Wednesday, October 08, 2008 - Posts
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Rachael is so not our Elisabeth Hasselbeck! And seriously, Ellen, how are we divisive? Au contraire, I'd say we are a model of comity - the U.N. of blogs, really, only with no corruption and no Libya on the Security Council. We've been at this for a year now - come to think of it, why haven't we celebrated that? - and despite disagreeing on minor matters like abortion and war have hardly ever even gotten hot at each other. On no occasion I can recall has anyone been so much as borderline disrespectful, which has got to be some kind of miracle, if you believe in such things, which I do; see how diverse we are? (Or is that too Sarah Palin for ya? Maybe we are the Midwest of blogs!) I guess the bottom line is that I don't even believe there is an us and a them, and think Obama's right when he says that there's not this vast chasm between us at all; in fact, compared to political differences in other countries, our right and left are close enough to slow dance. For proof, just listen to the candidates last night, much of the time saying the exact same thing, even down to telling that one poor woman in the audience that she was understandably cynical. (I was thinking oh, Obama's lost her vote, until McCain came up behind him and called her the exact same thing.) Anyway, happy birthday to us, and to all of you who are off tomorrow, Tzom Kal. (OK, Emily B. just taught me that earlier today; see, we are still learning about each other...)
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I know being chosen is supposed to be a great honor, but I feel oddly protective of Matani Shakya, the newly appointed 3-year-old goddess in Nepal. When not being "wheeled around on a chariot pulled by devotees" the kumari toddler will reside in a palatial temple until she hits puberty. She will then, sadly, get tossed for a new baby deity. Harsh reality, that. Where do ex-goddesses go for therapy?
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Back to basics for a second here. We are getting rather divisive on "XX Factor" itself. True, I do not get Rachael's politics. I consider her a friend and a colleague and I admire her competence and her smarts, but on politics, she and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum. I don't get it.
But I want to.
I wish I could wake up one day with a conservative brain and see the world as Rachael sees it and see how the things she believes can make sense to her. I wish someone made conservative-colored glasses that I could try on. Oddly, I come from a family of conservatives, and I still don't get it.
I also feel bad that Rachael is surrounded by liberals. I imagine it's a bit how I'd feel if I worked at Fox News (don't overthink that comparison, please). And I feel bad that McCain and Palin are the candidates that Rachael is being put in a position to defend when their behavior is at times indefensible. I think we all agree that it is absolutely great to have Rachael's intelligent voice on XX Factor, especially since we don't all agree on the many topics we discuss here, and having her here leads to some lively debate, and hopefully some understanding.
But.
I think we are forgetting something. Obama, McCain, Biden, and Palin are first and foremost politicians. Palin is not of the heartland; she does not even feel of the heartland to me. Look at her wardrobe for one. I don't know anyone of the heartland who has a wardrobe like that. In fact, I live in New York City. I have freelanced at Vogue magazine. Even the people who work at Vogue don't have wardrobes like hers. She is wealthy. She is a celebrity. She is a politician. She is not like you and me. Her claims to the heartland are a pose meant to appeal to the Republican fantasy of the average American.
But neither are the others like you and me. They are all wealthy, educated (or, if you prefer: elitist) politicians. They are all posing.
Often it comes down to whose pose you believe in more, whose pose feels more authentic. Bill Clinton was a great poser.
Palin's "regular gal" pose feels particularly transparent. McCain is posing as a dyed-in-the-wool pro-life Republican (I remember I used to like him before he became a candidate in this election and was being himself more). Biden is posing as someone who would be happy in the No. 2 spot and agrees 100 percent with Obama's positions. And Obama is posing as ... I'm not sure what, exactly ... the candidate who cares?
I remember listening to a speech of his several months ago, and a line from a Joni Mitchell song popped into my head, "Pretty lies, when you gonna realize they're only pretty lies ..."
I love what Obama talks about. I want to believe. Please don't let him be telling us pretty lies. But this is what all politicians do, don't they? They make campaign promises—that they have no intention of keeping or that they are incapable of enacting once in office.
But I like what Obama is saying. He is at least saying the right things. McCain is not. In my humble opinion. And Palin is definitely not. She jumped right on the lying bandwagon so quickly, it makes me a little sick. Maybe she's a Washington outsider, but she has learned to be sleazy in record time. My sense is that she doesn't even know McCain that well, and yet she is willing to say whatever she has to—morals, ethics, common decency be damned.
I was particularly impressed with Obama when after Bristol Palin's pregnancy became known and a reporter asked him what he thought, he said that the families of candidates are off-limits, particularly the children. That's class. I can only imagine how the Republicans would have buried him if he'd had a pregnant daughter who was Bristol's age.
I don't think that even McCain believes what he's saying. "My friends," is a stall so he can think of his next talking point, the talking points devised by the party to get him elected.
But, back to the point. Let us not be so entrenched behind our candidates of choice that we cannot be critical of all of them. They are, after all, just politicians. Even Obama, whose pose is so convincing that I really hope it's not a pose at all.
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Rachael: I have been on the road, but I didn’t want to leave your very smart post unanswered. You and I are in complete agreement that American political discourse has taken a turn for the despicable in recent weeks, and that we are ill-served by the ugliness. But I am going to stand by my claim that campaigns send a message to their supporters about the legitimacy of hating, and that Sarah Palin and John McCain have not just condoned but encouraged it as their campaign has faltered in recent weeks. Americans who are explicitly charged to rage against the press will—as Dana Milbank reported yesterday—happily attack them (racial epithets evidently optional). Americans told that Obama pals around with domestic terrorists may just holler “kill him” in response. Americans repeatedly instructed—as Marjorie wrote yesterday—to view Obama as “not like us” or “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America” cannot be faulted for believing that racism and xenophobia are legitimate modes of political conversation. And I am glad you brought up Obama’s guns and bitterness statement because it highlights the difference between Obama and Palin: Obama’s San Francisco statement was not an attack on gun owners. It was an admittedly artless effort to understand and explain why people in small towns might become single-issue voters. You can call his remarks elitist; they were. But it would be wildly unfair to suggest he was saying those voters are un-American, or irrelevant or unworthy of being engaged. Nobody listening to Obama’s words about small-town voters that day would have responded with “kill them” or “sit down, boy!” These are not small rhetorical differences. Palin is a desperate candidate who seeks to stir up regional and racial hatred and should be held accountable for the way her supporters respond. You and I both agree that the name-calling is cheap and coarsening. I will go one further and say that anyone who believes that some Americans are irrelevant because of their skin color, religion, or hometown is leading her followers right into the abyss we both deplore.
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I didn't hear every word of the debate, because along with most of the other passengers waiting for the 10:35 flight from JFK to National, I was straining to make out what the candidates were saying over the general airport din, plus the patter of an Australian guy who found McCain ridiculous—his mention of Obama's support for a slide projector in a planetarium struck him as especially hilarious—and an unhappy Republican who grumbled, "Nothing new, nothing new'' every time "that one'' opened his mouth. Though they proved oblivious to the subtle cues the rest of us were working so hard on, leaning forward intently and frowning, a whole planeload of us non-Washington insiders nevertheless refrained from telling these two to zip it; from Wasilla to the Upper West Side, Americans are in some ways shockingly well-behaved.
From what I could tell, however, the candidates were as rude as their hecklers, proclaiming the questions excellent and then ignoring them. (I did not think McCain calling Obama "that one'' was so insulting, though; I could be wrong, but I thought he meant to do it jokingly —sort of like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler always calling each other "this one''—and didn't quite pull it off.) Their mutual refusal to stray from their stump speeches is what offended me; we're in a crisis here, as we all agree, yet most of what they had to say last night was a remix of the same old musty talking points they've been spouting for months. And with McCain pacing around behind Obama, with all the glassy-eyed steadiness of that New York mafia don who used to pad around in his bedroom slippers pretending to be out of it while secretly still running the whole operation, I at one point thought they might burst into song, call it a comic opera, and basta. McCain's "cut taxes and earmarks" aria really was ridiculous, mate, and Obama's "the middle class needs a rescue package'' refrain so vague that it really was "nothing new, nothing new.'' Sadly, I'm not sure the rest of us who were leaning forward so expectantly missed a single thing we hadn't heard before.
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