Hank Kalet

Apparently Jeff Greenfield was joking the other day on CNN when he offered one of the stranger political analyses we’re likely to see. Greenfield, as I wrote yesterday, used his time on “The Situation Room” to comment on the Barack Obama phenomenon — critiquing his wardrobe and even riffing on his name (Obama-Osama). The whole thing was a joke and he’s surprised that we didn’t get it. (We didn’t get it because it wasn’t set up as a joke and didn’t include the clues necessary for us to know it was satire.)

He admits to not being funny — his wife apparently questioned whether people would get it — but then offers this bit of nonsense to explain the reaction:

Most of what happened here, I think, is a demonstration of the hair-trigger instincts that have grown up among some of the bloggers (not to mention the need to fill all that space every day, or hour, or 15 minutes).

In a political world where partisans routinely assume the worst about their adversaries — and where conspiracy theories stretch from Bill Clinton as a drug ring- and murder-enabler to Bush as planner of 9/11 — there’s a tendency to find malice aforethought.

And explosions of outrage take a lot less a time than falling into the habits of the Mainstream Media — like, say, calling or e-mailing a reporter to ask, “What were you thinking?”

So it was the blogger’s fault that he told a bad joke? It was the blogosphere’s fault that the faux analysis he crafted was a nearly perfect recreation of the kind of thing we already are seeing and hearing on Fox News, that he didn’t clue us in at all leaving us to wonder what kind of nonsense he was offering?

I think what the bloggers were reacting to — certainly what I was reacting to — was the tendency for not only Fox but the mainstream media to buy into silly, shallow analyses like this — as it did with Al Gore and George W. Bush in 2000.

The fact is, this is exactly what passes for political discourse on cable news these days and Greenfeild should have known this. He also should have known that he is not Jonathan Swift, Jon Stewart or the SNL Weekend Update anchors.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Christmas is coming back to Sea-Tac Airport in Seattle.

Not that it actually ever left.

The Port of Seattle, which runs the airport, had removed 10 Christmas trees from the airport after a Chabad-affiliated rabbi threatened to sue for inclusion of a menorah. The issue became another in a long line lf perceived slights that the conservative community has latched onto as a way of pushing its phony war on Christmas rhetoric on the rest of us.

The media has painted the port’s decision as an overreaction — the anchors on Channel 5 (a Fox affiliate) last night made fun of the story and wondered why the port just didn’t install a menorah.

Sounds logical, right? But the discussion is far more complicated than that. A few years ago, the South Brunswick Township Council attempted to craft rules governing who could speak and not speak from the stage or have a booth at the township’s Community Unity Day celebration. The issue stemmed from a speech made during the 1999 festival in which a member of a Sayreville Christian group offered a fire-and-brimstone sermon from the stage.

The council at first attempted to split the difference — opting for a limited-access plan that would give the township some say over who was to speak and perform. We argued in an editorial (sorry, not available on line) at the time that “placing restrictions on groups based on the content of their speeches or performances would seem to violate these groups’ right to free expression. But to leave things as they are leaves the township open to the criticism that it is endorsing a particular faith, thereby tearing down the church-state wall.”

That’s why we had advocated having the township open the stage only to invited guests — primarily school acts and local dance groups — to prevent the likelihood that the stage might be dominated by religious groups and to keep the council out of the religion business. We think the same basic issues apply here.

It is a variant on the solution offered by Charles Hynes of the First Amendment Center a couple of years ago:

Step one, get religion right. The government isn’t the engine for proclaiming the religious message of Christmas. That’s what churches do. But does that mean no religious-themed floats in the city parade? No sacred music in the school concert? Of course not. Including a variety of floats, songs or whatever — religious and nonreligious — is both constitutional and fair.

For example, a December school concert that doesn’t include sacred music would be odd indeed. But the overall effect of the program should be educational, not devotional. When it comes to religious holidays, public schools are supposed to educate kids about what people of various faiths believe and practice (and not just in December).

Many schools either persist in the old model of promoting religion, or they move to the other extreme of leaving out the religious elements entirely. But another approach — the only solution that upholds the First Amendment — is to teach about religions. This takes work (teacher preparation, good resources) that many schools aren’t willing to do.

As for the larger public square, cities and towns shouldn’t sponsor official displays that promote any religion. But they should open public spaces to religious communities that wish to put up religious displays in December or at other times.

Step two: Once the religious issues are addressed, sit down together and figure out how to deal with the secularized Christmas.

The religious Christmas has constitutional guidelines, but the secular Christmas doesn’t. Trees, Santa and mistletoe aren’t likely to be seen as religious by the courts. But when government puts up even the most secularized Christmas displays, conflicts still break out.

Why? Because many non-Christians see all references to Christmas as religious messages. To complicate matters further, many Christians don’t like their faith reduced to Santa and reindeer.

Bringing people together in a school or community to talk about how to handle both the religious and secular Christmas is difficult. The path of least resistance is either to ban any mention of Christmas or to plow ahead and ignore minority complaints. A far better approach is to face the issue, agree on how to include religion constitutionally and then find ways to celebrate the season without banning Santa Claus.

I’m not sure about the open space for displays — logistics again — but this seems sensible. The Port of Seattle could leave its main corridors free of religious iconography — a Christmas tree is not a religious symbol but it is a symbol of a particular religion — but allow, even encourage, individual businesses that might rent space in the airport to follow their own corporate rules. Starbucks, for instance, might opt to have a tree, while Borders might not.

This would keep the Port from having to determine which requests — and, by extension, which religions — are legitimate, satisfying the First Amendment and allowing for a level of seasonal festiveness.

It works here in South Brunswick, where we may not have a tree and/or menorah on displayed on public property. But thanks to private groups (the Chabad and Monmouth Mobile Home Park) we have public symbols that are bigger and better than anything the township might have conceived — and far more prominently placed than anything in any of our neighboring communities.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

The Record today offers a rather succinct look at the dead horse that is the special legislative session on tax reform. I had been skeptical of a state constitutional convention on taxes — partly because I am concerned that some draconian and ill-advised rules could be forced into place (a super-majority rule on taxes, for instance, or arbitrary caps), but also because I believe it is the responsibility of the people we elect to get things done.

But there are some facts that make this a far more difficult haul than it should be:

1. Municipalities and school districts are resistant to any discussion of forced mergers, though the kind of municipal consolidation necessary to save money can only be accomplished by the Legislature.

2. State workers are not going to go quietly and most Democrats are not going to want to buck the unions. The governor is not wrong about some of this — copays and plans should be part of the negotiating process. But there are obvious reforms that need to be enacted as quickly as possible that could save some money and infuse the pension process with a badly needed dose of rationality. In particular, we need to have a ban on double-dipping and a change in the way that pension payments are determined (the current system invites abuse). And there is nothing wrong with increasing the retirement age.

In general, though, the entire pension problem is a symptom a larger defect — i.e., we do not have a functional national pension system leaving private-sector employees to fend for themselves; this creates the kind of animosity and jealousy that pits public employees against the rest of us.

3. Increase the state income tax, especially at the upper levels, and increase the amount of state aid to schools and municipal governments (in particular, those with smaller per capita ratable bases or income levels). This will help shift some of the tax burden off the property tax.

Instead, we have vague promises of a 20 percent property tax credit, a voluntary (read useless) consolidation program and pension chaos.

You have to hand it to the folks who run the state.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

I saw this today — I wasn’t around much yesterday — on the indispensible Talking Points Memo. Is this what passes as intelligent political commentary these days?

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: Wolf, the political community has gone predictably hysterical over Senator Barack Obama’s presidential flirtation. So, in the spirit of retched excess, let’s take a look not at what he’s saying, but at another crucially vital matter: what he is wearing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)GREENFIELD (voice-over): The senator was in New Hampshire over the weekend, sporting what’s getting to be the classic Obama look. Call it business casual, a jacket, a collared shirt, but no tie.

It is a look the senator seems to favor. And why not? It is dressy enough to suggest seriousness of purpose, but without the stuffiness of a tie, much less a suit. There is a comfort level here that reflects one of Obama’s strongest political assets, a sense that he is comfortable in his own skin, that he knows who he is.

If you want a striking contrast, check out Senator John Kerry as he campaigned back in 2004. He often appeared without a tie, but clad in a blazer, the kind of casual look you see at country clubs and lawn parties in the Hamptons and other toned (ph) locations.

When President Bush wanted in casual mode, he skipped the jacket entirely. Third-generation Skull and Bones at Yale? Don’t be silly. Nobody here but us Texas ranchers.

You can think of Bush’s apparel as a kind of homage to Ronald Reagan. He may have spent much of his life in Hollywood, but the brush-cutting ranch hand was the image his followers loved, just as the Kennedy sea ferry look provided a striking contrast with, say, Richard Nixon, who apparently couldn’t even set out on a beach walk without that “I wish I had spent more time at the office” look.

But, in the case of Obama, he may be walking around with a sartorial time bomb. Ask yourself, is there any other major public figure who dresses the way he does? Why, yes. It is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, unlike most of his predecessors, seems to have skipped through enough copies of “GQ” to find the jacket-and-no-tie look agreeable.

And maybe that’s not the comparison a possible presidential contender really wants to evoke.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD: Now, it is one thing to have a last name that sounds like Osama and a middle name, Hussein, that is probably less than helpful. But an outfit that reminds people of a charter member of the axis of evil, why, this could leave his presidential hopes hanging by a thread. Or is that threads? — Wolf.

BLITZER: Jeff Greenfield reporting for us — Jeff, thank you very much.

This couldn’t be serious, could it? I mean, Obama goes sans tie and he’s like Ahmadinejad? Like anyone would even notice?

And then, as if reading from the Karl Rove playbook, Greenfield plays off the rhyme?

Or, as Josh Marshall on TPM put it:

Eric Kleefeld noticed a couple weeks ago that your cheesier run of GOP chat-hound was starting to make a big deal out of the fact that Barack Obama’s middle name is “Hussein”. Pretty lame. But given what’s been going on in this country for the last few years and the GOP’s track record I really can’t say it surprises me.

But if Barack Obama goes around wearing a jacket, collared shirt and no tie, do I figure he’s trying to look like a happening dude from a GQ spread (maybe, ok, check), trying to appeal to the youth vote (sure, check), looks like your average tech executive (sure), just likes to dress that way (sounds right)?

Do I think he reminds me Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Wow. I’ve got to say I really didn’t see that coming.

I’m not saying I’m outraged exactly. It’s more like curiosity. Kind of like I want to sit down with Jeff and a few Rorschach cards. Bizarre. No tie is the Ahmadinejad look?

The entire thing is just plain weird, but we need to keep in mind that this kind of commentary helps create the popular political narrative. The press corps helped solidify the “Al Gore is stiff and a liar while George Bush is a folksy guy you could have a beer with” storyline from 2000.

All I can say is, god help us.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

A story in today’s Times outlines U.S. efforts to create a new governing alliance that would sidestep the powerful and popular cleric Maktadr al-Sadr. The problem, as anyone reading between the lines in the story can make out, is that isolating Sadr is likely to lead to stepped up violence and a further fracturing of the fractured nation.

Read these paragraphs:

Officials involved in the talks say their aim is not to undermine Mr. Maliki, but to isolate both Mr. Sadr and firebrand Sunni Arab politicians inside the government. Mr. Sadr controls a militia, the Mahdi Army, with an estimated 60,000 fighters that has rebelled twice against the American military and is accused of widening the sectarian war with reprisal killings of Sunni Arabs.

***

Any plan to form a political alliance across sectarian lines that isolates Mr. Sadr and Sunni Arab extremists carries enormous risks. American and Iraqi officials have worked to try to persuade Mr. Sadr to use political power instead of armed force to bring about change in Iraq. Though it is unclear whether Mr. Sadr has total control over his militia, he could ignite another rebellion like the two he led in 2004 if he thinks he is being marginalized within the government.

***

Sunni Arab politicians not involved in the talks said they are furious at the proposed alliance.

The road ahead seems dark, doesn’t it?

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick