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?

Steele’s view seems oddly contrary to those people of color who are in fact ascending (or have ascended) in politics.  Barack Obama’s resonance with the populace was hardly based on any hip-hop cred.  The same could be said for Deval Patrick and Harold Ford, Jr.  They campaigned on issues, rather than disguising a dearth of ideas with faux “urban-suburban” hipness. 

Yet Steele’s entire interview with the Times is laced with an odd argot.  His new PR campaign is going to be “off the hook.”  Steele “don’t do ‘cutting-edge.’” He does “beyond cutting-edge.”  His critics can “stuff it”…ya dig?  Rather than a politician with fresh ideas, he sounds more like somebody’s uncle trying to be hip while playing some black-top hoops with 16 year olds.

Chairman Steele would do well to take a page from the play book of George W. Bush.  Bush, amazingly, was able to increase his share of the black vote from about 8 percent in 2000 to 11 percent in 2004.  Although slight, this uptick was driven by Bush’s flogging of issues of faith. Unfortunately, the primary “issue of faith” was a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.  While I don’t advocate the demonization of one group to get votes from another, blacks do form a disproportionately large block of voters who regularly attend church.  It would be more correct and probably more effective for Steele to recruit potential GOPers from the pews than by going “beyond cutting edge.”

Whatever that may be.

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.

When three Republican Senators voted for the Senate version of the bill – Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and Maine Sens. Olympia J. Snowe and Susan M. Collins, who in particular worked tirelessly with moderate Dem Sen. Ben Nelson to try and reach a true bipartisan compromise – they were immediately put on a “hit” list by the conservative National Republican Trust PAC.  The PAC’s executive director Scott Wheeler stating: “We just want to send a message that we’re going to have a long institutional memory, and we’re going to remind your constituents of what you did.”

What they did?  What’d they do?  Vote for a bill that might ultimately not be big enough to get the country out of the worst economic mess most Americans have ever lived through?  Wouldn’t it be punishment enough to dis-invite them to some soirée held at South Carolina GOP chairman Katon Dawson’s whites-only country club?  To be fair, Dawson resigned his membership to the Forest Lake Country Club in Columbia, SC last September.  That was just a gratuitous dig I had to throw in because…I wouldn’t have been allowed into the club to hand it to him personally.  But to the point of Trust PAC’s tactics; sure, it’s not unusual for one political party to target another political party over a vote.  But for a party to head hunt their own…?

And then, of course, there’s Judd Gregg.  Never mind that Gregg himself lobbied for the job of commerce secretary, never mind New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch making a deal to appoint Republican J. Bonnie Newman to Gregg’s seat.  When it came time to engage in the greater good Gregg, in his own words, realized he could not be a “team player.”  Worse, working with the president he “couldn’t be Judd Gregg.”  Political solipsism if ever there was.  Gregg being something like the T.O. to the Senate.

Regardless of the Republicans’ centrist deceptions, I would hope that Obama continues to rise above and reach out.  Hopefully there will be others such as Specter, Snowe and Collins who put the people’s work above myopic party ideology.  But if nothing else, as the economy improves, President Obama’s actions will serve to shame the lip servers of bipartisanship into taking up true residence.

For more perspective, visit www.thatminoritything.com

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.

But Cheney’s criticisms are at least grounded in arguable ideology.  Not so for former Chief of Staff Andy Card who took offense at Obama literally rolling up his sleeves and getting to work.  Says Card:  ”I’m disappointed to see the casual, laissez-faire, short sleeves, no shirt and tie, no jacket, kind of locker-room experience that seems to be taking place in this White House and the Oval Office.”

As opposed to the casual, laissez-faire kind of locker-room experience Bush brought to the Katrina response or the war in Iraq?

And scandal-plagued Alberto Gonzales isn’t worth taking the energy to blog about.

There is, obviously, plenty to be concerned about regarding the Democrats and the President’s first days in office.  But we don’t need advice on how to handle this new relationship from the ladies who blew the last one.

For more insight, visit That Minority Thing.com

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…

What Variety alludes to in their piece is that the Downey Jr. role is offensive. Mincing no words, Scott Feinberg over at the LA Times just comes out and says as much. Apparently bucking for a nomination for Best Performance by a White Guy Who Takes it Upon Himself to be Offended For Black People, Feinberg writes:

“I guess I just can’t imagine any circumstance under which a blackface performance would be acceptable, any more than I can imagine any circumstance under which the use of the N-word would be acceptable.”

Really? Can’t imagine any circumstance to use the word Nigger? You mean, like in a Ralph Ellison novel?

Trustees of the Liberal Plantation aside, Downey Jr.’s performance is sharp, smart satire. Clever, but aimed squarely for the gut, in the way the New Yorker’s Barack/Michelle-as-radicals cover was aimed at some other Brahmin organ that giggles with delight when it’s self-manipulated.

My take away from the Kirk Lazarus/Lincoln Osiris is a comedic finger giving a hard wag at Hollywood; an industry that has no problem writing big checks for Barack Obama, but then can do no better than spend tens of millions of dollars offending minorities. Seriously, was Notorious the best ode to blackness Hollywood could give us for the King Day/Obama Inauguration long weekend?

I can’t speak as to whether or not the Simple Jack story line or Les Grossman were offensive to their intended targets. But I can say that while I’ll be putting what little energy I can muster for the Oscars into good wishes for Viola Davis and Taraji P. Henson, I’ll have no problem if “Kirk Lazarus” gets the award he deserves.

For more perspective please go to That Minority Thing.com

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.

And can you have a narrativea more American than Obama’s? In the most Horatio Algeresque fashion he lifted himself up from a swamp of food stamps, went on to study at the best universities. Despite his Ivy League pedigree, Obama skips his shot at easy millions, becomes one of those much maligned “do nothing” community organizers, bucks the system, fights the old school and ends up president. Hey-day Frank Capra couldn’t commit to film a more finely tuned ode to Yankee gumption.

And would it have been possible to have had an election more American than Obama’s? One that put the exclamation point on our long, slow crawl to civil rights. Not arrived to – as in decades and centuries past – through the righteousness of passive resistance, the threat of violence or the lever of those darn “activist” judges. It was just people by their own free will choosing to shut out the white noise of racial bias and flip the switch for the person they thought was the best for the job. Surely that’s as American as mom’s apple pie or dad’s buddies buying you a baseball team.

Every president to hold office has espoused some version of Americanism; the truths that we hold self-evident, even when those truths are not always in evidence. But for all their grand rhetoric and mostly good deeds, none was able to seal the deal on the trifecta of equality, plurality and socioeconomic ascendancy. Obama has. Obama is the more perfect union. He is a house united. Obama is the New Generation and the hot light of a dawn that goes way beyond clever talk of morning in America.

Quite simply, quite plainly, just by virtue of his being, Obama is America. The first true American to lead our nation.

For more perspective, please visit That Minority Thing.com

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…

To be honest, I think Boot is putting on a bit of a rib. His piece largely hails George Clooney for all the stealthily neoconservative movies he’s made. But either way, Boot raises interesting points about what we set out to do in Hollywood and what you see on the screen.

When I wrote the story for Three Kings, it wasn’t meant to be particularly conservative or liberal. It was a black empowerment piece. The lead character of the story was a disillusioned black man who figures if the government is going to go to war over oil, then he is entitled to grab something for himself if he can. Gold. But when he sees that America is going to once again basically turn a blind eye to the plight of the oppressed, that’s when he decides he has to step in and help his “dark skinned” brothers and sisters. The ascendancy of a man of color who sees wrong, and does right despite his circumstances.

What ended up on the screen from all that was Ice Cube in the sidekick role.

And that shepherding the Shiites to safety? Hardly a statement on America’s moral obligations. It was a studio note early in development to have a more “up-beat” ending so they could sell more tickets. Trust me, decent folks that they are, when we were developing the movie the studio didn’t know a Shiite from a Sunni or an Arab from a Muslim and wasn’t particularly interested in their plight.

All that is to say, as people we are often deeper than the boxes crafted by the perspectives of others. Which is why I appreciate what Big Hollywood is trying to do: show that the ideologies of Hollywood are not as narrowly cast as they often seem. There is need for that, and I applaud anyone who tries to fill it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go be a flaming liberal over at my other blog site.