Like nearly everyone else at the bar last night, a pitcher of Shiner Smokehouse led our table into a long discussion of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and the officer who arrested him. The Talented Videographer had the most charitable take toward the cop -- she sees what they have to deal with everyday and recognizes how very dangerous and stressful that job is.
My 1 1/2 cents, for what it's worth, is that this was definitely about racism, but did not involve racists. Racism is what Gates was worried about when he exploded up front, and it's what the cop was angry about being accused of. Both decided to wear their heart on their sleeve exclusively because of racism, if for different reasons, and that is true even if neither, in my opinion, were doing anything worse than overreacting and showing bad judgment.
More importantly, the things that brought this event to our attention are the things that make it a shame it was brought to our attention. Gates is a very well known, and powerful, black intellectual, and he has an enormous network of the most-connected of the black community behind him. It was for this reason that Obama knew him, and probably felt enormous pressure, both externally and internally, to say something. At the same time, Gates' position makes this whole thing kind of a farce. Much worse happens to black men on a daily basis, but because they're not Skip Gates, the president does not comment.
Moreover, it was, INMHO, Gates' acute sensitivity to his position that made him so angry. It strikes me that he feels he's transcended the plight of the average black man, and was just plain furious to be pulled down into it, even if glancingly and with some complicity. (Hence the color-transcending odiousness of his tirade: "Do you know who I AM!?!") I do not know Gates personally, but I know a some folks who do, and the consensus is that he's a bit pompous. Sure, he's earned it (no one could top Harold Bloom, of course), but at the same time, it was this personality trait that launched him into this situation, as well as making him such a poor spokesperson for a cause he has had (cough) little to do with as participant or advocate over the last couple of decades.
To emphasize, I respect Gates as a scholar (I have great admiration for the work he did to bring Gwendolyn Brooks into the scholarly canon, for instance), but as a spokesman for civil rights, he's a wiffle ball. It's too bad the President felt compelled to take a swing.
Friday, July 31, 2009
The Beer Summit
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
It has recently come to my attention...
In as much as Rep. Bill Posney has found scattered support for HR 1503, a bill to require presidential candidates to submit their birth certificate before running, and I have held presidential ambitions myself, I thought I'd dig through my files and double-check the old B.C. from Albuquerque Presbyterian.
As I blew the dust from the parchment, I noticed something odd -- a slight bit of off-white discoloration around my name. A rasp with my penknife easily chipped away the artfully-applied White Out. It turns out the true holder of my SS# is one Ephraim Schmelman, son of Lazarus and Sandy Schmelman, of the four-points region.
Of course, I immediately confronted my parents, who explained that I was not, as I've been told, conceived on a honeymoon trip to Mexico, but in fact, purchased from a Mexican orphanage for abandoned black Irish babies (a connection, I'm told, cultivated during the Troubles, when Irish Catholic fear of the Protestant conversion of orphan children ran high). When my folks returned to Albuquerque, their good friends the Schmelmans, who had recently lost their young Ephraim (a freak Etch-A-Sketch accident), suggested the DIY naturalization.
It goes without saying that I am stunned by this news -- it raises a whole battery of questions and concerns. Who were my real parents? How can I find them? And most importantly, what can I do to prevent HR 1503 from passing and dashing my hopes of Oval Office employment?
(And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for Bill Posney and his meddling Birthers...)
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Zadie Smith at Delphi
There's an amazing essay by Zadie Smith over at the New York Book Review. It's about Obama, and speaking in tongues -- that is, with many voices. Please read it for yourself, it's so sharply written it could prick your eyes, and it's equally smart.
But I was floored by this line:
"The idea that one should speak one's cultural allegiance first and the truth second (and that this is a sign of authenticity) is precisely such a deformation."
She's talking about Jesse Jackson and how some members of the Black community feel about dealing with their identity with regard to whites. What is stunning is how clearly and cleanly she expresses this, and how well it describes we're seeing in Rush Republicans right now. She attributes such "deformations" to living "through a bitter struggle, and bitter struggles deform their participants in subtle, complicated ways." So what was Rush's bitter struggle? Where was Michelle Malkin's, or Charles Krauthammer's great testing?
But what is so striking is how pithily she expresses the incoherence here -- authenticity is tied directly to willing distortion. You place party before truth in order to demonstrate how true you are.
That, my friends, is one wicked pen. I think I'll go drown the week in White Teeth.
P.S.> And I wholly agree that Obama draws freely from the James Baldwin fount. Who wouldn't?
Friday, February 20, 2009
Sings of the Coming Barackolypse
Karl Rove recently started talking up the imminent rebound of the American economy. Brian Butler passes the quote on:
[I]f Republicans predict economic doom, they will overplay their hand. The Democratic stimulus will slow recovery, but not stop it. Recessions don't last forever and, if history is a guide, sometime late this year or early next the economy will rebound on its own.
Similarly, I heard Rick Santorum on Fox News today (meh, it's the gym) arguing that Barack was being too negative in talking about future hardship in the economy. He thinks the outlook should be more positive. This is, frankly, some of the best news I've heard this year -- because it suggests that Republicans are starting to worry that the economy *will* rebound late this year or early next, and that Obama will get all the credit. Barack on. Read more of "Sings of the Coming Barackolypse"
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
All your white daughters is belong to us
Thursday, November 6, 2008
The Ends (and Means) of History
This week is every bit the world-changing event I had hoped it would be. The girl and I went out last night and watched "W." to get a sense of the what we're leaving behind. It's not a very good movie, but it does do a nice, if cartoonish job of summing up Bush's approach to foreign policy and the Team of Ribalds he surrounded himself with.
On a more somber note, as ecstatic as we are for Obama and what he represents, I think his true story, and the story of his presidency, will be much more somber. The death of "Toots" the day before the election was fitting, a mark of what all of this will mean for him. I don't think there has been another present who felt as profoundly the weight of the office since L.B.J. And it destroyed him. When Obama is not speaking -- when he's just walking, or standing there, looking down, I think you can see how much it weighs on him, and how much he senses that he's become a vehicle for history (because at his level, no one is the driver -- ask Carter).
I think he will be a glimpse of the great leaders of the past. I think his administration will prove just as talented (if also, as driven by history and crisis) as his campaign was. As someone put it on N.P.R. the other day, he's the kind of guy who's likely to end up on some money. But I think he'll probably remain a mystery to us, always reserved, always, in some sense, with a foot inside that pantheon of great leaders, and hence, set apart.
The folks on his team are almost fanatical in their devotion (read this amazing post about his campaign and its people). He's a movement for them first, a man second. Even for those (outside Michelle and his family) who've known him the longest. And what that really means, is that among them, he's alone.
I don't know how to describe what I'm trying to express here -- how I feel about it. It's a mixture of respect, and sadness, and hope. He's not exactly a tragic figure, but behind all of the worship, I think, is a sad truth he's come to terms with: his life will never be his own. There's a good line in "W.," where Bush senior turns to junior and says, "maybe you should stay out of the barrel." 43 bridles at what he takes as his dad's preference for Jeb. But later he comes to see it as a reflection upon just how hard the Presidency is, and his dad's wish that his son would live a life he could enjoy. The great ones never have a choice. But they feel what they gave up.
