Bad American

America you make me so proud.

BIG TIP of the hat this morning to the fine folks at Plunderbund who landed up getting linked to Pandagon on this issue.

This is what we’re talking about folks:

Yes, it is what you think it is.

From Joseph’s post on Plunderbund:

I still haven’t heard back from the company actually selling the toys, so I did a little research.

It turns out that THESOCKOBAMA CO., LLC is registered in Utah as a Limited Liability Company.

Obama at his breakfast photo op in Greenwood, Indiana Tuesday. And yes, I HAVE been to Greenwood and actually ATE in that restaurant (the food’s pretty good). For more on what one diner patron thought of Obama, see the quote highlighted in blue below. But, according to the NY Times, one of the two guys sitting here said he’d vote for Obama. I don’t know which one that was.

I wish it was because I’m getting sick of the entire charade, but this Democratic nomination fight is not over.

Not by a longshot.

Of course, the pundits are all saying it’s over this morning - that Obama’s North Carolina landslide and squeaker loss in Indiana seals the deal for the charismatic Senator from Illinois. The Huffington Post and the Drudge Report come together in agreement on this issue.

So. How long have some of you been watching the Clintons anyway?

And you really think she’s going to quit?

She’s lending her campaign more millions and her aides are presenting an obstinate face to the TV media this morning.

And check this out:

With few states left, she and her aides said they would step up their efforts to count the disputed results in Florida and Michigan, where the states held contests in defiance of Democratic Party rules. If Mrs. Clinton can win the battle to have the delegations from those two states seated at the conventions on the basis of the vote there, she could greatly reduce Mr. Obama’s lead in pledged delegates.

But neither candidate actively campaigned in Florida or Michigan, and Mr. Obama did not appear on the Michigan ballot.

Still, in a sign of where the Clinton campaign is going, her aides are asserting that the winner will need 2,209 delegates, not 2,025. That higher number reflects the full inclusion of Florida and Michigan, which held their primaries before the date permitted by the Democratic Party.

Maureen Dowd:

Fox News reports that the Clintons are planning a summer campaign with TV appearances, fliers and rallies, between the end of the primary and the convention, to drag back superdelegates trying to flock to Obama. The Democratic race has been a scorpion and a butterfly in a bottle. Hillary tore Barry’s wings off, and so psyched him out with her silly goading — “Enough about the speeches and the big rallies!” she cried — that he gave up his magical trump cards.

But that’s not all: there’s still one very big race card left for the Clintons to play (overtly now) to the superdelegates: that Barack Obama cannot win white America in a general election against John McCain.

And they’ll use this kind of anecdotal evidence (plus the polling data that will back it up) from the Dowd column:

Wandering around Indiana, appearing in neighborhoods and at diners without any advance notice, talking to handfuls of people, Obama strived to seem less lofty and more mortal. Hounded by Hillary, Bill and Rev. Wright, he just looked sort of numb. When Obama went to an 11:30 p.m. shift change at an auto components plant here, a Newsday reporter on the scene noted that many of the white men “were less likely to smile or look him in the eye or seem impressed with him.”

In a restaurant in Greenwood on Tuesday, Obama approached an older white guy who waved him off, muttering afterwards to a reporter: “I can’t stand him. He’s a Muslim. He’s not even pro-American as far as I’m concerned.”

Which is why Obama, as a nominee is probably a dead duck not only in Indiana, but the entire South, all the Confederate border states and even some eastern states like Pennsylvania.

Check the map

I’ll stand by what I said to a customer in the book store I worked at in Iowa way back in February of 2007: sorry, America is not ready to elect a black president.

Of course if Hillary conceded and threw her wholehearted support behind Obama, he’d have more than a fighting chance: he’d literally be a shoo-in with most of her white blue collar votes following him.

But since her whole reason for drawing breath to live is to be President of the United States, if she can’t have it, neither will he. And she’ll be back in 2012. Count on it.

Not that the country is ready for Hillary either, but that’s another story entirely. She does have a better chance in the electoral college by far, but if she wrestles the nomination from Obama, blacks and disaffected young people stay home and she’s a dead duck too.

At this point all John McCain really has to do is wrap his crinkly white skin in the American flag and bide his time. You can see the train wreck coming from here.

Now if Clinton concedes in the next week or so, I’ll gladly admit I’m wrong. But I doubt I’ll have to.

Hillary Clinton will do ANYTHING she has to to win or she will destroy Obama in the process. Bottom line.

I wanted to let the comments roll in a little before commenting myself on Rev. Jeremiah wright’s speech to the National Press Club this morning.

I did not see the Bill Moyers interview but I watched Wright’s comments in full on CNN this morning. I even opened by store late to hear them in full.

A few openers from other sources:

The speech in full on Huffpo with commentary by Politico’s Ben Smith:

Well, if you had any doubt about whether Jeremiah Wright’s new high profile was in the service of the Obama campaign, his cheerfully combative performance in a Q&A at the National Press Club should put that to rest.

“We both know that if Senator Obama did not say what he siad he would not get elected,” Wright said of Obama’s denunciations. “Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability … based on polls,” he said.

He also closely parsed Obama’s words.

“He did not denounce me. He dismissed himself from some of my remarks. Like most of you not having heard the sermon,” he said. “He had to distance himself because he’s a politician from what the media was saying I had said which was anti-American. He said I didn’t offer any words of hope — how did he know? He didn’t hear the rest of the sermon,” he said. …

Wright explained his media tour, repeating that criticism wasn’t an attack on him or Obama, but on the black church.

“If you think i’m gonna let you talk about my momma and her religious tradition and my daddy and his religoius tradtion … you’ve got another think coming,” he said.

Eric Deggans in Huffpo

But by now it’s obvious Obama is deep in a sound-bite-fed, image-waged war. A man smart as Wright knows it doesn’t really matter what he says. He’s been reduced to an emotional image — the Willie Horton of 2008 — a boogeyman of black nationalism and aggression, used as a prop to make the professorial Obama look like a smooth talker hiding more radical inclinations.

Dave Winer from Huffpo on the Moyers interview:

Watching Wright, I wondered if Sean Hannity’s preacher could stand up to the kind of objectification this man has withstood. What about Tim Russert’s? How about the people who are close to Charlie Gibson and Andrea Mitchell? And how about the CEOs of Time-Warner, GE, the Sulzbergers and the Murdochs? These people have never run for office, they’ve never been vetted or elected. Could they come out so well after being put through the wringer that Wright has been through.

I think the silence comes from the fact that there still is some humanity in the press and in the blogosphere, and those who watched Moyers and really listened to Wright, realized that he’s not a liability to Obama, he’s an asset. At least some of the polish, the quiet confidence, self-respect, intelligence and grace we see in Obama must have rubbed off this man.

Reuters coverage of the NPC speech:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Barack Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, blasted news media he said had sensationalized his remarks in an often confrontational appearance at a reporters’ club on Monday.

But the Chicago preacher stood by the fiery sermons that have dogged Obama’s Democratic presidential campaign since they gained public attention in March.

“You cannot do terrorism on other people and not expect it to come back to you,” Wright said at the National Press Club when asked about a speech in which he asserted the September 11 attacks were retaliation for U.S. foreign policy.

Asked about another sermon in which he suggested the U.S. government created the AIDS virus to kill black people, Wright also did not retreat.

“Based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything,” he said.

MY VIEW

Ok, let’s stop right here, take a deep breath and think about this.

Some observations first:

I don’t know much about the relative civility of the National Press Club but it did seem at times as though this was a very contentious crowd for Wright. True, it seemed like a good number of Wright’s vocal supporters were there and made their feelings known. However, it also seemed as though the questions were absolutely of the ‘gotcha’ variety, worded in very provoking manner, and, occasionally, challenges to Wright were shouted from the floor which I assume is against decorum.

Wright reminded me a great deal of Malcolm X in the way he handled the press at this event. Contentious as Malcolm was but with two guns going for him: his own rhetorical style and an unassailable knowledge of the Bible. No one could trip the man up on scripture although some tried.

I have never heard ANYONE take a chunk out of the press’s ass the way Wright did this morning. He did not back down one inch and definitely made a lot of eternal enemies in the media today.

I also fear that, like Malcolm and especially Dr. Martin Luther King before him, Wright may have signed his own death warrant through his combativeness. For today I think Wright trampled over the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons of the movement to claim Dr. King’s mantle as the pre-eminent spokesperson for the civil rights movement today. In that vein, attacking the US government straight up, he will undoubtedly gain a whole new set of followers on both sides of the racial equation.

We have freedom of speech in this country. UNTIL you gain a following that might actually challenge the status quo in a tangible way. Mark my words, Rev. Wright just put a bullseye on his chest. I wonder if he knows it.

I was greatly impressed by Rev. Wright’s courage this morning. Very little he said wasn’t the historical truth although we are quite aware how willfully ignorant people are in this country of their own history. He has truly given the haters a sword to use against him but he has done so willingly. He is a man of the word - both Biblically and historically, and will not be turned around.

This was, without a doubt, the most incendiary thing he said this morning:

Asked about another sermon in which he suggested the U.S. government created the AIDS virus to kill black people, Wright also did not retreat.

“Based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything,” he said.

I agree with Wright as well. There is NOTHING that this government, regardless of who is the POTUS, is capable of doing. Ever since that rat bastard Harry Truman created the CIA (National Security Act 1947), everything and anything is on the table. Just as the Iranians whose original bone they picked with us was our own CIA assisted overthrow of their duly elected President in 1953.

My soul sister Big Ass Belle posted an excellent thumbnail sketch of the crimes this nation committed against its own black citizens here (includes a link to the Moyers interview):

It’s so easy to stay on the surface of things, surface thinking, not bothering to go any deeper than what’s just obviously apparent because it’s easy and quick and much less painful. But the reality is that this country has infected people with diseases in order to study the results. Right here in this country, in an experiment running from 1932 to 1972, scientists withheld treatment from black men with syphilis in order to see how the disease would run its course. Even after 1947, when the disease was curable with penicillin, treatment was withheld even though it could have saved the lives of the study participants because scientists wanted to see exactly how the disease kills. Participants were prevented from seeking treatment elsewhere and the study wasn’t discontinued until it was leaked to the press. Black men. Expendable. Of no real import, nothing more than lab rats.

So yeah, the US has done some dirty shit to its people, especially its people of darker hues. But drugs? Seriously? Oh . . . well, there have always been vague rumors about the CIA and dope in Vietnam. And the CIA and dope in South America. The CIA and military and dope and Iran-Contra. There are whole websites devoted to this and I won’t go into it. But I will say that on this point, and at this point in time, I would put nothing past my government. Nothing.

It’s funny, isn’t it, how many people come to the same conclusion: we wouldn’t put ANYTHING past our own government. And there’s of course, more here as well. The US Navy sprayed its own sailors with biological weaponized mist back in the 1950s and watched them get sick and die. I saw it on 60 Minutes including a letter that the show read a week later saying that the sailors’ families shouldn’t seek any compensatory damages because they sailors were doing their duty to fight the evil commies by giving up their own lives.

By their own government’s hand.

Only in America, so it seems.

But you KNOW most ‘Murkans haven’t a clue about any of this and would REFUSE to believe it no matter what evidence was shown to them, so great is the conditioning that goes on in our society. So it will be relatively easy for the media and the right to paint Wright as some kind of mad America-hater who wants to eat your children rather than look at some of the underlying and historical reasons for Rev. Wright’s statements.

I have to say that this white guy was pumping his fist in jubilation at Rev. Wright’s performance this morning. It was so refreshing to hear a man speak the truth and do so without equivocation or apology - talk about speaking to truth to power/Daniel in the lion’s den! But it was with sadness as well since I know full well the long knives that will be out for Rev. Wright because of these performances.

Will it tank Obama seems to be the ancillary question on everyone’s lips. Quite possibly. But you can’t fault the rev for that. I believe him when he says he’ll be the dog on Obama’s ankle after Nov. 5 as well as before. And it seems to come from a genuinely love of his people AND his country as well. After all Wright served six years in the US military.

But of course, HIS service will be discounted as was John Kerry’s. And of COURSE McCain’s very spotty service record is being presented as “war hero” caliber, clean of all blemishes. When I was in the Army, I was taught that being a POW was nothing to brag on later - it was the duty of every US POW to escape. There’s some spottiness in his record to be sure. But that’s OK - he’s on the ‘right’ side. Of the power elite that is.

So only time will tell if both Rev. Wright and Obama will weather the storm. For the sake of our country, I hope they do.

Today’s Contemporary Americana! 

But his remarks were thrown in the face of a people that don’t even know or understand their own country’s history. So it is easy to incite ignorant people who know nothing about most of what Rev. Wright preaches about. I have written on this ignorance before so I will not get into it again here.

But for those who get angry at what Wright is saying either read some Howard Zinn or check the comments of white pastors who basically said the same thing: God damn America - but for different reasons - because we tolerate gays and so-called un-Biblical behaviors. Of course, it was OK when they said it but not when Rev. Wright cites hard historical facts in his defense.

And now Wright has to fear the violence of the ignorant Bill O’Reilly-Lou Dobbs segment of the population and is having to cancel speeches for ’security’ reasons.  First Amendment for me but not thee, eh?

Sean Gonsalves writes an excellent rebuttal to Wright’s critics in Alternet today.

Personally, if Rev. Wright’s comments sink Barack Obama’s candidacy for President, not only would it be a crying shame but it would reinforce most of my negative thoughts about American society. So it will probably happen because, of course, no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

Which brings us to Phillip Morris’s column in which he reminds the readers what it takes for a black man to front a major column for a corporate journalism tool like the PD:

It was a great civil rights speech.

“Just the wrong presidential speech,” I said to Beatrice, shortly after Sen. Barack Obama finished explaining his problematic spiritual adviser Tuesday afternoon.

“Obama seems to have tripped onto the wrong side of his hyphen for the first time. He sounded like a defensive African-American trying to simultaneously explain and denounce racism. Not the heralded All-American unifier, who transcends race.“

A cookie to anyone who can unscramble this garbled syntax, especially the third paragraph. “Tripped onto the wrong side of his hyphen?” What? Is Morris trying to write that Obama was too ‘African’ and not ‘American’ enough? Jeez-O-Pete just say so whydontcha? Veiled insults shouldn’t be this difficult for a professional writer. And why can’t someone simultaneously explain and denounce racism? Sure Obama tried to have it both ways with his speech but he probably came as close to pulling off a rhetorical miracle as anyone who ever tried to lecture America on race.

“I thought he sounded like a black man trying to explain the racist rants of his former pastor. That was good. He highlighted some continuing racial challenges.

“But he did not sound like a morally outraged American incensed by his spiritual adviser’s apparent hatred for America. He didn’t convincingly sound like a man who knows how to put a nation ahead of a really close friendship.

I think Obama did a very good job explaining that merely stating that perhaps there are some things America should rightfully be damned for is not “hatred for America.” If anything, people who truly love their country and want to set it on the right course sometimes have to point out its flaws, sometimes in language that shocks. America has been running away from her history for 200 years and sometimes shock is what is needed to get this society to realistically face the fact that all past is prologue and much of our current racial and social difficulties can be explained by drawing a straight historical line right back to the source.

And why is this an either-or situation where Obama would have to throw a friend and mentor under the bus just to satisfy the Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannities of the world who aren’t ever going to vote for him anyway? Is Morris really saying most Americans are too stupid to be able to rationally separate the two issues?

Judging by the letters to the PD and around the Internet, they may indeed be, much to our sorrow.

But here is where Morris gets to the root of his discomfort and the discomfort of those who pay him:

“I just think Obama missed a unique commander-in-chief opportunity. He squarely addressed his minister’s racism. That was a no-brainer. But he didn’t strongly address his anti-patriotism. You can’t explain that away when you’re one of three vying to become president. Assaults on the flag should be met with brass knuckles, not Harvard debate team soliloquies.

Well, yes, if you’re a uneducated moron, perhaps that’s how you would think. I thought it was outstanding that Obama refused to speak down to the American people (and Jon Stewart agrees!) and, instead, tried his best to explain the nuances in what people say and why they say it. If you believe that mindless knee-jerk patriotism is a prerequisite to serve in public life, than the nation will continue to get the kind of leaders it apparently deserves - mindless incurious people like George W. Bush or John McCain.

And you, Mr. Morris, apparently believe that mindless knee-jerk patriotism is a worthy quality in a leader.

“You’re wrong. And you must not have good friends,” Beatrice said with a tone that signaled the conversation was over.

“I respect Obama even more for sticking with his minister. He’s loyal.”

For the record, I agree with Beatrice. I think she understands her community better than the PD’s token in the newsroom.

I agree with Jennifer Lehr:

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”
–Geraldine Ferraro

I woke up this morning, read the above quote and wanted to kill myself.

Hey, welcome to the club Jen.

(I have a friend whose mother and brother did commit suicide and even he says things like “The weather is so bad today I want to kill myself.” So what I mean is, I didn’t want to die die, but I did want to die.)

WTF?

No dear, spell it out - what - the -fuck?

I had to think for a minute what Ferraro was trying to say and why she was saying it. I mean aren’t there a million other “good” things she could say about Hillary or other negative things she could come up with against Barack to support her candidate. I couldn’t even understand her point really. What was she trying to say exactly?

Did she mean that Barack is lucky to be black at this point in our nation’s history because on the whole we Americans feel so guilty about our despicable treatment of African Americans that we will vote for Barack to make ourselves feel better? That the guilt we feel over denying women equality is nowhere near as strong as the guilt we feel over slavery and segregation?

She couldn’t have been saying that, could she?

Oh yeah, she could. And did.

And that is exactly the kind of crap that turns a lot of progressives off to Hillary because you know damn well Ferraro and Clinton are sisters-in-whine when it comes to this sense of chip-on-the-shoulder entitlement.

Lehr:

Doesn’t she realize that that is one of major reasons Barack is ahead? That we’re sick of that bullshit?

She could spell bullshit and not fuck? WTF?

Enough already ladies. I don’t want to want to kill myself anymore because I’d love to see a woman I can respect lead this nation.

OK Jen, enough of the suicide humor, we get it.

But the real insulting part of Ferraro’s comments is that somehow, some black people are lucky, no make that damn lucky for being black.

Not when looking for homes to rent or going on job interviews but politicians in America apparently lucky to be black.

I wonder if someone like Ferraro would acquiesce to their own ‘Watermelon Man’ scenario where tomorrow she would wake up black and have to spend the rest of her life in that situation? Would she go for it?

My, oh my, Obama is soooo lucky to be a black man running for President in 2008. Luckier than Jesse Jackson was back in the 80s apparently. You remember Jesse don’tcha Geraldine?

Perhaps Ferraro is closer to Rush Limbaugh’s view of Obama as some kind of ‘Magical Negro‘ who, like Jesus, will atone for the sins of white America by shouldering our burden as his own?

In any case, if Ferraro doesn’t see her own racism in her statement, it’s a statement about what some conservatives, with some justification, call ‘limousine liberals’ who love the proletariat as long as they don’t have to live next to them. Another such creature that comes to mind is Nancy Pelosi. And to be fair, so is Ted Kennedy, but then again, aren’t all Kennedys?

Real feminists aren’t racists. That should be rule one.

I like what Pam had to say here:

That one is pretty breathtaking on several levels, considering her selection as VP was most certainly due in part to the fact she is a woman.

In any case, using this particular line of thinking…

* If Clinton were a black man, Hillary would have been told to drop out of the race after losing 11 contests in a row, after all, John Edwards had to get out after losing only 3.

* If Obama were white, as it has already been noted elsewhere, he’d already be the nominee, because it’s pretty clear that while there are blacks voting for him because of his race, there are certain demographic groups who didn’t vote for him because he’s black, and those are the Reagan Democrats that Hillary is chasing.

In any case, since he’s biracial, does that factor into Ferraro’s deluded thinking? What would happen, for instance, if Obama were not visibly identifiable as black (as in, he could pass), but identified as such — does that make any difference in perceived advantage? It’s crazy-making.Yes, indeed.

I was waiting for today - the day the inevitable letters would roll in to the Pain Dealer assaulting Dick Feagler for his Sunday column on white flight (should that be capitalized I wonder?).

I suppose I should wait for tomorrow to see the letters that should follow in the wake of Phillip Morris’s column today.

But I feel like writing about it today. So let’s. First we must make some initial observations and statements.

I’m a white guy. I was brought home to an edge city split level in Mayfield Heights in 1962 and dad moved us to Chardon in 1968 for ‘country living.’ I have lived in Cleveland (yes indeed) Euclid, Willowick, Mentor and Painesville, not necessarily in that order. While in Painesville, persons unknown fired a few rounds from a subcaliber pistol on our street. I heard the shots and tried to help the police find where the bullets might have struck, but in vain.

I’m back in Chardon.

My kin have lived in Cleveland (Collinwood) and were business owners there (a bar). Other relatives have lived all over the east side including Richmond Heights, Lyndhurst, Parma and Kirtland.

I worked for the Federal government with people of all ages, races and backgrounds. I dormed with a black kid from Wickliffe while at Cleveland State (jock dorm - he was the jock, I was the flack).

Enough?

OK. Let’s throw out all the bullshit and get down to it.

The photo just disappeared from the Cleveland.com website. It was a photo of one of the suspects in the beating of Shaker Heights attorney Kevin McDermott, 52. It showed the young adult with a menacing hooded stare - right at the camera. No wonder it disappeared - someone must have said something at the PD.

No matter - there are other photos which sear the images into the public consciousness both in the PD and on TV news.

Can we at last be honest? The face of crime to the average white person in Cleveland, like it or not, blame it on the media or not, wears an African-American personage.

If we are to do anything to discourage negative race profiling, those images will have to change. Whether the media needs to find more good news stories in the black community is one issue I will leave for others to debate.

Let’s talk about Feagler’s column first.

The wife of the man who got beaten told our newspaper this: “It’s something we’re struggling with right now. We’ve lived here for 20 years, and we chose to live here for many reasons. But we have to feel safe.”

So move. But do it like we all have — like the whole three-county area has — don’t call it racism. Call it reality.

I knew Feagler would be called a racist for writing those lines. I didn’t know it would come from Morris, but I guess its OK with the PD if one columnist rips another one so long as the subject is race. That wouldn’t be tolerated on too many newspapers but then I’m getting ahead of myself here.

But he’s right.

Sorry, he’s right.

And you can call him a racist from sunup to sundown and ignore the community of people he speaks for and watch Cleveland die.

Yes there is racism, absolutely. But there has been a great number of people who have tried to overcome their own inherent racism (and I will absolutely admit I grew up with it in my family and Catholic schools where it was reinforced - oh yes, it was) but when an incident like this one happens in proximity to your own house, martyrdom seems a tall order for most people - even if the fears are overblown.

When people think ‘that could have been me’ all highflown idealism flies out the window. If that offends you, you don’t understand the human animal very well and you have very high expectations of people.

The people who wrote angry letters to the PD today about the Feagler article are justified in their own stubborn pride to stay in their own neighborhood and fight for it. I’m absolutely with those people - they believe their neighborhood (Shaker) and all that it was supposed to represent in racial reconciliation and civility, is worth fighting for. And that’s what we need.

But.

Some people don’t want to fight. They want to live in peace where they purchase their number one investment and asset. They want to throw up the picket fence and watch the kids play in the yard without worrying. Are you calling those people racist? Are you?

People make choices in live based on what they want. Choice is supposed to be American. When people make choices based on what they perceive as their own (and their family’s) best interests, its easy and cheap to attach all kinds of ulterior motives.

My dad didn’t move to Chardon in 1968 to escape black people. Mayfield Heights in 1968 was lily white.

However, he DID desperately want to move from working at the old Sears store on Carnegie Avenue to the new Sears at the Great Lakes Mall.

Why?

One day on Cleveland’s east side back in 1969, there was a racial disturbance in the neighborhood he was in. He was showing carpet samples to someone. On his way out, someone shot at him from a window. The bullet went through the back window of his ‘69 VW van and lodged in the wall approximately four inches behind his head. Dad called the cops but they had their hands full that day and couldn’t be bothered to do much.

I remember as a 7-year-old walking up to his van and putting my index finger in the bullet hole and thinking how close that bullet came to my daddy. I remember marveling at the spider web pattern the bullet made in the window.

And the whole family was relieved when he got the transfer to Mentor in 1970.

Wanna call us racists?

It’s easy, isn’t it, to just pull out the race card and fling it at people. Feels so good, so sanctimoniously wonderful. And yeah, I consider myself a liberal.

“Wouldn’t you just move,” Feagler asks?

Well, woudn’t you - white OR BLACK, move if you could?

More from his column:

I grew up in Cleveland across the line from Shaker Heights. Back then, it was, I guess, inner-ring. But some ring! It was platinum. When I was a kid, Shaker Heights was the richest town in the world. The kids wore white tennis shoes and had gears on their bikes. If they weren’t rich, they wanted to be, and set a tone for their community.

Now Shaker is just Shaker, trying to hold on to it itself. The high school (which once dazzled me by calling itself a campus) isn’t quite as good anymore. People are moving out, black and white, moving away from a culture that may, on New Year’s Eve, beat a guy half to death with a pipe just for taking a walk.

Any dispute of the facts of these two paragraphs?

And this:

A Shaker cop offered suggestions on how to walk around Shaker. Go in twos, he said, or get a big dog and walk it. Or take a cell phone with you, pre-dialed to 9-1-1.

In other words, live in some parts of Shaker Heights as you would live in Fort Apache.

Hyperbole? One more time: “A Shaker cop offered. . .”

A cop tells you this is how you should walk around your own neighborhood.

Because Kevin McDermott could have been you. Or your kids.

But if you decide to move, you’re racist - you’re part of the white flight pattern. Your fears are irrational and you probably have some deep seated psychological problem, or so intimates Phillip Morris.

Let’s also go somewhere where Feagler doesn’t.

McDermott was beaten, literally, by a majority of children: ages 14-17. Violent street crime used to be something older teens and people in their 20s were expected to commit. The difference between 1969 and today on the tough streets of Shaker is you could literally get beat to death by children. It’s happening more and more - can you deny it?

And the cops? They’re largely absent from the scene for a variety of reasons. In city and suburb, you’re pretty much on your own.

I could go into a long sociological dissertation about the socio-economic factors driving this. I will focus on the root cause of all of this: in our rabidly dysfunctional capitalism, we have elevated the status of bling above all else. On every medium and in every presentation life is cheap and you are what you own. And if you are poor and do without, you are a loser and you will be surrounded by people who have everything and maybe they just got it any way they could. And that’s OK because the popular culture says ‘get rich any way you can,’ ‘get rich or die trying.’ Its a multi-billion dollar sales pitch that is in people’s faces 24-7 and it has a deep and destructive impact - on ALL of us. You say there’s no fathers in the house? OK, where did they go? They went in search of the next thrill - which is exactly what the popular media culture tells them to do. Want to see the real enemy here - turn on your television, listen to your radio, read the ads in magazines. See the pretty and successful people - why aren’t you like them?

But the right people make a buck over all of this so don’t expect any societal epiphanies any time soon.

And that, of course, doesn’t mean a damn thing to the mom and dad living a few streets down who think: McDermott could have just as easily been our teenager.

You call these people racist at your own peril. When they pick up and leave with their capital, experience and community commitment, neighborhoods die with them.

So let’s get to Phillip Morris’s column:

Feagler — someone who did move away — could not be more wrong in the meaning and instruction he finds in the story of Shaker Heights attorney Kevin McDermott, who went for a walk and was brutally attacked by seven young black men last Monday.

Seven young WHAT men, Mr. Morris?

Sorry, does pointing that out make me a racist?

Because try as you might, the fact that all of these perps were black will make an impression in the minds of many people. Impression upon impression - like the kids who ran over the woman at Playhouse Square last year. Over and over.

Would Morris suggest we search out groups of white teens who commit the same crimes? There surely must be some out there. I’m not being cute here - I know white kids commit crimes too - why don’t I read more about THEM in the PD?

And now here is the critical part of Morris’s column:

Unwittingly or not, Feagler used the attack to justify those who look to their racial fear as reason to flee the city or the region. He calls it “reality” and implies that moving to get away from black neighbors is not racism.

Instead, he calls it realism.

His logic is shockingly shallow, perhaps revealing. Not only does Feagler’s amplified fear-mongering provide solace to race baiters, small thinkers and the fearful, it wrongly paints race as the problem. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

Simple translation: if you think as Feagler does, you are a racist. This is responsible journalism?

Phil, why don’t you come out and use simple language? You can’t have it both ways with weasel words and phrases. When you use words like “shallow,” “revealing,” “small thinkers” and “fearful” it’s clearly to create a pejorative by implication.

These peopleyou malign may be a bunch of simpletons to you but all they see is what they see IN YOUR OWN NEWSPAPER. Phillip, please, check your own paper for the last several months, or the last year. Check the photos, especially. Look at the images and the stories. While you’re at it, check out what Ma and Pa Whiutemiddleclasscleveland see on their local TV news over and over again.

Yes, it’s sensationalism - this case, the woman who was run down in Playhouse Square last year - it sells papers and PAYS YOUR SALARY.

See where I’m going with this Mr. Morris? I worked on newspapers myself and saw the damage coverage like this can do to a community. Does it ever bother you that the PD is one of the main conduits of information for the area that continually show the face of crime to Northeast Ohioans as having a black face? Or do you pretend that this isn’t happening - that the coverage of the black community by the PD is fair and balanced?

But taken all that together, can you honestly tell Mr and Ms. Whitemiddlceclasscleveland to shake off all of those images of black perpetrators and find positive racial models where few to none are being presented? What have YOU done to change this climate at the Pain Dealer?

No its easy to just say fearful people are racist without examining THE NATURE OF THAT FEAR.

And you know what else Mr. Morris, when you write lines like the above it has the EXACT OPPOSITE intent that you may have - its SHUTS DOWN any meaningful dialog on racial issues in Northeastern Ohio because white people fear being publicly labeled racist almost as much as they fear being crime victims.

So what do the fearful white folks do when they read your column? As a typical white guy who has seen three generations of reaction to this sort of rhetoric, I’ll tell you.

They won’t, in any numbers, white letters to the PD editor with their names and addresses attached to them talking about the issue you raised. Oh, no. Now that you’ve preemptively labeled them racists.

That’s the same reason most of them won’t go to their local police departments to file complaints about crime in their inner ring suburbs - they’d still have to put their names and addresses on the complaints and guess who else reads police reports?

No they just make a silent, yet deadly (to the health of the region) calculus and call their friendly real estate agent. No muss, no fuss, no hurled invective.

And I hate that Mr. McDermott, beaten to a pulp, now has to have the additional indignity of having to shoulder the burden of being used as a living icon of possible white flight. He didn’t ask for this role and we should leave this man out of it.

So Morris writes:

Hopefully, McDermott won’t flee his home of more than 20 years. The criminals mustn’t win. Hopefully he stays in Shaker and helps lead the discussion on how to restore what was once one of America’s greatest suburban cities.

There’s nowhere left to run.

Mr. Morris, by writing this, you do NOTHING to advance that discussion. That last line will be taken by many white people as a threat (yeah, so they’re racists, right?). How DO you restore Shaker Heights to the community that it once was? Well, Mr. Morris, how? By hurling cheap accusations at fellow columnists and label fearful whites as closet racists? That really helps now, doesn’t it?

And people wonder why the city and now the inner ring suburbs have gone to hell over the last 40 years.

Who is the race baiter Mr. Morris?

Can you understand the fear? And that the fear is spread by YOUR EMPLOYER as well as other media outlets in this town?

Care to write about how to address that fear in another column that isn’t so patronizing and inflammatory? I’d love to read it.

I can still remember fingering that bullet hole in my dad’s car, Mr. Morris. Again, am I a racist? Guess what? Like many people I’m becoming less and less concerned with being labeled as such by columnists like yourself.

The crazy thing is that Morris is right - it IS a crime problem. Absolutely. And I find it interesting that Mayor Frank Jackson now has come up with an aggressive strategy to fight that crime problem.

But there’s a caveat contained in the story:

Jackson plans to unleash aggressive police officers with a mission of taking guns from the streets to reduce the city’s rising homicide rate. That kind of policing comes with a price, and Jackson warned that the ramped-up efforts could cause more confrontations between police officers and criminals.

and

Solving the city’s crime problem will require a lot more than police work, though. White said law enforcement and residents have to work together.

“We can’t arrest and prosecute our way out of this problem,” he said. He took note of a variety of federal programs aimed at helping people released from prison as they return home. He said such programs do not receive the publicity of the gang sweeps and other law enforcement efforts but are more important.

and

Taking aim at organized drugs rings is a key part of the strategy, Jackson said. They are business ventures that employ children to sell guns, drugs and sex on the streets, he said.

“This is organized crime.” he said. “Make no mistake about it. Misery and poverty is big business. People come to buy drugs, sex and guns.” The mayor said he has created a more-transparent Police Department since he was elected two years ago. Officers on the gun and gang units will be held accountable if they overstep their authority, he said.

Jackson said he would support the officers as long as they follow the law.

“If they step out of the box, then it’s on them,” he said.

It’s the old adage: be careful what you wish for. Cleveland’s inner city wants their crime problem aggressively addressed. Unfortunately, the way we conduct police operations in America, the result, based on the above comments and warnings, will to turn the CPD into a copycat version of the LAPD or NYPD gang units.

And guess what will happen the first time the Cleveland police gun down a 12-year-old who was waving a Glock in the air?What happens when the TV crews go to the kid’s mother and family and they talk about what a ‘good boy’ he was?

I wonder what Mr. Morris will write then?

I take no back seat to anyone in sentimentality toward my hometown. I wouldn’t have moved back here if there wasn’t some twisted love I have for Greater Cleveland. Five generations on both sides of my family have lived and died here.

But I fear for the future of my community. I see us becoming Detroit by degrees.

But I do know one thing for sure. Unless we’re willing - on both sides - to have an honest dialog about race and class in this community; one in which white folks like Dick Feagler can write and speak of their fears without fear of being labeled racists, we are doomed.

Pain Dealer story

I debated with myself on using the”L” word in the title but that would be unnecessarily inflammatory. Still, this is a political hit job against a woman who was only doing that which she was supposed to do.

The other debate is including the comments (usually from hard core capitalist/right wingers who troll the Internet all day trying to stamp out progressive thought) on the PD entry. I decided to use that page because I think people of good will need to see the venom that”s out there. I’d put my own two cents in but the PD banned my account just before the Wide Open Blog dustup and never gave me a reason for the banning. That’s free speech pardners!

From the story:

On Monday, Ohio Civil Rights Commission head Barbara Sykes bucked Gov. Ted Strickland and state lawmakers by pressing ahead with a plan requiring businesses to give pregnant women 12 weeks of unpaid leave.

On Tuesday, she paid for it.

Strickland spokesman Keith Dailey said that the Democratic governor is “not inclined” to support Sykes when she goes before Senate lawmakers for a confirmation hearing. Asked if Strickland would like to see Sykes step down, Dailey said the governor “thinks the process in the Senate should be allowed to work itself through.”

snip

Strickland’s statement came after House Speaker Jon Husted told reporters that he believed Sykes would not be confirmed by state senators.

“I believe the Senate is looking at the idea, and I believe the administration is looking at the idea of whether the chair will be confirmed in the Senate, and I think that will change the dynamics,” said Husted Tuesday afternoon.

Sykes, who could not be reached for comment Tuesday, crossed onto politically thin ice Monday when she forged ahead with the maternity leave proposal after Strickland and Republican legislative leaders both asked her to pull back and give business groups more time to study the issue.

Dailey said the governor was disappointed that Sykes turned down a “reasonable request” to give business groups more time to comment on the proposal. Strickland agrees “in concept” with the proposal, according to Dailey.

As was pointed out in the previous PD story, Sykes correctly asserted that business groups had since August to make whatever objections/deletions/corrections they wanted to the maternity leave plan.

What seems to have happened between ‘then’ and ‘now’ is that these same ‘bidness’ types got to Strickland and the governor’s iron cross on maternity leave seems to have melted pretty fast.

Remind me again why I should vote for Democrats in Ohio? Because they have a greater fashion sense than Republicans? or for some other reason, because, quite frankly, stunts like this seem to point out that where money and ‘bidness’ is concerned for working Ohioans, Strickland is acting like Taft.

You voted for change? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Again, we’re talking about 12 weeks (that’s three months) of UNPAID leave. Paid maternity leave is what civilized countries that put ‘family values’ money where their mouths are do as a matter of course for their citizens.

Not the USA of course. Our hard earned money must go to the maintenance and expansion of the greatest war machine the world has ever seen. Pregnant women can fend for themselves. Those who can’t, according to the conservative mindset, either didn’t marry well enough or shouldn’t be having needless babies in the first place.

It’s God’s will, right?

But back to Barbara Sykes. Here we have a perfect example of the table scraps real progressive women and women of color can expect from the just-as-paternalistic-as-Republicans white male power structure of the Ohio Democratic Party.

If Strickland wasn’t so fearful of the state’s business community or so protective of his own ego, he would be championing this albeit watered down maternity leave bill through the General Assembly. But he is, after all, a craven politician who knows what side of his bread is buttered and by whom.

And he wouldn’t be cutting off a loyal Democrat (loyal to what the party supposedly stands for) at the knees for placing the needs of Ohio women and their families first ahead of politics.

This whole issue stinks to high hell and sends absolutely the wrong message to two constituencies that are the literal backbone of the Ohio Democratic Party. But the crass calculus has probably already been made by Strickland’s gang: where are progressive women and women of color going to go? They’ll play nice and do what they’re told.

This just stinks.

Bob Cesca in Huffpo

You think I’m an outrageous writer, read this guy. I love the fact he’s started his own blog, so I’m linking it to my blogroll.

Anyway, it might be a shooting fish in a barrel point, but obviously, Obama’s Muslim upbringing is going to be made into a scare tactic issue in the campaign, especially if he gets the nomination. You’ve got to wonder if some of Clinton’s assassins are chomping at the bit to get some of this smearing out into the public eye sub rosa.

But Cesca goes a step further and imagines a future campaign ad smearing Obama:

DEEP VOICE GUY: Barack Osam–Obama. Is he or is he not working for our enemies?

TEXT: Paid for by Frightened Dickless Bigots For Truth.

Not so hard to imagine such an ad actually running, is it?

Of course I remember The Amazing Doocy wetting himself on Fox and Friends when the whole ‘Obama attended a madrassah’ story came out.  Bigotry is American as apple pie, why does this surprise anyone?

Of course all of this is race based and religion based.

Cesca’s ire is raised by yesterday morning’s WaPo front page drive by:

Senator Obama is a Muslim extremist who wants to overthrow the government. That’s the rumor I read about on the front page of the Washington Post today. They’re evidently in the business of whisper campaigning now.

Despite his denials, rumors and e-mails circulating on the Internet continue to allege that Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim, a “Muslim plant” in a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected president, he would take the oath of office using a Koran, rather than a Bible, as did Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the only Muslim in Congress, when he was sworn in earlier this year.

Again, I have to ask why this is such a surprise? The Post has always been a tool of the Washington establishment and they’re simply playing their role in the grand game. Newspapers generally are conservative organs because their run by people who are generally capitalists and hardcore capitalists tend to support the Military-Industrial state apparatus.

The solution for intelligent people and progressives is simple: stop believing what you read in American newspapers. And for Goddess sakes, get on the Internet. The Truth Is Out There Scully. But you have to find it on your own.