Orange Cheetoh Man Bad, Pale Gropey Man Good!

Someone linked to video of Michelle Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention, and I listened to a minute or two before I thought: Huh -- Democrats must be pretty slow.  At least their leaders think so, because they find it necessary to repeat, over and over, how bad Donald Trump is, lest Democratic voters forget between now and November, and accidentally vote for the wrong guy.  It reminds me of the private sessions Squealer, the pig's propaganda chief in Animal Farm, has with the sheep to teach them new loyalty chants.  The sheep aren't very bright, so a lot of drill is necessary to get them to remember such complex cheers as "Four legs good, two legs better!"

I made the above meme in 2016, and it has occurred to me that one reason people would keep making anti-Trump memes could be that it's a way to cope with Trump's omnipresence in the media, to scratch the itch.  But they just add to his omnipresence, making things worse, which impels them to repeat the old ones even more, and create new ones.  Ostensibly part of the idea is to win over the fabled independent voters, but do they watch the Convention?  I'm technically an independent, and I sure as hell don't.

Then too, Democrats do have bad memories, as do Republicans.  They remember an Obama administration that never was, a Bush administration of empathy and care, a Bill Clinton who lied but nobody died, a statesmanlike Bush I, a decent Ronald Reagan, and so on.  (Someone said that Michelle Obama invoked Reagan in her speech; I'm not going to try to verify it, but it would be no surprise.)  That's one function of the Convention, to celebrate that imaginary past and promise an imaginary future.  Even so, is it really likely that Democrats will forget to hate Donald Trump and vote for Joe Biden?  I don't believe it.  But if it is, no wonder we're in trouble.

Take That, Patriarchy!

When Ted Cruz jumps to stand with you, you may be in trouble:

I saw this item Wednesday morning just before I went to work, and it intrigued me.  On the one hand, right-wing Republicans have thrown tantrums before when they imagined that the Obamas were violating royal protocol; surely they would be upset that Mrs. Obama should do it now, and to one of America's most important allies in the Middle East.  On the other hand, she was defying "sharia law," which is good, but she's a Democrat and married to a black man, which is bad. especially since her husband is widely believed by Republicans to be a Muslim bent on imposing sharia law on Christian America.  What to do?

But consider the dilemma for the Democrats.  On the one hand, Mrs. Obama defied patriarchal Muslim norms and totally destroyed the Saudi oppression of women! -- at the same time that her husband was defending US intimacy with one of the nastier dictatorships in the world, and his administration (along with the corporate media and other minor elements) was fawning on the late King Abdullah as a "man of wisdom and vision," even a "man of peace" who "nudged Saudi Arabia forward."  On the other hand, she disrespected another culture, which objectively put her on the side of the Islamophobes.  As far as I can tell, except for Cruz, most people chose to solve the problem by falling back on knee-jerk cheerleading.  Since the Right mostly did not mount an offensive, liberals didn't have to get defensive.  So when I looked around after work that day, I didn't find the slapfight I'd half-hoped to find.

What I did find was that Mrs. Obama's behavior was not unprecedented.  In fact, it was routine and bipartisan.  Neither Laura Bush nor Condoleezza Rice (who later referred to the headscarf as a "sign of oppression") wore a headscarf when they traveled to Saudi Arabia and met King Adbullah, and according to this Washington Post article, other foreign women have done likewise.  As foreigners and non-Muslims, they aren't even expected to cover their heads.  So why did Mrs. Obama's attire get all this attention (via)?  There was a fuss on Twitter by some Saudis, that's why: about 1500 tweets, some of which were critical, while others defended her.  A tempest in a teapot.

So, good for Michelle Obama, though it doesn't seem she was making a bold political statement.  Like her predecessors, she went with the flow, followed precedent, didn't make waves.

This item interested me, though, because lately I've been seeing a number of feel-good multiculti memes which declare that wearing a headscarf is a personal choice or an individual choice.

 
Which is, of course, nonsense.  Using a Hello Kitty lunchbox as a briefcase is a personal decision.  Dyeing your hair green is a personal decision.  Wearing a hijab, or other form of female head covering, is a custom tied to the status of women in a particular culture or religious sect (as shown by the fact that men aren't required to wear one), it's a declaration of one's religious affiliation and makes a statement about the status of women in that affiliation.  (If people were required to use a Hello Kitty lunchbox as a briefcase for religious or cultural reasons, it would cease to be a personal choice.)  It's not a universal Muslim custom, nor is the covering of women's heads as a cultural requirement limited to Islam; and outside of certain Islamist environments a woman can usually go bare-headed without being penalized for it, though even in Europe or the US she could come into conflict with her family or her mosque if she makes the personal choice not to wear the scarf.  It could be a personal decision if a non-Muslim chose to wear one in a non-Muslim society because they thought it looked cool, but how often does that happen?

This iteration of the meme is particularly dishonest, not just because it ignores the cultural context in which many women must cover themselves, but because of that bit about its being "oppressive to strip you of your freedom of choice" by calling the head covering a sign of oppression.  Discussing a cultural sign, criticizing it for what it signifies, does not strip a person of their freedom of choice.  Assaulting a woman and tearing off her headscarf would strip her of her freedom of choice -- but so would assaulting a woman who chooses not to cover her head.  So would laws or regulations forbidding (or requiring) women to wear the hijab.  By this logic, criticizing, say, antigay or antichoice Christians would strip them of their freedom of choice.  Such Christians and their apologists might very well try to claim that it does.  (As do ultraorthodox Jewish males who assault little orthodox Jewish girls for not meeting their standards of female attire.)  People of the mindset represented by this meme mostly reply that their faith is not legitimate, it's a religion of hate, and therefore their faith doesn't deserve respect.  As I've noted before, such people are highly selective in their implementation of freedom.  I suspect that they are so tolerant of the hijab because it has no hegemonic cultural significance in the US yet: it seems exotic, and they can fantasize about the inner lives of the women who wear it.  To some extent the hijab is a personal choice here, though young girls whose parents require them to wear it, or grown women pressured by their communities to wear it, could plausibly argue otherwise.

While it would be obnoxious to hector women who cover their heads, or accuse them of collaboration with the patriarchy, etc., such criticism does not strip them of their freedom of choice, any more than this meme strips me of my freedom of choice by trying to tell me how to think about the hijab.  We live in a pluralistic society, however much many people find that uncomfortable, and in a pluralistic society people are free not just to behave and believe differently, they are free to talk and disagree and argue about their differences.  Unfortunately the level of debate is generally very low on all sides, but the remedy for that is to raise the level, not to throw out debate altogether.

According to the meme, "Susan wears a hijab out of choice".  This is laziness, or as Bertrand Russell said about postulating, it has all the advantages of theft over honest toil.  Susan is a fictional character, created to grind the meme-maker's axe.  Real women's reasons for wearing headscarves will likely be more complex than that.  People have often chosen to go along with systems that oppress them.  The women in the anti-choice movement, for example, are as eager to police other women's bodies as any patriarch.  Or take as simple an example of female gender-cop behavior as women calling other women sluts.  I'm reminded of Richard Trexler, who wrote in Sex and Conquest (Polity Press, 1995) of claims that children chose to become 'two-spirit': "Compare these protestations that a child exercised 'free will’ to those in any traditional Catholic society that young girls married of their own free will, when of course they did not" (225 n14).  In the American culture of therapy, moreover, choice is highly suspect: it's only okay to be gay, for example, if it was forced on you by your genes; as this meme shows, choice is okay when it's an exotic multicultural manifestation, forced on you only by your parents and your imam.

I think it's time to reread Susan Miller Okun's Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?, in which she and several other writer / scholars grapple with questions like this one.

Somebody Up There

I'm pretty sure I was no more than seven years old when, after having wakened from a nightmare and gone to my mother for comfort and reassurance, I began to wonder who she went to when she had a bad dream, when she was afraid.  I had just come to realize that my mother was also a daughter, that one of my grandmas was her mother.  But she didn't live with her.  If she had a bad dream, she couldn't get up and run to her mother.  So what did she do?  What did all grownups do?

Democracy Now! broadcast excerpts today from a memorial to the late Maya Angelou, and what they chose to share was mostly gag-making.  First the war criminal and general congenital cheap pig Bill Clinton:

Here is why I think she died when she did. It was her voice. She was without a voice for five years, and then she developed the greatest voice on the planet. God loaned her his voice. She had the voice of God. And he decided he wanted it back for a while.

That got him an ovation.  Of course she really died because God needed another angel.  And this sort of thing, with its amoral sentimentality, is probably inescapable when someone dies, but coming from someone like Bill Clinton it's especially repulsive.

Next up was Michelle Obama, who claimed that "the power of Maya Angelou’s words ... carried a little black girl from the south side of Chicago all the way to the White House."  Well, no, I don't think Angelou should get the credit (or the blame) for Mrs. Obama's ending up married to a President of the United States.  Not even when I consider that Angelou also inspired "a young white woman from Kansas who named her daughter after Maya and raised her son to be the first black president of the United States."  (I'm sure I'm not the only person who reflects from time to time on what difference it would make to the discourse about President Obama if his mother were still alive.  Did she really "raise her son to be the first black president of the United States," or were her standards higher than that?)

Finally Oprah Winfrey took her turn, and she was in many ways the most appalling.

I was in utter despair and distraught and had called Maya. I remember being locked in the bathroom with the door closed, sitting on the toilet seat. I was crying so hard she could barely understand what I was saying. And I had — I was upset about something that I can’t even remember now what it was. Isn’t that how life works? And I called for long-distance cry on her shoulder, but she wasn’t having it. She said, as you all know she could, stop it! Stop it now. And I’d say, what? What? What did you say? And she said, stop your crying now. And I continued to sniffle and she said, did you hear me? And I said, yes, ma’am. Only she could level me to my seven year old self in an instant.

And so on, and on.  Winfrey's remarks sent me to the pages of Marge Piercy's 1973 novel Small Changes.  Piercy had a fair amount to say about the Strong Woman and the women who depend on her.  In Small Changes there's a Socratic dialogue on the subject.

“Don’t try to make me somebody up there,” Wanda said with quiet anger.  “On some higher level.  I’m older than you, yes.  I have a few things to teach you that you want to learn, though most of it is in you already.  But I’m not existing on some easier, calmer level.  If I’m older, I’m also more spent.  I have less reserves, less to spare.  I’m a woman the same as you, and it isn’t easier for me to fight and to survive and to get things done than it is for you!  It makes me angry when you pretend it’s different for me.”

“But you know so much more.  You never wonder who you are, I know you don’t!”

“Beth, it’s recently I stopped being only Joe’s woman and mother of my kids.  That’s all I was for years, and don’t forget it.  Joe, my kids, and radical politics were my life, in that order.  I wasn’t on my own list of priorities.”

“But now you do know!  You do!  I feel you’re pretending.  Because I know you’re stronger than me.”

“You mean I’m louder.  How do you know I’m stronger, Beth?  Because you haven’t seen me break yet?” [454]

And:

She wanted to love, yes, but safely, without demands, from a distance.  She wanted Wanda for her own loud, strong, vigorous dark Madonna.  Part of her froze and tucked in when Wanda wanted to make demands back, when Wanda wanted to talk about her aching legs or to worry about her sons or to be sullenly angry and defeated: when Wanda asked her to be her friend [456-7].

I haven't read that much of Angelou's work, but from what I have read I get the impression that she made her own weaknesses and fears clear enough.  She must have gotten so tired of people attaching themselves to her, demanding to be mothered and inspired.  It's no tribute to her to turn her into a wise, powerful oracle who was always on top of things, a "loud, strong, vigorous dark Madonna" who'd make you whole if you but touched the hem of her garment.  Michelle Obama did better than Winfrey in this regard, recognizing that Angelou was honored better by learning from her weaknesses as well as her strengths.  I wonder who was there for the adult Maya Angelou when she had bad dreams.

Divide and Conquer

This morning I came across some more debate about Michelle Obama's recent encounter with a gay-rights protester at a Democratic Party fundraiser.  (Significantly, this apparently lone protester was turned into "gay rights protesters," plural, in this report.  We dissidents are scary!  One of us looks like a crowd!  Poor Michelle, shouted down by an angry mob of radicals waving pitchforks and torches!)  Obama faced the protestor down, threatening to walk; the protestor was shouted down and removed by the others present.  Ian Welsh commented:

To step back to Michele Obama, and her being heckled by an activist.  Mrs. Obama was raising money for the Democratic party.  She has her profile because of her husband, whose adjunct she was acting as.  The idea that you shouldn’t be rude to her because she’s the “first lady” is ludicrous: she’s not some nice, uninvolved lady, she is a participant in the political process, and one who will be very rich for the rest of her life because she married Barack Obama.

In another, shorter post, Welsh linked to a post by gay Democratic blogger (and sometime Democratic Party fundraiser and campaign worker) John Aravosis, who after initial uncertainty became less critical of the protester.

Now that I know that this fundraiser was at the home of a lesbian couple, the protest – a gay protest – becomes a lot more relevant ...

The only reason to do a protest is to move the ball forward on issues you care about.  I was initially worried that this protest didn’t do that.

Despite this, Aravosis is still only "in the undecided column."  He does, however, link to and quote an opinion piece on CNN.com by ESPN writer LZ Granderson, a gay African-American man defending protester Ellen Sturtz.

Heckling the first lady wasn't fair because she isn't responsible for policy. But the incident sent a message to those who are responsible: We are people, not pawns.

The discussion in comments under Aravosis's post is worth reading; much of it is intelligent and informed.  Several commenters, however, complained that Ellen Sturtz's protest was "ill-timed." This is funny to anyone who remembers the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s (or any other protest movement, I suspect), which was often accused of the same offense.  African-Americans were told to wait patiently for white racists and their enablers to change their minds by themselves; Martin Luther King Jr.'s letter from jail in Birmingham, Alabama, is among other things a reply to such well-meaning white moderates.  No protest, or debate, or disagreement is timely in the minds of the powerful and their hangers-on. 

Aravosis admitted that Sturtz's protest was justified by the outcome: it got a lot of media attention and sparked some discussion of her issue, about which most Americans probably knew little.  Including gay Americans, it seems.  I don't understand why he's still "undecided."  The cycle of abuse rolls on.

Circle the Wagons! The Lesbians Are Coming!

This really made me angry when I heard it on Democracy Now! today.  While giving a speech "at a private fundraiser in Washington," Michelle Obama was confronted by Ellen Sturtz, a lesbian protester upset by Barack Obama's failure to sign an executive order banning discrimination based on sexual orientation by federal contractors.

Mrs. Obama's reaction was interesting. "And I don’t care what you believe in," she told Sturtz. "We don’t — wait, wait, wait. One of the things I — one of the things that I don’t do well is this. ... [You] can take the mic, but I’m leaving. So, you all decide."  Sturtz was shouted down by the audience, and Mrs. Obama stayed.

Some liberal and progressive pundits criticized Mrs. Obama for not handling the situation well, comparing her approach unfavorably to her husband's.  I have mixed feelings about that myself.  I sympathize with Michelle Obama's position as First Lady: she's stuck in the public eye whether she likes it or not, and I gather she's always been less than happy with that.  (The Onion satirized her plight, not unsympathetically.)  It's not her fault that her husband won't act on antigay discrimination by federal contractors, and I'm inclined to question Ellen Sturtz's choice of venue for her protest.  Still, if she can't deal with protesters -- like Medea Benjamin, I prefer that word to "hecklers," which is favored by corporate media -- she should stop giving speeches.

I disagree with Benjamin, though, about Mr. Obama's tactics with protesters.  The other day a student spoke up during a speech he gave in Israel.  The student, an Arab-Israeli, called out, "Have you really come to promote the peace process or to provide Israel with more weapons to kill the Palestinian people? On your way here did you see the [West Bank security] fence, or the killer of Rachel Corrie?"  I wouldn't call that "heckling," as most media did.  I think the first question, especially, is quite fair, and an honest answer would probably be "the latter."  Obama has learned a trick or two since 2010, when a student in Tampa asked him about Palestinians and he floundered, obviously unprepared.  He hasn't come up with any more honest answers to such questions, but he's learned to mock the people who ask them.  In Israel last week, he smirked and said that "we actually arranged for that because it made me feel at home ... I wouldn’t feel comfortable if I didn’t have at least one heckler.”  (By way of balance, I'll point out that the protester spoke in Hebrew, and "a reliable Hebrew speaker" told Obama he was talking about convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.  So Obama didn't even understand what was being said; not to worry, his response to any question would have been the same.)

On balance, I prefer Michelle Obama's direct brusqueness to the smarminess of her husband.  What got me going was the rest of the DN! item:

Some criticized the protester, Ellen Sturtz, saying there were racial overtones when she said she was "taken aback" that Michelle Obama "came right down in my face," in response to the interruption. Anthea Butler, a professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, said: "Media coverage also played along, portraying the First Lady as the aggressor rather than Sturtz. ... Such a characterization read instantly to many as an exhibition of white privilege. Similar statements of any black person 'stepping out of their place' in the 19th and 20th centuries resulted in beatings and lynchings."

I don't detect any "racial overtones" in Sturtz's complaint.  Professor Butler's remarks stink of the same dishonesty that drove Clarence Thomas's claim that he'd been subjected to a "high-tech lynching" during his confirmation hearings, a phrase that was recycled twenty years later, with equal creepiness, by defenders of Herman Cain.  The victims of lynchings seldom ended up with lifetime tenure on the highest court in the land.  A lone lesbian of any color is not a lynch mob, and if we're going to talk about privilege, the First Lady's privilege trumps that of any mere citizen. Before they convict Ellen Sturtz of "exhibition of white privilege," they'd better have some evidence, and I haven't seen any yet.  How classic, though, to accuse a citizen of oppressing her rulers.

What can ordinary citizens do to reach the ears of their rulers?  Few of us have enough money to purchase some quality time with the President on the golf course.  If we are lucky enough to get an audience with him, we should tug our forelocks and know our place: "Oh, come on, don't lobby me here right now," he admonished a Greenpeace director who got importunate at a photo op.  Getting up in the President's face is lèse-majesté; we unlucky Americans may not have a king, but we can still act as if we do. What is an appropriate way to let the President know what we think: Write letters, send e-mails, call the White House ... vote? Please. Since the President isn't bothered by "hecklers" anymore, some other ways of getting his attention will have to be devised by those of us who can't buy it.  I'm not sure what those methods would be, but I have faith in the ability of our grassroots activists to come up with them. And whatever they turn out to be, they'll be the wrong methods at the wrong time as far as the powerful and their toadies are concerned.

Do the Americans Believe in Their Myths?

I know I should let it drop, but it's getting to me, this cult of personality.  An intelligent friend of mine on Facebook quoted today someone else's remark that "Seriously, Michelle [Obama] is like...the statue of liberty. Only with more compassionate eyes, and better fashion sense."  This comparison -- to an inanimate object, mind you! -- seems totally loony to me.  Luckily, Democrats base their politics on principle and fact, not on emotion.

The Onion has a good piece that sums up my reaction to Mrs. Obama's speech very well: "Good Evening, It's An Honor To Be Used As A Political Prop In My Husband's Campaign."  After reading a few more status messages gushing inanely over her speech ("Regardless of if you like President Obama, how can you not want First Lady Michelle Obama back?!"), I posted a link to the Onion piece.  A right-wing acquaintance of mine, who'd been drooling over Clint Eastwood just a few days ago, shared the link.  I commented, "Funny, you didn't feel that way about Ann Romney's speech"-- and she didn't ("a darn good speech at the RNC.  Who knew!").

But enough of this.  I decided to write this post to quote a couple of writers quite unrelated to one another whose remarks feel relevant to the way intelligent, educated adults act as though they believe that national politicians and their families are their personal, intimate friends.  One is from Glenn Greenwald:

Indeed, as I've written many times, "trust" is appropriate for one's friends, loved ones, family members and the like -- but not for politicians. That's what John Adams meant when he said: "There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." "All" means "all" and "none" means "none."

But that's not how our political culture works generally. Our politics have become entirely celebretized. Political discussions typically resemble junior high chatter about one's most adored and despised actors: filled with adolescent declarations of whether someone "likes" and "trusts" this politician or "dislikes" that one. "I trust Obama" has long been a common refrain among his most loyal supporters. The fact that, as Krugman says, that is much less true now is quite significant, even if "trust" is an inappropriate emotion in the first place to feel towards any political official.

While I agree with Greenwald's basic point about trusting politicians, I disagree that American political culture is any more celebritized than it was in the past.  The scale has increased vastly from the original thirteen states, and mass media have extended its reach so that millions of people at a time can adore their rulers in closeup.  In fact, I believe that electoral politics is primarily glorified "junior high school chatter" about who's the dreamiest and most popular; concern about issues, logic, and fact is at best secondary.  Whether anything can be done about this I don't know; I'm inclined to doubt it.

The other quotations come from Paul Veyne's book Did the Greeks Believe Their Myths? (Chicago, 1988), page 81:

Indeed, the pleasure that citizens took in hearing an orator pronounce the panegyric of their city cannot be believed. These speeches of praise were a fashion that lasted for a millennium, up to the end of Antiquity. People spoke of mythical origins and of kinship among the cities of Greece as often as the people who frequented the salons of the fauborg Saint-Germain talked genealogy, and for the same reasons. … “When I hear praised,” Socrates says ironically, “those who have just died in battle and, with them, our ancestors, our city, and ourselves, I feel more noble and great; each of the other listeners feels the same on his part, so that the entire civic body comes out of it exalted, and it takes me three days to get over this emotion.”

And from page 90:

Worship and love of the sovereign reflect the efforts of the subjugated to gain the upper hand: “Since I love him, therefore he must wish me no harm.” (A German friend told me that his father had voted for Hitler to reassure himself; since I vote for him, Jew that I am, it is because in his heart he believes as I do.) And, if the emperor demanded or, more often, allowed himself to be worshiped, this served as “threatening information.” Since he can be worshiped, let no one think to contest his authority. … [91] Under France’s Old Regime, people believed and wanted to believe in the king’s kindness and that the entire problem was the fault of his ministers. If this were not the case, all was lost, since one could not hope to expel the king as one could remove a mere minister.

The chorus of adulation for the President's wife (who, to repeat, is not running for office herself), the widely-expressed wish to have a Celebrity Death Match between Betty White and Clint Eastwood, and the endless flood of cute pictures of the Holy Family -- all this and more keeps reminding me that Democrats, even the more "liberal" or "progressive" ones, are no more rational than the Republican opposite numbers they scorn so lightly.  Who scorn them as lightly in return, with as little basis.  Whether, and how, we might construct a sensible politics in this country I don't know.  But it won't be built by either party.

The Decline of the West

So all my liberal friends are slobbering over Michelle Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention.  I didn't watch it (my TV doesn't receive digital signals, and I don't have cable or satellite), so I don't know.  But who cares?  She's not running for office.  I also don't trust their judgment, since most of these people have also rhapsodized over what a great speaker Barack is, and I know that he isn't. Besides, they are all team players.  Michelle gave a better speech than Ann Romney because she's on Our Team.

Aside from that, they've been speculating gleefully that Betty White would perform at the DNC, to show Clint Eastwood how it's done.  So many people have been dwelling on the fantasy that they seemed to have begun to believe it was really going to happen.  White is a charming, funny lady, but I can see no reason why she should give a major speech at a national political convention.  Who'd write it, I wonder?  She wouldn't be allowed on the podium with a speech that hadn't been vetted.  Maybe the same people from Comedy Central who contributed jokes to the President's speech threatening the Jonas Brothers with death by predator drone.

I've noticed that the Obama cultists who spammed their feeds last week with jokes about the Republicans' convention center ("You Didn't Build That" -- it was built largely with public funds) have been silent about the site of the Democratic National Convention: the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina.  As Amy Goodman reported today,

... earlier this summer, Democrats organizing the party’s convention stopped calling the venue Bank of America Stadium, referring to the site instead as Panthers Stadium, even though Bank of America purchased the sponsorship rights in 2004. The move appeared to mark an effort by the Democratic National Committee to distance itself from symbols of the Wall Street bailout like Bank of America after reneging on a pledge to stage the convention without corporate donors.

Not only that, Goodman mentioned

 ... the nation's largest utility, Duke Energy, and its role in bringing the Democratic National Convention to Charlotte, North Carolina, where we’re broadcasting from. The company’s chief executive, James Rogers, held fundraisers, donated his company’s office space, even guaranteed a $10 million loan to the convention committee.

So of course my Democratic friends are kvelling about Michelle and Betty.  But it could be worse.

On the other side, my Right Wing Acquaintance Number One was delighted by a Forbes article which hopefully announced "New York Times Proves Clint Eastwood Correct -- Obama Is Lousy CEO."  "That rings true to me," RWA1 commented.  The Forbes staff writer, shaking his head in disbelief, declared "A Sunday New York Times front page story — New York Times! — might have killed President Obama’s re-election hopes." He sums up:

Imagine, for a minute, that you are on the board of directors of a company. You have a CEO who is not meeting his numbers and who is suffering a declining popularity with his customers. You want to help this CEO recover, but then you learn he doesn’t want your help. He is smarter than you and eager to tell you this. Confidence or misplaced arrogance? You’re not sure at first. If the company was performing well, you’d ignore it. But the company is performing poorly, so you can’t.

With some digging, you learn, to your horror, that the troubled CEO spends a lot of time on — what the hell? — bowling? Golf? Three point shots? While the company is going south?

What do you do? You fire that CEO. Clint Eastwood was right. You let the guy go.

The President of the United States isn't a corporate CEO; a government isn't a company; voters aren't customers.  And I'd like to know who the writer thinks "you" are.  From a corporate point of view, Obama has done very well: the stock market is booming, and corporate profits are at record highs; he's also still quite popular with his "customers" -- certainly more popular than George W. Bush was by the end of his second term.  Obama has also sheltered the corporate sector from accountability for the crimes and mismanagement that nearly destroyed the US economy in 2008.  And while RWA1 may wish that Bush hadn't bailed out the banks (with Obama's and McCain's collusion), or Obama the auto companies, I doubt the corporatists agree with him.  I hold no brief for Obama, as readers of this blog will know, but it's also worth pointing out that a major faction in upper management (the GOP in Congress) did its best to sabotage him from the day he took office.  (I've also been trying to remember when Republicans like RWA1 were bothered by Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush's excessive fondness for vacations.)  A CEO like Obama wouldn't be dismissed, but even if he were, he could still count on a generous golden parachute of stock options and severance pay.

So that's the state of political discourse in America these days.  We're doomed.

Can 50,000,000 Obama Fans Be Wrong? (Second Go-round)

I don't know the ultimate source of this photo, but my Tabloid Friend on Facebook reposted it today from another user. The previous poster commented:

Man .. these folks have been a-huggin' up on each other for quite awhile. Here's another piece of my "positivity carpet-bombing campaign" .. It's called L-O-V-E, y'all.

Haters .. don't hate .. just participate.

And he added, "You can see the peace she finds in his arms .. WOW!!"

This must be another talking point for the Obama campaign, focusing on personalities rather than issues. If anyone wants to talk about drone attacks that kill civilians (but not in huge numbers) or the erosion of civil liberties, just bring out the adorable pictures and demand that everybody say "Awwww!" If you don't go along with it, you're a "hater." I've been called worse.

It's a cute picture, all right, but it also shows how little you can tell from a snapshot, which in this case dates from before Obama's emergence as a national political figure anyway, before he'd been coached in posing for effective campaign photo ops. Michelle is hugging Barry, but he's not hugging back. He looks uncomfortable and distracted, though he may just be squinting in the sun. It looks like more of a "Quit hangin' on me, woman!" pose than a "Baby, baby, baby" pose to me.

Which doesn't mean there was trouble in paradise; I have no idea what it means, since I wasn't there and I don't know the Obamas' history. What I do mean is that it's not a romantic photo, and not a very good illustration for the the original poster's caption. But the important thing for the Obama campaign is to flood us with reasons to love Obama personally and distract us from his record. I have no doubt that Ronald and Nancy Reagan loved each other just as much, or George W. and Laura Bush for that matter. It's nice for them, but is no more relevant to Obama's (or Bush's or Reagan's) performance in office than Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton's considerably less warm and fuzzy relationship.

Another commenter, who claims to be able "to tell a lot from snapshots," just chimed in with "I love the way he is squeezing her shoulder and holding onto her jacket collar, they look at ease and just comfortable with each other..." It doesn't look to me like Barry's squeezing her shoulder or holding on to her jacket collar", but look and decide for yourself. And even if she's right, even if I agree that they're a "magnificent couple," what conclusion should I draw from the fact that a man who "look[s] at ease and just comfortable with" his young wife (long before he became President, mind you) can also joke about killing people with predator drones?

P.S. Yesterday someone wrote somewhere about Obama's golf game that it must drive a lot of Republican politicians crazy that a black man has a better swing than they do. No evidence that Obama's game is that good, of course, but it occurs to me now that it might be fruitful to compare Obama to Tiger Woods. Woods also had to contend with racism as he rose to fame and fortune. There must have been white golf fans who were furious to see a black man beating white men in a "gentleman's" game. But that didn't change the fact that Woods was, to put it mildly, a terrible sportsman, given to regular tantrums on the golf course, a player for whom winning was the only thing. This is much less important than Obama's war crimes and disdain for the Constitution, of course. The parallel I'm drawing is that though racism surely underlies a lot of right-wing criticism of Obama, he continues to show that he's not a decent man, no matter how well he photographs with his wife.

Can They Do That?

Pearl Cleage, who's a good novelist but a straight-up Obamabot, posted this on Facebook today:

... i LOVE michelle obama. i'm sorry she's upset about the new book "the obamas" where the author speculates on what the first lady might be thinking and feeling about her husband, her marriage, etc. but don't you worry, michelle! we've got your back ... AND we're registered to vote for your husband!

Two things occurred to me: How do you register to vote for a specific candidate? Oh, I know she didn't mean that; she just meant that "we" (whaddaya mean "we", Kimo Sabe?) are registered to vote, and "we" are gonna vote for Obama in November. But even more: how does Cleage know that Michelle wants to spend four more years in the White House? I wouldn't blame her a bit if she didn't. Talk about "speculat[ing] about what the first lady might be thinking and feeling"! Cleage has some friends in high places, so she might have information on that subject that I don't; but I can't shake a mental image of Michelle bolting for the doors and Cleage cooing at her soothingly and pushing her right back in.

Speaking of the coming elections (this generation shall not pass away), Robert Reich has a so-so piece at Salon on Ron Paul's appeal to young voters. In New Hampshire Paul won over "47 percent of primary voters between the ages of 18 and 29", and the GOP leadership, according to Reich, is trying to credit his economic policies for that. "The young," Reich declares, "are flocking to Ron Paul because he wants to slice military spending, bring our troops home, stop government from spying on American citizens and legalize pot." I'd like to see some evidence for either of those claims, but it may not matter. It could be that, as various Obama loyalists are saying, that many people on the left are mistaking Paul for a "progressive." After all, many people on the left mistook Obama for a progressive in 2008.

Democracy Now! broadcast an edited version of the late George Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words" monologue today, the first time I've heard it in quite a long time. The clip began with Carlin musing on the supposed fact that there are 400,000 words in the English language, and only seven that you can't say on (American) television. As he pointed out, that's quite a lopsided ratio. But as fond as I am of expletives, my first thought was that 399,993 words is quite a large sandbox to play in. Why are those seven naughty words so important to Carlin and his many fans? Carlin jeered at the notion that hearing those words (on American television) would destroy your soul, which is indeed a notion to laugh at; but what about the corollary, that not being able to speak those words (on American television) will destroy your soul? Just to play the devil's advocate, why was Carlin so obsessed with saying those words when 399,993 others were available, many of them quite powerful, especially when someone knows how to use them? Once again I got the impression of Carlin as an angry baby squalling in his dirty diapers.

It also occurs to me that the left in America has often stressed that broadcast media are not and should not be a laissez-faire zone: we want even private commercial broadcasters to have public responsibilities when they get a license to use the public airwaves. As former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps pointed out in the same DN! segment, a sizable segment of the public doesn't like to hear a lot of expletives on the public airwaves, and compromise may be necessary. That segment of the public can't prevent words they dislike from appearing in print or other media, and even cable networks have more freedom in that area.

I am rather disdainful of people who throw tantrums at hearing one of the Seven Words on TV or radio, especially when I consider what they don't object to hearing there. But I'm also disdainful of people on the political and cultural left who throw tantrums over broadcast content that offends them, and want it removed and forbidden. I'd say the first point we need to establish is that the First Amendment guarantees your right to be offended, and that offensiveness should not be grounds for limiting freedom of speech and press. But what does? I don't know where the line should be drawn, and I don't believe a clear line can be drawn. Serious discussion of such problems is anathema in most of the political spectrum, so I don't expect much light to be cast on the subject.

I'm especially wary because I've noticed lately that I'm more bothered when I hear people screaming "fuck" at each other in public, like the middle-aged Hoosier lady who yelled in the middle of the public library about a fucking bitch who called her grandbaby a bitch! In front of her grandbaby, in fact. I didn't, and wouldn't, do anything about it, but I was taken aback. Maybe I'm just getting old. I thought of an old Kliban cartoon which showed two old women walking down the street, passing a young woman having sex on the sidewalk with two young men. "In my day," said one of the grandmas, "nice girls didn't do that."

(I was going by memory, which is never a good idea. Actually not two grandmas, but an old heterosexual couple.)