Filed under: health, politics, racism | Tags: anh cao, health care, joseph cao, louisiana, obama, post-racial, racism, reform, vietnam
By now, you’ve heard that Representative Anh “Joseph” Cao from Louisiana cast the single Republican vote in favor of the health care bill.
Quin Hillyer writes a reasoned response to the outcry from conservatives on The American Spectator, citing Cao’s longtime promise to support the bill if it included pro-life language. Representative Cao posted a statement himself on his website:
“I read the versions of the House bill. I listened to the countless stories of Orleans and Jefferson Parish citizens whose health care costs are exploding — if they are able to obtain health care at all. Louisianans needs real options for primary care, for mental health care, and for expanded health care for seniors and children.”
Say what you want about Cao’s politics–whether he made a “secret” back-door deal with the Obama administration in return for Hurricane Katrina funds, for example–but to attack Cao’s ethnic heritage? In what is lauded so often as a post-racial, Obama-happy world? How could this be?
I’m always in shock when I read blatant racial epithets like those directed at Rep. Cao. Just take a look at the public tweet in the graphic to the right for an idea of misdirected vitriol.
Filed under: art, literature, world | Tags: berlin wall, fall, mark doty, poets, vera pavlova, yusef komunyakaa
Nine prominent poets memorialize the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in today’s NYT. Mark Doty writes about an ordinary construction site in his U.S. neighborhood; Russian poet Vera Pavlova contrasts the momentous occasion with her everyday experiences as a mother.
Yusef Komunyakaa writes in “Nostalgia” (my favorite of the bunch):
While the east slept in the arms of the west
each house broke into two divided houses
& concertina rolled out across the dead of night
to cleave a full moon.
and
Let’s not speak of official good & evil,
but of a man and woman spooning bodies,
knowing what it takes to make love
go through gray concrete brightly.
