As the presidential race winds down, you can feel the Republican desperation.
Now, that’s not to say I think this election is a done deal. I’ve got my phone bank list open in another browser window (Obama’s website couldn’t make it any easier). So after reading this post — and commenting on it, if you’d like — let’s all get back to work.
But back to the desperation for a moment. Whether it’s the latest hypocritical (and just plain false) guilt-by-association with Rashid Khalidi or hitching on the Ashley Todd stereotype ride, you sense Republicans are searching for a surprise …. But it’s no surprise that they are hoping, expecting, working to make sure it’s something that plays on those good ol’ racial fears.
Thankfully, this time progressives have been meeting fire with fire — and the mainstream media has not been far behind. We’re still counting the like of Rachel Maddow and Campbell Brown as mainstream media, right?
On the frontlines has been Stop Dog Whistle Racism! — which has never let any veiled racial attack pass them by. They define “Dog-Whistle Racism” as “political campaigning or policy-making that uses coded words and themes to appeal to conscious or subconscious racist concepts and frames.” Suffice to say, they have been plenty busy.
When this election is over, we need to have a Hall of Fame of media who, like many of the canvassers and other volunteers that are hitting the streets and the phones this weekend, represent a new generation of awareness and activism.
a) decent
b) family man
c) citizen
d) all of the above.
If you, like John McCain, answered “d,” pat yourself on the back. You’ve just earned yourself some praise from unexpected corners — including much of the liberal blogosphere — for finally reining in the vitriol of your most rabid supporters. In this case? By agreeing with a woman in your audience that the word “Arab” is a slur. She pins the word on Obama; McCain says that’s just not nice.
What’s notable here is that McCain, like everyone in his audience, knew immediately where she was going with this. He knew that to “respect” Obama in this case meant to defend him from the (supposedly heinous) charge of being Arab, and he did this not by saying “actually his father’s family is Luo, from Kenya…” but by calling Obama a decent family man, a moniker he apparently believes no Arab could claim.
Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette, who was present at the event in question, reports that the woman, Gayle Quinnell, said “Arab terrorist,” which would render McCain’s comment more defensible. But in the video there is no indication that Quinnell said “terrorist.” She just said “Arab.” Some have wondered if the word “terrorist” was inaudible. This might be true, but Quinnell keeps speaking after she says the word “Arab,” before McCain reclaims the mike.
I am guessing Cox simply misremembered the exchange: that the words “Arab” and “terrorist” are so thoroughly linked by now that to make the former an adjective of the latter has become second nature.
I heard Chuck Todd report on Meet the Press today that insiders in both campaigns acknowledge that a major factor in Wisconsin and Michigan is an unspoken (and un-pollable) racism from white rural voters — “the Bubba vote.” Todd says that the Obama campaign has a “magic number”: They need to go into election day with a 58 percent majority in the polling in those states, because they are going to lose seven percent of voters who will tell pollsters they are for Obama but who instead will vote their racial fears when they complete the ballot.
What Todd didn’t mention is that this racism isn’t simply a result of a backwards segment of the population; it is being actively fomented by the Republican party and their surrogates. And I’m not talking about intimidating African American voters and others in places like Michigan, where they are threatening to challenge all voters who have received a foreclosure notice on their home (a legally questionable and certainly “mean-spirited” tactic).
No, I’m talking about the distribution of “Obama Waffles” at the Values Voters Summit. It featured a variety of racist portrayals of Obama. While the image on the front recalls classic racist stereotypes, the image of Obama on the top shows him wearing an Arab-like headdress. The image on the back depicts Obama wearing a Mexican sombrero. Joan Lowy of the AP writes:
The box was meant as political satire, said Mark Whitlock and Bob DeMoss, two writers from Franklin, Tenn., who created the mix. They sold it for $10 a box from a rented booth at the summit sponsored by the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council. [...]
While Obama Waffles takes aim at Obama’s politics by poking fun at his public remarks and positions on issues, it also plays off the old image of the pancake-mix icon Aunt Jemima, which has been widely criticized as a demeaning stereotype. Obama is portrayed with popping eyes and big, thick lips as he stares at a plate of waffles and smiles broadly.
Placing Obama in Arab-like headdress recalls the false rumor that he is a follower of Islam, though he is actually a Christian.
On the back of the box, Obama is depicted in stereotypical Mexican dress, including a sombrero, above a recipe for “Open Border Fiesta Waffles” that says it can serve “4 or more illegal aliens.” The recipe includes a tip: “While waiting for these zesty treats to invade your home, why not learn a foreign language?”
If you want to see how a caricature can legitimately use humor and make a political point, I would suggest Steven Brodner’s illustration of Sarah Palin in a recent New Yorker. BagNews Notes, as usual, has the insightful and convincing analysis:
Palin [...] is a reality show. Sixteen days out, her visage continues to permeate the media sphere, as the electricity — primed by biographical fairy tales tightly bound to visual spin aimed at the right brain — continues to trump the reams of qualifying or damaging information that is streaming out.
The crossed arms on two screens and in the larger caricature reflects her inherent defensiveness and hostility. The fish “that big” and the hand gestures on “Bridge to Nowhere” call out the chronic double speak. The way the eyes track in relation to the angle of her head speaks to how well she knows where the camera is (while the disappearing neck telegraphs the underlying reality of “the empty suit.”)
In real life as well, one can easily sense all this, but still she rolls.
Even though many Democratic activists are calling for it, I’m not yet sure that the Obama campaign needs to meet the Republicans down in the muck. I think the alternative narrative — which keeps them on a high road — might hold the most power, if we can afford to be a little patient.
Regardless, they need to seize control of the narrative. And an image, I’ve heard, can be worth a thousand words.
Before I go join Drinking Liberally to watch tonight’s historic event, a few interesting items on race and the Democratic National Convention:
- Writing in The New York Times earlier this week, Alessandra Stanley notes that while one first was celebrated, another was almost swept under the rug: “Tuesday night was tailored to pay homage to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s barrier-breaking near-miss, yet there was no overt celebration of the bull’s-eye: Barack Obama is poised to be the first African-American presidential nominee.”
Of course, that’s all likely to change tonight — and to be clear, Stanley notes that it’s not so much that the sentiment is missing, but that the campaign has kept such references to a minimum: “While African-Americans on the convention floor — and in the commentators’ booth — express feelings of pride and exhilaration, convention organizers design the pageantry on the air to mute racial distinctions and veil novelty, focused it seems, on reassuring those white viewers who find the 2008 spectacle jarringly different from past ones.”
Surely being told of Michelle Obama’s appreciation for the “Brady Bunch” was part of the calculation. Yet the genuine excitement on the floor of the convention, as well as the diversity of this year’s delegates, is obvious to anyone glued to C-SPAN.
But this is the part in Stanley’s piece that was the real stunner:
Obviously, race is a tripwire topic for television, as Chris Matthews of MSNBC demonstrated all too irrepressibly on Tuesday.
Mr. Matthews said the Obamas are “like the Huxtables,” and praised Mrs. Clinton and Mrs. Obama as exceptional role models: “They do everything right. They have great kids, they work their hearts off, they make it in their professions, they don’t live off welfare, they don’t commit crimes, they don’t live on affirmative action.”
His two African-American guests, the seasoned television personalities Ed Gordon and Jeff Johnson, gave him a skeptical look but did not comment.
Plus: Novelist Kim McLarin argues that Michelle Obama’s presence on stage at the convention may be even more transcendent than her husband’s.
- Dawn Turner Trice, a Chicago Tribune columnist who also leads the Exploring Race forum on the paper’s website, has been keeping the discussion going from Denver this week (she’s in row 20 right now at the stadium). Here she asks readers what it means to be an American in the context of race; more here.
- Over at Black Voices, Branden Cobb asks if the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr., has been fulfilled. Rep. John Lewis fielded a similar question during a discussion with Michele Norris that aired on “All Things Considered” this evening.
- The DNC has put together this table (PDF) showing the gender and race breakdown of the delegates for all conventions between 1984 and 2008. This year, women came out slightly ahead of men for the first time ever. About 44 percent of the delegates are minorities. For the past three conventions, the DNC has also logged the percentage of delegates who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, and delegates with disabilities — this year it’s 6 percent and 4 percent respectively.
-Here’s Spike Lee making perhaps the most apt assessment of the meaning of Obama’s nomination, defining it in terms of “BB” and “AB”:
The most pressing question in this presidential campaign has become: Why isn’t the Obama campaign (or their surrogates and sympathizers) spreading insidious rumors about John McCain to counterbalance all the junk out thereabout Obama?
Now, I subscribe to plenty of liberal/lefty e-mail lists — so I feel fairly in touch with the viral pulse out there. And I know plenty of Obama sympathizers will say that they’re working very hard at getting out the unknown stuff about John McCain.
But my response to them would be that you’re still hampered by this ridiculous need to stay in the realm of truth.
For example, Brave New Films has done a great job of exposing “The Real John McCain.” In their latest salvo, they reveal that McCain, in fact, is the true elitist. He and his wife own, among other things, ten mansions:
Unfortunately, though McCain’s elitist hypocrisy might scandalize many of us, it doesn’t come across as a threat to the American way of life. That’s because old, rich white men have always held power in this country. Strangely, it’s not news — both to the man in the street and the Man in the media.
You can’t say the word “nigger” or any other “profanity” in Wilmette, Illinois. Or at least you can’t say it when someone else might hear you.
That appears to be the result of a controversy in which the city’s park district refused to allow an open-air production of the musical adaptation of “Ragtime.”
Jim McDonough, jazz critic for the Wall Street Journal, gives a great overview of the controversy and its resolution, which includes a revealing interview with Ty Perry, an African American actor/director who was hired to direct the production:
Mr. Perry, who claims no special authority over Ragtime based on race, sees things quite differently. “If you don’t want people to use the word,” he said, “this is the perfect opportunity to show them why they shouldn’t.” Setting aside euphemism, he quoted examples of its use in the musical. “There is a song in which Coalhouse Walker [the black protagonist] sings the line, ‘I’m not their nigger,’” he says. “And at another point when Willie Conklin [the racist villain] demands a toll, Coalhouse asks, ‘Since when?’ And Conklin says, ‘Since some high falutin’ nigger and his whore could drive that car of theirs any place they please. That’s since when.’”
Mr. Perry adds: “I understand it makes white people nervous, but to take that word out of ‘Ragtime’ would be to invalidate my heritage as an African-American man. I was talking to my partner about this and he said, ‘I can’t understand what you feel when you hear that word.’ And I said, ‘I can never understand the guilt you feel when you hear that word.’ We both have a common bond with that word. So let’s deal with that.”
Even though the park district eventually agreed to stage the production indoors — starting this past Thursday — they still believe “the decision not to do it outdoors was the correct one.” Apparently, they’d rather not “deal with that.”
Unfortunately neither side is putting the cultural power of this cover in its full context.
And satire is all about context.
David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, actually said in his defense: “The idea that we would publish a cover saying these things literally, I think, is just not in the vocabulary of what we do and who we are.”
This statement sums up for me why, in fact, the cover is somewhat indefensible. Sure, for subscribers of the New Yorker — they get it. They don’t think the New Yorker is trying to undermine the Obama campaign. They’ve read the “Talk of the Town.”
But in the postmodern age, any responsible publisher in any medium needs to know that their images and words, especially the provocative ones, will disseminate to diverse audiences. That doesn’t mean they should avoid satire — but they should make sure their satire works on a broader levels.
Okay, that might work. But this is an extraordinary case. The rumors of Obama’s religious and national leanings are so insidious, so consciously constructed, that to throw the cover into that cesspool without a more direct refutation of that subtle, viral campaign can’t help but perpetuate the mess.
It all reminds me of John Kerry’s inability to see the power of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. With apologies to Marshall McLuhan — in the present political environment, the image or the soundbite is the message. Trusting in the ability of your audience to just “know” the truth isn’t enough anymore.
As a Chicago sports fan, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” has a special place in my heart, having been popularized by Harry Caray when he announced games for both the White Sox and the Cubs.
So I think it’s pretty cool that ESPN is commemorating its 100th anniversary by having a Battle of Bands contest between competing modern versions of the song.
I think it’s even cooler that the ultimate multicultural (and multi-genre) band — Ozomatli — is one of the three finalists:
Paul Mooney, a very funny, veteran African American comedian, says Obama present a challenge to white America: “We’ve always had to say, does this white man like us? We’ve always had to think race. And this is the first time white people have had to think race.”
And Roland S. Martin says that comedy is the perfect venue for that thinking — but maybe not conversing — to occur:
The comedic moment liberates people to laugh out loud at what they really feel and what they really think, but they’re going to naturally suppress those thoughts and views once they’re outside that particular arena,” he said. “It’s OK to sit in that arena and just crack up laughing about rednecks, making jokes about Obama’s ears or his race or whatever, but the moment you want to have the conversation, the whole dynamic changes.
The best joke in the article? That would be when we hear a bit from W. Kamau Bell’s recent stand-up show:
I’m voting for Barack Obama. Not for the reason you expect. I did it because he’s black. Not because he’s intelligent, or well spoken or represents hope. Nope. You had me at Negro.
From another perspective, Dahleen Glanton of the Chicago Tribune does a great job breaking down “coded prejudice” — when people use a secret language of sorts to identify and frequently stereotype African Americans and other minorities.
It uses the present presidential campaign as a starting point the discuss the power and influence of this coding — reminding us about everything from “welfare queens” to Willie Horton and noting how Obama has already had to fight this subtle racism:
“We hear code words all the time in talk radio. It’s a constant drumbeat,” said [Steve] Rendall, who also co-hosts FAIR’s national radio show, “CounterSpin.” “Code word bigotry is a secret code, a secret handshake between the listening audience and the host.
“Either conscious or unconscious, there is sometimes a mispronunciation of [Obama's] name or dwelling on his middle name [Hussein], suggesting that he is some covert Muslim. It is not overt racism but it is xenophobic.”
But it’s an admirably broad piece, tracing the recent history of lawsuits based on coding, which is still being legally defined.
I posted last week about on the power of rumors in this year’s presidential campaign — about how this old-fashioned tactic has taken on new meaning in the digital age. Two subsequent articles have done a great job of explaining the reasons why and how rumors work.
In a New York Times op-ed, Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt, experts on how the brain processes memory, discuss how a false rumor — such as that Barack Obama, a Christian, is a Muslim — is very hard to get out of your mind, even after you have been presented with and recognize the truth. Scary stuff:
The brain does not simply gather and stockpile information as a computer’s hard drive does. Facts are stored first in the hippocampus, a structure deep in the brain about the size and shape of a fat man’s curled pinkie finger. But the information does not rest there. Every time we recall it, our brain writes it down again, and during this re-storage, it is also reprocessed. In time, the fact is gradually transferred to the cerebral cortex and is separated from the context in which it was originally. For example, you know that the capital of California is Sacramento, but you probably don’t remember how you learned it.
This phenomenon, known as source amnesia, can also lead people to forget whether a statement is true. Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true.
It’s a mind-opening read.
And from another angle, Matthew Mosk of the Washington Post discusses the latest work on political rumors by Danielle Allen at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton (yeah, it’s the free-wheeling genius think tank that was once the research home of Albert Einstein). Allen, an expert in the “the way voters in a democracy gather their information and act on what they learn,” became obsessed with how the rumor of Obama being a Muslim — specifically, the chain e-mail about it that became viral — began and spread.
There’s a somewhat surprising consensus that admirable black fictional figures may have subtly conditioned the electorate to be receptive to a candidate like Obama, the presumptive Democratic standard-bearer.
“One wonders to what degree a scenario played out in a safe, contained, fictionalized context might have prepared people for the real thing,” said Darnell Hunt, a professor of sociology and director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. “Popular culture is more than mere entertainment. It gives us a dress rehearsal for the real thing. We can imagine who we are and who we would like to be.”
Make-believe black presidents occupy an odd little corner of pop culture, a territory that a few notable films and television programs have staked out.
The piece makes some unsubstantiated psychological leaps, but it is worth it simply for the history it provides of black presidents on the big and small screen. It sent me on a search, for example, to find more info about a short film, “Rufus Jones for President” (1933), starring a very young Sammy Davis Jr. as a black 7-year-old elected president (see it here) and about a a full-length film “The Man” (1972), starring James Earl Jones “that is largely credited with being the first serious treatment of a black man becoming president”:
Based on an Irving Wallace novel, the movie starred James Earl Jones as the Senate president pro tem who suddenly ascends to the Oval Office after the untimely deaths of the president and speaker of the House and the illness of the vice president.
In the poster for the film, Jones is pictured taking the oath of office at a ceremony populated by white politicians. The tag line for the movie reads “The first black president of the United States. First they swore him in. Then they swore to get him.”
Braxton interviews at length the minds behind two more recent representations of black presidents: the satirical film “Head of State,” in which Chris Rock plays May Gilliam, an ordinary man who ascends to the presidency, and the television series “24,” which began, maybe more radically, in the middle of the presidency of David Palmer (portrayed by Dennis Haysbert)., in which the qualifications of David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) for the highest office were never questioned.
The only issue I have with the article — and this is true for much coverage of pop culture in the mainstream media — is it focuses too heavily on how “life imitates art,” how pop culture is a progressive, forward-thinking force.
While I wouldn’t deny the power of pop culture to change minds, I think it is equally important that we put pop culture in its own historical context — and see it reflecting the anxieties and prejudices of its day, even as it imagines such a “progressive” scenario as a black presidency.
With the exception of David Palmer on “24″ — where a black presidency was accepted as matter-of-fact — all the other representations that Braxton notes can be seen as actually regressive.
It’s telling that on the DVD commentary to “Head of State” Chris Rock says, “I don’t know if I’ll see a black president in my lifetime.” While Braxton sees this as a laughable “misunderstanding,” he ignores that fact that the intention of the Rock’s film was not to lay the groundwork for a future black presidency — it was to express how much racism is an almost impenetrable obstacle to black leadership.
I’ve been wondering when this was going to become an issue.
After seven years of being treated as the greatest threat to America since Joseph Stalin, few Muslims have the energy to muster outrage over a botched photo-op. But the incident speaks to the mutual
ambivalence between Obama and Muslim Americans. As one
editor at Islamica Magazine noted, “Muslim support for Obama is akin to George Bush’s support for democracy in the Middle East. The mere association with the former will undercut the credibility of the latter.”
The Muslim-American demographic, traditionally divided between Republicans and Democrats, has moved to the left by a comfortable margin since the passing of the PATRIOT Act, the war in Iraq, and other assorted failures of this administration. Supporting Obama, however, has proved to be tricky territory. As the candidate continues to face down the Is-Obama-Muslim? question, those who actually are Muslim wish that he would, just once in a while, take a page out of Seinfeld and add “…not that there’s anything wrong with that!” Until then, they don’t see themselves welcomed en masse at his campaign headquarters.
Watching Michelle Obama on “The View” (watch it yourself while it lasts), you see all her very admirable strengths — and you see a predictable campaign strategy emerging. As Jodi Kantor and Michael Powell over at The Caucus put it:
The virtue of a show like this is clear — not only is there a fair dollop of politics, it’s a very useful forum for a candidate, as they can talk about Third Rail topics such as race in a chatty, just between us fashion… . A smart place to roll out the non-makeover makeover.
That’s not to say the discussion isn’t full of shopping tips, a pantyhose debate, motherhood, etc — all the post-Hillary-”standing by my man” safe stuff that allows us to know that Michelle is, first and foremost, a woman.
And of course, not a dreaded feminist. That was made clear long ago, in an early 2007 interview with the Washington Post: “You know, I’m not that into labels. So probably, if you laid out a feminist agenda, I would probably agree with a large portion of it [...] I wouldn’t identify as a feminist just like I probably wouldn’t identify as a liberal or a progressive.”
“The View” appearance, though, certainly reveals that, when she wants to/is allowed, Michelle can be a great, measured spokesperson for the Obama campaign on a variety of substantive issues. Like her husband, she has an uncanny ability to seem like she is never breaking a sweat, no matter what she is asked. And she absorbs other viewpoints with a friendly smile and talk of diversity and a transcendence of party politics.
Basically, she’s really cool — someone, as I’ve said before, with whom everyone (black and white, woman and man) wants to hang.
Let’s just hope she isn’t confined in this new/old role — and she’s able to makes some enemies.
Yes, make enemies — a great indulgence in a campaign season but a potentially profound way to show leadership and demonstrate that true “change” will requires sacrifice and will inevitably be, at times, unpopular. That sense of non-negotiable values is what made John and Robert Kennedy moral touchstones for a generation.
So if someone calls her out on her supposed lack of patriotism or her supposed racial antagonism or if someone turns her intelligence and self-confidence into negative “manly” qualities, she shouldn’t just say they are “lies,” which they are. She herself should use the opportunity to lead us into needed conversations about the power of dissent and the complicated history of race and gender in America.
Of all the images from Tuesday’s historic night, this simple, intimate fist pump is the most striking:
BagnewsNotes, of course, is all over it, appreciating “Michelle’s proud, private, knowing, understated, intimate and unselfconscious expression, as well as the lack of tension in each partner’s body.”
Not only does it show the Obamas and their relationships in a good light, though, it also points the way toward victory in November.
Barack Obama’s greatest asset is his likability, and the genuine affection that he and Michelle seem to feel for each other just adds to it. In a moment like the one above — or maybe in the moment immediately following it, when he turns his smile to us — the entire audience feels like we are his friends and partners, because we can see that the “real” Barack is not so different from our own confidantes. He and Michelle demonstrate an intimacy that’s infectious.
And that’s different from Bill Clinton’s Bubbha persona or George W. Bush’s “regular guy” routine — because those were more self-conscious personal performances — clearly public gestures of sorts. The moments we have between Barack and Michelle, while certainly performances on some level as well, at least feel like extensions of a private life.
Their relationship reminds me of another inspiring political couple, John and Abigail Adams:
More than a year ago, in response to Joe Biden’s racial miscue at the start of the Democratic primary campaign, I discussed how most white Americans have no idea how to talk about race.
Little did I know, though, that ignorance and naivete about race wouldn’t prevent a lot of white people in the media from trying to talk about it every chance they got over the past year.
And hearing the media’s response to the results from West Virginia last night, it’s clear that all that talking hasn’t advanced the conversation very far. Despite periodic attempts at nuance, the dominant race narrative on MSNBC, CNN, Fox and other mainstream political outlets is that Barack Obama has trouble getting white people to vote for him — and that African Americans are hypnotized by the first viable black presidential candidate and simply will not vote for anyone else.
This narrative reduces the complexities of both white and black Americans — and it validates racism by giving it a back-door entrance into the conversation. It reminds me of those well-meaning white folk who argued in favor of segregation because America just wasn’t ready for change just yet.
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What Todd didn’t mention is that this racism isn’t simply a result of a backwards segment of the population; it is being actively fomented by the Republican party and their surrogates. And I’m not talking about 
If you want to see how a caricature can legitimately use humor and make a political point, I would suggest Steven Brodner’s illustration of Sarah Palin in a 
Plenty 
The piece makes some unsubstantiated psychological leaps, but it is worth it simply for the history it provides of black presidents on the big and small screen. It sent me on a search, for example, to find more info about a short film, “