The Cruelty of Desperation

Pennsylvania seems to be the lightning rod for racism in this presidential campaign. First, Hillary Clinton began to effect a hillbilly accent while campaigning there during the primaries. Then John Murtha insulted his own constituents by calling them racist, and John McCain got tongue-tied trying to use the Murtha insult to ingratiate himself with another crowd of Pennsylvanians.

Then Friday rolls along and a young, unhinged McCain campaign worker self-mutilates herself with a backwards "B" and the McCain campaign shows its true colors.

Peter Feldman is the McCain Pennsylvania communications director who went to two television stations with the story that the worker had been mugged and mutilated by a vengeful Obama supporter, who just so happened to be black. Click here for the talkingpointsmemo.com story.

The McCain campaign pushed back and claimed the hoax story was spread by bad reporting, and could not be linked to the campaign. However, Keith Olbermann found to the contrary.

Now this same Peter Feldman appears to be connected to an outrageous email distributed to 75,000 Jewish voters in Pennsylvania. The email suggests that a vote for Obama is a vote for a second Holocaust.

Although the GOP tried once again to distance itself from the email blast, the consultant responsible for creating it, says otherwise, and the "otherwise" includes reference to the same Peter Feldman.

This is why I adore talkingpointsmemo.com: Josh Marshall is a determined journalist working through the medium of the Internet.

Which leads me to conclude that the cruelty inherent to feeling desperate is another one of those human traits that make self-rule and participatory democracy very difficult, indeed. Using fear to persuade, the legacy of Lee Atwater, who regretted these very tactics on his deathbed, has been kept very alive by Karl Rove and his protegees. It's a dreadful way to campaign and rule. The Democrats under Obama's leadership have resisted this streak this time. We have to figure out a way to return politics to a less devisive tone, so that it isn't about vanquishing the enemy, it isn't about pro-America and anti-America. It's about making a better and sustainable future for ourselves, as one nation on a very crowded and stressed planet. It's about balancing individual and community, and enlarging the definition of community to encompass the world.

Sarah Palin Unleashed, Racism Unleashed

There are signs within the shattering McCain campaign that there is much controversy about the proper role of Sarah Palin in the waning days until the election. One camp believes that she is the cause of McCain's decline. The other camp says she needs to be unleashed.

Palin is already tugging at her leash. Last weekend, much to the dismay of her handler, she held an impromptu Q & A with local reporters while deplaning in Colorado Springs. But let's remember that Colorado Springs is the epi-center of the radical right Christian movement, the world of mega-churches and James Dobson.

Read the analysis in Politico.com.

And then there is the issue of the unhinged campaign worker in Pittsburgh who falsified a police report that she had been mugged and mutilated by an Obama supporter. Rather than just let the incident play out, the McCain Communications Director in Pennsylvania, was briefing the press, telling reporters that the attack was a blatant retaliation for her working for McCain and that the "B" carved into her cheek stood for "Barack." Police became suspicious because the "B" carved into her cheek was backwards, a sign that the unstable young woman had carved the "B" herself. In a mirror!

That any campaign attracks weird and unstable people isn't surprising. It happens all the time. But for the McCain campaign to make this into an issue, to spread the word that a young white woman was attacked by an angry African American man was pure and utter race-baiting. And in a state where accusations of racism are becoming commonplace: first John Murtha and then McCain's botched attempt to use Murtha's comment to his advantage, but getting tongue-tied, he ended up agreeing with Murtha that Western Pennsylvanians are racist.

Read the hoax story and see the press that was preserved by talkingpointsmemo.com, the result of the McCain campaign's briefings.

John Moody, VP at Fox News, said that if the story turns out to be a hoax, then McCain is sunk because of its opportunistic and rash decision to connect itself with the story. Read this post from the Huffingtonpost.com.

Religulous-- Religion Merged With Ridiculous

Since I did go to see Religulous the film by Bill Maher, on Yom Kippur, and I was raised Jewish, one might conclude that I am not religious. I am not. It is not the worst thing I've ever done on a Holy Day, but I'm not telling.

Anyway we went to see Religulous. If someone believes deeply in a religion, don't see this film. It's sarcastic, funny, ironic, and did I say funny? Bill Maher interviews his mother, who happens to be Jewish, although he was raised Catholic in New Jersey. Apparently, he never knew why his mother never went to church with them and didn't bother to ask. Suddenly when he was thirteen, at just the age when church becomes unbearably boring because it didn't lead to copping a feel, his father stopped going, as did Bill and his sister. According to his mother, it was probably because as a couple, they used forbidden birth control. Although she never asked her husband either.

Yes, our generation, the Baby Boomers, was raised in families where nothing of importance was ever discussed.

I am jealous, however, because Bill Maher did get to go to the Creation Museum. When I first heard about this delusion constructed by Ken Ham in Petersburg, KY, just across the border from Cincinnati, OH, I wanted to go immediately. My daughter feared that I would make this into a destination spot on our next mother-daughter summer roadtrip. We didn't. Bill Maher got there first.

He got to stroll through a hall with dinosaurs and cave people despite the fossil record.

He also made it to the Vatican, Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount, although Maher's mother is Jewish, which technically means that he is Jewish, too. When I was in Jerusalem this summer, I did not get to walk into the Mosque because one had to declare that Allah was the one and only god. ( I wonder if I should have capitalized "god.")

And Bill got to speak to Jesus. Well, more than one. At Holy Land Theme Park in Orlando, he spent time with the actor who plays Jesus and who gets whipped and crucified six days a week. And he spoke with an evangelical preacher from Puerto Rico who believes he is the direct descendant of Christ and therefore, the second coming himself. (I wonder if I should have capitalized "second coming himself.")

There are some wonderful visits with people who skeptically question fundamentalism in any form: Jewish, Christian, Mormon, Muslim, Scientology. There are others who are wildly full of certitude about their religion and very hypocritical.

The last five minutes of Religulous get a bit preachy. So I won't. This is my take on religion, at least for me. I like ritual, anyone's, so I go to church, temple, or the local mosque for holidays and rituals when I have been invited by friends. I enjoy the music, where there is any, and the sense of community, so long as it is welcoming. And mostly it is. I enjoy the stories of religion, the fables, myths, and miracles, listening to them as allegories, not as fact. However, I am anti-authoritarian by nature, so I rebel from any "shoulds" in my life.

Instead I am often awed and humbled by the beauty, complexity, and incomprehensibility of much in this world. I don't put a beard on it. I don't put a face to it. I prefer to just let myself be overtaken by the spirit of wonder.

I am really annoyed by the misuse of religion in politics. I believe that the Republican Party has been taken over by fundamentalists who have a very different take on democracy and the separation of church and state. I hate the pandering to religious voters by both candidates. At one point in Religulous, Bill Maher has a chart of the number of agnostics and atheists in America: 16 million. I count myself as one of them. How come no one ever panders to us?

Afterword: Two young people from outside Wilkes-Barre, PA just left our house after buying one of our cars. They are both voting for Obama. The young woman who works in a hospital said that she thought some people weren't voting for Obama because of race. But it seems to be generational. So in Pennsylvania, the key to the election might be getting out the youth vote, the generation less touched by racism, unlike the older folks who remember how it used to be, when inequality was hidden, because no one talked about anything important.