Obama

The Contraception Contretemps and the Siren Song of Sanity

February 22, 2012 By Sean Murphy 2 Comments

Did you see Rick Santorum today? Did you hear him yesterday? A year ago? A decade ago?

Look: I’ve had little to say about this recent (very manufactured, very cynical) hysteria about womens’ right to not have their private parts and personal volition subject to what a bunch of old fruits in costumes and out-of-touch, self-loathing (likely closeted) politicians determine, based wholly on words that explicitly do not appear in the bible.

What can/should anyone say that public outrage and the fact that it’s 2012 won’t take care of?

Aside from how poorly it will continue to play, politically, these outrages represent a real opportunity (and this is important: it will play poorly politically not because of spin, or the media, or astute campaign messaging but because these opinions –and the bills they are attempting to produce– are equal parts antiquated, offensive and calculated to appeal to an ever-shrinking base of true believers). Speaking of shrinkage, wouldn’t it be nice to see some of these freaks put their money where their hard-ons aren’t and get equally fired up about banning erectile dysfunction meds? Lots of senior citizens popping those pills in the hopes of procreation, right? Of course, the hypocrisy of religious men (and women) is literally too long and disgusting to catalog, so let it suffice to say that this ship has sailed, and condolences to you all as you live out the rest of your bitter, backward lives listening to the anti-siren song of progress, evolution and tolerance. I hope it continues to hurt your ears in equal proportion to how happy it makes my eyes, and heart. Who’s with me?

(Incidentally, don’t give this cretin an ounce of credit for belatedly backing off the bill that should never have been brought forth in the first place. It is disgraceful –and what an embarrassment to my state this idiot is– that this clown shoes lunatic fringe has felt sufficiently emboldened in recent weeks to get their Medieval on. On the other hand, that noise you don’t hear is the satisfying silence of cowardly retreat and that noise you do hear is the unified uproar of women (and men) who are appalled that this could possibly be a conversation piece in 2012. That he turned tail so quickly shows how opportunistic and shameless everything about this “controversy” has been. That he –and his imbecilic compatriots– thought for one moment that they were on the right side of (take your pick) history, sanity, or respectability (in 2012!) shows not only how obtuse, but willfully out of touch these jackasses really are. Let’s hope the chorus of sanity grows louder still and what was obviously conceived as a winning diversion (HA!) turns out to be an overdue rallying cry for the types of people who were supine or asleep enough to let an immoral vandal like Bob McDonnell get elected in the first place. For anyone still not paying attention: consider this a painful but necessary wake-up call.)

Similarly, my take on the recent contraception contretemps can be boiled down to one sardonic observation, which I offer with maximum disdain: If adolescent boys could get pregnant, the Catholic Church would be passing out birth control with the communion wafers.

On a happier note, did you catch Obama last night? If not, some video below.

The election comes down to all sorts of factors, but in terms of who “gets” it, who is “real”, who is contemporary, who is in touch and who can inspire progress, would you rather have a president who hangs out with blues legends and community organizers, or a president who pals around with bishops and lobbyists?

The “choice” is yours.

(See what I did there?)

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: Bob McDonnell, Obama, Rick Santorum

The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave

November 16, 2011 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

If Newt Gingrich does the unthinkable (and, for the record, I still think there is less than a 1% chance it happens) and sticks around –much less snags the Republican nomination to run against Obama– I will be obliged to reexamine my views concerning the Deity I don’t believe exists.

For a man who makes it his business to loathe the media so much (a nice pre-emptive strike that Palin learned from and mostly got away with, and which is only somewhat catching up with Cain and Perry, yet of course most of the damage to their campaigns, painful as it’s been to watch, has been self-inflicted), wait until he gets a load of finally (finally!) receiving a modicum of scrutiny that all (most?) candidates receive. Once the rock under which this first-class charlatan does business is lifted; once the tiniest bit of fresh air shines light on even some of his shady dealings, manifest hypocrisy and shameless opportunism, that tubby deck of cards is going to crash harder than Charlie Sheen after a three-day bender.

Earlier in the year I had this to say about the dime store despot. Here is my key takeaway, which it gives me giddy pleasure to revisit:

Gingrich remains the gift that keeps giving. There is not much I had any interest in saying, since he was doing so much of the heavy lifting this past week to immolate himself (as predicted by anyone not inexplicably in thrall to his con act; that so many in the media still give this snake oil salesman the time of day is bewildering). So let’s cut to the chase: I would wage considerable sums of money that there is no chance Newt could ever weasel his way into the nomination for 2012. Frankly I don’t think God loves us enough to make that remote possibility a reality. However, few things would provide me more pleasure. It might even be worth praying for.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: Newt Gingrich, Obama

In Memory of Sidney Lumet: Celebrating ‘Serpico’

April 11, 2011 By Sean Murphy 2 Comments

It’s difficult, and pointless, to try and isolate which film was Lumet’s best or most enduring. The fact that he made three of the best movies of the ’70s (three out-and-out masterpieces in one decade) is more than enough. There are already several well-written and worthwhile tributes and summaries of his long, amazing career, and they rightly spend time on the many decades he was active (including this last one when, at the age of 83, he directed the disturbing, outstanding Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead). For me, it was that seminal decade (the ’70s) when he did his best work, and that work does the near-impossible: it totally reflects its time and provides indelible commentary on –and for– that era; while managing to anticipate our world, almost forty years later. This is beyond prescient and bordering on prophetic. Of course, it has as much to do with the screenplays as his direction, but it’s to Lumet’s credit, and indicative of the dilemmas that drove him, that he gravitated toward this material.

In the recent past (2009) I wrote about how Network pretty much previewed…everything, focusing on the then-implausible ascension of circus clown Glenn Beck in a piece entitled A Half-Assed Howard Beale:

(Right now Paddy Chayefsky is:

a. Rolling over in his grave

b. High-fiving Peter Finch in heaven

c. High-fiving Peter Finch in hell (where it’s Happy Hour 24/7)

d. All of the above

There are any number of examples that could be (and probably have been) offered up to illustrate how prescient Chayefsky’s screenplay for Network really was. Think of phony purveyors of moral outrage ranging from Morton Downey Jr. to Jerry Springer, and the whole concept of infotainment to the hastening-of-the-apocalypse proliferation of Reality TV. Stage it and they will come is now the (un)official mantra of media’s M.O. And, in the end, it’s all pretty much a tempest in a teapot. Or, a tempest in a tea party. Which brings us to the unbelievable Glenn Beck. Of course, fabricated indignation has been good business in America since Jonathan Edwards first perfected the formula with Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God back in 1741, shortly before the advent of cable television.

Capitalizing on the nervous consciences of the faithful created steady work well into the 20th Century, and Sinclair Lewis codified the archetypal character in Elmer Gantry (1926). That pernicious tradition was carried on faithfully by Confidence Men like Pat Roberston, Jerry Falwell, Benny Hinn and Rick Warren. But of course this act has always been too tempting for politicians not to embrace with every inauthentic bone in their bodies. The only hucksters that can outhustle the pols are the preening simpletons who rile up the credulous citizens who dial in each day for another dose of bad medicine. At the appointed hour, the idiot box transfigures into a burning bush and these rapt minions who otherwise behold Christ in their breakfast food (or, proving how crafy and omnipotent the Lord can be, at lunchtime too), get their Godhead on in the form of a third-rate carnival barker.)

I also wrote about Serpico while introducing a piece commemorating the ten-year anniversary (in 2009) of what I consider the best film of the last twenty years, The Insider:

(Toward the end of Sydney Lumet’s ’70s classic Serpico there is an unnerving scene that encapsulates the conundrum faced by the eponymous cop: already persona non grata within the law enforcement fraternity for his refusal to take bribes, Serpico is transferred to the narcotics division, where the beat is the exceedingly dangerous streets way off-Broadway. His new partner grimly explains that, compared to the types of kickbacks Serpico was accustomed to seeing, the haul in narcotics is serious business. “That is big money, that you do not fuck around with.” In this moment Serpico finally understands that his life is now in greater danger, amongst police officers than at the hands of criminals, because of his insistence on obeying the law.)

I think this one scene, perhaps even more than anything in the embarrassment of riches that is Network, tells us all we need to know about how the world really works. Going back to the Watergate story, the reporters were advised to “follow the money”. That might be the most disturbingly succinct epitaph of our last century. Every act of violence and venality is prompted by the pursuit of money or the lack thereof, and most of all, the things money can’t buy (which, come to think of it, is the central theme of Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead).

When I ask myself: how is it possible that, despite the will of the people and the painfully obvious cookie crumbs leading to the criminals, Obama has let Wall Street off without so much as a harsh word, or how the Republicans can hold the country hostage for indefinite tax cuts on the wealthiest one percent, or (worse) how so many feckless and supine Democrats can tolerate –and in some cases, abet– this mendacity, or how our military budget is sacrosanct, or how we can continue to fight ill-advised and unwinnable wars (killing countless Americans and “foreigners” in the bargain), when I look at some of my well-educated and otherwise enlightened friends and wonder how they can possibly be immune to this cognitive dissonance, I think of these words: “That is big money, that you do not fuck around with.”

So in tribute to Lumet’s genius, I’d like to revisit a piece I wrote many moons ago, celebrating Serpico. I could never (and would never) pick favorites but if I had to, I would probably suggest that this movie represented the best work that Pacino and Lumet ever did.

Serpico (1973)

An illuminating moment occurs near the beginning of the film Saturday Night Fever—the project that officially launched the trajectory of John Travolta’s career, where, with a haircut and white suit, the young hot shot evolved from Vinny Barbarino, Sweat Hog, to Tony Manero, disco icon—a film which, like any formidable piece of art, is as much a reflection of its times as it is the vision of its creator: A lean, mean, and bikini brief-clad Travolta halts in mid-strut and gazes lovingly up at his wall, upon which is a poster of the man—a bearded, long-haired, gold hoop earring-wearing undercover cop—and he haughtily, if speciously assures himself “I look like Al Pacino!” The symbolic import of this simple scene is substantial. The act of conferring coolness through establishing, by any means necessary, solidarity with Pacino—particularly a young cat who knows he’s bad, especially a movie character depicting a young cat who knows he’s bad—is about as ringing an endorsement of unequivocal hipness as anyone could reasonably hope to attain. This moment then, signified a passing-of-the-torch of sorts, and an informal promulgation of what most folks already knew: that Al Pacino, in short, is the ‘70’s, and along with Nicholson and DeNiro, formed the divine triumvirate of American motion-picture ascendency in that decade.

Coming less than a year after the searing intensity of his performance as Michael Corleone—in the role and movie, The Godfather, Pacino could not have chosen a more diametric project than the true story of Frank Serpico, the undercover cop who pits himself in a lonely—and costly—war against an entire police force. This film serves as a radical (and realistic) rewriting of the classic—and antiquated—American Dream myth, wherein the best man always wins, and good always prevails over evil. With an escalating irony that could only be culled from real life (otherwise it would be offensively implausible), the more he attempts to distance himself from the wrongdoing around him—which has casually corroded the department like a malignant infirmity—the more scorn he is subjected to. In a word, it doesn’t get any more American than this: Serpico, the man, and Serpico, the movie, are potent amalgams of, and commentaries upon, the country that made them. The idealizing, even naïve young man confronting corruption is arguably an invariable rite of passage for just about every individual who leaves the comforts—and conformity—of home for the bigger, badder realities of the world. When the individual is a police officer, and the subject of his disillusionment is the laissez-faire depravity of his precinct—and, to a larger extent, the backbiting, political system as a whole—the stakes are raised rather considerably.

It is sufficient testament of a job well done that it is impossible to imagine any other actor taking on the role of Frank Serpico and delivering such a capable, compelling performance. The tribulations of this alienated underdog provide the opportunity for Pacino to utilize a concentrated fervor in ways he never would (or could) again. It is a tailor-made vehicle for his expressive gifts: this is his superlative performance, his greatest role. He is, in turns, quiet, assertive, tranquil, indignant and incensed. He is a man of intelligence and integrity surrounded by the numbed and indifferent denizens of New York City’s police departments, amongst whom he wears out his welcome quickly—and irretrievably.

The crux of his dilemma is an unflinching nonconformity, which obliges the battle-wearied veterans of his precinct to examine not only their own detached compliance, but why he won’t go along with it. In a development that is perverse as it is ironic, he becomes increasingly regarded with suspicion because he refuses to break the very laws he’s sworn (and is paid) to uphold. Because he is honest, he cannot be trusted. If the story, or the actor, wasn’t up to the task, this rather unremarkable—indeed scarcely believable—story would seem trite, redundant, or nauseatingly bathetic. Thankfully, this true tale—which, like any worthwhile biography about an extraordinary individual, serves equally as a commentary on society and that evasive and evanescent perception dubbed the human condition—is abundantly provocative, discomforting, and ultimately redeeming.

Serpico is one of the rare and wondrous works of art that truly satisfies on all levels: it is, first and foremost, an intriguing and indelible movie experience. It is also an inspirational story that serves to remind us that crime often operates in an unremarkable, but eviscerating fashion. It reminds us that heroes don’t wear capes, and seldom wear badges. Often, they wear a look of defiance, and a battered, but not beaten pride—a weary, but unwavering integrity.

Serpico was—and will remain—one of the great things that came out of the much-maligned “me-decade”. The bell-bottoms, platform shoes, white suits, pompadours and carefully cultivated obtuseness faded, like the fads that they were. Disco faded; Travolta faded. Just because the cyclical engine of fashion has made some of these things unconscionably, and inconceivably cool again, doesn’t mean that they won’t once again drift back into the droll depths whence they sprang. The stuff of substance, soulful as it is scarce, will nevertheless continue to stick around—as it always does—especially on the fleet and unfashionable frequencies. And, despite The Godfather, despite Dog Day Afternoon, despite Scarface, despite Glengary Glen Ross and Heat—Pacino would never be this cool again. Just ask Tony Manero.

Filed Under: Film Tagged With: Al Pacino, Glenn Beck, Howard Beale, Network, Obama, Serpico, Sidney Lumet, The Insider, Wall Street

20 Years Later: How Rodney King Helped Us Plug In, Dial On and Wake Up

March 3, 2011 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

ON THIS DAY

On March 3, 1991, in a case that sparked a national outcry, motorist Rodney King was severely beaten by Los Angeles police officers in a scene captured on amateur video.

Twenty, already?

As incredible as that is to process, it also underscores on so many wonderful levels how far we’ve come as a country. Don’t get me wrong, it also casts a bright dark light on how unevolved we insist on being, and how much work there is to do (yesterday: women, minorities and homosexuals, today…workers’ pensions?).

But just thinking about the racial dynamic, it is difficult to deny that we’ve come light (skinned) years compared to how we rolled, collectively, a couple of decades ago. Put it this way: it was a leap of something greater than faith to conceive of an African-American being president four years ago. Twenty years ago? The only person who had that type of hope & audacity was Jesse Jackson, and even he wasn’t kidding himself. (And don’t kid yourself: without this man and the indescribable lifting he did, the notion of President Obama would still be a fantasy.)

It happened: we made it happen. Yes we did; we have an African-American president (even if he’s a Republican…just kidding, mostly).

In any event, looking back at March 3, 1991, it’s difficult to determine what is more unlikely: that something this barbaric happened, or that it happened to get caught on tape. Because let’s face it: if it had not been caught on tape, we would never know about it, and a great many of us would never have believed it. History usually happens quickly (in hindsight anyway) and this was definitely one of those seminal occasions where everything changes, immediately. This was exactly the see-it-with-your-own-eyes evidence America needed to be slapped upside the head with, and it began a dialogue that put us, however tardy and reluctantly, on a path toward progress.

In so many ways, this appalling spectacle anticipated what was to come in the subsequent decades (culminating in Obama’s victory): the use of amateur handheld video going “viral” (back then you still had to get through the gatekeepers at the major news outlets but those buttoned-up buffoons know a story when they see one), leading us in a crooked and narcissistic path to YouTube and Reality TV. The sensationalistic nature of infotainment where instead of letting actions speak louder than babble, we bring in “experts” to explain to us what we are witnessing, or more importantly, what we should be making of it (I’m thinking here of our number one agent of contemporary intellectual debasement, Oprah Winfrey and her stable of charlatans, all of whom epitomize a sick aspect of the American Dream as they prove you can manage to extract inconceivable wealth from gullible fans no matter how little you have to offer). We also see an engagement with current events from artists that would give rap music an edge that saw it through its golden age (post Run DMC and pre-cartoon character knucklehead solipsism) where acts like Public Enemy, Ice Cube and KRS-One began to voice defiance to the prevailing storyline (this was both welcome and distressingly overdue as we limped toward the end of the Reagan/Bush debacle).

Make it rough. That is exactly what artists started to do, and it’s possible to imagine that the next generation was poised, if not exactly prepared, for the paradigm shifting possibilities of the Internet. Within a decade after the world got its own URL, people plugged in, dialed on and woke up (ironically, right around the same time Timothy Leary got set to “explode into space”). At first a novelty, the ability of people to download music, create digital files, record themselves and the world around them –and share these advancements with people they didn’t know, half-a-world away, in real time –quickly became the new normal. Initially downplayed or demonized, blogs and (increasingly) independent sources of information began breaking stories and busting down walls.

We’re not even close to where we need to be, and we never will get that far, but recent events prove that underground voices and unauthorized agents of dissemination can challenge, even counteract the sanctioned (and sterile) storyline. Look at Wisconsin: it was business as usual, and the game-rigging mainstream media was either promoting the anti-worker talking points or else not reporting at all. But a funny thing happened: people (finally) started paying attention and talking about it; like a healthy rash, awareness quickly spread and all of a sudden we had a minor movement on our hands. (Check out how social media has energized the various uprisings happening right now across the pond…)

It still takes entirely too many of us entirely too long to see (and smell) what’s happening right in front of us, but after the last 20 years (Rodney King, Iraq, Wall Street’s Big Adventure), it’s no longer easy –it may no longer be possible– for this younger generation to set the controls for the heart of the couch and fall asleep. Now we know that things we are unwilling to even imagine are happening, daily, around us and to us. We are unable to ignore what is staring back at us, on the screens and in our mirrors. Even more important, we are finally able to acknowledge what is going on when we are not watching. That, in its own irregular way, constitutes progress.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: Boogie Down Productions, Ice Cube, Jesse Jackson, KRS-One, Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Rodney King, Timothy Leary

The Democratic Fault Line

November 3, 2010 By Sean Murphy 12 Comments

So, fake tan is the new black?

How do I feel about the idiot winds that blew this astroturf tsunami over our land?

Eh…

Certainly, it sucks to see a party whose signal accomplishment of the last 24 months was to act petulant and say no like a talking point rendered Reductio ad absurdum. Way to go, guys (and gals), you got exactly what you hoped for and other than the collateral damage to your bought-and-sold souls, this won’t be anything but swell for you all (until it comes time to actually govern to the types of people you’ve attracted, who want to eat whatever they wish and not get fat, drink as much as they can and not get drunk, and earn as little as they can and still be…proud Americans, damit!).

Nobody likes a poor sport (that’s why I don’t like Republicans), so I’m content to let these nihilistic blowhards savor their smackdown. As always, you have to hand it to them: they said what they wanted to do, they predicted what they were going to do, and against all (well, not all, but all reasonable) probability, it worked. How it worked is the moral of this particular passion play –of which more shortly. And because we expect less than little from the intransigent GOP, how can you resent them for having the cowardice of their convictions? Particularly when the profiles in cowardice displayed by their political opposition is so…typical.

Yes, I come not to castigate conservatives, or take pot-shots at the tea partiers (it’s been done, and that market will remain bullish, not to mention bullshit-ish, for the foreseeable future). My concern is –and has been for some time– the ways in which the Democrats are congenitally incapable of articulating their achievements, and crafting a message that is either succinct, compelling or consistent. The shame of it is, all they have to do is tell the truth and it would set them (and the rest of us) free.

The lines are already, and predictably, being drawn in the sand. The sycophantic, supine and sensationalistic mainstream media can’t get to the scene of the crime quickly enough: Obama governed too far to the left (because moderate conservatism is the new far-Left)!

I see a lot of passion and animosity on both sides of this Democratic fault line, but whose fault is it?

First off, to echo the likes of the always reliable and amusing Mark Morford, any Dems who sat this one out, “on principle”, should feel very satisified and smug about their audacity of Nope. You really showed them this time, you clever little hipsters! It’s like 2000 only without Nader. If the polling data is remotely correct and a significant number of young voters simply didn’t show, that’s a disgrace: these spoiled brats should have thought long and hard about the difference between mediocrity & mendacity (Democrat TM) and incompetence & imperialism (that new and unimproved Republican Brand). For those of you coming off your parents’ health care plans in the next two years or no longer receiving allowance or beginning to grapple with those student loans, have fun with that. Also: enjoy that job search! Helpful hint: there are a lot of hungry tea-baggers and yes, they would like fries with that.

That said, the onus of this clusterfuck is, sadly but undeniably, squarely on Obama and his uninspired, uninformed and generally underwhelming team of super geniuses. For them to try and pin this one on the progressive base (as they began doing months ago, a harbinger of what was to come as well as an ugly insight into their almost-empty book of ideas), the same base that put in the time to get Obama elected (remember that slightly favored alternative, Hillary Clinton?), goes beyond disingenuous and approaches being outright despicable.

Let’s make it as clear as it can possibly be stated: Obama blew it.

(This doesn’t mean his presidency is over, or that yesterday’s results doom his prospects for re-election; indeed they may improve them in the long –and possibly the short– run; it simply means that what has happened thus far, and what it led to, begins and ends with him and the people he chose to surround himself with.)

For starters, let’s address the dreaded enthusiasm gap: after the fiasco in 2008, was there anyone (not on the GOP payroll) who felt warm and fuzzy about Wall Street or insurance companies? Yet those are the first two entities Obama got in bed with, and his uninspired, uninspiring “reforms” were the inevitable and unecessarily compromised outcomes of that grotesque alliance. Look at the video tapes: Obama has been more harsh with the progressive base, in word and deed, than he ever has been to Big Oil, Big Insurance, The Wizards of Wall St. or the weasels across the aisle, all of whom have used virtually every waking moment to malign and cripple him and his agenda. If you look at the accounts, each time public opinion was practically to the left of where Obama began his negotiations –not where the legislation ended up after the pork-fests and pocket-lining inside the sausage factory. As many others have pointed out, you can’t run as a progressive (we are the change we were waiting for?) and then govern to the right of Richard Nixon. (That said, just because Obama is one thousand times the man for the job McCain would have been, and his policies are a million times better than what the Republicans would want, is no reason to expect sentient, tax-paying voters to applaud this temerity. Guantanamo? Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? Afghanistan? These aren’t the pipedreams of DailyKos disciples, these are the things Obama campaigned on.)

But let’s get to the real issue at hand. There is no question, none, that Obama had a once-in-a-century opportunity to harness all the uncertainty, anger and energy circa 2008 into doing something significant, and striking a lasting blow for the good. All it would have required was using this ultimate “teaching moment” to prove (and the proof existed anywhere he would have pointed) that deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthiest percentile, fighting unfunded (and, ahem, unpopular) wars and a steadily increasing chasm between the obscenely rich and the working poor put us precisely in the ditch we found ourselves trying to dig out of. That these anti-government obsessions (which, incidentally, unravelled during the Clinton era and should have been permanently put to bed, and probably could have been if Gore had won; thanks again young rebels!) are, in fact, the opposite of patriotic, they are in fact bad policy and utterly inconsistent with the blonde-haired and blue-eyed Jesus the religulous right ostensibly worships. That as FDR showed, government can be, and often is, a force for good, taxes pay for things we actually use, and putting people to work (not to mention avoiding additional and catastrophic layoffs) was the primary impetus of the (weakened, half-assed) stimulus. Oh, and Obama didn’t raise taxes: he cut taxes! Did you get sick of being reminded about that? I didn’t, because I wasn’t.

It’s not that difficult to imagine: one speech, early in ’09, wherein Obama declared: “not only am I going to fund these projects, no American who wants to work will go without on my watch. I’m going to spend this money, because it is an investment on people, and you will be able to measure the results immediately. This is an investment on behalf of our well-being, and if you want to judge me in four years, I will take those odds. And if I’m wrong, the worst case scenario will be an early retirement where I can drive across this great nation over new roads and rebuilt bridges, and take advantage of the radically improved infrastructure that these projects made possible. I’ll walk away from the Oval Office happy and proud, because I’ll know we made a difference, and that is what I was elected to do.”

Instead, he surrounded himself with the exact same charlatans who oversaw the Wall Street (and housing) implosion and ignored economists like Paul Krugman whose chief fault is that he has been right, about everything, all along. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t do the right thing, it’s that he wouldn’t do the right thing. The question still remains: could he do the right thing? Just because Democratic policies make sense, it doesn’t mean the politicians we elect are sensible. On what planet would you put Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, who still had blood and feathers on their face, in charge of the fiscal hen-house? That was an early sign that the best and the brightest were, in an Obama administration, about to become the unseen and the silenced. If you are late to the party, I can’t recommend the heavy lifting that Matt Taibbi has been doing the last two years highly enough: read him and weep.

Obama was either too clueless or (worse) arrogant to believe he actually needed to make a case, and be ready to fight back against the full-scale war the GOP declared on him the second he was elected. (His refusal to bother himself getting involved in the health care brawls all summer of 2009 is the second largest blunder of his presidency: he not only allowed the do-nothing Repubs to define the narrative (wrongly), he let the Tea Party lunatics get a foothold and, with the lack of any consistent, intelligible message, determine that opposing the government was the correct, and patriotic thing to do. By the time he saw the gramatically-challenged writing on the signs, it was arguably too late. Worse, he apparently considered the battle won once the (weak and watered down) health care bill squeaked through last Spring. That was when he (and the mostly useless, or at least unused Biden) should have been making the stops, explaining why it was good (or at least better than Nothing) and what he would continue to do. Instead, he refused to get in “campaign mode”. Meanwhile, against all probability, the masses with their pitchforks and flames, had –for lack of a tangible target for the ire– latched on to the Fox-spewed propaganda filling the inexplicable vaccum of what passes for political discourse.

Put another way: for all his wasted potential and self-inflicted peccadilloes, do you think Slick Willy would have fumbled this one? Are you shitting me? He probably had a recurring fantasy, while in office, that he could have walked into a crisis like the one Obama inherited in order to impose his will. He probably dreamt of getting all up in that sumbitch and working the change from the inside, crawling out of the rotten carcass with grime in his hair and a shit-eating smirk on his face. That rascal would have remained on message and ensured that his people were hammering home the Truth every day. It still astonishes me that Obama (and a great many of the feckless, scared-of-their-shadow Dems) didn’t begin every sentence these past 24 months with the observation “Well, it’s a challenge, but remember: the Republicans had almost unfettered control for the last eight years and this is what happened; we hope nobody ever forgets it.”

Even today, in his uninspired (and, for true believers, truly frightening) news conference, Obama just can’t bring himself to invoke FDR. Remember “I welcome their hatred”? What part of that does he not understand? Did you see Obama on Jon Stewart last week? “Yes we can, but…” Wow. Ill-considered decisions and mistakes aside, day truly is night if the one thing Obama could count on –his rhetorical majesty– has so utterly deserted him. And whether or not you believe a more provocative, even confrontational commander-in-chief could have yielded better results (I did, and do), if you think some (many?) of the on-the-fence moderates (the same sorts who voted for George W. Bush because he was the kind of guy they could enjoy a (near) beer with) would not have appreciated some decisive rhetoric (or decisiveness, period), particularly if it was spoken with a modicum of authenticity, you are either irretrievably cynical or hopelessly naive.

This is the rub: does Obama have it in him? Does he really care? Does he, as late as today, even get it?

Would a more progressive acumen have made a difference? We’ll never know. But it seems sufficiently clear that the (mostly welcome) fate of the craven Blue Dogs underscores, once again (will they never learn?) that being Republican-Lite is not the answer. Indeed, it is the proven recipe for disaster and will continue to be in our increasingly debased political culture. It’s hard enough to fight against these fuckwads; it certainly doesn’t do you any favors when you do their work for them.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: Bob Marley, Democrats, Jon Stewart, Mark Morford, Obama, Paul Krugman, Republicans, Tea Party

Hey Glenn Beck: What Color Is Your Soul?

August 30, 2010 By Sean Murphy 2 Comments

First, a confession.

I have to admit, when I took the clownish charlatan Glenn Beck in my sights more than a year ago, I frankly underestimated his influence and staying power (or, to put a finer point on it, the unfathomable gullibility of the many million who follow him).

I couldn’t put it any better than the good doctor (MLK, that is) did: Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

So if I am a bit surprised to see Beck’s cult of personality disorder grow, it remains entirely too simple to trace his dubious lineage:

Think of phony purveyors of moral outrage ranging from Morton Downey Jr. to Jerry Springer, and the whole concept of infotainment to the hastening-of-the-apocalypse proliferation of Reality TV. Stage it and they will come is now the (un)official mantra of media’s M.O. And, in the end, it’s all pretty much a tempest in a teapot. Or, a tempest in a tea party. Which brings us to the unbelievable Glenn Beck. Of course, fabricated indignation has been good business in America since Jonathan Edwards first perfected the formula with Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God back in 1741, shortly before the advent of cable television.

As incendiary, and insufferable, as Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly are, you tend to appreciate how they sometimes can’t keep a straight face as they shovel the horseshit, whipping simpletons into a righteous lather for a steady paycheck. Yes, they are contemptible and yes, they wield their petty power over the powerless in incredibly irresponsible fashion. But with them you know to expect less than little in terms of originality, integrity or intellectual rigor. Thus, you have to remain content, in a free country, to let them hold sway over a semi-retarded audience who would crawl over molten coals for them. And to be certain, Glenn Beck’s senseless sensibility makes those two blowhards look like oracular paragons. He is an empty suit with an empty mind, offering regurgitated jeremiads and faux populism to a genuinely distressed viewership looking for answers but disinclined to trust the dirty Socialists currently in power. His histrionics are comprised of two primary objectives: to position himself as a voice of reason in these troubling times, and to use a time of crisis as the impetus for his own existence. If Beck was capable of experiencing even an infinitesimal measure of shame, he would combust quicker than a drummer from Spinal Tap.

Can-Utility and the Krauthammers

May 28, 2010 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

Well, when you anoint yourself King Canute, you mustn’t be surprised when your subjects expect you to command the tides.

So saith the cretinous Charles Krauthammer in a piece that, unfortunately, makes many valid points about Obama, oil and the state of America these days –at least in terms of culpability, and what he (correctly) calls the cult of personality that Obama has mostly benefited from.

Filed Under: Ruminations in Real Time Tagged With: Can-Utility and the Coastliners, Charles Krauthammer, Genesis, Gulf Oil Spill, King Canute, Obama

A View To A Kill or, It’s The End of the World As We Knew It (And I Feel Fine)

March 26, 2010 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

Here’s how bad it’s gotten: David Frum , the dude who used to write speeches for the worst president we’ve ever endured, has written the most lacerating epitaph for The (Tea) Party of No, here. The entire thing is a must-read, and the closing paragraph demands to be quoted in full:

So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.

Here is the really ugly part: Frum is not Monday morning quarterbacking. He was practically pleading with anyone who would listen how (self) destructive this unified and unyielding obstruction would be in both the short and long term. In fairness, the G.O.P. had deluded itself into thinking that the fantasy they were spinning was gold, not shit. And there were plenty of cowards and co-opted folks in the media and inside the Democratic party who still hadn’t figured out how to stand up to bullies. (Instant update and mid-post edit: holy shit, look who just got “terminated” by AEI. You really can’t script this stuff better, and how made-to-order this full-scale Republican implosion is unfolding. Can you say MISSION ACCOMPLISHED? Holy shit.)

Of course this problem was exacerbated in no small measure by Obama himself being way too cool and detached on the sidelines as the Fox News and RNC fear factories spewed out their garbage and took control of the narrative (and I’ll never forget, or forgive the cynical and craven Rahm Emanuel for folding like a shanty house in a hurricane the second Scott Brown pulled off his big upset in Massachussetts). Finally, at almost the last possible second, Obama joined the fray, inspired more by the need for survival than anything else. But to his eternal credit, he rolled up his sleeves and went to work. As we saw, the results were immediately apparent and quite positive.

Can we now, at long last, acknowledge what many of us suspected all along: the bill was never “wildly unpopular” with the general public. Or, to put a finer point on it, more than a little of that disenchantment was actually coming from Democrats who (correctly) felt the bill was not strong enough. But, as many of us suspected all along, when push came to shove of course they would endorse even a rather weak and watered down bill for two primary reasons. One, virtually any bill was better than the alternative the G.O.P. was offering, which was nothing (well, more tax cuts). And two, the Republicans absolutely meant it when they bragged that killing health reform would kill Obama’s presidency. In hindsight, if only a handful of Republicans had crossed the aisle, it’s likely the bill would have failed. By doubling down on the obstinance they have practically patented at this point the Republicans essentially dared the Democrats to pull together and see this through. Without that total, and arrogant, defiance, I’m not at all certain the Dems, famous for their inability to do anything, would have gotten the ball across the goal line.

As always, the so-called Liberal Media was about as useless as usual (and their general incompetence increases in direct proportion to the overall degeneracy of our political discourse). Obsessed with the trivial horse-race aspects of who won the most recent news cycle, and handicapping the odds and chances of whether some bill (any bill) might pass, they did less than a little to help dispel the truly hysterical talking points and outright falsehoods the right wing noise machine was expelling into the air.

And here is what I said to a friend last week: “If/when this bill actually passes you are going to quickly see the shameless media transition from the Obama’s presidency is doomed! meme to the Obama back on track! and all of a sudden we would begin to once again hear the t-word (transformative) associated with his presidency. In fairness, both of those assumptions are more or less accurate: if the bill had failed, it would have emboldened the Republicans and further intimidated the feckless Democrats (and we likely would have seen increased –and detrimental– influence from that paper tiger Rahm Emanuel); on the other hand, with the bill passing, it allows Obama and his party to regain (and more importantly, articulate) the narrative. Both parties knew what was at stake, although it (typically) took the Dems about eight months too long to feel the necessary urgency. For this alone, the oft-ridiculed Harry Reid should get his moment in the sun and be properly lauded for hanging in there and doing a ton of heavy, often thankless lifting. Likewise, Nancy Pelosi has gone from being a controversial figure to an instant legend: she, like Obama, was overlooked and underestimated, and it came back to bite her opponents in a big way. And man must that bite sting.

Lo and behold, look what happened to those opinion polls, literally overnight. Kind of hard to say the “majority” of Americans hated this bill, huh? And more importantly, that was always a bogus formulation. It was pretty obvious to anyone not at a tea party or on the NRCC payroll that more than a little of that antipathy was coming from the left. These folks (quite understandably) believed the bill was not strong enough: they (we) knew that this same bill was arguably to the right of what Nixon advocated in the early ’70s (!) and it was certainly close, if not a tad milder than what Bob Dole endorsed less than two decades ago (!!). Regardless, we understood that when putsch came to shove, (something made infinitely easier courtesy of the Republicans’ very vocal and uninhibited declaration that their sole intention was to stand as one in obstruction to the bill, and Obama) many of them would unite in support of this initiative. And that’s pretty much what happened.

So what about the independent voters?

Well, this coveted and often capricious demographic generally makes or breaks a sitting president and his legislation. How bad will the mid-terms be for the Dems? I felt they never would have been nearly as bad as many were predicting last month (or last week for that matter); I feel the prospects are much better now. In part because today, as much as ever, perception is reality: Obama (and this bill) is a winner. Equally important, people do tend to appreciate a leader who can get things accomplished. That he hung in there and did something presidents have been attempting to achieve for almost a century is also a self-fulfilling historical narrative. Obama has injected life, meaning and import into his first term.

To the victor go the spoils, history is written by the winners, etc. But it’s more (and less) than that: just as the fairly hysterical media coverage post-Brown did not paint an accurate portrayal of what was really going on, or what was likely to happen, the surprise passage of HCR is not going to transform moderates into liberals. It doesn’t need to. Unless the bill begins rescinding peoples’ coverage because of pre-existing conditions or bankrupting families who can’t pay their bills (oh wait, that’s what is already happening), it stands to reason that HCR will never be more unpopular than it was last Saturday. After Sunday, the bill can only get more popular in direct proportion to the number of people who realize it’s not only not the end of the world, but actually a pretty swell thing. This transformation is already underway(not just the big shift in public opinion in recent polls); each day that goes by without any of the more outrageous Republican predictions coming true is another opportunity for T&R (Truth and Reality) to vanquish the hysteria.

There was a good reason Karl Rove lost his shit on Sunday while David Plouffe toyed with him (and showed, about ten years too late, the most effective way to defuse this braying rodeo clown). Rove knew what everyone else on his team was figuring out: they threw everything they had, and everything they could possibly fabricate, in the monomaniacal pursuit of defeating HCR. And they still lost. The reason they wanted to beat it so badly was not because The Party Of No has the best interests of anyone at heart; it’s because they knew this would be political gold for Obama, and Dems for decades. Think about it for a second: if they even half-believed a fraction of the dire repercussions they were robotically shrieking about, they would have happily gotten out of the way and let Obama have his way. Because, if it was going to be so awful, and it was so clearly against the will of most Americans, the Dems would pay a very dear price for their assumptions. Of course, what is becoming increasingly clear, from the stimulus to HCR, is that during one of the worst years Americans have endured since The Big D, Democrats have scrambled and strategized to make things better while The Party Of No has held their breath, sucked their thumbs and egged on the worst elements of the lunatic fringe that now bolsters their base.

It’s a loaded term, particularly in light of the very recent outbreaks of violence, threats and manufactured outrage, but a day of reckoning is imminent. And it’s not for the party being targeted by this illiterate mob of mouth-breathing imbeciles; it will be for the party that has cynically, and eagerly, stoked the flames of this tea party silliness. These idiots were useful for the farcical “town hall meetings” (speaking of manufactured outrage, and an unhealthy dose of straight-up racism), and to provide flesh to bolster the dubious proclamations about how unpopular health care reform was/is. Now that the battle is over, and now that so many of these “real Americans” have exposed themselves for who they really are, it’s going to be difficult for the G.O.P. to disown them at the very moment that their association may finally be unwelcome.

But, as the song goes, breaking up is hard to do. It was truly disgusting to see the contemptible Eric Cantor go from expressing tepid disapproval at reports of violence and paranoid hostility to shifting the blame to Democrats. Look, one need only read this blog (filed under “Politics”) to see that I have few qualms calling out my own side for its inanity, incompetence and self-absorption whenever it’s warranted. But at this particular moment in time, there is no getting around the fact that one party alone is associated with this ugliness. That violence is being encouraged is a repugnant enough thing; that it’s underscored by explicit racist, homophobic, nationalistic rhetoric is another. That this racist, homophobic, nationalistic rhetoric is funneled out ’round the clock by a major propaganda machine disguised as a “news” network is yet another. That a major political party is applauding and abetting this sewage is still another. That it has been kicked up a notch by that party’s recent VP candidate finally begs the question: is there a bottom here? At what point does a semblance of shame or propriety or, when all else fails, the impetus for political survival override this insanity?

As always, only time will tell. In the meantime, it’s equal parts encouraging and appalling to see what’s left of the Republican Party doubling down on denial and the fake fury that is born out of fear. For the sake of all our moral and responsible citizens, let’s hope they continue racing furiously in the other direction while Democrats –and the future of progress they represent –leave them in this moribund fantasy land of their own making.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: David Frum, Democrats, HCR, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, Republicans, Tea Party

Waterloo This

March 21, 2010 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

I love the smell of health care reform in the morning. Smells like victory.

Filed Under: Ruminations in Real Time Tagged With: Apocalypse Now, Bob Marley, GOP, Health Care, Health Care Reform, Obama, Revolution, Waterloo

The Hope of Audacity

January 29, 2010 By Sean Murphy 1 Comment

Question: How many GOP staffers are looking for new jobs after agreeing to let the cameras roll during Obama’s smackdown at the Republican Retreat Q&A today?

(Answer: hopefully, none; if by some miracle that embarrassment was deemed in any way a success by the simpletons running the show in the not-so-big GOP tent, we should look forward to many more of these, like twice a day if possible.)

First off, let’s pause and consider something: can you imagine, under any circumstances, not only Bush alone (ha) but even if he had, say, Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rove with him, ever appearing before cameras to answer direct questions in an unequivocally partisan environment? Please. And don’t get me wrong: I’m not wishing he had; dude humiliated himself just reading off of cue cards (or having answers directly piped to him during debates). Can you fathom the further levels of disgrace he would have brought upon the nation while endeavoring, under the hot lights and flashing digi-cams, to address unscreened queries from a hostile crowd? Of course I kid myself: he probably would have repelled into the auditorium sporting a flight suit and right-wing radio/Fox News masters of unreality would have declared it a TKO.

The fact that Obama would do it is beyond impressive; the fact that he can do it (and win, convincingly) is remarkable, illustrative and should give Democrats hope. We did not elect an idiot; we did not elect an empty suit. To watch him, in real time, wrangling with them, and (a la the undramatic eviscerations of McCain in the debates) calmly, methodically defusing them, without raising his voice, breaking a sweat or personally attacking, is to remember why people were overcome with the H-word (Hope) a year or so ago. It is like Reagan with Carter’s intelligence. Or Clinton without the smarm. Only more so.

This addresses the one tactical error I’ve complained about since last spring (!): Obama needed to be doing exactly this, then. About health care, about jobs, about any and everything, since at least early summer. That he’s only doing it now, after extreme circumstances, is unfortunate –and he and the party have paid a considerable price for it. But better late than never. Literally. And hopefully the feckless, spineless and mostly useless Democratic senate can take notes and learn a lesson or two. Their inertia has been worse than unacceptable (it has not done nothing; it has enervated and resucitated the braindead and tone-deaf Republican party), but to be fair, Obama’s virtual disappearing act from the public stage has not helped matters. Obama’s performance today is hopefully the salt spray required to move those slugs out from under their stones. Speaking of stones, maybe more than a few of them can grow some.

More of this, much more of this needs to occur as often and visibly as possible, effective immediately. Unfortunately, I don’t suspect the Republicans will make the same mistake a second time. That is, being seen in real time on camera trying to engage with Obama, and being shown –in color and without spin– having their collective asses handed to them on intellectual, moral and factual grounds. It is exhilarating, if lamentably overdue. And it’s up to the people with the majority (the majority of votes, the majority of ideas, and the majority of consent) to at long last begin bringing the fight to the party whose only goal is to accomplish nothing.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: Bad Brains, GOP, Obama, Reignition, Republican Retreat, Smackdown