The Bully Pulpit

It's an interesting tangle people are finding themselves in with Barack Obama being the Democratic nominee for president ... all of a sudden, either the underlying racism of people and institutions is revealed, or we've all become way too sensitive.

I'll be the judge:

John McLaughlin, host of a usually great PBS political talk show, calls Obama an Oreo — black on the outside, white on the inside.

While I don't personally believe McLaughlin is a racist, he may just be an idiot. Comparing blacl people to inanimate objects, no matter what the point, is generally the wrong thing to do.

The New Yorker publishes a magazine cover featuring Obama dressed as Osama — as if we need any more confusion on this front — and makes Michelle Obama out to be a revolutionary, complete with an AK47 and gun belts.

While it's easy to say the cover of the magazine is inappropriate, it's clearly satire. It rattled some cages, and it pissed some people off. That's just successful political commentary. The cover was meant to be a reflection of the misinformation and rumors being spread about the Obamas, and it was exactly that. If some readers can't tell the difference between this ironic potrayal and the reality of the Democratic nominee, then the New Yorker's point is well taken.

Some people are so taken with Obama, and his candidacy, that they feel mockery should be off limits. My feeling? Screw them if they can't take a joke. It will only be a matter of time before McCain is spoofed for some aspect of his candidacy, and I wonder if the legions of Obamaphiles will cry foul then? Not likely.

Posted by James Faulk at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (40)

Just finished a great book, by Charles C. Mann, called "1491." The book takes great pleasure in destroying all the comfortable stereotypes we've established about Native American cultures and how they existed prior to the landing of the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.

Incidentally, as the link above will point out, the Niña replica ship will soon be visiting Humboldt County. It occurs to me with this ship's arrival, its crew members will see a relatively well-settled town in Northern California. But if these ships were preceded by the small pox virus and 95 percent of our population had died off prior to its arrival, they'd see a loose gathering of hunter-gatherer societies who they could feel comfortable calling savages.

History repeating itself?

Posted by James Faulk at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Conan is in town as we speak, and I'm getting ready to march up J Street to the Eureka Women's Club to take part in a Q and A session. It will be Schwarzenegger, the Times-Standard editorial board and the, ahem, Eureka Reporter editorial board.

We hope it won't turn into a full-on cage match showdown between us and the Reporter staff with the governor playing referee. I'm sure it won't ... I think.

I'll write an update on what happened when I get back, sometime around 1 p.m. Unfortunately, the best question has already been asked. When the governor came up to kick off his re-election campaign at the Samoa Cookhouse, Andrea Arnot piped up with a humdinger: Will there be a Terminator 4?

It gave all the journalists on the North Coast a reason to be proud.

***** UPDATE ******

The ER and TS managed to avoid any scraps this time around, even exchanging a handshake and pleasantry or two. Both sides were obviously thrilled to have the big-wig in town, although in journalism it's totally not cool to show that you're impressed.

In the who-had-the-best-questions competition, as always I thought our staff walked away the easy victor. And online, the T-S creamed the competition: a video, a multimedia slideshow and a Web update up as of 4 p.m.

I love competition.

As for Schwarzzy, it's easy to see why he was elected. He has the charisma of a movie star, and he's not afraid to use it for his political advantage. At times today, when a tough question was asked, he evade the issue and try to charm his way out of it.

Case in point. He was asked about the skyrocketing cost of higher education, and he said he has worked to minimize the rate of increase but that in the end students just need to get a job and pay their own way through school. That's what I did, he said.

Let's analyze this: if UC Davis has a tuition of more than $20,000 a year, and a student works as a dishwasher or fry cook to raise the money, then he or she might just make enough working full-time to pay that tuition.

But living expenses — rent, food, gas, bus pass — you can forget about. And books? That's absolutely out of the question. This answer pointed out that on some things, this governor seems absolutely out of touch.

He mentioned that his daughter was in the midst of applying for various colleges, and was lucky enough to get accepted. Hmmm. Will she be paying her own way through college, Mr. Schwarzenegger, by working an hourly job? Somehow I doubt it.

Posted by James Faulk at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Real reform is at last achieved! While Cuban residents may be strangled by a blockade instituted by the United States for more years than I've been alive — you've seen the cars: Jesus, open a Hyundai dealership already — a measure of change dawned on that Caribbean country this week when Raul "not the real dictator" Castro bequeathed upon his people the power to grow their own brain tumors.

Cell phones have come to Cuba.

Members of the Buena Vista Social Club can now — in the middle of their basement set, dodging the single communist light bulb that sways back and forth on its moth-eaten cord — call their American cousins and say, "Wish you were here."

And the American cousins can say, "That music sounds great. Let me record you, release the album and make a mint off your talent while you remain conveniently stuck in Red Cuba, unable to cash in on Capitalism."

It's nice to see progress made in the struggle for human rights. Cell phones. Man, what's next? Ipods?

Posted by James Faulk at 03:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Wait one cotton-pickin' second. Some Bolshevik in Eureka wants to make it so that the lowliest wage earner in Eureka walks out the door with a ten spot for every measley hour he works behind the counter? Said communist grumbles something about a livable wage for working families and adds that such an initiative could help drum up interest in the November election.

Let's analyze this: The working world should be survival of the fittest. I work for peanuts (tasty ones, boss, but they're still peanuts — please don't fire me) because I obviously haven't achieved the evolutionary rung required for a decent-paying job. Just handing me a livable wage job without the requisite million years of appropriate DNA development, could throw natural selection for a loop.

Donald Trump and Martha Stewart got where they are because they are higher level human beings. They exist on a plane somewhere between the potato-chip chomping proletariat and the long-limbed aliens who gave Whitley Streiber a colonoscopy. Their wealth was not handed to them — they acquire riches by virtue of the $ gene.

To make matters even worse, we then want to bribe THE POOR to participate in the political process?? Say what?? This leftist wants to level the playing field so that poor hourly wage earners are as likely to vote as the stodgy VFW treasurer down the street, the gray-haired Mason with an American flag mounted on his Airstream motorhome.

Truly, a world turned upside down. Couple these wet dreams with a black man running for president and anarchy reigns. Where's Ron Paul when you need him?

Alexander Hamilton, so magnificently portrayed on the $10 bill, recognized that the general public (read: minimum wage earners) are ill-equipped to make governmental decisions.

"Men," he once famously said, "are reasoning rather than reasonable animals."

Shouldn't we listen to our founding elders?

Posted by James Faulk at 03:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (54)

Just listened to this speech, and as usual, Barack moves me and seemingly the rest of America with the power of his words.

The message seeks to transcend race, and put us all on the same team as we move ahead. A worthy goal, but realistic? I have to wonder if the rednecks of the world will let it happen. And because of those rednecks, I have to worry for Barack's safety as we move ahead into the general election.

But as he says, maybe it's better to be optimistic than jaded — if we all wonder whether such a change is possible, it never will be.

Posted by James Faulk at 08:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Blogs are a great way to get around the traditional rules of reporting. Check out the North Coast Journal's blog today, where Editor Hank Sims posts that Bill Clinton may make a visit to the North Coast on Wednesday.

Printing rumors is usually taboo, but in the world of blogs it's apparently allowed. To Hank's credit, begrudgingly, he never states that it's a fact, and promises to keep his readers updated with new information. We're following the same story, independent of Sims' Journal, and we'll have an update on ts.com as soon as we hear more. We could have run with it earlier, but we like to confirm things before reporting them.

Where was I?

BILL CLINTON!!! In Humboldt County!!! Sweet. We may just have to invite him in to the old Times-Standard for a donut and a talk with the good ole boy — er, I mean, editorial — board. Then we can take him on up to HSU and let the masses teach him how to inhale.

Say what you want about Bill, the man was a fun president. He played the sax, he made more eye contact than a used car salesman, and he had "sexual relations" in the Oval Office. If that's not cool, I don't know what is.

Posted by James Faulk at 02:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2020)

Like clockwork, in the wake of Obama's defeat in New Hampshire, some are claiming that the results defy logic, and therefore could be the result of vote tampering by Diebold, a right-wing corporation that makes and sells voting machines.

Here's a link to a story that appeared in the Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel on that very subject.

To me, it always sounds like a bunch of hot air, like a conspiracy theorist's wlidest dreams come true. But I have to agree with the tenor of the article. At least with Dennis Kucinich requesting a hand count, we'll know one way or the other whether Diebold had a vested interest in Obama V. Clinton. Anyone want to bet a buck that the hand count proves the vote tally of the machines is more or less accurate?

Posted by James Faulk at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Former presidential candidate David Cobb is saying that a vote of Obama and Clinton is essentially a vote for the same candidate — neither would bring true change to Washington. As I recall, the same argument was made in Bush V. Gore, by Ralph Nader, and where did that get us?

But what do you think? Are Obama and Hillary cut from the same political cloth? Is a vote for a third party the answer? Or are Cobb's blinders on, given that the BIG issue for him and fellow Greens is corporate power?

Posted by James Faulk at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Whose next for the mat? And let's just admit it, Mr. Kerrigan — Edwards is toast.

Posted by James Faulk at 11:06 AM | Permalink

I love presidential politics. What can I say? The polished and positioned, pounding one another personally and otherwise as they battle for the ultimate privilege of aging rapidly before the American public. Look at GW — the man gained 20 years on his old man in the space of eight. Who needs 1.21 jiggowatts to mess with the space-time continuum?

For me, presidential politics has been a lifelong obsession. It started with Election 1988, when the formidable and knee-high Michael Dukakis went up against the elder Bush. Living in a major metropolis at the time — alright Modesto, but it's major when compared to the Redwood Empire — we got a visit from the Massachusetts governor at an inner city park.

Being the only one in my family with an interest in politics that rose above "all Democrats are commies, all Republicans are money-mongers," I walked the three miles from my house to the park to sit in a drizzle and wait an hour and a half for the tardy politician. I was 12.

He gave a decent speech, as much as I can recall. The highlight for me — and sadly, the closest I've come to presidential power — was a brief and wet handshake from Dukakis.

Maybe it was the Willie Horton ads, maybe it was the fear that riding in a tank is at least philosophically close to war and therefore dangerous — whatever the reason, the glad-hander left my palm moist with sweat. It was raining, I was already wet, and here I had to deal with wannabe presidential perspiration.

Something about that damp intimacy gave me insight into the outcome of that race ... surely no man with clammy hands could be president. What would the Russians think? His finger thus coated might slip on the Big Red Button. It seemed like a nail in the coffin to a young political neophyte.

My foretelling held true and the upstart was flogged at the polls.

Fast forward — courtesy the flex capacitor — to the present, and there's a humdinger lined up for the next few weeks. We have the two major parties struggling to find a clear nominee in a field that's actually, to my mind, offering choices for once. And it's anyone's guess how it will all turn out in these approaching primaries, much less the real contest coming up in November 2008.

And the stakes? Maybe it's a cliché to say this may be the most important presidential election in a generation, but it sure seems like that is the case.

Secretly, I guess I wish I was an Iowan, or a New Hampshirite — they get the good closeup look. And they get to shake the hands, and do the sweat test. Which of these candidates has clammy hands, and which has calluses?

Seriously. Who needs debates on the issues when you have the sweat test?

Posted by James Faulk at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's clear the libertarian maverick and 2nd District Supervisor Roger Rodoni has made some waves during his tenure, so much so that he's now facing two challengers: One from Southern Humboldt, which in some ways feels neglected by Rodoni; and another from Fortuna, which is obviously Rodoni's strongest base of support.

A question has to be asked, however. Since both challengers appear to come from the left of Rodoni — Estelle Fennell and Clendenen are hardly right-wingers — will the Rodoni opposition effectively silence itself? If the left-of-center vote is divided among two candidates, shouldn't that bode well for the Rancher?

A similar effect seems to have gone a long way recently in preserving the job of Harbor Commissioner Roy Curless. And, as we already know, both Curless and Rodoni look damn spanky in cowboy hats. Maybe that's the real secret behind Humboldt County electoral success, at least south of what some might consider Humboldt County's cultural Mason-Dixon Line.

Where would you put that line? I'm thinking somewhere south of Fields Landing, and north of Loleta. College of the Redwoods, maybe?

Posted by James Faulk at 07:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The feud between law enforcement agencies, the blue collar blue suits, and District Attorney Paul Gallegos has taken many twists and turns over the years — from cops backing the recall and putting up a cop-friendly candidate in Worth Dikeman to Galleos allegedly skipping out on inter-departmental meetings because, rumor had it, the surf was up.

I doubt much of what has been rumored is true, but it makes for interesting watercooler discussions. And it also makes for an even more complicated situation, now that charges have been brought against former Chief Dave Douglas and Lt. Zanotti of the Eureka Police Department. Gallegos, it now appears, will even try the case himself.

My questions are as follows: Do any of you believe the charges are fueled by the supposed feud, even though the Grand Jury technically made the decision? And, do you think Gallegos' taking the reins of the prosecution makes the defendants nervous, or gleeful at the chance to take on the surfer DA in court?

Posted by James Faulk at 05:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (24)