Political Theatre category archive

I haven’t said anything about the IRS “scandal” because I don’t understand it.

Let Lawrence O’Donnell explain it to both of us.

As I suspected, there seems to be rather an absence of there, there.

Via The Richmonder.

The next six frames are crucial.

You remember, of course, that, for something to be Sanfordized, it must be taken to the cleaners.

Afterthought:

I think the speculation about Hilary Clinton’s running in the next presidential election is Firebagger wishful thinking combined with Republican paranoia and a dash of news media desperation.

She’ll be 69 years old in 2016. That doesn’t mean she couldn’t do it either mentally or physically, but I think it’s unlikely that she’ll want to.

Just my two cents.

Some of you may have heard about this incident in Martinsville, Virginia. A summary:

In a video posted to YouTube, students were describing the quilt when Councilwoman Sharon Brooks Hodge began expressing concerns about one particular square.

“The small black person represents us before we learned all the information about it, and then the bigger gold person is how he feels after we’ve been enriched with all the different knowledge,” a student says in the video.

Hodge replied: “Excuse me, why is the small black person the negative image?” When the student tried to explain, Hodge said, “I take offense to that.”

I heard the YouTube video on a podcast. The student was unable to explain because, clearly, no thought went into the color choices. The gang at TWIB (I can’t find the exact podcast) thought that the council woman was too hard on the student.

In the Roanoke Times, Wendy Kellam has a thoughtful piece on the incident. A nugget:

I don’t believe any of the students meant any malice in the presentation, but we can’t disregard the feelings of black people either. Our black children are sadly faced with negative stereotypes and oppositions from childhood.

We have to continuously reinforce to our children they are just as good as other races. But when our sons are of the age to drive, black parents have to inform them, by way of the dreaded conversation, what could happen to them if they are stopped by certain police officers. We have to tell our children the story of Emmett Till that happened in 1955. We have to explain to them in 2013 that what happened to Trayvon Martin could happen to them solely because of the color of their skin. Those two stories don’t even begin to scratch the surface of racism directed toward the black race, so I appreciate Hodge addressing the issue she had with the quilt.

One of my mother’s favorite terms, in criticizing my (and others’) behavior was “inconsiderate,” closely followed by “thoughtless.”

She could not abide behavior that did not anticipate its effects on others. She saw no excuse for it.

Those who argue, as many white folks are bound to do, that Not White folks should “just get over” it do two things:

• They attempt to render their own history invisible, and
• They are profoundly inconsiderate and thoughtless of the history of others.

I suspect that they are purposefully thoughtless and inconsiderate because they don’t want to think about and consider what their ancestors and perhaps even they have done (and, perhaps, continue to do).

Like my mother, I see no excuse for thoughtlessness and lack of consideration.

Via Bartcop.

The members of the ZuckerPAC are starting to realize that they’ve been zucked.

PoliticalProf explains. A snippet:

“Our son-of-a-bitch is better than their saint.”

If you remember that notion, and the concept of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard), pretty much all of politics will make sense to you.

Warning: Mild language.

The Rude One has thinks he knows what to do about nullification: nullify right back (Warning: Language).

Scott Herhold is puzzled by Mark Zuckerberg’s transition into a PAC-man:

The TV spots (funded by Zuckerberg’s PAC–ed.) laud Graham for fighting Obamacare and commend Begich for working to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling.

Neither of those messages is central to the thinking of Silicon Valley. In fact, they would irritate a lot of Facebook users and managers.

In adopting Machiavellian tactics, Zuckerberg has done more than upset his core constituency. In a real sense, the Facebook CEO has raised questions about what he and his company stand for.

“It’s incredibly cynical,” says Phil Trounstine, my former colleague and the co-founder of the political website Calbuzz. “It makes people believe that it’s all just a game. And it’s not a game. People are struggling for real stakes.’

Hmmmmm.

“Incredibly cynical.”

“Zuckerberg.”

Who could possibly have ever expected to hear those two in the same breath?

Who, indeed?

One of the most successful attempts to replace history with fiction was the creation of the legend of the Old South, the South of Gone with the Wind: Elegant, stately plantation homes; gracious, hospitable planters; legions of contented darkies singing happily as they labored, before returning to their shacks for the night.

It was a great flack job that enabled the South and Southerners, indeed, the entire country, to look away, look away, look away from the reality of exploitation, brutality, theft of labor, and rape hidden in the back yards of those picturesque estates and, later, remain blind to Jim Crow, which was little more than an attempt of recreate chattel slavery in disguise.

On a smaller scale, we can follow a similar effort right now, as the contemporary Republican Party, its dupes, fellow travelers, and symps attempt to purge the memory of George the Worst, so that voters will forget what governance by that party actually looks like.

In the Roanoke Times, Jason Husser argues eloquently the importance of remembering the past, the real past, not the one we wish had happened. A nugget.

Memory is recognition and recognition is power. “Memory has fueled merciless, violent strife, and it has been at the core of reconciliation and reconstruction,” writes William James Booth, a political theorist at Vanderbilt University and a personal mentor of mine. “It has been used to justify great crimes, and yet it is central to the pursuit of justice.”

Forgetting the bad parts of our past is appealing. Those who caution against “unburying a hatchet” are selling snake oil. Whatever short-term therapeutic value found in blocking a negative event from our minds is overwhelmingly outweighed by the long-term harm of losing the memory of public atrocity.

Read the whole thing.

Michelle Bachmann plans her next speech.

Image via Comically Vintage.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Alfie Kohn contests the claims that our schools are failing. He argues that, in many cases, the claims are little more sales pitches for educational snake-oil.

A couple of nuggets:

The assertion that our students compare unfavorably to those in other countries has long been heard from politicians and corporate executives whose goal is to justify various “get tough” reforms: high-stakes testing, a nationalized curriculum (see under: Common Core “State” Standards), more homework, a longer school day or year, and so on.

And later on, discussing science scores:

But even with older students, there may be less to the bad news than meets the eye. As an article in Scientific American noted a few years back, most countries’ science scores were actually pretty similar.[2] That’s worth keeping in mind whenever a new batch of numbers is released. If there’s little (or even no) statistically significant difference among, say, the nations placing third through tenth, it would be irresponsible to cite those rankings as if they were meaningful.

Follow the link for some facts, with citations.

Addendum:

And be sure to see the George Smith’s comment, below.

As the punditocracy’s current fad seems to be calling for “leadership” from President Obama (witness this drivel from Maureen Dowd, who is always willing to sacrifice sense to achieve sarcasm), as if he can somehow sprinkle pixie dust over Congress to turn it into a sensible body determined to make proper decisions, it is well to remember this gem, buried in a longer column by Joshua Green concerning gun control.

Most Americans mistakenly believe that politics really works the way it does on The West Wing, where an impassioned speech by President Bartlett can rouse the country and bend the opposition. In the real world, things work differently.

As long as we the people continue to people the legislatures with fools and tools, we will be ruled by fools and tools.

More and more, Republicans seem to basing their playbook on stuff the Onion wouldn’t print.

Dick Polman summarizes the week in wingnut whackjobbery. A nugget:

Last, but surely not least, a new national poll reports this fascinating finding: Forty-four percent of Republicans – yes, folks, 44 percent – believe that “in the next few years, an armed revolution might be necessary in order to protect our liberties.”

Hey, no wonder they said no to expanded background checks.

Better yet, before they sign up that sister-free Kentucky tyke and mount the barricades, perhaps they’d prefer to self-deport.

Battling the poors and the olds.

Larry Flynt endorses Appalachian Trail hiker Mark Sanford for Congress as “America’s great sex pioneer.” (Video at the link.)

I have nothing to add to this.

PoliticalProf explains how to gin up a crisis.

Just read it.