Here's a little video I took this morning, which fairly represents the scene in the rotunda (the center of the demonstration):
For all the size and noise and sincere fervor, I've seen absolutely no anger, nastiness, or rudeness. Not even any pushing to get into a better position. Everyone is quite nice, really. You need to understand that. Even when my dear bodyguard is not close to me, I don't feel at all endangered. And though I've photographed some signs and other junk piled on the ground, there isn't stuff strewn all over, and there is zero vandalism or destructiveness toward the capitol building itself. Despite all the opposition to the legislature, the entrance to the Senate chamber was barricaded with nothing more than a velvet rope overseen by 2 elegantly dressed guards...
... and no one made the slightest attempt to impinge on the roped-off area.
That was last June. What counted as "smartass" was a Kopp’s Frozen Custard stand owner saying — in response to Biden's asking what he owed for the ice cream cone — "Nothing, just lower our taxes." A reader — perhaps prompted by yesterday's "bite me" post — reminded me of what I wrote at the time:
Bite me. When the powerful seek to work their will upon us and demand that we be nice about it, that's the right response: Bite me. Even if he were the one being nice about it, we shouldn't have to put up with it without complaint.
I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - "Bite me!" Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, "Bite me!" Then we'll figure out what to do about the recession and the taxes and the oil spill. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "Bite me."
Did you watch the clip? How did it affect you today, after all the talk last week about the need for newly civil discourse in America? What is the role of angry speech? "First, you've got to get mad," we're told. "Mad as hell." You've got to yell. This is a dramatic speech that has resonated with Americans for 35 years. Why? And what does that tell you about the importance of maintaining civility?
For those of you who still want to argue, straining against the evidence, that the terrible political rhetoric pushed Loughner over the line, let me help you. I've studied law for 30 years, and I know how to extract an argument using what little is available.
Ready?
Here goes...
The overheated rhetoric in America was so repugnant that Jared Loughner couldn't bear to engage with it. Alienated and left to his own thoughts, he became mentally disordered, leading to the massacre. If only the political debate had been more gentle and inviting, he might have watched television and listened to the radio, and then his mind would have contained more conventional ideas, precluding the insane, murderous thoughts.
AND: I was just talking with Meade about my (deliberately strained) theory, and he said that a young guy like Loughner would not have been drawn in by more politely stated political commentary. A marginal individual — especially a person with a propensity toward violence — would probably be susceptible to more aggressive, more vivid commentary. What did Loughner consume instead of politics? Wasn't it violent video games and movies? By contrast, the news — even the commentary pundits decry as vicious — would seem bland and insipid.
Now, I think he was psychotic, in which case, none of this explanation applies, but let's assume you want to work with the idea that he was a marginal citizen who might have been normalized if the community socialized him more appropriately with debate and dialogue. What could have reached him? Probably not some namby-pamby paragon of niceness.
The last couple of days, I've been preoccupied with the Prop 8 case, where the key question is: What is the government's interest in restricting marriage to opposite sex couples? The pro-Prop 8 side focused entirely — and oddly — on the fact that only opposite-sex couples make babies accidentally. If accidental babies are the problem, why express any negativity toward same-sex couples? They'll only get babies if they make a deliberate decision to have them.
But this study suggests another reason for the special treatment of opposite sex couples. Society extracts better behavior from men by encouraging them to pair up with women. Women are the tamers of men. Don't waste women on other women. The social order wants to maximize the use of women for the fixing of men. And if men pair with men, all hell will break loose. Double the chaos of men roaming solo. With synergy, even more than double.
I spent all day Monday watching the oral argument in the 9th Circuit, and much of yesterday, reading, talking, and writing about it. That would have been way more entertaining if the pro-Prop 8 lawyers had contended that there is a legitimate government interest in controlling men by yoking them to women.
Bite me. When the powerful seek to work their will upon us and demand that we be nice about it, that's the right response: Bite me. Even if he were the one being nice about it, we shouldn't have to put up with it without complaint.
Asks Lubna Hussein, who faced whipping in Sudan, but now will only be fined for breaking the law. The law in Sudan is Muslim law. Hussein says: "I am Muslim; I understand Muslim law."
The law in contention here is Article 152 of Sudan’s penal code. Concisely stated, the law says that up to 40 lashes and a fine should be assessed anyone “who commits an indecent act which violates public morality or wears indecent clothing.”
But what exactly is indecent clothing? ... Mrs. Hussein has argued that Article 152 is intentionally vague, in part to punish women.
The excerpts [in the Daily News] seem... to be a kind of correction to the Stepford, "stand by your man" approach so often taken by political wives (and Elizabeth Edwards did, at least, refuse to physically stand next to her man while he made his confession and apology)—but only kind of. Edwards tells her side of the story and publicly chastises her husband ("He should not have run," she writes) but he's still her husband. Her critique has a narrow outer limit. Is writing about this better than keeping mum? Or, in a way, is it exactly the same? Is telling us all the true, clichéd things about why a person might decide to stand by her jerk that different from, or that much more informative than, silently standing by said jerk?
The News does pull out one genuinely heartbreaking quote from the book: "I lie in bed, circles under my eyes, my sparse hair sticking in too many directions, and he looks at me as if I am the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. It matters." And I'm sure it does matter, and yet, I can't help but wonder if the look she's describing resembles the supposedly earnest, empathetic stare Edwards utilized on the campaign trail, which some people, myself included, always found to be so disingenuous (and that turned out to be, to the extent that Edwards' ambition did trump his judgment, truly disingenuous). And then I wish I could un-think that thought, because it would be nicer to believe Elizabeth Edwards' version of things.
Ugh! Why wish to be nicer? I don't understand that. The Edwardses outrageously wasted our time and distorted the presidential selection process. I assume they did it because they both lusted for political power. Let's trash them mercilessly. They need to get off the public stage. If gazing into her husband's insipid mug comforts a gravely ill woman, that's fine, but when you write a memoir, you are trying to drag us into it. Keep your intimate moments intimate or they cease to be intimate. Don't think you can command niceness from us because of your troubles. Be gone!
Very 1960s, of course. If there are "nice" songs from earlier or later eras, you'll have to flag them for me. I do know this one, but it's hardly the same thing.
Meanwhile, let's vote on my "nice" songs. Just the songs. Don't count the video, which for both is nicely low quality. And don't give the Lovin' Spoonful extra credit for Peter Noone.
Both Obama and Jindal are at the geeky end of the spectrum among American politicians. But Obama's race cuts against this persona, and makes him "cool" in a way (however studiously achieved) it's hard to envision a comparably wonky white politician being perceived. As Michelle noted in her essay on the subject:
Biracial heritage aside, Obama is a black man. And, in this country, black men have long had the edge on cool.... [A]s a thought exercise, imagine Obama as a white politician. Wonky, overeducated, idealistic, unflappable, reform-minded, big into basketball, articulate but without the lyrical echoes of the African American pulpit -- far from being brother cool, Obama would be ex-senator turned failed presidential candidate Bill Bradley.
So while Jindal may not face the same radical-black-guy stereotypes as Obama, neither will he benefit from the same cool-black-guy stereotypes. If anything, the common stereotypes of Asian-Americans -- as earnest strivers who may be a little nerdy -- could exacerbate Jindal's already wonky self-presentation. When Ace of Spades (exactly the kind of conservative id figure Jindal will want to impress if he runs for the GOP nomination at some point) says that last night the Louisiana governor reminded him of "Achmad, Jaglesh, Clayton, etc., in Animal House," the ethnic geek stereotype is hard to miss. And that could be an issue in a nation where seven of the last eight presidential elections have been won by the candidate widely perceived as cooler, more likable, more popular: Reagan, Reagan, Clinton, Clinton, Bush (arguably primarily for these reasons), Bush, and Obama. (I consider the 1988 election a draw in terms of uncoolness.)
To be clear, I'm not trying to indulge these stereotypes. But it would be silly to pretend they don't exist in the minds of a non-trifling number of voters. Now, if Jindal gives many more national speeches as bad as last night's, his ethnicity won't make any difference. (The fact that he's been most widely compared to Kenneth of "30 Rock" is a nice indicator of Americans' ability to see beyond skin color.) Moreover, for a number of reasons I think it would be a great thing for the GOP, and the country, if Jindal were his party's nominee for president in 2012 or (more likely) 2016. But he may have a trickier path than some of his fans imagine.
Okay, there's a lot going on here, and I will leave some of this open for discussion and respond to what you have to say, but let me sketch out a few points.
1. "Cool" is a cop-out word. It's a word to make racism cute and safe. It's a word white people manipulate black people with: Come, bring your coolness, just the part of what we think of as blackness that makes us feel cool, but don't be whatever it is that we find excessive and fail to perceive as cool. Soothe us appropriately and you can be successful. You can even be President. Look! President Barack Obama! Yay! Aren't we cool? How terribly embarrassing.
2. Nerdiness, done right, is endearing. We might even call it cool. Orr suggests that white people warm up to the black nerd — Obama as Urkel — but not to the "South Asian" one, because there are just so darn many South Asian nerds. Do white people have ideas about the appropriate nerd proportion in the various racial/ethic groups? Are white people ashamed of themselves?
3. Comparing Jindal to Kenneth of "30 Rock" is not a nice indicator of Americans' ability to see beyond skin color. Quite the opposite! Instinctively repainting him white is — I would say — presumptively racial. To strip away his racial identity — to stereotype him as an especially white white man — is a powerful racial move. This is not nice at all. I would really like to know what makes white people so sure they are being nice about racial things. This confidence in niceness is misplaced, yet very very common....
4. .... in liberals. Liberals believe they are the good people with the good beliefs, the good hearts. Especially about race. How could it be otherwise? They are so nice and so good-hearted. And Bobby Jindal is not a liberal. He's a conservative. That's not good. That's bad. Bad, bad Bobby Jindal. Quick! Help me think of all the ways Bobby Jindal is just terrible. Ack! Don't look at him! He's horrible! I can barely stand to look at him. When he first emerges from behind a curtain, I moan "Oh, God." This is terrible. This is automatically horrible. A man of color, who is not supporting our side. One look and I am disgusted. How loathsome!
IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian writes:
Reading Orr's piece in The New Republic was a painful experience, although an informative one. It's a terrifyingly illustrative model of the racial psychopathology still endemic in the American psyche. In bringing about the absolutely necessary and noble goals of the early Civil Rights Movement, it was necessary to change the way people thought about the issue of race. Unfortunately this mental change quickly developed into a complicated neurotic knot that still strangles so many contemporary minds.
If you reread the article, it's not really about anything at all. It's just a tortured attempt to justify the author's political biases by attaching politics to race. The political discourse (for lack of a better word) in America today is yet another manifestation of the primitive force behind racism, sexism, xenophobia &c: us vs. them. Terrible to see racial and political bigotry merge, but it looks like that's where we're headed.
Liberals believe they are the good people with the good beliefs, the good hearts. Especially about race. How could it be otherwise? They are so nice and so good-hearted.
A good point about some liberals. They believe that it's entirely self-evident that they are the good guys. They sometimes seem to believe that this gives them license to say the most dreadful and stupid things because, after all, their hearts are in the right place. I've had friends express the most unspeakably offensive ideas to me under the assumption that they had immunity from responsibility because they were liberals.
It's like that scene in "Annie Hall":
Allison: No, that was wonderful. I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype.
Alvy: Right, I'm a bigot, I know, but for the left.
