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The Revolution, Televised

At first, I didn't want to write something about Egypt's turmoil because things seemed to be changing moment to moment.

As events (and non-events) have unfolded, I think the opposite is true: there's not much to write about Egypt, because in many ways, nothing has exactly happened, yet.

Egypt may well be the first televised modern revolt, partly by timing, partly because, despite Mubarak's authoritarian instincts, Egypt has been a fairly secular society which hasn't limited access to various media. Indeed, Mubarak's inability to black out and isolate his protestors is as good an example as any of his wishy-washy presentation as an iron fisted leader. The really successful dictators know enough to insist on total control. Of everything.

For all the talk of how tweeting and facebook and "social media" have vastly changed the opportunities to communicate in situations like this, it's television that still makes the story a story. More than anything, the Egyptian government can't get these protests under control because doing so - shooting at civilians, quelling riots - would happen in plain view of the cameras watching events 24/7. Violence and streetb protests make, as they say, great television. And right now, the story of Egypt is really a story about watching and waiting. TV has created the impression that there's a fast moving, ever changing story on the ground... but mostly, it's the effect of heightening tension in hopes of a dramatic resolution.

As with Tunisia, the Egyptians have one simple demand: the removal of the totalitarian in charge. The unraveling of the past few days has been amazing, mostly because Mubarak has offered cosmetic change after cosmetic change - I'll appoint a Vice President!  I'll fire my cabinet! - refusing to accept that the change Egyptians want is... not him.

It would be amazing - and generally very unlikely - for this matter to resolve peacefully. If Mubarak can be convinced to step down and leave Egypt, there's the question of what arises to take his place. If he refuses to leave, then it's hard to see how violence and chaos can be avoided.

One thing I think American audiences may not realize fully is just how much this is not an American story. The puzzlement and disarray in American government and American media - both of which were caught fairly flat footed by the speed and direction of events as they unfolded in Tunisia and Egypt - speaks to a failure to fit this into our own national narrative. The dirty open secret of our foreign policy - as WikiLeaks more or less reminded us - is that America accepts foreign dictatorships as a necessary, even useful evil. Authoritarians provide structure, and make the business of supplying funds to get a desired result much easier. We talk a lot about freedom and favoring democracy everywhere... but freedom is dangerous and democracy is messy when you just want to get your way. And really, a lot of people living under those authoritarians have caught on to the reality that our talk of "freedom" is pretty much all talk. And possibly marketing, since we remain the world's best advertiser.

In our country, I think the Obama Administration has, yet again, benefitted from a wild card event beyond its control. Egypt has swept our petty intraparty squabbles off the front page, put foreign policy back up front, and left conservatives scrambling for  something to oppose. At the same time, I'm struck, as usual, by the American ability to cast ourselves as the innocent ingenue. Who knew Egypt would fall apart? Who knew that there could be a random shooting in Arizona? The truth that these wild cards are not so wild, that these events speak to issues and problems we should be addressing but largely avoid, generally gets lost. We know, actually, that this country has a problem delaing with untreated mentally ill people who turn to violence.

And we've known, for years, that Hosni Mubarak has been a disaster for Egypt, and should never have been allowed to hang on to power this long, and stifle all opposition forces so thoroughly. But doing nothing, giving Mubarak guns and money and credibility as a "world leader" served our purposes. Like a Shah in Iran, a President in the Phillipines, or a totalitarian in Iraq... until their usefulness ceased to be so useful.  They get overthrown, and we look around, each time, wondering how these situations got so out of hand.

Television, our instant history maker, doesn't tell that story. That story is complicated, it doesn't have great pictures, the drama is long and mostly hidden from view. The story television likes to tell is unfolding in front of us, right now, soon to be resolved. It tells the story we say we want to hear, even if we think we don't say it, or want it. Because television, primarily and still, is a medium that entertains, however we try to dress up news as "serious" and "important". TV shapes the "news" into a dramatic narrative... and then waits for the dramatic conclusion. The revolution will be televised... because revolutions make great television... and that's what's important. Vive la revolucion!

 

True Grit: Grim's Fairy Tale

Last week, following the Oscar nominations, I started a long, rather downbeat post about my annoyance with the Oscars latey and this year's choices in particular. Upon reflection, it was long, more than a little self indulgent, and somewhat misplaced. The problem isn't me, it's the movies; and I don't have to feel bad about the part I'm not responsible for creating.

Occasionally, as a writer, it's necessary to work through those self indulgent moments, the melodramatic and maudlin, depressing and grim thoughts that occupy the mind. It doesn't necessarily need to be shared with the world.

If I have an objection to Ethan and Joel Coen's films - and I have several - "self indulgent" is the starting point. There's a "look at us" quality to their films, mannered, fussy, overly self (or group?) conscious to their images, their writing, the stories they mean to tell. Too often, the films are chilly, distant and distancing exercises, plumbing the depths of human behavior without much to say about making the world, better, nicer, or more decent. It's a grim world... they're just watching it. Or something. Much of it, I keep feeling after another slog through another of their overhyped efforts, seems like stuff they could work out on their own, without dragging us along.

I'm not sure what fascinates the Coens about westerns, or rugged outdoorsiness; they've alternated a string of sardonic urban "comedies" with wide open dramas set on the vast landscapes of the western plains, leaving neither place better for it. The comedies aren't much fun and neither are the dramas, though the dramas veer close to self parodies of overripe seriousness. 

One could argue - I would - that the Coens have made one very similar film repeatedly, changing this or that detail along the way, shifting periods and settings with the desperate sense that people might otherwise catch on. True Grit isn't all that much different from previous Coen exercises: a determined, almost stoic female heroine, a dark brooding bad guy with seemingly no moral foundation, and a hard done semi loser/drunk with a sense of frontier justice.

All this, and you're remaking a John Wayne picture? It's no wonder the Coens shot, yet again, to the front of the Oscar line - only pretentious Brits can slow them down - True Grit is a handsome film, though the point of this exercise is as muddled as anything they've done. The fact that few seem to have caught on to their mannered, busily artificial storytelling probably means more of the same... but I have to think at some point, even trying to switch up time periods and minor details, things are starting to seem pretty similar in Coen land.

True Grit is the story of Maddie, a young girl sent to retrieve her father's body after he was murdered, coldly, by a hired hand. Maddie isn't just interested in putting her father to rest; she is interested in justice for his murderer, and goes to great lengths to hire an aging US Marshal, Reuben "Rooster" Cogburn, to chase the man down and bring him to justice. Her plans are complicated when a Texas Ranger - Mr. LeBoeuf - shows up, also chasing the same man for a murder in Waco.

This is the fim that won John Wayne his only Oscar, not Wayne's best work, necessarily, but a great role for an aging cowboy. Jeff Bridges is no Wayne, and his Cogburn plays more like a grizzled, aging free spirit than a battered lawman on his last legs. Bridges has passed over - what with his own Oscar - into that hammy place where his presence is iconic, whether it's working or not. The performance mostly works, though there's not much to it, and the Coens offer a convenient, incoherent picture of an aging alcoholic whose drinking problem vanishes, conveniently, in a pinch.

As Maddie, Hailee Steinfeld is all stoic, gritty determination - the "true grit" of the title is hers, however she tries to confer it on her elders - and it's a compelling performance to be sure, though just how brilliant it is could be debated at length. Steinfeld wends her way capably through arch, overwritten dialogue like a true pro, and my mom is onto something pointing out the role, in its way, is feminist and iconic. But Maddie shows up essentially fully formed; we see nothing of the forces that shaped her - not her unseen parents, not her life circumstances prior to walking into the film - and there's nothing really, to explain the - again, convenient - deployment of her streetwise savvy, fearless determination, or disarming moments of charm. The character is too perfect, too finished, and not particularly sympathetic at any point... and Steinfeld, for her strengths, can't quite give the sense that this adds up to a full person.

And, in the end, Maddie is really just a younger, pluckier Marge Gunderson, the heroine of Fargo, all business and well defined purpose, entirely admirable without being necessarily fully likable, more than able to take on the feckless men around her, with similarly chilly, unrewarding results. For me, the Coen films are a unique exercise in frustration, obviously well made, obviously thought through... yet cold, more than a little heartless, and too sure of being too cool. I just don't have use for the thankless, cold, nearly sadistic posturing of bad guys played by Javier Bardem (There Will Be Blood) or Josh Brolin, here. It's no wonder that frosty, distant Matt Damon is mildly well suited for his chilly, idiosyncratic role as LeBoeuf - a role that would have a lot more going for it in the hands of someone less reserved, a Texan like, say Matthew McConnaghey. Damon's no Texan... and no blonde movie idol on the level of a Redford or Newman - he surely lacks their essential warmth - however he deploys his baby blues.

True Grit did convince me that a big piece of the allure of Westerns is their wide open vistas, the lonely riders on the open plains. Westerns were, after all, one of the few genres that could guarantee outdoor, location shooting pretty much every time, and for many urban residents, it was a view of an otherwise unseen, unknown landscape. At this late date, in these modern times, there's not much unseen left to show, and for all its pretty pictures, True Grit's landscape shots feel mostly like filler, tap dancing in place until the next set piece comes along.

For a film of fairly solid construction, True Grit is mostly solid plotting without great storytelling and little, if any, emotional payoff. Frontier justice - especially as envisioned by the Coens - is more a dismal inevitability than a sense of right or good prevailing, and death, mostly violent, hangs over this film like a dark cloud. That, to an Oscar voter, is what passes for insight this year. And I can't say I blame them; the best thing to say of True Grit is that its grim mediocrity outshines much of the rest of the field. It's selfish, really, I suppose, to ask for more.

The Poverty Problem We Have (And The Revolution We Don't)

President Obama made history on Tuesday.

It was only the second time since Harry S. Truman’s State of the Union address in 1948 that such a speech by a Democratic president did not include a single mention of poverty or the plight of the poor.

- Charles Blow

In the ongoing discussion I've had with several people about, er... this stuff, one of the issues that's been put in stark relief is the tangled conditions of income inequality and deep poverty in America that are so much a part of our economic reality today. The sense that politicians are out of touch, the complaints that that the "mainstream media" is complicit in silence about people's suffering, the anger with corporate profiteering, especially with financial institutions... the things that drive the "Versailles" argument are in many ways symptomatic of a discussion about poverty that we're not having but exists, quite squarely, in the center of our political and eocnomic issues.

One reason I think we're not putting the poverty problem front and center - where it belongs - is because so many people se the problem as so blindingly obvious. Unemployment is spectacularly high. Home foreclosures are rampant. We've been in a terrible recession. Demand for government services is increasing. Surely, it seems, everybody knows there's a poverty problem. Don't they?

Well... do they?

It's long past time, I think, that someone - and a lot of someones - concerned about poverty put it out in public more starkly and far more directly than has been thus far, certainly since the recession began. Not an argument about who is out of touch. Not more polemics about how terrible rich people are. But someone to say, clearly and up front, that our society has to do something about poverty. And income inequality. And it has to be done right away. Seems obvious... but so far, it mostly hasn't happened. And I don't think it's a mystery as to why.

• Most of our current political debates are among the privileged and the comfortable. There is almost no one speaking for people in poverty, certainly no one to give voice to the actual experience and concerns of living in poverty day to day. We have experts, we have studies... and mostly, we have a professional, educated elite that likes to view poverty from a distance and talk about almost anything else.
• Actually dealing with poverty and income inequality doesn't mean poverty will go away. We will always be a nation where some have more and some have less. The challenge is to be a nation where our institutions do more for people with less, and our focus is not on giving more to people who have more.
• Taking stepes to reduce income inequality and better address poverty means many people will have to sacrifice and give things up. This is unpopular, and isn't helped by presentations, especially from the left, that put 80-90% of people into the "Middle Class" and thus somehow exempt from sacrifice. Until we - progressives, liberals, concerned antipoverty advocates -  can tell more people that "shared sacrifice" means "most of us", there's little change for the kind of changes needed.

It's depressing, and frustrating, that President Obama has turned out mostly to be a President of and for the upper middle class, educated. professional elite. It's not necessarily surprising - though, as Charles Blow notes, the President won more votes from lower income voters and the less educated - given that the President's base of support within the Democratic Party began with college students and their parents, but even his base, I think, felt that he was a President who would advocate for help for those actually in need far more than he has.

That the President hasn't been the kind of advocate many Democrats expected probably goes a long way - longer than his continued supporters might like to face - to explaining why his Presidency has been, at best, a middling success (or, to many, something of a puzzling failure). Though Democrats in Congress, working with the President, managed to pass a number of major pieces of legislation, the past two years of his Presidency showed an indifference to issues of poverty, and a preference for economic policies that often made bad situations worse - a Medicaid expansion in healthcare reform that is unrealistic, "Financial reforms" that don't do much to help individuals vis-a-vis banks, a general lack of practical solutions to address practical problems. Yes, the Congress extended unemployment benefits and beefed up fod stamp funds and showed some creativity on the margins; but the painful half measures on things like foreclosure protections and lack of affordable housing reforms were more indicative of the lack of priority given to helping those most in need.

This is why, for months, I've been most frustrated with the failure to develop a "Tea Party" movement on the left, a moment where frustration and anger with inaction in Washington by long serving Democrats would force intraparty challenges to the status quo. It's not the nation that needs a reviolution, and it's not the right wing that needs to throw out its RINOs. Progressives who are concerned with traditional notions of what a left wing party should be - focused on the working class, concerned most with policies and practical ways to help those most in need - ought to find much of the current Democratic leadership seriously wanting, and worth replacing. Yet, year after year, we stand by while the same people (Nancy Pelosi? Still?) do the smae things, getting much the same results.

This is the time when the case could be made to energize poor people, working class voters; this time, in the next few months, is the moment when a substantive challenge to a sitting President would need to take shape to have a serious hope of affecting change. It won't happen, I don't think, and many on the left will simply throw up their hands, complain about "Versailles", and grouse that Obama was not the one they wanted in the first place. And Republicans? At some point, the angry white working class of Tea Partiers is either going to notice that they've hitched their wagon to the people even less interested in income inequality and poverty... or they will continue to dream the dream that Stopping the Liberal Menace is the key to solving their problems, that sacrifice is for other people, and it's okay if poor people suffer... so long as it's not you.

Like many, I'm sure that the problems we have are largely unsustainable, that soemthing will have to give. And while I wouldn't entirely rule out the potential for uprisings... that seems a lot less in the cards than other, less extreme options. One of which is that, in the near term, poverty and income inequality simply get worse, and the opportunities for many simply shrink. We have a long way to go, and many people have pretty far to fall (including many who think it can't happen to them, and others who think it can't possibly be worse than it is already). I'd like to think we, as a society, don't want that to happen. But if we don't make dealing with the problems of income inequality and poverty more central soon and actually address things that can be addressed... things will get worse, for a lot of people.

 

Season Of The Mink

It's really winter - even more winter than usual round these parts - and that menas the height of a special season in New York City: The Season of the Fur.

Until I moved to Manhattan, I could only imagine a land where, on a cold, wintry day, so many women (and even here, not many men), wrap themselves in the fur of animals to stay warm.

New York is an amazing city, and one of its more amazing aspects is how how luxury items can be both commodified and spread more widely. The presence of gold and diamonds. The amount of designer fashion. The wide breadth of people living in high end apartments. And the number of women who own a fur.

One of my first lessons as a Manhattanite, that this place I now called home was not, you know, Kansas anymore, was working in a department store - a series of them, actually - and watching the Security department open up, each winter, a special area for saleswomen to check (and lock) their furs. Watching the long line of women waiting to check, I was, at first, stunned. I'd never seen so many furs in one place, and not on so many women whose salaries I knew, roughly, would put such a luxury item out of reach. But it's not a great mystery. Nearly every major New York department store has a fur salon, and one group that benefits enormously from this is the sales force in the store, who can buy nice furs usually at deep discounts. It's usually the basic farm raised mink (the store I worked in used to mass market them at $1999), but that kind of coat is available many places, around that entry level price point.

But it's not just basic mink; once the furs get broken out, it's remarkable how many women, of so many economic levels and social classes, can show up in a nice fur - fox, chinchilla, even sable, never mind rabbit and others (it does probably have something to do with a large population of Russian emigres, where fur ownership seems to be more of a given). Fur on the subway. Fur on the city buses, in the restaurants, at the movies. Fur coats, well taken care of, are an especially long lasting clothing item - it's amazing how many women will say "it was my Grandmother's" when you ask.

Mom and I went to the symphony last night - certainly, a higher end enterprise wth a classy clientele - but the arrival of Season of the Fur was everywhere we looked. Use an especialy keen eye, and I've started to notice the wider popularity of fur lined raincoats. So chic to be wearing fur... so few can actually see.

As you might guess, I'm mostly agnostic when it comes to fur. I'm not thrilled with the trapping and killing of animals, but I'm no animal rights activist, and I think fur is a reasonable response to living in a cold climate (hence, I tend to have more issue with fur in, say, Los Angeles. Or Miami). I don't strenuously object to fur on fashion's runways. I kind of enjoy shopping fur salons. If men could wear fur without looking especially fey and silly... I'd think about it.

The prevalence of fur is one of those economic signposts that point to the complexities of American society. It's easy to make class assumptions about a woman in a fur... but she could just as easily be the saleslady as the million dollar customer... and so many variations in between. The prevalence of fur probably says something about the cheapening or mass marketing of luxury... but I'm not sure anyone's entirely figured out just what it says, or whether it's especially good or bad (nad because it makes "Luxury" meaningless, good because nice things are not limited to a lucky few). I tend to think that the wide availability and consumption of items as luxurious as fur points to the difficulty of trying to make arguments about deep, rivening class divisions in American society. When items that would normally be restricted to a narrow subset of the upper class become widely available and popular... it's hard to argue, in the next breath, that the masses are suffering. Even when, by most measures, many are. The ability to live a more luxurious life - be it a fur, a widescreen TV, a high end car - is available to more people in America (even by bad means like too much credit and debt) than many places in the world... and it makes the idea of downtrodden masses harder to put across, especially to those masses. Revolution... or a new car? The choice is yours!

Soon enough - or so I am told - winter will end, the temperatures will rise, the rains will come... and the furs will once again get stowed away. The Season of the Fur will end. And, like winter and snow, I will, in some ways, miss it. Until next year. Either way, the Revolution is surely still very far, far away. And the fur is much closer, and more warm.

Friday Evening Fenceposts

 

jinb

Lord, We Don't Need Another Mountain

It was yesterday, while shoveling the driveway, that it officially happened: we started running out of places to put the snow.

We've been building a mountain by the driveway - on the side where there isn't a giant bush in the way - and yesterday it just got too big. Most of the snow wouldn't go over it; and on the near side, the incline just drove the snow down the hill, back into the driveway.

It's been snowing about twice a week in our neck of the woods, every week since the day after Christmas. One storm is kinda light - that's the snow we're having today, too - and one is pretty heavy, anywhere from 6 to 12 inches or so. Twice a week. The heavy snow is usually Tuesday, or Wednesday.

The snow has tested us, up here in the land that's near snow country, but usually isn't like living down the road from a ski resort. We were pretty sure we knew how to drive in snow. We don't wonder anymore. We used to just shut down... that's not really possible twice a week. Errands must be run, groceries bought, there's work to be done.

But we're worn down. This isn't funny anymore. And it's well beyond annoying. It's kind of the dull resignation of "oh well, here it comes again."

In the end, I stepped back and devised a solution to our mountain problem: I dug a trench through the snow in the yard, and lowered the mountain from the opposite side. And a very kind gentleman pulled up and cleared the final section from our driveway to the street with his snow blower. For free. That's what it's come to: the kindness of strangers, the aid of technology, and the creativity to think differently about an age old problem.

I don't spend a lot of time fretting about global warming. As much as I accept that the problems we're having are man made... I don't really believe that they can just be undone. We can make efforts to not make global warming worse - that's the point of reducing consumption, carbon emissions and the rest - but reversing the effects? I don't see it.

What I see, out my window... is more snow. And a series of weather systems that are nothing like anything I've expereinced in winter anywhere on the East Coast. Unlike many, the snow hasn't beaten me down, convinced me it's time to move to Arizona (Florida? Seriously?), made me love winter less, or long for the change of seasons. If anything, the repeated snowfalls have reminded me that winter, in its crisp whites, is a beautiful, awesome thing.

But I got to tell ya... we're running out of places to put it.

Where The Action Is - And Where It Isn't

I'm grateful to my friends - though at this point, they might dispute it - for pushing me to think harder about my arguments. The lengthy debates I've had since bringing up Versailles have brought me, oddly, back to realizing that one of my main interests in writing about politics and current events stems from both an interest in revolutionary theories and examining stable and unstable societies. And I've had to dig deeper and think harder, in thinking about the French Revolution, about how and why societies break down.

That's one reason, I think, why I've been finding the recent events in Tunisia and Egypt both heartening and scary, all at once. And I think it's well worth considering - especially for the "Versailles" labelers of the left - just what level of class division is needed before a society starts to break down... and why, maybe, one might want to see society change in other, smaller ways before resorting to revolution.

I'm one who finds modern day Egypt especially depressing, which has a lot to do with the fact that when I was growing up in the seventies, Egypt under Anwar Sadat had seemed like a real breakthrough in how Middle Eastern countries might become really productive democracies, makingprogress on some of the hardest issues. I'm one who thinks the Camp David Accords of Jimmy Carter were a real watershed moment in integrating Israel as a nation into some kind of reasonable coexistence with its neighbors.

But Sadat was assassinated and suddenly what had seemed like progress turned out to be extremely vulnerable and fragile. Hosni Mubarak, who took control after Sadat... has maintained that control ever since. And it's clear he has no interest in an orderly transition to a more open government not in his control.And that's largely worked for him... until Tunisians - who have a society that's more secular and less controlled by fundamentalist Islam, stood up to their own dictator and his cronies. Across the Middle East, there's new concern that if the Tunisians finally had enough, others will as well.

I think many Americans, still, tend to take for granted so much of what, in fact, our society makes possible that others simply don't. Our freedoms to say what we want, do what we want, disagree openly and loudly and passionately... these are not things that necessarily exist elsewhere. And the most frustrating aspect, in many ways, is that for all we know and believe about freedom, we tend to sit by as a nation while dictators rule nations like Tunisia and Egypt - the US has not made much effort in either country to change their status quo. A controlling dictator who gets money from the US... will often do the things we want done.

Yet, there was President Obama on Tuesday night praising the Tunisian protestors, and today, urging Egypt not to stifle dissent. From a distance... that may be all we can do. But it amounts to precious little. And watching protests descend into violence, seeing masses of people trying to make themselves heard by an out of touch elite... that, really, is how I remember my French history. And it doesn't, usually, end well.

One of the weird facets of modern American politics is how class identification has become so strangely muddled. We have wealthy, educated, liberal elites who see themselves, still, as more closely tied to the working class than to their own elite qualities. And we have conservative, working class whites who feverishly reject labels like "socialism" and "communism" when the ideas of Marx and Engels, and theories that would more evenly spread national wealth more fairly, would most likely be to their eonomic benefit.

I think those kind of confused dynamics - the educated Marxist revolutionaries, the less well off defenders of a crony capitalsim that hurts their interests - go a long way to explaining our messy, mixed up politics these days. The people angry enough to start a revolution can't seem to figure out who to revolt against, or how to articulate their demands. And the people who understand where violent revolution leads - into chaos and social disarray - are loath to see what are actually fairly privileged, comfortable lives thrown into that chaos and disarray, or more pointedly, into violence and possible death.

The Tunisians, it seems, don't struggle with those concerns. The Egyptians, it seems, are pretty sure that more violence wouldn't be as bad as continuing to live under a stifling dictatorship.

The news of our world tends to go where the action is - where the violence happens, where the protests are, where the unrest is; we seek to show, and to understand, what makes people take to the streets, take to the battlefield. All of that, so we can be where the action isn't, so that our comfortable, generally secure, generally stable lives, won't be up-ended by violence and chaos and unrest. Our choices may not be so binary - what we have, or violent revolution... but I think, as an American society, we've generally made a choice to live with some our problems, rather than turn them into a case for revoltuion. We take actions that stabilize, defuse, redirect. We stay, by choice, where the revolution isn't.

Or... you can go where the action is. That is, always, an option.

Morning Morsels: I Could've Slept All Night...

Today, a few notes from a very dull evening.

• I don't think anyone needs go into extensive detail about why the State of the Union was a dud, erasing much of the good will and fanboy (yes, boy) crushing the President enjoyed out of his speech in Tucson. It's easy to hang much of the blame on the fact that SOTU speeches are generally long and generally dull... still, the President was stunningly vague, thematically weak, and his delivery of his big speeches isn't what it used to be (when has he stumbled so often over prepared remarks?). I have no idea what he wants to accomplish in the coming year... and I'm not sure any of us need to care much about it, anyway.
• Just one thing, though... isn't it time the President stopped trying to leaven his political speeches with misplaced humor? That line about "smoked salmon" was just so odd, and inappropriate.
• And the president would be in political trouble... if only the Republicans had a plan of their own. Congratulations to Paul Ryan for having all the earnestness of an ex-Eagle Scout, while managing to deliver a drab, downbeat assessment of the American condition also lacking in any kind of specific plans (it's not like you don't have one). At least the President remembered that people like to hear a vaguely hopeful notion of the national prospects. Ryan offered none of it.
• Who cares what Michelle Bachmann actually said - apparently, the President is a disaster and Americans are brave - I think you have to admire the astonishing way that Bachmann has managed to maneuver herself into the political position the media had reserved for Sarah Palin (in our national attention span, it's one handsome brunette slightly dim deeply conservative lady politician at a time).  Thank goodness (or Goddess) she'll never be President. No seriously... she'll never be President. Never, ever.
• If the speeches were eminently missable, the commentariat was even more so - snoozy, nap-worthy bloviating on a grand scale (it was telling that Fox News couldn't muster much in the way of "we hate him" outrage, and also virtually ignored Bachmann's remarks). MSNBC's lack of Keith Olbermann may have been a longtime dream... but without Olbermann, there's no one to match crazy with Chris Matthews, and Rachel Maddow remains a dreadful moderator (though clearly, some of it was post-Keith shell shock). CNN gave the main hosting role to Wolf Blitzer with predictably lame results (made worse by including Piers Morgan - who's even more celebrity focused than Larry King - in pointless panel chatter). But even Jim Lehrer couldn't get much insight out of News Hour regulars, partly because no one, anywhere would state the obvious - that outside of DC, this speech meant little to anyone. And yes... that too is a sign of political elite disconnected from the realities around them. It's almost like Marie Antoinette in 18th Centruy France.
• Speaking of fiddling while Rome burns, all that mess about the brave new seating arrangement was Washington at its out of touch best. We don't care where you sit. And calling it "date night" was both mortifying and indicative of its symbolic silliness. All the more reason that the actual effect of the seating - which turned out to squelch much of the preplanned audience responses of jumping up and down at various applause lines - was so richly earned. And this, on a night when the President needed the kind of screaming adulation he was getting from that "memorial" in Tucson.
• And... in the Hollywood Minute, congratulations to Washington's political drama for stepping on the Oscar nominations! And doesn't that make the 12 nominations for the (historically inaccurate) The King's Speech somehow all the more ironic?

Anyplace I Hang My Hat, Rahm?

Well, for a day or so, the Earth seemed to move: I was as surprised as anyone that the Illinois Court of Appeals actually made a common sense decision that if Rahm Emanuel wasn't living in his residence in Chicago... then he's not a resident of Chicago.

Or at least, he wasn't a resident of Chicago long enough to meet the requirement for being elected Mayor, which is a year of residence prior to the election.

The decision by the Court of Appeals up-ended what was looking like a lopsided race between Emanuel and the "anyone else" contingent of those unhappy with Emanuel's office shopping. It's not that Emanuel's election was a given - almost every black candidate dropped out in favor of former Senator Carol Mosely Braun, the only one in the race who's actually won the city in races before (for Secretary of State, and the Senate). Braun versus Emanuel and a number of others, even with Emanuel's outsize fundraising and his heavyweight backers (a whole contingent in a White House spomewhere in DC), was not necessarily a slam dunk, though Emanuel looked pretty secure.

And, at least for a day, that whole story got thrown into chaos.

Since he announced his decision to leave the White House and run in Chicago's Mayoral contest, the question of Emanuel's residency has simmered, a manifestation of the anti-Obama (some say "Versailles") feeling of an elite group of political types playing musical chairs in politics. Especially in Illinois (um... Carol Mosely who?). It didn't - and doesn't - help that Emanuel approached each challenge, from the press to the Board of Eections to court, with a smirky "that's not a problem" look that looked less like confidence and more like knowing how to pull the strings to get the desired result.

That feeling can be underlined today, when the Illinois Supreme Court issued a stay of the Court of Appeals decision, which has the effect, for now, of keeping Emaniuel's name on the ballot... and literally putting it there, since the ballots go to the printers today.

The Illinois Supreme Court will still have to decide on the underlying issues in the case, and they may yet keep Emanuel off - no one seems to have a sure feeling for it - but whatever happens, I'm not sure anyone will be able to call the matter settled. The question of "residence" when it comes to politics, turns out to be quite slippery. And the slipperiness, really, speaks to a number of issues in our society, from what makes a place a "home" In a country where transience is especially common.... to the class issues of an educated, professional elite that can shift, easily, from one place to another while poorer people cannot.

The issue isn't necessarily cut and dried: it's common for elected officials who work in DC representing other places to have residences in both DC and their state or district. It's become a big deal, this year, that a slew of members of Congress - more than a few, mostly Republicans, and all men - have decided not to find homes or apartment, but instead camp out in their offices. The President, while living in the White House, is considered a resident of wherever he was prior to being elected. And his staff often takes up temporary residence in DC, while maintaining connections back to their home communities.

It's in this mix that Emanuel's decision to rent out his Chicago home for some period while serving Obama as his Chief of Staff comes into the muddle. Prior to that gig, Emanuel was a Represnetative of a section of Chicago, where the home in question actually is. And, for those elections, he was a resident of Chicago, even while also having a place to stay in DC.

Emanuel's residency muddle is hardly the most extreme example of claiming a residence out of the blue (let's remember that New York has a Senate seat held both by Bostonian Robert Kennedy and Hillary Rodham Clinton) for the purposes of an election. The Emanuels actually are from Chicago. He grew up there, and got involved in politics because he lived there.

Still, rules are rules and they exist for a reason. It doesn't strike me as a stretch to say that Rahm Emanuel has a clear, explicable case for a life as a native of Chicago, more, say, than a lot of New Yorkers I know. But if you asked me, in a sensible way, where has Emanuel been living while serving as Chief of Staff... well, he was living in DC... right?

Most of us, after all, can't make the choices made by politicians or senior executives or movie stars to have multiple residences, "commuter" marriages or lives, five days working in one city, only to fly home on weekends and holidays. These are the living arrangements, most often, of the highly comfortable, the very well educated, or the people with a talent in extrememly high demand. In Emanuel's case, really, it's all three. And has been most of his life.

And in this, I think, the question of "can anyone say no to Rahm Emanuel" becomes tangled up in "for the purposes of this election, has he resided in Chicago in  the sense of the statute?" Dislike of Emanuel - because he's abrasive, because he frequently gets his way, because he is so deeply resented in certain quarters, both right and left - seems to drive the "question of his residence" story more, really, than the question of residence. And in that question of where we live, what we call home, in America is really a very flexible question. Home is where your heart is, where your people are, where you've put down roots. And some of us are rootless, and some of us take our heart with us, wherever we go. Anyplace I hang my hat... that's my home.

Common sense, really, should probably invalidate Rahm Emanuel's candidacy - he hasn't been in Chicago for the requisite year, and I think many of his supporters know it as well as his detractors do.  But I think common sense might have more weight if more of his detractors seemed less keen on punishing Rahm for a multitude of unrelated sins, and a little more flexible on what, really, defines the notion of home, and "residing," in America, in these often quite transient times. Punishing Rahm won't solve our class issues, our political problems, finish his career, or, necessarily, improve the race for Chicago's next Mayor. Letting common sense prevail might be a start on some of that, though. And conveniently, for me and many others, both can be accomplished at the same time.

President Obama, And The Idea That Something Has Changed

Over the weekend, we got what I think was one of the more important articles about the current state of the Obama Presidency. And no, I'm not just tooting my own horn.

Peter Baker's profile of Obama and his economic team is full of interesting anecdotes and insights, many of which don't speak well about his eocnomic team. But for me, the key lines come early, and are about as good an indication of what we get and don't get with a President Obama as anything I've read:

Every day, in briefings, in trips around the country, in letters from the public, Obama is reminded of the many people who are still hurting. And he surely knows that if he cannot figure out in the next two years how to create jobs, he may lose his own.

Obama is fighting to keep Republicans, fresh from their fall electoral triumph, from reversing what he has started while prodding his own team to come up with something, anything, to put people back to work. “The president wanted to lower unemployment but didn’t see a way to get more money out of Congress,” one adviser who sat in on many such meetings told me. “He grew frustrated because the economic team didn’t have that magic combination.” Or as another adviser put it, “He was really frustrated that there weren’t solutions on the cheap.”

Obama has been casting about for ideas. He held two unpublicized meetings last month with outside economists, a group of liberals one day and a group of conservatives the next, soliciting suggestions while deflecting criticism. (He was “a bit defensive,” one participant told me.) He likewise met with labor leaders and convened a four-hour meeting with chief executives from Google, General Electric, Honeywell, Boeing and other corporations. Obama was so intent on the conversation that he canceled a lunch break and asked the executives to bring their chicken, fish and pasta back from a buffet so they could keep talking.

Some of those who met with him repeated the common complaint that he has yet to articulate a coherent strategy. While the policies have been “quite good,” the “public relations and related politics have not been,” Alan Blinder, the Princeton University economist and former Federal Reserve vice chairman, told me. “One damaging result of that is the American public has little to no understanding why various things were done, why they made sense, what effect they were expected to have and did have, and instead they feel ripped off.”

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director who advised John McCain during the 2008 campaign and attended another meeting with Obama last month, said the problem goes beyond public relations. “I honestly do not know where his policy rudder resides,” he told me. “I really can’t tell. What are the principles on which he operates? He’s very smart; he knows all the policy options. I just don’t know what are the criteria by which he’s picking between them.”

Sorry for the extended block (emphases mine), but I need this setion to make a point. There's a sense being put forward - certainly by his communications team and friendly voices in the media - that this year's State of the Union represents a "freah step" in the President's approach to governing, a chance to reorient his policies and his process for achieving his goals. But to me, if you want a good explanation of why nothing, really is likely to change and little is about to be accomplished, you can see it in Baker's opening anecdotes about the President's economic meetings.

Nothing's changed. The President we have is the President we got, whose flaws and weaknesses are often misdiagnosed and misunderstood. And if the President is successful in making a case for reelection - which, right now, seems entirely the plausible, likely scenario - his success with making the case will be because people will, in part, either refuse to face his flaws or to admit that he hasn't changed. But it's all there... if you just look: