Tuesday, October 12th, 2004

What Else Is Back? The Late 80s

Did you love the 80s? They’re back.

Continuing this thread, here’s an overview in the NY Times on the rise in youth homicides. In certain cities, streets have started looking again like the late 80s.

The most notable thing in the article was James Alan Fox’s comments about the Bush administration’s cutbacks on youth programs. Fox, if you remember, is no Clinton-nostalgic liberal. He’s in fact one of the right-wing ideological architects of the War on Youth.

Back at the start of the 90s, he argued that the rise in population of young black and Latino males would drive a rise in violent crime the likes of which America would have never seen. Here’s a quote from him from back then: “We are facing a potential bloodbath of teenage violence in years ahead that will be so bad, we’ll look back at the 1990s and say those were the good old days.”

(Yup, C. Delores Tucker was a huge James Alan Fox groupie.)

Fox’s comment looks laughably ironic these days. The 90s were the good old days–youth violent crime rates hit twenty-year lows. So he’s noticeably dialed back–or at least the writer and editor have–the tone of that ridiculous claim.

Interestingly enough, the right-wingers lost the battle for truth, but won the battle for politics. During the 90s, 48 states made their juvenile justice policies more punitive, and in 2000, the crowning achievement of the War on Youth–Proposition 21–passed in California.

But now even Fox seems to agree that the failures of Bush’s domestic and economic agenda have something to do with the rise in homicides. Certainly their War on Youth didn’t do anything to prevent it. The bottom line is that the fundamental problems–poverty, bad schools, no youth programs, etc. etc. etc.–don’t get resolved by locking more kids up or sending them to adult prisons. They just keep coming back and rearing their badass heads.

posted by @ 5:24 am | 0 Comments

Friday, October 8th, 2004

Where’s Race In This Race?

First impressions: Bush’s impassioned aggressiveness signalled weakness. His jokes–except the old “Want some wood?” frat joke–got no laughs. Kerry’s wooden-ness seemed calming in comparison. I think there is no question that Kerry projected that ineffable leadership thing.

But the main question in this race is: where’s race?

In all the discussion about joblessness, education, the war, and domestic issues, there is no talk coming from either Bush or Kerry on the issues that matter to people of color.

OK, so Bush came out against the Dred Scott decision–wow, tough call there, Mr. President–on the grounds that whoever decided that one was doing based on their personal decision. But in all the talk about jobs there is no discussion about who are the jobless, what the effect of that joblessness is on inner-city violence. In all the talk about education, there is no discussion about which children are being left behind in the rush to standardized testing and the tax-cut-driven shift of moneys toward the military. In all the talk about the Patriot Act, there is no discussion about the Muslims and South Asians who have disproportionately been slammed by the very real rollback in civil liberties.

Come on Kerry, get real. You want the base to show up on November 2? Start acting like Bush, who ain’t afraid to call a liberal a liberal.

posted by @ 6:52 pm | 1 Comment

Friday, October 8th, 2004

Enrique’s Journey

In NYC today, I caught this photo exhibition at the Open Society Institute by Don Bartletti: Enrique’s Journey. It’s the incredibly powerful story of a boy’s travels from Honduras across the border to find a mother who left him to find work in the U.S. Please see Bartletti’s photos and read Sonia Nazario’s story.

posted by @ 4:37 pm | 0 Comments

Friday, October 8th, 2004

Inconvient Evidence

While we’re on the topic of Bush’s image-management deterioration…

This from Brian Wallis’ introduction to the Inconvient Evidence exhibition of the Abu Ghraib photos at the International Center on Photography:

“Aside from the atrocities they depict, as photographs, the images from Abu Ghraib contradict the studied heroics of twentieth-century war photography that have been updated to the current conflict. Away from the photojournalistic fluorishes designed to make war palatable–the heroic flag-raisings, the dogged foot soldiers close to the action, the sense of shared humanity among combatants, and the search for visual evidence that war is universal and inevitable–the often-banal JPEGs from Iraq proffer a very different picture: war is systematic cruelty enforced at the level of everyday torture.”

Check excerpts from Seymour Hersh’s new book here. (The Department of Defense statement of defense is here. The famous New Yorker articles are archived here and here.

posted by @ 4:32 pm | 0 Comments

Friday, October 8th, 2004

La Plug

Me on the best cartoonist since Aaron McGruder, Garry Trudeau, and Ted Rall: Lalo Alcaraz.

posted by @ 3:47 am | 2 Comments

Friday, October 8th, 2004

Bone Thugs N Harmony Voters

Soccer moms, NASCAR dads, and Bone Thugs N Harmony voters: Farai Chideya on why it’s all down to Ohio. Her new book Trust: Reaching The 100 Million Missing Voters is essential hip-hop generation reading. Cop it now…

By the way, today is the last day to register to vote in New York and many other states. Get to a post office now and do that thing.

posted by @ 3:39 am | 0 Comments

Thursday, October 7th, 2004

Who I’d Like To Be When If I Grow Up

Motherfuckin Frank “Bush Killa” Rich, cultural critic nonpareil, on potentially the turning point in the campaign–the slow death by split screen of the Bush myth-making machine. He is this great every single week.

posted by @ 6:24 pm | 0 Comments

Thursday, October 7th, 2004

Time For An October Surprise?

Bush is down in the polls. Kerry is gaining in projected electoral votes. Could Osama’s capture be imminent?

posted by @ 6:20 pm | 0 Comments

Tuesday, October 5th, 2004

Dr. Doom Says Goodbye Black Vote

First impressions: I actually only really caught the last half hour but it seemed a surprisingly bloodless affair. Both looked tired, a bit confused, and if anything, Cheney seemed to bring down Edwards energy level. Smiley couldn’t even nail his dad’s story–which has been a stump speech since he was on the debate team in high school 5 years ago. Cheney is the kind of guy who could end a Nelly party.

At the same time, Cheney’s admission that he didn’t know the AIDS fatality numbers for African American women was just phenomenally dumb. I bet most major media outlets will be ignoring this question, but for people of color, he’s just set the Republican Party way back. Remember how we were discussing the Republican’s chances with black voters a little while ago? That was Karl Rove’s idea. Folks, Karl Rove is getting ready to hang himself.

posted by @ 6:44 pm | 2 Comments

Tuesday, October 5th, 2004

Stuff

+ Eugene Kuo’s web-photo-essay 25 Days in Turkey

+ The Prickly Paradigm catalog, including Thomas Frank on cultural studies and Michael Silverstein on the speechifying of Abe and W.

+ Write your own speech for W. And he’ll talk it for ya.

posted by @ 5:20 am | 0 Comments



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