The devil is in the details

No doubt the 2008 presidential race will go down in history as one of the most hotly-contested and controversial electoral races in history, in large part owing to the tearing down of the gender and race barriers that the candidates who ran in it represent.  The one on Friday, at the University of Mississippi, promises to be politically charged not just for the history that is about to take place there, but also for the history that it recalls.

In 1962, a man named James Meredith became the face of the movement for civil rights when he attempted to become the first African American student to matriculate at Ole Miss, and caused riots to break out in the university.  The uproar went well beyond the boundaries of Oxford, Mississippi, and made the state a battleground for the movement, as even the state’s segregationist governor opposed Meredith’s entry, to the point that it became necessary for then President Kennedy to send U.S. Marshals to ensure Meredith’s safely.

Having moved to the United States only two years ago, I grew up without knowing any of this.  It was, and it still is, hard to imagine a segregated America only half a century ago, so different from what it is now.  But having grown up with the vestiges of the Spanish-Filipino class struggle still heavily ingrained into the Philippine national psyche, I understood and felt the significance of Meredith’s moment.

But in spite of everything he accomplished for the civil rights movement, Meredith today says “nothing could be more insulting to me than the concept of civil rights. It means perpetual second-class citizenship for me and my kind.”  It seems almost counterintuitive, just as bewildering as it is to think of how Clarence Thomas can vote consistently against affirmative action.  But to understand Thomas and Meredith is to recognize that everyone, no matter what race they belong to, has always had an inalienable right to equal opportunity in this country.  I firmly believe in what the civil rights movement stood for and what it continues to stand for today.  But there is something to what Meredith is saying.

It’s like that episode in West Wing, where Ainsley argues against the Equal Rights Amendment.

Because it’s humiliating. A new amendment we vote on declaring that I am equal under the law to a man? I’m mortified to discover there’s reason to believe I wasn’t before. I’m a citizen of this country. I’m not a special subset in need of your protection. I do not have to have my rights handed down to me by a bunch of old white men. The same Article 14 that protects you protects me. And I went to law school just to make sure.

Meredith makes the same fundamental argument, in his letter to the Department of Justice, that started it all.  As an American citizen, just like the rest, he should not have had to fight to be able to go to school.

That Obama has chosen to keep race out of this election as much as he can is a sign that we are moving in the right direction.  But the fact that he has to watch his back for every single move that he makes that could potentially conjure up the “angry black man” stereotype that have people remembering a time when both races were indeed on unequal footing is sobering.

How far have we really come, if a candidate continues to be identified by the color of his skin or her gender?  When Obama stops being a “black candidate”, and when being a woman becomes less of an important factor for Sarah Palin’s nomination, maybe we’ll have gotten to where King imagined we’d get to.  Certainly, you can’t distance a man from the characteristics that make him who he is.  But while we’re talking about the issues, can we please forget these details?

Filed under: Politics , election, history, Politics

Political satire and the WWW

Although Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert may be to thank for the legitimizing satire as political commentary in this day and age, nothing tells it like it is more than a good Saturday Night Live sketch, and the latest one by Tina Fey as Sarah Palin is classic SNL at its best.  
 
But although the likes of SNL have legitimized political satire, YouTube is to thank for popularizing it.  Because thanks to the World Wide Web, we not only have Amy Poehler posing as Hillary Clinton on SNL, but a variety of Hillary impersonators on a homemade Hillary Show.  And now, just days after Sarah Palin’s now-infamous interview with Charles Gibson (“Bush doctrine?  What’s that?”), we have LisaNova’s take on it, to laugh and cry about.  

I’ve often grappled with the idea of the Internet as being inherently democratic in nature.  The beauty of the World Wide Web is that it does not discriminate, and on any issue worth discussing, one can find the good, the bad, and the ugly.  But there’s the rub: the ugly.   When allowed to creep in, as in a democracy, seemingly inconsequential and unhelpful add-ons to a discussion run the risk of diluting the salience of the issues.  Thus, something like rumermongering, like slanted critiquing, can harm the very end goals of a democratic process of discussion.

Should I say the same for grassroots political satire online?  I don’t know.  I’d like to think that if it ups the ante on any discussion of current events, then it counts.  But I’ll have to think about that some more.  In the meantime, watch bits of the original interview on BBC World.  Then, watch LisaNova’s take on it, and thank the YouTube gods for her existence.  

After laughing a bit, you may find it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, as the grim reality of what a Palin election could look like sets in.  But you quickly come to your senses, roll your eyes, realize how stupid that thought is (“It’s just a comedy sketch!”), and quickly forget your discomfort.  Until you read about the Palin interview in the papers again, and remember not just one, but both interviews.

Filed under: Uncategorized , election, political commentary, youtube

The change wars

What’s wrong with this image from the New York Times? It’s a graphical representation of the “number of times words were used per 25,000 words spoken” from the convention speeches of both parties over the past two weeks. Unsurprisingly, change ranks highest in the Democrats’ list (89 mentions), followed closely by McCain’s name (78) and Bush’s (46). But while the Democrats were eager to tie their opponents to the incumbent president, the Republicans have taken a sharply contrasting stance on things. With Bush’s name hardly appearing in Republican speeches (with a grand total of 7 mentions), someone tuning in to the conventions with nary a knowledge of contemporary American politics would be hard-pressed to know which party Bush would have been attached to.

It is no secret that part of the Republican strategy for the past 18 months has been to distance McCain from the Bush administration that everyone has had enough of. Cynical though this may sound, how convenient it must have been for the GOP then to have an excuse to have Bush give the prototypical rite-of-passage speech from one party leader to the next from very far away.

But what interests me more than this is something new I’m seeing — a call for change from within the Republican Party rivaling the cries from Denver last week. “It would be easy to be confused about which was really the gathering of the opposition,” writes the Times, “As Senator John McCain accepted the Republican nomination for president, he and his supporters sounded the call of insurgents seeking to topple the establishment, even though their party heads the establishment.”

Since when did the Republicans start talking about change as if they owned the word?

Filed under: Uncategorized , election, political communication, rhetoric

Loving/hating Sarah Palin

I remember finding out about Sarah Palin’s appointment as McCain’s VP just before noon last Friday, when someone gave a small cry of disbelief in our cube farm.  And at that time, my reaction was “Sarah who?” After seeing her speech last night, I am still trying to figure her out, but there is no denying the immense impact she has had, and is going to have on this election.  Simply put, this unbelievable appointment of a relative unknown, who just so happens to be female, and who just so happens to be unbelievably unlike any other vice presidential candidate appointed before has turned the game entirely upside down.

Having come from a very liberal background but having immersed myself in the complete opposite side of the political spectrum only recently, I took a mild interest in the Republican campaign but thought it to be terribly run (I guess I still am, and perhaps always will be, a rabid liberal at heart).  But suffice to say that the Palin development has got me hooked, in stages that might well describe the seemingly collective reaction of confused apolitical twenty-somethings like me.

At first, I was incredulous.  Who was this woman?  And knowing a little more about her background, how on earth does McCain think she is qualified for the position?  Let’s not kid ourselves, the man is 72 years old.  Reagan was 73 when he ran for his second term, but who cares about how old you are when you’re wildly popular and responsible for the end of the Cold War?  Following in Bush’s footsteps, McCain just doesn’t have a substantial victory (no matter how much he claims this war to be one) to his party’s credit.  And at 72, he’s surely not getting any younger.  And though the thought scares me, I can still imagine a President McCain.  A President Palin, I cannot.

I watched her Friday afternoon introductory speech, in which she introduced her seaplane and exposed Alaska to the world, and although most people in the office were rabidly Republican, we all agreed she sounded shrill and un-vice-presidential.  So to add to the incredulity, I was unimpressed.  And no amount of poking around her Wikipedia page and trying to access the nonexistent www.sarahpalin.com (why on earth the campaign did not buy the domain rights to her name when they had her running for the second-highest position in this country still boggles me completely) could change that.

Then, the Bristol effect happened.  I remember, too, how I found out.  At a Labor Day barbecue, someone’s Blackberry went off and the news read like a bad blurb to a terrible reality TV show on the TV Guide.  As if the news of Sarah Palin’s candidacy–a virtual surprise to many high-ranking Republicans–wasn’t gimmicky enough for this election round, her 17-year-old daughter just had to be pregnant.

No doubt that is beside the point.  Palin shouldn’t be judged as a vice presidential candidate based on how her children have turned out or with the consideration of all this extraneous news on her family life.  But although people shouldn’t judge her based on that, there is no denying that this is going to factor in somehow.  Because try as I might, I just can’t dissociate the fact that Palin, who supports abstinence-only education–a method which has been proven ineffective (as if we didn’t all know that already)–and is intent on selling herself on a moral high ground, would have the nation’s conservatives defend her daughter’s actions when it is convenient for the GOP campaign.  And somehow, I just can’t shake off the feeling that there is a terrible double-standard at play here, that makes it somehow alright (and fashionably chic even) to have privileged teenage moms become celebrities almost overnight, at the same time that other girls in that same situation in middle America would find themselves with a scarlet letter on their foreheads for the same actions.

But what incenses me most is the fact that Bristol Palin is getting married to this boy, and that all of a sudden, he has become a part of the Palin family at the Republican convention.  It’s not that I don’t think they love each other–I’m sure they feel they do.  It’s just terribly, terribly reminiscent of arranged marriages or what I’d like to call “marriages for saving face” that used to happen back in the dark ages.  If Sarah Palin weren’t running for the second-highest position in this country, would her daughter still be getting married this early?  I would love to think she would have a little more sense to wait rather than commit herself to a lifetime of building a family with a boy who never wanted kids in the first place.

The sad thing is I thought I could like Sarah Palin, all of this aside.  I heard her talk last night, with extremely low expectations and found myself pleasantly surprised.  Granted, her speech was written by Bush’s speechwriters.  But she had a tenacity that I don’t think anyone can just fake.  If I were conservative, and Republican, and not a woman, I would actually really like Sarah Palin.  But I am terribly disappointed in this aspect of what would otherwise probably become the legend of Sarah Palin, some fifty years from now, when all of this has died down and we’ve seen America get its first black and female presidents.

Filed under: Uncategorized , election, palin, Politics, republican