What you wish for
“Barack Obama’s candidacy was the Clintons’ worst nightmare. They had dreamed of the day when an African-American could be elected president. But they never anticipated it would happen on their watch and were utterly confounded.”
— CARL BERNSTEIN, the author of “A Woman in Charge”, in the New York Times Op Ed “Low Riders”, 6/8/08
Reading this comment by a former Watergate reporting hero and recent biographer of Hillary Clinton took me back to the late summer of 1965, beginning my sophomore year in college, during the heart of the civil rights movement. In April, I had been one of fourteen students – seven black, seven white – who had attempted to desegregate the seven local Winfield, Kansas barbershops on a sunny Saturday morning.
It was my first civil rights activism, if you don’t count my speaking against my minister in 1962 for reading Uncle Remus stories (complete with Stepin Fetchit accent) to the Oklahoma white kids’ church camp in which one lone African American girl had quietly and single-handedly desegregated that little tradition.
Now I felt mainstream. I wasn’t taking the bus to Alabama to sign up Black voters, like some in my class, but I was acting locally and meaningfully. The barbershop incident had sparked a furor in the town of 10,000 and had split the mostly white town right down the middle – even the Methodist church in which I was student minister. After initial resistance, the barbers did, gradually over years, begin cutting everyone’s hair.
And it had highlighted other, closer racism within our own church-related college including an unstated policy of segregated dorm rooms. So when, in May, the Dean posted a signup sheet for students willing to room bi-racially, I was one of the first to sign it.
And I was one of the first three to be chosen, come the fall of 1965, to room bi-racially: Willie Williams, Roger Winfrey, and me. Roger was a Kansas boy and also a pre-ministerial student. Willie was from Texas, son of a sharecropper, who only had enough money for three of the four years of college (he would go on to graduate after three years).
Of the three of us only Willie and I survived the experience. Roger found it too stressful, too unreal, and eventually even left the school. But Willie and I grew to know each other very well, to share our very different childhoods, to cross the wide social divide and become genuinely warm friends.
All eyes were on us. Seriously, from a four-decade perspective it sounds silly and melodramatic, but it was quite simply revolutionary. My own grandmother denounced me. I lost my scholarship because the Tulsa racist right wing Christian who had put up the money refused to fund an integrationist. But for my Dad and an understanding banker in Oxford, I would not have been able to pay for my senior year – the college financial head would not sign off on a student loan.
But in all of it, the ring of truth in the above Carl Bernstein comment is my memory of my first reaction when I was told I had been selected to desegregate Southwestern College student housing. “Oh, my god.” I had no idea it would be me. An impulse of right thinking had prompted me to sign up for desegregated dorm living. Why wouldn’t I sign up? But I do remember that first thought, that first moment when it actually was about to alter the course of my own life.
I know, just a little bit, what the Clintons might be feeling. But I also know that my nine months with Willie Williams was a profound experience and a most healing one. And I know the same will be true for America when Barack Obama takes the oath of office on January 20, 2009.
Labels: Clinton, Obama, President, racism
Letter to my cousins: Why Obama?
Dear cousins, I completely understand both of your perspectives. And at 61, I, too, have lost much or most of my naivety. And I agree that anyone who would vie for the job of President or any state or federal level political post, is likely self-absorbed, much-flattered, and likely to compromise in far too many ways, just to get there. Since the ancient Greeks, politicians have pretty much been given to such traits and behavior.
But when I look at our loss of historic and constitutional freedoms, including habeas corpus;
when I see that in our name torture is now an official practice which is (or at least for a time was) decided by top administration officials meeting in the basement of the White House;
when I look at the exploding national debt with accumulating interest (to which we will likely add $1 to $3 trillion for the Iraq experiment, if you include costs of maintaining the veterans who have been injured in body and mind) and the fact that that debt is almost wholly financed by foreign, substantially, Chinese, money which can be quickly withdrawn, if they choose;
and when I pay attention to the surging economies of China and India, whose growth rates will eventually doom us to second class world economic status, especially when factoring in our miserable public education system which fails to graduate roughly 40% to 50% of high schoolers;
when I look at the overwhelming burden of Social Security and Medicare for which no solutions are being proposed and for which too few in our generation are saving;
when I ponder the exploding price of oil, the loss of the dollar's value throughout the world, the exploding cost of food which this very day is leading to riots in many countries, and the shrinking glaciers and the climate change they portend (regardless of whether you think it is natural, manmade, inevitable or whatever) -
then I think we cannot, for the sake of our grandchildren - allow ourselves to be so bitter and disillusioned that we become disconnected from being part of some solution.
I choose not to tie my happiness to the outcome of these awful circumstances; I'm ok with my little day to day bubble. But I also choose to move past my own security to ponder what I can do, what we cousins can do, what our children and their friends can do to take control of this careening car of the future and get it somewhat steering in a more positive direction. And when I entertain those thoughts, and I look at the choices for President, I feel obligated either (a) to run myself (which ain't gonna happen), (b) to choose a third party candidate (which I've done several times to no effect) or (c) to choose among McCain, Clinton and Obama, which of those might be most likely the one to create an atmosphere in Washington which fosters effectiveness for my own efforts at solutions, that's when I choose Obama.
While I do personally hold out hope, "the audacity of hope" (if you will), in fact, one need not be hopeful nor need one "believe" in anything political. One only needs to reject the thought of being totally helpless. And if one can reject being helpless, then there is some action-imperative growing from that. That's all I'm saying.
Danny
Labels: America, Clinton, McCain, Obama
Just words?
Journalism is America's Fourth Estate. Investigative reporters, analysts and pundits are important guardian's of the people's interest in government and politics. But has the Fourth Estate become a cadre of slackers? Case in point: it has become cliche to discuss Hillary's attempts to stop her snowballing primary losses to Obama as creating a "firewall" first in one primary state and then another. This term "firewall" has been used repeatedly by journalists, analysts and pundits of all stripes:
11/30/07 -
The Boston Globe: "I would argue that New Hampshire is the firewall of last resort," said Dante Scala, a University of New Hampshire political scientist. [http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/11/30/ with_iowa_tight_nh_becoming_clintons_firewall/]
12/18/07 -
The New Republic -
John B. Judis: "This hostility of Latinos toward blacks has sometimes showed up in political behavior....[this is] Hillary Clinton's Firewall." [http://www.tnr.com/politics/ story.html?id=314e8fae-3fd3-4af2-bfde-f0f8e069c1fe]
2/2/08 -
The Atlantic - Mark Ambinder: "Clinton's Firewall Scenario" [http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/ clintons_firewall_scenario.php]
2/13/08 -
The New York Times - David Leonhart: "Is it possible that Barack Obama has become the favorite in Texas, a state long considered to be a firewall for Hillary Clinton?" [http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/ online-market-watch/]
2/22/08 - Bloomberg.com - Lorraine Woellert and Kristin Jensen: "Ohio was supposed to be Hillary Clinton's firewall." [http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/ news?pid=20601087&sid=akZsaWjVqF90&refer=home]
There are, indeed, over
300,000 such "Clinton Firewall" references on Google.
Here's the problem. A "firewall" is a partition to inhibit the spread of fire within a structure or in a computer system to prevent unauthorized access.
Obama's wins are in wide open spaces - the 50 states - and he is moving like a prairie wildfire. When fighting a wildfire, professionals use a "firebreak", which is a strip of cleared, open space to arrest the spread of a wildfire through a forest or a prairie.
The correct word for Clinton's failed attempts is "firebreak".
Perhaps the only ones who care about such things are those of us who study language and feel passionately about precision in language. But shouldn't that include journalists and editors - those who live by their use of precise language? And if some early journalists, analysts, editors and pundits chose the incorrect word, are the rest such lemmings that they thoughtlessly follow suit?
The number of uses of the correct term "Clinton firebreak" on Google? As of today,
three:
FOXnews (sweet irony),
The Baltimore Sun, and
Mother Jones magazine. There are three journalists and their editors who know the difference between a firebreak and a firewall; and all of those correct references occurred in February 2008, months after the imprecision began.
Whatever word is used, it appears that Hillary Clinton will be ineffective in supressing the political wildfire of Barack Obama.
Labels: Clinton, elections, Obama, words
RJB2 on the Democratic Debates
RJB2 on the Democratic Debates at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood:
ROUND THREE: HILLARY DROPS THE “J” BOMB
Her voice makes me want to go clean my room.
His voice is like curling up to a warm fire and putting on some Marvin Gaye.
Labels: Clinton, Obama, President, RBJ2
