January 2008 archive

The NYT has 120 plus stories on ‘Clinton’ and ‘gays in the military’ between 92 and 93. If you want to know how the media was able to define Clinton as a divisive figure who alienated people a decade ago, look around. We’re living it. Then, as now, Hillary and Bill are being blamed for the divisions among us.

Campaigning on Race: Who here can deny seeing Obama as a person of color, first; and as an individual, second? Obama has been running on race from day one.

Reverse racism, fears of exclusion, and liberal guilt have been exploited shamelessly by Obama supporters. Policy positions more extreme and right-wing than those of either HRC or Edwards are shuffled to the side in order to present a candidate who voted with the party 97% of the time as an agent of change, rather than simply as more of the same in black.

How often do Obama supporters focus on the superficialities of appearance and ignore the deeply flawed roots of a campaign of cynicism, a campaign that owes so much to bigotry and gay-baiting.

Obama’s Ebenezeer St speech is a milestone in this campaign. Not because Obama spoke out against intolerance, he’s done that before. The Ebeneezer street speech is special because the speech, delivered in a church just a week before the South Carolina primary allowed Obama supporters, many of whom were shocked by the role gay-baiting played in Obama’s campaign, to forget that this campaign of ‘hope’ began by pandering nakedly to bigotry and hatred.

Obama preaches a message of inclusion, but sends anti-gay bigots into the south to drum up dollars and votes. Then he scolds bigots for coughing up the dough. The acolytes see in this astonishing cynicism further evidence of divinity.

Obama devotees place the Ebeneezer Street blindfold over their own eyes and those of others, celebrating themselves, forgetting the message of MLK, forgetting honesty, forgetting, at least until the SC election is over, that there would be no Obama South Carolina victory without bigotry and hate, without Donnie and Mary-Mary.

Gay hatred, bigotry, cynicism and lies will likely carry the day, this weekend, just as they did back in 92-94. When Obama supporters cheer themselves, their morality and their courage, perhaps they can raise a glass to Mariachi Mama, and her son who hung himself last month, and all the gay folks who have taken their own lives rather than endure the kind of hate promulgated from the stage of the candidate for change.

we bounce around like free radicals

in our flesh, bones, and blood world

One of the key buzzwords of this Presidential race is change. The voices of change cumulated in a Democratic victory in 2006, and since then, the voices of change have only gotten louder and louder. Supposedly. And yet, when we look at the front-runners for the election, we see that the conventional candidates — Hillary Clinton and John McCain — are poised to take the nomination starting with Super Tuesday. A showing below 15% in South Carolina could doom John Edwards, while both Hillary and John McCain are leading by substantial margins in California. While the Republican primary is a lot messier than the Democratic primary, it seems that with his wins in South Carolina and Louisiana, Mike Huckabee’s home turf, it seems that McCain is an odds-on favorite to take over the Republican nomination.

This brings us to the question of change — do we really want change? The buzzword of this election has been change, yet we see the two establishment candidates, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, establishing themselves as frontrunners in the primary. It seems that people on both parties say that they want change, yet saying that they want change and actually having the courage to vote for change are two different things. It is a lot like a bad relationship — we say that we want to break up, yet when it comes time to actually do it, it is much more comfortable to stay in the relationship than it is to make a clean break and start over. We say that we don’t like where we are and want to move and make a fresh start; however, when it comes down to do it, we are more afraid of the unknown than we are of staying in a bad situation.  

As the Associated Press reported:

With the return of a long-sought masterpiece of antiquity, Italy on Friday trumpeted one of the successes of its campaign to recover what it says are looted treasures from museums and collectors around the world.

The 2,500-year-old vase by Greek artist Euphronius, which Italy regained after signing a deal with the Metropolitan Museum in New York, was feted in Rome at an official presentation.

The Euphronius Krater – a large vase painted with scenes related to Homer’s epic poems “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” – is regarded as one of the finest examples of its kind. The vase was used as a bowl for mixing wine and water.

“It is universally considered the best work by the artist,” Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli said at the ceremony. Also attending was his predecessor, Rocco Buttiglione, who started the country’s high-profile campaign to recover art.

The Sixth Century BCE was a golden age of Greek vase painting, with innovations and individual styles proliferating at an unprecedented pace. Perhaps not coincidentally, the first signed vases had appeared only at the beginning of that century. Soon after came revolutions in figure painting technique and the first explicit attempts to realistically depict the physical world.

Euphronius was one of a group of vase painters whose work was as revolutionary as would be that of Cavallini, Cimabue, Duccio, and Giotto, some 1800 years later. To understand the depths of this revolution, all one need do is think of their predecessors, from highly stylized Egyptian and Near Eastern art to even the stunningly vivid and vivacious art of the Minoans. In the former two realism wasn’t even considered; in the latter, it was only, albeit marvelously, attempted.