The Distant Ocean

Uncle Sam or Uncle Tom?

Enough already.  Let's start from what Ralph Nader actually said, since it's been malignantly misrepresented in nearly all of the ravings over it:

"There's no shift of power from the few to the many, which is so badly needed in this corporate government of ours in Washington, D.C., in the scenario of Barack Obama.  I mean, to put it very simply, he is our first African-American president, or he will be.  And we wish him well. But his choice, basically, is whether he’s going to be Uncle Sam for the people of this country, or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations who are running America into the ground."

First: this is a conditional statement.  Nader didn't call Obama an "Uncle Tom"; he asked if Obama was going to be an Uncle Tom, and stated clearly that it's up to Obama to make that choice.

Second: he wasn't using the term to refer to race at all, but rather to service—in this case, crucially, service to corporations.  This is further obvious from the fact that he said "the people of this country," meaning everyone in the country, not any particular race.  To rephrase what he was saying: will Obama serve the people of this country, or giant corporations?

Third: "Uncle Tom" is a race-specific term in its original sense, but it is not a racial epithet. One commenter displayed his ignorance of the term by comparing it to "spic" or "shylock", as though "Uncle Tom" is somehow the same as "spearchucker" or "sambo".  Not only is that wrong, but the irony is that it's unlikely a genuine racist would ever use the phrase (and certainly never pejoratively), because a genuine racist wants to see blacks being servile to whites.  Can you imagine a white supremacist screaming "Uncle Tom!" at a black guy?  Of course not.  The people who portray it as some kind of beyond-the-pale racial slur are probably the same ones who don't know what "niggardly" means.

Not only is it not a racial epithet, but in popular usage it's expanded to refer to anyone who acts against the interests of the people they should be representing.  The character of Uncle Tom has become a universal symbol for people who act against their class interests, whatever the defining aspect of that class may be: race, economic status, religion, etc.  The closest analog would be "Judas".  And that's clearly the expanded sense in which Nader was using it here.

Fourth: since 2000, Nader has run for president with a Native American and two Latinos—in addition to spending years arguing passionately for the interests of the poor and working poor in this country, who are overwhelmingly people of color (a point he's made repeatedly during the 2008 campaign).  Attempting to tar him as racist is not just absurd, it's offensively absurd.

And finally: is Obama an Uncle Tom, going by the original meaning?  Meaning: has Obama betrayed the interests of blacks?  The Glen Ford article I mentioned yesterday doesn't leave much room for argument on that point.  Obama has consciously used his ethnic background as a launching pad for his own ambitions, taking numerous cheap shots at blacks as a group in order to soothe white fears about any potential radicalism on his part—to let whites know that they needn't feel threatened by his racial identity.  "Post-racial" for Obama apparently translates into reassuring whites by scapegoating blacks.

All that said: is "Uncle Tom" better avoided in public discourse?  Yes—because it's easily misconstrued or misrepresented, especially by people who have no idea what they're talking about.  But that mainly reflects a hypersensitivity to any race- or gender-specific language in this country, and not anything inherently wrong with the term itself.

In the attack interview Fox newsprick Shepard Smith foisted on him, Nader started to ask "Do you know what the historic...?"—and was cut off.  Smith wasn't interested in the historical context that made the phrase so appropriate, much less the actual question Nader was posing of whether Obama will serve people or corporations; he just wanted to take a cheap shot at someone he hates, and this was a convenient bludgeon to use.  And if you look at all the fevered attacks and denunciations of Nader since this non-event occurred, that's really all there is to them.

UPDATE: Thanks to cemmcs for the pointer to this Counterpunch interview with Nader:

AC: What about you calling him an Uncle Tom on Fox?

Nader: On Fox I said that as the first African American president we wish him well. The question is, will he be Uncle Sam for the people or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations which are driving America into the ground. Fox cut it off after "corporations".

He is less vulnerable to criticism and harder to criticize because of his race. When I said he was talking White Man's talk, the PC people got really upset.

It doesn't matter that he sides with destruction of the Palestinians, and sides with the embargo. It doesn't matter that he turns his back on 100 million people and won't even campaign in minority areas. It doesn't matter than he wants a bigger military budget, and an imperial foreign policy supporting various adventures of the Bush administration. It doesn't matter that he's for the death penalty, which is targeted at minorities. But if you say one thing that isn't PC, you get their attention. I tell college audiences, a gender, racial or ethnic slur gets you upset, reality doesn't get you upset. 

So Fox doctored the quote to remove as much context as possible.  Shocking.  And Nader cuts through the trivialities with his usual acuity, and puts the focus back where it belongs.

Read this, twice

Because it's just that good.  It's so good as a whole that it would be a disservice to excerpt it; just go read it.

I've taken a tiny tilt at this windmill in the past, but I may never again, because with someone as piercingly eloquent as Glen Ford doing it I'm just embarrassing myself.  I've always been impressed when I've followed links to Black Agenda Report articles, and it may be time to start making it a regular visit.

(via)

Now that's some good schadenfreude

I've been stewing on a posting about Obama's newest appointment since yesterday but I'm too burned to write it, so I'll just indulge in some petty laughter at Peggy Hill's expense instead (which I consider only fair, since she subjected me to such pain over the past few months):

McCain aides had numerous complaints about Palin. She was unwilling or unable to find the time and energy to prep for her disastrous interview with Couric. And when she did study, she astonished her handlers by her unsophisticated views.

She didn't know Africa was a continent, according to Newsweek. Fox News revealed that during her cramming, she couldn't name the three countries that belong to the North American Free Trade Agreement: the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!  Stop, my sides!  And here she is giving her opinion on the value of learning from experience:

When pressed on what went wrong with the campaign, she said, "I certainly am not one to ever waste time looking backwards."

Well, that certainly explains a lot.  This part really speaks to my deepest hopes, though:

In one of her favorite coffee shops in Wasilla Tuesday morning, Palin summed it up this way: "Forever, I'm going to be Sarah from Alaska."

Yes, please, I beg you.  Forever.  In Alaska.

november5.org

For all your friends who say they want to hold Obama's feet to the fire*, there's an organization forming dedicated to exactly that: november5.org.  Will it gain any traction?  Who knows?  Sign up and find out.

This is also the answer to your liberal friends who're fond of displaying their ignorance by claiming that Ralph Nader just "goes away" in between elections.**

-----------------------------

* Am I the only one who thinks that's a rather questionable choice of metaphor to apply to a black politician (especially given this country's history)?

** Odd that he'd do that if he's only running to stroke his ego, isn't it?  You'd think he'd constantly be seeking the limelight—not just trying to pull it his way once every four years.  But like most irrational hatred, liberal hatred dissolves when it comes in contact with logic.

Presidential election results

For those of you looking for a good source for voting numbers, the San Francisco Chronicle has a thorough tally here.  As of this writing the totals reflect 97% of precincts.  The 2004 totals I'm using are here.

First for the unimportant candidates: Obama has a bit over 63 million votes so far (and if the current trend continues he'll end up with about 65 million).  To put things in perspective as far as that "mandate for change" we keep hearing about, in 2004 George Bush received just over 62 million votes.  So if this is a landslide, what was 2004?

Now for the third parties.  Ralph Nader is the top candidate for the third election in a row, with approximately 650,000 votes—an increase of about 40% over his 2004 vote total.  McKinney and the Greens managed to finish fourth again, behind Nader, the Libertarians, and even the Constitution Party (the same order as in 2004).  McKinney did at least beat David "Judas goat" Cobb's 2004 showing, 141K votes vs 120K, but she's gotten about a fifth of Nader's vote total.  The Green Party's presidential total went up by about 17%, vs. 21% and 22% respectively for the Libertarians and the Constitution Party and the aforementioned 40% for Nader.

So the only real change in the third party world was Nader's (relative) surge in support; otherwise things have stayed almost exactly the same as 2004.  No surprises there.

It's been deeply depressing for me to watch the Green Party's self-immolation since 2000.  I worked with the Greens in 2000 on Nader's campaign and again in 2003 on Matt Gonzalez's campaign for mayor in San Francisco, and it was a tremendously exciting time.  After 2000's total of 3 million votes, the Greens were the undisputed alternative to the major parties.  But when 2004 came around, fear took over and they threw it all away; rather than running all out against the Democrats and proving that they were a truly independent party, 100% committed to their own success, they fretted over how they might affect Kerry's chances.  They waffled so long that they lost the opportunity to leverage Ralph Nader's popularity, and then they ended up nominating a candidate who pursued a safe state strategy (to be crystal clear: safe for the Democrats), with a vice presidential candidate who said she might not even vote for her own ticket!  It's hard to imagine a more pathetic display.

And what was the result?  Unmitigated disaster: Bush won anyway, of course, and the Greens all but vanished from the national stage, sacrificing the credibility they'd gained at such cost in 2000.  Now the party is left to try to rebuild to the point they'd already reached eight years ago.  I don't know if they'll ever make it again, but if they do I'd guess it'll be at least a decade and probably much more.  So I wish them luck in the future and I'll continue to vote for Greens when I think they're the best candidates, but I couldn't be more disappointed at the way they've squandered the opportunity they had.

Election 2008: WE HAVE A WINNER!

!!! EXCLUSIVE--MUST CREDIT DISTANT OCEAN !!!

Using our hyper-advanced analytical techniques, we here at the Distant Ocean are now able to project with 100% confidence that the winner of the 2008 presidential election will be the candidate who...:

• Supports massive increases in the military budget
• Wants to continue the US military presence in Iraq
• Has repeatedly threatened military attacks against Iran
• Rejects the primacy of the UN Security Council in matters of international security
• Refuses to commit to the deep carbon emissions cuts that are our only hope of addressing global warming
• Has taken millions from corporate donors
• Enthusiastically backs managed corporate trade agreements like the WTO and NAFTA
• Supports immunity for lawbreaking telecommunications corporations
• Supports the death penalty
• Voted for the Wall Street bailout
• Rejects gay marriage
• Deeply admires Ronald Reagan
• Voted to restrict the ability of Americans to get restitution through class action lawsuits
• Backs Israel unconditionally, no matter what vicious atrocity they're committing this week

We could have given you many, many more identifying characteristics, of course, but we don't want to insult your intelligence, since you probably knew who we were talking about after the first few entries.

Congratulations, presidential candidate we've so clearly described!

BREAKING ELECTION DAY NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The most important news alert I've seen all day.  You heard it here first!

It's at times like this that I'm proud to be an American.

Protest votes

[ WARNING: An utterly trivial issue is about to be thrashed to within an inch of its life.  If this sort of thing cheeses you off, it's not too late to turn back. ]

I've always wondered: just how does this "protest voting" work?  When I get to the polling place should I say, "Just so you'll know, I'll only be casting a protest vote today, not a real one" and they'll respond with "Oh! Ok. Well, here's your protest ballot. You can take it to a booth and, oh, I don't know, fill it out or do origami with it or whatever gives you a thrill, and then when you're done we'll throw it in that pit over there, urinate and defecate on it, and set it on fire. If you have any questions, go to hell and see if anyone there cares. Oh, and please return the crayon when you're done. Thanks for protest voting!"

(Why, yes, this is a pet peeve of mine.  How could you tell?)

I don't see the need to affix belittling adjectives to people's choices.  I guess I could call the votes of those who stick to the Republicans and Democrats "blinkered votes" or "limited votes" or "corporate-approved votes", but I don't.  And I suppose I could call the votes of people who stay faithful to their principles and vote for the candidate they truly prefer "free-thinking votes" or "honest votes" or "courageous votes", but I usually prefer not to say that out loud.

I sometimes wonder: is every vote cast against a guaranteed majority merely a protest vote?  If there's a ballot proposition to execute juveniles for littering, and it's predicted to pass with 70% support, should I say, well, I can see the handwriting on the wall, and cast my vote with the majority?  After all, what's the point of lodging a doomed, narcissistic little protest vote against them?

It comes down to this: there are six pairs of candidates for president and vice president on my ballot, and—unlikes millions of other people—I refuse to pretend that only two of those options actually exist.  I don't cast protest votes; I just cast votes.

Why I'm not going to see W.

I hated this movie the first time around: unconvincing overly-scripted dialogue, wooden performances, gratuitous violence (but no gore), way too much profanity (mainly my own), and the worst part is that the bad guy never gets his.  And it was literally 70000 hours long.  I'm sure Stone's version is shorter by an hour or two, but does he really expect me to pay ten bucks to see it again?  What am I, a masochist?

And the most discouraging thing I've seen lately...

...would have to be this:

[W]hen Bill Clinton was elected, the eventual weaknesses of his presidency were already common knowledge: his penchant for triangulation and his history of extramarital activity. The former would ensure that health care reform would be shot down for a generation, and the latter would give Republicans the wedge they needed to completely disrupt the final years of his presidency. And we could have predicted it all from the moment he was elected. With Obama, I just don’t see any similarly grand Shakespearean flaws being foreshadowed in the first act. We’re in an entirely different moment.

That's Tom Tomorrow, aka Dan Perkins.  I can't believe he's missed Obama's ever-increasing "penchant for triangulation" over the course of the campaign, so I have to assume he's just erased it from his mind.  And "an entirely different moment"?  I don't know how this moment could be more similar to 1992: a youthful underdog Democrat comes along after multiple terms of Republican malfeasance, talking about change, hope, and optimism, and energizing young voters—and is swept toward victory on the basis of vague uplifting rhetoric that doesn't match his behavior.  Not to mention that they're both black.

(And the implication that the problem with the latter part of Clinton's presidency was that he was prevented from doing even more, coming from someone who spent years savaging Clinton's crimes, is pretty mind-boggling.)

I was sorely disappointed in 2004 when Perkins—whom I'd seen in 2000 bashing Al Gore at a Nader super-rally in Oakland—not only went the Kerry route, but took the cheap shot of comparing those who didn't to George Bush.  And it's a shame now to see such an astute progressive observer of the political scene so far in the bag for Obama that he's convinced himself the last few months didn't happen.  It's things like this that make me think we're in for a very long four years.

The most encouraging thing I've seen lately

That someone went from this in March of 2008:

First, my story: Like many of you, I tried to deny it. I lived deeply, and tragically, closeted, afraid to face my inner desires and tortured by the possibility that someone might find out. Trying not to look at [Obama] when he came on television – which, as you know, is often. I looked, of course, but only out of the corner of my eye, and tried not to swoon as those golden words melted the very air.

I even denounced him a couple of times right here in this space, just to cover my tracks: yes, I was an Obama-basher, because I just couldn't face the truth about myself. Yet I couldn't resist the siren song of my real desires, and, slowly but surely, I inched out of the closet and into the light.

To this in June:

I have to say I was wrong – dead wrong – about Obama. In my eagerness to find a bright spot in a rapidly darkening world, I grasped on to his alluring rhetoric and his at-times trenchant critique of the Bush foreign policy, like a sinking man holding on to a life-jacket.

And finally, a few days ago, to this:

Nader is the Eugene Debs of our times: he is brave, intractably committed to principle, and disdainful of the limousine liberals and their “conservative” counterparts who grimace in maidenly horror at the sight and sounds of such truth-telling populism. Most importantly, Ralph Nader knows who are the real enemies of the American people, and what is the source of their power. He, alone, is serious about breaking that power. While I may disagree with some of his more socialistic proposals, and probably wouldn’t last very long at a Nader-for-President meeting before getting into it with his commie followers, I don’t know of anyone in American political life, at the moment, who has more genuine good old fashioned integrity.

If you haven't figured it out already, "commie followers" might have tipped you off to who this is: Justin Raimondo, self-professed conservative-paleo-libertarian.  Which might seem surprising, but it actually makes two in a row for him.

So it's possible to shake off the hazy gauze of hopey change.  Not easy and not likely to be repeated on a wide scale, but possible.

(This is also the ultimate counterexample for those who say that Republican/conservative contributions to Nader prove he's just being used to attack the Democrats—a talking point that's never impressed me, since I've personally convinced a handful of Republicans to vote for Nader in the past.  One of the most telling comments in response to Raimondo's endorsement was, "When I heard Nader debate the constitution party candidate he was actually inspiring despite the contempt I have always had for him"...which just goes to show that if people had an opportunity to hear what the man is actually saying, he'd win.  When it comes to Nader, ignorance breeds contempt.)