Prickly Liberals

Was it the magazine cover or was it the fact that Ryan Lizza’s New Yorker article about Obama’s years in Chicago politics revealed the Democrats’ presumptive nominee to be just an ordinary pol, not a messiah in the making? In any case, Lizza and The New Yorker were invited off the press plane accompanying Obama on his campaign trip (aka “fact finding mission”) to Afghanistan and Iraq, and then to Israel, Jordan, Germany, France, and the UK. This piece from The Guardian reports on liberal bloggers complaining about “retribution” for “unfavorable coverage.” But, of course, for anyone with a brain screwed on right The New Yorker cover was pro-Obama or, at least, anti-rightwing caricatures of him. Needless to say, prickly liberals don’t have their their brains screwed on right. Needless to say too, there are plenty of sound reasons to oppose Obama that have nothing to do with him being an unpatriotic secret Muslim out to wage “jihad” and/or get whitey.

Needless to say too, none of these reasons come close to reasons for hoping John McCain’s Republicans defeat him in November. Our institutions force lesser evilism upon us -- and, compared to McCain, even a turnip would be a lesser evil. But this does not mitigate the plain fact: that Barack Obama, like Hillary Clinton, is, at best, a kinder, gentler and more competent proponent of the politics George Bush and Dick Cheney ought to have brought into profound disrepute. Unfortunately, thanks to a media as much in the thrall of the regime as our two semi-official parties are, those criminals have only brought disrepute upon themselves – not the politics for which, as it were, they stand.

That leaves it up to we, the people: to wean ourselves and each other away from the illusions of Obamamania and, to the greatest extent possible, to force President Obama to do the right thing (or at least not to wallow in the wrong thing, as the beneficiaries of the regime in place would like).

More on The New Yorker Cover

To the ranks of liberal pundits who are nearly as dumb, and every bit as reprehensible, as the people the July 21 New Yorker cover satirizes, add MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. Fresh back from vacation, he joined in on last night’s “Crossfire.” Olbermann’s was the first anti-Bush voice to find a home in the corporate media. Needless to say, it didn’t happen until long after it might have done more good than it does now when only the most benighted still think well of the Torturer-in-Chief. Even so, for breaking through the media haze, we are all in Olbermann’s debt. But, now that Bush bashing has become the norm, Olbermann’s rants have become predictable and tiresome – making his lack of depth, and inability to appreciate irony, more striking.

Olbermann and the others would do well to look beyond the magazine’s cover. The “offending” issue contains a fine piece by Ryan Lizza on Obama’s years in Chicago and Illinois politics; it is called, appropriately, “Making It.” If Lizza’s detailed and subtle account is on track, Obama’s instincts are better than most, but he’s nevertheless a thoroughgoing opportunist – as any serious Presidential candidate would have to be. As such, he courted elite interests in Chicago from the outset. But he was and probably still is more than usually vulnerable to pressure from the base.

How to provide that pressure, and how to force Obama to focus his mind on it, is the challenge we will face between now and November – and, more importantly, after January 20, when Obama’s longstanding political ambitions are finally consummated.

Dumb and Dumber

One question raised by The New Yorker cover depicting the Obamas as Afro-Muslim terrorists, burning the American flag in the Oval Office under a portrait of Osama bin Laden, is who is dumber – the liberal pundits and bloggers who find the cover “racist” and “offensive” or the people (as many as 13% of the voting public, according to some accounts) who believe that the Obamas are pretty much as the cover depicts? The rightwing “blogosphere” and Fox News have much to do with the views of folks in the latter category; they planted the seed and cultivated the flower. But in the end we have to face the fact – 13% of potential voters are morons. Prickly liberals are another matter. Presumably, they understand the concept of satire at some level; it’s just that irony is beyond their ken. Or maybe they’re simply buffaloed – like the Democrats who supported (and effectively still support) Bush’s wars and who won’t say anything even remotely critical of “the troops”(torturers included) or the godly (so long as they’re Christians or Jews, no matter how benighted), and who won’t do or say anything that certifiable morons might deem “unpatriotic.” These liberals might not be dumber than the people The New Yorker cover satirizes, but they’re every bit as reprehensible.

The larger question, though, is how is it that right-wing bloggers and Fox could rustle up anything like 13% of the population? Why can’t people who have their heads screwed on right and who got enough oxygen in utero do that? Think how much better the world would be if, say, the Green Party and/or Ralph Nader got 13% of the vote! If it were the case that there are many more stupid and ignorant people out there than reasonably progressive and enlightened ones, the question would be easy to answer. But that’s almost certainly not the case. Therefore the question is anything but easy.

One thing is clear, however: that though they play some role, the “manufacturers of consent” in the corporate and corporate-friendly media are not the main culprit in the disorganization and decapacitation of the Forces of Light. It’s the institutions – the ones that channel holders of centrist and left of center positions into the cesspool that is the Democratic Party. In this crime against (small-d) democracy, we are all complicit to some extent. That’s why a first order of business, now and after Obama trounces the increasingly bathetic John McCain, must be to think hard about how to break out of the prison house our duopolistic politics has become.

Unfortunately, there’s no simple answer. Especially for people living in “battleground” states, voting for Cynthia McKinney and/or Ralph Nader (yet again) is problematic – given the institutional arrangements that constrain our politics. But perhaps we shouldn’t be too hasty in dismissing “third” (actually, second) parties or independent campaigns. They can’t “win” and neither can they restructure political life (unless circumstances change radically). It’s not even clear that they are useful as “educational” vehicles – since the media only mocks or derides them, when they pay attention at all. But there is still the expressive side of politics. Its importance shouldn’t be dismissed, even if protest votes have only a negligible effect on outcomes. For those of us who live in “safe” states, it is looking increasingly like casting a protest vote against Obama may make more sense than adding to the “mandate” of that Clintonized (center-right, empire and military friendly, shamelessly opportunist, bought and paid for) but “inspiring” Democrat.