Letters to the Editor
AncientAssyrian
Published Letters: 758 Editor's Choice: 54
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Gotta Cover all the Bases...
[Read the article: There's no taking sides]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Because if the Dems win, you never know where your next administration position or pundit gig is coming from, eh Joe? Maybe you and Joan can share an office in the West Wing or at MSNBC....
Not buying it one iota,
AncientAssyrian
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Maybe he agrees with you on that...
[Read the article: Barack Obama agrees with me]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...but let's ask him if he thinks that Hillary's attack ads are "fair" -- as you believe them to be.
Did you guys have an editorial meeting deciding that Salon needs to make it look like most of your writers are not shilling for Hillary? Is that what Conason's apologia and this blog post are all about?
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The Battles of the Sixties Were 40 Years Ago Joan: Obama is Looking FORWARD, Not Backward
[Read the article: Update: Michelle Obama disagrees with me]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You can't be invested in the past while also invested in the future.
Why does it bother you that he says he's not "invested" in the battles of the sixties? Certainly, no one will say that racial equality or women's rights aren't still challenges we face. But these are not the battles of the new millenium, Joan. Obama is invested in the battles of today. He is looking forward -- not backward.
In the 60s, the world didn't despise America, and didn't associate us with torture, occupation, and destruction. We didn't have increasingly successful efforts to change America into a Christian theocracy. Our Constitution wasn't under siege. In the 60s, we weren't clearly facing global warming. in the 60s, we didn't have 8 years of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld, and company.
Attention to racial equality, women's rights -- these are all ASSUMED as part of the mission. But they are not THE battles of our current day.
And Obama knows that.
Our newest voters coming of age for the 2008 election were born in the 1990s, Joan. They were born 30 YEARS AFTER the battles of the sixties.
When you and I first voted in the late 70s, Joan, did you feel drawn to politicians whose energy was focused on still fighting the "battles of the 1940s?" -- a time before you and I were even born? I didn't. World War II was a long time before, and frankly, politicians who harped on that in the late 70s were dinsosaurs, in my mind.
How is that any different today? Why do we want politicians whose point of reference are things that happened 40 years ago?
Not being invested in the battles of the sixties is a GOOD thing. Obama has NEVER denounced those battles, and he is not saying they weren't an essential part of history. He has honored and celebrated them, as you know.
But they are NOT today. They were 40 years ago.
At a time when racial equality and women's rights were key issues, Obama had a progressive white mother who married a black man -- a very radical and counterculture thing to do in those days. As he has said in speeches, he wouldn't BE here if not for the civil rights movement. He knows that.
His mother was a single mother for much of his childhood -- and he was around strong, empowered women. He SAW the women's movement in action.
He passed up lucrative corporate America, and worked himself in the civil rights arena. LIVED IT HIMSELF -- worked it himself. At a time when civil rights were no longer even the "cause" they were in the sixties.
He married a woman who is the embodiment of a strong, empowered, educated woman.
This is not a man oblivious to the fight for racial equality or women's issues. But in living that fight and its aftermath, he is looking forward to the issues that face us today, and the issues that will face our children.
Politicians need to be aware of history, of course. But I don't want politicians mired in events of 40 years ago. I don't want politicians who practice politics circa 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990.
I don't want politicians who think that just because something's been done this way for decades, it's the way it should continue to be done.
We aren't fighting the war in Vietnam, or the civil rights movement, or the women's rights movement anymore. We have a new set of complex struggles. And we need politicians who recognize that, and bring contemporary, fresh views to those challenges, not old warhorses and workhorses who want to do same-old-same-old and keep fighting battles from 40 years ago with 40-year old tactics.
P.S. As for the first part of your video blog and your continuing discussion of the Reagan issue and Hillary's attack ad, I can only assume that, being an intelligent and self-aware person, for some reason you truly are not realizing the passive-aggresive sabotage you continue to perpetrate on the Obamas. Witness your video blog -- you repeat Hillary's accusation that Obama praised Regan, then you laundry list in detail all the terrible programs of Ronald Reagan...and then speed past in half a second the fact that Obama corrected Hillary's unfair attacks, and that he did NOT praise Reagan's policies, only his political savvy. Joan, either you're deliberately anti-Obama and trying to conceal disingenously, or you are subsconsciously acting out your feelings about Obama and don't realize it.