Tea Drinking and the Ironies of History

Whatever else the tea drinkers who assembled in Washington on August 28 might have accomplished, they did manage to turn the National Mall into an irony-free zone, at least for an afternoon.

They certainly seemed oblivious to the obvious ironies of the day. Like the fact that even as the tea party movement was portraying itself as a “grassroots” upwelling from the people, the New York Times and the New Yorker were running big stories about the right-wing billionaires who are funding the whole show. I’d like to get me some of that “populism.”

Nor did they seem fazed that featured speaker Glenn Beck - former shock-jock, now Messiah Complex victim - was exhorting the nation to return to “traditional values.” Beck has made his career playing so fast and loose with the facts that he no longer knows when he is lying and when he’s not. This is the guy, after all, who lied to the ladies on “The View.” How low can you sink?!

Many people got upset that the event took place on the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, at the same location where Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream Speech.” You could see that this would make some people touchy since the tea partiers want to re-open debates most of us thought were settled long ago, like the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the 14th amendment, which was passed in 1868. Ironic for sure.

Personally, I got the biggest giggle being lectured at by Sarah Palin about “character.” When the going got tough up there in Alaska, not only did Governor Palin quit her job in order to cash out, but she gave one of the most memorably bizarre speeches ever delivered by an American politician who wasn’t drunk. A model for any of us facing tough times.

The biggest irony of the day, however, came from Abe Lincoln, whose memorial was appropriated for this tea party.

Lincoln, if memory serves, was the president who prosecuted the Civil War against the southern confederacy. He fought the war for two reasons: first, to preserve the Union; second, to end slavery in the United States. When he promised, in the Gettysburg Address, a “new birth of freedom” he wasn’t talking about the freedom of the wealthy to get richer, which is what the tea drinkers seem to have in mind, but about removing the stain of slavery from the fabric of the nation.

In order to achieve those goals Lincoln engineered the largest expansion of the Federal government and of Federal power to that point in our history. He instituted the nation’s first military draft; he suspended habeas corpus rights. Most importantly, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which was viewed by slave owners as an outrageous infringement of private property rights. Abe Lincoln was arguably the first “big government” president.

He did all this over the yapping objections of those who insisted on “states rights” because he knew that only through the actions of the Federal government would the institution of slavery be crushed and freedom granted to roughly 4 million enslaved Southerners.

Had Lincoln left the question of slavery to the Southern states, how much longer would that human tragedy have endured? Hard to say, but the Confederate Constitution, the legal framework for the nation Southerners fought to establish is pretty clear about this. It reads: “no law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.”

And yet there they were, thousands of tea drinkers standing in front of Lincoln talking about the evils of the Federal government and the need to return to states rights. All with straight faces. Martin Luther King might have been spinning in his grave, but I think I saw Abraham Lincoln roll his marble eyes in disgust during those speeches.

So the next time you want to have a little fun, ask one of these Earl Grey aficionados about Abe “Big Government” Lincoln. Ask them which side was right during the Civil War. And since the “states rights” position was on the wrong side of history about slavery, and about segregation, ask them why they think they think they’re on the right side now? You’re liable to get some rambling, semi-coherent answer that will be positively Palin-esque.

Obama the Mugwump

As I have listened to McShame/Moosehead (Geezer/Dingbat in a yard sign I saw recently) attack Barack Obama for being a closet socialist something didn't seem quite right. No, it isn't that the charge is ludicrous on its face - what, after all, does one expect from a woman who has said that god wants to us to build more pipelines in Alaska (god is so mavericky, isn't she??!!)

Rather, I found myself asking: Is this the same Barack Obama that McShame accused of being a secret Hooverite in the second presidential debate?? How did the man compared to Herbert Hoover, who staunchly defended his vision of free-market, "associative" capitalism even as it spiraled down the drain, suddenly become the love-child of Che Guevara?

Perhaps McShame has spotted something here the rest of us have missed? Perhaps Obama really can contain the contradictions of being both Herbert Hoover and Eugene V. Debs? Does this mean that under an Obama administration we will get capitalistic socialism? or socialized capitatlism? Gads!

Or does it really mean that the McShame/Moosehead campaign has fallen so far off the rails that they can't even keep their sleazy smearing "on message." I understand that over the weekend McShame will accuse Obama of being a Dreyfusard. Or a Jacobin, I can't remember which. And neither can he.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Sometimes common sense trumps all. While some voters continue to be attracted to Sarah Palin because of her "aw shucks," if expensively coiffed, persona, Joe Plumber types just aren't buying it. Listen to one western Pennsylvania white voter, quoted in today's New York Times.

“She’s always talking about the ‘Average Joe,’ ” Jeremy Long said. “Average me! I don’t want myself in the Oval Office. I want someone smarter.”

Even though the Times finds a lot of voters out in Pennsylvania steel country who are uncomfortable with Obama because he's black, they also respect that he's smart. And for once, brains seem to be trumping race.

THE REAL AMERICA

A recurring theme in the Republican end-of-days campaign is that the GOP base represents "real America." As candidate Palin put it in Greensboro, North Carolina:

We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.

Statistical whiz kid and political analyst Nate Silver offers this graphic insight into the "real America" that the McCain/Palin campaign is mobilizing. It's a very, very white place, much like the Republican Party itself. The above chart, which Silver assembled, lists the 44 cities where Sarah Palin has held rallies and their racial composition. America's population is 72 percent white; the "wonderful little pockets," by contrast are 83.3 percent white. It's no surprise that in these homogeneous places, the angry Republican base has let loose with accusations that Obama is a terrorist, a Muslim, and a radical who will bring Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Jeremiah Wright into his cabinet.



Directly above is Silver's chart of the cities where Obama has held rallies. Not surprisingly, they are, in the aggregate significantly more diverse. The average white population in Obama rally towns is almost 70 percent, fairly close to the national figures. But Obama is also rallying in places with larger black populations than the national average. Here we can see a glimpse into the two-pronged Democratic strategy: to drive up turnout among African American voters, while appealing to the independent, white swing voters who are essential to victory. The strategy seems to be working.

THE PITBULL ON THIN ICE

I've never been much of a hockey fan, despite my Midwestern heritage. Everything about hockey is white: the season, the players, the fans, the culture.

When Ed Snider, the owner of the Philadelphia Flyers invited Sarah Palin to drop the first puck at last night's Flyers-Rangers game, Republicans and Democrats alike assumed that this would be a celebratory moment for the Pitbull with Lipstick to rally her Rustbelt white middle-class base.

Instead, the Flyers fans booed. (The Republicans should have known that Philly sports fans are infamously hostile, especially when they smell blood.)

It was a proud moment for this adopted Philadelphian. The pitbull with lipstick has been defanged by her own kind, hockey moms and hockey dads. If the GOP can't win them, their effort to take the White House is on thin ice.

CAMILLE LOVES SARAH, THE SEQUEL

Salon has given the chronically vapid Camille Paglia thousands of words to pontificate on all sorts of issues that she knows nothing about, such as Obama's views on foreign policy. Paglia argues somehow that Obama's resolutely centrist foreign policy is rooted in campus radicalism. "The university culture at Columbia and Harvard through which Obama passed has been drenched in a reflexive anti-Americanism for several decades. Armchair blame-America-first leftism is the default mode. Disdain for the military is rampant, and conservative voices are rarely heard." Had Paglia actually read Obama's foreign policy statements and had she actually examined Obama's by now well-known record at Columbia and Harvard...but well that would actually require fifteen minutes of research. For Paglia, logorrhea substitutes for logic.

But that's not the worst of it. Paglia continues her month-long swoon over Sarah Palin. And she reveals a new infatuation with Todd. She hails the Alaskan couple as Sarah "powerful new symbols of a revived contemporary feminism." Here's the clincher: "That the macho Todd, with his champion athleticism and working-class cred, can so amiably cradle babies and care for children is a huge step forward in American sexual symbolism." If only Paglia had watched the gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Republican convention, she would have observed a fascinating bit of political theater playing out. Bristol Palin (whose shotgun wedding Paglia would surely manage to interpret as a step forward for feminism) was the primary caretaker for little Trig. Cindy McCain rocked the sleeping child for a few minutes, no doubt in an effort to soften her sharp edges. But then, when the prime time cameras came on, Todd took over. Until the cameras were on, the baby got passed about among the womenfolk. As a feminist dad, I can say that my "cred" came from cradling my babies out of the limelight at two in the morning. A few minutes of theatrical parenting on prime time TV is not a blow for equal parenting. And anyhow, who watches the Palin clan when Todd is zipping about the tundra on his snowmobile?

To top it all off, Paglia throws in a good dollop of racial essentialism. "When I watch Sarah Palin, I don't think sex -- I think Amazon warrior!" So gushes Paglia, as her analysis degrades even further. She goes on: "the questions that keeps popping up for me is whether Palin, who was born in Idaho, could possibly be part Native American (as we know her husband is), which sometimes seems suggested by her strong facial contours. I have felt that same extraordinary energy and hyper-alertness billowing out from other women with Native American ancestry -- including two overpowering celebrity icons with whom I have worked."

And finally, Paglia defends Palin against charges that she's a dim bulb: "On the contrary, I was admiring not only her always shapely and syncopated syllables but the innate structures of her discourse -- which did seem to fly by in fragments at times but are plainly ready to be filled with deeper policy knowledge, as she gains it..." Palin as empty verbal vessel waiting to be filled by Republican policy knowledge. Hmm. I'll leave it to my friends in cultural studies to interpret that one.

Two pieces of advice: Salon, it's time to can Paglia. And America, it's time to can Palin.

TAXES AND PATRIOTISM

Joe Biden is right. Paying taxes is patriotic. For speaking an unpopular truth--indeed for being a true maverick--Biden has taken flak from the wannabe mavericks Senator McCain and Governor Palin. Our tax dollars support infrastructure improvements, medical care for the disabled and elderly, public education, national parks and recreation, and much more. Sometimes that money is misspent: I don't like how my tax dollars have been used in Iraq. Along with every other American citizen, about ten cents of my federal tax dollars went to pay for a recreation center in Wasilla, Alaska, that Sarah Palin funded through earmarks. A waste of my money--perhaps. But my responsibility as a voter and as an engaged citizen is to challenge elected officials to spend my money more effectively--not to dodge my responsibility and evade paying my taxes. (For those of you who weren't reading this blog back in April, check out my post on taxation, published on April 15.)

Unfortunately, Sarah Palin has shirked her responsibilities as a tax-paying citizen. To put it most bluntly, she and Todd Palin are tax dodgers. I can think of few less patriotic acts than that. Tax attorneys have been poring over Palin's tax returns for the last two years. They are not pretty. Palin did not pay taxes on $43,490 that the state of Alaska gave the family to cover travel expenses for Mr. Palin and the Palin children. I travel a lot for work--and like most who do, I get my legitimate business expenses reimbursed or deduct them on my taxes. As much as I would love to bring my wife and kids with me on speaking gigs, their presence is not a legitimate business expense. Palin owes taxes on that unreported income (not to mention on her dubious state per diem payments for working at home). This is not a technical matter or an accounting glitch. It gets to the core of Palin's sense of duty and responsibility. It gets to her character. And that character is, as revealed on the tax returns, deeply flawed. And it gets to one of the core ideological flaws of the anti-tax philosophy of the Republican Party: they want the benefits of government--such as a strong military, Social Security, and pothole free highways--but without paying for them.

D'OH

Homer's plight at the ballot box offers a humorous riff on a deadly serious issue. Voter intimidation is not a joke this year. As the Republicans grow increasingly desperate to win a majority in swing states, we can expect attempts to violate voting rights. The Michigan GOP (at least before McCain decided to throw in the towel there) promised to disenfranchise foreclosed homeowners. Similar plans are afoot in Ohio, thanks to the Buckeye State's Republican Party.

And this week, flyers have been circulating in North and West Philadelphia attempting to intimidate voters by stating that those who have outstanding arrest warrants or unpaid traffic tickets may be arrested at the polls on Election Day.

Expect to see a lot more of this activity, especially in swing states where a large black turnout might be enough to defeat McCain and Palin.

SARAH PALIN FOR POET LAUREATE

I have long loved poetry. My tastes are quite diverse, ranging from the Rustbelt intellectual Philip Levine to the ruminative Susan Stewart. I am now reading the extraordinary experimental, lyric reflection on Detroit, The Straits, by the immensely talented Kristin Palm. And I encourage you to visit Mirabile Dictu, the brilliantly polymathic Canadian blogger and poet, who intersperses verses with informative posts on feminism, human rights, and politics.

After reading this piece by Hart Seely at Slate, I am now convinced that Sarah Palin is America's most innovative poet. Step aside Levine and Stewart. What I thought were rambling, inarticulate answers on foreign and domestic policy are actually powerful examples of what Seely calls an "arctic-fresh voice" who composes "intensely personal verses, spoken poems that drill into the vagaries of modern life as if they were oil deposits beneath a government-protected tundra."

I have taken the liberty of posting Seely's transcriptions of Palin's extraordinary verse:

"On Good and Evil"

It is obvious to me
Who the good guys are in this one
And who the bad guys are.
The bad guys are the ones
Who say Israel is a stinking corpse,
And should be wiped off
The face of the earth.

That's not a good guy.

(To K. Couric, CBS News, Sept. 25, 2008)


"You Can't Blink"

You can't blink.
You have to be wired
In a way of being
So committed to the mission,

The mission that we're on,
Reform of this country,
And victory in the war,
You can't blink.

So I didn't blink.

(To C. Gibson, ABC News, Sept. 11, 2008)


"Haiku"

These corporations.
Today it was AIG,
Important call, there.

(To S. Hannity, Fox News, Sept. 18, 2008)


"Befoulers of the Verbiage"

It was an unfair attack on the verbiage
That Senator McCain chose to use,
Because the fundamentals,
As he was having to explain afterwards,
He means our workforce.
He means the ingenuity of the American.
And of course that is strong,
And that is the foundation of our economy.
So that was an unfair attack there,
Again based on verbiage.

(To S. Hannity, Fox News, Sept. 18, 2008)


"Secret Conversation"

I asked President Karzai:

"Is that what you are seeking, also?
"That strategy that has worked in Iraq?
"That John McCain had pushed for?
"More troops?
"A counterinsurgency strategy?"

And he said, "Yes."

(To K. Couric, CBS News, Sept. 25, 2008)


"Outside"

I am a Washington outsider.
I mean,
Look at where you are.
I'm a Washington outsider.

I do not have those allegiances
To the power brokers,
To the lobbyists.
We need someone like that.

(To C. Gibson, ABC News, Sept. 11, 2008)

COURTING DISASTER

The next administration may have the occasion to nominate as many as four Supreme Court justices according to the right-wing Judicial Confirmation Network. So as a warning to America, they have put together a bland ad that provides judicial cover for hurling the mud of "God damn America," the Weathermen, and a corrupt developer back into the public sphere. After a few days respite from wingnut slime attacks, we are back to the dubious politics of character assassination and guilt by association.



What is missing from the ad is an evaluation of the sophisticated legal mind that McCain has chosen as his running mate. We now know that he regularly consults her for foreign policy advice, so it's likely that he'll also tap her for her legal acumen, on display in all of its glory here.



Whose Supreme Court justices do you want?

EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK --NOT

The self-proclaimed feminist from Wasilla has now allied with John McCain and most of the Republican Party in opposing the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Equal pay for equal work, still a pipe dream for most women workers, will only become a reality if it can be enforced. In her interview with Katie Couric, Palin raises the bogeyman of trial lawyers manipulating guileless women into filing costly lawsuits against employers. She scores cheap political points by pointing her accustory finger against the very lawyers whose knowledge of the law, negotiating skills, and courtroom strategies are essential to fighting workplace discrimination. The threat of litigation is an important tool in holding discriminatory employers responsible for their actions--and in deterring them from creating two-tiered workplaces.

In a particularly inarticulate sentence, Palin states: "Again, thankfully with the existing laws we have on the books, they better be enforced." But who will do the enforcing? And what happens to women like Lily Ledbetter who didn't learn of their bosses' discriminatory policies until it was too late to sue? They are screwed--and the discriminators are rewarded.

Palin's position here represents the essentially symbolic nature of conservative anti-discrimination policies. Denounce discrimination but offer toothless remedies. Why? Because in the end, the interests of business trump all.

Here's Palin's squirrelly response to Katie Couric's questions on fair pay:

Couric: Where do you stand on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act?

Palin: I’m absolutely for equal pay for equal work. The Ledbetter pay act - it was gonna turn into a boon for trial lawyers who, I believe, could have taken advantage of women who were many, many years ago who would allege some kind of discrimination. Thankfully, there are laws on the books, there have been since 1963, that no woman could be discriminated against in the workplace in terms of anything, but especially in terms of pay. So, thankfully we have the laws on the books and they better be enforced.

Couric: The Ledbetter act sort of lengthens the time a woman can sue her company if she's not getting equal pay for equal work. Why should a fear of lawsuits trump a woman's ability to do something about the fact that women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. And that's today.

Palin: There should be no fear of a lawsuit prohibiting a woman from making sure that the laws that are on the books today are enforced. I know in a McCain-Palin administration we will not stand for any measure that would result in a woman being paid less than a man for equal work.

Couric: Why shouldn’t the Ledbetter act be in place? You think it would result in lawsuits brought by women years and years ago. Is that your main problem with it?

Palin: It would have turned into a boon for trial lawyers. Again, thankfully with the existing laws we have on the books, they better be enforced. We won't stand for anything but that. We won't stand for any discrimination in the workplace - that there isn't any discrimination in America.

h/t to Kathy G.

The Original Prince of Darkness

One of the first complete sentences my parents taught me to say as a small child was: Henry Kissinger is a war criminal.

Perhaps that explains much of my subsequent history, but I found myself uttering the sentence again last week when Sarah Did New York. While much of the press coverage focused - quite rightly - on her bottomless ignorance and ineptitude, I saw no comment on the absurdity that Kissinger remains an obligatory stop on the "Bone Up On Foreign Policy Tour." There Gov. Moosehead sat, smiling for the photo-op, with a man who should have been tried and convicted of war crimes.

Kissinger's sins and wrong-doings have been thoroughly documented - from the October Surprise of 1968 to his dirty wars in places like Chile - and I won't rehearse them all here. Suffice it to say that nearly forty years after Kissinger (and Nixon) began bombing and de-stabilizing Cambodia in 1970, Cambodia still has not recovered. (For those who haven't read it, William Shawcross's book Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia is well worth it).

Much of the rest of the world certainly recognizes Kissinger's criminalities. He can no longer travel freely in much of Europe and Latin America because of indictments, pending indictments and police investigations.

Yet here in the United States he has assumed the role of elder statesman and foreign policy wizard. When you want international relations gravitas, you go to Kissinger. Getting Kissinger's blessing is the mark that you are a serious player in the foreign relations game, though why that should be so, given Kissinger's record, simply baffles me.

When Bush finally agreed to set up a September 11 Commission (you'll remember that he and Dick Cheney vigorously opposed the idea; and you'll note that the administration has still not implemented many of its recommendations), he tapped Kissinger to be its Chair. When families of 9/11 victims - not the Administration mind you - asked him to specify his relationships -personal and business - with the Bin Laden Family, Kissinger, coward as he is, exited the Commission job by a back door.

I'm delighted that this past week or so the press finally woken up to the prospect of Gov. Moosehead as Vice President. But while they were launching their attacks against her failings, I wish they had found a moment to mention that my parents were right: Henry Kissinger is a war criminal.

BLARNEY

Tomorrow night, should John McCain prove himself able to multi-task and the first presidential debate goes on, Sarah Palin will step once again onto the faux populist stage. Just ten blocks from my office, Palin will sidle up to the bar, have a beer and shot, and cheer on McSame with a rowdy crowd of handpicked Republican supporters. The campaign has chosen a symoblic watering hole: a woodpaneled place called the Irish Pub, where my people (or rather people pretending to be my people) can get a pint of Guinness on tap and pretend that they are back on the old sod of the Emerald Isle.

Alas, there's not much Irish about the Irish Pub other than the beer, a couple of Irish flags, and a bunch of Celtic tchotschkes. It's a corporate sort of place, one that caters to the after-work crowd in Center City Philly on weeknights and fills up with frat boys and Wharton students who, no doubt, will be drowning their sorrows now that Bear Stearns, AIG, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch won't be lavishing them with lucrative job offers.

The faux populism of watching the debate in a faux Irish pub would not be lost on the Irish people whom I knew best. Grandma and Grandpa S, who immigrated from Ireland to the United States in the early 1920s, became die-hard Democrats when they moved to the U.S. My grandfather, a city bus driver and lifelong union member, and my grandmother, who took care of her four children and various folks in the extended family, were the sort of commonsense, working-class people who supported political candidates for bread and butter reasons. They voted for politicians who promised to protect their jobs and economic security--not candidates who pretended to be like them while representing the interests of stock brokers and CEOs. Grandma and Grandpa S owed a lot to the party of FDR, especially their monthly Social Security and union pension checks. They kept their savings in a bank regulated by the FDIC. They could have cared less about capital gains tax reductions and corporate bailouts.

I'm hoping that enough voters, especially in Rustbelt swing states, share my grandparents' simple wisdom and resist the sham populism of McCain and Palin. Pretending to be one of the people makes for fine symbolic politics but, after eight years of government under the guy you could drink a beer with, it's time to move on. We don't need any more drinking buddies in the White House. This week's polls, the best for Obama/Biden in a while, suggest that the direction of the campaign might be changing. Still, we should expect the Republicans to cling to their blarney. John McCain will keep fulminating against the Wall Street honchos whose fortunes he protected from regulation for the last quarter century. Sarah Palin doesn't have much to pitch, other than herself as a small-town, anti-elitist of the God, Guns, and Guts variety, minus the bitterness but also minus the brains.

So tomorrow night, if the debate goes on, I'll be watching in my neighborhood watering hole, owned by the son of Irish immigrants and probably the most racially diverse bar in the city. And I'll hoist a pint in honor of my grandparents and the politics that their grandchildren's children deserve.

SMALL TOWN AMERICA

An oft-repeated theme in this year's election is the virtue of small-town Americans. One of oldest themes in American political and cultural history, the notion that small towns are repositories of all that is good, true, moral, and American continues to resonate. Echoing Richard Nixon's pitch to small-town voters in his "silent majority" campaign (Nixon himself was a product of little Whittier, California), John McCain and Sarah Palin have touted "small town values" on the campaign trail. As Palin stated in her acceptance speech: "'We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity.' I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman. I grew up with those people. They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America ... who grow our food, run our factories, and fight our wars." (Note to reader: big cities = lazy, consumers not producers, shirkers not workers, naysayers not patriots).

I thought of Palin's speech this morning as I spent an hour walking the streets of Newark, Ohio, the county seat of Licking County, a town of about 47,000 people that has seen better days. Founded in the first decade of the nineteenth century, Newark's architecture reflects its late nineteenth and early twentieth century prosperity. Among the town's real treasures, The Home Building Association, a jewel box of bank (now vacant) built by the great architect Louis Sullivan in 1914.

The Louis Sullivan building is one reminder of how the Republican tribunes of small-town glory have it wrong. They emphasize the virtues of small rather than the virtues of town. The Home Building Association building reflects the cosmopolitan aspirations of small-town America, the attempt to be something greater than itself. Nearly a century ago, Newarkers were proud to imagine themselves as a city.



But life in small-town America today is less. There is an anomie in many of the small towns I have visited in the Midwest and Pennsylvania. These are places that have lost population and jobs, whose downtowns have been gutted by the expansion of Walmarts and suburban shopping centers, and where politics can be narrow and nasty. (The stories of Palin's reign in Wasilla give the lie to the images of small town politics as uplifting). One of the synomyms for small is petty. And there is a pettiness, a parochial localism, in small towns that gets lost in our romantic evocations of Elm Street.

Newark is one of those towns that has been hit hard by the economic downturn. Like many Rustbelt towns, its economy is dependent on manufacturing, but it has been hit badly in recent years. Licking County is not one of Ohio's worst-off areas: its current unemployment rate is 6.6 percent. But you can see the effects of the downturn in the shabby houses along the once-grand Hudson Street just a short walk from downtown. It's the sort of place where the Democrats should find a ready audience among folks burned by declining incomes, the stagnant housing market, rising gas prices, and insecurity.

But Licking County is a solidly Republican place: its voters pulled the lever by large margins for George W. Bush in 2000 and again in 2004. As I walked past the Newark Republican Party headquarters this morning, the McCain/Palin signs dimmed my morning cheer. Their campaign represents the worst of small-town politics: narrowly-defined local interest and the sanctimony of the small. And it doesn't offer much to small-town residents other than a boost of self-esteem that the candidates "know them" and "are one of them." And it doesn't offer much for the Newarks of America, big or small, that are the places left behind in the global economy. It's time to think big.

The Nation of Snark

The poll numbers, for what they are worth, seem to have settled back to pre-convention levels after the tumultuous two weeks caused by Gov. Moosehead's arrival on the political scene. The conventional wisdom says that the post-convention bounce for Team McSame has worn off, as has the Palin flavor-of-the-week phenomenon.

But that analysis, right though it may be, begs a rather obvious question: how on earth did McSame get a "bounce," given what a laughably dreary convention the GOP threw; and why didn't Obama get anything like the same buzz, given how spectacular the Democratic convention was by the standards of such things?

One explanation, it seems to me, is that we are now living in the Nation of Snark.

Though it has only entered my vocabulary recently, the term "snarky" is about 100 years old. It originated in British slang to describe someone who was irritable, carping, testy, nasty. Snark is what happens when bitterness and anger go out to have a good time. In other words, the Republican Party, and John McSame, is its true and rightful heir.

While Obama has been busy trying to appeal the better angels of our nature, McSame has been appealing to the snarky percentage of the electorate. These are the people for whom the cheap shot is more important the point well-made; for whom ethical behavior is defined by contestants on Big Brother; and for whom the sports analogy applies to politics: win at all costs.

The astonishing (at least to my eyes) reaction Gov. Moosehead got was not really because people agreed with her on issues (or even knew what her position was on issues) but because she wore vulgar t-shirts, laughed at a cancer survivor on the radio, and generally displayed a frat-boy attitude. What was clear from the moment of her debut was that she was just as snarky as the rest of us. We loved her, if only briefly, for that.

And it was clear that she is just as snarky as McSame - contemptuous, smirking, full of bile. Indeed her selection smacks of nothing so much as a ploy taken straight from an episode of Survivor.

In his speech in Denver Obama exhorted that we are a better nation than this. That was arugably one of the best lines of American political oratory to have been uttered in a generation. The problem with it may be that it isn't true. If McSame and the Moosehead win this election, it will demonstrate that we are no longer a nation that believes in aspiration, but a nation of snarks instead.

IDENTITY VERSUS INTEREST

Listening to Barack Obama, John McCain, and Sarah Palin respond to the current economic crisis and make their pitch to working-class voters, I was struck by the fundamental difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. The Republicans are the party of identity politics. The Democrats are, for the most part, not.

For years, the left and liberals have faced the charges of being mired in a divisive identity politics. Republicans mocked the narratives of oppression offered by advocates of groups that, indeed, were the victims of long histories of oppression, especially racial and ethnic minorities and women (whiners, complainers, dividers). Democrats, beginning with the DLC and Clinton and continuing through the current campaign, have attempted to distance themselves from what observers called "interest group" politics, jettisoning particularism for universalism.

But since the Nixon years, the Republicans have been the party of an identity politics that dare not speak its name, that is white identity politics. And this year's campaign "Country First" is the latest pander to those identity politics, a carefully crafted play to the deep-rooted argument that "they" (Democrats, the party's diverse base, and this year's standard bearer, Barack Obama) are not "us" (or should I be cleverly postmodern and say they are not "U.S."?

Yesterday's stump speeches by Obama in Nevada and McCain/Palin in Ohio make transparent the Republican Party's identity politics. Obama, who is still strangely facing charges that his economic plans lack the specifics needed to attract working people, was very specific in his indictment of the failed philosophy of the Republican Party. McCain and Palin, on the other hand, gestured toward the aggrieved identity of white workers who are the supposed victims of elitist condescension. The telling moment was when Sarah Palin talked about herself and working-class Americans as "us" and then proceeded to trot out the old, tired line about Obama dissing bitter small-town whites for clinging to their guns and religion. For his part, McCain tossed out the lie that Obama will raise "your" taxes (failing to note that in this case, the possessive "your" refers to the 2.5 percent of wealthy Americans whose taxes will be raised, not the other 97.5 percent of ordinary Americans who will receive tax relief under Obama's plan).

The Republicans are playing to voters' identity. The Democrats are campaigning on their economic interests. The outcome of this year's election will ride on whether or not a segment of the working and middle-class electorate in economically-devastated states will support a ticket whose candidates pretend to be the cultural allies of the people or a ticket whose candidates are challenging (at least in part) the failed economic policies that should be the real source of bitterness at the grassroots.

Speaking of economically-devastated swing states, I'm off to Ohio for three days, so sorry for no links this morning and for what might be some thin posting tomorrow and Friday.

INTRODUCING THE NEW, IMPROVED RUSTBELT INTELLECTUAL

Oh, Mom why did you name me Tom? From now on, please call me Beretta Hockey Palin. Why the new moniker? Check out this site for bit of levity in this otherwise grim, grim week of economic news brought to you by the Republican Party and its allies.

SAINT SARAH, MARTYR

For the last forty years, at least, the Republican Party has appealed to its base by making the disingenuous claim that its leaders are outsiders, disrespected, and marginalized in the political process. You see, Republicans are martyrs, sacrificed on the altar of political correctness by the liberals who still dominate our media, our universities, and our political establishment, who still somehow maintain their imperial power despite four decades of withering Republican challenges. Although the GOP has built a formidable infrastructure of lobbyists, think tanks, politicized churches, and grassroots party operations, they are still position themselves as a counterestablishment. The theme has been so oft-repeated that it has become a truth, part of the taken-for-granted of national politics: Republicans are the victims of a biased liberal media, they are the victims of raving leftist professors on campuses and sneering, condescending elitists.

The latest version of Republican martyr comes in the form of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Poor Governor Palin, so poised in face of an onslaught of difficult qustions about her record, so brave and unstinting in the face of criticism that she has serially lied about her position on the "Bridge to Nowhere." Poor Palin who has looked across the Bering Straits to Russia and yet gets lambasted for her lack of foreign policy experience. Poor Palin, the victim of bully Barack who put lipstick on her porcine visage. And above all, holy Saint Sarah, she who opposes reproductive freedom, sex education, equal pay for equal work, increasing the minimum wage, and tough anti-sex discrimination laws, is the victim of sexism.

Here is the latest, by McCain corporate flack Carly Fiorina on the hilarious depiction of Palin by Tina Fey on SNL. "I think that continues the line of argument that is disrespectful in the extreme and yes, I would say, sexist, in the sense that just because Sarah Palin has different views than Hillary Clinton does not mean that she lacks substance." The only people who aren't sexist, it seems, are those who hail Palin's meager executive record as something of substance, who buy her dubious rhetoric of reform, who believe that cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations will solve our country's economic woes, who want to force incest victims to carry their babies to term, and who want teach our children that T-Rex dwelled with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden 4000 years ago.

Saint Sarah joins the litany of Republican martyrs, along with St. Barry (the patron saint of extremists), Sts. Carswell and Haynsworth (patron saints of the South and of mediocrity), St. Phyllis (the patron saint of subservient women), St. Bork (the patron saint of original intent), St. Rumsfeld (the patron saint of waterboarding), and St. Alberto (the patron saint of patronage). Oh ye victims of liberal torture, ye who suffered and died to keep the faith of our wingnut Fathers, welcome into your ranks the exalted St. Sarah who bravely suffers the slings and arrows of the Godless. Pray for us. Amen.

CAMILLE LOVES SARAH

I am a feminist, I live in Philadelphia, I write for popular periodicals. I am Camille Paglia.

Not.

Wannabe Rustbelt Intellectual, Paglia, has penned a rambling, incoherent column in today's Salon (h/t to Kathy G--it's great to have you back) holding up Sarah Palin as the model feminist and charging, bizarrely, that Barack Obama is making himself too black for middle America. Of Obama, Paglia confesses: "I have become increasingly uneasy about Obama's efforts to sound folksy and approachable by reflexively using inner-city African-American tones and locutions, which as a native of Hawaii he acquired relatively late in his development and which are painfully wrong for the target audience of rural working-class whites that he has been trying to reach." Huh?

Paglia writes that "in terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment." Except one inconvenient fact. Palin and the McCain campaign have been playing the victim card at every turn. Paglia buys right into this, arguing that Palin has been subject to "witch-trial hysteria" over the last few weeks. Hyperbole aside, Camille, this is a political campaign. Should the Democrats bow in worship of the gun-toting, economic conservative, book-banning, faux-reformer vice presidential candidate of the opposing party? Overall, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have been exceedingly polite to Palin out of deference to the double-standard that has infected the election since Palin debuted: namely that it's OK for the pitbull with lipstick to bark and bite, but not OK for her opponents to fight back.

Tough questions about Palin's qualifications? Unfair, because she's a woman. Concerns about her executive experience? Sexist: she wouldn't get these questions if she were a man. Obama uses the phrase "you can put lipstick on a pig and it's still a pig" in a discussion of McCain in a speech. Cries of sexism and outrage by the McSame camp. This coming from the campaign of the sexist who called his wife a c-nt, cracked a vile joke about Chelsea Clinton as the bastard child of Janet Reno, and has never seen a pro-woman public policy that he likes. The sham victimology that the GOP is using to shield Palin from the hard-hitting criticism that every political candidate should face is nothing short of appalling.

Palin-loving Paglia goes on to burnish her middle-American credentials in one of the most risible passages in her article. "One reason I live in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia and have never moved to New York or Washington is that, as a cultural analyst, I want to remain in touch with the mainstream of American life. I frequent fast-food restaurants, shop at the mall, and periodically visit Wal-Mart (its bird-seed section is nonpareil)." Paglia's leafy suburb (which I won't name to protect her privacy) is lush and pretty rich. It has a great school district. You can live the very good life there. I'm sure that the lawyers, doctors and college professors who live in her sweet little slice of suburbia are true middle Americans.

When Paglia goes to her local mall, she's not rubbing shoulders with the blue-collar swing voters of Northeast Philadelphia whom Biden, Obama, Palin, and McCain are courting, unless she happens to enter through the stockroom or spends a few minutes after hours schmoozing with the janitorial staff. The residents of her quiet corner of the world aren't, for the most part, struggling to make ends meet. They haven't been ravaged by eight years of Republican policy: they have been favored by it. Most of the working-class voters with whom Paglia disingenuously identifies don't have time to linger in the bird-seed section of Walmart, they work there. That the arch Paglia is now the voice of authentic working-class America is just plain bizarre.

RANDOM POLITICAL NOTES

Just when I begin worrying about Obama's willingness to start pulling the punches against the mendacious McCain/Palin campaign, he has. At last. Someone had to call the duo on their spurious embrace of reform politics. And call them on their lies. For those of you who haven't see the ad yet, it's above. I am still waiting for the campaign to take Steve's advice and launch ads hammering the theme of "old and tired ideas." But this is a starting point.

After nearly two weeks on stage and in her bunker, where she's getting briefed on foreign policy by Joe Lieberman, Palin is finally subjecting herself to an interview. Unfortunately, she's up against the vapid Charlie Gibson. If he pursues questions of the trivial variety that he threw out at the last Obama/Clinton debate, then Palin will come out with even more of that shiny, new glow. I hope, rather than dwelling on her colorful Alaskan heritage, that he tests her knowledge of the politics of Pakistan, Georgia, and Darfur. Will she be able to handle questions about America's troubled relationship with its allies in Western Europe? I don't think so, but I also don't think that Charlie is likely to push the point. I'll be watching anyway. And praying.

The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a great piece this morning in which Ed Rendell sticks it to Palin by chastising her for selling the surplus Alaska plane on Ebay. Great story Sarah, but as it turns out Pennsylvania made a better financial decision by spending a mere $700 by advertising its surplus plane on two aeronautical web sites, rather than paying Ebay's 2.5% commission. Stick it to 'em, Ed. You need to redeem yourself from your rather lackluster support for the Obama campaign to date.

Many of Rendell's constituents are Catholic (though he is not). Why politicians like Rendell and Hillary Clinton have won the hearts of Pennsylvania Catholics and why Barack Obama has not is the subject of one of the smartest posts that I have read on Catholic politics to date, by Tim Meagher at HNN.

More later, but today is the first day of classes for me and I'm swamped.