Black Bloggers Identify Taser Nation

There has been a great deal of uninformed comment about the invisibility of African-American bloggers, mostly by white bloggers who don't trouble themselves to read the work of African-American bloggers. One area where black bloggers are way out in front of black bloggers is the increasing use of tasers as a torture device by American police. Here's Margaret Kimberley of Black Agenda Report:

A country that employs torture as an instrument of national policy should be expected to do the same on the local law enforcement level. The reverse is also true. The United States, with its long legacy of subjecting society's "Others" to systemic violence, now elevates pain to a kind of universal principle, spreading torture and "rendition" as institutionalized components of its global offensive. Now the domestic legacy and foreign policy combine to trickle down upon previously immune white citizens, in the form of Taser-torture. Tasers, once defended as life-saving alternatives to police use of deadly force, have become weapons of arbitrary, sadistic choice. The circle of pain is complete.

The most prominent example of the "trickle down" of Taser torture to American whites is the incident of Utah policeman Jon Gardner zapping white motorist Jared Massey with 50,000 volts of electricity because Massey wouldn't sign a ticket for speeding that he wasn't legally required to sign anyway. The whole incident was captured on video and distributed on YouTube. The only thing that Massey was being to Officer Gardner was annoying. Yet, USA Today reported that the Utah Highway Patrol found Gardner's conduct to be "lawful and reasonable under the circumstances." In other words, the highway patrol is saying that Utah policeman have a right to torture anybody they want anytime they want unless the torture is even more egregious than what happened to Massey and captured on video.

Surprised There Aren't More Hostage Situations

My main reaction to the hostage situation at one of Hillary Clinton's campaign offices is surprise, and gratitude, that there aren't more such incidents. In the U. S., we have a potent mix of troubled individuals, a violence-soaked popular culture, pervasive pornography, and easy access to weapons and explosives. We not only have a high murder rate but a seemingly constant stream of serial killers, serial rapists, fantasy killings, and other bizarre crimes. Given that there are also continual reports about terrorism, it's surprising that more people haven't adopted terrorist motifs to express their longing for violent revenge and fame.

New Hampshire hostage taker Leland Eisenberg seems to be a good example of what I'm talking about. He claims that he walked into the campaign office with a fake bomb taped to his chest because he was frustrated over his inability to obtain mental health care.


Hillary Clinton believes that account, but I do not!! It sounds too pat, too contrived, and too closely correlated to Hillary Clinton's reputation on health care to be true.


Certainly, Eisenberg is a guy with a lot of long and short-term troubles. He was apparently homeless at the age of twenty-one, accused a Catholic priest of abusing him, and served a 10-12 year prison sentence on a rape count. More recently, he had been arrested for "driving under the influence and stalking" and his wife was divorcing him because of his heavy alcohol consumption, verbal abuse, and threats. That's a load of problems. Nevertheless, it seems like Eisenberg was more frustrated by his lack of fame and celebrity than by a lack of mental health care. Or at least, he was coping with his sea of troubles by trying to become famous. The day before he walked into the Clinton campaign office with a fake bomb strapped to his chest, Eisenberg told his stepson to be sure to watch the television because he knew that he himself would be the center of televised terrorism drama the next day.

It's that convertability of personal breakdowns and traumas into efforts to seek fame through terrorist behavior that's worrisome in the Leland Eisenberg case. I'm glad it doesn't happen more often.

RUDY'S NEXT MISTRESS: THE HIT REALITY SHOW

I have an idea for the next big reality television hit--Rudy's Next Mistress. The premise of the show is that a national television or YouTube audience would select Rudy Giuliani's next mistress in the same way a national audience chooses the next American Idol. In the first round of the competition, women from all over the country would send in (tasteful) videos in which they explain why they want to be Rudy's Next Mistress and how well they match up with America's Mayor. After a panel of Rudy Giulini's best buddies cut the number of wannabe mistresses down, the final 12 contestants would be brought on national television to make their pitch to Mr. Giuliani before the television/internet audience and a distinguished panel of judges that would include former Senator Gary Hart, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and Ms. Monica Lewinsky. Given their high level experiences with either courting political mistresses or being a political mistress, the members of the panel can be expected to make the most entetaining comments possible. Still, the ultimate deciders for Rudy's Next Mistress will be the American people themselves.

If Rudy Giuliani is elected president in 2008, the producers of Rudy's Next Mistress would expect President Giuliani to introduce the winner at the same ceremony where Mr. Giuliani was sworn in as president. Perhaps the winner could swear to do her best to uphold the traditions of presidential mistresses like Marilyn Monroe during her term in "office" and pledge to marry President Giuliani if he and his current wife Judi Nathan Giuliani should get a divorce.

The benefits to being Rudy's Next Mistress would be tremendous. Most of all, there's the honor of being the escort and bedmate of the future President Giuliani himself. All the pundits agree that Rudy Giuliani is a "man's man"--the kind of man who would stand up to Hillary Clinton, attack Iran, flaunt his friendship with mob-connected guys like Bernard Kerik, and keep a priest accused of pedophilia on his payroll. More important, Rudy Giuliani is the kind of man who treats a mistress like a queen. When Giuliani visited Judi Nathan's condo in Southampton, he took his security detail with him. Just think how impressive Rudy Giuliani would be when he visits a presidential mistress accompanied by his Secret Service guards, mobile communications center, and nuclear football. And Rudy's Next Mistress will look pretty impressive herself when she's sleeping with him in the Lincoln Bedroom. Monica Lewinsky gave Bill Clinton blow jobs in the dark corners around the Oval Office. Rudy's Next Mistress would be giving her blow jobs under the beneficent gaze of Honest Abe himself. Now that's class.

Rudy Giuliani would be generous with the resources of the federal government as well. When he was mayor of New York, Giuliani assigned police officers to drive Judi Nathan and her family around the city despite laws against using public property for personal purposes. "She used the PD as her personal taxi service," said one former city official who worked for Giuliani." Isn't that romantic?

If Giuliani was willing to be so generous to Judi Nathan while just a mayor, just think how loving he would be to a presidential mistress. People don't realize the depth of Rudy Giuliani's commitment to his mistresses. Liberals created a lot of ethics rules and laws to control the behavior of public officials, but Rudy Giuliani is glad to defy those rules and laws for the sake of the women he loves. By refusing to kowtow to all those "ethics," Rudy Giuliani shows that he's tough enough to do what it takes to take on the Islamofascists. If Rudy is man enough to stick it to the liberal media and the do-gooders at ethics "watchdogs" like Common Cause, he's man enough to stick it to bin Laden as well.

That's why it's important that the American people choose Rudy's Next Mistress. Given the importance of Rudy Giuliani's mistress in the war on terror, we can't leave the selection of Rudy's Next Mistress to chance.

Will Rudy's Next Mistress Fly on Air Force One

If we know anything about Rudy Giuliani, we know that he's good to his mistresses. It was reported months ago that he used to tryst mistress Judith Nathan at the counter-terrorism command center that he had placed in the World Trade Center. Having sex in the nerve center of the city's war against terrorism must have been the thrill of a lifetime for Nathan.

No wonder she married him.

Today, Brian Ross of ABC reports that Giuliani also provided a car and a security detail for Nathan while she was his mistress.

Well before it was publicly known he was seeing her, then-married New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani provided a police driver and city car for his mistress Judith Nathan, former senior city officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

But what does this matter? Don't we know that Giuliani's a megalogmaniac, that he's corrupt, and that he doesn't think the law applies to him?

The answer is yes.

But we don't know how Giuliani is going to transport his next mistress if he gets elected president. Of course, Giuliani could use Air Force One to transport the next Judy Nathan around after he gets tired of this Judy Nathan. Maybe this would be his chance to join the Mile High Club as well.

But I suspect not.

Air Force One is a Boeing 747. Talk about an unsexy, out of date model of a plane. No! I see Rudy as taking his next mistress around in real style. Besides Mike Meyers already did the 747 seduction bit in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.

Rudy would want to find something really special for his next mistress. After all, she might become the next Mrs. Rudy after Judy Nathan.

Information on Greg Goldey Services, etc

After I received an inquiry from Sasha Triplett (Hi Sasha!) in Louisville, I thought it would be a good idea to search out some information on services for Greg Goldey and addresses to send cards and letters.

Greg's immediate funeral services will be private. The (tentative) plan is to hold a public memorial service for Greg on Saturday, Dec. 8.

Memorial Service, Saturday, Dec. 8, 2pm,
Unity Universalist Church
3564 Clays Mill Road
Lexington, KY 40503

If plans change, I will post the change.

Greg's family would prefer donations to their Buddhist temple in lieu of flowers. The address of the temple is below.

Shambhala Center of Lexington
315 W. Maxwell St
Lexington, KY 40508

phone: 859-225-4183

Finally, people should send cards and letters concerning Greg to his wife and children at the address below:

The Goldey/Hardesty Family
25 W. Hickman
Winchester 40391

Death of Greg Goldey

Greg Goldey died last night at 2:11am. I got to visit him yesterday afternoon. It was a tough situation because he was already struggling to breathe, had a hard time staying in focus, and was seeing a lot of people. But Greg was more than willing to see the friends, relatives, and colleagues coming to his house because he was concerned for them and their feelings. It must have been a long hard day for him to know that he was dying at the same time that he was so intensely connected to so many people.

Greg had always been a good guy and I always liked him. But that in fact was underestimating him. The way Greg conducted himself while he was terminally ill with cancer was noble in the best sense of the word and I've come to look up to him as a human being and a man.

It's horrible that he's gone.

Are Whites a Race?

One of the things that drives me crazy about "race talk" (to use a phrase from bell hooks) in the U. S. is the the way that white writers write as though African-Americans were the only race. Aren't whites in the United States a race as well?

Gary Kamiya's Salon article on "Is Race Dying" is an example in point. Kamiya claims that "it's hard to believe that just a few years ago, issues of black vs. white dominated the national discourse."

But Kamiya poses whites as passive to invisible to this discourse. For Kamiya, the most important contributions of whites to discussion about issues of race in the United States are guilt and politeness.

The great breakthrough of the civil rights movement, sadly, failed to erase the subtlest and most powerful barriers: internal ones. Whites learned to acknowledge the history of racism, foregrounding their own racial guilt. That was necessary but insufficient. It resulted not in racial enlightenment but racial politeness.

That might be true for liberals, but liberals aren't the only white people. Perhaps Kamiya is not aware of the tremendous amount of right-wing campaigning in opposition to affirmative action, hate crimes legislation, school desegregation, gun control in inner city areas and other racial issues. Conservatives have also been relentlessly promoting a "color-blind" within which any kind of black self-awareness or collective black self-assertion is viewed as the equivalent to segregation. In this way, conservatives have been arguing that the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus, and a lot of hip hop music are just as racist as Bull Connor while he was whipping black demonstrators or George Wallace barring the school doors at the University of Alabama.

In fact, Kamiya seems to be sympathetic to the conservative point of view.

According to a recent NPR/Pew poll, 37 percent of blacks agreed with the statement that blacks today are so diverse they can no longer be considered a single race. Among the youngest respondents, aged 18 to 29, a staggering 44 percent agreed.

This is extraordinary. More than a third of the blacks who responded, and almost half of the young blacks, have rejected the cornerstone of American racial politics: black racial solidarity. If the poll is accurate, the most emotionally charged and immutable racial truth, the one-drop rule, is no longer sacrosanct for a large number of black people.

For Kamiya, anything that breaks up "the cornerstone of American racial politics: black racial solidarity" is a tremendously good thing and that's the case whether he's discussing whether blacks view themselves as a single race, the "values gap," or the increase in the bi-racial population of people like Barack Obama and Tiger Woods.

But African-Americans have always considered themselves an extremely diverse group or even a number of groups that were brought together by the scourge of white racism. The efforts of many light-skinned blacks to differentiate themselves from the more darkly hued were observed in turn of the 20th century New Orleans. Spike Lee portrays the same thing in School Daze. Likewise, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X wrote of the religious and ideological distinctions within the African-American population during the sixties and contemporary black writers have been denouncing the lack of political activism among the black middle class for years.

And Black people would be even more self-differentiating if they didn't have to face stereotyping, job discrimination, and police violence from the larger white population. But Kamiya doesn't comment on the relentless racial stereotyping of American television, movies, music, the fashion industry, and the news media. He also doesn't mention the mountains of racial jokes circulating abound black people. Kamiya doesn't ask why the steretyptical representation of black people is so important to white-owned and run media corporations or predominately white audiences. If Kamiya had asked such questions, he would have found that whites have a racial consciousness as well and that white racial consciousness has been a powerful factor in American politics for decades.

Yes, Virginia. Whites are also a race--a relatively unified race on racial issues. And black people will remain relatively united as long as that is the case.

An Update on Greg Goldey

Greg Goldey is in the last stages of his cancer. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers.

Romney's the Man?

Josh Marshall at TPM has graphs on Romney's steady rise in the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Perhaps Romney wears well on Republicans. Maybe, he just looks presidential. Or maybe Republicans are deciding that he looks like the best of a bad lot.

Trent Lott and the Waning of Primary Racism

FAREWELL TO THE DINOSAUR. Trent Lott announced his retirement from the United States Senate today. He'll be leaving effective at the end of this year or the beginning of 2008. Lott's significance in American politics is that he is one of the last racist political figures who engaged in the direct promotion of white supremacy. Lott not only expressed a sense of pride in Mississippi's vote for segregationist Strom Thurmond back in 1848, he also was extremely active in promoting the memory of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and promoted the Council of Conservative Citizens as a replacement for the old white Citizens Councils. Wary of being fully identified with the cause of racism in the post-civil rights era, Lott was circumspect in his efforts for the cause of white supremacy. But he regularly reminded people that his loyalties lie with the primary racism of slavery, segregation, and opposition to integration.

Speaking at a 1984 convention of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Lott declared that "the spirit of Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican Platform." Asked to explain his statement in an interview with the extreme rightwing publication Southern Partisan, Lott said, "I think that a lot of the fundamental principles that Jefferson Davis believed in are very important to people across the country, and they apply to the Republican Party... and more of The South's sons, Jefferson Davis' descendants, direct or indirect, are becoming involved with the Republican party."

A THOUSAND SECONDARY RACISMS BLOOM. But Lott's passing from the political scene has mostly symbolic significance. The weight of political racism has passed from the "primary" segregationism racism of Lott, Jesse Helms, and Strom Thurmond to various forms of "secondary" or indirect racism. Shelby Steele's critique of Barack Obama as untrustworthy because he's "black" in the sense of being part of the black community is one example of "secondary racism." Steele is not making the direct claim that whites are superior to blacks. Instead, he's arguing indirectly that the politics of black culture make any (non-conservative) black person a suspect candidate. As an advocate of color-blindness, Steele's arguments about Obama are similar to the arguments of William Bennett and others who argue that black culture is handicapped by "race-consciousness." Conservatives have come up with a barrage of indirect racist arguments against affirmative action, school desegregation, and attempts to stop racial profiling among other things. Secondary racism rules on the right.

RACISM LOSING ITS WAY? One of the things that is happening to the Republican Party is that they're losing access to the narratives of secondary racism. Where the Republicans used to campaign against "black crime," affirmative action, the "ghetto drug epidemic," hip hop influenced popular culture, and other "black" phenomena, they've largely been unable to develop a racial narrative in opposition to African-Americans for the 2008 campaign. While hardly out of sight, the racist thrust of Republican campaigning has shifted from blacks to Mexicans and Muslims. They've also been careful to promote pedophiles as the new "other" in American society.

But none of these themes has the same appeal as secondary racisms used to have. It would be a mistake to view white voters as being less racist than they've been in the past. Think of the mountain of racial jokes and stereotypes directed by whites to black people in this regard. It seems, however, that the Republicans dipped into the well of racism one too many times with the publication of the campaigns against affirmative action and the publication of The Bell Curve during the 90's and have run out of good ideas for playing on white racism without seeming "racist." Political racism seems to be losing its grip.

Maybe that's why Trent Lott is leaving the Senate. He might know that the game is up.

Shelby Steele Hates Black People

There have always been African-Americans who share a fundamental perspective with white racism. When they look at the American racial system, what they first see are faults, falseness, weakness, and depravity among other black people. I imagine that these were the kind of people who gave the famously racist Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo 5% of the black vote in one of his elections. Maybe Bull Connor would have pulled a small percentage of the black vote in segregated Birmingham as well.

The black neo-conservative Shelby Steele is well-known in The Content of Our Character for anchoring his analysis of race relations in a perception of racial manipulation by black people. Steele starts out the book with a story about a dinner party in which a black professor employed comments on race to make the white guests feel uncomfortable and guilty. Steele's starting point for his thinking about the racial system was not the persistent racism, disproportionately high poverty levels, or the pervasiveness of racial stereotyping. What fascinated him instead was the way that blacks "gamed" whites into feeling uncomfortable or guilty. Largely sympathetic with white people like myself, Steele wasn't interested in the ways that whites "game" race when we evaluate African-Americans in our jobs, tell jokes or stories about black people, or talk about black people when they're not around.

Now Steele has a book out on Barack Obama and it isn't surprising that Steele focuses on the "mask" that Obama adapts as a black man appealing to white voters. According to David Broder's largely sympathetic review:

In "A Bound Man," Steele makes the case that Obama has adopted "a mask" familiar to many other African-Americans, designed to appease white America's fear of being thought racist by offering them the opportunity to embrace a nonthreatening black . . . Steele likens Obama's success to the fame and fortune won by Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. But the earliest of the crossover heroes he calls "Iconic Negroes" was Sidney Poitier. And it reminded me that in his political biography of Obama, author David Mendell reported the reaction of a focus group of liberal, North Shore (Chicago area) female voters, middle-aged and elderly, when shown a videotape of Obama speaking in his 2004 Senate campaign. Asked who Obama reminded them of, the answer was "Sidney Poitier."

Steele doesn't seem to ask himself about the "masks" adapted by white politicians like Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, or Hillary Clinton. He also doesn't inquire about the extent to which the persona that anybody presents to the public isn't a "mask" that hides at least as much as it reveals. According to Erving Goffman, "the presentation of self in everyday life" involves the creation of a "front" through which "information about the actor is given off through a variety of communicative sources, all of which must be controlled to effectively convince the audience of the appropriateness of behavior and consonance with the role assumed." If Steele were going to discuss the "masks" of politicians in any kind of objective way, he would ask how political figures use self-presentation to "convince" their audiences concerning their personal appeal and their fitness for office and then investigate the extent to which Barack Obama's being black leads him to create a different kind of "mask" from other politicians.

Instead, Steele focuses on Obama in a way that creates an impression that Obama is uniquely manipulative of his public presentation and unlike the more racially honest white politicians who dont' seem to put on such a front.

"The problem here for Barack, of course, is that his racial identity commits him to a manipulation of the society he seeks to lead," Steele writes. "To 'be black,' he has to exaggerate black victimization in America. ... Worse, his identity will pressure him to see black difficulties -- achievement gaps, high illegitimacy rates, high crime rates, family collapse, and so on -- in the old framework of racial oppression."

In other words, "racial identity" or being black in the way that other black people are black makes Obama fundamentally dishonest about race. For Steele, black people are such a problem that he wonders if a black guy like Obama can be honest enough to be president.

I don't have a window into Shelby Steele's soul, but I'd call that hating black people until proved differently.

Hillary Doing Well in Kentucky

A recent Survey USA poll has Hillary ahead of Giuliani by 4 in Kentucky. That sounds about right. Kentucky Republicans are in the dumps as a result of Republican governor Ernie Fletcher's big re-election loss and the generally low opinion of George Bush. Giuliani also rubs religious conservatives the wrong way as a result of his pro-choice views.

As a result, Hillary looks pretty good.

The Hillary Punching Bag Meme

It looks like the mainstream media game has switched to one-upping Tim Russert. Now that Russert has "gotten" to Hillary Clinton with his immigrant driver's license question in the Philadelphia debate, media figures are now rushing to figure out ways to "get" to Hillary Clinton.

It seems like the hot new strategy for tearing at Hillary Clinton is to portray her as a washed-up punching bag.

Here's Thomas Schaller of the Baltimore Sun:

So which political victories, exactly, is Hillary Clinton touting? Has 15 years of ending off Republican attacks made her a powerful, partisan heavyweight or a beleaguered punching bag? John Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama dare only to flirt with such questions.

Actually, Schaller's only flirting with the question as well. He certainly makes no argument concerning how Hillary has been "beleaguered" or how she's been a punching bag. Hillary's case for fighting the Republicans is that she was an integral part of the team that brought the Clinton administration back from the dead after the 1994 debacle and that she emerged as a stronger figure as a result of the impeachment controversy. Schaller's tries to deny Hillary any credit for the Clinton administration's defeat of Gingrich and the Republican revolutionaries by claiming that the Clinton's won as a result of Republican over-reaching than anything else. But that's absurd. Given that the Republicans over-reach as a matter of principle, every Democratic victory of the last 13 years has come against Republican over-reaching.

Schaller also has nothing to say about the unique alchemy by which Hillary became a more appealing figure as a result of the impeachment scandal. Not only did Hillary's approval numbers soar, but it was as a result of impeachment that she started to look like a possible presidential candidate. Far from being a punching bag, Hillary Clinton's combination of policy expertise, tenacity, determination, temper, and ability to both dish out and take a punch started to look "presidential" when people saw that she was a "stand-up woman."

But none of this is significant to Schaller. He doesn't care any more about whether Hillary actually is a punching bag than Russert cared about immigrant driver's licenses. The point is to find the theme around which the mainstream media can rally in their efforts to "get at" the Hillary Clinton candidacy.

John Ellis does another permutation of the Hillary as sad-sack by creating an analogy between Hillary and Richard Nixon.

Like Nixon, Senator Clinton is widely disliked. Like Nixon, she cannot be made warm, even by a modern-day Roger Ailes. Like Nixon, she is a politician whose resentments are always close to the surface. And like Nixon, she is a politician about whom her peers have real doubts. But also like Nixon, she is intelligent and diligent and determined and tough and she has been through hell and back . . . . She knows that it's like to get her head kicked in every day, day after day after day, for months and years on end. She endures.

That was the whole point of the 1968 Nixon campaign narrative. He wasn't perfect by any means, but he was formidable and he endured. It's a narrative that fits Senator Clinton's campaign like a glove. For reasons either right or wrong, Americans will elect their first female president only when they are convinced that she is the tougher of the two (or three) choices. She won't be inevitable until we believe she is as formidable as Tricky Dick.

Talk about terrible advice. Who would portray themselves or their candidate as someone who "knows what it's like to get her head kicked in every day, day after day after day, for months and years on end." But Hillary Clinton is smarter and better than that. If people attacked me like the right-wing attacked Hillary, my head might have gotten kicked in. In the final analysis, my skin isn't thick enough for politics. Hillary was more like the powerhouse tailback who is stronger in the fourth quarter after 25 or 30 carries. Despite taking a pounding, she's ready to overpower the opposition rather than cave in herself. This is what the debates have shown. Hillary Clinton has considerable personal warmth, lots of savvy, and an ability to take the heat and come out looking better as a result. That's why her lead was getting up to thirty points before she stumbled in Philadelphia.

The "Hillary as punching bag" idea is the latest in a long line of themes employed by the media to derail Hillary Clinton's candidacy. There was the Hillary and the baggage of "the Clinton era," Hillary as "unelectable," Hillary as "polarizing," Hillary as being "too unpopular on the left," and Hillary as overly "dynastic." Hillary Clinton has falsified these stereotypes by turning in solid performance after solid performance during the Democratic debates. My bet is that Hillary's performance will keep the "Hillary as punching bag" theme from gaining traction as well.

But that doesn't mean the MSM won't try again.

Simple Gifts and the Sweet Life

Today, my family and I spent Thanksgiving with Mrs. RSI's brother Tom and his family down the street from us in Morehead, KY. Our two children were there along with Tom and Molly's four children who had come from Minnesota, Lexington KY, and New York City. Mrs. RSI's cousin Laura and her daughter Nina were also down from New Hampshire with a son and his girlfriend coming in from Cincinnati as well. Bucking the trend toward focusing on Christmas, Halloween, and Valentine's Day, Mrs. RSI's family have made Thanksgiving their favorite holiday and wanted to share it as widely as they could.

As was the case with most American families, Tom and Molly don't make much overt reference to God in their holiday festivities, but they do make a point of singing the following Shaker song.

Simple Gifts

'Tis a gift to be simple
'Tis a gift to be free
'Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be
And when we find ourselves in the place
just right
We'll be in the Valley of love and delight

When true simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend we will not be ashamed
To turn turn will be our delight
'Til by turning, turning we come 'round right

Repeat refrain

Ah! Liberals! Have to love them for their goodness. Tom and Molly also asked everybody to write down something that they were particularly grateful for.

I wrote "the sweet life." My colleague Greg's health is deteriorating and its a horrible thing. But I can also see the warmth and good will of all the people who are helping to care for him. In fact, the beauty of the group that's formed around Greg's care is even more striking than the destructiveness of the cancer. I can't think of a place where the sweetness of life is more evident than the Goldey house in Winchester.

Despite the sorrows involved in Greg's illness and Noelle N'Diaye's arrest for wanton child endangerment, working at Morehead State is also a wonderful thing. Recently, I told one of my students that life was sweet for people who could figure out ways to make a living for coming up with new ideas. Afterwards, I realized I was right. Being a college professor is a great thing for me because I can make a living out of the ideas I develop.

And I come up with new ideas all the time.

Finally, the person who most makes for a good life is Mrs. RSI. When someone you love and respect is also a huge turn-on, life with them is about as sweet as can be.

I could go on, but I am very grateful for the sweetness of life on this Thanksgiving.

"Giuliani Time" Starts for Whites

When New York police officers rammed a plunger up the rectum of Haitian immigrant Albert Louima in August 1997, they crowed to Louima that "this is Giuliani time . . ." I was reminded of the Giuliani cops when I saw a video of a Utah police officer "tasing" a quarrelsome white driver named Jared Massey he had pulled over for speeding. When the guy decided to argue about speeding rather than sign his citation, the police officer made him get out of the car and then poured 50,000 volts into him with his taser. What makes the officer Giuliani-like is that he believed he had a right to torture the driver because he thought the man was annoying. The Giuliani police in NYC thought they had a right to torture anybody like Albert Louima for any reason they wanted. The same is the case with this police officer in Utah.

The other Giuliani element was the vaunting over the guy he had tortured. When a second officer arrived on the scene, the original cop laughed that the man "took a ride with the Taser" while the second officer put in his sadistic two cents by adding "painful isn't it." The boasting is important. In Rudy Giuliani's world where power, strength, and masculinity are established through military attacks, torture, and threats vaunting over opponents is an important way to represent the distance between your strength and their weakness. In the case of the cops and Albert Louima, their bragging represented the distance between their power as police officers and white men and Louima's powerlessness as a Haitian immigrant. The Utah cops were sharing their sense of power when they laughed about the guy who was tased.

Liberal blogger Digby formulates the incident in terms of the erosion of constitutional rights.

Police in the country are now allowed to torture speeders by the side of the highway in order to get them to comply. The only difference between this officer slugging the speeder in the stomach and putting 50,0000 volts of electricity in him is that the latter doesn't leave any marks. The intent, the pain and the goose-stepping authoritarian message are exactly the same.

Word to the wise. Do not ever question the police, no matter whether they are violating your rights, ignoring the constitution or breaking the law. It is perfectly legal for them to torture you on the spot if you do.

I'm feeling so free I can hardly breathe.

This is a place where Digby and I disagree. In fact, being able to count on not being arbitrarily arrested, being framed for crimes, or tortured has always been a privilege of white people, and fairly respectable white people at that. This is something I realized when I had an incident where a local University police officer pulled me over for running a stop sign. The original charge was bogus because the stop sign was a new sign. Then, the officer started adding on charges for not wearing a seat belt, not having registration, proof of insurance, and threatened to put me in jail for those even though none of them would even result in a fine. On top of that, he wrote up my court date for an hour before court even started.

In the end, the stop sign charge was diverted and I got my paper-work in order which meant that all the other charges were dismissed.

But I also had an epiphany when I asked myself what would have happened if I had been black? Or a poor man? Or a student? And the obvious answer is that it would have been worse, perhaps a lot worse if I had been a black guy. When the prominent African-American writer Cornel West was arrested for driving in the wrong neighborhood and protested that he was a theology professor, the cops baited him with the n-word. I'm sure they would have been harsher than that with a black guy in Morehead.

That's the significance of the Utah case. What's changed is that the police have expanded "Giuliani time" to well-dressed white guys with nice wives and little babies.

The police have never hesitated to refuse to recognize rights, defy the Constitution, or break the law when dealing with large parts of the American population. Now, they're extending their abuses to nice white people as well.

"When did God Come into Thanksgiving?"

That's what Mrs. RSI asked when I told her about the conservative effort to "bring God back into Thanksgiving.

As always, Mrs. RSI is right.

Newt Gingrich argues that "historically, Thanksgiving is about renewing the bond between Americans and their Creator. It's a time when we are reminded that our rights come from God and that we have responsibilities to God as free citizens." (Gingrich, Winning the Future, Nov. 20, 2007)

Given the association of Thanksgiving with the harvest, it would probably be more accurate to say that Thanksgiving used to be about forgiving god more than thanking him. It's the same with harvest festivals all over the world. Of course, there is the conventional "thanking" of god for the blessings of the harvest. Who doesn't know the religious routines of their societies? But people were primarily congratulating themselves for bringing in the harvest after long summers and autumns of backbreaking labor and constant struggling against the droughts, insects, parasites, floods, frost, and heat.

And who brought about all of those difficulties? God!!! For sincere Christians like the Pilgrims, the difficulty of producing food begins with the expulsion from the Garden of Eden in Genesis and it's always been believed that god punished human sin by bringing about the natural disasters that traditionally made farming so difficult.

That's why harvest festivals like Thanksgiving always feature a big banquet. Much of what Thanksgiving dinner celebrates is the triumph of people over god or the gods and humankind's reconciliation with divinity at the moment of their triumph over nature.

Much of what Thanksgiving was about the generosity of spirit in sharing food and other bounties of the season, and part of that generosity is extended to god as well.

It's kind of touching in a way.

Of course, now that the United States is no longer an agricultural society, the holiday of Thanksgiving is even less connected with gratitude toward the Christian god than it ever was. Mrs. RSI and I are in our fifties and neither of us have heard about god in relation to Thanksgiving outside the forgettable conventions of saying grace. Thanksgiving was always about taking time off from work, relaxing, enjoying family and getting ready for the even bigger holiday blow-out of Christmas.

And that's the way it should be.

As for god, I don't believe in a god or any other kind of divine presence. But if there is anything divine in the world, I'll be in a very forgiving mood after dinner.

Soft Edges of the Second Civil War

There have been times when I've thought that the United States is in either a pre-civil war state or a kind of low-level second civil war. Having rejected much of American society, the right-wing is engaged in a series of cultural and political wars against black people, Hispanics, gays, popular culture, public schools, higher education, science, and liberal whites.

Oh, and I forgot Muslims.

It's not like the rest of society hasn't responded either. The response from the rest of society has not been as cohesive and determined as the right-wing "war on America," but the level of activism against the right is rising. The left blogosphere has risen as a significant locus of liberal activism. Suburban voters around cities like Philadelphia have changed their political allegiance from the Republican to the Democratic Party in reaction against social conservatism. Personal animosities toward conservatives are also hardening. I've seen surveys indicating that the number of atheists is growing as a result of hostility to the religious right. Likewise, there are reports of scientists being blackballed for supporting creationist viewes. Battle lines are hardening and the American social and political system is becoming more brittle as a result.

Ron Brownstein has published a book entitled The Second Civil War to explore the conflict. A columnist for the LA Times, Brownstein is probably the most acute observer in the national pundit class. However, the excerpt from The Second Civil War in The National Journal is disappointing. Like Jonathan Chait, David Broder, and every other bubble-brain in the mainstream media, Brownstein postulates an equivalence between the political right, and liberal bloggers because both sides are 'highly partisan." For Brownstein, the right and left are locked in a death grip that will inevitably be salvaged by a "return to the center."

But the analogy is almost entirely specious. Brownstein focuses on Tom DeLay's 2006 resignation speech from the House of Representatives and the Yearly Kos convention in Las Vegas that year. However, Tom DeLay was a majority leader of the House of Representatives who was at the center of a vast web of political power, financial resources, and media clout. A blog with about 500,000 hits a day, Daily Kos is hardly comparable to DeLay. Daily Kos might still become the focal point for an expansion of left-wing activism. The right-to-life movement certainly served that purpose for the right during the 1970's. But the rise of Tom DeLay was an outcome of thirty years of conservative activism while the liberal blogs might represent the initial thrust of progressive activism that ultimately results in the liberal version of Tom DeLay in the 2020's. But progessive activism is still a long way from matching the institutional strength, integrated media structure, and political savvy of the the political right.

There may be a civil war developing in the United States, but the difference between Tom DeLay and Daily Kos indicates that most of the conflict is still being initiated from the right.

The End of Thanksgiving as We Know It

Conservative religious figures want to put the "thanks" to god back in Thanksgiving. But they don't understand that Thanksgiving is being swallowed up by Christmas and Halloween altogether.

Lots of commentators notice that the Christmas season gets longer and longer and that's very much the truth in Morehead, KY. Walmart's had their decorations up for weeks, people are setting up Christmas trees, and our town's Christmas lights were strung up last weekend.

But Halloween is getting longer as well. Pumpkins and scary costumes are now out as early as September 1. In fact, I spent years fighting with my ten year old about her desire to buy a pumpkin in early September and finally got her to wait until Oct. 1. That's more than four weeks before the actual holiday.

Christmas and Halloween seem to be converging as well. In fact, the major Christmas decorations started going up as soon as Halloween decorations were taken down.

To the contrary, I can't remember seeing any Thanksgiving displays at the local stores. It seems like Thanksgiving is getting squeezed out by the other holidays.

But why?

Obviously, it's money. As the biggest commercial event of the year, Christmas obviously outshines Thanksgiving at the cash register. But Thanksgiving turkeys can't match up with Halloween costumes, candy, and extravagant Halloween parties either. As the more profitable holidays expand in national awareness, Thanksgiving shrinks into a fairly empty warm-up for the Christmas season.

But there lies the problem. If the Rev. C. Albert Mohler and Congressman Roy Blunt want more God in Thanksgiving, they're going to have to figure out a way to inject a lot more mammon into the holiday. Who says God and mammon don't go together?

Hillary Takes No Crap From Rove

Unfortunately, I can't be part of the current left blogospheric re-evaluation of Hillary Clinton. I endorsed her last March. But Karl Rove has an article in Time that makes me feel even better about her candidacy. According to Rove, he inherited Hillary's old office when the Bush people moved in and told a story about Hillary's office containing the only full-length mirror in the White House.

Rove acts all innocent about this petty little incident, but it's evident that he told the story to score "condescension points" on Hillary as a women who (naturally) would be overly concerned with her appearance.

How did Hillary respond? Rove states that "the senator from New York confronted me shortly after and pointedly said she hadn't put the mirror there."

Of course, Rove tries to create "plausible deniability" by denying that he had said that Sen. Clinton had placed the mirror in the office. But who's he kidding? He knew what he was doing just as much as Hillary.

For Rove, this demonstrates that Hillary Clinton is "hard" and "brittle." But I have an alternative interpretation. What Hillary demonstrated was that she didn't like Rove and wasn't going to take any of his condescending crap about her as a women. The Democratic Party has too many people who are willing to be buddy-buddy with the Karl Roves and Mary Matalins of the world. If the Democrats need anything, they need more Hillary Clinton types who let him know exactly what kind of jerk they think he is.

Score one for Hillary.

Of course, none of that stopped Rove. He kept telling the story at Republican events and she reminded him once again that he was an asshole.

So a few weeks later, in another talk, I repeated the story about the mirror. And shortly thereafter, the junior senator saw me and, again, without a hint of humor or light in her voice, icily said she'd heard I'd repeated the story of the mirror and she … did … not … put … that mirror in the office.

I'm voting for Hillary anyway, but that's still the kind of thing I like to hear.

O'Hanlon, Kagan, and Some Good Old Homoerotic Warmongering

"Hey! Loverboy! Isn't it time we invaded Pakistan?"

One of the interesting developments of the last few years is the enhanced homoeroticism of heterosexual guys. Straight college guys used to bond over football, beer, and fish stories of what they might have done with whatever "chick" they picked up the previous weekend. What made all of this "erotic" is that a lot of guys found that the primary pleasure of having sex with women was telling the "other guys" about it. It was the bond with their male friends that counted. As for the women involved, they were mostly thought of as sluts if they were remembered at all.

Now, the same kinds of college guys are taking the homoeroticism up several notches. No longer limiting themselves to the warm feelings of male companionship, they're simulating gay sex with each other when they aren't talking non-stop about masturbation or sharing porn stories. Movies are picking it up too. The recent hit Knocked Up has a scene where Ben responds to a phone call from a woman by simulating sex with his guy friends. Once again, the main point was the primacy of Ben's affective bond with the other guys with the sex serving as an affirmation of that bond.

I was reminded of simulated sex and homoeroticism more generally when I read today's New York Times op-ed by Michael O'Hanlon and Frederick Kagan. The whole article is about the manly bonds develop when liberal (O'Hanlon) and neo-conservative (Kaplan) foreign policy experts and discuss their deepest feelings about American military operations in Pakistan.

According to O'Hanlon and Kagan, it's necessary to send American troops to Pakistan now because the problem will be too big if Pakistan is allowed to collapse completely.

The task of stabilizing a collapsed Pakistan is beyond the means of the United States and its allies. Rule-of-thumb estimates suggest that a force of more than a million troops would be required for a country of this size. Thus, if we have any hope of success, we would have to act before a complete government collapse, and we would need the cooperation of moderate Pakistani forces.

Even though O'Hanlan and Kagan start modestly enough by proposing an American special forces operation to secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons. But the excitement of planning another American intervention into a Muslim country is so exciting that they eventually go orgasmic.

First, O'Hanlon and Kagan deploy the "crack international troops" at their fingertips:

For the United States, the safest bet would be shipping the material to someplace like New Mexico; but even pro-American Pakistanis would be unlikely to cooperate. More likely, we would have to settle for establishing a remote redoubt within Pakistan, with the nuclear technology guarded by elite Pakistani forces backed up (and watched over) by crack international troops. It is realistic to think that such a mission might be undertaken within days of a decision to act. The price for rapid action and secrecy, however, would probably be a very small international coalition.

Actually, neither the UN nor anyone else has international minutemen standing by their black helicopters waiting for orders that could bring them to Pakistan "within days of a decision to act." Consequently, the only way that this scheme makes sense is if one can imagine O'Hanlon and Kagan sharing the military fantasy in the same way that college guys go to strip clubs in groups or like to share Jenna Jameson sex toys. Even if they don't lead to orgasm, the sharing of military fantasies is a way for liberal and neo-conservative warmongers like these guys to bond together in a pleasurable and meaningful way.

But why let "crack international troops" have all the fun? Why not show the Pakistanis what real Americans are made of?

A second, broader option would involve supporting the core of the Pakistani armed forces as they sought to hold the country together in the face of an ineffective government, seceding border regions and Al Qaeda and Taliban assassination attempts against the leadership. This would require a sizable combat force — not only from the United States, but ideally also other Western powers and moderate Muslim nations.

Given that plausibility is not exactly high on O'Hanlon's and Kagan's list of priorities (exactly what Western powers or moderate Muslim nations would commit troops to this kind of operation?), one has to admit that they are deploying "a sizable combat force" mostly as a way to increase the pleasure of their partnership. Not that there's anything wrong with that. In fact, in the final analysis, O'Hanlon and Kagan should be congratulated for their restraint. The logical endpoint for these kinds of military fantasies is the orgasmic spasm of wiping out large sections of the Pakistani population. But O'Hanlan and Kagan limit themselves to controlling the major Pakistani cities in a surge-like strategy of securing the center before moving out to the periphery. And I'm sure the authors believe that it's precisely that kind of self-discipline that distinguishes foreign policy professionals from Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, and other ideologues.

Foreign policy might be about sex, but pros like O'Hanlon and Kagan know how to stop before the whole thing blows up.

At least they think they know.