(* With 10% of the country following some form of vegetarian diet, this number is based on the assumption that vegetarians break Democratic 3-1, which is a margin very similar to the LGBT community, non-Christians, and not "white non-Hispanic."
Also note: Women are also disproportionately Democratic. However, unlike all the other groups listed here, women make up a significant percentage of Republican voters, too.)
Even though there is some overlap between these categories, the vast majority of Democrats fall into at least one of these five. And by "vast majority," I mean "over 70%."
Now, of course there is still a not-insignificant straight, meat-eating, non-union, white Christian contingent within the Democratic Party rank and file. However, that group is older than the rest of the party, and as such continues to shrink as an overall percentage of Democratic voters. Non-whites, non-Christians, LGBTs and vegetarians are all disproportionately under the age of 50, which will make future incarnations of the Democratic Party even more skewed toward these groups. This process is accelerated even further by Republicans targeting their messaging, and making the vast majority of their gains, among Americans who do not fit into one of those five categories.
I write--or at least attempt to write this--in a value-neutral sense. It isn't good or bad, it is just who the Democratic Party is at this point. It is significantly not-"white non-Hispanic," and the "white non-Hispanic" segment is significantly vegetarian, non-Christian or non-straight. Among Democratic voters who fit into neither of these groups, it is significantly union. Further, demographic and political trends will only make this more so in the future. The end result will be a Democratic Party that looks much more like that Congressional Progressive Caucus, and a Republican Party that includes the Blue Dogs and Conservadems.
During a three-hour tirade about Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to transfer five detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the United States for criminal prosecution, Rush Limbaugh attacked the "dangerous" "ideologue" Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA), who in a Fox News interview that day discussed his support of Holder's decision.
--If Democrats do lose a significant number of House seats in 2010, the chamber as a whole will shift to the right. However, given who will lose, the Democratic caucus will actually shift significantly to the left.
--Yey, there is lots of water on the Moon! That's great and all, but if you want something that will really excite you about potential human colonization of space, check out the new VASIMR rocket--it can travel to Mars in only 39 days! Best of all, it was actually designed to ferry people and goods back and forth to a permanent Moon base, and is already being tested on the international space station. The pieces are really falling into place...
--New Stargate Universe tonight-and the premier of the Prisoner on Sunday. Woo-hoo
I will have a post up a little later looking at the merits of the Nobel Committee's decision to award President Obama with the Peace Prize. For now, however, I want to focus on the messaging of the award. It is pretty great:
Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts.(...)
Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.(...)
His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.
Shorter Nobel Committee: we really hated unilateral Republican foreign policy. In fact, we hated it so much, we are going to give President Obama the award pretty much for just not being a Republican. Just having the United States talk to other countries is good enough for us.
Seriously--it is hard to read this award as anything but the Nobel Committee giving the middle finger to American exceptionalism as the driving force behind American international relations.
The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists - the Taliban and Hamas this morning - in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize. Republicans cheered when America failed to land the Olympics and now they are criticizing the President of the United States for receiving the Nobel Peace prize - an award he did not seek but that is nonetheless an honor in which every American can take great pride - unless of course you are the Republican Party. The 2009 version of the Republican Party has no boundaries, has no shame and has proved that they will put politics above patriotism at every turn. It's no wonder only 20 percent of Americans admit to being Republicans anymore - it's an embarrassing label to claim.
.
Wow! That is just about the most aggressive, hard-hitting rhetoric I have ever read from a Democratic Party committee. It is like Alan Grayson wrote this response.
So, say what you will about the merits of the award--which I will discuss a bit later on--but the messaging is phenomenal. The world gives the finger to Republicans, Republicans can once again cheer against America, and Democrats actually get aggressive in their response messaging. That's not nothin'.
Update: Just to be clear, I like that the DNC is willing to be so aggressive, not that they are calling everyone who disagrees with the award Taliban sympathizers.
Second, only one side, Progressives (as always), are required to give up anything. This "compromise" moves in only one direction--toward a weaker public option.
The only floated compromise where this was not the case was the "stronger trigger" Pelosi floated last month. In that compromise, Progressives would be allowed to write trigger language, thereby making it a certainty to kick in and also allowing for a much stronger public option than any of the ones currently on the table. Of course, the Maine Republicans saw right through that trick, and the idea was quickly nixed.
The opt-out "compromise" offers nothing comparable in return, such as a public option that would be available to 100% of all residents in the states that did not opt-out.
Third, there is no indication this compromise actually has any votes behind it. In addition to garnering no Republican votes, it is a safe bet is that this would be opposed by a lot of House Progressives, and also opposed by a lot of other House Democrats who are from the red states that would opt-out.
Given both that we all expect Progressives to fold on anything and that it seems the 60-vote culture of the Senate means the House doesn't matter anymore, it is a common misconception that just because an idea is floated by a Senate Conservadem leader--in this case, Tom Carper--the idea has the votes to pass into law. That just isn't true.
The lesson here is that just because a Senate Conservadem likes it doesn't mean the idea can actually pass into law.
On top of all that, this compromise has a problem all its own:
It would be a Democratic and Progressive-sanctioned middle finger to the 16,094,055 Obama voters who live in McCain states. This is not even to mention the 4,282,367 Floridians who voted for Obama but whose Republican dominated legislature would opt-out the week after the health care bill passed. There are even a lot of non-voters and Republicans who would use, need and want a public option but who live in red states.
For all of these reasons, the opt-out compromise is not worth supporting. There is, however, one thing that it offers, and which I admit will be very tempting to many Democrats:
Spite
A public option opt-out is a good way for blue state Democrats frustrated with Republican obstructionism to both experience the benefits of progressive policies and engage in punitive action against those who oppose them. You don't want to stand up to insurance companies, are fine with having large uninsured populations, and don't mind crippling health care costs? Fine, you go and do that red staters. Enjoy your corporate free for all, while we start living better.
I admit, that can be a pretty tempting viewpoint. The vicious rhetoric against liberals and progressives for decades, not to mention the damage caused by conservative governance and power grabs, increases the desire to just go our separate ways. Just let red America have its corporate free for all, while maybe here in blue America we can regain some control over the system and prove we have better polices.
The opt-out plan still isn't a good idea, and we need to stop talking about supporting it. However, I do at least understand why it is tempting. Spite can be a powerful emotion in politics these days.
I was on MSNBC this morning talking about the Obama administration's difficulties in passing their agenda. There were three other guests on for a five minute segment, so I only ended up getting in one line. That is very frustrating, because there is something I really wanted to day: being more civil won't solve any of our problems.
All three of the other guests, and the host, at least partly blamed increasing in our political discourse for the problems we face. Pardon my French, but that doesn't make any fucking sense.
Being more civil won't create a single job.
It won't prevent a single home from being foreclosed.
It won't give a single person health insurance.
It won't lower the cost of health care by one cent.
It won't take a single molecule of greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere.
It won't stop a single soldier or civilian from dying in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Incivility is not the source of our problems. However, thinking that our problems are caused by things like incivility is a major problem we face. If we keep suggesting fake, bullshit solutions to serious problems, then we will never get to the actual source of those serious problems and thus have no chance of solving them.
Even when Democrats are in charge, our government has becoming overwhelmingly responsive to corporate, moneyed interests. That is the problem. That is why real income for the bottom 90% of Americans hasn't increased in 30 years. That is why health care costs so much. That is why we are unable to address climate change. That is why we are funneling hundreds of billions of dollars to Wall Street even after they crashed the economy. Just becoming more civil won't change any of that. Thinking otherwise is akin to just sticking your fingers in your ears and singing "lalalalalalala."
What we need are Democratic leaders who are as willing to take on these corporate interests-and their lackeys in Congress--as they are willing to take on the lack of civility in our political discourse. We don't have that right now. The Democratic leadership in the White House and Congress are much more interested in coddling the conservative, corporate Democrats who are a barrier to even modest reforms. They help them avoid key votes, close off primary challenges, and even work to shut down progressive advertising campaigns that seek to hold them accountable. We should be holding these corporate Democrats accountable with every political means at our disposal instead of talking about being more civil. Until we do, don't expect any change from the status quo.
I am glad that Rio got the Olympics. Brazil is an emerging powerhouse, and South America has never received an Olympics before. Its about time.
Further, the simple fact is that no city in the United States deserved it. If the Olympics are really supposed to be about increasing international cooperation, giving to the Unites States now would be a terrible decision. Here is why:
The United States hosted the Summer games in 1984 and 1996, as well as hosting the Winter Games in 1980 and 2002. If this is really about co-operation, one country should not be hosting one out of every four Olympic Games.
The last time the United States hosted the Olympics, the leaders of the host city's bid team were charged with bribery by the Justice Department, and ten members of the International Olympic Committee were expelled. Not exactly the best image for an event that is supposed to be about international co-operation.
It is more difficult for people from many countries to enter the United States than to enter other nations. Again, if this is really about international cooperation, that makes the United States a pretty poor choice.
The Unites States failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, unlike virtually every other country in the world. Why the one country unwilling to protect the planet from climate disaster should be allowed to host the premier event of international cultural co-operation is difficult to fathom.
Other examples of our lack of international co-operation include extraordinary rendition, the use of torture, not being a signatory to the land mine treaty, and the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. There is a very long list of our refusals to accept international standards for pretty much anything.
The fact is that we don't deserve to host such an important international event of cultural cooperation until we actually start cooperating with the rest of the world. In fact, I am pretty sure that is exactly why we didn't get the 2016 Games.
We may often not think that there are any forms of sanctions the rest of the world can levy on us for our actions, but the harsh reception to Chicago's bid--the first city to be eliminated once the political (that is, voting) stage of the finals began--shows that there are. Whether we like it or not, the rest of the world has not taken kindly to the list of actions I presented above. Not getting the Olympics is the first real comeuppance.
This defeat was exactly the outcome should be expected after our actions over the past decade. The 2008 election was not enough to just obviate everything have done--and continue to do--against the wishes of most of the rest of the world. Either we change, or international rejections of this sort will become more frequent.
Update: Oh yeah--as commenter Adam in Portland writes, there was also that bit about the United States crashing the worldwide financial system and sending the world into its deepest recession since World War Two. Bet that made us real popular, too.
Gallup has some polling data that should provide a bit of optimism about the state of the country. Over the past decade, there has been a steady increase in the percentage of Americans reporting that they are paying "very close" attention to the news:
Even adjusting for the peaks around Presidential elections, that is clearly an upward trend. Just guessing, but some factors involved in this increase include:
New technologies and media that make it easier to follow the news
Political and economic turbulence
An aging population
It is also worth noting that Democrats actually pay less attention to the news than do Republicans:
Reasons for this gap are largely demographic. According to Gallup, there is a correlation between high income, older age and paying close attention to the news, which favors Republicans. Also, according to Gallup's data, men (42%) pay significantly closer attention to the news than women (30%), which also favor Republicans.
The Republican advantage shows that while there is an increase in civic engagement taking place in America, that engagement does not necessarily favor progressives. More people are paying attention to the news, but not necessarily the lower-income, largely younger people who have been most severely hurt by the economy of the past decade. No matter how successful Democrats have been in wooing and increasing turnout among young people, there is still a lot of work to be done.
According to PPP, 35% of the country thinks either that President Obama was not born in America (23%), and / or that George W. Bush had something to do with the 9/11 attacks (14%). My favorite line in their press release is "a very troubled 2% of the population buys into both of those conspiracy theories." Ha!
On the bipartisan front, 25% of Democrats think that Bush was involved in the 9/11 attacks, while 42% of Republicans think that Obama was not born in the United States. While the relatively high number of Democrats who think Bush was involved in 9/11 does not really surprise me, it is something of a relief that a smaller percentage of Democrats hold that position than Republicans who believe Obama wasn't born in America.
I'm glad PPP did this poll, but I think they missed a chance to poll the actual Democratic equivalent of the "birther" conspiracy theories: that Bush stole the 2004 election. Those two conspiracies are equivalent because they deny the legitimacy of the President. Thinking that Bush was involved in 9/11 is more like thinking that Obama has a secret plan to indoctrinate American children with Islamo-socialism.
My guess is that belief in the stolen 2004 elections is more widespread among Democrats than Bush having foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. It certainly seems extremely widespread within the comment sections of the progressive blogosphere. I have never been kosher with that theory, and actually find it pretty irritating. This is both because I tend to find all conspiracy theories irritating, and because of the whining complaints about "a-list" bloggers like me being involved in a supplemental conspiracy to suppress evidence of 2004 theft (mainly because we are cowards who want to be taken seriously, or something). And I'm pretty sure that even writing this will result in a bunch of posts about how naïve and uninformed I am about the 2004 elections.
One thing I will say in defense of people who subscribe to all of these conspiracy theories is that such "radical" beliefs are to be expected when our political and economic system continues to fail such an enormous percentage of the country. Over the last 33 years, the bottom 90% of America has received less than a 10% of the growth in real income, and less than 25% of the total increase in our national wealth, even as the cost of education, health care, transportation, food and housing have all soared. When the system is failing people, they will inevitably turn to alternative ideas and conceptualizations for the cause our problems, no matter unsubstantiated those ideas may be. After all, why should you believe the official explanation for anything, when the people offering those official explanations have just been ripping you off for decades on end?
Not to always be the irritating know it all sitting in the first row of class or anything, but I have news for MSNBC. The culture wars never left American politics. In fact, they will always be with us. We are never going to enter a period as a nation where our cultural differences fail to have an impact on our political choices.
The only way we will ever enter into a post-culture war phase of American politics is if there is no longer an statistical significance in both partisan and ideological self-identification between people of different ethnic, gender and lifestyle demographics. To put it more bluntly, we will end move past the culture ways when cultural factors are no longer proving to have statistically significant impacts on partisan and ideological self-identification. As soon as there is no ideological and partisan gender gap, no difference ideological and partisan gap among people of different races, or between people who are straight and those who are not, or between gun owners and non-gun owners, and no difference between the way people with different religious identifications and attendance habits, then we will have entered the post-culture war period.
Problem is, that is never going to happen. It certainly has never happened before in American politics. Cultural factors like religion, ethnicity, and lifestyle have always had a statistically significant impact partisan and ideological self-identification. Irish-American Catholics and white southerners used to be overwhelmingly Democratic, for example.
It is worth considering if, when people call for an end to partisanship and ideology in politics, they are actually calling for an end to cultural differences in America. I doubt there is often a self-conscious connection between the two. The case of the David Broder's of the world, it is probably a symptom of living in a hermetically sealed demographic bubble for a while. In the case of the Obama administration and Obama campaign, it probably is / was a case of sending out code that "it's OK to trust me even if you think I am different." Also, it might be connected to an understandable desire to enter an era when cultural differences won't divide us as badly. However, given just how central cultural differences always have been, and always will be, to our partisan and ideological divides, it is still an unattainable goal.
The mention of that name, in the right circles, brings back a flood of associations.
Among them: a famous cabaret in Gay Paree, a Nicole Kidman movie rich in costume and set design and...well, a movie, anyway; or, if you really know your films, perhaps the association is with the 1952 John Huston "biography" film of the same name.
The one association that might not quickly come to mind, even though it should: ground zero in a battle that led to the desegregation of Las Vegas.
Today's story will fill in the blanks that you might have regarding that association-and by the time we're done, we'll have covered, just as we promised last time, the 55-year history of a place that began in 1955, lasted for not quite six months, and ended just last week...maybe.
It's another one of those American history stories you never heard before, and it's well worth the telling...so let's get right to it.
In celebration of the new Star Trek movie, which I will be watching tonight, I am taking the liberty of re-publishing an old article of mine: Star Trek As Progressive Mythology. My view is that science fiction that takes a positive view of the future, perhaps best exemplified in popular culture by Star Trek, is a progressive shift in the use of mythology. Instead of taking our ideal of society in an unattainable past, as conservatism does and as mythology has usually done, Star Trek views the ideal of society in an as yet unattained future, ala progressivism:
[L]ike with the X-Files, there are basically two types of Star Trek episodes. While the X-Files has "monster of the week" episodes and "myth" episodes, Star Trek has "ethical problem of the week" episodes and "galaxy politics" episodes. While I love both kinds of episodes, the focus on this post is on the "ethical problem of the week" type. Specifically, they always seem to resolve their problems by being, well, liberal humanists.
Star Trek is a rare phenomenon in popular culture: a detailed, future fantasy universe that is both based on our own past and that takes an overwhelmingly positive view of our future. Most popular culture science fiction either views the future in negative terms (The Matrix, Phillip Dick) or as an indecipherable "other" (X-Files, Arthur C. Clarke). Star Trek is an unusual view of our future simply because it is so darn positive. Poverty has been eliminated. Humans are free and united. People live to be over 100 years old on a regular basis. There isn't even any money! As Jean Luc Picard puts it, in the future world, individuals do not search to acquire wealth or power, but rather "to better themselves." As we travel around the galaxy making more new friends all the time, our beliefs in equality and self-determination always serve to make us stronger, even against totalitarian adversaries such as the Borg that in many ways are more powerful than the United Federation of Planets.
Star Trek not only shows what is best about liberal political structures and philosophies, but it is fundamentally a representation of the culmination of modernism and the great march of progress. It shows us what liberalism and modernism hope to eventually achieve, rather than what they have already achieved. It is, in that sense, a powerful mythology of modernism, of liberalism, and of progressivism. That works perfectly for those beliefs since, in contrast with conservatism, progressivism always sees the ideal of society as lying somewhere in the future, rather than in the past. As a result of our march of progress, things will be better in the times to come. Even for the characters in Star Trek, rather than trying to live up to some past ideal, rather than trying to imitate the unmatchable actions of super-human archetypes from the past, the best is always yet to come in new worlds and new cultures that are not yet known.
One of the problems with the mythology of almost any culture is that it tends to find our ideals in the distant past. The ways we should act as members of a family, as citizens of a public society, or simply as social animals have always been laid down for us by people who lived long ago (or who didn't live at all). In this way, most of mythology has been inherently conservative, depicting contemporary society, and indeed all societies, as but a poor imitation of the greatness of the past. However, if we are always trying to live up to the greatness of the past, we may have difficulties imagining a better future, which is a necessary aspect of any progressive. By taking the unusual step of placing your mythological greatness in the future--and not in an eschatological future, as the rapturists would have it--then what we are ultimately trying to live up to is the fulfillment of the promises inherent in our own liberal democracy: equality, self-determination, prosperity, and friendship. With this shift, mythology can become a progressive vision for self-improvement that is not bounded by the dictates of the past. Hell, San Francisco even becomes our capital. Hard to imagine a better place for the capital of a progressive future.
Dif-tor heh smusma. (Or, for you humans out there, live long and prosper.)
I started out fully agreeing with Rosenberg's recent posts, about inherent differences between Conservatives and Liberals.
But that agreement, and my first posts on the topic, occurred when I was half-awake last night. Today I have second thoughts, which I think we should all consider.
It is true that SOME Conservatives have a completely authoritarian mindset, and some are cynical and power-hungry predators. SOME of those may be that way, due a family tradition or culture that comes from the old landed aristocracy.
But, here is the problem. There are millions of Conservatives in America, and they have a range of traits. Some are further to the Right than others, and likewise each one will vary in the degree of authoritarian ideology, degree of cynicism, and so on.
I think that it would be "naive and dangerous" to believe that we can negotiate in good faith with men like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and others that are hopelessly far to the right. The only way of dealing with those far-right fanatics is to remove them from power (vote the politicians out of office, and bring down the approval ratings and audience size of far-right media figures).
But in the long run, we will be most successful if we can convert the Joe-the-Plumber types, and show them that our policies are best. And even if there are millions of Joe-the-Plumber types that have been brainwashed by the Right for so long that they will never see the truth, we can build a media machine to rival that of Limbaugh and Murdoch, so that the children of all the Joe-the-Plumber types will embrace Progressive politics.
If each of us begins to belive that every Republican is actually a ruthless Fascist, we will lose the ability to reach out to, and recruit, Joe-the-Plumbers. And likewise, when we talk about Republicans and Conservatives, we will speak about them in terms of stereotypes.
I will be a lifelong, die-hard opponent of Social Darwinsim and of theocracy. But even though I need to recognize that many of my opponents may be ruthless and cynical liars, I will constantly remind myself not to take a "guilty until proven innocent" view of my conservative opponents.
We are going to be talking a lot about swine flu over the next few weeks.
The conversation about the politics of the thing is already well underway, engulfing those who sought to remove funding for infectious disease control out of the "stimulus" bill.
We are lacking, however, an examination of the science of the thing, and that's the point of today's conversation.
How dangerous is this infection?
Why is it killing people in Mexico but not here?
Exactly what is a pandemic?
Do those facemasks really serve any purpose?
And what about closing the border?
They're all good questions; and they are all questions we'll try to answer today.
In the print edition of the latest Harper's, Terry Eagleton describes the radical, liberating thought behind the "art for art's sake" movement of the 19th century:
Art was play, not labor, and it held out a promise of emancipation to the wage slaves of the first industrial capitalist nation in history. The work of art obeyed no law but its own and could therefore be seen as a model of human autonomy. It had no reason or purpose beyond its own self-delight; and in a utilitarian age that judged things in terms of their practical functions, this glorious uselessness carried some subversive implications.
From William Blake to Oscar Wilde, art was an image of what men and women could become in changed political conditions. They, too, could be gloriously pointless; in fact, this was the whole point of human existence, which the gray-bearded champions of the work ethic had never understood. Human beings resembled works of art in being ends in themselves. Art of art's sake was not a retreat from politics; it was a politics all its own.
This article really hit home for me back on Sunday night, as I was returning from my first days of non-holiday related vacation since, well, since Open Left was founded two years ago. Why is it that progressive activists, who still seek to transform society in many of the same liberating ways sought by Blake, Wollstonescraft, Shelley or Wilde, are willing to live such utterly shitty existences to bring about said change? That is, why are our lives entirely dedicated to bringing about progressive political change, instead of actually experiencing the liberating progressive lifestyles we seek?
A lot of you know exactly what I am talking about. Working conditions for most people who make a living in progressive politics completely suck. Weekends don't exist. Vacations don't exist. 60+ hour workweeks are common, if not the norm. You don't make enough money to save up for a house, much less pay off student debt or save for retirement. Job security doesn't exist. For many, health care doesn't exist. Someone is always willing to work harder than you feel like you can possibly manage. Whether you are a blogger, a staffer for PIRG, working for Grassroots Campaigns, an SEIU organizer, or a campaign staffer, you have basically no life outside of work. And, even if you did, you couldn't afford that life anyway.
In September of 2007, one weekend I went to the Jersey Shore with a few friends in progressive politics. During the trip, someone said "oh--so this is what a vacation is like!" Sadly, someone else responded, "no--this is what a weekend is like." It was funny because it was so painful.
I'm not saying that people in progressive politics have it worse than people in any other profession. Certainly, there are many worse jobs someone could have than being a professional political activist, and undoubtedly there are tens of millions of Americans facing similar, or worse, problems of work exhaustion despite continued financial difficulty. What I am saying is that progressive political professionals are doing a pretty lousy job of demonstrating a better way to live. If we are working to make the country more like our organizations, then we seriously must be stopped. We are not ourselves living the progressive ideal, or really anything close to it.
I can't help but shake the feeling that the lifestyle created by the low-pay, few benefits and long-hours of progressive political organizations is actually part of the problem in our society, not the solution. We are operating like base cogs in an enormous utilitarian machine, not living up to the ideal that human beings are ends unto themselves and should be given ample time to live as such. It makes me think of David's great recent post "Existential Question: What The F%$@! Are We Doing?" Josh Marshall also had a must-read recent post relevant to this subject, and President Obama gave a good response when asked if he ever regretted running for President. Even so, there seems to be a big contradiction between what progressive activists are trying to achieve, and how we are actually living. Our lifestyles and workplaces seem to be part of the problem we are trying to fix. If haven't even liberated ourselves, how can we help liberate anyone else?
There may be no more recognizable icon of "Retro-Cool" than that photograph of the Rat Pack standing in front of the marquee at The Sands Hotel in Las Vegas.
They're right there, lined up in front of their own giant names on the marquee: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop.
Night after night they would gather with friends such as Shirley MacLaine, Angie Dickinson, and Johnny Carson, to deliver some of the greatest nightclub performances in entertainment history.
Today's story, however, focuses on what happened after the show: when four of those five could leave the showroom, drink at the bar, gamble at the casino, and go upstairs to their rooms.
In a town sometimes known as the "Mississippi of the West", however, one of those five performers could not do any of those things.
Our Journey In Two Parts literally crosses over to the "wrong side of the tracks", tells a story of segregation overcome, and recounts the six-month history of a Las Vegas hotel that has a 55-year history: the Moulin Rouge.
The only way for a pundit to assemble a large enough audience to succeed in prime time is to pander to their audience's ideological sensibilities and to dumb down their content to the lowest common denominator.
The notion that popularity is earned through stupidity can't die a fast enough death. Not that the notion is actually dying, just that it is an idea that needs to go away. The implication of such sentiments is that people are generally pretty dumb, or at least dumber than the person doing the evaluating. It is fundamentally a statement of elitism over the masses.
Dangerous Things are happening in America these days, we are told, and the once-innocent citizens of Iowa and Vermont have already been exposed to the hazard...and now it looks as though the contagion might spread to States across New England.
But lucky for us, our friends on the Right are here again to save to save us from...(insert horror film music here)...
...The Gay.
The Gay, it turns out, want the opportunity to marry.
Among other complaints, our friends on the Right feel this will destroy religious tradition, which will ultimately destroy first Christianity, then the Nation. Therefore, religious tradition must be protected at all costs.
Well as it turns out, there are some people from our past who know a few things about religious traditions and how they distort reality-and today, we'll examine the lessons they have to teach us.
What should we expect from President Obama's State of the Union speech on Tuesday night? Probably talk of our economic difficulties, but talk of how we are going to fix them through more public spending (especially on health care), less military spending (especially in Iraq), and eliminating the Bush tax cuts. And bi-partisanship. And hope. And by getting past ideology.
But I have to ask: why are State of the Union speeches a big deal? Presidents deliver speeches all the time, but these speeches are rarely covered lived on by all major television, Internet and radio news outlets. Within the professional political world of D.C., the SOTU not only is worthy of an acronym, but its annual parties are second only to changes of partisan power in Congress and / or the White House in terms of celebratory atmosphere. What is it about the SOTU that generates such intense coverage from major political and media institutions?
The answer, I'm pretty certain, is that over one-quarter of Americans actually watch the SOTU (possibly because many have no other choice). This makes it second only to Election Day in terms of popular engagement in politics. So, of course, it is a big deal in political and media circles. For all the cynicism and snide comments made about politics, the word derives from the Greek polis, which pretty much just means "place where many people live together." In other words, politics is simply the business of figuring out how people should live together. It is also why politics remains just about the only highly esteemed, creative class profession for which no real qualifications are required. In the final analysis, almost anyone is qualified to hold an opinion on how people should live together--and on how to convince them they should live together. So, of course, people in politics and media take this event seriously.
But this begs a more fundamental question: why do so many people watch the SOTU? (More in the extended entry)
There are quite a few words that seem to have changed their meaning as a result of recent political discussion. For example:
Maverick I used to think that "maverick" meant "someone who defies convention." Now, I'm pretty sure Natasha is correct when in thinking it means "irresponsible rogue."
Oversight In the not to recent past, "oversight" meant "careful supervision." Now, the proper definition of the word is "meaningless promise." Another possible meaning: "I have secured peace for our time."
Pragmatist For a while, "pragmatist" described someone who took the real-world outcomes to be the ultimate determinant for the meaning and / or value of an action, idea or policy. Now, I'm almost certain it means "someone who considers challenging the status quo to be too great a risk."
Ideological At one time, called something "ideological" meant it related to a larger system of values or beliefs. Now, it is almost exclusively used to call someone or something "non-centrist."
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While I am trying to be funny, I am not trying to be snarky. The meanings of words are contextual, and they can change as their use changes. The definitions of these words really are changing as a result of their use in our political discourse. How do you see the meaning of these and other words changing?
