POLITICS – Page 24 – Don't Gel Too Soon

RETURN OF THE CULTURE WARS – BUT DID THEY EVER LEAVE?

Some very smart analysts, including POLITICO and PressThink founder Jay Rosen, are talking about the current Republican strategy in support of Sarah Palin as a "reigniting of the culture wars." Attacking with all the code words of past anti-"left" vocabularies. And here’s Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal:

I’ll tell you how powerful Mrs. Palin already is: she reignited the
culture wars just by showing up. She scrambled the battle lines, too.
The crustiest old Republican men are shouting "Sexism!" when she’s
slammed. Pro-woman Democrats are saying she must be a
bad mother to be
all ambitious with kids in the house. Great respect goes to Barack
Obama not only for saying criticism of candidates’ children is out of
bounds in political campaigns, but for making it personal, and
therefore believable. "My mother had me when she was eighteen…" That
was the lovely sound of class in American politics.

When the McCain Summer of Love ad debuted, I wrote this – They Will Campaign Against Us Until We’re Dead, and Maybe After. If you watch CSPAN, especially Washington Journal, you know from the phone calls how much anger still exists; how much hatred of the generation I grew up in. Against our opposition to the war, mischief and outrageousness, and even more, our search – no, demand – for peace. Going after all of us, FORTY YEARS LATER, still works.

I guess that since I’ve been posting quite a lot about that time forty years ago, the memories are long on both sides. But Barack Obama was 7 years old in 1968. It’s not and never was his culture war. It is, however, the never-ending flash-point in the conservative playbook, a safe way to rile folks up and re-ignite the hatred and anger manifested in the 60’s and 70’s and again in the 90’s when that Boomer couple, the Clintons, were in the White House.

I’ve given up trying to figure out how to respond. Most Americans, including us 60’s people, love our country and loved it then. It was the a desire to return the country to its true nature — just as it is today — that drove us. But it’s far more useful to the McCain campaign to taunt us — and Barack Obama; and to divide us, too, with these ancient battles. The tough part is figuring out how to answer.

Bristol Palin, Sarah, Paula Jones and a Question of What’s Right

I’ve started three new posts today trying to avoid writing about Bristol Palin. I don’t think I can. But I’m going to borrow someone else’s words, someone who has said it so much better than I could. The link in this piece came from the always wise Jill Miller Zimon, whose blog Writes Like She Talks is sharp and smart. She’s among those posting really thoughtful ideas about this very sad situation.

I’m as concerned as many of my peers about the choice issue and the complicated role it plays here; just as troubled by much of this candidacy and the tragic exposure of a very young woman to a national furor. My biggest problem though, is with what I see as the (noisy but far from majority) inappropriate writing and speculating about this family. In my mind, these attacks run a real risk of ending up as a "brie v beer" class war, and we’re not like that. We shouldn’t sound like we are. It’s the same feeling I had during the Paula Jones debacle when people wrote about her as "trailer park trash." Whatever the substance of either Jones or Palin, or this pregnant young woman, what’s been going on: trashing Sarah Palin for going back to work after her child was born, implying that if she’d been a better mother this pregnancy might never have happened… interpreting her values as "redneck" — is dangerous. I’m old enough to remember when conservatives talked like that – fought against all our efforts for equal pay, for non-mommy track hiring, for not only abortion rights but also contraception — all of it.

As I said though, Richard C. Harwood has written what I think is a very thoughtful piece about this potential battle – an unwinnable one, I fear. Here are two of the best quotes but you really should read the whole thing.

Moreover, I have said that I
know two families with specials needs kids where both parents work, and where
there is so much love and affection that I would be more than willing to have
my own two kids join those families. Further, I have wondered aloud why
stay-at-home dads who were once professionals are okay, but not Palin’s
husband. . . .

Let me be clear: I am not defending
Sarah Palin. To me, there is some virtue in her selection, but also the
rolling of dice. But how we talk this choice is just as important as our final
judgment. Why? Because so many of us want a different kind of politics in
America, a politics that is more reflective of reality, more thoughtful, and
more hopeful. We want a politics that transcends Red States and Blue States. We
want a politics that encourages honest and tough debate, but not unnecessary
discord and divisiveness. Now is our chance.

In 1984, I worked for Walter Mondale
when he nominated Rep. Geraldine Ferraro as his choice for Vice President. Of
course, the initial burst of excitement for Ferraro dissipated quickly as she
found herself mired in family problems, with Mondale losing in a landslide.
While Palin’s selection and her running mate may take a similar route, the race
is still far from over. But no matter what, my question is, what route will you
take?

There is so much we all want to say. How we say it, though, could make all the difference.

MUSIC, POLITICS, PATTI SMITH, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, ROBERT HUNTER AND A LONG WALK

For weeks I’ve been writing about politics here, but today – some personal politics. They say the personal is political, and for me, the personal is music (and political) — and music makes all the difference — through time, sadness, joy, loneliness, political anguish, even spiritual connection.

I’ve started walking every morning – around two miles. Part of the reason is that I never get to listen to music anymore, so on my walks, I pretty much let my iPod take me wherever "shuffle" wants to go. For while we moved from Bruce to Great Big Sea to Juno. Then things got serious – an anthem really, of a time in my life when I valued awareness, aliveness, presence above all else: along came Me and Bobby McGee. Kris Kristofferson wrote it but this is one of the few videos I could find of him performing it – Janis Joplin’s version was the famous one. Still — it was this version, Kristofferson’s, that spoke to me.

A cut-loose road song and a love song too. "Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose." I remember my mother railing against this chorus — claiming that freedom was real and important and much more than "nothin’ left to lose" and she was probably right, but then… Then that road life was one I craved but never had the nerve to undertake and this song was my chance to travel along. Later, on Saturday Night Live, Gilda Radner did a monologue as "Bobby McGee" who had moved home, and whose "mom even kept my room for me." She’d given up. There I sat on our water bed in our Upper West Side apartment in our married, new baby life, and cried. It was way too familiar. Made me face the gap between what I had wished and what I was, that gap we all face as we enter "grown up" lives, with kids and responsibilities.

Then, around the time my walk reached Georgia Avenue, I traveled to London’s Grosvenor Square, and Scarlet Begonias. The Robert Hunter/Grateful Dead song included this description: "Wind in the willows playin’ tea for two; The sky was yellow and the sun was blue, Strangers stoppin’ strangers just to shake their hand, Everybody”s playing in the heart of gold band." It sounds comical now, I suppose, and it was really about Dead concerts, but I remember so many marches where people passed food around, each taking what they needed, and driving on the turnpikes on the way as we gave M&Ms to each tollbooth operator along with our quarters and even, at the first Clinton inauguration, being hugged by some guy I’d never met as I stood alone, close to tears (again) when Bob Dylan came out and surprised everyone.

Continue reading MUSIC, POLITICS, PATTI SMITH, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, ROBERT HUNTER AND A LONG WALK

SPEECH OF A LIFETIME– Oh – and that Sarah person

At
last. Our whole day had been built around this. Obama accepts
the nomination with the highest TV ratings of
any acceptance speech in modern US history, according to the Hollywood
Reporter:

Barack Obama’s historic acceptance speech for the Democratic
presidential nomination Thursday night was seen by 38.4 million viewers — 57%
more than watched John Kerry four years ago — and was the most-watched
convention speech ever.

Thursday
night’s viewership set a new record for national convention coverage, according
to Nielsen Media Research. Naturally, it’s also the largest number since the
convention began, up 42% from Hillary Clinton’s
speech on Day 2.

Obama’s
speech was seen by more U.S. viewers than the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony
(34.2 million).

It was a remarkable speech in a spectacular setting. You either watched it or
you didn’t – watch it here. It’s actually worth more than one viewing for
not only the substance but also the environment and symbolism. Watch it —
it’s pretty amazing.

Here’s
a
transcript, too.

I
waited until today to write this because I felt so much emotion last night that
I thought I should let it all sink in. I’ve seen so many acceptance
speeches, and my sense of Obama’s role is so deep that I didn’t think I had
much new to offer. It doesn’t seem to be wearing off though — not that
I’m alone. MSNBC super-conservative and often inflamatory and somewhat
cruel Joe
Scarborough was still rhapsodizing when I woke up. I think any aware
American, anyone who’s lived through a substantial portion of our modern racial
history, anyone with any desire for a better, more just country — any of us —
could not have watched what happened last night and remained
dispassionate. Tweets all night, and not just from those in the arena
kept saying "Tears everywhere" "Tearing up"
"Didn’t think I’d cry but…" I was fine until the family
walked out to the center of the stadium holding hands. Then I just
disolved.

Beyond
the moving historic moment, and the incredible tableau of two decent committed
families who have made public service a life-time commitment, who are the kinds
of people who seem to manifest what Americans used to think of as "real
American" character, the substance was also inspiring, at least for
me. You can read blogger comments on the wonderful CSPAN Hub — assembled by a team that
includes that very smart woman you keep seeing on CSPAN, Leslie Bradshaw. This post of
hers will give you an idea of
what it took to run the Hub operation – so valuable to so many bloggers.

Continue reading SPEECH OF A LIFETIME– Oh – and that Sarah person

MARTIN LUTHER KING AND BARACK OBAMA: ANOTHER COSMIC ANNIVERSARY

I was about to be a senior in high school that summer, with my family on vacation in Provincetown, MA, at the tip of Cape Cod. All I really wanted to do was find Edna St. Vincent Millay’s summer hangout and the theater used by Eugene O’Neill and the Provincetown Players. Those were gone; instead, I tripped over a future that quickly ended my quest for the past.

Walking by a restaurant, we passed a TV sitting on the sidewalk, on a milk crate so everyone could watch. On the air: the March on Washington and the speech by Dr. Martin Luther King. I was transfixed. Living in a little town outside Pittsburgh, I hadn’t really paid much attention. Until that moment. It was August 28, 1963, and it launched the next phase of my life. As I watched, I knew that I belonged there – where there was purpose – in the middle of history. It was a profound thing to listen to this man, to see the sea of people around him, watch the individual interviews, hear the music. When people wonder how we became a generation of activists, I know that this was one of the moments that drove us forward, if we weren’t there already.

How beautiful then that EXACTLY 45 years later, Barack Obama will accept the nomination of his party to be the Democratic candidate for President of the United States. I heard Rep. John Lewis, so badly beaten in the 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, tell an interviewer that he wasn’t sure he could make it through his own speech — that if anyone had told him that 45 years after that Selma march he’d watch an African-American man accept the presidential nomination, he would have told them they were crazy. Obama adviser and friend Valerie Jarrett, describing what it would mean to her parents in an interview with our own Erin Kotckei Vest, struggled to contain her own tears. This is important.

Continue reading MARTIN LUTHER KING AND BARACK OBAMA: ANOTHER COSMIC ANNIVERSARY

HILLARY SUPPORTERS AND THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN: DON’T DO THIS!

This is breaking my heart. Why is it that we Democrats are incapable of NOT shooting ourselves in the foot (feet even)? In my view (and I’m hardly alone in this) this may be the most critical election of my lifetime. I’ve written (are you sick of it yet?) about the parallels to 1968 when the refusal of many anti-war voters to show up at the polls and vote for Hubert Humphrey brought us Richard Nixon and a cascade of disaster. That could and most likely will happen again if we don’t all pull ourselves together.

I heard a commentator quote — I thought Jefferson but can’t find the source — “True democracy means acceptance of defeat by one vote.” Sounds right, doesn’t it? But there is what we wish were true and there is political reality, and the reality this year is that every moment of hesitation by Senator Clinton’s supporters puts another barrier between Senator Obama and the White House. My most-respected friend PunditMom has a very smart analysis of where all this antipathy is coming from. And there’s a survey of much of the conversation in Lisa Stone’s summary at BlogHer.

As I write this I think about the suffragists who won us the right to have this fight in the first place just 88 years ago. What would they think now? They were willing to stand up to those who asked them to halt their campaign until WWI was over. Should women have the same singular focus now — placing their anger ahead of the outcome of this election? Is the injustice so great that it justifies putting another conservative Republican in the White House?

I think not. Our sisters will do us a disservice that will last a very long time if they continue to stand in the way of an Obama victory or even just sit on their hands, because that will betray women who are at the bottom of the power pile, raising children alone, struggling for childcare, lacking health insurance, vacation or sick leave and any kind of job security. Feminists rightly say that “every issue is a women’s issue” and that means that every decision in a McCain administration will have a heavy impact on these women, and on the rest of us.

Beyond that, in my view, the perils of an anti-choice administration that will nominate judges like those who overrode violence against women laws in Virginia and frequently support employers over women seeking redress to sexual harassment or other discrimination, an Administration that will carry on the Bush foreign policy and continue to decimate our constitutional rights — oh – you know the list — those perils outweigh any grievance.

So if sisterhood is powerful, let those whose hearts are broken by the Clinton loss recall their sisters who need so much – and consider how little their interests would be served if Barack Obama does not prevail. On this, Women’s Equality Day, let them ease their pain with the knowledge that they will help on “every issue” and therefore every “women’s issue” if they can move past the pain of their defeat and see to it that our country itself is not defeated too.

THE FIRST TIME EVER….

Thanks to Lawyer Mama over at Momocrats for posting this. I just had to put it here too.

By the way, there is great coverage coming from women at Momocrats and BlogHer. Check it out – they’re doing a great job!

1968-2008 FORTY YEARS SINCE THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION IN CHICAGO AND I WAS THERE

I wonder if you can imagine what it felt like to be 22 years old, totally idealistic and what they call “a true believer” and to see policemen behave like that. To see Chicago Mayor Richard Daley call the first Jewish Senator, Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut, a “kike” (you had to read his lips – there was no audio but it was pretty clear) and to see your friends, and colleagues, and some-time beloveds with black eyes and bleeding scalps. To be dragged by a Secret Service agent from your place next to Senator McCarthy by the collar of your dress as he addressed the demonstrators, battered, bruised and angry. To see everything you’d worked for and believed in decimated in the class, generational and political warfare.

That’s how it was. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, of course, on this momentous anniversary – when hopefully another, happier landmark will emerge in the extraordinary nomination of Senator Obama. I’ve been to every Convention from 1968 until this year. It’s kind of sad to break the chain after 40 years but I think I’m ready. I did a workshop on convention coverage at the BlogHer conference to pass the torch; I’m so excited for all the women who are going. Just as Senator Obama is a generation behind me – in his 40s to my 60s – a little kid when we faced billy clubs and tear gas in his home town, so are many of the bloggers credentialed to cover the week. I know it will be great for them and that they’ll make certain we know – in twitteriffic detail, what’s going on.

I know too that, 40 years from now, it will still be a milestone
memory in their lives. I started to write “hopefully, a happier one”
but despite all the agony of those terrible days in 1968, I’m embarrassed to tell you that I wouldn’t trade the memory. It’s so deep in my soul and so much a part of my understanding of myself and who I’ve become that despite the horrors within it, I cherish its presence. So, what I wish my sisters in Denver (and Minnesota) is to have conventions — happy or not — as important to their lives, sense of history and purpose and political values as Chicago was to mine. Along with, of course, the fervent hope that this time, there will be something closer to a happy ending.

TRIUMPH IS EXPENSIVE: HONORING MY FRIEND RACHEL

She’s a tiny powerhouse, hair in ringlets, face of an angel, but
when she wants something to happen, woe unto those who stand in her
way. Her name is Rachel, and because of her, we’re all a lot safer
than we were yesterday. Really. Safer.

One of the things we discover as years pass is just how much
discipline, determination and talent it takes to win a big battle.
People who win show up on the front page, on the evening news, in
Talking Points Memo… all over the place. It looks so great to be the
one taking the bow. Most of the time, nobody knows what it took to get
there. Can’t imagine, and probably, don’t care. But I know. And I
care.

Continue reading TRIUMPH IS EXPENSIVE: HONORING MY FRIEND RACHEL

MOURNING ENORMOUS LOSS: TISHA B’AV, THE TRAUMA OF MEMORY AND THE WISDOM OF JEWISH TRADITION

The lights were out; all that remained were small spotlights where the readers sat. It was a day of sorrow and mourning, so we spurned comfort and, as tradition dictates, sat on the floor. In front of the Sanctuary, the readings began: Eichah – Lamentations, the prophet Jeremiah’s horrifying account of an ancent time of soul-shattering misery. Reading it aloud is part of the holiday** but,
since I was newly observant, it was previously unknown to me, as was the
enormous impact of the dimly lit room and haunting content and trope of the reading. That first time, just three years ago, I didn’t have a clue what was coming — that night or the next morning, when the readings continued.

Accompanied by a 25 hour fast, this all takes place on the holiday of Tisha B’Av – the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av, to commemorate the multiple horrors believed to have taken place on that day.*

This is a lot of sadness (and foreboding of more to come) to have
taken place on the same date. So it’s fair to observe a period of
mourning and remembrance. What happened to me, though, was that the
language of mourning is so fierce, so hideous, and in some ways, so
applicable to what we see happening around us now, that it is almost
unbearable to listen to. And so, the first time I heard it, I fled in
the middle and went across the hall into the childcare room. My sweet,
ridiculously smart friend Aliza, with her
infant daughter and unable to join the prayers, was off to the side
praying on her own. In tears, so troubled that I was trembling, I
interrupted her prayers, something I would never do otherwise, and
demanded to know why it was necessary for us to listen to this. And to
know we’d be doomed to do so every summer. In her quiet way, she
replied that perhaps once a year isn’t too often to recall these
fearsome times in our history.

At the time, I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but now, I’m,
shocked to discover that I look forward to this annual observance,
which
comes this weekend. Why? I guess after three years some of the shock
has worn off. Of course there’s more: as usual when I listen to Aliza,
I’ve had to think harder. One thing I’ve realized is that this day,
ignored by most Jews, is a kind of anchor — keeping us in place,
connecting us, those who came before, and those who will follow.

I can’t trace my family past my grandparents on either side; all my
grandparents and their siblings came here years before the Holocaust
and any records of their ancestors were lost or destroyed as the Nazis
decimated Europe. That they were Jewish, though, is irrefutable. Now
I find that, although I can’t share their stories and traditions, we do
share a history. I realize as I am writing this that moments which
commemorate that common history are not just religious, but also family
connections. Our mourning on the 9th of Av honors not just God’s
anger, which led Him to allow the destruction of the Temples, and not
just the martyrdom of so many, but also each individual, unknown person
whose DNA is mixed with mine.

I had often
protested that we need to honor that which we value as the positive
attributes of the Jewish experience, not just the martyrdoms that
remind us of our history of suffering, but also the joy and pride
our tradition offers. What I’ve realized is that we can’t forget..
There’s much to be learned by what’s
come before and by acknowledging our connection to it. And this deeply
moving, haunting and humbling tradition is connected to each of us
right
now, this minute.

* With thanks to the OU Tisha B’Av website :

In the time of Moses, the "sin of the spies" whom he sent out
to evaluate the situation in the soon-to-be conquered Canaan and who
returned with horror stories that questioned God’s power to protect the
Jews and caused Him to decree that none from the generation who went
out of Egypt would be permitted to go into Israel.
The destruction of the first Temple under Nebuchadnezzar. (587 BCE – 3338 in the Hebrew calendar)
The destruction of the second Temple under Titus. (70 CE – 3895 in the Hebrew calendar)
The Romans conquered Betar, the last fortress of the Bar Kochba
rebellion and Hadrian turned Jerusalem into a Roman city. (135 CE –
3895 in the Hebrew calendar)
King Edward I signed the edict that expelled all Jews from England (1290 CE – 5050 in the Hebrew calendar)
Jews expelled from Spain because of King Ferdinand’s decree (1492 CE — 5252 in the Hebrew calendar)
The last Jews left Vienna under expulsion orders there. (1670)
World War I began (1914 CE — 5674 in the Hebrew calendar)
Himmler presented the plan for the "Final Solution" to the "Jewish
problem" to the Nazi party. (1940 — 5700 in the Hebrew calendar)
Nazis began deporting Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. (1942 CE — 5702 in the Hebrew calendar)

** Also, interestingly, quoted in Christian prayers for Zimbabwe,