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Wednesday, July 30, 2003
More:
*** BUSH: First of all, let me just--quick history--recent history: The stock market started to decline in March of 2000. Then the first quarter of 2001 was a recession, and then we got attacked on 9/11, and then corporate scandal started to bubble up to the surface which created a lack of confidence in the system. And then we had the drum beat to war. I remember on our TV screens--I'm not suggesting which network did this, but it said: "March to war," every day from last summer until the spring: "March to war, march to war, march." That's not a very conducive environment for people to take risks when they hear "march to war" all the time. *** *cough* Uh, yeah, Mr. President, that's true... posted by Mike B. at 2:35 PM 0 comments
More:
*** BUSH: And in order to, you know, placate the critics and the cynics about intention of the United States we need to produce evidence. And I fully understand it, and I'm confident that our search will yield that which I strongly believe: that Saddam had a weapons program. I want to remind you, he actually used his weapons program on his own people at one point in time, which was pretty tangible evidence. *** Reminder: "Weapons program" does not mean "nuclear weapons program," and that matters. posted by Mike B. at 2:32 PM 0 comments
From the Bush news conference:
*** QUESTION: Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to Al Qaida were a key part of your justification for war, yet your own intelligence report, the NIE, defined it as, quote, "low confidence that Saddam would give weapons to Al Qaida." Were those links exaggerated to justify war or can you finally offer us some definitive evidence that Saddam was working with Al Qaida? BUSH: I think, first of all, remember I just said we've been there for 90 days since the cessation of major military operations. Now, I know in our world, where news comes and goes and there's this, kind of, instant news and you must have done this and you must do this yesterday, that there's a level of frustration by some in the media--I'm not suggesting you're frustrated; you don't look frustrated to me at all. But it's going to take time for us to gather the evidence and analyze the mounds of evidence, literally, the miles of documents that we have uncovered. BUSH: David Kay came to see me yesterday. He's going to testify in a closed hearing tomorrow, which in Washington may not be so closed, as you know. And he was telling me the process that they were going through to analyze all the documentation. And that's not only to analyze the documentation on the weapons programs that Saddam Hussein had, but also the documentation as to terrorist links. And it's just going to take awhile. And I'm confident the truth will come out. And there is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the United States' security and a threat to peace in the region. And there's no doubt in my mind that a free Iraq is important. It's got strategic consequences for not only achieving peace in the Middle East, but a free Iraq will help change the habits of other nations in the region which will make America much more secure. *** Let me summarize: Q: Can you finally offer us some definitive evidence that Saddam was working with Al Qaida? A: No. posted by Mike B. at 2:29 PM 0 comments
Well huh.
President Bush said Wednesday he has government lawyers working on a law that would define marriage as a union between a woman and a man, casting aside calls to legalize gay marriages. "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and I believe we ought to codify that one way or the other and we have lawyers looking at the best way to do that," the president said a wide-ranging news conference at the White House Rose Garden. Bush also urged, however, that America remain a "welcoming country" -- not polarized on the issue of homosexuality. "I am mindful that we're all sinners and I caution those who may try to take a speck out of the neighbor's eye when they got a log in their own," the president said. Huh. That's interesting. "WE'RE ALL SINNERS"? ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS? ...yep, pretty interesting. posted by Mike B. at 12:23 PM 0 comments
...and then, weirdly, I notice that the guy who wrote the Xiu Xiu review gave Ween's GodWeenSatan a 9.6. And spoke well of comedy. Huh. Whatever, buddy. posted by Mike B. at 12:05 PM 0 comments
A letter I may or may not send to Pitchfork:
Those who'll tell you that nothing's shocking are, generally speaking, full of shit. Sure, it's tempting to cop a jaded wince and react to everything with calculated disinterest, but in a world where the quiet, seemingly emotionless among us often wind up hanging from the rafters of dank apartments, one has to wonder how many reactions of shock and trauma are silently repressed and denied. We're often taught not to register our emotions, but when those unexpressed feelings finally boil over, the results are virtually always shocking, and it's that simmering combination of rage and terror that often fucks things up in the most horrific ways. Look guys, I'm glad you like Xiu Xiu, but let's watch the rhetoric, OK? Sure, you can say they're good, and that you like them, but "disturbing"? "An album for the mad and the ill, the suicidal and those near death"? And what about the weird intimations of familiarity about a band that I've never heard of outside of PF--"I'm not even getting into the stories that circulate about this deviant" and "the infamous cover sticker" etc. First off, let's talk about this "those who'll tell you that nothing's shocking are...full of shit" business. There's a big difference between shock in music and shock almost everywhere else. What's shocking in music are things like sudden volume shifts, odd instrumentation, impossible melodic lines or harmonies, etc. So think of Shellac's "Mama Gina" or Black Dice's live shows. But it's been a while since there was anything like the riot at the opening of The Rites of Spring--a ballet. Instrumental music, absent a cadaver made into an organ or skulls used as bongos, has largely lost its ability to really, truly shock. But you're talking about lyrics. Even there, though, in the context of popular music they've become utterly shock-less to your average listener (the shockability of a "oh my stars! *faint*" PTA member notwithstanding). After all, the aesthetics of rock as developed in the 60's emphasized shock and rebellion and all that jazz (contra Meltzer's way better formulation which concentrated on stuff like banality) so anyone with any experience in the form has been conditioned to expect such shock, and so while artists can continue to try new and different ways to shock, if it succeeds at all, it is seldom long-lasting. Popular music is good for a lot of things, but shock isn't one of them. What is shocking? Well, lotsa things, sure. Ann Coulter re-starting the Joe McCarthy fanclub--I'm still reeling from that. A very clean, nude person walking down the street. The building catching on fire. Lotsa stuff. But very little in music, I think. You can be surprised, sure--but that's different from shock. Surprise is how you react to emotional freak-outs: "what the hell just happened?" Shock is how you react to a naked guy fellating your grandparents at a school assembly: "I can't believe they're doing that!" And incidentally, shock is rarely the cause of suicide; it's usually the kind of slow-burning despair that's more the province of country than rock. But, christ, could we not bring suicide into this? The problem with focusing on all this shock and transgression stuff with Xiu Xiu is that it's super unconvincing to me and, I hope, anyone over the age of 17. (Not to say anything bad about them, but I know from, er, personal experience that this kind of stuff has more coin when you're suffering through adolescence, and that's cool.) It makes me way uninterested in the band. I mean, honestly, do you expect me to be able to read the line "Cremate me before you come on my face" as anything other than a reasonably funny joke? "Shocking"? "Unsettling"? Really? The issue of humor came up in the review of the first Xiu Xiu album, and indeed, the line cited--"THIS IS THE WORST VACATION EVER-- I'M GOING TO CUT OPEN YOUR FOREHEAD WITH A ROOFING SHINGLE!"--is pretty fucking funny, especially with the way it's delivered. So if this is funny, why not lotsa other stuff about Xiu Xiu? Is it because it would be bad if it was funny? Or because you hear minor tones and assume it has to be sad? Aw hell, I dunno, but it does seem to fit into a wee bit of a Pitchfork pattern, which is especially weird given that the four Xiu Xiu reviews were written by three different writers. So I'm just saying keep your mind open. Hey, maybe Xiu Xiu is actually like Andrew WK--one big joke, right? Of course, given that comparison Xiu Xiu don't look so good, since they're way less fun to listen to. They are a pretty goddamn good joke, though. posted by Mike B. at 11:36 AM 0 comments
This may be of interest to some--a letter written by Idaho Republican Representative Butch Otter...
*** July 30, 2003 Mr. Jason Clark Dear Jason, Thank you for contacting me regarding the "Patriot Act." I appreciate hearing from you and having the benefit of your views. The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on our country demonstrated that our country's defenses were inadequate for the new threats we face. President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft asked the Congress for new powers to interdict and prosecute the increasingly de-centralized terrorist networks operating in our country. I agreed that some of the new powers they requested were necessary, and supported large parts of the Patriot Act, which was passed during the 107th Congress. Some of the provisions of this legislation, however, could not be justified-even in the face of the current threats. For instance, the Patriot Act authorizes no-knock searches of private residences. These "sneak and peak" searches would give the government the power to repeatedly search a private residence without ever informing the residents that they were the targets of an investigation. Section 215 of this bill authorized the government, with the permission of a secret court, to seize the business records of any business establishment in the country, then order the proprietor not to inform anyone that the records had been seized. This extraordinary provision would make every business an adjunct of the government and threaten the 1st Amendment rights of their employees. Section 220 authorized any federal judge to issue search warrants for anywhere in the United States if any terrorist activity whatsoever occurred within his jurisdiction. This places the rights of all Americans at the whim of judges who don't have any connection with the areas which they are issuing warrants for. Perhaps the worst provision of this legislation is Section 203, which authorizes the unlimited sharing of information between intelligence agencies and federal law enforcement. There are no restrictions on what kind of intelligence may be received or which agencies may receive it. This projects the CIA, NSA, and other such agencies into law enforcement. Giving federal law enforcement agencies access to the almost unlimited collection apparatus of our intelligence organizations is granting a blank check to the federal government. During the debate on the Patriot Act, I rose on the House floor to remind my colleagues that secret courts, no-knock searches, and nationwide warrants were all things our founding fathers had fought to gain their freedom from. While my colleagues voted by a margin of 357-66 to pass the bill into law, and the Senate voted by a margin of 98-1, I could not vote to abrogate the constitutional rights of my constituents. In retrospect, many Members of Congress have recognized that the Patriot Act was passed in haste during the emotional few months following September 11, 2001. There seems to be a growing sentiment to roll back some provisions of the Patriot Act and to restore some our of lost liberties-even among my colleagues who supported the legislation when it came before the House. As you may know, I recently offered an amendment to H.R. 2799, the Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary Appropriations Act of 2003, which targeted the so-called "sneak-and-peek" provisions of the Patriot Act. That this amendment passed overwhelmingly by a vote of 309-118 speaks to the fact that many Americans, Members of Congress and private citizens alike, are demanding a reconsideration of this controversial legislation. This amendment is just the first step in restoring the fundamental rights and liberties we compromised in the USA PATRIOT Act. I have also joined with Representatives Bernie Sanders and Ron Paul to sponsor another such effort, H.R. 1157, the Freedom to Read Protection Act of 2003. I will continue working with my colleagues-Republicans and Democrats alike-on legislation that will bring balance back to the equation of protecting our rights and providing for our homeland security. In the meantime, you can be confident that I will adamantly oppose any legislation that expands or strengthens the dangerous provisions of the Patriot Act and will use my good office to work with citizens and groups from around the country to protect our freedoms. Thank you once again for contacting me. As always, "Idaho - Esto Perpetua" ? C.L."Butch" Otter Member of Congress CLO/mmj posted by Mike B. at 10:48 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Thinking more about about that whole McCarthy thing: if politics is just an expression of naked self-interest (and if you dig Coulter, it probably is), then it makes more sense than it would appear on first incredulous blush. I mean, carrying out a witch hunt ruins the viability of the opposition and, no matter how cynical, would seem to benefit the McCarthyites.
Then again, that whole thing ended up...well, in the 60's. And I know conservatives hate the 60's, but it was kind of a bad time for them. So witch hunt away, kids! Maybe you could start with Joe Lieberman? I hear he's Jeeeeeewish... posted by Mike B. at 12:55 PM 0 comments
I was thinking last night about the present-day equivalent of Madonna's mainstream controversiality (there's a word for you), and I realized that the person espousing a moderate response to speech codes, as I've wondered about before, would be...
Eminem. Hmm. I'm kind of interested in running down Eminem's policy positions, as it were, to see how he manages to be controversial while still being widely supported and not regarded as whiny. (I'd also be interested in seeing what vaguely controversial positions non-right-wing talk show hosts espouse--the usual "look at these people being stupid" kind of thing you hear on morning zoo shows.) Madonna, for instance, embraced pro-sex women's lib (pro-choice, pro-personal expression, pro-orgasm) in a way that allowed her to fully enrage one segment of the population (xtians, conservatives) while getting embraced by another segment (women, libby men). Eminem pisses off the right by talking about sex and violence a lot, and just by being a rapper; he gets the left by being working-class (well, used to be) and anti-racist but taking enough contrary stances that they can still respect him in the morning. Of course, Em's stuff seems way more personal and way less political than Madonna, although admittedly she was working in a pesonal-is-political kinda field. But maybe I'm selling him short. So lessee... - Anti-gay but pro-gay marriage ("There's no reason that a man and another man can't elope (eww)") - kind of enlightened Santorumism - Anti-corporate ("There's a million of us just like me, we could be working at Burger King, spitting on your onion rings, doing circles in the parking lot, screaming 'Just don't give a fuck' with the windows down and the system up" - if I got that one right) - Anti-mainstream culture ("Trying to decide which Spice Girl to impregnate") while being happily mainstream himself - Anti-media-focusing-on-unimportant-issues (i.e., his personal life) - A, um, complicated relationship with women's issues (a punk-rock one, if Travis Morrison is to be believed--Well, she said, it was really awesome, a couple of guys from our crew noticed that he was hitting on me and went over and got in his face and they got in a fight and they totally creamed the guy. I was speechless. This was awesome? This is the “punk” scene that rejected false suburban values? It sounds like the damn 1950’s to me.). He, you know, likes women, but he kind of distrusts them. Maybe this is appealing because it implies an express powerlessness? That's all I got. Of course, the standard line on Eminem is that he's just expressing things white males think but shouldn't say in public, and from this rundown I'm not sure how true that is, politics-wise, but it's important (and oft-overlooked) that he says it in a real funny way. And from there... posted by Mike B. at 11:58 AM 0 comments
Just how much faith do neocons have in the free market?
The Pentagon office that proposed spying electronically on Americans to monitor potential terrorists has a new experiment. It is an online futures trading market, disclosed today by critics, in which anonymous speculators would bet on forecasting terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups. Traders bullish on a biological attack on Israel or bearish on the chances of a North Korean missile strike would have the opportunity to bet on the likelihood of such events on a new Internet site established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency... The Pentagon, in defending the program, said such futures trading had proven effective in predicting other events like oil prices, elections and movie ticket sales. "Research indicates that markets are extremely efficient, effective and timely aggregators of dispersed and even hidden information," the Defense Department said in a statement. "Futures markets have proven themselves to be good at predicting such things as elections results; they are often better than expert opinions." That right there: that's faith for you. Blinding. posted by Mike B. at 11:15 AM 0 comments
Monday, July 28, 2003
Some days, you know, it doesn't bother me. But other days I think about the fact that Joe McCarthy is being regarded as a pretty good guy, idea-wise, and I get really, really pissed off.
The fact that he has any traction instead of being regarded as a perfect example of the evil that goverment can produce is just sickening. Yikes. posted by Mike B. at 6:21 PM 0 comments
My friend Phil has a blog called Kicking Puppies, and this is a pretty cool post, even beyond the fact that it uses the term "prohomo." posted by Mike B. at 3:57 PM 0 comments
Reading this Salon story about a College Republican conference, I couldn't help but think: man, I wish Hunter S. Thompson wrote this. There's some good tidbits in there, but overall, the general tone of sneering condescension--"their faces hard and triumphant atop blue suits and evening gowns as they belted out the letters" etc.--was, I think, less useful than Thompson's usual one of shocked disbelief and willing intervention.
Anyway, excerpts: "As conservatives, we don't hate America," Erickson told his young audience. "The life of a liberal is hell. It is not possible to have a debate, a discussion, with someone who at their root, at their core, hates everything this country stands for but doesn't hate it enough to leave." (snip) Ann Coulter's latest book, "Treason," which tarred virtually all Democrats as traitors, may have been denounced by conservative intellectuals, but its message has pervaded the party. Gene McDonald, who sold "No Muslims = No Terrorists" bumper stickers at the Conservative Political Action Conference in January, was doing a brisk trade in "Bring Back the Blacklist" T-shirts, mugs and mouse pads. (snip) The room filled up again, though, when Warrior, an ex-WWF wrestler who has built a second career as a mascot for the right, took the stage that afternoon. Warrior -- that's his full legal name -- spoke at the Conservative Political Action conference in January, and has been one of the most requested speakers among conservative organizations ever since. Dressed in a blue pinstriped suit, his long, dirty-blond hair pulled into a ponytail, Warrior explained why he'd left the world of wrestling. "When it became degenerate and perverted," he said, "I dismissed myself from pursuing it as a career anymore." The speech that followed contained references to thinkers from Socrates to Tom Paine, and perhaps it would require a scholar of the classics to discern its meaning. "America was founded on that primary premise, that America would survive only as long as its people live up to their means," Warrior thundered. (snip) One message that was clear was a hatred of nuance or ambivalence. To defeat the "pervasive degeneracy, ignorance and destruction of soul" that prevails today, he said, "you must live to judge and be ready to be judged ... extremism in defense of moral behavior is no vice." [note: quote of the day.] The saying "there are two sides to every story," he told his audience, "brings your loved ones closer and closer to tyranny and outright annihilation." (snip) If Bush and his successors remain in power for the next decade, Cole believes, we'll have a world "where leaders say what they mean and follow it up ... millions and millions will enjoy the freedoms that our forefathers fought for. Democracy will spread across the world. Iraq was a phenomenal start. In Africa, the United States is helping Liberia and giving AIDS relief. Soon, they'll be back on the economic track. People now living in squalor will experience a home-owning boom like that following World War II. Look at how Staten Island was developed ..." (snip) Alexandre Pesey, a 28-year-old French conservative writing a Ph.D. thesis on the conservative movement in America, England and Germany, admires Bush's honesty and was pleased with the reception his American comrades had given him. But "some are a bit simple," he mused. "You can find strange people with American-flag ties." The bellicose religiosity of the event, with group prayers before every meal, also puzzled him. "That we cannot understand," he says. "Religion is private." (snip) Sibeni, who had spiky hair, glasses and a long face, is high-strung and given to rash pronouncements. He denounced assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. for "dividing the country" and trying to help African-Americans "advance over the white society," and defended American support of the brutal Augusto Pinochet regime in Chile. Chen, who went to high school with Sibeni in Great Neck, Long Island...Chen seemed so mild and centrist that at one point I called him a closet Democrat. Taken aback, he replied: "How am I a closet Democrat? I'm racist, I love guns and I hate welfare." He wasn't kidding. "I'm racist against anybody who doesn't work for a living," said Chen, whose family comes from Taiwan. "We're in Washington D.C. You can guess who that is." He's no fan of religion, but says he's less bothered about paying tax dollars to faith-based programs than to "crack whores who have eight kids because it's easier than working." "I wish there could be racial equality," said Sibeni, who, while in high school, refused to attend Martin Luther King Day celebrations. "The number one reason there's racial inequality is because of hip-hop." (snip) All four of them believe they have lost opportunities to affirmative action. "I applied to NYU and I didn't get in," says Sibeni. "My SAT scores weren't the greatest ..." "You were just another white guy from Long Island," says Ferruggia. "The only person you can really discriminate against anymore is white men." Ferruggia, the daughter of a pharmaceutical salesman, was valedictorian of her Southwest Florida high school. "I had the highest SAT scores in between five and 10 years" at her school, she says, and feels affirmative action cheated her out of scholarships. "I watched minority after minority after minority accept these awards ... I'm tired of people whining that I'm taking away from them." "A lot of poor white people in the trenches of Appalachia, they don't complain, they go out and work," said Ferruggia's blond friend, who sat quietly next to her for most of the evening. "Black people have been given a lot of chances ..." "And they always screw it up," said Sibeni. posted by Mike B. at 3:07 PM 0 comments
More:
*** To: "Catherine Lewis" Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 12:17 PM Subject: Re: argh Catherine- Fair enough about the draught, but like I say, I think the way you folks handle the negative letters you do receive may have an effect on that. But maybe not. Good to know that you need to be cc'ed on letters to the writers if they're gonna get published--you may want to put something to that effect on the staff or contact page, as I was actually unaware. Incidentally, while I've got you: there was this odd phenomenon where Brent's "official" response to my and someone else's White Stripes letters, published on April 7--a response which was odd enough in that it was in the third person and kind of un-parsable--was taken down the next day. Any memory of what was up with that? Thanks for the reply. *** From: "Catherine Lewis" Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 1:04 PM Subject: Re: argh > Good to know that you need to be cc'ed on letters to the writers if they're > gonna get published--you may want to put something to that effect on the staff > or contact page, as I was actually unaware. Yeah, I'm thinking about how to handle that.... > Incidentally, while I've got you: there was this odd phenomenon where Brent's > "official" response to my and someone else's White Stripes letters, published on > April 7--a response which was odd enough in that it was in the third person and > kind of un-parsable--was taken down the next day. Any memory of what was up > with that? Yeah.... it wasn't really from Brent. I thought it was, based on the tone and the return address, but it wasn't, so I took it down rather than changing the headline, etc. I'm sorry about the confusion on that (although I must admit, I was as confused as everyone else :) *** Well, that clears up something I've been wondering about for a while. posted by Mike B. at 1:23 PM 0 comments
I wrote me a letter to PF.
*** To: Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 11:20 AM Subject: argh Catherine: You write- As far as the deranged fan-of-the-week mail: As the one who sorts through most of those letters and picks which ones appear on the site, I can tell you they start to sound very formulaic after a while ("Dear Pitchfork, I disagree with your review of ___, therefore you have bad writing, therefore you sukkk. PS -can I write for you sometime?"). Sometimes it feels like indie-rock MadLibs... Iee. Look, I understand how demonstrating that the people who disagree with you are stupider than you can be entertaining for the Pitchfork partisans, and loath would be I to stand in the way of such entertainment. But please don't pretend like that's the only kind of negative mail you get. I know for a fact that some pretty intelligent, non-Mad Libby criticism gets sent to you guys, and you publish way, way less of that than of the inarticulate fanboy rantings. (The ratio's about 1:20 by my count, and even when that 1 goes go up there, it's with a snarky headline.) So don't complain about the quality of discourse on the letters page when you give people the distinct impression that the only way their critical opinion is going to get published is if it's misspelled and illogical, and when you don't publish the intelligent criticism that you do get, because--heaven forfend--it might make y'all look wrong. I know this is the internet and whatnot, but c'mon now. *** And I got me a response: *** Mike, I LOVE the well-written criticisms. I love it even more when the writer responds back. And I can say that a large majority of those that I receive DO get published (notable exception is when there's a lot of back-and-forth between the writer & the fan, or when the writer has composed several responses to a certain review -- I do have to pick-and-choose in that case. Which is why your dialogue about the Liz Phair review never got published, fyi.) Honestly, I haven't gotten that much mail recently. I can't tell if that's because people don't care any more, or if readers don't know to send it to me, or if there's a lot getting sent to the writers that isn't getting passed along to me. In hopes that it's the latter, I've sent a reminder note out to the reviewers, so we'll see if that rounds up some good critiques. Thank you for writing, Catherine. *** More in a bit. posted by Mike B. at 12:07 PM 0 comments
Worst. Logic. Ever.
"The state's run like a zoo," said Rob Fleming, 43, a truck driver and registered Democrat, as he stood outside the Department of Motor Vehicles in Hollywood on a recent afternoon. He called the fee increases taxation without representation. "That's why I'm going to go with the Terminator on this one," he said, referring to Mr. Schwarzenegger by one of his movie roles. "He's already got the money. He's not looking to line his pockets. Maybe he's honest. Maybe he's for the people." Yeah, when you're trying to find someone not interested in making money, look for a rich person. Sigh. posted by Mike B. at 12:03 PM 0 comments
Thursday, July 24, 2003
Jason points me to an Economist article about the rightward shift among US youth. It makes a point that may sound a wee bit familiar as regards the unintended consequences of the boomers taking over the educational system:
IN WOODY ALLEN's musical comedy, "Everyone Says I Love You", one young character suffers from a terrible affliction: compulsive conservatism. He annoys his decent (ie, liberal) parents by calling for smaller government or extolling the latest article in the NATIONAL REVIEW. Everything ends happily, however: the parents discover he is suffering from a brain tumour. The tumour is removed, and with it goes the youth's annoying politics. These days more and more young Americans are suffering from a similar affliction. This week Washington saw two jamborees for young right-wingers: a National Conservative Student Conference, put on by the Young America's Foundation, and a National Convention of College Republicans. Hundreds of young conservatives flooded into the capital to listen to their heroes (including a wrestler called Warrior), to learn how to identify liberal textbook bias, to visit the White House, and to watch Karl Rove receiving the Lee Atwater Leadership Award. (snip) Why this upturn in conservatism? One reason is a healthy desire to tweak the noses of people in authority. America's academic establishment is so solidly liberal that Naderites easily outnumber Republicans. The leftists who seized control of the universities in the 1960s have imposed their world-view on the young with awesome enthusiasm, bowdlerising text-books of anything that might be considered sexist or racist, imposing draconian speech codes and inventing pseudo-subjects such as women's studies. What better way of revolting against such illiberal claptrap than emulating the character in Mr Allen's film? By going to the moderate left, of cou....oh wait, that doesn't exist because all the leftists my age are friggin' crazy. Well, maybe I'm just feeling bitter, but it does seem like taking a moderate oppositional stance against the identity-politics loonies would be a bit more effective than right-wing pranksterism. But maybe it's just that you can't oppose the loonies because they're so good at shouting you down (anyone who's tried to take a slightly oppositional stance on a campus recently knows this) so ineffective rebellion is the best option. I don't really believe that, though. posted by Mike B. at 2:43 PM 0 comments
Incidentally--and thank the lord--the lawyer who was charged with aiding terrorists because she, you know, talked to her accused-of-being-a-terrorist client, had the most serious charges dismissed because "the law under which she had been charged was unconstitutionally vague." Wshew. posted by Mike B. at 2:32 PM 0 comments
I had a thought on the basis of this Salon article about "Bush's lies" which was way smarter than it had any right to be, given the headline ("Bush's lies vs. Clinton's lies"):
Bush is similarly stymied at attacking his opposition. His first option is to paint all Democrats as antiwar in Iraq and implicitly in support of a maniac whose brutality becomes clearer with each mass grave found. This strategy will have particular currency if the situation in Baghdad improves, the bloodletting stops, and troops stop telling reporters that they want to go home. Many Democrats agree that Bush can get traction here. "Most Americans aren't lawyers or arms inspectors, but they do know an enemy when they see one," says Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist Democratic group. The problem for Bush is that almost all of the top-tier presidential candidates were pro-war. The big difference between their position and the White House's was that the Democrats wanted to act multilaterally and with the support of the United Nations. That position looks eminently reasonable now, with Americans making up nearly all of the coalition forces patrolling Iraq and with the realization that Saddam almost certainly did not pose an imminent threat to this country. So it seems that, of the plausible scenarios at this point, the worst-case one for the Republicans is if Dean gets nominated and the peace continues to go badly; the best-case one is if Dean gets nominated and the peace starts to go really well. Is that a gamble the Democratic faithful are going to make? I wonder. Let's just all try and remember, though, that point during the war when it looked like it was going badly and then all of a sudden we took Baghdad. That can easily happen again--and, hopefully, it will. But hey, maybe my analysis is flawed. The Salon article's not, though. Good stuff. posted by Mike B. at 2:27 PM 0 comments
Pitchfork reviews the Friends Forever album, which is an album featuring humor done by a band on a record label who is currently having their dong huffed (mostly acause of Lightning Bolt). Think they're going to get a negative review? You bet!
Of course, it ended up sounding like a positive review to me, as it listed the following artists I love: Fluxus, Beavis & Butthead ("more Butthead than Beuys"? Sign me the motherfuck up!), Melvins, Happy Flowers, GodWeenSatan-era Ween, Devo, Anal Cunt (their comment--on a band that recorded a song called "Hitler Was a Sensitive Man," no less--"like, *wince*") and Weird Al. Shit, that sounds awesome. Memo to PF: you guys need to get off your I-hate-humor kick. I've actually been digging FF's song "Carnisaur Vs. Unicorn" (mp3 download) quite a bit lately, so maybe I'll pick that sucka up, along with the reissued "Ascension" and "Boy in Da Corner." Or maybe I'll, you know, save up so I can eat dinner. Naaaaah. posted by Mike B. at 12:46 PM 0 comments
Styx is the government!!!!
You wouldn't know it by looking at him, but clean-scrubbed House Republican Deputy Whip Eric Cantor is a huge fan of Styx. "I grew up on Styx -- 'Mr. Roboto' and 'Lady,' and 'Come Sail Away,' which I still like to sing, but I'm not going to sing it for you now," the 40-year-old Richmond resident told us yesterday after giving members of the rock band, in town to play MCI Center, a tour of the Capitol. "I was happy to do it because I did it with fond memories of the band," Cantor said. "Yeah, they were dressed more casually than most people in the Capitol. There were definitely earrings and some dyed blond hair." Huh. That's something you don't see every day. posted by Mike B. at 12:26 PM 0 comments
Jesse responded to my post about the curious squeamishness about patriotism and the flag on the political and cultural left by mentioning that in the 70's the Grateful Dead were big into the idea that they were an American band, and their public personas involved a lot of flag iconography and "mutant patriotism." I responded by saying that this trend had always made me feel a little weird, like they were just pandering to the white baseball cap kids who had put me off the Dead in the first place, but that flags were all over the late 60's / early 70's counterculture: Hendrix's rendition of the anthem, Peter Fonda's helmet, etc.; certainly more than today. Jesse replied that "the more I think about it, the whole 'America is beautiful, man' philosophy was pretty central to Kerouac and Ginsberg (who was way into Whitman)."
Good point. It's interesting to see how unabashedly folks who were, if anything, more radical than many of us middlebrow modern leftists embraced the flag and everything that came with it--or, more accurately, made something new out of it. (This will be the only good thing I'll say about the baby boomers today.) And I can't help but think that this had something to do with their education. Wrongheaded as the mainstream views about America may have been in the 50's, it's clear that just as the ill-gotten prosperity they protested allowed the boomers to have the freedom to engage in political and cultural insurgency, so did the America-is-great conformism of their education nevertheless have an effect--mostly positive, I think--on their thinking. While it doesn't seem all that weird for these paragons of the counterculture to be talking about how great America is and hitting the road, it does seem weird when contrasted with the total lack of America-can-be-kinda-neat attitudes among the kids who were raised by said paragons and their disciples. We'd never wave a flag to save our life, and the only hitting-the-road we do is done out of a weird sense of kitch. And this seems undeniably due to the fact that the boomers decided that educating us with any love of America or the American system would be conservative and repressive and like that (c.f. "The Language Police"). And while I'm not necessarily saying that's a bad thing ("Why're all them blacks and Mexicans in Jimmy's textbook?"), I do think it's something we should overcome if we desire political efficacy. Rebellion makes it easier to evolve a political consciousness, but it's certainly possible even in the absence of something to rebel against. For a good example of this contrast and the problems thereof, let's look at the guy who sprung to mind when I read Jesse's response: Willie Nelson. Here's a guy who comes out of Austin (a current HQ of the counterculture) and revolutionizes country music, smokes a lot of pot and is pretty much a bumming-around musician, but he manages to both retain credibility with a large swatch of Americans and the elite while also talking honestly about his love for America and supporting the Democrats. This guy is a model of what we're looking for, patriotism-wise. But let's contrast him with another noted Austinian, one who revolutionized comedy and was a happy exemplar of the counterculture: Bill Hicks. Now, don't get me wrong, I love Bill, just like I love a lot of cultural heroes who would be way uncomfortable with the flag. (Which flag Hicks has hilariously proposed should be revised to show your parents fucking.) But I don't really like the kneejerk anti-Americanism that seems to be such a part of his act. Bill has an undeniable love for humanity, but the problem with this broadness is that it overlooks the details and he ends up hating a lot of actual people--and yeah, it's hatred. Some people regard this attitude as a brave thing or an honest thing, but to me, the far more brave thing would be to question this attitude among the people who agree with him and find a way to actually bring in the people he hates. I love a lot of his jokes, but his cultural critiques can be pretty shallow and needlessly absolutist. The whole "you people are sheep!" thing. Like, here's a bit from a review: Hicks scripted a rousing fight song with the intent of impugning everything unholy and dangerous in the world of capitalism. Foremost on the list was the evil known as laziness. Not laziness in the casually procrastinating sense, but rather the much graver error of cultural indolence. Essentially, people who've grown weary of their power to discern submit to the demands of fictional authoritative figures (i.e. media) who dictate their tastes, interests, opinions, and beliefs. What results from this "dumbing down" is a culture of people who have forgotten how to judge correctly. A group of people-- some of whom are reading this review-- that find themselves on the wet end of a degenerate culture. A culture erected from the cancerous mutation of hype machines, spin, and an elitist social sect designed to capitalize on the acquiescence of its members. These same idle sheep find themselves flocking to inferior merchandise simply to nestle snuggly within an arbitrary hipness quotient, and because of the concomitant satisfaction in rallying behind mediocre products with strong PR. Icky. That puts me off way more than a guy waving a flag right now. I dunno. I guess Hicks' attitude is better than that of folks who agree with Toby Keith, but it still seems like it's missing something important. A good patriotism, to me--one that looks past all the current signifiers of the flag toward what it could become--is not unlike a good Christianity, a Voeglin-esque one. Hicks, like a lot of lefty activists and cultural heroes, have a kind of idealistic utopianism that regards anything less than utopia as debased, and anything debased as bad and not worth bothering with. But if a true Christianity would contend with the now because paradise has not come yet, then a good patriotism would recognize the good in the American system and the way that mostly-shared set of beliefs unites us, even if we look like dumb rednecks or whatever. It would be able to look past all the things other people say about it and make something new. (incidentally, Salon published my letter about that, along with some pretty giggle-worthy activist griping about the Gitlin interview) posted by Mike B. at 12:24 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, July 23, 2003
Newsweek's cover story on California this week absolutely nails it. I've got to give a lot of respect to them and the authors for writing a piece firmly grounded, for once, not in conventional wisdom but in strongly established public policy scholarship--although in this case, the two may finally have dovetailed. Here are the key paragraphs, which I think I might have cheered out loud at, following an analysis of how fucked Gov. Davis is:
Davis isn’t entirely to blame. He is the perfect distillation of the dysfunctional California political system that produced him—a system that itself is a laboratory specimen of the iron law of unintended consequences. For a quarter century (since Prop 13 [which put a cap on property taxes and is regarded as the start of the "tax revolt"]) California voters, following a tradition that stretches back to Hiram Johnson, have been trying (or so they thought) to place more power directly in the hands of the people. Through the increasingly obsessive use of ballot initiatives, they have imposed strict term limits and rigid budgetary-spending caps, and have written rules on everything from the rights of crime victims to the use of state pension funds to the legal rights of immigrants. The ironic result, however, hasn’t been more democracy, but less; not more trust in government and leadership, but less. The elected legislature and the governor are often bystanders in a system on “autopilot,” says author Peter Schrag. When they run for office they face spending limits. But initiatives do not, which of course makes them a lucrative source of income for consultants who dream them up...Ballot measures are where the real action is—except that the governor and the legislature still have responsibility for fashioning a budget. And the legislature, observers say, is composed of people who often, quite literally, don’t know what they are doing. Under the state’s strict term-limits law, none can amass the experience necessary to understand even the rudiments of governing a state with an economy bigger than that of France. “It’s frightening how little these people know,” says GOP consultant Sal Russo... All the ignorance and churn leaves someone else with all the power: not the people, not the pols, but the consultants and lobbyists who fill the plush office buildings that surround Capitol Park in Sacramento, or who work out of San Francisco or L.A. Amid the coming and going, they are the immutable ones, plucking candidates from obscurity (as long as they have cash upfront or rich friends); lobbying for or against legislation (usually the latter); hauling in their rake-off from placing TV ads in a state where media are everything and door-to-door campaigning is impossible. (snip) As a result, the activist fringes are in control, since they can turn out the vote in low-turnout elections. The result is even more apathy, even lower turnout—and even more power for the unelected powers that be. Predictably, Davis blames the budget mess and his own problems on antitax Republicans. The GOP, for its part, blames greedy public-employee unions. The voters despise them all. “I’m afraid the whole political system here has lost its credibility,” says Dr. Gloria Duffy, head of the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco. I hate referendums. They're the political equivalent of letting a five-year-old make the rules for professional baseball. "There should be lasers! And trampolines!" Sure, they make the political process more exciting, but they don't really result in greater control by the people; studies show that something like 95% of referendums are won by whatever side spends more money. And referendums are often financed--as many California ones were--by one or two rich individuals. And the rich overriding the political system is not my idea of democracy. It just reveals an absolute inability to tell the difference between democracy as a kneejerk concept and American democracy, which is inevitably placed in the context of the Republic. Look, the founding fathers were smart guys. They didn't create the Senate or the Supreme Court in order to protect their riches or to oppress the working class. They did it because they had a justified fear of the mob. The collective will of the people can be pretty dumb sometimes. For an easy example, think about a referendum that said the tax rate would have to be lowered to 0%. I bet that would pass, because who wants to pay taxes? But then the state would have zero money, and they wouldn't be able to pay for...well, anything. And sure, I guess we could all organize our own private police forces and drive our garbage to the nearest cliff and dump it off, but we don't really want to, nor should we. America is founded on the idea of collective governance, and if you don't like that, well, why don't you move to Russia, you goddamn post-capitalist. If you don't understand that one of the purposes of government is to make responsible decisions for the good of the republic that the people wouldn't make given pure individual self-interest, well, then you probably shouldn't be voting. And I hate term limits. Yeah, it sounds like a good idea at first, because it can be so hard to get bad incumbents out, but there are better ways around that. Because then you think about it for a second. And you think: hmm, well, government can't really function if it has to completely reinvent itself every, oh, 4 years. That's not gonna work; programs and initiatives and departments have to be continuous to be effective. So if we're kicking out the elected bastards every four years, who is going to govern? Well, obviously, the unelected bastards. And me, I'd rather have the power rest with someone I can oust. I'm glad that movement seems to have lost momentum, but it sucks that it's so firmly implanted in some states. Look, I'm not arguing this from a leftist perspective. I'm arguing this from the perspective of someone who believes in the American system. And I'll admit it: these measures have become popular and effective because the system itself seems to have some major blockages in it (much like how litigation seems to have superceded legislation as a means of forcing social change because the legislative process itself seems far less responsive to a sense of justice). Hell, you can see all the leftist/libertarian medical marijuana initiatives as a good sign that most of us have decided that pot should be legal and we'd really like the legislatures to get on that, please. But, like so many neo-conservative ideas (c.f. "drown it in the bathtub"), the supposedly "populist" combo of initiatives and term limits is a deeply cynical one that only makes the system worse. Want to argue with me? Well, then tell me what else fucked up California besides cynical systemic demagoguery. So I'm glad to see this idea get some mainstream traction: "The ironic result, however, hasn’t been more democracy, but less; not more trust in government and leadership, but less." If we can start with debasing initiatives, then maybe we can move on to a greater understanding of how the system should work, and really make it better instead of just wrecking it. posted by Mike B. at 12:14 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
Speaking of patriotism, Paul Krugman has a great column summarizing some of the latest administration bullshit and bringing up the whole "She's a spy! Oops, did we just say she's a spy?" thing.
More on patriotism shortly... posted by Mike B. at 11:22 AM 0 comments
Harm'll appreciate this one. In reference to the forged yellow cake evidence:
“Within two hours they figured out they were forgeries,” one IAEA official told NEWSWEEK. How did they do it? “Google,” said the official. The IAEA ran the name of the Niger foreign minister through the Internet search engine and discovered that he was not in office at the time the document was signed. Google: useful for intelligence agencies and mailing list members alike... posted by Mike B. at 11:20 AM 0 comments
Monday, July 21, 2003
QV points us to a new Jonathan Lethem story, which is actually an excerpt from his upcoming novel, The Fortress of Solitude. It's on the new Yorker site, so it'll be gone in a week.
It is, as Mike Reynolds promised, about race. Much more on this later. Beginning of one section: The last thing Dylan Ebdus’s mother, Rachel, had taught him, before she left Dylan’s father and vanished from their home, was the word “gentrification.” End of same section: Dylan Ebdus, one-man integration unit. Very very exciting. Go read. posted by Mike B. at 6:30 PM 0 comments
Hey, I'm kind of Gitlin-y, aren't I?
- "But it's a huge failure of imagination if someone can't imagine why someone would support Bush. Since roughly half the population did...everybody on the left should go listen to Republicans and try to figure out what makes them tick. This is across-the-board advice. I would tell people, "Good God, most people are not like you!"...Parochialism is never a platform for understanding, and this is another kind of parochialism. One can understand and not understand. "This also requires understanding people who don't make sense: to understand, for example, how 50 percent of the population could be convinced that there was Iraqi involvement in 9/11. That's rationalist heresy. " - "ANSWER is a cult. It's a tightly organized sect that operates in the shadows and tries to bull its way into power." - "It's obviously a lot harder now to make the case that there's no difference between the parties. I think it was a foolish case in the first place, but today all you have to do is say the words "John Ashcroft," "war in Iraq," to make it very, very difficult to make the claim that this is exactly what Al Gore would have done or even close to it. But there is a phenomenon in politics -- and the left isn't any more exempt from it than the right -- of cognitive dissonance, in which you bend the world, you hypnotize yourself into seeing the world in such a way as to make it unnecessary for you to rethink your first premises. "So just as George Bush may well think that he found weapons of mass destruction, and most Americans think that there were Iraqis involved in 9/11, you'll find Greens who desperately cling to a falsehood about political reality which makes it unnecessary to rethink their premises." - "If you shudder at the thought of power, you don't belong in politics. You can't emote your way to power, you can't moralize your way, you have to strategize your way to power." - "The left is always ready for carnivorous action against one of its leaders. They're always ready to shred a standard-bearer if he or she fails to deliver the maximum. They're very quick to send somebody out the safe house of sainthood, because they've let them down." One particular thing I'd like to take off on, though, is this: The post-Nader left needs to be a patriotic left, and should be indignant at the thought that the corporate rich who are lining their pockets and keeping their kids out of the armed service are the real patriots and we're the outsiders. I think they're the outsiders, and we're the patriots, and we should be proud of it. Walking around DC in November of 2001, when people went a little flag-crazy, I kept seeing American flags that had fallen off a truck or a pole, and I would pick them up and put them in my pocket and take them home and put them up somewhere, because that's what you're supposed to do with a flag--you're not supposed to let them touch the ground. And my companions thought this was deeply weird and not a little creepy; after all, it's the flag, and we leftists get a little uncomfortable around the flag (and prayer, but that's a different matter). Which is unfortunate. Gitlin's right: we do need to reclaim the idea that we're patriots just as much, if not more, than the right is, because it gives us the confidence in our actions and the acceptability of our ideas that the left so desperately needs. And that particular ickiness about the flag--which afflicts even practical leftists who have no qualms about power or working within the system--is a big part of what's holding us back from that goal. The process we've engaged in over the last 40 years or so of reexamining our history and kind of collectively confirming in the intellectual community that said history is kinda fucked up has been a good thing, but it's unfortunate that it's led to such widespread anti-Americanism on the left. It seems like one of those "failures of imagination" that Gitlin talks about--a failure to separate a justifiable distrust of American nationalism and the authoritarians that exploit it from a justifiable love of the Republic and the American experiment. The hallmarks of the left--anti-authoritarianism, prioritizing civil liberties, localism, an intellectual approach to politics--are far more deeply rooted in American thought and government than in the Europeans who have made highbrow anti-Americanism so fashionable. We need to remember that: to remember that, despite the way the right twists American thought into American nationalism, and despite the horrible things that American nationalism has done throughout the history of the nation, expressing a leftist point of view is to express the point of view of not only a great number of living Americans, but a great number of our best and brightest. We must have confidence, and we must learn to love the things we know we love without guilt or distrust, and we must use that to kick those nationalist fuckers out of the seat of power of this great government of ours. (n.b. I have written about Gitlin before) posted by Mike B. at 6:12 PM 0 comments
Friday, July 18, 2003
never a dull moment
Well, in politics, anyway. Today has been the day from hell, so in lieu of my usual posts, I thought I'd condense the unusually numerous things that have made my jaw hang open in one, easy-to-get-pissed-off-at list. - After an ABC reporter named Jeffrey Kofman did a (fairly devastating--Donald Rumsfed gets called on to resign) story on low troop morale in Iraq, a "White House source" told Matt Drudge that Jeff is gay, and Canadian. Drudge decided to just print that he was Canadian. Gay smears? In this day and age? Seriously? (And don't forget that "White House sources" also blew the cover of a US spy in an attempt to discredit a critic.) - Speaking of low troop morale, the director of CENTCOM reminds the troops that they can't criticize their commanders, which, while sucky, is true, and has its purpose in combat; it's also worth noting that he's not actually proposing to enforce this rule, so I think it's lame but OK. This, though, is evil: the wife of the commander of the "you're coming home, oops you're not" 3rd ID wrote a letter to troop spouses saying that, basically, if you criticize the administration it's your own fault if the troops get shot. Yoinks. - The British whistle-blower on hyping pre-war WMD claims, David Kelly, was found dead after he was subject to a campaign by the government to discredit him or paint him as a "fall guy." Not much else to say about that one. - At the end of an LA Times story about the problems with planning for post-war Iraq comes this bit, which did, literally, cause my jaw to drop: Still, he and other Pentagon officials said, they are studying the lessons of Iraq closely — to ensure that the next U.S. takeover of a foreign country goes more smoothly. "We're going to get better over time," promised Lawrence Di Rita, a special assistant to Rumsfeld. "We've always thought of post-hostilities as a phase" distinct from combat, he said. "The future of war is that these things are going to be much more of a continuum "This is the future for the world we're in at the moment," he said. "We'll get better as we do it more often." Well, that's good to...hey wait a minute! I can't believe they said that. I really just can't. Man. - Last but best: House Republicans called the cops on the Democrats. You gotta read this one, kids. After passing legislation partially privatizing pensions while "Ways and Means Committee Democrats were huddled in an adjacent room," Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, R-Calif., summoned police because he thought the lone Democrat to remain in the room, Rep. Pete Stark of California, was speaking out of line, other Republicans on the panel said. He asked police to remove Democrats from the adjacent room, but later rescinded that request, the Republicans said. Assistant to the Sergeant of Arms Donald Kellaher, called in to mediate, said that "clearly the police in this circumstance have no role or authority to intervene." Democrats were upset because they said the final version of the 90-page bill was circulated around midnight Thursday and they weren't given sufficient opportunity to study it before Friday's meeting. Yeah--for "speaking out of line." Yeah. Atrios actually has two (this one's better) good posts about it. Leah's points out that the Dems have reason to be mad: On the complicated Medicare bill, for instance, the actual bill and amendments were held in a locked room; Democrats were not provided with copies; they were only allowed to read the bill in the locked room, and only after it being ascertained that they had neither pencil or paper upon which to make notes. Responsible governance? What? Guys, you don't get to call the cops after that shit. And the excuse that "the Democrats did it, too!"--that ain't gonna fly. posted by Mike B. at 6:04 PM 0 comments
Thursday, July 17, 2003
Call me too smart for my own good if you will (go right ahead!) but I just don't see why this is such a big deal. What? Is Bush supposed to be so dumb that the only way we can be sure that he knew what was in his speech is by seeing a picture of him editing it? Don't we have all the evidence we need in the goddamn broadcast of him reading it???
I must be missing something, huh? posted by Mike B. at 4:01 PM 0 comments
Extremely worrisome post here about the possibility that, in seeking to discredit the guy who blew the whistle on yellow cake, members of the Bush administration blew the cover of a spy, endangering the lives of her and all her sources. The spy being, of course, his wife. Yikes. Yikes yikes yikes. posted by Mike B. at 3:58 PM 0 comments
To give Salon some respect (after...good Lord, 1,500 words of criticism): this article starts off complaining about Kerry not using his position of strength on national security to bash Bush in a speech given to NYC police, firefighters, and other civic workers. Instead of complaining about the yellow cake issue, or the missing WMD, he said "that Bush hasn't fulfilled his promises to give cities enough money to defend against terrorism," saying:
"One of the first things I'll do as president is reverse George Bush's wrongheaded rule change that is going to take overtime pay out of the pockets of fire and police sergeants and paramedics." Kerry's speech also called for putting 100,000 new police on the streets along with 100,000 firefighters as part of the Father Mychal Judge Fund, named for the New York Fire Department chaplain who died in the World Trade Center. (snip) Kerry didn't say anything remotely new and critical about the president's intelligence imbroglio, and his biggest crowd-pleaser was a bit perplexing. "We should not be opening firehouses in Baghdad while closing them in Brooklyn," he said to much applause. The article then goes on to point out how the other Democratic candidates have been hammering Bush on this issue, and the clear implication was that Kerry should be, too, seeing as how he's in the best position to do so (war hero etc.) even if he did vote to approve the use of force in Iraq. And I was all set to get pissed off, but then, surprisingly, the article came to the right conclusion: But maybe more important, six months from now, few people are going to remember who was toughest on Bush during the yellowcake scandal. They are only going to remember if one of the candidates blunders and says something over the top or that turns out to be dramatically wrong. Moreover, there isn't that much additional damage that any one candidate, even the decorated Kerry, can do to Bush on this issue. With scores of pundits and papers already speaking out, a candidate can only move the debate on the margins. However, what will matter six months from now is who has support from the unions and other fieldworkers. The police and fire department unions will be good for a lot of photo-ops and a lot of door knocking come primary season. Kerry has already built up an impressive party machine that he's been building since he raised millions that he knew he wouldn't have to spend for a 2000 Senate race against a no-name challenger. He's snagged key staff from Al Gore and Bill Bradley's campaigns, not to mention getting former state party heads to run his New Hampshire and Iowa campaigns. He also has nearly $11 million on hand, more than any of his rivals. In other words, John Kerry doesn't seem to believe that he needs to hit home runs when it comes to national security. Damn straight! Unions matter, and party machines matter, and campaign staff matter. (Note to Dean supporters: if you're going to say we shouldn't go after Dean because he might be the Dems' candidate, doesn't the same thing apply to attacks on Kerry?) It's a lovely bit of political realism, which has been largely missing in the big Dean grope-fest. These things get you elected Presidents; excited college students do not, which is why excited college students feel "excluded" sometimes. They don't have connection, or influence, or (as the current Doonesbury series points out) experience, and that's what you need to win a national election. More importantly, it shows that Kerry is focusing on actual proposals instead of simply bashing Bush (or, you know, the rest of his party--an interesting if unfortunately effective strategy). As Salon says, yellow cake probably won't end up mattering so much by the time the GE rolls around. But homeland security will, and Bush is weak on that. What's overlooked in this whole "Bush is invincible" thing is that once there is a Democratic candidate and there is a singular voice out there opposing Bush's, there are a whole lot of traditionally Republican areas where he's pretty vulnerable. He's slashed funding for police and fire departments; the DHS terror-alert system causes massive drains on civic systems; he's slashed Vetrans' benefits and the pay of soldiers in the field; he's betrayed the intelligence community; and he's made America vulnerable to terrorist attack, like he was doing before. What this means is that there are a lot of people out there--the people who vote Republican but don't actually benefit from their fiscal policy--who still like Bush but can be readily convinced that they don't like his policies. And, it seems, that's what Kerry is going for. Would that the other folks would do so too... posted by Mike B. at 3:42 PM 0 comments
we all dance to things we disagree with
A Salon writer, Kate Haulman, just works herself into an absolute tizzy about the Willie Nelson / Toby Keith song "Beer For My Horses": Still, catchy tune and pseudo-feminist video aside, the song offends my lefty sensibilities on virtually every level. But what do you do when you like something -- be it a painting, song, film or fashion -- but reject all that the thing signifies? Can music or art or dress speak to a person or be appreciated in a contentless manner?...Can you embrace something without endorsing its intended meaning? Culture is politics and vice versa, but what does that mean on a case-by-case basis? Until I divine the specific relationship between the two I must be content to A) enjoy the song as guilty pleasure when it crosses my path; B) refuse to financially support the enterprise by purchasing the CD or patronizing advertisers on stations that play the song; and C) appropriate it. That last, I think, is crucial if one hopes to drain powerful cultural forms of their totalizing political punch. It's an age-old American strategy, dating from the days when Continental soldiers lifted "Yankee Doodle" from the mouths of mocking British troops, stealing some of their cultural, and perhaps military, thunder. Appropriation was also at work when slaves made the heaven in Methodist hymns into a specific vision of freedom from bondage. Republicans attempted a watered-down version of it when they chose Sting's "Brand New Day" as the theme song for their 2000 convention. They even got to play it once or twice before he pulled the plug. Well, there's at least two big red flags here: "guilty pleasure" and "appropriate." (I am seriously getting pissed off just typing the words, and yes, I know this is not a good sign.) The idea of guilty pleasure is a stupid, Catholic, one, but so, I often feel, is loudly declaring that you don't have guilty pleasures. Because, let's face it, you probably do. Mine include Tori Amos and Eurovision-y europop, mainly because I don't know anyone else with decent musical taste who non-guiltily likes these things. (I still listen to 'em, though.) The problem with the concept of the guilty pleasure is less the "guilty" part and more what's defined as a guilty pleasure. The term is used by people with "good taste" to describe anything mainstream which they, horror of horrors, like. But this presumes that anything mainstream is bad, or falls within "bad taste," and I think that's just not true. Just because something is liked by a lot of other people, or not liked by the Wire, doesn't make it a guilty pleasure. The point of guilty pleasures is that you just like them, they're pure pleasure, and you don't think about it too much (viz. the above strategy of listening to the song without thinking about the horrendously politically incorrect lyrics). But there's lots of pop stuff that you should think about, that is well-crafted and interesting and wonderful. So what should we call a guilty pleasure? ("GP" for short.) Well, GPs are fun in their own special way--aside from the "no thinking" part, you enjoy GPs alone. There's no one else you know and respect who will admit to liking it, so you have to do it "in secret," and this has a certain adulterous excitement that makes it, well, pleasurable. That's why "guilty" pleasure--because guilt can be pleasurable, too. All the lapsed Catholics (or the male submissives wearing panties and garters) will tell you that. But it's different from a regular pleasure, and that's why I don't think this song should be (or is) a guilty pleasure--it's not being enjoyed alone. With a GP, you enjoy it by keeping it to yourself, your own little discovery among the trash; with a regular pleasure, you want to share it with everyone else (i.e. pop's inclusivity), and that's clearly what the author's doing here, despite the hissy fit. Let's get down to the object at hand, then. The author asks of the song: "Can you embrace something without endorsing its intended meaning?" Well good Lord, Kate, what school of critical discourse was your ass into at college? Because most of the ones I dug my paws into didn't give two shits about intentionality, and if it didn't matter for fugging Twain then it doesn't matter for fugging Toby Keith. Who cares if he meant it as a call to kill Iraqi children or not? If it's catchy, it's catchy, and you can use it. Moreover, don't be so quick to dismiss Willie: I can easily imagine him smoking a bowl and giggling his ass off about the way this is probably being taken. This is, after all, the man who sent a case of whiskey to the Texas Democrats who broke a quorum by going to Oklahoma, so maybe--just maybe--by justice he's talking about something different than Keith is, and by "Somebody stole a car / Somebody got away / Somebody didn't get too far yeah" he's not thinking about criminals, but Republicans. The song mainly "offends my lefty sensibilities on virtually every level" not because it's a vigilante revenge fantasy, but because it's a vigilante revenge fantasy set in Texas. If this was a samurai vigilante, or Shaft, or Robin Hood, or anything else, would we have such a problem? Nope. So set it in feudal Japan if you'd like, and if it'll make you feel better. But don't let your leftist squeamishness about horses and gunsmoke and all that bullshit prevent you from enjoying the song, OK? Christ--I mean, look at what she's going on about here: In message, the song amounts to masculinist, parochial-cum-nationalist, evangelical eye-for-an-eye, pro-death penalty drivel devoid of social context, lacking any awareness of the systems and structures that induce people to commit crimes on a local level or that make the world look as it does today. It's nauseating. Oh, please, Kate. If you don't see it there, you're just not looking. And besides, it is, as she says, "catchy"--and that line about "Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses" is a really lovely turn of phrase. What's really interesting to me about the Keith song that I think gets Kate in a particular tizzy, the real one she's writing about here--Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue (The Angry American), which seems to equate war in Iraq with retribution for 9/11, erroneously--is not that people like it, since, after all, Bush does still have a pretty good approval rating. No, it's interesting to me that no one's written and released a response song. Because that is the difference between sarcasm and sincerity, between true discourse and masturbatory "appropriation." It would be an actual political act instead of one that's funny, but not comedy. What's the point of appropriation, of doing that instead of responding? Why would you need to appropriate something when you can ignore the intention and interpret it however you want? I think we do it to preserve another guilty pleasure, a far more dangerous one: the left's desire to wrap itself in a blanket of presumed powerlessness. So much of our moral authority springs from this position of being oppressed that we don't know how to deal with power, avoid it, and pretend as if we're helpless even when we're not, and lionizing appropriation / subversion is one of the horrible results of this. The theory would go, I guess, that no one wrote a response song because no one would hear it because the media and mainstream is dominated by the conservatives, etc. But that's stupid. Just as country music is reflexively conservative, so is rock pretty liberal, by and large, and the ideas you could express in such a response song have become fairly mainstream now. Remember that 50% of the country still is Democrat. So why no response song? Because it would have to be, like the Keith song, catchy, and I don't think anyone who could write a coherant response song would also be willing to make this "sacrafice" to catchiness. But pop is no sin; sure, patriotism may be the last refuge of the scoundrel, but a good melody is a seldom-used way to convey an idea. But no luck, and now we're locked into a horrible cycle: the left embraces subversion because it thinks it can't break into the mainstream, but it can't break into the mainstream because it thinks doing so would be a sell-out, a betrayal of their subversive position. Wouldn't it be better for us to be active participants there, though? Why be subversive when you can actually engage in dialogue? Wasn't that what was so cool about "Sweet Home Alabama"? (The song, not the movie.) That's the problem with conflating culture and politics, as Kate does: one is a thing, and one is a process. So there can be politics in art just as there can be politics in government. (Don't forget that a lot of government isn't politics; paving roads and transporting mail and like that isn't political at all.) And politics is, at its heart, discourse--a discourse between presumed equals, even if the participants are not, in fact, equal, and that is the beauty of politics, its equality of word. So you want to be political? Great. Respond. Reply. Reinterpret. But don't subvert unless you think it would actually do some good--and most of the time, it doesn't. posted by Mike B. at 1:43 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, July 16, 2003
Not to toot my own horn or nothin', but hey lookie: I convinced Eschaton that trying to impeach Bush is not a good idea. They didn't quite use my reasoning, but it'll do.
Woulda been nice to have a cite there though, Lambert, after getting hammered for making the suggestion. posted by Mike B. at 3:32 PM 0 comments
Haven't seen this anywhere, but maybe I just missed it...
Rove Spends the Fourth Rousing Support for Dean Talk about lining up the competition. President Bush's chief political adviser has seen the possible presidential candidates among the Democrats and has found one he apparently thinks his man can beat: former Vermont governor Howard Dean. Karl Rove tried to stir up enthusiasm for Dean marchers yesterday at the 37th annual Palisades Citizens' Association Fourth of July parade along the District's MacArthur Boulevard, which always attracts plenty of politicians. As a dozen people marched toward Dana Place wearing Dean for President T-shirts and carrying Dean for America signs, Rove told a companion, " 'Heh, heh, heh. Yeah, that's the one we want,' " according to Daniel J. Weiss, an environmental consultant, who was standing nearby. " 'How come no one is cheering for Dean?' " Then, Weiss said, Rove exhorted the marchers and the parade audience: " 'Come on, everybody! Go, Howard Dean!' " Weird that it's not on any of the usual suspects; it was posted but ignored at Dean's blog, and of course the freepers like it. (They also inform us: "As long as Bush supports 'the roadmap to war' against the Jews he cannot possibly win another term. It is a sin against The Only True God, the author of the Bible, to support any leader that betrays the Chosen people." Well shit!) I first read about it Newsweek, and thought, as Demwatch does, that either Rove sincerely thought Dean is the easiest to beat, or he's trying to get that meme out there (Rove seemingly being aware of campaign politics at all times) that Dean is unelectable, because he's actually very electable. But then I read the actual article, and since the quote comes from "an environmental consultant" and not Rove himself, presumably the quote was not meant for public consumption, and we can assume that it was meant genuinely. For what it's worth. posted by Mike B. at 3:04 PM 0 comments
Thanks, New York Times, for reminding us how fucked up things are in Iraq:
In her loose black dress, gold hairband and purple flip-flops, Sanariya hops from seat to seat in her living room like any lively 9-year-old. She likes to read. She wants to be a teacher when she grows up, and she says Michael, her white teddy bear, will be her assistant. But at night, the memory of being raped by a stranger seven weeks ago pulls her into its undertow. She grows feverish and has nightmares, her 28-year-old sister, Fatin, said. She cries, "Let me go!" (snip) For most Iraqi victims of abduction and rape, getting medical and police assistance is a humiliating process. Deeply traditional notions of honor foster a sense of shame so strong that many families offer no consolation or support for victims, only blame. Sanariya's four brothers and parents beat her daily, Fatin said, picking up a bamboo slat her father uses. The city morgue gets corpses of women who were murdered by their relatives in so-called honor killings after they returned from an abduction — even, in some cases, when they had not been raped, said Nidal Hussein, a morgue nurse. "For a woman's family, all this is worse than death," said Dr. Khulud Younis, a gynecologist at the Alwiyah Women's Hospital. "They will face shame. If a woman has a sister, her future will be gone. These women don't deserve to be treated like this." It is not uncommon in Baghdad to see lines of cars outside girls' schools. So fearful are parents that their daughters will be taken away that they refuse to simply drop them off; they or a relative will stay outside all day to make sure nothing happens. (snip) If an Iraqi woman wants to report a rape, she has to travel a bureaucratic odyssey. She first has to go to the police for documents that permit her to get a forensic test. That test is performed only at the city morgue. The police take a picture of the victim and stamp it, and then stamp her arm. "That is so no one else goes in her place and says that she was raped, that she lost her virginity," said Ms. Hussein, the nurse. At the morgue, a committee of three male doctors performs a gynecological examination on the victim to determine if there was sexual abuse. The doctors are available only from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. If a victim arrives at any other time, she has to return the next day, without washing away any physical evidence. (snip) Yet even when women come to the hospital with injuries that are consistent with rape, they often insist something else happened. A 60-year-old woman asserted that she had been hit by a car. The mother of a 6-year-old girl begged the doctor to write a report saying that her daughter's hymen had been ruptured because she fell on a sharp object, a common lie families tell in the case of rape, Dr. Younis said. Shame and fear compel the lies, Dr. Younis said. "A woman's father or brother, they feel it is their duty to kill her" if she has been raped, Dr. Younis said. "It is the tribal law. They will get only six months in prison and then they are out." The article sort of half-heartedly tries to pin this increase on the war and looting and the defunding of the Iraqi infrastructure, but I think that's unclear. The police patrolled more, sure, but the reporting problem was still there. It's mostly just a reminder of the problems facing us as we try and install a republic in a place where nine year olds will be killed by their fathers because they were raped, and the father will only get 6 months of jail time; where reporting such rape involves letting the (let's be blunt) semen and sweat and blood sit on your body and in your vagina overnight while waiting for a doctor, and after you get examined they give you a stamp that says, "RAPED." In this situation there are, as they say, some cultural hurdles to overcome. posted by Mike B. at 1:55 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, July 15, 2003
Speaking of annoying...let me quote this Atrios post:
I think for once Joe Klein basically gets it right here. For years the media hasn´t been confronted with angry Democrats, to our shame, and so when they find one they think that they are "leftists" or "extreme liberals." I´always a bit amused when people accuse sites like Media Whores Online , or Move On, or this one as being "leftist." MWO have always been unabashed Clinton Democrats. Move On began to support a censure resolution to get the country past impeachment, hardly the agenda of radical leftists. Clinton Democrats are not and have never been "leftists," unless you´ve redefined leftist, as Howie "I am not a whore shut up Shut Up SHUT UP SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP" Kurtz has, as anything to the left of Jonah Goldberg. Sorry Atrios, I respect the power of blogs as much as you do, but Joe's column is about Howard Dean, not Calpundit, and by "angry Democrats" I think he primarily means candidates and policymakers, not pundits and the hoi polloi. So he may or may not be right about Dean, but he's not really concerned about you. The question here, though, is--as it seems to have been in some of my other posts today--about rhetoric, language, and what power it can or should have. The damage Zacarias Moussaoui would do would be with words, not with weapons; Ari uses rhetoric as a weapon against understanding, weilding language as an offensive and defensive tool instead of as a conduit for communication. What Atrios is saying here is that, although the rhetoric of these writers may seem extremist (and yeah, folks, it kinda is), their actual policies are moderate, and that we should--what--see through all that and realize that they're (grr!) moderates. But Klein seems to be saying that the leftist rhetoric, instead of being a liability or a shield to see through, is actually a boon for Dean: The crowd seemed not to notice his shopworn moderation, though. Dean had been bold on the war—and so freshness was assumed on every other issue. So here we have two models of the power of language. One (Klein's of Dean) says that you can use it as a shifting thing while your actual policies stay constant; presumably Dean will then tone done the rhetoric and focus on the fiscal conserative stuff during the GE, thus winning the primaries by appealing to hardcore Dems and the election by appealing to moderates / independents (or so goes the strategy). The other (Atrios') says that...well, I'm having a hard time parsing it. It says that either the interpreters (media) should look through their language to the actual policies they're pursuing--a hard proposition seeing as how the blogs under discussion are so strongly (and annoyingly) reactive and critical--or that using such rhetoric while pursuing more moderate goals is a good way to let off steam at the evils of the other side and rile up the base and like that. Obviously I'm not a big fan of the latter model. In politics, after all, presentation is reality--it's all words--and so to judge MWO et al by their words, politics is simplistic, stupid, and debased. They may be moderates underneath, but they sound like Rush on top, and that's what matters. I mean, since when are "Clinton Democrats" all not leftists? I know a lot of Clinton Democrats who were pretty pissed off at some of the more moderate moves he made. Don't be afraid of the leftist tag, guys--just reclaim it. As for the former model, I guess if it's true, I'm beginning to warm to Dean. Still, he's off-putting in the same way Atrios and krew are, and the gay marriage thing just doesn't sound like a good thing for a Presidential candidate to be embracing right now, to say nothing of his decidedly non-Clintonesque campaigning style. He'd be a good VP, though. posted by Mike B. at 6:10 PM 0 comments
Hotmail sends me to a list of "Famous Mensa Members" with the intro:
Think Mensa members are all super-nerdy bookworms? Guess again. It then goes on to list such non-nerds as Scott Adams, author of Dilbert, Joyce Carol Oates, "word expert" Richard Lederer, Buckminster Fuller, and Isaac fucking Asimov. Yeah, no nerds there, huh? Definitely no "bookworms." Christ in heaven. posted by Mike B. at 4:42 PM 0 comments
Eschaton, in its annoying way, points us to a Bush quote in which...well, just read:
Q Mr. President, thank you. On Iraq, what steps are being taken to ensure that questionable information, like the Africa uranium material, doesn't come to your desk and wind up in your speeches? THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me first say that -- I think the intelligence I get is darn good intelligence. And the speeches I have given were backed by good intelligence. And I am absolutely convinced today, like I was convinced when I gave the speeches, that Saddam Hussein developed a program of weapons of mass destruction, and that our country made the right decision. We worked with the United Nations -- as Kofi mentioned, not all nations agreed with the decision, but we worked with the United Nations. And Saddam Hussein did not comply. And it's the same intelligence, by the way, that my predecessor used to make the decision he made in 1998. Yeah, 1998. Yeah, "my predecessor." He's actually trying to bring Clinton into this! Which is weird, because, you know, Clinton bad. It's also weird because he's saying the info they were acting on is at least five years old. Incidentally, Mr. President, a lot of the people who are pissed off about the WMD thing now weren't particularly happy about Clinton's Iraq strike, either. posted by Mike B. at 12:23 PM 0 comments
"To my good friend the neo-con rapper, isn't this something you could rap?"
Questioner: But in his statement he says that not once, but, in his words, several times, the White House was alerted to concerns about the quality of the intelligence. He meets with the President every day, he's meeting with him now. Did that subject never come up in any of these meetings? Fleischer: The fact that it's fragmentary is what means that it should not have been -- risen to the Presidential level. There's all kinds of information that is available that may -- may not be true. And I've always talked about intelligence being mosaic. Some parts of the mosaic are very clear. Those parts that are the most clear are absolutely concrete is what should rise up to the Presidential level. There's many other pieces of intelligence in the mosaic that certainly may be true, they may be fragmentary, but they should not necessarily rise to the President's level. We're the ones who acknowledge that. It would be cruel to say that questioning Ari Fleischer is like trying to figure out what a retarded seven-year-old wants for lunch, so I won't say that. posted by Mike B. at 12:08 PM 0 comments
"No, we don't really feel like respecting the justice system, now that it comes down to it."
The Justice Department said today that it would defy a court order and refuse to make a captured member of Al Qaeda available for testimony in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui. The department acknowledged that its decision could force a federal judge to dismiss the indictment against Mr. Moussaoui, the only person facing trial in the United States in connection with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. (snip) Bush administration officials have said for months that if Mr. Moussaoui's indictment were dismissed, his prosecution would almost certainly be moved to a military tribunal, where Mr. Moussaoui would be expected to have fewer rights to gather testimony from witnesses like Mr. bin al-Shibh. (snip) "The government has established the damage to national security that such a deposition would cause," the department said. "The deposition, which would involve an admitted and unrepentant terrorist (the defendant) questioning one of his Al Qaeda confederates, would necessarily result in the unauthorized disclosure of classified information." (snip) The government has said Mr. bin al-Shibh is being interrogated at a secret place overseas. So there's a few things I don't get about this. First: uh, is this legal? It was my impression, perhaps misguided, that since military tribunals were a part of PATRIOT II, which hasn't been passed, that particular justice-hack wasn't an available option yet. Are they just going to go ahead with it anyway? What judge would be able to stop it? (And yeah, the fact that Z. decided to act as his own lawyer here ain't helping matters a bit.) Second: call me crazy, but I don't see the danger. We have suspect X, under constant guard, and suspect Y, under constant guard, neither of whom have, y'know, lawyers. So even if they do get together and trade info about how they're planning on blowing up the Dairy Queen in Elkhart under the guise of an innocent discussion about taco stands in the Mission, how are they going to get the info out? Is Z. going to spill it in court in such a way that the, uh, al Qaeda operatives in the courtroom (?) act on it? Let's give all that the benefit of the doubt. Let's assume that al-Shibh gives Z. info and that Z. manages to communicate that in such a way that it can get to the ears of a sleeper cell. Even if that were possible, which seems, at best, highly unlikely, these guys haven't had any new information since they've been captured, and whatever info they had before capture was presumably already communicated. So what's the fucking point? Sure, there's a small, unlikely risk, but there's always a risk (the criminal could grab the baliff's gun and shoot up the courtroom, etc.), and in this case, that risk just ain't big enough to bypass the entire American judicial system. These people aren't masterminds--they're operatives, and I doubt anything they could say would be more or less likely to trigger a terrorist attack that anything coming from someone not in custody of the US government. Give the nutcase his trial. It's way better for the health of the Republic. Secret, military trials would be much more efficient and better for security; the fact that we have, instead, an open judicial system is one of the sacrafices we make in a democracy. posted by Mike B. at 11:03 AM 0 comments
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