Paul Krugman and the Obama cult of personality

Below is the email I contemplated sending Paul Krugman of the New York Times today because of his views on Senator Obama's supposed cult of personality. I decided it was too long a rant to send in an email to someone I don't know, so why not publish it in cyberspace for a bunch of people I don't know (or all five of you I do know) to read it at their leisure? The column in question was "Hate Springs Eternal" in this morning's paper.

Mr. Krugman:

I do want to say first that I have long admired your column, and that I will continue to admire and support your work by reading it long after this campaign season has ended.

I am writing in response to your column and subsequent blog post because I wanted to let you know that our experiences of this campaign season starkly contrast each other. I currently live in California, and I support Hillary Clinton but my preferred candidate this season is Barack Obama. While you assign the Democratic campaign's vitriol to Senator's Obama supporters who supposedly worship the cult of his genius Roman style, my observations tend to place more of the vitriol in Senator Clinton's camp. I have heard some horrible things said about Senator Clinton, but mostly from people who blanket oppose Senator Clinton and would campaign for a ficus rather than support her (and these people really bother me, but that's another issue). I admit that my circles may incline me to hear from moderated rational people and not fanatical fascist supporters of Senator Obama, whom I am certain do exist (and yes I saw the video). Nonetheless, my experience of Senator Clinton supporters was that they were the overly antagonistic ones. A number of women I spoke to, including family members, tended to view me as a traitor to all women for supporting Senator Obama. By contrast, the one time a person on my district's Obama listserv sent out an email blanket insulting Hillary Clinton, the listserv was filled with emails distressed by such behavior. They viewed supporting Senator Obama as a choice they had made, but they respected Senator Clinton as a Democrat, a leader, and a candidate.

On your blog, you brought up the race issue. Now, as you alluded to in your blog, perhaps I believe what I believe because I do actually believe that in a legislative way Al Gore "invented" the internet. The thing about racism is that it survives because it is capable of behaving in ways that are inexplicit but significant at the same time. Tying Senator Obama's victory in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson's is about as explicit as you can get while still claiming plausible deniability, but we'll give Bill Clinton the benefit of the doubt and say it was a subconscious racial connection rooted in historical facts. Dolores Huerta, whom I have also been a great admirer of, attempted to portray Senator Obama as someone who has no interest or concern for Latina/os. Frank Rich, your fellow columnist, made clear in his Sunday piece that the Clinton campaign has actively played on the race issue, especially between Latino/as and African Americans. A Clinton campaign pollster claimed that Latina/os would not vote for African Americans (as a footnote to this piece: you can't say any one ethnic group always votes one way - as it turns out some white men are willing to vote for people outside their own immediate racial-ethnic group). Senator Clinton then supported this statement to Tim Russert by claiming it was a "historical" fact when, as Rich pointed out, plenty of Latina/os have voted for African Americans at local levels in both California and across the country. Though not explicit, I cannot doubt that at some level, even if merely a subconscious one, that was meant to work as race-baiting between Latino/a and African American voters. Such behavior did factor into my ultimate decision to support the campaign of Senator Obama (among a range of factors).

If Senator Clinton is the fairly elected nominee, I do intend to support her in the fall. If Senator Obama is the nominee, I do expect that attacks will be made against him and his character that will dwarf anything stated so far by Senator Clinton's campaigners. For some reason, U.S. voters do like living in "Nixonland" as you cleverly called it. While I have long admired your keen and insightful wit on issues like this, I think this time your support of Senator Clinton, like others' support of Senator Obama, may have kept you from seeing that Senator Clinton's campaign has made some serious missteps with regard to race, and more specifically that what antagonism exists in the Democratic race runs on both sides and has its own strong expression in the Clinton camp.

Thank you for your time,
sister t

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Photo taken by Josh Haner for the New York Times

Remaking Romeo and Juliet

This is just a random shout out to the internet-verse. A couple of weeks ago, I read this piece on Patrick Stewart in the New York Times. In there he mentioned, with what seemed a small tinge of regret, that he will never play Hamlet, Romeo, Orlando, or Benedick. I saw Romeo and Juliet in New York's Central Park last summer, and I realized I had never really taken to that play before because I had not liked the actors and actresses I have seen as Romeo and Juliet. This memory connected in my head with the fact that I also have long admired Stewart's ability to act, even if he wasn't always provided the best cinematic roles.

So, here is what I'm asking of the universe. If you have or know anyone who has the ability to produce Romeo and Juliet, might I suggest you turn the story around? Make Romeo and Juliet the parents instead of the children. I think that would be a fascinating turn on the play. And then you can cast Patrick Stewart, and that would be amazing to watch. Just let me know where you are going to produce this so I can find a way of seeing it.

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The above photo was taken by Steve Forrest/Insight-Visual, for The New York Times in London's Gielgud Theater, and it can be found with the Jan. 23, 2008 article linked above on Patrick Stewart.

This blogger endorses Barack Obama

On her deathbed, my Missouri-born, Kansas-residing grandmother asked my aunt to read Bill Clinton’s autobiography to her. Yes, on my mother's side, I come from a long line of cradle-to-grave working Kansan Democrats. That’s right, Democrats in Kansas, and they’re not from some liberal elite bastion of a place. I spent much of my childhood in my grandmother’s mobile home, in a trailer park along the Kansas river.

This election is a big deal. For those of us on the left side of the political oval, it does feel like another Republican in the White House could certainly spell the end of the United States of America that could be. And we have reason to be excited about our top contenders. Democrats in the United States do, by and large, have no qualms about electing a woman or an African American man, knowing that their biographies might actually give them added knowledge and skills presently lacking in our president.

But one day in December, I woke up with the conviction of supporting Barack Obama for president. My decision to support Senator Obama was entirely mercenary. I saw his popular polling among independents and evangelicals, and meanwhile one of my own friends vowed she would never vote for Hillary Clinton because she hates her so much.

I have to take a break from endorsing Senator Obama for a moment to support Senator Clinton. Why do people hate Senator Clinton so much? Hate is a strong word and stronger feeling, and I own I am filled with a certain writhing disgust every time President George W. Bush or Vice Present Dick Cheney open their mouths or even appear in photographs greeting me as I enter LAX on a return flight from Latin America. Nonetheless, I can put that feeling aside and listen to them, and if I had to choose between Adolf Hitler and George Bush on a ballot, I would not stay home that day just because I loathe the Bush administration.

But people hate Senator Clinton with a kind of fervor that I thought was reserved for someone who had killed your family, scalped your dog, and made you eat your poor puppy for dinner. That kind of hatred does not reflect well on them. In the case of my friend, I could not help but wonder if it was because Senator Clinton was a strong woman on parity with her husband but certainly not controlled by him. If somehow, my friend who had been intelligent and capable but chose a much more dependent role in relationship to her husband, if maybe she could not stand the cognitive dissonance of that choice when faced with the likes of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Admittedly Senator Clinton is not always the most likable of people to watch, but she is a strong, capable, intelligent, and decisive human being, all qualities we supposedly like in a president. I really believe her when she says she has committed her life to small daily victories that make people’s lives better. So you can find her annoying, but hate her, what is wrong with you? If, in this day and age, you are afraid of a strong woman who is smarter than you are, you bring the human race down as a species.

So back to how I wound up with Senator Obama. Partially, it is a matter of our somewhat mirror biographies, in that we are both the descendants of mothers born to the state of Kansas and fathers born to countries in the global South. I can see that Senator Obama has struggled with his African American identity in ways that evoke my own struggles with being Latina but looking “Greek”. I also agree with arguments made in the New York Times and by Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek. Senator Obama’s biography does make a difference to the kind of leader he can be. The rest of the world would look at us differently if our president was half Kenyan. And his intimate familial knowledge of Kenya, his childhood experiences in Indonesia, change the way he looks at and interacts with the rest of the world. The future of this country demands we have a president who can work with the rest of the world better than the last one. For those of you who did not get the memo, the United States is not the only important power on this tiny blue planet. We need a president who can do more than transcend the divisions of Republican and Democrat. We need a president whose very being can transcend the divide between the United States of America and the rest of the world.

Of course I read Time this week, and much to my chagrin, I discovered I am part of some soapy idealistic movement of people under 30 who believe in politics again. That is not it; I think a lot of us just believe that we are in a perilous situation, and we desperately need the right person to help us right now. It would be a grave misstep to elect a Republican, even one as honorable and heroic (at least in his youth that is) as John McCain. Republican fiscal policy has failed the bulk of us whenever they have been in charge since 1980, and most of us under 30 know that. McCain offers no alternative. Republican social policy erodes the possibilities for the poor, minorities, and women, or well basically everyone who is not wealthy, white, and male. Since that is 98% of us, you would think we could have no trouble voting them out of office. Republican foreign policy has generally alienated even our allies, especially the policy of this current administration. As we face an uncertain future, we are much more dependent on the good will of friends and neighbors than we have ever been before. That makes either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama a no-brainer kind of choice against any Republican, or so I would think, but then I thought Al Gore was a no-brainer kind of choice over George W. Bush.

Democrats should be happy with either of our top candidates, excepting some rabid Hillary Clinton despisers. Their differences are not so much those of substance but of style. This is not to say their policy differences are insignificant, and for you Obama critics out there, he does have some quite substantive policy initiatives to consider. As a Democrat, I consider it my obligation to castigate Senator Clinton for her vote authorizing the Iraq war, and I do so with this post. She, and many of her fellow Democrats, betrayed our party and our country on that day. Senator Obama guarantees that we will leave Iraq within 16 months of his taking office, but Senator Clinton has offered no such guarantee.

I also believe the difference of style is an important one. Mark Leibovich’s recent New York Times article on this issue paints the distinction in stark contrasts that echo what I have seen in the campaigns. Professor Lani Guinier, in this piece, observes that Senator Clinton “is the talented lawyer serving her clients” while Senator Obama is a community organizer to his core “who sees the source of his power as the ability to inspire people to mobilize.” Here in California, my experience of the Clinton campaign is one of an admirably committed civil servant, but the Obama campaign has an army of committed volunteers who are always inspired to help organize others in support of him. Less-than-wealthy Clinton supporters are left more out in the wilderness; my own mother just today found out how she can support Senator Clinton in the caucuses back home in Kansas.

These are just a few of the reasons I have chosen to support Senator Obama, though it is an admittedly close election in my mind, with two superior candidates. Let me just say, however, that all politicians will betray their own best intentions. They are politicians because they are power-hungry individuals who can bend in the wind when need be; the rest of us aren't politicians because we can't compromise our ideals that much. I do not believe that either Senator Obama or Senator Clinton can completely heal the country of the Bush ills. But I do believe that Senator Obama has a slightly better shot at doing so and an even better shot at defeating Senator McCain. If you are in a Super Tuesday state, please be sure to do the rest of us a favor and vote. If you’re voting Democrat, you should strongly consider Senator Obama’s claim that he has the right experience to govern our country right now.

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This was a really long post, but I have a couple of additional side notes:

The music video above should be a little clearer on the fact that it is also saying, "Sí, se puede," as well as "yes, we can" in so many languages that people speak in the United States. I was pleased to hear Spanish and see American Sign Language, but what about others?

Those of you spreading emails that claim Senator Obama is a Muslim should be ashamed of yourselves. Not only is that email an out and out lie, it is playing on ignorant religious fears that degrade our whole country. While I would have no fear of electing a Muslim for president were she or he the right person for the job, I know that is an opinion not shared by much of the country. I know politics is about dirty trickery, thus why I am not a politician, but come on people, even Senator McCain, whose adopted Bangladeshi child was used against him in 2000, would probably find that a low blow.

Killing to Be Famous

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.
--Paul, 1 Corinthians 1:27-29

Yesterday, possibly the deadliest shooting in the history of Nebraska took place in an Omaha shopping mall. Myriad horrible reasons can lead a person to shoot fellow humans en masse a la Columbine or Virginia Tech, and I don't believe any one reason can explain a complex situation. But the BBC news coverage included information about the shooter's suicide note not found in other news I read. Rumored to have lost his job that day at McDonald's, the gunman's note apparently also described his desire to be famous.

I refuse to write his name in this blog for that precise reason. While I am certain that a desire for fame could not be the sole reason that he committed an atrocity prior to suicide, the possibility of its contribution to this occurrence hangs heavy on my head. We as members of this culture are guilty in our support of fame over excellence. My friend Valerie, a Gen X-er, often challenges that those of us in our 20s tend to value fame over the excellence that should be a natural predecessor to fame. While excellence may have led to Meryl Streep's fame, it certainly had nothing to do with Paris Hilton's. What does it mean to seek fame for fame's sake?

I began this post with a quotation from Paul, not because he has the most psychologically stable advice to offer us today, but because its rhetorical valuation of what is dishonorable to the Roman world popped into my head today. Robert Jewett draws on this quotation from Paul in Saint Paul Returns to the Movies: Triumph Over Shame in part as a call for people to seek themselves in things other than those deemed great by the world. Excellence is not something the outside world can measure for us as individuals. I can only assume that we seek fame, at least in part, to relieve the existential quandary of human existence, but, though not myself famous, I am certain fame alone cannot solve that quandary. And if we, in that cultural space that somehow transforms individual psychology, cannot learn to value an excellence completely unmeasurable by how often our youtube video is played then we may all end up killing ourselves in Nebraska shopping malls.

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On a completely unrelated note, I just had to note that NewsCorp bought beliefnet.com, citing, at least in the Financial Times, the Pew study finding that 82 million people in the USA turn to the internet as part of their faith. What will Murdoch controlled online religion look like? And to what purposes will it be put?

Where have all the funny girls gone?

This is really just a short follow up on an earlier post. Today, the Los Angeles Times has a really good piece" on the dearth of strong women in comedic roles on the big screen. Carina Chocano makes some excellent observations about recent comedic films, and her observations should prompt further questions about why these movies have unappealing men playing opposite women with no character to speak of. Is it just money in the movie industry? Does Hollywood doubt that comedies with strong female characters and flawed male heroes can make money? Could they be right? Is there something more going on in our culture? I think it is worth noting that the U.S.A. may be the only film industry with such a problem. The film Persepolis suggests that France is capable of launching a solid film about a strong and complicated comedic female lead.
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Image still comes from the website for Persepolis.

Superhero is Super-zero

Last summer, on this blog, I claimed that the Sci-Fi Channel's Who Wants to Be a Superhero? was the answer to the reality show genre. I thought that a show that forced people to be good people in order to win did, in some small way, redeem the reality show genre.

I am sorry to say it. I was wrong.

The first season was charming, but the second season clarifies how much Superhero is just another reality show. A second season does not serve as a referendum on the genre, but a perpetuation of much that is wrong with the reality show genre: play-acting old scripts with a cast of characters far less compelling than the first.

Watching tonight's episode, I found myself wondering how they cast women for this season. Perhaps strong women don't need to be fake superheroes? Then, watching the treatment of the one woman left, it is clear that the show does reward a certain kind of behavior more common among the show's men: taking charge even when you're not really paying attention to how other people are reacting. Hygena, the woman left, does not take charge, but she also knows when she may not have the skill set that others have and that it might be good to let them air out their ideas.

On the other hand, she was not eliminated. The openly gay superhero, Parthenon, who has been a strong contender and the most compelling character for much of the season, was eliminated because he failed to inspire children. The winner from last season, Feedback, also failed that challenge, but he went on to become the superhero. I can't help but wonder if sci-fi feels children aren't ready for a gay superhero?

This leaves one superhero for whom the competition is his to lose, and that is Hyperstrike. The sad thing though, if he does win, is that he is the character who, at least on camera, has seemed the most scripted and least well acted. But then reality shows tend to reward those who follow the script best.

This season of Superhero has proven itself to be ruled by certain normative scripts. Even if they are scripts more to my liking, I still can't help but wonder why we (and obviously I am included here) want to watch "reality" shows that just perpetuate old scripts instead of helping us to create our own new ones.

Settling for Less

I just read a movie review for Dedication in the New York Times. It was a relief to read Jeannette Catsoulis' opening remarks. I haven't seen the film, but I have seen Knocked Up, which she references. Good humor aside, I was really struck by the completely flat portrayal of women in the film. Not only that, but I have always assumed successful, intelligent, and beautiful women don't generally settle for whatever random man they find in a bar. Whatever happened to the being alone, having friends, and having cats option? Oh wait, I just remembered, these are movies being made by men. I suppose it is a certain ever-adolescent male fantasy to somehow find a woman capable of standing on her own two feet and yet choosing to add this man to her life. And somehow, these same men would like to imagine they don't actually have to mature past the age of 20 in order to convince this woman to stay with them. Well, girls, I hope that you don't let these movies convince you of that. We all have to grow up and maybe the best thing to do in a situation like this is to grow up alone.