Category: The Dish

I’m not the only one to have been somewhat taken aback by the onslaught of the last few weeks, and trying to make sense of it. A reader writes:

When people tell me horror stories about American racism, I usually dismiss them as the product of the actions of a very small minority. See, I moved to Massachusetts from Latin America 8 years ago. I’m 30, married to a white woman who doesn’t think twice about my and my family’s race, and I’ve been able to work and study and make a good living in this country with exactly zero opposition or discrimination from any American of any race I’ve come across. For me, my ethnic background has been about as much of an issue as my shoe size in living a full and productive life in this country.

Then all the attacks on Obama’s religion, his pastor, his skin color, his culture, et cetera started coming out.

I mean, I’d heard O’Reilly and Limbaugh and Dobbs and Coulter stoke the fires of xenophobia and racial hatred in the past, but again, they always looked to me like rambling lunatics with no real credibility among people with IQ’s over 54. I guess I was proven wrong yesterday, when Hillary won the PA primary at least partially on a platform of deceit and innuendo about Obama’s race. Much to my amazement, it actually seems to have worked. That old white people so overwhelmingly came out to vote for her in PA can only be explained by the kind of racism that I’ve been dismissing for years from my progressive home state. What did she get, like 2/3 of white seniors?

I’ve learned a lot about Americans’ attitudes toward race in the last few weeks – in fact, it feels like I’ve been beaten with a learning stick. Today, for the first time in 8 years, I feel vulnerable about my own race and my standing in American society.

I think all of us who once dismissed the fashionable view around the world that a black man would have a real problem becoming an American president have had a learning experience these past few weeks. I don’t believe that racism explains all of it at all. To my mind, the kind of tactics deployed against someone like Obama were deployed against Kerry and Gore and Clinton. Class and gender and age also weighed in the balance. And the fear of another Carter has motivated some. But the insane hysteria over Wright, the racist incidents in Pennsylvania that are only now being aired fully, the "Hussein" and "Muslim" memes, the sense of white entitlement that is so embedded in the Clintons that they don’t even fully see it: you have to be blind not to see the impact of race. Imagine if John Edwards had achieved what Obama has achieved. Imagine if he had won more delegates, votes and states than Clinton. Would Clinton have ever offered him the veep slot? Of course, race has affected this campaign, if only because the white entitlement that infuses the Clintons is invisible to most.

I still believe a black president is possible in America. Within another generation, it is far more conceivable than it would have been a generation ago. But I also now understand better why it will be an almighty struggle. And why neither Republicans nor Democrats have completely clean hands in this.

(Photo: Jeff Swensen/Getty.)

Fort Collins, Colorado, 11.20 am.

The military experiments with communication via vibration. Pervs.

A photography exhibit by Sabine Haubitz and Stefanie Zoche depicting hotels abandoned during construction.

This is cool: a website where people post their own childhood snapshots – and then try to recreate them as adults.

Along this vein, as is so often the case, Dave Barry got there first.

It does help explain why the biggest brand name in Democratic politics has never been able to close the deal in this primary season, and why a freshman senator will win the majority of pledged delegates:

My wife and I are what you would call Obama’s core demographic. I’m 27, she’s 28; we are both working toward earning our doctorates; and we’ve both lived through, but didn’t really experience, Bill Clinton’s presidency.  I think we have both developed a well-nurtured sense of doom about the future, driven perhaps by predictions of global warming and the seemingly unending War on Terror that President Bush has promised will be the defining struggle of our generation.  I know we’re going to be taxed to the hilt at some point to pay for that enormous national debt, and I know that our own finances have probably relied a little too much on the credit card and student loan.

It’s difficult and often hyperbolic to define a generation’s attitudes toward anything, let alone something as complex as voting behavior.  But, I do believe this election is being driven by an Obama voting bloc that, to a certain extent, blames the anxieties that I mentioned above on our parent’s generation.

No, not on our parents directly, since how could you not express affection for such an over-indulgent group of ex-hippies, but on their lack of self-discipline.  They were the generation that got their wish in the 1960s with John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy.  Who saw the promise of a new politics embodied in both men, and had the electoral power through sheer demographics to propel them to what would have been successful presidencies.

The promise was cut short, but that generation of baby boomers lived on as the definitive political and economic force in American politics.  In the late 60s and early 70s they expressed their social power through a burgeoning cultural and political revolution.  As the 70s became the 80s they began to grow into their prime earning potential, demanding tax cuts and beginning a spending spree that would fuel almost all of the economic growth of the 1990s.  They were narcissistic and short-sighted; all too willing to view an ascendant, powerful America as their personal reward for being born at the right time and place.  Perhaps the greatest metaphor for this generation’s attitude is the prevailing belief that the American consumer (and government) spent their way to a victory in the Cold War.

Now that it appears we’ve reached the limit of unrestrained consumption, they appear more than willing to take their social security checks and medicaid benefits and ride into the sunset, leaving in their wake a bankrupt, increasingly desparate younger generation.  They even have the gall to claim that we’re the generation of narcissists!  In my mind, the struggle between Clinton and Obama lays bare this generational conflict.  Unfortunately, we do not have the demographics on our side, and I’m afraid that our struggle will ultimately be unsuccessful.  I’m afraid that by the time a pragmatic, problem-solving leader like Obama reaches the White House, we’ll be beating ourselves over the heads with our guns (bullets having become an expensive luxury) in a vain attempt to protect our local community’s water supply.  I’m not saying it will be as bad as a Mel Gibson movie, but I think it will be pretty bad.

The greatest dogwhistle of the Obama campaign so far is his ability to lay out this urgency to our generation.  Viewed in this light, the only thing Obama has to tell me about yesterday’s election is that Pennsylanvia has the second oldest population in the country.  After hearing that fact, I get it.  He was never going to win.  My wife and I are committed to his campaign no matter what, and I thought I would write you to share our reasons why.  This campaign is about generational politics, but unfortunately the urgency of our generation’s concerns doesn’t seem to be filtering through to the MSM.  I’ve admired your willingness to express this generational dynamic, and I thought I would urge you to do more.

Thomas Banchoff considers the Pope’s and Bush’s relationship. The president is keen to advance certain factions in a religious faith he does not share – for his own political purposes. That instrumental use of religion is at the core of today’s "conservatism". But Banchoff notes that Benedict doesn’t share Bush’s political theology in all respects:

[For Benedict], political freedom is not God’s gift; it is a practical task, a way to protect and promote the inherent dignity and equality of human beings. Its advancement is a joint challenge to believers and non-believers alike, to be addressed through patient diplomacy and dialogue, not through the application of force.

It was striking to me that the Pope refused to address the president’s authorization of inhumane treatment and torture of prisoners. This was not an accidental omission. In return, the president refused to engage the Pope on his own complicity in the systematic cover-up of child rape and teen abuse by his own priests. I have a feeling that history will not be as reticent.

The fusion of the Clinton machine with the Fox network and the Rove axis deepens. McAuliffe praised Fox so shamelessly they used his comments in a promo:

No double-digit win in the end in Pennsylvania. This is what Clinton-backer Karl Rove called a landslide.