Lucky White Girl

Should I fear for my country?

I watched Obama's interview on Face the Nation yesterday and thought it was quite reasonable and good.  I didn't think anything more of it until this morning when I read an email from my mom.  

The email was a bald-faced lie about a completely made up "interview" Obama supposedly did on another Sunday talk show in which he "said" some outrageous quote meant to scare people.  I couldn't believe it!  The author just made the whole thing up from beginning to end and people like my mother bought it hook, line and sinker because it seems like something that "crazy Muslim radical" would say!

I told her that the thing was a complete farce and then pleaded with her: "Mom, this election is important, could you at least TRY to get the facts?"  

I can respect someone voting for McCain because they're wealthy and he would lower taxes for rich people or because they support the war in Iraq but to vote for him based on outright lies about Obama, that just deserves no respect at all.  That deserves pity.

If this is how some people get their "information" (or more accurately misinformation) then I truly fear for our country but honestly, after my day of canvassing in Virginia last Saturday, I sincerely believe that my parents are part of a small outlying faction of fanatical wingnuts and most voters are acting more responsibly/rationally this year. 

On a personal note, it does make me sad and worried for my folks.  I don't want to have delusional far-right extremist parents!  Conventional, conservative, small town Republicans I can live with and understand and even respect.  Delusional wing-nuts spreading outright lies and misinformation, is another matter.

UPDATE: Here's a link to the article on Snopes.com debunking the email hoax.  It's not even a new one.  It's from a year ago. sigh.

UPDATE: Maybe I shouldn't worry so much.  Apparently it's not just my mom.  The Republican party generally is being wracked by reactionary fear politics.  See this article in the Politico.

I did this! You can too!

I just went out and went door to door in Virginia asking people to vote for Obama.  It was exhilarating.  I'm going try to do it every weekend from now until I go back home to Florida and then I'm gonna do it in Florida.  Hey, if I can do this, ANYone can do it.  Here's a video about how easy it is to go door to door in your own neighborhood.  Don't wait for someone to call you.  Get out there and GET INVOLVED!

Trust me, you'll feel great about participating in this historic campaign.  We can do it!!

Who is John McCain?

A former fan of John McCain and author of a book about him (Citizen McCain) now has second thoughts.  Elizabeth Drew has an article in Politico this morning.  I'm especially interested in the character of political candidates --integrity matters with me-- so I found what she had to say about McCain's character especially interesting:

[Political analysts] still believe that McCain won the nomination not because he gave himself over to the base but as a result of a process of elimination of inferior candidates who divided up the conservative vote, as these observers had predicted. (These people insisted on anonymity because McCain is known in Republican circles to have a long memory and a vindictive streak.)

I had already concluded that that there was a disturbingly erratic side of McCain’s nature. There’s a certain lack of seriousness in him. And he does not appear to be a reflective man, or very interested in domestic issues. One cannot imagine him ruminating late into the night about, say, how to educate and train Americans for the new global and technological challenges. (emphasis added).

There was a time when I thought McCain was a different kind of Republican.  No more.  At first I thought his choice of Sarah Palin was just a pathetic and ultimately ineffective ploy to lure women voters.  Now the more I hear Palin (who can see Russia from her house!) try to talk about foreign policy and imagine her "learning on the job" and experimenting with international politics in a nuclear age, I'm thinking the choice shows more than desperation --it shows a dangerous recklessness.  As Ms Drew concludes:

McCain’s recent conduct of his campaign – his willingness to lie repeatedly (including in his acceptance speech) and to play Russian roulette with the vice-presidency, in order to fulfill his long-held ambition [for the presidency]– has reinforced my earlier, and growing, sense that John McCain is not a principled man.

Indeed he's certainly not. 

Thanks but no thanks Sarah Palin!

Sarah Palin's chirpy fascism really scares me.  So here's a great way to tell her to shove it! 

I heard about this campaign on the blog g love and her special sauce and think it's a great idea.  Donate to Planned Parenthood in honor of Sarah Palin and they'll send her a card letting her know of your support.  Use the donate in honor of/in memory of option and put this address in the "send acknowledgments to" field:

John McCain 2008
P.O. Box 16118
Arlington, VA 22215

Tell Sarah Palin "thanks but no thanks" for rolling back decades of progress on women's rights.  Women in this country deserve better.

Meanwhile I hope Sarah Palin continues to inspire young women --to campaign against her reactionary politics!

What price revolution?

Here is a good international perspective on the U.S. election from the Guardian this morning.

Note this paragraph especially:

For America to make a decision as grave as this one - while the planet boils and with the US fighting two wars - on the trivial basis that a hockey mom is likable and seems down to earth, would be to convey a lack of seriousness, a fleeing from reality, that does indeed suggest a nation in, to quote Weisberg, "historical decline".

I've thought the U.S. has been in a historical decline for at least a decade (maybe two) and, objectively speaking (as opposed to speaking out of my own self-interest which would obviously benefit from continued U.S. dominance), I can't see that the decline of the United States would make much difference for the world as a whole. 

We'd fall into a period of hyper-violence (not to imply we don't have hyper-violence now but I'm thinking more widespread and far-reaching) as other countries battled to take over the #1 spot on the world stage (China, Iran, who else? Russia possibly?) but for most of the world's people, would they be any worse off?  I doubt it.  A change in the oppressor, that's all.  And a very bloody transition.

So is it moral of me to want Obama to win because I think he could hold off or even reverse that decline?  I don't know.  Obama's policies are well thought-out, level-headed, wise.  Maybe I harbor a secret hope that perhaps, just perhaps, the tide of U.S. imperialism will recede just a fraction under the leadership of a statesman like Obama.

It's not fair, the suffering that U.S. policies both foreign and domestic have meted out to the world's poor.  It's not fair that we are the only remaining superpower.  It would be arrogant of me to want us to remain a superpower.  I don't want us to be a superpower.  I don't want any country to be a superpower. 

But if the global hierarchy were turned on its head now, it'd be a very long time before the violence receded and stability returned and a lot of people would suffer in the interim.  And even after it was all over, there's no guarantee that the end result would be any better for most people on the planet than the current structure is now. 

People are suffering now.  The world needs salvation now.  I want a revolution as much as anyone but how we get there makes all the difference in the world.  We need Obama to gently, compassionately push us back from the brink and create a better world for all of us.  We need him now.

Bob Herbert on being a liberal

Proud to be a liberal.

"Without the many great and noble deeds of liberals over the past six or seven decades, America would hardly be recognizable to today’s young people. Liberals (including liberal Republicans, who have since been mostly drummed out of the party) ended legalized racial segregation and gender discrimination.

Humiliation imposed by custom and enforced by government had been the order of the day for blacks and women before men and women of good will and liberal persuasion stepped up their long (and not yet ended) campaign to change things. Liberals gave this country Head Start and legal services and the food stamp program. They fought for cleaner air (there was a time when you could barely see Los Angeles) and cleaner water (there were rivers in America that actually caught fire).

Liberals. Your food is safer because of them, and so are your children’s clothing and toys. Your workplace is safer. Your ability (or that of your children or grandchildren) to go to college is manifestly easier.

It would take volumes to adequately cover the enhancements to the quality of American lives and the greatness of American society that have been wrought by people whose politics were unabashedly liberal. It is a track record that deserves to be celebrated, not ridiculed or scorned."

The patriarchy LOVES Palin

On a related note, one of the Sunday news talk shows mentioned that there's a poll out saying that Palin is popular more among working MEN than working women. 

I think for the same reason behind the "gendered sentence" I wondered about in the post below: Palin is the embodiment of the male ideal: a bulwark of patriarchy all wrapped up in the perfect feminine package (and the packaging is all important!).  She can single-handedly buttress male supremacy while all the while looking like she just stepped off the cover of Cosmo, not a hair out of place.  What Republican wouldn't love this?

gendered language

I read this sentence in the Washington Post today and thought it said a lot between the lines, (probably without meaning to). 

"Of the many striking images of Palin -- sportswoman, beauty queen, populist -- in Alaska the most iconic is working mother, a perfectly coifed professional woman balancing public duties and child-rearing in a charismatic blur of multitasking".

"A charismatic blur of multitasking"?  What does that mean?  Multi-tasking is charismatic?  Or multi-tasking these particular activities --career and child-rearing-- is charismatic?  And charismatic to whom?  To men, of course.  It's so sexy to have babies, to embody this ideal blend of male fantasies of women, ooh baby, so attractive!

Then I looked at the byline of the article and saw that two men wrote it.   That seemed to explain so much.

What do you think?  How would it have changed the meaning if a woman wrote the sentence?  Does that imply that language has no absolute meaning, but instead is all relative, depending on who is speaking it where and in what context?

Wow.

Does it make sense to speak of gendered sentences, gendered language, i.e. language that is constructed around a social construct, if language itself is a social construct? 

Questions, questions!