Some Thoughts

As you've undoubtedly noticed, the posts have been few and far between over the last few months. That's because my job has been particularly demanding of late and probably will be for at least a little while longer. But I want my regular readers to know that I do expect to be able to start posting semi-regularly at some point in the near future. Bear with me.

In the meantime, here are a few scattered thoughts about some of this week's news:

1) I'm somewhat shocked, but the Democrats in Congress appear--for once--not to have caved in to White House pressure on a national security-related issue. Given that the president is likely to veto any bill that doesn't immunize the telecom companies and gut FISA, I agree with Glenn that the best outcome here is probably to have nothing happen at all and hope that a President Obama or Clinton can sign a sensible bill in 2009.

2) I always figured that if Barack Obama's presidential campaign took off, media attention would eventually focus on the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and some of his more colorful sermons. I was expecting it to be more of a general election, swiftboat type issue than an issue in the primaries, though. I guess I never really figured a Democratic rival would pursue an electoral strategy based on stirring up white resentment. A failure of the imagination I guess.

Anyway, the most annoying aspect of this controversy is, by far, the sanctimonious obliviousness of conservative commentators. For example, John Hinderaker over at Powerline has a four-part series of posts entitled "The Audacity of Hate" in which he excoriates Obama for having ever been associated with someone as crazy and hate-filled as Rev. Wright. He then goes on to make a number of condescending generalizations about "African-American society":

The prevailing political correctness of recent years (another phrase for the same phenomenon is "soft bigotry") has prevented mainstream commentators from confronting the fact that this irrationality has penetrated deeply into African-American society. Unchallenged, the sickness has spread.

Conservative double standards are rarely as soul-crushingly obvious as this one. Hinderaker has no problem with Republican politicians associating themselves with (and indeed aggressively seeking the endorsement of) people like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, John Hagee, and James Dobson, men who have track records of saying crazy, hate-filled things that Rev. Wright can't possibly compete with. Moreover, if we're looking for segments of society into which "irrationality has penetrated deeply," we need look no further than the conservative evangelical community which forms the base of the Republican party and to which Republican politicians endlessly pander.

The bottomline is that Wright is controversial because he's black. None of his sermons are, in any objective sense, any more hate-filled or outrageous than what thousands of white preachers and ministers say to their congregations every Sunday throughout this country. But, as usual, Obama will be pressured hard to repudiate Wright while John McCain will remain free to court the endorsements of people like John Hagee and Pat Robertson.

3) On my way to work yesterday, I heard this interview with Hillary Clinton:

I realize that there are many intelligent, honest, reasonable people out there who genuinely believe that Clinton would be a better choice as nominee than Obama. But how even the most diehard Clinton supporters not cringe when they hear her say stuff like this? She's claiming, in no uncertain terms, that an election in which only her name was on the ballot was a fair election. A fair election!

I know that Clinton supporters hate it when their candidate is accused of being willing to do or say anything to be elected. I used to share that annoyance. I thought it was simply a sexist double-standard, a woman being criticized for being ambitious in a way that a male candidate would not. But over the last few weeks, I don't think any fair-minded observer could fail to notice that the Clinton spin machine is willing to do and say things that the Obama spin machine has refrained from doing. To take an obvious example, throughout the campaign one of the strongest arguments against nominating Clinton has been the fact that she has very high negatives and has the potential to be a very weak general election candidate. Knowing that she could very well end up being the nominee, however, Obama and his surrogates have been very careful not to suggest that Hillary can't win the general election and have limited themselves to arguing that Obama would be a stronger candidate. This week, however, Clinton's campaign director, Mark Penn, told reporters that Obama "can't win the general election," an incredibly reckless (and ridiculous) thing to say.

I really don't think that if the situation were reversed, Obama's team would be saying that Clinton can't win or arguing that he should be awarded delegates from a unsanctioned primary in which only his name was on the ballot. The Clinton camp really is in a league of its own when it comes to spin.

UPDATE: Hilzoy has a series of very thoughtful posts on the Obama/Wright issue. But in this paragraph in particular she puts her finger on something that really annoys me about the John Hinderakers of the world:

Second, there are things like “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.” I think that Obama has to disown this, of course, and I'm sure he will do so sincerely. Precisely nothing about Obama leads me to believe that he secretly damns America, etc.

That said, I do not feel, myself, like lecturing African Americans about the precise level of anger they should feel towards this country, or the extent to which they should identify with it. My ancestors were not kidnapped and brought here against their will, nor were they enslaved, or sold away from their parents or children, or raped by their alleged owners as a matter of course, or branded, etc. etc., etc. Nor, once freed, were they subjected to what can only be described as terrorism for a century. The likes of me do not face persistent residential discrimination, and while, as a woman, I do face some discrimination in employment, I think it's considerably milder than what African Americans have to deal with.

I could, of course, go on (and on, and on, and on.) But the general point is: I really don't feel like talking about just how angry African-Americans should be about all this, any more than I would want to tell a rape victim that she is, frankly, just a little too upset by her experience.

I completely agree. It's not just the double standard. It's not just the fact that conservatives are quick to call someone like Wright an anti-American, hate-filled bigot without ever directing any similar scrutiny towards the Pat Robertsons and John Hagees of the world. It's the presumptuousness, the idea that this guy is telling a sixty year old black man from Chicago how he should feel about America.