Never stop running

According to an article in Newsweek, Oprah Winfrey had been a member of Chicago's Trinity United church until the mid-nineties -- when she stopped attending services there, in part because of the inflammatory rhetoric of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. "Winfrey was never that comfortable with the tone of Wright's more incendiary sermons, which she knew had the power to damage her standing as America's favorite talk-show host," writes Alison Samuels in the May 12 issue, and then quotes an old friend of Winfrey's: "Oprah is a businesswoman first and foremost... She has always been aware that her audience is very mainstream, and doing anything to offend them just wouldn't be smart."

It's interesting that long before Barack Obama knew he would be running for national office, Oprah already knew she was running for whatever weird sister-confessor role she has held for decades -- and she knew she could never stop running. I still think Obama and his people were naive not to think that Wright would come back to haunt the candidate but his victory in North Carolina and near victory in Indiana would seem to indicate that this isn't the controversy that's going to sink him. Even Newt Gingrich warned Republicans that they were going to need something better than the scary pastor in the closet to beat the Democratic candidate in November. Willie Horton won't spook no more.

I guess I should say presumptive Democratic nominee, since Hillary is now engaged on the last, and possibly strangest, phase of her campaign: the dance macabre. It reminds me of a Randy Newman song: she's dead but she don't know it. Or maybe she does, since every pundit and pollster pretty much pronounced her such after she failed to deal a mortal blow to Obama. But after weeks of having meat tenderizer poured on him because of his relationship to Wright, she is the one with the fork being put in her. Watch for her surrogates and winged monkeys to continue to talk up her historic candidacy and the importance of every vote but did you catch Bill's expression while she was delivering her victory speech in Indiana? When he wasn't smiling and clapping with the crowd he appeared to be hearing a song of his own, over the hill and very far away...

It must be hard to live your whole life as if you are running for something when you're not sure what it is; Oprah wanted to be queen of America and damned if she isn't. Hillary wanted to be president but it's unlikely she's going to get another shot. And after that, every other job title just sounds kind of weak. Maybe she can take up preaching.

posted by Sean Elder @ 11:10 PM  0 comments

Endgame

We put our house -- well, one floor of it -- on the Fort Greene House tour this year to show off some of the progress we've slowly been making remodeling the old brownstone, room by room. It's a great excuse to do some spring cleaning and buy some new geegaws that we otherwise might not have. (After all, we've been talking about replacing the lighting fixture over the front door for almost nine years. Now we finally did it.) It's also a great excuse to get out of the house, unless your idea of a good time is talking to strangers about marble countertops.

Fortunately, it was beautiful afternoon -- the wisteria was in full bloom, the birds were on the wing -- so I went into a darkened theater to see a new production of Beckett's Endgame at BAM, conveniently located a few blocks from our house. John Turturro plays the part of Hamm, the old man in the wheelchair who is cared for by his servant and surrogate son, Clov (Max Casella). Hamm's father figure, Nagg (Alvin Epstein) -- whom he addresses as "progenitor" and "fornicator" at various times -- and mother manque, Nell (Elaine Stritch) live near at hand, in separate garbage cans. (Was this the inspiration for Oscar the Grouch?)

I probably read Endgame the first time in high school, and have seen several productions of it since then. It's one of those plays that makes more sense, and gets funnier, as I get older -- which could be said of Beckett in general. "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness," Nell says, "I'll grant you that. Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more."

I also needed to get away from the presidential primaries for the day. Everyone I met as I rambled through other people's homes on the house tour was an Obama supporter (they were responding to my button) which was no surprise: multiracial and regenerative, Fort Greene is Obama country. And they, like me, were experiencing some anxiety about the state of things. HIllary's Terminator-like tenaciousness and the tightening poll-numbers in Indiana and North Carolina are not making us question our faith (read the cover story in this month's Vanity Fair, about RFK's presidential run if you want to be reminded of the power of hope) or doubt the inevitability of his candidacy. But even as he brushes the dirt off his shoulder we want to go on. We still find it funny but we don't laugh anymore.

I saw a bit of Hillary in Hamm: his parents die, his surrogate son abandons him (or tries to, endlessly) and he yammers on, seemingly for his own amusement. "Me to play," are his first words, like those of a child, and the desire to put everyone through their paces -- promising sugar plums that no longer exist --keeps the absurd comedy in motion. "I'm warming up for my last soliloquy," he tells Clov, in hopes of keeping the disillusioned servant in his thrall. But the manchild has packed his bags. "Me to play," he repeats to himself and then, wearily: "Old endgame lost of old, play and lose and have done with losing."

This is a play whose ends are in its beginnings, as the characters keep reminding us, and Clov's first lines, spoken to the audience, are "Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished." I'd like to say it could end on Tuesday but some nightmares it seems you just can't wake up from. "You're on earth," as Hamm likes to say, "there's no cure for that."

posted by Sean Elder @ 5:54 PM  0 comments

Father of Night

There's definitely something mythical, if not Biblical, about Obama's repudiation of Jeremiah Wright. The word "jeremiad," which the OED describes as "a complaining tirade," comes from the Lamentations of Jeremiah in the Old Testament; he was a prophet who kvetched before there was a Yiddish word for it. Wright's arguments, advanced tirelessly between Friday and Monday, were not with the Lord but the world -- particularly the political world his most famous former flock member inhabits.

A few pundits have already labeled this Obama's Sister Souljah moment, -- but the black activist Bill Clinton condemned before the Rainbow Coalition back in 1992 was nothing to him. She was just a way of making a point: that he wasn't beholden to "the black community." Wright was Obama's pastor for 20 years --he married him and baptized his children -- and in breaking with him, he breaks with one of his spiritual fathers. As Maureen Dowd noted in her column today, "The Illinois senator doesn’t pay attention to the mythic nature of campaigns, but if he did, he would recognize the narrative of the classic hero myth: The young hero ventures out on an adventure to seek a golden fleece or an Oval Office; he has to kill monsters and face hurdles before he returns home, knocks off his father and assumes the throne."

I found myself thinking about Falstaff, whom Henry IV rejects in Part II of Shakespeare's bio-plays. (It's been said that only men appreciate the drunken, lecherous Falstaff -- a character in a Richard Ford novel says he's like the Three Stooges in that regard -- but legend has it that Queen Elizabeth was so taken with the old rogue that she ordered Shakespeare to bring him back, as he did in the Merry Wives of Windsor.) The old scalawag taught the young Hal plenty about the ways of the world (and how to have a good time) before he was headed for the throne. But by the time the king confronts the corrupt courtier and his posse at the end of Part II, the thrill is gone:

How ill white hairs become a fool and a jester!
I have long dreamed of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swelled, so old, and so profane,
But being awake, I do despise my dream.

Not that Wright is obese ("surfeit-swelled") or even a fool and a jester...much. Though watching the replays of some of his remarks, especially the Q&A period of his speech before the National Press Club, I wanted to yell, "Stop clowning!" The stakes are too high; this isn't about you but the whole country. And if this is but part of our hero's journey, it's the part where he begins to cut away the obstacles from his past that would weigh him down. As King Henry says to his former mentor,

Presume not that I am the thing I was,
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turned away my former self,
So will I those that kept me company.

Too bad Hillary can't brush off Bill like that! Now there's a man who's been in touch with his inner Falstaff...

posted by Sean Elder @ 11:47 AM  0 comments

Bite-sizing Wright

For anyone who might have thought, "I wish I knew more about what the Rev. Jeremiah Wright really thinks about our country," the last three days have provided an embarrassment of riches. Wright has been MIA since an edited version of some of his sermons rocked Obama's campaign last month but he returned with a vengeance on Friday, appearing on Bill Moyers' show for a fairly decorous (and heavily edited) return to the public eye. Then last night he spoke to the NAACP convention in Detroit in manner more familiar to those who have seen more of his sermons than the snippets from the infamous YouTube tape. Then this morning came the piece de resistance, a speech (picked up by all the cable news networks) to the National Press Club that was more secular (and sarcastic) than either previous performance -- followed by a Q&A period in which all hell broke loose again.

Asked about his comments comparing the terrorist attacks of 9.11 to "America's chickens coming home to roost" (an echo of Malcolm X's response to the assassination of JFK), he said, "You cannot do terrorism on other people and not expect it to come back on you." And questioned about his patriotism he replied, "I served six years in the military, does that make me patriotic? How many years did Cheney serve?"

Over at Fox News the Pepsodent twins they have hosting the morning news were beside themselves with glee, poring over their notebooks, as excited as kids who just got a pony for Christmas. Rather than rip into Wright themselves (they like to leave the heavy hitting to the show's evening stars, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity), they let the initial condemnation be voiced by one of the network's house Negroes, Juan Williams, who clucked in predictable fashion over the reverend's failure to disavow his own beliefs. At CNN, on the other hand, the reaction was slightly more tempered. Wright's speech was listed at the top of the hour (9 am EST) as one of three major stories breaking (fires in California and the man who kept his incestuous family in an underground apartment being the other two), and their morning crew (again, not the sharpest knives in the network's drawer) turned the damage estimation over to CNN commentators Roland Martin and David Gergen. Gergen, a political gun-for-hire, predicted bad things for Obama while the more Barack-friendly Martin (who had covered the Detroit speech the night before with Soledad O'Brien, the two of them dressed in matching dashikis) said it was the senator's challenge to distance himself from his former pastor. "He needs to remind people, 'I am the one running for president.'"

True dat. But even those who might be leaning Obama's way are going to wonder, who brought this guy to the party? Personally, I find Wright a dynamic and compelling speaker. The best thing about Moyers' show were the longer clips from the infamous sermons that put his controversial remarks in context, and it would be worth looking at the tape to get the full story. And having been to a few African-American churches, and heard a few preachers who come from the same tradition, I got some of the street-based humor and calculated outrageousness that stitched together his speeches last night and this morning. (He said Jesus was "playing the dozens" when he called His enemies a "brood of vipers.")

But most voters don't want the full story, as previous elections have proven time and again, and most white Americans don't know from the African-American church tradition -- sing-song hyperbole, passion and playfulness all mixed up -- and don't want to. The campaign can console itself with knowing that Wright rejected Obama for rejecting (if not disowning) him and promised that if he were elected, he would give him a hard time, too.

Right now, that looks like a big if. The success of Obama's campaign going forward will depend on how he handles the questions about Wright, something he feels like he has already done with his speech on race in Philadelphia this month. But just as Wright tried to win back his own story -- his life, his dignity -- by setting out to speak for himself instead of having his identity nibbled to death by sound bites, so Obama must now try and set his record straight. Tell the voters of Indiana and North Carolina, if not the nation at large, where he differs from his former pastor, and why. He no longer has the luxury of following the advice Wright says he got from his mother: "Better to be quiet and let other people think you a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt."

posted by Sean Elder @ 3:42 PM  0 comments

When the Music's Over

My wife and I attended the Annual Dinner of the White House Correspondent's Association last night, held at the Washington HIlton Hotel, aka the "Hinckley Hilton" where President Reagan was shot. I saw a lot people pointing to the actual sight of the attempted assassination, but no reenactments taking place.

The association has been hosting these events -- part roast, part comic revue -- for decades but it's been in recent years that the media organizations that bought the tables started bringing Hollywood stars in to add celebrity wattage to the luster of DC's deepest dweebs. I mean, I like Sam Donaldson and Joe Klein as much as the next guy, but they can't hold a candle to Padma Lakshmi or Kal Penn, two of the attendees I saw adding an international flavor to the festivities.

In an attempt at bipartisanship, the meal consisted of salmon AND beef, nestled against each other in a way that would nauseate your average vegetarian. So it was with the evening's entertainment: once the thousands attending the black-tie do were settled in the cacophonous ballroom beneath the hotel, they proceeded to ignore association president Ann Compton as she gamely tried to announce the recipients of the college scholarship awards they dole out each year. Despite her attempts to shame the crowd into honoring the students, the assembled wonks and demi-stars paid her no mind, intent as they were on mingling and schmoozing with each other. ("If a bomb were to go off here now," I asked a woman from the Obama campaign who I happened to be seated next to, "would the world be a better place?")

Then the president took the podium and the entertainment began. Bush is famously inept at prepared remarks, though my wife met him before the show and swore he was much more of a relaxed joker in private. Maybe he's just glad to be getting out of there. I sensed some relief among those in attendance at the prospect of seeing him no more. Though his jokes were equal parts game and lame, there was a great sigh when he said, "I'm going to leave you now..." Yes! His last gag, in which he led the US Marine Band, waving a baton like Mickey Mouse commanding the brooms in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, after declaring, "I always wanted to do this!"

Later that evening, Washington correspondent Carl Cannon, son of Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, called the moment "classic Bush."

"He is the frat-boy-in-chief," he told me, "but a lot of people would like to do that." Cannon and his father coauthored a book comparing Bush to Reagan (not altogether favorably) and he's had opportunities to defend him before. "Anything he does is by definition presidential. That doesn't necessarily mean dignified."

I'm all for being undignified (you should have seen the shirt I wanted to wear with my tux, the David Lee Roth number my wife vetoed) and I don't mind Bush pretending to lead a military band. It's him pretending to lead the military I have problems with.

The closer was late night comedian Craig Ferguson -- "another case of an immigrant taking a job Americans don't want," as the Scotsman (and newly minted American citizen) put it. It's a thankless task: after Stephen Colbert excoriated the media in attendance at the 2006 dinner, the association ran for cover by hiring Rich Little to do the honors last year. Little, who I literally watched when I was a kid, is best known for doing impressions of people who are no longer alive.

Ferguson, who is both an author and a recovering alcoholic, has famously broken the fourth wall of late night TV comedy a few times, as when he talked candidly about the hypocrisy of celebrity bashing last year. For this event, though, he generally hewed to a sort of safe middle-ground, making fun of his native peat ("Al Qaeda tried to bring a religious war to Scotland. You're a thousand years too late!") and such safe targets as the New York Times, which was too cheap, I mean principled, to buy a table at last night's event. His only real shot at the press there came when he said, "It's your job to watch the government and make sure they don't exceed their power -- well done on that, by the way."

posted by Sean Elder @ 4:30 PM  0 comments

Baby Mamas

I'm having trouble writing this since I'm bouncing a baby on my right knee as I try and type. I haven't had to do this in about 14 years but, like riding the proverbial bike, it comes back to you pretty easily. This baby is simpler than most; though he cries every 90 minutes or so, you don't have to feed or rock him. You just take a little key and stick it in his back. Then dandle him on your knee for a while.

My daughter is taking care of an electronic baby for extra credit in her health class. The electronic-baby gag was developed for kids in inner city schools years ago, as a way of showing girls who might be thinking of getting pregnant (or who might be thinking that getting pregnant wouldn't be so bad) the harsh realities of baby care. As any parent knows, taking care of a real live infant is not so simple as putting the key into the slot. And much more rewarding.

Because Aidan, as he had been named pre-assignment, is about as realistic as one of those surrogate women you can buy in porn shops (or so I've heard!). He's about the right dimensions of a healthy seven-to-nine month old, but aside from crying like clockwork, doesn't do much.

"Has he made his happy coo?" my daughter asked me, getting out of the shower. Not yet, I replied. As parents of real children know, the happy coo, accompanied by the adoring smile, is what keeps kids from being catapulted out the window by sleep-deprived parents.

I was initially skeptical of this assignment. After all, my daughter's expensive NY school is hardly the place where kids are sitting around harboring "Ms. Jackson" fantasies about the good life of being a grandmother at 35. Or so I thought. Then my daughter told me about an exchange she had with one of her friends who was also doing the baby thing. For Franny, the experience has confirmed her belief that having a baby -- certainly anytime soon -- is not an option. But her friend got all dewy-eyed and claimed that any woman who didn't have one was unfulfilled, and that getting up every 90 minutes was the meaning of life.

In a North Korean prison camp maybe. I was just happy to hand it back to her so she can take Aidan to school on the subway, getting dirty looks from people (because she's Latina, she insists) though one fellow did offer her his seat. Before they split I heard Aidan make the happy coo. A small victory for life, if not modern technology.

posted by Sean Elder @ 7:27 AM  0 comments

Cue the Arabs

After Clinton's decisive victory in Pennsylvania pollsters need to parse the effectiveness of her last-minute advertisement, employing images of Pearl Harbor and Osama bin Laden. She was expected to win the Keystone State anyway, of course, and Obama's people were quick to remind folks that they had narrowed a 30-point lead to a 10-point victory over the course of a few months. And most of the voters she got (older, whiter, bluer of collar) were ones many had ceded to her long before the bitter-voter brouhaha.

But did that fleeting image of bin Laden help persuade some of those last-minute voters she looks to have won? It couldn't have hurt, her people must be thinking, in which case you can expect to see more subliminal images marching through her ads: earthquakes, floods, Vesuvius erupting. "It's the toughest job in the world, you need to be ready for anything," the announcer declares, and only a superhero (aided by her league of superdelegates of course -- join now and you could be looking at an ambassadorship to someplace nice in about eight months!) can save the planet.

I don't want to add anything to the opinions already out there about the toll this is or is not taking on the party. Like Will Rogers, I only know what I read in the papers, and seeing the coverage of last night's primary in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal side-by-side was an instructive reminder of the importance of perception. "Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton scored a decisive victory over Senator Barack Obama on Tuesday in the Pennsylvania primary, giving her candidacy a critical boost as she struggles to raise money and persuade party leaders to let the Democratic nominating fight go on," ran the Times lede -- a scrappy kid-says-in-the-picture story that goes on to say that "her victory nonetheless gives her a strong rationale for continuing her candidacy in spite of those Democrats who would prefer to coalesce around Mr. Obama."

The Journal's take was slightly more downbeat, at least if you're a Hillary supporter. "Hillary Clinton kept her presidential candidacy alive with a decisive victory in Pennsylvania's Democratic primary, but still faces long odds in her quest to overtake front-runner Barack Obama on the road to the party's nomination," begins the report, going on to note that her campaign was struggling for money and that her margin of victory probably wouldn't change the conversation.

The Murdoch-owned Journal has arguably been more Obama-friendly in its coverage of the election in general, but its worth remembering that the Murdoch-owned New York Post started being friendlier to Clinton when it was obvious she would win her senate seat the second time. Is it just because he likes a good news story? (Look at the paper's coverage of the departure of the WSJ's managing editor, also on the front page: "Editor Out as Murdoch Speeds Change at WSJ," making it sound like Marcus Brauchli was old and in the way.) Or does he know something the Times doesn't, ie, when to back a winner?

More disturbing than invoking the Evil Cave Dweller before the closing bell were remarks Clinton made about Iran. "I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," she smiled sweetly on ABC's Good Morning America yesterday. "In the next ten years, in which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them." Actually, we're able to totally obliterate them now. Maybe she was thinking of her opponent. Or maybe she just wants to assure any Democrats leaning toward McCain that she remembers the Beach Boys too.

posted by Sean Elder @ 7:46 AM  0 comments