I Don't Want the Future to Look Like Me, Just Think Like Me

By which I mean simply that ideas matter more than melanin, a thought prompted by this "duh" quote from the fabulous Josh Marshall.

But more important it brings up the question upon which all of this madness, birtherism and the like turns. Will America forever be a white country? For any demographer, this question has answered itself for many years. But the very existence of Barack Obama has startled a significant part of the population into realizing what the rest of the world has known for some time--that the day fast approaches when America will no longer be majority white--not just in population, but in governance and culture. It is only through this prism that the the new political hysterics can be understood.

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• Birtherism Writ Large (talkingpointsmemo.com)

Never Waste a Good Letter: Hello, North Carolina

Cover via Amazon

Alton:

God you read a lot in what seems to be a pretty active retirement. I *skim* a lot, wandering the net as I look for examples for journalism class -- examples of good writing, good reporting, good organizing, good gatekeeping and, of course, bad examples of all that and more. I save all sorts of things on the computer and use so few of them because teaching journalism is all about the basics, collecting some facts that may be "facts," understanding that having collected enough information to make a good judgment about including/emphasizing only some of that information is a clear and present manifestation of the inevitable imperfection of human knowing and human sharing .... But, hey, if you wade too deep in these waters, suddenly you seem to be teaching *against* the aims of a basic reporting course. You are suggesting it's too flawed an enterprise to attempt. Well, we don't believe that. We get out of bed in the morning and do our best. So should everyone else, including all the poor young journalists. There are limits on knowing but we should still try to know, right?

*Right?*

That's a long excuse for not reading much anymore in the long forms, either fiction or non-fiction or poetry or essays. I read news and news about news and some thoughtful analysis of news by scholars, though less of that than I probably should. God, I hate jargon but maybe only because I'm not very good at it. I don't play well with others when it comes to pitching scholarly ideas. I once had an article rejected by a reader because, as he wrote, Dr. Robertson "seemed to be under the misapprehension he should be entertaining." Ah. Enough of that.

We are still pretty much yellow dog Democrats. As I like to say, the Dems are in the pocket of big business but the Repubs are an organ inside its body. The Republicans really are more vigorous in their "know nothing-ess" when it comes to science -- global warming and so on. We were talking about this after going to Biltmore with you. You really can sink into comfortable despair about modern politics and curse both parties and all parties. It really is an intellectually defensible position, particularly if you are older, with maybe ten years of decent life left, and money in the bank. But by temperament, I choose to think it's worth hoping that -- if the world is not going to move forward (in terms of my definition of such) -- perhaps we can slow things down as the world slides back into the abyss. So: an inch of difference between the D and the R, but I live in that inch! So: We give some money to the Ds and try to be ready to engage in rational poltitical discussion when given the chance in the hope that Malcolm Gladwell is right and there is a tipping point and I will be the one who says the thing to the right person at the right time and thus the world will be saved.

Well, there you go.

Yours,

Michael

Why I Love Mother Jones Blogger Kevin Drum

He says Obama will probably nominate Elena Kagan, whose written record is surprisingly thin. And just why will Obama nominate her?

Because Obama seems to have almost a sixth sense for doing things that annoy me just a little bit. On most issues he's roughly in the same ballpark as me, but in the end he always seems to end up just a notch to my right. Not enough to really piss me off, but enough to keep me perpetually just a little disappointed. A Kagan nomination would fit that pattern perfectly. So I'm bracing myself for yet another mild disappointment.

I Rise from the Torpor of my Sickbed to Praise Nancy Pelosi

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The President and Rahm Emmanuel were playing tennis for a while, but the score was still 0-0.

"We might as well stop till Pelosi shows up," the President said, "because she's the one with the balls."

This is, of course, somewhat unfair, and I give the President great credit for finally putting his nose into the Republicans' quivering gut and driving them into their own backfield, creating stumbles and fumbles --metamorphosis! new sports metaphor coming out!

But I certainly read several places that it was Pelosi who fanned the Prez with a towel as he sat bruised in his corner and threatened to make Rahm Emmanuel drink the spit bucket when the White House got shaky after Scott Brown's senate win in Massachusetts. (It's a bird! It's a plane! It's yet another sports analogy!)

Thank you, Nancy. That was no lady. That was Pelosi.

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Think Like a Canadian

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I'm trying to do that this morning.

Obama has in no way frustrated my expectations. I took him at his word during the late presidential campaign -- moderate, cautious, a treat for the eyes, brilliantly wordy. I thought his talk about bipartisanship was weak, and so it has turned out to be. But my hopes for him were high because at bottom I'm as irrational as the other guy. (Though I have it under better control. Most mornings my socks match.)

As it turns out Obama may really be the white Jimmy Carter -- smart, well-intentioned, unwilling to close the deal if it interferes with his sense of proper conduct, a happy failture. I really liked Jimmy Carter and still defend him as being a better president than most give him credit for being. And so it may end with Obama, a fine and decent man willing to lose on his own terms and whom I will defend with a whole litany of Yes But.

Ah well. In the long term we're all dead, and it would now appear in the short term we are all fucked.

Back to being a Canadian. The collapse of America's sense of its exceptionalism -- and more to the point our actual collapse, first a totter and then a crunch -- makes a fine spectacle as seen from Olympus, perhaps slightly less fine from Ottawa because of proximity but still rich in schadenfreude.

As seen from Oakland, of course, it's no fun at all. Fucked, as I said cutting to the chase.

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What the Cat Promises, the Cat Delivers. Now, in its Network Premiere....

Image by *CQ* via Flickr

Bob Wieder's 'The Little Kenyan Boy'

Said the pros to me, "Barak Obama,
It's sheer insanity, Barak Obama,
To seek the presidency, Barak Obama,
So young, so ebony Barak Obama,
Barak Obama, Barak Obama...

When I won, some said, "Barak Obama,
Glenn Beck swears you're a Red, Barak Obama.
Your health care hopes seem dead Barak Obama.
You should have stayed in bed Barak Obama,
Barak Obama, Barak Obama..."

Salonistas say, "Barak Obama,
Long live your White House stay, Barak Obama.
We’re with you come what may, Barak Obama,
Let’s kill Glenn Beck, okay? Barak Obama,
Barak Obama, Barak Obama...

Peace on Earth to those who smile when they say,
Barak Obama

Why Obama Won the Nobel Peace Prize

Last minute sub for Letterman.

Obama OKay. I Think.

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But more than okay depends on what flows from the speech. It seemed to invite a delay of the public option, and that is either smart politics that will someday produce a public option, meaning an inevitable expansion of Medicare to the masses.

Or not.

But it was passionate and eloquent. Maybe it will be many things to many people, inspiring some, goading others. Maybe it provides cover for those who waver. But if only the spirit of LBJ would ooze up from beneath the White House floorboards and inhabit BHO for a couple hours a week.

By the way in Journalism Ethics today I wanted to use the mainstream reporting of the disruptions at the congressional townhalls during August -- the question being were the disruptions cherry-picked and exaggerated.

And Dah Babies didn't seem to know what in the hall I was talking about. Or maybe they did and they were shy. Sometimes, I flare my nostrils and stamp my feet too much. I must be terrifying.

I am Duty Bound to Blog About Obama's Speech

I'm a blogger. That's what bloggers do. They blog. If they stop blogging, they aren't bloggers. It's a very existential thing: existence before essence.

But what to say? Then again, that's not a question that has ever stopped a blogger from blogging. But when you are not quite sure what to say, the answer is:

Bullet Points. And here they come.

* I will be more disappointed in Obama if he fails to hit at least a 6-of-10 on the goodness scale with whatever healthcare reform Congress passes than I was with Clinton when he failed to get anything at all through. It's the Southern thing. I felt in my bones that Clinton was flawed, Faulkneresque. I had more hope than expectation (being Southern).

But Obama seemed like a new thing, and even though any analysis of his record in the context of Illinois politics suggested how very moderate and cautious he was, one could not fail to project upon him what was possible rather than what was likely. His blackness (such as it is; what there is of it) filled one with conviction that he was an outsider, which I interpreted as meaning he would come charging into the temple like Jesus among the moneychangers.

There was no particular reason to think this, only to be convinced of it. So if Clinton was from Faulkner, where is Obama from, fictionally speaking?

Moby Dick, All the King's Men, Death of a Salesman, The Great Gatsby -- damn, all my fav American lit is depressing. I think perhaps I must fall back on Shakespeare and Henry V.

Barack. About that speech tomorrow: Adapt, adopt and improve.



(Liberals as "we few; we happy few." That works.)

Obama's Final Solution (Minus the William Shatner Ad for Priceline, Which I Rather Enjoyed)

Timothy Noah at Slate Explains Why Public Option *Is* the Straw that Stirs the Drink

Here's the link. Here's the essence of his argument:

Why is the public option so vitally important to health reform?

At the broadest possible level, the public option is necessary simply because it's impossible to identify a successful health system anywhere in the world based on a for-profit insurance model. If profit-driven health insurance could be made to work, then surely somebody would have figured it out by now. Paul Krugman, in an Aug. 17 New York Times column, likens health reform to the reforms Switzerland instituted in 1994: "[E]veryone is required to buy insurance, insurers can't discriminate based on medical history or pre-existing conditions, and lower-income citizens get government help in paying for their policies." But there's a significant difference. In Switzerland, private insurers are required to provide basic health coverage on a nonprofit basis. Under Obamacare, private insurers will continue to seek profits, and it's quite possible that the new regulatory restraints imposed on them (take all comers, don't punish the sick with higher premiums, don't seek out fine-print reasons to cancel policies after policyholders get sick, etc.) will inspire them to find ever-more-ingenious ways to avoid payouts. President Obama often says that a public option will help keep the private insurers honest. What he doesn't say, but surely knows, is that private insurers' duties to their shareholders may be irreconcilable with their duties to their customers.

Black People Make Me Nervous

Ochre - Image via Wikipedia

As do white people, yellow people, red people and sometimes even ochre people, a thought that arises in the aftermath of the Gates arrest and Obama's hope for a "teachable moment."

Moreover, powerful people make me nervous as do fat people, ugly people, beautiful people, people with body odor, well-dressed people, really smart people, really dumb people, people who seem to be a bizarre amalgam of smart and stupid, people with white even teeth, people with no teeth and people who cover their teeth with their hands when they talk.

Indeed, I make myself nervous. I'm not all that comfortable being alone. Beer with the President? I'd wet myself. Confrontation with a white cop? I wet myself writing that sentence.

So, here's the baseline.:

* Zero degree of anxiety is a state I've never attained.
* One degree of anxiety. With my wife. She's very nice.
* Two degrees of anxiety. With myself, all alone, with the buzzing in my ears and the sudden movement at the corners of my field of vision.
* Seventy-three to eleventy hundred degrees of anxiety. Pretty much everybody else.

Here hyperbole shades into truth: It's degree of anxiety and management of anxiety that matters. So many degrees of overlay determine the final number. Is race/ethnicity a factor in this and do I need to be aware of my own semi-conscious prejudice? Damn well better. Autopilot, the unquestioned premise, is a dangerous thing.

But it's not simple, and I'm a teachable guy. As the President said, it really is all about calibrating the truth of the moment, not ignoring it.

Addendum: It's brown ochre, also known as Goethite.

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As They Said at the End of 'Bridge over the River Kwai': Madness. Madness.

From Intrade.

Will Obama be forced to resign?

The Barack Obama birth certificate controversy refuses to go away. Despite having provided a short form birth certificate issued by the state of Hawaii his status as a natural born citizen is being challenged by members of the press, such as Lou Dobbs of CNN, and the growing 'birther movement'. The requirement of all future presidential candidates to prove their citizenship is also being debated in Congress.

If it is proven that Obama is not a US citizen, and therefore not qualified to be president, he will of course be forced to resign or be impeached. Will this happen? We have opened a new market on the possibility of Obama departing office before the end of 2009, 2010 and 2011. These contracts can be traded here.

The President and the Cop and the Locker Room

When President Obama called the Cambridge policeman whom he had criticized a day or two ago for his role in the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., it reminded me of something written years ago by former newspaper colleague Lowell Cohn.

Cohn was a San Francisco Chronicle columnist during my tenure at the paper in the Eighties. We had an odd bond. We both had PhDs in English literature, mine from Duke and his from Stanford. We both had the good sense to disguise our provenance -- and not to use words like provenance.

I don't know if Lowell's degree explained it, but his columns usually came at the games he covered from a slightly different angle than his fellow columnists, if playful, then playful in different ways, if exploring the psychology of the game, coming at that psychology from a different angle. It's hard to remember specifics, and I'm not accusing him of being literary. He had a different quality of mind, not necessarily better than the other columnists, just different. Sometimes he would explain what every sportswriter knew and never thought to share with readers. He understood that the obvious sometimes wasn't.

The column I particularly recall -- and the one the Obama phone call brought to mind -- followed an earlier column in which he had in some way criticized Giants outfielder Jeffrey Leonard, who I think had the nickname "Penitentiary Face." Leonard was a tough-looking guy, with the capacity to intimidate fans, teammates and, naturally, sportswriters.

Lowell explained how the baseball "code" demanded that after a sportswriter was perceived to have criticized an athlete, the manly act was to march into the locker room as soon as possible, seek out the athlete and allow the athlete to berate him publicly. That's what Lowell did after criticizing Leonard, and then .... I don't remember what happened. I don't remember the column in that much detail.
I *think* Lowell said that Leonard appreciate his offering himself up and that afterwards they had a pretty good relationship.

The point of the phone call is that Obama knows the code of manhood. Did the he fumble the moment by suggesting the Cambridge officer was stupid -- well, behaved stupidly; I concede there is a valuable distinction between adverb and adjective, an "existential" distinction.

However, you parse it, the President manned up. He called the guy to clear the air, and I admire him for it, though it's certainly true that when it comes to clearing the air, as President, he had the wind at his back.

Hail to the Sonny Boy (and then things get weird)

I'm not sure where to go with this, but Memorial Day starting me thinking about my dad (see below) and that started me thinking about fathers and sons and *that* suddenly -- oh the mystery of association -- led me to the following:

Obama is my first "son" president. That is, he's the right age to be my son. Bush and Clinton were my "brother" presidents, which made me dislike the former more and the latter less -- with Clinton there would always have been girls to spare. First Bush, Reagan and beyond were all "dad" presidents, and that connects up with a different set of approving and disapproving, resentment and attraction.

That is perhaps part of the reason I find it hard to criticize Obama even when I disagree with him and think he isn't doing exactly what he promised. Not having any actual kids -- and I cannot add "that I know of" -- I'm not sure if my feelings are typical. I mean, my dad refused to be as proud of me as he should have been. But I look at Obama, and I think: damn, what a fine young man.

We shall see what this goes, this thinking of him as a gawky adolescent who's finally grown into his length and the size of his feet. But it's true. Right now he's my metaphorical sonny boy.

And now *for some unfocused irony*. I had never seen the movie, nor the clip from the movie until I went searching for a nice illustration for the preceding.

But this is a blog: no turning back.

USF Makes the Bottom of a Weekly Standard Article Fretting about Obama's Honorary Degree From Notre Dame

An essay worth thinking about.

My not being Catholic shouldn't mean I just stand by and smile when these controversies arise. Most of the time, I'm proud of how USF deals with the contradictions in its philosophy/theology, noting that such contradiction is inherent in all the religious systems I am familiar with. But, as I said, I'm not Catholic.

The conclusion of Joseph Bottum's essay, which first appeared in the Weekly Standard.

Any Catholic with an ounce of awareness knew this fight was coming. The ordinary Catholic Church and the Catholic colleges were bound to clash, and it's a little unfortunate that it actually spilled into public view with a visit of the president of the United States to the campus of Notre Dame. A better place to make all this public might have been the Sacred Heart University dinner this spring, which honored the pro-abortion activist Kerry Kennedy. Or the Xavier University commencement, which is honoring the pro-abortion political strategist Donna Brazile. Or the University of San Francisco graduation, which is honoring the pro-abortion district attorney (and prominent Proposition 8 opponent) Kamala Harris.

- snip -

There are reasons, however, that the struggle over Catholic culture broke into open battle over a visit of Barack Obama to Notre Dame. In part, it's simply because Obama is the president and a whole lot more prominent than Kerry Kennedy or Donna Brazile or Kamala Harris. But in greater part, it's because Notre Dame is, well, Notre Dame: home of the gold dome, the basilica, the grotto, and Touchdown Jesus. If Georgetown doesn't appear Catholic to ordinary Catholics, that's just Georgetown.

But if Notre Dame is shaky--if the most identifiably Catholic place in America doesn't seem Catholic--then the old connection between Catholic culture and Catholic institutions and the Catholic Church really is broken beyond repair. And where will Catholics send their children to school then?

Little O Meets Big O: I'd Like Some of That Sugar, Also

From Baseball Prospectus, where Nate Silver once roamed.

The White Sox learned this past week that it's good to have fans in high places, as they received a private tour of the White House this past Monday during an offday between road series with the Rays and Orioles. President Barack Obama, of course, is a big White Sox fan.

White Sox reliever Octavio Dotel seemed to have the best time of all while meeting Obama, and he even asked for and received a hug from the President. "This is a guy I've been following," Dotel said. "It's exciting to see him. He's such a powerful man. I never met him before, and it's really, really neat to be around him. Just to be that close to him and have that chance, I saw the opportunity to ask for a hug. He said, 'of course.' That was really nice of him."

The White Sox brought Obama plenty of gifts, including a black White Sox jersey with his name and the number "1" on the back, a dozen autographed baseballs, t-shirts, and caps. The White Sox also were allowed to see some parts of the White House that aren't shown on public tours. "We got to see everything," Dotel said. "All we needed to see is where he lives. I'm telling you, it was great. He knows a lot about us. He's a big fan. I can tell he really enjoyed [the visit]."

Why I Would Never Be Obama's 'White Friend'

Image by BL1961 via Flickr

Because I really don't think he suffers fools gladly -- which comes out a little harsher than I intended (in relation to myself), but you get my drift.

Loved this moment from tonight's news conference.

Q (from CNN's Ed Henry?) It seems like the action is coming out of New York in the attorney general's office. It took you days to come public with Secretary Geithner and say, look, we're outraged. Why did it take so long?

OBAMA: Well, it took us a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak. (Laughter.) All right?

I'm not the best person to compare Obama's public manner with that of Bush because I don't suffer fools at all when they happen to the President of the United States, so I could never stand to look and listen to Forty Three for more than a few minutes. I was not, as they say, dispassionate, disinterested -- if I can for a moment revive that fine old word in its fine old meaning.

But my impression is that Bush was a combination of belligerence and insecurity, simmering with a kind of bullying camaraderie designed primarily to put lesser beings in their place. The stink of privilege and his confusion about how and why he was entitled to it seeped out of every pore, malformed every sentence.

Obama, on the other hand, seems to always be in a bit of a struggle with the sense that he's the smartest person in the room, and it would be impolitic to assert it but inauthentic to disguise it.

I like that quality of his just fine, but I'm not sure I could personally keep his interest being a little short of dazzle, you know, with ample room for improvement. Heck, that's why I got married, to be a good woman's project.

Oh, I'm not saying it always has to come down to being about me, just that it's a lot more interesting when it does.

Four Long Years Ago in the Daily Kos! How Could I Have Missed it?

More more more. Lovely funny stuff.

Those were the days, my friend. I really did think they'd never end. Perhaps, I am too complacent now, too slow to provide razor-sharp critique of the Dems missteps. But Obama on his worst day really is better than Bush on his best.

Literally. And I literally mean literally.

Beauty and the Beast

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

This is just my very personal reaction to the controversy over the chimp cartoon in the Daily News:

Barack Obama looks about as much like a chimpanzee as George Clooney looks like me. Actually, the chimp looks like my uncle Clarence, but my uncle is too dead to care.

Though suddenly all this mistaken identity makes me think of that late afternoon in college when that cute Sharon -- a kind of a kewpie doll; a kind of a Bernadette Peters -- came running up to me from behind and, having gotten my attention, stepped back in astonishment, saying, "You look just like Jack Kascur from a distance."

And so, for a very long time, I lived in the shadows, always walking away, like a retreating god.