Obama: No Surprise That Hard-Pressed Pennsylvanians Turn Bitter (by Mayhill Fowler)

Huffington Post, April 11, 2008

When I began following the Obama Campaign through Pennsylvania, the place was new to me -- as apparently it was to Senator Obama, since his Road to Change bus tour was heralded as the candidate's introduction to the Keystone State. Now the Senator has moved on to Indiana for a spell, but I'm back in PA, thinking about Obama's and my experiences of the people here.

Pennsylvanians are as friendly as Iowans-- and that's a huge compliment. (I love you Texas, but you get up on the wrong side of the bed a lot, or at least you did during the weeks before the primaries.) These Pennsylvanians are patriotic. On several occasions, they've awarded Barack Obama a standing ovation for his promise to restore the Constitution. Clearly, Quaker Staters feel a connection to the part their state played in the making of the Constitution; they see themselves in America's larger history.

At two town hall meetings in Pennsylvania, Senator Obama drew plenty of remarks about patriotism. In Harrisburg two weeks ago, one person called on by Obama chose not to ask a question. Instead a man who introduced himself as only Dennis told Obama, "Make a speech on patriotism because the Republican Party does not own the flag." In Wilkes-Barre a few days later, Obama fielded a similar comment from a man who said, "I believe that this nation now has dangerously low levels of patriotism and national pride.... My question to you is How are we going to reestablish America's reputation to Americans?" After leaving Pennsylvania and stopping over in Montana on his way to California, Senator Obama must have had these Pennsylvania questioners on his mind, because in Butte and Missoula he talked a bit about patriotism, introducing the subject as a theme we'll likely will be hearing more from him in the future, perhaps in a major speech at some appropriately historic date and time. Barack Obama and the rest of us will owe that to Pennsylvanians.

Another thing about Quaker Staters. The ravages of mining and old-style manufacturing have been unable, after all, to break the bond Pennsylvanians have with the natural world. Driving through the western part of the state, I thought again and again what great deer hunting country it is, and how my dad, a hunter in his younger days, would love it. Clipping a poem from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by Jeff O'Brien, a citizen of Upper Turkeyfoot, Somerset County, I imagined Turkeyfoot's "ice hard in the cavities of the derelict woods/the long dark coming in the magnesium shifts of twilight" as I drove through and determined to order O'Brien's poetry collection from Amazon. I've wondered about Pennsylvania and its citizens in other times and seasons, and I would like to stay longer here to see.

In the midst of this harsh pastoral, Pennsylvanians are scrappy survivors. They complain (particularly about their governor and Clinton surrogate Ed Rendell, who doesn't seem as popular as the media make him out to be), but they endure. They refuse to be bound to the broken temples of commerce and manufacturing, the vacant Beaux Arts hotels, the rotting nineteenth-century row houses, the abandoned sidings and once-grand railway stations that inscribe Scranton and Wilkes-Barre and diminish Pittsburgh and Lancaster. Pennsylvanians are remarkably chipper. In the end, the material world that once gave them prosperity has not defined them. On the contrary, Pennsylvania unfolds in an interlocking chain of Turkeyfoots and Allentowns, held separately and together by a sense of shared community, of humor, of history, and of abiding faith.

These qualities of hospitality, patriotism and endurance are exactly what Californians need to hear about Pennsylvanians. And when he spoke to a group of his wealthier Golden State backers at a San Francisco fund-raiser last Sunday, Barack Obama took a shot at explaining the yawning cultural gap that separates a Turkeyfoot from a Marin County. "You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Obama made a problematic judgment call in trying to explain working class culture to a much wealthier audience. He described blue collar Pennsylvanians with a series of what in the eyes of Californians might be considered pure negatives: guns, clinging to religion, antipathy, xenophobia.

I'm not sure this is what at least this lot of Californians needed to hear about Pennsylvanians. Such phrases can reinforce negative stereotypes among Californians, who are a people in a state already surfeited with a smug sense of superiority and, as an ironic consequence, a parochialism and insularity at odds with the innovation, prosperity and openness for which California is rightly known. (Of course, this is a generalization, and as such does not fit everyone; but as a state characteristic I stand by it.) Californians might be better served by hearing that Pennsylvanians have a strong sense of their place in American history, for here California is wanting. California needs to hear that other Americans have gone through hard times and survived, humor intact. Since Barack Obama sees himself as the candidate best able to unify the country, these are the messages he needs to carry and his frank words about Pennsylvania may not have translated very clearly.

To give Obama his due, he spoke about working class Pennsylvanians likely because he had been thinking about them a great deal. And he spoke, as he often does away from large rallies, in a calm, even, matter-of-fact way. Every town hall meeting I've observed, from California to Iowa, Nevada to Texas, has showcased Senator Obama's core decency and high measure of regard for each individual.

It's curious, then, that he often has such a hard time making a connection with many working class Americans. With plenty of time for people to get to know him, like in southern Illinois before his first state legislature race and in Iowa before the caucuses, Obama has forged that connection. People get comfortable with the way his mind works. Obama is the man with the big picture; he jumps quickly from the particular to the general and back again, for he makes sense of the world in a synchronic rather than a linear way. For all his soaring rhetoric, there is a dispassion about him. And yet he blends rationcinative intelligence with empathetic understanding. This is a rare combination, and for many people, this aspect of Obama takes some getting used to. His Puritanical streak, moreover, while amusing to the press can be off-putting to everybody else.

Wednesday in Levittown, Obama told his audience, "We can find areas of common ground." But if we are going to move from divisiveness to comity, then Obama must show that he can lead us to see one another at our best and to measure one another at our highest worth. "I'm going to have a big table and will invite everybody," Obama often says. These were his exact words to Johnstown March 29. "I'll have the biggest chair, because I'll be President," he added.

One of the roles of host is making introductions. Just as Californians need to learn a few things from Pennsylvanians, the reverse is also true. California is the, most racially tolerant and ethnicity-tolerant state in the Union. California has found a way to bring strict environmental standards to prosperity's table. Californians celebrate entrepreneurship, open-mindedness and creativity.

In answer to the Wilkes-Barre gentleman's question about low levels of national pride, Senator Obama said, in part, that a new generation needs to move into government service, for there is "something big and noble and exciting and important about serving the country." First, however, Senator Obama-- and also Senators Clinton and McCain-- must see us and talk about us in such a way that sets the bar high. A leader will hold us to that standard. "Californians and Pennsylvanians," our next president must say, "find your best selves in one another."

Link to blog: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fowler/obama-no-surprise-that-ha_b_96188.html

Leaf-tailed Gekko, Madagascar

MOOOOOOM!!!!!! MOOOOOOM!!!!!!!

Philly Mayor Michael Nutter Would Quit Obama Church

Mayor Michael Nutter Tells ABC News He Would Have Quit Church if His Pastor Made Such Remarks

By DAVID MUIR, URSULA FAHY and JOEL SIEGEL
PHILADELPHIA, March 29, 2008

Sen. Hillary Clinton's most prominent African-American supporter in Pennsylvania says that had he been a member of Sen. Barack Obama's church, he would have left because of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's fiery and controversial sermons.

"I think there's no room for hate, and I could not sit and tolerate that kind of language, and especially over a very long period of time," said Philadelphia's newly elected mayor, Michael Nutter, in an interview with ABC News' David Muir.

"If I were in my own church and heard my pastor saying some of those kinds of things," he added, "we'd have a conversation about what's going on here, what is this all about, and then I would have to make my own personal decision about whether or not to be associated or affiliated."

Asked by Muir if he would he have quit Obama's church, Nutter said, "Absolutely."

Wright preached that the U.S brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own "terrorism." He also said the government "wants us to sing 'God Bless America'" but that it should be "God damn America" for the way it has treated minorities.

Obama condemned the comments, but said he could not "disown" Wright. He suggested the incendiary remarks reflected longstanding anger over past injustices against blacks.

Nutter said, "I think there is a big difference between expressing the pain and anger that many African Americans and other people of color may feel versus language that I think now crosses the line and goes into hate."

Clinton needs a decisive victory in Pennsylvania to keep her White House hopes alive. And Nutter, who took office in January, could play a pivotal role if he is able to help Clinton make inroads with African-American voters, a pillar of Obama's political base.

The pressure on some of Clinton's prominent black supporters to abandon her has been intense. An icon of the civil rights movement, Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., switched allegiances to Obama, partly because of anger in his home district over his choice for president.

Nutter has been called Philadelphia's Barack Obama. He is black, Ivy League-educated, popular and an agent of change -- just like Obama. But Nutter has remained steadfast in his support of Clinton -- to the surprise of many in this city.

The mayor acknowledges that some voters have approached him and asked, in his words, "Why not support a brother?"

"Somehow, someway, for some people there's an automatic assumption that a mayor who is African-American or some other elected official has to support another African-American," Nutter said.

"I thought that when Dr. King said that he wanted people to be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, I thought that's what he was talking about," Nutter added.

Nutter is sticking with Clinton, even though by doing so, he said he might be thwarting the election of America's first black president.

"Certainly the opportunity to demonstrate to my 13-year-old daughter that there is a bright future for her, that a woman could get elected president of the United States, is equally compelling," he said.

"I think that we are at this historical moment," Nutter said. "Either candidate will clearly make history. But you only get to vote for one. The most important thing is winning in November, putting a Democrat in the White House."

He added, "I'm a great fan of history. I don't know that when people are struggling to pay the bills, that they ultimately conclude that, 'Well, if we can just make history with this vote, then all of my problems will be solved.' It still, for me, always comes back to performance [and] track record."

Nutter met with both senators before deciding his endorsement. He brushes aside those who say he did not back Obama because Obama endorsed someone else for mayor.

"We're talking about president of the United States. They're not running for high school class president," he said.

"I think Sen. Clinton is the absolute best candidate for not only Philadelphia but for other cities like us, certainly for Pennsylvania [and] the United States of America, to restore our leadership role all around the world."

In a wide-ranging interview, Nutter voiced outrage [BLOGGER'S NOTE: the word "outrage" is a completely incorrect characterization of Nutter's comments -- he was quite calm while speaking.] that the Democratic Party is opposed to counting the Michigan and Florida primaries because both states scheduled the elections early in the primary season, against party rules. Clinton won those primaries -- though candidates were barred from campaigning in the states and Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan.

Counting the abridged votes from those states would help Clinton to narrow Obama's lead in delegates.

"Think about who we are in the Democratic Party and the country we are in," Nutter said. "That we would somehow leave out any of our citizens in this process, I think, would be an absolute disgrace. We need to be a bit smarter about it."

Political observers say Nutter's pick for president perhaps could cause him political problems down the road.

"The people who swept him to victory are exactly the same people who are over the moon for Barack Obama," said Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Chris Satullo.

The Rev. Ellis Washington, president of Black Clergy of Philadelphia and Vicinity, told The National Journal "there is some frustration" with Nutter's endorsement.

"I do speak to some who look at Nutter's name and kind of shake their head," he said.

A random sampling of voters here found others shaking their heads, too.

Philadelphian Victoria Walker said, "I would have thought that he would have endorsed Obama."

"I've struggled with this one a little bit, because from the perspective of Philadelphia, in many ways I see Nutter as a parallel to Obama," said long-time resident Fred Rosenfeld.

Nutter endorsed Clinton back in December, when she was the clear front-runner. Now she is struggling. But Nutter is having no second thoughts.

When asked if he would endorse Clinton again, Nutter said, "Absolutely. Same endorsement. Never a hesitation."

Link to article: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=4549699&page=1

Inspiration versus Substance by Joe Klein

TIME Magazine, February 7, 2008

"We are the ones we've been waiting for," Barack Obama said in yet another memorable election-night speech on Super-Confusing Tuesday. "We are the change that we seek." Waiting to hear what Obama has to say — win, lose or tie — has become the most anticipated event of any given primary night. The man's use of pronouns (never I), of inspirational language and of poetic meter — "WE are the CHANGE that we SEEK" — is unprecedented in recent memory. Yes, Ronald Reagan could give great set-piece speeches on grand occasions, and so could John F. Kennedy, but Obama's ability to toss one off, different each week, is simply breathtaking. His New Hampshire concession speech, with the refrain "Yes, We Can," was turned into a brilliant music video featuring an array of young, hip, talented and beautiful celebrities. The video, stark in black-and-white, raised an existential question for Democrats: How can you not be moved by this? How can you vote against the future?

And yet there was something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism — "We are the ones we've been waiting for" — of the Super Tuesday speech and the recent turn of the Obama campaign. "This time can be different because this campaign for the presidency of the United States of America is different. It's different not because of me. It's different because of you." That is not just maddeningly vague but also disingenuous: the campaign is entirely about Obama and his ability to inspire. Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause — other than an amorphous desire for change — the message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is.

That is not unprecedented. It has echoes of Howard Dean's 2004 primary effort, although in Dean's case the propellant was substance, not rhetoric — the candidate's early courageous voice against the war. But Dean soon found that wasn't enough. In June 2003 he told me he needed to broaden his movement, reach out past the young and the academic and find a greater array of issues that could inspire working people. He never quite found that second act, and his campaign became about process, not substance: the hundreds of thousands of supporters signing up on the Internet, the millions of dollars raised. He lost track of the rest of the world; his campaign was about ... his campaign.

Obama would never be so tone-deaf, but he is facing a similar ceiling, a similar inability to speak to the working people of the Democratic Party (at least, those who are not African American) or find an issue, a specific issue, that distinguishes him from his opponent. And his opponent, Hillary Clinton, has proved herself tough, specific and reliable — qualities that become increasingly important as the economy teeters and as worries about the future gather in the land.

This has become an odd campaign for Democrats. There is good news ... and fear. The good news is that this time the people seem far more interested in their party than in the Republicans. On Super Tuesday, at least 15,417,521 voted Democratic, and 9,181,297 voted Republican. And more good news: both Obama and Clinton are very good candidates who hold similar positions on most issues, moderates who intend to reach out to Republicans after they are elected — although, given Clinton's undeserved reputation as a partisan operative, that may be a tougher sell for her than for Obama. But this is not a struggle for the ideological soul of the party. It may, however, be a struggle for the party's demographic soul — older voters vs. younger, information-age workers vs. industrial and service workers, wine vs. beer. There is also — and I will try to tread lightly here — the classic high school girl/boy differential: the note-taking, front-row girl grind vs. the charismatic, last-minute-cramming, preening male finesse artist. Both Clinton and Obama have difficulties reaching across those divides, and that is where the fear resides: neither candidate may prove strong or broad enough. As this campaign progresses, their weaknesses — the reasons for their inability to put away this nomination — are going to become more apparent than their strengths.

Clinton's strengths are most apparent in debates, which is why she is pressing to have one each week. She simply knows more than Obama does. In recent weeks, she has been far more likely to take questions from the press and public than Obama is. That appeals to voters more interested in results than in inspiration; it especially appeals to the middle-class women, juggling job and family, who are the demographic heart of the Democratic Party. Clinton's weaknesses are intractable. They are wrapped up in her husband, who nearly ruined her campaign in the two weeks after Iowa but seems to have been relegated to the back of the bus in recent days. And they are wrapped up in her age. She is a baby boomer, of a generation that has been notably obnoxious and unsuccessful in the public arena. Perhaps the most dreadful baby-boom political legacy has been the overconsulted, fanatically tactical, poll-driven campaign — and Clinton has suffered whenever she has emphasized tactics over substance. Her lame attempts to "go negative" on Obama have been almost entirely counterproductive. Her husband's attempts to paint Obama as a "race" candidate — his resort to the most toxic sort of old-fashioned politics — only reinforced the strangely desperate nature of their campaign. It was the very opposite of "Yes, We Can" politics.

Obama's strength is inspiration, and it's also his weakness. In the recent past, Democrats have favored candidates who offer meaty, detailed policy prescriptions — usually to the party's detriment — and that is not Obama's game. After his Iowa victory, his stump speech had become a soufflé untroubled by much substance of any sort. He has rectified that, to some extent. He now spends some time talking about the laments of average Americans he has met along the way; then he dives into a litany of solutions he has proposed to address the laments. But those are not nearly so convincing as Clinton's versions of the same; of course, Clinton has a tragic deficit when it comes to inspiration.

There is an odd, anachronistic formality to Obama's stump speech: it is always the same. It sets his audiences afire, but it does not reach very far beyond them. It is no accident that Obama is nearly invincible in caucus states, where the ability to mobilize a hard core of activists is key — but not so strong in primaries, where more diverse masses of people are involved. He should be very worried that this nomination is likely to be decided in the big working-class primary states of Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania.

Then again, one of Obama's most effective lines is about the "craziness" of trying the same old thing in Washington "over and over and over again, and somehow expecting a different result." The first politician I ever heard use that line — weirdly attributed to everyone from Benjamin Franklin to Albert Einstein — was Bill Clinton. It is a sad but inescapable fact of this election that Bill and Hillary Clinton have now become "the same old thing" they once railed against. In a country where freshness is fetishized — and where a staggering 70% of the public is upset with the way things are today — the "same old thing" is not the place to be. Unless, of course, the next new thing turns out to be a mirage.

Link to article: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1710721,00.html

Arnaldo Jabor -- O homem versus o mosquito

And this is once again the reason that sometimes Arnaldo Jabor is my hero:

O Rio é uma calamidade urgente que tem de ser assumida

Não interessa saber se a dengue é uma epidemia ou não. A dengue é apenas a forma microbiológica que expõe o caos geral da administração do Rio. Os vírus proliferam pelo mesmo fertilizante que estimula a corrupção, a violência, a vergonha burocrática. A verdadeira epidemia é a administração da cidade que já atinge um grau de gravidade talvez irreversível.

Vivemos no Rio (oh leitores de outros estados!...) a sensação permanente do Insolúvel. Já temos a dengue, a febre amarela; um dia chegaremos à perfeição da varíola. Mas muitos sintomas eclodem alem da dengue: depressão, miséria, violência, ignorância. A própria crise psicótica do Cesar Maia também é um sintoma. Ele, que pareceu um exemplo de pragmatismo para quebrar a cadeia do populismo, entrou em catatonia, em paralisia mental, e não fala mais. Diante do Insolúvel, ele emite ruídos de e-mail como um robô quebrado.

O Rio de hoje é o filho defeituoso que a ditadura militar criou, pela fusão com o Estado fluminense, a estratégia "geiseliana" de afastar o MDB de uma possível vitória na política nacional em 75.

A des-fusão dos dois estados e a volta da Guanabara é um tema que surgiu, fervilhou e esfriou de novo, como tudo aqui. Seria uma utopia? Na Prefeitura, na Câmara Municipal, assembléias, repartições, vemos a cenografia e figurinos de nossa desgraça.

Estamos salpicados de favelas, de onde descem hordas de assaltantes para pescar cidadãos como num parque temático, somos governados por populistas de direita há décadas. Nosso melhor governador ("prefeito" do Estado da Guanabara) foi o Carlos Lacerda. Homem inteligente e competente - o ódio máximo de minha juventude - ( podem me esculhambar, velhos comunas...), mas que nos trouxe luz, água, túneis, urbanização e o conceito de administração moderna contra a politicagem fisiológica. Lacerda, com todos seus defeitos, era um atalho no populismo que tirou o Rio do ciclo "de dia falta água, de noite falta luz..."

Hoje, há um caldo de cultura de onde germina nossa tragédia. Ou melhor, duas grandes poças de cultura que se somam.

A primeira grande poça trágica é a imensa ignorância da população pobre, presa da demagogia de oportunistas que usam a religião, o clientelismo, o cabresto, grana, tudo para conquistar votos.

A crassa ignorância dos despossuídos é o chão onde crescem os pseudo-políticos, como a água parada gesta ovos de mosquitos.

A segunda poça de germes é mais sutil. Não está no analfabetismo, nem na crendice, nem na ingenuidade. Está no carioca médio e em sua "cultura malandra". Depois de décadas de desgraça, ainda não sabemos como agir, como nos mobilizar, além de vagos protestos, cartas a leitores ou comentários (como eu mesmo faço), na facilidade da indignação impotente.

Atraso x modernização

Cariocas, somos considerados criativos e manemolentes, quando hoje estamos mal informados e sem inspiração. Somos malandros com o terno esfarrapado, a navalha sem aço e o chapéu panamá rasgado. O carioca tem uma "poética" irresponsabilidade política. Carioca gosta de falar de política mas não de agir politicamente; tudo se afoga no chope ou na praia e chegamos, no máximo, a movimentos abstratos, pedindo paz, abraçando a Lagoa, cantando, chorando. O carioca é ideológico, mas deixa a política para os canalhas. E nossa única saída para a tragédia que vivemos seria uma virada pragmática, uma mudança, uma diferença de métodos e de ética. O Rio está organizado para "não" funcionar.

Tornou-se impossível governar sem uma macro-mudança administrativa. Precisamos de cinturões industriais na periferias, precisamos criar algum objetivo econômico para a região, seja a criação de uma "hong kong" carioca, uma base financeira e cultural. A idéia de que há uma "solução" para o Rio é uma falácia. Precisamos de atalhos, de imaginação. Não dá para retornar a uma "normalidade" ideal, apenas por uma corriqueira substituição de poder. O Rio tem de planejar seu futuro em cima de um luto, da aceitação de uma grave encrenca em estado adiantado.

Com a aproximação das eleições para a Prefeitura, dois cenários se apresentam na paisagem política: o atraso e a possibilidade de uma modernização. Marcelo Crivella é o uso da política como instrumento de outro poder. A prefeitura não como um instrumento para o bem da cidade. A cidade não como fim, mas como meio. Seus eleitores já foram escolhidos e apontados em sua primeira declaração contra Fernando Gabeira: "Ele é a favor de homem com homem, aborto e maconha". É nítido que ele vai usar a superstição, o moralismo tacanho, a ignorância e a obediência religiosa para se eleger, depois de ter sabiamente desviado Wagner Montes do caminho, ele o mais forte candidato no mundo da ignorância pública.

Para esta vertente político-religiosa, quanto mais paralisada a máquina da cidade, melhor. Quanto mais indefesos forem os aparelhos do estado, melhor. Depois do populismo chaguista no estado, depois da honestidade incompetente de Saturnino Braga, depois do brizolismo, da piração de Cesar Maia, involuímos para o populismo da fé.

Por outro lado, a possibilidade de eleição de Fernando Gabeira pode ser uma oportuna retomada de um pragmatismo que não se vê desde o boom do Estado da Guanabara. Não falo por salvacionismo, nem Gabeira seria um bonaparte. Falo porque ele pode criar uma nova vertente política, cortando caminhos pela imaginação, pela criatividade e pelo nível intelectual e contemporâneo que ele representa. Mudança de rumos, mudança: quase um Obama carioca.

Quem pode atrapalhar Gabeira? Homens e mulheres de bem, como Chico Alencar, Jandira, Eduardo Paes, que pensam ainda em termos legítimos (sem dúvida) mas também sem possibilidade alguma de vitória.

Eles teriam de entender e se coligar com o único que tem uma chance de vencer o populismo psicótico (sou um romântico). Entender que o Rio não é uma cidade a mais à espera de uma eleição. Somos uma calamidade urgente que tem de ser assumida, como o desmatamento da Amazônia ou a seca no Nordeste.

Alexander Calder!

Alexander Calder, Romulus and Remus, 1928. Wire and wood, 30 1/2 x 124 1/2 x 26 inches. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. 65.1738. © 2007 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Star Trek -- Enterprise theme song: "Faith of the Heart"

OK, so now you know I'm a Trekkie.



One-minute version above.

If anyone knows where I can find the high-def 4-minute version (old copy taken down at youtube), please send me a message or make a comment here with the link -- I really miss it!  Thanks!

"Faith of the Heart"

It's been a long road,
To get from there to here.
It's been a long time,
but my time is finally here.

And I can feel a change
in the wind right now.
Nothing's in my way.
And they're not gonna
hold me down no more.
No they're not gonna hold me down.

'Cause I've got faith of the heart.
I'm going where my heart
will take me.
I've got faith to believe.
I can do anything.
I've got strength of the soul.
And no one's going to bend
or break me.
I can reach any star.
I've got faith,
I've got faith,
Faith of the heart.

It's been a long night,
Trying to find my way.
Been thru the darkness,
Now I finally have my day.

And I will see my dream
come alive at last.
I will touch the sky.
And they're not gonna hold
me down no more.
No they're not gonna change
my mind.

'Cause I've got faith of the heart.
I'm going where my heart
will take me.
I've got faith to believe.
I can do anything.
I've got strength of the soul.
And no one's going to bend
or break me.
I can reach any star.
I've got faith,
Faith of the heart.

I know the wind's so cold,
I've seen the darkest days.
But now the winds I feel,
Are only winds of change.
I've been thru the fire,
And I've been thru the rain,
But I'll be fine.

'Cause I've got faith of the heart.
I'm going where my heart
will take me.
I've got faith to believe.
I can do anything.
I've got strength of the soul.
And no one's going to bend
or break me.
I can reach any star.
'Cause I've got faith,
'Cause I've got faith,
Faith of the heart...

Faith of the heart.
I'm going where my heart
will take me.
I've got faith to believe.
And no one's going to bend
or break me.
I can reach any star.
'Cause I've got faith,
'Cause I've got faith,
Faith of the heart...

Sinto vergonha de mim

Have a look at this short video of the words of Cleide Canton and Rui Barbosa.

http://www.rolandoboldrin.com.br/video/

When Women Rule by Nicholas D. Kristof

From the New York Times Op-Ed. Published: February 10, 2008

While no woman has been president of the United States — yet — the world does have several thousand years’ worth of experience with female leaders. And I have to acknowledge it: Their historical record puts men’s to shame.

Nicholas D. Kristof. Photo by Fred R. Conrad, The New York Times

A notable share of the great leaders in history have been women: Queen Hatshepsut and Cleopatra of Egypt, Empress Wu Zetian of China, Isabella of Castile, Queen Elizabeth I of England, Catherine the Great of Russia, and Maria Theresa of Austria. Granted, I’m neglecting the likes of Bloody Mary, but it’s still true that those women who climbed to power in monarchies had an astonishingly high success rate.

Research by political psychologists points to possible explanations. Scholars find that women, compared with men, tend to excel in consensus-building and certain other skills useful in leadership. If so, why have female political leaders been so much less impressive in the democratic era? Margaret Thatcher was a transformative figure, but women have been mediocre prime ministers or presidents in countries like Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Often, they haven’t even addressed the urgent needs of women in those countries.

I have a pet theory about what’s going on.

In monarchies, women who rose to the top dealt mostly with a narrow elite, so they could prove themselves and get on with governing. But in democracies in the television age, female leaders also have to navigate public prejudices — and these make democratic politics far more challenging for a woman than for a man.

In one common experiment, the “Goldberg paradigm,” people are asked to evaluate a particular article or speech, supposedly by a man. Others are asked to evaluate the identical presentation, but from a woman. Typically, in countries all over the world, the very same words are rated higher coming from a man.

In particular, one lesson from this research is that promoting their own successes is a helpful strategy for ambitious men. But experiments have demonstrated that when women highlight their accomplishments, that’s a turn-off. And women seem even more offended by self-promoting females than men are.

This creates a huge challenge for ambitious women in politics or business: If they’re self-effacing, people find them unimpressive, but if they talk up their accomplishments, they come across as pushy braggarts.

The broader conundrum is that for women, but not for men, there is a tradeoff in qualities associated with top leadership. A woman can be perceived as competent or as likable, but not both.

“It’s an uphill struggle, to be judged both a good woman and a good leader,” said Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a Harvard Business School professor who is an expert on women in leadership. Professor Kanter added that a pioneer in a man’s world, like Hillary Rodham Clinton, also faces scrutiny on many more dimensions than a man — witness the public debate about Mrs. Clinton’s allegedly “thick ankles,” or the headlines last year about cleavage.

Clothing and appearance generally matter more for women than for men, research shows. Surprisingly, several studies have found that it’s actually a disadvantage for a woman to be physically attractive when applying for a managerial job. Beautiful applicants received lower ratings, apparently because they were subconsciously pegged as stereotypically female and therefore unsuited for a job as a boss.

Female leaders face these impossible judgments all over the world. An M.I.T. economist, Esther Duflo, looked at India, which has required female leaders in one-third of village councils since the mid-1990s. Professor Duflo and her colleagues found that by objective standards, the women ran the villages better than men. For example, women constructed and maintained wells better, and took fewer bribes.

Yet ordinary villagers themselves judged the women as having done a worse job, and so most women were not re-elected. That seemed to result from simple prejudice. Professor Duflo asked villagers to listen to a speech, identical except that it was given by a man in some cases and by a woman in others. Villagers gave the speech much lower marks when it was given by a woman.

Such prejudices can be overridden after voters actually see female leaders in action. While the first ones received dismal evaluations, the second round of female leaders in the villages were rated the same as men. “Exposure reduces prejudice,” Professor Duflo suggested.

Women have often quipped that they have to be twice as good as men to get anywhere — but that, fortunately, is not difficult. In fact, it appears that it may be difficult after all. Modern democracies may empower deep prejudices and thus constrain female leaders in ways that ancient monarchies did not.

Link to article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/opinion/10kristof.html

Was It Only a Game? by Dick Cavett

Published in the New York Times, February 8, 2008, 8:11 pm

Among this year’s worst news, for me, was the death of Bobby Fischer.

Telling a friend this, I got, “Are you out of your bloody mind? He was a Nazi-praising raving lunatic and anti-Semite. Death is too good for him.”

He did, indeed, become all that. But none of it describes the man I knew.

Towering genius, riches, international fame and a far from normal childhood might be too heady a mix for anyone to handle. For him they proved fatal.

I’m still sad about his death. In our three encounters on my late-night show, I became quite fond of him.

Viewing the tapes of those memorable appearances, a licensed professional in the field of psychiatry might see foreshadowings of the savage illness that eventually engulfed him. I didn’t.

Some years back, the writer Rene Chen was working on a book about Fischer, and confessed to being unprepared for the maddening — and maddened — thing that the poor man had become.

Getting low on advance money, and having learned that Fischer had been on my show several times, Chun asked if there were any way he could see these “invaluable documents — short of unaffordable fees.” I sent them to him.

He had written me about a still picture he’d found:

Thought you might like to see this photo. When I came across it recently, I was struck by the warmth it transmits to the viewer. Both of you look like you are having a fabulous time. Studying the photo it’s obvious that these two men genuinely like each other. Fischer is clearly comfortable with you.

If you screen Fischer’s Tonight Show appearance, which aired shortly after his ‘72 victory, the enigmatic chess champ comes off well, but doesn’t look nearly as comfortable or spontaneous during the course of 15 minutes as he does here in a single frame. Of course, this is just an isolated image. One would have to see the entire show to make a judgment. But I suspect that the Fischer in your interviews is a Fischer we haven’t seen before. The famous 60 Minutes piece that aired just before the ‘72 match depicts a totally different Fischer — anxious, guarded, serious as hell.…

You were lucky enough to be the only media person that Fischer seemed to be completely at ease with. Taping not one, but several interviews with you speaks volumes about your character and integrity. [I’ll be the judge of that. — D.C.]

Fischer could smell a show biz phony in an instant….

*********************

It must seem strange to people too young to remember that there was once a chess champion — of all things — who became arguably the most famous celebrity on earth. And that his long-anticipated match against the reigning Russian champion, Boris Spassky, was broadcast and watched worldwide as if it were the Super Bowl, except that chess drew a much bigger audience.

There was another element that added to the drama. With Fischer the American and Spassky the Russkie, the monumental match was seen as a Cold War battle.

The Russian chess champions considered themselves the undoubted best. Time out of mind the Soviet chess dynasty had reigned supreme, viewing themselves as a rightful symbol of Soviet superiority in all fields.

PBS broadcast the drama in sports fashion, complete with play-by-play commentary by Shelby Lyman, who himself became a household name. People stayed home from work, glued to their sets, and PBS got its highest ratings ever. The country and the world became chess-crazy. And Fischer-crazy. Chess sets, dusty on the shelves, suddenly sold in the millions.

We ordinary mortals can only try to imagine what it might feel like to be both young and so greatly gifted at a complex art. And to be better at it than any other living being, past or present. There are plenty of geniuses and lots of famous people, but few are both. Is anyone really capable of surviving such a double burden?

We assume that geniuses are blessed creatures who don’t have to work hard to achieve their goals. Hard for us, easy for them. But Bobby as a kid — IQ pushing 200 — put in 10 to 15 hours a day of brain power and heavy concentration that would kill an ordinary person. (Or at least me.)

The chess world was already well aware of this kid prodigy. But they were unprepared for him to suddenly go up against the acknowledged top player of the day in the United States Chess Championship. And win — at the age of thirteen. When asked what happened, he said, “I got better.”

What does such dedication to seemingly unreachable goals — until he reached them — do to the rest of you, the over-achiever? Touchingly, when he returned to my show after having disposed of Spassky, triumphant in the eyes of the world, he opined that he might be wise to try developing some of the rest of himself. He had begun to see that a life of nothing but chess was “kind of limited.” (He went to dinner in Reykjavik with friends. “Bobby couldn’t follow the conversation,” one said. “He sort of backed into the corner, got out his little pocket chess set and played with himself.”) He announced on my show that he was now “reading a lot of magazines, trying to keep up with what’s going on in the world.” He was still in his twenties.

Until the advent of Bobby Fischer, my image of a young chess genius was not flattering. I pictured a sort of wizened and unpopular youth, small of frame, reclusive, short, with messy hair, untended acne, thick glasses and shirt sticking out in back. And also perhaps, as the great V. Nabokov wrote in describing somewhat genderless piano prodigies with eye trouble, obscure ailments, “and something vaguely misshapen about their eunuchoid hindquarters.”

**********

Getting Fischer on my show that first time, before the big match, was considered a major catch at the time. If anyone in the audience shared my image of what a chess genius probably looked like, Bobby’s entrance erased it.

Here was no Nabakovian homunculus. There appeared, somewhat disconcerted, a tall and handsome lad with football-player shoulders, impeccably suited, a little awkward of carriage and unsure how to negotiate the unfamiliarity of the set, the bright lights, the wearing of make-up, the band music, the hand-shaking and the thundering ovation — all at the same time. I had hoped to avoid the cliché “gangling,” but Bobby gangled. He sort of lurched into his chair.

Once seated, he was something to behold. Six foot two (tall in those days), athletic in build, perfect in grooming, and with striking features. The face radiated intelligence. You couldn’t confuse him with anyone you’d ever seen.

And there were the eyes.

Cameras fail to convey the effect of his eyes when they were looking at you. A bit of Svengali perhaps, but vulnerable. And only the slightest hint of a sort of theatrical menace, the menace that so disconcerted his opponents.

Looking out over the audience, I could clearly see entranced women gazing at him as if willing to offer their hearts — and perhaps more — to the hunky chess master.

When I asked him about such matters, he said that the awful demands of his life — the global travel; the constant study, sometimes until dawn, followed by play; the punishing five-hour sessions at full concentration, day after day — all this made it “pretty hard to . . . [hesitates] . . . build up a relationship.” He seemed quite surprised with himself, as did friends watching, that he had allowed so revealing a moment. (That old Cavett magic, no doubt.)

One thing he said in that first appearance became famous. At one point I asked him what, in terms of thrills, the chess equivalent might be of, say, hitting a home run. His answer: “I like the moment when I break a man’s ego.” There was a trace of a chill in his laughter.

For me, watching the Fischer shows after all this time contained quite a few surprises. For example, I winced watching the first one when I heard myself use the word “paranoid.” That awful word that in the later, bad years became almost part of Bobby’s name. But back then it passed unnoticed.

On the post-Spassky show it was Bobby himself who uttered the p-word. I re-winced. He claimed that Harold C. Schonberg, then the Times’ music and chess critic, “said I was paranoid.” Somehow the joker in me came up with, “No he didn’t. You’re imagining it.”

Happily he got the joke — a beat before the audience did — and laughed heartily. (People who who knew him were in disbelief that he could actually laugh and be funny on the show.)

He didn’t know it, but I had spotted him earlier that day. We were walking to my studio at the same time, but from opposite directions. He towered over passersby who would stop in their tracks and gaze worshipfully. From a distance, you could see the consonants in his name on their lips: B, F. He seemed unaware of them, with his ever-present little transistor radio clapped to his ear like a teenager.

He had come to like soul music, he said.

That night Tony Randall was on, which Bobby enjoyed, and both of us inquired about his reported loutish behavior in Reykjavik that nearly prevented the Great Match from happening, what with his incessant demands and threats to walk out and accusing the Russians of cheating and demanding to have the swimming pool to himself. (They had actually promised him that in their eagerness to get him.) Bobby, looking thoughtful, surprised lots of people with, “I’m afraid that a lot of what I did was . . . not too bright.” [Friendly laughter]

Crazy as it sounds, the paranoia was not all on one side in Reykjavik. The Russians demanded that Bobby’s chair be taken apart, so they could look for a hidden device that Spassky thought might be causing him to feel hypnotized. Bobby loved it.

Randall had vastly amused the audience when he told a story about a piece of hate mail that came to him not at his own show but, of all places, at the old “Opera Quiz” weekend radio show with its presumably cultured and genteel limited audience. Tony was a sometime panelist. The nasty letter began, “The only thing more disgusting than watching a faggot like you on television is when you go on Dick Cavett’s and having to watch you two faggots sit there together, yakking like two faggots,” etc. The audience was hysterical.

Fischer, having watched this from backstage, came out to a long ovation. Wanting to dispel the myth that he and Spassky were non-speaking enemies, he insisted that despite all the gossipy press to the contrary, he and Boris were truly quite good friends, and went bowling together. “Really buddy-buddy,” he said, adding, “not like you two, of course.” [Booming laughter.])

Tony asked him if he’d like to be on “The Odd Couple.” Bobby’s “maybe” fetched a healthy laugh.

With a little pressing about could he imagine another life for himself, he confessed to having given some thought to becoming an actor. If he had been able to use all that was in him, he might have proved a forerunner of the genius actor, Javier Bardem. Fine actors can use a touch of madness. (Geo. C. Scott, with several touches, comes to mind.) Bobby had acquitted himself stylishly as a guest on “The Bob Hope Show.” Strange to think that at that time Bobby was known to even more people even than his world-famous host. I couldn’t help wondering if Bobby F. knew who Bob H. was until then. “He’s a funny guy,” Bobby allowed.

**********

Our mental health advisers, shrinks and friends advise us to avoid guilt at all costs. But they don’t tell you how. There seems to be an unlimited number of guilts available to us. When someone we know — or are related to — comes apart and deteriorates physically and mentally and commits suicide, don’t most of us think, “Maybe I’d have been the one who could have made the difference; done or said this or that and saved the poor soul?” How much of such thinking is charitable and how much egotistical? For a time I was pained by that thought that I might have been Bobby’s salvation. But then we comfort ourselves, concluding that of course it would have been too late. And then, alas, comes, But would it have been?

I like to think I would have gladly boarded a plane and tracked Bobby down — in wichever of his far-flung refuges around the globe he was holing up in — and tried to be of help. But how would he have, as they say, received me? Would I still be one of the few (some said only) people Bobby ever really liked? Might pathology have erased memory? Would I have been utterly forgotten? Or a Jew bastard, sent to further hurt him? (Bobby’s mother was Jewish, as was his biological father, who left when Bobby was two.)

The thought that he might have been delighted to see me and that I might have brought him even brief pleasure — parted the clouds for him for a while — is hard to think about. Because it means I should have done it. This is going to always haunt me.

Somewhere on the internet I ran across a picture of the later, ailing Bobby. I don’t know where it was and don’t want to see it again.

It’s a color head-shot. It’s not pleasant to see how the magnificent edifice had crumbled. He looks ancient, is balding and that great face that shone with intelligence is all but hidden by a massive growth of white beard. It could be an actor playing King Lear. He is facing the camera but the eyes are cut sharply to one side. They look both suspicious and frightened. Those great Fischer eyes of old have been replaced. They’re not these.

**********

I’m surprised in writing this how much emotion there still is in the subject for me. There’s no story like it: genius kid, precocious, plunged into triumphant victory, money and world fame — no one under 30 should be subjected to fame — then gradual decline into raving lunatic. “Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

You’d think, with all the hells Bobby descended through in his allotted 68 years, that those gods could have spared him the agony of kidney disease — a notoriously painful way to die. A Sioux friend of mine likes to quote, “Count no man lucky until he has had a good death.” If there be such a thing as a place of rest, I hope that Robert James Fischer has found it.

I’ve sat for a while trying to figure out how to close A faint glimmer of a bit of poetry had been swimming elusively in my head, just out of reach. And then it emerged.

It’s from E.E.Cummings’ famous poem about another lionized and legendary figure who, after triumph and glamour, also did not have “a good death”: Buffalo Bill.

With Cummings’ quirky punctuation, it’s a short poem, with no title but referred to by its first three words: “Buffalo Bill’s / defunct.”

Its closing lines somehow seem appropriate here. They are:

Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what I want to know is
how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death

Link: http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/was-it-only-a-game/