So the internet is a blaze with this Newsweek Cover calling Obama the first gay President because he all of a sudden stands for gay marriage rights or some shit like that.  Seriously Newsweek…break your own stories guys.  Pretty pathetic.  I mean I nailed this story weeks ago.  And I didn’t need Obama to come out in support of gay marriage to know he was gay either.  The thing that let everyone know he was gay was the fact that he dated a guy in college.  Some Australian dude named Genevieve Cook.  I had a picture up, but the hard-asses over at Vanity Fair made me take it down.  Now this story is everywhere and so is that picture.  So here he is…Obama’s college boyfriend.  Australian Diplomat’s son…

Below is what I said when I broke the news about Obama being gay.

Hey Barry…your girlfriend…woof! Dating a dude in college isn’t a good look man.  Not in an election year.  It doesn’t matter how warm you were sexually with this bro or how cool you played it…dating a dude is dating a dude.  On second thought, maybe it’ll help him. Could Obama be our first black and our first gay president?

So yeah Newsweek…nice try guys.  Supporting Gay Marriage doesn’t make Obama the first gay president.  It’s being gay that makes him gay.

PS: Not that there is anything wrong with that…

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So newspapers have decided to be web publications too, with all the content on line, and lots of additional as-it-happens minute-to-minute coverage of this and that. But the click-through ad revenues are meager, so most of these extended newspapers have decided to charge for online access to articles – the first ten or twenty each month are free, but then you find yourself locked out unless you pay up. Except that doesn’t work – it’s a snap to get past most paywall systems, save for the very clever Wall Street Journal. But this also means newspapers are ceasing to be newspapers at all, with a morning dump of what happened the day before, and have become a sort of hybrid, part newspaper and part blog, and not quite either. And there’s still not enough money to hunt down and report the news. Yes, as all this evolves we’ll know less and less. The irony is that they call this the information age.

And the weekly news magazines are in the same pickle. Life and Look disappeared ages ago, and Time and Newsweek struggle. They too have lively online items, and fewer and fewer readers picking up the magazine from the rack, and even fewer subscribers – and thus fewer folks willing to pay for glossy full-page ads. There’s a reason Newsweek was absorbed into the Daily Beast – the website is where the good stuff is. Newsweek is the afterthought, for the old folks who want something tactile in their hands. And of course eBooks now outsell physical books – everyone offers some sort of Nook thing. And the brick-and-mortar bookstores are disappearing – not just the little ones, but Borders is now gone and Barnes and Noble soon will be, by all accounts. Print had a fine run, for a few centuries, but that seems to be nearly over.

But there are last gasps. There always are, and in the Los Angeles Times (online) Rene Lynch explains one of those last gasps:

Time magazine’s breastfeeding cover story asks: “Are You Mom Enough?” But it might as well ask: “Who Says Print Is Dead?”

The magazine is the talk of the nation this morning, dominating the morning talk shows, the radio shows, social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, and that gold standard of relevancy, Google. It’s the No. 1 search term there today.

“This is a cover that has the entire nation talking,” said magazine expert Samir Husni. “When was the last time you saw a story do that,” unless it was a breaking news event? “This is an example of print well done. It’s a stroke of genius … the print industry really needed this cover to show they are still the movers and shakers.”

They are? There is a picture of the cover at the link, which seems to be designed to be provocative:

The Time cover shows breastfeeding in an up-close-and-personal kind of way that many Americans have never seen before: a 3-year-old boy standing on a chair so he can better suckle at his standing mother’s breast, with both mother and child looking directly into the camera.

The headline says, “Are You Mom Enough?” perhaps because nothing sells magazines like preying on a woman’s insecurities. The headline and cover have started an array of offshoot conversations, including: Is the 3-year-old being set up for a lifetime of ridicule? And why does the media love pitting mothers against one another?

Yes, there was quite a buzz, and Lynch has links to it all, and discusses how this introduced the nation to a new term - extreme breastfeeding of course. But that buzz was the point:

It all adds up to the secret sauce behind the cover’s success, said Husni, a professor at the Magazine Innovation Center, Meek School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi. The editors have taken a very old topic – breastfeeding, after all, has been around forever – and managed to put a very fresh spin on it.

“It didn’t just start the conversation, it’s continuing the conversation,” he said. “This is not just ’15 seconds of fame, go on to the next story.’ This story is going to be 24/7 [for a while]. There’s a reason why people call this ‘old media.’ That’s because it took 500 years to build up this tradition. You don’t just throw the white flag and say, ‘OK, everything is digital now.’”

He says this is an editor’s dream come true – a magazine that actually matters. So print isn’t really dead – for a moment at least.

Of course Tina Brown, once the editor of The New Yorker and now the head of the combined Daily Beast and Newsweek operations, after Time released its hot breastfeeding cover, said this – “‘Let The Games Begin!” And she wasn’t kidding, as now we have the “First Gay President” – Newsweek marking Obama’s surprise announcement with their own controversial cover you can see here – Obama in the Shepard Fairey “Hope” pose with a rainbow-colored halo, with this preview of the cover story by Andrew Sullivan:

It’s easy to write off President Obama’s announcement of his support for gay marriage as a political ploy during an election year. But don’t believe the cynics. Andrew Sullivan argues that this announcement has been in the making for years. “When you step back a little and assess the record of Obama on gay rights, you see, in fact, that this was not an aberration. It was an inevitable culmination of three years of work.” And President Obama has much in common with the gay community. “He had to discover his black identity and then reconcile it with his white family, just as gays discover their homosexual identity and then have to reconcile it with their heterosexual family,” Sullivan writes.

Maybe that’s a stretch, and the irony is that Sullivan isn’t that much of a print guy. His blog The Dish – part of the Daily Beast mixed-media conglomerate – gets more traffic than almost every other political site in the world. So this might not be striking a blow for the supremacy of print. And the media critic Will Bunch simply asks will somebody please get a gun and put America’s newsmagazines out of their misery?

He’s not happy:

If you think it’s hard for a once-a-day print publication to stay relevant in a 24/7 world, then you need to multiple that struggle times-seven for America’s newsmagazines. For the last decade, pundits have asked how these publications that ruled the media landscape in the mid-20th Century can survive in this kind of environment.

The only moderately satisfying answer is that publications like Time and Newsweek – which have large staffs of enormously talented journalists – can publish news and commentary on the Web in a timely fashion similar to Web-oriented sites like Slate or the Huffington Post. They do this and they do it okay, although like every “legacy media” outfit the revenue isn’t sustaining as the big profits of the print monopoly era. But what can they do about the supposed raison d’être of the whole enterprise – that thinner-and-thinner glossy thing that’s on the newsstand once a week?

Honestly? Nothing. The “weekly newsmagazine” is an oxymoron. There’s just nothing about the news that has a “weekly” component to it anymore. At this point, the print editions of Time and Newsweek would need to do something truly remarkable and praiseworthy to justify their continued existence. Instead, they are going out like a tragically insane individual, stripping naked and running down the street yelling profanities at civil society.

And here we go again:

Newsweek’s cover, calling President Obama “America’s first gay president” because – like roughly half of all U.S. heterosexuals – he now supports the idea of same-sex marriage, reminds me of their famous 1964 cover calling Lyndon Johnson “the first black president” after he signed the Civil Rights Act. OK, I’m just kidding… they didn’t do that in 1964. People would have thought such a cover was stupid and immature. …

Of course, in the short run they’ll probably sell a few extra copies with these shock covers. But at the expense of destroying a brand of top-notch journalism that it took seventy-five years to build up. And then what desperate ploy will they use to beg readers to pay attention? One can only imagine. Harry Truman said famously that it’s a damn shame when anyone dies, and that will be no less true of Time and Newsweek.

But it’s just so sad and pathetic to see it end like this.

And the article is now online – you don’t have to buy the dead-tree version at all. And Sullivan himself quotes it at his website of course:

Barack Obama had to come out of a different closet. He had to discover his black identity and then reconcile it with his white family, just as gays discover their homosexual identity and then have to reconcile it with their heterosexual family. The America he grew up in had no space for a boy like him: black yet enveloped by loving whiteness, estranged from a father he longed for (another common gay experience), hurtling between being a Barry and a Barack, needing an American racial identity as he grew older but chafing also against it and over-embracing it at times.

This is the gay experience: the discovery in adulthood of a community not like your own home and the struggle to belong in both places, without displacement, without alienation.

Actually, Sullivan’s item is rather subtle and insightful, and the parallel he establishes makes sense, as does his contention that acceptance of gays, and assuming they ought to have the same rights as everyone else, has gone mainstream now.

And, as proof of that, as reported in Talking Points Memo, even the Republicans see that:

Republicans must evolve on gay rights or risk political extinction, a top GOP pollster warns leading establishment figures in a revealing new memo.

Jan van Lohuizen, who polled for President George W. Bush in 2004, finds that support for gay rights – including same sex marriage – is rising at an accelerated pace among members of all political affiliations. He calls on Republicans to acknowledge the shift in the way they talk about the issue.

The memo, reported by various news outlets, recommends that Republicans express their support for “equality under the law as a fundamental principle” because “freedom means freedom for everyone.”

And he recommends a little political ju-jitsu, reframing gay rights as a core conservative value:

“As people who promote personal responsibility, family values, commitment and stability, and emphasize freedom and limited government we have to recognize that freedom means freedom for everyone,” he advises Republicans to say. “This includes the freedom to decide how you live and to enter into relationships of your choosing, the freedom to live without excessive interference of the regulatory force of government.”

It’s hard to see the many Republicans deciding that’s how to deal with this, but passages in his long memo do hammer that home:

People who believe in equality under the law as a fundamental principle, as I do, will agree that this principle extends to gay and lesbian couples; gay and lesbian couples should not face discrimination and their relationship should be protected under the law. People who disagree on the fundamental nature of marriage can agree, at the same time, that gays and lesbians should receive essential rights and protections such as hospital visitation, adoption rights, and health and death benefits.

And this ain’t affirmative action:

This is not about giving anyone extra protections or privileges, this is about making sure that everyone – regardless of sexual orientation – is provided the same protections against discrimination that you and I enjoy.

And Josh Marshall comments:

It’s a fascinating document – not so much for the argument it makes (that Republican should essentially embrace marriage or call off the war against it) as the data it advances. Because the numbers it shows pretty convincingly make the argument that the war over gay marriage is basically over.

This isn’t to say President Obama’s decision to embrace the issue is a gimme for him in political terms – it’s still quite possible that it will be a net loser for him in purely electoral terms, though I think that’s now slightly less than likely. But the direction of the public opinion data is so overwhelming as to suggest that there’s no way to turn back to the tide. Anyone who’s followed the public opinion data on this topic knows that marriage equality is overwhelmingly more popular among the young than the old. But, as he notes, even among older voters opinions are rapidly changing. Until 2009, support went up about 1% a year. Since then it’s been about 5% a year.

Still, this might not fly:

The electoral power of GOP politics is still largely driven by white evangelical voters. And I don’t expect that group to move any time soon. Still, the change is vast and rapid…. Just as important though, I think the number of people who are intensely opposed is still at least a bit larger than those who are intensely supportive. But intensity can only overcome relatively small differences in support levels.

Watching how the Republicans work this out will be fascinating, especially concerning the evangelicals, as Rachel Held Evans suggests here:

When asked by The Barna Group what words or phrases best describe Christianity, the top response among Americans ages 16-29 was “anti-homosexual.” For a staggering 91 percent of non-Christians, this was the first word that came to their mind when asked about the Christian faith. The same was true for 80 percent of young churchgoers. (The next most common negative images… “judgmental,” “hypocritical,” and “too involved in politics.”) …

So my question for those evangelicals leading the charge in the culture wars is this: Is it worth it?

Nicholas Beaudrot adds this:

The once near-universal brand of American Christianity is being associated with an ever-shrinking size of the American public. Like Burger King and Axe Body Spray, you may wake up one day and find that the overwhelming majority of the public has simply tuned out everything you have to say. Now, it’s always possible that the leaders of the major American churches may want it this way. But for those who don’t, the window of opportunity where people might be willing to consider a more relevant form of modern Christianity is closing.

And as for that advisory memo, Sullivan says this:

Read the bluntness of this. This is the GOP establishment talking to itself – and the Republican pollster who arguably knows more about the politics of the gay issue than anyone else (how else to explain the Ohio campaign of 2004?) is advising them in no uncertain terms that they need to evolve and fast, if they’re not going to damage their brand for an entire generation.

But that may be harder than it seems:

Evangelicals and social conservatives are urging Republicans to make the fight against same-sex marriage an election-year priority and go after President Obama over his new-found support for the cause. So far, the GOP establishment is resisting.

Rick Santorum pushed Mitt Romney to use the issue to his advantage. “I think what you see is his is a very potent weapon if you will for Gov. Romney if he is willing to step up and take advantage of a president who is very much out of touch with the values of America,” the former presidential candidate said.

But the Republican establishment is singing a different tune, showing little interest in focusing on the issue, and instead fielding questions about it by pivoting to the economy. The result is a strategic divide over how to handle the issue of same sex marriage on the right, pitting politicians against the evangelical community as they negotiate their response to the president’s gay marriage position.

And this is getting hot:

“I don’t think the way the Republicans on Capitol Hill are addressing it is the way to do it, saying it’s a distraction,” Tony Perkins, president of the evangelical Family Research Council, said Sunday on CNN. “Defending the family, the cornerstone of civilization, is not a distraction. It should be a priority. And it should be a part of what Mitt Romney talks about.” Perkins wasn’t downplaying the importance of discussing the economy but he expressed dissatisfaction with Republicans for soft-pedaling the issue of same-sex marriage so far.

Perkins also disputed the idea that Obama was posturing politically, contradicting the main line coming from the Republican establishment. “I don’t think the president did a political calculus to do this because if he did, he needs to go back to the calculator, because it’s a bad formula,” he said, pointing to anti-gay marriage amendments in swing states, like the one just passed in North Carolina, as evidence.

Evangelical leader Gary Bauer agreed with the assessment. “I think the president this week took six or seven states he carried in 2008 and put them in play with this one ill-conceived position,” he said on CNN.

Maybe he did, but read the polls – most folks think he did the right thing. But there was this:

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul remarked on President Obama’s decision to publicly support same-sex marriage by saying, “Call me cynical, but I wasn’t sure his views on marriage could get any gayer.”

The comments by the Republican lawmaker from Kentucky drew big laughs at a gathering sponsored by the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition. A video became public after it was posted on the website “The Iowa Republican.”

“It did kind of bother me though that he used the justification for it in a biblical reference,” he continued to more laughter. “He said the biblical golden rule caused him to be for gay marriage. And I’m like what version of the Bible is he reading? … I don’t know what version he’s getting it from.”

It’s that copy of the Bible with that injunction to do unto others as you would have them do unto you – Matthew 7:12 actually – and Matthew doesn’t carve out an exception for gay people. There are no carve-outs.

But it’s pointless to argue about the Bible with these evangelicals – in the Bible that they read, Jesus is the angry he-man with the big biceps and six-pack abs, kicking ass and taking names, and, as they say, bringing on the pain. And of course Rand Paul was just using the slang taunt – That’s so GAY!

But it seems that taunt is losing its power. That’s so gay? Yes, perhaps, and what’s your point? And Obama is the first gay president? Maybe so, but who cares? Some things just don’t matter anymore – just like newspapers and weekly news magazines. There’s no going back.

So he suggests we think about this:

To understand the Afghan War, one basic point must be grasped: in poor nations with weak state services, agriculture is the foundation for all politics, binding villagers to the government or warlords or rebels. The ultimate aim of counterinsurgency strategy is always to establish the state’s authority. When the economy is illicit and by definition beyond government control, this task becomes monumental. If the insurgents capture that illicit economy, as the Taliban have done, then the task becomes little short of insurmountable.

That’s from “The Opium Wars in Afghanistan” – a short history of the three Afghan wars of the past three decades. Now what? What have we gotten ourselves into?

And consider Tom Freidman in the New York Times with this:

This newspaper carried a very troubling article on the front page on Monday. It detailed how President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan had invited Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Kabul – in order to stick a thumb in the eye of the Obama administration – after the White House had rescinded an invitation to Mr. Karzai to come to Washington because the Afghan president had gutted an independent panel that had discovered widespread fraud in his re-election last year.

He’s referring to this article that notes “according to Afghan associates, Mr. Karzai recently told lunch guests at the presidential palace that he believes the Americans are in Afghanistan because they want to dominate his country and the region, and that they pose an obstacle to striking a peace deal with the Taliban.” The news here – “‘He believes that America is trying to dominate the region, and that he is the only one who can stand up to them.”

Freidman:

That is what we’re getting for risking thousands of US soldiers and having spent $200 billion already. This news is a flashing red light, warning that the Obama team is violating at least three cardinal rules of Middle East diplomacy.

Of course he makes these up as he goes along – he’s like that – but the first rule is rather obvious:

When you don’t call things by their real name, you always get in trouble. Karzai brazenly stole last year’s presidential election. But the Obama foreign policy team turned a blind eye, basically saying, he’s the best we could get, so just let it go. …

When you can steal an election, you can steal anything. How will we get this guy to curb corruption when his whole election, and previous tour in office, were built on corruption? How can we be operating a clear, build-and-hold strategy that depends on us bringing good governance to Afghans when the head of the government is so duplicitous?

Well, yes – and there is the McCoy item too. And there is Freidman’s second rule, never want it more than they do:

If we want good governance in Afghanistan more than Karzai, he will sell us that carpet over and over. How many U.S. officials have flown to Kabul – the latest being President Obama himself – to lecture Karzai on the need to root out corruption in his administration? Do we think he has a hearing problem? Or do we think he believes he has us over a barrel and, in the end, he can and will do whatever serves his personal power needs because he believes that we believe that he is indispensable for confronting Al Qaeda?

Freidman suggests that Netanyahu and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, feel the same way too. They can make us dance.

And there’s the third rule Freidman invents:

In the Middle East, what leaders tell you in private in English is irrelevant. All that matters is what they will defend in public in their own language.

When Karzai believes that the way to punish America for snubbing him is by inviting Iran’s president to Kabul – who delivered a virulently anti-US speech from inside the presidential palace – you have to pay close attention to that. It means Karzai must think that anti-Americanism plays well on the streets of Afghanistan and that by dabbling in it himself – as he did during his presidential campaign – he will strengthen himself politically. That is not a good sign.

No kidding. And this analysis from the man, Freidman, who said even if there were no WMD in Iraq at all, after all, and it turned out that in spite of what we were told, Saddam Hussein actually had no connection at all to al-Qaeda, no matter – the Iraq War was the perfect thing to do. We had to show folks in that part of the world that no one pushes us around, and we had to make it all very local and very dramatic – bust down the door, any will do, and rough up the hapless dude in front of the wife and kids, and if he whines or calls out to Allah, tell him he can just suck on this.

It seems that approach is a bit counterproductive, and the Afghan War is proving that once again. Of course some people consider Freidman a moral monster, for this and for calling for a pan-Islamic civil war so they’d all just go ahead and kill each other or something. But he’s considered an important thinker. The New York Times pays him big bucks for thinking big thoughts, and making up new rules, kind of like Bill Maher – without the wit and basic decency.

But although Freidman considers Obama a fool for even talking with the corrupt and hopeless Hamid Karzai that is the approach Obama takes, generally, on all conflicts, foreign or domestic. You talk, you listen – you try to figure out what can be done with the other party, and what just won’t work. You don’t give in, but you listen. You at least give it a try.

And we elected Obama knowing full well that’s what he would do. McCain wouldn’t. McCain was all for slapping folks around and telling them to stop the bullshit – and then they would, or so he told us. McCain running mate, Sarah Palin, was of the same mind – that’s how she dealt with her kids, and Wasilla, and Alaska. You laid down the law. Yeah, one kid got knocked up, by that Levi Johnston fellow whose mother was later sent to jail for pushing drugs, and now the fifteen-year-old daughter is in deep trouble with drinking and vandalism and drugs – but the principle holds true. You lay down the law, and people do what they’re told.

That this manifestly does not work is obvious. Grudging compliance turns into resentment, and resentment grows as the person mulls over and begins to obsess about having their own powerlessness rubbed in their face, publicly, and then they act out. What else would you expect to happen?

And in America it’s like that with race. It always has been. Long ago Langston Hughes wrote that short poem about that raisin in the sun, the one that explodes – it was about a dream deferred. Many white folks must have seen that odd little poem as a threat – give us what we say, as a matter of common decency, we deserve, or this country will explode, and you won’t like what happens one bit. Others must have seen it as a simple observation. Rub someone’s powerlessness in their face, publicly, or even worse, pretend they don’t exist (what Ralph Ellison was getting at in Invisible Man), or worse yet, patronize them, telling them, with a smile, you’ll get to their concerns later, as their concerns are really important to you, and then go to lunch with your friends – and certain things are bound to happen. And they’re not good things. Everyone has had a tiny little taste of that – the recording that says please hold, your call is important to us – and you know how you felt as five minutes turned into thirty and then an hour, and then you hung up. Multiply that by a billion or so.

And now we have a black president, and it’s not very surprising that he knows not to do anything like that to anyone – friends or enemies. No good can come of saying wait, not now, later. You can at least listen. It keeps any raisins from exploding. And no good can come of pretending that the other party doesn’t exist, or shouldn’t exist – see the Bush-Cheney administration on North Korea. They exploded their first nuclear device – and that was some raisin.

Obama seems to get this – and maybe those who voted for him must have sensed the logic that underlies it all, even if so many of those who voted for him were white folks. Perhaps the development of modern call-waiting queues with soft-rock elevator music and periodic canned your-call-is-important-to-us messages kicking in helped a bit. They could relate. You don’t have to be black.

So perhaps Obama’s experience as a black man informs his governing style and his approach to international affairs. He’s not Thomas Freidman, the white guy. Of course many on the left are frustrated with Obama’s insistence on taking Republicans seriously, even if the Republicans say they will break him, and say they want him to fail, even if America fails, and will always vote against anything he wants done – and even if he incorporates what they want into whatever it is, after he’s carefully listened to them, they’ll vote against it anyway. Everyone saw that with healthcare reform. What’s the point?

But maybe there’s no point. It’s just a frame of mind, or more precisely, a philosophic and moral position. You don’t shut people out, and you don’t pretend they’re invisible, and you never rub their powerlessness in their face, publicly. You just don’t do that. It’s just not right. And of course is amazingly bad politics, if you’re playing a long game. Doing any of that may feel good – really, really good – in the present. Bush seemed to get off on that – and Cheney certainly did. But you pay later. And they both did. Maybe you have to be black to understand, but probably not. Being observant might suffice.

Of course there are some scholars who say we cannot have an effective black president, as any black president would have an odd and different perspective on things, one informed by race. You may be one of those who say that’s just what we want, someone who understands what happens to those others dismiss or just cannot see, and accounts for that. But you’d be arguing with the conservative black scholar Shelby Steele – and he’s the anti-Obama. He too was born to a black father and a white mother – his father, a black truck driver, met his mother, a white social worker, while she was working for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). And Steele attended the University of Utah, where he later taught black literature and studied for his PhD, but when he was finally offered a tenured position at the university he turned it down. He had married a white woman and Utah was no place for an interracial couple to live. He ended up at San Jose State.

So far so good, but he’s a self-described Black conservative – opposed to affirmative action and other such “unsuccessful liberal campaigns to promote equal opportunity for African-Americans.” You see blacks have been “twice betrayed” – first, by slavery and oppression, and then by group preferences mandated by the government that “discourage self-agency and personal responsibility” in blacks. The problem is that white Americans see blacks as victims to ease their guilty conscience, while blacks attempt to turn their status as victims into a kind of currency, with no purchasing power. That’s why, in 2007, he wrote A Bound Man: Why We are Excited about Obama and Why He Can’t Win. Obama is a “bound man” to his “black identity” – the kind of guy from whom grievance and protest become personal truth. All black men are like that, except for Steele himself. And after Obama won Steele said Obama had been just like Louis Armstrong, donning the “bargainer’s mask” in his bid for white acceptance – Obama demeaned himself by playing Happy Darkie. In short, Obama takes whites – who Steele claims have always been stigmatized as racist and had to prove they are not – “off the hook.” And who doesn’t like Louis Armstrong?

Still, it’s something. But see Adam Serwer:

Guys, it’s really hard to be Shelby Steele. First you write a book about how Barack Obama can’t win the 2008 election because he’s constrained by the traditional roles of black people in American politics. After he wins you’re stuck writing harried op-eds about how he only won because white people felt really guilty and wanted to vote for a black guy, a thesis belied by the available demographic information. Conversely, you praise then-candidate for RNC Chair Michael Steele as someone with “integrity” who “really stands for something,” which was already embarrassing enough at the time.

Then, when the political winds seem to be blowing misfortune Obama’s way, you eagerly rub your hands together and write about how Obama is ineffectual as a president because he never had the chops to get the job done after all, because he was only elected because he’s black. Then, of course, Obama pushes historic health-care legislation through Congress that puts him on the same playing field as the most prominent Democratic presidents in American history.

Serwer embeds all the links if you want to look up any of that, but since Steele has been wrong on these matters, you may not choose to spend the time that would take, carefully reviewing errors in judgment. What the point?

But there’s something new. In the Wall Street Journal Steele writes this – all of Obama’s recent accomplishments were only achieved because Obama, as a black man, needs to prove that he’s just as good as all the other white presidents:

Mr. Obama’s success has always been ephemeral because it was based on an illusion: that if we Americans could transcend race enough to elect a black president, we could transcend all manner of human banalities and be on our way to human perfectibility. A black president would put us in a higher human territory. And yet the poor man we elected to play out this fantasy is now torturing us with his need to reflect our grandiosity back to us.

Serwer is amused:

A president with an inflated sense of ego and concern over his ultimate historical legacy? How black of him.

But he also sees what’s going on:

Steele keeps reassuring his conservative audience that this fop Obama is a pushover whose only advantage is being black. And those who believe him do so because they want to be reassured that Obama isn’t exceptional. And because Steele himself is black, his followers assume he must know about these things. Then they lose, and they scratch their heads and start muttering angrily about Teleprompters. Steele’s work helps conservatives cling to myths about liberal black folks being the products of white charity, and they don’t contradict him because they don’t actually know enough black people to know better.

If you’re Shelby Steele, though, you can’t actually abandon your thesis, no matter how much harm you’re doing the cause of conservatism or your party, because you offer a specific product – reassurance to whites that anti-black racism is a thing of the past and that they’ve fulfilled their ethical obligations to blacks. Therefore, any substantive expansion of the social safety net isn’t about social responsibility but exploitation. … Steele is bound to a vision of a world where black people’s existence is defined by exploiting white guilt for personal advantage. So it doesn’t occur to Steele that extending health-care coverage to 32 million people is a good in and of itself worth fighting for, because he likely sees it as merely a crude redistribution of resources from one race to another under terms he sees as unfair.

Just who is the “bound man” here?

Not only is Steele offering the same kind of reassurance to white conservatives that he accuses Obama of offering to whites in general, he doesn’t even have the freedom to admit that he’s wrong.

But it’s more than race. A 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll recently found that fifty percent of respondents would be willing to support an openly-gay presidential candidate. And then the Family Research Council, the prominent religious right group with ties to the Republican leadership, suggested that President Obama may effectively already be our first gay president:

If it was argued during his two terms in office that Bill Clinton was “our first black President” because of his supposed liberal policies that would benefit African-Americans (though I’m not quite sure what President Clinton did, that he wasn’t forced to do, that would benefit any minority except for Chinese monks with political donations to spend.) With that argument shouldn’t Barack Obama already be our “first gay President” due to his liberal policies pushing the homosexual agenda?

Steve Benen comments:

The Family Research Council isn’t saying President Obama is gay; it’s saying President Obama might as well be considered gay, the same way Bill Clinton was considered black.

And the religious right wonders why it’s so hard to take their movement seriously.

But Benen offers these facts:

In his first year, the president has presented a package of domestic partnership benefits for federal workers, lifted the travel/immigration ban on those with HIV/AIDS, expanded hate-crime laws, addressed the diplomatic passport issue, issued a strong Pride Month proclamation, hosted a White House event to honor the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, and taken the initial steps in ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He’s also publicly expressed his support for repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and making the Domestic Partners Benefit and Obligations Act law.

It’s a start, and it’s apparently enough to make major religious right groups publish foolish things.

And just why is it an insult? As with race, you may be one of those who say that’s just what we want, someone who understands what happens to those others dismiss or just cannot see, and accounts for that. There are worse things than that. Ask the parents of Matthew Shepard.

So yes, Obama’s experience as a black man informs his governing style and his approach to international affairs. He’s no Thomas Freidman. You got a problem with that?

But of course there’s no fixing Afghanistan.