An Excellent Suggestion Obama Won't Take

Mickey Kaus has posted an excellent suggestion regarding What Obama Should Do With His Nobel Peace Prize:

Turn it down! Politely decline. Say he's honored but he hasn't had the time yet to accomplish what he wants to accomplish. Result: He gets at least the same amount of glory--and helps solve his narcissism problem and his Fred Armisen ('What's he done?') problem, demonstrating that he's uncomfortable with his reputation as a man overcelebrated for his potential long before he's started to realize it.

I think that would indeed be Obama's best course for dealing with his 'all hope and no change' Nobel. But I also think there is no chance that he'll decline it. Nothing in his career suggests that he is the least bit uncomfortable with being "overcelebrated for his potential."

Some Dissenting Opinion On the Nobel Peace Prize

(image from al Jazaeera)





You know that things are getting weird when you can't tell news from parody without checking the original source. This afternoon, I saw a Canadian newspaper report that a Taliban spokesman had denounced the Nobel peace prize committee for its award to Barack Hussein Obama, but there is such an outpouring of jokes today about that award ("Obama wins Eurovision Song Contest" ... "Obama declared winner of Florida 2000 recount" ... "Obama tugs on Superman's cape" ... "Dan Brown announces Obama is the son of Jesus and Mary Magdalene" ... "Obama wins all the gold medals at the 2016 Rio Olympics" and so on and on) that I had to go to alJazeera.net to make sure the story was genuine.

It was. Here are the key quotes:

In Afghanistan, the Taliban mocked the award, saying it was absurd to give it to Obama when he had ordered 21,000 extra troops to Afghanistan this year.

"The Nobel prize for peace? Obama should have won the 'Nobel prize for escalating violence and killing civilians'," Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, told the Reuters news agency.

In the Middle East, Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, was more sceptical. Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas prime minister in Gaza, said: "Unless real and deep-rooted change is made in American policy towards recognising the rights of the Palestinian people, I would think such a prize would be useless."

Liaqat Baluch, a senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a religious party in Pakistan, said: "It's a joke. How embarrassing for those who awarded it to him because he's done nothing for peace. What change has he brought in Iraq, the Middle East or Afghanistan?"

Most of the on-line reader comments that I browsed through shared the Taliban's sentiments.

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Update - Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive, doesn't sound much happier than the Taliban's spokesman over Obama's Nobel prize.

DC Media Confused by Obama's Blaccent

The Washington media seems to be mystified as to the meaning of a slang term President Obama used yesterday.

Just as soon as President Barack Obama uttered the words Thursday afternoon, the reaction was nearly universal.

On Twitter, The Hill's Sam Youngman asked: "WTF does wee-weed up mean and how do you spell it?"

Real Clear Politics' Mike Memoli: "I don't know what that means."

In matters like this always check the Urban Dictionary, which will make the meaning clear.

E$tremely Qualified Ambassadors

The Wall Street Journal has taken notice of the large number of political donors and fundraisers who have been appointed to ambassadorial posts (Donors Find a Home in Obama's Ambassador Corps). A few quotes:

Mr. Obama's choice of Mr. Roos [TSB note: John V. Roos, the Silicon Valley lawyer and Democractic Party money bundler who is going to Tokyo], along with other political boosters -- from former investment banker Louis B. Susman, known as the "vacuum cleaner" for his fundraising prowess, to Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney -- has raised eyebrows among some who thought the president would extend his mantra of change to the diplomatic corps.

"We're not only insulting nations [that] we're appointing these bundlers to, we're risking U.S. diplomatic efforts in these key countries," said Craig Holman, a government-affairs lobbyist at watchdog group Public Citizen.

This tension can be traced back to Mr. Obama's claim during last year's campaign that President George W. Bush engaged in an "extraordinary politicization of foreign policy." Mr. Obama said he instead would ensure that hires are based on merit, rather than party or ideology. The American Academy of Diplomacy, an association of former diplomats, seized on the comments in lobbying him to lower the portion of ambassadors drawn from outside the foreign-service establishment to as little as 10% from the 30% average since President John F. Kennedy's tenure. (Mr. Bush's score was 33%.)

Of the Obama administration's 55 ambassadorial nominees so far, 33 -- or 60% -- have gone to people outside the foreign-service ranks, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

That ratio is almost certain to tilt back toward career diplomats as dozens of the remaining posts are filled.

"The president said in January that he would nominate extremely qualified individuals like Mr. Roos, former Congressman Tim Roemer, and Miguel Diaz, who didn't necessarily come up through the ranks of the State Department, but want to serve their country in important diplomatic posts," said White House spokesman Tommy Vietor.

So there you go. No one ever said that the people "extremely qualified" for important diplomatic posts would necessarilly be those who are qualified by virtue of professional preparation. Obama promised he would appoint ambassadors according to "merit," and so he has. It's just that all of his political fundraisers have merit, and not all of his senior Foreign Service Officers do. Is anyone actually surprised by this?

Apparently, some really are surprised. The American Academy of Diplomacy and other admirers of Obama jumped to the conclusion that the people Obama would find "extremely qualified" to fill his ambassadorial posts would be, you know, diplomats. The Academy of Diplomacy had especially unrealistic hopes ("President-elect Barack Obama has repeatedly stated his intention to change the culture of Washington. He promises to drive the money changers (the lobbyists) from the temple, to reduce the partisanship and to appoint people who can actually do the job -- not just his political supporters.") Ouch! Reality bites. At least, it does if you believe political promises.

The ambassador's union is putting a good spin on the bad news:

Ronald E. Neumann, president of the Academy and a retired Foreign Service officer, cautioned that it is far too early to tell how the Obama lineup will look. When administrations turn over, the first ambassadors to leave their posts often are the prior president's political appointees; those spots are first to be filled, in turn, with new political appointees. Mr. Roos's predecessor in Tokyo, in fact, was a former business partner of Mr. Bush, although he had served as ambassador to Australia before the Japan post.

The president's slate of nominees thus far, Mr. Neumann said, "tells you it's not change, but it doesn't yet tell you what it is."

Maybe I'm a cynic, but, if it isn't change, then I'd say that it's The Same Old Thing.

And then there's this:

The Swiss media aired some concerns about the choice of car-dealership magnate Don Beyer for the Geneva posting.

They're talking about my homeboy, Don Beyer junior, son of the real Don Beyer who built a Falls Church, Virginia, Volvo dealership into the automotive empire that junior inherited. Basically a rich-kid dilettante, Don junior got into Democratic politics as a money raiser; he was Howard Dean’s national treasurer before raising money for Obama. He never ran for any local or state office until he bought the Virginia Democratic Party nomination for Lieutenant Governor back in the 90s. He served four pointless years in an otherwise Republican administration with a Republican-majority legislature, then ran for Governor and lost. His most commendable achievement is that his family business runs the absolutely very best radio commercials I've ever heard. [Here’s an archive of those one-minute masterpieces; I particularly like the Oxymoron and Latin Words ads.]

Beyer might be a political lightweight, but he's honest and harmless, which means he compares favorably to the "extremely qualified" appointees who preceded him in the last few administrations. What did Switzerland ever do to us that we've sent them such a string of crooks and cronies?

We have sent the Swiss: Peter Coneway, a Goldman Sachs partner who was a major donor to the Bush campaign; Pamela Willeford, a Texas socialite and hunting partner of Dick Cheney; Mercer Reynolds, Bush's 2000 Ohio finance chairman; Madeleine Kunin, a former Vermont Governor appointed by Clinton upon the death of his first appointee Larry Lawrence, a Friend of Bill who contributed about 20 million to Democrats over his lifetime, sometimes in excess of legal limits, and who extended both his generosity and his poor regard for financial disclosure requirements to his fellow Ambassador Richard Holbrooke.

That last appointee was enough to embarrass even Bill Clinton, assuming that is possible. After Lawrence's death it was rumored - all too believably - that he had been under investigation by the State Department's Office of the Inspector General for financial irregularities when he passed away. Lawrence caused one last scandal when Clinton approved his burial in Arlington National Cemetery based on a false claim - which Lawrence had perpetuated even during his Senate confirmation hearing - to have served in the U.S. Merchant Marine during World War II. As it happens, merchant mariners are not entitled to burial in Arlington in the first place, but Clinton wasn't one to let rules, or a regard for the truth, stand in his way, especially not when Lawrence's widow was keeping the money flowing and insisted on the Arlington burial. When that outrageous fraud was exposed, Lawrence's body was disinterred.

This country could do better than an Ambassador Don Beyer, and we could do worse. That makes him typical of the political appointees we send abroad as ambassadors. If you're the kind who believes in campaign promises - whether explicit or implicit - you might find that a bad thing. Personally, I'll settle for it.

Aunt Zeituni Gets Another Reprieve

The Boston Herald reports today that Obama’s aunt can stay in the U.S. another year. The Kenyan aunt of the President of the United States - I guess that makes her "KAOPOTUS" - is the country's most famous illegal alien and absconder. She has lived in South Boston public housing projects, unmolested by either state or federal authorities, since a federal immigration judge ordered her to leave the country in 2004.

She had already lived in the U.S. for several years before the law caught up with her. In fact, according to the Boston Herald, she received a U.S. Social Security card in 2001 (whether legally or illegally, I have no idea).

In 2002, she applied for political asylum in the U.S. due to violence in her native Kenya. I don't know what the crime rate is in Kenya, but it must be impressive indeed if KAOPOTUS prefered to continue living in the Old Colony housing development in Southie rather than go back home.

Highlights of the story:

President Barack Obama’s aunt, who has been living illegally in the U.S. for years, can stay in the United States until next year while she awaits a decision on her fight against deportation, according to a spokesman for her attorney.

- snip -

A hearing on an appeal of her deportation was scheduled for 8:30 a.m. today at the John F. Kennedy Federal Building in Boston, which houses the Boston Immigration Court. The proceedings were closed to the public. Immigration Judge Leonard Shapiro scheduled a second hearing on her case [TSB note: in connection with a previously granted motion to reopen her case to fight the 2004 removal order] for Feb. 4, 2010.

So she can stay in the U.S. for at least one more year, and gets another chance to fight the 2004 deportation order. But hasn't she worn out her welcome in Boston? That city has already provided her with housing and medical services for at least seven years. Wouldn't KAOPOTUS be more comfortable in another public housing project, say, the one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC?

Obama Sends a Friendly Note to a French Guy

The French newspaper Le Figaro reported on Thursday, March 19, that the Obama administration sent a très sympathique yet somewhat puzzling note to the President of France.

The note was written in response to a message of congratulations on Obama's election. It was delivered via the U.S. embassy, so I assume the appropriate embassy officer looked it over before it was sent to its addressee. The key phrase in the note is a generic pleasantry that reads, in English:

"I am certain that we will be able to work together, in the coming four years, in a spirit of peace and friendship to build a safer world."

Everything seems to be in order. But the kicker is that the note was written to the former President of France, Jacques Chirac, not to the man who replaced him almost two years ago, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Le Figaro is reading political significance into the note because they assume the use of the word "peace" was a veiled reference to Obama's differences with current-President Sarkozy over the war in Iraq. For all I know, maybe it was. Maybe Obama is sending subtle digs at Sarkozy. But I find it odd that Obama would deliberately associate his policies with a has-been French politician who left office with a trail of scandals behind him.

Anyone who has worked in Washington for more than a week knows not to attribute intent to something that can be explained just as well by incompetence. It is entirely plausible that the note was drafted by a protocol guy in the embassy who more or less automatically produced a safely bland and unobjectionable President-to-Président sentiment, and just didn't quite focus on the implications of Obama pledging to work harmoniously for the next four years with someone who is no longer President of France. A plain old gaffe is so much more likely than a fiendishly clever veiled message. I'll bet the only message associated with this note was the Homeric "D'oh!" that sounded in the political section of U.S. Embassy Paris after the text was published.

Here's the quote from Le Fig with the text of the note in French:

Le président américain vient d'adresser une lettre très sympathique à Jacques Chirac, selon l'expression de ce dernier. "Je suis certain que nous pourrons au cours des quatre années à venir collaborer ensemble dans un esprit de paix et d'amitié afin de construire un monde plus sûr," écrit le successeur de George W. Bush au prédécesseur de Nicolas Sarkozy. En évoquant le mot de paix, Obama rend un hommage implicite à l'action de l'ancien président français qui s'était opposé à la guerre en Irak. Une intervention américaine contre laquelle le futur président américain s'était opposé comme sénateur, lors du vote au Congrès.

It could have been worse. At least the note didn't come with a pile of American-format DVDs of Hollywood classics. On the other hand, Chirac has unlimited free time these days so maybe he would have appreciated that, especially if any of those classic films featured Jerry Lewis.

Obama's a Leftie

Until I saw him sign a document today I hadn't noticed that Obama is left-handed. That makes him our eighth sinistral President, which is a pretty impressive record for a despised minority group that includes less than ten percent of the U.S. population. The other seven were:

James Garfield, 1881 - 1881
Herbert Hoover, 1929 – 1933
Harry Truman, 1945 – 1953
Gerald Ford, 1974 – 1977
Ronald Reagan, 1981 – 1989
George Bush, 1989 – 1993
Bill Clinton, 1993 – 2001

Off the top of my head I know that presidential candidates John McCain and Ross Perot were also lefties, so there may be some truth to the notion that left-handers are unusually prone to become President.

In his book Right-Hand, Left-Hand, Chris McManus of University College, London, claimed that left-handed people have historically produced an above-average number of high achievers and that left-handers' brains are structured in a way that widens their range of abilities, particularly language abilities. In 2006, researchers at Lafayette College and Johns Hopkins University published a study that found left-handed men are 15 percent richer than right-handed men for those who attended college, and 26 percent richer if they graduated.

Being left-handed myself, I'm pleased to think that we have some kind of advantage over the right-handed majority. I might feel clumsy using scissors and other right-handed products but, by God, I have a better chance than most righties of becoming rich or President!

The Inaugural Poem Wasn't All That Bad

I kind of liked the Elizabeth Alexander (see her website) poem, even though I'm disposed to dislike modern poetry. She won't make me throw out my T.S. Eliot, but I have to say that Alexander is kinda, sorta, not so bad for a modern poet.

Praise Song for the Day consists of 14 unrhymed three-line stanzas and a one-line coda: "praise song for walking forward in that light." It's mostly imagery, with only a little bit of vulgar politics. Best of all, it was nice and short, taking less than four minutes to read. You can watch her read it here, and can find the text here.

It could have been much, much, worse. Alexander's previous poems include this sort of thing:

Haircut - by Elizabeth Alexander

I get off the IRT in front of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture after riding an early Amtrak from Philly to get a hair cut at what used to be the Harlem "Y" barbershop. It gets me in at ten to ten. Waiting, I eat fish cakes at the Pam Pam and listen to the ladies call out orders: bacon-biscuit twice, scrambled scrambled fried, over easy, grits, country sausage on the side. Hugh is late. He shampoos me, says "I can't remember, Girlfriend, are you tender-headed?" From the chair I notice the mural behind me in the mirror. I know those overlapped sepia shadows, a Renaissance rainforest, Aaron Douglas! Hugh tells me he didn't use primer and the chlorine eats the colors every day. He clips and combs and I tell him how my favorite Douglas is called "Building More Stately Mansions," and he tells me how fly I'd look in a Salt 'n' Pepa 'do, how he trained in Japan.

Clip clip, clip clip. I imagine a whoosh each time my hair lands on the floor and the noises of small brown mammals. I remember, my father! He used to get his hair cut here, learned to swim in the caustic water, played pool and basketball. He cuts his own hair now. My grandfather worked seventy-five years in Harlem building more stately mansions. I was born two blocks away and then we moved.

None of that seems to relate to today. This is not my turf, despite the other grandfather and great-aunt who sewed hearts back into black chests after Saturday night stabbings on this exact corner, the great-uncle who made a mosaic down the street, both grandmothers. What am I always listening for in Harlem? A voice that says, "This is your place, too," as faintly as the shadows in the mural? The accents are unfamiliar; all my New York kin are dead. I never knew Fats Waller but what do I do with knowing he used to play with a ham and a bottle of gin atop his piano; never went to Olivia's House of Beauty but I know Olivia, who lives in St. Thomas, now, and who exactly am I, anyway, finding myself in these ghostly, Douglas shadows while real ghosts walk around me, talk about my stuff in the subway, yell at me not to butt the line, beg me, beg me, for my money?

What is black culture? I read the writing on the wall on the side of the "Y" as I always have: "Harlem Plays the Best Ball in the World." I look in the mirror and see my face in the mural with a new haircut. I am a New York girl; I am a New York woman; I am a flygirl with a new hair cut in New York City in a mural that is dying every day.

Did I just say she's not so bad? Uh ... let me think that over.

Barack Obama: Gun Salesman of the Year

I'd seen news reports of a firearms buying frenzy in advance of the Obama administration, but not until today did I see Obama's image used to advertise guns and gun accessories. I was browsing on-line stores to price night sights for my Glock - not out of any fear of new gun controls, but just because I want night sights - and saw the banner above for the "Coronation Sale."

This is one kind of economic stimulus that I don't expect to see Obama take credit for.

CNN Reports: Pilgrimage to the Holy City of Washington

I'd heard it referred to as the Immaculate Inauguration of Barack Obama,
but that was meant in jest. Now a CNN report has made a serious comparison of Obama's inauguration to the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. Oh, they made a half-hearted attempt to frame it as a story about crowd control at large events, but clearly CNN likes the idea of the inaugural as religious ceremony.

I like the comparison, too, but I wonder why we don't go the whole nine yards? At Mecca, the pilgrims do more than just passively attend an event. They walk counter-clockwise seven times about the Kaaba, run back and forth between the hills of Al-Safa and Al-Marwah, drink from the Zamam well, go to the plains of Mount Arafat to stand in vigil, and throw stones at three pillars in the city of Mina in a ritual stoning of the devil.

Here's my idea for making Obama's inauguration day a more fully satisfying experience for his devout followers. First, instead of having Obama lead an inaugural parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in front of stationary attendees, let's have the attendees walk around the Washington Mall nines times (it will help them keep warm). Then let's have them run back and fourth between the Washington and Lincoln Memorials, and afterwards stand silently before the Capitol Building. Next, they can drink from the Reflecting Pool (if they dare; have you seen the water in there?). And for the big finale, they can all walk past three pillars symbolizing Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld and throw stones at their political devils.

People would love it, and it would become an annual event.

National Voting Pattern Mostly Unchanged in 2008

These state-by-state scatterplots show the regional distribution of the Obama vote in 2008 versus the Kerry vote in 2004, and the Kerry vote versus the Gore vote in 2000. The states above (left of) the 45-degree diagonal line are those that went Democratic. The plots look pretty similar, huh? To be precise, the standard deviation between 2008-2004 was 3%, and the 2004-2000 SD was only 2.4%, so the electoral map has not changed much since 2000 apart from the obvious outlier of Hawaii (favorite son effect).

The plots come from a blog called Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State, which is written by a group of professors in political science and statistics departments. They have highly satisfying stuff if you like your election analysis quantified and on the dry side.

Mr. Natural in 2008: Change I Can Believe In

It seems the University of Pennsylvania's Institute of Contemporary Art is having a showing of R. Crumb's artwork (Digging 'Underground'; In a Temple of High Art, the Lowbrow Work Of R. Crumb Certainly Rises to the Occasion), and the Washington Post has done a good deed by telling its readers about it the week before the Presidential elections.

I'm sure all of R. Crumb's artistry is just as transgressive and avant garde and whatnot as the WAPO article say it is, but the part of it I always liked best was Mr. Natural, his critique of phony gurus and their needy followers. Crumb created the cartoon character of Mr. Natural for an 'underground' San Francisco newspaper in 1967, and it also ran as a series in the Village Voice during the mid-1970s. Mr. Natural, the self-proclaimed "only knower of the cosmic secrets alive today," was a rather ill-tempered mystic of hazy origins who had renounced the material world and went about the San Francisco Bay area dispensing his wisdom to '60s burnouts in return for their admiration and - even better - cash. The demand for perfect masters was so high in the '60s that even suspect sages could thrive, and Mr. Natural was the perfect comment on that situation.

It was quite timely to be reminded of Mr. Natural just eight days before the nation will, in all likelihood, elect a messianic cult figure President. Any politician who wants his campaign to be "the occasion, the vehicle, of your hopes, and your dreams," and who speaks of remaking the world "as it should be," and who says he feels "a righteous wind at our backs," has departed the realm of politics and is way, way, over into mystic territory.

The Latest Book by Someone Obama No Longer Knows

Bill Ayers, the superannuated New Left radical and former Weather Underground bomber, and his lovely wife Bernardine Dohrn, who was a regular La Passionaria to the bomb-tossers back in the Weather Underground's heyday (you can read all about it in Ayer's memoir of that time), have jointly authored a book about how white supremacy is the driving force in American life. Race Course Against White Supremacy is scheduled for release next June, but may be pre-ordered now at Amazon.com.

From the Amazon website:

Product Description

White supremacy and its troubling endurance in American life is debated in these personal essays by two veteran political activists. Arguing that white supremacy has been the dominant political system in the United States since its earliest days—and that it is still very much with us—the discussion points to unexamined bigotry in the criminal justice system, election processes, war policy, and education. The book draws upon the authors' own confrontations with authorities during the Vietnam era, reasserts their belief that racism and war are interwoven issues, and offers personal stories about their lives today as parents, teachers, and reformers.

About the Author

William C. Ayers is a distinguished professor of education and a senior university scholar at the University of Illinois–Chicago. He is the author of To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher and Fugitive Days, a memoir about his life with his wife, Bernardine Dohrn. Bernardine Dohrn is the director of the Children and Family Law Justice Center and a clinical associate professor of law at Northwestern University. She is the coauthor of A Century of Juvenile Justice and Justice in the Making. They live in Chicago.

Barack Obama publicly praised an earlier book by Bill Ayers, but that was way back in 1997. Now that Obama is running for President he doesn't remember ever knowing Ayers, so I doubt he'll offer so much as a book jacket blurb for the geriatric ex-terrorist's latest work.

It's Not Pronounced "Pahk-ee-stahn"

I caught only about ten minutes of the second Presidential debate yesterday (due to the demands of a normal family life, I rarely spend my leisure time watching TV in the evenings) but that was enough to hear the name "Pakistan" mispronounced about twenty times. By coincidence, this week my English as a Second Language class is working on long and short vowel sounds, so maybe I was particularly sensitive to how both candidates mispronounced the word such that the last syllable rhymed with "don" when it should rhyme with "man." In McCain's case, he usually said "Pahk-ee-stahn," and Obama always said "Puck-ee-stahn." They're a bad influence on my students.

I once had an ESL student from Kosovo who would go into a rage when he heard native English speakers twist the 'Stans - Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, etc. - into 'Stahns. He could see that such people are pretending that a foreign word mispronounced in English is being correctly pronounced in whichever foreign language. But it's not, and people who do that are just putting on airs.

If one of the candidates would drop the faux foreign pronunciation and just say "Pak-ee-stan," I'd be so happy I'll vote for him.

Obama: Cool, Aloof, and Insensitive (Say the Brits)

By now, most people will have seen the news about the July 2008 letter sent by Sir Nigel Sheinwald, British Ambassador to the United States, to Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister, to prepare him for a visit by Senator Barack Obama to London.

The British Ambassador described Obama as "temperamentally cool" and "maybe aloof, insensitive," and one about whom "the charge of elitism ... [is] not entirely unfair." Wow! When the Brits call you cold and haughty, you ought to take a good look in the mirror.

Of course, it might just be that the Ambassador isn't the best judge of American politicians, since he also reported that Obama "demands calm and 'no dramas' from those around him ... That will, I think, be an important criterion for his choice of running mate." Sir Nigel couldn't have been more wrong about that prediction. Joe Biden is never calm, and much of the time he is more dramatic than a Mexican soap opera.

UK Guardian to America: Elect Obama, or Else

A columnist at the UK Guardian, writing on behalf of the whole world, has warned America not to break his heart by electing anyone other than Barack Obama. Here it is: the world's verdict will be harsh if the US rejects the man it yearns for. Yes, the headline actually used the words "the man it yearns for."

It seems that consequences will follow if we fail to elect the world's heart throb. According to the article's sub-head, "an America that disdains Obama for his global support risks turning current anti-Bush feeling into something far worse." You might wonder what could possibly be far worse than the current anti-Bush feeling? What could the world do to us, anyway? Well, in the P.G. Woodhouse novel The Swoop!, England was occupied by foreign invaders and the Brits retaliated by giving their enemies the Supercilious Stare.

The Supercilious Stare unnerved them. There is nothing so terrible to the highly-strung foreigner as the cold, contemptuous, patronising gaze of the Englishman. It gave the invaders a perpetual feeling of doing the wrong thing.

Maybe the Brits will unleash something like the Stare on us if we toy with their feelings and then elect McCain.

Two quotes from the article:

If Americans choose McCain, they will be turning their back on the rest of the world, choosing to show us four more years of the Bush-Cheney finger. And I predict a deeply unpleasant shift.

And the manner of that decision will matter, too. If it is deemed to have been about race - that Obama was rejected because of his colour - the world's verdict will be harsh.

That last bit of finger-wagging is especially choice. The British love non-white politicians so much that they have two (two!) of their own in the House of Commons, and the rest of the EU nations seem to be likewise enamored of non-white office holders. So of course they claim the moral high ground.

America, you have been warned. Elect the man the world yearns for, or risk a deeply unpleasant shift and a harsh verdict in the court of world opinion. Maybe even the Supercilious Stare.

Community Organizers Strike Back

The jibes at community organizers at last week's Republican convention really struck a nerve. Already two groups have stood up to fight for the dignity of those put-upon souls.

The National Association of Social Workers was outraged to hear Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, one of the nation’s vice-presidential candidates, malign in a live international broadcast the work of community organizers.

Outraged is right, and they want you to read all about it: Social Workers Respond to Gov. Sarah Palin’s Attack on Community Organizers. According to the NASW, we owe our very democracy, our economic growth, and even our health and family services to community organizers. God bless them all, and I'm sure they could use some of your spare change.

And if the social workers are outraged, then the organized community organizers [I can find no other way to describe them] at Community Organizers Fight Back are angry and demanding an apology.

Community organizers across America, taken aback by a series of attacks from Republican leaders at the GOP convention in St. Paul, came together today to defend their work organizing Americans who have been left behind by unemployment, lack of health insurance and the national housing crisis. The organizers demanded an apology from Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for her statement that community organizers have no “actual responsibilities” and launched a web site, http://organizersfightback.wordpress.com, to defend themselves against Republican attacks.

Once again, I'm left perplexed when community organizers explain what they do, exactly:

Though many people are unfamiliar with community organizing, the job is both straightforward and vital: community organizers work with families who are struggling–because of low wages, poor health coverage, unaffordable housing, and other community problems–so that collectively, they can fix those problems and make government respond to their day-to-day concerns.

So, 'working with' these Dickensian families apparently consists of telling them to collectively fix their own problems by demanding that the government do something about them. Is that it? Everything I know about life tells me that if you expect the government to fix your problems for you, it will result in nothing but steady employment for more community organizers, generation after generation.

Community Organizing Explained

"Over the past five years, I've often had a difficult time explaining my profession to folks."

So said Barack Obama, about his former profession of community organizing (in After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois, 1990).

Actually, it's easy to explain the profession of community organizing, and it was never done better than by Tom Wolfe in his 1970 essay about Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (you can read it here).

[Community organizers] were the kind of people the social-welfare professionals in the Kennedy Administration had in mind when they planned the poverty program in the first place. It was a truly adventurous and experimental approach they had. Instead of handing out alms, which never seemed to change anything, they would encourage the people in the ghettos to organize. They would help them become powerful enough to force the Establishment to give them what they needed. From the beginning the poverty program was aimed at helping ghetto people rise up against their oppressors. It was a scene in which the federal government came into the ghetto and said, "Here is some money and some field advisors. Now you organize your own pressure groups."

To sell the poverty program, its backers had to give it the protective coloration of "jobs" and "education," the Job Corps and Operation Head Start, things like that, things the country as a whole could accept. "Jobs" and "education" were things everybody could agree on. They were part of the free-enterprise ethic. They weren't uncomfortable subjects like racism and the class structure--and giving the poor the money and the tools to fight City Hall. But from the first that was what the lion's share of the poverty budget went into. It went into "community organizing," which was the bureaucratic term for "power to the people," the term for finding the real leaders of the ghetto and helping them organize the poor.

When you get down to the basics, community organizations and community development corporations are simply vessels for receiving and disbursing federal funds in the form of Community Development Block Grants. If you want the CDBG money, you first have to create an organization, which means you need a organizer or two to do the necessary paperwork and jump through the bureaucratic hoops. From the above link:

Citizen Participation - A [CDBG] grantee must develop and follow a detailed plan that provides for and encourages citizen participation. This integral process emphasizes participation by persons of low or moderate income, particularly residents of predominantly low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, slum or blighted areas, and areas in which the grantee proposes to use CDBG funds. The plan must provide citizens with the following: reasonable and timely access to local meetings; an opportunity to review proposed activities and program performance; provide for timely written answers to written complaints and grievances; and identify how the needs of non-English speaking residents will be met in the case of public hearings where a significant number of non-English speaking residents can be reasonably expected to participate.

I've encountered many such organizers and organizations in the 15 or so years I've done various types of volunteer work in Northern Virginia, and they were all primarily funding pass-through mechanisms, although a few of them were also safehavens for out-of-office politicians bidding their time between elections. It is clear what those community organizers do, but many of them surround themselves with an impenetrable word cloud of high-sounding justifications for the same reason an octopus emits ink when threatened by predators. The plain fact is that many community organizers don't really develop anything tangible with that development money except for their own offices, cars, debit cards, cell phones, expense accounts, travel vouchers and salaries.

Hence the difficulty Obama had explaining exactly what it was he did for a living for a few years in Chicago. According to the most detailed news media accounts I've seen, Obama's community development organization received about $400,000 in block grants over three years but could claim only the usual nebulous accomplishments, such as 'supporting' this group and 'standing by' that one and 'empowering' the other one.

I got a kick out of the way Obama's campaign manager responded to the laughter at the Republican Convention about community organizing:

Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack's experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed. Let's clarify something for them right now.

Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies.

Enough is enough. Make your voice heard loud and clear by making a donation right now. Thank you for joining more than 2 million ordinary Americans who refuse to be silenced.

That's perfect. I don't know what 'working with' unemployed steel workers entailed exactly, although I doubt it meant something actually useful like finding them other jobs. I do know what 'responding to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies' means, it means Mau-Mauing some hapless Chicago city agency employees exactly as Tom Wolfe described happening in San Francisco back in 1970.

And the icing on the cake is that Obama invites you to fight these outrageous slurs against community organizers by sending him some cash. Please dig deep, ordinary people across America are depending on you to keep the money flowing to their community organizers.

Post-Nationalist Politics: Change You Can Believe In?

Judith Apter Klinghofer's blog at History News Network had an insightful piece last week about the post-nationalist - or, better, the supra-nationalist - politics of European elites. Read it here: EU Has Post-Nationalist Leadership; US Next?

She speculates that post-nationalism is the reason for the wave of European support for Barack Obama's candidacy. That, I think, is a key point most people miss about Obama. While everybody, including Obama himself, fixates on his being half-Black, the really formative influence on him, politically speaking, is that he's half-American.

Barack Obama Disses His Grandma

Maybe it's just me, but Obama never seemed less authentically black then when he trashed his grandmother in that "A More Perfect Union" speech yesterday (transcript courtesy of the Washington Post).

"I can no more disown [Rev. Dr. Wright] than I can disown the black
community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

The anecdote about his grandmother can be found on pages 88 and 89 of Obama's autobiography (Dreams of My Father) and it consists of this: one day when Obama was about 16, his grandmother, who was the main income earner for his family, and who rode the bus to her job at a bank, complained to her husband that she was being harassed by a bum at the bus stop. Obama's grandfather, an Old School lefty, chastised his wife for her presumed racial prejudice (since the bum was black) and refused to drive her to her job.

Judge for yourself whether that story qualifies as cringe-making racial or ethnic stereotyping. Or whether it doesn't really tell you more about his lazy and judgmental grandfather than it does about his grandmother.

Personally, I don't know any black man who would diss his mother or grandmother as Obama has done in his books and speeches. That simply is not typical behavior of an American black man. It is, however, typical behavior of privileged white yuppies, a social description that is a much better fit to Obama's cultural background of prep schools, Columbia University, and Harvard Law School.