Krugman WTF?

Does anyone know what Paul Krugman is smoking? Is he drinking Contrarianberry juice or just plain old Haterade? I mean, okay, criticize Obama, fine. I get it. The media's giving him a free pass and Krug patrol is here to collect fare. Try to counterbalance the hope-mongering Rich-Dowd Dream Team. (Psh, as if.)

Do what you gotta do, Krug. Fine.


But to call Obama "an oratorically upgraded version of Michael Bloomberg" is just disengenuous. No one seriously thinks Bloomberg is an ineloquent Obama. Bloomberg's a short, Jewish, billionare businessman; he and Obama have about as little in common as two people can. (That said, endorse away, Mr. Mayor!)

The real accusation, of course, is that Obama is, like Bloomberg, a centrist. Which I guess is what Obama is if you insist on measuring people's politics with some kind of left-right pH test kit. Barack Obama's Senate votes give him a damn pH of 7. (Maybe 8, slightly on the sweet side?) But it's patently obvious to millions of people the nation over that he's more than that. And specifically, that he's more than that in terms of progressivism.

And wait, who are we comparing him to again? Like Dennis Kucinich or something, right? Bernie Sanders? Oh. That's right: Krugman is calling Obama a centrist compared to Hillary Clinton. The word "Clinton" has like eight definitions, but I'm pretty sure one of them is "n. centrist."




You feelin okay, buddy?

But none of that matters. Why? Mandates! Mandates! Freaking mandates, they're all Krugman can think about! His obsession with the health care mandate issue is incomprehensible to me, especially since he's an economist.

He's swinging away at the mandate piñata again today, referring to Obama's "adoption of conservative talking points on the crucial issue of health care." (At least, I assume he's referring to mandates there. Otherwise, we'd have a Krugman column free of mandate references, and that just wouldn't be right.)

Here's what a damn mandate is: it requires people to buy health insurance, just like we Californians have to buy car insurance. Hillary Clinton's health care plan has a mandate. Obama's doesn't. Otherwise, their plans are virtually identical.

Clinton has seized on the difference. She is shocked! shocked! that anyone calling himself a Democrat would propose a health care plan that "leaves people out" and "isn't universal." If you've watched any of the debates recently, you know this is totally her favorite riff.

I'm not a health care expert and don't presume to know whether mandates would be helpful in getting more people insured, but I do know that advocates of single payer (total, all-out, "SiCKO"-approved, publicly-financed health care) think mandates are total bullshit.

Here's why: if you require people by law to purchase health insurance, you have to penalize them for not doing so. So when you're dealing with poor people, it's kind of a doozy. Do you exempt them from the mandate? (Oh my god, then it's not universal! Gotcha, Hillary: You're leaving people out, too!) Or do you leave people who can't afford to buy insurance to pay a fine for noncompliance? (Then poor people are paying out for a fine and they're still uninsured. Sucks, don't it.)

And that's exactly the explanation Obama has given in debate after debate. (I mean, not in those exact words.) But it's all so tedious that one starts to zone out when they argue about it and the audience is left with the vague sense that Clinton's plan somehow keeps it realer.

And, wonder of wonders, Paul Krugman, Princeton lefty economist, seems to agree.

See, I can make it all about mandates too. Uh! Who's the centrist now, byeeitch?

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Is "Obamedia" the New "Liberal Media"?

Yes it is.

Remember the good old Liberal Media? Conservatives bitched and moaned about the media's "liberal bias." Many media outlets absorbed the shame-dumping, got all self-conscious and needed to prove the critics wrong. So when Bush took us to war in Iraq, it was, gosh, just a fine idea.

The very concept of truth got mushed into a spectrum with opposing opinions on each end and the accepted truth lying exactly in between. Reality was the median point between Ann Coulter and Michael Moore. Call it the Crossfire era. Weenie Democrats like John Kerry and liberal castrati like Alan Colmes couldn't win that tug-o-war.

Now that three-quarters of the nation agrees that Bush sucks, I guess "the media" can too. The Crossfire era is so over.

But I'm hearing echoes of it in the Democratic primary race. The Clintons, ever the Karl Rove copycats, are crying favoritism. MSNBC, in particular, supposedly hates Hillary Clinton and is all ga-ga for Barack Obama. So, of course, when MSNBC hosted the big number two-oh Democratic debate on Tuesday, moderator Tim Russert had to prove it wasn't so.

Hence a big, scary question for Obama about Louis Farrakhan supporting him. (Obama faltered a bit at first, but then knocked it out of the park with his "reject and denounce" line.)




Which made me wonder, where can I get a Jews for Obama shirt? Or perhaps

יִדן

פֿאַר

!אָבאַמאַה

would be better. (It's Yiddish: Yidn far Obama!) I could send one to Joel Stein! Sorry if the vowels show up funky on your screen; did my best.

Oh, and Chris Matthews' humiliation of Texas State Senator and Obama supporter Kirk Watson after last week's debate? Same shit.


I'd like to thank Crimson for the term "weenie Democrat." So apt.

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Ceding Telegraph

WE were strolling down Telegraph Avenue, popping into Amoeba and Rasputin and all the little hipster shoe stores and tattoo joints. Each place had a nook that I would have otherwise ignored where stacks of high-gloss fliers sat, neatly or messily, depending. They advertised events at Shattuck Down Low or Luka's or clubs in the city. Brian added a stack of his Influence fliers to each collection.

The walk was so familiar (Dwight...Haste...Channing...Durant) but something felt off-kilter. And it wasn't just my "It's Spring!" outfit of denial, which was leaving my toes cold.

I used to own this street. A decade ago, I would pound my way to class to the beat of Drummer Larry, and if my hips were swaying, well I just couldn't help it. Shades on, hair bouncing: I was on my own and on my way. I'd trade smiles with the guy selling Rasta hats and grab coffee at C'est Cafe and take a mercy "Dollar Off at Amoeba" card from that lanky dude who looked like an Addams family cousin. I dined at Mario's La Fiesta and the old Pasta Pomodoro. I treated myself to custom-scented lotions at the OG Body Time. I even enjoyed my quiet irritation with the old hippies hawking bumper stickers and tie-dye onesies.

There are plenty of eulogies for Telegraph these days, after Cody's, but they mourn a place I never knew, a memory that the gray-ponytailed street salesmen render into nostalgic tourist wares. On that mythical street, students in berets and bell bottoms debated anti-war strategy in cafes and pored over philosophy books in Cody's and threw molotov cocktails at campus police.

My Telegraph, with all its thumping vibrancy and Tupac shirts, was a disappointment to sixties Berkeleyans. A sad hangover.


AS I walked down the street last weekend with my latte and my inappropriate sandals, I realized that I was an old lady. Everywhere I looked was a new breed of Telegraph rat. Punky girls in black skinny jeans and preppier girls in leggings shimmied along with effortless sass. A tribe of gay black teenagers dodged in and out of the sneaker stores alongside us, one guy sporting a big gold handbag. A table of students in Peet's argued over a brain teaser in adorably pompous tones. An Asian guy walked hand-in-hand with a white girl, white guys flirted with black girls. There were lots of those Bay Area kids whose ethnicity is so delightfully indistinguishable.

I had just read that morning's Frank Rich Times column, so I knew what I was looking at: millennials. The smoke shop and the Wet Seal and the slick new ATMs--all crawling with millennials.

"The so-called millennial generation (dating from 1982) is the largest in American history, boomers included," Rich explains. He adds that "roughly 40 percent of it is African-American, Latino, Asian or racially mixed. One in five millennials has an immigrant parent. It’s this generation that is fueling the excitement and some of the record turnout of the Democratic primary campaign."

Most interesting.


OF COURSE one's initial instinct in revisiting an old haunt or alma mater is to poo-poo the new population and lament the ruin they've brought to the place that was so perfect. That inner grump saw my funky Telegraph replaced by a teen shopping Disneyland, scrubbed of seriousness and homeless people, just as the boomers before me saw their lefty mecca overrun with apathy and street punks.

But if there's one thing I hate it's being hated on by baby boomers. So I wasn't about to do my successors like that. When I set adrift my feelings of being a dork and belonging to a bygone era, and opened my eyes a bit more, I liked what I saw.

These millennials, they're very charming. It appeals to me the idea that each new generation will make progress, that my children will evolve beyond my limits. Millennials have something going for them in that respect: a personal swagger, an open-mindedness, fewer hangups about race and gender and sexual orientation. And of course they are great followers of Obama: supporters, but also heirs.

Maybe it was nothing more than a big gold purse confidently tossed over the shoulder of a black teenage boy that won me over. That's doing sixties Telegraph proud.


SO, no back-in-my-day grumbling from me: I'm ceding Telegraph to the millennials. It's as it should be. My thirtyish brethren and I can hit up the Lakeshore Farmer's Market and go to the clubs on the fliers. Telegraph is theirs now. I'll trust millennials to do their thing, and watch with curiosity.

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That's My Shit

Every now and then something comes along that just restores your faith in the great human project. Actually, I think I felt like that for some other reason lately, but I plum forget what it was.

I can hardly contain my glee about two new products hitting shelves this spring: Cowpots and Biobags.

Cowpots are biodegradable pots. You start seeds in them, and once they're grown you put the whole thing in the ground; no transplant shock. Wa, you're thinking. We already have those. They're called peat pots and they're not that rad.

But behold the Cowpot! It's made from (yeah) cowpats. A renewable resource, unlike those mysterious peat bogs I'm told to feel guilty about. And then, too: it's fertilizer! Now that's the kind of ingenuity that makes me proud to be an American. I think I maybe felt proud to be an American for some other reason lately, but damned if I can remember what it was.

Biobags are compostable plastic bags. You heard right, my friend. Compostable plastic bags, made (some alchemical way) from corn.

You take one of these bags, you put it in your compost pail, you fill the pail just like a trash can, and when the time comes to empty it into the compost it's not a household saga involving black sludge and fruitfly larvae. I have a package of them under my sink right now and every time I review that fact it blows my mind.

Compostable plastic bags! They go right in the compost! That's the coolest thing since what's his name. (Chazack. No. That's a Hebrew word meaning "be strong.") I mean, it starts with compost pails, but imagine the potential! I almost paid a grip of money to order a hundred pack of these little miracles online, but then I saw them just waiting for me, pretty as can be, in the household supplies aisle of Berkeley Bowl.

Goddamn. It's a new day.

(Chazack, Barack: you just might win this.)

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Obama's Real Platform

Barack Obama can be hard to see. He doesn't have a simple rallying-cry cause and his campaign is often derided as so much hazy inspiration. The more complicated truth is that he is running a meta-campaign that's about more than just The Issues. He has intelligently-considered, progressive stands on The Issues. (Here they are.) But his campaign, as I see it, revolves around two larger questions: What kind of politics do we want to have? And, who are we as a nation?


What kind of politics do we want to have?
Compared to war, to poverty, to global warming, this sounds like a trivial question. (To paraphrase John Edwards, how many kids does this help?) In fact, it is anything but trivial. Washington does not lack for policies and plans. The affliction to which so many of these policies succumb is the dread "partisan gridlock," the stepchild of a particular destructive style of politics. That would be the Nixonian, Clintonian, Rovian style: lie, double-talk, squirm out of blame on technicalities, destroy enemies, eschew ethics, break laws and grant pardons, be secretive, tout American democracy in word and resemble a banana republic dictator in deed. The ugly mess of the last seven years is as much the result of dirty politics as right-wing principles.


Who are we as a nation?
Are we a nation of overprivileged, overfed assholes who bully the less fortunate, hog the world’s resources and leave messes in our wake? Are we really what the Bush administration makes us appear to be? This is not only a question of “our image abroad.” It also pertains to our self-image. It determines both our actions as a country and our views of one another. Must we have perpetual shadow enemies on the other side of the political color wheel and define ourselves in opposition to the easily-disdained Other?

Obama thinks that kind of polarity diminishes all parties, and I agree. If coming of age in the Bush era has taught me anything, it has taught me that. Obama has a compelling vision of national cohesion, and I admire it. It’s a vision that he, himself representing a multiplicity of cultures, is uniquely suited to midwife into reality.

If George Bush is the cowboy conquering the natives, Barack Obama is the melting pot personified. With him at the helm, we would instantly shed the Nation of Assholes image and instead tap into a prouder American legacy: the nation of immigrants with big dreams. Individual, imperfect, bearing the various scars of so many historical wounds, different from each other in every possible way, but inextricably bound together.

“Out of many, we are one.”

When Obama spoke these words in sonorous baritone after his landslide win in the racially-fraught South Carolina primary, I cried. Critics and cynics can write off his "pretty speeches," but you can't speak with that kind of power and resonance without really having the goods. He doesn't just give his audiences the candy they want, either. At Martin Luther King's old church, he chided black America for failing to embrace "our gay brothers and sisters." No one cheered. But he still said it.

* * *

Maybe it's time we called into question the idea of defining candidates foremostly by their stands on Issues. Is that even what presidencies are based on? Have an agenda in the campaign, enact it in office? Did Bush run on starting wars and racking up debt? Character matters because in the end, that’s all we’ve really got. Candidates can say anything in a campaign; it might bear no relation to how they govern. (Remember, "uniter, not divider"?) Times and issues change. Real character is the only sturdy campaign promise.

Obama is not pure as the driven snow. I know about Rezko and “present” votes and leaving the butter out. But I think his effort to engage in a politics of integrity is genuine. (Ironically, because he is pegged as the idealist candidate, he is lambasted for every “You’re likable enough”-type slip, while Clinton's Machiavellian tactics are forgiven as tough politics that Obama “better get used to.”)

And, by the way, he has the progressive bona fides and he's proud of them. He worked as an organizer on the South Side of Chicago. He squandered his Harvard law degree on civil rights work. Many on the left are suspicious of the fact that he doesn’t jump in front of every conservative he sees and say, “Let’s fight!” He is not perpetually antagonistic like Edwards or Kucinich, and apparently some find his geniality disappointing.

Me, I’m just sick of it all. I'm sad about our national downward spiral. I'm weary of the bullshit artistry and the vitriol and the pitting of teams against one another. I don’t care about winning every argument. I want good things to actually happen.

Speech at Ebenezer Baptist, 1/20/08



South Carolina Victory Speech, 1/26/08

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People Who Are Not Black...

Introducing a delightful new parlor game! To play now, just scroll past my blabbering.

In honor of tomorrow's South Carolina primary, where black voters appear ready to embrace the Obamanomenon, let's take a little walk down memory lane.

Almost exactly a year ago, self-described pundit Debra Dickerson wrote a thoughtful piece for Salon about Obama and race. Her take on what Obama represents for both black and white Americans was carefully reasoned and insightful.

Until this:

"Since the issue was always framed as a battle between gender and race...I didn't have the heart (or the stomach) to point out the obvious: Obama isn't black. " (My emboldening.)

She went on:

"'Black,' in our political and social reality, means those descended from West African slaves. Voluntary immigrants of African descent (even those descended from West Indian slaves) are just that, voluntary immigrants of African descent... "

Stephen Colbert had Dickerson on soon after the article and its attendant flap. "It sounds to me like you are judging blackness not on the color of someone's skin, but on the content of their character," said Colbert. "Which I think realizes Dr. King's dream in a very special way."

Now, in fairness, I understand what Dickerson was driving at: Obama's heritage makes him very different from most African Americans. (She seems to want to imply that he has no baggage; I would submit that he has different baggage, including the kind that riles Dickerson.) It should also be noted that exactly half of what makes Obama different from other African Americans is that he's also white. So, perhaps Dickerson could have said he's of mixed racial descent or his ancestors were not slaves in this country or he's a newer member of the American black community or he's a brother by another mother...

But to call him "not black"?

Taking this assertion to its many logical conclusions makes for a delightful parlor game. I call it


People Who Are Not Black
(If Barack Obama Is Not Black)

WORLD LEADER TYPES
Nelson Mandela (South Africa)
Kofi Annan (Ghana)

HIP HOP PIONEERS
Slick Rick (England)
Afrika Bambaataa (Caribbean somewhere)
Grandmaster Flash (Barbados)
DJ Kool Herc (Jamaica)


Did you know hip hop was founded not by black people, but voluntary immigrants of African descent?

HOTTIES THE BLACK COMMUNITY HAD BEST HANG ON TO
John Amaechi (England/Nigeria)
Karrine "Superhead" Steffans (St. Thomas)
Idris Elba (England/Sierra Leone/Ghana)

Is Dickerson ready to banish eye candy Stringer Bell?


TWO OF MY FAVE ENTERTAINMENT REPORTERS
Sal Masekela [+ his jazzman, pops, of course] (South Africa)
Lola Ogunnaike (Nigeria)

PEOPLE I KNOW
My Riverside extended fam Zaid, Russom, Astena, Dibora, Helen and Raquel (Eritrea)
Elementary school chums Gian (Trinidad) and Brona (Ireland/Guyana)
Garden class hero Dylan (Belize)

Which cutie planting tomatoes is black and which isn't?

CELEBRATED AUTHORS
Zadie Smith (England/Jamaica)
Claude McKay (Jamaica)
Jamaica Kincaid (no, not Jamaica: Antigua)

SERIOUSLY, THESE PEOPLE AREN'T BLACK?
Marcus Garvey (Jamaica)
Biggie Smalls (Jamaica)

Maybe his murder case will be solved now that he's not black!

MORE MISC MUSIC CELEBS
Rihanna (Barbados)

Seal (England/Nigeria)
Sean Kingston (Jamaica)
Akon (Senegal)

Marleys, all (Jamaica)
Wyclef Jean (Haiti)

CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHORS ON WHOM MY BOYFRIEND HAS CRUSH
Isha Sesay (England/Sierra Leone)

He does have a point.

All those guys hanging out at Oakland cafes (Ethiopia/Eritrea)
Population of African continent (Africa)
Non-American diaspora of African descent (all countries outside U.S. and Africa)


OH YEAH, AND...
Barack Obama (Kenya/Kansas white folks)


Who'd I forget?


Research assistance by Crimson & Associates.

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Who I'm Worshiping Now

I've oft been accused of fickle hero worship. Of course that's hogwash. Anyway, here's


WHO I'M WORSHIPING NOW
THE MEDIA EDITION


Can you name all six?



1. Shrill, sexist and weak on the life philosophy,
but he nails the Clinton connivery every time.



2. The guys go on to starring roles
while she holds it down Gilda Radner-style.



3. "Those of us who have struggled to get our minds around the notion that a man who looks like Barack Obama could be the next president of the United States can no longer take easy refuge in the disappointments of history."




4. Rural Life makes great election-coverage detox.




5. Somehow: sexy?




6. "Her argument against Obama now boils down to an argument against idealism, which is probably the lowest and most unlikely point to which any Clinton could sink."





See, it was still about Obama. I warned you, fair reader.

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