The Mental Masturbator

Following Wright’s unapologetic press conference today, Obama had his own, and he strongly denounced Wright’s words. From Salon:

“I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday,” Obama told reporters about Rev. Jeremiah Wright. “The person that I saw yesterday was not the person that I had come to know over 20 years.” While he said he gave Wright “the benefit of the doubt” because “soundbites [of his sermons] created a caricature of him,” in Wright’s sneering Monday press club performance “he caricatured himself.”

“I gave him the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia, explaining that he has done enormous good in the church,” he said. “But when he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS; when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st century; when he equates the U.S. wartime efforts with terrorism – then there are no exuses. They offend me. They rightly offend all Americans. And they should be denounced, and that’s what I’m doing very clearly and unequivocally here today.”

“It is antithetical to my campaign. It is antithetical to what I’m about. It is not what I think America stands for,” he said.

Can we finally put this matter to rest? I like that Barack tried to avoid doing this as best he could, but after Wright’s unapologetic appearances this weekend and today, I don’t think he had a choice. This controversy just keeps cropping up, and hopefully, after today’s strong clear words denouncing these ridiculous statements (except for the US terrorizing people, that one I agree with, but I also completely understand why Obama must denounce it) it will finally go away. Obama said the remarks offend him, he said they’re antithetical to his campaign and himself, and he even said Wright was no longer the person he had known for the past 20 years. So please, America, stop talking about it. And please, Jeremiah Wright, shut up for the next 7 months. Thanks.

I’m sick of the way pollsters and news people talk about the electorate. They’re always talking about “the white vote” or “the black vote” or “the female vote” or “the whatever vote.” To me, it seems somewhat absurd and insulting. They look at how poor white people voted in Texas, for example, and then they look at how poor white people voted in PA and they say “politician A is losing the white vote.” My point? Maybe two people in two different states have different opinions even if they’re the same race! No, that couldn’t be it, because they’re poor and white, so they must all think the same. And also, their poorness and their whiteness are the only personal traits that inform their choices apparently.

It’s ridiculous, and it’s prejudiced. The news media, and politicians, view us purely based on whatever superficial group we’re apart of. I thought we were supposed to be judging people based on the content of their character, not on their demographic group. I’m not a statistician, or a sociologist, so I’ll ask: is there any evidence of a correlation between voting choices of demographic groups in one region and demographic groups in another? Sure you could say “Obama has been getting 90% of the black vote so there’s your proof right there.” But that’s too easy, and I think a little skewed. I can see how the first viable black candidate in a country founded on racism and slavery is very appealing to African Americans, and so this is a unique circumstance.

It just seems to me that referring to all white (or whatever) people as “the white vote”
is troublesome and probably misleading. There are so many factors that determine peoples’ decisions that to call it the white vote, as if someone’s whiteness was the only quality that mattered, seems morally and practically wrong to me. Perhaps it explains why these pundits can’t predict anything.

Doesn’t this method also have the problem of overlapping groups? If you’re talking about the white vote, and the educated vote, and the poor vote, and the urban vote, etc, there’s going to be a lot of people who fall into several of those categories. So maybe when Obama does something to appeal to “the white vote” that same action might alienate him from “the urban vote” but what if there’s a white urban person?! Did he gain that person’s vote or lose it? Gah! It’s so confusing! Though I guess they need fodder for their endless chatter, right? Poor news people, they have so much time to fill, we can’t expect them to also be accurate and not-racist.

When they talk about “the anything vote” it just rubs me the wrong way. And it also seems like it’s probably the wrong way to analyze the situation. And it also defines people based solely on their race, sex, or class. I thought we were supposed to be passed that in this country.

BTW: I’m a young educated white male who lives in an urban area. The young, male, educated, and urban parts of me want to vote for Obama, but the white part of me wants to vote for McCain. No part of me wants to vote for Hillary (not even the part that used to intern for her). In the end Obama got my vote. After all, 4/5 of me wanted to vote for him.

On this PA-primary-eve-day one might consider writing a scathing post about team Hillary’s latest bs, but that’s been done to death. What I’d rather do is issue a desperate plea to the people of PA to please, please end this horrible primary. There is only one way that you can end it, by giving the win to Obama. See the thing is, Obama already won sometime back in February, and Hillary’s been in denial ever since. Don’t believe me? Than how come every big contest has been do or die for Hillary? If you’re winning like Barack, you can afford to lose a big contest, but if you’re losing like Hillary, one big loss is the final nail in the coffin. So please Pennsylvenians, vote for Obama. At this point a vote for Hillary is a vote to help McCain. I wont go so far as to say it’s a vote for McCain as that would be excessive, but it is definitely a vote to keep this slugfest going, and every day it does is a gift to the McCain campaign.

I hate to break it to you but she really can’t win. So please, vote for the Democrats to finally have a candidate. If you make the right choice, we can have one tomorrow. And then we can finally start going after our real opponent John McCain. He is formidable and we can’t keep wasting our time.

As always there are spoilers for the episode in this review, don’t read if you haven’t seen it

That episode was pretty crazy.  Let’s see, in the search for Earth, I didn’t realize there would be so many military people on that ship, like Gaeta?, but I guess it makes sense.  Starbuck is talking a lot of crazy talk, like she feels removed from her body, strange.  It also seems as if a coup is brewing on that ship.  Could be trouble.

As for the Cylons, I’m not clear on if the Cavil’s managed to kill the rogue Sixes or not.  If he did did I guess that means the civil war is over, just like that?  If so that’s really lame.  But it can’t be because I’m pretty sure that was an unboxed Diana at the end (it wasn’t Cally was it?).  Even if that was Cally, I know Lucy Lawless is coming back so the Sixes can’t be dead, unless Cavil unboxes her anyway for some reason.

I think Tory is becoming a much more interesting character.  I mean, that could just be because she never did much before and now she has lines all the time, but I find that she’s embracing her Cyloninity more and more.  And, of course, she killed Cally!  Makes sense I guess, they can’t risk getting found out, but it shows just how much Tory is embracing her Cylon side.  Also, seems like she might have a thing for the Chief which may have something to do with it as well.  It’s also interesting that she saved the child.  In fact, that whole encounter seems purely like an attempt to save the child, otherwise she could have just let Cally end it.  Those hybrid babies are clearly one of the top priorities of the final five, even if they don’t consciously know it.

Now that Cally is gone I bet the Chief is gonna get a whole lot crazier.  I think his relationship with her was keeping him grounded.  I bet you a million dollars his head is shaved next episode.  Killing her does feel a little easy, it would have been more complicated to keep her around but I guess they want to remind us that these people are  Cylons and naturally the people close to them are in danger.  If you think about it, there was a good chance of something like this happening.  None of the other three have family, and that’s good because it’s hard to build a healthy relationship on a lie.  And not just a lie, but a huge lie.

Let’s entertain for five seconds that Cally is the fifth.  This would be bad because the Chief’s baby isn’t a hybrid in this case. On the other hand, it would be interesting because it would mean two Cylons procreated which, as far as we know, has never happened before.  It would also fit in nicely with D’ana’s apology last season because she could have been apologizing to her for trying to execute her on New Caprica.  Also it would be good because they would be dealing with her and not just killing her off to make their jobs easier.  Ultimately though, she’s probably not.  I think it’s more significant that the baby is a hybrid.

Can’t wait till next week!

What was with that debate last night? I thought CNN was bad, but wow ABC takes the cake for most terrible news network (Fox isn’t a news network). Or at least worst debate moderation ever. Right off the bat they asked Obama about the bitter remark. After beating that one into the ground for ten minutes, they brought up Rev. Wright. Aren’t we past that one already? But ABC had a new take on it: “do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”[nyt] What, the fuck, is that? That’s not really an answerable question. How does George Stephanopoilous even pretend he’s a journalist? Other “important” issues ABC raised:

• Why doesn’t Obama wear a flag pin?
• Is he friends with William Ayers of the Weather Underground?
• Why they want to raise taxes when clearly that hurts everything

They were really adamant that raising the capital gains tax is clearly bad for the country. I didn’t think the news was supposed to take that kind of partisan position. And what do a bunch of out of work factory workers in PA care about the capital gains tax anyway?

In the second half there were more policy questions, but I found they were often given in an antagonistic tone. Overall I’d say it was 60/40 worthless-gossip questions to real policy questions. Terrible ratio, more than half that debate was worthless and stupid. The candidates should stick to holding their own rallies and q&a sessions. Or what if prominent Democrats moderated the Democratic debate? They would probably be less dickish to their colleagues. I’d like to close this with something Obama said in the debate:

What the American people want are not distractions. They want to figure out, how are we actually going to deliver on health care; how are we going to deliver better jobs for people; how are we going to improve their incomes; how are we going to send them to college?[nyt]

According to a (unscientific) History News Network poll, 98.2% of historians questioned think the Bush presidency has been a failure. 1.8% think it was a success. It’s not too surprising, this just means the historians are doing their job. This has been a sad week for Mr Bush, first the Pope snubs him and now this. As for the 2% who think he’s a success, well, they must be out of their minds.