Wait, really?

I haven’t spoken about the Biden – Palin debate that took place the other night, which is a rather glaring omission. This was likely the most-watched political event EVER, and it definitely bears some consideration. I will say this: it probably wasn’t the debate that most people were expecting to see. It wasn’t a train wreck. Sarah Palin’s performance was neither crash-and-burn bad, nor did it reach the levels expected by those who believed that she was lulling Biden into complacency and setting him up for a massive trouncing. This actually bears repeating: it wasn’t a train wreck, but there were signs of a less-than-stellar performance by Palin. She pretty much immediately pitted herself against Biden and moderator Gwen Ifill, so that if and when she did not fully answer their questions, it would appear to be intentional and not due to ignorance. She stuck like glue to her talking points, but did it in such an obvious way (repeating the same MAVERICK! phrases ELITE! a lot WASHINGTON INSIDER!) that she did not come across so much prepared to debate as she did rehearsed to perform.  Biden did a good job of answering the questions put to him without looking like a bully, which is impressive, since he came across that way a bit when he was responding to Obama during the Democratic candidate debate. On the whole, I doubt that either candidate influenced anybody who wasn’t already inclined to be on his or her side. A transcript of the debate can be found here.

Today, I ran across this funny chart a couple of times, and thought I’d share it:

If you’d like to read more from the man who created this flow chart, click here.

Too touchy?

I don’t consider myself easily offended. I make and laugh at jokes about women, black people, New Jerseyans, Americans, Christians, liberals, and a host of other groups to which I belong. And I do believe that non-black people can talk about, or disagree with, black people without automatically being considered racist. So why did it bother me so much today when a white coworker used the word “uppity” to describe an annoying black patron?

I’ve been thinking about it for the last couple of hours, and I think I’m bothered because the word uppity has such a troubling history. When I hear it, I think of a person whose behavior is somehow above what could reasonably be expected from one of his or her station. I don’t know if this is a definition that would be used by that any significant portion of the non-black population when defining uppity, but it’s probably what a lot of black people think when they hear it. This word has been the subject of recent press, after Lynn Westmoreland, a Republican Congressman from Georgia, used it to describe Barack and Michelle Obama, then claimed to be ignorant of any racial connotations to the word. He’s from Georgia. Even if that’s not what he meant when he said the word, I find it unlikely that he could have spent the past 58 years in Georgia without somehow knowing that this word might have had a racist connotation. His explanation that he thought they were elitist and snobbish also makes no sense. They’re pretty high up on the freaking totem pole, buddy. Certainly higher than you. How do you expect them to behave? Also, I’m really love it if I Westmoreland could answer this question: what about a duly elected senator who won his party’s vote to be their Presidential candidate could be considered too elite? Don’t we want our leaders to belong to a relatively high class in society? Who should be of a higher class than those who aspire to lead our nation? And if that higher class does exist, why aren’t they running things?

So this patron was annoying, but in the same way that scores of other patrons are annoying many times throughout the day. She didn’t seem to look down on us, she just didn’t really care that what she wanted didn’t conform to library rules. She was over the whole rules thing, but she never acted as though she was above us. I get along just fine with my coworker and I’ve never thought for a second that he might have a problem with me due to my race, but things like this always make me uneasy.

What ever happened to kindness?

I am not the world’s most enthusiastic Obama supporter, but enough of my positions are close to his that I feel comfortable voting for him. I don’t feel like the Republican party addresses my concerns, but I’v never actively hated them, or regarded them with the ridicule that I see in a lot of my Democrat peers. I understand that 2008 is an election year, and people will do what they feel necessary to try to get elected. STILL I was disgusted by both Rudy Guiliani and Sarah Palin’s speeches. Guiliani has no hope of getting elected to a higher office than the one he’s already held, so it didn’t hurt him to give a nasty, unsubtle, totally negative speech about the Democratic candidates. He has nothing to lose and it bought him a little goodwill from people who six months ago wouldn’t have spit on him if he was on fire.

But I was totally unprepared for how nasty Palin’s speech was. She’s been raked over the coals by a lot of people in the last week, but the Democratic ticket did not participate in the very public rehashing of all of her family’s business. They didn’t condemn either her or her daughter, and didn’t question Palin’s decision to stay in the presidential race. So why would Palin give such a dirty speech, and take cheap shot after cheap shot at Obama? The qualifications and half-truths were bad enough, but outright lies about death taxes and clean coal really make me wonder why the Republican powers that be would think it necessary to craft and deliver this speech. It definitely played to the rabid base in the convention hall, but I can’t imagine it going over well with moderates. And for somebody who considers herself a strong and committed Christian, I really wonder how such a dirty attack could be considered in any way Christ-like. In terms of delivery, she totally nailed her speech. In terms of content, Ms. Palin did little to solidify her own party’s positions on issues and gave the kind of light-on-actual-information speech that Republicans often accuse Obama of giving.