alias Bruce.

It's not funny

when a president sends troops potentially to their deaths, and upon looking back at last night's post I need to say that I did not mean to imply that it is. There is no humor in the catastrophe of civilian and military deaths, rotted government and misogynistic persecution that we call the Afghanistan War. I think I was writing from a sense of the tragic absurdity of Obama's lack of moral and political leadership. He reminds me more and more of Ronald Reagan: a stylized figure who plays a bang-up Leader of the Free World on TV but who relinquishes the force of leadership to others behind closed doors.

Not that Reagan and Obama can be called equals. Reagan had far more resolve and conviction than Obama, which is in itself a horrifying realization. Obama has far more intellect. But both have done their best work on camera. Their main difference in usefulness, I think, is that Reagan made a great figurehead for his deeply-held agenda (because he had one), while Obama makes a lousy one (because he doesn't). What a sinking feeling I had last night as I watched Obama yet again strike his trademark commanding pose, this time in front of the cadets at West Point: his eyes flashing, his stance lean and strong, his words crackling -- all for naught, as we have learned with his treatment of Wall Street and health care reform and now Afghanistan, where once again his actual acts of policy fold miserably into a let's-please-everyone collapse that neglects essential ingredients for success in any direction.

In the case of Afghanistan, that means an escalation (no! say doves and most Americans) that broadcasts its ending date to the Taliban and al-Qaeda (no! say hawks) while increasing casualties (no! say doves and most Americans) without any reasonable probability of victory in a nation whose topography and social fabric are not made for successful foreign intervention (no! say doves as well as those hawks who know this cannot be a short war). Obama offers just enough of what pleases all sides -- tough-sounding troop increases for the hawks, a quickie withdrawal deadline for the doves, vague promises of partnership for skeptical and fearful Afghans -- to assure that this mess will yield no one's desired result. Obama lacks the spine to call this "anti-terrorist" stab at nation-building what it really is: a militarily unwinnable enterprise that, in saner times, would be supplanted by international economic and political development and detective work. Perhaps he has talked himself into this war. Or maybe, when things go badly, he will follow the Iraq War model and retreat toward the door while proclaiming that we have "achieved our goals." Or perhaps, if things get awful enough, he will simply change his tune and roll with the long-war plan, explaining in an artfully-delivered speech to the nation how we no longer have the option of withdrawal.

No, it is not at all funny, seeing a man of such great gifts roll over and do dog tricks in his desire to please many masters -- while people die for his lack of fortitude. For a man who cast a lonely vote as a senator against the war in Iraq, yesterday at West Point was just about the bitterest joke one could imagine.

For me, the laugh track

in Obama's Afghanistan speech last night began when he intoned with a straight face that the United States has never sought world domination. What a disappointing, gelatinous sop he has revealed himself to be.

Obama's Latest Audition.

Is it just me, or was it straight-up creepy the way that Barack Obama put on his best kill-the-pig-drink-its-blood face to defend Eric Holder's 9/11 trial plans? In response to a reporter's question about some people finding it offensive to grant Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a federal trial (which is an absurd debate in the first place for a nation that claims to follow the rule of law), Obama set his jaw and intoned to the cameras, "I don't think it will be offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him."

It's not that this is some policy turnaround for Obama. He ran on a platform that challenged the general efficacy of the death penalty but that carefully left open a window to use it in heinous situations. But to me, the overzealousness of Obama's death declaration about the 9/11 trial (he quickly backed off and said he was just hypothesizing a possible outcome) stank of phoniness. Even through the television, for Chrissakes, he emanated the smell of a guy straining for primal toughness in the face of charges that he is a softie. The appropriate response in front of the cameras would have been a sober presidential declaration about the deadly seriousness of due process in order to secure justice for such a horrific crime. So why the bloodthirsty schoolboy overstatement? More and more, Obama reminds me of the title character in the film Zelig, who is addicted to being whatever others expect of him. How much of his soul will a man sell in pursuit of perceived gravitas?

You Didn't Read This.

Good evening. The subject of this blog non-entry is the former governor of the northernmost American state, who shall here remain nameless, since Google hits and soundbites from outraged liberals are precisely what she seeks in order to inflame her extremist fringe base. Not that the prospect of her shattering the Republican Party does not carry certain benefits. But for that she does not require our help.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to follow this link to an insightful piece at The Nation (and formerly at Tom Dispatch) in which Max Blumenthal makes the case that the former governor's appeal to her audience rests more on reptile-brain nihilism than on any structured affirmation, which makes her adherents immune to counter-argument or evidence, let alone reason.

If for any reason, after reading the essay, you or others become caught in the trap of overly energetic attention toward said former governor, I will disavow all knowledge of this post.

This message will self-destruct in five seconds.

Who's Really Scared of a 9/11 Trial?

For God's sake. With all of this chittering by small weasel-like creatures about the allegedly catastrophic "propaganda opportunity" provided to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 defendants by the federal court trial planned in New York by Attorney General Eric Holder, you'd think the United States was some sorry illegitimate state whose global stature cannot hold up under the challenge of a criminal defendant's statements in open court.

Which I guess, come to think of it, is actually the problem.

Holder has said, rightly, that he isn't scared. But I do think the spastic critters squeaking their fears on Fox are onto something, although a very different something than what they think they're onto. In truth, their behavior begs a basic question: What kind of country is so unsure of the persuasiveness of its ideals that it is afraid to apply its own rules of due process for fear that the transparency of a trial will allow an anti-American defendant's voice to be heard?

Answer: A country that has trouble believing in itself. For good reason, actually.

So here's the deal: When part of calling yourself a democracy involves using a publicly accountable and visible court process to put accused criminals on trial, you don't get to conveniently renege on the "public" and "accountable" and "visible" parts when you have a defendant whose beliefs you consider tangibly threatening. Dictatorships do that. Alleged democracies don't. An alleged democracy believes in its supposedly convincing principles of jurisprudence enough to put them into practice even when -- or especially when -- this shines a public spotlight on a defendant's violent defiance.

A right to a public trial is a right to a public trial. When you chicken out on granting that right because you fear the message of the accused, it says more about you than it says about the defendant.

Who's Afraid of...?

A couple of nights ago I watched Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the movie version of Edward Albee's eyebrow-frying play, with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton scorching their way through the Marriage From Hell and Sandy Dennis adding heat as an innocent bystander who gets raked into the coals. It's a pleasant little film if you don't mind clinging to the earth's crust for two hours to avoid sliding down into the magma. The film won five Oscars, including Best Actress for Taylor. I think it deserved at least one more, for Burton, who underplayed the steamrollered but knowing husband like a force of nature. Somehow I had managed to miss seeing this film, as I've missed a long list of classics. If you haven't seen it, I suggest you correct that quickly. I'm no movie maven, but it's certainly the best film about the lies of love that I've ever seen. You can find details here, but beware the painfully-complete plot summary if you plan on watching the film.

Anyway, I mentioned the movie to some friends, one of whom emailed me an excerpt about playwright Albee, who has managed to be ruthlessly honest AND to win every dramatic award in the universe at least once. He's the kind of informed bigmouth we need more of in the age of Small Change. The excerpt, from a 2008 interview in the Gay and Lesbian Review, dates from the last of the Bush years, but you'll want to read it anyway:

AMERICA’S leading playwright provocateur, now an octogenarian, Edward Albee—whose plays include the scalding Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, A Delicate Balance, Three Tall Woman, and the taboo-smashing The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?—is hardly resting on his accumulated laurels (three Pulitzer prizes and three Tony awards). In fact, the playwright is now directing new stagings of two of his one-acts, “The American Dream” and “The Sandbox,” with the assistance of a hearing aid, and is proving as durable as his work. When his The Play About the Baby ran at New York’s Century Center in 2000, he underwent an operation to have two stents inserted to bypass a 95-percent blocked artery to his heart, and stayed conscious to observe the entire procedure. He gamely recommends that “life should be lived at the precipice, so that we don’t come to the end of our life with regret for what we have not done.”

An ardent Democrat, he laments the Bush regime and its current “destruction of democracy in this country,” and observes: “I don’t know a single artist today who doesn’t believe this administration is terrible...that it was not elected, but was put in power by a coup d’état. It worries me to see that it believes the only way to save democracy is to repress it at home, by silencing journalists and writers.” There is still evidence of the angry young man who penned “The American Dream,” willing to call things as he sees them. A recipient of Kennedy Center honors when Bill Clinton was in office, Albee has refused to attend any Kennedy Center ceremonies under George W. Bush. “One doesn’t like some presidents,” he remarked, but “this is the first president I’ve despised. What’s worse is the fucking passive American people. Remember what Adlai Stevenson said? In this country we can still have anything we want—but we’re going to end up with what we deserve.”

Thanks to Laurie.

Baltimore Mayor's Card Trick.

Here's one for you:

Let's say there is a mayor. Of a major city. And the mayor is single and is dating a wealthy developer. (The mayor's administration is also granting said developer some big-ticket city contracts, by the way. But more about that later.) And at some point it comes to light that this mayor went on a shopping spree with 60 -- count 'em, 60 -- gift cards from Best Buy, Old Navy, and the area Giant supermarket chain worth about $1,500, most of which were paid for by the mayor's developer lover. Except there's a small twist: these 60 cards were allegedly intended for use by poor families during the holidays. The developer, by now the mayor's ex-boyfriend, tells a grand jury that the mayor's office telephoned him asking for a slew of $25 and $50 gift cards; the $25 cards, he says, were for single mothers and the $50 cards were for bigger families.

But, as it turned out, all 60 of them were personally used by the mayor, for the mayor.

All hell breaks loose. The mayor is indicted for felony theft and other charges. Initially, the mayor claims to have used the cards by mistake. (Yep, used up 60 cards, all by mistake. Shopping can be so confusing.) But no, wait. At the trial, the mayor's legal team makes a hairpin turn and argues that the mayor, in fact, truly believed that all these cards were intended for the mayor's personal use. So the mayor, the attorney declares to the jury, was spending recklessly in good faith. Sure, maybe it appeared a little odd for the rich boyfriend to send, as a personal token of affection, 60 small-value gift cards to the mayor's office instead of, say, sending a few big cards or a gift certificate for $1,500 to the mayor's home. But, hey, anybody can misunderstand a gift, right? So off went the mayor on an extended and thoroughly honorable mission to spend down 60 gift cards.

Welcome to Baltimore, the town where I live, where the mayor of the moment, Sheila Dixon, in a local tradition of political hacks, numbskulls, and petty thieves, is trying to set a new record for the most outrageous straight-faced claim of innocence ever. As well as a new standard for astoundingly reprehensible behavior toward the poor.

I care more about this sorry Baltimore episode than you do, of course, because I live here. Mayor Dixon is a perennial lightweight and sad sack whose un-mayorly leadership has been a local embarrassment since her election. But then, this is the town where (former mayor) William Donald Shaefer made it onto CNN by ordering a young staffer, on camera, to repeat her walk away from him while he ogled her derriere. Mayor Dixon might rightly figure that shame is extinct around these parts.

Anyway, at a time when former card-carrying Deficit Spenders For Bush Wars And Plutocratic Gluttony are now threatening to riot over federal spending to repair the damage they helped create, I thought I'd share with you Baltimore's latest little tale of political audacity.

By the way, Mayor Dixon's trial for theft, embezzlement, and misconduct is now in progress. Her perjury trial for allegedly not reporting gifts from city contractor and former boyfriend Ronald Lipscomb is scheduled for March.

You Name It.

I saw a bumper sticker like this one on a truck the other day.

What a tribute to the awe-inspiringly seductive powers of delusion. For the sake of a sought-after feeling of potency, or a fearful swipe at the specter of a black president, or a sense of heroic devotion to a single cause (e.g., guns), gaggles of scared and struggling folks are able to convince themselves that by nodding at the power of citizen-stomping corporations in a near-depression economy they are "keeping their freedom and their money." This while the New York Times reports that national unemployment has hit 17.5 percent when you factor in those who are seeking jobs, those who have given up looking, and those who are working part-time because they can't find full-time jobs.

We could detour here into a rant about far-right gullibility and brain failure, but why? It is hardly news that the back-slapping refrain of, "You've got yours, just like us, and don't let those people take any of it away from you" has been the ruling class's most effective sop for white wage slaves ever since the days of black non-wage slavery.

I heard a Republican say on the radio a few days ago that the rise of so-called social conservatism has been the worst thing that ever happened to the G.O.P. Its passing off a mob-mentality moralism as "conservatism," he said, has splintered the party's planks of true conservatism: those being belief in small government, maximum market competition, staying out of people's private lives, etc. This isn't news, either, since we know very well that today's farthest right is not "conservative" at all but a loose posse of reactionaries who like big government and violation of individual rights just fine when it does what they want: punishing women for abortions, using military and police surveillance and violence with abandon, detaining assorted feared "others" without due process, passing laws forbidding gay people to marry, and so on.

So all of this gets me to thinking: We need to make it a public point to delete the word "conservative" from the terms we use to describe such people, and substitute another.

How about "coercive?" As in, "Social coercives have shown support for a measure that would make public the names and medical records of women who have abortions." (This is true, by the way.) Or as in, "In an intra-party conflict among Republicans, coercives are calling for harsh government policies toward illegal immigrants, while business-oriented conservatives are not."

I'm still mulling over other possible terms. Maybe you'll want to as well. It's definitely time to change the lexicon. Calling people "conservatives" when they embrace government-as-God's-goon just won't cut it.

Argue No More?

A friend told me a couple of days ago that she avoids political blogs because most of them are less about dialogue than about spitfire opinion. She is right, of course; most political blogs are online opinion columns. Of those I read (the "Blogs and Friends" roster at left will give you an idea), my favorites are those where the writers think hard about issues and where readers and commenters do as well, whether there is agreement or not.

I think my own trajectory about discourse has moved, over the past 10 years or so, more and more toward trying to muster the energy of people of good will toward the pursuit of progressive (generally leftward) social change and away from the notion of more purely even-handed exchange, which is where I think I was when my first book, the original Race Manners, came out in 1999. I guess, like a lot of civil rights and racial justice advocates, I reached a point where I felt my energy was better used in service of those ready to carry out actual social change than in trying to pull in those who are invested in resisting it. To be blunt about it, I think history gives us pretty vivid evidence (abolitionism, women's suffrage, black and gay civil rights) that there is generally a majority that stands around watching while a committed minority doggedly pursues change until it is achieved.

Anyway, just after I had this conversation about blogs and discourse, I received an email from my friend Rob Levy pointing me toward an October 15 manifesto by Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, a fiercely liberal church reformer and author of, among other works, Why Christianity Must Change or Die. Spong's new manifesto, "The Time Has Come!", is a scathing critique of Christian homophopia, and it basically argues that the time has passed for debating, engaging or even responding to the Christian Right on issues of gay rights, because those rights are on an inevitable path toward victory and there is no longer any moral, religious or political argument to be had.

Spong declares, in part, that:

 "...it is time to move on. The battle is over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to what the final outcome of this struggle will be. Homosexual people will be accepted as equal, full human beings, who have a legitimate claim on every right that both church and society have to offer any of us. Homosexual marriages will become legal, recognized by the state and pronounced holy by the church. "Don't ask, don't tell" will be dismantled as the policy of our armed forces. We will and we must learn that equality of citizenship is not something that should ever be submitted to a referendum. Equality under and before the law is a solemn promise conveyed to all our citizens in the Constitution itself. Can any of us imagine having a public referendum on whether slavery should continue, whether segregation should be dismantled, whether voting privileges should be offered to women?"

And he goes on to say:

"The battle in both our culture and our church to rid our souls of this dying prejudice is finished. A new consciousness has arisen. A decision has quite clearly been made. Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. Therefore, I will from this moment on refuse to dignify the continued public expression of ignorant prejudice by engaging it. ...I have been part of this debate for years, but things do get settled and this issue is now settled for me. I do not debate any longer with members of the "Flat Earth Society" either. I do not debate with people who think we should treat epilepsy by casting demons out of the epileptic person; I do not waste time engaging those medical opinions that suggest that bleeding the patient might release the infection. I do not converse with people who think that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans as punishment for the sin of being the birthplace of Ellen DeGeneres or that the terrorists hit the United Sates on 9/11 because we tolerated homosexual people, abortions, feminism or the American Civil Liberties Union."

I challenge the idea that the battle is won, but I also get it that Spong is speaking of the engine of spirit more than the machinery of politics. I suspect he knows very well that there are many more lawsuits yet to be filed, more gay family tragedies and triumphs to be played out, more wicked voter propositions to be fought, more insults and awful injuries to be endured. But at the heart of it, Spong is telling advocates of gay rights that it is now time to act victorious and to stop stooping to bicker with bigots who have already lost to the inertia of spiritual advancement. History has already spoken on this issue, Spong is saying, and it is time for progressives to act like it.

We could apply this idea to other fronts on which it has become an article of faith for progressives to exhaustively rebut the hard right: abortion rights, the socially supportive role of government, racial justice. What if we were to confidently wield the moral triumph of these ideas instead of yelling about them on Hardball or Crossfire? What would the progressive movement look like if we steadily affirmed the inevitability of meaningful reform of health care and campaign financing? How much time did the black civil rights movement spend debating with the sworn enemies of human rights? How much of their energy did Cuban visionaries of economic equality devote to shouting matches with the Batista regime and United Fruit Company?

I'm simply asking questions here. But I think Spong is trying to tell us something. Maybe argument isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Obama, the Nobel Prize, and Jazz.

It's a fair question whether President Barack Obama really deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize. It's just that, in the scheme of things, I don't think it's a very interesting question.

I'm still digesting all of this, of course. Talk about a weekend surprise. But if we go by the usual Nobel standards, I can't see, at the moment, how Obama even comes close to deserving the laurels, which generally reward either a life commitment to changing the world (think Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela) or a huge accomplishment in the cause of peace (think Mikhail Gorbachev, pivotal in ending the Cold War, or Woodrow Wilson, instrumental in the Treaty of Versailles). Not that every Nobel Peace Prize winner has that kind of global veneration; recent recipients include former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari and Mohamed Elbaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency. And anyway, I do think Obama has the potential for greatness in leadership -- if someday soon he would gird his loins to lead his party and his wobbly nation.

No doubt, there is plenty of sound and fury in the "is he worthy?" Nobel debate that is now rattling our American windows. Head Republican buffoon Michael Steele darted into traffic to yell public insults to the effect that Obama is a sorry excuse for a Nobel laureate. Some prominent Washington figures with better home training than Steele have murmured their tepid congratulations. Others are heartily slapping the prez on the back. Obama himself, wisely, comes across as humbled and overwhelmed by the honor. If nothing else, the event illustrates in thick bright-red crayon just how childishly single-minded some Republicans are in finding any Obama outcome to be proof of his evil. (RNC position if Obama wins Nobel: Of course he won. He's a slick black strutter who has managed to sweet-talk the world. RNC position if Obama does not win Nobel: Of course he didn't win. Did you really think this gibbering fascist huckster was even in the running?)

But as I said, to me what's important about this is not how we in our Americanness try to hash out Obama's Nobel merit. What's important is what Europeans are actually trying to say in giving him the award and in their response to his receiving it. It looks to me as if, for Europe, this award is less about what Obama has accomplished and more about what he makes possible, which I'm guessing they see as a bona fide hallelujah moment after the apocalypse of the Bush years.

Listen to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who the New York Times quoted as saying the award marked “America’s return to the hearts of the world’s peoples.”

And here is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, proclaiming that “In a short time [Obama] has been able to set a new tone throughout the world and to create a readiness for dialogue.”

Then there was Nobel committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland, who declared, “The question we have to ask is who has done the most in the previous year to enhance peace in the world. And who has done more than Barack Obama?”

That whooshing sound you hear is a great gasp of relief from across the Atlantic at their now having an American partner who studies, thinks, plays well with others, and who keeps the cover securely locked over the blinking red buttons on the console.

Which is where jazz comes in.

Our country has a long tradition of missing or dissing the global meaning of things African-American. Just as jazz has been revered in Europe as essentially a very advanced and creative form of classical music while its primarily-black American practitioners have struggled here to be viewed as more than barroom entertainers, Europe now bows to a man (who happens to be black) who represents a return to global statesmanship on a teetering planet -- while Americans squabble about whether he is really a legal citizen and whether he really hates white people.

We Americans really need to get out more often.