Primaries, the Whiteness of Iowa, NH; Low Unemployment Rates

It is very curious that we are giving so much first in the nation stock to two states that are hardly representative of the United States.

Iowa and New Hampshire both have white populations of over 90 percent (IA: 92.6%, NH: 94.8%, for the 2005 to 2009 year range). The national figure for the white population is 74.5 percent. In Iowa and New Hampshire, of the other groups, African-American, Asian-American, Hispanic or Latino and Native American, none exceed five percent.

(See, for example, this Fact Sheet at the U.S. Census' FactFinder site: http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ACSSAFFFacts?_event=Search&geo_id=&_geoContext=&_street=&_county=&_cityTown=&_state=04000US19&_zip=&_lang=en&_sse=on&pctxt=fph&pgsl=010
(By the way, on January 20, 2012, the Census' new portal will be :
factfinder2.census.gov )

More diverse Florida and Nevada
At the end of January and at the beginning of February, will come the primaries in Florida and Nevada.
Florida of course has a larger percentage of Latino voters, as compared to Iowa or New Hampshire.
Nevada will also be a more diverse state than the first primary or caucus states. It has become a magnet for Asian heritage Americans. Demographers in a USA Today article ("In a twist, USA's Asians are heading to the Mountain West" [7/6/2008], http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-07-06-Asians-West_N.htm ) hypothesize that Asians are doing what middle class whites have done for decades: moved to different states, to find easier costs of living. Nevada in the 2004 to 2009 period had an Asian percentage (6.2 %) higher than the national average of 4.4 percent. (Las Vegas' Asian percentage is 5.9 percent.
The 2008 USA Today article reports:

Filipinos are the largest Asian group here, at about 45%. Chinese are the next at 15%, Japanese and Koreans make up 9% each, Asian Indians and Vietnamese represent about 5% each, and other Asians make up 12%.

Because the Asian community is still relatively small in numbers, ethnic divisions are not as distinct as in places such as Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York.

Given voting patterns that we have seen in California and New Jersey, a "purple" or swing state status, between Republican red and Democratic blue could be in the cards for Nevada. The state might be a potential President Obama win in November and the Democrats might take the Republican senate seat there this year.

Ah hah!: Iowa and New Hampshire unemployment rates out of sync with the nation
Will the unemployment rates of South Carolina, Florida and Nevada provide a contrast in voting patterns to voting patterns in low unemployment states of Iowa and Hampshire?
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics site ( http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm ), which uses December 20, 2011 data for the latest reported state-by-state unemployment figures:
The first states had some of the lower unemployment statistics:
Iowa, number 6 for lowest unemployment: 5.7 percent
New Hampshire was number 4 with 5.4 percent unemployed

South Carolina's primary (January 21) should bring out more of the mood affected by unemployment: ranking 42 in lowest unemployment (translation: one of the ten worst states for joblessness) with 9.9 percent unemployed.
Florida's rate (the state has its primary on January 31): 10.0 percent without jobs.
Nevada's caucuses (February 4) likewise has 13.0 percent unemployment, the worst in the nation.

Republicans, Sotomayor, ethnic voters and the long reach of political memory

REPUBLICANS PROJECTED TO ALIENATE HISPANIC VOTING BLOC FOR A GENERATION WITH OPPOSITION TO SOTOMAYOR
Just minutes after President Barack Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be the first Latina justice and the third woman on the Supreme Court, the Republican right was assembling the bandwagon with ideological vitriol against her.

Republicans to be mindful of how their rhetoric and conduct will resonate for many Latino voters. Diversity rings differently for different voters. For many voters in the white majority it sounds like quotas, of lowered expectations. But for many voters in groups that have been long excluded, it means that they (the excluded group) are no longer excluded, that America is including them, that the American government is finally representing them, that the American government is no longer a white government, but a government for the range of various communities that compose the country.
Simon Rosenberg, of the New Democrat Network:

"The movement of our nation from a majority white to a more racially complex society is perhaps the single greatest societal change taking place in our great nation today,'' he suggests.
"And if the Supreme Court is to have the societal legitimacy required to do its work, its justices must reflect and speak to the people of America of the 21st Century,'' he says.

And here, politicians and pundits are on board with sharing the belief that Republicans will have to tread very carefully in how they treat Sotomayor: Sam Youngman, "Senate GOP risks alienating Hispanics over court pick," May 26, 2009 from "The Hill":

Democratic strategist Guillermo Meneses said Republicans will stay in the minority for years to come if they try to bruise Sotomayor.

“If Republicans unleash the attack dogs on Sotomayor, they will be looking at becoming a regional, minority party for the next couple of decades,” Meneses said. “They really have written the playbook on how to antagonize Latinos, the fastest-growing political power in our nation.”

Former Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla (Texas), an ally of President George W. Bush's, told The Hill on Tuesday that Senate Republicans will have to be mindful of how they treat Sotomayor.
“That is the political reality,” Bonilla said. “In an ideal world, you would decide on a Supreme Court justice based on their qualifications. But in the real world, this is something Senate Republicans are going to have to deal with, and that's her ethnicity.”

So, we will have conservative Republicans blathering on about "dubious qualifications," "unqualified," "token." They will speak to the choir with their scathing rejection of her fitness for the high court. And how will many (yes, not all) Latinos will hear racism (or at least suspect racism) in the Republicans' opposition to her.
(Already, Latina.com reports that Rush Limbaugh has said that he wishes Sotomayor fails, and Mike Huckabee called her "Maria.")
Many activists in the Party of No believe that the best route is to cast the center aside and go with the faithful core. Yet as they play to the Fox News crowd, they need to consider how their tone and words resonate for viewers of the Univision, Telemundo and Telefutura television networks.
True, there are plenty of conservative Latino voters that will stick with the Grand Obstructionist Party, on issues such as personal libertarianism or conservative social values. But more broadly, we can envision the Republicans losing hefty enough numbers of Hispanic voters in marginal states, such as Nevada, Arizona, Florida, and maybe even Colorado. The buzzword in the context of this appointment is "Hispanic legitimacy." The Republicans of the Party of No will giver further reason for voters to see them as intolerant, if not old fashioned and exclusionary.
A recent poll said that 68 percent of voters did not see it remarkable that a Latina judge was selected.(Mark Silva at Chicago Tribune's "Swamp Politics, May 26, 2009.) While that might be true, the Republicans did poorly, broadly, in so many regions. The Republicans need to worry about the partisan fence sitters in that remaining 32 percent.
COOPERATIVE PLAYERS NOW BITTER PARTISANS, WITH EGG ON THEIR FACES?
Here's another interesting nugget: the Republicans will scream about how a) she is too political in her rulings or b) dubiously qualified. But they have to remember that not only did Bill Clinton appoint her to federal court positions, but Bush I (George H.W. Bush) gave her an earlier boost in 1992 to the federal judiciary. If she is so disreputable, key Republicans with judiciary assignments will have to explain why they supported --with their votes Clinton's 1998 promotion of Sotomayor. Also from Youngman's piece in "The Hill":

When former President Bill Clinton nominated Sotomayor to the U.S. Circuit Court, 25 Republican senators voted to confirm her. Seven of those 25 — Sens. Bob Bennett (Utah), Orrin Hatch (Utah), Susan Collins (Maine), Olympia Snowe (Maine), Thad Cochran (Miss.), Richard Lugar (Ind.) and Judd Gregg (N.H.) — still serve in the upper chamber. An eighth, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), was a Republican at the time but switched to the Democratic Party earlier this year.

These Republicans will have to explain their sudden "realization" that Sotomayor is extreme or unqualified.

Denounce the SNL skit on Paterson

The criticisms surrounding the "Saturday Night Live" skit on Gov. David Paterson (NY) do not concern the notion of whether or not it is fair game to lampoon a governor. The issue is that the dubious comedy was centered around mocking Paterson's eye movements and issues of blindness in general.
(Satirizing political figures with topical humor can be done without offending classes of people. Witness the same night's opening sketch that ridiculed the vulgarity and egocentric nature of Gov. Rod Blagojevich (Ill.). Here, the sketch did not offend Serbian-Americans.)

Apparently, we need to explain the situation to the writers of "SNL." When you can see, your eyes fixate on objects. Hence, the eyes remain with a fixed gaze upon one thing. When the seeing person shifts his/her attention to another object, the eyes pan to another location.

Now, when a person cannot see, the blind person has lost the connection with fixing eyes upon objects. Thus, the eyes appear to dart about. This is simply how things are for sight-deprived people.

This is not a laughing matter. So, why is it that "Saturday Night Live" needs to step into the gutter and have Fred Armesen mimic this aspect of Gov. Paterson?

Adding insult to the matter, Armisen held a chart upside down. In the sketch performance, the "news anchor" character guided Armesen's arms so that he was facing in the proper direction. Worst of all, a major part of the sketch was after Armesen finished his lines. Armisen blocked the camera view of the "Weekend Update" news-desk. And this poor taste joke was repeated and repeated.

Clearly, foibles of blindness were the focal point of the "humor" in the sketch.

This is sickening. Let's go back to when we were say three, four or five years of age. Remember that our mothers, fathers or schoolteachers told us that it was impolite to make fun of people's disabilities? If this argument itself was insufficient, the older, model adults explained to us that it would hurt the feelings of people with such a disability.

I presume that network censors do not hold the place in networks that they did, say forty years ago. (We do not hear of them as much as we would have in past decades.) But they serve a necessary function. If writers and performers cannot exercise the golden rule and consider the effect of their words upon the potentially offended minority group, then network censors can enforce good manners, good judgment.

Such a skit was cold-hearted on the part of Saturday Night Live. The writers and actors do not know the frustration that sightless people feel, not being able to see for the practical purposes of sight or for the aesthetic purposes (of enjoying physical beauty).

Alas, this is not too surprising. The casting department of Saturday Night Live has not given us a representative cross-section of the diversity of society. The cast is heavily male, nearly entirely white. To my recollection, they have never had a regular member that is of Asian background. Generally, the number of African-Americans on the cast has been a token number. The fact that SNL has felt it necessary to resort to using Armisen in blackface to play President-elect Barack Obama is reflective of their negligence to have a greater number of African-American actors.

Comment too should be made on the quality of the roles that African-American cast members are given on the show. To be sure, there are inane roles given to European-American performers, but overwhelmingly the nature of the role that the typical African-American cast member is the role of the buffoon, a role perpetuating the tradition of black American as a supposedly clownish character, by her/his very nature.

Lastly, we should note that lately the show has ridiculed the gay orientation of Rep. Barney Frank. Armisen (hmm, how is that he is all of the most offensive roles??? hmmmm) a couple of weeks ago, playing Frank, told actors playing Detroit Big 3 auto executives that American cars should be "more gay." Yes, the latest offense, in the matter of Armisen/Paterson sketch, follows a defiant Seth Myers response to outcry over SNL's treatment of Frank. When faced with criticism that the sketches were insensitive toward Frank in a gay perspective, Myers replied that he would not be cowed to criticism.

We should remember not only that free speech allows us to offend anyone to any degree we wish. We should exercise self-restraint against offensive free speech, not because we are afraid of any governmental power, but because we are concerned with the feelings of potentially offended people.

Please join me in writing a protest letter to the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC).
Here is the contact information for NBC:
Mr. Jeff Zucker, President
NBC Entertainment
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10112
(818) 840-4444

Click here to E-Mail NBC.

The NBC website.