Editor's Note: Happy Thanksgiving from the Media Consortium! This week, we aren't stopping The Audit, The Pulse, The Diaspora, or The Mulch, but we are taking a bit of a break. Expect shorter blog posts, and The Diaspora and The Mulch will be posted on Wednesday afternoon, instead of their usual Thursday and Friday postings. We'll return to our normal schedule next week.
In testimony Tuesday afternoon that literally had my jaw dropping, a forensic psychiatrist called by the U.S. government testified that Omar Khadr, the Canadian who Monday pled guilty to a slew of terrorist acts including murder, is too dangerous to be released because he is sincerely religious and became even more devout at the Guantanamo Bay prison.
I have a thought to add on what I think is an important broader point to Darcy's post last night on the lack of opportunity for bipartisanship.
The point for me is what happens when you pursue this game anyway. In every election, Democratic Party institutional structures (principally the party committees and, if a Democrat is President, the White House) target vulnerable Republicans, many of whom are moderates. Think DeWine-Brown, Chafee-Whitehouse, Talent-McCaskill, Collins-Allen, Sununu-Shaheen, Smith-Merkley. If Specter had not switched, he would have a big bulls-eye on his back, too. They also target moderates and drive them into retirement with the threat of a strong challenger-see Warner, John. They also target open seats where voters may have elected moderate Republicans- there are places, for example, where moderate Republicans decide not to run because they are facing a high-profile, highly-recruited Democrat who will mop the floor with them.
Targeting resources in this way keeps moderates out of the House and Senate and decreases opportunities for bipartisanship. Yet the White House keeps insisting on bipartisanship, and we find ourselves in a no-win scenario. If this were 2002, the Republicans looking at our side across the negotiating table probably would have been Chafee, Snowe, Collins (at least initially), Specter, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, and maybe DeWine or Voinovich. Instead, we're dealing with Grassley, Enzi, and Snowe. Why? Because we kicked out all the rest (and tried to beat Collins with Tom Allen). That is a major ideological shift. When you have this going on, and the White House keeps pursuing bipartisanship, it is self-defeating. Instead of compromising with a Lincoln Chafee, you find yourself compromising with a John McCain. If you beat McCain, you find yourself at the table with a Saxby Chambliss. And so forth.
The positive result of this is that you eventually find yourself with such a hard-right, "party of no" Senator, like Kyl or someone, that won't even come to the table, and Obama can do his "well, I reached out and tried" shtick and then muscle something through. I don't care as much about window dressing bipartisanship, like Obama doing that shtick or holding inauguration dinners for "my dear friend Sen. McCain", so whatever. But my concern is that Obama's philosophy does not line up with the "muscle something through" way of doing things, and that he will diddle around for months and try and move to the right, chasing whichever Senator he has to deal with further and further to the right to get to their position instead of telling them to fuck off. That's where you find the negative result. My point to add onto Darcy's post is that the blind pursuit of bipartisanship becomes a dangerous game where you both waste the nation's time at the negotiating table and/or you end up with a bill so devoid of progressive principles it's not worth doing anything on.
This whole set-up reminds me of the prophecy in the Harry Potter series- "neither can live while the other survives." You can't have (a) a strategy of targeting moderates (b) an insistence upon bipartisanship, and (c) a willingness to drag things on/not muscle legislation when you can't get bipartisanship, all at the same time. Something has to give. The White House and Democratic Congressional leaders have to pick and choose, and for our country's sake, I hope they give up this blind pursuit of bipartisanship.
The revelation last week that Albus Dumbledore, the powerful and wise wizard of the Harry Potter series, was gay caught the attention of the entertainment news. It earned the wrath of the the religious right and Bill O'Reilly (who called it part of author J.K. Rowling's "gay agenda." And most importantly, it received applause from the audience of children and families to whom Rowling was speaking.
This is the reaction that matters -- because Harry Potter readers are soon going to be running the world and their beliefs will triumph while O'Reilly joins anti-wizard Jerry Falwell in the hereafter. Messages of hate from the religious wrong are having less and less impact in this next generation -- while messages of love, like that Rowling offer, are gaining traction.
Among the tongue-in-cheek tells -- his sense of style, his "flaming" phoenix pet and that his name's anagram is "Male bods rule, bud" -- are reasons more core to the HP Alliance's mission: Dumbledore's openness and sensitivity. As Slack argues:
Rowling said that she viewed the whole series as a prolonged treatise on tolerance....Like the LGBT community that has time and again used its own oppression to fight for the equality of others, Dumbledore was a champion for the rights of werewolves, giants, house elves, muggle-borns, centaurs, merpeople -- even alternative marriage.
The Alliance's aim to promote issues from genocide in Darfur to workers' rights in America isn't a stretch -- these lessons are in the novels, even if readers don't realize how political the message is. Should we be surprised that a story-teller does a better job communicating values than many of our politicians?
So the religious right is right to be worried. Their stranglehold on our culture has been broken. Jerry Falwell would never have been able to stand up to Albus Dumbledore in a fight.
"The AP-Ipsos poll found 22 percent of liberals and moderates said they had not read a book within the past year, compared with 34 percent of conservatives."
- An Associated Press story last week
"Obsfucation usually requires a lot more words...so I'm not at all surprised by the loquaciousness of liberals."
White House Spokesperson Tony Fratto, in response to that story
Despite our First Lady being a librarian, reading hasn't been a high priority of the Bush Administration - nor, apparently, of the larger conservative base despite the attempts by right-wing publishing houses such as Regnery. Forget morbid jokes about what Bush hasn't read or what he has -- this is about more than the President's dislike of "book-learning." This is about an administration that, if the previous quote by its spokesman is to be believed, is doing its darndest to keep Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism In Public Life continually relevant. (A great read, by the way.)
Liberals love words. We love words because we love discourse. But our love of books goes even deeper: reading is intrinsically a revolutionary act, as figures as disparate as Thomas Paine and Franz Fanon might tell you. And literacy is a powerful - and therefore threatening - source of liberal activism.
"While literature can be a beautiful solitary experience, it can also bring people together in a community."
This sentiment is at the heart of the growing Reading Liberally network of book clubs and tours, but the quote itself comes from Andrew Slack, the 20-something founder of the HP Alliance -- which is making sure our Harry Potter-crazed world recognizes the powerful social justice messages in the adventures of J.K. Rowling's young wizards.
Andrew is by no means alone. Harry and the Potters, a wizard rock band, will be playing to a crowd of 2,000 at New York's Bohemian Beer Garden in Astoria on Thursday as a build-up to their 6,000-person concert on Harvard Yard on Friday -- a week after the 5th film hit the theaters, and the eve of the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in the series.
"Hundreds...thousands of people getting together to rock out to songs about the power of love," explains Slack. "And not in a hippyish way...these are teenagers who feel a connection to the books and to each other."
The nearly 10,000 friends on the HP Alliance's MySpace page demonstrate that connection...and Slack wants to make sure they are talking about more than whether Hermione and Ron will end up together. Especially: the genocide in Darfur.
From their press release last week:
In anticipation of the back-to-back release of the final Harry Potter book and the fifth movie -- HP Alliance is working with the Genocide Intervention Network and several human rights groups to organize hundreds of house parties all over the world.
On July 14, each house party will listen to an HP Alliance podcast where Joe Wilson, former U.S. Ambassador; John Prendergast, senior advisor to the International Crisis Group; and Dot Maver, executive director of the Peace Alliance will discuss the history of the Sudanese genocide and how regular people can do something to stop it. The podcast will also feature "Wizard Rock" bands like "Harry and the Potters," a young Harry Potter fan who got the state of Kansas to divest 38 million dollars from companies that fund the genocide in Darfur, and is co-sponsored by the popular Harry Potter news site, the Leaky Cauldron.
Using house parties to connect Harry Potter with a serious issue like the genocide in Darfur has helped capture the attention of young adults all over the world. "I'm 16 years old and have been actively trying to do just what you guys are planning for years!" said HP Alliance member Michelle. "I'm just a teenager, but I have a voice and a big heart and want to put all my effort into planning an awesome party to help spread the word and help Darfur!"
But the social justice message of Harry Potter isn't issue specific. Beloved Dumbledore rejects the entire right-wing style of divisive, fear-mongering politics. After Voldemort's return, Slack notes, Dumbledore warns of the dark wizard's ability to tear people apart, and argues the only way to counter it is "an equally strong bond of friendship."
And throughout the books, today's political topics are drawn out in black-and-white.
On the evil of torture: Dumbledore begs the Ministry of Magic to rid themselves of the Dementors, saying that a free society has no place for their kind in our penal system.
On the right to trial: Harry's godfather Sirius Black was held and tortured for 13 years without a trial, and in the most recent volume Stan Shunpike and Mundungus Fletcher were imprisoned without trial despite the Minister's knowledge they may be innocent.
On the value of diplomacy: communicating with the foreign and frightening Giants proves better option than isolation or violent conflict.
On racial equality: full rights for "purebloods," "mudbloods" and Muggle-born wizards.
On worker's rights: Hermione's campaign to empower the House Elves.
The 7th and final volume will reach millions of readers within the first weekend -- citizens of all ages who can learn about justice and equality in an open society...and who can take action in the real world to fight the battles Harry fights in his.
As Slack (who'd welcome comment directly at andrew@thehpalliance.org or via their MySpace site) concludes:
A story can change the world. Traditional politics isn't the only way to make people aware or to get people active. We can do a lot with this story and with this gigantic community of readers that's dedicated to fighting the dark arts in the real world.
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