ARUGALA!!!1

Race card!

But it was played by an unlikely source (WSJ editors) against an unlikely "racist" (Obama):

Asked a question he didn't expect at a rare unscripted event, [Obama] didn't merely say he disagreed with Justice Thomas. Instead, he instinctively reverted to the leftwing cliché that the Court's black conservative isn't up to the job while his white conservative colleagues are. So much for civility in politics and bringing people together.

Huh? What's race got to do with anything? (Unless the editors have instinctively reverted to the rightwing cliché that black liberals believe Thomas is a "Tom.")

For the record, Obama said: "I don't think that [Thomas] was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation." When even the WSJ had a When-Will-Justice-Thomas-Ask-a-Question Watch because of his well-known lack of curiosity in the courtroom, then Obama's assessment seems pretty credible.

The get-out-of-adultery-free Card

This video is a must-see for anyone fascinated by sex scandals, right-wing hypocrisy, and seeing Sean Hannity lose his shit:



Andrew at his best: "Hannity also says that the Vietnamese 'did not break [McCain's] spirit.' Actually, they did, using the enhanced interrogation techniques Hannity approves of when used by Americans."

Best ad so far (and it's by an amateur)

(H/T Andrew)

BS

Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and you were a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch. One of your colleagues submits this proposal:

First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn't meet the goal. We will call the goal a "BA."

You would conclude that your colleague was cruel, not to say insane. But that's the system we have in place.

[Charles Murray]

Obama will eat your family

While I'm over-analyzing ads today ... I still can't shake how sinister McCain's second celebrity ad actually is:



After Obama makes a slow, horror-film turn towards the camera in a darkened room, we see the following sequence: mother/two children, mother/child, two women, old woman, mother/child.

Six woman, four children, no men. In the entire ad -- titled "Painful."

"Halo," Jeremiah Ridgeway

Coates on McCain's latest ad

This is better: McCain still pushing the celeb angle. I disagree with Eric on the race angle. It's just hard for me to buy that the mere presence of a white women in the same space as Obama would change a substantial number of votes. If the entire election were in Tennessee, maybe. But as a national strategy?

I suspect Coates is showing some restraint here, and if so, I applaud him. But I think he misses the point with the escalating theme in these ads. The McCain camp isn't trying to plant subliminal fears into the minds of white parents nationwide. Rather, I suspect they're just trying to get pundits to overreact to its ambiguous "Hot chicks dig Obama" theme. In other words, McCain's not trying to race bait, he's trying to race-card bait.

Race-card baiting

With the "Celeb" ad, people read way too much into the whole "white sluts with black guy" thing. But c'mon: McCain's latest ad features three white women fawning over Obama, followed by some dude saying, "Hot chicks dig Obama." In today's media cycle, where's the line between invoking miscegenation and trying to bait pundits into saying so? Is there even a line at this point?

I still think the ad has no real grounds to cry racism. But it does contain juust enough insinuation (especially in the context of the first uproar over "Celeb") to bait people like Bob Herbert into saying stupid, counterproductive things like "Why is everyone missing the phallic symbols in McCain’s Britney ad?"

Campaigns spend millions of dollars on each ad they craft, so they're incredibly deliberate with the content they use. The more pundits cry racism over ambiguous ads, the more it helps McCain. There isn't a huge logical leap here.

Elitism Watch

How does this ad not display a condescending contempt for average Americans? Comparing Obama supporters (at least half the electorate) to hysterical Beatles fans? Poking fun at Midwest supporters for eating fast food, or implying they're stoners, or both? Portraying young women as ditsy girls with schoolyard crushes? Flashing "So Act Now" and "Don't Delay" like we're watching some late-night infomercial? (Not to mention mocking a grown man for showing some emotion. Nice touch, Sgt. Schmidt.)

So, now we have three separate McCain ads that assume American voters will be swayed more by charges of celebrity than 8 years of Bush, soaring energy costs, a recession, two wars, etc. Of course McCain people will say, "Lighten up! It's just a bit of fun. And there's a real policy argument here: Obama will raise taxes on people earning more than $42K." Except that's a lie, thus illustrating an even greater contempt for voters and their role in an informed democracy. (When Clinton used that kind of deceit, Publius called it the rube strategy -- "we'll say what we want and most people will be too ignorant to ever figure out the difference.")

FIRST!!1

In Josh Green's blockbuster exposé on the Clinton campaign, he reveals: "On March 4, as Ohio and Texas were voting, the advisers, who now included senior strategist Doug Hattaway, circulated another memo formalizing what they now called the 'Florigan Plan.'"

As a campaign writer for The Hotline, I was assigned the FL/MI delegate debacle, the first story of which we published on March 7. It appears, based on Nexis, that I coined the term "Florigan" in the press:

Florigan: Ghost Primaries Haunt Dems
The 3/4 primaries "supplied oxygen" to Hillary Clinton's campaign, "but they also threw gas on the smoldering problem of what to do about" FL and MI. Because it seems "increasingly likely" that neither Clinton nor Barack Obama will clinch the nod in the 13 remaining contests, their camps are refocusing on the "largest pool of outstanding votes: the 366 delegates originally allocated" to FL and MI. "But the Michigan-and-Florida issue remains almost intractable."

(It's no "terrorist fist jab," but still kinda cool.)

Belated thoughts on Dark Knight

Dan wrote a great list of observations. My favorite bits:

Everything you hear about Heath Ledger is true. ... It is a subtle film, except when it's not. And when it's not, it's over-the-top. But who the fuck cares. ... In a movie bursting with ambition on all fronts, perhaps the greatest achievement are its words. How many action films can boast that? ... The film does not have much to say about the goodness of humanity. ... This is the first film-with-terrorism-metaphor that our age of terrorism deserves.

Obviously the best film of 2008 so far, can't wait to see it again on IMAX. Building on its terrorism metaphor, I had this thought: Despite his constant, city-wide destruction, the Joker never has a posse, and his one-time conspirators rarely survive a scene. His omnipresent army of allies are bribed, released from the nut house, used as props, pawns, or simply drawn into madness. How did he manage to rig that building so quickly? How did he turn that cop so easily? After a while you let go of reason, and the Joker becomes more as a virus than a villain. He can't live without a host.

Favorite new blogger

On racial politics, Coates seems to have the most noble sentiments of both the left and right -- a nuanced vantage point that's rare to find. Plus, he's teaching his kid D&D, and quotes Nas when talking about it. I fear I won't be able to disagree with him much, particularly given his opinions...

on Lacy Clay stating Cohen should be barred from the CBC because he's white:

Obviously, on its face, Clay's logic is silly and Cohen should be allowed in the CBC. In fact, given his circumstance, I almost think he should sue them. Clay thinks he's punishing Cohen, but more likely he's punishing the black people who sent Cohen to Congress. That said, Clay's statement really is only shocking because we view black America through the prism of some old noble savage-type shit. The expectation, post-Martin Luther King, was that black folks should--and would--always and forever occupy the moral high ground.

But most of the people who benefited from the Civil Rights Movement weren't any more moral than the white people they wanted to compete with. They just wanted the right to get a better job and live in a bigger house. Nothing wrong with that. But we really shouldn't be shocked when black politicos, act in the same stupid provincial manner as other white ethnic politicos.

on Mark Penn's plan to peg Obama as "un-American":

I'm not particularly outraged by this. Let Mark be Mark. The fact is, if anything, it looks like Clinton ultimately held back, no? I was pretty pissed about that hard-working white voters remark, but for some reason, I've come to think of it as a slip. Let me expound on that. Not a slip, like Clinton didn't mean it. But a slip like, it's exactly what she meant. It just wasn't supposed to be a dog-whistle. It was the un-pc truth. At least from her twisted perspective.

Taking the X out of Sex

Blending theory and a brave dose of personal info, Tracy Clark-Flory defends casual sex:

[As] the median age of marriage continues to climb, young women are spending a lot more time romantically vetting -- and being vetted. It isn't just that hooking up is becoming a common preamble to dating, either -- living in sin is increasingly a prelude to marriage. Hopefully, by taking several test-drives before buying, we'll be happier with our final investment.
...
I learned something from all of the men I dated. Sexually, I learned plenty about what turns me on. More important, by spending time in uncommitted relationships, what I wanted in a committed relationship became clearer.... [Y]ou can chastely date more men than you can count -- or sleep with every man who offers you a drink -- and not learn a damn thing about how to find a healthy relationship.

She also quotes a bit of wisdom from Kathy Dobie: "We learn less about intimacy in our youthful sex lives than we do about humanity ... Perhaps, this generation, by making sex less precious, less a commodity, will succeed in putting simple humanity back into sex."

Hooray!

About 125,000 gorillas were just discovered, doubling the previous estimate of global population.

Paradox of Racial Privilege

In his lengthy pushback against the "white-immigrants-shouldn't-be-punished-by-racial-preferences" sentiment, Coates wrote, "Jim Crow wasn't simply a crime against black people--it was a crime against the American future. It robbed this country of the innovation and ingenuity of some of its most patriotic citizens."

Agreed. And similarly (though to a much lesser extent!), affirmative action -- something that was meant to help blacks -- was a crime against blacks. While only a small percentage of black people have gotten jobs or school slots from the policy, it has adversely affected all African Americans by lowering expectations, diminishing agency, stigmatizing recipients, and cultivating widespread resentment among whites (legitimate or not).

What He Said

"My biggest problem [with affirmative action] is that it expends tremendous political capitol to help those in the black community who need it the least," - Ta-Nehisi Coates, the Atlantic's newest blogger (and who I had the honor of sparring with during my stint at the Daily Dish).

The Affirmative-Action Nominee

Though he "did not excel academically" and constantly broke the rules in high school, he ended up going to one of the country's top colleges, where he graduated 894 out of 899.

I'm sure his father being a four-star admiral had nothing to do with his acceptance to the Naval Academy.