I was going to write about something else this morning but then I made the mistake of reading the comments on a post by Tasha Fierce, on feministe. I am not actually going to link to the comment because the comment itself has little or no relation to Tasha’s post – about the “coming race war” rhetoric, which I want to write about later, and will link then – and I don’t want to derail the conversation because of an automatic trackback. Also, I am just using him as an example – this sort of language is all over the primarily White “progressive” blogosphere.

Anyway, the commenter says:

Obama hasn’t been a great president; he’s been disappointing in a lot of ways and indistinguishable from Bush on some very important issues. We still detain people without trial, we still torture, we’re still neck deep in two expensive wars with fuzzy mission parameters and increasing irrelevance, the economy is still weak, his handling of the BP situation was laughable, he’s broken every major campaign promise he made with regards to transparency and accountability, he promised health care reform and instead delivered watered down regulation and a huge corporate welfare system.

These are mostly legitimate, though arguable, points. Many people have  been disappointed with various actions (or inactions) of the Obama administration and that is only natural. I am possibly less disappointed than some because I was not so expectant – it was obvious from the beginning that, for all his soaring rhetoric, Obama was not, and likely will never be, some sort of radical leftist firebrand. I decided that I could live with a moderately left pragmatist as president because it was highly unlikely that we could elect anything but, at the moment, and that was that.

But anyway, more of the comment - he says something about how a reasoned challenge could be politically disastrous for Obama (I guess he means a challenge from reasonable Republicans? Not sure they exist, but that’s neither here nor there), and then writes:

Unfortunately, people like Beck, Brietbart, the Tea Party, and Palin manage to make even as poor a president as Obama look…well…really desirable. On the left you have a subpar president on the right you have a conversation that sounds like its moderated by David Duke and Charles Manson.

A subpar president. I wanted to make sure I understood that term so I looked it up – “Not measuring up to traditional standards of performance, value, or production.” So.

Of  course my mind winged its way back over the presidents we’ve had in just my lifetime (I was born in 1958) and I did a very quick comparison with Obama. The first president I was aware of was Kennedy, only because he was assassinated I think (I was four,) but then there was Johnson (“Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”); Nixon – who, you see, was not a crook; Ford… well, you know the list. Land wars, covert wars, CIA scandals, funding anti-Communist groups, supporting vile governments, etc., etc.

Even given that all the commenters complaints were true in and of themselves, with no nuance, would that not make Obama at least on par with the “traditional standards of performance, value, or production” of past presidents? Why is his malfeasance, if that is what one believes it is, below the standard? Or why are his accomplishments, some historic by many measures if not by the measure of their adherence to an all-or-nothing political view, thought to not measure up to the standards of production or value or performance of past presidents who also may have compromised to get what they wanted – or were unable to get even a half of a loaf at all?

I came across another feminist site a couple of weeks ago, following a link from feministe. The blogger wrote a post about Obama and government, her disappointment with Obama and all that… but the first few paragraphs of the post are about South Africa, the disappointment that the ANC turned out to be, so on and so forth, and she uses this as a segue into her issues with Obama. I left a comment something to the effect that there was little difference between the set up of the blog post and the people carrying signs with Obama as a witch doctor. My comment remained unpublished, but the point still stands.

Words matter. Dog whistles matter. And make no mistake, these ARE dog whistles. Conscious and deliberate? I don’t know. Attacking minorities, including women, on what are their perceived (by mainstream or White society) weaknesses or stereotypes is so embedded in our culture that we often just do it instinctively. When you want to attack a Black person you imply (or state right out) that they are below the standard, not capable of governing or leading, easily led, weak (primarily targeted toward Black men), and all the rest. Just like you attack a woman by implying she is hysterical or weak (except that non-white woman are attacked as being strong, but in the wrong way) and all the other nonsense. It doesn’t really matter if it is deliberate, because if an unintentionally sent dog whistle reaches an even unintentionally receptive ear, the result is the same regardless of intent.

Should it be let go because it is happening on the left instead  of - or in addition to - the right? I don’t think so. I am a pessimistic optimist, so I fully believe that not too long from now (as the arc of history goes, that is) we’ll have a woman president. A gay or lesbian president. Any one of the other non-white, non-male, non-gender normative, non-Christian categories of U.S. Americans will be striding in to “Hail to the Chief” one day. Perhaps we should use this time of the “first” to practice how to react to someone “different” even when we disagree or dislike them intensely, in a ways that do not perpetuate stereotypes, do not replicate right-wing tropes, or the inequities of the past.

But, ANYWAY, here is the list! 

Issued an Executive Order on the Stewardship of the Ocean, Our Coasts, and the Great Lakes. 

Signed the The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009, creating the strongest consumer protections in our country’s history.

Signed the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act (pdf) as a part of his Accountable Government Initiative, saving us tens of billions of dollars in erroneous payments.

Ushered the Tribal Law and Order Act through Congress.Finally got the Senate to extend unemployment insurance.

Nominated marshals and judges and ambassadors (all career Senior Foreign Service members, by the way).

Expanded the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Target for Federal Operations.

In conjunction with this announcement today, Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Hilda L. Solis, Secretary of Labor, Martha Johnson, Administrator of the General Services Administration, and Ronald Sims, Deputy Secretary of the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development convened a Clean Energy Economy Forum on Federal leadership in High Performance Sustainable Building.

Saw the Senate Judiciary Committee approve Elena Kagan’s nomination and send it the floor. 

And hosted UK Prime Minister David Cameron.  

Anyway, though…

Apparently when others were piling on Shirley Sherrod yesterday, or running away from her, Lizardoids and Johnson consistently stood up for her, without even knowing what the rest of the story was. They just knew Breitbart and his tactics and what a liar he is (my addition) and figured there WAS a rest of the story.

Cole seems to think they were just about the only ones, but I am not sure about that – I didn’t hear about any of this until this morning, so most of the (non-right wing) reactions I’ve found are to the proven Breitbart lies.

One thing I didn’t know, brought out by one of LGF’s commenters, teh mantis, last night:

The whole story is BS. Brietbart has conveniently edited out the context of this story, but he forgot one crucial detail. Notice where she says that the story took place just after Chapter 12 bankruptcy was established for family farms? Andrew really should have edited that out. You know why? Chapter 12 was so established in 1986. What was Shirley Sherrod doing in 1986? She was running the New Communities black farm coop in Georgia. She was not employed by the government in any way. Some white farmer called a black coop looking for help. She helped him, but not as much as she “could” if, you know, he were a black farmer and thus would have some interest in the coop. They also gave farmers help restructuring their loans and whatnot, so she referred him to a lawyer who could help him, despite his condescending attitude.

I should also note that the her coop and the associate RDLN recently won a $1 billion+ settlement for black farmers after they were systematically denied loans provided to white farmers in the early eighties, complements of Ronnie Reagan (Pigford v. Glickman). But we all know it was those black farmers banding together in their cooperative farming blackness that are the real racists.

I don’t know why this story hit me so badly. I guess because this woman could be any one of the older Black women I know, have known - the ones who have toiled for years, taken all the spit, all the insults, all the sexism, all the racism, all the people refusing to stand by them, all the comments about being “welfare queens”, or “lazy” or having 10 kids, and all the suspicious glances when *anything* at all goes wrong, and working daily with the knowledge that should something major go wrong, it’s likely you’ll be the first gone, last rehired  – and to get through all of that to a place where you are looked up to, where you are doing good, where are where you deserve to be because you paid your dues - only to have some lying cretin with a history of targeting relatively powerless Black folks swoop down and blithely pull everything you’ve worked for away from you in the effort to get that guy, over there…

Shame. Shame on Breitbart, his supporters, the dissiminators of this nonsense, limp pickle Vilsack and the Obama admin, too, if they don’t restore this woman’s life.

The full video and transcript, at TPM

Lately I’ve been remembering a short story I read a few years ago in one of those little Ellery Queen or Alfred Hitchcock magazines. I think it was by Bill Pronzoni. It went something like this:

A series of letters between a woman and her husband, who was in prison for stealing a large amount of money or something – which had never been found. The prison authorities read every incoming and outgoing letter.

In one exchange the woman mentions how she is having trouble getting someone to plow the fields so that she could plant whatever for the next harvest, because she has no money. Husband writes back, telling her to look on the south field, where she will find something to help her out.

Well, of course in the next letter she says that she was unable to do that as the authorities had been out there since dawn, digging up the entire field and if anything was there to be found they would have found it, because they’d turned over every inch of ground. And he writes back two words: Now plant.

I thought that was just a great, funny end to the story. By hook or by crook someone’s plowed the field and prepared the ground, even if they didn’t know they were doing it. Now plant.

Those words run through my mind lately whenever I see/hear someone crying out “Where’s my hope? Where’s my change? Where are my rainbows and ponies I was promised? I’m going home!”. Thus removing their shallow roots from the field.

Or when, as I’ve seen in a couple of places recently, someone says “Where did the Movement go? I’ve been sitting here waiting for it to continue, I was on such a high after the election but now I am tired of waiting. I’m disappointed and giving up”. Some cannot grab hold of the trellis to grow upward.

Or “I haven’t gotten everything I wanted when I wanted it or in the form I wanted it, so I hate you and I’m done!”. Bindweed is a killer, I understand.

I don’t begrudge anyone their feelings or their disappointments – but movements are not formed on the mountaintops, or in continuous sunshine, or on pathways strewn with roses.

They grow up out of the sometimes very dark valleys, the paths strewn with sharp rocks and slippery pebbles. Like pearls they come from an irritant, and in all shapes, colors and sizes – sometimes smooth and round and perfect; other times lumpy and haphazard but still containing its own beauty.

That’s because Movement, change, hope, progress… is never about a single person and never a result of a single person’s efforts, nor should it be based on a single person’s personality or abilities.

Effective, long-term, continuous, sustainable change comes when many make one, when batons are picked up by one person (or a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand) then passed to the next to take it as far as they can go.

Hope is not a panacea, a destination, a resting place. It’s a journey – often through the dark with no torch or GPS, through the smelly alleys and bug infested dwellings; through the swelled bellies and dead eyes; through the lost homes and vanished jobs; through the injustices and descriminations; through the trials and tribulations, hope is the belief you’ll make out the other side.

Hope is what keeps you working to make that happen.

So, no, I don’t begrudge anyone their feelings or disappointment. I do, however, gaze at those packing up and going home with something less than sorrow.

I’ve never been interested in politicians and political shenanigans, but when I look at the cleared plot marked “hope and change”, at those still standing holding their seeds, at those who look around at a field that may not be pretty and perfect, may be full of rocks and hazards and that needs a lot of work still – and see those who have figured out “Hey! WE are the ones we’ve been waiting for”, I smile and think -

NOW plant.

This did two things… allowed President Obama to build up a record beyond that of being a great orator and “the first Black president”. And gave me an excuse to almost completely disengage from the constant political horseraces and eternal campaigning that is US politics.

This was a good thing, I think. If the world had fallen apart in the interim I would have found out about it on the evening news, along with everyone else. Assuming they reported it, that is.

Still, I’ve been slowly getting into reading poliblogs again in preparation and paying a bit more attention to happenings. A pretty mixed bag, most of the opinions, which is only to be expected.

I have some thoughts, which I will get more into once I get my computer (hopefully in a week or so) and can type easily and do links and such.