NYCweboy

Bitter, Party Of One

Nobody said this next part would be pretty.  There's bound to be a lot of this sort of stuff as things play out (and if you don't know why I'm feeling so good, check out Clinton here, or her poll numbers here). [And a hat tip to Anglachel, who drives traffic to me, and whose enthusiasm for Clinton makes me unworthy.]

I don't know where we heard it, or came up with it, but among my gay friends we used to have a little phrase for people who were feeling too jaded by romance: a mock Maitre D call in a restaurant - "Bitter, party of one? Your table is ready."

In the spirit of that, let's give a little sympathy to those feeling the pain:

• Bitter, Party of One.
• Bitter, Party of One.
• Bitter, Party of One.
• Bitter, Party of Two Or More, All fomenting over much ado... about very little.

Barack Obama For Vice President

A long (long) time ago, I wrote a post that lifted this little experiment in personal blogging to a whole new level - a fairly straightforward explanation of support for Hillary Clinton that I figured would cheer some friends and maybe change a mind or two. As it turns out, I managed to be part of an overall move in the blogosphere towards more full throated support for Mrs. Clinton, and a whole new notion of linked blogging among similarly minded thinkers.

In that vein, I've spent the last few days wrapping my mind around how to think about the endgame in this primary race.  And tossing it around while lying in bed, I thought the following piece needed to be written.  First, because no one has said it, simply, and I think it needs at the very least to be said; particularly so no one can say it wasn't. Second, I think it needs to be said because  I think someone needs to figure out how to end this gracefully, if, as it now appears, Hillary Clinton's general upswing since March 5th becomes an inexorable march towards success in August as the party's nominee, as weakening support for Barack Obama erodes to a point where claims of "overwhelming math" no longer seem overwhelming.

There are a lot of people who call the idea of a Clinton/Obama ticket a dream, and I think that's a mistake. At least on the Clinton side, this has never been a campaign built on dreams or fantasies; it is about realities.  And the reality is this: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama together do not, naturally, make an obvious choice for a unity ticket. But to bring the party together, we need most to respect all the people who've argued, passionately, for the people they support.  And I will be the first to admit that those who support Barack Obama have a number of valid points, and a compelling narrative about change that this nation needs to see and feel.

At the same time, I think Obama has shown that it is not yet his moment, though he has weathered a lot as a candidate and remained an inspiration, particularly to minorities and those, like me, of mixed race. And I believe, seriously, and realistically, the way to best reflect that is to nominate Barack Obama for Vice President. As with my endorsement of Clinton, I have thought out a number of reasons for this - reasons that are about being for Obama, not for a dream, or for a bald political calculation. I think Barack Obama is the right person. And here's why:

All The Wright Moves

Perhaps it's most instructive about the 24 hour news cycle that the post I planned to write yesterday on Jeremiah Wrights recent public appearances became something entirely different about 2 hours ago. That's when Barack Obama made the amazing move of coming out and doing what he should have done four weeks ago, and simply disassociate himself from his pastor.

I've said all along that the problem for Obama was never the string of inflammatory remarks put out on video that served as the springboard to "The Wright Scandal"... whatever that means. No, the deeper problem - one that Obama didn't solve with that, still legendary, but clearly not enough, speech in Philadelphia - was the question of just how deeply Obama felt about the kinds of ideas that animated Wright's preaching: angry, difficut rhetoric that  defiantly celebrated the sense that the white world had far more accounting to do for the state of things than the black community does.

That Obama answered that today - more or less - with a strong sense of responsibility on all of us in coming together, raises as many questions as it answers.  There's the question of what it does for his campaign. There's the question of how it plays in the black community.  There's the question of  what it means for Wright, and for how this story continues to play out.

And the hardest question - of how we ever plan to discuss race in a way that deals with our conflicts while finding common ground - just lays there, unexamined.

One of those weeks

Firefox just crashed as I was working on a closing sentence for a post chock full of link goodness - sort of, as it was actually full of depressing, infuriating, outrageous shit like the rape epidemic in the Congo; rising gas/food prices and housing instability and Bush's insolence, unpopularity and insulation from all the f***ing problems he helped create in the last seven years; voter suppression and pay inequity and veteran exploitation and enough already of the GOP and Bushie McSame; and the utter fiasco of fresh wounds of racism and oppression in the feminist blogosphere.  F*ck, f*ck, f*ck.

Links were my easy way out of dealing with all this sh*t I've been studiously ignoring.  I'm overdue on my tuition, struggling to find work and feeling the weight of my housing expenses in the chronic tension in my hunched shoulders and neck, and stymied by the overwhelming crises we face in this world, my inability to process much of it, my hiding out in election coverage in response, and the dismay I feel at what seems like the implosion of Obama's campaign, delivered in no shortage due to his own strategic errors, but also because of our country's racism. That's such a blunt statement that I need to expand on it, but see Rev. Wright, the media, the GOP, and the (white) American public, generally, to begin.  ALSO, SIGN HERE TO PROTEST THE NC GOP SMEAR CAMPAIGN AGAINST OBAMA.

Seriously, this rare PC crash is just the icing on the cake, and an obvious sign that I need to check out - AGAIN - from the 'sphere and get my f***ing house and life in order.

Sometimes life just sucks, don't it?

For all the gory details, I recommend Racialicious, Firedoglake, Hullabaloo, Feministe, Problem Chylde, Sudy, Fetchmyaxe, the Field Negro, Shakesville, MyDD, Diary of an Anxious Black Woman, and Pizza Diavola.  They should all be in your blogroll anyway.

At least I still have this link open - and it offends me.  No more taking one for the team, for christ's sake!!

- Redstar

Speaking Of Boring...

I am trapped at the car service place, having Paco (as I like to call him, or rather... as he told me he likes to be called) looked over.  The little guy (he's a Ford Focus) needs new tires, and some other stuff.

It's indicative, I think, of the problems our economy is having that this suburban Ford/Kia dealership is so amazingly solicitous.  Twice now, they've offered me a loaner car. This morning they did a 10 point inspection on the spot when I arrived. The waiting area has wifi (no one seems to realize - or need it - but me), full cable selection, coffee, and up to the minute magazines.

So while I take advantage of high speed download time, I just caught McCain's healthcare speech in Tampa on CNN. And here we go with another week of bad McCain news.

The Common Touch

Jeff Zeleny and Adam Nagourney (yes, good old AdNags) offer up in today's NYT the thoroughly unsurprising report that the Obama realize they have a working class people problem, and they're trying to solve it. The article does a nice job suggesting just the kind of floundering I predicted last Wednesday, where the whole campaign seems flummoxed about how to change on the fly. And as with so many Obama campaign reports, while it talks about him attending small group "town halls" and being more specific, they offer no samples of what he actually said.

Of course none of this is especially well suited to the Times' Washington based political reporters, whose notion of "working people" probably serves as the definition of... er, I said I wouldn't use that word, didn't I. Well, let's just say, they're not likely to have a beer or go bowling, either.

But it's also not clear it's well suited to Obama.  I was struck, over the weekend by both Obama's appearance on Fox (I only caught pieces, because the show goes up against Stephanopolous in New York... and I have no DVR. Pity me), and by the discussions elsewhere - even Obama's surrogates on ABC admitted that there's a need to adjust his message, and behind that, an acknowledgment that something went wrong in PA.

For his part, Obama seemed uncomfortable and ill-suited for Chris Wallace.  As always, his defenses of his record in the Senate - as a reliably Democratic vote, Wallace noted - seemed, well, defensive; though he's right about the idea that we need to ratchet down partisan divides, he actually offers little sense of how to achieve it, and that, I think, is the far deeper problem with his campaign: that it's central premise is so poorly fleshed out. Moreover, there were plenty of smaller things that could trip him up.  Matt Stoller at Open Left - an Obama supporter - was totally nonplussed by the triangulation with GOP positions.  Myself, I raised an eyebrow at his suggestion that there was an appropriate way to limit third trimester abortions, though it turned out he was using the expansive "health of the mother" language that, as opponents note, doesn't really limit them. But I think Obama managed to get stuck in it precisely because he was trying to thread the needle - pro-choice activists will not love the answer, but the idea that his answer shows "common ground" with conservatives is also ludicrous.

And then there's the stuff in today's Times.

The Week In John McCain

With all the hand wringing about how "distracting" the primary race is (So Hillary Should Get Out Now ™), you'd think John McCain was some sort of genius. The proof of this, we keep getting told, is all the brilliant work he's doing while "the public isn't watching." Um, yeah... great work trying to get the public to watch. But hey, we shouldn't ignore the man - I mean, he is the Republican nominee, right? (Well, sort of; he's kind of passed the required number of delegates to win... but more on that in a minute.)

No, to be serious for a moment: I'm mindful of the case to be made tht McCain has a free forum to make his case to the people while Democrats work on selecting a nominee.  But still.  You look at these 4 events of the week, and tell me: is this the best the GOP has?

• McCain and Money. One of the most fearsome elements of McCain's "time off the campaign trail" we were told, was that he would solve a problem that's dogged the party since 2006: money raising on their side has fallen through the floor. With unity at the presidential level, we were told, McCain could finally tap those donors (which, given the current vogue for "tap that" in another context, isn't helping, either). Well, the results are in and... it's already over: McCain has announced that he's officially going into public financing - which may not have been a choice, given that he probably violated the law for public funding when he took out a loan against future public funds, then claimed he wasn't going to get them. This came after McCain's dismal March when both Clinton and Obama out-raised him, again. And after all the handwringing that we'd wind up in late summer with a cash poor candidate struggling for dollars, it turns out... that's McCain, who plans to rely on... wait for it... the Republican Party and 527 groups to run negative ads. Um, kind of the way McCain-Feingold was supposed to stop them... but never mind. McCain might be able to use this to his advantage as the "clean guy" compared to Dem "dirty fundraising", but the fact remains that most of the people who don't like filthy rich people's money in the election process are Democrats. And a lot of them - though not me - are much happier to see us winning, even with the money (the thin film we lay over it that "all this money comes from small donors on the internet" is nice, but hardly the whole story). The upshot is McCain enters the campaign already at a weak point.
• McCain and voting. Then there's Pennsylvania, which handily answered the question of just how well McCain united the party. That's right, with only one contestant in any position to claim victory... 27% of Pennsylvania Republicans who showed up to vote voted for someone else... namely Huckabee or Ron Paul. That's not big deal? Well, no, not really; but it's a reminder that McCain is still not the choice of religious conservatives or libertarians, two constituencies that help make the glue that holds the GOP together in a victory stance. Without them, meaning if they stay home (because they're not voting in any meaningful for Clinton or Obama), McCain is relying on independents to make up his balance.  And that's terrible strategy whether we're talking about Clinton or Obaa as his opponent: Obama already has strong appeal with independents, and Clinton bites into the working class voters (Reagan Democrats) McCain might well appeal to otherwise.  He needs strong base turnout. Nothing suggests he's closed that deal.
• McCain and women. Then there was the simmering story of McCain's announcement that he opposed The Lily Ledbetter Act, a proposal in congress to restore wage discrimination protections tightened in the Supreme Court decision against Ledbetter. My suggestion: read Gail Collins on this, because she took what an issue I was only half listening to, and pretty much socked McCain with it (reminding all of us that while the Times has two women writing regularly on the op-ed page, only one is really a feminist).  It's not that McCain opposes the bill, or that his vote would make the difference (though clearly, he could influence others); no, it's the patronizing way he suggested that paying women less was just fine. That's not "third wave" women's issues, that's old school feminism about basic equality... and lots of people get it.  And it's a perfect issue to wreck McCain's chances with women voters.
• McCain and Poverty, Katrina... and the rest. Meanwhile McCain's been on a "destitution tour" of places that Republicans can't really ever hope to win: he went to Selma to try and pretend the GOP doesn't have a black voter problem, to Inez, Kentucky to suggest he actually cares about poor people... and to the Ninth Ward of New Orleans to tell us, bravely... that he thinks the Bush Administration did a terrible job responding to Katrina. Because God knows, some people still think they did okay. I was hoping Red would tear into this - she's far more knowledgeable on it than I, but each backfiring stop on this tour is its own special mess, none more so than NOLA, where concern about response efforts 3 years ago is beside the point; asked what he'd do about rebuilding issues as they stand now, McCain lamely offered a notion of gathering leaders together to "discuss" what should be rebuilt, and what shouldn't. It didn't take long for New Orleans experts to point out the ludicrousness: they've been "discussed" to death; what needs to happen is government moving money and programs into place that help with rebuilding and remove beaurocratic hurdles (and take charge of levee rebuilding, which is key). The Ninth Ward itself is some of the highest land in New Orleans. Of course it will be rebuilt. But that's McCain for ya: bravely opposing Bush on the thing everybody already hates him for.

If this is a good week for Mccain... I'd hate to see a bad one.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes... Or Their Eyes... Something.

I'm really too old for the cult of Doogie Howser, MD. I was in my twenties when it started, and the premise, while charming, never really did it for me (14 year old doctor/genius... whatev).  But I can see why, for high school geeks like the kind I was, such a premise, smartly played, would have lasting impact.

No, for me, the appreciation of Neil Patrick Harris is in what he's become: the child star who's not a cautionary tale, the guy who proves it's possible to be a working actor and not wind up a tabloid nightmare (I was going to say "not warped"... but I think he kind of might be... in a good way), and of course, the guy who's comfortably gay without making a big deal of it.

I mention all of this, of course, because it's impossible to discuss Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay and not mentioon the Cult of Neil. The one-two punch of Neil's first star turn in Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, followed by the immediate success of How I Met Your Mother, is what revived Neil's place in pop culture, and it's to his credit that he's managed to make a new career as the youthful, leering bore work for him far better than it should, by rights.

It also kind of goes without saying that Neil's all-too-brief turn in H&K...Gunatanamo Bay is the film's finest 15 minutes (if that).  Too brief, too funny, the scenes with Harris are every bit as anarchic and amusing as the first go round (who else, really, could make "I'm going to get my f*ck on"  both rallying cry and pathetic, at once?), and they underscore the best and worst of sequels like this, where what worked the first time can't sustain a second go round. And what we're left with is a pale notion of what made the first one such a left field success.

Quick, like a Bunny! Yo, Madonna! How About a Clinton fundraiser?

Certainly, you can top Elton's net, yes? 

Oh, and weboy? The perfect pop single?...It lasts five minutes, give or take.  ; )  jinbaltimore

...And What We Can't Talk About, When We Do Talk About Race... And Barack Obama.

It doesn't surprise me that one outcome of this week's primary results is that the tensions of talking about the dynamics of this election season have gotten rougher; a lot of Obama supporters - which could easily be described as "the media" - have had to readjust to the fact that Clinton's win in PA was solid, as good as her supporters expected, if not better, and made it clear that things we'd been saying were turning out to be true. And that, in turn, has led to some expected hand-wringing about the kind of divide the results exposed.

Put another, less PC way... it's gotten hard to ignore that some white people don't vote for Barack Obama.

The question, of course is why.  And in order to discuss that, naturally, we need to talk about some difficult subjects. And race, really is only part of it.  It's also class, and economics, and cultural tensions... but simmering under and around all of it is people talking frankly about race in a way that most people find uncomfortable, a way that has to acknowledge perceptions and prejudices without, necessarily, giving into them.

And I mean that both ways: some, I think, struggle with a way to talk about working class white voters that doesn't resort to "redneck" or "trailer trash" type stereotyping; the opposite, of course, is sweeping generalizations about black people that  are clearly prejudiced if not flat out racist. Complicating it are perceptions, stereotypes and casual notions many of us hold, things we rarely admit, or discuss with strangers.