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Rick Sanchez
There’s a lot of talk this week about Rick Sanchez’s quote: “I think Jon Stewart’s a bigot.”
For these and other comments, Rick Sanchez is no longer employed by CNN. And, that was the right decision for the network to make. It’s very easy to label someone as a bigot, or a racist, or a homophobe, or any other of a seemingly endless supply of epithets designed to make the target appear less sophisticated, less worldly, than the speaker.
Sanchez made this comment in an interview he was giving on Pete Dominick’s satellite radio show. Dominick, who rumor holds is working on his own show for CNN (hey, Pete! A timeslot just opened up!), and who used to work for Stewart, didn’t let that lie. He asked the inevitable followup question: “How is he a bigot?” The response?
“I think he looks at the world through, his mom, who was a school teacher, and his dad, who was a physicist or something like that. Great, I’m so happy that he grew up in a suburban middle class New Jersey home with everything you could ever imagine.”
Apparently, all that’s required to be a bigot in the mind of Sanchez is that you didn’t grow up poor. He seems to believe that there is some innate quality of humanity that is missing from people who grew up in a loving family where the bills got paid.
Of course, that applies to, well, a large number of people. Sanchez is pretty well known to not care for how Stewart makes fun of him, but the truth of this matter is that CNN recognized that Sanchez was pretty careful to call the entire middle class “bigots”.
I am not sure what Sanchez thought his viewer demographic was on CNN, but guess what? He thinks they’re all bigots.
I am glad CNN had the guts to say that enough is enough, and they won’t tolerate a news anchor insulting large sections of their audience. But what of Sanchez? Well, last year he tweeted the following:
do u know how much money i’d make if i’d sold out as hispanic and worked at fox news, r u kidding, one problem, looking in mirror
Well, Rick… if you’re still able to look at yourself in the mirror today, you might as well cash in and see if Fox will give you a primetime show.
I always liked John McCain. I regretted that he wasn’t the candidate in 2000. I probably still would have voted for Gore, but I would have felt that no matter who won, the country would have been in good hands. John McCain 2000 seemed to be someone who gave some thought to his issues, and didn’t hide behind a veneer of civility that makes politics seem so phony. George Bush seemed like a big phony, and someone who didn’t give a lot of thought to anything, let alone political issues. 8 years of his Presidency didn’t convince me otherwise, by the way. But those 8 years did a lot to convince me that what I thought of John McCain was incorrect.
McCain wanted to be President. He wanted it bad enough that he sold out his maverick nature to toe the Republican line far more frequently; frequently enough that his moments of breaking with orthodox thought appeared more bizarre than maverick. By 2008, he had fallen far enough in my estimation that I essentially never even considered voting for him. He no longer appealed to the independent streak in me, instead seeming fairly standard issue Republican.
And yet, maybe the maverick spirit lives within in the McCain family. I’ve liked Meghan McCain since she appeared on the scene – she’s a conservative, sure, but she has sensible stands on gay marriage, sexual freedoms, and she can explain her concerns on most issues, and is willing to listen. She also has a sense of humor, which counts for a lot. And she tells other Republicans that blind faith to far right agenda will never appeal to the youth voters, which is true.
And today, I have new reason to respect Cindy McCain. I always thought of her as the severe and somewhat mean-spirited woman on John’s arm. Not only was she a political wife who only seemed to speak in order to support her husband or take a swipe the candidate couldn’t take, but the darker rumor mill indicated she allowed her husband to get away with things that are verbal abuse. She seemed smart, but willingly used. So of course she had to throw off all my expectations by posting for the NoH8 campaign, a movement that photographs celebrities with duct taped mouths and No H8 penned on their faces, for promoting marriage equality – or, in another term, for gay marriage rights.
Mrs. McCain, I’m not sure I like you, as I genuinely like your charming daughter… but bravo. Bravo indeed.
Tonight, Massachusetts voted a Republican in to the Senate. This would surprise anyone who was looking at the race a few months ago, but comes as no surprise to those who’ve been looking at it for the last couple of weeks.
What does this mean for centrism? Well, you have to look at how the race was run.
On the one hand, it definitely reminds us that almost no state is a red state or a blue state. Like all states, Mass has a mix of people with a vast, muddy middle area. They elected Romney to office, after all, though he was a bit more liberal at the time. So it might be tempting to note this as a victory for centrists – that even in a “solid blue” state, moderates can and do influence the politics. A lot of people have said that Republicans could be in trouble if they go to the right particularly hard, and this might bear that out – for both parties.
On the other, neither side ran a typical campaign. Brown, for one, hardly ever called himself a Republican, knowing that word is anathema in Massachusetts. Coakley, on the other hand, sold herself mostly as a person with a penchant for misspeaking. Democrats didn’t take this race seriously, and it might have had another outcome if they had. But Brown’s strategy worked – Brown sold himself as a moderate, and yet a look at his record, while hardly the most conservative record in the world, if fairly solidly in the Republican camp. Whether or not the votes of Massachusetts will hold him to his promise of “social consciousness” while he has his personal beliefs tend towards the conservative side of the aisle will remain to be seen.
Now, the question is, what does this mean for the legislative centerpiece of the Democratic Congress, health care reform? I’ve seen a surprising number of posts tonight indicating that its dead, most of them in the “ding dong the witch is dead” vein (mostly from my conservative friends). And it could mean that. But keep something in mind: neither side really wants it dead, and neither side has to accept its death.
Democrats may actually come out ahead (at least in terms of how liberal a health care bill is passed), if they are willing (which is always the question with them.) The only option left to them is reconciliation, a concept I admittedly don’t understand well. I thought it could only be used for the budget. But people talk about using it for health care reform. If Democrats move this direction – costly as it may be in terms of making them look like they are playing fair – then they only need 51 votes in the Senate. They can tell Lieberman and Nelson to take their amendments and shove them, and pass the House version generally in tact. This might be a monumentally unwise move by the Democrats, but cornered animals tend to do strange things.
On the other hand, while no Republican in the world would admit it, they need Health Care as an issue. If they kill it now, it – meaning the need to repeal the bill – doesn’t help with the mid-terms and doesn’t help in 2012. I wonder if we’ll see Snowe or another moderate Republican have a change of heart, though that may be the cynical part of my brain.
What does this mean for the future? Not a whole lot. It will keep Steele in his job a little longer, and it will re-energize the morale of a number of downtrodden Republicans, but like NY23, it won’t maintain its party switch. Come 2012, barring a truly popular Republican with incredible coat tails, one Kennedy or another will decide to run, and take it from Brown. In short, what this race does is one thing only – remind us that the political pendulum in America is ever-swinging.
The powerful earthquake in Haiti was nothing but a tragedy. Everyone knows this. A fault runs directly beneath a large city that is built out of the most flimsy materials available, and it is an unmitigated disaster. There is a very good list of links to how to help at the Washington Post here.
As I said, everyone seems to get the utterly catastrophic scale of the disaster. And yet we act shocked that some people are taking advantage of the disaster to make their own twisted points. People who’ve done so repeatedly in the past. For example, Pat Robertson, who has in the past talked about drowning New Orleans for its sin, has said that Haiti is cursed to disasters because of a deal with the devil for its freedom.
Something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. Napoleon the Third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, “We will serve you if you get us free from the prince.” True story. And so the devil said, “OK, it’s a deal.” They kicked the French out, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other…
Leaving aside the asinine nature of making the claim, the weak theology backing it up, the fact that Haiti is overwhelmingly Christian – 96% are Roman Catholics or Protestants, and the fact that a man of God should be spreading comfort, not trouble, in such times, we all need to remember one thing: he wants this attention. He needs it. He craves it.
People are calling Robertson a crazy old man. Sometimes, alternatively, its that he’s an uncaring old man. Neither are remotely true – in my opinion, its that he’s a self-serving attention whore who’s spent his life trying to be the center of attention, and uses statements like his ones about Haiti, his ones about Katrina, to keep the focus on him. He’s not crazy – crazy people can’t plan statement to draw maximum attention this way. And he’s not uncaring. He cares… about how he can use these events for himself.
Rush Limbaugh, same thing. Rush is smart. Really, he is. He knows that most of what he says is extreme to a point of absurdity, and he says it anyway because its gets people paying attention to him and his show, his ratings, and increases his bottom line.
Take a lesson from your childhood, folks. While it may never really work because of their built in audiences, try ignoring them and see if it goes away – at least in how it impacts your life. Or take your advice from the internet, if you’d rather, and don’t feed the trolls.
So the world is atwitter about Harry Reid recently revealing that he said something extremely stupid and, frankly, racist during the campaign. I’m actually more shocked that we’re finding out about it now (one would think it would have come out sooner) or, if it didn’t come out immediately, that it came out at all.
There must be something about white men of a certain age thinking that being complimentary while saying something racist isn’t racist. You’ll remember that Biden did something a little less obviously stupid but still fairly dumb, calling Obama “clean”.
Part of me agrees with the Republicans who are trying to equate Reid with Trent Lott. Whether or not the comments were equally offensive, I understand the impulse to say that if your stupid enough to make a racist comment like that, well, you deserve what happens. And what’s good for geese is good for ganders… or Democrats and Republicans.
On the other hand, part of me wants to take President Obama’s lead. He’s basically told Reid that it was all okay now. Given that the comments were about Obama, that seems that.
On the third hand, what do I know? I’m white. On the other hand, a lot of people who shouldn’t be piping up are. Normally, I
wouldn’t take Michael Steele to task for commenting on it, even as much as I like pointing out how bad a Republican leader he is – but he’s in trouble of his own right now for using the phrase “honest injun” and the sheer weight of hypocrisy for criticizing one foolish, probably innocent racial comment while defending his own foolish, probably innocent racial comment may cause him to implode. I’m concerned for his safety!
On the fourth hand, I’m perfectly willing to let this be Reid’s waterloo. I have no love for Reid, not because he’s a racist – and I don’t know that he is or isn’t – but because he’s not an effective leader. If in a month he emulates Dodd and says he’s retiring, I’d be fine with that. Sure, it means Nevada will almost inevitably go back to the Republicans, but I think that’s likely anyway.
I guess what I’m saying is Reid just bugs me. Whether or not he’s doing something stupid right now.
Centrism is, at times, a powerful force for good. If for no other reason than most Americans are not radicalized to the left or the right, finding the center and acting on that moderate agenda is often an effective means to the end of moving forward, but not leaving people behind. That said, centrism and moderation have their own flaws as well, and we’d be foolish not to acknowledge them.
The bill currently moving through the Senate is an example of one problem with centrism: it can leave no one happy. Progressives are saying it doesn’t do enough, conservatives are afraid it does to much, and the middle… well, we don’t seem to think its going to accomplish anything at all, except make things more expensive.
And who can blame us? Weve seen Washington bail out Wall Street without passing any reform, and they are just back to their old tricks. We’ve seen a job stimulus that may or may not be working – but the website that went to show us it was working had an extra 440 Congressional Districts on it. And we’ve seen credit card reform pass in such a way that the cards had time to raise their rates more than double before it was enacted, to insulate themselves from the real effects of that reform. Is there any chance Health Care reform can do any better?
If we take away the option from Health Care companies to drop our coverage if we get a bad condition or to deny us coverage in the first place, that sounds good, but its subverted by the fact they can still raise our rates to price us out of coverage.
If we mandate coverage for all Americans but don’t make coverage affordable, what have we really accomplished?
I want health care reform, and I didn’t necessarily need to see a public option, although I generally support one. But passing only part of a set of laws, in the name of political expediency, because Senate rules allow one or two people a large amount of power, isn’t a good way to do things. It looks like centrism – “moderates and Republicans forced the Democratic bill to the center” – but it isn’t in the middle in any logical, thought out way. It is more like if the bill had been given to a mad barber.
Perhaps this is one reason why no one thinks well of the middle – nothing gets there unscathed.
I am going to try to write here regularly again. Probably weekly, probably posted on Sundays. Just an FYI for our readers.
Now, as to the issue of the day: A year or so ago, Vice President Biden predicted Obama would be tested on foreign policy in his first year in office. A few months ago, there was the Somali Pirate incident which Obama ordered our special forces to handle, and they did so, beautifully. That wasn’t the test Biden referred to.
I think today’s news is it. Iraq is reporting Iran has seized an Iraqi oil rig. Either Iran has done so, or Iraq is making false accusations, or this is all a set up. In any case, the whole area is a powder keg and this is a dangerous, dangerous thing that is happening.
I don’t know what the outcome will be, but we can only hope Obama handles it well. To make matters more difficult, I don’t even have a prediction of what “well” would be at this time.
Good luck, Mr. President.
Well, the media is all abuzz about Sarah Palin’s book.
I haven’t read it yet, so I’ll reserve judgement on it. But with all due respect to our friends over at Palintology, I think that she’s got a really big job ahead of her in terms of political rehabilitation.
Certainly her resignation as governor is the biggest thing for her to get around. I mean, I understand why she did; having to deal with one bogus ethics complaint after another week after week after week would make me want to quit too.
But it’ll take a lot more than a book to reverse her political fortunes. Yes, she’s the darling of the far right, and she can have a very lucrative career as a public speaker and fundraiser if that’s what she wants. But if she wants to be elected to national office, she’s going to have to appeal beyond that base — and that means to us, the centrists.
I remember watching her debate coverage when she ran for governor of Alaska and being impressed — and being shocked when she ran for Vice President and appeared to have lost at least 40 IQ points. That observation alone makes me tend to believe that at least some of what she says about being mishandled by McCain’s staff is true. But she’s gotta convince us that she’s more than a caricature, and she’ll do that by speaking things other than right-wing catchphrases.
It’ll take some time, and I don’t think it’ll happen in time for 2012. It took about 20 years for Joe Biden’s national political repuation to get repaired. Maybe it won’t take so long for Palin, but if she wants to get elected to something, she needs to have a realistic timeframe. The problem is that the GOP might actually nominate her in 2012, when she won’t be winnable. That’s a serious mistake on their part.
During the campaign, though, the time I was the most impressed with her was towards the end, when she says she stopped listening to the advisors (at a point where it was very clear that they couldn’t win anyway) and she gave a series of speeches on energy policy. It’s an area she knows, it’s an area she’s comfortable talking about and she makes a hell of a lot of sense. If she’s really lucky, she’ll get taken on as Energy Secretary in the next Republican administration.
One of the issues on the NY state ballot this last election was a question of whether or not to allow prisoners to do volunteer work while in prison. I presume this would be work of the kind that could be done reasonably in a prison - envelope stuffing and the like. I have to admit, that question gave me pause.
One of the places I lose my “liberal” cred is law and order, crime and punishment. I’m for the death penalty, I’m for harsh sentences, I’m for prisons being a crappy place to have to live. I’m not all “conservative” on my law and order stances - I’m for rehabilitation over punishment of drug users, for example - but by and large, I’m pretty harsh on those who break the law.
But you’d think the spirit of volunteerism would be something we’d want to foster in even the harshest, roughest souls, even in such soil as criminals. You’d think that, as a former volunteer coordinator for a non-profit, that I’d be sympathetic to allowing giving such groups access to any volunteers that they may have available.
But none of that really crossed my mind as I considered the question. I’ll tell you what did, and I’m still not sure of the answer. My question, as I considered the question, is what is the point of a prison? I figure there are two options: it is a place of rehabilitation, or it is a place of punishment.
If it is a place of rehabilitation, then learning to give to your fellow man, learning that volunteering is a good thing, would be part of that rehabilitation. If it’s a place of punishment, then letting them get the “volunteers high” would be a mistake, because it wouldn’t fit their punishment to let them feel good about their accomplishments.
So I ask you, readers, what are prisons?
