Heh. Tony and Dave Barry on the "economic stimulus" plan

It is funny because it is so true:

"Q. What is the purpose of this payment?

A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.

Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?

A. Shut up."

The "angry black man"

This Jeremiah Wright business has annoyed me to no end. Mary sent me this blog that places Wright in the Jonah tradition and it is a thoughtful explanation that keeps Wright understandable within the black church experience.

But last night, against my better judgement, I watched Newt Gingrich on the Daily Show. What a moron. And when discussing Wright and Obama, he said exactly what some of my conservative friends have also suggested--that Wright's hateful rhetoric and Obama's friendship with him for 20 years means that we "really don't know what Obama believes."

Right. Of course, John McCain sought out the idiot moron Hagee and then renounced (line-item renouncing, as I said the other day) bits that he didn't like while maintaining the idiot moron's endorsement. Imagine if Obama did that? And still no conservative will suggest that McCain's acceptance of Parsley ("kill all the Muslims") or Hagee ("Catholic church is a whore and God drowned NOLA to get the gays") raises any question about what McCain actually believes or stands for.

Why?

I am starting to believe it is the specter of racism. One of the very positive outcomes of the Civil Rights movement was the marginalization of open racism. The Klan and their counterparts were pushed further to the margins of society and membership in those horrible groups appropriately shamed.

So now, with a prominent black man running for President, open racism is really off the table. Conservatives who are troubled by his race can't say that directly, but have to find another way to criticize him. The funniest was that Obama is an elitist, which struck me as incredibly funny in the context of American race relations. Easier, I think to suggest that he is a closet Muslim, though I hope that is relegated to the most uniformed.

But then comes Jeremiah Wright and a good way out. Hard to criticize Obama when he is so damn smart, articulate, thoughtful, etc. But when you have an "angry black man" behind him, all of a sudden, a useful tool. After all, even conservatives believe that race relations in this country have sucked--how could Obama not be angry? But being angry is the worst thing a black man can be. Can't acknowledge that anger or you become dangerous. John McCain can embrace his anger. That is "passion" in a white politician. But Obama cannot.

And when he refuses to be angry, people just impose Jeremiah Wright in his place. Voila--one angry black man and an excuse not to vote for him. But one that allows them to claim it has nothing to do with Obama's skin color.

Sigh.

More Obama and Wright

Thanks for the nice thoughts yesterday. Perhaps I am a bit of a moody personality, but I am doing fine today. I finished planting the garden yesterday and have been relatively productive today. Still avoiding grading, but that is no sign of depression!

I was just about to post another rant about the ridiculous media event that keeps playing the Wright "God Damn America" clip when the former pastor went to the National Press Club. The media response is still ridiculous, especially when you compare the criticism or analysis of Hagee and Parsley. For example, while there has been at least some questioning of Hagee's ridiculous theology, there has been nearly none on Parsley.

And when Wright went on Bill Moyers, as we have discussed several times, his responses were thoughtful and even prophetic. But on Monday it became clear that he had no concern about how his views or beliefs were hurting Obama. In fact, it appears there is some resentment or something there where the Reverend may not even support Obama. I don't know. But his defense of Louis Farakhan and other statements about Zionism were clearly over the line. And on purpose. He has to know that this will cause Obama problems.

Or perhaps he did it to give Obama another chance to repudiate him. I don't know. But repudiate him he did:

"Sen. Barack Obama Tuesday said he was outraged by comments made by his former Pastor Jeremiah Wright.

'I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday,' Obama told reporters at a news conference."

I always thought that Obama was right to not attack the man before. But now, he had to do something.

****

Another example of how far we have fallen and how quickly, came in this story about a former Prosecutor who just testified for Hamdan at Gitmo:

Davis told Navy Capt. Keith J. Allred, who presided over the hearing, that top Pentagon officials, including Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England, made it clear to him that charging some of the highest-profile detainees before elections this year could have "strategic political value."

Davis said he wants to wait until the cases -- and the military commissions system -- have a more solid legal footing. He also said that Defense Department general counsel William J. Haynes II, who announced his retirement in February, once bristled at the suggestion that some defendants could be acquitted, an outcome that Davis said would give the process added legitimacy.

"He said, 'We can't have acquittals,' " Davis said under questioning from Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, the military counsel who represents Hamdan. " 'We've been holding these guys for years. How can we explain acquittals? We have to have convictions.' "

Davis also decried as unethical a decision by top military officials to allow the use of evidence obtained by coercive interrogation techniques. He said Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, the legal adviser to the top military official overseeing the commissions process, was improperly willing to use evidence derived from waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning. "To allow or direct a prosecutor to come into the courtroom and offer evidence they felt was torture, it puts a prosecutor in an ethical bind," Davis testified. But he said Hartmann replied that "everything was fair game -- let the judge sort it out."

The triple play here. Using the justice system exclusively for political leverage, gaming the system to insure convictions, and then using evidence obtained through torture. If you had told me Americans would do this with the full support of the President and Vice President, I would have thought you were crazy just a few years ago. Now, I believe this man.

****

Speaking of bad trends:

One of the darkest developments of many dark developments in the Bush years has been the slow ascent of Christianism as a core value of the military. The promotion of Christianists throughout the armed services, the insistence by the president that no public institution be regarded as a place where religion should be silent, clear discrimination against Jews and atheists in military educational institutions: the possibility of a secular military dedicated to defending all Americans regardless of their faith or lack of it has been called into question under the current administration. The resilience of the ban on gays - while the military has granted a record number of waivers to criminals - can only be understood if one sees the US military as an increasingly religious institution at this point, and not a rational secular one. The latest story of an atheist soldier being threatened by superiors is believable in this context.

The story is a chilling one--if true--where a superior officer threatens to bar soldiers from re-enlistment or even bring charges against them for discussing atheism. They were further told by the officer that they were betraying their country and the founding fathers.

Sully finds a commenter at Volokh's blog who defends this attack on atheism and refers to the American military as a "Christian army." We can hope that this commenter is an outlier, but with the administration in power, who the hell knows. Historical ignorance is rampant.

Ok, back to work.

Eh

I have been a little morose lately and am not even sure why. Spring has always been a little hard on me for reasons I really can't quite identify. Perhaps it is the uptick in allergy symptoms, or the warmer days and nights. In some cases, it brings back memories of last year. I still miss my dog Alafair a lot lately.

Most of my mood is probably more about fatigue and stress. (Let's just hope that some jackass doesn't pop into the comments and tell me that since I accept the science of evolution, I can't feel sad or stressed because those are just biological responses). The project I spent the last few months working on was a job application that ended up just not working out. It was worth a shot, and I certainly don't regret going through the process, but in the end, it just wasn't going to happen in a way that was good for SOF and myself. And as much as I am at peace with that, the last few months have just worn me out.

I will be fine. We are working on our vegetable garden and trying to get our yard in shape. That is fun and fills me with a sense of anticipation for the warmer weather--something I can often find myself dreading if I am not careful. But I am always happier when I accept the weather (or any of the millions of things outside my control) rather than fighting them. Duh. Pretty obvious, but I find it harder than that to maintain. I often think about the plaque my mother made for me years ago with the serenity prayer on it. Good advice, that.

That is something I keep trying to remind myself about the election as well. I voted in the OK primary, and have contributed money to Obama's campaign. I can do no more than that. Getting anxious about the election doesn't actually accomplish much.

Don't get me wrong. I will still rant about this stuff. That is part of how I work through this anxiety and frustration and helplessness. But I work to not let it get me down.

Anyway

I think I would take Jeremiah Wright any day

Read the transcript of his interview with Bill Moyers.

And by contrast, read what John Hagee says still about Katrina and the gays.

You tell me which is more of a problem? The one that has a candidate still taking his endorsement and trying to "line-item" distance himself? Or the one that Obama was forced to reject?

And let me say another thing. I used to watch John Hagee and Rod Parsley on television. I am not sure why, but I did. I found them horrible and yet interesting at the same time. So, I am familiar with their work, and at least for Hagee, he has only Bible training. He has been in religious school after religious school--and not theology. But read the Jeremiah Wright interview and just see how much more educated this man is. Not only is he smarter, but he actually understands theology and history and culture. I would bet that John Hagee would not even get some of the references.

And that, in some ways, is one of the more troubling differences between the two. You may disagree with some of Jeremiah Wright's conclusions, but he is not just some angry black man raised in conspiracy theories. He is a well-educated and thoughtful man. John Hagee, on the other hand, represents the worst of the anti-intellectual wing of the conservatives. He reads the Bible and that is all that is needed (except, of course, to sell his books pushing for war with Iran).

I will take Reverend Wright any day.

Role of government

In an interesting piece on FEMA and John McCain comes a very good articulation of the right wing approach to government, and its open hostility toward all things government and all civil servants:

That's the right-wing approach to government management, applied to virtually every domestic agency throughout the Bush years: politicize, privatize, devolve, and cut.

It is irresponsible policy and about time that the adult Republicans that I know--the ones who know better--stand up to that wing of the Republican party. Government cannot and will not solve all our problems. But it isn't our enemy either, and there are things that government can do well.

I can't say it any better

TAPPED Archive | The American Prospect: "REACTIONS TO THE WRIGHT INTERVIEW: THE STUPIDITY CONTINUES.

The transcript isn't up yet, but on Hardball last night, Chris Matthews' roundtable (consisting of Tucker Carlson, Margaret Carlson, and Michelle Bernard) concluded that the Bill Moyers interview of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was very, very bad for Obama. (And they hadn't even seen the whole thing!) Matthews, in his inimitably clueless way, called the Wright 'flap' 'Obama's Iraq,' as if sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians to their deaths was comparable.

The political panel concluded that Wright had dug a 'deeper hole' for Obama and had in fact 'thrown Obama under the bus' when he said, as Kate quoted below, that Obama had said what he had to say as a politician, and that he would say what he has to say as a pastor, and everyone hates politicians. Because people might have otherwise forgotten that Obama is a politician."

Just pure stupidity.

Friday morning rant

Well, we shall see. Right now it is just a series of annoyances.

First idiot? How about Rush Limbaugh? Evidently, the drug using idiot is hoping there will be massive riots in Denver at the Democratic convention.

Several callers called in to the radio show to denounce Limbaugh's comments, when he later stated, "I am not inspiring or inciting riots, I am dreaming of riots in Denver."
Limbaugh said with massive riots in Denver, which he called "Operation Chaos," the people on the far left would look bad.

I know he is an idiot, but imagine how much America would freak out if Reverend Wright had said these things? The right gets away with a lot in this country. (Crooks and Liars has a rough transcript of a caller who took Rushbo to task for calling for violence. He ends up calling her the racist and a "mush mind," and says his main goal is to put liberals out of business.)

****

Speaking of Reverend Wright, he continues to be rehabilitated, while John McCain's less sane, less honorable version continues to make the right look hateful and stupid. Yeah, that's right, John Hagee reiterated that Katrina was God's poorly aimed way of stopping a homosexual parade. Of course, he didn't say "poorly aimed." But evidently God takes a shotgun approach to sin and to make sure he hit New Orleans, also took out the coastal regions of Mississippi and the rest of Louisiana. That is just how much God hates the gays, according to this braying idiot. Yet, it is Obama who has to answer for his spiritual advisor.

****

Ok, a little more idiocy (perhaps this post should be renamed). I have ranted on this for sometime, but the conservative insistence that we fun only abstinence education makes me angry. Since it doesn't work very well, it exposes those kids to more unwanted pregnancies and sexual diseases when they break their abstinence pledge. Turns out, some conservatives don't care and/or simply ignore evidence that they are funding bad policy:

"Republicans said even if some abstinence-only programs do not work, others do, and it would be wrong to end the funding.

Rep. John Duncan, a Tennessee Republican, said that it seems 'rather elitist' that people with academic degrees in health think they know better than parents what type of sex education is appropriate. 'I don't think it's something we should abandon,' he said of abstinence-only funding.

Charles Keckler of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the Bush administration believes abstinence education programs send the healthiest message."

Sure. What is more important? The message or the outcome? And the message here is that we would rather kids catch an STD than tell them about ways to prevent it beyond abstinence?

******

Speaking of more idiocy, Sally Kern qualifies, I think, and also speaking of unintended consequences, Sarah points to a story where a company might not relocate to OKC because of such hateful statements. Well, that will show them, right Sally?

*****

John Ashcroft is a bit of a cipher. I remember his appointment as AG sending a shiver down my spine that Bush was clearly not interested in moderation. After he stepped down, I watched him babble about torture on the Daily Show and felt bad that he was once our AG. Then we learn that Ashcroft was mildly reasonable on wiretapping and the world makes a little less sense.

Well, the babbling torture defender is back. A very interesting story about Ashcroft visiting a very liberal and hostile campus (good for him) and how badly some of the students acted toward him (bad for them). But when a reasonable student (at least by her account) challenges Ashcroft on torture, he comes unhinged.

I have a lawyer friend who says that these people did not commit war crimes and that talking about war crimes is stupid. I am not sure I agree, but in any case, it appears to me that people like John Ashcroft are very nervous about that potential.

The Penn Primary, a Green Bible, and Dobson and torture

And a few other things. First, Hillary's 10 point win in Pennsylvania is likely to keep her in the race, but I, for one, hope that Oklahoma's Brad Henry's SuperDelegate endorsement of Obama is just the beginning of the deluge. Come on, Supers, you know you want to vote Obama, and the longer you wait, the more you help McCain.

Second, and about damn time, Ethics Daily announced a website resource called The Green Bible where they plan to warehouse information about environmental stewardship. This is exactly the kind of leadership the evangelical community has needed for a long time.

One of those links, however, caught my eye, and I am not sure how I missed it. The 7th of this month, Robert Parham noted that James Dobson was angry at John McCain for more than his support for stem cell research. The great mob boss of the evangelical right is also angry because McCain is concerned about global warming and wants to shut down Gitmo and stop American torture.

McCain spoke last week during to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on Foreign Policy, and reiterated his support for governmental intervention in the global warming debate, proposed shutting down Guantanamo, blamed the U.S military for torturing prisoners of war and promised to pander to our European allies before defending America's interests around the world

Sigh. It just warms your heart, doesn't it? The founder of Focus on the Family doesn't mind torture.

I wish this shocked me, but of course, it does not.

Seriously? How dumb are these people?

Small Church's Obama Sign Causes Big Controversy - Greenville News Story - WYFF Greenville:

"Pastor Roger Byrd said that he just wanted to get people thinking. So last Thursday, he put a new message on the sign at the Jonesville Church of God.

It reads: 'Obama, Osama, hmm, are they brothers?'"

He is just asking, mind you--just TRYING TO GET PEOPLE TO THINK. HE ISN'T A RACIST OR A MORON OR AN IDIOT.

Sigh. Amazing that these people get to vote, drive cars, and carry weapons. Worse, of course, is his assumption that if Obama were a Muslim, that would make him the same as bin Laden.

Oh Sweet Jesus!

And I am sorry for posting this, but the need for a masculine Jesus just won't go away:

And while his ministry is not to men in particular, Mark Driscoll, pastor of Seattle's Mars Hill Church, nevertheless desires greater testosterone in contemporary Christianity. In Driscoll's opinion, the church has produced "a bunch of nice, soft, tender, chickified church boys. … Sixty percent of Christians are chicks," he explains, "and the forty percent that are dudes are still sort of chicks."

Nope, calling men "sort of chicks" isn't offensive, nor intended to shame the men and the women at the same time. Not at all.

The aspect of church that men find least appealing is its conception of Jesus. Driscoll put this bluntly in his sermon "Death by Love" at the 2006 Resurgence theology conference (available at TheResurgence.com). According to Driscoll, "real men" avoid the church because it projects a "Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ" that "is no one to live for [and] is no one to die for." Driscoll explains, "Jesus was not a long-haired … effeminate-looking dude"; rather, he had "callused hands and big biceps." This is the sort of Christ men are drawn to—what Driscoll calls "Ultimate Fighting Jesus."

Always nice when you can combine more misogyny with a little gay bashing along the way.

Driscoll comes closest to imagining Jesus as the model of maleness when he argues that "latte-sipping Cabriolet drivers" do not represent biblical masculinity, because "real men"—like Jesus, Paul, and John the Baptist— are "dudes: heterosexual, win-a-fight, punch-you-in-the-nose dudes." In other words, because Jesus is not a "limp-wristed, dress-wearing hippie," the men created in his image are not sissified church boys; they are aggressive, assertive, and nonverbal.

Because to truly be a Christian man means I need to be willing to punch people in the mouth.

Sigh.

Still the torture president

Top Bush aides pushed for Guantanamo torture | World news | The Guardian

Larry Wilkerson, a former army officer and chief of staff to Colin Powell, US secretary of state at the time, told the Guardian: "I do know that Rumsfeld had neutralised the chairman [Myers] in many significant ways.

"The secretary did this by cutting [Myers] out of important communications, meetings, deliberations and plans.

"At the end of the day, however, Dick Myers was not a very powerful chairman in the first place, one reason Rumsfeld recommended him for the job".

He added: "Haynes, Feith, Yoo, Bybee, Gonzalez and - at the apex - Addington, should never travel outside the US, except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel. They broke the law; they violated their professional ethical code. In future, some government may build the case necessary to prosecute them in a foreign court, or in an international court."

Troubling report about military propaganda under this administration

I am still reading this report from the NYT about this administration's use of retired officers to promote their agenda, but it is worth reading. It is also worth noting how much this sounds like a Clinton policy.

But however we see it, it seems to me that we need to have a serious discussion about the role of media in our culture. If I were President, I would advocate more attention to some kind of independent funding for news, or at least a requirement that every "news" organization had to return to some idea of the public good instead of measuring their news output just as another revenue stream.

Yeah, I am not holding my breath either. And no one should fear a President Streak anytime, well, ever.

*****

Yesterday was largely a day spent trying to clean up the backyard and catch up on a little sleep. But during a visit to the grocery store, I had a funny exchange with the young woman sacker. She kept looking at me, and finally said, "you know, you look a little like Johnny Depp." The checker then chimed in and said, "oh, I see it too."

I asked if that was a compliment, and they assured me it was, but that it might mean I need to grow a goatee and mustache. That won't happen, btw, but if you are wondering, evidently, this is what Streak looks like....





Well, maybe not....

Saturday

As my friend Anglican noted, this has been a rough week. Not terrible, mind you. I just spent the better part of the last two months working on something that just didn't pan out. And more than likely for the best, but it is still a bit disheartening when it falls apart. I found myself just completely worn out at the end of the week and trying to get back into some focus. I already feel much better. Still tired, and still have a lot to do, but better.

That is, of course, until I read the news. :) Anglican also sent me this great video of a priest standing up to a Fox reporter about Jeremiah Wright. Interesting about Wright to be sure, and a strong defense of the man, but the most telling thing for me was the absolute total lack of objectivity by the Fox reporter. Not even close and not even trying. For him, Wright is unAmerican and a bigot and hate monger, and that is it. There is no alternative, and that is where he starts the questions. Pretty much par for the course from Fox reporters, from what I have seen. Or from ABC's Charlie Gibson at the last debate when he framed the question as if supply side economics is established truth. Sigh.

Speaking of sighs, Hillary Clinton is back on the attack, or more accurately, still on the attack. And that would be great if she were attacking John McCain. But of course, she is attacking Obama and his supporters. She has a right to do that, but unfortunately, it appears that she is willing to destroy Obama even if it means losing in the fall. Personally, I think if we could get her to drop out of the race she cannot win, then the polling data that shows Obama and McCain in a dead heat would change dramatically. McCain is a train wreck candidate and the more exposure he gets, the more we will see that. But Hillary believes the Presidency is hers--that she is entitled to it. So much so, that she is willing to cozy up with Richard Mellon Scaife and emulate the very same partisan attacks that the right used against her husband. So much so, that she is now bashing the core activists of the Democratic party. She was overheard bashing MoveOn.org's members as radicals who opposed Afghanistan and now crash caucuses to undermine her. Hilzoy is not happy and notes:

"To say this about her opponents is just wrong. But to say it about the activist base of her party -- about the people who are motivated enough to show up for caucuses and participate in the electoral process -- is insane. Hillary Clinton is running for the nomination of the Democratic Party. She is trying to represent us. If she thinks that people like publius, who caucused in Texas, is worthy of contempt, or that the stunning increase in Democratic voter participation this year is not a cause for joy but a sign that the dirty f*cking hippies have taken over, why doesn't she just become a Republican? She's certainly talking like one."

My friends and I have noted that just three months ago, we were fine with who ever won the Democratic primary. Now, I wince every time I see the Clintons on television.

Sigh.

More trouble for Hillary

Theda Skocpol on Hillary's "screw them" statement:

"But what is clear in both in my memory and my notes is that there was extensive, hard-nosed discussion about why masses of voters did not support Clinton or trust government or base their choices on economic as opposed to what people saw as peripheral life-style concerns. Hillary Clinton was among the most cold-blooded analysts in attendance. She spoke of ordinary voters as if they were a species apart, and showed interest only in the political usefulness of their choices -- usefulness to the Clinton administration, that is.

I vividly remember at the time finding it impressive that Bill Clinton (NOT Hillary Clinton) showed real empathy for the ordinary people whose motives and supposedly misguided choices were under analysis. Ironically, just as Barber reported, Bill Clinton was the one who combined analysis and empathy, much as Obama himself did in his full San Francisco remarks."

And

It is particularly despicable of them to criticize Obama for the sort of observation/analysis that was routine in and around the 1990s Clinton White House. And I cannot help but feel there is a psychological edge of pure envy in Bill Clinton's attacks: Obama is empathetic and charismatic as well as smart, just like Bill was back then, in those so much better days!

Over and out. I am going to try to find a way to preserve in amber my better memories and feelings about the Clintons, so as not to lose altogether the sense of admiration I once felt, but can no longer.

This is pretty funny

And also sad.

Obsidian Wings: The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Slight Return): "STEPHANOPOULOS: I’m sorry to interrupt, but do you think Mr. Douglas loves America as much you do?

LINCOLN: Sure I do.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But who loves America more?

LINCOLN: I’d prefer to get on with my opening statement George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: If your love for America were eight apples, how many apples would Senator Douglas’s love be?

LINCOLN: Eight."

Read the whole thing.

On patriotism

From Upper Left

"Who loves America? Jeremiah Wright loved it enough that while Dick Cheney was getting his string of five deferments, Wright voluntarily gave up his student deferment, left college and joined the United States Marine Corps. Wright was valedictorian of his class in Corpsman School. When asked about the sacrifices he'd made, Wright said he was inspired by the words of John Kennedy that he should 'ask what he could do for his country.'

And he did that at a time where there were many restaurants in this country that wouldn't serve him food, hotels where he could not get a room, neighborhoods where he could not hope to live, and whole states where he could not obtain justice. That, damn it, is how much Jeremiah Wright loves this country. What Stephanopoulos asked isn't fair, because there are very few people who have expressed their love for America as clearly as Reverend Wright, especially when America -- then and now -- rarely seems to appreciate their dedication."

An open letter to Charlie Gibson and George Stephanapoulos

And it is a good one:

You implied throughout the broadcast that you wanted to reflect the concerns of voters in Pennsylvania. Well, I'm a Pennsylvanian voter, and so are my neighbors and most of my friends and co-workers. You asked virtually nothing that reflected our everyday issues -- trying to fill our gas tanks and save for college at the same time, our crumbling bridges and inadequate mass transit, or the root causes of crime here in Philadelphia. In fact, there almost isn't enough space -- and this is cyberspace, where room is unlimited -- to list all the things you could have asked about but did not, from health care to climate change to alternative energy to our policy toward China to the deterioration of Afghanistan to veterans' benefits to improving education. You ignored virtually everything that just happened in what most historians agree is one of the worst presidencies in American history, including the condoning of torture and the trashing of the Constitution, although to be fair you also ignored the policy concerns of people on the right, like immigration issues.

You asked about gun control -- phrased to try for a "gotcha" in a state where that's such a divisive issue -- but not about what we really care about, which is how to reduce crime. You pressed and pressed on those capital gains taxes, but Senators Clinton and Obama were forced to bring up the housing crisis on their own initiative.

Instead, you wasted more than half of the debate -- a full hour -- on tabloid trivia that for the most part wasn't even that interesting, because most of it was infertile ground that has already been covered again and again and again. I'm not saying that Rev. Wright and Bosnia sniper fire and "bitter" were never newsworthy -- I myself wrote about all of these for the Philadelphia Daily News or my Attytood blog, back when they were more relevant -- but the questions were stale yet clearly intended to gin up controversy (they didn't, by the way, other than the controversy over you.) The final questions of that section, asking Obama whether he thought Rev. Wright "loved America" and then suggesting that Obama himself is somehow a hater of the American flag, or worse, were flat-out repulsive.

Are you even thinking when simply echo some of the vilest talking points from far-right talk radio? What are actually getting at -- do you honestly believe that someone with a solid track record as a lawmaker in a Heartland state which elected him to the U.S. Senate, who is now seeking to make some positive American history as our first black president, is somehow un-American, or unpatriotic? Does that even make any sense? Question his policies, or question his leadership. because that is your job as a journalist. But don't insult our intelligence by questioning his patriotism.

An amazing list of issues never raised. I have suggested (almost tongue-in-cheek) that while campaign finance reform may be unworkable, perhaps we could work on some debate reform where we force the candidates to answer real questions about their job. The fact that Obama's lapel pin is still a subject for, well, anyone, is ludicrous.

Oops

One book from the 90s suggests that Hillary Clinton had a much different take on Southern working class whites In 1995:

"In January 1995, as the Clintons were licking their wounds from the 1994 congressional elections, a debate emerged at a retreat at Camp David. Should the administration make overtures to working class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The then-first lady took a less than inclusive approach.

'Screw 'em,' she told her husband. 'You don't owe them a thing, Bill. They're doing nothing for you; you don't have to do anything for them.'"

Even more interesting and oddly making Bill look good (in my mind) is his followup:

I know how you feel. I understand Hillary's sense of outrage. It makes me mad too. Sure, we lost our base in the South; our boys voted for Gingrich. But let me tell you something. I know these boys. I grew up with them. Hardworking, poor, white boys, who feel left out, feel that our reforms always come at their expense. Think about it, every progressive advance our country has made since the Civil War has been on their backs. They're the ones asked to pay the price of progress. Now, we are the party of progress, but let me tell you, until we find a way to include these boys in our programs, until we stop making them pay the whole price of liberty for others, we are never going to unite our party, never really going to have change that sticks.

Of course, that last one sounds remarkably like Obama, and is what Hillary 2008 would call elitist and patronizing.

One of Sully's readers on elitism

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

My background: I'm an educated centrist, and as it were, gun-owner and sometime duck hunter.
On the 'elitist' debate: I've been amused to see the likes of Bill Kristol, Roger Kimball and Rich Lowry and other conservative commentators so incredibly desperate in their efforts to convince people like me that we're being looked down upon by Obama -- a black guy raised by a single mom who worked as an organizer among the poor of Chicago, etc. etc.
I personally don't feel in the least that Obama is an elitist. Rather, I feel the elitists are those highly educated, inside-the-beltway weenies like Kristol, the bow-tie wearing Kimball, the UVA grad and prepster Lowry who are tripping over themselves to tell me how offended I ought to feel when I know damn well I'm not offended. Id be shocked if Roger Kimball, Lowry or God knows Bill Kristol know the first thing about hunting ducks, or if they could survive ten minutes in a cold duck blind before dawn, the artery-clogging breakfast that follows or the round of beer and whiskey drinking that goes on the night before.

In my opinion, listening to these folks go on and on about how offended I should be makes me feel a hell of a lot more condescended to than hearing some single throw-away line at a fundraiser. Obama said his thing once; these wankers won't shut up. It's as if they think I'm too stupid to figure things out for myself, so they can't miss an opportunity to tell me how I've been slighted. Well sorry, weenies -- I just don't feel slighted, and that's because I'll be damned if I'm going to pick a president based on a stupid gaffe when there is a war going on and when the economy is going in the shitter. These guys must really think I'm a moron.

It is funny to see wealthy, elitist Republicans chiding a guy who grew up with his single mom. Of course, this is from the same people who said that Bush was a war hero and John Kerry a draft dodging hippie.