The triumph of feminism
女权主义的胜利

Sep 11th 2008
From The Economist print edition

America’s feminists may have lost a battle or two. But they are winning the war
偶失城池不妨最终胜利

THIS was supposed to be the year in which America’s feminists celebrated the shattering of the highest glass ceiling. They had the ideal candidate in Hillary Rodham Clinton, a woman who had been tempered in the fires of Washington. And they had every reason to think that she would whip both the young Barack Obama and the elderly John McCain.
今年理应成为美女权主义者庆祝粉碎人生道路上最高玻璃天花板的历史性一刻。她们有理由相信，希拉里.克林顿，作为她们的理想候选人，在经历了华盛顿之火的重重锻造之后，会毫无疑问地向年幼的奥巴马和老气麦凯恩发起致命一击。

But it was Mrs Clinton who got the whipping. She not only lost an unlosable primary race. She was dissed and denounced in the process. Chris Matthews of MSNBC said that she owed her Senate seat to her husband’s infidelity. One lobbyist created an anti-Hillary pressure group called Citizens United Not Timid. A couple of young men ordered her to “iron my shirt”. Mr McCain, whom she regards as a good friend, looked on benignly when a Republican asked him “How do we beat the bitch?”
然而，最终希拉里却不幸中招。她不仅输掉了一场输不起的初选，而且在选举过程中被不断非议指责。微软全国电视有线广播公司的Chris Matthews称希拉里能够占有参议员的位置要归功于她丈夫的不忠。一名政治说客发起了一个名为”公民团结无惧”的反希拉里的压力集团。一群年轻男人命令她为他们”熨平衬衫”。而麦凯恩，这个被希拉里视为好朋友的人，在一位共和党向他问道”我们如何揍扁这个婊子？”的时候，则选择了仁慈的甩手旁观。

Mr McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running-mate has turned the defeat into Armageddon. Mrs Palin is everything that liberal feminists loathe: a gun-toting evangelical, a polar bear-hating former beauty queen, a mother of five who opposes abortion rights and celebrates the fact that her pregnant teenage daughter has “chosen life”. During her campaign for Alaska’s lieutenant-governorship in 2002 she called herself as “pro-life as any candidate can be”.
麦凯恩将萨拉帕林作为竞选伙伴的选择将这场失败变成了一场世纪末日的终极决战。帕林女士几乎囊括了所有信奉自由主义的女权主义者憎恨的元素：带枪的福音主义者，厌恶北极熊的前选美皇后，身为5个孩子的妈妈不仅反对堕胎还将她十几岁女儿怀孕的事实引以为荣。在2002年，阿拉斯加州长副职的竞选中，她号称自己比任何候选人都要反对堕胎

Gloria Steinem, the founder of Ms magazine, says that “Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton”. Kim Gandy, the president of the National Organisation of Women, dismisses her as a “woman who opposes women’s rights”. Debbie Dingell, a leading Michigan Democrat, said that women felt insulted by the choice. Joe Biden says that, if Mrs Palin becomes the first female vice-president, it will be a “backward step for women”. “Eighteen million cracks”, says the New Republic, (referring to Mrs Clinton’s 18m votes and the glass ceiling) “and one crackpot.”
Ms杂志的创办人Gloria Steinem称”帕林和希拉里的共同点仅仅只在于一条染色体”。国家妇联主席Kim Gandy对帕林表示不屑，称她是一个反对妇女权利的女人。密歇根民主党的一位高层Debbie Dingell称，这个选择是对女人的一种羞辱。Joe Biden称，如果帕林成为第一个当上副总统的女人，这将是”妇女的退步”。新共和杂志将这一切称为”一千八百万的裂缝和一个疯女人”

Mrs Palin’s arrival on the national stage is inspiring some startling political somersaults. Some feminists claim to be outraged that Mr McCain has promoted somebody just because she is a woman. Sally Quinn, a writer for the Washington Post, has even argued that, given the size of her family, she cannot possibly be both a national candidate and a good mother. At the same time, conservative traditionalists are suddenly realising that they have always been supporters of mould-breaking working mothers, whatever impression they may have given to the contrary. The whole business is also inspiring plenty of speculation about the end of feminism. One group of Hillary supporters said that their heroine’s defeat was like being told to “sit down, shut up and move to the back of the bus.”
帕林女士的闪亮登场确是掀起了些许政治波澜。一些女权主义者声称因麦凯恩只是因为女性性别原因而提升某人而大为光火。一位华盛顿邮报的作家Sally Quinn甚至坚持说，”鉴于她的家庭规模，她不可能同时成为一名合格的国家候选人和一位称职的母亲。与此同时，保守派的传统主义者突然意识到，他们一直以来都是作为突破传统枷锁的全职妈妈的支持者，不管这样做最终是否会导致怎样相反的效果。这一整个事件也激发许多对于女权主义最终将走向何方的猜想。一组希拉里的支持者称 他们女英雄的失败就好比被人教训说：”坐下，闭嘴，然后挪到公车的后面去。

But is feminism really faring so badly? American women are certainly under-represented in public life. They make up less than 20% of governors and members of Congress. The number of women on the Supreme Court has recently fallen by half, from two to one, thanks to Sandra Day O’Connor’s retirement. But what Ms Steinem regards as the most “restricting force” in America is nevertheless getting ever less restrictive. Some of the most culturally conservative states in the country, such as Kansas and Michigan, have female governors. In 1998 women won the top five elected offices in Arizona. Mrs O’Connor was arguably the most powerful voice on the Supreme Court for decades.
但是，女权主义的表现真的就如此差劲儿吗？的确，美国妇女的地位在公共生活未被充分代表。她们在政府和国会工作的比例不到20%。而由于Sandra Day O’Connor的退休，在最高法院工作的女性数量也跌至近半。然而，Steinem女士认为，在美国，最强力的制约也开始慢慢放松了。一些文化上最为保守的州，例如堪萨斯和密歇根，都拥有女性地方长官。1998年，亚利桑那州的女性赢得了前五位由选举产生的最高级别职位。而O’Connor女士则无可争议地成为了数十年来，最高法院里最具影响的声音。

Women are also winning the most important of all gender wars-the war for educational qualifications. They earn 57% of bachelor’s degrees, 59% of master’s degrees and half of doctorates. And they are doing better all the time. In terms of higher education, women drew equal with men in 1980. By the early 1990s six women graduated from college for every five men. Projections show that by 2017 three women will graduate for every two men. The meritocracy is inexorably turning into a matriarchy, and visibly so on many campuses: the heads of Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Brown and the National Defence University are all women.
同时，女性群体也赢得了所有性别战争中最重要的一场–学历之战。在学士学位，研究生学位，博士学位中，她们分别占到了57%，59%，50%。并且她们一直都在做得更好。在高等教育方面，1980年她们就已经和男性平分秋色。到了90年代早期，从大学毕业的男女比例就已经达到了5：6。预测表明，到 2017年这一比例将达到2：3。知识界的精英群体正无情地转向母系统治，这些在众多校园里显而易见：哈佛，普林斯顿，麻省，布朗以及国防大学的校长都是女性。

Boys, meanwhile, are more likely to drop out of high school than girls. They are also more likely to be consigned to special education classes or prescribed mood-managing drugs. Men are more likely to commit crimes, end up in prison, kill themselves or be murdered. Even their sperm count is headed south. The long-term result seems unavoidable: men are becoming ever more marginalised, while women are taking over the commanding heights of wealth and power.
同时，男孩们比女孩们更容易在高中失学。而且他们也更可能被交送到特殊教育学校或被开具控制心境的处方药物。男人更容易犯罪，在监狱中度过余生，死于自杀或他杀。甚至连他们的精子数量都在不断减少。长期的结果似乎不可避免：男性正越来越边缘化，而女性正在逐渐占领财富和权力的高地。

The new Madonna
新麦当娜

It is even plausible to argue that there is feminist-friendly news buried in the recent headlines. One reason why younger women did not coalesce behind Mrs Clinton in the same way as their mothers must surely be that they have simply become accustomed to living in a world of opportunities. On Super Tuesday, for example, Mr Obama did very well with women under 30, while Mrs Clinton won easily among women over 60. Convinced that they will see a woman in the White House during their lifetimes, they did not feel the same “fierce urgency of now” (to borrow a phrase from Mr Obama) as 70-somethings like Ms Steinem.
事实似乎表明女权主义的利好消息被隐藏在最近的各大头条中。年轻女性们不像她们母亲一样联合起来支持希拉里的原因就是，她们已经直接融入了这个充满机会的世界。比如，在超级星期二上，奥巴马颇得30岁以下的女性的好感，而希拉里只是轻松地赢得了60岁以上女性选民的选票。她们相信在有生之年将会看见一位女性入主白宫，所以像Steinem女士那样年过七十的人群，感受到的并不是相同的”当务之急”（引用奥巴马的话说）

In her idiosyncratic way, Mrs Palin also represents the fulfilment of the feminist dream. She demonstrates that gender is no longer a barrier to success in one of the most conservative corners of the land, the Alaska Republican Party. She also proves that you can be a career woman without needing to subscribe to any fixed feminist ideology. Camille Paglia hails her as the biggest step forward for feminism since Madonna. One can argue, as we have, that it was astoundingly reckless of Mr McCain to have picked her on the basis of having once met her for 15 minutes. But if feminism means, at its core, that women should be able to compete equally in the workplace while deciding for themselves how they organise their family life, then Mrs Palin deserves to be treated as a pioneer, not dismissed as a crackpot.
以她不同常人的方法，帕林女士也同样代表了女权主义者们梦想的实现。她向世人展示了在这块土地上最保守的角落里（阿拉斯加的共和党），性别再也不是通向成功的障碍。同时，她也证明了，即使你不归附于任何女权主义的思想形态，也能取得职业生涯的成功。Camille Paglia称赞她为自从麦当娜以来，女权主义的最大进步。人们可以认为，麦凯恩是如此草率，仅仅在相识15分钟后，就将选择了她。但是，如果女权主义的核心是，在工作场合女性具备同样的竞争力，同时有权自己决定如何组织她们的家庭生活，帕林则称得上是一个先锋，而不应被指责为一个疯子。

译者：topsun   http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=14029&extra=page%3D1

The seniors’ club
资深人士俱乐部

Jul 31st 2008
From The Economist print edition

America’s longest-serving Republican senator has been indicted
为美国服务最久的共和党参议员被起诉

THOMAS JEFFERSON once asked George Washington why he had agreed to a two-house Congress. Washington, noting that Jefferson had poured his tea into his saucer in order to cool it, said that he had answered his own question. “We pour House legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it.” But the father of the nation never imagined that the inhabitants of his cooling chamber might try to pocket the silverware and run off with the teapot.
托马斯杰斐逊有一次问乔治华盛顿为什么他同意两院议会.华盛顿注意到杰斐逊把自己的茶倒入碟中冷却,就说其实他的行为已经回答了自己的问题.”我们需要把众议院的立法放入参议院这个碟中冷却.”但是美国国父却绝对没有想到他的这些资深成员现在却想侵吞掉银器,和茶壶同流合污了.

On July 29th Ted Stevens, the senior senator for Alaska and the longest-serving Republican in the upper house, was indicted on seven counts by the Justice Department. The department accuses Mr Stevens of falsely reporting hundreds of thousands of dollars of services he received from an oil company that had helped to renovate his home. He denies all the charges.
在7月29日,阿拉斯加资深参议员,在上院服务时间最长的共和党人Ted Stevens,被司法部指控犯有七项罪行.司法部指控他在装修房屋时从一家石油公司接受了价值几十万美元的服务.他否认了所有的指控.

The “services” seem paltry given the billions of dollars at stake in oil deals. His house is hardly a mansion: one newspaper talks of “peeling paint and an overgrown backyard”. Mr Stevens’s loot included some furniture and a stove. The interesting thing about the Stevens case is not what it tells us about suspected corruption but about everyday political life in Mr Stevens’s intersecting worlds, Alaska, the Senate and the Republican Party.
考虑到石油生意动辄几十亿的规模,这个”服务”似乎微不足道.他的房子并不豪华:一家报纸曾说它”油漆脱落,后院杂草丛生”.Stevens先生的赃物包括几件家具和一个火炉.Stevens案有趣的地方并不是它涉嫌贪污,而是它说明了Stevens先生的政治圈子,即阿拉斯加,参议院,共和党内这些有趣世界里的政治困境.

Mr Stevens has used his decades in the Senate-he first arrived there in 1968-to pour billions of dollars into his home state: so much money that Alaskans refer to him as “Uncle Ted”, talk of “Stevens money” and joke about changing the name of the currency to “the Ted”. The state is littered with tributes to his powers, such as the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. There is even a federal penitentiary named after him.
Stevens先生在参议院工作了几十年-他第一次来到这里要追溯到1968年-为他的州争取了几十亿美元:数量如此庞大,以致于阿拉斯加人称呼他 “Ted叔”,常常谈论”Stevens的钱”,甚至开玩笑说应该把通货名称改为”Ted”.阿拉斯加州内到处是对他功绩的赞颂,比如说Ted Stevens安克雷奇国际机场.甚至还有一个联邦监狱是以他的名字命名的.

Alaska likes to think of itself as the “last frontier”-a place where rugged entrepreneurs carve a living out of an unforgiving landscape. But in fact it is a quasi-welfare state. Alaska has been number one in per capita federal spending for more than 16 years, with $13,800 being spent on each Alaskan in 2006. Much of the state’s economy-particularly oil and fishing-is based on making money out of government-controlled land and sea. Each of its 680,000 inhabitants gets an annual payout from the state’s oil fund of $1,654.
阿拉斯加总认为自己是”最后一块未被开发的地方”-远离罪恶大陆雄心万丈的企业家,在这个州创造自己的生活.但实际上它已经是一个准富裕州了.阿拉斯加的联邦人均支出居全国第一已经不只16年了,2006年它的联邦人均支出是13800美元.该州经济的绝大部分-尤其是石油和捕鱼-都是在政府控制的陆地上和海洋里赚钱.680000名居民每人每年都会从州石油基金中得到1654美元.

Mr Stevens puts up a vigorous defence of his activities. Alaska is a unique state with unique needs, he argues: a geographically isolated and sparsely populated giant of a place that was only admitted to the Union in 1959, it needs government money in order to pump-prime the private economy. But Mr Stevens’s model of development had created an inbred class of politicians and businessmen who spend their lives doing favours for each other.
Stevens为他的种种行为进行了强有力的辩护.阿拉斯加是一个有独特需求的独特的州,他说:阿拉斯加地理上被隔离,领土广阔人口稀少,直到1959年才进入联邦,因此需要政府资金来鼓励私有经济.但Stevens先生的经济发展模式却产生了联系紧密的政客和商人集团,这些人的一生都在为彼此大开方便之门.

Mr Stevens was first appointed to his Senate seat by the then-governor, Walter Hickel. The junior senator, Lisa Murkowski, was appointed by her father, Frank Murkowski, when he left the Senate to become governor. (She has since been re-elected.) These hereditary politicians-and dozens of smaller players in the state capital, Juneau-are all hand in glove with the state’s big industries, particularly oil. Some local politicians have even taken to wearing baseball caps embroidered with the letters CBC-for “Corrupt Bastards Club”. The scandal that is consuming Mr Stevens is also consuming lots of local politicians, including his son.
Stevens先生的参议员职位最初是由时任州长Walter Hickel任命的.年轻参议员Lisa Murkowski是由她的父亲离开参议院担任州长后任命的(自那以后她再次当选).这些世袭政客-还有诸多在州首府朱诺活动的小角色-与阿拉斯加的大工业,尤其是石油业都联系紧密.许多当地政客甚至喜欢戴绣有字母CBC的棒球帽-意思是”贪污的混蛋俱乐部”.现在困扰Stevens先生的丑闻也同样困扰着许多地方政客,包括他儿子.

The Stevens affair poses some awkward questions about the Senate. Its seniority system gives extraordinary power to people who can get in early-perhaps because they have a family name like Kennedy or a powerful patron-and then stay around for as long as possible. This gives a disproportionate amount of power to people from small states with non-competitive political systems (Mr Stevens was chairman of the Senate’s most powerful arm, the cash-dispensing Appropriations Committee, for seven years.) It also encourages states to keep voting for incumbents and incumbents to hang on until they drop. The current Senate contains 26 people who are 70 or over.
Stevens丑闻也说明参议院有些不无尴尬的体制问题.它的年功序列制度给一些可以很早进入参议院落的人极大的权力-也许是因为他们姓肯尼迪,也许他们有势力很大的赞助人-然后他们会在位子上能待多久就待多久.它同样会给一些来自不怎么需要竞争的小州的人大得不合理的权力(Stevens先生是参议院最有势力的委员会,负责现金分配的拨款委员会的主席.)它还会鼓励各州继续选本州的现任参议员,鼓励现任者在位子上待得尽量长.当前超过70岁的参议员有 26名.

It also poses yet more problems for the Republican Party in an election year. Mr Stevens’s indictment gives the Democrats a chance to resurrect the corruption charges they used so effectively in 2006. It also gives them a chance to raise the question of hypocrisy. The Republicans have always claimed to be the party of limited government and fiscal restraint. But when it comes to their own constituents they are all for handing out free money.
这个案子也揭示了大选之年共和党的一些问题.Stevens案会使民主党再次祭起他们在2006年屡试不爽的法宝-贪污指控.它还会使得民主党指责共和党的虚伪.共和党总宣称自己的支持小政府和财政紧缩的政党.但一旦细查它的党员,就会发现严重的贪污问题.

Baked Alaskan
四面楚歌的阿拉斯加人

Is Mr Stevens’s disgrace proof that people have had enough of all this? There are some encouraging signs. Alaskans once named Mr Stevens “Alaskan of the century”. Now they seem ashamed of what he stands for. Even before this week, he was stuck in a close re-election race against his Democratic rival, Mark Begich, the mayor of Anchorage, and also facing a primary challenge from a disgruntled Republican. Sarah Palin, the Republican governor of Alaska, has made her name campaigning against the state’s corruption and nepotism.
Stevens先生遭受如此耻辱是否说明人民已经受够了？很有这种可能.阿拉斯加人曾经称Stevens先生为”阿拉斯加世纪人物”,但现在却为他所代表的一切而感到羞耻.甚至在本周之前,他就在改选中与他的民主党对手,安克雷奇市长Mark Begich缠斗不清,在初选中他还面临着对其不满的共和党人的挑战. 阿拉斯加共和党州长Sarah Palin,在竞选中就声明她要对抗州内贪污和任人唯亲这两个问题.

Mr Stevens has also become a national symbol of out-of-control spending. His voluble support for a $400m “bridge to nowhere”-in fact, to a sparsely populated island where his friends owned land-helped to create a huge backlash against “earmarks”, particularly among fiscal conservatives. Tom Coburn, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, tried to divert the largesse from Alaska to Katrina-ravaged New Orleans. John McCain is a long-standing campaigner against pork-barrel spending.
Stevens先生已经成为胡乱花钱的全国典型.他喋喋不休地要求给阿拉斯加4亿美元经费-花在这个他的朋友占有土地的地广人稀的半岛-很多人反对此类” 专项拨款”,尤其是财政保守派当中. 俄克拉荷马共和党议员Tom Coburn希望将这笔巨款用于受卡特莱娜飓风袭击的新奥尔良.John McCain一直以来都反对政治分肥的行为.

Mr Stevens managed to roll over the objections to his bridge in the Senate. “I will put the Senate on notice-and I don’t kid people-if the Senate decides to discriminate against our state, to take money from our state, I’ll resign from this body. This is not the Senate I came to.” It would be nice to think that Mr Stevens is right for once about his last point. But the Senate is pretty hard to shame. Mr Stevens’s successor as chairman of the Appropriations Committee is Robert Byrd, a 90-year-old Democrat from the pork-gobbling state of West Virginia.
Stevens先生成功地压下了参议院当中的反对声音.”我希望参议院注意-不开玩笑-如果参议院歧视我们州,把我们州的经费拿走,我会向这个机构辞职, 这不是我想像中的议会.”Stevens先生关于参议院的最后一点还是很对的.但是参议院是一个很不知羞耻的地方.下任拨款委员会主席,Stevens先生的继任者,是90岁的民主党人Robert Byrd,他来自贪婪的西弗吉尼亚.

译者：xsj191    http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=13117&extra=page%3D1

New and improved
焕然一新的奥巴马

Jul 10th 2008 2008年7月10日
From The Economist print edition

The only problem with Barack Obama’s move to the centre is that he’s not moving far enough
巴拉克•奥巴马转向中间路线的唯一问题在于他做得还不够。

THE reaction to Jesse Helms’s death on July 4th is a reminder of how bipolar American politics has become. The right praised him as a man of principle who also overflowed with the milk of human kindness. The left retorted-rightly, in our view-that he was also a bigot and a bully (see article). But at least conservatives and liberals have discovered one thing they can agree on: that Barack Obama is a cynical opportunist, a flip-flopper and a shape-changer, a man who brushes aside his principles with the same nonchalance that lesser mortals reserve for their dandruff.

7月4日耶西•赫尔姆斯（Jesse Helms）去世的消息引发的反应提醒着人们美国政治的两极对抗已变得多么严重。右派称赞他是一位充盈着人性之善的正直之士。左派反驳说（在我们看来有其道理）他还是一位偏执狂，是一位恶棍。然而至少保守主义者和自由主义者已经发现他们能在一件事情上达成共识：即巴拉克•奥巴马是一位愤世嫉俗的机会主义分子，其立场时常左右摇摆，仿若一只变色龙，这是一位无视原则的人物，那种若无其事的态度犹如下等人对待身上的头皮屑。

Bob Herbert of the New York Times worries that Mr Obama is “not just tacking gently to the centre. He’s lurching right when it suits him, and he’s zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that’s guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash.” Some 22,000 people have protested on his website about his change of heart on wiretapping. A group called “Recreate68″ promises to complain about his move to the centre at the Democratic convention in Denver in August.

《纽约时报》的鲍勃•赫伯特（Bob Herbert）担心奥巴马”不仅仅缓缓地向中间路线转变，而且在情形合意之际他还会向右翼潜行，他如此毫无节制地左右摇摆注定会使人对他的幻想破灭，如果不是对他口诛笔伐的话。”大约有2万2千人在他的网站上抗议他在窃听这一议题上改变立场。有一个名曰”再现68″的团体许诺说要在8月份在丹佛举行的民主党全国大会上就其向中间路线转变之举开展抗议活动。

For its part, the right has discovered that Mr Obama is not a “hard left” liberal, as it had previously thought, but a standard-issue politician who will “say and do anything to get elected”. Charles Krauthammer calls him a “man of seasonal principles”. Bo Snerdley, Rush Limbaugh’s sidekick, describes him as “the first black Clinton”. “Has there ever in recent political memory been so much calculation and bad faith by a politician who has made so much of eschewing both?”, asks Rich Lowry, the editor of the National Review.

就右派而言，他们现在发现奥巴马并非像他们原先认为得那样，是一位”坚定的左翼”自由主义分子，而是一位”为了当选什么话都敢说，什么事都敢干”的普普通通的政客。查尔斯•克劳萨默（Charles Krauthammer）认为他的立场”会随着季节变化而变化”。 鲁什•林堡（Rush Limbaugh）的助手Bo Snerdley 将他描述为”首位长着黑皮肤的克林顿”。” 在最近的政治记忆中有没有哪一位政客曾如此信誓旦旦，说要规避政治伎俩，说要坚守信念，而又如此地精于算计，如此地不守信义？”《国民评论》的编辑里奇• 劳瑞（Rich Lowry）如是问道。

This is all overstated. Mr Obama was always clear that he was running for the presidency of the United States, not the chairmanship of MoveOn.org. He has repeatedly presented himself as a post-partisan problem-solver who wants to work with Republicans as well as Democrats. His enthusiasm for “faith-based” social services is long held. Even on the issue that first endeared him to the left-the Iraq war-he made it abundantly clear that he was opposed to that particular war, not to the exercise of American power. Still, there is no doubt that he has engaged in a bit of vigorous repositioning in the past few weeks.

这一切都言过其实了。一直以来奥巴马都很清楚他竞选的是美利坚合众国的总统，而不是MoveOn.org 网站的主席。他再三地将自己描述成一位能够在后党派政治中解决问题的人，他不但想和民主党人共事还想和共和党人合作。他对于”基于信仰”的社会福利事业的热情可谓长而久之。甚至在伊拉克战争，这一让他开始受到左派垂青的议题上，他的立场一直表白得明确无误：他反对的是这一场特定的战争，而不是反对行使美国的权力。然而，在过去的几周内他的立场变化得无疑有些剧烈。

The old Obama pledged to take public financing in the general election. The new one will spend what it takes. The old Obama pledged to filibuster a bill giving legal immunity to telecoms companies that co-operated with the government on terrorist surveillance. The new one supports the bill. The old Obama failed to wear a flag pin. The new Obama talks about patriotism in a sea of American flags, praises General David Petraeus, the chief commander in Iraq, raises doubts about partial-birth abortion, agrees with the Supreme Court on gun rights, supports the death penalty for child-rapists and embraces faith-based social work.

昔日的奥巴马承诺在大选时接收财政部提供的经费，如今的奥巴马要花费的是他所募集到的资金。昔日的奥巴马承诺他将阻挠给予在监视恐怖分子行动中与政府合作的电信公司司法豁免权的议案。如今的奥巴马支持此议案。昔日的奥巴马没有戴过国旗胸针。如今的奥巴马在一片美国国旗的海洋之中高谈阔论爱国主义，赞扬伊拉克美军最高指挥官戴维•彼得雷乌斯（David Petraeus），对晚期堕胎提出质疑，同意最高法院关于持枪权利的判决，支持对儿童强奸者实施死刑，拥护基于信仰的社会工作。

But isn’t moving to the centre just sensible politics as the primary turns into a general election? Ronald Reagan devoted a great deal of energy to persuading people that he was not a trigger-happy ideologue. Bill Clinton sold himself as a New Democrat who felt Middle America’s pain. George Bush initially styled himself a “compassionate conservative”. The likes of Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, on the left, and Barry Goldwater, on the right, may have won brownie points from their supporters for sticking to their principles. But they went down to calamitous defeats. The oddity of this election cycle is not that Mr Obama is moving to the centre but that John McCain is moving to the right.

在初选转入大选之际，向中间路线转变难道不是正当且明智的政治举动吗？罗纳德•里根曾投入大量精力，劝说人们他并不是一位好战的意识形态分子。比尔•克林顿将自己描绘成一位深感中部美国之痛的新民主党人。乔治•布什起初将自己定位成一位”富有同情心的保守主义者”。像沃尔特•蒙代尔（Walter Mondale），迈克尔•杜卡基斯（Michael Dukakis）这样的左派人士与巴里•戈德沃特（Barry Goldwater）这样的右派人士或许会因为坚持原则赢得支持者的称赞，但他们却在选举时一败涂地。这轮选举的奇异之处并不是奥巴马向中间路线转变而是约翰•麦凯恩正在向右翼转变。

Mr Obama’s flip-flop on public finance is certainly cynical (and his willingness to justify it as an act of high principle even more so). But polls suggest that Americans are happy with a certain amount of flip-flopping: Mr Bush has all but destroyed the market in stubborn consistency. And Mr Obama’s hard-edged cynicism also helps to quell one of the biggest doubts about his candidacy-that he is too naive and soft-minded to hold the most powerful job in the world.

奥巴马在财政部竞选经费这一问题上立场摇摆不定自然有其玩世不恭之处（他愿意为此辩护说这是高尚之举愈发显得如此）。但是民调显示美国人对于些许的立场摇移是认可的：布什几乎让美国人忘了还有”立场坚定，始终如一 “这档事。奥巴马这种轮廓鲜明的犬儒主义也有助于消散人们对于他总统候选人身份最大的一项疑虑，那就是他太嫩了，思想太温和了不能胜任这份世界上最有权势的工作。

Mr Obama is capitalising not only on his huge fund-raising advantage over Mr McCain but also on his rival’s problems with his base. He is occupying the middle ground in order to reassure white voters that he shares their values. This is no airy-fairy liberal who is going to allow himself to be pushed around by Middle Eastern despots. This is a shrewd opportunist at work.

此刻奥巴马不仅充分利用他在资金筹措方面相对于麦凯恩的巨大优势，他还拿这位对手与其支持者之间的问题做文章。如今他占据中间地带为的就是让白人选民安心：他的价值观和他们是一样的。这并不是一位会任由自己受中东暴君们摆布的童话般的自由主义者。展现在你面前的是一位精明的机会主义者。

John Kerry’s shadow
约翰•克里的阴影

The vital question is not whether Mr Obama is changing his positions but whether he is changing them for better or worse. Here the picture is largely positive. His new-found enthusiasm for NAFTA and free trade could help to avert a prosperity-destroying drift to protectionism. Indeed, his chief economics adviser, Jason Furman, sounds like the very model of good sense. Mr Obama’s willingness to support wiretapping in certain circumstances suggests that he is trying to strike a balance between security and privacy in what he calls a “dangerous world”: the policy challenge is not to pursue vendettas against the Bush administration but to find a reasonable set of rules to govern surveillance. His repositioning on the Iraq war represents a recognition that the situation on the ground in Iraq has changed dramatically.

关键的问题并非奥巴马是否在改变立场，而是他立场的改变是朝好的方面还是坏的方面发展。这方面的情况大体上是正面的。他对北美自由贸易协定（NAFTA）和自由贸易新发现的热情或许有助于避免其向保护主义漂移，那将是摧毁繁荣之举。事实上，他的首席经济顾问詹森•福尔曼听起来就像是一位判断力强的典范。奥巴马愿意支持在特定情况下的窃听行为显示出他正试图在这样一个被他称为”危险的世界”中在安全和隐私之间达成某种平衡。政策的挑战之处并不在于向布什政府寻仇，而是找到一套合理的规则来治理监视行为。他在伊拉克战争这一问题上立场的重新定位表明他已意识到了伊拉克的实际情况已经发生戏剧化地改变。

If there is a problem with all this repositioning, it is that it is not going far enough for most American moderates. Mr Obama has punted on partial-birth abortion rather than denouncing the whole gruesome procedure. He has insisted on putting restrictions on faith-based social services that most churches find unacceptable. On July 3rd he held not one but two press conferences on Iraq-one in which he seemed to suggest that he would adjust his policy in the light of new realities, another in which he insisted that his position “has not changed”. Mr Obama needs to embrace centrism as a matter of conviction rather than flirting with it as an instrument of political expediency. Otherwise the accusations of flip-flopping that did John Kerry so much harm in 2004 will begin to bite.

如果说他这些重新定位有何问题的话，对美国大多数温和派来说这一问题在于他所作的转变还不够。奥巴马已在晚期堕胎这一议题上放下筹码，但他并没有谴责整个令人毛骨悚然的过程。他坚持要对基于信仰的社会福利事业加以约束，大多数教堂认为这是不可接受的。7月3日他就伊拉克问题举办了不是一场而是两场新闻发布会，在一场发布会上他似乎暗示说，鉴于目前的新形势他将调整其政策，而在另一场发布会上他又坚称他的立场”并没有改变”。奥巴马需要将拥护中间路线视作一种信仰，而不是轻率地将其作为政治上的权宜之计。否则立场摇摆不定这个曾在2004年重创约翰•克里的指责会再度开始发威。

译者：kevin.Ren    http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=12611&extra=page%3D1

Michelle Obama’s America
米歇尔•奥巴马之美国

Jul 3rd 2008 2008年7月3日
From The Economist print edition

Is Barack Obama’s wife his rock or his bitter half?
巴拉克•奥巴马的妻子是他的支柱还是令他痛苦的另一半？

THERE are two ways to be a political spouse. You can shun the limelight or you can grab it. Margaret Thatcher’s late husband, Denis, exemplified the former approach. He never upstaged his wife and though intelligent and rich, he was content to be viewed as a golfing, gin-swilling duffer. At the opposite end of the spectrum are the Clintons. Hillary was Bill’s closest adviser when he was president, and he would have done the same for her, had she been elected. Neither approach is right or wrong, but both have predictable consequences. If you keep your mouth shut, you are unlikely to stir up controversy. If you speak up, you may help your spouse, but you risk hurting him or her, too.

做政治人物的配偶有两种方法。要么躲避闪烁的镁光灯，要么努力攫取公众的注意力。玛格丽特•撒切尔业已过世的夫君丹尼斯可谓前种方式之典范。他从来不抢他夫人的风头，虽然他聪明富有，但他乐意被视作一位整日打高尔夫，大口喝杜松子酒的笨蛋。克林顿夫妇与之截然相反。当比尔担任总统的时候，希拉里是其最亲密的智囊，要是希拉里当选的话，比尔同样也会为她出谋划策。这两种方式无所谓对错，但是二者产生的后果是可以预期的。如果你保持缄默，你不可能挑起争论。一旦你畅所欲言，你或许会助你的配偶一臂之力，然而你也有可能伤害到你的另一半。

John McCain’s wife, Cindy, gazes adoringly at him on the stump but says little. If she has to introduce him, she says she loves him and hopes you will vote for him. She may favour pink skirt-suits over golfing trousers, but in her reluctance to say anything that might conceivably hurt her spouse she is unmistakably a (Denis) Thatcherite. Hostile bloggers half-heartedly accuse her of being a Stepford wife or make snide cracks about the fortune she inherited and her past addiction to painkillers. But she seldom captures the headlines and seems to like it that way.

每当约翰•麦凯恩发表政治演讲时，他的夫人辛迪总是在一旁含情脉脉地注视着他，但是她很少发言。如果她必须要引见麦凯恩时，她总是说她爱她丈夫，衷心希望你投票支持他。她也许钟爱粉红色的裙装，而不是打高尔夫时所穿的长裤。然而她不愿谈及任何有可能伤害到夫君的事情，就这一点而言，她无疑和（丹尼斯）撒切尔是一类的。不怀好意的博客们对她只是敷衍了事地指责一番，说她是一位对丈夫惟命是从的花瓶太太，抑或讽刺挖苦她继承的庞大财产以及过去服用止痛药成瘾的经历。然而她很少登上头版头条，她似乎就喜欢这样。（译者注：这里a Stepford wife引用的是电影《超完美娇妻》的故事，片中远离俗世的小镇Stepford环境悠和宁静，彷如世外桃源，每个太太都美丽动人，而且对丈夫惟命是从，绝对是很多男士的梦想）

Michelle Obama falls somewhere between the two poles. Unlike Bill or Hillary, she has never hinted that she expects to be co-president. But unlike Mrs McCain, she criss-crosses the country making fiery speeches on her husband’s behalf. In many ways, she is a huge asset to his campaign. She is clever, driven, beautiful and articulate. Even when he is not there, she draws large, avid crowds. Yet she still finds time to be supermum. She bought two laptops so her husband can see and talk to his daughters when he is on the road. She teases him about his snoring and makes him take out the rubbish. He calls her “my rock”.

米歇尔•奥巴马属于这两极之间的一类。与比尔或希拉里不同，她从来没有暗示她期望与丈夫共同执政。但是也不同于麦凯恩夫人，米歇尔在全国来回奔走，替丈夫代言，她的演讲火药味十足。在许多方面，对于奥巴马的竞选活动来说，她都是一项巨大的财富。她聪明过人，很有抱负，美丽迷人而且还能言善道。甚至当奥巴马不在场时，她也会吸引大量热情的观众。而且她还能抽出时间做一名超级妈妈。她买了两台手提电脑为的就是让她的丈夫在竞选旅途中能够看到他的女儿们，并能够和他们交谈。她常常揶揄丈夫呼噜呼噜的打鼾声，还让他把垃圾清理出来。奥巴马将她称为”我的支柱”。

Like her husband, she exemplifies the American dream, having risen from humble roots to Princeton, Harvard and a $275,000-a-year job handling “community and external affairs” and “business diversity” for a hospital in Chicago. But her story is otherwise quite different from his. His background is more exotic and chaotic. His mother was white, his father was Kenyan, they broke up when he was two and the young Barack later lived in Hawaii and Indonesia. Michelle’s family, by contrast, was hard-up but intact. It was also all-black, all-American and rooted in the South Side of Chicago. Michelle grew up knowing useful people: she was chummy with Jesse Jackson’s daughter and even baby-sat his son when she was a teenager.

同她的丈夫一样，她堪为美国梦之楷模。出身卑微的她先后赴普林斯顿和哈佛大学求学，后来为芝加哥的一家医院处理”社区和外部事务”以及”业务分歧”，这项工作每年为她带来275,000美元的收入。然而她的经历在其他方面与奥巴马迥然不同。奥巴马的背景更加奇异，更加动荡。他的母亲是白人，父亲是肯尼亚人，在他两岁的时候父母关系破裂，年幼的奥巴马后来先后在夏威夷和印度尼西亚生活居住。相比之下，米歇尔一家虽然手头拮据但完好无缺。她一家人都是黑人，都是美国人，世居于芝加哥南部。米歇尔从小就认识了一些可以派上用场的人物：当她十几岁时，她与杰西•约翰逊的女儿亲密无间，甚至还给他的儿子当过保姆。（译者注：杰西•约翰逊是美国著名黑人民权领袖，1984年大选时他是美国民主党的总统候选人）。

When Barack was starting out as a politician, his rivals dismissed him as inauthentically African-American or even “the white man in blackface”. Having Michelle at his side helped reassure sceptical blacks that he was really one of them. Even the precise shade of her skin colour may have helped him at the polls. Famous black men often pick light-skinned or white wives. Some black women resent this. That Michelle is quite dark may have endeared Barack to black female voters who might otherwise have voted for Hillary Clinton.

当巴拉克的政治生涯开始的时候，他的对手认为他并非纯正的非裔美国人，甚至说他是一位”长着黑人脸庞的白人”。有米歇尔陪伴于左右可以让那些心生疑虑的黑人安心，即巴拉克•奥巴马真的是他们中的一员。甚至她肤色的深浅也可能在竞选时帮了奥巴马的大忙。一些有名的黑人经常挑选浅肤色或白人女性作太太。这让一些黑人女性很是恼火。米歇尔的皮肤够黑这一事实或许让巴拉克受到了黑人女性选民的垂青，要不然的话，他们或许会投票支持希拉里•克林顿。

Now that the primaries are over, the issues have changed. Blacks are solidly for Mr Obama, but many swing voters are unsure. Some Republicans think his wife’s habit of speaking her mind could prove a problem. For example, in February, as her husband’s campaign was catching fire, she said: “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country, because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.” Some Americans bristle at the implication that the only worthwhile thing any of them has done in the past quarter-century is to back Mr Obama.

鉴于初选已经结束，争论之议题也已随之改变。黑人对奥巴马的支持坚如磐石，但许多摇摆不定的选民还没有拿定主意。一些共和党人认为他夫人这种想什么就说什么的习惯或许算的上一个问题。例如，在2月份，当她丈夫的竞选活动正进行的如火如荼之际，她这样说道：”长大后第一次，我为我的国家感到骄傲，因为似乎希望终于强势回归。”这似乎暗示说许多美国人在过去25年里所做的唯一一件有价值的事情就是支持奥巴马，这令他们颇感愤怒。

Mrs Obama’s speeches rarely accentuate the positive. America, to her, is a “downright mean” country where families struggle to buy food, where mothers are terrified of being fired if they get pregnant and where “life for regular folks has gotten worse over the course of my lifetime”. But she was born in 1964, when Americans lived shorter, poorer lives and southern blacks couldn’t vote. Whereas her husband is magically skilled at not giving offence, Mrs Obama can be a blunt instrument. “Don’t go into corporate America,” she urges young people, denigrating what most Americans do for a living and biting the hand that pays for all the public programmes she favours. “Barack Obama will require you to work,” she says. “He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation…Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.” Some people would rather decide for themselves how to live their lives.

奥巴马夫人的演讲很少强调美国积极的一面。她心目中的美国是一个”彻头彻尾卑劣的国度”,在这个国家，一家人为了填饱肚子往往要紧衣缩食，母亲们极度恐惧，如果怀孕就会被解雇，”在我的一生当中，老百姓的日子似乎越来越糟了。”但是她出生于1964年，那时美国人的寿命比现在短暂，也更贫穷，南部的黑人还没有投票的权力。她的丈夫似乎具有魔法，从不冒犯他人，他精于此道，而奥巴马夫人或许只是一位直言不讳的傀儡而已。”不要涉足美国工商业.”她如此敦促年轻人，她将大多数美国人为了生计所做的事情贬损的一无是处，对于为她钟爱的所有公众计划出资的美国工商业来说，这简直是恩将仇报。”巴拉克•奥巴马要求你们去工作，”她说: “他要求你们不要玩世不恭，要求你们搁置分歧，要求你们走出藩篱…..巴拉克绝不允许你们一如既往，重过昔日那种不参与世事信息闭塞之生活。”有些人宁可自己的生活自己做主。

The bitter bit
麻烦的一面

Conservative pundits have savaged her. One acerbic blogger calls her “Obama’s bitter half”. Others mock her occasional gripes about her personal finances and her solipsistic college thesis about the woes of black Princetonians. The National Review says she “embodies a peculiar mix of privilege and victimology, which is not where most Americans live. On the other hand, it does make her a terrific Oprah guest.”

保守主义的专家们对她猛烈抨击。有一位尖刻的博客将她称为”让奥巴马痛苦的另一半”。还有些人嘲弄她时不时抱怨私人财务状况，讥讽她就普林斯顿大学黑人的不幸遭遇所作的论文充满唯我论色彩。《国民评论》认为她”既享有特权又有一种受害者的心理，是一个奇异的混合体，大多数美国人过的可不是这种生活。另一方面，这的确使她成为奥普拉节目上的一位绝妙的嘉宾。”

Mr Obama says people should lay off his wife. Laura Bush agrees. And one has to sympathise with Mrs Obama. She was always a reluctant political wife. Her husband’s crazy hours and long absences impose a hefty burden on her and on their children. In dark moments, she fears for his physical safety. And all the while, both she and her husband are subjected to maliciously false gossip online.

奥巴马说公众应该放过他妻子。劳拉•布什会赞同此观点的。对奥巴马夫人我们必须抱有同情心。她并不总是乐意当一位政治人物的妻子。她丈夫日程安排可谓疯狂，并且长期不在她身边，这让她和她的子女感到巨大的压力。在夜深人静的时侯，她为丈夫的人身安全忧心忡忡。一直以来，她和丈夫一直承受着网上恶意编造的谣言的伤害。

But not all criticism is unfair. If Mr Obama is president, his wife will have the ear of the most powerful man on earth. So her political views matter. And if she expresses them forcefully in speech after speech, she can hardly cry foul when not everyone likes what she says. On June 30th she appeared on the front page of USA Today saying: “I don’t want to be a distraction.” For better or for worse, she is.

但是并非所有的批评都是不公正的。如果奥巴马成为总统，他的妻子将会对地球上最有权势的人物施加影响。因而她的政治观点至关重要。如果她在一个接一个的演讲中强有力地表达她的观点，当不是每个人都喜欢她的言辞的时候，她就不能鸣冤叫屈了。6月30日她出现在《今日美国》的头版，她说：”我不想分散大家的注意力”。 不管是好是坏，她已经如此了。

译者： kevin.Ren   http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=12503&extra=page%3D1

The politics of hip-hop
“嘻哈”政治

Jun 26th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Can rap change the world?
饶舌能否改变世界？

“WRITING about music is like dancing about architecture,” intoned Elvis Costello, a pop star. So a columnist approaches the subject of hip-hop (which includes rap) with caution. One cannot hope to capture its sound or fury on the page. Instead, Lexington will ask what it signifies. Is it “pavement poetry [that] vibrates with commitment to speaking for the voiceless,” as Michael Eric Dyson, a professor at Georgetown University, believes? Is it “an enormously influential agent for social change which must be responsibly and proactively utilised to fight the war on poverty and injustice,” as the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN), a pressure group, contends? Or is it mostly “angry, profane and women-hating…music that plays on the worst stereotypes of black people,” as Bill Cosby harrumphs?
流行歌星艾维斯·科斯特洛曾缓缓道出，”写乐评犹如对着建筑而舞蹈。”①是故，当一个专栏作家企图触摸嘻哈文化（包括说唱）这个主题时，他尤须谨慎行事。他不能期待单靠一支笔就能将它的声效和暴躁恰如其分地演绎出来。因而，”莱克星顿”将会另辟蹊径，去追问它究竟意味着什么。它是否如乔治敦大学教授迈克尔·埃里克·戴森所以为的那样，乃”飘摇不定的路面诗歌，许下为底层民众代言起行的承诺”？抑或又如压力集团”嘻哈峰会行动网”（HSAN）所声称的，此乃”推动社会变革的深具影响的一个动因，这种变革势必吹响冲锋的号角，积极而稳妥地致力于反贫穷反社会不公的斗争”？再不然，莫非它通常就成了比尔·科斯比②嗤之以鼻的下流玩意—”这种愤愤然、亵渎而又夹杂着对女性憎恨之情的靡靡之音利用了黑人中最烂的那套陈词滥调”？

None of the above, argues John McWhorter, in a new book called “All About the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Can’t Save Black America”. Mr McWhorter, a fellow of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank, is a hip-hop fan. He likens the group OutKast to Stravinsky. He admits that some hip-hop lyrics display an ungentlemanly attitude towards women, but he doubts that listening to violent lyrics causes people to behave more violently. If it did, there would be more opera fans stabbing their ex-lovers outside bullfights.
在新书《节奏天下：”嘻哈”为何难以拯救黑色美国》中，约翰·麦克沃特认为上述答案皆非。麦克沃特先生是曼哈顿学会（政治上趋于保守的智库）的会员，而且，还是一名”嘻哈”迷。他将OutKast组合比作斯特拉文斯基③。他承认一些说唱歌词对女性不恭，但是那种认为”暴力美学的歌词必将容易导致听众产生暴力行为”的观点则让他难以苟同。倘若果真如此，那些歌剧发烧友在欣赏斗牛表演之余岂不是要前赴后继，乱刀捅死他们昔日的情人④？

Mr McWhorter also thinks people take hip-hop far too seriously. Those who disapprove of it vastly overestimate its capacity to corrupt. And those who expect it to foster a political revolution that will dramatically improve the lot of black Americans are going to be disappointed.
他也认为人们太把”嘻哈”当回事了。那些极为反感它的人高估了”嘻哈”的腐蚀性。而那些指望它能孵育一场政治革命的人正幻想这种革命能够戏剧性地改善美国黑人的生活状况。这批人终将失望和沮丧。

The most popular rappers are brilliant entertainers. They have also done a lot to make people aware of the difficulties facing poor urban blacks. But their political views are neither particularly acute nor central to their work. Consider the hot album of the moment: “Tha Carter III” by Lil Wayne. Its central message is that if you are a rap star, you will get laid. The song “Lollipop”, for example, celebrates a young lady who treats Lil Wayne as she might a lollipop.
最流行的说唱歌手是那些才华横溢的艺人。为了让外界意识到城市贫困黑人所面临的种种困难，他们已经做得够多。但是，这批说唱天王的政治眼光既不特别敏锐，又非他们娱乐事业所关注的重心。看看此刻小韦恩大卖的那张专辑《卡特3》罢。它的中心思想是，如果你是一名说唱明星，就会有姑娘主动来上你的床。譬如专辑中的单曲《棒棒糖》里，一位年轻辣妹服服帖帖伺候着歌手的”棒棒糖”，小韦恩对其”口技”赞赏有加。

On the last track Lil Wayne does get serious. He laments that “one in every nine black Americans are locked up” and that “the money that we spend on sending a motherfucker to jail…would be less to send his or her young ass to college.” Troy Nkrumah, the chairman of the National Hip-Hop Political Convention, thinks it wonderful that Lil Wayne is speaking truth to power. But if Lil Wayne is to be taken seriously, it needs to be pointed out that his “one in nine” figure is inaccurate-it is true only of black men aged 20-34, not black Americans in general. And his analysis is simplistic: the government’s spending priorities are not the sole determinant of whether you break rocks or read books.
当歌曲临近尾声时，小韦恩的确变得严肃起来。唱腔哀怨，”九个黑鬼八个蔫，还有一个牢中监”，”破钱砸向此杂碎，多是铺就铁窗路……身后那头小蠢驴，捉襟见肘求学路”……国家嘻哈政治大会主席特洛伊·恩克鲁玛表示，小韦恩在权力面前”说”出了真相，难能可贵。不过，假如要严肃认真对待小韦恩，那很有必要指出他所谓”九分之一”的数字是不准确的—惟有界定在20到34岁这个年龄段的黑人（并非总群体），它才算对。再者，他的分析亦过分简单，政府开支的轻重缓急并非决定你是砸石头还是啃书本的惟一变量。

Earnest hip-hop fans often argue that “commercial” rappers such as Lil Wayne are beside the point. Hip-hop’s revolutionary potential is best expressed by “conscious” rappers who focus on important issues rather than babes, bling and booze. The Roots, a group from Philadelphia, are often cited as an example. Their message? “If I can’t work to make it, I’ll rob and take it. Either that or me and my children are starving and naked.”
那些郑重其事的嘻哈粉丝或许并不服气。他们会说小韦恩这样的”商业化”明星难当大任，可以忽略不计。”觉悟”都在那些能锁定重要议题而非”什么心肝儿珠光宝气的装饰品以及豪饮烂醉”的说唱艺人身上呢。后者才是嘻哈文化之革命性潜能的最佳代言人。来自费城的乐团”根”（The Roots）就时常被当成这样的楷模。可他们的姿态又如何呢？”工作倘无意，抢夺更卖力。一箪食哈一件衣，非我非儿非虾米。”

But crime and starvation are hardly the only options. Even without a high-school diploma, a black man can probably find a job if he looks. And some manual jobs, such as plumber or cable technician, pay quite well. “It may well be that you can’t write much of a rap about training someone to fix heaters or air conditioners,” sighs Mr McWhorter.
但犯罪和饥饿几乎不是惟一的选择。即便没有高中文凭，一个黑人只要有求职意愿，他仍可能找到工作，并且水管工和电缆维修员这类体力活，薪酬还挺不错。麦克沃特难免一阵叹息，”你会将某人参加热水器或空调维修培训班这样的衰事写进歌词里吗？”

Conscious rappers are often well-meaning. Dead Prez, a duo from Florida, sometimes toss apples into the audience to encourage healthy eating. But when it comes to more contentious political issues, hip-hop offers no plausible solutions; only impotent and sometimes self-destructive rage. In “Lost in tha System” by Da Lench Mob, for example, the vocalist says, of a judge: “He added on another year cos I dissed him. Now here I go gettin’ lost in the system.” The disrespect in question was a suggestion that the judge perform fellatio on him.
觉悟良好的说唱歌手常常用心良苦。来自佛罗里达的二重唱组合”尸统”（Dead Prez）偶尔还会扔苹果给自己的乐迷以鼓励他们崇尚健康饮食。但是，一旦触及到那些容易惹来争议的政治问题时，”嘻哈”却无法提供可信的解决办法，仅仅是于事无补的望洋兴叹，甚至时而还会裹挟着自暴自弃式的狂怒。比如Da Lench Mob的单曲《迷失在体制中》，主唱开始揶揄法官：”因俺作践他，多判一年刑。此时此地中，迷失体制里。”其备受争议的冒犯之举是建议法官给他”吹箫”。

Fans love rappers partly because they strike such a confrontational pose. Dead Prez sometimes burn dollar bills to protest the evils of capitalism, and their lyrics accuse teachers of teaching “white man lies”. Mr McWhorter summarises the message of hip-hop as: “Things will keep sucking until there is a revolution where the white man finally understands and does a complete 180-degree turn.” This was true half a century ago in the segregated South. But today, it is nonsense.
乐迷热爱这些饶舌艺人一定程度上是因为他们所采取的那种战斗姿态。”尸统”乐团就喜欢偶尔烧烧美钞来表达它对资本主义诸多弊端的抗议。歌词的矛头也指向那些传播”白人谎言”的教书先生。针对”嘻哈”的政治姿态，麦克沃特总结如下：”直到整个社会都掀起一场革命，全盘接受它的白人自身也实现了彻底180度的大转变，惟其如此，这种黑白世界的对峙才可能有所缓和。”倘若反观50年前盛行种族隔离的美国南方，麦氏的判断放在当时的确非常正确；但今天，它已不合时宜，纯属无稽之谈。

The limits of protest
抗议的限度

Some people argue that hip-hop is politically consequential because activists can use the music and the culture that surrounds it to communicate with young people who might otherwise shun politics. There is something to this. For example, in 2004 the superstar P. Diddy fronted a fairly successful voter-registration campaign called “Vote or Die”. And HSAN once co-sponsored a rally to protest about a proposed $300m cut to the New York City school budget. The cut never happened. HSAN trumpets this as a great victory. But it is hardly evidence that hip-hop can change the world. That $300m is a tiny slice of what New York spends on its schools, and lack of money is far from the main obstacle to improving them.
有人认为”嘻哈”具有重大的政治意义，因为社会活动家可挟其音乐及文化”外衣”以联络沟通当下那些可能患上政治冷漠症的年轻人。这的确有些道理。譬如，超级明星P.Diddy在2004年就领导了一场名曰”不投票，毋宁死”的特别成功的选民注册运动。此外，”嘻哈峰会行动网”（HSAN）也曾与人联合主办过一次政治集会，旨在抗议对纽约市学校削减3亿美元的预算提案。而预算削减从未发生。HSAN便吹嘘已取得重大胜利。但这很难被看做是”嘻哈”能够改变世界的证据。那3亿美元仅是纽约教育总支出中的九牛一毛。而且，入不敷出的财政困难远远不是改善黑人教育水平的主要障碍。

Civil-rights activists in the 1960s were inspired by protest songs, but the songs did not drive the movement. Political change requires hard and often tedious work, as the thousands of weary volunteers working for Barack Obama can attest. Incidentally, one might think that Mr Obama’s spectacular rise undermines the argument that a black man can never get a fair shake in America. But Mr Nkrumah shrugs that even if Mr Obama is elected president, he will be powerless to implement progressive policies because the corporate power structure will not let him.
上世纪60年代的民权活动家从抗议歌曲中得到启发，但这些战歌并未推动社会运动的蓬勃开展。政治变革要求艰苦卓绝甚至时常是单调乏味的基础工作，一如奥巴马麾下数千名疲惫不堪的志愿者所证明的那样。顺便提一句，有人或许会认为奥巴马那令人叹为观止的一枝独秀已打破黑人在美国无法获得公正对待的历史魔咒。但恩克鲁玛则对此耸耸肩—即使奥巴马当选美国总统，他仍无力贯彻开明激进的政策，因为整个共同体的权力结构不会允许他这样做。

译注：

①”Writing about music is like dancing about architecture – it’s a really stupid thing to want to do.”
–Elvis Costello, in an interview by Timothy White entitled “A Man out of Time Beats the Clock.” Musician magazine No. 60 (October 1983), p. 52.
原文引用艾维斯原话的前半截，而隐去后半句，大概是因为它比较出名。或许已无需饶舌。艾维斯的意思可能是反感当时的评论家对音乐的挑剔和业余。音乐原本用来聆听，如今乐评泛滥，指手画脚，音乐人自然容易不满。而专栏的意思无非是先承认A picture is worth a thousand words，尔后再继续为他对HIP-HOP（注意他没有直接说RAP）的演绎寻求辩护和正名。

②美国黑人喜剧演员、电视制作人和社会活动家。其对嘻哈措辞强烈的批评亦可见对某种亚文化的评价超越了种族。黑人世界也并非铁板一块。

③前者是来自亚特兰大的双人说唱组。第46届格莱美音乐奖得主，美国南方粗口说唱乐团中的佼佼者；后者全名为伊戈尔·斯特拉文斯基（1882~1971），享有世界声誉的俄裔美藉作曲家。主要代表作为早期三部舞剧音乐《火鸟》、《彼得鲁什卡》、《春之祭》。

④是否在影射歌剧《卡门》？译者是高雅艺术门外汉，揣测而已。

译者：alex147   http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=12343&extra=page%3D1
译文对比阅读：http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=12331&extra=page%3D1