I've got a couple of man-in-the-street quotes in today's The New York Times article about the mayoral election. It mentions my Monday Facebook status ("Mike, the more you call me, the less likely I am to vote for you,' which got more positive reaction than any update in months) but no, the Times is not watching my Facebook page for interesting quotes. I was interviewed by a reporter outside my polling place.

She asked who I was voting for, and I said Thompson, and she asked why. I said I was disgusted and embarrassed by Bloomberg's campaign. He spent obscene amounts of money, much of it unnecessarily negative and often completely untrue. I mentioned my status update and the response it received, and she wrote it down carefully, then asked my name and age.

And I answered, "40." I'm not 40. I haven't been 40 in nearly half a decade. I wasn't shaving years off my age for vanity's sake (or not consciously, anyway), and in almost every respect, things are better now for me than they were when I was 40. I just get that math wrong sometimes. Just like when I say "next month" and mean November even though it hasn't been "next month" for nearly a week. I know, intellectually, that it's 2009, but my spatial sense of time tells me we're about halfway through this decade.

Meanwhile, despite all his spending, Bloomberg barely squeaked by. Did you vote? I would have loved to see him lose, although I'm a lot more upset about Corzine. What happened to everyone who was so excited about "change" last year? Did they think we were finished? I'm very worried about what Christie will do in NJ, but aside from his oligarchical tendencies, Bloomberg hasn't been a terrible mayor and did successfully lead us out of Giuliani Time. Perhaps he will be chastened by this result and work a bit harder to represent the city as a whole.

Anyway. This is my second appearance in the paper this year (the first was thanks to my work with the AIA Guide to New York City). I have been traveling a lot lately, mostly for Journalism Online, but still managing to play music, and will be hosting the Ponkiesburg Pickin' Party every Sunday.

Tags: politics

As I write this, family members are reading the names of those killed in the attacks eight years ago. In previous years the reading was broadcast live on the radio, almost an hour of names tolled one per second, every name someone's heartrbreak, someone's tragedy. The name of someone who went to work and never came home, family waiting and hoping for that long long day, as almost all of us did, jumping every time the phone rang, losing hope as others checked in.

I grieve for them, but I wish we would stop and take a moment not just to remember those deaths, but the hundreds of thousands who have died as a result of our policies following that day.

I've been doing some research this morning and here's a number to think about:

753,118

That's one fairly conservative estimate of how many people -- civilians, US and coalition military, private contractors, Iraqi and Afghani military, enemy combatants -- have died since 2001 in these two wars.

( Methodology in some more detail )

If we read those names, one per second, the rate at which the WTC casualty names are usually read, it would take eight days. But of course, we don't know most of those names. Not every death was innocent, of course. Some of those people died in combat against our forces, but do we not honor the dead of our enemies? Some of them were terrorists. Would they have preferred to have led normal lives rather than being driven to horrific deeds? I don't equate the death of a firefighter trying to rescue civilians with the death of a man who blows a truck up to kill civilians. But I do equate their lives and their value as people.

We should never forget those who died on 9/11. Their families certainly never will. But neither will three-quarters of a million other families forget their own tragedies, and whether they were poor Afghani civilians trying to get some gasoline, or soldiers fighting a war for a dictator, or kids asleep in their beds, we should not forget them either. Surely we do not think their lives were worth any less than those of the firefighters and police officers and office workers who died here.

Tags: politics

An unpleasant reminder of ongoing horror came in the mail yesterday, in the form of a seven-inch single. It's John Cale's "Mercenaries (Ready For War)," released in 1980, from his punk masterpiece, Sabotage/Live. The A side is a brutal song about the soldiers who are paid "enough to want to kill for you, but not enough to want to die for you." The B-side is the rare "Rosegarden Funeral Of Sores," which is unavailable on CD.

The picture sleeve is the real point, though. It's a threatening photo of Cale, overlaid on a map of a war-torn region of the world that was omnipresent in the news at the time. The map shows eastern Afghanistan, northwest Pakistan, and a bit of Iran. Thirty years later, it's completely up to date, as are the two ugly and violent songs on the record. True, "Ready For War" references the since-renamed Zaire, but the "jolly old Belgian Congo" is still quite the business opportunity for mercenaries.

And this affects me, like most Americans, not at all; it takes a luxury purchase to even bring it to mind. It's sad and shameful.

Tags: music, politics

I woke up this morning to the news that the Navy had killed the the three Somali pirates, and rescued Captain Richard Phillips, and I gave a little internal cheer. As I continued with my online reading, I found quite a few people saying they were not so happy.

Many of them are making good points. The United States is directly responsible for the disaster in Somalia, having intervened in a civil war, pulled out after a helicopter was shot down, then helped destablize the Islamic government that was starting to pull the country together.

Beyond that, Phillips' plight received so much attention solely because he is an American citizen. It is hypocritical and bigoted to call for the pirates' heads after they kidnap an American, but to pay no attention when they kill or threaten to kill French, Taiwanese, Ukranians, and many others. Bloodthirsty jingoism like "Three dead pirates are only a start" is disgusting.

However. Is Richard Phillips, an innocent man doing his job -- a native, by the way, of rednoodlealien's hometown -- guilty of any of this? Do liberals who condemn collective punishment such as the Israeli policy of demolishing suicide bomber's houses and making their families homeless, support collective punishment like this? Do liberals who oppose the death penalty for people who really did murder someone, also believe that a random civilian should be executed, without due process, for the crimes of people he's never met, or for beliefs and attitudes he may not share?

That's callous and cruel nonsense, as callous and cruel as Bobby Jindal and Mark Sanford letting their citizens suffer to make a political point. Richard Phillips, the human being with a wife and kids, who worked a difficult and dangerous job, did nothing to deserve to be held by thugs on a lifeboat for days and threatened with death.

You can't say the same about the thugs who were holding him, who did make individual decisions that led to their own deaths. They may not have chosen to be in their economic and social situation, but they certainly chose to take a hostage after they failed to take over the ship, and to threaten to kill him rather than surrendering or negotiating his release. And if you believe the Navy they may have been preparing to kill him when they were shot. Let's also remember that these pirates are not heroic Robin Hoods. They go back home with their money, buy Hummers and Escalades and automatic weapons, and terrorize the Somalis who have not chosen to become criminals.

The decision of whether or not to pull the trigger in this instance came down to this: Who deserves to live more? The innocent hostage, or the three thugs? Given the choice, which the thugs created, I support the Navy's decision. It's not pleasant, but I'm much happier this morning to read that the three of them were shot and killed, than that they had killed their hostage.

I hope this incident leads to a constructive set of policies to address the problem, as opposed to the raids on the pirate strongholds that some are calling for. Perhaps this will serve as the impetus to try to help Somalia rather than further damaging it. But let us please not confuse that issue with the plight of one Vermonter who suffered something none of us would ever want to endure.

Tags: politics

I saw Frost/Nixon last night with rednoodlealien and doodlegoat and was rather disappointed. On its own as a film it is in some ways magnificent -- Frank Langella in particular is very good -- but fails in that it sets up a story of the callow David Frost meeting the Goliath of Richard Nixon and after three days of failing miserably, finally succeeding in getting him to make an enormous confession. But it's not clear why. A bizarre (and entirely fictional) late-night phone call from Nixon causes Frost to suddenly get serious and, over a weekend, study up enough on Watergate to go toe-to-toe with Nixon. Really? Just three days made him able to challenge one of the smartest and most devious men in history?

Meanwhile Nixon, who in the film is shown as doing these interviews for the sole purpose of rebuilding his reputation, suddenly capitulates? Why? It's utterly arbitrary and therefore unsatisfying; you cannot believe that either of these characters would have made the transition that they did. Even as a film, without reference to the history, it does not work.

As history, it's much worse. There are a few important things left out of the film. First and foremost, Nixon didn't make that admission. The transcript of the interview is shamelessly edited to almost completely reverse what Nixon actually did say, as several commentators have pointed out.

Secondly, the film is set up as a gladiatorial battle, in which only one of the two combatants can come out victorious. This is not what happened. Nixon was not only paid for the interview, he was given a sizeable cut of the profits. So it was in his considerable financial interest to make them successful. So by offering up some juicy Watergate tidbits, he gave Frost the victory he needed and ensured some financial security for himself. It was good for both of them and Peter Morgan in fact said he could have written it to have Nixon "win" with as much historical justification.

I think the thing that disturbed me most, though, was that Langella portrayed Nixon as in many ways a likeable man. He wasn't. He was nasty and vengeful and probably as close to evil as any American President has been, and to portray him as a sympathetic character is not only dishonest but disturbing.

Tags: movies, politics

I am peripherally associated with the science fiction community and have been most of my life. As a teenage I was a typical "fan," going to conventions and subscribing to the magazines and idolizing people like Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein and Harlan Ellison. But people like that began to look a lot less admirable as I got older, and while I certainly retain some of the values I learned from them, I outgrew more of them. I still respect learning and science and wit, but I have long since outgrown Libertarianism, infantile put-downs, and the need to have an apocalyptic rant about everything.

As an adult, I have friends who are writers or editors or otherwise involved in the field. So I still spend time in that community, although it's been years since I've gone to a convention (the last one was the Night of the U Turns heading to Lunacon with bobhowe and I think that was nearly 20 years ago) or subscribed to any of the magazines. Bob and shunn are the main reasons I came back to the field; by reading magazine issues or anthologies they were published in, and reading the work of writers they recommended or knew, I discovered a new generation of great writers in the field.

But I've felt no desire to get more involved. Partially, things have changed since I was going to cons; in those days conventions were about writers and books and there were annoying "media conventions" for comic and movie fans. Now it seems that most conventions are what I would have called "media cons" and they actually have cons devoted to books and reading. I don't have time for gaming anymore, I can't keep a straight face in groups of people who took the Lord Of the Rings films seriously, and aside from Art Spiegelman, Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Marjane Satrapi, I've never had the patience for comics or "graphic novels."

It's also disturbing that some things haven't changed. SF was founded by white men. There were very few women in field and more than one of them, in the twentieth century, wrote under male names or ambiguous names, in order to be published. Alice Sheldon, for instance, was one of the best writers in the field in the 1970s and 1980s, but it was years before anyone knew she was the real person behind "James Tiptree Jr."

The field is also, for all intents and purposes, racially segregated. I didn't recognize it as a teenager; I lived in an apartheid society and accepted it as normal that my neighborhood and my schools were all white, that the music I heard on the radio was all white, that the characters on TV were either white or comical. (This was, by the way, in New York City, not South Africa or Alabama.) When I was young I believe there was only one nonwhite SF author in the field: Samuel R. Delany. When I was in high school a few others came along and somewhere after I stopped paying attention folks like Octavia Butler and Nalo Hopkinson started writing. The field is clearly more diverse now than it was 20 or 30 years ago, but its progress has been incremental and hard-fought, as progress in this area has been generally.

I'm writing all this because there's ben a huge ruckus in the community over something called "Racefail." I don't really understand what happened because I haven't had the stomach to read through all the links in that post; after one or two I gave up in disgust. I'm even disturbed by the term "racefail." Mostly it seems like the kind of white-on-white racial conversation that makes me want to bang my head against the wall. Angry self-righteous white liberals lob accusations at angry white conservatives, everyone calls each other racist, everyone presumes to speak for other people, and mostly people just harden their positions and congratulate themselves on them.

As a straight white guy I have spent lots of time in self-justifying straight white male communities that get angrily defensive when anyone questions their straight white maleness. I've also spent lots of time in self-righteous white liberal communities where we all congratulated ourselves on how nonracist we were. Mostly I try nowadays to avoid these communities altogether and instead associate with and support communities that behave in accordance with my values. I find that more effective than trying to be an angry change agent in communities that behave unpleasantly. It's more effective, and I'm happier.

As a straight white man I have the privilege of deciding when to engage with problems like this, and when to ignore them. If I were, say, a speculative fiction writer of color, I would have to choose between having to be an angry change agent in order to follow the vocation I'd chosen, or giving up something I loved because of the resistance I was meeting. That's an unfair choice for anyone to have to make.

Everyone in the community is responsible for how the community behaves and the way it is excluding people. And make no bones about it. People are being excluded, or the community would not look the way it does. I'm responsible too. I'm choosing to not engage in what to me is aggravating nonsense. But that POC SF writer has no choice but to engage in it, because to him or her, it is a challenge to his or her very existence.

We all have to choose our battles and I've obviously chosen otherwise. I am fully aware of the privilege that allows me to make that choice. Everyone in the community should be aware of the privileges they have, and how they are exercising them, because you are always exercising your privileges. Even just by choosing to live your life and do what you do the way you want to, without worrying about these kinds of issues, you are exercising privilege. Be aware of how you are exercising it, and don't deny that you are, every minute of your life.

I'm a straight white guy. It's not that I have no dog in this fight, because I do; there are writers I'd love to be reading, and people I'd love to hear from, who are being suppressed by racism and other forms of bigotry. I am more likely to buy books, attend readings, or otherwise support writers who come from outside the mainstream. I do that because I like that kind of work and because I want to support their efforts to be heard. I will not buy books by people whose views I find offensive (sorry, Orson, but all those books of yours on my shelf were bought used). As much as I love Tolkien or CS Lewis, I won't let anyone discuss their books without questioning the disgusting passages in them.

But I'm not going to try to speak for people who are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves. If there are communities of writers working to change the composition of the field or to broaden what's discussable within it or challenging the sick stereotypes still so prevalent in SF, I'd like to know who they are, so I can buy their work and pay more attention. Again, I'd rather do that than yell at a bunch of people who clearly don't want to listen anyway. I would be grateful for any pointers to SF communities that I would enjoy supporting.

(Edit: I am grateful for the thoughtful posts and links to non-bicker reading, but at this point, the boorish commenters have sufficiently confirmed my lack of interest in getting too involved with this community or this debate. So comments are now screened. I will unscreen anything that's not rude.)

(Another Edit: Thanks to those who have suggested some good reading. I've unscreened the comments that were not rude, and corrected one serious error in my original post.)

Tags: politics, sf, stupidity

William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
At a Baltimore hotel society gath'rin'.

William Zantzinger, immortalized by Bob Dylan as a racist murderer in "The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll", died this week. In 1963, drunk and rowdy at a Baltimore hotel, he ordered a drink from Hattie Carroll, a 51-year-old black woman who worked at the hotel. She wasn't quick enough, and he repeatedly struck her with his cane. She fled into the kitchen, told her co-workers she felt sick, and died of a stroke the next day.

He was charged with murder, but the charges were reduced to manslaughter based on testimony that his actions did not lead directly to her death. He was sentenced to six months in prison and fined $625.

His obituary in The New York Times today took Dylan to task for taking "some liberties with the truth," and quotes writer Clinton Heylin, who said Dylan's portrayal of Zantzinger "borders on the libelous." But the Times only mentions one error of fact in Dylan's song, the fact that Hattie Carroll had eleven children, not ten, which as the Times pointed out would not have fit the meter of the line as written.

Hattie Carroll was a maid of the kitchen.
She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children
Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage
And never sat once at the head of the table
And didn't even talk to the people at the table
Who just cleaned up all the food from the table

I think those lines are probably worth the rewrite. He also misspelled Zantzinger's name, leaving out the "T."

Heylin, in his book, says Dylan's song "verges on the libelous, depicting [Zantzinger] as a privileged son who killed a black maid, Hattie Caroll, by striking her with his cane at a Baltimore "society gathering," escaping with a nominal sentence because of his political connections." Rather, Heylin says, Zantzinger "got drunk at a party and began tapping people with a wooden carnival cane," including Carroll, whom he describes as "a 51-year-old barmaid with an enlarged heart and severe hypertension." He also says that Zantzinger didn't have much in the way of political connections, although he and the Times disagree on what they were.

Dylan's song does leave you with the impression that Zantzinger beat her to death with his cane, which was not the case. But Zantzinger did commit a crime. He assaulted and verbally abused an older woman because she didn't bring him his drink quickly enough. The commission of that crime contributed to her death. It's not that different from a store owner having a heart attack when a robber points a gun at him and demands money. That robber would be charged with felony murder, and while it might be reduced the way the charges against Zantzinger were, the responsibility remains the same. Heylin's description is an outrageous understatement of Zantzinger's behavior, and the six-month sentence was unjustly light. Dylan's song is not only a brilliant piece of songwriting, it is as factual as one can expect a song to be, verging on journalism.

Zantzinger was a piece of work. In 1991, he pleaded guilty to collecting rent from black families who lived in shanties he didn't own, shanties without running water or toilets. He did this for years, over the protests of community groups, even taking some of the tenants to court. It took an investigation by The Washington Post to stop it.

( 1991 Washington Post article )

Unrepentant to the end, Zantzinger told writer Howard Sounes said the song "had no effect upon my life" and called Dylan "a no-account son of a bitch. He's just like a scum of a bag [sic] of the earth....I should've sued him and put him in jail." But as Sounes points out, he never did, never tried to enjoin Dylan from performing the song, never dared to put his claim that the song was false to a legal test.

Tags: music, politics

mary_wroth got tickets to the The Grand Inquisitor, a one-act play at the New York Theater Workshop based on the only chapter of The Brothers Karamazov that I liked (Part II, Book 5, Chapter 5), in which Christ returns to Earth at the height of the Inquisition, and performs miracles the day after the Grand Inquisitor had a hundred heretics burned at the stake.

( Summarization, if you haven't already read it )

I found the performance absolutely riveting. Bruce Meyers as the Grand Inquisitor delivered an hour-long monologue with passion and fire, capturing both the Inquisitor's terrifying ruthlessness as well as his twisted and condescending sense of compassion. Jake Smith, as Christ, had probably the harder job, sitting still and listening intently, without saying a word, not even moving until the final kiss.

It was an improvement over the book, actually. Meyers was credited as the "Narrator," not as the Inquisitor, because the story is told in the third person, up until the Inquisitor begins talking to Christ, at which point it just becomes one long monologue. So Meyers sets the scene and tells the story of Christ in the street, then puts on a long black cloak and enters the character of the Inquisitor.

In the so-called novel, the story is told by the "bad brother," Ivan, to the "good brother," Alyosha. It's a poem he planned to write, but never did, and he tells Alyosha the whole story. The monologue concludes when the Inquisitor says, "Tomorrow I shall burn you. Dixi." ("Dixi" is Latin for "I have spoken.") At that point in the book, Alyosha can no longer contain himself and argues with Ivan, and the story is interrupted. The coda, when Christ kisses the Inquisitor and the Inquisitor lets him go, is explained in dialog between the two of them, following which Ivan immediately repudiates the whole thing. "But it's nonsense, Alyosha, it's just the muddled poem of a muddled student who never wrote two lines of verse."

My overall problem with The Brothers Karamazov is that it isn't really a novel, it's a bunch of philosophical discourses forced through the mouths of artificial and annoying characters, with ludicrous plot action strewn around here and there, like the sad little bushes in a concrete Midtown plaza, to justify calling it a novel. Stripping away all the novelistic trappings made the monologue much more compelling, as did, of course, Meyers's performance.

It's also well worth thinking about in light of my post yesterday. The Inquisitor represents the ultimate in cynicism (as does Ivan, just less compellingly) -- the belief that humanity cannot handle freedom, but instead prefers to be coddled by ruthless authoritarians. The song I mentioned yesterday, "Dear Leader," the one I removed from my Myspace page, took exactly that viewpoint.

Of course, Dostoevsky, with that final kiss, rejected the viewpoint as well. The Inquisitor does not change his mind, but clearly, Christ was the victor in the exchange, without having said a word.

In any case, we enjoyed the performance, as well as an overpriced but rather excellent vegetarian meal at Counter. Afterward, we went to the Strand because I really wanted to pick up a King James bible. I was hoping for a used one, but instead got a modern "study bible" with all sorts of fancy maps and such. WORDS OF CHRIST IN RED! Oh and also ten pounds of H.L. Mencken, (The American Language and its two supplements).

Tags: politics, religion

For the first time in some months I updated the songs on my MySpace profile. I hate the site and its miserable UI, but it's the most important social networking site for a musician, so I should pay more attention to it.

But as I looked at the songs I had up there, I realized that the change I was making had more to do with shuffling the songs around. Things have changed, dramatically, since the last time I added new songs. The last thing I added was the "John McCain Blues" video, and, well, he is down the drain. It's not relevant anymore, thankfully.

I also removed "Dear Leader," a song I wrote after the 2004 elections that began, "When I was young / We used to have elections." The idea for that song came in a conversation at Rocky Sullivan's, the now-defunct political watering hole, during the nightmare of the Democratic National Convention. That was a much darker time, and maybe we'll be able to look back at it as the low point of a bad period, rather than a harbinger of more frightening things to come.

So it's gone, and maybe I'll have some more optimistic songs in the future. I think we all owe it to ourselves, and to our country, to practice hope not as a slogan but as an attitude, as an inspiration, as the impetus to get out there and do the work that must be done. Some of that work will be activism and volunteering, but a lot of that work will be in everyday life, in conversation, in the way you respond to someone who talks about how government never works, or Obama will never really make a difference, or all politicians are crooked. To the extent that any of those things are true, they're true because we allow them to be. Because we're complicit in our despair and inaction.

It's time to end that. Hopeful songs are harder to write than cynical songs. It's easier to be snarky and cynical than to believe you can actually make a difference. But it's worth the effort. Look what we were able to do this year.

( Other songs I added )

Tags: politics, songs

McCain just conceded. I'm thrilled and relieved, but this isn't over.

We have a chance now to get back on our feet, restore some level of moral authority, to stop things from deteriorating further. But we have to work harder now. The hate machine is already gearing up to take back Congress in 2010, to manufacture Obama scandals like they did for Clinton, to continue the "terrorist" smears, to build up the "socialist republic" fears, to send out hysterical letters about President Barack HUSSEIN Obama. And if the Democrats don't run away with their tails between their legs in the face of those attacks, it will be the first time since LBJ that they've done so.

Two things to think about, from opposing columnists the other day in the Times:

The Republican rump, the party that’s left after the election, will be the party that attends Sarah Palin’s rallies, where crowds chant “Vote McCain, not Hussein!” It will be the party of Saxby Chambliss, the senator from Georgia, who, observing large-scale early voting by African-Americans, warns his supporters that “the other folks are voting.” It will be the party that harbors menacing fantasies about Barack Obama’s Marxist — or was that Islamic? — roots.
--Paul Krugman

Look at recent history. Jimmy Carter and a Democratic Congress begat Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton and a Democratic Congress produced Newt Gingrich. Who knows what would follow a President Obama and a Democratic Congress? Here’s one possibility: President Sarah Palin.
--William Kristol

I spent today doing get-out-the-vote work in Pennsylvania, mostly ringing doorbells and giving wavering Obama voters some encouragement and information on where to vote, and offering rides if needed. It felt like useful work, but it was also depressing how many people didn't seem interested, or were actively hostile.

But ten days in battleground states (I was in West Virginia for the week before the election) did make me seriously doubt the value of phone-banking for your candidate. You would not believe how many phone calls people in West Virginia and Pennsylvania were getting; it was a constant and angry topic of conversation. I was happily surprised at the number of Obama signs even along rural roadways, but the worst comments I heard about him had to do with phone calls. "Those Obama !#$%ers woke me up again last night!" Rural people tend to get up a lot earlier than city people, and phone calls at 9 or 9.30 at night are extremely unwelcome. I personally stop donating to any nonprofit that calls me for donations, so I really wonder if phone-banking turns out voters or turns them off. More than one person said, "I'm sick of the whole thing. I don't even think I'm going to vote." I wouldn't volunteer for that again; I think that staffing voter-information hotlines, or doing polling site protection work, is much more valuable.

Tags: politics

I am, strangely enough, feeling almost optimistic about the election. Partially because of something Obama said in an excellent article this weekend in The New York Times Magazine, when the reporter asked him about how he would appeal to the working-class white guys who are so opposed to him.

“If I’m able to change this,” he told me on his plane, meaning the cultural breach in our politics, “then it’s probably going to be most powerful after I’m elected, when you’re no longer in the context of day-to-day battle, and I can prove it by what I do.”

In any case, I decided to redo the old blues "Cocaine" (no relation to the J.J. Cale tune covered by Eric Clapton) changing the refrain from "Cocaine, running 'round my brain" to "John McCain, going down the drain," since that does seem to be what's happening.

( Lyrics )

Tags: politics, songs

So Joe isn't a plumber, doesn't pay his taxes, and isn't even named Joe. And wouldn't see his taxes increase under Obama's plan. I'd say that Samuel the Tax Cheat is a pretty ideal illustration of Repugnant fiscal policy.

Tags: politics

Once again, we're getting down to the wire in a very close, and very important, election, and a disturbing number of people seem to be focused not on making sure the best candidate wins, but on supporting third-party candidates whose views better reflect their own, even if they have no chance of winning and in fact are more likely to draw votes from the better mainstream candidate.

I am not a huge fan of Obama. I didn't even vote for him in the primaries, and I am deeply skeptical that he will be able to make any serious change for the better. But I'm also reasonably confident that he won't make things significantly worse, which is (much) more than you can say for McCain and his frightening sidekick.

So on a practical level, I will be doing everything I can to make sure Obama wins, including spending Election Day doing get-out-the-vote work in Pennsylvania. (I've already voted, via absentee ballot.)

And let's take a moment to step back and think about the two-party system itself, which so many people seem to think is inherently evil. Our neighbor to the north, Canada, just had a national election. There were four serious candidates in the race, who were represented at all the debates, from the Conservative, Liberal, New Democratic, and Bloc Québécois parties. What essentially happened was that more than half the country voted for a more progressive government, but the Conservatives won the election since the NDP and the Liberals split the progressive vote.

Canada is, for the most part, saner than this country. Religious lunatics have little voice in government, there are actual debates involving actual issues, and corporatism is not quite as rampant. Yet their election went badly not only despite, but because of, their multi-party system.

In countries with a significant proportion of insane religious fundamentalists, a multi-party system is more frightening. It gives the crazies an outsize voice in politics. Look at Israel, where racist right-wing parties can topple governments. So whenever people bring up third parties in this country, I'm always amused that they seem to think Ralph Nadir would be a significant candidate. Hello? If this country ever gets a real third party, it's more likely to either be a right-wing religious party, or a right-wing Libertarian party. Which might help (by splitting the right-wing vote), but that means you should be hoping a third party forms on the other side, not your own.

So whatever your feelings about the two major candidates, the fact is that one of them will be President next year. You need to decide which one of them reflects your views and vision for this country, and make damn sure he is elected. Distracting yourself and others with talk of meaningless third-party candidates, is worse than pointless.

Tags: politics

I doubt I'll watch the debate ludicrously contrived political spectacle tonight, but I had an idea for a drinking game. You drink if Sarah Palin:

• correctly pronounces the name of a country or foreign leader
• correctly describes a policy of the current president
• cites any concrete examples to support her descriptions of McCain
• correctly names and descrbes a Supreme Court decision

Practicing Mormons could play that one.

Tags: politics, stupidity

I kept trying to think who Sarah Palin reminded me of. Finally, it hit me.



Of course, Dolores Umbridge had experience in national government...

Tags: politics

Frank Rich hits the nail on the head in his column today comparing Clinton's Iraq speech with Obama's speech on race:

You have to wonder if her Iraq speech would have been greeted with the same shrug if she had tossed away her usual talking points and seized the opportunity to address the war in the same adult way that Mr. Obama addressed race. Mrs. Clinton might have reconnected with the half of her party that has tuned her out.

She is no less bright than Mr. Obama and no less dedicated to public service. It’s not her fault that she doesn’t have his verbal gifts — who does? But her real problem isn’t her speaking style. It’s the content. Mrs. Clinton needn’t have Mr. Obama’s poetry or pearly oratorical tones to deliver a game-changing speech. She just needs the audacity of candor. Yet she seems incapable of revisiting her history on Iraq (or much else) with the directness that Mr. Obama brought to his reappraisal of his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

It's another way of saying what has bothered me about her all along: either she lacks courage in her convictions, or she lacks convictions. Either way, I regret my vote for her.

Tags: politics

I finally watched Barack Obama's speech on race all the way through, and I have to say I'm tremendously impressed. After so many years of watching Democrats run and hide from anything that might offend anyone -- Bill's endless demoralizing triangulations, Hillary's cynical poll-following, most of Congress' opposition to a war they were too cowardly to vote against -- his speech is a momentous occasion if for no other reason than that he actually stood up for his beliefs. If he'd followed the typical political playbook, he would have renounced the Rev. Wright as if he'd suddenly discovered that his pastor, who'd married him and baptized his children, was a terrible person with whom he could not possibly associate.

He managed to explain why Wright says the things he does without belittling the man, to explain Wright's statements fairly and sensibly without endorsing them. He talked frankly about race, more courageously than any politician I remember. He spoke uncomfortable truths to whites that they need to hear, and challenged the black community to acknowledge that things have changed, even if they haven't changed enough. And he called on us all to address the real enemy:

Like the anger within the black community, [white] resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze--a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

I've said previously that I regret having voted for Clinton, but didn't necessarily wish I'd voted for Obama; I'd seen nothing so far to impress me. Now I have. He didn't talk to me as if I were an idiot. That's unique in politics nowadays, and in the media. I joke about the reasons that I don't have a television: I don't like being yelled at, and I don't like being treated like an idiot. This is the first campaign speech I've watched in some time that didn't do both. He deserves the nomination for that reason alone; for not only refusing to lower himself to Clinton's increasingly ugly level, but stepping above her and saying important things to the entire country.

Even The Wall Street Journal's editorial page today published a thoughtful discussion of the speech that gave Obama a great deal of credit for not lowering himself to the typical level of political speechmaking (although of course asking innocently why anyone would think things were bad in the U.S.) Peggy Noonan says, admiringly,

He didn't have applause lines. He didn't give you eight seconds of a line followed by clapping. He spoke in full and longish paragraphs that didn't summon applause. This left TV producers having to use longer-than-usual soundbites in order to capture his meaning. And so the cuts of the speech you heard on the news were more substantial and interesting than usual, which made the coverage of the speech better. People who didn't hear it but only saw parts on the news got a real sense of what he'd said.

If Hillary or John McCain said something interesting, they'd get more than an eight-second cut too. But it works only if you don't write an applause-line speech. It works only if you write a thinking speech.

I don't know if this speech will get him elected president, but if all he does is encourage some thoughtful conversation, instead of the cheap shots and insulting assumptions most political candidates make, we'll all be better off. If not, as he said, "we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change."

Tags: politics

I was definitely voting with my head rather than my heart when I pulled the lever for Hillary Clinton. Now my heart is starting to tell my head, "I told you so!"

Tags: politics

I voted for Hillary. Obama may have a better chance of winning, but she'd be a better president. We don't need new ideas right now, we need old ones like competency, intelligence and morals. Hopefully I haven't made a Nadir choice. Whoever wins, though, I hope it's thoroughly decisive so we can get going on the real challenge.

(Oh, and the poll workers said turnout was surprisingly high, which is encouraging.)

Tags: politics

The New York Times this morning endorsed John McCain, in an editorial that asked the question, "Why, as a New York-based paper, are we not backing Rudolph Giuliani? ... What about the man who stood fast on Sept. 11, when others, including President Bush, went AWOL?"

That man is not running for president.

The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.

Mr. Giuliani’s arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking. When he claims fiscal prudence, we remember how he ran through surpluses without a thought to the inevitable downturn and bequeathed huge deficits to his successor. He fired Police Commissioner William Bratton, the architect of the drop in crime, because he couldn’t share the limelight. He later gave the job to Bernard Kerik, who has now been indicted on fraud and corruption charges.

The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city’s and the country’s nightmare to promote his presidential campaign.

I cannot wait not to have Ghouliani to kick around anymore.

Tags: politics