Scribblings of the Metropolitician

Hillary – It's Time to Hang Up YOUR Hope

Hillary's been telling everyone that hope isn't enough, that we gotta be realistic. Well, I think it's time to start taking your own advice: you've lost the initiative, you've lost the upper hand, you're now looking more and more like sour grapes.

Utterly, utterly ridiculous. She accuses him of "stealing" then she goes and does the same thing? Put the crack pipe down, HIllary.

As always, much better writers than me put this sentiment into better words. Maureen Down says in her piece in the NYT called "Begrudging His Bedazzling":

David Brody, the Christian Broadcasting Network correspondent whose interview with Hillary aired Tuesday, said the senator seemed "dumbfounded" by the Obama sensation.

She has been so discombobulated that she has ignored some truisms of politics that her husband understands well: Sunny beats gloomy. Consistency beats flipping. Bedazzling beats begrudging. Confidence beats whining.

Experience does not beat excitement, though, or Nixon would have been president the first time around, Poppy Bush would have had a second term and President Gore would have stopped the earth from melting by now.

She just doesn't "get it." Now, she's the whiny nerd on the playground who can't understand why no one will play with her, thinking she's being targeted for her awkward looks, her big braces, or the fact that she's smarter than everyone else and they're just jealous.

No, HIllary – we just don't like you. Some people still do, but less and less so, as you petutantly protest and continue to so obviously "not get" that you're showing more and more why your brand of politicking and possible governing isn't what your party wants right now.

My, my – ain't that the pot calling the kettle...Barack.

And you have conservatives endorsing you, surely because they know that McCain would wipe the floor with you. I guess you're going to stick around until you're humiliated in Ohio and Pennsylvania, but will you please quit then? See, I'd have to heartily agree with Down on this point:

Voters gravitate toward the presidential candidates who seem more comfortable in their skin. J.F.K. and Reagan seemed exceptionally comfortable. So did Bill Clinton and W., who both showed that comfort can be an illusion of sorts, masking deep insecurities.

The fact that Obama is exceptionally easy in his skin has made Hillary almost jump out of hers. She can't turn on her own charm and wit because she can't get beyond what she sees as the deep injustice of Obama not waiting his turn. Her sunshine-colored jackets on the trail hardly disguise the fact that she's pea-green with envy.

After saying she found her "voice" in New Hampshire, she has turned into Sybil. We've had Experienced Hillary, Soft Hillary, Hard Hillary, Misty Hillary, Sarcastic Hillary, Joined-at-the-Hip-to-Bill Hillary, Her-Own-Person-Who-Just-Happens-to-Be-Married-to-a-Former-President Hillary, It's-My-Turn Hillary, Cuddly Hillary, Let's-Get-Down-in-the-Dirt-and-Fight-Like-Dogs Hillary.

At least Obama knows who Obama is. Clinton changes styles like her clothes, and it's not befitting of someone of her reputation. It cheapens her. But the sadder thing is: she doesn't care.

By threatening to throw the kitchen sink at Obama, the Clinton campaign simply confirmed the fact that they might be going down the drain.

Hillary and her aides urged reporters to learn from the "Saturday Night Live" skit about journalists having crushes on Obama.

"Maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable and needs another pillow," she said tartly in the debate here Tuesday night. She peevishly and pointlessly complained about getting the first question too often, implying that the moderators of MSNBC -- a channel her campaign has complained has been sexist -- are giving Obama an easy ride.

Beating on the press is the lamest thing you can do. It is only because of the utter open-mindedness of the press that Hillary can lose 11 contests in a row and still be treated as a contender.

Come on, Hillary – be real. You've gotten as easy of a ride of it as anyone could get, even and especially Obama, whom no one, including the mainstream press, took seriously seriously until Iowa, when his sweep across state after state began. You came from a position of literally having this nomination locked down, until it just started unraveling, both because of the other guy campaigning fair, square, and well, while you were unable to do the same.

Be a good sport after you get trounced in Ohio and please, please drop out out of the race while you still have some face to save and before you splinter the party unnecessarily, since at that point, you'll have a snowball's chance in hell of winning, because this whole thing has got you so twisted that you actually think you can criticize Obama for lack of experience in making big decisions, even as you voted for and helped start the present war, which he voted against.

Are you really that deluded, or are do you just not care about reality anymore?

At a rally on Sunday, she tried sarcasm about Obama, talking about how "celestial choirs" singing and magic wands waving won't get everybody together to "do the right thing."

With David Brody, Hillary evoked the specter of a scary Kool-Aid cult. "I think that there is a certain phenomenon associated with his candidacy, and I am really struck by that because it is very much about him and his personality and his presentation," she said, adding that "it dangerously oversimplifies the complexity of the problems we face, the challenge of navigating our country through some difficult uncharted waters. We are a nation at war. That seems to be forgotten."

Actually it's not forgotten. It's a hard sell for Hillary to say that she is the only one capable of leading this country in a war when she helped in leading the country into that war. Or to paraphrase Obama from the debate here, the one who drives the bus into the ditch can't drive it out.

Yeeeesh.

Don't Fuck With Cincy

Ouuuuuch. Like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Mccain's staff pulls out attack dog Bill Cunningham, lets him do what he does best, then apologizes for his words.

Then, at a time when McCain's conservative credentials are being called into question, you've got ole Bill basically calling McCain a big pussy in front of the whole frat house. Now, Ann Colter, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Cunningham, and Sean Hannity are all stumping against McCain and some (Colter and Bill) are even making a point of formally endorsing Hillary.

Whoa. And how did we get here? What does this Ohioan (me) think this means?

Well, to start with, Cincinnati is the most conservative city in America. Although in actuality, that's hard to gauge, what makes Cinci so important is the fact that it's the one major city that breaks the overall pattern repeated across the US: large metropolitan areas are blue, less populated (but more numerous) areas tend to be red. In all the 2004 swing states especially, this tension is what made them fall where they fell.

In all the states I pored over in 2004, it was "city vs. country" and tipped blue, but only barely, in States democrats won. What made me know Kerry lost Ohio before all the votes were in was the fact that it was still squarely half-and-half when most of the major cities were counted. Hours before the tallies were finished, before any major network was calling it, I knew that Bush had remained POTUS. Because Cinci's vote were still not counted, and Cincinnati's the only major city I know of in the United States that's bright, fresh hemoglobin, race car red.

As someone who lives in the heart of the "tri-state area," you know this. And within Ohio, I lived in Dayton, which is part of the triangle of cities all situated about 45 minutes apart: Dayton, Columbus, and Cincinnati. The raising of the speed limit from 55 to 65 literally brought us about 10 minutes closer together, along with the suburban sprawl that makes the edges of the cities closer to one another.

Now, one think anyone in that area knows is that you can't buy a Playboy within the city limits, there are no strip clubs, there's a huge bloc of conservative, old-school, former German immigrants who are proud, Protestant, and very socially conservative. There's also huge racial tension in Cincinnati because of the extreme disparity between black and white in this town, where a lot of whites are very obviously comfortable and well off, whereas a lot of blacks are very obvious not.

This is markedly different from Dayton, where the level of integration is much much higher, and even the public school systems enjoy pretty minimal tension between the races. You see blacks and whites (it's a mostly black-and-white town, and the number of blacks stands at around 40%, if memory serves) together in social places, mixed in groups far more than other parts of the country. You can even see this in the campaign speech in Dayton, where it's a mix of young and old, black and white, and where, like Wisconsin, Obama is making big inroads even as Clinton is tanking, even within her own most solid base - older, white women.

Dayton is a real typical Ohio city, where it's bright blue and people are relatively moderate, and fairly nice people who haven't been through race riots like in LA, nor do they see the extreme extremes in poverty in an obvious way as in Chicago, nor do you have constant influxes of immigration from around the world, as in NYC. Where I'm from, it's pretty black-and-white, with smidges and dollops of Latino, Jewish, or Asian people thrown in there. We got some college towns with more diversity (say, Columbus) or larger segments of the Asian population (say, Cleveland), but for the most part, it's a group of black-and-white folks who've pretty much gotten used to each other. And where, importantly somehow, even poorer black folks live in small houses and have their own yards.

I still remember commenting to a grad colleague that California seemed much more segregated than my hometown in Ohio, to which he guffawed, since most people on the coasts think everything in the middle is something akin to a scene from Deliverance, in which hicks play banjos on their porches and talk about the "perty mouths" of outsiders. Kinda strange for a Californian to hear an Ohioan remark that Dayton, Ohio seemed more integrated than the Bay Area, but I think it's true. There are more types of people, but there isn't very much actual social mixing between racial groups, other than between Asian Americans and whites, of course.

Anyway, Cinci's not like that, from what I've seen. It's conservative, uptight, and hardcore red meat. Like raw and bloody. It's no surprise that Cincinnati has been ground zero for more pitched conservative battles than its size would seem to lend itself:

Larry Flynt and Hustler? Cincy.

Mapplethorpe and the cultural freakout over a few pictures? Cincy.

Literally deciding the fate of the President of the United States in 2004? Cincy.

Had Cincinnati followed the pattern of every other major metropolitan area in the United States, Kerry would now be running for re-election.

So going to Cincinnati wearing anything other than his Sunday conservative best was a bad idea. And unleashing an attack dog like Bill Cunningham, telling him to "give the crowd some red meat," and then getting all PC and apologizing for it later – bad, bad press.

Bill Cunningham is one of the best shock jocks in the US – hell, even I listened to him all though middle school from 10-12 every weeknight as I fell asleep. The guy's a straight talker, he's runs a funny show, and you never wonder for what he thinks. He's gotten far more conservative over time, it seems, as politics has shifted further to the right since the mid-80's, when I was listening to him, and as conservative shock radio has upped the ante and started warring with specific left-oriented media, such as Keith Olbermann's show, Jon Stewart, or Bill Maher at times. Then you mix in the culture wars and the extremization of the right over the last couple decades, and ole Bill sounds pretty strident to me now.

But what I always liked about Bill Cunningham is that he always did pull off a reputation as a shock jock but never went into the realm of the truly crazy. Rush Limbaugh – I can't even listen to that blowhard talk for more than a minute; Bill Cunningham always seems to be the voice that "makes sense" to the actual staid, conservative crowd that doesn't see itself as radical or ideological, but rather as "the normal people" in the world. That's Ohio, and that's Bill.

I don't agree with him, but he's not nearly as stupid-sounding as that waste-of-human-flesh Rush. And Colter? Don't even get me started. If her intellect shone as brightly as her blonde ambition, she might even be worth calling a pundit, as opposed to a crazy bitch. Sorry, PC-police, I think her level of coo-coo warrants the term.

But McCain's people really screwed the pooch on this one. Why did they take a conservative pit bull, put a bloody steak in its mouth, and tell it to go buck wild? What did they think Cunningham would say? Did they think he'd keep this fight "fair?" Do they even know who Bill Cunningham is?

Now, I'm sure they also felt that ole Bill from WLW was far more acceptable than a Limbaugh or Coulter – who would be crazy choices to be asked to stump for McCain at a political even, as anyone knows – but Bill isn't going to speak in thinly-veiled innuendos, coded language, or subtle politico-speak. He's going to go for the jugular, baby, and he's going to give "straight talk," which is what he's famous for. Isn't that what McCain calls himself?

I don't blame Cunningham at all. He's happy, of course, since now he's making the rounds again in right-wing media and getting his impressively powerful voice (I don't think I've ever just heard him speak in a normal tone, but always seems to be projecting as if he had a built-in megaphone in his throat) on national TV and mainstream venues like CNN and FOX.

McCain's people? I think someone's head is rolling on this one. This is a huuge political mistake, since I think he just pissed all his conservative right street cred out the window, and now that he's made an enemy of the shock jocks with big voices and big audiences – ouch. It's gonna hurt him to hear, day after day, night after night, Limbaugh, Cunningham, Coulter and a myriad others drive home what a big wimp and double-talker McCain is, and how he's "not a real conservative."

And actually, I think they're right, if you can excuse the unintended pun. I don't think McCain's all that conservative, because he can't be anymore, at least publicly, as things have de-radicalized as the culture wars petered out, the real war in Iraq has heated up, and Bush has been busy driving the American economy into the ground. I don't think the shock jocks command as much power as they think they do, and are more on the extreme right than ever, but their war of words against McCain is going to hurt him a lot in another election that's got the 50/50 dynamics of recent years, but which this time, the burden will be on the Republicans to scrape enough votes to win, as opposed to the Dems last time.

In the big picture, I like McCain as a person and he's not a bad conservative candidate if I had to pick one. I don't agree with most of what he stands for, but he's also not an idiot, like Bush II. We just totally disagree on issues, but I don't think him to be immoral or incompetent. But I think his campaign's really jumping the shark now, after the non-scandal of the cute lobbyist that blew over, but the heels upon which this real fuck-up is coming at the most inopportune time.

Of course, I want Obama to win, but I do extend an E.T.-style "ouuuuch" to him, even as my higher brain wants to ask, "What the hell were you thinking?" This was the epitome of a bad political move, poorly thought out and horribly executed.

Ouuuuch.

Space Kimchi!

The title to this NYT piece -- "Starship Kimchi: A Bold Taste Goes Where It Has Never Gone Before" -- now, that's the real stinker. From the NYT directly:

Mr. Ko, the Korean astronaut, said he would use the kimchi to foster cultural exchange. He plans to prepare a Korean dinner in the space station on April 12 to celebrate the 47th anniversary of the day the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space.

The developers of the “space kimchi,” meanwhile, say their research will continue to benefit South Korea in a practical way even after the country’s national pride is burnished by Mr. Ko’s historic mission.

They say kimchi’s short shelf life has made exporting it expensive because the need for refrigeration and rapid transport. That has added to the cost in importing countries, limiting sales.


"During our research, we found a way to slow down the fermentation of kimchi for a month so that it can be shipped around the world at less cost,” Mr. Lee said. “This will help globalize kimchi.”

I'll end with a tagline nearly as bad as the NYT title – "Space kimchi: outta this world?"

OK, That's Pretty Funny

Would that make Hillary Obama? Hehe.

I like to quote Wesley Snipes from Passenger 57, when he says, "Always bet on black."

Umm, now I'm confused.

Hehe.

Love Tina Fey.

FeetManSeoul Gets Bootilicious in Expat Living!

Check out the fresh styles in our latest, bootilicious installment of Expat Living! (Don't tell me you didn't see that one coming.)

And don't forget about Feetmanseoul.com, where all this comes from.

"The Politics of Poshintang"

Do you eat dog? Have you? Want to? Think it's ewwy?

Well, we've got a great discussion of "The Politics of Poshintang" going on over at Bomb English this week. Good stuff, good stuff. The podcast, I mean. Hehe.

Podcast #33 - That Guitar Kid: Unplugged!

I first posted this at the Marmot's Hole.

Ah, Pachabel's Canon in D. Done by a Korean kid on YouTube. To the tune of 38 million view and counting.

Oh, yeah. I remember watching that video and just thinking, "You rock, kid." Then The New York Times did a piece on him, his true identity unmasked (or un-hatted?), and he rocked all the more. He then made the rounds on Korean television, spoke and performed around the world (and he still is), and then I met him as a panelist in the YouTube Korea rollout that they inexplicably invited me to attend.

[source]

Then...came this podcast.

Well, OK, I'm sure Jay (Jeong-hyun Lim) isn't thinking "score!" as when a NYT reporter contacted him, but we had a good lunch and great talk at Shinchon's On the Border nonetheless. This is also the first actual English-language audio interview with Jay that you'll hear. Jay is frank, cool, and tells the WHOLE story behind the YouTube video that's now in the 38 million views range. He also tells us his REAL motivation for playing the guitar..

And the real reason for this announcement – the kid's got his own band and he's playing tonight in Hongdae at 7PM, at the Sapiens7 LiveHouse. Sorry for the late notice, but if you can get out there, it should be an experience! Here's the map:

Frank Rich Nails It

Damn that Frank Rich! Always taking the words right out of my mouth. Well, he's a damn good writer, which is I guess why he works for The New York Times. To wit, he brings up in his piece entitled "The Audacity of Hopelessness" darn good points about the smoke and mirrors lore of Hillary's alleged "experience" in getting things done, which has become about as effective in her political campaign as it was for her failed attempt at health care reform:

This is the candidate who keeps telling us she's so competent that she'll be ready to govern from Day 1. Mrs. Clinton may be right that Mr. Obama has a thin resume;, but her disheveled campaign keeps reminding us that the biggest item on her thicker resume; is the health care task force that was as botched as her presidential bid.

Ouch. And finally, someone in the mainstream press is calling her out on the cheap ways she constrasts herself to Obama:

Clinton fans don't see their standard-bearer's troubles this way. In their view, their highly substantive candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat who got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naive young people who lap up messianic language as if it were Jim Jones's Kool-Aid. Or as Mrs. Clinton frames it, Senator Obama is all about empty words while she is all about action and hard work.

But it's the Clinton strategists, not the Obama voters, who drank the Kool-Aid. The Obama campaign is not a vaporous cult; it's a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done. The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this race, more words than action, and its candidate's message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was and is self-immolating.

Thank you. And the sheer negativity and callousness with which they obviously consider this whole "getting elected" affair a big political game, or a scorched-earth battle should be widely read as deeply insulting, but they're getting away with it:

As for countering what she sees as the empty Obama brand of hope, she offers only a chilly void: Abandon hope all ye who enter here. This must be the first presidential candidate in history to devote so much energy to preaching against optimism, against inspiring language and -- talk about bizarre -- against democracy itself. No sooner does Mrs. Clinton lose a state than her campaign belittles its voters as unrepresentative of the country.

Bill Clinton knocked states that hold caucuses instead of primaries because "they disproportionately favor upper-income voters" who "don't really need a president but feel like they need a change." After the Potomac primary wipeout, Mr. Penn declared that Mr. Obama hadn't won in "any of the significant states" outside of his home state of Illinois. This might come as news to Virginia, Maryland, Washington and Iowa, among the other insignificant sites of Obama victories. The blogger Markos Moulitsas Zuniga has hilariously labeled this Penn spin the "insult 40 states" strategy.

What's up with that? Basically, as they lose states, Billary is saying, "Oh, well, they're not really the Americans we're worried about, anyway. Fuck 'em." In a nutshell. And even while getting away with murder on the campaign trail, Billary complains of getting beaten up by the press:

If the press were as prejudiced against Mrs. Clinton as her campaign constantly whines, debate moderators would have pushed for the Clinton tax returns and the full list of Clinton foundation donors to be made public with the same vigor it devoted to Mr. Obama's "plagiarism." And it would have showered her with the same ridicule that Rudy Giuliani received in his endgame. With 11 straight losses in nominating contests, Mrs. Clinton has now nearly doubled the Giuliani losing streak (six) by the time he reached his Florida graveyard. But we gamely pay lip service to the illusion that she can erect one more firewall.

Right on the money. What is all this vaunted experience getting her? What has Billary demonstrated in this race other than utter and supreme arrogance, disregard for entire swathes of the American voting populace, and that, for all her talk of "experience," she's being trumped by a man and a campaign with their nose to the grindstone, finger on the pulse of the people, and feet on the ground campaigning, from the grassroots to the big networks.

That's something Obama learned how to do, that's a skill he did pick up while organizing, administrating, and governing back in Chicago -- so when are we going to stop cutting Hillary this ludicrously extreme slack and tell her, once and for all, to put up or pack it up?

Truly an apropos title for his HIllary hit piece: "The Audacity of Hopelessness." Yeah, Billary has been pretty fucking audacious, at that.

Dooooooh!

Just got this email. About 18 years too late. Doh!

Dear Brown Alumni,

Today the Brown Corporation approved a new financial aid policy that eliminates loans for students whose family incomes are less than $100,000, reduces loans for all students who receive financial aid and no longer requires a parental contribution from most families with incomes of up to $60,000. Beginning in the fall of 2008, the new provisions will apply to all current students who receive financial aid, including the incoming Class of 2012.

This important action by our University is an effort to address the universal concern over the cost of receiving an education at a top institution such as Brown. I invite you to read more about this new policy on Brown's Web site. If you have any questions about this news, please don't hesitate to contact me directly.

With best regards,

Todd Andrews' 83
Vice President
Alumni Relations

I doubt they make that retroactive. Hehe.

Well, I'm glad this is happening, and I'm proud that my school continues to really try to bridge the gap for those without the funds to pay for college. My university wasn't "needs-blind" while I was in college, as admissions had to account for the finances of something like 10% of those who applied (my memory is fuzzy on that, so don't hold me to it). We went needs-blind several years ago, and this is just the next step. This is one aspect of education that is really done right.

Except I ain't getting a retroactive check in the mail. And I would've gotten a full ride!

Double dooooooooooh!

If This Happened in Russia or Kenya, Wouldn't We Be Thinking the Worst?

Umm. Whoa.WTF?

I want a paper ballot, too, with traceable identifiers.

The bar of alarm being raised shouldn't be "actual evidence of mistabulation" but whether procedures were properly followed, and access to ballots secured. If not, shouldn't we be freaking out? Because if there are any irregularities at all, when something like wild deviations from exit polls and actual tabulations occur, you leave the room for serious doubt. This is not saying that black helicopters came and agents from a nefarious shadow group came and changed ballots, to those defenders of the status quo who love to paint any critic as a "conspiracy theorist," but my point is can you say they didn't?

All you have to do is secure the ballots as per procedure, make the process transparent, and you leave no room for any doubt. And doubt, fellow Americans, isn't what we want to have in our election process, is it? Doesn't that undermine the very fabric of democracy?

Doubt is the difference between our election process and any one of the sham elections we tsk tsk at on CNN. And lack of doubt strengthens the mandates of those who govern, and helps bolster the power of the rule of law.

Which is, in the end, the only thing that separates American society from any other. Besides Britney Spears records and $6 lattes, of course.