Alan Horn's diary

March 19, 2008

The presidential candidate Barack Obama has distanced himself from his pastor over the latter's expression of some commonsense liberal views, comparing them curiously to the embarrassing racial and ethnic slurs of an older white relative.

America is not racist. America is not imperialist. Just keep telling yourself that, America.

March 3, 2008

Sometimes I wonder about these people who are running for president. What do they get out of it? What are they really trying to accomplish?

I don’t know why we can’t get answers to these questions. I realize that it seems like the papers are filled with nothing else these days. But most of us know better than to believe anything they print on this subject. So the mystery remains.

February 26, 2008

All the current presidential candidates say they are for “change,” but this is a vague and empty slogan that tells us little. What kind of change are they talking about, exactly?

There is change for the better, and there is change for the worse. Normally, of course, we welcome the former and try to avoid the latter. But at certain times, such as in the middle of a lengthy public function, we are so bored out of our fucking minds that we long for a change of any sort, no matter how dire.

This is the kind of rigorous, far-reaching analysis we need so badly these days, and yet so seldom find in the mainstream, corporate-owned media.

February 18, 2008

The Democratic Party primaries have been putting me in mind of politics in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh is an untouchable woman. Aside from being the first of her caste and sex to have reached this office anywhere in the country, she is perhaps best known for putting up statues of herself and throwing ludicrously extravagant parties for her birthday at public expense.

The ever-worsening conditions of untouchables in the state, which is one of the poorest and most socially backward in India, have not diminished her popularity among them. It’s as though, despairing of general upliftment, they’ve settled on the obscene aggrandizement of one among them. The statues, the billboards, the diamonds and feasts and rare bouquets for her birthday only enhance the chief minister’s appeal in their eyes. Having long given up on anyone using power on their behalf, much less their partaking of it themselves, their highest wish is merely to see one of their own enjoy it to the fullest.

So it is with supporters of the low-caste candidates in the Democratic race. No one really expects that the actual policies of a President Obama would do anything to lighten the oppression of black people in this country, or that a second Clinton presidency would do any more for women than the first one did.

The pathetic hope is that simply having one or the other of them raised to such an office will in itself give his or her respective section a little more dignity.

February 4, 2008

Barack Obama, one of the Democratic candidates for president, has been campaigning on the idea that there’s no more racism in America, or nearly none. We’re “ninety percent of the way” there, he estimates. That’s something I was certainly glad to hear, if a little surprised.

According to his recent book, the reason black people are ever more segregated, impoverished, undereducated, unemployed, and incarcerated is not racism, for the most part. Apparently it’s largely due to their own ignorance (or, “lack of emphasis on educational achievement”), sexual promiscuity (“the collapse of the two-parent black household”), and shiftlessness (“conservatives--and Bill Clinton--were right about welfare”).

February 2, 2008

Many people have been asking me for my “take” on the Democratic primaries.

There are two major candidates left in the race. While I haven’t finished reading the entire article, here are a couple of things that strike me right off the bat.

I hope it will make no difference that one candidate has the unusual given name of “Hilary.” There are many men called Hilary and even some in public life, albeit mainly in Britain, like the Labour politician Hilary Benn. In any case, the candidate surely did not choose his name, and certainly should not be held any less manly on account of it.

With the other candidate it’s not his given name, unusual as it is in its own way, that gives concern so much as his surname: O’Bama. There is still a great deal of prejudice against the Irish in the minds of too many people in this country, and I hope the candidate’s ethnic background will play no part in their decision.

January 29, 2008

While I don’t favor any candidate from either capitalist party, the news that Rudolph Giuliani will soon be withdrawing is good to hear because of a peculiar domestic disturbance he’s been causing. Whenever his face appears on television, Eli Weasel--my pet ferret--gives out a high-pitched whine, flings himself violently and repeatedly against the walls of his tank, and urinates into his water cup.

The violent and repeated flinging, of course, is a normal part of ferret behavior which Eli engages in all the time, but the rest is worrying. I can never figure out whether this reaction is due to the former mayor’s outburst against ferrets and their keepers in a 1999 radio broadcast, or whether--to the contrary--it’s some kind of mating ritual.

But somehow I feel the latter explanation to be more likely. Come to think of it, Eli behaves in a similar way whenever Eliot Spitzer comes on.