I questioned the prize committee’s definition of the word “peace” when Al Gore won it for environmental activism, which seemed a wee bit of a stretch for me. This time around, the committee at least seems to be thinking in the general direction of “peace”:
The committee praised Obama for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” during his nine months in office and singled out for special recognition Obama’s call for a world free of nuclear weapons, which he first made in an April speech in Prague.
Heralding Obama as a transformative figure in U.S. and international diplomacy, the committee said: “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”
So. This will, no doubt, make conservatives flip the fuck out. Maybe it’ll move his poll numbers among the rest of the population. (Maybe the Nobel committee just wants us to get some decent health care?) But what reaction do I, an American progressive/hippie pinko commie type have to the bestowing of the Peace Prize on the president whom I spent the better part of a year volunteering to get elected?
The snark is flowing fast on Twitter. Melissa Harris-Lacewell: Because he appointed all his electoral adversaries to the cabinet. #ReasonsBHOwonNPPandBecause he invited a white policeman over for a beer! #ReasonsBHOwonNPP #BlackMenDontDoThat.
But really, it does seem a little…early? I mean, the man’s been president for nine months. The extraordinary goodwill that he’s generated around the world? Mostly a result of him so very obviously NOT being George W. Bush. I mean, yes, he’s done some things that are impressive. He’s given speeches in Muslim countries calling for understanding, he’s called for a world without nuclear weapons, he’s not behind the coup in Honduras and has actually taken some steps to return the rightful president, etc. He wants to get out of Iraq, though it appears to be going far slower than we’d have hoped.
Let’s be clear: we didn’t elect Dennis Kucinich. Shit, we KNEW we weren’t electing Dennis Kucinich. But I think a lot of us were hoping for more than we’ve gotten. Pushing for the Patriot Act renewal and more funding for war in Afghanistan harder than he seems to be pushing for a public option on health care is only the latest set of disappointments.
I wonder what’s left to give him if he DOES accomplish something major? If he manages to broker peace between Israel and Palestine? Hell, if he actually ends the two wars he inherited? Our own Matt Duss joked: Obama will receive prize on Dec 10. Has until then to end Isr-Pal conflict, get Iran to abandon nukes, end Iraq/Afgh wars. No pressure. (I guess they could always give a prize to Hillary Clinton for all that, and once and for all cause Bill’s head to explode: Carter, Gore, Obama and HIS WIFE?)
Others pointed out the massive peaceful protests in Iran this year and how that deserves more of a peace prize than Obama. Mousavi’s history with prior Iranian regimes probably discounted him (fairly, I think) but what about acknowledging the people who crowded the streets protesting for change? What about the people in Honduras calling for the return of their president under repressive conditions?
The Nobel Prize and other things like it celebrate individual achievement, but working for peace isn’t an individual thing. It requires collective action. It requires solidarity, communication, interaction. It’s not like writing a great book (or a great oeuvre). In a way, giving the peace prize to a sitting president while peace protesters are arrested in this country demeans the massive, not-officially-sanctioned peace movement that marched against wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yet a lot of those people worked to put Obama in office as the best way to stop American warmongering, so perhaps blogger Cyn3matic was right when she said: Nobel Peace Prize=GIANT repudiation of W and the misbegotten Bush-Cheney years. This is the world saying, ‘08 voters, we AGREE. She noted that she felt vindicated in her anti-war marching years ago by this vote, and so perhaps in some way this is an acknowledgment of all the American people.
But turning it down would be a slap in the face to an international community that is showing, in the most generous way possible, that it wants the U.S. back as a leading component of the global order. The issue is not Barack Obama. It’s what the president represents internationally: a symbol of an America that is willing, once again, to drive the international system forward, together, toward the humane positive-sum goals of peace and disarmament. The fact that Obama hasn’t gotten the planet there misses the point entirely. It’s that he’s beginning, slowly, to take the world again down the path.
So while I see what Obama’s done so far as a step in the right direction on some issues, perhaps, but mostly just shifting us back to where we were under Clinton (a place that I was not at all happy to be, so we’re clear), I guess the rest of the world thinks something bigger is changing here.
My latest piece is up at Global Comment. Some thoughts on healthcare, freelancing, racism at town halls, and equality.
For a country that relies on the bootstrap myth, the U.S.A. certainly has a health care system that punishes people who attempt to live that way. The self-employed, the small business owner, and most especially the scraping-by creative types—artists, designers, freelance journalists—have no easy way to get health insurance. We are stuck buying our own care on the “free” market, where a single person has very little bargaining power.
On Tuesday, September 1st, I became one of America’s 46 million uninsured. I have a graduate degree, a decent amount of published writing, and multiple regular freelance clients. There is a better-than-average possibility that I could pay my bills with my writing, except for that one problem. A survey by AHIP, the national organization of health insurance providers, reports that I can assume to pay an average premium of $4734 in New York state, where I reside.
Paul Krugman explains that employer-based health insurance is regulated by the government. Corporations can get tax advantages for providing health care for employees; benefits are not considered taxable income, so companies pay less in wages and make it up in health care. Krugman notes, “[T]o get that tax advantage employers have to follow a number of rules; roughly speaking, they can’t discriminate based on pre-existing medical conditions or restrict benefits to highly paid employees.”
Campus Progress reports that only 60% of the population is covered by employer-provided health care. 26 million small business owners or their employees remain uninsured despite having a steady source of income—because it simply costs too much.
I’ve been following the story on Twitter all day, as U.S. news outlets are really not covering it at all. People livetweeting from Iran as the country explodes at the election results, information being passed on as it is received and people attempt to verify it in real time…
Nico Pitney at the Huffington Post has been liveblogging and collecting info as it happens, but watching the story come in over Twitter is really exciting–and frightening. We place a certain amount of trust in news that comes to us from mainstream outlets, while here we just assume that people are who they say the are and that they are where they say they are. Or we desperately try to verify, a task that would be much easier if news outlets had nearly the amount of reporters on the ground that they should have.
Video, however, is worth a thousand words.
Live video shot by amateurs and uploaded to YouTube has an even more visceral effect than the glossy photos taken by professionals. It feels real, immediate, frightening, and exhilarating. No doubt the repression is coming, but these people are willing to face it.
We’ve spent so long arguing that government doesn’t have to be the enemy, but the fact is that we’re used to government being the enemy. We’re used to disavowing the actions of our president loudly, to practically shouting “Not in our name,” to writing screeds of why we’re disappointed that this is our country.
No wonder we have a hard time believing that someone could get things right.
I was reading The Nation over breakfast this morning and came across this piece (which is excellent and should be read in its entirety) by Jonathan Schell.
Schell writes:
Yet in addition to being interconnected, the crises have striking features in common, suggesting shared roots. To begin with, all are self-created. They arise from pathologies of our own activity, or perhaps hyperactivity. The Greek tragedians understood well those disasters whose seeds lie above all in one’s own actions. No storm or asteroid or external enemy is the cause. Today, the economic crash is the result of investment run amok: the “masters of the universe” are the authors of their own (and everyone’s) downfall. The nuclear weapons that threaten to return in wrath to American cities were born in New Mexico. The oil is running short because we are driving too many cars to too many shopping malls. The global ecosphere is heading toward collapse because of the success, not the failure (until recently), of the modern economy. The invasion of Iraq was the American empire’s self-inflicted wound–a disaster of choice, so to speak. All we had to do to escape it was not to do it. Here and elsewhere, the work of our own hands rises up to strike us.
I was trying to find a quote this morning in which someone complained of Obama’s call for a new age of responsibility and said that it wasn’t their fault and they didn’t want to take responsibility.
And I think about the liberal blogosphere and how much of it has been defined, as I wrote before, by disavowing the actions of our government. Like leaving the Kerry 2004 sticker on your car after the last election, it seems like a big “don’t blame me” gesture, an argument like the one I made each time I left the country in the Bush years.
“I didn’t vote for him! I couldn’t help it!”
Now that the guy we (most of us) voted for IS in office, we feel like his call for responsibility is roping us back into being a part of Bush’s America. But responsibility isn’t just that.
Obama is in office because millions of people gave money, and thousands upon thousands of people took it upon themselves to volunteer for the campaign. Here in Philly there was a controversy because the Obama campaign didn’t want to pay “street money” to the folks who worked on election day, but they didn’t need to; volunteers were everywhere.
We took responsibility. We didn’t say “It wasn’t my fault, why should I have to work to fix it?”
Obama’s presidency isn’t a fun party where we punish the people who screwed up, because we all are complicit in the screwups. Like acknowledging and dealing with any other form of privilege, whether it be racial, gendered, heterosexual, cisgender, Western, middle-class, or educational, it’s not about feeling guilty. It’s about looking forward and doing something to change it.
No, it’s not my fault that Bush was elected. But I’m not going to let it be my fault that Obama doesn’t get to do all he can do.
Obama is redefining responsibility with that inaugural speech and its follow-up actions, just like he’s redefining the center. He’s taken the word away from conservatives who use it to gut welfare spending, and made it part of our vocabulary by coupling it with his famous quote from his keynote speech back in 2004, when his election to the Senate was a lone bright spot in a horrible election cycle, where Democrats were crouching defensively, letting the Right define the argument.
“It’s that fundamental belief — I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper — that makes this country work.”
That’s responsibility. It’s not covering your own ass and then crying out to punish the other guy. It’s looking at your own involvement and seeing what else you can do.
It shows Obama once again willing to be nonpartisan and appoint Republicans to his cabinet, giving him the moral high ground against obstructionists.
It takes another Republican out of the Senate, and though he’s one who could probably be pulled into a Democratic majority on some bills, having a Democrat appointed by New Hampshire’s Democratic governor would be the magic 60–if they ever get around to seating Al Franken.
And Gregg should jump at it, since New Hampshire’s trending Democratic and he’s unlikely to be reelected. Plus, he’s actually, y’know, qualified for the job.
My only question is: How quickly can we make this happen?
It’s officially Blog for Choice day again, and in the afterglow of the Obama administration, it might be easy to think that we don’t have to worry about Roe v. Wade anymore. That things are great, time to go back to being happy.
Not yet.
The balance of the Supreme Court is still weighted in the wrong direction. We still have a lot of work to do, and yes, we’ve taken a step in the right direction.
Choice also means more than maintaining Roe v. Wade. As Sylvia wrote, we need to fight for comprehensive sex education. We need the right to choose not only when we will or will not have a child, but when and how we will be sexual, and we need to know that no one but ourselves has the right to judge us for those choices.
My top pro-choice hope for the Obama administration is of course overturning the global gag rule. We’ve seen and heard much about it, but it remains undone–for the moment. And I can hope that moment won’t last much longer.
But I want much, much more than that.
I am celebrating still, beaming at the television at the mention of President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But I do not forget that there is still work to be done, that the inauguration of Obama was the beginning of a journey, not its end, and a call for us to work harder, because look, after all, at what we’ve already achieved.
So today, I think about the choices that have opened up to us in the past few days, and about the ones that are still in danger. And I prepare for the fights ahead.
You may have already read these as they came in, but I’m organizing them here in order, partly for me, and partly for anyone who doesn’t read my Twitter feed but wants to see how my inauguration trip went.
This morning, I’m getting up and heading down to Maryland to stay with some friends before the inauguration on Tuesday.
I’m recovering from a cold, so I sat home yesterday watching the whistle stop tour on TV. I didn’t go down to catch Barack here in Philly, but I watched him since.
I love the symbolism of the train tour. As matttbastard said, it’s like they’re symbolically doing away with the last 40 years. Plus, trains are cool.
The Obama campaign always understood the importance of symbolism, of performance. Yes, the president has lots of serious things to do, but one of his most important jobs is to stand for us, to represent us, and to reach out to us.
I love Michelle Obama, and Dr. Jill Biden.
And I love listening to Barack. I know he’ll screw up over the next four (eight?) years, but I hope he never screws up to the point where I get sick of hearing his voice. I hope I never forget how I feel now, how I’ve felt over the past couple of months knowing that we did it, we put the Bush era behind us, and how I’ve felt over the past year working for a candidate that, though he pissed me off at times, I actually trusted to do the right thing.
I’ll be in DC today, Monday and Tuesday, and will be twittering away, so feel free to follow along.
“You proved once more that people who love this country can change it.”
Well, Barack, I started trying to change this country long before I felt any love for it. And I’m finally starting to have a bit of faith in it.
It was New Year’s Eve when I first kissed the boy I was supposed to marry.
This will be my second New Year’s without him.
We didn’t make it to two years–we celebrated two New Year’s together, and now I have two alone. Last year I spent the evening with friends who knew and loved both of us, and it was wrong and yet right that I was with them.
This year I may well spend it completely alone. Me and a bottle of pink champagne, a bubble bath and more bad TV.
2008 was good to me. Very good, despite economic turmoil and occasional drama and one painful, wrenching moment (Kacie, I miss you).
I made a lot of new friends this year. I learned a lot, both in school and out. Most importantly, I feel as though I’m just inches away from the life I want, and I’m not giving up now.
I kissed some great boys this year, too. (Yeah, that’s right.) And nothing really fell apart afterward. That’s always a bonus. So I don’t really mind not having a New Year’s kiss.
Of course, 2008 will always be the year we elected Obama. I hope he will live up to at least some of our hopes, and be worthy of our work, our sweat, our support.
I read some great books and comics, saw some great movies, heard some great music. I’ll have more to say on that later, of course. I got tattooed, got paid decently for my writing for the first time, worked hard and played hard. I remembered how much fun it is to dance.
And though there were many people who were part of the year, who helped make it great, in the end I have myself to thank for it. I learned to trust myself again, and to trust myself more than I ever did. I questioned that trust over and over again, but I say goodbye to 2008 with it strong.
Maybe I should be more afraid of 2009 than I am. We live in scary times, after all. But right now, I’m looking forward to it.
