I Hate What You Just Said

(Photo by David Shankbone - http://shankbone.org/)

The results of California’s Proposition 8 vote were deeply disheartening.   But the following is from the Good News Department here at IHWYJS:  people are making their voices heard.  Americans from coast to coast - gay, straight, young, and old - are speaking out on behalf of tolerance, decency, diversity, and equality.

One might have expected pro-gay rights demonstrations on Saturday in San Francisco, or in other California cities like San Diego and Sacramento.

But people also spoke out on Saturday in favor of marriage equality in New York.  And Boston.  And Pittsburgh.  And Charlotte.  And Honolulu.  And Orlando.  And Indianapolis.  And Seattle.  And Houston.  And Portland.  And Kansas City.  And Cincinnati.  And Providence.  And Atlanta.  And D.C.  And Baton Rouge.  And Phoenix.  And Detroit.  And Nashville.  And St. Louis.  And Chicago.  And Denver.  And Fargo.  And Des Moines.  And Oklahoma City.

And Salt Lake City.

And Idaho Falls.

Get the idea?

Ezra Klein has a fantastic essay up over at The American Prospect. He writes,

Barack Hussein Obama was, arguably, the country’s most unlikely candidate for highest office. He embodied, or at least invoked, much of what America feared. His color recalled our racist past. His name was a reminder of our anxious present. His spiritual mentor displayed a streak of radical Afro-nationalism. He knew domestic terrorists and had lived in predominantly Muslim countries. There was hardly a specter lurking in the American subconscious that he did not call forth.

And that was his great strength. He robbed fear of its ability to work through quiet insinuation. He forced America to confront its own subconscious. Obama actually is black. His middle name actually is “Hussein.” He actually does know William Ayers. He actually was married by Jeremiah Wright. He actually had lived in Indonesia. These were not smears, though they were often used as such. They were facts. And this election was fundamentally about what happened when fear collided with fact.

For the first time, America had to articulate what exactly it feared. Did it truly believe that the middle name “Hussein” suggested a terrorist threat to the country? Well, no. Did it genuinely think Obama a radical Afro-nationalist who had dedicated his life to serving a country he loathed? Probably not. Did it actually seem plausible that Obama wanted to become president so he could finish the job the Weathermen started? Unlikely. The shadowy terrors that animated American politics in the dark aftermath of 9-11 receded. Time had passed. To borrow a line, it was morning in America, and our country looked different in the clean light of the dawn. And so too did its problems.

The entire essay is worth a look.

Daniel Gross with a nice retort to those who would blame our sub-prime mortgage meltdown on loans made to minority homeowners.

In last Thursday’s debate between Vice Presidential candidates Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, moderator Gwen Ifill asked both individuals to describe their Achilles’ heel. Palin’s response revealed her to be the unlettered tundra hick that we’d always suspected:

PALIN: My experience as an executive will be put to good use as a mayor and business owner and oil and gas regulator and then as governor of a huge state, a huge energy producing state that is accounting for much progress towards getting our nation energy independence and that’s extremely important.

But it wasn’t just that experience tapped into, it was my connection to the heartland of America. Being a mom, one very concerned about a son in the war, about a special needs child, about kids heading off to college, how are we going to pay those tuition bills? About times and Todd and our marriage in our past where we didn’t have health insurance and we know what other Americans are going through as they sit around the kitchen table and try to figure out how are they going to pay out-of-pocket for health care? We’ve been there also so that connection was important.

But even more important is that world view that I share with John McCain. That world view that says that America is a nation of exceptionalism. And we are to be that shining city on a hill, as President Reagan so beautifully said, that we are a beacon of hope and that we are unapologetic here. We are not perfect as a nation. But together, we represent a perfect ideal. And that is democracy and tolerance and freedom and equal rights. Those things that we stand for that can be put to good use as a force for good in this world.

John McCain and I share that. You combine all that with being a team with the only track record of making a really, a difference in where we’ve been and reforming, that’s a good team, it’s a good ticket.

1) Achilles Heel:

This is standard fodder for Job Interview 101 — explain your weaknesses. But Sarah Palin clearly doesn’t understand the literary reference to the Iliad, much less the common — even threadbare — expression of the Achilles’ heel that is used to describe a character flaw or personal weakness. I think we know what her Achilles’ heel really is: she doesn’t read anything.

2) American Exceptionalism:

The term American Exceptionalism is an academic keyword used as a criticism of American nationalism, our belief in a “manifest destiny,” and our willful forgetting of all the violence and suffering that attended the founding and expansion of our nation. It carries the exact opposite meaning that she intended.

3) A Shining City on a Hill:

Palin’s statement that America is a “shining city on a hill” is falsely attributed to Ronald Reagan. Had Palin actually read Reagan’s speech, she would know that the former president himself acknowledges that the source of the quotation is John Winthrop, a Puritan, and first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Significantly, Winthrop’s quote — which is taken from a sermon entitled “A Model of Christian Charity” (1630) — is widely discussed as the earliest expression of American Exceptionalism. Winthrop describes the Puritan’s presence in the New World as a mission from God. Several million Indian deaths later, the idea appeared somewhat less “shiny.” Incidentally, Winthrop didn’t say “shining” — Reagan added that part.

And we should also point out that Reagan wasn’t even original here: he lifted the line from president-elect John F. Kennedy who quoted Winthrop in a speech to the Massachusetts Legislature on January 9, 1961. Kennedy used the quote to describe his efforts to assemble his administration for the “awesome” task of governing our country.

Oh, and Kennedy quoted the line correctly.

The O.J. Simpson trial concludes in Las Vegas:

O.J. Simpson, the former football star who was famously cleared of double murder in the sensational 1990s “Trial of the Century,” was found guilty on all charges in his Las Vegas kidnapping and robbery case on Friday.

Simpson was convicted along with co-defendant Clarence “C.J.” Stewart on the 13th anniversary of his controversial 1995 acquittal and immediately jailed by Clark County District Court Judge Jackie Glass.

Both Simpson, 61, and Stewart, 54, face mandatory minimum sentences of five years behind bars and could be sentenced to life in prison.

And Troopergate makes its final stop at the Supreme Court of Alaska:

The Alaska Supreme Court will decide whether to block the findings of an abuse-of-power investigation due to be released next week that could be potentially damaging to Governor Sarah Palin’s vice presidential candidacy.

The court accepted an emergency appeal late on Friday filed by six Alaska politicians who claim the investigation is being manipulated to hurt Palin before Election Day on November 4.

The court scheduled verbal arguments for Wednesday on whether to suppress the probe’s findings.

The independent investigator conducting the probe plans to turn over his conclusions by next Friday to the Legislative Council, the body that authorised it.

The sign’s creator, Andy Lacasse, of Barefoot Bay Florida, is interviewed here.

Do you think Andy is friends with these fine Americans?

Matt Taibbi has some thoughts on Sarah Palin.

In-between throat clearings, Fred Thompson spoke last night at the RNC. For several minutes of the speech, I thought Fred was reading from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs instead of the teleprompter. But I was wrong. The Mel Gibson-grade torture porn Fred was spouting was actually a recounting of John McCain’s experience as a POW in Vietnam.

The truly curious thing about this speech is that it doesn’t present McCain the strong, McCain the Top Gun pilot, McCain the patriotic hero; rather, it presents McCain the victim, McCain the martyr, McCain the lying in his own feces. I assume that this is all about getting the attention of the Christian right, for whom Thompson’s speech will read like a fifth gospel.

The Gospel of St. McCain begins on October 26, 1967, high above the dense jungle of North Vietnam. It was on that day that “a surface-to-air missile slammed into John’s A-4 Skyhawk jet, blowing it out of the sky.” During the escape from the plane, McCain broke “his right leg, his right knee, his left arm and right arm in three places.”

As Thompson relates, what greeted him on the ground was even worse:

An angry mob got to him when he fell to the ground. A rifle butt broke his shoulder. A bayonet pierced his ankle and his groin. They took him to the Hanoi Hilton, where he lapsed in and out of consciousness for days. He was offered medical care for his injuries if he would give up military information in return.

John McCain said, “No”.

I’m sorry, but there is something in the description of the bayoneting of McCain’s ankle and groin — and the refusal of succor — that sounds a bit too much like the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The only difference is that while Jesus got a postmortem spear in the side, McCain got a bayonet in two places — and one of them was the crotch. Which is like one-upping the suffering of the Son of God. In short, Jesus was a pussy. And probably a community organizer.

Anyway, thank God McCain didn’t die. Just think of the theological confusion this would have created. Who would I worship then?

Thompson continued:

After days of neglect, covered in grime, lying in his own waste in a filthy room, a doctor attempted to set John’s right arm without success and without anesthesia. His other broken bones and injuries were not treated. John developed a high fever and dysentery. He weighed barely a hundred pounds. Expecting him to die, his captors placed him in a cell with two other POWs who also expected him to die.

At this point, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Nothing makes a Republican misty-eyed like the story of a man who can’t get adequate health care or one who experiences arbitrary imprisonment and senseless torture. There are 47 million citizens without health care in America. But doing anything other than praying for these people will introduce inefficiencies in the market. Jesus, CEO would be very displeased. And I have it on good authority that America would never torture. I prayed hard for that.

But Fred Thompson was just clearing his throat:

John McCain fought on. He persevered. So then they put him in solitary confinement for over two years — isolation, incredible heat beating on a tin roof, a light bulb in his cell burning 24 hours a day, boarded-up cell windows blocking any breath of fresh air, the oppressive heat causing boils the size of baseballs under his arms, the outside world limited to what he could see through a crack in the door.

For five-and-a-half years this went on. John McCain’s bones may have been broken, but his spirit never was.

We hear a lot of talk about hope these days. John McCain knows about hope. That’s all he had. [. . .]

He’d smile and give ‘em a thumbs-up.

The guards cracked ribs, broke teeth off at their gums. They cinched a rope around his arms and painfully drew back his shoulders. Over four days, every two to three hours, the beatings resumed. During one especially fierce beating, he fell, again breaking his arm.

John was beaten for communicating with other prisoners. He was beaten — beaten for NOT communicating with so-called peace delegations. He was beaten for not giving information during interrogation. [. . .]

Whenever John was returned to his cell — walking if he could, dragged if he couldn’t — as he passed his other fellow POWs, he would often call out to them.

Obama can form the word “hope” with his mouth. But it’s a mouth that hasn’t been repeatedly kicked by the boot of Charlie. And that makes all the difference. McCain has suffered more than Obama. Perhaps more than Jesus. Therefore, we can be sure that God favors him to lead our nation.

I can’t wait for Mel Gibson to buy the rights to this story.