Is the campaign really about ME?

Gee, I bet you thought that this presidential campaign was about issues like the war in Iraq or the devastating economic crisis. Maybe you thought rising fuel prices or education reform were important. Or maybe you even thought electing the country's first black president meant something. Well guess what? You're wrong This campaign is really about ME. That's right, ME--Mike Klonsky and whether or not the candidates know ME (move over Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright).

At least that's the way low-life blogger Steve Diamond and his gaggle of right-wing loony internet acolytes, along with Manhattan Institute's Sol Stern and Fordham's Mike Petrilli, see the race. To the new-McCarthyite witch hunters, it's all about us '60s-era radicals and our undue influence over Barack Obama. Lord, if only it were true. Maybe Barack wouldn't be scrambling towards the center on issues of gun control and immunity for spying communications conglomerates.

To some of the low-life's (he even brings in our families, kids, etc....) charges, I plead guilty. I was indeed a militant young radical leader back then--head of SDS in '68 and then a Marxist revolutionary. We new leftists were indeed looking for answers and alternatives to both Soviet gulag socialism as well as to the Democratic Party's machine politics, war mongering and racial segregationist practices of the times.

That's me on the far right in '69. 

Quite naturally we looked to other '60s-era radicals (Che, Mao, Mandela, Ho Chi Minh, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King) for answers. Found some. Didn't find others. History and lots of hard debate and experience have moved me far from my politics of 30-40 years ago. But there is also much I've tried to hang on to--opposition to the war, support for union rights, involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and the struggle social justice and democratic education, to name a few.

It's that part of my history that led me to my last 30 years of work as an educator and school reform activist (yes, low-life Diamond, I actually was a cab driver--a damned good one). You'll have to read our book for more on that topic.

Most of the rest of the low-lifer stuff is crap, either badly researched or just fabricated--a throwback to the old '50 McCarthyite, guilt-by-association campaigns. Much of it doesn't even get my name right. They call me Martin.

I haven't had the time nor the inclination to google Diamond or look into his past. Don't know what his politics were 30 years ago. But I'll leave that to others.

In case you haven't noticed, this type of fear-based politics is a sign of the times. It even has Barack Obama putting on flag pins and vowing that he is truly patriotic over and over and over again. I really don't blame him, especially after hearing Matt Lauer accidentally referring to him, once again, as "Osama" yesterday morning.

Among the crap is the claim that Obama threw me "under the bus" by censoring my educators blog on the Obama campaign website. The fact is, I have great difficulty managing even one blog, hadn't posted on the Obama site for weeks and then found the site filled with racist comments and even threats of violence, posted by the low-lifes. So I closed it down. Actually, I and anyone, can post on that blog site. There is no screening. No controls. That, to the campaign's credit. Doing the SmallTalk blog with its 30,000 readers each month, is more than enough for a small-time blogger like me.

The rest of his "evidence" of the Klonsky/Ayers/Hayden/Rudd/Davidson/Obama conspiracy is really too silly to deserve a response (Obama gave me $175,000--I wish. Must be mixing me up with Hillary).

But anyway, there it is. This election is all about ME. So remember, when you go to the polls in November, a vote for Obama is a vote for ME (and you). Now watch ME (us) kick McCain's butt.

*****

Darn that Leo Casey at Edwize. He spoils everything by taking on Diamond's claim that the election is all about ME. Casey first makes sure that no one thinks him a weatherman terrorist nor a Maoist. Hey, does this imply that Casey and the UFT are supporting Obama? He's yet to say so, but this post hints at it. Kudos to you for that Leo. But Casey's blog also has provided a platform for low-life Diamond and he never even criticizes him directly. Even as Diamond takes him to task for being a naive conciliator.

Instead Leo writes:

A sure sign that the 2008 election is shaping up to be a realigning election, decisively ending three decades of conservative dominance of American politics, is the declining quality of argument put forward by the Right. This is particularly true in the field of education, where right-wing education pundits are reduced to complaining about the long-dead political pasts of two Chicago-based Obama education supporters.

How right you are Mr. Casey.

Leo then argues the right also has its own '60s radical, Howard Fuller, in its ranks. So there. Take that you Republicans.

I'm still trying to figure out how one's past can be described as "long-dead." I like to think of it as prologue.