Of presumption and racism

I don't really know if the presumption meme that people keep affixing to Obama is racist. Frankly I don't think it much matters. More importantly, I think Dana Milbank should own up to getting his facts wrong. I also don't get Harold Ford's angle. Why is he giving Obama advice? Didn't he lose? I kind of see the point about Obama needing to lose "the suit" and roll up his sleeves--but then not really. It sounds like the sort of warmed-over consultant-speak we see in the media all the time.

A rambling statement on Dungeons & Dragons, Michael Strahan and black fathers

The geeks among us--and there are many--will recall that I am an old-school D&D fan. The alive among us will recall that I'm also a father. A few weeks back I wondered about the possibilities of teaching my son D&D. He will turn eight next week, and along with a giant Lego set, I plan to begin teaching him all about orcs, elves and halberds. Today three books I ordered arrived, two of which you see above. I've been flipping through them all day, and man I tell you, I had forgotten exactly how much in love I really was. A few months ago me and Kenyatta decided to cut off our cable, then our TV blew and we decided to not buy another one. I think D&D may work well to supplement the gap and offer an active chance for us to really build some family. To that end, Kenyatta's actually volunteered to learn the game--so we'll have three of us playing.

We tried this before with football and it really worked out well. When me and Kenyatta first hooked up, she thought football was just a bunch of men falling on top of each other. Now she's got a favorite team (the Colts) a favorite player (Peyton) as does my son (the Giants, and the now retired Strahan) who also plays little league. Some of our best memories revolve around football--last year we had a ball watching Devin Hester  return two touchdowns against the Broncos (I'll never forget him hurdling Todd Sauerbrun). I may even start taking the boy to the sports bar on Sunday. We'll see.

There's a greater point to all this rambling. I'm consistently amazed at the coolness of building family. The first two years are drudgery, no doubt. But then it just becomes awesome. I really wish we'd been able to have a second kid shortly after Samori was born, but money and health made it prohibiitive. Still, even with the one I'm often surprised by the sheer fun of the whole project. My Dad once told me something that has stuck with me for years. The saddest thing about so many black fathers--and fathers in general--quitting on their kids is that, invaribly, they cheat themselves more than they actually cheat the kid. I've seen a lot of folks turn out fine without knowing their second parent. But the absent parent, permenantly loses that link, that ability to share the things that once excited them, that chance to relive their own childhood with their flesh and blood. That goes for D&D and for Devin Hester.

More on the "Obama is a celebrity" line of attack

I was reading Jim Rutenberg's story on this, and I was trying to work out why this new strategy by McCain rankles me. I think it's because the "Obama is Britney" line is too clever for its own good. The "John Kerry is an effete windsurfer" pitch made sense mostly because the country was at war. It directly attacked the idea that Kerry claim to the commander in chief mantle. The idea was that Kerry wasn't tough enough to deal with Al'Qaeda. Whatever you may think of that charge, it's clear and direct.

But the McCain attack is much more passive-aggressive, and isn't really as clear. First, I know that there is a substantial portion of Americans who don't like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, but it's not clear to me that there is a significant portion of Americans who don't like celebrities in general. To the country, there is a large group of people who reliably drop millions of dollars to see the latest Will Smith feature. Implicit in the McCain attack is this idea that most celebrities are famous for being famous. I guess. But Tiger Woods is demonstrably a great golfer. Michael Jordan really did have a killer turn-around jumper. John Kennedy really did create the Peace Corps. Clint Eastwood really is a great actor and director.

In other words, it doesn't directly follow that celebrity equals bad president in the way that effete equals bad commander in chief. Being effete is considered the opposite of being a commander in chief. I'm not sure that being a celebrity is considered the opposite of being president. Indeed, it's kind of hard to be president and not be a celebrity--that comes with the job. So then what is the attack? Obama already is a celebrity--just like all our past presidents? Maybe I'm slow. I'm just not getting it.

Maybe hip-hop is relevant

Nice riposte from my people over at the Prospect:

Ta-Nehisi Coates titles a post "Ludacris attempts to make Hip-hop more irrelevant" but it's hard to see how it's ever been more relevant. Nas is protesting FOX News on behalf of MoveOn, Ludacris gets a personal chin check from Bill Burton and when and Obama's choice to listen to Jay-Z's Black Album is an issue of "serious" political importance.

So while we're here ... did any other random black people who like Barack Obama say something that offended you today? If so, you should call Bill Burton so he can issue a denunciation. I hear that one of the goals of the transition team is plans for a new federal agency that will deal exclusively with issuing apologies on behalf of Barack Obama for anything black people do that offends you.

This is good news. For Hillary.

Matt takes on the stupidity of the "Why isn't Barack leading McCain by 40 points" argument. In defense of said argument, the frontrunner always gets hit a little harder. But I still think it's a silly angle.

Buckley, Conservatives and Race

Following up on the Affirmative Action post below, I think it's worth reading William Vogeli's piece, "Civil Rights and the Conservative Movement," which, to my mind, is the most thorough article I've read on the Right and African-Americans, from a conservative perspective. I think the grappling with the legacy of William F. Buckley is especially powerful. Vogeli is a Buckley guy, but he doesn't try to downplay the man's warts:

The single most disturbing thing about Buckley's reactions to the civil rights controversies was the asymmetry of his sympathies—genuine concern for Southern whites beset by integrationists, but more often than not, perfunctory concern for Southern blacks beset by bigots. This disparity culminated in a position on violence committed by whites against blacks and civil rights activists that was reliably equivocal. Like the liberals of the 1960s who didn't condone riots in Watts and Detroit but always understood them, Buckley regularly coupled the obligatory criticism of Southern whites' violent acts with a longer and more fervent denunciation of the provocations that elicited them. Thus, "the nation cannot get away with feigning surprise" when a mob of white students attacks a black woman admitted to the University of Alabama by federal court order in 1956. "For in defiance of constitutional practice, with a total disregard of custom and tradition, the Supreme Court, a year ago, illegalized a whole set of deeply-rooted folkways and mores; and now we are engaged in attempting to enforce our law." Thus, the Freedom Riders went into the South to "challenge with language of unconditional surrender" the whites' "deeply felt" beliefs, and were "met, inevitably, by a spastic response. By violence."

What's interesting is Buckley ultimately supported a holiday for MLK, and unlike some his more reprehensible peers, actually grappled with his blind-spot in regards to segregation. Also, Vogeli gets at the essential problem of conservatives and black voters--the dodginess of the "limited government" defense. To oppose Affirmative Action and hate crime legislation from the perspective of limited government is an honest position that probably could be explained to the African-American voter. But it can't be explained when the people who hold that position support other massive intrusions of government--like the drug war,and the expansion of prisons. Unfortunately, that leads to my critique of the article--I didn't see anything on what a conservative pitch to African-Americans would look like. I've said this before--if conservatives want the black vote, it's not enough to outline what your against, you have to say what you're for. I didn't get that from the piece. I still have no idea why any African-American should ultimately support a Republican.

One other thing. For those who wonder why I'm so into this subject, I say the following. I'm a liberal, no doubt. But as a black person--and I guess as a liberal--I've never thought it was a good thing that nine out of ten black people think that basically half the American electorate would like to see them back in chains. I'd much rather that nine out of ten blacks vote Democrat out of a serious committment to liberalism, not because they basically don't have a choice. That sense, that there really is only one electoral option, is not good for black folks, and it's not good for the country at large.

Hip-Hop and Voter Registration

I'm going to second Tim Fernholz skepticism of using artists--and art, for that matter--as a way to influence elections. Vote or Die was a joke from jump, mostly because the people involved, while interested in the cause, overestimated their power. Frankly, I don't think people listen to music to figure out which way to vote. Nor should they. Music is influential, but not in the easy mathematical way (if you listen to this, you'll do this) that a lot of us want it to be.

Really now, Barack as Paris Hilton?

Man, desperate much?

Mark Penn--Fail. Again.

I'm not clear why Mark Penn is writing this column:

The seniors of today may not be the so-called Greatest Generation, but they sure are the biggest generation — and their voting power has been compounded by the dramatic expansion in average life expectancy that’s occurred since they were born.

Granted, people hope for a large youth showing in the general, but who actually thinks that seniors aren't important? Isn't the whole point of jumping on McCain for calling Social Security a "disgrace?" Where are all these people who think it's a good idea to ignore whole swaths of the electorate? Oh right. They're sitting at home. With Mark Penn.

Ludacris attempts to make hip-hop more irrelevant

Really. I mean why? Are Negroes just trying to sabotage? Man, with friends like these...

Obama and Affirmative Action

It's worth actually watching Obama responding to questions at UNITY and his specific assessment of the future of Affirmative Action before you decide what you think. As you guys know, I've always been kind of luke-warm to AA. I think that pro-AA folks have a point that there's going to be AA no matter what (legacies for instance), and the real question is what kind. That said, the prospect of an upper middle class black or Latino kid getting preference over a poor white kid from Virginia should rankle all of us. I basically agree with Obama's assessment--that AA isn't really the future, that AA does nothing for masses of black kids dropping out of school, that decent health-care and better schools will be the best AA, in that they will help whites and disproportionately help blacks, but finally that the time is not yet now to phase them out.

Chris Bodenner, who is officially my new favorite sparring partner, cites the The Corner's reaction to Obama's speech:

Obama's criticism is wrongheaded for at least three reasons:  (1) it is obviously preferential policies that are divisive, not their abolition; (2) the “big problem” of helping people from disadvantaged backgrounds can be addressed by helping people of all colors who are disadvantaged, rather than crudely and unfairly using race as a proxy for disadvantage; and (3) Obama himself has recognized as much, ... acknowledging the divisiveness of preferential treatment (in his Philadelphia speech), and the fact that his own daughters, for starters, come from privileged backgrounds and thus are “probably” not deserving of preferential treatment.
...
This is a solid, important commitment by [McCain] to the principle of E pluribus unum, and Americans across the political spectrum, but especially conservatives, should applaud him.  As for Barack Obama: This is a critical moment in his campaign.  Is he a candidate of change who will transcend race and bring us all together, rejecting divisive policies he knows in his heart are outdated and irrelevant—or just another Democratic pol who lacks the courage to stand up to powerful but aging interests in his own party, which remain hopelessly infatuated with identity politics and insist on perpetuating a set of policies that have always been unfair and divisive and are now outmoded to boot?

And Lashawn Barber:

The whole point of the civil rights movement was to bar the government from preferring one citizen over another based on factors like race. But our government continues this odious practice, and I can think of nothing more unfair or divisive, no matter which race or sex benefits from the discrimination. A government with the power to discriminate in favor of blacks has the power to discriminate against blacks.

Here is something that grates on my nerves as much as the term “African American”: People use the terms “affirmative action” and “race preferences” interchangeably, but they are not even synonymous. Affirmative action was a policy designed to provide qualified blacks with opportunities to compete with others for jobs. The “cast a wider” imagery described the process. The goal was to include more qualified blacks into the hiring pool. Affirmative action as conceived quickly became what’s known today as race preferences. Under this standard, blacks are not expected to compete against whites, only against one another. Public colleges and universities are notorious for unofficial separate admissions tracks, for example. It is truly tasteless.

A quick aside--I believe in looking at wealth, instead of race, in terms of AA. Having said that, I admire Obama's refusal to use AA as some sort of foil to reach white voters. There's a basic logic problem here, as well as one of perspective. Barber's proceeds from a reductionist argument--that the Civil Rights movement was about barring "the government from preferring one citizen over another based on factors like race." In fact, the CRM had much a loftier goal--full citizenship for African-Americans. The problem wasn't merely race-based discrimination (i.e. you can't go here because of your color) but an entire system that worked to cripple black communities. Indeed when you consider the period spanning post-Reconstruction to the CRM, simply describing that era as a time when whites preferred "one citizen over another based on factors like race" is Orwellian.

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To stimulate the left and right brain...

I had this long, overwrought post announcing what the rest of you apparently already know--that I'm going to be blogging for the Atlantic--and then it got eaten by Typepad. It was quite wry and humorous. Oh well. I'm just going to say thanks to those who've been posting here from jump (Shani, Breuk etc.) and also how sad I am that Matt won't be fighting in the trenches with me. For what we do, in our way of thinking, there really isn't anyone better than Matt. Anyway, I know I'm not the most reliable lefty, and a lot of you have beef with me from time to time. But I do try to shoot straight guys. It's really all I know how to do. And now I'm just going to do what I should have done five sentences ago--hand the mic over to Outkast.

The politics of black outrage

It should be said that all people enjoy fashioning themselves as the truly aggrieved. The idea that black people have cornered the market on something as ancient and human as playing the victim is laughable. I am thinking of Preston Brooks beating down Charles Sumner for insulting the honor of South Carolina--and then getting a hero's welcome back home. I'm thinking of the Cuban-Americans and Elian Gonzales, or folks who organize their whole identities around flags of treason. One way of coping with the very human, and very distasteful, penchant for playing the victim is to claim that only the blacks do it--or that the blacks do it the most, or that they do it so much that it's become a culture. Not like those true stand-up Americans who've given themselves as martyrs in the War On Christmas.

That said, I don't get the uproar over this. Yeah, it's dead wrong, but on the list of things shortening the life-span of my kid, it doesn't rank. Plus racist art is ultimately bad art, and bad art tells me a lot about its consumers. The worst thing in the world would be for these idiots to go underground. No. I like them right here, caught in the shine of their own high beams. Right here. Right where I can see them.

UPDATE: This is a great point, " Lots of little kids who wouldn't otherwise encounter this (particular) crap are exposed to it in a context that is "mainstream." After all, WalMart are the schmucks who force entertainers to issue special sanitized versions of their CDs. "

The Traveling Man

Headed out out of ATL into Chi-town tomorrow guys, to watch a Michelle Obama speech. Posting will be light or nonexistent. Some things are about to change over this way. I'll have an announcement early this week.

Billy Dee says, "Only you can stop corniness."

And now a message from Black America's Spokesman For Life, Billy Dee Williams:

Seriously America, I know we all must live in a world where John Travolta is considered a great dancer, and a 60 year old Rocky can go the distance with Antonio Tarver, but on the real, you've officially gone too far.

Props to Matt for the link.

From the department of "Stop whining and do your job"

Let me get this straight. Adam Nagourney writes a shockingly awful story, premised on the idea that the mere existence of Obama should immediately ameliorate centuries of race conflict, and he's mad that Obama called him out on it? Please read the story yourself. But the basic thrust of it seems to be this: the press is shocked--shocked!--that Barack Obama sees the media through the lens of his own interest.

Reporters who cover Obama these days grouse that Obama's flacks shroud the campaign in secrecy and provide little to no access. "They're more disciplined than the Bush people," a reporter on the Obama trail gripes. "There was this idea of being transparent, but they're not. They're total tightwads with information."

You don't fucking say. Really now, I have no respect for this at all--if you can't push through politicians stonewalling you, if you can't get past flacks re-routing you, if you're intimidated because their assorted henchmen are threatening you, you should just give up. Hearing the press complain about Obama, is like listening to a boxer complain about getting punched. The candidates aren't your friends. They aren't there to hand out warm milk and cookies. They aren't supposed to tuck you in on the campaign plane. The Obama campaign is doing what any competent campaign would do--attempting to control the narrative. Reporters are supposed to cut through that. The Obama guys are doing their job. Now go do yours.

UPDATE: For the record, I felt the same way when reporters complained about the secretiveness of the Bush White House and how they actually tried to prevent press leaks. What are they supposed to do? Encourage leaks?

Even more blogging heads

Loury and McWhorter on the Obama/King comparison

Loury is peeved that "image-makers" are juxtaposing King's speech in 1963 with Obama's speech this year at the DNC. The dates, for all who don't know, are exactly 45 years apart. I kind of get Loury's beef--and then not so much. First off, Obama didn't set the date--it would have been the same if Kucinich had won. Second, Loury's critique--of media--posits a time when the MSM were a great asset to black folks, except mostly they've been a hindrance. If you look at the epoch of lynching, for instance, perhaps no institution, short of the government, has more blood on its hands than American newspapers. I mean really, King's own family sold off his image to Alactel, I really can't have a beef with him being associated with Obama. Ultimately I come down with McWhorter--it's stupid to act like this is some sort of equivalent to 1963. But that's because history hadn't played out yet. IN 1963, it would have been stupid to compare "I Have a Dream" to the Gettysburg address. We just don't know what's going to happen yet. Anyway watch the rest of the episode. It's pretty good.

And another thing...

...All you folks who can't get through the day because your seized and utterly paralyzed by white guilt, please deposit a check in PayPal account. According to Steele there are millions of you out there, and your guilt is forcing you to excuse my cultural pathologies. I see only one way out--make a deposit, and you can feel unburdened.

Why liberals don't listen to Shelby Steele

Or at least this one. Chris Bodenner nods approvingly toward Shelby Steele (though whacking him over his support of McCain) and wonders why Steele is so often dismissed by liberals. I can only speak for myself.
In Aspen, I watched Steele claim that white guilt was the reason we were losing the Iraq War. And then I watched him stand in front of a room full of white people and reduce African-Americans into cartoons so could fit into his ridiculous bargainer and challenger. Steele subscribes to the theory of Black Automatons in which black people don't exist as actual people, but as robots whose whole lives are ordered around the machinations of white people.

This is why it's laughable to see Steele attacking Jackson and Sharpton--they are branches of the same deterministic tree. There are no actual black people making individual determinations in the world of Steele or Jackson. Either it's racism or its culture. Either the white man is keeping us down or the niggers are fucking it up for everybody. Both Jackson and Steele still think that this is 1992 and the most important debates about race either center around some vague notion of "social justice" or the affirmative action policies at Harvard Law.

When I watched Steele talk, I didn't feel bad for black America, I felt bad for the white people who were there drinking it up. (In fairness, many were not.) It really saddens me to write that. I actually agree with Steele on one thing---the end of the Civil Rights Industrial Complex is great thing for black people everywhere. But Steele is tied to that complex, and his ideas are just as bereft. Like the men he derides as extortionists (which they are) Steel is running a hustle--Sharpton and Jackson traffic in white guilt. Steele traffics in white ignorance. And they keep all the profits. I've never seen "white guilt" or "white ignorance" do a damn thing for black folks.

Again with the underwear jokes? Why print should drop the blogger-hate

Joe Scarborough warrants, in the words of Jay-Z, only half a bar. He sits at a desk and does interview with flacks and people he works with. An unremarkable former Congressman trumped up into a professional babbler, Scarborough may not be a joke, but as the saying goes, he most definitely plays one on TV. I do find it interesting that fellow MSNBCer Jonathan Alter can speak on blogs as he does, while sharing the studio with people who basically embody the worst aspects of blogging. Alter offers us an unnaunced and warmed-over view of bloggers as mostly a crowd of hecklers, who sit at home popping off and feeding from the trough of presumably legitimate media:

Blogging is a good news/bad news story, too. Daily Kos held a convention last week in Texas full of self-congratulation. Like Thomas Paine and the ideological pamphleteers who provoked the American Revolution, bloggers help enliven and expand public debate. They are indispensable aggregators of political news.

But we're finding this works better for keeping on top of daily flaps than for learning genuinely new information. Bloggers rarely pick up the phone or go interview the middle-level bureaucrats who know the good stuff. It's a lot easier to chew over breaking stories and bash old media. Where do they get the information with which to bash? Often from, ahem, newspapers.

Which are shriveling this year. Talk is cheap and reporting is expensive. Anyone can sit at home pontificating in PJs (I've done it myself), but it costs nearly $1.5 million a year for a bureau in Baghdad. As newspapers lay off hundreds of reporters in the face of assaults on their classified advertising by the likes of Craigslist, who will actually dig for the news?

I find it fascinating that this view is coming from a guy who makes his living giving opinions in print, on TV and online. But let's allow that dog its nap--for today. There are many things wrong with Alter's analysis, but let's begin with the fact that Alter is basically taking the top 5 percent of print journalism--a mature form that's had a chance to iron out its wrinkles--and comparing it to the worst of a very new form. It's true that "anyone can sit at home pontificating in their PJs," but not everyone does it well, which is why some bloggers attract an audience, and some don't. Moreover, the idea that blogging consists of simply spouting off is moronic and reductionist. The first thing I discovered--and this has been repeatedly rammed home to me--is just how much reading I have to do in order to be credible. Frankly, I still don't do enough. But the sheer amount of info you have to absorb, in order to be good, is pretty incredible. The best bloggers may not pick up the phone much--but they do research. It's just not clear to me that talking to some bureacrat is anymore revelatory than reading a ton. It's probably best to do both.

But there is a more problematic notion in Alter's take. As I said it's true that anyone can sit at home in their underwear pontificating, but it's equally true that anyone can pick up the phone and call a mid-level bureaucrat. Folks, the word of the day is credentialism. I'm always amazed that people think it takes years of study at an Ivy, and then more years at a J-school, to learn how to use a phone and structure a story. I learned the basics of journalism during a three month internship, at an alt-weekly in Washington, D.C. when I was 19.  That was almost 13 years ago, and the rudiments of the craft--the tenacity and courage to hunt for facts, and an eye for the counterintuitive--have not changed. Journalism isn't like, say, medicine. You can teach kids the basics of journalism--that's why they have high school newspapers, but not high-school brain-surgeons.

Continue reading "Again with the underwear jokes? Why print should drop the blogger-hate" »

The limits of super-hero movies

I get Tony Scott's point about the genre, and in the main, I agree with him. Furthermore, eff the stereotype, my love of comic-books makes me pine for the end of this wave. All that said, I think Tony misses something here:

to paraphrase something the Joker says to Batman, “The Dark Knight” has rules, and they are the conventions that no movie of this kind can escape. The climax must be a fight with the villain, during which the symbiosis of good guy and bad guy, implicit throughout, must be articulated. The end must point forward to a sequel, and an aura of moral consequence must be sustained even as the killings, explosions and chases multiply. The allegorical stakes in a superhero are raised — it’s not just good guys fighting bad guys, but Righteousness against Evil, Order against Chaos — precisely to authorize a more intense level of violence.

Hmm, those seem likee rules developed by executives who see comic book movies as huge summer blockbusters. They aren't inherent to the genre at all. One of the best things about comic books is that, in the proper hands, you can do incredibly detailed character development, and deal with some really major themes. No movie could give you the character development that Chris Claremont pulled out of Storm during the years when she had no powers. If anything the problem with comic books today is they live in this era where we just go from event to event. Writers rarely stay with a book for more than a couple years and everytime you turn around some editor is trying to generate "buzz" by killing a major character, or almost literally invoking deux ex machina. In other words, while some may pine for a day when movies aren't dominated by superheroes, I pine for a day when comic books can stop trying to be like movies.

The stupidity of polls

Remember that whole black-brown split and all the problems those racist Mexicans/Cubans/Puerto-Ricans were going to cause Obama?

Class-Based Integration

So, hope everyone checked out Emily Bazelon's piece in the Times Magazine on Sunday discussing the merits of class-based integration. As it turns out, putting there's sort of an event horizon for schools in which too many poor kids basically make the school unmanageable. Emily highlights the very interesting case of a North Carolina school district where class-based integration has been a terrific boon for black kids:

Wake County adopted class-based integration with the hard-nosed goal of raising test scores. The strategy was simple: no poor schools, no bad schools. And indeed, the district has posted striking improvements in the test scores of black and low-income students: in 1995, only 40 percent of the black students in Wake County in the third through eighth grades scored at grade level in state reading tests; by last year, the rate had almost doubled, to 82.5 percent. Statewide scores for black students also got better over the same time period, but not by as much. Wake County’s numbers improve as students get older: 92 percent of all eighth graders read at or above grade level, including about 85 percent of black students and about 80 percent of low-income students. (Math scores are lower, following a statewide trend that reflects a change in the grading scale.) The district has achieved these results even as the share of low-income students over all has increased from about 30 percent a decade ago to about 40 percent today.

Matt, Kevin and Richard Kahlenberg are debating over whether a solution like this could be applied nationally. The consensus being basically, no, because we aren't going to blow up the system of school districts in this country. But to my mind, the piece helps us get out from under the cloud of pessimism that follows any conversation about the gap in test-scores. 

But there is something else at work here.  Her research on class and achievement is helpful because it really shows (to me) that the problem of America's racist past is that it basically affected a massive wealth-transfer out of black communities. More than that, I like Emily's piece because it exposes the lie that racial inequality is completely intractable. But that's never really been true. There are two questions here--how are we going to fix the race chasm, and how far are we really willing to go to do it? People like to focus on the former, because the truly frightening one is the latter. We're forever trying to achieve equality by not negatively impacting white people. You can look back at the War on Poverty and see how desperate folks were to make it look color-blind. How'd that work out? I think one of the reasons Affirmative Action was extended to basically everyone but white males, was likely, so it wouldn't be reparations. Ironically, class-based integration uses the same logic. I'm a fan because I believe in it on principle. But the politics of it seem to be captive to ancient formulations: Despite the fact that slavery and Jim Crow crippled black folks, we want to heal those wounds by inconviencing white people as little as possible. It's been this way since Reconstruction. If I'm pessimistic about anything it isn't not knowing the right thing to do, it's having the will to get it done.

George Bush as Batman

Here's hoping that Andrew Klavan never goes to Hollywood:

There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

Cover your eyes if your one of the five people in America yet to see this flick. The Dark Knight is a flawed film that isn't as good as its predecessor--it lacks the same energy and drive of Christopher Nolan's original take. It is very ambitious--the murder of Rachel Dawes is particularly inspired, and Aaron Eckhart is really really good. I thought it was a noble, if highly flawed, effort--and I say this as a fan of virtually every Nolan film. But no matter how problematic the Dark Knight is, the movie doesn't deserve to picked over by people whose politics so overwhelm them, that they see argument in a product that was created to make you buy popcorn. It's worth noting that one of the most poingant moments in the film comes when Batman sees he can no longer terrorize the mob into squealing. But really, I don't want to make an argument for why The Dark Knight is actually a lefty movie and not a right-wing defense of the War On Terror. I want to make an argument against unthoughtful hacks and their need to piggy-back their politics on to virtually anything.

The Housing Bill

I'm sure some of our more knowledgeable readers will have some commentary on the housing bill, but one thing that caught my eye:

...until Wednesday he had threatened to veto the bill over $3.9 billion in grants for local governments, a provision the White House regards as a giveaway.

Does Bush have a point here? What's that $3.9 billion actually for?  Megan is pissed about the whole thing, because it basically looks like Congress, and Bush, have no interest in looking at Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac on a fundamental level:

Instead of moving to put FM/FM into a more easily understood model--either nationalizing them, or privatising--they're making the GSEs even weirder, and of course, piling on more debt.

It's time for Congress to bite the bullet:  nationalize them, or take them private.  But keeping pet companies on a leash so that you can use them as a sort of housing market slush fund, while pretending that the liabilities you thereby create don't really affect the government, is the kind of thing one expects to see in a banana republic, not a free and prosperous nation.

The Wall Street Journal's reporting seems to cast doubt on the bill's centerpiece--giving banks an incentive to allow people in trouble to refinance:

The biggest boost for homeowners is a program that would allow the FHA to back the refinancing of as much as $300 billion in home loans for distressed borrowers. Under this plan, the lender or investor holding the mortgage would have to accept at least a 15% write-down in the value of the previous loan. The new mortgage would then receive federal backing.

But lenders wouldn't be required to participate, and many are likely to conclude that they are better off proceeding with a foreclosure or offering the borrower some other means of trying to catch up on payments. The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the program would lead to 500,000 borrowers refinancing loans totaling $85 billion.

Thomas Lawler, a housing economist based in Leesburg, Va., said he expects the effect of that program to be minimal. "This is probably low on [lenders'] list of options" of how to work out overdue loans, he said.

Of course, as with many things, my perspective is informed by who I am. So I'd love to see some reporting on the most important vestige of slavery and Jim Crow--the wealth gap. My guess is that the news won't be good. 

Tom Shales says I should be watching "Black In America"

But I really don't think so. It's true I haven't seen a frame of it. But I just think that any major media company that tries to capture some 30 million people in a news special will simply fail. I know Shales likes it, but I have no faith that these guys can deal with something this nuanced.I simply can't sit back and watch these fools act like most black people are poor--when they are not--and try to sum us all up under episodes like "The Black Woman & Family" or "The Black Man." I take it as a bad sign that these guys basically got on the 2-3 train and took a 30-minute ride Uptown to go and do their reporting. Yes I know don't knock it until you try it. But today I'm violating.

The indelible soulfulness of Bob Barr

Now this is interesting. As a commenter mentioned, Bob Barr was accused of yelling racial slurs at a security guard a few years back. Usually those sorts of accusations will get you accused of being racist. But when you're in my cross-hairs and you've got the visage of Bob Barr, they get you accused of being black. It isn't just that accusation, it's also the fact that Barr apparently gets really pissed-off when people ask him that he's black. Who'd get mad about that? People in NY start speaking Spanish to me all the time, apparently thinking I'm Puerto-Rican. I wouldn't get pissed...unless....

I tell you a smell a conspiracy. It's really coincidental that Bob Barr will be taking votes from McCain, thus helping us elect a black man. Isn't that kinda funny?

I don't even completely agree with Nas...

...but this is cool. Just glad to see him standing for something. Obama is actually having an effect on hip-hop--just not the one that some of these fools thought he would. I still wish Nas had kept the original album title.

From the department of crime doesn't pay

As a guy who recently wrote a memoir, I can't tell you how depressing it is to see the genre basically become a magnet for liars--and then to see those liars rewarded with coverage in the New York Times. Call me conflicted, but just spell my name right. Perhaps the worst part is that memoirists who defraud their readers don't even get that much out of it. I mean, you may get book-level fame and book-level money, but dude, it's still book level. If you're going to defraud somebody do it the right way--go get an MBA, work on Wall Street and steal some real money.

Oh, that hurt. Sorry friends, I promise, no more fat-cat bashing.

Nerd Nirvana pt. 2: Dungeons & Dragons as a parenting tool

OK, so the unitiated need to stop reading right now. In the words of Jigga, it's about to get real ugly in here. Anyway, that Margaret Weis note got me to thinking. I recently ordered copies of the old first edition Player's Handbook, the Manual of the Planes and the Deities and Demigods book. I need them for a project I'm working on, but I also wanted them as sort of archives of another time, and as a reminder to myself not to let the daily grind of adulthood kill what the best thing I had going as a child and probably have going as an adult--imagination and curiosity.

But more to the point, after the order, I got to thinking--What would it be like to try D&D today as a full-grown adult? Me and my buddy Ed Park (who does a mean version of She and Him's "Sentimental Heart") were talking about this awhile back, and I think the conclusion we reached was that it almost certainly wouldn't have the same pop. That said, I'm seriously considering teaching my 8-year old son to play (I was seven going on eight when I started) because I don't want his idea of games and gaming to be limited to things that don't require abstraction. There is something to said for having to imagine what that Sword of Vorpral Wounding looks like, or how it would feel to face a White Dragon. My question for the Nerds among us is, Have any of you guys tried D&D as adult? Did you just put away the polyhedral dice and say forget it? Do you ever get the hankering to go rooting through the Caves of Chaos?

The Edwards "love-child" story

Jack Shafer smells a double-standard. Me, not so much. Shafer compares Edwards to Larry Craig, and correctly notes that Craig was not simply suspected of having sex with a man, he was actually charged with a crime. But Shafer still sees a double-standard. It seems to me that the crime--even more than Craig's hypocrisy--is key. I don't much care if John Edwards is having an affair. Who knows what arrangement he has--or doesn't have- with his wife? I do care if my public servants are breaking the law.

A counter to David Brooks and debt

Megan speaks on the debt crisis. I especially like the historical perspective.

Bob Barr--Negro

Group News Blog makes a point that us politically-aware Negroes have been thinking for some time, though not around white folk. But this is the age of Obama so here it goes--Folks, there's something vaguely familiar about Bob Barr:

You see, Bob Barr has long been the butt of many jokes in my family since the ugly winter of 1998. He was such a annoying, little pit bull against Clinton, you just wanted to smack him...but...

There was something odd about him. Something that was "off".

Media people have noted that "offness" of late, but I will tell you that this has been long discussed in other more insular circles.

Bob Barr, um...well...as my mother said it "Looks a little 'funny' 'round the mouth...

Dig the lips, folks...That ain't collagen...that's collards and Coltrane.

Funny-ass hair texture too--particularly on the 'stache. "Rev. Al's shit is straighter than Barr's is." one friend loves to note frequently.

The first time I saw Bob Barr, during his Bill Clinton-pursuing heyday, I thought to myself, "I didn't know there were was another black Republican in the House besides J.C. Watts." I have of course since been corrected, but I have to say, there really is some Anatole Broyard/Nella Larsen/Jessie Fauset business going on with this cat.

Great moments in blog commentary

Courtesy of H&R, a commenter over there responds to the convoluted lines of attack Republicans have used against Obama

I don't think "dork" and "charismatic godhead" descriptions can exist side by side.

He's one of those awkward dorks who fills football stadiums.

He's one of those gaffe machines who can spellbind the populace with his rhetoric.

He's one of those devoted leftists who has no discernable political philosophy.

He's flip-flopped on Iraq, while stubbornly refusing to change his position.

He has a relentlessly negative message of hope.

Are all of the smart Republican message gurus sitting this election out?

The culture of debt

I generally thought this David Brooks column on debt was interesting, but I've got a couple quibbles. His invocation of culture bothered me, not because I don't think it's true, but because of how selective he was in applying it:

Some of the toxins were economic. Rising house prices gave people the impression that they could take on more risk. Some were cultural. We entered a period of mass luxury, in which people down the income scale expect to own designer goods. Some were moral. Schools and other institutions used to talk the language of sin and temptation to alert people to the seductions that could ruin their lives. They no longer do.

It's interesting that he applies a "economic" explanation to home owners and " cultural" explanations to "people down the income scale." This, basically, is my beef with conservatives who invoke culture. It isn't that culture isn't an important factor--it is--it's that culture impacts people at all levels. So if you live in the projects and you got a big-screen TV from Rent-A-Center, you are crazy, no question. But if you live in the suburbs and gambled on a second mortgage, so you could build a a home theater, you are equally crazy. Furthermore, you're a victim of the same culture as the person who lives in the projects. The fact that other factors--some of them cultural, some of them not--allowed you to move into the middle-class doesn't mean your values are automatically different from that person who lives in the projects. Some of them are. Some of them aren't.

Conservatives often whip out the culture card to reinforce this idea that if this large group of people change their individual behavior, then they too could have the American dream. Bet. But don't switch up the logic because we now have middle-class people foolishly running up credit card bills, taking out second mortgages which they can't afford and then crying to the government for relief. We've seen this transference game before--let's not talk about antisemitism, let's just focus on black antisemitism. But it's a dodge, in that it allows folks to not deal with their own issues. It's like saying "Yeah, my kitchen is on fire, but look over there, that dudes whole house is burning down."

Especially The Blacks and the Jews Pt.2544233

This is just great. Really, incredible. Between this and the Jeff Ross piece, I'm starting to see what this coalition is all about. On another note, I'd love to do is get an ethnicity breakdown for interracial marriage between blacks and whites. I wonder whether blacks who marry whites, disproportionately marry Jews. Meh, maybe I've just been in New York too long.

A short list of things not to be when you grow up

1.) Mass murderer
2.) Terrorist
3.) Anti-pornography crusader and counselor to survivors of sexual assault, who stars in a porno in which you sexually assault 18-year old girls. Props to Alas, a blog for this.

So I'm pretty smart but...

...on some things, I've got the brains of a slug. Economics would be one of them. I know bloggers are supposed to have at least rudimentary knowledge of everything they post about, but it seems to me that one of the assets of the form is it allows you to interact with people who are smarter than you. We have some sharp-ass commenters on this board, and a couple who I've noticed who are really sharp on the econ end of things.

So here's the deal: I've been following this business with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. There's one thing I don't understand here--Isn't it inherently dangerous to have half the mortgages in country controlled by two entities? If it is in fact dangerous, have there been criticism that suggest other ways of doing business? If so, what are some of those other ways?

And now I throw it out to you, my illustrious commenters

More on the eternal, never-ending travails of the blacks

NPR looks at the end of "white flight." William Frey is on there. Really smart guy. I'm less impressed with the WSJ reporter. There's something condescending about this whole conversation. Obviously there's the conflation of the "black poor" with all black people. But moreover there's just this expectation that black people won't be affected by the exact same market forces as white people, that black people won't want to move to a suburb with good schools and big lawns just like white people.

Ta-Nehisi is getting into The French Kicks

Swimming is pretty good. Anyway, it's time for another music thread. What are we listening to folks?

Joe Lieberman--The Jewish Jesse Jackson

Remember all that talk about Barack Obama's Jewish problem? I do. And Joe Lieberman was supposed to help McCain capitalize on all those problems. There's only one problem with that theory:

Only 37 percent of Jews view the Connecticut Independent in a favorable light compared to 48 percent who have a negative perception. As for Obama, 60 percent of Jews view him favorably while 34 percent view him unfavorably.

Sam Stein inexplicably goes on to note that if Barack Obama has a Jewish problem, than Joe Lieberman is "in monumental trouble." Sam didn't get the memo--black people always have problems. Black people are "monumental trouble" incarnate. Every time a white guy eats a steak, some black kid somewhere develops heart disease.

Anyway, my point is that Lieberman is now entering that territory where--much like Al Sharpton--he gets gravitas for representing a group of people, who, in reality, have decidely mixed feelings about him. Lieberman poses a Jesse Jackson problem. Both Lieberman and Jackson's greatest appeal is to a portion of the base which thier respective candidate have already locked down. Furthermore, both are repellants to other members of thier respective candidates coalition, who are far less wedded to them.

The same white voters who wouldn't support Barack in the primary, are the same white voters who hate Jackson. The same right-wing evangelicals who hate McCain for his refusal to completely bow before thier social agenda, are the same right-wing evangelicals who despise Joe Lieberman's support for abortion rights. Lieberman's main right-wing accolade is his support of the war--but that's also McCain's main right-wing accolade. Obama is smart enough to see that Jesse can't help him. But because media love the facade of bipartisanship, and don't hate Lieberman anywhere near as much as they hate Jesse, McCain hasn't ben forced to take a hard look at how much Lieberman is helping. My guess is not much.

Bloggingheads Part 2

Me and Megan go for ours again. Check it out.