human rights, embodied

Posted on by

The ABC has given vent to some further thoughts about human rights. The full text, together with spin, is here. Dr. Williams’s argument in this piece seems to turn on this claim: “The recognition of a body as a human body is . . . the foundation of recognising the rights of another.” To which Tobias Haller’s cat, Augusta Victoria, appends the following critique, based on years of experience with a bodiliness that has been subject to numerious transformations, not the least of which involved the removal of portions of her anatomy. As Augusta Victoria sees it, Dr. Williams’s framing of the issue “seems to shift the embodiment away from the body itself into the subjective perception of it by some other entity . . . ,” and hence,

[T]he question arises as to whether Feline Rights are innate (based on existence as a Feline Being) merely on account of embodiment as a feline, or the recognition of that fact by another entity, be it Human or Dog.

The whole issue is problematic, especially since Dr. Williams’s remarks seem less occasioned by issues of human rights and more occasioned by a concern for “any apparently human body we encounter as in some sense a potential communicator with [us].” This becomes clearer as Dr. Williams develops the argument:

The right of the imperfectly rational person – whether the child or the person with mental disabilities – may be put in question if we stipulate a capacity for reasoned self-consciousness as a condition for acknowledging rights. And to speak of the right of the body as such casts a different light on the sensitive issue of the right of the unborn. . . .

To which the wise feline responds with the suggestion that

As the very earliest embryonic forms of feline and human are barely distinguishable except by the application of sub-microscopic analysis of DNA sequences, it would appear . . . that rights ought not be governed merely by “embodiment” — or by an even more abstruse concept of “recognized embodiment” (surely a receptionist suggestion) — but rather use as a point of reference the principle of descent from other humans — or felines; if, that is, one wishes to address the reality of the fluid nature of embodiment at all its stages of life.

Realizing the fluid and indeed manifold nature of “embodiment at all its stages [and perhaps forms] of life,” as well as the legitimacy of Dr. Williams’s interest in “apparently human” bodies, I put the question to Maximillian Augustus and Murphy O’Farrell, two near relatives of mine who happen to dwell in the neighborhood.† Maximillian, affectionately known as Maxie, stated his conviction that all bishops are alike — “If you’ve smelled one, you’ve smelled them all.” But Maxie isn’t sure that bishops, as a tribe, are human. Murphy countered that the ABC at least looks interesting. “A man with a big, white beard can’t be all bad,” Murphy observed.

†In the photo, Murphy is the poodle on the right, with the raccoon eyes. Maxie is the one who looks like a movie star, on the left.

. . . about snakes

Posted on by

In the extended family of my boyhood there was a cousin known as Bubba. The name carried no connotation of ignorance or redneckery — we were all southern folk. It was a carryover from babytalk, like a lot of nicknames, and it meant “brother.” I’m unable to account for the morphing of Bubba from sobriquet to media cliché meaning “dumb hick,” but this week’s Newsweek cover has got to deserve Waylon Jennings’ Wurlitzer Prize for obnoxious camp (though the cover story isn’t bad).

And speaking of that, the sneering and condescension of Michael Gerson and Charles Krauthammer on today’s Washington Post op-ed page is only exceeded by the Post’s front page teasers reading “Asleep at the Pew” for Gerson and “Ex-Uncle Wright” for Krauthammer. We hear a good deal these days about the encroachment of bloggers, whose endless typing threatens the public mind, more properly nourished by the (presumably slower) typing of wise, disinterested, and brainy types who occupy slots in major media outlets. Golly, gee, I can’t wait for the next brainy and disinterested excursus about immigration from Lou Dobbs! And that Krauthammer really gives me food for thought when he sneers in Latin; mirabile dictu, indeed.

New duck on the block. One of the nice things about living in St. Louis is the city’s multiplicity of neighborhood restaurants and pubs. My beloved and I have been saddened recently by the closing of two favorite places, Pestalozzi Place and Tanner B’s. But we were happy last night to be able to walk across the alley again and find Pestalozzi Place reincarnated as The Shaved Duck, a lively new bistro featuring a tapas-style menu with wonderful entrées (we both had a trout entree that was superb), local cheeses, and craft beers. Here are a couple of enthusiastic reviews: [1], [2]. Owners of the Shaved Duck also operate The Scottish Arms on Sarah, just off Laclede. Last night’s opening was great fun, and, to judge from the crowd, a big success.

still not buying it

Posted on by

The New York Times got what it wanted when Barack Obama repudiated Jeremiah Wright. Previously I quoted George Will gloating in The Washington Post. But Not even Will can match the condescension with which the Times in last Tuesday’s edition gloats on its editorial page.

It took more time than it should have, but on Tuesday Barack Obama firmly rejected the racism and paranoia of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., and he made it clear that the preacher does not represent him, his politics or his campaign.

My own mixed reaction to this whole business has sent me looking around to clarify my views by reading those of others. What I’ve found is an almost universally negative reaction to Wright, coupled with sympathy or disapprobation for Obama depending on the bias of the writer. Martin Peretz, while he holds no brief for Wright, has some very laudatory things to say about Obama in a couple of posts at The New Republic. Here’s the first, in a post entitled “The Wrong Stuff.”

Frankly, I don’t think that Wright means doom at all for Obama. But the emeritus pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ was received on Sunday by 10,000 enthusiasts at an NAACP gathering in Detroit, reported in Monday’s New York Times. This event tells you how far we have yet to go in the coming together of the races in America, and it also is a demonstration of why we need Barack Obama so much.

As Peretz notes, Wright’s detractors might well pay attention to the fact that he is often greeted with enthusiasm by large audiences. But the heart of Peretz’s praise for Obama can be seen in another post very unfavorable to Wright and entitled “Barack Obama: Putting Race Hustlers Out of Work.”

Obama returned to the subject foisted upon him by Jeremiah Wright, and he tried once again to show that he did not choose to have American politics be assumed as a battle over enemy territory. There is some nobility in the effort, a nobility akin to Abraham Lincoln’s. It is a disposition that many Republicans used to honor and many Democrats, too: you may disagree, disagree over significant matters, but you try to found common ground. Obama is the last Democrat standing who still believes there is common ground, and I dream that when he and John McCain finally face each other without Hillary Clinton in the mix they will be speaking from different podiums but across common ground.

Peretz lumps Wright together with Cornell West, calling West a race hustler. Yet Peretz, himself, often presumes that American politics is “a battle over enemy territory.” A die-hard cold warrior, whose views about palestinians often border on racism, Peretz can find anti-Semitism under rocks it would never occur to me to inspect. Still, I think his admiration for Obama is sincere, and as an Obama supporter I’m grateful for it. I too still cherish the hope that Obama and McCain can face each other across common ground, and that’s why I understand how difficult Wright is for Obama.

But whatever difficulty Wright’s anger may pose for Obama agonistes, Wright is correct more often than he is wrong, in my view, as John Nichols pointed out a couple of days ago in The Nation. Wright deals in what Shelby Steele calls poetic truth when he talks about politics, and that makes his speeches easy to parody and to deconstruct as mere rants. This is what Obama did in repudiating Wright, but there is much in Wright’s message that all Americans ought to take seriously, albeit his language may be polarizing, and albeit he speaks from a racialist position that makes much of what he says uncomfortable to hear. Wright has been accused of egotism, but I think it shames Obama and those editorialists who have followed him to have dismissed Wright as a fraud and to have accused him of “giving comfort to those who prey on hate.” Indeed, as Nichols points out, Wright’s theme was reconciliation as he spoke before the National Press Club, and it was primarily in the question period that he occasionally went into attack mode as the questioners attempted to force him to give answers that could be sensationalized as anti-American.

Anti-Americanism is the bugbear of today’s revived McCarthyism. A google search turned up 948,000 hits for anti-Americanism. It has seemed to me, reading around, that those who deplore Jeremiah Wright from the political right focus on what they term anti-American in his language, while those on the left characterize Wright as racist and paranoid. I am wondering why Wright has become so important that he is singled out for particular vituperation from all sides. I’ve already quoted The New York Times. Martin Peretz calls Wright “a side-show, a freak side-show that is propped up by other black hustlers.” Richard Baehr fulminates against Wright’s “brand of crackpot racist anti-American lunacy,” as though it weren’t sufficient simply to call him anti-American.

Maybe Wright’s poetic truth is the real truth about America.

It isn’t Obama’s poetic truth. That’s about what America might be, can be, is on our best days. But what about the other days, like the gritty day lately when one of my neighbors whispered to my beloved that the new folks on the block are an interracial couple? And what about the gloating in the Times and elsewhere where writers and editors ought to know better? I think first, that Wright has received attention in proportion to Obama’s importance as a public figure and that the “matter of Wright” will be a measure of what our country has lost if it succeeds in taking Obama down. It has already diminished him. And I think, too, as I have said before, that the Jeremiah Wright spectacle is a drama of non-significance as it is being portrayed, that it displays the propensity of a sensationalist mediascape to focus on what it can hype, that it displays, as John Nichols says, “a contemporary political culture that has come to rely on character assassination as an easy tool for reversing electoral misfortune.”

We ought to be deeply ashamed as a people that we allow ourselves to be manipulated by political pornography. Barack Obama would have been right had he repudiated that, and my heart would be far less heavy today. But I have to say two more things about the Times editorial before I stop. This sentence, “In the last few days, in a series of shocking appearances, [Jeremiah Wright] embraced the Rev. Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism,” is simply not true. It is unworthy of the Times to have printed such a lie. And finally these two passages, which taken together remind me of Leon Wieseltier when he called Andrew Sullivan “Obamaboy” in print on the last page of a recent New Republic and accused him of Jew baiting.

This could not be handled by a speech about the complexities of modern life. It required a powerful, unambiguous denunciation — and Mr. Obama gave it. […] This country needs a healthy and open discussion of race. Mr. Obama’s repudiation of Mr. Wright is part of that. His opponents also have a responsibility — to repudiate the race-baiting and make sure it stops.

Wieseltier had the decency to apologize for his remark (more or less). If the Times wants to help stop race baiting, it might start by cleaning up its own editorial page.

more on Obama and Wright

Posted on by

I’ver just read a partial text of Obama’s remarks denouncing Jeremiah Wright at Winston-Salem, on Ben Smth’s Blog — inadequate, as far as I’m concerned. Nor only does this speech leave open the question why Obama didn’t say these things before he had to say them, as Smith points out in a later post, but it also leaves open George Will’s weasely question: why Obama associated with Wright for twenty years without any serious criticism. And a related question too — if Obama would have left the church had Wright not stepped down as pastor, why? Because he intended to run for president and he knew the association with Wright could hurt him?

Today’s series of denunciations seems petty and almost personal to me. And it’s too scripted, too calculated and lawyerly, with a response aimed at each famous soundbite; though, in fairness, Obama does try to speak as I hoped he would.

I have spent my entire adult life trying to bridge the gap between different kinds of people. That’s in my DNA, trying to promote mutual understanding to insist that we all share common hopes and common dreams as Americans and as human beings. That’s who I am, that’s what I believe, and that’s what this campaign has been about.

Maybe I’m wrong, but this doesn’t ring true to me. There’s too much of the stump speech in it. The DNA reference is too cute. It’s not worthy of the man I stood in line for two hours in the cold to hear last winter. I’m not buying it.