Ethan Zuckerman's musings on Africa, international development
and hacking the media.
Readers of Global Voices – and of this blog – know that many Chinese people aren’t happy about western media coverage of the Tibet protests. Specifically, they’re really not happy with CNN. And April 19th is evidently slated to be “anti-CNN day” in a number of locations around the world.
Why CNN specifically? Well, Jack Cafferty’s comments didn’t help. Speaking on The Situation Room, he offered the commentary, “So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed… I think they’re basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years.” (He’s subsequently clarified that the “goons and thugs” are the Chinese government not the Chinese people. Good luck with that.)
One of the protests that could be most interesting has been organized by a group calling itself “Revenge of the Flame“. They had planned on executing a massive denial of service attack on CNN’s website, launched at 8pm Beijing time on the 19th. The cat, however, is out of the bag, and CNN has reported that they’re expecting the attack and are taking countermeasures that might make the site slow or unavailable in Asia. (In other words, they’re likely filtering requests from large sets of Asian IP addresses and preventing those IP addresses from making more than a few requests per second…) Revenge has responded by calling off the attack and threatening another one at some unannounced point in the future.
Could a group of Chinese hackers shut down CNN? My guess – they could certainly make for a very uncomfortable Saturday for CNN sysadmins, especially if they’ve gotten hold of large botnets. Will some hackers attempt to attack the site tomorrow? Probably. Will they succeed? Wait and see…
Danwei is reporting that CNN is currently blocked in China. That might be a government response to anger over Caffrey’s comments, which have oddly been raised to the status of international incident, when they should probably be dismissed as the rantings of a xenophobic blowhard. But there’s another explanation – if the Chinese government were worried about the implications of an attack by Chinese hackers on cnn.com, blocking the site at a national boundary level might be an effective defense. Assume your attacker has a botnet built mostly from compromised computers within China. It’s pretty trivial to issue a DDOS on a specific URL. It’s trickier to order that DDOS via an unblocked proxy server. Even if you can, you’re far more likely to take down that proxy server than take down cnn.com.
Not saying that’s why they’re blocking the site. Just saying that it’s an interesting possibility. And one worth watching.
The people of Zimbabwe have been waiting patiently – perhaps too patiently – to hear the outcome of elections that are now almost three weeks old. Since yesterday, they’ve been waiting to see what happens to the cargo of the An Yue Jiang.
According to the Times of London, the ship left China in late March, at roughly the time of the March 29th election. (This is London reports that the arms deal was finalized on April 1st, three days after the elections, late enough for the ZANU-PF government to know they were facing a lost or closely contested election.)
The ship carries mining cargo for Botswana, and a 77 tons of small arms destined for Zimbabwe – AK-47 rounds, rocket propelled grenades, mortar shells. There is understandable fear that this materiel could be transferred from the Zimbabwe government to pro-government militias, or simply used against by the military in attacks on citizens who demand that MDC presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangarai be allowed to take power. As “Hope” writing on “This is Zimbabwe” puts it, “We call them guns; Mugabe calls them ‘campaign materials’”.
South African President Thabo Mbeki faced international pressure to block the shipment – he and his staff argued that this was a legitimate transaction between governments, and pointed out that Zimbabwe doesn’t currently face an arms embargo. Fortunately, many South Africans disagreed with that position.
The South African Transport and Allied Workers Union, an organization that represents 300,000 South African workers, refused to unload the ship, citing concerns about arming a government that does not appear to be respecting election results. (It was briefly reported that a state-owned company, Armscor, might be asked to unload the ship over the objections of SATAWU.) And Anglican bishop Rubin Phillips, backed up by the South African Litigation Center, petitioned the Durban High Court to block the shipment. The court ordered that the ship could be offloaded, but that the cargo could not be transmitted across the South Africa/Zimbabwe border. Reuters reports that the ship has subsequently left Durban, evidently without offloading the arms.
So what now? Now we watch other Southern African ports to see whether the ship will be allowed to dock and offload elsewhere. Keep a close eye on Beira, a port city in Mozambique that’s an easy drive to Harare. It will be interesting to see whether civil society in Mozambique is capable of mobilizing as effectively as South African organizations did. Don’t bet on it.
Heh. Or maybe they’re in more of a hurry. According to a NYTimes story, “the last radio transmission the authorities heard from the ship was this: ‘Next port, Maputo,’ referring to the capital of Mozambique.” Interesting. The main roads from Maputo to Zimbabwe pass through South Africa. I still think Beira is a better bet, as it’s a straight shot from Mozambique to Zimbabwe.
It’ not very often that I find myself siding with Condoleeaza Rice. But she’s right – it’s embarrasing that the African continent’s leaders haven’t put more pressure on Robert Mugabe to step down… or at least to release election results.
South African President Thabo Mbeki, in particular, no longer looks like a fair broker in this process – continued delay looks to strengthen Mugabe’s hand and weaken Tsvangarai’s. As MDC faction leader Arthur Mutambara argued in his letter issued to celebrate Zimbabwe’s independence, “What does Mugabe need to execute his evil strategy? Just a one word answer would do: Time.” As long as Mbeki continues to insist that there’s no crisis in Zimbabwe, there’s less pressure on Mugabe, and ZANU-PF gets the time to challenge parliamentary seats, to attempt a more effective rigging of run-off elections, to portray the first round of elections as incomplete and incompetently run.
That Zimbabwe hasn’t seen violence or widespread protest gives Mugabe time as well. Had Zimbabweans responded to failure to call the election by taking to the streets, that might have strengthened MDC’s hand – the failed strike of earlier this week sends a message that the population is (understandably) tired and scared, and may not be willing to rise up should election results not be honored.
An editorial in the Christian Science Monitor asks, “Can’t he see it? Can’t Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s strongman, see that the jig is up – if not today, then in the not-too-distant future?” That strikes me as seriously naïve – at this point, the holdup is likely more about senior ZANU-PF officials and less about Mugabe himself. Even if Mugabe accepted Tsvangarai’s assurances that he’d be allowed to remain in Zimbabwe, unprosecuted, for the remainder of his life, it’s likely that many of his senior officials understand that a new government means the end of perks, salaries and protections from prosecution. Media often overfocuses on charismatic leaders, and ignores the more complex story – I suspect that’s the case with speculation about Mugabe’s personal ego and pride in relation to this situation.
With this in mind, it was particularly interesting to hear Patrick Chinamasa – former Justice minister, who lost his seat in the recent poll – accuse Morgan Tsvangarai of treason for attempting to “overthrow” the government with British collusion. Treason is a capital crime in Zimbabwe – should Chinamasa attempt to prosecute Tsvangarai for the “crime” of standing against Mugabe in an election, it could create a scenario where Tsvangarai wouldn’t be willing to return to the country.
These accusations, in turn, shackle the UK from calling more strenuously for intervention. As a former colonial power, any possible threats of interference get spun into accusations of a return to colonialism. It would have been difficult for the UK or the US to put pressure on South Africa to block a controversial shipment of arms to the government without inviting more critique of Anglo-American meddling… and, as the South African government has pointed out, there’s no trade embargo against Zimbabwe preventing the shipment from going through.
It’s hard for Britain to criticize Mugabe without being dismissed… but Mbeki, as a fellow leader who’s fought for black rule of the African continent, would carry much more weight with a critique. Let’s hope that Mbeki – who finally decided today to urge the release of election results – will show some spine.
You might have missed it, because I buried it at the bottom of the last (long) post. What follows below is a very funny radio segment from a South African morning comedy show:
(I believe this is from Darren “Whackhead” Simpson, who has a segment on a morning show on 94.7 FM in Jo’burg. Here’s a slightly different version of the segment on YouTube.)
About two thirds of the way through, you’ll hear the (fictional) Zimbabwe Embassy phone service offer an option for voters who aren’t sure if they want to vote for Mugabe or for “that colonial lapdog traitor Makoni or for the British organ-grinder monkey Tsvangarai”:
If you are not sure who you want to vote for, in other words, if you are undecided rural voter, wait for the tone and leave your physical address where one of our representative can help you make up your mind very quickly.
Unfortunately, it’s funny because it’s close to the truth. As the folks at Sokwanele have documented, there’s been widespread voter intimidation designed to “persuade” rural voters that it would be in their best interests to support ZANU-PF.
Almost three weeks after the elections, the results of the presidential race haven’t been announced, which strongly suggests that attempts to rig the election weren’t successful. (That’s suggested as well by plans to recount votes in 23 constituencies, the vast majority of which were won by MDC, giving them control of Parliament.) The logical next step would be to release results which show a close race between Tsvangarai and Mugabe, forcing a run-off election.
And there’s evidence that the run-off may be more thoroughly rigged than the first round. Chris McGreal is in Zimbabwe for the Guardian and reports on “Operation Makavhoterapapi” – a systemic effort to punish voters who voted against ZANU-PF through physical violence. The term “Makavhoterapapi” is a Shona term meaning “where did you put your cross?” McGreal reports that many voters chose polling places they believed would not be monitored by ZANU-PF to cast their votes, knowing that they’d be in danger voting for MDC at those centers.
According to McGreal, some ZANU-PF sympathisers are evidently using voting rolls to identify people who went to the “wrong” – i.e., unrigged – polling places and beating them and their families. He notes, “One feature of the beatings is that very few people are killed. It would appear that Zanu-PF has learned that deaths attract attention.”
Another report that’s attracting attention focuse on a ship that was held for some hours today before being allowed to dock in Durban. The ship is of Chinese registry and is supposed to contain arms for delivery to Zimbabwe. It’s widely speculated that the arms are for government troops and supporters, as China has continued to be a steady ally to Mugabe despite international criticism. It seems unlikely that South Africa will prevent the arms transfer, as Thabo Mbeki has continued to insist that there is “no crisis” in Zimbabwe, despite strong international pressure to twist Mugabe’s arm.
Two weeks ago, I was nervous but happy, believing we were on the verge of real change in Zimbabwe. More or less all my optimism has evaporated, a trait that I suspect is common to Zim watchers. Knox Chitiyo has a nuanced, well-informed and extremely dark prediction for the future of Zimbabwean politics in the wake of this election – a strengthened state and military which will refuse to accept the posibility of a President Tsvangarai, even if this means out and out political warfare, and abandonment of the last shreds of functional government in Zimbabwe. Let’s hope he’s wrong.
Years ago, the fellows at the Berkman Center decided that we needed a single day a week where we would all make a best-faith effort to be at the center, so we could socialize, talk about our research, share ideas and generally do whatever it is that fellows are supposed to do. By tradition, this day is Tuesday, when many of the fellows attend the Berkman lunch series, and a large number of us show up for “fellow’s hour” – an informal 90 minute roundtable.
Sometimes these roundtables are quite serious and involved, especially when a colleage is presenting new research. Sometimes… not so much.
Yesterday afternoon, I talked a bit about my fascination with Chinese pushback on western media coverage of protests in Tibet – anti-cnn.com and videos on YouTube promoting the view that Tibet is an integral part of China. I’ve argued on this blog that these are a form of bridgeblogging, and made the case that these are a form of amateur “public diplomacy” at a conference at the Fletcher School yesterday.
While my colleagues seemed somewhat interested in those arguments, what captured everyone’s attention was the phenomenon of YouTube video at fellows’ hour. David Weinberger somehow made a segue to Senator Mike Gravel’s exceedingly odd campaign video where he covers “Helter Skelter”.
(I recommend skipping the first thirty seconds and beginning once Gravel takes the stage. Gravel has released a number of interesting videos, including a cover of “Power to the People“, and two “avant-garde” pieces – a seven-minute film of a campfire called “Fire” and downright disturbing piece where Gravel stares into the camera for seventy seconds before dropping a rock into a lake and walking away. The latter two videos are the products of a pair of video professors in USC – Gravel explains that they approached the candidate and offered to make the videos for free.)
The floodgates opened, and we spent the next hour trolling the net for presidential song videos. There’s a wealth of them out there, ranging from the inspiring to the truly bizarre, ranging far beyond will.i.am’s “Yes We Can” (and the wonderful parody john.he.is) and Obama Girl (and the Obama Girl/Giuliani Girl “debate“.)
Jake Shapiro, one of my fellow fellows and the head of PRX, a project that’s helping change how independent producers access US public radio, has been collecting citizen video for the BallotVox project, a site that is covering citizen media responses to the elections. (Think of it as a domestic version of our Voices With Votes project.) He’s got a great set of videos indexed at del.icio.us, collecting people talking and singing about their candidates of choice.
It’s quite hard to find pro-Hillary and pro-McCain music videos that haven’t been produced by the campaigns themselves. Those you can find tend to be somewhat cringe-inducing. An amateur remix of the Rocky theme song to promote Hillary is reasonably painless, but it’s been watched only 4,000 times.
Watched far more often is Gene Wang’s “Hillary4U&Me“, embedded above. It’s a musical bridge back to the 20th century, arriving somewhere in the early eighties, shorly before “We Are the World”. Comments were disabled on YouTube, but it’s safe to say that’s not because they were overwhelmingly positive – the site retains a one-star review for the video. (I strongly recommend viewing the video above, then viewing one of several available videos depicting an unwary viewer watching Wang’s song.)
The song is so bad that there was a widespread blogosphere discussion about whether it had been produced by the Obama camp to critique his primary rival. Nope – it’s the brainchild of a Hillary supporter and tech entrepreneur, who admits that his may not be the most successful product in promoting his candidate: “I do agree that some of the Obama videos are better. But we have the better candidate by far.”
The pro-McCain videos, at least, were intended to be funny. Humor site 23/6 has released “It’s Raining McCain” and “Here Comes McCain Again“. It’s unclear the connection between the Arizona senator and eighties songs with rain metaphors, but there’s no debating the fact that it’s very difficult to get the image of McCain, falling like rain, out of your head.
That’s not to say that all pro-Obama videos are pain-free. It’s not especially easy to make it through magicalchaswick’s “Hey There Obama“, a moody folk song sung by a boy soprano. (I’d pay to hear him sing a duet with 12 year old Brook Pernice, who may be looking for a new candidate after her man, Mike Huckabee, withdrew despite her impassioned country-western outline of his positions and traits.)
But it’s possible that Obama’s got the greatest range of musical styles represented, from roadhouse country through reggaeton to reggae and calypso.
Some of these are clearly professionally produced – Amigos de Obama’s Tejano and Reggaeton songs have some pretty high production values, and Viva Obama (above) isn’t exactly the sort of thing you produce in your living room some afternoon. But some of the most amazing may well be, like this Bollywood masterpiece, below:
Roughly a year ago, my friend Bruno Giussani offered a prediction for the 2008 elections. In response to the pro-Obama remix of Apple’s 1984 ad, he argued, “2008 will be the campaign of user-generated swiftboating. It will be a campaign dominated by information chaos.”
I think he’s right about the chaos, and off on the swiftboating. Not that there isn’t a great deal of nasty political disinformation on YouTube. There is. But the viral nature of the medium seems to favor the spread of some videos over others. If it’s funny and/or has a good beat, it’s got a much better chance of going viral.
I did an informal timeline of Reverend Jeremiah Wright videos on YouTube, both before and after ABC broke a news story about the “God Damn America” sermons – there were videos of Wright circulating previously, but with very, very few views. After the story broke, hundreds of videos were uploaded featuring the Wright clips. It wasn’t a YouTube story until it became a mainstream media story, at which point political actors in both camps took to YouTube to play through their attacks and responses.
My significantly less serious prediction for 2008 – the winning candidate will be the one who convinces Moldovan band O-Zone to re-record “Dragostea Din Tei” as a campaign song.
“Hallo, Barack?”
I’d very much welcone any other links to music videos produced by any of the US presidential candidates… or for that matter, candidates anywhere else in the world. My comment thread is your comment thread…
A special bonus – while flooding you with videos, allow me to recommend a wonderful radio segment from South Africa parodying election rigging in Zimbabwe. Many thanks to Abdulrahman for forwarding it.
One of the very best aspects of being married to my wife is that she shares my basic theory of travel: if you don’t have anywhere to be, you might as well wander aimlessly and see what interesting things you encounter. Which is how we found ourselves exploring Perugia’s new form of public transport, the Mini Metro.
Perugia, like many Umbrian towns, is on a hill. A big, tall hill crowded with very old buildings. It’s not easy to catch a taxi in town, or drive your own car. And the town’s government would like to encourage you to leave your car somewhere down at the base of the mountain and use public transport to explore the town. So they’ve offered an unusual range of transport options to make this more appealing. In a few places around the town, you’ll discover escalators, which lead to a series of underground tunnels and then to more escalators. They’re designed to make the near-vertical hill more manageable to walkers.
And now there’s the mini-metro. It’s quite new – indeed, the locals tend to give directions in terms of bus lines, instead of suggesting you use the Metro. But it’s absolutely adorable – little silver trams, with bright red interiors, running on a red track that cuts through hillsides, ducks through tunnels, over city streets and descends from the top of Perugia down to its suburbs. Each carriage can fit about 20 people, and they’re independent of one another – it feels more like an airport shuttle than a proper metro.
(The Mini Metro appears to be the first of its kind, a project by Leitner Ropeways, an Italian company best known for its ski lift equipment. It looks like a lovely, slick, eco-friendly solution for public transport in towns that are really too small to have proper public transit. I want one in Pittsfield, MA whether we need one or not.)
So we paid our tickets and took the metro to its furthest stop, a vast parking complex on the outskirts of town. I’d figured this was an attempt to get people to drive in from the suburbs, park their cars and take the new metro in. Actually, it’s a more clever dual use than that – it’s the parking lot for the local football stadium. And the presence of hundreds of men (and perhaps a dozen women and children) in red and white suggested that a game might be about to break out.
Because travel’s all about seizing opportunities, we shouldered our way into the line and purchased tickets in the cheap seats – the Curva Nord – received tickets printed with barcodes and our names, copied from our IDs. I figured this level of ticketing complexity – plus the man-trap style turnstiles complete with barcode readers – implied a orderly and regulated football environment.
Nope. Welcome to the terraces. Our assigned seats – a fiction at best – were right in the heart of the passionate local cheering section. It’s not the best place to watch the niceties of football, but it’s a damned fine way to get a sense for what it might be like to be a fan of Italian Serie C football. Right after we’d mastered our first “Allez Perugia! Allez Forza Grifo!” cheer, our striker booted a quick, clean shot past the Sergiovese keeper – the only score of the game – and the crowd went appropriately, expressively, extremely politely nuts. For a bunch of drunk, stoned football fans, they were extremely welcoming to a bunch of Americans, including one big, balding guy who has a tendency to yell at bad calls in angry, Boston-accented English.
We stayed a half, bought ourselves a pair of Perugia football scarves, and took the Mini Metro off to the next adventure. Thanks, Perugia, it’s been good fun. Time to get back to the land of the Red Sox.
I often blog from the stage at conferences – it’s a way for me to keep track of what people are saying on stage, and a good way to stay focused. But it usually requires a cerain amount of explanation. And at the Perugia Journalism Festival, where I’m literally the only person with a laptop, it seemed like it would be over the top. Which is too bad, as some fascinating things got said during the panel I did this afternoon with two top Italian media professionals – Luca Conti of the Pandemia blog and Luca De Biase, the editor of Nóva 24, and with Jan Schaffer from J-Lab, a project currently based at the University of Maryland. Jan is a friend from the citizen media conference circuit; De Biase is someone I know by reputation and because he’s been kind enough to interview me in the past. And I got a chance to meet Conti over lunch, discovering that he’s one of the key figures in the Italian digiterati… helpful, as much of our discussion on citizen media ended up focusing on the unusual situation of the media in Italy.
As I understand it, Italian media has a reasonably strong state subsidy system, with government money available for editorial functions for publications that meet certain standards, including for periodicity. Journalism is a profession that’s regulated, in part, by a trade union, which both sets professional standards for journalists and negotiates on their behalf with regard to payment and benefits. Needless to say, this changes the background for the “journalists versus bloggers” debate that we so often deal with in the US. Luca De Biase pointed out that many bloggers are trying hard to distinguish themselves from professional journalists in Italy – I mentioned that one of the key issues in America is ensuring that American bloggers are protected with the same laws and institutions that protect journalists when (and only when) bloggers are committing acts of journalism.
Grillo addressing the crowds in Bologna
Much of the conversation centered on Italian provocateur, blogger, comedian and politician Beppe Grillo. Grillo has been an outsider for years in Italian politics, with his comedy banned from Berlusconi-owned stations. He’s become hugely influential in Italy both through popular standup comedy routines, and through a regularly updated blog. And lately, he’s been a very effective network organizer, bringing 300,000 people into the streets of Bologna to celebrate “V-day“. “V” in this case stands for “Vaffanculo” or “Fuck you”, and the day was organized to support a bill to remove Italian parliamentarians who have criminal convinctions from office. De Biase pointed out that fewer than 2% of the people who turned out in the streets of Bologna are regular Grillo readers – they found out about the event through a network of friends, often leading back to regular readers. This sort of coordinated network action is the sort of stuff that would make Clay Shirky proud, and I plugged Clay’s new book “Here Comes Everybody” to the crowd.
If you watch the video embedded above, you’ll see Grillo reference Creative Commons, copyleft and other movements designed to shake up the intellectual property establishment. De Biase and Conti talked about one of the strangest copyright provisions I’ve ever head of – an exception in Italian copyright which allows the use of copyrighted works for educational purposes so long as they’ve been “degraded” in some fashion. De Biase tells us that there’s a movement called “degradare” (I believe) that seeks to degrade and thus free works of art from copyright – he points to the story of a protester “degrading” the Mona Lisa by overlaying a reproduction with Neopolitan trash and wonders if this is sufficient degredation to free it from the Louvre’s copyright control. I would love more information on this movement, if anyone has it, especially web pointers. De Biase’s point is that legislators need to understand this medium better before attempting to regulate it, which is true of regulators in almost every nation.
Good fun. I wish it had gone on a bit longer, and, as always, wish I spoke Italian. Ah, eventually direct brain/circuit interface should make all that obselete.
Walking between sessions at the Perugia Journalism Festival, I’m passing through the Corso Vannucci, the heart of this magnificent old city. With Italian elections taking place tomorrow, the Corso has been hosting political rallies each evening. Last night was a left party represented by a global funk band; they were better than the Communists, who just featured a guy with a bullhorn yelling about the need to smash the criminal state. This morning, there was a jazz band – no idea who they represented.
Cakes representing Italian political parties at the local bakery
The session I was rushing to catch was “the Race for the White House 2008″, which features three Italian journalists as well as a historian from Columbia’s Journalism School. I’ve been fascinated to see perceptions of the US elections in the developing world through the Voices without Votes site run by Global Voices – I figured this would be a great chance to see the Italian perspective on US politics.
Mario Calabrese from La Repubblica frames this as a “spectacular election,” one with two competitive primaries and no incumbent running. He mentions the sheer size of the press corps – five major networks in the US turned out 100 people each, including 14 journalists, to cover the Iowa primaries. It’s important to consider the hundreds of millions of dollars raised, including many tiny donations for Obama. The novelty of the election is hard to underestimate – the possibility of a black president or a woman president.
Evan Cornog from the Columbia School of Journalism tries to set the election in some historical context. He points out that American political power tends to move in terms of one party being dominant over another. Democrats dominated for some time after Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Republican dominance came on after Kennedy and peaked with the Contract with America. There’s an advantage to the Democrats at present because of Bush’s unpopularity and the frustration over the war. There’s questions about “whether this will overcome an innate conservatism in the american electorate,” and a national history that’s included slavery and racism. There’s enthusiasm for Obama and speculation that he will be the nominee. On the other hand, “the notion of electing a black president is as exciting to Americans as to Europeans”, but it’s disconcerting as well.
Maurizio Molinari, the US correspondent for La Stampa, has written a book called “Democratic Cowboys”, which the moderator recommends as the preferred guide to US elections. He explains the importance of novelty in understanding this election, pointing out that Republicans have been registering as Democrats in the primaries and that “white people are voting for Obama, a concrete example of this novelty.” This may bem in part because Obama uses language similar to that used by the Republican party on faith, and has criticized Democrats for forgetting the importance of faith.
Paolo Mastrolilli, foreign editor for RAI 1 News, reminds us that the most fascinating figure in this election is McCain. “McCain is the great surprise. To stem the novelty of a woman and a black person running, the Republicans have nominated the last person you think they would nominate,” someone hated by the religious right. For McCain to win, though, he needs to win the base – the 29% of American voters who still support Bush. If he can do that and convince Independents to support him, he’ll be very hard to beat.
Molinari is interested in the conlifct in the Democratic party as a “clash between the souls of the Democratic party,” between Clinton as the anti-Republican establishment, and Obama as someone who can involve young and African-American voters. He’s amazed that neither side will back down, arguing that in any European country, we’d see a negotiated sharing of power. “The soul of America is competition” and “if you step back, you are a loser.” He reminds us that McCain’s hero is Ted Williams, who stepped away from a baseball career to fight in the Korean War. Williams, a pilot, was shot down, but refused to bail out of a plane that was in flames. When McCain asked his why he’d made this illogical decision, he explained that he wasn’t willing to lose his legs and his baseball career. That desire to take a risk and preserve his career is why he’s McCain’s hero.
Cornog is asked repeatedly whether America is ready for an African-American president. He notes that America now faces a very different racial climate, where African-Americans are CEOs of major corporations and it’s not commented on. He argues that we need to understand Obama’s candidacy in the way we understand anti-Catholic sentiment in US politics. The “Know Nothing” Party in the 1850s was based almost entirely around anti-Catholicism, reacting to Irish immigration, and fear of Catholicism was still a major factor when Kennedy ran in 1960. His speech to ministers in Texas, drawing a firm line between church and state (a line he notes that Bush has tried hard to blur), was so effective that he later ran it as a half-hour long TV ad. He speculates that Obama’s speech on race was so effective that he might consider running it as an ad. It’s unclear if the US can elect a black president, “but if anybody can get us over that hump, it’s Barack Obama.”
In turn, Cornog has a question for Molinari, wondering what aspects of US political culture are hardest to explain to an Italian audience. Molinari explains that “left and right in the US doesn’t translate to the right and left in Europe.” In the US, the right can support environmental issues in security and economic terms – that’s uncommon to hear in Italian politics. There’s a tendency, he believes, to align the US right with anti-immigration parties like Lega Nord – if you do that, you’re shocked to hear George Bush supporting amnesty for undocumented immigrants.
Mastrollilli, in turn, argues that it’s hard to get Italians to understand American nationalism and patriotism. When he asked Clinton what America should do in Afghanistan, she responded, “We have to wage war until the bitter end.” His editors were shocked that a left-wing candidate would be in favor of continued warfare.
Molinari surprised me with some of his frank language about Obama has to position himself in racial terms. “Obama wears his identity differently from his wife. His wife is far more radical. The strength of Barack Obama is that he’s African American, but that fact does not define the whole of his identity, in the same way that Kennedy was an American and a Catholic.” He constrasts Obama, “who was educated as a white, speaks as a white American,” to his wife, who’s from a dangerous part of the South Side of Chicago. He associates Michele Obama with black separtism, Reverend Wright and a version of African-American politics that can’t move beyond revenge and the civil rights struggle and predicts that if she’s a vocal force in the campaign, Obama will lose.
I’ve been interested in how little discussion of the Internet there’s been at this gathering. Mastrollilli is asked about the influence of the internet in reporting American politics – he points people to the Drudge Report, the Smoking Gun and Politico.com. He acnowledges the usefulness of US political blogs – comparing them to Italian website Dagospia, “but more serious.” Some of these blogs, he reminds us, are “run by former political reporters and are very good.” So much for a shift to citizen journalism… :-)
My Heart's In Accra by Ethan Zuckerman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Design based on Zen Minimalist template designed by Joni Mueller and Ivan Minic for Pixelita Designs.