Politics, culture, and ... toys

So I was on jailbreaktoys today, trying to purchase the Revolutionary set, and I see this awesome little indie Obama fundraiser.

They are selling these Obama action figures, with the perfect tag, "The first and only action figure with the power to transform a nation."

Best of all, for every action figure ordered, the folks at jailbreak donate a buck to Obama's campaign.

I like this especially because they are supporting my guy, but even if you aren't all about Obama, it is pretty cool to see how even funky web-based toy-makers have been mobilized.
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Fail Meme

Some friends turned me on to Fail Dogs this weekend, which are ok, but not as funny to me as Clinton Fail. Can we start a new meme?

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Thoughts on Obama

As anyone who has been reading my other blog for any length of time knows, I'm in the bag for Obama. Hell, if I was hot and female, I'd give Obama girl a run for her money.

OK, that's a bit of tragic hyperbole, but you get where I'm coming from, I'm sure.

As I write this, I'm no less pro-Obama (Probama?) than ever before, but I do have some problems. Not with him, necessarily, more likely his message handlers.

Here's the thing (and I'm about to get all wonky on you, kind of)... Obama is straight-up post-materialist. And that's cool. Plus, I'm pretty much post-materialist, too, so it's real cool.

Enough.

Post-materialist is just a fancy-schmancy way of saying that he is concerned with all the kinds of things people are concerned with when times are good. You know, when food is on the table, everyone is employed, the nation is relatively at peace. (This country is hardly ever at peace, if you think about it, so we have to approach this thing relatively.) Anyway, point is, when times are good, we stop worrying about the basics and start opening our minds and wallets to other things less directly pressing. No pressing job issues? Let's fix the environment then. No crazy violent crime rate? Let's help the homeless then. No problems with inflation? Let's do campaign finance reform. And so on and so on. Reasonable, right? Right.

Problem is, shit is not comfy right now, and it is getting less comfy by the day. It is still pretty ok for the youth (who don't have to worry about mortgages yet) and the well-educated (because they are usually on pretty solid financial ground). Surprise, surprise - I just named 2/3 of Obama's base. The other 1/3, African-Americans, are as bad off as anyone else, but supporting Obama isn't about post-materialism, it is about history and identity and, yes, hope. And sometimes that stuff is as important as anything else.

Hillary is definitely not a post-materialist. I don't think she's capable of it, even if times were great (which they are decidedly not). She's had a bunker mentality since high school (if not birth) and such a worldview does not usually allow oneself to focus on the less immediate things. This is why I'd really like her in the Senate, as a leader, fostering change for a long time to come.

My guy Barack has plenty of policy details to offer, not just on his webpage but in every stump speech he delivers. Focusing on his policy details just doesn't fit with the media's stereotype of his candidacy, so it doesn't make the news, but that's another complaint for another time.

So where am I going with all this? Honestly, I don't know. Mostly just trying to say I wish my candidate would take a step back, realize that the political landscape has changed dramatically since he launched his bid last year, and recalibrate his pitch. He's got all the right positions, he just needs to change the way he lets people know.

He's the candidate of change, which is great and necessary. We want transformation and we desperately need it. But right now people really need to keep their houses and feed their kids and put gas in the tank and get their cousins and sons and fathers home alive from wars abroad.

It is possible to have both, but you have to speak to both. Obama's gone from rhetoric of transformation to rhetoric of electoral calculation (i.e., why HRC can't win). He's as right today as he's ever been, but it wasn't the rhetorical switch he needed to make. He needs to adopt a rhetoric of problem solving, and he can do so without being crass or pandering. All he needs to do is talk about his ideas.

I hope he and his advisors aren't too hooked on the hubris it seems they've been caught on of late to make this change. It'd be a damn shame if we ended up with a lesser leader cause he/they couldn't read the tea leaves. Read more!

Why Aren't We Talking About the Food Crisis?

Jimmy and I were talking in the hallway yesterday about the food crisis and the end of Empire. We ran into another of our colleagues and asked him what he thought, but he hadn't heard about the food shortages or the food riots. Sigh. I don't think that the U.S. MSM has paid nearly enough attention to this issue. Why not?

And, is it all caused by rising gas prices or are there other factors? Read more!

Three Un-related Things

1. I had a dream last night in which I yelled at Hillary Clinton severely for not being nicer to my pregnant friend. I accused her of not being a real woman, among other things. WTF?

2. How do I get on this list? And, I'm sad to say that I don't know anyone on it personally. Can we start a facebook for that?

3. I'm confused about where Obama wins and electoral maps. What do you think that it means that he tends to win in the big cities (typically where Democrats win), but not so much in the country/suburbs. Does that mean that "true" Democrats like Obama better and more centrists like Clinton? But, I thought that Obama was getting all the new Dems and the Independents and the cross-over Republicans. Very confusing. What am I missing? Please don't say that the "urban vote" is the minority vote--I mean, is that what it is??

Please discuss.

ps: When is spellcheck going to learn how to spell Obama?? Jeez. Read more!

Bitter Battle Blog

A lot of buzz has been raised over Barack Obama’s recent comments about small-town voters. The initial reaction was merely the public being called a name that they didn’t like. Voters like him to tell the truth, but start to get shifty when it pertains to them. Polls numbers show, however, that this offense didn’t take for long . His recent misstep shows how out of touch he is with the image of perfection that the media has built him up to be – and how he can relate to us normal-folk.

This is nothing new, especially to the blogosphere, mainstream media, or news sources.

The voters have moved on from this issue. Hillary never got the bump in the polls she was expecting, Obama is still gaining or holding ground in Pennsylvania (depending on what poll you look at), and the superdelegates aren’t moving. Without political gains on the issue, you would think that the story would be dead.

But it continues. We’ve had apologies before and we’ve had stories go on infinitely longer than they should have. This conversation is no longer about the content of the comment, however. It’s a game: how many entendres can we come up with “Bitter”? Now, don’t get me wrong – there have been some good ones. My favorite has been “Guns and Bitter”. They range from “Bitter Battle” to “Bitter-Sweet Symphony”. The most recent stories are how inconsequential these comments have been on the race at large.

I can’t help but feel that the continued frenzy over this issue is fueled by the plays on words that continue to plague articles. A new pun comes to mind, and someone on the tail end of the spin cycle contributes with an analogy of Obama trying to swallow a “bitter pill”. I’ve done my part to keep it going, too, with my own variation from the “Butter Battle Book”. Language has a powerful hold on this election. The level of political discourse in this country is higher than at any point in my lifetime, and I give much of the credit to Barack Obama’s powerful speeches that inspire a nation. It’s just a bit depressing to see this debasement of language by the infotainment (read: news) industry.

Now, I like puns as much as the next guy. Plays on words are the epitome of my sense of humor. But when language is stretched to the brink of uselessness merely for the sake of using another bad entendre, it creates a blasé attitude towards language in general – and I can’t afford to go through another era of “common” language.

It's not my fault. I guess the media has just made me bitter.


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Build it, They Will Come

Political Cotton Candy is new, very new. In fact, PCC is so new that many of its co-bloggers have not yet written a blog post. Perhaps they are waiting to find out what particular lacuna we fill? Behold, the Google search strings that lead our many, many readers to find us:

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Notice any themes?

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When/Why Ideas are Political

Stanley Fish has a great essay in the NYT in response to the soon to be published “French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States” by Francois Cusset.

It looks like a great book to introduce graduate students to the history of ideas. Anyone plan to read it? Read more!