There’s a fantastic post over at Jon Swift’s blog that chronicles the best posts at dozens of political blogs as chosen by the bloggers themselves. Lots of good stuff there. I didn’t see his email in time, but if I had responded, I would have chosen the post I wrote the day after the GOP Convention, The Great White Nope. By far, it’s the best thing I wrote this year.

So, here’s the deal with the whole “Barack the Magic Negro” controversy. If one were to give conservatives the benefit of the doubt, then one should mention that simply citing the “magical Negro” archetype isn’t racist at all, even when one considers the very non-PC choice of words. As described in Wikipedia :

The magical negro (sometimes called the mystical negro or magic negro) is a supporting, often mystical stock character in fiction who, by use of special insight or powers, helps the white protagonist get out of trouble. The word negro, now considered by many as archaic and offensive, is used intentionally to suggest that the archetype is a racist throwback, an update of the “Sambo” and “savage other” stereotypes.

In some ways, this one-dimensional caricature has become the liberal-guilt, mirror-image of the Stepin Fetchit stereotype, where the predominant image of the black man as foolish comic relief is replaced with the paper-thin portrayal of someone who is supernaturally wise and noble. Even if the latter is a more positive archetype, both “characters” are dangerously stereotypical.

Having said that, what’s so insulting about the fact the “Barack the Magic Negro” parody that’s all the rage among Republicans isn’t that they use the word “negro”, it’s that Barack Obama isn’t a magical negro. At all. The intense interest in Barack Obama’s personal life and the fact that the American people spent the last year getting to know Barack Obama and what he plans to do for the country all stands in stark contrast to the notion that Obama’s appeal is in any way one-dimensional in keeping with the “magical negro” archetype.

And that’s why this whole thing is so damnned offensive. It’s not that Republicans are being politically incorrect (though they do love to throw that canard around every time they get caught accidentally wearing their prejudices on their sleeves), it’s that GOP leaders are using racial stereotypes to demean the next President of the United States. If you spent the last year paying attention to politics, watching debates, listening to speeches (as I would hope leaders within the RNC have done) and you still can’t look at Barack Obama without concluding that he’s a “magical negro”, then you’re a racist. A simple-minded, closed-hearted, ignorant motherfucker racist.

Pointing that out isn’t “politically correct”, it’s just the truth.

Here’s a story that’s incredibly chilling at first glance :

For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument — that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. — very seriously. Now he’s found an eager audience: Russian state media.
. . .
Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russia relations.

But it’s his bleak forecast for the U.S. that is music to the ears of the Kremlin, which in recent years has blamed Washington for everything from instability in the Middle East to the global financial crisis. Mr. Panarin’s views also fit neatly with the Kremlin’s narrative that Russia is returning to its rightful place on the world stage after the weakness of the 1990s, when many feared that the country would go economically and politically bankrupt and break into separate territories.

Considering how scary things have been in Russia lately, the notion that one of their foremost intellectuals has been predicting a serious catastrophe for the United States is incredibly scary, right? Well, before you get too worried, here’s a map of what this “expert” believes the country will look like once our civil war splits our country apart :

Needless to say, anyone who has actually lived in the United States can see that this map is about as realistic as the “Jesusland” map that circulated a few years ago. There’s so much to criticize about this ridiculous prediction, so I’ll try to limit myself to only three complaints :

1) If the United States is going to have a massive civil war that ends up with the states being divided up among various remaining superpowers, isn’t it odd that every single state line would remain intact?

2) Lemme get this straight, the deep south would be under Mexican influence, but Southern California wouldn’t?

3) What are the regional differences that explain why Idaho and Colorado would be under Chinese influence, but Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado would be part of Canada? Same goes with Ohio vs. the rest of Appalachia.

This doesn’t even work as speculative fiction, much less the analysis of of someone whose opinion is being taken seriously by anyone with power. If this sort of crap is from one of Russia’s brightest minds, then they’re in serious trouble.

This post at Brand New of the best and worst logo designs of 2008 reminds me of a question I had about a recent redesign. Ummm…why does the Pepsi logo now look like it’s about to sneeze?

It occurred to me that there are some people out there who have never seen this. Well, I can’t let that happen.

I’m not being facetious here when I ask about Caroline Kennedy. Since she’s likely to be the next Senator from New York, I’d like to know a little more about what kind of Senator she might be. Until last year, this is the only thing I knew about her :

That and I think I might have caught her on a talk show once talking about one of her books. That’s it. I understand that she’s had a semi-public life, but I tend to follow electoral politics, not the lives of celebrities from political families.

I’m sure Kennedy is a good person and might make a good Senator, but her thin political resume makes her a blank slate. Where’s her political platform? Has she ever participated in a debate? Does she have a voting record of some sort? Being a prominent Democrat who supported Barack Obama is hardly a defining trait when we’re talking about appointing someone to the United States Senate.

Even worse, when I go to Wikipedia and try to find out what she actually stands for, this is what I get :

Seriously, this isn’t a joke. If Caroline Kennedy were a normal candidate for elected office, she’d have a website in which she presented herself to the people she’s trying to represent, but the closest I could find to that in five minutes of Googling was a Wikipedia bio and her entry at the IMDB.

Unlike every other name on the AP’s short list for the Senate seat, Caroline Kennedy has never been elected to anything, ever¹. The people of New York are supposed to accept her jump from “professional Kennedy” into the U.S. Senate based on the assurances of a few powerful elites?? At the very least, the Senate seat should be filled by someone who has actually been chosen by the people of New York for something. Congressmen, State Senators, Mayors, and other elected officials from New York should be outraged by the fact that Kennedy is able to cash in on her family’s name and skip ahead of dozens of dedicated public servants to ascend to one of the most powerful positions in the nation.

Must be nice.

^{1 : Before anyone mentions it, the selection of Joe Biden’s senior advisor to fill the open Senate seat in Delaware is equally unjust. In some ways, it’s even more bizarre in that Ted Kaufman is clearly just a seat warmer so that Biden’s son can run for the seat in a 2010 special election (Joe was re-elected to his Senate seat last month too), but at least in this case, the potential nepotism will ultimately be decided by voters.}

Barack Obama has officially won the election today, as the electoral college met and formally elected him to be the next President. What kind of message does it send to the electorate that every four years they’re urged to vote, only to get a passing reminder a month later that our constitution provides a backup clause so that we can be protected from ourselves? Isn’t the electoral college an embarrassing relic of when our founders deemed democracy to be too fragile to withstand the whims of the uneducated masses? As we’ve seen over the past eight years, the electoral college is hardly enough to keep fools from seizing power. In fact, as one of those who will never get over the 2000 election, I think the electoral college does a lot of harm to our democracy and should be abolished.

On a side note, I’m not taking the Obama sticker off my car until he’s sworn in.

You know who would be a better candidate for Senate than Caroline Kennedy? Anyone in New York who has ever run for elected office and won. State senators, mayors, city council members, judges, etc. I know the Governor can legally appoint anyone he wants, but I’d like to think that one of the minimum requirements to be a United States Senator is that at least one person, somewhere, at some point in your life, voted for you.

- I look forward to the day when I can IM people without needing accounts on AIM, Yahoo, MSN, and Gmail, or do social networking without accounts on Friendster, Myspace, and Facebook, or photo-sharing without accounts on Flickr, Picasa, and Snapfish, etc. That’s why I like email and HTTP. They’re simple, cross-platform, and you don’t have to favor one corporation’s proprietary crap over another to communicate with people.

- I like Bill Richardson just fine, but when I saw him nominated for Commerce Secretary the other day, I was instantly reminded that he was the only Democratic candidate who supported a balanced budget amendment to the constitution. Needless to say, if fiscal hawks like Richardson had their way, we’d be totally fucked right now. Being able to run up deficits during a recession is a very good thing.

- The Kinks finally have a box set (U.K. only) coming out, but the third of six discs ends with their work in 1971. Ooof…that’s a lot of late-period Kinks. For those of you who haven’t figured out how awesome the Kins are yet, you’d be better off just picking up their first eight albums used on Amazon. Or just Village Green and Something Else.

- Although I’m sympathetic to the fact that the Big Three are getting an undue level of scrutiny as compared to the financial sector when asking for bailouts, I’m still not a fan of bailing them out. There’s a lot of great “if we put X restriction in the bailout” ideas floating around, but the same discussions happened on the edges of the $700 bailout discussions too. Bailout-wise, the choice is going to be either a blank check or nothing, which is a shame because I’d rather see the auto industry saved either through a heavily structured bankruptcy package financed out of the $700 billion or nationalizing those industries completely and using their combined manufacturing muscle to (a) try to get a head start on 2009 infrastructure projects or (b) building stuff people want to buy. Of course, either would require a level of imagination and political courage that doesn’t exist in Washington D.C.

- If I start speculating about Bush giving a lame-duck pardon to O.J. Simpson, do you think that will that be enough to get me a guest spot on MSNBC or CNN?

- The economy’s in the shitter, but at least we’re still burning through money on missile defense tests. I hope they’re spending as many resources on “nuclear device smuggled in an unchecked shipping container” tests, since that’s a lot more likely to happen.

It’s not that unusual for evangelical leaders to play fast and loose with “thou shalt not kill”, but I am a little surprised to see the touchy-feely Rick Warren join in the act :

HANNITY: Can you talk to rogue dictators? Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust, wants to wipe Israel off the map, is seeking nuclear weapons.

WARREN: Yes.

HANNITY: I think we need to take him out.

WARREN: Yes.

HANNITY: Am I advocating something dark, evil or something righteous?

WARREN: Well, actually, the Bible says that evil cannot be negotiated with. It has to just be stopped. And I believe…

HANNITY: By force?

WARREN: Well, if necessary. In fact, that is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers.

Like I said, this is hardly remarkable. Televangelists like Pat Robertson have been openly praying the deaths of Supreme Court Justices and foreign leaders for years now. What I find unique about this situation is that Warren, through a spokesperson, cited specific Bible verses for his Christ-tinted deathwish. From ThinkProgress :

Does Warren really consider it part of his ministry to sanctify the inch-deep theologizing-cum-warmongering of thugs like Sean Hannity? If so, who else does Warren think Jesus would bomb?
I contacted Pastor Warren’s office for clarification, specifically to find out where, exactly, the Bible says that “God puts government on earth to punish evildoers” like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
. . .
Pastor Warren’s office called back to confirm that Warren was indeed referring to Romans 13. I responded, as I wrote in my post, that Romans 13 addresses the power of civil government to punish criminals, and has nothing to do with killing foreign leaders. Warren’s representative said she’d check on that and get back to me again.

So…Rick Warren, one of the most powerful and influential evangelical voices in the country thinks that our relationship to our government should follow what’s written in Romans 13?? This Romans 13?

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

Wow. It’s gonna be a quiet eight years, huh?

(For a Prop. 8 bonus, check our Romans 13:9-10. It would be nice for once if the religious phonies who use the Bible to justify their prejudices actually read the book they’re quoting.)