Cartoonish Reactionaries

By Mark W. Davis (WHWG)
February 19, 2009 – 1:39 pm

We have the new Attorney-General, Eric Holder, to thank for calling us a “nation of cowards” when it comes to candid discussions of race.  On the same day, The New York Post was denounced for an editorial cartoon that depicted Connecticut’s rampaging chimpanzee as the putative author of the stimulus package.

“The drawing,” huffs Sam Stein of the Huffington Post, “from famed cartoonist Sean Delonas, is rife with violent imagery and racial undertones.”

There is, of course, real racism to denounce.  A failed candidate for the chairmanship of the RNC sent out a song, “Barack the Magic Negro,” as a joke. The RNC didn’t find it very funny and wisely elected Michael Steele as chairman.  

If we are really going to quit being a nation of cowards, however, perhaps we should free all our minds from the old imagery of Jim Crow and allow this administration–or any administration–to be ridiculed just like any other group of politicians.  Delonas’ Post cartoon was in the time-honored tradition of Thomas Nast, who invoked whole menageries to satirize the politicians of his day (giving us the Republican Party’s iconic elephant, and the Democratic Party’s iconic donkey).

In short, if we are to quit being a nation of cowards, perhaps we should quit reading hidden, secret-society, Jim Crow “code word” meanings  into ordinary satire that clearly is not there.

If the Huff-left wants to denounce racism, perhaps they should look in their ideological backyard and start with comedian Sarah Silverman, whose act includes the coarsest racist humor put to song.  When Lenny Bruce pioneered a similar shtick fifty years ago, it may have actually have had a social point.  Today, it is both stale and offensive.

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Eric the Brave

By Ed Walsh (WHWG)
February 18, 2009 – 6:40 pm

ericholderAttorney General Eric Holder, speaking today to Department of Justice employees, said, “Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.”

Score one for civility.

Can Holder really be serious? First of all, if you’re going to call people cowards, don’t add so many qualifiers – “I believe” … “in too many ways” … “essentially.” That sort of hedging might come off as sort of, you know, cowardly.

Second, if your goal is to encourage more honest discussion about race, why use loaded language?  According to the AP, Holder said President Obama’s speech on race last year inspired his remarks today. I don’t recall Obama calling anyone a coward – let alone using that word to describe the whole nation throughout its history (essentially, in too many ways).

Holder elaborated: “If we are to make progress in this area, we must feel comfortable enough with one another and tolerant enough of each other to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us.”

Getting comfortable and exhibiting tolerance don’t usually start with one person calling the rest of the country cowards (I believe, essentially).

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Oh, Are My Ears Bleeding?

By Ed Walsh (WHWG)
February 18, 2009 – 1:43 pm

Does any federal government office produce less engaging rhetoric than that of Chairman of the Federal Reserve?

Alan Greenspan was famous for his inscrutable public statements. Ben Bernanke, who comes across (to me) as much more personable than Greenspan, employs a workmanlike approach to his speeches that defies listeners to stay tuned for more than a couple of minutes.

I guess the people who really need to listen, do. But if anyone has a formula for giving monetary policy some pizzazz, please share.

UPDATE: As if in answer to my plea, The Atlantic‘s Marc Ambinder, while not injecting any pizzazz into Ben Bernanke’s remarks today, did actually read them and distill them into the most noteworthy points. Now that’s public service.

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Responsibility on the Horizon?

By Ed Walsh (WHWG)
February 18, 2009 – 12:56 pm

foreclosure-housePresident Obama is unveiling his housing rescue plan at a high school in Mesa, Arizona. (Not sure about that venue. If you’re a high-school homeowner you are either very successful or very deceptive. But anyway…)

The details of the plan are complicated and the impact likely won’t be known for some time. But the messages the president is driving are: (1) This is help for responsible homeowners; (2) speculators, bad lenders, and other greedy ne’er-do-wells will not benefit.

The president realizes that Americans are losing their appetite for spending their own money to help people who may have made bad choices (see: Motors, General). So it’s important to present this package not as a sop to sloppy homebuyers, but as a necessary prop to whole communities that may be circling the drain as a result of rising foreclosures.

Determining who’s a “responsible” borrower and who’s an ugly speculator will be difficult. After all, it was President Obama himself who in January diagnosed “an era of profound irresponsibility.” But the public’s increasing discomfort with subsidizing the failures of irresponsible people — and the president’s acknowledgment of it — could be a good sign.

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Frum the Right

By Ed Walsh (WHWG)
February 17, 2009 – 3:45 pm

Over at NewMajority, my former (more senior) colleague David Frum explains why, despite the general glee on the right, Republicans likely fumbled a real opportunity on stimulus.

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A Petty Caption

By Ed Walsh (WHWG)
February 17, 2009 – 3:23 pm

In today’s Politico Playbook, Mike Allen mentions a new White House slideshow of behind-the-scenes photos from the stimulus negotiating process. The general theme of the pics is of a president vigorously doing the public’s work.

Then there’s slide #4, which is a picture of the president meeting with Republican members of Congress. The caption notes this, then says: “Many of them were seeking his autograph.”

What is the point of that, other than to make Republican members look silly and juvenile — like they’re the giggly girls swooning over the new boy in school?

That, of course, is the point. But it was unnecessary and undignified. I know the president doesn’t sign off on all the communications vehicles produced by his staff, but someone there should be aware that snide comments in White House documents (even photo documents) cheapen the president’s message.

When President Obama says he respects the ideological differences that exist between the parties and he wants to improve the quality of dialogue in Washington, his own staff shouldn’t undermine him.

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Berns on Lincoln

By Ed Walsh (WHWG)
February 17, 2009 – 10:53 am

Walter Berns — always thoughtful, eloquent, and worth the read — reflects in today’s Wall Street Journal on why Lincoln is our greatest public hero. He reminds us that history was not always (or even mostly) moving in Lincoln’s direction at the time he led the country, and that, time and again, Lincoln stood alone.

Near the end of the piece, Berns deconstructs the Gettysburg Address, concluding, “[W]e remember everything he said. And we remember it because he took great pains to say it beautifully.”

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Speaking in Tongues

By Vinca LaFleur (WWW)
February 16, 2009 – 9:36 pm

Worth Reading:  This thoughtful piece by novelist Zadie Smith in the New York Review of Books, exploring President Obama’s ability to speak in the “many-colored voice, the multiple sensibility” that we celebrate in our artists but have not typically prized in our politicians.

Here’s Jack Shafer’s summary of the Smith piece in Slate.

And if you like Zadie Smith, check out this essay she wrote after an American book tour in 2001, follicularly entitled “On the Road: American Writers and Their Hair.”  The opening:

I have just completed a book tour, which is somewhat like being on safari but without the attendant dangers of thick bush-land, extreme heat, guns, or wild animals. But book tours offer their own perils to the young writer. I have been on an American book tour before. Four things come out of an American book tour:

1. The writer gains 15 pounds.

2. The writer can find a minibar within five seconds of opening a door, irrespective of wood-paneling camouflage.

3. Any original thought the writer ever had – every pretty black mark she ever made on a piece of white paper – is replaced by the endlessly reoccurring phenomena of the writer’s own name rising up at them in embossed font on the front of a book they have come to despise.

4. The writer is reduced to embracing the only creative subject she has left: writing about writing and writers. And, if she is lucky, hair.

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Bush Speaks (The Other One) (No, the Other One)

By Ed Walsh (WHWG)
February 16, 2009 – 1:59 pm

jeb-noaaWhat better family to hear from on Presidents Day than the Bushes? (OK, maybe the Roosevelts, but I don’t see any of them stepping up.)

Fred Barnes’s interview with Jeb Bush in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal offers a glimpse of how Republicans could be packaging themselves as a novel-thinking, reform-minded, fully modern — dare I say progressive? — party capable of winning voters from coast to coast. He talks of disruptive innovation, rational thinking on immigration, genuinely radical education reform, and a goal of rebuilding the GOP at the gubernatorial level to establish a portfolio of smart governing ideas. My pulse is quickening just writing about it. Of course, that last name is a liability in today’s political environment. But for how long?

Jeb also expresses a warm post-partisan view of the presidency, telling Barnes: “I would never want Obama to go through what my brother went through. It might be fair that every president gets the same amount of vitriol. But it’s not right for our country, it’s not going to help us, and it’s not going to help Republicans.” Amen.

(By the way, Jeb is wearing a NOAA hat in this old photo. NOAA is administered by the Department of Commerce, which doesn’t have a secretary-designate right now.)

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Uniquely Qualified to Celebrate Presidents Day

By Ed Walsh (WHWG)
February 16, 2009 – 9:25 am

rushmoreHappy Presidents Day to presidents old and new.

It seems unfair that the president always ends up working on Presidents Day. You’d think he’d qualify for a day off if millions of people around America who have nothing to do with the presidency get to spend the day catching up on “Law and Order” reruns or buying sofa sets at unbelievably low prices. But no such luck. President Obama is expected to be in the West Wing for meetings this afternoon.

While he’s there, why not talk about him behind his back? Check out this story from Politico‘s Carol Lee, who picks up on a unique rhetorical tic President Obama (or his speechwriters) have evidenced.

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Love and Chocolate (and Ham)

By Ed Walsh (WHWG)
February 13, 2009 – 2:54 pm

cakeIt’s Friday the 13th, the second-scariest day this week, right behind Valentine’s Day (or St. Valentine’s Day, as my digital-cable guide insists on calling it).

Still looking for a way to communicate your love to that special someone? Take a piece of advice from our commander in chief. According to People.com, President Obama ordered his Mrs. a Triple Chocolate Enrobed Brownie Cake from New York City’s Bake Me a Wish! (Exclamation point theirs.)

The president, in yet another attempt to upstage ordinary men everywhere, ordered the cake ten days early! (Exclamation point mine.) And he spent 40 dollars! But of course, he’s got a job.

If you’re a little strapped for cash these days, how about treating you and your darling to a five-dollar footlong from Subway? Nothing says “I Love You and You’re Stuck with Me” like a Black Forest Ham sandwich on fresh oven-baked bread. And what a value!

I was thinking recently about how Americans could use more value for their money, what with Josh reminding me again and again how little value there is in the stimulus bill. Did you know that the $789 billion stimulus plan would buy 157.8 billion five dollar footlongs? (Simple math, really.)

To conceive of such a bounty, I ran a few more numbers. If you assume each sandwich is about 3 inches wide, 157.8 billion five dollar footlongs would allow us to build a 31-foot wide bridge of FDFs from the Earth to the moon.  (And I believe this project is shovel ready.)

Still, though, I imagine the Triple Chocolate Enrobed Brownie Cake will win more hearts. But regardless of the gift you choose to give this Valentine’s Day/Stimulus Season, remember: The best way to express your true feelings for someone is to hire someone else to put them into words for you.

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Coming Soon to a Town Near You: The Big Inflation

By Josh Gilder (WHWG)
February 13, 2009 – 11:34 am

budget-chart-8830025This chart (hat tip, Power Line) shows the deficit as a percentage of GDP, with a projection for 2009 that includes expenditures under TARP I, TARP II and the Stimulator Pork Package. The most obvious thing is that we’re headed for a deficit over twice as large as under Ronald Reagan, but we hear nary a peep from the media about “mortgaging our children’s future” and “deficits as far as the eye can see.”

For Republicans, complaining about liberal bias is like complaining about the weather: It’s futile and we know it, but sometimes it’s just so aggravating you can’t restrain yourself.

The larger point, however, is that this chart demonstrates that there are two, and only two ways to grow out of a deficit. One was Ronald Reagan’s way: cut marginal tax rates for high income earners and business and grow your way out. That way is illustrated by the upward trend that begins in 1983, when tax rate reductions in the top income brackets went into effect, and continued into the 90s, as the economy reaped the fruits of innovation and entrepreneurial activity those cuts unleashed. Obama has explicitly ruled out taking this path, as it represents to his mind the “failed policies of the past.”

There’s a second way to get rid of a deficit, though , and this appears to be the path Obama and his advisors have decided to follow. That’s illustrated by the years 1976 to 1979, under Jimmy Carter. It’s not easy to see on this table, but in those years the deficit went from 4.2% to 1.6% of GDP, and it was all thanks to inflation. Obama was very young then, and he may not remember, but the 1970s were not good times. That’s when The United States almost became Argentina.

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Great Speeches from a Dying World

By Vinca LaFleur (WWW)
February 12, 2009 – 11:33 pm

great-speeches-from-a-dying-worldIt’s not the kind of movie likely to grace the multiplex at the mall, but indie film fans with an interest in oratory might be tempted by “Great Speeches from a Dying World,” a documentary exploring the lives of nine homeless men and women in Seattle.  Evidently, each subject’s life is framed by the recitation of a well-known speech — for example, a crippled and crack-addicted woman named Deborah Payne delivers “Ain’t I a Woman?” by Sojourner Truth.

Writes NYT reviewer Stephen Holden: “When she recites the words “If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back,” you sense that Ms. Payne, in different circumstances, might once have been strong enough to lead the charge.”

You can check out the trailer here.

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Watch for the Payback

By Josh Gilder (WHWG)
February 12, 2009 – 4:59 pm

Senator Gregg’s withdrawal from consideration as Commerce Secretary was principled and gracious. It was also smart, in at least two ways.

This stimulus is a tar baby for any Republican who might be tempted to be associated with it. Gregg was wise to step away.

The second smart thing was declaring up front that this had nothing to do with the vetting process.

The question now is whether we begin to see any pay back — selective leaks of the private information Gregg was obliged to hand over to the Obama administration. I doubt Obama would ever countenance such a thing. The question is whether others in his White House are so restrained.

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Biden as the drunk uncle

By Josh Gilder (WHWG)
February 12, 2009 – 4:47 pm

My colleague, Kendall Bentz, sends along this hilarious compilation of John Stewart and Jay Leno goofs on Joe Biden, and points out that until and if they figure out how to make fun of Obama, Biden seems to have been designated the comedic fall guy.

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