If you always wonder, when standing in the voting booth, how to pick candidates for the less well-known political offices, the Indy Star’s interactive voter guide goes through each of the candidates, provides information about them, and lets you make selections and print out a cheat sheet to take to the voting booth with you. Very nice. I don’t know enough about local politics to decide if the questions they asked of each set of candidates are the ideal questions to ask, but at least they give you some insight into candidates.
There’s a video clip circulated by notorious nutjob Michelle Malkin making the rounds; it’s of Democratic advisor Mickey Kantor, who is currently advising on the Clinton campaign.
The scene is an edited clip from the 1993 movie “The War Room” about the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign. The movie followed Kantor, Stephanapoulos and Carville as they worked to get Clinton elected. In the clip, Kantor is discussing a memo of poll numbers put out by the Republican party, where the numbers had been faked one explanation says faked, other say talking about Ross Perot’s poll numbers. In it, Kantor appears to be saying about the Republicans putting out fake data “These people are shit. How would you like to be {inaudible}?”
The circulating video clip from the movie has been edited to make it sound as though Kantor was talking about the people of Indiana, who’s poll numbers he mentions right before he makes the derogatory remarks. The filmmaker says the inaudible section was dubbed or manipulated to say “a worthless white n**ger?” In the original movie, this section is not clear, according to the Huffington Post.
It also leaves out the origin – suggesting that the video is recent and from the current Clinton campaign, not from 1992.
UPDATE: According to the filmmaker, the sound was edited from the original, and everyone in the room including the filmmaker agrees that he never used the N-word. Other people claim they hear it even on the original DVD. Until I hear the DVD for myself, I can’t tell. I doesn’t sound like this on other clips posted on YouTube.
The edited version appears on YouTube with comments and ratings turned off, and is being circulated around Indiana now. You can see it here:
I saw part of the movie back in 1993, but I didn’t remember this scene; just lots of video of Carville and Stephanapoulos with their heads together, so I recognized what I was seeing pretty quickly as being from the 1992 clinton campaign.
If Kantor had actually said this about Indiana, it wouldn’t just be coming out now. It’s getting dugg and heavily circulated, so I’m blogging about it in hopes that people watch the actual movie and see what it’s saying before leaping to conclusions about it.
Also — the fact that Malkin is pushing it obscures where it’s coming from, but I can’t see something this hacked up coming from Obama’s campaign. Smells like McCain to me.
NOTE: The reason I’m blaming Malkin for this one is because the story about it first “broken” on her blog and on the Drudge Report, with other discussion following pretty widely after that in the blogosphere. But she’s definitely one of the primary voices pushing this out there. That’s also the reason I think McCain is behind it rather than Obama.
Also, I got a couple of nasty right-wing comments on the post defending Malkin, which I deleted, per my comment policy. Comments are closed due to conservative dickishness.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m voting for David Orentlicher in the primary as the Democratic candidate for Julia Carson’s former seat in the U.S. Congress. The slated Democratic candidate and current office holder is André Carson (elected in March in a special election) but I’m just not convince that Carson has enough experience. David has been a State Representative for many years. I’ve met him several times and heard him speak on a variety of issues.
The other two candidates running are Dr. Woody Myers and Carolene Mays. Mays is pretty openly homophobic and is universally opposed by the gay community in Indianapolis. Dr. Myers seemed like a decent guy, until we discovered that he opposed the Patient Bill of Rights, which I had supported back in 1998.
There’s pretty clearly no legal grounds for the threat, but I sure did get a good laugh out of it. And another reason not to vote for Woody Myers.
In other political news, Barack Obama visited my friend Rich’s family farm in north western Indiana and played basketball with Rich’s nephew, and talked for awhile with his family. Rich got lots of photos and I guess Senator Obama was pretty cool.
He also brought Rich’s family apple pies, one of which Rich brought to work. So this morning, I had a piece of delicious Barack Obama Apple Pie, which I heard isn’t store bought at all, but he baked all by himself on the tour bus, from apple he gathered from trees growing right there on the bus roof. Also, I heard he’s ten feet tall, breathes fire and is able to fly. I wonder how he keeps the press from finding all that out. He must be magic.
I still plan to vote for Hillary for a variety of reasons, but I have to admit, Barack’s magic pie is delicious, and if he ends up with the nomination, I’ll be excited to vote for him in the fall.
Looking back through modern U.S. campaigns, there’s simply no media model for so many members of the press to try to drive a competitive candidate from the field while the primary season is still unfolding.
…And the fact is, the media’s get-out-now push is unparalleled. Strong second-place candidates such as Ronald Reagan (1976), Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, Jesse Jackson, and Jerry Brown, all of whom campaigned through the entire primary season, and most of whom took their fights all the way to their party’s nominating conventions, were never tagged by the press and told to go home.
“Clinton is being held to a different standard than virtually any other candidate in history,” wrote Steven Stark in the Boston Phoenix. “When Clinton is simply doing what everyone else has always done, she’s constantly attacked as an obsessed and crazed egomaniac, bent on self-aggrandizement at the expense of her party.”
…No longer content to be observers of the campaign, journalists now see themselves as active players in the unfolding drama, and they show no hesitation trying to dictate the basics of the contest, like who should run and who should quit. It’s as if journalists are auditioning for the role of the old party bosses.
Shakespear’s Sister refers to this sexist phenomenon as the “take your boobs and go home” media push.
Lawrence Fobes King (January 13, 1993 – February 14, 2008) was a 15-year-old student at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, California, who was shot twice by a fellow student, 14-year-old Brandon McInerney, and kept on life support until two days later.
Newsweek described the shooting as “the most prominent gay-bias crime since the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard”, bringing attention to issues of gun violence as well as gender expression and sexual identity of teenagers.
My family is originally from southeastern rural Iowa, and regardless of the small town life aspect, they’re very well-educated and don’t talk like hayseeds and goobers. Sit down and talk to them about the election and they have intelligent, thoughtful conversations about the issues. They have slightly different political agendas than those of us who live in cities, but rural American life and uneducated, unsophisticated behavior DO NOT go hand in hand.
I know there are some differences in education levels between rural Iowa and rural Indiana, but does it account for the reason that Kokomo seems to be embracing their inner hayseed in this lovely New York Times article, or is it stereotyping on the part of NYT? (My editorial commentary is inserted, in emphasized text.)
KOKOMO, Ind. — With all the talk among the Democratic presidential hopefuls about change, they may wish to consider this as they wander Indiana: People here practically revolted a few years ago when their governor, Mitch Daniels, pushed to change to daylight saving time like most of the country. (DST is a horse of a different color, and not a good example “disliking change.” That falls under the category of “didn’t take the brown acid like the rest of the U.S.”)
Change, it seems, may not carry quite the same political magic in this state as it has elsewhere.
“We hold onto a lot of traditional values,” said Brian L. Thomas, 39, (What a geezer, stop boring us rambling about walking to school in the snow in bare feet, Grandpa… Oh, wait… 39? Hey!) as he bought a cup of coffee along the courthouse square here on Wednesday. “Saying you’re ready to change is probably not the best or only thing you would want to say around these parts. Frankly, we want it to be like it used to be.” (Kokomo was a sundown town, BTW, where black people couldn’t be in down after dark or they’d be lynched. So nostalgia ’bout the “way it used to be” should be given a skeptical eye and a challenge.)
Many of the two dozen voters interviewed in this central Indiana manufacturing city of 46,000 expressed queasiness over the notions of change that both Democratic candidates have proudly pledged elsewhere. Though residents bemoaned economic conditions that have taken away thousands of factory jobs and given the state the 11th-highest rate of foreclosures, they also said they worried about doing things — anything — very differently.
“What are we going to change to?” asked Ron O’Bryan, 58, a retired auto worker who said he was still trying to decide which Democrat to vote for in the May 6 primary. “You mean change to some other country’s system? What do you think they mean?” (Yes, all this talk of giving you health care and bring back the manufacturing jobs your company shipped overseas to communist China – that’s akin to that wicked Socialism. You know, the kind that used to be RUN BY THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF INDIANA, back when your grandpappy was their treasurer in 1933. Ahem. Indiana, being a manufacturing state, was a prominent supporter of the labor/socialist movement at one time.)
Jeremy Lewis, a 28-year-old window washer, said simply, “Old-fashioned can be in a good way.” (Yes, bring back the good old days of Saturday morning Smurfs and Light-Brite makin’ things with light…. Wait, those are MY good old days. This kid is 28. What the fuck was it then, Transformers and Underoos? And Wham!)
As the Democratic presidential hopefuls turned to Indiana as a new battleground in the fight for the nomination, they find themselves facing a different audience in places like Kokomo, a blue-collar city in the middle of endless expanses of farms north of Indianapolis. In some ways, these are voters not so unlike those in other Rust Belt states, like Pennsylvania, but with an added dose of nostalgia and a practical, Midwestern sensibility. (I think they watched the musical The Music Man a few too many times before heading out to the midwest, because this whole article sounds like that song… “And we’re so by God stubborn We can stand touchin’ noses For a week at a time And never see eye-to-eye. But we’ll give you our shirt And a back to go with it If your crops should happen to die. Farmer: So, what the heck, you’re welcome, Glad to have you with us. Farmer and Wife: Even though we may not ever mention it again.”)
“We are manufacturing workers, farmers, beer drinkers, gun owners, pickup drivers,” said Karen Lasley, 64, who was volunteering on Wednesday morning in Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s field office in Kokomo (one of 28 Mrs. Clinton has opened around the state along with Senator Barack Obama’s 22, including one just down the street). “We are full of pride for this country.”
After the photographers left, they all hopped out of their overalls, slipped on their DKNY and Jimmy Choos and took a stroll around the town square, high-fiving each other at putting one over on the the Grey Lady.
According to toxicologists, it is not possible to get high from sniffing a magic marker. It is possible that your school’s administrators are too dumb to know that.
