alternative hippopotamus

As you probably are aware, Politico did a straw poll that showed that 70% of the Take Back America attendees favored Obama in the upcoming election. On one hand, this doesn’t surprise me. The demographics of TBA are people like me, so it’s not surprising that I should identify with people like me. Still, 70% is a big number. That does surprise me.

Add to that, that bloggers who I also would describe as “people like me,” have not uniformly come out in support of Obama. I’d even say that there’s something about him they don’t like. Fair enough, I just don’t like the way some folks disrespect supporters of the dude.

Jerome Armstrong, for example, is out of line when he says:

But it’s even worse that, caught up in a presidential contest in which denouncing Wright has been seen only through the prism of supporting Obama, progressives have been silent about Wright’s wrong and divisive words. That’s a terrible precedent to have set.

Pull off the blinders that have you supporting a particular candidate, while being blind to the bigger issue. If progressives are not going to have the guts to call out those who foster divisive talk, and demand their renouncement, no matter where it comes from, it’s a bigger loss than an election.

Candidate love must be the blindest love of all- since 70% of progressives, at least the ones at Take Back America, would throw American society under the bus. This is a contemptuous view of his fellow progressives, and one that does Armstrong no credit. It’s certainly true that holding a minority view does not make you wrong. It may be reason, though, to take a moment and ask if there’s something that other people see in a candidate, and why they might see what they do.

Clearly, I don’t think I’m in the process of throwing American society under the bus. Why am I not bothered by Obama’s relationship with Wright? Because the two have completely different approaches to the issue of race in our culture. Perhaps you remember the Bill Moyers interview with Shelby Steele. Steele identified two approaches to race observed in our public discourse: that of bargainer, and that of challenger:

SHELBY STEELE: Well, the black American identity, certainly black American politics are grounded in what I call challenging. It’s basically, they look at white America and say we’re going to presume that you’re a racist until you prove otherwise. The whole concept is you keep whites on the hook. You keep the leverage. You keep the pressure. Here’s a guy who’s what I call a bargainer who’s giving whites the benefit of the doubt.

BILL MOYERS: Give me a simple definition of what you call a bargainer. And a simple definition of what you call a challenger.

SHELBY STEELE: A bargainer is a black who enters the American, the white American mainstream by saying to whites in effect, in some code form, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I’m not going to rub the shame of American history in your face if you will not hold my race against me. Whites then respond with enormous gratitude. And bargainers are usually extremely popular people. Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Sidney Poitier back in the Sixties and so forth. Because they give whites this benefit of the doubt. That you can be with these people and not feel that you’re going to be charged with racism at any instant. And so they tend to be very successful, very popular.

Challengers on the other hand say, I presume that you, this institution, this society, is racist until it proves otherwise by giving me some concrete form of racial preference.

BILL MOYERS: Affirmative action.

SHELBY STEELE: Affirmative action. Diversity programs. Opportunities of one kind or another. And so, there is a much more concrete bargaining on the case of challengers. And you go into any American institution today and they’re all used to dealing with challengers. They all have a whole system of things that they can give to challengers, who then will offer absolution.

The two have taken different paths in their lives: Obama is a bargainer. Wright is a challenger. Has Obama rejected Wright’s divisiveness? I’d say Obama has so much rejected Wright’s divisiveness on the issue that he has taken the other path in approaching how he deals with race.

Not really. But, I chatted with folks I haven’t seen for a while, and saw or met some celebs. Phil Donahue! Ariana Huffington! Bill Gates, Sr!

Bill Gates, Sr., is of course the father of the deranged billionaire, MisterSoft. For someone who sired that much money, Bill Gates, Sr. is surprisingly in favor of such class-leveling left-wing fantasies like the Estate Tax. It’s almost like he believes that a calcified class hierarchy is deadly to a democratic republic. Who knew?

With my Drinking Liberally hat on I pitched the concept of a Firedoglake Night to Jane Hamsher and Christy Hardin Smith. A benefit perhaps? For what, I don’t know. How ’bout for me? Mmmmh? I gotta eat too, ya know. Jane Hamsher countered with: how ’bout a Naomi Klein book night? I mentioned the idea to Naomi Klein. We’ll see what transpires. Her book, The Shock Doctrine, is fabulous, btw. I defy you to start reading it and put it back down.

Chatting with Eric Boehlert, I learned that he too, has a new book coming out in which the progressive blogosphere will be a featured element. This too, would be a book for which a party in our Fair City should happen. Again, we’ll see. The talk turned to the Great Blog War of the Democratic Primary of 2008. Remember when we were the “reality-based community?” Those were the days. It’s not for nothing we’ve been studying the scorched earth stylings of Little Lulu and Doughy Pantload.

Yesterday, I went to an actual press conference. With actual reporters from the Washington Times, Fox Noise, Politico, etc. And it wasn’t even all that icky. Except for the Laroushie who asked about how right Lyndon Larouche was when he predicted the upcoming (current?) recession. Robert Borosage, one of the organizers of TBA, countered with: “Lyndon Larouche has predicted 100 of the last 2 recessions.” The Politico article that was largely the result of the press conference: here.

Starting next Monday the Take Back America conference comes to the banks of the Potomac, Our Fair City, USA. There will be all kinds of media figures, bloggers, politicians, and hey, even my hero Norman Lear. I will be on blogger’s row, as I have been for the last couple of years. It’s as close as I get to the Cool Kids Club. And Candy Crowley.

In theory I’m there to learn how to be a better progressive, which may even include being more tolerant of other Democratic candidates. So, this is the last time for a while that I can say this: Your candidate’s pwnd, & my candidate r00lz! There, I’m glad I got that out of my system.

There’s also going to be a lot of parties. No $4300 call girls, or as Lewis Black would have it, used Hondas. Just a bunch of progressives sitting around talking. About our common vision for a Bush-free world. And, loving it.

Rick Perlstein captures my frustration with the historical revisionists: (The Big Con)

So here’s my question: a supremely absurd regurgitation of these arguments has recently shown up in the conservative magazine Commentary. It gives me a headache to debunk historical solecisms point by point; the futility—the truth won’t change these people’s mind—makes me feel like I’m filling a bathtub with an eye-dropper. But for my loyal reader’s sake, I’ll do it—if you want me to.

So please do vote in the comments: is this a productive use of my time?

Let me put it like this. One of my favorite authors is Plato. Particularly the great allegories of Books 6 and 7 of The Republic where Socrates/Plato talks about the noetic world, an ideal realm that acts as a model for the iconic world. A place where the only thing greater than the truth, is the goodness of the truth.

And then, there’s the Pantload. A man who apparently takes delight in leading his readers astray. He fabricates a history that never existed. Where liberals tried to traduce the state (through universal health care, no doubt) and in a binge of power almost brought the republic down, replacing it with a fascist, totalitarian state. For proof Goldberg has a dingbat science fiction writer, or more accurately a very good science fiction writer who had some dingbat ideas about society.

The most threatening thing to people like Goldberg is that the idealism that him and his cohorts have worked so hard to kill off might have survived the Fear and Loathing of the 1960’s. The left, progressives, liberals, what have you, must either have cynical motives or have been moved by some kind of totemic worship. To whit:

But my favorite example of JFK-driven magical thinking comes from Sidney Blumenthal’s column on Al Gore’s (ill-fated) endorsement of Howard Dean:

Gore’s endorsement of Dean is the most important since grainy film was shown at the 1992 Democratic convention depicting President Kennedy shaking hands with a teenage Bill Clinton.

Either Blumenthal didn’t realize or care that President Kennedy didn’t endorse Bill Clinton. JFK merely shook hands with a teenager from Arkansas whom he no doubt never thought about again. The rules of the space-time continuum apply, even to Clinton sycophants.

There’s no serious way of responding to idiotic cracks like that.

To go back to Rick Perlstein’s question, is debunking the revisionists a good use of time? Here’s the thing. There needs to be a way of setting the record straight. There are real people out there whose livelihood depends on people believing the worst things about the left. There needs to be a way of letting people know that the revisionists are not being honest with their readers. And, I don’t really see an alternative to using this thing we call the blogosphere towards that end.