The G Spot

Are today's wingnuts getting wingnuttier?

By Kathy G.

A question I've been pondering of late is this: are today's wingnuts wingnuttier than the wingnuts of yore? Are their ideas more extreme, their thought processes more irrational, their language more intemperate, their basic attitudes more angry and hateful?

Lately, I've been thinking that the answer to that question is a resounding "yes!" The anti-Obama sentiments many of the wingnuts have been expressing at McCain/Palin rallies have been more intense and extreme than I've ever witnessed toward any Democratic candidate. What's especially notable is that these sentiments have been have been more or less openly sanctioned McCain and Palin, who make constant insinuations that Obama isn't patriotic (such as McCain's charge that Obama "would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign") or that he supports terrorism (Palin's remarks about Obama "palling around with terrorists"). During McCain and Palin speeches, audience members have responded to mentions of Obama with loud, clearly audible shouts such as "Treason!", "Terrorist!", "Kill him!", and "Off with his head!", and yet were never rebuked by either of the candidates. I find this remarkable.

Furthermore, the wingnut conspiracy theories about Obama -- that he's a secret Muslim; a terrorist; a Maoist or Stalinist; that he murdered members of his former church; that Bill Ayers ghostwrote Obama's memoirs; or that Obama was, contrary to his birth certificate and all other available evidence, born in Kenya -- are as wild and perfervid as any I've ever heard about any presidential candidate. And let us not forget that some of those ludicrous rumors, such as Maoist/Stalin one, and the Ayers-as-ghostwriter one, have been propagated by allegedly "serious" conservative outlets like the National Review Online.

No wonder why William F. Buckley's son Christopher has publicly endorsed Obama. Christopher quotes his late father as saying, concerning the conservative movement, "You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks." And to some extent he did -- most notably, he banished the John Birch Society from polite conservative society. Yet the things being said about Obama are at least as nutty as anything the Birchers ever said (such as Bircher found Robert Welch's infamous charge that President Eisenhower was "a conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy").

Congratulations, Nancy Siraisi

By Kathy G.

This morning, I was surprised and delighted to learn that historian Nancy Siraisi was among the winners of this year's round of MacArthur "genius grants." The MacArthur is an extremely prestigious fellowship given to academics, writers, artists, scientists, activists, and other creative types. What's unique about it is that it is very generous (it pays $100,000 a year for five years) and that there are basically no strings attached -- the winners can use the money any way they please. 

The reason I was so pleased to see Siraisi's name among the winners is that she's a former professor of mine. The first time I walked into a college classroom at Hunter College was for her course on early modern Europe. It was one of those introductory survey courses that attempt to cover an impossibly broad terrain -- in this case, the history of all of Europe between the 1400's and the 1700's.

The subject of the course appealed to me, because, frankly, I find European history to be infinitely more interesting than American history. Don't get me wrong -- there's plenty of exciting stuff in American history, and I've long had a strong interest in U.S. women's history, labor history, and African-American history. But the history of Europe is, to me, much more fascinating. I think this is because it covers a much longer time period, and therefore, much of it seems whole lot stranger to me than American history does (which is not to say that there isn't plenty of weirdness in American history).

I mean, the Founding Fathers, of course, believed many things that are dramatically and profoundly different from what most 21st century Americans believe today, but at least I can see some common threads. Whereas, the God-and-Satan-obsessed world of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, with its popes, its kings and queens, its saints, its feudalism and its brutally oppressed peasantry -- well, that stuff is wild, and, for me, a whole hell of a lot harder to wrap my mind around. Which is why I find trying to understand it both more challenging, and more intrinsically interesting and rewarding.

Answered prayers

By Kathy G.

I'm traveling, so today will be a light posting day. But I did want to leave you with this: I am currently reading a splendid biography of Voltaire called Voltaire Almighty, by the Oxford don Roger Pearson. I'll have much more later on this wonderful book, but for now I just wanted to quote something Voltaire wrote in a 1767 letter:

I have only ever addressed one prayer to God, and it is very short: "My God, please make all our enemies ridiculous." God has granted my wish.

Looking at a what an utter farce and unqualified shambles the Right is these days, I have but one thing to add: a hardy "Heh, indeedy!"

Quick hits

By Kathy G.

I might not get around to posting today, but meanwhile here are some things to keep you busy:

Melissa has the latest installment of her disturbing Impossibly Beautiful series;

Ed Kilgore argues that the attacks on Michelle Obama won't work (I sure hope he's right about that);

The Politico reports on Mittens-for-Veep Mania (another story I kinda doubt but oh God please make it come true!);

Sir Charles writes about Senator Straight Talk's leetle tax problem;

Rick Perlstein gives us a primer on ratfucking (and yes, I think he's dead-on about the bogosity of the "Hillary supporters for McCain" movement);

The Siren relates an unforgettable anecdote from the life of Charlie Chaplin;

and finally, Harvard Magazine on unequal America.

On Stupidity

by J. Robert Parks

No, this is not a post about George W. Bush. Instead, it’s about blockbuster movies. I’ve always been lucky as a movie critic, in that I never had to review the big summer films. The paper I used to write for wanted me to focus on smaller fare, and I was happy to oblige. And now that I write for myself, well I can choose what I want. But just because I don’t have to write about the big movies doesn’t preclude me from seeing them, and I like to be somewhat current. So I thought I’d check out two of the biggest from this summer’s crop, Iron Man and the Indiana Jones sequel.

Neither movie is terrible. In fact, Iron Man is quite good with a great Robert Downey, Jr. performance, some sharp dialogue, and convincing action sequences. But these qualities are what makes its stupidity so frustrating. I mean, if I go to the latest Adam Sandler movie and complain about how dumb it is, I have no one to blame but myself. What else was I expecting? That man eats stupid for breakfast. But Jon Favreau is a solid director, and Iron Man’s first ninety minutes are surprisingly tight. And yet, the last half hour trots out every asinine cliche you can imagine.

It all goes downhill (major spoilers from here on out) when Gwenyth Paltrow’s character (the excessively loyal assistant who also looks smashing in a backless dress) has her first heroic moment. She has to go to Stark’s old office and download critical files from his computer. First off, why doesn’t techno-genius have backups at his home office? Second, if he’s been shut off from the company, how can Miss Priss just walk into the building, then into the office, and then just start working away on the computer? Our arch villain is smart enough to bar Stark from the building, but not the sidekick? And then, as if that wasn’t enough, the bad guy actually shows up while she’s there but doesn’t seem suspicious? doesn’t ask what she’s up to? doesn’t want to see what she’s doing at the computer? Come on! And even when he does figure it out, he just lets her walk out the door. My friends, that’s stupidity.

But we’re just getting started. The final confrontation and inevitable vanquishing of evil begin with Paltrow’s other heroic moment. Based merely on the title of a computer file folder, she’s able to locate the super-secret lair of the arch villain (really?) and then in nothing but a dress and heels escape when said villain enters the scene. That leads to the predictable showdown between not one but two Iron Men. While I’ll admit the special effects are kinda cool, I also couldn’t help but laugh at the synthesized growls that pour forth from our gladiators. Pain never sounded so ridiculous. But that at least makes some sense. Nothing can explain why yet another movie needs to trot out the hoary cliche of the villain dropping his guard so that he can taunt his foe at the moment of triumph. And how is our arch-nemesis finally defeated? By some kind of weird nuclear explosion that conveniently obliterates the bad guy and leaves our heroes, who are nearby and defenseless, relatively unscathed.

I could go on an on about the incongruities in Iron Man’s final act, but you get the idea. My major problem with all of this isn’t that the movie is unrealistic. Heck, I’m willing to swallow the first 90 minutes without a burp. The travesty is that it’s so lazy and unnecessary. I mean, this is a freakin’ comic book movie where the laws of physics don’t apply. They can make up whatever crap they want. And yet the filmmakers can’t come up with a more satisfying conclusion? A conclusion in which our super-smart villain doesn’t suddenly become super-dumb? Apparently not. Even worse, those same filmmakers know that today’s audiences are so undiscriminating that no one will even raise a fuss.
****
Indiana Jones and the Extremely Long Title at least has the virtue of being consistent. It’s silly from beginning to end, and that’s been true of the previous three installments, too. Our heroes can survive whatever catastrophe the screenwriter god throws at them--coincidentally, a nuclear explosion here as well. And they’ll always figure out exactly what they need to know, and just in time. So an unrealistic sword fight through the jungle while balanced on hurtling Jeeps? Yeah I can handle that. Amazingly carnivorous ants? No problem. I can even accept Spielberg’s weird fixation on aliens. The Jewish and Christian myths of earlier Indiana Jones movies strike me as more organic, but that probably says more about me than Spielberg.

So the stupidity of the new Indiana Jones doesn’t lie in its plot but in its approach to history. Now I know what you’re thinking. You don’t go to a Raiders of the Lost Ark sequel for what it has to say about the past, ancient or otherwise. Fair enough. But why then do writers George Lucas and David Koepp feel the need to evoke a particular time? The movie alerts us that this takes place in 1957 and then proceeds to show scenes involving nuclear test explosions, the Red Scare, a guy on a black Harley roadster, and a fight between greasers and preps. In each case, the historical motif is reduced to its most superficial essence, often to create a joke but sometimes to flatter the audience. It’s a bit like what tv shows such as "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy" have been reduced to. But instead of offering some pop culture reference, Indiana Jones trots out an historical icon so that Joe Six-Pack can lean over to his girlfriend and whisper, “It’s like James Dean.”

The problem with this is that we as a culture are becoming more and more divorced from history by the day. I won’t bore you by quoting the cultural theorist Frederic Jameson, but his ideas are prescient. He argues that in our postmodern age, we have lost track of historical time and now connect with history only through iconic images: Abe Lincoln’s stove-pipe hat, the flag raising at Iwo Jima, a nuclear test explosion. We don’t have any context for these images; indeed we can rarely tell which event happened in which decade. And, therefore, any understanding of how history might impact the present and lead us to a different, more progressive future becomes impossible.

The use of the Red Scare strikes me as particularly problematic. It would be one thing if Spielberg were actually using this to make some subtle reference to the Bush Administration’s use of patriotism as a way to stifle dissent. But the short scene is so laughable in its simplicity and so lacking in any kind of historical context that it’s just window dressing, as if one of our nation’s more ignominious moments was fodder for the production designer. This becomes especially ironic when Harrison Ford solemnly delivers the movie’s moral at the end: “Knowledge was their treasure.” I’ll make sure to put that on a bumper sticker.

Again, I can almost hear the objections. Why should we expect Steven Spielberg to teach us history? I never said we should. I’d prefer he leave out history altogether. The problem is that when history is treated as a library of images that a filmmaker can trot out for atmosphere, people are fooled into thinking that’s all history is good for. Or even worse, that because they can catch the reference, they actually know something about history. As Neil Postman wrote, “What shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?”

The Hillary-ization of Michelle Obama

By Kathy G.

Before I get to the main subject of this post, I wanted to share my enthusiasm about my favorite new blog: Ta-Nehisi Coates. Though Ta-Nehisi's blog centers on politics, he is also the author of a fascinating-sounding new memoir, The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood. (You can watch an engaging video about the memoir here). He's had some especially smart things to say about the presidential race. Read this post, for example, about Hillary Clinton's instantly infamous "hard-working white people" remark, and why "the obligatory 'not a racist' defense" is irritatingly beside the point, and offensive to boot.

All this is by way of introduction to my favorite of his most recent posts, this expert takedown of Christopher Hitchens' recent nasty, dishonest, and embarrassing attempt at a hit job on Michelle Obama (which appeared in Slate, wouldn't you know. And just when I thought Slate couldn't possibly suck any harder). Ta-Nehisi has a much, much higher opinion of Hitchens than I do (I think the man descended into disgraceful hackdom long ago), but that doesn't stop him from seeing very clearly what Hitchens was trying (and pathetically failing) to do in that piece, and calling him on it. Among other things, Ta-Nehisi points out that if you want to smear someone for the non-existent radical views they allegedly had in college, it would help matters if you yourself don't have a lengthy and well-documented past as a Trotskyite Trotskyist, as Hitchens himself does. D'oh!

The Hitchens piece, contemptible piece o' shite though it is, a surefire sign that, now that it's clear Hillary's presidential campaign is all but over, the right is proceeding apace with its attempt to Hillary-ize Michelle Obama. We have, of course, all heard about how "unpatriotic" she is. Maureen Dowd has already cattily attacked her for not being sufficiently deferential to her husband. And now we're being treated to Hitchens' exegesis of how her college term papers prove she's really Stokely Carmichael in drag. Delightful! But hey . . . radical, unfeminine, unpatriotic -- remind you of any other right-wing caricatures of a certain prominent Democratic woman with a famous husband?    

"He was nude. Nobody made him nude, he took his clothes off!"

By Kathy G.

Skyline, Jersey City, New Jersey

I'll explain the title of this post in a bit (and trust me, it will be worth the wait).

But first: while reading this fun and informative article about the political culture of Jersey City, New Jersey in Politics magazine, I came across the following quote, from former Jersey City mayor Gerald McCann:

"Politics is a big deal in Jersey City," he says. "Everywhere else the national pastime might be baseball, but in Jersey City the pastime is politics."

And it occurred to me: so maybe that's where it comes from -- "it" being my lifelong penchant for political junkiedom. I suppose I get it from my parents, both of whom are Jersey City born and bred. And I myself lived in Jersey City for a few years early on in my life -- in fact, my earliest childhood memories are from that period.

Here's the thing about Jersey City: local politics is indeed the number one obsession there. The other important thing about Jersey City is its longstanding tradition as the most politically corrupt city in America. New Orleans? Chicago? Kansas City? Providence, Rhode Island? Cicero, Illinois? Pikers, all of yiz*!

(*Linguistic note: "yiz" is the Jersey City-ese plural for "you" -- exactly as "youse" is the Brooklynese version of same).

As the Politics article points out, Jersey City has long held a well-deserved reputation on the corruption front. It goes back at least to 1889, when a New York Times story, headlined "Jersey City Corruption," described the city as (in Politics' words) "a hopeless cesspool in which corrupt judges, law enforcement officials, politicians and the press all interact to operate with equal disregard for law, ethics or the public good."

My family's history intersects with Jersey City's history. Indeed, my paternal grandfather was a Jersey City Teamster and a ward healer. I'd love to claim that he was a principled lefty who courageously fought the machine and stood up for the rights of workers everywhere, but sadly, the evidence indicates otherwise. Indeed, while Jersey City was very much a Democratic city, its political culture was not progressive at all, not even when it came to labor. Beginning in the 1930s, for example, the city's despotic mayor, Frank Hague, tried to suppress union activities.

Interestingly, both of my parents had a strong visceral reaction to Jersey City's head-to-toe, all-permeating culture of political sleaze: they became conservative Republicans. They tell a story that when they voted for president in 1964, theirs were two of only three votes in their Jersey City precinct for Goldwater (and they never did find out who the mysterious third voter was, either). My dad later became involved in local politics in the town where I grew up. Both my parents remain devout conservatives to this day, though I've spent a frustrating lifetime trying to argue them out of it.

Back to Jersey City -- there is at least one thing to be said in that metropolis's favor: politics there are rarely boring. Indeed, the history of Jersey City is one long, tawdry, albeit richly comic, spectacle. Above all, there are The Mayors. With depressing but predictable regularity, they end up in jail. And even when they don't, many of them blaze new trails in the annals of American buffoonery. Herewith follows a brief rundown of a few of Jersey City's finest.

Happy May Day

By Kathy G.

Depiction of Chicago's Haymarket protest, 1886

Today is May 1, May Day. In much of the world, this day -- sometimes known as International Workers Day, or Labor Day -- is a day that honors and celebrates workers and the achievements of the labor movement. Here in the U.S., we also celebrate Labor Day, but our version occurs on the first Monday in September. And too often America's Labor Day is treated as little more than an apolitical day of rest, in contrast to May Day in other countries, which is celebrated in a manner that is far more political and explicitly pro-organized labor. But the irony is that May Day began to commemorate an important episode in American history: the Haymarket affair.

The Haymarket incident occurred in my adopted home town of Chicago on May 4, 1886. Following three days of protests and a general strike by labor groups calling for an eight-hour workday, a rally was held in Chicago's Haymarket Square. A bomb exploded, police opened fire on the crowd, and apparently some in the crowd fired back.  A number of people were killed, including at least seven cops and four civilians. Eight anarchists, most of them German immigrants, were prosecuted for murder. Following a trial that many believed was a travesty, seven of them were sentenced to death, though only five ended up going to the gallows. The remaining three defendants were eventually pardoned.

Thereafter, Haymarket became a rallying cry for socialists, anarchists, and labor activists around the world. Emma Goldman, for example, credited her reading about the Haymarket affair with having a profound affect on her political views and helping draw her to anarchism. In 1889, a resolution was adopted by the Second International to make May 1, 1890, a day of demonstration for the eight-hour work day. That date was chosen in honor of the Haymarket martyrs. Many countries eventually adopted May 1 as a national holiday honoring workers, but not America. Uncomfortable with the radical associations of that date, Congress in 1894 deemed that the first Monday in September would henceforth be a legal holiday known as Labor Day.

And apparently, it wasn't enough for America to turn its back on the vibrant,radical, internationalist vision May Day represents and create a poor, largely depoliticized substitute (Labor Day) in its stead. We've also attempted to co-opt May 1 so that it serves an entirely different public purpose. Wikipedia notes:

the U.S. Congress designated May 1 as Loyalty Day in 1958 due to the day's appropriation by the Soviet Union.

And as if one right-wing holiday on May 1 wasn't enough for you, how about adding a second one?

Law Day was created in the late 1950s, by the American Bar Association to draw attention to both the principles and practice of law and justice, and to distract attention from International Workers Day. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established Law Day by proclamation in 1958. . . . Law Day has been resurrected by President George W. Bush.

Teaching Class

By Historical Agent

Most of us have (unfortunately) taken history courses that didn’t cohere around any narrative or set of arguments. Now that I’ve started teaching, I realize that even doing it poorly is much harder than it looks. Often I don’t see inadequacies in my lessons till I’m standing in front of my class and realize that I’m actually boring myself. I watch the students stop taking notes, fidget, and nod off as I ask myself, “Why am I telling them this? What’s the point?”

One such moment occurred the last time I was teaching the second half of the U.S. history survey (1865 to the present). I was lecturing about the labor movement in the late nineteenth century, arguably its most dramatic period: massive strikes met by state repression; the colorful culture of the Knights of Labor; the black flags of anarchists; the retrenchment of the American Federation of Labor. So what was the problem?

I don’t think it was that the students were uninterested in labor history. In fact, many of them wrote about strikes or union leaders for their research papers. The issue, I think, was that I was presenting labor history as just another social movement, with class as a natural category that transcends time. It seems like a trap that’s been set by a milquetoast interpretation of identity politics: students understand that hierarchies exist, but the liberal framework professors often use suggests that the only purpose of social movements is to make the hierarchies less onerous.

I was lucky enough as an undergrad to take the U.S. history sequence (both semesters) from the same fabulous Marxist professor, who really understood how to teach labor history. Now I’m trying to remember how she did it (didn’t save my notes—drat!). Part of the problem I have is that I usually only teach the second half of the survey; I don’t know if students have any idea of what concepts like the division of labor are. To start with the Great Uprising of 1877 is like telling them to walk into a movie an hour after it’s started.

Ultimately, what I want to do is figure out how to get students to see that the industrial working class had to be created. If this bores them too, I don’t care. It won’t bore me. And it will be on the exam.

I’m really curious to hear G Spot readers’ experiences with learning about class formation, especially if it was in a U.S. history course. Maybe it’s something the labor movement teaches better than college professors.

The unfinished business of feminism

By Kathy G.

Tom S. at Rust Belt Intellectual has a lovely post up about the unfinished business of feminism. He argues that the right and the media have caused us to misunderstand feminism because they've focused a disproportionate amount of attention on feminist elites -- theatrical activists and the like. But he and says more attention should be paid to what's been called "the other women's movement," aka working class feminism:

These feminists defined their struggle primarily in economic, not cultural terms. They represented blue and pink-collar women who, by the mid-twentieth century, were entering the paid workforce in increasing numbers, despite the pervasive rhetoric about the normative family headed by male breadwinners.

For these blue and pink collar women:

feminism really mattered. Against the odds, working-class feminists raised their wages and undermined sexist hiring practices, even if both victories were incomplete. Working-class feminists demanded better benefits and affordable child care and fought for family-friendly workplace policies. The feminist workplace revolution is still unfinished. And in fundamental respects it has been rolled back in the last two decades by biparisan indifference to the issues that matter most for ordinary working people, male and female alike.

Blue-collar and pink-collar women experienced the promise of feminism and its limitations. Today they have real reason to be bitter. In most states, family leave policies are still appalling, day care is expensive, and working women's wages are stagnant. Women are disproportionately represented in the ranks of part-time and contingent workers, both sectors of the labor market that are volatile and insecure.

This is a working world that is largely invisible to the young and to the privileged. And I think it helps to explain why so many older women gravitate toward Hillary Clinton.

Tom is skeptical whether Clinton, if elected, would actually do anything for these women. As for Barack Obama, Tom says:

it’s time for him to take off his bowling shoes. Rather than hanging out with men in blue-collar bars, he needs to reach out to middle-aged, working-class women who are the backbone of the expanding service sector, who dominate employment in the now-struggling retail sector, and who are the underpaid care workers who take care of the sick and elderly while usually returning home to take care of their own aging parents or children or both. Their votes will really matter in November, given the persistent gender gap in voting between Democrats and Republicans. It is folly to ignore these struggling working women. Their lives are a reminder of feminism’s unfinished business. Their continued economic insecurity is a reminder of the failure of our public policies. Women, carework, and workplace rights should not be a fringe issue. They matter to us all.

A-fucking-men to that! Obama would do well to listen to that advice. I don't think he's addressing economic issues nearly enough. And personally I haven't heard him say a word about work/family issues. Though I'm sure he's said something about those issues during this campaign, clearly it's not a priority for him.

I'll add that of all the candidates, I think John Edwards is the candidate likely to have done the most for working class (and middle class) women, which is one of the main reasons I supported him.

And I do really need to check out the historical scholarship on working class women in America. The women's history courses I took in college focused heavily on elite women, but as Tom describes it, the history of working class feminism sounds fascinating. I'm sure Historical Agent knows something about this subject and I invite her to weigh in on it, if her studies are not too overwhelming at the moment.