I'm sorry, but you just gotta love this guy

Obama gets choked up while thanking his campaign workers.

Mr. President, with all due respect - it's time to bomb the muthafucka

An F-15 Striking Eagle.

I don't usually write directly political posts here at the Hub Review. And I'm by nature a pacifist (believe it or not).  But I'm sorry, it's time - past time - for real solidarity with Libya, and by extension the rest of the Middle East. And that means military action against the Gaddafi regime (which even now is murdering its own citizens in Tripoli).  We sat on our hands as the Iranian revolution failed. Are we really going to do it again? Isn't there some way to push a resolution through the UN Security Council and quickly have some F-15s on their way to military targets (military targets only, not cities, not civilians) in Libya?  History has HANDED us an opportunity to re-align ourselves with an entire region (and with Islam), and we are, excuse me, so far blowing it.  The Middle East needs us now, and we can help its people achieve democracy - or at least a chance at a better life - with minimal risk to our own forces.

As for the usual fears regarding direct military action - yes, there are risks.  There are ALWAYS risks.  But this time the popular will would be behind a limited intervention, not against it, and that would make all the difference.  As for handing regional dominance to Iran - please; the Iranian regime is itself fragile.  Who knows if the fall of Gaddafi might bring about a renewed revolutionary spirit in Tehran, too?

And in the meantime - can you just imagine the faces on the fucking Tea Partiers and birthers - not to mention that idiot Glenn Beck and the disgusting Rush Limbaugh - if their arch-enemy brought down Muammar Gaddafi?  When Barack HUSSEIN Obama was behind the destruction of one of America's longest-standing enemies, the nutjob who outwitted Reagan and both Bushes?  I confess that would be a sweet, sweet day - almost as sweet as the fall of the Libyan madman would be to his own oppressed people.

The overreach meme reaches the arts (perhaps appropriately)

Artists have used Obama, so does he now expect them to return the favor?

On the same far-right site that I discovered the article on Tarantino and torture, I also discover this disturbing account of a conference call between Obama administration apparatchiks at the NEA and a "group of artists, producers, promoters, organizers, influencers, marketers, taste-makers, leaders or just plain cool people [looking to] to join together and work together to promote a more civically engaged America and celebrate how the arts can be used for a positive change!”

The money quote came at the end of the call, which was rather obviously designed as an effort at soft recruitment of "artists, et. al." into producing work that favored the administration's priorities:

"This is just the beginning. This is the first telephone call of a brand new conversation. We are just now learning how to really bring this community together to speak with the government. What that looks like legally? . . . bare [sic] with us as we learn the language so that we can speak to each other safely . . ."

This is only a single data point, but if accurately rendered, the exchange is troubling. The National Endowment for the Arts was not meant to be, and should not become, a "soft" propaganda arm of the federal government, and Obama supporters (like myself) everywhere should protest any movement in that direction. (Even though the irony is that most artists are only too happy to produce work in consonance with the adminstration's aims.) Of course the temptation to influence the artistic community is great at a time like the present - when the right is in full attack mode against reforms that have long been overdue, and is gaining traction with a malleable and anxious American public. But still that temptation must be resisted.

Meet the new Shepard Fairey

Posters like the one at left have apparently been popping up around Los Angeles and Atlanta. They're shocking, I know, but you have to admit they're devilishly effective. I wonder if the ICA will be giving this artist a retrospective in twenty years. Because frankly, in graphic terms his work is at least as punchy as the Shepard Fairey "Hope" poster, and equally inspired in its pastiche of the proto-fascism of The Dark Knight with "birther" racism (the Joker's whiteface does brilliant double duty here). In short, it's a great poster. So I wonder - will we soon see the emergence of a new, far-right form of "street artist," one that doesn't color within the politically-correct lines of the contemporary art world? I've long been telling Shepard Fairey fans that if they only stripped the politics out of his borrowed imagery, they'd perceive his work very, very differently. Maybe the "Obama Socialism" poster will help them see my point.

A brief pause while your correspondent joins ObamaNation!

Obama speaks at the climax of Sunday's concert.

Yes, Hub Review fans, yours truly succumbed to Obamamania and hopped a flight down to D.C. on Sunday. I was sure, actually, that due to what seemed like blizzard-like conditions, our plane would never take off - or at best would end up in the Hudson! But the spirit was with us, and after many delays we made it to Dulles, and then to D.C. (the shuttle drive into the city, with most of the bridges and half the streets closed, was almost more trying than the flight). And by late afternoon, my old friend Alton and I had actually made it to the concert on the Mall, just in time to hear Stevie and Bono and Arlo and Beyonce, and of course the Man himself (video captured from the camera of yours truly above), whose speech was short, sweet and genuinely moving. A few people around me were crying, and I was tempted to join in myself more than once - particularly at that tiny moment when Obama mentioned "gay and straight" from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (I'm very, very sorry that I missed Gene Robinson's convocation). I know, I'm as disappointed as you are that he's got that homophobic evangelist cracker blessing the inauguration - but has any President (or President Elect) dared to include people like me at the national table before, and so openly? I wonder what Mary Cheney is thinking right now . . .

I've never been in a crowd of over half a million people before - that was the local TV estimate, but due to the fact that the crowd actually spilled to the OTHER side of the Washington Monument due to the jumbotrons on that side of the hill (we got close to the reflecting pool, but then backed up for the epic shots), I'd say there were close to three quarters of a million people there. And if you're going to join a crowd that size, I'd advise you make it a crowd of liberal Democrats - the whole human tidal wave seemed remarkably orderly, and there was hardly any trash left behind (we hung around a bit, to check out some folks actually live-blogging from the grass of the Mall). Most incredibly, we kept overhearing chance encounters between people who had no idea they were both flying in for the event! What are the odds? Go figure. The whole wonderful afternoon really came off without a hitch - and to be honest, judging from the last hour, it was almost pitch-perfect in its themes and message.

Of course Tuesday will be even more of a challenge - at least twice the crowd, and maybe a little colder. We've scoped out our spot on the Mall on the Smithsonian side of the Monument, as we figure closer to the Capitol will just be too intense. Believe it or not, there were actually 250,000 tickets given out to the proceedings, so even those with tickets will essentially be watching Obama on a jumbotron (only once they're on the grounds, they won't be able to leave, or move around - yikes!). We've given up on the parade, as everyone says you can't do both (for reasons unknown, there are no jumbotrons on the parade route). So that's the plan - be down at the Mall by around 9, when the gates open, shiver and shake and eat our power bars till 12, then thrill that we're watching Obama on TV - but on TV in Washington D.C.! - then head home with 2 million other weary, frostbitten Americans (thank God my friend's digs are near DuPont Circle - we can just walk!).

It should be great. Our long national nightmare is almost over, my friends - of course cleaning up that nightmare is only just beginning. I'll blog again before I return to Boston - and I've got reviews of Cabaret and A View of the Harbor on the way.

Cheers! And remember - yes we can -

Tom

History has two faces

It's not as though I never thought I would see this day in my lifetime; still, even hours after the event occurred, it registers with a faint shock that this country has elected an African-American president. I grew up in the South, in the 60's; I can remember "Whites Only" and "Colored" water fountains, and my neighbors off-handedly using the "n-word;" yet I also remember when my local school began to be integrated, it happened with less fuss, ironically, than would occur in liberal Boston a few years later. Indeed, when I came to this city in the late 70's, it actually seemed more racist to me - or at least certainly more segregated - than my hometown; black cab drivers wouldn't take you to Charlestown or Southie in those days, and no white person went to Roxbury alone. Today, many of those color lines have eased (although I imagine most of my white friends could count on one hand the times they've been to Dudley Square), and opposition to racism has become our de facto cultural stance; indeed, it's hard to fight the feeling that so many young people are aggressively anti-racist precisely because it's so easy, so risk-free. Obama's race for them was therefore an irresistible draw; it represented political virtue with no penalty.

But progress often occurs through such ironic modes; the fact that many of Obama's young supporters would have contentedly gone along with racist tropes thirty or forty years ago doesn't really change the fact that once again, America has somehow transcended itself. What's more sadly ironic about this victory, at least to me, is that even while America has been rejecting its racism, it has been confirming its homophobia. In California, Proposition 8, which will enshrine discrimination against gays and lesbians in the state constitution, is expected to pass (validating, perhaps, the wisdom of the Massachusetts legislature, which killed a similar embarrassment before it got to the ballot). It seems that every time this country takes a step forward, we also take a step back. But what makes this defeat even more bitter is the fact that of all ethnic groups, African-Americans have supported Proposition 8 by the widest margin, and their turnout was far larger this year due to Obama - in a word, in his rise he unwittingly brought about discrimination against gay people. Strange as it may seem, many of those who were once the victims of bigotry have turned out to be bigots themselves. And they even use the Bible as their justification, precisely as the Southern Baptists used it in the civil rights struggle when they pointed out that the Bible justified slavery (which it does). To be blunt, if you believe in the Bible "literally," then you believe in slavery; I wish more fundamentalists and evangelicals, both black and white, were routinely reminded of that fact.

Still, one of the most salient points about Barack Obama is that he may prefigure a sea-change in African-American prejudice as well as white prejudice. He seems slightly distant to gays and lesbians, I think, but also accepting of them - he even mentioned gays in his acceptance speech last night (another tiny inch forward). And of course he opposed Proposition 8. Could he be the catalyst for a reversal in black attitudes? There was certainly a sense of historic re-alignment in Chicago last night - Chicago, the city whose riots famously doomed the 1968 Democratic convention, and probably the chances of the Democratic nominee that year, and perhaps, liberalism in general. (The riots even occurred largely in Grant Park, the setting for last night's rally.) Could history, hiding a smile, have returned to this fraught site with the purpose of launching a new liberal trajectory? Can Barack Obama possibly effect a genuine transformation of this country? His most ardent supporters always seemed to grant him that kind of messianic quality; perhaps it's time for gay rights supporters to begin to hope for the same thing.

It may already be starting . . .

After posting Katie Couric's accusations of sexism in the media, I thought it only fair to publish an image of buttons recently sold at the Texas State Republican Convention. I said in my post on Katie that the U.S. had behaved in a more sexist than racist fashion during the Hillary/Obama dust-up. But that of course could change . . .

Off topic, but top of mind: this time Spitzer, next time . . . Clinton?

Is anyone else thinking what I'm thinking? Yes, Eliot Spitzer is a hypocrite and an adulterer, and is guilty of his crimes, and was no longer tenable as Governor of New York. Still . . . the government's intense pursuit of this case is intriguingly at odds with its actual social value (if they were really interested in discouraging prostitution, for example, they'd only have to pick up a copy of the Phoenix to catch some leads - they'd hardly have to track Eliot Spitzer's cash transactions!). And let's just say the Bush Justice Department has a certain reputation for targeting Democrats rather than Republicans . . .

. . . So something tells me an elaborate attempt at a sting is almost certainly in the works for Bill Clinton. Yes, we've all heard of Canadian MP (and F.O.B.) Belinda Stronach (with the Billster, above), who for a time was rumored as his current squeeze; we all presumed the Karl Rove slime machine was geared up for a reprise of that rumor. But what are the odds that Belinda's been Bill's only hobby for the last few years - and let's be frank, what are the odds that he has, perhaps, moved large sums of cash around, catching the eye of federal regulators . . ? To move in with federal charges against Clinton would be, I have to admit, a truly superb October surprise (and right up Turdblossom's alley). But if such plans are in the works, why tilt your hand with Spitzer? Does Spitzergate indicate that Bushco doesn't actually have anything fresh on Bill?

Oh, who knows. But this is the kind of moment when I suddenly start to care a lot less about Obama's lack of experience in, or enthusiasm for, real world politics . . .