Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘john kerry’

So with Obama’s inauguration yesterday, the Broadway show Avenue Q needs some replacement lyrics, quick:

With the imminent departure of President George W. Bush, the creators and producers of the Tony-winning musical Avenue Q launched a contest to replace a lyric in the musical’s final song, “For Now,” that states, “George Bush!” is only “for now.”

Over 2,000 entries were received, and the judging panel — including Q creators Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx and Jeff Whitty and the show’s producers — have selected four possibilities that will be tested over several performances to “gauge the response and audience reaction, and determine which lyric emerges as the most satisfying,” according to a press statement.

The contest lyrics that will be tested follow:

“Recession”
“Prop 8″
“This show”
“Your mother-in-law”

Avenue Q is, of course, no stranger to political satire. In 2004, it held its own version of the Bush-Kerry presidential debate… with song, dance and puppets.

Bono called Paul Martin “infuriating” for his refusal to make large commitments of increased foreign aid in the wake of Live 8:

“He’s very difficult to deal with because he won’t agree to things that he doesn’t believe he can deliver, although that is very frustrating and annoying and infuriating,” Bono told reporters while standing next to Martin.

Canada currently spends the equivalent of 0.26 percent of GDP on foreign aid. Martin says he would rather commit to small increases he knows he can afford than make long-term promises.

Bono, I love your music and the video for Where The Streets Have No Name kicks ass. So I mean this with all due respect: shut up!

Martin may be a weak political leader who waffles more than an Eggo, but at least he’s a political leader. Who elected Bono leader of anything?

This is just part of a larger rant that I have about celebrities and politics. We used to have economists talking about the economy, international relations experts discussing international relations, political analysts talking politics… Agree or disagree, the people leading the discourse usually actually knew something about their topic and had solid credentials in their field.

Since when did “#1 on the Billboard rock charts” become a credential for discussing world trade or poverty?

This is not a new phenomenon. It’s been going on for years, and has been encouraged by the fact that stars get publicity for their political action, and are under a large amount of pressure to pretend to care about causes bigger than themselves. Some actually do care. I have no problem with that.

What I do have a problem with is this notion that we’re supposed to listen to them because they’re celebrities. In a debate about world trade, if you put a Ph.D. in global economics at a table with Jeanine Garofalo, why should we assume that they’re on equal footing to discuss the issues? I won’t give much weight to Paul Martin’s opinion on rock music, so why should I care so much what Bono thinks about politics?

In last year’s American election, in which we had Springsteen singing for Kerry and Britney Spears cheering for Bush, I couldn’t help but wonder whether anyone was actually basing their vote on what celebrities were saying. And if so, what does that say about the electorate?

That’s my issue with Live 8 in general. International aid and third-world poverty are serious issues, and nobody elected Roger Waters or Dave Matthews to decide how best to spend our tax dollars to deal with them.

Celebrities are human beings – often with good hearts and fat bank accounts. If they want to do charity work or get involved in worthy causes, more power to them. But when they use their charity work as a publicity stunt, it cheapens them and their cause.

It also creates issues among fans who respect celebrities for their art but dislike their politics. Should I refuse to watch Sean Penn’s movies because I don’t like his soapbox political views? No, that’s mixing issues, isn’t it? But by suggesting that his celebrity status lends credence to his politics, the celebrities themselves have mixed those issues, leaving someone like me to either have to avoid art because of politics, or wonder if I’m implicitly supporting politics because of art. When I go to an Our Lady Peace concert and, in the midst of screaming and cheering, Raine Maida shouts that we should “send a message to Bush to stay out of Iraq”, it puts a sour taste in my mouth. Regardless of his message (I’d feel the same way if Raine said the opposite), suddenly I’m no longer at a rock concert, but at a political rally. It didn’t say that on my ticket. I didn’t pay for that. All it did was to make me feel manipulated and used.

The most reasonable point I’ve ever heard from a celebrity on the issue of celebs in politics comes from Alice Cooper:

“To me, that’s treason. I call it treason against rock-and-roll, because rock is the antithesis of politics. Rock should never be in bed with politics. If you’re listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you’re a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we’re morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal.”

Cooper’s comments were made in the context of last year’s US election campaign, but they’re equally valid for issues like foreign aid and world trade.

So let Bono think that Paul Martin is “infuriating”. That’s fine. I don’t really care. I may disagree with Martin an awful lot, but here he is being eminently reasonable, refusing to make lavish promises he can’t keep and instead sticking to more immediate, gradual commitments. Foreign aid in itself won’t solve African poverty overnight. And, despite what he may think, Bob Geldof is not uniquely qualified to tell us how to think.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe – just maybe – if Bono were Canadian and had actually voted for Martin, then his criticism might be a bit more valid. In the meantime, please stick to rock music and let the politicians stick to politics.

This quiz seeks to go “beyond red or blue” and classify American voters according to 9 different political categories:

Contrary to the widespread impression of a nation only divided into two unified “red” and “blue” camps, our latest survey finds important cleavages on values and basic attitudes within each party. As a result, both parties face internal challenges as well as opportunities to expand their constituencies.

Anyway, the quiz stubbornly insists that I’m an “enterpriser”, which it classifies as Republican, Conservative, rich and male. Er… not exactly accurate. I tried to tell it that I was against government meddling in religion or morality, in favour of gay rights, and that I probably would’ve voted for Kerry if I were American, but it didn’t listen. I guess I have to win the lottery and get a sex change operation now.

Then again, reading the 9 categories I have to conclude that I don’t fit any of the descriptions. “Canadian”, unfortunately, was not one of the choices.

(Via Mike Silverman, who the quiz didn’t listen to either).

That seems to be the buzz.

But could she really win? Could she capture more votes than John Kerry did last night? Certainly she’s more charismatic. She’s a proven campaigner and she was probably the brains behind any good decisions that Clinton made during his term. And both she and her husband are evidently still hugely popular.

But would it be enough?

I can’t help but think that… god damn, this election is just barely over! Can we give it a rest for a while before we start campaigning for the next one???

Bush winning the election is not what’s making me so uncomfortable. At least, it doesn’t make me any more uncomfortable than a Kerry win would have.

The trouble is, the combination of results that have given the Republicans another four years in the White House, significant gains in Congress and a virtual lock on the Senate all at the same time. That means that one side pretty much dominates all three houses – as opposed to the tenuous hold they had last term. And no matter what side the power is concentrated on, that is too much power for one team in a nation that is very much bitterly divided.

The GOP doesn’t have much to hold them back now. Despite the fact that nearly half the country didn’t vote for them, they have a popular vote win, a win on “their” issues in many direct questions, and pretty much a free rein to move the country even further to the right for the next four years – and, with Supreme Court appointments, for a long time after that.

Gay marriage is not an issue that should be decided by popular vote – because a majority shouldn’t get to decide to deny rights to a minority. But look for the Republicans to push ahead for a nationwide constitutional ban on gay marriage, for no good reason other than because many people find the idea distasteful. In fact, this issue probably helped Bush win the election, by encouraging Conservatives to go cast a vote. Similarly, abortion is once again in trouble. We can probably expect a woman’s right to choose being gradually chipped away in the next few years.

Many Kerry supporters are disappointed because they fear another four years of what they perceive to be devastating international policies by the Bush team. Personally, I’m much more concerned about the domestic American scene. In fact, the Democrats most likely lost this election by assuming Iraq was the only issue, and failing to make a strong case for their liberal values at home.

And with so much power concentrated on the Republican side, I admit I’m worried. I’d be just as worried if all the power were concentrated on the left. Either way, too much power in one camp with too few checks and balances is a dangerous thing.

Despite the conspiracy theorists’ claims, the Jewish vote is rarely an election factor, and certainly wasn’t this time. Concentrated in locked up states like New York, and not enough to do the job in swing states like Florida, who Jews were voting for wasn’t a top story for most media networks who were too busy covering the story-that-wasn’t-in-Ohio to notice.

But the big question going into this election was, would they or wouldn’t they?

The Jewish vote has been heavily Democratic since time immortal. But in light of 9/11, the war on terror, the situation in Israel and the alignment of the far left with Israel’s enemies, would some lifelong Jewish Democrats shift their allegiance to Bush? Would committed Democrats react like Meryl and Lynn and vote for Bush because of international issues? Or would they act more like Allison, putting these issues aside to vote for the candidate who they still feel is best on domestic issues?

Ha’aretz is reporting that Bush picked up 22% of the Jewish vote this election. That’s up 3 percentage points from the 19% he got in 2000. So it seems that there were at least some Jewish voters who switched allegiances.

On the other hand, that’s still 78% of Jewish voters casting their ballots for Kerry. And the “why” isn’t exactly a mystery:

They predicted “anticipated conflicts” between the Republican majority on Capitol Hill and the Jewish community on issues such as separation of church and state, abortion, gay rights, and same-sex marriage – issues, one Jewish leader said Wednesday, on which “the vast majority of the Jewish community disapproves of the Republicans’ positions and views.”

The voting broke down similarly for Jews as it did for Christians, with the more secular voting for Kerry and the ultra-Orthodox religious allying more closely with Bush:

According to unconfirmed results, Bush won 75 percent of Jewish votes in two large Brooklyn voting precincts that have a substantial concentration of Orthodox Jews, compared to a 25 percent turnout for Kerry.

Ultra-Orthodox activists predicted Wednesday that the final results will prove that other voting precincts in Brooklyn with an ultra-Orthodox populace overwhelmingly supported Bush.

[ . . . ]

“In the current elections, Orthodox Jews played within the community the role of evangelicals in the general electorate,” Furst said. The difference is that evangelicals make up about 40 percent of America’s population, while the percentage of Orthodox members in the Jewish community does not exceed 10 percent.

That may be so, but it’s telling that the division line in the sand seems to be religious versus secular, not one religion versus another. (The Muslim vote, of course, is an exception. An estimated 93% of Muslims voted for Kerry.)

At any rate, the big story here hasn’t materialized the way some people thought it might. The Jewish population did not become conservative overnight, abandoning decades of liberal values in order to vote for a president whose support for Israel is – at least in part – due to his evangelical Christian beliefs. Considering that there was no Joseph Lieberman on the Democratic ticket this time around, getting only 3% less of the Jewish vote than four years ago can hardly be called a defeat for Kerry.

My hope is that with Kerry’s concession, the healing process can begin. Sounds like a cliché, doesn’t it? Besides, it has about as much chance of happening as Michael Moore voting for Bush.

Kerry should have conceded hours earlier, but at least he didn’t drag this out for weeks. Now, love him or hate him, Americans at least know that Bush is their president.

As I predicted, it looks like a fairly convincing victory for Bush.

But many of the networks are still labelling it “too close to call”, pointing to the slim 140,000-vote margin in Ohio for Bush that, if eradicated, could theoretically swing the election to Kerry.

Frankly, I think Ohio is still the big story because the major media networks want it to be the big story. That’s where they sent all their reporters, so that’s where they’re expecting the story. Plenty of other states have even slimmer margins and have been declared for one candidate or the other.

Bush won the popular vote convincingly this time, unlike four years ago. And he’s leading in the three states that the networks have yet to call, including the all-crucial Ohio. Very soon, Kerry’s going to come under a lot of pressure to concede. This isn’t Florida in 2000, no matter how much people were expecting it to be. This is a solid victory and Kerry should be gracious enough to admit it.

The Bush victory was pretty expected, and I don’t have much to say about it that a million other bloggers haven’t already said. Personally, I think the more telling stories were some of the direct ballot questions, particularly the issue of gay marriage. 11 states have banned gay marriage by passing constitutional amendments to disallow it. This is a serious step back for human rights in the United States, and it’s extremely sad that so many people have turned out in droves to deny even the possibility of granting rights to a minority that are already enjoyed by the majority.

I could say much more about this election, but I’m posting manually since blogger seems to be down (perhaps overloaded with election blogging?) so I’ll leave it at that… for now. More to come.

I don’t have any money riding on this and I’m not afraid to look foolish if I’m wrong. A prediction is different from an endorsement… it’s about what I think will happen, not what I think ought to happen.

For what it’s worth, here’s my US election prediction: A narrow win for Bush, but not so narrow that it takes a month in the courts to sort out.

Why? Simply beacuse all these neck-and-neck polls for months have shown Bush slightly ahead. Kerry has never been leading at any point in this campaign.

I think that most Americans – whether fairly or unfairly – feel that Bush understands that there’s a war going on better than Kerry understands this. Implicitly they trust Bush over Kerry on security. And tomorrow at the polls, I think they’ll give Dubya four more years.

But hey, I could be wrong.

I’ve long been uncomfortable with the practice of major newspapers and media outlets “endorsing” a candidate or party in an election.

I’m not so naive as to think that the media is truly objective, but I do believe it ought to at least strive for objectivity. A newspaper ought to report the news, not be a propaganda vehicle for a given party or candidate. Endorsements directly negate any semblance of objectivity.

This US election, we’ve seen bloggers – large and small alike – boarding the endorsement train. Damian Penny is endorsing Bush. Andrew Sullivan has endorsed Kerry. Some blogs, like LGF for Bush and Daily Kos for Kerry, have become de facto campaign tools.

In a way, I’m much more comfortable with blogger endorsements than with media endorsements… because blogging is all about relating one’s personal opinion. People read bloggers for a certain viewpoint or perspective, not for objectivity. A blogger offering an endorsement is akin to offering his or her opinion, which, let’s face it, is the raison d’être of blogging.

But I’m not about to be presumptuous enough to offer an endorsement here. Why? Several reasons:

• First of all, my readership — all 9 of you — doesn’t really care what I think about the election, and even if you did, most of you are Canadian and can’t vote in it anyway. “Endorsement” differs from “opinion” in the grandiosity of the words. An opinion is just that — a mere opinion. An endorsement, on the other hand, implies a certain importance. And I don’t harbour any delusions of importance, nor do I really believe that anyone would — or should — be influenced by my opinion.
• Secondly, I’m not American either. And again, while I can have my opinions, the issues I’d be concerned about as a Canadian are not the same issues as American citizens have to weigh in this election.
• And finally, because I don’t think that either Bush or Kerry is worthy of endorsing in this election. I was “undecided” for a long time and now I’m in the “I don’t care, just pick a leader” camp. Of course, this is an easy cop-out, given that I’m Canadian. If I were American I’d probably have to weigh the issues and finally hold my nose and vote for one or the other, because I firmly believe that it’s extremely important for every citizen to vote, and I wouldn’t be able to justify not voting. But I don’t have to make a decision, so I won’t.

It’s a cop-out, perhaps, but I refuse to believe that the issues are as black-and-white as the Democratic and Republican campaigns are trying to make them out to be.

For example, the Republicans claim Kerry’s unfit for leadership because he flip-flops on issues. But I think that a good leader should be willing to make situational decisions, and to change a decision based on input or new information. Maybe Kerry’s more nuanced style isn’t weakness but openness. I also think that Kerry’s not foolish enough to truly compromise American security or to pull troops out of Iraq prematurely. Despite what some people claim, he knows that the US created the situation in Iraq, and that the US can’t just leave without solving it.

Similarly, I don’t think that the innuendo-based attacks on Bush are fair to him. The widespread panic about reinstating the draft is nothing more than a scare-tactic designed to turn voters away from Bush. And instead of banding together against terrorism, Democrats are blaming the Bush administration for failing to correctly interpret warning signs before 9/11 and failing to prevent the attacks. The 9/11 commission uncovered some glaring mistakes, to be certain… but if Al Gore were President, would he really have done any better? Remember, this was so far off anyone’s radar screen before 9/11 that anyone who warned about it incessantly would be accused of fear-mongering.

I’m equally torn on domestic issues. Bush has created a huge deficit and giant economic woes… but was that entirely his fault? The economy was on the verge of recession when Clinton handed him the reins, and between the tech stock crash and 9/11, economic problems were a near-certainty. Nor do I truly believe Kerry will end NAFTA, as many Canadians fear. But economy-wise, it’s hard to tell who would be better. Kerry seems disturbingly like a protectionist, while Bush has implemented tariffs. The rhetoric about “tax cuts for the wealthy” is a Kerry campaign favourite, as is the notion that Bush is subsidizing the outsourcing of American jobs, but I doubt Kerry would be able to do much about either.

The Bush team has crawled steadily to the right, pandering to interest groups who believe that guns are good, abortion and gay marriage is bad, and decisions should be made based on Christian faith. This, too, is a bit of an oversimplification; in four years in office, Bush hasn’t directly done much to threaten the separation of church and state. But I’d trust Kerry’s judgeship appointments over Bush’s, in terms of setting out a future for the country. The fact that the Republicans would use a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage as a campaign tack, even though they know it would never pass, says a lot about the types of divisions they’re aiming to create in American society.

Kerry, for his part, is more solid on these issues but his “internationalist” policies concern me. Though AIPAC’s record on Kerry shows him to be a good friend to Israel, the amount of faith he has in the United Nations concerns me. Similarly, many American allies are very concerned about Kerry because they think he’ll try to get them on board on issues that they have no intention of supporting. For them, it’s easier with Bush, because at least he won’t ask so they won’t have to refuse.

Nothing’s as simple as thirty-second campaign spots make it out to be. But ultimately, the right to vote is what’s important. My only hope for this election is that a leader is chosen quickly by the people, not by the courts.