alias Bruce.

Moyers Gets It Wright.

Obama takes the North Carolina primary by 14 points, loses Indiana by two. He scores a net gain in delegates as well as in the popular vote, and pundits declare a Clinton victory all but impossible unless Obama plants a bomb on a plane. Former Wal-Mart board member and Iraq War supporter Clinton, principled and public-minded as a great white shark as she temporarily refashions herself as a "populist," loans her bankrupt campaign a few million more dollars from her bank account and moves her party-splintering operation to the next state primary.

And the only reason we are still talking about this, the only reason Hillary Clinton remains politically visible at all, hanging from the cliff by her synthetic-populist fingernails, is race.

Race is why a white electorate that was poised to shoo Obama into the nomination suddenly went into a cold sweat at the prospect of his possibly turning out to be, you know, just another scary black guy who's not nuts about white people. Race is why Rev. Jeremiah Wright has 24-7 traction as a notorious associate of Obama's while John Hagee (know his name?) has none as a henchman of John McCain's. Race is why mouthy and intemperate black figures in Obama's background are infamous Bad-Nigger bogeymen while equivalent white figures in the backgrounds of white candidates are invisible and inconsequential.

Journalist Bill Moyers has gone public about this, prodding this double-standard with a sharp stick, and I suggest you read his May 4 essay in which he names the names (like Hagee's) and cites the nasty political facts of the perennial Black Scare. Question: With an economy plunging into recession, an unwinnable and unsupportable war siphoning off desperately-needed public resources, gas approaching $4 a gallon, and health care in outright crisis for much of the country, why are we talking about Obama's ex-pastor and his absent flag lapel pin? Answer: Because of undying racial anxiety that, here in the year 2008, has millions of white voters wondering in the privacy of voting booths whether Obama is one of Those Hostile Black Guys We Can't Trust.

Moyers is a white guy. Read what he has to say about it.

Thanks to Mary Clare for referring me to Moyers' essay.

Quote of the Day.

"People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become, and they pay for it, very simply, by the lives they lead."

-James Baldwin, from No Name in the Street (1972)

Thanks to Brian, who has this quote memorized, for the tip.

Bad Nigger, Chapter 2.

So it's happening, like an overheated passage in a pulp slavery novel.

Barack Obama is cast as the genteel house Negro, the friendly family facilitator who bears no grudges for whips and chains and who poses no threats to the assembled white polity at the table, most of whom nod at the idea of "change" without having to make any painful changes, and at the sentiment of correcting oppression without identifying oppressors.

And Rev. Jeremiah Wright is cast as the black buck, the field Negro, the darkie with an attitude about the whole damned ball of wax: the banning of the drum, the bones at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean (see poet Amiri Baraka), the tyranny of King Cotton, the military occupation of black impoverishment, the black male heart attacks in elevators where white women clutch purses.

I hate this narrative. Hate it. I dreaded its potential emergence when Barack Obama began trying to sell himself as a politician immune to the collective understanding of blackness, and when the corporate press and Obama's rivals -- hello, Hillary? -- made it a project to seek and find the angry and anti-white black man who surely must lurk somewhere in the Obama candidacy. The black man who so many white Americans have dreaded for so long. The Bad Nigger.

They have found him, in a preacher who is part truth-teller and part egotistical demagogue.

In the end, I think this roaring tornado in a teacup is about class and caste. As in political points of view based on the economic and racial realities of who -- in the words of Malcolm X -- is catching hell and who is not. Barack Obama is the voice of politely unchallenging reconciliation, of what he calls "unity," which amounts to delicately addressing social crimes without naming perps or calling for specific accountabilities. Jeremiah Wright, on the other hand, is the voice of defiant proletarian (and what Marxists call lumpenproletarian and what pundits call "underclass") cynicism, a resentful, in-your-face I-don't-give-a-shit-you-white-motherfucker rawness about justice denied and remedies owed according to the impolite legacy of a troublemaker named Jesus.

And so Obama, like Jesse Jackson and others before him, is busy publicly backpedaling from the Bad Nigger persona, and Wright is busy raising hell and bringing fed-up disenfranchised black congregations to their feet.

I have read the entire transcript of Wright's National Press Club speech, and as with his previously condemned and selectively-looped sermons, I find little that ought to offend, aside from his cagily-couched suggestion -- popular among many in America's most vulnerable black communities -- that this government may have used the AIDS epidemic to decimate and disempower black populations. Even such unspeakable evil, I would assert, is well within the potential of the Bush Administration, which is easily the meanest and most corrupt Presidential Administration of my lifetime, and feasibly the worst ever. But the charge of a decades-long deliberately-concocted genocidal AIDS epidemic is an explosive assertion to which one ought to expect explosive reaction, and which demands far more evidence than any I have seen. The one undeniable reality here is the long-existing fact that some broad swaths of black Americans have concluded from their experience that you can't trust white people.

At any rate, it looks as if Wright is now in full-tilt Fuck-You mode, the electoral chances of his onetime friend and congregant be damned. And Obama is in full-tilt Get-This-MF-Away-From-Me mode, the truth of many of Wright's criticisms of our country notwithstanding. There is no refuting, for instance, the observation that a nation that has carried out and colluded with terrorism, from its very founding to the present, cannot reasonably be choosy in the acts of terror about which it decides to howl. This kind of truth-telling, however, is still too hard for many of us to choke down, and it is fatally toxic for a presidential candidate who is still trying to fend off the deep and widespread fear that he might prove to be one of those Bad Niggers after all. I'd bet a pile of cash that this post-plantation racial fear factor is a bigger element in Hillary Clinton's current appeal among working-class whites than any aptitude she has for recreational gunplay or political honesty.

I feel for Obama, although I've always found his vague "unity" pitch to be a kind of sidestep. Social injustice, after all, is not cured by mere calls for across-the-board "unity," but by the conviction to stand and struggle for social justice. Obama, as a former Chicago community organizer, ought to know this. Yes, in a money- and corporate-media-dominated electoral marketplace, running on conviction is tough. (That's why we need electoral reform.) But it is nonetheless necessary.

In that sense, I think Obama, through his non-confrontive I'm-With-Everybody approach, has helped set himself up to be ambushed. I also think that Wright, his rightness on many of the issues aside, is being, well, an asshole. He does not have to do this in the way that he is doing it, treating it as an attack on the church (it's not), making a sarcastic and mocking and crowd-titillating show of his venom and his umbrage. You don't have to play it that way, brother.

But hey. America created the Bad Nigger. Hillary Clinton is happy to let the narrative do some of her dirty work for her.

And, as I've said, one of the results may be President John McCain.

What Won't She Do to Get to Washington?

The best part of the day: I recorded an interview in Washington, D.C. today on Dr. Pamela Brewer's national "MyNDTALK" show, a radio program on which Brewer, a practicing psychologist, explores with guests the interface of personal and social issues. (That interview will air later in the spring; I'll put up a link.) She and I talked about racial animosity, Katrina, fear of terrorism, demagogues, and the presidential race. It was an honest and constructive conversation. Afterward, I enjoyed a great Indian meal on 18th Street (I took the above photo on my stroll) and then found an Internet cafe, where I am writing right now.

The most painful part of the day: In response to a question in the interview, I had to acknowledge that if Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, John McCain will win the presidency.

Who wants to think of Clinton, the first woman to have a serious shot at the presidency, as being the spoiler who hands the White House to the next generation of the Republican war enterprise? Nobody. But look at her: going dirty, winking at groundless Republican smears, flinging character accusations like clods of cow manure while offering nothing in the least bit more substantive than Barack Obama's own less-than-bold policy ideas, and in some cases offering much less.

Radio host Randi Rhodes got herself suspended (and later resigned) from Air America for calling Clinton "a fucking whore," and it's fitting punishment. (Who needs more misogyny when the "smart bitch" persona still has such widespread appeal as a reason to hate a woman?) But I can understand where Rhodes was coming from. I don't like Clinton and I don't trust her. Not because she's a woman. But because I think she is cynical, dishonest, and obsessed with winning above all else. She has done exactly what I abhor: taken the wrong stance on major policy issues such as Iraq, and then tried to save herself through personal attacks against her rival. For me, the epitome of Clinton's lack of principle was when she calculatingly added, after telling a reporter she doesn't think Obama is a Muslim, "As far as I know."

I think that is why a lot of Americans dislike her (a recent poll I saw had Clinton's unlikeability at something like 60 percent). And that, in turn, is why, if she succeeds in bludgeoning and battering Obama out of the ring for the Democratic nomination, we will inaugurate President John McCain in January of 2009.

It seems the only remaining question is, is Clinton willing to take down the entire Democratic Party with her?

Go, Condi!

Somehow, when someone has sold her soul, the moments when she displays what remains of her convictions seem that much more moving.

That's how I feel about Condoleezza Rice's having spoken with such apparently heartfelt and brutal honesty about racism in a March 28 interview with the Washington Times. It takes a lot for me to plunk down a few hard-earned quarters for a copy of that right-wing Moonie-owned polemic, but when I saw Condi and snippets of her comments on the front page, I bit.

It's month-old news by now, but for me it still resonates as a troll-unblocks-bridge story. Among Rice's declarations:

"Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together – Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That's not a very pretty reality of our founding, and I think that particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are today."

When is the last time you heard a Republican talk that way?

Not that Rice deserves bows and bouquets for taking a moment from her faithful service to thugs to speak truth about race. And a cynic might see, with some justification, a motive for Rice to try to salvage some trace of public integrity for herself as her adopted Administration slithers toward the end of its despised and disastrous term.

Still, I liked the verve and substance of much of what Rice had to say (although I was left wondering if her nonsensical understatement that "descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start" was a reflexive Republicanism or an attempt at irony) and I suggest that you read it. For one thing, given Rice's record of selling herself out, this moment of candor may be of historic value. For another, it's more proof that one's essential humanity, like energy, can never be entirely destroyed.

An aside: As I write this in a cafe in Washington, D.C., I am seated immediately next to a white husband and wife (they look to be about 30) who are interviewing a black woman (she looks old enough to be their aunt) about her potentially being hired to care for their newborn infant. To be sure, anyone has a perfect right to hire, or to be, an in-house child care provider regardless of race. And I have white friends who have worked as nannies. Moreover, this particular interview is not a one-way inquisition; personal questions are being asked in both directions. (Note that I'm overhearing all of this and not eavesdropping; I couldn't un-hear it if I wanted to.) But in Washington, a center of Third-World poverty, I see so many older black women carrying around white infants that it feels like a re-shooting of Gone with the Wind. I wish everyone at that table well (including the infant; she's doggoned adorable), but I've got to say that this extended-plantation scenario sets my teeth on edge.

End of tangential rant.

Jimmy.

For three successive days after trout season opened in New York this year I waded a small upstate creek (pictured above) that's heavily stocked and heavily fished. I caught a total of maybe a dozen brown trout, the biggest of which were beautiful fish in the 14-inch range. I took them home to the frying pan, with gratitude, especially since on the first day I fished for six hours in nonstop rain at 40 degrees. (What can I tell you? If this was about logic or good sense, we'd all stay at home.)

If you have never seen a brown trout, it truly is an exquisite fish. It's tougher and likelier to go native than the other main stocked trout in the northeast, the rainbow, so browns are often wilier and stronger than stocker rainbows living in the same creek. You'll notice, though, that the rainbows evaded me this time with total success, which suggests something about their intelligence as well as mine. Anyway, in case you have never seen one, while you're wondering where in the hell this blog entry is going (I promise it's not where you think), take a look at this photo of a brown trout (that I did not catch):

This particular creek gets hammered by fisherpersons on and after Opening Day. I mean slammed. Guys who won't walk 30 feet from their cars crowd the banks plunking Power Bait (don't ask) into trout pools, using boulder-sized sinkers and line heavy enough to dredge up a Volkswagen -- for fish that, in this creek, rarely exceed two or three pounds. The good thing, though, about the slothful ways of this breed of trout-slayer is that if you're willing to walk a mere quarter-mile upstream, wade across the creek and navigate a little brush, you suddenly find yourself alone in the woods -- and grinning upstream at a mile or so of pretty riffles and pools populated with hungry and unmolested trout.

So I had a sweet time wading water largely alone, fell once and nearly took icy water into my waders, put a hole in them crawling on my hands and knees through brambles (which gave me a wet and cold right knee), got followed by a very defensive nesting goose who hissed at me for a good 20 yards as I waded and as he or she followed me along the bank (you do not want to mess with a two-foot-tall nesting goose), and I caught some trout.

And at one point on a rainy day while walking one of the more popular stretches of bank, I ran into a talkative, no-bullshit guy named Jimmy.

Jimmy and I made the usual "did-you-catch-any" small talk, which evolved into more general fishing talk (he told me, for instance, that the state is now stocking the Genesee River with sturgeon, a once-native fish of primordial lineage that can reach 100 pounds. Now THAT will add a wrinkle to any given morning's fishing.) Then Jimmy groused about how little money the state is putting into its overall fish stocking program while the nation, in his words, pours billions into "that war that's killing our boys." I agreed with him, and then we got onto money in politics, which is when Jimmy launched, without warning, into his riff on Barack Obama.

Jimmy, who looks to be about 40, said Obama is the first politician he has gotten excited about in years. He said Obama is the only candidate now in the race who has a conscience and actually cares about ordinary people. He said he thinks Hillary Clinton is a fake; she sucks up to too many causes and he doesn't trust her. He makes it a point to watch every one of Obama's speeches, and he said that Obama's message and his presence are so powerful that they "give me chills." He talked about Obama the way I remember people talking about JFK and King and Bobby.

I'm not saying Obama deserves all of this. I'm just reporting to you what Jimmy said to me.

Jimmy -- he's a white guy, by the way, who you'd make to be maybe a security guard or a plant worker or a technician although we didn't talk about work -- never said a single word about Reverend Jeremiah Wright, or the disgraceful company Obama supposedly keeps, or any need for Obama to be ashamed of his former pals and to denounce their statements.

I have written before that I think a lot of Obama's success -- or, better put, his lack of vulnerability on standard "black" grounds -- has to do with his nimbly leapfrogging white mainstream and media anxiety about the political "bad nigger:" you know, the black ex-slave with an attitude. Deep in official Washington, and I suspect in the fearful center-right of much of the Democratic leadership, is a suspicion that a passionately popular black candidate has got to be hiding some bad nigger in him somewhere, and that when it finally emerges it will scare the hair off of white America, like a fast-moving black kid who suddenly jumps onto their elevator. I'm not much enamored of Obama's actual politics -- he's soft on banks, private-sector-protective on health care, and more protest than policy on Iraq -- but I believe there is a body of official wisdom poised to nail the ostensible "bad nigger" in Obama. Reverend Jeremiah Wright is now that designated bad Obama nigger: angry, preachy, unrepentantly accusatory, and, by the way, absolutely correct on the subject of America's moral and political hypocrisies. Wright's ceaselessly-soundbited "God damn America" quote, for instance, if you read or listen to the sermon from whence it comes, is in fact part of an extended reference to the failure of a long line of world empires to live up to the demands of a just God. It is clearly not a call for Locusts and Inferno to visit upon Washington. But the "bad nigger" script calls for a vengeful escaped slave behind the spectacularly appealing Obama persona. And if Obama himself cannot be successfully tagged with the feared role, then the search turns to his associates.

Such is life within the long-lived official white narrative of staying ever on the lookout for the Scary Black Male. If Clinton has her way and hijacks the nomination by jumping as she has on any and all convenient opportunities to impugn Obama, she will likely succeed in handing the presidency to John McCain.

All I can tell you is that one guy named Jimmy, standing in the rain trying to catch just one lousy trout, isn't buying the story. Right now, the guy he is most scared of and mad at is not black; he is white, rich, and in the White House.

Facing It.

 
                  
                               

I spoke April 3 at SUNY Geneseo, a college in the State University of New York system.  Good school, good people, national academic reputation.

And, following a media-spotlit debacle last fall, a national racial reputation.

It seems that a few fun-loving white male students -- fraternity members among them -- decided last Halloween that it would be a great idea to make themselves up in blackface as caricatures of various rappers, yo's and ill-behaved black celebrities, among them dog-abuser and former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, and to party in costume at at least one local bar. Word spread. Photos were taken. Outrage arose. Media descended on the college. The school was in apparent shock and was slow to react, which made things worse. Student demonstrations ensued. Apologies by the white perps followed, as did an intense series of campus-wide meetings, dialogues, a teach-in, and demands for far greater campus diversity (as of 2006, the student body was 89% white) and mandatory courses to broaden most students' perspectives beyond the white experience.

When I met with faculty before my talk, one professor reminded me that blackface incidents are not unique to SUNY Geneseo; scores of such acts happen nationally. It may very well be that the blackface  affair at Geneseo -- a small school in a small and very white town in immediate proximity to cornfields -- made a plump, easy target for journalists who crave certain kinds of drama but who lack the will to challenge lying U.S. presidents and illegal wars.

None of which changes the reprehensible facts of the events at Geneseo.

A few things struck me -- and some moved me deeply -- on my visit to the SUNY Geneseo campus. One was the passion of student activism there, exemplified by a group called Fighting Against Racial Injustice (FARI), which has spearheaded a movement for racial change on campus and has orchestrated a response to the blackface incidents, and whose arsenal includes self-produced DVDs about Geneseo's racial climate and specific proposals to the administration for action. The demands for substantially greater recruitment of people of color and for adding the experiences of people of color to curriculum mandates, for instance, came from FARI, although the administration has also had committees considering these issues for some time. FARI, however, does not speak or act on behalf of all students who oppose bigotry, and some of the questions I fielded from students concerned how to mount their own organized movements for change regarding black/white issues, biracial issues, Native American issues, and others. (I suggested, among other things, that they be meticulous and methodical in gathering support, be creative in their messages, be audacious, and form coalitions of shared interests with other campus organizations). An Arab-American student passed me a note with a Halloween anecdote about having met a student dressed in Arab garb who opened his robe to reveal that he was "a suicide bomber." The sheer physical response to my talk told me a lot about concern for these issues: hundreds of people showed up, and the event had to be moved to a larger auditorium to accommodate the crowd. As I later told a friend, if you want a welcome rebuttal to the foreboding sense that the American soul has been repackaged as a snack food, go visit some college campuses and spend some time in the circles of young people who are stubbornly organizing for progressive change.

Another truth that the Geneseo visit underlined for me -- and this is as true in any other locale as it is in Geneseo -- is the raw power of innocently inherited ignorance. One of my mantras these days, which is pretty much at the heart of my latest book, is my belief that 99-some-odd percent of Americans are good people with bad racial ideas. I make a living writing and talking about where these brain toxins come from: economic history, political expediency, chronic insecurity, media enterprises that churn fear and rage into gold. Sure, there are true malevolent bigots among us, with their wickedly and perhaps irrevocably-ruined psyches running amok in their savage search for ethnic cleansing. But when it comes to the great bulk of us, we should never underestimate the power of bad (or nonexistent) information to propel a decent human being to believe lies and to behave badly. Case in point: several of the blackface-wearing white Geneseo students later wrote public apologies (which seemed, even to me as a black man with a tendency toward skepticism about such things, as earnest and sincere as any mea culpa I've seen) in which they revealed that they knew nothing -- nada -- of the history or even the existence of blackface as a tradition of American racism. They were mortified, according to their public statements, that their attempted good-time gag had caused harm. If their tortured apologies are to be believed, and I think they are, then what we are dealing with here, at least in part, is a cadre of young whites who are utterly clueless about how and why strutting around in blackface is so gravely and cruelly hurtful. Want to know how they came to lack any such knowledge? You'd need to look at their upbringings, at their families' dinner table conversations, at their lifelong range of friends and travels, at their media diets. This is what innocent inheritance, ignorance by default, can do. It makes good people unwitting accessories to evil. That, in and of itself, is an ironclad argument for required courses about racism and cultural relativism not only in college, but in grade school. If we are teaching our kids about the Boston Tea Party and the Civil War, we damned sure ought to be teaching them what racism is and why their own cultural experience is not at the center of the universe.

And this gets to the final reminder that I took away from SUNY Geneseo's struggle to deal with its own racial casualties: How outright damning the inertia of homogeneity can be in any community. As I said to the hundreds of folks who came together that day at Geneseo, I think the organization FARI has gotten it right with its core demands for greater recruiting of people of color and required revision of the Geneseo curriculum. An overwhelmingly white school in an overwhelmingly white town is a virtual assurance of ongoing racial ignorance, distance, and injustice.

Of course, proximity to people of other backgrounds is no guarantee of awareness and fairness.

But it's certainly a prerequisite.

Do It Now.

I've not blogged for a while. That's because my mother, Marguerite Peoples Jacobs, died earlier this month. She was the kind of 84-year-old I'd like to grow to be if I'm so lucky. She was unflaggingly vibrant, intellectually engaged, politically and morally committed, and impossibly active. She was unstoppable. Two weeks before she died she was still doing her regular volunteer gig at the Red Cross Blood Drive -- not to mention her board meetings, service organizations, book club, travel group, and a lot more that I couldn't keep up with. One day a few months ago I telephoned her and she said, sweetly, that she couldn't talk because she had four meetings that day.

I couldn't possibly even begin to describe my Mom in this space. Suffice it to say that she raised four children single-handedly after a divorce, earned her bachelor's degree at night after working as a  Registered Nurse, built a career running a program at the County Health Department, spearheaded social causes (she co-ran a black voter registration drive, and co-founded local chapters of two national organizations) and was unofficial psychiatrist, mentor and confidant to a stream of colleagues and friends and relatives, including me. She was my first and greatest heroine. The things my siblings and I believe and do are a direct tribute to her.

I am telling you this not just because of my love for my mother. I am telling you this because, after she died and I found myself alone in a hospital room with her body, I was able to weep not just with grief but with gratitude for her being my Mom -- because I had no regrets. We had loved each other fully over these years as we both grew older, had said everything that needed to be said, had acted on every tender and aching impulse that needed action between mother and child. We left nothing on the cutting-room floor. At least nothing that I know of. And so I'm lucky enough to now hurt purely for her death, purely for the physical loss of her, without the added suffering of "what I should have said" or "what I wish I had done." I was fortunate to have this, too, with my father in the years before he recently died.

So let me keep this short and tell you what I'm really trying to tell you: Losing somebody you love is hard enough. Don't add to the loss by squandering the opportunities you have, right now, to be with them. Whatever "be with them" may mean to you: saying what you most need to say, doing what you need to do, making things right, clarifying what's wrong, fighting for something, letting go of something. Being true. Not "true" in the sense of forced loyalty -- who needs that? -- but in the sense of being faithful to what you'll be able to live with after they have died. What you don't want is to get the fateful phone call and to feel, thereafter, an abyss of regret for what you wish you had done.

My Aunt Claire, a reverend who formally eulogized my mother, said it at the service: Do you need to say, do or feel something with someone you love? Do it now. Do it right now. It's a cliche because it's true.

I'm relatively new to this business of having my parents die. But even I know that my Aunt Claire's counsel is good advice. If I were you, I'd take it.

"Ethical Perversity."

Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun and chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, has nailed it in his two-word description of the current national political conscience: "ethical perversity."

What else to call it when one politician is brought down in national disgrace for the hypocrisy and illegality of his dealings with a high-priced prostitution operation, while another politician lies the nation into an illegal war that kills tens of thousands, condones torture, and shreds the Bill of Rights, all to nary a peep about high crimes and misdemeanors? 

For a surgically revealing analysis of what the fall of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and the survival of President George W. Bush tells us about the moral innards of American media and American politicians and voters, read Lerner's March 14 essay on the Spitzer affair. It's worth the five minutes to read the entire piece. But the gist of Lerner's argument is that in the wake of a decade of corrupt and criminal national political leadership with resultingly vast human casualties,

"That there is no outcry for these government officials and corporate leaders to resign immediately or be impeached, that there is no moral outrage at the entire system that produces this impact, is America's ethical perversity. Instead, the only crime against humanity that the media takes seriously and the politicians fear is being exposed for personal sexual immorality. While everyone basks in their own self-righteous demands on Spitzer, we all allow media and elected officials to fundamentally distort our ethical vision and play out our morality on the smallest of possible stages while ignoring the global and personal consequences of our larger ethical failures."

As it happened, I was in New York for the entire week of the Spitzer drama that culminated in his resignation with his absolutely devastated-looking wife, Silda, at his side. All week, the screaming front pages and breathless TV news loops repeated the anguished refrain: We have been betrayed, our trust in our leaders has been shattered, our faith in politics has been shaken, our state is in crisis. What to think? What to do?

By the second day, I was sick to death of it.

Yes, Spitzer's behavior, as an ex-prosecutor who made his bones catching the big boys red-handed, was hypocritical, contemptuous of the legal process, arrogant, and flat-out stupid beyond belief. And the very business of female prostitution is fraught with issues of sexual objectification, exploitation, and abuse of women. This far more than a matter of principle; prostitution is an industry within which women frequently end up decimated, diseased or dead, and, especially at the lower end of the trade, it has everything to do with poverty and drug addiction. Spitzer deserved to pay for what he did. Perhaps even to be forced to resign.

But Rabbi Lerner's question is, How come Spitzer is forced to quit amid howls of moral judgment and a Republican threat of impeachment, while Bush, whose criminal wrongdoing extends exponentially farther beyond his own family and Administration and, in fact, beyond his own nation, gets to awaken every morning in the White House with no phalanxes of outraged legislators or citizens calling for his head?

That's where "ethical perversity" comes into play. Read Lerner's piece. Forward it to someone you know who is more frothed up about Governor Spitzer's illegal sexcapades than about President Bush's murders, tortures, and wiretaps. Then ask them for an ethical explanation.

Thanks to Laurie for the tip.

RedBlue America.

There is a lot to like about a web site where voters don't let their "red" and "blue" cloaks get in the way of serious sit-downs on politics and policy.

In a blindingly floodlit mass media arena that alternately casts Hillary as bitch and teary hysteric, and Barack as rock star and bearer of a toxic middle name, the intent behind redblueamerica.com is palpably small-d democratic: If you build a forum where thoughtful visitors aren't punished for their opinions, they will come. As one of redblue's founders wrote in an email inviting me (and no doubt many other blogsters) to visit the site:

"Redblueamerica.com is based on the idea that there’s a large group of Americans ‑ especially educated people who vote regularly – who actually want to know what the other half thinks on important issues facing the nation. Too often in this country people talk past each other, refusing even to expose themselves to others who think differently.We are opening up our site to users who want to post their own political blogs - because we believe that the future of the political and cultural discussion shouldn't be left in the hands of the journalism majors, but by everyday Americans who want to participate in the debate."

I'm not sure about the assumption that the electorate is divided in half. (More about this in a minute.) But who'd disagree with the need for more intelligence in our disputes?

So I took a look at the site, and I'd suggest you do as well.

Redblueamerica's format features a pairing off of parallel "red" and "blue" lead blogs (chosen by moderators "blue" Joel and "red" Ben on the given topic of the day) surrounded by readers' comments and guest blogs. On the most recent day I visited, the subject was, "Is Hillary Clinton getting a raw deal from the media?" A previous point-counterpoint topic was, "Why are fewer people having children?" Lots to talk about. I like that. The site's slogan -- "Best Thinking. Both Sides." -- is a stretch, but, hey, a noble one. The site is also nicely designed, with a clean layout of a surprising number of lists and options. And, except for an annoying pop-up error box that announced a failed script every time I opened a new page on the site, everything seemed to work.

But there are bigger problems here. One is that the "red/blue" dichotomy has always been more of a tale than a truth, and so the site's alleged red-versus-blue debates are on shaky ground from the start. In the Hillary-getting-a-raw-media-deal face-off, for instance, "blue" Ezra Klein calls the clearly centrist Clinton a "progressive" (?!), while "red" Ed Morrissey lays out a tactical analysis of Obama's overshadowing of Clinton that could just as well have been presented by a "blue" strategist. Then there's the matter of substance. We already know the mainstream media are smitten with Obama, and we know it's for the same reason that they gave the likable liar George W. Bush a free pass in 2000 while raking the presidentially superior but stylistically wooden Al Gore over the coals: personality. I'd like to see more substantial "red/blue" discussion of Clinton and Obama -- say, debate about the life-and-death issues on which both candidates have gone spineless: a rapid and clear plan for ending America's intransigent "leadership" of the Iraq debacle and courting allies for a credible internationally-implemented security solution; a capacity to confront the health insurance industry; a willingness to stand up to Wall Street and the banking industry. In a way, redblueamerica's premise of red-versus-blue works against itself, making it harder to tunnel beneath the lines of established punditry and to resist the inertia of conventional  commentary.

And then there is the ever-present problem of cranks, like the wingnut who gained space on redblueamerica, the first time I visited, with a recitation of the current right-wing mytho-babble about Obama's being a "secret Muslim." (As if his faith ought to matter at all anyway.) It's not censorship to filter out these wackos. It's sensible judgment.

But all in all, I like what redblueamerica is attempting to do. Where else would you see contributors from The Nation and No Left Turns on the same page? They have asked me if I'll guest blog, and I think I might if I can get through this mess on my desk. Anyway, take a visit yourself and see what you think.

I'll also look for other interesting sites and occasionally write about them. This is fun.