Notorious B.O.B.B.Y.

Many eons ago, this past January, I fielded a dozen phone calls from young friends of mine, responding to Barack Obama’s surprise victory in the Iowa primary. Some of them were astonished, some in disbelief. Most of them asked over and over again, “What does this mean”? One of these calls ended with a darkly glib joke. After a few minutes of excited banter, a cynical friend of mine said, “Yeah, but how long before he gets shot?”

We both laughed, of course, because we are a jaded and sarcastic lot, members of a generation very nearly destroyed by irony. We laughed because that’s what we were supposed to say in the face of hope and optimism: someone will take this from us, tragedy will strike, hahaha. We listened to ourselves engage in a parody of our own tired obsession with post-postmodern disillusion and apathy. And laughed again at the self-awareness of it.

Last week, when Hillary Clinton alluded to the assassination of Bobby Kennedy while explaining her decision to stay in the race, however, the joke stopped being funny. The New York Post quickly discovered (in an obscene font size) that Hill rhymes with Kill and the candidate may have sealed her own fate with what she contends was a misinterpreted comment.

I spoke with a young Obama supporter after the story broke who didn’t know what the big deal was. Although he is generally quick to Clinton criticism, this latest horror didn’t register with him. And it didn’t much register with me, either. It turns out that Clinton has once again highlighted the stark generational differences at play in this election.

To explain: I know nothing about JFK or Bobby Kennedy or Dr. King as men. My generation wasn’t there for those movements; we didn’t witness the glory or the tragedy. My understanding of these iconic figures came through grade school black history pageants and Oliver Stone films.

The staggering tragedy of these deaths only crept into my consciousness this past April, when I traveled to Pennsylvania to cover that state’s Democratic primary. I met a 60-year-old black woman in Philadelphia who shared the timeline of her political involvement, which in many ways stopped in 1968 and started again in 2008. She told me her family was afraid to turn on the television back then because it seemed like every time they did, another great man was stolen from them.

As much as her words impacted me, I still will never know what that was like. And maybe that’s good in that it allows me to be less jaded than members of the generation that witnessed it.

Maybe that’s what is missing this election season: a serious examination of our generational differences. As much as we have probed our disturbing patterns of racism and sexism in these months, we have overlooked some very telling age-based truths.

Consider, for example, that come November, a man who survived the Great Depression and fought in World War II will share a polling place with a woman who was 10 years old on Sept. 11, 2001.

This month, Vanity Fair decided not to run Miley Cyrus’ back-baring photographs on its cover and opted instead for a portrait of Bobby Kennedy and the tagline The Hope, The Tragedy and Why He Still Matters. I read the story and, inspired as I was, it was hard to extract why, exactly, he still mattered. I asked a young blogger friend of mine for her thoughts on the Kennedys and she wrote back:

“The only political legacy I’ve lived under is the Bush Family. I mean, if Hillary wins then I guess it will be the Clintons as well . . . But the Kennedys represent a legacy that my generation will never have, like something you see in a museum and it looks nice but you’ll never know if they were good or bad because you never got to know them.”

The same week that issue of Vanity Fair hit the stands, news broke of Ted Kennedy’s malignant brain tumor. Almost instantly, I heard in that tragic development some premature, inverse echoes of 2004, when Ronald Reagan died in June of the election year. What followed then was a brief and wondrous Reagan-fueled Republican Renaissance, brushing aside conservatives’ uneasiness about the administration and saving the president’s job. I wonder now if Democrats will have a similar self-love affair, longing for the days of Camelot and casting Obama as King Arthur.

In any case, it won’t register with most of us. Instead of heaping the burdens and curses of previous inspirational leaders on the back of Barack Obama, his young supporters seem to be watching his story unfold in real time with the optimism and glee of political virgins.

And even if we’re not that pure, we know that in America’s modern democracy, you don’t have to assassinate someone to derail a political movement. I was reminded of this watching HBO’s fictional re-telling of the Florida Recount of 2000. For most in my generation, this was our first big civics lesson.

Late in the film, Kevin Spacey’s character is sitting at a bar talking candidly with a colleague. By this point, the two of them have given every second of every day and every ounce of energy to Al Gore’s campaign and the fight is almost over. Kevin Spacey turns to his colleague (played without cigarettes but with a cartoonish Boston accent by Denis Leary) and says, “You know what’s funny about this whole thing? I’m not even sure I like Al Gore.”

I am certain that he was not alone in that sentiment. The same could be said for John Kerry: the bland alternative to deranged fear mongering. These are the only elections we’ve known.

And that’s why this one matters. We can’t be troubled by the threat of assassination or another generation’s ghosts.

Hillary Clinton is Ralph Nader for Hillbillies

Eight years ago, I found myself crouched in a doorway in downtown Los Angeles as police officers in riot gear fired tear gas and rubber bullets at young people in the street in front of me. Just a block away, Bill Clinton was onstage at the Staples center, warming the crowd for his heir apparent Al Gore on the next to final night of the Democratic National Convention.
The kids in the street were not protestors, in a strict sense. At that time, my generation didn’t have much to rally around. In a vague and almost naive way, we resented globalization and were put off by the obscene wealth of the tech era. Most of that was rebellion for rebellion’s sake: we had no war, no recession, no paranoia, no visible tyranny. We just wanted something different.
As people vomited in the street from the gas, others ran blindly and the police shouted orders over bullhorns to disperse, a young man I was sharing the doorway with turned to me. He was calm and smiled before asking me, “What do you know about Ralph Nader”? I half shrugged, to question his timing, and he handed me a flyer.
Months later, people would curse Ralph Nader for handing the presidency over to George W Bush. In many ways, that wasn’t criticism. His plan was to upset the system, to demonstrate that there were legions of Americans who didn’t want to choose between two different kinds of same. Because of that, I liked him. He appealed to youthful, idealistic short-sighted rebellion: the kids in the street. He stuck around for the purpose of “crashing the party”.
It appears after Tuesday’s near-meaningless victory in West Virginia that Hillary Clinton has the same designs. The only problem is that this time, young Americans have found someone to rally around in the name of change who is not a trouble-making outsider, but a viable candidate. In light of that, even though the race is all but un-winnable, Hillary has had to readjust herself as the champion of a different group of Americans: old, white, poor, uneducated and subtly racist. You could say she is now positioning herself as a Ralph Nader for Hillbillies.
That phrase would be funny if it weren’t true.
I don’t like the word irony, but I don’t know how else to describe the Wellesley/Yale girl scouring the nether regions of Appalacia in a pantsuit, promising to shine the light of freedom and prosperity on this forgotten and cripplingly poor corner of America.
Now, you don’t have to be from humble means to advocate for the poor, but you do have to be genuine. Hillary only recently positioned herself as a populist, when she realized it was her only remaining option to combat the inclusive, optimistic and successful candidacy of Barack Obama.
If Hillary Clinton was sincere about helping the people of West Virginia, she might have told the story of that state’s most famous resident: Lynndie England.
Lynndie was raised in a trailer park in Fort Ashby, West Virginia: a town of 1,354 where the median income for a woman is $21,667. When Lynndie was 17, she dropped out of high school and joined the Army Reserves to escape her night job at a chicken processing plant. Lynndie had dreams of going to college and becoming a meteorologist. She saw the Army Reserves as a means to that end. The only means for her, in fact.
Instead of college, though, Lynndie ended up as a prison guard at Abu Grahib in Iraq and the rest of her story is as tragic and heart breaking as the beginning. Her superiors at the prison manipulated her into posing in pictures with naked detainees, giving the thumbs up, among other things. When she became the face of the Abu Grahib horrors, she became something else: the face of white poverty in America.
Lynndie’s story highlights the horrific distaste of Ms Clinton’s pandering. She is not a crusader of this neglected, suffering group of people. She is trying to exploit their misfortune as a means to derail her own political party. It is truly sick and insane.
She was only allowed a brief West Virginia victory dance, however.
John Edwards threw a rather clunky sabot into Hillary’s false populist loom late Wednesday with his endorsement of Barack Obama. This spells trouble for Hillary because Edwards (expensive haircuts and shiny penny loafers aside) is a genuine populist. He’s been singing justice for America’s poor since the beginning of his political career.
So choose your metaphor. Chris Matthews said the snow cone has melted. Pat Robertson said the train has left the station. At this point, Barack Obama would have to be found naked with a face full of cocaine in a Super 8 with Miley Cyrus to lose the nomination. Or so it seems.
The other option (which I have to consider because nothing is certain this season), is that Hillary plays her cards so shrewdly that she derails the party with underhanded dealings and steals the nomination.
In that case, come July, I’ll be huddled up in a doorway in Denver, dodging rubber bullets in the street with betrayed and angry young people while a block away, Bill introduces another heir apparent.

Decadent and Depraved: Hillary, Horse Racing and The Hills

It is a common, irritating and overused metaphor in the world of political reporting: The Horse Race. This is the numbers game, the poll-surfing and guessing that fuels the meaningless and mindless excitement behind tracking candidates’ progress numerically. The horse race sweeps fundamental issues aside in favor of days long conversations about, say, how the Reverend Wright controversy is tilting the numbers among white males over 50. It’s like the game at the carnival where you shoot the water in the clown’s mouth to blow up a balloon: sure, there’s a winner every time, but what the hell are we doing here?

This election season has exposed a flaw in the metaphor, too. Horse races are exciting because they are quick and decisive. There are no horse marathons. Four months after Super Tuesday, we are exhausted, disgusted and looking to places like Guam for salvation.

In fact, the same day that Chamorros cast their vote for Barack Obama, America’s attention was instead focused on the biggest day in thoroughbred horseracing: the famously “decadent and depraved” Kentucky Derby. If you missed it, let me offer a brief and heartless synopsis: the favorite horse won and the second place horse--Eight Belles--broke both of her ankles and was quickly euthanized, right there on the track.

It should be noted here that Eight Belles was a filly, a female horse. In 134 years of running the derby, a filly has won only three times. Because of this, Hillary asked her supporters to place bets on Eight Belles, saying, “I hope that everybody will go to the derby on Saturday and place just a little money on the filly for me”. Considering Eight Belles’ fate and the results of last night’s primaries, Ms. Clinton should be thankful that she doesn’t have a Mexican midget with a riding crop on her back.

Barack Obama swept to a startling victory in North Carolina and came within a couple points of Hillary in the Indiana contest. As early as midnight, the Huffington Post ran the headline “Presumptive Nominee” above a photo of Michelle and Barack Obama, waving to supporters, drenched in confetti.

A big night for Obama could not have come sooner. I spoke with a young Obama supporter before the polls closed who told me that if Hillary wins both states and the thing drags on, she’s “giving up”, adding, “I don’t care any more. It’s too much.”

Yes, the balloon of youthful optimism has been slowly deflating for weeks now. Negating the candidates themselves for a minute, I have to say the weeks since Pennsylvania have been particularly trying, if only because I can’t watch these two drink cheap beer alongside union guys in grimy bars with sawdust floors any more. It disgusting. If I knew drinking Budweiser in seedy places was a qualifying round for president, I would have tossed my hat in the ring years ago.

Obama’s overwhelming victory in North Carolina may have drawn this thing to a close in time to bring back the hopeful, the young, the optimistic, the people who climbed out of the cave of indifference back in January, only to be chased back in weeks later.

It’s a fitting place to mark that milestone, too. North Carolina is the home of many things: Newport cigarettes, obnoxious college basketball dynasties (Duke) and Andy Griffith. It is also where Pepsi Cola was first produced, way back in 1890. 100 years later, Pepsi famously crowned themselves “the choice for a new generation”. To follow the analogy, the current administration would be Coca Cola and Hillary Clinton would be, um . . . RC Cola? I’m not sure. Something irrelevant. (Would it be too much to call John McCain New Coke?)

To be fair, Hillary put up a fight and was rewarded with an anorexic (almost Florida-thin) victory in Indiana. It turns out petty, divisive rhetoric and pandering pays off. With a hair’s breadth victory in a medium sized state at the end of a losing run.

I’ll stop short of bidding adieu to the Clintons because I’ve learned from the recent past, but there is clearly not much gas left in that tank. And it is my hope that the close comes in time to reinsert some hope and optimism.

She doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, though. I’ve been asking myself for weeks now, “what is she still doing here?” It’s gotten to the point that watching her is like watching an episode of The Hills: mundane, maddeningly dull and ultimately meaningless. I find myself asking out loud, “Who watches this? Why is this so popular? In fact, it’s exactly like The Hills, only there’s a new episode every day and it’s broadcast 24 hours a day on three separate networks for months until you find yourself rolling around on the ground, groping desperately for meaning in the vacuum of vapidity that boring, rich blonde girls have created.

It is my opinion that her defeat was signaled by her endorsement of Eight Belles just before the derby. Sports analogies have been historically problematic for her. Weeks ago, campaigning in Philadelphia (a city she lost), she compared herself to Rocky, forgetting of course that in the film, Rocky was an over the hill contender who trained hard and fought valiantly, but was ultimately defeated by a charming black guy.

Confirming another one of my theories that her delusion is actually a mind-bending months-long mescaline trip, last night Hillary Clinton got onstage in Indiana and delivered a victory speech, in full defiance of reality. At one point, she raised her hand and addressed her supporters, saying, “thanks to you, it’s full speed to the white house!”

Sadly, you can’t run full speed with two broken ankles.

M'aider! M'aider!

There was a moment early on in the Mayday festivities in New York City that qualified as surreal. An elderly Chinese woman took a break from toting her “immigrant rights now” sign through Union Square and took off her shoes to rest her feet and talk with some friends. Moments later, a young, scruffy college student walked past and offered her a copy of “the socialist worker.” She laughed and shook her head. It may or may not have occurred to our young idealist (in a beret, no less) that this woman in all likelihood risked her life to escape a communist country.
This is not an attempt to undermine his efforts or scoff at university idealism, just a way to highlight some of the noticeable changes that have taken place since the first large scale mayday immigrant rights marches two years ago.
I was in Los Angeles that day in 2006 and I was awed as a spectator. I saw the peaceful, powerful message being sent and was touched, even inspired. Close to a million people made their way through the downtown streets with a simple message: we’re here and it’s our America, too. Generations of families marched side by side because, as one young protestor told me: I don’t want to lose my mom.
On this day in Union Square, there were noticeable differences. For one, the turnout was minimal. Less than 1000 people, even. And it looked suspiciously like many other disorganized laundry list lefty parades I’ve been to in the past 10 years. The Mumia people were there, the socialists, the animal rights people, police brutality folks, Iraq vets against the war, groups carrying signs with Hitler moustaches drawn on the president’s face: the message of immigrant rights was lost in the confused and frustrated stew of liberal outrage.
The people who generally burn the American flag at their events were marching with people who understand the flag’s significance more than most: people who risked their lives to come here, work and very much buy into the system. It reminds me of what I saw when I visited the UC Berkeley Campus after the bombing started in Afghanistan in 2001. People were out there, too, with their vegan signs and their racial justice pamphlets: worthwhile causes, mind you, but it all becomes a numbing static blur when you get away from the central issue.
Some of those undocumented people might LIKE George Bush or think Mumia should fry. It’s an ignorant assumption that people demanding immigrant rights will want to get on the animal rights bandwagon. Contrary to the conventional argument, it’s not all the same fight.
It should be noted, though, that a lot has changed in the past two years concerning the fight for immigrant rights. Raids by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency have torn apart families and destroyed communities in pockets all over America. It has become evident, also, that as a result of the economic downturn in this country, fewer Latino immigrants are sending money to their families back home. Most people I talked to said that fewer people came out this year because they’re either afraid of being detained or they can’t afford to take a day off work.
We should also remember, however, that the son of an immigrant is running for president. The politics of identity force us to stop at Barack Obama’s blackness, forgetting that he is the son of a man who came to America for a new life, just as all of those who march did.
Mayday is kind of a wacky holiday to begin with, however. It’s a pagan holiday that got blended with the Virgin Mary and eventually came to represent the struggle for workers rights. Except, of course, Americans celebrate their workers rights holiday months from now with barbecue and Home Depot shopping on a monday.
Until 2006, Mayday in America wasn’t much more than a time for campus communists to hand out papers and for others to celebrate “loyalty day” (which is what the US government changed the holiday to back in the cold war after the soviets adopted it) by dancing around a pole. Only after the immigrant rights movement adopted it did it become a significant American Holiday (however unofficial).
And after that significant turn, it almost feels more significant here than in most of the world. Barring demonstrations in Turkey and the Philippines (among other countries), where people marched in response to soaring food prices, most of the world’s Maydays this year seem obsolete. An old woman in the Ukraine holds a picture of Lenin, crying. Thousands march through Havana with portraits of the now nearly irrelevant Fidel Castro.
Even in America, organized labor seems a little outdated. Yesterday, a union boss in Indiana gave his endorsement of Hillary Clinton, saying America needs a leader with “testicular fortitude”.
Keeping in mind a disappointing turnout in most American cities this year, the fight is still significant. The voice still resonates. And particularly now, with the difficulties America is facing.
Another curious anniversary celebrated on Mayday: Five years ago on May 1st, our president stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared Mission Accomplished in Iraq.
The phrase “mayday” is also used by pilots and policemen as a distress call over the radio. It has nothing to do with theday itself, the phrase is an anglicized version of the French phrase m’aider, which means literally: “help me”.
It is fitting, then, that on this day, with all that we have to contend with in present day America, the future of our country, our recent immigrants, can celebrate the anniversary of the day they first made their voices heard.