party over: a primer on equality and Prop 8

We'll take a brief break from the longest post-election party ever to turn a quiet, sober eye to California, my home state. There, among the raisins, peaches and lettuce, the people of California voted overwhelmingly to deny their fellow Californians basic equal rights while, at the same time, making it possible for Barack Obama to become President. Ironic, isn't it?

Basically, Prop 8 tells every gay person in California to suck it up and accept it: you will never have the same right or access to the same things to which I, my straight sister and straight brother in law have rights and access.

There. That's the Proposition in a nutshell.
(Come at me with your counter arguments trying to explain to the 'danger' of gay rights and not only will I call bullshit on all of that, I will ask you what made you hate gay people.)

Now there's been some talk about who's to blame for this vote. Was it black people? Was it Latinos? Was it black and/or Latino church folk? (We'll come back to that.)

Let's cut to the chase: it was straight people who tanked equal rights for gays in California. (Let that sink in a bit. We'll come back to that, too.)

Here's the thing about equal rights - they actually supercede religion and race and they do so because the idea behind equality and civil rights is quite simple:

IF SOCIETY WORKS ONE WAY FOR ONE PARTICULAR GROUP OF PEOPLE, TO THEIR BENEFIT, THEN IT BETTER WORK THE EXACT SAME WAY FOR EVERYONE ELSE.

I will repeat this often and loudly at whoever is puffing themselves into a self-righteous ball about why they voted for Prop 8:

Religion: you voted for Prop 8 because the Bible said so. Well, so what? We don't live in a theocracy and it's wrong for a portion of the population to be subjected to your narrow interpretation of the bible which should actually have no bearing on civic life. God will not send you to hell because you voted for something that gives Tony and Miguel the right to spousal healthcare benefits or visit one another in the hospital should Tony get hit by the RTD.

The 'Ick' Factor: you voted for Prop 8 because the idea of two women loving one another and exchanging vows in front of a judge skeeves you out. Again, so the frak what? Your personal, outdated and irrelevant homophobia just legally stripped an entire community of their basic civil rights which they should have because they're, you know - basic frakking human beings living in America.

The Race Thing: you're quite willing to vote for Obama but, lawd, that gay thing is what white folks do. Are you kidding me?? You are surrounded by gay people.

You sit in church, look up into the choir and know that Donny the pianist has been 'that way' for years. (Quiet as kept, you know big ol' flashy, stentorian Bishop So-And-So has been having liaisons with black men for years.)
You have a cousin who always brings her slightly butchy 'roommate' to every family reunion and you know they're not just sharing an apartment to save on rent.
You have heard stories of folks in your family who've never married or, after a spouse has died, have never remarried but suddenly get quite comfortable moving in with their life-long same sex best friend - and you KNOW it's not just about companionship.
You go to the fests in Leimert Park and you see the all the gay men with their babies and their 'girlfriends' and you STILL think those men are straight.

And you know what? Luther - gay! Langston - gay! Snoop (on The Wire) - gaaay! My aunt Diane - totally gay!

What the hell, my people?!
Y'all had best get off your high horses about civil rights and demanding to hear bullshit arguments to 'convince' you that gay people need the same rights as you. Who do we think we are? We do not own the patent on civil rights. Ol' Miss Sally mighta marched with Dr. King but Ol' Miss Sally has NO right to use Dr. King's fight to emancipate black folk to justify keeping gay people in a cage built by her misunderstanding of what 'the gays' do, are like or really want.

You know what gay people want? What you and I have. Freedom. Autonomy. Dignity. The privilege to introduce the person they love to a room full of people as their spouse. They want to fulfill a human desire to create a family and have that family be protected just as your family is protected. They want what we have and we should give it to them.

Why? Because we took it away from them!

This brings me back to STRAIGHT PEOPLE tanking this thing for the gays. White, black, latino or asian - a majority of the heteros in California voted for this shit. Why? Because we are drowning in our straight privilege and are, deep down, unrepentant homophobes. We don't like gay people. Apparently, we hate them, despite working with gay people, socializing with gay people and having gay people in our family. We might as well have just pinned a great big pink triangle on them.

And until we share some of this burden and hold our fellow straight breeders accountable for their homophobia, gay people will never get what they deserve - what we have.

(Why I'm using 'we:' we, even as self-identified friends to the gays, are implicated in this travesty. Clearly, if we straight people who support gay rights because we know and love gay friends and family or because we know it's the right thing to do or because we are (gag) 'tolerant' - clearly we didn't do enough. Our gay-hating friends, neighbors and family voted for this shit because we didn't call them out on this crap long before this stupid Proposition even got on the ballot.

The burden to change the paradigm of hatred and bigotry shouldn't fall entirely on the community that's oppressed by it; it should be shared equally by the privileged who must sacrifice something in order to see the Promised Land of equal rights for all.)

So go on. Celebrate voting for Obama and 'change.'
Deep down we straight folks are oozing with the same old bullshit tar of hypocrisy.

[A Private Note to Richard:
Yes, I do think anal sex is healthy, especially when done with respect, with someone you trust and/or love, plenty of lube, and a condom. In fact, Lawrence v. Texas pretty much guarantees that any and all enjoyment of butt sex is private and outside of the reach of the law. In fact, beyond butt sex, Lawrence v. Texas also upholds that the liberty given to us in the Constitution pretty much covers gay folks' freedom to enter into relationships without fear of reprisal or criminal prosecution, whether or not such a relationship has legal recognition. Thanks for asking.]

Work to do - Ta-Nehisi Coates

VOTE

I cannot say this with enough emphasis: Get in gear and go vote.

Stand in line for a long time; take a little stool and wear comfortable shoes; pee in a can or wear Depends, I don't care.

Double check your polling location.

Bring two forms of ID (one with a photo and one that verifies your current mailing address, just in case there's an issue)

Bring along the contact info for ACLU voter protection:
phone 1-877-523-2792/email at vrp@aclu.org

Read directions carefully and take your time with the new electronic system.



[And now, a special messge to members of the youth vote:

I've already had to tell someone's undergraduate sister living in Mississippi, but wanting to vote absentee in Texas, that she can't vote today because she waited too long and missed her deadline for sending in her application as well as her ballot. Are you freaking kidding me??

If the undergraduate population's inability to plan ahead blows this for us I will be seriously pissed.

This goes for all the little old people down in Florida, too.]

this debate

is giving me a headache.

so far, apparently, economic issues trump every other domestic policy that matters to a significant portion of this population? 45 minutes of taxes, negative campaigning nonsense (where McCain thinks criticism of policy = personal attacks), vice presidential suitability and nothing about reproductive justice, women's particular vulnerability in this economic time, equal pay or the right to privacy; also nothing (so far) on their differing views on the SCOTUS and what their legacy would be.

how's the debate treating you?

Apple-Picking

Saturday morning, during the WLF breakfast, I said that I never thought I'd see the day a black man would be president. The woman next to me scrunched her nose and said, 'Really?'

Uh, yeah, lady. Really. Are you kidding? With this country's history?

I'm reading a book called The Color of Wealth which covers the racial disparities in wealth acquisition in this country. In detail, it shows how our country's history of systematic racial oppression is sprinkled with documented government supported acts of land theft, displacement and economic cock-blocking (for lack of a better word.)

I've just finished the chapter on Native Americans and it was depressing as hell - and infuriating.

It was depressing to think of this people systematically deprived of the assets that rightfully belong to them (it goes SO much farther than just land theft - it's about billions and billions of dollars cheated from tribes because private enterprise and our US govt colluded to strip them of rights to natural resources and revenue, as well as mismanaged the funds that were supposed to be held in 'trust' for them.) These are dollars that could, right now, make a material impact on generations of Native Americans who currently hit the lowest indicators for economic sustainability, employment, education, and health.

Our country basically committed genocide against a whole population and built a nation on top of their bodies and land. Sickening.

But it was also depressing to think about how racism has crippled us, as a whole. We are diminished, when we don't know our whole history. When they teach us about the Homestead Act but don't mention the little details that expose it for a racist (only white men got land that was stolen or misappropriated from Native populations)government policy, then how can we truly know who we really are and what it means to benefit from that kind of legacy?

Why do we really rely so much on our myths? Are we really that childlike and feeble?

I wrote an earlier post about chickens coming home to roost for the GOP but I think that I could say the same thing about our country as a whole. There is karmic payback for the blood and death we've caused. I don't care if folks think what I'm saying is unpatriotic - it's true. You can't pick and choose which parts of our history are worthy of mythmaking and then hope no one remembers or knows about the other; it's all part of the same.

When someone wins a battle, someone else dies; when you build a city, you've destroyed someone's home; when you're on top, there's somone suffocating on the bottom. We've been winning for a few centuries now and I'm guessing that the pendulum is about to swing the other way.

That's the way the world works; it's the balance of the universe. One could even call it justice.

(Ding's process: This was supposed to be a funny post about apple picking in Wisconsin this weekend, but it became something a little bit more sobering. Sometimes I write with a plan and sometimes the writing abruptly veers off my self-imposed topic. Apple picking reminded me of 'cherry picking' which made me think of selectively reading history, this weekend's conference, the Obama candidacy as a way for history to come full circle but also how it prompts the idea of payback and triggers the fears of those racists at recent McCain/Palin rallies who are expressing, IMO, fear of karmic payback. Funny how writing works.)

if i meet him, i can't pass out!

Sometimes, unexpected opportunities just fall into your lap.

It's been a stressful week at Large Metropolitan Non Profit, as well as with my other non profit board obligation, but all of that will have been worth it because of what's going to happen in a few hours. My CEO (a very generous woman) is giving me her credentials for the National Women's Leadership Issues conference, being held in Chicago today and tomorrow.

Barack & Michelle Obama, high-level policy makers, and campaign advisors will all be there and I, little ol' me, will be soaking it all in. To hear about issues directly from policy wonks I've only read about - for two days! This kind of access is unbelievable. I'm giddy! Thank goodness I brought a cute suit and shoes to work and have an eyebrow appt at lunch. Yes, I am a sucker for political celebrity.

(I'd Twitter it for y'all but, alas, my Twitter is under my real name and I'm not for blowing my cover right now. I'll do my best to post something about it, though!)

election '08: heh!

Wow.

FiveThirtyEight.com: Electoral Projections Done Right: Today's Polls, 10/8

good lord, that was a boring debate.
and tom didn't pick any questions about women's issues?

what are we, chopped ovaries?

hello, chickens. like your roost?

Speak correctly, or build a big bunker -- chicagotribune.com

Poor conservative Kathleen Parker. She's shocked - absolutely shocked - that today's political discourse has devolved so much. Oh, the invective hurled at her for suggesting Palin isn't fit for the Republican ticket. Goodness! The insults. The ire! The death threats!

Such extreme partisanship has a crippling effect on government, which may be desirable at times, but not now. More important in the long term is the less-tangible effect of stifling free speech. My mail paints an ugly picture and a bleak future if we do not soon correct ourselves.

The picture is this: Anyone who dares express an opinion that runs counter to the party line will be silenced. That doesn't sound American to me, but Stalin would approve. Readers have every right to reject my opinion. But when we decide that a person is a traitor and should die for having an opinion different than one's own, then we cross into territory that puts all freedoms at risk. (I hear you, Dixie Chicks.)

I'm sorry folks said her parents should have aborted her, but the disingenuity here is a little hard to swallow.

Where has Ms. Parker been for the past 8 years? Where was she last month, during the GOP convention, and Amy Goodman was pitched in jail for covering it? Where was she to decry the national trashing of our political discourse when non-Republicans were called appeasers, traitors, terrorist collaborators and folks on the Hill were forced to eat those silly Freedom Fries; where was she when folks who objected to the unconstitutional reach of the Patriot Act, who correctly thought the run up to the Iraq war was full of bullshit, who said Guantanamo was a blight to our democratic legacy were called un-American; where has she been as American Muslims continute to suffer racial profiling, terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and have had their loyalties called into question because of their religion or heritage; where was she for the last two elections when two pretty smart presidential candidates lost their races because her party accused them of being soft on defense while backing a mediocre guy whose sole act of mental agility was cooking up ways to get out of military service; and where has she been for the last 18 months as her party, and its lapdog punditocracy, made a point of racially Othering the Obamas and saying some pretty racist shit in the process?

And, yes, where has Kathleen Parker been for the last 20 years as her party got all comfy in its bed next to the Christian Right, who have no problem wearing the robes of a Pharisee?

Spare me the concern, Ms. Parker. Spare me your disappointment at how the nation's political discourse has become vile, limited, intellectually bankrupt and savage. Your party built this roost and I'd say it's about time you saw exactly what your chickens look like.

[cross-posted at Screed]

sigh.

I, myself, am a half-breed silk jacquard but who am I to judge?


What We’re Up Against | RaceWire

shorter bailout blame: The Brown People Did It! and what i'm reading this morning

It is a truth universally acknowledged (among Republicans) that when the economic shit hits the fan the one holding the shovel is most likely a low-income person of color.

So it is with this bailout mess. Now that the package has been approved, all eyes are looking for a scapegoat. Surprise, surprise, the luminaries on the Right have lit upon their various whipping persons: people of color, poor people, affirmative action, immigrants and even the nice fuzziness of multiculturalism.

You can catch reaction to this line of spin at Feministe and Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose thread includes a very good parsing of CRA lending policy.

(No, I'm not going to link to Malkin, Coulter or Sailer. You can Google them yourself and gag in the privacy of your own desk.)

Of note is Tim Wise's essay that not only takes this line of thinking to task, it also pokes some holes in the 'personal responsibility' canard the Right is so fond of trotting out:

So there you have it: white conservatives who simply cannot bring themselves to blame rich white people for anything, and who consistently fall back into old patterns, blaming the poor for poverty, black and brown folks for racism, anybody but themselves and those like them. That anyone takes them seriously anymore when they prattle on about "personal responsibility" is a stunning testament to how racism and classism continue to pay dividends in a nation whose soil has been fertilized with these twin poisons for generations. Unless the rest of us insist that the truth be told--and unless we tell it ourselves, by bombarding the folks who send us their hateful e-mails with our own correctives, thereby putting them on notice that we won't be silent (and that they cannot rely on our complicity any longer)--it is doubtful that much will change.

When conservatives say things like 'Oh, if only those darkies hadn't whined about equal access and equal opportunity, we wouldn't be in this mess!' I realize that there is a huge gulf between us that will never be bridged.

Conservative anger always seems to float downward, blaming people who always get the shorter end of the privilege stick; my anger floats up. I'm not going to blame the folks who use pay day loans to make their tiny paychecks last a little longer; I'm gonna look fish eye at the greedy white-collared sonofabitch who calculated that he could fleece more sheep by putting a pay day loan office on every corner in the south side.

I know, very noblesse oblige of me. But it's not, really. It's called freaking compassion!

...

I'm working on a complicated piece I've been wanting to write about intentional motherhood so I've been snapping up essays on motherhood, birthing and contraception. This is one linking increase demand for food and family planning.

This is also one about black midwives fighting the AMA for the opportunity to provide black maternal care.

And, of course, the asshat from Louisiana who thought it was a good idea in a brainstorming session to throw out 'sterilize black women' as a way to combat poverty. Uh-huh. No, that's not racist or problematic as shit at all.

Oh, and then there's this - it only took one month for the bloom to be permanently rubbed off the rose. (Yeah, there are huge problems if Parker thinks Palin is a picture of modern feminism but to get a huge, horking female conservative to admit Palin was a bad pick? I'll gloat.)

And here - a third party (who??) solution to the economic crisis at hand from Cynthia McKinney (via Alas, a Blog.)

Get to reading!

shorter bailout blame: The Brown People Did It! and what i'm reading this morning

It is a truth universally acknowledged (among Republicans) that when the economic shit hits the fan the one holding the shovel is most likely a low-income person of color.

So it is with this bailout mess. Now that the package has been approved, all eyes are looking for a scapegoat. Surprise, surprise, the luminaries on the Right have lit upon their various whipping persons: people of color, poor people, affirmative action, immigrants and even the nice fuzziness of multiculturalism.

You can catch reaction to this line of spin at Feministe and Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose thread includes a very good parsing of CRA lending policy.

(No, I'm not going to link to Malkin, Coulter or Sailer. You can Google them yourself and gag in the privacy of your own desk.)

Of note is Tim Wise's essay that not only takes this line of thinking to task, it also pokes some holes in the 'personal responsibility' canard the Right is so fond of trotting out:

So there you have it: white conservatives who simply cannot bring themselves to blame rich white people for anything, and who consistently fall back into old patterns, blaming the poor for poverty, black and brown folks for racism, anybody but themselves and those like them. That anyone takes them seriously anymore when they prattle on about "personal responsibility" is a stunning testament to how racism and classism continue to pay dividends in a nation whose soil has been fertilized with these twin poisons for generations. Unless the rest of us insist that the truth be told--and unless we tell it ourselves, by bombarding the folks who send us their hateful e-mails with our own correctives, thereby putting them on notice that we won't be silent (and that they cannot rely on our complicity any longer)--it is doubtful that much will change.

When conservatives say things like 'Oh, if only those darkies hadn't whined about equal access and equal opportunity, we wouldn't be in this mess!' I realize that there is a huge gulf between us that will never be bridged.

Conservative anger always seems to float downward, blaming people who always get the shorter end of the privilege stick; my anger floats up. I'm not going to blame the folks who use pay day loans to make their tiny paychecks last a little longer; I'm gonna look fish eye at the greedy white-collared sonofabitch who calculated that he could fleece more sheep by putting a pay day loan office on every corner in the south side.

I know, very noblesse oblige of me. But it's not, really. It's called freaking compassion!

...

I'm working on a complicated piece I've been wanting to write about intentional motherhood so I've been snapping up essays on motherhood, birthing and contraception. This is one linking increase demand for food and family planning.

This is also one about black midwives fighting the AMA for the opportunity to provide black maternal care.

And, of course, the asshat from Louisiana who thought it was a good idea in a brainstorming session to throw out 'sterilize black women' as a way to combat poverty. Uh-huh. No, that's not racist or problematic as shit at all.

Oh, and then there's this - it only took one month for the bloom to be permanently rubbed off the rose. (Yeah, there are huge problems if Parker thinks Palin is a picture of modern feminism but to get a huge, horking female conservative to admit Palin was a bad pick? I'll gloat.)

And here - a third party (who??) solution to the economic crisis at hand from Cynthia McKinney (via Alas, a Blog.)

Get to reading!

The Debates!: Get it On!

I'm sitting here, with my girls and amid a fab spread of cheeses, pate and chips/dips (as well as a hell of a lot of beer), watching the debate. And we're taking a drink everytime we hear the words: war, POW, Main Street, and hope. We won't get as plowed as watching the Orientalizing opening cermonies of the Olympics, but maybe we'll get a nice buzz on.

Consider this your space to share your thoughts, reactions, funny asides and observations during this debate.

Carry on!

[I've also opened a thread at Bitch, PhD if you wanna take part over there.]

student voting: a handy legal guide

[crossposted at Bitch, Ph.D.]

So I'm at work, trying to put together communications for GOTV and I am realizing that there is a huge gap in my knowledge re: the voting process for students. I know the rules for early voting, absentee voting and registering and what to do if you're challenged at the polls here in Illinois, but what about for students?

Everyone I've spoken to has drawn a blank when I try to develop a guidesheet for students voting in this election. The best I can come up with is, 'Uh, be familiar with the laws of the state you're going to school in or, uh, vote absentee.'

Not good enough. I had no idea there were so many barriers to student voting - and it's no wonder that previous elections have seen younger voter turnout remain so flat. We make it virtually impossible for them to vote!

Some states have flat out refused to recognize students' residency as valid (hello, Texas, Virginia and New York); some states don't recognize student IDs as valid identification, making it impossible for students to comply with HAVA (Help America Vote Act) guidelines; some states require drivers licence addresses to match voter registration card addresses, which unfairly burden students from another state; and then there are those state officials who claim that students voting where they go to school could endanger financial aid or scholarship awards.

So what are the rules? Where can student voters go for clean information?

Thank goodness I didn't have to do much legwork.

The Brennan Center has developed a web tool that provides a handy legal guide for students during this election year. They code states according to how student-voting friendly they are - green is friendly, red is not. (Just guess which states aren't friendly.) They give you what the regulations are and what maze of red tape you'll have to navigate to come out the other side. They also dispel all the myths WRT losing financial aid, imperiling parents' taxes and endangering tuition.

The guide does not say that students merely have to show up to vote, but helps prepare students for whatever bullshit their state throws in their way. Forewarned in forearmed.

So, professors and grad student instructors, or anyone who knows a college student voter who's fired up - do your students a solid and tell them about this guide so they can prepare themselves for what they need to do to vote without too much issue. They don't have a lot of time.

Updated: to add that Jack (from Jack & Jill Politics) has created a Voter Suppression Wiki. They have an action page that is pulling information together from voter suppression watchgroups, contact information to report irregularities, different campaigns and legal actions already in progress to halt voter suppression.

McCain/Palin: Not Mavericks!

Sometimes, I think people don't understand what 'maverick' means. It's to be a dissenter among ones associates, to be the one who breaks away from the pack.

The narrative beginning to be spun about the McCain/Palin ticket as one of reform is laughable and inaccurate.

Here is the GOP's draft of their 2008 platform. It's a marvel of cognitive dissonance and plain old spin. I'm sorry, NO mention of Iraq at all??

It used to be, you could rely on McCain to be at least less hardcore about a couple of things: immigration (he was one of the drafters of the Dream Act, after all) and stem cell research. Oh, and this war being a total mess. Back then, that was enough to mark him with his 'maverick' status.

(Apparently, GOP standards for dissent are low.)

But can McCain, and presumably Palin, be counted on to be real dissenters? I don't think so. He's backed off his support for his own legislation, he's reified his support of the war and he wasn't really that much of a dissenter if he voted with the President 90% of the time, anyway.

Over on Screed, I take a look at Palin's very slim record and compare it to the GOP's platform and their favorite sacred cows. There's not much difference between her and them.

So what's she dissenting? She looks like just another Republican to me.

[ok, I have to get some food. I'll write about the GOP platform more later today. Yay for three day weekends!)

Doh! McCain picks a running mate!

It's a girl!

ooh, way to trump the Friday news cycle, gramps (thus endangering any post convention bounce Obama's camp might receive)!

Sarah Palin...what do we know about her?

Background Information
Gender: Female
Family: Husband, Todd
5 Children: Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, Trig.
Birth Date: 02/11/1964
Birthplace: Sandpoint, ID
Home City: Wasilla, AK
Religion:

(huh? no religion?? why - that's unAmerican!!)

Education:
BA, Communications/Journalism, University of Idaho, 1987.

Professional Experience:
Media
Utilities.

Political Experience:
Governor, Alaska, 2006-present
Former President, Alaska Conference of Mayors
Former Mayor/Manager, Wasilla City
Former Council Member, Wasilla City Council.

Organizations:
Member, Alaska Miners Association
Member, Alaska Outdoor Council
Member, Alaska Resource Development Council
Member, Chambers of Commerce (Various)
Member, Iditarod Parent-Teacher Association
Member, National Rifle Association
Member, Valley Hospital Association Board
Coach/Hockey Team Manager, Valley Youth Sports
Member, Youth Court Steering Committee
Former Member, American Management Association
Former Member, Salvation Army Board.

Caucuses/Non-Legislative Committees:
Chairman, Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, 2003-2004
Former Member, Alaska Municipal League Board
Chair, Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission
Vice Chair, National Governors Association Natural Resources Committee.

Her record? Check out what Project Vote Smart has collected here.

Compare this 'bright shining star in the Republican firmament' to McCain on women's issues, the environment, the war, economic empowerment issues and, other progressive issues (gay rights? racial justice?) and compare her to Bush on these things, too.

Will the fact John 'I fell and I can't get up' McCain picked a woman draw disaffected HRC supporters to his side? If it does, will those women sleep easier knowing they played the gender card and doomed this country to regressive social policy for a very long time?

(Hello-oo! Supreme Court nominees!! This is what it's all about, people!!)

LeBlanc has this to say over at Bitch, Ph.D:

I want you to hammer Sarah Palin on this stuff. If I were you, or if I were a reporter, or anyone who had a loud voice, today I would ask Sarah Palin the question:

If you were elected vice-president, and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act came before the Senate once again, and the vote was tied, and you were called upon in your constitutionally-mandated role as tie-breaker, how would you vote? Would you, like me, vote that when women are denied equal pay for equal work, they should get restitution, or would you, like John McCain, vote that a Supreme Court decision making it nearly impossible for them to receive that restitution, should stand?

Don't let her get away with the "I'm a woman, of course I care about women" bullshit. Make her answer for the hypocrisy of her party.

DNC '08! Who's covering what?

Hey, things are underway in Denver. My co-bloggers over at Bitch PhD are already there and so is, it seems, the rest of the blogosphere.

(Sigh. Damn my having to choose between holidy travel to family and the DNC convention!!)

If there are ChurchGal readers in Denver and you were at this panel, lemme know. I'd really love to know what this conversation was all about.

For folks interested in brown politics (who isn't, really?) you can check out Jack & Jill Politics - they have a really well-thought out coverage page with Twitter feeds, updates, video and links to other brown political bloggers. Excellent stuff.

I wonder if there are any religious bloggers at the convention?

Here's to an exciting kick off!

obama-biden: it's balanced, alright.

Whaddya know. Obama picked Biden.

I am not bothered by this.
I think it's brilliant, funny and totally expected. In fact, earlier this week, I had called it while emailing with some friends. Friends called it for Bayh, Schweitzer and Webb but I went for Biden.

My reasoning:
As evidenced by an ample Google record, Biden has a long history of saying problematic shit re: people of color. I will not offer an opinion re: Biden's racism - I'm just saying he says problematic shit.

The things he says are not that substantially different from what 98% of the general white population, conservative or self-identifying liberal, say/think about people of color in general, black people in particular. So, in effect, Biden is familiar to most of the population. He's easily recognizable; he is our American mirror.

By choosing Biden, the Obama campaign is saying to America, 'See? We get you. We know you're scared, but it's ok. Joe is just like you, and we like him! Obama's not mad.' By signaling to the electorate that they're overlooking Biden's 'off the reservation' problematic racial shit, they are asking that we also overlook some things - primarily, the color of Obama's skin and all the weight it carries.

Yeah, yeah. Biden brings some bizarro 'connection' to 'everyday' people (pundits need to STFU) and foreign policy experience which is a good thing, but his biggest contribution to the Obama campaign is his whiteness. His benign, problematic, clueless Whiteness. It's a gift and I hope Obama uses it well.

[an extra piece of goodness: today's This American Life about snap judgments that had me shaking my head.]

on the Clinton Campaign memos

The Front-Runner’s Fall

If you haven't read the piece in The Atlantic about the internal workings of the Clinton campaign, you really should.

Oh, not because it gives you a little thrill to have all your bad feelings against the Clinton campaign reaffirmed (if that was your wont) but because of what you can learn about basic lessons of organizational management.

For me, especially if I remembered part of my past at a strategic communications firm, the story of the campaign's implosion was a textbook lesson of what happens when an organization A) fails to ensure proper values and strategy alignment among its teams, B) doesn't address bad information flow and C) lacks trust. None of these issues are siloed from one another. In fact, they depend on one another and soon you just have a ball of entrenched dysfunction, as the Clinton campaign discovered.

Not to sound all Fast Company, but values and strategic alignment is the glue that holds an organization together. In corporate speak, it's what folks talk about when they say they're 'on the same page.' Folks in leadership talk a lot about 'being on the same page' but there is usually a big gap between where the Leader says they are and what folks on the frontline see.

Say what you will about the GOP, in every single one of the candidates they run, values and strategy go hand in hand. The DNC? Not so much. I don't know if this is because the left likes to 'process' shit so much and no one likes to be the bad guy or deliver bad messages but when I think of the messy politicking of the left, aligned is the last thing they are.

(See the continued wrangling over what's going to happen at the convention, which I won't be able to attend, and how we seem to run into the same thing every election cycle when each warring progressive faction wants some other interest to fall on their sword so that others will survive.)

In the case of the Clinton campaign, HRC and her staff seemed to come from totally different places: in one instance, Penn wanting to go immediately negative (which I'll note later), other key staff resisting, the Leader being conspicuously absent from the final decision. Did HRC really believe that BO was 'un-American'? I seriously doubt that. Yet, what made Penn think she'd be open to that? What values gap existed between them?

(And sharing the same goal does not mean people share the same values.)

My biggest takeaway from the piece is how information flow is crucial to any successful campaign (not just political campaigns, either.) The Clinton campaign memos reveal how information was plugged, or viewed with distrust, at various points, to the detriment of the campaign. Information on budgets, tactics, shifting electoral landscape - all, at some point, went ignored by key people after being floated 'up' or 'across' the organization from people on the frontline. As a result, the leader was left without the necessary tools to do her job; she was at sea.

Does this kind of isolation make a leader trust her team or does this make her assume more random responsibility because she can't trust her team to do what it needs to deliver? And, in return, does a team look at their leader's angry withdrawal and respond positively or do they panic, withholding bad news or difficult conversations - which leads to more distrust?

High performing teams don't have these issues; they see and act (quickly) while wearing the same goggles, acting with flexibility to good and bad environmental factors; ideas are evaluated on their value-addedness (is this idea going to enhance our mission and vision, stretch it or take us outside of it?); high performing teams act with autonomy but there's always an honest touchstone with leadership, marked by free flowing communication.

If only someone on Clinton's staff had read a few issues of the Harvard Business Review.
...
Reading the Atlantic piece, I was riveted.

Penn's memos where he suggested highlighting Obama's Otherness and 'un-American-ness,' made me think, 'Wow, he actually said it!' If we take his suggestion and pair it with his note that the campaign was trying to 'neutralize' race as a major demographic factor, then we get a picture of a man with his head very far up his ass.

You want to take 'race' out of the picture but you don't mind telling a whole bunch of black and brown people (in addition to the rest of the country) that a man of color is un-American. Nice message.

Talk about problematic - and talk about an opportunity for the Dems to ask themselves if that kind of strategic thinking reflects the core values of their party.

This piece also makes me hope the Obama camp will be careful of future values/strategy misalignment, mission and vision creep, or perceptions thereof. (In other words, no more FISA or offshore drilling shit!)

But I'm almost positive Obama reads the HBR. Right?

[crossposted at Screed]

asshat: karl rove

So.
Yesterday, Karl Rove called Obama 'cooly arrogant:'

"Even if you never met him," Rove said, "You know this guy. He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."

Clearly, if making snide comments was all that counted I guess that makes all of Gen X 'cooly arrogant.'
But I digress.

1. how many black people actually belong to a country club?
2. of those black people, how many would actually make snide comments about their fellow privileged country clubbers?
3. how many country clubs actually allow smoking?
4. since when does 'cooly arrogant' mean something bad when pop culture/literary/cinema tells us 'cooly arrogant' men are frakking hot?

A Few Cooly Arrogant Men We (ok, I) Have Loved:
Mr. Darcy

Captain Wentworth

Toby Stephens

Cary Grant

James Bond

Daniel Craig, James Bond

Pierce Brosnan, Thomas Crown

Steve McQueen

Rupert Everett

Omar Sharif

Peter O'Toole (when he was less cadaverous)

Jean Reno, Swept Away

Morpheus

George Clooney

Clive Owen

almost every Regency romance hero ever written

Batman

Magneto

Bruce Willis

Prospero

Severus Snape

Nick Charles

Mr. Tibbs

Han Solo

Spencer Tracy

Paul Henreid

Humphrey Bogart

Spock

Feel free to add your own.

In the meantime, the GOP needs to resolve their collective cognitive-Obama-dissonance if the best they can come up with is calling Obama a milk chocolate WASP.

rhetorical devices, 101: hyperbole

"This is the happiest day of my life." Really? Are you sure? I mean, out of all your days on earth you're sure that this day, this particular day, is the one that gives you the best feeling of happiness (well-being, satisfaction, contentment and joy) you have ever experienced? Can you measure that happiness and back that up with some sort of empirical evidence - and can you be sure that this zenith of happiness will hold firm in the future?

"Oh my god, that was the worst sex ever." Really? Ever? In your lifetime of sexual activity, this one instance was measurably worse than (and exceeded the badness of) the sex you've had before? So bad that it may put you off sex forever? If you run an analysis of all your lovers, taking into consideration their various techniques and the quality of the sexage, will this one lover top the list as the worst, or just one of the worst?

"For the first time in my life, I am really proud of my country." Oh, please. You mean you have lived in a state of perpetual and uninterrupted dissatisfaction with this country since the day you were born? I mean, you haven't felt even a little swelling of pride during the Olympics?? And what makes this particular moment so great for you that it erases all other, potential pride-inducing moments a country could have, huh?

"Mission: Accomplished." Sigh.

So. Out of all these dramatic, hyperbolic declarations, which one is the most damaging to our civic psyche? Which one makes the person saying it a liar and a person not to be trusted?