MEGAN: Hey, there, what's up?
MOE: I'm getting coffee. I'll be online in 5. I really feel like its the seventies today. Even the good news on the front of the Times about the natural gas in Louisiana is kind of dark.
MEGAN: Sure, no worries
MOE: Well the good news is that former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle is in on some Kurdish oil deal. That is bound to make him a lot of money and he sure deserves it having had the foresight to liberate The Iraq and also suck up to Bill Clinton's friend that dictator guy across the border in Kazakhstan, even as Seymour Hersh and his cabal of elite treason-loving freedom haters were knocking that for being a "conflict of interest" or whatever. Thanks to Wikipedia, we know Richard Perle explained back in 2003 that Sy Hersh was basically a terrorist, so we probably don't need to spend much more time on his smears. Especially with such other positive energy deals in the works as this one that is making everyone in De Soto Parish, Louisiana, suddenly a card carrying Cadillac owning rich person! And that makes 1 place GM might make a profit this year.
MEGAN: Well, unless they bought it outright, I'd say GMAC bought a bunch of Caddies more than people in DeSoto did, but no matter.
By the way, Bush has signed off on the first military execution since 1961. It's also the first actively-pursued execution since then. Can we all take a moment to be unsurprised that the soon-to-be executed man is black?
MOE: There are six other men on military death row. Are you saying that's why he got to go first? Incidentally, I never thought much about the death penalty before The Idiot wherein the lead character is this charismatic Christ figure named Mishkin, which happens to be the name of the retiring Federal Reserve board governor who apparently wants to set inflation targets, something I don't have much of an opinion on today, although I read somewhere else that only about a third of jobless are receiving unemployment benefits these days, down from 44% in 2001 and 52% when all "social safety net" stuff was actually taken seriously, before the breakdown of the family made us all stupid and neighbors started locking their doors at night and buying homes in ever farther-flung suburbs, a trend no one thought would ever ever end but boy were they wrong, but hey, on the bright side, it's a good thing we didn't turn out Berlin, right? All opera and free education and cheap rent and richly endowed cultural institutions and SO LITTLE GDP GROWTH??? Anyway, we were supposed to "weigh in" on that Tennessee guy. Um, he sucks is my opinion.
Because all the drawbacks of breakneck economic growth are so easily reversible! Oh wait.
MEGAN: Yeah, I'm sort of all like, meh, whatever, another crazy person went on another crazy shooting and we're supposed to go, ohhhh, it's because he hated liberals? Well, maybe he just hated Unitarians, it's not like he went to the local Democratic Party offices. Why would anyone expect that the guy's homicidal/suicidal rantings would make sense? It was like 4 pages long. I haven't written a letter that long since my best friend in junior high moved to Canada, not even the one time that I got a letter from a guy I'd been dating in college 3 weeks after the school year ended telling me what a stupid, slutty, vicious cunt I was but that he was only writing to make sure that he hadn't knocked me up so then he really wouldn't have to have speak to me again. God, damn, I wonder if I still have that letter somewhere. Anyway, even he didn't merit a 4 page reply. But God knows what Mr. Crazypants in Tennessee will write when he learns GOP hero Dan Quayle is about to turn Mr. Fancypants and is in talks to join Dancing With the Stars.
MOE: Yeah, oh god, Dan Quayle, it's the nineties again all right. Except insofar as the pollution in China is hella worse.
MEGAN: They're even still defending their human rights record. Seems like it would've been easier to try harder not to be human-rights violators in the last 20 years or whatever, but whatever.
MOE: Pitchfork crapsters: previous link contains JARVIS COCKER, J MASCIS, SEBADOH, LIZ PHAIR, BUILT TO SPILL, MISSION OF BURMA annnnnnnd Flava Flav, referencing his popular reality TV show! To get us back on the Dan Quayle angle. Lou Barlow does not sound like he held up too well, but we'll forgive him because his cover of Ratt's "Round And Round" was such a sparkling contribution to the culture. Okay, and also, pollution. because it's kind of a really good story with implications for the whole next century.

Shougang Steel Group, the giant steelmaker whose name translates as "Capital Steel," was ordered to relocate most of its operations hundreds of miles away to a partly manmade island. Xiang Dong, who worked at the company for 16 years, says he cried when his unit was shut down on March 31. Most of his 600 or so colleagues were transferred to the new facility. "Of course I was sad. A lot of coworkers cried when it stopped," says Mr. Xiang, who continues to work as a caretaker at the mothballed production line. "But this is for the Olympic dream. We do some sacrifices for that."

MEGAN: Speaking of human rights records, did you know the American Medical Association didn't support the 1964 Civil Rights Act? That they deliberately shut down black medical colleges, understaffed black hospitals while forcing the segregation issues, allowed affiliates to keep black doctors out and are only just now apologizing? Because I didn't.
MOE: Oh God, I looked at that story and had no idea what it was about, other than I didn't feel like I needed another reason to disrespect doctors this week. Holy shit.
MEGAN: Ahem. I'm feeling a little disrespectful to the medical establishment this morning, though, but I will change the subject before I rage out for the 2nd time in as many days and so we can talk about the Doha talks in which they're still debating the same fucking issues they did 2 years ago when I got my writing start authoring a "humorous" round-up of the week's events in the WTO negotiations. No, for real.
MOE: Oh, great last graf:

Consider this statistic: In 1910, when Abraham Flexner published his report on medical education, African-Americans made up 2.5 percent of the number of physicians in the United States. Today, they make up 2.2 percent.

MEGAN: Yeah, that was the best kicker I'd read all day.
MOE: Anyway, I have to go sort of. But the buzz today is Obama closing in maybe on Tim Kaine for VP. Do you think Obama could win your state? Maybe I could go home and vote there since Philly seems to have forgotten I existed. Garry Kasparov thinks O needs to go hard on Russia, not a shock, the Ataturk Thought Association is worried the country is turning into Iran following a raid on their headquarters. And I'm still hung up on China, because at some point the world needs to figure out how to make the whole green collar jobs thing work, and just to spite the fucking Republicans I hope they do it in Berlin.
MEGAN: One of my friends just took a green collar job! He mostly took it, though as a third job because his former employer outsourced a bunch of their work and his second job as a tattoo apprentice doesn't pay the bills either so now he's working at a recycling plant. He says he doesn't feel very green except on the really hot days and then he does, but only around the gills.
As for Virginia, polls show it's tight, so who knows. The Washington Post keeps running stories I'm too lazy to find at the moment that Obama's operation in the state just keeps expanding and expanding so maybe? I don't think Kerry was within a point or two of Bush, like, ever in 2004.

Leah and two co-workers decided to spend their lunch break shopping instead of working out and headed over to an Old Navy store, at which they were detained by 6 police officers for shoplifting for more than ninety minutes. They hadn't taken a thing, hadn't put anything in a purse — but they did have the "misfortune" of being being black while trying to shop. Mall security had called police upon spotting a "gang of shoplifters" entering the store — Leah and her two friends. No one in the store, the mall or certainly among the police bothered to apologize to the women for the mistake, though a letter from Leah to the CEO of The Gap got the store manager fired for his behavior.

Leah and her friends are exactly the kind of shoppers The Gap should be (and probably is, at the corporate level) trying to attract — the kind of shopper who will drop by regularly on a lunch break or one the way home for an impulse buy. Affluent, young, successful women who would likely remain loyal to the brand for years to come, who have now soured on the experience and the company (and who are talking to the press about it) because some manager assumed that they were shoplifters because of the color of their skin.

Brand Loyalty Strong Among Minorities [Brandweek]
New 'Buying Power' Report Shows Blacks Still Outspend Other Ethnic Segments [Target Market News]
Behind the Scenes: Black and shopping in America [CNN]

MEGAN: Hey, how is Austin?
SPENCER: It's filled with liberals, positive reinforcement, beef products, Johnny Dash-themed dive bars, extremely cheap beer, and bloggers with pulverizing hangovers.
MEGAN: HuffPo has been Twittering it.
SPENCER: I have met a lot of FDL commenters, who rule; Brandon Friedman of VetVoice gave Wesley Clark a terrorist fist jab at the keynote; I was told to pipe down because I was telling off-color stories during Howard Dean's keynote.
MEGAN: I get told that a lot, too, but really? Howard Dean is that important to listen to?
SPENCER: yeah, Nico asked me if I'd be on the HuffPo twitter feed, but that would require unlocking my Twitter and inviting people I don't know to see it, and there's a lot of stuff that I really don't want to make public on there.
MEGAN: I know, because you never accepted even me as one of your Twitter friends. I'm trying not to be mad about it.
SPENCER: I didn't? I'll put you on. Anyway we should probably talk about the news and shit.
MEGAN: Yeah, probably. So, at an ad conference, someone asked Arianna to play Karl Rove and run plays against Obama. Arianna's not that creative, but hearing her say aloud what we all know is going on at RNC HQ is sort of freaky.

Barack Obama may be Muslim, we're not sure, but he is definitely a Muslim sympathizer. He is the candidate of Hamas. He wants to negotiate with terrorists. He does, basically, not really care for America.

Also, she said "Hawai'i barely counts" as growing up in America and Michelle is "angry and bitter."
SPENCER: The first piece of Obama literature I saw when I got here was a doorknob flyer that read COMMITTED CHRISTIAN.
MEGAN: Which is part of the current messaging that this committed agnostic (no, it's not an oxymoron) doesn't really love, but whatevs.
SPENCER: Arianna's probably right that the sotto voce campaign will move away from the statement "Obama is a Muslim" to "We can't be sure that Obama isn't a Muslim". At this point, it's a safer play to make that sort of epistemic claim — there's absolutely no way Obama could disprove it, it's not the sort of statement that admits of the facts, as they taught me in epistemology class.
MEGAN: Hasn't it already?
SPENCER: It has? My prediction has come true already? See, that's why I'm an A-list blogger.
MEGAN: Indeed! I mean, it's (not to bring up old wounds here) but totally where Clinton went, "I have no reason to doubt it" and "not that I know" and such.
SPENCER: Let's. Not. Talk. About. That.
SPENCER: There is sooooooo much relief-slash-jubilation that the primary is over here — at our FDL caucus yesterday, a review of the last year on the blog tread delicately on the subject of the Great Interfamilial Unpleasantness.
MEGAN: I'm glad at least some bitches are hugging it out after the whole Ricki Lieberman thing that left a bad taste in my mouth. So, moving on to something everyone can be pissed about, there's a new anti-Michelle ad.
SPENCER: YES LET'S. It actually ends with these women pledging allegiance, and what's up with that Reagan quote at the end? "Freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction?" is that like, a threat?
MEGAN: Yes, the Pledge of Allegiance, the vaguely martial music and the use of all women in the add is rather pointed. All in all, still shit but far better done than the North Carolina ad.
SPENCER: Did you see the NYT/CBS poll about Michelle Obama? Her negatives are stunning, or, rather, the racial discrepancy in views of Michelle is stunning

There was even racial dissension over Mr. Obama’s wife, Michelle: She was viewed favorably by 58 percent of black voters, compared with 24 percent of white voters.

MEGAN: Yeah, that would be what freaks me out a little more, that and the whole "where are the feminists that are so opposed to sexism in the media" doing right now?
SPENCER: What accounts for this, Megan?
MEGAN: Oh, God, where to start? I mean, mean girls, the legitimacy of female anger, fear of strong women, envy... Did I ever tell you I have actually met people that have never met a black person until they were an adult. And I'm not talking until they were 18 and went off to college, I'm talking as a legitimate adult. They still exist. They aren't few in number. I mean, I think we've seen this reflected in Crappy Hour comments before:

Nearly 60 percent of black respondents said race relations were generally bad, compared with 34 percent of whites. Four in 10 blacks say that there has been no progress in recent years in eliminating racial discrimination; fewer than 2 in 10 whites say the same thing. And about one-quarter of white respondents said they thought that too much had been made of racial barriers facing black people, while one-half of black respondents said not enough had been made of racial impediments faced by blacks.

I think this is also horrifying and telling:

Nearly 70 percent of blacks said they had encountered a specific instance of discrimination based on their race, compared with 62 percent in 2000; 26 percent of whites said they had been the victim of racial discrimination. (Over 50 percent of Hispanics said they had been the victim of racial discrimination.)

Seventy percent of blacks have encountered at least one incident of racial discrimination. And I'm one of the 26 percent, as once when I broke up a party as an RA in college, I was called a "racist Jewish bitch." And I still know that's nothing by comparison.
SPENCER: Can I tell a story here? I once had this girlfriend who grew up in a mostly-white area, and I took her to my mom's house in Flatbush for the first time. Flatbush is majority-black but rather internally diverse — lots of immigrants from West Africa, the Caribbean (Haiti esp) as well as African-American; and it also contains Russians and Jews. As we were driving down Foster Ave, my GF took a look at the people on the street and said, "So, does your mom's house have a blackyard?". True story
MEGAN: Whoa. Um, how long until you broke up with her?
SPENCER: You were called a Jew?
MEGAN: Yes. A racist Jew because as an RA, I was breaking up a loud frat party 4 doors down from my apartment during finals week and it happened to be the one African-American fraternity on campus. And, obviously, I was just doing it because I hated them and not because I had a 17 page paper to finish and a 25 page paper to finish by the next day and it was finals week and because they were heard by the head of housing. But, yes, Jewish.
SPENCER: So, seriously, where's the organized defense of Michelle Obama? She's an extremely accomplished woman and while she may not have been the professional powerhouse that HRC was by 1992, I don't understand why organized feminism doesn't evidently identify with her. that was badly expressed — I'm hungover — but you get what i'm saying i hope.
MEGAN: No, I think it was said pretty well, it's close to how I've said it. Where's Geraldine Ferraro decrying the attacks by the media on her working status? Where's Gloria Steinem's impassioned defense of righteous anger and women? Did we all just admit that sexism triumphed and go home? Is it only sexism if it's Hillary?
SPENCER: A couple months ago, my friend Ann Friedman of TAP and Feministing wrote a really prescient piece called "Solidarity Politics" about this sort of thing

Let's make this election about the issues, everyone says — and rightfully so. Our presidential nominee should be chosen primarily on the issues. But most of us don't separate issues from identity as cleanly as we'd like to believe. When it comes down to it, everyone is an "identity politics" voter. The problem is that phrase, as commonly used by right-wingers and some on the left who are tone-deaf on issues of race and gender, has the effect of cutting down the political choices and involvement of women, people of color, and gays and lesbians.

MEGAN: I have to say, please introduce me to Ann sometime and I promise not to fan girl out. I almost always really love her stuff — thoughtful, well-written, etc.
SPENCER: and Ann is right about this, but the character assassination of Michelle Obama demonstrates that the argument needs to be taken a step further — recognizing that cross-cutting identities within the context of identity politics is fucking up people's expectations too
MEGAN: I took the best class ever in college in Microsociology (mind-blowing topic) and one of the things that stuck with me was the professor's assertion that we are a collection of equally accurate but not equally relevant identities and roles.
SPENCER: You were saying in the car yesterday that there's a cohort within the feminist movement that's increasingly indistinguishable from an HRC machine and how bad that is for the movement as a whole — it was a really good point that you should tease out for the benefit of CH readers.
MEGAN: Like, because you're white, you'd never call me your white friend, or because we know a zillion bloggers, you'd never call me your blogger friend. I'd never introduce myself to your friends as Pam's sister or Butch's daughter or Greg's ex-girlfriend.
SPENCER: Or George Costanza's father's lawyer.
MEGAN: Yes, exactly. And so I feel like, for many people and sadly probably too many women, the identity that more people associate with Michelle Obama right now is that she's black. Not that she's a woman, or a lawyer, a wife, a mother or anything else. And that's why the Obama campaign is trying to play up the prominence of those roles.
SPENCER: It's depressing that a core mission of the Obama campaign is to teach white America that black people are, like, people.
MEGAN: Or like people, commas deliberately excluded.

I thought of how badly I hated George W. Bush in 2000 because he reminded me of this kid I ran against for some lofty student council position in fifth grade. He was an idiot, a total, shameless unabashed tool, and yet inexplicably well-liked! No one seemed to notice the emptiness of his charm. No one seemed to care because he was so...confident! They believed the hype. (Fools! I would have been soooo much more competent!)

Okay, so, to the present. Barack. He's got a little of that light-skinned black guy thing happening. In high school he signed yearbooks with little Afros over the B and O. BTW, do you think anyone ever teased him for having those initials, B-O? Nah, he'd have laughed it off, cocky bastard. He openly admits he played a "flashy," "street" game of basketball, clashing with coaches who thought he wansn't disciplined or team player-y enough. Oh man, then that guy gets into Columbia? What were his SATs, even? Does anyone know? Why isn't that public?

Okay, so... done with the rhetorical exercise! So here's the thing. I think I get what Geraldine Ferrarro was saying, and that's what's so despicable about it. She's trapped in high school, at the student council election she couldn't win because she wasn't popular enough. Lady, grow the fuck up! Have you read anything Barack Obama has written? Turns out the black boy can write pretty good! (Oh yeah, and teach constitutional law.) His blackness is very much a part of his identity. He struggled with it. Felt alienated. Funny thing that, the way "confidence" can sometimes result from experiencing/conquering alienation at an early age! And seriously, the kid was raised in fucking Indonesia. Would anyone want a fortysomething first-term senator in charge of making every major American foreign policy decision at one of our most tricky moments in history if he hadn't been raised in Indonesia? I probably wouldn't!

But WAIT: that's hardly the only advantage Barack Obama's being born a Kenyan Irish Hawaiian whatever has afforded him in his life and career. Having his flameout father abandon him — he got a whole BOOK DEAL on the basis of coming to terms with that! What's more, it also clearly afforded him not only an element of empathy for underprivileged Americans that furthered his career, but a nuanced perspective on the foreign policy challenges posed by poverty in Africa and maybe even the entire Third World! Beyond that, the fact that he is black has drawn OTHER BLACK PEOPLE who had maybe been previously disillusioned by politics into actually voting. But the fact that he is successful and black makes him relatable to all those other successful black people who go through life hounded by the nagging perception that wherever they are, whatever they have accomplished, affirmative action is to credit for all of it. Successful black people like Michael Eric Dyson totally dig that the Obamas understand this phenomenon.

It is all so unfair!

If you are thirteen years old!

I think I've truly seen it all now - check this out: The Brazilian Butt Enhancer. Seriously, I've never met someone who wanted a larger rear, have you?

And she basically replied that she had been told that the original Glamour racist was a "junior person," as Glamour editor Cindi Leive herself claimed in a letter to the magazine, in which she identified the employee simply as "junior staffer" who, while "not a beauty editor" was nevertheless an "editor." So did Cindi simply fall on her subterfugesword to cover up for an incurable, irredeemable racist? Or does Glamour actually employ TWO separate editors who have never heard the song "Baby Got Back"?

Would You Ever Wear This? [Glamour]

Text reads: "In Africa, kids don't come to school late, but not at all"
Quit hit: Makeup for some? [Feministing]
UNICEF's Blackface Faux Pas [Mediabistro]
Earlier: 'Glamour' Editor To Lady Lawyers: Being Black Is Kinda A Corporate 'Don't'