Too Ignorant To Articulate Their Own Ideas

Although one is not supposed to enjoy watching a train wreck in progress, I must say that the Arizona gubernatorial debate between Gov. Jan Brewer and her Democratic opponent Terry Goddard was a special moment. It made for satisfying entertainment. Brewer's conspicuously long moment of silence -- not in remembrance of someone who died, but because there was nothing in her brain -- seemed to last for an eternity.

And the funny thing is that in that backwards state, it's likely that she'll still win.

Brewer has decided not to do any more debates because she sucks at them, and she only did this one in order to claim "$1.7 million-plus" of "public funds" for her campaign. Besides, as she said, "I don't believe that things come out in proper context in an adversarial atmosphere." And when she was challenged post-debate by reporters about her unsubstantiated -- no, false -- claim that decapitated bodies were being found in Arizona, she couldn't take the heat and walked away.

I blame Janet Napolitano for this mess, partly at least. When she quit as governor of Arizona to head Obama's Homeland Security operations, she created a gaping hole in Arizona politics, allowing the dumbness to fill the void. Brewer, Arizona's not-ready-for-primetime secretary of state, was next in line because, unfortunately, Arizona doesn't have a position of lieutenant governor.

Now, don't get me wrong, everyone has a bad day now and then -- a brain fart, forgotten lines, thoughts cut off in mid stream. Chalk it up to lack of sleep, stress, stage fright, what have you. However, I would argue that in Gov. Brewer's case, her reticence was due to the exceedingly low storage capacity in her mind. Simply put, she has very little to work with. After all, this was the person who could not answer an important question that gets to the heart of S.B. 1070, the anti-immigrant bill that she signed into law. Regarding the law -- which essentially authorizes police to stop and arrest people who are suspected of being "illegal" immigrants -- Brewer was asked what an illegal immigrant looks like. She did not have an answer, but assured that "the law will be enforced civilly, fairly and without discriminatory points to it," whatever in Sam Hill that means. Perhaps she should have consulted the white supremacists, prison profiteers and lobbyists who wrote the bill.

But even more, I blame people such as Sarah Palin, and Bush before her, for making ignorance acceptable, fashionable and even virtuous in politics. On the campaign trail in 2008, Palin refused to speak to reporters, and in that regard became the worst of role models. In this year's midterm elections, we've witnessed the same behavior with Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle, and Rand Paul, the GOP Senate candidate from Kentucky. And candidates such as Angle and Senate hopeful Ken Buck of Colorado have given their websites a makeover to remove their troubling tea party positions. For politicians, and specifically for the new breed of rightwing politicians, media attention is a fabulous thing when things are going your way. However, when things don't work out--for example, when a candidate makes a gaffe, receives negative publicity, is judged to be an extremist, or cannot speak in full sentences -- these politicians silence themselves. Or even worse, they feel that they are accountable to no one, including the public. In the end, they are mere front men and women for powerful interests, and the money speaks louder than words if we bother to listen.

By no means would I suggest that this dumbing down of political discourse is a new phenomenon. However, in the present-day context, it is very selective. And I dare say that if Barack Obama had possessed the underwhelming intellectual capabilities of a Sharron Angle, or the deficient oratorical skills of a Jan Brewer, there would be no president today named Barack Obama. In any case, it boggles the mind that this class of conservatives, however bold and self-assured, is unable or unwilling to articulate and defend their atrocious viewpoints--policies which will surely destroy this nation, or at least come closer to it than even George Bush ever could have hoped.

A big part of the problem with today's political discourse is that we do not have honest, thorough debates on the issues that educate and inform the voters. A properly functioning democracy begs for an informed populace, and America enjoys neither. And the tea party movement, the engine of excitement in the GOP, is anti-intellectual, as lynch mobs tend to be.

In order to understand the way things could be in U.S. politics, I urge you to check out the legendary debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley at Cambridge University, a university where a decade ago I had the pleasure of giving a lecture to students on human rights in the U.S. The Baldwin-Buckley debate, titled "The American Dream is at the Expense of the American Negro," took place on October 26, 1965, 45 years ago. Yet the debate is timeless in its truth telling, particularly as far as Baldwin's contributions are concerned.

To be sure, my political beliefs bear little resemblance to the ideological leanings of the late Buckley. And while I disagree with him on almost everything, he was a conservative public intellectual worthy of respect, and there are few of those these days. Today's conservatives surely would have shunned him, as they would have marginalized their standard bearer and quasi-deity Ronald Reagan. Tea party folks are far too extreme for old-time conservatives who mostly cared about their money. (Come to think of it, for all of their so-called Christianity, the tea party conservatives wouldn't have thought much of Jesus for that matter -- a hippy man of color who spoke out against the rich and powerful, and hung out with the sick and the poor and the prostitutes. But alas, I digress.)

The selectively reticent, ultra-conservative public figure is a danger, a dishonest player in a game where people deserve to know where you stand. A true debate on the issues would keep all of us honest by forcing us to think about our stances and that which undergirds or fails to undergird them. But the self-serving silence of Brewer and those of her ilk does not bode well for this increasingly failed state called America. They do not express or defend their positions, perhaps because they are ignorant, or because they simply refuse to speak, or because they are patsies for oil tycoons who do all of the talking and sign the checks. Maybe it's all of the above. And I don't know which is worse.

Mama Grizzlies' claws come out on race

From theGrio:

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin passionately defends Dr. Laura's racist rant and use of the "n-word" on the radio. Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle thinks the color black is "thoroughly evil." And Orly Taitz hates President Obama so much that a federal judge fined her $20,000 for filing frivolous lawsuits challenging the president's citizenship.

What's going on here?

There appears to be a new women's political movement brewing in America these days, but not at all a healthy one for women, or politics, or for black people for that matter. I'm talking about the "mama grizzlies"-- including Sarah Palin and the women who admire her, the women in the Tea Party and the birther movements. And there are the women running for office from the far right wing of the Republican Party--the only wing that seems to remain of the party of Lincoln, not to mention Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Susan B. Anthony, and Mary McLeod Bethune. But that was another time and another place.

Whenever you look around, it seems that one of these "mama grizzlies" has something horribly tasteless and offensive to say about black people. The question that we must ask is: is there something inherently anti-black about these loony ladies of the right?

There's no question that Sarah Palin, in those days of the 2008 presidential election campaign, brought attention to these new women of the right and elevated them from obscurity. As the Vice Presidential running mate of John McCain who was able to see Russia from her house, Palin saw a black-socialist-Muslim radical in the form of Barack Hussein Obama, and she didn't like what she saw. She said Obama was "palling around with terrorists" and he did not see the U.S. like other Americans. Such talk stirred up the crowds at the McCain-Palin events, which often doubled as retro pro-segregation pep rallies, with twenty-first century upgrades (fear of a black president as opposed to fear of integrated schools). One woman in one of these crowds was so emboldened that she told McCain Obama is "an Arab", to which McCain responded in disagreement, angering the mob, or rather crowd.

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The Failure of McPalin Lynch Mob Politics - You Betcha!

Color of Law
By David A. Love
BlackCommentator.com
October 16, 2008

“Terrorist!” “Traitor!” “Kill Him!” “Bomb Obama!” “Obama Bin Lyin!”  

These are the words one can hear from the crowds at the McCain-Palin rallies. Through race baiting and inflammatory xenophobic, anti-Muslim and anti-Obama rhetoric, the GOP presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and their surrogates, have whipped their supporters into such a frenzy, one can only include that they hope physical harm befalls their Democratic opponent. Truth be told, the assassination of Black leaders is not a new story in America. It is no accident that Senator Obama had to receive super duper Secret Service protection earlier than any other presidential candidate. And it should be noted that a group of White supremacists planned to assassinate Obama during the Democratic convention in Colorado.

Senator McCain was offended and outraged when Rep. John Lewis of Georgia compared McCain’s incendiary tactics to that of the late Alabama segregationist George Wallace. I conclude that had McCain’s race baiting succeeded, he would have found a way to get over his anger. After all, when you purposefully stoke the fires of hatred, you should expect that someone will call you out on it. Rather, it is likelier that the Manchurian candidate’s sense of indignation stems from the feeling that the time-tested Southern Strategy—the Republican Party’s dutiful use of the race card to scare the White electorate in national elections, with a bonus if the other candidate is actually Black—was supposed to work as it has always worked. It was supposed to work as it did eight years ago, when operatives for then-candidate Bush (who now work for McCain), smeared McCain in the South Carolina primary by claiming he had fathered a Black child. But apparently, in 2008 it did not work for McCain against Obama.

Stirring up disgruntled, frustrated and bitter White folk over fears of a Black planet, the Republicans borrowed their strategy from the segregationist Dixiecrats of the Jim Crow South. Back then, racist politicians, members of the White Citizens’ Council, the “white-collar” Klan, spewed invective when it came to verbal attacks on African Americans. While keeping their hands clean of any wrongdoing, these politicians stirred up the “unwashed masses,” their poorer, uneducated Klan brethren, who could be then counted on to respond to that rhetoric through assassinations and lynchings of civil rights workers, the bombing of Black churches, and other acts of physical violence and domestic terrorism. It was understood that the words of the politicians went hand in hand with the murderous crimes of the foot soldiers, cause and effect.

As for today’s ideological descendants of the Dixiecrats, the conservative Republicans, racism and inciting racial violence have won them elections. And given this crowd’s emphasis on killing to meet public policy and foreign policy objectives— whether through the second amendment, unjust wars, coups or assassinations— I wouldn’t put anything past them.

And color-coded character assassination is all you have left when you are a party bereft of any ideas and vision short of war profiteering, trickle-down economics, corporate welfare and tax cuts for the wealthy. And the self-proclaimed mavericks who would mis-lead this nation have been operating on smoke and mirrors. At the top of the ticket is a man whose only claim to fame was being in a country where he had no business, fighting people who meant him no harm (sounds familiar), then getting captured and refusing to leave when the “enemy” told him he could go. His running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, was sly and vindictive enough to unlawfully abuse her authority as governor of Alaska, and is dumb as bricks on any matter of domestic or foreign affairs. Palin—who has used hate speech to stir up crowds across the country, causing them to boo Obama in absentia—came into the national spotlight at the Republican convention by quoting an anti-Semite who had hoped for the assassination of President Franklin Roosevelt.  

In past years, the race card might very well have worked even for this pair of untalented, mediocre individuals. Perhaps it is too early to write their political obituary, although many commentators across the political spectrum have already done so. And the fact that their campaign is fighting for dear life in bright-red Bush country may provide all the proof we need that it is done, time to stick a fork in it. Nevertheless, it appears that McPalin is a casualty of the changing times, changing demographics, an economic collapse, the youth vote, and an opponent who has excited a multiracial electorate like no other politician in generations. Has the Southern Strategy already made its last stand? Time will tell.

Meanwhile, Palin now has had the tables turned on her. This self-described “hockey mom” was booed while throwing out the puck at the opening game of the Philadelphia Flyers. Philly is Obama territory, to be sure, but the hockey fans? They were supposed to be her people, or so she thought. But even having her two daughters there could not save her. Perhaps some people are determined that they will not be fooled again, that the cost is simply too high for any of us to bear.

Palin Hates Native Alaskans, Black Folks Too

Color of Law
By David A. Love
BlackCommentator.com
October 2, 2008

Perhaps it is the understatement of the century to say that that Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska— that Trojan Moose running mate of Senator John McCain—knows absolutely nothing about foreign policy. The person who aspires to be a heartbeat away from the presidency only received her first passport last year. And the extent of her international affairs experience involves Alaska’s proximity to Siberia.

What receives far less attention, however, is Palin’s inability to deal with cultural diversity within the borders of her own state. With a quarter of its population as people of color, including one-fifth Native- Americans and around 10 percent African- and Asian-Americans combined — Alaska is far more diverse than one would conclude at first glance. Yet there is ample evidence that the governor has little else than utter disrespect for Alaskans of a darker hue.

As for Alaska Natives, who have experienced years of being treated as less than human, crowded out and pushed aside to make way for White settlers, Palin has continued the policy of degrading and suppressing the state’s first inhabitants. Don’t be sidetracked by the fact that Palin’s husband is of Yup’ik Eskimo ancestry. There have been the affronts to the Native community, such as when Palin allegedly fired the highly regarded Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, a Native, because he refused to remove Palin’s former brother-in-law from the state police force. And when she assumed her office, the governor tried to appoint a White woman to a seat on the state’s wildlife management board, a seat which had been occupied by a Native for 25 years.

Subsistence fishing and hunting are very important to the traditional way of life for Native peoples, and Gov. Palin has done everything in her power to oppose tribal subsistence rights, to the benefit of commercial and sporting interests. And she has continued a lawsuit which would eliminate all federal fishing protections for Native Alaskan people. In addition, she opposes tribal sovereignty, and has refused to acknowledge native languages and give them the respect they deserve. A federal court ordered Palin to provide voter materials in indigenous languages.

And as Earl Ofari Hutchinson recently noted, Alaska is rife with racial inequality. Infant mortality for Native children is double that of Whites. Native students are 12 percent of the children in public schools, but 25 percent of the dropouts. Native Alaskan men are 10 percent of the population, but 40 percent of the prisoners. Chronically unemployed and victims of discrimination, the indigenous population is underrepresented in employment in the legal, child welfare and criminal justice fields. Before Palin took office, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission called for a host of reforms to deal with these racial disparities, but Gov. Palin, maverick and reformer that she is, hasn’t budged on implementing any of the recommendations.

Then, there is Palin’s disrespect for Alaska’s African American population. Yes, I was just as surprised as you are. On April 29, a group of African American leaders met with the governor to discuss their dissatisfaction with her record on diversity in hiring. According to Gwen Alexander, head of the African-American Historical Society of Alaska, Palin told the group that she did not have to hire any Blacks, and didn’t intend to hire any. Further, Juneteenth—that well-known day of slave emancipation celebrated by Blacks throughout the country — has been an official holiday in Alaska since 2001. However, as veteran journalist Linn Washington notes, Palin did not attend the celebration, and did not send a representative. The governor similarly declined requests for her attendance to town hall meetings on issues affecting communities of color.

The extent of Gov. Palin’s record on diversity seems to amount to ignoring Native Alaskans’ basic rights, telling Black folks she doesn’t have to hire them, and snubbing Juneteenth. So, where does all of this lead us? What is the punchline to this cruel joke known as the vice-presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin? Well, in the end, Palin’s record represents an indictment of the GOP narrative of small town America. As the new poster child for the conservative cause, Palin gives small town people a bad name. To be sure, many people in small towns are just as clueless, narrow-minded and averse to cultural diversity and civil rights as the governor of Alaska. But many more are not, and these people must decide very soon if they will allow Sarah Palin to speak for them.

Fake Mavericks Denigrate a Long Tradition of Community Organizing

By David A. Love
BlackCommentator.com
Color of Law
September 18, 2008

The Republican Party made it clear at their 2008 convention that they have no love for community organizers.

The overwhelmingly white crowd in Minnesota cheered at the speech made by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin - GOP vice presidential candidate and Trojan Moose - mocking Senator Barack Obama’s community organizing experience. “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities,” Palin told the party faithful in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Although her remarks were directed toward Obama, it is clear that her ultimate target was community organizing itself. And the GOP is no friend of community organizing, particularly when community organizing helps the poor, the powerless, the disenfranchised, and, especially, people of color.

And while the GOP standard bearers - including Palin, the Manchurian candidate Senator McCain, 9-11 pimp Rudy Giuliani, former sleeping presidential candidate Fred Thompson, and empty suit Mitt Romney - have given little indication that they have worked an honest day in their life or improved the human condition, they would sit in judgment of those who have dedicated everything, and sometimes sacrificed their lives, in the name of social justice.

Now, I should say in the interests of full disclosure that my wife and I have a background as community organizers - she has worked in children’s health, political and labor campaigns, while I have experience in racial justice, police brutality, voting rights and media justice. It is hard work, and perhaps the most fulfilling you will find. You are helping real people solve real problems in their lives, and you see and feel the direct results of your actions.

Community organizing helped bring us an end to slavery, Jim Crow and apartheid, voting rights for women and African Americans, and humane working conditions. Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad were a perfect example of effective community organizing, as was Dr. King’s Montgomery Bus Boycott, or Gandhi’s ability to bring the British Empire to its knees through nonviolent civil disobedience. When you think about it, Moses and Jesus were community organizers as well.

Conservatives throughout the ages have done what they could to stop this brand of community organizing, for the sake of staying in power, getting paid, keeping others down, keeping the whole pie for themselves, whatever. And today’s conservative crowd in early twenty-first century America, a frighteningly bankrupt coalition of entrenched interests, scam artists, profiteers and the Christian Taliban, is no exception. They thumb their noses at the New Deal reforms and the regulatory state, even though their own regime of deregulation and upward wealth transfer (also known as unbridled greed) has destroyed the American economy for the second time in eighty years. They spit at the civil rights legacy and programs of diversity, at a time when the ranks of the Brown, non-Christian, foreign language speaking and foreign born in the U.S. is increasing in dramatic fashion.

And most of all, they yearn for judges who are strict constructionists in interpreting the Constitution (translation: Black folks picking cotton, women in the home, LGBT people ostracized and invisible, etc.). They are more than aware of the transformative nature of community organizing, and they would erase all the positive effects that community organizing has had on public policy, legislation and court decisions.

These counterfeit mavericks, reformers and compassionate conservatives who claim to put country first, whatever that means, want to take us back to the days before the people woke up, and they are counting on you to go back to sleep.

GOP Scrapes the Bottom of the Barrel with McCain-Palin Ticket

By David A. Love
BlackCommentator.com
Color of Law
September 11, 2008

When I look at the 2008 Republican ticket for president and vice president, I can’t help but ask: What kind of Simple Simon nonsense is going on here?

At the top of the ticket you have John McCain, whose only claim to fame was that he was captured by the “enemy”. Not much of a qualification for the White House, one would conclude, although I know that this area of discourse is sacrosanct. At best, the man is average and mediocre, stale and stilted, uninspiring and crotchety. No domestic policy beyond drilling for oil and corporate giveaways. And a foreign policy consisting of war, war and more war. You get the impression that after four years of this man, he would likely have the U.S. at war with anyone and everyone, building on the disastrous policies of the warmongering idiot Prince George.

Then, of course, there is Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, a state with a population half the size of Philadelphia. Before that, she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town of about 5,000 at the time, and was nearly recalled. Lest you find yourself impressed with job titles such as governor, remember that George Bush once was governor of Texas, and we know how much good that did us.

For a political party that claims to value merit and qualifications, and doesn’t want people of color to get any unfair handouts, the Republicans once again have shown that they will scrape the bottom of the barrel to find their “talent,” their leaders and standard-bearers. Those who should be the benchwarmers become the starting lineup. They did it in the Bush Justice Department, filling that once prestigious agency with intellectual duds who met the right-wing ideological litmus test. They did it with FEMA, placing a horse show judge in charge of relief efforts in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans. Palin is the epitome of a lightweight to say the least, the GOP’s cynical answer to Hillary Clinton, but with none of the intelligence and none of the qualifications of that able yet flawed former candidate. And when Palin’s background is scrutinized, the party that cares little about women’s rights plays the sexism card.

But here’s what we do know about Palin. She billed Alaska taxpayers for 312 nights she spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office. She is under investigation for intimidating state officials into firing her state trooper brother-in-law.

Palin believes in creationism. She would preach to the rest of us about family values, and is against reproductive rights and contraception. She believes gays can be “converted” through prayer. And as Palin parades her hair licked family - complete with pregnant teen daughter and the daughter’s “fiancé”, shotgun pointed at his back - the governor cut funding to Covenant House Alaska, which provides housing to pregnant teen mothers. As far as foreign affairs are concerned, she believes invading Iraq was a task from God. And while Obama, a U.S. senator, has been thoroughly and incessantly scrutinized about his experience, Palin just received her first passport in 2006.

Together with McCain, this counterfeit superduo portrays itself as mavericks that will change Washington, although their campaign is managed by lobbyists and Rovian operatives, not to mention that their party has ruined the nation in eight years.

The ability of McCain and Palin to divorce themselves from reality is staggering. At their convention in Minnesota, with only 36 African American delegates, or 1.5 percent of the total, the Republican Party was able to act as if Black and Brown people simply do not exist in America. That is just as well, given that the GOP has painted itself into a political corner by appealing to its Neanderthal base - embracing intolerance and religious zealotry, and making itself into America’s version of the Afrikaaner National Party during apartheid. The Southern Strategy has come full circle for the Republicans. A party that depends on white identity for its bread and butter, despite rapidly changing demographics, is destined for a well-deserved demise that I will celebrate.

Yet, the McCain-Palin ticket is banking on the proclivity of the American electorate to act against its economic self interests, emphasizing “culture war” issues rather than the pocketbook issues that actually matter. Everyday people have taken a severe beatdown in America over the past eight years, but gluttons for punishment that they are, have we had enough? My sense of optimism demands that this latest incarnation of Reagan and Bush will fail, but time will tell.