That's what Bill Maher said last week on Real Time with Bill Maher regarding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. His argument was that Barack Obama could have done the politically expedient thing and distanced himself from Rev. Wright last month. Instead, when video on YouTube emerged of Rev. Wright apparently denouncing the United States (which he didn't do -- more on that later), Obama delivered a cogent and nuanced speech about race that treated Americans as intelligent people instead of as empty vessels into which simple, polarized opinions are poured. Obama's race speech was, sadly, revered throughout the media. I say "sadly" because it's the kind of speech that would be the old hat in academia: a speech in which a subject is carefully analyzed, and the apparent discrepancies are explained, but no solid conclusion is reached. Race is a very complex subject, Obama said, and should not be dealt with using platitudes. Wright, said Obama, is his spiritual mentor; he could no more disown him than he could disown his white grandmother, who also made occasionally racist statements. This kind of speech is not politically expedient, because it does not distill the issue down to talking points and sound bites. For Obama to be lauded for delivering a real speech with actual ideas is a disturbing commentary on how far our country's discourse has fallen.

But I digress. Obama took a bullet for Rev. Wright and was congratulated for it. And we thought it was the end. But the ABC debate that preceded the Pennsylvania primary brought Rev. Wright back into the spotlight, and Wright felt it necessary to go on a press blitz over the weekend. He appeared on Bill Moyers' PBS show as a soft-spoken, intelligent man -- but Moyers never addressed Wright's more inflammatory statements, like his assertion that the U.S. government spread HIV to kill black people. In one of his other appearances over the weekend, he said that Obama's defense of him was due to the fact that he's "a politician."

It's this statement that Bill Maher found most offensive: here is Barack Obama, trying his hardest not to appear like just another politician. Here's Barack Obama, faced with an association with a man who could injure his chance at the presidency. And Barack Obama takes the high road -- risking his candidacy -- to defend Rev. Wright. And how does Rev. Wright repay him? By going on TV and saying that Obama is just another politician, spitting in the face of everything Obama has been doing for the past year. And it is for this reason, I think, that Obama made a clean break with Rev. Wright.

Now, there are some points that Rev. Wright has made that are very good points: his "God damn America" statement is not a unilateral statement of hatred for the United States. God is damning America, according to Rev. Wright, because America fails to care for its impoverished and marginalized people, and because America involves itself in unjust wars that cost billions of dollars while people in this country live in poverty and without health care, among other things. Many commentators have passed judgment on the form of the opinion, but no one has talked about the opinion itself: is it valid or not? And the answer is yes, Rev. Wright's opinion is valid. His comment about HIV comes from his statement that, after the Tuskeegee experiments, he will believe anything. This, however, does not excuse statements that are factually incorrect as well as inflammatory. Like any human being, Rev. Wright makes good statements, but he also makes bad ones.

His statements about U.S. foreign policy are actually not the most offensive statements he has made. What's offensive is that Obama took a bullet for him, and Wright repaid him by throwing him under a bus.

Posted by Mark at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's official, America. You're a glutton for punishment.

Here you had Barack Obama, a candidate who promised change, a candidate who wasn't another hackneyed politician. He was an activist and a constitutional law professor. He was eloquent and he had solutions. He held the promise that Democrats had been waiting for: someone who wouldn't cower when faced with the Republicans, but wouldn't become one of them, either. He was someone who would hold his ground and stand up for what he believed in.

And you destroyed him, America. You turned him into the politician you wanted to see: you wanted to see the same hackeneyed baloney. You wanted personal attacks, pandering, and feuding. You wanted George Stephanopoulos and Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews and Sean Hannity to officiate a professional wrestling match. You didn't care about issues: I mean, clearly you don't care about issues. President Bush, after all, has a 69% disapproval rating, and still -- still! -- this election is up in the air. The easy decision, the one that could be made by any student from a middling kindergarten class, would be to vote for someone who is different from the person you hate! In your self-loathing, America, you knew that smoking was bad for you, but you kept on doing it, anyway.

Barack Obama had to go on television this week to denounce the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Why did he have to do this? Is it because the American people are so stupid that they would think that, because Obama went to Wright's church, it follows that Obama himself believes that the government spread HIV in black communities? Of course not: Obama went on television to put an end to the Rev. Wright saga. Something is wrong with this country when the first 45 minutes of a debate are taken up with such issues as flag lapel pins and a crazy pastor.* 45 minutes spent on why he doesn't wear a flag lapel pin? What do you mean by "bitter"? And my favorite, from George Stephanoupolos, "Does Rev. Wright love America as much as you do?" If they really wanted to stir up some controversy, they should have asked him if he liked deep-dish or New York style.

This election promised, more than the others in my memory, to deliver real issues. The country is in the midst of an economic crisis. We're mired in an unpopular war abroad. The president doesn't seem to care about the average person. This is prime time for a politician to talk about what he or she plans to do to save the country. And for the first few months of the campaign, we did talk about that. But as the primaries wore on and it was clear that there would be no definite winner, the so-called mainstream media became bored. Twenty-four hours is a lot of time to fill, and the candidates weren't saying anything new or different. What's a twenty-four hour network to do?

Make up controversy, of course!

It's no coincidence that the Rev. Wright "controversy" landed squarely in the middle of the lull between the Ohio primary and the Pennsylvania primary. Undoubtedly the news media were scouring every source they could find in order to shake the grass. Issues are great, but they don't glue people to news "analysis" enough to justify the ad prices. By finding some great YouTube footage of Rev. Wright supposedly denouncing America, there was more than enough analysis to fill twenty-four hours of television: the initial video! The history of Rev. Wright! What should Obama do! What is Hillary's response! Repeat ad nauseum.

Obama looked like the candidate for change. But now he looks just like any other candidate. Gone is the Obama of a year ago who fired up young Americans and made them believe in their leaders again. America couldn't tolerate a candidate who didn't give it bread and circuses. So they pulled Obama down into the muck with them, ensuring that they would have entertainment for the next week, even if it means granting the Bush administration a four-year extension.

Posted by Mark at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

... if you count Michigan and Florida. Hillary claimed yesterday that she was 100,000 votes ahead in the popular vote for the Democratic nomination. Her statement was artfully crafted so as to be technically true but nevertheless misleading: "I'm very proud that as of today, I have received more votes by the people who have voted than anyone else," she said. The key clause here is "people who have voted." While people in Michigan and Florida voted, their votes did not count. How odd that Hillary, who once upon a time agreed that she would not campaign in those states and that those states' votes wouldn't count, is now the champion of enfranchising those voters.

This is an excellent example of what to expect from President Hillary Clinton: misleading phrases that are technically true but pragmatically misleading, and support for positions that are politically popular, not right. President Bush is currently the master of the technically-true-but-misleading phrase; with Hillary, we would get at least four more years of that.

While Hillary continues to count Michigan and Florida voters, no one else does. There will be no re-vote in those states, which chose -- against DNC rules -- to hold their primaries before Feb. 5. As a result, their delegates will not be seated.

Here's the problem: Hillary is, in reality, 500,000 votes behind Obama. With her 10-point victory in Pennsylvania, she officially cannot win the nomination with pledged delegates alone. Prior to Pennsylvania, she would have had to win every remaining contest by at least 20 points. She has taken out insurance in the form of trying to coerce superdelegates, but a win financed by superdelegates in spite of Obama's popular victory would make her candidacy appear illegitimate and artificial. Add these two facts -- the fact that she cannot win through pledged delegates and the fact that she must appear to have popular support -- and the sum is that she desperately needs to get the Michigan and Florida delegates seated. That gives her more popular votes, which equals more legitimacy, and if she succeeds in wooing enough superdelegates to her side to win the nomination, she can point to her popular vote numbers as proof that she won through "the will of the people" and not back-room deals with party insiders.

But what would the rest of the country think? Hillary is essentially asking to change the rules now that she dislikes the outcome. Obama didn't campaign in Florida, and he -- along with every other Democratic candidate except Hillary -- wasn't on the ticket in Michigan, since everyone agreed that Florida and Michigan wouldn't count. Hillary was okay with this deal in January because she -- like most of us -- thought the election would be decided in Iowa and New Hampshire like it is in every election. Once she realized that Obama had more popularity than anyone had thought, she panicked and reneged on her agreement under the assumption that votes need to be counted, people need to be recognized, etc. etc. Never mind that there is no right to vote in a party primary. While party primaries are administered by the FEC and local boards of election, they do not hold the same status as official elections. Parties, for example, may limit participation in their primaries to party members only. The notion that voters have a "right" to vote in a primary is a mistaken notion; voters in primaries are subject to the stipulations of the parties involved, unlike a general election.

Seating the delegates outright is out of the question; a contest where Hillary was the only candidate would be plainly unfair, as would a contest in which no other candidates campaigned in the state because they thought (correctly) that that state wouldn't count. All she can do now is mount a P.R. campaign designed to make her appear -- both to voters and superdelegates -- more electable than she really is. The fact is that, in order to win the presidency, the Democratic candidate has to be able to sway not just died-in-the-wool Democrats, but also swing voters and new voters. In Pennsylvania, Obama captured six of ten new voters: he also holds sway among swing voters. Republicans definitely don't like Hillary Clinton, and her candidacy wouldn't make them abandon John McCain. Obama, however, might do just that.

The next contests are May 6 in Indiana and North Carolina. Polls in Indiana are up in the air, ranging from neck-and-neck to a huge Hillary win. North Carolina is definitively Obama country, with the spread ranging from 9 points in his favor to 25 points in his favor. He will soundly defeat Hillary in North Carolina; only Indiana remains a swing state.

If Hillary loses the popular vote and the pledged delegate count, but manages to use the Clinton "victory at any cost" machine to drive right over Obama and secure the nomination, the Democratic party will be in shambles and their victory in November -- which is crucial for the survival of this country -- will be in serious doubt. A McCain victory assures continued involvement in Iraq, continued military spending, no foreseeable health care reform, continued tax breaks for the Americans who need tax breaks the least, and God knows what kind of foreign policy. A McCain victory in November would give added credence to the Republicans, as though "they're back!" Republican inertia would in turn lead to more Republican wins, bringing us right back to where we were in 2002.

Posted by Mark at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sen. Barack Obama has received a good deal of flack for comments he made last week in San Francisco. Speaking of middle-class workers in Pennsylvania, he said, "It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Sen. Hillary Clinton immediately went for the throat, criticizing his comments as "elitist." (In today's CNN Compassion Forum, Clinton added "out of touch" to her characterization of his comments. Please keep in mind that Hillary is a graduate of both Brown University and Yale Law School, hardly bastions of the "common man.")

But are his comments wrong? Clinton has suggested that Obama is being "patronizing" in his suggestion that religion is something that people turn to when times are tough. But she has not answered Obama's argument: namely, that middle-class Americans in economically depressed parts of the country have lost faith in the ability of government to help them, choosing instead to turn somewhere else for help, or to blame others (in this case, immigrants) for the problems that government has caused.

Paul Levinson suggests that this is a non-issue, since working families know how hard their lives are, and for Hillary to suggest that everything is rosy is just as disingenuous as George W. Bush suggesting that the economy is doing just fine. What do Americans want: a politician who insists everything is fine as the country burns around her, or a politican who tells it like it is? John McCain didn't receive the same amount of criticism when he appeared in Detroit earlier in the year and told an audience there that "there are some jobs that won't be coming back." Mitt Romney, on the other hand, went to Detroit and said that they could get jobs back, and he could help.

That's a lie.

Aside from forcing American auto manufacturers from employing Americans in the United States, there's nothing the president can do. Furthermore, the "free trade" types that populate the Republican party would have none of it.

Every time Obama disseminates a harsh truth, Hillary calls him on it, as though the job of the president is to be the nation's cheerleader. What's the point in that? And, if Hillary really wants to make a change, why would she choose to adhere to a George W. Bush tactic; namely, putting an irrationally and incorrectly optimistic spin on a situation that isn't very good?

Posted by Mark at 8:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Elizabeth Drew, writing in The New York Review of Books, characterizes Hillary Clinton's campaign strategy as "molehill politics":

In this fight, the Clinton camp is the more aggressive of the two, and it's adept at what might be called molehill politics: making a very big deal in the press about something that's a very small deal—such as a single word in a mailing or a slip-up by an aide. Clinton's strategists pounce on whatever opportunity presents itself to attack Obama, and try to knock him off his own message, and his stride.

According to Drew, Hillary can't make positive steps forward; all she can do is try to bring Obama down. It's come down to the superdelegates, since Hillary would have to win by at least 20% in every remaining primary contest if she wanted to beat Obama in pledged delegates. Ever since the Texas and Ohio primaries -- which, instead of definitively ending the contest, assured only that it would continue -- Hillary has abandoned the state primaries and instead focused on superdelegates. This, says Drew, is Clinton's goal: "to convince the as-yet-uncommitted superdelegates which candidate would be stronger in the general election -- regardless of who has won the most pledged delegates." The 3 AM ad, the mortgage crisis ad: these are designed to convince superdelegates that Obama is not as electable as Clinton.

In the meantime, according to Daily Kos, the Republican National Committee is trying to get Hillary Clinton seated as the Democratic nominee because they believe she will be easier to defeat.

And all the while, John McCain is portrayed as a "maverick" in the so-called mainstream media even as he adjusts his positions to match those of the Republican mainstream. McCain, who has never been particularly religious, switched to evangelical Protestantism in order to appease that wing of the Republican party. McCain's foreign policy has also taken a turn toward neoconservatism, ensuring that this once-maverick politician joins the Republican mainstream and delivers us four more years of what we've seen since 2001.

Posted by Mark at 1:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By Richard D. Erlich

"Freedom isn't free" is a true statement that became a cliché, so we no longer think about what it means, nor its implications.

We need to think about it.

John F. Kennedy said that we Americans would "pay any price, bear any burden [...] to assure the survival and the success of liberty." Within a few years, a bitter observation had it that the world would be better off if Lyndon Johnson was a more consistent Machiavellian and hadn't applied such Kennedy-esque idealism to Vietnam. Ideals can be pushed too far when the cost is human lives.

Usually, though, people go too far in the other direction, arguing that "If it saves just one life, it" -- all sorts of "it's" -- is justified. Safety can be idealized and presented as an infinite good, and that, too, is a problem.

I have heard people say, "Nothing is more important than protecting our troops?" If nothing is more important than protecting our troops, we should keep them out of war zones. If they're in combat on a justified mission, accomplishing the mission is more important than their safety.

Similarly, George W. Bush has said that his main duty as President was protecting the American people. Actually, what a president swears most specifically to do is "to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." The president's job includes protecting Americans, but his primary job is protecting America, which can be something different. To protect America, the president may have to send to their deaths American troops.

Civilians, too, need to take risks, and the cost of freedom includes civilian deaths.

Freedom can be dangerous. I'm a life-member of the American Civil Liberties Union, but I'll tell you that most Americans, most of the time -- even most members of most minority groups -- would be safer in a police state.

Part of the cost of freedom is the blood of Americans who would not have died or been wounded or maimed if we lived in a police state.

Racism complicates things, but most of us would be safer -- at least initially -- in an America without the Bill of Rights: disarmed (no Amendment 2) with constant surveillance (Amendment 4), and no troublemakers free to openly spread dangerous doctrines (Amendment 1). Most of us would be safer in a country without trials and legal technicalities, where the authorities could just throw known or suspected evil-doers into jail indefinitely and torture them for information -- or just to break them -- or, for "the worst of the worst" of the evil, send out death squads to kill them (Amendments 5-8).

Freedom isn't free, and neither is safety, and a fair number of American civilians seem willing to pay high prices in military blood for freedom, and the blood of foreign civilians, but not take too many risks for themselves or their kids. Many of us will trade a whole bunch of freedom for at least a sense of safety.

And to get done other handy things.

If you don't believe this, check out a sampling of American schools and then ask about bringing some medical marijuana with you on a commercial air flight. Kids don't have the same rights as adults, but to preserve their safety we've made a lot of schools very like prisons -- complete with "lockdowns" -- and have quietly dropped critical thinking and Civics as part of the "basics" kids should know. These practices have contributed to a generation or two with little sense of a right to privacy, and little knowledge of or dedication to most of the US Bill of Rights.

Oh -- and if you openly bring marijuana of any sort onto a commercial air flight, you'll be arrested: extraordinary laws to protect us against terrorists are used against the most ordinary sorts of crimes.

We need to take seriously "Freedom isn't free," and liberals, conservatives, and civil libertarians need to talk openly and honestly about the price they are willing to pay, and ask others to pay, for freedom. We need to discuss how much courage we can demand from ordinary people.

Justice Louis D. Brandeis said, "The makers of the Constitution conferred the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by all civilized men -- the right to be let alone." If we are to maintain that right, we Americans need to carefully balance the claims of liberty and security -- and take more risks. As Steven Stills said, we must "Find the cost of freedom," and be willing to pay.

Richard D. Erlich is currently the main content provider for the Clockworks 2 wiki, which people interested in science fiction should visit and help build since, even including the hard-copy, hard-cover Clockworks [1] (Greenwood Press), is a radically incomplete List of Works Useful for the Study of the Human/Machine Interface in SF.

Posted by Mark at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)