"Joy and pleasure are as real as pain and sorrow and one must learn what they have to teach. . . ." -- Sean Russell, from Gatherer of Clouds

"If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right." -- Helyn D. Goldenberg

"I love you and I'm not afraid." -- Evanescence, "My Last Breath"

“If I hear ‘not allowed’ much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

The Center

Well, whoda thunkit?

In their first days in session, Senate Democratic leaders reintroduced a bill that they said was indicative of their new approach: the Prevention First Act, which seeks to reduce the number of abortions by expanding access to birth control, family planning and sex education.

I was going to comment something to the effect that if the radical right shuts up for a minute, people of reason and common sense (not always the same thing) can make themselves heard. However, I don't think that's the case. I think it's much more that corporate media, being very sensitive to the sources of power, are now allowing the opposition to be heard because the "opposition" is now -- not controlling the debate, so much, but simply cutting through the bullshit.

This bill is the one effort in the abortion controversy that makes sense so far. It encapsulates what has always been the liberal position, but was shouted down by the Christianists. Remember, they not only want to outlaw abortion but contraception and sex education as well.

This whole article is disturbing for what it doesn't say, but I suppose that's merely a function of institutional blindspots.

And conservatives, by controlling which legislation came to the floor, succeeded in defining the debate over social issues for more than a decade, through votes on same-sex marriage and the procedure opponents call partial-birth abortion, in ways that highlighted the political limits of liberalism.

Well, no, not exactly. Conservatives controlled the Congress, and the MSM went along for the ride. Look, there are any number of articulate, intelligent people on the left who simply have not been able to be heard. In fact, the more I look at that paragraph, the more self-serving it seems. At any rate, on framing the debate, take Time magazine's stunt with asking James Dobson for an OpEd on Mary Cheney's baby. Conservatives defining the debate? Perhaps, but it's been conservatives in the editors' offices, not in Congress or anywhere else. Time did post a rejoinder -- two days later, after some heat began to build. There was no reason why they couldn't have posted both simultaneously, or even gotten a piece from someone with no horses in that race. Bruce Carroll of GayPatriot, for crying out loud, would have been a good choice. He's gay, conservative (as such things are understood these days), not particularly pro-marriage but not violently against it, and probably has a much better sense than James Dobson of what family relationships are about. But then, Henry VIII probably had a better sense of family relationships than Dobson does.

After a statement like that, all the quotes from Democrats saying "Oh, we goofed" ring hollow, simply because I find myself asking, "Who did they not talk to?" and "Who did they decide not to quote?" For a party that has been flailing around lost for ten or twelve years, the Democrats seem to have a very well thought out program. (And, as I have noted, it's all things that could have been done if the Republicans cared.)

Bottom line on this is that when a particular player "defines the debate" in the public arena, it's because those charged with reporting to the public have allowed it, or even facilitated it. We're seeing the same crap going on right now with regard to the escalation of the Iraq war: the conservative mantra, duly trumpeted by the media, is that the Democrats have no plan, which is a lie. (Big surprise, that.) The Democrats have several plans, which we should be studying. Beats doing the same thing over again expecting it to work next time.

Oh, and today's irony:

“I can tell you what I expect,” said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee. “I think the Democratic leadership will seek to advance the policy agenda of the hardcore groups but do so under the cover of deceptive rhetorical campaigns.”

Pot, kettle. (And where did they learn that tactic, you snake-oil salesman?)

(A sidebar on this story from Glenn Greenwald detailing how the MSM forms the "debate." This one's about the lead-up to the Iraq debacle. Scroll down past the first three paragraphs.)

4 comments:

Citizen Deux said...

I find that it is states that do best in working on cutting edge social issues, it ALWAYS takes longer for the whole to adopt and adapt to the changing morays of our nation.

See Massachusetts with gay marriage, universal coverage,etc.

Starting on the national scene is never a good idea. Get things to work well in a robust urban area (Chicago) then roll it to the state and finally look to a region and then the nation.

Hell, we can't even agree on a speed limit!

Hunter said...

As a strategy, for example in the case of gay marriage, that's really what proponents were after. If you follow the history of same-sex marriage at all, after the court cases in Hawai'i and Alaska in the early 90s, it was the Christian right that made it a national issue with the introduction and passage of DOMA in a Republican-dominated congress.

They were also quite blatant about the fact that it was the best fundraising ploy they'd ever had. (Not that I'm cynical about their motivations at all. Nope. Not me.)

You're quite correct, I think, that local action is best, and that's the strategy that the major gay rights groups have been trying to follow. The problem they've faced is that sometimes events don't wait for your strategy, and they spent too much time and energy trying to tell people to pull back when they should have been more aggressive in support, which got group like HRC a lot of flak from the community (including yours truly). All they did was give the national anti-gay groups time to establish their talking points, which of course the MSM took as the limits of the debate.

Building a national consensus, barring a readily apparent crisis, is a time-consuming and nerve-wracking process, and even then, most questions aren't really ever closed -- they just generate more questions. Sort of like science.

Citizen Deux said...

Perhaps, but we do make progress. Universal sufferage, equal opportunity. One battle at a time.

I am hopeful.

Hunter said...

One thing that's very interesting with the same-sex marriage phenomenon is that proponents are now advancing domestic partnership/civil union legislation with the up-front admission that it's a stop-gap. This has happened in New Jersey, where the civil unions bill was tepidly received and everyone involved was quite public about the fact that they wlil be back for full marriage, and just happened in Washington State, where the legislature will be considering two bills; the sponsors make no bones about the fact that they want marriage equality and have put up domestic partnerships as a means of "instant relief." The California legislature will be considering a marriage bill again, and New York will have a bill this year.

I think this is going to force the right wing to come out of the closet, as it were, and simply admit that they don't want any legal recognition for gay couples, which is going to turn a lot of people off, since a majority now favor some form of it.

I also predict that civil unions will run afoul of Brown v. Board of Education's "separate and unequal" finding when someone decides to take it to the federal courts, and that there will suits filed on behalf of the children of gay couples. I'm really surprised no one has filed suit under the Establishment Clause.

Any guesses? Ten years? Twenty?