Freshly minted Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele gave an interview to the Washington Times in which he detailed his plans for making the GOP relevant again.  Says Steele:

We need messengers to really capture that region – young, Hispanic, black, a cross section … We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles. But we want to apply them to urban-suburban hip-hop settings.

Hip-hop.  Really?  That’s Chairman Steele’s reductive take on people of color?  That unless “principles” are framed in rhyme and break beats we will have no interest in them? (more…)

Shangri-la and Brigadoon and Bipartisan.  Three mythical places.  One of which few Republicans have seemingly ever heard.  Because if there is one thing we can take from the first weeks of the “New” Washington, it’s that the (liberal) Democrats are incompetent (old news, really) and the Republicans are disingenuous when it comes to bipartisanship.  Oh, sure, they talk up the swellness of President Obama every chance they get.  And will continue to do so as long as his approval numbers are above fifty percent.  But most GOPers tend to become like children who dance hysterically in a sandbox when it comes time to play with others.

Despite all the sit-downs Obama had with the Republicans – apparently too many for Speaker Pelosi’s tastes – and despite the fact that the House version of the Stimulus Bill contained specific tax breaks for which the Republicans had asked – though not to the degree they wished – not a single GOPer would break ranks, step up and vote for the bill.  A surprisingly “my way or the highway” attitude for the minority party whose eight years of good cogitating was a major factor in whipping America into the stellar fiscal shape we find ourselves. (more…)

Usually when a president leaves office he and his administration have the good graces to go off somewhere and quietly wait for history to pass judgment on their legacy.  

Not so with the Bushies.

Having thoroughly bankrupted every aspect of this country, Bush cronies from Karl Rove to Alberto Gonzales to Andy Card now sit and snipe at the president at every opportunity.  Most egregious is former VP Dick Cheney; he the accomplished crystal baller whose every prediction about the war in Iraq was so very spot on.  His flip flop on strategy from the time he was Secretary of Defense to when he was Vice President is unprecedented.  But having gotten it all so very wrong, Cheney lacks the decorum to merely fade away.  Like a crazy ex-girlfriend who stalkishly screams from the street corner to your window “you’ll be sorry if you leave me,” Cheney insists President Obama is soft on terrorism and his closing of Gitmo will invite disaster.  This despite the fact some 420 of the original 775 detainees have been released without so much as ever being charged.  This despite the fact that President Obama continues the Bush policy of air strikes along the Af/Pak border.  This despite the fact the President intends to press the war in Afghanistan which the Bush administration left to fester. (more…)

On the heels of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announcing the nominees for their 81st shindig, there were the usual nontroversies over who was named and who was ignored.
Among all that, Hollywood trade paper Variety noted that Robert Downey Jr.’s nod for Best Supporting Actor in “Tropic Thunder” “marks the first time since Laurence Olivier’s 1965 “Othello” that an actor has been nommed for playing a role in blackface.”

Not quite true. Forrest Whitaker darkened his skin to play Idi Amin for his Oscar winning performance in “The Last King of Scotland.”

Slightly different circumstances, yes. But… (more…)

Considering all the price gouging going on with hotel rooms in DC, Obama’s inauguration is apparently history in the making. But as we observe this epic, monumental, never-been-done-before achievement, what exactly are we celebrating? If Toni Morrison is to be believed, William Jefferson Clinton “white skin notwithstanding,” was our first black President. As Morrison’s got both a Nobel and a Pulitzer, I for one am not going to argue with her. And Obama, being bi-racial, is only black in the strictest sense.

It’s not even correct to say that Obama is the first minority to hold the highest office in the land. Every white guy ever elected is co-owner of that distinction. As far back as the first census in 1790 white men were just 41 percent of the population and have been trending downward ever since (thirty-two percent in 2007).

So, if it’s not really about race or minority status, maybe the big deal we feel churning in our collective guts is something as bold as this: that Barack Obama is our first truly American president.

Can you have a heritage more American than Obama’s? The literal marriage of the immigrant and native. Born in our most diverse state. One without an ethnic majority, but where people of mixed race make up some 20% of the total population. There is nothing about Obama’s background that isn’t truth to the tired saw of the American melting pot. (more…)

I find in life the compass of one’s politics are often arbitrarily set by the poles of the person you happen to be communicating with. When I write for the Huffington Post I’m often considered the resident Righty. When I write for NPR I’m the flaming Liberal.

But I was surprised to find that based on a story I wrote in Hollywood, some people believe me to be a neoconservative.

Me? A Neocon? Really?

While the perception – or misconception – is probably not widely held, it stems from the 1998 film Three Kings. In a piece in the LA Times Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Contributing Editor to The Weekly Standard, Max Boot, called the movie a “neocon masterpiece.” Largely for the plot point of US soldiers shepherding a group of Shiite refuges to safety in Iran in the immediate aftermath of the Gulf War.

Says Boot: “The message is clear: The U.S. should pursue its ideals in foreign policy, not simply try to protect its strategic or economic interests.” He goes on to say: “Anybody who wonders what U.S. troops are doing in Iraq today should rent Three Kings. It makes an ironclad moral case for the invasion.”

Better you should buy it than rent it. However…

(more…)