"Well, he's not running for sociologist in chief, he's running for president."

On "Meet the Press," Bob Shrum articulated a potential new meme about Barack Obama. The subject, of course, was Obama's statement that small-town people "get bitter" and "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Mike Murphy picked up Shrum's "sociology" theme:

The--one of the big vexing things for Democratic elite is how to hell do working-class whites ever vote Republican? We give them all the class warfare stuff, but they still seem to do it. Well, they do it on culture. And the Democrats, many of them, look at this like some sociological disease to be explained away. And Barack, sitting in some $10 million backyard had to explain it like a sociologist...

For Murphy, unlike Shrum, "sociology" was not a way of encapsulating and setting aside a stray musing, but evidence of a central problem of Democrats: They're out-of-touch and elitist.

Shrum reworks his meme:

And I think he was explaining what was going on with a lot of those folks. Now, should he have said it that way? No.... People go with sociology, and he shouldn't be a sociologist.... People--sociology says that when people are in distress, when they're economically deprived, they, they hold onto the things in their lives that give them some sense of security and identity. That's faith, that can be hunting, that can be all of those things.

Sociology says.... Obama was only saying what the experts know, right? But it was not a good idea to say it when you need these people to vote for you.

James Carville stammers into the fray:

I'm just, I'm just saying that in--culturally, he, he, he, he--I know he's not sociologist in charge, but that he didn't have his kind of history right. He needs to have a better history and a better understanding. I think--and I think Bob is right, he's going to have a chance in the debate, and he's going to have a chance to, to, to kind of re-explain himself here. But this statement was really off in terms of his--its, its, its accuracy and understanding who "these people are." They're--they'll--there's a large segment of the Democratic Party that would like to win an election without these kind of white, working-class voters, and we need a substantial...

I think he's about to say that real Democrats can't stand those people Obama was talking about. Shrum talks over him and prevents him from going deeper into that hole.

The "Compassion Forum."

I've been recording... and avoiding. But now I'm taking a look. [ADDED: Link to news story about the Compassion Forum.] The first question, to Hillary Clinton, is perfect: Why criticize Barack Obama for saying that people turn to religion in hard times? What's wrong with doing that? Hillary says she'll let Obama speak for himself... and then she lambastes him. So much for compassion! The questioner persists: You know "he's a man of faith." This is all very weird. Not only are the candidates put to a test of their own religious faith, but they are being tested on each other's faith!

Does Hillary know whether Obama is a "man of faith"? I don't. I just read his first book, "Dreams From My Father," this weekend, and my sense of it is that he is not a religious man. The only significant discussion of religion comes when he joins Jeremiah Wright's church, and that is all about his worldly, political concerns with his community organizing in Chicago.

Now, Hillary is asked to "share" her experiences with the presence of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! She says that since she was a child, she's felt the "enveloping" love of God and that, on many occasions, she's felt the Holy Spirit has been with her as she made "a journey." That's 2 down, 1 to go! She's "anchored" in "God's grace" and has "you know, that sense of forgiveness." Yikes, this is excruciating. And speaking of excruciating, when has she felt the presence of Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior? She left Him out when answering the question. Is she going to get back to Him, or has she forgotten?

She doesn't get back to Jesus, but she does say she's uncomfortable — she's a reserved person — making assertions about religion. What matters is what you do. She finds a way to shift over to talking about the religious faith that other people have. She plugs in some campaign trail anecdotes — a good rhetorical move, I think.

Why does God allow innocent people to suffer? The classic question. Hillary's answer: "I don't know. I can't wait to ask Him." Which gets a laugh. Then she goes on to say — very well, I think — that "the very existence" of suffering is, for us, "a call to action." "Maybe the Lord is waiting for us to respond to His call."

Her favorite Bible story? Esther! She had the opportunity to make a decision, to take a risk.

A question from a Muslim: Can we address climate change without changing our standard of living? Answer: Compact fluorescent bulbs, blah blah blah. We can do a lot of things that won't really be too hard. Voila: Compassion!

Is God watching this show? Is He fast-forwarding through some of it? I am.

Ah, the Hillary section is over. She did a good job. She hit an appropriate level of humility and piety, and she seemed smart and focused on the things a President should be concerned about. I think — based mainly on reading biographies of her — that she actually is a religious believer.

Now, Obama is introduced, and as he walks down the aisle the crowd acts idolatrous.

The first question for Obama is about that bitter small-towners quote of his. He says he never meant to demean people for clinging to religion. He himself has turned to religion in times of need. People need to understand that "I am a devout Christian." He sounds genuinely angry — and I felt that I could almost hear tears in his voice — when he says he's been working all his adult life through churches. He wants credit for that, and he hates the way politics works, needing to tear things down, seizing hold of one aspect of something he's said and misusing it. To me, he looks ravaged — acne'd?— older. Maybe he's just awfully tired.

Does God punish and reward in real time? He doesn't know but he tries to "move [God's] agenda forward." He's saying "uh" a lot. I noticed that Hillary has completely eradicated the "uh" that had once plagued her speech. There is a really noticeable shift in energy and alertness from Hillary to Obama. "What I think we can do is to uh act in ways that uh that are consonant with uh the values that uh that we cherish."

Asked about the Biblical creation story, Obama says he's one of those Christians who don't take that part of the Bible literally, though he says there's a legitimate debate over whether the universe was created in 6 of our 24-hour days or some other time frame. He's firm that God created the world, but hastens to say that he believes in evolution and thinks religion and science are fully compatible. The more science discovers, he says, the more he is aware of "mysteries" that strengthen his faith.

Now, he's talking about Jeremiah Wright. He's interrupted by audience applause when he says that Wright has been misrepresented by that "greatest hits" video that's been going around. He goes on to say that he finds much of that video "deeply offensive." He emphasizes his church's "community" and "ministries" — it's not just Wright.

He speaks of his experience with Islam when he lived in Indonesia as a child. It's made him familiar the form of Islam that is compatible with the modern world. I think this is the only discussion of Islam in the entire "forum." Neither candidate was pressed to opine about fundamentalist Islam, its connection to terrorism, or anything about Israel.

He makes a commitment to cut poverty in half in the next 10 years.

I've reached the end of the recording. I haven't commented on everything, and I can see that Hillary got the advantage by going first. It was hard to put up with the whole second interview, especially as it frequently lapsed into mundane statements of policy. Obama seems to have handled it well enough, though he did seem a bit bland and tired. Why did he have to go second? He lost a coin toss. Pure chance or divine intervention?

April is still a little bleak.

But see that swath of green? This dot of pink:



That's hope. Isn't it?

"You will never be happy as long as you are afraid of your sadness."

Happiness training.

For two days we have defined our concepts of happiness and unhappiness.

We have paired off for exercises like the cheesy New Age practice of looking in a mirror and answering "What do I see?"...

It is two weeks since our third day on learning how to bring abundance into our lives...

We look at three types of happiness; joy, pleasure and satisfaction....

On day four, people shared their extraordinary abundance stories....

Yikes. Would it surprise you to learn that the female/male at these sessions ratio is 3 to 1?

"Scientists invent microscopic operating table for 1mm worm."

The answer to the question: What's in worm news today?

IN THE COMMENTS: blogging cockroach types:

damn
i was hoping they would have developed
a little operating table for me
i think i need surgery on my right rear leg
after that accident under the fridge last summer
ive been in chronic pain ever since it happened
i am on aspirin with the help of tommy
--he is the boy whose computer i use--
he grinds one up every week and puts out a little each night
it helps
but if they could develop
an operating room for a miserable worm
they could certainly build one for all the sick
and injured cockroaches out there
tommy says the vet wont touch me
id have to be some madagascar hissing cockroach
to get any medical care
its size discrimination i tell you
sizeism pure sizeism

Tibet rally in Union Square.

Nearby, the buttons for sale were miscellaneous:



ADDED: Click here to enlarge the buttons picture. The empty row at the left seems to have been filled with Obama buttons. There are lots of Clinton buttons left. Lots of Che too.

"Everywhere, they flew the colors of assertive patriot."

"Their car windows were plastered with American-flag decals, their ideological totems. In the bumper-sticker dialogue of the freeways, they answered Make Love Not War with Honor America or Spiro is My Hero. They sent Richard Nixon to the White House and two teams of astronauts to the moon. They were both exalted and afraid. The mysteries of space were nothing, after all, compared with the menacing confusions of their own society.

"The American dream that they were living was no longer the dream as advertised. They feared that they were beginning to lose their grip on the country. Others seemed to be taking over — the liberals, the radicals, the defiant young, a communications industry that they often believed was lying to them. The Saturday Evening Post folded, but the older world of Norman Rockwell icons was long gone anyway. No one celebrated them: intellectuals dismissed their lore as banality. Pornography, dissent and drugs seemed to wash over them in waves, bearing some of their children away.

"But in 1969 they began to assert themselves. They were 'discovered' first by politicians and the press, and then they started to discover themselves. In the Administration's voices — especially in the Vice President's and the Attorney General's — in the achievements and the character of the astronauts, in a murmurous and pervasive discontent, they sought to reclaim their culture. It was their interpretation of patriotism that brought Richard Nixon the time to pursue a gradual withdrawal from the war. By their silent but newly felt presence, they influenced the mood of government and the course of legislation, and this began to shape the course of the nation and the nation's course in the world. The Men and Women of the Year were the Middle Americans."

Time Magazine, declaring "The Middle Americans" The Men and Women of the Year for 1969.

Read the whole, awesome essay — and marvel that we've been talking about these things for the last 40 years.

Barack Obama's recent comment about the bitterness of left-behind small-towners may seem like the latest line of dialogue in a long, long conversation.

Insane — and insanely great — retro ad for diet soda.

(Via Andrew Sullivan.)

ADDED: I don't remember seeing that ad, which seems to be from the early 70s period when I didn't have a TV — and when things like that would have driven me to ranting about "Stepford Wives" and brain-dead "Middle Americans." (Hey, no one says "Middle Americans" anymore. It was a Nixon phrase.) In the 60s, however, I watched tons of TV. So here's a 60s diet soda ad, with some of the same themes, but an attitude about women that is much better:



More feminist, isn't it? The man is ridiculous, and the woman doesn't need him. She's beautiful — and slim, of course — which is very attractive to him, but she's not doing it for him. Here — let's splat a whole wedding cake on him to prove the point.

"Phony, academic-sounding verbal junk... trying to talk like effete characters from Victorian novels...."

I've been ignoring this Dick Cavett thing in the NYT that's been sitting at the top of the most-emailed list for days, but now I'm reading it. I don't want to delve into Cavett's earnest opposition to the war — he's lambasting Petraeus – but there's some discussion of language that interests me:

In addition to his own pedantic delivery, there is his turgid vocabulary. It reminds you of Copspeak, a language spoken nowhere on earth except by cops and firemen when talking to “Eyewitness News.” Its rule: never use a short word where a longer one will do. It must be meant to convey some misguided sense of “learnedness” and “scholasticism” — possibly even that dread thing, “intellectualism” — to their talk. Sorry, I mean their “articulation.”

No crook ever gets out of the car. A “perpetrator exits the vehicle.” (Does any cop say to his wife at dinner, “Honey, I stubbed my toe today as I exited our vehicle”?) No “man” or “woman” is present in Copspeak. They are replaced by that five-syllable, leaden ingot, the “individual.” The other day, there issued from a fire chief’s mouth, “It contributed to the obfuscation of what eventually eventuated.” This from a guy who looked like he talked, in real life, like Rocky Balboa. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Who imposes this phony, academic-sounding verbal junk on brave and hard-working men and women who don’t need the added burden of trying to talk like effete characters from Victorian novels?

And, General, there is no excuse anywhere on earth for a stillborn monster like “ethnosectarian conflict,” as Jon Stewart so hilariously pointed out....

Petraeus’s verbal road is full of all kinds of bumps and lurches and awkward oddities. How about “ongoing processes of substantial increases in personnel”?

Try talking English, General. You mean more soldiers.

It’s like listening to someone speaking a language you only partly know. And who’s being paid by the syllable. You miss a lot. I guess a guy bearing up under such a chestload of hardware — and pretty ribbons in a variety of decorator colors — can’t be expected to speak like ordinary mortals, for example you and me. He should try once saying — instead of “ongoing process of high level engagements” — maybe something in colloquial English? Like: “fights” or “meetings” (or whatever the hell it’s supposed to mean).

I agree. So did George Orwell in "Politics and the English Language," which Cavett really ought to have cited.

Anyway, last night I was reading the most atrocious sentence, written by (the highly acclaimed blogger) Josh Marshall:

Some of it is likely equally demagoguable, but shows up some of the tendentious misconstruals of what he said.

Talk about phony, academic-sounding verbal junk and trying to talk like an effete character from a Victorian novels! "Demagoguable" and "misconstrual" are not even words. I'm not saying you can't coin a word, but coin something less ugly. (I mean, those are the Wisconsin and Louisiana quarters of word coinage.) "Likely equally demagoguable"... "tendentious misconstruals"... ugh! That's misconscrewed. Makes me want to demagag.

***

But the actual substance of Marshall's post is excellent. I was going to say, after reading Cavett's post, that we tend to find language especially irksome when we are irked by the message. But Marshall's post is something I would like to link to uncritically. He's found a 4-year-old clip of Barack Obama saying something very close to what he said this week about bitter small-towners:

"[Bill Clinton] can’t compute that he’s not the new kid on the block. It’s about his mortality — and immortality."

"He needs her to win because if she doesn’t become president, he goes down as a minor president. If she wins, it’s the Adamses and the Roosevelts and the Clintons."

A former Clinton adviser said to Maureen Dowd.

Hey, it better not just be Dick Morris again. Anyway, wanna psychoanalyze Bill Clinton again? (He fears death!) Dowd does.

When "the juxtaposition of weaponry and sexuality" violates the campus conduct code.

Instapundit links to this Denver Post story about 2 male students who distributed a parody — "The Monthly Bag" — of the feminist newsletter — "The Monthly Rag." Here's a PDF of the 1-page flier (via Ace).

This was a problem:

Did You Know...??

The Barrett .50 Caliber sniper rifle has an effective range of 2000 meters?

There's also a comic discussion of a chainsaw, making it seem like a male sex organ. And there's a description of a sexual practice in which the woman takes the demeaning/ridiculous position of a wheelbarrow.

"We quickly determined this was one of the worst cases of the year," said Adam Kissel, director of FIRE [the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education], because the parody publication was singled out. "It's such an obvious double standard. The fact that 'The Monthly Rag' mentions male castration alongside an announcement for a feminist porn activist provides the same juxtaposition they're claiming for Robinson of violence and sexuality."

Tomi-Ann Roberts, director of the feminist and gender studies program that publishes "The Monthly Rag," said participants in her program were surprised when this situation arose.

"We were like 'whoa ... wow ... wait.' Obviously, there are some men here on this campus who are very angry at our flier," Roberts said....

At the conduct hearing in March, Robinson and other students raised concerns about the offensiveness of The Monthly Rag. Roberts dismissed those complaints.

"There's a difference between material that is 'offensive' ... versus material that demonizes or threatens or belittles groups of people," Roberts said.

The main problem is that men who were not identifying themselves were wafting confusing suggestions of violence toward women. It's a big overstatement to say the flier "demonizes" or "belittles" women, but look at the quote carefully. Roberts doesn't say this flier demonizes and belittles women, only that there's a distinction between merely offensive material — which I hope she thinks should protected — and threats and hate speech that put other students in fear.

FIRE's position is that the men's flier was so much like the feminist flier that it's got a case of inequality: Women can do what men can't. Anybody got a PDF of The Monthly Rag? Did The Monthy Rag create anxiety about school shootings? I'm not saying the school was right to punish these boys. (The punishment is forced speech: They must conduct a forum on the issues raised by their case. Are they allowed to say what they really think or must they spout the party line?) I'm just saying that that Roberts has drawn a real distinction. We can still talk about whether that's where the line should be drawn. But let's not act as though it's been established that The Monthly Bag was only a comic, male version of The Monthly Rag.

(By the way, I suspect that the author of the headline to that Denver Post story was expressing covert support for the comedic college boys. If you don't get my point, read this.)

ADDED: Let's also examine Roberts's response: "Obviously, there are some men here on this campus who are very angry at our flier." I think she's imposing her own prejudicial belief that men are angry. One could just as well look at The Monthy Bag and say: Obviously, there are some men here on this campus who think our flier is ludicrous.

And let me say that I think the "group" that the men's flier seems to "demonize" or "belittle" is just the "group" that publishes The Monthly Bag. That is, there is speech and an answer to that speech. In this sense, FIRE is on the right track. When you have speech responding to speech, you shouldn't squelch one side of the dialogue. But the Monthly Bag guys muddied the issues by bringing in the sniper rifle (and the chainsaw). I assume they intended comedy, but comedy isn't easy, and comedy isn't an all-purpose excuse.

AND: Here's the PDF of an issue of The Monthly Rag. The reference to castration is no sort of threat to men, but the statement: "Many cultures have cautionary tales about the dangers of sex with women. It is associated with the fear of male castration." That is, the group that published the flier — the "Feminist and Gender Studies Interns" — is expressing a concern about men's fear of women, not saying that the fear is justified and certainly not that they have any idea of harming anyone.

I got the link to that PDF from Just One Minute, which has some commentary on what I've said here and some other things.

Cosmic ice cream.

Daffodil.

"Abundantly, gloriously fleshy, the paint gathered in great gobs and whorls..."

The highest price ever for a painting by a not-dead-yet artist is about to be paid for this luscious painting of an extravagantly nude woman.

Magnolia.

"So Indiana may end up being the tiebreaker."

Barack Obama admits he's in a tie? No, he's just talking about winning 2 of the 3 states with primaries coming up. The 2 he thinks he can win are 2 weeks after the 1 he sees himself losing. If Clinton wins Pennsylvania, that victory will hang out there for 2 weeks before he'll get the chance to rack up those 2 victories — in Indiana and North Carolina — that are supposed to constitute his win in a 3-state game.

How odd that Pennsylvania got set apart in time from all the other primaries. What luck for Clinton. All this time for something to go wrong for Obama and for exploiting it — like that awful quote everyone's talking about. From the article at the first link:

[D]uring a private meeting with California donors, [Obama said] that economic bitterness had driven some working class people to "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Obama modulated that assessment Friday night before an audience in Terre Haute:

"People end up voting on issues like guns and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. They take refuge in their faith and their community, and their family, and the things they can count on. But they don't believe they can count on Washington."

He added: "People are fed up, they are angry, they're frustrated and they're bitter. And they want to see a change in Washington."

That's an excellent rephrasing of a damaging statement. But I must say that the original statement sounded like a typical law-school-liberal remark. I think it was quite sincere, and I'm rather sure he believed he was being admirably intellectual and raising politics to a new, higher level. Within a liberal law school environment, that statement would be heard as a thoughtful, compassionate insight. Some of your colleagues might think you were excessively, squishily tolerant of what they see as ignorant, bigoted people, but I don't think they'd push you to be more understanding of the alien culture you were observing.

ADDED: John Hinderacker says:

Barack Obama's arrogance has been evident for some time, and it's no shock, perhaps, to learn that that he shares this bigoted opinion, common among urban liberals, of people who live in "small towns." But to actually express it, in public, at a campaign event, is stunningly stupid.

Ed Morrissey says:

The matter-of-fact style in which he spoke this shows the unthinking contempt he has for people he has never engaged — an acceptance of stereotypes without questioning them that shows his own bigotry, not to mention foolishness and poor judgment.

...Obama only really performs well with a script. Once he has to speak extemporaneously, not only does he fare worse as an orator, but he tends to get lost and make unforced errors.

Morrissey seems to think the main problem is that Obama is young and unseasoned. So he'd be better if only he learned how to disguise his real thoughts. I mean look at Hillary here, exploiting Obama's gaffe:



Is that better? A hammy politician buttering you up?

MORE: Glenn Reynolds links to an old Onion piece with Al Gore campaigning in Pennsylvania like this:

"Over the past few days, I have traveled all over your state and met many of you. And what has impressed me most is that no matter where I have gone, my reaction has been the same: 'Oh, God, get me the fuck out of this dump,'" said Gore, who alternately referred to the Keystone State's 12 million residents as "animals" and "ghouls."

Read the whole thing.

Glenn collects links here. I especially like Mickey Kaus:

I used to think working class voters had conservative values because they were bitter about their economic circumstances--welfare and immigrants were "scapegoats," part of the false consciousness that would disappear when everyone was guaranteed a good job at good wages. Then I left college. ...

Because Obama's comments are clearly a Category II Kinsley Gaffe -- in which the candidate accidentally says what he really thinks -- it will be hard for Obama to explain away. [He could say he was tired and it was late at night?--ed But he was similarly condescending in his big, heartfelt, well-prepared "race speech" when he explained white anger over welfare and affirmative action as a displacement of the bitterness that comes when whites

are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition ...

Obama's new restatement confirms the Marxist Deskwork interpretation of the race speech, removing any honest doubt as to his actual attitude.

Rather than trying to spin his way out, wouldn't it be better for Obama to forthrightly admit his identity? Let's have a national dialogue about egghead condescension!]

Obama is doomed if people come to see him as a leftist. Is he really one, or is he just used to circulating among people who casually say things like that to win favor with each other? If that's all it is, then it's not a Category II Kinsley Gaffe, and we get back to the more mundane concern about his inexperience — his lack of seasoning.

Cherry scene.

ADDED: On this overcast day, there were few people in the gardens. An artist painting a tree. Some older couples wandering and pointing things out to each other. Bunches of schoolkids, led by teachers. One kid asked if it was "wabbit season." Another kid wanted to know how they were going to get to wherever it was they were going. The teacher said: "We're going to use those things attached to your legs. We're going to move them back and forth. We're going to walk."

Rugged cherry.

If you're thinking of going to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens to see the cherry blossoms...

... right now, you'll only find budding branches — sprightly and pretty, I think — in the Cherry Esplanade:





But if you go over to the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, you'll find plenty of sumptuous blooms:

Radio alert.

I'm going to be on "At Issue with Ben Mehrens," a Wisconsin Public Radio show, at 5 PM Eastern Time today. It's a call-in show where we talk about the news of the past week. You can stream the show or, later, listen to the show from the archive.