Hightower Lowdown

Having just graduated from the University of North Texas in June 1965, I headed east to Washington, D.C., for a few years. I wanted to experience a place and culture that were different from where I'd been raised--and to absorb all the lessons I could about the new American politics emerging as my generation came of age in the sixties and seventies, including the progressive populist lessons to be found in such transformative movements as civil rights, antiwar activism, farmworker justice, feminism, and environmentalism, and the Ralph Nader model of corporate muckraking and public-interest advocacy.

It was a heady time for a 22-year-old Texas bumpkin to arrive in the nation's capital, for D.C. was an exciting, creative place politically. However, the city suffered from a serious, almost terminal cultural flaw: there was no Mexican food or barbeque worth eating. You could take the boy out of Texas, but you could not take Texas out of the boy, and I yearned for a real taste of home. Then it came.

The best Christmas present I ever received was from my parents--a cardboard box filled with a fantastic assortment of BBQ sauces, Cajun spices, chili mixings, tostados, salsa...and, of course, the essential liquid binder for all of the above: a 6-pack of Lone Star beer.

Today my favorite meals are those made up of an array of small plates with many different tastes, such as an Italian seafood misto, a 20-dish Turkish "salad" (like I once had in an Arab village in Israel), a Greek mezze, or just a selection of appetizers from any interesting American restaurant. I like variety.

So in this season of many flavors (Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Eid al-Adha, Winter Solstice, etc.), we're serving up a Lowdown misto for you this month--a holiday basket of tidbits, oddities, advice, and whatnots to ease you into 2010 and our next decade of grassroots activism. [ read more ]

After casting her ballot for Barack Obama, Amanda Jones said simply, "I feel good about voting for him." Ms. Jones, of Cedar Creek, Texas (a town just south of Austin), is African-American, and what gives her vote some historic punch is that she's 109 years old. Her father was a slave. Her mother was born right after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. She's been through it all--Jim Crow segregation, women's suffrage, the Great Depression, the poll tax, FDR, the civil-rights movement, desegregation, 13 years of George W (five as guv, eight as prez), and now: Barack Obama. This last change fills her with joy, she says.

Me, too. As you Lowdowners know, I'm wary about how progressive (much less how populist) Obama's presidency will be, but--come on, let's wallow in the moment, let's greet the historic symbolism of his election with all the glee that it deserves, and let's take energy from the hope that he presents to us.

I had my own moment of reflection shortly after Election Day. I was rummaging through some old personal papers and came across a small document from 1964. I was a junior in college that year and had just turned 21, making me eligible to vote for the first time. This little slip of paper, issued to me by the county election office, was my Certificate of Exemption From Poll Tax.

Yes, as late as '64, Texas still made people pay to vote. First-time voters were given an exemption from the tax, which I recall being about $5. That was real money in those days. The levy was intended to deter poor people, especially blacks and Mexican-Americans, from joining the democratic process. It was successful.

The poll tax, which ended in 1966, was a mirror of the time. Growing up in Denison, Texas, my school years were totally segregated--from kindergarten through my high-school graduation in 1961. The southern youth of my day were raised on the Big Lie that somehow or other racial separation was "normal." The first time I sat next to a black kid in a classroom was when I went off to college at North Texas State in '61 --and he was from my home town of Denison! I was face to face with the Lie, and that jolting reality drew me into civil-rights activism, which later moved me into antiwar activism, which later moved me... well, here I am.

And here we all are, standing in a better place than we came from. The thing we can celebrate is not solely that Obama's going into the Oval Office, but that so many people over so many years worked so hard, enduring so many ups and downs, to get to this day. [ read more ]

At a time when We The People have been vociferously and unequivocally demanding that our political aspirants offer Big Ideas on America's Big Issues (good jobs, health care for all, the wars, Wall Street greed, our collapsing infrastructure, big-money corruption of government, etcetera), the presidential campaign has taken a dive into the politics of lipstick and other smears.

Barack Obama's campaign has been oddly tepid, as if on cruise control. It has not been hammering its best ideas, such as his call for a massive, long-term, multibillion-dollar program to restore America's economy and world leadership through a Green Deal that would create millions of middle-class jobs and achieve true energy independence from Big Oil. Far worse, the once-proud "straight-talk express" of John McCain has dissolved into a pool of Karl Rovian sleaze.

The McCainites shrieked in September that Obama had called the sainted Sarah Palin a lipstick-wearing pig. Which, of course, he had not. Wait, they shrieked even more shrilly in a campaign ad, Obama supported a bill to require "comprehensive sex ed" for kindergarteners, forcing children to learn about sex "before learning to read." Which, of course, he had not. Then came last month's Wall Street banking collapse, and McCain immediately popped out an ad huffing that Obama was getting his advice on financial policy from a former CEO of one of the failed banks. Which, of course, he was not. McCain's henchmen have also spread rumors that Obama is a Muslim, that he is not even an American citizen, and that he won't put his hand over his heart to pledge allegiance to our flag. Which, of course, he is not, he is, and he does. And have you heard? Obama has fathered black children!

Such stuff would be a knee-slapping hoot if it was a skit on "Saturday Night Live," but this is a campaign to choose the president of the United States. Every day that McCain and crew can set the media yackety-yackers buzzing over nonsense and force Obama to respond to lipstick is a day that there is no national discussion of what matters. [ read more ]

The political media establishment is enraptured by John McCain. Mainline media sparklies, as well as the blatherers on the Fox channel, routinely buff up his image as a straight-talking, maverick foe of Washington's special interests. "The press loves McCain. We're his base," gushes MSNBC's Chris Matthews. But if the senator really is the feared reformer of business-as-usual government, why does his presidential campaign look like the back alley of K Street?

Many a president has had certain supporters behind him whom he should have moved out in front in order to keep an eye on them. McCain, however, isn't even bothering to keep his self-interested backers in the shadows--he has literally put them in charge of his campaign. "Tell me with whom you walk," goes the old adage, "and I'll tell you who you are." Candidate McCain is walking cozily with a coterie of corporate lobbyists, executives, and fund-raisers who are shaping his policies... and expecting to walk right into the White House with him.

There was a hilarious dustup in May when two of the campaign's key operatives were publicly fingered as lobbyists for the totalitarian military thugs who rule Burma. Bad image. To patch over this embarrassing exposure, the campaign dumped the duo and loudly proclaimed a new internal ethics rule barring lobbyists from paid positions on the "Straight Talk Express." Bold! Decisive! Laudable!

Except that it was a crock. Here's the hilarious part: the announcement was made by the top campaign staffer, Rick Davis. Guess what he is. A lobbyist! His clients range from such telecom giants as Verizon to undies-maker Fruit of the Loom, and most have had business before McCain's Senate committees.

The trick is that the new rule bars "active" lobbyists from being "paid" to work "full time" on the staff. [ read more ]