Grits

It had to happen eventually.  Grits have now entered the discourse of American politics at the highest level. 

I’m not talking about “grit” as in 1969 Western classic “True Grit”, which won John Wayne his only Oscar (and which was remade by the Coen Brothers in 2010, a version I still haven’t seen).  “Grit”, as personified in both movies by lawman Rooster Cogburn, is the quality of being tough, determined, courageous, persistent.  Hard core, you could say. 

Finns, it would seem, know this quality well, since they have a word for it (sisu) that everyone who moves here encounters soon upon arrival.  You can’t overestimate the importance of sisu for Finns.  In the Finnish national psyche, the word sums up the essential character of Finns that has allowed them to survive, even thrive, in a harsh land.  Being so fundamental to the country, sisu has naturally been evoked often enough in political life here, similar to the way the concept of “exceptionalism” is constantly bandied about in American politics.  

Grits in the morning.  Photo: Sashafatcat

But what I’m talking about now, “grits” (always plural), is a food.  It’s porridge made from ground corn (maize, to the rest of the word) that is symbolic, in a trivial way, of my native Southern US.  Growing up in the South, grits are a part of life. 

When I was living in Athens, Georgia, working as a lab tech, I once met my boss for breakfast at a little downtown café that served a typical fare of eggs, bacon, and – as Southern tradition dictates – grits, whether you asked for them or not.  My boss, a botany professor and native of California, remarked about my sprinkling sugar on the heap of grits on my plate.  I joked that I eat grits “like a Yankee”, meaning that I adulterate them with something other than margarine or red-eye gravy.  I went on to explain that this is the only way I can eat grits.  My boss responded flatly, “I don’t even try.”

Actually, I don’t mind grits at all, and in fact I’m sure they’re healthy food.  It’s not that grits are bad; it’s just that they’re a bit bland by themselves.  Hence, my uncivilized abuse of this Southern delicacy. 

All of sudden, grits were in the news last week.  Republican candidates are currently vying for the hearts and minds of Southern voters, and they are doing this by showing how they are one with local folk using the time-honored tactic of eating what the local folk eat. 

I doubt Finish politicians face the same kind of gastronomic scrutiny and pressure to eat, in front of the cameras, such regional dishes as black sausage in Tampere or kalakukko (“fish rooster”) in Kuopio.  US candidates aren’t so lucky.  They routinely have to eat the most ridiculous food on offer at any number of county fairs across the land, including I’m sure the now-famous “fried butter on a stick”, first cooked up at the State Fair of Texas.  Candidates who are seen turning down such real-people food, risk being labeled elitists. 

Critics once ripped into Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry when – campaigning in the birthplace of the venerated Philly Cheese Steak sandwich – he had the gall to order his with Swiss cheese, instead of the de rigueur Cheese Whiz.  It showed, so claimed the purists, that Kerry didn’t have the common touch. 

To prove his own bona fides, everyman George Bush, Sr., used to make a big deal about his fondness for the Southern treat of pork rinds (crunchy fried pig skin, which actually isn’t that bad). 

With the primaries looming in Alabama and Mississippi today, grits are now on the menu – again whether you want them or not.  And you’d better want them.  Newt Gingrich, who is hoping his Dixie roots will win over voters and make his campaign slightly less embarrassing, summed it up thusly, according to the Wall Street Journal Blogs:  “If you don’t understand grits, there’s a pretty high likelihood you don’t understand the rest of the South either.” 

I think that’s a joke, whether he meant it that way or not.  But über-Yankee Mitt Romney, desperately trying to come across as down-home as possible, is taking no chances. Last week he bravely admitted that he has now tried for the very first time the South’s answer to oatmeal.  With cheese, as it turns out. 

Not to be outdone, Newt Gingrich trumpeted his grits credentials by reminding Alabama voters, "I just want you to know that as a Georgian, I understand grits.  I even understand cheese grits.” 

Good to know.  May the biggest grits eater win!

Super Tuesday

The Republican presidential race took a great leap on Tuesday when my home state of Georgia, along with nine others, all held primaries or caucuses on the same day.  Against my better judgment, I stayed up to around 3:30 to watch the returns come in.  Georgia was declared a win for Newt Gingrich within minutes of the polls closing at 2:00 a.m. Helsinki time.  No surprise there.  Not even Newt could manage to lose in his home state. 

Gingrich got 47% of the vote in Georgia, to Romney’s 26%.  What surprises me is that Santorum, favorite of hard-core evangelical Christians was only able to reach 20%.  Ron Paul got a pitiful 6%, which I guess shows there really isn’t much of a libertarian streak in the Peach State after all.  Republicans in my home county in North Georgia went for the native son in an even bigger way.  They cast 51% of their votes for Gingrich, giving him a whopping 28 points lead over Romney.  And this despite support for Romney from some of the county’s more prominent citizens that was enthusiastic enough to draw attention from national TV, though not exactly in a good way. 

While Gingrich took Georgia by storm, you have to wonder whether the hurricane force of his personality (read, “blow-hard”) is strong enough to carry him much beyond his home state.  It begins to look like he doesn’t have much of a natural base outside his native south, if even there.  In northern and western Super Tuesday states, like Massachusetts and Idaho, Gingrich didn’t make it higher than 8%.  In Ohio, he did better (15%), but still came in third. 

Even in the South, Gingrich wasn’t a shoo-in.  Neighboring Tennessee, just up I-75 from Atlanta, went overwhelmingly for Santorum, leaving Gingrich in distant third place.  With a less-than-stellar showing like that, it’s no wonder there’s lots of talk that Gingrich should do everyone a favor and quit.  Of course, he won’t.  Not yet.  He’s betting that Georgia and South Carolina weren’t just flukes and is putting all his chips on Alabama and Mississippi, two other Deep South states that vote next Tuesday. 

I have a feeling that the baffling allure of Newt Gingrich does not extend much beyond the Georgia state line, and he’ll lose next week, especially when God-fearing voters in Alabama and Mississippi have the option of Rick Santorum. 

If you ask me, Santorum’s allure is just as baffling as Gingrich’s.  He is not only conservative, but also a true believer.  He’s a deeply religious Catholic with an antiquated worldview that has apparently prompted him reopen a debate that many of us thought was settled over 50 years ago. 

Everyone recognizes that abortion is an incredibly emotional and tangled issue, and one that is still controversial for many Americans.  I don’t doubt for a moment that Santorum, like many conservatives, would like to see abortion disappear.  But what is surprising is that he also seems to feel the same way about birth control, decades after the Pill made planned pregnancies easier and a way of life for most Americans. 

Maybe that’s what bothers Santorum.  He is currently riding the wave of controversy over birth control that would have been hard to predict a year ago.  He has talked about “the dangers of contraception” in America, which he sees as not only unleashing sexual freedom outside of marriage, but also igniting too much sexual pleasure within it.  In Santorum’s mind, sex between a husband and wife is sullied by contraception.  Without the possibility of creating a baby each and every time, matrimonial sex is diminished, reduced to just an act of pleasure stripped of its true purpose, procreation. 

I’ll hazard a guess that most married couples in America kind of like it like that.  In ordinary times, I would say that Santorum is way out of step with his fellow citizens.  But these may not be ordinary times.  Just witness the uproar surrounding Sandra Fluke. 

Fluke, a 30-year-old law student, tried to testify before Congress in favor of forcing church-supported universities, such as Fluke’s Georgetown, to pay for birth control as part of their health-care insurance coverage.  (It was a White House proposal along these lines that first awoke the apparently long-simmering animosity of conservative Republicans to birth control.) 

Fluke told an informal panel of Democratic lawmakers that the lack of insurance coverage for birth control pills could cause hardship for low-income students at Georgetown.  She explained how a fellow student with an ovary condition treatable with birth control pills eventually lost an ovary after she was unable to get the medication through Georgetown University’s insurance. 

Now, some conservatives might simply argue against the policy Fluke was advocating.  (By the way, the public health system in Finland pays when women visit a clinic for birth control prescriptions, but not for the medication itself.  Women here have to cover the cost of the pills, unless they need them for a medical condition.)  Or conservative critics might question Fluke’s objectivity or accuse her of exaggerating the severity of the issue.  Fair points.  But that wouldn’t have been vicious enough for conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, a gasbag of historic proportions. 

On his nationally broadcast show, Rush launched into a personal attack against Fluke where he called her a “slut” and “prostitute” for expecting taxpayers to pay her to have sex.  Rush’s twisted (in every sense) logic was that Fluke was having so much sex that she could no longer afford to pay for birth control herself.  He continued his on-air attacks for four days in a row, at one point suggesting that if taxpayers had to pay for Fluke to have consequence-free sex, then she should provide video tapes of the encounters so everyone could enjoy. 

Even by Rush Limbaugh standards, this is simply unbelievable.  Not to mention totally inaccurate.  Besides being incredibly insulting and juvenile, his rant bore no relation to what Fluke’s actually said, to the issue at large, or the reality of birth control itself.  For example, it would be private insurance paying for the pills, not taxpayers.  Limbaugh also seems to think a woman needs to take a birth control pill each time she has sex.  Chances are he’s confusing birth control medication with Viagra, something he apparently does know quite a bit about. 

Limbaugh finally issued a lukewarm apology when sponsors started leaving his show, but hasn’t faced much real criticism from the right over his comments, least of all from the GOP presidential candidates, who all seem afraid of him.  I would love to think that something like this would force him off the air for good, but the way things are these days, I wouldn’t get too hopeful. 

Happy International Women’s Day?

Go Newt, Go Figure

After last weekend’s elections in Finland and America, both countries are closer to choosing a president.  In the case of Finland, a lot closer.  Practically done, in fact.  For the US, however, it is still a long slog, but with some fascinating twists sure to come. 

The Finnish poll turned out as expected with Sauli Niinistö getting the lion’s share of the vote, some 37 percent.  The Green Party candidate, Pekka Haavisto, also as expected had a strong showing, though squeaking into second place only 1% ahead of the third-place finisher, veteran politician Paavo Väryrnen.  Niinistö and Haavisto now continue to the next round, to be decided a week from today.  Early voting has already started. 

A couple of encouraging things to note from the first round.  “True Finn” Timo Soini came in a distant fourth with only 9.4% of the vote, a far cry from the nearly 20% his party garnered in the parliamentary election that shook things up so much last spring.  However, it might be wise not to read this as a complete repudiation (almost wrote refudiation there, shades of Sarah Palin!) of the xenophobic party that Soini represents.  The presidential race here has more to do with the individual candidate, not the party, which helps explain how Haavisto’s personal popularity outstrips the Green Party’s relatively low level of support (only 10 MPs in a 200-member parliament). 

The other positive takeaway was the turnout.  A few weeks ago, I heard a Finn lamenting how people here don’t bother to vote as much as they should, with a typical turnout (he said) of only 60-something percent.  That sounded low to me, though not bad compared to voter turnout in the US.  Average turnout is around 50% for US congressional elections, maybe more for higher-profile White House races, which is pathetic for a country that prides itself as the model of democracy. 

It turns out that the 60-something figure for Finland claimed by my friend is indeed too low.  In the first election round last Sunday, almost 73% of voters turned out nationwide, and even more in Helsinki.  I can’t help but boast a little that turnout in my neighborhood was a whopping 85%.  As I’ve said, Finns are a civic-minded people.

While the Finnish election was satisfying, the one in South Carolina was absolutely galvanizing.  I even stayed up to watch the coverage on CNN, which started at one in the morning Helsinki time.  When the voting ended an hour later, CNN was ready within minutes to declare Newt Gingrich the winner, a stunning comeback for the Georgian who had until a week earlier been badly trailing Mitt Romney in the polls.  Not only did Gingrich beat Romney, he trounced him by 13 points. 

The victory for Gingrich, which keeps him in the running and denies Romney an early anointment as GOP nominee, was bizarre.  And it highlights the bizarre, you could say even schizophrenic, nature of the Republican Party in 2012. 

The winner of the first 2012 Republican primary to be held in the conservative and religious South is a two-time adulterer who has most recently been attacking the GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney for being a capitalist tool.  Go figure.

Something like 65% of South Carolina GOP voters identify themselves as evangelical Christians, the most earnest and in-your-face type of churchgoers in a region that’s not known as the Bible Belt for nothing.  Yet by a margin of nearly 2 to 1, this devout demographic voted for a man who has traded in not only his wife three times, but also his faith.  He was born a Lutheran, became a Southern Baptist while in college, then converted in 2009 to the Catholicism of his current wife. 

I’m not saying there is anything wrong with this; it’s just a bit ironic a deep-red, born-again state like South Carolina doesn't have a problem with it.  You could think that Gingrich’s flipping churches is his way of applying free-market principles to religion.  If a particular religion doesn’t serve your needs, why not shop around for one that does?  At least you have then given the matter of religion more thought than most people, who usually stick with the faith that was chosen for them by accident of birth.  That's the charitable way of looking at it.  When it comes to Gingrich’s ditching his first two wives, I'm afraid there’s no charitable way of looking at that.  None at all. 

This is beside the point anyway. It’s not that Palmetto State voters chose Gingrich because they admired his freewheeling attitude toward spouses or churches.  (After all, as people always like to point out, redemption is an important tenet of Christianity – good news for the occasional politician or clergyman caught with their pants down.) 

And South Carolinians’ enthusiasm for Gingrich probably has nothing to do with his critique of Mitt Romney’s money-grubbing business skills, which were dubbed “vulture capitalism” by leftist Rick Perry before he dropped out of the race.  South Carolina voters seem to be riled up for Newt mainly because they are mad as hell, and they see in Gingrich someone who not only shares their blinding anger at Obama and the Democrats, but also is also snarly enough to fight. 

If voters didn’t think so before, they saw the light when Gingrich lashed out at CNN debate moderator John King, who had the nerve to ask Gingrich about claims from Gingrich’s second wife that he had asked her for “an open marriage” so that he could carry on unhindered with his mistress Callista.  With that outburst, he won their hearts.

South Carolina may well turn out to be a fluke, however, since mainstream Republican leaders and pundits have piled on Newt, and polls in Florida, where voting next takes place on Tuesday, are showing Gingrich back in his familiar second place, far behind Mitt Romney.  Maybe even yesterday’s endorsement from Herman Cain won’t be enough of a boost to save Gingrich.  Come to think of it, a nod from Cain might be the last thing Newt needs. 

Anyway, I’ll probably be drifting off to sleep in front of the TV in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, watching to see how Gingrich fares in Florida.  Looking ahead, I can’t wait to see what happens with Gingrich on Super Tuesday in my, and his, home state of Georgia – not as diverse as Florida, but not as reactionary (I hope) as South Carolina. 

Maybe it doesn’t matter.  I have a feeling that by the time March 6^th rolls around, karma will finally bite and Georgia Republicans will no longer have the option of voting for their native, and very prodigal, son.  

Horse Races

It’s fashionable, and totally correct I might add, to carp about how politics – the very serious business of organizing how people are governed – is all too often reduced to a horse race.  Who’s up, who’s down, who’s ahead of whom in the polls, by how many points, yada, yada, yada.   

I have to confess.  I’m one of those bad people who love to view politics as a spectator sport, which probably points to a defect in my character or at least a sad statement on the state of my life. 

So, for a political junkie like me, this is shaping up to be a lost weekend at the racetrack.  There are gripping elections in both the US and Finland. 

Well, maybe it’s an exaggeration to say “gripping” in the case of the Finnish presidential election, which takes place tomorrow, Sunday.  Compared to the Las Vegas sheen of recent US campaigns, the election here in Finland is, let’s say, understated.  The numerous televised debates between the eight candidates have much more in common with Charlie Rose than American Idol.  In terms of squabbling, they haven’t even reached the level of the McLaughlin Group.  (I realize some of these public-affairs TV shows will be familiar only to political junkies like myself, so starved for entertainment as we are.) 

Also, you can make the case that the race for Finnish president doesn’t mean that much, since in Finland’s parliamentary system the president doesn’t have much power beyond setting foreign policy. 

Still, Finns are generally very civic-minded, so when they go to the polls to elect a president every six years they take it seriously, as they should.  And, with the political landscape in flux here, there’s probably even keener interest than usual in the outcome of this election.  The surprising success of the reactionary True Finns party in parliamentary elections turned Finnish politics on its ear last spring.  And the on-going European debt crisis keeps calling into question Finland’s role in the EU, as well as all kinds of domestic economic issues here. 

This uncertainty notwithstanding, there is practically no doubt who will win tomorrow’s election.  The conservative National Coalition Party’s Sauli Niinistö is sure to be the next president, according to polls, breaking the Social Democrat’s 30-year hold on the presidency.  (As a point of interest, the “conservative” party here occupies about the same spot on the political spectrum as the Democrats in the US.)  The weakness of the long-dominant Social Democrats is one of the biggest surprises in this race, as well as the projected poor showing of the True Finn’s candidate, Timo Soini.  

With the outcome seemly certain, the biggest question now centers on who will come in second.  In the Finnish system, if no one receives more than 50% of the vote, there is a runoff between the top two contenders.  With the vote being divided between eight candidates, it can easily happen.  Many people I know are voting for Pekka Haavisto, the hugely popular candidate of the Green Party, hoping he’ll make it to the second round. 

Haavisto, who is openly gay, seems to have been propelled to second place in the latest polls by his personal favorability, which is much higher than the level of support the Green Party itself enjoys.  As the results come in on Sunday, we’ll all be watching to see how good the news is for Haavisto and how bad it might be for Soini, who is running a distant fourth in the polls and has no chance of making it to the second round. 

Before then, an even more interesting question will be resolved – who wins in South Carolina.  Like Ground Hog Day, what happens today will decide whether “spring” has come for Republicans, or if they might have to slog through six more months of GOP winter.  The conventional wisdom is that a win by frontrunner Mitt Romney in this deeply conservative state, and the first in the South to vote, will settle the issue. 

Romney’s anointment seemed like a done deal until this past week, when feisty Newt Gingrich surged in the polls and bumbling Rick Perry narrowed the field by quitting.  I’m on pins and needles about this.  I can’t say for sure whom I want to win.  I’m hoping that Republicans, after carefully vetting each candidate and weighing their true devotion to conservative values, will choose the man absolutely best suited to go up against Obama in November, and lose. 

Many Tea Party Republicans hate Obama for pushing through “Obamacare” health insurance reform, which was largely modeled after “Romneycare”, created by none other than Mitt Romney.  I relish the thought of Tea Party supporters, who want to kick out the president because of Obamacare, having to vote for the man who made the template for it. 

As great as it would be to see Republicans face that dilemma, I still worry that Romney comes across as reasonable (dare I say, sane) enough to be a real threat to Obama.  So, imagine my excitement by the prospect of Newt regaining his vigor in South Carolina and giving Romney a real run for his money.  For all his presidential good looks and slick operation, Romney lacks the passion that true conservatives seem to be searching for, the passion needed to win their hearts.  Passion is one thing that Newt has – an abundance of it, in fact.  He is so passionate about so much that it can be heartbreaking at times – just ask the two ex-wives he cheated on. 

We now have the titillating possibility of Gingrich winning South Carolina, staying in the race and, who knows, catching enough fire and momentum to ride Tea Party anger and resentment all the way to the convention in Tampa.  Thinking what a spectacle a race between Obama and Newt would be, I have no choice but to "endorse" Newt Gingrich as the GOP candidate.  (Now, there’s a game changer!)  Still, given how surreal US politics have become, there’s a little voice in my head that says, “What if he actually wins?” 

Then, sweet Jesus help us all.

Famous Georgians

Often when I tell someone in Finland that I’m from the American state of Georgia, I get a blank look in return.  If “Georgia” seems to mean nothing to them, I offer the explanation of “Floridan lähellä” (near Florida).  Everyone knows Florida. 

In the past I’ve tried to correct this lack of Finnish awareness of Georgia by listing (or boasting, as the case may be) some of the famous people who have come from the Peach State.  I even gained a bit of a reputation among my colleges for doing this to a highly annoying degree. 

Foremost is Martin Luther King, who is without question the best-known Georgian anywhere in the world.  And, of course, there’s Jimmy Carter, whom Finns of a certain age are definitely familiar with, though they might not necessarily associate him with Georgia. 

Beyond these two famous men, Finns (and, for that matter, anyone else outside of Georgia) are much less aware of the other prominent folks from the state. 

This is where I come in, happy to enlighten the uninformed that renowned Georgians also include Mr. Ray Charles and Mr. James Brown.  Okay, it’s true the Godfather of Soul was born across the river in South Carolina, but he lived most of his life in Georgia.  And Ray Charles, the man who made “Georgia on My Mind” such a classic, would deserve to be an honorary Georgian, even if he hadn’t been born there. 

But, the list goes on, especially in the musical realm:  Little Richard, Otis Redding, Gladys Knight, all R&B and Soul legends, all from my home state.  Closer to my own time, the alternate musical scene in the college town of Athens -- a liberal oasis in a sea of diehard conservatives -- spawned acts such as The B-52s and, of course, R.E.M., the best band ever, period.  Sorry, Tenacious D. 

And then there’s the Georgians who left home to make it big in Hollywood, starting with Oliver Hardy, the larger half of the Laurel and Hardy comedy duo.  Hardy briefly attended boarding school in Young Harris, the tiny mountain town where I went to college almost 70 years later.  Other, somewhat more modern entertainers from Georgia are Julia Roberts, Burt Reynolds (how could Burt not be from Georgia), and the delectable Kim Basinger.  I once worked with someone in Athens who had gone to school with Kim.  She once showed her high school yearbook, where the teenage Basinger certainly looked pretty in her school photo, but not so different at the time from many of the other girls in her class. 

I realize I’m dating myself badly with all these references to figures who are already starting to fade from the scene.  Or maybe it shows I haven’t lived in the state for a long time.  Anyway, the best-known native sons of Georgia nowadays are two that sadly I’m not proud of at all.  And both are running for president. 

One of them, Newt Gingrich, is in fact the current Republican frontrunner, which means he is the “anti-Romney” of the moment.  (Republicans seem desperate to find some marginally acceptable candidate who is not Mitt Romney so that this person [fill in the blank] will appeal to Republicans apparently desperate to vote for anybody – except maybe Mitt Romney – who is not Barack Obama.) 

Finns might be puzzled by the name “Newt”, especially if they realize that it’s English for vesilisko.  Of course, Newt’s simply a nickname for Gingrich’s actual first name “Newton”, but it’s hard to imagine a name more fitting to his personality.  (And for this I mean no disrespect to actual newts, God bless ‘em.)

As Speaker of the House in the 90s, Gingrich led rebellious Republicans in a failed and ill-advised attempt to shut down the federal government.  A bit later, he was more successful in clamoring for the impeachment of Bill Clinton over his lying about sexual misconduct – while Gingrich himself (who was 55 at the time and married) was dappling in a little sexual misconduct of his own with a 32-year-old congressional employee.  She became his third and – at least for now – current wife.  Gingrich has since blamed his forays into adultery on his overriding passion for America.  Seriously. 

Despite all this, Newt has somehow gained the reputation of being an intellectual, the gray eminence of the Republican Party, which does nothing to mask the belligerent, mean-spirited nature that makes him a uniquely unlikable person. 

On the other hand, the other Georgian running for president appears to be extremely likeable.  Too bad he also appears completely incompetent for the job of highest office in the land.  Herman Cain is, by all accounts, a likeable guy, a powerful motivational speaker, and – as the former CEO of the Godfather’s Pizza chain – probably a fairly successful businessman.  That doesn’t, however, make him presidential material, as recent events have shown.  His only shtick is a simplistic flat tax plan, branded “9-9-9”, that most economists agree would hurt poor people the most.  Beyond that – and a fine singing voice – he’s got nothing. 

But Cain is good at promoting himself and was briefly the frontrunner in the quest for the “Anti-Romney-Obama”.  That was until his star began to fade a few weeks ago after stories of past sexual misconduct started to emerge and his campaign started to stumble. 

The sex allegations now seemed to have fizzled, with no new developments lately, and I think that’s fine.  I would hate to see Cain drop out of the race due to unproven claims of hanky panky with any woman he happens to run across who isn’t his wife.  Instead, it is much more fitting that his campaign self-destructs because voters finally can’t ignore the fact that, behind his upbeat nature and his gimmicky 9-9-9 plan, he hasn’t got a clue what he would do as president.  His recent flubs at answering straightforward foreign policy questions on Libya have proven just how out of his depth he is. 

I think that even more than Gingrich, who probably seriously thinks he could be president and actually has some chance of winning, Cain is only in the race for free publicity to sell his books and boost his personal brand.  Both men, in their own ways, are embarrassments and not the kind of Georgians I would want to brag about – or be president.