 As many of you know, the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art opened in 2007 with the mission to raise awareness of feminism's cultural contributions and to educate new generations about the meaning of feminism and feminist art. In addition to being the home of the dinner party by Judy Chicago and ongoing changing exhibitions of feminist art, the center is a place for presentations, discussions, lectures, and dialogues on feminist activism, feminist art, and all things current on our social and political landscape. So with this in mind, I can think of nothing more important and more current than a discussion on the state of politics and the media one year after the historic election and inauguration of Barack Obama and just days after his first State of the Union address. We at the foundation and at the center are so delighted to have Courtney back to moderate her third panel discussion here. Courtney is a writer, teacher, and speaker living here in Brooklyn. Her first book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, How the Quest for Perfection is Harming Young Women, was awarded a books for a better life nomination. This year, Beacon Press will publish her next book, Do It Anyway, The New Generation of Teachers with Advocates and Activists. And Seal Press will publish her first anthology co-edited with J. Courtney Sullivan entitled Click, Moments We Became Feminists. She's widely read freelance journalist, editor at feministing.com and a senior correspondent for the American Prospect Online. Her work has appeared in Newsweek, the Christian Science Monitor, Glamour Magazine. And she contributed to the Shriver Report released by the Center for American Progress last fall. Courtney has been on Good Morning America, the Today Show, CNN, MSNBC, and quite effectively took on Villa Riley last year on the O'Reilly Factor, so hats off to you for that one. Courtney consults with social justice organizations throughout the nation, including the Ms. Foundation for Women, the National Council for Research on Women, the Women's Funding Network, and the Bartos Institute for the Constructive Engagement of Conflict. I could go on and on about her many important accomplishments, but instead I would prefer to hand the event over to Courtney so that she can introduce the fabulous roster of panelists that we have and get the discussion started. Thanks a lot, Rebecca. Thanks to the Brooklyn Museum. I'm sorry, Dr. Sackler's sick, or I would thank her specifically. She's made the Feminist Arts Center Sackler for Feminist Arts Center a really dynamic space that people haven't had a chance to go up there and check it out. She does a really amazing effort to bring in all sorts of conversations and sort of create this intersectional dialogue that I think contemporary feminism is very much about, so it's a real honor to be a part of that effort. And it's also an honor to basically just get to invite some of my smartest, funniest friends to come have a conversation with me, which is what I've done today. We have Charlton at the end here, Samita in the middle, and Ramin right next to me, and I'll read their bios more specifically when each of them presents. But I just wanna sort of put in perspective very quickly the conversation we're gonna have, and we do hope it's a conversation. So for those of you sitting there, we're not gonna talk at you very long. We're kind of, each of my buds here will do 10 minutes, and then we really do intend it to be sort of an interaction, a give and take, so please be thinking about what questions you have, what thoughts you have. But let's figure out where we're at first, right? It's a chance to reflect on and discuss Obama's first year in office. What a year it's been. Just a few numbers to put things in perspective. There have been 2,425,000 US properties which received foreclosure filings this year. The jobless rates are the highest they've ever been in 26 years. No wonder Obama used the word job as many times as he did in the State of the Union, right? $787 billion stimulus package, 80% of which has not yet been spent, but we learned this morning or last night perhaps that the economy grew 5.7% this last quarter, the fastest in six years, right? So things are still very scary, but perhaps things are looking up a little. 47 million people are uninsured. That doesn't even account for the numbers who are uninsured, and we've all watched this sort of healthcare reform process unfold. I don't know, unfold may be too graceful of a word actually for what we've been watching, but nevertheless, two months before the Iowa caucus, Obama said the following in Des Moines. The dream that so many of our generation fought for feels as if it's slowly slipping away. Most of all, we've lost faith that our leaders can or will do anything about it. Now he's become that leader, right? He's become the one that we're wondering can he do anything about it? Will he do anything about it? Let's be frank, the man has inherited a shitstorm, right? He got into office right at a moment when sort of this conglomeration of terrible things all came to a head, and the American public expected him in many ways to fix all of it immediately, or they would hate him. So present number 44 started off on a historic high with 68% job approval ratings. The Washington Post ABC News poll currently stands at 53%, with 44% disapproving. Among independents, 49% approve, which is actually the lowest of any of his recent predecessors at this point in their presidencies. So Obama's got some haters on his hand at the moment. It's also an auspicious time to be having this conversation because of the State of the Union, clearly. How many of you watched the State of the Union or read the transcript? All right, so we've got a good educated audience here. He spoke about the numbing weight of our politics, which was one of the phrases that I don't know for you, but for me, just really resonated with me, and I think it's something we'll be talking about today. This notion that perhaps it's not sort of American society that's failing, but our actual polity, right? That the government itself no longer works for the American people. There's a really interesting article in this month's Atlantic by James Fallows, in which he basically asked the question, is America going to hell, right? A very subtle question. But he goes around and he asks all of these different historians and politicians and public intellectuals, and he concludes, America, the society, is in fine shape. America, the polity, most certainly, is not. What I have been calling going to hell really means a failure to adapt, increasing difficulty in focusing on issues beyond the immediate news cycle, and an increasing gap between the real challenges and opportunities of the time and our attention, resources, and best effort. We saw this really interestingly yesterday in this House Republican retreat, in which Obama on live camera had a real discussion with a bunch of our strongest, most strident Republican leaders, and perhaps that's a sign that things are starting to unravel, that we are starting to admit that there needs to be a different kind of political dialogue, a different kind of conversation. I'm gonna ask you personally to think back to Obama's election, whether you voted for him or not. Put yourself back in that place. There are 1.8 million people gathered in chilly 27 degree weather, kind of like today, at the inauguration at the National Mall. Millions more of us watched on television or live on the web. At that moment, what did you think was gonna come out of Obama's presidency? At that moment, what did you think 2009 was gonna look like? And from that place, we'll have this conversation, sort of looking back and reflecting. A lot of us, actually all of us are involved in either creating media or analyzing media, and one of the things we all find incredibly frustrating is sort of the lack of attention span and the 24-7 news cycle and the way in which that creates a really coarse, fairly uninteresting conversation. So we're gonna attempt to be very fresh and really look back and say things from our hearts about sort of what we hoped and what happened, and we hope you'll do the same. So this can be really a conversation that transcends the kind of very disappointing news cycle that we all experience so often. As I said, we're each gonna talk, well, I'm not going to, but they're gonna talk each for 10 minutes, and then we're gonna have the group discussion. I think I'm gonna start with Charlton. Are you cool with that, Charlton? All right, so let me tell you a little about him. He's an associate professor of media, culture, and communication at New York University. The co-author of the forthcoming book, Race Appeal, The Prevalence, Purposes, and Political Implications of Racial Discourse in American Politics. Co-editor of the forthcoming Rutledge Companion to Race and Ethnicity, and the co-director of the Project on Race and Political Communication. That's at raceproject.org. Charlton has provided expert commentary on a wide range of racial issues for state, national, and international media, such as CNN, The New York Times, and PR Associated Press, Reuters TV, O'Globo, LaMonde, CTV, and many others. He's also very, very serious. I added this, Charlton, by the way. He's also very, very serious about grilling from what I hear that I have not yet tasted his burgers, which is a damn shame. And on another person that I met, Charlton, because I interviewed him for NYU Magazine, the alumni magazine, actually about a poll previous to Obama's election even. I think it had just come out of the Department of Sociology that was sort of wrestling with how folks felt about, was it okay to vote for Obama because he was black? Was it okay to vote for him from sort of this post-racial point of view that you did not vote for him because he was black, but you couldn't vote for him because he was black? And I felt like when I interviewed Charlton, he made so much sense of a lot of these things that were really quite new then in terms of real questions to be exploring. And so I've been bugging him for quotes and to be on panels ever since. So thanks for being here, Charlton. Take it away. Thank you. Is this mic, can you hear me okay up there? All right. I'm gonna begin actually with a short clip, which had turned out to be the only person to come with one today. But a short clip that we're gonna play from Michael Eric Dyson commenting on the recent Harry Reid incident, if you wanna call it that. And then we'll kind of take it away from there. Mr. Obama has a responsibility to step up to the bully pulpit that he has inherited and not to continue to be loathed to deal with the issue of race and say this is a teachable moment. Yes, we can accept the apology of Mr. Reid, but let's deal with Negro dialect. Let's deal with the fact of light skin versus dark skin and let's teach America about some of these more vicious and invidious issues. Otherwise, they do look like hypocrites in my book. And let me tell you this, I think we should push the president. This president runs from race like a black man runs from a cop. What we have to do is to ask Mr. Obama to stand up and use his bully pulpit to help us. He is loath to speak about race, Tamron. As a result of that, his disinclination to speak about race means that he won't even take this teachable moment to help America understand. And he shouldn't do that as a black man, by the way. He should do that because he's president of the United States of America. We're out of time and I certainly appreciate it, but Professor Dyson, I will have to ask you, are you gonna apologize now for saying that the president runs like a black man from the cops or are you sticking by that one? I'm sticking by that because the brother runs very well and he's running like a brother running from a cop. Thank you both, I greatly appreciate it. Thank you both. Hot topic this morning, wow. All right, I show that mainly for comedic purposes. I'm the funny one in the group, right? But I showed this clip really because it speaks to what I've really been thinking about. I'm one of those folks who, with Obama's election, had hopes when it came to the issue of race, had high hopes when it came to the issue of race and having Obama be able to perhaps start or continue what I thought might be a more productive conversation about race here in the United States. Of course, Obama dazzled us and dazzled the American public with his 2008 race speech. People had high hopes for Obama, this person most poised to bridge the racial divide and after centuries of racial animosity, usher in an age of racial harmony. He was a post-racial, the trans-racial, the super-racial candidate and when we elected him, many declared that we are all post-racial now. Able to escape the trappings of racial thinking and talk more openly and honestly about race. Many, of course, expected Obama to lead this charge. But throughout his first year, a familiar pattern emerged whether it was criticisms about Justice Sotomayor's wise Latina statement, Henry Gates's claims of racial profiling or Harry Reid's talk of light-skinned negroes, racial controversy erupted. Silence from Obama usually followed. Next came vociferous criticism from those expecting Obama to shoulder the responsibility of instigating a national dialogue about race, as can be clearly seen here with Mr. Dyson. But it is unfair to expect Obama to be America's porter-in-chief, carrying the weight of the nation's racial baggage. It is simply not his role. To the degree that he owns the bully pulpit that comes with his presidency, he has obliged to use it for purposes originally and popularly intended. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about FDR's New Deal, Kennedy Space Race, Johnson's Great Society, or Reagan's Arms Race. The audacity of presidents to skirt congressional deliberation to build up public opinion and goodwill among the American people has always been in the service of building national policy, not a national teach-in on how to bridge group differences. Beyond that being his role, leading a national dialogue about race would be disastrous for both Obama and the country from the standpoint of both politics and race. The sharp ideological and political party distinctions magnified in Obama's first year, dooms any such national dialogue, especially if Obama is the one leading it. I think we sometimes forget that while Obama dwarfed McCain in electoral votes in the last election, he defeated him by only seven percentage points in the popular vote. And most whites, in part because many of them were Republicans voted for John McCain. At the beginning of Obama's presidency, Democrats, by more than a 22% margin over Republicans, said things will get better for blacks in the next four years. By margins of 35, 32, and 15%, respectively, Democrats, more than Republicans, said that the Voting Rights Act is still necessary, said that they were influenced by Martin Luther King's dreams and his legacy, and believed that we can still fulfill that dream. Even more telling is a divided national response to the year's racial controversies. When critics pointed out the racist overtones expressed at the Republican Tea Party rallies across the country during the healthcare debate, conservative mouthpieces like Rush Limbaugh glint back and down to the rank and file, Stalin started calling their critics racist, many saying Obama was the racist in chief among them all. When Obama later defended Professor Henry Gates, calling attention to issues of racial profiling, Obama's conservative detractors used it as evidence that Obama really does have a secret chip on his shoulder and really wants to secretly do to whites what whites did to American slaves. In such an ideological and politically divisive environment, any attempt for Obama to call for and lead a national conversation about race will be discounted and sullied by the same kind of toxic partisan and ideological divisiveness that defines our nation's persistent racial problems. But even if Obama did shoulder this responsibility and even if the country were not so sharply divided by anything else but race, President Obama still is not the person best suited to lead this kind of national dialogue about race. No matter how national in scope and effective dialogue comes down to a few people sitting down face to face talking, listening and understanding. They may disagree but they agree to keep talking. This kind of dialogue, the kind we really need to have about race is best facilitated not by a president but by pastors, priests, rabbis, teachers, coaches, mentors, heads of fraternal organizations, leaders of self-help groups. These are the people of best capable of leading, building and continuing a lasting and productive dialogue about race. Those who are not entangled in partisan politics or in and out of office in four years were more importantly subject to the sensational whims of mass media. Time and again the media and partisan public figures demonstrate their inability to lead this conversation. Over and over we see a familiar pattern of how the news media and political figures frame racial conversation. We go back to Harry Reid here. Democrats defended his statements, Republicans rebuked him interestingly enough but both sides are missing their real point. First while intent might matter in a court of law, it means little when it comes to race. Racism and the damage statements like Senator Reid's and others can and do have. Second members of both parties share the same fundamental racial hypocrisies. Yet the media and political figures spend their time playing pin their tail on the racist. That is the only thing that is important when one of these so-called teachable moments occurs is Harry Reid really a racist. Who's the racist here? Republicans say no, the Democrats are racist and Democrats say oh, Republicans are racist whenever we have a chance to pick one up and hang that label over them. The media and political figures in both parties would rather squabble over debate and divine the complexities of particular individual's racial motives. Each wants to gain the moral high ground to demonize the other for being racist. Yet while doing so, each conveniently and conspicuously avoid something far more important and that is doing something that changes the fundamental systemic racism that continues to play the United States. Republicans do so because they are in denial, hiding behind the thin veneer of colorblindness to avoid action. Democrats on the other hand, as the last few months of the healthcare debate has shown, perhaps simply don't have the stomach for it. Both however, apparently recognize that it takes a lot less time, effort, and investment to call each other racist every chance they get than it does to actually try to debate and discuss how to really end or address racism. At the beginning of his tenure, Attorney General Eric Holder made a controversial statement that America is a nation of cowards who are refusing to talk about race. But Holder was wrong. It's not so much that we don't want to talk about race. We simply don't know how to do so. Until we learn to talk about race in more proactive and productive ways, Obama's best contribution to improving race relations in this country is to focus, as incidentally he always has, on shaping public policy that seeks to ameliorate racial disparities and improving equal opportunity. I'm gonna stop there. Thank you. Thank you. He's a 29 year old segment producer at The Daily Show with John Stewart, perhaps the most trusted man in news right now, right? He's actually a comedian. He'll gladly explain what that means, segment producer, if you ask him. Since graduating from Columbia University in 2002, he has started an online financial news service called New Ratings. Council juvenile delinquents in the East LA and worked for real time with Bill Maher. When he's not disemboweling the media and dismembering Washington politicians through his work at The Daily Show, he likes to run long distances and play with his twin niece and nephew, the cutest little people on the planet, which I can affirm. He also recently had a big success. A lot of his job ends up being sort of to play the watchdog in the media that media used to be, right? Journalists used to be watchdogs now. Comedians are watchdogging the journalists. He noticed that Hannity had been using visual footage that was actually not from the protest he was actually covering because of the weather you noticed, right? Yeah. Right, so he brought it to the attention of Stewart and the whole team and they decided to do a bit of a segment on it. They did this segment and Hannity actually apologized on his show sort of owning up to the fact that they hadn't been very exact with the visuals, the footage they were using there. So that was actually Ramin who caught that. He's also one of my best friends on earth. So I'm excited to share him with you here today. And he's gonna talk about particularly the media but also this question that I brought up earlier about sort of the structure of politics, the way those conversations are happening and sort of the failure of journalism to actually do its job. So without further ado, Ramin. Howdy. What was great too about that Hannity apology was that he apologized to John and not to his viewers which is... I don't need to hear that. So last year I spoke mainly on how often a politician goes on a cable news show and just basically says, recites talking points and they are most often unchallenged. Sometimes what they say is true, sometimes it's not, most often not. And one year later, I'm proud to report nothing has changed. So let me just give you a recent example. Our ex-mayor Rudy Giuliani went on this week with George Stephanopoulos, actually it was GMA, sorry. And he said, I quote, we had no domestic attacks under Bush. We've had one under Obama. This is Rudy Giuliani saying this, the guy who made his career off of our domestic attack. So George Stephanopoulos says nothing to that. He didn't challenge it, he just let it go. Giuliani also said after the State of the Union, he said at least, he said the least about national security than any American president I can recall at a time in which we were at war with Islamic terrorists. And notice once again, he never used that word. This is like Franklin Roosevelt during the Second World War not mentioning Nazis and not mentioning war. He did say terrorists three times. I mean, you can count it doesn't matter but he was unchallenged on that point as well. And this goes on all day. You can talk about why it happens. They have a lot of time to fill. They're tweeting, they're not listening. They want the person to come back on the show so they don't wanna piss them off. Who knows? But at this point they've become basically conduits for talking points. They just sit there, allow anyone to say what they wanna say and move on to the next segment. These talking points they get out, they seep into the media's consciousness. The media builds a narrative. You may hear an Obama opponent go out there and say that he's not showing enough leadership. He's not tough enough. And then you hear the media ask, is Obama tough enough? Can he save his agenda? So you start worrying. So I'll admit after the Scott Brown win, I was one of those people. Yeah, I watch this stuff every day, morning, tonight. And I got caught up in this whole like, God, he's Scott Brown, like they're building momentum and they're tasting blood and now they're gonna go into the midterms and he's just not getting his message out and he's not communicating and I'm just getting all worried. So I came into this panel early this week thinking, I'm gonna have some choice words for Obama. I just don't, I don't think he's doing it. And then he gave the State of the Union and he did his Obama thing, like he booed me. He, you know, he, you know, he starts smiling and he's joking and I think he looked up at Michelle and he said, thanks honey. And you know, and he's just out there and he's, you know, he's making fun of Republicans, he's Democrats, Supreme Court, he's going after everyone and I'm just, you know, I just felt like I was home again and I feel like that's his, that's his thing. You know, he, when his, when shit gets out of control, he is able to kind of, you know, bring everyone in and just, you know, always with a speech, but just kind of bring everyone gather around and just be like, shh, you know, just kind of, it's all, it's all pulling in right now. And you know, he did that with, you know, if you want to go back to the race speech, you know, Reverend Wright, everyone was saying, those videos came out and Obama's a radical and he doesn't, his judgment is terrible. How could he sit in that, in those pews for that long and you know, the media was just, it was going out of control, it was crazy and everyone's bearing down on Obama and then he gives the race speech and you're like, cool, that's, we're good on that. All right. Moving on, you know, it's like, his grandmother was racist, it's all good. So, you know, and then you saw it with, with Afghanistan where he was getting criticized for dithering and you know, he's taken too long and he's putting our troops in danger and then when he did commit troops, it was, you know, he's hawkish now. He's continuing Bush's policies. He's not that different than Bush and he's not the progressive, we thought he was and all this stuff and then he, you know, gives the Nobel Prize speech and talks about a just war and you know, lays out this whole history and all of a sudden you're like, yeah, war is cool. Yeah, like I'm down, let's do war. And then, you know, the healthcare as well, you know, people with death panels and you know, we're gonna pull the plug on grandma and all this stuff is going on and the media is running wild and going nuts and then, you know, he gave a presser in the summer which the Gates thing ended up kind of derailing but and then he gave his address to Congress which you lie ended up derailing but you know, that was his kind of attempt to bring it back to kind of get the media on the same page and spell out the narrative so that it's not spelled out for him. And he did it again in the State of the Union but I think with the central issue now being the economy, it's hard to do that. I mean, the economy is in numbers, it's not in talking points so he can't go out there and convince people that it's cool to be unemployed, you know, or that it's okay and there's no speech that he can give, I think going forward that will, you know, make jobs appear or will, you know, turn the economy around. And so I think it's just interesting to kind of take note of this moment where his chief weapon being, you know, his ability to give a great speech is kind of rendered, you know, unusable. I just don't know if he can give a speech that will help. So his rhetoric I think has kind of reached a limit and I just wonder, you know, what will happen going forward with the economy because I just don't think it's under his control. So, yeah. Well, you say a little bit more about the media and the accountability issue. Have you seen that get worse over the last year? Do you think that shows like The Daily Show are the only ones holding people accountable? Yeah, I mean, it's. Oh, actually, and talk about what you said earlier about the house, the whole thing that went down yesterday and how Obama's like the journalist in chief. Well, that might be on the show. I don't know. It's a special preview for this. Yeah, a special preview and the camera rolling. So, no, I think, hell, yeah. Well, Obama, if you saw yesterday, he went before the House leadership, Republican leadership at a retreat they had in Baltimore and basically just smack them down left and right. It was amazing to see. You should go watch it on YouTube. It's pretty impressive. They let cameras in and he, you know, just someone would get up there and ask him a question and kind of recite talking points, Republican talking points on various issues. And he would just say, that's a talking point. That's not, you're doing this to get reelected. You're just one after the other. And so I think one of the points we're probably gonna make on Monday's show is that he is the journalist. You know, he's the journalist in chief now. He's the guy who's responding the way news anchors should be responding when they hear something like that. So it's just, just thought that was pretty interesting. Sorry. Don't blog about it. Don't blog, no one blog about that. All right. Don't tweet that. Yeah, don't, please, don't tweet that. No Twitter, Twitter about that. Twitter tweeting, yeah. All right, thank you very much, Ramine. I'll give her that. And last but certainly not least is Samita. She is the 31 year old writer, educator and activist. I know her because of our shared work at feministing.com, which for those of you who don't know is the most widely read feminist publication in the world. We're very excited to know. We were shocked when we found that out. Samita has this incredible sort of voice and place in the blog. One of the one who writes often the most controversial posts, often the posts that people say, what does this have to do with feminism? And those are the folks who don't know enough about kind of the contemporary perception that feminism is really about race and class and gender and all these intersectional issues coming together that we can no longer just talk about women and men or just about gender and expect there to be a really radical conversation. So I encourage you to come check out her voice, come check out the topics that she's choosing because she's carved out this really important place in the blogosphere with her voice. She's now the executive editor of Feministing, in fact. She is also the web manager at the Center for Media Justice an Oakland-based organization. She has a bachelor's degree in sociology and women's studies from SUNY Albany and a master's degree in women's studies from San Francisco State, which is focused on blogging, gender, social networking technology and activism. I recently sat on a panel with her where we started talking about some of these issues and I was like, oh, you've really thought about this stuff. I was just sitting in my pajamas talking about my cat, but she's actually thought a lot about why this stuff is really radical and important. She's written for New American Media Wiretap Color Lines, The Nation and the American Prospect. In 2007, she was named a champion of sexual literacy by the National Sexuality Resource Center. She focuses most of her writing on popular culture, race, gender, the prison industrial complex and my personal favorite in her bio, the romantic industrial complex. If you're wondering what that is, stick around. That's like panel part two, the romantic industrial complex. Samita's gonna focus particularly on Michelle Obama and sort of the ways in which Michelle has become this really interesting symbol over the last year and the ways in which she is and is not maybe living up to the potential of that symbology, so take it away, Samita. Thank you, Courtney. Can you guys hear me? Yeah, that was quite the introduction. I'm really excited to be here. So yeah, I'm kind of gonna veer off and talk about, so I'm really interested in stories and the way that narratives are produced around race and gender and how we understand these kind of public figures. And I think that there's obviously a lot to be said about the role of gender in the Obama administration and that's one thing that I think we could talk about a lot, but then there's that whole question of, but he has all these other pressing issues to worry about. So let's not talk about gender right now. So I'm kind of more interested in, and it's been interesting what Ramina's saying, how many different things I felt this week alone about Obama, because this week I started, I was talking to all my radical organizer friends in Oakland and I was like, no, enough is enough. We threw our support behind him and like, this is crazy, stop telling us we need to organize. You guys need to be accountable, whatever. And then the State of the Union happened and I still kind of felt, you're kind of a bully, but okay, I see what's going on. But this kind of range of emotions that I'm feeling. And I think that the one moment that really captured the contradiction of feelings is when Chris Matthews said after the speech that he forgot that Obama was black because the speech was so good. And I think that that, so a writer for the Atlantic Monthly, Tanahashi Coates, wrote really articulately about how because the kind of black experience is so not projected in this complex way in mainstream media, people don't have a variety of kind of discourses to draw from, and so they're like, oh, they equate being articulate and well-dressed and knowing how to do your job as white qualities. And like nobody ever forgets you're black when you're incarcerated, right? So I thought that kind of, that little juxtaposition really spoke to what I'm feeling in terms of feeling like I need to defend the first black president and first lady and then also hold them accountable for all these decisions that I feel he's making that are not good for my community or the folks that I work with. So that said, I'm interested in Michelle and kind of the role and the transformation that she's had over the last kind of three years that I would say, and I think if you can think back to when the campaign first started, she was a little bit more mouthy. Like she would say stuff that was a lot more controversial. I can't remember where the interview was, but she said, she's like, well, Obama's a black man. He could get shot at the gas station or something. She said something really controversial and everyone was like, oh my God, she's like this maniacal, angry black woman. She'll never make it to the White House. And the campaign tapped down on that pretty quick. Like they were like, uh-uh, it's not going down that way. And so she was, you know, her even just speaking the truth or whatever she was saying, it was perceived as kind of, you know, angry and militant and castrating. So she was very much coiffed and they put her in a lot of Jackie O. outfits and all of a sudden she was demure. And all of a sudden people were shocked that she was so successful. And then she had a degree from Harvard. You know, she has a law degree from Harvard. And you know, because there was no narrative to draw from there was either the kind of angry militant black woman or the kind of Claire Huckstable, you know, and Claire Huckstable, I mean, let's be real, what's that, 20 years ago now? I mean, people were just like, they didn't have like a bank of images to kind of draw from. And so kind of starting with that momentum, like I just remember a series of interviews actually even on the Daily Show where like she would just be like, yeah, everything in the campaign is really nice. It's just all really nice. Sarah Palin's really nice. And I'm like, look, you have a Harvard law degree. I know you don't think that, but like she didn't have the opportunity and like she couldn't really, you know, speak to what she was actually going through in the campaign. And you kind of see this through her media coverage. Like first she's saying some things that are a little controversial. And then it's like, I think people should eat organic food, you know, and it's like, what? I know you think more than that. So after the election, I think, you know, as a feminist writer, you know, the first lady is not exactly the kind of end all be all of like feminist accomplishment, right? Like it's a very spectacle position. It kind of symbolizes, you know, it symbolizes a visual cue of what femininity is for the country, right? It symbolizes motherhood. And I Wikipediaed Michelle for this presentation and you know, under accomplishments, the first thing is fashion. It's like notable fashion contributions. And then the second like kind of like footnote is issues she's working on. And you know, again, she has a Harvard law degree. So, you know, it's kind of the way that she's been put into this position where she has to kind of reflect these very feminine ideals. So it's not to be threatening. And I think, you know, as a pop culture analyst, those are really exciting things, right? Like she defies some normative standards of beauty, right? She's, you know, not blonde. I mean, she doesn't look like Jacqueline Kennedy, no matter how many kind of like Chanel couture dresses we put her in. So, you know, there is this kind of like, she is pushing against normative understandings of beauty, but then she also kind of reinforces them because, you know, she has this very kind of like preppy look and, you know, whatever. So I think that's a piece of her kind of spectacle making is the way that she looks and how that influences young women. And it's so interesting. Like it's doppelganger week on Facebook. So you have to like pick pictures of who you look like. Don't pretend you don't know. Everyone's like, oh, I don't know. I'm not on Facebook. And so like I was all distraught because like I couldn't find a celebrity that looked like me. And so I'm like asking and people are leaving all these ridiculous comments like Christina Ricci and I'm like, no, that's wrong. Someone else said Madonna. And then someone else said 1970s Pam Grier. And I was like, you know, and I'm grown. Like I was like, you know, it's really frustrating. There's no one in the media that looks like me. And you know, and so thinking about like what she symbolizes, you know, for young women of color and for women that are, you know, looking to be successful and like want to go into politics and this kind of stuff. It's like the only way for me is this kind of like overly feminine role. So I think that's like one of the spectacle pieces of her. And then another is her kind of role as mother and not only national mother as the first lady, but also, you know, as kind of what she's talks about about the kind of like importance of motherhood. And Melissa Harris Lacewell, an amazing writer if you haven't checked her out, she wrote about this kind of cycle of bad, like villainized black mothers in the media. And you know, this fear that she had that when Michelle came into the White House that there would be this kind of like all of a sudden, you know, there'd be all this Claire Huckstable imagery like, okay, the coiffed mother that can do it all, you know, but that actually didn't happen. So there was this like the cycle of kind of villainized black motherhood continued. And interestingly in contrast to kind of Sarah Palin and her motherhood choices that were considered really off limits, right? Like, you know, she has five children. She has a daughter who had a child out of wedlock, a teenage daughter. If Sarah Palin had been black, how different would that conversation have been, right? So, or if Michelle had five children and a daughter with a child out of wedlock, would they even, would she even be considered a potential contestant for a first lady? So, you know, Lacewell kind of draws the point that white motherhood is still the kind of land of opportunity, it's still the kind of potential to reconstruct the American nation, but black motherhood is a failure. So it's interesting that those competing discourses are still happening despite the fact that we have this kind of first lady who's very much like I can do it all and garden. So the last kind of, am I going over on that? No, no, you're not. So the last thing, I think in terms of her role as spectacle is the issues that she's chosen to take. And, you know, and I know, I just feel like I know a lot of motivated people, women of color, and I just feel like after having done all this education, their top, you know, political priority wouldn't be obesity, which is what she just announced last week is gonna be her big campaign for this year. And kind of falling in line with what all first ladies have taken on is campaigns of personal accountability, right? Like don't do drugs, you know, volunteer in your community, you know, go to church if that's the case, or eat well, eat organic, whatever. So there was a moment in the state of the union on Wednesday where Obama was like, and Michelle's working on, you know, obesity. And he was like, she gets a little bit embarrassed, you know? And so I was doing a live chat on this blog called Post-Boojee, which you should also check out. And I wrote, I was like, I think she's embarrassed that she's using her Harvard law degree to solve obesity. And all these people got really upset. She tells me like it is, I'm done. All these people got really upset. They're like, well, if she had a state school degree, would that matter more? And I was like, look, I have a state school degree. And I was like, that's not what I'm saying, you know? But this kind of question of what is considered relegated to like feminine issues versus masculine issues. And, you know, somebody else was like, well, you know, children's issues are really important issues. And I was like, yeah, but like, how would you feel if like Obama started the state of the union, like we really need to focus on obesity? You know, you'd be like, oh, great, you're tripping. Like we are doomed, you know? And that's not to say that there isn't this big conversation that needs to happen with the food industry and the healthcare industry and all these kind of like larger political issues. But the way that they're kind of depoliticized to become feminine and domestic issues, I think is the interesting part of it. So that's my take on Michelle Obama. Awesome, thank you. Well, it's interesting, as I'm listening to everyone, I was thinking about one thing that certainly hasn't changed from a year ago is that we're all taking politics very personally, right? You heard it every single person up here talking about like their own emotional roller coaster of the last week and granted we all write and talk about politics. But I think one of the things we've really seen is that the excitement that that totally unprecedented election season created among regular Americans about their own government has really been sustained in a lot of ways. That there has been a sort of engagement in the political sort of, you know, the sort of project of citizenry that we haven't seen in years, right? It may not look like some of us up here would like it to look, i.e. the burthers or the tea baggers, et cetera, but there is sort of this impulse to take this stuff very, very personally in a way that I think we probably wouldn't have seen years ago. And I think also is a real product of Obama's world view, his political view, right? He thinks that salvation lies in the engaged citizen and he's always said that. He always sort of turns back on the citizen. You know, when we were sort of turning him into a deity, he's constantly talked about over and over in his speeches about the fact that it lies in the citizenry, that the solutions lie in people and regular Americans caring about and advocating for themselves. On that note, I wanted to follow up with Charlton with one question. The sort of end of your talk, you said, you know, basically the way the government and the way that media are structured right now, we can't have a quality conversation about race. We should have it in other places. Families, community centers, classrooms, I'm assuming, are some of the places you were thinking about. Do you think it's okay for us to sort of give up on the idea of having quality conversations about race in mainstream media or do you think there's something we need to be doing sort of as consumers to demand something different or are you sort of in the mind look like we've tried? It's not gonna happen. Let's like go to our respective sort of regional places and have these conversations, but don't look to the media to ever get it right. There's a sort of yes or no, I think, to that question and one is out of my cynicism that the media can and will ever change, but I would think primarily, no, we shouldn't give up on that. I mean, when you think about the fact that there's so many news outlets and that they're doing stuff 24 hours a day, there's no reason why the news media can't really structure and be the sort of leader in proactive kinds of discussions about race. I mean, think about all the crazy stuff we spend our time talking about. The media spends its time focusing on. So I think that there's, the possibility is there and we shouldn't give up on it. I think we have to figure out some way of getting media institutions to say, hey, there's something more important than just the kind of gotcha thing and the sensationalism and once that's over, why not have some kind of a conversation which you've got access to viewers and listeners use that in a more productive way. Yeah, and it may come down to an issue of economics and funding, right? Like if we're funding media that isn't based on controversy and ratings and shock and awe, you see the most interesting things about race on PBS, on these channels that are publicly funded for the most part. So there may be have to be a whole shift in how we fund those things. On that note, Samita, I wanted to ask you sort of from the blog, sort of alternative media point of view, this idea that kind of why do you think, or maybe you do think this is happening, but from my point of view, it's not happening enough that kind of the margins of media, the racial issues and all these other great blogs that are analyzing race issues in a really complex way, why aren't they influencing the big mainstream media more? Because one of the things that feminists thing that we found is one tool that we really are able to sometimes influence the way CNN, for example, frames the story because CNN producers read feminists thing and then they'll call up and say, either to get one of us on the show, but also say, you know, we thought that was a really interesting take on this issue. We didn't even think of that as a story, but you guys wrote about it and now we think of that as a story, right? So an interesting way that sort of on the margins we're able to influence the mainstream, but I don't see that happening as much with race. Maybe I'm missing it, but sort of like the race analysis. Yeah, I mean, I think there's like a couple of different things. I think the blogs in particular that you mentioned are a little bit academic and longer, right, form. So I think that tends to be harder, like feminists saying it's like small posts that I think are easier for producers that are, I mean, I'm sure Romain, you could speak to like how much media you're combing daily to put a segment together. It's like, you know, you want five sentences, you don't want a dissertation, right? That's part of it, but I also think that they're kind, like, I think the media thinks they deal with race well. Like I don't feel like they think they need advice on it, right? Like I really do, because you know, I think the New York Times was proud of themselves that for so much of the campaign and the election, they were writing about race on the front page, even though these conversations were terrible, right? Like all the kind of race, gender conversations on the front page of the New York Times were, I mean, if you study race and gender at all, you're just like, what are you talking about? You know, it's just, even in the op ed sections and that kind of stuff, like it was, you know, people didn't feel like they need like an extra kind of, they didn't feel like they needed extra resources because it's really a question of the spectacle, right? So it's like, that person's a racist, a spectacle. You know, that person's not a racist. That's, you know, this person doing this. So it's not this kind of really fleshed out or deep conversation. It's really just this kind of flat, like, I mean, yeah. Did you happen to see on CNN, TJ Holmes did a story about Swagga this past year and he interviewed five- And it wasn't a Saturday Night Live special. It was amazing. It was so painful. It was, he interviewed five black men of, you know, bearing ages and about what Swagga is. And it was, I mean, this is like them tackling the racist. Right, exactly. This is what they thought. This was like a big piece. Like, yeah, we're getting like Swagga. Yeah, let's do it. You know, let's get into this. So yeah, that's the state of race discourse. Yeah, and to kind of just add to that, I think one of the things that TV producers and news and journalists look to blogs for is sources, right? And so they're like, well, we have people of color to talk to you. And so it's like, oh, well, let's go look for women at like a feminist blog, let's go, you know, so it's kind of not necessarily that they're looking for the analysis as much as they're kind of looking for sources. Right, yeah, which again puts some of this back on the folks who get called to do these spots, like our original clip, like that's a real, he's talking about Obama using a bully pulpit, but he actually has a bully pulpit in that moment to say something more complex than, you know. But they're not challenging what they say. I mean, they bring them on just to get a, he said, she said, you know, and you have this view, you have this view, say them, great. Okay, we're good. You know, we did our job, we presented both sides, but what analysis did you do? Like what did you have to say about it? You know, what, where do we go from there? How do we merge these ideas? How do we, you know. And as someone who's been in that position myself, the structure of the show makes it almost impossible to try to say something more than what's, and maybe I'm not as skilled as some of the people who do this constantly, but I find I leave those shows and feel like if all I can do is try to say one mildly complex thing or one unintended, you know, able to bridge from a really stupid question to something that actually adds the conversation that I'm happy, but I never go in or leave expecting to have any freedom to actually have a real conversation or make a point. Can I just jump to something real quick there, just an interesting interaction I have in that point in getting interviewed at CNN once on this issue of it was one of those blackface issues with the Vogue France I think it was back this last year. And I forget the reporter's name is Jason, he's a really light-skinned black guy, curly hair. And so off camera before the interview, we start this long conversation as he's trying to figure out what I'm gonna say. And so forth, and we had this very deep conversation it was evident that he had researched this topic, had a lot of good questions. And then of course, there's about a 25 second sound bite of mine that makes it on the thing. And I'm like, why couldn't that whole conversation that came before be on, you know? But there's- What else is going on? They have all the time in the world. What else is going on? They show it. Three more minutes and you have something productive but the structure again as you say. Yeah, there's sort of like a tyranny of low expectations. I think among a lot of television producers working in that 24-7 news cycle, I'd probably underfunding and overwork in all those issues play a role too. We could really get off on media obviously because that's a lot of what a lot of us think about. But I wanna pull it back to Obama, Ramin and ask you, you talk about being sort of soothed by Obama's amazing rhetorical skills. Wooed, I think was the word he is. Do you think there's a danger in that? Do you think his incredible charisma as a public speaker is somewhat equitable with his capacity to create policy and be a leader and motivate not just us to wanna trust him but the actual kind of legislators that he's supposed to be corraling at the moment. Yeah, I'm not sure they see him as an effective legislator. I think they see him as an effective communicator or speaker but he didn't spend much time in the Senate. I'm not sure how much Pelosi and Reid think that he is an effective legislator. We know Biden likes him because he's sitting behind with that shit eating grin the entire state of the union. That guy's got a great smile. But I think this is the point where he has to demonstrate that he can be an effective legislator. He has to not communicate to us but communicate to them, especially with healthcare, what he wants, what specifically he wants and whether that's trimming it down to fewer things or whatever that might be. But... And do you think his intervention yesterday, like those kinds of interactions will make him a better legislator? Like, do you think they will allow him to actually influence some of those guys that he was sort of calling to the carpet? Well, sure. I think he's calling the Republican bluff. He's putting them on the spot and he's gonna force them to vote on things that he wants to do this jobs bill and it has tax cuts in it. So, do they support the jobs or are they gonna be against tax cuts? So he's forcing, I think there's gonna be a lot more of that, hopefully. Yeah, but there's something to be said for someone who could speak really well. I mean, it goes a long way. I mean, that's your job. Yeah, and you can make the argument that that job has become even more a job of symbolism than ever before. I think someone on MSNBC, Howard Feynman on MSNBC said, if a presidency could be just based on, could be judged just on how you speak, they'd already be like chiseling Mount Rushmore for him. Yeah. I mean, he's that good. Yeah. So. So questions from the audience, please join our conversation. Thoughts or questions? I think there's Mike's set up, right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, there's one over here. I don't feel like there's one over there. Come on, smart people. I know half of you and I know how smart you are, so you can't pretend that you don't have questions. First brave soul over there. I've got one. Yes. Hello, and it's for the sister. There is an article in Essence right now. I believe it's out this month and it's about this whole Michelle Obama gardening thing. But it takes a look at it from a different perspective. The concept being a whole bunch of feminists have written in saying, hey, Michelle's doing this gardening thing, she's lightened up and I mean, what happened? It's about her arms, this and that now. And the response says, okay, that's how a white feminist sees it. Now, from a black woman's perspective, what's fascinating is to see a woman with a Harvard education actually go into a yard with fifth grade black students and dig into the soil and get them motivated to actually reconnect and touch the earth coming back, coming from a history of slavery where in all reality in our community, touching the earth is actually, it's almost taboo just to do that because of all the sort of resentments that people have from slavery. So that her doing that in many ways, at least in the black community and her even speaking about organic food, which we're the people with the highest rate of diabetes. You know what I mean? We're going through it with that. There's a way in which that agenda is much more radical than it looks in other communities. I just want you to speak to that. Deep, right? Should I speak to that? Yeah. Yeah, I think that the subversive reading of that is absolutely right. And I think that if there was some kind of dominant conversation around displacement from land and reconnection with that land, I think that I would feel more confident about that being a narrative. And again, to clarify, I actually love Michelle. I think it's awesome, the organic gardening and all that stuff. It's more the way that those kind of decisions then get interpreted by mainstream media, which is not kind of versed on... I mean, even if you look at the gardening movement right now is happening mostly in kind of like super urban environments, right? In Detroit and in Oakland and places where organic gardening has taken on because they don't have grocery stores and things like that. So there's definitely this like very radical connection to organic gardening. It's not this kind of bougie activity. It's something that a lot of people are doing because they don't have food in their communities. So all those connections and possibilities and readings are absolutely there, you know? And I completely trust and believe that Michelle is smart enough to know that. I just don't know if that's actually getting translated to the way that she's being read on a mainstream level. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, yes, I disagree with you on what you said before about Obama being a legislator. I know he's a great orator. I don't think he has to be a legislator. I think that it's up to, as far as I know, we have a legislative branch of government, which is the Senate and the House of Representatives. It's up to them to work together to pass the laws that are necessary. I think as far as the healthcare reform is concerned, I think he gave them great ideas. He had specific points that he was hoping would be in the bill. I think some of those have been incorporated. I think that in the Senate, all the Republicans are very set on ensuring that nothing he wants is passed. And I think it's more political than anything. And us as the voters who vote in order to get these people into Congress, I think that we need to take some action. I think it's up to us now to really think. And the news media is another area, and I agree with certain things that you said, that's slant the arguments. And I don't think they take enough time to vet the information that they're putting out there. They have people come on, whether the person is giving truth or false. You don't know the difference. And you just let them speak and say what they want. It's slants even in the papers in that form of media. The same thing that they've written opinions and other things that are completely wrong. And nobody is really trying to vet what's being sent to the average person. And I think this is creating a big problem. And it's up for each citizen here in the United States to take some action to make sure that you get the appropriate person into Congress. Either the Senate or the House of Representatives or the country will never get anywhere. Thank you. Well, I guess I'll just address the first portion of your question about him being an effective legislator. I think he tried the approach of letting Congress take control of the healthcare bill and do what they wanted with it. And we saw where that has ended up. Democrats are not like Republicans. Where Republicans, they fall in line. They are much more united in what they think on a variety of issues. Democrats have a very big tent. I mean, they have Democrats in red states just disagree on a lot of issues with Democrats in blue states. So it is, I think, up to him now to try to get all of them on board. Something that he didn't do a very good job of in his first year. I also should say, I meant to say this in the beginning. They just asked me to say this, that my views do not represent that of the show. It's pretty stupid. I just had to say it. Do tell all your friends that already left. This is for me, not John. I'm sorry, I had to say that. You actually reminded me at this morning, I don't know if anyone saw Charles Blow's op-ed in The Times where he said, he basically was arguing that Obama's seat of the union went over Americans' heads. And that the sort of, if you pull Americans, they know very little, unfortunately, about how our government works, right? He said, we subsist on Twitter twaddle, a never-ending stream of ideas and idiocy where emotions are rendered in anagrams and thoughts are amputated at 140 characters. The most trusted newsman may well be a comedian, John Stewart, and stars of the most trusted, in quote, news network, Fox, may well be a comedian's dream. The president must communicate within the environment he inhabits, not the one he envisions. Which is basically an argument for like, Obama to talk down to us, right? And gets back to this idea of the engaged citizenry and sort of what are we settling for within our own selves, our own lives, that makes this all possible. I'm thinking about, in the State of the Union, when he talked about being more transparent about earmarks, that we were gonna publish every earmark online. How many of us are gonna go to that site and read about all of the earmarks, right? In a perfect world, I would wish we would, but we're not going to, which gets back to sort of our consumption as citizens, our sort of political aspirations for ourselves, what we feel accountable to, how much energy we're willing to put towards this project, right? So it seems like there's a real moment going on of kind of wrestling with, you know, both from the sort of perspective of is Obama fulfilling his role, but also are we fulfilling ours? And what does that look like? How can we hold the media accountable? How can we hold ourselves accountable? Cause we're all pretty quick to complain, obviously, but it doesn't seem like a lot of us take the time to really investigate some of these issues. Is there a, someone over here? Thank you. Sure, thanks. So I've been having an internal debate the past couple weeks about Obama's first year in office and whether he's been too ambitious or whether he should have taken smaller steps and built his way up to big problems like healthcare, et cetera. And I read the Time Out New York article on this panel and I hope I'm saying it correctly. Professor McLean, right? McElwain. McElwain? I think you had touched upon this a little bit, but I wanted to sort of just get the panel's view, whether he has been too ambitious and really going after two large of issues right off the bat instead of building momentum, tackling smaller issues and gaining political strength in his first year so that eventually he could tackle large issues like healthcare. And I just wanted to get your perspective on that. Yeah, great question. Thanks. Thanks. Do you want to talk a little bit? I'll start with that. And I mentioned in that article that I gave him high marks because he didn't sort of bow to the temptation of starting off small. Let me give a quick context. Time Out New York ran a little piece where they asked each of us to grade Obama's year in office. So that's the grading piece we're talking about. Go ahead. Yes. And I think this is one of those things that distinguishes a president from, say, a legislator. That is, you can do more than one thing at a time, and we expect you to do more than one thing at a time, and we expect you to do big things at the same time. So I gave him high marks for that, thinking that, number one, it's his job, but number two, that was part of our expectations of him. It was part of his promise. It was part of our expectations. And more politically speaking, I think it was wise, given what we now know about the ending of this first round of healthcare, if he waited to his third year, what then? We're in campaign season again, and all is lost. So I think it was a very smart move on his part to say, I can do this, I'm gonna try, and we'll see what happens. Yeah, and also the metaphor comes to mind of the really lazy second grade teacher who didn't teach anything they were supposed to, and then the third graders go to the third grade, and that third grade teacher has to be incredibly ambitious and try to get them caught up to speed, because the last guy was so lazy, and I feel like that's one of the things he tried to say in the State of the Union is, look, I inherited a terrible State of the Union. I'm doing my best here, and I basically have to be ambitious. Healthcare, obviously we could have, depending on your perspective, delayed that as a big project, but in terms of the economy, the dude had no choice, right? I mean, he was really inheriting a classroom of starving citizens. And like you said before, his approval ratings were high. He had the whole country on his side, a lot of the country on his side, and he has a 60 seat supermajority, which hasn't happened in forever. So I think he had to try to push a lot of stuff through. I think he might have, I mean, he was doing a lot of stuff. I remember over the summer, I was just noticing like every Monday, he would come out and have like, you gotta do high speed rail, we gotta do credit cards, we gotta do banking, like it was just one after the other. And I was like, how do you do all these things? You know, it's amazing. And I wonder if his trying to do all of those things at once kind of took his attention away from healthcare too much and took him out of the process, like the nuts and bolts of kind of like what, what do I want in the bill? What do I, you know, what are the things that I need in there? Instead of saying, well, you guys kind of, let me know what you think and we'll figure something out, you know? So I, ambitious, yes, but, and I think it was good to be ambitious, but I just, I wonder if it got too far and then he lost focus a little at times. Very question. Yes. Hi. Keeping in mind, the president's focus on sort of this bipartisan reconciliation and true telling and calling people out on what they're doing wrong. I kind of wanted to take issue with Charlton's point that now's not the time and he's not the president to lead the talk about race because I was thinking about the more perfect union speech and, you know, hell didn't break loose. He was okay. The American people got it. Something resonated. So I'm just wondering if now isn't the time, you know, we have these amazing formats. We have this truth and reconciliation format. We have, you know, dialogues. We have town halls. We have these mechanisms that we can use to talk about race. You know, if this isn't the president and this isn't the time to really have an honest conversation, you know, when can we do this? And if it is the time, how? Yeah, I think now is certainly the time. The moment is right. I just don't think that he's the person. If we take back to the end of Bill Clinton's presidency when he sort of had this initiative to start this dialogue on race, what ended up happening was it ended up becoming a, just another political issue in the way that other issues go. And I think that's the danger here. But I don't think there's anything stopping for Obama from saying, you know, here are some people to sort of begin this task or organize and start things in these different ways. I just don't think he should be the spokesperson for it. But I think the time is certainly right. I'd like to figure out how to do that. Hi. Hi, Andrew. Hi. So I went through a similar emotional rollercoaster that most of you described over the past week. And in the beginning of the week, my question is about idealism versus pragmatism, right? Obama talks a lot about, I want to change the tenor of politics. And that's what he was trying to do yesterday with the questions. And part of me was like, yeah, like he's totally controlling the room and he's the smartest guy in the room and I love it. And the other part of me was like, I just want him, I mean, speaking Courtney of talking over people's heads, part of me just wanted him to really be back room and conniving and Machiavellian and get stuff done. And this is the tension I've been feeling a lot. Like, okay, you want to change the tenor of Washington. He even said, look guys, I gave you a stimulus bill that was a third tax cuts and a third state stuff. And he still didn't like it. Like, he's still surprised by that. Whereas a more kind of cynical politician would be like, I'm just going to ram stuff through with my super majority and forget about bipartisanship. And I keep waiting for that moment when he's going to do that. Like the day after Scott Brown got elected, I wanted them to just be like, oh, we got to push this thing through. And instead he said, you know, that wouldn't be civil. We got to change the course of, which is great. I love it, but I also hate it because I just wanted to do stuff, you know? Yeah, great question. Question mark. Question mark. Remember anything you want to say? Yeah, I mean, I think he wants to be everything to everyone a little too much. Like with that budget freeze, you know, he's like, yeah, it's a budget freeze. It's not across the board. It is a scalpel. It's not a hatchet. You know, it's like, well, just do it. You're going to do it. Like, just say it what it is. You know, call it what it is. And yeah, I just, it's tough because he's dealing with a bunch of children. Like he's really dealing with people who want to get elected again. And you know, I'm glad he's calling them out, but I don't know if it's going to change. Like I just don't, I don't, I think once they leave the room with him, they're like, all right, how else can we screw this guy? You know, like how else can we advance our agenda? But you have to think that maybe if he just keeps saying it over and over again, like it'll start to permeate, you know, and just start to get in the heads of the media. I don't know. I mean, I hope. I hope. Yes, we can. Hope. So, yeah, but yeah, I'm kind of with you on that. Like how does, he needs to be forceful, but he is trying to change, really change the culture in Washington. Like that phrase is used a lot, but he really is trying to change the culture little. And I think yesterday it was like a nuts and bolts. Like trying to deconstruct what they do and how talking points become narratives and how narratives advance and become consciousness. And really trying to stop that cycle or at least make people aware of it. But it's like really hard work. I don't know if he could do it himself. You know, I think he needs journalists to get on board. But as far as like jam, yeah, I totally feel you on, you know, he needs to jam stuff through, but I don't know how, yeah. It's, he's dealing with a really tough set of circumstances. Anyone else wanna weigh in on that one? I also feel like it's related to this ambition question. Also like that maybe his idealism is a little ambitious or there's too much ambition in his idealism and sort of looking at when are the moments when he trades in his idealism for some pragmatism and how that rhythm happens. Cause it certainly would have to be a very complex process for a leader in his position. And you know, probably some of the confusion on our parts about it is the same confusion he feels to a certain extent about when to do those things. But it's a great question. Chloe? Hi. Hi. This is a question for Samita. I really enjoy listening to you talk about Michelle Obama and femininity and Courtney. I know you think and write a lot about young women. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about Sasha and Malia and the media treatment of them and what you think that might mean on wide scale. Yeah, I don't know. You know, I remember when Obama was elected, my brother was joking to me about Obama's, Barack was sharing a story about how, I forgot the older, which one is the older child, Malia? Sasha's older? Sasha's the older child. And she said that apparently... It's on the inauguration. Who said that, though? The preacher. Oh yeah. Sorry. Sasha said that she was gonna write all her papers sitting at this desk in front of a picture of Abraham Lincoln. And my brother was joking about how like Middle America probably like reacted to that. And they were like, this young black woman is gonna, child is gonna be, she's like, I'm gonna use that desk. And like, just like kind of the, it just like pushed any kind of, we never had anything to kind of compare it to, right? And it's just like, so like, those are such like traditional places that are, so in these like kind of realms of control. But to kind of, I guess, touch on your question, I mean, it's sadly like, I haven't followed a lot of their coverage, but I do think that, I think that they are kind of desexed and neutralized in a lot of ways for fear of kind of demonizing them. I think that's like a very strategic decision on the part of the family. And I also think it'll be interesting to see what happens in the next few years as they get older. And like, they do become kind of like more in the public eye and stuff like that. I saw also one of my favorite moments during election season was, I can't remember exactly what, in what, maybe it was the Democratic National Convention, or when was it, when one of them just got to be on camera and started like yelling at her dad who was on screen, is anyone remembering when this was? When, yeah, what was that? It was the DNC, but like the first day or something. And I thought that was an amazing moment because it was really like, she had hijacked like the most watched moment on television to like be a kid and like yell and like interrupt her presidential father and his reaction was fantastic. And Michelle's like, it was this very real moment. And so I'm particularly interested in that little one, like the ways in which she's like ready to like, hijack some shit, like she wants to get in there and actually have some opinions. And I was thinking when Samita was talking about Michelle, like, I was contrasting with the Clintons a little bit in my head going like, there's so many differences here in sort of how she's being framed and what her future potential is. Cause I'm like, you know, is there a Michelle for president moment? And it doesn't seem like there is based on sort of how things are unfolding, obviously too early to know. But maybe there's like a Malia for president moment cause she seems to have like a real voice. It'll be interesting to see how that unfolds. I also think more interesting than the coverage of the daughters has been the coverage of Obama as a father, right? And sort of, you know, I don't think, I obviously Clinton and Chelsea, like there was a clear connection there and he would talk about it from time to time. But I don't think I and my sort of time have been as aware of a president owning his fatherhood role and valuing it publicly in such a concerted way. And obviously that's very tied into race and sort of what he's trying to do around that conversation about race and fatherhood. But I think that is really interesting to continue to follow. A little of that has faded it seems. But particularly early on, it seemed like there was a lot of talk about him as a present father and the importance of that for him. Do you have any thoughts on that, Charlton? Yeah, you know, in part I think it's a continuation of what he started doing the campaign, which is very interesting. There was that moment of contention with Jesse Jackson and others where, you know, Jackson, you know, this was the famous, you know, I'd like to cut his nuts off in common. We're talking down to black people saying that, you know, we need to have some responsibility and accountability and it doesn't, you know, just because you can have kids doesn't make you a father. You have to be present. You have to be there. And so I think this attention to that sort of fatherhood image is both deliberate but important and important. You know, and you brought this kind of up, you know, it's kind of a way of living that conversation without talking the conversation about race in a way. Which is, you know, I'm saying it's important to have an image of black fathers with black children and that in a way speaks louder than, you know, any other kind of conversation that we can have. So I think it's very much sort of tied in that way. And also kind of reminds me of the Chris Matthews comment in some ways, right? Because part of what he was saying was like, well, he wasn't saying this, but he should have been, is we don't always have to talk about race to be talking about race. So we could be talking about fatherhood and the subtext is like, this is a black man who takes fatherhood seriously. But we've gotten to a point where we don't always have to say that totally explicitly. Of course, Chris Matthews is not saying that. I loved, Cote said, you know, Chris Matthews didn't forget Obama was black. Chris Matthews remembered he, or forgot that he was white, that Chris Matthews was white, which I think was the more important point there. Or Chris Matthews forgot that he was a racist, which is another important point. Let's take a couple more questions, yeah. The common theme through all of your panels is that the media has this ability to hijack and distract from real issues, from the real issue going on. Someone states that the Medicare reforms are gonna be death panels, and suddenly that's what we have to discuss. Someone yells a word racist, and now we have to have this very important conversation on race completely distracting from any real issue. I mean, I even remember watching on CNN, they were having a whole program on whether this read comment was even worthy of news. And yet they were making it worthy of news by devoting half an hour to discussing it. It almost seems as if the media wants the president's agenda to fail. It will be better off for the media. Do you think this is true? Do you think that this is any different treatment than past presidents? And what can we do to hold the media accountable and have them stop distracting from the real issues? Yeah, great question. What do you mean? Oh, I look at you so much. Well, yeah, I mean, I think Samita might have said, sensationalism is what is fun to watch. I mean, it's fun to watch people getting a fight and conflict is more interesting to watch than not conflicts, you know? And you watch a show like Christiane Amanpour has a show on Sunday on CNN and Fareed Zakaria and the Great Shows, but people aren't watching those shows. They're watching the, you know, the Hannity's and the O'Reilly's because they get to see a fight, they get, or they get to see their own views mirrored back to them in Hannity's case. But you know, it's hard for me to say what, to go back into like the Clinton era with news because I think it's really just taken on a new, it's a different animal now than it was back then. We were also like 12. Yeah, I didn't really follow politics, right? Let's be honest. You know, but at the same time, the news really hasn't pounced on the fact that the president just gave these Republicans a huge smackdown yesterday and that's conflict and why aren't they harping on that and getting back to, you know, that the president is trying to get the conversation back to the real issues. They're not focusing on any of that. Because American Idol was on. Yeah, it's all, I mean, also Friday is a tough news day. I mean, usually if the administration or anyone has some news to dump, like they're moving Gitmo, I mean, the Khali Sheikh Mohammed trial is getting moved and they purposely issued that on a Friday because they know that throughout the weekend it can get, it goes, you know, people don't follow the news as much on a Friday and Saturday, so. But what was I gonna say? It was the front page of the times. I'll be surprised if people don't make some hay out of that. No, it will be a big conversation. But your question of, you know, does the media want Obama to fail is a really important one and I think, you know, it's hard to talk about media writ large first of all because that's like a very big term, but you know, the immediate concern every day when you're in newsroom is, you know, how do we fill this time? We know what makes ratings go up. Therefore, if things are going well, that's not gonna make ratings go up, right? So the basic structure, getting back to these structural issues, is set up for producers to be looking for ways in which there's a controversy or things are going to hell, right? Yeah, I mean, the fact that that question is, I mean, even that we entertain that, like, are they rooting for Obama to fail? Like, that's. Are you having a moment? Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's pretty deep that they, you know. No, it's, you know, it's, I don't think so. I mean, Fox is, of course, but you know, that's like, that's not news, but other networks, I don't think so. I think they like to see a comp. I just don't, I don't think they have a horse necessarily. I mean, MSNBC could argue. I mean, I think that's one thing we've seen in the past year is that each of the three networks, or at least Fox and MSNBC have really dug in to their camps and more so than they ever have been before. MSNBC, especially, Fox is, I mean, Fox is a political organization. They're not a news network. So, you know, Glenn Beckett was just, just on a Harris poll was rated the number two TV personality in the country. So, and their ratings are triple CNN, triple MSNBC daily. So, they're a force. Well, then maybe the problem is that we're actually calling these stations, these entities news organizations when in reality they're not, and what we need to hold them accountable is to have these actual neutral reporting people who do wanna report on how it really is. But as long as they have the ratings, what's, where is our accountability? Like a bunch of like public intellectuals in Brooklyn being like, Fox, tell the truth. Like as long as my uncle in Colorado Springs is watching the show every night, like they're gonna keep framing it how they're gonna frame it. So, it's also about a conversation between consumers, between American citizens, talking to one another about this. I'm gonna keep going just because we don't have much time, but thank you very much for your question. Yeah, Brian, thank you. Yeah, this is for the entire panel. And you guys were touching on some points that have been interesting looking at a year of Obama's president and seeing where things have moved or haven't moved. So, me to touch on something that really is at heart, something really troubling to me and it's that you talked about black equals fail and how there's no diversity of images of black people. And I mean, I just think that in this era of personal accountability, I think every American needs to go out there and engage blacks on a general level. And all these snafus would be dismissed. I mean, the higher reeds, these comments to Chris Matthews comments, they would be just, they wouldn't happen if they really knew a black person. So, like John Stewart says, meet a black person or whatever, like just seriously, just engage because otherwise you just have these stereotypes of the swagger, you know, these swagger episodes will happen and continue to happen. And that's just my own personal thing. I just wanted to get some feedback from you. Yeah, I think even just changing the conversation from black to white, from black and white, right? Like, I mean, living in New York, it's like such a diverse place. You have so many different kind of groups of people that are interacting on a daily basis. Like, a New Yorker has different opinions even of diversity than someone who like, hasn't ever interacted with any people of color, right? And like, looks at me and they're like, are you Arab, are you, you know? And so, I think, yeah, and there is no reflection of, you know, we have these kind of like, growing extremely diverse colleges, right? We have, you know, business centers, like all these places where people are interacting with people that they're not used to interacting with in like really unique and new ways. And for some reason that's not being reflected. That kind of like very complex diversity is not being reflected in the mainstream media. And when it is, it's like, what was that horrible movie, The Crash? You know, it's the kind of dialogue that everyone has to pull from is very frightening. It's very frightening. So, I mean, I think that, and this kind of does get back to the media accountability issue a little bit, is to continually produce types of media that takes to task this flat analysis of the way that people of color live their lives, right? There isn't one kind of, you know, I'm South Asian. There isn't one South Asian experience. There isn't one Black experience. And to continually, you know, produce sitcoms about complex family situations. And, you know, those are, because that's really what changes people's minds. It's not, you know, what like, you know, it's not necessarily what I write that feminist thing that's gonna change people's minds, but it's gonna be something like, other than Appu on the Simpsons, you know? Like really pushing the boundaries of, you know, how we understand race. We also have to get past that, the level of tokenization to this critical mass idea, right? So, like right now, Obama is all, a lot of people know about a Black person in leadership in some way. I mean, you could condolence the race, et cetera. You could like pick some other folks, but, you know, in gender and race and all of these issues, until we have a critical mass of people, so they could go, oh, Black leadership can look like that, and like that, and like that, and like that, or women in financial positions can be like that, and like that, and like that, because instead you have minorities, whatever they are in the case of gender or race, imitating the majority, just so they can be tokenized and get in the door, but they aren't allowed to actually have an authentic, you know, presence in that space, because there aren't enough of us to be in that space. It's like the women in the 80s with the shoulder pads at work, right? Was it an attempt to distract everyone from the fact that they were women? We're just like you, we'll act just like you, et cetera. So I think we're all aching to get to this like critical mass place where there'll be enough diversity in the spotlight that people can actually be authentic in that space, instead of feeling like they have the whole weight of being the one person who gets to project that for the country. Yes, let's do this to the last, or second to last question, we'll finish with you. Thank you very much for facilitating this panel. I just don't think that we could sit here and have this conversation about what Obama is doing unless we bring up what are we doing? And I know that might sound cliche, it really might, but there have been a lot of discussions that have taken place. As we know over the past couple of weeks, what is Obama doing, what grade do we give him, this, not whatever. But I know there are also a lot of conversations that might be happening, not on such a pedestal, I guess you could say about what are we doing as people. A friend of mine named Salome Halrima has a campaign that she started called I Promise, where you can upload a 30 second YouTube video about what are you doing, what have you done to contribute to this whole idea of changing the face of America, how we really want things to run for ourselves. So I don't think that we could end this conversation without having some concrete things for the visitors to take away about what they can do and how they might be able to progress and how maybe they can contribute to your media, the way you contribute to media, how can they find out more about you? Awesome, thank you Alicia. I think right off the top of my head, I'd say one of the most difficult and important things, and this gets back to the point earlier, is interrogating your own daily practice of media consumption and thinking about what are you watching, what are you reading and what kind of feedback are you giving the producers or editors who create that media. Because a lot of us are very passive in terms of our media consumption. So that's just one, take action tomorrow by, I was actually thinking it'd be interesting to do a week of vetting your own media consumption, like writing down every time you go to a website or watch something on television and just keep tracks. I think some of us don't even know what we're consuming. So that might be an interesting experiment for a day or a week to figure out who are you paying attention to. And then I have a mentor friend, Gloria Felt, who's actually been on this panel with us previously, who puts on a sticky note the producer's name and email address or editor's name and email address of the media that she consumes the most and just sticks it on her computer. So it makes it very, very easy for her. Every time she goes, it's like, she's like, oh, that thing I watched last night was great. Let me give feedback to that producer that that was a good thing. She'll just jot off a very quick email. And I think that's a great technique for keeping yourself in that involved sort of accountability space. Does anyone else have any really practical suggestions I was thinking just how the, we look at the 24 hour news networks and the frenetic pace and the amount of stuff they're trying to jam in there. And I was kind of thinking about like how it's to try to see it as a reflection of who we are and not just as like this animal that's kind of like separate from us that's doing to us, but that we are the media. So if we, you watch them and they're tweeting and they're doing 20 different things at once. And that's kind of like the way we are. That's like our lifestyle reflected back to us. You know, our attention spans are short. You know, we don't ask necessarily ask the questions that we want answered. So how can we expect the media to do the same? I mean, they're people, they're charged with the task of doing that. But I mean, when it comes down to it, they are people just like us. And maybe we need to just be more of the media that we want to see. And how many bipartisan conversations do we have? Like look at who I chose to be on this panel. Yeah, exactly. Not the most bipartisan panel in case you didn't notice, right? And in our daily lives, like how many conversations do we have across political, racial, et cetera, lines? Yeah, I was gonna bring up just a follow on that point. I think a great thing to do that I've challenged myself doing, I'm not sure if it's to my betterment or what, is to start and instigate conversations regularly with people who don't think like us. For me, that comes in the form of, I used to live in Oklahoma for a lot of years. And so I'm asked a lot of very conservative Republican friends that are great friends, but we think quite differently from each other. So I use my Facebook page sometimes to engage in questions and conversations with them. And you can imagine how some of those might go. But what I find, it just keeps your attention focused. Every time that you have that, as Romero was saying, the tendency to just sort of go off and we got kids and we got work and we got so many things to do. How high is keeping the media accountable up on our list when we got all this shit to do every day in only 24 hours? And so I find that having that conversation and making myself at least once a month sort of spend some time engaging keeps my focus and keeps me saying somewhere along the way I got to impact this process, whether it's impacting you and how you see things or using what I learned or a product or conversation to instigate something somewhere else to try to make some change. But I think, as you say, we very few of us have the nerve, I think, sometimes to do that or the time to do that, but I think it's important. So I think I'm thinking a lot of different things right now. So let me try it. So I work with this amazing organization in Oakland called the Center for Media Justice. Go to their website, check it out. I helped build their website. And they work on campaigns of media accountability, right? And they start with ownership and then they train community organizers and community members on how to talk to the press, how to send letters to the editor, how to place op-eds, right? So they give these kind of like skills that you would think we would all know about, but for some reason because we've gotten so distant from media in so many ways and thinking that we actually have a right and a say in what is said in the media, they actually kind of try and re-center that. And it's really interesting, like I think Ariana Huffington put out an article the day after the State of the Union being like organizing two point out. Like that's what needs to happen. Like we need to get back to organizing. And I don't know, I feel like most of you that are in here since you're here on a Saturday afternoon, you're probably pretty politically involved. You probably know some organizers. They're like the last people that need more work on their plate. The organizers I know are completely overworked. They're at capacity. They've been doing the work for sometimes 20, 30, 40 years. And so thinking about how this burnout and exhaustion that we feel and this kind of frustration that we've been waiting, waiting, waiting for this kind of presidency, for this hope. Most of my friends that are organizers, like their politics were so far left of Obama that they kind of took some time out of the campaign that they were working on to support Obama's campaign. But ultimately it didn't actually address the local organizing initiatives that they were working on, right? So thinking about that burnout, what are like some more concrete ways and more creative ways? And it makes, I've watched this week, I watched Howard Zim's documentary since he passed away earlier this week. And thinking about this really activist professor, right? He just completely shut his whole life down and committed his life to anti-war efforts and to fighting racism and to fighting the way that history was documented. But really what I found most notable was his actual organizing efforts, what he did on the ground. And thinking about this division that I feel happening between my friends that are doing the work on the ground or the people that I knew that are doing organizing and folks that are kind of producing the media. And it's like where do we as citizens kind of fit between this division, right? Ultimately the media will be most effective when it's led by the people that are doing the organizing on the ground. So I think supporting initiatives of media accountability that reflect the stories of what's actually happening on the ground. And so that might have to be going back to traditional and a good example is how Lou Dobbs got kicked off the air, right? Because Presente, the national Latino organizing initiative got him kicked off in a lot of ways. And so these kind of like measures, like really thinking about media as something that we have to organize against to dismantle. Last question over here, please. Well, I'll keep it brief. But there's been so far a great discussion about what we've seen in Obama's first year. But I'm going to be the media a little bit and hijack the discourse just to ask, based on what's been discussed about Obama being between a rock and a hard place in a lot of these issues and trying to please everyone, what do you think we can hope to see Obama change over the next three years of his presidency? Amazing last question. Awesome. Okay, so let's go down the line. I'll give you guys a second to think about that. What do you hope to see or not see? I'll start kind of with, I think, your conundrums you were talking about wrestling with earlier, which I also sort of do. I want to see a lot more of kind of what we expected with Obama's choice of Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, some of the stereotypes that went along with Chicago politics and Obama. And I kind of want to see some of those come out. I want to see some of the very hard edge, take no prisoners politics and get a few things done that are good. Yeah, I want to see more of what he did yesterday with the Republicans, obviously. And I want to see healthcare reform passed without some kind of amendment that's going to dictate that I can't have an abortion or have reproductive health at all. I want to see the end of the Iraq war. In the next three years. And I want to see some really concrete kind of plans about Afghanistan. And I think that, yeah, doesn't really talk to me right now. I mean, on the Rahm Emanuel thing, I think he needs to get his people in order. I think they're not as ruthless as the Cheney and the Roves were, those guys. And I think they're the ones who do the dirty work. They're the ones who work, get in there with the Democrats and arm twist and all that stuff. And I don't think that they've been doing as ruthless a job as like Roven Cheney did, which I think Obama needs, because I'm not sure he's great at that. I'm not sure that's his forte. I mean, I think he may just be kind of like a more of a foreign policy, inspiring speech, not limited to that, but that's more of his wheelhouse and getting in there and the arm twist. I just don't think that that's his thing. And also like something the New Yorker touched on a couple of weeks ago is that he cares too much about what people think of him. He may not seem that way, but I think he really does. I agree with that notion that he does really care about what the media thinks about him. You see him addressing a lot of criticisms made by the media, Fox, whoever, coming from all different directions in his speeches. And I think Bush insulated himself a little more from that and kind of let his underlings deal with it. But Obama, they were saying in this article like he's a voracious news consumer, like there's a picture of him in The Times with The New York Times reading it. And that's great. I mean, it's great for him to be informed and to know what all the attacks are and where they're coming from, but I just wonder if it will contribute more to that feeling that he has of just wanting to be everything to everyone. So, yeah. Cool. Well, first I wanna thank all of you for being here. This has been a really, I think substantive conversation which is refreshing as we've been talking about in this kind of media landscape this moment. Particularly thankful that you came out on such a cold day. The last weekend for the rock and roll photographs which I hear amazing, so stick around and check out the museum if you haven't already. I wanna thank my amazing panelists. You can see why I call all of them friends and like to have these conversations with them. And I'm gonna leave you with two quotes. The first is from Martin Luther King who said, change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability but comes through continuous struggle. So I think some of what I feel like we're all sort of chipping away at here is this notion of this continuous exhausting but yet worthwhile struggle to see that our sort of politics actually reflects our personhood. And in that spirit I'm gonna give Obama the last words because that is incredible strength from the State of the Union. What keeps me going, what keeps me fighting is that despite all these setbacks that spirit of determination and optimism, that fundamental decency that has always been at the core of the American people that lives on. So thank you for sharing yours with us today. We'll be hanging out after we're just gonna talk. Thanks.