Presidential Elections, 2008

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Oprah: On Obama Victory

Tag: other, man, son

Women for McCain

What boggles the mind is how Gov. Sarah Palin can possess acute social savvy while lacking, at the same time, any hint of self-awareness.

First, she’s parodied on Saturday Night Live by Tina Fey — who was able to make fun of her simply by repeating her word-for-word replies to Katie Couric. Then, in the spirit of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, she makes a guest appearance on the show, and gets treated like a VIP to restore her dignity. The scripted jokes about her are good, but not great. They’re hardly needed, however, since Palin’s own inadvertent self-parody in interactions with Amy Poehler, Lorne Michaels & Alec Baldwin is so effective.

Remind me, which Sarah Palin is the one that’s supposed to appeal to women voters?

P.S. If you want to see the McCain-Palin’s “feminism” depicted with stark candor, you must watch the following YouTube video, Women for McCain:

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A Rather Thoughtful Article by a British Journalist

The following is a succinct editorial by Jonathan Freedland of the British newspaper “The Guardian” on the upcoming US election:

‘If Sarah Palin defies the conventional wisdom that says elections are determined by the top of the ticket, and somehow wins this for McCain, what will be the reaction? Yes, blue-state America will go into mourning once again, feeling estranged in its own country. A generation of young Americans - who back Obama in big numbers - will turn cynical, concluding that politics doesn’t work after all.

And, most depressing, many African-Americans will decide that if even Barack Obama - with all his conspicuous gifts - could not win, then no black man can ever be elected president.

But what of the rest of the world? This is the reaction I fear most. For Obama has stirred an excitement around the globe unmatched by any American politician in living memory. Polling in Germany, France, Britain and Russia shows that Obama would win by whopping majorities, with the pattern repeated in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. If November 4 were a global ballot, Obama would win it handsomely. If the free world could choose its leader, it would be Barack Obama.

The crowd of 200,000 that rallied to hear him in Berlin in July did so not only because of his charisma, but also because they know he, like the majority of the world’s population, opposed the Iraq war.. McCain supported it, peddling the lie that Saddam was linked to 9/11.

Non-Americans sense that Obama will not ride roughshod over the international system but will treat alliances and global institutions seriously: McCain wants to bypass the United Nations in favour of a US-friendly League of Democracies.McCain might talk a good game on climate change, but a repeated floor chant at the Republican convention was ‘Drill, baby, drill!’, as if the solution to global warming were not a radical rethink of the US’s entire energy system but more offshore oil rigs.

If Americans choose McCain, they will be turning their back on the rest of the world, choosing to show us four more years of the Bush-Cheney finger. And I predict a deeply unpleasant shift. Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and much misunderstood: outside a leftist hardcore, it has mostly been anti-Bushism, opposition to this specific administration. But if McCain wins in November, that might well change.

Suddenly Europeans and others will conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling cliq ue, but Americans themselves. For it will have been the American people, not the politicians, who will have passed up a once-in-a-generation chance for a fresh start - a fresh start the world is yearning for.

And the manner of that decision will matter, too. If it is deemed to have been about race - that Obama was rejected because of his colour - the world’s verdict will be harsh. In that circumstance, Slate’s Jacob Weisberg wrote recently, international opinion would conclude that ‘the United States had its day, but in the end couldn’t put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race’.

Even if it’s not ethnic prejudice, but some other aspect of the culture wars, that proves decisive, the point still holds. For America to make a decision as grave as this one - while the planet boils and with the US fighting two wars - on the trivial basis that a hockey mom is likable and seems down to earth, would be to convey a lack of seriousness, a fleeing from reality, that does indeed suggest a nation in, to quote Weisberg, ‘historical decline’. Let’s not forget, McCain’s campaign manager boasts that this election is ‘not about the issues.’

Of course I know that even to mention Obama’s support around the world is to hurt him. Incredibly, that large Berlin crowd damaged Obama at home, branding him the ‘candidate of Europe’ and making him seem less of a patriotic American. But what does that say about today’s America, that the world’s esteem is now unwanted? If Americans reject Obama, they will be sending the clearest possible message to the rest of us - and, make no mistake, we shall hear it.’

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Open Letter to America’s Minority Children

I hope you took the time to watch both the Presidential and Vice Presidential debates. While you may have gotten enough information for a terrific civics paper, you also got an important lesson on “real” life in this country. Learn from it.

In America, it is true that you can be practically anything you desire. And yes, you will have to work very hard for it. Harder than some of your friends. Your parents already told you that. But rarely do you really get to see what they were talking about play out right before your very eyes. You did just by watching these debates. Learn from it.

When your parents demand that you speak clearly and in well-formed sentences, with proper syntax and without the slang, without the “you knows” and the “likes”, they’re not just being hard on you. They want the world to see and understand someone capable of articulating a coherent thought. When they chide you to stop listening to that music, turn off the TV and read a book — big thick books with no pictures — it’s because they want you to learn how to think, not just repeat the last thing you heard.

You live in a world where certain people — this election cycle they have been called “regular” people — can get by by doing less. Let’s be honest: the standard for Gov. Palin’s success was set so low last during the debates, that failure for her was impossible. She could fumble her way through poorly memorized talking points, substitute phony beauty pageant charm for substance and come away a winner. You will not have that luxury.

Gov. Palin could spout nonsense in the white man’s version of ebonics — “get down to gettin’ down to work,” “give a shout out” to some classroom in Alaska — “talk straight to the American people” in the most circuitous language ever delivered on a debate stage and get away with it because, in addition to being someone’s definition of “cute,” she is also white.

You betcha, I said it.

And if you watched the post debate “analysis” last evening and today, you saw white person after white person defend the indefensible. She was nervous, they said. She was folksy, they marveled. She connected with “us,” they told you. And in this case “us” is not you. Had you or I or Barack danced through a debate like this, we would have been laughed not just off the stage, but out of the race.

Got that? You don’t get to play “Debatin’ With the Stars,” doing flat-footed versions of the quick-step, jive and tango, and score perfect tens from biased judges.

Sarah Palin was given every benefit of the doubt, every available point for not drooling on her suit jacket, not farting loud enough for the microphone to pick up, not getting lipstick on her teeth. She earned extra credit for the beauty queen kiss blown to her “First Dude,” for winking at the audience and not falling off her high heels. You would not be judged so lightly.

You must answer every question put to you, and anticipate every question that isn’t. She can choose to not answer any. Ever. You must be on pains to have your facts and figures straight. She is at liberty to make hers up as she goes. She is free to lie at will. You are not. Um hum, I said it.

The expectations for you are always higher and harder and always changing. Barely graduating from decent state school is not enough. You need those “super student” credentials on your permanent record, and the better the schools you attend the better for you. But remember, in this topsy-turvy, “up is down” world, being a good student will be held against you. You will be called “arrogant” and “presumptuous” and “elitist.” When you speak carefully and thoughtfully, you will be called “professorial” and “articulate” or “an orator,” as if those are bad things.

The Sarah Palins of the world will be hailed as brilliant for doing mundane things mundanely. You will not. You will be asked to give them a break, give them a pass, overlook their obvious failures while not getting any breaks or passes yourself. (And seriously, you don’t want their breaks and passes. The cost is way too high, especially for your own self-esteem.)

The soft bigotry of low expectations is not your burden. You cannot get by with a pussycat purr, “That’s hot.” You cannot slip into presidential politics by winning Miss Congeniality or winning American Maverick. Your bar will always be set high.

Remember what you learned last night: You must be two or three times as good to earn half the credit. She only needs to show up. Quietly breathing through her nose is optional.

But everything you achieve, you will have earned. Fair and square.

* Association of Black Harvard Women

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