For any African Americans who haven’t voted yet, I have only these words from the song “This Is It” by Kenny Loggins. Mind you, they’re out of context – they deal with Loggins’ dad’s failure to fight a debilitating illness head-on – but they do apply in this context:
For once in your life, here's your miracle
Stand up and fight
This is it
Make no mistake where you are
This is it
You're going no further
This is it
Until it's over and done
Vote. As African Americans, we are accountable for today’s presidential outcome – not only to our ancestors, but to the generations to come.
Vote.
Showing posts with label Presidential Campaign. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Presidential Campaign. Show all posts
Memo to Obama Camp: Ask The Damn Question
So far, I haven't heard the Obama campaign ask The Damn Question.
You know the question: The one question politicians are afraid to ask when they're running because they're afraid it will be turned back on them when they're in office.
You know the question:
"Are you better off now than you were eight years ago?"
Or, in the case of this failed Bush administration, "Are you better off under W than you were under the Bill?"
Somehow, we've allowed the country to lose focus of what's at stake: Four more years of being on the wrong track.
The Bush administration has failed this country domestically, internationally, environmentally, you name it. And people forget that we're not just electing a president (or vice president, for that matter), we're also electing a party. The likelihood that McCain won't drag back into office more Republican ideologues? Not high. Not high at all. Idealogues who paint Democrats as tax-and-spend liberals and then run up deficits and national debt. Idealogues who don't want to leave until there's victory in Iraq, but haven't defined what victory is. Idealogues who are just now accepting that global warming is for real. Idealogues who would invade Iran at the drop of a hat, or rather, at the hint of weapons of mass destruction (Oh, by the way, where are those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, anyway?)
And personally, I'm tired of our nation being governed by "likeable" but average/stupid people. Yep, W may be likeable enough, but that's not a qualification for the job. Intelligence is. Good judgment is. The ability to work with Congress is. Not whether you can thow back a few beers or dress a moose. Or, in the case of Cheney, shoot your friends on a hunting trip.
I don't think any C student should labor under the misperception that he or she can be President of the United States. It should be a job reserved for the most intelligent among us, not the most likeable. Too much is at stake. Did W know that Russia would eventually invade Georgia (Gov. Palin: That would be the former Soviet bloc country, not the state south of the Mason-Dixon line) when he "looked into Putin's soul?" I don't want a soul-looking president; I want a president who is sharp enought to assemble sharp enough staff to provide good intelligence briefings that are actually paid attention to (that means you, Condi Rice).
Average, likeable people don't belong in the White House. They belong in the shoe department at Macy's.
So, Obama Camp, you've brought us supporters too far to eff up now by being silent.
Ask the Damn Question.
You know the question: The one question politicians are afraid to ask when they're running because they're afraid it will be turned back on them when they're in office.
You know the question:
"Are you better off now than you were eight years ago?"
Or, in the case of this failed Bush administration, "Are you better off under W than you were under the Bill?"
Somehow, we've allowed the country to lose focus of what's at stake: Four more years of being on the wrong track.
The Bush administration has failed this country domestically, internationally, environmentally, you name it. And people forget that we're not just electing a president (or vice president, for that matter), we're also electing a party. The likelihood that McCain won't drag back into office more Republican ideologues? Not high. Not high at all. Idealogues who paint Democrats as tax-and-spend liberals and then run up deficits and national debt. Idealogues who don't want to leave until there's victory in Iraq, but haven't defined what victory is. Idealogues who are just now accepting that global warming is for real. Idealogues who would invade Iran at the drop of a hat, or rather, at the hint of weapons of mass destruction (Oh, by the way, where are those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, anyway?)
And personally, I'm tired of our nation being governed by "likeable" but average/stupid people. Yep, W may be likeable enough, but that's not a qualification for the job. Intelligence is. Good judgment is. The ability to work with Congress is. Not whether you can thow back a few beers or dress a moose. Or, in the case of Cheney, shoot your friends on a hunting trip.
I don't think any C student should labor under the misperception that he or she can be President of the United States. It should be a job reserved for the most intelligent among us, not the most likeable. Too much is at stake. Did W know that Russia would eventually invade Georgia (Gov. Palin: That would be the former Soviet bloc country, not the state south of the Mason-Dixon line) when he "looked into Putin's soul?" I don't want a soul-looking president; I want a president who is sharp enought to assemble sharp enough staff to provide good intelligence briefings that are actually paid attention to (that means you, Condi Rice).
Average, likeable people don't belong in the White House. They belong in the shoe department at Macy's.
So, Obama Camp, you've brought us supporters too far to eff up now by being silent.
Ask the Damn Question.
The Council of Meat Bees
I don’t know whether Senator Obama or Senator McCain will be the next president, but I do know that what the next POTUS should have is a Council of Meat Bees.
What is a meat bee, you ask?
I found out a while back that I’m a meat bee. Or at least as persistent as one.
When I first started working for a state agency, I was in a meeting with a boss of mine who was meticulous to a fault, seemed to enjoy elevating form over substance, and was constantly correcting the work of others without regard to whether the corrections were needed. We were in a meeting, and in the meeting he glossed over something he had gotten wrong. In the spirit of tit-for-tat, I pointed it out.
“But you were wrong.”
My boss continued his schpiel as if he didn’t hear me. When there was a break, I said it again:
“But you were wrong.”
He eyed me dismissively and continued with his talk. When he ended, I turned to him, looked him directly in the eyes, and said, “Why do you have so much trouble admitting you were wrong?”
By that point, he had had it with me. His normally happy baby blue eyes turned cold and hardened:
“My God, you are as persistent as meat bee! Let it go!”
Meat bee? I had to ask.
“What’s a meat bee?”
He leaned in and looked harder, all the more to drive the point home that he was the boss and I was the subordinate:
“You know those pesky bees that buzz around your barbecue and don’t give up until you set aside a plate of meat just for them? Those are meat bees. You, my dear, are a meat bee.”
It wasn’t a compliment. But I take it as one.
What the next president needs is a council of women who are as persistent as meat bees, to wit, A Council of Meat Bees: Fifty women over fifty from all walks of life who have overcome extreme adversity because, well, they were as persistent as meat bees. I’m talking about women who have overcome cancer, were or are caregivers to ailing parents, have raised large families by themselves, survived domestic abuse, have overcome being widowed to head a family business, etc. You know – your everyday heroine. And I do mean all walks of life – regardless of political affiliation, religious affiliation, race, etc. The only qualifications would be that 1) They’re women over fifty; 2) they’ve overcome adversity; 3) they are willing to serve as advocates for women who are facing the same adversity they did; 4) they’ve never served in a political office; and, most importantly, 5) no matter what, they have to tell the President the truth about what they experienced and what they see other women like them going through, even if he doesn’t want to hear it. In other words, they have to be as persistent as meat bees.
What would a Council of Meat Bees do?
For starters, they would meet with the president every month and advise him on issues relating to women – work issues, family issues, health issues, you name it. They would be paid a nominal fee and would be flown in and put up by the president’s political party, not the federal government. I think both the DNC and the RNC can afford it.
Second, they would help the president shape his political agenda as it relates to women.
Third, once the president has shaped his political agenda, they would propose policies that could be implement by the federal government and legislation that would further the president’s political agenda as it relates to women.
Fourth, they would lobby Congress regarding their proposed legislation.
Mind you, I don’t expect the Meat Bees to agree. Strong, persistent survivor-women may not. What I would expect is that they reach common ground on problems common to women and put the concerns of women like them above any differences they may have.
Oh, and the Council would be chosen half by lottery, half by the First Lady.
Are you a Meat Bee?
What is a meat bee, you ask?
I found out a while back that I’m a meat bee. Or at least as persistent as one.
When I first started working for a state agency, I was in a meeting with a boss of mine who was meticulous to a fault, seemed to enjoy elevating form over substance, and was constantly correcting the work of others without regard to whether the corrections were needed. We were in a meeting, and in the meeting he glossed over something he had gotten wrong. In the spirit of tit-for-tat, I pointed it out.
“But you were wrong.”
My boss continued his schpiel as if he didn’t hear me. When there was a break, I said it again:
“But you were wrong.”
He eyed me dismissively and continued with his talk. When he ended, I turned to him, looked him directly in the eyes, and said, “Why do you have so much trouble admitting you were wrong?”
By that point, he had had it with me. His normally happy baby blue eyes turned cold and hardened:
“My God, you are as persistent as meat bee! Let it go!”
Meat bee? I had to ask.
“What’s a meat bee?”
He leaned in and looked harder, all the more to drive the point home that he was the boss and I was the subordinate:
“You know those pesky bees that buzz around your barbecue and don’t give up until you set aside a plate of meat just for them? Those are meat bees. You, my dear, are a meat bee.”
It wasn’t a compliment. But I take it as one.
What the next president needs is a council of women who are as persistent as meat bees, to wit, A Council of Meat Bees: Fifty women over fifty from all walks of life who have overcome extreme adversity because, well, they were as persistent as meat bees. I’m talking about women who have overcome cancer, were or are caregivers to ailing parents, have raised large families by themselves, survived domestic abuse, have overcome being widowed to head a family business, etc. You know – your everyday heroine. And I do mean all walks of life – regardless of political affiliation, religious affiliation, race, etc. The only qualifications would be that 1) They’re women over fifty; 2) they’ve overcome adversity; 3) they are willing to serve as advocates for women who are facing the same adversity they did; 4) they’ve never served in a political office; and, most importantly, 5) no matter what, they have to tell the President the truth about what they experienced and what they see other women like them going through, even if he doesn’t want to hear it. In other words, they have to be as persistent as meat bees.
What would a Council of Meat Bees do?
For starters, they would meet with the president every month and advise him on issues relating to women – work issues, family issues, health issues, you name it. They would be paid a nominal fee and would be flown in and put up by the president’s political party, not the federal government. I think both the DNC and the RNC can afford it.
Second, they would help the president shape his political agenda as it relates to women.
Third, once the president has shaped his political agenda, they would propose policies that could be implement by the federal government and legislation that would further the president’s political agenda as it relates to women.
Fourth, they would lobby Congress regarding their proposed legislation.
Mind you, I don’t expect the Meat Bees to agree. Strong, persistent survivor-women may not. What I would expect is that they reach common ground on problems common to women and put the concerns of women like them above any differences they may have.
Oh, and the Council would be chosen half by lottery, half by the First Lady.
Are you a Meat Bee?
Obamaudacity
Obamaudacity: The possibly irrationally exuberant belief that Barack Obama's candidacy will energize young voters, sweeping him into the White House and causing Generations X and Y to take ownership of their country.
Yes, I've been on the fence for a long time regarding what has now become the Obama/Clinton /Edwards race, partly because none of them was my first choice. Long before his movie won an Academcy Award and he shared a Nobel Prize, I had hoped that Al Gore would take all his newfound populist energy and fame and make a final run at the White House. It was not to be, but I held out hope.
But now we're getting down to the wire, and I feel like I have to choose. And, given my choices, I've come down with a mild case of Obamaudacity, for a variety of reasons.
First, I'm not a Hillary hater, but I can kinda understand those who are. I would love to see a woman in the White House as someone other than the First Lady, but I'm not certain whether Hillary is that woman. I don't think the Hillary folks truly recognize how much of the African American community's fondness for Bill is manifested as grace toward Hillary. And, as much as Bill Clinton did, most likely with Hillary's help, to increase the number of African American federal judges and to appoint African Americans to his cabinet, I'm still smarting over the Clintons' treatment of Lani Guinier. Remember her? The nominee for head of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice? I hated the way she was made out to be some "quota queen." Trust me, I had to read some of her academic writings in law school, and she wasn't nearly as radical as she was made out to be. What I hated more was that the Clintons didn't defend her and she wasn't allowed to defend herself. But God and Kharma worked it all out -- she made history as the first African American woman tenured professor at Harvard Law School. But it still left an image of the Clintons in my mind as a couple that turns tail on their friends at the whiff of controversy or confrontation.
The other reason I'm not feeling Hillary is that her candidacy reminds me of the same old tired political tactics that the candidates use first to inflict harm on their party brethren and then to inflict harm on the other party's candidate. Her swipes at Barack Obama's inexperience ring hollow for me. First, I love that Obama has grassroots political experience from actually working to organize everyday people to vote. Second, her backhanded remark to the effect that spending part of one's childhood in a foreign country doesn't count as foreign policy experience lends itself to some irony and doesn't exactly ring true. If that is indeed the case, then sleeping with the president doesn't equate to foreign policy experience, either; otherwise, Monica Lewinsky would be more than qualified to be Secretary of State. She did, after all, overhear President Clinton talking to Arafat while she was in flagrante fellatio.
And, as someone who actually did live in a foreign country, albeit for a short time during college, I would beg to differ with her assessment. I studied in Spain as a college student during the Reagan years, when the dollar was at an all time high. I learned first hand the effect of U.S. monetary and foreign policy on other nations. For instance, I never understood why, when I went to the bank to change my dollars into pesetas, that I was treated with disdain. One of my Spanish classmates explained it to me curtly: "Don't you get it? Oil is bought in dollars. It's winter, and the dollar is high compared to the peseta. That means that a lot of poor people in this country won't be able to afford to heat their homes. And you come walking in the bank, exchanging dollars like they're nothing. Of course they hate you."
Talk about foreign/economic policy 101. If Obama gained even a scintilla of an other-worldly perspective on the effects of U.S. foreign and economic policy on other countries, or even an understanding of how non-Americans regard this nation, he will have brought far more of worth into the White House than its current occupant. Plus, if I haven't learned anything else from the likes of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, I've learned this: Don't confuse experience with wisdom.
Finally, I've got Obamaudacity because of my experience teaching young people. When I taught law students, the one thing I noticed was that very few of the black law students I met were registered Democrats. Those who were registered to vote at all were primarily Independents. They didn't feel any Roosevelt/Kennedy/Clinton loyalty to the Democratic party. And they were largely apathetic, suffering from "political party fatigue." Yet, it is this very group that has the most to lose if they are not politically energized and engaged. They're Gen X and Gen Y, so that means they're going to get the sloppy seconds of the Baby Boom generation -- sloppy environment, sloppy Social Security, sloppy economy, sloppy deficit, sloppy never-ending war in Iraq, sloppy immigration policy, sloppy everything. Basically, we Baby Boomers are going to leave these young folks to clean up our mess. They might as well get started now and have a say in who is going to help them do it. And if Obama is their choice, then, as someone in the tail end of the Baby Boom generation, I want to honor their choice. To them, I imagine, he represents a clean slate unsullied by past scandals, support for the war in Iraq, and the same recycled political hacks from both parties.
I know Baby Boomers won't let go of Rolling Stones concerts -- hell, some of us would still be following the Grateful Dead if Jerry Garcia were alive -- as well as smoking doobies, endless self-improvement, and flagrant conspicuous consumption. But maybe, just maybe, we need to cede to the choices of the generations behind us. Maybe we need a case of Obamaudacity.
Yes, I've been on the fence for a long time regarding what has now become the Obama/Clinton /Edwards race, partly because none of them was my first choice. Long before his movie won an Academcy Award and he shared a Nobel Prize, I had hoped that Al Gore would take all his newfound populist energy and fame and make a final run at the White House. It was not to be, but I held out hope.
But now we're getting down to the wire, and I feel like I have to choose. And, given my choices, I've come down with a mild case of Obamaudacity, for a variety of reasons.
First, I'm not a Hillary hater, but I can kinda understand those who are. I would love to see a woman in the White House as someone other than the First Lady, but I'm not certain whether Hillary is that woman. I don't think the Hillary folks truly recognize how much of the African American community's fondness for Bill is manifested as grace toward Hillary. And, as much as Bill Clinton did, most likely with Hillary's help, to increase the number of African American federal judges and to appoint African Americans to his cabinet, I'm still smarting over the Clintons' treatment of Lani Guinier. Remember her? The nominee for head of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice? I hated the way she was made out to be some "quota queen." Trust me, I had to read some of her academic writings in law school, and she wasn't nearly as radical as she was made out to be. What I hated more was that the Clintons didn't defend her and she wasn't allowed to defend herself. But God and Kharma worked it all out -- she made history as the first African American woman tenured professor at Harvard Law School. But it still left an image of the Clintons in my mind as a couple that turns tail on their friends at the whiff of controversy or confrontation.
The other reason I'm not feeling Hillary is that her candidacy reminds me of the same old tired political tactics that the candidates use first to inflict harm on their party brethren and then to inflict harm on the other party's candidate. Her swipes at Barack Obama's inexperience ring hollow for me. First, I love that Obama has grassroots political experience from actually working to organize everyday people to vote. Second, her backhanded remark to the effect that spending part of one's childhood in a foreign country doesn't count as foreign policy experience lends itself to some irony and doesn't exactly ring true. If that is indeed the case, then sleeping with the president doesn't equate to foreign policy experience, either; otherwise, Monica Lewinsky would be more than qualified to be Secretary of State. She did, after all, overhear President Clinton talking to Arafat while she was in flagrante fellatio.
And, as someone who actually did live in a foreign country, albeit for a short time during college, I would beg to differ with her assessment. I studied in Spain as a college student during the Reagan years, when the dollar was at an all time high. I learned first hand the effect of U.S. monetary and foreign policy on other nations. For instance, I never understood why, when I went to the bank to change my dollars into pesetas, that I was treated with disdain. One of my Spanish classmates explained it to me curtly: "Don't you get it? Oil is bought in dollars. It's winter, and the dollar is high compared to the peseta. That means that a lot of poor people in this country won't be able to afford to heat their homes. And you come walking in the bank, exchanging dollars like they're nothing. Of course they hate you."
Talk about foreign/economic policy 101. If Obama gained even a scintilla of an other-worldly perspective on the effects of U.S. foreign and economic policy on other countries, or even an understanding of how non-Americans regard this nation, he will have brought far more of worth into the White House than its current occupant. Plus, if I haven't learned anything else from the likes of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, I've learned this: Don't confuse experience with wisdom.
Finally, I've got Obamaudacity because of my experience teaching young people. When I taught law students, the one thing I noticed was that very few of the black law students I met were registered Democrats. Those who were registered to vote at all were primarily Independents. They didn't feel any Roosevelt/Kennedy/Clinton loyalty to the Democratic party. And they were largely apathetic, suffering from "political party fatigue." Yet, it is this very group that has the most to lose if they are not politically energized and engaged. They're Gen X and Gen Y, so that means they're going to get the sloppy seconds of the Baby Boom generation -- sloppy environment, sloppy Social Security, sloppy economy, sloppy deficit, sloppy never-ending war in Iraq, sloppy immigration policy, sloppy everything. Basically, we Baby Boomers are going to leave these young folks to clean up our mess. They might as well get started now and have a say in who is going to help them do it. And if Obama is their choice, then, as someone in the tail end of the Baby Boom generation, I want to honor their choice. To them, I imagine, he represents a clean slate unsullied by past scandals, support for the war in Iraq, and the same recycled political hacks from both parties.
I know Baby Boomers won't let go of Rolling Stones concerts -- hell, some of us would still be following the Grateful Dead if Jerry Garcia were alive -- as well as smoking doobies, endless self-improvement, and flagrant conspicuous consumption. But maybe, just maybe, we need to cede to the choices of the generations behind us. Maybe we need a case of Obamaudacity.
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