What Parsons’ refers to as “the personal” in Obama’s remarks I simply see as his willingness to speak on silence and inaction in the media– especially when it comes to justice for black people. And even though he’s not talking about anything new, there is something particularly striking in the specter of disproportionate sentencing in this cultural moment, this moment of Paris Hilton and Scooter Libby, of Genarlow Wilson, the Newark lesbians sentencing, and the Jena Six. (Jesse Rae Beard, one of the h.s. students, is pictured, left.) Obama took a good opportunity for shifting the norm, by using specific examples to make other candidates seem too abstract and less connected to the cultural moment, without affecting his own reputation for being “intellectual,” but here humanized, relatable.
The story is a good one. Below it is a Jena Six background story, since I haven’t posted on the case yet:
And here’s a background story related to the Jena Six, whom I will say more about in a later post:
Related posts at $3.60:
Related posts by me at Cypher&Syllable:
What do you think?
Fun and irreverent take on being young and down with the Obama campaign? Or sinister shadow of the Harold-Fordism Obama should expect throughout his campaign?
[6/20/07: Jack and Jill Politics has a nice update, here.]
And it does seem to have a scent of Limbaugh on it:
Related story:
The video is so interesting, as it uses Angelou’s blackness to authenticate Clinton’s femininity, and by some kind of metaphysical extension, her integrity as a candidate. Mainly consisting of images voiced over by Angelou, the video intercuts all these images of women of color (look Latinas! look AA&PIs!) with Clinton spending “quality time” with black children. Don’t get me wrong; I really like Angelou. She even wrote me a really sweet letter for my first book. But there’s something about the way the Clinton people use her in this video, an image amongst many others, that doesn’t sit well with me.
Elizabeth Benjamin on The NY Daily News’ blog reads the endorsement as “humanizing” Clinton. Angelou at best historicizes Clinton, reminding us that it is really meaningful that a woman is running for president. But at worst…
“Along with Hillary Rodham Clinton…and me!”
I am displeased. Not necessarily with the endorsement; I’m still working through that one. But the message was already a little, say, “thin”– vote for Hillary because she is a woman. And it is absolutely degraded by Angelou’s role here as Hillary’s black friend.
Coincidentally, after my random in-class rant on nationalism and the Miss Universe contest, I came across this article at the BBC. It’s about Miss Mexico’s gown choice for this year’s Miss Universe pageant, which will be held May 28th in Mexico City. The gown was selected for Rosa Maria Ojeda Cuen from a field of thirty other dresses, and was admired because the selection committee “wanted a dress that made you think of Mexico.” Hector Terrones, who served on the selection committee, apparently also explained to La Jornada that “The design should grab people’s attention and have impact without giving too much information.” But critics, like La Jornada columnist Jorge Camil, vehemently disagree on the dress’ ‘message,’ claiming that:
It would be like Miss USA wearing a dress showing images of the Ku Klux Klan in the Deep South. [...] A beauty contest is very far from being the right
place to vent political and religious ideologies.
Oh my! Let’s have a look at this dress…
According to msnbc, this well-accessoried ensemble features a “billowing, hoop skirt adorned with sketches of Catholic rebels hanging from posts. Rosaries and scapulars hung from the bullet-studded, bandolier belt; a large crucifix necklace, black halter top and wide-brimmed sombrero completed the outfit.”
(I really like it when ladies remember their hats. Bullets, however, are often that one thing too much that bogs down the look.)
The msnbc and BBC articles each do a good job pointing out some of what is at stake in this choice for representing Mexico to the world. There is also an article in La Jornada* that is particularly good at reading the dress as a signifier of contemporary Mexico’s political moment, which Melissa has also pointed out to us to in her response to JL’s post on the new abortion laws in Mexico City.
Further, as all of the articles point out, there is something troubling about this fetishization of the violent Cristero War, which hinged on Catholic rebellion against 
the secularization of the Mexican state. And for some, the images, which include Roman Catholic rebels hanging from posts and a man facing a firing squad (maybe Blessed Miguel Pro, SJ.?) also have an uncomfortable resonance with the pervasive public violence brought on by the escalating drug war in Mexico.
Hey Princess Propaganda and Princess Production, what do you think of this sticky uber-princess situation?
[*By the way, the Jornada article is in Spanish though, since it is a newspaper, you might only need to dredge up your sixth-grade Spanish! I suggest taking a look. If you get stuck, feed the article's URL into Babel Fish.]
. . . .
by Supriya Pillai
I’ve been in the basement of the UN for all of last week and I’ll be there until the end of this week. The Commission on the Status of Women meets every year to discuss government’s various commitments to a particular theme having to do with women. General, I know and, annoyingly, pretty non-binding, but the theatre I have been witness to has really been something. Watching world politics unfold in one room as people comb through language and text, the silent fights become more vocal. Diplomacy is just a nice way of fighting. Like, when most delegates take the mic, they respectively thank their other delegates, the chair and then they proceed with their “fuck yous”– but ever so gently.
This year, the theme is the Girl Child. Interesting to note, there are no international treaties, documents, etc that indicate that girls can express their human rights. Rather, there are places where girls are protected (i.e. by their families), but in and of themselves, they are not entitled to inalienable human rights.
Here’s the thing, the US is one of the very few countries that hasn’t even ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), let alone the Convention of the Rights of the Child or the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)… and they are proposing new language. It’s really arrogant. The US won’t ratify the UDHR because they claim we cannot have universal human rights when we believe in state sovereignty. To be honest, the US just wants to be exempt… exempt from owning up to torture at Abu Ghraib, owning up to starting a war when war wasn’t necessary, owning up to the systematic imprisonment of black folks and latinos in this country… I mean the list is long and basically they want to be exempt from fulfilling human rights and exempt from being held accountable for violating them.
So, what gives them the right to introduce any new language, to boss around other countries, and then to denounce the whole UN system at once? And for those of you who think that the UN is a waste of time, that’s our government’s propoganda and I can’t figure out, if that’s what they think, why they’re present and why they’re fighting so hard.
This year the US is [presenting] 2 resolutions. One got nixed today and the other will most likely get trashed too. They’ve put their hands into the pot of female infanticide, which we can all agree we are against, but then they had to throw in sex selective abortion. Our administration is so against abortion that they will fight battles outside of the country (since they can’t win them inside the country) to try to gain allies to deny women the right to control their own bodies and choose an abortion.
Another government’s delegation said to me and some other colleagues today, “I don’t understand why the US has to meddle in abortion, opposing it so much, when it’s legal in their own country.”
The other resolution is against forced and early marriage… I won’t go into it but it’s really the US’s back up… they have thrown in language on sex selective abortion into this resolution today with no negotiation from others… so really very diplomatic, to say the least. It’s all confusing and doesn’t make sense, but they are letting the world know that they are going to fight abortion wherever and however they can.
China has been funny… they blame all of the problems that the girl child faces today on globalization. They aren’t far off the mark, but they don’t see themselves as accountable in any of it.
Our friends from South America lobby in a block called Mercosur and they are doing a phenomenal job. Brazil, in particular, is very progressive.
Every year the Palestinians [present] a resolution (through another country since Palestine is not considered a member state) on women and girls living under foreign occupation. And, every year it gets shot down (by guess who? The US and Israel). But, this year we hope will be the year that it gets recognized.