Sunday, September 28, 2008

McNasty vs. Cool Hand Obama

Damn! We really saw McNasty in the first debate. I think it is safe to say that neither Obama nor McCain like each other. McCain was downright condescending toward the black senator from Illinois, treating him with scorn and contempt. He dissed Obama at every turn, and, rather strangely, never once looked at him during the 90 minutes of the debate. I thought: Is he trying to negate his physical existence by his visual indifference? I saw it as odd and silly. There was something voodoo-ish about it. He was certainly all puffed up over his own importance, apparently thinking that the freshman senator was an upstart and needed to be knocked off his pedestal. Obama was a backbencher and had a lot of nerve to run for president against an old warhorse whose experience dwarfed the man from Chicago. McCain was not only tense; he dripped with superiority, superciliousness, arrogance, and aggressiveness. I found it rather repellent; and I shudder to think of a man of his temperament as our president.

However, it was intense and thoroughly interesting. Obama had his hands full but acquitted himself well, except for too many of those “Your right John…” McCain’s refrain, which was repeated over and over, was “Mr. Obama doesn’t understand that…”

The moderator could not direct the nature of McCain’s statements, as often they weren’t cogent or to the point. He simply gave a variation on his stump speech. When asked about the prospective Bailout package he started talking about cutting spending and earmarks. Obama brought him back to reality with a comment about earmarks added up to $18 billion this year while the Bailout was a $700 billion item, so lets put the importance in the right place. I thought Obama scored well in the discussion about Iraq and Afghanistan. General Petraeus said recently that he stays clear of the words win or victory when talking about the war in Iraq. McCain isn’t so inhibited or prone to be cautious; he did his usual genuflection at the altar of Victory, sounding like an ex-military man with a Vietnam hangover. And his statement about loving veterans was a lot of hooey. All you need do is check the record and you’ll see what a lot of bull that is. He also said that everyone knows that the government in Pakistan ten years ago was a “failed regime” which justified the coup that took place. He neglected to mention that the government was democratically elected. He played it loosey-goosey when it came to the facts, which is his style these days, unfortunately. In contrast, Obama stayed to the facts. He was also more relaxed and gracious throughout the debate.

I can’t wait to next Thursday night, when Palin and Biden hook horns. Should be quite a show. In fact, it could decide the election. I don’t know how many people have noticed that two journalists, Bob Herbert of the New York Times, and conservative op-ed writer, Kathleen Parker, whose syndicated column appears in the Arizona Star, have called for her to drop out of the race, due mostly to her poor showing in the interview with Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

McCain's Big Gamble

A few weeks ago I wrote about two women who had been catapulted into the limelight as different as night and day; one was Palin who was riding high when I wrote about her, and the other was Rachel Maddow who had just gained her own show on MSNBC, who no doubt fewer people knew about. Things have changed already. First about Palin. I would say that the bloom is definitely off the rose: The GOP Base may still feel enthusiastic about her, but the majority of Americans are turning away from her, as her lack of qualification made her clearly unfit to be either VP or President. What hurt her credibility the most were the interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. (I didn’t count the guy on FOX NEWS because he only tossed her softball question.) She was not only ignorant, but also nearly inarticulate, with stumbling responses. She is on the verge of becoming a liability for the McCain Campaign.

McCain is not oblivious to this downward slide of his female sidekick. He has tried to have her protected from the Media; because he had to know how ill prepared she was for the national stage. I even heard one pundit suggest that he should drop her and replace with, say, Mitt Romney. But it seems to me that would be an admission of poor judgment on his part. Obama would hammer him if he did that. He’s stuck with her; he must be having nightmares about her upcoming debate with Joe Biden. And now he has supposedly opted out of his first debate with Obama on Friday the 26th at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. He may be reluctant himself to go one on one with Barack on the Economy, which he has often admitted is his weak point. The Guy is making it up as he goes along, stirring the pot on issues that have nothing to do with the grave problems facing the country, particularly the Middle Class and working people who live from paycheck to paycheck. Lipstick on a pig, charges of Sexism, the silly ads his campaign has put out, all the lying and distorting they have done to distract the voters, in the hopes of hiding the fact they have no cogent or fresh agenda to offer the American people, only more of the same, and we all know how unpopular President Bush is. His latest razzle-dazzle play was the so-called suspension of his campaign—he’s the only one shut down, practicing politics in another form—and rushing to the Capital (which took 22 hours) for a late Thursday afternoon meeting on the controversial Bailout plan. He was the last person to speak; he spoke for two minutes and it was of no real consequence.

His big gamble has left him square in the middle between the fragile consensus gained by the Democratic leadership and moderate Republicans in the Senate, and the rigorous cadre of GOP ultra-conservatives in the house, who have hated the Paulson plan from the start—because it was Socialism by another name and therefore, un-American. Influential GOP senator Richard Shelby of Alabama also has said he can’t accept the plan as it is. No doubt there are some Democrats too. From all indications the public is also not in favor of the Paulson plan because it rescues people who don’t deserve it. The antagonism could be summed up this way: To hell with the Bush scare tactics that the sky is falling; it’s time to go back to the drawing board and some debate on coming up with a plan upon which a consensus can be reached. It is not wise to rush to judgment. Not a bad idea.

Finally, there is Rachel Maddow. I haven’t forgotten her; I’m just saving the best to last. Today I read three articles about her and her show. Two were online, The America Prospect and the Huffington Report, which I read daily, and this morning there was a review about her and show, which she calls “Mind over Chatter,” in the New York Times. As Palin’s star sinks in the west, Rachel’s star is rising fast in the east. I haven’t missed her show since it started Sept.8. It is an hour that passes very quickly. Mentally she is very quick, lucid, on target, and very well prepared each day, having all her ducks in a row. She’s full of enthusiasm and often very funny. She’s a sheer delight in every way. Her program is on MSNBC at 6 PM Monday through Friday.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Three Marginal Men

In “Down By Law” (1986) Jim Jarmausch is the poet of low-life characters, people who live in lonely fashion on the margins of mainstream society, the disenfranchised, not-too-bright men and women who tend to live inside their self-created but fragile bubbles.

Bobbie, a black prostitute, talking to Jack (John Lurie) the pimp she works for, tells him her mother used to say, “When you boil things the scum rises to the top.” Actually, that applies more to two of the secondary characters in the movie who betray the friendship they had with Jack and an unemployed Disc Jockey named Zach (Tom Waits.) We meet Zach in the middle of a furious argument between him and his woman, Laurette (Ellen Barker), as she unloads on him for his inability to hold a job for any length of time. While she throws stuff all over the place, including out the window, he sits there like an emotional slug, barely paying attention to her tantrum. He seems to understand why she is flipping out but it is of little concern to him. Then we are back with Jack and his treacherous friend called the ‘fat man,’ a previous colleague of Jack’s. The fat man convinces him he has a new honey that would love to join his stable of whores, so Jack, like a trusting dummy, goes to check the girl out, who turns out to be an underage female. Three cops burst in and pounce on him and take him away. Zach is next. He is sitting outside one night sucking on a bottle of beer and humming songs to himself, minding his own business. An Italian tourist comes by to disrupt his private reverie and he tells him to buzz off. The tourist writes down the expression, which he had never heard before in his travels. . Then a neighborhood shyster comes by and offers him a deal he can’t refuse: To drive a fancy car across town to an address for $1,000. What an easy gig, he thinks. When he arrives at his destination he is hustled out of the car by some cops who have been waiting for him. . They open the trunk of the car and guess what, there’s a dead body inside. Like Jack, he realizes too late what a chump he has been.

Zach and Jack meet when they become cellmates at a rundown New Orleans prison. They hate each other at first, even come to blows, but when Jack finds out that Zach was the DJ he used to listen to on the radio, his interest and respect go up a notch or two. Slowly, by dribs and drabs, a relationship develops (but never a friendship) and they tell each other their defining stories and play cards together in a situation of incredible boredom. At a certain point a third cellmate is introduced; it turns out to be the Italian tourist, named Roberto (Roberto Benigni.) Neither Zach nor Roberto remember that previous brief encounter. Roberto is actually there for a serious crime, murder, as he killed a guy with a billiard ball, an 8 ball yet, but he says it was self-defense. He is an energetic, loud, and a dominating little fellow who bonds with the other two convicts in short order. Watching the three of them relate is the greatest pleasure in the movie.

The three of them eventually break out of the prison, on Roberto’s lead, the escape barely sketched in by Jamaursch. The three spend days wandering through the swamps of the Louisiana bayou country. It’s a harrowing trip but they finally emerge on a dirt road with a small restaurant across the street. God seem to be the on their side. They send Roberto in because the name above the door is Luigi. After dark they go in to see what the hell is going on. They find Roberto romancing a dark-haired beauty named Nicolette who inherited the restaurant from her uncle Luigi. The two of them are chattering away in Italian. The boys join them for food and wine and a gay old time. In the morning they borrow clothes from Uncle Luigi and say their goodbyes to the two new lovers. Zach and Jack walk down a road that ends in a fork going east and west. The two exchange jackets, say goodbye, without a handshake or a hug, and go their separate ways. The end.

One reviewer called “Down By Law” a “neo-noir-comedy,” which is an apt description. The film was shot in lovely black and white, which I really enjoyed because I see so few B & W films these days. The cinematographer was Robby Muller. Many scenes are beautifully composed or shot from odd angels. One has to be patient with the movie because the first part of the movie is pretty slow and sometimes the characters fidget for minutes before speaking. Tom Waits is, to say the least, a very unique actor, full of little twitches and furtive glances. The comedy does not arise from scripted lines; it emerges from the oddball personalities and the situations they find themselves in. Roberto Benigni plays a kind of magical elf, boisterous, commanding and efficient, who is able to energize the other two for their betterment. He helped them lose their sense of alienation, as the three of them felt a sense of shared humanity for a period of time. The final chapter in the movie is not realistic, but no matter, we can easily accept it as fable. You buy it because you want the trio to come out okay. Roberto deserves Nicolette, and Jack and Zach deserve their liberty, as they were framed and did not do want they were accused of. The downbeat beginning ends on a high note—very cool! I am mad at myself for waiting so long to see the movie. It is one of Jim Jarmausch’s best films.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Crossing the Red River

My brother in Wisconsin wrote me yesterday that his oldest daughter has decided to vote for John McCain, for one reason and one reason only, abortion, which he is against. Today I received a letter from an old golfing buddy of mine, a Radiologist who lives in a neighboring state, who is Catholic like my niece, telling me he had never heard of Palin but thought she was swell and that he was going to vote for her and McCain because they were pro-life and that was the only crucial issue with him too.

These one-issue types drive me up a tree; they put the cart before the horse before they take a good look at priorities. My brother has argued with his daughter that it would be a big mistake to put that Republican pair in the White House after eight years of Bush and the neocons and what they have done to this country. All the screws of the ship of state are coming loose and, like the Titanic, we seemed to be taking on water, fast. Grover Norquist, one of better-known neocons has always said he’d loved to drown the State in a bathtub. Bush and his cronies may achieve that task. Sometimes I think it has been their main purpose in office.

Nouriel Roubini, an economist who teachers at New York University but has an international experience, who is better known as “Dr.Doom’ because he calls a spade a spade when it comes to the economic and financial mess we are currently stuck in. He has a new designation for our country: Rather than USA he says USSRA, The United Socialist State Republic of America. Why does he say that? The Government has nationalized private companies who have overstep their bounds, taking them over, to one degree or another, to rescue the rich from themselves, as their faith in deregulation and the market turned out to be a pie in the sky. Isn’t it ironic that it’s the Republicans who were against “nation-building” as a foreign policy but they have been trying to do precisely that in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past six years; and now the Party that hated Socialism in any form has become the USSRA. They have created a monster; the very beast they swore was a deadly enemy. My, my, what strange bedfellows greed and corruption can make. Comrades Bush, Bernanke, and Paulson have crossed the Red River and God knows if they’ll ever get back. On September 17 Roubini wrote: “ This transformation of the country where there is socialism for the rich, the well connected and Wall Street (i.e. where profits are privatized and losses are socialized) continues with the nationalization of AIG.” The government is now the largest Insurance Company in the world. Who would have guessed?

As for Palin, I think the bloom is coming off the rose. It was bound to happen. A growing number of Republicans and conservatives are coming out to declare she is not qualified to be Vice President or—God forbid!-- President. Senator Chuck Hagel said so last week and so did several conservative journalists, including the influential David Brooks of the New York Times. They were very polite in saying so. I can be more impolite: I think her nomination is a sick joke, a sop thrown to the social conservatives at the Convention and nothing more that. She was elevated to help the stumbling maverick to get elected, or at least to put up a fight for the remaining weeks of the too long campaign. She clicked with the base, but McCain has made it clear he has no particular use for a Vice President. He has said that they have two jobs: To check on the President’s health every day and to attend the funerals he doesn’t want to go to. He’d probably give her an office in the basement of the White House and ask her to also take care of the White House Christmas Cards for him. If she needed help, Cindy could help.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Who's Not Where?

Todd Haynes treats Bob Dylan in “I’m Not There” like a chameleon, a multifaceted singer/songwriter/poet/musician who changes colors and persona in different surroundings in a life that is circular, not linear. He trots out six personae that show and express the various sides of the Great Enigma of Pop Music who maintains a special niche in the pantheon of influential artists of the past 40 years. The film is a labor of love, a compulsive fantasy of a dedicated fan, his take on his talent and rich identity. At first blush the movie hit me as a bewildering circus of crisscrossing characters and confusing events. Some things seemed reasonably connected and poetically reflective of the Bob Dylan I know; but other things had me scratching my head, as more puzzling than revealing. But I kept reminding myself that this was one man’s fantasy about Dylan and I needed to respect his perspective and spin on the artist. Plus it was interesting as a movie, with a marvelous complexity that was a joy to watch and see how it unfolded over two intense hours.

Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s girl friend in the early years in Greenwich Village, writes in her recently published memoir of that period, A FREEWHEELIN’ TIME, that by accident she found out that Bob Dylan was really Robert Allen Zimmerman. His draft card fell out of his wallet and she saw his name on it. It pissed her off that he couldn’t share that information with her. It points to a long-lasting sly evasiveness in him; there was a desire deep in his mature to keep a core-self in a private place, as it were, a kind of cockpit he enters for his creative vision-flights. This is why he has always rejected the notion of being the spokesman for his generation, while insisting he was just a songwriter doing his thing as best he knew how, thank you very much. The actor Bruce Greenwood played a journalist in the film who was constantly bugging Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett) for some definitive answer about his work and vision. Dylan/Quinn was notorious for slipping out of those kinds of loops, which he never wanted to give a glib answer to.

The film opens with Woody Guthrie, which is fair enough; only in this case he is a pre-adolescent black kid, with guitar of course. He hops a freight train and rides along while talking to two tramps on board. Later on, in one of the more thrilling musical moments in the film, he sings “Tombstone Blues” with Richie Havens. Okay, we know Woody was a model for Dylan in his folk singing phase. But why a black kid? When Norman Mailer makes an appearance at a social gathering in the film, I thought of his famous essay from the fifties called “The White Negro,” in which he argues the hipster or beatnik was outside the white community, like black people were, and as a consequence he had more identification with them then he did the white world. Another factor could be the influence of the Blues on Dylan. As a teenager in Hibbing, Minnesota, he listened to black pop music from the south on the radio and that was big part of his early education.

Jude Quinn’s image as played by a moody, hunched over Cate Blanchett is the closest to what Dylan actually looked like during the late sixties. The last name comes from his song, “The Mighty Quinn,” which in turn might have come from the 1959 movie with Anthony Quinn called “The Savage Innocents,” about the mores of Eskimos in Alaska, which impressed Dylan when he saw it. A variant title for the song is, “Quinn the Eskimo. ”Since Dylan in those days deliberately assumed an androgynous image, slim, cool, and with a mop of curly hair, that’s why Haynes chose Blanchett to play him. The versatile actress did the he/she act beautifully. She also had to take the crap from the audiences when Dylan moved away from folk and embraced Rock Music. “Maggie’s Farm” is heard then, the anthem of that transformation and change of colors.

Dylan’s love life and marriage with kids is profiled in the episode with Robbie (Heath ledger) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg.) We see their ups and downs and the implication is he was somewhat hard to live with. It appears the image of Claire actually combines three women in his life, Sara, his wife and the mother of his children, plus Suze Rotolo and Joan Baez, three dark haired women. It basically is an image of the seventies.

Two smaller incarnations were Rambling Jack and Pastor John, Jack being another coffee house folk singer (Rambling Jack Elliot) and Pastor John Dylan’s brief encounter with Jesus. Christian Bale played both in a very limited part. The same was true of a character that talks to the audience in stark black and white. He gives his name as Arthur Rimbaud (Ben Whishaw) one of Dylan’s favorite poets.

Finally, the sixth incarnation is Billy the Kid, played by Richard Gere, who hardly looks like a kid. He also has a female dog named Henry—androgyny again. He lives in a small town called Riddle, Missouri, a town populated with freaks, cowboys, and giraffes. It’s a kind of Fellini-esque Carnival that seems to relate to Sam Peckinpah’s movie, “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,” in which Dylan had a part: His character’s name was ‘Alias.’ Since Riddle is in Missouri I’d guess were dealing with Dylan’s identifying himself with outlaws, specifically, with the James Gang. This what he sings in his song ‘Outlaw Blues”: ‘Well, I might look like Robert Ford/but I feel just like Jesse James.”

Todd Haynes treats his hallucinations of Dylan as a secretive man with multiple personalities, an outlaw always on the move, even on the lam from people who want to know WHO ARE YOU? But he’s busy brushing away all footprints he leaves behind in the sand. His horse’s name is Mystery and if you ask his name don’t be surprised if he says Alias, smiles, and rides away blowing in the wind.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Wonder Woman Split in Half

They are like Wonder Woman split in half; one half fell to the right, the other to the left.

Who am I speaking about? Sarah Palin and Rachel Madow, two women who have been flying under the radar for most of their lives, but who have suddenly exploded into view to become major players in the current political circus.

It has happened overnight, or so it seems, with incredible speed and drama. They both have shot across the television screen like charismatic upstarts, wowing their audiences with their bravado (Palin) or wit (Madow.) But goodness, do they ever fly in opposite directions. Their emergence from the wings seems an extraordinary event: It is a fact and a coincidence that fascinates me that two such exceptional women have come on the scene to impact politics and the Media at, roughly, the same time. Both are moving like comets, not toward rags to riches, but toward prominence and influence, abandoning their place as backbenchers. In fact, for the past week McCain has been playing second fiddle to Palin; she, not him, is the reason the campaign is drawing big crowds. And Rachel won her own show on MSNBC this week, not bad for a woman with little TV experience.

Sarah Palin is 44 years old; she’s been Governor of Alaska for about 18 months, and before the Republican Convention she was a virtual unknown in the lower 48. Why John McCain chose her is a question that that will be pondered long after November, and that will be true if the ticket wins or loses. Her vetting seemed awfully short and incomplete; it happened too quickly and with no time for depth. But McCain is known to be impulsive; this time it seems to have paid off, although it is really too early to tell. But once she gave that Convention speech, where she bragged about being the Mayor of her hometown, Wasilla, Alaska, population 6000, and how she wrestled with Big Oil and won, and then managed to break the good old Boy’s network, she was in like Flynn with the Republican Base, the conservative-evangelical-Rovian core of the Party, who always had some reservations about McCain’s conservatism. She energized and unified the Base, as if by magic. She was on her way.

In her train was her family, her Husband Todd, who she called “First Dude,” and her 5 kids, including a 4-month-old baby named Trig, who was born with Downs Syndrome. Then we found out that Bristol, Sarah’s 17 year old daughter was pregnant, but everything was cool because they were going to do the right thing a get married. It got glossed over in a flash. A lot of allowances were made for Sarah because she was the apple of the eye of McCain and the Base. Sarah was pro-life, even a hardliner about it; she was pro-guns and an avid hunter who could field dress a moose; and she was a Pentecostal Christian, belonging to an Assembly of God Church that had ideas about “the End of days” and “the Great Rapture,” which would strike a lot of secular citizens as strange and kooky. She didn’t believe Global Warming was manmade. Her education was a mixed bag: She attended 6 different colleges in different places, finally graduating from the University of Idaho in Journalism. She considered banning some books in the Wasilla Library. But hey, lets not quibble about a few details; to the folks at the convention she was a new incarnation of Joan of Arc carrying the flag of victory. They went wild about her and a week later, nothing has changed. She has ignored her critics who found large holes in some of her stories, like, for example, the bridge to nowhere, but she keeps telling them, as if it was perfectly all right to reinvent herself for the campaign. But amazingly, so far none of the criticism has stuck to her, like her charisma has a Teflon shield. St. Sarah is here to slay the dragon named Obama and help her grandfather become president—by hook or by crook.

On the other side of the political divide is Rachel Madow, 37 years old, a bright, witty, and rapid-fire talker who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, went to Stanford and to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar where she began work on her dissertation. She was an AIDS activist for a time, and then, almost by accident, got a job in Talk Radio, AIR AMERICA, the liberals answer to Rush Limbaugh. Keith Olberman of MSNBC was aware of her and at the beginning of the primary season he would invite her to be a regular commentator, which led her to be included as one of the pundits on a panel at the two party conventions. She acquitted herself impressively. Shortly after that, with Olberman’s help she was given her own show, which debuted on September 8. She is sandwiched between two programs of Olberman’s popular COUNTDOWN, the second program being a re-broadcast of the first one. That’s moving up the media ladder very fast and that’s because she is very good. She is a left-leaning brainy Lesbian who is expressive without apology. She tries to stand on neutral ground with her guests, unless they wander off into politics as a form of fiction. She calls a spade a spade, and can probe her guests while smiling at them. And she can be very witty and funny. She projects an attitude that politics is great fun, which is rare these days. She has a verve and enthusiasm that is charming and infectious. It is no surprise her success has come quickly.

So on the one hand we have the hockey mom who loves the good book, and the brainy Lesbian out to reveal all the foibles and errors of thought of numerous politicians. Sarah is physical, likes the out-of-doors, and lots of kids and family life. Rachel isn’t fond of animals or country life; she likes cities and what can be found there for someone as intellectually curious as she is. Sarah goes to Church, Rachel to the library. It remains to be seen who will be around the longest and have the most impact on their society.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Bridge to Notopia

CBS NEWS did an analysis of Sarah Palin’s story about the bridge to nowhere, doing a good job of explaining the truth. She was indeed for it before she was against it, and when Congress canceled the project, she kept the money, some $230 million, using it for various road projects, which means she used the earmarks, which she is now against. The same story was published in The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

Finally, it is refreshing to see some journalists are prosecuting her stories that needed analysis and airing.

But now a new nastiness has suddenly arisen. The McCain people released a new add today that is scurrilous, one that charges that Obama, when he was a member of the Illinois senate, sponsored a bill that promoted “comprehensive sex education for kindergarteners.” The charge is ridiculous on the face of it, but that doesn’t bother the lobbyists running his campaign. In truth, the bill was designed for “age appropriate” sex education for kids as a means of teaching them what was improper touching, as well as to protect them against pedophiles.

Why such an ad? Their target is a bloc of uneducated, moderate, or undecided mothers in the battleground states, to show them that Obama belongs to a different culture than they do, which is the populist, good Christian culture, as embodied by Sarah “The Saint” Palin. The Obama campaign came out with a statement that said the ad was “shameless and perverse.” Tomorrow Obama himself needs to come out with a kick-ass statement that will show his disgust for the tactic.

I am halfway through Thomas Frank’s new book, THE WRECKING CREW, a thoroughgoing study of what extremes the Right Wing of the Republican Party is willing to go to maintain power so they can continue to dismantle the State, which to them is no more than a road block to business, which is their only God no matter what they say in their speeches. He charts the progress of the ‘New Right,’ from their adoption of the aggressive tactics of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) of the ‘New Left’ active in the sixties. There is no room for wimps or true believers who are a pussy. Moreover, it is okay to twist the truth and to hit hard, even if it is below the belt. There is only one goal, to win the election. Whatever works to that end is legitimate because Karl Rove says so. If Obama wants to win this election, he has to drop this cool intellectual posture he habitually takes. He needs to show some anger, some fiery emotion.

Friday, September 5, 2008

Friday Morning, A New Day is Dawning

Friday Morning, as a new day dawns. Okay, the hoopla is all over with, the speeches have been made, the balloons have fallen, the commentators in the skyboxes have gone home, and the campaign begins anew, energized on both sides of the cultural and political divide, which right now looks as wide and as deep as the Grand Canyon, even if the dark sun of corporate power hangs ominously over the whole scene, casting shadows over both Parties. In the piece I wrote yesterday I mentioned that the Republicans acted like the Party out of power that needed to win the election to revive the country, which had been taken in the wrong direction by the other guys, when in fact the GOP has been in the White House 20 of the past 28 years, and had control of Congress too, since 1994, at least up until two years ago. Peter Baker picked up on the same theme today in an article in the New York Times called, “The Party in Power, Running as if It Weren’t.” The Incumbent Party is trying to steal the motif of CHANGE as if it is a flag they found first. Only change in this case is hooked with REFORM, which means they will “drain the swamp” of a corrupt Washington D.C. It was the Democrats who steered us wrong and the republicans are the Cavalry arriving on the scene to save the day—to rescue us from the knuckleheads across the aisle who are led by a naïve and inexperienced black man of no account but plenty of pretty words.

They are the Party with a lot of brass too. For example, on Wednesday night Mike Huckabee said the following, “Sarah Palin got more votes in her two runs for mayor than Joe Biden did in his bid for the presidency this year.” The crowd roared when they heard that. But when the facts are checked you get another story. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 election and 909 in 1999, in her re-election race, for a grand total of 1,525. Biden dropped out after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot. Huckeebe wasn’t interested in the facts; he just needed a hook to rouse the crowd and it worked. But millions of people won’t check those facts and will retain an image of Palin as a giant killer, bigger and more successful at vote getting then the senior senator from Delaware.

Huckabee only wanted to rile up the social conservatives who had hijacked the convention by Wednesday, which I wrote about and posted Thursday morning. The base, that is, the social conservatives in the Republican Party, are tolerating McCain and his strange ideas about working with the other side, only to get their hooks in the White House. Their real hero and Standard-bearer is Miss Wasilla, Sarah “The Terror” Palin, the Northern Wonder Woman, who was the real star of the Convention and the darling of the right wing. She was the talk of St.Paul, not John McCain. According to some papers this morning she had a bigger TV audience than Obama last Thursday, whose numbers keep dropping as time goes by. He started out with 42 million and he’s now down to 37 million. She had 38 million on Wednesday night. She’ll probably do better than McCain also. Palin seems to represent for the right a new twist on the neocon theology: Not only is she a well-spoken, confident female, but a new breed of social conservative/reformer as well, a flaming populist, which is a perfect mask for people who think they are better than the people they have to convince to vote against their best interest. . As Maureen Dowd put it, she is “maverick squared.”

Clearly, the Democrats plan to stick to the issues. The GOP has decided to run on personalities, not issues. Palin is a novelty act and a Hockey Mom; they figure that’s enough to win the hearts and minds of the working class, the discontent Hillary voters and the uneducated. She will personify the base while McCain will embody the HERO and honor, duty, service, patriotism, virtue, country first, on and on like that. Neither is a Rhodes scholar so it makes sense to emphasize their personalities, charm, character, and idealism. Will it be enough? I doubt it.

I look forward to seeing the debates.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

"Pit Bull with Lipstick"

“Pit Bull with Lipstick”

One had the impression on Wednesday night the soldiers of the Base were calling the shots that night, not McCain’s lieutenants. Since Sarah Palin and the revelations about her family drama became the main talking point of the convention, the Base has not only been energized, they have taken control. The moderates, the few that are left in the Party, are sitting on their hands and dreaming about another time and place. As the main speaker of the evening, Sarah proved she is no wallflower; she was confident, articulate, and authentic. She did not write the speech; Matthew Scully who she knew less than a week wrote it. They crafted a humdinger, with plenty of barbs thrown at the Democratic nominee. She talked about her biography, Obama, and McCain who she praised to the skies. The hall roared every needle she stuck in her Obama voodoo doll. There was no discussion of our economic problems or what she might do to make our lives better. The speech was her first step and she did well, but there is a long way to go.

I have two other impressions of the evening.

The first was the emerging hostility toward the Media and the Press. Mike Huckabee was the first to mention it, calling the coverage “tacky.” He added he wanted to thank the Media for unifying the people in the hall and across the nation. This unity was crystallized by that shoddy and unfair treatment of their wonderful convention by those talking heads up in the skyboxes that were besmirching the event with their negative comments. Rudy Guilinai, the keynote speaker, went so far as to call the Media “left wing,” which seemed to really upset Tom Brokaw. He knows better. Carly Florina threw in the charge of sexism. According to her the press was only repeating what the Obama people were putting out. But the later part of the program was so designed that they gave the boys and girls up in the skyboxes no chance to interrupt with their unsympathetic commentary, until the final speeches were over. It was Chuck Todd of MSNBC who was first to notice they were being squeezed out to some extent.

The second thing was the tone of the dominance of the small town mentality of the Base, best represented by Sarah Palin. Bush was never mentioned. Clearly, Sarah was the new embodiment of their philosophy. They have elevated her to a unique position, almost as important as McCain, maybe even more. She’s an insurance policy for the near future. They were the folks of the red states ready to eat red meat. The most meaningful divide between the electorate is between, if you will, the country mouse and the city mouse. Palin represents the rural and small town people of America, a culture that is based on past values and attitudes, the rugged individualist, the rabid patriot, and the Protestant ethic. Contemporary Urban culture is so different to be like night and day. There is more sense of communities and subcultures, of diversity and a complex multiverse of values and perspectives; and religion, for example, plays less a role in people’s lives, where it seems more central for the country mouse. Abortion sits on the saddleback between the two cultures, one pulling one way, the other pulling in the opposite direction. This election will determine so many crucial questions how we will conduct ourselves in the future. Its importance cannot be stressed too much.