The Veil Has Been Pulled Back

As I noted at the time over at my blog, when the Tea Party Express came to Boston, a great number of the people who attended the rally were doing so ironically, some of whom came with satirical signs similar to the one Lauren Valle was carrying, myself included.  I met someone who was carrying such a sign, who I saw later on, without it, looking a bit desheveled.  He told me that he'd been jumped, and his sign stolen and destroyed.

I really wish I'd taken notes, because I recognize that it sounds thin when I say it like that.  The point is, I wasn't surprised at all by today's news that MoveOn.org's Lauren Valle was attacked by a crowd of Rand Paul supporters, one of whom brought her to the ground so that another could stomp on her head.

Apparently Don't Tread On Me only applies to people who have the slogan emblazoned upon them somewhere.

It now emerges that one of the attackers-- the one whose foot on Lauren Valle's head caused a concussion, who was described by the Rand Paul campaign as a "volunteer" with whom they'd cut connections-- is in fact Burboun County Coordinator Tim Profitt.

There are any number of things I could say here.  That this sort of behavior is coming from a campaign that's been hostile to women's rights.  That these are the supporters for a candidate who in college tied a woman up, forced her to take a bong hit, and demanded that she praise the Aqua Buddha.

But fuck that.  Those are cheap shots in comparison to what's actually going on here.

This is the movement that's supporting a Senate hopeful from Alaska whose private security guards illegally arrested a reporter who had the nerve to go so far as ask the candidate a question.  They've backed a candidate for Governor in New York who essentially threatened the assassination of a journalist for the New York Post.  And a candidate for Senate in Nevada who referred to "2nd Amendment Remedies" to conservative angst in the age of Obama.  And a candidate for the US House in Texas who openly advocated violent insurrection against the lawful government of the United States.  Whose supporters appear in droves wearing slogans and insignia that either imply or directly advocate violence in the absence of the complete dismantling of the Obama Administration, and the New Deal with it.

The real story here is that this hasn't happened several times already.

No.  I'm not saying that all Teabaggers are violent radicals.  But they're all more than comfortable amongst violent radicals.  They gather alongside people calling for a watering of the tree of liberty, the slogan infamously found on the garb of domestic terrorists including Timothy McVeigh.

Do they think that the people they're associating with aren't serious?  Do they think the people who call for a new civil war are kidding when they're doing so while openly carrying firearms?

This isn't guilt by association.  This is guilt by promotion.  When Rand Paul won his primary, he declared that he had a message from the Tea Party, without so much as mentioning the state he was nominated to represent.  These are his people.  Today, he and his campaign weakly pushed back against violence as a part of the political process, but he's been with these people since the word go.  And this outburst of violence doesn't represent a departure from the character of their movement  It's what the Tea Party movement has always been about.  It's just that now the threat of violence that has always been present has gone beyond the merely metaphorical.

And everyone who ever treated these assholes like a legit political movement owns a small piece of this incident.

As Long as Grass Grows or Water Runs (Redux)

This is a cross-post from Ramblings of an Idle Insomniac, with some alterations to both bring it up to date and adapt it for this blog.

I recently re-read Chapter 7 of Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States of America, As Long as Grass Grows or Water Runs-- a reference to possibly the single most infuriating unfulfilled promise in the history of America. And there are many in the running.

Say to my reel Choctaw children, and my Chickasaw children to listen-my white children of Mississippi have extended their law over their country. .. . Where they now are, say to them, their father cannot prevent them from being subject to the laws of the state of Mississippi. . .. The general government will be obliged to sustain the States in the exercise of their right. Say to the chiefs and warriors that I am their friend, that I wish to act as their friend but they must, by removing from the limits of the States of Mississippi and Alabama and by being settled on the lands I offer them, put it in my power to be such-There, beyond the limits of any State, in possession of land of their own, which they shall possess as long as Grass grows or water runs. I am and will protect them and be their friend and father.

Spoiler Alert: Andrew Jackson was a dick.

Today, there's the promise we collectively made to the great American city of New Orleans. My failure to visit that city before it was ravished by Hurricane Katrina-- with an assist from the Army Corps of Engineers-- is something I will regret for some time. Today, the Lower Ninth Ward still stands in shambles. What relief money wasn't blown on oil subsidies and perks to corporations that weren't hurt by the hurricane was channeled to the tourist areas. And now even the people who owned their own homes can't afford to come back. They've been forced off of their lands, and this time around those who forced them out through a gross misapplication of relief funds have offered nothing in recompense

There's also the promise from our elected leaders that they would put the success of our country before their own success politically, whether by guile or by gutlessness. And the promise that capitalism would furnish us a better future than that of our parents. Our current President's promise to be a "Fierce Advocate" for the LGBTQ community is as of yet in the same territory. The promise to rebuild Afghanistan was deferred to the point where it may yet be impossible to carry out.in favor of our misadventure in Iraq, where we may never have had the chance to keep the promises we made.

Let alone the promise of freedom of religion. Seriously. What the fuck. Even Jon Stewart doesn't get it. He equates the GOP talking point that the Park51 Islamic Center is a monument of victory for terrorists with the counter-argument that the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan is celebrating opposition to the mosque. He says, in this clip, "How about we not give a fuck about what the terrorists think."

I love Jon Stewart, but I often get pissed at the false equivalences that he espouses. This one clocks in at eight megatons. Simply put, the War on Terror, for lack of a better phrase, is not solely a military engagement, even where we have boots on the ground. Indeed, General David Petraeus' Counter-Insurgency strategy in Afghanistan explicitly depends on a commitment to dismantling the Taliban/Al-Queda narrative that America is at war with Islam. When 70% of Americans express an intent to force the Cordoba House off of the property that they rightfully own because they don't think it's American enough to be two blocks away from Ground Zero, they are reinforcing that narrative.  They are making it easier for the enemies of freedom to  recruit new blood, raise money, and be accepted by a greater percentage of the Muslim world.

This may not come as a surprise, but this opposition isn't really about Ground Zero being hallowed ground. At least, it isn't only about that. Ever since 9/11, plans for new mosques and Islamic centers across the country have been beleaguered by the opposition of unscrupulous bigots. In 2008, I helped my friend Matt Porter shoot interviews for his documentary about such a conflict in Boston. Today, it's worse. Local politicians have felt completely safe adding their voices to the mix, most likely emboldened because of the public support for those speaking out against Park51 in Manhattan (whose residents, it should be pointed out, don't oppose its construction). In Tennesee, it's gotten violent.

Recently, Sarah Palin, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell all spoke out against a Gainesville pastor's plans to stage a burning of Qurans outside his parish.  Thanks are, I suppose, in order.  But only for Senator McConnell.  The former two each in their statements equated burning the Quran to building a mosque within two blocks of ground zero.  Later that same day, the asshole from Gainesville said that he'd be willing to call his stunt off, so long as the Park51 project was cancelled.  I won't go so far as to say that he got the notion from Palin and Boehner-- suffice to say that until that day he hadn't mentioned the mosque at all in conjunction with the burning-- but in any case the two of them can fuck right the hell off.  I'm assuming that I don't need to explain here the difference between a scene ripped from the pages of Bradbury-- or some of the more unfortunate chapters of history-- and building a place of worship specifically meant to foster inter-faith dialogue.

After a warning from General David Petraeus about the ramifications of such a stunt (which even without actually having taken place, has already resulted in at least one death), a personal phone call from Secretary Gates, an appeal from President Obama, the cajoling of a local imam who shares his belief that Park51 should be moved from the apparent Islam Exclusion Zone around Ground Zero, and far more publicity than one would have hoped he'd be getting (though apparently it was a big story overseas even before it got national attention here), he has as of this very moment backed off.  Last word is that he's arrived New York to meet with the leadership of the Park51 project, though the Imam in charge had specifically stated that no talks would take place on 9/11.  I suppose I'm cynical enough to assume that he's going to make some manner of an ass of himself before the day is out.

This should be obvious, but let me make a note here.  Causality does not equal justification.  When I say that the death of a protester in Kabul was, predictably, the result of the threat to burn the Quran, I'm not saying that the protest itself, which involved a crowd overrunning a NATO base, was at all justified, or that the scapegoating of Americans by some Muslims in Afghanistan is any more valid than the scapegoating of Muslims by some Americans.  Indeed, as I would sneer at such action being taken as a result of an American flag burning-- and as I do, in fact, sneer at the perennial attempts to exempt flag burning from the First Amendment-- I find this reaction to be incomprehensible.  The point is, it is utterly predictable.  And when your actions have a predictable consequence-- one in fact that you've been warned about-- it doesn't matter how venal the intermediaries between your actions and the unwanted consequence are.  This pastor undoubtedly owns a piece-- however small-- of this human tragedy in Afghanistan.

I find it bitterly ironic to be making the argument that my fellow Americans have, with their words and attitudes, undermined our military and civilian efforts to combat violent extremism in Afghanistan and around the globe.  The same people who shamed opponents of the Iraq War as un-American are now turning a deaf ear to the pleas of General Petraeus, whose word they took as Gospel once upon a time.  So much for deferring to our generals on matters of national security.

The leadership of the Republican Party-- with the notable and commendable exception of Orrin Hatch-- have as of this writing failed to make any real effort to repudiate this new wave of Islamophobia.  Presumptive candidates for the Republican nomination continue to ally themselves with figures who are to this day perpetrating the myth that America is at war with Islam. And yet, they say, Muslims will still enjoy freedom of religion.

As long as grass grows or water runs.

From a Left-Wing Loon: An Open Letter

(I was going to send this to the editor at a weekly called the Dayton City Paper, but decided against it.)

To David H. Landon, former Chairman of the Montgomery County Republican central Commitee:

I have a few questions with regards to your column in the Dec. 2nd edition of the Dayton City Paper:

Do you really think that Palin's dismal interviews on ABC, NBC, CNN, Oprah Winfrey's and Sean Hannity's talk shows amount to substance? In case you missed the memo, her "autobiography" was totally ghost-written. I do believe that she read early edits of the book, and that she might even have had someone in her publicity team slice up a few blurbs from national news so she could pretend to know what she was talking about when asked milquetoast questions on national television. But to call her "well spoken" after countless examples that the woman knows little to nothing beyond plattitudes about the country she wants to lead should be very, very frightening for the GOP.

Halfway through your condescending, fact-ignoring assessment, you say "The election of Barack Obama has taught us the hard lesson that substance can be overcome with sizzle." By the virtue of that statement, you think that Obama's whole campaign really did rest on a slogan and that, consequently, the independents who voted for him failed to examine his policies; that the 2000 election was decided on Bush's mastery of the facts when, in fact, he coasted on scaring us into a spending freeze and a constant accusation that the word "liberal" is somehow equivalent of a racial slur.

And what, pray tell, is really so "compelling" about the Barricuda's story? That she was a former beauty runner-up who became mayor of a town of 5,500? That she was able, for half a term, to run a state with the smalles tpopulation in the union while simultaneously pretending to raise five offspring?

Yes, I said "pretending." I watched with absolute disgust as she trotted out her youngest, Trig, to prove that her child with Downs Syndrome made her more a "woman of the people" than anyone else. She used her youngest and eldest children as props, and you cynical bastards in the GOP leadership ate it up.

The best thing Sarah Palin can contribute to the national debate is to force a third-party candidate in the 2012 election and expose just how broken the two-party system really is. She will prove that populism is sometimes sexier than substance, and that a good catch-phrase masking plain stupidity will energize a group of people too easily manipulated to see that they're being had. Maybe, after all of the smoke and mirrors behind her celebrity has faded, all of you angry white men will finally shut up and realize that the President you've been calling "arrogant" in public and "nigger" behind closed doors is actually making the attempt to do something substantive for this country. I'm not naive enough to assume that you'll let him without a fight. But I have enough faith in your intentions to assume that you will eventually stop turning your own party into a tabloid and make it into one that espouses real alternatives rather than insults. Maybe she's the best thing that ever happened to you: maybe she shows the rest of the country just how backwards your tactics really are.

But there's my naiveté again. I assume that the country will start to actually examine what they're being told, rather than believe a slogan on one side and fear-mongering ont he other.

An Unlikely catalyst to a Three-Party System

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Before you read on, you should watch some of this. Otherwise everything written after this point will just seem like run-of-the-mill Sarah bashing. As it is I think her new book does enough to bolster the Barracuda's ego. there was a crazed media frenzy surrounding the release of this book-- ghost-written, of course, and light on policy, heavy on colloquialisms, and riddled, I hear, with just a touch of self-aggrandizement.

Of course, you should watch this video and notice something: this woman-- who wants to be President, and whose crazy right-wing nut-job fantatical supporters are busy circulating ad campaigns to sell her book and, consequently, build momentum for the run (or at least a long set of fundraising events)-- seem not to remember this interview when they hoist her up. I have heard tons and tons of people bemoan that this interview is edited badly; that the edits we saw on national television were too simplistic and failed to show us the "real sarah" because of this bogeyman left wing liberal media bias. Well, to those of you who say that, I invite you to do what Palin never did while accusing Obama of "palling around with terrorists" or any of the other silly lies she parroted during the campaign, I challenge you to actually watch any of this man's speeches and tell me you can't find anything that, while inflammatory, is also undeniably correct.

If anyone puts her on the ballot, the Republicans get exactly what they deserve: a long, slow, painful re-alignment.

Eating Rights Movements in One Gulp

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I saw a link to this story on the Huffington Post last night and have been chewing on its implications since then. It hasn't yet completely digested. At first reading I was a little taken aback. It was as if my own prejudices against the obese were being called out even though neither the writer nor the subjects of the piece knew that I was reading it. I felt what I can only assume can be called fit guilt. Don't misunderstand: I'm not in perfect shape buy anyone's standards. On the other hand, I have always been able to maintain a physique wherein I could see my toes without bending over. Ultimately, I view morbid obesity as a choice: there are always going to be people of different shapes and sizes; but if a person is winded after walking up a flight of stairs and they're not attached to an oxygen machine, I don't see a moral pull to sympathize with them.

But this article led me to sites of associations that treat obesity as if it's a matter of civil rights; that the media's treatment of the obese is offensive and discriminatory and that it has to be stopped. Take these folks, for example: they're called the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Awareness. They've been around since 1969 and up until this very night, I'd never heard of them. Is this because I grew up in a household that looked at the obese as physical abnormalities or because, as a child, my father always made fun of me (and my whole generation) for not ALL having six-packs and taut biceps? I don't know.

On the other hand I can't fathom a reason why a series of lifestyle choices could eve be compared with a civil rights matter. Self-esteem is one thing; making yourself into a societal victim so you can keep up your bad habits is just disgusting.

"By the People": A Kind of Review

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A year ago Thursday I posted a fairly lengthy piece about the hopes and responsibilities this President's election posed to a country that so desperately needed a paradigm shift. I kept thinking about that piece as I watched By the People, the HBO documentary about Barack Obama's two-year quest for the Presidency. Press releases for the highly-touted piece promised a candid look into the lives of the people involved in this campaign. being tha thtis was a doc about the current President and not an outgoing one, I expected less of a real doc and more of a hagiography. And I was right.

Successful political campaigns all seem to evolve into short-run cults based around human beings we elevate into demi-godhood for the months leading up o their elections. The high priests and priestesses of these cults are the campaign managers, political strategists, and operatives. This campaign was no exception. It just so happens that the demi-god behind this particular cult gradually evolved into the demi-god for most of my generation and, as such, the political operatives (aside from then-Senator Obama's innermost circle) happened to all be around my age. then-Senator Obama's chief speechwriter is seven months younger than I am. That age bracket is the most empowering portion behind this President's rise to power: we were the chief creative force and the majority of the energy behind his rise to power, and for that and that alone, we deserve to be proud of ourselves.

That said, the film kid in me took a look at this film and began to dissect at about minute three of the picture and never really let up at the film's end. Here were some of the notes I took (and, yes, I was the asshole watching this at home, taking notes):

Out of the Mouths of Babes

The Obama family has been adamant that Sasha and Malia are kept out of the fray of political gossip and tabloid; at the same time members of the campaign staff and this film took great care in showcasing the cute kids involved with the campaign. Do you remember the first full night of the Democratic National Convention? I do: after Michelle Obama gave a fabulous speech, out trotted Sasha and Malia Obama, beaming, as a screen the size of a house descended on the stage so that the cameras could get a shot of them-- Michelle flanked on either side by those cute little girls-- with the Nominee for the Highest Office in the Land in the background towering over the rest of us. The film had at least three instances where the kids involved with the campaign were put on prominent display for their (albeit immense) cute factor. Sasha-- who winks and waves in an early scene about a phone call Obama makes to their house in Chicago from the road-- indulges in the limelight her father casts. I got the distinct sense that the film-makers were acting more as Reality Television producers: Okay, so we need to make sure that the phone call comes while they're doing something homey. Okay, Sasha: are you ready? SMILE! Aaaaand cue phone. . . And of course, there's this sense that Gibbs can't help but make sure his son talks about the election every time he's on camera. The scene with the 11-year-old on the phone is a classic, but of course HBO knew that: they play that snippet in every promotion of the film.

Speech Coverage

The filmmakers employed the same sort of restraint in directing the reverent tone of the film as did Obama's camp in carefully crafting and aggressively moving forward with getting their candidate into the Oval Office: They covered every major speech he made that we remember, from this one all the way to this one. My favorite speech coverage from this film, though, is from a rally I had never seen before. The Senator's grandmother had just died. He was tired, he was grieving, and he spoke anyway. With a slight break in his voice and two tears eking their ways out of the corners of his eyes, the man who would be president talked to the adoring crowd about silent heroes. It was the only time during the entire film where I felt the camera captured him as a human rather than a saint.

Media bits

The filmmakers covered the most famous and incendiary video blurbs that I could remember; namely, this attack ad, the section of this otherwise brilliant speech that Fox and the Hillary camp both used to scare moderate white people and, of course, this well-placed PR stunt. Call me an idealist, but I tend to hold documentary film makers above the level of PR campaigns. I never saw a skeptical reaction to the way the candidate dealt with any of these contentious issues. Let's take the crying fiasco: are you telling me that a film crew with absolutely unfettered access couldn't come up with a single instance of a staffer (or, better yet, the candidate himself) ranting about this? Sure, there's a section where Obama, in a rehearsal for one of the debates, admits that he doesn't want to sound whiny while responding to lies told about him on the campaign trail; but that's the closest we come to seeing him almost honestly assess what it was like to have to be on such a high guard about his image and positions.

All in all, this was a great piece of PR material for the President. It wasn't necessarily a great and nuanced documentary. I don't think it will dispel any of the animosity his opponents have built around him in the ten months since he's been in office. Anyone who wishes and prays that hte Obama Presidency ends in 2012 will still feel that way by the end of this film. On the other hand, for those of us who want to be able to tell our grandchildren that the first Black President of the United States became so in no small part to the sweat, tears, and sleepless nights of members of our generation, we can point to this film as evidence and say "Yes. We did."

Dan Savage and Maine: One step Forward. . .

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I know I'm late on this, but I saw Milk for the first time a little over a week ago. Granted, this guy will never run for public office in Seattle; his activist streak is more comfortable in popular culture, where he can enliven his community at the same time as he can make lots of money doing so. But in watching the poll results for the Maine vote last night, I couldn't help but think that someone in the public sphere would have to take it up. The overtly organizational ends of that movement are too busy having the President placate them to fight back with any real amount of force.

I was in college when I was first introduced his to work. It was in the back of the Theater section of the Chicago Reader, an amazingly huge free weekly publication where every week I would plumb through the classifieds for work (that I never got,) twist my head around the crossword (which I never finished,) and laugh my ass off at his column. it wasn't so much the relationship work that interested me. Don't get me wrong-- as far as advice columns go, what drew me to Savage was its absolute candor; what drew me to Savage's writing style were primarily two things: first, he's mean and still incisive. Second, he can't help but inject his own activist streak into his advice column. Of course, the funniest instance was the santorum affair; but his rants about everything from Prop 8 to the recent Hate Crimes legislations have been fun. After years of tirades and active, articulate (if vitriolic) regular commentary on every gay issue to come down the pike since I began reading him seven years ago, here's what he said about the brou-ha-ha from last night.

"Fuck you Maggie, wherever you are."

I have no idea who Maggie is (and I'm sure given the obscurity of this start-up, I might never find out.) On the other hand the terseness of Savage's response is pretty telling. At the middle of the decade the GOP made killing gay marriage a rallying point around which conservatives could unify. For us straight folk to even have a remote say in gays' right to marry was absolutely out of my imagination; for us to suddenly assume that gay marriage will sully the sanctity of marriage (as if it were ever sanctified int he first place) is equally insane. The moment you try to tell any of the Gun-and-Bible crowd that, of course, you'll be decried a blasphemer and, as such, never be allowed to sit at Christmas dinner ever again.

Of course Savage isn't the only gay writer of prominence with a national appeal. Kushner is brilliant, but nobody sees plays except us crazy theatre kids. Sullivan's exceedingly bright, but he has always seemed to me to be a William Baldwin or Gore Vidal for our generation-- too erudite, too haughty, too. . . wordy. The LGBT Community is looking for its next Harvey Milk, and at a time when he seems to be needed most,

On the other hand, Maine, congratulations: the fiercest prominent opposition your bigotry seems to have gotten thus far is a big old "Fuck you, Maggie." Whoever she is.