We love dogs here at PopPolitics. And we love Best Friends Animal Society — a great organization that rescues and cares for the neediest of animals, especially dogs.

So when Best Friends asks us to send a message to Senator Obama, we’ll give it serious consideration.

In this case, they are responding to news that Obama has promised his daughters a new puppy after the election — and the American Kennel Club polled “AKC experts” to determine what pure-bred breed would be the best match.

Here’s the start to Best Friends’ petition — which they are promoting on ObamaFamilyDog.com:

If Sen. Barack Obama becomes president, he’ll instantly be faced with decisions that will affect millions of Americans. Obama will also soon be making a decision that could affect millions of American dogs. It has been reported that once the election is over, the Obamas will be looking for a new four-legged family member (much to his daughters’ delight).

The American Kennel Club (AKC) has suggested five types of purebred dogs that would fit the Obamas’ lifestyle. While we don’t disagree that it’s important to choose a dog that matches well with the family, mixed breeds should certainly be considered along with pure breeds. Also, whether purebred or mutt, we believe the Obamas should make a winning choice and adopt a family dog, not buy one.

In America’s shelters, millions of dogs are killed each year, in large part because there aren’t enough families for them. For a candidate focused on “hope” and “change,” adopting a homeless pet is the right choice. Win or lose, this is an opportunity for Obama to effect change on this very important issue.

From my perspective, how you treat the neediest around might say more about your character than any policy position.

Plenty is being said about the new New Yorker cover that features Barack Obama in Muslim dress amidst plenty of anti-American symbolism.

The New Yorker is defending it as satire — a mockery of the right-wing distortions of Obama’s background and political leanings.

Obama’s camp is calling it “tasteless and offensive.”

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.

Some have suggested they might have shown the images on the cover coming out of bubble above John McCain’s head or being painted by Rush Limbaugh.

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.

I read the other day that Wednesday, July 16, is the only day of the year in which there is no major professional sporting event taking place in the United States. That is a fact worth some contemplation, which may lead to some conclusions about overkill and saturation. But instead of going down that road, I would like to make a few observations about the current baseball season — a season most strange and maybe even portentous.

But first: We have arrived at that moment in mid-summer when baseball takes a break for the All-Star Game. The first All-Star Game was the creation of Arch Ward, a Chicago Tribune sports editor who was able to persuade the owners to hold a game between the American and National League All-Stars in Chicago in conjunction with the Century of Progress Exhibition of 1933. Those who welcomed this game saw it as the dawning of a new age, in which the use of modern promotional techniques had arrived in baseball.

A number of owners objected to it as a distraction from the regular season, an unnecessary interruption of the normal patterns. No doubt some also objected because they were not going to make enough money from the game, which was being played for charity. Managers objected because it broke up the regular season, although more objections came from those managers whose teams were doing well than those whose teams were struggling.

After the first All-Star Game, the managers were designated as the previous year’s pennant winners. But for that first game, two of the grand old managers — Connie Mack and John McGraw — were given the honor. For the first two years, both managers and fans chose the players, and then from 1935 through 1946, the managers selected their teams. Beginning in 1947, the selection of the starting lineup passed to the fans — until 1957, when Cincinnati fans stuffed the ballot box and chose Reds for seven of the eight starting positions.

This led to the removal of the fans from the process from 1958 to 1969. During that period, Major League managers, coaches and players made the selections. In 1970, the selection of the starting lineups was once again the domain of the fans. Ballot-box stuffing and sentimentalism — rather than performance –continue to dominate the selection. Now the system includes also includes online voting.

Continue reading "A Long, Strange First Half of the Season It’s Been …"

Update: Here’s the comprehensive article I had been looking for on the history of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

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:

It reminds me of when I saw the Sones de México Ensemble sing “This Land is Your Land” in Spanish at the Old Town School of Folk Music’s 50th anniversary concert late last year.

Redefining America never sounded so good.

It was a magnificent tennis match. Two evenly matched players, who admired each other’s game, competed as they had done many times before. It turned out to be the best tennis match that each had ever played against the other, and it was on the Centre Court of the All England Club for the Championship at Wimbledon.

The amazing thing is that this description could apply equally to both the Ladies’ Singles Championship on Saturday and the Gentlemen’s Singles Championship on Sunday.

The Ladies’ Championship involved two sisters and went two sets for about two hours. The Gentleman’s Championship involved two major rivals and turned into the longest Wimbledon Championship in history, coming in at almost five hours and played over nearly nine hours. Delayed by rain at the outset and then twice during the match, many were already proclaiming this match the greatest Wimbledon final in history well before it ended in the waning evening light of the London summer.

The Williams sisters have played many times before, several in grand slam finals, and invariably have produced lackluster or sloppy tennis. Too often it was painful to watch. At last on Saturday there was a match between these two fabulous players that rose to the level of their great talent. Each called forth from the other the best tennis they were capable of playing. It was a treat by any measure, but it was particularly sweet for those who have been waiting years for this match-up to produce play at this level.

Continue reading "The Glorious Way the Ball Bounces"

A couple of recent articles tackle the question of race in America from two ends of the cultural spectrum.

Mark de la Vina of the Mercury News discusses how comedians are some of the few people who are actually talking about Barack Obama’s race.

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.

Seriously, BagNewsNotes has been doing such a good job analyzing images of Obama and images of Obama and McCain — we could use his wisdom here.

The following is a personal reflection on the meaning of George Carlin by David Masciotra, published in the “impressions” section of PopPolitics magazine:

How does one make a 14-year-old who hates high school excited about language, learning and politics? One way guaranteed to be effective is to make the entire process painfully funny.

At one point I was that kid, awkwardly stumbling through adolescence, bored by conventional classroom tactics, attempting to determine what interested me as a student and what spoke to me as a human being. Somewhere in the midst of that exploration of self-discovery, I was introduced to counter-cultural comedian George Carlin.

Continue reading “Remembering George Carlin.”

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.

Continue reading "Following Up: More on Michelle Obama and the Power of Rumors"

Every summer, it seems, I go through my Liz-Phair-regret phase. It’s probably because on our near-annual roadtrips, Liz Phair’s first three albums — “Exile in Guyville,” “Whip-Smart” and “whitechocolatespaceegg” — are still, to this day, in heavy rotation in the car’s CD player.

Besides being full of fun, quirky and complex music, they are powerful and risky feminist statements. And that’s not because they explicitly promote some agenda of empowerment — but because Phair deftly picks at life’s complexities; she is full of desires and doubts, strengths and weaknesses.

My love of these albums made Phair’s sudden but deliberate and self-aware attempt at pop stardom (by eliminating the quirks and dumbing down the lyrics) all the more devastating. It’s been awhile since she made that transformation in her fourth album, “Liz Phair” (2003), and boggled the minds of fans and rock critics alike. If you want to revisit that cultural moment, see the vitriolic critiques by Mim Udovitch in Slate or, from one of her early advocates, Greg Kot in the Chicago Tribune.

What makes this summer’s regret phase particularly poignant is that Liz Phair seems to be going through it as well. Or at least that might be a pop psychologist’s take on her 15th-anniversary reissue of “Exile in Guyville” and the accompanying tour in which she plays the entire album. Greg Kot uses the opportunity to revisit the past himself, while Jim Derogatis of the Chicago Sun Times saw her kick-off concert at the Vic Theater and, well, didn’t like it.

While Phair might be trying to make up for some lost time, she still doesn’t seem to fully “get it” — to realize her own contradictions.

Continue reading "Female Singer-Songwriters: Crafting a Contradiction"

Greg Braxton writes in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times:

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.

Worthwhile photo galleries accompany the article.

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.

This election year, instead of dreaded “swiftboating,” the chief Republican campaign tactic is rather old-fashioned: rumors. Granted, rumors take on a whole new meaning in the digital age, but they work by the same word-of-mouth method they always have.

I was heartened by the fact that the Obama campaign saw this new/old reality and decided to enter the fray, instead of hoping it all goes away. They created a website — Fight the Smears — that attempts to counter every “smear” with “the truth.”

Unfortunately, the site is rather lame. It should be a daily blog that acts as a watchdog of the media coverage, but instead, its static feel and lack of updated content gives interested readers no reason to return.

Better to rely on independent sources such as Michelle Obama Watch — which has the grassroots type of energy that the Obama campaign has, until now, displayed itself.

Or, maybe take the satirical advice of Christopher Beam at Slate, who lists a series of alternative rumors that he thinks the Obama campaign should actively encourage. Here’s some of my favorites from the fairly long list:

Barack Obama goes to church every morning. He goes to church every afternoon. He goes to church every evening. He is IN CHURCH RIGHT NOW [...]

Barack Obama’s skin is the color of AMERICAN SOIL.

Barack Obama buys AMERICAN STUFF. He owns a FORD, a BASEBALL TEAM, and a COMPUTER HE BUILT HIMSELF FROM AMERICAN PARTS. He travels mostly by FORKLIFT.

Barack Obama says that Americans cling to GUNS and RELIGION because they are AWESOME.

So two Muslims in headscarves were barred from appearing on camera at an Obama event in Michigan. Obama’s spokesperson promptly apologized and said this was the decision of individual volunteers, not indicative of campaign policy. The women asked for a personal apology from Obama himself.

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.

Continue reading "Muslims For Obama — But Don’t Tell Anyone"

The coverage — truly, the celebration — of Tim Russert’s life and legacy has been, surprisingly, very engaging. Sure, I got a bit tired of the non-stop eulogizing, but the affection and dignity with which everyone has remembered Russert feels like a oasis of humanity amidst the manufactured narratives that dominate TV news.

In particular, the bits of the memorial service I was able to see yesterday — especially Luke Russert’s rousing eulogy and Bruce Springsteen’s comments and performance of “Thunder Road” — were undeniably moving.

Having said all that, I can’t help but agree with Hal Boedeker’s scathing critique of the coverage — which he calls “one of the most embarrassing chapters in television journalism history” and “outright merchandising of his death for ratings.”

It really is a must-read in its entirety — but to give you a sense of it, here are excerpts from the first three of the six major “lessons” from the coverage that “should be taught in journalism schools”:

Continue reading "Meet the Press … And Forget About the News?"

The following is a new article by Steve Schwartz, published in the “sights” section of PopPolitics magazine. Schwartz reviews and contextualizes the “John Adams” miniseries, which has just been released on DVD:

In one of the final scenes of HBO’s seven-part miniseries “John Adams” (available now on DVD), the former president, nearing 80 years old and grieving after the passing of his wife Abigail, visits Boston’s Faneuil Hall to view John Trumbull’s iconic painting of the Founding Fathers signing the Declaration of Independence.

The truculent old man offers his verdict directly to the artist: “It is very bad history.” Adams proceeds to explain that there was no single moment where the delegates ceremoniously affixed their signatures to the document; instead, they were doing so throughout the summer of 1776, while scurrying in and out of Philadelphia.

“You would not deny the artist a certain … license?” Trumball pleads with Adams, to no avail.

“Don’t let our posterity be deluded with fictions under the guise of poetical or graphical license,” admonishes Adams.

Of course, the writers and producers took their own creative license with this memorable moment. As David McCullough wrote in his Pulitzer-prize winning biography that inspired this miniseries, “What Adams thought as he looked at this painting will never be known.”

I focus on this scene not to criticize the fabrication but to use it as a handy reference point to illustrate the virtues of this series. It serves to remind us that good history can be presented in all of its complexities based on its own merits.

Continue reading “Making History: HBO Brilliantly Captures John Adams’ Complex Life.”