Oh Sarah! (Palin) But Could She Be (A Little Bit) Right?

Just when we thought it was safe to go back in the water…. there she is again!  This time, though, some of what she says is creepily unsettling.  This loads slowly but is worth the wait – we can talk about it after you watch it.


Here’s the thing: Do you really think people, especially journalists, would have been so cruel to an “unwed mother” whose parents were progressive politicians?  Or to a Rockefeller or even a Bush? Throughout the interview, Palin raises the issue of class, and of the attacks on her kids; we’ll touch on that in a minute.

During the campaign, I wrote about Palin and the class issue, and the sad parallels to Paula Jones.  The fact is that Sarah Palin isn’t sophisticated, that she’ be a popular Girl Scout leader or Women’s Club president in the life that existed when I was a kid – around the Mad Men era.  Maybe that would have been OK if she’d known more, or been less cruel and incendiary in her speeches.  Her inherent lack of sophistication and experience, what William Galston has called “a celebration of ignorance” enabled much of the class snobbery the followed.  But follow it did; not in the “she’s not our kind” sort of way – it was far more subtle than that.  More in the collective realization of the “cool people” that she was a WalMart, polyester lady thrust into a J Crew sort of world.

Now.  Let’s think about the kids.  The family itself was kind of a throwback I guess.  And their omnipresence – thrust onto the stage – was weird.  But when Elizabeth Edwards was criticized for taking the kids on the road during the campaign, feminists and others leapt to her defense.  When Al Gore Jr. was arrested in a DUI it was a “private family matter,”  not a continuing object of ridicule.  Somehow though, the way this pregnancy and relationship has been portrayed has been cruel and tawdry without casting much light on Palin, her tenure or her philosophy.*  And remember the whole “mommy wars” thing – did Palin put her career ahead of her kids?  One person who wrote consistently well about this is PunditMom.  Take a look.

None of what I’m saying here justifies what Palin stood for or did as a candidate.  She was, and is, a scary person hiding behind “adorableness.”  But we need to think about the mainstream coverage of her campaign and how much of it derided matters of class and family, not policy and ideology.  There was certainly enough of that substantial stuff to keep any reporter busy.

What do you think? 

*I am not talking about conversations concerning issues of choice, sex education or contraception but of the less substantial, more visible harumphing.

Joe Scarborough and Crew: How Did They Ever Get To Be Cool? (They are!)

Well this is one reason. 


I gave up my alma mater, THE TODAY SHOW, for C-SPAN's Washington Journal. But no more – nope.  Now I'm strictly a Morning Joe girl.  My insomniac husband and I start our day with these characters, and there's good reason.  They're smart, they're funny, they have real personalities, and they think and react. Both they and their guests deftly provide more information and perspective, than anywhere else you can go in the morning.

When I started at TODAY the theory was that people felt as if we were in their bedrooms.  That Deborah Norville failed at replacing Jane Pauley (as if anyone could) because she was so perfect, so slick, that she was intrusive.  TV was still one-way then; we produced the show, trying to make it as accessible as possible, but still, we were sending it to the audience, not talking with them.

At Morning Joe – the perfect Millennial programming, Scarborough, (former Congressman) the shredding (den mother?  Zen master? daughter of Zbigniew)  Mika Brzezinski, wise-cracking Willie Geist (former Tucker Carlson producer, son of CBS News Sunday Morning contributor Bill Geist) and the rest of the crew are not in our bedrooms, we're in the studio with them.  There's no "third wall" (I always wanted to produce a show like that,) you see
the cameras, the cardboard Starbucks cups and even the
producers.  We're all in it together.  Conversations with their (very well-booked) guests are smart, sassy and collegial; lots of information emerges but from conversation, not inquisition.  There is very little distance between the audience and the studio – bluster is deflated and humor is the tool of choice.  ALL with considerable elan, explication, foresight and accessibility.

I almost forgot the music.  Most commercial breaks are punctuated with music – often Bruce Springsteen, always connected to the last topic of conversation.  During the campaign, of course, Born to Run and Jackson Browne's Running on Empty were favorites.  It's another way of communicating with the audience – fun and usually spot on.  When it's not music, it's clips from late night comedy or other relevant but irreverent television.

I'm not alone in this – didn't invent a new wheel.  The New York Times has called the show "oddly addicting" (my experience exactly); the Washington Post described it as "a provocative, alternate-universe newstalk show."  From six to nine AM Twitter is full of Joe sightings.

I spent many years in broadcast news, nine of them at the TODAY SHOW, and I've mourned its transformation from the informative show I knew to what seemed to me to be an undisciplined mush called, by many production alums, "Friends in the morning."  It's wildly popular so I'm not condemning it – just saying that it isn't the show I worked for.  Now, after a long, sad period of missing what TODAY was, I see in Morning Joe what it could have (and should have) become. 

Introducing Tuesday Tours: Random Worthy Blog Posts

Tourist with suitcases
Welcome to Tuesday Tours.  There's so much good stuff out in the Blog Universe; we all have our blog readers filled with those we love.  It's tough to keep up though, so until further notice, I'll be offering Tuesday tours of some of my own frequent favorites.

One of my favorite bloggers, Pundit Mom, offers posts at two ends of the spectrum as the week begins.  Both are worth reading.  The first:  advice to the Obamas about the neighborhood around Sidwell Friends School.  It's just fun.  The second is a serious post with a serious question:  When is it right to tell an airline official that a passenger is making you nervous
? 

Concerned about what's going on in Israel?  Check back daily at Writes Like She Talks, where Jill Zimon has her finger on what's up all over the Web.  Here's a sample.

The wise Maria Niles is looking to figure out all those generation labels like X and Boomer and Millennial — and what they mean (and what the heck her own is.)

Also "generationally speaking," you know that all last year I wrote comparing 1968 and 2008.  Well,  Time Goes By columnist Saul Friedman has done me one (actually two) better, writing of lessons from his own iconic president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Obama's point of reference, Abraham Lincoln. 

Beth Kanter is a legend.  Rightfully so.  So when she offers 52 ways for Non-profits to use social media efficiently as a New Year's gift to her readers, I'm figuring that at least some of them can help the rest of us too.

Two of my favorite moms have something special too:  I'm late on this one, but Her Bad Mother's description of a willful three-year-old (it's long so wait until you have time) is priceless.  Some kids are just strong strong little people.

Also, Woulda Coulda Shoulda's Mir Kamin celebrated her son's last single-digit birthday with a wonderful hymn to a newly-nine-year-old.  She never misses, that one.

Finally, this one – because the happy family in the photo is mine.

Visit This Jewish Blog Carnival – It’s Interesting

HaveilHavalim This carnival is fascinating – many sides of issues relating to Judaism, observant or secular Jewish life and, of course, Israel.  It's pretty diverse, take a look and see what you think.  Full disclosure: a post of mine is included.

Doubt – More than a Movie — Also a Time Capsule


This film, Doubt, is exceptional. Smart, funny, moving, intricate and remarkably well-acted, it is, without exception, a remarkable accomplishment. I grew up in Pittsburgh and nuns like Meryl Streep’s Sister Aloysius Beauvier were a staple in my life, not in Catholic school, but every weekend, at speech tournaments at Greensburg Catholic or Central Catholic or other parochial schools that so often hosted the competitions. 

God help you if one of your judges was one of these sisters.  They were the toughest and the scariest.  Even in the cafeteria between Round 2 and Round 3, they wandered with the same “eyes in the backs of their heads” that Sister Aloysius demonstrates to her young protege.  The teams they coached were the amazing.  Practiced, smart, disciplined and resourceful, they did the sisters proud. 

As I watched Meryl Streep as the principal of a Catholic elementary school where accusation and suspicion take over, all the memories of those scary Saturday mornings at the front of a classroom, giving speeches on labor unions or disarmament or the dangers of the Soviet Union came tumbling back. The nerves were unavoidable; when the sisters were among your judges, you had to be prepared, organized, well-spoken and committed.  Or else.

Probably the familiarity of those nuns (weird for a nice Jewish girl to have access to, I suppose) and the memory of all the Sundays I went to Mass with friends after a sleep-over added to the film’s impact.  I know I had a very personal reaction.  But whether you grew up in Idaho, Arizona or the Bronx, the film is irresistible and won’t leave you alone just because it’s not on the screen any longer.  I’m not going to talk about the plot because that will diminish the pleasure of watching it unfold, but if you respect great writing, great acting and excellence in film-making, you don’t want to miss this one.

Farewell to A True Anti-Apartheid (and Jewish) Hero(ine) of South Africa: Helen Suzman

Helen Suzman3
Nobody ate lobster tail at our house, or bought anything else that came from South Africa, even way back in the 50’s, .  Well before Randall Robinson’s TransAfrica or Steve Van Zandt’s Sun City (see below**), my mother was actively boycotting the apartheid regime.  Despite her generally moderate liberal perspective, she was fierce about this and created my own boycott habit, something that drove my kids crazy all the years that they drank Ovaltine while their friends got Nestle Quick. (That’s another story though.)

Of course anyone back then who knew about South Africa or read Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country understood the horror of it, but barely anyone talked about it, or demanded action from their own countries.  So why was this the issue that set fire to my mom?  

Helen Suzman*, who died on New Year’s Day at the age of 91, was the reason.  For years she stood as the only anti-apartheid voice in the entire South African Parliament – for six of those years as the only woman as well.The Jewish wife of a well-to-do physician, she entered politics, visited Mandela in prison, stood and spoke, often alone, for the end of apartheid and all that it stood for.  Because she was brave, and because, like so many early white activists there, she was Jewish, her often solitary and always dangerous crusade was a matter of particular pride to many Jewish women, my mother among them.  Her powerful example was a foreshadowing of much that came later.  By the time I was in college, friends were lying in at the doors of Chemical Bank to demand divestiture – removal of American funds from South African investments.  By the 80’s daily demonstrations, and arrests, outside the DC South African embassy kept a drumbeat of attention on the issue.   It took until February of 1990 for Mandela to be released from prison, granting great credit to Ms. Suzman, who later stood at his side as he signed the new constitution.

How interesting that one of the earliest moral political lessons I learned came from the courage of a woman half way around the world, not only because of her courage and effectiveness but also because of her faith.  We speak so casually of “role models” these days, but when there is a true model of how to live, the impact is enormous.  I’ve known that for a long time, and as I watched Barack Obama tell city kids he visited on Thanksgiving eve that ” You guys might end being the president some day” I thought it again.

Ms. Suzman’s example multiplied her power: not only did she stand alone for change when such a stand was desperately needed, she also taught all those who watched her that they could stand too, that just as her stands gave birth to theirs, their own actions multiplied the impact of hers.  As we enter this new year, with so much ahead of us, it’s something we would do well to remember – and live by.
*Here’s an interview with Ms. Suzman

**Here’s the 1985 video from “Miami Steve” and artists from Herbie Hancock to Pat Benetar and Bonnie Raitt to Lou Reed and The Boss himself.

Report from London: Barack Obama, Man of the Year and Best-Sellwe

LON Man of the Year inside pg.
First-ever Times of London Man of the Year.  This is pretty amazing if you’ve followed the disdain with which the U.S., and particularly George Bush, have been viewed here in Europe. The UK may in many ways be more angry than most, because they were sucked into the Iraq war too. 

But my son, the one who works in London and has been going back and forth for five years or more,reported that the day after the election it felt better to be American in Europe than it had in a long time.  Add that to what happened  when Obama went to Berlin: the amazing reception arising, I believe, because he stands for the America that the rest of the world wants to know.  The America of promise and compassion and justice and hope.

Now the Times of London, one of the great London newspapers, has, in its first Timers Person of the Year – worldwide – chosen President-Elect Barack Obama. In their editorial, they say:

What, then, made Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency so remarkable, such a landmark event, is not the fact of his improbability or of his extraordinary background. What made it landmark is the nature of those things. For unlike his predecessors, Mr Obama’s improbability, Mr Obama's extraordinary background, is not just important to him and to the story of his personal triumph. It caps a period of incredible change in America and makes possible incredible change in the world. And it is this – and the way he won the presidency – that made him the obvious choice as The Times Person of 2008.

London Obama books cropped
Of course the next four years are pretty scary, and it's probably impossible for him to live up to all we hope for him, but at least, for now, we are once again members in good, or at least better, standing, in the world community. 

There's more evidence. These are the best-sellers in Waterston's bookstore in Chiswick. Number one and number four.  This will be a president the world wants to know.  So while it's scary, it's also exciting: to have selected a leader who makes us proud, through a process that made us proud, to have elected an African American president for our country, which, with all its troubles, once again makes us proud too.  The Bush years broke more hearts than our own, and the world reaction to Obama, from the Berlin speech to the London Times to front pages and African murals and Sunday commentary from one end of the world to the other proves it.

We don't know what will come next; we don't know how we will respond to that which is asked of us – and much will be.  But we do know, I think, that we have chosen, as our leader, someone whose place in the world enhances that of our country, and of us, and begins to build the faith, and determination, that will take us where we need to go.

Money, Madoff, Seniors and Struggles

ROnnie banner
NO this is not the lazy way out – sending you to another blog.  Ronni Bennett is a highly visible, highly regarded "elder blogger" and has formed a large, vital community around her blog Time Goes By.  A retired CBS News producer, she moved from Manhattan to Maine for a more affordable standard of living and she's got her fingers on many pulses.  Today, she writes about the already tragic costs of the economic crisis for "the rest of us" – those not losing fortunes because of Bernard Madoff but just losing ground.

I think the Madoff story is worth the attention it's getting,  not just or even mainly because of the damage it did to high-end investors but because someone of such stature (Head of NASDAQ) would – and could- do such things – and that he got away with it for so long.  It's institutionally mind-blowing.  As I wandered the web reading stories for this post, I discovered more reasons, too.  It did disproportionate damage to Jews and Jewish charities – and Madoff was Jewish.  Another "how could he?"  Non-profits around the world, literally, are devastated; an example of the non-profit chaos generated by Mr. Madoff's activity. 

Even so, Ronni's point about the focus on the big stuff when there are so many stories, especially at this time of year, is worth taking a look at.  She's right about that; we need to see more profiles of those people who "work hard and play by the rules" and are struggling to figure out how to survive.  They're our neighbors – and, in many cases, they're us.

Harvey Milk, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin and the Pain of Gay Life in America

James-baldwin
I was in high school when I read Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin's heartbreaking story of pain and loss.  It was the first time I'd understood anything of the harsh realities of life for gay men, and it changed me, opened my soul and my mind the way great writers are supposed to. Toni Morrison, his close friend who has often said that she misses him still, told NPR's Michele Martin how much she would have loved to see his reaction to the election of Barack Obama.  Me too. 

MILK poster
I kept thinking of Baldwin as I sat in a screening of Milk ,the story of a gay man, years later, who fought discrimination with determination – and humor – and lost his life to an assassin in the process.  Harvey Milk, played by Sean Penn, moved to San
Francisco from a dead-end job in Manhattan and ended up launching a political gay rights movement that took over first the Castro, then San Francisco, then the nation.  Battling anti-gay referenda in cities, towns and states, he made it possible, in ways probably not dreamed of when Baldwin fled US racism and homophobia by moving to Paris in the 1940's, for gays to live openly.

Here's what's hard though.  Baldwin wrote Giovanni's Room in 1956, when gay men suffered, for the most part, in secret.  Harvey Milk led his battles in the 1970's, as, at least in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, they emerged from the closet into the light, fighting for their rights every day as efforts were made to push them back into silence.  In California, one of Milk's greatest successes was the defeat of a bill that would force the termination of all gay teachers. 

Look at us now.  On the same landmark day that we elected Barack Obama president, California, in a statewide referendum, repealed the right for gays to marry.  Similar efforts have become a cottage industry, and have succeeded all over the country.  

Where kids are concerned, Florida, where Anita Bryant originated her cruel anti-gay campaign in the 70's, is still fighting to maintain a recently-overturned ban on gay adoption.  Arkansas and Utah ban any unmarried couples, straight or gay, from adopting or fostering children; Mississippi bans gay couples, but not single gays.   Arkansas voters last month approved a measure that, like Utah's bans any unmarried straight or gay couples from adopting or fostering children, a clever way to be "nondiscriminatory."  Gay couples who want the non-biological parent to adopt their baby have to choose carefully in which county they file their papers.  Get the wrong judge and you're toast.  Perfectly fine candidates can lose elections because of their stands supporting gay rights.   

To read the policy side of these issues in more detail, visit Leslie Bradshaw.  She's one of the most passionate writers about the past election and the current state of gay rights and discusses the issue far more completely than I can. 

But  to a pop culture vulture like me,  it's sad to sit through a docudrama, which is basically what MILK is, 52 years after Giovanni and 30+ after Harvey Milk, and feel that, in too many ways, it could be today's news.

  

ADD:  I just discovered this post from Uppercase Woman.  A great survey/meditation on gay marriage.