...on whatever crosses my mind

Jay-Z on Gay Marriage

I just saw this on my Facebook timeline

 

 

There's some talk online about Jay-Z's endorsement being more powerful than Obama's. I don't really think that's terribly useful. These are two of the most culturally important black men in the world.  I guess I'd like to think of their endorsements as a one-two punch, rather than quibble about who will make the most individual impact.

That said, I'm struck by the simplicity and the almost nonchalance of Jigga here. Even though I know that's pretty much Shawn Carter's demeanor whenever he talks.

Fuller thoughts to come...

The Incomparable Baratunde Thurston on Obama's Release of His Birth Certificate

So many people I work with in D.C. weren't as upset by Barack Obama's release of his long-form birth certificate and the press conference about it as I was.  My twitter timeline was filled with "oooh, Barry delivers another smackdown." Liberal writers and bloggers all talked about the "political calculation" of it all.

That just wasn't what I was feeling. I was feeling this:

 

Quote of the Day - January 27, 2010

Bill Maher on political sex scandals and how it relates to our current political situation:

"I find America to be such a childish nation when it comes to its puritanical sexual views. Let me tell you something. John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer are two guys that the Democratic party and the country could really use right now. Edwards' big issue was poverty in America. And Eliot Spitzer was the Sheriff of Wall Street. And why did they get drummed out? Because they got their winkie dinks caught in the cookie jar. So what! When so many people in this country face the same issues, it's so hypocritical to say these guys can't be in public life."

Indeed

Quote of the Day - October 5, 2009

Roger Cohen's op-ed in today's issue of The New York Times, which dissects the fundamental different way that the U.S. and Europe view health care, is a beautiful, subtly persuasive bit of writing.

To wit:

One fundamental reason a public option — yes, “option,” not single-payer monopoly — is needed in the United States is to jump-start the idea that basic health care is a moral obligation rather than a financial opportunity.

And:

A public commitment to universal coverage is not character-sapping but character-affirming. Medicare did not make America less American. Individualism is more “rugged” when housed in a healthy body.

Indeed.

On Politics and the Sorry State of Affairs (or, you know, the Democrats)

(x-posted at Forbes Avenue)

I've been having a hard time figuring out what to say about politics of late.

Part of it is that life gets in the way and a brotha ain't always got time to sit down and take stock of everything that is happening. And part of it is that I'm losing faith that we liberals always taking to the innanets is even effective.

But this was a big week, folks. Big education speech. Big health care speech. White folks still freakin' out about the fact that the president got some melanin. And one of the tried and true liberal visionaries lost his job, leaving Obama with pretty much no one on the Left with which to work.

Time to say something.

But what do I say that I haven't said already? I wrote a few months ago about my frustration with the Democrats? But I wanna take it a step further:

I do not believe there is a progressive movement in this country, which is why I think the Democrats are so ineffectual.

To wit: Brilliant reporting on how the Democrats fucked up health care from jump.

To wit:

Bill Maher: New Rules
by James2896

What’s Wrong with Obama’s Speeches on Race

(cross posted at Forbes Avenue)

Well, first. There are so few.

No, seriously -- let me start by saying that the fact that we have a president who talks about race seriously at all is a huge step in the right direction.

That said, I am frequently distressed by what the president actually says when he does speak about race. Because I think he is (perhaps unintentionally) intellectually dishonest about how race truly operates, what life is actually like as a Black person, and what it will take to really create equality of opportunity and an equitable division of resources (which are two very different things that require two separate, but specific, approaches).

Unlike most people, I thought the Philadelphia speech was terrible, ahistorical, and dangerous. I thought in his attempt to appeal to both White and Black, he made a crucial mistake that many people make when discussing race -- equating Black and White feelings about, and experiences with, race symmetrically. Meaning White people's resentment at Black progress was the same as Black frustration with being oppressed.

Simply - though both are legitimate, they are not equal.

To suggest, as he did, that they are, I think is dangerous. I think it contributes to a feeling of fatigue in America. Fatigue with remedies for past wrongs. Fatigue with talking about Black people when we can talk about White people. Fatigue fatigue fatigue.

This is perhaps unavoidable. He is a politician and there are many more White people than there are Black people. He must say what will allow him to stay in power and do what he wants to do to help everyone. I get that.

But because race operates the way it does, what any prominent Black person says carries enormous weight. In this case, what he's saying is incredibly detrimental to a concerted, real fight to end racism (it's great, if you're goal is bettering race relations...but yea, that's a different goal).

We've got to find language that talks honestly, directly, and passionately to the specific and unique experience of being Black in America without it being assumed that, by doing so, we ignore everyone else.

Quote of the Day - July 20, 2009

Jamelle beautifully dismantles Ross Douthat's (quasi)anti-affirmative action argument in today's New York Times:

Contra Douthat, affirmative action (and especially race-based affirmative action) will be necessary for as long as our political institutions refuse to address systemic discrimination in any meaningful way.

Indeed.

Beating the Racial Double Standard Horse Dead; Or, How We Continue to Miss the Point

Perusing The Root during my lunch break today, I came across this headline, "TV's Golden Age of Rage: O'Reilly, Hannity, Olbermann and the rise of white rage on cable television."  I immediately clicked on the link, ready to read what I thought would be a brilliant dissection of white paranoia and white frustration with non-white male progress (and its perceived byproduct, white male stagnation) as propagated by the "news media."

But then I got to this part:

But now, try to think of a single African-American newsman who's exhibited—and gotten away with—the type of antics their white counterparts do each and every day on America’s top news channels. Don’t feel ignorant if you can’t. There aren’t any. But why?

Ugh.

This article, which isn't entirely wrong about the racial double standard, does succeed in diluting the force of an argument against such a standard by arguing that what Black folk want is the ability to do stupid ass shit too. 

Look, I'm all for reminding people of racial double standards.  But in this case, I don't know that we should be arguing for Black people to act a damn fool on the news. 

Or, to put it another way, the article misses the point.  The issue with cable news right now isn't that its unfair that Black folks can't behave the way Hannity, Beck, and O'Reilly behave. 

A Democratic Majority: What Does It Mean?

So Al Franken will be seated and Democrats have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

Jamelle, like me, is skeptical that this means what Democrats and the mainstream media will try to tell you that it means:

The past few months have demonstrated the extent to which there are real ideological/interest-based fissures within the Democratic caucus. Or put another way, Ben Nelson is still the 60th vote, Evan Bayh the 59th, Blanche Lincoln the 58th and so on.

Precisely.

I think the problem with this "super-majority"/"filibuster proof" meme is that it obscures the reality that the Democratic party is a collection of loosely aligned points of view.  Sixty Democratic votes doesn't mean the same thing as 60 Republican votes (or even 58 Republican votes). 

I suspect the reason Democrats fall out of favor is that people view them in a way that is not at all based in reality. Meaning, people expect Democrats to behave as Republicans...you know, like a party and using their majority to ram things through Congress.

There is a part of me that would like this to be the case (at least, partly).  I sorta think winning an election gives you some leeway to do what you think should be done.  I know, crazy, right?

However, I never look at the Democratic party as a party in the way I view the Republican party as a party. And it is not that I don't think they believe in anything, so much as I don't think they are organized around a central ideology like the Republicans.  And that makes things different.

But the meme out there will be that Democrats will push through whatever it is they want, or should, whether they do that or not.  But no one will define what it is the Democrats want.  Because no one knows.  What the Blue Dogs want isn't the same as what a Chuck Schumer wants. 

Why does no one say this (enough)?

Jamelle rightly deconstructs Ezra Klein's primary message that Democrats should use this majority to get some stuff done because Klein fails to account for the fact that there is no there there.  What do Democrats want?

Democrats in the past may have been the overreaching liberal party, but they aren't that now.  But you wouldn't know that to listen to the Right and the mainstream media.

Ultimately, I think what will happen is that Democrats will fall apart on health care and everything else (and probably never even get to the "black" issues like mandatory minimum sentencing) and people will vote some of them out of power, thinking (I would argue incorrectly) that Democrats squandered their majority.

I would say this is good because the Democratic party is so disjointed that it serves no one well at all, but what is the alternative?

Bill Maher Reads My Blog...

...well, not really.  But he seems have figured out what I (and others) have been saying:

Word.

Quote of the Day - June 18, 2009

Freddie over at the steller League of Ordinary Gentleman makes a passionate plea for anti-health care reform folks to take a look at themselves, saying:

I believe that for people in the most powerful economy in the history of the world to lack for access to health care is an obscenity. I believe it makes folly of our claims to be a moral nation and undermines the very notion of democratic community. I don’t expect people who don’t agree to change their minds. But we are not asking this for no reason; we are asking this because of real and devastating suffering. Even I don’t believe that this suffering is the only meaningful part of the discussion. I know in my heart that a discussion that fails to interrogate it as an essential fact is as useless as it is immoral.

Nuf said.

More on Bill Maher's Obama Critique

Bill explains what he means:

"If not now, when?"

I think this is the major point that Bill Maher has buried in his critique of Obama.  His comment that even his own audience, which suffered few jokes or critiques of Obama in the past, applauded that critique is instructive. 

I think that is saying something.

This is sort of what I wanted to get at yesterday in my post. The Democrats have two out of three branches of government and, mostly, the other team is on the ropes.  Now might be a good time to do what you said you would do when you got elected, Democrats.

I think the challenge for them is figuring out what the hell it is they want to do and then figure out how to bring the entire party along.  The Blue Dogs are Democrats in name only. And despite what the Right will tell you, the rest of the party ain't all that liberal.  Especially not the leadership. 

Of course anyone who watches Bill regularly knows that he knows that the Democrats have no idea what they really want to do, mostly because there is no Democratic ideology (I'm coming to believe this more and more).  So rhetorically, he's conflating what Obama should/would/could do with what is really the role of Congress.  This works because, as you see, it gets him interviewed on MSNBC.  And there should be criticism of Obama.  But I don't think it is translating to people demanding what they want from Congress.

Bill has to get that applauding audience of his to transfer that frustration from Obama to Congress.

More:
Congress v. Obama: We're Kinda Screwed
Bill Maher Goes Hard at Obama

Diversity on Sunday Talk Shows

The Congressional Black Caucus is mad about the lack of blackness on Sunday talk shows.

I feel their pain, but generally speaking Senators are more newsworthy than House members and, well, ain't nobody callin up Roland Burris anytime soon.  That leaves a lot of House members who, outside of the House leadership, just aren't the people that get asked on these shows. 

Not that that's right. 

I do think the Sunday shows need to step up their diversity game.  I would actually like to see more than just legislators.  Might be cool to see how local organizers view what the federal government is doing.  Or heads of non-profits that wield a lot of power in D.C. (though folks act like they don't).

Congress v. Obama: We're Kinda Screwed

There's this whole meme out there in the blogosphere -- Jamelle rounds all the recent stuff up nicely -- around the notion that the real problem with our federal government is that Congress abdicates its duty to be a check on the executive branch -- even in the age of Obama.

And I largely agree with this, but with a twist:  I think the problem with Congress is the Democrats.

I think they are weak and rarely if ever use the rules and strategies of Congress to their advantage.  Sure Republicans rammed through all the stuff they wanted pre-2006, but Dems didn't do what they should have done by blocking any of it. 

In fact, I think the Republicans, even in their crazy current state (perhaps even because of it), are a better minority party than the Dems were from 1994 to 2006.  This year alone, Republicans have already blocked a D.C. voting rights bill, the bankruptcy bill that would have fixed a lot of the mortgage problem at no cost to taxpayers, and will probably ruin the health care bill. But that's their job.  They don't think those bills are the right thing to do, so they stop them. 

Democrats have controlled Congress for 3 and a half years and they just aren't getting the job done.  I don't know that they need to be as obstructionist and as partisan as the Republicans, but sometimes you gotta take the hard vote and I just don't think they do nearly as much as they should.

Stephen Suh goes a step further in his disdain of Democrats:

There's been quite a bit of discussion about how the Senate is institutionally designed to impede progress. But the plain fact is that Harry Reid has a lot of power - and the knowledge and skills - to move legislation forward when he wants to. It's just what when it comes to truly progressive legislation, he doesn't want to, and few members of the Democratic Caucus care enough about progressive policies to put any pressure on him. So we can go two ways: transform the Senate's rules, procedures and most imporantly, its privileges, or transform the Democrats in the Senate.

Indeed.

Bill Maher Goes Hard at Obama

Glad someone does:

Obama Mucks It up on DOMA

A states' rights argument for the Defense of Marriage Act?

"This policy of neutrality maximizes state autonomy and democratic self-governance in an area of traditional state concern, and preserves scarce government resources. It is thus entirely rational."

Say what?!

I think what bothers me most about this is the "it is entirely rational" part.  To save money, the government should discriminate? Really?  You really wanna go down that rabbit hole, Barry? 

Get it together, patna!

A Moment of Sanity on FOX News

Shep Smith, displaying deep humanity and good sense, calls out his own viewers:

Might have been nice to then admit that FOX News courted those viewers and that's why they are there. And also might have been nice to say we need to change the way we talk about our problems in the U.S.

But, one step at a time, right?

Quote of the Day - June 11, 2009

William Jelani Cobb compares Obama's incrementalism on gay rights to that of Kennedy with civil rights in the 60s, and warns:

The president would do well to define this moment by taking immediate action to repeal "don't ask, don't tell" or ensure adoption rights for homosexual, bisexual and transgender families. Kennedy believed that promoting civil rights would jeopardize other aspects of his domestic agenda during a national crisis. Barack Obama has a broader set of crises to resolve than any president in modern history, but that is not a rationale for inaction on this issue.

Then he goads us, the people:

Ultimately, the gay rights movement will have to learn something that the civil rights movement learned again and again during the 20th century -- it is often necessary to force the hand of even your allies to achieve your goals.

Indeed.

Do Better: Understanding the Sotomayor Cartoon

This post is an entry in a blogging day of action.  Check out more posts and get involved!

When my friend Tanya told me about the Sotomayor cartoon and I looked at it, I wasn’t angry. I'm a Black man living in the United States.  Sadly, I expect this.  Since January, I’ve watched White men lose their damn minds over any little thing Obama has done, racializing everything from economic recovery to the man’s dates with his wife. Unlike most, I do remember what it was like during the election.

The man picked a Puerto Rican woman to be on the Supreme Court. Something like the cartoon was bound to happen. Sad, but inevitable.

We live in a racist, sexist country.

The reason White men are losing their minds over everything that Obama is doing and the selection of Sotomayor is because, to the core of their being, “minority” and “qualified” are mutually exclusive terms. “Qualified” and “woman” are mutually exclusive terms to them.

They so virulently go after Obama and Sotomayor because they really believe that the world is unfair, giving shit to people who don’t deserve it. Destroying our perfect union. Wrecking havoc on the wallets of ordinary Americans and deigning to join a body that has, yes, decided Brown v. Board of Education but also decided Plessy v. Ferguson and Dred Scott. The notion that a woman of color would think she could gain entrance to it literally assaults their sense of balance and rightness in the world.

Or more pointedly, racism and sexism.

See, though far too many people think these terms have become overused and thrown around so much, that is what is at work here. It can’t really be anything else (no matter how much you argue).

It’s crucially important to recognize racism and sexism for what it is.

The image of Sotomayor strung up like a piñata with a bunch of Republican men waiting to hit her with a bat is disgusting and dehumanizing. That’s what racism and sexism are, the notion that the people you don’t like, that aren’t like you, are not even human. Sotomayor becomes an object to beat the shit out of. Literally. Further, the constant conflation of the varied nationalities and cultures of Hispanic people leads to ridiculousness like insinuating that Sotomayor is Mexican. You know, ‘cause what’s the diff, minorities aren’t human the distinction is a nonissue.

I think the reason so many other people are so livid about this cartoon and the new cover of The National Review is because of two things: 1) racism and sexism at this level still seems antiquated to most White liberals and 2) they still understand so little about how racism and sexism works (or ignore it in their neverending quest to tell the world “it’s all better”).  Given these two facts, folks get angry but can't seem to do anything much constructive with that anger.

Conversating: Obama and Dissident Voices on Race

I am interested in posting some conversations, emails, IM's I have with colleagues, friends, adversaries because often I find I say some dope ass shit when I'm just talkin and vibin off of someone compared to when I say "i'm gonna write a blog post on X thing about race today."  LOL.

To that end, this post is informed by a couple of incidents including, but not limited to, the Dyson verbal beatdown of Obama on race, some (what I would consider to be) problematic critiques of the Dyson beatdown, and Melissa Harris-Lacewell's critique of the latest Smiley effort.

Appreciating what me and a friend are discussing here is not contingent upon reading that stuff, but I wanted to provide context for those curious about why we are talkin about this stuff.

Enjoy and comment freely!