As we head into the 2012 election season, and I see all sorts of familiar right-wing rhetoric reappear from the 2008 season, I’m reminded of a powderkeg of an issue lit by the McCain campaign, or the Obama campaign, depending on who you talk to. Obama claimed that the Republicans would try to scare voters by reminding them that he’s “different” – an allusion to his name, age, background and race (“doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills”), which is, of course, exactly what they did (birthing the Birther movement, actually).

But was Obama’s warning “playing the race card”? The McCain campaign certainly thought so. Rick Davis, the McCain campaign manager, responded quickly, with, “Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”

But was Obama playing the race card? What exactly is “the race card?”

The way it’s commonly understood, playing the race card means accusing someone of being a racist in order to score political advantage or deflect criticism. Its practice has been levied towards Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton most frequently, although because of their history in politics and ready interest in speaking on behalf of the entire black “community” (of approximately 40 million Americans), this is not surprising. It had not been used to describe Barack Obama, who has studiously avoided mentioning racism, beyond his deep, balanced treatise on America’s complex history with race, after the Reverend Wright controversy.

It’s difficult, unless you’re hypersensitive to it, to see “my opponents will play up how I’m different from the classic US presidential profile in many different ways” as meaning “if you don’t vote for me, that means you’re racist.”

But the hypersensitive might exactly be the group that the McCain campaign would like to exploit. What the McCain campaign, which has been much more heavily reliant on negative campaigning against his opponent than Obama’s, has been quick to play as an opportunity for itself is the “race-card card,” or tapping into white resentment against perceived use of the race card by African-Americans.

Resentment against Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton reached a fever pitch during the Don Imus controversy, when Imus called the Rutgers women’s basketball team players “nappy headed hos“. Right-wing bloggers and commentators at right-wing sites like The Free Republic and Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air fumed with indignation. (For a different reason, some black commentators also wondered both why Jackson and Sharpton felt the need to inject themselves in the debate, and why right-wing pundits were obsessed with their reaction.)

But did Obama’s original comment have any merit? Has he been an target, or did he raise the spectre of racism to a naive electorate? Let’s look at the attempts to highlight (or even fabricate) Obama’s “differentness”:

• conservative online magazine Insight publishes story alleging that Obama attended a Muslim religious school, a madrassa (not true)
• Larry Johnson alleges that he has a video showing Michelle Obama calling white people “whitey” (not true)
• many right wingers feel the need to highlight the fact that Obama’s middle name is Hussein (which is true, but would most certainly never be mentioned if it were John, or Sidney, for example)
• Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, is constantly called a racist (which is not true; referring to the disgrace of the US’s racist past does not make you a racist)

While these sorts of rumors were not directly attributable to the McCain campaign, they were popular memes circulated in right-wing circles, and almost certainly helped McCain’s candidacy among a type of voter primed to believe these sorts of things. And the campaign was quick to invoke the race-card card, while it largely remains passive when stories that can be easily proven to be untrue were circulated.

Publius at Obsidian Wings had this to say:

But the bigger problem here is that the Race Card Chorus plays on white resentment — which remains a poisonous brew. I’m a child of the rural South. But you know what? Actual racism is a lot less common there — we have a ways to go, but there has been real progress on that front. The more serious problem is white resentment. A lot of white people honestly think they have been significantly deprived of various things because of minorities. And it’s hard to overstate how deeply these feelings run. It’s not so much animosity toward people who are different — it’s the animosity of the aggrieved. They feel like they are the victims. That’s why race is a losing issue for Obama — it’s not so much that people are racist, but that they feel they are being punished because they’re white (yes, I know how completely absurd this must sound to the black community). And so this whole “race card” business feeds these flames (quite consciously, I think).

The race-card card might be more effective than the race card itself.

Oh, and since Rick Santorum has proven himself to be a douche yet again with his disrespectful answer to a gay servicemember’s question at a debate a couple of weeks ago, I thought I’d add that link there.

Walking down the street, absorbed in thought. Like I usually do.

While my brain is consumed thinking about something, my eyes wander. My eyes dart from person to person as I walk past them.

I notice that my eyes have been trying to figure out why a woman’s hand is not visible to me. Is she wearing a glove? Is it in her pocket? I realize that she doesn’t have a hand. Completely mortified, my eyes widen when I realize that I’ve been staring at her wrist for far too long.

A split-second later, I realize that my look of embarrassment at myself for looking at her too long might be construed as horror at her not having a hand.

That it’s impossible to explain these things in the second they happen leaves a terrible feeling in my stomach, especially knowing that it’s probably happened to her 100 times that day alone.

Awful.

This month’s challenge was time-consuming, but oh-so-worth-it. Croissants! Like baklava from a few months ago, a good croissant has lots of layers. In the case of croissants, you create those layers by interleaving dough and butter over and over again. It works beautifully and yields a pastry that is crisp and flaky on the outside, and steamy and soft on the inside. This was worth the many hours necessary to make these things (although, in all fairness, it is not difficult to make them, just time-consuming).

The Daring Bakers go retro this month! Thanks to one of our very talented non-blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!

Since the technique involved so many steps, and a friend wanted me to share it and the recipe I used, I created a how-to recipe for croissants with pictures. I did not find the process particularly frustrating – there’s not a lot that go wrong – but this is not the sort of thing you can bang out in an hour if you have friends coming over for brunch. You have to plan.

Three pictures of my resulting croissants after the jump. They were delectable!

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Napisz to. Napisz. Zwyklym atramentem na zwyklym papierze: nie dano im jesc, wszyscy pomarli z glodu. Wszyscy. Ilu?

Write this down. Write it. With regular ink on regular paper: they were given nothing to eat, everyone died of hunger. Everyone. How many?

To duza laka. Ile trawy przypadlo na jednego? Napisz: nie wiem. Historia zaokragla szkielety do zera.Tysiac i jeden to wciaz jeszcze tysiac. Ten jeden, jakby go wcale nie bylo: plod urojony, kolyska prozna, elementarz otwarty dla nikogo, powietrze, ktore smieje sie, krzyczy i rosnie, schody dla pustki zbiegajacej do ogrodu, miejsce niczyje w szeregu.

That’s a large meadow. How much grass was for each? Write: I don’t know. History rounded the number of skeletons. 1,001 is still 1,000. That one is as if he completely never existed: an imaginary seed, an empty cradle, a primer opened for nobody, air which laughs, screams and grows, stairs for the void running to the garden, no particular place in line.

Jestesmy na tej lace, gdzie stalo sie cialem. A ona milczy jak kupiony swiadek. W sloncu. Zielona.

We’re in that meadow, where it became a body, which is as silent as a bought witness. In the sun. Green.

Tam opodal las do zucia drewna, do picia spod kory – porcja widoku calodzienna, poki sie nie oslepnie.

Over there, there’s a forest with wood for the chewing, and under the bark stuff to drink. A portion of a view for the whole day until you go blind.

W gorze ptak, ktory po ustach przesuwal sie cieniem pozywnych skrzydel. Otwieraly sie szczeki, uderzal zab o zab.

Up above, a bird, whose nourishing wings cast a shadow across their lips. Their jaws opened, tooth gnashed tooth.

Noca na niebie blyskal sierp i zal na snione chleby. Nadlatywaly rece z poczernialych ikon, z pustymi kielichami w palcach.

At night in the sky, the crescent moon shone and reaped the dreamt-of breads. Arms approached from blackened icons, with empty cups in their hands.

Na roznie kolczastego drutu chwial sie czlowiek. Spiewano z ziemia w ustach. Sliczna piesn o tym, ze wojna trafia prosto w serce.

On a spit made of barbed wire, a man spins. They sang with dirt in their mouths. A pretty song about how war strikes right at the heart.

Napisz, jaka tu cisza.
Tak.

Write how quiet it is.
Just like that. 

I was a big fan of the new “reimagining” of Battlestar Galactica, a sci-fi series that ended its four-year stint on television just a few years ago (but which, thankfully, continues to exist through DVD).

Although not a natural science fiction fanatic myself (I could never get into any of the Star Trek series, for example), I’ve enjoyed the complex, layered storytelling of the world of humans living under constant seige by their progeny, called Cylons, who have been able to create humanlike versions of themselves. The entire human population of about 50,000, spread across about 50 ships, continue to grapple with everyday human quandaries along with the constant pressure of evading Cylon attacks, buoyed by the hope of reaching the mythical planet of Earth, where the lost “thirteenth colony” of humanity is rumored to live.

How BSG’s humans cope with the existential threat posed by the Cylons, who seek to destroy them as inferior progenitors in the course of natural evolution, echoes in some ways the way the West does the same vis a vis the threat posed by fundamentalist Islam (although, naturally, the threat is not nearly as dire nor as foreign). The philosophical, social, political and ethical decisions that the humans’ struggles force them to make mirror those that have continued to shape our societies in the face of the forces that threaten to erode them.

Philosophical issues: The predominant philosophical theme that runs through the series is what constitutes a sentient being, and if Cylons qualify. What exactly makes us human? Is it our physical appearance and bodily makeup, our minds and our capacity to think, is it our feelings and capacity to love, or is it something less tangible, our values and character, or a soul or spirit? For the first two or three criteria, the humanoid Cylons clearly qualify (“Boomer” shows a capacity to love that often overrides her programmed directives), so is it that they wantonly kill people that created them and that are so similar? People have been warring and killing each other since the dawn of humanity, so disregard for fellow man is obviously not a disqualifier.

There are barely-detectable (without the aid of a laboratory) differences at the molecular level between humans and humanoid Cylons, but these might be meaningless if humans and Cylons were not locked into an existential struggle against each other. What compels Cylons to want to destroy humans? It’s not clear, but their different theology suggests they think wiping out the human race would complete an evolutionary step.

BSG also explores determinism vs free will (esp as it relates to those competing motives in Cylons like Boomer), and immortality (via commemoration, legacies and memories, most vividly struggled with by Starbuck).

Ethical issues: The series’s characters grapple with ethical dilemmas that constantly test their values and ideas of justice. Ethical concepts dealt with include:

• Utilitarianism – Measuring and executing to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of humans present a neverending challenge, principally to the human leaders, President Laura Roslin, and Commander William Adama. Every decision, whether to rig votes for the vice presidency, or “jump” and leave raiders or ships behind, carries with it certain loss; the loss must be weighed against potential gain, or mitigation of an even greater potential loss.
• Justice – Human treatment of Cylon and human prisoners, what rights are extended to them, whether they are entitled to due process, and how punishment is meted, create ongoing dilemmas to those forced to make these decisions.
• Kantianism – The individual’s role in shaping his behavior vis a vis rational thought and experience is brilliantly explored through the conscious thoughts of Dr Gaius Baltar, who continually struggles to balance self-interest with moral accountability to his fellow humans.

Social issues: BSG offers a glimpse into Cylon social structures, largely collectivist, as a foil with which to contrast human society, which is a reflection of its “western”, individualist values. Appreciation for (and tolerance of) dissent, love and duty (“office romances”), nepotism and favoritism, and behavior incentivization are all explored throughout the series.

Political issues: The predominant political undercurrent is that between civilian and military government, embodied by Roslin and Adama in the series. Colonel Tigh declares martial law at one particularly chaotic point in the second season, and faces widespread noncompliance as civilians protest the dissolution of their elected government. The accommodation of a civilian government by a military engaged in constant warfare with an existential enemy is one that democratically-elected governments have had to repeatedly face in times of conflict.

…..

With the series ending, we’ve lost yet another brilliant television show that made us think (while, sadly, so many others that don’t continue to live on). But, like at least one great “thinking person’s television” show, Six Feet Under, BSG ended when the majority of its viewers continued to cherish it.

This month’s challenge actually had nothing to do with baking, but, really, I’m not complaining, because it had to do with chocolate. We even learned how to temper chocolate, which was really useful, since there’s a technique you have to master if you don’t want to screw up your chocolate (see this pic to understand).

The August 2011 Daring Bakers’ Challenge was hosted by Lisa of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drive and Mandy of What the Fruitcake?!. These two sugar mavens challenged us to make sinfully delicious candies! This was a special challenge for the Daring Bakers because the good folks at http://www.chocoley.com offered an amazing prize for the winner of the most creative and delicious candy!

I went with two chocolate-dipped candies:

1. marzipan with Grand Marnier-infused candied orange peel and pistachios
2. honeycomb (sponge) candy

The former was very, very easy to make. The latter, um, not quite as easy.

The first attempt at making honeycomb candy resulted in an enormous river of caramel lava overflowing out of the glass dish that I was hoping would contain it. It also was a bit too moist (I cooked it until 285F), so the second time, I made a much smaller batch that I heated to 300F. The candy was perfect – crunchy, not sticky or chewy. It’s actually easy to make once you have the recipe/technique down, and dramatic. Even my caramel-hating boyfriend liked the taste of it, too.

I used the seeding method of tempering the chocolate, since I don’t have a scraper and didn’t want to mess with the marble/granite method. As it turns out, with a decent thermometer and a microwave, the seeding method turned out just fine.

More pics after the jump…

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Po kazdej wojnie
ktos musi posprzatac
Jaki taki porzadek
sam sie przeciez nie zrobi.

After every war
Someone’s got to clean up
After all, some kind of tidyness
Isn’t going to come about on its own.

Ktos musi zepchnac gruzy
na pobocza dróg,
zeby mogly przejechac
wozy pelne trupów.

Someone’s got to sweep aside the rubble
to the side of the road
So that carts full of corpses
Can pass through.

Ktos musi grzeznac
w szlamie i popiele,
sprzynach kanap,
drzazgach szkla
i krwawych szmatach.

Someone has to bury
in the sludge and ashes
couch springs
shards of glass
and bloodied rags.

Ktos musi przywlec belke
do podparcia sciany,
ktos oszklic okno
i osadzic drzwi na zawiasach.

Someone has to drag the beam
to support the wall
Someone has to glaze the window
and set the door in its hinges.

Fotogeniczne to nie jest
i wymaga lat.
Wszystkie kamery wyjechaly juz
na inna wojne.

It’s not photogenic
and it takes years
All the cameras have already left
for another war.

Mosty trzeba z powrotem
i dworce na nowo.
W strzepach beda rekawy
od zakasywania.

Bridges must be rebuilt
along with train stations
Sleeves will be in shreds
from being rolled up.

Ktos z miotla w rekach
wspomina jeszcze jak bylo.
Ktos slucha
przytakuje nie urwana glowa.
Ale juz w ich poblizu
zaczna krecic sie tacy,
których to bedzie nudzic.

Someone with a broom in his hands
remembers how it used to be
someone listens
and nods with the head that hasn’t been cut off.
But already around them
Those who have become bored
will start to fidget.

Ktos czasem jeszcze
wykopie spod krzaka
przezarte rdza argumenty
i poprzenosi je na stos odpadków.

Someone will still occasionally
dig up from under a bush
some rusty old arguments
and carry them over to a pile of debris.

Ci, co wiedzieli
o co tutaj szlo,
musza ustapic miejsca tym,
co wiedza malo.
I mniej niz malo.
I wreszcie tyle co nic.

Those who knew
what happened here
have to give up their place to those
who know little.
And less than little.
And, finally, those who know nothing.

W trawie, która porosla
przyczyny i skutki,
musi ktos sobie lezec
z klosem w zebach
i gapic sie na chmury.

In the grass, overgrown with
causes and effects
someone has to lie back
with a straw in his teeth
and stare into the clouds.

This month I made a significant variation from the standard recipe outlined by the Daring Baker Challenge host: I went vegan. My cousin V. was in town, and, among a number of her other dietary peculiarities, she is currently not eating dairy (she does eat fish, and just started eating gluten again, so it is something you have to check in every now and then about). So I used the suggested recipes for making the vegan pastry cream, and vegan chiffon cake, and came up with something that was visually unappealing but still tasted quite good.

Blog-checking lines: Jana of Cherry Tea Cakes was our July Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to make Fresh Frasiers inspired by recipes written by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson in the beautiful cookbook Tartine.

The pastry cream was essentially a pudding – sweetened, flavored (with lemon juice, lemon zest, and vanilla) almond milk, thickened with flour. It unfortunately didn’t have any stiffness to it whatsoever, and without the ability to put in some whipped cream or gelatin, I was a bit at a loss at what to do. As you can see above, the thing started to collapse within seconds of me lifting away the plastic wrap.

The chiffon cake was pretty dense and chewy–apparently a common problem among gluten-free cakes (I certainly didn’t have to make this gluten-free, since the pastry cream was full of it anyway), according to V.–but not too disagreeable. Most everyone loved the addition of the thin layer of almond paste at the top, and, of course, the big pile of sliced strawberries I had picked up at the farmer’s market earlier that day.

Maybe I’m still an East Coaster at heart. Or maybe I’m getting old and crabby.

Me at a popular sandwich spot. Bubbly hipster employee. All of her delivery using HRT.

BHE: “Hi! Welcome to ____! Can I help you choose a sandwich? We have-”

Me: “I’ll have the ________.”

BHE: “Oh, yeah! That is one of my favorites! I really like the hummus that’s in it. Good choice! Y’know, I think some crispy cucumber slices really, like, add something to this sandwich, and they’re only like 30 cents more. Would you like to give them a shot?”

Me: “Sure.”

BHE: “Awesome! Now, like, what kind of bread would you like? We have, like, sourdough, Dutch crunch, whole wheat-”

Me: “Sourdough.”

BHE: “Awesome! And what cheese would you like with that? I personally like-”

Me: “Provolone.”

BHE: (Looks like she’s about to tell me I have terminal cancer) “Ohhhh, I am SO sorry. We don’t have provolone. I totally understand you wanting provolone because it is like SO great-”

Me: “Cheddar is fine.”

BHE: “Oh, OK. Cheddddaarrr [types it into the terminal]. Is there anything else you’d like? We have a lot of really awesome drinks, like chocolate-”

Me: “Just water, thanks.”

BHE: “OK. A bottle of water. Really a great choice because you can get like TOTALLY thirsty eating one of our sandwiches! That’ll be $13.91 [yes, that expensive].”

Me: [hands over card]

BHE: [looks at card] “Thank you, J___! Now that will just take a couple of seconds here. [5 seconds later] I am SO sorry this is taking SO long. Sorry, J___! It should only take like a FEW more seconds.”

Me: [looks at her incredulously]

BHE: “Awesome. Could you sign here? Now you get to choose a bag of chips. Do you like barbecue-flavored chips, J____?”

Me: “Um, I don’t know. Whatever.”

BHE: “I REALLY like the Funky Fusion chips. They are like this melange of barbecue, cheese, vinegar, pepper and all these other great flavors. They’re really great! [laughs] Thanks, J____! Your sandwich should be out in just, like, 5-10 minutes, J____!”

—-

We should have nipped the “Would you like fries with that?” stuff in the bud when we had the chance…

The whole hipster movement has brought to the fore a new aesthetic for men: skinniness. Women have wanted to be skinny since time immemorial (i.e. for the last 40 years or so), but it’s only recently that (straight) women have really wanted the same from their boyfriends and husbands. Traditionally, women have liked men to be muscular—a sign of strength, confidence and vitality—but now even waifish-looking men can get love from women.

Why? I know a LOOOOOOT of women and can put forth 2 guesses based on the way I know they tick:

1) They’re hoping it’s catching. Just like women like to hang out with other skinny women, many women are hoping they can catch skinniness from their rail-thin boyfriend or husband like an STD. After all, there have been recent studies that suggest that if you hang out with fat people, you’re likely to get fat, and, speaking less sociologically and more biologically, certain intestinal bacteria can influence your weight, too.

2) They want skinny daughters. It’s only since the era of Twiggy that really thin models have been in, and it’s only been since a number of these models have had similarly-thin, pretty daughters (think Bianca and Jade Jagger, Isabella and Elettra Rossellini, Kelly Emberg and Ruby Stewart, Beverly and Anansa Johnson…an endless list, really) that consciousness that you might want to pass on skinny genes to your progeny has spread. And not only do the mother’s genes matter: witness skinny rocker men with gorgeous, willowy daughters (Keith Richards and Steven Tyler come to mind). NONE of this is lost on young women who are paying attention.

These reasons—the latter, especially—help to explain why gay men don’t like skinny boyfriends; some might want to be skinny themselves, but almost all gay men (except the chickenhawks) like muscular, fleshy boyfriends. They’d rather try to get/stay skinny by hanging out with skinny, bitchy queens.