Boo Jim Webb!!

Since Jim Webb is being a jerk who only wants to sell books (his newest one is very good, by the way!), I think that leaves just a few:  Barry could pick Caroline Kennedy, which would be nice, but I don’t think she’d accept.  I like Joe Biden, but I have a feeling there are problems with him I haven’t thought of yet.  I think he should pick Tim Kaine.  Yes, he gave a terrible dem response to Bush’s STFU (or is it SOTU?), but in reality, he’s very very good at the politics thing.  Also, he has better complexion than Mark Warner — not that that’s saying much.

Evan Bayh would bore everyone to death, and Sam Nunn is a mean old coot who everyone should quit talking about.  I mean, really — Sam Nunn?

What do YOU think?  How about Barbara Mikulski?

Που βρισκόμαστε, παιδιά;

Bitter

The Rev. Wright Writes to the NYT

From the huffington post. I don’t know about “most Americans,” but I think the quality of Wright’s prose is by itself a good enough reason for Sen. Obama to have stayed at Trinity U.C.C. for twenty years — or forty years, or whatever.  Read it all; it’s beautiful:

March 11, 2007

Jodi Kantor
The New York Times
9 West 43rd Street
New York,
New York 10036-3959

Dear Jodi:

Thank you for engaging in one of the biggest misrepresentations of the truth I have ever seen in sixty-five years. You sat and shared with me for two hours. You told me you were doing a “Spiritual Biography” of Senator Barack Obama. For two hours, I shared with you how I thought he was the most principled individual in public service that I have ever met.

For two hours, I talked with you about how idealistic he was. For two hours I shared with you what a genuine human being he was. I told you how incredible he was as a man who was an African American in public service, and as a man who refused to announce his candidacy for President until Carol Moseley Braun indicated one way or the other whether or not she was going to run.

I told you what a dreamer he was. I told you how idealistic he was. We talked about how refreshing it would be for someone who knew about Islam to be in the Oval Office. Your own question to me was, Didn’t I think it would be incredible to have somebody in the Oval Office who not only knew about Muslims, but had living and breathing Muslims in his own family? I told you how important it would be to have a man who not only knew the difference between Shiites and Sunnis prior to 9/11/01 in the Oval Office, but also how important it would be to have a man who knew what Sufism was; a man who understood that there were different branches of Judaism; a man who knew the difference between Hasidic Jews, Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews and Reformed Jews; and a man who was a devout Christian, but who did not prejudge others because they believed something other than what he believed.

I talked about how rare it was to meet a man whose Christianity was not just “in word only.” I talked about Barack being a person who lived his faith and did not argue his faith. I talked about Barack as a person who did not draw doctrinal lines in the sand nor consign other people to hell if they did not believe what he believed.

Out of a two-hour conversation with you about Barack’s spiritual journey and my protesting to you that I had not shaped him nor formed him, that I had not mentored him or made him the man he was, even though I would love to take that credit, you did not print any of that. When I told you, using one of your own Jewish stories from the Hebrew Bible as to how God asked Moses, “What is that in your hand?,” that Barack was like that when I met him. Barack had it “in his hand.” Barack had in his grasp a uniqueness in terms of his spiritual development that one is hard put to find in the 21st century, and you did not print that.

As I was just starting to say a moment ago, Jodi, out of two hours of conversation I spent approximately five to seven minutes on Barack’s taking advice from one of his trusted campaign people and deeming it unwise to make me the media spotlight on the day of his announcing his candidacy for the Presidency and what do you print? You and your editor proceeded to present to the general public a snippet, a printed “sound byte” and a titillating and tantalizing article about his disinviting me to the Invocation on the day of his announcing his candidacy.

I have never been exposed to that kind of duplicitous behavior before, and I want to write you publicly to let you know that I do not approve of it and will not be party to any further smearing of the name, the reputation, the integrity or the character of perhaps this nation’s first (and maybe even only) honest candidate offering himself for public service as the person to occupy the Oval Office.

Your editor is a sensationalist. For you to even mention that makes me doubt your credibility, and I am looking forward to see how you are going to butcher what else I had to say concerning Senator Obama’s “Spiritual Biography.” Our Conference Minister, the Reverend Jane Fisler Hoffman, a white woman who belongs to a Black church that Hannity of “Hannity and Colmes” is trying to trash, set the record straight for you in terms of who I am and in terms of who we are as the church to which Barack has belonged for over twenty years.

The president of our denomination, the Reverend John Thomas, has offered to try to help you clarify in your confused head what Trinity Church is even though you spent the entire weekend with us setting me up to interview me for what turned out to be a smear of the Senator; and yet The New York Times continues to roll on making the truth what it wants to be the truth. I do not remember reading in your article that Barack had apologized for listening to that bad information and bad advice. Did I miss it? Or did your editor cut it out? Either way, you do not have to worry about hearing anything else from me for you to edit or “spin” because you are more interested in journalism than in truth.

Forgive me for having a momentary lapse. I forgot that The New York Times was leading the bandwagon in trumpeting why it is we should have gone into an illegal war. The New York Times became George Bush and the Republican Party’s national “blog.” The New York Times played a role in the outing of Valerie Plame. I do not know why I thought The New York Times had actually repented and was going to exhibit a different kind of behavior.

Maybe it was my faith in the Jewish Holy Day of Roshashana. Maybe it was my being caught up in the euphoria of the Season of Lent; but whatever it is or was, I was sadly mistaken. There is no repentance on the part of The New York Times. There is no integrity when it comes to The Times. You should do well with that paper, Jodi. You looked me straight in my face and told me a lie!

Sincerely and respectfully yours,

Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., Senior Pastor
Trinity United Church of Christ

Taftotita

When Obama supporters speak approvingly of the senator’s ability to “transcend” race — races? — I think I agree, although I’m not convinced that that’s the best choice of words to describe what it is I think they’re describing.

A while ago in the Athens News, in an essay about Greece’s ‘official’ minorities in western Thrace — and what they are and are not allowed to call themselves – Brady Kiesling wrote something almost perfect about multiple identities in theory vs. practice. Based on my own slightly more complicated experience I think he got it exactly right:

As the U.S. Embassy human rights officer, I was once dragged to the Foreign Ministry behind Ambassador Sotirhos to be scolded for the State Department’s annual human rights report. By criticizing official mistreatment of Muslims in Western Thrace and Slav speakers in Macedonia, we had implied that Turkish and Macedonian minorities existed in Greece. Staring at the floor I mumbled that neither the Greek state nor the U.S. State Department had any right to decide who existed and who didn’t.

As individual citizens we follow conscience and self-interest in asserting whichever of our multiple political and social identities is most appropriate in a given context. Waiting in line for a driver’s license in Houston, I was a tall Texan again after 46 years. Under other circumstances I identify myself as an American citizen, a Californian, a would-be archaeologist, a dissident diplomat, a lapsed Catholic, or a resident of Plaka. In peaceful times, these segmented loyalties are an advantage. The price I pay for them is that, should I need rescuing, no group will feel any obligation to invade the Plaka on my behalf.

This is why, I think, the idea of percentages and the use of hyphens are worse than useless for understanding this sort of thing. I could go on and on about this, but not now.

By the way, everyone should buy his book, which is a masterpiece. I typically read appx. two books per week, and that book was easily the finest thing I’d read on any topic in five years. As I’ve never met Mr. Kiesling, and have no connections to him, my enthusiastic endorsement is disinterested.

-max mason