Hillary Clinton Marginalizes MLK’s Role in the Civil Rights Movement

I’ve got to try to spread this one.

http://embeds.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/01/07/clinton-talks-tears-with-fox-news/

Click the link, go down to the video, skip to about 3:50, listen to her answer.

I’ve gotta say, this is pretty dumb on multiple levels. First of all, to create a contrast between MLK and LBJ with the former being a “man of words” and the latter being a “man of actions” is a spit in the face to Dr. King and the years he spent on the street organizing protests, rallying the populace, being beaten and abused, and changing the public’s attitude towards the cause of civil rights. Secondly, how dumb do you have to be to compare your opponent to MLK as a negative? And third, how dumb do you have to be to do that when you’re white and your opponent is black? The general stupidity of her statement aside, there’s no way it can bode well for Clinton when she frames her campaign against Obama by taking credit away from MLK and heaping an undue amount of praise on a shrivelled white dude (don’t get me wrong, LBJ did a lot for civil rights, but Clinton really, really skews his role).

I hope this gets noticed by more people and gets some time in the press, it’s one of the only gaffes I’ve seen from Clinton since this election began, and damn if it’s not a doozy.

Hey Guys, It Looks Like We’re Relevant Again

One of the factors of Thursday’s caucus that really excited me involved demographics: if Iowa is any indication, young people are voting again.

Both the 2004 and 2006 elections saw marked increases in turnout among voters aged 18-29. And this year, over three times more young people voted in the Iowa caucuses than in 2004. According to the latter article, the percentage of Iowa caucus-goers under 30 was about equal to the percentage of those over 65, challenging the perceived stranglehold of the elderly over elections. One of the biggest explanations given for this surge in young voting is the rise of instant mass communication, particularly through the internet, that exposes us to constant barrages of information and can be used by politicians and pundits alike to raise awareness and outrage over hot-button issues.

For decades, now, younger people have been pretty much ignored by most politicians due to their political apathy, and those who tried to rely on young voters tended to get screwed over by low turnout (ie: Howard Dean). This is a far cry from the 1960s, when college students were a nexus of political zeal and the focus of media attention. In comparison to that bygone era, college campuses today seem to be hotbeds of apathy. To quote a spoken-word track from the Dead Kennedys: “We’ve got our college kids so interested in beer, they don’t even care if we start manufacturing germ bombs again! Put a nuclear stockpile in their backyard, they wouldn’t even know what it looks like!” It seemed like the political passion faded with Vietnam and was rendered insignificant by the time of the “Reagan Revolution” (a friend of mine recently argued that college kids were only such crusaders during the 1960s because their asses were personally on the line with Vietnam and the draft, which may be partially accurate).

But now, young people are starting to creep back into the scene, and, as one would guess, we tend to be liberal.  This is bad news not just for the Republicans, but also for the Democratic party’s old-guard establishment, as Iowa showed us: young people flocked disproportionally towards Barack Obama, largely skipping Hillary Clinton, who had practically been coronated by the old party faithful months ago. This, coupled with the almost entirely youth-based Ron Paul movement (I won’t get into it here, I feel like I talk too much about the guy already), suggest a demographic more concerned with ideals than traditional political credentials. People have been demanding “change” every election since…ever…but with the help of an energized youth vote, we may just see it happen in 2008; could a new, more powerful progressive voting bloc be in the cards for the future?

A Look at Iowa: Wherein the Bloggist Gloats Over His Candidate’s Victory

It’s been awhile since I posted on this thing, but I just noticed a request for some post-Iowa thoughts, so I guess it’s as good a time as any to start up the blog-train again.

First off, let me bask in the smug self-satisfaction that comes from my preferred candidate passing the first test of the electoral season with flying colors. Obama’s performance this past year has been amazing; he ran just the kind of campaign necessary to unseat the practically coronated Clinton after starting the race 30 points behind. Through his sheer likeability and his charming “politics of hope” rhetoric, he established himself as a solid second place candidate without drawing practically any criticism from his rivals; after all, it wouldn’t pay to attack such a positive figure. Of course, after his position as frontrunner was more than secure, he was able to go right for Clinton’s throat, joining with Edwards to change the Democratic contest from “choose from 8 candidates of change” to “choose between the ESTABLISHMENT, man and 7 candidates of change (but especially Obama).

Now that he’s got a solid W under his belt, I’m hoping we’ll start to hear the end of the “America isn’t ready for a black president” shit. As far as race goes, it’s hard to get much more whitebred than Iowa, and if they’re comfortable with a black president, I think we can lay the suspicions to rest.

“But wait, what about the South?” First off all, rhetorical device question man, as Thomas Schaller argues, the Democrats really don’t need the South to win national elections. And second of all, it’s not like any of those states have any chance of swinging towards Clinton; I doubt the issue of race will cause Obama to lose the vital Democratic stronghold of Alabama.

A final note of gloating: Obama’s Iowa victory seems to be giving him some much-needed momentum in the upcoming primary contests; the first post-Iowa Rasmussen poll in New Hampshire puts him 10 points ahead of Clinton (sorry for second-hand link, Rasmussen’s page seems to be down right now).

I haven’t been paying as much attention to the Republican contest as I probably should, but I can’t help but think (and hope) that Iowa will be a notable fluke. Democrats seem to consider Huckabee an easy opponent in the general, but I’m worried about him; he’s got that folksy charm that made people notice him in the first place, and as we’ve seen in Iowa, his crazy-ass social views really seem to energize the Christian right. I personally think someone like Romney or Giuliani would be more beatable thanks to the lackluster response they’ve received from the true believers.

And finally, since this blog seems to have so much Ron Paul related material already, let me just take a minute to say how hilarious it’s been reading the reactions from his internet supporters to his 5th place finish in Iowa. Personally, I think 10% is pretty respectable considering where Paul started and how exclusive his message is, but it seems as though many of his supporters were firmly under the belief that he was going to pull off a win, evil mainstream “polls” and “reality” be damned. The growing screams of massive voter fraud (designed specifically to neutralize the Ron Paul “threat”) have been the best; a common point of outrage has been the reports of the caucus results being tabulated in a central computer system maintained by–gasp–a firm based in Israel. “Damn you, international Zionist banking collective! Why must you stretch your reptilian fingers over the American political process once again? That’s it, I’m going back into my bunker.”

 In my next post, I’ll talk about a very uplifting demographic development that came to a head in Thursday’s caucus.

The Ronpaulogists Have Arrived

As I’m typing this, a group of bright-eyed and energetic students are handing out pamphlets for Ron Paul from a basecamp of placards they’ve set up in front of our student union building. Like all true believers, they’re accosting everyone who walks past and grilling them about their preferred candidate, blissfully unaware that most people are not likely to change their political philosophy because of some random stranger in a sandwich board. I know I dedicate far too much time and energy to my distaste for Paul, but it justs floors me every time I think about just how sanctimonious his supporters are in relation to how insane and irrelevent the actual man is.

I don’t really enjoy being a pretentious asshole (other than in my writing), but I can’t shake my desire to innocently ask them about Paul’s 2004 Congressional statement about the 1964 Civil Rights Act being a terrible detriment to race relations or his assertion that gun-grabbing UN shadow officials are conniving to create a North American Union. I’m sure the people are mostly still starry-eyed at the prospect of an anti-war Republican, so maybe I can help open their eyes a little.

Why Won’t They Taaaalk to Me?

I’ve been trying for the past week to get in touch with the Kucinich and Gravel campaigns to submit a brief electronic interview about their views on political power, but they’re not responding. Who’d have thought that presidential candidates would turn down an opportunity to talk to a tiny college newspaper?

This Ethnic Cleansing Brought to You by Gap

Nothing makes me happier than seeing a humanitarian cause become popular; even the most empty-headed consumerist teen will commit great acts of altruism if the issue has enough celebrity endorsements. In the past couple of years, the issue that has epitomized this phenomenon is the ongoing slaughter in the Darfur region of Sudan; thanks in great part to decent media attention and celebrity campaigning, ending the genocide in Darfur has become a hot button issue for people who couldn’t even find Sudan on a map.

 

However, this kind of situation really underlines how fickle humanitarian feelings can be in this country. Just like with fads in music and fashion, many average folks tend to just pick up one or two causes of interest and cast them aside as soon as they become boring or uncool. For most humanitarian crises, interest rarely moves on beyond brief cyclic periods of de-apathization; for example, the brutal regime of Myanmar was all over the news and on the lips of many political figures for a couple of weeks last month, but now it’s nowhere to be found, although they’ll probably pretend to care about it again a year from now to see if any big names bite on it and make it trendy. Belarus and Nigeria are other good examples of this; coverage of their constant humanitarian crises tends to pop up twice a year or so. Presumably, the principal reason people continue to care about Darfur is the fact that Bono made some passionate pleas about it between his frantic bouts of being musically irrelevant.

 

Moreover, in the blitz of activism regarding the situation over in Sudan, people have begun endorsing asinine positions that are almost unassailable due to the risk of sounding apathetic about genocide. The most foolish position to me is the demand that the US intervene militarily to stop the violence in Darfur; this is a grossly irresponsible suggestion, but continues to gain traction among my fellow liberals. I thought that the mess in Iraq was enough to teach us that military invasions for humanitarian reasons are terribly risky and tend to create more problems than they solve; how one can oppose the Iraq War and defend a pre-emptive strike against Sudan is beyond me. Furthermore, the violence in Sudan is the result of centuries-old ethnic and religious disputes that an American invasion force would be just as effective in stopping as it’s been able to facilitate workable religious compromise in Iraq.

 

An important thing to remember about the Darfur genocide is that it’s not genocide of the Holocaust model, where one conquerable group slaughtered masses of unarmed minorities; bloodthirsty militias represent every ethnic group in the region. Unless we disarmed everyone on all sides of the conflict (an impossible feat), we’d just replace one slaughter with another.

 

So keep up those donation drives and protests, Darfur crusaders, but don’t be so quick to support actions that would only exacerbate the situation; peace can’t always be achieved through the barrel of a gun. And more importantly, keep an eye on all those other conflicts and oppressors in the world; they deserve your attention too, even if Bono doesn’t have anything to say about them this week.

That’ll Do, Blogosphere

Barack Obama’s campaign has waded into major gaffe territory by inviting gospel singer Donnie McClurkin to perform at a campaign function in South Carolina; McClurkin is one of those guys who claims to have been “cured” of latent homosexuality through prayer (aka: closet case) and now spreads homophobic rhetoric wherever he goes. Obama has issued several statements reiterating that he does not share McClurkin’s beliefs and brought a gay preacher to the same event for “balance,” but has refused to pull the guy altogether.

My biggest issue here isn’t with Obama’s terrible handling of this, but with the progressive blogosphere’s reaction, most notably at Daily Kos. Now, I read Daily Kos fairly often and consider it a great source for news that tends to slip through the mainstream media’s enormous cracks. But I get a little irritated when its community, which often subscribes to opinions far from the Democratic mainstream, pretends to be a major guiding force in political discourse. In this case, they’ve decided to claim Obama’s mistake here as an “epic flameout” that will sink his candidacy, and various members of the community have called him a “bigot” and “cynic” for allowing McClurkin to perform. Meanwhile, the mainstream press has already started losing interest in the story, and most of the voting public is casting it aside as the minor piece of news that it is.

But in the isolated world of the “netroots,” a major blog’s declaration of the severity of this issue has transformed it into an implosion of the Obama camp; one commentor in the above link actually started laying out plans for Edwards to absorb the Obama voters who have apparently all dropped ship over this one mistake. And the funny part about it is that Obama actually has one of the most progressive voting records regarding GLBT rights among any of the candidates (barring probably Kucinich); apparently, allowing a homophobe to sing some songs at a fundraiser says far more about Obama’s views on gay rights than his actual policies and voting history. So chill out, blogosphere; not only is this a non-issue, but you don’t actually have the influence to turn things that are huge deals on your comment sections into huge deals for anyone else.

I guess I should feel like a dope for writing this diatribe on a blog of my own, but I have no delusions about the irrelevance of my ramblings.

The Myth of Bootstraps

          Of all the justifications conservatives tend to give to justify their apathy towards the poor and disdain for social programs, none annoy me more than the claim that anyone can “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” with enough hard work. Grew up in an inner city where education money gets funneled into the suburbs and the only successful peers are drug dealers? Have a physical, psychological or learning disability that makes ordinary life twice as hard as the next guy? Belong to a race or gender that just plain gets paid less than another? Not to worry, you can overcome any of these obstacles with enough elbow grease and gumption, and if you don’t, you’re just too lazy and shouldn’t expect some nanny government to bail you out!

 

            Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of personal responsibility; in fact, I think too many people across all social strata tend to fail to live up to the consequences of their own actions these days. However, the marginalization of social leg-up programs in the name of personal responsibility is based on a myth of what it actually means to be personally responsible. For instance, most conservatives agree that welfare stifles personal responsibility because the government provides goods to the temporarily unemployed; but where does one draw the line when it comes to relying on the state? Are truckers being lazy leeches when they depend on public roads to transport goods? Am I being less personally responsible by just calling the cops when there’s a disturbance by my home instead of handling it myself with a shotgun? Most Stetson students (myself included) rely on federal grants and loans to help pay tuition; is this reliance on the government to pay for education somehow more noble and compliant to rugged individualism than getting meager welfare checks for six months?

 

            So as we can see, there’s a big difference between the belief that one can get ahead through hard work and the claim that government assistance denies us of the incentive or ability to do so. With the exception of “welfare queens” (who are so rare and grossly exaggerated as to almost be considered myths themselves), the recipients of social benefit programs use them to try to combat the effects of a disadvantaged circumstances and get to a point where they can fend for themselves. Pulling oneself up by the bootstraps is based on the notion that everyone is actually born with the opportunity to improve their lot in life; in fact, this just isn’t true, given the vast disparities in educational quality across local areas and the remaining de facto bigotry apparent in the professional world (even the phrase itself underscores its absurdity, since it’s physically impossible for one to lift oneself up by the shoelaces). In the face of these discrepancies, social safety nets are an effective way to help turn the ideal of personal responsibility into a reality; programs like welfare and Medicaid don’t discourage people from pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, but rather give them the chance to do it in the first place.

My Lil’ Punditry Kit Part VI: Jack Bauer’s Bane

This is the final piece from the particular column I’ve been writing for, and concerns CIA rendition/”enhanced interrogations.”

Waterboarder? I Hardly Know Her (10/6/07)

A debate is again raging over the treatment of terror suspects thanks to rumors of a 2005 Justice Department memo encouraging the CIA to use “the harshest interrogation techniques” they’ve ever employed, apparently issued just months after a public memo condemning all torture by US forces. The Bush administration denies condoning torture, but the punchline is that the White House has been actively trying to redefine “torture” for years to justify human rights violations.

In 2002, contradicting all legal definitions, the administration attempted to define torture only as activity leading to “organ failure or death.” Since then, violent yet non-lethal questioning methods have been labeled “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques;” interestingly, this term was coined by the Nazis for their treatment of political prisoners and involved many of the same methods defended by Bush today. Most notable is the practice of waterboarding, a technique of simulated drowning made famous by Pol Pot, denounced by nearly every authority (including US law) as torture, but described by Dick Cheney as “a dunk in water.” So whenever you hear Bush claim that he doesn’t condone torture, remember that he’s using his own definitions.

Additionally, Bush’s denials only seem to apply to actions taken directly by US personnel; unfortunately, extensive evidence exists supporting the allegation that the CIA often ships terror suspects to nations where local authorities are known to employ extreme interrogation. A 2006 EU investigation claimed that the CIA maintained secret “black sites” in Eastern Europe and shipped detainees to nations such as Egypt and Uzbekistan, where the police have little legal incentive to follow the Geneva Conventions.

So why does this matter? Despite being illegal and immoral, torture has long been established as ineffective and actually detrimental to our efforts against terrorism. Several intelligence experts have argued that torture simply isn’t effective in eliciting accurate information. Most experts reject the “ticking time bomb scenario” popularized by Jack Bauer, in which eminent threats can justify torturing people with pertinent information; in reality, such situations rarely happen, and torture usually leads to inaccurate confessions. Furthermore, hatred and resentment against the US over its “enhanced interrogations” breed more terrorist sentiment than could be neutralized by waterboarding and induced hypothermia. Simply put, we have nothing to gain from the use of torture; one would think this was obvious, but times have sadly reached a point where some people need to be reminded of it.

My Lil’ Punditry Kit Part V: Obamania

This was the result of me being tasked with endorsing a presidential candidate; a tough choice, given the options.

Obamarama (9/29/07)

I get depressed every time I read about the current presidential election; I find most of the frontrunners for both parties either unimpressive or downright frightening. Seriously, we’re probably going to end up with Rudy “Never Forget (My Exploitation of Tragedy)” Giuliani versus Hillary “Soulless Janus-faced Bitch” Clinton; the idea of either of those people becoming president just makes me shudder. The only thing keeping me sane is the hope that a better candidate might make some headway before the primaries, and for me, the preferred candidate to do that is Senator Barack Obama.

 

First off, say what you want about his beliefs, but the man is damn charming. He emanates a charisma that’s almost Kennedy-esque, and speaks with a sense of purpose and humility that’s incredibly refreshing. You may consider this a shallow thing to consider when picking a president, but one of the position’s most significant roles is to act as the representative voice of the nation; after seven years of this capacity being filled by a reclusive man who can’t string together a coherent, much less thoughtful sentence, I think we’re due for a genuine person in the White House.

 

Obama’s platform appeals to a common sense liberalism to which I can relate. He supports expansions of social programs, but unlike conservatives who only pay lip service to fiscal responsibility, he helped revive the “pay-as-you-go” system that forces Congress to submit more balanced budgets but was killed by Bush in 2002. He supports a universal healthcare system that offers full insurance for all Americans and would save money for families and businesses. On foreign policy, he supports a renewal of diplomatic networks with potential enemies such as Iran and North Korea; this would end the current policy of sticking our fingers in our ears and giving them lists of concessions to be made before they can be given the privilege of talking to us (I can only imagine how the Cuban Missile Crisis would have ended if Hillary or Rudy had been in office, refusing to meet with the Soviets as the bombs started dropping). And of course, he supports withdrawal from Iraq.

 

All things considered, Obama’s pretty much the best chance we’ve got to put someone reasonable in the White House. Unless you want to use NYPD caps as currency, consider giving him your vote.