Bad Monkey

I’m writing this before the November 2d elections, knowing that it won’t see print until the election results are known. The timing won’t keep me from making a prediction: voters will reward sleazy tactics, outright liars and buffoons of all political persuasions.

That’s because the election season that will (mercifully) be over when you read this has been dominated by two parties—not Republicans and Democrats, but those I’ll dub “denialists” and “enablers.”

Denialists have a variety of motives, but essentially, they are fleeing the complexity and ambiguity of modern life. They span a spectrum from the outright delusional—the so-called “birthers” who have convinced themselves that President Obama was born in Kenya, and the one in five Americans who believe he’s a secret Muslim—to the various groups of creationists, climate change deniers and others who are suspicious of science and empirical evidence and looking for any opportunity to reject findings that do not confirm their own beliefs or serve their own interests. They include the revisionists who cling to carefully selected and edited versions of America’s history and constitution.

There have always been denialists on the fringes of American political life. What is different today is that they are being enabled by the emergence of a media landscape in which the time-honored function of genuine journalism—truth-telling—has been pushed aside in favor of what sells, and telling people what they want to hear is a sure winner.  The fact that paying talking heads to spout uninformed—occasionally deranged—opinions is so much less expensive than paying journalists to do actual reporting is just icing on the cake.

In this intellectually dishonest, morally distasteful environment, can we really be surprised that candidates of both parties have participated in a content-free, ugly exchange of untruths and half-truths?

In the run-up to November 2d, it has been impossible to avoid the hammering of negative, misleading ads. I am supposed to be outraged over the “government takeover” of Medicare (and too stupid to know that Medicare is a government program). I am supposed to believe that a candidate for prosecutor who once represented a defendant accused of child molestation is thereby disqualified for office (and to ignore the profoundly unethical conduct of a candidate who would make such a charge). Presumably, I am supposed to listen to the out-of-context charges and counter-charges, the grainy photographs and gloomy atmospherics and make my candidate selection based purely on my emotional response.

No wonder Jon Stewart held a rally for sanity. If the antics of this electoral season are any indication, it’s in short supply.

Actually, it was Stewart who came up with the best description of our current politics. In an interview, Terry Gross of NPR asked him about his focus on politicians and the media, and who was most culpable. Stewart said “Politicians are politicians. If you go to the zoo and monkeys are throwing feces, well—that’s what monkeys do. But you’d like to have the zoo-keeper there saying ‘Bad Monkey.’”

The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

Dickens’ classic book “A Tale of Two Cities” begins, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” That’s a pretty apt description of the world Americans inhabit right now.

On the plus side, advances in transportation and communication allow us to travel the globe and connect with others in ways our parents could never have imagined. Medical science has given us longer, more comfortable lives. Technology has improved our productivity, and brought education, books, and the arts to millions who otherwise would lack access to them.

The best of times.

And then there is our experiment with self-government, which isn’t going so well.

It’s partly the economy, of course. During times of economic distress, people get testy. Prejudices emerge. (Attacks on immigrants and Muslims, especially, are getting ugly.)

But it’s not just the economy. We also seem to be in the throes of a massive cultural backlash, driven primarily—although certainly not exclusively—by old, angry white guys.   Most of these angry folks cannot articulate what it is that makes them so furious—probably because they really don’t know themselves. They just know that the world they were born into (or think they were born into—that “leave it to Beaver” world that existed, if at all, for a very few families) has changed.

If you listen to Tea Party activists for even a few minutes, you cannot help but be struck by the fact that they cannot describe policies they support, although they can certainly identify what they are against—much like a cranky two-year-old, or that character from “Broadcast News” who was “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.”

Conventional wisdom tells us this rage will translate into the election of several of the crazier candidates who have emerged from the primaries. We are two weeks away from an election where a lot of irrational folks are energized and large numbers of reasonable citizens are dispirited.

If, as many of our pundits predict, this angry electorate votes indiscriminately against moderates and incumbents, opting for extremists who display little or no recognition of the complexities of the issues (or even basic understanding of the world we inhabit), we will all suffer the consequences. If we turn the apparatus of government over to the “simple answer” ideologues—the creationists and climate-change deniers, the folks who want to repeal Social Security and the Civil Rights Act, the conspiracy-theorists who have convinced themselves that President Obama is a Muslim who wasn’t born in the United States—the consequences will be grim.

We have never needed sane and steady public servants more than we need them today.

Which brings me to another quote that seems apt right now: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”

If reasonable people don’t vote in large numbers, and the ideologues and crazies and know-nothings take the reins of power, “the best of times” will become “the worst of times” in no time.

Cookies and Savvy Politics

Many years ago, when I first became what we now call a “straight ally,” working for equal rights for gays and lesbians, the only members of the community who were politically visible tended to be “in your face” activists. These were not people who appreciated nuance. Of course, this has been true of every political movement, from civil rights to women’s rights; they were started by the more passionate—okay, the more strident—members of the group suffering discrimination. As cultural attitudes changed and the mainstream became more receptive to the message, the movements themselves became more strategic. The movement for gay equality has been no different.

Case in point: a recent episode in Indianapolis, Indiana, involving—of all things—cookies.

The controversy occurred when “Just Cookies,” a bakery with a lease in the Indianapolis City Market, refused to fill an order for cookies with rainbow sprinkles. The order was placed by the local university’s gay rights organization, to celebrate Coming-Out Day. (The owner—clearly not the sharpest knife in the drawer—said he had two young daughters and couldn’t fill the order because he needed to model “morality” for them. I’m not sure what is immoral about rainbow sprinkles, and the daughters turned out to be college-aged, which certainly didn’t help, but bigotry is seldom logical.)

The City of Indianapolis has a human rights ordinance, passed relatively recently, that prohibits discrimination based upon sexual orientation, and there was an immediate hue and cry, accompanied by lots of publicity featuring individuals leveling accusations of discrimination. The Mayor’s office promised to investigate whether the Ordinance had been violated. That in turn animated the usual suspects—the local unit of the American Family Association among them—to leap to the defense of the owner and his right to his religious beliefs. It seemed likely that the controversy would devolve into the usual name-calling and righteous indignation, allowing the right-wing to generate anti-gay hostility and ramp up their fundraising.

But then, the gay community and its allies did something politically brilliant.

The sponsors of the Human Rights Ordinance and the presidents of two major gay rights organizations wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper. That letter made several points:

  • The Ordinance prohibits discrimination—for example, a refusal to sell cookies to gay groups or individuals.
  • The Ordinance does not—and constitutionally could not—require a business owner or individual to support a political cause with which he disagrees.
  • Just Cookies had never (to the authors knowledge) refused to sell cookies to gay people or groups; it had, however clumsily, declined to endorse a political position.
  • The authors strongly disagreed with the political position of the owner, but—echoing Voltaire—defended his right to hold that position. (To which they added the hope that those who disagreed with their advocacy of equality would be equally supportive of their rights.)

The letter was both legally correct and politically brilliant. The Indianapolis Star—never noted for a pro-gay-rights bias—ran a favorable front-page story and an editorial, the latter commending the gay community for its “graciousness.” Both the story and the editorial made the bigots look small and extreme. The electronic media followed suit. Rather than the typical “fringe vs. fringe” coverage such conflicts tend to generate, the gay community came out looking mainstream and reasonable, and the anti-gay activists were deprived of a favored tactic: accusing those of us who are pro-gay-rights of “religious bigotry.”

And at the end of the day, thanks to the amount and kind of publicity generated, a lot of people will demonstrate their disagreement with the owner’s political position—which he has every right to hold—by buying their cookies elsewhere. Which they have every right to do.

A consequence sweeter than cookies.

Recycled Politics

Indiana citizens aren’t making much progress recycling paper and plastic, but we seem to be leading in the reuse of old politicians. Evan Bayh is apparently preparing to run for Governor again, and in the race to replace him, Republicans want us to send Dan Coats back to Washington—a city he is intimately familiar with, having been there as a Representative, Senator, Ambassador and lobbyist.

I don’t know which is worse, listening to Bayh piously declare that he left the Senate because his sensibilities were offended by partisan sniping, or listening to Coats engage in it.

This is the point in the political cycle where it is nearly impossible to avoid 30-second spots in which Candidate A explains that Candidate B is unfit for public office, because—unlike Candidate A—Candidate B lacks “Hoosier Values.” Plenty of politicians employ these tactics and the empty phrases that invariably accompany them, and it may be unfair to pick on Dan Coats, but his ads are especially vacuous.

Here is a man who certainly should know something about policy. He’s been part of the legislature; a member of George W. Bush’s inner circle (he was even tapped by Bush to shepherd a Supreme Court nominee through the confirmation process) and most recently, a high-priced lobbyist. Yet his political ads are absolutely devoid of content; they consist entirely of labeling and name-calling.

The wisdom and adequacy of the new healthcare law is an entirely appropriate issue for debate and discussion. Coats clearly disapproves of the law, but he doesn’t tell us why. He just calls it “Obamacare” and “a bad idea.” What parts of it does he disagree with? Does it go too far? Not far enough?

In one ad, Coats says that support for the economic stimulus was a “vote against Indiana.” There is an overwhelming consensus among economists—conservative and liberal alike—that the economy would be immeasurably worse without that stimulus. If Coats disagrees, he doesn’t tell us why.  We are supposed to know the stimulus was “bad” because it is associated with “Pelosi, Reid and Obama.”  Should voters ask Coats how he reconciles his claim to fiscal conservatism with his support for the profligate Bush administration? These are not arguments; they are guilt-by-association smears.

As long as we’re recycling, I’ll resurrect the famous Wendy’s commercial question: where’s the beef?

The truth is that there isn’t any “beef.” Coats—and Bayh, if he really does run again for Governor—are useful to their respective parties because they have money and name recognition, not because they bring energy or new ideas to the table.  They have name recognition because they’ve been around for a long time—and have thus been part of the problem. They have money because they are old Washington insiders who’ve demonstrated an ability to play nicely with the vested interests. We can assume they have no new ideas, because they aren’t offering any.

I’ll recycle paper and plastic, but I draw the line at recycling old politicians.

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The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

Dickens’ classic “A Tale of Two Cities” begins with the sentence, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” That’s a pretty apt description of the world the gay community inhabits right now.

Two national polls in as many months have found, for the first time, narrow majorities of Americans in favor of same-sex marriage. A judge recently struck down “don’t ask, don’t tell” and a Congressional vote that would repeal it is pending as I write this. In California, Proposition 8 has been found unconstitutional, and neither the Governor nor the Attorney General has proposed to appeal that ruling.

Signs of favorable cultural change are everywhere; the New York Times runs same-sex wedding announcements, House and Garden television routinely showcases renovations of homes owned by gay couples. (Even in the Indianapolis Star, the real estate story last week pictured the home of a gay couple with children, with no commentary whatsoever.) Poll after poll documents the overwhelmingly accepting attitudes of people under 35.

The best of times.

And then there are the dark clouds.

It is a truism that economic uncertainty generates intergroup tensions. Prejudice against Jews, Catholics, Muslims, immigrants and gays spikes in times of economic distress, and this is one of those times.

If it were only the economy, that would be troubling enough. But as I wrote last month, we seem to be in the throes of a massive cultural backlash. Older white, Protestant, heterosexual males are not going to relinquish their previously privileged status in our society without a fight. What makes it worse is that most of them cannot articulate what it is that makes them so furious—probably because they really don’t know themselves. They just know that the world they were born into (or think they were born into—that “leave it to Beaver” world that existed, if at all, for a very few families) has changed.

If you listen to the Tea Party activists for even a few minutes, you cannot help but be struck by the fact that they cannot tell you what they are for. They can rant on and on about what they are against—much like a cranky two-year-old, or that character from “Broadcast News” who was “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.”

So far, that rage has not had much effect upon the fight for gay equality. We have some crazy candidates like the woman who won the GOP primary in Delaware, who—among other things–wants to outlaw gays and masturbation (good luck with that, honey), or the Montana Republican platform provision advocating the re-criminalization of homosexuality, but those are embarrassments even to the three sane people left in the GOP.

The balance of power, however, can change pretty quickly. We are less than two months away from an election where the crazy folks are energized and the rational folks are dispirited. If, as many of our pundits predict, the Republicans recapture Congress, it won’t be the party of Reagan and Bush that gains power. Difficult as it may be to believe, the current crop of candidates is far to the right of either of those very right-wing Republican leaders. Even the few centrist Republicans who remain—and they truly are few, and highly endangered—have no choice but to pander to the zealots who have for all intents and purposes taken control of one of America’s major political parties. As someone who worked hard for the GOP for over 35 years, it breaks my heart to see what has become of the party.

There’s another quote that seems apt right now: All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. If good people don’t vote in large numbers, and the haters and know-nothings take the reins of power, “the best of times” will be a fleeting memory.