A Pilgrim’s Digression

This guy’s video blog at Politico is probably my favorite blog of the campaign season. Below is just one example:

What I find fascinating about this story of “fake” Virginia, Palin’s remark about “real” America, and both of those coupled with Sarah Palin’s wardrobe fiasco, is how quickly Democrats have turned the tables on Republicans.  Used to be, this was a Republican line of attack: find a way to portray your opponent as un-American and elitist, and then make fun of them.

This feeling of schadenfreude is why I’ve been enjoying the wardrobe story so much.  Seeing Palin and McCain hoisted by their own petard is as pleasurable as watching a televangelist explain his consorting with male prostitutes.  Self-righteousness always gets its comeuppance.

What I find fascinating is how quickly Republicans have resorted to the sexist double standard as an excuse for Palin’s outrageous spending.  The woman spent $150,000.00 of campaign funds on her and her family’s clothing and accessories over a 55 day time span–but she had to do it, you see, because women are held to a double standard whereby if they don’t look good, they will be endlessly criticized.  She just had to do it.

“Fake” Virginia, “real” America…the only phony I see in this campaign is a woman who consented to be dressed up in clothing she can’t afford in real life, on a budget that would pay off the mortgage on an ordinary American’s home, in order to look the part of Vice-President.  Because god knows she isn’t fit for the role any other way.  She isn’t a Vice-Presidential candidate, she just plays one on TV.

I was listening to WMAL, as I always do in the morning, and of course the hosts Grandy and Andy were offering this as a defense–Grandy going so far as to call it an “investment” in her political future, and saying that $150,00.00 wasn’t nearly enough to spend on this woman.  Then there were callers, mostly men, calling in to say they didn’t think it was wrong to spend that much money on her clothing (she’s hot, after all, and we wouldn’t want to look at her in something from a middle-class mall store).

Then the other line of defense was “well, Michelle Obama wears expensive clothes, too, so why can’t the McCain campaign waste money on baby clothes for Trig Palin and $3000.00 outfits for Sarah and a leather jacket for Todd?”

The utter hypocrisy is amazing.  However, I agree there is a double standard at work here.  I want you to put the shoe on the other foot for just a moment.  Let’s reverse this story.  Suppose, for a moment, it was revealed that Michelle Obama spent $150,000.00 on clothing for her, her daughters, and her husband’s wardrobe because they’re black people, and they have to look better than average so whites take them seriously and don’t criticize the way they look.

Do you think Republicans would be ranting about that on conservative radio today?

Even after more than a year, I am still trying to determine exactly why I support Barack Obama for President.  I’m not sure it’s even a simple matter of support anymore; I’ve invested more of my emotional capital in the Obama campaign than in any other Presidential campaign in my lifetime.  I want to see him win as much for my own emotional and physical well-being as well for the well-being of the country.  Why?

My support might have begun with a recognition that among all the candidates, only he did not support the Iraq war from the beginning.  Thus he never had to reverse gears, or explain himself, or (in the case of Hillary) refuse to apologize.  However, that issue has quickly receded in importance.  I often think that the reason I’m voting for him now has little to do with issues or ideology, and everything to do with simply who I believe him to be.

He’s only about twelve years older than me.  He had a humble childhood.  He went to good colleges and has become a successful professional, with a wife and kids.  The kids are only a little older than my son.  People often talk about his inscrutability, his peripatetic childhood, his coolness and emotional distance, his intelligence, his lack of traditional masculine virtues, such as a love of manual labor, hunting, and fried, fatty food.

All of these things add up to a different kind of man, who doesn’t like clearing brush on his ranch and won’t pretend that he does like it, just to fit some ideal.  He probably doesn’t even want to own a ranch, preferring city life.  I feel like for the first time, this is a candidate I can identify with.  Not voting for Obama, and voting for McCain, would be like rejecting who I am in favor of the masculine ideal of a previous, more conservative era.

I may admire that ideal, and I may look up to a man who embodies it; but that man isn’t like me, I can’t really identify with him, and I can’t vote for him.

That sounds almost as shallow as saying “I’m voting for the chick because she’s hot,” but more often than not, even among people who consider themselves smarter than average, I think the reasons why we vote a certain way have little to do with issues.

Sometimes I think that’s unfortunate, sometimes not so much.  Certainly it’s disgusting to witness someone casting a vote based on willingly believing a certified falsehood–the “Obama’s a muslim” woman at the McCain rally, for example.  But is it wrong to vote for someone because of their perceived personality or life story?

What I find odd is often the degree to which people identify with a candidate who is, in reality, nothing like them.  George Bush was the son of a wealthy war-hero father and politician, who himself was the son of a wealthy politician; he attended Yale; he managed a professional baseball team; he ran an oil company.  And yet, men often said they could identify with him.

When I hear someone say that Sarah Palin is “like us,” I think to myself that there must be a disconnect between the person’s feelings and reality.  I can’t imagine any life story more unlike the majority of American lives than that of Sarah Palin.  Simply growing up in Alaska is, or ought to be, alien to the vast majority of us.  Narrow the story to one of gender, a female growing up in Alaska, hunting and snowmobiling, and her story becomes even more unlike “ours.”

So, too, I am able to see how my own identification with Obama is superficial and probably not perfect in comparison.  I’m white.  I had a mother and father and a stable home.  I certainly never attended Columbia and Harvard. Yet I still see in him someone more like me than not.  Even the story developing about his ailing grandmother has struck a chord with me, so much so that I feel like our lives are indefinably linked in some mysterious way.

That sounds creepy, so let me back off from that and admit that my own upbringing does share some traits with Palin, too.  She’s only about ten years older than me; we both grew up in a mostly rural environment, hunting and camping, riding four-wheelers (the Appalachia equivalent of snowmobiling).  Beyond that, I doubt we would have had much in common, had we been in school together.  She played sports and was a popular, pretty girl–the kind who wouldn’t have given me a glance.

Additionally, what I don’t share with her and people like her, whom I knew growing up in West Virginia, is a strident anti-intellectualism.  She and McCain and so many Republicans and conservatives revel in it, framing it as anti-elitism.  That, more than anything, is why I identify with Obama rather than Palin and McCain.  At age 35, I know the kind of person I am, as well as the kind of person I want to be and can be, and it won’t ever again be the kind of person who hunts, watches football, works with his hands, eschews books and newspapers, and scorns ideas and values that are different than his own narrow, inherited set of ideas and values.

I also know the kind of politician who respects the kind of person I am and doesn’t care about my non-comformity to some mythic American masculine ideal, and that politician is Obama.

This morning, I woke up at 3:25, a full hour before I had to get up for work.  I woke up panicked with the thought that the alarm didn’t go off and I was late.  I had to check the alarm clock, my watch, and a clock on the dresser before being assured that I still had an hour before I had to get up.

Then I got back in bed and lay there thinking about the election until the alarm went off an hour later.

Last night, driving in to Washington, I listened to Fox News on XM and uncontrollably bit my fingernails until my fingertips were sore.  I’ve always been a nail biter, but certain stimuli can make it worse.  Listening to Sean Hannity is one such stimuli.  Fox News is like a parallel universe in which John McCain is within one or two percentage points of snatching victory from the grasp of Barack Obama.  It’s all within the margin of error, Hannity and his cohorts keep repeating to themselves.

It doesn’t help that Alan Colmes is a lapdog.  He can’t defend us, give voice to our fears, or even tell Hannity to shut his yapper.

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The Powell endorsement ought to effectively dispel all doubts about Obama’s readiness, particularly on foreign policy.  Powell is the kingmaker, at least as far as Obama is concerned.  I don’t see how McCain recovers from this. It’s not even the endorsement as much as Powell’s pointed criticisms of the McCain campaign in this video; criticisms such as Powell’s statement that if Ayers is a “washed up terrorist,” then why do we keep talking about him?  Criticisms such as Powell stating that he has heard “senior members of my own party” suggest that Obama is a muslim.

These criticisms combined with the endorsement are a crushing blow to the McCain campaign and the Republican party. It’s going to be fascinating to listen to conservative talk radio tomorrow.

Obama begins this week as, in effect, the President-Elect of the United States.

John Cleese on Sarah Palin. Watching this reminded me of the famous “Dead Parrot” skit from Monty Python.

“[Sarah Palin is] like a nice-looking parrot.  The parrot speaks beautifully and kinda says ‘aw shucks’ every now and again, but doesn’t really have any understanding of the meaning of the words it is producing, even though it is producing them very accurately.”

This morning, I am a bit torn in deciding who won the Presidential debate last night.  On the one hand, I think Obama clearly made the better case for himself; he defended himself well and pointedly against every charge made by McCain.  McCain’s best line of the evening–potentially a killing blow to Obama–was “I am not President Bush.  If you wanted to run against President Bush, you shoulda run four years ago.”

However, Obama did not let that remark stand as a rebuke; he came back with the comment that if he sometimes mistakes McCain for President Bush, it’s because their economic policies are virtually identical.

The exchange typified the evening: thrust by McCain; deft parry by Obama.

However, the fact that McCain was on the offense leads me to feel that he probably won the evening.  Both men did what they needed to do, but since it was the first time McCain has done so with any degree of success, he wins.

Was McCain’s success a game changer?  We’ll know soon enough.  Right now, I don’t feel it is.  Even this morning on the Grandy and Andy show on WMAL, some callers were expressing frustration that McCain didn’t fight enough.  He wasn’t angry enough–one fellow even demonstrated the angry tone of voice McCain should have used when he said “I am not President Bush.”

In a way, I think this incessant need to see anger on the part of McCain speaks volumes about the typical Republican voter right now.  The man supposedly known for his temper just can’t be angry enough to please the conservative mob at his back, urging him on.

Ultimately, it won’t be McCain’s lack of passion that kills his campaign, though.  There are a whole host of factors working against him right now, starting with the economy and probably ending with his choice of Sarah Palin as vice president.  Last night, when asked if she was qualified for the position, McCain sounded ludicrous trying to justify her place on the ticket.

His defense of Palin also gave the debate one of its funniest moments, in my opinion, and not only because Palin has become a caricature.  In one of two slips of the tongue (calling Obama “Senator Government” was one), McCain referred to Palin as a “breast of f…” then, embarrassed, quickly corrected himself and said “breath of fresh air.”  I’ve sorta filled in the rest of his Freudian slip in the title of this piece.

There have been a lot of dirty jokes made about why McCain really chose Palin, and some of his comments about her have been rife with double entendre.  His absolutely ridiculous comment  that many times he had “sought Palin’s ear” on foreign policy issues brought to mind an image of the old geezer seeking to nibble his protege’s ear.

Or maybe I’m just a dirty minded man, myself.  No doubt that’s true…but if your running mate is a woman, I think you have to be careful what expressions you use, so as not to give the impression that you harbor secret fantasies about her.

Well, if anything Palin is a breast of air, full of air in fact and little else, and McCain will live or die by the choice he made.  There are still other factors working against him as well, though.  For one thing, his demeanour is so cranky, I think that factor alone turns off many people.  Maybe it should not be a factor, but we live in a telegenic age where innocent expressions on a politician’s face, or a sigh, or a glance at a watch, can potentially turn off millions of voters.

One of the drawbacks of the kind of sitdown debate we saw last night is that it allowed for tight shots of the candidate’s face, many of them reaction shots while the opponent was speaking.  McCain often had this wide-eyed look about him, a deer in the headlights look, as if he were continually surprised at what was being said.  Or perhaps he just coulnd’t believe he was on the stage with this amateur.  Or perhaps he forgot to take his valium before the debate.

He was probably quite tense and anxious, but he can’t look tense and anxious on national television.  His erratic speech patterns and occasional mistake in the beginning seemed to confirm his nervousness.  Obama, on the other hand, is quite telegenic.  He sat there calmly, even when being attacked, and did not alter his pleasant, smiling expression beyond an occasional wide grin when McCain really went off on a tangent.

Obama’s weakest moment of the night was missing the opportunity to really take it to McCain on the negative advertising and campaign of vicious innuendo.  McCain acted very indiginant about Obama’s ads criticizing McCain’s health care plan and economic policies.  Obama should have said, “Look, those ads of mine are negative ads, but they are about substantive policy issues.  Your ads attack my character directly.  Your ads are ad hominem ads, and they are despicable.  There is not a sigle ad put out by my campaign that attacks your character or suggests that you are anything but a patriot and a man of good character.”

Obama missed that opportunity, unfortunately.  McCain’s weakest moment came in that same exchange, when he almost seemed to be whining about how John Lewis hurt his feelings in his comparison of McCain to George Wallace.  Then, a few seconds later when Obama brought up the fact that at McCain’s rallies, there have been people suggesting that someone kill him (Obama), McCain went off on this complete red herring about how he won’t sit there and let Obama criticize old veterans in World War II caps and women who support McCain with signs that say “Military wives for Mccain.”

Hopefully, people saw through this transparent attempt at demogoguery–no one is criticizing veterans and military wives for McCain.  Obama’s concern was about people like the elderly crackpot who believes Obama is a muslim.

So I think McCain won?  Yes, unfortunately, rather like Palin won her debate with Biden.  She did what she had to do, and so did McCain.  Unfortunately for both of them, I doubt it will be enough.

So, how long do you think it will be before John McCain fires his advisors?  I’m thinking it will be a matter of days, considering how little time is left.  Really, it’s the only trick left in the playbook.  It might seem desperate, too, but it worked for McCain last fall when he was down and out.  His is a campign that has generated its momentum solely by surprising people, so I’d be on the lookout for just one more.

Meanwhile, McCain’s surrogates on talk radio seem to be holding the line for him, at least for now.  Limbaugh made a mild joke today about how he was going to start using the staple McCain phrase “My friends” as a way of making it grate a little less on his supporters’ nerves.  Apparently conservatives don’t like the way McCain uses “my friends” twice in the same sentence, either.

I can’t remember if I wrote about this already, but Franklin Roosevelt used the phrase “my friends” in his speeches, though perhaps he didn’t sprinkle it so liberally throughout his paragraphs as McCain.

Other than that, conservatives are holding the line, disputing the polls, attacking the media.  Same game in the last quarter as in the first.  Limbaugh did suggest today that all those angry people at McCain rallies shouting “Kill him,” as well as racial epithets, are in fact Obama plants.  Yes, the person who shouted “Kill him!” was actually working for Obama.  Maybe Obama will even bail him out when the Secret Service takes him to jail.

I came to this video series via Wonkette, who posted them on her site.  I’ll link to the original blog where the videos appear, blogger interrupted.  This is video of a McCain-Palin rally in Ohio.  As you’ll see when you watch it, the video is meant to showcase some of the up and coming intellectual lights of the new Republican party—ordinary Joe and Sarah Six-Packs, who have been so underrepresented in American politics until Sarah Palin came along.

Here’s Part One.

And here’s Part Two.

Be sure to check out blogger interrupted, as well.

These videos remind me of how Sean Hannity uses Man on the Street interviews with Obama supporters as a way to highlight what he considers the vapidity of the liberals.  Looks like there is some astonishing ignorance on both sides.

I also found the child’s comment, “You need gloves to touch him,” ironic in light of the trite political boxing metaphor of “taking off the gloves.”  How many times have we heard that McCain and Palin are taking the gloves off, over the last week or so?  I guess some of their supporters are putting on gloves instead of removing them.

What do you think the kid meant by that comment, anyway?  Have the parents told her that Obama is dirty or foul in some way?  No child is going to make a statement like that unless they have heard it from their parents, wouldn’t you agree?  Any thoughts?

When I first read this article at the Huffington Post, Is Palin Trying to Incite Violence Against Obama?, my first inclination was to say this is an exaggerated fear.  One McCain supporter shouting “Kill him!” at a rally does not mean the campaign itself is trying to incite violence.

However, by insinuating that Obama has terrorist sympathies, the McCain campaign does give hateful people the excuse they need to attack him and his supporters.  I would link the HuffPo article to this one from a UK paper: Man shot three times by racist gunman.  The man in question was shot because he was wearing an Obama tee-shirt.

The linkage of Obama to Bill Ayers, “an unrepentant terrorist” as Sean Hannity puts it, has been going on for close to 12 months now.  It has reached boiling point because of the New York Times story, which unfortunately has given conservatives cover to come out from the shadows and allege openly what they have been insinuating on their talk shows.  Sunday night, Sean Hannity even hosted a 60-minutes-like exposé (without the deference to fact over opinion that 60-Minutes upholds) of Obama’s “radical ties.”  Should Fox news now be considered a Republican political action committee?

More to the point, not only is the conection between Ayers and Obama dicey, but the insistance on calling Ayers a terrorist insinuates that Obama himself is a terrorist or at least a terrorist sympathizer.

In these times, is that not like shouting fire in a crowded theater?  It’s certainly meant to induce a kind of fear response in people.

Although it’s difficult to argue that Ayers is not a terrorist without sounding like a terrorist sympathizer myself, I’d point out that Ayers has stated his goals as a radical were not to kill people.  In fact the bombings he facilitated were planned so as to avoid casualties.  In the end, the only people the “terrorists” killed were themselves.

Their activities were still treasonous, not to mention dangerous since no plot to bomb a building can ever take casualties completely out of account.

Still, it seems to me Republicans are playing with fire by indicating that one of the candidates for President is “palling around” with a terrorist.  Note Palin’s use of the present tense in that phrase, too.  The implication is that the “palling” is still going on.

I doubt anything serious will come of it–Obama is too well protected by the Secret Service.  Still, if even one Obama supporter dies at the hands of someone who takes Palin’s accusations as a call to action, should the McCain campaign bear some responsibility?  Maybe Palin herself, or better yet Sean Hannity, could face a lawsuit.  Wouldn’t that be just lovely.

Its dark now when I arrive at work at 6:30 AM.  Was it just last week that there was still faint, gray morning light this early?

Last week, too, I started wearing a jacket in the morning.  This week, I need a jacket and a long sleeve shirt.  The mornings and evenings are chilly, but the afternoons are hot, as is typical of October.

Back in West Virginia, October is squirrel season.  The hunting season always used to come in around my birthday in the middle of the month.

Sometimes I would go hunting after school.  My Mom or Dad would take me to my maternal grandma’s place in the country and I’d go off into the wooded hills and hunt until nearly dark.  It would be hot when I started, so that I would carry my camouflage jacket, wearing only an olive drab tee-shirt and light camo pants probably bought at one of the Army surplus stores where my Dad bought most of our hunting clothes.

By the time I came off the hill at dusk, I would be wearing the jacket and glad to have it.

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