Bending Over Backwards in No Time Flat

"The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."

These words are often attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr., who was paraphrasing 19th-century Unitarian minister Theodore Parker when he spoke them.  Whoever first came up with the concept, it has given comfort to many activists and freedom fighters over the years.  Be patient, it says. This will be a long fight, but we will win; not just because we're right and they're wrong, but because this is the way the world works.

The good news is that the arc of the moral universe still seems to be bending in the right direction, and the better news is is that it doesn't seem to take as long as it used to.  Or at least that's what everyone's saying about the most recent battle for equal treatment under the law: the gay rights movement.

Specifically, when it comes to attitudes about the right of same-sex couples to marry, the change seems to be fairly rapid, especially when you compare this right to the right of women to vote, or the right of people of color to learn and work and live alongside their more traditionally privileged -- white -- fellow citizens.

It's happened so fast, in fact, that many wonder if the shift is reversible -- more of a whim than an actual sea change. Of course, none of us can predict the future, but I'll put my money on the table with Theodore Parker.  Things will go our way, mostly because we have the truth on our side.  But even I've been surprised - albeit pleasantly - at how quickly this is all happening.

While there have been a number of social movements for equal treatment under the law on behalf of disenfranchised groups of people, the three that stand out the most in my mind are the suffrage movement which aimed to get women the vote, the Civil Rights movement of the 1950's and 60's, which led to such victories as the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (among others), and the LGBT rights movement of today, which has yet to result in a nationwide ENDA or full marriage equality for all Americans - but it will, I'm confident.

And sooner than we thought. And I think there might be a couple of reasons for that.

1) Civil Rights for White Guys

The most obvious difference between the three movements is, of course, visual.  When we think of the most prominent leaders in the quest for equality under the law for LGBT persons, the images that most of us conjure up are of white gay men like Harvey Milk, Larry Kramer, or Dan Savage.  Sure, there were others - Bayard Rustin was a gay rights activist before anyone knew what that meant, and I dare say that Ellen DeGeneres has done as much for the LGBT community as anyone in our history.

And yet, the picture that most people have in their minds when they think of the "gay community" is a group of well-groomed, manicured, athletic white men with perfect hair and shiny teeth.  And whoever is responsible for that image is certainly up for debate; many within the LGBT activist community point the finger squarely at each other for sidelining the contributions of women and people of color in our struggle, while others blame the media, and still others say that society at large still allows white men to be more visible than anyone else.  And there's probably some truth in all three of those scenarios; they're not mutually exclusive, and in fact, probably symbiotic.

But it helps when those who are being treated differently look the same as those who have traditionally held all of the power.  The "look, we're just like you" tactic goes a long way when we do actually look just like you, and you just happens to be the group with the most power.  Also, having a lot of white guys in our movement allows us to be angrier.  One need only look so far as how Rosie O'Donnell was perceived once she came out as a lesbian and dropped the "Queen of Nice" persona to see how difficult it is to be a) pissed off, b) anything other than white or male, and c) listened to and taken seriously.  And we need to be angry if we're going to get anything done.  White guys can get angry and still be listened to. Shouldn't be that way, but there it is.

2) Will Portman

If you don't know who Will Portman is, it's okay; he's not exactly a household name.  He is the son of Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), who recently became the first sitting US Senator from the Republican Party to endorse the right of gay people to marry each other.  And he did it, he said, largely in part because his beloved son, Will, is gay.

Will Portman (l), Sen. Rob Portman (r)

A lot of my lesbian, gay, bi, and trans friends were actually rather put off by this, noting (correctly) that he has and has had many, many constituents who are LGBT, or parents, siblings, children, and friends of LGBT citizens, and therefore plenty of reason to adopt a pro-gay stance in the past.  Why now, they wondered, should I treat Sen. Portman like a hero when he seems to be only interested in the well-being of his own family?

And I get it, I really do.  But I also believe that this is how change happens.  Harvey Milk once urged all LGBT people to come out of the closet, to their parents, to their friends, and co-workers, and neighbors.  He stopped short of asking people to come out to total strangers (it was the 1970's, after all), but he knew intrinsically that it was much more difficult to hate gay people if you know gay people.  And that everyone knows gay people; sometimes, they just don't know they know them.

So is Senator Portman a hero?  Maybe, maybe not. But Will Portman is a superhero in my book. It was tough enough for me to come out to my father, and my father was not a Republican Senator who had publicly opposed gay marriage in the past. Will is the personification of Harvey Milk's words, and one of the reasons why we'll eventually win this thing. Because not only does everyone know us, everyone's related to at least one of us.  And it's hard to hate your flesh and blood. It's not impossible (I'm looking at you, Newt & Phyllis), but a little more difficult than hating someone you'd never met and would cross the street to avoid.

But, I hear you say, what about women's rights? All men have mothers, and many have daughters and sisters. And it took a freakishly long time for women to secure the vote, and they still make 78 cents to the dollar. And you're right.  And even though I've singled out Will Portman to make my point about all of us in our (mostly) straight families, I did so on purpose.  Because until Will came out to his dad, he was a young, white man, raised in economic privilege and headed to Yale University, of all places.  It's likely that our friend the Senator had a very clear picture of who Will was and what he was going to become, and was therefore shocked to learn that, in the eyes of the law, he is not an equal citizen of this country he serves. Will wasn't minimized from birth the way so many women have been (and yes, continue to be), and the injustice was therefore a little more galling. Shouldn't be that way, but there it is.

3) The Twitter Machine

And this, I think, is the biggest differentiator yet. Imagine what might have happened if Susan B. Anthony had a Twitter account.  Or if Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a blog.

Dr. King spoke some of the most inspirational words we Americans have been lucky enough to hear from one of our fellow citizens, and yet - unless you were lucky enough to attend one of his speeches in person - every word we heard was filtered through our media.  A white man somewhere - or, more likely, a room full of white men - decided that his words were newsworthy, or decided that we didn't need to hear them.  In contrast, the struggle for LGBT civil rights is being fought in the age of the internet, and the differences are startling.

If you want information these days, you can get it yourself. There are 31 billion searches on Google every month. In the age of radio, it took 38 years for a single piece of information to reach a market of 50 million people. The invention of the television reduced that time frame to 13 years. The internet allowed this to happen in 4 years, and the introduction of Facebook reduced time to market to 2 years.

Facebook is totally gay.

Like I said, our team has the truth on its side, and the truth just travels faster than it used to.  Admittedly, lies also travel quickly, as evidenced by Tony Perkins' Twitter account, but so does the repudiation of those lies. When hate groups like the National Organization for Marriage peddle junk science purporting that children are highly advantaged by heterosexual parents, we can hammer that down like a Whack-a-Mole in no time flat.

And that, I believe - more than any other reason - is why the LGBT rights movement has moved faster than anyone ever thought it would. It's not a whim, and it's not entirely because we're still a bunch of racists and sexists (except that we kinda are, still).  It's mostly because the whole world just moves a lot faster than it used to, and the struggle for equality under the law, regardless of sexual orientation, just happens to be a beneficiary of that.  And funny cat videos.  But that's another topic for another day.

It's (Not Just) the Economy, Stupid

So it's been over a week, since Rep. Todd Akin made his incredibly stupid remarks about "legitimate rape" that appalled Democrats as a rule and even sent Republicans scrambling to denounce him and urge him to step out of his bid for the U.S. Senate.

And it's been twenty years since James Carville and the rest of Bill Clinton's election team used the phrase, "The economy, stupid," to mobilize voters and keep their candidate on message.

Since that time, it's become a staple of political wisdom, almost silly in its obviousness, that when the economy is in the shitter, it's a dumb idea to dwell on what we call "social issues" - things like women's health, immigration reform, gay marriage, reproductive rights, voter suppression, stuff like that.  When politicians talk about jobs and money, they're on point, but when they talk about social issues, they're clearly distracted - and it's boneheads like Todd Akin that are doing the distracting.

And it's almost taken for granted that voters who care deeply about these distractions, these "social issues," are flimsy thinkers, easily distracted, the kind of people who would buy a car because it's a pretty color with no knowledge of important things like, say, fuel efficiency, or torque.

And yet, it seems that everyone is just this distractable, as Todd Akin and his belief that magical vaginas can tell the difference between self-actualized, feminist-friendly sperm and bad, evil, rapey sperm, and will secrete spermicidal fluids when under stress shows.  That little bit of ridiculous twaddle has been distracting the entire nation for over a week now, so clearly we're all susceptible.

I personally have no problem with this.  My problem, and it's a minor one, has to do with this notion that jobs and the economy are the only issues worth discussing.  And they're important, don't get me wrong.  I'm lucky enough to have kept a job throughout the recession we've been experiencing for the past four years, but I do know how lucky I am.  Friends of mine - talented, imminently employable friends (and members of my family) - have not been so lucky, and I've seen first-hand how painful a bad economy can be.  Jobs and the economy should absolutely be on the table.

But it's a big table, and governing our country is a big job.  It seems to me that there ought to be room in the national discourse for lots of legislative issues that affect our lives.  And therein lies the problem.

Because, you see, the country is run - by and large - by straight white men.  If you have any position of power in our government or our society, you're probably at least two-out-of-three (straight, white, or male) - or you're Oprah.  And if you're a straight white man, then a lot of "social issues" - things like women's health, immigration reform, gay marriage, reproductive rights, voter suppression, stuff like that - can easily be seen as someone else's problem.  It's not easy for a lot of straight folks to truly feel the pain of gay couples who can't get married, difficult for a lot of men to empathize with women who are being threatened with less than full control over their own bodies, and hard for white people who are largely blind to their own whiteness to get too awfully excited about voter-ID laws that don't make it any harder for them to vote, or immigration "reforms" that don't require them to carry proof of citizenship at all times.

Not that all straight white men are bad.  There are a few who are downright awesome.  But most straight people, white people, and male people simply don't know what they don't know about what it is to be not straight, not white, or not male in America in 2012.  It sometimes seems that the only straight white men in this country who are truly invested in the silly superficial "social issues" are the assholes who believe that equity for non-straight, non-white, non-male people will somehow result in some sort of hostile takeover where only one kind of person has dignity, social standing, and the freedom to make their own choices - without realizing that this is exactly the world we live in and that one kind of person is them.

So here's the takeaway: social issues are not going anywhere.  They will continue to distract us for a long, long time.  Because for women, issues of women's health are life-or-death issues.  For gay people, the ability to get married means that you can visit your partner's deathbed, inherit his/her legacy without being taxed to death, or not be deported.  For people of color, Arizona's SB-1070 or Pennsylvania's new requirements for voter identification make you less valid, less human, less American in the eyes of the law.  This is really important stuff for a lot of people, even a few of the downright awesome straight white guys.

I don't feel stupid when I talk about social issues.  I don't feel like I'm being distracted from the really important stuff.  For me, it's all really important stuff.  And maybe when our politicians, our legislators, our media, and our citizenry starts treating it all like really important stuff, we can actually take a step forward as a nation.

Girls Gone Republican

The longer the summer drags on without an announcement of some sort, it seems that Sarah Palin won't be running for President after all.  Which disappoints me, only because if Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann were going to run, I was hoping we could also recruit that batshit-crazy anti-Muslim weirdo Pamela Geller into the race as well. Because c'mon, how awesome would it be for the girl-power trifecta of the modern Republican Party to feature a Sarah, a Michele, and a Geller?

But even if Palin won't be running, I think we can all agree that she'll be a presence in politics throughout 2011 and 2012, for good or ill.  Most of my friends would certainly choose "ill," and I don't blame them.  Sarah Palin was a small-town mayor and half-term governor who (let's be honest) lies a lot, and I feel fairly secure in my belief that she adds a lot more heat than light to the national discourse.

But the same can be said of lots of political pundits.  And yet, there seems to be a special kind of scorn among by leftie friends reserved for Sarah Palin, a kind of seething hatred matched only by the hot wrath that they feel for surprise GOP Presidential front-runner (if anyone can be a front-runner before a single primary) Michele Bachmann.

Okay, so let's start with the obvious similarity between these two.  Yes, I'm talking about their vaginas.  Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are, according to my highly unscientific sampling of my friends, the two most hated figures in Republican politics right now, and they both happen to be women.

But just try and suggest that one has anything to do with the other, and you'll get an earful.  A friend of mine started quite the brouhaha on Facebook by posing this very thought just yesterday, and the response was quick - and often angry.

There seems to be this belief among liberals that they absolutely, positively cannot harbor any sexist thoughts by virtue of their very liberal-ness.  To be fair, you won't find many conservatives who will openly admit to sexism either - but the denials among liberals are, to me, especially ironic.  After all, you can't find many liberals who will tell you that sexism is a thing of the past, the way conservatives sometimes like to.  Yet, there are many on the left who know it's real, but refuse to imagine that any sexism lives inside of them.

I probably don't need to say this, but I have this niggling voice in the back of my head, shouting: "Let me be clear.  I am no 'fan' of either Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann."  If this particular rant has a point at all, it's not to defend either of these women, but rather encourage readers on the left to be honest with themselves, where these two women are concerned.

It might help to go back a bit.  When Barack Obama was campaigning for and eventually became President, I found a lot of the rhetoric used against him to be tinged - nay, saturated - with racism and racist assumptions.  You can't look at that now-famous Photoshopped image of Obama as a witch doctor with a bone through his nose and deny that there is a lot of racist invective coming his way.  The very idea that Obama should be the first and only President in our history to be forced to make public his official birth certificate to prove that he's actually an American-born citizen is racist to the core.

And yet - when I was engaged in several political "conversations" (ahem) with my conservative parents during his campaign and administration, they grew very frustrated with the notion that they weren't allowed to criticize the man without being called a racist.  They had a point.  They, like almost every white person in American, probably harbor more covert, unconscious bias against people of color than they'd like to admit.  AND, they had some real concerns with Barack Obama's policies, worldview, and political philosophy.  They leveled many of the same criticisms against our last Democratic President, Bill Clinton - and no one ever accused them of racism when they did it.  It's not racist to criticize someone who just happens to be black, they'd tell me.  And they were right.

AND ... a lot of the criticism being leveled at Obama was and is racist.  But not all of it.  So it's complex.  And I think the way the left thinks about and reacts to Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann is similar that way.

First of all, there's some stuff out there that is sexism in its purist form.  For instance, during the 2008 campaign, some voters were "concerned" that Palin, a mother of five, wouldn't be able to handle the pressures of being Vice President - or perhaps worse, might not be there for her children the way a good mother ought.  A man with a spouse and five kids would never hear this complaint.  It was sexist, and it was dumb.

But it's not always so obvious.

Last week, Bill Maher defended himself against the sexist charge by saying, "It's not because they have breasts.  It's because they ARE boobs."  It was a great line, and it got a lot of applause.  And I believe him when he says that.  And by that I mean, I believe that he believes it.

One denial that liberals are quick to spout when you inquire into their attitudes about Sarah and Michele is, "I can't be a sexist!  I voted for Hillary!"  Which would make sense, if sexism were as simple as we think it is.  But it's not.  Sexism is not as neat and clean as "Men good. Women bad. End story."  A lot of us (including me) loved Hillary because she was so smart.  But what's our definition of smart?  Is it possible that we assign intelligence to those who say things that we already agree with?  I'm not suggesting that our Secretary of State isn't as smart as you think she is.  She's done an amazing job at the State Dept. and in the U.S. Senate; she is clearly a brilliant woman.

The question I'm much more interested in is this: Are Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann as stupid as you think they are?  What I find really curious about our feelings about Palin and Bachmann isn't that we don't like them.  We (meaning we blue-state liberals) also don't particularly care for Sean Hannity, Eric Cantor, Rush Limbaugh, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, or John Boehner.  But while we think of these guys as being bad people who are wrong about so many things, we don't think of them as idiots, the way we frequently characterize Sarah and Michele.  We disagree with them all, but we do so a little differently.

Now ... are there men on the right we deride as less than intelligent?  Sure.  Are there women on the right that we respect for their ability to turn a phrase even while wishing them to their own special circle of deepest, darkest hell?  You betcha.  But by and large, there's a theme that's present when it comes to people we disagree with.  The men are bad and evil.  But the women are stupid.

Is it reasonable to suggest that a stupid woman would not have been able to turn an incomplete term as Alaska's governor into a media empire?  Am I weird to think that a woman who might very well win the Iowa Republican primary has the teensiest bit of political savvy?

Maybe, or maybe not.  But it's worth a thought.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being

My parents have no idea what I do for a living.  I've told them numerous times that I work in the field of Diversity & Inclusion, and my mother just shakes her head and says, "Yes, but I don't know what that means."  And the more I've tried to explain it to them, the more mysterious my career becomes.

Basically, I help organizations to become more diverse and inclusive.  "Diverse" means (yes) more people of color and more women.  But it also means, more gay people, more people with disabilities, more people from different faith communities, more transgender people, and more military veterans.  More of what you don't already have, basically.  And "Inclusive" means that you treat people well.  There are other definitions, but that's pretty much the crux of it.  Everyone might not have the same experience at work, but everyone has an equal shot.

I don't believe it's a terribly difficult concept to grasp.  Admittedly, I've been thinking about it every day for the past thirteen years, and maybe that's why - but doesn't everybody know that we live in a society wherein people who are Black, Latino, Asian, female, gay, lesbian, bi, trans, Muslim, Jewish, agnostic, athiest, Sikh, Hindu, or possessed of a disability have to take a lot of shit that other people don't have to deal with?

Honestly, I think that most people "get" that there are those in this world who are unjustly disenfranchised.  What they don't get, or don't want to get, is the flip side of the coin - that people who are white, straight, Christian, or temporarily able-bodied have this thing called "privilege."

Privilege is like the untouchable third rail of the Diversity & Inclusion conversation.  Nobody wants to admit that it's there - and yet, if you think about it, it must be there.  If someone is "less than," it begs the question: less than who?  If someone is down, then by definition someone else is up.  Simple, right?  Not for some people - and by "some people," I'm usually talking about some white people.

For those who are new to the concept of white privilege, the best resource I could possibly point you to is a classic essay by Peggy McIntosh called "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack."  It's a really short read, and it spells out the issue plainly and concisely.  In it, McIntosh reflects on why it was so difficult for her to get the men around her to admit that their penises entitled them to all kinds of free stuff that society made women work really hard for - and how she started to wonder if she got any free stuff that other people had to work really hard for.  And she started to make a list.  And it turned into a pretty long list.  It included things like, "I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented," and "Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of my financial reliability," and "I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race." And as the list got longer and longer (she stopped at 26 items, but could have clearly gone on and on and on), she realized she was onto something.

For me, the most powerful thing about McIntosh's essay isn't the laundry list of free stuff that society gives to white people, it's that she (like most white people) was completely blind to her own privilege before she made a conscious decision to focus on it.  That's the tricky thing about privilege: not only are we unaware of it, but we're encouraged to be oblivious.  And ignorance is often just as difficult to confront than out-and-out hatefulness.  Because like the proud bigot, the ignorant are fiercely protective of their ignorance.  They don't know and they don't want to know, because knowing makes a person accountable, and it's a whole lot easier to live in this world if racism (and sexism, and ableism, and heterosexism, and all the rest) is somebody else's problem.

Privilege is why we have stupid-ass words like "reverse racism."  Terms like "reverse racism" are, to put it simply, complete and utter bullshit.  It's like saying, "I can totally understand racism against them, but racism against me is totally fucked up; like, it doesn't even make any sense."  When people talk about "reverse racism," here's what usually happened: 1) members of an oppressed community have expressed resentment toward those more powerful than they, and 2) a white person within earshot gets his or her feelings hurt because after all, they never individually owned slaves (never mind that they reap the benefits of their skin privilege each and every day, as I do, often without even realizing it).

Privilege is why no one on Fox News can admit that some members of the Tea Party are clearly and abjectly racist (see this and this and this and this and this), but can freely and easily use the racist tag to describe Barack Obama.

Not only is this accusation profoundly unfair and untrue, but it illustrates the key point about privilege.  When Glenn Beck thinks that he's the victim of racism, he feels it.  But when the world conspires to make him feel more intelligent, more patriotic, more moral, and just plain better than anyone who's a shade darker than he is, he can't feel that at all.

And I get why white people cling to the belief that they are more victimized by racism than anyone else; I do.  Owning your privilege is tough.  It requires you to reflect on your entire life, and realize that you've been the beneficiary of a lot of free stuff over the years.  And we Americans would like to believe that earned all that stuff.  And you might have earned some of it; I won't take that away from you.  But I guaran-damn-tee you that if you grew up white in America, you got some of that shit for free.  You didn't earn it all.  And once you get it through your thick head that your skin color (or your penis, or your heterosexuality, or your Christianity, or your temporary status as an able-bodied person, or the HIV-negative blood coarsing through your veins, or whatever else) has given you a place of unearned privilege, it's sort of incumbent upon you to level the playing field a little, in whatever way you can, even if that's just educating yourself whenever the opportunity arises.

When I started doing diversity and social justice work, I was motivated by the oppression I felt as a gay person, and I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't really prepared to deal with my skin privilege.  And yeah, at the beginning, I did take the weight of the world onto my shoulders, and I felt a lot of guilt.  And getting through the guilt (but remaining knowledgeable and accountable) wasn't easy. You know what's easy? Playing the victim.  Playing the victim is easy, and it's actually a lot of fun, especially when you get to keep all the free stuff.

Skin Deep

I have a confession to make.

I'm not proud of it.

I've told a couple of people, but for some reason, it's difficult to put it in writing.  Not that I can't find the words, but y'know ... once things are written down, it's more difficult to deny them.

But there's really no denying it.

(sigh) ... Here goes.

I think Paul Ryan is kind of cute.

Yeah ... that Paul Ryan, the congressman from Wisconsin who has become the darling of the Republican party after writing that infamous budget proposal that basically dismantles Medicare.  That Paul Ryan.

Also, the Paul Ryan who a friend described as "looking vaguely like a Muppet."  My friend meant this as a dig, but I agreed with her - in outcome if not in intent.  He does look sort of like a Muppet ... in the sense that he's, well ... kind of adorable.

I've always had a "thing" for guys with sad eyes.  Paul Ryan is probably the poster boy for sad eyes.  When he frowns, he looks very sad indeed, and even when he smiles he looks like he could use a hug.  My boyfriend has sad eyes.  So does David Duchovny, who was my principal celebrity crush of my youth.

And now I must make it clear - I abhor Paul Ryan's politics.  As I was writing the above paragraph, the more principled voice inside my head was screaming at me, "And when he kicks your Grandma in the gut, what does he look like then? Huh??!!"  If I lived in Wisconsin's 1st district, I would not vote for Paul Ryan; in fact, it's safe to say that I would actively campaign against him (and could conceivably contribute to his next political opponent's campaign, should s/he have even a slim chance of winning).  I know what I believe in, and I have very strong convictions.  I absolutely know where I stand.

But I wonder: what's happening to me when I'm paging through Time Magazine, and stumble upon a full-page image of this guy, vaguely reminiscent of a Muppet, but also somewhat evocative of Superman - and I find myself staring at it.  And staring. And staring just a moment more, willing myself to turn the page, reminding myself of why this guy is the personification of everything that's wrong with the overprivileged frat house that is the modern Republican Party, but unable to deny myself another moment gazing at someone who can't be that bad, c'mon just look at him, isn't he cute??!!

Eventually, I do turn the page, but I continue to berate myself.  If I were a better person, I say, my repugnance of this man's value system would trump the pleasing arrangement of his features and render him downright homely.  But clearly I'm not this paragon of virtue I will myself to be.

And I'm reminded of all the guys I've been attracted to in the past, guys I've developed actual crushes on - only to get to know them (oftentimes by dating them) and discovering that their sad eyes, great teeth, and square jaws did not translate into the gentle-hearted, strong-but-silent, full-of-integrity personalities that I had assumed they would be.  And I think about all of the wonderful people I'll probably never get to know because upon first glance, they look sort of ... mean.  Or stuck-up.  And I wonder where I (we?) evolved this tendency of assigning personality characteristics to people based on facial features and body type and how we might possibly learn to evolve our way out of it.  And like most things that lead me down these winding roads inside my head, I'm left with more questions than answers.

But I do know this: Paul Ryan is dangerous.  Even if he is kind of dreamy to look at.

The American Nightmare

So yesterday, Barack Obama unveiled his birth certificate.  He's the first President in our history to do so.  And if that weren't sickening enough, Donald Trump followed up with a press conference of his own, congratulating himself for forcing Obama's hand.

I've read a lot of opinions in the last 24 hours about both men, in newspapers and on the blogosphere.  But most of these opinionators dodged what I feel is the most important question.  It's a question that was posed to me by a colleague who I think might have been fighting back tears when she said to me, "Why the f*ck does anyone care what the hell Donald Trump has to say, anyway?"

And the sad truth is that ... we do. We. Us. All of us.  Love him or hate him (and please, count me in the latter camp), we're interested in what he has to say.  And this is a sad truth for one sad reason: he's loaded.

I blame the American Dream.

Folks in this country generally understand "The American Dream" as the belief that if you work hard enough, you can be as successful as you want to be.  It doesn't matter where you were born, or who your parents were, or the color of your skin, or whatever challenges life has thrown your way.  And because this is America, we generally understand "successful" to be synonymous with "rich."  Believing in the American Dream is important to us, and there's no denying that it works for some people (Exhibit A: Oprah.  Exhibit B: Barack Obama, himself).

But we, as a nation, need to do some growing up when it comes to the American Dream.  Because we've confused the idea that it's possible with the notion that it's possible for everyone.  I've often wondered why so many working class Americans consistently vote against their own economic interests in favor of the billionaires, and I'm beginning to wonder if it's because they're voting in the interests of their perceived futures.  After all, they're all working really hard.  And this is America.  So who's to say that they won't be billionaires themselves someday?  Except, of course, that they won't all be.

And there's another downside to the myth of the American Dream, and it's this: we've bought into the notion that intelligence, work ethic, and character will make you rich in this country, and have slowly come to believe that the reverse is also true: that riches are a sign of intelligence, work ethic, and character.  And it's simply not true.

Let's take for example, The Donald.  Donald Trump is the very opposite of a self-made man.  He made a fortune by being born to rich parents.  Period.  Now, I'm not suggesting that people who inherit money are automatically arrogant, ethically misguided, stubborn assholes with bad hair (although that's certainly true in Donald's case).

What I am suggesting is that the size of your bank account has no correlation to your intelligence or character, whatsoever - no matter how you made your money.  I'm suggesting that we, as a nation, should judge who merits our attention based on a person's words and actions, because a person's words and actions are a much better gauge of a person's intelligence and character than the size of his/her bank account.  And using this test, Donald Trump fails miserably.  As James Poniewozik so astutely noted yesterday ...

Trump's remarks literally began, "I am very proud of myself." Because of course he is. Because who wouldn't be proud to have cynically embraced a toxic nutjob theory, on the basis of no good evidence, questioning the President's legitimacy, then having his suspicions shown to be an Al Capone's vault? Who wouldn't be proud to have turned himself from a national punchline into a national punchline with a shot at a Presidential nomination, through sheer, up-by-the-bootstraps pandering to Internet conspiracists? That takes talent, folks!

And there you have it.  Donald Trump has a ton of money.  That doesn't make him worth your time, or mine.