Heidi Li's Potpourri

One small blow for justice - an article worth reading

A good read about an important step toward returning the U.S. to the rule of law: Guantanamo inmates no longer "enemy combatants".

The Obama administration is moving swiftly, more swiftly than on the economy or other issues of social justice, to ensure that the United States is at dismantling the legal and rhetorical nonsense that put its treatment of Guantanamo detainees completely outside the ambit of international law, and in some respects, domestic Constitutional law. This is a positive, commendable development. It is not the end of the Bush era of abuse of citizen and non-citizen rights but it is absolutely a step in the right direction.

If the newly formed White Council on Women and Girls were to take as meaningful a step in improving the treatment of women in this country, it would be a major development. Go here to read the executive order creating the Council.

I have refrained from commenting on the creation of the Council on Women, because, like the Department of Justice, or any other office of the Executive Branch, the Council is positioned to make positive changes. It is also positioned to do nothing. Only time will tell.

In 1984, a great Democrat used the opportunity to address the Party and the Country about the Equal Rights Amendment

Today we have a Democratic President who is not a progressive, who is not, in my opinion, a liberal. He has expressed his admiration for Ronald Reagan. Thinking about our current president made me nostalgic for a time when a major Democratic Party player refused to play at wasteful bipartisan brinksmanship or speak of a fuzzy post-partisan era. Mario Cuomo spoke of unity, spoke of bringing the party together - but not just for the sake of collapsing the country into one politically mediocre middlism. He believed that Democratic unity - liberal unity - was what would bring our country prosperity and justice.

When Mario Cuomo spoke we on the left who did not have his platform knew we could outright criticize military adventures and trickle-down economic theories; we could demand that we take care of the old and the less well-abled; we could care about all races and orientations; and and treat women equally under our constitution. The 1980s were a lousy time for those of us on the left as they were so much the Reagan years. But at least we had leaders like Mario Cuomo who would speak out, publicly and courageously in the name of all these things, but even - oh my - the E.R.A.

Listen to Cuomo's speech here. My paraphrasing or even a reading of the text does not do it justice. Listen to it if you can.

Pay special attention to this passage:

"We speak -- We speak for women who are indignant that this nation refuses to etch into its governmental commandments the simple rule "thou shalt not sin against equality," a rule so simple [applause, chanting] --I was going to say, and I perhaps dare not but I will. It's a commandment so simple it can be spelled in three letters: E.R.A." [chanting, chanting]

It is over 20 years since Mario Cuomo dared to spell it out in three letters: E.R.A  -- while a convention hall full of Democratic delegates roared those letters back at him.

Can you imagine now a Democratic Party shining on the hill introducing the Equal Rights Amendment or fighting for the three state strategy or fighting, state by state - including all those supposedly newly blue ones - for its passage?

I confess I cannot imagine today's Democratic Party doing this. But may I be wrong. May the Democratic party wake up from its mediocre middlism and go to the mat for the majority, for the 51 percent of Americans who are not guaranteed the highest protection of their equality under the law.

E...R...A.....E...R...A......E...R...A.....E...R...A.

Political integrity, professionalism, and plain manners in a time where it feels unsafe to speak one's mind

Note: this is a revised version of an earlier post.

The comment, which was directed to this earlier post on this blog:

....

I don't really know or care what your formalistic obsession with DNC Convention rules are, and I doubt other GULC professors will care either. If you want to have a serious conversation about the role of sexism in the campaign, I suspect you might find some Obama supporters who are willing to have that conversation. But if you start by telling your other profs that they supported Obama because he's black, or because he's a man, or because he is hip, they won't respect you and they won't listen to anything else you have to say.

My reply, with identification of the alum redacted:

Dear Mr. G.

Because you did not comment anonymously and shared your views frankly, I am taking the time to to let you know that I have read and considered them. Of course I disagree with your perspective on my position on President Obama: I believe I have criticized him when it is merited, not demonized him. But as you note, beginning  by telling somebody something they are not likely to agree with is not a very engaging way to begin a dialogue.

So, let me just say that the most interesting point you raise, in my opinion - lawyer to lawyer - is whether or not my expectation that the DNC abide by its own rules (which would have included not awarding any of Florida's or Michigan's delegates to then-Senator Obama, which meant he would not have entered  the roll call ahead in the pledged delegate count or the popular vote count) is "formalistic". Legal formalism has a number of meanings; it is a contested term. One of the things it means is applying rules as if the substantive results are politically irrelevant. Since legal rules often have political impact, to do this with legal rules is sometimes criticized as missing that point, the point about the overlap between law and politics (how tight that linkage is or should be is another contested point.That point is not relevant to the DNC's conduct. The DNC is a political institution, and nobody I know would deny the link between the Democratic Party and politics. The problem is that the Democratic Party acted, for whatever reason, without political integrity, comparably to FDR when he attempted his Supreme Court packing scheme. Let us assume that both FDR and the DNC acted from good intentions: each believing that if they changed established rules in order to get particular results this would be justified because the results would be good. The problem with what FDR did was that it showed an unwillingness to win his case for the New Deal through politics and suggested a profound disrespect for those who disagreed with him politically. The problem with what the DNC did is that it showed an unwillingness to allow the delegates to the convention choose the Democratic nominee and a profound disrespect for the millions of primary voters who did not share the DNC establshment's preference for a candidate.

These elitist, authoritarian measures violate the spirit of liberal politics, which actually depends upon self-commitment to norms interpreted non-instrumentally so as to make politics more than a game of might makes right. In the long run, I believe right makes an political institution mightier and might makes right weakens political institutions. FDR's courtpacking move brought in the original vogue for laws institutionalizing term limits. I believe these laws to be undemocratic, preferring, for political reasons, a self-enforced political-cultural norm about the number of terms that is appropriate. Likewise, I believe that ultimately the current Democratic Party has marred itself by showing that it is as unwilling to respect the franchise as it was during Jim Crow days or the Republican Party was in 2000.

Note to readers: Many have sent comments or private emails to lend moral support and advice about taking care about running against the majority view in the workplace, especially around this election. I believe I was misleading in my original post. I will only comment on the election and its meaning for the law school if I can do so courteously and if it seems at all worthwhile. But I appreciate, greatly every message of support and solidarity. Camaraderie among dissidents is alive and well.

As for the morning session of the faculty retreat ... I made the choice to, in the words of the Beatles, let it be. The panel includes two of three colleagues who will work in the new administration in high positions. One will be working specifically on climate change, two others in the department of justice. These colleagues are liberals and not among those who chilled the atmosphere of the law center during the election season. They would have worked in a Clinton administration and will do good and important work no matter what. Today is not the day to distract from their aspirations. There will be better occasions to raise the issues that distress me.

For those in pain because today is not the day Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes President of the United States

Today, many men and women of good will toward this country and its new president are, nevertheless, heavy-hearted. These are men and women who looked heartily forward to seeing Hillary Rodham Clinton inaugurated president. In an election cycle when winning the Democratic nomination was tantamount to winning the presidency, these men and women worked and rooted hard for Mrs. Clinton during a hotly contested Democratic primary season, one where she won the popular vote and where we can never know for sure who would have won at the Democratic National Convention had announced and promulgated Party procedures been allowed to run their course.

Some of these men and women supported Mrs. Clinton despite of her gender, some because of her gender. For some, gender truly was not part of the equation of their support. Some, like me, started as a firm Clinton supporter for reasons that had nothing to do with Mrs. Clinton's gender and ended up realizing that in order for this country to ever elect a woman president, we will have to work together at the deepest of social and cultural levels - let alone in politics -to eradicate the misogyny and sexism that reared its head as soon as it became clear that there was high likelihood that a woman would become the next president of the United States. Misogyny and sexism did not just pop up out of nowhere, either. It was used deliberately or willfully ignored by alleged liberals from whom we expected so much better.

The pain felt today by many of Mrs. Clinton's supporters is the pain of frustration: frustration at realizing how deeply and pervasively sexism and misogyny infiltrate our lives and our world. It is the pain of impatience: impatience with others' obliviousness to the infiltration. It is the pain of anticipated toil: the toil ahead to put women into 51 percent of the positions in all spheres of public life so that eventually one woman with even half the qualifications of Mrs. Clinton will indeed be elected President of the United States of America.

We can take that pain and turn it totally inward, to the point where it exhausts us. Or we can take that pain and turn it outward, in the form of energy to fuel the changes we demand. As I have listened to Mrs. Clinton herself spend her time in the build up to being confirmed Secretary of State, I have witnessed a leader showing us how to do the latter. I do not know Mrs. Clinton personally, but from what I know of human nature and what I can glean from her odyssey since Denver, surely she has experienced some of the pain so many of her supporters feel today. I am also sure that, like all of us, she will always carry some measure of the pain within her. What makes Mrs. Clinton's leadership so extraordinary is that she exemplifies the power of pushing through the inner pain or going around it or using it to fuel continuing achievements.

If today you are among the hurt and the angry, remember that tomorrow (or the next day or the day on which you are ready), you will have a chance to take that hurt and anger and put it to use for full social justice for all people, including the 51 percent that are women.

Some pleasing surprises found today:

• a post over at Stray Dogs that Amble in: 51 Percent - "The New Women's Suffrage"
• donations from those who have recognized today with a contribution to 51 Percent
• newly discovered site to see: Madam Secretary

This is just incredible

Today was one of those days where the demands of work and life made it seem unlikely I would be posting. Frankly, I spent part of the day thinking about the fact that I know it will take a long time and a lot of patience to develop 51 Percent, to find funding for it, to make its mission clear and broadly known, and asking myself whether I had the stamina to see it through and the guts to take the risk to see whether it could become an educational backbone for a full fledged movement for social justice for women.

Also, I  wondered, whether this week and next, when so much attention will be paid to the political events of each day - and the events that merit critique will receive them from so many talented writers around the blogs and maybe even off - it made sense to post. I prefer not to repeat what others are saying, often better or more knowledgeably then I could.

But then, lo and behold, here, in Washington, DC,  the epicenter of inaugural schlock (T-shirts, onesies, coffee mugs), I received yet another email from another organization trying to make money off the onset of the Obama administration. (I've already been tapped by email solicitations to give to money to fund the inauguration itself!). The latest organization looking for dough: Ms. Magazine. The product they are hawking: a subscription that kicks of with their special inauguration issue. The cover photo they sent, designed, one must assume to make me want to subscribe:

Honestly, I did a double-take. A triple-take. Because if a feminist looks like President-elect Obama then a feminist looks exactly like somebody who has done nothing, and I do mean nothing, to suggest that he will fight for increased social justice for women. This is the person who has retained Jon "The Groper" Favreau as his chief speechwriter; installed Tim "I'm not really for serious guarantees of Roe v. Wade" Kaine as the DNC Chair; appointed far fewer women to his cabinet or to cabinet-level positions than Bill Clinton did and barely the number that George W. Bush has (more on that here and here and best of all here). Between the choice of Rick "Women who exercise their right to abortion are like Nazis" Warren to give the invocation at the Inaugural Ceremony itself and total silence with regard to how the economic stimulus package he is proposing will aid those likely to be hit hardest - yes, women - I have to say that if President-Elect is Ms. Magazine's idea of what a feminist looks like, I  would hate to see their vision of what an anti-feminist looks like.

While I will not be buying a subscription to Ms. Magazine, their solicitation reminded me that now more than ever, I want to stay the course with 51 Percent (even if it means, yes, seeking contributions from folks during these tough times - something I feel uncomfortable about - but eventually we will attract major benefactors and they, combined with the small dollar contributors will fuel the development of the Museum of Misogynistic Memorabilia and help us build up our speaker's bureau). I founded 51 Percent because I realized that most preexisting women's organizations got sidetracked somewhere along the way - sold out, bought off, distracted. I will not let that happen to 51 Percent. Unless we understand the basic injustice of a society where the majority remains vastly under-represented in public life (not just in politics but also in politics), we will get more magazine covers from purported feminist publications that applaud the feminism (!?!) of a incoming President who has ignored even this list of recommendations for moving justice for women to the fore of his administration.

Meanwhile, if you want to learn more about 51 Percent go here. You can find a mailing address for donations to 51 Percent here.

If you have $5.10 or $51.00 or any amount to donate, you can do so at the website or below. Moneys raised will be going to the development of the Museum of Misogynistic Memorabilia and announcing, via ads, the formation of 51 Percent and its Museum in select publications.  Please note that donations directly to 51 Percent are tax-deductible to the extent permissible under law, and donations via Google are direct to 51 Percent

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Reject trusteeship, forget about "normal politics"

"The basic cry of the [ANC Youth League] did not differ from the ANC's first constitution in 1912. But we were reaffirming and underscoring those original concerns, many of which had gone by the wayside. African nationalism was our battle cry, and our creed was the creation of one nation out of many tribes, the overthrow of white supremacy, and the establishment of truly democratic form of government. Our manifesto stated: "We believe that the national liberation of Africans will be achieved by Africans themselves. ...

The manifesto utterly rejected trusteeship, the idea that the white government somehow had African interests at heart."

Nelson Mandela, Long Walk To Freedom, p.99.

Reject trusteeship. This is the smartest phrase I have read in a long time when it comes to a fight to ending supremacy of a minority that works against the interests of a majority. Although Nelson Mandela was writing about the liberation struggle he and his compatriots waged against white supremacy in South Africa, the idea of rejecting trusteeship is going to be critical in the long walk to full autonomy for women (and anybody who is not a straight male) in our country.

Women need to appreciate that their liberation will be achieved by women themselves.

Consider each of three great emancipation/liberation struggles of the twentieth century: the fight for civil rights for blacks in the United States; the effort to end colonial rule and caste-oppression in India; and, most significantly for the post, the fight to bring democracy to South Africa. In every case there came a turning point, when the leaders of these struggles realized that they could no longer operate within a  paradigm of "normal politics". That is they realized that that for true social transformation to occur the emphasis had to be on transcendent politics, a willingness to fight from the outside, not from within.

None of these fights I just mentioned were fights directed toward ending misogyny or sexism ; women participated, but the struggles were not aimed at ending male supremacy; they were directed against other social ills and  led by men with some rather illiberal attitudes toward women. I'm not prepared to condemn these men - e.g. Martin Luther King, Jr., M.K. Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela - for their attitudes toward women. I prefer to learn from their experiences in bringing about major social change.

Mandela in particular is a source of knowledge and inspiration for anybody determined to see a vast social transformation, one in which an oppressed majority comes to the fore. Mandela's own development as a social and political thinker is a lesson in coming to understand true politics. I intend to continue to share his insights as guideposts for those of us who have found 2008-09 a time in which we realize that we cannot entrust the interests of women to preexisting institutions. We are starting almost from scratch.

I cannot pinpoint a moment when I became politicized, when I knew I would spend my life in the liberation struggle. ...

I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities, a thousand unremembered momements, produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned our people. There was no particular day on which I said, From henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead I found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise.

 Long Walk To Freedom, p. 95.

Do these words resonate with you? If so you are getting ready to move beyond normal politics - for Mandela's "politicization" was in fact a rejection of the politics as usual of his time and place; he rejected tribalism in favor of African unification, he rejected incrementalism in favor of sweeping social reform; he demanded that the people whose oppression he sought to end become empowered as both a means and end of that goal.

Let us demand the same for women. We do not need breadcrumbs from either political party - we need not beg them to protect the already withered and watered down rights to reproductive freedom that are essential to women's autonomy; we have seen the futility of supporting their favored sons in the vain hope that they will avoid employing and highlighting those who degrade and belittle women; we have seen that they will tolerate anything from a straight male regardless of the insult bestowed on women or gay men.

To be continued...

What are women, Jews, and gays - and those who care about them - going to do now in preparation for 2012?

If you are a Jew, a woman, a gay person or somebody who is not any of these but cares about somebody who is, and you voted for President-elect Obama in the primaries or the general election, read Katha Pollitt (article reprinted,with light annotation, below). Than ask yourself some tough questions:

• Why did you vote for then-Senator Obama?
• Has he met your expectations so far?
• Do you think he will in the future?

If you are unhappy with President-elect Obama's conduct now, what are you doing to work toward a better alternative candidate to support in 2012? If you think you will want an alternative, you better start working on that problem now, because the soon to be incumbent is already working to make sure he is the automatic choice for the Democrats in 2012, and that he maintains the money machine he created - depending on the precedent of foregoing public funding - to ensure that he will again be the Democratic nominee. We have had one term presidents in this country - usually succeeded by a successful candidate from the opposing party (e.g. G.H.W. Bush followed by William Jefferson Clinton; Jimmy Carter followed by Ronald Reagan). Now, there may be a Republican out there who you would be happy to see become president in 2012. But if you want an alternative to a Republican follow-up to the current term of President-elect Obama; and if you are have misgivings about President-elect Obama, for whatever reason, you had better start organizing around a different option for 2012, be that person currently an Independent or currently a Democrat.

My own view is that President-elect Obama, under the banner of empty p.c. talk, has taken real steps - ranging from the retention of Jon Favreau to the Rick Warren invitation to the cabinet appointments of Bob Gates and Ray Lahood - to erode whatever vestiges of a two-party system we have had in this country.  President-elect Obama has not ever and does not now speak for liberalism; he speaks for himself. But he will enjoy a tremendous advantage in getting the 2012 Democratic Party nomination: the Democratic Party ensured that for itself by rigging his receiving it this year in Denver. That is going to discourage any Democrat from taking him on. Of course, depending on how much damage he does to himself Mr. Obama may make it easy for the Democrats to nominate somebody else as an alternative by deciding to step aside, as Lyndon Johnon chose to do in declining to see renomination in 1968, a move that did not work out too terribly well for liberals or conservatives as it brought us Richard Nixon, one of the most disgraced and disgraceful Presidents our country has ever had to endure.

---

From the Los Angeles Times

Opinion

Rick Warren is an insulting choice

Preacher Rick Warren's views are simply too extreme for Obama's supporters.

By Katha Pollitt

December 22, 2008

To understand how angry and disappointed many Democrats are that Barack Obama has invited evangelical preacher Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inaugural, imagine if a President-elect John McCain had offered this unique honor to the Rev. Al Sharpton -- or the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. I know, it's hard to picture: John McCain would never do that in a million years. Republicans respect their base even when, as in McCain's case, it doesn't really return the favor.

Only Democrats, it seems, reward their most loyal supporters -- feminists, gays, liberals, opponents of the war, members of the reality-based community -- by elbowing them aside to embrace their opponents instead.

Most Americans who've heard of Warren know him as the teddy-bearish, Hawaiian-shirted head of the Saddleback megachurch in Orange County and the author of "The Purpose Driven Life." Perhaps they also know he's the rare right-wing Christian pastor who sometimes talks about poverty and global warming and HIV. His concern for those issues has given him a reputation as a moderate and has made him the darling of Democratic Party think tanks, ever hoping to break the Republican lock on the white evangelical vote.

But on the signal issues of the religious right he is, as he himself has said, as orthodox as James Dobson.

And as inflammatory. Warren doesn't just oppose gay marriage, he's compared it to incest and pedophilia. He doesn't just want to ban abortion, he's compared women who terminate pregnancies to Nazis and the pro-choice position to Holocaust denial. (Hmmm ... If a fertilized egg is as precious as a born Jewish human being, does that mean a born Jewish human being is only as valuable as a fertilized egg?)

Speaking of Jews, Warren has publicly stated his belief that they will burn in hell, presumably along with everyone else who hasn't accepted his particular brand of Christianity (i.e., the vast majority of people in the world). And forget about evolution -- the existence of homosexuals, he's argued, disproves Darwin. And while we may not know how old the Earth is, the Saddleback website assures us that dinosaurs and humans coexisted.

Warren claims that his views are mainstream, pointing out that in 30 states, the majority of voters have banned gay marriage. Popular doesn't mean right, of course, but regardless of what Americans think about gay marriage, on other so-called social issues, he's way out in far-right field.

Take abortion. Most Americans, whatever their personal feelings, are pro-choice. On election day, anti-choice initiatives went down to defeat in all three states where they were on the ballot. Most Americans do not think the one-third of American women who terminate a pregnancy are running a concentration camp in their wombs, and would have no trouble choosing between saving a Jew from a gas chamber and a fertilized egg from a fire at the clinic.

Or take marriage. At his Saddleback Church, wifely submission is official doctrine: The church website tells women to defer to their husband's "leadership" even when he's wrong on important issues, such as finances. Never mind if she's an accountant and he flunked long division, or if she wants to beef up the kids' college fund and he wants to buy shares in the Brooklyn Bridge. The godly answer is supposed to be "yes, dear." Is elevating this male chauvinist how President-elect Obama thanks women, who gave him more than half his votes?

Or take foreign policy. In electing Obama, Americans overwhelmingly rejected President Bush's Wild West approach to foreign policy. Apparently Warren didn't get that memo either. Unlike many evangelical preachers, he issued a statement against torture, but despite his access to Bush, he told Beliefnet.com that he never raised the subject of torture with him. ("I just didn't have the opportunity," he said -- although he apparently found plenty of time to lecture Obama about abortion.)

On "Hannity & Colmes," he agreed that the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, should be killed because "the Bible says God puts government on Earth to punish evildoers." Really? The Bible says the United States should murder the leaders of other sovereign states? How many other heads of state does Warren want to do away with? If Ahmadinejad, who is, after all, a more-or-less democratically elected leader, had shared his inauguration with an imam who had called on national television for the assassination of President Bush, Americans would be calling for the nuking of Tehran.

In a news conference Thursday, Obama defended the choice of Warren: "It is important for the country to come together even though we may have disagreements on certain social issues." That's all very well, but excuse me if I don't feel all warm and fuzzy. Obama won thanks to the strenuous efforts of people who've spent the last eight years appalled by the Bush administration's wars and violations of human rights, its attacks on gays and women, its denigration of science, its general pandering to bigotry and ignorance in the name of God.

I'm all for building bridges, but honoring Warren, who insults Obama's base as perverts and murderers, is definitely a bridge too far.

Katha Pollitt, a poet, essayist and critic, writes the "Subject to Debate" column in the Nation. She is the author, most recently, of "Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories."

Against the subjugation of women? Resist both infighting and selling out

Disagreements about how to end injustice, and specific injustices, are as old as injustice itself. Whether one is considering the injustices of colonialism, racist domination, oppression of women...in each and every one of these areas, those who can agree in broad general principle have often found themselves disagreeing over specifics, including some major ones. To make common cause does not magically bring about harmony.

When Gandhi fought to escape the injustices of British rule, he was opposed by people who resisted his ideas about throwing over caste distinctions. When Mandela picked up arms to fight apartheid, many withdrew their support from his movement. When King sought to expand his conception of civil rights to include equal access to economic opportunities, former and potential allies turned against him.

None of these examples of fights for justice achieved perfect justice, no more than the Civil War achieved a perfect Union. But I do believe that the U.S. Civil War achieved a more perfect union. Likewise, I believe the India of today is a far more equitable place than the India of one hundred years ago, that the South Africa of today, like the U.S. of today, has achieved within the past fifty years enormous strides toward racial justice.

My own dream is that within my lifetime, I see the progress toward the good of justice for women that Gandhi, Mandela, and King got to see the toward the goods of justice they pursued in their lifetimes. They managed to see results in their pursuits even though each had to learn when to resist pressures from people who genuinely shared their vision and when to resist the lure of becoming subservient to those who offered only short term funding and enrichment rather than truly shared commitment.

Now, even as I write this, millions of men and women are freshly galvanized to make it a reality that all the world comes to see women's rights as human rights, to see woman as just as much the paradigm representative of humanity as man, and therefore to see a woman's rights as indistinguishable from any human's rights. With all that energy comes passion and motivation. But with it comes too friction and infighting. With it too comes the willingness by some to give up the chance to speak truth to power, in order perhaps, to gain power, but nevertheless at the sacrifice of a chance to speak without fear of offending.

I believe that at the end of every day, and at the start of every morning, a person needs to be able to reflect upon herself or himself, and address these questions to herself or himself: if I am fighting for justice, am I making choices that do not compromise my integrity? What can I tolerate in allies even if I cannot join wholeheartedly in every step they take? Can I broaden my toleration without selling out my convictions?

Especially in the fight against the subjugation of women, men and women must ask themselves these questions, because one of the hardest obstacles to achieving progress toward the good of justice for women is the tendency toward infighting on the one hand and selling out on the other. Fighters for the empowerment of women tend to care about all sorts of injustice and obviously have some very basic differences, including differences in sex, race, and class. These differences can lead to fissures and cracks that can render the fight for justice for women, for justice for people, very tough going. But the common interest in justice for all must be used to resist the fissures and to repair them, when possible. What cannot be repaired is selling out. Certainly, one person's "sell-out" may be another person's "reasonable compromise". Personally, I believe in the necessity to question one's own choices in such matters very closely, because it is very tempting to see oneself as the reasonable compromiser, the unifier, the one who moves beyond "unnecessary" partisanship rather than to recognize in oneself the more natural tendency in human nature toward selling out.

For my own part, I prefer to err on the side of sticking to my convictions rather than losing them in a process of mollification and conciliation. If enough other people join me in those convictions, then they and I will not have to mollify and appease: we will ultimately have coming to us those who would now have us coming to them. We will be numerous enough and bonded together strongly enough in the fight for women's rights - the fight for human rights - to the point where will we have the upper hand, both ethically and tactically.

For my own part, I would rather take ten million baby steps toward the good without losing my footing in conscience than take a great leap and risk losing my moral compass. I will march with as wide a cohort as I can - even when we disagree on some things - in the name of reaching my goals. But I will not join ranks with those who are able to take heady leaps that gain them a seat at the local powerbroker's table or a grant of some of that powerbroker's money at the price of their integrity.

If ten million or twenty million or fifty-one million people choose to baby step along with me and I with them, we will, together, make the same rate of progress as those who choose to go it more or less alone. In the fight to beat misogyny and sexism, in the fight to achieve proper representation and empowerment for women, I expect great changes. I demand great changes. I will work toward great changes. But I know the greatest shifts toward justice take years to accomplish. To stick it out, every step forward must be appreciated and celebrated (e.g. Senator Clinton's name placed in nomination even at the admitted charade of a free and open Democratic Party convention) and every step backward must be condemned and resisted (e.g. the retention of a speechwriter for the President of the United States of America who participates in boorish, distasteful and sexist party shenanigans.) Time is on the side of those who fight for justice, so long as those who fight for justice do so with patience and tenacity, and resist the parallel temptations toward selling out or excessive infighting.

Why Rahm Emanuel's actual dealings with Rod Blogojevich do and will matter

I have just one question about this. Did Rahm Emanuel mention all of his connections to Rod Blagojevich on the famous vetting questionnaire that the Obama team supposedly required all prospective staff to answer? Given the broad wording of the questionnaire and the fact that Blagojevich has been under investigation for years for all sorts of crimes and shenanigans, I would have thought the Obama administration would want to know the full extent of overlapping ties, even if Emanuel has not done one improper or illegal thing in connection with the Senate vacancy created by President-Elect Obama's resignation. The issue that President-Elect Obama seems to have is one that cost him some people's trust back in the primary season. The change many of us have been waiting for is not us. It is a change from the hypocrisy, corruption, and absurdity that have riddled the last eight years of this country's political leadership. If the Obama questionnaire was meant to do more than provide protection for President Obama, that is, if the questions it asked were asked in good faith, seeking full disclosure up front in the name of creating a culture of transparency and truthfulness, then Mr. Emanuel should have revealed all of his overlaps and ties to Gov. Blagojevich. If you deal with dirty politicians, however much out of necessity, disclose your dealings; and, if need be, put them in context so as to show why you should not be seen to be cut from the same cloth. If Mr. Emanuel only now explains himself - or rather if an explanation is supplied only on December 22, when the Obama-Biden transition team releases its "internal investigation (the one that it has already told us clears its members of any wrongdoing), that is a post-hoc effort at rationalization, which is not going to cut it with people who thought that President-elect Obama was coming to the Presidency to stop that sort of thing. Since the inception of the office the President of the United States of America has merited a great deal of public scrutiny. No, this did not just start with Bill Clinton. In his own time, President Ulysses S. Grant's drinking habits were subject of much speculation; whether he was or was not an alcoholic and how that affected his ability to serve his country remains a topic of historical study and debate. The question of whether Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemmings came up during his first term as president. I have no particular view as to whether Grant's drinking or Jefferson's relationship with Hemmings mattered during their own eras or whether and how they should matter know. But I do have a view about Presidents who expect not to come under scrutiny. In anything like an egalitarian democracy, it is the right of citizens to question their public servants, especially those who enjoy great public power. It is their right to care about the precise relationship and connections between their President's chief of staff and an apparently crooked Governor from the President's home state. It is their right to care about who their President chooses to write the words he speaks; or who he chooses to bless his inauguration. It is not only unrealistic to bleat about how unfair it is for the public to care about these things. It is to forget that the American public has always cared about these sort of things, even if at times the press has been selective and inconsistent in its reporting on different Presidents and presidential candidates. Certainly, part of why people care is that they care about sensationalistic matters or matters that may have nothing to with a person's actual qualifications or ability to be a good President. But people also care because they want to decide for themselves whether what a President reads or who she or he puts into a kitchen cabinet relates to a President's qualifications and abilities. So, people care about how Rahm Emanuel answered question 63: “Please provide any other information, including information about other members of your family, that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the president-elect.” They care whether he had to answer the question; they care whether he discusses any of his dealings with Gov. Blagojevich. And they care not only because they voted for a change in our nation's political culture; they care because many of them voted for the candidate they did because they took his discussions of change to mean a change from low standards when it comes to corruption or even questionable dealings. People want to trust Barack Obama. Many react badly to people who criticize his integrity or trustworthiness. But again, to expect any President to be forever unscrutinized by the public is naive. And if a a candidate makes people believe he offers more integrity and truthfulness than any of his rivals, it is naive to suppose that President will not be watched closely to see if that President lives up to the standards he himself set.

If you think images do not matter, would you welcome these into your child's library?

Ferris State University, in Big Rapids, Michigan is a historically black university. It is also home to one of the most interesting museums in the United States of America: The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. One on-line exhibit is devoted to The Picaninny Caricature.

From the museum's website:

The picaninny was the dominant racial caricature of Black children for most of this country's history. They were "child coons," miniature versions of Stepin Fetchit (see the section on the coon caricature). Picaninnies had bulging eyes, unkempt hair, red lips, and wide mouths into which they stuffed huge slices of watermelon. They were themselves tasty morsels for alligators. They were routinely shown on postcards, posters, and other ephemera being chased or eaten. Picaninnies were portrayed as nameless, shiftless natural buffoons running from alligators and toward fried chicken. [footnote omitted]

Some of the images presented as examples of hateful imagery:

 

The museum also has online exhibits dedicated to depictions at the intersection of misogyny and race hatred. Two of these are here and here. From The Mammy Caricature:

• Is this funny?
• Is this cute?

If one of President-elect Obama's staff members had posed in the lap of a cardboard cut out with this mask photoshopped as the head, would that person still have a job?

A slogan from the Museum:

"THESE IMAGES FORCE A PERSON TO TAKE A STAND FOR OR AGAINST THE EQUALITY OF ALL HUMAN BEINGS."