Daywalker "totally bites him in the ass."

Scroll down to the "in the comments" part.

"Oh, damn. Where did you come from? I’m white. I’m entitled. There’s a black man stealing my show."

The things they say at Barack Obama's church:

In a guest appearance at Trinity United Church of Christ, the priest, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, who resigned about two weeks ago from an unpaid position on the Obama campaign’s Catholic advisory council, delivered a tirade against Mrs. Clinton that included fake tears, a high-pitched voice and top-of-the-lungs screaming. He also gave a racially tinged critique of so-called “white entitlement,” of which he says Mrs. Clinton is guilty.

“When Hillary was crying, and people said that was put on — I really don’t believe it was put on,” said Father Pfleger, 59, the white pastor of a predominantly black South Side church. “I really believe that she just always thought: ‘This is mine. I’m Bill’s wife, I’m white and this is mine. I just got to get up and step into the plate.’ And then, out of nowhere, came, ‘Hey, I’m Barack Obama.’ And she said, ‘Oh, damn. Where did you come from? I’m white. I’m entitled. There’s a black man stealing my show.”

Father Pfleger, a well-known longtime activist and friend of Mr. Obama, issued an apology late Thursday. “I regret the words I chose on Sunday. These words are inconsistent with Senator Obama’s life and message, and I am deeply sorry if they offended Senator Clinton or anyone else who saw them.”

Another sorry-if-you-were-offended apology.

Of course, the Clinton campaign is delighted by Pfleger's wonderful gift:

“Divisive and hateful language like that is totally counterproductive in our efforts to bring our party together and have no place at the pulpit or in our politics,” said Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton. “We are disappointed that Senator Obama didn’t specifically reject Father Pfleger’s despicable comments about Senator Clinton, and assume he will do so.”

How much mileage can they get out of this one?

Reading over Pfleger's remarks, I think they'd be perfectly apt in a comedy routine. The main problem is that they were in a sermon in a church... and it's Barack Obama's church, the source of way too many of his problems. How on earth could someone who supports Obama and is clever enough to say something like that be stupid enough to say it there?

ADDED: You've got to see it in video. [Better version of the clip swapped for the one I had before.]



Hilarious. Race-baiting... it's wrong. Still... LOL.

And here's Rush Limbaugh:

This is stupid! Unless there's a plan here. They must be out to sink Obama at this church, 'cause they know the whole world's watching. Well, that could be, too. Maybe they're just selfish. They're just trying to increase attendance and to hell with Obama. The thing is, this Pfleger guy, he's right. He stole that from me. I didn't say it quite that way, but we all know that the Clintons sitting around, you know, shell shocked. "What happened to us?"

AND: More Pfleger:



UPDATE: Obama and his wife resign from Trinity Church.

"Bleary-eyed and somewhat bedraggled... five and a half hours... 'felt like five and a half weeks."

That was last night. The real fight is today, as the Democrats struggle to find a way through the Florida and Michigan problem.

"Should he be introduced as a Neanderthal man, a bigot, a warmonger, looking out at us from the 19th century?"

Who asked that about whom in 1964?

"They wear high, tight, wight collars, black jackets and what were once known as 'ice cream pants.'" What the hell are ice cream pants? Did people even know that in 1964?

"Unknown Man Commits Suicide." A forlorn headline, from 1899.

Was it "absurd to turn around and start appointing people based on sexual preference" to a public policy committee devoted to the AIDS epidemic? In the Reagan Administration, in 1987.

Imagine arguing that the plan for the New York subway line should be bent eastward so Harlem residents don't flow downtown and unbeautify Central Park West. Some people did, in 1922.

"Will no one weep for the tulips?" Asked in 1939.

A warning that the ghetto law will soon be enforced. Also in 1939.

It's the Reagan Adminstration that's to blame — and never Congress — as the NYT looks at law, taxes, and racism in 1983.

Who is out to get the "carpers, critics and killjoys" and "reactionaries" in 1934?

Movies seen and not seen.

Yesterday at the Sundance theater here in Madison, Wisconsin, it was opening night for the "Sex and the City" movie. Women were swarming around and inside the place. Some arrived in groups of 4 and wearing short, tight dresses. The "caffe" area that, at Sundance, replaces the concession stand, had a party atmosphere. Were they serving drinks? I think they were.

But we weren't there to see "Sex and the City." We were there to see "The Fall." Unlike the ladies in little dresses, we did not dress like characters in the movie. That is, we did not wear loincloths or red masks with rectangular eye holes or helmets or diaphanous gowns. But we were just as eager to take in the show on opening night.

Here's the trailer that got me:



Watching the trailer again, I can see that it absolutely accurately represents what is in that movie, so if you like that, go see it. If you don't, don't. Here's the Roger Ebert review that the trailer summarizes in one word ("Magnificent"). And here are a few more Ebert words:

Either you are drawn into the world of this movie or you are not. It is preposterous, of course, but I vote with Werner Herzog, who says if we do not find new images, we will perish. Here a line of bowmen shoot hundreds of arrows into the air. So many of them fall into the back of the escaped slave that he falls backward and the weight of his body is supported by them, as on a bed of nails with dozens of foot-long arrows. There is scene of the monkey Otis chasing a butterfly through impossible architecture.

The monkey belongs to Charles Darwin, who's out on a quest with the Black Bandit, an Italian anarchist, an escaped slave, and a Indian (whom the man has described as an American Indian but the girl has pictured as a man from India). The alternating sequences of fantasy and storytelling reminded me of "The Princess Bride." And there's a satisfying ending that reminded me of [click for spoiler].

The movie has gotten mixed reviews. To the extent that these say the story isn't coherent, I think they are wrong. Pay close attention and you'll see how it makes sense. You have an impoverished 5-year-old child who is listening to a story told by a suicidal, drug-addicted man. The fantasy sequences are the combination of his words and her visualization. The story takes place in the early days of Hollywood and filmmaking is a theme. The man is in the hospital because he was paralyzed in a fall doing a movie stunt, and in putting a story into words he is like a screenplay writer and the girl is like the director, so the slippage between his story and her imagination tells of the writer's loss of control of his story as it is made into a movie. The little girl is in the hospital because she fell out of an orange tree doing her work as a migrant picker. In her eagerness to see the man's story in her head, she's a movie fan.

ADDED: Importantly, this movie was made without CGI. They made models like this:



Better get that explosion right the first time. I hate CGI — I feel visceral revulsion to it. The beauty of "The Fall" is clearly film beauty, not computer tricks.

Court rejects challenge to the form of the Wisconsin referendum on gay marriage.

Wispolitics reports:

A Dane County judge upheld Wisconsin’s constitutional amendment banning gay marriage Friday, describing the propositions included in the referendum put to voters as “two sides of the same coin.”

UW-Oshkosh instructor William McConkey challenged the amendment, arguing Wisconsin statutes limit referendums on constitutional amendments to a single question. McConkey’s attorneys argued that the marriage amendment asked voters to respond to two separate questions: how marriage should be defined in Wisconsin and whether marriage benefits should be allocated to unmarried people.

This decision is not surprising. I don't much like referendums, and I support same-sex marriage, but I don't like the use of a procedural hypertechnicality in court to thwart democracy. Defeat the amendment on the merits.

IN THE COMMENTS: Peter Hoh asks "What's the status of the amendment? Is it on the ballot for November?" No, it passed in 2006. This is an effort to invalidate it. "Defeat the amendment on the merits" was ambiguous. I only meant to say that if we're going to have referendums, the voters should prevail.

"I still happen to believe that Saddam Hussein was a threat, that he needed to be dealt with."

Tony Blair responding to Matt Lauer, who's quoting furiously from the Scott McClellan book.

Ezra Klein tries to figure out a way for the Democrats to secure their masculinity.

It's not through Jim Webb:

Democrats can't out-tough the GOP. It's possible that James Webb can do it. But he's sui generis; a Democrat who can win at politics when played under Republican rules. Democrats love those candidates, because they think of presidential elections as an away game, and they're endlessly hunting for the candidate who plays best under those conditions.

What then are the Democratic "rules"? Or what's the Democratic "home game"? Ezra mixes the metaphor. Sports don't have different rules at different stadiums. But he doesn't even go on to try to discern the rules or the conditions at the home stadium. He moves on to Obama-promotion:

His policies -- particularly his domestic policies -- have not been half as innovative as his politics. But his willingness to double down on opposition to the gas tax holiday, to battle back on negotiating with dictators, to respond to attacks by pressing the point, has been genuinely exciting. And though he has been confident and even aggressive in all of this, he has not been "tough."

And he disses Kerry:

He has not pretended to go shooting, or driven on to Jay Leno's show on Harley. He's essentially been making his own rules.

So can you figure out what Ezra wants to say about masculinity as played by Democratic rules in Democratic stadiums? He titles his post "The Politics of Masculinity," and I think his real point may be that Democrats shouldn't try to compensate for what appears to be inadequate masculinity, but try to find where he says that:

To be clear, this isn't a commentary on Webb.

Well, then be clear. What is it a commentary on?

But the argument for his elevation to the national ticket -- which is to say, to become one of the faces of the party -- is about the electoral benefit of a hyper masculine, effortlessly tough, culturally conservative (seeming) candidate who can win back those Reagan Democrats and white males.

I'd love to have a private, confidential conversation with Webb about what he thinks about the way his party perceives him as some sort of walking bucket of extra testosterone.

As I wrote the other day, I don't think the Democratic Party should be orienting itself towards reknitting that particular coalition.

Knitting! Only a Democrat would talk about knitting masculinity.

I think there are other, more plausible, paths to a majority coalition; paths that are more durable because they aren't so candidate-specific, and that could create a political model better for progressivism and for broad participation in electoral politics.

That's the last sentence of his essay! Come on, Ezra! Real men don't use semicolons. And more than that: Say what you have to say. Don't pussyfoot around. I think you mean:

We are the Mommy Party. Let's own it. Let's do it! The home game is knitting and cooking and putting bandaids on booboos. Be forthright about it. That's more masculine than driving a Harley or a tank or carrying a gun and a dead duck and nominating a bucket of testosterone for VP.

IN THE COMMENTS: George quotes a part of the essay that I left out:

"He [Webb] is the daywalker, combining a progressive's positions with a southern militarist's affectations."

A 'daywalker' is a vampire.

What does that sentence mean?

UWS guy said:

I thought the daywalker line was pretty hip. It also made Webb sound even more bad-ass.

Chip Ahoy said:

I find Ezra Klein nearly incomprehensible and in possession of a disordered mind. And yet his readers apparently 'get' him. One said he understood the metaphor of daywalkers, then elaborated incomprehensibly.

Newscaper says:

This is hilarious IMO. It doesn't mean what Klein, Mr. [wannabe] Hip thinks it does. The other comment here was right in that by making a semi-obscure (by mainstream stds) pop culture reference to Blade -- the vampire comics and Snipes films, he was trying to sound cool and edgy.

What a dipshit -- he actually botched the metaphor.

A "daywalker" is a vampire who can survive in sunlight and fully mingle with normal people and pass as one. But he's still a vampire.

Sounds like Klein is saying the Dems in general are the vampires who can't stand exposure in the light of day (see other commenter's correct 'prog' vs 'lib' observation), and admitting the Dems are treacherous, blood-sucking parasites -- yep, sounds about right :)

But, one might interject, "But wait, the daywalker Blade IS the good guy in the stories," to which I reply that Blade is only the good guy because he has turned *against* the evil of the other vampires, opposing their agenda rather than advancing it.

Klein's metaphor so totally bites him in the ass, by inadvertently being approriate in a way that is 180 out of synch with his intentions in using it.