This country, my country of origin, is obsessed with Black and White as the only two races, as the only racial conflict, as the only communities of conflict. In every experience of academia, media, and social conversation about race, Black and White are polarized to model the dynamics and yawn-boring patterns of racial tension in the US. Shameless in its ignorance, the United States frequently groups Asians in one category, one hand glossing over our black hair and smudging our skin until its all yellow. I am Brown.
The Latino community continuously gains signficant ground, but Asians are the wallflowers of the race conversation. Deemed pleasantly invisible and poetic in distinct features, Asians are Asians and nothing more, nothing less. If we continue to operate in the same outdated model of an umbrella-ed Asian category, I shudder to think of how many lifetimes it will take until bi-racial and bi-cultured issues will come to surface.
Lord I really don’t like Ronald Reagan. And despite how much I hate the Clintons right now, Bill was a better president than Reagan, by a long fucking shot.
With that said, I dunno if I’d go so far as to single out Obama as a “Lieberdem”, as Natasha Chart does. Now, as Noam Scheiber notes, despite utilizing narcotic, substance-free transformational rhetoric about hope and change that can intoxicate even a perpetual cynic like yours truly, “rather than tacking left, the Obama campaign went straight up the middle, where a much larger universe of potential voters awaited.” And it is a matter of record that Joe Lieberman mentored Obama in the Senate.
Still, the DLC-Dem charge seems ironic coming from a self-professed “spiteful” Clinton supporter. Um, so, let me see if I’m following: Chart, who claims to have always “disliked Democrats who tore down the Democratic brand, trashed progressives, and praised Republicans”, is standing up to the establishment by supporting a Triangulating perennial DLC favourite/defender (who counts Newt Gingrich as a fan club member) whose husband endorsed Joe Lieberman in ’06 and, during his tenure as both Governor of Arkansas and POTUS, essentially wrote the book on kissing GOP ass (when politically expedient) and eating your own (again, when politically expedient) in order to stake a claim on the mushy middle. All “out of spite”.
*blinks*
Shit, show me a viable Donkey candidate in this election cycle who isn’t a “Lieberdem.” And don’t say “John Edwards”, whose voting record belies his recent populist re-branding as Huey-Long-in-wingtips. Hopefully somebody somewhere is drafting a wide-ranging eulogy for common sense and intellectual consistency during this primary season–to say nothing of bullshit detectors.
bastard.logic 