A NEW KIND OF PLANK/THE GRAND OPENING: THE GREAT NORTHERN PART 2

“Straight from the shoulder I think like a soldier

I know what’s right and what’s wrong.

He knows what’s right and what’s wrong!

I’m the original discriminating buffalo man

And I’ll do what’s wrong for as long as I can.

He’ll do what’s wrong for as long as he can!”

The Minotaur’s Song by Incredible String Band

Having never worked in a restaurant before, I had the choice of starting out as a busser or a host.  Cleaning up tables seemed like too much work, whereas greeting people at the door and escorting them to their seats (punctuated by periodic bursts of song) sounded like just the kind of breezy job duties I could handle.  As we rehearsed for the opening, like minded musicians found each other and duos and trios began forming.  This was especially helpful to someone like me, who could marginally provide my own piano accompaniment, but who would be much better off singing while one of the other far better pianists (or guitarists) played.  And I was hoping I could convince some other people, musicians and singers, to join me on a couple of “group” numbers.  I was very lucky early on as there were many brave souls willing to help me in what would turn out to be somewhat whacked out, peculiar performances.

Opening night arrived; the joint was PACKED.  Here’s an encapsulation of the Great Northern experience, which repeated itself in one form or another for the 18 months I was there: The “C’s” (a not exactly affectionate term for “customers” coined by Bongo) would come in the front door to be greeted by one of the four hosts: two attractive young women (think “American Idol”), one who mainly sang “show-tunish” numbers and another who was more pop influenced; a tall, handsome, blond haired country singer (think TV network CMT); or a long-haired, bearded, wild-eyed “outsider” type (uh, that being me).  To the right was a full bar with a copy-playing rock band.  To their left was the restaurant.  One of us hosts would escort the party to their table.  The chances were high that there would be someone performing.  The chances were also high that the signature dish, The Plank, would be making its way to one or another corner of the room.  Food, liquor and music were served up non-stop throughout the night.

The Plank was an attraction unto itself.  It was a maybe six by three foot long piece of wood piled high with barbeque-sauce slathered ribs, various other meats and cheeses, and a selection of fruits and vegetables.  It actually came in several sizes depending on how many people were in the party that ordered it.  It brought a sort of medieval, bacchanalian edge to the whole proceedings.  Two people had to carry it out of the kitchen, and it was usually greeted with as much (if not more) enthusiasm as a well-played musical number.  (The waiters tried to be careful regarding just when they brought it out – its appearance could absolutely destroy some of the quieter musical numbers.)

In between a mouthful of ribs, a shot of whiskey, and raucous table conversation, here’s what an unwary C might experience those first few months: Bo Richards blasting through the Stones’ Heartbreaker with a voice that filled the always noisy space (there was no amplification); the breathtaking vocal magic of Sears, Seely and Nitz on Home to You; the folksy roots music of Marty C; the show-stopping beauty of Antoinette, Nancy and Alice’s Soft Spoken Man/Desperado medley; the Nicky Hopkins/Elton John-like brilliance of Ichabod’s piano playing; the calming beauty of Gray and Cathy’s Bluebird; the rhythm and blues piano playing Lanny supporting the raunchy decadence of Lindaroo as she stopped the show with Don’t You Feel My Leg.  The list could go on, and will, but for now, suffice it to say there was a mighty, mighty, array of amazingly talented performers who made strong impressions and immediate repeat customers out of the folks who came to visit.

TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK

CARD TRICKS, COOKS ON ACID AND A MOVEABLE FEAST: THE GREAT NORTHERN FOOD AND BEVERAGE COMPANY PART 1

“I grew up, like many people, believing memory to be a sort of hologram stored in the brain.  An accurate image of what was once perceived, once felt.  Of course that’s not true.  Memory is a reconstruction, and frequently a faulty one.”  Max Cairnduff

Way back in 1973, I was working part time as a DJ at the local “underground” radio station.  Going through various written Public Service Announcements and such for an upcoming break, my girlfriend, who had joined me that day (and who would later become my wife), found an interesting one.  It was for a new restaurant that was looking for musicians to fill host, bus and waiter positions.  Evidently, the staff would supplement their usual duties with periodic songs for the benefit of the customers.  The Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray” ended, and before I started The Incredible String Band’s “You Get Brighter”, I read this solicitation during the break.

Up to this point, I had played piano and sang intermittently, and also had done some acting.  I was just beginning to “get serious” about the band I was in (one of the musicians is the “co-writer” of this blog).  I hadn’t really performed “professionally” or in front of that many people.  But I needed another job, and this sounded intriguing.  So I took note of the audition date and decided to give it a shot.

I think there were about 50 of us auditioning for some 20 positions?  We were all in a large banquet room adjacent to the actual restaurant, sitting around the perimeter.  There was a piano (with an accompanist if needed) and three people who were going to listen to us.  Running things was Gerald Scarne, whose father had written the classic SCARNE ON CARDS.  Evidently he and a few others had opened a similar establishment in Los Angeles that was wildly successful, and they wanted to expand the empire.  The audition would proceed with everyone there listening to everyone else.  It was a colorful and diverse crowd: fresh-faced young ingénues singing show tunes, grizzled old guitar players singing Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, and everything in-between.  We were each asked to perform two songs.  The only one I remember playing, at the piano, was John Prine’s “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into Heaven Anymore”.  The only other individual auditioner I remember was this insane, wild-eyed percussionist who did a surreal, Ricky Ricardo inspired routine on congas – absolutely incredible.  As with any audition, there was a wide range of talent, and of course only so many “slots”. 

Along with a couple dozen others, the percussionist (who became known as Bongo) and I were hired to open The Great Northern Food and Beverage Company a few weeks later.  Little did I know that this would be the beginning of an intensely productive, creative and insane 18 months, and that I would stumble into at least a half dozen friendships that have lasted my entire life.  But at that point, with an LSD dosed kitchen staff, barbeque drenched ribs on huge wooden planks, and initiation to the proper way of drinking tequila still around the corner, I was clueless.

TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK        

Conversations/April - Signals of Spring

There's a word in Spanish, Italian, and German
In sign language, Morse Code, semaphore and gibberish...


"Pidgin English", Elvis Costello


Samuel Morse was born into a world, in April 1791, whose best long-distance communication motif was semaphores or smoke signals, or possibly mirror manipulations on a sunny day. He probably had no sense, as a child, of the possibility that two people could communicate over a distance; his developing artistic sense was probably what he thought of as an efficient communication approach. But forty years later, most people were probably aware that there was an impending revolution based on beeps being transmitted over a wire.

In the Spring of 1959, twenty years after the first TV broadcast, when not in school, I was likely to be lodged in front of a built-in 45-rpm player, marching repeatedly through my sister's singles, which were dominated by Elvis. I mastered his phrasing, albeit an octave higher, and memorized all of the lyrics of many of the most popular songs of the era. I had begun to be aware the year before that the guy on the radio, whoever he was, seemed to be listening to the same stuff I was, but wasn't sure what to make of it - did my sister talk to him, or he to her? Was he more of a record, or was he somehow yelling somewhere in a way that got to me through that radio?

When Morse died in an April in the 1870's, Guglielmo Marconi hadn't yet begun trying to figure out how to take the wire out of the telegraphy equation - he would not be born until an April two years later. And the Pony Express was only a memory ten years distant. But if wires produced communication scenarios previously unthought, beeps through the air broadened in a way that must have been unimaginable the logistics of the proposition; you could be just sitting out in the desert, or on a boat, and if you had a box full of a certain kind of electronic stuff, you could find a way to converse with someone a long ways away - in real time. For the people of the world before 1900, that sort of proposition must have had much the same sense of mystery that the radio did for me in the late fifties.

It's likely that most boys of that era - the fifties, that is - sooner or later, as they looked at comic books, became enamored of something sold on full pages crowded with Wonders to Behold - X-Ray Specs! Black Eye telescopes! Transfer tattoos! And though most were deceptively marketed and overrated, one which I ordered, even with its limitations, was a true wonder. It was a germanium diode radio. The user simply had to go out, as I did in Alleghany, CA, to find any expanse of metal of reasonable size, a cyclone fence, some corrugated steel, and attach the alligator clip of the device to that metal, put the earphone into your ear, turn the dial, and - wow! - you could hear KXOA playing the Byrds' "I'll Probably Feel a Whole Lot Better."

Did you have any interesting tales of emerging awareness of communications? Do you have any thoughts about what the relationship between our assumption of TV and our kids' assumption of continuous availability of texting might be?

Fuller: My father was an electronics nerd and worked in the field for years. He built a television set in the early 50's and was often glued to his ham radio. The first big time awareness I had of a communications device was a record "recorder" he also built. It was about the size of a medium turntable, but instead of playing records, it recorded sound onto acetate "platters", one at a time. I'm not sure how many of these things he made, but I don't think there were too many; he wasn't interested so much in WHAT was recorded as he was in HOW it was actually accomplished, so cutting a few of these would probably have sated his appetite for this sort of thing. He played the guitar and piano, but didn't record "songs" per se; his recordings were more the "slice of life" stuff you might get from a home movie. So the only remaining recording I have, which was put on cd by my sister about six years ago, is of her and me and him and my mother, and I think a couple of relatives, jibber jabbering on, perhaps, Mothers Day. I think my sister and I must have been around seven or eight? I may have sung The Ballad of Davy Crockett (acappella), and he may have accompanied himself on guitar singing "On Top of Old Smokey"? Perhaps this early foray into recording is what set me on my wayward path thru life attempting to duplicate it, albeit in a little more refined way? And of course I was more interested in the "what" rather than the "how". When was the first time you actually were recorded and heard yourself? Was it a "big deal"?

Spence: The first time I was recorded - and remembered it! - was probably around 1959. My father had acquired an RCA portable reel-to-reel machine, and at the point I remember, had apparently had it for awhile, it looked used. The two reels spinning were of interest to an 8-year-old regardless of the audio capabilities, and I'm sure it took me awhile to realize that it was capable of "remembering" sounds.


He recorded us all talking, as I recall, perhaps to send the recorded reel to his father in Massachusetts, perhaps to just stow away for posterity, I don't recall what might have become of the immortalization. But on the heels of that, I had him, or perhaps my brother, show me how to thread the tape and begin recording. Not long after the conversation recording, to which I had paid little attention at the time, I set about recording myself singing an Elvis song, perhaps "Good Luck Charm", which I was taken with for awhile. 


I threaded the tape identified by someone as erasable, got it properly hugged around the take-up reel's hub, plugged in the stubby microphone, and pressed the button to record. I remember being somewhat hypnotized by the spinning reels for a second or two, then started singing. I figured just the chorus would be good, not very long, but long enough to get a sense of what the machine did.

I pressed the stop button, then the rewind button; of course I went too far, and the tape came to the end and the tail flapped on the full reel - I don't think they had a mechanism to detect that the tension was released and stop the motor. But I wasn't frustrated; I enjoyed the idea that I had figured out how make the machine yield up its secrets. I again threaded the tape, snugged it on the take-up, and pressed the play button.


- and was greeted by an absolute horror. I understood that I was doing a creditable job of imitating The King, but what came out of the recorder's speakers was a ridiculous representation of some little kid trying to sing "Good Luck Charm". I went in high dudgeon to the first person who would listen, though memory doesn't serve as to who the lucky soul was. I complained that the machine was broken, it had to be playing at the wrong speed, like when I used to forget to change the speed when I went between 78'a and 45's on the record player. And I suspect that it was no mean feat to finally convince me that what I was hearing, however unfairly, represented in fact what I sounded like.


At some point not too much later, there was an occasion when a microphone was plugged into a P.A. system, it may have been at a party, or at school, and someone encouraged me to speak into it. I was having none of it; it was bad enough to know how bad I sounded without broadcasting it.


I managed to resign myself to my spoken voice while deejaying in college, figuring that the point was sharing music after all. And the voice in the headphones then was somehow not as trauma-inducing as what came though that player's grille all those years before.

CONVERSATIONS/MARCH: PREJUDICE III

It Seems to be Down to Poverty

(Image: Frank Gorshin as Bele on Star Trek)

Exactly! It's about the economy, stupid, it's about the classes, it IS about class warfare, but the bastards don't want us to believe that. So here we are, again. I swear, we could have talked about prejudice any month we wanted and there would have been some totally worthless piece of violent hatred perpetrated against someone here in these United States. And it's not going to change any time soon. To think that some of us actually believed we were progressing after the civil rights struggle 60 years ago! Vigilance must be never ending.

So on this final post for March, I have to admit that I'm filled with trepidation because of my own prejudice and an upcoming social obligation. If you've been following one of TV's greatest current shows, "Justified", based on an Elmore Leonard story, you realize that Harlan County, Kentucky is filled with oxycontin dealing semi-crazy power hungry cracker halfwits, the kind of people who don't think twice about serving up a healthy beat down or worse to anyone who might be crazy enough to think differently than them, disrupt their business, or upset the Dixie Mafia (do they go into Arkansas?) in any way. They don't take kindly to outsiders, especially the kind of toities who wander in from one of the coasts or any big city for that matter. And of course, this depiction must spread to the whole damn South, right?

Well in a coupla weeks, for the first time, I'm heading to a very small town in Arkansas for a family wedding. Despite my ability to blend in physically with the locals, I only hope certain beliefs and or comments can be contained for the duration of my stay. From what I've seen of the South portrayed in Justified, I'll be one step shy of an ass-whoopin' at any given moment. Wish me well and keep me in your heart.

Conversations/March: Prejudice II

Is it Not so for You?
(see end of previous post)

(Image: The Hate Monger by Jack Kirby)

Happy St. Patrick's Day, from one Italian-Irish-American to anyone reading this!

Somewhere in the mid-nineties, while working at The Sacramento Bee, we were obligated to take a two-day diversity training course. This particular course was unlike any I have ever taken. The trainer was Asian, and I wish I could remember his name. It was a hugely eye-opening experience, probably best summarized by an exercise he administered within the first couple of hours. My class was hugely diversified, which represented The Bee at that time. My own department, Customer Service, where I was one of the people responsible for hiring, probably had a 45% "minority" workforce. The newspaper in general was pretty mixed, perhaps with the exception of the news room and the very white (and male) members of upper management (what a surprise, right?) I suppose my "willingness" to hire all types of people had its roots with my parents, as these things usually do. Despite growing up in such a very white neighborhood, I don't remember either one of them ever making a "racist" statement in my presence, and while we disagreed about many things, civil rights wasn't one of them. (I think I was also "lucky" to have spent my 9th thru 12th grades in a VERY mixed student population.) The racial diversity of people in my department also spilled over to how they chose to present themselves. At first, one of my managers was dead set against tattoos, piercings, dyed hair, etc., but luckily for many of our staff, I was able to convince him that these "peculiar" fashion choices did not necessarily indicate a poor employee. By the time I left the paper, the department looked more like a collection of record store employees than a white collar call center.

Anyway, back to that exercise in our diversity class. As I recall, there were about 25 of us in the class, close to half were black, and all of us from a very mixed bag of jobs/pay scales/etc. The Asian instructor was incredible in that he managed to convince most of us that we could freely speak in the class about some of the most sensitive issues that had shaped our lives. He asked the class for a show of hands for who had been stopped, at some time in their life, in a car or on foot, by the police. Just about everybody raised their hand. Then he asked how many people felt "frightened/intimidated" (he probably used a different word) when that happened. Virtually everyone who was not black pulled their hand down. He then went to each of the people with their hand still in the air and asked them to discuss their perspectives on this issue, and it was a real eye opener. Their stories about the police and that person's relationship to them, and their family's relationship to them, were quite a surprise to the non-black "students". And this was how the whole class proceeded, as he skillfully got us to "reveal" the cultural events that shaped our perspectives, and it was amazing how different the various "races" in that class looked at things.

So today, I still work in a very diverse work environment, but my friends are mainly white like me. My son married an incredible Hispanic woman. My neighborhood is mixed: it's mainly white, but includes Hispanics, Asians, and has in the past included blacks. About half the households on my block are gay couples, mainly white women. I think it is paramount that for almost anyone to begin to grapple with prejudice, there's gotta be some contact with different types of people. I'm very much for integration, though not so sure about "forced" integration. But if it's not "forced", how can it possibly occur?

Your thoughts?

(Spence replies)



Actually, the "intimidation" factor you relate from the nineties diversity session was an eye-opener for me.


I thought immediately of John Howard Griffin's book Black Like Me, and how profiling emerges between then and now. Questions leap out: Does the current Trayvon Martin case reflect an utter lack of change since your session? A CNN piece seems to say so. Would that author's appearance invariably produce a sense of threat in whites, particularly in a dark setting? But, further, what does it mean that most of us probably need to know that the victim was black before we feel like we _really_ know the story? 


Then, locally, why do stories like  this (hooded sweatshirts) and this (Onesto, Reyes...) and this (gang members) provoke such a weary here-we-go-again from the middle class where I live? Are the suspects somehow self-profiling, and have they always been? And what would happen if they got plunked into my neighborhood instead of a dense, decaying, and dark neighborhood near the strawberry fields or the Boardwalk?

And why does the Toulouse gunman Toulouse gunman apparently feel a similar sense of threat, but react to it more terrifyingly? 
Is there somehow a codified relationship between, say, these identifiers these identifiers , turbans, and tattoos that might be seen on the average black or brown NFL or NBA player?


I guess the good news is that, in contrast to Griffin's experience, that intimidation or exclusion is much more likely to be associated with police, as part of semi-sanctioned profiling, than it is to be with a clerk in a store, or a server in a restaurant, or a voting registrar. But even where the "markers" - tattoos, hoodies, shaved heads, even oversized jerseys or head scarves - don't effectively invite the stereotypes, it appears we have a long way to go. And I suspect that enforced integration might not be the answer, simply because it seems to be down to poverty in as many cases as not - the people with those looks just tend not to either be able to afford more racially monolithic middle class neighborhoods, or want nothing to do with them.

CONVERSATONS/MARCH: PREJUDICE

Senior year, high school. I guess nowadays, I should stipulate a very public school. The previous summer, for reasons that are inexplicable to me, my friends decided it would be funny to start calling me a wop. I'm not sure how they knew I was half Italian; my name wouldn't have told them because that particular heritage came from my mother's side. I don't suppose it matters; it wasn't a secret, it wasn't like I tried to keep it from anyone. The taunts weren't constant, but often enough to sting. There was one person in particular who seemed to get a big kick out of it. He was Irish, maybe full Irish from his name, maybe his glee had something to do with the way the Irish had been treated.

In any case, it was a peculiar feeling. When I was in kindergarten and 1st grade, I was fat, not obese, but hefty, and I can remember being made fun of then. The only thing that saved me was a girl in my class who was even bigger, so she got the brunt of the comments. Then in 2nd grade or thereabouts, I slimmed down, and it all stopped, at least for me. I guess we were the main targets people could actually see, as I grew up in a VERY white neighborhood. As a matter of fact, for years there was a clause in the homeowner contracts saying the houses couldn't be sold to blacks. At an elementary school reunion I attended a few years ago, the sole Chinese student in the class told us a few stories about what his family went through growing up in our hood - ugly, despicable stories, all unknown to the rest of us.

When I was in the 9th grade, the lily white junior high school I attended went through a big change. The previous summer, some kids had burned down their own junior high, so the students had to be bussed to various other schools. This caused a huge influx of a new, extremely diverse student population. This turned out to be advantageous, because the high school I was going to attend the following year was one of the most diverse in the city, so this preliminary mixing of the cultures was an introduction to a world I didn't really know or understand. Despite the lack of different cultures in my hood, I guess because of the way I was raised, I never really thought about "looking down" or discriminating against other people. It wasn't unknown to me (this was, after, the Sixties), but I tended to side with underdogs in any case, and definitely sided with the civil rights movement.

Anyway, one beautiful October day around lunchtime during that senior year mentioned above, I had taken one "wop" too many. I was incensed, embarrassed for myself AND my mother AND my grandparents AND I suppose my pride was taking a beating. I wasn't exactly a fighting kind of guy, but I had tried "reasoning" with my tormentor, and he just didn't get it. So I took the pre-packaged pie-like dessert treat out of my sack lunch from home, throwing away the rest of the food. I went into the cafeteria and smeared the thing with katchup. Then I went to the quad where the guy was having lunch with a bunch of friends, most of whom I knew. Without hesitating, I walked toward him; I could see his smile start to turn into something else as he realized he didn't really know what was coming. I smashed the ketchup smeared pie in his face as hard as I could and walked away. I believe the quad suddenly became very quiet, but I didn't really know because I was shaking and too oblivious. From that point on, he left me alone.

So: have you ever been the "victim" of prejudice? Or, conversely, have you ever been the one to perpetrate the prejudice? When did you first realize that prejudice was rampant in this country? And what do you think is the state of race relations now? Can I get any broader with these questions??? Feel free to be as narrowly focused as you wish!

(Spence)

My school experience was almost completely suburban or rural, and running through the high school yearbook it's hard to find someone who seems Jewish or Asian, let alone someone who is black or brown. And the lower grades were much the same; all Anglo, not much sense of the difference of lineage, although people were aware that, for instance, the Sbaffi family in my rural town were perhaps a generation or two out of Italy, I never heard discussion that wasn't in a self-deprecating mode, Mike Sbaffi maybe offering an Italian Joke. 


On the other hand, especially in that town, Polish jokes and Irish jokes were popular, if invariably trumped by some racy or scatological element. And given that I had at that age an unfortunate resemblance to Alfred E. Neuman, it was an advantage to have a stable of jokes to rely on. And given that my father ran a bar, it seemed like jokes were fairly easy to come by. And further, I suppose it's not unlikely that in the midst of the jokes I spouted to curry favor were some that offended someone I may not have even known was Polish, though I would have desisted in humiliation if I had been called on it. I'm pretty sure I offered an Irish joke to a boy with a speech impediment who happened to be Irish and had only me as a friend, and tend to think he didn't feel belittled - partly perhaps because he was too young to drink, and I think they all involved drinking.


A telling episode there, though, was probably my first exposure to actual bigotry. A rumor spread through town one summer that a black family was moving into a decrepit house near the substation. Several people who never came to the bar showed up expressly to advertise their determination to pack up and leave the next day should it be true. It turned out not to be. But I probably noticed from that point that my mother especially tended only to use denigrating, and in today's terms, emphatically politically incorrect terms for almost every possible ethnicity that could be imagined.


It was in college, and not before, that it became a point of contention. I had met a black girl named Ashley, the second black I had spent some time getting to know (the first being an exceedingly tall and scholarly looking boyfriend of one of the gaggle of Catholic school girls that frequented a card-playing group in the cafeteria.) She was cheerful, thoughful and kind, and we talked about music and religious kooks between us and among a group of six or seven who tended to hang out on the quad in good weather. No one at school would have dreamed of saying anything unkind of or to her. But my mention of her to my mother was enough to get a running argument going which was part of the larger narrative of rebellion and disaffection that were the themes of my approach to twenty. It didn't matter that there was no romance involved for her - it just wasn't appropriate. 


But that said, I ended up spending most of my life in almost exclusively white company, and apart from rampant local racial profiling of Latinos based predictably on a continuous parade of stories about gang violence in our county, I have continued to have the sense of bigotry as a remote phenomenon. Something you see on the news.


Is it not so for you?

CONVERSATIONS/FEBRUARY: Presidential Timber

So can a president be "toity"? Many thought Wilson was (I saw a TV series where Robert Vaughn played him to a Toity T.) But it seems like, should one be, the GOP will want nothing to do with him. So I started thinking about how we evaluate presidents in this month featuring birthdays of same, in the month of an election year when a cluster of primaries is as likely as not to put paid to the selection process.


Washington is considered great partly because he served out of a sense of duty, partly because he considered each weighty decision carefully, then decided emphatically, and partly because he was more or less the sole character among the FF's who did not have a classical education, and yet commanded absolute respect for the clarity of his opinions among his high-flown peers. And, of course, for other reasons relating to his military service, and yet others not relating to it.


Have we had a modern president who could be described in that way?


Adams, who like Washington was a Federalist or somewhat like a big-government Democrat, was temperamentally a Gingrich of his time, railing against all and sundry for reasons both personal and political, oppressively arrogant and chronically irritable. The FF darling of the GOP, Thomas Jefferson, was milder-mannered and more devious, perhaps more of, perhaps, a Reagan by temperament, somewhat remote, although Reagan didn't live in his brain the way Jefferson appeared to.


Is there a current candidate in the Jefferson mould?


FDR has never ceased being a paragon of all that is not right philosophically to those in the GOP. Mitt Romney keeps on hammering away at the term "cradle-to-grave" when he talks about the government coddling us, and only partially backpedaled when it appeared that his comment that he was "not very concerned about the very poor" had caused political erosion:


"I've said something that is similar to that but quite acceptable for a long time."


Barack Obama had a "poor are always with us" moment at the prayer breakfast, when he implicitly chided his likely opponent:


"It’s also about the biblical call to care for the least of these –- for the poor; for those at the margins of our society."


But for all that, does the President have a clear advantage from the character standpoint for swing voters?


And, if he does, does it not matter given that ideology is on the ascendant right now?

Fuller responds:
In today's climate, it's a mug's game trying to figure out this stuff. Almost everything is corrupt. Prior to the 2000 election, I remember Alexander Cockburn saying it didn't matter whether Gore or Bush won - they were both products of the same monied interests. I'm not saying I necessarily agree with him, but there's a whole lot more people who are saying the same thing today because so much of the Bush era still lives on! Foreign affairs? Obama continues our Never Ending War. Wall Street? Obama stocks his cabinet with banker types. Core freedoms? Assassination by presidential decree without trial, unlimited detention without trial, and so on. No, I wouldn't vote for whichever (Romney) of the Republican goofballs is their candidate, but the Obama disappointment is real, despite his apologists. No, I haven't given up on him, but it sure would have been nice for some grass roots progressive Democrat to have at least tried to take him on.

Obama's pretty toity, a bona fide ivy league egghead, if ever there was one. Don't you remember how "intimidating" that was to so many people back in 2008? Luckily, he started his "let's have a beer and talk this over" approach. Ah, he's just a regular guy after all; now we can all rest easy that he's just like us! But maybe we need a graphic of presidential education, because the vast majority of presidents (all but 10) had a college degree. Let's take a look at the data: In the "modern era", since 1897, when Grover Cleveland left office, ALL presidents have had a (usually highly pedigreed) college education with the exception of Harry Truman. But I guess in this latest political climate, "acting" like it is a liability; Bush (Yale graduate) was a "regular guy" but Obama (Columbia and Harvard Law) isn't.

Who are these "swing voters" you mention? This country is so extremely divided, I can't figure this out. I guess none of 'em live in California. Do they actually exist? Do you know any?

What a mess. Is this historically business "as usual", or are we in fact in some new era of the damned? Is this truly the beginning of the end of the American Dream, or is this hopelessness cyclical? And how do "Millennials" see it? Am I just the product of too many bitter political disappointments? Maybe the younger voter has a fresher, more idealistic outlook ?!


(Spence)
Here are some swing voters NRP talked to:
79-year-old Annita Milani talked to an interviewer, who summed up what she said thus:


"[Annita] was caught up in a wave four years ago captivated by [Obama]...the promise of Obama has turned to ashes. Disillusioned with a Congress she views as corrupt, a health care overhaul she sees as ill-advised... [she] is struggling to choose a Republican alternative."


Bill Mullin, 53, produced this narrative:


"'[Obama] is handcuffed by congress...I need to hear that there's going to be action on lowering the deficit.'... [he] isn't opposed to legal abortion or same-sex marriage."

The Arroyos immigrated decades ago from Puerto Rico, and see the Republicans "knocking each other out" but Obama failing to deliver on promises for a better life for hispanics.


The pieces make them seem quite ordinary and familiar to me.
So how do the candidates intend to make sense to them? Here's some aftermath on an Obama photo op:


"As President Obama gave his speech at Master Lock about "insourcing" Wednesday. Newsradio 620 WTMJ's Nick Iannelli had a chance to talk to speak to several Master Lock employees about the recent history of Master Lock.
One Master Lock employee had a telling story. That employee has been at Master Lock for several years and has seen jobs come and go. The man remembers having an office at the company and seeing several hard working employees at the company. Then suddenly, the jobs just left."


And the up-and-comer on the other side of the bird?


"Santorum criticized [Romney]'s record on federal bailouts in particular, although both men opposed the government's decision to rescue the auto industry.
"Gov. Romney supported the bailout of Wall Street and decided not to support the bailout of Detroit. My feeling was that the government should not be involved in bailouts period," Santorum said in an address to the Detroit Economic Club..."


And speaking of him, from his Nevada victory speech:


"Four years ago, candidate Obama came to Nevada, promising to help. But after he was elected, his help was telling people to skip coming here for conventions and meetings. Today, Nevada unemployment is over 12%, home values have plummeted, and Nevada’s foreclosure rate is the highest in the nation."


A cheap shot both because that state was a worst case, and the "telling people to skip" is much overstated...


"We won’t settle for a President who tells us it could be worse. What defines us as Americans is our unwavering conviction that things must be better."


Intended to be a feelgood line, but I suspect those tracking audience response devices didn't move much on this one.


"President Obama wants to “fundamentally transform” America. We want to restore America to the founding principles that made this country great. Our vision for the future could not be more different than his."


I tend to interpret this as fairly reactionary - it does seem that he believes in both the 50's good old days and the Enlightenment good old days, and neither had government bailouts, same-sex marriage as a public issue, or much regulation of business.
And I just saw this on a chat in the web page gutter as I typed:


" I just have a hard time believing that voters in MI would be dumb enough to vote for Santy..maybe because so many younger voters don't remember Mitt's dad as Governor here...I met Gov. Romney when he visited our catholic school..I was in 4th grade. "


Presumably someone who thought RomneyCare did work.


Do you think any of this adds up to a targeted trajectory to victory? Would Mitt make a difference? Is Santorum after a different kind of "fundamental transformation"? And on the monied interest front, isn't it interesting that (as Time pointed out this week) the president famous for the "Ask not" quote was our wealthiest? And it was a card-carrying patrician who we associate with the resolution with our most dire financial crisis?

Fuller responds:
As February 2012 becomes a memory, nothing seems to have changed. The aberrant elephants left in the room rumble along, trampling everything in sight, but unless things drastically flip, the victory in November will be Obama's. At least I have to tell myself that. Despite my bubbled insularity, as most Californians have to admit being a part of, I refuse to believe this country is made up of more voters who want Santorum or Romney. It just doesn't fly with me. I understand that many Americans have hardly any historical/political memory whatsoever, but I can't leave myself open to the prospect of a country full of people who, in the first place believe John Kennedy said what Santorum said he said, and then want to vomit because of it. And speaking of intestinal weakness, I cannot stomach any possibility that I live in a country where the majority of voters would actually believe Romney has any concern for them in any way except to further his own power lust. I understand the Obama-hate is deep, but surely it's not dominant? I've just recently heard that Obama is the man of the toitys and the have-nots, but that the middle folk can't quite "understand" him. What a bizarre thought, and yet it seems to make some kind of perverse sense. Or maybe not!? In six weeks, I will be visiting Arkansas for the first time. I think it will be quite the fascinating journey. More on that later.