I also received an e-mail with a photo of a very mature fetus’ arm protruding through — what? — a hole in a pregnant belly? A bloody image meant to shock. Turns out the same photo is posted on the FreeRepublic thread about my column, but the contributor, calling himself Revelation 911, confides that it’s actually a picture of in-utero surgery and that the gestation went full-term. …
There are a couple of ugly remarks regarding anatomy and even rape, and a bunch of digs at San Francisco. A few people suggested it was time for another earthquake here. It was supposed to be funny, but it amounts to a wish for my death. There’s a lot of that among pro-lifers, I guess. Someone suggested advocates for choice should commit suicide!
Debby Morse FreeRepugnant.com San Francisco Examiner, February 15, 2002
I guess I’m surprised that anybody else is surprised by the current wave of racism overflowing the cesspit known as Free Republic. Oh, yes indeedy, the latest freeper attacks on Malia Obama are utterly vile, and make me want to throw up all over Jim Robinson’s entire operation (but that’s the problem with virtual communities: there’s nothing to throw up on, save for the Web server dutifully regurgitating the spew from the diseased minds of the perpetually persecuted).
Nevertheless, I don’t understand why anyone should be surprised by this latest display of racist hate. Maybe it’s because they’re attacking a little girl? No… They attacked Chelsea Clinton plenty. Maybe because they’re using some of the worst sort of racist talk? No… They do that all the time. Maybe because they’re slamming a wartime President? No, no, no — that’s what they attacked liberals for doing during the Bush Reign. And they’ve made (and still occasionally make) death threats against Bill Clinton. (I remember, quite clearly, seeing one freeper express the wish to nail Bill’s body to the front door of the White House; I’ll see if I can find a copy of the message I sent to the FBI quoting it.)
Whatever the reason folks are so up in arms over Freakerville this time, it’s good to see JimRob’s Institute for the Criminally Logic-Challenged being exposed, again, in the MSM…
Gay people have no national standard-bearer, no go-to sound-byte machine for the media. …
One explanation is that gay and lesbian activists learned early on that they could get along just fine without one.
Well, yes, that’s been true, but only as long as “gay activists pursued a different approach, focusing on issues pertinent to their local communities”:
City councils and state legislatures are where domestic partnership laws and legislation extending anti-discrimination protections to gays and lesbians originated.
That’s the way it’s always been — until now. Now, we’re on the national stage.
In the midst of being annoyed about everything else that’s wrong with Obama’s declaration of June as LGBT Pride Month, this, I am ashamed, completely escaped my attention — but Joe Garofoli caught it:
Make no mistake: Bringing back the official presidential declaration of June as LGBT Pride Month is a very, very good thing indeed, for which Barack Obama deserves some praise — but only some. He does not deserve Brownie points for it, for the simple reason that it’s something he should do anyway; even we took it for granted he would (and you’d better believe we’d have been all over his case if he hadn’t). That, and he’s only continuing what Bill Clinton began in 1999 (and Chimpy McCokespoon refused to do for the last eight years).
Which is the long way around of saying: It’s the least he could do. The very least.
Nevertheless, we’re happy about it — although we are not at all impressed with the way the official statement claims Obama has “partnered with the LGBT community to advance a wide range of initiatives,” when in reality his administration has done nothing to advance anything, and in fact has backtracked on nearly everything:
This afternoon in Toronto, former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush shared a stage for a “conversation with presidents” at Toronto’s Convention Centre, in a ticketed event (with a hefty payday for both ex-presidents) that was open to the general public. …
…while President Clinton mostly kept to his promise to “thwart” efforts to get 42 and 43 to tangle with each other, he offered an interesting insight into his thinking on gay rights.
On the issue of gay marriage — which Clinton, like President Obama, personally opposes — Clinton said of his position: “Frankly, it’s evolving” as he sees more committed gay couples raising kids. …
Christ on a crutch, Bill, will you puh-leeeze ditch that right-wing crap — that marriage is about nothing but children?
Mind you, I don’t like Andrew Sullivan — in my book, he’s still a neocon Republican enabler, and I take an extremely dim view of his irresponsible promiscuity (while no one ever “deserves” HIV, there’s a very good reason Michaelangelo Signorile calls him “Bareback Andy“).
That said, when Sullivan is right, he’s right, and this is one of those times he’s right — at least when he’s not making Obama’s inaction on LGBT rights all about himself:
Neither do we. That “magical ‘right time’” will come after we’ve done all the hard work, and a Democratically-controlled Congress will feel not comfortable, but pressured to end up on the right side of history; that’s when Obama will find his “magical ‘right time’” to swoop in and take all the credit.
But it’s still excellent advice.
“The writer, a lawyer in New York, served on the White House staff from 1993 to 1999, including three years as special assistant to President Bill Clinton.”
I knew this name sounded familiar — and now I’m sorry I ever studied up on PNAC, ’cause at this juncture I’d rather forget everything I ever learned in the past eight years, and live the rest of my life in blissful ignorance. But once your eyes have been opened…
Dennis Ross, a former top diplomat for the George H W Bush and Clinton administrations, will become the Obama administration’s top envoy on the Middle East, an internal email from Mr Ross’s current employer has revealed.
Mr Ross, who previously served as the US envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is set to take a wider role as Hillary Clinton’s top adviser for the Middle East as a whole. Ms Clinton herself is due to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for her confirmation hearing for Secretary of State next Tuesday.
Executives at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the think-tank where Mr Ross works, told the organisation’s board that Mr Ross had “accepted an invitation to join the Obama administration as ambassador-at-large” in a job “designed especially for him,” covering a range of issues from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to Iran.
The email, first reported by Chris Nelson, a Washington-based foreign policy expert, adds that Mr Ross “will not reprise his previous role as special Arab-Israeli peace envoy, a post that will be held by someone else; rather he will be working closely with both the special envoy and the secretary.”
Mr Ross is likely to strike a high profile in his new job, particularly given the current Gaza conflict and mounting fears about Iran’s nuclear capacity. He served as an adviser on the Middle East to president-elect Barack Obama during the election campaign, calling for bigger carrots and bigger sticks to dissuade Iran from developing nuclear weapons capacity. …
More at the link. And if mention of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy alone hasn’t already given you a heart attack, here’s the rest of the story on Ross, from the invaluable Right Web:
Although generally considered a political moderate, Ross has been closely associated with a number of neoconservative-led organizations and policy initiatives. A consultant for the hawkish Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), Ross supported the advocacy efforts of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which played a key role advocating invading Iraq in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He also frequently promotes aggressive Mideast policies in his writings and congressional testimony, and regularly teams up with scholars from organizations like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) to craft policy approaches toward Tehran’s nuclear program and other issues in the region. …
Ross got his start in high-level policymaking working under Paul Wolfowitz in the Pentagon during the Jimmy Carter administration, where Wolfowitz headed up a project called the Limited Contingency Study, the results of which, writes author James Mann, “would play a groundbreaking role in changing American military policy toward the Persian Gulf over the coming decades.” …
After the election of Ronald Reagan, Wolfowitz became head of the State Department’s Policy Planning staff, where he assembled a team of advisors that included a number of figures who later became closely involved in neoconservative-led campaigns, including Ross, I. Lewis Libby, James Roche, Zalmay Khalilzad, Alan Keyes, and Francis Fukuyama. Discussing this period, Mann points to Ross in arguing that “not everyone on [Wolfowitz’s] staff was a neoconservative. … The fact remained, however, that Wolfowitz’s policy planning staff turned out to be the training ground for a new generation of national security specialists, many of whom shared Wolfowitz’s ideas, assumptions, and interests.”
Also during the Reagan presidency, Ross “served as director of Near East and South Asian Affairs on the National Security Council staff … and as Deputy Director of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment,” according to his biography on the website of the Harry Walker Agency, a speakers bureau that also promotes, among others, former George W. Bush aide Peter Wehner, the neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, and alarmist antiterror wonk Steven Emerson. …
During the presidency of George W. Bush, Ross continued his policy work as a consultant to and fellow at WINEP, authoring policy papers, penning op-eds, and providing congressional testimony on Middle East issues. He repeatedly joined forces with neoconservatives, signing open letters for PNAC, advising advocacy groups like United against Nuclear Iran (whose leadership include former CIA director James Woolsey and hawkish weapons proliferation expert Henry Sokolski), and joining AEI scholars Michael Rubin and Reuel Marc Gerecht in discussing Mideast policies with their counterparts at the Brussels-based Transatlantic Institute…
In 2006, Ross joined a cast of neoconservatives and foreign policy hawks in supporting the I. Lewis Libby Defense Fund, an initiative aimed at raising money for the disgraced former assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney who was convicted in connection to the investigation into the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s name. Ross served on the group’s steering committee along with Fred Thompson, Jack Kemp, Steve Forbes, Bernard Lewis, and Francis Fukuyama. The group’s chairman was Mel Sembler, a real estate magnate who serves as a trustee at AEI and has funded the group Freedom’s Watch. …
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Ross supported the advocacy work of PNAC, a neoconservative-led letterhead group that advocated overthrowing Saddam Hussein in response to the attacks, even if he was not tied to the them. Ross signed two PNAC open letters on the situation in post-war Iraq, both published in March 2003. The first of these, “Statement on Post-War Iraq,” was issued on March 19, 2003, the day before the United States began its invasion. The letter argued that Iraq should be seen as the first step in a larger reshaping of the region’s political landscape, contending that the invasion and rebuilding of Iraq could “contribute decisively to the democratization of the wider Middle East.” Other signatories included Max Boot, Eliot Cohen, Thomas Donnelly, Joshua Muravchik, and several other core neoconservatives. …
In the aftermath of the invasion, Ross—as well as a number of neoconservatives—expressed deep skepticism about the course of the war and the future prospects in Iraq. …
However, in critiquing Bush’s Mideast policies, Ross has limited his criticism to issues of implementation, while giving the White House high marks for its objectives. …
Ross’s approach to Iran appears to have grown increasingly belligerent over time. …
During the run-up to the 2008 presidential elections Ross participated in two study groups aimed at influencing the next president’s policies toward Iran, both of which proposed extremely aggressive approaches. …
Much, much more at the link, with lots of sourcing.
“Maricón” moment aside, I like Bill Richardson, and would have been happy enough to see him as Obama’s VP pick. When that didn’t happen, I was pleased to see him make the cut for Commerce Secretary; in truth, Richardson would have been most qualified for Secretary of State, except that he’s got nearly as bad a case of foot-in-mouth disease as Joe Biden, so IMNSHO it’s best Bill wasn’t chosen to be the frontman in delicate diplomatic talks with the rest of the world.
But now, Richardson is out as CommSec, having withdrawn his name after finding himself at the center of a federal investigation into “whether a financial firm improperly won more than $1.4 million in work for the state of New Mexico shortly after making contributions to political action committees of Gov. Bill Richardson,” a possible “pay-to-play” scandal that goes all the way back to 2003.
The question is not why you and I didn’t hear about this before (or even pay much attention when the grand jury convened last month); the real question — which is being asked everywhere, by everyone — is: Why didn’t this come up while the Obama team was (presumably) vetting Richardson?
Obama’s transition team apparently chose to ignore these past whiffs of scandal. They also seem to have been unfazed by the current federal investigation into a possible pay-to-play scandal, which was already well underway when Richardson’s nomination was announced on December 3. Within two weeks of the nomination, the media was widely reporting that Richardson was the subject of a grand jury probe in a “highly active stage.”
It may also be a measure of the inadequacy of the new Obama administration’s vetting process that it somehow missed or ignored the ongoing and widely-reported grand jury testimony over alleged incidents in 2004 in New Mexico, part of a broad federal investigation of selling state services. It would seem to be an obvious something for the experienced Richardson to include when completing the 63-page questionaire [sic] given to potential Obama appointees.
That’s not what Camp Obama wants you to think; Malcolm adds in an update: “Press secretary-designate Robert Gibbs said tonight, ‘I think our vettors have done a good job.’”
Which is more disturbing to you — that the Obama team missed such a huge scandal-in-the-making (hardly likely), or chose to ignore it? Both scenarios are more than worrisome.
Meanwhile, Obama has pissed off Dianne Feinstein by tapping ex-California rep and former Clinton chief of staff Leon Panetta to be head of the CIA. Panetta’s a good guy, a smart guy, and he has plenty of experience working in the fed, but he’s no spook. Still, notes McClatchy:
…Panetta has some strengths. He’s not connected to controversial post-Sept. 11, 2001, anti-terrorism practices. He’s sufficiently detached from the agency to facilitate a shake-up, if Obama so desires. He’s a former director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration, and has knowledge of the intelligence community’s budgets. He had some experience with intelligence planning during his Army service at Fort Ord, Calif., in the 1960s.
President Bill Clinton Asks California Voters To Vote NO on Proposition 8
Tells Voters Prop 8: “Not What America is About”
SACRAMENTO — October 31 — In a telephone call to California voters, President Clinton delivers the following message regarding the unfairness of Proposition 8:
“This is Bill Clinton calling to ask you to vote NO on Proposition 8 on Tuesday, November 4th. Proposition 8 would use state law to single out one group of Californians to be treated differently — discriminating against members of our family, our friends and our co-workers.
“If I know one thing about California, I know that is not what you’re about. That is not what America is about. Please vote NO on 8. It’s unfair and it’s wrong. Thank you.”
The calls from President Clinton went to millions of registered California voters overnight.
…and it’s not for Obama, but for those of his supporters who have been hailing Joe Biden as a fabulous choice.
Many (most?) of you say Bill Clinton’s “fairy tale” remark was racist:
“It is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war. There’s no difference in your voting record, and Hillary’s, ever since. Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.”
How criticizing Obama for attempting to differentiate between his war stance and Hillary’s is supposed to be racist is beyond me, but, whatever. The question is this:
If “fairy tale” is somehow racist, then how do the same Obama supporters who condemned (and continue to condemn) Bill Clinton as a racist now justify wholehearted support for Joe Biden as vice president in light of Biden’s observation about Obama in 2007?
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
Now that, ladies and gents, is, indisputably, a racist remark.
So why am I hearing how great Joe Biden would be as Obama’s veep? Are the Biden fans too young to remember this (or the absolutely horrifying “You cannot go to a 7/11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent — I’m not joking” gaffe of 2006)?
As Jonathan Chait wrote in 2007, “In addition to his uncontrollable verbosity, Biden is a gaffe machine.” But foot-in-mouth disease is no excuse. So, I’d like to know:
How does Joe Biden get a free pass for saying that a black man who is “articulate and bright and clean and … nice-looking” is “a storybook,” while Bill Clinton has been sentenced to eternal damnation for saying Obama’s take on his own record is a “fairy tale”?
Somebody explain it to me, because I really don’t get it.
It looks like somebody over at Camp O finally got the message: Today’s New York Times reports that the Obama campaign is trying to re-craft Michelle Obama’s public persona. All fine and good, except for one thing: The NYT assumes the problem with Michelle is that she talks too much about race. Maybe that’s a problem for some people; for me, it’s her personality, period: She grates on me like a bastard file on an overripe peach. I don’t like her dissing the Clintons (anybody who says, even in jest, that she wants to rip Bill Clinton’s eyes out is not a person I want representing my country, especially to foreign dignitaries), I don’t like her pretending to be the poor little poor girl when she never was, and I don’t like her telling me that her husband is the answer to all my prayers. I couldn’t care less about the color of her skin — I just don’t like her.
The NYT piece, “Michelle Obama Looks for a New Introduction,” cites conservative columnists’ complaints about her “being unpatriotic” and that “she simmers with undigested racial anger,” and (without naming him) citing (unfairly, IMO; Aravosis and Rogers* got slammed for “spreading rumors” about right-wing closet queens, too — until they were proven right) Larry Johnson’s “unfounded claims that Mrs. Obama gave an accusatory speech in her church about the sins of ‘whitey’” among the reasons “her husband’s presidential campaign is giving her image a subtle makeover, with a new speech in the works to emphasize her humble roots and a tough new chief of staff … with an eye toward softening her reputation.”
But the article spills most of its ink explaining how racial issues shaped Michelle’s childhood, college days, and corporate career.
Which means NYT writers Michael Powell and Jodi Kantor are getting sucked into thinking the reason Michelle Obama grates on so many of us has everything to do with race, even when it doesn’t.
Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) gets closer to the heart of the matter than the NYT writers who quote her as saying “Mrs. Obama must stop sounding like a lawyer trying to win an argument. The trick, she said, is ‘not pushing so hard to persuade people that Barack is the right one. All she has to do is be likable.’”
But Powell and Kantor follow that right up by noting how “Mrs. Obama has already had to check her brutally honest approach to talking about race.”
Why does it have to be all about race? Can’t I just dislike Michelle Obama based on her irritating personality alone?
* Tip: Do NOT invite Aravosis and Rogers to the same dinner party these days (or Aravosis and Pam Spaulding, for that matter).
Barack Obama has taught me that racism — even faux outrage over nonexistent racism — is worse than the most egregious sexism or homophobia.
Always. Without exception.
I’ve also learned — from Obama supporters — that the word “urban” is racist. (And for nearly half a century, I thought “urban” meant “of or pertaining to a city,” as opposed to the country, or the suburbs. Silly me!)
I’ve also learned — from some backwater ‘burb (oops, sorry! is “‘burb” racist, too?) in Illinois called Carpentersville — that saying a couple of kids are climbing a tree “like monkeys” is racist. (That would have come as a surprise to my dearly departed grandfather, whose pet name for me was “macaca” — and not in the George Allen sense, either. As much as I detest the idea of agreeing with Tony Blankley on anything, even the weather, it’s true: “macaca” is indeed an Italian term of endearment expressing good-natured exasperation with a mischievous child; it means “clown,” or “goof.”)
Moving to nip in the bud some potential bad press, White House hopeful Barack Obama’s campaign persuaded a delegate to step down after she was ticketed for calling her neighbor’s African-American children “monkeys.”
Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski, a Carpentersville village trustee, was elected as an Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention. She sports an Obama sign in her front yard.
On Saturday, two neighbor children were playing in the tree next-door to her house.
Ramirez-Sliwinski “came outside and told the children to quit playing in the tree like monkeys. The tree was not on Ramirez-Sliwinski’s property,” Carpentersville Police Commander Michael Kilbourne said.
Ramirez-Sliwinski admitted she used the word “monkeys,” but said she did not intend racism. She said she was only trying to protect them from falling out of the tree.
“Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski said she saw the kids playing in the tree and didn’t want them falling out of the tree and getting hurt. She said she calls her own grandchildren ‘monkeys,’” Kilbourne said. The mother of one of the children did not see it that way, noting she and Ramirez-Sliwinski have clashed before.
“She felt it was racist because of the fact the children were African-American,” Kilbourne said.
Told of the incident Monday by the Sun-Times, Obama’s campaign called Ramirez-Sliwinski and persuaded her to step aside as a delegate because the campaign felt her remarks were “divisive and unacceptable.”
“Given the incident, she is stepping down as a delegate and will be replaced,” said campaign spokesman Ben Labolt.
Let’s recap:
• Calling Hillary Clinton a “big f*****g whore” and Geraldine Ferraro “David Duke in drag” is not “divisive and unacceptable” enough for Obama to dress down Randi Rhodes (hey, ya think Obama returned the money raised at Randi’s Hillary-bashing event?)…
• Preaching about evil, children-killing gays is not “divisive and unacceptable” enough for Obama to fire Donnie McClurkinbefore handing him a microphone and giving him free reign to spew his hateful, “ex-gay” tripe (hey, ya think Obama returned the blood money from that fundraiser?)…
• Condemning America to hell, blasting mythical “rich white people” for all the evil in the world, making appalling cracks about “stemen-stained dresses,” and slurring Italians as “garlic noses” is not “divisive and unacceptable” enough for Obama to stand up and walk out on the bigot he calls his pastor, “spiritual mentor” and “role model” who “helps keep his priorities straight and his moral compass calibrated,” Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. (ya think Obama plans to take back the tens of thousands he’s tithed over two decades?)…
• Consorting with such organizations — established for the sole purpose of demonizing and legislating gay and lesbian Americans out of existence — as Americans for Truth and Focus on the Family, calling various mayors “slave masters” and certain politicians “house n****rs,” warning “white people who believe in Jesus” that “I will stand on top of the Sears Tower and call every one of y’all racist” is not “divisive and unacceptable” enough for Obama to cut ties completely with another of his “closest religious advisors,” Rev. James Meeks…
• Expressing the desire to “rip Bill Clinton’s eyes out” is not “divisive and unacceptable” enough for Obama to take his own wife aside and tell her to chill the anti-Clinton crap, her condescending reluctance to back Hillary as the Democratic nominee, and the grim view she takes of America, at least when she’s representing him in public…
…but saying a couple of kids were climbing a tree “like monkeys” is “divisive and unacceptable” enough for Obama to kick Ramirez-Sliwinski to the curb?
So, now what? If you call playground equipment “monkey bars,” are you a racist? I guess so, since anything and everything — as long as it suits a pro-Obama agenda — can and will be deemed racist.
(It’s also not lost on us that Ramirez-Sliwinski was an elected delegate, more beholden to the wil of the people than to the will of any candidate.)
What’s more, you read that first line in the story right: Ramirez-Sliwinski was ticketed — cited and fined — under the stupidest ordinance we’ve heard of in a long time. From the Chicago Tribune:
Carpentersville Trustee Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski vowed Monday to fight a citation she received over the weekend for a comment that apparently offended her African-American neighbors. …
Ramirez-Sliwinski, who is Hispanic, was issued a citation alleging that she violated a village ordinance prohibiting disorderly conduct. The ordinance bans conduct that disturbs or alarms people, and one of the boys told police he was scared by Ramirez-Sliwinski’s comment, Police Cmdr. Michael Kilbourne said.
The citation carries a fine of $75.
“She was not arrested. She was not fingerprinted. It is a local ordinance violation,” Kilbourne said.
“Conduct that disturbs or alarms people”? Remind me to stay the hell out of Carpentersville then. The way this stupid law is worded, I could be cited if my “Christian Right is Neither” T-shirt “disturbed or alarmed” somebody.
(On the other hand, I could go to Carpentersville and lodge a criminal complaint against every right-wing church that preaches anti-gay rhetoric from the pulpit. Now that would be fun. And it would also trigger an emergency meeting of the town council to repeal that stupid law, quick-smart.)
The Trib piece also provides more detail on the “monkeys” incident, in Ramirez-Sliwinski’s own words:
[Ramirez-Sliwinski] said the parents were outside, but she intervened because she was concerned about the boys’ safety and because the small magnolia tree was being damaged.
“I went over to the kids and told them to get out of the tree,” Ramirez-Sliwinski said.
The father of one of the boys told her it was none of her business, she said, and “I calmly said the tree is not there for them to be climbing in there like monkeys.”
There has been friction between Ramirez-Sliwinski and her neighbors in the past. She said she has told them to turn down loud music and has instructed them on how to properly use the village’s new garbage bins.
Ramirez-Sliwinski said she intends to contest the citation in an effort to force the neighbors to talk to her. …
Attempts to reach the neighbors for comment were unsuccessful.
“My take on this is that it is really being blown out of proportion,” Village President Bill Sarto said. “To a great extent, you have to take the remarks and put them in proper context. The trustee saw children playing in a tree, and she made an observation that they should be careful because they are acting like monkeys. Had they not been in a tree, it could be inappropriate.”
Hey, but what do I know? In Obama’s book, I’m just another “typical white person.”
Here’s the last word, from Village President Bill Sarto, quoted in the Sun-Times piece):
“Frankly, I don’t see a law that was broken here,” [Village President Bill Sarto] said. “I think this entire thing has been blown out of proportion. She’s a good neighor. She went over to caution the children to be careful not to fall out of a tree.
She has never indicated to me any prejudice whatsoever. We have a trustee who has been convicted on four counts of domestic battery and refuses to resign from the board. He beat his wife with a baseball bat. This seems far less egregious to me.”
(CNN) — Sen. Hillary Clinton’s aides blasted Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign Monday after a major Obama supporter referenced the blue dress at the heart of former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment scandal.
Gordon Fischer, a former chair of the Iowa Democratic Party and part of Obama’s Iowa support team, also compared Bill Clinton unfavorably to Joe McCarthy.
McCarthy was a senator who was known for leveling accusations that people were Communists or spying for the Russians in the 1950s.
“When Joe McCarthy questioned others’ patriotism, McCarthy (1) actually believed, at least aparently (sic), the questions were genuine, and (2) he did so in order to build up, not tear down, his own party, the GOP,” Fischer, wrote on his blog.
“Bill Clinton cannot possibly seriously believe Obama is not a patriot, and cannot possibly be said to be helping — instead he is hurting — his own party. B. [Bill] Clinton should never be forgiven. Period. This is a stain on his legacy, much worse, much deeper, than the one on Monica’s blue dress.”
. . .
Fischer, who endorsed Obama last fall, later removed the post from his blog and replaced it with an apology.
“I sincerely apologize for a tasteless and gratituous [sic] comment I made here about President Clinton. It was unnecessary and wrong,” he wrote.
In a conference call with reporters Monday, Clinton aides said Fischer’s decision to attack the New York senator reflected “gutter tactics that [the Obama] campaign is now deploying.”
“This is now the Obama campaign’s primary message to the American people,” said spokesman Howard Wolfson. “Not to build him up, but to tear Sen. Clinton down.”
He also dismissed Fischer’s apology. “In my opinion the remarks of Gordon Fischer are very much in keeping with the campaign Sen. Obama is running. So I don’t know why he would apologize.”
You really have it in for Obama; I’m not clear on why you think Clinton is a better pick (especially after your early faves in Demo-land were Kucinich and Edwards)
Don’t assume I made the leap from Kucinich to Edwards to Clinton without a lot of “help” from Obama.
Until the Donnie McClurkin fiasco last fall, Obama seemed a perfectly acceptable candidate to me. I was, frankly, ambivalent about him; I had planned on voting for Kucinich in the primary, and, knowing Dennis would never get the nomination, lining up to vote in the general for whichever Democrat did. I assumed that would be Edwards or Clinton or Obama, and I was fine with any of them (as fine as I could be, that is, since I know I’ll never really get the president I want).
But then came McClurkin, and— and, honestly, I’m so tired of writing about Obama and McClurkin (and at the moment, I can’t think of anything I want to say that I haven’t already), I strongly suggest you read all my entries on McClurkin, as well as Kirbyjon Caldwell (here and here).
Mind you, it was not solely the McClurkin issue that turned me off to Obama; it was (and is) a huge issue, yes, but it served more to open my eyes to everything else that is Barack Obama.
I discussed my revulsion at the way Obama mishandled the McClurkin flap with my better half. My question to her was: “Are his supporters right? Am I just piling on the guy because he used us to get the bigot vote in South Carolina, so I’ll never be able to see him in a positive light?”
The answer, we both decided, was no. The McClurkin issue forced me to take a harder look at Obama — his slim record, his flip-flopping (on issues having nothing to do with The Gay Thing), his convenient memory losses, his sucking up to the GOP, his whiney-ass schoolyard games, the vast emptiness of his rhetoric — and I didn’t like what I saw. And, as time went on, I began to see a very clear pattern in Obama: He was (and is) exposing his own feet of clay with each and every new incident.
You also need to understand that my support for Clinton is lukewarm, at best, and I’m not afraid to point out her missteps (although, in sharp contrast to Obama, has improved). Because Kucinich and Edwards dropped out before Super Tuesday, the only choices left on my ballot were Clinton and Obama — and by the time the California primary rolled around, I knew far too much about Obama to even entertain the thought of voting for him.
I gather that Clinton is someone you trust more on gay issues in particular. No one in my family has flagged Obama as weaker on these issues than Clinton; Obama may in fact be, but it hadn’t been brought up as a concern before I read your pieces.
Let’s say I dis-trust Clinton less than I distrust Obama on gay issues. In reality, their positions are very similar; the difference (on the gay angle alone) is that Clinton didn’t exploit raging, religion-based homophobia to win votes at the expense of gay and lesbian Americans, and then pretend she didn’t do it, and didn’t do it deliberately.
I’m thinking no one’s brought it up because during her Senate run she said she opposed same-sex marriage and would have voted for DOMA and apparently she remains opposed to gay marriage.
As DOMA goes (and she didn’t vote for it, as she wasn’t a Senator at the time), Hillary was wrong to support it when it was passed, and she’s wrong not to support its complete repeal now. (There is a “but” in that, which I’ll get to in a second.)
If you wanted a fight out of me on that, you won’t get it; I’m well aware of Hillary’s flaw here (she wants to overturn only one part of DOMA), and Obama’s strength (he wants to repeal the whole thing). I also recognize that Clinton has attempted to compensate for her earlier support of DOMA by striking a middle ground: retaining the part of DOMA that continues to leave marriage equality to the states, while overturning the part that would prohibit federal recognition of same-sex marriage.
While that would leave the possibility of federal recognition open, that’s not good enough for me. But (and here’s the “but” I warned you about a moment ago) — as much as I rail about having to take “baby steps,” especially when it comes to issues of full equality — I’m pragmatic enough to understand that Clinton’s approach is more likely to succeed, thus staving off another attempt by the Hard Right to write a federal marriage ban into the U.S. Constitution.
Yes, I understand very well that a constitutional amendment is a massive undertaking than can span decades, even generations — I cheered and pumped my fist in the air at ERA rallies in the 1970s, you know — but I also know that a wholesale threat to strip individual states of their so-called “right” to deny us equality would result in a backlash that would plunge the fight for equality back into the Dark Ages.
As much as I want federal recognition, and as much as I detest the “states’ rights” argument, I’m not above setting my emotions aside long enough to consider — and admit — that perhaps the “baby steps” strategy really is the most workable plan. I could be wrong either way, but as I often say, if you keep doing something one way, and it’s not working, it’s time to think about doing something else. That “something else” in this case, as it is fomenting in my thoughts these days, is to take the same path as that of anti-miscegenation: Go ahead, leave it up to the states — and then challenge each state, through the court system, to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages.
That’s a hard road, a longer road, and one that promises to clog our already-overburdened court system. But I think, at least today, that a constant chip-chip-chipping away, state by state, may be the only practical way of getting there. Plainly put, the bigger a headache it becomes — i.e., the more time, money, and resources that are wasted — for each state to defend its archaic anti-marriage laws, the more likely… How does that Confucian (or perhaps Zen) saying go? “Water continually dropping wears hard rocks hollow.”
Now, it’s fine, even commendable, that Obama intends to overturn all of DOMA — and if he can manage to do it, I’ll be the first to thank him, praise him, and re-evaluate everything I’ve ever said about his commitment to equality. (Re-evaluate, mind you, not retract; he’s got a lot to make up for, and I will never accept the rubbish that he is a true ally as long as he remains opposed to full marriage equality — and until he completely repudiates all his “love the sinner, hate the sin” rhetoric, and patently ignorant and offensive remarks about giving us a “set of basic rights,” to “allow” us to live our lives “in a way that doesn’t cause discrimination” — for starters.)
But can he do it? Will he do it? I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume, generously, that he is sincere; after all, Bill Clinton was sincere about allowing gay people to serve openly in the military (he even made it his first priority, just days after taking the oath of office) — but look what that got us: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Bill, for all his good intentions, was forced into that compromise.
And that is how, in retrospect, I perceive DOMA: It was a rotten compromise. It sucked. It sucks now. I hate it. But it did serve one purpose: as a stop-gap measure to stave off a major backlash, and at least delay the push for a U.S. constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.
Bill handled both DOMA and DADT badly, due to his underestimation of the anti-gay forces against us, and we’re still suffering for his lack of judgment. I don’t want anything like DOMA or DADT (or something worse that I haven’t even imagined yet) to happen again. And yet I am told, repeatedly, by Obama supporters, that as a gay person I’m a fool not to support Obama on his promise to repeal DOMA alone — whereas I see Obama ignoring the outcome of Bill’s promise to us, and the resulting DADT policy. Obama is taking a gamble on our lives in a way that’s already been proven reckless. And that in itself is reckless.
Since that seems that’s largely the raison d’etre of your site…
It depends how you look at it. The raison d’etre is to point out injustices and hypocrisy (legal and otherwise), in the hope it will open a few eyes and effect change, through the “water continually dropping” effect.
Marriage equality, of course, is a huge issue, but if we were granted full federal recognition tomorrow, I wouldn’t go away. (Sorry! LOL) I want to reiterate something I don’t think I say enough: Marriage equality is not a single, narrow lens through which I view life; it is a wide-angle lens which offers a nearly 360-degree view of countless life issues lost on those lacking the same peripheral vision.
I suggest you read what my better half (who is far more direct and succinct than I could ever hope to be) had to say about it recently, from the perspective of LGBTs being thought of as “one-issue voters.” In short, we’re not just fighting for the right to say “I do”; we’re fighting for a plethora of rights and protections that we would have automatically through federally-recognized marriage. As it stands (and by leaving it all “to the states”), we have to fight for each of those rights and protections, one at a time.
So, yes, marriage equality is a major reason for this blog, but not the only one. Frankly, I wish I never had to write about marriage equality again; I’d rather concentrate on eradicating homophobia on a social (instead of legal) level, through education, interfaith networks, whatever works through peaceful, nonviolent means.
I’d also like to spend more time celebrating gay culture, art, film, literature, and recognizing people (especially young people) and programs making a positive difference in the world.
But until we do get those “I do’s” and everything that goes along with them, I can’t.
…I’m surprised by just how much the Church Lady you can sound on the topic “Obama does not make me happy.”
Wow, that’s the first time I’ve ever sounded churchy to anyone. LOL
Monday’s guilt-by-association-with-Wright-rant was great. You slam Wright for brining up Lewinsky; you talk about how astonishing it is to see a Democrat mention that scandal…. and then you use Fox as one of your primary news sources for analysis of Wright’s statements?
I’m hard-pressed to find where I used Fox as one of my “primary news sources for analysis of Wright’s statements,” unless you mean the quote I cited from Fox recounting Wright’s Christmas and January 13th sermons from this article — in which case I don’t see a conflict; everything in that article appears to be factually correct, with little if any editorializing.
In the end, it was Fox that broke the story the MSM had been ignoring up to now; if you’d rather I’d quoted ABC or MSNBC (or even CNN, which came into the game last), well, I could, but as the other networks piggybacking on Fox have only supported Fox, why bother?
Following on that, your use of the term ‘heterosexual privilege’ in today’s leader was jolting.
One of the things you accuse Wright of is being racially divisive by pointing out the racism inherent in our culture; I have not heard him speak, but that sounds very much like a man pointing out white privilege to me.
I have no problem with pointing out white privilege — I’ve never once pretended I’m not automatically privileged by my white skin — but there’s a big difference between pointing out white privilege and 1) blasting all whites for black oppression in the 21st century, and 2) preaching a theology that seems to have no goal other than the endless perpetuation of anti-white hate.
The difference between Jeremiah Wright and me is this: I don’t blame all heterosexuals for my oppression.
And the difference between Barack Obama and me is this: If my “spiritual advisor” — since I don’t have one, let’s say Harvey Milk — had ever “preached” against straight society, and fired up the gay masses against straight society as a whole, I’d condemn Harvey faster than you could say “Anita Bryant.”
Pointing out white privilege can indeed make white folks very flinchy; we don’t like to admit how much of a pass we get.
Not this white woman. I do recognize my free pass, and I don’t like it one bit.
But I also don’t like being lumped in with every ignorant jackass who happens to share my skin tone. I don’t know how to make it clear to you, or to anyone else, that not all of us deserve to be the target of Wright’s harpoon, since all white people cry, “But I’m not a racist! Some of my best friends are…”
But I do recognize it, and I do fight racism, with the same angry passion as I fight homophobia. Without looking, I can tell you from memory that since I started blogging in 2003 (one of these days, I’ll have to move the old stuff over here, but if you want to find it, go Google the long-dormant “doublethink” blog at Salon.com; that was mine), I’ve blasted fark through George W. Bush for his Pickering nominating because I recognized the racism; I blasted some idiot Florida state rep (whose name escapes me) for making a joke about blacks and basketball because I recognized the racism; I’ve spilled tons of pixels attacking first-class jerks like Trent Lott and Ted Nugent and Toby Keith and that spawn of Satan Michael Savage because I recognized the racism.
I do see it, and I do scream about it. Loudly. Being white, it’s my responsibility to scream about it — precisely because I recognize how much more weight the words of heterosexual allies carry when speaking out about homophobia — and it is a responsibility I welcome.
It just pisses me off when everything I’ve tried to do is tossed aside because I’m white.
I guess some of us have never lived in a big city and seen a driving while black checkpoint in operation nor made a truly boneheaded traffic mistake and gotten off with a warning, nor seen an interracial couple getting harassed by local cops.
Wrong-O. I’ve seen it, and I’ve lived and worked amidst it. In my long entry about Michelle Obama, I mentioned that for a couple of years I worked as a photographer in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Who do you think attended those schools, the Waltons? Years before that, I lived near the corner of Wilshire and Crenshaw in L.A.; from the moment the news started covering the Rodney King riots live, I didn’t have to look at a map to see where Reginald Denny was getting his head bashed in — I could name every fast-food joint around the intersection of Florence and Normandie.
The only new thought that came to my mind was: “Denny is white… I am white… I would be killed without anyone stopping for one second to consider whether I was on their side or not.”
On the flip side, I could say: “I guess some of us have never lived in a big city” — or a small town — “and seen a driving while queer checkpoint in operation nor made a truly boneheaded traffic mistake and gotten off with a warning, nor seen a gay couple getting harrassed by local cops.” Or a straight person bashed because he was mistaken for being gay. Or a transgendered woman sentenced to a cruel death because of the paramedic who was supposed to be treating her after an auto wreck but wouldn’t touch the “chick with the dick,” the doctor who denied her treatment, and the host of other “care” givers who finally performed only the most perfunctory (read: half-assed) procedures after she lay unattended for half an hour, in a state of what was probably “sheer terror.”
As I wrote at Democratic Underground (ironically, regarding the way people gloss over homophobia yet go insane when it comes to racism, anti-semitism, etc.) nearly two years ago:
Now, listen: I am not playing the “my persecution is worse than yours” victim game. As far as I’m concerned, all persecution is equal; when you’re the one getting lynched, or burned at the stake, or herded into a gas chamber, your victimhood is 100%. And it doesn’t matter if you’re gay, or Jewish, or black, or even an Australian in the wrong place at the wrong time when a bomb goes off in an Indonesian pub. You’re just as dead as everyone else, and your family is just as destroyed as any other.
You could argue that Jewish persecution has occurred on a larger scale, and you’d be right; e.g., the Nazis gassed some 6 million Jews, and “only” about a million male homosexuals. But persecution is persecution, and dead is dead is dead.
Matt Shepard is just as dead as Anne Frank.
Anne Frank is just as dead as Emmett Till.
Emmett Till is just as dead as Brandon Teena.
And only by the grace of God (or providence) is that 17-year-old Texas boy not as dead as any of them.
Dead is dead is dead.
And hate is hate is hate. And while I can fathom the many reasons for it, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to accept the fact that the general public just doesn’t care much (or at all) when it’s the queers who are being bashed, murdered, or verbally assaulted.
Don’t you see? I don’t see any difference between homophobia and racism. They both destroy lives — whether we’re talking about the life of the gay man or the black man, or about the pervasive hate and fear that drive homophobes and racists to oppress, and beat, and kill.
But okay, so that’s racially divisive, a rhetoric that aggregates all members of a group into a group eligible for privilege.
And then today, you’re using heterosexual privilge, which is an idea that derives directly from white privilege? And in the following sentence, you lump all of your opponents into kinky Jesoids who want piss on you?
If by “all my opponents,” you mean people who use their religion as an excuse to maintain both my second-class citizenship and their privilege, then yes, I do.
Yes, I do lump my “opponents” together — but only not only into one big “Jesoid,” because there are plenty of non-Christian religionists who oppose my equality, too. However, it is only those who base their anti-gay crusades on their “deeply held religious beliefs” who oppose me at all. I have never once heard a secular argument against same-sex equality. If you’ve ever heard one, please clue me in; I’d be fascinated to hear a compelling argument that has nothing to do with religious beliefs.
Randall Terry — founder of Operation Rescue and absolutely maniacal anti-gay crusader — unknowingly made this point crystal clear (in part 2 of an essay he wrote bemoaning his son Jamiel’s homosexuality); bold emphasis mine:
But more simply put: Homosexual behavior is wrong because it violates the way our Creator made the world, and the Laws He gave us. This brings me to the most important part of this article: The Name, the Person, and the Standards of God.
If you have followed the fight over homosexual marriage, there has been a steady drumbeat to keep the Name and the Standards of The Almighty out of the debate. This, of course, is not new. Whether it is the debate around abortion, or over prayer in schools, or the Pledge of Allegiance, or the posting of the Ten Commandments in government buildings, there is a blatant, unashamed effort to drive the Name and the Laws of our Maker from the public square.
Tragically, many well meaning people in our camp have decided to go along with these rules. I tell you plainly: If we surrender on this point, we will lose the war. We will not win. We cannot win.
Why? Because absent the Created order and standards of the Almighty, there is no reason to oppose same-sex-marriage. Why should we deny two consenting people who love each other the right to be married?
The arguments against homosexual marriage involving children (having or raising them) won’t hold up. Older couples who marry cannot have children. And children are raised in homes without two natural parents every day. Sometimes a grandparent raises a child. These scenarios might not be optimum, but it is done by millions every day.
Arguments over “traditional marriage” are also of little value. We’ve had a lot of traditions that needed changing. This could be another one. Traditions are important, unless they stand in the way of liberty. Moreover, who is to say which tradition is the best? America’s, or ancient Greece’s or ancient Rome’s, where they openly practiced homosexuality?
The reason we oppose homosexual marriage is because it violates the way God made the world — it attacks the institution He created; it betrays and defies the Laws He gave us.
If there is no God; if we are the chance arrangement of molecules that happened to evolve from some primal swamp; if we are merely animals and there is no such thing as moral absolutes, good and evil, right and wrong — defined by the Ultimate Lawgiver — then anything goes. Let the homosexuals do what they want. Who are we to impose our morality on them?
But if there is a God who makes the rules, then He has imposed His morals on all of us, and we are obliged to obey and defend those ethics in the public square.
Here, for comparison, is a short discussion of the same subject by two atheists; the argument is essentially the same as Randall Terry’s!
Bottom line: There is no compelling secular argument against same-sex equality. It is always based on religion. Always.
That’s not to say I lump all religious people in with the bigots. I have only one complaint about the religious left: They won’t take the religious right to task. But then, that is an integral part of being a Christian: not judging others, but simply emulating Christ, turning the other cheek, being meek, that sort of thing.
Still, even Jesus got angry enough to turn over the moneychangers’ tables in the temple. I wish the meek-and-mild religious left would turn over a few more tables.
Ah well. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind, right?
Talk about damning with faint praise.
But you know what? I’ll take the faint praise; it’s one of the small benefits of refusing to march in lockstep with any group to which I belong, be it by default (women, gay people, Caucasians, Italian-Americans) or by choice (Democrats — and that’s subject to change at any moment).
Read it and weep, Barack (or better, yet, save the party and drop out now) — it’s on the front page of the Politics section in today’s New York Times:
In the interview last spring, Mr. Wright expressed frustration at the breach in relationship with Mr. Obama, saying the candidate had already privately said that he might need to distance himself from his pastor. But perhaps the two could repair things, said Mr. Wright, pointing out that Mr. Obama’s opponent, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, had faced worse.
“At least there are no semen stains on any dresses,” Mr. Wright said, one of several digs he has taken at the Clintons.
“That kind of frankness scares people in the campaign,” he added.
It shouldn’t scare anyone — it should simply disgust and anger the hell out of all Democrats, no matter who they support.
Sadly, however, it has become the norm for Obama supporters (among whom Mr. Wright remains, despite his previous “frustration” over being “disinvited” from The Big Obama Show) to fling every piece of poo recycled from the Newt Gingrich / Ken Starr era at Hillary. It’s déjà vu all over again — only this time the attacks are coming from within the Democratic Party. (Or are they? It’s often difficult to believe that even half the most vocal Obama supporters are anything but Hillary-hating GOP plants.)
The minister’s defenders say the statements that have been playing this week on television are outliers, taken out of context, and that he is not antiwhite. The United Church of Christ, the denomination of the Chicago church, is overwhelmingly white. And Mr. Wright is an equal opportunity critic, often delivering scorching lectures about black society, telling audiences to improve their education and work ethic.
“I can remember Jeremiah saying in probably half his sermons: Everyone who’s your color ain’t your kind,” Richard Sewell, a church member, said in an interview last year.
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., senior pastor, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, March 2005. Credit: Trinity United Church of Christ/Religion News Service
The senator “affirmed” his Christian faith in this church; he uses Wright as a “sounding board” to “make sure I’m not losing myself in the hype and hoopla.” Both the title of Obama’s second book, The Audacity of Hope, and the theme for his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 come from Wright’s sermons. “If you want to understand where Barack gets his feeling and rhetoric from,” says the Rev. Jim Wallis, a leader of the religious left, “just look at Jeremiah Wright.”
This following video is, according to Fox News, from Wright’s Christmas sermon. (Gee whiz, what a message of peace and unity for Christmas, eh?)
My transcript (free to use, with attribution/link, please) is below.
On edit: YouTube keeps pulling the video, but a lot of people keep re-posting it — so if you get the “We’re sorry, this video is no longer available” message, check back later, as I’ll do my best to find a new copy every time I see it’s gone missing again.
Who cares about what I’m going through? Who cares about what poor people have to put up with? Who cares about what a poor black man has to face every day in a country and a culture controlled by rich white people?
Somebody missed that — you got nervous, because we got some white members here. I’m still in bible country. I am still in [unintelligible].
Jesus was a poor, black man who lived in a country and who lived in a culture that was controlled by rich white people. The Romans were rich, the Romans were Italian — which means they were European, which means they were white — and the Romans ran everything in Jesus’ country.
It just came to me with— with— with— within the past few weeks, y’all, why so many folks are hatin’ on Barack Obama. He doesn’t fit the mold. He ain’t white. He ain’t rich. And he ain’t privileged.
Hillary fits the mold. Europeans fit the mold. Giuliani fits the mold. Rich white men fit the mold.
Hillary never had a cab whizz past her and not pick her up because her skin was the wrong color. Hillary never had to worry about being pulled over in her car as a black man driving in the wrong…
I am sick of Negroes who just do not get it!
Hillary was not a black boy raised in a single-parent home. Barack was! Barack knows what it means to be a black man livin’ in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people! Hillary can never know that!
Hillary ain’t never been called a n*****! Hillary has never had her people defined as non-persons! Hillary ain’t had to work twice as hard just to get accepted by the rich white folks who [unintelligible] everything, or to get a passing grade when you know you are smarter than that C student sittin’ in the White House!
Ohhh, I am so glad that I got a god who knows what it is to be a poor black man, and in a country and a culture that is controlled and run by rich white people!
He taught me, Jesus did, how to love my enemies. Jesus taught me how to love the hell outta my enemies! And not be reduced to their level of hatred, bigotry, and smallmindedness.
Hillary ain’t never had her own people say she wasn’t white enough!
Jesus had his own people sidin’ with the enemy!
That’s why I love Jesus, y’all. He never let their hatred dampen his hope. …
I’m biting my tongue to refrain from saying what I’d like to say regarding your “level of hatred, bigotry, and smallmindedness,” Mr. Wright, as my Italian blood (which ain’t half so white as you’d like to think) is a little hot right now.
No, actually, it’s very hot.
Here’s something I can say with complete impunity, Mr. Wright: You are outright lying about Barack Obama growing up poor, underprivileged, and “raised in a single-parent home.”
And Barack himself “admitted in his book, Dreams from My Father, that he had no clue what it meant ‘to be a black man in America.’ And with precious few African-Americans around him in Hawaii, he learned how to ‘be black’ from ‘TV, movies, the radio; those were places to start. Pop culture was color-coded, after all, an arcade of images from which you could cop a walk, a talk, a step, a style.’”
Oh, wait, one more thing: Mr. Wright, I hope the Internal Revenue Service is already investigating your church, and preparing to strip it of its tax-exempt status.
But then, the IRS is already interested in the United Church of Christ — a shame, really, as the UCC is the most Christ-like Christian denomination this side of the Quakers, far more colorblind than you are, and far more liberal than Obama himself — due to your unabashedly racist, one-sided politicking, and to Barack’s own shortsightedness.
What am I talking about? I’m talking about this letter from the IRS to the United Church of Christ, regarding Obama’s use of your pulpit for campaign purposes:
Because a reasonable belief exists that the United Church of Christ (”church”) has engaged in political activities that could jeopardize its tax-exempt status as a church described in section 501(c)(3) and exempt under section 501(a), this letter is notice of the beginning of a church tax inquiry described in IRC section 7611(a). We are sending it because we believe it is necessary to resolve questions concerning your tax-exempt status as a church described in section 501(c)(3) and in section 170(b)(1)(A)(i) of the Code.
Our concerns are based on articles posted on several websites including the church’s which state that United States Presidential Candidate Senator Barack Obama addressed nearly 10,000 church members gathered at the United Church of Christ’s biennial General Synod at the Hartford Civic Center, on June 23, 2007. In addition, 40 Obama volunteers staffed campaign tables outside the center to promote his campaign.
All 501(c)(3) organizations, including churches, their integrated auxiliaries, conventions or associations of churches, are prohibited from participating in, or intervening in (including the publication or distribution of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office. This is an absolute prohibition, violation of which results in denial or revocation of exempt status and/or the imposition of certain excise taxes, if applicable.
The prohibition against political campaign activity does not prevent candidates from being invited to speak at an event of an organization described in section 501(c)(3). If a candidate is invited to speak in his or her capcity as a candidate, then other candidates running for the same office must also be invited to speak and there should be no indication of support for, or opposition to, any candidate by the organization. Alsom the prohibition does not prevent an orgnization’s officials from being involved in a political campaign, so long as those officials do not in any way utilize the organization’s financial resources, facilities, or personnel and clearly indicate that the actions taken or the statements made are those of the individuals and not of the organizations.
… not the first time Wright appeared to endorse Obama, who was baptized at Trinity United, has been an active member of the church for two decades and receives spiritual mentorship from Wright.
The title of Obama’s second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” was taken from a sermon by Wright.
. . .
In his Jan. 13 sermon, Wright said:
“Hillary is married to Bill, and Bill has been good to us. No he ain’t! Bill did us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty.”
FOX News purchased the video recordings of Wright’s sermons from the church.
“It’s pretty clear an indirect endorsement of Barack Obama — that’s not something you’re supposed to do according to the tax code,” said Andrew Walsh, a professor at Trinity College who specializes in religion in politics.
“Bill did us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty.”
You need help, Rev. Wright. Your soul is poisoned by hate. If you’re hearing any “voices” guiding you, they don’t belong to angels.
It’s sad that your “hatred, bigotry, and smallmindedness” may be the thing to bring down one of the few genuinely liberal Christian churches in the modern world.
It’s sad that the IRS wouldn’t think of narrowing its focus to a single, rogue church within an otherwise upstanding denomination.
It’s sad that the entire UCC body may become collateral damage in your crusade against those of us who don’t buy Obama’s lies — or yours.
We’re royally pissed off at Elliot Spitzer — not because he was patronizing a prostitute (or ten, or a hundred), but because by letting his little head do his thinking, he’s really screwed over gay and lesbian Americans.
Elliot Spitzer was one of the best friends American LGBTs could ask for. He’s been a longtime advocate for marriage equality, and last April introduced a same-sex marriage bill in the New York legislature — the first governor in the country to do so. Although the GOP-dominated state senate killed the bill, we were hopeful that New York would be one of the next states (competing with Rhode Island and California) to offer full, equal marriage, à la Massachusetts.
Now it looks like we’re going to lose our best friend in the Empire State. And even if Spitzer doesn’t resign (and, really, he has to; he violated the Mann Act), his power is effectively neutered.
We don’t care a whit if Elliot Spitzer wants to pay for sex, and whatever damage he’s done to his marriage (and his relationship with his children) is his own concern. What a person does sexually, in private, is nobody’s business — unless his behavior puts a crimp in somebody else’s freedom. That includes conservatives trying to force the rest of us to live by their “moral values,” or, in Spitzer’s case, a single individual setting back the march toward LGBT equality by way of a really stupid choice he made for his own selfish pleasure. In short, Elliot Spitzer traded our freedom for the promise of a lousy orgasm.
A lousy, expensive orgasm. It’s difficult to imagine what you get for $4,300 — the price Spitzer was going to pay for a call girl named “Kristen” — but we imagine it wasn’t seven minutes in the missionary position.
Whatever Spitzer was going to get for his money, he didn’t get it. We were the ones who got screwed — without, as my dear departed father used to say, so much as a kiss.
Then, of course, there is the damage Spitzer has done to the Democratic Party, the extent of which remains to be seen. We already have a hint about the extent of the damage he’s done to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign; within minutes of the story breaking on the newswires, Barack Obama supporters on the Message Forum That Shall Remain Nameless were using the Spitzer scandal to smear Clinton. First, they somehow rationalized (if you can call this line of thought “rational”) that Clinton was tainted merely by her association with Spitzer, one of her most high-profile supporters; furthermore, they decided that this association by default cancels out Obama’s relationships with Donnie McClurkin, Kirbyjon Caldwell, and the rest of the homophobic bigots from whom Obama refuses to distance himself.
As if.
Second — and this is very real damage — the widely-circulated image of Spitzer’s wife, the silent, suffering Silda, standing by her man…
…brought the image of Hillary standing by Bill during the Monica Lewinsky scandal back into razor-sharp focus.
Counter-clockwise from upper left: Mr. and Mrs. Elliot Spitzer, Mr. and Mrs. Larry Craig, Mr. and (now ex-) Mrs. Jim McGreevey, and Mr. and Mrs. Bill Clinton.
What’s wrong with this picture? For starters, three of the four disgraced politicians are Democrats. Having researched political pecadilloes for years, I can tell you that Republicans far outnumber Democrats in the cheating department. Granted, represented are four of the most infamous sex scandals in recent memory (although it’s a stretch to call the Lewinsky scandal “recent”), but if ABC had asked for my input, I could have given them dozens of examples of humiliated wives standing by their men — from the other side of the aisle.
In any case, Clinton (Hillary, not Bill) is screwed no matter whether Spitzer resigns or not. As Peter Baker wrote in WaPo:
Spitzer has been a bad-luck charm for Hillary Clinton to this point. His illegal immigrant driver’s license proposal arguably became the first time she was thrown off her stride in this campaign. … That led to a bad patch for her that lasted all the way through the Iowa caucuses. …
Now Spitzer may throw her off stride again at a moment she needs to keep her momentum going. And on top of that, even if he does spare her by resigning soon, that has a cost too — one fewer superdelegate for her at the convention.
It’s not lost on us, by the way, that this scandal comes at the most inopportune time for Democrats — and at a very convenient time indeed for Republicans. (You’ve already forgotten all about Vicki Iseman, haven’t you?)
And it’s not lost on us that Spitzer was nailed by a federal wiretap — you know, that part of the USA Patriot Act that allows the feds to listen in on your phone calls for any half-assed reason they want (or no reason at all). It was the Bush Machine that turned the U.S. into “one nation, under surveillance” — and we knew Big Brother wasn’t going to confine wiretapping to terrorism suspects.
OK, OK, so the Spitzer hooker bust was a by-product of a “routine tax inquiry” by the IRS, and prostitution was said to be “the furthest thing from the minds of the investigators” looking into the suspicious movement of funds through Spitzer’s hands. But the timing of the emergence of a “confidential informant, a young woman who had worked previously as a prostitute for the Emperor’s Club V.I.P., the escort service that Mr. Spitzer was believed to be using” who enabled the investigators “to get a judge to approve wiretaps on the cellphones of some of those suspected of involvement in the escort service” seems awfully convenient. To the Republican Party, that is.
But, all speculation aside, what’s done is done — and what’s been done is irreversible.
As for how badly Spitzer has hurt the Democratic Party, hurt Hillary Clinton, and hurt us LGBTs — who saw in Elliot Spitzer the closest thing we had to a savior — only time will tell.
But it’s gonna hurt every last one of us.
And all because Elliot Spitzer couldn’t keep his penis in his pants.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you can’t comprehend how Michelle Obama’s remark, “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback,” could possibly be perceived as a dismissal of every American achievement of the past 25 years.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you wonder, as Sasha Issenberg put it, “So what did Michelle Obama think of the United States before her husband decided he wanted to run the place?”
Now, thanks to Lauren Collins in the March 10, 2008, issue of The New Yorker, we know what Michelle Obama thought — and thinks — of the United States.
It isn’t pretty.
Collins’ article, “The Other Obama: Michelle Obama and the politics of candor,” depicts Michelle Obama in a generally positive light, both praising her “lack of pretense” and attempting to explain why Michelle says the things she does.
Problem is, Michelle comes across as angry and bitter — especially at the lousy hand she’s been dealt (never mind her superior private education and income, both personal and household, which is more than most Americans could ever dream of grossing) — angry at everyone and everything. This is not a role her husband’s campaign advisers want her to portray. (”‘Occasionally, it gives campaign people heartburn,’ David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s chief strategist, admits.”)
She also just can’t seem to shut the hell up. While we’re all for outspokenness, especially from a woman (and especially from a woman belonging to a minority group; remember, yours truly is an outspoken woman who belongs to a minority group, too), she is the spouse of a presidential candidate, who, every time she opens her mouth, manages to insult a wide swath of the electorate.
It’s not difficult to envision the way her tendency — no, her compulsion — to shoot from the hip would play in her role as First Lady, especially when the precarious art of international diplomacy demands discretion.
Unfortunately, Michelle Obama hasn’t the first clue about discretion.
Beyond the cringe-making spectre of Michelle’s tactlessness offending some less-than-understanding head of state (can you say “international incident”?), the United States cannot afford to be represented by a First Lady (the official “hostess of the nation”) who repeatedly denigrates her own country. Our standing in the international community is on life support as it is; we do not need a First Lady who agrees with our detractors that the United States is a hellhole of greed and hate.
It doesn’t matter what Michelle thinks she means, or how her nebbish husband (who, notes Collins, has been “working the hapless-hubby routine for a long time”) or his campaign advisers try to “clarify,” explain, spin, or dismiss her words; it’s how her words come across. Anyone who thinks the American public is going to sit down, parse out those words, and spend any time trying to find a deeper layer of meaning (assuming there is one) is a fool; Americans have been conditioned to make snap decisions on first impressions and sound bites.
Worse, it appears Michelle is unlikely to be reined in; Collins writes that she knows what to say and what not to say, but “her pride visibly chafes at being asked to subsume her personality.”
Here’s a newsflash: “Personality” does not preclude tact. And if one’s “personality” is so literally compulsive that one cannot contain one’s unthinking brashness, there are bigger issues involved than mere pride.
Michelle Obama, Collins writes after witnessing a speech at a little South Carolina church, “acknowledged … that some advisers have lobbied her to take a sunnier tone, with little success.”
When Michelle made her “really proud” remark, a casual online acquaintance suggested, in a public forum, that perhaps it was indeed time someone in the Obama camp take her aside and advise her in the art of finesse. Barack supporters, predictably, flew into a rage at the idea of putting a gag on the irrepressible missus; most spat out accusations of “sexism” (ironic, as genuine sexism is usually the first resort of offense against Hillary Clinton), and more than a few attacked my acquaintance as a racist “threatened by an uppity black woman.”
This reaction was, apparently, not atypical, as it is echoed by Collins in her re-cap of the wider fallout over Michelle’s gaffe:
The sentiment — that America was in a mess, and Mrs. Obama was not happy about it — was not a new one, but her unfortunate formulation instantly drew charges that she was unpatriotic. Bill O’Reilly spawned his own scandalette, remarking, “I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels.” Victor Maltsev, of Rego Park, wrote to the Post, “Obama wants to be our next first lady? Watch out, America!” Cindy McCain seized the opportunity to draw a sniffy contrast between the Obamas and her and her war-hero husband, telling a cheering crowd, “I don’t know about you — if you heard those words earlier — I’m very proud of my country.”
It was a manufactured controversy, but it reflected a real cavalierness on Obama’s part — not toward the Blue Angels and 9/11 and the Berlin Wall and America’s armed forces, as her various critics had it, but toward the reality that it might be wise for a person whose spouse is running for President not to say something that could be construed that way. The controversy over her brand of household humor may have been a matter of cultural misinterpretation. But Obama’s blitheness about politics may have less to do with race than it does with class — conservative commentators pegged her as a paragon of élitist leftism — or, more likely, for a daughter of blue-collar Chicago, with personal disposition.
Of course, the Obamacans missed the point. As usual.
The point, again, is: Michelle’s unbridled derision of the United States makes Barack look bad. If she becomes First lady, she’s going to make the United States itself look bad.
If you think that assessment is a knee-jerk overreaction, consider this exchange between Collins and Michelle:
In Wisconsin, I asked her if she was offended by Bill Clinton’s use of the phrase “fairy tale” to describe her husband’s characterization of his position on the Iraq War. At first, Obama responded with a curt “No.” But, after a few seconds, she affected a funny voice. “I want to rip his eyes out!” she said, clawing at the air with her fingernails. One of her advisers gave her a nervous look. “Kidding!” Obama said. “See, this is what gets me into trouble.”
“I want to rip his eyes out!”
I’m sorry, but there’s no “clarifying” a remark like that, no “kidding” away a remark that, made by you, Mr. or Ms. Average Citizen, would bring the Secret Service to your doorstep. (Don’t laugh; law-abiding Americans have been hauled in for a lot less than wishing physical harm — “kidding” or not — to a President of the United States.)
It is clear, however, that not all of Michelle Obama’s outrageous remarks are unrehearsed. Collins observes:
Pundits have portrayed Obama as an oversharer and a taskmaster, demeaning her husband by acknowledging his morning breath and his body odor. But the domestic carping that commentators have taken as some sort of uncontrollable T.M.I. tic serves Obama’s husband well, and this may account for her frequent recitation of the mundane details of their housekeeping arrangements. …
. . .
The ordinary card, in fact, may be one of the Obamas’ best assets. It assuages fears of difference — “We’re just like you” is the cumulative message of all the back-and-forth about the breath and the bread — and inoculates against jealousy, a smart bit of self-deprecation on the part of a young, gifted, attractive couple whose fortunes have risen quickly, like movie stars insisting that they were unpopular in high school.
But the Obamas are anything but “ordinary.” By now we all know the basic facts about Barack Obama’s life:
The product of a brief marriage between a black Kenyan scholar and a white Kansan mother, fellow students at the University of Hawaii, Barack was abandoned at age two by his father, but, despite his standard stump-speech sob story of being “raised by a single mother,” was hardly fatherless; his mother was remarried to an Indonesian student, and when Barack was six, the family moved to his stepfather’s homeland.
Barack’s “critical boyhood years,” Hank De Zutter reminds us, “from two to ten — were spent neither in white nor black America but in the teeming streets and jungle outskirts of Djakarta.”
By the time Barack was ten, his mother divorced again, and sent Barack to live with her parents in Honolulu. Barack’s grandparents enrolled him in the prestigious (and expensive), racially diverse Punahou prep school. From there it was onto Columbia University (he earned his bachelor’s in political science in 1983), and then Harvard Law School, graduating magna cum laude in 1991.
The former Michelle Robinson wasn’t exactly raised on food stamps in a tenement slum, either. A graduate of the Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, a highly selective, highly competitive Chicago public college preparatory requiring “special application and entrance testing” for admission to its 450 student openings.
She went on to Princeton (majoring in sociology), and then, writes Collins:
Obama went straight from Princeton to Harvard Law School. After graduating, she became a junior associate, specializing in intellectual property law, at the Chicago firm of Sidley & Austin. She worked there for three years, eventually becoming, as she says in her stump speech, disenchanted with “corporate America.” Valerie Jarrett hired her as an assistant to the mayor, Richard Daley.
Collins also crunches the numbers:
The Obamas’ financial standing has risen sharply in the past three years, largely as a result of the money Barack earned from writing “The Audacity of Hope.” In 2005, their income was $1.67 million, which was more than they had earned in the previous seven years combined. …
. . .
Just after Barack was elected to the United States Senate, Michelle received a large pay increase — from $121,910 in 2004 to $316,962 in 2005.
What’s more, the Obamas have no need to worry about such mundane things as daycare, housework, or having to actually go outside to get some exercise:
Last summer, Obama’s mother retired from her job as a bank secretary in order to look after Malia and Sasha when Barack and Michelle are on the road. (The Obamas employ a full-time housekeeper, and Michelle tries to see a personal trainer four times a week, but they do not have a nanny.)
Yet, Michelle still complains about the “struggle” to “balance work and family.” Never mind that having people to babysit your kids, clean your house, and make you work out four times a week are the kinds of luxuries completely off-limits to Joe and Jane American as they struggle to balance work and family.
It’s not lost on Collins (or on the reader) that Michelle Obama sees the world through a deeply-tinted lens of self-absorption:
Her frame of reference can seem narrow. When she talks about wanting “my girls to travel the world with pride” and the decline of America “over my lifetime,” you wonder why her default pronoun is singular if the message is meant to be concern for others and inclusiveness.
The question is: How genuine is that message of “concern for others and inclusiveness”?
Perhaps the sentiment is, but the “just plain folks” schtick makes the message ring hollow. The Obamas are not “just plain folks” by any stretch of the imagination — they just play them on television.
And in speeches.
At the Pee Dee Union Baptist Church, in Cheraw, South Carolina, “a hamlet of about six thousand known as ‘The Prettiest Town in Dixie,’ Michelle Obama pulled out all the stops to connect with her “mostly elderly, almost all-black crowd,” to prove she was just like them.
“On behalf of my church home and my pastor, Reverend Wright, I bring greetings,” Michelle began, and then went on to talk about her “people” (they’re from from South Carolina, too), and her grandparents’ membership in “an A.M.E. Baptist church in Georgetown.”
Notes Collins:
Obama was playing to her audience — later she riffed on “those relatives who have plastic on the furniture” and reminded the churchgoers to get “ten other triflin’ people in your life” out of bed and down to the polls on Saturday. Her appearances at the church, and many like it, were a key point of strategy in a state that would be the first real test of whether or not Barack could attract significant numbers of black voters. “In South Carolina in particular, because she had family from there, it made a lot of sense for her to speak in the African-American community,” David Axelrod said.
That’s fine, but even in print, the “plastic on the furniture” and “triflin’ people” business sounds as empty — and condescending — as her husband’s frequent — and phony — “lapses” into Southern-fried preacher-man talk. (Oh, it’s phony, all right; the man who spent his entire childhood outside the continental United States, and never knew “the black experience” during his most crucial formative years, admitted in his book, Dreams from My Father, that he had no clue what it meant “to be a black man in America.” And with precious few African-Americans around him in Hawaii, he learned how to “be black” from “TV, movies, the radio; those were places to start. Pop culture was color-coded, after all, an arcade of images from which you could cop a walk, a talk, a step, a style.” Which tells you his racially-charged “Cousin Pookie” remark is utterly and completely meaningless, and merely calculated stagecraft aimed at drawing a connection between himself and a version of Black America to which he has no real connection at all.)
It’s right at the beginning of her speech to the Pee Dee Baptists that Michelle Obama, true to form, gets herself “into trouble” again.
Writes Collins:
Obama begins with a broad assessment of life in America in 2008, and life is not good: we’re a divided country, we’re a country that is “just downright mean,” we are “guided by fear,” we’re a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents.
A nation of “cynics, sloths, and complacents”?
A country that is “just downright mean”?
I don’t care if you agree with her or not; these remarks fly right in the face of her husband’s frothy, ethereal “hope and change” meme. In fact, she answers Barack’s oft-repeated question: “Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?”
It’s clear what kind of politics his wife is participating in. (Hint: It ain’t hope.)
“We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day,” she said, as heads bobbed in the pews.
Who are “we,” Michelle? You have no idea what it means to be “struggling folks who are barely making it every day.” None.
“Folks are just jammed up, and it’s gotten worse over my lifetime. And, doggone it, I’m young. Forty-four!”
Conditions have gotten worse for other people over your lifetime, Michelle. Your family has experienced nothing less than meteoric success, year after year — and your children have never known, nor are they ever likely to know, what it means to go without… or what it feels like to hear their parents arguing over money.
From these bleak generalities, Obama moves into specific complaints. Used to be, she will say, that you could count on a decent education in the neighborhood. But now there are all these charter schools and magnet schools that you have to “finagle” to get into. (Obama herself attended a magnet school, but never mind.)
So did you have to “finagle” your way into Whitney Young, Michelle? Or did you earn your way in?
Health care is out of reach (”Let me tell you, don’t get sick in America”), pensions are disappearing, college is too expensive, and even if you can figure out a way to go to college you won’t be able to recoup the cost of the degree in many of the professions for which you needed it in the first place. “You’re looking at a young couple that’s just a few years out of debt,” Obama said. “See, because, we went to those good schools, and we didn’t have trust funds. I’m still waiting for Barack’s trust fund. Especially after I heard that Dick Cheney was s’posed to be a relative or something. Give us something here!”
“Give” you “something here”? Thanks, Michelle, for making “us” (whoever “us” is supposed to be, but I’ll generously assume you mean Americans who don’t have it as easy as you and your husband) sound exactly like the worst right-wing stereotype of “entitlement mentality” liberals.
(The point isn’t lost on Collins: “Some observers have detected in Obama an air of entitlement. Her defenders attribute these charges of arrogance to racist fears about uppity black women. While it’s a stretch to call the suggestion that Obama projects an air of self-satisfaction bigoted, it may at least reflect a culture gap: last April, after Maureen Dowd wrote a column criticizing Obama for undermining her husband’s mystique, a blog riposte, circulated widely on the Internet, was titled ‘The White Lady Just Doesn’t Get It.’”)
It’s not that I’m too concerned with the damage you’re inflicting on your husband’s campaign, Michelle; I don’t like his positions, I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him, and I want to see him lose the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton. But if Barack does win the party’s nomination, this idiocy you’re spewing is going to help guarantee a win by President McCain.
Even more damaging is the longlasting pall you’re casting over the Democratic Party — to which I still belong. You’re making Democrats look spoiled, and demanding, and unreasonable.
Yet you just go on and on. And if your crack about ripping out Bill Clinton’s eyes weren’t enough, you go on to denigrate the very real, measurable gains of the entire Clinton administration:
In Cheraw, Obama belittled the idea that the Clinton years were ones of opportunity and prosperity: “The life that I’m talking about that most people are living has gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl. . . . So if you want to pretend like there was some point over the last couple of decades when your lives were easy, I want to meet you!”
Then you want to meet me, Michelle. I grew up without a trust fund, too, and worked crap jobs throughout my young adulthood in the 1980s. Even after I finished school, my whiz-bang computer-programming skills languished while I had to take anything I could find to pay the rent — I was a school photographer in the very worst, violence-ridden schools in the Los Angeles Unified District, and off-season I jumped at the chance to proctor the state bar exam, or the state cosmetology licensing exam, from one to three days at a time — because there was nothing else available.
Then came “the Clinton years” you disparage so easily. Almost overnight, I was awash in offers to put my professional skills to work. I climbed the ladder at breakneck speed, and my salary rose practically exponentially. Just before George W. Bush was sworn in for the first time, I was earning $110,000 a year.
Then I was laid off. The jobs dried up, and the industry I loved so much (information technology, primarily for medical manufacturing — an area in which I felt, sincerely, that I was contributing to a greater good) has never come back.
Today, I eke out a very meager living doing what I can. Two-week vacations to Hawaii are just a memory. I stay home a lot. And when something breaks, I fix it myself.
Michelle, have you ever soldered a loose wire back into place when a burner on your stove stopped working? (Have you ever even opened the top of your stove to see what’s inside, or would that get your hands too dirty?) Would you even know how to do that?
Yesterday, I fixed the silverware drawer in the kitchen. It’s the most used drawer in the house, and it finally warped to the point that it couldn’t be pulled in or out. So I took it apart and, with nails my late father had squirreled away in a cigar box, put it back together again, and made it work. I even rubbed a wax candle along the runners to make it slide in and out more easily.
Could you do that, Michelle? Would you do that, Michelle? Especially when it’s just too easy for you to pick up the phone and call a repairman — or have someone call a repairman?
I’d rather call a repairman, too. But I don’t have the money to call a repairman.
So I guess you want to meet me, Michelle, because that “point over the last couple of decades” when my life was easy was hardly a single “point”; it was eight long years of “opportunity and prosperity.” Eight years.
But your revisionist history of the first Clinton era is no surprise, Michelle. Your husband does it all the time, even going as far as venerating Ronald Reagan and praising the GOP as “the party of ideas … over the last ten, fifteen years.”
“Barack Obama’s upscale white supporters (and those too young to recall the 1970s and 1980s) tend to describe Clintonism as a betrayal of liberalism, a sellout to Wall Street, and proof that ‘the Clintons’ won’t bring about change — a view encapsulated in the Daily Kos blog’s visceral aversion to Terry McAuliffe’s mug. Yet while the courting of big donors with stays in the Lincoln Bedroom left a bad odor, as a historical matter, the Clinton years were unquestionably a time of progress, especially on the economy. And it seems that as Obama mania sweeps the educated classes, the party’s struggling lower-income base still prefers Hillary. One reason is that they’re less prone than their better-off party mates to vote out of an enthusiasm for stirring rhetoric or viral videos or a wish to play their part in a grand narrative of racial reconciliation. Having been battered by globalization, rising health care and education costs, and the subprime mortgage disaster, they’re remembering the Clinton years and voting for who they think will help them. …
“Clinton detractors … like to grouse about “triangulation.” This was pollster Dick Morris’ cynical term for the election-year opportunism behind Clinton’s moderate-seeming but mostly inconsequential ideas in 1996, like the V-chip (to screen out television violence) and school uniforms. On economics, however, Clinton’s construction of policies that defied traditional left-right categories was substantive. The Earned Income Tax Credit, which originated in a pilot form in the 1970s, attracted conservative support in the 1980s as an alternative to transfer payments as a way to help the working poor; Clinton made it a signature policy, expanding it in his 1993 bill to an additional 15 million families — a result that added up to the most significant anti-poverty measure since the Great Society. The virtuous cycle engendered by Clinton’s balanced budgets — which by paying down the debt won the confidence of bond traders and helped bring down interest rates — eventually won over many who had doubted the strategy. …
“By the end of the Clinton presidency, the numbers were uniformly impressive. Besides the record-high surpluses and the record-low poverty rates, the economy could boast the longest economic expansion in history; the lowest unemployment since the early 1970s; and the lowest poverty rates for single mothers, black Americans, and the aged. Real wages, after declining over the course of the Reagan and Bush years, rose under Clinton. To be sure, the gap between the very rich and everyone else widened — as it has continued to do since — but gains for the rich, for once, didn’t leave behind the poor and lower middle class. …
“It’s the economic achievements of the Clinton years that people recalled when they scratched their heads at Obama’s claim that during the last 10 to 15 years — i.e., the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies — Republicans had the “new ideas.” On the contrary, while it’s possible to argue that the GOP claimed the mantle of newness in the 1980s, when Democrats were still groping for their postindustrial vision, it was precisely in 1992 — with the emergence of Clinton’s fusion of populism and neoliberalism — that Democrats did find a program for the globalization age. And it worked.”
Nevertheless, the Obamas, and their supporters, continue to disparage “the Clinton years” — even despite Barack Obama’s own rather schizophrenic admission: “I think there’s no doubt that there were good things that happened during those eight years of the Clinton administration. I think that’s undeniable. … And, particularly, when looked at through the lens of the last eight years with George Bush, they look even better.”
To both Obamas, and to their supporters, I ask the old bumper-sticker question: So, what was it, exactly, about eight years of peace and prosperity that pissed you off so much?
Yet while attempting to stay on-message and deny everything good about the first Clinton era, Michelle Obama suffers from her own schizophrenic treatment of the Obama campaign’s “out with the old, in with the new” meme:
She exudes a nostalgia, invoking the innocence and order of the past, as much as her husband beckons to a liberating future. Listening to her speeches, with their longing for a lost, spit-shine world, one could sometimes mistake her, were it not for the emphasis on social justice, for a law-and-order Republican. “It’s not just about politics; it’s TV,” she says, of our collective decay. And, wistfully: “The life I had growing up seems so much more simple.”
Michelle, honey, you grew up when I did — you’re all of two years younger than I am.
I do agree that life was indeed simpler when we were younger, and I long for it too.
But you need to make up your mind: Do you want a return to a secure, more orderly past, or do you want to gamble what tenuous hold we have on that past and barge into the future with a set of half-baked — and often contradictory — ideas about what to do with that future?
There’s much more in Collins’ lengthy profile, well worth the full read if you want a clearer picture of the outspoken and often outrageous Michelle Obama, as well as her family (in response to Michelle’s brother Craig’s complaint about Michelle’s overbearingness in college, their mother advised: “Just pretend you don’t know her”), her marriage (”…[Barack] got me into one of these discussions again, where, you know, he sort of just led me down there and got fired up and it’s like you’ve got blah blah blah blah, and then dessert comes out, the tray comes out, and there’s a ring!”), the Tony Rezko mess, and the Obamas’ close relationship with their highly controversial, Louis-Farrakhan-admiring, racial-separatist pastor, Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. (who portrays America as “a Eurocentric wasteland of lily-white lies and outright distortions”).
But we’ll end with one last quote from Collins — two paragraphs buried between pages eight and nine of the piece — which sum up the problem with Michelle Obama:
The self-assurance that colors Obama’s assumption that her personal feelings are some bellwether of American achievement is also palpable in her forceful declarations that her husband is the only person who can solve the country’s problems. “I tell people I am married to the answer,” she said, in a speech in Harlem. “The man . . . who I am willing to sacrifice,” she called her husband, in Iowa. In November, on MSNBC: “Black voters will wake up and get it.” There is a hectoring, buy-one-while-supplies-last quality to Obama’s frequent admonitions that Americans will have only one chance to elect her husband President. Someone who has spent a good portion of her life gaining purchase has suddenly been asked to sell something, and she seems to find it slightly beneath her.
Perhaps Obama’s high-handedness is preëmptive, her way of “claiming a seat at the table” — as she is fond of calling enfranchisement in the power-brokering structure — rather than waiting to be offered one. It’s as though she figures she might as well say that she and her husband are all that before someone can say that they aren’t. And there’s a sort of strategic genius to her presentation of campaigning as grinding work that takes her away from her family, rather than a glorious tour of the world’s greatest country that she would be thrilled to be undertaking even if she didn’t have to. … By loudly voicing her distaste for retail politicking, Obama makes people feel as though, by showing up, she were doing them a favor.
It’s not that Michelle Obama isn’t “grateful” for her high socioeconomic status in this country (on the contrary, she needn’t be grateful to anyone; there is no question she worked for it, and earned it), or her constant dismissal of what’s right with America, or even her deliberate blindness to how much better we had it with Bill Clinton at the helm.
It’s that she has little love for her country, and even less dedication to service to her country. She “makes people feel as though, by showing up, she were doing them a favor.”
You’re not doing anyone any favors, Michelle.
Don’t do me any favors, either… unless, of course, you really do want to meet me for a real-life lesson in how good the Clinton years really were.
Point by point, let’s look at Barack Obama’s statement, released February 28, 2008:
I’m running for President to build an America that lives up to our founding promise of equality for all — a promise that extends to our gay brothers and sisters. It’s wrong to have millions of Americans living as second-class citizens in this nation. And I ask for your support in this election so that together we can bring about real change for all LGBT Americans.
So, Barry, where was this appeal before Camp Obama realized how badly they’ve been screwing over the LGBT community? Why didn’t you make this statement before the South Carolina primary, instead of handing an “ex-gay” bigot a microphone so he could tap into the raging homophobia of throngs of religious bigots at the expense of the LGBT community you’re suddenly sucking up to now? Why wait until just before the Ohio and Texas primaries to cozy up to the queers — because you just realized Ohio and Texas are full of queers who don’t go in for that “love the sinner, hate the sin” sermonizing you do so well?
That’s why throughout my career, I have fought to eliminate discrimination against LGBT Americans. In Illinois, I co-sponsored a fully inclusive bill that prohibited discrimination on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender identity, extending protection to the workplace, housing, and places of public accommodation. In the U.S. Senate, I have co-sponsored bills that would equalize tax treatment for same-sex couples and provide benefits to domestic partners of federal employees. And as president, I will place the weight of my administration behind the enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act to outlaw hate crimes and a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act to outlaw workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
If these issues are so important to you, then why wait until you’re president to “place your weight” behind them? Why haven’t you introduced any domestic-partnership bills as a U.S. Senator? You’re allowed to do that, you know.
As your President, I will use the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws.
Not good enough, Barry. You can “urge states” all you like, but when you leave equality to the states, you get separate but equal — just like the validity of your parents‘ marriage was “left to the states” when you were born.
That’s not good enough. You can’t claim your intention to push through “equal treatment” of LGBT Americans on a federal level, while leaving “family and adoption laws” to the states.
Only federally-recognized marriage equality will do.
I personally believe that civil unions represent the best way to secure that equal treatment.
But I also believe that the federal government should not stand in the way of states that want to decide on their own how best to pursue equality for gay and lesbian couples — whether that means a domestic partnership, a civil union, or a civil marriage.
Again, with the “states’ rights” argument. You’re just wrong, Barry. You’re misinformed, deluded, and just plain wrong.
Unlike Senator Clinton, I support the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) — a position I have held since before arriving in the U.S. Senate.
You can promise “the complete repeal” of DOMA — in fact, you can promise anything you want — before you’re president. Bill Clinton did; he promised to allow gay and lesbian Americans to serve openly in the military, and look what happened to him: He was blindsided by Congress, and forced to compromise with DADT.
So, you can promise us anything you want, Barry — or you can be realistic about DOMA, like Hillary Clinton has been: She’s promising to overturn the part of DOMA she believes she can overturn — she’s not making a promise that is absolutely impossible to keep.
Now, you could say that your eagerness to compromise on marriage equality via the baby step of civil unions is based on political expediency, but I won’t believe it for a second. Your aversion to full marriage equality is based on your religious beliefs, and nothing else — which we’ll address further in just a moment.
While some say we should repeal only part of the law, I believe we should get rid of that statute altogether.
So do I, but I have no confidence whatsoever in your ability to get rid of it altogether. If you can, great — I’ll praise you for it — but I’m not holding my breath.
And let’s not forget that you can’t do it alone, Barry. It’s going to be up to Congress to overturn DOMA; you’re just the guy who’ll get to sign the bill, if it ever gets to your desk.
Finally, don’t think for a minute that I believe you’re going to go to work on repealing DOMA right away; LGBT equality has never been a priority for you in the past; especially with the mess left to you by the Bush administration, LGBT equality is going to be further down on your to-do list than you’d like to admit.
Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples, which is precisely what DOMA does.
Then why aren’t you pushing for federally-recognized civil marriage — not civil “unions,” but civil marriage — right now?
I have also called for us to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and I have worked to improve the Uniting American Families Act so we can afford same-sex couples the same rights and obligations as married couples in our immigration system.
Oh? Since when did this issue hit your radar? Last I heard, your position on the UAFA was identical to Senator Clinton’s: You have both been withholding your support for the UAFA, citing concerns about immigration fraud.
Well, here’s my question to you, Barry: If immigration reform is such a big issue to you, why not propose a moratorium on all immigration-by-marriage until you’ve got it sorted out? By holding up passage of the UAFA, you are denying only same-sex couples immigration rights. Either open immigration to everyone, now, or deny immigration to everyone, now, until you figure out how to deal with fraud.
Or, as Immigration Equality noted: “The fraud protections in the UAFA are exactly the same as they are for married (opposite-sex) couples. I perhaps haven’t pushed this point hard enough in previous exchanges, but the fraud protections in the UAFA are not the problem. The problem is that politicians do not understand LGBT relationships and do not consider them bona fide. Whether it is because a marriage certificate cannot be issued, or some deeper discomfort with LGBT marriages we do not know, but to deny LGBT couples a marriage certificate and then say that because there is no marriage certificate you must be subjected to more intense scrutiny is discriminatory, and wrong. Let’s not forget that Obama does not support gay marriage while at the same time claims civil unions extend exactly the same rights as does a marriage certificate.
“The fraud protections in the UAFA are no more loose or no more strict [than] current fraud provisions for opposite-sex couples. It is unfortunate that Sen. Obama, the child of a binational couple whose marriage was once as frowned upon as LGBT relationships does not see this double standard for what it is. We are continuing to work with the Obama camp to bring them onto the UAFA but we will not let them off the hook so easily.”
The next president must also address the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
And this issue is specific to an “open letter to the LGBT community” why, exactly?
Did you mention HIV/AIDS because you’re so accustomed to associating HIV/AIDS with gay men — and “the unfaithful husband or the promiscuous youth” and other “sinners” — the way you did in your 2006 World AIDS Day Speech at your “friend” Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church?
“Like no other illness, AIDS tests our ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes — to empathize with the plight of our fellow man. While most would agree that the AIDS orphan or the transfusion victim or the wronged wife contracted the disease through no fault of their own, it has too often been easy for some to point to the unfaithful husband or the promiscuous youth or the gay man and say ‘This is your fault. You have sinned.’
“I don’t think that’s a satisfactory response. My faith reminds me that we all are sinners.”
Are you so compelled to distance yourself from the AIDS epidemic by asserting your heterosexuality that you must, again, compartmentalize HIV/AIDS as a “gay issue”?
When it comes to prevention, we do not have to choose between values and science. While abstinence education should be part of any strategy, we also need to use common sense. We should have age-appropriate sex education that includes information about contraception.
Can’t find a thing wrong here. But then, there’s a first time for everything.
We should pass the JUSTICE Act to combat infection within our prison population. And we should lift the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users. In addition, local governments can protect public health by distributing contraceptives.
Fine, but: Why are you bringing the issue of HIV/AIDS and prison inmates and intravenous drug users into an “open letter to the LGBT community”? Are you lumping felons and heroin addicts in with “the unfaithful husband or the promiscuous youth or the gay man,” too?
We also need a president who’s willing to confront the stigma — too often tied to homophobia — that continues to surround HIV/AIDS. I confronted this stigma directly in a speech to evangelicals at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, and will continue to speak out as president. That is where I stand on the major issues of the day.
I’m glad you brought up your visit to Warren’s church. You pissed off a lot of left-wingers — and Warren pissed off a lot of right-wingers — by “consorting with the enemy.”
Oh, I know it by heart: These are the people you want to “reach out” to — this is your attempt to make “post-partisan unity” a reality. But you shouldn’t be consorting with them, Barry; these are the people who want no middle ground. Surely, you’re not stupid enough to think they are going to compromise with us — the “us” being the Americans “they” have built successful careers of demonizing, and at best want to run out out of the nation on a rail: the gays, the pro-choicers, the atheists, the evolutionary scientists and teachers, the Muslims… anyone who isn’t a heterosexual, anti-choice Christian opposed to full marriage equality.
They are not going to compromise their core values, Barack — and those of us whose rights hang in the balance (where our rights exist at all) will be damned if we compromise our core values for theirs.
The Christofascists are not going to budge an inch. You may get their votes, but you’re a damned fool if you actually believe you’re going to bring them around to any mode of rational thinking.
As my friend David G (whose nail-it-to-the-wall observations I’ll be quoting again soon) remarked regarding your “gay ad”: Like Donnie McClurkin and Kirbyjon Caldwell and Hezekiah Walker and all the rest of the religionists you call your “friends,” they are in fact “fundamentalist activists, anti-choice, anti-science… They are the same as Robertson or Dobson. Not ‘good folk who haven’t accepted gays,’ but dogmatic, rigid fundies. …
“Those of you who think these members of the Religious Right are only ‘a tad homophobic’ are living in denial. They are the clinic blockers, the school boards who sue over evolution. And you are voting them to power in our party.”
Which begs the question: Is that really your intention, Barack, to bring these bigots around? You pay a lot of lip service to maintaining the separation of church and state — even a few atheists positively swooned over your remark that “we are not a Christian nation; we are a nation of Christians and Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists. We are also a nation of non-believers and non-church going folk who may not have ‘Sunday-best’ hanging in their closets but who most assuredly carry the best of intentions within their hearts.”
Yet you continue to infuse your rhetoric with religious buzz phrases — yes, I’ll say it: “code words” — that seem contrived as a “dog whistle” for the religionists, but are more than familiar to those of us against whom your Bible has been used as a bludgeon. I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt, Barry; it’s tempting to think your own religiosity is so deeply ingrained, you don’t even know you’re doing it (which, to be honest, isn’t much comfort either). But I am convinced you are doing it deliberately.
In the same speech that wooed a few atheists, you also said:
My religious upbringing taught me that homosexuality was sinful and that gay unions should not be allowed. But my political belief is that all people are created equal and thus should be treated as such, homosexual couples being given the same civil rights as their heterosexual counterparts.
I’m not so sure about that, Barack. In fact, I’m dead certain your political belief is informed, and formed, solely by your religious belief. Remember what you said in Iowa (and have repeated in one form or another ever since you started stumping in churches)?
“Doing the Lord’s work is a thread that runs through our politics since the very beginning. And it puts the lie to the notion that separation of church and state in America means somehow that faith should have no role in public life.”
And:
“My faith teaches me that I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I go out and do the Lord’s work.”
I can think of another president who was convinced that he was doing “the Lord’s work” by merging religion with politics: George W. Bush.
That is not a comforting thought.
And, as David Domke and Kevin Coe observed: Since the Saddleback sermon, “Obama’s religious politics have only grown. He often begins speeches — including his address in February 2007 in which he announced his intention to seek the presidency — by giving ‘all praise and honor to God,’ and regularly cites the biblical story of Joshua.”
To those of us not swayed by biblical ecstasy, that’s pretty chilling stuff.
But having the right positions on the issues is only half the battle. The other half is to win broad support for those positions. And winning broad support will require stepping outside our comfort zone. If we want to repeal DOMA, repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and implement fully inclusive laws outlawing hate crimes and discrimination in the workplace, we need to bring the message of LGBT equality to skeptical audiences as well as friendly ones — and that’s what I’ve done throughout my career. I brought this message of inclusiveness to all of America in my keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention.
I’ll give you credit for your 2004 DNC speech, Barry. I was stunned with delight to see this kid with the funny ears even mention “gay friends in the red states.”
What’s sad is how inspired I felt at the time — and how small a bone you threw to me, and how I jumped at it, with nearly feverish hope.
What’s sad is how much my opinion of you has changed in less than four years.
I talked about the need to fight homophobia when I announced my candidacy for President, and I have been talking about LGBT equality to a number of groups during this campaign — from local LGBT activists to rural farmers to parishioners at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Dr. Martin Luther King once preached.
Don’t bring Dr. King into this, Barry. Not when your campaign and your supporters virtually slit Hillary Clinton’s throat for making a historically accurate remark about what it took to get the Civil Rights Act passed. You don’t have a monopoly on Dr. King’s message or legacy — and, frankly, Dr. King was far more evolved on the issue of true equality than you are.
And as far as your appearance at Ebenezer Baptist Church, do you remember what you told BeliefNet after that?
“The prayer that I tell myself every night is a fairly simple one: I ask in the name of Jesus Christ that my sins are forgiven, that my family is protected and that I am an instrument of God’s will.”
I don’t want “an instrument of God’s will” in the White House, Barry. I want an employee who doesn’t drag his religious beliefs to the office every morning.
Just as important, I have been listening to what all Americans have to say. I will never compromise on my commitment to equal rights for all LGBT Americans.
Barry, until you commit to marriage equality, you are not committing to full equal rights for all LGBT Americans. Period.
But neither will I close my ears to the voices of those who still need to be convinced. That is the work we must do to move forward together. It is difficult. It is challenging. And it is necessary.
Why? Your stubborn refusal to “close your ears” to homophobes is impossible to defend in light of your swift and unyielding condemnation of racists.
Finally, what rankles me, Barry, is that you presume to speak for the LGBT community, when you don’t “get” the LGBT community. Your intentions may be (may be) good, but you lack an innate understanding of us, what we’re about, what motivates us, and — yes — why we can’t pretend the McClurkin issue was an isolated incident and just let it go.
You are not our “voice,” Barack. You may think you’re listening to us — and this letter of yours, and your “gay ad” show you’re at least vaguely aware that many of us queers are none too pleased with you — but you’re not hearing us. You don’t have the authority to speak for us, as a genuine ally.
Which is yet another reason I say you need some more “seasoning” before you’ll be anywhere near ready to lead us all, as a nation.
Americans are yearning for leadership that can empower us to reach for what we know is possible. I believe that we can achieve the goal of full equality for the millions of LGBT people in this country.
Again, “full equality” means marriage equality. Not some “set of basic rights,” as if we were children, or animals, who must prove we can be trusted indoors without piddling on the rug before you give us a set of grown-up rights.
“Full equality” means exactly equal with what you aready have, Barry. And as long as you have what we don’t, you have privileges, while we have merely second-class citizenship.
“Separate but equal” is not equal.
To do that, we need leadership that can appeal to the best parts of the human spirit. Join with me, and I will provide that leadership. Together, we will achieve real equality for all Americans, gay and straight alike.
I don’t think so, Barry. I don’t believe in you, because you don’t understand what you’re promising us — and yet simultaneously denying us.
You’re not ready, Barry. You’re nowhere near ready.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you look at Obama and see no “there” there.
If you’re an Obama supporter, nothing gets your goat like a Clinton supporter saying Obama is all style and no substance.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you ask Obama supporters to show you Obama’s substance.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you tell Clinton supporters that Obama is a “blank screen” onto which you’re supposed to project all your own hopes and dreams.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, the “blank screen” line just means there’s no “there” there.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you get angry when the Clinton supporters dismiss the “blank screen” concept.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you ask the Obama supporters to explain, in their own words, what Obama intends to actually do.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you direct all Clinton supporters to Obama’s Web site, to read somebody else’s words — and then complain that nobody reads Obama’s Web site.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you’ve combed through Obama’s Web site, repeatedly, and find no “there” there.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, Obama’s entire campaign smacks of a preachy, religious tent revival.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you rail against religious or “cult” comparisons — while you refuse to discuss issues and policies, instead following your “Camp Obama” leader’s directive to share only “personal conversion stories.”
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you hate using such a heavily-loaded word as “cult,” but you’re extremely uneasy about the many ways in which the Obama supporters resemble the followers of… well… sorry to say it, but… yes… Jim Jones.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you take extreme umbrage at being branded “cult-like” — but you have to consult Wikipedia to find out who Jim Jones was.
If you’re an Obama supporter, once you find out who Jim Jones was, you suddenly understand what “drinking the Kool-Aid” means, and you’re positively aghast anyone would aim that Jonestown allusion at you.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you want to scream at the Obama supporters: “What do you think everybody meant about ‘drinking the Kool-Aid’ in reference to the Bush administration all these years?!” And then you go bang your head against the nearest doorjamb until the pain stops.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you revile Bill Clinton — and by extension, Hillary — for signing NAFTA.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you’re still stunned that Bill Clinton was impeached over lying about a lousy blow job, yet all attempts to impeach George W. Bush, a bona fide war criminal, have failed.
If you’re an Obama supporter, Bill Clinton deserved to be impeached for lying about a lousy blow job, but you don’t support impeaching Bush or even Cheney, because Obama told you that he doesn’t support it, explaining that “you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breeches, and intentional breeches of the president’s authority” — which means that Bill’s lousy blow job is a far more “grave, grave breech” than anything Bush or Cheney has ever done.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you remember when former U.S. ambassador Joe Wilson risked everything to blow the lid off BushCo’s “yellowcake” lie and expose the treasonous, criminal betrayal of his wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame — which not only endangered her life, but endangered national security.
If you’re an Obama supporter, Joe Wilson is a paid Hillary operative, and Valerie Plame is a ditzy blonde who needed her husband to bail her out of an embarrassing situation.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you think Paul Krugman is a brilliant economist and fine political commentator, whose progressive perspective has remained consistent since the early 1990s.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you think Paul Krugman is an inbred knuckledragger too stupid to balance his own checkbook.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you’ve always thought Peggy Noonan was a bitter, nasty, right-wing hack, and your opinion has never changed.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you never realized how wise and erudite Peggy Noonan really was, until late January of 2008, when she ripped both Clintons up one side and down the other.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, nothing Peggy Noonan writes surprises you, since Noonan was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, after all, and— by the way, speaking of Ronald Reagan…
If you’re an Obama supporter, you agree with Obama’s praise of “that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship” Ronald Reagan employed in curbing “all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s.”
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you know that the “excesses of the 1960s and 1970s” Reagan’s right-wing backlash was targeting included the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement, the women’s liberation movement, the gay liberation movement, the consumer-protection movement, and the environmental movement. For starters.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you cry, “That’s not what he meant by ‘excesses of the 1960s and 1970s’!” but when pressed to explain what he did mean by “excesses of the 1960s and 1970s,” you start to mumble something about “fiscal excesses,” but stop mid-sentence when you realize that Reagan was a union-busting tax cutter who gutted the middle class and racked up the largest federal deficit in U.S. history.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you can’t comprehend how Michelle Obama’s remark, “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback,” could possibly be perceived as a dismissal of every American achievement of the past 25 years.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you wonder, as Sasha Issenberg put it, “So what did Michelle Obama think of the United States before her husband decided he wanted to run the place?”
If you’re an Obama supporter, you’re quick to correct the quote; what she really said was “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country, not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.”
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you don’t see how the addition of the word “really” changes the meaning — especially since both quotes are correct, as she made them in two different speeches on the same day.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you respond that no one can possibly understand what Michelle Obama really meant unless you’re black, because America has yet to earn the pride of a minority that has been oppressed, demonized, and dehumanized throughout the entirety of America’s 232-year history.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, and you’re gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, you wonder how you manage to find plenty of things to make you proud of America while remaining oppressed, demonized, and dehumanized throughout the entirety of America’s 232-year history.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you also wonder how Obama supporters can keep claiming that Barack Obama “transcends race,” when they keep using lines like “You can’t understand what Michelle Obama really meant unless you’re black.”
If you’re an Obama supporter, you’ve been demanding Clinton release her tax returns, right damn now!
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you’re not allowed to wonder why public access to Michelle Obama’s 1985 sociology thesis has been “Restricted until November 5, 2008.”
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you remember that too — and you also remember the way the Clintons were raked over the coals for it.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you remind the Clinton supporters that Michelle Obama’s thesis is irrelevant — Michelle isn’t running for president.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you remind the Obama supporters that Hillary Clinton wasn’t running for president in 1993, either.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you know Obama is going to take the general election in a landslide — just look at how he’s knocked Hillary flat on her butt in 24 state primary races already!
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you know that Obama wins caucuses and open primaries (in which registered Republicans and in some cases even unregistered voters) can vote for whoever they want, while Clinton wins closed primaries. (Obama has won eleven caucuses, five open primaries, and eight closed primaries — while Clinton has won nine closed primaries, three open primaries, and one caucus.)
If you’re an Obama supporter, you snark at Clinton supporters because they’re essentially saying: “Some states don’t count.”
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you know that Republicans who “cross over” to vote for the weaker Democrat in open Democratic primaries — like the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Bluey — are not an anomaly.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you scoff at Clinton supporters who just can’t believe that Obama is accomplishing exactly what he said he was going to do: convert Republicans and Independents to the Democratic Party.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you’re stunned by how deeply in denial the Obama supporters are about the Republicans’ long tradition of gaming the system.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you just don’t believe the Republicans are that smart, or that organized.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you wonder if the Obama supporters have even the first clue about the real meaning of “Rovian tactics.”
If you’re an Obama supporter, you’re convinced that Obama’s healthcare plan will give every American the same health-insurance coverage Obama himself enjoys.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you know Obama’s plan is a mandate for 15 million uninsured American children — and nobody else.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you rail against Clinton’s healthcare plan because you think it involves “wage garnishment.”
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you ask Obama supporters if they think Social Security (a.k.a. FICA) deductions are a form of “wage garnishment,” too.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you point out the vast unfairness of Clinton’s healthcare plan, as it will “penalize” childless Americans who have to pay for the coverage of somebody else’s kids.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you point out — again — that Obama’s plan is a mandate for 15 million uninsured American children, and nobody else — which means childless people will be paying for the coverage of somebody else’s kids.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you’re stuck for an answer to this one, especially as the Clinton supporters turn to the next logical question: “Do Obama supporters complain just as loudly about their taxes paying for ’somebody else’s kids’ to attend public school, too — or would they prefer school vouchers?”
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you’d never in a million years dream of attributing any of Obama’s negative campaign tactics or unlikeable personal characteristics to the fact that he’s black — that would be a truly despicable, racist thing to do.
If you’re an Obama supporter, there’s a strong chance you attribute everything you hate about Hillary Clinton to the idea that she’s having her period, or she’s not having her period, or she’s past having her period — all of which makes her “unhinged,” “hysterical,” “shrill,” “screeching,” a “harpy,” a “shrew,” a “bitch,” a “nag,” a “virago,” “weepy,” “emotionally unbalanced,” “losing it,” “cracking up,” “like your ex-wife yelling at you,” “an angry schoolmarm,” “insane,” subject to “mood swings,” “bipolar,” having “Mommy Moments,” having a “case of the vapors,” “on the rag,” and “in need of a Midol” — or, as Obama himself so slyly put it, “the claws come out” and she “launches attacks” … “periodically when she’s feeling down.”
If you’re an Obama supporter, you know it’s not your place to judge whether or not anyone is a “true Christian” — but you’re well within your rights to judge whether or not anyone is a “true Democrat.”
If you’re a Clinton supporter, the familiar strains of “You’re either with us or you’re against us” sends a chill down your spine.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you wax poetic over the way Obama is going to unite all Americans.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you tremble when you think of the last presidential candidate who billed himself as “a uniter, not a divider.”
If you’re an Obama supporter, “unity” means: Vilify, marginalize, ostracize, and ridicule Hillary Clinton and her supporters — while “reaching out” to Republicans; gloat like a soccer hooligan over Obama’s popularity; and tell Clinton supporters Obama doesn’t need their support, their donations, or their votes.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you can’t understand why Clinton supporters respond with: “OK, then win without us in November. Good luck.”
Yes, it looks like we’re going to have a Part 3!
Copyright (c) 2008 LavenderLiberal.com. Permission is granted to reproduce “If You’re An Obama Supporter… / If You’re A Clinton Supporter…” in part or in full, on the World Wide Web or through email only (i.e., not in any hardcopy or other permanent storage medium), solely on the condition that 1) this copyright notice, 2) proper attribution (”Lavender Newswire”) and 3) a live hyperlink back to this post or to the Lavender Newswire home page ( http://news.lavenderliberal.com ) is included with the reprinted content.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you know Clinton has too much “baggage” to win the general election.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you know Clinton has successfully fought off the Republican attack machine for the past 16 years, and there’s nothing new to throw at her that will stick.
If you’re an Obama supporter, asking how Obama will deflect right-wing attacks (such as questioning his “Muslim family ties” or dealings with Tony Rezko) during the general election campaign is good strategy.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, asking how Obama will deflect right-wing attacks (such as questioning his “Muslim family ties” or dealings with Tony Rezko) means you’re just a paid Hillary shill and/or “concern troll” trying to smear Obama.
If you’re an Obama supporter, suggesting that Latinos are not voting for Obama because “Latinos hate blacks” is a valid observation.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, noticing that African-Americans are voting overwhelmingly for Obama is racist.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you hate Hillary for her pro-Iraq War Resolution vote, and remind everyone within earshot that Obama never voted in favor of the IWR.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you remind everyone within earshot that Obama was not a Senator at the time of the IWR, and thus no one knows how he might have voted (especially when you consider his votes to continue funding the war ever since), but you get drowned out by the Obama supporters reminding everyone within earshot that Obama never voted in favor of the IWR.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you don’t like the fact that Clinton voted to authorize the Iraq War, but you realize that 76 other Senators, many with far more liberal leanings than Clinton, were duped into a “Yea” vote by the Bush administration’s lies.
If you’re an Obama supporter, Hillary started the Iraq War all by herself.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you remember than Barack supported John Kerry in his 2004 run for the White House, and you think this is fine, because both are solid, anti-war Democrats.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you remember that Kerry voted the same way Clinton did on the 2002 Iraq War Resolution.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you cheer Obama’s plan to start withdrawing troops from Iraq within 16 months after taking office.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, nobody listens when you mention Clinton’s plan to start withdrawing troops from Iraq within 60 days after taking office.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you know you can’t reasonably assume that Hillary is going to bring all the best things about her husband’s eight years of peace and prosperity to the table — you may be getting a “twofer,” but ultimately, it’s Hillary running, not Bill.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you know Hillary is going to bring all the worst things about her husband’s eight years of — well, you can’t remember what was so bad about the Clinton years, except for the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but you’re sure there’s plenty of bad stuff that will carry over into a Hillary Clinton administration.
If you’re an Obama supporter, it’s time for those old, out-of-touch, irrelevant Baby Boomers — in fact, it’s time for everyone over the age of 45 — to get the hell out of the way and hand the reins over to the youth of America.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, of any age, you suddenly become irrelevant the moment you remind the Obama supporters that Obama himself is 46 years old, which makes him a Baby Boomer, too.
If you’re an Obama supporter, 54-year-old Robert F. Kennedy is an out-of-touch Baby Boomer (he did, after all, endorse Clinton).
If you’re an Obama supporter, 50-year-old Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg is a savvy, intelligent American (she did, after all, endorse Obama).
If you’re an Obama supporter, you use to revere 80-year-old poet laureate and living American treasure Maya Angelou — until she endorsed Clinton, which suddenly made her old, out of touch, and irrelevant.
If you’re an Obama supporter, 76-year-old Ted Kennedy is neither old, nor out of touch, nor irrelevant, because he endorsed Barack Obama.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you stand behind Obama for demanding that Don Imus and John Tanner be fired from their respective jobs for making racist remarks.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you agree that marriage equality for same-sex couples is a decision that should be left to the states.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you wonder how Obama can use the same “states’ rights” argument against same-sex marriage that was used against his own parents’ interracial marriage (which wasn’t recognized in a handful of states at the time they were married).
If you’re an Obama supporter, you echo Obama’s repeated mantra of “post-partisan unity,” and agree wholeheartedly that it’s time to “reach out” to Republicans because we can’t get anything done if we’re not all working together.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you insist that Obama has not interjected religion into this campaign.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you want to know how Obama can justify his refusal to support same-sex marriage equality based on his own religious beliefs — as well as the religious beliefs of Dick Cheney, “and over 2,000 religious leaders”.
If you’re an Obama supporter, anyone who won’t sign a loyalty oath to vote for Obama in the general election is a traitor to the Democratic Party.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you’re not allowed to take issue with Michelle Obama’s reluctance to support Hillary Clinton if she wins the Democratic nomination.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you remember how quoting passages from a speech by British Labor party leader Neil Kinnock, and “forgetting” to attribute those passages to Kinnock, cost Joe Biden the 1988 Democratic nomination.
Stay tuned for Part 2. There’s just so much more, presenting it all at once would result in the longest blog entry in the history of the Web.
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