Crib From This gets Hitched.

I know—dumb title; but who cares.

Over the years, we here at Crib From This have characterized the writings, spoken remarks, and ideas of Christopher Hitchens variously as dumb, smart, funny, and irrelevant [this is not a typo—ed.]. Through the thick and thin of these reactions to his work, it remains that Hitch is among the few commentators to appear regularly in the 'mainstream media' (whose ranks Hitchens—previously a longtime columnist for The Nation magazine—joined when he emerged as an early and ardent propagandist for prosecuting the Iraq War) to reliably possess any kind of panache or even sense of humor. So when Hitch revealed, a number of months ago, that he had been diagnosed with a life-threatening form of esophageal cancer, we, of course, felt that this was some pretty crap news.

So, in any event, when we happened accidentally upon a couple of his recent contributions to his column in Slate, we were pleasantly surprised to find that both are pithy and of a high caliber. Neither of them is—as Hitch has sometimes been perceived to be—controversial or even provocative. Rather, they both communicate successfully more-or-less obvious truths that lots of other commentators and/or media lack the clearheadedness or intellectual distance from the daily news cycle to state. This is the kind of commentary that is so thoroughly lacking right now and why 'the news', as it were, has become so unworthy of anyone's serious attention over the past six months or year-or-so.

Anyway, we link, first, to Hitchens's lucid take on the recent, bizarre, Rick Sanchez episode. Rick Sanchez is, by the way, a person I had never previously heard of and someone whose career, etc., I fail to find at all interesting. And this is precisely why Hitchens nails it: he doesn't find Sanchez or his remarks to be particularly interesting either. Part of the reason for this, Hitchens argues, is that it simply isn't controversial to "note the effectiveness of the Jewish Lobby."

And we link, second, to an article in which Hitchens reflects upon the inanities and utter lack of substance detectable in the supposed political 'debates' preceding the upcoming mid-term elections occurring across the country. A taste:

Asking my hosts in Connecticut if there was anything worth noting about the upcoming elections in their great state, I received the reply, "Well, we have a guy who wants to be senator who lied about his record of service in Vietnam, and a woman who wants to be senator who has run World Wrestling Entertainment and seems like a tough lady." Though full enough of curiosity to occupy, say, one course of lunch, that still didn't seem to furnish enough material to keep the mind focused on politics for very long.

And this dearth—of genuine topics and of convincing or even plausible candidates—appears to extend from coast to coast. In New York, a rather shopworn son of one Democratic dynasty (and ex-member by marriage of another) is "facing off," as people like to say, against a provincial thug with a line in pseudo-tough talk. In California, where the urgent question of something suspiciously like state failure is staring the electorate in the face, the Brown-Whitman contest hasn't yet risen even to the level of the trivial.

Hitch then carries this discussion in the direction of a general, broadly applicable, and yet incisive and satisfying question:

Consider: What normal person would consider risking their career and their family life in order to undergo the incessant barrage of intrusive questioning about every aspect of their lives since well before college? To face the constant pettifogging and chatter of Facebook and Twitter and have to boast of how many false friends they had made in a weird cyberland? And if only that was the least of it. Then comes the treadmill of fundraising and the unending tyranny of the opinion polls, which many media systems now use as a substitute for news and as a means of creating stories rather than reporting them. And, even if it "works," most of your time in Washington would be spent raising the dough to hang on to your job. No wonder that the best lack all conviction.

This may seem to discount or ignore the apparent flood of new political volunteers who go to make up the Tea Party movement. But how fresh and original are these faces? They come from a long and frankly somewhat boring tradition of anti-incumbency and anti-Washington rhetoric, and they are rather an insult to anyone with anything of a political memory. Since when is it truly insurgent to rail against the state of affairs in the nation's capital? How long did it take Gingrich's "rebel" forces in the mid-1990s to become soft-bottomed incumbents in their turn? Many of the cynical veterans of that moment, from Dick Armey to John Boehner, are the effective managers and controllers of the allegedly spontaneous Tea Party wave we see today.

Populism imposes its own humiliations on anyone considering a run. How many times can you stand in front of an audience and state: "I will always put the people of X first"? (Quite a lot of times, to judge by recent campaigns.) This is to say no more than that you will be a megaphone for sectional interests and regional mood swings and resentment, a confession that, to you, all politics is yokel.

I think that pieces like these—more reflective, more genial, less polemical, and yet every bit as unwavering—suit Hitchens's authorial voice just fine. It's almost as though his longtime infatuation with Orwell has begun to rub off on his style in a more direct way. I like it. Let's hope that the new, 'mature Hitchens' is able to stick around for a good while longer, because we need people to be writing like this in the midst of our present political/cultural landscape.

So, for as long as he continues to turn out work of a high caliber, we say: we'll gladly Hitch our wagons.

Racist Tea Bagger issues domestic terrorist threat.

Terrorism is unacceptable, whatever the color of the terrorist's skin.

It's an important point for those of us who oppose violent extremism to make. Stand up for education, freedom of expression, civil liberties and civil discourse and denounce violence, chauvinism, willful ignorance and hate.

The trouble with phony multiculturalism.

I happened upon an item on CNN.com that illustrates what I shall call phony multiculturalism. I shall define phony multiculturalism as the cynical and superficial brand of multiculturalism that is promoted by the corporate/political oligarchy for purposes of marketing/propaganda.

The item concerns a Photoshop mishap in a Microsoft advertising campaign. Take a look at the two photographs in question. The first comes from an advertisement tailored to an American market. The second is an altered version of the same photograph, intended for a Polish market (apparently Polish people haven't yet caught on to the superiority of the Macintosh):

Kinda disturbing, no? I mean, it's bad enough that they replaced the head of a creepily smiling black man with the head of a creepily smiling white man. But to add insult to -- as it were -- injury, the white guy's head is the wrong size and is contorted such that it looks like he doesn't have a neck.

I realize that this is for the damn Poles, but still....

Here's an excerpt from the article, titled Microsoft apologizes for gaffe in online ad:

SEATTLE, Washington (CNN) -- Software giant Microsoft apologized Wednesday for the apparent bad judgment that led to the head of a black model being swapped for that of a white model in an online advertisement.

The ad -- which showed three business people, one Asian, one white and one black -- was altered on Microsoft's Web site for Poland to place the head of a white man on a black man's body.

"We apologized, fixed the error and we are looking into how it happened," said Lou Gellos, a Microsoft spokesman.

He said that because the company was still reviewing how the swap occurred he could not comment further.

Okay. So, this is typical a PR/damage control cant. But just consider for a moment how completely dishonest this claim is: They are "looking into" how it happened?

How it happened is, of course, obvious:

The business Web site CNET.com, which first published reports of the swap, wrote that the change in models may have been made with the "racially homogeneous" Polish market in mind.

So, Microsoft created an alternative version of the image in its efforts to "target" the Polish market, such as it is... This wasn't an "error." Nor was it really a "gaffe." The only mistake that Microsoft made was getting caught. The "gaffe" is that, embarrassingly, some graphic designer did a sloppy enough job that people noticed.

What's actually unsettling to people about this might be a more fundamental problem: There's a level at which such portrayals of diversity function to perpetuate the illusion that actual diversity is far more common than it really is.

To the extent to which this illusion is perpetuated, this species of multiculturalism creates a decline in the impetus or perceived necessity for measures bringing into effect actual multiculturalism.

I think that witnessing the shenanigans of Microsoft's marketing department somehow spotlights this problem. In other words, it reminds us that, in the hands of publicly traded corporations, such warm-and-fuzzy phenomena as multiculturalism, environmentalism and healthcare always function first and foremost as tools to be used in the service of making money.

And making money will always be, by definition, a conservative enterprise.

The GOP fraternity's quandary:What to do about Rush?

The New York Times's Timothy Egan weighed in a couple of days ago on the apparent non-news story of the moment: a game of 'hot potato' being played among various factions of the Republican Party. The hot potato they're tossing back and forth is the grotesque, meaty melon of Rush Limbaugh. Below is excerpted Egan's blog entry on the subject, titled Fears of a Clown:

Once upon a time, you could drive to the most remote reaches of the United States and escape Rush Limbaugh. But from the Mogollon Mountains of New Mexico to the Badlands of South Dakota, where only the delicious twang of a country tune or the high-pitched pleadings of a lone lunatic came over the AM dial, there is now the Mighty El Rushbo.

As someone who spends a lot of time on the road, I used to find Limbaugh to be an obnoxious but entertaining companion, his eruptions more reliable than Old Faithful. But now that Limbaugh has become something else — the face of the Republican Party, by a White House that has played him brilliantly — he has been transformed into car-wreck-quality spectacle, at once scary and sad.

Behold:

The sweaty, swollen man in the black, half-buttoned shirt who ranted for nearly 90 minutes Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. He reiterated his desire to see the president of his country fail. He misstated the Constitution’s intent while accusing President Obama of “bastardizing” the document. He made fun of one man’s service in Vietnam, to laughter.

David Letterman compared him to an Eastern European gangster. But he looked more like a bouncer at a strip club who spent all his tips on one bad outfit. And for the Republican Party, Limbaugh has become very much a vice.

Smarter Republicans know he is not good for them. As the conservative writer David Frum[*] said recently, “If you’re a talk radio host and you have five million who listen and there are 50 million who hate you, you make a nice living. If you’re a Republican party, you’re marginalized.”

Apart from a couple of unconvincing conclusions that Egan reaches later in the piece, this seems a pretty decent analysis of a current political/media sideshow (that I confess I haven't been following very closely). Egan correctly identifies the 'straw-man' technique that has for the last 20 years or longer been one of the GOP's most consistent and elegantly executed tactics. The key to pulling it off -- and the reason why the Democrats hadn't been any good at it in the pre-Obama era -- is doing it with a sense of humor. Why is a sense of humor so important?

Consider that in the past, Limbaugh-hatred was either (1) shrill and way too earnest or (2) holier-than-thou and self-congratulatory. The first tendency had the effect of expanding Limbaugh's power and influence because it rewarded him for cloaking his run-of-the-mill intellectual dishonesty in an aura of mischief and insouciance. This insouciance, at once contagious and 'empowering' to his audience, was applied to the task of caricaturing ever-more-outrageously various Democratic Party sacred cows (feminism, multiculturalism, political correctness etc.). This seemed a particular thorn in the side of the Democratic Party throughout much of the 90s (in fact, perhaps beginning with Michael Dukakis's failed 1988 presidential bid): the Dems were the squares, who -- in the eyes of many a country bumpkin and many a Wall Street trader alike -- didn't "get" it. In that era, the Dems allowed Rush to frame discourses in his own increasingly ludicrous (and, spiritually, racist and fascistic) terms. The Dems lacked the savvy to respond in a way that is disposed structurally to draw attention to the very 'straw man'-ness of his 'straw man' criticisms.
Circumstances have changed. It is this very savvy that the intuitive politician Barack Obama possesses in spades. Our new president wields this powerful weapon deftly, and thus, he exposes convincingly the hysterical patchiness of the rantings of Limbaugh and ilk, and he manages to do so in such a way as to charm your mother's pants off! The talent of the Republican Party for 'messaging' and propaganda has long been superior to that of the Democrats. But, ever since the majority of the public turned against the Iraq War, it's been painfully clear that its effectiveness has run its course.

The GOP sloganeering- and outrage-machine is fueled not on ideas but on sound-bites that serve as stand-ins for ideas. Once its pattern of rhetorical brinkmanship is exposed in all of its fraudulence -- as was done spectacularly in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq -- there's no recourse to a coherent set of underlying principles or ideas. In other words, it, like Fox News, is all smoke-and-mirrors.

Obama knows how to deal with smoke-and-mirrors. All you have to do is pucker up and blow the smoke away. The Elephant will then see its own naked reflection. And it will be ashamed.

The second tendency that I outline above -- that of self-righteousness -- made the Democrats fall into the trap that their antagonist had set for them: that of embodying the very caricature that America's favorite squishy-necked pill-popper had spent all of his hate-energy expounding. This not only appeared to Limbaugh's audience to confirm the validity of what he was saying, but it simultaneously further endeared him to his fanatical audience. Remember: this is an audience that has lived through its Savior vicariously. Rush's audience couldn't help but take personally any and all insults/slights that were directed against him. His not inconsiderable talent is that of making his devoted listener feel that he has something at stake in Limbaugh's treatment among the chattering classes. The egomaniac's egomaniac, el Rushbo beckons his avid listener to see the world through Rush's beady eyes. As Limbaugh would have it, the politician or journalist who behaves dismissively toward Rush is, in fact, behaving dismissively toward them and 'their kind', however narrowly circumscribed this category (racially, for instance) might be.

Even worse for the Dems of the 90s: self-righteousness is the character flaw that conditions the ugly act of scolding, and the best way to provoke somebody's irrational fury against an amorphous 'enemy' -- especially when the somebody in question has an inferiority complex to begin with -- is to scold him.**

Now the GOP is at last forced to come to terms with its ideological incoherence, the fracturing of the myriad marriages of convenience that were holding together its recent political alliances. Inevitably, this involves lots of finger-pointing. And, sure enough, it is not now the Democratic Party, but indeed Rush Limbaugh who comes across both as shrill and as taking himself way too seriously. As Egan observes correctly, the Dems have done a masterful job of exploiting this situation, and are reaping considerable benefit. The vast majority of voters identify the Democratic Party as the party of competent adults.

True, it is primarily Obama's administration -- and not Congressional Dems -- that enjoys this deserved reputation. But with George W. Bush's parting gift, the economy, in a free-fall -- the unemployment rate, an astounding 8.1 percent, is the highest it's been in twenty-five years --, all of these idiotic "no" votes among Republicans on any and all Obama-sponsored stimulus or spending packages are likely to come back to bite the GOP in the ass.

The continuing series of callow, nakedly partisan whine-fests from the likes of House Majority Leader John "Indignant Hillbilly" Boehner contribute to the stiff scent that's in the air: that of a major political party marginalizing itself seemingly out of existence... The Democrats, as long as they don't fall back into the traps of moral righteousness, multiculturalism as practiced in the early 90s,*** and so-called political correctness, will continue to reap benefits from turning the spotlight in the direction of the GOP airing its own dirty-laundry.

Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, like him or hate him (why bother choosing?), is a good mouthpiece for talking trash about Limbaugh precisely because Emanuel's a dick and doesn't pretend otherwise. Counterintuitive as it might seem, the fact that there is obviously something calculated behind the Dems' going after Limbaugh is actually what makes it work so well. This is because it is precisely the interaction between calculation and execution that makes this and any non-news story so damned entertaining. It's like watching a baseball team pull off a sacrifice fly to score an RBI.

A brief note on moral righteousness. It is true that certain species of moral righteousness play a role in Obama's shtick, but that's not the part of his shtick that is in any way partisan. Obama reserves this righteousness for affirming values about which there is near-unanimity -- values that are no less significant for their universality.

Obama will denounce torture, for instance, but opposition to torture is still -- THANK GOD -- a defining moral principle held among the vast majority of Americans, the exceptions including some truly slimy, invidious creeps like William Kristol and Alan Dershowitz. Anyway, as long as Dems don't start to press so hard as to actually create sympathy for Limbaugh, they'll benefit from this approach.

Actually, I take that back. It occurs to me that as soon as things get to the point at which Limbaugh becomes an object of sympathy, his relevance is at that moment forever demolished.

_________________
* For the record, while I'll concede that David Frum is probably a little bit smarter than Rush Limbaugh (although certainly nowhere near as successful -- by any measure), in no way should this be confused with acceptance of the completely fallacious notion that David Frum is smart.

** See Hitler, Adolph.

*** Mind you, I'm not against multiculturalism as such. I simply dislike some of the idiotic excesses that came along with it when middle school principals, etc., started getting their unenlightened paws on it. Uh, if that sounds a little wooden, I'll just say that I do actually espouse a principled criticism, but I'm not in the mood right now to go into the details of it.

This is where the real fun begins:Pay attention to the Republican Party's excuses & explanations

I think that you can tell a lot about the health of the Republican Party by observing all of the excuses that its remaining apologists devise in order to explain away what appears to be a landslide victory for Barack Obama, as well as for several Democratic congressional candidates across the country. My diagnosis of the Republican Party is that it is in big big trouble.

Here's some of the spin and blame-gaming in which the Republican Party has been engaging and in which it will continue to engage:

• the voters are 'scared' about the economy, and they don't understand the economy all that well, so they're voting Dem as an act of panic;
• the media are 'liberal' and 'biased' and were 'in the tank' for Obama,
• and they never gave Sarah Palin a 'fair chance',
• and they never inquired about Barack Obama's real connections to William Ayers, etc.;
• Democrats encouraged and engaged in voter fraud;
• Democrats failed to insist upon the showing of ID cards at the polls.

This final allegation is especially infuriating and widespread, because it is essentially an index of the extent to which the Republican Party is fast hemorrhaging the cosmopolitan and suburban portions of its base.

What's left of the Republican Party at this point is, quite frankly, the Dixiecrat portions, which it absorbed into its ranks with the advent of Goldwater and then Nixon.

And, just in case anybody here doesn't know what the Dixiecrats were all about: they were the segregationists who never forgave the Democratic Party for having passed the Civil Rights Bill. In other words: racists.

A recent email exchange about Powell's Obama endorsement, veering into discussion of the unconscious assumptions that comprise American "comon sense."

Below is a recent thread of email correspondence between a friend of mine and Yours Truly. I was going to use its raw material as a basis upon which to descant, but in the interest of not wanting to go to that trouble, I have decided instead simply to reproduce it.

It is, of course, redacted, to protect the identities of those whose permission has not been sought. (Permission has been obtained. From Stephen Schlei, anyway. But the full identity of 'Kevin' shall remain, for the moment, a mystery...)

From: Steve
Subject: Powell endorses Obama
To: Tom
Date: Sunday, October 19, 2008

I'm sure you've heard about this already. Both of the videos on this page are incredible:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/19/colin-powell-endorses-oba_n_135895.html

In my lifetime I don't believe I've heard a Republican speak more eloquently.

My brother and I were talking about politics, and he brought up an interesting point. I was (am) appalled by the way Americans misunderstand a socialized health care system, and vote against their own interests to support an ideology (capitalism) that doesn't give a fuck about them. We were talking about some other stuff too, but here's what my brother had to say about it, and I think he's on to something:

My theory: people attach themselves not to the ideals and practices of what would apply to them, but to their perceived and possible future situation (that happens to be much better). They won't vote for a healthcare plan that will increase their meager benefits because they believe that they are losing the possibility of benefits that the rich can afford (which they could possibly have one day). It's the same reason no one stops gambling in Vegas, even when they're up. They don't see it as a growth from their starting position, but rather a pittance compared to a huge win.

It's why ordinary people defend big business. It's why they like trickle down economics. It's the entire foundation of the GOP's low class voting base.

I think the Republicans have been selling that dream world for a long time, where you too can be a millionaire (and who should stand in your way?) and all babies are born to loving families.

Steve


On Mon, Oct 20, 2008, Tom wrote:

Yeah, I totally agree with you and Kevin. I have become very interested over the last few years in the period in US history stretching from the beginnings of the US industrial revolution through to the Gilded Age. Part of the reason I have been investigating this period is because it contains the origins or perfection of many of the myths upon which the GOP (and really, in a wider sense, all of us, because they sit, often unexamined, in the American consciousness, I think) and its ideology are based:

• the myth of meritocracy, of 'classlessness';
• our particular American attitude toward private ownership;
• a preference for empirical and positivistic thinking over critical or theoretical thinking,
• suspicion toward intellectualism and even contempt for ideas more generally (which, as David Brooks points out, sees its apotheosis in the person of Sarah Palin);
• Social Darwinism;
• the equation of social justice with 'charity' and suspicion of 'wealth redistribution';
• the equation of everything from education to religion to friendship to governance with private consumption;
• the assumption that 'status' or wealth are earned and/or deserved, rather than conferred;
• the idea of the inexorability of progress;
• suspicion toward 'expertise'; and
• the tendency to blame oneself for one's own poverty, squalor or misfortune.

We could of course go on with such a list forever, but its upshot is that almost every one of these myths seems more or less grounded in the task of masking from view -- that is, both from the view of those who are successful/happy and those who are unsuccessful/unhappy -- the pervasiveness and power of the very structural inequalities that the myth seeks to negate. If (and to the extent that) you benefit from the system, you're living in denial of your complicity in injustice and harm done to others. If (and to the extent that) we get screwed by the system, it provides for us the means by which we acclimatize ourselves to our surroundings, to our fate.

And so it makes sense to think that some of these poor-to-lower-middle-class racists at McCain/Palin rallies are so very offended at the idea of that these myths will be exposed for what they are. They've lived their entire lives aspiring to something that the system tells them can be theirs one day, be it in the form of success later in life or in the form of success for one's children. But it's a very precise set of aspirations that they've been sold throughout their lives, and they are -- and long have been -- resentful of the idea that someone will take it away from them.

As far as I can tell, the only answer to this huge problem is education. Well, there's one other answer, which is sad, but true (sad AND true!): these people are a dying breed. They don't have the power they once had because they don't enjoy the decent middle-class wages they once had but most importantly they don't have the numbers. And the final irony is that it's the GOP which has been the most aggressive force in destroying them: it's the GOP's doing that is turning their neighborhoods into ghost towns. Thanks for the thought-provoking email. Hope all is well...

Best,
Tom


On Mon, Oct 20, 2008, Steve wrote:

Your ideas are great, and I love the way you put them. The subject deserves serious attention. This idea of the American Dream is so strong a myth that it is a reality, or a form of reality -- not the one most people would like if they could pull back the veil. ....

... Anyway, I can't believe how positive I feel about the prospect of Obama winning the election. It'll be like a great weight is lifted from this country, and I think I'll actually walk down the street differently (I'm not kidding!). McCain is down in the polls, and I'm hoping the negativity we've seen recently means they don't have anything up their sleeves which could significantly sway the election. The GOP is desperate and floundering. To me, Powell's statements have been the nail in the coffin, and have revealed to the world just how out of touch the Republicans are. We can only hope that they get so thoroughly crushed in this election that they have no choice but to start changing their party line. ...

Steve


From: Kevin
Date: Tue, Oct 21, 2008
Subject: Re: Powell endorses Obama
To: Steve

Tom precisely explains the extent to which the American Dream has served to suppress progress in this country. I just watched Sick Around the World and it's clear that the only things that have stopped us from pursuing a universal health care system are the myths that Tom listed.

Take the 'myth of meritocracy.' On NPR there was a social analyst that was researching ideological differences between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives, on the whole, subscribe to the idea of fairness in the world. The (particularly brutal) example he gave was that conservatives tend to assign blame to rape victims: that they were 'asking for it' by their attire, social activities, acquaintances, etc. Therefore the rape had some sort of logical justification. Applied to health care, it isn't that people are unjustly denied healthcare by businesses who can choose not to supply it, it's that these people do not work hard enough to earn better jobs that do offer health care. Therefore they don't deserve it - it's only fair.

On a side note, the 'suspicion of expertise' is an interesting one. A study (lost the link, sorry) has shown that people become more insistent about false assumptions if they are given proof to the contrary. For example, let's say a group of people have a 30% certainty that Iraq has WMDs. If they are given the reports and investigative results that clearly show no evidence of WMDs or WMD production, their certainty goes UP to 65%.

It explains why the GOP only has to plant ideas (which to us seem ludicrous) and they gain so much traction. If you insist that Obama associates himself with terrorists, when the campaign produces factual evidence to the contrary it works to your advantage. In this case, you have to give credit to Obama's campaign managers who have masterfully dealt with these attacks. (This also applies to the healthcare thing - those who have fears about waiting lists and expensive govt. run programs will only be more insistent after watching the Frontline episode.)

I'm curious to see if Tom's right about these people being a dying breed. I have faith in the fact that we're moving away from a television-based society to the Internet addicted information junkies of today. Multiple news sources can only be a good thing from here on out, and counters the effect made by choosing only one news source that shares your world view. But I do have fears that the strength of the temptations created by these persistent myths will only continue to fester and grow. I mean, come on. If ever the pendulum was pulled WAY out of line to the absolute limit of bad judgment, it's now after 8 years of GWB and a full on economic collapse. We should be seeing it flying the other direction, but instead we're having to push as hard as we can.

Kevin


From: Steve
Date: Tue, Oct 29, 2008
Subject: Re: Powell endorses Obama
To: Tom

Sorry, I meant to forward on my brother's response to the response you wrote that I forwarded to him. I feel like I'm moderating here. The program "Sick Around the World" that he mentions is a Frontline episode that you can watch off of their website. It's really interesting, and talks about how universal health care works in 5 or 6 other countries, so check it out.

The reason this popped back into my mind is that I was thinking about how much racism there is in this country and how standardized and widespread it is. This "American dream" fallacy supports those racist theories. African Americans aren't economically underprivileged because they're still recovering from hundreds of years of inequality that was only truly addressed 40 years ago, they're just lazy. And all the crime in the ghettos? That's because black people are morally inferior. In this country they have all the same opportunities as me, and look at where they've gotten themselves.

Steve

Trouble The Water: go see it.

I kept forgetting to mention this. If you've not seen it, I recommend highly this feature-length documentary, which currently enjoys some form of limited theatrical release.

Trouble The Water gives us a glimpse into the experience of residents of New Orleans' poorest neighborhoods, ignored by the city's meager evacuation efforts -- an 'evacuation' that provided no transportation for the benefit of residents who lacked access to an automobile. These residents were abandoned to endure Hurricane Katrina from the confines of their homes, located in the neighborhoods that were most vulnerable to the flooding that occurred as a consequence of the breach of the infamous nearby levies.

The protagonist of this film is the New Orleans rap artist Kimberly Roberts whose home-video footage comprises some of the most candid and shocking sequences of the film. She and her friends and family sit huddled in their attic for hour upon hour. Footage captured by Roberts from her attic window reveals common street-signs that are almost entirely submerged by the flood waters. She and the other residents of her neighborhood watch as the water-line continues to rise; many fellow residents -- including elderly people -- are trapped in the crevices of their attics, with no way of freeing themselves. Others are left to perish of starvation.

Even after the rain ceases, no government agency, no rescue operation is anywhere to be found. Those confined to the Roberts home are lucky to spot a stray row-boat passing by -- two and a half stories above where the street would normally be. Using this boat, Roberts's husband Scott, along with others, mounts a couple of heroic rescues of nearby residents. Still: no police, no coast guard, no national guard, no FEMA. And yet, "Brownie" -- we are reminded -- is said to have done "a heck of a job."

The extraordinary story continues, following Kimberly and Scott Roberts as they escape to some semblance of safety, only to contend with racism, bureaucracy, long-lines, paperwork and contempt. Through it all, Kimberly Roberts remains at once unflinching in her willingness to speak truth to power, and unyielding in her optimism. She's an absolutely amazing woman.

If you're not one for righteous indignation, this might not be the movie you'll most enjoy seeing, but you should see it anyway. A human being cannot help but get mad at what he sees, as the Roberts and their friends are forced to confront hypocrisy and injustice at every turn, in the fight for their very survival. There are really only a couple of moments at which the film becomes a little preachy. But I think it more than earns the right to be that way a couple of times. Apart from these miniscule, arguable exceptions, Trouble The Water allows its subjects and their circumstances to speak for themselves.

In conclusion (sorry...I've always wanted to write a final paragraph that begins "In conclusion..."), go see Trouble The Water if and when it appears at a cinema near you, and tell your friends to do the same.