A Rational Animal

[Sigh] . . . .  I addressed this last week, but apparently it’s already time for a refresher course.

The New York Times, in its haste to ensure that no one but Hillary, Obama, and Edwards gets any ink, begins what is supposedly straight reporting with the following:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is the front-runner and will probably win the Democratic presidential nomination. Rudolph W. Giuliani could do well in Mississippi. And the length of the presidential campaign is insane.

Read that first sentence again.

WTF?

First of all, I have yet to see any hard evidence that Hillary is indeed the "front-runner."  The distance to Election Day ‘08 is so far that it renders such evaluations meaningless. 

But it’s the second half of that sentence that really sticks in my craw.  "[A]nd will probably win the Democratic presidential nomination"?  Sez who?  Robert Pear?  And since when has he become The Grand Electoral Oracle 20 Months Out?

Sweet jumping Jeebus on a pogo stick.  Note to Bill Keller:  This is supposed to be a news piece.  You know, that kind of writing that involves verifiable facts, not the author’s opinion?  Particularly when he seems to pull his opinions out of his ass.  I will be flatly astounded if Hillary is the nominee.  I don’t give a rat’s ass how much ink they’re giving her now, or how many millions she raises - I don’t see a plurality of DNC delegates voting for her, and I don’t think she can win the general.

Pear then devotes the remainder of the first third to the following dubious conclusion:

Democratic governors pleaded with their presidential candidates to ignore the fringes of the party and focus instead on the “middle 20 percent” of the electorate with a pragmatic, problem-solving agenda.

Of course, the only guv that he quotes in support of this proposition is Tennessee Blue Dog Phil Bredesen, who disses Pelosi but doesn’t actually say anything about this "middle 20 percent" that Pear finds so compelling.

And then . . . then the piece’s hed is discarded utterly, in favor of interviewing long-time GOP tool and current Mississippi guv Haley Barbour about Hillary’s chances.  Good ol’ Haley gets six - count ‘em, six - grafs all to his little ol’ self.

Pear next moves to a series of governors for comment.  He gives a little extra space to PA’s Ed Rendell, who has the only intelligent comment in the entire piece (Pear’s "reporting" included):

“I think it’s insane,” Mr. Rendell said in an interview. “The media has created a two-year presidential election cycle that’s very destructive to American politics. And the political system is complicit. We front-load our primaries so much that four or five states decide who the nominees are going to be. It’s over by February. And then we have a God-awful yearlong presidential campaign, general election campaign, which is too long and lends itself to all these negative attacks.”

No shit.  But blame Edwards, Hillary, and Obama and their handlers, and especially blame the MSM.  The rest of us would be content to labor quietly in the trenches for another eight months, and not have to listen to the squawking of the punditocracy.

Pear quotes governors Barbour and Bredesen, Rell and Rendell, Baldacci and Pawlenty and Ritter and Sebelius.  He also manages to get in references to GOP candidates Giuliani, McCain, and Brownback; to Dem candidates Clinton, Edwards, and Obama; and even to 2004 candidates Bush and Kerry. 

So who’s missing? 

Why, yes, that’s absolutely right.  Not a single, solitary word about Bill Richardson. 

In an alleged straight news story about both governors and presidential candidates, there is not a single fucking reference to the one person who not only fills both roles, but is also a major player on the national and international diplomatic stage.

Now, Bill’s not generally the type to allow others to label him, much less to marginalize him, and from what I’ve seen, he doesn’t take kindly to being ignored, either.  But I hope he’s ready for this.  The MSM have already staked out their turf, and have assigned roles to each of the players.  Richardson is this campaign’s Howard Dean:  the candidate who doesn’t fit the MSM’s insider narrative, but who could actually win, and who thus must be marginalized at all costs, at every opportunity. 

I hate the MSM. 

If you’re reading this later in the day, you can still watch it here.

So far, he’s doing his usual job of acquitting himself well.  What’s surprised me is that all callers so far have seemed sympathetic to him.  They’ve got three lines set up this morning:  One for Dems, one for the GOP, and one for us NM residents.  Calls so far:  one Georgia Democrat who is clearly a supporter ("I’ve been following you since you were in the Clinton Administration . . ."); one New Mexican from Roswell who didn’t identify her affiliation, but asked about vets’ issues and added that she hopes he wins the presidency; and one Republican who asked about a couple of different issues, but who was not merely polite, but seemingly receptive. 

Of course, each question gets a detailed answer - he’s as wonky as his buddy the Big Dog.  Personally, I like that in a candidate, but I realize that a lot of people want the snazzy and substanceless sound bites.

He’s saying right now that he’d send Jim Baker to Iran as his emissary to negotiate!  There’s a counterintuitive choice for a Democratic candidate. 

Now he’s moving on the latest caller’s second question, WRT veterans’ medical care in their home states.  So far, he’s talked about the fact that the federal vets’ death benefit was $11 lousy grand, and the fact that he’s arranged for NM vets to get $400K policies.

Well, just got the first marginally hostile question:  "What are you gonna do when negotiations with Iran fail?"  He refuses to be baited; good for him.  He’s pointing out that diplomacy should be the first option, with the sabre-rattling coming only upon diplomatic failure.  Not, of course, that the current pack of bulllies would ever dream of such an approach . . . .

Los Lunas, NM (I’ve been there a lot lately):  Question about negotiating with Iraqi anti-American elements.  Again, he’s stressing the importance of bringing Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia into the process.  The host’s first question - literally right out of the box - was:  "If you’re elected president, what will you do about Iraq?"  His response:  Set a timetable for withdrawal of troops within 12 months.  Use the promise of withdrawal as an incentive to get the players to do two things:  1) Bring together all three religious factions (Sunni, Shi’ite, Kurds) and trade withdrawal and reconstruction for creation of a three-state confederation, underneath a "federalized" Iraqi government, that would require true cooperative effort; and 2) creation of truly multilateral approach to security via bringing Jordan, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc., into a wide-ranging reconstruction effort that would commit all parties to ensuring security.
Ohio Dem: Wants to know about his commitment to Ohio, which is now an electoral "kingmaker," so to speak, and whether he’s taking PAC money.  WRT the former:  "I’m going to get myself in trouble here, because there are 49 other states" that are important, but acknowledges the role of Ohio and promises to campaign accordingly. WRT the latter:  Notes that he’s not independently wealthy, and is indeed taking PAC money, within campaign finance limits.

NM teacher, via e-mail: Wants to know about low teacher pay in NM; Richardson points out the changes he’s made already, as well as his bill before the current Lege.  What he hints at, but doesn’t say bluntly, is that we’re coming off several terms’ worth of GOP anti-union and anti-teacher policies that left our state’s educational system in the gutter.

Okay, on to Mike Gravel . . . .  I’ll have additional Richardson posts later today, too.

Update: Mike Gravel is obviously not my choice (although, were he by some freak chance to become the nominee, I’d vote for him in a heartbeat).  However, I think he knows that he has no real chance, and it has freed him to say what he really believes.  He was jsut asked a question by a [clearly conservative] Democratic caller who was agitating over the "homosexual agenda" and its supposed hold on the Democratic Party.  Gravel professed confusion about what the caller’s question was, then said, "Look, here’s what I think . . .," and promptly endorsed gay marriage.  Not civil unions, not domestic partnerships - marriage, for consenting adults, period.  He concluded with this:  "I think that it’s entirely right for a man and a woman to get married, a woman and a woman to get married, or a man and a man to get married.  I can’t be any more clear than that."  Bravo, Mike!!!  (He’s wrong on the sales tax, but that’s another post . . . .)

I shit you not.  There’s the screen grab; click on the thumbnail if you want it to be readable.

How fricking stupid are these people?  Okay, okay, I know; it’s WaPo.  Pretty damn stupid.  But still . . . . 

At least The New York Times had the sense to phrase its hed as "Sharpton Learns His Forebears Were Thurmonds’ Slaves."

But to say flatly, in 2007, that one person was "owned" by another?  Good freaking grief.  Yeah, I know that people traded money for persons in those days (still do, in some benighted parts of the world, including the U.S.).  I also know that those who give the money and get the persons consider said persons their property.  That doesn’t mean that they "own" them in any sense of the word that should be afforded any legitimacy.  And WaPo has no business lending its legitimacy (however tenuous that may be these days) to such a concept with that sort of phrasing. 

Now, if they wanted to say "illegally imprisoned," "held captive," "enslaved," "kidnapped," "committed an obscene and criminal act," etc., etc., then maybe we can talk.  "Owned"?  Not so much.

Incidentally, maybe WaPo’s not so thrilled with Novakula’s diatribe about Chief Illiniwek, either.  When I went to retrieve the column for this morning’s post, it wasn’t on the main Opinion page, despite being only a three days old.  Nor was it captioned in any of the "blurb boxes."  Knowing, however, that WaPo indexes a dozen or so of each columnist’s most recent pieces, I scrolled down to Novakula’s photo, clicked on it, and went to "Past Columns by Robert D. Novak."  And what did I find?

Zip.

Well, not exactly.  I found his ten most recent columns - with one notable exception:  his most recent (prior to today’s), which, coincidentally, happens to be his screed on the "killing of Chief Illiniwek." 

Or maybe not so coincidentally.

Anyway, I grabbed a screen shot.  The image above is a thumbnail; click to see the actual screen grab.

Yes, I grasp that this post is an exercise in futility.  This is Novakula we’re talking about, after all.  And since I haven’t had time over the last few days to address this, part of me entertained the idea of ignoring him altogether.

Nope. 

Can’t do it.

If you read this blog, you know why I was so outraged by John Aravosis’s casual racism with regard to the University of Illinois’s correct, if long overdue, decision to retire its mascot, "Chief Illiniwek."  And it’s true that Aravosis’s attitude bothers me more than Novak’s, if only because I expect better from the former, while I expect nothing good from the latter.

But while racism and stupidity are what I expect from Novak, that doesn’t excuse them.  And the fact is that he has a much larger platform from which to bray his bigotry, and a much broader sphere of influence.  So, no, I’m not going to ignore it.

[If you want the background on the Illiniwek mess, go here.  This post is devoted purely to taking down Novakula.]

Let’s start with the title, shall we?  "Death of the Chief."  Just like John’s complaint that they [we PC-addled NDNz, presumably] were "killing [his] chief," Novak sees this as a "death." 

A death?  Get a freakin’ grip, folks.  Death is what stalked the Tsalagi on the Trail of Tears.  Death is what was inflicted on the Cheyenne at the Sand Creek Massacre.  Death is what dogged the Diné during the Long Walk to the Ft. Sumner concentration camp.  Death is what suffocated the Chiricahua and Mescalero Apache interned in hellish concentration camps in the Deep South.  Death is what shadowed the numerous Pueblo peoples of my own area at the hands of Bent, and Carson, and Kearney, and a host of other white "Christian" killers in the employ of the U.S. government.

But the act of retiring a racist "symbol" and ending 80+ years of cheap minstrelsy?  The references to "death" and "killing," in this context, are racist in and of themselves, with their utter lack of awareness of the very real massacres of the peoples that "symbol" supposedly portrays.

But that’s just the beginning, both literally and figuratively.  Novak ends his very first graf with this:  "I was privileged to watch Chief Illiniwek proudly dance down the field to Indian war music."

Jeebus, you idiot.  First, get it through that fevered brain of yours:  The minstrel you saw doing his little happy dance was not some real person named Chief Illiniwek.  He was some white guy dressed in regalia he had no business wearing, and that undoubtedly wasn’t even accurate, but a mishmash of pieces from a variety of tribes and traditions.  Second, no Native American would have done this "proudly":  The only pride on display here was that of racist delusions of superiority that encouraged the exploitation of other cultures’ sacred traditions for purposes of cheap entertainment.  And third, and please try to get this through your fucking thick skull:  What you heard was not "Indian war music."  It was your white school’s white band’s idea of what "Indian war music" must sound like.  The two bear no relationship to each other.

Novak continues:

Oh, well, boo fucking hoo.  So they "bow[ed] to years of pressure" - did they "scrape," too?  Oh, and BTW, Bob, Native American activists had every right to pressure them to end such an outrage, and the NCAA was rightly concerned about its image.  But "liberal politicians?"  Of course - all the evils in the world come back to liberals.  By God, if it weren’t for those damn liberals, we NDNz would still know our place, on the reservation, seen [for the consumption of the tourist hordes] and not heard, and certainly not becoming "activists" who "pressure" poor, defenseless Big 10 universities into an appreciation of cultural diversity and appropriateness.

But Novak’s just getting warmed up:

This is a melancholy moment for me and many other Illinois alumni and university officials, including President B. Joseph White. The university has been forced to yield to blackmail. The death of the Chief epitomizes some unsavory aspects of contemporary American public life: political correctness, hypocrisy and bureaucratic tyranny.

Awwww.  Look, everybody:  Bob’s "melancholy!"  Again, boo fucking hoo.  Cry me a goddamn river.  And while you’re at it, see if you can’t curb the hyperbole a bit, hmm?  I mean, really:  "yield to blackmail"?  What happened to all your capitalistic tendencies, Bob?  Doncha wanna see your alma mater make tons o’ money again? 

But I really love that final phrase:  "unsavory aspects of contemporary American public life: political correctness, hypocrisy and bureaucratic tyranny."  Funny; I thought the "unsavory aspects" of this whole episode were the racism, exploitation, and expropriation of another culture and its sacred traditions for venal purposes.  It never occurred to me that political correctness, hypocrisy and bureaucratic tyranny" were the real villains here.

But, you know, I could dismiss this as simply more of Novak’s usual bigotry.  After all, he’s entitled to his opinion, however fucked up it may be.  But then he begins trading in outright falsehoods:

"Only a small minority of Native Americans is shown by polls to oppose Indian nicknames in sports." 

Really, Bob?  And could you, y’know, maybe cite, like, a source for that preposterous statement?  Because as a Native American, I certainly oppose them, and so do all my Native friends and acquaintances.  And more to the point, every poll I’ve ever seen - of Native Americans, that is, as opposed to the U.S. population as a whole - shows that a majority of Native Americans opposes them.  Vehemently.

Up next:

To say, "But the Chief is no mascot" is, at best, the analytical equivalent of "you say to-may-to; I say to-mah-to."  We say he’s a mascot; Novak and the university, in their infinite wisdom, say he’s a symbol.

Oh, a symbol.  Well, just pardon me all to hell, Bob.  Now that we’ve cleared that up, go back to your little war dance - erm, no.  It doesn’t matter in the slightest which label you put on it; the fact remains that your blessed "Chief" was indeed a "comical figure" who mocked sacred traditions.  And I’ve seen the "dance," bub - ain’t nothin’ "austere and dignified" about that bullshit.

The accusation that Illinois and other schools degrade Native Americans is absurd. These schools picked Indian symbols in admiration of their valor, ferociousness and indomitable spirit in the face of overwhelming odds. Native Americans were honored in naming states. Illinois is Algonquin for "tribe of superior men." Indiana means the "land of the Indians."

WTF?  I’m nearly reduced to incoherent strings of profanities.  (Fuckfuckfuckfucketyfuckingmoronassholewhatthefuckishetalkingabout?)  Listen, dipshit, there’s nothing "absurd" about that accusation at all:  It does degrade Native Americans.  And "valor, ferociousness and indomitable spirit in the face of overwhelming odds" is hardly the reason they were chosen - well, maybe the "ferociousness" part, since the supposed point was that they were savage.  And there’s no equivalence, moral or otherwise, between naming a state - i.e., a place - after an indigenous culture and naming a money-making vehicle for mass entertainment after them and then christening the baby with 81 years of min strelsy in redface and "warpaint."

Oh, and Bob?  Quit trying to show off your knowledge of indigenous languages.  It just makes you look like a moron.  "Indiana means the ‘land of the Indians’?"  Wow.  We PC-crazed NDNz never could’ve figured that out if we hadn’t had you to educate us.  But to say that "Illinois is Algonquin for "tribe of superior men’?"  Now, Bob, that’s just wrong.  First, because "Illinois" is a French-English bastardization of "Illini" (or, more accurately, probably "Helineh").  And second, because although some native speakers of that particular branch of the Algonquin linguistic tree might translate it as "tribe of superior men," it’s doubtful.  I wouldn’t necessarily go bail for the notion that it translated to "men" - i.e., as opposed to something gender-neutral.  Maybe it did; maybe it didn’t.  I’m no expert on indigenous languages; I’m having enough trouble trying to learn my own.  But I can guarantee you that "tribe" wasn’t in there anywhere, and I can pretty much guarantee you that this "superior men" locution wasn’t present, either.  Most indigenous languages, in my experience, have a word that represents the people who speak that language as their native tongue, and that literally translates to something along the lines of, simply, "The People."  "Diné" among what you know as the Navajo.  "Ani’yun’wiya" among the Tsalagi, or what you undoubtedly refer to as the Cherokee.  "Anishinaabe" among my own people (that’s Ojibwe or Chippewa to you, Bob).  True, there may be an undercurrent of pride, even of a sense of "chosen"-ness, to some of these names, but generally, the actual translation is simply "The People."

Bob’s not done whingeing yet, though: