Though Tyra Banks first asked the question on her talk show several months ago, it is from the glowing (what else) interview of Barack Obama in the upcoming issue of Rolling Stone that we finally see what’s on his iPod.
Dylan. The Stones. Stevie Wonder. Sheryl Crow. Yo-Yo Ma (quick: name another famous cellist. Can’t do it, can you?). Basically everything you’d expect from a tail-end Baby Boomer born in 1961. Somehow, Obama’s impossible-to-judge selections seem too safe and just believable–not as hip as his supporters might want, but totally acceptable to just about everyone.
Obama reveals himself to be a regular, faintly obsessive fan of the music of his time with decent, if safe and mainstream, taste. He said to Rolling Stone, “If I had one musical hero, it would have to be Stevie Wonder. When I was at that point where you start getting involved in music, Stevie had that run with Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Fulfillingness’ First Finale and Innervisions, and then Songs in the Key of Life. Those are as brilliant a set of five albums as we’ve ever seen.”
Note he says “albums.” One wonders what else was in his record collection that he won’t tell Jann Wenner. While we bet Obama is way into MC5 and the Stooges, maybe even a secret Albini fan (hello, he’s from Chicago), we do know he’s into Jay-Z, seeing as he made the “brush ya shoulders off” gesture publicly.
The news that Obama deleted his Netflix queue either proves that it is music that unites us or that Obama’s taste in film was becoming the topic of smears by conservative pundits. As reported in WiseNews, Obama’s move from Netflix came after conservative commentator Michelle Malkin wrote a column referencing accusations by conservative bloggers that Obama has had access to middle eastern DVDs depicting scenes of kaffiyehs, the checkered arab scarf. “There is no proof he hasn’t rented movies showing kaffiyehs. Lawrence of Arabia is right there on his Facebook page under Favorite Movies,” wrote Malkin. We’re not sure how she felt about Stevie Wonder.
THE GOP: FISHERS OF (WHITE) MEN
I recently had an illuminating conversation with my father. He was in management in the defense industry for years until he retired, causing him to hate Republicanism with a white hot passion. He can’t wait to pull the lever for Obama.
He had just returned from a Canadian fishing trip with five “Blue Collar American” types in their seventies. He told me he was worried about Barack Obama’s chances. “Some people are pretty racist,” he said.
I told him, “Think of it like sports. They said that Black men couldn’t be quarterbacks. Now it’s normal. Then they said Black men couldn’t be head coaches. They excelled. Then they said Black men couldn’t be owners…”
“But son,” he interrupted, “these guys don’t even like football! Get it?”
“What? Why not?”
“Too many Black people!”
I didn’t ask him why he had friends like that. If you grew up in Blue Collar America before the 1980s, the answer to that is self-evident: a person needs friends.
Anyway, having already exhausted “articulate”, “attractive”, “Muslim”, “naturally gifted”, “exotic” and the like, it is slowly dawning on the GOP’s that all of their “cleverness” might be accomplishing the opposite of what they intended: it may be inoculating people against code words. Now what?
I listened to Rush Limbaugh the other week, and he was laying out The Plan (beyond the one wherein we are winning the war). I hope you don’t have a full stomach and remember, I heard this with my own ears (though obviously I will be paraphrasing). Sigh. Here goes:
The Obama candidacy is part of a George Soros plot to rule the world. No surprise there. Then it gets ugly. Soros is so evil, so amoral and power hungry that he has trained a Black man to behave like a President! When the cameras aren’t rolling, when he doesn’t have a teleprompter to read someone else’s words, he isn’t so “articulate”. His speech is dull, slow and halting. In other words George Sauros has painstakingly trained Stepin Fetchit to ACT LIKE JFK!! WAKE UP AMERICA!
I shit you not, this is their plan (that and painting Michelle as a “ho”). Yep. Count on it. McCain will wag his finger and scold and denounce the offending miscreants, but he’ll have the smell of it all over him.
Back to Dad. “Well Dad,” I said, “these guys would never have voted for a Democrat anyway, no matter who it was.”
“Nah,” he laughed, “I don’t think that they ever vote at all.”
Picking a qualified and electable running mate will be a snap for John McCain after the woes he has encountered trying to find a suitable campaign theme song. In his struggle to employ a stirring but appropriate ditty, McCain has been more apt to incite the artists associated with the songs he favors to consider chopping off their own fingers or poking their own eyes out with their accursed, misunderstood pens. Until now McCain has hardly been able to settle on a song that didn’t call forth a barrage of Cease and Desist orders.
Part of the problem is that these wily musicians and their intentionally ambiguous lyrics are designed to engender a mass following (e. g., Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”) while obliquely projecting their political slants. McCain wanted John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Little Pink Houses,” with its familiar “Ain’t that America” refrain, to stoke patriotic fervor and unify the electorate around simple homespun values–but someone in McCain’s camp eventually figured out that this particular jam actually decries the empty lie that is the “American dream.” Plus, Mellencamp is all about the farmers, that tragic, oft-neglected group that might well unseat the oil dynasty if we would only let them grow the corn to fuel our cars, buses, jet liners and semis.
McCain also tried ABBA and, well, they are fricking foreigners, you daft geezer. Naturally all of their lyrics are flimsily coded anti-American messages. ABBA was able to re-unite on at least this issue; they had a collective hissy fit. Bush encountered similar resistance in 2004 when he tried to use the Orleans hit, “You’re Still the One.” Ah, but songwriter John Hall was an anti-nuke activist. So now McCain, figuring Chuck Berry has been fucked over in much worse ways and might indifferently abide this dubious but relatively innocuous misappropriation, has jacked “Johnny B. Goode.” Berry is a self-proclaimed Barack Obama man, but McCain says he will continue to use the song, penned over a half-century ago by the pedophilic pee fetishist, because the 81-year-old legend has been, “the only [artist who] hasn’t complained.”
Obama is currently going with U2 and “Beautiful Day,” playing to the optimistic hipster set with his whole rainbows and jellybeans appeal. You would like to believe he could have found one song by an American band that would bolster his image and rally the faithful. But then again, Bono is some kind of Christian, and even with their half-billion dollars and staff of thousands Obama & Co. wouldn’t have been able to find a Christian-American band that doesn’t induce spontaneous wide-spread vomiting.
This theme song business is some serious shit, though. Kosovo, the newest country in the world, has just chosen a national anthem. I caught a few bars of the grim ecclesiastical arrangement on the radio today and was quite underwhelmed. Things are so touchy in the tumultuous Balkan state that the song has no lyrics. A spokesman said that because of the broad array of ethnicities, historical volatility and the clashing factional interests, there likely exists no sequence of words that would not be a potential igniter of conflagration in the region that has for centuries been the embattled border land between the Muslim and Christian hemispheres.
It is possible that the outcome of this historic U.S. election will be determined by whichever candidate picks the catchier tune, and clearly McCain is at a distinct disadvantage in this realm, judging from the apparent rage inspired in popular musicians by anyone associated with the Bush administration or even the Republican Party. It would be commercial suicide for any contemporary mainstream rocker to align themselves with, or even to allow any of their “art” to be used for the advancement of the conservative agenda, especially if they were a closet neo-con. So, taking for granted the fact that leftist posturing might for some musicians be simply the pragmatic option, let’s not lose sight of the more compelling issue at hand here: this presidential election is our first one out of fifty-six, dating back to 1789, in which we are free to choose a presidential candidate by basing our votes on the singular criterion of the candidate’s race. Now if that ain’t democracy then Chuck Berry ain’t a freak.
I’ve been away for several weeks driving around America in a gasoline powered ve-hicle. I’ve seen things.
This I know: While nobody knows how this presidential campaign will play out it is an absolute certainty that like in 1968, the Empire will be shaken to its core.
W. and crew have taken the GOP so far out on a dead limb that they’ve nominated a candidate who they despise. Hillary, having given the okeydoke to “blue collar America” has smashed the LBJ coalition.
Meanwhile that unsinkable ship, the “USS Sole Superpower,” has sunk. A shocked and addled populace drifts on the waves, clinging to its habits and prejudices while sharks circle the wreckage. They face a stark choice: they can swim towards the small island on the horizon (which may not even have any food or water) called “Obama,” or they can stay put and hope to be rescued before the sharks decide to strike.
(Metaphor switch!) Obama, the Mohammed Ali of politics (see? Americans can embrace a Muslim champ) has, against all odds, defeated the hardest hitter around to take the Democratic Title. The Clintons, like George Foreman, foresaw an early knockout, but Obama employed a “rope-a-dope” strategy. He’s taken some thundering shots to the head and body, which is worrisome, and the tireless GOP waits in the wings like Joe Frazier. The ensuing fight won’t be pretty. Furthermore, unlike Ali, Obama didn’t get a knockout. He won on points in a controversial split decision.
Obama will not use the rope-a-dope on McCain. He’ll float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, stick and jab. To win he must fight his fight and bring it.
The greatest obstacle to this would be a Hillary vice-presidency. The Republicans have a warehouse full of ammunition on the Clintons, sitting unused. Obama would be caught flat footed, spending the entire campaign explaining what the Clintons really meant by this or that. You know the drill.
I know for a fact that Republicans are desperately praying (literally) for an Obama-Clinton ticket. For all of their bluster, GOPs know this: Their candidate might win out only if Obama picks Hillary. They know that McCain is no Joe Frazier. No, he is a Scott LeDeaux, a paper tiger with a glass jaw. A Great White Hope, if you will, though even a LeDeaux could land a lucky punch if he catches the Champ flat footed.
So will “blue collar America” ever vote for Obama? (Metaphor switching back!) As we bob on the ocean, surrounded by sharks, something new develops. Amongst the run-of-the-mill sharks, up swims a ravenous 40-foot Great White named “War on Iran!” Maybe, just maybe, America will decide to swim for that island.
These are the (legal) things Marion Kind has done for money: cabbage picker, office clerk, landscaper, ice cream man, injection molder, forklift driver, film and stage actor, drycleaner, comic book artist, truck driver, dishwasher, fanzine putter-outer, bartender, housepainter, singer, UAW shop steward, warehouse and packaging person, courier, waiter, guinea pig, illustrator, poet, writer, fashion model, five instrument recording artist, assembler, construction, cabbie. Not saying he did them well, only that he got paid.
The Liar Next Time
Former Bush administration press secretary Scott McClellan’s memoir about his tenure as spokesman for Cheney Inc., What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, puts, at first glance, the final touches on the first chapter of the post-Skull-and-Bones-Bildenberg, etc., conspiracy world. According to early reports of McClellan’s book–in stores Monday–he claims he was but a mouthpiece through which the Bush administration dispensed, on a daily basis, the directives by which all branches of the federal government should proceed. McClellan, heretofore considered a “loyalist,” says Bush governed on a “permanent campaign” premise, predicated primarily on “propaganda.” And, says McClellan, he told nothing but lies. The guidelines for his evasive press conference babble were simply the will and vision of the Cheney-Bush cadre. Thanks for coming forward in such a timely fashion there, Scotty.
A cursory retrospective might suggest that George XLIII, by being such a dweeb, ruined the fun for the monarch-capitalist elite, going so ham-handedly about the diabolical duties of titular commander of the U.S.S. Free World that he gave up the jig. He cracked out of turn, as a David Mamet character once said. George XLIII is a fable character of a boy who inherited kingship but did not possess the capacity for comprehending that the sacred charade was to be performed with dignity and that he should, under all circumstances, remain in character so the masses would have an idol on which to train their focus, a hero to whom they could entrust their dreams. But he got up in front of everybody like some vulgar, gangly teenager toasting his elder sister’s wedding, sporting an unconvincing cockiness while mimicking the ritual, and destroyed all illusions of wisdom and solemnity.
Bill Clinton, given his hillbilly roots, could be given a pass for his theatrical blunders. And reportedly George XLI never even planned for George XLIII to be the ascender; it was supposed to be Jeb or Cletus or whatever they call the purportedly smart one. What makes it all so mythical and Shakespearean is that the drama is drawn from the unscripted eventuality of the ascension of the retarded son. Talk about mainstreaming gone completely awry.
This time, the moral of this fable is not, however, America wins again. Pop philosophy superstar, Slavoj Zizek, for all of his dazzling, convoluted intertwining of infinite academic and cultural references, seems to have made at least one clear political point in all of his writing, and that is that the killing off of Stalinist-brand oppressive communism has, by eliminating that vital counter balance, collaterally taken with it the whole of the liberal democratic movement, including the American “left.” Zizek might have hit on something. Our new “face to the world,” Obama–who has all but ceased participation in the Senate–is merely the perfect stall, should his whole impossible dream thing actually come true, a placeholder while they primp the facade on the next chimera.
What’s my point? There is none. There is no conspiracy. The whole thing is done so above board–and since Bush stripped off the veneer–grotesquely so, we cannot accept that the grand reveal is even true. We suffer mass hysterical blindness because we cannot deal with what we are looking at. They–the profiteers, too many to enumerate–do what they want and we can’t or don’t do shit about it. Bush, by buying oil to bolster our emergency reserve at an extremely critical juncture in a market already strained by Middle East instability, deliberately raised oil prices. A story popped up online at the UK’s The Independent site last Friday: Dr. Mamdouh Salameh, an oil economist who advises both the World Bank (a tool of US hegemony) and the UN, says his study concludes that without the war on Iraq, oil would be no more than $40 a barrel, less than a third of its present price, or about what it was before the war. Monitoring of the web for even one American news source who linked to the story has come up empty. It is such a forgone conclusion that it is old news nobody wants to countenance.
The Arabs don’t set oil prices anymore than a titty dancer sets the cover charge. I was lapse in my cynical astuteness assuming G43 waged war for long-range control of the oil supply, but the Bush-Saud cartel are reaping such ludicrous immediate gains that you have to marvel at the pathology behind what enables them to psychologically rock themselves to sleep at night while magazine color photo spreads of amputated soldiers and shrapnel-blinded children litter newsstands and coffee tables from here to, literally, Timbuktu.
Francis Fukuyama, a historian and a target of Zizek’s criticism, contends in his book, The End of History, that the modern advance of democracy and the waning of old school communism indicates that all great historical changes are in the past, that there is no turning back from the global permeation of liberal-democratic government. I am with Zizek; Fukuyama probably missed the point. They have rubbed it in our face that they can conduct extreme and protracted evil, motivated only by vanity and greed for power and profit, and with utter impunity. We showed them that they can shut down the farcical democratic process at whim (election 2000) and we will behave as powerlessly as any subjects of a totalitarian dictatorship. We sit idly by as the feeble and anemic Democratic Party has long abandoned its constituency and comfort ourselves that at least “He” will soon be gone. Well, we might not know what the next version of Him looks like but we know who he’ll working for.
F-F-F-Fire!
Why does the American public allow pundits and politicians to talk to them as if they are the senile relative in the room? These a-holes love to banter amongst themselves about what “The American People” think about some piece of drivel or another until we learn it verbatim.
The American People, the story goes, think issues are boring and politics are dirty.To be president a person must be able to take a punch–even (especially) a sucker punch, or a kick in the groin. I mean, what if Bin Laden caught Obama farting in church? What if Iran saw Hillary scratch her ass during the national anthem?
The American people just love this stuff, see? We love to gawk at the accident by the side of the road. In fact, we’d love it if, barring a real accident, one could be staged for our entertainment.
The Media, having framed the terms of battle, forces Democrats to steel themselves for months of expensive, banal, and–considering the numbers–pointless trench warfare between Clinton and Obama. Independents? Hell I don’t know…how could someone honestly not have chosen sides by now?
Republicans wait with bated breath: “Please, please, pleeeez, let it be Hillary!”
Their Hillary ammo sits un-used, and it is some foul stuff (I’ve heard it)–it will make the Rev. Wright business look like a stubbed toe. Seriously.
To most of the rest of the industrialized world this bickering is bizarre to say the very least. Why are we,The American People, putting ourselves through this? Why must we piss on people that we presumably expect our soldiers to salute someday? It’s as if The American People, standing in a burning house that could spread fire to the entire neighborhood, would rather argue about who left the toilet seat up (and what kind of person would do such an awful thing) than put the fire out. Is this really us?
New York City educator Debbie Almontaser was, according to the New York Times, forced to step down from her position as founding principal of the Kahlil Gibran International Academy public school, before it even opened. It was her dream that the school could mold a curriculum that would serve a broad cross-section of NYC kids and produce graduates fluent in Arabic and with a clearer understanding of the Middle East and Islam, so as to be prepared and qualified to go forth, as “ambassadors of peace and hope,” and bridge the ever-widening chasm that separates East from West.
Almontaser, a Yemen-born, New York-bred Muslim, tendered her resignation in the wake of a deliberate smear job by a New York Post reporter who artfully misused her words, quoting her out of context and omitting qualifying clauses from her statements that mitigated what the Post presented as militant rhetoric.
Daniel Pipes, director of the self-described “think tank,” Middle East Forum, a conservative watch dog group with their eye trained on Muslims, sees Almontaser’s efforts at the Gibran school as part of a long-con strategy of Muslims to promote radical ideals through “soft” jihad. Pipes contends that Muslims are slowly and, more importantly, lawfully infiltrating, at a molecular level, all facets of American society. Pipes fears Muslims with radical leanings are operating under the radar and are ultimately intending to impose sharia law in the United States.
Whereas Pipes might view Barack Obama as a potential Manchurian Candidate type of un-witting operative, a less savvy group of fear mongers began work in January smearing “Barack Hussein Obama” by planting seeds of dread via a chain e-mail that claims that Obama is a closet “radical” Muslim extremist. The email reminds us that “the Muslims” endeavor to destroy America and that one of them in the White House would certainly accelerate their affecting that end.
What if Barack Obama is Muslim? He certainly chose a strange route along which to run for president. You would think a Muslim extremist mole would at least come up through the Republican Party to take us off of the scent for a while longer. But no, this crafty underhanded bastard has risen to the precipice of prominence as a radical reform Democrat. That’s “reverse psychology,” where you hide in plain sight and so forth. More diabolical still, as a college student, Obama changed his name from Barry back to his original christening, Barack. Damn, he’s good.
Who would suspect a guy of East African heritage with an African surname and a middle name identical to the family name of an infamous Islamic dictator of being Muslim? The length of exacting calculation to which this man and his cabal of coup d’etat hopefuls must have gone is horrifying to contemplate. But, the most daring and paradigm-inverting tactic that he has employed thus far has been to speak at length on the subject of race at a critical juncture of a tightly contested bid for his party’s nomination.
He had to do something to divert the scrutiny of the press from his glaring Muslim-ness and steer the focus toward a safer subject. So this cunning operator presented himself as someone who comes from a culture and community that struggles with its own conflicted sentiments toward the white race in general.
The 9/11 Truth-ers and Loose Change folks–the people promulgating the notion that the Bush administration, in cahoots with World Trade Center ownership, blew up the WTC themselves and blamed it on al Qaeda as an excuse to wage war on Iraq, or some such business–never saw this one coming. The only problem with the Loose Change theory is that Cheney and Co. quite obviously needed no complex and impossible-to-pull-off conspiracy in order to go to war. They just told some lies to buy some time, sent in the troops, were found out in their lies, and re-elected. Where is the necessity for an intricate conspiracy plot in all that? Here’s the conspiracy you fricking yahoos, it’s not this president who is doing al Qaeda’s bidding, it is the next president who is a secret Muslim.
If Obama gets to the White House, is he going to blow up his own crib, family, flat-screened TV, and his own ass, like some crass suicide bomber? If your goal is to assassinate the leader of the free world does it make you re-think your plans if you are the leader of the free world? Or, would he quietly wait it out through two terms of molding the new Great Society and, after he’s out of office, with his full compliment of Secret Service entourage in tow, pass the floor plans of the White House, along with lists of security pass codes and descriptions of secret handshakes to some thickly-bearded guy in a turban on a bridge in Ankara or Damascus?
What if they are right about him being Muslim but wrong about him being “extreme”? What if he’s just a regular old Muslim, like five or six of my neighbors? Most are single mothers who I rarely see or hear anything out of unless they are coming from or going to one of their multiple jobs. Directly across the street from me is an African-American Muslim bachelor who drives a fairly new pick-up truck. There is often a lot of foot traffic in and out of his house. But it’s mostly just the white work crews he regularly hires to lay tile and frame walls. He’s remodeling his house. Pretty scary.
War of the Roveses
For all of its incompetence, greed, lying, looting, and criminality, for all it’s hypocrisy, scandals, and military blunders, there are two things that modern Republicanism does well: accrue power and defeat liberals at the polls.
The Neo-con cabal, in spite of its anti-government rhetoric has succeeded in centralizing power in the executive branch to a degree heretofore undreamed of except perhaps in some paranoid and dystopian science fiction. Clearly, at some point the executive branch must voluntarily cede some of its power back to Congress and the judicial branch.
Additionally, over the last thirty years they have trained a large segment of the public to react emotionally to “cultural issues”, turning the 60’s on its head. Now it’s liberals who are old fashioned, hypocritical, and ideologically inflexible. This has been done using tactics perfected and instituted by that most foul of all Karls, Rove.
This is what worries me about the Clinton bid for the nomination. Beyond the daily insults to my intelligence, which are merely annoying, one’s tactics speak loudly as to what one’s motivations are. If the Clintons are willing to use Rovian tactics on Obama–whom nationwide polls indicate is the most popular Democrat in America, what does this say about how president H. Clinton will preside?
Like mustard gas and anthrax bombs, the mere existence of Rovian tactics doesn’t mean that they must be used. They contaminate the battlefield for everyone and must never be used except as a last resort on an enemy who has used them first. A Democrat should never use them on a Democrat. Ape shall NOT kill ape!
This brings us to the crux of the matter: these are not people whom I trust to pare back the executive branch’s power. Hillary promises health care and troop withdrawal. What if she decides to triangulate to the right as she has done so often in the past when faced with a tough political battle? Will she “go Rovian” on Democrats who stand in her way?
Because of the Supreme Court situation, I will vote for Ms. Clinton should she receive the nomination, but under extreme duress. Like the Third Degree, smallpox blankets, and McCarthyism, Rovian politics must be brought down. They have made the American voter a laughing-stock, an object of pity and scorn around the world. Rovism must be torn town like Saddam’s statue. This can only be done when it is no longer tolerated by decent people. It is the issue of this primary and indeed the whole election; it’s the one that History is watching.
Officer Sam
BILLY: Hey Willy! Did you hear about the Superpower who started an oil war and invaded and ruined a whole country?
WILLY: No, Billy! What happened?
BILLY: They left without the oil!
WILLY: Really? Why??
BILLY: Cuz they’re so GOOD!
WILLY: HA HA HA!
The World Cop has become the Bad Lieutenant–a twisted, thieving, lascivious oil-swilling bully. To be sure, Officer Sam has never been a model cop. From his earliest days on the beat he’s lined his pockets, planted evidence, and twisted arms and done killings for the Big Boys. But in the last seven years he’s gone berserk while we–his employers–mostly averted our eyes as he’s strolled across the world spying, looting, and torturing on duty. He has ordered up every shiny gadget and every new weapon–on credit–to the point where the entire world economy is teetering on the brink of ruin.
Traditionally content to shake down Third World “ghetto” communities, he has lately taken to rummaging through our trash, breaking into our houses, bugging our phones and computers, looting our bank accounts, and arresting us without charges whilst smearing and destroying anyone who crosses him. Hiding behind the the flag, the sacrifices of his predecessors, and even the cross, Officer Sam has disgraced the force at a time when the world was most vulnerable, going so far as to deputize one Mr. Private Contractor, who answers only to him.
When he finally brought down the Soviet Mafia by means fair and foul, all hopes turned to the World Cop. Would he make things right with those whose lives were ruined or lost during the long struggle? Nope. Instead, Officer Sam promoted himself to Emperor Sam and wallowed in self-righteousness, ignorance, decadence and greed. Now the jig is almost up. At the very least, Emperor Sam will be demoted back to beat cop. What remains to be seen is what happens after that. Will he be forgiven, fired, or forced to resign? If it is one of the latter, will he wear a suit to work in his new life or will he work the drive-thru window?
Even if Barack or Hillary pull us out of Iraq, this won’t be over by a long shot. The crimes have been committed in plain view, and Sam’s “issues” remain–and his enablers have yet to admit the scope of the problems–his and theirs.
These are the (legal) things Marion Kind has done for money: cabbage picker, office clerk, landscaper, ice cream man, injection molder, forklift driver, film and stage actor, drycleaner, comic book artist, truck driver, dishwasher, fanzine putter-outer, bartender, housepainter, singer, UAW shop steward, warehouse and packaging person, courier, waiter, guinea pig, illustrator, poet, writer, fashion model, five instrument recording artist, assembler, construction, cabbie. Not saying he did them well, only that he got paid.
Pass the White-Out
Two nights ago, on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, I was walking home in South Philly, grumbling to myself about SUVs blocking narrow one-way streets because their owners abandoned them for quick sandwiches. Then I look to my right and see Bill Clinton sitting down with Chelsea and getting grubby with a cheese steak, right on the sidewalk–to very little fanfare. People were excited, taking cell phone snap shots and calling their moms, and Bill was letting anybody come right up and paw at him and shake the hand he was trying to eat with. The thing that struck me was that as small a gathering as it was–25 well-scattered people at its peak–they all really responded to the dude, and the dude to them. There was a Hispanic family, an Asian family, a twenty-something black couple, and random pedestrians of every variety–and there was no “Oh my God it’s the President!.” Instead it was a giddy “Oh my God, it’s Bill.” They just go to him like they know him.
Here in Philadelphia, I have enjoyed the option of squandering several opportunities in recent weeks to see either of the democratic candidates in person, and within easy walking distance. For years we have heard how presidential campaigns are completely controlled by the media, and determined by the TV strategies of campaign eggheads. Elections are long. The family of one candidate is working the street late at night, for the primaries. A big part of these things is decided on the ground, as they say.
Pennsylvania voters stuck to the script Tuesday and Hillary got her win. Obama, not terribly demoralized by the inevitable results, had–even as Hillary’s familial tentacles were glad handing working class Philly–already pulled out of the state to attend to more practical markets. The only thing the Clinton victory may have possibly accomplished was to bolster her latest strategy of hammering it into the Democratic party’s collective psyche that Obama would, as the Democratic nominee, have a daunting task ahead trying to wrest the coveted white, working class votes from a guy that reminds every hillbilly of their loopy estranged grandfather.
Nora Ephron (find her on IMDb before you Google her) is positively distraught that, as she estimates, this entire historical presidential election process will, ironically, come down to which candidate white male voters choose from the options of either-a-woman-or-a-black-guy, or an old white man who favors the illegal torture of illegally detained “enemy” combatants.
There are plenty of reasons not to vote and a variety of rationales that indicate that the outcome is a foregone conclusion, but Jesus lady, it is only April. Let the kids have a little fun.
Ephron is saying that even though voters from other demographic groups will each make educated, rational and color-and-gender blind decisions as to who should lead the free world, a bunch of misogynistic, xenophobic, anger management-challenged honkies will cast the votes that tip the scales.
Man, fuck that. Get off your sorry emo butts and go out and kick some metal head ass. Keep us honky motherfuckers from going to the polls. What do I care, I wouldn’t dignify that charade with my participation if they were giving out Xanax martinis to everybody as they came out of the voting booths.
Prior to the age of terror-alert-level color codes as a major campaign issue diversion, the women’s vote was divided and neutralized, and its electoral leverage had, for years, been gutted by one issue: abortion. Candidates felt little pressure in regards to how they were viewed in the light of any other issue, in the eyes of women, because once a candidate’s stance on abortion had been determined, the vote of nearly every woman was dictated by that. Women debated scores of other issues, but pro-choicers have not voted for fascist, right-to-life zealots, nor, conversely, have right-to-lifers voted for commie, pinko baby-killers.
Generally it has not mattered because these issues come in pre-packaged bundles. There aren’t many candidates running on a “Universal Health Care/Overturn Roe v. Wade” platform, and now, with John McCain pitted against Democratic candidate _____, it does seem time to unify the female vote. No politician really wants the hassle of overturning Roe, and McCain, crazy as he may be, isn’t a likely threat to focus his lunacy on taking on a nation of furious women. Iran maybe, but not politically active lefty women.
So to prevent us crackers (who Ephron assures you can in no way be trusted in this case) from queering the pitch when the curtains close, let’s go over a couple of strategies that will keep whitey from having his say on election day:
-Tell the white guys in your life that you truly believe they have a real chance at this Velvet Revolver lead singer gig and they shouldn’t spare a minute for anything that doesn’t involve preparing for their web-cam video audition.
-On election day: Free access to IShotMyself.com (NSFW)
-Schedule a Super Bowl with a Pamela Anderson-Condoleezza Rice mud-wrestling bout half-time show.
-Squidbillies marathon.
-Free Xanax martinis for anybody who knows most of the words to “Highway to Hell.”
All right, this ain’t a top ten list but you get the idea of how little effort is required to divert the abominable white man from his simple task of deciding the fate of the world, and you can use this as a guide to ensure that you will take back the night, fight the power, and stick it to the man.
Just remember though, a honky on a Xanax martini hangover can be a mother, brothers and sisters.
Long has written about sports, news, music and travel under various names and for various publications, including the Buffalo News, The Beast, Blue Dog Press, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the New York Sports Express, among others. He served a short stint as the guitar player in the Philadelphia metal-hop band, Incognegro. He also played guitar and sang on recordings of the Laughing Hyenas and The Unsane. He has dabbled in documentary and music video. He is a veteran of the US Navy and a graduate of the University of Houston. He lives in Philadelphia. You can google the rest.
What Up, America?
In my line of work, I hob-nob with Caucasians of every stripe. I have been shocked and disappointed by the reaction of many White folks–many of whom I have known for years and consider friends–to last month’s “speech on race” by Barack Obama. When I learned the speech was in progress (and lacking cable) I frantically searched the radio dial to find someone broadcasting it live. I finally found the one and only station.
I found the speech to be honest and very moving. I was swept away–surely Americans would embrace a man capable of such modest, intelligent bravery. The abject, hysterical hypocrisy of the “Reverend Wright Controversy” would soon be put to rest…
From the neighborhood bar, to the hallways of various work places, to snatches of conversation overheard on the street, these White people were not only unimpressed by (what they’d actually heard of) Obama’s speech, they were very angry at him. They viewed him as a phony and a racist.
Almost every day, I hear White people drop the “N-bomb”, mock Black speech patterns, sneer about Blacks supposedly being parasites, over-sexed, stupid, violent, loud, messy and arrogant. I hear them state matter-of-factly how their music sucks and their clothes are silly. What angers these Whites most of all is how Liberals “coddle” and “make excuses” for them.
In some circles, it is talked about in code words. In others, more crude terms are used. While some White people strenuously agree with such talk, others sigh and nod knowingly. Some try to diffuse such situations with “humor”. Once in a while, some White people actually defend Black people. These Whites are usually, in so many words, referred to as naive or worse. One thing I never see in these cases is people leaving that neighborhood bar, workplace or street corner with friendships dissolved forever, never to return. Yet that is precisely what some people expect of Obama, based on a few comments by his minister.
These White people almost never consider themselves racists–they are merely saying things that “everybody knows”. This crap is so deeply ingrained in White American culture, so ubiquitous, that it is almost a part of our identity. If I totally avoided people who engage in this type of racist behavior, or the establishments which tolerate it, I would never be able to leave my house.
The sick part of all of this is the amount of projection involved. When White Americans say something rude or lascivious, or attempt to dance, or bust a move athletically, when they borrow money or intend to buy illicit drugs or sex, when they depict a person with false eloquence, self serving generosity, or unthinking religiosity, how often do they affect a “Black” accent?
What Mr. Obama politely called “White Anger” is real and in many cases, justified. This other stuff is just raw, ignorant racism. Everybody knows that if the Republican Party “repudiated” everyone engaged in this type of behavior, they would have to fold up shop tomorrow. Sadly, the Democratic Party wouldn’t be in very good shape either.
Back to the live broadcast of Obama’s speech: when he’d finished, the voice of a middle aged white man broke in… “Oh brother, give me a break!” he said. I then realized that the only radio station I’d found that was broadcasting the speech live was a right-wing talk show–to mock it.
These are the (legal) things Marion Kind has done for money: cabbage picker, office clerk, landscaper, ice cream man, injection molder, forklift driver, film and stage actor, drycleaner, comic book artist, truck driver, dishwasher, fanzine putter-outer, bartender, housepainter, singer, UAW shop steward, warehouse and packaging person, courier, waiter, guinea pig, illustrator, poet, writer, fashion model, five instrument recording artist, assembler, construction, cabbie. Not saying he did them well, only that he got paid.
Bare-Knuckle Diction
Disclaimer to any supporters of Senator First Lady, who might stumble across this column:
Barack Obama and his campaign are unaware of my existence. I do not claim to speak for him, them, or any of his supporters. I accept in advance that I expect that any of these folks would “repudiate” (magic word of the week) me and my opinions, as well as my family, my lifestyle, my religion, my handwriting, and my DVD collection. Cool with me. End disclaimer.
As the Senator First Lady’s campaign gradually becomes so shrill as to become audible only to Blue Dogs and Republicans, one marvels at the “politics as hockey-fight” mentality of her hard-core supporters. The rate at which her campaign generates intellectually dishonest “facts” and then REPUDIATES (ding-ding) them, then refolds them into the debate almost defies comprehension. One visualizes a thousand Roves in a room busily typing away on a thousand typewriters to create the One Perfect Dis, the Big One that will finally take out The Interloper. Well, pardon the fuck out of me, I not only don’t want her doing this to Obama, I don’t even want her doing it to McCain!
And make no mistake, it is the appalling intellectual dishonesty that I REPUDIATE (ding-ding). Because that is what I hate about Republicanism. The whole “who are you going to believe, me–or your own eyes and ears?” sickening arrogance of it all, the whole “are you still beating your spouse” circular logic (HA! Gotcha!). I won’t bother to list and shoot down the whole twisted litany of Clinton Campaign gripes, not because I can’t , or that I’m “above it all”, but because they don’t deserve the dignity of a response. Period.
I, alone amongst my circle, was a Bill–and by extension I suppose, Hillary–Clinton supporter. I thought they performed an invaluable rear guard action against the Neo-Con blitzkrieg during the 90s. But like the old Cold Warriors who internalized the enemy’s tactics and became that which they were fighting against, the Clintons have now become a menace in their own right. The frightening thing is that Clintonistas seem as blind to their hero’s transparent chicanery as George W’s followers are to his. It’s the EXACT same vibe.
But, let’s pretend that Hillary is right, that Obama is full of shit. There’s an old saying, “Only a fool confuses horseshit and bullshit”. Horseshit is a conceit, bullshit is a lie. Horseshit is harmless, bullshit is destructive.
Obama and Hillary claim to want to accomplish very similar things. One candidate wants to do this by appealing to our better nature (yes, like Dr. King, and (sigh) no, I don’t say that because he’s Black). The other appears to think that Americans lack this better nature and must be bullied, tormented and tricked into doing the right thing. If that ISN’T bullshit, it doesn’t matter who the president is.
Obama and Generation Shrug
As the world holds its collective breath at the prospect of America FINALLY pulling its head out of its ass, the oil-industrial complex wakes up and digs in its heels. Now Barrack Hussein Kumbaya Adolf Huggy-Bear Media-Darling Obama, this “untried” politician, having miraculously pulled ahead, must take on the Clintons, the neo-cons, the Religious Right and their media operatives all at once.
I am a cynic, and I realize Obama is a professional politician vying to run a vast empire. But the time is long overdue for Generation Shrug to grow up. Oil wars? Shrug. A lawless President? Shrug. Stolen elections? Shrug. Oil barons looting the Treasury? Shrug. Vice President running amok? Shrug. The list goes on and on.
Mrs. Clinton is a hard worker? Who gives a shit? Is she going to win folks seats in Congress and the Senate? No. The former presumed Democratic candidate has been silent while the neo-cons gobbled up this country and crapped on the world. This country has a chance, maybe one chance (and an undeserved one at that) to stop its slide into dictatorship and disaster–DISASTER. The next month will see the Clintonistas, the neo-cons, the Christo-Fascists, and the media tie Obama to the whipping post. He will probably bear it gracefully, but will his candidacy survive? The tone of politics in America can change if we stop acting like gullible rubes.
The people who are attacking and will continue to attack Obama are not the guys at the water cooler or sitting on the next barstool. They are elite, highly paid professionals representing vast constituencies. When they act like pigs it is because they are allowed to act like pigs and frankly, as our representatives, they make pigs of us all. They are professionals and must be forced to act as such. When challenged at work are you and I allowed to lie, smear and whine? To shift the blame, attack people’s patriotism and break rules? Are we allowed to slander? To send company security to take out our enemies and spy on fellow employees? When called to account, are we allowed to act like outraged martyrs?
I know Obama isn’t Dr. King. He ain’t Jesus. But he isn’t an empty suit either. We are battling some very dark forces indeed. McCain is another Nixon waiting to happen. Hillary Clinton, while smart, hard working and well meaning, is a thumb in the eye, dirty political infighter and a fifty-one-percenter to the core. Barack Obama is attempting to point this bloated, addled, apathetic, war mongering herd to higher ground. You can take a chance, or you can shrug and sink back into the pigsty, knowing in your bones that this leads to a broken economy, more military disasters and more piggishness. Kumbaya my ass!