mrbacklash

A way through the winter

2010-01-17T20:55:00.000-08:00

From Agence-France Presse:

Nearly a year into his presidency, Barack Obama acknowledged Sunday that he at times is wracked by doubt and disappointment when his key agenda items are slowed by multiple hurdles.

"You know, folks ask me sometimes why I look so calm," Obama told several hundred worshippers from the pulpit of Washington's Vermont Avenue Baptist Church, where slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr once delivered a sermon.

The US leader is famous of his aura of unflappability in the face of crisis, but he acknowledged that there are sometimes roiling emotions beneath the surface.

"I have a confession to make. There are times when I'm not so calm. My wife knows. There are times when progress seems too slow. There are times when the words that are spoken about me hurt. There are times when the barbs sting. There are times when it feels like all these efforts are for naught," he added.

"Change is so painfully slow in coming. And I have to confront my own doubts."

But the president said it was his faith that gave him inner calm and peace and urged congregants at the church to find solace in theirs.

"So let us hold fast to that faith," Obama urged the congregation.

"Together, we shall overcome the challenges of the new age. Together, we shall seize the promise of this moment. Together, we shall make a way through the winter. And we're going to welcome the spring."

Backlash coming

2010-01-17T20:51:00.000-08:00

Be afraid.

David Levine

2009-12-30T14:21:00.000-08:00

I think this is my favorite drawing by David Levine, showing the Soviet spy and influential British art historian Anthony Blunt. As undergraduates at Cambridge during the early thirties, Blunt and his friends became communists out of concern for the oppressed and fear of fascism. Here you can see Blunt giving what looks like the black power salute with one hand while holding a cup of tea in the other. It captures the contradictions of Blunt and the Cambridge ring quite well. They were a group whose commitment to leftist politics led them to betray their country, yet they remained English snobs to the end.

Another favorite, no explanation needed.

According to an appreciation in the New York Times, Levine was fond of saying that Stalin and Trotsky had destroyed "a beautiful idea."

For the most part, you'll find the people Levine depicted in their own idiom, their own clothes. Yet here we see Bertrand Russell dressed as a hippie.

Andy Warhol as Alfred E. Newman.

It doesn't seem to be one of the commemorated examples of his work, but Levine's rendering of Ken Starr as an Ayatollah (at first I thought it was Starr as bin Laden) probably deserves to be recycled.

Here's how he depicted arch-reactionary prelate Pius IX.

Bobby Kennedy, chicken-hawk.

Totally Unacceptable

2009-12-30T03:41:00.000-08:00

Some depressing news this morning - Obama came out with a statement last night proclaiming the near-miss terrorist attack over Detroit to be the result of a "systemic failure" in American security. The carping from our pseudo-conservative friends is working, apparently. And now Obama has to catch up to the problem before it leaves him behind. But he must not break a sweat in doing so. Perhaps this accounts for the measured response he's taken since Friday, traces of which remain in his most recent remarks:

“A systemic failure has occurred, and I consider that totally unacceptable ... Had this critical information [regarding plans by Al Qaida's Yemeni branch to use a Nigerian in an airliner attack] been shared, it could have been compiled with other intelligence and a fuller, clearer picture of the suspect would have emerged ... The warning signs would have triggered red flags, and the suspect would have never been allowed to board that plane for America.”

Perhaps it's wishful thinking to suggest that Obama will manage to turn this situation to his advantage. He was very lucky that the bomb failed and one wonders what his enemies would be saying now had it succeeded. Still, if he is intellectually sharp enough to survive the experience of being president at all, then Obama would, at some level of his mind, have anticipated something like this happening, if not worse. Or perhaps he's so exhausted that all these bewildering events have reduced him to simply reacting. It will be interesting, and scary, to watch.

At any rate, it's also interesting to read this story in The Independent (London) which shows us some of the Internet postings by Mr. Abdulmutallab, the failed bomber. You can find them toward the bottom of the story, and they point to someone who's locked in a struggle against loneliness and sexuality. Never a good combination, but predictable enough given the incredible stupidity of his crime.

Here's a picture of the building in London where Abdulmutallab lived for three years while studying engineering at University College. According to the Independent, his flat is worth two-million pounds and located on what they describe as a luxury car-lined street in Marylebone. If you look next to the window on the right, you'll see one of those blue-plates that get affixed to London buildings of historical significance. I once saw one on a building where Alfred Hitchcock had lived. (Perhaps it was here on the Cromwell Road in Kensington, where the director is said to have lived during the thirties.) According to the BBC, the one here memorializes Sir Robert Mayer, the English philanthropist.

Another question that this so-far modest debacle will affect: the closing of Guantanamo Bay. A few days before the failed attack, the Times had reported that funding problems would delay the shuttering of America's prison camp there until 2011. Is it too pessimistic to assume that it won't happen even by then?

Mr. Backlash '09

2009-12-27T09:11:00.000-08:00

It will be hard to look back on this year without thinking of Glenn Beck. He nurtured and kept alive the ugliness and paranoia that Sarah Palin first conjured during the election of 2008 and that now seems poised for a great political victory in the coming Congressional elections.

So this would seem to be the right time for a full consideration of Beck and his influence, but there's something about him that defies such consideration. "To write a serious critique of Glenn Beck is almost a waste of time," according to Thomas Frank. And in a way, he's being generous, since it's also a waste of time just to watch his show, as I discovered this summer when members of Congress were returning to their districts and confronting their constituents' angry protests against proposals to extend health care coverage to the uninsured. Since I found the whole thing ridiculous, and since the protesters seemed to be taking their cues from Beck's show, I began tuning in everyday at five o'clock on the TV in my office. I thought watching Beck while going about my other business would be fun in a perverse, cynical way. What I found instead was that watching Beck is indescribably boring. The show consists of nothing but the host spouting conspiracy theories that are more mind-numbing than laughably stupid, and the endless, repeated playing of video clips in which some official of the Obama administration is caught in a gaffe that reveals her secret Maoist agenda. Beck doesn't seem to have many live guests on his program and when they do appear they almost always take his side. Although his use of blackboards to sketch out various conspiracies provided a few chuckles and there was at least one instance of truly comic misspelling, I ended my few weeks as a loyal Beck-viewer feeling worn-down and depressed. The attempt to laugh at the enemy had failed. I also got very little of my regular work done due to all the agonizing over why it had failed.

Maybe it would be fine to dismiss Beck as stupid and mindless. Yet he is a central figure in the American political scene of the moment. If the kind of politics that Sarah Palin practiced in 2008 flourish in 2010, then it will be due in no small part to him.

Perhaps the best way to think of Beck is as a "study in the pathology of cultural criticism." This is what one historian of modern Germany has done to explain how intellectuals and writers of the late nineteenth century set the stage for what was to come later. Much like Beck, the subjects examined in "The Politics of Cultural Despair" by Fritz Stern all "sought to become prophets who would point the way to a national rebirth." As Frank observes, Beck's routines are like violent mood swings that go from ranting about social ills to weepy expressions of "goo-goo civic togetherness in which we overcome various plots 'to keep us from uniting,' in which we get together and realize we 'are not alone.'" Like the inventors of what Stern calls the pre-Nazi "Germanic ideology," Beck leaps from "despair to utopia across all existing reality."

Naturally, there's a huge difference between the subjects of Stern's scholarly work and Glenn Beck. The writers Stern wrote about, though demented, were real intellectuals of the pseudo-conservative revolution, whereas Beck is more like its rodeo clown. In our times, however, maybe the best way to understand him and where he's dragging us is to treat Glenn Beck as though he were a serious thinker.

A Serious Fact

2009-12-24T19:14:00.000-08:00

Max Weber, "Capitalism and Rural Society in Germany" (1906?):

"It happens nowadays in the civilized countries - a peculiar and, in more than one respect, a serious fact - that the representatives of the highest interests of culture turn their eyes back and, with deep antipathy standing opposed to the development of capitalism, refuse to cooperate in rearing the structure of the future."

Born Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, Pope Pius IX (1792-1878) was the longest reigning Pope in Church history, serving a period of 32 years that began in 1846.

In 1869, he convened the first Vatican Council, which announced the doctrine of papal infallibility. The dogma of the immaculate conception was also defined under Pius IX.

In 1858, papal police acting on orders authorized by Pius IX abducted a six-year-old Jewish child called Edgardo Mortara from his parents home in Bologna. He was baptized without their permission and, at age 23, was ordained a priest in the Augustinian order. He adopted the spiritual name Pius and learned to speak several different languages while working as a missionary among German Jews.

Mortara re-established relations with his family during his mid forties and attended the funeral of his mother (seated), which was led by the rabbi of Bologna. In 1897, he preached at Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York, despite objections from the archbishop on the grounds that Mortara's campaign to convert Jews would embarrass the American church.

The Mortara controversy was raised in 2000 when Pope John Paul II arranged Pius IX's beatification over the objections of Jewish groups and some of the descendants of the Mortara family. (Opponents of beatifying Pius also reminded the church that he had re-opened Rome's Jewish Ghetto after first closing it during the early, liberal period of his pontificate.)

In 1864, Pius IX issued an encyclical on the "Church in Bavaria" in which he observed:

If at any time whatsoever, then surely now in this most sad age, it is the duty of bishops to battle most strenuously against the enemies of the faith. Hence the bishops, relying on divine aid, must raise their episcopal voice and must preach the gospel to all. They must announce, teach, explain, and impress upon both the wise and the foolish, the eternal truths of our divine faith along with its doctrines and precepts. The bishops are also bound to explain and to show to both the highest princes and the government the deplorable evils and damage which affect the people and the princes themselves. This is the result of the present-day contempt of religion and of the spirit of unbelief rising from the darkness under the fallacious appearance of social progress; this, of course, harms the Christian and the civil government. Everywhere it daily grows stronger; it perverts and corrupts the minds and souls of men.

Obama in Oslo

2009-12-10T18:21:00.000-08:00

This is how the Independent (London) memorialized Obama's acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize prize today. It's pretty subtle, but I think a hayseed could figure out what the artist wants to say. In fact, it would be a good thing if more people in this country could see how Obama's Nobel has been received by the European press. They would learn that they aren't alone in having a low opinion of the president. Others share their view of him, if not for the same reasons, that he is a slight, speechifying phony. Perhaps this would make them feel better about the outside world, even if they still move their lips while reading the autobiography of Sarah Palin.

Welcome Chip Pickering!

2009-12-07T19:17:00.000-08:00

TPM has a story about the newest member of the GOP's bad behavior caucus: Rep. Chip Pickering of Mississippi. They say it better:

One of the ne-er-do-wells from the C Street Group House, former Rep. Chip Pickering (R-MS) is under investigation for assaulting an opposing team's youth league soccer coach after what I suppose must have been a particularly intense game. In a nice extra touch, the unfortunate soccer coach was allegedly already wearing a neck brace when Pickering got all pro wrestling on him.

Pickering was last in the news after his wife accused him of adultery and sued him and his mistress for "alienation of affection" -- not unlike fellow C Streeters Sen. John Ensign and Gov. Mark Sanford.

Stalwart defenders all of traditional marriage. And better sportsmen you would not want to meet.

"... exclusively Republican and mostly Southern"

2009-12-07T15:15:00.000-08:00

An article in the Minnesota Independent (12/4/09) by Chris Steller says that Michelle Bachmann "sent more than 1 million email messages or print mailings to [her constituents] last quarter using her congressional franking privilege."

"Franking" isn't a crime - elected officials of every rank enjoy the privilege of sending mail to the voters and letting the public pay for it. But abusing the privilege is frowned upon. In 2005, one candidate for mayor in New York City even saw his campaign go down in flames because of a franking scandal.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/16/nyregion/metrocampaigns/16miller.html)

It may be too much to hope that the news about Bachmann will have a similarly devastating effect, but you never know.

The article - "Bachmann a Member of House's Million Franking Club" - also says that apart from Bachmann only five other members of the House of Representatives - described as "exclusively Republican and mostly Southern" - have sent more than a million messages. So far this year, none of her colleagues in the Minnesota delegation to Congress has spent as much of the taxpayers' money on constituent mailings - $105,581.

Reid makes the obvious argument

2009-12-07T15:05:00.000-08:00

Harry Reid, from the Senate floor today...

Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is this:, 'slow down, stop everything, let's start over.' If you think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said, 'Slow down, it's too early, let's wait, things aren't bad enough.'

When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted they simply, slow down, there will be a better day to do that, today isn't quite right.

When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats we hear today.

Would we be in a different place today if they had been saying this all along?

Pressure from the Left?

2009-09-24T03:49:00.001-07:00

Another sign - not that it were needed - of how certain lawmakers seem to inhabit a parallel universe: Jim DeMint (R-SC)'s appearance on ABC News Now on Sept. 23rd in which he expresses his fear that "the PResident is putting off listening to the recommendations of his generals [to escalate the war in Afghanistan] because he's getting so much pressure from the left to get out of Afghanistan."

According to an NBC/WSJ poll, 49% of the American people see the war in Afghanistan as a failure. And 45% say that they are more concerned about wasting lives and resources in that country with nothing to show for it.

In a CBS News poll from Sept 1st - 40% of Americans say they want to see the number of troops in Afghanistan decreased. And 52% say the war there is going badly.

Besides, it wasn't a "leftist" who said the time to get out of Afghanistan is now - it was George Will.

An Epigraph

2009-09-17T22:22:00.000-07:00

"When you come into the presence of a leader of men, you know you have come into the presence of fire; that it is best not incautiously to touch that man; that there is something that makes it dangerous to cross him."

-Woodrow Wilson

You'll find that quotation on the very first page of "Master of the Senate." It's scary to think of since Obama seems less and less like someone dangerous to cross.

The Underlying Argument

2009-09-16T20:46:00.000-07:00

It's sad to read any newspaper these days, but especially the Washington Post. Everyone likes to pick on the Times, but it's the Post that really stands out as the emblem of elite media's decline. Think of the heroism of Watergate-days, and then remember the shame of Katherine Weymouth's "salons," where lobbyists could pay $250,000 for the privilege of hanging out with government officials, as well as Post reporters and editors. Nevertheless, there was an interesting article on the front page of Wednesday's edition: "As Right Jabs Continue, White House Debates Counterpunching Strategy," by Anne Kornblut. There's one quote from an administration official that encapsulates the problem (though you have to read all the way to the end of the article before they give it to you): "There's a broader argument that is the underlying argument to all of these attacks, which is a very fundamental struggle about trying to tear this president down and delegitimize his presidency ... That is really the war. And all of these are skirmishes - some of them flare up into battles - but the broader war is about the fate of this presidency and the other side's attempt to delegitimize him and make him into a failure."

What would the effect of complete failure on health care be for the Obama administration? Surely, the other side must view the issue as the biggest battle in their war to delegitimize Obama. (Didn't they call it his Waterloo?) That's not the question though - the question is how to fight back against it. It would seem the obvious answer is to call the other side out on their most odious feature: racism.

Loyal readers will know that Mr. B himself has called for liberals to do just this. But something happened this week that has thrown that advice into doubt: Jimmy Carter. He told NBC News that there is a "belief among many white people, not just in the south but around the country, that African Americans are not qualified to lead this great country" and that this belief explained Joe Wilson's outburst at the joint session of Congress last week. It was true, yes, but as Michael Tomasky writes today in the Guardian, it was a stupid thing to say. (And not surprising that it came from Carter.) "But right or not, it was a classic kind of no-win statement ... Lots of activists think telling the unvarnished truth is what matters in politics. But it isn't. What matters is accomplishing your goals, for yourself and the people. A former president ought to know this. Carter seems to me a good and decent man. But his presidency was, let's face it, a failure. He does not have the standing to persuade large percentages of Americans to see things his way. Being right can sometimes be wrong."

All of that seems persuasive enough. But what Tomasky doesn't say is how to fight back against attacks that are making a difference. Of course, it would never do for Obama or anyone who works for him to say that race is behind the opposition. Does he think that the same goes for liberals too?

A few confederate flags

2009-09-12T12:05:00.000-07:00

There was an event today in Washington that was billed, according to the Los Angeles Times, as the "largest gathering of fiscal conservatives in the history of the nation's capital." It was a protest march that passed down Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House, from whence President Obama had flown to Minnesota for a speech on health care. According to the Associated Press, "Many protesters said they paid their own way to the event - an ethic they believe should be applied to the government. They say unchecked spending on things like a government-run health insurance option could increase inflation and lead to economic ruin." It was also reported that "a few confederate flags" flew among the demonstrators.

To redeem the honor of the demonstrators in Washington today someone needs to explain quickly how so-called movement conservatism isn't hopelessly tainted with racism. Somehow it's impossible not to see the saltire battle-flag as the true emblem of this gathering, and its warnings about inflation as other than ancillary. I don't want to say that the saltire is always a symbol of bigotry - even if it is in almost every case - but it's hard to see how it might be an expression of fears about, say, inflation. Besides, is the risk of inflation really so great that concerned citizens need to march on Washington to warn against its perils? Bonds finished strong last week on expectations for controlled inflation, says the Wall Street Journal, and the expected rate of inflation for this year is less than three percent.

Did they ever yell at the white presidents?

2009-09-09T20:00:00.001-07:00

http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/staying-classy-gop-way-cong-joe-wilso

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Republican House member shouted "you lie" during President Obama's health care speech to Congress on Wednesday, and members of both parties condemned the heckling.

After the speech, South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson issued a statement apologizing for his outburst.

"This evening, I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the president's remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the health care bill," the statement said. "While I disagree with the president's statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the president for this lack of civility."

The outburst came when Obama denied that proposed health care legislation would provide free health coverage for illegal immigrants. Immediately, Wilson shouted, "You lie!"

Uppity

2009-09-09T06:02:00.000-07:00

The word that Glenn Beck used on his show yesterday. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Preposterous Name) knew just to suggest it:

"What you're seeing is folks on my side anxious to see what the president has to say tomorrow night," Chambliss said. "I think he's gonna have to express some humility based on what we've seen around the country this August and that's not his inclination."

Link: http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/09/chambliss-obama-better-show-humility-in-speech-to-congress.php?ref=fpb

Unanimous in their hatred

2009-09-08T19:49:00.000-07:00

It's not hard to understand the origins of Obamaphobia. They hate the man because he is black. It's that simple - and that's what liberals should say to Obamaphobes over and over again. So far we've been shy about dishing it out, perhaps because of fear that it would mean over-playing the race card. But what other explanation is there? What else could explain the irrational fears of parents who won't let their school-age children attend a speech on "staying in school" by the president of the United States? It is not fear of communism that keeps the kids home from a speech with the president. Nor is it fear of socialism. Nor anarchism. Nor black nationalism. Nor is it any other concept that people do not understand. It is because of skin color.

Given the forces arrayed against him, it would be churlish of anyone on the left to mount a vigorous attack against Obama. Yet there are ways in which he leaves you feeling a little let down. Jean Edward Smith is the Roosevelt biographer from Marshall College, West Virginia, who offered an apt comparison between FDR and Obama last week in the Times, though one that I'm afraid only works to a certain extent. Unlike with Obama, who seems to lead on the basis of rational beings working out their mutual interests, "Majority rule, as Roosevelt saw it, did not require his opponents’ permission." He acts, in other words, the way Bush the Younger did, or Reagan. Roosevelt was a divider, not a uniter. He "unabashedly waged class war." Yet, even as Smith concedes, FDR also kowtowed to Southern bourbons and he made sure that "more than half the country was always on his side."

In other words, FDR was everything that we want Obama to be and that he has failed to provide frustrated liberals. It's a tempting argument, and one that was foreshadowed as early as Larissa MacFarquhar's profile of Obama in the NY'er last year. It's why Mr. Backlash originally supported Hillary. She talks in terms of the battle between the people and the special interests; while Obama's natural tendency is to reconciliation. But it's not clear to me that Obama, in his way and in his own time, is doing something all that different from what F.D.R. Take a look at the differences between Obama and FDR. Is Obama doing anything more than trying to make sure that more than half the population is on his side - always? He doesn't have the luxury of kowtowing to bourbon Democrats the way FDR did; they've all become Republicans.

Not that the point isn't very well taken - it's just that more considerations for how imperfect historical analogies are might have done the argument better.

Here's link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/opinion/03smith.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=franklin%20roosevelt&st=cse

Is our President tough enough?

2009-08-20T20:37:00.000-07:00

That's the question Robert Reich poses on his blog this week, without ever really answering it. One suspects though that the answer is no, especially in view of passages like this one:

The President's centeredness, calm, and dignity inspire trust but also suggest a certain lack of combativeness, a reluctance to express indignation, and an unwillingness to identify enemies -- resulting in a tendency toward compromise even at the early stages of controversy.

He goes on to say Obama's tendency to compromise is dividing his supporters into two groups: the ones who trust him implicitly and the ones he's disappointed. In that latter category, you'll find people who are disillusioned over the failure to fight for health care ("I call Obama the Coward-in-Chief," said one poster on Reich's blog) and have become cynics. The stories must already be out there about the disillusioned cadres of 2008.

Fatherless Sons

2009-08-19T21:28:00.000-07:00

Someone whose judgment of politics I've always admired once told me that the big danger with Obama was that he might turn into another Colin Powell. But right now it seems to me that the person Obama most resembles is Bill Clinton. At least at the moment, he seems to be following in the footsteps of his most immediate Democratic predecessor, traipsing to an early defeat on universal health care. Clinton never got it back after the defeat of his health care plan. Will Obama be able to recover? There was a meeting between Bill and Obama at the White House this week, just within hours of Hillary's meeting. I saw a picture in one of the tabloids - two actually - one that showed Hillary sitting glumly as if waiting to be let in, the other showing Obama and Bill walking arm-in-arm together into the Oval Office, a blinding light showering over the desk that once belonged to John F. Kennedy. One picture was stamped with a time - 12.49pm perhaps - the other with some time afterwards. The message was clear: Hillary being hustled out of the way so that the fledgling could take his lesson from the master. What dark arts they must practice. I remember being for Hillary in 2007 and then switching to Obama in 2008 because I was so sick of Bill. Reliving all that non-sense, and dreading what was to come with Hillary as the nominee, made it possible to overlook Obama's inexperience. (Judgment, let's not forget, was his rationale.) My fear for Obama then and to some extent now was that he'd turn into another Jimmy Carter. It never occurred to me he'd become another Clinton, but now I see that this was foolish. Obama, as much as Clinton, is the fatherless son who may not have the stomach for a fight. It is possible that he'll recover in the political sense and win re-election. But I fear his political success would come like Clinton's at the expense of making real change, of digging us out of our hole rather than simply digging a new one less quickly.

Welcome to the John Birther Society

2009-08-11T20:39:00.000-07:00

Today at work I watched Obama's appearance at the health care town-hall in Portsmouth, NH - the seaside New England town of TK thousand where Teddy Roosevelt negotiated the end of the Russo-Japanese War - with one eye closed.

I was horrified at what might happen at the ritual of old-school democratic politics and hugely relieved when Obama turned in a masterful performance.

Here's a link to the NY Times piece following Arlen Spector rowdy town-hall in Lebanon, PA that made such an impression at today's am production meeting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/health/policy/12townhall.html?_r=1&hp