July 2010 Archives
President Obama has repeatedly denounced Arizona's hard-nosed anti-immigration law as misguided, irresponsible and a threat to civil liberties. Obama's right. The law is wasteful, unenforceable, and more ominously, virtually a license for police to engage in racial profiling. But despite massive protests and a judge's ruling putting parts of the law on hold, it's also popular in Arizona and judging from polls and the underground sentiment of millions of Americans on immigration, popular with them too.
Arizona officials have relentlessly fired back at the feds and all the critics that they had to act in large part because the federal government has dithered, stalled, and back pedaled countless times on enacting comprehensive immigration reform. They are right too. The enforcement of immigration laws is the job of the government. But the hard truth is it won't do it. The political will is just not there.
This was painfully evident back in February when Obama gave immigration reform short shrift in his State of the Union address. This rankled immigration reform backers. They loudly protested that the president reneged on his promise to them to make comprehensive immigration reform a centerpiece of his agenda. In the months since then they have hammered at Obama to make good on the promise, all to no avail.
So that opens the door wide to Arizona and dozens of other states that watch and wait to see how the little passion play between the Obama administration and Arizona officials will ultimately play out in the courts. This means only one thing. Immigration will continue to enrage and polarize Americans. Sooner or later, that rage and polarization will come back to bite both Democrats and Republicans in the backside.
"And do not oppress a stranger, for you know the heart of a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Exodus 23:9)
Most of our society agrees that there is a problem. Most will stipulate that the Federal government has utterly failed to control our borders. Most will accept our right, even duty, to secure our borders. We may broadly agree that undocumented people are exploited for cheap labor and also receive social and educational services. We may disagree on ultimate costs, but we truly and deeply disagree on issues of attitude.
The people who come across our borders come to work and to better themselves and their families. They come because we employ them. Why do we treat their presence with such dehumanizing animus? Could some of our anger be the guilt we feel about such exploitation? Human beings often--even normally in an aberrant kind of way--rationalize our mistreatment of people by demeaning them and fearing them.
We can take on the real problems of illegal immigration, but we can do it honestly, kindly and without smearing an entire ethnicity with our anger and fear. We are dealing with human beings here, and we don't have to make them some alien other.
Gail, my people and yours have been strangers in many strange lands. We have been at times isolated, persecuted and made the "other." We have been stereotyped, labeled and libeled. Thus we can engage this issue of the strangers amongst us with firm resolve but also with open hearts.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
"The liberals are the cancer of this country," he said over a $3.00 cup of cappuccino. It was so right, so pristine, so true.
I believe that they are a boil on the backside of humanity. Let's take the (hopefully temporary) stay of Arizona's immigration law. In some countries an interloper (Let's face it. That's what people who are here illegally are) would be lucky to get a stale sandwich and a bus ride back to the border.
The liberals may point a crooked finger at any future racial profiling, but like my mother used to say, "Nu, what if my bubbe was my zayde? Quit worrying." (Translation: So? What if my grandmother was my grandfather? Stop kvetching.)
Anyone who sneaks into this country and filches off our system without taking any step to become legal, isn't going to be much of a citizen anyway. Because they've already shown that they just don't care. For a closer look at what they are offering, look at our jails and our drug dealers. This may indirectly provide jobs, but that's about it.
I used to work with a man from Mexico who waited years for his citizenship. That piece of paper was one of the proudest moments of his life rivaling only the birth of his child. Even he said that he resents those who refuse to wait years for one lousy piece of paper the way he did.
A few years back, President Bush tried to cut them a deal; they nixed it, and the moving hand of Arizona legislators began to writ.
The good news is that it ain't over til it's over. Attorney General Eric Holder says that Arizona Law SB 1050 preempts the federal laws that he and others know have been gathering dust. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer said that it is just another hurdle to overcome. Either way, Brewer and company may have already won. The government is going to deploy 1,200 troops to the border on Sunday.
Who would have thunk?
Well, here comes the fire in FriendlyFire. Gail, I could not disagree with you more. Your defense of Breitbart is indefensible. He either knowingly, or very carelessly, put on a chopped and edited tape that told a lie. This was not picking just a portion without revealing full context. This was distorting both the clear language and intent of Ms. Sherrod.
This was not a story of a racist speech given a few months ago by a hater of white folk. Two decades ago she had a racist thought and moved beyond it. This was a redemptive story of her epiphany when she faced her racist impulse and overcame it. I cannot imagine the sin of which you find her guilty.
Clearly Breitbart acted cynically and badly, and both the Obama administration and the NAACP reacted like traumatized boxers twitching at the mere feint of an opponent. They acted thoughtlessly and recklessly without doing their du-diligence. You would think they might even give her five minutes to explain, knowing that he father had been murdered by a white racist. Yes, they missed the context too.
There is also a moral difference, albeit a fine one, between failing to speak up and speaking falsely. It is true that much of the black community avoids distancing itself from people they perceive as their own. This is true of many minorities. We, and I include the Jewish community, do not like to air our dirty laundry in public and often try to put on a united front. Having said that, I was embarrassed for my black friends that so many refused to distance themselves from Farrakhan--including Tom Bradley. While, mainstream Jewish organizations did denounce the violence and hate speech of Irv Rubin and the JDL directed at both blacks and Muslims.
Still Gail it is changing the subject to try to defend Breitbart's manipulation by comparing it to the silence, the regrettable silence, of others.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Earl, hold on to your hat there while I fan you off. You are making waaaay too much of the Andrew Breitbart tape doctoring affair. While no one would argue that he did wrong via some crafty editing, the bottom line is that Shirley Sherrod did say those things and may have some racist blood cells circulating through her system, like just about every other breathing, living being on the planet. If people would just stop being so politically correct, there'd be a lot more laughs around here.
Besides, if Breitbart wanted to call out the NAACP for racism, heaven knows he didn't need to pick a virtual unknown like Shirley Sherrod; he already had plenty of ammo waiting for him. He could have picked from among some of the shining stars in their midst like Al Sharpton, for the Tawana Brawley affair, Louis Farrakhan, for the "Judaism is a gutter religion" affair, and Jesse Jackson for just about anything else that those two haven't covered. Yet no one ever hears anyone at the NAACP calling them out after their blacks-only radar has gone off, though I will stand under the window at headquarters to check on any changes.
The funny thing is that if Obama had been George W., then people would been chanting and rallying racism from high and low. And George W. probably wouldn't have fired her, either; he would have rebuked her or given a gentle reprimand. While Sherrod did wrong, she also owned up to it and tried making amends.
And that's more than can be said for the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost of the NAACP.
I am relieved that the Federal Judge has stayed most of Arizona 1070, the ill-conceived immigration bill that puts every brown-skinned person in peril. I hope that the stay becomes permanent. I find it hateful that skin color, clothing or accent could ever be considered probable cause to suspect someone's right to be here. Yes, we do have a right, an obligation, to control our borders. And yes, the Feds have done a very bad job of it. I do understand the frustration of some at such failure. However, the passion of the mob, however righteous the motive, is no substitute for our Constitution. Crime is a problem, but vigilantes are not the answer.
However, I do have to confess to an epiphany this weekend that made me feel like a self-righteous hypocrite. Having spent some time being mad at Arizona, writing criticism of their law, their impulses and their attitude, I was brought up short when coming home from visiting friends near San Diego. As we drove through the Immigration Checkpoint, about 75 miles north of the Mexican border, I remembered every other time I had driven through. Not once was I ever stopped. The uniformed immigration agent just looked in the window and passed us through. The only people we ever saw pulled over to the side had brown skin.
We have done for decades in California what I objected to Arizona doing--and I never really noticed. I saw but I didn't see. I may have to call off my boycott and smug sense of superiority, for I am guilty of tolerating what I find intolerable in another state. Whether the stopping of brown skinned people by the state or the federal government, the 14th Amendment promises equal protection and due-process for all. Most of us would agree that "driving while black" should not be probable cause to be stopped by the police. Well, living while brown should not create the demand to produce your papers or else.
We could fix our immigration problem easily if we had the will to put the burden on those who employ undocumented people. But we haven't the will. And so we take out our frustration based on color, dress and accent. This may be our American tradition but constitutionally, this is un-American.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
To divulge or not to divulge? That is the question. Whether it is better to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous ignorance or to know more that the average cumquat.
At the bottom of Wikileak is Julian Assange, an Australian hacker, who was heard to say, "I enjoy crushing bastards, so it is enjoyable work." So on a dating profile, you would know where he stands and that in his free time he enjoys being redundant. But what is the public to do with the outpouring of information. After all, we have a right to know certain things, but what?
So I have complied a list of things that should be leaked and things that should be coded so that Assange and other hackers would have a strong electric current surging through their evil keyboards when they have hacked and gone too far. Here it is:
Yes:
How our servicemen are behaving
What BP really knew beforehand
When they are going to clean everything up
How much mercury is really in our fish
How to use the leaks to divert the bankers' bailout money into worthy causes
How some charities are really spending our money
Al Qaeda's military operations
Anything about Iran
Illegal immigrants
How Fidel Castro managed to stay alive so long
No:
What Lindsay Lohan is doing in jail
Who is sleeping with whom
Israel's military operations
America's security operations - if we have any after letting everyone in
That's about it for now, but if anyone has any others, contact me with the lighter stuff, except about Iran, al Qaeda and such, and Julian Assange with the heavier stuff. Thank you.
The good news and bad news about our nation are related--as such things usually are. We survive because despite elections (which occasionally have consequences) we enjoy and are cursed with tremendous continuity. This is to say that all American governments tend to act like, well, all other American governments.
Out of power candidates run against imperial presidencies and government secrets. Everyone out of power is all for transparency because it might reveal the ignorance, arrogance and incompetence of the incumbents. Funny how as soon as the outs get in, they see the virtues of both opacity and mendacity.
The revelation of the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War was heroic to the anti-war movement and liberals. Yet the leaking of the notes and reports from the front in Afghanistan is not welcomed by the Obama Administration. Like all leaked intelligence, it is alleged to put our service people in harms way. Uh, I think what puts them in harms way are deployment orders and the pursuit of a military goal that we stipulate cannot be achieved by military power. Our other goals and metrics of victory are ill defined or un-defined.
This White House, as all other White Houses before, dances the dance of dissembling double-speak. It was emotionally painful and vaguely nauseating for me to watch Press Secretary Gibbs channeling the Queen from Alice in Wonderland and holding two impossible things before breakfast. He held two opposing and contradictory positions on the 90,000-page document release by Wikileak. He consistently argued that he had nothing to say because there was "nothing new," and we already knew everything in the leaked materials; and he asserted without shame, insight or apparent irony that these materials were valuable, it was wrong to release them and they put our service personnel in greater danger.
The released materials are pretty raw, and how much is reliable is certainly open to question. These are reports by people in the field and raw intelligence from people with positions to defend and opponents to discredit. They are not to taken as Gospel. But what makes them important is what they reveal about both the Bush and Obama administrations' common view on secrecy and desire for the American public NOT to have information about how the war is being conducted, what is working and what is going terribly wrong.
One of the things we know, but don't want to be officially known, is the complicity of the Pakistani intelligence service and their aid to both the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The Pakistanis are, after all, our allies and recipients of billions of dollars of aid--much of it military. The other great smoking gun is actually a smoking missile and serves as a good example of governmental bad faith. A report claims that at least one of our helicopters was shot down by a SAM--a surface to air missile. Up till now we have claimed that the Taliban didn't have missiles and if any helicopters were hit it was by RPGs (Rocket Propelled Grenades). So, why doesn't our government want this known?
1. Well, because we have been denying it for years and we don't want to admit prior acts of mendacity.
2. Because if it is true it probably means that the SAMs we gave the Mujahidin to use against the Soviets are being used against us, and we don't want to wonder how the arms we are now supplying our "friends" may, are and, inevitably, will be used against us.
As with so many important secrets, these are secrets from the American people only. Our enemies know if they have missiles, if the Pakistanis are helping them and how well they are doing.
Democracy depends on We the People having access to good information. Our governments want us only to have access to their version of good news. This is deeply disappointing, but hardly surprising.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele has repeatedly snapped back at the charge and the notion that the GOP is racist, harbors racist elements, and plays the race card. Steele on occasion has loudly said that the RNC must embrace diversity, and be a big tent that includes minorities. Every time he opens his mouth to say these things he's called a liar. Those that call Steele a liar rattle off the litany of racist gaffes, slurs, and acts by GOP officials, politicians, and assorted GOP connected tea party leaders and activists to prove their point.
Now they have one more thing they can add to the litany. That's RNC Steele's invite to rightwing smear machine engineman, Andrew Breitbart to appear at the RNC's three day confab in Los Angeles, August 12 to 14. It's billed as a rev up the troops, fundraiser, and called "Election Countdown." Brietbart's name is not buried among the GOP assorted luminaries scheduled to participate at the event. His name not only headlines the event, he and Steele will host the first night welcoming reception. His name even appears ahead of Steele's on the opening night reception announcement. So why is that? Is it Breitbart's name, fame, money, the controversy and curiosity he invariably arouses, the media attention he draws, his staunch GOP troublemaking credentials, and the fact that might be good for a few more bucks in the till that compels Steele and the RNC to make him the star of their show. It's all of the above. And this makes Breitbart an even more disgusting choice to headline a major event, by a major party, that claims it's poised to make major gains in the midterm elections, and chatters incessantly about even taking back the House. GOP Senators and House members and mainstream party officials have put up a hard front that even with its pile of no's to the Obama administration's initiatives and legislation it has still managed to maintain some degree of respectability among a wide body of conservative, and moderate GOP voters. It has even grabbed votes and support from centrist independents that question or oppose Obama and the Democrats' health care, stimulus, and tax proposals. Plopping Breitbart at the top of a major GOP event blows the party's façade of respectability to smithereens.
Even before Breitbart's vile hatchet job on Shirley Sherrod, he had managed to parlay a name and turn his mini-on line empire, biggovernment.com, into the bible of muckraking and old fashioned dirty tricks cheerleading and agitation against Democrats, liberal and progressive activists and minorities. Despite full exposure of the Sherrod tape as a fraud and fabrication, Breitbart still kept the lying, doctored tape on his website. This is much more than the usual standard, garden variety GOP shouts and rants at Obama and Democrats on legitimate policy issues.
Breitbart is a direct throwback to the Nixon, dirty tricks operatives and escapades of the early 1970s who brought shame and disgrace on the White House and the GOP. The party spent the next decade trying to rid itself of the stigma of being a party that condones dirt digging, rumor mongering, and even lawlessness as long as the target smeared was a Democrat.
That's a history that Steele and the RNC will embrace and revel in if Breitbart headlines their show. Steele can prove that's not the case by rescinding the invitation. Will he?
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
With some new work responsibilities at USC, the time has come for me to say goodbye to Friendly Fire and a good chunk of my outside writing. Huge thanks to Jonathan, Gail and Earl. And special big thanks to Mariel Garza and Chris Weinkopf for the opportunities they've given me here!
Andrew Breitbart deserves a rousing defense. He single-handedly managed to get President Obama, much of the media, conservatives, and a big body of the general public talking about race, but not just race in the usual drive-by, finger pointing divisive way, but race in which there's near universal sympathy for a black victim of racism. The raw deal Breitbart dealt Shirley Sherrod drew variously either an apology, condemnation of the doctored tape, or a loud demand that she get her job back, from everyone from Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, and Bill O'Reilly to President Obama. Some prominent conservatives even lashed out at the rightwing smear machine.
For a brief moment, there was renewed clamor that Obama frontally address the issue of race and racism and hold the much talked about racial dialogue. Breitbart said that he released the doctored tape of Sherrod's speech in part to hit back at the NAACP for having the temerity to call out the tea party for the racism of some, many, are most of its activists and leaders in part. And in part he released the lying tape to expose the NAACP for allegedly giving safe harbor to its own racists. Breitbart did a service on both counts. He again tossed the spotlight on the tea party and how it deals with or more accurately ducks dealing with the racists among them. The NAACP took full advantage of the reopened window and again reminded that the tea party has racist elements among them. That in turn stirred some talk about having a dialogue on race between the NAACP and tea party leaders. NAACP President Ben Jealous quickly said that he would look with favor on that.
As for the issue of racists within the NAACP, Sherrod debunked that. The full 43 minute unedited speech that she gave to the local NAACP banquet, showed a thoughtful, sincere, committed former civil rights worker, and someone who has spent decades championing the rights of farm owners and workers, giving a life affirming, morality lesson on her personal experiences with race and racism. Her experience showed the power of racial reconciliation and redemption. Millions saw that, got that, and praised her for that. She is the best calling card the NAACP, and by extension African-Americans, have to show that a black person who had every right to be hateful and embittered toward whites could forgive and move on.
Breitbart did yet another service. He spurred President Obama to use some of the strongest language to date to blast the rightwing spin doctor media for doing everything it can to bully, intimidate, and harass his administration. This put Obama on guard against the perennial danger of making a rushed even panic decision about anyone in his administration, or in a government agency, based on a hit attack by the likes of a Breitbart and Fox. Some even hope that this will embolden Obama to hit back, and hit back hard against the rightwing smear machine. We'll keep a watch on that.
Breitbart did a final service. He gave the rightwing smear machine a momentary black eye. He made news editors, producers, and executives, and that includes those at Fox, more cautious about what they dump on the airwaves to score a hit. The public is already deeply cynical about a media that has become virtually indistinguishable from the tabloids and has parlayed gossip, innuendo, rumor, half truths and outright lies into ratings and profits. The Sherrod doctored tape was a textbook example of how a lie can be turned into ratings. Breitbart deserves a defense for the many services he performed.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
NAACP president Ben Jealous caught holy hell from black bloggers for his astoundingly embarrassing rush to judgment applauding the curb toss of Shirley Sherrod. Jealous, of course, quickly reversed gear and admitted that he and the organization had been snookered by the rightwing attack hack Andrew Breitbart and Fox News.
But that begs the larger question, really two questions. Why was the NAACP snookered? And even after it realized it was conned, has it done enough to atone for its colossal blunder? The answers to both questions aren't pretty. The group clearly had the tea party on its mind when it made the quick call on Sherrod. It did not want to be yelled at by tea party activists and the rightwing smear machine as hypocrites, for double dealing the race card, and for being soft on alleged black racism.
The NAACP's knee jerk overreaction and appeasement had everything to do with timing, as it turned out bad timing. It came on the heels of the blowback that the NAACP got for its convention resolution a week earlier blasting racist elements in the tea party. Breitbart made no bones about why he trotted out the lying tape when he did. He said that he wanted to hit back at the NAACP. The NAACP could have easily ignored it, or taken a few moments to check it out, and found it to be the fraud that the world now knows it be. It didn't and for that it took the deserved heat. The NAACP, though, has done too much, and is till to valued an organization to be endlessly beat up on for its act. Just don't let it happen again. But the second question is still crucial and that's has it really made up for its flub to the person hurt the most by its rash action, and that's Sherrod.
The answer is no. Start with the retraction. The statement it issued was weak, tepid and non-committal. It did not call for an apology. It did not issue a ringing call to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to immediately and fully reinstate her to her position. It did not criticize Vilsack for making his bonehead decision to fire her. It did not promise to do an internal review and soul search within the organization to find out why it rushed to hail Sherrod's firing and to insure that hasty decisions won't be made again. It did not pound the tea party and the right wing attack machine. It covered itself by again repeating the patently unnecessary mea culpa that the NAACP has zero tolerance for discrimination. This is exactly the reason the organization gave for praising the swift kick to the curb of Sherrod. Unlike Vilsack and President Obama, it did not formally apologize to Sherrod for its act. It referred to the Sherrod debacle as the worn cliché teachable moment, but gave no hint that it learned the lesson, and that is to hit back and hit back hard against the right, and not just with a paper resolution. Finally, the NAACP has not even demanded that Breitbart remove the offending video (it's still on his site) calling Sherrod a racist. The NAACP, Instead, has clamped a wall of silence on the sorry episode preferring to simply move on.
Unfortuately, Sherrod can't. The NAACP hasn't done much to see that she can.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
Let's call xenophobia what it is.
There is no plan to build a jihadist center on Ground Zero. There is a plan to build a Muslim community center a short distance from Ground Zero.
If radicals were to use it as a plotting place, that would make it all the easier for the FBI and CIA to grab an Americano at a nearby Starbucks and then keep tabs on them. But this center is planned as a place for pluralism and multi-faith dialogue, not jihad.
There's not much more to say about that. There's more to say about how there is growing resistance to mosques far from Ground Zero -- in other parts of New York, in Tennessee, in Wisconsin, even in our own Temecula in Southern California.
Be with the xenophobes if you must be with the xenophobes. But spare me your claims about how you are really a saint.
Capitol Hill reporters relentless peppered White House press secretary Robert Gibbs with questions of why the White House rushed to judgment and demanded the resignation of Shirley Sherrod. A clearly flustered Gibbs could only say and repeat that the White House made its horrible decisions on faulty information. Gibbs promised a review to get to the bottom of why and how it happened. The surface reason the White House dumped Sherrod was made on faulty information, a doctored video, and simple ignorance of the true facts. It wouldn't have taken much of an investigation to find the truth. That wasn't done. Former Civil Rights Commission Chairperson Mary Frances Berry and others claim that Obama is scared stiff of being ripped by Fox News, Limbaugh, Beck and the conservative smear machine. That's just as spurious. If Obama sneezes, they'd attack him for polluting the Ozone, so there's no real fear of them. The decision to can Sherrod had everything to do with politics, and the tight cornered racial parameter of his presidency.
This was set the very first day of his presidential campaign. In his candidate declaration speech in Springfield, Illinois in February 2007, he made only the barest mention of race. The focus was on change, change for everyone. He had little choice. The institution of the presidency, and what it takes to get it, demands that racial typecasting be scrapped. Obama would have had no hope of winning the Democratic presidential nomination, let alone the presidency, if there had been any hint that he embraced the race-tinged politics of Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. His campaign would have been marginalized and compartmentalized as merely the politics of racial symbolism. The month after he got in the White House he mildly chided Attorney General Eric Holder for calling Americans cowards for not candidly talking about race.
The term for that is racial overcompensation. He must react, hard and swift, to any appearance of anyone connected with his administration that says or does anything that can be construed as racial favoritism. The doctored Sherrod speech was a near textbook fit of the requirement to punish any real, imagined, or put up racial transgression with firing, reprimand, and a quick distancing from the offending party.
Obama got a bitter taste of the misery that race can cause a president him when in an unscripted moment he spoke his mind and blasted a Cambridge cop for cuffing and manhandling Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates. The loud squeals that he was a bigot, racist and anti police for siding with Gates bounced off the Oval Office walls. A chagrined Obama back pedaled fast and asked all for forgiveness. There would no White House repeat of the Gates fiasco.
Obama has clung tightly to the centrist blueprint Bill Clinton laid out for a Democratic presidential candidate to win elections, and to govern after he won. The blueprint requires that the Democratic presidential candidate tout a strong defense, the war against terrorism, a vague plan for winding down the Iraq War, tepid proposals to control greenhouse emissions, mild tax reform for the middle class, a cautious plan for affordable health care, pro business solutions to joblessness, and make only the most genteel reproach of Wall Street.
The Clinton blueprint also requires a Democratic president to formulate a moderate agenda on civil rights, poverty, failing inner city public schools, the HIV-AIDS crisis, and the racially skewed criminal justice system in written policy statements. And then say little about them or low key their approach to them in the White House. Obama's silence, extreme low key approach to these policy issues, occasional reminder that he's the American president, not black president irked the Congressional Black Caucus and at times other civil rights groups.
Obama well knows that the GOP lost an election, but it still packs a punch. It and its tea party shock troops can disrupt, obstruct, and create chaos for his administration, his political agenda, and him personally. And it does it not only because that's the warfare that Republicans wage against Democrats anyway, but because the GOP has masterfully reignited its populist base against Obama. The base is rock solid conservative, lower income white male loyalists, with a heavy mix of hard line Christian fundamentalists. Despite the GOP's and tea party activists wail that racism has nothing to do with the white fury at Obama, the bitter truth is that many white voters do not and will not accept a black president.
If Obama talked candidly about race and tried to spark a dialogue on race as some clamor for him to do it would turn his administration into a referendum on race. This would turn the GOP and tea party counterinsurgency into a red hot fire.
Obama's rush to judgment on Sherrod had nothing to do with fear and only tangentially with a terrible misread of the information about her purported racial statement. It had everything to do with the price of White House governance. The price is a politically constricted, race neutral presidency.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
The controversy over building a Mosque near Ground Zero is both ugly and understandable. We are not a society that deals well with nuance but let me try to be both nuanced and clear.
I believe the mosque should not be built at this site and at this time. I think, whatever the intent of the Muslim faithful, that this will not be a healing presence but a raw wound.
In the Torah, (Exodus 23:19) it says, "Seethe not the kid in the milk of its mother." While there are many interpretations to this passage, one is clear: Even animals have feelings and there are some things that mothers, fathers, survivors should not have to see. It doesn't mean: Be a vegetarian. It does mean: Be considerate of terrible ironies and the feelings of other. If we are to be sensitive to animals, how much greater should our consideration be for our fellow human beings?
I also believe that they have as much legal right to build a mosque there as any group would have to build a church or synagogue. After going through the zoning hell that all religious groups face, they should have equal legal rights. They should, however, as an act of sensitivity and generosity choose not to build at this time.
Almost two decades ago, a Catholic religious order wanted to build a convent next to Auschwitz. I opposed that too. I don't hate Catholics and don't want nuns stopped from praying, but it just wasn't fitting. They could build elsewhere and pray elsewhere. Being Polish nuns and living and praying in Poland, they had every right to do what they did. But let no one mistake their presence as a move towards healing and reconciliation.
Those who want to build this mosque may succeed--and should not be met with vandalism, harassment or hatred. But they must not believe that this will taken as a gesture of peace, understanding or reconciliation.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is dithering, waffling, and foot-dragging on what should be a no-brainer. And that's the immediate reinstatement of Shirley Sherrod to her post as Agriculture Department's director of rural development in Georgia. He wronged Sherrod, a dedicated public servant, by grossly overreacting to the phony, doctored, and politically self-serving rightwing connived hit tape of a speech that Sherrod gave to a local NAACP banquet back in March that purported to show her admitting to trashing a white farmer and then refusing to help him. Despite irrefutable proof that this was a lie, a blatant effort to hit back at the NAACP and civil rights leaders for putting the heat on tea party racism, and a grotesque sully of the name and reputation of a hard-working, efficient, and loyal government program administrator, the best Vilsack could say is that he'll conduct a review to ensure that services are provided in a fair and equitable manner.
This is the worst kind of cowardice and bureaucratic cover your backside gibberish, and Vilsack knows it. If he had conducted the review in a fair and equitable manner before panicking and trying to appease the rightwing attack machine, Sherrod would still be on the job, and the issue would have quickly blown over.
In fact, even if Sherrod did what she was alleged to have done, there's still a little thing called due process which requires an investigation, diligent fact-finding, and corroboration, a careful weighing of the factual evidence, and then giving the accused a chance to present their case before making a decision about their fate. None of that happened. Sherrod was summarily kicked to the curb, her name drug through the media and public mud, and a sterling reputation as an official who did her job, and won consistent high praise from the legions of farmers of all races that she has aided during her years with the agency tainted.
Now that we know Vilsack doesn't have the intestinal fortitude too quickly and publicly person up and right a colossal wrong, President Obama should. He should order Vilsack to do the right thing and apologize to Sherrod and immediately reinstate her. This would do two things. It would remove the taint that the Obama administration nervously listened to the din from the conservative echo chamber about bogus black racism and made Sherrod the sacrificial lamb. Sherrod contended that she got calls from the White House demanding her resignation. The second thing it would send the message that the White House will not be bullied, intimidated, badgered, and ultimately hit the panic and appeasement button every time the bogus shout is made that the administration is tilting toward minorities.
The Sherrod debacle was more than just a put up job by the right. It was a textbook lesson of how organized, agenda driven, rightwing ideologues, will stop at absolutely nothing to shame, embarrass, and vilify the Obama administration using the one tried and true tactic it knows will inflame, and that's race baiting. They've honed that ploy to a fine art over the past four decades, and the Sherrod flap shows it still works magnificently.
Sherrod had the double misfortune. Not only was she targeted by conservatives for ouster. She was used by them as a pawn to hit back at the NAACP and civil rights organizations that have rightly put much heat to the GOP and tea party activists for their very real racism and perpetual race card play.
President Obama can undo the damage that they've done, and the cowardice of Vilsack in the face of their assault on Sherrod. He can order her reinstatement, with full apology for the wrong and hurt she's suffered.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
I'd hate to go out on a limb here, but the kindly residents of New York City must have gone mad. The proof came via a Community Board 1 voted to consider building a mosque on Ground Zero, in a 29-1 vote with nine abstentions by those who wanted time to think things over.
This is all the brainchild of Iman Feisal Abdul Rauf, head of the Cordoba Institute that is funding the $100 project. But a quick look into his past reveals that he is no choir boy himself. For his resume, with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and their infidel-ridden agenda, reads like a Who's Who guide to a Holy Jihad. If they want to build a mosque somewhere else, let them. This doesn't make me a xenophobe, as Rob implies, just someone with common decency and common sense. For it wouldn't show good manners or graces for one group to build a house of worship on something they destroyed, though I know that some disagree.
Manhattan Borough President, Scott Stringer, supports it as an "outright rejection of hatred and bigotry." In that case, he should not only take a gander at Rauf's resume but at his sound bites on "60 Minutes" where he blames the American government for 9/11.
Catholic Priest Kevin Madigan supports the mosque saying that he thinks that "they need to establish a place such as this for people of goodwill from mainline Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths to come together and talk." In that case, they can always meet at the public library, the Y or a banquet hall.
This only proves once again that some people will just jump at the chance to hold hands with everyone, stand in a circle and sing "Kumbaya."
Fox News, and the gaggle of rightside blogs, websites, and assorted tea party activists were in sheer delirium when they dug up an old tape of Shirley Sherrod, the Agriculture Department's director of rural development in Georgia, supposedly getting caught with her racism hanging down. The tape was of a speech Sherrod made at a local NAACP banquet on March 27. Her alleged racist sin was that she admitted that she did less to help a needy white farmer than she could--it happened twenty years earlier.
The cause of the rightwing's delirium was two-fold. They could joyously shout "gotcha" at the NAACP, black Democrats and civil rights leaders that have relentlessly pounded the tea party and conservatives for months for saying and doing nothing about the racists in their midst. They got even greater joy and satisfaction from Sherrod's plight since this gave them a chance to rant that this is proof that there's a double standard among blacks when it comes to dealing with race. Put simply, blacks are quick on the trigger to rail at whites for any and every real or perceived racial transgression, but are stone silent, or secretly or openly condone, even revel in racial bigotry, against whites.
This is baloney any way you look at the race issue and how it plays out in black and white. Start with Sherrod and what she actually said and did. She didn't resort to the stock code words, misdirection, feints, or dodges that GOP and tea party has honed to a fine art for decades to stoke white fears and bigotry. She spoke at a public forum, and in what soundly more self-confessional, than boast, took herself to task for her own racial favoritism. "I learned about myself and how far we still have to go."
Sherrod said much more in her talk and the suspicion is that the much more was to make clear that this was a personal teaching moment, an epiphany, for her on how bigotry can corrupt and damn anyone, even someone who themselves has been the target of bigotry. Sherrod has certainly dealt with that bigotry first hand in the blatant and shameless treatment of black farmers. The issue was partially resolved this past February when the Obama administration announced it agreed to a $1.25 billion settlement to resolve charges by thousands of black farmers that the Agriculture Department discriminated them in loan programs for decades. The racist treatment of black farmers was not the act of one local official in one state. This was the systematic, and deliberate racial targeting of black farmers by the official government agency charged with administering loans and programs for farmers. Thousands of black farmers lost their farms and land as a result of the officially sanctioned discriminatory lending practices. The settlement didn't end the outrage. Congress had to approve the settlement by the end of March, 2010. It cavalierly left for Spring break before approving the settlement at the time.
Now back to Sherrod. Needless to say, her full speech which might have provided more insight into why she did what she did and how she learned from her act was nowhere to be heard in the self-serving edited version that Fox News blared all over the place. A humiliated and embarrassed Sherrod promptly offered her resignation. It was just as promptly accepted by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. NAACP president Ben Jealous quickly issued a statement applauding Sherrod's resignation, and did not equivocate in stating that the NAACP had a zero tolerance for discrimination in any form and by anyone, no matter their color.
He did not publicly disavow Sherrod and her act issue after weeks passed of badgering, cajoling, harassing, and withering criticism about alleged black racism. Jealous did not pull a page from Sarah Palin and other tea party leaders when they come under fire for racism. They reflexively point the finger at blacks and civil rights groups for alleged racial bias toward whites. Jealous by contrast did not finger point the GOP and the tea party's endless history of racism and racist acts to cloud, obfuscate, and muddy the Sherrod issue.
Sherrod's action was indefensible, and she was the first to admit it. But it was the regrettable act of one person, one place, one time. This hardly rises to the level of an institutional racial high crime and misdemeanor. Sherrod paid a dear price for her intemperate act. Unfortunately the same can't be said that the GOP and the tea party have paid the same price for their bigotry. They've done everything possible to see to that that won't happen.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
I get the point of the NAACP resolution, and my knee-jerk response is sympathetic. But I don't believe their efforts will help bring racism to light. For one thing, diehard conservatives will argue that the black community is showing "blind loyalty" to President Obama that is less than color-blind. They will argue that heated opposition to big government wouldn't seem to racist to many blacks if so many blacks weren't already unwaveringly behind a candidate who shares their skin color.
And they will have a point.
This is not to say that the Tea Party is above reproach. They strike me as a nasty bunch, and I'm suspicious about why they didn't bring guns to protests against Bush's big spending or his Wall Street bailouts. Still, until the bigot wing of the Tea Party gets truly violent, you won't see the mass of them bothering to condemn that wing.
Tea Party leader Sarah Palin quickly joined the chorus of tea party leaders denouncing the NAACP resolution that condemned the "racist elements" in the party. But Palin should take a close look at the NAACP resolution. It called on tea party leaders to denounce the racists within their movement. In other words, if as tea party leaders loudly protest that they are not racists, and neither is their movement, then it should be an easy step for them to promptly surround any individual that turns up at a tea party rally or event and shouts a racist slur or waves a Confederate flag, Texas Lone Star flag, an Obama Joker poster, or a sign or banner with a crude racist scrawl on it and insist that they immediately cease and desist, scrap the sign, or be ejected.
Tea party leaders should have no problem quickly and forcefully publicly denouncing the Iowa tea party group that put up a billboard comparing President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin as well as Ryan J. Murdough, a white supremacist running for a seat in the New Hampshire legislature. They should issue press releases,
statements, and public announcements reminding the press and their locals, chapters, and membership that racist acts, utterances, and displays will not be tolerated at any tea party sponsored event, and will be met with swift rebuke.
If Jeopardy were ever to come calling with a job as a question writer, I have a question under the lunacy category. "Which organization of lunatics is accusing the Tea Party of racism?"
After they return from a 60-second commercial break, the contestants roll their eyes at the ease of it all and ring the buzzer. "The NAACP," one of them calls out. Because the question really is a shoo-in depending more on the quickness of the buzzer hand than anything else.
Like prodding a possum out of a hole with a stick, about the only way to lure them out is when a black person is in trouble. If a person of color commits a crime, they will defend him. If a crime was committed someone of color, they will show up in full regalia because black is beautiful and blacks are the eternally oppressed people. However, they never show up when others are being oppressed because they aren't black. Sociologists would call it "selective oppression."
Their latest call to action came via two signs allegedly written by people in the Tea Party. One read, "Obama's Plan: White Slavery," and the other one read, "Obama, what you talkin' about Willis? Spend my money?"
Still, it would have been all too predictable to see what would have happened if someone printed a similar sign aimed at another ethnic group. If anything, it would have been enough to prod Al Sharpton and company back into their holes.
I know it is naïve to wonder what is controversial about a resolution asking people who claim not to be racists to repudiate racism. If I'm not harboring racists or trying to protect my clout with racists, why would I resist repudiating anyone who acts like a racist? Okay, I said my wonderment was naïve.
It is very clear that elements of The Tea Party--which is not a party at all but a coalition of grievances (some quite valid)--are racists. This, however, is not a stunning charge. Any group will have some racists--Democrats, Republicans, Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Hindus and Jews. This is the nature of groups and unfortunately of the human condition.
The problem is not the fact that when you look at pictures of Tea Party gatherings, you don't see many people of color. But it is not the colors in the picture but the content and character of the signs that more than hint at racial animus. When there are signs with Obama as Hitler, cartoons with Obama with a bone through his nose, pictures with chickens and watermelons, one does not require a degree in semiotics to understand the intent of some.
Remember Sir Thomas More, "Silence connotes assent." The silence, the non-repudiation of racial hatred implies at least a disquieting tolerance. Nor can one fail to recoil at the angry mob that spat at African American members of Congress on their way to vote on health care and still credibly deny racism. That they were uniquely targeted again calls for a response.
Dislike Obama, as many liberals disliked W. Call him names. Fight his policies with reason, wit and passion. Or just be vulgar. That too is okay (but says more about you than about him). However, please if you care about this nation, do not add to racial tensions by attacking the African half of his race or pretending that he is not a real birthright American. This too is a kind of code delegitimizing the man not his policies.
Silence is a response. Own the bigots or repudiate them.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Leave it to the geniuses at the Department of Children and Family Services to muff another case. This time, it involved then 5 year-old Desarie Saravia and her brother, Brian. In an unusual and intelligent move, the agency removed from her mother's care a little over six years ago and was returned to her mother. Her care in her own had to be pretty bad for her and her brother to be removed from her own mother and placed elsewhere. In this case, it was Desarie's grandmother, Marina Jovel. Desarie and her brother, Brian, now 12, were happy with their grandmother and played and grew as normal children do.
But the children's mother, Debby Saravia, must have cleaned up her act well enough and put on enough of a show to have her children returned back to her and her boyfriend, Antonio Rodriguez. Shortly thereafter, the grandmother and other family members noticed some ominous changes in the children. She said that they had lost all spontaneity and were guarded and listless and scared. After living with her mother and her boyfriend, they also lost weight and became malnourished.
She tried to regain custody of her grandchildren, but the DCFS wouldn't release them because their father didn't take a DNA test, so they couldn't prove kinship one way or the other.
Antonio Rodriguez did some things to the little girl that are barely fit to print in a family paper, but he stripped her, took her to a public restroom and assaulted her while making her brother stand guard, and he was shocked when the little girl died in her own defense after being battered, bruised and beaten for all those months.
I have a message for the mentally impaired DCFS caseworkers. A family is more than the people with genetic links to a child. They are the ones who love and nurture and support a child. They are the ones who stay up with them late at night and take them to silly movies that they wouldn't otherwise see on their own. They are the ones who cook for them and make sure they have warm enough clothes in winter and that there are enough socks in their sock drawer, and they are the ones who help them with their homework and worry about them each time they leave the house.
And since you don't seem to know this despite all your hours of training, then maybe you need to consider another way to spend your time like standing in the unemployment line. It would be taxpayer dollars wisely spent.
Let me get this straight. Al Gore secured the services of a masseuse. Not just any masseuse, but 54-year old one. First, let's discuss what 54 means with or without plastic surgery. It's not 18. It's not 24 or even 36 before gravity starts kicking in. It's 54, the age when gravity has already taken its toll and often with a vengeance. It's when everything starts heading south and the plastic surgeon becomes a woman's new best friend and confidant.
Then this woman, Masseuse X because she wouldn't give her name, accuses Gore of getting randy and trying to make advances. She even called him a "sex crazed poodle," which must have done as much for his libido as a Barry White love song. Then she claims that she thought hard and fast before going to the police and is so holy, virtuous and pure (yes, somewhere there are holy, virtuous and pure masseuses working in hotel rooms late at night) that she relented, though she did keep a pair of black stained pants from the aforementioned sex poodle. She claims not to want any money for her trouble aside from her hourly wage and a handsome tip, though she was willing to accept one-million dollars from the National Enquirer for her story about the groping Al Gore.
If any of this makes sense to anyone, then perhaps you also see little pink elephants following you on the street. Or maybe I'm the one who should go home and have a nice glass of wine.
In quick succession J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department attorney, strongly implied in his testimony to the Civil Rights Commission that the word came down from on White House high to the Justice Department to dump a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia. Adams just as strongly implied that the White House put the word out to play hard ball on discrimination cases when the victims are minorities, and soft peddle the same type cases when the victims are white. The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch quickly announced a lawsuit against the DOJ to hand over documents on the case. Not to be outdone, Rush Limbaugh gassed that Obama hates America (meaning whites) and that he's deliberately torpedoing the economy to "payback" the nation for 230 years of racial sins against blacks.
Any other time, and with any other president, this would be treated exactly for what it is, sheer lunacy. But this not any other time, and the president is Obama. The suspicion that always lurks close to the surface is that an African-American once in a position of power will turn the tables and "payback" whites for the decades of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, racial violence, abuse, degradation and exclusion. The two decade assault on affirmative action firmly implanted the widespread belief that unfit and unqualified minorities and especially blacks were hell bent to shove whites aside and grab all the plum positions. It was reverse discrimination and racism. It was a short step from this to the notion that racism is virtually dead in America, except for the racism of blacks. This set the stage to tag Obama the reverse racist.
The shouts, taunts, spitting, catcalls, Obama joker posters, Confederate and Texas Lone Star flag waved by tea party activists was not just a naked, spasmodic race baiting by unreconstructed bigots. Many passionately believe that Obama is determined to give the company store away to minorities, especially blacks. Every chance he gets he'll dump more money, devise more programs, and propose favorable legislation that favor blacks and minorities at the expense of whites. An Obama White House will bend, twist, and mangle laws to aid and abet black advancement. No matter how much Obama talks about being president of all the people, downplays race, and has an impeccable record on broad race neutral legislation, he's still a reverse bigot.
The knock of Obama as a racist is much more than mindless dribble it serves a canny political purpose. The starting point is the 2008 campaign. The GOP could not have been competitive during campaign 2008 without the bail out from white male voters. Blue collar white voters have shrunk from more than half of the nation's voters to less than forty percent. The assumption based solely on this slide and the increased minority population numbers and regional demographic changes is that the GOP's white vote strategy is doomed to fail. This ignores three political facts. Elections are usually won by candidates with a solid and impassioned core of bloc voters. White males, particularly older white males, vote consistently and faithfully. They vote in a far greater percentage than Hispanics and blacks.
GOP leaders have long known that blue collar white male voters can be easily aroused to vote and shout loudly on the emotional wedge issues; abortion, family values, anti-gay marriage and tax cuts. They whipped up their hysteria and borderline racism against health care reform. This was glaringly apparent in the ferocity and bile spouted by the shock troops the GOP leaders in consort with the tea party activists brought out to harangue, harass and bully Democrat legislators on the eve of the final health care vote. These are the very voters that GOP presidents and aspiring presidents, Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr. and W. Bush, and McCain and legions of GOP governors, senators and congresspersons banked for victory and to seize and maintain regional and national political dominance.
The GOP's win with the white vote failed in 2008 only because of the rage and disgust of legions of white voters at Bush's horribly failed and flawed domestic and war policies. This was more a personal and visceral reaction to the bumbles of Bush than a radical and permanent sea change in overall white voter sentiment about Obama, the Democrats, and the GOP. Even if the GOP is, as is widely seen, an insular party of Deep South and narrow Heartland, rural and, non-college educated blue-collar whites this is not a voting demographic to mock, ridicule or be sneered at, let alone dismiss, because the numbers are still huge.
Adams, Limbaugh, the tea party activists, and GOP leaders have crudely but effectively programmed millions to think of and see Obama as their worst racial nightmare. To them, he's a black man who has real power and will lord it over whites. It's the worst kind of con, but for the Obama loathers selling the con is all that matters.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
Al Gore denies guilt, perhaps giving him a little more sense of what it feels like to be a denier, given the denier movement within the global warming debate. And perhaps his accuser is a climate skeptic who felt that massaging Al and his ego was more than she could take.
But I do feel for the accused here. Forget the quaint, precious notion of "innocent till proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." In everyday practice our society uses a "Where there's a trace of smoke, there's global warming" method to judge and hang people. In most cases, we protect the names of the accuser but never the accused. (In the Gore situation, the accuser did choose to come forward publicly.)
Be certain, the guilty must be punished, as Al Gore must be punished if it can be ascertained that there is truly a case here.
But what about if he is being accused without proper cause? Is it time that we take greater care to keep both accuser and accused's names out of the spotlight, until such time that we can ascertain whether someone is indeed innocent till proven guilty? Didn't the McMartin case teach us anything?
There is too much risk that even an exemplary public figure or community leader can be destroyed forever by even an insinuation of a crime -- but never more so than in our Internet & 24/7 cable era. We need to adjust accordingly.
Is it fair to re-open the sexual battery complaint against Al Gore? The simple answer is, Yes. This is not about a rumor, TMZ generated gossip or speculation. An official complaint was filed, and even if tardy and suspect, it must be taken seriously. This is not an allegation of an affair or consensual sex. Sexual battery is a crime.
The real question, given the fact that the complaint was filed, is not should the investigation be re-opened, it is if it was covered up?
There is certainly a legitimate question whether the sex lives of our political leaders should be grist for our mills? Personally I don't care what they do in their bedrooms or in the pantry adjacent to the oval office. Their sex lives--gay, straight, monogamous, monotonous or monastic--are of supreme indifference to me. I don't care about their private sins--except to the extent that they may raise concerns about their judgment and mental stability.
John Edwards cheating? I don't care. John Edwards believing he could cover it up once he got caught? Pathological and disqualifying. Gore sleeping with someone other than his wife? Nothing. Assaulting a woman. Criminal.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Can we have a reasonable discussion about immigration? Well, you know the answer is "No." This issue is fraught with emotion, fear, anger and, worst of all, politics. Our national non-discussion embodies everything that is wrong with political discourse today. It takes an important and legitimate concern and reduces it to sound bites, talking points and a base struggle for political advantage. Any interest in solving the problem is adumbrated by the politics and passions--intentionally and cynically inflamed by both sides.
It is instructive that today's big question is not really about immigration, danger on the border, or if Arizona's new law is constitutional. No, those questions are all substantive. The question posed today by talking heads and op-ed writers is this: With about two-thirds of the American people favoring Arizona's law, is Obama smart to sue the state? This question is emblematic of the horse race trivializing politics of today.
The question that reasonable people could, in theory, disagree over reasonably should be: Is Arizona's law constitutional? Examining it in terms of political popularity does violence to the foundation of our laws. The president should be judged by his dedication to a coherent understanding of the Constitution. But that is too complex an issue, so we look at the horse race and politics instead.
The fact is that the Arizona law is not a slam-dunk for either side. The supremacy clause that puts the Federal Government in charge of immigration and citizenship is a strong argument. The Arizona response that it mirrors federal law, I don't find compelling. What does seem stronger is their position that they are not usurping the Federal Government but only enforcing state trespassing laws, having declared that undocumented people are not entitled to, well, be here. This is an intellectually interesting approach.
The smoke and mirrors around the government's failure to control immigration, while clearly factual, is legally irrelevant. The Feds fail at lots of things but that doesn't put the powers given to them by our Constitution into forfeiture. If incompetence and failure resulted in the erosion of legal power (the erosion of moral authority by failure is a given), we would have anarchy at ever level. We would all become vigilantes empowered to act on our own authority according to our evaluation of how badly the government worked to educate our children, defend our nation, fill our potholes, and protect us from crime. As tempting as this state of nature might be in theory, it is neither legal nor practical.
Our borders are porous. Gang violence does come across and degrade the quality of life for many in border areas. Still, no one seems interested in dealing with how this violence is driven by our demand for drugs and our supplying of weapons to the drug cartels. The problem is real and the Fed's failures are terrible. But this politics that refuses to accept the nuances also fails to deal with the obvious.
If there are 12 to 16 million undocumented aliens and if we want to deport them, how would we? Can we imagine the courts we would have to build--and fund? Can we imagine the lawyers we'd have to train and pay to give a semblance of due process? Can we imagine the holding facilities we'd have to build and staff to hold all those whom we'd clearly have to detain? Or would we seriously just catch and release on verbal bond and expect them to show up for deportation?
All these important and real questions avoid the hard cases of the children who were brought here as infants and have no other country or the children who were born here and are linguistically culturally and legally American. Do we really want to deport their parents and send American citizens to foreign countries or into expensive and often abusive foster care system?
Quite aside from issues of constitutionality and morality, how about practicality and economics? This is not simple stuff--and when we only look at it politically, we do a disservice to our selves and the Constitution. There is a vitally important conversation to have. Instead we are having an argument involving many idiots filled with sound and fury, signifying...nothing.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Anthropologists studying the Dark Ages, might want to look at modern-day Iran for what it looked like. Conversely, the Shah and others from that era must surely be rolling over in their graves. Maybe in his time stoning people to death was something that happened in the far reaches of the province. Now it is front and center with Napoleon Adhmadinejad.
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashianti, was convicted of adultery by an Iranian judge in 2006 and will be buried up to her chest and stoned to death. She was questioned in Farsi, a language she does not understand, and convicted by a judge who under Iranian law, was allowed to convict her based on a feeling or a hunch. The 43 year-old mother of two has maintained her innocence. Innocent or guilty, the punishment hardly fits the crime. The story and online petition are here.
UPDATE: Due to international pressure, Iran has relented.
Let's be clear. The only way Leslie Van Houten would ever set foot outside of a prison is in a pine box. She has been denied parole more than a dozen times, and now add one more denial to that. The latest decision to deny her parole could have been mailed in. But having said that, the real issue is not whether Van Houten or any other heinous killer that society near universally agrees must never see the light of outside, should go free.
The issue that transcends the nature of the crime and the criminal that commits it is does keeping the Van Houtens behind bars in perpetuity when all agree they're no threat, and have done everything humanly and beyond possible to change their lives mock the notion that society still pays empty lip service to, namely rehabilitation?
From cradle to grave, the preachment on prisoners is study, grow, change your life, help humanity, and pay your debt to society, and thereby earn a second chance. At least that's the story line on crime and punishment. Of course, that's baloney. As a society, we are vengeful, vindictive, and ruthless when it comes to prisoners no matter how much they may come to resemble a cross between Mother Teresa and St. Paul in their prison lives. If they commit a crime they're all Les Miserables, Jean Valjean. Condemn them all to eternal hell fire and damnation.
That's the lot of Van Houten, model prisoner or no. So I say stop the sanctimonious pretense that we give a hoot about prison rehabilitation, and second chances, and prison life epiphanies. Just go along with the pack and scream hang em' high, and hang em' long when the name of prisoners like Leslie Van Houten is mentioned. That's the cheap, easy, and hypocritical way out.
Though frankly I don't give a hoot about Van Houten, the subject of her parole, which comes up every couple of years, raises some important issues about the purpose of incarceration. Do we put people in prisons to punish them? Yes, certainly that is true. Do we put people in prisons to reform them and expect them to be better when released? It is a hope with little statistical encouragement to back it. Do we want to release people at some point when we determine that they are no longer a danger to society? We're not sure. Do we want to grant compassionate parole for people too old, sick and expensive to care for in prison? We're not sure of this either. A fair number of terminal cases seem to get miraculous cures upon release.
Do we care if Ms. Van Houten is reformed and repentant? Is repentance an important issue or is simply being old and no longer a threat good enough? Or are there crimes that are just so hideous that the perpetrator loses his or her license to ever be in society again? This is a profound question that is at once religious, philosophical and jurisprudential.
In theory our great faiths believe in repentance, in personal changes that are profound and permanent. In Judaism we call it Tchuvah, which means to turn, turn away from the wrong path and re-turn to our best selves. We believe that it is never too late to become a better person.
Christians too believe in repentance. In the Greek the word is Metanoia, which though literally means a change of mind, in our metaphorical language it really means a change of heart. It is deep, heart-felt and not just momentary regret.
Although we all believe that a bad person can become good--or at least better--does that change, should that change or annul punishment? If you are no longer the same person characteralogically who committed the crime, should you still do the time? If so, then the incarceration is not about the criminal but becomes exemplary--a warning, a deterrent to other potential malefactors.
While I'm not particularly interested in Van Houten's fate, my animus is tempered by this last week's celebration of the life of Sen. Robert Byrd of Virginia. He was an imperfect man, a self-described "redneck," a former member and a recruiter for the KKK. He was a product of his environment, his time and class, but he transcended it. He left the hate behind; he repented of his antagonism towards black people, his opposition to Dr. King and his vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His heart was changed and his repentance took the form not simply of feeling bad or acts of conspicuous contrition, but a life of service and a record of actions that proved the depth and sincerity of his change.
Therefore in regards to Van Houten, I have to ask myself if, while climbing in the Himalayas, I ran into Hitler living peacefully and having spent the last 65 years as a sincere and repentant wise man, having done no further evil and only given of wisdom and goodness, would I see the changed man and turn away leaving him in peace? No.
So do I believe Van Houten should get out? No. She may have changed. She is almost certainly no danger to society, but there are some acts, some crimes so intrinsically evil that society cannot fully accept repentance--no matter how sincere.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
It's that time again, the Manson Family Parole Board Hearing Time, the time when the jailed followers of the Manson cult trot themselves out, apologize for their sins, claim they've paid their debt to society and ask to be freed. This time, it's Leslie Van Houten's turn. She said she was high on LSD when she stabbed the already dead Rosemary LaBianca after the Manson clan murdered her. Although Van Houton didn't kill anyone herself, she voluntarily tagged along, as the clan went on a murder spree that left actress Sharon Tate, who was 8 ½ months pregnant, dead after she begged for her child's life, the wealthy grocers, Leno and Rosemary La Bianca, coffee heiress, Abigail Folger and others.
Now 70, she claims to have reformed and to have seen the light. It's funny how jail does that to a person. Yet even during her trial when there was nary a gram of LSD coursing through her veins, Van Houton and two other Manson followers, Susan Atkins, who died last year in jail, and Patricia Krenwinkel didn't seem very remiss as they held hands, smiled and sang for the cameras.
In her defense, her lawyer points to her exemplary behavior since being locked up and her involvement in the Golden Girls, a self help group for women inmates. Citing a law where prisoners can go free if they are no longer deemed a danger to society, her lawyer says that she is ready to be released. So now all a convicted felon has to do is join the Golden Girls, or some other self-help group, lop off the offending appendage or two or maybe get a lobotomy to be deemed safe. Still, there is an element of justice that has to be followed. Even if Van Houten or any other self-proclaimed reformed thug were about as threatening as a box of Wheaties, they still need to pay their debt to society.
Although only 19 when she began associating with Manson, she was still old enough to hold a job, drive a car and enroll in college. And she was old enough to know about harm and consequences. She could have stopped, she could have left, or she could have done the normal thing and gone to the police, but she didn't. She helped those who made people pay with their lives, and she should continue paying with hers. She knew that going in at the tender age of 19, and she knew that before she dropped the first gram of LSD. Her only way out now would be to get permission from her victims or their families, which is never going to happen no matter how remorseful she claims to be or how many Golden Girls' meetings she attends.
Not growing up in a family where anyone clubbed anyone over the head or opened bottles with their teeth, I wasn't prepared for what happened yesterday at the mall on Tampa and Victory. I was headed into the pharmacy to get some pictures developed when I saw a man slap a woman's face. I asked her if she was okay, but the jerk intervened and said that she was on drugs. Talk about projecting.
I went into a nearby store and called the police. A man with two young daughters was also doing the same thing in front of the store. I went back outside as the jerk hovered around her, and I asked her if she wanted to go inside my car. She refused and walked away, and he followed. Several yards later, he grabbed the back of her neck. Several people reached for their cell phones. I called 911 again and begged them to hurry, but the dispatcher said they were on the way. People began to gather around to stop the man, but he walked out of the mall, crossed the street and went down Victory.
A few moments later, I saw the woman wheeling a cart of party supplies to her car with another man. Even though I gave them my number, the police never called me back for a statement, so I assume she never bothered reporting it and that it was as dead and buried as yesterday.
To the woman at that strip mall: For crimney's sake, girl, get some help. Find out why you would be content to wheel a cart of groceries across a parking lot after being beaten and why you didn't go to the police. You must be feeling rather poorly about yourself, but o one is so low and down that he can't get up. People do it all the time, and there is no reason why it can't be you. Go to a social service agency, and get some help while you are still in one piece. You need to get out of there while you can because you've had fair warning. And if you stay, every bruise, shove and slap that he gives you from here on in is going to be on you.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele ticked off President Obama, most Democrats, nearly all Republicans, and much of the military brass. Steele's sacrilege was to tell a partial truth about the war. It has become Obama's war, if not by choice as Steele says, at least by default. Steele's aim was to heap blame on Obama for waging a drifting, listing, and lethal, costly, and at times confused war without end. It was yet another naked Steele partisan political attack on Obama. At first glance, it seemed strange though for Steele to sound like an antiwar dove. And GOP war hawks let him know that when they screamed for his resignation. But Steele gambled that he could float the attack line since polls show that a majority of Americans consistently either oppose the war or are befuddled by it. Steele, no surprise, backpedalled fast after the heat of howls of protest, and screamed for more troops to win the war. But Steele's point about Obama and the war is valid.
On two occasions as a presidential candidate, and once before he became a presidential candidate Obama said or strongly suggested that escalation of the Afghan war would be in the cards if he was elected. In his anti-Iraq war speech at Chicago's Federal Plaza on October 2, 2002, Obama went on the attack. He blasted the war, called it a drain on American resources, and a foreign policy nightmare. He repeatedly called it a dumb war. The "dumb war" characterization implied that there are wars that are worth waging. He made it clear that he was not a reflexive opponent of all wars. The US was simply fighting the wrong war, in the wrong place. He demanded that Bush fight an all out, no holds barred war against terrorism. Though he did not mention Afghanistan directly, in the speech it didn't take much to connect the terrorism dots to Afghanistan.
Six months after he announced his presidential candidacy, in a speech in August 2007 at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Obama left no doubt that Afghanistan would be his number one target for attack if he was elected.
He made an impassioned promise to wage what he dubbed the war that had to be won. He spelled out in minute detail his plan of attack. It was virtually identical to the plan he laid out in his West Point speech. He vowed to drastically increase troop strength, ramp up spending on an array of military related programs such as mobile special forces, pacification teams, intelligence operations, and to beef up military aid to Pakistan. He vowed to take the war to the Taliban in Northwest Pakistan. Eleven months after his Wilson Center speech, Obama was still only the "presumptive" Democratic presidential candidate. Yet, in a CBS Face the Nation interview, he promised to "finish the job" in Afghanistan. These are the exact same words that he used to sell escalation in interviews in the build-up to his West Point speech.
In the time he's been in the Oval office, Obama has hardened on the military option, and repeatedly pledged that he'll redeploy troops as fast as he can from Iraq to Afghanistan. Obama has never cited Pentagon pressure as his reason for upping the military ante in Afghanistan, even during the flap with ousted general Stanley McChrystal. The Pentagon has certainly hammered hard for troop escalation. But the massive troop increase and billions more in spending on it is clearly his call. A call he made and firmly decided on long before he ever got to the White House.
Some hopeful Afghan war critics blame the Pentagon, GOP war hawks, defense contractors, and oil interests, for arm twisting Obama to escalate. This helps to rationalize their bitter disappointment at the president's escalation decision. The truth though is that Afghanistan is the war that Obama passionately believes is the right war to fight and win. Steele got that much right, but despite his reversal under fire, Steele is still the consummate political animal, and the war like much else about Obama and the GOP's assault on him oozes with political malice. As the battle casualties mount, and the public head scratching grows over the inability to deliver anything resembling a knock-out punch to the insurgents, and the in your face corruption of the Karzai regime continues to grate, public protests frustrations and protests over the war will rise. Steele and the GOP will loudly remind any and all that Obama put his indelible stamp on the conflict, and if it's a muddle, then it's a muddle that he made.
Three failed and flawed wars and the public´s distaste for those wars helped topple two sitting Democratic presidents, and hopelessly discredited a Republican president. Steele would love nothing better for the same public distaste for the war to politically damage Obama. That's the wrong part of Steele's initial outburst. The peril to Obama, though, of his turning Afghanistan into a single minded crusade remains.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk shows on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
I love the United States of America, and I propose taking that love back from those who use patriotism as a universal and unquestioning justification for their own beliefs, as well as those who think love of country is ugly and jingoistic.
I'll confess that in my youth I thought of patriotism as something bad. I was relentlessly critical of much of American culture, politics and policy. I got to see behind the curtain of politics at a young age since my mother was hugely politically active and a member of the California Democratic Council, the president of the Brentwood Democratic Club, and a delegate to numerous state and national conventions. We entertained politicians, hosting Hubert Humphrey in our home. Such was her dedication that she married an unsuccessful candidate for the US Congress.
I saw the hope when Stevenson ran and felt the despair at his defeats. I was energized by JFK, and heartbroken at his assassination and the Vietnam War. I was raised to be more than offended by our tragic history of civil wrongs and was in Watts registering voters to try to save the Rumford Fair Housing Act when the riots broke out. I've ridden the rollercoaster of hope and despair--but no point was lower than the assassination of Martin Luther King.
I was living in Tunisia serving in the Peace Corps. Trying to explain what had happened was impossible. Then at an assembly at my high school, one of the professors read the "I Have a Dream" speech in French. I felt embarrassed and broken. If asked if I were a patriot, I would have demurred.
Yet, when I sailed home as we passed the Statue of Liberty I wept and was overcome with feelings. Why? I think that nothing makes one appreciate America as much as living abroad--living with spies in my classes that reported to the police, living with prisoners beaten and tortured--not in secret as some kind of aberration, but as normal practice and policy. Nothing makes one appreciate what we have as much as seeing people proud or accepting of their lot without the hope of change.
Here we always believed that change was possible, not easy, not always safe, but possible. We always believed we could engage our society and help move it towards a vision of justice.
I can certainly rehearse all our well-known sins--slavery, the treatment of Native Americans, the economics of greed and the busting of unions by violence and by legislation.
Yes, our treatment of immigrants has always been lacking in compassion, as irony free each settled group forgets its own story and repeats the sad history of xenophobia. The new group is always perceived as dirty, dangerous and dishonest--by turns the Irish, the Poles, the Italians, Jews, Asians and now Hispanics. We're always about to be overwhelmed physically, fiscally and culturally by people who are not quite us.
We also have our military sins. We drove perfectly good English Tories into Canada, took what we wanted from Mexico and projected power abroad to protect our economic interests all over Latin America. We supported bad guys all over the world because they were friendly to our interests but not our values. This goes on still. And yes, we have fought some bad wars and pursued other wars badly.
I don't have to love all of our history and policies to love my country. Nor do I have to hate another nation to prove my love for America. Like my family I don't have to pretend to perfection in order to love. I don't have to deny the warts to feel and celebrate the good things, the accomplishments, the generosity.
For me, the truth is that this nation is engaged in a great and noble experiment to see if E Pluribus Unum is really possible, if we can become one nation, composed of many different parts, peoples and cultures.
We frequently fail to live up to our hopes, but our hopes are noble and worthy. Can we ever really agree that we don't have to think alike to love alike? Can people of different races, religions and political philosophies make a union? The answer is that we don't know, but we are trying and doing a better job than most.
While I agree that there is something that does not love a wall, still our walls are to keep people out not in. This is an important distinction. We try, we dream, we hope. We make progress and suffer setbacks. We elect a true African American with a name that does not come trippingly to the traditional American tongue. We intermarry across old lines that in my youth seemed as high, thick and permanent as the Berlin Wall--and were!
My family like my nation is black, brown, white and Asian. My family like my nation is Jewish and Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Humanist and atheist. My family, like my nation is Democratic, Republican, Independent but the last card-carrying communist passed away two decades ago. My family like my country is not perfect but I love them.
My desire, my prayer and my commitment is to help fulfill the words of a seldom sung verse of one of our greatest patriotic songs:
"America, America God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control thy liberty in law."
Confirm thy soul in self-control thy liberty in law."
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
In a world where shameful and shameless mean the same thing, the L A Times' intentional mixing and confusing of advertising and content is both. The LATEXTRA section today, wrapped in a faux news advertising Universal and their new King Kong attraction, was repellent. This advertising masquerading as news is an appalling breach of journalistic ethics--if any remain. There can be no question that its intent was to mislead and confuse readers into believing that something terrible happened at Universal and over a wide-spread area of Southern California there was catastrophe and damage.
Ironically there was more than a germ of truth in this. Something terrible and destructive did happen, but it was to the Los Angeles Times. The ever more blurry line between news and advertising is virtually erased and it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between the two. It is made yet more problematic when inside the paper news and entertainment writers cover advertisers. How can we not believe that marketing creates editorial pressure?
People mourn the passing of our great newspapers and believe that they are being killed off by the Internet. This is only half true. Some, like the Times, are committing suicide and are actively complicit in their sad fate.
News, whether on paper or in electrons, is built on credibility. You do not fool your customers, whether readers or viewers. When you teach us not to trust you, we will look elsewhere.
King Kong indeed went on a rampage and left, not Universal in tatters, but the Times credibility in complete disarray.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Do we love America as much as we say we do?
It's been said that many a person loves humanity but can't get along with the human beings next door. Likewise, I believe we often love our image of America far more than the actual motley collection of three-hundred-plus million people who comprise the American experiment in 2010.
I'll admit I've been one of those to suggest that certain parts of America don't represent the "real" America, and that they should perhaps, oh, go about re-seceding.
But I can also appreciate those who serve America and defend America as it is, and who don't wait to serve it or defend it once it meets their lofty standards.
This year, let's love and honor our home not just for what we claim its founding fathers' intent was, but for what it is today, in all its glory and frailty. Happy 4th, everyone.
Oh, say can you see? Oh, yes, I can. I can see that this country is one of the greatest places on earth. Since the wild and raucous seventies, people have been singing about this country, and not exactly in love songs, either, though they are still here and if it was that bad, they would have packed their bags and left long ago.
This is one of the greatest countries on earth because they provided a safe haven for my grandparents, aunts and uncles and great-parents as they fled the Russian pogroms and for my father and his best friend as picked up the pieces of was left and they came here after the Nazis. And we provide a safe haven for too many others, too, which has turned into a problem.
Still, it is and remains one of the greatest countries on earth, a beacon of hope for those who have weathered one storm too many. And it will remain a great country if we start setting some standards and start playing our cards right, or at least differently.
This is one of the few countries where a person can speak his mind without fear of being carted off in the middle of the night, where a woman can regain some measure of dignity after she has been sexually abused, where a person can come here with nothing and at least be given a second chance and where children don't have to go hungry because they will be fed at school.
G-d bless America and G'd bless us all. Long may our flag wave.
Here we are again at another budget precipice. If we step off the cliff, we fall into the gully. If we stay back, then we bake in the sun. I haven't had this much fun since having my molar teeth extracted.
This week's/ hour's/ day's/ month's problem is the 200 mil that taxpayers are expected to spend to bail out the public employees' pensions. The goose that once laid the golden egg is turning out to be cracked and the retired teachers, cops, librarians and firemen could suffer.
If it were put to a vote, it probably wouldn't pass especially because the loot could be used for other things like schools, highways, the lug heads who land themselves in jail, et cetera.
I, however, would vote "yes" on it if for no other than self-serving reasons. Aside from being an irritating blogger, I am also a member of a pension system, and I and the other pensioners were promised a certain amount if we made it to the Candyland of retirement. And here we are at Candyland
It's not the same as those wretched furlough days where we were notified that we had to take a cut to at least try and balance the budget. This was promised to us long in advance and some of us may never have stayed if we were told that we weren't going to make it to Oz.
The thing to do for the future is set up a task force of union members to go after the union stewards' salaries and all those other crazy things they throw our dollars away on.
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