The Black Snob Feed

President Obama Enjoys Hot Dog While GOP Delegate Deathmatch Rages On

Danielle Belton — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 14:10:11 +0000

Last night as results rolled in from GOP races in Alabama, Mississippi and Hawaii, current Commander-In-Chief Barack Obama was busy hot dogging his way through some March Madness, taking UK Prime Minister David Cameron to a basketball game. It was essentially the most high powered form of a play date you could ever have.

But while other heads of state were chowing down and discussing their sports of choice -- the GOP continued its quixotic and often demoralizing race to find out who gets to go up against Obama in the fall.

Mitt "Mittens" Romney may still have the delegate lead, but Little Ricky Santorum won the night, snagging Alabama and Mississippi.

For some reason the Romney camp thought they had a shot in Mississippi. I'm not quite sure how they figured that one out, unless they were considering that Romney-haters would be split between the GOP's Catholics-masquerading-as-evangelicals, Santorum and Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich, proving that he's both a jerk and delusional, won't get out of the race to give Little Ricky a real shot to be the ultimate "Not Romney" rival.

From ABC News:

“Yeah, I understand it. Everyone in the Republican establishment wants Romney and they’d like everyone else to go home,” Gingrich told ABC News’ Jon Karl in an interview Tuesday. “They’d like to have a coronation, but that’s not how this is done.”

Though Rick Santorum was the projected winner of the primaries in both Mississippi and Alabama Tuesday night, Gingrich’s spokesman R.C. Hammond told ABC News there was a “zero percent” chance Gingrich would suspend his candidacy.

Gingrich said his expectation was to be in Tampa and have an open convention, and that taking the nominating process all the way to the convention would be “good for America.” Gingrich said that he and Santorum staying in the race would be helping conservatives because “Santorum and I are stopping Romney.”

If Gingrich jumped on the Santorum "Let's Go Back to 1955, Ladies" bandwagon, Santy would actually have a fighting chance to give Mittens hell during a potentially brokered GOP convention. But, no dice. The Force (of denial) is still strong in this one. Gingrich believes he and only he can stop Romney, even though all signs point to Sir Newton running out of ch'i.

From ABC News:

The Gingrich campaign sent out a memo earlier in the day stating that the race for delegates was far from over and called Louisiana on March 24, “half time.”

“The sequencing and pace of the second half favors Newt. When this process started, Newt’s team had two goals: block an early Romney nomination; and plan for a sequenced and paced second half,” the memo stated.

And see? This is what I've been talking about for the longest. Newt Gingrich is not only a jerk to those who disagree with him, he's a jerk to members of his own party. I realize that there's probably no love lost between former House Speaker Gingrich and ol' Santy, a guy who had to put up with Gingrich's tyranny in Congress, but who are we really trying to "get," Newton? Do you want to take Romney out or not?

The ego in here is suffocating.

That said, I was somewhat delighted to learn this week that this protracted, soul-defeating GOP primary was the vision of former RNC Chairman Michael "Man of" Steele. After feeling left out from all the fun during the 2008 super exciting Democratic nomination race that featured Obama and current Secretary of State, former Senator and former First Lady Hillary Clinton (also featuring a horny John Edwards and a funny Bill Richardson), Steele thought it would be neat if the GOP could also have a long, fun primary fight.

Of course, Steele forgot that part of the reason WHY the 2008 Democratic primary was so exciting was because it was a battle between the would-be first-ever African American president of the United States and the woman who likely would-have-been the first female president of the United States who was also a former First Lady of a popular president. Those were the KEY ingredients to 2008's hype.

Democrats were in love with their choices to the point they were willing to go all joyful (then angry) warrior over them, and relished in lengthy debates over "hope and change" versus "The Clintons." The media was "in love" with the historical narrative and The Clintons being back on the scene. Obama spoke to record crowds. Elderly black people were crying over the chance to vote. Chris Matthews had thrills going up his leg. Young people were tweeting about Obama and making Hope/Change art.

It was fascinating and fun and a once-in-a-lifetime thing that launched a billion books.

This? This right here with the GOP in 2012 is not a political wonderland where conservative voters are choosing between Zombie Ronald Reagan, Not-Born-American and pre-secret love child Arnold Schwarzenegger and whatever Bush that isn't named George running. They've got "cheesy grits" and the Contraception Crusader.

Obama's got a better chance of his hot dog eating photos going viral that someone getting a loving feeling from Steele's hell campaign.

But that's for playing, Iron Mike.

Which One of You Gave The Snob Her Annual Super Cold?

Danielle Belton — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 13:53:22 +0000

Was it you? I didn't really appreciate that. I'm already super tired and super busy. I'm supposed to be working on a book, editing a proposal for a friend, writing a billion articles for a bunch of people and updating this blog. But no. You had to give me your germs. Even though I wash my hands constantly and work from home, minimizing my contact with you and your diseases.

Thanks a lot, buddy. Thanks bundles!

Black Enterprise: Baratunde on Baratunde By The Snob

Danielle Belton — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 13:27:53 +0000

Last week for Black Enterprise Magazine Online I interviewed comedian, Jack & Jill Politics blogger and The Onion's Digital Director Baratunde Thurston about his love for technology and BLACKNESS. Yes, blackness. As in, his new book "How to Be Black." We also talked, at lenght, about how more black people need to become entrepernueral in the online space, rather than simply users of it.

From Black Enterprise:

Thurston: Black people, as much as we’ve been deprived, we’re pretty creative, entrepreneurial folks. We should be set up to do more in the (digital) space. But no one’s painting that picture that coding is cool. That entrepreneurial is sexy. Digital start-up entrepreneurship is not hot as it could and as it should be. There’s an attitude and certain presumptuousness that accompanies the mindset of people who build tech businesses. An arrogance of, “Yeah, I can do that. I’m going to build a tech company.” Not in a negative way, but the delusion has to be strong that I’m going to create Foursquare so people can check in and become king of the burger joint.

Clearly we have an affinity for gadgetry. We were using pagers before anyone knew pagers were necessary. We’ve been promoting technology and using technology for a really long time. It’s time for us to join, in full force, that producer class. When black people create stuff it’s amazing. We created jazz. What’s that going to look like in tech and software and web experience? It’s not just about “oh, this would be great for black people. Oh, we got to hook black people up and make more black coders.” It’s about the world and the mark of relevance in the world is that people know how to build things.

If you’re black and reading this and thinking of being entrepreneurial, you have to be digital.

Read the full article and Q&A at Black Enterprise Online.

Clutch Magazine: Snob Wonders If You and Halle Berry Are "Love Addicts?"

Danielle Belton — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 13:13:32 +0000

When I heard Halle Berry was engaged again (while being in the middle of a knock down, drag out custody battle over her daughter Nahla with her ex-boyfriend Gabriel Aubry), I thought about how turbulent her love life has been (at one point she declared she'd never get married again) and it reminded me of a few women I've known over the years who've fallen into the trap of "love addiction." It's a form of addiction where you feel worthless unless you're in a relationship, hence pushing you often into intense, high drama, sometimes abusive situations.

From Clutch:

It might seem counter-intuitive that when engaging in something as close and bonding as a love affair with a hot guy to wonder, “How will this affect my friends,” but if you’re a turbulent love addict, constantly dragging friends and family members through the dramatic highs and lows of your love life as if you were the only person in the world to ever have one, it can hurt your friendships.

But, you say, who needs friends when I have this hot French guy over here?

But, ah-hohoho, you do, girl. You do.

Because you’re a love addict.

I know you’re all, “Wait, Danielle, love addiction is not a real thing. That’s something people say to cover up their car crash love lives and explain why they had sex with Tiger Woods.”

Well, did it ever occur to you that those two things aren’t mutually exclusive? You can be completely pathetic AND addicted to high risk, intense, co-dependent, soul-sucking, crazy relationships that make your friends fantasize about running over your on-again, off-again ex with their cars.

Not so much because they hate the guy, but because if he’s dead you can’t go back and date him anymore.

Obviously, I have no clue if Berry has this issue. She's a gorgeous actress who dates hot guys. It just seems like often those hot guys turn out to be jerks. And she's spoken frankly about her tendency to put her father issues into her relationships, get completely lost in love and about her severe bouts of depression, including a time where she thought of attempting suicide.

So, she (and about four or five women I've known over the years) may not be a love addict. But she's got "love addict" tendencies.

Do you?

Check out the full story at Clutch Magazine Online.

The Snob Talks Rush, Black Women's Bodies and the Angry Latina Stereotype on NPR

Danielle Belton — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 14:57:30 +0000

The Snob (me) on a panel at The Washington Center, this week, discussing women in communications as part of Women's History Month. (Journalist and activist Marga Fipp, right.)The Snob returned to the "Beauty Shop" this week on NPR's "Tell Me More" with Michel Martin. Joined by fellow Beauty Shop regulars Mary Kate Cary, Viviana Hurtado and newcomer Lonnae O'Neal Parker of The Washington Post, we discussed Rush Limbaugh finally going one "slut" comment too far, O'Neal Parker's article for the Post about how black women having a more positive view of their bodies than their white female counterparts (even though statistically more black women are overweight), and a recent story on Jezebel about why Latinas feel they can't get angry -- thanks to that whole "hot" Latina anger stereotype that causes others to dismiss and marginalize them when they do get peeved.

That black women body image discussion isn't necessarily new news. There have been various other studies over the years that have said similar things. When I was a teenager, there was a pretty big story about how black teenage girls tended to see their mothers as being beautiful or attractive while our white female teem counterparts were a bit more negative and critical about their mother's looks.

I opined both on Tell Me More and back then, as a child, that this bit of racialized navel gazing isn't rocket science. It's simply that black people -- particularly women -- have opted out on worrying about Westernized Photoshopped to the point of being unrealistic beauty standards that are rigged. In particular, the standards they can do little to change. When you're an outsider, you quickly realize this life-long beauty competition is a distracting sideshow that keeps women so obsessed about youth and looks that they lose sight of their own well-being and happiness. And this is often to their emotional detriment.

And it's not that you aren't initially affected by it. People still perform the doll test on very young black children and children still reflect the views of fairer skin being "better" by picking the white doll. When I was a very little kid, I wanted blue eyes. Then one day my father took my Barbie coloring book and colored the Barbie black and I thought she was the most beautiful thing ever and from then on, I only drew and colored black people. It was funny, but it had never occured to me to color Barbie black because on the cover of the coloring book it was only white Barbies. It was also my first experience in learning you could make your own rules.

That reflective prepubescent self-loathing is usually about being exposed to something or someone positive who looks like you. Often that's enough to change the negative thought pattern. Because as a kid, you're merely reflecting back what you see on television or in the toys you play with or what's on advertisements (like my coloring book cover). Once I learned that people who looked me were also "beautiful" and that coloring book cover could be "wrong," I got over the blue-eyed obession I had at five years old.

Michel Martin mentioned the hair obsession among black women, but I've written about that too, and the key word here is "change." Nobody can "change" into a tall, Nordic, blonde white woman. But you can "change" your hair. And that's where the insecurity comes from, in that illusion that if you just did something differently you could have the thing that people measure the standard by. But if you know there's nothing you can do, you only have two choices -- forever hate yourself or recognize that a game is being played on you to tear you down and reject it.

This isn't though about "embracing" being unhealthy, since the weight thing keeps being brought up again and again. The weight issue in the black community isn't about black women wanting or celebrating being fat. You still get grief for being fat in the black community. It's just that your complete worth isn't defined by your scale. It's not the end of the world if you aren't a size zero.

Also, a lot of the weight issues has more to do with lack of access to better, healthier food choices, stress from work and homelife, lack of time for exercise and the lack of healthcare or money to invest in ones health. Even my own weight was largely the result of me eating to cope with my own depression, which I have done throughout my life. It's not about me being so enamored with being heavy that I'm lazy. I'm overweight for the same reasons everyone -- black or white -- is overweight. Poor eating habits and lack of exercise, which I've been working to change over the last six months.

But if you ask some people, I'm not "fat" at all. And that's really the difference. I've known white women who were as heavy as me (and some smaller than me) and they felt really penalized for it and had internalized a lot of self-loathing. It's not that I love my size, but my size has never stopped me from doing whatever I wanted to do. I don't turn down TV appearances or chances to do things or dates because my body doesn't fit some standard and I "hate" it for it. My body works. It's healthy. I can get stronger. I can lose or gain weight. But it's a perfectly good body for what I need it to do.

Not everyone feels this way, of course. There are many white women who don't let Madison Avenue or the Fashion Industry's unrealistic, Photoshopped view of beauty stop them from living their lives. There are black women with eating disorders. I think it's a dangerous thing to tie how good black women feel about themselves with things like "Oh, but you're fat," and "Oh, but you're poor." Why can't it be celebrated that many black women seem to feel pretty good about themselves and that's awesome? Especially considering society tells you every day why you, black woman, should not. That's far more remarkable -- to know that so many women have found the love for themselves within themselves, without needing the validation of others, than focusing on what number pops up on our scales. It's extraordinary to find that so many women can enjoy themselves and find their own beauty. We should focus instead on what other men and women can do to emulate that powerful self-love, than be puzzled at it for existing.

No matter what they say, out of all the terrible statistics people throw in our faces, loving ourselves isn't a bad one.

Clutch: Rush Limbaugh Is Sorry For Mocking Your Birth Control

Danielle Belton — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 16:37:39 +0000

In today's post for Clutch Magazine, The Snob writes about how birth control wandered in the national debate. Not abortion, but BIRTH CONTROL. The pill. The thing women take for everything from pregnancy prevention to period regulation to controling ovarian cysts and hormones. Yes. That thing. It's a thing right now. For crazy people. Take a gander.

From Clutch:

Why is birth control, something that we all thought was settled as a part of life post the sexual revolution of the 1960s, rather commonplace by the 1970s, and something I took as a 15-year-old virgin to regulate my horrible, no good, very bad menstrual cycle (you don’t want to know) CONTROVERSIAL?

I get why various forms of birth control and family planning were controversial in my grandmother’s day, back when getting your tubes tied was called “butchering”…but today? Now? And why?

Well, there’s an election, that’s why.

(...)

But before we laugh off what we think is ludicrous, we have to remember – these people running on the anti-birth control mantra have some power. They are former members of Congress. Captains of media. Titans of industry. Wealthy donors and influential religious figures alike. It’s not some slack jawed yokel. It’s the moneyed invisible hand animating that slack jawed yokel puppet, lulling you into a false sense of reproductive rights security. They say it’s about abortion, but it’s really about you having control over what goes on down there between the knees and how you shouldn’t have any more control than your father/boyfriend/husband/pastor will give you. Who cares what you think, believe or who you pray to believes. There’s an election to be won, and even though women are over half of the population of the United States, the GOP is talking about lady people as if they are a niche. As if they don’t vote.

Read the rest at Clutch Magazine Online.

President Obama Numbers Are Up (And So Is "Obama Derangement Syndrome")

Danielle Belton — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:40:08 +0000

I've always been fascinated in the disconnect between those enraged with President Obama versus his typically much more moderate or typical responses. They see some foaming at the mouth radical, tossing around handouts and sending out assassination squads and I just see this ...

What you don't know is that afterwards the President ate that baby.Oooh. Terrifying.

It's not that there aren't legitimate things to complain about when it comes to President Obama.

You can ...

Feel uneasy about the forever jail in Cuba known as Guantanamo that's still not closed despite the President promising early on he would close it.
Fret over civil liberties still being besmirched and disregarded now that American citizens can be indefinitely detained, in violation of their rights, if they're a "terrorism" suspect.
Be mad about how we're deporting more people than were deported under George W. Bush -- sometimes whether those folks deserve to be deported or not.
Bemoan how much time was wasted by President Obama "negotiating" with the militant GOP wing of Congress during the debt ceiling debate.
Feel uneasy about our reliance on Predator drones in the never-ending War on Terror that sometimes have this habit of murdering families and wedding parties.
Be mad about the war in Afghanistan, in general.
Express how even though you're glad Osama Bin Laden is dead, that really sounded like we straight up assassinated someone when we clearly have a "public" policy of not assassinating people.
Get on the "what has he done for black folks lately" train.
Complain that you wanted "single payer" and you got the old GOP healthcare program that now even the GOP doesn't like.

But none of that exactly spells terrorist-caving, crypto-Nazi socialist. That just some sounds like your basic gripe about any modern American president at anytime. That he has a toe in the warmongering pot and a toe in the "celebrate corporate interests" pie and a toe in "but what about the people" cobbler and yet another toe in the "you know how Washington is" fruit cake.

Also, these aren't the things Obama's critics on the Right are complaining about.

From Politico, it's all about Obama "hating" religion, according to Newt Gingrich:

“You’ll notice the President Obama is very quick to apologize for Islam while he attacks the Catholic church,” he said.

Gingrich cut himself off before finishing his next thought.

“You’ll notice that he’s very sensitive about problems involving Islam, but he has a willingness and…” he said.

(...)

“This is the most anti-religious administration in American history. And you have my commitment that on the very first day I will issue an executive order that turns over every single anti-religious act of Barack Obama.”

From Huffington Post, Rick Santorum calls "apologizing" for the accidental Koran burning in Afghanistan "weak:"

During a Sunday appearance on ABC News, Santorum said that Obama should not have apologized for the holy book destruction because the U.S. military had only accidentally burned Qurans. Santorum then added that Obama's apology, rather than the actual burning of Qurans, was hurting both the image of America abroad and the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan.

"There was nothing deliberately done wrong here. This was something that happened as a mistake. Killing Americans in uniform is not a mistake ... when that is occurring, you should not be apologizing for something that was -- an unfortunate -- say it’s unfortunate, say that this is something that should have been done," Santorum said. "To apologize for something that was not an intentional act is something that the president of the United States, in my opinion, should not have done."

"But if it was a mistake, isn’t apologizing the right, important thing to do?" asked ABC News host George Stephanopoulos.

"It suggests that there is somehow blame, this is somehow that we did something wrong in the sense of doing a deliberate act wrong," Santorum replied. "I think it shows that we are -- that I think it shows weakness."

It's tough being everything to everyone. So it's only natural to his opponents, what seems kind of tepid, frustrating or harmless to us is SCARY BLACK MAN DOING TERRIBLE THINGS to them.

Wanting everyone to have health care? Evil. Allowing gays and lesbians who are already in our military serve openly? An attack on our "values." Finally settling a USDA lawsuit from black farmers who got left out of the farm bailout money from the 1980s? REPARATIONS. Ending the unpopular war in Iraq? Cut and run. Toppling the Libyan regime without invading Libya? Wussy. Reaching out to the citizens of the Middle East after we'd been busy bombing, invading and assassinating people in their countries for decades? Weak and unAmerican. Honoring the various customs of different countries when you visit them? Traitor. Saying that a police officer "acted stupidly" when he arrested the world's most harmless black intellectual Skip Gates? Race-baiter. Wanting your insurance company to cover birth control? ATTACK ON RELIGION.

It all reminds me of this brilliant (and my favorite) "Get Your War On" sketch.

I remember, especially around 2004, how bad "Bush Derangement Syndrome" had gotten. But most of the histrionics came from a very real place. We'd suffered the worst terrorist attack in the history of the United States under the Bush Administration's watch. We were fighting two wars that had become increasingly unpopular. We'd started ignoring the Bill of Rights out of terrorism fears. Domestic spying became more widespread. The Jack Abramoff scandal happened, the Valerie Plame scandal happened, GITMO opened, Hurricane Katrina happened, torture happened, Abu Ghraib happened, the housing market collapsed, the economy tanked, Wall Street almost caused a second Great Depression, the bank bailout began -- all under the Bush administration.

So when people called Bush a "Nazi" it was wrong, as clearly, Bush was not a Nazi. Nazis were efficient and competent and murdered millions of people in a rush of arrogance, anti-Semitism, delusional superiority and maniacal ego.

Bush was a blundering, aspiring one-term president who had a terrorist attack land in his lap and was forced to DO SOMETHING. In that rush to "do something" he proceeded to do many clearly wrong things under the tutelage of an amoral Vice President Dick Cheney and a gaggle of Neo-Cons playing toy soldiers while running around the State Department.

The man simply shouldn't have been president, but his election reflected the cynicism that has clearly only worsened in the GOP, where it was less important to select someone competent enough to govern than to go with a "brand name" and someone who seemed "likeable," arguing that "anyone could be president" as many had convinced themselves Democratic President Bill Clinton was some blundering, uncouth, skirt-chasing Hillbilly when he in fact he was a brilliant, Rhodes Scholar earning, skirt-chasing, politickin' genius.

By devaluing the job Clinton actually did, they'd convinced themselves anyone could do it. Including President Trust Fund Baby. It wasn't so much about governance anymore, but simply winning for the sake of winning.

That's why when people would just FLIP OUT over Bush and his blunders, I could understand why they were flipping out, even if it was over the top and not practical.

But I don't understand the Great Obama Flip Out. I don't understand it when people on the left act like they'd rather had President Walnuts and The Palinator instead. I don't understand it when people on the right scream about him being Hitler.

Who on Earth are these people talking about?

The guy likes Jesus and basketball and has been married to the same woman since forever. He seems to genuinely want to help people along with possessing just the right amount of ego/narcissism/charisma to run and hold the highest office in the land. This is why that for the longest time when Mitt Romney would attack President Obama, he'd always preface it with that Obama seems like a nice guy. Because ... he does. He seems like a really nice guy. It's hard to paint him as some diabolical monster. The best route is to kind of go "He's a nice guy who doesn't know what he's doing," rather than running around, screaming about the scary black man.

Because, for all that, many still view him as reasonable competent and well-meaning, even if they aren't happy with how he's handled everything. And at the end of the day, he's still the best bet to be realistic about getting us out of our economic malaise, as opposed to Romney's "I'd let the auto industry die" and Santorum's faith-based economics.

Obama understands that the government is just people. Voted for the people, by the people, staffed by the people. It can only be as good as the people we choose to run it. Romney, Santorum and the bulk of the GOP don't believe government can do anything, which means they don't think "people" can do anything. Which means you shouldn't expect anything if they get elected, other than allow the invisible hand of the market to decide your fate and a lot of arguments over things that we thought were already settled, like THE PILL.

So, if that sounds awesome to you -- for corporations and religious institutions (two other groups of "people" deemed more competent by the GOP than the "people" of our government) to be valued over everyone else, even if their purpose isn't to better America necessarily but to better their own accounting books or create new members adhering to their beliefs, you know who your guys are.

If that's not your thing, you probably aren't surprised that despite the "socialist-Nazi" talk, Obama's poll numbers are up.

BP Blog: Going Through The Motion

Danielle Belton — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:29:02 +0000

Vincent van Gogh's 1890 painting Sorrowing old man ('At Eternity's Gate')Today for BP Magazine's Bipolar Blog I write about my most recent down cycle, which has been the entire month of February. This probably isn't shocking to anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis and notices that I tend to post less when I'm in a funk or super busy with work, and both were happening this month. But I managed to catch myself when I started to fall into old habits: "Back when I lived in California, moving to a new apartment was my answer to every problem. Because I would blame the 'apartment' for allowing me to slip into such an emotional funk. Yet out of those four moves in five years, no matter where I moved, my Bipolar Disorder was still there. This time around, I went as far as actually finding a few nice places, but when it was time to sign a contract and hand over a check, the part of me that remembered those old days would go – do you really need to move, or is it the Bipolar talking?"

Read the full post here at BP Hope.

Santorum Sez: Going to College Turns You Into Barack Obama

Danielle Belton — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:17:00 +0000

As if that's a bad thing.

Rick Santorum, college graduate and presidential candidate, recently argued that Barack Obama, college graduate and current president of the United States, was a "snob" because he wanted all Americans to have the opportunity to go to college. Santorum argued that this seemingly benign thing had malevolent intent because college is the place Liberals are made -- or something. Ignoring the fact that pretty much everyone running for president, including himself, went to college, and in the case of the GOP candidates, somehow they all went to college and weren't turned into sodomites and radical black leftists. Nope. They went to college and are still their same obnoxious, narcissistic selves. Because, as you know, college is a place where you get an education, not a "re-education."

From The Washington Post:

“Not all folks are gifted in the same way,” Santorum told a crowd of more than a thousand activists at the Americans for Prosperity forum in Troy, Mich. “Some people have incredible gifts with their hands. . . . President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob.”

This from Penn State graduate Santorum, who was famously late for the ultra-conservative wing of a conservative party who admitted he was pro-choice until he ran for public office.

How convenient. But also, how opportunistic to appeal to the most far of the far right who detest a fictional version of Obama, warped by a contradictory myriad of lies. How predictable a move for Santorum when running against a weak and "moderate" seeming Mitt Romney who has failed to set the electorate on fire.

When all else fails, appeal to people's celebration of ignorance.

America has always had an anti-intellectualism streak. Although you can obviously be a smarty-pants and come out on either side of the political divide, at different times in our history different political parties have grabbed the "keeping it real" mantel and bragged about how cool it is to not know "stuff."

For a long time, this was bread and butter for Southern Democrats who did not appreciate "Northern elites" or "yankees" telling them what to do with their "nigras." (*Cough, cough* State's rights!) George W. Bush famously lost his first run for office to a conservative Democrat in Midland, Texas who "out-Texan'ed and out-Christian'ed" him, painting the young Bush as an elitist snob from Yale, who liked to party and was out-of-touch from the real values of regular folk.

Many years later, Bush became president of the United States and in spite of his Blue Blood pedigree he was declared the candidate with whom voters would most likely enjoy having a beer. Just as Bush's posh background was rendered a footnote to a populace that largely saw him as some kind of windshield cowboy, the GOP went from a party that used to possess a such thing as a "Liberal" Republican, to a very Christian evangelical dominated, "down with smart people" party.

Even the man who beat Bush in Midland all those years ago playing the anti-elite card is a Republican today.

In Obama's case, the "snob" argument lobbed against him gets a little silly. The President was born to a single mother and was raised mostly by his grandparents in Hawaii. No one was wealthy. He got were he did by his own hard work and wits, things modern Republicans typically praise, unless you don't agree with their ideology or you're in their way.

Obama is both.

Which is why it seems the GOP has "invented" a "scary" Obama to run against. One who will somehow take all their guns (even though he's made little effort to do anything regarding our gun laws), who will start preaching Black Liberation Theology (even though if you ask some black people he's not engaged in black issues enough), who is secretly a Muslim (which directly conflicts to the Christian-based Black Liberation Theology stuff he's supposed to believe in), who is weak on terrorism (by ordering the death of noted terrorist Osama bin Laden and facillitating actions that lead to the death of noted terrorism-backer Muammar Gaddafi) and is some bougie, class warrior for the poor who looks down on poor people while pandering directly to them (or some such nonsense). So much spouted about the president is a series of contradictions and riddles that he's become a black radical who's done nothing for black people (if you ask Newt Gingrich). A pro-gay maniac who's against gay marriage.

How anyone can look at Obama and see anything other than a genuinely nice, charming, smart but sometimes annoyingly tepid moderate who takes out most of his aggression on terrorists because that's the only thing Democrats and Republicans can agree on, is beyond me. His health care plan was the old GOP health care plan proposed in the 90s. He harkens back to a time when even if your president wasn't blissfully perfect, he was competent. Say what you will about "caretaker" Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter or George H.W. Bush, you didn't worry about the world blowing up under their watch as we did for eight years of Bush-Cheney. And Obama doesn't even have the "flaws" that usually reduce caretakers to one-terms, like being unrelateable, distant, slightly unsophisticated sounding or too bluntly honest (in the case of Carter).

For all the screaming that Obama will be the end of things, that clearly has not occurred and he seems more than competent and up for the task, even if our politics are more polarized and unpredictable as ever.

Obama preached "compromise" for most of his first term until he finally realized the Republicans had no interest in such a thing. He tried to reason with them as "people" ignoring how powerful the bipolar, cynical, money-worshipping Doomsday Cult wing of the GOP had become. And I say all this as someone who likes and supports Barack Obama, thinks he's a smart guy and wants him to have a second term for both the history books and because the alternative seems so fringy and insane.

I don't want to live under an executive branch that espouses "get government out of your life and into your uterus." And for all the talk about "Sharia Law," I think it's less about stopping "radical Muslims" and more about Christian fundamentalists not wanting any competing dogma when they dump the Constitutional clause separating church and state. And don't even get me started on Santorum's confusion that "freedom of religion" means forcing his views as a Catholic on the entire country and crafting laws that fit within Catholic dogma, ignoring the fact that not all Americans are Catholic, not all Americans are Christian, not all Americans believe in God and that some Americans are agnostic, athiest or secularists. The whole point of the religion clause is to protect everyone's beliefs, not to use the government to enforce the beliefs of the largest religious group.

And even if many Americans are Christians, Santorum ignores that among Christians there is lots of disagreement over who has the right take and interpretation on the Bible, hence the many, many, many different Christian dominations and sects, orders and groups. Catholics, Mormons, Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Methodists, Lutherans and Episcopalians all claim to follow Jesus, but how they interpret the Bible, worship and determine who is and isn't a Christian, who can and cannot take communion and what you should or should not do vary extremely. To what end does Santorum push his view when even Christians can't agree among themselves on what the right view is?

Which, again, is why there's a separation between church and state, so you can have all these different types of followers of Jesus and not have anyone end up dead. You can live in a country where you can change your religion and you don't have to worry about being attacked. But start endorsing one view over the other and using the government to enforce that view you will find yourself on a slippery slope to bringing back the Holy Roman Empire in Iowa and all the drama that goes with it.

Which brings us back to college and how wanting people to go to college in a society where blue collar jobs have dried up and factories have closed and moved overseas and we are rapidly moving to an information-based, service-based society and the best paying positions often require a college education.

If the GOP nominates Rick Santorum to be their nominee, I'm not going to say you're going to lose, because anything could happen. Perhaps Obama will kill, cook and eat his dog "Bo" on live television, or suggest bringing back the Caliphate in Kansas. Maybe he'll have a very torrid and public affair with Kim Kardashian. But short of these things happening, even if the economy collapses tomorrow, you can't beat what's imperfect, but not at all scary or radical with something strange, fundamentalist, anti-education and "no sex" obsessed, who's not offering up any solutions for how he'd actually fix the economy or make Americans lives better other than shouting "Freedom!"

I like "freedom" too. Especially my uterus. But I get the impression Santorum's not talking about that kind of freedom.

He might beat Mitt Romney (and that's still a big might), but Obama still looks like a bridge too far if Santorum can't pivot from slinging "snob" red meat to the yokels to real solutions to the majority.

Clutch Magazine: Some of My Best Friends Are Women

Danielle Belton — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:09:18 +0000

Don't like women? All of them? That's a pity. Especially since women are human beings with all the good and bad that comes with that, not a monolithic entity of boobs and hair. In my latest post for Clutch Magazine I discuss the "myth" that all women are catty versus the EXPECTATION that all women must always be "nice."

Here's a snippet:

In our gendered society, the most valued traits encouraged in women are to be nurturing, pleasant, never angry and supportive. Hence, there are a lot of very nurturing and supportive women out there. But – and this is a big but – when you are not naturally nurturing or supportive and you also happen to be a woman you are viewed as a holy aberration. A monster. A thing that cannot be a real thing.

Women are supposed to be nice, don’t you know? Except when they’re not nice.

(...)

Human nature dictates that you’re going to get some men who are nurturing and some women who are not. But since those people are viewed as “abnormal” (even though it is perfectly normal to be giving or selfish depending on your own personal nature), the response to push men and women back into their gendered corners is strong. So strong our less nurturing sisters feel the need to at least “fake” the friendly in order to survive.

Hence – cattiness. And bitchiness. And all that lies therein.

Women don’t own the market on “nice.” But we’re most certainly expected to be nice.

Read the full story at Clutch Magazine.