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The Barras Report
THE RETURN OF INTIMACY
Dec 2, 2008, 09:56
I saw it briefly, just after the attack on Sept. 11, 2001. Americans removed the walls between them. They were no longer strangers. A terrible thing had happened on our shores, and to our fellow citizens. We grieved together, and prayed together for a safer future.
But that intimacy—not of lovers but a circle of loving friends, neighbors and families—Americans had exchanged walked away when Anthrax entered; when terrorists profiling began, when war became the vision that filled our eyes, pained our hearts and emptied so many communities.
“It is easy to see the beginning of things, and harder to see the ends,” Joan Didion wrote in her 1967 essay. I think of this line when I think of Sept. 11.
I have worked hard to see both beginning and end, and reawakening. I think intimacy may be returning. I could be wrong; it could just be Advent--the start of the Christmas season.
The Barras Report
REPUBLICANS NEED A LIFELINE
Nov 19, 2008, 10:25
If the national Republican Party has a cold, the local DC GOP has pneumonia, and is on life support.
Sen. John McCain’s presidential defeat and vanishing congressional seats have instigated handwringing among conservatives and prayers for a 2010 or 2012 recovery. Newt Gingrich, the magician who affected the 1994 Republican takeover when Bill Clinton was president, is seen as someone who might save the Grand Old Party.
“The [national] Republican Party has reached a point where it has to hope and pray that contingencies bring it back to the point of resilience,” Ross Douthat, a senior editor at The Atlantic, said last week during a post-election forum sponsored by the Democratic Strategist and the Progressive Policy Institute. .
Douthat, the co-author with Reihan Salam of “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream,” lives in a “what if” world. He, like other conservatives, sees the party’s potential revival in possible gaffes or debacles of President-elect Barack Obama’s administration.
The District Republican Party needs more than luck.
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The Barras Report
What Black America Expects From President Obama
Nov 14, 2008, 18:05
African Americans have just entered the no-excuses zone.
We finally have one of our own in the White House. With Barack Obama's ascension to the highest office in the United States, most African Americans feel that we have arrived as fully equal citizens. But we need to recognize that with Obama's victory come challenges -- and that many of those challenges will be put to the black community itself.
Obama isn't like the leaders who have traditionally spoken for black America. As president, he's unlikely to embrace the confrontational identity politics that have defined black activism for so long. He won't tolerate an African American brand of racism or a culture of violence. Nor is he likely to be patient with the long-standing narrative of victimhood that has defined black America to itself and to the mainstream for more than a century.
Obama is already constructing a new black political and cultural narrative -- gathering together the best of the past, including the coalition politics that characterized the early civil rights movement and an image of strong black males that doesn't involve bling-bling or hip-hop misogyny. He has decried the low-hanging pants fashion so popular with young black men, blasted rapper Ludacris for offensive song lyrics and called on fathers to take responsibility for their families.
Are African Americans ready to accept all this and respond positively? Are they ready for a truly post-racial America?
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The Barras Report
REDEMPTION SONG: CAN FANNIE MAE'S EXECUTIVES SING IT?
Oct 30, 2008, 08:34
He waited for someone to sit next to him. But the chairs around him were empty, as if he were quarantined. Franklin Raines, the former chief executive officer of the nation’s largest mortgage lender, has become a “pariah,” said one person attending the same meeting.
James Johnson — Raines’ predecessor at Fannie Mae — also is an outcast. When Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama chose Johnson to serve on his vice presidential search committee, the choice created a firestorm of criticism. Johnson removed himself from the committee.
Critics say Johnson and Raines played key roles in Fannie Mae’s decline. They say the duo and the corporation were brought low by ambition and greed.
There have been others who were overwhelmed by their appetites. They pulled themselves from the ditch and regained the respect of their fellow citizens. Johnson and Raines could do the same while benefiting Washington metropolitan communities.
Think Michael Milken.
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The Barras Report
THE MAIN EVENT—LOSING THEIR MINDS
Oct 19, 2008, 14:22
WHAT if he loses? That’s the question author Ta-Nehisi Coates asks in an essay in the Oct. 20, 2008 issue of “Time “ magazine. He wonders how blacks will react if Democrat Barack Obama fails to win the White House on Nov. 4.
“An Obama defeat would be greeted with a loud sucking of the teeth and deepening of self-doubt,” he says. “A loss would be hugely disappointing, and to put it crudely, it would also be more of the same.”
Actually, asking the question is more of the same.
Though I admire Coates and think him a hugely talented writer, raising the question about loss--not victory--is troubling. Even now, as the country is poised for major political and cultural change—a change that has been coming since the mid 1990s when the first class of new styled black leaders hit the mayoral suites and the halls of Congress—some African American see mostly the possibility of defeat.
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