Living in Spanglish

Fear of a Latino Planet

2009-06-01T17:17:00.007-04:00

We know why the right wing of the Republican Party is giving Sonia Sotomayor such hard time. They are scared silly of her. They look at her and see a Hollywood stereotype: an unbridled woman they can't control, like the character played by Linda Cristal, an Argentine fronting as a Puerto Rican in the LatinoExploitation classic "Cry Tough." It doesn't matter that the things she's being attacked for were logically consistent with things Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have said in the past.
The Republicans are in an identity crisis, and all they have left as a bogeyman is identity politics.

The Ballad of Gregory Rodriguez

Today's op ed column by center-right assimilationist Gregory Rodriguez (cq no accent) is a whole new take on the idea of self-hatred. In his subtle "The Generic Latino: What does the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor really say?" he argues for the abolition of the Latino category because, like white Republicans, he's a little bit queasy about being in the same room with a Puerto Rican.

While he has a point that many Latinos identify first with their home country over the broader category of "Latino," his analogy between French considering themselves French first over European and Latino ethnicities and Latino identification is ridiculously flawed. Europe's various tribes speak vastly different languages and have been feuding, well, since the days when the ruling language there was Latin. Spanish-speaking Latinos have been collectively racialized by Anglo-American hegemony over the hemisphere and have a considerably stronger unifying possibilities than Europeans.

Then he proceeds to tell his version of the origin of "Latino" political alliances, when Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans joined forces to create a common political purpose, something that in retrospect, should have raised "brown" flags.

He goes on:

Frank del Olmo, the Los Angeles Times columnist and associate editor, put it more squarely than most when he called the adoption of the catchall term "shortsighted" and "self-defeating." Del Olmo was instrumental in establishing which term the newspaper would adopt -- "Latino" -- but he also argued, in these very pages, that because Mexican Americans made up 65% of all Latinos (compared with 10% Puerto Rican and 4% Cuban), the generic term was more advantageous to non-Mexicans than it was to Mexican Americans. "The term Hispanic allowed other Latinos to use a large and growing Mexican American population to increase their influence," he wrote. "Add up all the Cubans and Puerto Ricans on the East Coast, for instance, and they are still outnumbered by all the Mexicans in the Los Angeles area alone."

This is laughable because so many commentators and politicians from the Left Coast have historically used the term Latino when they were really speaking about Mexican Americans. To imply that the use of Latino sucked political juice out of the Mexican American community is absurd. If anything, the notion of being Latino in America is closer to being Mexican-American than anything else.

Then he says:

I know just as many Mexican Americans who were moved by the nomination of a Puerto Rican woman to the Supreme Court as those who were not. I suspect that many voters may be happy enough about Sotomayor's achievement, but at the same time, they will realize that the elevation of a "Latina" goes only so far and not far enough. I suspect that they may even understand that Sotomayor's nomination could come at Mexican Americans' expense. Because the media and the political elites make no distinctions among Latino groups, Mexican Americans may find themselves waiting a very long time for one of their own to be nominated to the Supreme Court.

Sounds like he's still upset that they picked Jennifer Lopez to play Selena. Not one word that he is in any way pleased about the nomination of a woman whose class background is identical to the majority of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles, and who has consistently put herself on the line as an advocate for Spanish-speakers and minority women, and is being viciously attacked for that.

"They may still decide that Frank del Olmo was right," Rodriguez (cq no accent) concludes. "Becoming generic Latino or Hispanic was self-defeating. Maybe it's time to dump the catchall terms."

Well actually now that Gregory Rodriguez (cq no accent) no longer wants to be Latino, my Puerto Rican ass is feeling a lot better about identifying as such. After all, this is the "public intellectual" who quoted New York Times reporter Alan Riding (whose authoritative weight stems from the fact that he covered the Contra War during the '80s) to prove the supremacy of the Mexican American experience:

"While many other Latin American nations and cultures were the products of conquest and colonization, 'Mexico alone is truly mestizo: it is the only nation in the hemisphere where religious and political--as well as racial--mestizaje took place.' (xii, Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds, 2007 Pantheon Press)

Well gee whiz, maybe that's why Sonia Sotomayor is a disappointment. What could she possibly have learned about "mestizaje" or multiculturalism growing up in the South Bronx? A place where Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, African-Americans, and so many other razas made a mestizaje that birthed hiphop, salsa, graffitti, among other things (Colin Powell?). Should we be mourning the fact that alleged perjurer and probable war criminal Alberto Gonzales (cited as "one of our own," by Rodriguez on p. xvi, ibid), despite many teases from George W., never even got nominated?

Beyond Blithering Nonsensical Neoliberals

2009-05-21T10:57:00.006-04:00

Okay I'm blowing the whistle. Time out. This opportunistic Errol Louis-style neoliberal "sack of dog mess" (to quote Whoopi on Glen Beck) ill-logic must end. Can we put a lid on the post-racial obfuscation parade? I'm pretty sure even Colson Whitehead doesn't appreciate it; all he did was write a novel about a black teenager who spent a summer in the Hamptons.

Today's Daily News column by Errant Errol, referenced above, entitled "Beyond Black and White: Obama Signals a Less Tribal Time in City Politics" is a piece of apologist anti-politics political commentary as disheartening as has been produced in a local tabloid for some time. Under the guise of announcing a new era where "tribal" politics is being replaced by "a referendum on the economic plight of the middle class," Louis seems unfazed that the Obama administration's tacit endorsement of Michael Bloomberg's re-election run is a complete abandonment of the majority of New Yorkers, who can only dream of being middle class.

Here is the crux of Louis's logic (and it's frighteningly similar to the weakest part of Obama's worldview): ethnic and racial politics have failed, left us with nothing but a legacy of corruption and inefficiency; the new politics is bipartisan, unencumbered by racial "special interests," and petty corruption.

So, the Obama administration, unwilling to investigate the illegal activities of the previous administration, helping to engineer the Wall Street takeover of the economy during a time of crisis, even siding with the Bush administration by denying Valerie Plame's rights to sue over being outed as a CIA agent by Dick Cheney's office, is more interested in alliances with Michael Bloomberg, one of the world's richest men, because of their common desire to save the middle class.

Bloomberg, who is only in the position to run because he pressured his own City Council to overturn a law that prevented a New York mayor to run for a third term, and who is an unabashed champion of the same corporate swill that drove the country into financial ruin, is then an example of a new politics that is not bogged down by the tired old issues of the '60s. And that's why Obama won't support Comptroller Bill Thompson, the likely Democratic challenger, an African-American, even though even Bill Clinton supported Dinkins over Giuliani in 1993.

Hey, it's post-racial. The same kind of post-racial politics that results in record-breaking stop and frisk operations by the NYPD, 90% of which were of blacks and Latinos.

Send 'Em On Over!

The Democratic Senate, which led the call to close the human-rights violating Guantánamo base in U.S.-occupied Cuba, is now too worried about NIMBY issues to support its closing. Keith Olberman's Countdown on MSNBC has a great interview with the Economic Development Director of Hardin Montana, in which the guy practically begs the administration to send the inmates there, saying that the locals prefer them to sex offenders. But, hey, why not send them to Puerto Rico? It would be a big boost to the economy there, and the inmates are already used to the tropical climate!

Last but not least, here's a classic Chomsky leftier-than-thou piece on why all of the liberal handwringing over the war crimes committed by the Bush administration isn't seeing that this is just business as usual. The set-up of his invocation of the "original 9-11" Chile CIA coup is brilliant.

Solo Star State

2009-05-20T11:33:00.002-04:00

This is a photo from El Nuevo Día, the pro-statehood newspaper of Puerto Rico, a photo that would probably not run in any other newspaper in the world. It shows Puerto Rico's resident commissioner, Pedro Pierluisi, shaking hands with Representative Nick Rayhall (D-West Virginia), on the occasion of the submission of yet another proposed plebiscite on Puerto Rico's "status," or colonial relationship with the United States.

Why Nick Rayhall? Well, the distinguished West Virginian is the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, which is the venue through which issues pertaining to Puerto Rico are heard. Pierluisi is a non-voting member of Congress whose role is to suggest things that, in this case, don't even make the Committee's homepage as part of its "Latest Committee News."

The pro-statehood party is currently in power in Puerto Rico, with its new governor and ex-resident commissioner Luis Fortuño benefitting from a misuse-of-funds "scandal" that brought down his predecessor, ex-resident commissioner Anibal Acevedo-Vilá. (Tangentially related to the U.S. Attorney scandal, which involved Bush White House appointees going after political enemies of some Republican faction, Acevedo-Vilá's prosecution resulted in his acquittal just months after he lost the election.) With the economy tanking rapidly, unemployment flirting with 20% and massive budget cuts to the government, the island-colony's largest employer, there is a good chance that Puerto Ricans will vote for a change in status as specified by the first round of the proposed resolution.

Puerto Rico flirting again with statehood? Still a bit of a laugh considering the anti-Latino bent this country's been on over the last few years. But here's an idea: instead of Puerto Rico becoming the 51st state, how about replacing Texas, whose governor is threatening to secede from the Union. It really wouldn't be too much of a stretch, I mean the flags are almost the same:

Call it the "Solo Star State."

Invisible Island

2009-04-21T11:46:00.005-04:00

Puerto Rico y Cuba son dos alas del mismo ave"

-Pablo Milanes

Back in the days of nueva trova, that uniquely Cuban form of hippie-assed folk-singing that celebrated the collective triumphs of da people, there was a song that imagined "Puerto Rico and Cuba" as "two wings of the same bird." This sort of Cold War air-kiss encouraging the free associated state to your right to join hands with its socialist neighbor on the left (or at least that's how it looks if you're viewing a standard Mercator Projection) was just the kind of thing that made the good old boys in Washington nervous. Hence, the 1978 Cerro Maravilla affair, a sordid tale of political assassination that is unfortunately almost forgotten.

Twelve years later, a movie that depicted those events called "A Show of Force," which starred, among others, Amy Irving, Andy Garcia, Robert Duvall, and Lou Diamond Phillips, opened in New York, the city with more Puerto Ricans than San Juan, with almost no publicity, and closed a week later. There were rumblings about a media blackout, but of course this was met with stifled yawns in the pre cable-news era.

But are things any different now? Fast forward to April 18 in Trinidad, and Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega, who originally rose to power in the 1979 Sandinista Revolution, laments that the meeting he and Hugo Chávez and Barack Obama and several Latin American heads of state are attending should not be called "the Summit of the Americas" because Cuba and Puerto Rico were not represented.

At least that's what I read in this blog in Newsweek. Katie Connely's post describes Ortega's speech as "peripatetic," which etymology buffs will note derives from the Latin words adding up to "walk around." You know, meander. But Connely, clearly trying to avoid accusations of meandering, does not waste a single word on why Ortega mentioned Puerto Rico at all. Not even a parenthetical like: (Puerto Rico's representation as a nation would be irrelevant since it is an unincorporated territory of the U.S. and therefore not part of Latin America. In fact, it's new Governor, who is tied to the U.S.'s Republican party, recently named the assistant director of Puerto Rico's branch of the FBI as the island's police commisioner) perhaps.

Connely, however, should probably be commended for mentioning Puerto Rico at all. The rest of the media acts as if Ortega never mentioned it in the most soundbite-worthy comment of his peripatetic speech. Take Fox News.com's dispatch, "Obama Endures Ortega Diatribe." It ends with this strangely edited, peripatetic quote:

"This summit and I simply refuse to call it summit of the Americas. Yes, we are gathered here, we have a large majority of presidents, heads of state of Latin America and the Caribbean," Ortega said, lamenting the lack of Cuban participation in the summit due to it exclusion since 1962 from the Organization of American States. "They're absent from this meeting. One is Cuba, whose crime has been that of fighting for independence, fighting for sovereignty of the peoples. I don't feel comfortable attending this summit. I cannot feel comfortable by being here. I feel ashamed of the fact that I'm participating at this summit with the absence of Cuba."

"They're absent from this meeting?" "One is Cuba"? Somehow I'm not seeing Puerto Rico in here. I think I'll have better luck checking the travel section.

Open Ignorance of Gringo-America

2009-04-19T11:13:00.004-04:00

Whether you like Hugo Chávez or not, you have to give him some credit on this one. He has exposed Barack Obama, emissary of hope, as a straight-up Gringo. In the middle of a meeting with Latin American heads of state, Chávez got out of his seat, and with cameras flashing, he gave him a copy of Eduardo Galeano's "Open Veins of Latin America." While it was clearly a move designed to embarrass Obama, neither the president nor his handlers were able to manage an equally clever response.

Maybe that's because when it comes to Latin America, the less said the better. Neither The New York Times nor NBC News, two of the bastions of the "liberal media" establishment, had anything to say about the significance of the book, which is a painstakingly crafted account of the exploitation of Latin America by the U.S. and Europe. The NBC Nightly News report on the incident filed by Chuck Todd, rumored to be on the verge of getting his own show, didn't even mention the title of the book (Journalism 101?). An AP report suggested that Obama may not read the book because of his "crowded night stand." "I think it's in Spanish, so that might be a tad on the difficult side," said White House portavoz Robert Gibbs.

Sure, if you zoom in on the above photograph, it's fairly clear that the edition Chávez gave Obama was the Spanish one, "Venas Abiertas de América Latina." But the English translation of this 35-year-old text, (called obscure by CNN.com) widely assigned in universities all over the U.S. since its publication, is ridiculously easy to obtain--while much has been made that it's #2 on amazon.com as I write this, Galeano is a star in North America.

Obama, who had never been anywhere in Latin America (unless you count Puerto Rico, which was absent from the agenda, elided by the fuss over Cuba despite this announcement that the U.S. was going to begin to "re-evaluate" the enchanted island's status beginning in mid-May) until last week, believed that Chávez had given him one of the Venezuelan president's own books. "I was going to give him one of mine," Obama said.

So, the leader of the free world is assuming here that anyone who gives him a book is automatically just engaged in self-promotion, and he had missed the chance to self-promote back. This is what must have been front-and-center on his mind, since he had recently disclosed that the bulk of his income from 2008 was attributable from sales of "one of mine ."

There's little left to say but, "Que gringería!" (Pardon my temporary inability to figure out how to put an upside-down question mark into this blogger interface.) It's obvious that any serious discussion of Latin America's role in the world economic system is so subversive to GringoAmerica's project of liberal democratic benevolence that even an administration as seemingly enlightened as this one can't help but come off decidedly Bush-like.

As my tocayo Evo put it so eloquently to Obama, "I can see publicly that there has been a change, that you've learned--but the actions on the ground of your people in my country are no different."

Shut It Down!

2009-02-19T17:04:00.005-05:00

It may seem strange for someone who has spent most of their life writing for the print media to call for shutting down a place that employs people who are ostensibly my peers, but enough is enough. This is a matter of human rights. The New York Post, perhaps the most important print media property of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp empire, has been spewing vile insults that pass for "journalism" for as long as he has owned it. The appearance of this latest incomprehensibly disgusting cartoon should surprise no one. The cartoonist is the same one who produced the sliming of mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer, portraying him as a servant of Al Sharpton, which helped cost him the race in 2001. Delonas's "work" is well-known as a tasteless freak show, as is shown in this Gawker spread.

But let's not call for the shutdown of the Post just because of this nauseating display. It's so easy to overlook the years of poisonous drivel that so often appears on its editorial pages, and is spewed out by its columnists and reporters. This is just not a case of cartoon sensationalism out of control. The New York Post, like the rest of the instruments of Murdoch's empire (I haven't even mentioned Fox News) is a sustained attack on human warmth, grace, and intelligence that has unfortunately caused more damage than can be undone in a few short years. It has created a corrupt, anti-human worldview that actually has traction with the everyday people that consume it and has been a major disrupter of the capacity to analyze and critique the disastrous presidency of the previous eight years. We are all paying for that now.

Lastly, the mostly unsourced complaints from disgruntled Post employees, who have tacitly endorsed this reign of horror all along, ring a little hollow. Murdoch actually benefits from the illusion that there is internal self-critique in his malicious empire. That's part of the game he plays. The prudent thing for those with principle would be to resign. And for the rest of us to refuse to ever contribute one more cent to Murdoch's toxic "journalism" ever again.

War Cabinet, Taino Dreams

2008-12-02T12:37:00.002-05:00

What can I tell you? The fact that the Wall Street Journal has called this the "war cabinet" doesn't make me feel very comfortable. I don't understand, am I part of a radical far-left fringe for wondering why someone who is on the board of Chevron or "that one," an ex-CIA director and blowback-creator represent "change?"

So far we got Clintonianism after Clintonianism. We might have well elected Hillary.

While we're (not) on the subject, I'm kind of irritated by the last two Damien Cave pieces about Puerto Rico. They kind of reek of this being a "downtime" thing for Cave, who has spent a lot of time covering Iraq. He's a nice writer, but his superficial analysis of Puerto Rican politics really are a disservice, and this last one about Taino "syncretism" is also lackluster.

When Cave quotes archaeologist Miguel Rodriguez Lopez saying "There is a feeling that [Taino culture] represents our primary roots" without any balancing statement about Puerto Ricans' African roots, and then references Brazilian carnaval without mentioning its African origins, the piece becomes a farce.

I'm not against identifying with Taino per se. Some kind of Afro-Taino mix is certainly central to puertorriqueñidad. And I'm all for embracing our Spanish roots, most of which are Moro/arabe/judío, and sometimes I think when I go way back in my gene pool I must have had some roots on the Catalán waterfront. But let's not get into over-simplified "home-coming queen, Halloween, 'Last of the Mohicans' and Las Vegas showgirl syncretism."

Also, curious about why Plaxico Burress was so driven to go to LQ's "Latin night."

Race Baiting Spikes, Critique of Pragmatic Politics pt. 2

2008-11-17T11:43:00.005-05:00

The narrative is all-too familiar. Group of pimply-faced adolescents get drunk and decide to go out and smack down a scapegoated victim, whether it's Bensonhurst, Howard Beach, or Jena, Louisiana. Fueled by racism absorbed through family circles, backyard parties, locker room chatter, and maybe now video games and internet neo-nazis, they take to the streets in a search and destroy mission to erase perceived blight.

But as they televise the above-pictured perp walk again and again, you can't help but thinking, what's wrong with this picture? The lead goon, Jeffrey Conroy, looks the part, and there are always a couple of undersized wannabe thugs trailing in the ringleader's wake, but check out the two black (one half-Puerto Rican) faces bringing up the rear. How do we explain Jose Pacheco and Anthony Hartford?

"It's tragic to see our youth of color adpoting the racist anti-immigrant culture," writes a veteran anti-racist activist in an e-mail.

Long Island has had a noticeable recent history of anti-immigrant hysteria, and one town's case even prompted a well-known documentary. But is it also becoming a site for a new melting pot, where even people of color can band together with racist whites to act out against newly perceived others?

This is actually the second time in a year that someone with partial Puerto Rican ancestry was involved in a race-baiting controversy. The late Daniel Cicciaro Jr. was killed by John White, an African American man who came out of his house to defend his son, who had been chased by Cicciaro and friends flinging racial epithets. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that a neo-Nazi group bent on making a martyr out of Cicciaro backed off when talking to his mother, who informed them that she was Puerto Rican.

Perhaps some of the facts regarding Pacheco and Hartford's involvement will come out during the grand jury process. And of course this is a great opportunity for the well-meaning members of Long Island's highly segregated communities to make something out of the healing process.

But those of us complacent with the idea that the Northeast, or even the New York metro area is a "safe" multicultural zone should revisit some basic presuppositions. Racial incidents in Staten Island, as well as across the country may be seen as temporary spikes caused by the shock waves from Obama's election, but they also might signal a troubling future.

Critique of Obama Pragmatism, Pt. 2

Well all this smiling and sitting down with previous political foes, this "reaching across the aisle" as it were is all well and good. Still I wonder how Obama (we?) can do this in a way that doesn't assume "all things being equal." How much did the Bush administration concern itself to reach across the aisle? How many Democrats did they put in Cabinet positions (I'm jumping the gun on this, but there is much chatter about Secretary of Defense Robert Gates staying and there was at least a hint about Chuck Hagel and Richard Lugar up for the cabinet)? Today's new stuff about some disturbing CIA connections for individuals picked to head Obama's Intelligence Transition Team doesn't sit well either.

I'm not talking revenge here, nor am I presuming to "descend to the level" of the one-party state Republican thugs that tried to hijack the constitution permanently. It's just that this country was pushed so far to the right in the last eight years, it's not exactly time for meeting people who relentlessly race- and communist-baited you halfway.

Is the essential contradiction in ObamaLogic that the more important "change" to be brought about in his administration is the "break from politics as usual," meaning "partisan politics," rather than a complete break from the catastrophically undemocratic policies imposed by the Bush administration?

Okay, it's true, the guy isn't even in office yet and I'm giving him a hard time. It was pretty great to see the happy couple on 60 Minutes last night.

Rahm Emanuel Update

2008-11-13T20:56:00.002-05:00

Apparently Rahm Emanuel or someone close to him reads the Living in Spanglish blog. Well, maybe they read some Time magazine blog or an ABC News blog or, I don't know, Gawker. Of course all those entries were published the day after mine. At any rate, Obama's recently anointed Chief of Staff has apologized for his father's profoundly inappropriate remarks.

Maybe this is a good sign.

Party Over?

2008-11-12T11:26:00.004-05:00

Okay it's time to stop snickering at Sarah Palin. Don't want to be a party pooper, but the bad news is starting to trickle in from Iraq, Pakistan, and Gaza. And I'm not even going to get into the economy, or even Madonna and A-Rod. It's time to face reality, and it isn't all that pretty, notwithstanding the promise of presidential puppy. (Could it be? Puppy politics becomes another form of playing the "mixed" race card?)

The first of several matters that may stand in the way of our unconditional love for the "skinny kid from Hawaii with a funny name" (but does he have game?) are some controversial cabinet selections:

1) There are concerns about some crazy stuff Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's father apparently said, with no word so far on Rahm's desire himself to distance himself from these remarks. Ewan MacCaskill and Suzanne Goldberg of the Guardian UK write:

In an interview with the Israeli daily Ma'ariv, Emanuel's father, Dr. Benjamin Emanuel, said he was convinced that his son's appointment would be good for Israel. 'Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel,' he was quoted as saying. 'Why wouldn't he be? What, is he an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House.'"

Hopefully something was lost in the translation.

2) Another touchy subject is Lawrence "Larry" Summers potential nomination as treasury secretary. You probably remember his strange comments on the intellectual inferiority of women while president of Harvard University. Perhaps more important was Summers' central role in the implementation of NAFTA which he did at under-secretary of the treasury under Bill Clinton. U.S. labor activist Peter Cervantes-Gautschi writes that Summers "engineered the destruction of Mexico's economy through forced increase of interest rates to unmanageable levels--business and farm loans went from 11% to 56%, credit card rates from 7% to 61%, home loans from 5% to 615, car loans from 7% to 91%. The result was massive human suffering and the forced migration of millions of economic refugees to the U.S."

3) Finally, Eric Holder, of the prestigious law firm Covington and Burling, has been mentioned as a possible attorney general candidate. It turns out that Holder is a lawyer for Chiquita Brands International, which has admitted to paying $1.7 million and supplying arms to Colombian paramilitary death squads, leading to the death of 4000 Colombian civilians in the banana growing regions of that country. So much for Obama's enlightened remarks during the debate on why he was cautious about the Colombia free trade agreement?

To give Obama credit, he has not given in to Bush on tying the Colombia free trade agreement to a bailout of US auto makers. And the Holder appointment is not a given.

But it remains to be seen just what all this talk of "post-partisan" politics really means.

Change Has Come

2008-11-05T10:14:00.002-05:00

Barack Obama’s critics have long been skeptical of his main campaign slogan, “change you can believe in.” They have tried to render the idea of change as meaningless, claiming Obama’s promise is vague and unsubstantial. Instead, they have made vague and unsubstantial attempts to paint him as a posturing neophyte, or worse, a danger to America.

Now, with the election of the Senator from Illinois as President, America will finally know what change means.

The most important change brought about by Obama’s victory is the end of the conservative Republican era. It dates back to Ronald’s Reagan’s ascension to power in 1980, an election that was also seen as groundbreaking. This Republican hegemony culminated in the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush, one that brought about a tragically unnecessary war, the destruction of the middle class, and the deterioration of America’s standing in the world.

Obama’s victory, as well as the increased Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, are a clear mandate that repudiates the Republican policies of reckless militarism and the redistribution of wealth from the majority of middle and lower-class Americans to a small, wealthy elite.

Voters have expressed a desire to change foreign and domestic policies so that wars are not entered into cavalierly, government spending does not wind up in the pockets of political cronies. They also want the next administration to prioritize education, health, and environmental issues.

Another change that Obama’s election brings is equally important. Despite the Senator’s own campaign’s minimizing of the importance of his race, the election of a black president is a change that this country has long needed.

Since the Civil Rights movement of the ‘60s resulted in the elimination of overt discrimination against blacks, Americans have often disagreed over whether the problem of racial prejudice has been resolved. Much has been accomplished, and people of color have made great strides. But the continued impoverishment of the majority of black people, as well as an atmosphere of inflammatory racially tinged attacks on Obama demonstrate the persistence of racism in our country.

Barack Obama’s election goes a long way to address this issue.

He seems uniquely qualified to speak from the perspective of a black American, while at the same time he has a direct connection to the white majority. And while it may not happen during his lifetime, he can play the most important role in helping this country deal with the transition to a multicultural, multiracial society.

In a significant way, Obama’s unorthodox background as a biracial man from Hawaii is a refutation of the conventional wisdom that has dominated America’s historical narrative. When someone who is not “apparently” American becomes this country’s most powerful leader, the entire idea of America changes, and in a way, we begin a new American era with a clean slate.

As Obama prepares to take office, many progressives will wonder whether the candidate who won in part due to massive corporate campaign contributions will stay true to his lofty idealism and be a true president for the people. But for this moment, we can afford to keep our hopes high that a real change has finally come.

No Bama Becomes Yes It's in the Can

2008-10-15T10:27:00.006-04:00

"If he were white, this would be a blowout," says former Jesse Jackson presidential campaign adviser Harold Ickes in today's Times. The story rightly points out that race remains an ostensible elephant in the room, with neither McCain nor Obama bringing it up overtly. Still, many of McCain's recent smears of Obama have racial elements embedded in them. From the fear-mongering "Obama-is-both-a-black-and-Arab-with-ties-to-terrorism" drivel pushed by various websites and Fox News-legitimized extremists to the above-ground association-game tying Obama to Bill Ayres, the subprime mortgage crisis and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the more recent phony Acorn voter fraud charges, the American voter is being bombarded with a chronic "othering" of the Democratic presidential nominee.

But the strange thing is, the race is becoming a blowout. If so, then a variety of factors is helping to nullify the perception of Obama as black. The economic collapse, while ineluctably tarring McCain with a conservative Republican free market brush, is apparently the biggest reason for Obama's ascension. Obama appears to be the calmer, more intelligent mind in the face of crisis, with more articulately crafted solutions. While this may seem like a simple case of one candidate rising to the occasion and outclassing another, it may be an indication of the moment that Obama has passed into the realm of the "accepted" black man.

In his Huffpost column, Eric Deggans interestingly cites a line of dialog from Spike Lee's classic film Do the Right Thing. When Lee's character asks John Torturro's Pino Frangione why he hates his Brooklyn neighborhood's black people while at the same time accept celebrities like Eddie Murphy and Magic Johnson, Pino responds:

"Magic, Eddie, Prince are not niggers...They're not really black. They're more than black. To me it's different."

Could it be that Obama's explicitly stated colorblind strategy has worked? Or does all of this prove that race prejudice is intrinsically tied to class prejudice, and once you transcend class, race doesn't matter? Can Obama get a taxi to stop for him in Manhattan?

No matter what outrage you may have over his campaign workers combing states like Montana and highlighting the fact that he is half-white, the Senator from Illinois now seems, barring a national-security-level October surprise, a lock to become the first black President. Ever. Probably because he's "more than black."

Or maybe, as Chocolate News insists, something else entirely.

Latino Auto-critique department:

I got an e-mail from NALIP today about WETA, the Washington-area PBS Channel, failing to air a documentary "Latinos '08" last week. While I'm willing to express my outrage that this station is turning its back on a program that offers a Latino perspective on national politics, of which there are precious few, I can't say I'm impressed by this particular one. Distorted to the point of absurdity with an overload of Republican-friendly talking heads, this doc reduces the "Latino" perspective to the Mexican-American one in a way that is almost insulting to the rest of us Latinos. Not to mention that the lavishing of praise on McCain (followed by faint cries of disappointment over his recent reversals) and barrage of attacks on Obama were right out of Karl Rove's playbook.

From the beginning, the talking heads talk about "Latinos" when they should really be talking about "Mexican-Americans." A detailed history of the UFW and Chicano movement segued into the Reagan Hispanic era and beyond, and you would never know that Puerto Rico is a colony of the U.S. and that there was a Cuban Revolution, or that these Caribbean folks are represented by several elected officials (in the U.S. House of Representatives). As the "favorable" New York Times review suggests: "Even after suggesting that Latino voters are a varied lot, some of these experts go right on referring to 'the Latino community' as if it were a monolithic entity." Any serious documentary on Latino politics must begin and end with an analysis that identifies three major constituencies: Mexican Americans in the West, Puerto Ricans in the Northeast, and Cubans in Florida, then touch on the mixed communities of Chicago and the Midwest and the new immigrant areas in the South.

Now the Wall Street Crisis Is Our Fault

2008-10-08T14:49:00.003-04:00

I'm not even going to go into the slime attack from the McCain/Palin team over the last few days. Palin in front of a beerhall putsch crowd screaming "terrorist!" "treason! and "kill him!" in reference to the Democratic presidential nominee. Nor will I spend any time on the infamous "that one" remark from last night's debate, which seemed like a "meds running low" moment from McCain. We should all be inured to this by now. If the Republican Party can't bring about a Permanent Republican government, they're going to brand everyone not on their side as Permanent Others.

But this "hate piece" from Ann Coulter really breaks some new ground. It inspired the following op ed piece, which was somewhat edited by the Progressive Media Project and hopefully will appear in a newspaper near you in the next few days:

Bailout Blame Game Unfairly Targets Minorities

Leave it to conservatives to inject a racial component into the current economic crisis. Over the last week, leading conservative commentators like Charles Krauthammer, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page have been trying to blame the crisis on minorities getting subprime mortgages.

The conservatives blame the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which was enacted to address a practiced called “redlining,” in which banks deliberately withheld credit from minority communities in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The act was intended “to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs…in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.”

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter has written that the CRA has fostered granting loans based on “nontraditional measures of creditworthiness, such as having a good jump shot or having a missing child named ‘Caylee.’”

While Coulter’s words can be dismissed as crudely racist, they echo a line of thought that asserts that since many of the subprime mortgages were given to minority borrowers, this “affirmative action” measure is at the root of the current crisis. But this attack on victims of predatory lending is as flawed as calling Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama a terrorist.

First, if the CRA was crafted over 30 years ago, why is it that only now subprime mortgages have created a crisis? Secondly, most of the disastrous subprime loans were made by mortgage brokers and disreputable lenders unregulated by the CRA. Third, according to data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, white and affluent borrowers took out 58 per cent of higher-cost loans, with blacks and Latinos accounting for 18 per cent each.

Just last week The New York Times reported that the Nehemiah housing program, which provides housing for minorities in that city’s outer boroughs has reported 10 defaults on 3900 households in the last 27 years. Hardly what you’d call an irresponsible group.

The true culprit in our current financial crisis is the policy of the Bush administration that rewrote rules for our lending and banking institutions that have enriched high-rolling financiers and bankrupted powerless average Americans. Current regulations allow institutions to charge higher fees to sell debt if loans fail, giving them an impetus to create the conditions for default in the first place.

These facts have implications for the recently signed bailout package, in which the government has agreed to purchase blocs of toxic subprime mortgages whose values are decreasing as a result of the crisis. The bailout also includes little aid to homeowners still trying to pay the predatory loans.

Now more than ever, it is clear that this country needs to reassess its domestic economic policy in a way that serves the majority of its hard-working citizens, rather than blame them for the excesses of a privileged few.

Link to the Right Wing From NY Times

2008-09-29T10:47:00.004-04:00

I understand that The New York Times opinion pages give plenty of space to right-moderate voices, but their currently featured post on "The Bilingual Debate" is pretty noxious. A thinly disguised Latino- and immigrant-baiter, Lance T. Izumi attacks Obama for saying that instead of worrying about English-only legislation, Americans should make sure their children can speak Spanish.

Let's let alone the fact that this reference has nothing to do with the touted success of Izumi's prized charter school, Sixth Street Prep in Los Angeles, where "full immersion" has a shockingly swift payoff. Izumi quotes the school's principal as saying "We've had tremendous success with having a student who is brand new from Mexico and would walk into a classroom 12 months later and you wouldn't be able to pick out which one he was." It's the old Invisible Mexican Trick.

Izumi's post is another example of how right-wing crankery gets legitimized by seemingly academically responsible think tanks, in this case the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy. A casual perusal of that website puts you in contact with names like George Will, Michael Medved, Sally Pipes, and even our old friend Margaret Thatcher. And check this hyperlink that Izumi's post gives to source Obama's aforementioned traitorous quote. It points to a blogger who refers to herself as Sister Toldjah. From there, you can move on to this hilarious video of Upper West Side New Yorkers, some who must be New York Times staffers, giving the finger to a small group of pro-McCain-Palin marchers. Talk about coming full circle.

Fear of a Black President

2008-09-24T10:35:00.004-04:00

Last week's AP/Yahoo Stanford University poll's revelations about race in the upcoming elections was bad enough. Surprise: 40 per cent of all white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks. The adjectives used to describe blacks agreed to by many respondents included "boastful," "lazy," "irresponsible," and of course, good old "violent." These widespread attitudes among Democrats and Independents had the potential to cost Obama 6 percentage points. What about the Bradley effect? Apparently, according to analysis of the poll, this was suppressed by virtue of the fact that the poll was conducted via computer, where whites were less inhibited about expressing their true views. Any casual reading of the posts below newspaper stories in many of our great tabloids, including New York's own Daily News and Newsday, reveals a thriving subculture of racist braying.

Then there was yesterday's report about the town of Roxbury, New Jersey being blanketed with racist fliers asking the question "Are you ready for a Black President?" Perhaps your initial reaction was something along the lines of, oh well, we've known for quite some time that fringe white supremacist groups have been penetrating eastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey, and even the Klan has been known to march in Philadelphia.

But if you look closely at this story, you'll find that the fliers were distributed by a group called The League of American Patriots, a group that seems to be part of a new brand of post-racial racists that have been trying to mainstream themselves in the manner of so-called racialist expert Jared Taylor. Taylor, who runs an utterly racist site called American Renaissance (check out the ads for books like "The Jena 6 Fraud" and "On Genetic Interests"), is taken so seriously by the mainstream media that he has appeared on CNN and Fox as a legitimate commentator. Even Daily KOS gave him space.

The League of American Patriots, whose flier asserts that "black ruled nations are the most unstable and violent in the world," and asks why Americans should "allow a black ruler to destroy us," are apparently fans of Taylor, having attended the American Renaissance Conference in February of this year. In a report that appears on their website, American Patriots commented that one of the speakers, Michael Walker "effectively discussed ways in which we can make the nationalist movement more palatable to the masses as opposed to 'appearing like a bunch of angry white men.'"

So far, the strategy doesn't seem to be working. But is this the tip of the proverbial iceberg?

McCain on Spain Is Mainly Insane

2008-09-18T20:09:00.008-04:00

For those of you worried about McCain's recent surge in the polls, worry no longer. Remember when he had to be corrected by loyal Democrat Joe Lieberman about the difference between the Sunnis and the Shia in Iraq? Well, as you've no doubt heard by now, the Arizona Senator (you know, the one who wouldn't support making Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a holiday in his home state) apparently doesn't know that Spain is in Europe, not Latin America. The Spanish press, I guess tongue in cachete interpreted his remarks as an unexplained elusiveness about his desire to meet with the Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. My gut feeling is that, upon hearing the name Zapatero, his 72-year-old brain accessed the neurons that stored his memories of the Zapatistas, which led him to Latin America, and that set up the typically Republican bifurcation between "pro-neoliberal" "friends" and "Marxist" enemies.

Here's what Obama should do in the debates: Ask McCain if he would meet with Cristian Castro to acknowledge a new movement toward religious freedom in Cuba. That would get him a little perplexed.

When in Doubt, Racialize

2008-09-15T10:39:00.004-04:00

Wasn't it only yesterday that the conservative media echo-chamber was pondering whether Obama was black enough? Those days seem long gone. Manning Marable writes eloquently about the shift from this strategy to the more blatant racializing that is slowly creeping to the surface. From the Clintons' 3 a.m. phone call ad, which Orlando Patterson stridently compares to Birth of a Nation, to the recent McCain-backed sex education ads, which even Karl Rove thinks was going too far, the endgame is clear: Obama is the not-to-be-trusted other. Not only is he African American, but he is a Muslim, a liberal elitist, and a pervert whose policies will get your daughters knocked up by the time they're 11 (for a more reasonable timetable on teen pregnancy, see Sarah Palin).

Interesting how yesterday Frank Rich proclaims that race is not as big an issue in the campaign as the fact that John McCain is far from a solid candidate, then winds up talking about race for several paragraphs. It seems you can't utter two consecutive sentences in print or anywhere in the blogosphere without race coming up. Check out this incredible report from the floor of the Value Voters Summit held by the Family Research Council in Washington last week. [Here's a partial speakers list for that event: Bill Bennett, Tom DeLay, Lou Dobbs, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, Phyllis Schlafly, Mitt Romney.] It's amazing how these supposedly pro-life, pro-Christian "activists" can allow these two Neanderthals sell this racist cereal box at their "summit" and let them get away with saying it's satire.

I guess you could say it's like putting lipstick on a pig.

Paterson Breaks the Code

2008-09-09T13:32:00.002-04:00

Not sure if the (New York) Daily News is trying to push the "race card" thing back into the forefront, but their current prominently placed blurb on Governor David Paterson's musings on the Republicans adds to yesterday's Living in Spanglish post nicely. "The Republican party is too smart to call Obama 'black,'" says the gov, who goes on to refer to Giuliani and Palin's continual trashing of Barack's stint as a "community organizer" as a subtle reference to not only people of color, but those who work in communities of color. For a more analytical take on this issue, Peter Drier and John Atlas's recent piece in The Nation is strongly insightful. But it's interesting that Paterson was willing to come out so stridently about the racial implications of the twin pit-bull attacks (Giuliani's of course, sans lipstick).

Black Flight

2008-09-08T11:09:00.007-04:00

While watching the Republican National Convention from St. Paul, Minnesota last week, I couldn't help but notice that almost everyone there seemed to be white. Wasn't it just a few years ago that Colin Powell and Condi Rice and J.C. Watts where all prominently associated with the Republican Party, and it was only a matter of time before the Party of Abraham Lincoln would become the real liberator of people of color from Boston to San Diego?

It turns out it wasn't my imagination. This excellent piece in the Washington Post contains several stunning revelations on the racial makeup of this year's RNC delegate pool. Among them: only 36 of the 2380 delegates seated on the convention floor are black, the lowest number in 40 years. That number is down from 167 in 2004, and 24 states had delegations with no (zero) black members. Only one African-American speaker, former Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele, was scheduled to speak during prime time at the convention.

[For Latinophiles, a CBS--New York TImes poll released last week estimated that only 5 per cent of the RNC delegates were Latino, the lowest percentage at the RNC since 1996. Please send this information on to Michael L. Barrera, President National Hispanic Business Information Clearinghouse, 1225 17th St, Suite 1500, Denver CO 80202, who, in response to my recent op ed about the presence of Latinos at the Democratic Convention sent the following e-mail: "Just a thought after reading your story about the Latino agenda at the DNC. Just wanted to strongly remind you that all Latinos are not Democrats."]

Apparently the Republicans have read the handwriting on the wall. After Katrina and Obama, why would they waste their time courting black votes. [For that matter, Latinophiles, have we noticed how McCain and his Annie Oakley running mate have not exactly claimed the immigration issue as one of their maverick concerns?] I guess it's no surprise that the Alaska governor was involved in a failed marketing business to be called Rouge Cou, French for je ne sais quoi.

Temple of Spectacle

2008-09-02T11:15:00.003-04:00

Make no mistake, this year's most-crucial-ever presidential election is rapidly being exploded from within by media madness. Of course the mainstream media has been sticking its not-so-invisible-hand into the picture as far back as the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debate, when it was widely speculated that voters who saw the debate on television thought Kennedy won, whereas those who heard it on the radio felt that Nixon won. But just as the news cycle was settling in to analyze the meaning of the Obama spectacle concluding the DNC in Denver, Hurricane Gustav collided with ex-beauty queen and teenage pregnancy advocate Sarah Palin to create the mother of all spectacles. I mean, how could Fox News Channel and CNN (=Politics) have it any better? Men in red, white, and blue windbreakers with special flap-enhanced sleeves spattering on at the edge of the levies, trying to break through as star reporters and meanwhile, at the northern end of the Mississippi, echoes of Jamie Lynn Spears and tabloid dysfunction drowning out the essential warmongering and police-state repression that is the Republican Party as effectively as an air raid siren. Take shelter in front of your TV sets! The big show is about to begin! The Republicans, now under the stewardship of the Christian Right and Rove protege Steve Schmidt (and perhaps even Rove himself, despite Rupert Murdoch's pathological slobbering) have opened a Pandora's box of media echo-chamber that may well drown out their own message.

Meanwhile, we're left to consider the aftermath of the Obama-as-spectacle message? Is he just using the Super Bowl halftime show as a vehicle to end the cycle of media echo-chamber, the repetition of conventional wisdom that has strangled the individual and critical thinking, or is he part of it? Could it be that the spectacle of a black man as president changes everything, even the spectacle itself? Stay tuned.

Pee Wee Moment Mitigates Militant Anger

2008-08-26T12:16:00.006-04:00

The mainstream media seem to be obsessed with re-creating this archetypal moment in the late '40s when Jackie Robinson integrated baseball as a way of making palatable the still-dicey Democratic nomination of Barack Obama for president. Witness this high-up quote from "post-racial" Representative Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. that Obama needed a "Pee Wee Reese moment." While it is true that sometimes contemporary America seems like a howling mob of racist baseball fans, Pee Wee had less baggage than the Clintons in terms of sharing power.

Last night Chris Matthews and his liberal sidekick Keith Olbermann offered lavish praise to Michelle's somewhat halting, if generally pleasing speech. Despite being an ex-ESPN talking head, Olberman carefully avoided the Jackie Robinson trope, while Matthews gushed that this was a "Bill Cosby family." They did everything America asked them to do, work hard, study, teach their kids right from wrong. Would have lived in a Brooklyn brownstone (constructed on a set at Kaufman-Astoria Studios in Queens) and daughter would have gone out with Lenny Kravitz. "These people" had what it took to convince the most skeptical non-racist Middle Americans (people that say "why do they need affirmative action?" "why do they have welfare?"). "They have done everything that every conservative white guy has ever said everybody should do in this country."

Of course Juan Williams, uncowed by white guilt, felt it necessary to inform Fox News viewers that Michelle was prone to using a "kind of militant anger" to express her views. Well, I don't know about you, but her brother's admission that she'd memorized every episode of The Brady Bunch had a kind of brutal feel to it. It's as if she were saying, "take that, whitey."

Daddy Yankee Go Home

2008-08-25T17:30:00.003-04:00

It's all over the news cycle right now, but this is disappointing news. DY was a gracious interview subject and he at least has ideas about what could happen with reggaeton, but this endorsing McCain move, done at an Arizona high school today, is embarrassing. Speculation about how this was orchestrated is already raging. I guess my favorite conspiracy theory would some how tie the late "Coquito," the late Puerto Rican drug dealer who was also a reggaeton impresario and apparently friends with two PNP (statehood party) politicians to both McCain and Yankee.

It's not a stretch to link alleged Coquito associate Héctor Martínez Maldonando, the senator from the Puerto Rican town of Carolina to the McCain effort, since much of his party is behind the Arizona senator. But DY rival Don Omar has been more strongly associated with Coquito. Still it seems like strange bedfellows.

I could spout outrage about DY, and how this sort of stuff is proof of his weasely PNP sellout loyalty, or that the whole Torres de Sabana thing should have been ample warning about his lack of authenticity and culture-stealing ways. But seriously, it's so unusual for a music or film megastar to have coherent politics that I'm not shocked. Tego knew this from the beginning and that's why he's scaled back his expectations since the first major label deal soured on him. Interesting to see how Calle 13's political stridency holds up in their new album expected in October.

Did I talk about race yet? Well that's probably the most troubling aspect of all of this. DY is simultaneously the biggest and "lightest" reggaeton star, something many observers don't think is a coincidence. Is this just another example of Latinos (Hispanics?) failing to warm up to Obama over race? If it is, frankly it's nauseating.

The Way of the White Hispanic

2008-08-20T10:54:00.003-04:00

The National Latino Institute for Policy is all over the latest neocon attempt to reassure America that predictions that a majority minority nation are overblown. First, they e-mailed me this anxious piece by long-time white-identified Hispanic (and former Reagan administration employee) Linda Chávez (bet she doesn't know her name takes an accent). The basis of her argument is that intermarriage will assure that Hispanics take their rightful place alongside Germans, Italians, Poles, etc. in the Great American Melting Pot and be erased from the rolls of the encroaching minority hordes.

Chávez, who proudly claims English and Irish ancestry, as well as being one of those "special" New Mexicans with an uninterrupted Spanish lineage, is the forerunner of neoliberal attempts to fetishize intermarriage as the solution to the Hispanic Problem championed by New America Foundation fellow Gregory Rodríguez (again, accent added).

Today, Jeff Jacoby, who was suspended in 2000 by his newspaper, The Boston Globe, for "journalistic misconduct," has a whole new rationale. The census bureau's calculations are based on stats that don't count Hispanic whites as white! So take heart, white supremacists...oops, I mean, those who prefer an objective assessment of the total white population (by extrapolating from an unrelated observation by Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson), "of the 46.6 million Hispanics in the United States today, at least some 22 million are white."

This of course, begs the question. If you think you're white, are you white? Or, if you think you're not a racist, are you not a racist?

Obviously these are questions for minds far more powerful and exacting than mine. Perhaps I should take the advice, given by both Chávez and Jacoby, which I'll quote here.

First, Linda:

Isn't it time we quit obsessing about race and ethnicity? America has successfully integrated millions of people from every region of the world.

Then, Jeff:

With a little luck, common sense, and goodwill, it will seem as odd in 2050 to focus on "non-Hispanic whites" as it would today to insist only "non-German whites" are really white. Better still, perhaps by then we will have really progressed, and abandoned the pernicious notion of racial categories altogether.

I'm not even going to bring up the fact that neither commentator mentioned African Americans vis a vis assimilation, rates of intermarriage, or the Melting Pot.

What will Obama do with this talking point? Ignore at his own peril?

Obama Americana

2008-08-19T12:22:00.003-04:00

Frank Rich's most recent column pointed out that "Americans" are tired of hearing about Obama, which is actually the McCain attack/deflect attention machine's fault. Possible subtext: Americans aren't just tired of hearing about Obama, but about "others" in general. After all, as leaked by Obama insiders, the plan seems to be to use the Democratic Convention to create an "all-American image" for Barack, to "tackle what members of both parties see as his greatest vulnerability with undecided voters: his 'otherness.'"

Speculation about his vice-presidential pick at the moment, center around two "normal" guys, Evan Bayh, Tom Kaine, and the slightly less normal Joe Biden, furthering the sense that otherness is next to un-electability-ness. Wonder about last week's reportage about "growing diversity in swing counties" could make a lot of this de-othering process not as necessary as his handlers think.

Minority Majority

2008-08-14T12:50:00.006-04:00

So it turns out that the minority will be the majority in the US of A even faster than previously thought. Now, if we can only make it to 2042, which could be right on schedule for the summer release of Tropic Thunder 10. Speaking of that devil, isn't it extraordinary how there is absolutely no serious discussion of Robert Downey's blackface role? Talk about the end of history. You have Manohla talking Jewface here, a guide to appreciating the "genuine humor and satiric intent underneath the unerring waves of bad taste and political incorrectness" there. How about the immortal David Edelstein in New York Ragazine proclaiming that Robert Downey, Jr. "makes a damn fine Negro." If he do say so himself.

The only reason I even looked at New York was its cover subject, and about the only thing worth looking at there was this brilliant essay by Patricia Williams. And maybe the amazing photo of Obama's mama at his wedding to the fabulous Michelle.

This is the picture that tells us more about the future of America than people like Jerome R. Corsi can bear to imagine. Corsi's new book represents yet another wave of paranoid ravings designed to keep the McCain-Obama race inexplicably close. Which it continues to be, for obvious reasons. Yep, it seems, "Obama has some problems, particularly with white voters." At the top of this Politico pundit's "seven worrisome signs for Obama" is, of course, race.

Not surprising, you think? It's not only a Republican problem. Those recently revealed internal memos from the Hillary campaign yielded this quote from Clinton strategist Mark Penn about Obama's race vulnerability:

All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light. Save it for 2050.

Or, at least, 2042.