Who's Your Uncle?

Another spring, another political scandal. I don't know enough about Ehud Olmert to pass judgment on his leadership in Israel, although I admire anyone who makes a reasonable go of the job.

I do find the NY Times story on Olmert's possible regisnation to be very interesting. Halfway down the page, author Isabel Kershner refers to one of the participants in a legal deposition as "avuncular" and "unassuming." In so saying, Kershner runs, colors flying, across the hard line between fact and opinion. In the breakdown of literary boundaries that has accompanied the information age, journalists might feel the need to 'paint a picture' for readers at least as compelling as that offered by novelists or memoirists. Nonetheless, it was not the best choice of words.

Speaking of journalism, Fareed Zakaria once more asserted the self that made me so fond of him in this fantastic piece about terrorism, where he debunked the meme that has taken hold in the popular press that terrorism shows no sign of fading. (In fact, I said this just yesterday.)

Zakaria titled his piece "The Only Thing We Have to Fear" a phrase so entrenched in our cultural consciousness that it's now a cliche. The sentence reminded me of another adage, dusted off and presented to me in my first year of journalism school. We must "speak truth to power" suggested the earnest journalistic manifesto I signed my freshman year. At the time I thought that phrase belonged to journalists, although in fact it started with the Quakers.

Zakaria, more than most journalists I've read, makes a living off "speaking truth to power." He picks a wide-ranging power as his audience. Sometimes it's corporate America, sometimes the Bush administration, more often it's the universe of editors and advertisers who direct American publishing.

"Speak Truth to Power" sums up the presidential race. The thing is this: I'm reading Obama's "Dreams from my Father" right now, and I've started to realize. This man might not be presidential material. Not because he'd be a bad commander-in-chief, but because Obama has his roots on the South Side. He used to pick do-nothing teens off the streets past Ninety-Fifth (yikes, say I, being from the Windy City). He knew where it was at.

Obama is a man in his element when he's "speaking truth to power." He's not so hot at being the power himself. He might do okay, but in terms of best allocation, he'd be better off as a rogue U.N. inspector, a Mohamed ElBaradei character, a thorn in the feathers of doves and hawks alike. To a degree, the same can be said of John McCain. McCain is on the wagon at last, but I wish he were off. Sometimes it seems he's lost himself in the make-believe land of Bushisms, paying no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Hillary, well, now there was a candidate. Forget about speaking truth to power. Hill was at her best with her arm across the windpipe of the opposition. Her forte was a fuerte unmatched in the present field. But due to the way the political winds have huffed and puffed, it seems this outcome (where Hillary becomes President and Obama and McCain take turns heckling her from the floor) is the only one we shall not have. Too bad, really.

The Immigration Conundrum

A court in Iowa recently sent 270 illegal Guatemalan immigrants to federal prison. The judge who pronounced the sentences said to the group, "I don't doubt for a moment that you are good, hard-working people...unfortunately, you committed a violation of federal law."

Unfortunately, the decision in Iowa could shape the emerging debate over illegal immigration, and set a precedent that might ultimately undermine rather than help the American economy.

We live in difficult times. Debate over the U.S.-Mexico fence has bogged down in disputes over Native American land claims. Terrorism shows little sign of abating. The job market is projected to weaken across all sectors.

And there are problems on a local level. Despite their contribution to local economies, illegal immigrants don't pay taxes. And the public services they use - education, hospitals - are funded through tax revenues. With the Bush stimulus plan in full swing, and the government running a deficit due (in part) to a big defense budget, there's just no money to be given in the form of federal tax relief to underfunded school districts. Districts that lean on federal funding (typically ones that underperform, a relationship which may or may not imply causality) have to do something. But so do states where education funding comes from local revenues (Iowa falls into this category, with 42.5% of expenditure coming from local sources.)

Gone are the days when INS - now ICE - might turn the other cheek.

But what is the solution? Economic analysis shows immigrants - even illegal ones - are a net benefit to the national economy. (A consensus among numerous studies I looked at) Nonetheless, the taxpayers of California (for example) can hardly afford the emergency room operations given out by law to all comers, regardless of immigration status. (The other option, which is to let illegal immigrants and their children suffer on the street, is even more unpalatable, as well as inconsistent with our national values)

Meanwhile, what happens to industries where much of the labor force comprises illegal immigrants? 20% of illegal immigrants work in construction, but a disproportion number also work in agriculture and fast food preparation. Right now, there is no action pending against Agriprocessors, the company that employed all 270 of the illegal immigrants. Regardless of the justice of this situation, to lock up the immigrants and let the company go free is to get the leaf of the problem without even touching the root.

The fence will not keep people out. After all, Iowa's immigrants came from Guatemala.

To be more utilitarian: what is the optimal allocation of illegal immigrants in our economy such that it will function most efficiently? The politician's answer: 0. The economist's answer: not 0. The ethical American's answer: ?

Some action might have been necessary in Iowa. But the action the court took was wrong on almost every level. And the entire United States will have to make immigration decisions in the aftermath of that precedent.

Off to See the Wizard

There was much hullaballoo when George Bush popped up in Saudi last week, palm out, hoping for a free pass to the end of his presidency. In other words, for a promise to pump more oil. The Saudis, conventional in their capriciousness, turned him down.

But let's not forget the ridiculousness of this situation. The United States is first in the world for oil consumption, with about 25.2% of world demand originating between sea and shining sea. We're headed, according to all predictions, for a serious crisis, considering as this pit is hardly bottomless. Meanwhile, our President is playing the mendicant in a country famous for its oppressive and unpredictable politics, and incidentally, one whose extreme Wahhabi sect has known connections to many of the world's deadliest terrorists (the rest, of course, were once the toast of Reagan's Rose Garden). Sometimes, there is no difference between sleeping with the enemy and being the enemy. Or, in the case of the Saudi royal family, failing to control the enemy and being the enemy.

Nonetheless, assuming that all the reports are true, and we are facing the so-called "end of oil," and that future predictions by IEA and EIA continue to be gloomy (and how exactly is it that in the case of a commodity with a fixed supply we have up until now only modeled based on demand?) In the words of the Godfather, "'What can I do?' What is that nonsense?"

Hence all the hand-wringing. If production peaks before demand, we are in for a serious catastrophe, the proportions of which will dwarf the economic credit crunch and the physical water shortage.

Let me be blunt: my grandparents live in a prosperous suburb of Mumbai, where for the past several months now they get two hours of water a day. Note I did not say clean water, note I did not say drinkable. I said, Two hours of water a day.

Meanwhile, I use more water in two hours than they use in two weeks. To return to the Godfather, an epic that for some reason seems so applicable to the oil crunch, "That is not justice." In another ten years, assuming demand has outstripped production, it will be my grandparents who get two gallons of gas a week, whereas I'll still be eating food that has a negative energy output ratio.

A utilitarian might wash his hands of the whole affair on the grounds that it's working out for the best. Assuming Americans are the most efficient people on earth (a faulty assumption to begin with, for reasons of energy usage and, on a financial level, market failures) then who cares about global access? I, for one, have trouble accepting that one life is worth more than another, but I admit that's how the world works.

Nonetheless, people talk about energy efficiency as if it's a jaunt, or a philanthropy, but Al Gore (not the Godfather) may be right that there is a moral dimension to this whole situation. It is not just a matter of dollars and cents and futures traded on commodities exchanges the world over.

When one person uses a lot of oil, someone else has to go without. That someone else has a face and a name and a life. What does he deserve? It is interesting that Americans, not God, will be deciding the answer to this very difficult question.

Double Standard

You can now watch the trailers for "You Don't Mess with the Zohan." It looks bad. It looks very, very bad. But it also makes me realize that we still operate in the existence of a double standard.

I'm not talking about gender. If Tina Fey is any example, female comedians can make bad movies with the same lack of talent as any late-night stand-up on Comedy Central. (And Baby Mama was bad. It was catastrophically bad. The premise was banal, the jokes were predictable. Hiring a surrogate mother for a 30-something woman whose career consumed her life? How Lifetime. Tina Fey should do something very weird - like build a space station out of pretzel sticks and the hair of llamas. She could make a great movie about that.)

At any rate, I'm not talking about that double standard. I'm talking about Zohan. An Israeli "anti-terrorist" agent. We can laugh comfortably about a man whose mission and training is to eliminate suspected terrorists Bond-style.

Who is Zohan's Palestinian counterpart? Wait, you'll say, there are no Israeli terrorists. There are certain people within Israel who believe that there should be one state, and that state should be Israel, and the Palestinian Arabs who have lived in the region for years should suck it up and become Jordanian citizens (because, you know, it's merely a hop, skip and a jump to Jordan on election day and therefore, at least, a Palestinian vote will count for something even if this system is not, strictly speaking, the most democratic). There are people who believe this. Some of these people train other young people to create settlements beyond Israel's political boundaries for the express purpose of building Israel, while perhaps deliberately antagonizing the Palestinians. But it's a stretch - naturally - to call these people terrorists. After all, they haven't bombed anybody.

And anyway, even if they had, even if the Israeli government of 1948 had followed an ethnic cleansing policy that left 800,000 Arabs as homeless refugees (or dead!), even if the United Nations had issued a report condemning paramilitary settlers responsible for multiple Palestinian deaths in the West Bank and Gaza, even if Palestinians were routinely treated up to the present day with such brutality by Israeli checkpoint soldiers that even President George W Bush felt compelled to weigh in: even if these absurd hypotheticals were true,

Who would make a movie called "Don't Mess with the Abu Bakr?" Who would laugh at it the way they laughed at "Borat"?

Let me be clear - I have no reason to side with Islamic militants. As a first generation American whose parents and grandparents grew up in majority-Hindu India, members of my family and friends have lost their property and sometimes their lives to religious extremism. But for me, my family, or the Indian government to suggest that the Hindus and Muslims did not each play an equal part in antagonizing the other would not just be naive - it would be criminal.

But the violence in the Middle East ebbs and flows, while Hollywood endures.

Sweet Home Anywhere But West Virginia

In much the same way that Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jews (say some!) and Palestine is the ancestral homeland of the Palestinians (hmm...say others...), and Georgia is the ancestral homeland of felons, West Virgina is the ancestral homeland of the idiots. It is their Promised Land. It is the place where they can go when no other state in the Union will have them.

I realize that is an offensive generalization. Not everyone in West Virginia is unintelligent. In fact, some West Virginians are quite smart, and also not married to their immediate relatives. And also probably do not keep assault weapons in their homes.

But I digress. People from Maryland may subscribe to unfortunate stereotypes where their Southwestern neighbors are concerned, but every so often, I read an article like this. In general, I approach political journalism warily, maybe because it's so prone to sensationalism. In fact, the real story might not be the fact that West Virginia's voters went against Obama, but the fact that Pat Healy waits until halfway down page two to mention that those who did so also felt, in large part, that the economic slowdown had affected them. West Virginia, unlike Maryland (a state with which it shares almost nothing except a slave-owning past) is not a rich state. West Virginia may be the whitest state in the nation, but blaming that for the entirety of their prejudices may not be fair.

Then again, I may just feel guilty that West Virginia ranks behind every other state and all US territories when it comes to places I'd want to live.

109.

I noticed something about the Democratic nomination race while looking through the Financial Times' interactive delegate map.

From state to state, region to region, the race between Clinton and Obama has been far from close on the local level.

In New Hampshire, Clinton beat Obama by 3%. Same story in Texas. But except for those two states, the votes have been sharply divided. It's common for the winner to have scored in the 50's or 60's, with the opponent trailing scores of points behind. Such was the story in Washington (68-31 Obama), Wyoming (61-38 Obama), Arkansas (69-27 Clinton), and Maine (59-40 Obama). Even Maryland - my home state - went for a Obama by a whopping 22% over Clinton.

What does this mean? Well on the surface, of course, it suggests that Clinton and Obama are not interchangeable. In past elections, I've heard voters moan that the candidates all bear an eerie resemblance to each other, even across party lines. One of the reasons may be the median voter theorem (as any adequate political science student knows) but the other may just be that politics is a factory from which everyone emerges looking roughly the same. (Or did I just say the same thing twice?)

Nonetheless, it seems that the states that want Obama really want Obama, whereas the states that want Hillary will brook no opposition either. This could be a problem for the Democrats when the time rolls around for a national election. By then, unlikely as it seems, the Dems will have one candidate, who will face the unpleasant task of quelling the dissent in his own ranks long after McCain has quelled the dissent in his. Of course pundits are calling on Dems to unite behind their man/woman/etc, but the question is, do they know if they even can? Maybe the differential between Clinton and Obama suggests vastly divergent opinions on where America should head, or what it should look like, or any other irreconcilable difference. Since the days of FDR, the party has specialized in covering as many people as possible with its vast and growing umbrella. After all, how could progressives turn anyone away? How could the people not be heard?

Well, they've been heard. And they don't all want the same thing.

Of course, one could argue that Reagan and to a greater extent W have turned conservatism into a populist - even revolutionary - movement, and that inclusivity is no longer a purely Democratic problem.

108.

On the bleary morning-after Clinton's campaign unofficially bit the dust, I've been pondering the significance of a female president of the United States. I realize I'm late to the game. It was Betsy Reed who introduced me to the history of the "Clinton as feminist icon" debate with her piece in the Nation, and that was about two hours ago.

Which reminds me of the infamous line from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, when Shylock the Jew says of his people, "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" It seems the question Clinton has been forced to answer on behalf of all women with political aspirations is, "if you elect us, do we not lead?"

But why was this ever in doubt? A quick search through history reveals that the US would hardly be the first nation to offer its highest office to someone who has two X-chromosomes. In fact, among the G8 nations, we join Russia, Italy and Japan as the nations which haven't. Considering that Russia's recent democratic history has been none too impressive, and that the last two countries are known for their more rigidly patriarchal cultures, what does that say about the United States?

The British elected Margaret "if you want something done, ask a woman" Thatcher in 1979. The Canadians had Kim Campbell for all of five months in 1993. Edith Cresson served the French for barely a year, although her career was far from distinguished, and Angela Merkel still holds power in Germany.

Among the rest of the world, India (Gandhi), Israel (Meir), the Philippines (Arroyo), Nicaragua (Chamorro, in between various juntas) and numerous other nations have had female leaders.

Against this background, what's more startling is the fact that the United States hasn't elected a female president. The exclusion seems deliberate. Interestingly, none of the G8 nations have had a recent president from a "racial minority" group, an omission that has been deliberate. On this front, at least, the US need have no qualms: Barack's half-black half-white half-Arab half-blue half-red half-Moses half-Carter all-American style has struck a chord with us.

Hurray.

I also wonder how much of the pandering that has gone on in the press over Clinton's gender might have been much, much better applied to other issues and concerns. There has been much debate recently over the decline of the dollar and the end of the so-called "American empire." Although these terms are simplistic at best and useless at worst, looking at the hash that's been made of Clinton's candidacy reveals a depressing tendency among all parties to look at the issues of the day on the most superficial level possible.

Since when is "black" "white" "man" "woman" a stand? Since when is it anything besides an observation of fact?

In adapting Hillary for The Hills generation, we've lost something. And I don't just mean the chance to finally elect a female President.

107.

So Obama finally condemned Rev. Wright. I'm not surprised he did it, I'm just sad. I thought a man like Obama, who not only confronts but seems to thrive on ambiguity, would be able to straddle the fine line. I cheered a little when I read his speech on race. I thought, here's a guy who understands the need to understand.

Well, too much too soon, it seems. Yes, so Wright seems to be a bit of a firebrand - but the course of true faith has never run smooth, as demonstrated just this month by the visit of another dignitary - the Pope. Americans fell all over the pontiff, in spite of the fact that this Nazi-turned-cardinal once referred to all of Mohammed's teachings as "evil and inhuman." It's true he apologized, and I'm not trying to knock the Pope.

My question is, if respect for the office means that in spite of his intolerant history Benedict warrants a presidential airport pickup and a White House dinner, why can't the world step back a little from Rev. Wright? Yes, he's a man of God, but since when does that mean he is perfect? And why does Wright have to be perfect, when so many other religious figures aren't?

I don't blame him for saying that an attack on him is an attack on the black church - after all, isn't it his right to speak up for the institution he serves, regardless of whether or not I agree with him? Inasmuch as it is the Pope's job to condemn abortion and birth control, isn't it also Rev. Wright's job to condemn injustices faced by minorities in America?

Yes, he said the government spread AIDS as a way of getting rid of black people. Believe me, Wright is not the first to think these thoughts. Perhaps a black American, familiar with the history of white scientific "interventions" as the mainstream is not, would not find Wright's theory so hard to believe.

I'm not trying to say that the man is an angel, or even that I agree with him. I'm asking why Wright doesn't get the same right to disagree as the Pope? Why is it that Benedict nee Ratzinger recently spoke at Nationals Park, while Wright faced a rescinded degree offer from Northwestern? (Clearly the fight has left these Methodists)

Is it just that the majority of Americans, in their hearts, believe what the Pope said about Islam? Or is that we've had a Catholic president, you know, but it's still a big deal that Obama is running for the highest office in the land?