I'm Not Gay, But My Husband Is

(Don't worry -- the couple in that photo are heterosexual. So it's all perfectly normal.)

The California Supreme Court had just cleared the way for same-sex marriage, and Ms. DeGeneres had announced on her program that she planned to marry her longtime girlfriend. “We are all the same people, all of us — you’re no different than I am,” Ms. DeGeneres told Mr. McCain as they sat next to each other in plush chairs. “Our love is the same.”

Mr. McCain called her comments “very eloquent” and added: “We just have a disagreement. And I, along with many, many others, wish you every happiness.”

Ms. DeGeneres said: “So, you’ll walk me down the aisle? Is that what you’re saying?”

Mr. McCain replied, “Touché.”

I realize the necessity of tact and genteel hypocrisy in addressing those whose opinions differ from ours, but I hope that Ms. Degeneres's love for her girlfriend, and now wife, is not "the same" as John McCain's love for his. McCain dropped his first wife when she was disfigured in an auto accident while he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and whether or not one believes the reports that he has beaten his second wife Cindy, it appears that theirs is a chilly marriage of convenience, with separate residences and no love lost. Still, I like the way DeGeneres put McCain on the spot there; it's a pity only entertainers seem to ask questions like that. But once again I'm reminded how much energy people expend trying to get respect from people who don't deserve any respect themselves.

I found the New York Times article I quoted above linked through a post of IOZ'. It's not M. IOZ' best work on matters same-sexual. He blunders by mentioning the candidates' perceived need to "appease the remaining homophobes of rural America and the Midwest," forgetting the cosmopolitan homophobes of the rest of the country (and the world, including Rome, Tehran, and Jerusalem). One of his commenters points this out. A reasonably intelligent man like M'sieu' should have realized by now that bigotry is not, and never has been, limited to any one class or region. Nor, as I've argued before, is it something that springs full-blown from the foreheads of gods or priests. If sex didn't make many people uncomfortable on a very deep level, that discomfort wouldn't be made manifest in religion.

The same Times article discusses Barack Obama's confused position on the issue.

Mr. Obama believes that marriage is a sacred union, a blessing from God, and one that is intended for a man and a woman exclusively, according to these supporters and Obama campaign advisers. While he does not favor laws that ban same-sex marriage, and has said he is “open to the possibility” that his views may be “misguided,” he does not support it and is not inclined to fight for it, his advisers say. ...

Some gay allies of Mr. Obama thought, during a televised Democratic forum in Los Angeles in August 2007, that he might come out in favor of same-sex marriage, after he was asked if his position supporting civil unions but not same-sex marriage was tantamount to “separate but equal.”

“Look, when my parents got married in 1961, it would have been illegal for them to be married in a number of states in the South,” Mr. Obama said. “So, obviously, this is something that I understand intimately. It’s something that I care about.”

At that point, he veered onto legal rights, saying that — both in 1961 and today — it was more important to fight for nondiscrimination laws and employment protections than for marriage.

The best I can say for Obama is that he's no stupider on this point than many other people, including gay ones. (In 2000 I saw an interview with Dave McReynolds, an old gay activist who was running for President on the Socialist ticket. Asked about gay marriage, he said that he wasn't interested in getting married "in a church or synagogue"; the civil side of marriage escaped him altogether, as it did Al Gore, who once spoke of marriage as "a sacrament" for men and women, odd terminology for a Baptist.) As a lawyer, Obama should be aware that marriage in the United States comes in two flavors, the religious and the civil. It is religious marriage that is "a sacred union" if one believes in such things, and religious marriage is within broad limits (barring polygamy, child marriage, etc.) outside the reach of the state. Same-sex couples have often exchanged vows, often with the blessing of clergy, to sanctify their unions, and so far there is no law to prevent them from doing so -- only sectarian restrictions that prevent clergy from officiating. In this respect, same-sex marriage is already a reality in the United States.

But religious marriage by itself brings with it no legal benefits, and it is those benefits, the fruits of civil marriage, that the advocates of same-sex marriage covet: shared work and government benefits, visitation access in hospital, and so on. A heterosexual couple, even if they have had a sectarian wedding, doesn't receive those benefits either unless they register their union with the secular state. Contrariwise, a church is not obligated to recognize a member's civil marriage if he or she has not jumped through its cultic hoops. My brother and sister-in-law, for instance, first married at City Hall, then had to make concessions (such as promising to raise their children in the faith) before her church would grant them a church wedding. If I met an atheist woman I chose to marry (it's a lifestyle choice!), we could get a marriage license and share Social Security benefits without the blessing of any god but Mammon, and I doubt there are more than a few religious nuts who'd feel that the heterosexual marriage of two atheists injured their own marriage in any way.

Obama's veer into "legal rights" at that 2007 forum was a blatant evasion, as though the struggle for civil marriage weren't a question of legal rights. If heterosexual civil marriage were also called a "civil union," which I gather it is in numerous European countries, then civil unions for same-sex couples would not be "separate but equal"; but in a U.S. context, civil unions are marriage lite, cementing the second-class status of same-sex couples. It's frustrating to find myself defending legal same-sex marriage in this way, just as it was frustrating to defend Bill Clinton against his enemies, but I am baffled not only that Obama doesn't grasp these elementary distinctions, but that no one close to Obama has spelled them out to him. As with Bill Clinton in 1992, I have to conclude that his gay supporters and advisors are so ignorant that they don't grasp them either.

One old pet peeve of mine may also be relevant here. As "gender" has replaced "sex" in polite discourse, I noticed the term "same-gender marriage" gaining currency some years ago. I haven't heard it so much recently, maybe because "gay marriage" is the usual buzzword. "Same-gender" marriage isn't illegal in the US either as far as I know: an effeminate man and a feminine woman could marry without impediment, though tongues might privately wag. Yet a masculine man and a feminine man could not legally marry, even though they were of different "genders." When I've pointed this out to people who speak of "same-gender marriage," they usually reacted with blank incomprehension -- evidently they didn't know what "gender" means. It's biological sex that constitutes the legal (and religious) barrier, not gender. I know that "gender" and "sex" are not mutually exclusive domains, nor are "biology" and "culture"; and I know that numerous scholars have chosen to speak in terms of the sex-gender system or other terms that try to express the interconnection of biology and culture. The sex/gender distinction has largely collapsed, though many still unconsciously rely on it, and "gender" (masculine/feminine) has come to mean most of what "sex" (male/female") used to mean, wth "sex" used only to refer to copulation. So most of the old sexist baggage has been kept under the sign of gender rather than sex, and people are pretty much as confused -- or flat-out mistaken -- about these issues as ever.

I'm Not Gay, But My Husband Is

(Don't worry -- the couple in that photo are heterosexual. So it's all perfectly normal.)

The California Supreme Court had just cleared the way for same-sex marriage, and Ms. DeGeneres had announced on her program that she planned to marry her longtime girlfriend. “We are all the same people, all of us — you’re no different than I am,” Ms. DeGeneres told Mr. McCain as they sat next to each other in plush chairs. “Our love is the same.”

Mr. McCain called her comments “very eloquent” and added: “We just have a disagreement. And I, along with many, many others, wish you every happiness.”

Ms. DeGeneres said: “So, you’ll walk me down the aisle? Is that what you’re saying?”

Mr. McCain replied, “Touché.”

I realize the necessity of tact and genteel hypocrisy in addressing those whose opinions differ from ours, but I hope that Ms. Degeneres's love for her girlfriend, and now wife, is not "the same" as John McCain's love for his. McCain dropped his first wife when she was disfigured in an auto accident while he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and whether or not one believes the reports that he has beaten his second wife Cindy, it appears that theirs is a chilly marriage of convenience, with separate residences and no love lost. Still, I like the way DeGeneres put McCain on the spot there; it's a pity only entertainers seem to ask questions like that. But once again I'm reminded how much energy people expend trying to get respect from people who don't deserve any respect themselves.

I found the New York Times article I quoted above linked through a post of IOZ'. It's not M. IOZ' best work on matters same-sexual. He blunders by mentioning the candidates' perceived need to "appease the remaining homophobes of rural America and the Midwest," forgetting the cosmopolitan homophobes of the rest of the country (and the world, including Rome, Tehran, and Jerusalem). One of his commenters points this out. A reasonably intelligent man like M'sieu' should have realized by now that bigotry is not, and never has been, limited to any one class or region. Nor, as I've argued before, is it something that springs full-blown from the foreheads of gods or priests. If sex didn't make many people uncomfortable on a very deep level, that discomfort wouldn't be made manifest in religion.

The same Times article discusses Barack Obama's confused position on the issue.

Mr. Obama believes that marriage is a sacred union, a blessing from God, and one that is intended for a man and a woman exclusively, according to these supporters and Obama campaign advisers. While he does not favor laws that ban same-sex marriage, and has said he is “open to the possibility” that his views may be “misguided,” he does not support it and is not inclined to fight for it, his advisers say. ...

Some gay allies of Mr. Obama thought, during a televised Democratic forum in Los Angeles in August 2007, that he might come out in favor of same-sex marriage, after he was asked if his position supporting civil unions but not same-sex marriage was tantamount to “separate but equal.”

“Look, when my parents got married in 1961, it would have been illegal for them to be married in a number of states in the South,” Mr. Obama said. “So, obviously, this is something that I understand intimately. It’s something that I care about.”

At that point, he veered onto legal rights, saying that — both in 1961 and today — it was more important to fight for nondiscrimination laws and employment protections than for marriage.

The best I can say for Obama is that he's no stupider on this point than many other people, including gay ones. (In 2000 I saw an interview with Dave McReynolds, an old gay activist who was running for President on the Socialist ticket. Asked about gay marriage, he said that he wasn't interested in getting married "in a church or synagogue"; the civil side of marriage escaped him altogether, as it did Al Gore, who once spoke of marriage as "a sacrament" for men and women, odd terminology for a Baptist.) As a lawyer, Obama should be aware that marriage in the United States comes in two flavors, the religious and the civil. It is religious marriage that is "a sacred union" if one believes in such things, and religious marriage is within broad limits (barring polygamy, child marriage, etc.) outside the reach of the state. Same-sex couples have often exchanged vows, often with the blessing of clergy, to sanctify their unions, and so far there is no law to prevent them from doing so -- only sectarian restrictions that prevent clergy from officiating. In this respect, same-sex marriage is already a reality in the United States.

But religious marriage by itself brings with it no legal benefits, and it is those benefits, the fruits of civil marriage, that the advocates of same-sex marriage covet: shared work and government benefits, visitation access in hospital, and so on. A heterosexual couple, even if they have had a sectarian wedding, doesn't receive those benefits either unless they register their union with the secular state. Contrariwise, a church is not obligated to recognize a member's civil marriage if he or she has not jumped through its cultic hoops. My brother and sister-in-law, for instance, first married at City Hall, then had to make concessions (such as promising to raise their children in the faith) before her church would grant them a church wedding. If I met an atheist woman I chose to marry (it's a lifestyle choice!), we could get a marriage license and share Social Security benefits without the blessing of any god but Mammon, and I doubt there are more than a few religious nuts who'd feel that the heterosexual marriage of two atheists injured their own marriage in any way.

Obama's veer into "legal rights" at that 2007 forum was a blatant evasion, as though the struggle for civil marriage weren't a question of legal rights. If heterosexual civil marriage were also called a "civil union," which I gather it is in numerous European countries, then civil unions for same-sex couples would not be "separate but equal"; but in a U.S. context, civil unions are marriage lite, cementing the second-class status of same-sex couples. It's frustrating to find myself defending legal same-sex marriage in this way, just as it was frustrating to defend Bill Clinton against his enemies, but I am baffled not only that Obama doesn't grasp these elementary distinctions, but that no one close to Obama has spelled them out to him. As with Bill Clinton in 1992, I have to conclude that his gay supporters and advisors are so ignorant that they don't grasp them either.

One old pet peeve of mine may also be relevant here. As "gender" has replaced "sex" in polite discourse, I noticed the term "same-gender marriage" gaining currency some years ago. I haven't heard it so much recently, maybe because "gay marriage" is the usual buzzword. "Same-gender" marriage isn't illegal in the US either as far as I know: an effeminate man and a feminine woman could marry without impediment, though tongues might privately wag. Yet a masculine man and a feminine man could not legally marry, even though they were of different "genders." When I've pointed this out to people who speak of "same-gender marriage," they usually reacted with blank incomprehension -- evidently they didn't know what "gender" means. It's biological sex that constitutes the legal (and religious) barrier, not gender. I know that "gender" and "sex" are not mutually exclusive domains, nor are "biology" and "culture"; and I know that numerous scholars have chosen to speak in terms of the sex-gender system or other terms that try to express the interconnection of biology and culture. The sex/gender distinction has largely collapsed, though many still unconsciously rely on it, and "gender" (masculine/feminine) has come to mean most of what "sex" (male/female") used to mean, wth "sex" used only to refer to copulation. So most of the old sexist baggage has been kept under the sign of gender rather than sex, and people are pretty much as confused -- or flat-out mistaken -- about these issues as ever.

Fannie Mae Landed on Us!

Yesterday I had a phone conversation about the Presidential campaign with another old friend -- not the same one I wrote about in the previous post, but one I've known for almost as long -- that clarified something I'd evidently been confused about.

My friend (another ambivalent Obama supporter) explained to me that whatever Obama might actually stand for or believe, he has to come across in his speeches and in the debate with McCain as a "moderate": he can't be too harsh, too critical, he can't actually call McCain on his lies, or he'll be perceived as an Angry Black Man. So he has to take a "centrist" position, he can't go too far to the left. A little light went on in my head, and I realized what was going on, not just in my friend's mind but in the minds of many other Americans. My friend was confusing "moderate" political positions with "moderate" personal presentation, or "image."

So I tried to explain this to him. In the first place, of course, Obama is not going and has never gone "to the left" at all. He'd have to swing sharply to the left even to be a centrist. His positions, as I argued here yesterday and earlier, are significantly to the right of the majority of Americans. In the course of the campaign he has made this more and more explicit.

Obama's political success, however, depends on his image, that of a black man who doesn't want to make white people feel guilty or otherwise bad about themselves, who denies that white racism is deeply rooted in American society, who is hopeful and upbeat and optimistic and will bring about the change 'we' need without seriously inconveniencing any white people. I told my friend that I don't expect Obama to do a Malcolm X imitation (he laughed at this and quoted Malcolm's "Plymouth Rock landed on us" line); it's not his style and image that I object to -- it's his political positions, the things he says he will do, that concern me.

As I've said before, this is one reason I find it useful not to watch TV or video clips of Obama's performances: so that I'm not swayed by his manner, but can attend to what he's actually saying. This puts me beyond the political pale, I know. Most Americans, despite paying lip service to "the issues", really don't seem to care about anything but the personalities (as they come across in the media) of the candidates. (Or of anyone else: I've often encountered respectable academics, for example, who respond to the careful arguments of their colleagues' publications in terms of their personalities. One, for example, dismissed a book by saying that it sounded to him as if the writer were struggling with mid-life crisis.) Because Obama has diligently crafted this non-threatening affect, both his fans and his enemies see him as liberal, even far to the left. I have to suppose that for many people, that's what "liberal" and "left" mean -- and remember that I'm talking not about the uneducated people so many liberals love to despise, but about college-educated, often professional people, including media professionals who supposedly are qualified to guide our country through the twenty-first century.

On the other hand, I suspect that if Obama (or anyone else) did occupy a real "left" position purely in terms of issues and policy, he would be perceived as an Angry Black Man no matter how gentle and mild his presentation. Case in point: Martin Luther King, Jr., a consistent advocate and practitioner of nonviolence, nevertheless scared the living shit out of most white Americans while he lived. After he was safely dead, however, even the most reactionary whites reimagined him as Mr. Sweetness and Light, who never wanted to make white people feel guilty or otherwise bad about themselves, who denied that white racism is deeply rooted in American society, who was hopeful and upbeat and optimistic and sought to bring about the change 'we' need without seriously inconveniencing any white people.

(Bill Cosby can indulge in denunciatory rhetoric without being branded an Angry Black Man, probably because his polemic is directed at his fellow African-Americans, not against whites. His earlier -- Sixties and Seventies' vintage -- criticism of white racism has been forgotten, not least by himself.)

Another case in point would be Ralph Nader, who (from the few video clips I've seen of him) isn't particularly angry or threatening in his presentation. Certainly his actual positions are threatening to the corporate interests that dominate the US political scene, but personally he's not a raving maniac. His political positions, of course, are virtually unknown to most people, but they know he's just an egomaniac who cost Al Gore the 2000 election, who doesn't care about anything except making a public spectacle of himself at the cost of the well-being of the body politic and his own dignity. It's not surprising, I guess, that people would prefer to caricature people they disagree with in this way (though I don't see how they know that they disagree, given their carefully-maintained ignorance about the others' opinions), but it says something that they choose to do the same with people they like: if I like you personally, your opinions, whatever they are, must be good ones. What would good opinions be? Who knows? Only an angry extremist would even think about such things.

This morning I found the problem well-described by M. Ioz:

Consider our situation. Barack Obama won last night's debate by speaking clearly, fluently, and like an adult about things that were palpably untrue, while John McCain kept implying that I am his friend. Obama terrifies me: an intelligent, thoughtful, well-prepared, capably extemporaneous man ascribing a future holocaust to some sort of non-existent, fantastical, steroidal Iran; talking about unsanctioned cross-border incursions into Pakistan because we found bin Laden, or some such, and must "take him out"; warbling around about "main street" while, in a lawyerly, circumlocutory way signaling that he's ultimately going to get behind hundred-billion-dollar cash bailouts to institutions that ought to be dismantled, destroyed, scattered to the wind. He wants GM to make electric cars. He wants the American people to know that he will appear before them to make extravagant xenophobic declarations in order to assuage their insecurity about the rise of other competing economies. He does this all in a calm, perfectly reasonable manner, with a convincing boardroom demeanor, and judging by the reactions of my liberal friends, with whom I listened, this was basically pleasing to them.

McCain is of course out of his mind: forgetful, vicious, reactionary. And his ideas are even crazier than BO's, but there's a certain comfort in the fact that their insanity is laid so plainly and mercilessly bare by the grinning psychopath's delivery. He provides no quarter for those who want to convince themselves that by Killing People for Their Own Good we are not actually killing them, or that by suborning corporate malfeasance we are combating it, or that by desperately seeking to maintain the geography of radial sprawl and the automobile we are seeking "energy independence."

That pretty well sums it up. I'd only stress once again that if Obama didn't express those lunatic and highly dangerous opinions, but expressed sane and constructive ones in the same calm, well-modulated boardroom manner, he'd be denounced immediately by Ioz's liberal friends (and by the corporate media, and by the Democratic leadership) as a angry man, a crazed egomaniac wacko like Ralph Nader or, say, Noam Chomsky. But not to worry: a candidate who advocated sane and constructive policies would never get past the first few primaries. I have to conclude that Americans don't want such people in politics. Once again I'm reminded of the broadcast pundit who said after the 2004 Kerry-Bush debates that Americans don't watch the debates for the candidates' stands on the issues, but to get a feeling for which one they'd want to invite home to dinner. I don't know if that's true, but if it is, we're doomed.

Fannie Mae Landed on Us!

Yesterday I had a phone conversation about the Presidential campaign with another old friend -- not the same one I wrote about in the previous post, but one I've known for almost as long -- that clarified something I'd evidently been confused about.

My friend (another ambivalent Obama supporter) explained to me that whatever Obama might actually stand for or believe, he has to come across in his speeches and in the debate with McCain as a "moderate": he can't be too harsh, too critical, he can't actually call McCain on his lies, or he'll be perceived as an Angry Black Man. So he has to take a "centrist" position, he can't go too far to the left. A little light went on in my head, and I realized what was going on, not just in my friend's mind but in the minds of many other Americans. My friend was confusing "moderate" political positions with "moderate" personal presentation, or "image."

So I tried to explain this to him. In the first place, of course, Obama is not going and has never gone "to the left" at all. He'd have to swing sharply to the left even to be a centrist. His positions, as I argued here yesterday and earlier, are significantly to the right of the majority of Americans. In the course of the campaign he has made this more and more explicit.

Obama's political success, however, depends on his image, that of a black man who doesn't want to make white people feel guilty or otherwise bad about themselves, who denies that white racism is deeply rooted in American society, who is hopeful and upbeat and optimistic and will bring about the change 'we' need without seriously inconveniencing any white people. I told my friend that I don't expect Obama to do a Malcolm X imitation (he laughed at this and quoted Malcolm's "Plymouth Rock landed on us" line); it's not his style and image that I object to -- it's his political positions, the things he says he will do, that concern me.

As I've said before, this is one reason I find it useful not to watch TV or video clips of Obama's performances: so that I'm not swayed by his manner, but can attend to what he's actually saying. This puts me beyond the political pale, I know. Most Americans, despite paying lip service to "the issues", really don't seem to care about anything but the personalities (as they come across in the media) of the candidates. (Or of anyone else: I've often encountered respectable academics, for example, who respond to the careful arguments of their colleagues' publications in terms of their personalities. One, for example, dismissed a book by saying that it sounded to him as if the writer were struggling with mid-life crisis.) Because Obama has diligently crafted this non-threatening affect, both his fans and his enemies see him as liberal, even far to the left. I have to suppose that for many people, that's what "liberal" and "left" mean -- and remember that I'm talking not about the uneducated people so many liberals love to despise, but about college-educated, often professional people, including media professionals who supposedly are qualified to guide our country through the twenty-first century.

On the other hand, I suspect that if Obama (or anyone else) did occupy a real "left" position purely in terms of issues and policy, he would be perceived as an Angry Black Man no matter how gentle and mild his presentation. Case in point: Martin Luther King, Jr., a consistent advocate and practitioner of nonviolence, nevertheless scared the living shit out of most white Americans while he lived. After he was safely dead, however, even the most reactionary whites reimagined him as Mr. Sweetness and Light, who never wanted to make white people feel guilty or otherwise bad about themselves, who denied that white racism is deeply rooted in American society, who was hopeful and upbeat and optimistic and sought to bring about the change 'we' need without seriously inconveniencing any white people.

(Bill Cosby can indulge in denunciatory rhetoric without being branded an Angry Black Man, probably because his polemic is directed at his fellow African-Americans, not against whites. His earlier -- Sixties and Seventies' vintage -- criticism of white racism has been forgotten, not least by himself.)

Another case in point would be Ralph Nader, who (from the few video clips I've seen of him) isn't particularly angry or threatening in his presentation. Certainly his actual positions are threatening to the corporate interests that dominate the US political scene, but personally he's not a raving maniac. His political positions, of course, are virtually unknown to most people, but they know he's just an egomaniac who cost Al Gore the 2000 election, who doesn't care about anything except making a public spectacle of himself at the cost of the well-being of the body politic and his own dignity. It's not surprising, I guess, that people would prefer to caricature people they disagree with in this way (though I don't see how they know that they disagree, given their carefully-maintained ignorance about the others' opinions), but it says something that they choose to do the same with people they like: if I like you personally, your opinions, whatever they are, must be good ones. What would good opinions be? Who knows? Only an angry extremist would even think about such things.

This morning I found the problem well-described by M. Ioz:

Consider our situation. Barack Obama won last night's debate by speaking clearly, fluently, and like an adult about things that were palpably untrue, while John McCain kept implying that I am his friend. Obama terrifies me: an intelligent, thoughtful, well-prepared, capably extemporaneous man ascribing a future holocaust to some sort of non-existent, fantastical, steroidal Iran; talking about unsanctioned cross-border incursions into Pakistan because we found bin Laden, or some such, and must "take him out"; warbling around about "main street" while, in a lawyerly, circumlocutory way signaling that he's ultimately going to get behind hundred-billion-dollar cash bailouts to institutions that ought to be dismantled, destroyed, scattered to the wind. He wants GM to make electric cars. He wants the American people to know that he will appear before them to make extravagant xenophobic declarations in order to assuage their insecurity about the rise of other competing economies. He does this all in a calm, perfectly reasonable manner, with a convincing boardroom demeanor, and judging by the reactions of my liberal friends, with whom I listened, this was basically pleasing to them.

McCain is of course out of his mind: forgetful, vicious, reactionary. And his ideas are even crazier than BO's, but there's a certain comfort in the fact that their insanity is laid so plainly and mercilessly bare by the grinning psychopath's delivery. He provides no quarter for those who want to convince themselves that by Killing People for Their Own Good we are not actually killing them, or that by suborning corporate malfeasance we are combating it, or that by desperately seeking to maintain the geography of radial sprawl and the automobile we are seeking "energy independence."

That pretty well sums it up. I'd only stress once again that if Obama didn't express those lunatic and highly dangerous opinions, but expressed sane and constructive ones in the same calm, well-modulated boardroom manner, he'd be denounced immediately by Ioz's liberal friends (and by the corporate media, and by the Democratic leadership) as a angry man, a crazed egomaniac wacko like Ralph Nader or, say, Noam Chomsky. But not to worry: a candidate who advocated sane and constructive policies would never get past the first few primaries. I have to conclude that Americans don't want such people in politics. Once again I'm reminded of the broadcast pundit who said after the 2004 Kerry-Bush debates that Americans don't watch the debates for the candidates' stands on the issues, but to get a feeling for which one they'd want to invite home to dinner. I don't know if that's true, but if it is, we're doomed.

Obama-McCain in 2008!

Things are looking somewhat better computer-wise, though I'm still working out a lot of things. For now, here's an interesting campaign ad that has been linked in various places:



When the Democrats' Great Satan appeared, though, a thought occurred to me and I looked for his birthdate. Nader is older than McCain. On the other hand, Nader's running mate is no Sarah Palin.

Anyway, this witty little clip is a depressing reminder that the current Presidential campaign is not about issues, not even about issues that matter to most Americans. One old friend of mine, who's opposed to McCain and wary of Obama (though not as wary as I am), protested to me that while Obama's not perfect, she and I are just atypical of most voters (true enough) and that what we want is not what most Americans want, so we should not be too critical or pessimistic about Obama. I was momentarily boggled by that, because it shows how well even aware and informed people are misled by the propaganda in which we marinate all day, every day whether we mainline the corporate media or not.

The fact is that most Americans want the US to withdraw from Iraq; most Americans want, if not a single-payer health care plan, at least something closer to one than the subsidy to the insurance companies favored by Obama; most Americans are skeptical of "free trade" as the term is used by McCain and Obama; most Americans want George Bush impeached. Contrary to the denunciations of "elitism" that come from most of the Democratic loyalists I've argued with, the real elitists are these two candidates and the party machines that are forcing them down our throats.

It's a home-game weekend in Bloomington, so the white American hordes have descended on the city once again. Last night I was hanging around on the street with some friends, and a passerby who'd stopped to buy a slice of pizza from a stand outside Rockit's Pizza suddenly threw a tantrum over a homeless man a few feet away. "Why doesn't he get a job at McDonald's?" the guy (white, about 40, probably college-educated, probably an IU alum) fumed. I suggested that the homeless man should be given a job as CEO of a financial corporation for $2 or 3 million a year instead; he'd surely be as qualified as the men who run them now. "But you have to have an education for that!" he blustered. I disagreed -- sure, they probably all have MBAs, but we see how well they've managed their businesses over the past few decades. The Angry Guy accused me of being an Obama supporter, which I denied: I don't like either Obama or McCain, I corrected him, and so he changed the subject back to McDonald's. But you know, dear reader, John McCain has never held a real job in his life (via), not the kind of job you have to apply for and be qualified for, and for which you might be turned down. He isn't qualified to do anything but marry money and accept corporate support, which of course he does very well. If Cindy dumped him and his corporate and party fans cut off the funds, McCain could easily end up sleeping in a box and begging for coins on the street too: "Disabled Veteran -- Please Help."

Speaking of Paulson's bailout plan, I wanted to quote too this wonderful comment by one of John Caruso's readers at A Distant Ocean: "The $700 billion may be a little high. Actually, once the oil starts flowing again, the bailout will pay for itself. I predict people on Wall Street will greet us as liberators!" As John said, Nice.

P.S. Not so Nice is this bit from a New York Times article on the bailout plans, linked derisively by Amygdala (who appends it to excerpts from another NYT article in which Aaron Sorkin imagines Barack Obama meeting Jed Bartlet of The West Wing; the article, also linked by Nicola Griffith, is well below-average stuff -- see Dennis Perrin's latest post for better satire):

[...] Under a so-called claw-back provision, the secretary would have the power to force companies to recoup previous payments to executives of companies involved in the program. And Mr. Frank’s plan would give broad authority for the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, to audit and oversee the program.

But Mr. Paulson said that he was concerned that imposing limits on the compensation of executives could discourage companies from participating in the program.

If the companies don't want to participate, let them go under -- or, if that would do too much damage to the economy, the government can seize them and dispose of them and their executives as the law and the situation require. I think it needs to be brought home to the incompetents and criminals who have brought about this crisis that they are responsible for it, and they're not in a good position to lay down conditions about it now.

Obama-McCain in 2008!

Things are looking somewhat better computer-wise, though I'm still working out a lot of things. For now, here's an interesting campaign ad that has been linked in various places:



When the Democrats' Great Satan appeared, though, a thought occurred to me and I looked for his birthdate. Nader is older than McCain. On the other hand, Nader's running mate is no Sarah Palin.

Anyway, this witty little clip is a depressing reminder that the current Presidential campaign is not about issues, not even about issues that matter to most Americans. One old friend of mine, who's opposed to McCain and wary of Obama (though not as wary as I am), protested to me that while Obama's not perfect, she and I are just atypical of most voters (true enough) and that what we want is not what most Americans want, so we should not be too critical or pessimistic about Obama. I was momentarily boggled by that, because it shows how well even aware and informed people are misled by the propaganda in which we marinate all day, every day whether we mainline the corporate media or not.

The fact is that most Americans want the US to withdraw from Iraq; most Americans want, if not a single-payer health care plan, at least something closer to one than the subsidy to the insurance companies favored by Obama; most Americans are skeptical of "free trade" as the term is used by McCain and Obama; most Americans want George Bush impeached. Contrary to the denunciations of "elitism" that come from most of the Democratic loyalists I've argued with, the real elitists are these two candidates and the party machines that are forcing them down our throats.

It's a home-game weekend in Bloomington, so the white American hordes have descended on the city once again. Last night I was hanging around on the street with some friends, and a passerby who'd stopped to buy a slice of pizza from a stand outside Rockit's Pizza suddenly threw a tantrum over a homeless man a few feet away. "Why doesn't he get a job at McDonald's?" the guy (white, about 40, probably college-educated, probably an IU alum) fumed. I suggested that the homeless man should be given a job as CEO of a financial corporation for $2 or 3 million a year instead; he'd surely be as qualified as the men who run them now. "But you have to have an education for that!" he blustered. I disagreed -- sure, they probably all have MBAs, but we see how well they've managed their businesses over the past few decades. The Angry Guy accused me of being an Obama supporter, which I denied: I don't like either Obama or McCain, I corrected him, and so he changed the subject back to McDonald's. But you know, dear reader, John McCain has never held a real job in his life (via), not the kind of job you have to apply for and be qualified for, and for which you might be turned down. He isn't qualified to do anything but marry money and accept corporate support, which of course he does very well. If Cindy dumped him and his corporate and party fans cut off the funds, McCain could easily end up sleeping in a box and begging for coins on the street too: "Disabled Veteran -- Please Help."

Speaking of Paulson's bailout plan, I wanted to quote too this wonderful comment by one of John Caruso's readers at A Distant Ocean: "The $700 billion may be a little high. Actually, once the oil starts flowing again, the bailout will pay for itself. I predict people on Wall Street will greet us as liberators!" As John said, Nice.

P.S. Not so Nice is this bit from a New York Times article on the bailout plans, linked derisively by Amygdala (who appends it to excerpts from another NYT article in which Aaron Sorkin imagines Barack Obama meeting Jed Bartlet of The West Wing; the article, also linked by Nicola Griffith, is well below-average stuff -- see Dennis Perrin's latest post for better satire):

[...] Under a so-called claw-back provision, the secretary would have the power to force companies to recoup previous payments to executives of companies involved in the program. And Mr. Frank’s plan would give broad authority for the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, to audit and oversee the program.

But Mr. Paulson said that he was concerned that imposing limits on the compensation of executives could discourage companies from participating in the program.

If the companies don't want to participate, let them go under -- or, if that would do too much damage to the economy, the government can seize them and dispose of them and their executives as the law and the situation require. I think it needs to be brought home to the incompetents and criminals who have brought about this crisis that they are responsible for it, and they're not in a good position to lay down conditions about it now.