Tuesday: Hillary Clinton Meets the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Today, Senator Hillary Clinton will go before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in order to prove herself worthy to be Secretary of State.

Ok, we all know how this is going to go.  She is going to be clear, concise and direct and will include brief summaries to reinforce her main ideas.  Also, she will avoid the use of “ah” or “um” which convey a sense of hesitation to the listener.  In other words, she will prove herself to be the commanding, assertive, knowledgeable person who does her homework and consults with experts in the field so that she knows the political landscape better than anyone else in the country.  By the end of today, we are all going to be scratching our heads wondering why we didn’t elect her instead.  No, no, Obots, this is not a recent phenomenon or a fluke.  She’s *always* been this way.  You just couldn’t see it with all the smoke in your eyes.

In the meantime, the NYTimes has compiled a set of questions from foreign policy experts that they want Hillary to answer.  Some of them are openly hostile, especially from Fouad Ajami who asks:

1. In 1913, Woodrow Wilson appointed William Jennings Bryan secretary of state for solely domestic political reasons. He needed but distrusted him, and thus relied on other advisers to conduct diplomacy. Have you read up on Wilson’s relationship with Bryan, and will it be relevant to your own situation?  (excuse me?  Hillary reads up on EVERYTHNG, wanker)

2. In the past, you have taken different positions on Iraq. As secretary of state, which of these foreign policy positions are you likely to adopt? Will you be the hawk who voted to authorize the war, or the war critic who referred to reports of progress in Iraq as requiring a “willing suspension of disbelief?”  (depends on the methods we used to achieve “progress” and what the media has refused to report on during the election season, wouldn’t you say?)

3. You speak about the 1990s, President Bill Clinton’s era, as a time of peace and prosperity. Yet the ‘90s witnessed a steady trail of anti-American terrorism that emboldened Al Qaeda’s leaders. In the Clinton era, terrorism was generally viewed as a law enforcement problem. Did we really do so well in handling terrorism in the 1990s?  (Um, yes.  There were no 9/11’s or anthrax attacks during the Clinton admin.  The first attack on the WTC was not followed by a second one and law enforcement was all done in a lawful manner.  So what’s your point?)

Yep, no hostility there.  It’s still Bill Clinton’s fault as far as Fouad’s concerned.  But Wangari Matthai and Walter Russel Mead ask some pretty thoughtful questions like:

3. African leadership is seeking closer ties with the East, especially China, which is willing to do business without conditions like respect for human rights. How will the United States address Africans’ willingness to sacrifice some of the most important principles of democracy and good governance?

and

1. The chances of peace between Israel and Gaza seem more remote than ever. Many of the Palestinians in Gaza are impoverished refugees and the overcrowded Gaza Strip has few resources. The two-state solution offers little hope for these people; that is one reason Gaza has historically tended to support radical Palestinian parties like Hamas. How will you make the two-state solution popular among the people of Gaza?

Oddly enough, not one of them involve how many times a month she and the Big Dawg have conjugal visits.  We are grateful for small favors.

Personally, after all the vetting, when she shows definitively that she is the best man and woman for the job, I wish she would say, “On second thought, I’d like to stay in the Senate.  I think I’d do a better job than Caroline Kennedy and let’s face it, there’s no consolation prize for being swindled out of the presidency by your own party.  Yeah, being the foreign president would be a nice addition to my CV, but completely unnecessary.  Surely, SURELY, you can find someone to do this job as well as I can.”

Probably not but if Senator “I-went-to-elementary-school-in-Indonesia!” would like to switch places before the inauguration seals the fate of our country for the next four years, I’d like to hear how *he* would answer the questions the experts would put before him.

On second thought, forget it,  I’m sure my ears would bleed.

***********

Many thanks to all of you who voted for us for Best Liberal Blog at the 2008 Weblog Awards.  You still have time to vote if you haven’t yet today.  Apologies to those blogs we recommended whose leads were squashed by the spiteful actions of The Blog That Must Not Be Named.  They sort of ruined the fun for the rest of us.  But as you can see, we rode the wave and we’re still here and not going away.  We’re not interested in caving in to the massive peer pressure tactics in order to be assimilated into the O-borg.  We really believe in our liberal values and will hold Obama and the Congress accountable if they refuse to wrest the country back from the hands of the Movement Conservatives.  No matter how turbulent it gets, we’re going to hang on and ride this baby out to the bitter end.

America Jumps The Shark

I’m beginning to think that the art of politics (if there is such a thing) is the ability to get strangers to pretend to understand when you talk nonsense out of both sides of your mouth.  Unfortunately, that is also today’s definition of journalism.  That makes looking for turds of political wisdom among the media bullshit as much fun as a scavenger hunt in a sewer.  And just as obvious.

Politico is reporting that there are landmines ahead for ever-prepared policy wonk, Hillary Clinton, in her upcoming Senate confirmation hearings because she’s married to Bill and she ran against the man who appointed her, while at the same time (same article) reporting that her confirmation hearings are scheduled for only one day and everybody thinks she’ll be confirmed “speedily.”

Rasmussen Reports tells us that “lots” of people, 75% in fact, plan to watch at least “some” of the first black president-elect’s upcoming inauguration, with 28% planning to watch it “all,” while you couldn’t pay 21% to watch “any” of it.  They don’t tell us how many people plan to watch “for sure,” but 61% of black people will watch “all” the festivities, because he’s black, too, while only 22% of whites feel the same way, because they’re not.  Since the stupid networks show every indication of airing every aspect of the stupid inauguration festivities over and over until we “all” puke, I think it’s significant that 21% obviously won’t be turning on their televisions, reading a paper or surfing the net in the foreseeable near future.

California Senator Dianne Feinstein’s recent support of Rod Blagojevich’s appointee for Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat, Roland Burris, should score her some major points with black voters and colleagues who pretty much liked her anyway, according to CQ Politics.  Fienstein’s support registered well with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, though her reasoning had nothing to do with his skin color; rather, she cited a quaint little concept known as “the law.”

Feinstein’s bold stance on a no-brainer issue nonetheless puts her at odds with her Senate colleagues intent upon prolonging what amounts to a pissing contest during a circle jerk.  Those opposing Burris’ seating because he was appointed by a guy they consider to be a slimeball, (presumably not because he was involved in shady pay-to-play scams, but because he got caught; nobody’s calling for Bill Richardson‘s head or for his duties to be suspended; probably because he doesn’t have a Senate seat to sell like Blago and barely Governor Patterson) are suddenly trying to figure out how to zip up their wet pants and look presentable without washing their hands now that they realize that the curtain’s open and people are watching.

What do you do when you pick the guy you like to give the invocation at your inauguration, in order to make nice with the people who didn’t vote for you, if the people who did vote for you hate him?  Why, you find somebody the people who like you will like, too, and invite him to speak at another event, call it an “inauguration…something” and, sell it on EBay the internet.

But, all of that is just business as usual.  Sure, the outgoing Republican president turning over 350 billion taxpayer dollars to the incoming Democratic president is a little unprecedented (like being a little pregnant) but, not eyebrow-raising in today’s Obamacan political climate.  And, so what if people who read Politico think that MSNBC’s Chuck Todd is a latter-day Walter Cronkite?   Who cares if the FISA guy wants to digitalize medical records?  Multiple wars, impeachments, Gitmo flip-flops, unemployment, sucky economy, scandal, we’re used to all that stuff.

No, what has sent the country into a Happy Days-inspired leap from reality is the recent propensity of popular culture icons to embrace the ridiculous as it relates to Barack Obama.  You’d think they’d never seen a black president before, or something.  First Ms. Magazine, in a move that makes “The View” and “Playgirl” seem radical by comparison, boasted an improbable cover touting Obama’s non-existent feminist creds, going so far as to depict him as the women’s movement’s very own super hero, a giant leap up, in the wrong direction, from Prince Charming or Barbie’s Ken.

But the “fridge was nuked” waaaay over the rainbow shark when Marvel Comics equally (more) improbably paired Obama with a real-as-it-gets superhero, Spiderman, in it’s latest edition, because the future Geek-In-Chief was once a collector.  I shit kid you not.

The Barack Obama rage has now taken the comic world by storm. Reportedly the president will feature along with the superhero ‘Spiderman’. The fact that the US-president elect was a Spidey collector as a kid, has inspired the Marvel Comics to feature the ‘icon’ for the children’s book.

“When we read that we thought, ‘Oh my God the future Commander-in-chief is actually the future nerd-in-chief,’ the New York Daily News quoted Joe Quesada, Marvel’s top editor, as saying. “With a geek in the White House , we just had to give him a shout back. It’s just the coolest thing ever,” Quesada added.

Unlike Ms., at least they didn’t give the Obamessiah undeserved super powers.  Maybe by this time next week, or more likely, the week after, since “lots” of us will be eating nachos and watching the Super Bowl of Politics on cable next week, (I wonder if they’ll have cool new commercials?) we’ll find out that the wheels on the Obabus are actually jet-propelled wings or something.  I’m sure a rocket fueled, Acme Co. E-ject-O driver’s seat is too much to ask for.

And, the wheels on the bus…

*X-posted over at my place, Cinie’s World, as you would expect.

David Shuster Meets His Match

Since I never watch MSNBC anymore, I was fortunate to see these videos posted at No Quarter by Curt of Flopping Aces. These interviews are amazing.

We already know that David Shuster is one of the most misogynistic “reporters” in the media, standing out even among his koolaid-chugging colleagues at the Obama Network. For example, during the primaries he accused Hillary Cllinton of “pimping out” her daughter, simply because Chelsea Clinton, a mature adult, freely chose to make campaign appearances for her mother. In another blatant display of CDS, Shuster brought a “Hillary laughing pen” onto the set during a discussion of primary results and used it to mock Hillary for her “cackle.” Shuster was also one of the most rabid of the TV talking heads in his attacks on Sarah Palin during the general election campaign. There are endless examples of his over-the-top CDS and PDS.

On Friday, Shuster “interviewed” (actually harrangued) John Ziegler a libertarian-conservative radio talk show host turned docmentary filmmaker, whose film Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected will be released in February. Ziegler maintained a good humored tone as he stood up to Shuster’s attempted battering. Apparently Shuster felt he’d been beaten, so he invited Ziegler back a few hours later for another attempt, which was again a failure. Watch and enjoy.

Discuss.

Update: John Ziegler has been “distressed by the general nature of the liberal response” to the preview of his documentary that was posted at you tube.

I should probably hold off (for now) on sharing the over-the-top,hate-filled, profanity-laced, rationality-less e-mail I have received, but you can just go to the comments section of the video and see for yourself!

While I guess I should not have expected much from the followers of a false Messiah virtually installed by an adoring media, even I have been a bit taken aback by the absurdity and intensity of much of the reaction to the video and the Zogby poll that I commissioned.

We Conflucians are not surprised, of course. We also know that the Obots are not really liberals. They are Obamicans.

Why I’m PUMA

I am a PUMA today for the exact same reason I went looking to become something that didn’t yet exist on May 31, 2008; I object to the manner in which Barack Obama became my president.  And nothing I’ve seen before or since has mitigated that essential truth in the slightest, in fact, the more I see of the way he operates, the more upset I get.  Barack Obama offends my sense of fair play.  From what I’ve been able to determine through my research of him, he has pushed the against “da roolz” envelope in every contested election he’s won.  Though he cannot be accused of outright cheating, he has built his entire pseudo-impressive career out of finding obscure loopholes to screw to his orgasm, thereby raping the process to his pleasure and advantage.

As has been extensively chronicled, in 1996, Obama won his first election to the Illinois Senate by contesting the voting petition signatures gathered for all of his challengers, getting them all disqualified, and running unopposed.   Before he could complete his second term of office, after winning re-election in 1998 over African American Republican Yesse Yehudah (whose name later emerged in Obama bribery allegations) he mounted a disastrous 2000 campaign for sitting Congressman Bobby Rush‘s seat, who beat the pants off him like he was a red-headed stepchild, by playing his “my black card on the table trumps the Uppity Magic Negro card up your sleeve.”   It worked, and Obama never let that happen again.

Given Illinois’ convoluted system regarding Senate terms…

Every Senate district elects its members to serve two four-year terms and one two-year term per decade.

…and Obama’s predilection for reticence, the details regarding his Illinois Senate runs are rather sketchy.  However, considering that his opponent in  1998, Yehuda, won approx. 10% of the vote, and that in 2002 he ran unopposed, its safe to assume that, for some reason, Obama’s re-elections were basically a rubber-stamp formality.  Curiously, Wikipedia mentions that Obama was re-elected to the Illinois senate in 2002, presumably in November, yet numerous sources report that he had already begun preparing for a run at the U.S. Senate by June of that year.  From the Boston Globe:

In mid-2002, Obama began to focus on the upcoming US Senate race. The incumbent, Republican Peter Fitzgerald, seemed beatable, and it was not clear Carol Moseley Braun, who had held the seat before Fitzgerald, would try to reclaim it. Obama and his wife made a deal: This would be, as his wife puts it now, “the last hurrah.”

And, from a Chicago Maroon piece written July 12, 2002:

Democratic State Senator and University Law School Senior Lecturer Barack Obama has begun assessing his chances in the 2004 US senate race. Obama has commissioned a statewide poll by the Colorado firm Harstad Strategic Research, and he has filed for federal permission to begin fundraising. Obama will have to win the democratic primary in order to face incumbent Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald in ’04.

Note the article from 2002 refers to Obama as a “Senior Lecturer” not “professor,” as he has claimed to be; a claim which was backed up, but “nuanced” (their word, not mine)  by Fact Check.org via the University of Chicago.  Another example of Obama’s fondness for “nuance”regards his now, much bally-hooed, then, largely ignored, unfilmed, 2002 Iraq war speech:

“My objections to the war in Iraq were not simply a speech,” Obama said. “I was in the midst of a U.S. Senate campaign. It was a high-stakes campaign. I was one of the most vocal opponents of the war.” (Obama delivered the speech in October 2002; he did not officially declare his candidacy for the U.S. Senate until January).

Even in this era of YouTube and camera phones, a recording of Obama’s speech is all but impossible to find. The Obama campaign has gone so far as to re-create portions of the speech for a television ad, with the candidate re-reading the text, with audience sound effects.

So, according to the above article from NPR, this cornerstone and centerpiece of Obama’s presidential campaign was actually an insignificant speech delivered to about 1,000 people by a little known guy running unopposed for the state Senate, at somebody else’s (Jesse Jackson) rally.    Even Obama’s campaign manager, David Axelrod, has admitted as much.   Quoted in the New York Times Caucus blog lamenting the lack of recorded Iraq war speech material:

“I would kill for that,” he was quoted as saying. “No one realized at the time that it would be a historic thing.”

Similar “nuance” marks the man’s entire biography, yet he has somehow managed to create the illusion of transparency.  When David Axelrod joined (became) Obama’s team in 2004, the elements of Obama’s new, “I am, too, black enough, but not too black, just short of under-handed envelope pushing” political philosophy began to successfully knit themselves  together.  On his AKP&D Message and Media website, “the Axe” takes his full share of credit:

In 2004, Axelrod helped State Senator Barack Obama score a landslide win in his U.S. Senate campaign, developing a message and media strategy that enabled Obama to defeat six opponents in the Democratic primary with an astounding 53% of the vote. He is currently serving as media advisor to Obama’s presidential campaign.

Breaking America’s Glass Color Barrier

In reflecting upon the historic nature of the election of Barack Obama as America’s first black president, I’m reminded of another moment in our recent  history when the country’s color barrier was shattered.  In 1984, beautiful, talented, intelligent, and yes, articulate, Vanessa Williams tore down the walls of one of the strongest bastions of white entitlement at that time, the Miss America pageant.  Until that point, women of color were pretty much excluded from competition, even when token contestants were allowed entree to it’s rarefied atmosphere, there was scant expectation of them attaining victory.  However, Williams, standing head and shoulders above the field, simply could not be denied.  While we now take fully integrated competition in the fading glory of the event for granted, at the time, Williams’ victory seemed every bit as momentous as Obama’s.

As America’s Constitutional preclusion of blacks as citizens prevented African Americans from from holding elected office, for many years before the crowning of a black woman, the Miss America pageant was also institutionally racist.  Though the envelope had been steadily pushed, women who were not examples of pure, lily-white virtue faced an often insurmountable hurdle.  Even in the case of some white women, like Bess Meyerson, Miss America 1945, being Jewish almost cost her the crown.  From PBS:

The pageant’s long history of excluding women of color dates from its beginnings. At some point in the 1930s, it was formalized in the notorious rule number seven of the Miss America rule book. Instituted under the directorship of Lenora Slaughter, rule number seven stated that “contestants must be of good health and of the white race.” As late as 1940, all contestants were required to list, on their formal biological data sheet, how far back they could trace their ancestry. In the pageant’s continual crusade for respectability, ancestral connections to the Revolutionary War or perhaps the Mayflower would have been seen as a plus.

It is no surprise that the nation’s first black Miss America was fair-skinned, deemed not quite black enough by some blacks and far too black by some whites.  “Light, bright, and damn near white,” was the sentiment of some African Americans, displeased that the coronation of such a light skinned black woman did nothing to validate the acceptance of the natural beauty of darker complexioned women with thicker lips and wider, blunter noses.

Almost immediately, the public would become divided over this history-making event. On one hand, black people would celebrate it as a defining moment for their race, while radical whites would protest it and even go as far as to threaten Williams’ life. Still, there was another group of African-Americans who would criticize Williams because her skin was too light, her hair was too straight, her eyes were the wrong color and her upbringing was too privileged. In short, they felt that Williams was not black enough, and therefore not a true representation of their race.

“Nigger” was the expression most often used against her in the hate mail she received during her reign from those whites furious that the integrity of an American institution had been compromised.  From Wikipedia:

Williams began competing in beauty pageants in the early 1980s. Williams won Miss New York in 1983, and went to the Miss America national pageant in Atlantic City. She was crowned Miss America 1984 on September 17, 1983 making her the first-ever African American Miss America. Prior to the final night of competition, Williams won both the Preliminary Talent and Swimsuit Competitions from earlier in the week. Williams’ reign as Miss America was not without its challenges and controversies. For the first time in pageant history, a reigning Miss America was the target of death threats and angry racist hate mail.

While there are some obvious similarities in the stories of Williams and Obama, the most striking being that their middle class blackness was questioned and assailed for it’s “Huxtable-esque” in-authenticity…

Vanessa grew up in a cozy community named Millwood (pop. 2,500), about 40 miles northeast of New York City. For years the Williamses were the only black family in town, but Vanessa never felt different. Her parents, Milton and Helen, taught music to high school students in neighboring exurbs and were cultivated, prosperous. “We had a real nice raised ranch house, great clothes, new bikes, good foreign cars, a pool in the yard—I missed a lot of the black urban experience.”

…there are also major differences between the two.  Unlike the empty suit clad Naked Emperor, there was never any question as to Williams’ qualifications.  She actually had to answer the questions, sing the song, and wear the swimsuit.  She also fulfilled her duties as Miss America admirably, always honoring the blacks and women who came before her for their sacrifice.   Until the “scandalously sexy” photos of her surfaced, causing those predisposed to object to her holding the crown to wax apoplectic about her “unworthiness,” giving them an excuse to hide their racism behind the fake outrage attendant to the convenient adaptation of outdated, Victorian mores, Williams served exemplarily.  The hypocrisy of a culture celebratory of the judgment of scantily-clad women on superficial criteria condemning a woman for exploiting those same qualities on her own terms ws never acknowledged.  Secondly, contrary to the Astroturf tools of David Axelrod in the media and blogosphere, fond of manufacturing false racial controversy on Obama’s behalf, hardly anyone objected to Obama’s candidacy simply on the basis of his race.  In fact, in the grand scheme of things, his exploitation of his bi-racial background afforded him a huge advantage.

There is no question that Vanessa Williams’ shoulders are among those upon whose Barack Obama stands, she who actually faced bigotry in all of it’s ugly forms before and after society’s misogyny joined hands with its racism, forcing her to resign in shame, only to emerge victorious, provided a template Obama could do worse than follow.  At the same time, struggling in a society whose standards of feminine comport are external and arbitrary, Williams also has as much, or more, kinship to other modern women as disparate as Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin.

With the ongoing specter of BlagObama-gate hanging over his head, the possibility of career-ending scandal derailing the Obama presidency is worthy of contemplation.  If this blows up, or other skeletons in his closet were to emerge, enabling political opponents to exploit the country’s residual racism to their advantage, it is not at all clear that he possesses the character, dignity, grace and strength necessary to persevere and overcome.

Like Vanessa Williams.

Or Hillary.

May God Bless and Keep You Always!

You — my readers, my friends, my family — have been my rock, my sustenance, my touch stone throughout this year.

As a community, we have all been that for each other — and for all of it, I give thanks.

And May Your Year Be Sweet — Filled with Chocolate and Sweet Moments

Who could have imagined one year ago that our PUMA community would materialize out of thin air? Who could have known that we would spend the year in a fight for the Democracy we have known? Who would have foreseen that they would have given so much to this fight, and given up or suspended so much that they took for-granted before — career, friends, family, colleagues and associates — in order to take a stand for something that seemed so obvious? It was the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times, and we could not deny it. Like Hillary, we found our voice, individually, and collectively. And we still are here . . . testifying.

And you? To whom do you give thanks? And . . . who in your life keeps you young?

And how about this: what did You do in 2008 that you could never have imagined a year ago?

And: what do you want to do this year, in any domain, for sake of what really matters to you?

Happy 2009, Everybody!

Please press play — the heart-swells will be worth it . . .

Forever Young

by Bob Dylan

May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
And may your song always be sung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

It is hard for an empty suit to take a stand – or perhaps even to understand what it means to take a stand

[Cross-posted from Heidi Li’s Potpourri]

Richard Cohen’s sister is canceling her inauguration party because of President-elect Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to bless Mr. Obama’s taking the office of the Presidency of the United State. According to her brother’s column in the Washington Post, what made her do this is the way in which Mr. Obama’s choice to pick this pastor for this occasion serves as a special sort of condoning of Mr. Warren’s views about gays and lesbians. I agree with Richard Cohen, and apparently his sister, that these views should be regarded as totally unacceptable by anybody who has any sense of the importance of civil rights and indeed of human rights. I also agree with Richard Cohen’s view that as a somebody running for the office of President and who was at the time a U.S. Senator, Mr. Obama had a particular responsibility for denouncing his then-pastor’s church, Trinity United Church of Christ, for giving the anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan a special award during the primary season. I find it troubling that neither Mr. Cohen nor apparently his sister have not been, as far as I can tell, overly concerned by President-Elect Obama’s equally eloquent silence and inaction regarding the sexism and misogyny directed at Senator Clinton and her supporters, particularly the sophomoric expression of these attitudes by Jon Favreau, the man writing President-elect Obama’s inaugural address. (I shudder to think what the reaction of the Cohen family would have been if Favreau had been found on YouTube horsing around calling somebody a “homo” – maybe then Richard Cohen’s sister would join us in our demand that the President-Elect fire this sophomoric bigot as his chief speech-writer. Whether a bigot is slick (Warren) or juvenile (Favreau), he is still a bigot.)

It is tempting to forget in this sort of dynamic who the real problem is. As is clear from what I have written so far, I wish Richard Cohen and his sister would be, respectively, writing about and canceling inauguration parties as much over Mr. Obama’s inaction in the face of sexism and misogyny as they are in the face of anti-Semitism and gay-bashing. And yes, I wish that Richard Cohen’s sister had paid attention to and given greater weight to the fact that she had the option to work to elect somebody who, both as a Senator and as a Presidential candidate, repeatedly marched in Pride parades and met with editors of gay newspapers across the country rather than working for somebody who would not even have his photograph taken with Gavin Newsome.

But I am not falling into the trap that lies that way. Just because people got it wrong before does not mean they cannot help matters now. People can learn. So despite the bit of complaining above, I am not going to point a finger at Richard Cohen’s sister (or, for that matter, at Katha Pollitt for decrying the misogyny involved in the Warren choice when Pollitt, like Richard Cohen’s sister, opted to support Mr. Obama for the presidency when it was already obvious that he was complacent, to say the least, about sexism and misogyny). I am just pleased that they are starting to pay attention now and apparently coming to understand better who they voted for. To quote Richard Cohen: “The real problem has nothing to do with ministers and everything to do with Obama’s inability or unwillingness to be a moral leader. Sooner or later, he just might have to stand for something.”

Aye, there’s the rub. During the primary season and the general election a friend of mine who spent some considerable amount of time listening to me lament the Democratic Party’s poor judgment in making then-Senator Obama their poster-child, kept saying to me that the real problem with Mr. Obama is that he is an “empty suit”.

That term seemed to me too tepid back then. But I have come to see it as the essential problem behind the problem of Mr. Obama’s inability or unwillingness to be a moral leader, and possibly any kind of leader. To be a moral leader, to stand for something means that you have to fill out your suit, your office, your position. To be an “empty suit” is to be a person who cannot draw a line in the sand, precisely because you do not have an arm and hand within that suit to use to reach out and draw that line. To be an “empty suit” is to be devoid of the weightiness that real leadership requires, including the gravitas to admit to a mistake and change one’s position (drop the bigoted minister and lose the bigoted speechwriter; say you have been wrong to dig in your heels rather than listen to the concerns of so many of the people who worked so hard to elect you). To be an “empty suit” is to be a moral vacuum.

I refused to vote for John McCain for a number of reasons but among them was the fact that while I knew he had the capacity for moral leadership, I did not care for the directions toward which his moral commitments would lead my country. I refused to vote for Barack Obama because I knew he came up empty on the capacity for moral leadership.

In some ways, moral emptiness, especially in a President, is worse than moral wrong-headedness. The morally wrong-headed leader takes a stand, e.g. George W. Bush’s legitimization of torture, and one can rally people against the stand she or he takes. The morally empty leader takes no stand. Under these circumstances, her or his silences often allow people to forget that the blank that exists in lieu of a leader is the appropriate target of criticism. After all, it seems easier to go after people who actually do take stands (Rick Warren, for example) rather than the person who silently enables wrong-headed person to gain in stature. But this is sleight of hand. The real problem is the enabler, the person who allows the sophomoric sexist to put words in his mouth, the person who lets bigoted clerics and their churches affiliate with him.

So, to Richard Cohen’s sister and to Katha Pollitt, I say welcome to my party – the one that got lost in 2008, the one that expected moral leadership of a certain kind from a Democratic president. Now that you are here, I hope you can help me figure out what we are going to do with the empty suit about to occupy the Oval Office. If that empty suit thinks he can pick up sufficient evangelical money and votes in 2012, he is not going to listen to bloggers and op-ed columnists whose votes and followers he thinks he can replace with the support of the evangelicals, regardless of the detestable content of many of their views and some of their conduct. Personally, I do not think we can give the empty suit the backbone necessary to resist the lure of that support. If we cannot give this empty suit some backbone, we need, as I have written before, to start figuring out how we can have a better candidate on offer in 2012. So to the people who are canceling their celebrations, may I suggest that they use the time and effort saved to start solving that problem. We need to coalesce now around somebody who can fight for a nomination by a major Party – probably the the Party formerly recognizable as the Democratic one – who is what Obama’s supporters hoped he would be and what I fear he is not.

Facebook Bans Breastfeeding Photos

From the New York Daily News:

A minirevolt is underway at Facebook after photos of mothers nursing their babies were removed from their personal pages.

More than 58,000 people have joined a Facebook group called “Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!” to complain about the censorship.

Organizers will conduct a cyberprotest Saturday, asking every supporter to change his or her profile picture to an image of breast-feeding.

“We need to take our bodies back,” said mom Stephanie Muir, one of the group’s administrators.

Facebook is very concerned about *The Children.*

A Facebook spokesman said it removes photos only if the entire breast is exposed.

“These policies are designed to ensure Facebook remains a safe, secure and trusted environment for all users, including the many children [over the age of 13] who use the site,” said Barry Schnitt.

I share the outrage these women feel, but where was the mass protest when Jon Favreau and friend groped a lifesize cutout of Senator Hillary Clinton and posted it on Facebook? In fact, the disgusting Jon Favreau group grope photo is still posted on Obama’s favorite speechwriter’s fan site. Why no *concern* from Barry Schnitt about that?

So, according to Facebook, children must be protected from seeing women nursing their infants, but the President’s speechwriter groping the future Secretary of State is just fine?

By the way, why hasn’t Jon Favreau been fired yet? And even more outrageous, why has Jon Favreau been named one of the six “Bostonians of the Year?”

Finally Some Outrage is Building–But Not From the National Organization for Women

Republican Andrew Breitbart, writing at Real Clear Politics:

At the exact moment Jon Favreau is receiving high praise in pre-inaugural media puff pieces, the 27-year-old chief speechwriter for President-elect Barack Obama (not Jon Favreau, the Hollywood actor/ director) finds himself in a minor mess over a photo from a recent private party showing him groping the breast of a cardboard cutout of Hillary Rodham Clinton as an unnamed pal wearing an “Obama staff” T-shirt kisses and feeds her beer.

If you haven’t seen it, imagine the early stages of the barroom rape scene of “The Accused” with Jodie Foster. Or think prosecutor Mike Nifong’s graphic (though false) descriptions of the Duke lacrosse party. Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson danced to a similar tune at the 2004 Super Bowl.

Fraternities have been closed for less.

Breitbart cannot understand why there isn’t a “groundswell of feminist outrage” yet. Concerned, he contacted the National Organization for women for a reaction.

The National Organization for Women, which last struck issuing news releases on why Sarah Palin isn’t a real woman, refused to comment on the Obama speechwriter incident.

When NOW’s press secretary Mai Shiozaki was reached Friday, she first claimed not to have seen the Favreau photograph. But when called later, she offered two reasons for not weighing in: “I haven’t looked into it” and “I have a 5 p.m. deadline. … I am already late.”

Tsk Tsk Tsk! Is This Really the Next Junior Senator from New York?

How do you like this photo, Barack?

Note: Thanks to Katiebird for the photo(shop).

This is an open thread.

Update: Obama thought this one was really hilarious (h/t Sugar, posted in comments yesterday).

I wonder if he’ll like the one Murphy posted?