Public Address - Busytown (Home)

Yes he can (or: Is McCain able?) | Feb 12, 2008 07:50

As Obama has proven, if you want to snag the vote, get your mates to come up with something people can e-mail to each other. An uplifting, musically inspired, goosebump-inducing B & W viral video. Can it work for John McCain too? Watch all the way to the end. The guy with the paper bag was the absolute highlight for me.

Alas, Hillary still hasn't managed to capture the YouTube wave. Maybe her new campaign manager will get it? I wish I had the skillz to make a video of her best moments to the tune of Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman."

Or at least to produce some lip-synched version of her debates with Barack, using footage from Bob the Builder... with Hillary as the eminently capable but always sidelined Wendy. Only that would make Bill Bob, and ... oh it's so confusing.

I'm hugely sympathetic to the feminist arguments about how Hillary's historic candidacy is being systematically devalued via traditional and surreptitious sexism. After all, this is a woman whose mother was born when American women (in all but a handful of states) still didn't have the right to vote. The righteous fury of this piece by the legendary Robin Morgan warmed the cockles of my radical feminist heart. Amen, sister! Old school but right on! It's certainly more cogent and less omg-she-could-like-totally-be-me! than Erica Jong's similar article in the Washington Post. Lest this seem like an exclusively female meme, good old Stanley Fish covers similar ground in the NY Times (including comparing the blithe sexism and misogyny of Clinton's opponents to anti-Semitism).

It starts young, though. My older boy is a confirmed Obama fan, and ventured the other day that "African American people are just smarter at the job than women." Where to start parsing that one?? I'm so thrilled he's gotten the message of Martin Luther King day (this year he mastered the words of the song that he insisted last year was called "Martin Luther King was a silver rights leader"), but I do have to take the second half of that statement a teensy bit personally.

I think he's picked up on the either/or vibe, and formulated his answer in those terms because binary thinking is very hard to get outside of. I asked him to expand on it a little bit, and he made the cogent point that "Perhaps Obama's father from Africa taught him some different ways of thinking, from that part of the world, not like the way Americans think, so he's more smart about the world than if he was just American. Because people in Africa have to do more things from scratch rather than just buying stuff, like in America, so it makes them smarter."

There are some issues there, true, but on the whole it's a nuanced perspective I hadn't heard before and I kind of liked it.

On the other hand, this open letter (thanks permiegirl for the link) from a fellow Wellesley College alum is troubling, whatever you think of GE.

And what do you make of Shep's suggestion in the comments thread to my previous post, that Star Trek precedent suggests we'll have a woman at the helm before a black man? Highly logical, captain? Or proof that American women can run things only in some parallel universe? (Captain Janeway was British, if I remember rightly).

I don't know - all this either/or black/white XX/XY stuff is doing my head in. Somebody point me towards a paradigm for thinking about it that doesn't take into account each candidate's "first"ness but rather their fitness for office...

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Other good stuff. Bob Munro posted a link to BagNotes which does a great line in visual analyses of the news.

And I liked Anjum's take on Obama's expedient response to rumours that he swore an oath on the Quran as opposed to the good old Bible.

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Forever Tuesday Morning | Feb 05, 2008 09:49

I had a dream about Barack Obama the other night. No, no, not that kind of dream -- I should be so lucky. In my dream, Mr and Mrs Obama came to our house for a fund-raising cocktail party. Because, in my dreams, I'm a highly influential member of the local community (despite or perhaps because of my charming foreign accent).

Actually, that's not so improbable: two summers ago, our street party was crashed by Ned Lamont, who was the leading contender to take down Senator Joe Lieberman - you remember him, the conservative Democrat and one-time would-be presidential candidate (as the Daily Show put it at the time, "Lieberman: for people who think George W. Bush isn't Jewish enough").

Trailed by camera crews from BBC America and the 24/7 politics channel C-Span, there was Ned Lamont on our street, shaking hands and kissing babies, including my own freshly minted one. I wished the man luck and said I was sorry I couldn't vote for him as I was not a citizen.

According to politics-geeks friends who were watching the live coverage on C-Span (I know, sad!), as Lamont turned away, he shrugged and said "She must be French or something..."

Bien-sûr, c'est difficile to be a foreigner in this country sometimes. Which is why it might be nice to have a President who had not only been overseas, but lived overseas. Imagine that!

Anyway, in my dreams, the Obamas were charming company. At first. And then they started to wear on me. Every topic of conversation, every stray comment I made, was pounced on to make a persuasive argument about how Barack would do better for us than any of the other candidates.

"Nice garden!"

"Yep, it's lovely, the boys like playing out there, and last year we planted tomatoes, and peas, and beans, and corn…"

"Well let me tell you right there, agriculture is the heart of America, and corn-based ethanol is a viable alternative energy source blah blah blah..." And off he'd go.

In my dream, he was the candidate I would love to have a beer with, because maybe it would make him just shut up for a minute.

In the dream I eventually stamped my feet and yelled "GUYS! We can't vote for you! So let's just, you know, chat?"

Of course my subconscious was not reflecting on the man himself - I'm sure he knows how and when to turn it off - as much as on the curious all-encompassing intensity of the US electoral system. The candidate becomes a 24/7 campaigning machine, to the point where, if the machine momentarily grinds to a halt, or churns out an unexpected answer, or goes all teary for a minute, it's big news.

Hillary hasn't attended any of my nocturnal fundraisers yet, so I can't report on her imaginary cocktail party manners. I get the sense her husband would suck all the oxygen out of the room -- but if you could only get her by herself, she'd own the place.

Curiously, she was just around the corner as I began typing this, kissing babies at the Yale Child Study Center. What a missed opportunity!

Anyway, all the talk comes to a head tomorrow, US time, on Super Tuesday. There will be a polling booth in the foyer of my big boy's school. And a bunch of parents will be taking advantage of hungry voters by holding a bake sale to raise money for the PTO. As far as I can make out, it's not actually illegal (as it is in New Zealand) to campaign on the day, which poses the quandary: do I ice the cupcakes with OBAMA or CLINTON?

I'm bummed that I can't vote, but a little relieved too, because how would you choose between two such different but brilliant and inspiring candidates? And both so symbolically weighted as well - each in the running to be a real first for this country. Rebecca Traister eloquently captures the dilemma in this piece at Salon.

I have to say, this awesome video (plus his great books) made me want to vote for Barack Obama. Plus, check out his amazing wife and cool sister.

And while Hillary hasn't done so well out of the viral video thing (ouch), this interesting (but flawed) exercise tipped me back in her direction, at least for a moment.

Meanwhile, supporters of both are adamant that only their candidate could beat the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain. But who knows? Obama can presumably be counted on to get out the youth vote, but we counted on that last time, and look what happened.

By the time Tuesday evening rolls around, American time, we'll have a clearer sense of who'll be on the slate in November. For the moment, though, I'm savouring the feeling of optimism and hope that hovers over the whole business. I like this sense of antici......pation. It feels very different from the Tuesday four years ago when events conspired to re-elect the cowboy president. Change is in the air, no matter who comes out ahead tomorrow, and that can only be a good thing.

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