"We've seen more progress for Blacks in the last 15 years in the United States than we have for them in the last 100 years," said the outspoken and self-righteous white girl in my grad school class.
This heinous and completely inaccurate statement was made amidst a heated debate between myself and the rest of my classmates at a HWCU, Historically White College/University. Originally about racism and the educational gap in the US, the conversation switched over to "reverse" racism faster than Mariah Carey when Hip-Hop really became In.
While this girl's statement is completely absurd to many, I'd like to rephrase the quotation and bring it back to what we all know and love: Hip-Hop.
"We have arguably seen more progress in the last 10 years for rappers than we have in the last 30.”
From Reagan to Obama, rappers (AKA Black men) have ascended the social ladder at a gratifying rate. In the early 90s, many of Hip-Hop's legends either never made it to high school or dropped out after enrolling. At least none of the nationally or internationally known acts bragged about their formal education. Many were products of the crack laden 1980s and early 1990s.
It was all about Street Cred rather than College Cred.
Perhaps because he did not die, Jay-Z rose to upper echelon of Hip-Hop infiltrating the hearts, minds, and souls of millions. The high school dropout became the poster boy for commercial Hip-Hop. Not everyone, but most people fell in love with his contagious crack raps full of unexpected vocabulary, clever wordplay, and eclectic rhyme schemes. Jay was the hood's ambassador to the world. While riding the wave of success for some time, he breathed new life into his career with The Blueprint, finally establishing himself as an artist, not just a rapper.
Jay accomplished this by crafting a radio friendly album introspective enough to evoke emotion. Hova became human to everyday fans in an era when rappers gang banged at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The difference between good and great when it comes to Hip-Hop is not only one's talent, but his/her ability to relate to the listener. Ironically, when he finally made the leap, it was in large part due to the artist waiting in the wings who remains unapologetically human: Mr. Kanye West.
Three years after the release of The Blueprint and several mixtapes, Kanye West popped on the scene gunning for the top spot. Upon completion of projects like The College Dropout and Late Registration, the Chicagoan beatsmith turned the game on its head using his own style with which he targeted untapped demographics. Sure, we all loved Jay, Pac, and Face, but a super majority of listeners were not gun toting or rock slinging tough guys. Finally a rapper came out who re-opened the gates for dudes with talent who were far from the urban cowboys of the 90s and early 2000s. 50% of the US population graduated from college, so logically even more dropped out in fashion similar to Kanye. With statistics like this accompanied by his incredible talent, it is no wonder Ye ran the charts the way he did.
Not only have his beats continued to break necks, but his lyrics have reached their zenith. They have become so notable that blogazines like Complex have composed articles regarding his 10 best scene –stealing guest verses. The emergence of Kanye West laid the foundation for artists who live very relatable lives and were not necessarily too cool for school. Artists like the Fayetteville native “the hoes used to call Jermaine...”
Unlike the two label mates previously mentioned, it is pretty much impossible to talk about the footprints of an emcee who is still in the process of making them. The rookie is aiming to sit comfortably on top with a persona that is less WWE and more MMA so to speak. One thing's for certain, he has already been where no big time rapper has been before...the podium at a 4 year college via the Magna Cum Laude route.
Despite possessing the supposedly ultimate co-sign (along with Memphis Bleek), J. Cole remains relatively unknown. As a result, its difficult to predict his future impact on Hip Hop history. Rest assured, this man is not in his position because of his associations, but rather because of his talent. It is still quite possible for him to:
A.) Pick the wrong person to beef with like Ja Rule or Canibus
B.) Come out with a classic album like Lauryn Hill and end up milk box material or
C.) Simply burnout
However, it appears the time has come for the tastemakers to get some shine vicariously through a lyricist/producer who came up without critically acclaimed collabos or childhood celebrity.
A dude like Huey mixed with Riley named J. Cole who's trying his damnedest to master the tools of the trade.
Songs like "I Get Up", "Grown Simba", and "Dreams" are evidence that he is a personable and well versed storyteller/lyrycist whose punch lines are not even punch lines. His lyrical content shows that when the competition is “thinking about breakfast he is heating up his dinner, and that he was plotting this moment back when everybody was riding spinners.”
So yes, racism still exists -- just like large-scale warfare and poverty.
But our President is black, and at the end of the day the overall level of respect/appreciation for rappers has increased considerably. A change has come and lyrics have managed to migrate from the crack house to the frat house without losing their credibility. We have witnessed more forward movement for rappers since Y2K than we have since 1980. It is by no means the time to settle, but remember it is the little things that count, and progress has been made. Absolutely no one can contest this truth.
After all...Jay-Z got Obama on the text right?
From the Associated Press:
After insisting for a year that failure was not an option, President Barack Obama is now acknowledging his health care overhaul may die in Congress.
His remarks at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser Thursday night sounded contradictory at times, complicating congressional leaders' effort to revive health care legislation as Democrats hunger for guidance from the White House. Even while saying he still wanted to get the job done, Obama counseled going slow, and bowed to new political realities. Democrats no longer command a filibuster-proof Senate majority, and voters and lawmakers are far more concerned with jobs and the economy than with enacting sweeping and expensive changes to the health system.
"I think it's very important for us to have a methodical, open process over the next several weeks, and then let's go ahead and make a decision," Obama said Thursday night.
"And it may be that ... if Congress decides we're not going to do it, even after all the facts are laid out, all the options are clear, then the American people can make a judgment as to whether this Congress has done the right thing for them or not," the president said. "And that's how democracy works. There will be elections coming up and they'll be able to make a determination and register their concerns one way or the other during election time."
It seemed to be a shift in tone for the issue Obama campaigned on and made the centerpiece of his domestic agenda last year.
"Here's the key, is to not let the moment slip away," Obama also said.
Sweeping health legislation to extend medical coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans passed both chambers of Congress last year and was on the verge of completion before Republican Scott Brown's upset victory in a Massachusetts special U.S. Senate election last month. Brown was sworn in Thursday, giving Republicans 41 votes, enough to block the initiatives of the Democratic majority.
Now the health legislation hangs in limbo. Lawmakers are looking to Obama for a path forward, but he has not publicly offered specifics. His signals have been mixed. At the DNC event he said Republicans should be part of the process — something they've shown little interest in and that would doubtlessly drag out a legislative effort that many rank-and-file Democrats want to end quickly. The health care bill has become unpopular with the public and a political drag for lawmakers.
"The next step is what I announced at the State of the Union, which is to call on our Republican friends to present their ideas. What I'd like to do is have a meeting whereby I'm sitting with the Republicans, sitting with the Democrats, sitting with health care experts, and let's just go through these bills. ... And then I think that we've got to go ahead and move forward on a vote," Obama said Thursday.
"But as I said at the State of the Union, I think we should be very deliberate, take our time. We're going to be moving a jobs package forward over the next several weeks; that's the thing that's most urgent right now in the minds of Americans all across the country."
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters on Friday that there is no meeting set yet for the president to talk over health care strategy with Republican and Democratic lawmakers.
"There's nothing on the block on this right now," he said. "But I think this just goes to the president continuing to want to hear ideas."
Bipartisan congressional leaders are planning to join Obama at the White House on Tuesday, but Gibbs reiterated that the meeting will be centered on how to create jobs and boost the economy.
Obama had also said Thursday night that "we've got to move forward on a vote" on health care. When asked what the president meant by that, Gibbs said only that White House officials are "still working with Capitol Hill on the best way forward."
Obama's comments came just hours after he met Thursday afternoon with Democratic congressional leaders, but the discussion focused mostly on jobs, and the leaders emerged with no announcement about a path ahead for health care. Rank-and-file Democrats are eager for them to settle on one by the end of next week, after which lawmakers will return to their states and districts for a weeklong recess where they'll likely face questions from voters on the issue.
Don Stewart, spokesman for Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, said Friday that the White House has not requested a sit-down on health care with Republicans.
"The president wants to start over on health care? Sen. McConnell's been saying that for months," said Stewart.
From USA Today
The White House didn't say much about last night's health care talks between President Obama and congressional Democrats, but officials made it clear they're cool with fast-tracking the final phase of legislation, with no public hearings and no Republican involvement.
"The president is anxious to get the differences worked out and get a bill to both houses and passed out of them," said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.
And the president will be deeply involved. The White House just announced he will meet again this afternoon with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other top House Democrats.
Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada -- who led a delegation to the White House early last evening -- have not appointed a House-Senate conference committee to work out differences in their divergent health care bills.
Instead, Democrats in both chambers are negotiating among themselves in hopes of forging a common bill than can be approved as amendments to the existing legislation.
Republicans are making an issue of this strategy."I don't think it's a surprise to anyone that a bill that's been written outside of the view of the American people will continue to be handled by Democrats in the same way again," said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Other critics have pointed to Obama's campaign pledge about "bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those (health care) negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are."
Indeed, C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb sent the White House a letter this week reminding officials of that promise.
Don't hold your breath on televised health care negotiations, however.
Said Gibbs: "I don't think there's anybody that would say that we haven't had a thorough, robust, now spanning two calendar years' debate on health care."
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. Treasury announced it has changed its regulations to lift restrictions on the ability of Cuban Americans to visit relatives in Cuba and send them money.
A Treasury Department statement on Thursday said the Office of Foreign Assets Control amended the Cuban Assets Control Regulations to implement President Barack Obama's April 13 initiative.
The change was made to "reach out to the Cuban people in support of their desire to freely determine their country's future, promote greater contact between separated family members in the United States and Cuba, and increase the flow of remittances and information to the Cuban people," the statement said.
Obama's move was considered a significant shift in a U.S. policy that had remained largely unchanged for nearly half a century.
According to Thursday's Treasury statement, U.S. travelers may now make unlimited visits to "close relatives," including aunts, uncles, cousins and second cousins in Cuba who are Cuban nationals.
In addition, Americans may send unlimited amounts of money to close relatives in Cuba who are Cuban nationals, the statement said. It noted that a separate ban on sending money to prohibited government officials and Cuban Communist Party members remains in effect.
The changes allow telephone communications with people to Cuba but only through non-Cuban providers, according to the statement.
Several key components of America's embargo on the island nation remain unchanged, including restrictions on travel to Cuba by Americans of non-Cuban descent.
In April, critics of the move blasted the administration for unilaterally changing what had been a long-settled U.S. policy.
The Castro "dictatorship is one of the most brutal in the world. The U.S. economic embargo must remain in place until tyranny gives way to freedom and democracy," Rep. Connie Mack, R-Florida, said then in a written statement.
Before he was elected president, Obama promised to lower some of the barriers in Cuban-American relations.
www.cnn.com
Call it a lesson in contemporary political discourse.
Educators across America found themselves at the center of a political storm this week as conservatives exploded in anger over President Obama's plans to give a speech to the country's schoolchildren.
A stunned White House insisted the address, planned for Tuesday, and accompanying suggested lesson plans are meant simply to encourage students to study hard and stay in school.
But some parents said they aren't buying it. They said they're convinced the president is going to use the opportunity to press a partisan political agenda on impressionable young minds.
"Thinking about my kids in school having to listen to that just really upsets me," a suburban Colorado mother, Shanneen Barron, told CNN affiliate KMGH-TV in Denver.
"I'm an American. They are Americans, and I don't feel that's OK. I feel very scared to be in this country with our leadership right now."
School administrators are caught in the middle of the controversy. Some have decided to show the president's speech, while others will not. Many are deciding on a class-by-class basis, leaving the decision in the hands of individual teachers.
GOP leaders have not shied away from the debate. Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer released a statement Monday accusing Obama of using taxpayer money to "indoctrinate" children. Watch the debate over the president's speech »
"As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology," Greer said.
"The idea that schoolchildren across our nation will be forced to watch the president justify his plans ... is not only infuriating but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power."
Nonsense, the White House replied.
"The goal of the speech and the lesson plans is to challenge students to work hard, stay in school and dramatically reduce the dropout rate," an administration spokesman said. "This isn't a policy speech. It's a speech designed to encourage kids to stay in school."
White House officials said that Obama's speech, the text of which will be available on the Web on Monday, is not unprecedented.
In 1991, President George H.W. Bush delivered a nationally televised speech to students from a Washington school, encouraging them to say no to drugs and work hard.
Charles Saylors, president of the National Parent Teacher Association, said the uproar over the speech is sad.
"The president of the United States, regardless of political affiliation, should be able to have a presentation and have a pep talk, if you will, to America's students," Saylors said.
Some of the controversy surrounding Obama's speech stems from a proposed lesson plan by the U.S. Education Department to accompany the address. An initial version of the plan recommended that students draft letters to themselves discussing "what they can do to help the president."
The letters "would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals," the plan said.
Under pressure from conservatives, the White House agreed the plan was not artfully worded and distributed a revised version encouraging students to write letters about how they can "achieve their short-term and long-term education goals."
The controversy is the latest example of how sharply polarized political debate has become.
"Ninety percent of Americans who identify with the president's party approve of him, but 85 percent of those who belong to the opposition party disapprove," said Keating Holland, CNN's polling director.
"In that kind of environment, almost nothing Obama does is immune from politics."
www.cnn.com
PHOENIX — The White House, facing increasing skepticism overPresident Obama’s call for a public insurance plan to compete with the private sector, signaled Sunday that it was willing to compromise and would consider a proposal for a nonprofit health cooperative being developed in the Senate.
The “public option,” a new government insurance program akin to Medicare, has been a central component of Mr. Obama’s agenda for overhauling the health care system, but it has also emerged as a flashpoint for anger and opposition. Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, said the public option was “not the essential element” for reform and raised the idea of the co-op during an interview on CNN.
Word that the public option might be dropped angered many liberals. One prominent Democrat, former GovernorHoward Dean of Vermont, said on Monday that he saw a public plan as inextricably linked to a health overhaul. “I don’t think it can pass without the public option,” Mr. Dean, who is a physician and a former chairman of theDemocratic National Committee, said on “The Early Show” on CBS.
“There are too many people who understand, including the president himself, the public option is absolutely linked to reform,” he said. “You can’t have reform without a public option. If you really want to fix the health-care system, you’ve got to give the public the choice of having such an option.”
Mr. Obama himself sought to play down the significance of the public option at a town-hall-style meeting on Saturday in Grand Junction, Colo., when a university student challenged him on how private insurers could compete with the government.
After strongly defending the public plan, the president suggested that he, too, viewed it as only a small piece of a broader initiative intended to control costs, expand coverage, protect consumers and make the delivery of health care more efficient.
“The public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform,” Mr. Obama said. “This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it.”
The president is scheduled to speak on Monday at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Phoenix, where the health care issue is expected once again to be front and center.
For Mr. Obama, giving up on the public plan would have risks and rewards. The reward is that he could punch a hole in Republican arguments that he wants a “government takeover” of health care and possibly win some Republican votes. The risk is that he could alienate liberal Democrats, whose support he will also need to pass a bill.
On Sunday, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, affirmed his support for the public option. “I believe the inclusion of a strong public plan option in health reform legislation is a must,” Mr. Rockefeller said in a statement. “It is the only proven way to guarantee that all consumers have affordable, meaningful and accountable options available in the health insurance marketplace.”
White House officials say the president has not abandoned the idea of a pure government plan, a central feature of the legislation moving through the House. But Ms. Sebelius’s comments did seem to open the door, and at least one Democrat close to the White House said the administration was well aware that, with moderate Senate Democrats opposed to the idea of a public plan, Mr. Obama might have to give up on the notion to get a bill through.
“The president is going to continue to try to persuade everyone of the great value of having a true public plan,” said this Democrat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid discussing strategy publicly. “But at the end of the day, I believe he recognizes that there are other, arguably less effective, ways to achieve greater coverage, more choice, better quality and lower cost in our system.”
In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, said the president remained convinced that a public plan was “the best way to go.” But Mr. Axelrod said the nuances of how to develop a nonprofit competitor to private industry had never been “carved in stone.”
On Capitol Hill, the Senate Finance Committee is expected to produce a bill that features a nonprofit co-op. The author of the idea, Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and chairman of the Budget Committee, predicted Sunday that Mr. Obama would have no choice but to drop the public option.
“The fact of the matter is, there are not the votes in the United States Senate for the public option,” Mr. Conrad said on “Fox News Sunday.” “There never have been. So to continue to chase that rabbit, I think, is just a wasted effort.”
The co-op, modeled after rural electric and agricultural cooperatives in Mr. Conrad’s home state, would offer insurance through a nonprofit, nongovernmental consumer entity run by its members. Mr. Axelrod said one downside of a co-op, from Mr. Obama’s point of view, was that it might be unable to “scale up in such a way that would create a robust” competitor to private insurers.
And whether a co-operative would actually bring Republicans on board with Mr. Obama is unclear. Senator Richard C. Shelby, the Alabama Republican who appeared alongside Mr. Conrad on “Fox News Sunday,” called the co-op idea “a step in the right direction,” adding: “I don’t know if it will do everything people want, but we ought to look at it. I think it’s a far cry from the original proposals.”
CNN) -- Beyond the noise of raucous crowds and angry protesters who have turned town hall meetings into shouting matches is genuine concern from ordinary citizens who are afraid that President Obama's health care proposals would only make things harder for them, experts say.
"The reason that we see these protests and people asking tough questions at town hall meetings is because they feel like the president is going to take something away from them. That motivates people. That gets them out," said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
Those fears were heard Tuesday at Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter's town hall meeting in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. "This is going to take away my freedom," charged one man who wanted assurance from Specter that the private option for health insurance would stay viable.
Specter repeated Obama's pledge, telling the crowd, "If you like your policy, you can keep it."
Acknowledging the skepticism at a town hall meeting Tuesday, Obama tried to alleviate fears that reform would take something away.
"I recognize there's an underlying fear here that people somehow won't get the care they need. You will have not only the care you need, but also the care that right now is being denied to you, only if we get health care reform. That's what we're fighting for," he said at the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, event.
Since his days on the campaign trail, Obama has promised the public that those who like their health insurance plans won't have to give them up, but he's stopped short of saying at what cost.
"I think that's the fear," said Diana Owen, an associate professor of political science and the director of American studies at Georgetown University. "Even though they are going to keep the plan, the plan is going to be at a much greater cost. And he's not been able to really allay that fear."
The themes coming up at town hall meetings across the country are broadly the same as doubts expressed during the campaign. Critics are voicing fears about socialism and the dismantling of the government they are used to. And those who have sufficient health care coverage worry they'll have to foot the bill for reform, echoing concerns heard during the presidential campaign that Obama would "spread the wealth around."
"That was one of the campaign critiques of Obama that seemed to work well, that seemed to resonate well," Owen said. "I really do think that it was an issue, and I think the opponents of the health care plan, by bringing that back up again ... I think that it could be an effective obstacle to what he's trying to accomplish."
Obama originally asked Congress to send him a health care bill before the August recess, but neither chamber met the deadline. As lawmakers spend the break in their home districts, they've been met with sometimes fierce opposition to Obama's proposals.
"It's not anti-reform -- it's anti-bad reform," Cannon said. "I think the public is reacting to what's in the legislation. And I think that's why the president wanted the House and the Senate to pass their versions before the August recess, because the president knew that the public would object to a lot of what is in these bills."
Obama's health care battle has been compared to former President Clinton's failed effort more than 15 years ago, but lawmakers didn't experience the same backlash during the Clinton years.
Part of the reason was because of the calendar, CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider said. Clinton proposed his plan in September 1993, and by the time Congress went on recess in August 1994, the plan was dead.
People also didn't use the Internet the way they use it today, "so you didn't have the viral communications that rally people to attend town halls," Schneider noted.
Today's hypersaturated media, where rumor is picked up as fact and disseminated to millions via blogs and discussion boards, has contributed to the misinformation being lobbed at lawmakers, Owen said.
Coming out of one of her town hall meetings Monday, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, said that "people are just getting information that's flat wrong." But as unfounded as some of the claims may be, such as charges that Obama will set up death panels to decide who will live or die, the emotional appeals resonate with the public.
"I don't think that this is debate that is going to go away," Owen said, noting that given the outpouring seen at the town hall meetings, Congress can't just pick up where it left off when it returns from break. "I think the public is going to remain engaged and energized."
Cannon said the debate has "stunted the president's momentum" and will make it harder for his administration to get through the types of reforms they were hoping for.
Cannon predicted that Obama's plan will fail, but advocates "are going to try more incremental reforms to improve the health care sector." The same thing happened after the Clinton plan failed. Congress passed less sweeping reform like the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Owen said the response to his proposals has likely been "a stark awakening to [Obama] about maybe on this particular issue, he's going to need a new tactic."
"When Congress comes back they'll have to kind of rethink the plan and rethink particularly how they present it to the public. and that means the Obama administration as well," she said.
By Philip Kennicott
Between Jack Nicholson's 1989 portrayal of the Joker in "Batman" and Heath Ledger's 2008 characterization in "The Dark Knight," something sinister happened to the villain's iconic makeup. What had been a mask, with the clearly delineated lines of a carnival character, became simply war paint, and not very well applied.
The visual change signaled a change in the Joker's inner mechanism. Nicholson's dandified virtuoso of violence was replaced by a darker, more unpredictable and psychotic figure. What had been a caricature became more real and threatening. An urbane mocker of civilized values became simply a deformed product of urban violence.
It is the latter makeup job that has been superimposed over the face of President Obama in an anonymous Los Angeles poster campaign that is now the talk of the blogosphere, the airwaves and the 24/7 hermeneutical speculations of cable television. The image, which appears above the word "socialism," delights and distresses people roughly on the lines of the usual political cleavage, with wide agreement that the as-yet-unrevealed artist certainly intends it to be disrespectful. But there is little consensus about whether it is effective as political messagemaking.
Between Jack Nicholson's 1989 portrayal of the Joker in "Batman" and Heath Ledger's 2008 characterization in "The Dark Knight," something sinister happened to the villain's iconic makeup. What had been a mask, with the clearly delineated lines of a carnival character, became simply war paint, and not very well applied.
The visual change signaled a change in the Joker's inner mechanism. Nicholson's dandified virtuoso of violence was replaced by a darker, more unpredictable and psychotic figure. What had been a caricature became more real and threatening. An urbane mocker of civilized values became simply a deformed product of urban violence.
It is the latter makeup job that has been superimposed over the face of President Obama in an anonymous Los Angeles poster campaign that is now the talk of the blogosphere, the airwaves and the 24/7 hermeneutical speculations of cable television. The image, which appears above the word "socialism," delights and distresses people roughly on the lines of the usual political cleavage, with wide agreement that the as-yet-unrevealed artist certainly intends it to be disrespectful. But there is little consensus about whether it is effective as political messagemaking.
Comparisons to Shepard Fairey's Obama posters, which rendered the president's face a boldly contrasted palette of red and blue above the blunt message "hope," generally tend to favor Fairey's artistry. The exhausted icon of last year's political campaign, now falling off bumpers and fading on T-shirts, had both a subtlety the current poster lacks and a simplicity that it desperately needs. Fairey's image included a clever visual play on red- and blue-state political values (a windmill rendered in red, a tank and dollar sign sketched in blue), but it required only one step of mental grammar: Obama is hope.
The new Obama poster has two basic thrusts. Obama is a socialist, or a crypto-socialist. And Obama is somehow like the Joker, unpredictable and dangerous. But joining these two messages together yields more questions and contradictions than good poster art can sustain. The Joker is violent and dangerous, but a socialist? And didn't we see George W. Bush depicted as the Joker not so long ago?
Yes, in an image by Drew Friedman published online by Vanity Fair on July 29, 2008. That drawing at least played into a view of Bush popular among his detractors, that the former president was unpredictable and fast on the draw when it came to geopolitics. But the danger many of Obama's detractors detect is more of calculating, long-standing deception, that he is quietly and secretly marshaling a socialist agenda, a view that would be better served by imagery that recalled "The Manchurian Candidate."
Even the first claim, that Obama is a socialist, isn't introducing anything new into the argument. Obama's opponents, in Congress and among pundits, have already raised the specter of socialism. The great virtue of an anonymous poster campaign is that it anticipates unspoken fears or claims, and leads the debate by insinuating and teasing out ideas that would be too explosive or alienating if simply dumped into the public forum by responsible actors.
Good posters lead on the viewer and tease us with hints about the unseen hand that has crafted the image. The Obama Joker poster leaves you with the sense that it has said everything it has to say, and waits only for the media to endorse the message through the legitimizing process peculiar to our new age of rapid-response journalism: that we are talking about it because you are talking about it, which means it must be worth talking about.
So why the anonymity? Perhaps because the poster is ultimately a racially charged image. By using the "urban" makeup of the Heath Ledger Joker, instead of the urbane makeup of the Jack Nicholson character, the poster connects Obama to something many of his detractors fear but can't openly discuss. He is black and he is identified with the inner city, a source of political instability in the 1960s and '70s, and a lingering bogeyman in political consciousness despite falling crime rates.
The Joker's makeup in "Dark Knight" -- the latest film in a long franchise that dramatizes fear of the urban world -- emphasized the wounded nature of the villain, the sense that he was both a product and source of violence. Although Ledger was white, and the Joker is white, this equation of the wounded and the wounding mirrors basic racial typology in America. Urban blacks -- the thinking goes -- don't just live in dangerous neighborhoods, they carry that danger with them like a virus. Scientific studies, which demonstrate the social consequences of living in neighborhoods with high rates of crime, get processed and misinterpreted in the popular unconscious, underscoring the idea. Violence breeds violence.
It is an ugly idea, operating covertly in that gray area that is always supposed to be opened up to honest examination whenever America has one of its "we need to talk this through" episodes. But it lingers, unspoken but powerful, leaving all too many people with the sense that exposure to crime creates an ineluctable propensity to crime.
Superimpose that idea, through the Joker's makeup, onto Obama's face, and you have subtly coded, highly effective racial and political argument. Forget socialism, this poster is another attempt to accomplish an association between Obama and the unpredictable, seeming danger of urban life. It is another effort to establish what failed to jell in the debate about Obama's association with Chicago radical William Ayers and the controversy over the racially charged sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Obama, like the Joker and like the racial stereotype of the black man, carries within him an unknowable, volatile and dangerous marker of urban violence, which could erupt at any time. The charge of socialism is secondary to the basic message that Obama can't be trusted, not because he is a politician, but because he's black.
Voting on strict party lines, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee approved a bill on Wednesday to revamp the nation’s health care system, as Democrats said that the legislation held the promise of more universal health coverage and more effective and affordable medical care while Republicans argued that the measure was unaffordable and would lead not to better care but to the denial of it.
The committee vote was 13 to 10.
The acting committee chairman, Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, had made clear from the start that his panel would bend little when it came to the top priorities of Senate Democrats and the Obama administration, including on a provision to create a government-run health insurance plan to compete with private insurers that Republicans insisted was a deal-breaker.
In the end however, Republicans held their ranks. In his closing statement, Senator Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming said that Republicans had been forced to offer more than 100 amendments to the bill because Democrats had largely shut them out of the drafting process. And he said that the $1 trillion, 10-year cost of the measure would simply drive the nation further into debt, while denying many Americans the choices for health care providers that they now enjoy.
Mr. Enzi, with a hint of sarcasm, noted that the bill’s title was the “Affordable Health Choices Act.”
“With it’s trillion-dollar price tag,” Mr. Enzi said. “This bill is anything but affordable.”
Committee Chairman Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, thanked Mr. Dodd and other committee members in a quickly issued statement that commended the bill’s passage and urged for bipartisanship going forward.
“It is a cause that can and should unite us all as Americans,” he said in a statement issued from Hyannis Port, Mass., where he is battling brain cancer. “As we move from our committee room to the Senate floor, we must continue the search for solutions that unite us, so that the great promise of quality affordable health care for all can be fulfilled.”
Both Republicans and Democrats acknowledged that the health committee bill was just part of what will eventually be a single Senate measure once the Finance Committee completes work on its version of the legislation.
The Finance Committee chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, has been making the one real effort to develop a bipartisan bill, and though negotiations with Republicans seem to have stumbled in recent days, committee members say they remain optimistic of a deal.
Even as the health committee was voting, Finance Committee Democrats were gathering in Mr. Baucus’s office to continue their talks.
The health committee bill, like the House version of the health care legislation unveiled on Tuesday, requires Americans to obtain health insurance and would provide subsidies to the poor to help them to do so. And it similarly requires most employers to provide health coverage to their employees or to pay a fee to the government instead.
Senate Republicans have yet to decide how tough they will be in grilling Judge Sonia Sotomayor in her confirmation hearings, but this is clear: The Supreme Court nominee already has shown an ability to withstand rigorous questioning.
Partisan tensions were high when Sotomayor arrived in Washington in 1997 for her confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. A rumor was making Republican rounds that President Bill Clinton wanted to elevate her from the federal trial bench because he planned to "fast-track" her to the Supreme Court if Justice John Paul Stevens decided to retire during Clinton's second term. Senate Republican leader Trent Lott (Miss.) delayed her confirmation by the full Senate, which occurred nearly a year after her hearing. And the rumor of Stevens's retirement turned out to be false.
But first she needed to survive the hearing, where Republicans asked astringent questions about some of the most sensitive issues of the time: mandatory minimum prison sentences, the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and gay rights. She survived the hearing with a combination of assured self-defense and well-placed ingratiation, although she also avoided one line of questioning by saying she could not recall the case.
It remains to be seen whether the current Republicans on the Judiciary Committee will set a similar tenor for her Supreme Court hearing, and only one of the senators at the center of earlier questioning remains on the panel: Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican. But Sotomayor's 1997 hearing, as well as a far friendlier Democratic-led hearing in 1992 after President George H.W. Bush nominated her for a judgeship, does hint at what senators can expect from Sotomayor. She came across as a self-confident jurist who enjoys speaking about her humble roots, discusses legal reasoning in accessible language and is adept at tactfully defending controversial positions.
In 1997, Sotomayor seemed to satisfy then-Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) by assuring him that she did not agree with those who think the Constitution needs to be read above all in terms of what "the words and the text mean in our time." And she told him that she did not care for the American Bar Association's practice of taking stands on issues such as abortion, because that "undermines their effectiveness on the central issues of their mission, which is the education of lawyers."
The toughest questioning came from Sessions, who scrutinized the depth of her support for minimum sentencing guidelines. First, he drew out of her a general statement of support for the guidelines.
Then he countered with a seemingly contradictory quote from the past: her strongly worded 1993 apology to a defendant to whom she gave a mandatory minimum sentence of five years: "I hope that yours will be among the many that will convince our new president and Congress to change these minimums. The only statement I can make is this is one more example of an abomination being committed before our sight. You do not deserve this, sir. I am deeply sorry for you and your family, but the laws require me to sentence you to the five-year minimum. I have no choice."
Sotomayor, a former state prosecutor, said the apology expressed her frustration over a feature in the sentencing rules that was later changed by Congress: the lack of a "safety valve" provision for defendants such as this one, a first-time offender without a history of violence who had shown a willingness to cooperate with prosecutors.
But Sessions pressed her on her "abomination" remark, saying a judge "has to be careful in conducting themselves in a way that reflects respect for the law." She conceded that "maybe I would not have called it an abomination" and assured him that "great respect both for the law and the process is terribly important." While she often gets letters from "heartbroken" families of defendants, she added, "I explain to them that as much as I understand their pain, that I have a greater obligation to society to follow the law in the way that it is set forth."
Sessions also challenged Sotomayor on whether she had applauded or remained sitting -- as some of her colleagues had -- when Thomas came to speak to the 2nd Circuit conference. Sotomayor had declined to say what she had done when asked later by a newspaper reporter. This demurral, she told Sessions, was only because she wanted to avoid making a "political statement." Sessions pressed further: Did she applaud or not? "He was my Supreme Court justice of my circuit. I stood up," she said.
Then-Sen. John D. Ashcroft (R-Mo.) engaged Sotomayor over a case in which an inmate had sued prison officials who had removed him from his food service job because he was openly gay, a move that, as Ashcroft put it, would "prevent disciplinary problems that could arise from having open homosexuals prepare food."
Ashcroft moved to a broader question: "Do you believe that there is a constitutional right to homosexual conduct by prisoners?" Sotomayor answered: "No, sir, there is not. . . . The only constitutional right that homosexuals have is the same constitutional right every citizen of the United States has, which is not to have government action taken against them arbitrarily and capriciously."
Ashcroft pressed on. "Are there any rights that are not protected by the Constitution that . . . you would like to see protected?"
"I have not thought about that in a while, sir. No," Sotomayor said.
Ashcroft was dissatisfied. "My time is not up," he said.
But Sotomayor held firm. "I think I answered," she said.
Sotomayor also came up short for then-Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), who asked her about a 1993 drug-trafficking case in which DeWine quoted her as telling the defendant, "We understand that you were in part a victim of the economic necessities of our society, but unfortunately, there are laws that I must impose." She said she could not recall the case.
The committee confirmed her five months later, with Ashcroft and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) voting no.
Watch the debate over the president's speech »
"As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology," Greer said.
"The idea that schoolchildren across our nation will be forced to watch the president justify his plans ... is not only infuriating but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power."
Nonsense, the White House replied.
"The goal of the speech and the lesson plans is to challenge students to work hard, stay in school and dramatically reduce the dropout rate," an administration spokesman said. "This isn't a policy speech. It's a speech designed to encourage kids to stay in school."
White House officials said that Obama's speech, the text of which will be available on the Web on Monday, is not unprecedented.
In 1991, President George H.W. Bush delivered a nationally televised speech to students from a Washington school, encouraging them to say no to drugs and work hard.
Charles Saylors, president of the National Parent Teacher Association, said the uproar over the speech is sad.
"The president of the United States, regardless of political affiliation, should be able to have a presentation and have a pep talk, if you will, to America's students," Saylors said.
Some of the controversy surrounding Obama's speech stems from a proposed lesson plan by the U.S. Education Department to accompany the address. An initial version of the plan recommended that students draft letters to themselves discussing "what they can do to help the president."
The letters "would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals," the plan said.
Under pressure from conservatives, the White House agreed the plan was not artfully worded and distributed a revised version encouraging students to write letters about how they can "achieve their short-term and long-term education goals."
The controversy is the latest example of how sharply polarized political debate has become.
