Cognitive Dissonance, or Slicing and Dicing the Baloney

I turned on the television just now (having shut it off in disgust at the end of the Red Sox v. Blue Jays game) to catch Jeremy Paxman slicing and dicing the hapless Educational Kinesiologist Dr. Paul Dennison, developer of the BRAIN GYM, on BBC's Newsnight. Paxman was plainly skeptical of the possibility that pressing "brain buttons" in the neck could promote communication between the left and right brain, for example. The program, presented on BBC America, then cut directly to a commercial for Kinoki Detox Foot Pads, which "use all-natural tree extracts and powerful negative ions to rid your body of harmful toxins." Yeah, ok.

This Makes Me Feel Very Old and Tired

Is Race Out of the Race? wonder Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom of the conservative Manhattan Institute in yesterday's Los Angeles Times. Their analysis of voting patterns in the Democratic primaries:

After nearly two dozen primaries, we now know beyond dispute that the pessimists were wrong. Obama won the majority of white votes in Virginia, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Illinois and Utah, and he received extremely high vote totals among whites in the other states he's run in as well.

Forget, for a moment, about white women, [oh, yes, let's do that!] many of whom have been drawn to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton through a strong sense of sisterhood. Look instead at white men. In a remarkable number of states, according to exit polls, Obama won more than 40% of the white male vote. Those states included Clinton's home state of New York (where Obama got 43%), Arizona (45%) and, most remarkably, the Deep South state of Georgia (46%). Indeed, in Connecticut, New Mexico, Illinois, California, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin, his support from white men was in the quite amazing range of 56% to 64%.

What's more, Obama would probably have won similar levels of support from white female voters -- if he hadn't ended up in a race against a woman. After all, there's no evidence to suggest that white women are less likely to vote for an African American candidate than white men are. If Clinton weren't running (and pulling away votes based on her gender), there's no reason why Obama's numbers among white women wouldn't be as high as his numbers among white men.

So, white women voting for Hillary Clinton are basing their vote on gender, but white men voting for Barack Obama are not. Just shoot me now.

Fossil Fools Day, April 1, 2008!

Here is a really good idea.

Holding Barack Obama Accountable

Read this important article by Bruce Dixon, Managing Editor of the Black Agenda Report, on the importance of "calling out" Barack Obama to commit to specific progressive positions on important issues despite the fact that

corporate media have made him a rock star, Joshua, a prince on his way to a coronation. Those who raise questions about Obama's commitment to a progressive agenda will have to struggle to be heard. That's just the way it is. They may even have to be impolite at times. That's just the way it is too. Rock stars, royalty and the uncritical adulation they require make little room for polite criticism or democratic discussion.

Dixon recalls earlier success in 2003 in slowing Obama's drift to the right during his campaign for the Senate, and warns that the time to hold Obama's feet to the progressive fire is now.

It gives me only a tiny pulse of grim pleasure to say I saw this coming.

February 14 Is not Valentines Day at My House . . .

It's the day Red Sox pitchers and catchers report to spring training!
W00T!

Stanley Fish on Hillary Haters

I like Hillary Clinton and I want her to be President of the United States of America.
I continue to be very disturbed by the tone of both the coverage of the Democratic campaign generally and remarks I myself have heard. Here's why.
Stanley Fish - Think Again: All You Need Is Hate
ht Feminist Philosophers

Oh Dear Oh Dear Obama

MoveOn members, by a 70-30% margin, have endorsed Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, as has the Los Angeles Times. Says the LA Times:

The U.S. senator from Illinois distinguishes himself as an inspiring leader who cuts through typical internecine campaign bickering and appeals to Americans long weary of divisive and destructive politics.

But wait. How does endorsing Obama over Clinton provide relief from divisive politics? It doesn't. Please look here, and here, and here, and here.

The LA Times' endorsement of Obama seems to rest entirely on two bases: Clinton's benighted, regrettable, but not entirely unforgiveable vote to authorize the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and Obama's unfamiliarity. The endorsement concludes:

An Obama presidency would present, as a distinctly American face, a man of African descent, born in the nation's youngest state, with a childhood spent partly in Asia, among Muslims. No public relations campaign could do more than Obama's mere presence in the White House to defuse anti-American passion around the world, nor could any political experience surpass Obama's life story in preparing a president to understand the American character. His candidacy offers Democrats the best hope of leading America into the future, and gives Californians the opportunity to cast their most exciting and consequential ballot in a generation.

In the language of metaphor, Clinton is an essay, solid and reasoned; Obama is a poem, lyric and filled with possibility. Clinton would be a valuable and competent executive, but Obama matches her in substance and adds something that the nation has been missing far too long -- a sense of aspiration.

Those are pretty shallow and disturbing reasons to endorse a candidate. Does the LA Times really think that what we need to "defuse anti-American passion around the world" is a good PR campaign? And how can Obama's interesting but highly unusual biography either substitute for depth of experience or put him in touch with "the American character," whatever that is, if it exists, of which I am highly dubious. It is at best irresponsible of the LA Times to urge us to choose a candidate based on how "exciting" it will be to vote for him. (I can't help thinking this "excitement" also led to the overwhelming MoveOn vote.) I will support Obama if he wins the Democratic nomination, but the careless assumption that he differs from Hillary Clinton only in style obscures real differences in their positions--Obama opposes universal health care, for example.

The LA Times endorsement is just a small part of the very worrisome media handling of the 2008 campaigns. The mainstream media are treating Obama very gently these days, usually at the expense of Hillary (and, lately, Bill) Clinton. The depiction of Obama as exciting while Clinton is dull is not a perception of reality, it's media spin calculated to get Obama the democratic nomination.

Why are the MSM greasing the skids for Obama? Because, in a year when it looked like the presidency was a lost cause for the Republicans, the Money thinks maybe Obama can be beaten. Even by John McCain, not so long ago the most loathsome man in America. Once Obama has the nomination, the corporate media (who served him up) will eat him alive. He is not, of course, the chosen candidate of the corporate Money--he is the candidate that Money thinks it can beat. Lulled into a false sense that the media love him, he has no idea how to handle the evil slagging press that has been a part of Hillary Clinton's daily life for decades. I'm afraid he will disappear beneath waves of ridicule and scandal in a landslide (underlain by the oozing mud of vile racism at the local level) that will make McGovern and Mondale look like winners.
I hope I'm wrong.