The Race Card

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When will Don Imus call out his friend John McCain for playing the race card in his attack ads against Barack Obama?

The subtext of the ads is obvious. The choice by McCain to bring in the same crew that ran the white woman ads against Harold Ford is plain. He knew what he was buyin'. The compromise of honor hangs in the balance.

For McCain.

And for Imus.
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Too-of-a-kind Coincidental

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Ever notice how sometimes things happen like a duet and it just doesn’t seem possible that it’s a coincidence? I had one of those experiences today, see what you think.

Driving to the tall timber this morning, once the Fargo stations faded away, we switched to the Park Rapids radio station―notable because its owner makes the astronaut radio station owner in Northern Exposure seem like a leftwing hippie.

So owner Ed Delahunt is in control of the microphone for his daily coffeetime call-in show which virtually never gets any calls. And with the patented reichwing tactic of prefacing his reading with “I don’t know this to be true, I don’t know if I believe this, but….” Delahunt launches into reading selected quotes from Michelle Obama’s Princeton paper and right-from-the-Rove- playbook-style editorial comments attacking Michelle Obama.

The whole litany read to me like the booga-booga scare tactic of Michelle Obama in the White House is gonna get you, white woodtick northern neighbors of mine.

Guess Ed decided not to heed the “lay off my wife” memo.

Now Ed’s not exactly known for his intellectual curiosity around these parts, and word around here is Clear Channel has a hand in his operation these days, so my red-flag radar went off. Just where did Ed get this stuff? The McCain campaign? A surrogate McCain group?

Hmmmmm.

And then this evening, since it was still dripping from the thunderstorm outside, we were watching Countdown, and Keith Olbermann’s top story #3 was all about Grover Norquist and his “John Kerry with a tan” comment to the L.A. Times. Keith and his guest talked about whether Norquist was the designated hitter to launch the race card―was this a “trial balloon”?

Forget race card. I think today signaled the McCain campaign and the Usual Republican Suspects have decided to drop the whole damned deck. Little fluttery race cards spilling out all over the country, in environments large―like Los Angeles. And small―like Park Rapids, Minnesota.

So what’s the candidate who pledges to run a campaign of honor because he’s a man of integrity have to say about the conduct of his surrogates?

And did the Rethuglicans decide to shift their attack against Michelle Obama to the same kind of under-the-radar tactics used against McCain in South Carolina about his adopted daughter?

Like I say, it could all be coincidence, happening on this same day. Yep. Coincidence. That’s what it must be. Or not.

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Hysterical Hillary

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In the end, it's not a pretty sight. The hysterical "you like me, you really really must like me" desperation that Hillary has displayed since Tuesday's election and ye-olde-butt-kickin' has been a process that is cringe-inducing.

Start with "the letter"--the demand letter to Senator Obama regarding Florida and Michigan delegates. She can't even be truthful there...why shade now? When the truth was that she, too, agreed to the terms the Democratic Party established when Florida and Michigan, despite warnings, moved their primaries ahead.

It's like the Bosnia sniper fire story: the truth--a First Lady going into a war zone--was impressive on its face. Why did she have to "embellish" events that never happened?

And then there was the mad dash into West Virginia Wednesday so that she could [and I heard her, in her own campaign words, on the radio even out here in the tall timber] talk about "electability" and "hard working people" "working class" "white"...as though, by implication, if you weren't white you didn't work, much less work hard.

For shame.

Playing the race card demeans the whole political process. The Republicans disgraced themselves enough with that, Hillary. Why would you stoop so low? Have you so little faith in yourself to win fair and square? Arguably your tactics are what have cost you this nomination.

Have you so little faith in Senator Obama, in the coalition of the people he's been building throughout this campaign? There's a lot of us who look a lot more like Claire McCaskill than Barack Obama who are enthusiastically supporting his campaign.

Have you so little faith in your fellow Americans?

We owe you nothing, now. Your victories, if they come, in West Virginia and Kentucky will have been purchased with the total public discrediting of your professed integrity...and yes, experience. Because the race card is one experience this country doesn't need any more of.

And then they came for me

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Here in Prairie Country, we like to flatter ourselves that we're pretty much removed from the kind of race-baiting, code-wording crapola that's re-emerged in this election campaign via voices as disparate as Rush Limbaugh and Bill Clinton and Lou Dobbs and John Hagee and, well, the list, sadly, goes on...and on...and on...and....

We see it in the subjects the media choose to focus on. The endless Rev. Wright. Hmmmm, just who is actually going to be on the ballot this year? Hillary Clinton, or Bill? Barack Obama or his former pastor? John McCain or George W. Bush? The lines are way too blurry these days.

Maybe in your neighborhood, you, too, have thought, hmmm, it can't happen here.

Until it does. Switch off the news about the gang shootings in Chicago, or the punditizing about the Alabama section of Pennsylvania or the upcoming Appalachian spring back to a previous century, and it's still right here.

Here in the Red River Valley of the North the ugly head of bigotry and hate emerges, too. North Dakota not-so-nice at the University in Grand Forks these days. A Jewish student has lived in fear, subjected to a swastika painted in the stairs at his dorm, a pellet gun shooting at his dorm room door. A school administration too slow to respond, to investigate, to do anything until the glare of publicity forces their hand.

So, hate radio is merely "bombast" and political campaign tactics merely "this ain't beanbag" until each and every one of us must say, enough.

Enough of smear by association. Enough of the politics of fear and hatemongering. Enough of screed and slime in the name of furthering a personal agenda of power or privilege.

Because the more we let ourselves be divided against "them," whoever "them" may be, the weaker we all become.

The collapse, right here in the heartland, of a major bridge across arguably the most important river in America, the Mississippi, is omen of these times. Neglecting the ties that bind us, the power that is "We, the people..." invites collapse and ruin.

Together, we are stronger, we are, yes, our brother's keeper. We are the exemplar of living toward a more perfect union, not division, of states.

Too often, it's easy to forget the lessons of history, or give them short shrift. And then comes an episode that reminds us of one pastor's call*:

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The version inscribed at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. reads:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out -

because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out -

because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out -

because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.

New England Holocaust Memorial

The version inscribed at the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston, Massachusetts reads:

They came first for the Communists,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,

and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me,

and by that time no one was left to speak up.

* Martin Niemoller's poem, in various forms can be found at Wikipedia.

White Dreaming

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White should be a thing of beauty, like the late spring blizzard which has frosted trees and cabins and homes in heavy coats of white.

But white, as we have seen more and more of late, can be a thing to distort and corrupt and contaminate, too.

The Clintons play it while protestin’ too much, but we ain’t buyin’ it.

But it’s emerging elsewhere, too. North Carolina Republicans are using it to attack statewide candidates.

We have, we admit, very low expectations of standards of decency from Faux News during and after Chris Wallace interviews Barack Obama Sunday morning. Tell me again, is Chris’ daddy Mike? Or George Corley? Guess we’ll learn soon.

And then there’s the corpulent hillbilly heroin junkie, leading the refrain, “Dreamin’ of Riots in Denver….” Theme song of the White Citizens Council, "White Christmas" is, in his corrupted version.

They're all playin' from the same deck, just hidin' in different suits in the vast White Wing Conspiracy. Exactly what Obama's been sayin' about the same ol' same ol' we're being offered by two of the presidential candidates this year: More of the same or if you can't beat 'em become just like 'em.

But this isn't something to toy with and tell yourself you can fix it later. Not for Clinton, not for McCain. What does each of them tell their community, their children? What does each of them tell the person in the mirror?

White. It's the same ol' race card. Will it win again?

Only if we let it.