Kill Me Now
One thing I am kind of glad for is that my vacation kept me away from much of the news. The "Bobby Kennedy remark" controversy managed to blow by with me almost not noticing it at all, such that I found Stephanopolous trying to drag an extra day out of it by getting David Axelrod to offer up more outrage a little desperate and odd.
Not only do I not see what the big deal is, I don't think the comment - that the 1968 race was still in a state of flux when Kennedy won California in June, and was killed the same night - said anything we didn't know anyway (and nothing Clinton hadn't said before, as well).
But I do think the "controversy" and the continued outrage at various blogs does speak to a hurdle Hillary Clinton has faced all along, and is probably the reason not only that we are where we are, but why we will, still, probably wind up with Obama as the nominee (and not with Clinton as VP): there's an antipathy to Hillary Clinton - not just generalized sexism - that's visceral, and personal. And that's why, ultimately, this week's stage managed kerfuffle is less about Bobby Kennedy or 1968 - or even the fear of an Obama assassination attempt - than it is about finding something, anything, to justify not just picking Obama over her, but somehow destroying her and her reputation.
Not only do I not see what the big deal is, I don't think the comment - that the 1968 race was still in a state of flux when Kennedy won California in June, and was killed the same night - said anything we didn't know anyway (and nothing Clinton hadn't said before, as well).
But I do think the "controversy" and the continued outrage at various blogs does speak to a hurdle Hillary Clinton has faced all along, and is probably the reason not only that we are where we are, but why we will, still, probably wind up with Obama as the nominee (and not with Clinton as VP): there's an antipathy to Hillary Clinton - not just generalized sexism - that's visceral, and personal. And that's why, ultimately, this week's stage managed kerfuffle is less about Bobby Kennedy or 1968 - or even the fear of an Obama assassination attempt - than it is about finding something, anything, to justify not just picking Obama over her, but somehow destroying her and her reputation.
One thing I wish we would get over is this "convenient nearby historical parallel" approach to writing: this isn't 1968, and a convenient set of 40th anniversary moments does not make it so; we've had a lot of 40th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination discussions, we're about to go through a Kennedy orgy surely (helped, no doubt, by both Ted Sorenson's shilling for his own book, and the early eulogies for Ted Kennedy), and probably a "Summer in Chicago" discussion of riots at the convention (oh, and I neglect to mention the 40th anniversary of events at Columbia too).
Despite the antiwar outrages we have right now, the sense of anarchy and society on the brink simply isn't there anymore. Our outrages, now, are far more mundane, our social disputes far less fraight with energy and turmoil as they were at the pivotal moments of 1968. It's Boomer mythology that insists, so heavily, on continuing to gaze, endlessly, at"defining" moments that don't, really, define the way we live now.
I simply don't share the somewhat odd, outsized fears many black people have that Barack Obama is at some great risk of being killed. I think it overstates Obama's "controversial" role as a candidate to think he's awakened some deeply stoked fires of hatred and animus that would get expressed in a way like ether Kennedy brother. It's mis-remembering the times, and who they were, to see Obama as equivalent or his role in out political life as similar. Bobby Kennedy, by 1968, was speaking, in a deeply challenging way, towards the establishment and the status quo, particularly towards an establishment that had made Vietnam such a spectacle of failure and death. By almost any measure, Obama's rhetoric, his politics, and his circumstances, hardly reach the heights of controversy, or the depths of scoial tension embodied in the words and lives of a Kennedy or a King.
That's not a bad thing, really. It's helpful, I think, that we are not a nation, these days, where our leaders die and our cities burn. It's helpful that our biggest differences, in many ways, are deciding between the almost entirely similar positions of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, or even the opposition views of a John McCain. Our controversies are things that can be discussed, hashed out, resolved. This is not the dawn of a new revolution; one that, really, we've never particularly wanted, as a nation, anyway.
Still, the reason this controversy will not die is less about the dim parallels to a 1968 few really remember or understand fully, and more about the visceral dislike Mrs. Clinton engenders in some quarters. I know it's out there, in no small measure, because I was part of it; facing the prospect of Mrs. Clinton's inevitability as it looked last summer and fall, I wondered if anyone could crystallize opposition to her, or if she would prevail without serious challenge. At the time, I thought Obama too green, too untested to succeed. It didn't, honestly, occur to me that "green" and "untested" would be used as strengths.
Over the weekend, I heard commentators - I can't recall exactly who - refer to Obama's "unprecedented" need for Secret Service protection, suggesting he was the first candidate, this cycle, to get it. That's not true, of course: the person who had Secrest Service protection all along, and has since 1992, is Hillary Clinton, who has surely faced years of visceral, outsize hatred and does not, generally, make a big deal of worrying about it.
I don't think it's healthy or helpful to look at all of this from a position of fear; one can't eliminate the notions that assassinations exist as a possibility, but in our heavily secured world these days, the likelihood seems awfully distant to cause the furor that's cropped up lately. I'm not sure that matters to the people who see in Hillary Clinton everything awful and base (and scheming and conniving) in our natures, and all that is wrong with politics. I don't think it's "Clinton Derangement Syndrome" because I think equating political opposition to mental illness - something conservatives overused in relation to President Bush - has run its course. Disliking Mrs. Clinton, as a personal matter, is smaller and I think sadder, than that. It's refusing to see Mrs. Clinton's humanity, her (admitted) imperfections, her concerns, as part of a whole picture. I'm not sure anyone could overcome that... and I'm not sure Mrs. Clinton ever could. And it's killing her... candidacy, if not her political future. Which strikes me as the real hit job, this past week. But then, killing isn't my metaphor. And I wish it wasn't ours, more generally.
Despite the antiwar outrages we have right now, the sense of anarchy and society on the brink simply isn't there anymore. Our outrages, now, are far more mundane, our social disputes far less fraight with energy and turmoil as they were at the pivotal moments of 1968. It's Boomer mythology that insists, so heavily, on continuing to gaze, endlessly, at"defining" moments that don't, really, define the way we live now.
I simply don't share the somewhat odd, outsized fears many black people have that Barack Obama is at some great risk of being killed. I think it overstates Obama's "controversial" role as a candidate to think he's awakened some deeply stoked fires of hatred and animus that would get expressed in a way like ether Kennedy brother. It's mis-remembering the times, and who they were, to see Obama as equivalent or his role in out political life as similar. Bobby Kennedy, by 1968, was speaking, in a deeply challenging way, towards the establishment and the status quo, particularly towards an establishment that had made Vietnam such a spectacle of failure and death. By almost any measure, Obama's rhetoric, his politics, and his circumstances, hardly reach the heights of controversy, or the depths of scoial tension embodied in the words and lives of a Kennedy or a King.
That's not a bad thing, really. It's helpful, I think, that we are not a nation, these days, where our leaders die and our cities burn. It's helpful that our biggest differences, in many ways, are deciding between the almost entirely similar positions of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, or even the opposition views of a John McCain. Our controversies are things that can be discussed, hashed out, resolved. This is not the dawn of a new revolution; one that, really, we've never particularly wanted, as a nation, anyway.
Still, the reason this controversy will not die is less about the dim parallels to a 1968 few really remember or understand fully, and more about the visceral dislike Mrs. Clinton engenders in some quarters. I know it's out there, in no small measure, because I was part of it; facing the prospect of Mrs. Clinton's inevitability as it looked last summer and fall, I wondered if anyone could crystallize opposition to her, or if she would prevail without serious challenge. At the time, I thought Obama too green, too untested to succeed. It didn't, honestly, occur to me that "green" and "untested" would be used as strengths.
Over the weekend, I heard commentators - I can't recall exactly who - refer to Obama's "unprecedented" need for Secret Service protection, suggesting he was the first candidate, this cycle, to get it. That's not true, of course: the person who had Secrest Service protection all along, and has since 1992, is Hillary Clinton, who has surely faced years of visceral, outsize hatred and does not, generally, make a big deal of worrying about it.
I don't think it's healthy or helpful to look at all of this from a position of fear; one can't eliminate the notions that assassinations exist as a possibility, but in our heavily secured world these days, the likelihood seems awfully distant to cause the furor that's cropped up lately. I'm not sure that matters to the people who see in Hillary Clinton everything awful and base (and scheming and conniving) in our natures, and all that is wrong with politics. I don't think it's "Clinton Derangement Syndrome" because I think equating political opposition to mental illness - something conservatives overused in relation to President Bush - has run its course. Disliking Mrs. Clinton, as a personal matter, is smaller and I think sadder, than that. It's refusing to see Mrs. Clinton's humanity, her (admitted) imperfections, her concerns, as part of a whole picture. I'm not sure anyone could overcome that... and I'm not sure Mrs. Clinton ever could. And it's killing her... candidacy, if not her political future. Which strikes me as the real hit job, this past week. But then, killing isn't my metaphor. And I wish it wasn't ours, more generally.
You forgot about Foster and the puppies.
Posted by: jinbaltimore | May 27, 2008 at 10:16 AM
I've been ruminating on something deep about this latest disaster too...this is an interesting post. Makes me sad.
Posted by: Redstar | May 27, 2008 at 12:03 PM
What has passed for political opposition and discourse this election cycle is something this country should be, and will be, deeply ashamed of. Clinton Derangement Syndrome is a mental illness and it IS the political opposition. No facts, no personal experience, no real history, just a contageous result of having swallowed years and years of swill from whoever can yell the loudest, write the most filth - that sir, is the opposition and to discount the millions who got their shots whilst doing their own research, would be a huge mistake.
Posted by: Phylise | May 28, 2008 at 01:53 AM
It's fairly easy for people in New York to misunderstand the degree of intolerance in the rest of the nation. You might think that we are not living in an age where "our cities burn" (though since your own recently did so I think the comment strange), but the deranged and maladjusted typically need little prodding to do the despicable or dangerous. John Hinckley thought that Jodie Foster would date him for shooting Reagan. that was a generation ago. But it was not so long ago that we should forget the lesson that "crazy" cannot be accounted for or defended against. It was crazy that inspired people to fly perfectly decent airplanes in to perfectly decent buildings, I think, for a political reason. How is it such a stretch to think that one man in a bunker in the hills of Montana might take it upon himself to make Hillary Clinton the President?
Reading half the blogs on pro-Hillary websites makes me think that not a few would at least sigh internally with relief if some nut case were to do what they perhaps secretly hope. You're lofty principles are fair and justifiably goals, but to think that we have reached beyond a point in human history where a minority of one will seek to solve their disputes through the use of a gun is, to use the word of the week, naive. It is for that reason that politicians should not make obtuse, thoughtless remarks that might encourage the least stable among us to do just that. It is that reality, not the principles you articulate, that makes her comment thoughtless and wrong, and makes her unfit to serve in the office which she seeks.
Posted by: JSF | May 28, 2008 at 12:35 PM
JSF Alert! Prepare for hyperbolic accusations lobbied at you for expressing your opinions! Ah! There's one now...that Clinton supporters will secretly be glad if Obama is killed. Miss the point of the post, much???
Posted by: Redstar | May 28, 2008 at 12:49 PM
And, really, given that Ms. Clinton is the one who's trailing in delegates, is the one who's related to someone who'd already been president, and is someone from a famous family, the claim could be made equally well that she's saying "the Obama supporters will have to kill me to get me out of this race."
But that's almost as silly as what Mr. Obama's campaign is claiming. (With the slight difference being that I'm not the Obama campaign, but just some guy with a website.)
Posted by: David Parsons | May 28, 2008 at 02:43 PM