Here and There

On some of my bike rides to and from work recently, I’ve been thinking about how seemingly difficult it’s been for Barack Obama to enact parts of his agenda — health care, tax hike on the wealthy, ending corporate-tax loopholes, drawing down in Iraq, funding the closing of Guantánamo Bay, to name a few.

Then I thought back to how George W. Bush really did seem to just show up and start kicking ass, cutting off funding for overseas family-planning clinics who advocate abortion (which, to be fair, Obama has since restored), cutting taxes almost to the point of eliminating them, and (ahem) getting us mired in this whole Iraq mess in the first place.
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Tomorrow’s expected confirmation of Al Franken as the winner of the Senate race in Minnesota is kind of a big deal.

I’ve followed Franken since his early days as a comedy writer, through the late ’90s and early part of this decade as an author, and then as a radio host on the then-fledgeling Air America. He has made me laugh and think, and I’m grateful for both.

I’m also happy that a Democrat is getting the seat that Paul Wellstone most likely would’ve been re-elected to in November, had he not been tragically killed along with his family in a 2002 plane crash. Wellstone and Franken were friends, and I recall Franken’s pledge to run after the seat went to Coleman in 2002. Franken did it the honest, if excruciatingly difficult and long, way.

And of course, this close a tally (225 votes are expected to separate the two candidates) really underscores, for Minnesotans as well as Americans in every state, the importance of voting. As long as they’re properly counted, yes, every vote does count.

Now, of course, the real fun begins, with Norm Coleman promising to keep waging legal battles for the election he clearly lost, and the Senate GOP caucus threatening to filibuster the seating of Franken as the 111th Congress convenes this week.

First impression: Not the sobfest I expected, but powerful as hell nonetheless, perhaps owing to the nature of the story itself, but also beautifully executed.

The story is compelling in its humanity, its struggle, its surprise, its triumph, its demise. Harvey Milk was prescient enough to foresee his end, and so recorded an audio will only to be played upon his assassination. The movie is told through the framework of his making that recording, and perhaps there really was no other way to tell it. But in this way, we’re drawn into this complex history through a resurrected Harvey Milk.

For Milk, it was never only about San Francisco. That just happened to be where he landed. And he probably landed here because of when he landed — 1973. The struggle was for justice, for the fair and equal treatment of all gay, lesbian, bi, and transgender people in all walks of life. And it had to start somewhere.

The surprise was the successes found along the way, and not always coming from where you’d expect. For Milk, this had to be due, at least in part, to his charm, his charisma, and to his ability to read people, to know how to connect with allies as well as some of his own worst enemies on a human level.

The triumph, of course, started with Milk’s third attempt to become a city supervisor. This perhaps would never have happened if it weren’t for 1976’s change in how San Franciscans elect their local representatives — the still-controversial district elections. A later, and in a sense larger, victory was the defeat of Prop. 6 in 1978, the so-called Briggs Initiative, which would’ve prohibited gays, lesbians, and those who supported them from working in California public schools.

For Supervisor Dan White, the defeat of Prop. 6 validated Milk’s struggle, and conversely invalidated his own. Owing to this and other (perhaps unknowable) darknesses of White’s life, he murdered Milk and then-San Francisco Mayor George Moscone.

I’m recounting history here, but it’s so appropriate because the movie did such a good job of presenting that history.

What this film offers that The Times of Harvey Milk couldn’t is a personalized look into Milk’s life, mostly from his perspective. Gus Van Sant and Sean Penn collaborate to bring the ’70s gay icon and politician to life in a way that feels accurate to those of us who’ve only seen footage, and eerie to those I’ve spoken with who knew the man or lived through the era.

Such a feat doesn’t catapult a movie into greatness, but the base layer of the story of Milk’s rise from obscurity to heroism helps pave the way.

I learned from friends who are away for the holiday in towns perhaps less-ready that the movie hasn’t opened everywhere yet. All I can hope is that it does, and that those who need to will set aside prejudices and watch this movie with an open heart and understanding that every fight for civil rights is undertaken on behalf of us all.

Thanks, once again, to Daniel.

it’s probably illegal, but here, world, the source of what will be, until my wedding day, my proudest moment as a human being:

This site is amazing.

Video the Vote is a national initiative to protect voting rights by monitoring the electoral process. We organize citizen journalists—ordinary folks like you and me—to document election problems as they occur. And then we distribute their footage to the mainstream media and online to make sure the full story of Election Day gets told. Watch our 2006 highlights and join us as we Video the Vote this November.

I feel Missouri slipping while North Dakota moves more solidly into our set:

I predict the popular vote will be something like 53.6 to 45.5. And I see Obama capturing at least 75 million votes overall.

If my Electoral College prediction comes true, it will be the largest margin of victory since Bill Clinton’s re-election in 1996.

Do it:

Just so you know whom to lynch:

Ahem, vote. Now, if you have to. Just vote.

Here and There never condones violence of any sort.

Therefore, I ask you to pour lots of cold water on the head of anyone over the next 13 days who tells you voting doesn’t matter or that Obama will win their state no matter what.

What I find as exciting as the possibility of electing a gifted politician is the enormous increase in attention paid to the race, no pun intended. Let’s make good on our efforts. The polls won’t know what hit ‘em.

Will the good voters of the state reject the bigotry that is Prop. 8?

Lord, let us pray that they do.

More Sullivan (sorry), this time referring to James Pontuso’s idea of how to correct popular vote wins, Electoral College losses.

In a world where the media did its job, this one concerning a damning report of possible voter intimidation in Virginia would, as they say in the industry, have legs.

Something’s (okay, many things) troubling me at the moment: all this talk of the so-called race card, and who played it first.

First, everyone knows that there’s a deep sense of xenophobia and racism built into a certain segment of the Republican base in this country. It helped propel Ronald Reagan when he launched his run for the GOP nomination in 1980; and even before that, Civil Rights legislation signed into law by Lyndon Johnson lost the South for Democrats.

The passing of Jesse Helms does nothing to alleviate deep-seeded, real racism that exists in dark corners (mostly of the South, but certainly all over the country). That’s not to say that there aren’t racist liberals. It’s just to make the point that racist liberals don’t constitute a voting bloc, per se. It’s also to say that it works to any Republican candidate’s advantage to play said card.

Second, and here’s what really annoys the piss out of me, Obama’s “dollar bill” remark, while clearly a reference to his being black, was spoken in a tone of mockery, and justifiably so (see point 1, above). He’s spoken this way before, and indeed, in the same sentence, talking about people not voting for him because of his “funny name,” or his relative youth.

What Obama is doing in bringing such factors up is to shed light on the broader attacks on him, namely that he’s “different.” He’s exposing such baseless attacks for what they are: desperation and distraction from the issues.

So seriously, pundits, talking heads, can we just leave this idiotic non-issue alone and move on? Or, better, why not cut to the true heart of the matter and do what the foreign press (BBC, al Jazeera, et. al.) did so well during the West Virginia primary and go talk to the racist population meant to be the targets of soft-pedalled racist political advertisements and speeches: