Sarah Palin has an interview curse—when she does a fine job, as she did for KTUU in Anchorage on Nov. 20, she gets blessed with the most amazing background action in recent history.
Slate V has the outtakes from other turkey interviews Palin has given. They’re bloody good!
In the wake of Proposition 8’s passage, which banned same-sex marriage in California, thousands of people rallied and marched in support of same-sex marriage across the state and across the country. Shouldn’t these have been victory rallies? After all, in late September opponents of Proposition 8 outnumbered its supporters.
There have been plenty of reasons thrown out for why the No on 8 campaign didn’t work, and the Advocate, the leading LGBT newsmagazine, details them all in its campaign postmortem. Did the Mormon church swing the election, with its large donations? How well did the No on 8 campaign rally support when poll numbers began tightening?
Poll numbers did consistently tighten, and that first narrowing happened after the Yes on 8 campaign introduced its first television advertisement. What role did the No on 8 media campaign have in the proposition’s passage?
John Barrett, the editor-in-chief of the Advocate and Karen Tongson, an English and gender studies professor at the University of Southern California whose research interests include queer popular culture offered insights to why Prop 8 passed.
The first No on 8 television spot featured Julia and Sam Thoron, a couple married for 46 years with a gay daughter. While Tongson thought the couple was “sweet,” she said the spot started the campaign on the wrong message. “Fighting on the turf of family representation is not the turf to fight on,” Tongson said. “That will push people deeper into their sense of protectionism of so-called conventional families.”
While the TV ad did mention the Thorons’ “gay daughter,” viewers only saw a brief still photo of her. “Gay people were never seen in the ads,” Barrett said. “We should be seeing gay people, not talking about them. The only time we saw gay people was in the Yes on 8 campaign. There are much more favorable images out there.”
Lorri Jean, the CEO of the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center and one of the directors of the No on 8 campaign, told the Advocate the campaign was expecting different responses to the ads from gays and undecided voters. “We knew all along that it was very likely that the ads that would be effective with undecided voters would not be viscerally appealing to our community,” Jean said. “Every single one of those ads tested well with undecided voters.”
The No on 8 campaign followed with a television spot of two women sharing photos over coffee, including photos of a niece’s wedding to her female partner. The spot didn’t show the pictures. Tongson said the ad was “ambiguous and odd,” because “they didn’t mention the word ‘gay’ once.” She said stepping around the issue of who would be directly affected by the passage of Proposition 8 wasn’t useful. “I don’t think anyone needs to make anybody feel comfortable. I think if you use the language of rights, you should ask ‘look, should people be unequal?’”
And by stepping around the issue, Barrett said, the No on 8 campaign did itself a disservice. “There was just so much confusion,” Barrett said. “People didn’t know what they were voting for. I know a lot of people who thought they were voting yes for gay marriage.”
The Yes on 8 television ad that arguably did the most damage suggested that if Proposition 8 wasn’t passed, gay marriage would be taught in schools. It began airing the first week of October. The No on 8 campaign responded swiftly, but with a fairly generic ad about the other side’s “lies.” It wasn’t until two weeks later that an ad responded directly to the Yes campaign’s school allegations. While California’s superintendent of schools said that “Prop 8 has nothing to do with schools or kids,” many voters’ opinions had changed. A poll conducted on Oct. 17 showed the race tightening further.
Because it needed to take precious time and money responding to the Yes on 8 ads, the No on 8 campaign also wasn’t able to spread its own message, and show voters that since gays had started marrying in June, voters’ lives hadn’t changed in any significant way. “The No on 8 side was so much more on the defensive,” Barrett said. “It was trying to reply, instead of getting a positive message out there. If you’re putting positive images out there, you are addressing the fact that this [proposition] is a scary thing happening. You’re asking voters, ‘Since June, has your marriage really be threatened?’”
In a campaign season where one of the major presidential candidates was black, and minorities were predicted to come to the polls in record numbers, Tongson said the No on 8 campaign didn’t do a good enough job reaching out to minority voters. An advertisement narrated by actor Samuel L. Jackson reminded viewers about California’s past miscegenation laws and internment camps, and said Prop 8 would eliminate other fundamental rights.
“Most people are responsive to the idea of keeping their hands off civil rights for people, and especially for rewriting the Constitution,” Tongson said. “I think that any image that can be tied to that, especially the broader concept of civil rights, would have been much more effective.”
The No on 8 discrimination ad certainly did what Tongson suggested, but it started airing less than a week before the election.
After the election was over and Proposition 8 passed with 52.3 percent of the vote, thousands took to the streets. Where were these people during the campaign? Maybe it was the No on 8 campaign’s fault for not rallying their base, or maybe the base needed the election to wake them up.
“Those of us who live in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City, we are able to live our lives without coming face to face with people outside of the cities where we live,” Barrett said. “And when we had a vote that came down against us, it was a slap in the face against us. People responded to [Proposition 8] afterward because people didn’t know how others truly felt before.”
The moniker “renaissance man” is perhaps overused, but I really can’t think of another way to describe journalist/author/producer/director/man about many towns Nelson George. That’s a lot of slashes for one East New York raised dude, but the fact that he does each with perfection is enough to make a roomful of posers pissed on sight.
As New York as a George Gershwin song played by Bobby Short, as Harlem as a Chester Himes novel directed by Woody Allen, as Brooklyn as a Biggie Smalls track produced by Danger Mouse, as international as a black Bond, the brother is everywhere. Still, no matter how busy the man is, there has never been a time when he couldn’t spare a few moments to give yours dearly a little insight on whatever old R&B legend I might be writing about at the time.
Damn, even in the midst of promoting his 2007 HBO film Life Support (which he wrote and directed), the brother still found time to school me on the DeBarge family drama for my then upcoming Vibe feature “Broken Dreams,” which will be reprinted next year in the Best African-American Essays 2009 edited by Debra J. Dickerson and Gerald Early. From a man who has jiggy folks like Jamie Fox, Chris Rock and Queen Latifah on his speed dial, color this “colored” (lets thank Lindsay Lohan for bringing the word back) brother impressed.
Of course, being a fan of his ’80s writings in Billboard and the Village Voice (where George penned more than a few superb essays for his Native Son column) I’ve known Nelson George longer than he’s known me. Being the geeky nerd boy that I am, a brother still remembers our first meeting one warm summer day in 1988.
Standing in the train station at 145th Street and Broadway, there was funny drunk who was talking much junk out loud. Looking like the Ned the Wino from Good Times, dude was ranting about who knows what. Yet, while everybody else was moving away from him, I noticed Nelson George watching this “performance” as though it were a one-man show Off-Broadway. “There’s nothing as entertaining as an old school drunk,” Nelson said, when he noticed me.
Like the great Richard Pryor, whose ghetto observations was a major influence for many urban writers, Nelson clearly understood that raw material for future writings could be found wherever one might be.
Since then Nelson has written many non-fiction books (on topics ranging from Motown to basketball, hiphop to black films), novels short stories and magazine articles; in addition he also helped fund Spike’s first joint She’s Got to Have It (released two years before I met him), wrote and produced Strictly BusinessCB4 and and, currently, is the man behind VH1 Hip-Hop Honors and BET’s popular American Gangster. As if that wasn’t enough, he has also started shooting a series of short films, the first being A Barber’s Tale.
Next year, I’m looking forward to reading his upcoming autobiography City Kid: A Writer’s Memoir of Ghetto Life and Post-Soul Success. How he does so much I’ll never know, but in my next life, I want to be Nelson George. [Ed note: Me too!]
TO VIEW A BARBER’S TALE, GO TO: http://starworksny.com/blog/2008/11/07/barbers-tale
[Ed note, part 2: Check out Nelson's awesome new show, which he hosts, on VH1 Soul, "Soul Cities." So far, they've profiled Chicago, Philly, San Fran and New Orleans. Next up: Los Angeles! Check out more here.]
This originally appeared on Michael Gonzales’ blog.
In technology news, the new BlackBerry Storm smartphone has a New York Times reviewer calling it the “BlackBerry Dud.” Unlike its predecessors, the BlackBerry Pearl and Bold, the Storm model doesn’t appear to live up to the BlackBerry tradition. According to the review, the new touchscreen (designed to compete with the iPhone) doesn’t respond well to touch. And its lauded email capabilities have been compromised on the new Storm. Hey BlackBerry makers, Research in Motion (R.I.M.) maybe you should have listened to the old adage: if it’s not broken don’t fix it….(Note: Blackberries still outsell iPhone).
With the U.S. economic problems looming, President-Elect Barack Obama named Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve Chairman to head his Economic Recovery Advisory Committee. Obama chose Volcker for his independent and fresh thinking. “At this defining moment for our nation, the old ways of thinking and acting just won’t do,” Obama said at a news conference in Chicago reported Bloomberg. This economic board will look for new ways to revive the U.S. economy.
In other President-elect cabinet news, sources tell CNN that Defense Secretary Robert Gates will keep his job for at least the first year of Obama’s administration. These sources also report “Obama is interested in some continuity at the Pentagon because he is entering office while dealing with two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the international financial crisis.” Other analysts claim the new president-elect is demonstrating his commitment to bipartisanship.
And if we haven’t noticed, the President-elect is making his cabinet picks fairly quickly. Obama is once again making presidential history with choosing his picks faster than most of the other presidents. Many political insiders are surprised because of the President-elect’s extensive candidate questionnaire and background check. Yet Obama appears committed to acting quickly to ensure a quick transition that will strengthen the economy and preserve jobs, which are on the minds of most Americans.
And if following up on his earlier threat to Obama, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said al Qaeda has sent a “plausible but unsubstantiated” report to Federal authorities that may have mentioned attacking transit systems in or around New York City. The DHS and FBI said Tuesday that the attacks would be waged with suicide bombers or explosives on trains and subways. Although the agencies don’t have details at this moment, they issued the warning because of a potential attack during the holiday season.
Today's Michael Ramirez cartoon from Investor's Business Daily.
The current financial crisis has already cost more than World War II, writes financial blogger Barry Ritholtz, and that’s after adjusting for inflation. It’s hard to conceptualize $4.6165 trillion (Bloomberg reports it as $7.76 trillion), so try this: government bailouts, including the recent addition of Citigroup, amount to more than the cost of the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase, the race to the moon, the savings and loan crisis, the Korean War, the New Deal, the invasion of Iraq, the Vietnam War, and NASA combined.
But CEO’s with fat salaries are just a distraction. If every oil company executive worked for free, writes Thomas Sowell at National Review, it wouldn’t lower the price of a gallon of gas by a dime or the cost of a car by even one percent. It’s an age-old story in which politicians give us someone to hate and blame in order to grab more power for themselves. Example: pols pressure banks into lending to people that normally wouldn’t qualify and when the economy turns sour, they blame deregulation and call for greater government control. He’s not having it.
A Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should worry conservatives, argues Paul Mirengoff at Power Line. Many conservatives espouse America’s rights to resist international pressures and to protect its own self-government, and they are willing to project American power to do so. While Obama’s picks for national security so far have shown no great desire to shake things up, he still inclines toward moving America into the international mainstream, Mirengoff writes, and Clinton has shown no indication she’ll act as a counterweight to that.
The Holy Land Foundation is going down, and CAIR should go with it, argues Scott Johnson. HLF, a Muslim charity, was found to have given financial support to Hamas, which the U.S. lists as a terrorist organization. In two separate posts, one at Power Line and one at National Review, Johnson lays out why it is one of the government’s most significant cases against terrorist conspirators in the U.S. since 9/11, and applauds the government’s outing of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the case.
At this rate, the Minnesota recount could drag on for months. Power Line blogger Scott Johnson has been following the recount, including state Senate hopeful Al Franken’s efforts to get some previously rejected absentee ballots back in the count. And he seems to be calling former Washington Democratic Party Chair Paul Berendt’s involvement in the process a “nightmare scenario.”
No need to discuss Barack Obama’s citizenship any more. Right Wing News blogger John Hawkins writes that he still receives e-mails asking why he has decided to stop writing about Obama’s legitimacy. Pointing to his post of a month earlier, he reminds those clinging to the belief that Obama is not really a citizen that the state of Hawaii has acknowledged they have a copy of his live birth certificate and that a newspaper clipping from 1961 proves he’s American. Discussion over.
Barack Obama won through media spinning and voter ignorance, or so seems to be the lesson of a popular video circulating on Youtube.
