The seriousness and depth of contemporary politics came to the fore yesterday when Nevada Democrat Harry Reid joined Republican opponent Sharon Angle in opposing construction of a mosque and community center near Ground Zero in Manhattan, approximately 2200 miles from Las Vegas.
Citizen K. has learned that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg conducted a conference call with Reid and Angle in which he expressed thanks for their concern. The precise responses of Reid and Angle are unknown, but I can reliably report on Bloomberg's end of the conversation:
"Senator, Ms. Angle, I'd like express my heartfelt gratitude for your interest in New York and your concern for the people living here...
"Yes, I do have to thank you. That you could make time to express your opinion about events in a city on the other side of the country when Nevada has a 14.2% unemployment rate and the highest foreclosure rate in the nation, well...I'm touched to say the least...
"Along those lines, though, I have concerns of my own that I'd like to run by you. As you may know, we have a lot of Catholics here in the Big Apple. New York is also, I'm proud to say, the home of many successful career women. Both groups have their notions and, well, the thing of it is...well...they're awfully offended by the whorehouses in Nevada and would like you to shut them down.
"Look, it's no skin off Elliott Spitzer's nose if a coed wants to go to Nevada to auction off her virginity, but it looks bad if I don't express the same interest in Nevada that you've so courageously shown in New York.
"I'd hate to see this become a political football. When you get right down to it, though, who can come out in favor of whorehouses? A pimp, maybe, but that's about it. Say, are either of you?...Oh, never mind: The less said the better."
Look, I have my issues with Harry Reid. He's allowed the sorry likes of Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson to lead him around by the nose in public. He's done a poor-to-nonexistent job of influencing the MSM coverage of the debate over health care reform insofar as the Senate debate goes. He gave up on a public option without a fight. But to compare what Reid said in private to what Trent Lott said in public, as conservatives urge? Give me a break.
According to Mark Halperin and John Heileman, authors of the forthcoming book Game Change, Reid described in private conversation then-candidate Barack Obama as a "light skinned" African-American "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." An early supporter of Obama's, Reid's characterization, though clumsy at best, was a hard nosed description of the advantages Obama had in a national campaign.
Why did the 69-year Reid use the word "Negro"? (That's what this is all about, after all.) Beats me. He's certainly old enough to remember when "Negro" was an advance on "colored," but he's also old enough to have seen "black" supplant "Negro" and "African-American" supplant "black." He should have used a more considered word, but who can deny the actual point Reid made? An important part of Barack Obama's appeal to whites is that he is not threatening to them, and Reid set forth the precise reasons why.
Here's what Trent Lott said inpublic about Strom Thurmond, the vile racist who ran for president in 1948 on a segregationist, anti-civil rights platform:
I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years.
There's a clear implication here: The United States would have been better off with a president who supported Jim Crow laws and opposed even the most miniscule advances in civil rights. Trent Lott pointedly endorsed to policies of a racist politician who did not believe that all are created equal. Publicly longing for the bad old days of Jim Crow strikes me as a far cry from a pragmatic political analysis made in a private strategy meeting.
Meanwhile, the inimitable Michael Steele soldiers on:
Clearly, he [Reid] is out of touch not only with where America and his district [sic] are but where — how African Americans generally feel about these issues.
How the ultraconservative Steele can claim to be in touch with how the majority of African-Americans feel about anything escapes me. Equally clueless were the remarks of right-wing Texas Republican senator John Coryn, who called Reid's comments "embarrassing and racially insensitive." Forgive me, John, but I doubt that you spend much time figuring out how to be racially sensitive. What I can believe is that you are well-versed in that code words and phrases that appeal to bigots while allowing a veneer of plausible deniability.
The conservative breast-beating over this is downright bizarre. When it comes to civil rights and at least attempting to guarantee racial minorities access to the full blessings of American life, conservatives can't point to a single accomplishment. In fact they resisted with might and main every step forward attempted by the movement activists, the radicals, and the liberals. Yes, some Republicans voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, but these days they'd be called RINO's.
Reid's words were bizarre and poorly chosen. He has apologized to President Obama and the president, having much bigger fish to fry, has accepted the apology. That's good enough for all but the most rabid and hypocritical conservatives. And that, as usual, is who does all the ranting...
Class Act Dept. Rushbo, with his usual grace, charm, and urbanity:
I know the real reason that Teddy Kennedy was mad and offended when Bill Clinton said, "Hey, come on man. You know, this guy would have been fetching us coffee a couple years ago". What made Teddy Kennedy mad was it's women get him coffee, it was Negros that brought Ted Kennedy his booze. And that's why he was all offended.
The intent is to demonstrate Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's utter cluelessness by getting him to state that paying taxes in the United States is a voluntary act and not a coerced transaction by which unwilling Americans are forced to transfer their hard-earned dollars to undeserving welfare recipients. In the video, a hapless Reid makes the mistake of giving a technical answer to a gotcha question.
(Note: For any Palinistas reading, the interviewer in this video asks gotcha questions, which -- no matter how much you think to the contrary -- differ from a straightforward inquiry about which magazines Reid reads. Also, I'm not defending Reid's ineffectual response: He ought to be able to handle the questions. I do wonder why he consented to an interview with this doofus in the first place.)
The plain fact is, though, that in this country we choose to tax ourselves. If enough people decided that we should no longer tax ourselves, they would elect candidates who would eliminate taxation (along with public safety, national defense, public education, roads, basic scientific research, what little public health system we have, and so forth). I'm not unsympathetic to the dilemma of tax dollars going to undeserving recipients. If someone could figure out a way for me to earmark my taxes so that none go to the Iraq war, no-bid Halliburton contracts, and a bloated military, I'd listen with open ears.
In the absence of that, though, I and everyone else are stuck with an imperfect social contract under which we all agree to pay taxes distributed -- for better or worse -- by our elected representatives. This is called "taxation with representation," and we fought a war to establish that particular practice as a right of the people. If I don't like what's happening, I vote to change it. I'm also free to contribute time and money to that end. The field of play is hardly even, but it's the one we've got.
My message to right-wingers like the interviewer above is this: You had eight years in power and you screwed up. Completely. Both ideology and competence of your standard bearers are discredited. And the best you can do now is to ask Harry Reid a couple of cheap shot questions?...
New Orleans offers an unprecedented opportunity to find more effective ways to make urban coastal areas safer around the world, Törnqvist and Meffert say. “A concerted effort to restore and transform a coastal urban center whose functioning is inextricably tied to its surrounding natural ecosystem can only lead to new knowledge and understanding that will prove critical once comparable conditions confront Shanghai, Tokyo and New York City,” the authors write.
I won’t describe the swearing-in ceremony since I’m sure you saw it for yourself. What I will tell you is that the emotions of all the people around us were on display. Families hugged, children sat on shoulders and tears of happiness were shed, including more than a few from Papa. We hung on every word and didn’t leave when it was over. No one wanted to leave. Everyone wanted to feel the way they felt at that moment forever. If only we could.
R. I. P., John Updyke. If you've never read his classic New Yorker essay "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," treat yourself now. You don't have to be a fan of baseball, the Red Sox, or Ted Williams to appreciate writing this good:
Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus, like the inside of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter egg. It was built in 1912 and rebuilt in 1934, and offers, as do most Boston artifacts, a compromise between Man's Euclidian determinations and Nature's beguiling irregularities...
Longtime Boston Globe sportswriter Bob Ryan remembers how the famous essay came about and contributes his own assessment of it...
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