The political world is still going on and on about Barack Obama’s admission to high school students that he used alcohol and cocaine in his youth. This isn’t a new confession, but a detail of the presidential candidate’s life he wrote in a memoir published years ago. Smart idea. I’m sure Obama has been planning this run for sometime. Why not get a skeleton out of the closet earlier, so anyone announcing, it as if it is a newly revealed secret, looks like a fool?
I like it.
But that’s not what’s going on right now. Bill O’Reilly and those other wacks, who have an entire closet of real nasty secrets from lewd sex to abuse of prescription drugs, are all hot about Barack’s candor with the kids.
You see, we’re not supposed to share those things with kids. They can’t handle it. If they hear someone in a position of authority admit they’ve done drugs, then watch out, man, those kids are gonna go crazy in a Reefer Madness-meets-Russell Simmons kind of way.
Critics accuse Obama supporters of clinging to the phrase, “he’s only human,” in his defense. These same folks say Obama shouldn’t hide his cocaine use, but certainly not preach about it. “I used and I regret it.” Anything more from their POV doesn’t provide a good image for Leader of the Free World material.
I voted for Bill Clinton. (I’m rolling my eyes right now.) Don’t you remember when his marijuana use came up during discussion of Clinton’s Sixties Fun Fest? “I tried mar-gee-wana, but I never inhaaaled.” I listened, and like others who voted for him, I swallowed hard. I pretended those words were never recorded. But at home, at night, in the privacy of my voting heart, I thought, “Why couldn’t he just admit it.”
“Yea, I smoked like a chimney back then. We all did. Even little Hillary had a bong stashed in her closet. But we have a child now … we don’t do that no more. And, like, I’ve got to run Arkansas and stuff. You just can’t move forward in this work when you’re stoned.'”
This election season, I’m not going to care about Obama admitting he snorted a little. He told those kids he was wrestling with his identity back then. Now those who understand the demons caused by denying who we are or being put in a box that doesn’t fit: Understand a little blow could go a long way in making life seem content (or MJ, or lots and lots of beer – take your pick).
Ain’t that right, Bill? “Ohh, yea Mari,” Bill says, his finger pointing right at me, making me feel like I just asked about Monica. “But I never snorted any of that stuff back then.”
I’m tired of my World Leader jumping rope to the rhythm of the right. This is no longer a world where presidential candidates are placed on a pedestal. There are hardly any secrets left in this era. No one can pretend to be a Truman or a Kennedy anymore. They’re better off admitting they’re just like us… human.
This article appears in Dec 13-19, 2007.
They’ll use anything to attack politicians on the side they don’t like. Meanwhile, if Huckabee admitted to using drugs and a Dem slammed him on it, they’d rush to Huckabee’s defense. The whole things is politics-as-sports. It doesn’t matter what’s right, it’s who’s on your team and what tactics will win.
In fact, Repub polemicists have repeatedly shrugged off Bush’s alcoholism and cocaine use. The prevailing excuse is that Bush was going through tough times before he was “born again,” or that he was a wild young buck. Nobody wants to admit Bush was just a standard-issue partying slob. (Don’t bother bringing up Bush’s 1.5 years AWOL from his military service, it’ll only result in a denial based on Dan Rather’s unfortunate use of forged documents.)
The Neocons came up with the playbook long ago (though they aren’t the only ones to use it). They try out different attacks and watch to see how effective they are. Early on they tried getting people to associate Obama with Muslims and terrorists. Fox News even “accidentally” used a big headline misspelling his name as “Osama.” I put the word “accidentally” in quotes because they made the mistake repeatedly. (His middle name being Hussein only makes matters worse.)
Then they attacked Obama’s brief time spent in an elementary school in Indonesia, suggesting it was an extremist-Muslim school when it turned out to be a completely innocuous all-purpose, non-religious school.
Their tactics against Hillary are no less sleazy. About two weeks ago on Monday, Drudge’s headline was a purposely misleading link that suggested Hillary is in a lesbian relationship with her top aide. The actual link went to a story about various ways people are attempting to smear candidates, but Drudge wrote the headline in such a way that it made it sound like a real rumor that was flying around. Then I went to Wikipedia to look up info on Hillary’s aide (the name escapes me) and somebody had created a Wikipedia entry within the previous few hours that also referred to the “rumor” of Hillary’s lesbian affair with this woman. (When I looked at the page a few days later, it had been changed again, with the slanderous information removed.)
The anti-Democratic narratives go something like this:
— Barack Obama: Drug-user, Muslim, inexperienced
— Hillary Clinton: shrill, lesbian, insincere, cold, “bitchy” (pretty much anything that negatively refers to the fact that she is a woman, without saying so directly, will be used)
— John Edwards: prissy, lawyer, wealthy, “$400 haircut”
— Dennis Kucinich: saw a UFO! must be crazy!
Not sure what the smears are against the other candidates, but my guess is that there’s a playbook on them too in case they surge forward in the polls. But until then they’re not a threat.
Incidentally, I was disappointed to see the Tucson Weekly use the $400 haircut as a footnote joke in its first Project President article. It’s a right-wing talking point — when you repeat it, you play right into their hands. From what I understand, the $400 haircut wasn’t a habit and Edwards may not even have been aware of the cost. As long as we’re talkin’ haircuts, let’s talk about Laura Bush’s $700 haircuts, as well as whatever Dick Cheney spends to keep his devil’s horns filed down.
The fact that so many pundits are falling over themselves to criticize Obama’s drug use is, to me, a sign of desperation. They’re going to have an uphill climb if Obama becomes the front-runner candidate, because he can very easily beat any of the lot of GOP candidates. Hillary can win too, but the margin will be slimmer.
Now there’s “word on the street” that Hill’s campaign is in jeopardy because of her recently fired aide who made come comment about Barak’s drug usage.
Ugh, it drives one crazy. Let’s have the election today and get all this name-calling, second guessing and money spending done with.
I would argue that Clinton is cold and calculating. I wouldn’t call her a biotch, but I do think Clinton above all others has a stick up her bum and comes off as robotic. Worse than Edwards in phoniness.
To me, the “open personality” or genuine candidates are: Richardson, Obama, McCain, Ron Paul and especially the unexpected Mike Huckabee. Huckabee always kind of looks like he’s a bug-eyed deer in the headlights with the national exposure he’s getting.
From what I understand the aide who commented about Obama’s drug use was forwarding a link and was some small-time staffer in a regional office.
Whoops, looks like I was confusing the recent flap over Hillary Clinton’s aide (who made comments about Obama using drugs) with the flap from a few days ago about a staffer forwarding emails suggesting Obama was a Muslim.
In each case, Clinton fired the person responsible. Whatever strings she might be pulling behind the scenes, she’s sending the right message by firing these people.
Lots of interesting things going on in politics lately. The most interesting thing to watch of late has been the way various people are responding to the intelligence report on Iran. The #2 most interesting political thing to watch is the fallout from the CIA’s destruction of videos of them interrogating 2 of their detainees. The #3 most interesting thing to watch is the way people are handling the recent FISA wire-tapping legislation etc.
(1) Iran. It seems to me that the Neocon establishment and Israel really, really want to go to war with Iran. Some call this “doubling down the bet,” because Iraq didn’t work out how they wanted it to (they expected it to give them control of the region and its resources, and instead they lost control and influence). I think they’re figuring if they bomb Iran by some miracle the U.S. can become the world’s standard-bearer for oil prices (basing them on the dollar again instead of the euro) and somehow the insurgency esp. the Shiites will be more manageable. Or something. I am not really sure what they’re thinking at all, except that they want to go to war with Iran.
The intelligence community has issued a report saying Iran is not the nuclear threat people are saying they are. The fallout from this is hilarious — right-wing editorial writers, politicans and other Neocons are falling over themselves to say, “Iran’s still a threat, yo!” They sound remarkably desperate. I think the intelligence community purposely released this report not just because they think it’s true, but because they got hung out to dry last time with Iraq, made to take the fall for Bush’s policy decision.
In a remarkable case of Irony Gone Wild, Israel’s foreign minister made a statement to the effect that the U.S. intelligence assessment would likely lead to war. But saying Iran doesn’t have nukes is exactly the opposite of that. There is a tortured logic here where he’s saying if Western nations let their guard down they will be surprised when Iran suddenly has nukes. But the alternative, saying they do have nukes, will surely lead to war as well. So this is really just the political equivalent of a temper tantrum. (Keep in mind that Israel has somewhere in the realm of 300 nuclear warheads and has become for all practical purposes a proxy military force for the U.S., even though nobody in any high-ranking position will acknowledge this.)
Now Joe Lieberman is endorsing John McCain for president. This is happening concurrently with two major editorial pages endorsing McCain, and a media push to make this headline news. What this indicates is that nobody is confient that Giuliani, Romney or Huckabee can win (all three of them have major Achilles heels). It also probably means — since Lieberman is on board — that McCain has secretly agreed he will move forward with war with Iran if he becomes president. (Lieberman is 100% in bed with Israeli interests as you can see for yourself by viewing his voting record and hawkish stance on everything having to do with the Iraq war.) War With Iran is shaping up to be just like War With Iraq was: that is, a war that is on the books years before it happens. (The Israel-Lebanon war was on the books a good 6 months before it happened, with Israel inciting border conflict and waiting for an excuse for all-out attack. This was all rubber-stamped by the U.S. and many believe the war was considered a tactical practice run for an attack on Iran. It also had the bizarre side-effect of punishing a relatively progressive and Western-friendly country for moving forward with democratic reform.)
(2) The CIA destruction of interrogation videotapes. This one is a lot of fun to watch. A lot of this is going down now but who is watching? The U.S. is too busy shopping for Christmas and viewing college football and NFL games. But it is interesting to see the new Attorney General already completely rolling over and proving to be every bit the Bush-administration lap-dog shill that Alberto Gonzalez was. He’s been instrumental in violently blocking Congressional investigations. You’d think a Justice Department AG would want to find out what happened. Nope….just another massive coverup. Undoubtedly the videotapes that were destroyed were at an Abu Ghraib level of heinousness, or worse.
(3) The FISA stuff that’s happening says a lot about the ineffectiveness of the Democratically dominant Congress. Especially interesting is the behavior of Democrat Harry Reid. The theory now is that the right-wingers have some sort of blackmail material on Reid because he is suddenly working against the majority of Democrats in pushing forward on reform of the wiretapping legislation. It’s completely a slap in the face to all of his constituents as well, and nobody knows quite why he’s doing it. The only possible reason is that somebody made a deal with him or has serious dirt on him. But does the average U.S. person even know any of this is going on? Nope. The U.S. wiretapping is so widespread and so open to abuses it’s amazing. And the telecom industry is 100% tied into it. We really do live in an oligarchy. (Note: Harry Reid is not the only top-level Democrat congressman whose behavior is suspciously anti-Democratic. Dianne Feinstein is also nearly a Neocon in her war stance, and it’s no coincidence that her husband has many profitable defense-industry interests. She also sponsored a flag-burning amendment, among many other kicks in the nuts to her constituency.)
I mention all of the above because it is so much more interesting and important than the general horserace of the various candidates.