no supper tonight

In mycountrytisofthee, we’ve hit that sweet spot in the campaign where all those details about healthcare mandates and biofuels are forgot as the genuinely silly season begins and the last vestiges of any kind of mock-seriousness are replaced by Pythonesque displays of hyperbole, shape-shifting, vitriol, and a steady stream of mis-speakings followed by either Byzantine explanations or quick displays of remorse. And it’s only gonna get worse–Joe Bageant, writing on the “bitterness’ business: “November is still seven months away. No normal person can stand, much less relish, seven more months of all this. But we will wallow in it all for the same reason a hog spends most of its life knee deep in shit. It has no other choice, it has plenty of company, and doesn’t know any other way of life.”

The Reverend Wright got the party started, “God DAAAAAMN America!” serving as the political equivalent of it’s getting-hot-in-here, so-take-off-all-your-clothes. Senator Clinton, jealous of the attention Obama received as a result of Wright’s bellicose imprecations, cast herself in a latter day Perils of Pauline, dodging sniper fire on a Bosnian tarmac, and added to the melodrama by scripting fables in which Chelsea narrowly escaped death at the WTC on 9/11. Then, in what must seem to be an nightmarish re-enactment of the Iowa primaries, the candidates found themselves forced to consort with the commoners and cows of Pennsylviania. Obama disgraced himself rolling a gutter ball, and further highlighted the gap between himself and The People by casually referring to anyone outside of Philadelphia as a bitter, racist, shotgun-toting snakehandler. Having spent a good chunk of my life in Pennsylvania, I was impressed by the speed with which he summed up the terrain. Hillary, on the other hand, re-invented herself once again as—in the kind of turn I’d like to see Obama making more often—an “Annie Oakley,” bragging about the ducks she’s bagged and doing boilermakers with the locals. Joe Lieberman took time out from campaigning for McCain to sum up the situation and draw the obvious conclusions:

NAPITALIANO: Hey Sen. Lieberman, you know Barack Obama, is he a Marxist as Bill Kristol says might be the case in today’s New York Times? Is he an elitist like your colleague Hillary Clinton says he is?

LIEBERMAN: Well, you know, I must say that’s a good question. I know him now for a little more than three years since he came into the Senate and he’s obviously very smart and he’s a good guy. I will tell ya that during this campaign, I’ve learned some things about him, about the kind of environment from which he came ideologically. And I wouldn’t…I’d hesitate to say he’s a Marxist, but he’s got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America.

These positions would include things like not planning to wipe Tehran from the face of the planet in between the swearing-in and the inaugural ball. Still, it would be fascinating to hear Joe get more deeply into the subject. Would he consider Obama as tending towards Leninism or Maoism? Do Obama’s economic positions seems to reflect those of the earlier Marx in the Grundrisse, or the “scientific” Marx of Capital? Does Lieberman suspect that Obama would implement, with the assent of a Democratically-controlled Congress, the infamous “community of women” envisaged by Marx? What impact would that have on the Lieberman marriage?

(What I haven’t myself seen pointed yet out yet, amidst the blather, is that Obama’s use of the word “they” exploded his own myth. It was all about us, the great big happy family celebrated in the 2004 DC keynote speech, the we in yes we can, Ashley and “the elderly black man” in that masterful speech on race. Whether the use of “they” in front of a San Francisco audience was condescending is beside the point; in positing an us-and-a-them, Obama revealed the very real fissures underlying his campaign theme, and the binary way of thinking to which he too is susceptible. What I would have liked to have heard: “WE are bitter. I speak for the bitter, not because I “understand” them, but because I AM one” (and the bitter comes out better on a stolen guitar….)

Meanwhile, someone new showed up in Congress, walked into the House of Representatives, “the most junior of junior Congresspeople,” and delivered a swearing-in-speech that included a blast against the war that had Republicans stalking out of the Chamber. But when you’ve actually taken five bullets on the tarmac, the real ones, not the kind Hillary Clinton fabricates out of the thin Yugoslavian air, maybe you don’t care so much about whether a few Republicans boo.

Her name is Jackie Speier, and she replaced the late Tom Lantos after a run—off for California’s 12th district seat, and the shooting on the tarmac (Jonestown) was not even the worst experience of her rather remarkably tragic life—this is a pretty good account. She’s tough and I find myself really liking her. Meanwhile, Obama bowls, Hillary spins, and the war goes on.

So, for Congressman Speier, a suggestion from the Cramps: c’mon little mama let’s tear this damn place up.