Sigh. I like Jonathan Bernstein a whole lot. He’s a very smart guy and I’ve learned so much from him. But sometimes, he is such an idiot. This week he wrote, Still Hoping to Save the Filibuster. His argument is that with lifetime appointments, there really should be some kind of legislative check against the majority. So he offers up some ideas for how we could maintain something along the lines of Filibuster Lite. One idea is that the majority would have to get unanimous agreement. He has other similar ideas.

The problem with all of them is the problem with the filibuster itself. And Bernstein himself has written repeatedly and at length that the problem was not the filibuster but the Republican Party. What would Bernstein’s proposal mean with a big tent party like the Democrats and a tiny tent party like the Republicans? When the Republicans were in control, the most extreme judges would be put on the bench for life. But when the Democrats were in control, the Blue Dogs would insist on “moderate” judges; no more Ruth Bader Ginsburgs. (And note: Ruth Bader Ginsburg is hardly an extremist.)

Martin Longman takes on all of Bernstein’s proposals, Don’t Revive the Filibuster. But even it doesn’t get at the most important aspect of all of this. Namely that the Republicans wanted to kill the filibuster and they would have killed it the first chance they got, regardless of whether the Senate came up with some kind of deal or not.

I understand the desire to keep minority rights strong in the Senate. But any efforts to do that depend upon everyone involved abiding by the historic Senate norms. And as I’ve shown, over the last 50 years, the Democrats have abided by the norms set by the Republicans who broke with those norms each and every time they were in the minority. So this game is played out.

There are two ways to deal with an adversary. One is to try to woo them and find common ground. That is usually the way to go. But when the adversary is a revolutionary group like the Republican Party, there really is no option but complete defeat. So it amazes me that Jonathan Bernstein can be so clear-headed about what has happened to the parties but then pine for some kind of comity that just won’t happen.

There is a conservative party and a liberal party in the United States. And those two parties are inside the Democratic Party. The Republican Party only makes sense in a parliamentary system, where minor extremist parties can thrive. But in our system, we need two reasonable—big tent—parties. There is no indication that the Republicans are capable of moving away from their extremist positions. And the biggest example of this is their approach to the filibuster. They are happy to see it go because they know the Democrats will not make any major changes to the government, and they look forward to one day having complete control of the government when they will try to radically change the nation. God help us if we citizens allow that to happen.

Jonathan Chait has been writing a lot about race this week with having finally seen 12 Years a Slave and now with Nelson Mandela’s death. I wrote a very positive take on one of his articles only yesterday, Liberal and Conservative Views of Racism. But I think he is a bit confused today, Why Conservatives Got Segregation Wrong a Second Time in South Africa. He’s prevaricating terribly. He really doesn’t want to come out and say that conservatives are racists, but he ends his article simply enough, “And a failure to grasp the historical character of racism is not merely a recurring problem for conservative racial thought, it is its defining quality.”

The word “racism” has gotten to be almost useless. In the minds of most people, it conjures up southern bigots lynching a black man who whistled at a pretty white girl. But that’s really not what I mean by racist anymore. We live in a racist society where blacks especially are an underclass. The conservative animosity toward them is not based upon race a priori. The great conservative myth is that hard work and intelligence will allow anyone to thrive in this great nation of ours. If blacks as a group are not now doing as well as whites, it must be because they don’t work as hard and aren’t as intelligent. So it is not that conservatives want to keep minority groups down; it is that their own mythology leads them to the conclusion that minority groups keep themselves down. Thus, in a meritocracy, it would be wrong to do anything for them.

Conservatives believe in the existing power structure, whatever it might be. This is the basis of Corey Robin’s work. What defines conservatism is its reaction against liberation movements of subordinate classes. I write about this all the time, but not in such highfalutin language. Simply: conservatives think that the way things are is the way things ought to be. Anything that might drag the rich down (e.g. taxes) or raise the poor up (e.g. public education) are theoretically repugnant. It is not, as is often claimed, that conservatives think the free market will make a more equitable society; they think the free market will make a more moral society.

Hence, conservatives are racists as long as blacks do not succeed as well as whites in this economic system. This, in itself, would not be so bad. But what passes for the “unfettered free market” in conservative thought is nothing but ossified privilege. They already think that the society is nearly perfect. Thus, giving no-bid contracts with no accountability to the rich just makes sense. If the poor were deserving of government largess, then they would already be rich. And it isn’t just the rich themselves who deserve this special treatment; their children do too. If conservatives really believed in the survival of the “fittest,” they would be in favor of a high estate tax. Instead, they want no estate tax at all.

So let me be clear. Conservatives don’t want to lynch blacks. But they most definitely think that poor blacks and poor whites alike are inferior. And given the statistics, there must be something wrong with the blacks. But that doesn’t make conservatives hate them. They just don’t care. And in particular, they don’t care enough to address gross inequalities in healthcare and education and criminal “justice.” Because in the conservative brain, the only social ill is that the rich are not rich enough and the poor make too much noise.

Erik Wemple says, Good Riddance to MSNBC’s Martin Bashir. As usual for a Washington Post columnist, he completely misses the issue. He didn’t like Bashir’s show. Fair enough. I only saw it a couple of times myself and it certainly wasn’t something that I went looking for. But he was competent and interesting. And he had a style that was distinct from pretty much all of the second-tier hosts: he seemed to actually give a shit.

That was his undoing, it seems. To me, what he said about Sarah Palin was typical rhetorical hyperbole. He didn’t actually say that someone should shit in Palin’s mouth. He was making a point that being in debt is nothing at all like being a slave and that when people like Palin link them, they are being offensive in the extreme. I thought it was highly effective rhetoric. And here’s the thing. I know that the conservatives thought it was highly effective rhetoric. And they responded the way they always do. They whined like children. They acted as though they engage in a high level of political discourse and the liberals just dump all over it.

If Wemple thinks that Martin Bashir’s show was bad, then it should have been canceled for that reason. But it wasn’t canceled for that reason. It was canceled because liberals can’t stand even the tiniest amount of controversy. Wemple even says, “Conservative America just lost one of its talking points about left-leaning network MSNBC.” Oh, really? Does he seriously think that this will make even an infinitesimal difference in how MSNBC will be portrayed in the conservative media echo chamber? If he does, I have news for him: according to conservatives, CNN is a lapdog of the DNC.

What really happened in this case is that conservative America had a major victory. They’ve been shown once again that all they have to do is whine about the smallest of insults and liberals will jump to attention and trash any member of their group. Even after Bashir’s firing, Sarah Palin was not satisfied. She belched out a logorrhea that, as best I can tell, means, “Martin Bashir has poisoned the whole world and now no one will go into public service (Or even be mothers, it seems!) because of the unthinkable harm done the always wounded Sarah Palin.”

Erik Wemple is missing the big picture here. This isn’t about Martin Bashir. There will always be people who say things that go too far. On the right, they are protected. On the left, they are sacrificed. Maybe the loss of Bashir is no big deal. But Palin’s statement makes a bit of sense here. How long will capable liberals move into the public sphere when they know that they are one misstep from being sacrificed to the whims of conservative outrage.

So fuck Sarah Palin! Fuck Erik Wemple! And fuck MSNBC! As I wrote before, I will no longer watch the network. What’s the point anyway? MSNBC represents liberalism like Josh Barro represents the Republican Party.

A couple of weeks ago, Will mentioned to me that he had seen Pennies From Heaven. He asked what I thought of it and I told him I wasn’t that fond of it. I didn’t think it worked. But I began to think back on the film and reconsider it. After all, I was only 17 when I saw it. So I picked up a copy and finally got around to seeing it last night. I really wasn’t wrong about the film. It is a worthy effort and often brilliant. It isn’t perfect, of course, it has minor problems. The story is too episodic and the murder subplot was entirely the wrong way to go. But these are minor. There is really only one major thing wrong with the film and it is fatal.

Steve Martin.

He’s just terrible. He does to this film what Bruce Willis did to Last Man Standing. But it is much worse here. Whereas Willis plays his usual stilted action hero character, Martin delivers lines like the understudy at a bad high school play. And then there is the dancing where he is obviously outclassed by everyone else. It’s a real shame.

There is much to like in the film. Gordon Willis’ cinematography is just perfect for the film. Of course, the whole art crew does a great job with the realism of the period and the fantasy numbers. Jessica Harper as the long suffering wife with homicidal fantasies is fantastic. Bernadette Peters and Christopher Walken burn up the screen. And Vernel Bagneris gives the best performance of the film. Sometimes, I thought that Danny Daniels’ choreography was uninspired, but at other times it was as good as anything I’ve ever seen. And Herbert Ross directs the hell out of the film. This is my favorite scene:

As you may know, this film is based upon a BBC television mini-series of the same name. I haven’t seen it, but I do know that Bob Hoskins played the Steve Martin role. And all I can do is sigh for the lost opportunity. It didn’t have to be Hoskins, of course, just about any decent actor would have saved this film. But this was Steve Martin’s second starring role. He made The Jerk right before Pennies From Heaven, and he brings the same level of acting to each film. That level, of course, is the level that one sees on Saturday Night Live.

Interestingly, just four years later, another film was made that addressed the same themes. And it too was shot by Gordon Willis: The Purple Rose of Cairo. There is a difference, of course. In Pennies, Arthur wants to make his life like the popular songs he sells. In Cairo, Cecilia just wants to escape from her life into the Hollywood movies she watches. Thus, even though Cairo is explicitly a fantasy—actual magic happens in the story—it is the more realistic. And so I think we get a film that speaks to us much more profoundly. The ending of Pennies from Heaven doesn’t really work. The ending of The Purple Rose of Cairo is one of the greats, right up there with the best of Vittorio De Sica:

Afterword

Artistically, I think the ending of The Purple Rose of Cairo would have worked better if Allen had left it vague. As a viewer, I like the sweet ending; I like watching her get drawn into the movie and smiling. But it strikes me as a little heavy handed. I imagine that the money people were pushing for that happy ending. It’s hard to say, of course. I would have been crushed if the dog had not come back in Umberto D. Regardless, Allen’s ending to Cairo is still artful. It’s a choice is all; and a hard choice at that.

After Afterword

To end The Purple Rose of Cairo with an explicit unhappy ending where she, for example, just cries would have been a mistake. I really think there were only the two options: happy or vague.

For conservatives, a moment like the death of Nelson Mandela is hard. They want to make it clear that they are not racists like that. They aren’t like those people who believed in slavery or Jim Crow or apartheid. It’s just that what minority groups want today that’s all screwed up. Of course, in 20 years, they won’t admit to what they believe today either. That’s just what it is to be a conservative, as I discussed earlier today before I had even heard of Mandela’s death. My colleague Michael Stickings tweeted, “Republicans praising #Mandela should just shut the fuck up, because their politics are pretty much the exact opposite.” That’s absolutely correct.

But I can’t hear the name “Nelson Mandela” without thinking of the conservative icon—and let’s be honest, saint—Ronald Reagan. A couple of years ago, Justin Elliott wrote an excellent interview with historian David Schmitz for Salon, Reagan’s Embrace of Apartheid South Africa. It doesn’t contain a lot of new information for me, because I was around during that time and involved in the divestiture movement. This was the idea that we just shouldn’t do business with an explicitly racist country.

There was a counter argument, called the “Sullivan principles.” But even at the time, it sounded like nothing but apologetics. Reagan and others argued that we needed to stay engaged with the South African government, because there were moderates who wanted to change. Also, it was claimed that American companies were the only ones there who would hire blacks. Well, it turned out that the first idea just wasn’t true. And as for the second, there were lots of whites who employed blacks as servants. That wasn’t exactly moving the country forward. What’s more, by 1987, Sullivan himself had repudiated the idea. Schmitz noted, “The crackdown of 1986 and the reimposition of martial law just made a total lie out of the notion that there were moderates in the Afrikaner government.” But of course, Reagan held firm.

Elliott asked, “Would you argue that Reagan’s foreign policy extended the life of the regime in South Africa?” Schmitz responded:

According to Reagan, it was all about the Soviet Union. If blacks got the right to vote, the Soviets would sweep in and take over the country. But I don’t believe that at all. I think that deep down, Reagan was a bigot. He simply thought that whites were better. I return again and again to how he launched his presidential campaign in Mississippi at the Neshoba County Fair where he talked about “states’ rights.” That was a dog-whistle heard ’round the world.

And Reagan repeatedly called Nelson Mandela a terrorist. He put Mandela and the African National Congress on the United States terror watch list. And they stayed there until the last six months of Bush Jr’s presidency. Just in time for his 90th birthday, the United States government admitted that Nelson Mandela was not a terrorist. But today, while supporting policies that go against everything that Nelson Mandela stood for, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor tweets out:

And why not. Now that he’s dead, he is no threat to the unjust status quo, which Cantor and his Republican allies are so committed to protecting.

See also: Conservatives Can’t Admit Reagan Was Racist Because They Are

One of my favorite songs is Gang of Four’s “Not Great Men.” It starts:

No weak men in the books at home
The strong men who have made the world
History lives on the books at home
The books at home

It’s not made by great men

They wrote that in 1979, when Nelson Mandela was rotting in prison on Robben Island. I know they would all agree that sometimes history is made by great men. It’s a sad for the world that Mandela has died. But if any man has deserved this just rest it is him.

Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

There will be more later of an angrier nature.

Jonathan Chait has written a great article about the way that liberals and conservatives look at racism in this country, 12 Years a Slave and the Obama Era. I highly recommend reading the whole thing, but I’m going to talk about just one aspect.

The truth is that it is hard for me to talk about racism because I’m well aware of my own racist thoughts. These aren’t rational and I work very hard to fight them. To the racist, every crime committed by a member of a minority group is more proof that “those people” are no damned good. The non-racist may have that initial reptilian brain impulse, but he fights it with his higher brain functions. Statistics are a powerful tool in this regard. You are a racist if your response to a black man saving a kitten from a burning building is, “Well, that’s the exception that proves the rule!” I’ve seen this again and again. When people are racist, they create a filter where all data against their prejudice is discarded as exceptional and all data for their prejudice is accepted as reinforcing.

But except on the edges of society, explicit racism is a thing of the past. As Chait discusses, first it was thought that it was right and fitting that blacks were slaves because they were inferior. Then that was wrong, but it was right and fitting that blacks be legally separated from whites because… Well, actually, I don’t really know why. Now we are at the point where blacks are economically separated from whites because, well, the supposed free market cannot be denied. It’s all the same. It’s all racism.

I am economically poor. But I’m still a walking and talking billboard for white privilege. Given the life I’ve led and the person I am, if I had been born black, I would most likely be dead. And I certainly wouldn’t have what I consider a near idyllic life with thousands of readers and work I find profoundly stimulating—not to mention the many great things in all the other parts of my life.

So I’m not going to sit here and talk about how I understand the plight of the black man and how I’m “evolved” on the topic. I try to be a better man. Always. That, to me, is what it means to be a liberal. I want to fix social injustices and I do what I can. And I want to remain open to social injustices that I’m currently blind to. That is probably the hardest thing.

The conservative way of looking at the world is not the opposite of this—although it is with a small minority that unfortunately seems to be growing in this country. The conservative outlook is that the way things are is just perfect. Of course slavery was wrong. Of course Jim Crow was wrong. But how could anyone think that voter ID laws are racist? How could anyone think income inequality was racist? Because to the conservative, social injustice is always something that used to exist. It never does exist.

Jonathan Chait quotes an interesting statistic, “Republicans, by a 60-40 margin, now believe discrimination against whites has grown to be a larger problem than discrimination against minorities.” So it isn’t just that racism has been solved, now it’s turned around and the whites are being oppressed. That’s not normal, of course. Left alone, conservatives would just think that minority groups have nothing to complain about. It is the Rush Limbaughs, the Michael Savages, the Sean Hanitys who have pushed this idea. And this is more in line with lynching mentality, because otherwise, how do you explain this:

There are only two ways that this disparity in wealth can exist. Either we still live in a racist society with a legacy of slavery. (Part of the money my family has comes from the fact that 150 years ago they owned property, they weren’t owned as property.) Or blacks and Hispanics really are inferior to whites. So unless conservatives are going to accept this latter contention (and most absolutely will not), then they must admit that we live with racism today. And it isn’t against the oppressed while folk with all their wealth.