Of Glocks and Books and Computers ...

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There was a memorial service here in Dallas earlier this week for the five police officers who were gunned down by a young black man who was reportedly upset over the shootings of black suspects by white policemen in Louisiana and Minnesota.

I wasn't able to watch the service on TV because I was at work, but I read the text of Barack Obama's speech online when I got home that night. And I have watched video clips on TV and online.

As I have acknowledged here before, I have never been an admirer of Obama, but even I must admit that the speech started out to be perhaps his finest oratorical moment — comparable, in my mind, to the speech Ronald Reagan gave to the nation the night of the Challenger disaster.

He was mindful of the fact that he was speaking at a service that was showing its respect for five public servants. But then he veered off into ideological territory. Such a thing would be inexcusable, anyway, but Obama made it worse by appearing to justify the actions taken by the angry, apparently mentally disturbed young man.

Obama lamented the fact that it was easier for a young black man to get his hands on a Glock than a computer or a book.

Now, to me, this said everything one needs to know about Obama's mindset. I have concluded that he believes racism only has a white face because whenever a white person kills a black person, he decries it as racism. But when a black person kills a white person, if the case gets any media attention at all — and, of course, the shootings here in Dallas were widely reported — Obama blames it on easy access to guns.

Someone needs to tell the president that guns are not cheap. A library card, on the other hand ...

Learning From History

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The mass shooting at an historically black church in Charleston, S.C., last week is disturbing on so many levels. It is overwhelming from a distance. I can only imagine what it must be like closer to Ground Zero.

There is, above and beyond all else, the disturbing story of the event itself — a young man sat through an hour or so of Bible study with a group of (presumably) strangers, then (apparently) calmly opened fire on them. Nine people were killed.

In case you're wondering why I used the parentheses on a couple of words in the preceding paragraph, it is because there is still so much we do not know. As there usually is at this stage of the investigation into a criminal act. But TV has conditioned many people to believe that all loose ends can be tied up in an hour's time, allowing for commercials — so they leap to conclusions without knowing all the facts that can put an event into context.

Usually, those conclusions are self–serving rubbish.

The intention is not, as some people would have you believe, to justify what happened. The intention is to satisfy the legal requirements to define a criminal act accurately. Those definitions have evolved through many millennia and generations of human experience. When one person kills another, that is a tragedy, but the law must know certain things before a case can be dealt with appropriately.

There are a lot of emotions swirling around this case, and I sympathize with that, but the law should not be administered on emotion. It should be administered on facts. In a criminal case, especially one that involves the death of one or more people at the hands of another, facts establish the legal nature of the crime. Emotion, as we should have learned from recent events, is often mistaken and can cause another tragedy.

Do you recall the 1996 Atlanta Olympics? A bomb went off the night of July 27, 1996, at the Olympics, killing one person and injuring 111 more. A security guard discovered the bomb before it went off and managed to clear a lot of people from the area, probably preventing more injuries and deaths, but he still became the prime suspect in the case. The media was relentlessly aggressive in its pursuit of him, treating him as if it was a foregone conclusion that he was guilty — until he was cleared of all accusations a few months later. He had never been formally charged with anything, but the damage to his reputation had been done. His job was terminated on the basis of unreliable information provided to his employer.

Our experience has told us that a person is justified in killing another if the other person posed a threat to the first person's life. In other words, we have concluded that self–defense is a valid, albeit regrettable, reason to kill. So the law must answer the question, did this young man kill in self–defense? There has never been any indication whatsoever that he killed in self–defense so any legal provisions on that can be ignored.

And, because of our experience, we have decided that if someone causes another person's death through negligence, that, too, should be treated differently by the justice system than murder would be treated. The case in Charleston clearly did not result from negligence.

Our experience has told us that it is not right to hold someone responsible for his or her acts if he or she is insane. That is much more of a gray area, and it requires weeks and months of evaluation before that can be determined. It may also involve interrogating a suspect's doctor to find out if that suspect had any known mental issues and/or had been prescribed any medication to treat such a condition. At this point, it appears that the answer to both questions would be "yes" in this case.

The law also needs to know whether the killing was premeditated. If someone planned to kill another, that is — and should be — handled differently than a killing that occurs out of the blue (i.e., a couple of people get into an argument that turns into a fight with guns or knives or even fists and one of them is killed in the fight — tragic but usually not premeditated).

A premeditated killing can be punished by death. Unpremeditated convictions usually result in jail time.

If it was premeditated, the law needs to know if it was the result of a conspiracy. Did someone else participate, either at the scene or behind the scenes? That requires time, too — sometimes a lot of it. Certainly more than an hour. (Heck, I've heard suggestions all my life that the John F. Kennedy assassination was a conspiracy, but, after more than 50 years, that remains a matter of opinion only.)

In this case, the evidence suggests it was premeditated and, to this point, does not suggest that there was a conspiracy, but the investigators need to be allowed time to talk to all relevant witnesses and review available evidence. I have heard of no second shooters, nor have I heard any suggestion that someone paid this young man to shoot these people. It appears he acted alone, but the law must be satisfied, and laws vary from state to state.

And that isn't all there is to it.

Until recently, I would have thought that most police killings are not premeditated. In most cases, the lack of premeditation would qualify a killing for a lesser charge, but the killing of a police officer is treated as a capital crime (and, therefore, eligible for the death penalty). It is our way of discouraging people from killing law enforcement officers (which, I suppose, includes judges and other court officers) under any circumstances.

As I say, the law evolves over time, and there are provisions in the law that make it legally possible to prosecute an unpremeditated killing as if it were premeditated — if someone is killed when another crime is taking place (i.e., a convenience store robbery), the person responsible for the killing is eligible for the death penalty even though the death of another person was not intended.

If you have ever served on a jury, you know that legal verdicts are seldom, if ever, as simple as "guilty" or "not guilty." The verdict forms consist of many pages of questions, most of which are designed to answer specific questions like the ones I have just outlined.

Why must so many questions be answered? Well, it has a lot to do with the experiences that the Founding Fathers had. They came from environments where it was customary for the state to take a person into custody and hold that person indefinitely without informing him or her of the reason. The Founding Fathers believed all people were entitled to due process — and that suspects deserved protection against being repeatedly arrested and charged for the same offenses until a jury finally convicted them. (They called that "double jeopardy.")

Many times, convictions are appealed, and appellate courts have been known to overturn convictions for entirely unanticipated reasons. That is why it is so critically important for prosecutors to have their ducks in a row when they go to court. The burden of proof is on them, not on the defense. If a verdict is overturned, it will be because of a mistake someone on the prosecution's team made.

I'm not a lawyer, but I have served on juries before, and I covered trials in my reporting days. Not having studied law, I don't know the history of law and justice, and I readily admit that I could be wrong on this, but my impression is that law and logic (which is a class everyone in Arts and Sciences was required to take when I was in college) must have evolved simultaneously. Jury verdict forms remind me so much of the logic questions I had to plot — If all A are B, and all B are C, then all A are C.

(For people who never had to take Logic, I suppose the most appropriate comparison would be your standard flow chart — "If the answer is yes, proceed. If the answer is no, stop.")

It seems to me that is what much of the application of the law comes down to — logic, the law of averages, probability. Comparing cases without context can become matters of comparing apples to oranges when it is really more instructive to compare apples to apples. The fact is, though, that each person and each case is different from all the others. People are individual and imperfect; they don't share the same brain or possess the same experiences.

So, it seems to me, as long as the application of law is made by imperfect people, there will be imperfections in the system. But that doesn't mean we stop trying to make the system better. We try to learn from the situations we face, especially the ones that challenge what we have always believed, just as we learn from history in all walks of life. Discoveries are important in the evolving story of humankind. One discovery begets another, and together they form the building blocks for yet another discovery. We could not have sent rockets to the moon if we had not, at some point along the way, discovered how to make and control fire.

History is also about learning from mistakes, errors in judgment, what we have tried to do about them in the past that was successful and what didn't work (so we don't keep spinning our wheels). Sometimes history is shameful, but no useful purpose is served by revising it. The only useful purpose is to remember, like the child who learns from experience not to put his hand on a hot stove. That child probably won't try to go through life without a stove, but he will learn when not to touch one. Do you recall what George Santayana wrote? "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Wise words.

My father was a religion professor at a small liberal arts college in Arkansas. One summer, when I was 13, my family spent a couple of months in Austria. We took side trips to places, and some of the places my father wanted to visit were important scenes from Germany's Nazi past — concentration camps, Hitler's retreat (Eagle's Nest) in the German Alps near the centuries–old, tiny town of Berchtesgaden. He wanted to take pictures of those places, pictures he could use in his college classes. He heard about them when they were in the news when he was a teenager; this was his opportunity to see them.

But he was disappointed. The German government, in its misguided attempt to erase Nazism from its national consciousness, allowed the concentration camps to fall into disrepair, and Eagle's Nest became a restaurant and beer garden (the irony of that is that, although Hitler occasionally drank in private, he never drank in public and actually gave up alcohol altogether in his last years). In fact, the first law enacted by the Allied Control Council after World War II ended abolished all Nazi symbols. Possession of Nazi flags has been forbidden in many countries since; the importation or display of them is particularly frowned upon in Germany.

What has been achieved by that in recent years? Well, neo–Nazism has been on the rise, and skepticism about the Holocaust abounds. Those who cannot remember the past ...

I am not a professional historian, but I have been studying history all my life, and one of the things I have learned from it is this: No possible good comes from denying the past. And that is why I reject the popular move to ban the Confederate flag. The Civil War was certainly a dark chapter in America's history, but there were important lessons to be learned from it. Banning the Confederate flag would prevent those lessons from being learned and, perhaps, like modern Germany, at some point give rise to a new Confederate movement among the American young.

Would I have a Confederate flag in my home? Absolutely not — nor would I have a Nazi flag in my home. But pretending they didn't exist or that they didn't witness some horrific things is to deny history. And I have learned that history always has the last word.

Recently, the Supreme Court upheld the decision of Texas, the state where I live, not to allow people to have Confederate flags on their license plates on the grounds that license plates are government property. I support that ruling.

But possession of the flag is not banned. It is still legal to have one; choosing to display it is a matter of free speech on an individual basis. Some people find that offensive, just as some people find the burning of the American flag to be offensive, but free speech is protected under the First Amendment. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry spoke in an interview yesterday about how the Confederate flag divides people. He is right about that, but we owe it to ourselves and future generations not to ban the symbols of hate but to learn from them.

History is not served when it is whitewashed.

Don't Apologize for Me

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"I'll just tell you one thing and I'm speaking now for all white people but especially those who have tried to change in the last 50 or 60 years — and a lot of them have really tried to change — I'm sorry for this stuff. That's all I'm saying."

Chris Matthews

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MSNBC's Chris Matthews took it upon himself Thursday to apologize for "all white people" for the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial.

Hey, Chris. Do me a favor. Don't apologize for me, OK? Leave me out of it.

Before I get an avalanche of racist accusations, hear me out.

I was raised by liberal Democrats. They were advocates of civil rights, which wasn't a very popular position to take in my Arkansas hometown. They participated in the local Human Rights Council, which was responsible for many changes in my hometown when I was growing up. They were activists on behalf of equal treatment under the law.

And I learned my values from them. For a long time, I was apologetic for truly terrible — and obvious — injustices against minorities. And, in my lifetime, I have witnessed many.

But I've grown weary from being beaten about the head repeatedly for things I had nothing to do with — like slavery. It was abolished a century before I was born. I'm sorry it existed, but what else can I do? I can't go back in time and change history. Heck, if I could do that, there are several decisions I have made in my personal life that I'd like to have a do–over on first.

But I don't have that time traveling kind of power. I'm sorry it happened, but it wasn't my fault, and I've never owned a slave. Neither did any of my ancestors (as far as I know) nor has any other living American — unless you want to include folks like that guy in Cleveland who held three women against their will for a decade or more, and that is really a different discussion, don't you think?

And I have never discriminated against anyone. On the occasions when I have been in a management position, I have not discriminated against anyone who was different from me in any way.

I have also taught journalism for a total of seven years, and I have never discriminated against anyone in any of my classes. My classroom policies are the same for everyone. My grade calculation method is the same for everyone.

Nor was it my fault that blacks and civil rights workers were murdered, primarily in my home region of the South. I'm not ashamed of the fact that I grew up in the South, and I won't apologize for it, either, but I realize and I regret that terrible things happened here. There are aspects of the region's history — even its recent history (comparatively speaking) — that I don't like — but isn't that true of most places?

I believe in justice for all, not justice for some. And justice means that the law (and the legal requirement to convict someone of something) is the same for everyone.

Sometimes the person who should be held accountable appears to escape justice. And, depending on whether one believes in the afterlife, there may be a tendency to believe the guilty did get away with something. That truly can be a frustrating experience. But I don't believe that is what happened in this case.

If the available evidence meets the standard required to convict that person, then that person must be found guilty. But if the evidence is not sufficient to meet that legal standard, the jury must acquit.

Outside the Zimmerman courtroom, a racism narrative was being presented, and guilty white liberals were lapping it up like kittens being presented with a saucer of milk. But inside the courtroom, the jury was being instructed to decide based on the evidence, and they were told what the law required for conviction.

Justice is supposed to be blind to everything — race, gender, religion, age, financial status. Only the facts are supposed to decide a case.

The evidence did not support the popular narrative, and, as the old saying goes, every person is entitled to his own opinion but not his own set of facts.

I believe in the principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Zimmerman was not proven guilty. I know there are some people who want to believe he was guilty of something — presumably because the person who died was black — but the physical evidence supported his side of the story.

The jury made the appropriate decision — and when you speak of this case, please remember that Zimmerman was found not guilty, not innocent. Courts do not decide if a person is innocent. In our system, a defendant is presumed to be innocent, and it is the responsibility of the prosecution to prove the defendant is guilty of the charge. That is the question being decided — guilt, not innocence.

And the prosecution had a weak case.

I do not apologize for believing the jury made the right choice. And I don't need anyone else to apologize for me, either.

Why We Can't Have a Serious Talk

Last night, I read an article in the Washington Post about the recent electoral embarrassments that have been handed to Barack Obama in Democratic primaries in West Virginia, Arkansas and Kentucky.

Obama, of course, is the incumbent, and he has drawn no serious opposition for the Democrats' nomination. Consequently, some people apparently believe, the Democrats in the primaries that are being held late in the process should line up like good Democrats and vote for the incumbent.

Even if they have objections.

But the voters in West Virginia, Arkansas and Kentucky have thrown Obama an off–speed pitch when he was looking for a fastball. About two–fifths of the Democratic voters voted for token opposition — in West Virginia, that meant voting for an inmate who is presently incarcerated here in Texas — rather than for the president, who long ago secured his nomination.

The Post's Chris Cillizza writes that many Democrats have a ready excuse for the political resistance they have encountered within their own party — they "ascribe the underperformance by the incumbent to a very simple thing: racism."

Most Democrats speak disparagingly of George W. Bush. And I have no fondness for him, either.

But this is a tactic those Democrats share with Bush and his supporters — and they have been every bit as gleeful in its use and in anticipation of its power to squelch serious discussions.

Sure, it was disguised differently when Bush was president. In those not–so–distant days, anyone who disagreed with Bush on anything was labeled unpatriotic.

End of discussion. Once you have been tarred with that brush, you might as well stop trying.

No matter how strongly you may feel about the issue, no matter how many legitimate concerns you may have, no matter how many hours you may have spent arguing with yourself about it, if the other side has labeled you a racist or unpatriotic, there is nothing you can say to reverse that conclusion, no logic you can offer, no facts you can provide.

But that doesn't mean the allegation is true.

Oh, to be sure, there are people today who do permit race (or religion or gender or sexual preference or anything else) to determine how they will vote, just as there have always been people who were racist (or sexist or homophobic or whatever). And there are people among us who are not patriotic Americans — they have always been with us, too.

That's one of the drawbacks of living in a free society.

But it's not so easy to know who the racists and unpatriotic citizens are. In my experience, they usually don't advertise the fact or leave tell–tale clues behind. They might share their views with like–minded individuals, but they don't usually tend to share them with strangers.

"The problem with that theory," Cillizza writes, "is that it's almost entirely unprovable because it relies on assuming knowledge about voter motivations that — without being a mindreader — no one can know."

It's true that Obama lost all three of those states in 2008, and it is quite likely that he will lose all three in 2012. I don't see a racial backlash in these votes. I see a repeat of a phenomenon I have seen many times in the past — when a candidate locks up his party's nomination, disgruntled voters in the late primaries are emboldened to vote for any alternative on the ballot.

It's an electoral protest, and it should be taken seriously. My experience tells me Democrats shouldn't be dismissive about it.

In 1980 (when another Democrat president was running for re–election), I was living in Arkansas. Gov. Bill Clinton was seeking his second two–year term as governor. He looked like a sure thing. He was young and charismatic, and his only opponent in the party primary was a 77–year–old retired turkey farmer who barely scraped up enough money to pay the filing fee.

Clinton's opponent had no campaign staff or finances to speak of, but he received more than 30% of the vote when the Democrats held their primary.

The governor's staff and supporters insisted that it didn't mean a thing, and, in Arkansas, it was generally accepted that it really didn't mean much. Arkansans, after all, had elected only one Republican governor since Reconstruction.

But they elected another one that November — narrowly.

Both political extremes use the term fascism almost casually in their references to each other, which I find to be alarming — as well as an appalling display of an absence of knowledge.

Neither side is truly fascist — at least, not yet. But, with their blatant use of what Adolf Hitler called "the big lie," it is clear that it probably wouldn't take much to push either one over the edge.

"Make the lie big," Hitler said, "make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it."

It was a lie when Bush's supporters accused his detractors of being unpatriotic. It's a lie when Obama's supporters accuse his detractors of being racist.

It has a chilling effect on dissent, and that makes it one of the most anti–democratic (that's democrat with a lowercase d) assertions imaginable.

The Patriotism of Robert E. Lee

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He has been called the greatest general ever produced in America, even though he was on the losing side in the greatest military conflict of his life.

Today is the 203rd birthday of Robert E. Lee. And, while history does remember him as the commander of the losing side in the Civil War, he easily could have led the winning forces. He was approached about being the general of the Union troops, but he would not fight against Virginia, his home state, after it seceded.

So he commanded the Army of Northern Virginia. But did you know that he never wore the insignia of a Confederate general? He only wore the three stars worn by a Confederate colonel, which was equal to the last rank he had achieved in the U.S. Army.

Lee was a patriot, and, like Abraham Lincoln, he wished to keep the Union intact. "I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union," he wrote in a letter to his son.

Yes, Lee was a patriot. But he was somewhat soft–spoken by today's standards. Much of what he said was expressed in letters, like one he wrote to one of his generals several months after Lee surrendered. "True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another, and the motive which impels them — the desire to do right — is precisely the same."

Lee's desire to do right led him to say, "We must forgive our enemies. I can truly say that not a day has passed since the war began that I have not prayed for them."

When the war was over, a woman spoke to him of her hatred of the North. He replied, "Madam, don't bring up your sons to detest the United States government. Recollect that we form one country now. Abandon all these local animosities, and make your sons Americans."

And, on one occasion several years after the war, Lee responded, after hearing Ulysses S. Grant insulted by a faculty member at what is now Washington & Lee University, "Sir, if you ever presume again to speak disrespectfully of General Grant in my presence, either you or I will sever his connection with this university."

There are people who believe his love for and devotion to his home state trumped his instincts about slavery. Some attempt to apply 20th and 21st century standards to a 19th century man.

It is true that, before the war began, Lee had freed the slaves his wife had inherited. But a letter he wrote to his wife five years before the outbreak of the war can be interpreted in several ways:

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"In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral and political evil in any country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, and while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially and physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, and I hope will prepare and lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known and ordered by a wise merciful Providence."

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Journalist Douglas Freeman wrote, in 1934, that Southerners of faith in the 19th century, like Lee, "believed that slavery existed because God willed it and they thought it would end when God so ruled. The time and the means were not theirs to decide, conscious though they were of the ill–effects of Negro slavery on both races."

Nevertheless, it is true that, after the war, Lee spoke of his "willingness that blacks should be educated." It would, he said, "be better for the blacks and for the whites," but it was nearly a century before Southern schools were integrated.

It is beyond dispute, as far as I can see, that Lee believed in education. "The education of a man is never completed," he said, "until he dies."

It would hardly be fair to expect anyone from the 19th century to live up to the standards that prevailed a century or two later. Even so, some have applied those standards to Lee's contemporaries, like Abraham Lincoln, as I observed nearly a year ago on the eve of the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth.

Presumably, through the application of similar logic, some people who have never lived in the South have harbored a prejudice against all white Southerners — because of slavery, because of the Civil War, because of the Ku Klux Klan, because of racist politicians, because of racism in general.

But not all white Alabamians were George Wallace, not all white Arkansans were Orval Faubus, not all white Georgians were Lester Maddox. The Wallaces, Faubuses and Maddoxes made it harder for progressive Southerners to be visible, but they were there. I know because I saw them.

It is important to remember — the day after Martin Luther King Day, the day of Massachusetts' special election to choose Ted Kennedy's Senate successor — that no region of this country has a monopoly on racism. School busing, as a means to achieve school desegregation, is maybe the best example.

When I was growing up, my hometown in Arkansas was much smaller than it is today. In those days, it was a rural community with many families, including mine, living outside the city limits. The likelihood of any family living outside the city limits had little to do with race. It was more of an economic thing, in both a positive and negative sense. There were places where lower–income families lived, and there were areas where middle– and higher–income families, in which the parents were better educated and had better jobs, bought land and built homes.

School segregation existed in my hometown before I enrolled in first grade, but integration was in effect by the time I did so I have no first–hand memory of segregated schools. There was never a time when there were no blacks in school with me. And there was never a time — at least that I can recall — when anyone, white or black, resisted school integration in my hometown.

But I do have a first–hand memory of riding school buses. As far–flung as the families were in my hometown, everyone except those who lived a short distance from school rode the bus. It was a normal, everyday experience for me.

It was, therefore, stunning for me — and, I presume, others my age, although I don't remember speaking at length with any of my friends about it — when places like Boston erupted in race riots over school busing. I couldn't really comprehend the issues that were involved. All I could see was adults getting into fights over something that I saw as a fact of life.

Well, it's tough enough to do the right thing in your own time. Never mind what the folks 100 or 150 years from now will think.

Lee himself seemed to comprehend that simple fact.

"After it is all over, as stupid a fellow as I am can see that mistakes were made," he said. "I notice, however, that my mistakes are never told me until it is too late."

The City of New Orleans

I haven't been in New Orleans in a long time. The last time I was there was many years before Hurricane Katrina flooded the city and officially — and, apparently, irretrievably — turned public opinion against George W. Bush.

When I was there, the emphasis was on good food, good drinks and fun (good or otherwise). Live jazz was playing in the French Quarter, French–style beignets with powdered sugar and chicory–laced coffee were being consumed with reckless abandon every morning at Café du Monde, and New Orleans generally lived up to its nickname, "The City that Care Forgot."

But New Orleans — and the rest of Louisiana — couldn't hide away from care forever. After Katrina, the national spotlight seemed to shine ever brighter on the Big Easy.

Judging from the home page of the New Orleans Times–Picayune this morning, things haven't changed that much, though. There is still an emphasis on good food, good music and good times. At this time of year, "good times" means football, and two of the NFL's unbeaten teams, the New Orleans Saints and the New York Giants, will square off Sunday afternoon in the Superdome that once housed — temporarily — Katrina's refugees.

Barack Obama probably could have picked a worse time to make his first presidential visit to New Orleans. Granted, his pledge to rebuild New Orleans stronger than before is one that should have been made — and kept — on the federal level four years ago. But that wasn't Obama's fault. He was barely in the U.S. Senate at that time.

As much as Obama and his supporters may have wanted to believe his election nearly a year ago demonstrated that America was a "post–racial" society, events this year have shown it is not true. Both sides have been culpable to a degree. Some — but not all — of Obama's critics have injected race into the conversation, and some — but not all — of his supporters have been far too willing to point the finger and accuse critics of racism — to the detriment of arguments on both sides.

Neither the right nor the left seems to be truly at fault for an issue that has emerged recently in Tangipahoa Parish, just north of New Orleans. But that hasn't kept either from taking sides.

Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell refused to marry an interracial couple. "I'm not a racist," he claimed. "I just don't believe in mixing the races that way."

He said he was concerned about the children that could be produced from such a union and, for that reason, he has declined to marry about four interracial couples in his career as a justice of the peace.

Now the ACLU of Louisiana is attempting to have Bardwell removed from office.

I'm not an authority on the law, but it does seem to me that, since the Supreme Court's ruling in the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case, marriage restrictions based on race have been illegal in the United States. Consequently, a public official who has the authority to marry couples and refuses to do so because the couple in question is interracial is in violation of the law.

But I grew up in the South. And, while laws have changed, it does not surprise me that attitudes have not — at least not to the extent that many people seem to have presumed.

What does surprise me, I guess, is how surprised others are by this. Last night, on Facebook, the pastor of my church pondered this development and asked, rhetorically, "It's 2009, not 1959, right?" Many people — too many to count — chimed in indignantly.

My knee–jerk reaction was that many of those people must not have grown up in the South — and then I remembered that my pastor did grow up here in Texas. But he, like many people, seems to have fallen under the spell of the post–racialists.

Be that as it may, it doesn't change the fact that a public official who refuses to marry an interracial couple is violating the law. As a public official, his personal opinions do not matter — even if he believes his motivation — the well–being of any as–yet unborn children — is noble.

(If his only concern is the children, has anyone asked him if he has performed marriage ceremonies for interracial couples who are past their child–bearing years?)

The left gets particularly agitated about racial implications, but the liberal lion, the late Ted Kennedy, seems to have understood that racism in America did not disappear because Obama was elected president.

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"Ted Kennedy believes that race in America is, as he sometimes puts it, 'a–burning,' by which he means that it bubbles just below the surface of the American psyche and it takes little to bring it out."

Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson
The Battle for America 2008

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I don't know how long it will take for those on the left to recognize that the election of the first black president didn't eliminate race as a factor in American life. It merely turned up the heat and it has bubbled past the surface in Obama's first year in office.

The real test of how much progress America has made in race relations was not — contrary to popular opinion — the election of the first black president. The real test will be whether, three years from now, Americans decide to re–elect him, knowing it will mean four more years of focusing on racial issues — often at the expense of issues that affect Americans of all races.

The Freeing of the Slaves

My parents were missionaries in Africa in the early years of their lives together, and they learned many lessons about race relations from that experience.

Mom is deceased now, but Dad is still alive and he has maintained a sense of humor about some of the more ludicrous aspects of racism in America. He doesn't think that racism itself is funny — he has never said so to me, but I suspect that he feels 21st century racism threatens to undermine Barack Obama's presidency — but he makes jokes about things like the "Three–Fifths Compromise" and eating watermelon and fried chicken to celebrate "Juneteenth."

I don't know how others would react to it, but my brother and I know he's kidding.

Ah, yes, Juneteenth. More than three–fifths (there's that fraction again) of the states recognize it as a state holiday. What is Juneteenth, you may ask? Well, it is a commemoration of the day that news about the emancipation of the slaves actually reached the slaves.

I guess you could call it a tale of three months — September 1862, January 1863 and June 1865.

On this day in 1862, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order that declared that all slaves in any of the Confederate states that were not back under Union control by Jan. 1, 1863, would be free. On January 1, Lincoln issued a second executive order that listed the states where the first order would apply.

The Civil War ended more than two years later, in April 1865, and it wasn't until Union Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, on June 18 and read the proclamation publicly on June 19 that the slaves were officially told that they had been freed.

As a result, June 19 became known as "Juneteenth."

Over the years, Juneteenth celebrations have been held regularly.

And it all really began 147 years ago today, with an executive order that most blacks in America heard nothing about at the time.

The Paradox of Politics (aka The Civil War)

Ellen Goodman tries, in the Boston Globe, to figure out why the Barack Obama of the campaign trail has not lived up to expectations since moving in to the White House.

Last year, she writes, he was the "Oprah candidate" — he "believed we could talk with anyone, even our enemies," but that reconciliatory approach doesn't seem to be particularly suited for handling global problems.

Heck, it doesn't really seem to work too well domestically. Obama's Republican adversaries have never seemed especially eager to work with Democrats, but lately even Democrats have been reluctant to work with him.

Democrats, Goodman writes, have been "waiting for Obama's inner fighter," but he keeps frustrating them. Even when they want to blame resistance on racism, Obama double–crosses them, saying that racism is "not the overriding issue."

Well, that was his chance to pass the buck, wasn't it? Everyone on the left lately, it seems, has been eager to blame racism for the administration's problems — Maureen Dowd and former President Jimmy Carter have been front and center.

Strange. Even Dowd wrote about her frustrations with Obama's hesitance hours before his congressional address. "Sometimes, when you've got the mojo, you have to keep your foot on your opponent's neck," she wrote.

But then Joe Wilson gave her the excuse to blame racism. Wilson gave it a face. Dowd didn't have to rely on hunches or gut feelings. And Carter piled on. And they've been followed by folks in the press who ought to know better — but economics drives everything, and those folks know that, right now, there is no better way to give sagging circulation figures a temporary boost than by taking sides in the racism debate.

So David Harsanyi of the Denver Post weighed in. And, from overseas, Janet Dailey weighed in in The Telegraph. And so did Toby Harnden in the Daily Telegraph.

Each has tried to put his/her own spin on the issue. But, in fact, the chorus has been predictable. It's like two sides of a football stadium yelling at each other. Even when they're yelling for the same thing, it seems hostile.

In recent days, Joe Klein of TIME has written about the race issue. And so has David Brooks in the New York Times. Eugene Robinson wrote about it in the Washington Post.

With an issue like racism and a president like Obama, it can be hard to get a handle on what it's all about. But I thought Goodman did a pretty good job.

"Can you be a healer and a politician? If you try to mediate an ideological divide, do you just end up in the crossfire?"

Maybe, as Goodman suggests, it's a matter of civility. Or the absence of it.

And maybe, as Harsanyi writes, civility is just plain overrated.

But when the debate is about racism, I think Yale lecturer Jim Sleeper made a good point in the Washington Post. Essentially, writes Sleeper, focusing on race "as the chief source of rage is a trap into which liberals have fallen too often."

I think the race issue was destined to be an ongoing factor for the first black president. When the first woman becomes president, she will have to contend with the gender issue. It will be easier for those who follow.

But right now, all of us must live through the growing pains that are the unavoidable byproduct of the first black presidency.

It was absurd to think we might be able to bypass this part of the growth experience — sort of like thinking one might get through one's adolescence without ever feeling awkward or stupid or ugly.

The Mother of All Wedge Issues

Racism.

I would like to think that this will be the last time I will feel the need to write about this topic. But I know it won't be. Because there is always someone who is ready to throw some more gasoline on the fire.

In this case, it is someone I have long admired — Jimmy Carter. I'm sorry, Mr. President. I disagree.

"That racism inclination still exists, and I think it's bubbled up to the surface because of belief among many white people — not just in the South but around the country — that African–Americans are not qualified to lead this great country," Carter told NBC's "Nightly News" yesterday.

Carter agrees with the point I made yesterday, that South Carolina's racial history makes it likely that racism played a role in Joe Wilson's outburst during Barack Obama's speech last week.

But I think he and Maureen Dowd and the rest of those on the left go too far when they see racism behind every criticism. As I have written before, it is a convenient scapegoat, the perfect wedge issue for a group that became all too familiar with the down side of wedge issues in the heyday of the George W. Bush–Karl Rove presidency.

Obama's supporters apparently thought they had a handle on this wedge issue thing because it was used so effectively in the campaign against Hillary Clinton. What they didn't understand was that the race wedge issue simply worked better than the gender wedge issue — in no small part because Democrats had concluded, based on the Bush experience, that political dynasties were a bad idea in America.

But that was — pardon the expression — bush league. Intramural squabbling. Now they're in the big leagues of wedge issues.

Wedge issues work in two ways. They work for the side that uses them by aligning that side with something that (presumably) everyone is for. And they work against the other side by implying that side is against whatever everyone else is for.

Fear is a major factor.

Republicans have learned to accept defeat when it is inevitable and reserve resources for battles in which the outcome is not certain. Democrats have not learned this lesson. They apply the "racist" label to anyone who objects to anything Obama and the Democrats are for. After eight months, it's wearing thin.

Obama continues to lose ground on health care reform for the same reasons Clinton did in 1993. Republicans know how to exploit fear of change better than Democrats do.

And this time, Democrats have handed the Republicans the mother of all distractions.

When Democrats are playing the race card, they are not responding to fears about changes to the health care industry. When voters' concerns are not addressed, it is only natural for them to oppose any change. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.

Focusing on race plays into the Republicans' hands.

When Dowd writes about a racist word she didn't hear, when President Carter says "[t]here is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African–American should not be president," when House Democrats insist on a predictable, party–line vote to censure Wilson instead of using their majority to promote job creation ...

It opens the door — flings it wide open — for Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele to complain, "This isn't about race. It is about policy."

And then Steele, who is also black, can say, "Injecting race into the debate over critical issues facing American families doesn't create jobs, reform our health care system or reduce the growing deficit. It only divides Americans rather than uniting us to find solutions to challenges facing our nation."

That makes the Republicans look like the responsible ones who are trying to find answers to problems. And it makes the Democrats look radical, extreme, out of control.

And then, who sounds reasonable and who sounds shrill?

A Fool's Paradise

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"A national survey of jobless workers by a pair of professors at Rutgers University shows just how traumatized the work force has become in this downturn. Two–thirds of respondents said that they had become depressed. More than half said it was the first time they had ever lost a job, and 80 percent said there was little or no chance that they would be able to get their jobs back when the economy improves.

"The 1,200 respondents were jobless at some point over the past year, and most — 894 — are still unemployed. More than half said that they had been forced to borrow money from friends or relatives, and a quarter have missed their mortgage or rent payments.

"The survey found that affluent, well–educated workers, who had traditionally been able to withstand a downturn in reasonably good shape, were being hit hard this time around."

Bob Herbert
New York Times

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On Sunday, I wrote about Maureen Dowd's New York Times column that spoke of her grudging acknowledgement that racism still exists in America, sparked by Joe Wilson's now famous outburst during Barack Obama's speech to Congress.

I didn't approve of Wilson's outburst, as I wrote last week, but I haven't been the least bit surprised by the reaction from Dowd and others on the left. It reminds me of Claude Rains in "Casablanca."

I'm shocked — shocked! — to find that there is racism here!

As vehemently as they will deny it, the folks on the left have become pretty good at their own version of playing the race card. They've been trying to perfect it for years, and they've been practicing this particular form since it became clear that Obama was a legitimate contender for the Democratic nomination.

Simply put, someone is a racist, in their eyes, if that person asks questions about any of Obama's policy positions.

I'm not saying that justifies shouting "You lie!" during a presidential speech. In fact, given South Carolina's history and the mentality of many of its political leaders, I think it's probably a safe bet that racism plays a role in much of the opposition to Obama in that state.

But I honestly felt that Dowd went too far when she wrote, "[F]air or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!"

I didn't hear that unspoken word. I didn't even think of it until Dowd mentioned it. I did think, as I wrote last week, that Wilson had been discourteous. I defended his right — the same right every American has — to believe what he wanted to believe. But, if he felt absolutely compelled to express it, he picked an unacceptable time and place to do so.

And, if I had been in Wilson's shoes, I think I would have chosen a less confrontational way to express my objection than calling the president a liar.

But perhaps that isn't as out of line as it may seem, considering the current political climate.

Those on the left seem to believe that they are so obviously correct on every issue — perhaps because they believe (and, more importantly, many in the center and even some on the right also appeared to believe on Election Day) that George W. Bush's policies were so obviously proven to be wrong — that anyone who disagrees or has questions must be motivated by something else.

This prospect seems to be causing considerable angst among those who apparently believed that the election of a black president was proof beyond any doubt that racism had been overcome and that we were living in a post–racial society.

Rubbish.

You know what this reminds me of?

This actually happened. It involved what is probably my favorite book in the world. But I know that a lot of people don't read much anymore so, if it makes it more relevant to you, as you read this, mentally substitute your favorite movie or your favorite TV show or your favorite CD. Something you love with all your heart.

My story involves the book "Advise and Consent," a Pulitzer Prize–winning political novel written by Allen Drury. My mother introduced me to it when I was a teenager. I was so taken with it that I went on to read the five sequels he wrote and about half a dozen additional books he authored as well.

Anyway, I had this friend, and I wanted to share this book with him. I know, not everyone likes political novels, but this guy had shown an interest in more contemporary works in that genre, and I thought this was something special. I thought he would appreciate it as much as I did, that it might be something that we could bond over.

To my great shock, he didn't care for it. There were a number of reasons why he didn't care for it. In hindsight, I appreciate his honesty. But, at the time, I admit, I was sad. I felt let down. In an odd kind of way, I felt rejected.

In most instances, I think, the initial reaction would be to take steps to protect yourself psychologically. You might say to yourself something like, "He doesn't know a good book when he reads one, after all!" But you reassure yourself that you have exquisite taste. And that makes you feel better. You are clearly right. And anyone who disagrees, to whatever extent, is clearly wrong.

The same thing, I think, is applicable to the attitude many people have about Obama. Some people just don't like him or what he stands for or what they think he's trying to change. As Americans, they are entitled to their opinion. You may think they are wrong, but they are entitled to be wrong.

But that won't suffice for people who have invested heavily of their emotions in the success of the Obama presidency. Their book has been rejected, the one they love with all their hearts. More than that. It's the greatest book ever written. A negative response is a rejection of not just Obama but also the relationship his supporters have with him.

Because what has been rejected means so much to them, they must find a way to explain the negative reaction. Is it enough to say that rejecting any of Obama's policies is evil or stupid? No. This transgression is so bad, such a betrayal, that the only way to explain it is to label it racism.

I guess it is the only way to explain why anyone couldn't love the president they love so much. They can't understand the beliefs or the fears that others have. Therefore, they must be racists. It makes Obama's supporters feel better.

But it doesn't make it so.

I have frequently criticized Obama for not doing more to encourage job creation. Because I have written this sort of thing many times, I have been accused of racism by some of my friends on the left. Well, today I noticed that Bob Herbert, a black columnist for the New York Times, complained that Obama "took a bit of a victory lap on Wall Street" yesterday, on the anniversary of the Lehman Brothers "implosion," and reminded him how much remains to be done.

"We're hurtin' and there ain't much healin' on the horizon," he wrote.

"It's eerie to me how little attention this crisis is receiving. The poor seem to be completely out of the picture. ... The recession may be ending for some. Tell that to the unemployed."

Now, if I had written what Herbert wrote, would I have been accused of racism? Probably. But, because Herbert is black, will he be given a pass? And, if he is, isn't that an example of reverse racism?

Absence of Logic

When I was in college, I was required to take a course called "Logic."

I was a teenager from a small town (well, it was small, at the time — it is larger now) in Arkansas. I didn't realize that logic was something that was studied in a class. I thought it was something that was applied as a result of accumulated life experiences, something along the line of "if you go out in the rain and you don't wear a raincoat or use an umbrella, you will get wet."

There is a certain amount of truth in that, but I discovered that there is more to it, a lot more. As the class progressed, and even in the years since I took that class, I came to regard it as the study of the application of absolutes. I know I'm oversimplifying here, but within all the talk of validity and fallacies and empiricism, it still came down to things like this:

• All A are B.


• All B are C.


• If all A are B and all B are C, then all A are C.

The truth of that conclusion depends on the values that are given to A, B and C. For example, if A represents turkeys and B represents birds and C represents the ability to fly, we can argue, logically, that

• all turkeys are birds, which is true, and


• all birds can fly, which is not true, then


• all turkeys can fly, which definitely is not true.

Anyway, I've been thinking about logic today after reading Maureen Dowd's column in the New York Times.

Dowd was one of the first to climb aboard the Barack Obama bandwagon. I remember, in 2006, the year before Obama announced his candidacy (when everyone, it seemed, assumed Hillary Clinton would be the 2008 Democratic nominee), Dowd covered an Obama speaking engagement and, with an open microphone nearby, made a comment about the size of his ears. Obama told her that he had been sensitive about the size of his ears since his childhood, when other kids teased him. Dowd replied that she was trying to "toughen you up."

It seems to me that Dowd needed some toughening up as well. But, apparently, she didn't get it because, today, she suggests that racism is at the heart of Obama's problems with enacting his agenda.

"I've been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer ... had much to do with race. I tended to agree with some Obama advisers that Democratic presidents typically have provoked a frothing response from paranoids," she writes. "But [Joe] Wilson's shocking disrespect for the office of the president ... convinced me: Some people just can't believe a black man is president and will never accept it."

Dowd concedes that she reached this conclusion based on a word that was never uttered when Wilson shouted "You lie!" during Obama's speech to Congress.

"[F]air or not," she writes, "what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!"

From that, she determined that racism — gasp! — did not disappear when Obama was elected last November.

My goodness, what will she debunk in her next column — the myth of Santa Claus' existence, perhaps?

Well, in fairness to Dowd, a lot of people seemed to think that the election signaled the end of racism in America. I don't know what was behind this logic. Was it because of Obama's gift for public speaking? Was it because he possessed an easy and reassuring smile, an athletic build, a nonthreatening manner? I don't know. But I never bought into the utopian notion. And, now, many people seem to be disappointed that the "post–racial America" has not emerged.

Why is that?

I grew up in the South. I lived through a period of phenomenal change in racial attitudes. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the South of today is different, more enlightened — in many ways — than the South of my childhood so I know that change is possible. When I was growing up, I knew that, one day, it would come to pass that a black man could run for president and the color of his skin would not be a factor.

(And, in fact, Obama's race was rarely mentioned in the general election campaign, but that had a lot to do with the economic meltdown.)

But never for a minute did I believe that the first black president (or the first female president) would be able to overcome generations of apprehension and distrust. It will take a series of such leaders, each building on and expanding the work of those who came before, to accomplish that.

Jackie Robinson would have been quick to tell you that the first of anything is precisely that — the first. Not necessarily the best or the most influential. When Robinson broke baseball's color barrier, he made it possible for others to achieve great things. He made it possible for first Hank Aaron and then Barry Bonds to become the all–time leader in home runs.

When Hattie McDaniel broke the color barrier at the Oscars by winning best supporting actress for her performance as Mammy in "Gone With the Wind," she made it possible for other talented black actresses — Cicely Tyson, Diana Ross, Diahann Carroll, Whoopi Goldberg, Angela Bassett, Halle Berry, Alfre Woodard, Margaret Avery and Oprah Winfrey — and black actors — Sidney Poitier, James Earl Jones, Paul Winfield, Denzel Washington, Laurence Fishburne, Morgan Freeman, Will Smith, Jamie Foxx, Don Cheadle, Howard Rollins and Cuba Gooding Jr. — to be nominated.

In the years after McDaniel won her Oscar, most black nominees did not win. But, eventually, some of them did.

Obama is a trailblazer, the first black president. Whether he wins a second term, whether the candidates in his party can succeed without him at the top of the ticket in the midterm elections are the kinds of challenges every first–term president must face. Obama's task is complicated by both the severity of the problems he inherited and the fact that everything he does is evaluated under a different microscope than the one that was used for his predecessors.

Perhaps that was the main lesson I learned when I was growing up — that laws may be changed by a single legislative roll call and the stroke of a pen, but changing attitudes takes time. In some cases, it takes a lot of time.

To believe otherwise simply defies logic.

Jumping to Conclusions

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"Grant that I may not criticize my neighbor until I have walked a mile in his moccasins."

Indian prayer

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I learned many things in journalism school — the most important, probably, were the nuts and bolts of news writing and news editing.

I carried those lessons with me into most of the jobs I have held in my life, from being a general assignment reporter to working on a copy desk to instructing young journalism students and preparing them for their own careers in a field that has always been very special to me.

But today, as I read a commentary by Maria (Maki) Haberfeld at CNN.com, it occurred to me that I haven't always followed the admonition I received in journalism school — although it actually is something my parents instilled in me when I was a child — to withhold judgment until all the facts are in.

Haberfeld was writing about Barack Obama's comment during his press conference the other night that the Cambridge, Mass., police "acted stupidly" when they arrested Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. last week.

In fact, I said almost the same thing the day before Obama did in this blog.

But I have to conclude, based on Haberfeld's observations, that the president and I — and countless others — were wrong to do so. At least, at this point.

The president and many other black Americans were responding from the perspectives of those who have lived as black people in America. Given the facts that Gates is black and the arresting officer is white — and the use and frequent abuse of racial profiling is known to exist, even if it is not always acknowledged — that is an understandable reaction.

I am not black, but there have been times in my life when my actions or statements were misunderstood by people who did not know — and often did not bother to find out — all the necessary facts.

The police officer in this case was responding to a citizen's report that there appeared to be a break–in occurring at Gates' home. According to Gates, the front door of his home was jammed when he returned from a trip to China. Only Gates and the investigating police officer know how that information was relayed to the police — and whether it was complete and accurate.

With that in mind, let me share with you a couple of Haberfeld's observations. She is a professor of police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York:

"One needs to understand that the interaction between a police officer and a suspect is just part of a larger context," Haberfeld writes. "When a neighbor calls the police to report a burglary in progress and a police officer is dispatched to respond, a decision–making process begins for the officer."

That decision–making process includes the experiences police officers have had on the job. It is certainly a fact that these experiences can breed racism in some people. But, as Haberfeld points out, these experiences also play an important role for people who must respond to all kinds of situations, many of which can turn deadly at a moment's notice.

"Yes, the professor identified himself as a legitimate occupant of the premises," Haberfeld writes. "However, he was not arrested for trespassing. He was arrested for disorderly conduct.

"Police officers arriving at the scene of a suspected burglary in progress do not put down their armor of suspicion just because somebody proved to them that they are the legitimate occupants of the dwelling. ... A person usually does not break into his own house — it is true that it can happen, and it apparently did in this case — but this is not a standard behavior that, once explained to the officer, should mandate an automatic approach to put down your guard."

Police work, of course, is an extreme. Seemingly innocuous situations can get out of hand rapidly. And, while the public may be apt to forget instances when police officers are killed in the line of duty, as Haberfeld points out, "police officers carry these stories as their secret weapons."

Perhaps racism did play a role in Gates' arrest. To this point, though, is there any evidence of that, aside from the facts that the arresting officer and the person who was arrested are members of different racial groups and Gates accused the policeman of racism?

It is best to know the whole story before jumping to a conclusion. Let's wait until all the crucial questions have been asked and all the information has been gathered before handing down our verdict.

I am reminded of something.

When I was growing up, there was a popular TV series based on the Neil Simon play and movie called "The Odd Couple." Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau starred in the film; Tony Randall and Jack Klugman starred as the fussy Felix and the slovenly Oscar in the TV series.

In one episode of the TV series, Felix and Oscar were wrongfully accused of ticket scalping by an undercover policewoman who did not bother to get the whole story. So the case wound up in court.

During the proceedings, Felix acted as his own attorney. He questioned the policewoman on the stand and got her to admit that she assumed a crime was being committed.

Making use of a chalkboard in the courtroom, Felix wrote the word "ASSUME" and said, circling the appropriate sections of the word as he did so, "You should never assume. Because when you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME!"

Circumstances are not always what they appear to be.

In fairness to all, I urge the president — and any who take their cue from him — to withhold judgment until all the facts are in.

Obama Omits Arkansas From Southern Strategy

The first couple of paragraphs of Shaila Dewan's New York Times article about how the Obama campaign is making no effort to win votes in Arkansas could be describing the Arkansas in which I grew up.

"Arkansas has a Democratic governor, an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature, two Democratic United States senators and three Democratic Congressional representatives out of four," Dewan points out — which is precisely the breakdown that existed when I was in school in Arkansas 30 years ago.

The names have changed, but the party affiliations are the same.

(In the 1970s, both John McClellan and J.W. Fulbright had been representing Arkansas in the Senate for three decades. Today, the senators are Mark Pryor — son of McClellan's successor, David Pryor — and Blanche Lincoln. And Wilbur Mills represented my district in the House for nearly four decades. My old district elected a Republican for awhile, but it is again represented by a Democrat.)

Some things have changed, though. As Dewan points out, "The Democratic presidential primary ... drew 80,000 more voters than the Republican one." (Actually, according to the vote totals I've seen, the Democrats had 314,000 participants and the Republicans had about 210,000.)

When I was growing up in Arkansas, the Republican Party was virtually nonexistent in almost every corner of the state — except in presidential elections.

In Arkansas, Democratic primaries typically had enormous advantages in voter participation — in 1976, about half a million people voted in the Democratic presidential primary while less than 35,000 people participated in the Republican primary between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.

But it was a different story when November rolled around.

In the last 40 years, Arkansas has supported only two Democratic presidential nominees, Jimmy Carter (in 1976) and Bill Clinton (in 1992 and 1996) — both Southern governors, and Clinton was a native son.

But despite the Obama campaign's insistence that it is conceding none of the states to John McCain, Dewan seems baffled that Obama has, so far, devoted few campaign resources to Arkansas.

"Obama campaign officials have made much of their desire to expand the traditional Democratic playing field into states like Idaho, Indiana, Missouri and Montana and have promised they will run a 50-state campaign," Dewan writes. "But in the red-bloc South, the campaign has begun a push only in Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia."

Dewan acknowledges that Obama's campaign has some hurdles to face with the Arkansas electorate.

"In Arkansas, unlike other Southern states, Democrats have maintained dominance by keeping white, conservative, rural voters — the ones that need the most convincing by Mr. Obama — in the fold," Dewan writes.

"Arkansas’s population is whiter than the rest of the South; it is only 16% black, compared with 30% in Georgia and 21% in North Carolina. Its voters are older and less educated and include fewer transplants from outside the South."

Much has been made of efforts to register black voters in the South, but, as Dewan's figures suggest, the black voter pool isn't nearly as deep in Arkansas as it is in some Southern states.

The key to Democratic success in Arkansas lies in persuasion, not registration.

The voters who can win the state for the Democrats are already on the voter lists.

To win over the white, conservative, rural, older, less educated voters in states like Arkansas, Obama must be persuasive.

And reassuring.

These voters were not reassured by Obama's remarks on guns and religion. There are many voters in Arkansas who own guns, and there are so many churchgoers in Arkansas that (when I was growing up there, at least) it was often called the "buckle of the Bible belt." It is predominantly Protestant, primarily Baptist.

Nor were they reassured by the abrasive images of Obama's pastor and his diatribes against America.

Or when Michelle Obama said she was proud of her country "for the first time" because of her husband's success. Even if that is the way she feels, tact demands that she not say so — or, at the very least, that she find a better way to express herself.

Many of those voters, in fact, could relate to Obama's white grandmother and her confessed discomfort with black people. It was not reassuring to them to hear him dismiss her as a "typical white person."

In a presidential campaign, every little thing is magnified under a very public microscope. You can't expect to win a national election by giving off-the-cuff responses to every question that comes your way.

And appearances matter, too. Even if you don't think they should. Americans like to see American flag lapel pins on their leaders. Even if that isn't Obama's preference, is it asking too much of him to put one on, anyway? Would it be a repudiation of things he believes in?

To the rank-and-file voters, an American flag lapel pin is a symbol of commitment — the same as the presence of a ring demonstrates one's marital commitment.

Even if the truth is that neither of those symbols has much meaning anymore, wouldn't it be prudent to give in on this point — if it makes it easier for voters to support you?

Arkansas handed Obama a pretty decisive defeat in its presidential primary in February. I'm not so sure that racism was a huge factor in his loss. The Clintons, after all, have a long history in Arkansas. When the state's Democratic Party chairman was murdered this week, they could honestly speak of knowing him for many years and the personal loss they were experiencing.

Because of the hard-fought battle between Hillary and Obama for the nomination, there is a wound among some Democrats that will take time to heal. The Democrats in Arkansas are, understandably, torn between their desire to defeat the Republicans in the election — and their desire to not seem disloyal to Hillary.

One of Hillary's Arkansas supporters, who is now supporting Obama, was hesitant when asked by the Times if she would put one of Obama's signs in her yard. “Hillary threw my bridal party,” she told the Times. “So it’s just hard for me to do that. I just have to decide how far I want to go.”

You could hear similar stories in every county in Arkansas. It's been many years since they lived there, but the Clintons still have many friends in Arkansas.

The article hints at "buried racism throughout the South." Personally, I have no doubt that will be a factor in the election — and it will be part of the public response to Obama's policies, if he is elected.

And, while it will be a factor in Arkansas, it's not the only one. Remove the racial element from the equation, and Obama's record still puts him out of sync with most Arkansas voters. He has more in common, philosophically, with John Kerry and Michael Dukakis than Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

As the results in November are likely to show.

If Obama's campaign staff doesn't believe he can convince Arkansas voters that he's the kind of Democrat with whom they can be comfortable, then they are wise not to commit too many campaign resources to the state.

But if the Democrats can't be competititve in Arkansas, I believe it is extremely doubtful they can be competitive anywhere else in the South.

No matter what the black population in a given state happens to be.

Perhaps Obama's acceptance speech will help to persuade some fence-sitting voters.

It will be a tough sell for many — and a crucial test of Obama's ability to lead a nation that is divided in so many ways.

Is It Safe to Have a Sense of Humor These Days?

Charlotte Allen's opinion piece in last week's Washington Post has provoked an angry response from women who were offended by its tone.

Ombudsman Deborah Howell writes, in today's Washington Post that she, along with "[t]housands of women," found Allen's article to have the "fatal flaw of not being funny."

Howell says, "[I]t's important for provocative opinion to be in the paper, especially in Outlook, which is all commentary. And this should have nothing to do with politics. Allen is a conservative, and Outlook should pay attention to conservative opinion."

She notes that her experience has taught her "to be wary of using humor, satire or irony about gender, race or religion." I can't argue with that. Certainly, the Democratic race for president has taught me the same lesson -- over and over and over. I've been getting that from both sides of the Democratic divide for many weeks now.

Whether one agrees with Allen or not, I thought it was long past time when Democrats needed to step back and laugh a little at themselves.

Howell seems to think Allen's piece went too far. "Readers come to the newspaper looking for news, facts, analysis, opinion and a little fun," writes Howell. "They do not come to The Post to be insulted, and the paper should not deliberately print anything offensive unless it is a matter of great news significance."

Everyone has an opinion, and The Huffington Post posted several opinions on this piece. Megan Pillow, for example, wrote that Allen's article made her realize that "sometimes vintage is just a fancy name for out-of-fashion. The article certainly marks the re-emergence of an antique, but in this case, what we get isn't a hip new comeback. Instead, we've been given a moth-eaten scrap of a concept dressed up in bloviated language and sold to the public for far more than it's worth."

The Huffington Post also posted the opinion of Jacqueline Leo, who appears to indulge in some stereotyping of her own in "The Self-Hating Shrew." Leo calls Allen's article "post-feminism on hyperbolic steroids from China -- an over-the-top rant with a dose of heavy-metal poison thrown in for effect."

Allen "goes on to attack Oprah Winfrey," Leo writes. "[M]aybe it's because Winfrey didn't go to Harvard and Stanford and yet she's still richer than Allen. Next on her list: Celine Dion. I assume ... because she's a Canadian and therefore a potential illegal immigrant or terrorist, not because she sings romantic ballads in contrast to the rap and heavy metal which no doubt dominate Allen's iPod."

Jason Linkins writes, in The Huffington Post, that Allen's internet "chat" last week in defense of her article was "a mind-bending trip inside the mind of a woman who has not exercised her critical-thinking muscles ... uhm ... ever. And her weird, nutball reasoning was hardly contained to matters of gender:"

Linkins, who is a political writer for the Washington Post, didn't bother to point out that Allen has written nearly 30 articles for the Post since 1993, and this is the first one in which her intelligence and reasoning have been questioned. Does Linkins read the opinion section of his own newspaper?

Or does he only read articles with his byline?

Alex Leo told her Huffington Post readers that Allen is "a bigot."

Leo says she "cannot in good conscience read the Washington Post ever again ... I won't be missing much, the New York Times is a better paper and the internet is a faster and better way into politics, but this will be my first break with a major newspaper and it turns out they didn't lose me because 'print is dead,' they lost me because they gave a bigot a platform, defended her, tried to make it seem like she was kidding (she's not, by the way and makes that clear in this forum), and then gave her another THREE HOURS on their website to purport her hatred and inanity."

Leo goes on to play a game of semantics with Allen's column, suggesting that the piece would be regarded as "vile and base and shocking" if the assertions were racial instead of sexual.

I'm sorry that so many people were offended by the article and the fact that the Washington Post published it.

But in a campaign in which I have been called "racist" by Obama supporters and "sexist" by Clinton supporters -- all because I, who originally supported John Edwards, simply asked readers for more information about the candidates before making my decision about how to vote in last week's Texas primary -- I thought it was important for people to be able to laugh at themselves.

Maybe I was wrong.

But if I was, maybe a sense of humor has become the most noteworthy casualty in this war.

What It's All About

A friend of mine, whose opinion I value, insisted, as I was trying to decide for which candidate to vote in yesterday's Texas Democratic primary, that it wasn't about misogyny vs. racism.

Yet, lurking beneath the surface, where all those high-minded subjects -- like "hope" and "change" and who is better qualified to answer a crisis call at 3 a.m. -- were (supposedly) getting the attention, is (you guessed it) misogyny vs. racism.

And, I have the feeling that, no matter who wins the race to the Democratic nomination, those issues will influence the general election as well.

No matter how much you try to distance yourself from that with thoughts about foreign policy, health care, the economy, NAFTA and the other things that affect everyday life for everyone, misogyny and racism won't be denied their role in this campaign.

It was inevitable. A country that wants to be seen by the rest of the world as the land of opportunity for everyone hasn't been the place where women or racial minorities were taken seriously in a quest for the highest office in the land. Until now.

One way or another, we're going to have something completely new in the general election campaign. We're either going to have a white woman or a black man at the top of the ticket.

And that means we're going to have to deal with some issues that have been buried in past elections.

We're not used to this in America. Sure, we have a "first" from time to time -- but, up until now, all our presidential nominees have been white and male.

This year, we'll have a presidential nominee whose candidacy speaks to issues we haven't dealt with before -- like shattering a "glass ceiling" or truly living up to the creed that says "all men are created equal."

Once Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have resolved their fight for the Democratic nomination, those will be issues that John McCain will have to deal with as well. He may prefer to talk about winning in Iraq and loving your country -- but his opponent will speak to what the country is really about -- whether it really believes in equality.

And, after months of all this, would it surprise any of us if the majority of America's voters look at the battle now being waged between Clinton and Obama, and turn instead to McCain in a "plague on both your houses" move?

Maureen Dowd recognizes what the issues really are in this campaign. The columnist for the New York Times says, "[T]he Democratic primary has become the ultimate nightmare of liberal identity politics. All the victimizations go tripping over each other and colliding, a competition of historical guilts. People will have to choose which of America’s sins are greater, and which stain will have to be removed first. Is misogyny worse than racism, or is racism worse than misogyny?"

As America has learned -- painfully and tentatively -- in other areas, it is necessary to deal with the past before proceeding to the future.

"As it turns out," observes Dowd, "making history is actually a way of being imprisoned by history. It’s all about the past. Will America’s racial past be expunged or America’s sexist past be expunged?"

I can't answer that question.

But I can say this.

I'm glad the question is out of my hands -- for now.