The “Surge”
Posted by tgirsch

Bwah! The picture is what sells it.

January 31st, 2007 | Satire, Humor | one comment

I Can’t Stop Condescending! Help Me!
Posted by KTK

I had some followup thoughts to Kevin’s post below.

you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy

I think there’s something interesting about this. I think the connotations of the word “articulate”, in this context, have changed somewhat over the years, but not in a way that makes it any less stupid. And the condescension that it used to convey has certainly not diminished, although it has evolved somewhat.

It used to be that people would compliment smart blacks for being “articulate” because they were surprised at it. Gradually they realized that was insulting, and gradually their surprise wore off (a bit). I think that usage of the term has faded. But the word keeps surfacing.

I think today bonehead whites describe articulate black people as “articulate” not because they hadn’t imagined they could be, but because there’s nothing else they notice about them. I mean, one reason people keep calling Obama articulate is that he’s got a lot to say, and he’s good at saying it. But they always notice the second part, without ever noticing the first part. It’s as if he gets judged on style points alone - as if his words had no actual content. (Maybe clueless whites regard black speech as some sort of exotic art form, like opera. Maybe Obama needs a little scrolling screen across his forehead to put his words into supertitle translation that white people could understand.)

Of course, Obama is articulate - extremely so, by anyone’s standards. But “articulate” and “unusually articulate even in a profession that values oratory” are not the same thing, and the latter is not what is implied by the former, especially when used by old-school whites about uppity blacks. In the thread on Kevin’s original post, Ted says: “I think it’s pretty obvious he meant . . . the first politically viable black candidate for President who also presents very well on TV”, and suggests Biden is just a victim of the sound-bite gotcha. But I don’t think it’s as simple as that.

Biden’s comment was stupidly condescending throughout. “Articulate”? Maybe. But what are we to make of “bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”? “Bright”? That’s a clever third-grader. “Clean“? He’s a United States Senator, you dumb motherfucker! Did you expect him to be dirty?! “Nice-looking”? That’s like “bright”, but weirder. There are two problems here. First, just like “articulate”, these remarks are superficial and condescending; they praise Obama for things that are peripheral to his political career, and would be non-issues in any white person in his position. (Not all Senators are all these things, it’s true; some are none of them. But none of them, or all of them together, is remarkable in a Senator, and nobody would remark on them in a white Senator. JFK was all of that in abundance, and while many people commented on his good looks, nobody ever dismissively summed him up as “bright and clean”.) What matters about Obama are his policies, and what he is able to accomplish. Being smart, articulate, and even good-looking are tools that will help him on his way, but they are only that - they are not the policies themselves. Biden comments on the externals, and in condescendingly diminutive terms (”bright”, not “smart”; “clean”, not “sharp-dressed”; “nice-looking”, not “good-looking”). But second, and more importantly, he chooses - four times in a row - terms that carry racial baggage. Of these, “articulate” and “clean” are the worst: they directly evoke racist stereotypes that, I’m sure, Biden doesn’t hold, but that somehow don’t seem to be far from his mind in evaluating blacks. “Bright” and “nice-looking” again are terms that soothe white anxieties, not that truly express admiration of a grown man in one of the most responsible positions the world can offer. Add to these “mainstream” and you get the perfect picture of white framing of an acceptable black person: not demanding; not asking to do anything, you know, out of the whitestream; meeting low expectations and content with that. Not having substance or content, not having ideas fit to be mentioned, let alone taken seriously. But clean, upstanding . . . a credit to their race.

There’s a scene from a sitcom in which Julia Louise-Dreyfus tries to introduce a good-looking black male acquaintance to her friend Barbara (Wanda Sykes), but she can’t get either of their names out - she just keeps calling them both “Black”:

[Dreyfus:]  Thank you, Mr. Black. . . . This is my handsome friend Harry. No! My black . . . Bar- . . .  my black Bar- . . . black! . . . I can’t stop! Help me! . . .

[Sykes:]  Girl, you had a black attack!

I think Biden had a black attack - or rather, a condescension attack triggered by blackness. He truly thought he was praising Obama, and offering a considered assessment of his political chances. But Biden can’t see anything more than “black man” when he sees Obama, so everything about Obama, and his political impact, comes out in coded superficialities that erase the real substance of the man. “African-American! Articulate! Bright! Clean! I can’t stop! Help me!”

January 31st, 2007 | General, Politics, Culture, Media, News & Current Events | 17 comments

Bugger Off, Biden
Posted by Kevin

Oh, this is just lovely:

“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

Christ, what next? A visit to Bob Jones University?

January 31st, 2007 | Politics | 26 comments

Think European, Act Locally?
Posted by Kevin

California seems to be:

The European Union’s environment chief reports the E-U is working closely with California to bring it into the 27-nation bloc’s trading scheme for greenhouse gas emissions.
Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas reported today that members of his staff met with California officials last week and discussed how to make the state’s planned program fit with a European one that has been operating for two years.

He added that that such a connection likely will take at least two years.

While I have my qualms about trading programs, I still think this is a good move. It demonstrates that local governments can take steps to work around the impediment of the Administration and take active steps to help reign in the global warming problem. With Bush in the White House, nothing will get done nationally on global warming. Bush’s backers have spent too much time and money denying the obvious problem to back down now. Besides, if the United states ever got serious about global warming, those business executives would have to adjust to a changing economic situation, and there is nothing CEOs of major companies hate more than having to actually react to real change. Right now, those companies are the economic “winners”. If the regulatory environment changed, they would have to work harder to maintain that status, and CEOs hate that.

But this shows that the individual states can work with the global community on this problem even if the national government refuses to do so. I suspect that if this comes to pass, the Bush Administration will go to court and argue that this is infringing on the foreign policy of the United States and thus cannot be done. Logically, the argument makes no sense. This is a purely economic move with a group that the United states already enjoys robust trading contacts. It is akin to California deciding to buy its airplanes (if, in fact, the state of California has its own airplanes) from partially state-owned Airbus. The Court should be no impediment to this kind of creative thinking. As long as the White House is controlled by the GOP, the states are where the most good can be done environmentally. California is paving the way and, if successful, I suspect that we will see other large states soon follow.

January 31st, 2007 | Politics, Economics, Environment | 46 comments

Things That Bug Me, Volume 47
Posted by tgirsch

In another thread, a commenter used the word “pedantry.” While I was reasonably sure I knew what it meant, I thought I’d better look it up to be sure. Merriam-Webster’s on-line dictionary defines pedantry as follows:

1 : pedantic presentation or application of knowledge or learning
2 : an instance of pedantry

Gee, thanks a brick. Definition 1 defines the word in terms of another form of the word, and definition 2 uses the word itself in its own definition. Really helpful, guys. Well, at least they made pedantic a hyperlink to that definiton:

of, relating to, or being a pedant

Arrrrgh! Don’t these people understand? It’s really quite simple: If you know what “pedant” means, you’re almost certain to also know what “pedantic” and “pedantry” mean. And in the event that you know the first one, but need a dictionary to tell you the other two, you’re an idiot. Clicking through to pedant (also a hyperlink), finally yields:

1 obsolete : a male schoolteacher
2 a : one who makes a show of knowledge b : one who is unimaginative or who unduly emphasizes minutiae in the presentation or use of knowledge c : a formalist or precisionist in teaching

Which finally gives a useful definition, and confirms that what I thought the word meant (something roughly like 2b) really is what it means. But Christ, should you really have to click through three definitions to get to a useful one?

(Yes, I realize that some of this is a legacy of paper-and-binding dictionaries, where the definitions of all three words would have likely been on the same page, and immediately adjacent to one another. But if you’re going to do an on-line dictionary, get with the 20th century already and do it right…)

January 31st, 2007 | I do too have a life | 2 comments