As the Anti-Gays continue to flog the crumbling, dysfunctional marriage between the Evangelical Wrong and that decaying corpse of an elephant called the Republican Party (why, yes, that would be necrophilia), head corpse-flogger and altogether unpleasant little troll Newt Gingrich pulled a new one out of his chubby chipmunk cheeks: the threat of paganism to the ever-increasingly larger wall between church and state.
Coming from the Salt Lake Trib, you’d expect the usual Mormon self-pity piece, but it’s not as bad as all that. Oh, the defense of the LDS church is apparent — it “endured back-stabbing from would-be friends,” was “attacked as belonging to a cult,” and was “cast as pariahs during Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign,” etc.” — but to writer Peggy Fletcher Stack’s credit, “A year of scrutiny for the LDS Church” spends its last third acknowledging the church’s strange-bedfellows alliance with the evangelicals who disdain Mormonism, and asking how (and if) the church will deal with the consequences of its high-profile political involvement, even quoting Wayne Besen without comment:
In June, Mormons joined the Preserve Marriage Coalition at the request of Archbishop George Niederauer, the San Francisco Catholic leader who had previously led the Diocese of Salt Lake City. The First Presidency sent a letter to all California Mormons, urging them to support a ballot measure known as Proposition 8, which defined marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman.
The same Evangelical groups that had demeaned Mormonism as a cult during Romney’s campaign were now the LDS Church’s allies in the California fight.
“These new defenders of the Mormon faith have long been the most prolific Mormon-bashers in the nation,” said Wayne Besen, executive director of the Brooklyn-based gay-rights group Truth Wins Out. “[The two groups] have nothing in common but their anti-gay rhetoric.”
The measure passed on Nov. 4, and in the ensuing days, angry supporters of gay marriage protested outside LDS temples across the nation.
“The church’s support of Proposition 8 created a loud backlash and may make the church a symbol for the constriction of civil rights,” [Philip Barlow, Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University] says. “Will the church dig in on what it sees as a moral and constitutional issue or will common cause help repair or forge new allegiances with Evangelicals?”
Not many years from now, 2008 may be seen as a turning point for the LDS Church in addressing the reality of homosexuality, he says.
The church’s theology was formed at a time when homosexuality could only be construed in biblical terms as “abomination,” he says. “Because of experience and science, today church leaders see the issue in a more complex light. They distinguish between feelings and actions, and they acknowledge that we do not know the originating causes of same-sex attraction.”
LDS founder Joseph Smith once said that ” ‘by proving contraries, truth is made manifest,’” Barlow says. “As is the past, this may be a painful but auspicious moment in LDS history.”
No doubt it will be. Whether the “truth is made manifest” sooner or later is the question; the answer depends not on LDS, Inc., but on individual Mormons, and the strength (or lack) of their desire to realign the church’s priorities with the goal of working harmoniously with the larger, reality-based world in which they live — or be content to continue wearing their self-imposed persecution complex as a badge of honor.
Mike Huckabee — past and probably future GOP presidential contender, and of course host of a Fox News show — says gay rights is a “different set of rights” than civil rights, and notes that gays aren’t getting their “skulls cracked,” so nobody’s rights are being violated. Well, that’s not really true, as Think Progress notes, but, needless to say, physical violence shouldn’t be the bar for discrimination in this country.
Of course, there’s all this:
• In the course of his mocking diatribe, Fox News host Greg Gutfeld inserted an off-color, homophobic joke about Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA): “Look, I don’t dispute that aliens exist, but there are more urgent threats than wrinkly creatures with a knack for anal probing. But enough about Barney Frank.”
• After Dennis Miller said that President-elect Barack Obama “ought to flatten these punks at AIG [American International Group],” Bill O’Reilly stated, “OK, and then arrest Barney Frank, correct?” Miller replied, “Barney might want to be arrested.” In response, O’Reilly said, “Oh, jeez. Ugh,” and shuddered. He continued, “OK, Dennis Miller, everybody. I told you to hide the kids.”
• On The O’Reilly Factor and in a FoxNews.com article, Bill Sammon suggested that Rep. Barney Frank allowed his relationship in the 1990s with Herb Moses, a Fannie Mae official at the time, to improperly influence his conduct as a member of the House Financial Services Committee.
• Radio host Lars Larson played a spoof “Barney Frank for President” advertisement, in which a person said: “Now remember, this Erection Day — Election Day, vote for Barney Frank for President. I’m Barney Fag — uh, Frank and I approve this massage — message.”
That’s how the Fox Network, which employs Huckabee and much of the right-wing media, treats one of America’s only openly gay politicians. But they don’t crack his head, so, who’s complaining, right?
And the hits just keep on coming.
Aside to Lars Larson: If you’re going to make a career out of being a despicable bigot, you should at least try to come up with original material — gay-hater Dick Armey took “credit” for the “Barney Fag” slur ages ago.
Normally, I breeze by the homophobic garbage on Democratic Underground, partly because I don’t haunt the halls of DU anymore (unless I’m tipped off to a particularly interesting meltdown going on in real-time), and mostly because I don’t see the point in torturing myself watching my people battle those hopelessly (and happily) entrenched in their own bigotry. I wasted six years battling the “Some of my best friends are gay, so I’m an expert on what’s homophobic and what’s not” brigades myself, and it was, indeed, a complete waste of time I could have spent doing something, anything, more productive… like trying to teach goldfish to drive.
Hearing there was something of a meltdown going on (again), I ran across a post by a gay DUer I’ve long liked and respected, who (for the umpteenth time for any LGBT DUer) pointed out the pervasive compulsion to label George W. Bush, or Karl Rove, or pretty much any right-winger as “gay.” This is different from outing a right-winger who really is gay (or at least a verifiable down-low type like Larry Craig); this is the Everyone We Hate is Gay syndrome, and it’s ugly, and extremely offensive to gay people.
After reading the usual “I don’t see any homophobia, so it doesn’t exist” replies from DUers who either have a serious memory disorder, or feign blindness to the neverending stream of homophobia right in front of their keyboards, I thought I’d ever-so-helpfully dredge up a few examples of what they’re “not seeing”… which, apparently, is too herculean a task for the Google-impaired.
Here are 1) the original post in question, and 2) two of the nastiest, most insensitive replies:
LeftCoast Donating Member (1000+ posts) Mon Aug-04-08 02:57 PM Original message
I’ve been around here for years and it just never stops. Virtually every foul Republican is referred to as “gay”. It happens over and over. It’s against the rules and the mods do try, but it never ends. Why?
They say that doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result is the definition of insanity so I don’t know why I keep expecting it to change.
I don’t know what to do, but I don’t like how DU makes me feel.
devilgrrl Donating Member (1000+ posts) Mon Aug-04-08 03:08 PM Response to Original message
15. Virtually every foul Republican is referred to as “gay” - By whom?
Quit painting everyone with one brush stroke please.
kestrel91316 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Mon Aug-04-08 03:21 PM Response to Original message
22. Do you always make shit like this up?
I have been here quite a while and can’t recall a single instance of a Republican being called gay for the hell of it. Now, if they are gay AND closeted AND a homophobe, I can see that.
You probably wanna run back to FR if you wanna concoct fables out of whole cloth.
For these “I can’t recall” folks (who can never again claim that DUers just don’t do this sort of thing), here’s a memory-refresher (and this, my friends, only scratches the surface):
And the winner of the Most Offensive Asshat on DU in 2008 (So Far) Award goes to “kurtboss,” who — to the credit of the DU admins — has since been banned:
kurtboss (361 posts) Mon Aug-04-08 09:05 PM Original message
Okay, let’s just make clear that there is nothing wrong with being Gay, however employing this strategy does make use of the negative cultural stereotypes about homosexuality. It’s exploiting it…but, to a good end.
So, here’s the deal. I want opinions. I don’t know if he’s really gay, but it doesn’t matter. This is hardball politics. A war, healthcare, the economy, etc all ride on this election…so it’s probably worth getting dirty for a couple months. I believe this can destroy his chances for victory by putting this seed of doubt in the minds of bigots.
1. The GOP Evangelicals HATE gays
2. Obviously easy to exploit McCain’s obsession with Obama–it’s practically pathetic at this point and noted everywhere in the media
3. He’s in the Navy. Village People anyone? It gets awfully lonely on ships.
4. To tie this up for you…McCain is already questioned by the Evangelicals and absolutely requires they turn out for him in droves. It’s his weakness.
How to attack it? Viral email. Youtube some effete moments put together…perhaps the infamous hug?? McCain is pretty pro-gay as GOP guys on policy isn’t he??? Check out the four photos below in what my FIRST and only google image search turned of of McCain hug
As for transphobia (or: Everyone We Hate is Transgender), there are far too many references to “Mann Coulter” to waste my time listing them all; see for yourself.
Don’t even get me started on the “prison rape is funny” posts — or the “Gays will lose us the next election! / Gays lost us the election!” scapegoating that happens every two years, like clockwork.
* While Hillary Clinton is not a right-winger, she is loathed as much as Bush, Rove, and all the rest by a substantial portion of DU. Remember, the ploy is called Everyone We Hate is Gay.
In explaining its reasons (experience, we agree, is a major one) for endorsing Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, GayWired Media takes a fresh approach:
As LGBT people fighting for the right to marry—the right to a legal recognition of partnership—no one knows better what Hillary Clinton has faced in her fight to be treated as her husband’s equal. With the exception of Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady’s position was always that of loyal “spouse” whose job it was to smile, nod and support her husband. Hillary Clinton was the first woman to step into the role of first lady ready to fight in a public forum… for better or worse, and as anyone who read headlines during her eight years in the White House knows, the press and the right-wing made her fight tooth and nail for the respect she earned.
Well done. And equally well done is this succinct summary of Barack Obama’s liabilities in the area of equality:
But whereas Clinton’s support of LGBT issues is consistent — in her autobiography Living History, she calls “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” a terrible “compromise” of her husband’s presidency — we get the sense much of Obama’s support is merely PR. The omission of the word gay from his South Carolina victory speech and refusal to remove openly homophobic gospel singer Donnie McClurkin from a performing engagement on his campaign trail further support those fears.
At first glance, none of the candidates for president on the Republican side express anything resembling a strong commitment to LGBT rights. In fact, many express the opposite. But one holds a strong commitment to state’s rights—a commitment that, thus far, has protected LGBT rights at the federal level while discouraging any amendment to the constitution that would prohibit same sex marriage. Coupled with his commitment to ending the war in Iraq and putting an immediate end to this costly and misleading charade, Ron Paul may look like the dark horse to lead America beginning in January, 2009, but he’s far better suited for the role than many of his fellow party members would have you believe.
And certain Southerners still scream, “States’ rights!” while defending slavery.
We will give GayWired credit for proving that gay folks are not just single-issue voters, as it takes Paul’s stance on the Iraq war into account:
Ron Paul is that rare politician who has gone out on a limb—the only Republican nominee to have voted against the Iraq War Resolution, he says the war in Iraq was sold to Americans with false information and if elected president, he would begin yanking troops out of the Middle East immediately—no disrespect to the issue of gay marriage, but as far as we’re concerned, ending the war is the most important issue at stake this election.
And we must admit GayWired’s reasoning also takes a fresh (well, novel) approach:
Though Paul isn’t known to be an avid supporter of gay rights, he opposes all federal efforts to redefine marriage, has said “don’t ask, don’t tell” fails because it doesn’t take into account heterosexual behavior that is disruptive to service and has said he has no interest in interfering with two individuals in a social, sexual or religious sense. That said, he was an outspoken critic of the Supreme Court’s decision on Lawrence v. Texas which deemed sodomy laws unconstitutional under the fourteenth amendment. Though he called the law ridiculous, his support of states rights, he argued, gives the State of Texas the right to regulate sex using local standards.
A consistency that, while bizarre, is almost refreshing. His view on the rights of the individual and of the state have defined his entire career. Better the devil you know or the devil who shape shifts depending on how he’s doing in the polls?
We still think GayWired is off the hook endorsing Paul — or any Republican; where is it written that a news outlet must endorse a candidate from each party? Well, maybe it is a requirement with for-profit companies — but still: If we were forced to endorse one of the remaining Republican candidates (that is, remaining as of GayWired’s press deadline), we would have picked Rudy Giuliani.
Make no mistake: We can’t stand Giuliani — but when the other choices are McCain, Huckabee, Romney, and Paul, choosing Giuliani is like choosing to have one eye gouged out, as opposed to having all four limbs amputated.
A few (quite a few) dumb-butts keep insisting that nobody other than “a few fringe gay activists” know, much less give a hoot, about Barack Obama’s continuing association with the anti-gay religionist brigades.
Well, listen up, dumb-butts: If you thought Obama’s hypocritical, two-faced, double-dealing, under-the-table, behind-the-scenes, low-down, dirty crap-o-rama was flying under the “mainstream” radar (how’s that for the most mixed metaphor in history?), here’s some news for you: You’re wrong. Again. And so’s your Saint Barry.
From CBS News, which found Carrie Budoff Brown’s piece from The Politico “valid” enough to pick up this morning:
Gay Community Still Wary Of Obama
. . .
“If we are honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community,” Obama told 2,000 worshippers Sunday at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King once preached. “We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them.”
. . .
Yet … At the same time as Obama’s Sunday speech, gay bloggers were digging into the background of the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, a spiritual adviser to President Bush who endorsed Obama a day earlier.
. . .
The twin developments appeared to encapsulate the tension inherent in Obama’s embrace of what he calls a new style of politics, his belief in forging alliances even with those who hold fundamentally different views.
In this case, he has spoken out against homophobia in front of black audiences while embracing some black religious leaders who are resistant to gay rights.
“People are confused,” said Wayne Besen, a gay activist and founder of Truth Wins Out, a New York organization aimed at countering the “ex-gay” movement. “We see one report of him saying powerful words. Then he is hanging out with some shady characters. People don’t know what to make of that.”
Wayne, darlin’, we love ya, we really do, but what “people” are you talking about when you say, “People are confused”? Obama cultists, perhaps, are confused, as they should be — but not one clear head that’s been following this stroke-Peter-while-screwing-Paul game Obama’s been playing has ever been “confused” in the least.
I’ve known “what to make” of Obama since the day he told us gay folks to STFU — no matter how long and loud and hard we protested, that self-loathing faux-”ex-gay” Donnie “Gays Are Trying to Kill Our Children” McClurkin was going onstage to woo the homophobes, no matter what (and woo he did).
By Monday, Caldwell’s church, Windsor Village United Methodist in Houston, scrubbed its Web site of any reference to the gay conversion program, Metanoia Ministry.
. . .
“I got to tell you, this is going to sound real stupid, but I didn’t know it was on our website,” Caldwell said. “I was surprised and embarrassed by it. I’m embarrassed from the standpoint that I should have known. We have 120 ministries at the church. You can’t be on top of everything.”
When asked if he opposed such programs, Caldwell said: “It’s not a ministry of the church. It is not supported financially by the church. It is not located at the church. That is pretty much where I am with it.”
. . .
But blogosphere skepticism has persisted, in part because of this connection: Barbara Hicks, a church staff member and treasurer of the church’s Prayer Institute, is listed as the contact for Metanoia Ministry. She uses a church phone number and email address.
“That is my ministry,” Hicks said Tuesday when reached at her church office.
She directed further questions to Caldwell, who said Hicks “does it on her own.”
How stupid do these people think we are? Caldwell and Hicks are playing the “Go ask your mother / Go ask your father” game. And it stinks — to high heaven. If either of them were so secure in the rightness of their “ministry,” neither would try passing the blame off on the other.
And neither would disgust me half so much if they would accept responsibility for their hateful, anti-gay brainwashing “ministry.” I’ve got more respect for Fred Phelps — at least that crazy old bastard stands by every vile word he’s ever spat out of his brittle old chapped lips, and doesn’t blame his sickening actions on anyone else.
I’ve said the same about Huckabee and Romney and all the rest of the screw-the-gays Republican candidates: At least they make no bones about where they stand — and about what they’d like to do to me.
Or, to quote Duane Wells yet again: “I never thought I’d say this, but Mr. Obama’s duplicitous stance on gay and lesbian rights circa the Donnie McClurkin controversy has given me something of an appreciation for George W. Bush’s no-nonsense approach to politics. I may not agree with a thing that comes out of curious George’s mouth, but at least he doesn’t piss in my cornflakes and tell me that he filled the bowl with whole milk. No sir. If there is a good thing to be said about President Bush it’s that he will tell you he’s going to piss in your cornflakes, then he will actually piss in your cornflakes and then he will hold a press conference defending his right to piss in your cornflakes. There’s no deception. It’s honest and clear… whether you like it or not. With Obama that is unfortunately not the case.”
“It matters who you are endorsed by because these are the people who are going to be calling in favors,” Besen said. “The gay and lesbian community has the right to be disturbed when such individuals are standing up beside Obama.”
Read those words again: “It matters who you are endorsed by because these are the people who are going to be calling in favors.”
Damn right.
You hear that, all you Obamaites who keep whining like a bunch of little girls: “Obama’s not responsible for the views of everyone who endorses him!” Take off your blinders: If you believe that a candidate’s backers don’t expect — or get — anything in return for corraling votes and money for that candidate, then you don’t know the first thing about politics. That’s the way it works: You wash my back, I’ll wash yours. Why the hell do you think the Bushites have been courting the Radical Religious Right all these years?*
If you don’t understand that, then you’re too naive — or just too stupid — to vote this time around. Learn something about the world, and maybe by 2012 you’ll be ready to come join the grown-ups back in Realityville.
* And why do you think the RRR came thisclose to abandoning the GOP altogether? Because the GOP didn’t deliver, that’s why.
Now, don’t you Obamaites use that as an excuse to sing that old song that goes: “Obama’s just courting conservative Democrats. When he gets in office, he’ll lead the fight for gay equality!” That’s a pile of crap, and you know it; it’s the same damned song we hear every election cycle. And consider this: If Obama is making promises — to any group, including the Radical Right — that he has no intention of keeping, what does that say about his honesty?
There’s little I can say that hasn’t already been said in the wake of Barack’s love-fest with Ronald Reagan, in an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal (given in order to gain the paper’s endorsement) — except: If you don’t understand the outrage, you’re either too young to remember, or appreciate, the enormity of the damage Reagan and his nest of freedom-hating vipers inflicted on America — and don’t give a damn about learning your nation’s history — or you were a Reagan voter who’s still in denial.
For the rest of us still trying to heal from the Reagan Era, this is what the fuss is all about — or, more accurately, this is what Obama is all about:
Ronald Reagan More Effective Than Bill Clinton:
“I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what’s different are the times. I do think that for example the 1980 was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”
Obama did not specify what he believes those “excesses” were. But Reagan is widely credited with leading a rightwing backlash against the gains of the civil rights and feminist movements that preceded his 1980 election.
Those excesses, of course, were feminism, the consumer rights movement, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and the antiwar movement. The libertarian anti-government ideology of an unaccountable large liberal government was designed by ideological conservatives to take advantage of the backlash against these ‘excesses’.
What about the civil rights movement, which had a huge effect on the ’60s. Was that an excess? Were people who protested the Vietnam War, because they felt it was fundamentally wrong, much the same as many of us feel concerning Iraq, an excess? What about the strong feminism movement? Was that an excess? Or how about the new found concern of the environment? Was that an excess too?
His narrative completely excludes stagflation, high gas prices, and the hostage crisis in Iran. Think they might have been factors in the 1980 election?
He also fails to reconcile the fact that Reagan won just 50.7% of the vote in 1980 (his landslide was in 1984) with his theory that there was a unified national mood.
He also fails to explain why, if the nation was so unified, 1980 saw one of the strongest third-party campaigns in 20th century American history.
Moreover, Obama ignores the racism that was fundamental to Ronald Reagan’s campaign. Recall that Reagan began his campaign with a call for state’s rights in Philadelphia, MS.
He [Reagan] was openly — openly — intolerant of unions and the right to organize. He openly fought against the union and the organized labor movement in this country. He openly did extraordinary damage to the middle class and working people, created a tax structure that favored the very wealthiest Americans and caused the middle class and working people to struggle every single day. The destruction of the environment, you know, eliminating regulation of companies that were polluting and doing extraordinary damage to the environment.
I can promise you this: this president will never use Ronald Reagan as an example for change.
Sen. John Edwards January 17, 2008
[Reagan] never did make a similar peace with the “welfare queens” he fabricated out of whole cloth to push his anti-compassionate conservatism. Nor with the African Americans he insulted by launching his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were slaughtered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964. Nor with the Berkeley students demonstrating in a closed-off plaza whom he ordered tear-gassed by helicopter in 1969.
Nor, last but not least, with the tens of thousands of AIDS corpses whose disease he did not even deign to publicly acknowledge until 1987.
When I think about the 60s and the 70s, I think about Medicaid, Medicare, the Environmental Protection Agency, Community Development Block Grants… It’s astounding to me to have this blanket endorsement of a right wing attack.
When he says government in effect grew too much in the 60s and 70s… Reagan agreed with that. This is not simply a tribute to Ronald Reagan’s rhetoric but an endorsement of some of the substance.
Barney Frank (D-Mass.) Conference call January 18, 2008
Republicans: The Party of Ideas
“I think it’s fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there… over the last ten, fifteen years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.”
So I suppose that means George Bush (past 7 years), had some good ideas? I suppose he thinks Bob Dole’s ideas were better than Clinton’s in ‘96? Does he think Gingrich had the right ideas in the ’90s?
The Republicans were the party of ideas for the last 10 to 15 years, because they were challenging conventional wisdom? OK, now I’m completely boggled. Is Obama talking about the same GOP I know — the Republican party of Tom DeLay and George Bush? The party in which candidates compete to see who can do the best Reagan impersonation? This is the party that’s challenging conventional wisdom? What’s going on here?
Paul Krugman Reagan and Obama The Conscience of a Liberal January 17, 2008
That’s not the way I remember the last 10 to 15 years.
I don’t think it’s a better idea to privatize Social Security. I don’t think it’s a better idea to try to eliminate the minimum wage. I don’t think it’s a better idea to undercut health benefits and to give drug companies the right to make billions of dollars by providing prescription drugs to medicare recipients. I don’t think it’s a better idea to shut down the government, to drive us into debt.
Sen. Hillary Clinton Conference call January 18, 2008
The Republicans have been the party of ideas for the past ten to fifteen years? Including the last seven years of Bill Clinton’s administration? Really, Mr. Obama?
So just what did William Jefferson Clinton do for blacks and Latinos?
Since the economy is the hot topic these days, let’s just look at what President Clinton did for minorities in terms of economic gains. …
Unemployment Rate for African Americans and Hispanics Remains Historically Low. Under President Clinton and Vice President Gore, the Hispanic unemployment rate has dropped from 11.3 percent in January 1993 to a record low of 5.8 percent in March 1999. The unemployment rate for African Americans has fallen from 14.1 percent in January 1993 to 8.1 percent in March 1999 — one of the lowest levels on record for African Americans.
Here are additional economic accomplishments of the Clinton/Gore administration — as of 1999 (during the administration’s second term) — that also had a direct positive effect for minorities…
. . .
Listen, Mr. Obama. If you think that President Clinton and Vice President Gore accomplished those amazing turnarounds for the economy and for minorities by singing “Kumbayah” with Republicans, you’ve just shown how naive you are.
And you’ve exposed how uninformed you are about the brutal history of U.S. politics where every progressive step is spattered with the blood, sweat and tears of all who fought so hard for those gains.
How we yearn for those 1990s that you dismiss, Mr. Obama.
[The interview] also re-aroused my suspicions that Obama is not a real Democrat, given as he is to touting GOP talking points on Social Security and presenting far weaker economic stimulus and health care plans than his rivals. Are his real political views more like Reagan’s than the Democraty party’s? It’s quite possible.
Worst of all, it reminded me of Obama’s dreamy attitude about the presidency. He thinks he can just be the “vision” guy and get “smarter people” around himself, and that the governing will take care of itself.
Never mind that George W. Bush — taking off where Ronald Reagan began — has decimated all key federal agencies of their most experienced staffers and devastated the agencies’ budgets, so much so that some will have to be rebuilt from the ground up.
JedReport was unable to reach Newt Gingrich, the chief intellectual of the Republican Party for comment. JedReport was able to confirm that Albert Gore, has had an idea or two over the last fifteen years, however.
Not “Invested” in the 1960s, Yet Can Read Baby Boomers’ Minds (Oh, and By the Way, the Boomers Can Go to Hell)
“I didn’t I didn’t come of age in the battles of the 60s, so I’m not as invested in them. So I think I talk differently about issues and I think I talk differently about values, and that’s why… um, I-I think we’ve been resonating with the American people.
“I think… And, by the way, when I say this sometimes, it’s-it’s interpreted as ‘I don’t think anybody who’s a Baby Boomer should be president’ — that’s not what I’m saying, but what i’m saying is… I think the average Baby Boomer has moved beyond a lot of the arguments of the 60s but our politicans haven’t. We’re still having the same arguments, you know, it’s all around cultural wars and it’s all, you know, even when you discuss war, you know, the frame of reference is all Vietnam — well, that’s not my frame of reference, you know, my frame of reference is what works. And my— even when I first opposed the war in Iraq, my first line was: ‘I don’t oppose all wars.’ You know… it… it… specifically to make clear this is not just a… anti-military, you know, 70s love-in kind of approach.”
In one fell swoop, Obama disparages the success-filled, non-stop efforts of millions of people during the 1960s and 1970s…
News flash: Barack Obama isn’t invested in the 1960s. No kidding. He’s not invested in reality either.
. . .
The 1970s peace movement helped stop the Vietnam war. It’s what drew John Kerry to the Senate to give one of the most electrifying speeches from a military veteran in U.S. history.
. . .
The cult of personality of Reagan, now Obama, has another thing in common. The arrogance to seduce the masses into believing something that isn’t so. Obama is convinced that Reagan was transformational, but misses on what grounds that transformation occurred.
That Obama made his case by attacking the “anti-military” Democratic rabble who Reagan also blamed for bringing this country to its knees in the 70s, because of the peaceniks’ love-in kind of approach, which was the in thing after the carnage of the Vietnam war, without realizing what he’s doing proves Mr. Obama’s cluelessness.
Reagan was the antithesis of “an anti-military, you know, 70s love-in kind of approach.” Now we find out that Obama is too. Who’s going to tell John Kerry?
Good Grief! That’s Me on the Left January 18, 2008
Astounding isn’t it? Yep, let’s put the guy who brought us “Iran-Contra, “Star Wars,” and “the largest deficits then ever known” up on a pedastal and claim he transformed this nation with “clarity” and “optimism.”
“One of the things I’m very proud of about this campaign is that I think we’ve already changed the political dialogue. When you think about it, you know, when Mitt Romney starts talking like me — which wasn’t the case… You have somebody like Huckabee who is doing very well basically taking a similar tone… I think we are shifting the political paradigm here.”
He was talking about the very same Mitt Romney who has spent more money on attack ads than all the other presidential candidates combined. Just over two weeks ago, CNN reported:
Two negative ads recently launched by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who has spent more on advertising than any other candidate, either misrepresent his rival’s records or include distortions, according to a CNN analysis of the commercials. (emphasis added)
This is the man who Barack Obama proudly cites as evidence he has brought about a shift in political paradigms?
. . .
Confused? So am I. I honestly have no idea what in the hell Obama is talking about.
It’s either another one of Obama’s completely meaningless bloviations or a political analysis conducted on a geometric plane I’ve never heard of before (perhaps for those times when triangulation just won’t do).
Mind you, I’m not saying that Obama didn’t put on a fine display of triangulation in the video. …
After Obama’s Reagan love-in, a quote I posted January 16 from Ed Pilkington is, if not prescient, far more pertinent than ever:
“Look further back still and the pattern is repeated. In 1990, while a second-year student at Harvard, [Obama] had the audacity to stand for election to head the Harvard Law Review, one of the country’s most prestigious legal publications. He beat off 18 other candidates to become its president (savor the moment: He was elected president Obama).
“David Goldberg, a civil rights lawyer who was a runner-up in that poll, recalls that Obama won by reaching out to right-wing law students, several of whom went on to become key legal advisers in the Bush administration: ‘We were a really polarized group of students, and he managed to span us all.’”
Notice a pattern yet?
Reagan — the Hollywood red-baiter who rose from president of the Screen Actors Guild to president of the United States even though he was already senile. Reagan who gave us tax cuts and “trickle down” economics that didn’t work — except for the rich and richer and richest. Reagan who let “mommy” (Nancy) run the white house with the aid of her astrologer. Reagan whose horse was smarter than he was.
Give me a break. One of the most disgusting sights in recent years was the genuflecting before this total fraud that went on at his funeral. And the hypocritical bullshit being trumpeted by the networks! Where were all the actors and writers and directors whose lives he ruined? I guess they were dead. But — what, me worry? — in America nobody knows one crumb of history, so Ronald Reagan’s vicious red baiting, how he rose to prominence by smearing other actors and writers and directors, was totally forgotten.
I suppose Mr. Obama has forgotten too — scholar of history that he is. Perhaps he was not alive in the 50s so he knows nothing about it — the Army-McCarthy hearings, the smearing of creative artists who donated to Spanish Civil War Relief even though they were not “card-carrying” communists. They happened, like my parents, and their friends, to have given money to help little Spanish children, orphaned by the Spanish Civil War — and ever after they trembled lest Ronnie Reagan and his ilk witch-hunt them.
Nowadays, as we grapple with the malevolence of President Bush, it’s Reagan we remember as the sensible one. At the risk of speaking ill of the dead, let memory at least acknowledge that there was much about Reagan that was not so sensible.
It’s not just more evidence that Obama was willing to say whatever it took to get the conservative editorial board to endorse him. It’s worse. It’s much worse.
It is further evidence that not only does Obama have no sense of the history of the last half of the 20th century — wait until you see the video below the fold — but also that he really is as conservative as his weak health care plan and far weaker economic stimulus plan have hinted. (Then there’s his use of GOP scare-tactic talking points on Social Security, and how he has been embraced by the right — including George Will who last year compared Obama to Ronald Reagan…
On the issue of Obama’s lack of “investment” in the struggles of the 1960s and 70s, and his obvious lack of personal experience of recent American history, here’s another quote from my post of January 16:
“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.
. . .
“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?”
Liberals always talk as if only the conservatives of our own generation were scary, and the conservatives of a previous generation kind of cuddly. Not helpful. Reagan really did almost blow the world up.
Look, I know this is weedy stuff and probably doesn’t matter to the average voter under the age of 45. But to long time liberals who lived through this period as an adult, it’s like waving a red flag in our faces. Reagan ran explicitly against the left (and in the process normalized the kind of indecent talk that made Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter millionaires.) Because he won big in 1984, leaders in both parties accepted this omnipotent Reagan myth and have run against liberalism ever since — and have ended up, through both commission and omission, advancing the destructive conservative policies that brought us to a place where we are debating things like torture. It would be helpful if ending the era of Democrats running against the liberal base could be part of this new progressive “trajectory.”
Some of us also remember the early devastating AIDS epidemic sweeping through the gay community without a word of support, comfort, or recognition from Ronald Reagan.
Some of us remember the lies about “Welfare Queens” he used to justify horrible callous, usually racist rhetoric about vulnerable fellow citizens.
Some of us remember illegal drugs sold on the streets of our cities to pay for illegal arms to the Contras and torturers and death-squads, while Nancy piously suggested we “Just Say No” as the racist War on Drugs ramped up here.
Some of us remember that an extreme minority of anti-democratic fundamentalist zealots started calling themselves “The Moral Majority” in the Reagan years.
Some of us remember Reagan telling us “government is the problem” and then seeing to it that whenever Republicans are in charge they would damn well prove it.
Some of us remember how Reagan sold the lie that giving to the rich and taking from the poor would create prosperity that would “trickle down” to the poor anyway.
Some of us remember Reagan tearing down Carter’s solar panels from the White House and his choice of James Watt as environment secretary.
Some of us remember “Ronbo” belligerently making war noises, throwing his weight around, and joking about nuclear strikes.
Some of us remember PATCO, and Reagan’s war on the unions that created a democratizing middle class (even if it never managed to extend to people of color as it so urgently needed to do).
Ronald Reagan was an evil bastard and he set the stage for the even worse Killer Clowns of the present Administration.
Feel good bullshit about the affable Gipper is dishonest and dangerous and damaging and we will not stand for it.
No, Ronald Reagan didn’t appeal to people’s optimism, he appealed to their petty, small minded bigotry and selfishness. Jimmy Carter told people to tighten their energy belts and act for the good of the country; Ronald Reagan told them they could guzzle gas with impunity and do whatever the hell they wanted. He kicked off his 1980 campaign talking about “state’s rights” in Philadelphia, Mississippi — the site of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964’s Freedom Summer. He thus put up a welcome sign for “Reagan Democrats,” peeling off white voters who were unhappy with the multi-ethnic coalition within the Democratic Party.
One of his first acts was to fire 11,000 air traffic controllers in 1981 — one of the most devastating union busting moves of the past century. And his vision of deregulation didn’t free the country up for entrepreneurship, it opened it up for the wholesale thievery of the savings & loan crisis. He popularized the notion that all government is bad government and in eight short years put in place the architecture for decades of GOP graft and corruption.
There’s enough hagiography of Reagan on the right, I don’t think Democrats really need to go there.
…if you think, as Obama does, that Reagan’s rise to power was premised on a sunny optimism in contrast to an out of control government and a society rife with liberal excess, then you don’t understand the conservative movement. Reagan tapped into greed and fear and tribalism, and those are powerful forces. Ignoring that isn’t going to make them go away.
It’s not as if nobody saw this coming — the warnings were there, over and over and over again. Did anyone think the Donnie McClurkin flap was an isolated incident? The easy dismissal of the Baby Boomers? The attack on church-state separatists?
(What “attack on church-state separatists,” you ask? Better you should ask, “Which attack on church-state separatists?” But here’s just one example, from his keynote address at the Call to Renewal’s Building a Covenant for a New America conference: “At worst, there are some liberals who dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical, or thinking that the very word ‘Christian’ describes one’s political opponents, not people of faith.” Nice job broadbrushing those of us who believe in Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation” as a bunch of Christian-haters, Obama.)
Here are just a few — a very few — of the warning signs (note the dates):
Just before U.S. Sen. Barack Obama admitted on the TV television program “Meet the Press” last fall that he was thinking about a run for the presidency, host Tim Russert asked him to define a great president.
. . .
Then, waxing more philosophical, Obama addressed the broader, cultural significance. “When I think about great presidents,” he said, “I think about those who transform how we think about ourselves as a country in fundamental ways so that, at the end of their tenure, we have looked and said to ourselves, that’s who we are. And … you know, there are circumstances in which I would argue Ronald Reagan was a very successful president.”
. . .
In terms of political philosophy, professional background and racial heritage, Obama and Reagan are distinctly different, one a figure of the new century and the other a representative of the previous one.
Look more closely, however, and you see a number of striking parallels between the young senator contemplating a White House campaign and the late, Illinois-born two-term president. …
. . .
Are such parallels predictive? Of course not. The disparity between Reagan and Obama in governmental experience is profound. Eight years as governor of the country’s most populous state is executive training that eight years in the Illinois state Senate and less than a full term in the U.S. Senate could never offer. And other differences abound.
But the intriguing similarities reveal two political figures possessing common traits, including vivid personalities with rare skill in connecting with the public. Both, in their ways, speak American, the distinctive dialect of the nation’s ideals and yearnings. Reassuring smiles and welcome wit of self-deprecating humor notwithstanding, electoral ambition is an animating drive for each.
In Reagan’s case, it took three campaigns spanning 12 years to reach the White House. Will Obama’s future follow such a course? His much-anticipated decision about 2008 will start to answer that question.
I recommend that every Dem read Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope” and read it with a critical eye.
I didn’t know much about Obama so I bought the book. It was an eye-opener.
He is laudatory of Ronald Reagan for his involvement in ending the Cold War. He makes no mention of the bloated military budget taking down the Soviet Union.
He says “Bush won two elections”. There is no mention of election fraud in either Florida or Ohio. He tells stories about first meeting Bush; he definitely was taken in by Bush’s “folksy” charm.
He refers to the “bankruptcy of socialism”.
He claims the press is only “distracted” not bought.
His discussion of 9/11 says nothing about questions disputing the “official” story of how it happened.
I found enough in it to give me pause about Obama, especially since he’s running a campaign on personality as opposed to policy.
That Reagan’s message found such a receptive audience spoke not only to his skills as a communicator; it also spoke to the failures of liberal government, during a period of economic stagnation, to give middle-class voters any sense that it was fighting for them. For the fact was government at every level had become to cavalier about spending taxpayer money. Too often bureaucracies were oblivious to the cost of their mandates. A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities. Reagan may have exagerrated the sins of the welfare state, and certainly liberals were right to complain that his domestic policies tilted heavily toward elites, with corporate raiders making tidy profits throughout the eighties while unions were busted and the income for the average working stiff flatlined.
Nevertheless, by promising to side with those who worked hard, obeyed the law, cared for their families, loved their country, Reagan offered Americans a sense of common purpose that liberals seemed no longer able to muster.
pp. 156-157:
The conservative revolution Reagan helped usher in gained traction because Reagan’s central insight — that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policy makers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than with growing he pie — contained a good deal of truth.
As SusanUnPC wrote two days ago: “If that not-a-real-Democrat gets nominated, I’ll be watching ‘Mourning in America.’
“And so will all those young people so smitten with Barack Obama now.”
Here’s a nice, long thread at Democratic Underground that spells out many (’though hardly all) the reasons Ronald Reagan was the devil incarnate. Read it and weep, Obamaites — for that two-faced Janus you call a candidate, for your own naïveté, and most of all for the country you’re so willing to give up to the dogs — again:
…from a Reagan defender who admits he’s “too young to remember most of Reagan’s years, but… The research I’ve done indicates that he did not start any significant wars during the 80’s. He was very poised and did not act based on knee-jerk reactions.”
(The poster, thank goodness, has since been banned from DU.)
Are there any Obama cultists who don’t get it yet? Well, get this: You’re getting PLAYED, suckers.
We were wondering when we’d see the phrase “Great White Hope” headline an op/ed about Barack Obama (The Great White Hope was a play-turned-1970-film fictionalizing the life of black boxer Jack Johnson), and this past Sunday, we found it in the Washington Post: “Why Obamamania? Because He Runs as The Great White Hope.”
David Greenberg recaps the “giddiness bordering on exhilaration among voters” following Obama’s win in Iowa, and utter intoxication among “voters and pundits … heady with the hope that he can deliver not just ‘change’ … but a categorically different kind of change from Clinton or the Republican candidates.”
For a moment, our hearts skipped at the possibility that Mr. Greenberg was about to explain the words “hope” and “change” — words rendered completely indefinable by Obama and his supporters. “Hope for what?” we keep asking. “Change what, exactly?”
Mr. Greenberg is to be forgiven for being as unable to define these words in the context of Obamamania; neither Obama nor his starry-eyed supporters have been able to define them either. Confront an Obama supporter, and you’ll likely hear (as we have, repeatedly) some inane, automated response as “You just don’t get it,” or “It’s a shame you don’t have hope,” or “Don’t you want change?” or (the most chilling we’ve heard lately) “There’s still time for you to catch up with the masses.” (Masses of what? And who wants to “catch up with ‘the masses’”? Whatever happened to thinking for yourself?)
This, however, is our current favorite: “Obama is the only way we’re going to throw those Bush thugs out of the White House!” Never mind that come January 20, 2009, Bush and Co. will be vacating the premises, no matter who wins the presidency in ‘08. But that’s the sort of answer you get when you press Obamaites too hard for a definition of “change.”
Still, Greenberg doesn’t need to define the words “hope” and “change”; he explains Obamamania by defining what they aren’t, beginning with the question, “So what explains the magic?”
The most obvious explanation is Obama’s stirring oratory, with its notes of generational change and unity.
Well, we already knew that: Obama’s charisma is undeniable, and he’s comparatively young (just six weeks older than yours truly, in fact); he represents the first post-Baby Boomer generation, the Baby Busters (perpetually confused with GenXers) — who, believe you me, have precious little in common with the “Howdy Doody” generation with which we’re so often lumped. Seriously: While a “generation” lasts 20 years, a “baby boom” just doesn’t — and yet every American born between 1945 and 1964 is thrown into the Baby Boomer pot. A “baby boom” is supposed to be the result of an event immediately preceding a spike in births; does anyone really believe that folks were still making babies in 1964 as a result of World War II?
But I digress, as usual. Still, Obama’s age, and, more striking, his tenuous ties to the rest of us Busters, are important considerations I’ll address in a moment. Right now, let’s get back to Greenberg’s herculean attempt to explain the Obama phenomenon (and note how Greenberg uses the word “seduction,” perhaps the most common word associated with the mystery of Obamamania):
The key to his seduction, though, resides not just in what he says but in what remains unsaid. It lies in the tacit offer — a promise about overcoming America’s shameful racial history — that his particular candidacy offers to his enthusiasts, and to us all.
Obama’s allure differs from the infatuations of past election cycles because it can’t be traced to what he has done or will do. In his legislative career, Obama has produced few concrete policy changes, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a rank-and-file fan who can cite one.
And there you have both the reason for Obama’s popularity, and the very thing that frustrates those of us not infected by the Obama bug to the point of distraction: His appeal lies in nothing he’s ever actually done, but in vague, feel-good… er, vibes. (Well, there’s one thing Obama may share with the rest of the Busters: I, too, once grooved on indefinable “good vibes.” Of course, it was the early 1970s, and I was about ten at the time.)
Not since 1896 — when another rousing speechmaker, William Jennings Bryan, sought the White House — has the zeal for a candidate corresponded so little to a record of hard accomplishment. But merely asking if Obama has done enough for us to expect he’d be a good president misses the point, because that measures the past rather than imagining the future.
Greenberg certainly has his finger on the pulse of the Obamanation: Asking about hard accomplishment misses the point — the point being: You’re killing my buzz, man — stop asking logical questions, and just get with the groove, baby.
Since when was it such a radical idea to demand that a potential President of the United States have a little more to fall back on than good vibes?
But that is another no-no question to the Obamaites: You’re not allowed to cite Obama’s distinct lack of experience in matters beyond the borders of the state of Illinois.
“Oh, sure,” the Obamaites cry, “Hillary has ‘experience’ — but do you want the same old corporatism that’s dominated the White House since the 1980s?”
(This is usually followed by “You’re just a Hillary supporter anyway!” Which is far from the truth — although the hostile fervor of the Obamaites has served to push many of us previously-anti-Hillaryites squarely into the Hillary camp — but that’s another thorn we’ve snipped before, and will no doubt snip again.)
Frankly, “the same old corporatism” under Bill Clinton worked just fine for me, thanks very much; despite Big Dog’s spectacular (and unforeseen) failures and downright betrayals in the area of gay equality, those eight years between 1992 and 2000 were the best eight years of my life, in terms of quality of life. Is it selfish to long for the days when I was making a very healthy paycheck in a field (I.T.) that has since dried up like Kakadu in July? Perhaps. But never lose sight of the fact that principles must come second to the little luxuries of life — like eating, and living indoors. The most principled civil-rights activist in the world isn’t much use to anybody if s/he’s on the street and starving to death.
Yet if Obama charms us by pointing to tomorrow, he doesn’t come bearing a new ideological vision.
True. And that throngs of voters are willing to cast their lot for a candidate whose ideology changes with every shift in the wind should make us all very nervous. One thing I’ve said repeatedly throughout this long, long campaign, in regard to Obama’s calculated machination of pitting Southern religionists against gay and lesbian Americans: You have to give the Republican candidates some credit for honesty; at least I knowRomney and Huckabee and all the rest loathe my very existence as a gay American, and will fight me head-on. In contrast, Obama’s talk doesn’t match his walk.
Don’t sing me that old song, “Obama is the best candidate for gay rights — just look at his voting record!” (This means you, Chris Crain, who, not-so-incidentally, keep harping on that stale old right-wing rumor that Hillary is a lesbian.) There’s little difference between Obama’s voting record on LGBT-equality issues and that of any other mainstream Democrat with at least two ounces of brain matter left in his or her skull.
Where Obama steps out of line — way out of line — is in his deceitful and downright mean campaign tactics, his shameless pandering to shameless bigots (particularly those who should know better), and his unwavering insistence that lesbians and gay men are simply not worthy of the same rights (or, more accurately, privileges) that he enjoys. See: McClurkin, McClurkin, McClurkin, and Barack’s latest hit with a bullet: “We Are All Sinners (a.k.a. The Wink-Wink-Nudge, Bush-Style Code Words for Religionists Song).”
Yet, believe it or not, I still don’t think Obama at his core is a raging homophobe. I believe he is completely indifferent to gay and lesbian Americans, and we pop up on his radar only as a commodity — or liability.
Obama is simply an opportunist — which again, is more worrisome: I know where all the Republican candidates stand on the issue of my rights; they make no bones about it. As Duane Wells wrote so very plainly and perfectly: “I never thought I’d say this, but Mr. Obama’s duplicitous stance on gay and lesbian rights circa the Donnie McClurkin controversy has given me something of an appreciation for George W. Bush’s no-nonsense approach to politics. I may not agree with a thing that comes out of curious George’s mouth, but at least he doesn’t piss in my cornflakes and tell me that he filled the bowl with whole milk. No sir. If there is a good thing to be said about President Bush it’s that he will tell you he’s going to piss in your cornflakes, then he will actually piss in your cornflakes and then he will hold a press conference defending his right to piss in your cornflakes. There’s no deception. It’s honest and clear… whether you like it or not. With Obama that is unfortunately not the case.”
And consider this: If Obama so readily and freely throws gay Americans under the bus for sake of cozying up to a contingent (whose votes he was almost certainly assured of anyway), who’s he going to throw under the bus next? He’s already told the Baby Boomers that they’re for all practical purposes irrelevant — will your particular demographic be the next rendered “irrelevant,” a mere monkey wrench in the Obama machine?
It appears that Obama’s only “ideology” is one of winning, at any cost. He doesn’t actually stand for anything, other than some fuzzy concept of “hope and change.”
And, to paraphrase Alexander Hamilton: If you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything. And Obama has proved, time and time again, that he’s susceptible to following, blindly, a lot of bad advice. That’s assuming, generously, that Obama is not the instigator behind the cruelest of his own campaign calculations; on the other hand, it’s Obama’s campaign, and Obama should be the one calling the shots.
Quite a dilemma, this: Should we be more worried by a candidate who surrounds himself with the most un-principled advisers and does whatever they tell him to do (a grim portent of the way President Obama will pick and choose his cabinet), or by a candidate who is himself so ruthlessly ambitious that he will discard the most faithful voting blocs in his own party in order to “reach out” to groups whose “principles” run counter to very idea of democracy itself?
“At crucial moments through his career,” writes Ed Pilkington, “he had what he calls the ‘audacity of hope’: where others might have stepped back, he reached out, both in terms of his personal ambition and in terms of his appeal to supporters outside the natural Democratic tent.
“When he made the Boston speech he was not even yet in Congress: He was a Chicago lawyer running at the time for one of two Illinois seats in the US Senate. That race was in itself a long shot: a black man, as he says in his first book Dreams from My Father, ‘without organizational backing or personal wealth, and with a funny name,’ competing to become only the third African American since the post-civil war period of Reconstruction to serve in the Senate. He won, galvanizing support in white areas as well as black.
“Look further back still and the pattern is repeated. In 1990, while a second-year student at Harvard, he had the audacity to stand for election to head the Harvard Law Review, one of the country’s most prestigious legal publications. He beat off 18 other candidates to become its president (savor the moment: He was elected president Obama).
“David Goldberg, a civil rights lawyer who was a runner-up in that poll, recalls that Obama won by reaching out to right-wing law students, several of whom went on to become key legal advisers in the Bush administration: ‘We were a really polarized group of students, and he managed to span us all.’”
Notice a pattern yet?
In his WaPo op/ed, Greenberg draws a parallel between Ronald Reagan’s empty, feel-good rhetoric, and Bill Clinton’s 1992 win due to being “the first Democrat since the 1960s to formulate a viable and vital new liberalism — one rooted in years of policy wonkery, a frank reckoning with his party’s failures and an early recognition of the importance of globalization.” But…
…where Clinton converted voters to his philosophy with binder-thick proposals, from AmeriCorps to welfare reform to the earned-income tax credit, Obama fans rarely tout his specific ideas. No one claims his agenda entails radical innovation or differs much from Hillary Clinton’s. On the contrary, Obama’s ideology, insofar as he has articulated it, seems to be a familiar, mainstream liberalism, heavy on communitarianism. High-minded and process-oriented, in the Mugwump tradition that runs from Adlai Stevenson to Bill Bradley, it is pitched less to the Democratic Party’s working-class base than to upscale professionals.
The Obama phenomenon, then, stems not from what he has done but who he is. As the social critic John McWhorter has written, “What gives people a jolt in their gut about the idea of President Obama is the idea that it would be a ringing symbol that racism no longer rules our land.” He is the great white hope.
Greenberg delves more deeply into the race issue, then hits upon an idea that — commensurate with my encounters with the frenzied throngs — is a very uncomfortable idea to Obama supporters:
Obama’s rhetorical gifts clearly contribute to his allure. But that allure resides not simply in the mellow timbre of his larynx but, more deeply, in his near-perfect pitch in talking about race to white America. Obama doesn’t shun race altogether — if he did, he would provoke suspicions — and he certainly doesn’t “transcend” race, whatever that means. But neither, as the social theorist Shelby Steele has written, does he rub white America’s face in its corrupt history of slavery and segregation. Traditionally, whites have appreciated such gentleness.
History provides a precedent of sorts: In 1960, John F. Kennedy, a dashing, almost aristocratic figure who defied many nasty stereotypes of Irish Catholics, made Protestants feel not just safe in voting for him but downright virtuous. They could flatter themselves that they were not prejudiced while still choosing a candidate as cultivated as any Brahmin. Similarly, Obama — whose strongest appeal has thus far been to upscale white liberals — allows those whites to feel good about themselves and their country. He lets them imagine that a nation founded for freedom yet built on slavery can be redeemed by pulling a lever.
At the same time, Obama doesn’t threaten or discomfort whites. He doesn’t strike them as wronged or impatient, or as the spokesman of a long-subjugated minority group or even as someone particularly culturally different from themselves.
Ouch. In other words, white liberals may be leaping at the chance to finally alleviate all that deeply-ingrained white-liberal guilt without actually addressing the issue of race head-on.
This idea, whether correct or not, is one few Obamaites confront easily or willingly. Rather, many immediately discard it with the accusation that it somehow impugns Obama’s qualifications for the presidency (whatever those as-yet-unexplained “qualifications” may be). It doesn’t — nor it is a “racist” thought (the growing chorus of “Racism!” from the Obamaites every time The One’s suitability for the presidency is questioned, for any reason, is deafening). Rather, it is an idea worth consideration and discussion; if nothing else, the truth could provide some clues about the makeup of Obama’s base: What percentage of Obama supporters really are white liberals proud to say they support a man of color — and secretly relieved to support that man as an imaginary panacea for race conflict in this country?
Obama above all should be most interested in the answer to this question, if for no other reason than to attempt to dilute the potential “Bradley effect” (when white voters publicly espouse their support for a non-white candidate, but vote for the white candidate when alone in the voting booth), a phenomenon that appears to have some Obama supporters worried. Witness Obama’s projected win — and surprise loss to Hillary Clinton — in New Hampshire.
Greenberg addresses yet another issue Obama supporters are loath to confront:
As much Kansan as Kenyan, Obama does not descend from families who suffered American slavery or Jim Crow. His family tree has fewer slaves than slaveholders, fewer chains than Cheneys.
That’s what I meant by Obama’s “tenuous ties to the rest of us Busters.” As mentioned, Obama and I are the same age; neither of us 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?
Greenberg continues:
This background may be what some people (mainly blacks) have meant when they asked the regrettable question of whether Obama is “black enough” to earn their votes. But Obama has always been black enough for his elite white enthusiasts, who would never presume to judge an African American’s racial authenticity — indeed, are all too happy to have such a question be kept, by prevailing norms, off limits to them.
Ouch, again.
Some pundits scratched their heads when Obama was trailing Clinton among black voters. (He’s now pulled even or ahead.) But it made perfect sense. Clinton had a track record of working for African Americans’ interests.
And yet it’s Clinton’s track record Obama supporters decry as the same old, same old — as opposed to, I guess, this hazy promise of “change” from Obama. No one put it better than Senator Clinton herself at the New Hampshire debate: “Making change is not about what you believe. It’s not about a speech you make. It is about working hard. …
“I want to make change, but I’ve already made change. I will continue to make change. I’m not just running on a promise of change. I’m running on 35 years of change. I’m running on having taken on the drug companies and the health insurance companies, taking on the oil companies.
“So, you know, I think it is clear that what we need is somebody who can deliver change. And we don’t need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered. The best way to know what change I will produce is to look at the changes that I’ve already made.”
Clinton is a known quantity. We know what she’s accomplished, and she’s clear on what she intends to deliver. Obama is not.
…is a fantasy of easy redemption. America’s racial history — mixed into our culture at its foundation — will be with us always, even as personal prejudice recedes and inequality is chipped away. For all we know, a President Obama might make the so-called underclass his top priority. But Obamamania — the phenomenon, not the man — leads us to believe that if only we vote for an African American, an avatar of “change” and healing, we can slough off the burdens of our past — the burdens of finding answers to problems such as the rising number of out-of-wedlock births, the obscene size of the black male population behind bars, the rotten state of city schools, the simmering white resentment about affirmative action, the black-white gap in life expectancy and the cascade of government failures that turned Hurricane Katrina from a breakdown of emergency relief into a disgraceful racial scandal.
Obama’s boosters are not fired up about finally confronting those intricate and intractable problems, for which the answers lie not in identity but in politics and policy. Inspiring and exhilarating as it is, Obamamania allows us to sidestep the hardest challenges, at least for now.
That is what worries me the most: that Obama will be swept into the White House on a wave of “easy redemption” that “allows us to sidestep the hardest challenges, at least for now.”
I’m no fool: Any change would be welcome after seven years of allowing ourselves to be cowed into submission by a rogue administration with an out-of-control tinpot dictator in charge.
But do we want to “sidestep the hardest challenges,” now or in the future? Haven’t we buried our heads in the sand long enough?
In case you haven’t heard, there is a War on Christmas. Across America the “cultural fascists” have been committing the following heinous assaults on Christians and the Baby Jesus:
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#The mayor of Cranston, Rhode Island censored all religious displays.
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# A nativity scene in Olean, New York was removed from the City Hall lawn after Wiccans placed the pentacle alongside it.
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#After a Catholic sued and won demanding a crèche alongside a menorah in Briarcliff Manor, New York, local officials banned both the Christian and Jewish symbols.
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Please explain to me how banning all religious displays is a War on Christmas. Maybe I’m just obtuse. Someone gets uppity and removes the Christmas tree after a pentacle is put beside it, but that’s still part of the War on Christmas? That sounds more like spoiled brats who don’t want to share the public square with people of other faiths. But I digress.
Then, of course, are the many businesses that “refuse” to say Merry Christmas, choosing instead to say Happy Holidays. This is part of a conspiracy to destroy Christmas and Christians, of course. Christians must fight tooth and nail to turn the tide or Merry Christmas will be lost forever.
Anyhoo, amidst the War on Christmas the wingnuts have had ample time to notice the goings on in the LGBT world. For instance, Pat Robertson, in a recent episode of The 700 Club , claims that the LGBT population is so small that giving us protections from hate-crimes is simply not worth the effort.
Maximum- maximum – 2% of our population could consider themselves gay or homosexual, and about 1% would consider themselves lesbian. That’s it! … There’s one thing about having ten, fifteen percent or twenty percent of our population being discriminated against, that’s a different matter.
According to the American Family Association of PA a local anti-discrimination ordinance is part of the War on Christmas. After all, it was passed on December 17th while the fundagelicals were out supporting crass commercialism for Baby Jesus.
“Christmas time – the perfect time to push this type radical agenda through when everyone is busy with last minute shopping and preparation for the upcoming holidays. It appears the Borough Council is more interested in toeing the line drawn by homosexual and cross dressing activists than it is in taking steps to insure employers can make decisions that are best for their company,” Diane Gramley, president of the AFA of PA, commented.
Lawmakers should know better than to pass any law related to LGBT rights near a Christian holiday.
On his final stretch of campaigning before the Christmas holiday, Huckabee underlined his lifelong opposition to abortion and gay marriage, issues that will likely drive many churchgoers to the Jan. 3 caucuses in Iowa. He spent Saturday traveling the western edge of Iowa, the most conservative part of the state, where Romney and another rival, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, campaigned late last week.
“It’s not because I don’t like them,” Huckabee said of gay people. “It’s because I like even more the idea that the heart and soul, the essence of our civilization is in the family. It’s not in the government. It’s not even in some institution, not even the church. Before there was the church, and before there was government, there was family.
“When you mess with the design, you end up messing with results,” he added. “We can’t afford to do that. That’s why you will never hear me waver.”
And what would the season be without Christmas carolers? Well these aren’t your typical carolers by any means.
Christmas carolers wearing shirts advertising anti-gay principles drew bespectacled looks from store patrons as they sang outside of a Sacramento Target store, officials said Saturday.
Officials said that the carolers said that they were peacefully protesting a new California law that prohibits discriminating against gays in school curriculum.
I tell you, I am amazed at the tenacity of those talibornigans. They’re out there in the trenches fighting against the Radical Secularists who want to destroy Christmas, working to make the world safe for Baby Jesus. They’re willing to write LTTEs, sign petitions, wring their hands and do whatever it takes to cram Christmas down people’s throats. Nevertheless they take the time out to notice what’s going on in LGBT land.
Republican presidential hopeful Sam Brownback said rival Mike Huckabee should apologize for a supporter’s “prejudiced whisper campaign” against him for being Catholic.
Huckabee issued a statement Tuesday night that didn’t apologize for the remarks but said they were neither approved nor condoned by his campaign. He said he was glad that the supporter had issued his own apology and clarification.
The supporter, a pastor in Windsor Heights, Iowa, had sent an e-mail to Brownback supporters pointing out that Huckabee is an evangelical Protestant and Brownback is not. Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, is an ordained Baptist minister.
“I know Senator Brownback converted to Roman Catholicism in 2002,” Rev. Tim Rude, pastor of Walnut Creek Community Church, wrote in the e-mail. “Frankly, as a recovering Catholic myself, that is all I need to know about his discernment when compared to the governor’s.”
The Brownback campaign sent out another e-mail an hour and a half after Huckabee’s statement, still calling for an apology from Huckabee. They say they saw Huckabee’s remarks last night, don’t consider it an apology and think the Huckabee campaign is “sidestepping the issue.”
Huckabee’s statement “said he’s glad Rude apologized, not that Governor Huckabee or his campaign apologizes,” a Brownback campaign spokesman said. “Our question is, Governor Huckabee himself, does he think what Pastor Rude himself says was wrong? Do they agree that the substance of his remarks were prejudiced, anti-Catholic or inappropriate?”
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