NYCweboy

Something To... Talk About?

The generally sour reaction to President Obama's proposed "half day health summit" meeting strikes me as proof that despite a lot of naysaying, the President is playing to his strengths. We may not get a health bill out of it, but I think  the moment for high optimism on that front is well past anyway.

Obviously, the White House team is feeling confident about a similar replay of the House Republican retreat dynamics. And so, apparently, are the House Republicans, who have attached a letter of conditions to their decision to attend; the letter is cleverly worded enough to provide plenty of potential loopholes for them to use as excuses, the main one being using "scrap the exitsing bills and start over" as a starting point for any discussion.

What's brilliant is that Obama has, yet again, reframed the discussion so that failure rests with the GOP: back out of the meeting... and you can't say no one offered to meet. Go to the meeting... and a failure to find common ground will rest with you at least as much as anyone else.

Of course, the real reason the summit is lose-lose for Republicans is because Republicans have so little to offer in terms of alternative proposals on healthcare issues. As with many issues these days, Republicans don't actually have a unified position outside of "no", and they are even more hamstrung on health policy because so few right side folks actually make health policy a subject of concern.  They've been slow off the mark, and the proposals they've floated are often ones which have been tossed around lefty healthcare discussions for years and discarded as either too little or unlikely to succeed. Republican rank and file are, as well, the folks most likely to say they don't see a problem or that we "have the greatest healthcare system in the world." There are a lot of steps that have to be taken just to get a discussion on the same page.

All of that, combined with our current tense political scene, has convinced a lot of progressives that another meeting is just a recipe for additional disaster. Nothing will come of it. Republicans will parade their usual outlandish objections (this argument sounds suspiciously similar to conservative claims that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will use his terror trial for propaganda purposes). There won't be any way to get a compromise... and any compromise they could get is probably the worst thing imaginable.

I think the bottom line is everybody needs a wake up call: most of all, as Obama's last forum with Republicans showed, it's helpful for Americans to see our government leaders engaged in the process of governing. That's even more true on healthcare, where most of the public, still, has little understanding of all the issues involved. A summit meeting - which the Obama folks attempted last year, but executed weakly and then abandoned - would be a good "reboot" to getting public support for some sort of healthcare plan. And progressives need the stark realities laid out: the hope for salvaging either the existing House or Senate bill is unlikely. Figuring out what is doable, and then doing something, is better than nothing.

But again, the real strength of the summit is that Republicans won't just be able to whine about having ideas that are ignored... they will actually have to present them, or admit they don't exist. And Republicans won't just have a theoretical strategy of "trying to use healthcare against the Democrats" - they will have to have staked an actual, substantive position, and provided the real outlines of a choice. And then see how that works for them.

Too much of our political debate, these days, is abstraction - the abstract ideas of what conservatism might be against the largely theoretical (even now) proposals of what Democrats might do if given a chance. And while I have my frustrations with the President's own preference for abstractions... the fact remains, in a forum where policy ideas are debated down to their details, President Obama is at his best. Which, for all of us, is where we need him to be. And making our politics something to talk about - something concrete and connected to our actual problems - would be a welcome change. Change you could hope for, and maybe even believe in. Again.

Please Stop Your Crying Now

Well, thank goodness. The New Orleans Saints have won the Super Bowl... so clearly we don't have to worry about them anymore. It's almost like Katrina never happened... right?

In the worst way.

I thought Melissa McEwan's takedown on Friday was a little much (I still do... but that can wait), but in the wake of the Saints actually winning, it does bear extending her basic point: winning the Super Bowl does not solve a host of remaining, lingering issues that stem from a failure to deal fully, fairly, or well with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Civic pride is wonderful, and rooting for the home team is admirable (even in Boston), but what's happening here, really, is yet another attempt to salve the national conscience by excusing our woeful national failure to ever do the things needed to restore and rebuild New Orleans in a sensible, thoughtful way. New Orleans is not safer, stronger, or in particularly better economic shape, and to pretend that a football victory fixes some sort of "mood problem" is both reductive and insulting to the people working hard, even now, to put things back together.

The mistake, I think, is laying blame for this narrative on football fans; it's unfair to blame the audience, really, for not knowing what they have not been shown, or told. Even if we have, as Americans, a short attention span and a rlentless interest in the new next big thing, the failure to keep the recovery efforts in the national spotlight rests with the worst instincts of the media to keep bad news and inconvenient information out of sight as long as possible.

The lesson learned from Katrina, ironically, seems to be helping Haiti: news organizations, so far, are keeping up with a story rather than dropping it, asking how rescue translates into recovery, and how recovery is complicated by a history of corruption and ineffectual leadership. Gee... I wonder if those questions applied in some form to New Orleans... oh, never mind.

I'm happy to admit, even though I didn't watch, I wasn't entirely uninterested; I was rooting for New Orleans too, and it's partly because of the affection I have for the place. But "what does a Super Bowl win mean for New Orleans" is not a way to answer questions about Katrina recovery and all that we have failed to accomplish. When the party's over - although, come to think of it, now we've got Mardi Gras, too - okay, in a month or so, when the parties end and reality intrudes once more, New Orleans will still be a story about many unmet needs, many unfinished projects, and a lot of residual issues. But I'm guessing, on a national level, we'll be well onto the next exciting story from somehwere else. But at least we'll know New Orleans is resting comfortably, now that they've won the Super Bowl... right?

Southern Storms, And The Pet Theories We Keep On A Leash

It's very odd living north of a blizzard.

Across NYC and the suburbs, we were promised, at the very least, a glancing blow: at least a few inches of snow as the massive storm passed by, relieved to miss a direct hit. Instead, come Saturday morning, it was clear we were to be denied: not even a flurry, or a flake, never mind a light dusting. There was, I'd say, a pretty collective disgust at having been promised a snowstorm, and getting nothing.

I wonder if this is how Buffalo feels when New York City gets the brunt of an East Coast storm.

The nearly three feet of snow in Baltimore brought me back to my childhood and the blizzard of 1978, when a friend of my mom's came for dinner on the night of the big storm... and stayed for a week. We didn't have school for two - which wrecked the school calendar - and for the first few days "playing in the snow" amounted to put on snow clothes, venturing out the front door, wading about 4 feet out into the yard in waist deep snow, and coming back for cocoa. Good times.

Around here, today, life goes on pretty much uninterrupted; the snowed in Mid-Atlantic makes an interesting case to observe, to remind ourselves that up here in North Country we know how to handle our snowfall, a weather anomaly to prove whatever pet theory we carry around about global warming.

It snowed, a lot. That must mean... something, right?

Anomalous is probably a lousy barometer of climate issues; I mean, it does matter that we've been getting bad hurricanes, mudslides in southern California, blizzards more likely to snow in DC than Boston... but nature is unpredictable. Sometimes it snows in April. You can't necessarily draw a lot of conclusions from isolated incidents, and that, really, is the whole point of scientific study.

Conservatives, as they do in winter months, have taken this week's storm as another way to question reports of global warming, restoring, if nothing else, faith in their absolute scientific illiteracy. Who cares what science says? Look at that snow!

The trouble with our global warming conversation, I think, is that the left has a similar, opposite struggle, taking these anomalous events and pointing to their anomalousness as proof warming exists: it snowed in DC! it didn't snow in Boston! We're all doomed! Look at that snow!

We have a global warming problem, it should be noted, because we have science for it (and that, despite the efforts over the past few months to try and debunk the research with a cache of stolen e-mails which reveal far less than many suggest): global temperatures that appear to be rising, and global effects that demonstrate concerning changes over time.  It's not a snowstorm. It's not a melting glacier. It's not a hurricane in October. It's everything.

I don't know what to do about global warming. I'm not sure a lot of people do, and I'm not convinced liberals do a great job of staking out environmental policy built around debatable notions of what "stops" global warming: science is not quite as conclusive as our policy proposals suggest. But all of that doesn't negate the obvious: global warming is clearly happening, and is just as clearly a problem. Snowstorm or no, three feet in Baltimore or clear streets in New York... that doesn't really change. It's not the deepest thought on a snowy day, but it might help keep those pet theories in perspective.

A Course In Miracles

A week off from political writing is remarkably cleansing: I resume my recommendation of time off from blogging; I'm even getting comfortable with the idea of taking the time I need, and just seeing where that takes me.

I get the impression that during my little break... things did not go well.

The first six weeks or so of 2010 have provided a remarkable amount of the impression of political unrest... without much to show in the way of actual results. Sure, we now have Scott Brown and considerably changed calculus in the Senate (and that, alone, may indeed be explanation enough for all that's come since)... but really, very little has happened, and despite gloomy projections on a number of fronts (health legislation being DOA, with environmental work close behind), nothing is quite so doomed as to have no solution at all.

Personally, I'm struck by the left wing freak-out: from fear of election disaster, to a sudden, often startling rise in intraparty infighting, Democrats seem to be in full flower with our fervent best. It's all bad. Everyone's lousy. How did this happen? Aieee!

Lucianne Goldberg used to refer to this as "dress up over your head" politics, which I always found both hilarious as an image and, of course, quite offensive (and isn't that humor in a nutshell? Especially these days?). But she doesn't do it quite so much these days, partly I suspect because she might have realized the term suits a good bit of right wing freakouts these days, especially, er, with Sarah Palin. And I think the real lesson here, right now, is that both sides are having a freakout, which suggests to me that we're in a moment where we're waiting for another shoe to drop.

As much as I think progressives have every reason to be deeply worried, and unhappy, with some of what's happening, I'd say the past few weeks - the Scott Brown Victory Lap, if you will - have been a good reminder that Republican hopes for significant reversals in this fall's elections are just that: hoping. The distance between excessive hope and actual success is still remarkably wide. And a lot of what's freaking us out, I suspect... is not really about the hard problems we actually have to face.

Saturday Singalong: On And On And On...

This is actually me admitting that, for a variety of personal reasons, I've been taking most of the week off. So, I've decided that I'll resume officially tomorrow.

In the meantime, you could listen to the radio. :)

Miss You Much.

NYCweboy

Friday Evening Floralude

jinb
 

The Walk-in Celluloid Closet

With Oscar nominations due in hours, I had been hoping to clear out a few film reviews that seemed to matter to the Oscar race. Then RuPaul's Drag Race premiered last night... and that was that.

Still, I should be able to get at least one in, and with it, a few mild observations about what I think is about to happen, Oscar-wise.

This year, I think we're getting a lot of foregone conclusions - it's hard to see anyone beating Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart, or Mo'Nique for Precious, or that guy in Inglorious Basterds for Supporting Actor (they seem to be on a special tear of using Best Supporting Actor to reward particularly unknown talents). Of all of them, I think I'm least moved by Sandra Bullock riding The Blind Side to an Oscar... but oh well.

Part of the reason for those foregone conclusions is that there are so few standout films and so few breakout roles from last year. Oscar season - a/k/a the holiday film schedule - seemed kind of thin and art films seemed overwhelmed by commercial projects (certainly Avatar, but even stuff like Blind Side) with a thin "artistic" veneer.

All of which is a polite way of saying that much of what was expected to be exceptional, often failed to deliver on the promise - Precious, I think, being the lone holdout.

One example of failing to live up to its hype, yet still managing to make a mark, is Tom Ford's directorial debut, A Single Man. Ford's small, stylish film had been a hit of last year's film festival circuit, and was expected to make a splash in art houses, especially with the gay community. The fact that it kind of fizzled, I think, has everything to do with Ford delivering about exactly what you'd expect from a fashion designer turned film director - a film of coldly beautiful images, almost entirely emotionally uninvolving, whose overarching themes were uncomfortably close to familiar, negative tropes about gays and especially gay men as seen on film.