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Take Down the Confederate Flag at South Carolina's Capitol - Now |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=27654"><span class="small">Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic</span></a>
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Friday, 19 June 2015 08:48 |
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Coates writes: "The flag that Dylann Roof embraced, which many South Carolinians embrace, endorses the violence he committed."
South Carolina's Capitol Building with Confederate flag in front. (photo: Jason Eppink)
Take Down the Confederate Flag at South Carolina's Capitol - Now
By Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic
19 June 15
The flag that Dylann Roof embraced, which many South Carolinians embrace, endorses the violence he committed.
 ast night, Dylann Roof walked into a Charleston church, sat for an hour, and then killed nine people. Roof’s crime cannot be divorced from the ideology of white supremacy which long animated his state nor from its potent symbol—the Confederate flag. Visitors to Charleston have long been treated to South Carolina’s attempt to clean its history and depict its secession as something other than a war to guarantee the enslavement of the majority of its residents. This notion is belied by any serious interrogation of the Civil War and the primary documents of its instigators. Yet the Confederate battle flag—the flag of Dylann Roof—still flies on the Capitol grounds in Columbia.
The Confederate flag’s defenders often claim it represents “heritage not hate.” I agree—the heritage of White Supremacy was not so much birthed by hate as by the impulse toward plunder. Dylann Roof plundered nine different bodies last night, plundered nine different families of an original member, plundered nine different communities of a singular member. An entire people are poorer for his action. The flag that Roof embraced, which many South Carolinians embrace, does not stand in opposition to this act—it endorses it. That the Confederate flag is the symbol of of white supremacists is evidenced by the very words of those who birthed it:
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth...
This moral truth—“that the negro is not equal to the white man”—is exactly what animated Dylann Roof. More than any individual actor, in recent history, Roof honored his flag in exactly the manner it always demanded—with human sacrifice.
Surely the flag’s defenders will proffer other, muddier, interpretations which allow them the luxury of looking away. In this way they honor their ancestors. Cowardice, too, is heritage. When white supremacist John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago, Booth’s fellow travelers did all they could to disassociate themselves. “Our disgust for the dastardly wretch can scarcely be uttered,” fumed a former governor of South Carolina, the state where secession began. Robert E. Lee’s armies took special care to enslave free blacks during their Northern campaign. But Lee claimed the assassination of the Great Emancipator was “deplorable.” Jefferson Davis believed that “it could not be regarded otherwise than as a great misfortune to the South,” and angrily denied rumors that he had greeted the news with exultation.
Villain though he was, Booth was a man who understood the logical conclusion of Confederate rhetoric:
"TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN":
Right or wrong. God judge me, not man. For be my motive good or bad, of one thing I am sure, the lasting condemnation of the North.
I love peace more than life. Have loved the Union beyond expression. For four years have I waited, hoped and prayed for the dark clouds to break, and for a restoration of our former sunshine. To wait longer would be a crime. All hope for peace is dead. My prayers have proved as idle as my hopes. God's will be done. I go to see and share the bitter end….
I have ever held the South were right. The very nomination of ABRAHAM LINCOLN, four years ago, spoke plainly, war—war upon Southern rights and institutions….
This country was formed for the white, not for the black man. And looking upon African Slavery from the same stand-point held by the noble framers of our constitution. I for one, have ever considered if one of the greatest blessings (both for themselves and us,) that God has ever bestowed upon a favored nation. Witness heretofore our wealth and power; witness their elevation and enlightenment above their race elsewhere. I have lived among it most of my life, and have seen less harsh treatment from master to man than I have beheld in the North from father to son. Yet, Heaven knows, no one would be willing to do more for the negro race than I, could I but see a way to still better their condition.
By 1865, the Civil War had morphed into a war against slavery—the “cornerstone” of Confederate society. Booth absorbed his lesson too well. He did not violate some implicit rule of Confederate chivalry or politesse. He accurately interpreted the cause of Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, men who were too weak to truthfully address that cause’s natural end.
Moral cowardice requires choice and action. It demands that its adherents repeatedly look away, that they favor the fanciful over the plain, myth over history, the dream over the real. Here is another choice.
Take down the flag. Take it down now.
Put it in a museum. Inscribe beneath it the years 1861-2015. Move forward. Abandon this charlatanism. Drive out this cult of death and chains. Save your lovely souls. Move forward. Do it now.
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Jeb Bush's Candidacy Is Like a Hollywood Sequel No One Wants to See |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=6853"><span class="small">Frank Rich, New York Magazine</span></a>
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Thursday, 18 June 2015 13:46 |
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Rich writes: "No one in America remembers anything, but surely our national amnesia doesn't extend to Jeb's lineage no matter how much he tries to bury it."
Presidential hopeful Jeb Bush. (photo: Johnny Louis/FilmMagic)
Jeb Bush's Candidacy Is Like a Hollywood Sequel No One Wants to See
By Frank Rich, New York Magazine
18 June 15
 ost weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week, the magazine asked him about a slew of presidential hopefuls: Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, and, yes, even Donald Trump.
Jeb Bush officially entered the presidential race running both for president and away from his family. His campaign logo includes his first name only, and Bush 41 and 43 were both absent at his launch. How much will the memory of his brother's administration, and the threat of a GOP family dynasty, weigh down his run?
No one in America remembers anything, but surely our national amnesia doesn't extend to Jeb's lineage no matter how much he tries to bury it. Not to mention that the exclamation point in the Jeb! logo makes one feel that the whole enterprise is as contrived as a musical comedy. (Not for nothing did George H.W. Bush's brother, Jonathan, have a brief career as a song-and-dance man, including a turn as Will Parker in a New York revival of Oklahoma! in the 1950s.) In any case, the real problem with being a Bush in this race may have less to do with his brother's lingering taint than with the fact that Jeb is facing down a Clinton. The most basic Republican argument against Hillary is that America doesn't want a retread. Jeb is the only candidate in the vast GOP field who cannot make that case.
But Jeb has other problems, too, as many have noted in recent weeks. The more voters see of him, the less they like him, according to the polls. His campaign has been engulfed in internal turmoil. He has raised oodles of money but he seems to incite passion in no one — unless it's a negative passion in his own party's base, which loathes his proselytizing for Common Core educational standards and immigration reform. And there doesn't seem to be much passion in Jeb himself, for that matter. Even at his announcement rally, he seemed a less-than-happy warrior. His addled demeanor doesn't make voters feel good about themselves or their country — a requisite, one would think, in the party of Reagan.
The Bush candidacy seems like an artificial conceit, a summer franchise sequel that, unlike Jurassic World, has outworn its welcome in the marketplace. It's not clear what the rationale for it is. The tea partiers disdain Bush. The Times surveyed 120 former officials from his brother's administration and found that only 25 supported him. The biggest arguments in favor of his candidacy seem to be that his mastery of Spanish will win over Hispanic voters and that his adult-in-the-room tone will wear better than the hot-headed shrillness of many of his opponents. But Marco Rubio comes by his Spanish naturally, and Hillary is an adult-in-the-room too. Perhaps, as the perennial theory goes, the Republican base will in the end rally around the Establishment candidate, as it finally surrendered (kicking and screaming all the way) to Mitt Romney. And perhaps for Jeb that is rationale enough. He seems to be running for no better reason than that he can.
In her opening moves as a candidate, Hillary Clinton's rhetoric indicates she's intent on distancing herself from President Obama yet she focuses on issues right out of his 2008 playbook. Is it fair to say that the party has moved to the left under Obama?
No. What the party has done is move to the left of where it was during Clinton's husband's presidency — for a myriad of reasons, including demographic change, the twin debacles of the Iraq War and the Great Recession, and the steady rightward drift of the opposition party. This is what Clinton failed to grasp when she lost to Obama in 2008, when she tripped over as Iraq much as Jeb Bush has been doing in this cycle. Whatever the sleights-of-hand of her current rhetoric, she can't afford to distance herself from Obama if she wants to motivate African-American and young voters to turn out for her in 2016 as they did for him in the last two presidential elections, and I don't think she is distancing herself from him in any meaningful way.
Substantively, she is talking the talk of Obama and even Elizabeth Warren in her eagerness to rouse the base. That said, her leftward drift seems completely phony to me; her broadside against CEOs, hedge-fund managers, billionaires, and corporations in last weekend's address didn't pass the laugh test when set against the steady tide of revelations of Clinton Foundation financial doings. Her leftward tilt is mostly pandering, in the same vein as "The Official Hillary 2016 Playlist" her campaign released on Spotify. Its seemingly focus-grouped hodgepodge of contemporary pop contained not a single song associated with her own generation, whether Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Motown, Springsteen, or even Judy Collins, whose "Chelsea Morning" is a Clinton family touchstone. But none of this is going to prevent her from gliding to the nomination, even if there are temporary embarrassments (e.g., a Bernie Sanders surge in the early primaries) along the way. Unless, as Amy Davidson wrote in an enticing post at The New Yorker's website this week, Joe Biden is somehow tempted to emerge from mourning and step up to the plate.
Donald Trump also jumped into the presidential race this week, though he seems to be the only candidate whose chances are openly dismissed by the press. Does his announcement change anything for the GOP front-runners?
If nothing else, Trump is proof, at least as far as the political press is concerned, that there is a God. Describing his antics can make any reporter instantly seem like Hunter Thompson, and his free-wheeling announcement show at Trump Tower was no exception. It produced lots of good copy, though it's possible no writer can match Trump's own verbiage. You are missing something if you don't read the full text of his speech. One choice passage, in reference to Mexicans who come to America: "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." Really, who can make this stuff up?
As Trump prepared to jump into the race, there were two starkly different views of his candidacy. FiveThirtyEight used polls and charts to make the case that he was the "most hated" contender since 1980, which it ran under the headline "Why Donald Trump Isn't a Real Candidate, In One Chart." The Wall Street Journal, by contrast, offered "Why Donald Trump Is Important, in One Chart." What that chart showed is that Trump polls in the top ten of the GOP field. That means he will qualify for the Fox News debates even when arguably more legitimate candidates (Fiorina, Kasich) will not.
I think the Journal has it right. Trump will say or do anything. He makes Herman Cain sound like Eisenhower. When Trump starts calling Mexican immigrants rapists on the debate stage — to take only one of many conceivable stink bombs he's capable of tossing — what will his fellow debaters do? His behavior in the arena is going to challenge and test the Republican presidential hopefuls more than any debate moderators ever could. While some argue that a Trump run is a blessing in disguise that will make the other candidates look better, Republican gatekeepers like Jennifer Rubin and Charles Krauthammer are already apoplectic about the havoc he can wreak.
We should also note NBC's response to Trump's candidacy: "We will re-evaluate Trump's role as host of Celebrity Apprentice should it become necessary, as we are committed to this franchise," Rebecca Marks, NBC's executive vice-president of publicity, told Talking Points Memo. Could this be the soft landing for Brian Williams?
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Why a Younger Hillary Clinton May Never Have Had a Chance |
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Thursday, 18 June 2015 13:35 |
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Angyal writes: "Clinton is living proof of how sexism and ageism interact: when it comes to leadership positions, women always seem to be held to a higher standard than men, and by the time they've accumulated the experience to meet that standard, they're old enough to be hit with age discrimination."
US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa. (photo: Jim Young/Reuters)
Why a Younger Hillary Clinton May Never Have Had a Chance
By Chloe Angyal, Reuters
18 June 15
 ne of the biggest applause lines in Hillary Clinton's kick-off speech last weekend contained both a self-deprecating remark about her age, and a big jab at sexism. "I may not be the youngest candidate in this race," Clinton said, "but I will be the youngest woman president." The crowd went wild.
Though my 66-year-old father won't be thrilled to hear me say it, 67 is not young. Hillary Clinton is not young. She wouldn't be the oldest commander in chief to serve, but there's no point pretending that she'd be a young president. Instead, let's talk about why it is that she'd get to the Oval Office this late in the game.
Simply put, Clinton is living proof of how sexism and ageism interact: when it comes to leadership positions, women always seem to be held to a higher standard than men, and by the time they've accumulated the experience to meet that standard, they're old enough to be hit with age discrimination. That Clinton is running at 67 is one high-profile example of how long it seems to take women to amass the experience necessary for people — whether it's voters or employers — to overlook the fact that they're women. We know this about ourselves: in January, a Pew survey found that 65 percent of people recognize that, in business, women are held to a higher standard than men.
Clinton is far and away the most qualified person to enter the race so far. Between her legal and advocacy experience; her time in the White House as the most politically active first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt; her time as a senator; and her service as Secretary of State, she has amassed more relevant experience and knowledge than a number of the current Republican candidates combined. Detractors can reasonably question her judgment, her trustworthiness, her husband and her emails, but her qualifications are indisputable. Her resume is undeniably presidential.
None of which protects her from being subjected to what Catalyst, a research and advocacy group focused on normalizing gender and race representation in corporate leadership, calls the High Competence Threshold. "Women leaders face higher standards and lower rewards than male leaders," Catalyst found in its 2007 study The Double Bind Dilemma for Women in Leadership. "On top of doing their job, women must prove that they can lead over and over again," the study found.
Proving over and over again that you can lead takes time, as does accumulating enough experience to overcome the High Competence Threshold. In other words, overcoming one's woman-ness in a male-dominated world and in male-dominated professions takes time. For Clinton, it has taken until she's 67. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act protects workers over the age of 40, meaning that Clinton is well past the age where age discrimination begins to occur.
Of course, the presidential field is not your average workforce, and the Constitution limits the top job to people 35 and over. But they don't have to be too much older; Barack Obama was 47 when he won the Democratic nomination, and with considerably less qualifying experience under his belt than Clinton had at the time Obama was nominated. Republican contender Marco Rubio is 44, and his youth is being considered by some to be an advantage. And though, in 2008, many questioned if John McCain, running at the age of 70, was too old to be president, few people are asking the same of Bernie Sanders, who is currently 73.
Men, too, are of course subjected to age discrimination, but they do not sit at the intersection of sexism and ageism that leaves professional older women without the glory or accolades — or, more importantly, real power — to show for their years of hard work. Though there are diminishing returns, advanced age is usually seen as an advantage for men. Where Rubio can be heralded for his fresh, new ideas, Sanders can benefit from the perception — among admirers, at least — that his age makes him wise and experienced.
This dynamic plays out in the entertainment industry — where art imitates life. By the time a female actor has gained the respect of her fellow actors, of directors, and of audiences — by the time she has finally accumulated enough gravitas to make meaningful choices about what roles she takes, like male actors do as they age — opportunities have dried up. A 2013 analysis of the Academy Awards found that 62.35 percent of Best Actress Oscars went to women under the age of 35, and women under 35 accounted for half of the Best Supporting Actress statuettes, too. By comparison, only about 15 percent of Best Actor winners are that young.
This year, a study of top-grossing films found that women account for just 12 percent of lead roles (4 percent in films written and directed by men), and that, of the women who appear on-screen in those films, "the majority are in their 20s (23 percent) and 30s (30 percent)." There are exceptions to this rule — Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep — but they are notably scarce.
Efforts to get more women involved in politics, and involved early, abound. There are numerous organizations that train women, particularly young ones, to prepare to run for office, like Running Start and the Yale University Women's Campaign School. These efforts are necessary, and yet they don't solve the problem of the double whammy of sexism and ageism that Clinton is facing. They don't do away with the High Competence Threshold: they equip women to work around it. Increasing the number of women in office might merely increase the number of women who are held to higher standards than their male colleagues and are then told they're too old when they finally meet those standards.
It is the height of hypocrisy to set the bar higher for women, and to then declare, once they finally clear that bar, that they are too old to lead. In so doing, we of course do them a disservice, but we do ourselves one, too: we deny ourselves the opportunity to be led by the most qualified person.
Doing away with the High Competence Threshold for women will take time; changing culture always does. But electing "the youngest woman president" would have the advantage of securing us a candidate with an exceptional resume — one she's spent a lifetime building. And, if we're lucky, it might secure us that Meryl-Streep-as-Hillary-Clinton biopic you know you want to see.
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FOCUS: The Scars of War Start Young |
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Thursday, 18 June 2015 11:34 |
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Turse writes: "War finds peculiar and heinous ways to distort lives, and when children are involved, it can mean a lifetime spent trying to recapture what was, to rebuild what never can be."
Palestinian children at a UN-run school sheltering displaced Palestinians from the Israeli offensive in Gaza City on 24 August 2014. (photo: Mohammed Salem/Reuters)
The Scars of War Start Young
By Nick Turse, Reader Supported News
18 June 15
 here's an ugliness to war beyond the ugly things war does. There are scars beyond the rough, imperfectly mended flesh of the gunshot wound, beyond the flashback, the startle reflex, the nightmare. War finds peculiar and heinous ways to distort lives, and when children are involved, it can mean a lifetime spent trying to recapture what was, to rebuild what never can be.
I've met these former child victims again and again. I think of the man whose features seemed to be perpetually sliding off his face because a grotesque incendiary weapon landed near him when he was just a boy. I think of the woman who, as a pre-teen, watched as her grandmother and neighbor were gunned down right in front of her. I think of the little boy who, after fleeing from a town in the midst of a rebel assault, hadn't seen his father in over a year. I think of the tiny girl who sang a song about orphans for me just months after her mother, father, and brother were killed by an old artillery shell. The boys who, on the cusp of their teens, had assault rifles thrust into their hands and were sent off to battle.
Those whom I met in adulthood were still suffering the after-effects, decades later, of adult wars that intruded on their young lives. Those I met as children were already thoroughly marked and, I have no doubt, will join the ranks of this enormous legion of the damaged. And they in turn will find company among the countless child victims in present-day Iraq and Syria, Yemen and Libya, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, not to mention Palestine.
After last summer's 50-day war between Israel and Gaza's Hamas government, hopes were high for the reconstruction of battered Gaza City. Instead, all these months later, rubble remains ubiquitous, the economy is in shambles, and living standards are deteriorating as the enclave struggles to stay afloat. "A lot of factors pile on top of each other: unemployment remains [at] 40 percent, youth unemployment is more than 60 percent," says Robert Turner, the director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.
The Gaza War and its aftermath have scarred yet another generation of Palestinian children, but Gaza has no monopoly on hardship. Suffering can be found even in the smallest of villages on the West Bank, too. In her latest report from the front lines of trauma, "Expelled for Life," Jen Marlowe focuses on one family of war victims: a father scarred in his youth by war and occupation whose young son seems about to follow in his footsteps -- to follow, that is, a path to displacement and despair so common to so many Palestinians.
What does it mean for a family to be made refugees again and again, generation after generation? What does it mean for the children of yesterday, today, and tomorrow to be made homeless in a way that transcends the loss of a house? What does it mean for them to have lost their place, quite literally, in the world? Just what does that pain do to children? Where does it take them as adults? Let Jen Marlowe lead the way in answering these questions.
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esterday my song "Rockin in the Free World" was used in a announcement for a U.S. presidential candidate without my permission.
