Obama, Iran, and Founding Mythologies

In the United States, we don't often view ourselves through analogies with other nations. This is mostly a result of American military and economic power. We make other countries respond to us. We don't respond to them. Other countries have to think about us. We don't have to think about them. It's hard for American conservatives to even recognize that the French, Greeks, or Iraqis would value their own country over ours. Given that it's often hard for progressives to get beyond reacting to the dangerous blustering of the right, American politics tends to be myopic in the extreme.

But I believe the best way to think about events in Iran is in relation to American developments. This is part of the point that Mir Hossein Moussavi's spokesperson made the other day when he stressed that Moussavi was Iran's Obama and Ahmadinejad equalled Bush. In Moussavi's view, what's happening in Iran is not a replay of the Iranian Revolution or the Velvet Revolutions in the former Soviet bloc. If anything, it is a replay of last year's American election.

As America goes, so goes Iran

I would argue that the Iranian/American analogy goes beyond our 2008 election and last week's Iranian election. The best way to understand the Iranian situation is that protesters are trying to give the Islamic Republic what Abraham Lincoln famously called a "new birth." Much of what Moussavi brought out in his statement yesterday was the inspirational role of the 1979 Revolution in the current protests.

The spontaneous movement of the people chose the color green as its symbo . . . And the generation that was accused of being far from religious roots, arrived at Takbir among its slogans and leaned against "Victory Comes from God and an Opening is Around", "O Husayn" and the name of Khomeini to prove that this fine tree brings similar fruit whenever it bears fruit. Nobody had taught them these slogans except the Innate Teacher [God].

For Moussavi, the current protests recall the Revolution of 1979 on two levels. Symbols of the current protests like the color green and the name "Khomeini" point back to the birth of the Islamic Republic which was ". . . a revolution for freedom, a revolution for the rekindling of the compassion of human beings, a revolution for truth and honesty." More importantly, the symbols are inspired directly by God. "Nobody had taught them these slogans except the "Innate Teacher." Like the 1979 Revolution, Moussavi views this movement as divinely inspired.

The protesters want a new birth of Shia Islam and a government and religious hierarchy that is responsible to the people and based in freedom. They want the freedom, compassion, truth, and honesty promised in 1979. They also want to end confrontation with the West. If successful, the protesters will have established the 1979 Revolution, Shiite Islam, and Iran's system on a new footing. The founding of modern Iran in the original revolution will then be interpreted through the lens of their own revolt against election fraud.

If Moussavi represents the rebirth of the Islamic Republic in Iran, Barack Obama should be seen in terms of the rebirth of the American Republic. In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln viewed the Civil War as a "new birth of freedom" which meant that government "of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the face of the earth." But the United States had been constructed in such a way that it promised a general freedom but excluded a vast majority of the population from most if not all of the freedoms being promised. African-Americans were either enslaved or subject to harsh proscriptions, women were denied rights to vote and hold office, and new immigrants were subject to various exclusions.

The Civil War promised "a new birth of freedom," but freedom would have to be "reborn" many times in the United States before anyone could see that promise being fulfilled. The Civil Rights movement of the late 1950's and early 1960's, the opening of immigration to non-whites, the women's movement, the counter-culture, gay rights movement, and other smaller movements have all been new births of American freedom. It goes without saying that all of those rebirths have not happened without determined resistance. The conservative movement in the United States coalesced in opposition to the activism of the 60's and had been politically dominant for most of the last 40 years. But the new births of American freedom have gone forward despite a string of Republican presidents and the election of Barack Obama in 2008 is best seen as a manifestation of the new political power of all the groups that have been invested in the growth of American freedom.

In other words, Obama's election was another new birth.

In his comments yesterday on the Iranian government's violent response to the demonstrations, President Obama quoted Martin Luther King's statement that "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Because of the many rebirths of American freedom over the last fifty years, most Americans now view the founding of the American Republic, the Civil War, and keystone American events through the lens of Martin Luther King and the African-American civil rights movement. As contemporary Americans, we look at the original founding of the Republic from the perspective of the rebirth and we assign the original founding patriotic meanings that we have achieved in our lifetimes.

In the United States, we have been engaged in a fifty process of giving "new births" to the freedom we view as our "sacred" birthright. One of the reasons that the Iranians compare Mir Hossein Moussavi to Barack Obama is that they sense the momentousness of their movement as being very similar to the progressive social movements most powerfully exemplified by the Civil Rights movement. In a similar way, we can understand ourselves better and gain renewed energy for the process of expanding freedom in the United States if we reflect on the many ways in which the Iranians are like us.

Don't Drink the Notre Dame Kool-Aid

Cory McCartney of SI.com is pushing the idea that a soft schedule is going to land Charlie Weis and the Notre Dame football team in a big BCS bowl.

Who knows! I doubt it, but maybe there's a dog's hair of truth in that idea.

Then McCartney goes way over the edge by claiming that Notre Dame's game against Southern Cal is "winnable" for the Fighting Irish. Now THAT is really drinking the kool-aid. The scout team at Southern Cal is loaded with scary-good athletes who would be stars just about anywhere else. Notre Dame probably couldn't beat them let alone the real team.

Robert Gates Needs a Geography Lesson

There's a report today that the North Koreans are planning to launch a missile toward Hawaii:

North Korea may fire a long-range ballistic missile toward Hawaii in early July, the Associated Press quoted a Japanese news report on Thursday. U.S. military experts do not believe the North Korean missile has the range to strike U.S. territory, but that the threat in the near future is real.

To be honest, I don't really think the North Koreans are a threat to attack Hawaii. Mostly, Kim Jong-il wants to draw Barack Obama into a game of homoerotic mutual denunciations that would allow Kim to feel like a real man and a real leader.

God, Kim misses George Bush.

But whether the North Koreans are a threat or not, I'm much more disturbed that our Defense Secretary Robert Gates doesn't seem to know which direction the North Koreans would have to fire if they did attack Hawaii.

The United States has positioned more missile defenses around Hawaii as a precaution against a possible North Korean launch across the Pacific, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday. "We do have some concerns if they were to launch a missile to the west in the direction of Hawaii," Gates said.

It's East Robert, East. Hawaii is east of North Korea. If the North Koreans fire their missiles west, it's somebody else's problem.

Boycott the Washington Post!

One of the things that continues to amaze me is why people on the left continue to patronize outlets like the Washington Post that pretend to be "the liberal media" but actually identify with the right. Yesterday, the Washington Post fired its token liberal blogger Dan Froomkin as part of its move to the right under Fred Hiatt and Dan Graham.

Former conservative Andrew Sullivan captures the firing well:

"Dan's work on torture may be one reason he is now gone. The way in which the WaPo has been coopted by the neocon right, especially in its editorial pages, is getting more and more disturbing. This purge will prompt a real revolt in the blogosphere. And it should."

But why should we limit our revolt to complaining? Why don't readers on the left fire the Washington Post in return.

This isn't to say that progressives should not read inform themselves of conservative views or keep up with right-wing politics. It's important that we do so and there are plenty of right-wing outlets like the Washington Times, TownHall, and RealClearPolitics that allow people to do so. Some of the conservative outlets like HotAir and Protein Wisdom are actually fun to read sometimes.

But why should we on the left allow an outlet like the Washington Post to maintain its reputation as a "liberal newspaper" while it pursues a right-wing agenda?

It's stupid and self-destructive on our parts to do so.

I'm not privy to the business model of the Post, but I would bet my bottom dollar that its ability to promote its advertising, sell newspapers, and generate on-line traffic depends heavily on the good will they'e earned among urban liberals and progressives.

The same would be the case with the New York Times and NPR.

But, now that the Post is taking a hard turn to the right, they no longer deserve the good will of people on the left. Given that the editorial page of the Post has become a major mouthpiece for neo-conservative war-mongering, it can even be said that the Post has become a significant vehicle for the most dangerous kind of right-wing politics.

In other words, patronizing the Washington Post has become the equivalent of sending checks to Newt Gingrich.

We shouldn't do it.

Moussavi=Obama, Ahmadinejad=Bush

At least that's according to Moussavi's spokesperson.

Mousavi spokesman on Obama. Via reader Heather, Foreign Policy speaks with Mousavi's external spokesman in Paris Mohsen Makhmalbaf:

FP: There has been growing criticism here in Washington that U.S. President Barack Obama hasn't said or done enough to support those demonstrating in the streets of Iran. Do you think Obama is being too careful? Or even that he is helping Ahmadinejad by being cautious?
MM: Obama has said that there is no difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi. Does he like it himself [when someone is] saying that there is no difference between Obama and [George W.] Bush? Ahmadinejad is the Bush of Iran. And Mousavi is the Obama of Iran.
FP: Would Mousavi pursue a different foreign policy than Ahmadinejad?
MM: As you may know, former President Mohammad Khatami, who is supporting Mousavi at the moment, was in favor of dialogue between the civilizations, but Ahmadinejad talks about the war of the civilizations. Is there not any difference between the two? We [Iranians] are a bit unfortunate. When we had our Obama [meaning President Khatami], that was the time of President Bush in the United States. Now that [the United States] has Obama, we have our Bush here [in Iran]. In order to resolve the problems between the two countries, we should have two Obamas on the two sides. It doesn't mean that everything depends on these two
people, but this is one of the main factors.

Like everyone else in the world, the Moussavi people know that the Bush administration opposed the Khatami government almost as much as the conservative mullahs.

They also know that the Bush administration was eager to start a war with Iran and that American neo-cons seemingly ended every meal with a chorus of "Bomb, Bomb Iran."

Maybe that's why they see the blustering Ahmadinejad as Iran's Bush and Moussavi as Iran's Obama.

Good Vibes at RSI World Headquarters

It looks like my book proposal for "Displays of Degradation" might be getting some fresh legs. As many times as it's burned and come back to life, I should be putting "phoenix" in the title. I'm still aways from getting a contract though.

Today was also an awesome research day.

Iranatologists Emerge From Hiding

Evidently taking the hint from RSI, Stuart Whatley attended a gathering of Iranatologists for speculation about the underlying meaning of the current protests. Taken altogether, the Iranatologists didn't have that much insight. But I thought the link was worthwhile.

Hillary Hurt: She Should Do a Commercial!

Hillary Clinton fractures her elbow. That must REALLY hurt. But there's no sense letting a serious injury go to waste. She should do a commercial explaining how the Obama health care proposal would help most Americans if they broke their elbows.

Health Care Message from President Obama

With the health care wars are getting under way, I got a "personal" letter from President Obama yesterday.

Here's a good chunk of it.

"The campaign to pass real health care reform in 2009 is the biggest test of our movement since the election. Once again, victory is far from certain. Our opposition will be fierce, and they have been down this road before.

To prevail, we must once more build a coast-to-coast operation ready to knock on doors, deploy volunteers, get out the facts, and show the world how real change happens in America.

And just like before, I cannot do it without your support.

So I'm asking you to remember all that you gave over the last two years to get us here -- all the time, resources, and faith you invested as a down payment to earn us our place at this crossroads in history.

All that you've done has led up to this -- and whether or not our country takes the next crucial step depends on what you do right now.

Will you donate whatever you can afford to support the campaign for real health care reform in 2009?

It doesn't matter how much you can give, as long as you give what you can. Millions of families on the brink are counting on us to do just that. I know we can deliver.

Thank you, so much, for getting us this far. And thank you for standing up once again to take us the rest of the way."

The bottom line is that the health care debate is going to be about money--in other words who has the money they need to best get out their message. The Obama administration has a good health care plan with a much needed public option for health insurance. Adapting President Obama's plan will be a big step forward in redesigning the American health system to serve the public as opposed to the health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and medical equipment manufacturers. I could say something about "bleeding the country dry while providing sub-standard care to large sections of the population." But I don't imagine Obama would like that kind of inflammatory rhetoric.

That's why I'm going to contribute up to $100 to the campaign. I hope others do as well.

Where's an Iranatologist When You Need One?

HuffPost has a headline about Iran's Assembly of Experts being called to an emergency meeting in the religious center of Qom.

There are very interesting things that are taking place right now. Some of my sources in Iran have told me that Ayatollah Rafsanjani, who is the head of the Assembly of Experts -- the eighty-six member clerical body that decides who will be the next Supreme Leader, and is, by the way, the only group that is empowered to remove the Supreme Leader from power -- that they have issued an emergency meeting in Qom.

Now, Anderson, I have to tell you, there's only one reason for the Assembly of Experts to meet at this point, and that is to actually talk about what to do about Khamenei. So, this is what I'm saying, is that we're talking about the very legitimacy, the very foundation of the Islamic Republic is up in the air right now. It's hard to say what this is going to go . .
.
An informed Iranian-American had a different take. "I think Rafasanjani is not going to ask for Khamenei's removal, but is bluffing to force Khamenei to drop support of Ahmadinejad."

But who really knows? Who can really guess? Iran's Assembly of Experts seems to be the religious version of the Politburo in the Soviet Union. They're the people who turned Ayatollah Ali Khamenei into Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. They're the people who decide who will be the "deciders" even if they're not involved in the ins and outs of daily government themselves.

But who knows whether the Assembly of Experts is actually meeting or what they're meeting about if they're meeting? Back in the good old days of the Soviet Union when the world was simple and our enemies were "reasonable communists" rather than terrorists, the U. S. had brigades of Sovietologists who closely followed the Politburo. They probably didn't know all that much for certain, but the Sovietologists could at least make plausible guesses about what was happening in the upper leadership ranks.

Where's a good Iranatologist when you need one?

Maybe There's a Problem with the Drug War

I caught this line in a CNN story about the murder of a Mexican priest by a drug cartel.

As enforcement action in Mexico and the United States has increased, domestic drug consumption in Mexico has increased.

There are all kinds of signs that the drug war isn't working.

But I still didn't think that "increased drug enforcement" would be correlated with "increased drug consumption."

Everybody would better off if drug use were legalized and taken over by governments.

Compassion for John Ensign

How the mighty often fall! Sen. John Ensign revealed yesterday that he had an affair with a Senate staffer and that the woman involved was married to another one of his staffers.

"Last year I had an affair," said Ensign. "I violated the vows of my marriage." Ensign did not name the woman with whom he had the affair, saying only that "the woman who I was involved with and her husband were close friends of mine." He added that he was "committed to my service in the United States Senate".

There was also the possibility of blackmail.

Two Senate Republican sources close to Sen. John Ensign of Nevada told FOX News that a former employee had asked Ensign for money in what both sources described as a case of "extortion."

The employee, Doug Hampton, worked in Ensign's Senate office, and his wife, Cindy Hampton, worked for Ensign's re-election campaign. Both ceased working for the senator shortly after the affair ended, the sources said, with Cindy Hampton receiving a severance package. The circumstances of Doug Hampton's departure remain unclear.

But whether the aggrieved husband tried to blackmail Ensign or not, having an affair with the spouse of a staff member is extremely low behavior.

The underlying problem for Sen. Ensign is that he's a self-righteous guy from the religious right who's condemned the sexual foibles of other politicians in no uncertain terms. When the Monica Lewinsky scandal erupted, Ensign called on Bill Clinton to resign as president, saying he had "no credibility left." Ensign was also highly critical of Larry Craig's arrest in a bathroom sex-sting, saying that Craign should resign from the Senate: “I wouldn’t put myself, hopefully, in that kind of position, but if I was in a position like that, that’s what I would do.”

That was in September, 2007. Three months later, Ensign was in precisely that position with one of his own staffers.

Adding everything up, it's easy to criticize Ensign as a self-righteous hypocrite and plenty of people are doing just that. And it's good for Ensign to feel the weight of that judgment. Maybe Maybe he'll be less of a jerk about other people as a result.

Still, I believe in compassion for politicians with wandering eyes.

I know I've posted on this before, but temptation is everywhere for politicians. Guys like Ensign are pretty people (Ensign has that Mitt Romney shock of hair) and they come into contact with all kinds of other pretty people who tell them how great they are in the most sincere way. A couple of drinks later, Mr. Political Big-Shot is turned on by someone who, luck would have it, is eager to go to bed with them.

That appears to be what happened with John Edwards and Rielle Hunter.

Or in Bill Clinton's case, an intern is flashing her thong your way.

That's temptation.

I'm not sure what happened in Ensign's case. Maybe the general sexual charge of politics was too much of a temptation for him. Maybe he is a hypocritical jerk calling on other "fallen" politicians to resign while actively pursuing affairs himself. Who knows, perhaps he's a monster like Eliot Spitzer choking prostitutes or Robert Packwood sexully harassing female staffers.

Hopefully, the tabloids will be able to sort everything out.

For now though, I'm going to give Ensign the benefit of the doubt, think it's a matter of temptation, and hope that he'll develop more sympathy for other people with problems.

Statement from Ayatollah Montazeri

Here (via Andrew Sullivan) is a recently released statement from Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri of Iran. Montazeri was an important clerical supporter of theocracy during the early days of the Revolution, but fell out of favor because of his support for a more open policy and spent some time under house arrest.

Given that Montezeri is no longer a powerful political figure, his statement probably won't have any impact on the policies of the current theocratic leadership of Supreme Leader Ali Khameinei.

But from an American perspective, Montazeri formulates his views in an unusual, almost unique kind of way.

In the name of God

People of Iran

These last days, we have witnessed the lively efforts of you brothers and sisters, old and young alike, from any social category, for the 10th presidential elections.

Our youth, hoping to see their rightful will fulfilled, came on the scene and waited
patiently. This was the greatest occasion for the government’s officials to bond with their people.

But unfortunately, they used it in the worst way possible. Declaring results that no one in their right mind can believe, and despite all the evidence of crafted results, and to counter people protestations, in front of the eyes of the same nation who carried the weight of a revolution and 8 years of war, in front of the eyes of local and foreign reporters, attacked the children of the people with astonishing violence. And now they are attempting a purge, arresting intellectuals, political opponents and Scientifics.

Now, based on my religious duties, I will remind you :

1- A legitimate state must respect all points of view. It may not oppress all critical views. I fear that this lead to the lost of people’s faith in Islam.
2- Given the current circumstances, I expect the government to take all measures to restore people’s confidence. Otherwise, as I have already said, a government not respecting people’s vote has no religious or political legitimacy.
3- I invite everyone, specially the youth, to continue reclaiming their dues in calm, and not let those who want to associate this movement with chaos succeed.
4- I ask the police and army personals not to “sell their religion”, and beware that
receiving orders will not excuse them before god. Recognize the protesting youth
as your children. Today censor and cutting telecommunication lines can not hide
the truth.

I pray for the greatness of the Iranian people.

Much like I've always thought of Iraqi Ayatollah Sistani as an impressive religious figure working through a very difficult time, Ayatollah Montazeri impresses because he apparently takes great care to drain any theatricality out of his statement. This gives his thoughts a simplicity and authenticity that's often lacking from the statements of Western leaders.

Another dimension of Montazeri's statement that I very much appreciate is his stress on the Iranian people as the touchstone for his thoughts. There used to be a phrase in the West that "the voice of the people is the voice of God" and Montazeri writes as though he agrees with that statement. He evinces enormous respect for the integrity of the Iranian people that has shown through the Iranian Revolution and the eight-year war with Iraq, and which still shows in the patience and non-violence with which all sectors of the people--"old and young alike, from any social category"--are carrying out the protests of the rigged election.

My reading of Montazeri's statement is that he views the full wrongfulness of the Iranian government in rigging the election and suppressing the protests as lying in its destruction of its bond with the Iranian people. The election represented a great opportunity for the Iranian government to "bond with the people" and the Iranian government failed in its duty by dealing with that opportunity in "the worst possible way." The Iranian government not only "declared results that no one in their right mind could believe," they "attacked the children of the people with astonishing violence" in front of the whole world.

For Montazeri, the Iranian government has broken any bond it had with God as well. A government that does "not respect the people's vote" has no religious or political legitimacy" and the police and army personnel attacking the children of the people risk the judgment of God as well as the judgment of the world.

Montazeri seems to believe that "the people" has an inherent bond with God and that the duty of Iranian government is to nourish that the various segments of the population that forms the people and thus strengthen the ties between God and his followers. He worries that the authorities have undermined "people's faith in Islam" as a result of their conduct.

Montazeri's stress on "the people" makes it possible for him to articulate a condemnation of the Iranian regime that has considerable moral and theological depth. We would do well to follow Montazeri's example in reestablishing the notion of the people as a central concept in our political thinking.

In the Western world, there used to be balance between the concept of the people and the concept of the individual. But American authorities have been successful in putting the whole weight of political philosophy on individuality and draining the concept of the people of any moral or political substance. The most important repository for any concept of the people is now African-American thought and African-Americans are starting to fall into individualistic patterns of thought as well. By disconnecting individuality from any collective sense in this way, the development of American political thought has made individuals more vulnerable to government and corporate efforts at manipulation and control. Losing a sense for the life of the people has come at the cost of a great loss of human freedom in this country.

Altogether, Ayatollah Montazeri articlated an impressive statement on the situation in Iraq, one which holds lessons for us in the United States as well as the Iranian government.

Painting the Estrogren Palace

It looks like I'll be returning to an estrogen palace when I get home to Morehead from my five-week stay in Philadelphia.

Mrs. RSI and the two daughters RSI started painting up a storm as soon as I left town. That's no surprise. I'm extremely allergic to paint and the only time anybody can do some painting is when I'm out of town for more than a week. The physical plant people at Morehead State painted my office and the halls in my building in January and Februar and I couldn't go back for more than five or ten minutes at a time until April.

But I have an ominous feeling about the colors. The kitchen is changing from whatever color it was (as a "guy's guy, I don't really notice these things) to "cocoa-butter" yellow.

I have no idea what color that is, but I got an ominous feeling when Miss Teen RSI told me how "pretty" it was.

I wasn't that excited about hearing the living room was being painted "rose-pink" either.

But there comes a time when every father of daughters has to "man up" and face the prospect of full-time immersion in the aesthetics of 21st century teen-age femininity. If the guy who lived across the street from my parents could get through raising six daughters, I can certainly survive the estrogen onslaught from my two girls.

It's the price we pay for our commitment to the traditional family.

Beck and the Far Fringe

In an interview with the Washington Post (via HuffPost), Glenn Beck reveals that he's not exactly the darling of the survivalist, Aryan Nation, militia, Neo-Nazi fringe.Washington, D.C.:

We have seen several domestic terrorist attacks already this year (Pittsburgh cop killings, Wichita abortion doctor murder, Holocaust Museum shooting) and Shephard Smith has acknowledged an increase in vitriolic hate-filled emails to Fox News. How do you balance providing your viewpoint with making sure not to push fringe groups over the edge towards violence?

Glenn Beck: Anybody who thinks that I'm pushing fringe groups to violence should read my e-mail. The fringe groups hate my guts. The fringe groups think I'm a government stooge. What people need to keep in mind is that some people in the fringe groups are CRAZY. If you want to target Fox News, feel free, but it's misguided.

Of course, the "far fringe groups" hate Beck's guts. HE'S COMPETITION.

The Long, Dark, Summer

Now that the NBA playoffs are over, Matthew Yglesias writes that "the long, dark summer of no interesting sporting events begins."

What he means is that the American sports world is now focused on baseball.

Here I have to admit to being a bad father. I so much dreaded the hour after tedious hour of watching t-ball games that I never introduced my daughters to softball.

If there's a hell, I'm sure I'll pay for it.

What if Cheney Were Being Waterboarded?

One of the significant issues of the post-Bush era is whether bitter dead enders like Dick Cheney actually want to see another big terrorist attack on the U. S.

After Cheney's inflammatory speech at the American Enterprise Institute, I was quick to write that Cheney "might as well be hanging out a sign saying "We're weak. Please attack us" and "one wonders if Cheney's well of bitterness doesn't run so deep that he wouldn't welcome a major terrorist attack as sweet vindication."

Apparently, CIA director Leon Panetta was thinking along the same lines and told Jane Mayer in a straight-forward way that:

"I think he smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue. It's almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it's almost as if he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that's dangerous politics."

Cheney denies it all and acts surprised.

"I hope my old friend Leon was misquoted," said Cheney in a terse statement (put out by his office. "The important thing is whether or not the Obama administration will continue the policies that have kept us safe for the last eight years."

Of course, I bet Cheney would change that story if he were being waterboarded.

Wishing Bill Kristol Well

Bill Kristol urges conservatives not to be stupid about Iran. I doubt he'll have much luck with that though.

Here's the full quote from his blog entry:

There have been very good grounds to criticize President Obama's foreign policy so far. There will be much more to criticize over the next three and a half years.

But he is our president. We could be at an historical inflection point in Iran. The United States may be able to play an important role. The task now is to explain what the Obama administration (and Congress) should be saying and doing, and to urge them to do what they should be doing. Presuming ahead of time that Obama will fail to exercise leadership, and cataloguing this episode pre-emptively as another in a list of Obama failures, would be a mistake. The U.S. has a huge stake in the possible transformation, or at least reformation, of the Iranian regime. If there's some chance of that happening, and some chance of U.S. policy contributing to that outcome, we should hope Obama does the right thing, and urge and pressure him to do so--because then the United States will be doing the right thing, and the United States, and the world, will benefit.

This too is the role of a loyal opposition.

Iranian Investigation into Vote Fraud: Probably Not as Hopeful as It Sounds

HuffPost put up a report that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khomeini has ordered an investigation into allegations of electoral fraud in last week's election:

Iran's supreme leader ordered Monday an investigation into allegations of election fraud, marking a stunning turnaround by the country's most powerful figure and offering hope to opposition forces who have waged street clashes to protest the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

HuffPost calls this investigation a "huge development," but it sounds a lot like the appointment of high-level investigatory commissions in the U. S. The idea is to distract, delay, and obfuscate until everybody forgets the issue.

Still, internal pressure to reverse the election results may be having an effect.

Rigging the election in such a massive way was tantamount to a coup by the clerical establishment and Ahmadinejad. Maybe they're starting to lose their nerve.

Cheney Invites Attacks

It's a little bit late for Jane Mayer to be quoting Leon Panetta as saying that Dick Cheney is inviting terrorist attacks. Cheney's inflammatory speech at the American Enterprise speech was almost three weeks ago and it was obvious then that he was practically inviting another 9-11. My reaction to the speech was that Cheney "might as well be hanging out a sign saying "We're weak. Please attack us." Also, "one wonders if Cheney's well of bitterness doesn't run so deep that he wouldn't welcome a major terrorist attack as sweet vindication."

Anyway, here's the money quote from Mayer's article on Panetta:

“I think he smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue,” he told me. “It’s almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it’s almost as if he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that’s dangerous politics.”Next time, the heavy hitters need to be quicker on the mark.

Better late than never I guess.

Netanyahu's "War Forever" Speech

Today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted the idea of a two-state solution for the Palestinians but added enough poison pills to kill a herd of elephants.

Here's some of the worst aspects of Netanyahu's speech.

The Palestinian state would be demilitarized to the nth degree. It would have "no army, no rockets or missiles, no control of airspace."

Netanyahu claims he wants demilitarization so the Palestinians don't pose a threat to Israel. Talk about an obvious lie. What Netanyahu wants is a Palestianian government that only governs during brief periods between Israeli incursions.

Given that no demilitarized Palestinian government would be able to stop terrorist attacks on Israel, demilitarization means repeated Israeli operations against the unarmed Palestinians.

It would be a state of war until the end of time which Netanyahu wants because the Israelis would be guaranteed to win.

Needless to say, none of this makes the Palestinians very happy. Mustafa Barghouti of the Palestinian parliament responded by claiming that "Netanyahu was calling for creation of a ghetto state." Barghouti should have added "with frequent pograms against the Palestinians."

Other lovely items.

Netanyahu doesn't want the Palestinian government to have control over their foreign policy--no treaties with Iran or Lebanon (i.e., Hezbollah), or anybody else the Israelis don't like.

But would he allow the Palestinians to make their own treaties with the Obama administration?
One doubts that as well.

Netanyahu also indicated that there would be no more withdrawals from the settlement expansion of the last forty years.

We tried withdrawal by agreement, withdrawal without an agreement, we tried partial withdrawal and full withdrawal. In 2000, and once again last year, the government of Israel, based on good will, tried a nearly complete withdrawal, in exchange for the end of the conflict, and were twice refused.

The Israeli settlement movement is just as much an impediment to peace as Hamas terrorism. In fact, it would probably be best to view the Israeli settlers and Hamas terrorists as allies in the effort to prevent peace.

Who knows! Maybe the Israeli settlers and Hamas terrorists have regular meetings to work out how the latest peace initiative is going to be scuttled.

But Netanyahu how little he's committed to peace by stressing his alliance with the settlers: "The settlers are not enemies of peace. They are our brothers and sisters."

Netanyahu also rejected any Palestinian right of return, any Palestinian claim to Jerusalem, and really any Palestianian claim to anything.

Obviously, Netanyahu doesn't want peace or anything like it.But you can bet that Netanyahu's stupendously conditional acceptance of a two-state solution will be disputed on the American right.

In fact, I'm waiting with baited breath for the first viagra-pumped, fantasy-driven neo-con to accuse Netanyahu of "appeasement."

Hoping for a Do-Over in Iran

Andrew Sullivan reports that "Iran's own election monitoring commission has declared the result invalid and called for a do-over."

I can't say whether Sullivan's sources are valid, but I could definitely live with that.

Eat your heart out Norm Coleman.

The Beginning of the End of Iran as We Know It

The Madoff Approach to Elections. The electoral fraud in the Iranian was massive and crude. In 2004, the clerical regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rigged the election by declaring hundreds of reformist candidates ineligible to run. This time, they assigned very similar vote totals for incumbent hard-liner president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad across provinces which had previously been distinct in their voting. It was as if the Republicans had said that Massachusetts voted the same as Texas. The biggest tip off to Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme was that he announced the same results every quarter without fail. Giving similarly huge majorities for the conservative Ahmadinejad across the board is a fraud as well.

Another fraud indication was that the regime improbably gave Ahmadinejad majorities in the home towns of his opponents and even showed him winning Tehran where he was very unpopular.

The Question of a Coup. There has been considerable talk from the camp of reformist presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi that the electoral fraud is a "coup" on the part of the conservative Iranian establishment. What Mousavi means is that Iranian conservatives have overthrown what he calls the "sacred system" system of balancing the ultimate power of the clerical establishment with a democratically elected president and parliament.

By rigging the election, the clerical establishment is in essence overthrowing the Iranian people as an element in the political system and eliminating the popular vote as an element in distributing political power.

There might be another coup element as well. Steve Clemons writes that there are powerful clerics such as Hashemi Rafsanjani who oppose the electoral fraud and that they might attempt to remove Ayatollah Khamenei as Supreme Leader. Given Ahmadinejad's denunciation of Rafsanjani during the final days of the campaign, it seems more likely that conservatives have decided to eliminate Rafsanjani and other reformist clerics like former President Khatami as independent centers of power. The conservative power play might be a coup within the clerical leadership as well.

Clemons also summarizes this idea well:

Ahmadinejad is now genuinely scared of Iranian society and of Mousavi and Rafsanjani. The level of tension between them has gone beyond civil limits --and my contact said that Ahmadinejad will try to have them imprisoned and killed.

The outcome of such a leadership coup would be the boiling of the Iranian regime down to a form in which a hard-line conservative religious establishment holds ultimate political power with the Ahmadinejad government acting as its agent in formulating economic and foreign policy. This kind of regime would have the support of about 20% of the population (according to Juan Cole) and would keep the opposition off-balance through a combination of political marginalization, using the police and militia as agents for repressing dissent, and engaging in constant foreign policy confrontation with Israel and the U. S.

The Shape of Things to Come. I have to admit that I have a really boring triangulating kind of opinion here. The BBC assumes that Khamenei and Ahmadinejad have won and that the situation in Tehran and other cities will calm down. To the contrary, Andrew Sullivan is more excited about the events in Iran than he's been anytime since the fall of the Soviet Union. My opinion is that the current coup will work temporarily but that the Iranian government will have a hard time sustaining itself over the long term. The Ahmadinejad government is too much like the Bush administration to survive for the long term. Like the Bush administration, the Ahmadinejad government is incompetent at managing the economy and domestic policy but in a country that doesn't not have nearly the cushion of wealth as we have in the United States. Now that the Iranian regime has shrunk to an authoritarian core, economic protest will inevitably gratitate toward overthrowing the regime. The Iran regime will counter domestic unrest by stirring up conflict with Israel and the United States and making patriot appeals to the Iranian public to support the government. But that strategy has already played itself out. Observers wonder whether the Iranian situation is more like the successful revolutions of 1990-1991 or the failed revolution of Tiananmen Square. My opinion is that the best analogy for the Iranian situation is the American election of 2004. The Bush administration won, but it was already on borrowed time.

Lebron James to the Clips?

Michael Wilbon thinks the Los Angeles Clippers are a better destination for Lebron James than the Knicks. Now, I have a soft spot for the Clips and agree with Wilbon that Eric Gordon, Chris Kaman, and Blake Griffin are a better supporting cast than Lebron will ever see in Cleveland.

It's also possible to see the merely dysfunctional Clips as a better destination than the "super, ultra, lightning" (to quote The Incredibles) dysfunctionality of the Knicks.

Certainly, there's the argument that James could sign with a team that has really good pieces like New Orleans, the Hawks, or Oklahoma City.

And the Clippers have young talent that's as good as anybody's.

But, there's a big "BUT" to all of this thinking. Now matter how one slices it, neither James nor anyone else can see Donald Sterling as a championship owner. They probably won't make a serious offer either.

Lebron James is not going to be a Clipper.

The same thing can be said for the ownership in New Orleans. I doubt that James will look at the Oklahoma City Thunder (too new) or Atlanta Hawk (too fractured) ownership as being very credible either.

Unless Lebron can figure out a way to go to Boston, the Lakers, or the Spurs, he will probably end up staying in Cleveland. The Cavs have strong ownership, an effective general manager in Danny Ferry, and a track record of making good moves like trading for Mo Williams. Mike Brown is a decent coach who's getting better all the time.

Even Lebron James lives in a world of limited options and the Cavs are probably the best option he'll find out there.

Ahmadinejad: Is He Iran's Rush Limbaugh or Iran's Newt Gingrich

It looks like Iran is in for a spell of instability as power-broking clerics like Ayatollah Khamenei and Hashemi Rafsanjani decide what to do in the aftermath of the rigged presidential election.

Actually, incumbent President Ahmadinejad should have considered seeking endorsements from Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. His "economic populism, social conservatism, and hard-line foreign policy" sound like Republican Party boilerplate.

RSI Bothered by Krugman

I have a lot of qualms about doing this because of the possibility of my opinion being picked up by the right as "even progressive bloggers like Red State Impressions . . ." Having been equated with Bill O'Reilly a couple of weeks ago by Ann Althouse (thanks Ann!), I'm a bit leery about the intentions of conservative appropriators.

Still, I have to object to Paul Krugman's op-ed on "The Big Hate." There are two passages that I find especially objectionable.

Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.

and

And at this point, whatever dividing line there was between mainstream conservatism and the black-helicopter crowd seems to have been virtually erased.

Starting with the second passage first, Krugman just doesn't seem to recognize the extent to which the distinction between "mainstream conservativism" and the "black-helicopter crowd" began to blur during the Bush years. Conservatives all over the country moved out of "liberal neighborhoods" and towns (See Bill Bishop, The Big Sort) In Bible-belt areas like Eastern Kentucky, conservatives have been taking their kids out of public schools and withdrawing into all-encompassing mega-church environments. Likewise, rural gun owners just assumed that any Democratic president would be "coming to take their guns." That's why the first reaction to Obama's election was a run on guns and ammunition at local gun shops. The same is the case with Muslim rumors about Obama. Nobody in the popular right needed The Washington Times to tell them Obama was a Muslim. It was all over conservative list serves well before the election. The same is the case with the stuff about liberal economic policies being socialism or Marxism. Mainstream popular conservatism has been moving toward the fringes for years.

In my opinion, conservatism is evolving rapidly in a rightward direction even as it is shrinking as a popular phenomenon. Right now, Rush Limbaugh represents the middle of the conservative spectrum with country-club Republicans and what Krugman would call "mainstream conservatives" on his left with a "near fringe" of really small government zealots, survivalists, Ann-Randians, and neo-Confederates on Limbaugh's right and then a farther fringe of secessionists, survivalists, neo-Nazis, and other wackos daydreaming about living in their cellars, making citizens arrests of Fed officials, and the like.

Yes, in the conservative universe, Rush Limbaugh is a relatively moderate figure. I would view Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly as either in the same spot as Limbaugh or somewhat to his left. For his part, Glenn Beck would be a couple of ticks to the right because of his flirting with integrating far fringe black helicopter themes into the Limbaugh mainstream.

All of these figures are revolting to progressives and I'm just as revolted as Paul Krugman. I can't say how many times I've referred to "Limbaugh mainstream conservatives" as "repulsive" and repugnant and I think they're also becoming such to the country as a whole.

However, I also think it's important to view the problem from their point of view as we attempt to sort out what is happening with the Rich Poplawski, George Tiller, and Holocaust Museum murders.

I believe the conservative view goes like this. Given that "conservatism" is moving farther to the right. the big names in the conservative media establishment are going to have to move farther right if they want to continue to appeal to what they (rather than Paul Krugman) see as the "conservative mainstream." Sarah Palin is enormously popular with the conservative base because conservatives view her as speaking to their increasingly fringe views. Glenn Beck's experiments with conspiratorial themes like "Obama re-education camps" get a response because Becks's audience already agrees with those conspiratorial themes. The increasing "extremism" of people like Beck is driven more by audience demand than it is by the "conservative media and political establishment."

For people who don't believe this, stop and think of the last time you heard something from Ann Coulter. Like O'Reilly, Hannity and some others, Ann Coulter is sticking with her old schtick rather than going along with the "far fringe themes" of Glenn Beck. And that's made her less prominent on the right as a result.

My suspicion is that Krugman doesn't get out of the BosWash urban belt often enough to fully understand that. Who can blame him? Who in the progressive movement really wants to spend a lot of quality time with people to the right of Rush Limbaugh. I know I don't. I feel a hell of a lot more at home in Philly than I do in Eastern Kentucky.

But the various fringes of the American right are out there and we need to think more about them if we're going to remain a "reality-based" political constituency.

What are the dangers in the current situation with conservatives? The first danger we see is far fringe people like James von Brunn, Scott Roeder, and Rich Poplawski launching suicide attacks at their various hate targers. These are horrifying events, a number of worthy people are dead, and it's tempting for progressives like Krugman to blame conservative media and political people because of their prominence and because conservative media and political figures are the furthest people on the right that most progressives know. But it's just highly unlikely that von Brunn, Roeder, and Poplawski were stimulated by anything in the mainstream conservative media. They were all versed in far fringe discourses much farther to the right than Limbaugh and launched their attacks out of "martyrdom" motivations more familiar to Osama bin Laden than Bill O'Reilly.

But Fox does come into play with the second danger. That's the danger of the increasingly right-wing "base" of the Republican Party drifting out to the far fringe and becoming real dangers. Right after Obama won the election, I heard a lot of stories from my students about racist guys in Eastern Kentucky gloating over the prospect of Obama's assassination or bragging that they'd "do it themselves" if nobody else did. What about is the possibility of those guys and the most committed anti-abortion activists, anti-tax zealots, Christianists, and others moving out to a "farther fringe" in which they adopt insurrectionist views and become a threat. There's a good chunk of the Republican Party there--maybe 25-33%. If such a large section of the American public switches from the "near fringe" extreme to the "far fringe extreme," we would move from the relatively frequent political assassinations we have now to real political instability.

That's a problem worth avoiding.

So the question then is whether Limbaugh, Fox, Sarah Palin, and other conservative media and political figures are guilty of contributing to a destructive shift of conservativism toward the far fringes of neo-Nazism, survivalism, and secession.

The answer here has to be a resounding NO! The conservative media establishment isn't doing any favors to the Republican Party by doing this, but they (probably unintentionally) are doing the whole country a favor by providing a "mainstream" conservative anchor that functions to slow down, mitigate, and render the conservative rightward drift less dangerous. Because Limbaugh, Hannity, Palin, Huckabee, and other conservative media and political figures are powerful forces, they tend to keep attention of everybody riveted on "mainstream conservatism" and keep large numbers of people from being more attracted to the far fringes.

Conservative media figures aren't quite sitting on dynamite, but they are sitting on an audience that could become dynamite under the right conditions. Krugman seems to want the conservative media to be "more careful" about their right-wing advocacy and their criticisms of Obama. To the contrary, I think the conservative media would make a real contribution by giving more attention to "far fringe" ideas and why they disagree with them. In this sense, I think the conservtive media should engage in a kind of triangulation in which they disagree the fringe right types on the right at the same time that they continue to focus most of their fire on the Obama administration and progressives like Krugman. In my opinion, airing out all of the conspiracy theories and providing them with a hearing in comparison to other views is a better approach than either maintaining silence or just condemning them as the work of "wackos."

Open political communication has been a liberal ideal since the attempts of lynch mobs to suppress the abolitionist movement in the 1830's. That counts for conservative ideas as well. In my opinion, the conservative media serves as a stabilizing force in the rightward drifting conservative movement. They should be encouraged to continue doing so.

Republican Extinction

While agreeing with most progressives about the mainstream media's sympathy toward conservative views, there are times when conservatives really do get sandbagged. The Katie Couric interview with Sarah Palin was a good example. Producers must have known in advance that the somber lighting of the set and the slow, uber serious tone of Couric's questions would all work against Palin's perky strengths and accentuate her lack of policy knowledge. Taping the show must have felt like moving in for the kill.

There's another little dig on Time's Mike Murphy article on the problems of the Republican Party. Time editors accentuate Murphy's theme of the "GOP Ice Age" by changing the Republican symbol of the elephant into a woolly mammoth, an ice age behemoth . . . .

Which just happens to be extinct.

Murphy, a top Republican consultant, puts a familiar argument into an attractive package. He believes that the power of demographics means that the Republicans need to change. He focuses on the Hispanic and youth vote. The Hispanic vote has increased from 2% of the electorate in 1980 to 9% in 2008, went to Obama by 36%, and delivered Indiana to the Democrats. Given that the most popular name for male babies in Texas is "Jose," the Republicans will have to change their stance on immigration if they want to become even remotely competitive for the Hispanic vote.

Likewise, Murphy argues that the Republicans need to relax their opposition to gay marriage and abortion rights if they want to start being competitive for the 18-29 vote.

Murphy knows that all of this is bitter medicine. Republican Senators and House members come from safe districts that really want the GOP to stick with Reagan. He also ould have mentioned that GOP voters are becoming even more rigid in their conservatism and thus are unlikely to change their approach.

Ultimately, the Republicans probably are on the road to extinction and they would need more bitter medicine still if they want to change course.

Top of the GOP list should be shutting down Fox News.

The function of Fox News is to amplify conservative views on abortion rights, gay rights, race, immigration, health care, and Obama. Conservative views on all of these topics range from unpopular to offensive with the rest of the country. With the television megaphone in the hands of right-wing provocateurs like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly, Fox provides decisive affirmation for both sides of all these debates in a way that disadvantages conservatism.

For conservatives 33% of the electorate, Fox affirms all of their views as being the right views and portrays them positively as an embattled minority. Largely because of Fox (and talk radio), conservative constituencies are always inflamed about immigration, abortion, gay rights, and religion. As a result, the Republican Party has none of the wiggle room on social issues that consultants like Mike Murphy would like to see.

Even worse, Fox also manifests conservative hostility toward African-Americans, hispanics, gay people, and secular culture. That hostility gets further amplified through the emerging left-wing media of the Daily Show, Colbert Report, Huffington Post, and Media Matters. To the Republican Party, Ann Coulter's homophobic comments about John Edwards are an embarrassment best forgotten. However, the rise of the left-wing media means that the provocations of Coulter are never forgotten. Material from Coulter, O'Reilly, Beck, and the other Fox worthies become left-wing news, fodder for comic put-downs of conservatives, and affirmations of progressive views concerning the right. The ultimate result is to lock in the majority view of conservatives as old white people who are bigots, homophobes, and religious zealots who are generally out of touch with modern America.

For Republicans, "The Fox Effect" is to shrink the GOP down to a very committed 33% minority that is poorly thought of by the large majority of their fellow Americans.

And it's not just Hispanics and young people who see conservatism this way either. So are white moderates and independents. Murphy doesn't mention this because he probably sees the Republicans as no longer having a chance with these constituencies, but the "liberalization" of the New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. suburbs has destroyed the Republican Party in the Northeast and given the Democrats an advantage in Virginia.

If the GOP wants to once again become competitive with the white moderates, independents, and weak Democrats who dominate the suburban vote, the best thing they can do is close down Fox.

Of course, that's not going to happen. One way or another, the Republicans probably will become extinct.

Alabama Football on Probation for 1,000th Time

Well, it does seem that way. The University of Alabama football program was placed on another three years probation and forced to vacate 21 wins because of a textbook scandal. Given that Crimson Tide boosters weren't caught giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to steer recruits to Tuscaloosa, that probably seems like progress.

But only if you think committing burglary is proress over robbing banks.

Who's No. 1 Among Conservative Bloggers?

John Hawkins of Right Wing News ranks Hot Air as the top conservative blog. No problem there. I also enjoyed the irony of Mickey Kaus' Kausfiles being listed at No. 21. Kaus might be the only person in the world who still counts himself as a Democrat.

But I was disappointed not to see my amigos at Protein Wisdom on the list. Evidently, Hawkins hasn't been surprised with Jeff Goldstein's campaign on behalf of (yawn) intentionalist theories of textual interpretation.

Jeremiah Wright Needs Nice Warm Cave

Jeremiah Wright needs to find a nice warm cave someplace for hiding out the rest of the Obama presidency. Wrights claims that first Jews and then Zionists are keeping him from Obama rank extremely high on the "clown" poll.

That's especially the case after the Holocaust Museum shootings.

Frankly, I imagine that Obama would rather have another frank little chat with Joe the Plumber than Jeremiah Wright.

And rightfully so.

Wing-Nut Blames Von Brunn on Muslims

My own instinct is to resist the urge to blame James von Brunn's attack on the Holocaust Museum on the right-wing media.

But it's not like the right is trying to avoid being stupid.

Here's Debbie Schlussel blaming Muslims for Von Brunn's attack.

In fact, it is because of Muslims--who are the biggest contributor to the worldwide rise in anti-Semitism to Holocaust-eve levels--that neo-Nazis feel comfortable--far more comfortable!--manifesting their views about Jews. Until 9/11 and our resulting new tolerance for Islam, the neo-Nazi types were marginalized and howling at the wind. We know who has been targeting Jewish museums and centers affiliated with Jews in recent years. And it hasn't been, in general, 89-year-old White guys.

Ugly stuff. Schlussel makes every Muslim in the world into an Islamist extremist. She might as well say that every guy with a German sounding name is a Nazi.

Brief Theses on Holocaust Memorial Murderer

Yesterday, an elderly white supremacist and neo-Nazi named James von Brunn walked into the Holocaust Museum and shot a security guard before being wounded himself and subdued.

Some quick thoughts:

1. James von Brunn is a typical American time bomb. One characteristic of American life is the bad chemistry of explosive rage, the easy availability of guns, and social failure. The result is that there's thousands of potential mass murderers walking around burning with anger, armed to the teeth, and waiting for one last trigger before they go off. One of the things that James von Brunn has in common with Michael McLendon, Jiverly Wong, and Scott Roeder is that he is part of an extremely destructive pattern in American life.

2. Too extreme for the "extremist right." People on the left often think of Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck as "the exteme right" and these guys as having an influence on shooters like James von Brunn and Scott Roeder. But they're wrong. Von Brunn is a long-time, neo-Nazi, white supremacist, anti-semite, and Obama conspiracy theorist who has already served time for an attack on the Federal Reserve Board. Members of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups are often cut off from their families, have few friends outside their groups, and live within the fantasy of their tight-knit circles. Von Brunn is so extreme that he might see Fox News as part of the "liberal media."

3. Who's Influencing Who? The problem with the right-wing media is that it appears that Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and some other members of the conservative media establishment are feeling their way toward fringe views. It's more likely that people like James von Brunn are exercising an influence on Beck and Limbaugh than the other way around.

4. Why Now? Why the explosion of mass murder within the first six months of the Obama administration? In a society as large as the U. S., it's likely that there's many causes coming together to cause this kind of wave of mass murder.

Here's three ideas.

First, the recession is significant. Michael McClendon, Rich Poplawski, and Jiverly Wong had all lost factory jobs before they went on their killing sprees.

Second, the Obama administration seems like the "end of days" to many on the far fringes of right-wing extremism. Obama is an African-American with an African father who was especially strong among college-educated, urban, whites and minority groups like blacks, hispanics, gays, and Jews. Given that the far fringes of the right are highly committed to their fantasies about all of these populations, the Obama administration represents an apolcalypse in which all of their hate targets have come to power. As Shepherd Smith said on Fox yesterday, some of them are responding by reaching for their guns.

Third, there's the fantasy of power. One of the primary fantasies on the fringe right is that they are strong and that everybody else is weak. One way to hang on to that fantasy in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is to plan a mass murder.

McAuliffe Loses in Virginia

Democratic Party mover and shaker Terry McAuliffe lost the Democratic primary for governor of Virginia today. The transition from hack to statesman is always tough.

A Great Philly Night

What a great, cool, fall night in Center City Philadelphia. The fact that it's June makes it even better.

Conservatives: Wrong for Every Occasion

The Detroit Lions went 0-16 in 2008 but it seems like conservatives have been zero for the last decade. I just looked at an essay by Victor Davis Hanson on how Obama supposedly is violating the laws of human nature. It's unbelievable. Everything he says about Obama, human nature, and academics is wrong, wrong, wrong. Even Hanson's personal anecdote about life as a farmer is formulated so badly it sounds like a lie. How does he do it?

The Discovery of the Day

Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan discovers that Barack Obama is not Ronald Reagan. Pat must have had an industrial strength case of the vapors when he finally figured that out.

Gay Rights: A Profoundly Democratic Cause

Quick!

Name a gay rights leader.

Ok. There's Harvey Milk but he had been dead for 30 years before you heard of him.

Now name a living gay rights leader.

I'm waiting. Cmon . . . Cmon. We haven't got all day. The gay rights movement has made enormous strides over the last six months and the last six years. Where are the transcendent moral figures of contemporary gay rights. Who's the Martin Luther King making the closet disappear? Where are his or her famous lieutenants--the Ralph Abernethy's, Joseph Lowry's and Jesse Jackson's of the gay rights struggle. What about the Malcolm X's, Stokely Carmichaels, and H. Rap Browns of gay rights. What about the famous gay rights writers in the vein of James Baldwin? Who's the gay rights version of Thurgood Marshall?

That's all right. I'm waiting for myself to find out as well. As a rural kid whose only news access to news was a small town newspaper and the CBS Evening News, I was aware of everybody named in the previous paragraph except Lowry and Jackson. Even though I'm a much better informed person today, I still couldn't name any of the leaders of the gay rights movement outside Harvey Milk and Randy Shilts and both of them have been dead for a long time. A lot of that's my fault, but the fault doesn't lie in me alone. In an age where practically everybody gets the celebrity treatment, gay rights leaders haven't gotten the celebrity treatment. People know Joe the Plumber infinitely better than they know the leaders of gay rights organizations or the lawyers mapping out the legal strategies for promoting gay marriage.

But the gay rights movement is winning anyway. Gay rights organizations have effective leadership and there's lots of excellent gay rights lawyers, and gay rights writers. And they all deserve a great deal of credit for their effective work. But I'm not sure that the moral weight of the gay rights movement--the main thing that keeps driving the gay rights movement forward-- the leadership. Rather, I think that the moral giants of gay rights are the millions of gay people who have come out to their parents, friends, and communities and are living openly as gay people despite often paying an awful price for their courage.

Celebrity leadership is generally over-rated and somebody like Martin Luther King did not direct the civil rights movement so much as he symbolized the broad activism of the African-American population. But the profoundly democratic character of the gay rights movement is especially evident in the fact that it's succeeding without celebrity leadership.

Rush Provides Another Reason to "Buy GM"

After years of giving the American public more reasons to vote Democratic, Rush Limbaugh is now beginning a new campaign to get Americans to buy GM cars.

The people saying they don't want to buy anything at General Motors are not mad at General Motors. They don't want to patronize Obama. They don't want to do anything to make Obama's policies work! This is an untold story, by the way. Of course, the government-controlled media is not gonna report anything like this but there are a lot of people who are not going to buy from Chrysler or General Motors as long as it is perceived Barack Obama is running it, because people do not want his policy to work here because this is antithetical to the American economic way of life. The government does not own car companies; the government does not design cars, not in a country that works. So people aren't going to buy products from companies that Obama runs.

That's right. The new slogan for General Motors should be "Screw Rush--Buy GM."

George Will's Favorite Grammatical Device

George Will thinks that President Obama "is inordinately fond of the first-person singular pronoun." As a monarchist who still hasn't gotten over his preference for the British side in the American Reveolution, Will would much prefer that Obama use the royal "we."

Newt Gingrich: a Powerful Force for Paganism

Today, at a speech in Virginia, Newtie complained about paganism.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee urged Christians to get involved in politics to preserve the presence of religion in American life.

"I think this is one of the most critical moments in American history," Gingrich said. "We are living in a period where we are surrounded by paganism."

Newt Gingrich has a Ph.D. in history from Tulane, but is as terrible a historian as he is skilled at politics. Paganism has lots of divine personalities like Zeus, Hera, and Apollo from the religion of classic Greece and the religious practice of paganism involves sacrificing animals (and the occasional human) to those divinities. Paganism also associates divinity with natural phenomena like thunder and specific places like groves and river. And sacrifices animals to them as well. If I remember right, Achilles was almost killed by a river god in the Iliad. But what anchored paganism was ancestor worship where the primary religious practice was within families and revolved around songs, prayers, and other forms of worshipping deceased male heads of household. Ancestor worship involves constant animal sacrifice.

In other words, paganism is a bloody mess. Even the few people I know who would claim themselves as pagans (including one of my wife's cousins) are too genteel to practice any form of animal sacrifice.

Likewise, most people who think of themselves as pagans are thumbing their noses at their families. As a result, the last thing they would undertake is ancestor worship.

So, rest easy Newt.

You're not surrounded by pagans.

But I can see where Newt Gingrich and other paragons of the right could see themselves as surrounded by people who reject the agenda of religious conservatism. At least two thirds of American rejects Protestant fundamentalism, Catholic traditionalism, conventional Mormonism, and Orthodox Judaism. About 15% of the American population is now either atheistic, agnostic, or vaguely spiritual as well. Perhaps what Gingrich means by "paganism" is the rejection of religious conservatism and he's certainly right that most Americans reject religious conservatism. Religious conservatism isn't even all that popular in Bible Belt areas like Eastern Kentucky.

But why is that the case?

Here I think Newt Gingrich should look in the mirror. Now that Newt is one of the premier voices for the conservative effort to claim the U. S. as a Christian nation, he's also become a powerful force for the rejection of religious conservatism. Newt's Gingrich is legendary for his relentless self-centereded, sanctimoniousness, hypocrysy, and inhumanity toward his fellow human beings. How could he not be. Gingrich is a prominent public figure who is extremely aggressive about all his bad character traits. Everything that anybody needs to know about Newt Gingrich can be summed up by the fact that he informed his first wife that he was divorcing her while she was in the hospital for cancer treatment.

As a spokesperson for the Republican Party, Gingrich drives people away from the Republican Party. Now that Gingrich is a spokesperson for religious conservatism, he's driving people away from religious conservatism. As some evangelicals like Michael Spencer are beginning to realise, the association of Protestant evangelicism and Christianity with political conservatism and the religious right is undermining Christianity. Now that moderates and liberals are starting to identify Christianity with people like Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and the guy who murdered George Tiller, they're also starting to reject Christianity.

If Newt Gingrich lives to be 100, we might be going back to ancestor worship and animal sacrifice after all.

Not Bad for Someone With an Allergy

Last night, I was drinking very liberally for a guy with an allergy to booze.

Big Day in New Hampshire

It gives me enormous pleasure to put the gay pride flag over this post. The expansion of gay marriage rights--really the expansion of gay rights in general--is one of the most inspiring trends in American life over the last 25 years. Why last 25 years! My own thinking is that the movement for gay marriage grew out of the surge in gay rights activism in the early 1980's around the AIDS epidemic. I was working as a cook and bus boy in a gay bar in Philadelphia as AIDS was really taking hold, have made many gay friends and acquaintances since then, and have always felt a great deal of happiness for them as the cause of gay marriage has moved forward.

Yesterday, the cause moved forward again as New Hampshire Governor John Lynch signed a bill legalizing gay marriage in New Hampshire. That makes six states that now recognize gay marriage rights with more states like New York likely to come in the near future. It's probably too much to hope for at this point, but I'd really like to see the federal government rescind the pernicious Defense of Marriage Act from the Clinton years.

Anyway, congratulations to everyone who supports gay rights. It was another good day.

The GOP Is Already Losing the 2010 Elections

This should be filed under the "Duh! What did you think was going to happen?" file. Andy McCarthy of National Review Online is in a blather because the Obama administration has withdrawn approval for the state of Georgia's vote suppression policies.

In the heated imaginations of people like Andy McCarthy, vote suppression was one of the Rove-era tactics that was going to bring about 1,000 years of conservative political domination. The general idea of vote suppression was to use the immigration issue as a wedge to lower the voting rates of less affluent Democratic constituencies like African-Americans, legal Hispanics, and poor whites. Under the cover of keeping illegal immigrants out of the voting booth, vote suppression gurus like Hans von Spakovsky sought to load up poorer Democratic constituencies with identification requirements that a certain percentage of them would not be able to meet. Lower voting rates among these groups means fewer votes for Democrats, more victories for Republicans, and a better life for the Andy McCarthy's and Michelle Malkins of the world.

Georgia was the state that bought into vote suppression in a big way and enacted a voter ID policy that withstood a number of court challenges. But it looks like the Georgia system is going to go the way of the dinosaurs, slavery, and segregation because the Obama administration is reversing the Bush administration's vote surpression policies. No surprise here! The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed precisley to end vote suppression in Southern states like Georgia. Andy McCarthy calls the Voting Rights Act an "anachronism," but the fact that Georgia was pursuing an onerous voter ID policy is strong evidence that the state still needs to be supervised under the Voting Rights Act. As a result, the Obama Department of Justice has withdrawn approval for Georgia's voter ID requirement. Hopefully, the Obama DOJ will be promoting policies that make it easier for minorities and poor people to vote.

Andy McCarthy claims that the end of the vote suppression era means that the Democrats are "already winning the elections of 2010." That's absurd. If McCarthy wants to know why the Democrats are going to win in 2010, all he has to do is look at Republican behavior in states like Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Whether it's pushing Republican senators like Arlen Specter into switching parties or ruining the chances of Republican incumbents like Jim Bunning to win re-election, the Republican Party is acting like its no.1 priority is electing more Democrats.

The Shorter Mark Sanford

State Sen. Joel Lourie (D-Richland) nails Mark Sanford, South Carolina's right-wing zealot of a governor, after Sanford's veto of legislation regulating payday loan-sharking.

[Sanford's] vision for South Carolina is for ineffective, underfunded schools, for kids buying cheap cigarettes and for unprotected consumers."

As always, the key to understanding conservatives is that they frankly don't give a damn about the welfare of their villages, towns, states . . . or country.

Kentucky Not Least Great After All

As a citizen of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, I almost instinctively flinch whenever I see a headline like "Which State Was Least Great in 2008?" on the Atlantic site. Kentucky is near the bottom of so many things that it used to be a joke that everybody in Kentucky said a prayer of thanks for Mississippi so we could be 49th rather than 50th.

But this measure of the recession wasn't so bad for Kentucky. We've lost .1% of our GDP (39th), 2.6% on our unemployment rate (31st), and another 1.3% (tied for 8th) on our home prices. Given that the recession has taken a bite out of the economy and unemployment has risen (it's about 10% in my county), we not exactly doing well. But we're not really that close to being a big recession state like Florida or Alaska either. In particular, people in Kentucky have hardly lost anything on their homes.

Kentucky might not have the "Unbridled Spirit" emblazoned on our license plates, but we're not the "Least Great in 2008" either.

Brian Williams Still Sucking Up to Power

It's reassuring to know that guys like NBC's Brian Williams know how to suck up to power even though President Obama is a Democrat.

Williams talks of "walking through the West Wing and Secretary [Hillary] Clinton drops by to see the president. To be in the hallway when the president walks by with a handful of M&Ms, popping them in his mouth as he goes to visit his chief of staff — it was unbelievable."

Talk about nauseating. All the same, I was pleasantly nauseated because Williams was sucking up to Obama rather than Bush.

Sotomayor Loses the Arrogant Prick Vote

But to Rick Santorum's credit, he did manage to get through his rejection article without saying anything particularly racist, misogynist, or homophobic. Good for him.

What Pro-Lifers Really Hate is Our Freedom

William Saletan of Slate keeps up his "abortion is tragedy" blather but undercuts his own argument when he points out that pro-life advocates don't propose to punish the women who get abortions as murderers.

The reason these pro-life groups have held their fire, both rhetorically and literally, is that they don't really equate fetuses with old or disabled people. They oppose abortion, as most of us do. But they don't treat abortionists the way they'd treat mass murderers of the old or disabled. And this self-restraint can't simply be chalked up to nonviolence or respect for the law. Look up the bills these organizations have written, pushed, or passed to restrict abortions. I challenge you to find a single bill that treats a woman who procures an abortion as a murderer. They don't even propose that she go to jail.

Why? If they really think abortion is murder, pro-life groups should be proposing that every woman who gets an abortion should either get a life sentence in a maximum security jail or the death sentence. The doctors, nurses, attendants, clerks, and anybody else who works at an abortion clinic or a hospital that provides abortion services should also be going to jail. So should anyone connected to dumping the spare embryos that will never be brought to term but are still "babies" in the mental world of pro-life activism.

For all their belligerent posturing, the pro-life side doesn't believe their own claim that abortion is murder. Here's a case where I think that Bush administration anti-terrorism rhetoric applies well. What the pro-life right really hates is freedom--the freedom of women (and men) to live our own sexual lives without the sword of pregnancy hanging over their heads to punish women and couples for any missteps. The right wants to make sure that sex is more feared than enjoyed, seen more as temptation than pleasure, and anticipated more with dread than joy.

It's all B.S. They might as well carry signs claiming "Freedom is Murder!"

The reason that abortions--the termination of pregnancies--are a right under Roe v Wade is that women can not be free beings if the existence of an embryo can determine how they are going to live the next 20 plus years of their lives. The pro-life movement does not want women to have that fundamental freedom of determining their own lives according to their own ambitions, plans, whims, or meanderings. But that's why abortion rights need to be defended and extended as part of the right of women to negotiate their way through their own lives. In this light, abortion rights are an extension of the right of women to manage their own lives that also include dating, marrying the person of their choice, and divorce rights. They're also an extension of the contraception, adaption, and fertility strategies that allow women to space out children as they see fit and allow women to be gay and still have children.

The right-wing opposes almost all of this freedom. They're just as opposed to the contraception, divorce, non-marital sex, gay people, homosexual adaption, and other elements of sexual freedom. Some Christian schools don't even allow dancing, hand-holding, and kissing--all because they're seen as "gateways" to unmarital sex. Actually, I'm kind of surprised that I haven't seen any defenses of arranged marriages coming out of the pro-life movement.

But just as bin Laden is ultimately going to lose his terror war, the American right will ultimately lose its war on freedom.

Tom Tancredo's Dangerously Racist Aide

A couple of years ago, Marcus Epstein, formerly a speechwriter for anti-immigration zealot Tom Tancredo (R-Co) and now the executive director of Tancredo's political action committee, was convicted of an attack on an African-American woman in D.C.

On July 7, 2007, at approximately 7:15 p.m. at Jefferson and M Street, Northwest, in Washington, D.C., defendant was walking down the street making offensive remarks when he encountered the complainant, Ms. [REDACTED], who is African-American. The defendant uttered, "Nigger," as he delivered a karate chop to Ms. [REDACTED]'s head.

The Talking Points Memo headline focuses more on the "n-word" than anything else. But Epstein also gets out some of the meaning of the n-word and what makes it so offensive. What's particularly interesting about Epstein's assault is that he uses the n-word as he is "delivering a karate chop to the head" of the poor African-American woman. Here, Epstein didn't just use the n-word as a pejorative that demeans African-Americans. What the "n-word" meant to Epstein was that he had a "right" to attack the woman without any other provocation than the fact that she was African-American. In Epstein's view, his status as a white man gives him such superior human status that he is free to assault an unknown black woman just for being black. If the laws had not changed to the disadvantage of racist murderers, Epstein probably would have contended that he had a right to killer her as well. This is what the whites in the Algiers Point neighborhood in New Orleans thought during the chaos of Hurricane Katrina. They thought the "n-word" meant open season on black people--"like pheasant season in South Dakota."

Epstein was also walking down the street "making offensive comments" before he delivered his karate chop. This is slightly different because it raises the chicken and egg of what comes first--the general belligerence or the specific racism. My own argument would be that racism and a generalized belligerence and aggression are mutually reinforcing. But how does this work as a young conservative activist walks down the street calling out "racial epithets." What are black people doing to offend him. Mostly, they're enraging Epstein by walking down the street as though they had rights and felt secure in those rights because they were enforced by both law and social opinion. Near the end of The Souls of Black Folk, DuBois' portrays a fictional white judge threaten to lynch every black person within his reach if African-Americans started thinking they had a right to enter his front door. Like the judge, Epstein claims a general right of superiority over black people grounded in nature and seems enraged that blacks can now claim a right over their own persons. That's part of why he lashes out at this one woman.

Epstein was convicted for hitting an unnamed African-American woman instead of believing he had a right to do so, being enraged that African-Americans could claim rights of their own, and using the "n-word" to signify all of this. However, the fact that Tom Tancredo hired Epstein over other qualified people, put Epstein in positions of responsibility, and didn't even remove Epstein over his attack on the black woman is a strong indication that Tancredo holds the same blatantly racist opinions as Epstein. It doesn't take much imagination to think that a really big chunk of the population of conservative staff apparatchiks holds the same kind of views as well. People on the left generally view conservatives as covering their racism with a very thin veneer of political correctness. The case of a dangerous racist like Marcus Epstein confirms that view.

Red State PHILLY Impressions

I'm back in Philadelphia for five weeks of glorious research and writing. To honor the occasion, I'm once again changing the title of the blog to Red State Philly Impressions.

George Tiller: Abortion Doctor and Credit to Humanity

Dr. George Tiller, a physician who performed abortions, was murdered in Kansas today by "an all-purpose right-wing nut" named Scott Roeder. Dr. Tiller's been a special target of right-wing figures like Bill O'Reilly because he's one of the few physicians who is willing to perform late-term abortions and Tiller had already been shot once by right-wing activists. Consequently, a lot of the commentary has been on the role of the right-wing media in tipping unbalanced people like Roeder into becoming murderers. For example, Jim D. Adkisson, who killed two people at a progressive Tennessee church, read books by Michael Savage and wrote in an apparent suicide note about the need to kill as many liberals as possible.

But I think it's more important to take an opportunity to give credit to George Tiller for being a courageous man and making an important contribution to human welfare. Abortion is a crucially important social asset as well as a legal right in American society. The fact that women are not forced to carry pregnancies to term has helped open up tremendous new vistas of freedom for American women and has been an incalculable benefit to our society as a result. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have always been mistaken in the idea that the number of abortions should be reduced to some "rare" minimum. Given that the material in a pregnant woman's uterus is a "fetus," a woman has as much right to control and/or dispose of that material as she has a right to contraception, regulating her periods, or anything else to do with gynecological health. As a result, there should be more abortions in this country rather than less. Abortions should be much more available in red-state areas like Kansas, Kentucky, South Dakota, and Mississippi. Those are the states that have the highest percentages of unwanted pregnancies. Abortions should be more available as a normal medical service to poor women and other women shouldn't feel so guilt-ridden about abortions that they choose to forego abortions that they would otherwise have done.

George Tiller deserves a lot of credit for performing abortions at all. I'm sure he could have made more money and had a more peaceful life doing some other kind of medicine. But he especially deserves credit for continuing to perform abortions and late-term abortions after the first armed attack on him by a pro-life activist named Shelley Shannon in 1993. I'm sure Tiller knew that he could be murdered at any time. But he kept providing abortion services to women in Kansas despite the vigilante death sentence hanging over his head. It's significant that Tiller died while attending a Christian church, the Reformation Lutheran Church of Wichita, Kansas. Not unlike Jesus, he died for the benefit of others.

Nuggets in Six; Lakers if its Seven

It's Sonia Sotomayor

Obama's nominating Appeals Court judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. I wanted to say "let the viciousness begin," but in Sotomayor's case, the viciousness started with a New Republic hit piece as soon as Souter announced his retirement.

Just as Over-Rated: Colin Powell

When the later histories of the Bush administration are written, Colin Powell is going to come off looking even worse than Bush, Cheney, or David Addington. Well, maybe not Addington. Few figures in American political life have had as much credit for integrity as Colin Powell. But how did Powell use his massive credibility while he was Secretary of State--to bring Bush and Cheney's dreams of invading Iraq to live. Although the machinery for the invasion was in place before the famous UN speech, overthrowing Saddam Hussein was not a popular idea until Colin Powell used his credibility to promote Bush administration's lies about mobile bio-labs and other pseudo-threats. If Bush neo-cons are the North Koreans in white face, Colin Powell was the useful idiot who made them look credible and convincing.

Over-Rated: North Korea

Kim Jong-il's government practices the Asian version of neo-conservative buffoonery. Far more attracted to theatrical belligerence, in-your-face gestures, and the politics of brinksmanship than the boring details of managing their affairs, the North Koreans have turned their whole country into post-Katrina New Orleans and can barely keep their huge army fed. Just as American conservatives are more interested in "outraging" liberals than anything else in political life, the North Koreans devote themselves to thinking of new ways to "thumb their noses" at South Korea, Japan, and the U. S. If North Korea is a threat at all, they're a threat to do something incredibly stupid just to show their audacity. That makes the North Koreans more over-rated than Journey, the LA Lakers, and John Wayne combined.

Last Night's P-Galore Tempest

It looks like we on the left are going to get the privilege of this week's hissy fit. On Saturday, the Republican National Committee put out a video that attacked Nancy Pelosi by representing her as "Pussy Galore," the villainess from the Bond movie Goldfinger. The big play here was to portray Pelosi in terms of the P-word as a term for female genitals and in case anybody missed the point, they put the label "Democrats Galore" at the end.

Having published a post entitled the "Deep Depths of Dick" last night in relation to Dick Cheney, I'm not in much of a position this morning to be self-righteous about reducing anyone to their genitals.

But here's what Taylor Marsh says:

At the end it says “Democrats Galore.” Imposed with a naked woman behind the tag line. Get it? Subtle it is not. But check out the video at around :40 seconds; a split screen that says it all. “Pussy Galore” is shown with “Starring Nancy Pelosi the Speaker” over “Pussy’s” image.

But hey, it’s good to have a sense of humor about these things right? And who doesn’t love the Bond films, especially those Sean Connery classics?

The RNC, however, is not celebrating the women in these classic movies, even by 1960’s standards. Nor are they empowering women through utilizing one of the the cunning female villains who parade around in them by equating her with Speaker Pelosi. I shouldn’t have to spell it out any further, though if the RNC doesn’t have women in their leadership ranks or men who get this stuff and know bad taste when they see it, the Rush, Newt and Cheney Party (as they were aptly called on "Hardball” yesterday) is truly nothing more than a frat boy institution. No offense to
fraternities meant.

That a woman, let alone Speaker of the House, should never be hinted to in any public way through the use of “Pussy” insinuations should be obvious. That this is being used by a once major political party in the 21st century is stunning.

Still laughing smugly to myself about my Dick Cheney post, I can't quite agree that making female genital insinuations is degrading at all times--just in male-dominated societies like our own. The problem of living in a male-supremacist society isn't so much that female genitals are degraded but that female genitals are so rarely exalted. Going back through the history of Western literature and popular culture, male genitals have been subject to a constant outpouring of exaltation and a steady stream of degradation as well. Jon Stewart can refer to Stephen Colbert as having "titanium balls" for sending up George Bush to his face and liberal bloggers like myself can demean Dick Cheney for being such a "dick."

But it's still so rare for female genitals to be exalted in any way that there's good reason to think that any insinuation concerning female genitals is demeaning. In the Renaissance classic Gargantua, Rabelais gives Gargantua a legendary penis, but his wife Gargamelle's vagina, clitoris, and ovaries must also have been enormous and had their own outsized qualities. But Rabelais limited her to giving birth and dying. That's pretty much still the case today. I saw a reference on Open Salon yesterday to a female blogger having "steel ovaries," but there's still little in the way of imagery, metaphor, mythology, and hype that represent the "parts" of women in terms of valued qualities, like energy, drive, determination, and toughness. If anything, the situation has gotten worse over the last couple of decades as the tentative efforts to represent women as full human beings have been overwhelmed by the explosion of pornography.

So yeah, the RNC video on Nancy Pelosi is degrading to Pelosi as a woman and degrading to all women. Even though I've degraded Dick Cheney through a reference to his genitals (Sorry Dick), I wasn't males in a bigoted way because I'm just as prone to exalt masculinity in other places. Exalting and degrading people in sexual terms is a lot of what popular culture and popular politics is about. But until women's sexuality is much more exalted than it is now, insinuations concerning women's genitals are going to be rightfully seen as degrading.