Goodbye, Creepy Old Opportunist

Goodbye.

“My Country, Tis of Me”: Nice Try, Kinsley

The definition of a Kinsley gaffe—when a politician speaks the truth—is one of those contributions to the political discourse so brilliant it’s almost ridiculous. Its progenitor, Michael Kinsley, has earned my envy and marvel on that score at least.

That instance of stellar insight is rare; even for Michael Kinsley if his recent attempt to cut down the Tea Party movement is any indication. 

The main thrust of Kinsley’s consideration of the movement (cutely titled “My Country, Tis of Me”) is the comparison (credited by Kinsley to the unbearably elitist and ideologically peripatetic David Brooks) to the progressive upheaval of the 1960s. 

[A]lthough the 1960s ultimately spread their tentacles throughout the culture and around the world, politically there was just one big issue: ending the war in Vietnam. No such issue unites the Tea Party Patriots. You might guess from some of their materials on the Web that the repeal of health-care reform is the TPPs’ Vietnam, their towering cause. But even for devoted TPPs, stripping health insurance away from people who’ve just gotten it is unlikely to summon the same passions that the activists of the 1960s brought to stopping a misguided war. Not only do TPPs not have one big issue like Vietnam—they disagree about many of their smaller issues. What unites them is a more abstract resentment, an intensity of feeling rather than any concrete complaint or goal.

To this very day Kinsley remains in awe of the anti-war movement’s definitive and clear organizing principle of ending the war in Vietnam, and raps the Tea Party movement for its dissimilar lack of a singular unifying policy goal. Firstly, Kinsley’s contention is highly suspect and not at all obvious. When the history of this era is written, it may well be said that the Troubled Asset Relief Program acted as the impetus of the fervor of Tea Party activism. It was the TARP program—with its lack of accountability, monstrous price tag, and subsequent departure from the law’s statute in appropriating its funds—that most recently claimed the scalp of Utah’s Bob Bennett and propelled anti-establishment figures like Rand Paul of Kentucky to prominence.

However, there is something to Kinsley’s notion that Tea Party people are mostly animated by “abstract resentment,” but I wouldn’t count that as a defect. To the extent frustrated voters are unable to clearly delineate the exact origin of and solution to the problems that ail them is a problem of the profoundly confusing times we live in. Simply put, you don’t have to a noted pundit to necessarily grasp the enormity, detachment, and misplaced ownership of our government, and be as hell about it.

The truly interesting part of Kinsley’s attempted smackdown is where he, like most establishment liberals that approach this populist object of their condescension, tries to project the movement’s lasting impact. Can you guess where he ends up?

The antiwar movement also worked, sort of. As did the civil-rights movement that preceded it. Antiwar protests ultimately turned the establishment itself against the war, though extracting us from it still took years. By contrast, the Tea Party Patriots, I predict, are just the flavor of the month: the kind of story that the media are incapable of not exaggerating. The antiwar movement and the 1960s changed America in numerous ways forever. The Tea Party Patriots will be an answer on Jeopardy or a crossword-puzzle clue.

With the very real exception of a small corner of boring hacks in the White House, everyone acknowledges—if begrudgingly—that Republicans on the cusp on something big in this year’s midterm elections.

Lest there be any doubt, any success the Republican Party finds in November is to be accrued to the Tea Party movement. The national Republicans, that feckless, miserable band of losers, were down and seemingly out not long ago. After the last presidential election, it had just lost the Commonwealth of Virginia to an inexperienced, polarizing black candidate—just to provide a view of how dire the situation was. It was the Tea Party protests that disrupted the conventional wisdom of the halcyon first days of the Obama realignment, and irrevocably changed the trajectory of American politics as a result.

Kinsley is careful not to wantonly toss around accusations of racism, and he continues to speak, convincingly, to some of the inner contradictions of the movement. To be sure, Tea Partiers are right to oppose Barack Obama and the Democrats but we must be very clear as to why. As a self-described left-wing Tea Party person, I believe we have much to fear from the “Big Government” of Obama but we must also guard against blanket reactionary hostility to the safety net itself. Medicare, that program we often see seasoned Tea Partiers defending, was implemented in spite of anti-government idolaters who bow at the altar of the mystical “free market.”

Conversely, Michael Kinsley and that entire pathetic crowd of liberal sycophants must understand what we’re dealing with in terms of the modern Democratic Party. What we have is mostly a collection of Wall Street liberals, reflexive statists, radical “environmentalists,” and other noxious malcontents that came together recently and eviscerated Medicare (to the tune of $500,000,000,000) in the service of a newly-minted corporatist health-care program.

Would it be too much to ask for Kinsley liberals to have a fuckin’ clue? For once? Ask not.

The Long March of Narcissistic Clintons

These are fascinating times for observers of Democratic politics—immensely so if you’re a PUMA Democrat. PUMA (i.e. Party Unity My Ass) Dems were, of course, the spontaneous, rankled, mostly unorganized sect of the Democratic base pathetically loyal to Hillary Rodham Clinton in the depressing closing days of the ’08 primary. And I was one of them. It was an unusual fit—obviously—with me being a young black male voter in what seemed like an agitated movement of middle-aged white women voters. 

For most of 2007 (and her entire political life, really) Hillary had been immersed in Elizabeth I phase—with all of her splendid royal pomp and none of her substance; typified by a frosty carapace of presumptuous entitlement. It had long been impolite, heretic even, for liberals to acknowledge what can generally be called the soullessness of the Clintons. (The reason this was true has to do something with the repulsive, Tartufian character of the Newt Gingrich opposition.)

It was in the heady countdown to the Iowa caucuses that I gave Hillary a second look. Hillary, Inc. was in decline and an unlikely hero of liberal conventional wisdom called Barack Obama was on the ascent. The phenomenon of Obama was disturbing to me because it seemed so… not political. To be sure, politics is mostly illusory bullshit but even by the usual plastic standards, the movement around Obama was an unbelievable rat’s nest of mass irrationalism, racial condescension, and lame hype. Discontent with sociopath John Edwards (whose entire populist pose was nothing more than the co-opted MoveOn wing of the Democratic establishment) I began backing Hillary who marvelously transformed into a heroic, rogue Norma Rae character.  

And now she (they) could be coming back.

A couple days ago Bill O’Reilly—bombastic assclown—invited Dick Morris on to discuss a commentary of Hillary’s that piqued his attention. (Interestingly, it was Rewriting History, Dick Morris’s case against Hillary from the political right that had once convinced me I was against her.) In a 60 Minutes interview—that’s still going?—Hillary lamented the sluggish state of the American economy as it has made her attempts, I guess, at smart power more challenging. What seemed to me like an attempt to answer a question and make it through Scott Pelley’s boring inquisition was interpreted by O’Reilly as a “jab” at her boss, the president.

Morris got on to explain that there assuredly as been “a subtle distancing” than began with Hillary’s leave of absence from the heath care reform brawl, and that we should take the possibility of a Clinton-led mutiny seriously.

Let me be clear (as an erstwhile PUMA): Hillary Rodham Clinton should not be president in 2012.

If Obama loses both houses of Congress, sees a precipitous evaporation of his political capital, and comes to be regarded as a miserably failed president, that would be an opportunity to radically shake up Democratic politics for years to come. The temptation of Hillary to make a stab at the nomination should be regarded as an obvious attempt to ensure radical change, post-Obama, doesn’t occur. A Hillary effort, supposedly on the model of Ted Kennedy’s fateful attempt in ’80, is not about policy at all but personality.

Anyone with the balls to challenge the president for his nomination should have one question put to them first: What would you have done differently? Nothing else matters. It’s not enough to dump Obama, recognizing that his great unpopularity would elect a Republican. (That’s nothing more than a cynical political calculation.) There has to have been substantive breaks with the president on policy, and for the right reasons.

It is clear to me on many of the most pressing issues President Clinton would have acted the same as President Obama. Just two examples: (1) The most odious element of ObamaCare is the unconstitutional individual mandate that Hillary steadfastly insisted on while Obama supposedly was against it during the primary; (2) Clinton and Obama both voted for TARP, and I can easily imagine Clinton as the titular head of the Democratic Party corralling Democratic votes in Congress in support of the bailout as Obama did. It’s possible, but certainly not self-evident, that Hillary would have been a more competent manager. It does seem unlikely that self-conscious Hillary would have so publicly agonized over the Afghanistan deliberation, or unwisely pledged the shuttering of Guantanamo within a year.

It’s evident now that the main difference between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton was simply that of two ambitious people who wanted to be president of the United States at the same time. The rest is just distractive political theater. We mustn’t allow the Clintons to get away with this. They are oligarchical elitists like all the rest. Even the praise that an otherwise hostile media occasionally bestows on them—that they’re smart and wonkish—is revealing. By this, they mean the Clintons are privileged, technocratic statists. (Why just yesterday Bill Clinton, whose deregulatory Treasury operation in  the late ‘90s bares great responsibility for the current depression, was on CNBC extolling the virtues of a monstrous, regressive value-added tax.) 

This is a party that is terrible need of a drastic reorientation. Foreign policy is far more complicated, but at the very least the party needs to break with the economic policies of the corporatist ruling elite. (This includes the Malthusian regime of “environmentalists” like Al Gore, and the fanatical outrage of anthropogenic climate change from which it grows.)

Like Hope and Change, the pantsuits lady from Foggy Bottom will merely be a stalking horse—that is to say, a vehicle through which the establishment prevents a truly cathartic political revolution. 

The Compulsory Enlightenment of Christopher Hitchens

As an avowed atheist, I absolutely adore Christopher Hitchens, New Atheist par excellence. Although I take issue with his hard-line activism and questionable priorities, I must always credit the work of Hitch for first crystallizing my nascent skepticism. It was a rather healthy advancement and for that I am intellectually indebted to him. 

His latest offering will invite heavy criticism from sundry quarters; including this one. (Indebted, not neutered, I said.) 

Here he is:

The French legislators who seek to repudiate the wearing of the veil or the burqa—whether the garment covers "only" the face or the entire female body—are often described as seeking to impose a "ban." To the contrary, they are attempting to lift a ban: a ban on the right of women to choose their own dress, a ban on the right of women to disagree with male and clerical authority, and a ban on the right of all citizens to look one another in the face. The proposed law is in the best traditions of the French republic, which declares all citizens equal before the law and—no less important—equal in the face of one another.

 I've always been astounded by the rather peculiar logic of folk who oppose the burqa to the extreme of prohibiting it. Hitchens and his sort are not animated by religious bigotry; obviously, the precise opposite is true. No, this is basically compulsory enlightenment. Atheists, and others, like me who support the right to veil recognize this as an issue that is fundamentally about individual liberty. Burqa banners begin with the essential premise that the decision to don a burqa or veil is anything but a free determination. They basically reason that the preponderance of women who embrace the burqa are motivated by the religious repression of the relevant men in their lives. To which I answer: trust people. 

Banning the burqa makes good, practical sense unless one stops to remember the proper role of government. Ultimately, the New Atheists are not shy about using the instrumentalities of government to rudely shake up cultural dynamics. This, in and of itself, is not a bad thing but radically degenerates into something awful once we consider the specifics of the issue. I may be an atheist (scornful of the dogma of organized religion as well as the fantastic belief in a Creator), but in terms of personal behavior, I'm basically a libertarian. The New Atheists are anything but. It's not enough to ban the right of men to impose the burqa on their wives, or even to mightily penalize such repression; we must outright ban the burqa itself! 

Let me ask a simple question to the pseudoliberals who take a soft line on the veil and the burqa. What about the Ku Klux Klan? Notorious for its hooded style and its reactionary history, this gang is and always was dedicated to upholding Protestant and Anglo-Saxon purity. I do not deny the right of the KKK to take this faith-based view, which is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I might even go so far as to say that, at a rally protected by police, they could lawfully hide their nasty faces. But I am not going to have a hooded man or woman teach my children, or push their way into the bank ahead of me, or drive my taxi or bus, and there will never be a law that says I have to.

 Let me be clear: I'd be a little more than hesitant about allowing a "hooded man or woman" near my children or drive my taxi, too. But that is obviously different matter altogether. I haven't any issue at all with a different set of rules to govern certain public establishments. People shouldn't be allowed to cover themselves in line at the Bank of America any more than they'd be allowed carry a gun there--that's rudimentary procedure in a critical security situation. Otherwise, we ought to trust people with the right to cover themselves as they wish. In return, they ought to be prepared to brave the consequences of what would likely be a lonely, eccentric existence on the periphery. That's what freedom of association is all about.

This is all a very clear expression of the sort of militant atheism that defines Hitchens. I'm all for tearing down the rigidity of religious conformity, and faith period, in our lives, in innumerable ways. But once we begin imitating the superstitious reactionaries in our own clever little way--constructing laws founded on the repudiation of faith, as opposed to centrality and supremacy of faith--we must stop and ponder what we're ushering in. The answer, I'd submit, is a regime of muscular, intolerant anti-theism. Sure, it will be shrouded in the moralistic rhetoric of equality, egalitarianism, and reason, but that only makes it more insidious... and creepily fascistic. 

How Lame Is John McCain?

 *sigh* 

When I saw "Complete the Danged Fence," John McCain's new campaign ad, I tried. I really did make an attempt. I tried to resist the temptation of being snide and contemptuous of a man who's given so much to his country, and in many ways, was given a bum rap in return during the last presidential campaign (although I'm still not sure I regret voting for the other guy). I sometimes try to remind myself that sardonic self-awareness and contempt for others has its obvious pitfalls and is, in no way, a sure prescription for "happiness."

Alas, I am weak.

You know, there were only two redeeming qualities in McCain's unfocused and downright amateurish campaign two years ago: the adorable Sarah Palin and the sharp sarcastic approach of at least a small corner of McCain's communications team. (God bless Michael Goldfarb, online editor over at Weekly Standard and deputy McCain communications person, for he provided much humor and wit on the campaign's official blog.)

McCain hasn't even that minor point for his Senate re-election bid. In his highly-combustible contest with "fat, undisciplined goon" J.D. Hayworth, McCain's operation has varied from nastiness to laughable politically correct smallness. 

The amount of desperate cynicism "Complete the Danged Fence" requires is breathtaking. I'm not an Arizona Republican or conservative, but if I were, the choice couldn't possibly be any clearer. Hayworth may by the "lobbyist-licking" scum Imus says he is, but that only demonstrates how awful the alternative of McCain is. A Sen. Hayworth would be colorful, if anything and a solid vote against bank bailouts and cap-and-trade madness, certainly.

In terms of principled leadership or ideological clarity, McCain hasn't a case beyond the entirely consistent pursuit of his narrow political interest. Simply speaking, John McCain is a vindictive asshole. Populist liberals, like me, were once impressed with McCain's brazen heresy in the early periods of the Bush presidency (born of the residual tension from the 2000 primary campaign) until the old man's expedient calculations directed him to endorse and embrace that same Bush for re-election. Likewise, his steadfast opposition to Obama's corporatist measures--from heath care reform to the present iteration of cap-and-trade passed by the House last summer--should be regarded as cynical posturing with a future expiration date.

"Complete the Danged Fence" is so weird as to be surreal, and insulting.

How fuckin' credulous are these hicks to let me pull this off? McCain must be wondering.

The good folks in Arizona need to stand up, be counted, and answer this question once and for all.

How Obnoxious Is Andrew Sullivan?

So yesterday brought the very big news of President Obama's nomination of his Solicitor General, Elena Kagan, to the Supreme Court. 

Obama's selection of Ms. Kagan basically assures the current nomination process will proceed as most have in the modern era: staid, heavily scripted, possibly punctuated by idle contretemps that ultimately ends with a beaming Kagan being administered the oath by Chief Justice Roberts. 

Needless to say, I have a pretty zen attitude towards these things. I'm more interested, if anything, in people's hyperbolic reactions to these typically bland paragons of unbridled ambition than they themselves. 

Case in point: the supremely obnoxious Andrew Sullivan. Unlike a great many of his detractors, what's bothers me about Sullivan is not his cloudy paranoia (Rock on!) but the hypocrisy of the polite liberal establishment that embraces him nonetheless. I'm not actually worried by Andrew talking endless shit about two of my girlfriends--Hillary, who does have a loathsome side to her, and Sarah. But what I usually resent about Andrew is the pointed criticism lobbed at anyone who dares to critique his boyfriend, Barry, outside the proper parameters of acceptable discourse. 

And now this: 

So Is She Gay?

 So read the title of one of Andrew's reactions to the Kagan nomination. *sigh* He continues:

It is no more of an empirical question than whether she is Jewish. We know she is Jewish, and it is a fact simply and rightly put in the public square. If she were to hide her Jewishness, it would seem rightly odd, bizarre, anachronistic, even arguably self-critical or self-loathing. And yet we have been told by many that she is gay ... and no one will ask directly if this is true and no one in the administration will tell us definitively.

In a word, this is preposterous - a function of liberal cowardice and conservative discomfort. It should mean nothing either way. 

 And there we have it. Sullivan reminds me of the very annoying sort of armchair black nationalists that most black people might know all about. Sullivan's posture, here, means that sexual orientation (like race for the ABNs) defines a person to an enormous and oppressive degree. It, furthermore, should be a sure indication of a particular set of political objectives. And to be sure, the advancement of those objectives trumps all. It's the Perez Hilton approach to sexuality applied to politics. 

With respect to what may possibly be Elena Kagan's obvious, but discreet and hushed, homosexuality, one should say... Who cares! This kind of bigotry is a tad different from the sort I'm accustomed to seeing in the political realm. Usually people like Sullivan (and the kindred-minded ABNs on the topic of race) are content with ridiculing and savaging closeted gay reactionaries who make for easy targets.

Sullivan expounds on his point this way:

To put it another way: Is Obama actually going to use a Supreme Court nominee to advance the cause of the closet (as well as kill any court imposition of marriage equality)? And can we have a clear, factual statement as to the truth? In a free society in the 21st Century, it is not illegitimate to ask. And it is cowardly not to tell.

Note the language--"to advance the cause of the closet." To be in the closet, he means, is an illegitimate and cowardly way to conduct one's affairs. 

No, dear Andrew, needling people about the irrelevant issue of their private tastes, let's say, is indeed illegitimate. And tacky. One should hope this attitude is seen clearly for what it is: intolerance and a lack of imagination. 

Honestly, I prefer Andrew the Gay Firebreather ranting about how much of a raging bitch Hillary is to this. 

From the Archives: "Welcome Back From Intellectual Wasteland"

Here's a letter to the editor I submitted to Savannah Morning News back in December.

An ode to “progressives.”

Last night I welcomed Keith Olbermann and the progressive blogosphere into my home for the first time in nearly two years. After perusing the netroots affected with a stirring mix of heartbreak and vindication, I tuned into Mr. Olbermann's program until the very end, where he concluded with a signature “Special Comment.”

In the intervening period, these people—my erstwhile comrades—had become unbearable for one small tic of theirs: what I perceived to be their fanatical fealty to and unrelenting defenses of Barack Obama.

It's an attitude that elicits potent feelings of shock and betrayal coming, as it happens to, from a young black man, in a majority-black town. From the very beginning, the current writer never bought the conceit of Mr. Obama's symbolic rise as inherently conducive to radical, real, or even modest progress for black people. And so I backed Hillary Rodham Clinton. Though she and the former president were, quite notably, the original triangulators, I felt that through her long, often infamous and incredibly fascinating travails in the harsh milieu of primetime American politics, she had developed a stronger sense of herself and would amount to an imminently less predictable puppet than Mr. Obama has been. (And to be sure, in the final stages of the campaign—back against the wall—she intimated truly progressive instincts.) 

Last night many of my old friends on the progressive left staggered back home—exhausted, dejected, feeling a bit foolish—from intellectual wasteland. With a little help from the menacing Joe Lieberman, they’d finally realized what I’d maintained all along: that the health care “reform”—if any at all—to be signed by Mr. Obama would be an absolute monstrosity. Because of the nation’s dire fiscal straits, as well as the understandable future concerns of cost-cutting and the resultant rationing by the government, I had always been reluctant about my optimal choice of Medicare-for-All, as well as the so-called public option, whatever that is. But the bill we have now—the bill that we were going to get all along—is a disgrace. The main problem is the individual mandate. (Allow us, for a second, to excuse the arguable unconstitutionality of the individual mandate, which Mrs. Clinton misguidedly insisted upon in the campaign.) The inclusion of a government plan to compete with private insurance at least gave citizens a choice. Any proposed legislation with the odious mandate that doesn’t include government competition is to be regarded as a bailout of the insurance industry. Obama and his benefactors are throwing the American people into a deregulated market (the cost-control features of the bill are chimera) to be flayed alive by the private insurers.

It would be akin to—if I'm permitted to borrow an example seen someplace I can’t recall—the government mandating that as a condition of lawful residence in the United States, we all buy cars and auto insurance without the availability of public transportation.

This illustrates why Mr. Obama is so dangerous. Republicans would never dare propose such policy. They are often inconsistent, but in the main, their partiality to business interests is predicated on an ideological aversion to government constraints in the service of the mystical “free market.” The sort of government-mandated cartel the Obama-Lieberman health care bill amounts to hasn’t even that justification. It’s an awful brand of corporatism.

My friends on the left that are beginning to come around are still wrong on the exact details of how we arrived here. Mr. Olbermann, last evening, passionately pleaded for the president to show leadership. Others mimic the critique, chalking up the problem to Mr. Obama’s weakness. Not so. Mr. Obama is not a victim of the congressionally-domineered process nor is he a mere opportunist waiting to sign whatever emerges from the Congress to please his insatiable ego. The truth is far more alarming. His White House gave barely a word to single-payer from the beginning, weighed in against the public option last summer and directed the acquiescence to Mr. Lieberman here recently.  Our elitist corporatist president is getting exactly what he wanted from the very outset.

Welcome home, gang. 

Pretty cool, I thought. Apparently they did not. It wasn't published. :(

I think all of this held up pretty well, if I'm permitted to say so. The one glaring exception is my supposing that Republicans would never posit something like an individual mandate--indefensible, constitutionally-questionable, and liberty-trampling as it is. How can I explain such a ridiculous supposition? Nevermind a charitable explanation; let's chalk it up to ignorance and my momentary failure to remember how thoroughly corrupt, and corporatist, both parties mostly are. Leave aside past Republican constitutional perfidy on issues like the war on terror police state ("Terrorist Surveillance Program," et al). This line of reasoning was wrong even in the relevant area of health care reform. The individual mandate is, of course, a reactionary Republican invention. And to be sure, the mandate was the linchpin of MassCare--ObamaCare implemented on the state level in Massachusetts, for all intents and purposes--which was signed by a still adamant Mitt Romney. (Furthermore, the fact that Romney is still considered a '12 frontrunner reveals a breathtaking level of hypocrisy, excuse-making, and doomed cynical calculating on the part of many a Republican--not Tea Party--voter.)

But maybe that's not the only thing that didn't hold up. I think I may have been too hopeful about the intellectual awakening of "progressives" like Keith Olbermann (Dylan Ratigan, Rachel Maddow, and other people who voiced grave misgivings about the Obama-Baucus-Lieberman "reform"). In fact, these people are utterly hopeless. What they all said in December was swept aside in a matter of weeks, and reached a fever pitch as we inched closer to the bill's possible passage. By the end of the ordeal they were angrily remonstrating against people like gullible doofus Bart Stupak of Michigan for having the gumption to possibly derail the same measure they criticized (and threatened to protest, in the case of Olbermann) a short while before. Lame. Wankers. All of them.

A Very Imus Tradition

More weird stuff about me: My favorite radio program is the infamous Imus in the Morning. I've been intently watching Imus in some form or another for, like, six years now. I watched him on msnbc in the very recent bad old days and now I religiously listen to the show's daily podcast rewind and occasionally catch the show in the morning live on Fox Business. He's awesome. ("The Great One" Mark Levin checks in at a close #2.)

Anyway, for the past several months Imus has been doing this thing where he asks Lou (program engineer) to get each guest's five favorite songs, which is innocuous enough except Imus predictably seizes the opportunity to upbraid nearly everyone for either suspicious selections--"Did you have your staff put 'em on, damn it?!"--or dopey ones. 

So in that vein, I'd like to present my five favorite songs for the week; a list I'm sure Don Imus will never have the privilege of pwning:


1) "Call Me." Go West. 

2) "Dirty Diana." Michael Jackson.

3) "Go Your Own Way." Fleetwood Mac.

4) "Love's Holiday." Earth, Wind & Fire.

5) "Run tha Streetz." 2Pac.

Solid Blow

It's been an especially hectic set of days since Tax Day, this past Thursday; a circumstance that left me unable to promptly take up and muse about events surrounding the recent Tea Party rallies. 

I'd like to begin by explaining what allows me to call myself bohemian tea partier. (Besides one's inalienable right to call himself whatever he damn pleases, of course.) Logically, the term itself seems counterintuitive, if not outright contradictory. So let me spell it out: I'm a bohemian; specifically, in my case, an ethnic, contrarian weird, socially progressive, ganja-partaking liberal arts student of the (sometimes regrettably called) MTV Generation. But I'm also a self-declared proud member of the Tea Party movement teabagger. That is to say, I am resolutely against bailing out the financiers, and profligate government borrowing for stimulus packages (that aren't). In an era of immense ideological intolerance, my opposition to the prevailing liberal catechisms of a compulsory cartel health care system, the faith-based monstrosity of anthropogenic climate change, its resultant monster of cap-and-tax, and my general disdain for Barack Obama, have placed me at a point of common cause with conservatives and libertarians who comprise the preponderance of the Tea Party movement. 

I feel, as Sarah Palin does, that this movement is a "beautiful" development. On a basic level it represents genuine, popular, populist uprising in an era of politics as Madison Ave-orchestrated hype and stale conventional wisdom. As a liberal still, I disagree with the deeply libertarian philosophical underpinnings of the movement, but mostly disregard the difference because we've arrived at kindred conclusions on the compelling issues of the day.

Having moved beyond that important prefatory stuff, I'd like to call your attention to an op-ed in Friday's New York Times. Charles M. Blow--that cool-lookin' dude up there--writes about the Tea Party he infiltrated in Dallas:

I had specifically come to this rally because it was supposed to be especially diverse. And, on the stage at least, it was. The speakers included a black doctor who bashed Democrats for crying racism, a Hispanic immigrant who said that she had never received a single government entitlement and a Vietnamese immigrant who said that the Tea Party leader was God. It felt like a bizarre spoof of a 1980s Benetton ad.

Blow does ultimately make a good point. This passage was cited to give you an example, however, of the sort of obnoxious elitist shit you have to wade through in order to get there. He continues:

 The juxtaposition was striking: an abundance of diversity on the stage and a dearth of it in the crowd, with the exception of a few minorities like the young black man who carried a sign that read “Quit calling me a racist.” 

The conclusive thought behind the piece is basically summed up like this:

 I found the imagery surreal and a bit sad: the minorities trying desperately to prove that they were “one of the good ones”; the organizers trying desperately to resolve any racial guilt among the crowd. The message was clear: How could we be intolerant if these multicolored faces feel the same way we do?  

To be sure, Blow is an average liberal elitist whose pen drips with an acute contempt for the subject of his little investigation. But as far as I'm concerned, he strikes an insightful chord when spotlighting Tea Party tokenism. It exists. Just as tokenism has always existed in the modern right-wing quarters; cognizant, for whatever reasons, of potently-levied charges of racial exclusion.  

My experience at the Savannah Riverfront Tea Party was akin: I believe I was one of only four or five black patriots present. And I noticed the two black speakers were particularly bombastic; hitting the theme of Proud Black Conservative as stridently as possible. 

Blow and I come together on the curious disproportion of black speakers and attendees but where he goes wrong is the automatically cynical verdict he thunders down because of it. He basically takes the presence of tokenism in the Tea Party movement as evidence of sinister manipulation on the part of the movement's (decidedly white, he dutifully reminds us) leaders. Not so. In my mind the frequent, and slightly condescending, attempts to promote the relatively few black faces in the movement is born of sympathetic defensive posturing. There's nothing inherently troubling about the paucity of black (or brown, yellow, or florescent beige) people in the Tea Party movement, and therefore, no need to overcompensate. 

If Blow's screed is indicative of establishment liberal thought, we must note a possible shift.  While they once remonstrated against the movement simply for its lack of black people, they now castigate the movement's leaders for deliberately--and boastfully even!--displaying its few eager black faces. Ironic how the new sin could well be a realistic description of affirmative action, tokenism's younger, 'roided-up brother. 

Condescending, well-intentioned symbolism for me, but certainly not for thee... you racist!

Agnostic sympathy for the Queen

I stated in the introduction that this little corner of mine was a political one. I'd like to qualify that a bit: bohemian tea partier is a primarily a political blog. But there's room for lots more; namely, the endlessly fascinating milieu of pop culture. 

The subject of this particular pop culture rap session is Queen Oprah of Harpo, Inc. My past attitude towards the woman can be summed up as a sort of pious agnosticism. I couldn't have possibly cared any less about her one way or the other. What Oprah represented--in addition to the incredible potential of individual blacks, which is undeniable progress--was the sublime therapeutic approach to, well, almost everything. Including politics. 

Pious agnosticism morphed into outright hostility around late-2007 when Oprah deigned to enter the acrid arena of electoral politics for the purpose of throwing her weight behind then-Sen. Barack Obama. An undecided Democratic primary voter at the time, I recall being fairly disenchanted with the three most popular choices presented to us: Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and sociopath John Edwards. 

The choice should have been clear, right? Here I am, politically engaged young black watching a charismatic--and black!--cosmopolite making a serious but uncertain run for the presidency. Furthermore, this elegant black insurgent would soon be joined by arguably the most famous and successful black woman ever to grace Creation. "What's not to like?" is a natural inquiry to be answered with another; as in, "Where to begin?" Succinctly put, Barack Obama stood as the most prominent encroachment of the Oprah phenomenon upon my unlikely little hobbyhorse of American politics. And I didn't like it. Ms. Winfrey had remained largely inoffensive training her media influence, as it were, into high-profile cross-examinations of Hollywood degenerates. But the eventual transfer of her obnoxious brand of sublime therapy to the serious business of Politics with a capital P was actually what precipitated my stedfast opposition to the Obama candidacy. It forever led me to conclude that the movement around this compelling personality amounted to nothing more than mass irrationalism. 

One assumes those who felt as I did are tempted with a giddy dose of schadenfreude upon the ridikulously delicious revelations put forth by Kitty Kelley. Kelley, commonly repudiated as a "poison-pen" sensationalist, has penned a new work: Oprah Winfrey: A Biography. 

As is normally the case in all things Oprah, I initially didn't give much thought to the ruckus left in the trail of Ms. Kelley's latest treatise. But leave it to the muckraking headline writers of Rupert Murdoch's New York Post to pull me in: 

Lesbian flings, prostitution & abuse lies: Oprah's 'hidden' life.

These people are so good, it's almost criminal. They even bulleted crucial little nuggets Ms. Kelley supposedly unearthed: 

 * Winfrey concocted stories about sexual abuse she suffered as a child -- and grossly exaggerated the poverty she was brought up in. 

* She went to great lengths to conceal her "lesbian affairs" -- including hefty payoffs -- and publicly attached herself to Graham to appear more normal to her audience of housewives.

* She lavished romantic gifts -- including a diamond toe ring -- on ABC talking head Diane Sawyer.

* Winfrey sold her body to earn extra money and has even described herself as a teen "prostitute."

* She doesn't know the true identity of her biological father.

* Her relationship with her own mother is so cold that Winfrey won't even let the older woman have her phone number.

If true, the hypocrisy is so staggeringly obvious that it needn't be fully delineated here. I certainly haven't talked to anyone about this but I think it's fair to assume many will look on this as Oprah's comeuppance. And while the backlash may not enough to entirely dethrone the billionaire heroine, it certainly should temper the tendency to handle Oprah with a hagiographic care, as has been the case. Since forever. 

As an irreverent sort of fellow, I tend to believe these sorts of things about public figures. When you're operating on the level of an Oprah Winfrey, it almost demands a kind of awful neurosis. And in terms of politics, it operates without regard to any discernible ideological boundaries. 

And still I want to sympathize with the lady. Apparently she was a crafty, ambitious, poor black girl who parlayed a gift for gab into incredible fortune and fame. While she may have perpetrated a complete and utter fraud, it is, in the main, a victimless one with one glaring exception. If these allegations are to be believed, then, for me, it magnifies the disgraceful display of her substance-free and faux-transcendent endorsement of Barack Obama back in 2007. I can countenance fraudulent personal narrative-weaving in the realm of entertainment, but once it intrudes the most important, all-encompassing element of society--politics--it becomes another thing altogether because of the dangerous potential. 

I am wont to leave entertainment figures to their devices, so as long as they remember their place. Shut up and sing, is a popular and apposite refrain these days. In the case of Oprah: Shut up and go back to exploring the neurotic depths of all those masochistic enough to avail themselves. 

Comin' From Where I'm From

The Internets,

Well, I suppose an introduction's in order, although I'm not precisely sure how to pull this off.

I guess I could start by sharing how I decided on what is certain to be an arduous endeavor. I mean, it certainly warrants justification, doesn't it? It takes a great deal of courage (or a rather revealing measure of grandiosity, but whatevs) for an initially young and obscure writer to put their work--and really, themselves--out there for public consumption. As if the quotidian pressures of self-critique aren't enough, there's the added requirement of shameless, constant self-promotion. (Not to mention the certain recriminations of your humble writer about all of this, in ten years or so.) But nevermind all of that; we've already started the blogger account. The die has been cast.

This is a political corner, first and foremost. I'm only 20, but I've been a political junkie really for many years now. In that vein, the start of a blog doesn't come as much of a surprise. I have experience writing letters to the editor to the local paper; proselytizing in essays while desperately trying to stay within the assigned topic; and sparsely posting on a few blogs throughout the years. As a tenth grader, I even held a sign near a polling station in support of John Kerry's marvelous and inspirational quest for the presidency.

The current political situation is, alas, so lamentable that's it gotten to be a little more involved than all the aforementioned stuff. This republic of ours is at a crossroads, and I can't help but to be on the scene, furiously scribbling down my every sardonic thought. This is History, baby, happening right outside my window, and I'll be damn if I let it pass me by for watching Zsa Zsa Gabor on Dancing with the Stars or whatever the hell passes for decent entertainment (with hideously high ratings) these days.

Before divulging a little more about myself, I should note that there is a level of manipulative, ass-covering calculation in how I plan to conduct this blog. First off, my name is "Jack Landsman," but not really. Also: I hail from a little historic town called Savannah on the old plantation of Georgia; and I attend "Gotham College" here in Savannah, and sit behind Commissioner Jim Gordon's eldest son in British Literature. (Tee hee.)

The most expedient and colorful way to describe my ideological persuasion--without getting too much into it; there's plenty of time for that--is to say I'm a populist, contrarian liberal.

Although I'm not entirely sure which career path I will eventually embark on, I think it's fair to predict it will heavily involve the discipline of writing. And this seems like a pretty solid start. Cheers.

Yr. Obt. Svt,

Jack