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. 

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!