Things are happening fast in the presidential primaries. And for us Democrats it isn’t just that Obama is piling up bigger majorities. A week ago, David Sirota wrote an insightful column arguing that Obama was staying away from issues of economic injustice because, for him, to speak about class equals speaking about race.
Remember, this is always how power-challenging African-Americans are marginalized. The establishment cites a black leader’s race- and class-unifying populism as supposed proof of his or her radical, race-centric views.
But this week, Sirota writes on his blog that Obama has decided to “put our lobbyist-written trade policy on trial in states like Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania.” He quotes Obama’s Virginia victory speech:
It’s a game where trade deals, like NAFTA, ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wages at the local fast-food joint or at Wal-Mart. It’s what happens when the American worker doesn’t have a voice at the negotiating table, when leaders change their positions on trade with the politics of the moment, and that is why we need a president who will listen not just to Wall Street, but to Main Street, a president who will stand with workers not just when it’s easy, but when it’s hard, and that’s the kind of president I intend to be when I’m president of the United States of America.
Like Sirota, I think this turn may be good for Obama and for the country, though the risk is double. On the one hand, Obama is vulnerable to characterization as “An African American of a certain age and ideology, easily stereotyped [and] one of the ancient band of left-liberals who grew up in the angry hothouse of inner-city, racial-preference politics,” as Joe Klein characterized Rep. John Conyers (Sirota) in a 2006 column in Time. That’s one serious risk. The other is that Obama’s Edwards-like attack on shipping jobs overseas, etc., will feed into the current wave of xenophobic nativism that is sweeping parts of the country. And it’s also true that Obama’s record on NAFTA and other matters of trade policy isn’t unmixed, as some respondents on Sirota’s blog point out.
In other news the ABC took heat on the front pages over some relatively innocuous comments about the relevance of sharia law to British practice in regard to family disputes. Fr. Mark Harris remarks that “The Archbishop of Canterbury is flying mighty close to the flame” and suggests that the controversy over Dr. Williams’ remarks may be based in anti-Semitism. On the other hand, one reaction to Fr. Harris’ analysis cogently argues that women are not on an equal footing with men in British Muslim communities and makes the following complaint about the ABC’s remarks:
Women’s lives are not academic. I fault the ABC for giving the potential for abuse under an extremely patriarchal system just a passing reference rather than the attention it deserves.
The full text of Dr. Williams’ remarks may be found here. Ruth Gledhill gloats this morning that the controversy isn’t over and speculates that it may undermine the ABC’s career.
. . . the Queen is anxious now about the Archbishop of Canterbury. She is worried about the “fall-out” from the row. I imagine she fears the authority of his office has been undermined. Which of course it has.
I generally dislike Gledhill’s column, but I think she may be right about this one. Issues of life and death for women need the benefit of Enlightenment principles, the ABCs multiculturalism notwithstanding. In the end Gledhill quotes Anne Applebaum, writing yesterday in the Washington Post.
Every time police shrug their shoulders when a Muslim woman complains that she has been forced to marry against her will, every time a Western doctor tries not to notice the female circumcisions being carried out in his hospital, they are acting in the spirit of the archbishop of Canterbury. So is the social worker who dismisses the plight of an illiterate, house-bound woman, removed from her village and sent across the world to marry a man she has never met, on the grounds that her religion prohibits interference. That’s why — if there is to be war between the British tabloids and the archbishop — I’m on the side of the Sun.
Here in St. Louis, news reports have focused on the public tragedy of the Kirkwood City Council and a man called Cookie Thornton, who ambushed the Council meeting last Thursday night and killed six people. Today, Kirkwood Mayor, Mike Swoboda, remains in critical condition, and the mourning continues. This story has a racial component, but public expressions of grief have avoided race for the most part. If the history of Meacham Park, the small, perhaps oppressed, community in which Mr. Thornton lived has some bearing on the story of Thornton’s murderous rage, so do the comments of Post-Dispatch columnist, Deb Peterson, who tells the story of how her Kirkwood neighbors helped her heal after her husband’s death some years ago. Complete Post-Dispatch coverage of the Kirkwood shootings and their aftermath is available here.
On Saturday, I listened to the Metropolitan Opera broadcast. It was a reprise of Beverly Sills’ 1975 Met debut in Rossini’s The Siege of Corinth, and it was spectacular: not just Sills, but Shirley Verrett and Justino Diaz as well. Even the chorus and orchestra, not always wonderful in those bygone times, were sharp for the most part. It’s a deservedly famous performance. I just bought on ebay a copy of the 1975 studio recording made with the same cast and conductor.
And speaking of old Met broadcasts, not long ago I acquired a copy of the famous 1950 broadcast of Faust with Jussi Björling, Cesare Siepi, Dorothy Kirsten, and Frank Guarrera. It too is a wonderful performance. The orchestra and chorus leave much to be desired, expecially the chorus, but this recording is a Björling lover’s dream–not only Faust but a lagniappe of songs and arias as encores by the great Swedish tenor. Dorothy Kirsten is wonderful as Marguerite. Not only does her skill as an actress show through even on this old recording, but her coloratura is sure as well, if not quite so spectacular as that of some others who have sung this role. Siepi and Guarrera are sometimes too lyric for me. Guarrera shines in the dramatic scene in which his character meets his death at Faust’s hands, not so much in the famous “Avant de quitter,” which he sings too sweetly for me. Siepi, a basso cantante, sings Mephisto for the most part without the comic edge I want to hear but is fine in the two big arias, especially the serenade. It’s a great recording. I had to get it from Amazon.uk, though. At the moment it isn’t available in this country.