A short extract forwarded by a reader from the classic Elvis Costello song, with regard to our Robert Byrd discussion. Speaks for itself:
“Oliver’s army is here to stay
Oliver’s army are on their way
And I would rather be anywhere else
But here today
There was a checkpoint charlie
He didn’t crack a smile
But it’s no laughing party
When you’ve been on the murder mile
Only takes one itchy trigger
One more widow, one less white nigger.”
A Democratic activist, Juanita Yvette Lozano, has been indicted for the theft of Bush’s debate prep tape. Some obvious, immediate questions: How dumb was Mark Mackinnon to hire this woman? Did it really take the Justice Department this long to figure it out – or was it put on hold until John Ashcroft showed up? Would a low-level staffer do this on her own initiative with no imput or encouragement from the Gore team? Why did she pick Tom Downey as the recipient? Let the inquisition continue. Or as Matt Drudge would breathlessly say, “Developing …”
Well, if that headline doesn’t bring us some traffic, what will? Thanks for all the subsequent emails about Senator “I’m-Not-A-Racist” Byrd. They raise an interesting question: what happens when an offensive term for a particular group then gets generalized to others? Byrd’s defense is that he doesn’t think the term “nigger” is racial any more. It can apply to whites and blacks – so it’s not racist. But its origins are clearly racist; and the term is clearly derogatory. Similarly, a 20 year-old reader points out, Chris Rock has a famous routine which starts with: “I love black people, but I hate niggers.” Is Rock racist? And what’s the difference between him and Byrd? Well, Rock is black, of course. And he’s deliberately funny, unlike Byrd, who’s merely a joke. But different standards for black and white discourse is a little, er, racist, isn’t it? In my neighborhood, the n-word is ubiquitous. But it’s a mainly black neighborhood and the word is interchangeable with ‘dude’. I wouldn’t use it in a million years -especially in the ‘hood. There are similar problems with the term ‘faggot.’ In his early days, Eminem said he had nothing against gay people, just faggots. Just as not all gay men were faggots, not all black guys are niggers. The question is whether this is one step toward enlightenment or one step back toward bigotry. I’m inclined to think that, in the younger generation, the use of such terms need not be prima facie case of prejudice. It’s quite common, for example, for high school kids to use the word ‘gay’ to describe anything they don’t particularly like. It has no tangible reference to homosexuals – although it hardly bespeaks acceptance. But in general, the use of the term now is far less ominous than it would have been ten years ago. So let the linguistic waves roll and the racial, post-racial epithets mount. And let old Klansmen like Byrd look before they mumble.
BEAT THIS SENTENCE: “Indeed dialectical critical realism may be seen under the aspect of Foucauldian strategic reversal – of the unholy trinity of Parmenidean/Platonic/Aristotelean provenance; of the Cartesian-Lockean-Humean-Kantian paradigm, of foundationalisms (in practice, fideistic foundationalisms) and irrationalisms (in practice, capricious exercises of the will-to-power or some other ideologically and/or psycho-somatically buried source) new and old alike; of the primordial failing of western philosophy, ontological monovalence, and its close ally, the epistemic fallacy with its ontic dual; of the analytic problematic laid down by Plato, which Hegel served only to replicate in his actualist monovalent analytic reinstatement in transfigurative reconciling dialectical connection, while in his hubristic claims for absolute idealism he inaugurated the Comtean, Kierkegaardian and Nietzschean eclipses of reason, replicating the fundaments of positivism through its transmutation route to the superidealism of a Baudrillard.”
– from Roy Bhaskar’s “Plato Etc: The Problems of Philosophy and Their Resolution.” (Verso ) Nominations now open for the single most incomprehensible, pretentious sentence published in “English.” This one courtesy of reader, Gerard Vanderleun.
The Chicago Sun-Times is on a roll. Their most recent story about Jesse Jackson’s racket, ahem, charity, Operation-PUSH, features an unholy alliance between Jackson and Republican governor George Ryan. Jackson had long attacked Ryan for failing to do enough to enroll poor kids in the state health-care program for children, KidCare. Then Ryan awarded Jackson a $763,000 no-bid contract to promote KidCare to Operation PUSH kids. All Jackson and his acolytes need to do is promote KidCare three times a week in any context. No wonder Jackson responded by giving Ryan an operation-PUSH Peace Award. (The event qualified as one of the thrice-weekly KidCare promotions.) PUSH claims to have moved 151 families into KidCare in the first seven months of the contract. Let’s say they can claim 250 families by the end of the twelve months. That’s $3,000 an enrollment. Nice work if you can get it. Does Governor Ryan support websites as well? Or do I have to attack him first?
Thanks to those of you offering definitions of Byrd’s ‘W.N.’ Here are the most persuasive. One reader explains: “‘White Nigger’ is a pre integration southern term for the very worst white trash. The Bad guys in the movie “Deliverance” are archetypal White Niggers. I have seen a lot of old people regress into the prejudices and language of their youth as they become senile. It does not mean that he was insincere during the years he claimed to be a liberal, but that part of his mind is now gone.” Another offers: “In the early 1980’s I worked in a large discount store in a small town. In the lunch room a group of us were discussing our various religions. It was a good-natured chat, and I mentioned my Catholic upbringing – the altar boy days, the “dominus vobiscum” of the Latin Mass, the incense. I noticed an older worker at a nearby table visibly stiffen at my comments. This person, a rather odd, solitary guy, was known for being something of a survivalist of the Conspiracy bent. A few hours later I passed him in a storage section of the store. As we walked past each other he turned to me and said, “I always thought Catholics were white niggers.” I was too surprised to say much of anything, so I just shrugged and went on my way. The next day, he walked up to me and whispered, ‘N*****r.'” Well, the consensus seems to be that it’s not very nice.
Senator Robert Byrd, one of the biggest embarrassments of the Senate, recently mouthed off about “white niggers.” I’ve read several stories about this but I still haven’t been able to deduce what he meant. I’m assuming he isn’t referring to Norman Mailer’s famous disquisition on the “white Negro,” meaning the desire of some trendy whites to revel in what they regard as authentic black culture. Or is Byrd’s colloquialism a version of Charles Murray’s recent lament about the ‘proletarianization’ of elites? Or is it a comment on the close parallels between black underclass culture and white trash culture, illustrated daily on any cheesy talk show you happen to watch? But whatever Byrd meant, it was surely racist – certainly more racist than David Horowitz’s ad about slavery reparations. The phrase requires you to believe that there is some uniform way of life that defines ‘niggers’ and that some white people, who should know better (Byrd implies), are copying this. If by racism, you mean a derogatory generalization about all people with a certain skin color, then this seems to me to be a pretty easy case of out and out racism. But so far, only Kweisi Mfume has spoken out about this. Where are all the other Democrats? Where’s Jesse Jackson? Oh never mind. It strikes me that, in this respect, conservative paranoids are right. There is a double standard between Democrats and Republicans on the racial gaffe question. If Jesse Helms or Rick Santorum had said this, there would be hell to pay. Or am I missing something here?
CONFESSIONS OF A CLINTON-HATER: Perhaps the most common explanation of loathing for Bill Clinton, at least among the Clintonistas, is that many of them want to undo all the good that Clinton did. John Podesta described them on one of the Sunday talk shows recently as “people” who are “ever present” and who want to “destroy and undermine . . . all the good things [Clinton] did as president.” So where do I fit in? I loved a lot of what Clinton did as president. I supported him on free trade, welfare reform, deficit reduction, to name some of his most notable accomplishments. At the very beginning, I was hopeful he would help gay civil equality and women’s rights. I even think his foreign policy was defensible. I admired his ability to relate to African-Americans. I drew the line at his compulsive lies, betrayal, and sleaze. Can’t Podesta understand that some of us just loathed the man – and what he did to our public culture of civility, honesty and dignity? To be sure, some were out to get him from the start. I wasn’t – and many others wanted the best from his talents. Our dismay and outrage is not because he pursued goals with which we disagreed, but because he betrayed so many of his accomplishments with sociopathic behavior that he should have found a way to control. Clear now, John?
The ever-fair John B. Judis has an interesting piece in the current American Prospect. He’s writing about electoral reform and wisely advises Democrats that getting rid of punch card machines is no panacea. The real reason is that, despite common misconceptions, punch-card voting machines are not concentrated in black and minority districts. According to a national study by two political scientists called Stephen Knack and Martha Kropf, 31.9 percent of whites live in punch-card districts, compared with 31.4 percent of blacks. The biggest error rate in the last election, Judis also points out, was in Illinois, not Florida. One of the main reasons for this was a recent law which banned straight ticket voting, where voters could simply pull one lever and vote for the entire Democratic ticket. Suddenly, Chicagoans actually had to think for themselves in the voting booth, a process that resulted in a doubling of invalid votes. This confusion would not be solved by optical scanners, which require, if anything, a slightly higher level of voter independence and competence. Bad news for Democrats. In many places last November, they were helped by punch-card machines, not hindered by them. Electoral reform could make their plight even worse. If the Democrats thought the 2000 election was unfair to them, they should brace themselves for 2002.
Forget Brad Pitt. James Gandolfini is the sexiest man alive. He’s also a much better actor than Pitt, as anyone who has seen “The Mexican,” can attest. I saw it last night and concluded that the culture war over homosexuality is over. Sorry, Gary Bauer. We won. You can’t see a TV show or a movie these days without some non-stereotypical homo stealing every scene. This is just a phase in our popular culture, of course, and it will probably die down. But what a relief from the days of Ellen, where homosexuality became the only thing the series was about – and homosexuality itself was some horrible, generic ‘lifestyle’ with a fully accessorized politics to boot. Gandolfini’s portrayal of a mobster homosexual couldn’t be more different. In a couple of hours, he just about destroys every anti-gay shibboleth you can dream of. Gandolfini’s Leroy is gruff and dangerous and masculine and effective. He has a waistline even Richard Hatch would worry about. He has casual sex but he isn’t immune to love. He murders but it isn’t a function of any homosexual pathology. Yep, he does suffer the fate of most gay men in movies – he’s dead soon enough. But since the cast of “The Mexican” ends up pretty much like the cast of “Hamlet,” that’s not saying much. And then the same actor pulls off his brilliance again in “The Sopranos,” this time as a straight mobster. More and more, it seems, the categories are less interesting than the human beings they are trying to describe. More and more, gayness doesn’t usurp someone’s humanity – it’s just a part of it. It has taken centuries and decades for our culture to reflect this reality. And as the culture also stops forcing gay men and women into defensive roles, their gayness will recede even further and their ‘normalization’ intensify. This is the real reason gay civil equality is inevitable. Reality bites – and liberates.
A Northwestern reader emails to signal his relief at the lack of empathy George W. Bush showed during last week’s earthquake. There were no sudden presidential tours of the damage, no lip-biting empathy moments, no hugs, no tears. There was simply a brief presidential announcement of emergency funds being released to help with the aftermath. If part of the relief of the Bush presidency is what won’t happen, this is surely one of the “won’t happen” moments. Finally, American citizens in the aftermath of natural disasters are being treated as grownups.
BUSH’S TRIANGULATION: Looking back on that speech last Tuesday, I’m struck by how Clintonian it was. Bush was no Reagan. There were no calls to arms for the right; and there were absolutely no negative lines against Democrats – or even government. And yet … Bush’s triangulation, so far, is not like Clinton’s. Clinton kept his party base loyal by symbolism and by sentiment. Ideologically, Clinton was unmoored – lunging from one co-opted policy to another. Bush, for all his soothing rhetoric, is keeping his party base close by giving them what they want. His top aides attend the bi-weekly confabs of the conservative movement in Washington, as Fred Barnes reports in the Weekly Standard. Bush’s key strategist, Karl Rove, has an open line to the right-wing for input and advice. John Ashcroft is attorney-general. For all the pressure for Bush to moderate his tax cut, it is the same now as it was when he started his campaign. The hedgehog doesn’t learn new tricks. He just adds new pricks. I keep thinking of Pope John Paul II. No, Bush is nothing like the Pope. But in a way, the current Pope, by his choice of name, sent a message that he was going to be a synthesis of the reformist radical Pope John XXIII and the consolidator Pope Paul VI. Bush, in some ways, is similarly showing himself to be a synthesis of Reaganite radicalism – in tax cuts, social security reform – and Clintonian triangulated centrism. He is President Reagan-Clinton. He has Reagan’s instinct for smaller government, but none of his vision or clarity or intellectual depth. Equally, he has Clinton’s eye for the political middle, for the concrete details of domestic policy that build majorities vote by vote, but without the psychopathic melodrama of the Clinton miniseries. Bush is Reagan cut down to post-Cold War size. He is Reagan’s mini-me.
CLINTON AGONISTES: “A psychopath is not a lunatic suffering from disabling delusions or an obviously neurotic person displaying phobias and anxieties; rather he or she is an outwardly normal person with an apparently logical mind who happens to be an emotional cipher. Hiding behind what Hervey Cleckley called “the mask of sanity,” the psychopath is the extreme case of the nonsocial personality, someone for whom the ordinary emotions of life have no meaning. Psychopaths lie without compunction, injure without remorse, and cheat with little fear of detection. Wholly self-centered and unaware of the emotional needs of others, they are, in the fullest sense of the term, unsocial. They can mimic feelings without experiencing them … In addition, psychopaths are often thrill-seekers, not simply because they discount the bad things that may happen to them if they take risks, but because they are underaroused: that is, their emotional void leaves them bored and restless. Knowing little of true feelings, they cannot rely on their own feelings to supply them with much satisfaction, and so they seek it out from dangerous activities, wild parties, and an agitated sense for excitement.” – James Q. Wilson, “The Moral Sense.”
A reader prompts me to look again at what Tocqueville wrote about American political parties and associations. Tocqueville essentially contrasts American political parties with those in Continental Europe by drawing a distinction between parties that seek to convince and those that seek merely combat. In Europe, he argues that many political parties are so convinced deep down that they could never persuade a majority in a free argument that they give up on free dialogue and resort to propaganda, collective orthodoxy and, if necessary, extra-legal maneuvers. I think we could say that in the last decade or so, this tendency has infected both major political parties in this country. The Gingrichites didn’t try to persuade; they acted like revolutionaries. The religious right equally tended to treat their opponents as moral degenerates to be overcome rather than citizens to be engaged. Similarly, the Carville-Begala wing of the Clintonites launched a literal “war-room” to fight the political fight. Under Clinton and then Gore, any means necessary was the essential motto of the Democrats. It’s a sign of the health of our democracy that most Americans found both tendencies repugnant. George W’s civility is not simply politeness. It’s a political argument for a new kind of civil discourse. It is, however, an old kind – and an American kind.
Here’s the relevant passage from Tocqueville’s <a HREF = http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226805328/qid%3D983583836/105-5057869-2241534 TARGET = NEW>”Democracy In America,” in the pellucid new translation by Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. Hard to beat. The argument against this kind of association is particularly acute for those claiming to represent the oppressed. If you can’t see the tragicomic figures of Lanny Davis, Barney Frank, and Joe Conason behind these words, you’re wearing blinders:
“The members of these [European-style] associations respond to the words of an order like soldiers on a campaign; they profess the dogma of passive obedience, or rather, in uniting, they have made the entire sacrifice of their judgment and their free will in a single stroke … That very much diminishes their moral force. Thus they lose the sacred character that attaches to the struggle of the oppressed against oppressors. For one who consents in certain cases to obey with servility some of those like him, who delivers his will to them, and submits even his thought to them – how can that one claim that he wants to be free?”
The Dish 