Dreaming in Finnish

Slow day here vacation-wise, because the moms were mostly hobnobbing at the conference and the weather was perfectly dreadful -- cold, raining, gray clouds thick enough to slice. Highlights? A pre-dinner sauna and a dip in the coldest pool on earth. Well, Moose jumped in, because her Teutonic blood can take it. Goose sat delicately on the edge, her toe barely touching the surface of the water.

Just to show the weather hasn't dampened our spirits -- or to prove that our spirits more or less match the Finnish national mood -- we pass along this pants-wetting bit of local video culture featuring the Helsinki Complaints Choir. I have a hunch the Pretty Boys will love it, connoisseurs of camp that they are. Moose is already imagining a Finnish-themed winter solstice party this year that will culminate in a reenactment of this stunning choral performance. Candy Man, you're on keyboards. Prep School Teacher, you'll be directing the choir. qta, you'll handle costumes, catering, obscure film references, and anything else Moose frantically orders you to do at the last minute. The vid is long, so we'll tease you with the song's haunting refrain to make sure you watch the whole thing:

My dreams are boring
Reference numbers are too long
Women are still paid less than men
Bullshitters get on too well in life
The daily paper is too thick
Why always me?
It's not fair!



Touching, isn't it? We think this is the theme song Hillary Clinton's campaign needed. In fact, we think Finland may be just the country for Clinton to lead. Doesn't this chorus of alienated complainers remind you of those armies of Clinton voters who just couldn't catch a break? Don't we all hate our jobs, feel we don't get laid enough, think that all ring tones are irritating, and believe that the ancestors of the Finns could have picked a sunnier place to be? Yes, my friends, the Finns are us. We are the Finns. Alas.

(With thanks to Stan, a Canadian digital humanist with a nose for blog fodder.)

(Closing joke supplied by a Feminist Digital Canadian: What does Finland look like? Ontario after someone had taken a rolling-pin to it. It's like we always tell you, kids: Tell all the truth, but tell it funny.)

Yoo-Hoo from Oulu!

(Photo Credit: Moose; Copenhagen Airport, 6/24/08)

Sorry for the delay in posting, kids. We've had some technical difficulties here in the north country. I think maybe some reindeer are chewing on the cable lines, which is slowing down connection times and making it impossible for Moose to upload the gargantuan files of the 12-megapixel photos from her super-awesome Canon G9. She had to shrink this poetic shot of the airport in Copenhagen down to practically nothing to get it to upload to Blogger. (Facebook friends can see a larger version on the album Moose set up there, "Chicks in the Arctic, 2008.")

Moose is a little too cranky to do one of her witty travel post cards right now, so I'll give you the short version of their trip so far. (She's still working to get all her brain cells and other bodily systems to accept the fact that it's seven hours later than it was when she hopped aboard a plane late Monday afternoon.) They got into Helsinki in the middle of Tuesday afternoon, took a nap, and went out for a lovely five-course meal, with wine pairings, that, thanks to their worthless Yankee currency, cost approximately 7 trillion dollars (which Moose, in an uncharacteristic fit of generosity, had volunteered to pay for, on account of Goose had taken care of arranging all the logistics of the trip). They dined at Havis on the harbor, and had a sumptuous feast that included an appetizer called "The Life of a Fish" (salmon served five ways from roe to smoked), white asparagus in a goat-cheese foam, and a delicate brill garnished with squid and gnocchi. It was delicious, and the service was impeccable, but when Moose translated the total cost into dollars she wondered if she shouldn't have invested that money in some nobler cause than feeding two jet-lagged middled-aged women. She thought about the floods in Iowa, Darfur, the earthquake in China, cancer, the cyclone -- oh, damn, she thought, where was that cyclone? -- and then she nodded off, and when she awoke it was time for the hotel's bountiful, complimentary breakfast buffet.

After breakfast, they skedaddled over to the train station to catch a 9:30 train to Oulu, site of the conference they'll be attending (where Moose will make her international debut as a "digital humanist," all on account of ME, a dog). The train ride was six hours long through some of the flattest country they had ever seen. "It's like Indiana," Moose said at one point, "with lakes and a lot more trees." In the course of their journey, they had another funny food-related incident, this one involving a woman named Marla who didn't seem to understand that their first-class tickets entitled them to free food in the dining car. The tickets said, in English, show your tickets in the dining car and get a sandwich, yogurt, and muesli (because apparently all Finnish meals are required to involve muesli in some form), but Marla's menu evidently said something different because she smiled politely and said a great many Finnish words to them that roughly translated into, "No free food for spoiled Yankee lesbians," so they returned to their seats, said they weren't hungry anyway, and went back to fiddling on their computers. Marla showed up at their seats in a few minutes, demanded their tickets, and went away. This made Goose quite nervous, but Moose said, "Don't be silly. This woman is not going to steal our tickets and run off to the North Pole. Trust the universe." Marla came back a few minutes later, talking on a telephone, handed back their tickets, spoke more words in Finnish, and walked away saying something about coffee and free cookies. They laughed hysterically, had a couple of cookies -- and were ravenous by the time they showed up at the opening reception for the conference a few hours later.

So, there you have it. They are now in Oulu and have hooked up with their digital humanist pals, with whom they dined on smoked reindeer pizza (see below) for far less than the cost of one day's worth of funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Reindeer is really quite tasty, you know, and they don't feel the least bit guilty about chowing down on Rudolph and his friends. Life is hard here in the rugged north. You eat what you can get -- a free cookie, a pop cult icon, a $400 nibble of fish -- anything Marla will let you have. Peace out, vikings.

(Photo Credit: Moose; dinner in Oulu, 6/25/08)

Strat Memo for the Obama Campaign

(Photo Credit: Alex Brandon, Associated Press; Senator Barack Obama speaks during a meeting of Democratic governors at the Chicago History Museum in Chicago, 6/20/08)

To: Obama for President
From: Call Us Next Time, Old Bitches for Hillary, and Roxie’s World

Re: Wooing Disaffected Clintonistas (Or, How To Turn an Old Bitch into an Obama Girl – Or Not)

Congratulations on nailing down the superdelegates you needed to secure the nomination, despite the ambiguity of the popular-vote outcome in the Democratic primary race. We are proud to belong to the party that put an African American at the top of a major-party ticket for president for the first time in U.S. history. That is nothing to sneeze at, even if we did support the Gritty Girl Who Got the Most Votes -- and, yes, we know that’s merely a technicality and it’s time to move on and blah de blah de blah.

Fine, let’s move on. Let’s start thinking about November. Not that you asked for our input or anything, but America’s favorite dog blog devoted to politics, pop culture, and basketball has given some thought to how you, the presumptive Democratic nominee, might get a few more unity ponies into the corral in order to increase your chances of defeating the war hero with roughly a thousand years of seniority over you in the Senate. We realize that polls are looking reasonably good for you at this point but Al Gore and John Kerry were both leading at this point, too, and we remain concerned about the rumblings of discontent we’re hearing in the pro-Hillary blogosphere. Besides which, we are not at all certain at this point that we ourselves will be able to pull the lever for you come election day, as we recently declared. We care deeply enough about the challenge before you that my typist is putting this post together 39,000 feet above the surface of our damaged yet still beautiful earth, as she and Goose make their way toward Finland. We interrupt their working vacation to give you some unsolicited advice on how you might earn or forfeit our support in the general election. File this under FWIW, Senator Obama, and we will see which way the pack runs in November.

Quickest way to guarantee our support: Put Hillary Clinton on the ticket. Do that, sir, and we’ll have an Obama-Clinton widget up on our sidebar so fast it’ll make your halo spin. We will set aside all our reservations and do everything within our power to assure that both you and Senator Clinton get to place your hands on the Bible come January 20, 2009. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss our Old Bitches for Obama-Clinton tee shirts as you stroll by in the inaugural parade. We’ll even give you a new blog name. Perhaps, instead of “the Lesser,” you might become known in these precincts as, um, “Good Enough.”

Quickest way to lose our support: Put Sam Nunn on the ticket. People keep talking about it, and it is driving us insane. Some of us are old enough to remember that the 20th-century Georgia senator crippled Bill Clinton’s presidency before the Big Guy had even had a chance to size up the first class of interns over the issue of allowing gays to serve openly in the military. Nunn may have indicated recently that he thinks the policy should be “revisited,” but some of us will never forgive the architect of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Put him on the ticket, and queers with long memories and deep pockets will know you don’t want their votes. Roxie’s World will urge its legions of loyal fans to write in Hillary Clinton. Your new blog name if you make this suicidal move? “Low-bama.”

What else/more you might do to persuade us: Stop pretending you are the most progressive candidate who has ever run when the record shows you are a centrist who on many important issues is actually more conservative than the woman you defeated for the nomination. Stop encouraging voters to believe that transcendence is possible or even desirable in the realm of politics. Politics is hard work because it is precisely not about transcending differences. It is about reckoning with them – through negotiation, through compromise, through deal-making. That doesn’t sully the process. In a very real sense, that is the process. Oh, and stop with the scary/spooky talk about the Supreme Court. Dems have been using that line for decades. If it won elections, there would be compact-fluorescent bulbs throughout the White House and Al Gore would be publicly planning his post-presidency while Tipper geared up for a senate run. Besides, most of us who care passionately about reproductive rights are savvy enough to know that Roe v. Wade has been functionally eviscerated. It will take more than one or two appointments to undo the damage wrought since Reagan began pushing the court to the right in the 80s.

Signs that lead us to think you are still really not getting it (or that you are arrogant enough to believe you really don’t need us and other Democratic base voters to win): Wow, Mr. New Kind of Politics, where do we begin? The closed-door meeting with 40 evangelical ministers whose names you never publicly released? The meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus where your response to women was that they needed to “get over” the primary race because McCain would be worse? The shift in your position on NAFTA and the quip about “overheated” campaign rhetoric? The reversal on public financing of your campaign? You’ve been a busy, busy boy since claiming the nomination, and most of the business has been about tacking to the center quicker than you could say “Clintonian triangulation.” Some of this may just be smart politics (though “progressive” critics of the Clintons have always been less charitable in their descriptions of similar moves), but we don’t see much in these adjustments that make our hearts go pitter-pat for you. Will swing voters who might otherwise go to McCain feel differently? Perhaps, but you might consider making some moves aimed at impressing the 18 million Democrats who voted for your major rival in the primary race. Which leads us to our next point.

Bold moves you could make to get our attention: You might try a little humility for a start. Some of us just don’t think you’ve earned the righteousness you convey in your speechifying and in the casual flicking of dirt off your shoulders. Even some of your sycophants in the press corps have started to make noises about a certain arrogance. Prove that you’re a true progressive: Admit that the health-care plan you advocated during the primary isn’t truly universal and that anything short of that is insufficient. Cut your ties to coal and ethanol. Have the guts to say that anything less than full federal marriage rights for same-sex couples is a form of segregation. Oh, yeah, and fire whoever it was who came up with the idea of that dopey campaign seal that goofily mimics the presidential seal. Some folks are already calling you “Faux-bama,” sweetie. Don’t give them any more ammunition, ‘kay? Last but not least, do a little reading this summer. Start with Rebecca Traister’s “incomplete taxonomy of post-primary rage” among Clinton voters. It’s pretty thorough and not dripping with the kind of contempt toward you that you’d encounter if you browsed the archives of The Confluence. You might want to try that sometime, though. If you could harness the energy of that hatred, Precious, you could rule the whole damn galaxy.

That’s it for now, Senator. We’re available for consultation with your campaign any time, though a couple of important members of the pack may be difficult to reach over the next couple of weeks. I am pleased to report that Moose and Goose arrived safe, sound, and sleepy to a drizzly Helsinki early this morning Eastern time. Stay tuned for travel pics and commentary from Finland, Sweden, and Norway – including one special excursion inside the Arctic Circle! – as the globetrotting moms go off on another one of their most excellent adventures. Who knows? Maybe they can nail down a gig for Hillary Clinton as ruler of some enlightened Scandinavian country. The far northern nations have a history of women leaders, after all, and we think Hill would fit right in with a bunch of ball-busting Viking tough girls. We’ll let ya know! Skoal, beloveds.

Three Fast Funnies

1. For all you hard-working cubicle-dwellers out there, here's a hilarious "Pearls Before Swine" (click on image to enlarge):

2. For those of you who know it's not nice to speak ill of the dead but have no qualms about making fun of them, hie thee straight over to the magnificent Jon Swift, who has emerged from his excruciatingly long (for those of us who can't live without our regular doses of "reasonable conservatism") blog silence in time to plumb the depths of the significance (to humanity) of the death of Tim Russert. The important part of the post is Swift's insightful analysis of what he terms "the Russert rule," which reversed well-established journalistic practices of making all conversations with public officials on the record so that Little Timmy and his friends could enjoy pleasant evenings in Georgetown, but the funny part is Jon's reflection on the enormous shock of Russert's sudden death:

Russert's friends and colleagues were understandably shocked by Russert's premature passing. If an overweight workaholic with diabetes and a history of coronary artery disease can suddenly die without warning, is any one of us safe? Many of the pundits and politicians who spoke at Russert's funeral and during the hours and hours and hours of cable news coverage must have been wondering, for the first time in their lives, Am I, too, mortal? Tom Brokaw has never looked so human.

Moose is going to tape that quote up on the refrigerator to keep her motivated to stick to the Tim Russert Memorial Lifestyle Adjustment Plan she launched in the wake of the newsman's death. (Originally, she was calling it a "diet," but then she clicked over to the Weight Watchers web site and was reminded that just saying the word "diet" is a guaranteed way to gain weight. She did not sign up for Weight Watchers, but she appreciated the sound, free advice.)

3. For those of you planning to sit back and laugh smugly and cynically as Senator Barack Obama proves to be the calculating centrist Roxie's World said he was all along, here's a David Brooks column that you might find amusing. It pains us to agree with the smarmy, insufferable Brooks, but he captures the duality of Obama -- "the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier" versus "the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who’d throw you under the truck for votes" -- that we think a lot of Republicans and most of his starry-eyed progressive fans have overlooked. The money quote?

Just try to imagine Mister Rogers playing the agent Ari in “Entourage” and it all falls into place.

That nails it, doesn't it? Public financing? Hey, he was for it before he was against it. Call us when Obama puts Sam Nunn on his ticket, will you? We may need you to explain to us, just once more and very slowly, what a truly transformational leader the Lesser is. What's that you were saying about a new style of politics? Let me cock my head to the right a little so you can speak into this old dog's good ear.

Peace out, kids. Much to do today as the moms prepare for their journey to the Arctic. Stay tuned for the strat memo we're preparing for the Obama campaign as it works tirelessly (or is that cluelessly?) to woo disaffected Clintonistas. We'll have it before they take off on Monday. Honor bright.

California Loving

I had been hungry, all the Years --
My Noon had Come -- to dine --
I trembling drew the Table near --
And touched the Curious Wine --
--Emily Dickinson

(Photo Credit: Noah Berger, San Francisco Chronicle; Del Martin, 87, and Phyllis Lyon, 83, pioneers of modern lesbian activism, are the first same-sex couple to wed legally in California, 6/16/08)

That crunching noise you heard early yesterday evening was the sound of Western civilization crumbling, as the first legal same-sex marriage was performed in the great state of California by love radical San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. The first happy couple to tie the knot was, appropriately, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, lesbo activists and a couple since the 1950s, whom Newsom married four years ago in the renegade weddings he performed before a court ruled them invalid on the grounds that Newsom did not have the authority to order that marriage licenses be granted to same-sex couples. Picky, picky, picky! (SF Chronicle report on the Martin/Lyon wedding is here.) An expected flood of queer hitchings and fabulous celebrations has been unleashed by a ruling last month by the California Supreme Court striking down the state's ban on same-sex marriage. A flood of painful, expensive un-hitchings is sure to follow, but, hey, that's equality for ya. We're hoping Del and Phyllis will discover that their fifty-five year partnership has been a good preparation for the rigors of marriage.

Roxie's World raises a glass and every paw in the house to Martin and Lyon, to Newsom, and to the CA Supreme Court. We also sincerely apologize for not having called attention to this monumental development sooner, but we've been awfully busy, as you know, trying to control the outcome of the presidential election. The court issued a strong, broad ruling rooted in the precedent of the same court's 1948 decision on interracial marriage (Perez v. Sharp) and affirming that "an individual's sexual orientation -- like a person's race or gender -- does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights." That wee parenthetical "like a person's race or gender" is a significant legal victory because decisions on LGBT rights and issues have hinged upon whether courts saw sexual orientation as like or unlike (the supposedly immutable characteristics of) race or gender. The decision also has national implications, because, unlike Massachusetts, California will issue marriage licenses to couples who do not reside in the state. (Yale law prof Kenji Yoshino blogs on the importance of the decision, which he describes as "revolutionary," here.)

Will issue marriage licenses to couples who do not reside in the state . . . . Huh. Did I mention that the moms have their big whoop-de-do convention that messes up the holidays every year in San Francisco, California this year? Did I mention that? Dear Santa: All I want for Christmas is for the state of California to make honest women of my moms. Love, Roxie

Ahem. We interrupt this sentimental foolishness to remind you that the official position of Roxie's World is that same-sex marriage is an important civil right that should be available to queers in all fifty of these United States, but that marriage as an institution and as a way of structuring intimacy has a dubious history and a tendency to become compulsory in character. We celebrate the expansion of rights, deplore any denial of full equality, and encourage all citizens -- and dogs -- to exercise their rights with care and continue to think creatively about the many possible forms of love. On the other hand, should the day come when same-sex couples are accorded the full panoply of federal benefits and protections attached to marriage, including Social Security spousal benefits, you can be reasonably certain Moose will have Goose in line at the courthouse so fast her head will spin.

By the way, one couple that apparently won't be having a double bridal shower is actress Jodie Foster and longtime partner and co-mom Cydney Bernard. We can't vouch for the story, which we stumbled across in the London Evening Standard, but word is Foster has dumped Bernard for the taller, younger, hotter Cynthia Morton, a writer she met on the set of The Brave One (which we analyze here). Jodie, sweetie, we will allow you a little mid-life crisis if you have to have one, but we would not recommend letting Morton write your next script. The Brave One was not, shall we say, your best vehicle. Call us, Jodie. We really need to talk.

Goodnight, my pretties. May you all be fortunate enough to find someone you can bear to look at, much less say "I do" to, after fifty-five years -- if and only if that is your freely chosen heart's desire and not the compulsion of a culture that privileges the couple as a relational structure.

Dear Santa: They are honest women, but, as I've told you before, they are weird. Love, Roxie

Update: More dish on the Jodie Foster/Cydney Bernard split: This UPI report from late May says that Jodie isn't the only one who dumped a co-mom! New gal pal Cindy Morton reportedly left actress Melanie Mayron (long ago of thirtysomething), with whom she has been raising 10-year-old twins, for Foster. Seems perhaps la Jodie is feeling a tad stressed by the whiff of scandal suddenly surrounding her. Check out this vid of her stuffing a large handbag in the face of a paparazzi trying to photograph her as she was approaching the passenger side of a car being driven by Morton earlier this week. Looks like it's time for somebody to pause and take a deep cleansing breath. What's a matter, Brave One? Is Morton proposing to write a sequel to Panic Room?

Going Neutral

(Image Credit: Where else but Wikipedia?)

Okay, kids, mourning has broken in Roxie’s World. We have fully absorbed Hillary Clinton’s loss in the Democratic primary race and are ready to move forward. Emmeline Grangerford has left the Office of Obits and Eulogies and is taking a well-deserved sabbatical. Flags are back at full-staff, but, as you can see, the flag we’ve run up the pole for the time being is that of Switzerland. Yep, that’s right. We do hereby declare our neutrality in the general election for president.

Permit me to explain. We are yellow-dog Democrats here in Roxie’s World. We will never vote for a Republican for president, no matter how angry we are with our party over

• its fundamentally flawed and undemocratic nominating process;
• the irregularities in the closing stages of that process that resulted in delegates being awarded to a candidate whose name did not even appear on the ballot in the state of Michigan;
• the effort on the part of the party establishment to bring the primary race to a premature close by strong-arming a candidate out of the race when she was still winning by large margins in important states.

We are mad as hell about all of those things. Plus, the disco divas ‘round here are pleased as punch that John McCain is apparently an ABBA fan. Nonetheless, we could never vote for a candidate whose positions on the war and the economy are so dramatically at odds with our own. We have no doubt that McCain will pick up votes from Clinton supporters in the general election, perhaps several from the friends and relations of Roxie’s World, but he won’t get ours.

Having made that (easy) decision, we still find ourselves unable so far to follow Senator Clinton’s lead, hop up on our unity ponies, and install an Obama widget on the sidebar. Moose has spent some time on the Lesser’s web site recently, and she continues to be wigged out by the crypto-messianism of its overall tone and appearance. That whole halo effect thing just is not working for us, dudes, though we can appreciate the temptation presented by the big “O” in “Obama.” Goose insists that since claiming the nomination Obama seems to have shrunk considerably in size. She attributes this miniaturization to a phenomenon Virginia Woolf describes in her perceptive work of feminist criticism, A Room of One’s Own. In patriarchal logics of vision, women function as mirrors for men, fun-house mirrors that serve to make the men look larger and more powerful than they actually are. Remove the woman from the stage, and the man shrinks down to actual size. “Oh, look!” says the viewer. “He really does have funny ears!” Then, put an older white man on the stage beside the younger African-American man, and the dynamics of the situation shift again. It is the latter who fulfills the mirroring function, because patriarchal logic is racialized as well as gendered, and the part of the reflecting other is always played by the non-white or non-male figure. (Don’t get mad at us, kids. We are not endorsing this system of seeing. We are merely describing it.) The Lesser shrinks even more standing next to a guy who looks so much like the Great White Men who have always led the nation. Obama may be more attractive, but McCain offers the powerful comfort of familiarity to voters who crave change a lot less than they think they do.

We made this point in a February post on political marketing and electability when we claimed – quite brilliantly, we thought -- that Obama had been positioned in the primary race as the iPhone while Clinton had somehow been cast as the political equivalent of your grandmother’s rotary dial phone. That’s a distinction that is less likely to be to Obama’s advantage in the general because, as Moose explained to Goose in a bit of dialogue from the earlier post,

McCain can make a contest between him and Obama all about who’s the manliest man, and the old white former prisoner of war is going to win that contest every time. All he has to do is stand there stiff as a board, make a couple of well-timed references to ‘Nam, and suddenly voters remember that grandma’s old rotary phone never dropped a call and didn’t shatter into pieces when it got dropped. Obama looks like a self-involved pretty boy, a puff of smoke. Faced with the two of them, voters realize they don’t want to be cool; they want to be safe.

Now, of course, it’s possible that Obama’s charisma and prodigious political skills will overturn all of these assumptions and power dynamics, especially against a candidate so stiff he can make a victory speech sound like a prayer for a bowel movement. If that is the case, Obama will win with or without the support of this humble dog blog. Nonetheless, so far we’ve only touched on peripheral, subjective issues that go to the question of the Lesser’s electability. That question is in some sense irrelevant to the question of whether we can or should support him. We are members of the Pudd’nhead Party, after all. We have a long, proud tradition of supporting losers in presidential elections. For years, when the self-proclaimed progressives or radicals were righteously sitting out elections or voting for third-party candidates, Moose and Goose stuck loyally by the Democratic nominees – and they’ve got the Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry buttons to prove it. (They’ve got [Bill] Clinton buttons, too, but we’re talking about the Dem losers they have supported over the years.) (Full disclosure: Moose cast her first presidential vote for Barry Commoner, who ran on the Citizens Party ticket in 1980. She attributes that vote to a desire to rebel as thoroughly against her Republican upbringing as she possibly could and to the not insignificant fact that she voted in Indiana that year, a state that would have gone for Ronald Reagan even if Dems had had the original Messiah on the ballot.) Why, then, are they hanging back this time, willing to risk the opprobrium of longtime fellow travelers who have rallied ‘round the party’s presumptive nominee with the enthusiasm of converts to a new religion? It’s complicated.

We acknowledge that part of our hesitation to throw our support to Obama is due to a lingering bitterness over the treatment of Hillary Clinton, her supporters, and some of their issues by the party, the media, the so-called progressive blogosphere, and at times the Obama campaign, which pushed negative stories about Clinton and hyped allegations of racism. We don’t need to re-hash those feelings and their causes here. We hope they will dissipate in time as Senator Obama’s general election campaign unfolds.

Deeper and more troubling to us is that there is in our judgment a taint of illegitimacy surrounding Obama’s nomination. We know that the debacles of Michigan and Florida were not the fault of the Obama campaign. We also know that he benefited significantly from those debacles and refused to support do-over primaries in those states that would have allowed full seating of their delegations to the convention and a far less ambiguous outcome to an exceptionally close race. We cannot shake the sense that Obama 2008 bears an eerie resemblance to Bush 2000, as a candidate claims victory under dubious circumstances and then steamrolls forward as if he had won in a landslide.

As to the substance of Obama's candidacy, we said all along that Dems had a great field of candidates but could nominate poop on toast and probably still beat Republicans campaigning this year with the albatross of George W. Bush around their necks. We basically stand by that point, although, as the primary battle wore on, Clinton truly distinguished herself in our eyes as the most qualified candidate. With Obama, on the other hand, the more we saw, the less we felt we really knew – or the less there was to see. For us, his shrinking began before Clinton left the stage. We continue to have doubts about his experience and qualifications, haven’t seen evidence of the political skill it will take to bring about whatever kinds of change it is he hopes to make, and don’t believe his health-care plan will ever achieve universal coverage. We also think that on the whole his “new” kind of politics is a version of brass-knuckles opportunism that doesn’t feel new at all. His campaign brilliantly gamed the Democrats’ ludicrous nominating process, demonized Clinton for trying to change the rules in the middle of the game, and then happily accepted rule changes that padded his delegate lead in the end. Further, he panders to different audiences as effectively as any politician we have ever seen. Performing on a national stage, he presents himself to majority-white audiences as a trans-racial, post-civil rights politician who doesn’t shush the crowd’s cries of “Race doesn’t matter!” Meantime, back home in Chicago, where cultural blackness pays hefty political dividends, Obama spent twenty years in the pews of a church in which race mattered deeply and in ways that might surprise a lot of voters not versed in the traditions of black liberation theology.

Make no mistake: We cast no judgment on Senator Obama’s (former) church affiliation or his racial cultural politics. Our point is that the senator has played the game of shape-shifting and message adjustment as slickly as any willie in American political history. The problem for him is that he is claiming to do something different. When voters catch him in these kinds of inconsistencies, it matters more, in part because he looks like a hypocrite and in part because they are just getting to know him. Small inconsistencies and dubious associations get magnified, and the next thing you know the internets are on fire with wild speculation about lapel pins and the Pledge of Allegiance. The question, “What else don’t we know about this guy?” may be viciously exploited by racist demagogues bent on destroying his candidacy, but it is one that many voters will raise in all sincerity as they seek to make an informed choice in November. That passionate sincerity should not be doubted or discounted.

Here in Roxie’s World, the question, “What else don’t we know about this guy?” goes to fundamental issues of trust regarding his stance on issues about which we care deeply: foreign policy, reproductive freedom, civil rights for sexual minorities. Since claiming the nomination, he has already – and, indeed, almost instantaneously – shifted his position on Israel and Iran (in his speech to AIPAC the morning after the end of the primaries). Before that, in our judgment, he occasionally voted “present” in the Illinois state legislature to avoid taking a stand on politically sensitive issues, including reproductive freedom. He supports a separate-but-equal solution to the challenge of same-sex marriage and believes it is a compliment to a gay person to say that “He wasn’t proselytizing all the time.” (Just some of the time? And always in an exceptionally witty way?) These are valid concerns about issues of serious import, and “McCain would be worse” is not a sufficient response to them – at least not to us, at least not yet.

It is never inappropriate to be skeptical about someone aspiring to hold the highest office in the land, particularly when that individual has spent so little time in the harsh glare of the national spotlight. To a large degree, voters are being asked to take a leap of faith in supporting Senator Obama. Some of us are still not prepared to make that leap, proud though we may be that our party can claim the historical first of nominating an African-American for the presidency and aware as we are that four more years of a Republican in the White House would be fraught with risk, not just for this country but for the world. Loyalty to party cannot trump loyalty to conscience, and conscience requires us to keep thinking, observing, studying, and considering our options. We welcome your input but not your censure of our stance as we make our way through this process.

In declaring our neutrality, we are also for the time being refusing to cast in our lot with those righteous forces currently coalescing under the banner of Just Say No Deal in order to protest Obama’s nomination and what appears to many to be an unseemly takeover of the Democratic National Committee by the Obama campaign. We are following development of this movement closely and encourage our readers to do so by checking in with involved blogs such as the Confluence and the Reclusive Leftist, which recently offered a most compelling argument on the strategic value of Clinton supporters maintaining and exploiting the leverage they accrued through the primary campaign. Could be we’ll join up with these daring dead-enders (a term we use with irony and affection), but for now we remain officially independent of everything but the dedicated pack of readers here in Roxie’s World. In a follow-up post, we will, out of the goodness of our hearts, offer a strategy memo to the Obama campaign on how to earn – or forfeit – our support.

Stay tuned, kids. It’s summertime, and my typist is (mostly) free of meetings and classes and the evils of Learning Outcomes Assessment. You may end up wishing she had a little less time on her hands, but we hope you’ll enjoy traveling with us on the mystery ride of political (in)decision. Peace out.

Oh, and let us know in Comments if you’d like to join the list of endorsers to our statement of neutrality.

Endorsed by:

Roxie Smith Lindemann, Sole Owner and Proprietor, Roxie’s World
Moose, Amanuensis, Roxie’s World
Goose, Freelance and Occasionally Off-the-Reservation Commenter, Roxie’s World
Mark Twain, Director, Office of Persona Management, Roxie’s World

If She'd Only Had a Brain

Shorter NYT article on alleged sexism in coverage of Senator Hillary Clinton's run for the White House: Nope, uh-unh, none here, none there. Do you see any, Keith? No, I don't, Chris, do you? Nah-h-h-h-h-h-h. No way!

Apparently, we were all mistaken. Senator Clinton wasn't running to be head of state. She was running to be chest of state. Which should have been a brilliant strategy, given all the boobs we've had in the White House to date. We can't imagine why it didn't work out.

Digby demolishes the Times story here.

Oh, and to the ludicrous, self-serving claim that Clinton and her supporters only started pointing out sexism in the coverage of her campaign when she fell behind, we offer proof that America's favorite dog blog devoted to politics, pop culture, and basketball began making such critiques last summer, when Clinton was 15 points ahead of her nearest rival in polls. Our earliest, sustained analysis of the problem is here.

We're still working on that post that's going to shake up the world, kids. Be patient. Genius takes time, and the truth is your favorite dog blogger is a sick old pup today -- showing signs of a recurrence of that miserable pancreatitis I had a couple of years ago. Throw a good thought my way if you have a chance today, okay?