Wearing Blinders

ThinkProgress drew my attention to a short film by Adam Butcher called "Bradley Manning Had Secrets." The animated movie of 5.5 minutes uses the actual chat logs between Bradley Manning and Adrian Lamo, the guy who busted him. The conversations took place about a week before everyone learned his name. I recommend watching it. If nothing else, it humanizes and provides greater understanding of Manning.

I tend to wear blinders when it comes to the Obama administration doing things I don't like because I feel they've got enough people actively rooting against them. From dropping the public option to extending the Bush tax cuts, I've defended them and rationalized their decisions.

But some things this administration has done (notice, I still avoid holding President Obama personally responsible) in the name of national security leave me chilled, from the use of drones to the signing of the National Defense Authorization Act. The NDAA gives the president the power to indefinitely detain an American citizen. The fact that the President promised not do do so means nothing. He "signed the bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists." I must be naive when I think, If your reservations are so serious, then DON'T SIGN THE BILL!"

Five Posts for the Price of One Click!

I've started five posts today. Each got deleted because I didn't think I could adequately address the subject in two paragraphs.

The first one drew attention to an opinion piece about shyness in the NYTimes: "Is Shyness an Evolutionary Tactic?"

The second pointed out one of my favorite columnists of late, Ta'Nehesi Coates, a senior editor for The Atlantic. He blogs about everything from Jane Austen to immigration. And his posts have some of the most intelligent comments you'll find on the web.

The third was on the cheating scandal in Atlanta's Public Schools. The governor's report showed nearly 180 teachers engaged in some kind of cheating on standardized tests, from changing students' answers to facilitating cheating by giving students unauthorized assistance. Think Progress reports:

While uncovering this widespread cheating, the report also noted that these abuses were facilitated by a “culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation” that faced APS teachers and administrators, who were pressured to raise test scores and feared for their jobs if they protested these policies or even reported cheating. One excerpt from the report found that a principal forced a teacher under a table during a meeting because her students’ test scores were deemed unsatisfactory.

The fourth was on a revelation about President Obama's father:

Before Barack Obama was born, his parents may have considered putting him up for adoption, according to documents obtained by a reporter for The Boston Globe.

Mr. Obama’s father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., told immigration officials that Ann Dunham, whom he had recently married, would make “arrangements with the Salvation Army to give the baby away,” one document said. [Obama, Sr., had to reapply for his Visa yearly].

The article in the New York Times indicated that President Obama had not previously known about his father's statement. I just imagine the President, worried about the job numbers, worried about Libya and debt ceiling negotiations, coming across this information. When does he have time to process it? To think about it? How does this fit in his narrative about his father? His own life?

I'm trying to remember the fifth post. That was going to be the awesome one, I'm sure. The most interesting and original.

I continue to write and revise and add details to my made-up story. I borrowed another writing book from the library, "The Writer's Digest Handbook of Novel Writing." It is a collection of pieces that had been written for "The Writer's Digest," with contributions from popular authors like Orson Scott Card, Lawrence Block, and Tom Clancy. They give advice on everything from dialogue and plotting to revision and selecting genre. David Groff wrote a chapter, "The Ten Essentials of Popular Fiction," and discussed the characteristics of a successful commercial ("popular") novel. I figured my own work would never cross over into the commercial category (I consider it "literary fiction," that is, "unpopular"), and Groff's words supported my assumption:

While this may surprise you, commercial fiction is always morally conservative. It doesn't matter how many Dirks bed how many Ambers, or how many KGB agents kill off innocent Berliners on the way to find CIA operative Tim Sheahan. A literary novel may, like a piece of contemporary music, be atonal -- and leave the reader feeling discord; but in a commercial novel the narrative ends on the tonic note, with balance restored and order reigning. The good doctor marries the actress, even though she has had to sleep with half of the Screen Actors Guild. The renegade Miami cop manages to blow up the drug smuggler's trawler before it docks in Tampa. In every case, the values and balance of the civilization are reaffirmed, at least temporarily.

He argues that works of popular fiction "are by nature optimistic." I don't know that I can do that. I'm generally an optimistic person, I suppose, thinking the best of people, often against my better judgment. But I'm also very guarded. Very careful and even tentative at times. And perhaps subconsciously, I'm using my novel to show that that "guardedness" is warranted. Life is complicated and messy, and I couldn't write with honesty by pretending otherwise.

The Cost of Ignorance

Timothy Egan had a piece in yesterday's New York Times that addresses the epidemic of ignorance among Americans today. He cites the large number of republicans--and people in general--who believe Obama's a Muslim. He mentions how many think that Obama was responsible for the bank bailout. From climate change to Michelle's trip to Spain, he says, we are being fed misinformation; lies are promulgated.

While "it would be nice to dismiss the stupid things Americans believe as harmless, the price of large, messy democracy," Egan asserts that ignorance has a price:

False belief in weapons of mass-destruction led the United States to a trillion-dollar war. And trust in rising home value as a truism as reliable as a sunrise was a major contributor to the catastrophic collapse of the economy. At its worst extreme, a culture of misinformation can produce something like Iran, which is led by a Holocaust denier.

It's enough to make me want to pull out my hair. How do you combat this? CNN, MSNBC, Fox News -- their primary responsibility is to their shareholders; not to us, not to the government, not to the truth. Their aim is to make money, not to make us smarter.

Maybe it's just another ugly August news cycle. Last year it was the town hall debacles. This year, the Mosques. And maybe, come September, the debate will be elevated.

(Actually, I'm pretty sure it won't be; I'll just have to find a better way to deal with my frustrations than pulling out my hair!)

Express Yourself

In his autobiography, Malcolm X describes how he received a "homemade education" while in prison. He had always considered himself an "articulate hustler," but the language he used on the street--"Look, daddy, let me pull your coat about a cat"--were insufficient within the prison walls. With only an eighth-grade education, he was unable to engage in meaningful conversations and correspondence. With access to little else, Malcolm X began to copy the dictionary. Starting with "aardvark," he wrote each word and its definition:

In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied into my tablet everything printed on that first page, down to the punctuation marks.

I believe it took me a day. Then, aloud, I read back, to myself, everything I’d written on the tablet. Over and over, aloud, to myself, I read my own handwriting.

I woke up the next morning, thinking about those words—immensely proud to realize that not only had I written so much at one time, but I’d written words that I never knew were in the world.... It went a lot faster after so much practice helped me to pick up handwriting speed. Between what I wrote in my tablet, and writing letters, during the rest of my time in prison I would guess I wrote a million words.

To listen to his speeches, to read his words, makes his "homemade education" all the more impressive. He felt unable to express himself, and he rectified it. He describes himself as never having felt "so truly free" in his life as when he was incarcerated, his eyes and mind and possibilities opened to the huge world contained in books. Language is power. Controversial as he was, Malcolm X was undeniably a man of ideas. His ability to communicate those ideas made him a leader.

I watched the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company perform his complete works (abridged). There were jokes scattered about crazy right-wingers, tea parties, and BP. At one point, one of the three actors--they performed hilarious versions of everything from Othello to Hamlet--said, "That's the craziest thing I've heard, at least since, 'Change you can believe in'... What, too soon?" There were audience members laughing and clapping. But I didn't get it. I still don't. I want to say, "Grow up! Obama is trying to govern!" I don't understand what more people want him to do. He needs support, he needs political capital to effect change, and by ridiculing him from the left, people are instead removing an important voice from the debate. Keep up the pressure, but let him lead.

We have so many opportunities today. Libraries, the internet, education: these should be equalizers! Good-natured people, myself included, worry about the widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots. But is anyone talking about the gulf between the "knows" and the "know-nots"? Am I just projecting here? The more television I watch, the more I read, the more I think about (what I perceive to be) rampant anti-intellectualism. Politicians, the media, appealing to our basest instincts, worrying about the 24/7 news cycle instead of truth and progress. Where are the intellectual leaders? Who has big ideas today, based on fact and reason, that has enough celebrity to garner attention? Will corporate media allow any other voices? And when will we be smart enough to demand better?

This Too Shall Pass

Thanks to a lovely day at the library Friday that included lunch from Wild Ginger (Thai!), to a wonderful Five after Five that involved five vegetarian dishes and some stellar wine choices (it was so crowded that by the time we went through, they'd had to change wines at a few stations, so I'm not sure which we had beside 3 whites and two reds), and to a very nice time up in Dayton that involved a 30-minute tour of their art institute and a homemade spicy Cajun-style shrimp and sausage dish, I have officially recovered from my Thursday doldrums. I still have this pit of anxiety in my stomach regarding all things class-related, but I'll chug on, hope that it shrinks, and even do whatever I can to make it disappear altogether.

Also making me happy? President Obama's meeting with Republicans on Friday, particularly the Q&A session that followed his opening remarks. Every question a Republican asked, Obama considered and responded respectfully in a way that showed he understood the issues but also that he knew why his approach was better and why so many of the political talking points (on both sides, he acknowledged) are disingenuous.

I was talking to my mom about this yesterday - even though he's governing from the center, leaving many progressives disheartened, I really believe he's aiming to change the culture in Washington. He's practicing what he preached during the campaign. And as someone (maybe Andrew Sullivan) put it, this is entirely necessary after 8 years of Bush. Short term frustrations, hopefully, will yield long-term gains. Though I couldn't be more ecstatic that he's finally pushing for a repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," a policy that seems increasingly ridiculous.

Here's the video of the Q&A Session. It's worth watching alone for the reminder that President Obama is super smart!

2009 in review

Sometimes things take a while to sink in. Reality changes, but we don't recognize the paradigm shift until much later.

I watched an interview last week with a mom and her two children who were a part of a larger group of African-American mothers and daughters who went to see Disney's latest movie, "The Princess and the Frog." This was the first Disney movie to have an African-American protagonist, and the mom discussed how important it was for her daughters to see a princess who "looked like them." It wasn't that she wanted her daughters to grow up and become princesses but that she didn't want them to grow up thinking that their options were somehow limited because of the color of their skin. She brought up the experiment, first conducted in 1939 but then replicated many times thereafter, in which little girls who were African American preferred white dolls over black dolls. How sad, she suggested, that they thought the doll that looked most like them wasn't beautiful.

But our reality is changing, and the moral arc of the universe is bending. Until this year, we only had one image of what an American President could look like (Morgan Freeman notwithstanding). I'm reminded of a Langston Hughes poem, written in 1925, called, "I, Too, Sing America":

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

When I hear the rhetoric about "Real America," the unfounded challenges to Obama's nationality, I also hear the echoes of those who sent Hughes to eat in the kitchen. I think, aren't they ashamed? But those voices are on the wrong side of history and will slowly become more obsolete. I look back at this past year and think Obama has accomplished a great deal; once (and if) the noise dies down, we'll better recognize that.

Where's My Unicorn?

An Obama supporter said yesterday about the Obama presidency and its current trajectory, "I'm very disappointed. I wanted my unicorn. Where's my unicorn?"

Many of us recognize that our expectations were high. But we didn't think they were unrealistic - after all, we helped get him elected. A lot of us expect gay marriage to be legalized; we expect our troops to come home from wherever they are; we expect a return to science and a strong commitment to combating global warming; we expect single-payer health insurance, quality public education and affordable higher education, sooner rather than later. These aren't exactly unicorns.

Marc Ambider, editor of the politics section of the Atlantic, asks, "Does Obama Hate Liberals?" He quickly answers that no, Obama does not hate liberals but instead "harbors contempt for ideologically driven special interest constituency politics." For the past couple years, many of us have projected our own beliefs onto him, our own struggles and aspirations. Because how he talks and approaches issues seem to account for disparate points of view (during the campaign, in particular), we have felt heard and validated. But when it comes to choosing a policy or direction, we see that our point of view was not chosen - instead it's some middle road that leaves us scratching our head. Still, he's the president of the United States, not liberal America or Blue State America. Obama has said on many occasions, don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

And so we wait. Health care reform will pass, barely. Many of us will be bitter because it will lack a public option or Medicare buy-in. But even with the public option, the reform would still represent tinkering around the edges; it would still be a far cry from single-payer. The bill is better than what we have now, though. The bill isn't perfect, and it may not even be good, but it's something. It's a start.

We still expect unicorns, but hopefully we can settle for a decent horse.

No Worries, Mate

When I was a child, my favorite phrase was "I'm bored." I used it to signal my dissatisfaction with whatever activity or people surrounded me. And I usually uttered to my mother, who always, no matter how many times I'd said it, had a new suggestion: call a friend, read a book, draw a picture, etc. If I'd had the word then, I probably would have said, "I'm experiencing ennui," just to be extra annoying. Despite myriad options, I always had trouble filling empty space.

I don't have trouble filling that space anymore. This is mostly a good thing. More Sydney pictures here. Skyrail pics from Kuranda (near Cairns) here. A few pics from the Blue Mountains here. I've been keeping up with the developments on health care, but it's been moving so quickly that any comment I make about it seems moot within a couple days.

President Obama spoke at Fort Hood yesterday, giving, I think, his best speech since inauguration. It was a moving tribute to those that lost their lives on American soil last week, as well as to those who continue to serve and sacrifice in wars for which "there is not always a simple ceremony that signals our troops' success -- no surrender papers to be signed, or capital to be claimed." I'll surely think of them today, Veterans Day.