Come on Al Gore, Endorse Obama now!
We need someone to counterbalance Bill Clinton, elder statesman of the Dems who's stooped low enough and sock Obama a few times, just so's Bill's "legacy" is preserved! he had his chance and blew it - sorry, he needs to move over and let a new generation get a shot! with 1.5 terms of his presidency he rolled the dice with the oval office and we know how that went! There's no saying what he's apt to do with another 4 to 8 years guaranteed to him and his wife!
I was all for Bill Clinton, and in fact all for Hillary too - but the possibility of having a no-baggage, all-american all-minority candidate is simply too much to resist - Obama of course must show staying power, as he does.. but not without support from the ground.
So Gore, help make it happen!
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Just one last post, then no more race/gender posts
Oh that Bob Herbert when he calls a truce he means it!
But even more than misogyny, ladies and gentlemen, is racism. Look at homicide by race and gender. Look at unemployment rates by race and gender, at bankruptcy rates by race and gender, at mortgage rate bias by race and gender. Ratio of prison releases due to faulty incarceration as revealed by DNA evidence by race and gender. Why just study the TV/radio air time and print media devoted to kidnappings by race and gender. Look at the average time taken by store clerks to attend to customers by race and gender..and then tell me that misogyny is worse than bias against the color of one's skin.
Not to take away anything from Herbert's story - but I think someone at NYT must have told him to write a pandering last-word-before-we-shut-up article saying your victimhood is greater than mine, and it would just sound more authentic coming from a black man! he's just keeping his job like black men and women will always do.
For information, here's the crime stats:
All crimes Against:
White Males 25.5%
Black Males - 32.5%
White Females 16.5%
Black Females - 25.5%
All crimes Against:
White Males 0.1%
Black Males - 0.2%
White Females 1.1%
Black Females - 3.1%
If there was ever a story that deserved more coverage by the news media, it’s the dark persistence of misogyny in America. Sexism in its myriad destructive forms permeates nearly every aspect of American life. For many men, it’s the true national pastime, much bigger than baseball or football.....
....If we’ve opened the door to the issue of sexism in the presidential campaign, then let’s have at it. It’s a big and important issue that deserves much more than lip service.
And so I had to wade through his entire column on Politics and Misogyny looking for the punch line and didn't find it! I think it was erased by the NYT editors, who else - but I think it was this..But even more than misogyny, ladies and gentlemen, is racism. Look at homicide by race and gender. Look at unemployment rates by race and gender, at bankruptcy rates by race and gender, at mortgage rate bias by race and gender. Ratio of prison releases due to faulty incarceration as revealed by DNA evidence by race and gender. Why just study the TV/radio air time and print media devoted to kidnappings by race and gender. Look at the average time taken by store clerks to attend to customers by race and gender..and then tell me that misogyny is worse than bias against the color of one's skin.
Not to take away anything from Herbert's story - but I think someone at NYT must have told him to write a pandering last-word-before-we-shut-up article saying your victimhood is greater than mine, and it would just sound more authentic coming from a black man! he's just keeping his job like black men and women will always do.
For information, here's the crime stats:
All crimes Against:
White Males 25.5%
Black Males - 32.5%
White Females 16.5%
Black Females - 25.5%
All crimes Against:
White Males 0.1%
Black Males - 0.2%
White Females 1.1%
Black Females - 3.1%
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Clyburn takes the high road
Almost as if in response to my plea/comment on TPM -
Clyburn takes the high road - confirming he'll remain neutral in S.Carolina primary
(Not really, I know - but I can make believe as well as anyone, can't I?)
Here's my comment on TPM elaborating on my own post on this blog -
"If you look at HRC's white women base and BO's black male base HRC's base may seem larger, but this slicing and dicing and micro-trending may be self-defeating...
Clyburn takes the high road - confirming he'll remain neutral in S.Carolina primary
(Not really, I know - but I can make believe as well as anyone, can't I?)
Here's my comment on TPM elaborating on my own post on this blog -
"If you look at HRC's white women base and BO's black male base HRC's base may seem larger, but this slicing and dicing and micro-trending may be self-defeating...
Obama, if smart could appeal to a much larger base of perhaps non-white men?
Or an even larger base of non-white people, men and women!
Do we want to go down that route as a country - oh leaders, lead us!"
In fact Clyburn's stance may be a double-edged sword - giving Clintons what they may have asked for, but fanning flames of black resentment a bit when he apparently denies them his voice as an overt channel for their frustration.MLK-LBJ: suggested Obama response
Caught this post on one of the blogs:
"At the end of the day (using some of Clinton's words from the interview), being “able to get it through Congress” is something she’s been doing longer. The ability to inspire by the “power of dreams” is a worthy and necessary talent for all social justice leaders. When she spoke of the dream "becoming reality..”..she seems only to be saying she thinks she can do it better than Obama can." http://iddybudjournal.blogspot.com/2008/01/hillarys-mlk-jr-moment.html
Well, Obama should say that Hillary, then, should stay in the Senate since he will need experienced competent leaders there to pass things through in the Congress, when he is President.
"At the end of the day (using some of Clinton's words from the interview), being “able to get it through Congress” is something she’s been doing longer. The ability to inspire by the “power of dreams” is a worthy and necessary talent for all social justice leaders. When she spoke of the dream "becoming reality..”..she seems only to be saying she thinks she can do it better than Obama can." http://iddybudjournal.blogspot.com/2008/01/hillarys-mlk-jr-moment.html
Well, Obama should say that Hillary, then, should stay in the Senate since he will need experienced competent leaders there to pass things through in the Congress, when he is President.
Hillary's moment and race and gender
The Dem's Primary cafeteria is a citizens gourmand's Envy - they have a simply great set of choices this year - can't lose the General Elections with any of the current options, including Edwards!
But it is critical for all of them to understand the answer to Drum's question (how did Hillary win NH?)
Firstly, do understand - Hillary, Barak and, yes, John too are more alike than not!
Each of them are, in their own way, trailblazers, and sometimes the positions they take that make many of the hairsplitters angry, are done mainly to counter the stereo-typed image that the media has, and presents, of their key demographic identifier.
Thus the story so far..
Hillary as the Woman has to work twice as hard as a man to prove she's tough - some of her pro-AUMF, anti-Iran votes, I think, were to insulate her against charges that she'll be soft and womanly, and ironically these have worked so well she has had to work hard to do the opposite!
Barak, (first names for all, as required by my EEOC advisor) as the black/minority of the group, has to work hard to prove that he does not just represent another victimized, marginalized, minority point of view as would an Al Sharpton or a Civil-Rights era politician - so he has the 'inclusive, work with the right, the left, the rich and the poor' message - it's not the '2 Americas' message he wants to deliver, but a message of reassurance that he's not going to be exclusively the Poor Man's President in the richest nation in the world - so Insurance cos. and (white) Business leaders, have nothing to worry. He could so easily be an Al Sharpton, but he picked the harder fight, to play in the old (white) boys' sandbox.
And John, the only Christian White Male has to fight against the "Me, Myself, and I" image of the stereo-typical privileged White Male and so rallies the country in favor of the downtrodden and the hard-at-the-heels American of all colors.
They could so easily stay within the stereo-typed molds that society and the media have prepared them. But each of them choose to carry the tougher message.
That is until now!
I think Hillary broke the post-Iowa tie with Obama because of two things - for one, her extensive back and forth question/answer lecture tours last week at NH demonstrated her intimate grasp of policy, and then there was THE tearing up. I liken that to the moment where Shakespeare draws the audience into his M of V story and invites empathy for that much-reviled figure of 16th century society - Shylock, the moneylender, the social outcast, through the latter's rants - If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh?
Hillary's tearing up humanized her, I would even say, it underscored her gender that which she has been working so hard to deny! In fact that was the second time in a week she let her gender guard down. The coy response to the NH TV anchor's likeability question was another girlish response for Hillary. I have no problems with it - whatever each thinks is needed to win, is par for the course, as long it's not a race-baiting Willie Horton ad!
Oh wait, that's the epilogue to the story - is the MLK-LBJ controversy a damning with faint praise version of the Willie Horton strategy from the Clinton camp?
Whether the Obama camp's response can be called playing the race card or not, where is this going to lead us?
For one thing, in simple numbers there are more white women than black men - or do you compare white women and non-white men? or white women against non white men and women?
Advice to Obama - pick your constituency thoughtfully and you may be able to mine a gold field!
But it is critical for all of them to understand the answer to Drum's question (how did Hillary win NH?)
Firstly, do understand - Hillary, Barak and, yes, John too are more alike than not!
Each of them are, in their own way, trailblazers, and sometimes the positions they take that make many of the hairsplitters angry, are done mainly to counter the stereo-typed image that the media has, and presents, of their key demographic identifier.
Thus the story so far..
Hillary as the Woman has to work twice as hard as a man to prove she's tough - some of her pro-AUMF, anti-Iran votes, I think, were to insulate her against charges that she'll be soft and womanly, and ironically these have worked so well she has had to work hard to do the opposite!
Barak, (first names for all, as required by my EEOC advisor) as the black/minority of the group, has to work hard to prove that he does not just represent another victimized, marginalized, minority point of view as would an Al Sharpton or a Civil-Rights era politician - so he has the 'inclusive, work with the right, the left, the rich and the poor' message - it's not the '2 Americas' message he wants to deliver, but a message of reassurance that he's not going to be exclusively the Poor Man's President in the richest nation in the world - so Insurance cos. and (white) Business leaders, have nothing to worry. He could so easily be an Al Sharpton, but he picked the harder fight, to play in the old (white) boys' sandbox.
And John, the only Christian White Male has to fight against the "Me, Myself, and I" image of the stereo-typical privileged White Male and so rallies the country in favor of the downtrodden and the hard-at-the-heels American of all colors.
They could so easily stay within the stereo-typed molds that society and the media have prepared them. But each of them choose to carry the tougher message.
That is until now!
I think Hillary broke the post-Iowa tie with Obama because of two things - for one, her extensive back and forth question/answer lecture tours last week at NH demonstrated her intimate grasp of policy, and then there was THE tearing up. I liken that to the moment where Shakespeare draws the audience into his M of V story and invites empathy for that much-reviled figure of 16th century society - Shylock, the moneylender, the social outcast, through the latter's rants - If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh?
Hillary's tearing up humanized her, I would even say, it underscored her gender that which she has been working so hard to deny! In fact that was the second time in a week she let her gender guard down. The coy response to the NH TV anchor's likeability question was another girlish response for Hillary. I have no problems with it - whatever each thinks is needed to win, is par for the course, as long it's not a race-baiting Willie Horton ad!
Oh wait, that's the epilogue to the story - is the MLK-LBJ controversy a damning with faint praise version of the Willie Horton strategy from the Clinton camp?
Whether the Obama camp's response can be called playing the race card or not, where is this going to lead us?
For one thing, in simple numbers there are more white women than black men - or do you compare white women and non-white men? or white women against non white men and women?
Advice to Obama - pick your constituency thoughtfully and you may be able to mine a gold field!
Saturday, January 5, 2008
An Obama Presidency?!
Over at Sepia Mutiny they discuss Obama as a brown candidate - http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/004943.html
No he's really not running a racial campaign, whether brown, black or blue - he actually has built upon Edwards' 2004 theme of the 2 Americas, except he uses the red states/blue states' ideological divide when he may mean the racial and economic ones too. The only time he actually referred to race in his campaign speeches was on the Selma anniversary (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7630250 )
I had steadfastly dismissed him as a creature of the celeb-obssessed, fad-chasing culture; even when hearing him speak I have felt he touched upon generalities and abstractions. And, yes, I am wary of someone selling hope - I remember Marketing 101 and the quote attributed to Charles Revlon "In the factories we make perfume, but in the stores we sell hope."! And I wonder what is the Obama factory really making? He seems too good to be true, and everything I've learnt from life, is that if its too good to be true, it can't be true.
I do think that if he's as good as he sounds, Obama as a member of a racial minority can do much more to shake up the power equilibrium in favor of the dispossessed classes than can Hillary as a woman. But I am so afraid that if Dems choose Obama as the nominee and Americans follow suit to make him Prez, it may be in exactly the same mind-frame that they selected Jimmy Carter so close after Watergate. And the Obama Presidency like Carter's will be awash in goodwill but will beseiged by the cunning, ugly, manipulative obstructionist minority in the Republican camp and the world at large. They would be wroth to see any good come out of the Dem Party...give them a long enough rope to hang themselves will be their mantra and they will see to it that he comes out looking like another naive peanut farmer. To this day they will not credit Carter adequately for the Camp David Peace Accord, they blame him for the Iran hostage crisis, and the economic problems of the 70's -
I agree with the Dailykos diarist RenaRF (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/4/135059/1810/652/430574) things could get real ugly but not just on the way to the nomination - our candidates have been bruised one after the other, Kennedy, Carter, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, in so many ways in their path to the White House, their stays at the WH and/or with their post-WH history.
I am truly afraid to Hope.
No he's really not running a racial campaign, whether brown, black or blue - he actually has built upon Edwards' 2004 theme of the 2 Americas, except he uses the red states/blue states' ideological divide when he may mean the racial and economic ones too. The only time he actually referred to race in his campaign speeches was on the Selma anniversary (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7630250 )
I had steadfastly dismissed him as a creature of the celeb-obssessed, fad-chasing culture; even when hearing him speak I have felt he touched upon generalities and abstractions. And, yes, I am wary of someone selling hope - I remember Marketing 101 and the quote attributed to Charles Revlon "In the factories we make perfume, but in the stores we sell hope."! And I wonder what is the Obama factory really making? He seems too good to be true, and everything I've learnt from life, is that if its too good to be true, it can't be true.
I do think that if he's as good as he sounds, Obama as a member of a racial minority can do much more to shake up the power equilibrium in favor of the dispossessed classes than can Hillary as a woman. But I am so afraid that if Dems choose Obama as the nominee and Americans follow suit to make him Prez, it may be in exactly the same mind-frame that they selected Jimmy Carter so close after Watergate. And the Obama Presidency like Carter's will be awash in goodwill but will beseiged by the cunning, ugly, manipulative obstructionist minority in the Republican camp and the world at large. They would be wroth to see any good come out of the Dem Party...give them a long enough rope to hang themselves will be their mantra and they will see to it that he comes out looking like another naive peanut farmer. To this day they will not credit Carter adequately for the Camp David Peace Accord, they blame him for the Iran hostage crisis, and the economic problems of the 70's -
I agree with the Dailykos diarist RenaRF (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/4/135059/1810/652/430574) things could get real ugly but not just on the way to the nomination - our candidates have been bruised one after the other, Kennedy, Carter, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, in so many ways in their path to the White House, their stays at the WH and/or with their post-WH history.
I am truly afraid to Hope.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
164 million people and Bhutto's son
Well, LA Times has it correct -
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-pakistan2jan02,0,6726194.story?coll=la-home-commentary
Furthermore it isn't clear whether she was bestowing Pakistan upon her family which might mean she thought Pakistan was her private property to distribute to her family as estate; or vice versa, whether she was bestowing her family upon Pakistan - kind of a little insulting both to Pakistan and her family? Surely a country of 164 million people who have lived and learnt to weather the dangerous political terrain of Pakistan can produce at least one successor more capable than the 19-year old Bilawal, even if he were Benazir's first-born son? And if it were me, I would never bestow upon my children an inheritance such as the country of Pakistan, however glorious and far removed from its present dismal state its future condition were guaranteed to be. Instead I would first want my children to atleast have the opportunities I have had education and experience wise - which in Bhutto's case means Oxford, Harvard and all the Ivy league degrees, the wisdom and connection that they supposedly come accompanied with, the freedom to choose their learning track, as well as their destiny - at the very least an education that his own peers in Pakistan would have access to.
So, in short Benazir's will is a little puzzling.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-pakistan2jan02,0,6726194.story?coll=la-home-commentary
Furthermore it isn't clear whether she was bestowing Pakistan upon her family which might mean she thought Pakistan was her private property to distribute to her family as estate; or vice versa, whether she was bestowing her family upon Pakistan - kind of a little insulting both to Pakistan and her family? Surely a country of 164 million people who have lived and learnt to weather the dangerous political terrain of Pakistan can produce at least one successor more capable than the 19-year old Bilawal, even if he were Benazir's first-born son? And if it were me, I would never bestow upon my children an inheritance such as the country of Pakistan, however glorious and far removed from its present dismal state its future condition were guaranteed to be. Instead I would first want my children to atleast have the opportunities I have had education and experience wise - which in Bhutto's case means Oxford, Harvard and all the Ivy league degrees, the wisdom and connection that they supposedly come accompanied with, the freedom to choose their learning track, as well as their destiny - at the very least an education that his own peers in Pakistan would have access to.
So, in short Benazir's will is a little puzzling.
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