teh Mexigogue

This is interesting. Alfred C. Liggins III writes an article seeking to debunk the myth that black voters are monolith that can be counted on to vote for Democrats in general and to vote for Obama specifically. I commiserate with him in his attempt to portray black voters as more discerning because I would that his viewpoint were so but the truth is, gauging from Presidential elections in my lifetime, the black vote can always be counted on to heavily favor the democratic candidate. Mr. Liggins says the black voters might surprise us but I think he’s just trying to sell the public on an idea whose time has not yet come, and simply saying the situation is what you say it is doesn’t make it so.

But more interestingly, Mr. Liggins’ article takes a turn for the absurd when he quotes Georgetown sociology professor Michael Eric Dyson who says:

“black people don’t vote for candidates just because they are black. If Clarence Thomas ran for president, he would get five black votes.”

Let’s think about that for a minute. Alfred Liggins wants to sell us on the idea that black voters aren’t a voting monolith so he quotes a guy who says that if Clarence Thomas ran for President he would get only five votes??? Because Clarence Thomas, although black himself, is politically conservative and doesn’t support affirmative action and other issues that black people find so important, so as a consequence he would only get five black votes nationwide. Which is the cherry on top that proves that black people don’t vote as a monolith?? Okaaaay. One wonders that Mr. Liggins doesn’t see the irony of putting that quote in his article.

Furthermore, recent history would fly in the face of Dr. Dyson’s assertion. In 1991, when Clarence Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court was placed in jeopardy by Anita Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment, black people around the country rose up with voices almost in unison saying Clarence Thomas was the victim of character assassination, many saying outright that Anita Hill was on the dole with some clandestine racist group whose main goal was to take down a powerful black man. No one seemed to have noticed that Clarence Thomas was in fact nominated by a white republican President but never let logic get in the way of a good conspiracy theory. Spin that any way you want to but the truth is that the majority of black people, then and now, can’t seem to see past the color scheme. If white voters were to vote the same way, John McCain would win by a landslide.

Grats America. As a whole white people are officially almost not racist anymore. Now it’s time for the rest of us to follow suit.

John McCain’s camp is complaining that Governor Palin has been going rogue. That’s their characterization, not mine. It’s funny because I mentioned a few weeks ago that I didn’t think we were seeing the real Sarah Palin, which is understandable given that when she was tapped for the VP position her job was to appeal to the more conservative element of the republican party and to play a supporting role to John McCain’s tank. In a word, provide DPS.

Anyway, McCain’s advisers are claiming that Palin has been going off message as of late during the campaign. I’m not sure that’s such a terrible thing at this point as the campaign needs a jump start and I disagree with the summation that she’s more concerned with her own political future than she is with this election. I think the problem is that John McCain is tanking as a holy pally when he really would have better served himself as a feral druid so Palin is desperately trying to pull aggro so he can heal himself before election day. Either that or everybody just runs out and ports out for repairs which I don’t think is a good strategy because the election is still within reach at this point.

I’m losing my analogy. What’s the best 2v2 partner for a subtlety rogue???

This is the concluding statement of this blog entry.

I think that Governor Sarah Palin did the smart thing in refusing to answer a reporter’s feminist question. It’s not simply that this was obviously the setup to the knockdown question (aha! Then how can you call yourself a feminist if you oppose abortion??), it’s that certain labels, feminist in particular, can be used to mean vastly different things, many which differ substantially from the main conception of the word.

The dictionary.com definition of feminism entry one is as follows:

the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.

That seems simple and straightforward. There is nothing in that definition, however, that delineates the difference between the vastly divergent views of what people consider feminist.

Steven Pinker refers to a distinction between what he refers to as gender feminists and equity feminists. Gender feminists, for all practical matters, hold that the only innate difference between men and women lies in the physical makeup of the body (mainly the genitals), and that virtually all variation between the sexes is the result of socialization. In short, if we can stop treating boys and girls differently, they will be virtually identical in action and temperament. Equity feminists hold that males and females are both innately equal in value as human beings, regardless of any variances that may exist between the sexes. The gulf between these two viewpoints is vast and insurmountable.

It appears from Governor Palin’s self described viewpoints that she (as well as most American women) would consider herself an equity feminist. The trouble is that the more extreme American feminists would fall under the gender feminist category and they are the more vocal ones, holding to tenets that are considered sacrosanct and not subject to rational inquiry (try discussing with one studies that confirm innate differences in the brains of males and females).

Gender feminists, being the more visible group, are the also ones who readily come to mind when the term feminist is invoked and are more likely to regard abortion rights as the litmus test for what distinguishes a “real” feminist from the rest, although many abortion rights advocates also fall under the equity feminist label as well. It is for these reasons that I think Governor Palin was wise in avoiding the feminist label in the aforementioned inquiry.

I think it’s legitimate thing to question a candidate on their stand on the issues. I do not consider it a dodge if they refuse to pigeonhole themselves in a label. Answering this question would be nothing more than opening a can of worms.

I had a dream that Wesley Snipes was a bus driver and he kicked my taco meat all across the parking lot. Then I got mad and made him pay me $20 for the taco meat. He paid me but I was still mad.

It was one thing when the NFL began cracking down on excessive end zone celebrations or when the NBA decided to fine players for complaining in the postgame conferences about poor officiating, it is entirely another thing when The Cleveland Browns suspend Kellen Winslow for talking to the media about his staph infection. I never thought these words would ever come out of my mouth but this football doesn’t trump everything. We’re talking about staph infections which literally kill people, how dare they suspend this player for talking about this issue. While we’re at it, why don’t the Los Angeles Lakers suspend magic for disclosing he has HIV? Or maybe Celtics should suspend Len Bias for disclosing that he’s dead? How much fucking sense would THAT make?

I propose that from now on people should always make jokes about the city of Cleveland.

President Bush claims to be a champion of free market economics but says he was forced to approve of government intervention in the economy because of “extraordinary circumstances.” I will point out that extraordinary circumstances aren’t the time to abandon your principles, that’s the time you need them most.

If you go to a person whose professional title is “therapist”, and you get sexually assaulted, how is this even actionable given that you should have known what was coming? What the hell ever happened to assumption of risk???

Get back modern CGI, nothing you can put together can hold a candle to The Land of the Lost, the show that terrorized television viewing audiences back in my day.

As a further note, you can now see why King Kong and Star Wars really rocked our collective boat after that.

I think this marks the first time in my life I’ve ever watched either a Presidential or Vice Presidential debate, or at least I watched half of it until Southpark came on. It’s not that I’m not interested in politics, I certainly am (and I also mean ‘interested’ in the literal, original form of the world meaning ‘to hold a stake in the outcome’), and urrbody who knows me knows that I simply love debates, it’s just that I have this attention span issue. I’ve had it all my life and it’s not made any better by having two contestants spouting the party line.

To begin with, I was glad to see that Governor Palin exceeded expectations and proved to be a better public speaker than her recent interviews have indicated. I have been of the opinion that her advisers, hoping not to relinquish any of her immediate popularity she enjoyed after the Republican National Convention, must have initially told her to speak in bland generalities so as not to fuck anything up, and for that reason I don’t think we’ve been seeing the real Sarah Palin in the media at first. With her approval rating finally coming down off of that initial high, I think she was finally told to go out there and be herself, to be the Sarah Palin that took the gubernatorial election from her more experienced rivals in Alaska, and I think we saw glimmers of that last night in form. What I don’t think we saw was the real Sarah Palin in substance.

Let me preface this next part by saying that the among the first things I learned about Sarah Palin after she was tapped for the VP position by John McCain was that she was supposedly a supporter of free market economics and that she was a pro-lifer. I think she handled the abortion and gay marriage questions last night within her above mentioned beliefs and it was important that she did so because her place on the ticket is, in part, to assuage and bring over the more bible thumpier (some would say more conservative) elements of the party, but on the issue of the economic bailout I heard the following terms come out of her mouth:

predatory lenders, greed, economic oversight

Over and over and over. She continuously repeated these key buzz words, playing into American fears, bringing the promise that Big Government will be there to bail them out, that much like bailing people out of the personal decision to stay around and participate in a hurricane, that Big Government will be there to bail people out of and protect them from big bad old capitalism. Government then becomes, like Ayn Rand displayed in her novel “Atlas Shrugged”, not an agent for protecting the rights of the individual, but an entity that it’s subjects can only hope to find favor with, favor in the form of “pull”. Historically the Republican Party has represented itself as the answer to big government. In reality I’m beginning to think that the republican version of government is likely to be be bigger than the Democrats.

Oh what am I saying? This blog entry was supposed to be about the debate. I think Biden did an excellent job defending his party line. I say this, not because I believe in the democratic party’s principles (I do not), but because I found him to be a more eloquent speaker than Palin was last night. He also did a good job in questioning John McCain’s “maverick” label and tying him into the policies of George W. Bush. He also brought up, rightfully, that the United States has spent way more money and effort in trying to subdue the people of Iraq than we have spent going after Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. I think these are the messages that Obama and Biden need to bring home if they are going to win the upcoming election.

Under normal circumstances I would say that McCain and Palin have to tell the American people what the price tag on Democratic social initiatives would be but let’s face it, occupying Iraq and Afghanistan until the war on terror is won is the same as saying forever and that’s got a pretty hefty price tag on it as well. I think McCain and Palin have to sit back and hope for a giant blunder by the other party.

What I saw last night was a very good debate under the circumstances. What I didn’t see, from either side, was hope for the American people. With the existing parties and candidates being what they are, I’m going to go out on a limb and say no we can’t.

McOwned.

Discuss!