Letters to the Editor
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a superficial people produce superfial politics
"Actually, I have to say I'm surprised that over the past couple of days we've all apparently become so willfully ignorant about the bad side of our voting habits. We (and by we I mean the American media and the American public as a whole) are intensely superficial when it comes to choosing our elected officials."
I agree.
Gore Vidal once remarked that this country doesn't have politics, it has elections. Meaning that Americans, a rabidly anti-intellectual but not necessarily dumb people, pay no attention to process and policies or current events during the off-political season, but go crazy every four years during a presidential elections. They listen to rumours and form political judgments based on the flimsiest excusions. People based their political opinion on the fact that they don't know much about politics or civic afffairs or how they government is run, or about each others as citizens and neighbors.
I wasn't surprised when Obama popped up and black intellectuals—left,right and center—started saying he isn't "black like me" or he isn't an "African-American like I'm an African American"—and these were supposedly the best and brightest! Even black politics has entered an era of superficiality.
Obama may be the best thing about black poltics because—irony of all ironies—he doesn't talk about black issues to the exclusion of what binds us together as a people, and most people feel that a change is gonna come.
Most of the race and gender talk has been an embarassment and juvenile. The media, which pushes a great of the crap, is increasingly guided by the "freak show," which Ferraro comments become a part of.
So it doesn't suprise me...a superficial people produce superficial politics.
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Will this be an issue? Should Alex write about it? Can this be defended?
This was posted up in the thread but I haven't seen anyone comment on it:
So what do you think of the new footage of Minister Wright talking about Hillary? Just curious -- the whole "Hillary aint never been called a nigger" rant...please check it out and tell me what you think...I am curious. The "Blacks shouldn't sing God Bless America...they should sing God Damn America..."
Take a look -- and the soap opera continues...
-- joejoe
Brian Ross of ABC News did a piece on this today. You can go there and see the video. This is Obama's "mentor", not just a party "elder" who was a volunteer from what I understand. If Obama disagrees with this, why has he continued to attend this church and listen to these sermons for 20 years? Is this a legitimate question or just another Hillary plot?
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@AKA Smith
Sorry, wrote a nice long response to you, but saw that D. Blixt, Fester and my personal television hero, Dr. Zachary Smith, said it a lot better than I did. So, what they said . . .
And for Dr. Smith, the Mechanical Men from the Planet Industro remain willing to follow you in glorious conquest . . .
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Intellectual Honesty isn’t always p.c. …
...that’s the message Alex seems to be sticking with, and in an incredibly narrow way, this might be true.
There are clearly benefits to Obama being a black man (the chance to be the “Jackie Robinson of the Oval Office” motivates press coverage and voters, for example).
There are just as clearly, though, plenty of hurdles he faces BECAUSE he is black and has non-WASPish name. In fact, many of these hurdles seem to be coming from the GOP and the Clinton Campaign, which just might be why Ferraro’s purportedly “innocent and merely analytical” comments are so scrutinized.
First of all, Obama (President of the Harvard Law Review) is clearly no Dan Quayle or George Bush Jr. who stumbled his way into office due to favoritism.
Secondly, consider the political atmosphere: the GOP actually polls to see just how racist they can go before it turns people off. There are whisper campaigns—which both pander to and inflame group-think hatred and, in fact, hate crimes—directed at Obama which bring us back to Rove 2004: “McCain has a black baby” and “Jon Kerry is a French Draft Dodger.” The same dude who once wasn’t “black enough” is now being painted as a frightening militant black terrorist. And Hilary’s principles don’t seem to compel her to “denounce and reject” the support of racially frightened whites. THIS is the part that makes this a story.
Okay, so MAYBE when Slick Willy likened Obama’s victory to Jesse Jackson’s, he was just talking strategy and demographics, not trying to send secret signals to white people that they should band together against the Other.
[Maybe when Hilary implied that she and McCain had both passed “the Commander in Chief Test” and Obama had not, she was sincerely concerned about his abilities. And maybe she was just as concerned and genuine when she next offered Obama the Frontrunner—“not Commander in Chief material”—the chance to be her Veep (a heartbeat away).]
Hillary, when given a chance to defuse verifiable lies about Obama’s religion, said: No he’s not a Muslim, “as far as I know.” Maybe these ARE the words of a genuine civil rights crusader who holds American ideals dear…
And that Obama in native garb photo: well, maybe it didn’t slip out of Hilary’s campaign after all, but even if this is this case, her campaign played dumb—pretending they couldn’t imagine what might be offensive…Obama didn’t have anything against Muslims, did he? Is this Democratic unity in the face of racist fear-mongering propaganda?
*There is a lot of genuine sexism in this country and misogyny demonstrated by the coverage Hillary has received. It bothers me, and I can also understand why women (and men) might be ready to bust up the boys’ club. That said, just because Hillary is a woman doesn’t mean she necessarily embodies feminist/feminine values (or the Enlightenment values this country was founded upon).
[But what does this mean? Feminists aren’t a monolithic group who receive ideological training and march out into the world ready to re-educate nonbelievers. Feminism is a big tent, capable of holding all kinds of values, cultures, and approaches.
That said, in my experience, feminists do tend to have some common tenets. They think women should be treated equally, and their ideas and experiences valued as much as those of men. They also tend to be progressive and think holistically, to value diversity, to see debate as a way of sharing ideas and reaching agreement rather than as a boxing match. Of course, there’s no law that says a feminist can’t be racist if she or he chooses, but I for one think it’s unfair to feminism to reduce it to voting for a candidate because she’s a woman, ESPECIALLY if that candidate’s values and actions seem contradictory to a great many of the larger ideals within feminism itself.]
And to see Hillary crying sexism, then nakedly appealing to women to vote for her because she’s a woman, then contributing to and not defusing the virulent hate attacks on Obama (+ black people, Muslim people), then mocking the hope of the masses for better, then trotting out “He only got nominated because he’s black,” and treating completely legitimate complaints about dirty politicking as sleazy attacks… well, there is certainly something circular, if not holistic, about that.
Good stuff, Alex. You’re gettin’ there.
The biggest reason the deck is stacked in favor of Obama, by his own admission, is that people are fed up. Obama represents genuine and principled political reform, while Hilary looks more and more Machiavellian as each day passes.