Please, John McWhorter, I Beg You -- Get Over Yourself

 
 
John McWhorter, in a recent piece for The New Republic, gave us his take on the newest effort from The Wire creator David Simon: Treme. For those of you on media blackout, Treme is a series chronicling post-Katrina life in New Orleans. (The word “Treme” is the local nickname for New Orleans’ 6th Ward, through which a number of the storylines in the series pass.)

Treme, shot with verve and style and featuring an impressive selection of local music, is brought to life by a sparkling script, a light but sure directing touch, and a cast which includes David Simon veterans such as Melissa Leo (Homicide: Life On The Street), Wendell Pierce and Clarke Peters (The Wire) as well as non-professional actors (Kermit Ruffins and the Rebirth Brass Band are a fixture; Dr. John and Elvis Costello cameo as themselves; and musician Antoine Batiste’s wife is played by New Orleans resident and Katrina survivor Phyllis Montana LeBlanc).

Some critics have argued -- rather oddly, in my opinion -- that Treme is overly earnest (one assumes they’d rather it were half-hearted and insincere); others complain that it never approaches the byzantine narrative and moral complexity of its predecessor series. That’s true enough so far, if also somewhat unfair. A day/week/month-in-the-life-of type of story will never approach the angularity and darkness of a well-executed crime drama; on the other hand, why should we expect it to?

More to the point, if we are entertained by a narrative (and Treme is nothing if not entertaining) -- and if that narrative has the additional virtue of neither demeaning nor glorifying its characters, nor insulting the intelligence of its viewers, then might we not just judge the thing on its merits and leave it at that? Might we not dispense with navel-gazing introspection into its supposed subtexts?

Apparently not, according to John McWhorter. To him, Treme:

is mesmerizing in its ways (I intend to keep watching) but leaves you beaten over the head every week about just how vibrantly real New Orleans is. Realer than where you live. Realer, really, than you.

which is, when you get down to it, quite a strange criticism. More on that bit of snark later, however, because John’s not finished. His takeaway from watching Treme is that

New Orleans is an occult matter that you can never truly “get” unless you’re a native or pretty close to it. The perky, hopelessly “white” tourists from Wisconsin with their nasal voices, the ones who get schooled by the street musician, can be taken as stand-ins for the viewer. Which makes the whole enterprise strangely unwelcoming.

Here’s the thing: Maybe he feels unwelcome because he’s watching some series that has nothing to do with what “Treme” actually is.

What's putting McWhorter off to the extent that he feels he's been made "unwelcome" by a series which, literally from the first frame, invites the viewer into the world it's depicting?

Avoiding idle speculation and judging by what he himself has written elsewhere, the most likely explanation is that what’s eating McWhorter here is The Authenticity Thing. That is to say, he’s sensitive to being lectured about what is or is not authentically X, where X equals some cultural or racial signifier or category.

Fair enough. No one likes being talked down to, and a lot of culturally toxic things are said and done -- and toxic artifacts produced -- in the name of an authenticity which is usually bogus anyway. This is especially apparent in Black American culture, and McWhorter has written eloquently on that very subject. (You can see it gets his back up, and I don’t blame him. As a lifelong black person, if I hear one more borderline nihilist wearing a black skin say some bullshit about “keeping it real”, I’m going to strangle somebody.)

In this context it would make sense for him to be bothered by the scene in Treme where

The surly street musician (who is just visiting himself, from Amsterdam) tartly informs tourists that it’s tacky to request “When the Saints Go Marching In”—that tune isn’t “real New Orleans,” apparently.

It would make sense when McWhorter writes (somewhat bitchily):

And if you live in the neighborhood the show is named after, Treme, the last thing you have any right to do is ask for quiet even in the wee hours, because, as Steve Zahn’s Davis McAlary character says, “This is the Treme, dude!” and the noise is what makes it real.

It would make sense, that is, if we were watching a series other than Treme.

In the screenplay in question, however, Simon and his writers take pains to repeatedly (if not always subtly) turn the myth of authenticity on its head! Every time you turn around in Treme, the series is holding up something or someone that is ostensibly “real” (or speaking on behalf of authenticity) and pulling the veil off to show us that it’s not what we think it is -- and that by extension, the entire question of authenticity is moot.

What the hell television show has John McWhorter been watching, anyway?

Take the above Davis McAlary scene, for example. In it, he has just left his house -- stereo blaring at full volume, speakers pointed out the window at his hapless neighbors -- and has been accosted by one of said neighbors, whom Davis (without a hint of self-reflection) accuses of being a “gentrifier”. His neighbor turns out to be not only from New Orleans, but somewhat knowledgeable about the Treme’s musical history. Davis, who actually comes from a wealthy family, comes across in this and a few other scenes not as some saintly arbiter of authenticity, but as an entitled jerkwad with an inflated sense of his own hipness and charm. That cultural smugness buys him a well-deserved asswhipping in the most recent episode.

Or what about the “surly street musician” from Amsterdam who takes such issue with the “perky, hopelessly white” tourists for asking to hear “Saints”? His musical partner, the ethnically ambiguous violinist Annie, answers them courteously and tries to stem his tirade. She is shown, as the series progresses, to be a much more competent musician than he is, and in greater demand too -- especially, and ironically, with musicians playing “authentic” New Orleans music. Those musicians, interestingly enough, don’t do their thing with a lot of self-regard or moralizing of the type that McWhorter seems to see lurking behind every magnolia tree. They just get about their business (with our friend from Amsterdam sulking in the background in at least one scene). So much for Treme lecturing its audience about what’s “real”.

John McWhorter also seems to take almost everything personally when he watches Treme. He gets upset when John Goodman’s character, who is comically out of touch (he’s just discovered YouTube) and comically over-the-top in his passion for his beloved New Orleans,

savagely disses San Francisco as an “overpriced cesspool with hills” when, let’s face it, that’s a pretty “cultural” city too, and has suffered its share of natural disasters.

To which I have to say: Relax, brother! San Francisco is a big girl and can take care of herself. So can Portland, Oregon, even if

Another character says people there clap on beats one and three. Really? I’m sure more than a few thoroughly cosmopolitan, Obama-voting white people in Portland, as proud of their “reality” and their bond with black culture and its music as New Orleans folk are, would take umbrage at that.

Jesus! And here I thought the scriptwriters were just having some fun at another city’s expense. Turns out they’re Insulting White People -- many of whom probably voted post-racially!

It seems like McWhorter is not just taking this stuff personally, but taking it personally on behalf of someone else. Which, let’s face it, is kind of odd, especially from someone who helped popularize the word “victimology”. You might come to the conclusion that anyone who can’t stand to hear someone good-naturedly abusing a city -- on a fictional tv show, for chrissakes -- is a bit of a humorless tightass. You might well think that; I couldn’t possibly comment.*

Treme has its flaws, of course. John McWhorter may have something interesting to say about what those flaws are. Eventually.

With that in mind I’d like to offer him some friendly advice: Watch it again, John, preferably after a stiff drink -- only this time, try to pay attention.

And please, get over yourself.





*Bonus points for any reader who knows what TV series I'm quoting here.

REPRINT: Why There Aren't More Black Republicans, 3 of 3

This blog post is reprinted from one I wrote on sodahead.com under the name CarbonMike (link to original here).

********

In Parts One and Two of this blog post, I’ve been addressing the question of why working-class and middle-class black Americans don’t support the Republican party more strongly. Republicans are in the electoral doghouse with the bulk of black Americans despite having very similar stated values, and the picture is scarcely any better with other “natural constituencies” such as Hispanics. Why? And how can they change this?

As to why, I’ve put forth two reasons.

Reason One is that Republicans are wrong on race -- publicly, loudly, and frequently. Black people in the demographics I’ve mentioned understand perfectly well that Democratic politicians are often misguided or just plain wrong and often take them for granted; they simply prefer that to being treated with outright contempt.

An excellent example is the way conservatives speak to each other and to liberals
about the black electorate. I’ve seen conservatives assert or imply -- several times in
the comments section of my blogs, and countless times in public political discourse -- that black people only vote for politicians on the basis of race. The assertion is ridiculous on its face, but it’s easily falsifiable by taking even a cursory look at the historical record, as I’ve done here. ( A parallel and often-made conservative assertion -- that black people only vote Democratic because they’ve been gulled into doing so -- collapses readily with a bit of historical analysis, as I show here in the discussion of the 19th century political machine Tammany Hall).

Whether it’s stated flatly or framed as a question (“why did blacks support Politician X on the basis of his race?”) it’s essentialist, it ignores the facts, and it’s damned insulting. Conservatives who make the assertion or ask the question reinforce the very phenomenon they think they’re investigating. Black people, like every other ethnic group, vote their perceived interests and will not trust a party which they read as hostile to those interests, period.

Reason Two is that Republicans appear not to apply their political philosophy fairly and consistently; that people think those values are too fluid to be trusted. I argue that there’s nothing in core conservative doctrine that working and middle class black people find disagreeable; what they seem not to like is the selective application of that doctrine.

In other words, If core conservatism means a healthy skepticism toward government power, then conservatives can’t only be skeptical when government tries to use its power to help people -- especially lower-income people of color -- otherwise they’ll continue to lack credibility (and struggle to get votes) in the demographic groups I’ve mentioned.

So how can conservatives/Republicans gain ground with people of color? How can they get out of the doghouse?

The first and most obvious part of the solution is for conservatives to ask intelligent questions and listen carefully and respectfully to the answers. Conservatives need to stop asking “why are black voters so gullible” (I’m paraphrasing) and start asking what their concerns and needs are.

If you are a conservative and your first thought upon reading “concerns and needs” was “welfare”, then YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM -- because, as I pointed out in Part One, working people in the black electorate are interested in reforming and shrinking welfare, not expanding it. Property and business owners in the black electorate are interested in expanded opportunity and a more balanced taxation and regulation environment, just like conservatives are -- they vote Democratic at least in part because they’ve been insulted into doing so. Republicans: either shut up and listen to these people, or continue to write off their votes.

What else can conservative politicians do in good conscience to increase their standing with the black electorate?

Since the demographic in question is a heavily urban one, Republicans also need to develop a comprehensive urban/metropolitan strategy.

This would be at variance with a popular losing strategy for Republicans: bashing cities. Black voters who have decided to put down roots in urban/metropolitan areas will not be inclined to trust a political party that says good people and good values can only be found in small towns.

If someone asked me to compile a list of core principles for successful urban conservatives/Republicans, the following would be at the top:

[1] Operational correctness in government (If You Can’t Run It, We Won’t Trust You To Reform It)

It’s been axiomatic in American conservatism, at least since Reagan, that government is the problem instead of the solution. Over time this has morphed into an increasingly rigid and impractical set of conservative positions; it has become standard Republican practice to run against not just the incumbent government, but even the idea of government.

The problem is that metropolitan areas are densely populated, built-up environments where government infrastructure and services of one type or another -- fire, police, sanitation, roads, public transportation -- support much of the fabric of daily life. Urban voters -- not even just black people, as the electoral numbers show -- are less and less inclined to trust conservative governance if conservatives appear to dislike government too much to bother operating it correctly.

The mishandling of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath and the conservative response to it are a profound negative example of this: from George W. Bush’s prior use of FEMA as a hiring hall for Republican political operatives, to Bill O’Reilly’s breathtaking televised statement that the lack of a timely and competent Federal response showed that black people need to reject “gangsta” culture (I swear I am not making this up) and stop relying on government to help them.

Republicans take note: it doesn’t matter how good your ideas for reform are. People of lower economic classes, who depend on, say, emergency response services more than wealthier demographics, quite reasonably assume that anyone who doesn’t care about running government properly can’t be trusted to reform it.

[2] Acknowledging public infrastructure as a market enabler (If We Build It, Business Will Come)

We’re a big nation and we want to do big things in the world; we want to lead. This requires a big government, and it requires lots of infrastructure, much of which is simply not profitable for the private sector to build or operate. (More on that in a comment I made here.)

Dogmatic conservatism says that government investment in infrastructure is somehow destructive of free enterprise, when the truth is that done right, it allows free enterprise to flourish.

You are reading this text courtesy of a “socialist” computer network that was originally designed and built (using taxpayer money) as a post-WW3 command and control network and only later became “the Internet”. The fear and vehement denunciation of all things “socialist” by online conservatives is puzzling, given that they’re so enamored of The World Wide Web and HTTP: both creations of a government-sponsored laboratory in Switzerland (CERN) built and maintained by the socialist democracies of Europe. The idea that any of the above are harmful or antithetical to free enterprise is of course ridiculous on its face. Private enterprise and free markets require public infrastructure.

The robust and vibrant business sector in my city (New York) transports goods on public roads, has its physical assets protected by public police and firefighters, arbitrates disputes peacefully in a civil court system, and fills entire skyscrapers every day with workers who arrive on public transportation.

By contrast, every country in the world where the government is “small enough to drown in a bathtub” (to quote one anti-tax conservative) is either a backwater or a failed state. To be credible among black city-dwellers, especially microbusiness owners who lean on infrastructure more heavily, anti-tax/anti-government conservatives need to either go try to make their fortunes starting software companies in the Hindu Kush, or start talking about rightsizing (as opposed to just downsizing) government and public infrastructure.

[3] Demanding Excellence in Police Services (The Job Is Hard But You Have To Do It Right)

In our federal armed services we demand professionalism and operational correctness without excuses. For example, if you’re the captain of a USN ballistic missile submarine and you run your boat aground on an exercise -- even if no one dies -- you’ve had it; your career is over.

One of my film school students is a former Navy pilot. She one time landed her FA-18 Hornet on a carrier deck at night -- after her right engine failed on final approach! The LSO graded her landing just like he would have any other. (She caught the third arresting wire, so she got an “OK” with an emergency underline). God help her if she had screwed the pooch and bent her bird, one good engine or no -- and I’m assuming conservatives have no problem with that.

So why, when an agent of a municipal armed service makes an error causing injury or loss of life, do we immediately hear a conservative chorus of “stressful job” and “life on the line” and “split-second decisions”? Conservatives -- and the rest of us for that matter -- can respect and appreciate the job law enforcement agents do while at the same time acknowledging that some on-the-job mistakes can and should be career-enders.

Working-class black voters tend to live in neighborhoods which require more intensive police services than wealthier ones, so they suffer disproportionately from the effects of sloppy or unprofessional policing. That makes this a key issue for them.

(It’s worth mentioning that conservatives’ disadvantage on this issue is almost entirely of their own making, because Democratic politicians don’t necessarily have a sterling record to run against. Note that, for example, the notoriously brutal Newark, NJ police department did not conduct any substantial reforms under the watch of former Democratic mayor Sharpe James, who also happens to be black.)

The platform I’ve outlined above is meant to mark the beginning, not the end, of this discussion. I haven’t painted a complete picture by any means; I’ve just done an outline sketch. It’s going to be up to conservative and liberal thinkers and politicians of good conscience, and the people they serve, to add to the list and fill in the details. My intention here was to point out a few possible ways for us to improve political discourse and lay the groundwork for better and smarter politics and government, and in so doing bring new life and new force to the American experiment. (Financial crisis or no, we’re not finished yet.)

Thanks for sticking around until the end! See you in the comments section.

REPRINT: Why There Aren't More Black Republicans, 2 of 3

This blog post is reprinted from one I wrote on sodahead.com under the name CarbonMike (link to original here).

********

In Part One of this post, I started to address the issue of why there aren't more black Republicans, despite the fact that black people (especially poor and working-class black people) are a natural constituency for a party which has staked out family-values, socially conservative, church-on-Sunday territory in the American political landscape. For students of American history, Republicans are also the titular party of Abraham Lincoln -- not a minor thing to an ethnic group that used to be traded as chattel slaves, you might think.

What makes the picture even more puzzling is that the black demographic in question has witnessed firsthand the failures of liberal social policy of the last four decades or so (and if we liberals want to be seen as serious and intellectually honest, we have to admit that there have been failures and that they've happened partly on our watch). Version 1.0 of institutions like public housing and direct financial assistance to poor people fulfilled some of their intended functions, but failed at others, and while the intent may have been noble, the implementation in many cases had socially destructive effects. And as a resident of New York State, I don't even want to get started on the so-called Rockefeller drug laws -- conceived by a senator with a (D) after his name --
which after a couple of decades on the books we're finally, belatedly starting to dismantle. Poor and working-class people of color have been disproportionately
affected by all of the above.

So what's the problem? Why can't Republicans "enlarge the tent" and attract more people from the demographics that should already be with them?

Reason One that I cited was: Republicans are wrong on race, specifically (though not exclusively) with respect to black people.

Reason Two involves something a bit harder to nail down concretely: the concept of fairness: Poor, working class, and even many upwardly-mobile people of color tend not to trust Republicans because they believe that they don't apply their own political philosophy (and therefore cannot be trusted to govern) fairly and consistently.

This has almost nothing to do with political corruption, which afflicts both parties (correcting for the rise and fall of their fortunes) more or less equally. So conservatives please note: this is not a "Republicans are corrupt" argument, which would be unfair and even a bit silly.

Unfairness is also not the same as being "tough" on people (I'm looking at you, Ronald Reagan). The populations I've mentioned don't have a big problem with toughness, at least in part because they're accustomed to the fact that life is tough; that there are many chances to screw up; and that the consequences for same are often harsh. This is especially true of recent immigrants from the developing world.

I think the POC who make up the working poor, immigrants and their children, and the upwardly mobile working class can live with toughness. What they can't live with is the idea that the core values of conservatives/Republicans, specifically in the areas of criminal justice and economic and social policy, are too fluid to be trusted; that they are provisional values contingent on things like race or social class.

For example: In the middle of the healthcare reform debate, you had any number of conservatives -- on television, in print media, and especially in online forums like this one -- shouting (literally) at the top of their lungs that healthcare reform (especially if it included a public option) was a terrible idea because (say it with me) Government Can't Do Anything Right.

Now while that debate was in progress, we had an incident in Massachusetts involving a black Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates, in which a government agent entered his house on a valid suspicion -- but, having ascertained that it was in fact his house and the suspicion was therefore invalid, arrested him anyway because he didn't like his tone of voice.

Many of the exact same conservatives whose voices were still hoarse from screaming that government could do no right, immediately started screaming that government could do no wrong -- as long as it was wearing a police badge and a sidearm. There were hysterical condemnations of President Obama -- even though he praised the initial police response and the phone call that led to it! -- for uttering the obvious truth that it's stupid to arrest a man for disturbing the peace in his own house.

This is not limited to the Gates affair. Look at discussion of any police-on-civilian incident involving the allegation of excessive force, and you'll find that political conservatives, in the overwhelming majority of cases, come down on decisively -- even vehemently -- on the side of the police. Putting aside for a moment the merits of any particular case, siding with municipal government agents by default is a morally inconsistent position to take if your default position is that government can't do anything right.

Political conservatives are also usually (sometimes vehemently) pro-death-penalty. Without getting into a rhetorical war about the pros and cons of the death penalty (please let's not, guys), you can see where I'm going with this: if you don't trust government to run health clinics and give out free cheese to people, why would you trust it to administer a system of capital punishment?

Going back to President Obama: here you have a president who's embarked on a number of very ambitious policies. There are perfectly good conservative reasons to object to any number of them, and doing so in a thoughtful and reasoned way (listen up, conservatives) absolutely does not make you a racist, or a hatemonger, or crazy, or any other objectionable thing.

But if you're labeling him a totalitarian -- if you're calling him a Stalinist, to use a very common epithet on the right these days -- you have zero credibility if you were silent (as most American conservatives were) while the previous president was doing all the things to people that Stalin actually used to do: torture, extrajudicial kidnapping on home soil, trials based on secret evidence, and so on. Again, the point here isn't whether those acts were justified or not; that's a different discussion. The question is, how can you have been in favor of torture, warrantless surveillance, and the suspension of habeas corpus -- yet believe that doctors for poor people are a dagger aimed at the heart of the republic?

To me, true conservatism is about modesty -- that is to say, true conservatives believe that we should be modest in our attempts to effect the change we want through government power, because of the corrupting nature of all power (Google "Lord Acton"). Conservatism says that we should distrust our own well-meaning impulse to use government to prevent all unpleasant outcomes. The conservative mode of thought embraces a kind of detached skepticism and a tough-minded acceptance of human nature as its core values, and those are healthy and important values for any free society to have.

But conservative skepticism should be fairly applied to all the enterprises of government, not just the ones which might benefit the undeserving, and not just the ones which happen to benefit low-income people of color. Appearances matter. Republican political inconsistency, played out in the public media every day, is not lost on poor black people, recent immigrants, the aspirants to higher classes. People who already have wealth and power don't care if the system isn't fair, no matter what color they are, because (1) they've obviously already overcome the existing barriers, and (2) their wealth constitutes a form of ongoing protection. Poor and working-class white people don't worry as much about the fairness of conservative governance (even though they probably should, at least occasionally) because conservative politicians are very vocal about their identification with, and preference for, that ethno-social-economic group.

People of color on the bottom and middle tiers of this economy, by contrast, need to believe that they've got a shot at the brass ring. They don't mind having to work hard to attain it; they just need to know that they (and more importantly their children) won't get slapped down because they reach for it. Appearances matter. In the American political landscape, who appears to speak for them, and who against?


Concluded in Part 3, thanks for sticking around so far...

REPRINT: Why There Aren't More Black Republicans, 1 of 3

This blog post is reprinted from one I wrote on sodahead.com under the name CarbonMike (link to original here).

********

I'm a pro-gun, pro-markets, pro-growth liberal who comes wrapped in a black skin. I also believe America is best served by having a serious and vibrant conservative movement as well as a serious and equally vibrant liberal tradition. But lately I've noticed that conservatives -- not all of them, but too many of their leading figures -- have been indulging in an awful lot of foolishness at the expense of serious, informed, rational dissent. At the same time, their political fortunes seem to be in decline (the changing demographic map is not in their favor, not to mention the disaster of the last eight years) and a question I hear often from mainstream conservative strategists is, how can we expand the party -- or more to the point, why can't we seem to?

Well, why can't they? Why aren't there more black Republicans/conservatives?

Some of my fellow African-American politics junkies probably remember the GOP's periodic "racial listening tours" (a term which is exactly two-thirds correct), an unintentionally funny exercise in which Republicans roam the highways and byways of our great nation asking why they can't seem to capture the black vote. Sometimes an obligatory black person is trotted out as if to demonstrate good faith, illustrating complete ignorance of the fact that it demonstrates just the opposite. I'm looking at you, Michael Steele.

The question itself is a testament to the almost pathological tone-deafness of many conservatives when it comes to black politics. Who would ever dare to field a candidate in Florida who was wrong on Cuba, or a candidate in New York who was wrong on Israel, or one in any Southern state who was wrong on guns? Not only would that person's defeat be a foregone conclusion, but once the electoral carnage had ceased, the operative question would be not "why did that person lose?" but "what ever made you think they could win?"

Yet the leaders and thinkers of the Republican party seem mystified that black people don't flock to the genius of its economic ideas and socially conservative ways. Why Are They Not Conservatives? Because conservatives are usually wrong on race.

Not just wrong in a speakers-making-occasional-gaffes sort of way. The GOP has gone out of its way ever since the Dixiecrat Flip to be consistently, aggressively wrong on race, every chance it gets. Its leaders can't seem to help themselves: Trent Lott and his CCC/Southern Partisan affiliation, not to mention his rhetorical appreciation of Strom Thurmond's brilliant segregationist ideas. Ronald Reagan slyly referring to "states' rights" in Mississippi. Lee Atwater's racially infused campaign propaganda (talk about victimology!) George Bush Jr. going out of his way to speak at segregationist Bob Jones university (which, by the way, was granted tax-exempt status by the Reagan administration). The countless Republican politicians and lesser operatives who feel compelled to make racial slurs about President Obama and his family.

Wrong, as well, in a hypocritical and cynical way. Conservatives -- and even many liberals -- take great pains to brand public figures of color who speak intemperately on the subject of race as being beyond the frontiers of civilized debate. Yet you can easily name any number of white conservatives who have made ethnically insulting, racially inflammatory, or downright racist statements -- loudly and in public -- and have not only avoided censure, but have continued to be accepted in mainstream political discourse. To my white brothers reading this: please don't pretend not to know what I'm talking about. I personally (along with most black people I know) have no special use for Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, but if neither one of those names can be mentioned without the accompanying phrase "racial demagogue" then someone needs to explain why Pat Buchanan is a talking-head show regular and Rush Limbaugh seems to have veto power over any public statement made by any Republican anywhere.

The irony here is that many black voters don't have any illusion that the Democratic party somehow automatically has their best interests at heart. Talk to young black urban professionals in my demographic -- who vote overwhelmingly Democratic -- and you'll have no problem getting them to admit that certain major elements of liberal social policy over the last few decades have failed, and failed badly. Those of use who love urban life and traditions understand, for example, that Jane Jacobs' The Death And Life of Great American Cities was -- intentionally or otherwise -- as much an indictment of liberal/Democratic public housing policies as it was a broadside against Robert Moses.

Conservatives really don't understand this, or at least behave as if they don't. You go talk to working-class black people of my parents' generation about, say, Clinton's welfare reform policies and most of them will say they didn't go far enough. Talk to black people who live in high-crime neighborhoods and you'll find that they're absolutely livid about crime -- on criminal justice issues, many of them are slightly to the right of Genghis Khan. Yet you can't get either group to touch the Republican party with a ten-foot pole.

Shouldn't conservatives be interested in attracting more of what seems to be a natural constituency for them? Sure they should be. Maybe they are. But the electoral numbers say that that's not enough. Black voters often resent being taken for granted by Democrats, but we prefer it to being treated with outright contempt by Republicans.

Safety Dance Part 2

Sometimes it's hard being a liberal. Hard, that is, when you have to watch other liberals miss all the really important parts of the argument or, worse yet, fail to frame the argument effectively in the first place.

If I hear one more fellow liberal talk about "how America is perceived in the world" as a primary reason not to torture people I think I'm going to jump through the television.

Joan Walsh from salon.com made this argument a while ago on Hardball, and she stuck in my mind because she sounded so lame doing it.

When people on the left argue this point, they often employ the following arguments:

(1) torture diminishes our moral standing and/or makes people hate us;
(2) torture never works.

The first argument is a trap, while the second breaks a good point -- that torture does not work reliably -- by pushing it too far.

Let's take the first: talk to a security-minded (read: scared) conservative, or even a liberal security hawk, and he or she will say -- correctly -- that moral standing is not even of secondary importance in a war, and that all sorts of atrocious things happen in wars. The firebombing of Dresden may even come up.

Now you could counter, correctly, that in a counterinsurgency war a lot of factors are more important than body count, and that public opinion is one of them, but now you're back to playing defense. Essentially, adopting this argument puts you in the position of arguing in favor of opinions rather than outcomes -- never a winning strategy in a national security debate. Not to mention that a smart conservative could gum up the works by pointing out that most of the governments running around torturing Muslims are also run by Muslims.

The second argument -- that torture never works -- goes too far because it's reasonable to assume that some non-zero percentage of the time, some guilty person will be detained and will go on to make a genuine confession or render useful information under duress. Insisting that can never happen makes us sound like we're repeating a slogan rather than cold-bloodedly analyzing reality.

When liberals talk about torture, they need to remember that they're framing an argument against an opponent who is playing to fear. So our arguments need to be about professionalism and problem-solving first, rather than moral standing.

My ideal talking point would be something like

-The name of the game is counterterrorism/counterinsurgency, and CT/CI is a zero-sum game at best. Every time you have to have an agent pick up a phone or jump in a car or do a Google search to run down some bullshit lead from a detainee who lied to get the pain to stop, you have an asset you're not fielding against the enemy, who now enjoys an additional degree of freedom against you. That's a losing strategy, and I'd actually like us to win this one if it's alright with you. So let's have the interrogating done by professionals rather than closet sadists, so we can win this one and move on.

Since a popular jumping-off point for this debate is the "ticking bomb" argument that Alan Dershowitz and others are so fond of, the following argument is also handy:

-Ticking bomb is fine if you're lucky enough to get the right guy, lucky enough to get him at the right time, and lucky enough that he breaks and tells you the truth in time; but all the other times you torture the wrong guy (or the guilty detainee lies to you) you're just running down the clock on your own side. Do you want a counterterrorism strategy based on luck, or based on science and empirical evidence?

Liberals need to flip and reframe this thing -- we should be referring to the "ticking bomb argument" as "the luck argument". Next time you're arguing the point with a torture apologist and he mentions the ticking bomb, you say "ahh, the luck argument! That's fine; you want to keep America safe with luck. I want to keep America safe using science and evidence and ruthless professionalism. But good luck with the luck thing."

This condenses very nicely down to "luck is not a security policy."

The reason I'm woofing on about how to argue a point which really shouldn't even need arguing is because this struggle -- war on extremism, overseas contingency operation, G-SAVE, whatever -- really is going to be a long game, and it's inevitable that we'll take some hits. Our enemies can't defeat us directly, but they can cause us to engage in self-defeating behavior. If the next terrorist attack sends us into some nightmare revenge spiral of secret detentions and internment camps and torture and who knows what else, the Al-Qaedas of the world will have accomplished their objective, which is to destroy American civilization. They made some headway under the Bush administration, so those of us who love our country with our eyes open have to win the argument decisively. The torture apologists need to be not just defeated, but utterly discredited, and the precedent needs to be neutralized, in order protect our most precious common posession: the structure and function of American civil society.

Safety Dance Part 1

It's been a bad patch for the GOP, but there's still some good news to be had. Republicans have finally found something they trust government to do correctly and well: torture and secret imprisonment.

Pretty amazing, when you think about it. Talk to any ten Republicans about, say, universal healthcare. At least nine of them will give a little involuntary shudder and say that your health is waaay too important to entrust to the government, which obviously Can't Do Anything Right.

Mention more aggressive emissions or fuel efficiency standards, and chances are the response will echo what Mike Huckabee said to the Daily Show's Jon Stewart when he raised the issue: "do you really want to drive a car designed by the government?"

Pick any service or activity: food aid for poor people. Civil infrastructure. Education. Wildlife preservation. Regulation of financial markets or power companies or the factories that feed the country. Regulation of anything at all. The provision of any service to anyone whose name does not end in Inc. You're sure to hear the same refrain: the government is guaranteed to screw it up. The old conservative paragon himself, Ronald Reagan, was often heard to say that the scariest words in the English language are

"I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

Imagine the horror of the modern conservative, living in a society with such an extensive (if poorly maintained) physical and social infrastructure, complete with safety nets for the poor and the aged. A nightmare from which he struggles to awaken! Worse, actually, now that Barack Obama is president. You only have to witness his treatment of the wretched hedge fund managers of the earth to know that the man is a Socialist/Communist/Stalinist/Godknowswhatist. Doesn't he know that government Can't Do Anything Right? From Jon Voight to John Boehner, the political right is scared to death of what such a man could do.

Thankfully, there's a phrase coined by the previous administration which is the antidote to the fear:

"I'm from the government, and I can arrest people arbitrarily, detain them indefinitely, and torture them with impunity".

When conservatives hear that phrase, it doesn't strike them as the scariest in the English language. Apparently it doesn't even rate in the top ten.

When conservatives hear that phrase, it makes them feel...safe.

When Ted Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama's presidential campaign, it
seemed to lend weight to at least a few of the favorable comparisons
between Barack Obama and JFK: both (so the narrative goes) intelligent,
charismatic, and hardworking political operators. The sentiment was
expressed in some quarters that Sen. Obama seemed a natural heir to
the Kennedy legacy. People even credited Barack Obama with having
something of Bobby Kennedy's political style. Seeing either one of
them work a crowd (no matter what you thought about their politics),
you might think: "this guy has a way with people".

Then again, if you were Geraldine Ferraro, you might not think
anything of the sort. What you might think is that Barack Obama would
never merit such a comparison, much less such an endorsement, if he
weren't lucky enough to be black.

It's not that Ms. Ferraro is racist; far from it. Some of her friend's
best friends are black. Ms. Ferraro just understands, perhaps better
than most, that a white man with as much intelligence and political
skill as Mr. Obama could never, ever hope to secure the Democratic
nomination; only with absolutely no charisma would the white guy ever
get the nod. And even then, he'd have to be somewhat ethnic. Maybe
Greek. Then he'd have a shot. Ms. Ferraro, of course, would be happy
to share that ticket, if such a crazy thing had a chance in hell of
happening.

And what are we to think of the Hillary Clinton who in 2000 beat Rick
Lazio in the contest for Pat Moynihan's empty seat in the U.S. Senate?
By some accounts it was a close race and a hard-won victory (she got
55% of the vote) against an adversary who had spent more time as an
elected official than she. (This is also true of Senator Obama, talking
points about "experience" notwithstanding.) It was said in some quarters
that she came off quite well in the debates against Mr. Lazio. There were even
rumors that she had campaigned quite aggressively and skillfully in the
suburban and rural areas of New York State.

If you were Geraldine Ferraro, however, all this talk about hard work and
political skill would be just so much noise to you. In fact, as
politically incorrect as it might be, you couldn't help but conclude
that the Clinton victory never would have happened if she weren't
lucky enough not to have a penis.

Or not. Here is where Gerry starts to deviate from her own logic. You see,
Ms. Ferraro would probably tell you that Sen. Rodham
Sen. Clinton Sen. Rodham Clinton, far from
being a tough political streetfighter with deep pockets and name
recognition, is actually the victim here. She's worked very hard for
everything she's achieved independently since some guy she happened to have married
(what was his name? Will? Phil?) got some high-profile job or other in
Washington. The sexist media, on the other hand, has downplayed not
only the resounding success of her healthcare plan but also her many 3A.M.
foreign policy achievements -- in Bosnia and Kosovo, for example, not
to mention Northern Ireland -- choosing instead to sing the praises of some black
guy who was never part of a scandal-plagued, polarizing White House.

It's clear: America's media establishment hates white guys and women.

The bias is obvious and unmistakable: on the rare occasion in this
country when a white male manages to break through the glass ceiling
and become President, he often finds himself crippled by a storm of
anti-white-guy media coverage. In recent memory there was one white
President whose rationale for starting a war was endlessly questioned,
analyzed, second-guessed, and subjected to withering scrutiny to the
point where, if memory serves, he got so pissed off he choked on a
pretzel.* Shame on you, Judith Miller! (You're lucky you don't have a
penis.)

On sexism the media's record is just as shameful. Rather than focus on
the battle-hardened Senator Clinton's "experience"
while she was married to whatshisface, this country's media outlets
are fawning over a "black" man (no more black, according to some, than
the elusive and seldom-seen Mr. Clinton) who, with the invisible aid
of a vast right-wing reverse-racist sexist conspiracy, gave her a
thorough asswhipping in eleven straight primary contests and is ahead
in the delegate count. Shame on you, democratic process!

After careful study, the elegance and simplicity of Ferraro Logic
reveals itself thus: being an ethnic minority in a country with a
painful legacy of slavery and segregation is a breeze, there's
essentially no downside. Being a white man or a woman, on the other
hand, is really difficult; lacking both melanin and a penis, Senator
Clinton is really in a bad way. Sympathy is definitely in order;
perhaps some tears too, as I hear the senator has used up her yearly
quota. Some wit might be thoughtless enough to suggest that, while
there's nothing for the melanin problem, she could simply confiscate
her husband's penis, thereby forcing him to do his thinking with his brain. (I
couldn't possibly comment.)

In any case, this is less about the Clinton dynasty ("nasty" being the
operative syllable) than it is about our friend Geraldine. I applaud
Ms. Ferraro for her independence and her courage. So many of us are
silenced, in our daily lives, by the fear of looking like a complete
fool; to see someone who is undeterred by it is an inspiration.






* The chronology of the events in question does not jibe with reality.
The pretzel incident actually occurred before the start of the Iraq War.
Sense7 regrets the error, and fuck you if you can't take a joke.