October 2008: Invasion of The Liberal Bodysnatchers...

...A scenario which must already have happened—if we are to believe this mailer—Yes, indeedy; that reads—

McCain-Palin Solutions for our Families

• Increase funding for stem cell research
• Address climate change
• Fight wasteful spending

Inside the leaflet is this, convincingly all caps:

JOHN MCCAIN AND SARAH PALIN WILL WORK WITH DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS FOR SENSIBLE SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEMS FACING AMERICAN FAMILIES... LEADERSHIP THAT REACHES ACROSS PARTY LINES.

Everywhere else, reality is on display.

There's this bit of failed stage management, as one of McCain's camera-unsafe volunteers speaks up.

Yet another volunteer with psychological projection issues sets out to prove The Blacks [and no doubt, Mooslims] are persecuting Republicans—by displaying self-inflicted wounds. One little detail she overlooked: letters read backward, because she used a mirror to create them.

watertiger on the Palin rally crowds: here, here, and here—

It's freakin' Gam-a-vision™. Sweet mother of Hades, women will never be taken seriously in American politics ever again.

watertiger also critiques Palin's outfit, which seems to be on backwards.

The Republicans dream up a Joe Sixpack figure, in "Joe" the "Plumber": not really a plumber, and with a possible Charles Keating family connection... Workers being a non-subject, until Republicans need to fake some populism. And no matter how obvious and lame the stage managing, the media dutifully grab the narrative and run with it.

And "Joe" says that Obama does a "tap dance... almost as good as Sammy Davis, Jr."—is there a more obvious tell than that? The guy is in his 30s—and all by himself he thinks up dog whistle comparisons with Sammy Davis, Jr.? Something tells me a person closer to the candidate's age is feeding "Joe" his lines.

Brad at Sadly, No offers a suggestion for the Obama campaign: the perfect working class icon for countering the phony "Joe."

Among the comments:

Leon Trotsky, Exile-in-Mexico—

Joe the Unlicensed Scab Plumber Taking Good Jobs Away From Legal Working Men And Has Avoided Paying What Fucking Taxes He Already Owes So Should Shut His Face About Some Hypothetical Tax Increase...

Hm, doesn't have the same zing.

Dragon-King Wangchuck—

Here’s a better counter to Joe Wurzelbacher:
Under Obama’s plan, Joe would be getting a tax cut even if he made six times as much as he did in 2006:

Court records from a divorce show Mr. Wurzelbacher made $40,000 in 2006.

Also from that Toledo Blade article:

He is also not registered to operate as a plumber in Ohio, which means he's not a plumber.

...

Mr. Wurzelbacher’s notoriety has raised the ire of Tom Joseph, business manager for Local 50 of the United Association of Plumbers, Steamfitters, and Service Mechanics, who claimed that Mr. Wurzelbacher didn't undergo any apprenticeship training.

So not even a Plumber in Training, he's a Plumber's Assisstant.

"Joe": the plumber's helper...


The effort to demonize Obama as a "community organizer" is funny, even if obvious code for, "poor darkskins forming mob: be afraid!"

This all jogged my mind about "De Organizer"—a 1940 opera by James P. Johnson and Langston Hughes. After its debut, the piece was performed only a couple of times, then believed to be lost. The score was rediscovered a few years ago, and productions since then include one I've seen.

Plot and characters are unfortunately wooden, but the gist is that a group of southern sharecroppers want to form a union and fight their oppressive conditions, so they send for an organizer, to show them the way. There is a strong messianic* tone: the poor, downtrodden farmers await arrival of De Organizer, who will transform their lives by revealing the path to justice.

When I saw this show (late in 2002), we had been through a mere two years of Bush, just over one year of living in a Homeland, and had not yet invaded Iraq.

As the opera ended and cast exited, my reaction to the 60+ year old libretto was, "Hey, I'm still waiting for De Organizer to show up and straighten things out!" It got some bitter laughs from people sitting in earshot.

* It's a good thing this opera is too obscure for the noise machine to connect it to Obama...

The only contemporary recordings of music from the opera were two arrangements of "Hungry Blues," both sung by Anna Robinson. The tune is catchy and lyrics are pointed; an MP3 is here, on Ben Greenberg's very worthwhile blog—named after the song.

Ben is the son of Paul Arthur Greenberg, in the 1960s a special assistant to Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC. A civil rights and labor lawyer, with jazz world connections—I don't know if the two ever met, but Greenberg would have been a man after the heart of Studs Terkel, who's just died at 96.

The country has lost its great oral historian of American life. Studs talked to people of all kinds about living through the Depression; about the American Obsession (the two books specifically on race here and here); and about the subjects of so many other books, written over a lifetime of asking questions and listening to what people had to say.

Which—speaking of media plant "Joe"—included talking to people about work.

And talking to real people about how they've experienced the American Dream.