Reading Log: November 2018

Beneath the Peaks: photo by Cliff Hutson

“Beneath the peaks, white bands of fog clung to the contours of rock.” 

 -  The Feral Detective

The books I finished reading in November 2018

November 2018 Books: photo by Cliff Hutson

“Dark Sacred Night,” Michael Connelly

“The Feral Detective,” Jonathan Lethem

“Yosemite Fall,” Scott Graham

“The President is Missing,” Bill Clinton and James Patterson

“Crime Partners,” Donald Goines

Mudville

It's all over but the shouting

I Voted 2016: photo by Cliff Hutson

“Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright,

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;

And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children

     shout,

But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out”

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Music as Commentary

I may have a liberal point of view, but I have always thought of NPR as being rather unbiased in its news coverage. However, this belief was shattered on March 11 while listening to Marketplace Morning Report. Someone involved in its production must have a bone to with Eliot Spitzer. A story on Wall Street's reaction to his peccadillo ended with the playing of "Your Cheatin' Heart" by Hank Williams. That says a lot, without saying any thing.

The morning of March 13 I was incensed by an interview with presidential hopeful Clinton. One must listen to the audio to get the full extent of her audacity; this transcript does not do it justice. If I had produced that story I would have closed it out with "Lying Eyes" by the Eagles.

Ethnicity, Gender, Identity, and Politics

Yesterday my local NPR station managed to tear itself away from its post-Super Bowl coverage long enough to once again beat the drum about the dilemma that has befallen people of color and women in having to decide between Clinton and Obama.

It would seem that the majority of Democrats have already agreed on one thing - they do not want another Southern white male to be president. The media pundits also tell us that people are no longer interested in the issues. I am not sure that is true, per se. I think that most of us really can not see al that much difference between the two. Also, what they say now will not be long remembered by the time one of them is in office. So what this boils down to then is that we the people are going to vote on the basis of the 'character and image' of the candidate.

The character of a person is a hard thing to measure if you do not actually know them and their public behavior has not been too egregious. Now I am cynical so I feel that as politicians they both have to be corrupt in some way, so I call it a draw. That leaves us with image. This would seem to lead us back to the fact one is a black man and the other a white woman and that we have to identify with one or the other.

Obama and I have at least one thing in common, we are both mixed race. He is decidedly African-American. His father after all was from Africa. I, myself, am black. [I have no connection to Africa except at the level of my DNA. Due to the laxness of record keeping for slaves, I can only trace my family back to 1809. But, in the oral and written records that we do have there is no lore, legend, or account about our time in Africa. - But that is another story.] There has been much made of post-race America in the last few months. I doubt that we are there yet. If we were, there would not be so much fuss about the color of his skin and a lot more about the content of his character.

My gender aside, I can also identify with Clinton. I grew up in a family with many strong women. Most of my career I have worked with women as my peers and my bosses. Other countries have also shown us that women can be world leaders. The idea of a woman in authority is not a problem for me. But, is America ready for it?

Super Tuesday

Self-Portrait
Originally uploaded by The Marmot

This morning’s LA Times had a column by Steve Lopez talking about next Tuesday’s primary election. It was titled “Figuring out who's the better candidate.” Its theme was much the same as mine last Monday – how should a black person choose between Hilary Clinton and Barak Obama. It should be easy - vote for the candidate who will make the better president. But, that is hard to figure out and there is a lot of pressure to vote for the candidate’s gender or ethnicity.

It never made a difference to me in past primaries who was on the Democratic ballot as I have always been registered in a minor party (anybody remember the Peace and Freedom Party of the 60s) or as an independent. However, this year the Democrats are allowing “Non Partisans” to vote with them if we choose to do so. I am inclined to take them up on their offer.

I am inclined to vote for Obama. Now this might worry his supporters somewhat as in the forty years that I have been a registered voter – I have only voted for one presidential winner, Bill Clinton. Does this prove that I am a man who sticks to his principles or just totally out of touch with America, I am not sure.

There was a time when I felt that it did not really matter who was elected president. There is an old joke that goes something like – ‘they told me if I voted for (Senator Barry) Goldwater for President we would become involved in a land war in Asia. Well I did and we are.’ I thought that this was pretty much on the mark until the incumbent used September 11 as an excuse to involve us in a war that has proved to have no justification at all, continence torture, and throw billions of dollars to his cronies. (I will save his domestic policies for another screed.)

But, as long as Huckabee does not make to the White House, I am not too worried that things can get much worse in our country. So I am willing to cast my lot with another long shot. I say this because while conventional wisdom says that the Democratic nominee is likely to become the next president, in my heart I am not convinced. I think that when the chips are down, Americans are not yet ready for a woman or a person of color to be the national leader. I hope to be proven wrong, but only time will tell.

Quandary

Purple Cauliflower
Originally uploaded by The Marmot

I have been thinking some more about framing since my last post. Wikipedia tells that a frame in social theory consists of a schema of interpretation that individuals rely on to understand and respond to events.

Seemingly, a person constantly projects into the world around them the interpretive frames that allow them to make sense of it; we only shift frames (or realize that we have habitually applied a frame) when incongruity calls for a frame shift. In other words, we only become aware of the frames that we always already use when something forces us to replace one frame with another. An individual can effectively set an agenda by consistently invoking a particular frame. The framing party may then control discussion and perception of the issue.

Of course as I write this the South Carolina primary is well behind us, but in hindsight, framing was well illustrated for me in an NPC piece a few weeks ago. A reporter questioned three black women, high up in the Democrats political machine, about their preferences for Clinton or Obama. They all admitted to being in a quandary, ‘do I vote for Clinton because she is a woman like me, or do I vote for Obama because he is black like me?’

You call that a question? It falls in to the trap of choosing the language to define a debate and, more important, with fitting individual issues into the contexts of broader story lines. [The Framing Wars. New York Times July 17, 2005]. The question should be - “Who has the most potential to be a good president?” The rest is merely commentary.

By the way, how does purple cauliflower grab you?