Mavericks Vs. Elitists

Last night was the big face-off: The Mavericks vs. The Elitists.

I admit that my mind is already made up– I know who I’m voting for and I know where he stands on the issues I care about. But I watched last night’s Vice Presidential Debate mostly to see how Sarah Palin would hold up. Would she freeze like a deer in the headlights when asked the really tough questions? Would she “get back to” the American public regarding issues she had no clue about? Or would she use her good looks and charisma to win our hearts?

I was secretly hoping that she would come across as naive and unprepared as she’s been in the press lately. Oh, let’s be honest: I was hoping that Biden would rip her to shreds.

Instead of a good, old fashioned blood bath, however, what I saw during last night’s debate was a woman who has been groomed and prepared exactly for this night. Within the first 60 seconds of the debate, she endeared “Soccer Moms and Joe Six Packs” by asking Biden if she could call him Joe. If that isn’t adorable, down home folksiness, then I don’t know what is.

As predicted, there were lots of mentions of the GOP ticket being chock full of straight talkin’ mavericks. But Biden did a great job of debunking that well-worn myth, demonstrating time after time that McCain’s partisan voting record on issues like renewable energy and health care speaks for itself. Good. Let’s put this rumor to bed once and for all:

“Let’s talk about the maverick John McCain is. And, again, I love him. He’s been a maverick on some issues, but he has been no maverick on the things that matter to people’s lives,” Biden carefully explained. “He voted four out of five times for George Bush’s budget, which put us a half a trillion dollars in debt this year and over $3 trillion in debt since he’s got there. He has not been a maverick in providing health care for people. He has voted against — he voted including another 3.6 million children in coverage of the existing health care plan, when he voted in the United States Senate. He’s not been a maverick when it comes to education. He has not supported tax cuts and significant changes for people being able to send their kids to college. He’s not been a maverick on the war. He’s not been a maverick on virtually anything that genuinely affects the things that people really talk about around their kitchen table. Can we send — can we get Mom’s MRI? Can we send Mary back to school next semester? We can’t — we can’t make it. How are we going to heat the … house this winter? He voted against even providing for what they call LIHEAP, for assistance to people, with oil prices going through the roof in the winter. So maverick he is not on the important, critical issues that affect people at that kitchen table.”
–The Nation

A critical moment for me came when moderator Gwen Ifill asked about the responsibilities of the vice president. Palin seems to want to follow Dick Cheney’s path by blurring the line between Executive and Legislative powers, exactly the kind of abuses of office that Biden thinks make Cheney the most dangerous VP in history.

This was Palin’s time to shine, and I think that her supporters were probably re-energized by last night’s performance. But what about the people Obama and McCain are still struggling to get, the independents and the undecided voters of America? Who did a better job of not only addressing the questions in a convincing way, but convincing the electorate that their ticket had their interests in mind? It’s a tough call. Palin did a great job of speaking in complete sentences despite what we’ve seen in her earlier performances, but she still appeared to be reading her responses at points, and got away with dodging questions. I was worried about Biden’s ability to let himself be more knowledgeable than Palin about issues of foreign policy without playing into (misguided) criticisms of being “too harsh” on the self-proclaimed Washington Outsider from Alaska. But as it turns out, he was extremely adept at both being a gracious opponent and emphasizing his experience over Palin’s.

Undecided voters might be impressed that Palin didn’t stumble over her own low expectations, but they should realize that they should judge her by the same standards as any other politician. Just because she’s an outsider doesn’t mean that she shouldn’t know her stuff. And being a maverick doesn’t even come close to qualifying you for the second-highest office in the country.

Thank You, Sarah Palin!

From The Indypendent

A month after Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin trashed community organizers as a way to attack Barack Obama, activists and individuals around the country have responded by raising more than $7,500 for the “Community Organizers Fight Back Fund.” The Chicago-based Midwest Academy is managing the fund and will use the money to train future organizers.

During her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention Sept. 3, Palin remarked that being the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, was “sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.” Former New York Governor George Pataki chimed in as well, saying, “What in God’s name is a community organizer? I don’t even know if that’s a job.”

Read the rest of the story here

Doublespeak

I knew something was wrong with this McCain ad, but I just couldn’t place it. Brent Staples, though, explains it perfectly in The New York Times:

In the Old South, black men and women who were competent, confident speakers on matters of importance were termed “disrespectful,” the implication being that all good Negroes bowed, scraped, grinned and deferred to their white betters.

In what is probably a harbinger of things to come, the McCain campaign has already run a commercial that carries a similar intimation, accusing Mr. Obama of being “disrespectful” to Sarah Palin. The argument is muted, but its racial antecedents are very clear.

The thinly veiled racial undertones in this election are hitting some voters loud and clear, even though some may not recognize it. Staples also talks about other members of the GOP are characterizing Obama with antiquated racial signifiers like “uppity” and– maybe even more appallingly– “that boy.”

I’m hoping these instances will be fewer and farther between as we near November 4, but something tells me that the opposite will be true. Meanwhile, in our so-called “post-racial” society, Obama will have to continue to be conciliatory where other candidates might be downright indignant, a throwback to the days where black men had to avert their eyes from a white woman to avoid retaliation.

The way that Republicans have attacked Obama are disgusting, but not surprising. They have placed him in a particular quandary wherein he is ridiculed for being too soft-spoken and passive to be an effective president during this time of war, yet his image is hardened when it’s convenient to characterize him as the bad guy, just like in this modern Willie Horton ad (Daily Kos suggests you watch it without sound for the full effect):

It’s tough to see Obama have to tiptoe around things that candidates don’t typically have to avoid, but if it gets him into the White House, do we have a choice?

Disgusting 9/11 “Tribute”

The Boston Globe posted the following obituary in response to the RNC’s overzealous use of 9/11 imagery:

ST. PAUL — One of the most enduring taboos in American politics, the airing of graphic images from the September 11 attacks in a partisan context, died today. It was nearly seven years old.

The informal prohibition, which had been occasionally threatened by political ads in recent years, was pronounced dead at approximately 7:40 CST, when a video aired before delegates at the Republican National Convention included slow-motion footage of a plane striking the World Trade Center, the towers’ subsequent collapse, and smoke emerging from the Pentagon.

The September 11 precedent was one of the few surviving campaign-season taboos. It is survived by direct comparisons of one’s opponents to Hitler.

Here’s the disgusting video, in its entirety, courtesy of MSNBC.com.

The GOP Strikes Back

I’ve spent a lot of time this morning looking at the GOP’s surprisingly clever website,Not Ready ‘08, which is, not surprisingly, all about attacking Barack Obama’s lack of “executive experience.” I have to say, for a party who has a history of being so anachronistically computer illiterate, they sure have a handle on this whole Web 2.0 thing.

By far, the best of the mini-sites is BarackBook, a send-up of Facebook dedicated to highlighting some of the particularly dubious aspects of Obama’s social network. It’s pretty ingenious, even going so far as to borrow the concept and icons from the feed, and mirroring the basic layout of the site. It makes me wonder how they could get away with this…seems like Facebook had to have licensed some general look and feel components to the GOP since it looks so damn similar. I think this is exceedingly clever, and I confess: I took a lot of joy in browsing around the site, looking at profiles for the likes of Kwame Kilpatrick and Bill Ayers. I hate to admit it, but this site does everything right– from illustrating social networks that go beyond just Barack (Ayers, for instance, is linked with Marilyn Katz and Rashid Khalidi) to an exhaustive list of related articles and quotes. Way to step into the 21st Century, GOP.

Why I Love Kanye (Part I of Many)

I guess Weezy is getting mad love these days, and I love the man to death, but I think that while his lyrics are largely devoid of any higher sense of awareness or responsibility to the Black community, Kanye West has always been a beacon of hope in the hip-hop game. Lil Wayne and the rest of those Cash Money rappers always rep the hell out of New Orleans, but where were they when Katrina hit? Kanye at least spoke out, donated money, and he also has the Kanye West Foundation, which facilitates educational opportunities for economically disadvantaged children.

I don’t mean to attack Lil Wayne in particular, but what does he give to the community? How is he using his success positively? As far as I can see, he’s pimping us out. I love Kanye largely because he critiques the glamorization of urban poverty as well as the clash between working class and middle class Black America. Kanye’s words ring true to my experience in a way that other rappers just can’t touch, or at least haven’t tried to touch. Though I think Lil Wayne and his ilk are outrageously talented artists, frankly, I’m getting a little sick of hearing the same empty words about empty wealth. I think that it’s almost a sin for these rappers to be going out and talking about how hard they’re balling in the face of so much devastation and destruction in our communities. Let’s be real: The reason why there’s so much tension in inner-city neighborhoods is not because Black and Brown people are somehow inherently more menacing and evil; it’s a direct result of capitalism and the class tension that is frequently brushed aside or altogether ignored in America. When Jay-Z or Lil Wayne or any of them buy into the same culturally and morally bankrupt values that fuel the White supremacist capitalist patriarchy, they are in effect ignoring their responsibility as public figures to call attention to the problems that plague our communities.

Of course, there has been a little bit of consciousness here and there from mainstream rap artists, but their repertoires as a whole speak to The Almighty Dollar more than they do to any sense of obligation to their people.

Enter Kanye. This verse, from a track called “Never Let Me Down” on his debut album, speaks volumes about his relationship with race as it is lived in America:

I get down for my grandfather who took my momma
Made her sit that seat where white folks ain’t wanna us to eat
At the tender age of 6 she was arrested for the sit in
With that in my blood I was born to be different
Now n—-s can’t make it to ballots to choose leadership
But we can make it to Jacob and to the dealership
That’s why I hear new music
And I just don’t be feeling it
Racism still alive they just be concealing it
But I know they don’t want me in the damn club
They even made me show I.D to get inside of Sam’s club
I did dirt and went to church to get my hands scrubbed
Swear I’ve been baptised at least 3 or 4 times
But in the land where n—-s praise
Yukons and getting paid
It gon’ take a lot more than coupons to get us saved…

Anyone familiar with Kanye’s music will recognize that this song is distinct because Kanye and J. Ivy’s monumental verses about feeling a larger sense of responsibility to the Black community based on their roots and spirituality seem to be completely disjointed from Jay-Z’s particularly haughty and insular bookending flows. However, I contend that this juxtaposition is just one element of Kanye’s sheer brilliance as a producer. I think he’s making a rather nuanced comment about the nature of ego in hip-hop. Though Kanye clearly respects Jay-Z, he also realizes that his style and lyrical content hasn’t really made any positive contributions to hip-hop or the Black community.

However, this verse is nothing short of stunning, especially following Jay-Z’s words. It strikes me as a particularly sincere choice for Kanye to open the verse with a narrative about his mother’s childhood, but I also like that he acknowledges his duty to be different because of that history. Whereas by the end of this song, Jay-Z claims to be God, the Pope, Michael Jordan, Jeff Gordon and the Eighth Wonder of the World, Kanye strives hard to be humble by positioning himself as a human-size figure within a much broader historical and spiritual context; he even goes as far as performing only one-quarter of the verses in this song.

I could go on and on about how Kanye is much more than you think he is, but think about that for a moment, then listen to The College Dropout, which can say a lot more in just over 75 minutes than I can in writing this.

No Justice, No Peace

I get mad at our corrupt, white supremacist hierarchical society so often that I probably sound like a broken record.

No matter how much we rally, protest and march, it never seems to be enough. Is it possible to have a nonviolent revolution in the United States? Sometimes I question if our collective principles are enough to fight this system and the powers that be.

Here we are, the day after the Sean Bell trial and not a whole lot has changed. The three police officers who gunned down Bell, an unarmed man, on his wedding day were acquitted of all charges yesterday by a judge in Queens. After work, I joined a rally outside of the courthouse, followed by a march through Jamaica, right to the site where Bell was murdered. I felt a lot of emotions walking down those streets, yelling to the top of my lungs. I thought the outpour of support from activists from all over the city was something unlike anything I’d felt before. Once we started marching, it was like all the energy and outrage were culminating into a beautiful demonstration against the repeated attacks on our community. I also felt a lot of solidarity with all the Queens community members who honked their horns, yelled out of windows and gathered outside of beauty salons to watch us rally through the streets. There was just something 500 angry people screaming “fuck the police” that got me all fired up inside.

But it also makes me sad that we have to do this. The event itself was a great demonstration in the face of the injustices that were carried out in that courthouse yesterday, but the fact remains that an innocent man was killed, and police officers murder dozens of unarmed black and brown people for no reason every year. These people have become powerful symbols in their communities of the systematic annihilation of people of color, which has brought together hundreds of discussions amongst scholars and activists, and has brought tremendous attention to the problems plaguing corrupt policing and the severe lack of “Professional Standards.”

But why does it happen every day? How many marches and rallies and protests do we have to assemble before we change our own government? Is true revolution in America possible without force? I’m getting more and more skeptical about the principles of nonviolent demonstration as I grow older. The thing that frustrated me the most about the march yesterday was that the police were, in effect, leading it. Even though we were a crowd of hundreds, there were police flanking us on either side, and we were accompanied by miniature police cars in the very front of the march. There were calls to break formation and veer to the side, or even make an about-face to throw the officers off, but ultimately we all respected the organizers of the rally and kept everything peaceful and orderly.

While I understand that they wanted to make sure that nothing got out of hand so that the media couldn’t blow anything out of proportion, there’s also a part of me that thinks a protest is supposed to be raucous and a little out of control. Still, though, on the other hand, the families of the victims don’t need to have their loved one’s memory associated with a bunch of rowdy activists; The time and place for that behavior comes sometimes, but yesterday wasn’t the time. I’m still torn.

It kills me that whenever I decide to bring a child into this world, this is what he or she will be born into. I know now that this world is not kind to people who look like me; and they are even less so if you happen to be born a male. The children at the rally really made me reflect on how I want them to grow up and have more freedom than we do in 2008.

America’s supposed to be free, but for who? When I can take a train from the richest city on the planet 45 minutes into a neighborhood where police were allowed to assassinate a man in cold blood with fifty shots, I ask you, where is the justice?

A: 75 Years

Q: How far back does this video clip set the Black race?

Fair and Balanced

The Nation’s John Nichols follows up on the Obama campaign’s response to Fox News’ Chris Wallace’s comments about his network’s coverage of the Obama/Wright Faux Controversy.

A commenter on Nichols’ post provides the following links, showing that Wright’s comments were, of course, taken out of of context and blown out of proportion by Fox News:

9 Minute “Chickens have come home to roost” video. [YouTube]
Full Audio of Wright’s sermon, with reflections about September 11 victims. [Odeo.com]
“God Damn America”, in context. [YouTube]

Pigs Fly, Hell Freezes Over

Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace takes Fox and Friends to task over their portrayal of some of Obama’s comments. (Via Think Progress.)