Grading Obama's U.N. Speech

IT'S A CLASSIC RHETORICAL move. Define who who you are by articulating who you are not. At his speech before the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, President Barack Obama made it pretty clear that he is not George W. Bush.

The President's talk, shorter than Moammar Khadaffy's and less racist than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's, not only addressed the responsibility of steering the ship of state through the gnarly waves of the present moment, it also charted the ideological course of the next three-plus years of his presidency. How did he do? If his speech were a freshman essay, what would his grade be?

In truth, his plan (or "pillars" as he calls them) looks beyond three years, in an attempt to ensure the future that "we want for our children:"

non-proliferation and disarmament; the promotion of peace and security; the preservation of our planet; and a global economy that advances opportunity for all people

I know what you're thinking--the president plagiarized George Bush! It sounds so much like the former Commander-In-Chief, Mr. Obama must have bought a speech online and passed it off as his own. Well, rest assured, I ran the text through turnitin.com, and it seems okay.

Whew!

Who wants two Joe Biden's in the White House?

It's hard to imagine the former president believing such things, much less talking about them at the U.N. One has to wonder what the audience was thinking as they heard Mr. Obama speak. Are the two men (Obama and Bush) really as different as they appear? What must the American populace be like to have elected, back to back, such radically different souls?

I would say that the America who voted for George W. Bush is the America driven primarily by pessimism: fear of the other, concern over what some see as a deteriorating moral fabric, and secret man crushes on Karl Rove. Those who swept Mr. Obama into office are those Americans who, at least for the moment, are driven by optimism: the now over-used sense of "hope," the promise of change from the politics of pessimism, the secret comb-over envy of Joe Biden.

There is a fine line between naivete and optimism. How you see Obama will determine how you would grade his speech. If you are inclined to find him more rhetorically gifted than politically so, then you are likely to agree with The Weekly Standard's Steve Hayes who described the address as both "embarrassing" and "dangerous."

Juan Williams on the other hand, thought the speech was "terrific" because "President Obama laid out concrete steps that his administration has taken since coming into office to prove that they, in fact, want to work with the rest of the world."

I'm more inclined to agree with Williams here. Like any good essay, his speech had a thesis. Its tone was neither too lofty nor too chatty. He was funny but serious; humble but presidential. Most importantly, as Williams notes, he gave specific examples of how we wanted to construct his pillars. Or, in the parlance of writing pedagogy, he supported his thesis.

As for content, it evoked MLK (without the biblical overtones) and JFK (without the triumphalism). This spooked Charles Krauthammer, who waxed nostalgic about American rhetoric of superiority:

Obama's speech is alarming because it says the United States has no more moral right to act or to influence world history than Bangladesh or Sierra Leone.

It diminishes the United States deliberately and wants to say that we should be one nation among others, and not defend the alliance of democracies that we have in NATO, for example, or to say as every president has said before Obama that we stand for something good and unique in the world.

And so, there you have it. Arguably the dividing line among Americans in regard to Mr. Obama. Either America is morally superior and should determine policy in other countries, or . . . not.

There is a pretty well-documented track record throughout history when empires try to impose values on other cultures. So, even when both content and form are taken into account, Mr. Obama does well here. He gets an A-.

Ten Commandments of Blogging

ABOUT A YEAR AGO, the Evangelical Alliance, an evangelical Christian organization in the U.K, hit the breaking point with bad behavior among Christian bloggers. Name calling. Flaming. Death threats. Sexist and racist posts. Inappropriate jokes about Luther and Calvin.

Among Christians, you say? Impossible!

Apparently, it was so possible that the group (EAUK) published a Ten Commandments of blogging in hopes that these rules of the virtual Moses might keep the Joe Wilson of Christian blogging in line.

So, we thought in the spirit of bad blogging behavior in general, we'd look at the various ways TWR has violated these commandments:

1. You shall not put your blog before your integrity.

That ship pretty much sailed when we graded Sarah Palin's speech, wrote about MIke Huckabee and Chuck Norris, and printed anything by Greg Barnhisel.

2. You shall not make an idol of your blog.

We broke this forthwith.

3. You shall not misuse your screen name by using your anonymity to sin.

TWR always sins in public, even when we cheat.

4. Remember the Sabbath day by taking one day off a week from your blog.

Okay, we didn't break this rule. We take too many days off the way it is.

5. Honour your fellow-bloggers above yourselves and do not give undue significance to their mistakes.

We did not honor, but we did acknowledge, Stuff White People Like and their mistakes.

6. You shall not murder someone else’s honour, reputation or feelings.

D'oh!

7. You shall not use the web to commit or permit adultery in your mind.

Busted again!

8. You shall not steal another person’s content.

Even if it's for noble causes? Or in service to the Lord?

9. You shall not give false testimony against your fellow-blogger.

What if, as in this case, the blog sucks?

10. You shall not covet your neighbour's blog ranking. Be content with your own content.

Are you joking? TWR wouldn't envy the hits of, say, Stuff White People Like. Would it? Would it?

Fox News Leaks Draft of Obama's "Welcome Back to School Speech" -- A TWR Exclusive

BELIEVE IT OR NOT, TWR is one of the first media outlets to see a copy of the original draft of Obama's speech to America's schoolchildren. Fox News has obtained a copy of the original draft of the speech and has leaked it to selected venues.

No doubt the final version will look very different after the president's handlers get a hold of it. But, the following gives us a fair and balanced look at how our leader truly thinks:

Good day Comrade Children!

On behalf of Vice-President Biden, Secretary of State Clinton, all of my advisory staff, the Black Panthers, and lesbians who want to marry, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for looking very, very deeply and in a very relaxed manner into your tv screens or monitors.

Nothing is more important to us than the clear and malleable minds of America's youth, and nothing is more sacred than the unity of the world's workers and future voters. That's you!

You're probably wondering why I've chosen to talk to you today. It's very simple. We've come to take over the world. In fact, it's already begun. See how easy it is to disrupt the American educational system? How fun and simple to grab your attention inside the walls of your very own school? Well, we do stuff like this all the time. In fact, we've been watching you since January, and you know what, we're watching you right now! In fact, let me take this moment to offer my condolences to you, Billy Carlson, in the Rutabega County school in Iowa. Tough break about your dad. Our death panel just gave him the thumbs down.

One reason we want you to pay attention to us, to pay very, very close attention to us, is because we have removed your textbooks. That's right. You no longer will use textbooks written by people who like Jesus. Instead, you'll just read Mother Jones and posts from The Daily Kos. This way, we can feed you all of the right information.

Indeed, recent studies show standardized test scores in history have fallen over the past decade. History is very important, especially if you know how to tell it. Under my regime, we'll let you know what history is so that there will be no confusion come voting and donation time. For example, in our chapter on the two party system, the entry on Republicans describes them as rich men who hate sick people, who want to replace swing sets with oil wells, and convert every rain forest into a golf course. We also give evidence of their plot to kill Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins,

And, killing people is bad---unless of course, it's babies. But, that's part of your homework assignment for next class period. Tonight, I want you to go home, laugh at your father for not having a gun, then play this very cool liberal establishment game (compatible with both X-Box and Wii). When you're done and before you refuse to say your prayers, write a 500 word essay on why we should raise taxes to support Planned Parenthood.

As you know, the major aim of liberals as stated by its atheistic leaders more than 30 years ago, is to create a Red America, thence a Red Israel, wash it with a Red Pacific and then enslave America. It is a task for which we can claim no special credit for doing. It is one which we are obligated to perform. It is one of the tasks for which we were brought into this world and for which we were born. If we fail to use all the powers of mind and body which Marx gave us, then I am sure our mothers, wherever they are tonight, may well sorrow for the day of our birth.

Let the conservatives tremble at an Obama revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. You have a world to win.

To help you in this battle, we have removed all of the American flags from the room and replaced them with banners featuring my face surrounded by golden light and a basketball. Pledging allegiance to me will help keep you focused on the task before us. Remember: Obamaism may be summed up in the single sentence: "Abolition of private property." "From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his needs." Okay, that's two sentences, but in my school, we don't worry about fuzzy math.

Sex, Religion, and Politics: The Trinity of Submission

WE THOUGHT OUR RETURN from summer hiatus should be gentle and gradual, so we decided to focus this week's post on the most innocuous of subjects.

Actually, the topic was generated by Red Room, a San Francisco-based social networking site for writers, who sought provocative dialogue on those very topics polite conversation ignores--sex, politics, and religion. The topic and its very verbotenness both annoyed and intrigued.

A number of concepts connect sex, politics, and religion--strong belief systems, rules of transgression, long complicated histories of bad behavior, some unyieldingly bad poetry, and saddest of all, Mel Gibson movies. But, what makes these three arenas of human participation particularly powerful is the degree to which they are ultimately about submission.

We like to imagine all three as forms of proactivity, which, of course, they can be. But, really, for this triumvirate to accrue any power at all, they require us, on some level, to submit. Theirs is the world of the relinquish, the bequeath, the surrender. They ask not only that we dominate but that we be dominated. We rarely like to think in these terms about such important aspects of our lives. As Americans, we hate to think about being dominated by transcendent forces. We think it undermines our agency, our identity, our ability to control destiny.

Think, for, example of the supplicant. The beggar and the believer, the subject and the subjected. He who bows; she who is bowed to. That image fits in any of these three puzzles and perhaps explains the intense and interrelated intimacies of politics, sex, and religion. Supplicate is Latin for "kneeling down." Submission (sub-missio) is Latin for "letting down." In public, we are all about being upright, but in private, any number of things might make us drop to our knees.

This is one reason these topics are off limits. In public settings, it's uncomfortable to talk about private submissions. But, it's also the main reason they make for such good novels, compelling movies, and voyeuristic reality TV. In the lockbox of our hearts, we know we are shaped and shadowed by these concepts; in fact, almost nothing has more control over the moral contours of our lives.

And so the secret conservative, the closeted believer, the passive dominatrix all go about their lives engaged and active, prostrate and submissive, perhaps overcompensating in one area of their lives as a means of seeking equilibrium: the calm surface of life's mirrored pond.

Thing is, we know we all dive in to drown.

Hiatus Haiku

TWR

goes on summer hiatus

until mid-August.

Banning Alexie?

"I BEGAN READING, AND I started to cross out sections that I didn't want him to read," she said. "Soon I thought, 'Wait, this is not appropriate; he is not reading this.' "

The "she" is Antioch, Illinois parent Jennifer Andersen, the "he" is her 14-year old son, and the book is Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, last year's winner of the National Book Award for Young Adult Fiction. As it happens, The Absolutely True Diary is also a recent addition to the Antioch High School's curriculum for incoming freshmen.

Andersen, who is quoted in a Chicago Times article, claims the book does not meet community standards and wants it removed from the curriculum. She and other parents have complained about vulgar language and overt sexuality in Alexie's short novel, arguing the book's content is at variance with what should be condoned in high school.

Andersen, who is clearly well-meaning, falls into the trap that plagues many parents, lawmakers, and even other students--she assumes that teaching a text is the same as condoning the content of that text.

For example, one of her complaints is that the book contains curse words that would not be allowed in the halls of the school. And so, by having students read this book and these words, the school is, in effect, putting its stamp of approval on those words.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Teaching is not endorsing.

In fact, some of the best teaching arises out of difficult material--material the teacher and student find objectionable, complex, and problematic. In truth, you actually want your child to work through potentially inappropriate material, and ideally, that will happen in a sound educational environment. This is because you want your kids--and other kids--to have good reading and interpretation skills. You want them not to misread. You want them armed with the ability to know the difference between advocating and expressing.

Sure, I think it's probably not a good idea to have high school freshmen reading Tropic of Cancer, but it's a great idea for students to read Alexie's novel--written for and about young kids--in high school.

Back to this notion of community standards. Education is not a strip club, it's not church, it's not the public pool. Education is about ideas, and it's about acquiring skills and abilities that make young people smarter and more capable older people. I'm fascinated by the fact that the parents ignore the theme of the book, whose message is entirely positive and totally in line with community standards (whatever that might mean) and focus instead on language their kids probably use on a daily basis.

Americans have never been good readers; we often choose surface over substance. This is a fine example.

Ignore the message; kill the messenger.

Repeat the cycle.

It's refreshing, then, to read that Antioch school board President Wayne Sobczak thinks the book will get to stick around.

Good news for now, but what if they want to teach Huck Finn?

Reading the Burka

EARLIER TODAY, FRENCH PRESIDENT Nicolas Sarkozy dissed the burka.

In a policy speech before a parliamentary committee, Sarkozy argued that the burka devalues women and in so doing is, in essence, at variance with French values. "The burka is not a sign of religion," Sarkozy quipped. "It is a sign of subservience."

This notion of the burka as a symbol--as a loaded text--is something that had gone underexamined in Western culture. In truth, the burka doesn't cover the body much more than a traditional wedding dress and veil, but as symbols they do vastly different cultural work.

For Sarkozy, the experience of the individual woman wearing the burka is less important than what the burka indicates. The burka does not itself repress, Sarkozy might assert, but as a semiotic text it signifies repression. And, in a world that relies on symbols and symbolism, to symbolize is to be. So, even if a garment does not literally restrict--as a wedding gown might--if it signifies restriction, then it restricts. It is for this reason that he is considering banning the burka in France.

Typically, when we think of censoring clothing, it is because the item in question is too sexually explicit, too revealing, but in the case of the burka, its transgression lies in its extreme coverage. Not enough is revealed. It denies (or indicates denial); it restricts (or suggests restriction); it shames (or signifies shame). For Sarkozy, the burka also represents a lack of independence. It is, Sarkozy claims, a garment that embodies subservience.

The question is, why fight a garment and not the ideology that creates the garment?

Don't misunderstand. I'm no fan of the burka. But, the gesture feels empty. Perhaps this is because the push to ban the burka takes place in the same symbolic field as the burka itself. Put another way, if the burka's offense is symbolic, "banning" it is as well.

On the other hand, could such a decision backfire?

Mohammed Moussaoui, head of the French Council for the Muslim Religion, understands the power of semiotics and political symbolism. For him, such a decision will lead to "stigmatising Islam"--a fascinating choice of words, given "stigma's" roots in Christianity. The stigmata--the holes in the recently crucified hands of Jesus Christ--served as a symbol not simply that Christ died but that he was resurrected. Religious symbols beget religious symbols.

Either way, Moussaoui knows that a public policy outlawing clothes sends a message not just about the garment but about values. Sarkozy knows he can't outlaw Islam (or the radical factions of it), so perhaps he can do the next best thing--take away some of its semiotic power.

How the Questions Surrounding Sonia Sotomayor Can Be Answered Via Literary Studies

TWO MAIN ARGUMENTS HAVE framed the predictably combustible conversations surrounding Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court—her ethnicity and her stance on interpreting the constitution. Both, critics and supporters claim, will affect how she adjudicates and, perhaps, how good her decisions are.

Law and literature enjoy a great deal of overlap, though rarely does one affect the public function of the other. In the case of Sotomayor's confirmation hearings, though, two of the most important recent issues in the world of literary studies actually shed light on the hot-button issues surrounding Judge Sotomayor's accomplishments and abilities.

First is the sticky notion of interpretation. Sotomayor is accused of being a fluid or liberal interpreter of the law, as opposed to someone like Antonin Scalia, who advocates for a conservative or "literal" approach to the constitution. For him, judges should look through history to the "original intent" of the founding fathers and, based on the intentions of the authors of the constitution, adjudicate appropriately. Judge Scalia has long defended "textualism" and "originalism," just as many literary scholars have championed what we might call "authorial intent." All of these terms get at the same thing--figuring out what the author of the document initially intended.


In the law, as in literature, such a project is nearly impossible.

We barely know our own motivations on a day-to-day basis, so it's neither plausable nor tenable to base one's approach to legal or literary texts on what we think the author may have intended 200+ years ago. Such approaches assume a fixed and static textuality and a fixed and static culture. The law, like literature, changes over time. So rather than try to get inside the head of a long-dead author (who does not himself change), it is better to look not at the author but at the text. Instead of asking what the author meant, we should be asking "what work does the text do?" It is this latter question that opens up people-centered documents like the constitution and novels to the beauty of human change.

What work a text does is also linked to questions of ethnicity.

Judge Sotomayor has been criticized for acting as a "Latina judge," much the way writers like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Sandra Cisneros and other authors have been critiqued for writing from a decidedly ethnic perspective. But, opening the literary canon was good for literary studies, just as opening the judicial canon will be good for the law.

We want our literature to reflect our diversity, so we should also want the body ruling on our laws to reflect that pluralism as well. The great mistake conservative commentators make is assuming that Anglo males do not adjudicate from a position of race or ethnicity. They most certainly do; the reality is, though, that such a position often merges seamlessly with the hegemonic values that have aggressively shaped our culture for the past three centuries.

With a new millennium, a new president, and an evolving cultural ethos, it's time for the law to take a page from its literary brother. Both our country and our legal system will be the better for it.

KINDNESS, APPARENTLY, IS IN. At least according to today's New York Times, which charts a spike of niceness on the big board of contemporary culture. I would agree. I was puzzling over a post for today on the dramatic increase in the frequency and eagerness with which people hold open doors, when I came across today's story in the Sunday Style section.

Sure, crankiness is still as prevalent as exhaust, but, for whatever reason, more and more people seem to be nicer. I think this is nice. But I'm curious why this is the case. Why now when so many things are going wrong?

My hunch is that the social contract becomes more important as legal and cultural covenants blur. Clear demarcations in culture, class, ethics, and morality lend themselves to organized behavior. Everyone knows what to expect from everyone else. Kindness isn't needed because order exists instead.

But, order's stock is plummeting.

The world is in flux. America, known for its ability to black and white itself into tedium, is going gray. Hazy beyond recognition are the lines between public and private, right and wrong, legal and illegal, ethical and unethical, the virtual and the real. Forget video games and chatrooms and cell phones. Contemporary cultural enmeshment is forcing us to redefine and rethink every form of information and identity. For example, people are now announcing divorces on Facebook, effectively doing away with the discreet conversation. The State of California keeps reversing itself on whether certain humans can or cannot marry, suggesting that the most sacred, most fundamental issues of morality can be inverted from one day to the next. Authors and publishers continue to pass off fiction as autobiography, and the most popular (and sometimes the most entertaining) television is a form of reality that is not really even real--nor is it fake.

In times like these, when almost nothing is certain--will we be married tomorrow or not? Will our banking system exist or not? Will we have a house or not?--manners often replace morality. One of the great ironies of the polis is that in times of extremis, the invisibility of the social contract provides an ordering mechanism that other more concretized systems do not.

In other words, being nice makes us feel grounded. It restores order. It calms and soothes. It reassures. Our economy may sink into a recessional morass, but you might get the thank you wave for letting some schmo squeeze into the lane in front of you.

It's really not a bad trade-off.

The Topps Obama Trading Cards

IT WAS WITH A mixture of fear and anticipation that I opened up the new Topps Obama trading cards. I was excited because I thought there might be some images of him wrestling with Hillary Clinton or dunking over George Stephanopolous.

Imagine my disappointment when the most action-packed card was not him decking John Edwards or tripping Bill Bradley, but the moment just after David Axelrod told yet another knock-knock joke. It was worse than all those football cards of offensive linemen in the three-point stance.

I wouldn't even need doubles to trade that card.

Another letdown was the sheer number of ties in the Obama trading cards. No one wears ties on baseball or basketball cards. Can you get excited as a collector when the star on the cards never seems to change his white collared shirt? It seems unlikely?

Wait, when did this post become an Andy Rooney routine?

Regardless, I was also hoping for some super cool stats on the back, like the number of direct hits during debates, or the number of times the word "change" was uttered during stump speeches. No such luck.

The truth is, the Topps corporation should market these as the Obama inaction cards. Sure, they feature heart-stopping images of the president waving, explaining a complicated point, and pretending to listen to John McCain, but a man can only take so much.

Sadly, these cards would feel more edgy, more active if they were candidate Obama cards rather than President Obama cards. It's sort of like capturing Manny Ramirez eating at Cheesecake Factory in November--the good stuff has already passed.

My suggestion to Topps is that they start working on the Supreme Court Judge Confirmation Hearings cards and the Republicans Who Switch Party cards. Throw in some stickers of recently outed and divorced politicians, and you've got something I'd actually trade for.