Malignant Absurdity, Vol. I

Cropped image of The Scream by Edvard Munch, 1893.
Oil, tempera, and pastel on cardboard.

I usually scroll past comments that express outrageously sexist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, and general wingnuttia but maybe taking the temperature of BlogHell can heighten the awareness of the Malignant Absurdity™ that's eating away people's brains with divisiveness and hatred.

Something to ponder: are the authors below incurable wacky-doodle bigots or a vanguard of a concerted ratfucking effort? If you're unfamiliar with the term, ratfucking, a Wiki definition: "...an American slang term for political sabotage or dirty tricks. It was first brought to public attention by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their book All the President's Men. Read on for details.

IOW, are Republican operatives (who refined ratfucking into a dark art) spoofing Obama or Clinton supporters to alienate voter blocs from the candidates and Democrats in general?

WARNING--highly offensive snippets ahead.

Last night's stumbling-upon comments... Clinton-bashing, misogyny, racism, verbal violence, and Obama disinformation via a WashPo post on Clinton in Indiana at The Trail:

Clinton is st8 ridiculous. Everyone knows men and women are different. The rest of the world knows this. Muslims keep their women in check. It's time for real men in America to do the same. If your a real dude, keep your women in the kitchen. The 21st Amendment was the worse thing to happen to America. It's time to take this woman out. The politics of change is here, and we got a skirt - thanks to the liberal media - and elite white ppl who are on some messed up idealogoical sh**. Men and women are different; history does not lie, and the rest of world doesn't either. This is troubling times we're in, and we need the politics of change. Hillary get yourself back in the hot kitchen. Real dudes, keep your woman from voting (thats the only group she got along with racist white folk), and keep them and Hillary in the kitchen where they belong. Our time has come, move over. 1.

Posted by: Treyshaun1 | April 25, 2008 8:49 PM

Treyshaun1, my brother. Once again your words bring tears to my eyes. When I see your comments on various blogs, I know that there will hope and real black leaders in the future. I can only pray that my son will have half your strength. It is time for us to unite and take this woman out. We've come a long way, and we got this woman whose still stuck in la la land. Racism is alive and well in this country, and these white folk will get whats coming to them. Our time has come, hehe. Treyshaun, my brother, stay up. 1.

Posted by: Masai Hanley | April 25, 2008 8:53 PM

The next poster, JakeD, politely corrects the erroneous reference to the 21st Amendment, which repealed Prohibition--the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote--and he also noted, "this is the second time I've seen it (mistakenly) used against [Clinton]." Hmmm, curious, isn't it? Followed by another raving wacky doodle, further descent into depravity:

I used to work hard and I used to follow the American Dream and tried to pick myself up from the bootstraps and provide opportunities for my children that I didn't have. I kept quiet and worked hard. I was accountable for my own actions, and knew that I determined my destiny. I would rise and fall by my own merits. But I have learned something from black people.

I HATE WHITE PEOPLE. Saying this, believing this, and blaming my economic situation on white people will get white people's attention. This is the lesson I've learned from black people. It works. I think I will now proceed to rob white people, kill white people, rape white people, and blame all my problems on white people.

Hard work has gotten me nowhere. I thank black people and white people stupid enough to listen to them for showing me that the American Dream is dead and traditional American values are dead. We live in a new era, and I'm ready for the CHANGE.

KILL WHITEY, RAPE WHITEY, ROB WHITEY IS THE NEW WAY OF THE FUTURE.

Posted by: Mexican President | April 25, 2008 8:58 PM

JakeD - your one intelligent white man (sarcasm added). Thank you sir, for correcting my brethren. I bet it makes you happy when we tripped up on one detail. Treyshaun is right though, we have the politics of CHANGE. And we got a racist skirt whose stopping the change for her own selfish ambitions. And its white folk like you who like focus on ever misstatement or mistake that black males make. Why don't you focus on your own pathetic life and your own inadequacies, time's are changing, and your time is done. My boy Treshaun, 1.

Posted by: Masai Hanley | April 25, 2008 9:01 PM

Mexican President,
Are you serious? No one cares about your people or Asians. I'm tired of white folk talking about how successful Asians are, or why is it that some slant-eyed dude from the Orient can do well on SAT's, get into good schools, and get good jobs without affirmative action. Or why can't blacks work as hard as Mexicans. I'll tell u what boy, we ain't like u. We're not as stupid as Latinos and Asians to be toiling for the white man and trying to assimalate into his racist culture. We live in a government of white sponsored racism. If Latinos and Asians can't see that, thats they bad. CHANGE is coming, and we'll get u fools too. Our time has come. When your white master's time is done, who you gonna run to?

Posted by: Masai Hanley | April 25, 2008 9:06 PM

[...]

Hey Treyshaun and Masai, Obama has already planted the CHANGE in Kenya when he worked so hard to get Odinga elected. I don't think a lot of people know that Odinga is not only a communist Muslim whose first order of business was going to be to replace Kenya's democracy with Islamic law, but that he shares a vision with Gaddafi to see Africa become a Pan African/Islamic socialist nation. That's why besides Obama, Gaddafi also supported Odinga's campaign. Although Odinga didn't get to become president of Kenya, he was able to do a little ethnic cleansing of around 1000 Kenyans which secured him the title of prime minister. Anyway, now that he's Kenya's prime minister, any day now he'll attempt a coup like he's done in the past and kill the president of Kenya so he can take his place and finally impose Islamic law. I'm sure you'd both be much happier living in Kenya then in the United States. There you'd be able to fully appreciate and enjoy the CHANGE and even have a front row seat watching it happen. You can probably even join in on the ethnic cleansing festivities. May I suggest giving Farrakhan a call to help you out with the airfare.

Posted by: Ijane | April 25, 2008 9:34 PM

The spittle keeps flying if you dare to read the entire thread. After I scanned WashPo's Post a Comment policy at The Trail--"User reviews and comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site...."--methinks someone is falling down on the job. Aren't they? Or...? Wouldn't be the first time the Pravda on the Potomac acted as a tool for GOP propaganda.

Are the above quotes examples of Malignant Absurdity™ or ratfucking or both?

POSTSCRIPT: When Anglachel referenced the violent rape-and-murder hate speech aimed at Hillary Clinton in her commentary on Keith Olbermann, she wasn't kidding. It's far more disturbing to read it on SCLBs.

Power rift

Obama is standing on the "shoulders of giants." But does that qualify him to lead?

My friend Rev. Irene Monroe (bio) posted a column last week on Obama's absence at the 40th anniversary commemoration of MLK's assassination. Clinton and McCain attended. But where was Obama?

One of Obama's political advisors, Princeton University professor and author of Race Matters, Cornel West criticized Barry at HuffPo:

“I want to say that I’m deeply disappointed that my dear brother Barack Obama decided not to go pay tribute and lay his wreath for the great Martin Luther King, Jr. That brother Martin’s profound love and deep sacrifice for black people, America and humanity is in no way reducible to political calculations, even for the campaign for presidency. That Martin Luther King Jr.’s deep commitment to unarmed truth and unconditional love can in no way be subject to strategies for access to political power.”

Rev. Irene pondered:

Was this a public backhand slap from West signaling to the public, as well as to Obama, his concerns about Obama’s calculated ambitions to the White House?

Or, as many Obama supporters in the African American community are now speculating, is there both a personal and ideological rift between West and Obama?

Given West’s prominence and respect in the African American community nationwide, the Obama campaign knows if West breaks publicly from the campaign he’ll take a substantial portion of black voters away from Obama come November (if Obama wins the Democratic nomination).

Having won the majority of African American voters in the Tennessee primary, Obama may have felt he did not need to come back to the state to do face time.

But black talk show radios were abuzz with listeners calling in expressing their disappointment.

Tavis Smiley, one of America’s most celebrated and respected media personalities and author of the bestseller Covenant With Black America, called into the Tom Joyner Morning Show. Smiley asked listeners if Obama’s absence was another signal of Obama only courting the African American vote when it is political advantageous for him to do so.

When the State of the Black Union hosted in NOLA convened, an "event [that] gathers a 'Who’s Who' of black intellectuals, pundits, activists, entertainers and politicians to discuss and brainstorm where black America is and where it is headed," Barry was absent again. He offered his wife Michele as his surrogate, but Obama, too busy on the campaign trail to attend this most auspicious summit, caused African Americans to question if his ambitions were most important to Obama. Rev. Irene pointed to criticism from Darryl Fears:

As the first black person to have a legitimate shot at a presidential nomination, defeating Sen. Hillary Clinton's rich campaign juggernaut, Obama is virtually a third civil rights movement, the manifestation of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream. His candidacy has produced a fervor in black America born of centuries of wanting. Nearly every black vote that Clinton thought was hers at the beginning of the race has been siphoned by Obama.

Each of the presidential candidates were invited to speak [at the State of the Black Union], but only Sen. Hillary Clinton accepted. Clinton is desperate to bolster her flagging campaign with a larger share of the black vote after losing all but a small percent to Obama.

Rev. Irene concluded in her column:

And in Obama winning our votes, he must also hear and heed to the moral imperative and hurt expressed by West:

“I have a very deep disagreement with my dear brother, Barack Obama — in this case, commitment to truth is in tension with the quest for power.”

Otherwise, we must wonder, if Obama can diss King, what manner of man do we have here?

According to Emil Jones, Jr., Obama is a man who seeks pow-er. That's what the president of the Illinois Senate said Obama wanted of him in 2003.

"And [Obama] said to me. . .‘You’re the senate president now, and with that, you have a lot of pow-er.’ ” Jones stretched out the word, as if savoring the pleasure of it, and his voice became very quiet as he continued: “And I told Barack, ‘You think I got a lot of pow-er now?,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, you got a lot of pow-er.’ And I said, ‘What kind of pow-er do I have?’ He said, ‘You have the pow-er to make a United States sen-a-tor!’ ” Jones let out a soft, smoky laugh. “I said to Barack, I said, ‘That sounds good!’ I said, ‘I haven’t even thought of that.’ I said, ‘Do you have someone in mind you think I could make?,’ and he said, ‘Yeah. Me.’ ”

Jones let the words hang for a moment, and then went on. “The most interesting conversation. And so I said to him, ‘Let me think about this.’ ” Obama knew that Jones’s support could single-handedly freeze the discretion of other powerful politicians in the state, and put endorsements of possible rivals on ice. “We met a little later that day, and I said, ‘That sounds good. Let’s go for it.’ ”

The rest is history.

Seeking power isn't bad or wrong if one's intentions to use it once acquired hastens the good of everyone. Those who share power, serve it justly with '"unarmed truth and unconditional love." Think of great people of history who have done just that: Dr. King, JFK, Mother Teresa, Ghandi, Susan B. Anthony, and so forth.

I didn't personally like LBJ, but in the political arena, he exercised presidential power to push civil rights legislation responding to Dr. King's righteous appeals for justice, signed it into law, and did so at the detriment to his party. Truman exhibited his power when he ended racial segregation of the military by executive order at the expense of his party, a decision that initially precipitated the exodus of Dixiecrat segregationists to the GOP that eventually transformed the South into a Republican bastion. These were not perfect men. I vehemently disagreed with their use of military force. However, these examples were acts of sacrifice to answer the call of courage grasping the levers of power embodied in the Constitution that we are all created equal.

As Maya Angelou so beautifully explained, "Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency." And what is power without virtue?

Consider Obama's opposition to a revote in Michigan and Florida. Is this a positive applications of his pow-er? Or is he more interested in winning? Rewind Donnie McClurkin. Was his using his pow-er to denounce homophobia? Or was he pandering to homophobic voters? What manner of pow-er did he display to billionaires at a fundraiser in associating the Clinton Administration's job growth with Bush's abysmal record and in belittling small town folks by characterizing them as "bitter" and clingy?

Obama's silence against misogyny and sexism--attacking his opponent Hillary Clinton's emotions, and in so doing, those of women in general--tells me all I need to know about the nature of the pow-er he seeks.

Female politics in a superpower

Edgamacation via Redstar at NYCweboy:

And now for the morning lecture: Female representation in politics. 13 years ago I did a stint with the Electoral Reform Society in the UK, and have since retained a love for proportional representation voting systems and information about increasing the ranks of women in office. This asinine comment thread over at Ezra Klein (his commentary on the Clinton campaign really undermines the rest of his work these days), got me thinking that the 'sphere needed some edgamacating about the proportion of women in higher office, especially here in the U.S. compared to the rest of the world.

We'll begin with Echidne's guest lecture on quotas:

a second concept of equality is gaining increasing relevance and support: the notion of "equality of result". The argument is that real equal opportunity does not exist just because formal barriers are removed. Direct discrimination and a complex pattern of hidden barriers prevent women from getting their share of political influence. Quotas and other forms of positive measures are thus a means towards equality of result. The argument is based on the experience that equality as a goal cannot be reached by formal equal treatment as a means. If barriers exist, it is argued, compensatory measures must be introduced as a means to reach equality of result. From this perspective, quotas are not discrimination (against men), but compensation for structural barriers that women meet in the electoral process.

She quotes the head of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, a 100+ year old kick ass organization in Geneva that studies electoral systems and women's political representation, as saying that all the top countries for women's leadership have some sort of quota system. (I used to have a fabulous IPU map in my NYC apartment that color-coded women's representation around the globe. It was a big hit at parties.)

Currently, the U.S. is ranked 70th of about 140 countries. Women comprise 17% and 16% of elected officials in the House and Senate, respectively. Countries that are kicking our ass in electing women to higher office include Rwanda (#1; 49% in its lower chamber and 35% in the upper chamber), all the Scandinavian countries, a notable portion of African and European countries, and Iraq (26% in its lower chamber).

Anyone who tells me that I should be satisfied with the elections of Thatcher (Uk #59) or Bhutto (Pakistan #43) as historically significant - and thus electing Senator Hillary Clinton for President is historically irrelevant - might keep in mind that just because public housing in the U.S. is more secure housing than shantytowns in Kenya does not make relative inequality (and poverty) in the U.S. less critical. We have our own work to do at home on improving gender, ethno-racial and economic equity, particularly given the notion that we are the land of the free and the land of opportunity. Right now that's a pretty narrow political pipeline for the majority of our country's population to squeeze through. Perhaps we can invite some wonks and officials from Mozambique (#12) and Honduras (#38) to show us how to increase women's political leadership. (Hint: see the above link for proportional representation.)

That concludes this Friday's lecture on women in politics in the U.S. and abroad. Sen. Clinton on The Tonight Show last night had awesome harsh words for Bush's train wreck governance. Apparently, she's speaking for the masses, even if, because of her gender, she's unlikely to lead us into a brighter future, and more generally be denied full benefits for her service to our country.

Good times are not had by all.

My brain feels fuller but my heart is heavy at the state of our nation's backward lean against female politicians. America, a superman power.