For two recent donations that are saving my ass. I don’t know if you all want to be publicly outed for your generosity, so I’m thanking you both here.

Some of you may know that I go from June to October with no income. Normally I can scrape by with cleaning jobs or temp gigs, but this year it’s not working. Those donations have been my only incoming cash. Sad but true.

So they mean a lot to me and to my kid. Thank you.

The New Yorker missed the satire boat and ended up with one of the most repulsive covers ever.

Now here’s how satire works. It’s supposed to piss off the wrong people for being called out on their stupidity and make everyone else laugh with it’s ridiculousness .

Swift got it in his “A Modest Proposal”. The idea of selling Irish babies as dinner meat to the wealthy was not a proposal that anyone would take seriously, but it did highlight the decadent ignorance of the wealthy.

The New Yorker just managed to reinforce negative stereotypes already in place.

Not funny. Not satire. Not working.

But I do have to give them the same credit that Violet Socks does. At least for those people industrious enough to read the article inside, the New Yorker goes about debunking the Obama is a radical myth.

Do we even care at this point? There are MASSIVE bank failures, 5 this year with 150 more banks on the verge, and the Fuckstick in charge won’t admit that there is a recession.

So I am going to sum up an hour long press conference for you right here.

The economy is growing. Banks are safe. Tax rebates haven’t had a chance to work yet. Congress is mean. Wah wah wah. Won’t let me drill in Anwar or build more refineries.
Terrorism. Terrorism. Terrorism. Ignore the increase in violence in Afghanistan. Al Queda. Blah blah blah

I watch these things so you don’t have to.

Jesse Jackson said Obama was talking down to black people. That is a perfectly legitimate statement made without racist framing.

McLaughlin said that Obama

“fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo — a black on the outside, a white on the inside.”

“Does it frost Jackson, Jesse Jackson, that…an Oreo should be the beneficiary of the long civil rights struggle which Jesse Jackson spent his lifetime fighting for?” McLaughlin asked his panelists.

That is using racist framing.

In the currently super charged political atmosphere, framing matters. And the only way we will ever be able to have much needed conversations about racism and sexism and classism and all the other isms, is if we throw out the framing that makes all those isms exist. Which means we need to get real good at spotting framing real fast.

First, a quick primer on what framing is. We all learned sentence structure in elementary school. We know that words have to go in a certain structure in order to make sense. “See the dog run” makes sense. “Run the dog see” does not. Framing is the structure we use to prove arguments as true. But unlike sentences, an idea should remain true across different frames. If it doesn’t then it is not a truth. For example, the argument used by forced pregnancy nuts about when life starts. According to them, as soon as a life is created it is sacred and should not be destroyed. If that idea were true, then people should be forced into organ donation. If it is okay to require one set of people to act as life support systems for other people because all life is sacred and should not be destroyed, then is should be okay to force all people to be life support systems for other people. That argument does not work across all frames, therefore it is not a good argument.

So why is McLaughlin using racist framing while Jackson was not. You might be tempted to say that it’s because Jackson is black, but we women know that membership in the vagina club doesn’t make you a feminist (Phylis Schaffly). Jackson is black, but that isn’t it.

Jackson’s comments did not require a racist framework to be true. Jackson could have been a white women (like both Redstar and I who had loads to say about Obama’s condescending Father’s Day speech) and his comment would still be true. And Obama could be a white man being just as condescending, and Jackson’s statement would be true.

McLaughlin’s statement, on the other hand, is only true if you buy into racial stereotypes and believe that one race is better than another. If you buy into McLaughlin’s Oreo trope and are black, for instance, then you believe that all black people should act a certain way and that Obama isn’t really black because he is educated and affluent. And that he isn’t “black enough” is a legitimate argument against him. You would have to believe that all black people are uneducated hoodlums from the ghetto who spend their days drinking 40s and playing dice on street corners and that any blacks who behave differently are trying to be white.

If you are white and you are buying into the Oreo argument, then you are just acting like Obama is a house negro. He’s passable enough that you can have him around you, unlike those other ones with all their strange ways. If you remove McLaughlin’s racist framing, there is nothing left to his statement.

But those of us who don’t by into racist stereotyping and framework, we know behaviors of all people, regardless of race (or gender or class or ability or ….), span then breadth of human experience. And one person’s experience isn’t actually more legit than another’s. Jackson didn’t frame his statement to disparage Obama’s experience. He didn’t try to negate Obama’s own identity with his comment. He simply pointed out that Obama is treating a section of people poorly.

If you cannot make an argument without using racist (or sexist or heteronormative or ablist) framing, then your argument won’t stand. Even if you think there is a kernel of truth in that argument.

I can say that Obama doesn’t get the struggles of the majority of the black community. I can say that without being black. Without being racist. I can say that because I can see the framing that he is using in his speeches. I can see the negative stereotypes he uses of lazy absentee fathers, without acknowledging that less than 40% of African American males are both free from jail and employed, making only a very small portion of black men lifetime partner material. I can see that those problems are ones of institutional racism and NOT the massive moral failings of a huge group of people. I can see in the way he talks about the self sacrificing single moms out there (especially since I am one) that he doesn’t get it. He sets up the good people against the bad people (hard working moms against lazy dads). Using that kind of framing doesn’t actually fix any problems. But looking at it without using stereotypes, we can say that we need more education, more jobs, more opportunity and fewer prisons. Those things would help everyone without setting up a competitive, hate-filled dynamic.

Framing matters. And it is one of the easiest things to change. When someone is making an argument, you need to look closely at the structures they use. Are they using stereotypes to support those arguments? Are they using commonly held beliefs (like there is such a thing as an Oreo) instead of actual facts? If you took away the stereotyping and the belief system, would the argument still hold? If you put the idea into a different frame, would it be true?

Let’s look at the Oreo example. Is it possible to be black on the outside but white on the inside? Does behaving in a certain way eliminate your membership in a certain oppressed group, or does it just change your personal experience? Does that argument hold up for other oppressed groups.

Imagine a tomboy. A girl who has never been into dresses or dolls or makeup. Does that make her not female? Would we push her out of the feminist camp because her experiences are different from the stereotype ideal we have of pretty pink girls? Nope. (Reason number 87907 that feminism is a good thing, it acknowledges that the female experience is vast and varied). Would we say ” well you act like a boy so you cannot know what sexism feels like”. Nope. She still gets to be female.

So no matter how Obama acts, he still gets to be a black man. His experience as one may be different from the majority. And that IS a legitimate argument, that he doesn’t have a solid understanding of poor black culture because he hasn’t lived it. But you cannot eliminate his blackness because it doesn’t conform to the stereotype.

Words mean things and framing is the basis for how we understand words. Legitimate framing makes arguments that are true regardless of the framework used. This has been one of my biggest problems with Obama to begin with, his use of Republican (and sexist and classist and abelist)framing. But that doesn’t mean that people who use those kinds of frames against Obama are right.

I had a couple of darling friends over last night, and over many glasses of tempranillo and a couple of cohibas, we talked about whether Obama really is “less” evil than McCain.

Now I am sworn to secrecy as to the identity of these two darlings. In super blue Seattle, admitting that you’re not part of the koolaid class could damage your social standing. I throw fabulous dinner parties and am a charming hostess, I can get away with publicly shaming the naked emperor. People still want to show up for my cooking. So I can say things like Obama is worse than McCain because we lose any hope of pulling the party back to progressive ideals for at least 8 years if he wins, with McCain we only have to wait 4 years. And during those 8 years we may lose the party to the right forever.

And right now, Bill Moyers is talking to a couple of conservatives on the tv about the fall of conservatism. At least one of the guys is an old school conservative, you know- separation of church and state, civil liberties loving conservative. Very Barry Goldwater. The other is a young whippersnapper, Contract with America type. Massive paraphrasing to follow.

The conservatives have lost their way and everything they once stood for, like individual freedoms, civil liberties, fiscal responsibility, etc. etc. has gone away in favor of the rabid dog of theocratic imperialism (totally my phrase). The idea being passed around by these guys is that the Republicans went so far to win, that they lost their basic foundations. Lockstep loyalty to the the party leader became more important than loyalty to the ideals that drew them to conservatism to begin with.

Lockstep loyalty to a party leader. Repeat that. Lockstep loyalty to a party leader became more important than ideals. It started with the hero worship of Reagan, but Newt Gingrich cemented the vote with your leader or die style of partisanship. Bush 2 took it to the end, with firings of Federal prosecutors who weren’t loyal enough to break the law for him.

Where else might we see people being browbeaten into loyalty to a party leader? Where else are we seeing party ideals like the right to bodily autonomy discarded in favor of party loyalty? Where else might we be seeing the party cave on the basic rights to privacy and freedom in order to push a candidate into winning?

We are watching what could be the crumbling of the conservative extremists. Instead of learning the lesson that truth to ideals is more important than finagling the vote, we have watched Obama co-opt the behaviors of the radical right. Instead we are seeing the most basic Democratic truths thrown out in favor of Republican appeasement.

So while a McCain presidency would hurt for a while, if Obama stays on the path he is on he could bring down the only election outlet progressives have for a generation. Imagine that. Imagine not seeing a real progressive Democrat for 16 years. Imagine that the party platform becomes middle of the road condescension instead of the progressive wish list of things we should be fighting for. Imagine not getting real healthcare reform before you hit retirement. Imagine knowing that your phone company can be listening in on your calls and never being able to fight them over it. Imagine that “safe, legal, and rare” is whittled down to just rare.

The ideal that the Democrats are supposed to stand for means more to me than actually winning the election. I gain nothing, and neither do you, by electing a conservative behind a donkey podium. It doesn’t advance our agenda. It doesn’t make us safer in our homes or give us access to jobs or education or doctors. It doesn’t do any of the things that we want our government to do. It’s a sham. And I will not vote for a president who doesn’t hold those ideals. If I did, I would have been a Republican, and I would have voted for Bush, twice.

There is no loyalty oath to the Democratic party, at least not one that I’ve seen. There is nothing that says you must agree with the party leaders or be thrown to the wind. I refuse to agree. I refuse lockstep loyalty to a candidate in order to win because I believe that it will destroy the party eventually.

While I will never vote for a Republican, and certainly won’t vote for McCain, I actually do believe McCain is the lesser evil. Or at least the evil with a shorter expiration date. I can wait for years, but I can’t wait a lifetime.

Look! I just updated the People Who Rock the Casbah blog roll. I meant to do it ages ago, but stalker trolls and life interrupted.

Now I may have forgotten someone- it’s not intentional, really. It’s just my addled brain. Please, if you want to be on the blog roll and are not, leave a comment (and or a bribe in the form of a libation that rhymes with “wodka”.

Smooches!

In a moment on Fox when he thought his mike was off and the camera wasn’t rolling, Jackson said “See Barack has been talking down to black people on his faith based programs. I want to cut his nuts off”.

I may not be black, but I am a fucking pro at noticing condescension and finger wagging. Jackson is dead on (though I wouldn’t go as far as nut removal). Obama simply buys into all the racist trope about the black community and frames his decisions in that way. Black fathers are uninvolved and lazy. yadda yadda yadda.

So if Obama simply doesn’t get the black community, and can’t be bothered as a Constitutional Law Professor to understand the foundations for women to own conrol of their own bodies, what other lovely bits of misunderstanding are we to get from him? The Fisa/ telecom immunity problem. Constitutional law professor seems to have forgotten about free speech and right to privacy (AGAIN).

And every time someone with some clout and political experience points these problems out publicly, they have to apologize for it.

The emperor wears no clothes, and no one can say a damn thing about it.

Via Pocochina comes this handy dandy Attachment Style Test.

No surprise with my results-

Your result for The Attachment Style Test…

The Player

20% Anxiety Over Abandonment and 46% Avoidance Of Intimacy

Take The Attachment Style Test at HelloQuizzy

It was Wednesday night dinner and we came up with a few tips on how to survive severe poverty while keeping a sense of humor. But first- the menu

Basil Crusted London Broil- bloody and rare ($4 at the ghetto mart)

Spinach and mandarin salad with raspberry vinegarette and goat cheese

Dumpster dive Olive bread with mozzarella and prosciutto

Box of cheap red wine. You need the wine to dull the pain of poverty. Really.

So in our wine addled state we came up with these helpful hints. Please feel free to add your own.

1) When bill collectors call, answer in cat speak. To every question, reply with “meow”. You can even sing the meow mix song. Eventually they will mark you as crazy and stop calling.

2) Dumpster dive at bakeries. Really, the olive bread came from a bakery dumpster in the sodo district somewhere. If I had a car I would totally be rocking the freegan.

3) Kill taste buds with cheap wine.

4) Hijack free wifi if you can. Since my neighborhood is not known for it’s super geeks, I still have to pay for the internet. But someday soon…………….

5) Ms. J says that Trader Joe’s frozen veggies are actually good. I’ll leave you to decide for yourself.I have yet to find frozen veggies that aren’t crap I wouldn’t have paid for if they were fresh. I never buy veggies or fruits in packages. It’s how they sneak the uglies in.

6) Learn the edible weeds that grow nearby. We have lots of fennel, blackberries, strawberries and cherries in the city. Go on walking scavenger hunts.

7) If, like me, you have a yard and a horrible black thumb, find a green thumb with an apartment and offer to trade growable land space for veggies.

8) I am half tempted to get a chicken or two. Free eggs and all that. But I wonder if that counts as having a pet or if I could chalk it up to food storage?

What are you all doing to survive the economic downturn?