The Pastime of Slut Shaming: Targeting Miley Cyrus

Some of my female friends, whom I admire and respect and like a whole lot, continue to express dismay over Miley Cyrus' sexually provocative performance at the VMAs. Across the Internet, some are labeling the performance as slutty, disgusting, and degrading to women. Funny thing is that I don't feel at all degraded as a woman due to Cyrus' romp on stage with Teddy Bears and Robin Thicke. 

I'm too old to appreciate Miley Cyrus' music but her performance style doesn't offend me any more than Madonna did in her hey day. Recall that video where she crawled across the floor and lapped milk out of a bowl? 

While I greatly appreciate and continue to like my female friends, I have to pose the following questions. Why is it that women are the first ones to turn on other women who are overtly sexual in their actions or appearance? We label these women as sluts, nasty, trashy, just doesn't sound very sisterly to me. What's with this judgment that a woman who expresses her sexuality while performing on stage is behaving in a shameful way and any decent female should be ashamed of her and for her? 

Michael Jackson grabbed his crotch and hoisted his junk in every performance. Even in the staid 1950s, Elvis gyrated his hips in a distinctly sexual manner, accompanied by pelvic thrusts. I can't recall a single male performer whose overtly sexual performance has ever elicited the same type of need to express revulsion and disgust as Miley Cyrus has garnered for shaking her butt, thrusting her pelvis forward, and sometimes pointing at her crotch.

Why are we still defining women in terms of meeting some 1950s standard of ladylike behavior? 

The Syrian government appears to have used chemical weapons against its own people but the big topic in the U.S. is that Miley Cyrus was twerking on television! Oh the horror! She pointed at her crouch and did a slow grind a few times with Robin Thicke. Notice how there haven't been any headlines labeling Robin Thicke as a slut, nasty, disgusting, or an embarrassment to his gender? Miley wasn't on that stage alone.

Perhaps we need to step back and really think as to what the message is that we wish to convey. Do we really want to adhere to some arbitrary and outdated standard that divides women into good girls and sluts? All the 20-year old Miley Cyrus did was express herself as a sexual being. She didn't advocate for violence. She wasn't an object; she was in control and she chose how to express herself. That's a far cry from exploitation in my book. Just something to think about.

All the Stupid People, Where Do They All Come From?

This post is not addressed to my regular readers. I know that you know this information. However, if you choose to do so, this is for your use. Please feel free to send it to anyone that you feel is talking nonsense about Obamacare. You may share it in part or as a whole. It probably won't do any good but it made me feel better to write and share this post. At least my head won't explode.

Just when I'm in a positive frame of mind, I go and read something so stupid (post from August 21 re: Affordable Health Care Act) it makes my head want to explode. There are a lot of sites that advise people not to buy health insurance in compliance with the Affordable Health Care Act. However, that's not what has my head expanding. It's the number of brainless nitwits who assert that noncompliance will result in not just fines but imprisonment. 

There is no imprisonment for not buying health insurance. Don't believe every stupid bit of information that you read on the Internet.

There are fines for not having health insurance. In Obamacare's first year (2014), the fine is $95 per adult or one percent of income, whichever is highest. The penalty is half the adult amount for children under 18. The penalty goes up every year, landing at $695 or 2.5 percent of household income in 2016.

If you own a car, states require you to buy at minimum, liability insurance. This is not to protect you but to protect your fellow drivers from being  hit by uninsured drivers and having to either pay out of pocket or file a claim with their insurance and risk an increase in their rates. 

When you get sick, (and unless you die young from an accident, you will get sick at some point in your life, and traipse off to the emergency room with no insurance) the rest of us pay for your health care. Those ridiculous overcharges at hospitals are to create sufficient funds to cover treating the uninsured.

So while you defiantly refuse to spend $100 per month on health insurance (if you're in good health with no pre-existing conditions your insurance costs will be low), when you are in an accident or become seriously ill and take yourself to the emergency room and are hospitalized, who do you think pays for your medical care? You have no insurance. The hospital can try to collect, but if you have no assets worth a crap, then there is nothing for the hospital to collect from you. And in spite of the nonsense I've read recently, there is no such thing as a debtor prison in the United States. Your property, if you have any, may be forfeited but no one goes to prison because he or she cannot pay their debts. 

Please stop spreading misinformation and declaring that anyone is going to prison because he or she does not purchase health insurance. If you'd rather pay a fine, so be it.

As for the chicken little cries that the AHCA equals Socialism, I suggest you start with the basics and check out Wikipedia's entry on Socialism. It's exceptionally simplistic and ultimately inaccurate to characterize Socialism as a redistribution of wealth. However, I don't have the time nor energy to give a fundamental lesson in Socialism.

Julius Chambers: October 6, 1936 – August 2, 2013

Julius Chambers

I heard the news of Julius Chambers' death in the early hours of Saturday morning. The first time that I met Julius, I was tongue-tied. He was a personal hero and I was awed to be in his presence. He shook my hand and murdered the pronunciation of my first name. I repeated my name for him and he smiled and nodded. I was a part of a group of attorneys testifying before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission on the impact of high stakes testing on minority students. Those of us involved continued to meet after our appearance before the commission to discuss strategies for improving the delivery of education services to minority students in North Carolina. Chambers was the catalyst for getting the group going. At that time, he was the director of the UNC Center for Civil Rights, founded in 2001 by Chambers at the UNC School of Law. 

As I got to know Chambers, my hero worship grew. He was brilliant in his knowledge of the law. He was also charming, had a great sense of humor, and totally unassuming.  This was the man who was responsible for perhaps the single most significant factor in moving school integration from just words in the 1955 Brown vs. the Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court decision to reality. It was Chambers' Swann lawsuit that ultimately resulted in court ordered busing which facilitated school integration. The 1971 ruling in the Swann vs. the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education case mandated cross-town busing to end segregation of local schools. It led to the 1971 Supreme Court ruling that allowed school districts to bus students to desegregate schools to achieve racial balance.

My fondest memory of Julius is of a dinner to celebrate the anniversary (can't recall which one) of the opening of the UNC Center for Civil Rights. I invited my Dad to be my escort, knowing that he would be thrilled to meet Julius. What I didn't know was that I was one of the guests whom Julius planned to introduce to the other attendees. I sat at my table, chatting with my dad who was in ecstasy because he had engaged in a lengthy cocktail hour chat with Bill Friday who had served for three decades as president of the University of North Carolina System. 

Julius began by announcing that he had some special guests whom he wished to introduced. He named an individual, provided a brief bio, and noted the person's contributions to the fight for civil rights for all people. He began my introduction by announcing that he didn't dare call my full name because he might mispronounce it and I would loudly correct him in front of everyone. He alleged that he had been forced to call me Ms. Reid all the years that he had known me because he wasn't allowed to say my first name. I was laughing so hard that I gave myself the hiccups while my bewildered father looked embarrassed that his daughter had dared be so sassy with Julius Chambers. Julius gave me a big innocent smile as I briefly stood to acknowledge the intro. He'd waited a few years but he had finally paid me back for my chutzpah in correcting him when we first met. 

The world will miss his presence. 

Just Some Random Thoughts on Race

I've been reading a lot of material about race and racism in America here lately. A friend suggests that addressing white racism needs a more humane approach to guide white people into confronting their racism and dealing with it. I'm not feeling so generous.

I'm tired of waiting for white people to understand the obvious. I'm tired of reading nasty racists comments on a story about fashion. Almost any topic on the Internet can be used by those who want to spread racist hate to do so. I'm tired of having to coddle white racists and I'm at the point where I don't really give a damn if they go screaming into an insane asylum. I agree with an old friend, a white southerner, who says that white people need to talk to other white people about racism.

How long does it take for white people to recognize that they have participated in and benefited from a monstrous system? When I was a child growing up in a society of "no colored allowed" signs, I thought that we were going to move beyond that. I thought that Dr. King's dream was going to become a reality. But while legalized racism has been dismantled, societal norms and social conventions haven't caught up. Since Obama's elections, racism has become more public. A 17 year old unarmed black male is deemed suspicious by a neighborhood vigilante who follows him, shoots him and then successfully argues that it was self-defense. I can accept that the jury viewed the evidence as insufficient to convict. What pisses me off is all of the white people who assert that Zimmerman's stalking of Martin had nothing to do with race. Are they really so ignorant that they don't know that "looks suspicious" is code for walking while black in Zimmerman's world? There was no reasonable cause for Zimmerman to follow Martin, exactly what is suspicious about a kid walking through a neighborhood?

I just read a comment by a white male in NC who talked about how well his integrated neighborhood gets along. He extolled the image of all the neighbors being friends. I'd love to talk to the black people in his neighborhood and find out how many of them agree with him.

My experience has been that it is always up to the black people to conform to white society in order to be accepted by the more enlightened liberal whites. There is nothing that we can do to be accepted by the sheet wearing crew. Wearing the mask, that is cloaking our connections to black cultural norms, is psychologically harmful and emotionally draining. We've been doing it since the first Africans were carted to these shores in the belly of a ship. There was and is immense pressure from the white culture for black people to assimilate culturally if we wish to be reasonable successful in the larger society. I don't want a colorblind society. I want to be appreciated as a black southern woman. Race is a social construct but my black cultural identity is an essential part of who I am.

President Obama's recent words about the Zimmerman verdict were beautiful and heart felt but they've also been said over and over again and haven't really made much difference. White people are not only still clinging to racist generalizations but when all else fails, they accuse black people of "reverse racism" and with sincere indignation declare that it is black people, led by that irascible duo of Sharpton and Jackson who keep racism alive. 

I have no more patience with the persistence of racism and I certainly don't have the emotional energy to help white people learn how not to be racist. 

White people are not the victims but the perpetrators of a system of racial exclusion that has persisted long past the end of chattel slavery and imposed social and economic consequences on black people that have impeded our ability to successfully and fully compete in the economic infrastructure in this country leaving us disproportionately represented in the underclass and in the nation's prison system. I find this to be unacceptable and I think that it's long overdue for white people who know better to talk to those who don't, about racism in America.

Obama, Holder, and the Matter of Race

I don't have any problems with Rich Benjamin's article at salon.com, the one where Benjamin poses the question, does Attorney General Holder represent the President's "inner nigger"? I wonder if the folks expressing outrage and offense over the article read past that question. 

Benjamin's piece addresses the same topic as an old, eloquent poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, We Wear the Mask. Benjamin isn't calling the President nor Holder a nigger; he is addressing the duality of consciousness written about by diverse voices from Carl Jung to W.E.B. DuBois.

Being black and participating in a white culture creates a sort of duality of nature for many black people. We must be careful not to be too black in our attitudes and behaviors because that frightens and disturbs white people. In Benjamin's words, "As such, what black person doesn’t understand duality and double consciousness, especially when s/he speaks to multiple publics and circulates in multiple contexts?" (salon.com)

Many otherwise rational people have taken issue with Benjamin's critique of Obama's speech. Bob Cesca offers a rambling and accusatory commentary on Benjamin's piece that essentially consista of repetition of variations of, "what the fuck?" (Bob Cesca, WTF is this?) Some liberals seem particularly bent out of shape because they perceive the article as accusing the President of being a coward, afraid or unwilling to speak out on race. This obtuse misconstruction of Benjamin's thesis reflects the general lack of familiarity with the body of work dealing with race theory and race consciousness. Most relevant is the concept of "double consciousness" as defined by W.E.B. DuBois.

In DuBois' Souls of Black Folk (a summary), he describes double consciousness as follows:

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

It is this double consciousness that is the underlying theme of Benjamin's thoughtful post. Discussions of race are rare in this country; meaningful discussions of race are virtually nonexistent. When we do talk about race, there is a focus on agreeing that the narrative stay in safe territory so as not to offend anyone, especially white people who are sympathetic to issues of race and racism. President Obama said all of the right things. His words can only be construed as offensive by windbags like Beck and Limbaugh, and those who continue to enjoy dressing up in bed sheets and attending tea parties.

However, Rich Benjamin does not fail to recognize that Obama made the speech that he needed to make. The point of his post is not to bash Obama but to highlight the complexities of America's race problem. Benjamin fully recognizes that an angry back man is not a readily acceptable image for the President of all of America. In Benjamin's words:

Where Trayvon Martin is concerned, the president is also wise to sweep a racial discussion under the rug, because that discussion tarnishes his political capital. Politically, he seeks to run-up his party’s Latino support, by burnishing his reputation for historic inclusion and racial reconciliation. In discouraging too much diversity talk or racial gripe, the president’s image management promotes him as a racial icon with no racial agenda. His image management shrewdly polishes his racial identity even as it downplays it.

The disturbing reality is that even President Obama's measured and thoughtful words have left many white Americans up in arms and crying reverse racism. I've debated with friends since Obama's election in 2008 about the careful steps that Obama has had to make in navigating the minefield of race in America.

Benjamin's question shocks in his choice of language. I think that it is intentional and appropriate. Racism is the insidious scourge of the United States that has long survived the chains of chattel slavery; its continued presence should shock and disturb us. Benjamin suggests that Holder and the President are the flip side of the same coin, or as he puts it, Holder is the President's doppelganger, the voice that expresses the unpalatable truths that the President cannot. It was Holder who put a less than rosy spin on the state of race matters in a 2009 speech in which he accused Americans of “...retreating to our race protected cocoons, where much is comfortable and where progress is not really made.”

The divisiveness reflected in public reactions to the Zimmerman verdict belie that we have entered into the golden age of a post-racial society. Rich Benjamin never suggests that President Obama is weak or ineffective only that perhaps the President has to repress all that he would and could say and that Holder voices the deeper frustrations that the President may feel. It's an interesting theory and adds another layer to the matter of race and identity in this country.

The N-Word Debate Resurrected

I have no problem with Quentin Tarantino's use of the word nigger in his film, Django Unchained. As he has said, it's accurate usage for the historical period of the film. I also don't have a problem with his usage at the Golden Globes. It really is about context. He didn't call anyone a nigger; he made an observation about its usage.

(Note: I'm breaking my own rule in this post in using the word nigger instead of the euphemism, n-word. I think that it's time for me to take away the power of the word in my life.)

However, I do take issue with the prevalent mythology that black people use the word nigger all the time. I'm black and 57 years old. I don't know all black people but I know a lot of black people. NONE of the black people that I know typically use nigger as a greeting or in general conversation.

The arguments that I read from white people who feel put upon because they can't use the word is that black rappers say it all the time! I don't know any rappers, but I don't count entertainers looking to make a dollar as the standard by which I live.

Black people do not run around greeting each other with the word as a rule. Among many black people, it is not considered a polite term to simply use in greeting.

What I don't understand is why under normal circumstances a white person would desire to say nigger. What's the point? If you really hold no racist feelings, then why on earth would you want to use such a vile and demeaning term? Is it some cheap thrill?

If you are engaged in a discussion where you need to say nigger, then I have no issue with that. However, it would come across as less offensive if you simply said n-word. What most black people object to is the use of the term nigger to define us. You can't call me a nigger and argue that you have a right to do so because it's not fair that only black people can say it. I just don't buy that white people are really that stupid or naive.

I have no problem with using the word in context to describe some historical application of the term. However, I don't find myself in circumstances where there is a need for the use of nigger as a rule. I can't help but wonder just when it is that white people find such a pressing need to say nigger that we're still having this ludicrous discussion about the alleged unfairness of white people not being able to freely use the word.

The NRA: A Predictable Response

Today the National Rifle Association (NRA) finally broke its silence about the massacre of innocents and their teachers in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012.

Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's executive vice president rejected the idea of stronger gun legislation in favor of placing "...armed police officers in every single school in this nation." LaPierre goes on to declare, "Innocent lives might have been spared, if armed security was present at Sandy Hook. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." (Rachel Rose Hartman, NRA Newtown Response, Yahoo News)

LaPierre and the NRA are irrational and dangerous.The difference between a good guy with a gun and a bad guy with a gun is indistinguishable until they shoot someone. Mass shooters are typically people who decide on a particular day to murder a lot of people. If they had been a "bad guy" and made a practice of shooting large groups of people, I seriously doubt that they would still be allowed to wander about with a gun. The NRA's position makes no sense to anyone capable of rational thought.

The problem lies with the number of guns owned in America, the type of weapons, and the type of ammo. Even a good guy can have a bad day and the last thing that we need are a bunch of armed people patrolling the halls of our schools unless the NRA can come up with a fool proof test to determine who is a good guy and who is a bad guy.

The NRA also tries to shift the focus to violent movies and video games. The problem is that numerous studies have concluded that exposure to such material is not the causative factor in American gun violence.

A Facebook friend argues that it isn't about the tool used by the perpetrator of mass violence, but about our "social celebration of violence as an answer to problems and as a way to fame."

I agree that we need to deal with our culture of violence, but the tools do make a difference. In addition, when data of other types of crimes is compared with crime rates of other cultures, the U.S. doesn't appear to be any more violent than other developed countries except in the area of gun violence.

We are not a more violent nation, if we look at overall crime rates. It is only in the area of gun violence that the U.S. drastically exceeds other nations. (National Vital Statistics Report, CDC, October 2012)

While we kill 11,000 to 12,000 of our fellow citizens each year with guns; England and Wales have about 50 gun homicides a year -- 3% of our rate per 100,000 people. The U.S. has more gun-related killings than any other developed country. (Max Fisher, WorldViews, 12/14/12 Washington Post).

Changing cultural norms takes an inordinate amount of time and in the meanwhile, this nation has a murder by gun rate that far exceeds that of comparable developed nations.

A single person with a semi-automatic gun with a magazine capable of rapidly firing multiple rounds is bound to have a higher kill count than someone with a shovel. Lanza killed 26 people in approximately 10 minutes. This pretext that tools don't matter is dangerous and nonsensical. Who would you rather face--a person armed with a shovel or a person armed with a glock?

The countries that have enacted stringent gun controls have seriously lowered their rates of death by gun violence

The NRA offers a ludicrous solution--let's arm the good people to fight the bad people, as if good people and bad people are separate species. Anyone has the potential to commit an act of violence and we don't know that they are a "bad person" until they do so. Some of those "good people" that the NRA would arm may get pissed off one day and become a bad person with a gun.

We have to stop coming up with overly simplistic solutions based on fallacies about human nature. There is no such thing as a criminal until a person commits a crime. We have more people in prison proportionate to our population than any other country. I'm not worried about criminals running around with guns. It's those law abiding citizens, armed to the teeth that worry me. Up until last Friday, Adam Lanza wasn't a criminal.

The CDC has gun death stats for 2011.

The Only Thing Left Is the Voting

It's over; the only thing left to do is vote. Last night, Governor Romney and President Obama engaged in their final debate.

The general tide supports that Obama edged out Romney by a small margin. My favorite guru, Nate Silver over at the 538 Blog says that the debate is unlikely to provide Obama with a large bump but that a small bump will still be significant. I can't read the rest of the article because the blog is on the New York Times site and I've used up my 10 free articles for this month. If I want to read more articles, I have to be a paid subscriber or just wait to November for my next 10 free reads. 

The debates were about as substantive as the "reality" shows that abound on the major networks. The moderators fail to ask substantive questions about matters such as climate change, the impact of the European economy on America, alternatives to fossil fuels and so on and so forth, and the candidates don't care if they answer the questions that are asked, only that they make points that their supporters will applaud.  

The public plays a major role in this pretense of doing something meaningful. Far too many people have the attention span of a toddler and only wake up and focus when there is a zinger offered by one of the participants. The media actually writes reviews of the debates analyzing who gave the best zingers of the night. The President appears to have won the zinger contest in last night's debate with his reminder to Romney that the modern Navy is not just a bunch of ships but consists of aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. Of course the memorable part of the chastisement was, "Governor,...we also have fewer horses and bayonets..."

The Huffington Post thinks that the President's zingers were "sharp but snarky." (Hunter Stuart and Oliver Noble) Various critics declared the President the loser of the first debate, chastising him for not offering any zingers. The talking heads on Good Morning America offered that the attack mode of the President in the last two debates may have upset women voters. Didn't bother me, but then I've watched Liam Neeson kick butt in Taken three times.

It would be nice if candidates could have real debates where they talked about the issues. Imagine scoring points with viewers by actually saying something substantive that required you to listen and follow the intricacies of the discussion. Everyone glued to the screen and not a single soul texting or playing Words with Friends on their electronic gadget of the moment.

I also hope for world peace. I'm a patron of impossible causes. 

I support President Obama. I believe that he does think about matters of substance but realized that his initial efforts to engage in civil and substantive discourse wasn't playing well with Mr. and Ms. Average American. I enjoyed his zingers, but that's not why I am voting for him.

I'm casting my vote for Obama because I believe that this country needs a leader who thinks about what matters. A leader who is focused on our interaction with the rest of the world, who understands that foreign policy is not about threats and waving a big stick. I want a leader who believes that we are all in this together and supports domestic policies that address  wealth distribution. You see, I don't believe that poverty is inevitable, that people are homeless because they are too lazy to do better, or that any child should go to bed hungry. I also believe that we can do better as a country, that we can work to build a society based on equity and fairness for all. I'm voting for Obama because in spite of the absence of any discussion of environmental issues in the debates, the President has demonstrated in practice and policies that environmental protection issues are high on his agenda.

Maybe next election cycle, we'll hear candidates engage in substantive discussions of the issues that should concern us all and maybe Denzel Washington will call me to chat. I work at being an optimist.

Romney, Iran, and Nukes

A Survivor of Hiroshima

Note: Only two nuclear weapons have been used in the course of warfare, both by the United States near the end of World War II. These two bombings resulted in the deaths of approximately 200,000 Japanese people—mostly civilians—from acute injuries sustained from the explosions. (Radiations Effects Research Foundation)

Foreign policy is the focus of the last presidential debate prior to election day. No doubt, one of the topics will be Iran's nuclear program. 

The Iranian government declares that its nuclear program is for peaceful, energy producing purposes. However, in spite of Tehran's protestations that the goals of its nuclear program is to provide fuel for medical reactors and a non-oil based energy source, the U.S., Europe, and Israel are skeptical and believe that the goal is to create nuclear weapons. 

A recent New York Times headline proclaimed that the White House has been in secret negotiations with Iran resulting in an agreement between the U.S. and Iran to engage in one-on-one negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. (NYT, 10/20/12) Before we all get excited that reason has prevailed, both the White House and Tehran are denying that any such agreement has been reached. (The Telegraph-UK, 10/21/12) The White House does assert that it is open to such negotiations. 

In the meantime, the Israelis continue to advocate that the U.S. set "clear red lines" on Iran's nuclear program that if crossed would trigger military action by the U.S. against Iran. (NYT, 9/11/12) Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel has publicly criticized what he considers to be President Obama's soft policy towards Iran, and avers that if the U.S. won't draw a line in the sand regarding Iran's nuclear program that the U.S. "...has no 'moral right' to restrain Israel from taking military action of its own." (NYT, 9/11/12)

Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has made it clear that he feels that the President should stop Iran in its pursuit of nuclear weapons and specifically rejects the notion of using diplomatic channels to address this issue. Already, Republicans are rejecting the notion of any negotiations with Iran, asserting that even if Iran makes an offer to parlay, it is only a ploy to distract from its real goal of making a nuclear bomb. South Carolina's Senator Lindsey Graham (R), a Romney ally, offered his views on Sunday, "The time for talking is over,...we should be demanding transparency and access to the (Iranian) nuclear program." (USA Today, 10/21/12) 

What is this red line that we need to draw? No one has made that perfectly clear. The Israeli government has indicated that it wants the U.S, to set a limit on the amount of enriched uranium (essential bomb making material) Iran may stockpile and enforce Iran's adherence to the limit with the threat of military force for a transgression. The Obama administration has rejected placing military action by the U.S. on the table as a possibility. Apparently, Romney doesn't share the President's views, as he has declared Obama to be soft on Iran and lacking in commitment to our ally, Israel.

The one question that I want Mr. Romney to answer tonight is what is his recommended course of action in dealing with Iran's nuclear program. I want specifics. Does he favor the red line spoken of by Netanyahu? If so, what will that line consist of? If elected, is Romney willing to take us into another war? Will he use military action if Iran crosses that red line? 

I admit that I don't need an answer; I think Romney has already made it perfectly clear that his image is of America the macho, the world enforcer. I just want to hear him say it and just maybe more of my fellow Americans will hear his words and reject an ideology predicated on the belief that might makes right.

Mitt Romney as commander-in-chief is a very scary proposition. It's like putting a ten-year-old behind the wheel of a race car. There was a folk song popular in the 1960s that had the line: When will we ever learn? It became an anthem for the anti-Vietnam War movement of the 1960s. Unfortunately, we appear to be a nation of slow-learners.

The Presidential Election: Time to Turn the Debate to Substance

My friend Leslie over at Parsley's Pics posted an article, "God Forbid Should Biden Not Perform Perfectly," in which she chides "fickle liberals" for continuing to focus on bemoaning their disappointment in President Obama's debate performance last week.

Another friend commented that liberals finding Obama's debate performance to be lackluster are not responsible for Obama's slipping in the polls.

I agree that in spite of the incessant fixation on Obama's "poor" performance from some liberals, there is no direct correlation of the criticism from some of the President's base and current polls that show him with fewer Electoral College votes than last week. 

However, the chronic complaining hasn't accomplished anything positive either. Liberals and conservatives have for the most part already decided who gets their vote. The target group in these last few weeks are the Undecided. As the candidates rev up their appearances and their ads, each hopes to grab those who are undecided and tip the scales in their favor in the hallowed swing states.

The problem that I have with liberals and the noisy critique from some quarters lamenting Obama's debate style is that it aides the opposition in keeping the focus on trivialities rather than substance. The other problem that I have is that the undecided are important and the way to snag them isn't with expressions of disappointment in the president's performance. He has a staff to evaluate the weaknesses of his debate performance and how to liven it up so that he too can present fluff over substance and thereby compete with Romney.  

I just don't think that continued expressions of disappointment about the first debate communicates any reasons to the undecided why they should support the president. No one is going to be drawn to support a candidate whose own base keeps declaring him to be a loser.

It's similar to a business that's floundering. If you want to attract investors to shore up the business and make it profitable again, you don't do so by publicly focusing on the company's failings.

The media keeps rehashing the debate as if Obama's IQ suddenly dropped by 30 points. It was a misstep and instead of wailing and gnashing of teeth, my view is that we, meaning liberals, need to do everything that we can to shift the focus back to the issues and meet the fixation on style over content with solid facts. Facts are unchanging, unlike Romney's version of reality.

I'm not interested in in-house debates among liberals. We all want the same thing. What we have here is a difference in approach. I think that getting Obama re-elected is the priority and we need to do whatever it takes to make that happen, including cutting out all the in-house bickering among liberals about our candidate. As lousy as Romney is, and as much as some elements of the GOP are unhappy that he is the candidate, for the most part, they publicly stand behind him. Conservative bloggers don't as a rule express any serious displeasure with Romney's performance, even when he tells 27 lies in 38 minutes. (Fact Check: Romney Told 27 Myths in 38 Minutes During the Debate)

We've beaten the debate performance drum long enough; I think it's time for a new rhythm.

---

(I was feeling down after hearing on the evening news that Romney was polling higher after the first debate, until I checked out Nate Silver's blog, 538: "Mitt Romney gained further ground in the FiveThirtyEight forecast on Monday, with his chances of winning the Electoral College increasing to 25.2 percent from 21.6 percent on Sunday." All increases are not equal.)--Oct. 8: A Great Poll For Romney, In Perspective