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.”
On Jay Leno making another homophobic crack, then apologizing for it, then canceling himself out by whining about those mean ol’ homos getting mad at him, here’s Melissa McEwan at Shakesville:
Well, after apologizing last week for asking Tonight Show guest Ryan Phillippe to give the camera his “gayest look,” Jay Leno spoke with KMXB radio in Las Vegas about the controversy on Friday and swiftly undermined any value his apology had with a series of pathetic excuses and justifications. …
Aside from undermining his own apology with the tired non-apology “if I offended anybody,” he completely misses the overall point about how that kind of humor facilitates intolerance, offering “I never made fun of gay rights or even gay marriage,” as if making fun of being gay isn’t a bigger problem. See, if the premise weren’t that merely being gay is somehow intrinsically funny, the joke would be “give me your best soap opera look,” not “give me your gayest look,” or even “gayest soap opera look” as Leno is now trying to reframe it. Who does he thinks laughs at a joke like that — people who aren’t homophobic? Yeesh.
Then, after casting us as oversensitive hysterics in the classic self-defense maneuver of insensitive and obtuse idiots everywhere, he gets to the best part in which he obliquely accuses us of deliberately misrepresenting what happened on the show to gin up outrage. I mean, I really wonder where, exactly, Jay read at “the blog” that he went on an anti-gay tirade — because not only does it not say that anywhere, or anything close to it, it also includes video of the actual exchange, so no one would have to rely on our subjective interpretation of it.
…Randi went over the line in calling Hillary Clinton “a big f***ing whore.” Sure, she’s got a right to say it. But it was not right to say it, especially not right for someone who represents Air America and all of progressive radio.
Unfortunately, as I’ve learned on my radio show, too many Obama supporters don’t understand that in order to love Barack Obama, you don’t have to hate Hillary Clinton. They don’t think it’s good enough to build up Barack Obama. They think it’s necessary to destroy Hillary Clinton, too.
And that’s just wrong. Being passionately and enthusiastically for Barack Obama doesn’t mean you have to say ugly things against Hillary Clinton. In fact, it’s counter-intuitive. In politics, it’s much more effective to be FOR somebody, than to be against somebody.
Carol Lloyd on Rhodes’ suspension, and the larger issue of playground bullies (a.k.a. Obama supporters):
With progressive pundits like Randi Rhodes, who needs wingnuts? …
Thursday Air America Radio announced that Rhodes had been suspended because of the comments, so good for it. Yet such suspensions won’t offer but a drop in the bucket against our wasteland of media vitriol. Forget sex and violence; I think playground cruelty is the source of the most obscenity. Have you seen the outdoor ad campaign for the new romantic comedy “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”? The black-and-white billboards proclaim: “I’m So Over You, Sarah Marshall,” “You Suck Sarah Marshall,” “My Mother Always Hated You, Sarah Marshall,” and “You Do Look Fat in Those Jeans, Sarah Marshall.” It’s the first time I’ve wanted to shield my daughter’s eyes from a spectacle in the city.
Ironically, the person who has been most articulate about the current mean streak in American culture is Barack Obama, Rhodes’ apparent favorite. But as someone who also favors the senator from Illinois, I’ve become increasingly queasy about the tone some of his supporters are willing to take. At a recent brunch, I heard a sweet elderly woman wearing an Obama button talk about “just hating” Hillary Clinton. …
As ad hominem insult has become normative political speech, professional bloviators like Rhodes seem to have to go farther each day to retain their “edge.” Still, why does Rhodes need to be so misogynist when she’s carving up her victims with her tongue?
Taking self-proclaimed progressives to the woodshed: Earl Ofari Hutchinson, who really ticks me off, because he’s a right-winger, and he’s making sense, and he’s not ripping up either candidate to do it (unlike — guess who? — the Obama supporters):
The objection here is not that progressives shouldn’t level a reasoned, principled, and critical dissection of Clinton positions. There are legitimate policy issues and positions to take her to task on. Unfortunately, that got tossed and Clinton’s left side critics have found it much easier, and more fun, to engage in juvenile delinquent wolf ticket selling. They then pivot and froth, fume, and rail at Fox for doing the same thing. And Heaven forbid if anyone dare utter any criticism of Obama. That’s deemed treasonous and the name calling kicks in with a vengeance against the offender.
The reasons for the juvenile delinquent name calling by Rhodes and company boil down to this. Clinton initially backed the Iraq war and refused to apologize for it or claims as Obama wrongly does that he was an outspoken anti-war guy from day one. Two, she supposedly is a back room, deal-making, opportunist Democrat who has been a shill for big money, corporate donors.
Her greatest sin, though, is that she pig headedly stands in the way of the coronation of Obama. A subtext to that is that by blocking the supposed inevitable, she, not Obama, is tearing the guts out of the Democratic Party and is making it that much harder for Obama to coast into the White House. Putting aside for a moment this wishful thinking fantasy land knock, nowhere, and I mean nowhere, have I seen the progressive Hillary baiters itemize exactly what they think they’ll get out of an Obama White House that will be radically different than what they’ll get from any other top Democrat who’s backed by big money corporate interests, pockets money through the back door from corporate special interest lobbyists, is lauded by defense industry top brass, hailed by centrist Democratic Senators and governors, and fawned over by hard nosed GOP conservatives, headed by former Bush political strategist Karl Rove, as Obama is. Tell me? …
The desperation of progressives to get someone in the White House who will quickly reverse the monumental damage of Bush’s policies is understandable. If progressives would simply stick to challenging Obama and Clinton to speak out boldly and clearly about their stance on Supreme court appointments, criminal justice reform, immigration, failing public schools, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and a specific plan for ending the Iraq War, among other seldom heard discussed policy issues then there would be no argument that both need to be hammered for ducking and dodging these thorny issues. But that’s far different than acting like 13 year olds and shouting out vile names at one candidate and only one candidate.
She shouldn’t have been suspended. She should have been fired.
And, nope, it’s not because Rhodes is an Obama supporter, and I’m not. When Rhodes turned her show into an Obama-Love Hillary-Hate fest, I stopped listening. That’s what I do when a celebrity starts doing or saying something I don’t like: I stop supporting them, which, when enough of us do the same thing, sends the clearest message of all. I think Terminator 2: Judgment Day is one of the coolest movies ever, but since Arnold Schwarzenegger opened his big yap and started denigrating Democrats as “girlie men” — and then proceeded to deny us gay folks the right to get married (twice), and has turned California’s once-vibrant economy into that of a third-world nation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera — I have withdrawn my monetary support from him by abstaining from the purchase of any product with his name on it.
When Randi Rhodes starting drinking the Kool-Aid by the gallon — and vomiting it back, in tenfold volume, over the airwaves — I turned her off. In fact, I turned off Air America Radio altogether; I changed the pre-set button on the car radio to something else… a Spanish-language station, I think. I don’t really listen to it — I don’t speak enough Spanish to understand much — but it was important to get Air America off my car radio, and I didn’t particularly care what replaced it, as long as it wasn’t a Christian station.
Mind you, I rather enjoy listening to the most fire-breathing Christian talk stations from time to time — the end-of-times soothsayers make for especially surreal entertainment — but if I actually left one of those nutball stations pre-set, it would be just my luck that the next mechanic who worked on the car would flip the radio on while he was working, hear Rev. Apocalyptus McFreaky spouting dire warnings of boil-covered frogs from the sky, and would think I was some sort of whackjob myself.
Ironically, that’s pretty much the reason I felt compelled to take Air America off the pre-set button: I’ve become quite embarrassed about any association with people and institutions which which I was once very proud to be allied. I’d hate to think my auto mechanic — or anyone else — would assume I must agree with the maniacal ravings of Randi Rhodes.
Sadly, I used to love Randi. But she’s come to represent the worst of— well, everything the Right has demonized the Left as: a bunch of wild-eyed radicals who hate, and spew the most toxic vitriol at, everyone who disagrees with them.
As I’ve often said (and probably written more than a few times), I expect irrational hatred from the Right, and I expect it from the Left aimed at the Right — but I don’t expect it from one faction of the Left aimed at another faction of the Left.
Well, OK, I do expect it these days. I’m just not entirely accustomed to it yet.
Anyway, speaking of the right wing (and I was), I do read what the tighty righties have to say (as Sun-Tzu said, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer”), and I don’t like the truth in what they’re saying lately.
To wit: Yesterday, Mark Steyn (and you can’t get more right-wing than Mark Steyn) over at The National Review (and you really can’t get any more right-wing than The National Review) answered the question “How did we reach the point where Air America calls Hillary a ‘whore’?” thusly:
Indeed. Randi Rhodes agrees with Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro on everything — abortion, health care, climate change, you name it. Yet the first is “a f***ing whore” and the second is “David Duke in drag” merely because they disagree on which Democratic senator would make the best president. The people applying these deranged epithets to the Clintons are in large part the very same people who spent the Nineties applying equally deranged epithets to anyone who disagreed with the Clintons.
There’s something rather heartening about this for those of us on the right who’ve been on the receiving end of the left’s vehemence: Apparently there really is nothing personal about it. You can be a chickenhawk warmonger racist homophobe mysogynist Bush shill or a pro-feminist pro-gay pro-black icon of progressive politics for a generation, but, if you cross the likes of Randi Rhodes, you’re all the same and you merit the same four-letter words and KKK slurs. The left’s Discoursometer is like one of those shower units where the slightest nudge turns it to scalding.
Ouch.
The only point with which I can reasonably disagree is that the “people applying these deranged epithets to the Clintons are in large part the very same people who spent the Nineties applying equally deranged epithets to anyone who disagreed with the Clintons.” Some are, to be sure. But a great many are not; for a great many of Obama’s “movement,” this is their first election, indeed their first foray into politics at all.
The screams of “You’re so done! Get out of the way!” you hear from the Obama camp are not only directed at Hillary, you know. Why do you think Obama himself dismisses the political activism — and activists themselves — of the 1960s?
Yes, partly because he himself is so detached from the 1960s — and not due to his age; as I’ve often noted, he is exactly my age, and I am quite beholden to the peaceniks and feminists and gay “lib” activists who came before me. But I have perspective Obama does not, and can never have; as I wrote in January:
[Neither Obama nor I] can recall the Civil Rights era as clearly as our elders (Obama and I were both two-going-on-three in 1964), yet I, at least, remember dim news images of firehoses in the streets of Birmingham, and attack dogs unleashed — and, much more clearly, my first, timid step approaching a black child at a playground. While I didn’t understand what it was I understood, I understood there was a difference between us, and that there were some very bad people in this world who would be very angry about my playing with a black child (or, as we were taught was the proper word at the time, a Negro).
Despite his skin color versus mine, I am not at all convinced that Barack Obama’s ties to the Civil Rights era equate with mine; when my snow-white third-grade class was being introduced to our first black classmate, Obama was living in Indonesia. We both attended Catholic school — but somehow, I cannot imagine that young Barack was inundated by the issue of American race relations (on the news, in the movies, on the cover of newsweeklies, and in lengthy class discussions — yes, even before my age reached double digits) as I was.
The issue was all around me; no one my age was allowed to forget the vast divide between whites and blacks in the United States. Was Obama, insulated literally on the other side of the planet, as aware at the same tender age of the volatile schism between black and white “back home”?
I wasn’t quite four when the Watts riots exploded — and exploded with such repercussion that I remember them as well as I remember the endless news footage of the Vietnam War, and the nightly body count out of Southeast Asia.
Does Obama remember any of this? Did he even hear about it before he returned to the U.S. at the age of ten — when even the Summer of Love was a quickly-fading memory?
But the lack of vital cultural milestones is not the sole reason he marginalizes and discounts the Baby Boomers; he does it because it strikes the chord of unleashed rebellion in every angry youth — and we were all angry youths at one time or another, cocksure that we knew it all, that our parents’ generation was irrelevant, that they had screwed up the world, and we were the only ones who could save it.
Obama gives his supporters cohesiveness by using the most basic, classic technique employed by all “movements.” No, I won’t use the word “cult” — this time — although this technique is essential to cult unanimity: a group identity defined by a common enemy.
I’ll let Chris Hedges explain it; he’s talking about fascism vis-à-vis (fundamentalist) evangelical religious movements — but then, what is Obamania but an evangelical religious movement? And why do you think Obama employs the speech and manner of a tent revivalist?
[T]he only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. … But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside.
If you can’t see how that applies directly to what I’m writing about today, then either you have never seen a group of Obama supporters in action, or you are an Obama supporter.
Eco continues:
8. The followers must be humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.
That’s the Obama supporters’ war on Hillary Clinton — and Clinton supporters — in a nutshell.
From Eco’s starting point, Hedges explores the origins of religious fascism — in short, the sum is greater than its parts; diversity within the group is trumped by the common unifying theme of disillusion and despair and a desperate need for hope (it’s not lost on us that the mantra of the Obama campaign is “hope”) and certitude of deliverance — and anything that threatens the illusion of the force greater than the individual must be destroyed.
Noting (on page 32) that such movements by their very nature inevitably lead to a “collective suicide,” Hedges writes (pp. 35-36):
The pain, the dislocation, alienation, suffering and despair that led millions of Americans into the movement are real. Many Americans are striking back at a culture they blame for the debacle of their lives. … They speak of numbness, an inability to feel pain or joy or love, a vast emptiness, a frightening loneliness and loss of control. …
They have replaced the world that has failed them with a new, glorious world filled with prophets and mystical signs. They believe in a creator who performs miracles for them, speaks directly to them and guides their lives, as well as the destiny of America. They are utopians who have found rigid, clearly defined moral edicts, rights and wrongs, to guide them in life and in politics. And they are terrified of losing this new, mystical world of signs, wonders and moral certitude, of returning to the old world of despair. They see criticism of their belief system … as vicious attempts by Satan to lure them back into the morass. The split in America, rather than simply economic, is between those who embrace reason, who function in the real world of cause and effect, and those who, numbed by isolation and despair, now seek meaning in a mythical world of intuition, a world that is no longer reality-based, a world of magic.
Those in the movement now fight, fueled by the rage of the dispossessed, to crush and silence the reality-based world.
Later, on page 151, in discussing the ministry of Ohio megachurch pastor Russell Johnson, Hedges again hits on a chilling parallel to the common characteristics of the most fervent Obama supporters:
In rallies like those in Johnson’s Ohio tour, friends, neighbors, colleagues and family members who do not conform to the ideology are gradually dehumanized. …
This new, exclusive community fosters rigidity, conformity and intolerance. In this new binary world segments of the human race are disqualified from moral and ethical consideration. And because fundamentalist followers live in a binary universe, they are incapable of seeing others as anything more than inverted reflections of themselves. If they seek to destroy nonbelievers … then nonbelievers must be seeking to destroy them. …
When people come to believe that they are immune from evil, that there is no resemblance between themselves and those they define as the enemy, they will inevitably grow to embody the evil they claim to fight.
And there, friends, you have it: A longer, more detailed answer to the question: “How did we reach the point where Air America calls Hillary a ‘whore’?”
As Nietzsche said: “When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you.”
Oh, and about Randi Rhodes: I guess I should explain why she should have been sacked instead of given a “time-out.”
The fans (or perhaps in this case I should use the word “fans” comes from: fanatics) rushing to her defense with cries of “Free speech!” are the ones missing the point.
Rhodes’ right to free speech was not violated. Rhodes’ right to free speech would not have been violated if Air America had fired her outright. Rhodes has every right to say anything she wants.
But Air America has every right to decide whether or not it wants to continue to pay her for saying anything she wants.
Businesses — smart businesses, at least — fire people who add nothing to the bottom line, or, worse, diminish the bottom line.
If Randi Rhodes’ childish, misogynistic name-calling were adding to the bottom line (or at least not diminishing it), Air America wouldn’t have even suspended her. So it’s reasonable to conclude that Rhodes is either adding nothing, or actively diminishing company revenue by her behavior.
I know her behavior well before the “whores” remark drove me away. Progressive radio being what is is today (that is, on life support since day one), Air America cannot afford to lose many more like me.
Rhodes’s “time-out” is a fair indication that Air America is losing, or is in danger of losing (measurable by the number of listener complaints) a lot more listeners like me.
How many times have you heard one of the anti-gay brigades (oh, I don’t know — just pick your favorite gay-hater, like Pat Robertson, or some idiot from the American Family Association) protest, “I am not homophobic!” quickly followed by the explanation that a “phobia” means you’re really a-skeered of something? “I’m not homophobic,” they say, “because I am not afraid of homosexuals.”
You know, and I know, that that’s just so much horse puckey, as the definition of “homophobia” has evolved to mean an aversion to — and usually outright hostility toward — homsexuality, and gay people.
But the tighty righties do have a point. If we’re going to do a Greg Brady and live by exact words (or definitions), then technically the gay-haters of the world are not homophobic — they don’t (usually) run screaming in fear at the sight of k.d. lang.
So, until now, I’ve been, yes, defending Barack Obama as not-a-homophobe. In truth, he fits the non-literal, right-winger definition of a homophobe — one who is averse to gay and lesbian people, but not necessarily scared of us.
Well, I take it back. Obama is scared of us. I’m certain of it.
What happened to make me so certain occurred a few days ago, but I’m glad I waited to blog about it, because some other interesting stuff has come to light since.
I’m talking about the April 4-16, 2008, issue of the Philadelphia Gay News. Here’s the front page:
The headline says: “Clinton talks; Obama balks.”
The little box in the middle of the big white space says (misspelling of “Barack” deliberate or not): “It’s been 1,522 days since Sen. Barak Obama has spoken with local gay press. See EDITORIAL, Page 11.”
And on page 11, we find:
At this point in the Democratic presidential campaign, we’re able to view the candidates by their actions. And we have found that Sen. Barack Obama would rather talk at the LGBT community than with it. While Sen. Hillary Clinton has been accessible to the local LGBT press with numerous “no rules” interviews, Obama simply has not. The fact is that Obama has spoken with the gay press only twice, and one of those interviews, which appeared in chicago’s Windy City Times, was in 2004 before he became a U.S. senator. The other limited interview occurred after controversy erupted when his campaign added an anti-gay minister to his tour of the South. It has now been 1,522 days since Obama has been accessible to our community. The question is now this: Is he trying to play it safe or has he become a managed candidate?
But there’s more to this story.
The LGBT press, which has been fighting for respect since its inception, expected this to be the year that candidates would respond to us as they do to the Hispanic, black and other community press… The local gay press is to our community what churches are to the black community — our lifeline for information. The local gay press now has a national weekly audience of some 2.2. million readers, not including our Web sites. Collectively, we reach more LGBT people than any other source. While Obama has issued numerous statements, he has only granted one interview in this campaign. This begs the question, is he uncomfortable with the LGBT community? …
So whom has he spoken with in that time? Christianity Today, local Philadelphia sports radio station, Grist and Paris Match. Guess he’s going for the French vote.
After giving PGN the runaround, PGN complained to Obama’s communications director that the campaign’s “actions, not just to PGN, but to the entire LGBT press, have been disrespectful,” noting that Republicans Bob Casey and Arlen Specter (no friends to the gay community, they) and even “nightstick-carrying” former Mayor Frank Rizzo have granted interviews to PGN.
“The last candidate running for office that refused an interview with PGN,” the paper reminds us, “was Sen. Rick Santorum.”
PGN then speaks directly to Obama, whomping him over the head with this hard little truth: “We were treated with more respect by Republican John McCain’s campaign than yours.”
The lone interview Obama has given during this campaign was to The Advocate, in which he made a pitifully lame attempt to defuse the outrage over the Donnie McClurkin insult (and during which he stepped even deeper into his own doo-doo by suggesting that queers and Democrats — as if the two groups were mutually exclusive — are “hermetically sealed from the faith community”).
And that interview was six months ago.
(And, for the record, the pandering, meaningless campaign ads he took out in gay print publications just prior to the Ohio and Texas primaries do not count as “interviews.” Neither does his appearance at the LOGO debate; for one thing, his absence would have been more than conspicuous, and for another, the questions lobbed at him weren’t even softballs, but wiffle balls.)
So what, you say? So, Obama hasn’t given an interview to the gay media (even the outlets that support him) since.
And it’s not like he hasn’t been asked. Repeatedly.
Immediately following the February 18 Wisconsin presidential primary, I began, on behalf of the Gay People’s Chronicle, to work on getting interviews with Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. …
Both candidates were approached for interviews through multiple routes, including calls and e-mail directly to their Ohio and national press offices, through the Ohio Democratic Party, and through LGBT individuals working at high levels with the campaigns.
Initially, both campaigns were thrilled to be asked for interviews.
The Obama campaign stopped being “thrilled” after Resnick laid out two simple ground rules: no surrogates, and live interviews only — “no written statements or written questions.” (Resnick reflects: “Having candidates only speak through open letters and privately to small groups offering endorsement does not build confidence.”)
That was Wednesday. On Thursday, the Obama campaign offered an open letter in lieu of an interview. I told them no. I can’t ask a letter questions. Then they suggested written questions, even though I told them earlier that wouldn’t be acceptable. Again, I told them no.
By Friday, about the time it would take for them to figure out the [New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission report] contradicts their candidate, the Obama campaign stopped returning my calls. When I was lucky enough to reach press staff, they were very quick to tell me they didn’t think they could work an interview into the candidate’s schedule.
Resnick (who, it must be noted, is a Kucinich supporter with no dog in this fight) wisely follows his editor’s edict not to “speculate in the article as to why the Obama campaign got cold” — but adds that “reasonable people can come to reasonable conclusions.”
Resnick goes on to compare the way Obama “denounced” and “rejected” the endorsement of Louis Farrakhan (albeit under heavy pressure from Tim Russert and finally Hillary Clinton, whose support was not solicited, with the way Obama refused to do the same with Donnie McClurkin, whose support was solicited.
Had Obama used the same rationale to explain Farrakhan, the Jewish community would have been irate.
Resnick wanted to ask Obama to “explain the difference between McClurkin and Farrakhan.” A fair question indeed — but one with which the Obama campaign took umbrage:
The Obama campaign, however, treated the question with indignation, claimed that the reporter mischaracterized events, and erroneously claimed that “Senator Obama spoke out against the hateful views of both Donnie McClurkin and Louis Farrakhan.”
As far as the Obama campaign is concerned, the issue was resolved last January:
It is also apparent that Obama sees his obligation to the LGBT community as fulfilled since his Martin Luther King Day speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church where he called on African-Americans to work against homophobia. …
Obama spokespeople pivot to the MLK Day speech as though it settles every debt to the LGBT community, past and future.
This attitude is mirrored, ad nauseam, by Obama supporters. (If we had a nickel for every Obamabot who rails hysterically against any mention of McClurkin with “Obama spoke out against homophobia! In a black church! What more do you want from him?!” we would have many, many nickels.)
Finally, Resnick’s frustration explodes, and rightfully so:
In my 12 years as a reporter, I have never experienced anything quite like Obama’s national communication director Robert Gibbs, either.
I wasn’t biting on the crap he tried to feed me, and he got offended.
When I stood there not writing any of it down, Gibbs said to me, “Let me tell you how this works. I talk and you write down what I say.”
“I’ll write down what you say when you answer the question,” I responded, adding that “I’m no campaign’s stenographer.”
Gibbs actually took the pen and pad out of my hands and wrote his own answer!
Take a moment to catch your breath. No matter how many times I read that last sentence, I’m still flabbergasted.
I’m not so sure what I’m flabbergasted by, however — that the media contact for a major presidential campaign would act like such a jerk, or by the now-obvious fact that the bullying so characteristic of Obama supporters is not some strange fluke, some spontaneously-generated anomaly, something isolated or unusual, but comes from the top down.
I’ve long believed that there was no way the Obama campaign could possibly be as nasty as Obama’s supporters — but that there must be something about Obama that evokes such nastiness.
It’s no secret that the Obama cult is creeping us out. In meatspace conversations, I’ve opined, many times, that while Obama himself may not be entirely responsible for the drooling infatuation of far too many slack-jawed, glassy-eyed Obamaniacs (who react with sheer hostility when you ask them to cut the “He’s so inpirational!” crap and actually define their idol’s policies), he’s not doing anything to tamp down the frenzy, either.
You have to wonder what “inspires” this kind of cult-like frenzy in the first place. Obviously, there’s something The Man is saying, or doing, that taps into some primeval instinct devoid of rationale. Do they implant chips in Obamaniacs’ brains at every rally? Are they beaming some sort of subliminal signal through the TV during Obama’s speeches that turns viewers’ brains to mush?
Ironically, when I wrote that, the answer was staring me right in the face: I was blogging about the indocrination of Obama supporters by campaign organizers.
But I digress. As usual. Back to the rightfully-exasperated Mr. Resnick, and the practical slap in the face he got from Obama mouthpiece Robert Gibbs:
Would Gibbs treat a New York Times reporter this way? How about a Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter?
Look, both senators Obama and Clinton are opportunists. Either would throw us under the bus for their own political advancement. That’s why, both lawyers who know that separate is not equal, continue to claim that civil unions are equal to marriage. …
Both campaigns knew that talking to me wasn’t going to be like the made for Saturday Night Live performance of Melissa Etheridge on the Logo forum. (This is not an insult to Etheridge. I can’t sing. We should all do what we’re good at.)
Nonetheless, it was Hillary Clinton, with her much longer record of talking to our community, who stepped up to the guillotine, and Obama who refused.
Here’s another article you’ll want to read on this subject:
I wanted to update you on my latest plans before news gets out. Today, I am announcing my plan to join the Libertarian Party, because the Democratic Party no longer represents my vision for our great country. I wanted my supporters to get this news first, because you have been the ones who have kept my campaign alive since I first declared my candidacy on April 17, 2006.
Well, now, this changes things. Since I just found out about it — and since he doesn’t even have the Libertarian nomination yet — it’s far too early for me to make any immediate decisions.
I do, however, have a few thoughts:
1. If the Libertarian Party has half an ounce of sense, Mike Gravel will be its nominee, if on no other basis than Q factor + all those juicy crossover votes from Democrats who feel hung out to dry by being forced to choose between Obama and Clinton (and who are still pissed off that their first, or second, or even fifth choice dropped out before their state primary).
Now, hear tell there’s something like 15 other people competing for the Libertarian nod — which sounds like a lot of competition, until you realize you have absolutely no idea who any of these candidates are. (I certainly can’t name any without Googling, can you?)
In the early debates and who-knows-how-many interviews, Mike Gravel has done half the work for the Libs already. He won me over (after Kucinich, Gravel was neck-and-neck with Richardson as my number-two choice until Richardson made that lousy maricon remark).
2. Where the Libs will balk is on Gravel’s polar-opposite positions to some key issues, such as universal healthcare (Gravel supports it, the Libs don’t). In reality, Mike Gravel is the perfect Green Party candidate — but let’s face it, folks: the Greens just aren’t ready for prime time. (Hey, I’m a Greenie at heart, and even I can see that.) Moving into the Lib camp was a wise move for Gravel, financially and in terms of credibility.
3. The Obamacans are going to go insane. Yellow-dog Democrats won’t be too pleased, either, but the Obamacans are going to go absolutely insane when they realize how many votes from former Kucinich supporters, Edwards supporters, and newly-resurrected Gravel supporters will be siphoned off from their Heavenly Messiah Obama. And they will be siphoned off, big-time.
3. Of course Gravel won’t win the general election — and in truth, he will end up being a major spoiler to the “presumptive” nominee, Lord Barry Most High.
Will this result in President McCain? Frankly, I believe Candidate Obama will result in President McCain.
Of Obama and Clinton, I believe only Clinton stands a chance of beating McCain in the GE (and the latest Rasmussen poll agrees).
And I don’t believe Clinton is going to get the nomination.
4. I have problems with Gravel on two issues: the flat tax (in short, it really is unfair to the working poor) and Social Security (his plan for which sounds a little too close to privatization for my comfort — although on the surface I do rather like the idea of leaving surplus SSA funds to heirs, as long as he’s able to compensate for the loss).
Otherwise, I agree with Mike Gravel on every other issue. Everything. All of them.
5. One thing’s for sure: With Mike back in the race, it is not going to be politics as usual.
(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.”
Before our very eyes, there is a new Religious Left coalescing out of the splintered remnants of the old Democratic coalition: the Obama movement, or, simply Obamania. Obama’s appeal to his supporters has much of the quality of religious hysteria and his oratory resembles that of a minister on a pulpit. His speeches allude sometimes to a coalition of faith and bipartisanship. If Barack Obama goes on to win the Democratic nomination for the presidency, it may very well signal a fundamental realignment of the political landscape in America. That realignment might be transient, as when the so-called Reagan Democrats shifted party allegiance for an election cycle or two, during the 1980’s. Or it could be something more lasting.
Polls, this year, indicate that Barack Obama has an unusual ability to attract Independent voters and even a few nominally identified as Republicans. On the other hand, somewhere between a quarter and one-half of the traditional Democrats currently supporting Senator Clinton indicate that they will cross party lines to vote for the Republican candidate if Senator Obama is the Democratic nominee. Race may be one factor in the impending realignment of voters, if Obama is a candidate, but there is another factor at work as well.
Obama is far stronger than Clinton in the Old South and in the Heartland, where religion plays a strong role in the daily lives of people. Obama does less well in California, the Northeast, and the Industrial portion of the Midwest, where wage-earners predominate and where religion, though still evident in the private lives of the populace, tends not to be intermingled with such secular activities as work, school, and play. These folks have a strong tradition of supporting separation of church and state and are less likely to join in with what is essentially a religious revival, even if it is arising from the left, this time, instead of the right side of the political spectrum. Organized labor, with its Marxist roots, will not comfortably embrace the new Religious Left, although it may be supported by some individual workers who are especially devout in their religious affiliation. There is evidence in current polls of a movement of white, male working class voters into the Clinton camp. For all too many leftists, Obama is a Pied Piper and the voter himself like the child who was too lame to follow the whole of the way. At first, he will stand aside and watch dumbfounded, but if the phenomenon is a lasting one, these voters will need to find a new home.
The last two elections, in 2000 and 2004 respectively, pitted a candidate from the Christian Right against candidates from the secular, pragmatic, nuts-and-bolts Democratic tradition. If Obama is nominated by the Democrats, the 2008 general election will pit a new kind of candidate from the Religious Left against a somewhat secular, pragmatic, nuts-and-bolts candidate from the right. Voters will align themselves, in part, based on whether they view the left/right or religious/secular dichotomy as the more important one. If the Obama phenomenon takes hold, in the Democratic Party, sooner or later there will be a contest between a candidate from the Religious Right and one from the Religious Left. That might create the kind of vacuum in which a genuine third party might emerge, with a secular and pragmatic orientation.
Religion, by its nature, is an inherently conservative phenomenon. Its epistemology is “revealed truth” and if God is all-knowing he can’t also be presented as “changing his mind.” No one likes a God who is a flip-flopper. By contrast, the secular domains occupied by science and reason are inherently revolutionary, constantly revising and up-dating their dogmas with each new experiment and discovery. So, it was a natural kind of alliance between two conservative traditions when the Religious Right emerged in the late seventies, spearheaded by Robert Grant, Jerry Falwell Ed McAteer, and Pat Robertson. It also dramatically changed the political landscape and led directly to the Reagan years.
The Obama phenomenon is a less likely kind of alliance and harder to comprehend. Obama presents himself as the “change” candidate and is widely perceived as such by his followers. Obama recognizes, however, an odd kind of paradox that his candidacy represents, when he describes the ethic of his Trinity Church of Christ community, with its emphasis on self-help, as a “quintessentially American — and yes, conservative — notion.” Religions have never been about change except in the sense of expanding the reach of their viewpoints into new communities.
Change can be good or it can be catastrophic. Many of us who have long advocated change in America do not welcome all of the kinds of change that Barack Obama represents. Certainly, we welcome inclusivity and the “new face on America” that Obama’s rise in prominence heralds, but do not welcome his emphasis on faith, overt Christianity in public life, and evangelical-style speeches delivered as though from a pulpit. Leadership by “inspiration” is a dangerous kind of leadership. Faith is diametrically opposed to critical thinking. Political prophets too often insulate themselves among their followings, leading to corruption, cronyism, and political sloth. It is only the willingness of voters to punish political parties for their corrupt tendencies that holds such problems in check. Loyalty in politics is an invitation to abuse of power.
America found itself knee-deep in an immoral and strategically unsound war in Iraq not merely because of George W. Bush and his neoconservative cronies. The other major contributing factor was the ignorance of the American people, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike. The American public was too easily duped by spurious arguments and false information into supporting the administration’s preposterous position. Only those who took the time to read and critically evaluate the available information saw through the gambit, before it was too late. Without critical faculties to draw upon, the public will repeat such mistakes over and over again. America will not be a significantly better country until Americans learn to think critically and independently. What does it matter if we are led around by our collective nose-rings by a leader on the left or one on the right? Obama, with his appeals to faith, hope, inspiration, and zealotry, is inviting the public down a pathway that leads to clapping and singing, as well as conformity and acceptance, rather than thoughtful analysis of alternative viewpoints and policies.
Even more than George Bush, it is WE, the American people, who are the problem in America. WE need to think carefully and substantively about major issues and, collectively, to direct our government toward sensible courses of action, instead of allowing them to embark on unilateral, unprovoked wars or reelecting advocates of torture. WE will not be a better people because of a euphoria imparted by a charismatic speaker — or when a “forceful wind” and “voices from the rafters” overpower our capacities for reason and objectivity.
