“She’s the voice of Iowa. If you want to deliver a message and you’re not talking to Kay, you’re not doing it effectively.” — Tommy Vietor, Iowa Spokesman for Senator Barack Obama.
The quote is from a nice piece that ran in the Chicago Tribune on January 1st. I’m posting it here so I –and Kay’s many friends– can find it.
When I was in the first grade (1954) we lived a few blocks from the city park, the centerpiece of which was the municipal swimming pool. You could swim from open till close for 10 cents. I don’t know this for a fact, but I don’t think most small towns in southeast Missouri had a pool. Come to think of it, Kennett had another pool. At the country club, although I’m not sure it had been built in ’54.
I never noticed that the city pool was segregated, until it wasn’t. That happened in the sixties due in no small parts to the efforts of Sol Astrachan, Kennett’s first Jewish mayor. No connection implied. It was a big deal. I seem to recall some white families forbidding their children going to the pool once “anyone” could swim there.
Barack Obama’s speech today started me thinking about growing up in a segregated community. I don’t think most of us were even aware there were no black kids in our classes. We just didn’t think about them. They had their own school somewhere, didn’t they?
It was called Willoughby School and it was located in what most white people in Kennet called “colored town.” Did the kids sitting in those classrooms wonder where all the white kids were, or –like us– did it never come to mind?
Growing up, I never had a black friend close enough to ask. We just didn’t talk about those things back then. Props to Obama for talking about them today.
I almost never watch Saturday Night Live. Just got out of the habit. Didn’t find it amusing anymore. I’ve watched Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan on 30 Rock and fell in love with Tina. As for Tracy, not so much. Thought he was one of the weak elements of the show. But I think I’ve sold the man short. (And he’s not afraid of Tina Fey)
This past Saturday, Tracy Morgan responded to Tina Fey’s promotion of Hillary Clinton three weeks ago with his own defense of Barack Obama.
MORGAN: Why is it that every time a black man in this country gets too good at something, there’s always someone come around and remind us that he’s black? First Tiger, then Donavan McNabb then me. Now Barack. I got a theory about that. It’s a little complicated but basically, it goes like this: we are a racist country. The end. It’s not the people in this room, but if we’re not a racist country, how did Hillary Clinton convince everybody in Texas and Ohio that Barack didn’t know how to answer the phone at 3 in the morning? Let me tell you something, Barack knows how to answer that phone. He’s not going to answer it like, (soft, frightened voice) “Hello, I’m scared. What’s going on?” He is gonna answer it like I would get a phone call at 3 in the morning: “Yeah, who’s this? This better be good or I’m going to come down there and put somebody in a wheelchair.”
Some things never change, Seth. People saying he’s not a fighter. Let me tell you something. He’s a gangsta, he’s from Chicago. Barack is not winning because he’s a black man. If that was the case, I would be winning. And I’m way blacker than him. I used to smoke Newports and drink Olde English. I grew up on government cheese, I prefer it. Now there’s all this stuff and all this talk about the pastor. Barack has to stay away from the pastor, ‘cause he’s too black. But just because he knows the dude doesn’t think…doesn’t mean that he’s gonna think like him. Look, I have a friend who goes to strip clubs, that doesn’t mean that I am gonna go to the strip club.
SETH MEYERS: But you do go to strip clubs.
MORGAN: Yeah, but I go for the girls, not because my friend is going. I have integrity. Barack is qualified. Personally, I want to know what qualifies Hillary Clinton to be the next president. Is it because she was married to the president? If that were the case then Robin Givens would be the heavyweight champion of the world. If Hillary’s last name wasn’t Clinton, she’d be some crazy white lady with too much money and not enough lovin’. That’s where I come in. I know women like that, you do not want them on the phone at 3 in the morning. In conclusion, three weeks ago, my girl Tina Fey went on the show, she declared that “bitch is the new black”. You know I love you, Tina. You know you’re my girl. But I have something to say. Bitch may be the new black, but black is the new president, bitch.”
“Barack Obama said Friday that he got more political money from indicted Chicago businessman Antoin “Tony” Rezko than he has previously acknowledged. Rezko helped raise up to $250,000 for his various political races, Obama’s campaign said. The campaign had previously put the figure at $150,000 but now says that amount was only for his 2004 Senate race.
(Obama’s) long friendship with Rezko has hampered his efforts to campaign as a new-style politician who abhors backroom deals and insider favors.” [AP]
File under Irony: Turns out Obama really didn’t need to take questionable money. Millions of little people (like me) would have given it (ARE giving it!) to him. I feel like I just crawled into the back seat on prom night. I haven’t been violated yet but don’t like it back here. Sigh.
Bright spot: The sit-down with the two newspapers was the right thing to do. Answer every question. I’ll give him points for that.
We’re all familiar with the O-face. Now, there’s the O-Bama Face:
The O-Bama Face (n.): the expression made by an Obama supporter when the inspired oration and possibility of a Commander In Chief Obama becomes just too much to take.
“The election has “triggered an avalanche of cybersquatter activity,” according to NetNames, a domain name management service. Speculators have registered nearly 2,000 domain names related to presidential candidates as of last week. Names related to Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy made up over half of the registrations, followed by Mr. Obama with 635 and Mr. McCain with 269.” — The Caucus (the NYT politics blog):
I didn’t see a lot of creativity in the domain names listed in the Times story. HillarysFatAss.com and UppityAfroAmerican.com were conspicuous by their absence.
"This is not, finally, an election of the new against the old. It is an election about the place of the America in the world of nations, and whether we are to be known primarily as a dreaded superpower. It is an election about catastrophes, both natural and man-made. It is the election of Katrina and Baghdad." — David Bromwich
Arianna explains why Obama is winning:
“Hillary Clinton’s campaign model,” David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist told me this morning in Chicago, “is a very tired Washington model: ‘I’ll do these things for you.’ Barack’s model is ‘Let’s do these things together.’ This has been the premise of Barack’s politics all his life, going back to his days as a community organizer. He has really lived and breathed it, which is why it comes across so authentically.
“Of course, the time also has to be right for the man and the moment to come together. And, after all the country has been through over the last seven years, the times are definitely right for the message that the only way to get real change is to activate the American people to demand it.”
“Small is the new big,” (Mark Penn wrote). “Many of the biggest movements in America today are small.”
Except when they are very big, and getting bigger by the day. And you’ve missed them.
The Clinton campaign has been complaining they aren’t getting a fair shake from the news media. No idea if that’s true or not. But Cory Bergman at Lost Remote shares this story:
"This is fascinating. A University of Washington journalism class is aggressively blogging the 2008 campaign. They’re attending primaries and caucuses, cameras and laptops in hand. The professor, David Domke, says he’s noticed a lean towards Obama among the students in part because of the way Obama’s campaign staff respected the bloggers.
“The Obama campaign treated us like pros — they called us back within minutes, set up interviews, got us press passes, went out of their way to make the campaign accessible,” Domke writes. “The Clinton campaign, in contrast, didn’t return a single phone call, didn’t provide press access, and did virtually nothing to encourage our coverage.”
Domke concludes: “The Clinton campaign has made the case that Obama is nothing but rhetoric; he’s supposedly all words, while she’s all action. Our experiences showed us that their campaigns — at least in Seattle — were exactly the opposite. In their treatment of my students, Clinton’s campaign was all talk, while Obama’s was all walk.”
HRC lashed out at Barack Obama today for using a strategy out of “Karl Rove’s playbook” by making speeches of hope while sending Ohioans what she called “false and discredited mailings” on health care and trade policy.
There’s a good analysis at FactCheck.org which concludes the direct mail piece "… lacks a good amount of context and could mislead those who are not familiar with Clinton’s plan." The mailer also includes a quote from The Daily Iowan:
“forcing those who cannot afford health insurance to buy it through mandates … punishing those who don’t fall in line with fines.”
Again from FactCheck.org: "Obama doesn’t tell readers that this is a college newspaper written and edited by University of Iowa students. That’s not to say it’s wrong, but a student newspaper carries less authority than a professionally written and edited major U.S. daily."
That’s chicken shit BO, not at all what your supporters expect from you. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt on this one. Maybe you didn’t see this flier before it went out, but that’s no excuse. Just give us the facts and we’ll decide who has the better plan.