This was originally written as a comment on TalkLeft, the erudite blog by Jeralyn Merritt on the politics of crime and today perhaps the most balanced perspective on the Democratic race on the Internet. I wrote it on April 13th in the wake of the very junior Senator from Illinois’ comments in my hometown of San Francisco. I still think it apt and so I am re-publishing them here with some new colour befitting events since the story broke.
The comments by Obama on Pennsylvania and on life in small town America generally. offend across the political spectrum. But in Obama land, the truth hurts and we should all listen to our would be messiah for his aim is nothing less than to instruct us all on how to live proper lives. While the Obama campaign is defending the comments predicated on the assumption that people are bitter (angry is more like it), they miss the reality that the affront is not the word “bitter” but rather the word “cling” and the items to which these bitter Americans are so jealously clinging to in this land without hope.
It is beyond bizarre that Obama supporters now complain about media coverage when for four solid months MSNBC has done nothing but campaign on his behalf. Keith Olbermann and his comparison of Geraldine Ferraro to David Duke, how do you think that comes off to Clinton supporters? Geraldine Ferraro whose long and illustrious career was nothing but a tireless effort on behalf of the disadvantaged reduced to the company of a KKK leader. It was uncalled for especially since her remarks were in fact accurate. Obama has benefitted from his race in this campaign. That 90% of African-Americans are voting for him should demonstrate that his race is a factor in his popularity. It is indeed odd that John Kerry cites that only Obama can bridge the current divide with the Muslim world. The reason he gives is that Obama is black. Weird how that works. His race is an advantage when it is convenient for the mantras otherwise we must shut our eyes and not notice his skin colour.
Condescending remarks by Obama and his surrogates are now part of the political lexicon. “Hillary, you’re likeable enough.” Lawrence O’Donnell calling John Edwards “a loser” on the Huffington Post in January simply because Edwards remained in the race and in O’Donnell’s mind such was preventing Obama from winning the nomination. Two and a half months after Edwards dropped out, Obama still has not won the nomination. Guy Saperstein, also on the Huffington Post, then followed with charges that Edwards would be forever damned if he failed to endorse Obama before Super Tuesday so that Obama could forever “banish the Clintons from public life.” Comments like “it’s time to slay the bitch” have been echoed more than once. Clinton has been called a “whore,” a “monster,” “a serial liar,” and accused of corruption and murder.
On January 13, 2008 at the Trinity Church in Chicago the Reverend Jeremiah Wright in a sermon said this:
Hillary ain’t been called a nigger. Hillary ain’t ever had to work twice as hard just to get notice.
On the former, I am sure the good Reverend is right. But let me ask him this, do you think perhaps she has ever been called a bitch or worse? On the latter, the fact that she has to work twice as hard now on this campaign and cut through incredible misogyny is perhaps not obvious. So allow to cite two examples.
On MSNBC, Chris Matthews with a straight face noted that the only reason she was elected Senator from New York was because of the sympathy for her abject humiliation during the Lewinsky scandal. Never mind the fact that as both First Lady of Arkansas and as First Lady of the United States, she has played a major advisory role and that in her work for Children’s Defense League she was largely responsible for the SCHIP. While her attempts to reform the health care system failed in 1993-94, name another politician who worked as hard and as tirelessly on behalf of a fairer more just health care system. Or the fact that her constituents in New York like her and that she has won praise from state leaders on both sides of the aisle. Tireless is a good adjective to describe Senator Clinton. She works more than twice as hard than just about everyone and is still dismissed by the Reverend Wright.
My own ephiphany on Obama came in January in Nevada when I went to assist the Edwards campaign. There I listen to an Obama radio ad in which he called Senaton Clinton a “sinvergüenza.” It translates as “without shame.” But to a man to whom words matter, Senator Obama ignores the Hispanic cultural context of the word “sinvergüenza.” Say it to a woman and you have called her a whore. In the American cultural context, “sinvergüenza” translates as “fucking whore.” Mistakes happen but this was pointed out to the very junior Senator from Illinois by both the Clinton and Edwards campaign and yet the ad continue to run. Such an action is frankly odious.
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos, and Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post have waged an unrelenting war against all things Clinton. In their campaign, they have resorted to calumny and vile misrepresentations of the achievements of the Clinton Presidency. They seem to forget that when William J. Clinton left the White House he left a balanced budget, a surplus, a record creation of jobs and a period of economic growth like few others in the history of this country. They are unable to bridge the credibility gap over Mrs. Clinton’s Iraq Authorization Bill and thus everything else goes out the window. Their world view is seen only through the prism of that one moment back in early 2003. Never mind that what matters is the situation on the ground now (or technically the situation come January 2009) and to thus extricate ourselves without leaving Iraq in a vacuum. Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn dictum still applies. We broke it, we own it. So who best can glue back together the Humpty Dumpty that is Iraq is the question we should be asking ourselves, not who gave the best speech in 2003. I, too, opposed the war on many grounds but an exit from Iraq leaving Iraq in a vacuum benefits no one.
Obama and his supporters fail to grasp the obvious affront and the sheer condescending character of his San Francisco remarks and he and they seem to forget that this not the first time he has made holier than thou and elitist remarks.
It is not that voters in Pennsylvania are not angry (the emotion Obama really meant) but that he painted them as clinging to their guns and their faith because of their so-called bitterness. He then went to characterize them as anti-immigrant and anti-free trade. In other words, xenophobic protectionist narrow-minded neanderthals. Then there is the venue he chose to make these remarks. It was not to them in a rally but in a closed session with Gordon Getty and his fellow billionaires in San Francisco of all places. In a city many see as the epicenter of liberal elitism and as some modern day Sodom and Gomorrah and on a day he raised $2.7 million from his backers, Obama decides to expound his true feelings when he believed that the outside world would not hear his remarks. And those of us who are his critics have long accused Obama of wanting to be all things to all people and noting that in the end will be nothing to every one.
Here are pictures from the event:
http://www.zombietime.com/obama_visits_b...
That 2800 block of Broadway in the Pacific Heights neighborhood is called Billionaire’s Row. Nope not elitist at all. I live about a mile away now in the Castro but for ten years I owned a TIC third story flat on Union and Taylor in Russian Hill just above North Beach and Chinatown and a half block from the staircase up to Macondray Lane, the setting for Tales from the City. George Schultz, Caspar Weinberger, the Hearsts, J. Paul Getty, the Tobin DeYoung family, Neil Young, Frank Quattrone all lived within a two or three block radius of me. It’s a privilege to live in San Francisco and I am proud to have San Francisco Values but at the same time I recognize that this 49 square mile slice of America is much more fortunate than most of the rest of it. And at times we very much come off as elitist. Certainly much of the country views us that way. I know that I am part of a elite and with that comes with greater responsibility. There is no doubt that Clinton, McCain and Obama are part of n elite. They belong to a club with only 100 very select though not very carefully chosen members. Obama has a responsibility to not be so callous in remarks he thought private but weren’t.
What is so galling to me is his duplicity. In Ohio and Pennsylvania, Obama rails against NAFTA and free trade but to the Canadians (however murky those circumstances were) and now to Gordon Getty, Obama is singing a different tune. To his billionaire friends, Obama said it was all just part of getting elected. Don’t worry, I have your back just give me more cash.
He voted for the Peru and Costa Rica FTAs but rails against NAFTA and the FTA with Colombia. He so garbles his facts on Colombia that the Colombians actually had to send a diplomatic note to the State Department. Obama’s gaffe? He told a Philadelphia audience that trade unionists in Colombia were being murdered at a rate of 200 a year. That’s true if the year was 2001. Last year it was 26. And blaming Uribe for those 200 murders back in 2001 was a pretty silly thing to say considering Uribe became President in August 2002.
But never mind Colombia, Obama winked and nodded to his billionaire friends that free trade agreements were safe under his watch.
And the subject of guns came up. Up in Boise on February 2, 2008, Obama told his enraptured audience that there were a lot of hunters in southern Illinois and that he wasn’t going to take anyone’s guns away. But in gun-shy San Francisco, the junior Senator from Illinois says something quite different. While gun control is not politically feasible now in the world according to Obama (funny we got an assault weapons ban under President Clinton and last night Senator Clinton espoused renewing it), Obama said he would close loopholes and ban certain types of guns. Not exactly what he told the good people up in Boise and in Montana just a week ago. There it was guns are sacred.
It is not that he is wrong in some of what he said in San Francisco, it is that he is telling different audiences different things. To the LGBT community, full equality. To Reverend Meeks, it is a state’s rights issue so don’t worry it will never get passed. To voters in the Keystone state, free trade is bad, to his donors in the Golden state, free trade is good and thus safe.
So which Obama is it? The pseudo-populist faux progressive from the campaign trail or the elitist effete politician? Either way he will say whatever to please his audience. Duplicitous is his very definition.
Back in July 2007 this problem of Obama being out of touch first arose when he complained to farmers in Iowa about the price of arugula at Whole Foods when there isn’t even a Whole Foods in the state of Iowa and when of all things to complain about Obama chooses a bitter green that is hardly staple in my own elitist kitchen (I was a food writer for a time and have a published cookbook). That is his problem he is Whole Foods through and through. But most of the country is Wal-Mart. And to be President you at least have to pretend you understand Wal-Mart shoppers. And Obama does not.
Blind men are at their blindest when they suddenly think that they can see. That defines Obama and his supporters pretty much to a tee. No criticism is fair. There are always excuses. The acronym WORM is now popular. It stands for What Obama Really Meant. Increasingly to a middle America that yet not knows the very junior Senator from Illinois very well, Obama risks becoming a joke. But the supporters of Senator Obama fail to see it because in their view Obama is a demi-god who will bring us all together in some sort of Earthly paradise. Trust in Obama and he will fix everything. They write such implorations like “Oh please America, don’t be so fucking stupid” or “Obama only speaks the truth” or “Obama will lead us to the Promised Land if only we let him” or my favorite “Obama is infallible. He can’t fuck up.” What is he, Moses? Do they realize these comments border on insanity and zealotry? And they wonder why some think them a cult of personality?
The whole “we are the ones we have been waiting for” is plainly messanic. Geez who else says the same thing? Jim Jones, Warren Jeffs, Ron L. Hubbard? I am not looking for a false prophet but a competent experienced manager who is fair minded, open to admitting mistakes and changing course, tireless, willing to expend political capital on moral imperatives, willing to teach and to learn, to admit they are human.
In Obama’s view, our problems can all be solved if we simply sit down and talk to each to other civilly. He sets a fine example by disparaging the culture of rural and small town America to billionaires in San Francisco. But apparently that’s not obvious. And yet he seems to think that I as a gay man have to negotiate my rights with the likes of James Dobson, Donnie McClurkin, the Reverend Meeks. That as a typical white person, I have much to share with the Reverend Wright who thinks HIV is a govt plot, that FDR allowed the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor, that Truman didn’t bat an eyelash when he dropped two Atomic bombs on Japan and who knows what else. Reverend Wright may have his good points but he sure does not come off as someone I want in my home. It is not that I oppose to talking to others but there are some with whom reasoning is not possible. Does Obama actually think James Dobson is going to let me, a gay man, marry the man of my dreams when he thinks such will bring down civilization to a grinding halt? Naive is another adjective to describe , say it with me, the very junior Senator from Illinois.
In the land of Obama, Obama is always right and Clinton is always wrong. There is now clinical psychological term for this. It is called Clinton Deranged Syndrome or CDS. Maybe the Clinton Health Plan will cover it because the Obama one will certainly not. No pre-existing conditions. It also leaves out at least 15 million people and costs more to boot per new insured. Now that’s bright. $4,200 per new insured under Obama and no universal coverage and $2,300 per new insured under Clinton’s universal plan. Paul Krugman noted this and guess what suddenly after 10 years of being adored he is suddenly a personna non grata. Elizabeth Edwards notes that she too prefers the Clinton plan and people on Daily Kos have the temerity to ask why doesn’t she just go ahead and die already. Yup that sort of loving feeling is bound to win her and us over.
They are digging their own grave. And probably ours as well. They fail to see that in their obsession they are dividing the Democratic Party. Loathing Obama may be the country’s fastest growing new passion. And rather than showing prudence and judgment they demonstrate nothing but hatred and ignorance. They fail realize that some people may actually be offended by Obama’s remarks. Some Americans actually are. Consider that as a possibility.
Clinton is not perfect. But Obama ain’t god either, in fact, he is rather human and yet afraid to be so. He’s never wrong. Still his mistakes are beginning to accumulate a serious bleed of his once invincible popularity perhaps not to wound him enough in his pursuit of the Democratic nomination but we will end up offering a bloodied corpse up come November. When I a San Francisco Values Democrat won’t vote for him, then he has a problem. So does Nancy Pelosi because I ain’t voting for her either. If moving weren’t such a hassle I’d move into Jackie Speier’s district. She I like.
en veritas, libertas
Charles Lemos