Doesn't anybody ever remember anything in politics?

I know I'm reaching the age where I can't really say I'm "young" anymore, but really, 1990 wasn't that long ago. Every now and then, though, I'm reminded that for people who depend entirely on the Internet for political news and history, it might as well be 1890.

I just experienced one such moment when I read about this on Daily Kos. Ol' Claytie Williams and his "rape joke" were huge news at the time. How on earth could that have escaped the attention of everybody in the McCain campaign who could have put a stop to it? I don't get it. Some of you are probably expecting me to argue that Republicans in general must not find rape jokes offensive, but my opinion of the party overall isn't as low as my friends tend to think. They're not all that bad. Which makes me wonder how they could have let the ball drop on this one. But that link has McCain's spokesman saying the campaign "was unaware" of the notorious remark.

Sadly, I do find I can believe that McCain himself wouldn't find Williams' "joke" all that bad. He might not have really said "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you c**t" to his wife in public (I admit I find it suspicious that word didn't get out for sixteen years and then three people were willing to come forward at the same time), but then he might have. He did make that tasteless joke about Janet Reno being Chelsea Clinton's father about ten years ago (and, to his credit, he apologized...but still, he said it). This fits that pattern all too well.

By the way, another thing I remember - but which that link fails to mention - is that Williams' loss to Ann Richards was not because of the rape joke. He continued to lead in the polls for months after making the joke, and Richards pulled ahead of him only after he refused to shake her hand at a debate. Apparently it was okay to make light of violence against women in general in Texas, but you still had to treat an individual lady like a lady. That makes it just a little bit easier to understand why their next governor after Richards was who he was, doesn't it?

The McCain Clinic

">Brilliant!

It still irks me when I think of the newscast I saw on Election Day 2000, with the all-female focus group in suburban Chicago...one woman after another chirping "I disagree with Bush on abortion but I'm going to vote for him anyway because I trust him not to be actively against abortion." Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot?
This is what I love about the progressive blogosphere; no more faux moderation!

If the embedded video doesn't come through on your computer, see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arw-yNas2xc

Of dirty tricks and old wounds

As some warn victory, some downfall,
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all except hatred

-Bob Dylan, "It's All Right Ma, I'm Only Bleeding"

After a rather nasty e-mail exchange I had this morning, I'm curious about what others think of this.

I was reading an acquaintance's blog post about Obama's possible running mates. John Edwards was listed among them (rather disingenuously, since he has already said he doesn't want the VP slot again), and he was immediately shot down as a poor choice because he "attacked Cheney for having a gay daughter" in 2004.

Now, I already felt Edwards would not be the best choice for Obama, mainly because he didn't do a particularly good job as the VP nominee in 2004. (I hate to have to say that, and I did support him for president this time around, but it's true all the same.) But the claim that he "attacked" Cheney is just ludicrous in my opinion. For what it's worth, here is an account of the exchange in question. And the "offending" remark from Edwards:

I think the vice president and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And you can’t have anything but respect for the fact that they’re willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It’s a wonderful thing. And there are millions of parents like that who love their children, who want their children to be happy.

Now, I do see how that can be seen as a bit passive-aggressive. It reminds me a bit of Clinton's brilliant comeback against Bush Sr. in the first 1992 debate regarding the "issue" of his patriotism ("But a senator from Connecticut stood up to Joe McCarthy, named Prescott Bush! Your father was right...") Both were obviously more about rousing the base than addressing the real issue at hand. But then again, one could argue that there was no "real issue" in the first place in both cases: Clinton's patriotism was only ever in doubt among people who hated his politics, and unfortunately, Kerry and Edwards were only marginally less hostile to gay rights than Bush and Cheney were. But still, does that make it "an attack for having a gay daughter"?

I don't see how, unless you're a homophobe. I really don't. I do think it's fair to call it an attack on someone for being a bigot against a group that includes a member of his family, but why is attacking that a bad thing? More to the point, why is an Obama supporter making excuses for Cheney's bigotry? I see it all too often, really: people who claim to be Democrats - or at least not Republicans - will feel compelled to regurgitate GOP propaganda like that. I call them the "I'm not a Republican but" crowd, and I really wish I could understand what inspires them. For one thing, maybe people like me could get through to them better if we could understand their perspective.

I did try to reason with this person about that. It didn't work, but this person did, I think, end up revealing a bit more than intended. Apparently Edwards was unreasonable because we can still love our children even if we "don't approve of their lifestyles." True, but that still doesn't make the above an attack on somebody for having a gay relative.

In any case, that exchange having devolved into a round of gratuitous insults without finding any common ground, I am curious as to what others think. I'm a bit disappointed that I wasn't able to make my own case any more articulately (is that a word?) than I did, but I guess that's what happens when two people look at the exact same quotation and see two completely different things. Was I off base? If so, why?

Oh, and the final parting shot from my friend? "It's my blog and I can write what I want there!" Yes, yes you can.

A tale of EPic proportions

I got my Singapore Employment Pass yesterday.

It had been in the works for quite a while, of course, but the deal wasn't finalized until yesterday. We received the requisite letter about two weeks ago, but the boss reminded me that I needed to go get a physical exam at a local medical clinic. I went off to the clinic to do so, only to read the fine print on the way there and discover for the first time that I did not need a physical. Apparently that is usually a requirement but it wasn't in my particular case for some reason. With that out of the way, I settled on Monday to set aside an afternoon to sit in the consulate waiting for my number to be called.

Monday came, I waited, and finally got to the desk with all my papers. The lady behind the desk said everything was there except the "white card" from immigration that I needed to fill out when I got off the plane. Nobody had told me up to that moment that I would ever need that card again, naturally. Luckily, that's just the sort of thing I have learned never to throw away, so I found it in my desk that night and then headed back to the immigration ministry on Tuesday. This time, another lady behind the same desk told me that I also needed my certificate from Yale. I had the HEC one with me and I thought I also had the Yale one, but I didn't.

That's where things start to get interesting. I went home and couldn't find a hard copy of the diploma translation anywhere, but I did have a scan of it saved. So yesterday morning I came to the office just long enough to print out the scan, hoping they'd accept a copy.

They did, but there was definitely a communication breakdown along the way. When I got to the desk, yet another woman took a look at the translation and asked me for my certificate.

"That's an official translation of it," I told her.
"No, this isn't a certificate."
"The diploma isn't in English. That's the official translation."
"We don't need a diploma, we need a certificate."
"What exactly do you mean by 'certificate' if it's not a diploma?"
"It's a...certificate!"

Now, I never did learn quite what she thought a certificate was. When I made it clear that I had no idea what she wanted, she told me to wait and went back to speak to someone or other in the back office. When she returned, she asked me to write on the copy where the original was and sign it. I wrote, "Original diploma is in USA and is not in English."

She looked at it. "USA, does that mean France?"

I'm not joking. Neither was she. Nearly everybody in Singapore speaks English fluently. Leave it to one of the few who don't to end up in a job that involves dealing with people in English all the time!

Nevertheless, the papers were processed at that point and I got the EP later on yesterday afternoon with no further troubles. I think she may have been confused by the fact that I had one degree from an English speaking country and one from a non-English speaking country, but the latter correspondence was in English in the original while the former wasn't. (In keeping with Yale's deliberate pretentiousness about almost everything, its diplomas are in Latin. This is not the first time that has gotten me caught up in red tape.) I doubt she ever quite caught on to my situation, and I still haven't got a clue what the difference between a certificate and a diploma is.

It was still a lot easier than it was in France!

RIP General Odom

For the past eight years and change, I have had a problem a lot of people would probably welcome, and which I find I can't complain about too much. I'd rather have it than not have it, I suppose, but there are times when it can be irritating all the same. The problem: inability to refer to where I went to school by name without people accusing me of snobbery or worse. My friends can refer as casually as they like to "a friend of mine from GWU/Georgetown/Duke/etc.," and nobody will bat an eye. But the minute you refer to Yale, you're a pretentious, namedropping blueblood.

I got a taste of it even before I actually started there...in that otherwise great spring and summer of 1999, I recall any number of times I told people I was going back to school "up in Connecticut," whereupon a friend in the know would say, "Stop being so modest, he's going to Yale!" So after a while, I went ahead and said that...but no matter how low-key I tried to be about it, it was never enough for some people. It was a no-win situation if there ever was one. Surprisingly, that doesn't seem to apply to all of the other Ivy League schools, as I knew long before I had anything to do with Yale. How did I know? Anybody who went to Grinnell will tell you, 95% of the time when you tell people you went there, they think you said "Cornell." Annoying as heck, but nobody ever gave me a hard time about that one. (If anything, it was the other way around..."No, Grinnell, in Iowa...no, not the potato state...no, it's hundreds of miles from Cleveland...") No, it's something about Yale that makes people think you ought to keep your fond memories for the tables down at Mory's - wherever that may be - to yourself.

Of course, some of them were probably just jealous. Which is okay. But still, it could be annoying, and still can.

But there are times when it's only right to refuse to let such things bother you. Sadly, such a time is upon us, with the passing of Gen. William Odom. If you've followed the anti-war movement over the past few years, you've probably heard of him. Such are the perks of Yale that, fair or not, he's not just a name on the blogs to me. I had the honor of sitting just a few seats down the table from him once a week in the spring of 2000 in a class on security policy. And what an honor it was!

I did not look upon it quite so kindly at the time, I must admit. To be honest, I can't even recall exactly why I was interested in the class in the first place. Yale has what they call a "shopping period" during the first week or so of the semester, during which you can go to as many classes as you like and make a more informed decision on which ones you want to take. Odom's class was one of several that I sat in on during that particular shopping period in which far more people showed up than there were spaces in the class. He therefore had everybody fill out index cards with their contact information and a paragraph or so on why they wanted to take the class.

Although his lecture was quite interesting during that first session, I was somewhat indifferent about taking the class by the time it was over. Then, just after it was over, something happened that made me decide I definitely didn't want to take it: a female undergrad approached Odom and made a direct appeal to be allowed into the class even though she was a freshman (and thus at the biggest disadvantage of all for getting in) because she was hoping to transfer to West Point after that semester. Odom, himself a West Point grad, let loose with a barrage of just about everything short of "machine guns and PMS don't mix" (and I imagine he was thinking that too) about why women shouldn't be going to West Point. Anybody who knows me can imagine what I thought of that.

Nevertheless, when I unexpectedly got into the class, I ended up enrolling. Like I said, I don't remember exactly why. It might have been something as mundane as how it fit with my other courses, most of which were rather tedious that semester. In any case, I took the class and ended up loving it. He was blunt (in the "I can laugh about it now" department, I made an incorrect point about Clausewitz in my first paper for him, and he wrote "Poppycock!" in the margin), but not as unreasonable as that outburst the first day had made me expect. I did end up locking horns with him on women in the military and some other issue that was near and dear to his heart - I can't recall what it was, but I do remember there were two incidents that made me conclude I'd never get an A but it was worth it to stand up to the guy. As it turned out, I got an A anyway, or maybe even because of that. And yes, there were war stories, including some tales of Oliver North and how Odom knew he was trouble years before any civilian had even heard of him.

Along the way, I picked up that, gender issues aside, he was anything but your typical career military guy politically speaking. Nice surprise! So it wasn't such a big surprise when he emerged as a voice of opposition to the war. Every time his name has popped up since then, I have gotten a kick out of imagining Bush's cabinet sitting around his classroom table and him letting them all have it. (Odom was not at Yale back in the '60s, by the way - he was at Columbia then - which is too bad, as the idea of Dubya himself as a "student" in his class is just priceless.)

Getting back to my earlier point, when I've seen his name in the news since the war, I have often been tempted to mention that I studied with him, but have mostly restrained myself to avoid any accusations of wearing Yale on my sleeve. But not today. Thanks for the memories, General, and thanks for doing what you could to get the truth out about the war!

I'm sure he'd be disappointed in me if I didn't add that I still think he was a sexist pig. But what an education.

I didn't vote for him but...

I'd nearly forgotten why Bob Dole is my favorite Republican...

"There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues," Dole wrote in the personal e-mail. "No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique."

"When the money starts rolling in you should donate it to a worthy cause, something like, 'Biting The Hand That Fed Me,'" he wrote. "Another thought is to weasel your way back into the White House if a Democrat is elected. That would provide a good set up for a second book deal in a few years."

Dole also made clear he has no plans to read the book.

"I have no intention of reading your 'exposé' because if all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high profile job," he wrote. "That would have taken integrity and courage but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively."

"You're a hot ticket now but don't you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?"

Okay, I know he's just upset because the partisan wall of silence has been breached (again), and that link shows he also threw in some predictable whining about "the liberal media," and I can't help being bugged by his judging the book when he hasn't read it (that always makes me think of a prof I knew in Iowa who once told me she would never watch Forrest Gump because "it's a celebration of anti-intellectualism" - how could she know without watching it?). But that said...

First of all, while McClellan's disclosures have been music to my ears this week, thee's nothing there that everybody who cared wasn't aware of years ago. Speaking of years ago, Dole is right, that's when he should have quit if he's known all along about the lies he "exposes" here. I really hope nobody out there thinks he's a hero for speaking up now, but I'm getting the impression some folks do.

From a more selfish but realistic point of view, there's also the matter of partisan loyalty here, and I know how that feels. Now Republicans everywhere know what it's been like every time Joe Lieberman has opened his mouth for the past five years or so.

A month, already?

Actually, it's been more than a month, hasn't it? Today does mark one month on the job, which means it's been a month and a week since I arrived. And it feels more like three days, except when I'm in the neighborhood of the hotel where I stayed during those first several days. (I still go back there quite a bit for dinner and such.) That area, of course, already felt like old times to me on the morning I arrived, since it was also the area I knew best from my prior visit here. It's still a comforting escape anytime.

So what can we make of the first month and change in Singapore? Since I am still job hunting (or really, "job hunting again" would be closer to the truth, since I did stop trying for a while there in order to concentrate on finishing up in Paris), I don't think it's appropriate to talk much about my current job in public. Suffice to say it's going pretty well for an internship. I am learning a lot about strategy, as well as making one's own way in a startup business. While I do like it, I don't see myself staying here long term, which is a pretty good incentive to get back into the swing of looking elsewhere. Now that I've had a week to get used to the idea that I really am done with the MBA and now I need to pay for it, it's on to finding ways to do that.

I am planning to look primarily here and I figure my chances are best here, but I am also still looking elsewhere. For now I'm thinking of my stay in Singapore as a six-month trial sort of thing (I'm not wedded to that length of time; it's just a good working number). I knew before I even got here that I wouldn't necessarily love it on a permanent basis just because I loved it as a tourist. So far I do like it - the weather is a bit muggy sometimes, but one thought of December in Luxembourg is all I need to get over any complaints about that! I do miss Paris like I knew I would, but the job market is probably much bigger here. We'll see soon enough. I can't say I really feel at home just yet, but that's probably mostly because I'll be moving again at the end of June and most of my stuff is still on its way here.

The only thing I really don't like is that, having won the epic battle over finishing my degree on time, my only reward is another battle to find a job in this economy. But that would be an issue no matter where I'd moved to. So yes, it's been a pretty good first month.