On Mrs. Obama's disdain

 --Tip Drill, Nelly

 In heaven's name
why do you play these games?
--Hang On, to Your Love,
Sade

 We see not only with our eyes,
but with all that we are,
and all that our culture is
--Dorothea Lange 

I've seen all good people
turn their heads each day
So satisfied I'm on my way
--I've Seen All Good People,
Yes

_______________________ 

[The graphic features the rapper Nelly and his "Tip Drill", in which he slides a credit card between a woman's buttocks. I saw it playing on a t.v. in a gym in 2001. An inauspicious beginning to the 21st century, far as women's rights go, I thought.]

Mrs. Obama, recently delivered a tremulous speech hailed for its unbridled emotion ostensibly on behalf of every woman. One does not become an attorney without some acting skills.

No doubt Mrs. Obama, hailing from Southside Chicago, knows of some men who “throw down, and take away.” But Mr. Trump has never been accused of being one of those men. 

ISTM in the pantheon of bad male behavior, copping a few feels and talking locker room about ladies private parts pales in comparison to the ACTUAL behavior of so many men who have inhabited the Oval Office. Stealing a kiss or copping a feel versus getting fellated in the Oval Office and inserting a cigar into a 19-year old's vagina.You decide.

But we trot out the little ladies when need to feel chivalric, which is to say, righteous and purposeful, in the face of a national political atmosphere which is anything but.

Witness one of the after-the-fact phony justifications for the Phony Wars on Terror (PWOT ©): women's rights. And things have gotten a lot better for women since that action, no?

But no one questions the bombast, because it sounds so good. I mean, who could be against women having rights, right? That is like saying you are against moms and apple pie.

This speech came in an atmosphere that has allowed the wide dissemination of  false rape tales like that of Tawana Brawley and Crystal Magnum by members of the Duke Lacrosse squad. The mythical targets were black women, in a reverse Mandingo fantasy.

We are all good people, and have been taught to atone. We believe that wearing our horsehair shirt will buy favor from the gods.

So when Mrs. Obama says “we”, what we hear is, “we black women”.  We live in an age in which there are calls for monetary reparations for slavery, and #blacklivesmatter is a social networking movement. A collective guilt gets superimposed upon any man, especially a privileged one, accused of some wrongdoing.

Mrs. Clinton’s initial campaign ads featured a black girl alone before the image of a florid Trump exhorting something on the screen, ad infinitum. She is wide-eyed, and seems afraid.

Ironic that a month later, tapings of Trump's private conversation appear, along with a few women over a span of 30+ years who allege they have been “inappropriately touched” (NYT headline) by Mr. Trump.

Have we no shame? Is there no adult in the newsroom, or among the viewers of the spectacle?

The stumping Mrs. Obama expresses her horror at Mr. Trump's bravado and possible overreach:

 “It’s that feeling of terror and violation that too many women have felt when someone has grabbed them, or forced himself on them and they’ve said no but he didn’t listen. It reminds us of stories we heard from our mothers and grandmothers about how, back in their day, the boss could say and do whatever he pleased to the women in the office.”

Unfortunately, her speech about the bogeyman bossman is fraught with untruth. And the lawyer in her would say that The New York Times will surely face a libel suit after this election.

But if the paper gets its candidate into Office, it will have been worth it. The lawsuit will occur post-election, and someone will happily foot the bill.

No woman has said that she said "no" to Mr. Trump, and that he then gave chase, as Mrs. Obama implies. And sorry to say, but exploitation and misogyny did not stop back in Mrs. Obama's mother's day. 

This is a transparent attempt to tarnish Trump with the biggest sin, that of being old and therefore, out of touch. The implication is clear: Mr. Trump and his superannuated brethren are from another place and time. This is blatant ageism.

Trouble is, Mrs. Clinton is exactly the same age, and the FLOTUS's speech is rent is rife with problems.

She states Mr. Trump spoke "freely and openly" on the secretly recorded tape. This IS still America, and we may hold opinions and we have free speech. We may speak freely, with an expectation of privacy unless permission has been granted otherwise.

She also said she is "worried about the impact this election is having on our boys who are looking for role models of what it means to be a man.”

However, if she were truly worried about that, then she would address the very real problem of the much too many young black boys who grow up lacking fathers or even father figures, for that surely has a corrosive effect upon that population, and our population at large. (She could witness that in Southside Chicago, too.)

Incarceration rates for black males are at epic proportions. 72% of black children are raised in single head of household families. Now those are problems that need tending to.

Mrs. Obama says she is hurt to her core over Trump's words. To quell her shock, perhaps she should stop listening to "Earth, Wind and Fire" and borrow her husband's iPod to broaden her horizons regarding the state of relations between the sexes.

There, she may listen to some of Jay-Z's greatest hits -- try "Big Pimpin'" for a start. Oh, I know, now that he and his wife are billionaires he tries to explain it away. But misogynist rappers have always contended that they are just expressing life as it is.

Jay-Z's wife, Queen Bey, earned her almost half a billion by robustly shaking her moneymaker and singing about fellating men in limousines, among other things. 

Probably not what Mrs. Obama wants for her daughters, but there it is.

This would be today, and it is exactly where women stood in her mother's day (and hers), if she cared to see and tell the truth.  

[cross-posted @ milpub.]

Expeditiousness

Purveyors of political correctness will, in the final analysis,
not even allow others their judgments...
They celebrate “difference,” but they will not allow people truly
to be different -- to think differently, and to say what they think
--Mark Berley

It is the absolute right of the state
to supervise the formation of public opinion
--Joeseph Geobbels

I love to go to Washington,
if only to be near my money
--Bob Hope
______________

On yesterday's Political Junkie (NPR Talk of the Nation), journalist Matt Bai addressed the impact of the Netroots movement in the Obama campaign's success and declared them "marginal." Fawning bloggers who were expecting to "crash the gates of power" may be disappointed, but they were never part of the team anyway.

"He's bigger than any bloggers," he said. "I mean, they can make noise," but the majority of the internet presence is his, implying that the majority of the internet presence is on Obama's election team. It's a great lesson in life: if people take the expedient choice once (see Rev. Wright), they are probably expedient actors: tigers don't change their stripes, political or otherwise. So long, and thanks for the fish.

So all the good folks who bleated their hearts out, paying their way to the convention and hoping for change from their new messiah have just been thrown under the bus.

We at Ranger didn't eat the slop from any feed bag, so we're not too broke up about it. It is, however, rather condescending towards those Believers who paid their way to the conventions to bray at the foot of the dais. We just stand aside and observe the Obamabilia and his "polebritiness" (Riding Obama's Coattails, Making a Buck Along the Way.)

Yes, he's our next President. And yes, I'm as hopeful as the next guy, really. (Disclaimer: this next bit has nothing to do with Obama himself.) But here is my beef: why has there been no opposition to the contention that we need leaders of a "new" generation, and that somehow newness equates to an actual meaningful change.

In this new ageism, 71-yr.-old Colin Powell says we need a "President who is a generational change." Is he so sick of his own toadyism that he imagines the fault lies in the stars and not in himself?

John McCain becomes, "the freed prisoner from a failed war. . . a story with roots sunk too deeply in the past for this moment (Change)." 42 years -- "too deep in the past"? This generation is poised to have its very own "failed war." Read Santayana.

On Bush, "father and son, World War II and Vietnam, a faded generation and a fading one . ." So even veterans in their late 50's and 60's are now "fading"? Can they be swept to the margins any more quickly?

So much for the hopes for rejuvenation of the Cougar generation, huh?

My beef is not with Obama, per se, but rather with a press which is collusive in heralding His coming. "New" -- as in new color, new age, new style, new music -- is all veneer-thin. All the deficiencies which plague their forebears can attach to their inheritors. Even if the behaviors are creatio ex nihilo; even if one has only dreams of one's father.

To be an X-er, Y-er, whatever, doesn't mean much in the whole scheme of things. People haven't evolved in a generation or five to the point of tossing off the yoke of covetousness, greed, sloth -- the unique mix of human traits which has landed us in our current precipitous situation. It is shallow thinking to say that because someone looks different, they will be different and somehow better than the ones they replace.

Obama's rhetoric is inspirational --straight from the pulpit. What change he can implement is another matter. Moreover, just because you may be enlightened doesn't mean you can bring your brethren along. Humans are burdened by laziness and distraction and exhaustion -- a perfect trifecta which has met its match in the wired 24/7 world in which we live.

Everyone has cable, Netflix, computers, Blackberry's, iPods, TiVo. There is so much to see, from the vantage point of your own couch. How much change can you implement when you are three episodes behind on "Lost"?

I resent the simplistic idea that the election of a younger candidate is somehow gonna whip this tired, lazy dog that is America into shape. The WaPo article is typical of this sort of triumphalism: McCain is of a "dying generation," his Vietnam story, "passe." George Bush's Oedipal Complex is REALLY passe, by some 2,300+ years.

C'mon: these are timeless human dramas and tragedies. The hubris to state that their time has passed is galling. We're not that evolved, thanks. Because you present with sang froid doesn't mean you, too, are not a part of the human tragedy.

What kind of grotesque society have we become, where disposibility and forgetfulness have become assets? Lethe, Greek goddess of forgetfulness, may have made one feel better for the time, but ultimately one would return to the same problems.

Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, served as an invaluable check to this desire for the easy fix.

Ageism

If you want my body and you think I'm sexy
Come on, sugar, let me know
--Do You Think I'm Sexy, Rod Stewart

Don't move that limbo bar
You'll be a limbo star
How low can you go?
--Limbo Rock, Chubby Checker
________________

Y'know, I don't know if it's just me, but the digs at McCain's age are rather pathetic.

Today's WaPo offered this inane non-news item: "Paris Hilton Issues Tart Rebuttal to McCain Ad." Really? Guaranteed that bit of wit didn't issue forth from Ms. Hilton herself. Should this be taking up a speck of respectable newspaper space, in the "Political" section? This mediocre "celebrity" otherwise consigned to People Magazine on her best day says:

"But then that wrinkly, white-haired guy used me in his campaign ad, which I guess means I'm running for president. So thanks for the endorsement white-haired dude."

"An announcer calls him 'the oldest celebrity in the world, like super-old, old enough to remember when dancing was a sin and beer was served in a bucket,' and asks, 'but is he ready to lead?' Hilton's spoof also intersperses images of McCain and Yoda from Star Wars and the cast of television's 'The Golden Girls.'

This is amusing? This is virulent ageism. Does the reverse fly? The contrapositive of "old white guy" is Obama as "young black buck" for his 48 years. How does that sound to you? Does it matter? We don't consult actuarial tables to determine who is the mostly likely to die when we consider our choice for president, do we?

Some tedious academic in gender and race studies will offer one day that this was a brilliant challenge to the Mandingo fantasy, earning a publication credit and another year on staff in the process. Really, it just sucks.

The liberal sites are running riot with shtick about "things older than McCain," as though this were respectable or relevant. It is mean and ugly and marginalizing, not witty and not winning. Do any of the people writing this and presumably getting a big har-har out of it realize they too are old white men and women?

Would this "old white guy" line fly any better coming out of a young black guy's mouth? How about an older black guy? How about a middle-aged Muslim? Do you see how irrelevant, and perhaps even self-loathing, the line is?

As if issues do not matter. I guess since little seems to separate these two candidates, style has to suffice in the stead of issues.

If liberals can't offer better than this, I am embarrassed to be in their camp.