Good Morning Lowcountry

GMLc column defunct

Pluffmudders won't find GMLc's brand of local news and lore in the daily paper anymore. The Good Morning Lowcountry column has been dumped from 2B, it's little home since 2000, as of last Saturday. Couple of reasons for this. 1) We're in a hiring freeze and I am needed to help edit Community News. 2) We shrank the paper in width, and 2B is needed for runover copy, jumps of stories, other stories, etc. But, as I've been told, this was not so much a real estate grab as a warm body grab.From my point of view, GMLc might have run its course. I'm OK with turning my attention to other priorities at the paper. Regular readers have been e-mailing and phoning in their disappointment, and I appreciate that.  But I'll be also working on a book proposal of essays, column outtakes, etiquette, critters, Lowcountry pronunciations, Lowcountry history and other bits of wit and wisdom from the GMLc material. If bloggers who read GMLc in the past have any favorite stuff, let me know. Thanks for the fun. I'll continue to blog here.

The "bitter" end ...

OK, I'll put in my 2 cents worth on the Obama remark about "bitter" underpaid Americans turning to (well, "clinging" to) cultural issues like guns and religion as a basis on which to vote.

New York Times blogger Dan Schnur argues today that questioning working-class voters' vote against their own economic interests amounts to liberal elitism and that Democrats just don't get it about the importance of values.

He makes a good point that non-economic matters
drive the cultural-values voting behavior of both poor conservative
people and rich liberal people. But Schnur says there's a double standard -- in questioning those cultural-issues-based-voting by poor, working class people, and not questioning cultural-issues-based voting by those in Martha's Vinyard or Beverly Hills.

Rich liberal people aren't voting their economic interests when
they are voting on "cultural issues" that require money and taxes. But rich people have far more latitude to vote against their own economic  interests... call it noblesse oblige in honor of the Titanic anniversary ... because they can afford to. So I do not see it as  wrong to question the motivations of those who against their own economic interests who CAN'T really afford to do so. It becomes more crucial and more interesting. Questioning that voting behavior is observation, not an "insult" to the underclass of America, or the blue-collar worker just trying to get by.

Obama said they vote on softer issues because they're bitter, or hopeless, about money, and why shouldn't they be? What president has done ANYTHING for them lately? Or for me, the middle class wage-earner, for that matter? If underclass and middle class voters had any sense, we'd all vote for the candidate who best supports unions, higher wages and better working conditions.

The argument becomes circular. Poor conservative people are hopeless and bitter, so they vote on issues other than pay, and then those cultural issues become prominent and nobody does anything for them economically because economics is not what got those votes. Guns and abortion and opposition to gay marriage got them those votes. So politicians have carte-blanche to continue to blather about guns and abortion and gay people and do nothing economically for the people who elected them ... their base, as it were.

I think the circle breaks down if, say, the liberal rich Democrat votes against his or her pocketbook and for, say, initiatives on global warming. If those initiatives rise to the forefront, are they going to complain about their taxes being raised? Probably, yes. But they don't have to. They can afford the higher taxes. Cultural issues are gravy.

I haven't put this very well. But suffice it to say that when candidates talk about voting behavior they are following social science. They're not trying to insult anyone. Obama calling this electorate 'bitter' is hardly revolutionary with the president having only 28 percent approval and the country having long rejected the still ongoing, and seemingly endless, Iraq war.

The NYT editorial page sums up the whole silliness of Democrats talking about duck blinds, shots of whiskey and God. That's Republican territory. How'd they get there?

Maybe what we need to do is redefine cultural values, and value-based issues. Values aren't just what one pundit ... or American political party ... decides they are. Yes, values include marriage, the constitutional right to bear arms, the constitutional right to practice the religion of your choice. Values also include inclusion, equal opportunity, tolerance and peace.

The gender speech Hillary could give ...

I quote from the excellent post at SLATE called "And Speaking of Perfect Unions …What if Hillary Clinton gave a speech about gender? (And why she won't.)" by Melinda Henneberger and Dahlia Lithwick.

Here's the speech Hillary COULD give, the authors write:

"1) I am proud to be a woman and a mother and the first serious female contender for the presidency, but my gender is only a part of who I am, and it doesn't define or constrain me.

2) I am part of a generation that faced and still faces all sorts of gender slights and slurs, and I honor the women who came before me for their commitment to achieving equal rights for women in the face of that.

3) But I would ask the women of this country to stop engaging in petty warfare over who has suffered more—women or blacks, women or men—as it is corrosive and fruitless. This country was founded on the promise that you can become the best thing you can dream for yourself; you are not trapped by the worst thing that's ever happened to you.

4) Things have improved for women in America in the last decades. They are not perfect; there is still much to be done. But women have made enormous strides in a few short decades, and to suggest otherwise is to devalue the life's work of too many heroes of the women's movement.

5) It is possible, indeed it is probable, that just as women have faced barriers and obstacles and derision, so have Hispanics, so have blacks, and so have men. No one in America can corner the market on suffering. Who the hell wants to spend their life in a corner, anyhow?

6)     Men. What are they thinking? (Pause for applause.)

7)     But seriously, if we in this country are ever going to move beyond Hooters, beyond date rape, beyond the wage gap and the glass ceiling, beyond Girls Gone Wild, and bulimic 12-year-olds, we need to start working together. We need to work with men on the gender signals called out by the media and with business about the value of women workers. We need to talk to one another respectfully and listen to one another's complaints.

8) Men, we understand and honor that many of you are taking paternity leave and folding the laundry and eating takeout because we forgot to turn on the crockpot. We get that everything has changed very, very quickly, and it's hard to come home to a wife who's coming home at the same time. You are doing more than your dads ever did around the house, and we still get mad when you forget to clean out the lint filter. It's nuts. But it's getting better. Stay with us.

9) Married guys, don't fool around with hookers. Don't fool around with staffers. Don't fool around with interns or Supreme Court justices. It's insulting to us and to you and to them. Marriage has to mean something. Gov. Spitzer. Bill, darling. I can respect the heck out of your political achievements even as I berate you for demeaning marriage. Life is complicated that way. Deal, buddies.

10) People of America, I understand why some of you are anxious at the prospect of a woman president. Sometimes I am nervous, too. But it's time. Also, I am sorry about that whole cookie comment."

stuff white people like ...

Stuff white people like, the blog, is mildly amusing and fairly dumb. As a white person, I found it to be a kind of fun exercise in silliness and making fun of one's own group. And, like just about everybody, I like the pictures of puppies.

Gary Dauphin at The Root has posted a rather long screed on why he doesn't like Stuff White People Like.

To which I'd say: Lighten up. I don't think the guy behind Stuff White People Like meant it as any power manifesto on the special privileges of a ruling class.

I agree that most of the categories are too broad to apply to anybody except EVERYBODY, like "dinner parties" and "graduate school" ... but it seems this blogger is just trying to make fun of the goofiness of his group ... for the sake of fun. I don't resent the guy getting a book contract. Stupider stuff has been published and FAR stupider stuff is on the Internet.

Maybe I am wrong and just haven't read SWPL thoroughly enough ... it doesn't seem to be worth the time ... but comedians far better than this blogger have made entire careers on stuff black people like ... Chris Rock, for example ... and stuff rednecks like, and stuff women like, and stuff gay citizens like.

As long as the comedians are members of the group they are making fun of, everybody seems to think it is OK, and funny. The humor lies in the generalities themselves ... for example, Chris Rock's bit on Mama gets the respect but Daddy's paying the bills. All Daddy gets is the big piece of chicken. Well, certainly not in every black family. Daddy might be having sushi, and Mama might be paying the bills. But nobody believes Chris Rock is speaking for all black citizens. The familiarity for black citizens of what he is talking about is what is so funny and so real.

One could argue that White People's blogger, Christian Lander (how white a name is that?), isn't funny, or is smug and a poseur, as Dauphin argues, but it strains the point to say he's arguing for some kind of racial or classist supremacy. And he's really no more a hustler and opportunist than people far more talented than he -- like 1st class satirists Rock and Dave Chappelle. Problem is, this guy Lander only goes skin deep (forgive the pun), while Rock and Chappelle are chroniclers of their time.

I, like Dauphin, look forward to a grey society ... when white no longer is a synonym for middle class- nerd-with-no-soul and black is no longer a synonym for disadvantaged-youth-with-a-rap-sheet, in the broad and stereotpyical view of many shallow thinkers and uninformed people in the country.

Stuff White People Like or something like it (hopefully better) might on some level serve to remind us all what we have in common.

This just in ...

A new poll agrees with my last post:

Man Up!A new poll suggests Clinton's gender is a larger issue for voters than Obama's race is.

Prostitution

The Myth of the Victimless Crime
from The New York Times

Bhutto ... more links

Gail Sheehy's interview with Benazir Bhutto for Parade magazine, scheduled for publication on Jan. 6, contains this disturbing quote from the former prime minister of Pakistan. When asked what she would say to President Bush, she answered: “I would say, ‘Your policy of supporting dictatorship is breaking up my country.’ I now think al-Qaeda can be marching on Islamabad in two to four years.”

Christopher Hitchens' take at Slate is interesting reading:

"Daughter of Destiny is the title she gave to her autobiography. She always displayed the same unironic lack of embarrassment. How prettily she lied to me, I remember, and with such a level gaze from those topaz eyes, about how exclusively peaceful and civilian Pakistan's nuclear program was. How righteously indignant she always sounded when asked unwelcome questions about the vast corruption alleged against her and her playboy husband, Asif Ali Zardari. (The Swiss courts recently found against her in this matter; an excellent background piece was written by John Burns in the New York Times in 1998.) And now the two main legacies of Bhutto rule—the nukes and the empowered Islamists—have moved measurably closer together.

"This is what makes her murder such a disaster. There is at least some reason to think that she had truly changed her mind, at least on the Taliban and al-Qaida, and was willing to help lead a battle against them. She had, according to some reports, severed the connection with her rather questionable husband. She was attempting to make the connection between lack of democracy in Pakistan and the rise of mullah-manipulated fanaticism. Of those preparing to contest the highly dubious upcoming elections, she was the only candidate with anything approaching a mass appeal to set against the siren calls of the fundamentalists. And, right to the end, she carried on without the fetish of "security" and with lofty disregard for her own safety. This courage could sometimes have been worthy of a finer cause, and many of the problems she claimed to solve were partly of her own making. Nonetheless, she perhaps did have a hint of destiny about her."

Also, Nicholas Schmidle is in Peshawar and writing for Slate.

Hitchens also links to an excellent recent profile by Amy Wilentz in More magazine.

Bhutto

This morning's early reports on BBC showed carnage in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Bloody bodies, a scalp with hair lying on the road (Pakistanis taking cell phone photos of it), wounded and dazes Pakistani citizens limping the street. It reminded me of the footage from Egyptian television when Anwar Sadat was killed (by the same method, bomb and bullets). The footage, unedited by American television initially, showed those who had been on the podium with Sadat crawling in pools of blood, one man missing his arm at the elbow.

It was a shocking and horrifying event, and it is shocking and horrifying in Pakistan. Pakistan has been a powder keg for most of the 20th century, since it was partitioned as a Muslim state away from India and shook off British rule. Pakistan's fuse got shorter with its development of sophisticated weaponry and its possession of the nuclear option. The fuse was lit most recently by its home base status for Al Quaida, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. The lawless tribal areas of Pakistan might as well have been divided off as a neighborhood of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban before 2001. After 2001, the rest of the Taliban just crossed the border, along with much of Al Qaida. Pakistan's madrassas  foment as much radical Islam as Saudi Arabia's. In fact, most of the Taliban were educated and trained in Saudi-financed maddrassas for Wahabism in Pakistan.

I know everybody knows all this. But this tragic reminder means that having had the same thought since 2002: Iraq? What about Pakistan? came to a terrible conclusion ... although certainly not the final conclusion On Robert Young Pelton's list of The World's Most Dangerous Places, Pakistan is usually ranked "apocalyptic." Salman Rushdie made the best case for Pakistan as "The Most Dangerous Place in the World" in May, 2002, in The New York Times.

My sister is so upset by this (she teaches history, she's the one who tells me: OK for the antecedents of this you have to go back to 1906) that she cried when she heard the news of Bhutto's murder.

Saudi sexism

Anne Applebaum at Slate has written a good essay on Western attitudes (i.e. indifference) to Saudi "values" concerning women -- that is, the state-sponsored oppression, repression, denial of basic civil rights, and terrorism against women in that country.

"Saudi propaganda," she writes, "plus our own timidity about foreign customs, has blinded us to the fact that the systematic, wholesale Saudi oppression of women isn't dictated by religion at all, but rather by the culture of the Saudi ruling class."

While I'm on the subject of repression of women, today's GMLc (about the novels and times of Jane Austen) did not give an address or location for Gage Hall. It is at 4 Archdale Street in downtown Charleston. Here's a map. And here's a name and a phone number if you want to contact the Jane Austen Society: Robin McKarns, 884-3414.

(AP PHOTO/STR)

Hitchens on Romney...

Christopher Hitchens, my favorite intellectual snob and provacateur, has written the best reaction to Mitt Romney's "religion" speech I've seen so far.