O'Reilly on Poverty and Race

Though I would certainly understand not doing this on a regular basis, everyone should go look at the interview from The O'Reilly Factor last night (Tuesday the 11th). To discuss the specter of poverty in our country, O’Reilly invited Professor Cornel West and activist Travis Smiley. West and Smiley are two of the most vocal crusaders for the poor and underrepresented in our country and watching them in action is fantastic. I haven’t had a chance to check out Smiley’s new PBS documentary series, the Poverty Tour, but I certainly hope to do so. Both of these men present the economic issues facing the country fantastically well and if anybody is looking for clarification on these issues I would point them in either West or Smiley’s direction. 

However, the real person to watch is O’Reilly. O’Reilly clearly spells out the current mindset of the American conservative movement on two issues. The first is on poverty itself. Of course he repeats the old trope that the poor are only poor because they are lazy (and in a drug-induced haze). Forget trying to argue that that statement is as incorrect now as it has ever been, even introducing the idea there might be some force in society (beyond evil socialist government) contributing to the rise in poverty is considered taboo. O’Reilly and the forces of modern conservatism aren’t interested in just defending their corporate pay-Masters, they purport that advocating that there should be transparency or accountability in the financial world as an unpatriotic waste of time. The same people who  declare they are against government or say treasonous statements about our President and other members of government lash out at the slightest hint condemnation of Wall Street elites. However, as I mentioned in my article about the Occupy Wall Street protests yesterday, the idea of holding Wall Street and corporations accountable is becoming far more unifying than dividing. One of the great successes of the OWS movement so far is to begin make the dividing line more clear to many Americans. O’Reilly, Romney, Cain, Perry and the rest of them are all viscously trying to protect the interests of the 1% and they realize that actually having to own up to that publicly would be bad politically. 

The other factor is the ever-present undercurrent of racism and exclusion rearing its ugly head. Hiding behind a banner of supposed color-blindness and ‘tolerance’, O’Reilly and American conservatives everywhere continue to spread their insidious racism. The way that O’Reilly treats West and Smiley, two authorities on a subject he clearly clearly knows very little about, is absolutely abominable. In the same way that Romney and other Republicans have been shaking their heads sadly and declaring that, even though they like Obama personally, the poor guy has bitten off more than he can chew, O’Reilly treats these experts as though they are in over their head and just confused by all of the information. The tone he and other white conservative (and some not so conservative) pundits, politicians, and pollsters take when talking with or about people of color sometimes makes it seem like their next speech would quote Kipling. That is, if they are up on their late 19th century poetry. The problem is, of course, about the same facing women. Just look at any of the town hall meetings Romney has where he answers questions from females (like the ones highlighted in this article: http://politics.salon.com/2011/08/26/romney_women/singleton/ ). They cling to the belief that a white male is the natural authority on all issues and they believe that their (primarily white) audience will lap it up. 

No, the fact that the conservative establishment is, on the whole, racist, sexist, and hates the poor is hardly news. However, I would like to believe that we are beginning to live in a world where such attitudes will, in the broader electorate, hurt them more than it helps them. It is, of course, important to spread around news stories that support a Progressive point of view. But a second task for the active Progressive is also unmasking conservatives for who they really are. The next time someone says we’re living in a post racial world or that the economic plans put out by conservatives favor anyone but the upper one percent, show them this or plenty of other clips. Don’t let conservatives claim the banner of acceptance or even tolerance when their message is clearly rife with hatred and societal exclusion. 

And above all, don’t let their feigns and misdirections distract from the fact that in a time where the poor and middle class are faltering, the conservative’s economic plans clearly still favor only the upper one percent of society. To quote a different late 19th century poem, There is no shape more terrible than this, more tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed, more filled with signs and portents for the soul, more fraught with menace to the universe. 

For a very interesting interview on the way race is playing a role in the Obama presidency, check out the interview from today’s installment of the Majority Report with Sam Seder at http://majority.fm/. He interviews Professor Randall Kennedy, author of the recently published book The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency. 

For more information on the Poverty Tour check out http://www.povertytour.smileyandwest.com/ and http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/ 

For information on how to take the fight actively to conservative talk show hosts (and their listeners) check out this website. http://www.truthticker.com/ 

A New Message in American Political Discourse

House Majority leader Eric Cantor has taken a step back from his recent comments that the Occupy Wall Street movement represented a mob. However, a recent article on Businessweek.com, Canter is quoted as saying he still greatly opposes the movement, and any attempts to legitimize it, because it supports “the pitting of Americans against Americans.” He also uses this supposed attribute of OWS to provide a contrast with the Tea Party movement, which he says was only interested in taking on government (he doesn’t seem to realize that the government is also made up of Americans, including himself). Even if Cantor was right about the attitude in Liberty Square, we only have to look at the audience reaction in the recent Republican debates to see that the Tea Party is all about pitting Americans against other Americans, particularly if they are people of color, women, homosexuals, the uninsured, or non-Christians. However, after spending a large amount of time amongst protestors in Washington Square and Liberty Square, I feel I can confidently say that Cantor’s evaluation of the protesters is completely wrong. 

Everyone in the media has been trying to find a way to sum up what has been going on in New York and now all over the country. They are looking for a particular cause that everyone can get behind, a particular message. Well, I have one word to suggest: inclusion. As much as the corporate media and their puppets in government would have you believe, this is not a movement of radical leftists. Ron Paul supporters are seemingly everywhere, as well as plenty of other groups I would not usually think to find myself in solidarity with are there: Spiritualists (some of them Christian), libertarians, communists, decentralists, the hardcore anti-debt lobby, the list goes on. One of the reasons it has been so hard to plug down a specific message behind these protests is that there isn’t one, at least not one we’re used to hearing

What nobody in the media, from the corporate media to the left wing blogosphere seems to realize is that we cannot judge the success of Occupy Wall Street the way we would any political party. There is no superstructure behind everything trying to get specific candidates elected to public office or specific initiatives carried through at elections (and that is a true distinction between this and the corporately and Christian fundamentalist-controlled Tea Party). The key message behind the Occupy Wall Street protests is that the average citizen needs to be more heavily involved with the governance of his or her nation. That a functioning Democratic state requires an active, educated, and united populous. There is no message more central to the Progressive agenda. And it is a message which protestors believe 99% of Americans can get behind. I think they may just be right.

Cantor’s quotes can be found at: 

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-11/cantor-drops-mobs-description-of-wall-street-protesters.html

I will continue to write on the OWS protests, provide video of public events, and participate in my own way. If anyone would like information on a specific topic from me please email me or post a comment. If they would like to find out more about the protests, I urge them to start their search at http://occupywallst.org/ and then just click around news sites. 

Zizek videos now on youtube

As promised, the my videos of Slavoj Zizek are now on youtube. You can also find transcripts and some better quality video at http://occupywallst.org/


Also on the youtube account is a video of a small speech that Mohammed Ezzeldin, an Egpytian citizen who had been part of the Arab Spring revolt and is now studying in the United States gave on Saturday in Washington Square Park.


For a bit on Mohammed Ezzeldin, check out: http://acmcu.georgetown.edu/227740.html


I'll try to post more videos like these in the future, maybe even with little more camera (or phone) skill.

A New Course

So, when I decided to start this blog, I had the somewhat naive idea that I would be able to churn out esseylets on a semi-daily basis. Though I obviously have not been able to do that, I feel like my failure has caused me to think more about exactly how to use this forum. Though I will still post my little essays about my thoughts on the world whenever I come up with one coherent enough to, I hope to change this site from one which simply showcases my ideas to one that acts as a sounding board for the ideas of others. 

The most basic way I will be doing this is by posting more links articles I feel are important, for some reason or another, to read. Sometimes I will post them with a direct response, sometimes I will let them stand alone. I strongly encourage anybody who reads through those articles and has any kind of reaction to post some ideas of your own. I hope these articles will be a means to creating a discussion, not an end point itself. 

I also would very much like to open up this website to other voices, not just in the comments but in the articles themselves. I know some people have already stated their desire to contribute every so often. If you feel you would like to write something, either on some kind of weekly / monthly basis or just a one off article, please contact me. These do not have to be treatises, tirelessly edited and full of pith. Send me your a journal entry, a school paper, a simple recollection of thoughts. And, of course, send me your ideas for anything you would like to see on this blog. 

I will be posting a few videos I took at Washington Square Park and Liberty Plaza over the course of the weekend. You’ll be able to find them on my youtube page at http://www.youtube.com/user/ParrProg?feature=mhsn. Great apologies about the quality and shakiness, they’re all from my iphone.