Wow.
A few more thoughts on Sherrod and racism
Thinking more about the larger context of Sherrold’s remarks, I will add:
(1) I am heartily sick and tired of the racism thought police on either side.
(2) Let us take as a given that members of all races and ethnic groups have been molded at least in part by their racial and ethnic experiences, and have certain conceptions and perceptions based on those experiences.
(3) We all must struggle against unfair assumptions based on our race and ethnic background, and focus on the individual rather than the group.
(4) The most important thing is how we treat people: the goal is to be fair. Definitions of how to do that will differ (affirmative action being one glaring example), but actions are the key. Therefore we should be most interested in how officials perform in their official capacities, and whether their acts are racist or not.
[NOTE: I understand that thoughts influence acts. But our legal system is mostly act-oriented rather than thought-oriented, and I believe accusations of racism should have that focus as well. Of course, this does not avoid manufactured accusations about acts, such as the alleged—but most likely untrue—racial epithets supposedly voiced by Tea Party members towards Lewis and others. But it would minimize the almost-unending activities of the racism thought police.]
Lanny Davis pleads for the Democrats to reset to center
Lanny Davis would like the Democrats to retreat from their leftward march and return to the center. It is not completely clear whether he thinks this should happen because it would be good for the country, or whether he believes it should be done in order to win an election or two, but I strongly suspect it is the latter.
Davis focuses on the message, stupid:
It’s time to hit the reset button and return to the progressive centrist message that worked not just in 2006 and 2008 with Barack Obama’s campaign but really back to 1992, when Bill Clinton was first elected…Such a pivot and return to a progressive-center message is the only hope for Democrats to minimize the usual midterm losses this November and win back many independent voters. That message is where most voters are. Returning to the pragmatic “solutions business” ”” whether coming from the left, right or a third way ”” is what most Americans need and want, now more than ever.
Yeah, but they want it to really happen, not just to be promised and then reneged on.
I doubt the current Democratic Party is capable of listening to Davis,anyway. And even if they could and would, present-day Democrats have already dropped the mask and shown voters their true face, and anything else will (or at least should) be regarded as a strategic ploy.
That is why Davis must also make the truly extraordinary claim that the Democrats’ leftward tendencies are only an illusion:
…[T]oo often the voice of congressional Democrats, especially in the House, seems more left of center ”” seems more big-government, big-spending, big-deficits, anti-business and -growth.
I think this perception is wrong and unfair. But it is a reality. The loss of independent voter support is a result of that perception and why President Obama and Democrats are looking at what could be a debacle in the November election.
So, voters, which do you believe: Lanny Davis or your lying eyes?
Breitbart on Breitbart
One thing you can say about the Shirley Sherrold flap is that it sure has gotten Andrew Breitbart some attention.
Actually, he’s gotten quite a bit of it ever since Obama took office. Breitbart is one of the few on the right who is willing to be just as confrontational as the left. Whatever else you might say about him, the man’s got cojones.
I criticized Breitbart the other day for undue haste in not having been careful enough in vetting the Sherrold video. But in an interview, he states he’s happy with the fallout from the incident:
He says he considers it a victory to have panicked the Obama administration and precipitated a public apology from the White House.
Breitbart is an internet maven, having worked for both Drudge and Arianna Huffington in the past. As the article puts it, he has “a genius for buzz” and is “a provocateur, a rabble-rouser, a master manipulator of the media’s appetite for controversy — real or fake.”
Breitbart’s hard-hitting theatricality would not be nearly as unique if he resided on the left, but as a man of the right he is very unusual. It is therefore not at all surprising to learn that Breitbart is a political changer. He grew up in Los Angeles, and dates his political transformation from the time of the Clarence Thomas hearings:
He was, he said, a typical West Coast liberal — until the Clarence Thomas hearings lit him up with the fires of conservative resentment against the liberal establishment…”It was the moment that I saw a glimpse of the matrix,” Breitbart said. “And I started to ask some very tough questions of myself, and my peer group, and my parents and their friends.”
I sometimes think of Breitbart as the modern-day, conservative (or libertarian?) version of fellow-provocateurs Hoffman and Rubin of Sixties Yippie fame. He shares with them a streak of wildness and a knack for publicity, and the ability to use the media to get a message across in creative and somewhat novel ways, as a well as an irreverence and a sense of humor—although just about everything else about Breitbart and the Yippies (political aims, specific methods, and substance) is very different.
Is there a racist in the audience?
Re the Shirley Sherrod video, commenter “cm” remarks:
i thought the point of the video was showing the reaction of the audience (naacp ppl) when she mentioned not helping the white farmer. they laughed and said amen at this point in her speech. it shows their racism.
i believe this was stated elsewhere too. i think ppl are intentionally focusing on her and her words when everyone should be focusing on the audiences’ reaction to her comments.
The commenter makes an interesting and important point, but I disagree with its conclusion.
During the flap over whether the Tea Party is a racist movement, most of the charges have been that a few people in a large crowd either held racist signs or shouted racist epithets. Let’s ignore for a moment the truth or falsity of those claims (although truth or falsity is very important), and for the purposes of this discussion stipulate that, even if it is true, a few signs or epithets do not necessarily a racist organization make.
I believe we should judge a group by the predominant persuasion of its members and especially by the message of its leaders and speakers. Sherrod’s statements and their alledgedly racist nature are far more important than the reactions of a few people in a crowd, and the same would be true of the speakers at a Tea Party function.
Why do I say “a few people?” Because an audience is for the most part silent, and therefore just a few in the crowd calling out or reacting can make a lot of noise, relatively speaking. On the video in question (here it is again), I don’t hear evidence of a great many people reacting and saying “amen,” although it’s very hard to gauge from a tape.
What’s more, my understanding is that Sherrod’s full speech ultimately describes a sort of redemption on the part of Sherrod, to the tune of “I once thought this but now I think that; I once had these beliefs about white people but now I realize we’re all in the same boat and the poor need help no matter what their race.” Unless we watch the entire speech we don’t know, nor do we know the reaction of that same audience if and when Sherrod voices those later thoughts; perhaps even more people cheer and say “amen”at that point.
Racism and racists exist, in people of all races and all political persuasions. What matters is the proportion of racists within a group, and especially the stated goals and agenda and offical actions of said group, as well as the subject matter of speeches given by its advocates. That’s what we should be focusing on rather than the random eruptions of a few people in a crowd.
[ADDENDUM: It occurs to me that these reactions of a small portion of a crowd could be considered an example of what I’ve chosen to call “the Martin Higby Phenomenon.”]
[ADDENDUM II: And here’s the full video, which I won’t have a chance to watch till later because I’m busy. I’m putting it up here now for your convenience.]
Oakland’s well-paid police
Why is Oakland having to cut back on its police services, to the point of not responding to forty-four categories of crime, including grand theft? As Josh Barro writes, it depends on what the meaning of “afford” is:
At current levels of compensation, yes, Oakland cannot afford to maintain a police department with 776 employees. That’s because total compensation for an OPD employee averages an astounding $162,000 per year. But at a more reasonable level of pay and benefits, Oakland could afford to maintain its force, or even grow it.
Read the whole thing. And lest you think (as I initially did) that those levels of compensation are because Oakland is tangential to the high-priced city of San Francisco, think again, because Barro points out that:
The Oakland police recruiting website boasts that this is the most generous benefit package for police officers among California’s ten largest cities. And indeed, Oakland police pay even makes San Francisco look fiscally responsible — total compensation for SFPD employees averages just $145,000. If Oakland just matched San Francisco’s compensation levels, it could stay within its proposed budget and hire additional officers, instead of cutting jobs.
Oakland’s problem is just an exaggeration of one faced by many California municipalities, as well as others all over the country: the growth of the power of public sector unions. The swelling of the costs connected with them is threatening the solvency of those communities and those states that have let this happen.
In Oakland, the situation has reached ludicrous proportions. But Barro suggests some solutions:
Many options are available. States should consider abolishing collective bargaining in the public sector, which essentially allows unions to sit on both sides of the negotiating table. They should phase out defined-benefit pension systems, which hide costs and are placing an increasing burden on local budgets. They should cap the value of employee health benefits at a ratio to average private sector benefits — no more “Cadillac” health plans. They should liberalize civil service protections that lead to an inefficient workforce, as proposed by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. And, where appropriate, they should freeze or cut employee wages that are higher than necessary to attract qualified talent.
The people of New Jersey have woken up to their similar situation and elected Chris Christie as a result. My own unofficial research tells me that the people of California are beginning to do the same, since some recent conversations with liberal friends and relatives there featured the (to me surprising) spontaneous statements by some of them that public sector compensation has gotten out of hand. Hmmm.
On Shirley Sherrod and Breitbart…
…my position so far is pretty much what Jonah Goldberg said.
Disclaimer: I haven’t actually watched the longer video in question, just the edited one. But when I see a host of respected writers on the right claiming that Breitbart goofed and that the longer video exonerates Sherrod, I’ll take it as highly likely that he did goof and that the longer video exonerates Sherrod.
The problem for Breitbart is that he is a figure with a huge target on his back, one whom the left would dearly love to take down because of the way he’s wounded them. He cannot afford to make any errors, and in this case he made a huge error by going with an edited video.
Breitbart claims that the video was sent to him already edited in a deceptive manner (perhaps he did not even know it had been edited?) But that’s the sort of thing he’d better be awfully careful to check and check again before he goes public with something; everyone knows that excerpts can be misleading. In fact, it was one of the charges ACORN leveled against Breitbart himself when he exposed them through videos he had made.
[NOTE: please see this newer post of mine on a related issue.]
Yeah, so journalism is a vast left-wing conspiracy—so what else is new?
The big ruckus in the blogosphere today is that Journolist reporters conspired to downplay the Reverend Wright/Obama story during the campaign, and to attack and impugn anyone who didn’t play the same game. It is shocking, but unsurprising to those who have been noticing what’s been happening in the media for the last few decades.
But perceiving something is quite a different thing from having the smoking gun, and this story provides the latter. But will enough people know or care?
The difference between left and right may be (at least in this case) that the left thinks this sort of action on the part of journalists is a good thing. I mean, after all, didn’t they become journalists in the first place in order to make a difference?
The thing that surprises me most about the Journolist revelations is the openness of the particpants in creating a paper (that is, computer) trail of their machinations, complete with identifying names. Apparently they either thought what they were doing was noncontroversial, or they trusted their fellow-Journolistos to keep the transactions sancrosanct, never suspecting that one day a member would turn tail and rat.
But that day has come, and as a result we are treated to such thoughtful missives as this one from Chris Hayes of the Nation:
I’m not saying we should all rush en masse to defend Wright. If you don’t think he’s worthy of defense, don’t defend him! What I’m saying is that there is no earthly reason to use our various platforms to discuss what about Wright we find objectionable.
Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent [sic] responded:
It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.
And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them ”” Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares ”” and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.
There are also some interesting windows on the past. The Nation’s Katha Pollitt reminisces about how distateful it was to her, as a feminist and a woman, to have to whitewash Bill Clinton’s sexual offenses back in the 90s: “I am really tired of defending the indefensible.”
Not tired enough, Katha, not tired enough.
But Ackerman rallies the wearying troops, including Kevin Drum of Washington Monthly, who naively wonders:
I think it’s worth keeping in mind that Obama is trying (or says he’s trying) to run a campaign that avoids precisely the kind of thing Spencer is talking about, and turning this into a gutter brawl would probably hurt the Obama brand pretty strongly. After all, why vote for him if it turns out he’s not going change the way politics works?”
Ackerman replies:
Kevin, I’m not saying OBAMA should do this. I’m saying WE should do this.
That will keep Obama’s hands clean—and it did, at least enough to get him elected.
Today’s scandal has prompted Andrew Breitbart to write:
The only way that the media will recover from the horrifying discoveries found in the Journolist is to investigate and investigate until every guilty reporter, professor and institution is laid bare begging America for forgiveness. Will they do it?
To say that this question is almost certainly only rhetorical, and that the obvious answer is “no,” is to state the obvious. A more important question is how many Americans will even hear about this—and, if they do, how many will care. I think that most people who would care were already pretty sure that this sort of thing went on, even before the revelations of the emails, and that many of the rest would probably agree with the co-conspirators’ actions and quietly (or loudly) cheer them on.
[NOTE: The Journolist discussion in question was prompted by one of the debates moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, during which Gibson “asked Obama why it had taken him so long ”“ nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public ”“ to dissociate himself from them.” This relatively mild query was considered way too challenging compared to the soft pitches they were supposed to throw Obama, and it caused the resultant commotion in the Journolist ranks.
Perhaps Gibson had learned his lesson by the time he subsequently interviewed Sarah Palin; it would be instructive to read the Journolist entries in response to that performance. My guess is that it received much higher marks.]
Wondering about the book in the masthead photo?
A number of people have told me they’re stumped by the title of one of the books in my masthead photo. They can see that the red one on the bottom is The Last Lion, the Churchill biography by William Manchester. But the one on top with the black cover is more difficult to identify.
Take a look at one of the outtakes:
There, does that help?
If that’s still too hard, here’s an easier one:
The real fascism
“Fascist” is a word that’s too freely thrown around and too widely misunderstood. But this article makes a persuasive case that it can rightly be applied to President Obama.
Nicholas Cage: an acquired taste that very few people have acquired
Gabriel Malor at Ace informs us that the movie “The Sorceror’s Apprentice” is “the lastest Disney and Nic Cage bomb,” which prompts me to observe that Nicholas Cage is the most talentless major film actor I’ve ever seen, a man so devoid of thespian skills that his repeated presence in movie after movie is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
Yes, Cage is Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew. But nepotism can only take a bad actor so far. And yes, Cage was okay in the movie “Raising Arizona.” But that was because his utter strangeness happened to fit the role. And even then he skirted the edge of overacting, a precipice he managed to plunge over in the subsequent “Peggy Sue Got Married,” which was an enjoyable movie despite the fact that Cage played the role of Kathleen Turner’s high school honey (and then husband) as though he were a space alien. The movie was directed by uncle Coppola; it is highly unlikely that Cage could have gotten (or kept) the role otherwise.
The indescribable voice Cage adopted for his role in “Peggy” was “a copy of horse Pokey’s from The Gumby Show; his bizarre performance almost got him fired.” Nevertheless, there’s no accounting for taste, because “Cher ”“ who likened his strange, but compelling performance to watching a two-hour car crash ”“ proposed him for the role of Ronny in ‘Moonstruck,'” a popular movie in which he was marginally human, but only marginally.
Any Cage fans out there who can tell me what the attraction is? Because I must confess that I am stumped.
As we learn more about Obamacare…
…it gets worse and worse, and the misrepresentations become ever more clear.
Although I must say that none of it is a surprise.