One point I’m happy to see people — specifically Ezra Klein and Kevin Drum — making is that unions are held to an absurdly high standard that no other institution is held to.  When I was a door-to-door organizer for the AFL-CIO, or just in casual conversations with friends, I’ve been disheartened by how quick people are to dismiss unions as being corrupt or write them off because of one bad experience someone they know had with their union.  Of course the labor movement has warts, but, as Drum points out, so does every institution comprised of, you know, human beings.

The analogy I use on this point is police.  Everyone recognizes that abuse of authority by police officers is a widespread problem, whether it’s Rodney King level brutality or just someone throwing his weight around and showing a little too much attitude while writing a speeding ticket.  But almost nobody would use this as an excuse to do away with having police.  I contend that the labor movement plays as important a role in protecting our economic security as police forces do in protecting our physical security.  Obviously, not everyone agrees on this point, but the fact that there are and have been corrupt union leaders doesn’t settle the argument.

-AR

First, it’s important to emphasize what isn’t happening in Wisconsin.  This is not, as Governor Scott Walker and his allies would have people believe, simply a matter of dealing with a budget deficit and asking state employees to give back during tough times.  The unions have offered to make concessions to deal with the state’s budget crisis, as they were prepared to do before Walker even took office, and the offer has been rejected.  While employee benefits are obviously more difficult to pay during tough economic times, public employees and their unions are not the cause of the budget crises states are in.  States without collective bargain powering for state workers are in the same or worse financial straits as states with collective bargaining.  If Governor Walker’s concern really were balancing the budget, he wouldn’t have just wrecked the state’s financial situation for the coming years by pushing through corporate tax cuts.  No, this is part of well-funded right-wing effort to crush organized labor, which remains the most effective counterweight to corporate influence over government.

Conservative claims that public sector employees are overpaid or doing better than private sector counterparts simply aren’t true.  The sad thing is that, to the extent that public employees do have it better than private sector workers, this is more a sign of how much pay and benefits have deteriorated in the private sector than a sign of “sweetheart deals” negotiated by public sector unions.  As the percentage of the private sector workforce belonging to unions continues to decline, fewer and fewer private sector workers have access to the wages and benefits that unions deliver.  If public employees have not suffered rollbacks in benefits the same way private sector employees has, this is as it should be.  The policy of our government should be that workers are entitled to a certain level of dignity, and that your labor should give you the ability to provide for your family, visit a doctor when necessary, stay home when your sick, go on vacation every now and then, and be financially secure in retirement.   And if there’s no political will to pass laws mandating a living wage or paid sick leave in the private sector, then government should at least do what it can to set standards for how workers should be treated through the treatment of its own workers.  (The most disturbing reports from the competing protests in Madison were of pro-Walker protesters carrying signs saying “Your Gravy Train is over– Welcome to the recession.”  It’s a sad sign that anyone would react to widespread economic misery by seeking to drag down those who have been spared rather than lift up those who are suffering.)

Opponents of unions are quick to dismiss them as special interests.  And of course that’s true.  Unions’ primary responsibility is the welfare of their members.  But we all should be thankful that unions are as powerful a special interest as they are and lament that unions aren’t as powerful as they once were.  Of all the institutions with the resources and interest to influence the government, none shares the broad interests of the majority of  Americans to the degree that organized labor does.  Every federal law dealing with quality of life in the workplace:  the 40 hour workweek, the minimum wage, health and safety regulations, etc., owes its existence to the support of organized labor.  Even though labor is not as strong as it once was, its hard to imagine either health care reform or financial regulation making it through Congress without organized labor pushing back against the insurance industry and the Chamber of Commerce.

And this is why the attack on labor is something that should terrify all progressives.  Labor is the muscle behind the progressive movement.  With its roots in organizing and its emphasis on solidarity and strength in numbers, no one understands the importance of coalition building better than organized labor.  For instance, in the 1960s the UAW, at the height of its power, provided critical support to other factions of the growing progressive movement.  In the past decade, labor has sought common ground with environmentalists and changed its immigration policy, two areas in which labor had been in conflict with other branches of the progressive movement.  And that’s the reason the right wing is so interested in how Wisconsin closes its budget deficit.

We’re a long may from a perfect democracy where each citizen has an equal say in how we are governed.  As long as special interests are going to have massive influence over our government, we need to make sure the special interests that answer to millions of nurses, firefighters, teachers, etc., have the same say as the special interests that answer to twelve guys in a boardroom.

-AR

Stories about Roethlisberger over the past couple weeks have generally fallen into two categories:  accounts of the remarkable story of redemption, from pariah to champion, and harsh criticism of the notion that throwing a football well could ever redeem behavior like Roethlisberger’s.  (Not surprisingly, the Onion ends up with the best take.)

This first line of stories generally seem to be an awkward attempt by sportswriters  to not let off the field nastiness spoil all the fun.  Stripped of his personal baggage, Roethlisberger is a fun athlete to analyze, a unique quarterback with a style that looks ugly but often ends up victorious.  But putting his off the field behavior back into the equation not only complicates the analysis of Roethlisberger the player and Sunday’s game, it exposes the ridiculousness of the multi-billion dollar enterprise of professional sports, the foolishness of devoting so much time, energy, and intelligence into glorifying and analyzing men who are no more than, and far too often seem less than, human.  The “wins doesn’t equal redemption” conclusion is painfully obvious, and anything Roethlisberger does on the field pales in comparison to what he likely did off the field.  But football writers want to write about football, and millions of people want to read about football, and writing about football requires writing about Ben Roethlisberger the football player (and dozens of other people with less than savory histories).  And so the Roethlisberger redemption stories come off as an awkward attempt by sportswriters to justify their profession, to convince themselves and the rest of us that it’s OK to care about what Roethlisberger does on Sunday.

I empathize with sportswriters grappling to rationalize their chosen profession because I’ve gone through a similar process this season as a Steeler fan.  When the Roethlisberger news broke, I wished the Steelers would trade him.  I actually thought it might happen, having convinced myself that the Steelers really are different from other teams, really do hold themselves to a higher standard, really do value character and integrity over money, and care about winning but winning the right way.  Of course, it didn’t happen, and I swore off the Steelers and professional football.

And I made it through about three weeks of boycotting the Steelers.  I’ve come up with quite a few rationalizations:  that the roster is still full of likeable players like Hines Ward and Troy Polamalu and coaches like Mike Tomlin and Dick LeBeau, that I’m not going to let one person drive me away from the team that means so much to my hometown, the team that my grandparents rooted and root for, the team my parents, and many others, drove to the airport to greet after their first Super Bowl win.  The team that inspired me to write the syrupy e-mail at the end of this column.  I’ve always been more of a baseball and basketball fan than a football fan, more of a Pirate fan than a Steeler fan.  But there’s nothing sports-related that I’ve experienced like being in Western Pennsylvania during the first Steeler Super Bowl run of my lifetime.  For three solid weeks, most of my family and just about everyone I’d grown up with was happy. I share these even though I don’t expect anyone not from Pittsburgh to be convinced (I’m still not fully convinced myself).

And so the whole experience has me reflecting on how weird being a sports fan is.  I’m not sure how I’ve ended up in a place where I can cheer Roethlisberger’s on-field success while saying that I “hate” Tom Brady, who for all I know is a perfectly decent human being.  My “hatred” for Brady (or the Ravens, or the Braves, or the University of North Carolina, etc.) has an element of hyperbole, but in a sense is very real.  I wish him no ill will off the field, but watching him succeed on the field causes a very real negative reaction and watching him fail causes a very real positive reaction.

Analogies can be made to other forms of art or entertainment.  I feel slightly better about cheering for the Steelers knowing that millions of people continue to watch Two and Half Men every week.  But the connection between sports fans and athletes has a unique quality to it.  Other than live performances — which, on any given night, generally don’t carry the win or lose significance that a sporting event have — we don’t share the experience of other entertainers or artists along with them.  Whatever emotional impact a novel, or a song, or a movie may have on us, it reaches us a finished product, and there’s a distance between how we experience it and how the people that made it experienced it.  But with athletes, we join their highs and lows in real time.  When Roethlisberger completed his Super Bowl winning pass to Santonio Holmes two years ago, I was jumping up and down, pumping my fist right along with him.  And I’ll probably be doing the same thing on Sunday, if the Steelers are so fortunate, though this time with the recognition that sports fanaticism is as much a sickness as a point of pride.

-AR

-AR

Anyone still confused should watch the full8.5 hours of Sanders filibuster.

-AR

Today, Obama struck back at his critics on the left, chastising those who would hold up legislation that would improve people’s lives due to naive or sanctimonious idealism.

Of course, Obama is right that compromise is often necessary and that measures that could improve people’s lives should not be held up because they aren’t ideal.  But that doesn’t mean that every compromise or concession is warranted.  While it’s impossible to prove counterfactuals and say what tactics or messages could have won what policy victories, I can’t escape the conclusion that progressives should have gotten more out of the last two years.  The Obama administration and its defenders are correct that, looked at out of context, the accomplishments of the past two years — health care reform, the stimulus, student loan reform, financial regulatory reform — are impressive, and surpass the two other post-Great Society Democratic administrations.  But if you compare the achievements of the Obama administration to what one would expect from “Generic Democratic President X with 60 votes in the Senate and an 80-vote majority in the House,” the record becomes much less impressive.  With those majorities, the failure to deliver on key campaign promises that a majority of the country supports, like Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal and ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, is hard to defend.  And Obama promised to be more than “Generic Democratic President X.”

At a more abstract level, progressive disappointment, or at least my own disappointment as a progressive, comes from how quickly the promise of November 2008 vanished.  In 2008, Republican policies had proven to be a failure, and over two elections the country had overwhelmingly turned away from the Republicans and given power to the Democrats and a man who was promising to change everything and who the other side was promising us was a socialist.  And yet, for the past two years we’ve been scratching and clawing, and often losing, for policies that aren’t even that progressive.  I don’t want to downplay the importance of health care reform — it’s an incredibly important law that will improve millions of lives.  But as Ezra Klein demonstrated last month, Obama’s “radical socialist” health care bill is the product of decades of liberal retrenchment on health care.  Thirty-five years ago, leaders in the Democratic Party made a serious effort to guarantee full employment in the United States.   This week, it took capitulating on tax cuts for the wealthy to win a temporary extension of unemployment benefits during one of the worst labor markets this country has seen.

Over the weekend I had a conversation with my sister about her frustrations as a working mother and a paper she was writing on Sweden’s policy towards child care.  We agreed that the United States needs to do much more — through policies like paid maternity leave and subsidized child care — to make it easier for working families to raise children and allow men and women to share equally in the benefits of family and work.  But if what passes for a progressive party in this country, led by its greatest champion in 40 years, can’t bring itself to enact even popular policies that serve progressive aims of equality and fairness, it’s hard to imagine anyone asking us to fundamentally reconsider our views on work, family, and gender equality any time soon.

-AR

First, some background.  Two weeks ago, Washington Redskins Coach Mike Shanahan benched (black) starting quarterback Donovan McNabb during the final two minutes of a failed comeback attempt against the Detroit Lions, claiming (white) back-up Rex Grossman had a better knowledge of the team’s two-minute offense.  As discussion grew about the surprising move, Shanahan leaked to the press that McNabb was struggling to learn the team’s playbook in general and gave the alternate explanation that he was worried about McNabb’s “cardiovascular fitness.” The Washington Post’s John Feinstein said that there was “racial coding” in Shanahan essentially calling McNabb fat and stupid, and called for Shanahan to be fired.

Reilly finds Feinstein invocation of race to be beyond the pale.  In his column, Reilly throws up what are probably the two biggest and most commonly employed barriers to productive conversations on race.

Barrier Number 1:  “Racism?  That’s sooooooo 1963.”

In response to Feinstein’s suggestion that racial coding might be involved in the decision to bench McNabb, Reilly writes, “Are we really going there? In 2010?”**  Because, you know, racial prejudice ended when we passed the Civil Rights Act.  Or when Tony Dungy won a Super Bowl.  Or when Obama was elected.  But definitely at some point before now, so we should just stop talking about it.

What’s so obnoxious about Reilly’s article is not just that he wants to believe that racial prejudice no longer exists, but that he seems unwilling to acknowledge that it ever existed at all.  Up until very recently, there were almost no black quarterbacks in the NFL.  The major reason for this is the type of prejudiced beliefs about African Americans that Feinstein identifies: blacks were thought to lack the intelligence and leadership ability required to be a successful quarterback.  This was the conventional wisdom of the NFL Mike Shannahan came up in and the men from whom he learned the game.  Amazingly, Reilly doesn’t acknowledge this history at all, and acts as though Feinstein’s accusations come completely out of the blue.

Barrier Number 2:  “How dare you call me a racist!”

Reilly devotes a large portion of the column to showing that Mike Shanahan is not, in fact, a racist.

Does Feinstein know that Shanahan was the guy who gave Rick Smith his first job in an NFL personnel department? Smith went on to become the league’s first black GM, at Houston.

Does Feinstein remember how Shanahan campaigned to help his wide receivers coach, Karl Dorrell, become the first black head coach in UCLA’s history? And that he let him leave in the middle of the Broncos’ season to do it?

Does Feinstein know what Shanahan did after receiving the call telling him that Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams had been killed in a drive-by shooting? He wept. On the phone.

Wasn’t it Shanahan who wanted McNabb in the first place? Convinced Dan Snyder to trade for him? Wasn’t McNabb black then? Or was there something wrong with the racial coding on Shanahan’s flat-screen?

But question isn’t “Is Mike Shanahan a racist?”, but rather, “Did negative stereotypes about African Americans play a role in the decision to bench McNabb?”  Maybe the most counterproductive feature of our current discourse on race is the need to destroy any nuance and fit things neatly into boxes of “racist” or “not racist.”

Extensive research shows that almost  all of us make certain assumptions about other based on race (gender and sexuality and myriad other factors).  What really separates the “racists” from the “non-racists” is not whether these assumptions are made, but the degree to which we question these assumptions before expressing and acting on them.  Which is why it’s so counterproductive that our first reaction whenever someone else questions whether racial prejudice might have influenced a decision is to shut down debate (How dare you call me a racist!) rather than engage in discussion and question our attitudes.

Reilly breaks out a series straw men to try to make Feinstein’s argument seem ridiculous.

What is Feinstein saying? That’s it’s not possible Grossman knew the two-minute offense better? That it’s not possible for a white guy to be better at something than a black guy? That’s it’s not possible for a black guy to be out of shape? If that’s the logic, what follows is: Black people are never inept. Apparently, according to Feinstein, white people have cornered the market on it. And if you think a black person is inept occasionally — like McNabb — go stand in the racist line.

Of course that’s not what Feistein is suggesting.  And nothing I’ve said means that Feinstein is necessarily right in his assessment.  But given the sorry history of the NFL and black quarterbacks it’s a legitimate point to raise, and demonizing and ridiculing Feinstein for daring to bring up race just shuts down an important line of inquiry.  On a broader level, the only way we can start moving towards racial justice is to be willing to at least discuss the ways in which our long sad history on race continues to infect our thoughts and actions.

-AR

*Previously, my problem with Reilly was that he tends to take very strident positions on utterly non-controversial topics.  The little league coach is wrong to exploit that the other team has a cancer patient?  Thanks for the insight, Rick!  Turns out he’s even worse when he takes on controversial topics.

**  This deserves longer discussion on its own, but I have to at least note the absurdity of someone seeming baffled that we still have to deal with questions of racism while writing a column about the Washington Redskins

And the big mistake of modern media has been this notion of balance for balance’s sake:  that the left is just as violent and cruel as the right, that unions are just as powerful as corporations, that reverse racism is just as damaging as racism.  There’s a difference between a mad man and a madman.

In the past, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Maher similar to my love/hate relationship with Stewart.  At his worst, Maher tends towards the “everything is an outrage” hysteria of what I would call the Move On/DailyKos wing of the progressive movement.  I’ve long felt that the most dedicated progressive activists do the progressive movement and political discourse a disservice by painting the right with too broad of a brush, treating every statement or action by any conservative as if it were the worst thing ever done or said.  This isn’t to say there isn’t a lot that conservatives do that is outrageous (this blog wouldn’t exist if there weren’t), but rather that one’s outrage needs to be properly calibrated to a given situation.  The perfect example of this is Keith Olbermann:  when he did his first special comment, I thought it was brilliant and that his anger was perfectly tuned to the subject he was addressing.  But as he continued to manufacture that same level of bombast for whatever the big story of the day happened to be, his anger lost the force that it initially had.

Watching Stewart’s rally on Halloween, however, I realized that I far prefer the occasionally misguided rage of the Move On crowd to the “too cool for it all” ethos surrounding the “Rally for Sanity.”

Stewart’s keynote address contained some solid criticism of the media, but ultimately it missed the mark.  The problem with the media isn’t simply that it sensationalizes stories, it’s that it sensationalizes the wrong things.  There are plenty of things that should be getting far more extensive, and, yes, angrier, coverage  than they currently get:  ever growing income inequality, a broken criminal justice and penal system, the exploitation of immigrant workers, the thorough infusion of misogyny and homophobia in our culture, and the concerted effort to roll back the gains of the civil rights movement by equating affirmative action with Jim Crow, just to name a few.  But the media can’t present these issues in the proper light, because doing so, besides depressing the hell out viewers, enraging advertisers, and thus driving down revenues, would lead to accusations of, gasp, liberal bias in the media.

Perhaps Stewart’s best line was when he said, “If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.”  And while that may be true, the entire non-partisan tone of the rally, its condemnation of ever calling your opponents nasty names, and its need to criticize angry voices on both sides in the same terms seemed to be suggesting (though Stewart smugly and unconvincingly argues otherwise) that we should amplify nothing.  That’s just making the same mistake in the opposite direction, and just as damaging to having an honest and productive public discourse.

-AR

Homer: Not a bear in sight.  The Bear Patrol must be working like a
       charm.
 Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
 Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
 Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
 Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
 Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
        [Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money]
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.

Well, the Republican House majority is now the magic rock protecting us from the socialism/fascism/tyranny/etc. of the evil Obama administration.

-AR

As for the sour grapes, watching Keith Olbermann and the MSNBC crew grasp for reasons why last night was actually bad for the Republicans–now they have to show they can govern, given the sorry state of the economy their gains should have been much greater, etc.–made me realize how absurd that is.  Perhaps it’s true that the Republican majority will provide the perfect foil for President Obama and the weak class that was just elected will allow for massive Democratic wins in 2012.  But the time to write about such things is as they develop over the coming months and years.  For the moment, things unqualifiedly suck.  Just two and four years after elections that seemed to signal that the country was heading in a more progressive direction, and two years after an economic crisis which should have rallied public opinion behind the need for strong government action, we’ve turned power over to crowd that thinks that policies which twenty or thirty years ago were considered centrist signify the erosion of American freedom.

-AR

(Despite the doomsday tone of this post, I do think it’s important not to overreact.  Such as, say, asking how Democrats can stay relevant when we still control the White House and the senate.)