D.C. Roundup

Mayor Gray Federal Probe. Stewart. WaPo
"The federal investigation into Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s 2010 election now includes a focus on an alleged get-out-the-vote effort that was not publicly reported and that several campaign workers have called a “shadow campaign,” according to people with knowledge of the probe."

Barry in Winter. Suderman. WCP
"The greatest politician in the history of the District of Columbia lingers in his silver Jaguar in the parking lot next to Thurgood Marshall Academy charter school on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE. At 2 p.m., the rally’s scheduled start time, there were only a handful of people milling about. By 2:25 p.m., when Barry rolled up, there weren’t enough people there to field a football team."

Endorsements for D.C. Council. Editorial. WaPo
"LESS THAN a year ago, as voters selected an at-large D.C. Council member in a special election, the precarious state of city politics was becoming clear. Shaken by scandal, the District government, which had made so much progress over the previous dozen years, seemed in danger of slipping backward. Since then, the danger signs have multiplied. One council member has resigned in disgrace, and federal prosecutors are conducting a broader probe into suspected corruption. As D.C. voters go to the polls again April 3, the need for principled, committed leadership is urgent."

Finally. Howard Theater Ribbon Cutting April 9th. AP
WASHINGTON — A landmark theatre in northwest Washington that helped launched the careers of Ella Fitzgerald and Marvin Gaye is reopening to the public.

Wrote about the Howard Theater previously here.

RGIII Pro Day. Jones. WaPo
"With Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder, General Manager Bruce Allen, Coach Mike Shanahan,offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan and representatives from other teams looking on, Griffin again showed his potential as an elite level quarterback with an accurate arm and great mobility."

Fat Trell's Real D.C. Ramirez. WCP
"Fat Trel is watching a roomful of seniors do the electric slide.
It’s a miserable Saturday in February, and inside Kuehner House, a brick fortress of a retirement community on Good Hope Road SE, D.C.’s fastest-rising hip-hop star stands out like a Parental Advisory sticker" Sphere: Related Content

Trayvon Martin

The murder of 17 year old Trayvon Martin at the hands of George Zimmerman does not bother me because of the racist, moronic actions of Zimmerman that lead to Martin's death. Those actions are tragic, but they represent one moron, Zimmerman, and one boy who was unlucky enough to stumble across his path, Martin. That is terrible, but it happens. Sometimes a person is crazy or racist or stupid and others pay, but that is, at the end of the day, a local issue between two families that should not demand national attention.

And if Zimmerman had shot Martin and the Sanford Florida police conducted the investigation in a reasonable manner, I would say there's nothing more to see here, move along. But that's not what happened.

The Sanford Florida police handling the Martin shooting:

• failed to arrest Zimmerman, despite his pursuing Martin against the orders of the 911 operator telling him to let the boy go;
• accepted that a 28 year-old armed man shot a 17 year-old unarmed boy in self-defense;
• taking Zimmerman's story at his word only, failed to run a background check or test the shooter for alcohol or drug use at the time of the incident;
• did find time to drug test the victim, Martin;
• apparently "corrected" an eyewitness account of the event to better match their interpretation of events; and,
• failed to take note of a possible racist remark Zimmerman uttered during the 911 call.

The institutional response is the problem. Each one of us can deal with an individual racist act, but when an entire agency conducts itself in a way that comforts racists; that covers their tracks; that looks suspiciously at Black vicitms; that is when we all need to take notice. That's when the game is rigged. Sphere: Related Content

Whiteness

Whuuut?!? Two posts in one week?!?! You must be unemployed again.

No, just a little more free than usual. Trust me, it won't last.

So I stumbled upon this post regarding Rush Limbaugh and the Crisis in White Conservative Manhood and I found it sort of interesting. Not compelling, mind you, just sort of interesting. It's short on evidence and not particularly revealing, but I think it illustrates an attempt to delve into the issue of whiteness in a moderately critical way that I think the U.S. could benefit from.

The 'Crisis' essay didn't get into it, but for me it sparked the idea that there's an intesection between color blindness, whiteness, and "real america" where White America as a socio-political phenomenon exists.

"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit and these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation,” Sarah Palin

"Real America" serves as a proxy for White America. All that is "really truly" American is White to the minds of many. Removed from the label of "Whiteness", then it becomes easy to deny the existence of race, or to proclaim that you don't see race. In the end, you don't need to see race, because all concepts that would normally be packaged into a conception of White race are subsumed in your concept of "America". Does anyone think that Sarah Palin was considering rap, jazz, César Chávez, or Japanese internment when she was referring to "real America"? Not likely. She was talking about small, rural, white towns where race is not an issue because there is only one race present.

If we could find a way to talk about white America, and white culture, in a non-accusatory, non supremacy boosting, academic, way, it would go a long way toward resolving racial issues here. An honest and useful discussion of race must include more than the experiences of Blacks. We have to include the racial experiences of other groups, and as far as white people (or any group) are concerned, we have to find a way to do this without making people feel guilty or chest-thumpingly prideful. There has to be a way to talk about these issues truthfully and dispassionately. Sphere: Related Content

Who is this Independent Voter?

I've argued before that the independent voter is a myth. As others have pointed out, an independent voter implies that one votes for both republicans and democrats (or neither). But polls and studies assessing the voting patterns of American voters who call themselves independent suggest that "independents" do no such thing. Independent voters vote along partisan lines pretty reliably (they appear to simply be unwilling to classify with one party or another - that's not independent, that's just a failure to identify yourself in public).

Still, there's another point that appears to undermine the idea that there is some robust middle in America. Not only are independents a myth; there is good reason why there are few true independents:

"Liberals and conservatives don’t have a failure to communicate. They disagree. Critics play gotcha with the so-called centrists, asking how they can support same sex marriage and also give money to marriage opponent John Boehner. But that is such a cheap shot. The problem is not inconsistency on one position or another. There is no point at which a rational person can embrace both parties. For the two parties, roughly mapping onto liberal and conservative, it’s disagreement all the way down.

This is so, because, contrary to the wishful thinking of the why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along crowd, political principles don’t just come from nowhere. They start at the most fundamental level: what counts as knowledge? What does it mean to be a person? Different kinds of people require and deserve different forms of government." Hirshman The Myth of the Middle Melts Like Snow

The idea that there is a large group of people out there that seems to think that evolution and creationism are both great ideas or that women should have the right to choose and abortion should still be outlawed, is nonsense.

All of this is not to say that, yelling epithets at each other is a good idea. It's not. We can disagree without being disagreeable or hateful. But that's a different issue.
As far as the independent middle is concerned: Stop looking for it. It ain't there. Man up, take your side, and make sure your side wins the election. That's reality.

Update: Ruy Texiera at The New Republic isn't buying the Independents Myth either.

"Start with the premise of the book. It is that independents are all swing voters ready to move right or left politically—or in Killian’s feverish imagination, toward some inchoate centrist formation of the No Labels variety. This premise is based on the greatest myth in American politics: that independents are actually independent. They are not. As numerous studies have shown, the overwhelming majority of Americans who say there are “independent” lean toward one party or the other. Call them IINOs, or Independents In Name Only. IINOs who say they lean toward the Republicans think and vote just like regular Republicans. IINOs who say they lean toward the Democrats think and vote just like regular Democrats.

Just how strong is this relationship? In 2008, according to the University of Michigan’s National Election Study (NES), 90 percent of independents who leaned Democratic voted for Obama, actually a higher level of support than among weak Democratic partisans (those who said they were “not very strong” Democrats), 84 percent of whom voted for Obama. Among Republican-leaning independents, a still-high 78 percent voted for McCain, compared to 88 percent support among weak Republican identifiers."

Sphere: Related Content