I Now Welcome Your Comments

You will notice that I have decided to display comments anyone has for my blog entries as of today. It's a risky move, to be sure. If I don't get any comments, this will mean that no one is reading it.

And speaking of hating for some things to happen . . .

Obama: Wright Is Wrong

Okay, I was wrong. Apparently Barack Obama has some backbone after all. He denounced Jeremiah Wright in North Carolina yesterday, and he did what he had to do to keep his presidential campaign from faltering. If you ask me, Obama seemed very angry at Wright but displayed remarkable self-control. He didn't fly off the handle the way, well, the way Wright would have done.

Obama, as a black man, can't show righteous indignation in the same way that Hillary Clinton can because of the racist way the media would interpret it. When Hillary gets mad, she's called a fighter and a passionate politician. But if Obama got mad the same way Hillary did, he'd be called . . . Jay-Z.

And we'd hate for that to happen.

So how will Obama's comments on Wright help him in Indiana and North Carolina against the Wicked Witch of Westchester? We'll soon find out.

James Monroe: The Fifth U.S. President

It was on this day 250 years ago, a quarter of a millennium, that James Monroe, the fifth President of the United States, was born.

Monroe, who served as President from 1817 to 1825, was a master builder of consensus and a sharp leader who was able to effectively govern from the center. Although he was neither in the Continental Congress, which declared the United States to be independent, nor in the Constitutional Convention, Monroe is considered a Founding Father largely because he was an aide-de-camp to George Washington in the Revolution and also served with Lafayette. He initiated the Monroe Doctrine, which closed European colonization of the Western Hemisphere.

Monroe became president at a time when Americans took pride in themselves for having stood up to the British in the War of 1812 and were creating a prosperous, democratic society. The Monroe years are known as the Era of Good Feelings.

We could use an era like that now. :-(

Correction: April 28, 2008

I hate to bring Madonna up, but I made a mistake. I had thought her latest album came out in March, but it's coming out tomorrow.

And her record company - whose last chance to cash in on her before she cashes in herself on another label is this record - will make sure it enters the charts at number one by manipulating sales of it through SoundScan.

I don't know which will go first, popular music or the ozone layer. :-O

Meanwhile, get out the earplugs.

Man Up, Obama!

Barack Obama has to be a man and take on Jeremiah Wright's egotistical tirades to save his presidential campaign.

Unfortunately, his wife won't let him. :-O

Obama Versus the Press

It's official: The media are trying to destroy Barack Obama.

After building up Obama over the winter, the media are starting to tear him down just for the hell of it. They cite his loss in the Pennsylvania primary to Hillary Clinton by ten percentage points, as well as his failure to win over not only working-class whites in the old industrial areas but also Philadelphia suburbanites in Bucks and Montgomery counties.

The real story, if anyone cares to look more closely, is that Obama actually improved his standing among Pennsylvania's blue-collar voters, showing that he was able to cut his gap with Hillary by half. (He had been 22 points behind in the polls at one point.) Also, his remarks about "bitter" working-class voters hadn't changed the dynamic in Pennsylvania that much. True, he should have done better among Philadelphia suburbanites, but he held his own better than anyone should have expected.

Obama can't seem to do anything right these days. If he gives John McCain credit for his leadership abilities and his experience, Hillary Clinton, who did the the same thing, bashes him for it. If he doesn't fight back against Hillary's barbs, he's a wuss; if he does, he risks being seen as a) piling on a woman or b) an angry black man. And white people have an inexplicable tendency to get scared when a black man like Al Sharpton gets angry.

Although, if you're a black man, and you just saw those trigger-happy policemen get off in the Sean Bell case, you have a right to be angry.

Obama can't even challenge his elitist image by citing his background as a resident of Chicago. We Americans take a disparaging attitude toward our own big cities, seeing urban residents as being out of the mainstream (read suburban) fabric of the country. So what's a nice guy from the South Side of Chicago to do?

Largely, he should try to let the attacks run off his back and counterattack only when he absolutely has to. Obama is trying to run a positive, hopeful campaign, but no one will begrudge him when he has to take on Hillary Clinton with the same rough, feisty, scrappy attitude that she's adopted towards him.

Hillary Clinton will do anything to stop Obama, even, it is rumored, helping to let McCain win in the fall should Obama be the Democratic nominee so she can run again in four years. Because, like the Bushes, the Clintons think they own the White House.

Music Musings

Some music-related stories to comment on . . .

Noel Gallagher of the British band Oasis noted the slow sales of tickets for the annual music festival in Glastonbury, England, and cited the inclusion of Shawn Carter - Jay-Z to you, ofay! - on the roster of performers as a reason fewer tickets are being sold. Gallagher suggested that maybe hip-hop isn't as big a draw for the Glastonbury festival as rock acts are.

A spokeswoman for the festival, however, saw - you guessed it - racist overtones in Gallagher's remarks, citing the appearances of previous hip-hop acts. She found it disturbing that Gallagher would pick on a black performer.

Noel Gallagher isn't racist - he's rockist. :-) He obviously thinks rock is a superior musical genre. And so do I.

When are we going to stop accusing everyone who hates rap of hating black people as well? It's like being accused of misogyny if you don't support Hillary Clinton for President. Maybe if Shawn Carter actually sang his lyrics, played an instrument, and called himself by his legal name (as I just called him - so, there!), maybe rock fans would take him more seriously.

Meanwhile, yesterday was National Record Store Day, a day devoted to brick-and-mortar record stores, which today are threatened by computer downloading and Internet sales. Theoretically, I'd like to see record stores, both independent and chain stores, continue, and do so as the social gathering places for music fans that they've always been, but more recently I myself have been buying more records from online sources, mainly because the record stores I go to in the mall don't have what I want. If I have to order them specially, I might as well do so online. And, ironically, I've actually found independent record stores to be less of a source of records for my collection than chain stores and Internet shopping. I found most of Family's albums, for example, either through Internet shopping or - you'll never believe this - Borders!

Mostly, though, chain store selections are restricted to three categories: hip-hop, classic rock greatest-hits compilations, and Mariah Carey. :-p

A High-Tech Lynching?

Now it can be told: ABC stands for "Attacking Barack Constantly!"

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton faced off at the debate before the Pennsylvania primary last night on ABC, and it amounted to what the lamentable Clarence Thomas would have called a "high-tech lynching." Obama was asked a question about his "elitist" San Francisco speech about bitter proletarian voters, which he reasonably expected, but then he faced questions about Jeremiah Wright, a subject he thought he'd dealt with already, and a voter's question repeated the canard about his refusal to wear a flag lapel pin. Hillary Clinton got fewer "gotcha" questions from the panel - including former Bill Clinton spokesman George Stephanopoulos - and as a result Hillary was able to come up with crisper replies. She also threw out rather barbed responses to Obama's statements, suggesting that she was in cahoots with Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann even noted that a question about Obama's friendship with a former member of the Weathermen bombers of the early seventies was asked by Stephanopoulos after Fox's Sean Hannity brought it up with the former Bill Clinton aide.

This debate served no purpose whatsoever. Gibson and Stephanopoulos didn't even get to the issues until later in the evening, by which time several viewers must have tuned out (as Keith Olbermann suggested). Not only was Obama driven to frustration by the silly questions, Hillary Clinton only made herself look nastier than she is, no dooubt driving up her negative poll numbers in the process. Obama is already decrying the use of "gotcha" questions in this debate, making possibly making him look like a whiner.

If any candidate benefited from this display of bad political theater, it was John McCain.

What's The Matter With Elitism?

I'm getting sick and tired of Hillary Clinton piling on Barack Obama for comments he made early last week about how working-class and middle-class Americans are "bitter" over their economic difficulties and cling to guns and religion for solace. Because isn't he right? Don't people in Pennsylvania, Ohio and other industrial (or post-industrial) states get bitter over losing their jobs and having to compete with their own teenage children for low-wage jobs at Wal-Mart? And when all they have is hunting and churchgoing to find something to believe in and hold onto, wouldn't you expect them to do that?

Hillary called Obama condescending, saying he took an "elitist" attitude. As Obama himself cited, this is a peculiar accusation for someone who grew up with a single mother in a Third World country and had socioeconomic difficulties growing up. But - what if Obama is elitist? What if Obama - whose annual family income is far less than the Clintons - can be considered elitist because of his ease with people of higher incomes and better education? Don't we want someone from an educated elite - who, by definition, knows a thing or two about running a country and knows what he's doing - to govern us?

Here's a pretty impressive list of elitists: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams. Six of our Presidents? Not just that - our first six Presidents! Imagine how much worse off our country would have been if, in the first forty years the Constitution was in effect, we had leaders who were not a part of an educated elite.

Ponder that while you're mailing your tax form tonight.

Planes, Trains And the Presidential Campaign

American Airlines's inability to meet this nation's admittedly lax aviation safety standards have led them to ground many of their planes and cancel their flights, leaving many to opt for taking a train - except that they couldn't find one. If there was ever a better argument for nationalizing the airlines and rebuilding Amtrak, this is it.

Meanwhile, John McCain has indicated that he would not approve of Barack Obama's alleged proposal to have the government cap the obscene salaries of corporate CEOs after Obama dared to call attention to the fact that many captains of what's left of industry make more money in a day than most people make in a year. McCain believes that stockholders should determine CEO salaries, not the federal government as Obama supposedly suggested. Obama should ignore McCain on the grounds that a) Obama never advocated such a policy, and b) he wasn't addressing McCain in the first place!

Hillary Clinton's makeup job makes her look like Monroe. Not Marilyn - James!

But at least she looks presidential. :-D

Charlton Heston: 1923-2008

Some thoughts on the death of Charlton Heston . . .

Charlton Heston was one of those Hollywood actors I always considered to be of great stature. Even his name - Charlton Heston - carried a sense of majesty. Calling him "Chuck" didn't cut it. Because of his association with the National Rifle Association in his last years - not to mention the way Michael Moore inadvertently sandbagged him in Bowling For Columbine - younger generations will remember him less fondly, but I come here to praise, not bury.

Consider, if you will, his great performances in Ben Hur and El Cid as evidence of his talent and his craft, and consider also his artistic integrity: Heston wouldn't involve himself in any of the sequels to Planet of the Apes because he was opposed to the idea of movie franchises. Also, he was an avid supporter of the National Endowment of the Arts and considered Shakespeare to the the benchmark for any serious actor - even though he worked in Hollywood, the least serious place on the planet. He even had a capacity for self-deprecation (as anyone who remembers his guest hosting stint on "Saturday Night Live" will remember).

Put it all together, and Heston left a legacy in which the good outweighed the bad. As for his conservative politics . . . well, he always said it was a free country, and he had the right to be a Republican.

Seems sensible enough to me.

Hokum In Harare

It looks like the end of an era may be at hand in Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe, the onetime guerilla fighter against white minority rule in the nation formerly known as Rhodesia, now president of Zimbabwe, saw his party come short of the 51 percent majority needed to avoid a runoff in parliamentary elections. Mugabe has always tried to hold elections that benefited his power base, but events and misfortune in the country have seemingly conspired against him.

Mugabe, Zimbabwe's first and only president, might have been seen as the George Washington of his country for fighting against colonialism and leading it from the beginning of independence. Instead, he assumed dictatorial powers and terrorized his opponents, preferring to hold onto the presidency seemingly for life. Fighting against oppression in the former Rhodesia, has has become the oppressor. He has made such a mess out of his country that many people will be glad to see him go.