You do claim to be a scholar? Of what?

So when is TPM ever going to have a black male writer?

Everyone on the TPM Cafe roster is a white male.

When is TPM Cafe ever going to have black female writer?

Just wondering.

Thanks.

(somehow my comments were posted midstream).

I didn't understand what you were saying until going back to that Crimson piece. Sorry, but that is not good writing if you have ask the reader to go back and read some background before they understand your primary point.

In any case I think you have missed Obama's appeal. He is reaching out to these working class people that have resentments against the meager gains many people of color have achieved. His campaign has worked from the beginning to talk to these people. It is of course a complex dialogue but he has been connectin. I happen to be firmly in the middle class academic world today but I entered this world within the working class, perhaps by today's standards it would be considered poor but that is not how we saw it. Your earlier piece really does describe attitudes that I experienced and witnessed. But I do believe that Obama is talking to these people in a way that neither you nor I fully understand.

Apropos of Senator Obama's comments on what I wish he had called "Contemporary Corporate Crypto-Fascism in Republican Party America," I would like to add here a letter that I wrote to Newsweek Magazine on 2/17/2005 in reaction to an article by Jonathan Alter entitled “The Bush Deal,” which largely gave a pass to Sheriff Dick and Deputy Dubya's assault on (under the guise of "reforming") Social Security. Three years later, I think the letter still has some salience in regard to Senator Obama's efforts to engage us in an investigation of divide-and-rule reactionary recidivism run amok at home and abroad. At any rate:

"The Calvinist and his Hobbes"

Permit me to acquaint you with a bit of history as a supplement to Jonathan Alter’s column (2/17/05) From The Uses of the Past (Mentor Books, 1952) by Herbert Muller, page 293:

"The chief sufferers from [the] development [of Puritanism], were the poor. In the Middle Ages, the poor were objects of charity, however sentimental; poverty itself was sanctified by Christian tradition. In the Puritan scheme of retributive justice, poverty was a sign of moral failure. The poor became the ‘idle poor.’ The spiritual fervor that once had focused on the sins of pride and greed now focused on indolence and improvidence. Presently it was discovered that the best way to keep the poor industrious and rescue them was to pay them low wages, keep them poor. A long line of ministers down to [the 20th] century preached the necessity of poverty in the divine economy. Protests on behalf of the poor were early denounced as incitements to ‘class hatred.’ Protestant theology supported a privileged class, with its division of mankind into the elect and the damned, but the pious grew even more uncharitable because of their innocence of economics. Like the naive businessman, they assumed that success or failure was due solely to the individual; they were quite unaware how extensively their society supported and endowed business. With the Industrial Revolution the state became more lavish in its favors to business but continued to deny any responsibility for unemployment, poverty, and distress. Not until the Great Depression did the American government fully recognize, and frankly accept, this responsibility."

So now we can better understand the truly noble and devoutly religious aspirations of Wal-Mart and the Bush Administration. Keeping the poor working unpaid overtime off the clock will, in fact, keep them poor and thus safe from falling into evil indolence and leisure; will, in fact, save their souls. We can also see that the current Republican fashion of attacking the poor for their ingratitude and “class warfare” far predates FDR and the New Deal. Decades of concerted attacks by Republican Party Administrations on labor unions, Social Security, public education, and family planning (the chief means by which the poor might better themselves and escape their poverty) do not constitute anything new under the sun, but rather only resume a Calvinist aggression, a true and historic “class war,” against the poor launched centuries ago as a result of the Protestant Reformation. The Calvinist Puritan, George W. Bush, along with his amoral Thomas Hobbes, Dick Cheney, do not have any problem whatsoever with either big government or “class warfare,” as long as they get to monopolize the former in the service of exclusively practicing the latter.

The current Bush Administration no doubt has purely angelic motives in wanting to enforce the “salvation” of the poor (who somehow don’t seem capable of achieving it through their own efforts) by giving the misunderstood rich even more government protection and lavish support. Lucky for the overworked rich that their stalwart religious piety prevents massive government subsidy, extensive leisure, and chronic conspicuous consumption from corrupting them as it would the “idle poor,” should these undeserving ingrates ever achieve a minimum living wage. The Calvinist Bush Administration obviously believes in eviscerating the Social Security System (after first looting its surpluses, of course) not for any selfish or privileged-class-perpetuating motives, but only out of a sincere desire to keep the working poor safe from themselves and thus deserving of a better life after death than the miserable one they have only themselves to blame for living here on earth.

Michael Murry,
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
2/19/2005

What was written in 1976 is as meaningless today as then; the basic constructs and dynamics of group behavior are correct but the conclusions from these experiences are not. Much as Glenn Loury's South Side Chicago, the framework of Boston circa 1976 juxtaposed against Baldwin has little relevance for today; the common thread between the views of Loury and those above is that each extrapolate personal experiences to encompass a larger narrative on class and race.

Most citizens would be clueless about these experiences or locations as they would be clueless about 3rd Ward in Houston, Hunter's Point in San Fransisco, or Anacostia in southeast D.C. but less so of 9th Ward due to Katrina in 2005. Each has a rich history and story to tell that is as disparate as life in the rural south as compared to life in the great plains or upstate New York.

They sound good but ideas above just don't hunt too well; the fundamental is simple: group differences do and will continue to exist. Rodney King expressed it best(to paraphrase): how can we find the ground to get passed that and this? In sum the starting point is "we" or the common good and thread; once established Baldwin and hunters can agree to return to the "we" minus arguing about novels and ducks while hunting. Of course horse trading and local politics do graze on the common greens; the trick is to keep the commons' green as in give and take.

Nuts? In the past 150 years how did the various ethics European communities function together in cities and town of the Eastern United States? Remember, since 1970 the U.S.A. has experienced: the Rust Belt, the Southern Strategy, Forced Busing-Boston Style; Vietnam; Agnew's elites; women libs, etc. Then along comes Obama, the rage of Harvard who relates to a lot of different folks; it does confuse the powers that be and more so those who want to be in power.

In sum the classic clash of class and wealth arises to maintain the status quo; i.e., Obama will screw up the presumed gravy train, and possibly send some folks to jail even if Scooter will be safe from those bars. And, the small town bitters awake, this non-vetted guy who cannot win is exposed, and Rove is a non paid staffer for McCain meet, at least in the heads of some desperate folks; i.e., a redux of the past 35+ years. In short this redux is the subtext to this narrative in this article; this has nothing to do with small town or rural white America.

Problem: Folks are tired of this; this being the got-ya thing, the race thing, the gas thing, for certain the Bush & Co thing, and the MSM thing. Folks are just tired and fired-up to get rid of a bunch of folks. Nonetheless, their is an element to be concerned about which is the convergence of strange bed fellows; it has nothing to do with upscale or downscale classes and race, the issue is powers that have no quarter for Obama.

Finally, those mid-western states along the Mississippi river kinda sinks the whole theory of this article, race and class. Farther east it is the Mason-Dixie Line or border states scenario that is the problem, and has been since the Civil War. The status quo and powers that seek to be in power seem to be the most plausible answers.

I agree with "acanuck" that so-called "Liberal Democrats" (certainly no one by the name of Mr. and Mrs. William J. Clinton) have never had the courage to throw the Republican Party's fascism back in the Seizure Class's collective face and laugh while doing so. While Senator Obama has not yet gone far enough in punching back at the Republicans and their phony, divide-and-ruule "culture war" distractions, he has at least made a beginning in that notable direction. I encourage him to continue going on the offensive and "just tell the truth about the Republicans," as Harry Truman said, "and they'll think its hell."

Moreover, I want to see all Democrats, not just Senator Obama vocally and obstreperously reject reactionary canards like "elitist" aimed by rabid Republicans at the "Liberal" tide now sweeping back into America after a long and disastrous absence. As a general principle of this in-your-face rejection of Republican Party fascism, I recommend remembering the source of the word "liberal" as a pejorative term and what countervailing pejorative (self-seen as an accolade by its formulators) liberals might best use to their own advantage. From Kenneth Burke, in The Philosophy of Literary Form (1941):

Imagagine a new movement arising in history; and, as is so often the case with new movements, imagine that it is named by the enemy (as "liberalism" was named by the Jesuits, to convey connotations of "licentiousness," in contrast to "servile," to convey connotations of "loyal").

Following Burke's observation here, I think Liberals should happily reject "naming by the enemy" and instead point out that, originally, those who found free-thinkng "liberalism" objectionable also considered bootlicking subservience to authority -- as connoted by the word "servile" -- a truly laudable quality. And America's radical reactionary Republicans obviously still proudly feel the same way. When they say "loyal," they mean "servile." Therefore, as I believe the Spanish once did or now still may do, we "Liberales" should henceforth refer to intellectually and morally constipated conservatives as the "Serviles," since servility and lickspittle conformity to the dictates of authoritarian fascism name and define them in terms their kind originated long ago.

Barack's comments about Pennsylvanians weren't "elitist," whatever that means. Rather, they suffered from being too generalized, simplistic, and just not having the ring of truth. Referring to the loss of jobs in Pennsylvania over the past 25 years and government's failure to do anything to help, he said people "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Well, are they anti-immigrant because unemployed or unemployed people who happen to dislike immigrants? Are they rascist because they are out of work, or are they unemployed people who happen to be rascist?
What the hell could Obama -- or anyone -- accomplish by lifting the lid on such a Pandora's box? The comments were a momentary lapse into glibness and pop sociology, and they were unconvincing.
I am for Obama. He's smarter than Clinton, who has proven that she wouldn't hesitate to jump naked into a mud-wrestling pit to be President. That's what her campaign has become, and it doesn't bother her that her tag-team mate is
John McCain.