One of the family stories my Dad likes to tell concerns my Aunt Ethel. She visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the holiest site in Judaism, and was surprised at how moved she felt. She was not prepared for the experience, but she wanted to write a note to God and place it in the cracks of the wall, as is the custom. She searched around in her purse for a piece of paper, but all she could find was an empty gum wrapper. She wrote her prayer on it and put it in the cracks. She always ended the story by saying, "I hope God can read shorthand."
By now you've probably heard that Barack Obama visited the Wall this week, and that he, unlike my Aunt Ethel, came prepared -- he wrote his prayer on a piece of paper ahead of time. I was a little surprised that he chose to do that -- it had never occurred to me that a non-Jew would do it, although of course he is welcome to. And yes, perhaps someone told him it would look good.
What I find stunning is that a Jewish seminary student took the note out of the wall after he left and delivered it to the newspaper, and that Maariv, the evening daily, published it. I don't think I can quite capture how offended I am by this.
Like every other blogger on this site, I can't let the night go by without saying something.
When I tucked my daughter in tonight, I told her, "Remember this day. When you are my age, you can tell your daughter that you vividly remember the night the United States finally nominated a person of color for President."
She asked me if I thought Barack Obama would be the next President, and I said I didn't know. The capacity of this country to elect horrendous people never ceases to amaze me, and this year could be no different. I hope it is though.
And then we talked about all the reasons people don't vote for Barack. About all the distractions from the issues, as though whether his pastor is like your pastor and his church is like yours matters more than whether he will end this war and return our civil rights.
I am moved tonight. I am happy. And I am troubled. I am troubled that Barack Obama has to repudiate people who speak the truth about the state of race relations in this country because if he doesn't he will be marginalized as a candidate.
I am troubled because I wonder whether Barack Obama is walking around with a big target on him for all those whose hate is bigger than their brains, and whether we are sending him to his death. And I wonder what he thinks about those things, and whether he thinks he may be sacrificing his life, and how he makes peace with that.
Glen Singleton once said he hopes it's not two years into Obama's presidency before America realizes that he's black. I guess I would say that I fear that two years into his presidency, people will realize that not only is he black, but that actually matters in this country.
But I am proud tonight. And I will remember this day.
I've finally figured it out. I have figured out what the pattern is that we see in Hillary Clinton's campaign, over and over again. I also think we saw it in the Bill Clinton years, although frankly I was so glad Bush and Dole didn't win that I didn't care. I care now.
Here's the formula:
Step 1: Say something offensive, stupid or outrageous that could be taken two ways, one of which is legitimate and the other of which is evil.
Step 2: Shortly thereafter, apologize "if anyone was offended." Alternately, apologize to the wrong person. For extra bonus points, apologize if the wrong person was offended.
Step 3: Wait for opposing candidate or side to be asked for comment.
Step 4: No matter what the opposition comment is, accuse them of politicizing your remarks for their own gain.
Step 5: Watch as news coverage swings away from what you said and towards the "playing politics" of the other side.
Step 6: Congratulations! You've accomplished three things: a) making a legitimate point, b) getting something you wanted to imply but didn't want to come right out and say into the public consciousness, and c) making your opponent, who was a completely innocent bystander, look like the bad guy.
What follows is this week's case study, the RFK comment:
In my last post, which I know you have all dissected, studied and committed to memory by now, I tackled Mike Huckabee's horrific "joke" at the NRA last week. One of my main theses, as Naomi fans can tell you, was that what we say on the spur of the moment, out of habit or under duress is what's deep down in our thoughts and beliefs.
If I'm going to argue that, then I think I need to take on Barack Obama's self-admitted bad habit of calling women "sweetie." As you may know, he did it to a reporter last week. He later called and apologized personally to her, and said he had a bad habit of doing that.
So, does this mean that deep down Barack Obama is sexist? Yes it does.
There are times when I choose to write about grand themes in the campaign. I actually have one "in the can" so to speak, waiting for me to have time to do it justice.
Then there are times when something happens that is so egregious you almost want to thank the person who did it, because the post about it writes itself. It is in that vein that I would like to offer big ups to Mike Huckabee who, today, at an address to the NRA, heard a noise backstage. He said:
That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he's getting ready to speak. Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.
Now, I do need to give credit where credit is due, and Huckabee issued the following statement late this evening:
During my speech at the N.R.A., a loud noise backstage, that sounded like a chair falling, distracted the crowd and interrupted my speech. I made an off hand remark that was in no way intended to offend or disparage Sen. Obama. I apologize that my comments were offensive. That was never my intention.
I have to hand it to him for an apology that, unlike many, is actually an apology. He didn't say "I apologize if my comments were offensive," which puts the blame on the listener. He said, "I apologize that my comments were offensive," indicating acknowledgment that they were.
And yet, I don't think that's all that needs to be said about this.
Today I spent the first of three consecutive days interviewing job applicants. It was therefore most appropriate that, when I came home, I found the following cartoon in the daily comics.
http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2008/05/12/
Two thumbs up to this cartoonist. I'm too burned out to say anything better than that.
It's been quite a while since I've posted. Election ennui is hard to overcome, and I've been busy. However, no blog entitled "Going There" could possibly overlook Hillary Clinton's immense going there comment of yesterday. In case you somehow missed it, she said, in a recorded interview with USA Today, that a recent AP article noted that:
"Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
This is one of those fabulous "let's count the number of things wrong with that statement" moments, so here it goes.
Let me begin by saying I think the media has behaved pretty badly throughout this primary season, although up until now it has largely been to Obama's advantage. They have routinely portrayed the Clinton campaign as in disarray, out of touch with the voters, unable to grasp the greatness of Obama, etc. When Hillary asked Barack if he wanted another pillow, she (and SNL) had a point.
Well, now the shoe is on the other foot. We saw the beginnings of it at the "debate" last week. (Did you notice Hillary wasn't wearing a flag pin either? Shocking!)
Today, CNN.com had a link on its homepage to its political "ticker" that read: "Poll: Support for Obama fading" I clicked on it expecting (rather downheartedly) to see a story about a poll showing that Hillary was going to take Indiana by a whopping margin, or that superdelegates are swinging her way, or something like that. Instead, I saw this.
The headline on the story says "Clinton, Obama Dead Even" It goes on to explain that both the national tracking poll and the poll of polls in Indiana have them tied.
Now, maybe it's me, but based on the teaser, that is not the story I expected to see. I expected to see a story about things going badly for Obama. They're not. They're going about how they've been going: up and down and all around -- Clinton was ahead of Obama by a point or two a few weeks ago.
The fact of the matter is, the media needs to report drama. They want this election to have a plot. Someone has to be going up and someone going down. Someone needs to be gaining support and someone having a scandal. And when the facts don't support juicy headlines, they just slap a juicy headline on a boring story and hope no one notices.
This primary season is not, in fact, an epic drama with a tension-filled climax and a denouement. It is just a really, really, really long story where not much changes. A famous review of a classic movie read, "A Bridge Too Far is an Hour Too Long." That's how I -- and the media -- feel about this election.
Last week on "The Daily Show," Jon Stewart came to the appointed time for campaign coverage and said (I'm paraphrasing here, but not much), "Now is the time we usually do campaign coverage. But we're not going to. Why? Because I can't f***ing stand it! It never changes!" And I have to say, that's about where I am.
I'm past, "This started too early." I've flown on by, "She should drop out." I left "this is hurting the party" somewhere between Ohio and Texas. "What does she think she's doing?" long since packed its bags and headed for a nice vacation in, probably, Denver.
No, folks, I'm now into, "I cannot stand this another minute, and I fear it will not end well."
You may know that John McCain openly and with great glee accepted the endorsement of Reverend John C. Hagee. Rev. Hagee has stated a number of interesting ideas, including:
The following is a list, probably not a comprehensive one, of reasons why I am unelectable. Thought you would want to know:
I feel like I should begin this post with "We Now Return to our Regularly Scheduled Campaign." It almost seems scandalous to talk about anything other than whether or not Pennsylvania voters are bitter (yep) and whether Barack offended them (nope). But I'd actually like to address something else that I think is much more in the spirit of what this campaign is about.
Twice in the last couple of weeks, the United Church of Christ has taken out full page ads in national newspapers (the NY Times and USA Today). You can read the ad here: http://www.ucc.org/assets/pdfs/usatodayad.pdf
First of all, I think this is a really good ad from a really good movement. It is courageous. It invites people to tackle the hard issues presented by one of their pastors and one of their more prominent members through thoughtful, faithful dialogue rather than sound bites and "gotchas." To me, it is a tangible form of what Obama is talking about -- doing things differently in this country.
The ad invites people of all backgrounds and traditions to join in the dialogue. So I sent it to my Rabbi and asked if he would give a sermon on race, and he said he would (not on the same date, since we don't do Sunday services of course). What would happen if all of us invited our clergy to help our congregations join the dialogue? Race could become something we really talk about. Can you imagine?
I say let's do it. Forward the link to your clergy-person and ask them to preach on this topic the week of May 18.
A big shout-out to the UCC and their willingness to truly follow their slogan, "God is Still Speaking,"
A friend of mine used to have a sign in her office that read:
If you're not taking any flak, you're not over the target.
I was reminded of that by the flak Barack is taking for calling people in Pennsylvania "bitter." I will leave out, for the moment, a diatribe about how much I hate it when the media takes one sentence of a speech and uses it to characterize the speech, but that is what happened here. However, Barack himself told folks in Indiana he "could have said it better" and indeed he could have. In fact, he did, in Terre Haute yesterday.
One of the things I have heretofore admired about Barack Obama and his campaign is that there has been a notable absence of "what were you thinking?" or "you've got to be kidding me" moments. While Hillary has been ducking imaginary sniper fire and John has been wishing us Jews a happy "Jewish Halloween," Barack has been remarkably intelligent.
That's not to say that there haven't been controversies. But even in the face of the Reverend Wright story, Barack has been open and honest and forthright. A controversy is not the same as a blunder.
During the last few days, however, three incidents caught my eye -- one by Hillary and two by Barack -- that made me cringe.
It is a truism of campaign work that you fundamentally win elections one vote at a time. Very often, you don't know for sure whether you actually got that vote, or if you did whether it was really you. But sometimes things happen in a funny way to let you know you made a difference.
As some of you (such as the "Swarthmore for Obama" group) know, I graduated from Swarthmore College in Southeastern Pennsylvania. It has been a "thru the looking glass" experience to subscribe to that mailing list because there is clearly a campaign going on there that simply never happened in Michigan. I have election envy.
Today I received an email from a member of the Development office at Swarthmore telling me she would be in Michigan the week of April 21 and she would like to meet with me and my husband (a fellow Swattie). I emailed back and indicated it was a busy week, it's the middle of Passover, blah blah.
At the end of my email, I said I felt I would be remiss if I did not remind her that she would be traveling during the Pennyslvania primary, and that she should get her absentee ballot. I offered to help her do that, and to talk her ear off about Obama if she were undecided.
I just got an email back thanking me profusely. Turns out she is an Obama volunteer and had totally blanked when she scheduled her trip. She is rescheduling it so she can be in Pennsylvania for the primary. One more vote for Obama saved!
Campaigning in Montana yesterday, Hillary Clinton joked:
"And that is another difference, you know how long it takes me to get ready than my two opponents — I mean really just think about it. I think I should get points for working as hard as I do plus the time it takes to get ready."
Oh no, she didn't.
Oh yes, she did.
You know, there was a time when I struggled with the fact that I liked Obama so much more because I so want to elect the first female president. If there were any last vestiges of that, they went out the window when I read this quotation.
Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Each of the three Presidential candidates marked the occasion with a speech.
Barack Obama spoke in Indianapolis about the actions of Robert Kennedy, who delivered the news in that city 40 years ago and appealed for calm. He talked about how Dr. King recognized the link between racial and economic justice, and how both of these are part of the larger struggle for fair and equitable opportunity for all.
Hillary Clinton spoke in Memphis, where King was murdered, about her memories of that day and her very emotional reaction to the news as a college student. She proposed setting up a cabinet level position to eliminate poverty in the United States.
John McCain spoke in Memphis also. He apologized for his vote against a federal holiday honoring Dr. King, and was booed.
I continue to be really disturbed by the "conventional wisdom" response to Reverend Wright. If you've been reading my blog, you know that I think the man has a point. I may not like how he said it, but I surely can understand why he said it. The calls for Barack Obama to repudiate him disturb me, because I think our clergy are supposed to trouble us and make us think.
In that vein, I'd like to share two quotations:
"If something isn't done, and done in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed."
What do you think of that? Does it sound like a threat to you? Does it sound like race baiting? Admit to yourself what your gut tells you about those words. Now read these:
Today on CNN.com there is video of Barack Obama dealing with a man who wants his picture taken with the Senator and won't take no for an answer. As far as I can gather from the audio, Obama thinks this guy is trying to get something he can sell on eBay. I personally don't care, although I would suggest to the gentleman that tangling with the Secret Service is not a good idea.
What I love from this clip, however, is the part where Obama is inside a cheese shop somewhere in Pennsylvania. He asks the proprietor how much he owes, and the guy says there's no charge. Obama says,
"You have to charge me. You see all these press? They'll write about how the guy got free cheese. It'll be a scandal."
He then pays for his cheese and leaves, robbing us of the enjoyment of seeing the press try to make something out of this.
So, for your enjoyment, I have written the news story that we didn't get to see on Fox News or whatever. Enjoy. (And yes, I have way too much time on my hands)
