“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” ― Jack Kerouac
This is how rich, curious Westerners fritter away the summer months: not yachting along the Côte d’Azur or strolling arm-in-arm through Mediterranean villas, but navigating the hectic, crime-ridden slums of Kibera, Dharavi, and Rocinha in an assortment of developing countries like South Africa, India, and Brazil.
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(Oxford University Press Blog, September 2013)
If you thought slavery was a thing of the past, think again. According to the U.S. Department of State’s 2013 Trafficking in Persons Report, appropriately released on Juneteenth Day, an estimated 27 million men, women, and children are human trafficking victims at any given time, with only 46,570 victims identified in the last year.
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(June 2013, iFLIP4.com)
Ryan Adams’s one-man acoustic set at Baltimore’s sold-out Lyric Opera House on Dec. 4 was as much a “homecoming party” as it was a musical occasion.The 37-year old musician, who announced his brief respite from the music industry in March 2009, kicked off his post-Cardinals era with a bang — though not in the way you’d think.
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(December 2011, JHU News-Letter)
NBC’s Parks and Recreation, the fourth season of which returns for its last few episodes tonight, boasts a wealth of great characters, from tough-as-nails Ron Swanson to the adorable Jean-Ralphio.
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(April 2012, Slate Magazine)
After a five-month absence, Robert Osborne, the primetime host for Turner Classic Movies, will return to the network tonight at 8 p.m. And it’s not a moment too soon for his diehard fans: As the day has neared, a surprising number of blogs—some created for the occasion, likeWelcome Back, Bob: The Officially Un-official Robert Osborne Welcome Home Party—have been celebrating his resumption of duties, some even launching countdowns to his “homecoming.”
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(December 2011, Slate Magazine)
On Friday, Slate ran an article by Elizabeth Weingarten examining Facebook’s “Social Inbox” feature, which sorts messages from friends and friends of friends into a user’s main inbox, and files the rest in an “Other” folder—unbeknownst, it appears, to most Facebook users.
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(December 2011, Slate Magazine)
Three weeks’ worth of misguided campaign strategies and unbecoming soundbites in the lead-up to this Tuesday’s election forecasted Romney’s downfall even before the race was called. In fact, the phrase “bleak prospects” would have seemed a gross understatement; by the morning of the election, the New York Times’ number-crunching guru Nate Silver had boldly pegged Obama’s chances of re-election at over 90%, and by 11:30 PM – before Florida and Ohio’s tallies had been finalized – none other than Fox News had declared a landslide victory for Barack Obama.
An unsurprising outcome, according to most prescient strategists and pollsters. But even if this year’s election was far from “too close to call,” Tuesday’s results undoubtedly afforded Americans a measure of political clarity – a kind of checkpoint where past and present-day electoral conditions could be thoroughly contrasted and evaluated, and the changing means of political self-identification for both parties could be analyzed and discussed. In other words, four years after the completion of Obama’s first presidential term, what has and hasn’t changed for Republicans and Democrats?
For Democrats, Election 2012 was a mixed bag. Weary liberals – sapped of last election’s fresh-faced, inspirational fervor – breathed only a collective sigh of relief after Tuesday’s results rolled in. Sure, voters who passionately stormed the polls in 2008 returned in dutiful defense of President Obama in 2012, but many observe a stark change in the tone of national and party discourse; without the sense of an aggressive, democratic mandate, much momentum seems lost in the face of bitter partisan fracture. Most agree that the enthusiasm surrounding Obama’s early years – once a force to be reckoned with – has weakened, though not without possibility of revival. But it isn’t all bad news; coming into Obama’s second term, a sense of progressivism persists, particularly given the recent legalization of marriage equality in states like Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington.
For Republicans, the results of Tuesday’s election were accompanied with a discouraging sense of déjà vu – another reminder of the party’s enduring existential crisis, particularly when it comes to their fragmenting base of constituents. Behind the roar of victory on the part of Democrats, embarrassed and embittered Republicans face many pivotal questions about the future of the party and the longstanding ideological fissures that felled its fortunes again this November. They’re beginning to take a forced but firm look at themselves in the mirror – a self-reflexive gesture that might engender a new and necessary willingness among party guardians to pursue the complex process of Republican modernization.
Which isn’t to say that Republicans should entirely abandon conservative orthodoxy, only that it might be wise for them to re-examine their priorities and consequently reclaim their relevance in the national political arena. Already, there are promising indications that the crux of the party is beginning to reject the moral militancy that has, for too long, overshadowed more substantive subjects of political discussion – fiscal conservatism, for instance, rather than issues like abortion and birth control. Young Republicans in particular are beginning to recognize the role ideological pandering has played in marginalizing mainstream moderates and despoiling the big-tent principles that once were, and should continue to be, the cornerstone of American Republicanism.
The Grand Old Party, it seems, have been offered what is known in politics as a tabula rasa — a clean slate — that lays the foundation for the emergence of a more modernized bloc of constituents. And while it is unlikely that religious radicalism will ever be fully purged from the political scene, Republican leaders can, at the very least, aim to minimize more extreme social agendas in the non-partisan context of global economic crisis.
If not, the party’s self-imposed ideological rigidity will compromise their ability to stay afloat in present-day electoral conditions; they will have to reconcile the divide between the “Chablis” and “Budweiser” Republicans, or else make a clean break from one segment or the other. Moreover, they will have to consider reviving – and actualizing – the notion of big-tent Republicanism to expand their shrinking base of constituents, and accommodate a growing pool of swing-voters and self-identified independents. Considering these circumstances, failure to consolidate is not an option for Republicans — that is, if they want to avoid being thrown out with the bathwater.
In the end, two questions persist: Is the Republican Party ready to modernize? Or will it, once again, resume the same tooth-and-nail infighting that has characterized its politics for much of its modern-day existence?
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*This article is temporarily unavailable due to the website construction for JHU News-Letter. Please e-mail me for a text version if interested.
(November 2012, JHU News-Letter)
Ever since Scott Van Duzer – a Fort Pierce, Florida pizza parlor owner – bear-hugged the President on one of last week’s campaign pit-stops, he’s become a household name among political pundits. He’s also made countless enemies among the general population; the registered Republican, who voted for Obama in 2008 and plans to do so again in November, says his heartwarming, meme-worthy photo op drew slanderous rhetoric from the Right, who regarded his off-the-cuff, “everyman” endorsement as a searing betrayal. Within hours, Big Apple Pizza & Pasta’s Yelp! page was crawling with unsavory comments, including one user who cringed at the thought of “O’Hussain” visiting “Big Crapple Pizza.” These drew stubborn responses from Van Duzer, who stood his ground amidst the explosive weeklong controversy. “I don’t regret anything I did,” he insisted in one interview, marveling at how his five minutes of fame ignited a political firestorm. “It’s my vote, my voice, and I respect everyone’s opinion, but it doesn’t have to be as nasty as it’s become.”
A doe-eyed idealist might condemn this regrettable series of events, expressing righteous disgust with the apparent “devolution” of “civil politics.” And to some degree, such naiveté would practically invite ridicule; after all, anyone’s who’s lived through at least two or three electoral scuffles is aware that politics – American or otherwise – isn’t touch football. Which isn’t to say we live in a “dirtier” age than our political predecessors: recall, for instance, how Senator Charles Sumner – a Massachusetts antislavery Republican – was brutally beaten with a metal-topped cane by Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina, in an explosive, pre-Civil War American Congress. And wasn’t it Vice President Aaron Burr who challenged Founding Father Alexander Hamilton to a fatal duel less than a decade after the “shot heard ‘round the world?”
A few crazy Yelp! reviews certainly pale in comparison to these real world, life-or-death matches. But – to modify an old Shakesperean adage – what’s in a hug? Is it truly “doe-eyed” or“idealistic” to identify the inappropriateness of such widespread, petty outrage? And when did embracing the President of the United States of America – an otherwise mundane event in the political scheme of things – become a detestably partisan gesture for GOPers?
Take one such milestone in the history of the “political hug”: A well-liked Charlie Crist – Florida’s then-Republican Governor – embraces the President as he campaigns for his economic stimulus bill along the panhandle in 2009. The unremarkable moment, caught on videotape, immediately “goes viral” in the blogosphere, swiftly circulating among wide-eyed liberals and conservatives, not to mention a swathe of disapproving party elders. Three years later, Crist – now a self-proclaimed “Independent” – is singing the White House’s praises at the DNC, remarking that his one-time political embrace “cost me more grief from my former party than you can ever imagine.” His reasons for departure? “I didn’t leave the GOP. It left me,” Crist retorted before a crowd of thousands at this year’s Democratic National Convention.
Spunky words from the former Governor – not to mention ones with ringing familiarity.Consider Arlen Specter, a Republican-turned-Democrat and former Pennsylvanian Senator whose moderate politics diverged from his colleagues’ evolving conservative radicalism. “As the Republican Party has moved farther and farther to the right, I have found myself increasingly at oddswith the Republican philosophy and more in line with the philosophy of the Democratic Party,” Specter remarked in April 2009, defending his so-called political defection.
At its heart, I believe, this is a discussion about the shrinking parameters of conservatism – how one party’s complex quest for self-definition is raising a whole slew of existential questions that will likely endure long after this November’s election. What is a “real Republican?” Can party members exhibit varying degrees of conservatism across a handful of issues – or must “real Republicans” exclusively adhere to what is branded as party orthodoxy? And is a conservative legislator who pursues bipartisanism – or symbolically embraces the President of the United States – an automatic “traitor” to his or her party? These unresolved issues threaten to overhaul American party relations as we know it, leaving us to wonder whether the Republican Party can ever gain primacy as a party of inclusion and embrace, both in its external – and internal – politics.
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*This article is temporarily unavailable due to the website construction for JHU News-Letter. Please e-mail me for a text version if interested.
(September 2012, JHU News-Letter)
Sure, the bitter, protracted contest between Mitt Romney and the remaining nominees is technically still an open-ended question. But it doesn’t take a number-crunching analyst to tell you that for underdogs Gingrich, Santorum and Paul, it’s already settled.
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*This article is temporarily unavailable due to the website construction for JHU News-Letter. Please e-mail me for a text version if interested.
(March 2012, JHU News-Letter)
If you’ve tuned into any major news outlet in recent weeks, you might come away with the impression that abortion is the issue upon which Election 2012 hinges. Lightning rod or no, the media circuit has been mostly abuzz with “abortion talk,” from the Komen Foundation’s Planned Parenthood imbroglio and the GOP’s all-male “birth control panel,” to Rick Santorum’s fire-and-brimstone commentary on prenatal testing, birth control, and the prosecution of “abortion doctors.”
I’ve little interest in reiterating self-evident feminist truths. What I’d really like to concern myself with, however, is Rick Santorum, the man behind the foot-in-mouth rhetoric – the quasi-evangelical enigma who seems well on his way to being blacklisted by mainstream left- and right-wingers alike.
No candidate – at least since the bowing out of pizza-magnate Herman Cain – has proven as baffling as the former Pennsylvania Senator. It was Rick Santorum, after all, who “surged” on the eve of the Iowa caucus, emerging as a kind of “dark horse” – a robust, unanticipated force to be reckoned with. The story read like this: While frontrunners Romney and Gingrich were busy slinging mud-pies, underdog Santorum stumped on doggedly, muscling his way through the finish line, the good, old-fashioned way. But it was Santorum’s caucus-night speech that definitively tipped the scales in his favor. For voters tuning in for the first time, he appeared articulate and even athletic in his argumentation, pulling off his smiley “compassionate conservative” shtick like a gosh-darn natural. He was folksy, inoffensive; he thrived as a charming, down-home, anti-Romney – at least with his evangelism left on the back burner.
But that Santorum – the one who performed impressively all along the debate circuit – seemed at odds with the off-air Santorum, who insisted that “standing up and defending [heterosexual] marriage” was “the ultimate homeland security.” His unhinged, off-the-trail rhetoric – for instance, his equation of homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality – left even mainstream Republicans nonplussed. Before long, the teetering balance he’d achieved between “straight-laced conservative” and “bible-thumping evangelical” had tipped into fringe territory.
As of late, Santorum’s made his bread and butter as “Mr. Social Conservative,” trotting out his borderline fanatical views on prenatal testing, birth control, and the prosecution of “abortion doctors” with frightening nonchalance. In an ill-fated CNN interview, he even questioned whether women should serve on the front lines of combat because of “emotions that are involved.” Those soundbites, and others like it, have rebranded Santorum as a kind of “culture warrior” – a religious zealot with a Cro-Magnon perspective on women’s rights. It’s no wonder he’s been ridiculed ad nauseum as a zero-prospect candidate by both the Fourth Estate and the Republican Old Guard.
The reality is that Santorum has 4 Superdelegates to Romney’s 91. He can’t win by any stretch of the imagination. But here’s the kicker: The latest results from Gallup’s nationwide daily tracking poll indicate that 36% of registered Republicans back Santorum over Romney’s 28%. Those numbers – and the paradoxical picture they paint – mean that Santorum matters, and will continue to matter in the relay leading up to the Tampa Convention. Sure, he might not be an electoral game-changer, but he’ll continue to highlight a symbolic divide in the Grand Old Party between the suit and the sweater-vest – the “Chablis Republicans” and “Budweiser Republicans” continuously wrestling for dominance.
It’s a dynamic that’s peculiar to both candidates, and how they’ve defined themselves with respect to each other. Does Santorum’s evangelical streak, for instance, make Romney look good? Or does Romney’s smarmy elitism make Santorum look better? It’s difficult to tell. What’s 100% certain, however, is that the two men provide a study in political contrasts, highlighting each other’s distinct strengths and weaknesses – for better or worse.
Santorum’s eight-point Gallup margin tells me there’s something terribly wrong with candidate Romney – and the gatekeepers know it. Santorum’s improved numbers, in many respects, are less about his advantages, than Romney’s lingering disadvantages. Sure, Romney’s got the credentials – the unquestioned economic savvy that, according to a Washington Post-ABC News Poll, 50% of Americans trust over Obama’s 44%. But fewer constituents seem to be voting for him, than voting against Obama –and when they do cast their ballot for Romney, they do so begrudgingly.
Which leads us to ask: why the reluctance? As far as voters are concerned, Romney is of Wall Street: a predatory, big-business capitalist, rather than a sympathetic blue-collar or small-business advocate. He oozes so much wealth he might as well be named Mitt “Moneybags” Romney. Of course, that isn’t to say that the former Massachusetts Governor should be crucified for hard work or good fortune – simply that he’s perceived by voters as a dreaded “one-percenter” who doesn’t play for the underdog, for the average American. And it shows. When Mitt Romney insists that “Corporations are people, my friend,” it’s a stab in the gut to unemployed America. And when he says he’s “not concerned about the very poor,” it’s the rhetorical equivalent of swilling a thousand-dollar Merlot.
In politics, perception is 80% of the game, and Romney has unfortunately been adorned with a big scarlet “E.” E, that is, for elitist – a dreaded, campaign-killing word for today’s Republican political aspirants. No wonder there’s something appealing about Rick Santorum’s “Vox Populi, Vox Dei”-style campaign, and not just for “guns-and-bible” Republicans.
Say what you will about him, but Santorum can connect with blue-collar and middle-class constituents in ways that $250 million dollar-Mitt Romney cannot. For GOPers, however, it comes down to a matter of preference. Who’s more distasteful in today’s political climate: an elitist or an evangelical?
Read the original column after the jump.
*This article is temporarily unavailable due to the website construction for JHU News-Letter. Please e-mail me for a text version if interested.
(February 2012, JHU News-Letter)
Sonia Tsuruoka