Thu - August 28, 2008
THE CREED
and the curse.
So this is what it's come
to.
We've long known that I can not possibly write ill of Senator Messiah without his disciples firing off outraged emails accusing me of being a racist (you know, because he's black) or a closet Republican (you know, because he's a Democrat) or a traitor to my area of expertise (you know, because he's a good communicator) or just a bad human being (you know, because he's a good human being). But now we learn, courtesy of an email from a longtime reader who should just stop reading this fucking blog, that to refrain from criticizing Senator Chosen One is not enough. In fact, even to lightly compliment Senator Breath of Fresh Air is not enough. I'm guessing that anything short of uncritical praise and undying adoration, or maybe just promising to get down on my knees and fellate the good Senator, will not be enough. It'll never, ever be enough.
This morning, I wrote a short, not terribly complicated post to make a point about Hillary Clinton and the hatred that many of the chattering-class political pundits have for her. I noted that, had she done what Senator Obama did last night -- appearing and grabbing the microphone just after her running mate spoke, stepping in to share her own thoughts and treading, however lightly, on what was billed as her running mate's moment in the convention spotlight -- we would have been hearing about it for weeks. For all the talking heads, it would have been one more example of her unbound ego, of her relentless need to make everything all about herself, even when it shouldn't be.
To make -- and indeed to lament -- that point, of course, I would have to think the criticism would be unfounded. That it would be unfair. That it would not be justified. And I did. Because it would have been. And because it wouldn't have been.
That means, of course, that I would have to think that Senator Obama should not be criticized for doing the same thing. (He shouldn't be.) And that it would be unfair to do so. (It would be.) And that it would therefore be unjustified to do so. (Indeed, it would be.)
I declared -- in the first fucking sentence -- that I didn't think there was anything wrong with it. And then -- in the second fucking sentence -- I declared that it was an effective theatrical flourish.
So, just to recap: 1) Shouldn't be criticized. 2) Nothing wrong with it. 3) Effective theatrical flourish.
But that's not enough. Oh, no. Not for people who think only in superlatives and speak only in multiple orgasms about their (and God's) favorite candidate; for them, even mere mentions must roll in huzzahs and hosannas, in gushes and swoons and great, wet cummings.
Now that I truly understand the ways of Barack, and now that I have been duly humbled and chastened in the needs of his humble but demanding flock, let me send one out to them, so that they might have mercy on my soul and bring me home to the warm, yet always demanding, embrace of the promised land.
First, a warm-up, in breadth of language and depth of thought they'll be sure to understand:
Change! Hope! Love! . . . Can we do it? . . . Yes, we can!
Now. Here's one for the zealots:
Barack Obama coming out on stage after Joe Biden's speech last night was the single greatest gesture any politician -- nay, any human being -- has ever made in the history of political conventions or ever, anywhere, since the dawn of time. It revealed to us all, who should have known it already, that Barack Obama is The Man, The Myth, The Legend, The One. God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten (and then elected), not made, being of one substance with the Father, by Whom all things were made, and by Whom he has been chosen and anointed, and Who could not possibly have been any better or more righteous than Barack was last night, even if He'd pulled that old Jesus trick and come again. I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic candidate, and I acknowledge one Democrat for the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead, and the most kick-ass speeches and administrations in history for the life of the world, or at least the week, to come. Amen.
There. I suspect that will make some people feel better. If history is any indicator, I'll be hearing from the rest within the hour.
No doubt to complain that I forgot to mention what a nice tie Barack had on last night. And to bemoan that fact that I devoted almost as much text to God as I did to Obama.
We've long known that I can not possibly write ill of Senator Messiah without his disciples firing off outraged emails accusing me of being a racist (you know, because he's black) or a closet Republican (you know, because he's a Democrat) or a traitor to my area of expertise (you know, because he's a good communicator) or just a bad human being (you know, because he's a good human being). But now we learn, courtesy of an email from a longtime reader who should just stop reading this fucking blog, that to refrain from criticizing Senator Chosen One is not enough. In fact, even to lightly compliment Senator Breath of Fresh Air is not enough. I'm guessing that anything short of uncritical praise and undying adoration, or maybe just promising to get down on my knees and fellate the good Senator, will not be enough. It'll never, ever be enough.
This morning, I wrote a short, not terribly complicated post to make a point about Hillary Clinton and the hatred that many of the chattering-class political pundits have for her. I noted that, had she done what Senator Obama did last night -- appearing and grabbing the microphone just after her running mate spoke, stepping in to share her own thoughts and treading, however lightly, on what was billed as her running mate's moment in the convention spotlight -- we would have been hearing about it for weeks. For all the talking heads, it would have been one more example of her unbound ego, of her relentless need to make everything all about herself, even when it shouldn't be.
To make -- and indeed to lament -- that point, of course, I would have to think the criticism would be unfounded. That it would be unfair. That it would not be justified. And I did. Because it would have been. And because it wouldn't have been.
That means, of course, that I would have to think that Senator Obama should not be criticized for doing the same thing. (He shouldn't be.) And that it would be unfair to do so. (It would be.) And that it would therefore be unjustified to do so. (Indeed, it would be.)
I declared -- in the first fucking sentence -- that I didn't think there was anything wrong with it. And then -- in the second fucking sentence -- I declared that it was an effective theatrical flourish.
So, just to recap: 1) Shouldn't be criticized. 2) Nothing wrong with it. 3) Effective theatrical flourish.
But that's not enough. Oh, no. Not for people who think only in superlatives and speak only in multiple orgasms about their (and God's) favorite candidate; for them, even mere mentions must roll in huzzahs and hosannas, in gushes and swoons and great, wet cummings.
Now that I truly understand the ways of Barack, and now that I have been duly humbled and chastened in the needs of his humble but demanding flock, let me send one out to them, so that they might have mercy on my soul and bring me home to the warm, yet always demanding, embrace of the promised land.
First, a warm-up, in breadth of language and depth of thought they'll be sure to understand:
Change! Hope! Love! . . . Can we do it? . . . Yes, we can!
Now. Here's one for the zealots:
Barack Obama coming out on stage after Joe Biden's speech last night was the single greatest gesture any politician -- nay, any human being -- has ever made in the history of political conventions or ever, anywhere, since the dawn of time. It revealed to us all, who should have known it already, that Barack Obama is The Man, The Myth, The Legend, The One. God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten (and then elected), not made, being of one substance with the Father, by Whom all things were made, and by Whom he has been chosen and anointed, and Who could not possibly have been any better or more righteous than Barack was last night, even if He'd pulled that old Jesus trick and come again. I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic candidate, and I acknowledge one Democrat for the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead, and the most kick-ass speeches and administrations in history for the life of the world, or at least the week, to come. Amen.
There. I suspect that will make some people feel better. If history is any indicator, I'll be hearing from the rest within the hour.
No doubt to complain that I forgot to mention what a nice tie Barack had on last night. And to bemoan that fact that I devoted almost as much text to God as I did to Obama.
Posted at 04:10 PM
A FEW THOUGHTS LINGERING FROM LAST NIGHT
and still nagging this morning.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. And
I'm not saying it wasn't an effective theatrical flourish, because it was. But
I am wondering what the reaction in the media would have been, had Hillary
Clinton been this year's Democratic nominee for president, and had she, less
than two minutes after her running mate had stopped speaking and was still
basking in what was supposed to be his moment, come bounding out onstage
and bogarted the mic and begun speaking to the crowd about what she
thought about what she had seen and heard the past two
nights.
Okay. I'm not really wondering at all. I know what the reaction would have been. And so do you.
And we'd have been hearing about it for weeks.
Okay. I'm not really wondering at all. I know what the reaction would have been. And so do you.
And we'd have been hearing about it for weeks.
Posted at 08:26 AM
Wed - August 27, 2008
THE COURAGE TO SPEAK THIS RATIONAL TRUTH
and the wisdom to know the
difference.
One of TWM's most favorite readers and writers and
thinkers -- we'll call him The Blizz -- emailed in response to this morning's
Moderate Proposal post. His thoughts, I
thought, were worth repeating here:
I couldn’t agree more on your assessment of Mark Warner’s speech. It was not a stirring speech, and it certainly wasn’t the kind of speech that will win him any of the rabid irrationalists -- folks who would waste several days of their lives to attend one of these increasingly anachronistic conventions -- but the lines you quoted were the lines that caught my attention this morning when I saw snippets of it.
I've been thinking about the differences between running a company well and running a government well -- and there are definitely some important differences -- but the two points I thought were true in both cases were:
#1 You need good/competent people (Exhibit A as to how not to have that… see the current administration), and
#2 You need people with differences of opinion who are willing to work together to find solutions.
That’s not to say that there always has to be agreement, because I would be the first to argue that some of the worst solutions are compromise solutions in which the worst of all approaches is cobbled together. We need people who can work together to figure out a way to make one idea/proposal better. And it doesn’t matter, as Mark Warner says, whose idea it is, or whose idea for improving the original idea it is. I think we would be a lot better off if the best-conservative-based/best-liberal-based/best-moderate-based idea that was made the best by opposing voices from left/center/right were tried, rather than what we have now -- either gridlock, or an amalgam of what-is-acceptable, which usually means what-won’t-work-but-is-politically-expedient.
Sadly Mark Warner seems to be one of the few people with the courage to speak this rational truth to a group who, despite their candidate’s campaign theme to the contrary, wants the same old red meat and stale idea/name-calling that has us in this place. For that alone, Mark Warner deserves all of our respect -- if not our votes one day.
Too bad that one day isn't sixty-nine from now.
I couldn’t agree more on your assessment of Mark Warner’s speech. It was not a stirring speech, and it certainly wasn’t the kind of speech that will win him any of the rabid irrationalists -- folks who would waste several days of their lives to attend one of these increasingly anachronistic conventions -- but the lines you quoted were the lines that caught my attention this morning when I saw snippets of it.
I've been thinking about the differences between running a company well and running a government well -- and there are definitely some important differences -- but the two points I thought were true in both cases were:
#1 You need good/competent people (Exhibit A as to how not to have that… see the current administration), and
#2 You need people with differences of opinion who are willing to work together to find solutions.
That’s not to say that there always has to be agreement, because I would be the first to argue that some of the worst solutions are compromise solutions in which the worst of all approaches is cobbled together. We need people who can work together to figure out a way to make one idea/proposal better. And it doesn’t matter, as Mark Warner says, whose idea it is, or whose idea for improving the original idea it is. I think we would be a lot better off if the best-conservative-based/best-liberal-based/best-moderate-based idea that was made the best by opposing voices from left/center/right were tried, rather than what we have now -- either gridlock, or an amalgam of what-is-acceptable, which usually means what-won’t-work-but-is-politically-expedient.
Sadly Mark Warner seems to be one of the few people with the courage to speak this rational truth to a group who, despite their candidate’s campaign theme to the contrary, wants the same old red meat and stale idea/name-calling that has us in this place. For that alone, Mark Warner deserves all of our respect -- if not our votes one day.
Too bad that one day isn't sixty-nine from now.
Posted at 12:58 PM
A MODERATE PROPOSAL
and a partisan disdain.
A little more than two years ago, I declared my (qualified) endorsement of former
Virginia Governor (and now, likely soon-to-be Virginia Senator) Mark Warner for
the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party. A few months later, he
announced that he would not seek it. I was disappointed then, and have remained
disappointed since. His speech last night, while not exactly barn-burning or
stem-winding, reminded why I did, why I was, and why I still should be.
You can read it here.
And then, perhaps, you can consider how much better off this election, and indeed this country, would be if we had fewer people who just want to score points for themselves and their party, and more people who just want everyone to win:
You know, I spent 20 years in business. If you ran a company whose only strategy was to tear down the competition, it wouldn't last long. So why is this wisdom so hard to find in Washington? I know we're at the Democratic Convention, but if an idea works, it really doesn't matter if it has an "R" or "D" next to it. Because this election isn't about liberal versus conservative. It's not about left versus right. It's about the future versus the past.
That paragraph, as rational and sensible and positive and productive a message as has ever been delivered at a Democratic or a Republican National Convention, received tepid applause, a few cheers, and a smattering of boos. It would have received the same -- or perhaps worse -- next week in Minneapolis. Because all too often, from the heads to the back-ends of both parties, common ground for the country is less important than red meat for the party.
If that thought doesn't depress -- and I mean deep-down, not-just-paying-lip-service depress -- the hell out of you, then I don't know what to say to you. Except that you probably should have stopped reading this site a long time ago.
You can read it here.
And then, perhaps, you can consider how much better off this election, and indeed this country, would be if we had fewer people who just want to score points for themselves and their party, and more people who just want everyone to win:
You know, I spent 20 years in business. If you ran a company whose only strategy was to tear down the competition, it wouldn't last long. So why is this wisdom so hard to find in Washington? I know we're at the Democratic Convention, but if an idea works, it really doesn't matter if it has an "R" or "D" next to it. Because this election isn't about liberal versus conservative. It's not about left versus right. It's about the future versus the past.
That paragraph, as rational and sensible and positive and productive a message as has ever been delivered at a Democratic or a Republican National Convention, received tepid applause, a few cheers, and a smattering of boos. It would have received the same -- or perhaps worse -- next week in Minneapolis. Because all too often, from the heads to the back-ends of both parties, common ground for the country is less important than red meat for the party.
If that thought doesn't depress -- and I mean deep-down, not-just-paying-lip-service depress -- the hell out of you, then I don't know what to say to you. Except that you probably should have stopped reading this site a long time ago.
Posted at 10:13 AM
Tue - August 26, 2008
MALICE AFORETHOUGHTS ON A TUESDAY AFTERNOON
for dissemblers on both sides.
What's worse: benefiting from, and so not
renouncing, a sleazy ad that suggests your opponent has
nefarious ties to a former domestic terrorist when you know damned well he
doesn't, or hoping to benefit from, and so ultimately approving, a
sleazy ad that suggests your opponent ran the first sleazy ad when you
know damned well he didn't?
I can't decide. But I do know that, like both of those ads, both of these candidates, both of their campaigns, and many of their most ardent supporters are making me sick.
I can't decide. But I do know that, like both of those ads, both of these candidates, both of their campaigns, and many of their most ardent supporters are making me sick.
Posted at 03:17 PM
SECOND THOUGHTS ON A TUESDAY MORNING
for all the people sending that hate
mail.
Can you imagine any other scenario in which the
addition of an old, gray-haired white guy to the already wildly successful cause
of a young, dynamic black man would be considered a great boost of credibility
and not one more sorry example of racial and cultural (and intellectual)
condescension?
I can't.
I can't.
Posted at 08:41 AM
Sat - August 23, 2008
FIRST THOUGHT ON A SATURDAY MORNING
from a guy who, a few points aside, has always
liked joe biden.
Nothing quite says change or breath of
fresh air or new kind of politics like a guy who's been serving in
the Senate for thirty-six years.
Posted at 08:04 AM
Thu - July 31, 2008
SAD, SILLY, DESPERATE
and incompetent.
Everyone seems to be talking about that sad and
silly and embarrassingly desperate new John McCain Celebrity attack
ad. The Obama camp is back in full umbrage mode. (Funny, I think,
that a group of people so quick to spot racism everywhere else was so slow to
acknowledge its existence at Trinity United Church of Christ.) The McCain camp
is back in full rationalization mode. (But the ad makes a serious political
point at the end! Sort of...) Partisan bloggers on the left are willfully
misreading, then hysterically misrepresenting, the piece. (It's
not a failed attempt to suggest Obama is as lightweight and inexplicably adored
for dubious as accomplishments as Britney Spears or Paris Hilton; it's a coded,
subtle bit of racism that suggests the scary, black Obama boasts a taste for
young white women!) Partisan bloggers on the right are willfully misjudging,
then wildly overpraising, it. (It's not a failed
attempt to suggest Obama is as lightweight and inexplicably famous for being
famous as Britney Spears or Paris Hilton; it's a shrewd and brilliant
and surprisingly savvy way to play the media and get people
buzzing about your message!)
It's all enough to make your head explode. Or at least to make you wanna throw your computer monitor through the nearest window. But before you do that -- and I would not blame you if you did -- allow me to point out something that, in their headlong froth to find evil partisan demons lurking behind every rhetorical corner, no else seems to have noticed: that the ad's sadness, silliness, and desperation are exceeded by its incompetence.
Senator Obama, after all, looks awfully good in it: smiling, striding confidently, speaking and waving to huge, adoring crowds:
Even that last shot, with the Higher Taxes, More Foreign Oil titles fading in and out, shows him smiling and and looking off into the distance and bathed in a light so heavenly you'd swear it was for the cover of next week's Newsweek:
My God. Obama doesn't look that good in his own commercials! He's warm, he's glowing, he's sexy -- and he's apparently been endorsed by JohnMcCain.com. Which candidate are they supporting here? Don't they know how to make even a bargain basement attack ad? Where's the grainy black-and-white photo? Where's the scowl, the frown, the grimace? Where are all the scary wolves?
Even in a campaign where the insouciance of the candidate and the indifference of his advisors seem perfectly suited, this ad is inexplicable. If its mix of bungled rhetoric and bumbling execution is any indication of how Senator McCain would run the country, perhaps he really is running for George W. Bush's third term.
It's all enough to make your head explode. Or at least to make you wanna throw your computer monitor through the nearest window. But before you do that -- and I would not blame you if you did -- allow me to point out something that, in their headlong froth to find evil partisan demons lurking behind every rhetorical corner, no else seems to have noticed: that the ad's sadness, silliness, and desperation are exceeded by its incompetence.
Senator Obama, after all, looks awfully good in it: smiling, striding confidently, speaking and waving to huge, adoring crowds:
Even that last shot, with the Higher Taxes, More Foreign Oil titles fading in and out, shows him smiling and and looking off into the distance and bathed in a light so heavenly you'd swear it was for the cover of next week's Newsweek:
My God. Obama doesn't look that good in his own commercials! He's warm, he's glowing, he's sexy -- and he's apparently been endorsed by JohnMcCain.com. Which candidate are they supporting here? Don't they know how to make even a bargain basement attack ad? Where's the grainy black-and-white photo? Where's the scowl, the frown, the grimace? Where are all the scary wolves?
Even in a campaign where the insouciance of the candidate and the indifference of his advisors seem perfectly suited, this ad is inexplicable. If its mix of bungled rhetoric and bumbling execution is any indication of how Senator McCain would run the country, perhaps he really is running for George W. Bush's third term.
Posted at 10:04 AM
Tue - July 29, 2008
ANOTHER MOMENT OF SILENCE
for the first amendment. and the virtues of the
political left.
Remember in 2002 when President Bush came to Neville
Island for a Labor Day speech and county police, following the orders of the
U.S. Secret Service, forced all protesters into a designated free speech area
behind a fence at baseball field about a block off the motorcade route?
Remember when a sixty-five-year-old man with a sign that read The Bushes must
truly love the poor -- they've made so many of us, foolishly thinking that
his entire country was a free-speech area, refused to go behind the fence, and
was taken away in handcuffs? Remember when a local columnist, appalled by what
he had seen and heard, called for a moment of silence for the First
Amendment?
Remember in 2004 when the protesters went to New York City for the Republican National Convention and city police, following the orders of the U.S. Secret Service, disrupted most of the protests and marches and forced many of the protesters behind fences or nets or police lines that were designated as free speech zones? Remember the ACLU report detailing how the scope and frequency of these free speech zones and restrictions have greatly expanded under the Bush Administration? Remember the -- rightful, justifiable -- hue and cry from the left about these patently un-American erosions of civil liberties and our First Amendment rights?
Yeah. I do too. But apparently some key folks in Denver and the Democratic Party do not:
Dozens of groups are expected to participate in an anti-war rally and parade on Sunday, Aug. 24 to express their unhappiness with what one group, Troops Out Now, has called "the complicity of the Democratic Party in the continuing wars waged abroad and the constant war waged against people of color, workers and the poor in this country.
The city of Denver isn't taking any chances. Sunday's parade route will end six blocks from the Pepsi Center where the first three days of the convention will be held, and during the week, protesters will be confined to fenced-off demonstration areas that protest organizers call "freedom cages."
In short: a group and a cause that most Democratic politicians and even Democratic voters would love to see protesting John McCain and the Republican National Convention will be caged and restricted for having the temerity to extend their complaints to an also, if not equally, complicit audience. Go ahead and protest, they might say; just don't protest us. And if you must, you'll have to do so behind that fence over there.
Unfortunately this is not a new practice for the Democratic Party machinery. Free speech zones were also in place at the 2004 Democratic National Convention -- a whole month before their more celebrated and denigrated counterparts at the GOP event; nothing like being ahead of the curve of your own complaints -- and, in some form or another (during the Clinton years, they were called protest zones), at the conventions in 1996, 1992, and 1988. So it's long been apparent that the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt gives as well as it gets, and that the only thing it has to fear, when not paying lip service to it, is fear of protest itself. But you would think that this year, more than any other -- a year of Hope and Change, of New Kinds of Politics and More Power to the People and Reversing and Redressing the Abuses of the Bush Administration -- we might be able to dispense with the protest concentration camps. But apparently not.
Remember in 1970, when Pete Townshend noted that the partings on the left and the partings on the right are often indistinguishable, that the new boss is most often same as the old boss, and that even when the change has to come, the world has a way of looking just the same? Yeah. I do too. And I have a sad, funny feeling that we're about to get fooled again.
Remember in 2004 when the protesters went to New York City for the Republican National Convention and city police, following the orders of the U.S. Secret Service, disrupted most of the protests and marches and forced many of the protesters behind fences or nets or police lines that were designated as free speech zones? Remember the ACLU report detailing how the scope and frequency of these free speech zones and restrictions have greatly expanded under the Bush Administration? Remember the -- rightful, justifiable -- hue and cry from the left about these patently un-American erosions of civil liberties and our First Amendment rights?
Yeah. I do too. But apparently some key folks in Denver and the Democratic Party do not:
Dozens of groups are expected to participate in an anti-war rally and parade on Sunday, Aug. 24 to express their unhappiness with what one group, Troops Out Now, has called "the complicity of the Democratic Party in the continuing wars waged abroad and the constant war waged against people of color, workers and the poor in this country.
The city of Denver isn't taking any chances. Sunday's parade route will end six blocks from the Pepsi Center where the first three days of the convention will be held, and during the week, protesters will be confined to fenced-off demonstration areas that protest organizers call "freedom cages."
In short: a group and a cause that most Democratic politicians and even Democratic voters would love to see protesting John McCain and the Republican National Convention will be caged and restricted for having the temerity to extend their complaints to an also, if not equally, complicit audience. Go ahead and protest, they might say; just don't protest us. And if you must, you'll have to do so behind that fence over there.
Unfortunately this is not a new practice for the Democratic Party machinery. Free speech zones were also in place at the 2004 Democratic National Convention -- a whole month before their more celebrated and denigrated counterparts at the GOP event; nothing like being ahead of the curve of your own complaints -- and, in some form or another (during the Clinton years, they were called protest zones), at the conventions in 1996, 1992, and 1988. So it's long been apparent that the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt gives as well as it gets, and that the only thing it has to fear, when not paying lip service to it, is fear of protest itself. But you would think that this year, more than any other -- a year of Hope and Change, of New Kinds of Politics and More Power to the People and Reversing and Redressing the Abuses of the Bush Administration -- we might be able to dispense with the protest concentration camps. But apparently not.
Remember in 1970, when Pete Townshend noted that the partings on the left and the partings on the right are often indistinguishable, that the new boss is most often same as the old boss, and that even when the change has to come, the world has a way of looking just the same? Yeah. I do too. And I have a sad, funny feeling that we're about to get fooled again.
Posted at 08:57 AM
Mon - July 28, 2008
THINGS THAT ALMOST MAKE YOUR (MONDAY MORNING) HEAD EXPLODE
almost.
1) When you read that an American presidential candidate,
fresh off his stage-managed trip to the Middle East and his
even-more-stage-managed trip to Europe, the cries of cheering, chanting Germans
no doubt still ringing in his ears, said, One of the values of this trip for
me was to remind me of what this campaign should be
about.
2) When you doubt the candidate would say the same after sitting down and chatting with a group of working class gun- and religion- and (now barely) job- and savings-clinging Pennsylvanians.
3) When you read that same candidate, who has enjoyed more and better (and more hysterical) media coverage than any candidate in your lifetime, persist in crying about how tough he has it from a group that, to date, has fawned over him in every possible way -- except, perhaps, to fellate him in public: We had a good week. That always inspires the press to knock me down a peg.
4) When you read that same candidate declare he rarely believes his own hype.
5) When you wonder what the speeches of a man who described his clinching of the Democratic nomination as the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs for the jobless... the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal might sound like if he did believe his own hype.
2) When you doubt the candidate would say the same after sitting down and chatting with a group of working class gun- and religion- and (now barely) job- and savings-clinging Pennsylvanians.
3) When you read that same candidate, who has enjoyed more and better (and more hysterical) media coverage than any candidate in your lifetime, persist in crying about how tough he has it from a group that, to date, has fawned over him in every possible way -- except, perhaps, to fellate him in public: We had a good week. That always inspires the press to knock me down a peg.
4) When you read that same candidate declare he rarely believes his own hype.
5) When you wonder what the speeches of a man who described his clinching of the Democratic nomination as the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs for the jobless... the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal might sound like if he did believe his own hype.
Posted at 08:54 AM
Tue - July 22, 2008
WE ARE GETTING TO KNOW
what some of us knew all along.
Every once in a while, along comes an op-ed that I
desperately I wish I'd written. Last Friday, the Washington Post's
Pulitzer-Prize-winning Charles Krauthammer did me one better: he offered up a
brilliant and blistering op-ed that I
desperately wish I'd written, in part because I've already have argued most of
its points and summoned many of its examples. Just not nearly as well. Or as
eloquently.
I'll save you the troubles of the click and the link and, while I beg both your pardon and your patience for one more day on my oft-promised, now oft-delayed Obama email response, provide the full text right here. To regular readers of TWM, much of this will sound awfully familiar...
The Audacity of Vanity
Charles Krauthammer
Barack Obama wants to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. He figures it would be a nice backdrop. The supporting cast — a cheering audience and a few fainting frauleins — would be a picturesque way to bolster his foreign policy credentials.
What Obama does not seem to understand is that the Brandenburg Gate is something you earn. President Reagan earned the right to speak there because his relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its knees and he was demanding its final "tear down this wall" liquidation. When President Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate on the day of his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, he was representing a country that was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend West Berlin.
Who is Obama representing? And what exactly has he done in his lifetime to merit ap propriating the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop? What was his role in the fight against communism, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the creation of what George Bush 41 — who presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall but modestly declined to go there for a victory lap — called "a Europe whole and free"?
Does Obama not see the incongruity? It's as if a German pol took a campaign trip to America and demanded the Statue of Liberty as a venue for a campaign speech. (The Germans have now gently nudged Obama into looking at other venues.)
Americans are beginning to notice Obama's elevated opinion of himself. There's nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?
Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.
It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history — "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment" — when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans began to slow." As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help." Obama apparently works alone.
Obama may think he's King Canute, but the good king ordered the tides to halt precisely to refute sycophantic aides who suggest ed that he had such power. Obama has no such modesty.
After all, in the words of his own slogan, "we are the ones we've been waiting for," which, translating the royal "we," means: "I am the one we've been waiting for."
Amazingly, he had a quasi-presidential seal with its own Latin inscription affixed to his podium, until general ridicule — it was pointed out that he was not yet president — induced him to take it down
He lectures us that instead of worrying about immigrants learning English, "you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish" — a language Obama does not speak. He further admonishes us on how "embarrassing" it is that Europeans are multilingual but "we go over to Europe, and all we can say is, 'merci beaucoup.' " Obama speaks no French.
His fluent English does, however, feature many such admonitions, instructions and improvements. His wife assures us that President Obama will be a stern taskmaster: "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism ... that you come out of your isolation. ... Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."
For the first few months of the campaign, the question about Obama was: Who is he? The question now is: Who does he think he is?
We are getting to know. Redeemer of our uninvolved, uninformed lives. Lord of the seas. And more. As he said on victory night, his rise marks the moment when "our planet began to heal." As I recall — I'm no expert on this — Jesus practiced his healing just on the sick. Obama operates on a larger canvas.
I'll save you the troubles of the click and the link and, while I beg both your pardon and your patience for one more day on my oft-promised, now oft-delayed Obama email response, provide the full text right here. To regular readers of TWM, much of this will sound awfully familiar...
The Audacity of Vanity
Charles Krauthammer
Barack Obama wants to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. He figures it would be a nice backdrop. The supporting cast — a cheering audience and a few fainting frauleins — would be a picturesque way to bolster his foreign policy credentials.
What Obama does not seem to understand is that the Brandenburg Gate is something you earn. President Reagan earned the right to speak there because his relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its knees and he was demanding its final "tear down this wall" liquidation. When President Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate on the day of his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, he was representing a country that was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend West Berlin.
Who is Obama representing? And what exactly has he done in his lifetime to merit ap propriating the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop? What was his role in the fight against communism, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the creation of what George Bush 41 — who presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall but modestly declined to go there for a victory lap — called "a Europe whole and free"?
Does Obama not see the incongruity? It's as if a German pol took a campaign trip to America and demanded the Statue of Liberty as a venue for a campaign speech. (The Germans have now gently nudged Obama into looking at other venues.)
Americans are beginning to notice Obama's elevated opinion of himself. There's nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?
Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.
It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history — "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment" — when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans began to slow." As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help." Obama apparently works alone.
Obama may think he's King Canute, but the good king ordered the tides to halt precisely to refute sycophantic aides who suggest ed that he had such power. Obama has no such modesty.
After all, in the words of his own slogan, "we are the ones we've been waiting for," which, translating the royal "we," means: "I am the one we've been waiting for."
Amazingly, he had a quasi-presidential seal with its own Latin inscription affixed to his podium, until general ridicule — it was pointed out that he was not yet president — induced him to take it down
He lectures us that instead of worrying about immigrants learning English, "you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish" — a language Obama does not speak. He further admonishes us on how "embarrassing" it is that Europeans are multilingual but "we go over to Europe, and all we can say is, 'merci beaucoup.' " Obama speaks no French.
His fluent English does, however, feature many such admonitions, instructions and improvements. His wife assures us that President Obama will be a stern taskmaster: "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism ... that you come out of your isolation. ... Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."
For the first few months of the campaign, the question about Obama was: Who is he? The question now is: Who does he think he is?
We are getting to know. Redeemer of our uninvolved, uninformed lives. Lord of the seas. And more. As he said on victory night, his rise marks the moment when "our planet began to heal." As I recall — I'm no expert on this — Jesus practiced his healing just on the sick. Obama operates on a larger canvas.
Posted at 06:56 PM
Mon - July 21, 2008
THE TRUTH WILL HAVE TO WAIT
until after you read at least one more
emailer.
Because today, I got too damned wrapped up with
work and play and spending some time with Adam that I didn't have time to finish
work on the long-in-coming last word on my contentious relationship with Senator
Breath of Fresh Air and his supporters. In the meantime, I'll share one more
email on the subject, this one from an old, dear friend who felt compelled to
add his always interesting voice to the
mix:
If I were trying to persuade you to pick one candidate over the other -- which I wouldn't do, since I know how you feel about both candidates -- my argument for McCain would be just this... No matter who wins, the next 4 years are going to be a disaster. (Hell, even if Lincoln or FDR or Reagan were elected in their political primes, the next 4 years would still be a disaster; there are just some horrible fundamentals that aren't likely to reverse in a short period of time, particularly when we have an electorate that seems short on sacrifice and long on wishful thinking).
As I've mentioned before, I'm sure a lot of Democrats thought their years in the White House after the disaster that was the Nixon Administration would bring great change. Then along came Jimmy Carter and the rest was history. As impossible as it may seem, Obama likely will preside over 4 years that will make the last 8 seem pretty damn good (at least economically). I think we could see 20-30 more years of mostly Republican presidents -- which is OK by me, if they aren't fuck-ups =) -- as a result of the disaster that will be the Obama Administration.
Whether you agree or disagree with this emailer, or with either of the previous two, it's pretty clear that I have some strong and provocative opinion rolling into TWM headquarters these days -- even when it's not being sampled by The Cutting Edge -- and I might do just as well to step aside and let all of you take over for a while.
Fascinating stuff, folks. Please keep it coming.
If I were trying to persuade you to pick one candidate over the other -- which I wouldn't do, since I know how you feel about both candidates -- my argument for McCain would be just this... No matter who wins, the next 4 years are going to be a disaster. (Hell, even if Lincoln or FDR or Reagan were elected in their political primes, the next 4 years would still be a disaster; there are just some horrible fundamentals that aren't likely to reverse in a short period of time, particularly when we have an electorate that seems short on sacrifice and long on wishful thinking).
As I've mentioned before, I'm sure a lot of Democrats thought their years in the White House after the disaster that was the Nixon Administration would bring great change. Then along came Jimmy Carter and the rest was history. As impossible as it may seem, Obama likely will preside over 4 years that will make the last 8 seem pretty damn good (at least economically). I think we could see 20-30 more years of mostly Republican presidents -- which is OK by me, if they aren't fuck-ups =) -- as a result of the disaster that will be the Obama Administration.
Whether you agree or disagree with this emailer, or with either of the previous two, it's pretty clear that I have some strong and provocative opinion rolling into TWM headquarters these days -- even when it's not being sampled by The Cutting Edge -- and I might do just as well to step aside and let all of you take over for a while.
Fascinating stuff, folks. Please keep it coming.
Posted at 08:40 PM
Sun - July 20, 2008
AND ANOTHER TRUTH, THE WAY ANOTHER HE SEES IT
the same way some of us have all
along.
Before I respond to yesterday's reader email -- stay tuned for that
tomorrow -- I am compelled to reprint part of another email I received this
week. It comes from a political blogger whose work I greatly admire, but whose
identity shall remain anonymous, lest his inbox be inundated with insults and
hate mails from the supporters of hope and positivity. After complimenting me
on last week's Jesse Jackson and the Nucking Futs post, my
second emailer added:
I was certainly among those who, during the spring primary season, was hoping against all hope that you had Obama pegged dead wrong. But you didn't, of course, and now we all know that you were right.
I imagine he's far too optimistic in the end. Not everyone knows I was right, and fewer still will admit it. But I don't mind telling you how nice it was to hear from someone who, dropping the partisan glasses -- that's the key here, folks, as I'll argue at length tomorrow -- and looking as purely and openly and objectively as he does at so many other things, this emailer sees something he has not wanted to see and possesses honesty enough to acknowledge it.
I would not presume to guess for whom this second emailer will vote, or even if he will vote. But he seems at least to realize -- and this is a point missed even by many of my most faithful readers, and one I will explore at great length tomorrow -- that I also would not presume to tell anyone for whom they should or should not vote for president. Unlike many other bloggers, I'm not playing partisan hack or shill or biased, blindered cheerleader. I'm sticking to a core set of beliefs and principles that have not changed in the almost four years I've been writing this blog. All I'm doing is calling the truth as I see it.
It's just that this time, as Colonel Nathan Jessup once famously noted, some people can't handle it.
I was certainly among those who, during the spring primary season, was hoping against all hope that you had Obama pegged dead wrong. But you didn't, of course, and now we all know that you were right.
I imagine he's far too optimistic in the end. Not everyone knows I was right, and fewer still will admit it. But I don't mind telling you how nice it was to hear from someone who, dropping the partisan glasses -- that's the key here, folks, as I'll argue at length tomorrow -- and looking as purely and openly and objectively as he does at so many other things, this emailer sees something he has not wanted to see and possesses honesty enough to acknowledge it.
I would not presume to guess for whom this second emailer will vote, or even if he will vote. But he seems at least to realize -- and this is a point missed even by many of my most faithful readers, and one I will explore at great length tomorrow -- that I also would not presume to tell anyone for whom they should or should not vote for president. Unlike many other bloggers, I'm not playing partisan hack or shill or biased, blindered cheerleader. I'm sticking to a core set of beliefs and principles that have not changed in the almost four years I've been writing this blog. All I'm doing is calling the truth as I see it.
It's just that this time, as Colonel Nathan Jessup once famously noted, some people can't handle it.
Posted at 11:55 AM
Sat - July 19, 2008
THE TRUTH THE WAY HE SEES IT
which is truly sad.
Buried in yesterday's first Note was the promise to
reprint, verbatim, an especially earnest and passionate -- I forgot to mention
bracing and beautifully written -- email I received on the subjects of Senator
Obama, his coverage in the mainstream media, and his treatment here at TWM. The
email, to which I have so far only responded with praise and thanks and a
request to reprint it, comes from a good friend and former student, someone I've
known and liked and respected the hell out of for more than ten years now. I'll
respond to him privately -- and perhaps also publicly -- later this weekend, but
for now, because I was so riveted by its momentum and so energized by its
honesty, because it is far and away the best of its kind I've yet received, and
because I thought it deserved a far wider reading than just my narrow little
focus, I wanted to offer it here, uncut and uninterrupted, for your
consideration.
Enjoy...
I've held my tongue for awhile, but I wanted to share my thoughts with you on Barack Obama.
I completely get what you've been saying about the media's coverage of Senator "Breath of Fresh Air" (that's my favorite of your nicknames, by the way), but I disagree with your recent take on The New Yorker cover.
Your reader, Mr. R, wrote, "The cover is an obvious satire -- at least obvious to the presumed sophisticates that take The New Yorker every week, or, as is my tradition, every visit to the doctor."
That, on its face, is absolutely true. But didn't the 2004 election, and the way our government operated in the years after 9/11, show us how impressionable the people living in this country are? George W. Bush shoveled bullshit about weapons of mass destruction, and we totally bought it by re-electing that prick. And once he touted home ownership as the key to our continued economic growth and greased the wheels to allow everyone with a pulse to obtain a loan for a $500,000 house, we bought it. And once he told us that he needed to grossly encroach on our human rights in order to protect this country, we fucking bought that too.
The bottom line is that there are a lot of stupid motherfuckers living in this country, but even worse, they are scared to death. Scared of losing their homes, scared of losing their jobs, scared of getting on airplanes, scared of going to school. Magazine covers like The New Yorker, while intended for folks like you and me, get into the hands of fear-mongering news organizations like...oh I don't know....ALL of them, and they plant the seeds in the heads of our impressionable fellow citizens and cause them to do stupid things, like vote for John McCain.
I can understand the counter-argument -- well, how is it fair for the media to deify Barack Obama every chance they get? Well, I guess my simple answer is because the primary goal of these organizations is to sell more magazines and newspapers, and quite frankly, Barack Obama is a guy who moves paper, because people fucking love him. Yes, I wish Time and Newsweek ran more articles that explained differences in each candidate's approach to key issues, but they don't -- they talk about Obama's NCAA tournament bracket and the restaurant McCain's daughter went to with Heidi Montag. And while it's a shame that things such as how handsome Barack is or how John McCain's wife looks like a drugged-out whore with a terrible hairdo are the reasons some people choose their next President, it's the fucking truth.
Which is truly sad. Because here's the truth the way I see it.
I can't stand to live in this country anymore if a person who intends to continue the same policies as our current President is elected as our new President. And I'm not the only one that feels that way -- I imagine you feel that way too. And when I listen to Barack Obama speak, I hear a man who is optimistic about my future because he speaks about doing something that's different than what is happening now, which, quite frankly, is all I need to hear. I need Barack Obama to be elected, because I don't want to be at war anymore, I don't want the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer, and I don't want someone to tell me what's best for me anymore, the way George Bush does every time he speaks about why he didn't do something that is very obviously in the best interest of the public but did not benefit his billionaire friends. (Let's ignore the fact that I'm being naive on Barack Obama's, or any Democratic candidate’s for that matter, ability to truly make a change, but that's a different story.) Because that's what has happened in the last eight years -- we've stopped being able to think for ourselves anymore, and have become a society of citizens who have been trained to act based on fears conveyed to us by our government.
Which is why your indictment of the media is perfectly fair, and why I share your opinion. I am outraged by the behavior of just about every single news organization in this country.
But haven't we beaten this to death? And shouldn't I be concerned that your blog, which is based in a key election state, may be communicating the same impressions that you yourself may not want the impressionable minds of Pennsylvania folks who have fallen on hard times to read?
I guess this is where I'm confused sometimes. I'm pretty certain that there is no way in hell that you would vote for John McCain. I know you well enough to be sure of that. But are you telling folks that we should consider not voting for Barack Obama because too many people love him and the media takes advantage? You haven't said this explicitly, and I don't imagine you will, because if Barack Obama had a face that didn't look good on a magazine cover (Ryan Malone's post-Finals face?), I imagine you would be giddy about the notion of an Obama presidency.
Anyway, that was all I had to say. I really do enjoy your hammering of the media on many issues, but at the same time I'm tired of repeatedly being made to feel that I should consider not supporting Barack Obama due to the looniness of the hype surrounding him.
I guess when it comes to reading your blog, I am impressionable that way. But there's a reason for that -- it's because I always believe what you say.
Enjoy...
I've held my tongue for awhile, but I wanted to share my thoughts with you on Barack Obama.
I completely get what you've been saying about the media's coverage of Senator "Breath of Fresh Air" (that's my favorite of your nicknames, by the way), but I disagree with your recent take on The New Yorker cover.
Your reader, Mr. R, wrote, "The cover is an obvious satire -- at least obvious to the presumed sophisticates that take The New Yorker every week, or, as is my tradition, every visit to the doctor."
That, on its face, is absolutely true. But didn't the 2004 election, and the way our government operated in the years after 9/11, show us how impressionable the people living in this country are? George W. Bush shoveled bullshit about weapons of mass destruction, and we totally bought it by re-electing that prick. And once he touted home ownership as the key to our continued economic growth and greased the wheels to allow everyone with a pulse to obtain a loan for a $500,000 house, we bought it. And once he told us that he needed to grossly encroach on our human rights in order to protect this country, we fucking bought that too.
The bottom line is that there are a lot of stupid motherfuckers living in this country, but even worse, they are scared to death. Scared of losing their homes, scared of losing their jobs, scared of getting on airplanes, scared of going to school. Magazine covers like The New Yorker, while intended for folks like you and me, get into the hands of fear-mongering news organizations like...oh I don't know....ALL of them, and they plant the seeds in the heads of our impressionable fellow citizens and cause them to do stupid things, like vote for John McCain.
I can understand the counter-argument -- well, how is it fair for the media to deify Barack Obama every chance they get? Well, I guess my simple answer is because the primary goal of these organizations is to sell more magazines and newspapers, and quite frankly, Barack Obama is a guy who moves paper, because people fucking love him. Yes, I wish Time and Newsweek ran more articles that explained differences in each candidate's approach to key issues, but they don't -- they talk about Obama's NCAA tournament bracket and the restaurant McCain's daughter went to with Heidi Montag. And while it's a shame that things such as how handsome Barack is or how John McCain's wife looks like a drugged-out whore with a terrible hairdo are the reasons some people choose their next President, it's the fucking truth.
Which is truly sad. Because here's the truth the way I see it.
I can't stand to live in this country anymore if a person who intends to continue the same policies as our current President is elected as our new President. And I'm not the only one that feels that way -- I imagine you feel that way too. And when I listen to Barack Obama speak, I hear a man who is optimistic about my future because he speaks about doing something that's different than what is happening now, which, quite frankly, is all I need to hear. I need Barack Obama to be elected, because I don't want to be at war anymore, I don't want the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer, and I don't want someone to tell me what's best for me anymore, the way George Bush does every time he speaks about why he didn't do something that is very obviously in the best interest of the public but did not benefit his billionaire friends. (Let's ignore the fact that I'm being naive on Barack Obama's, or any Democratic candidate’s for that matter, ability to truly make a change, but that's a different story.) Because that's what has happened in the last eight years -- we've stopped being able to think for ourselves anymore, and have become a society of citizens who have been trained to act based on fears conveyed to us by our government.
Which is why your indictment of the media is perfectly fair, and why I share your opinion. I am outraged by the behavior of just about every single news organization in this country.
But haven't we beaten this to death? And shouldn't I be concerned that your blog, which is based in a key election state, may be communicating the same impressions that you yourself may not want the impressionable minds of Pennsylvania folks who have fallen on hard times to read?
I guess this is where I'm confused sometimes. I'm pretty certain that there is no way in hell that you would vote for John McCain. I know you well enough to be sure of that. But are you telling folks that we should consider not voting for Barack Obama because too many people love him and the media takes advantage? You haven't said this explicitly, and I don't imagine you will, because if Barack Obama had a face that didn't look good on a magazine cover (Ryan Malone's post-Finals face?), I imagine you would be giddy about the notion of an Obama presidency.
Anyway, that was all I had to say. I really do enjoy your hammering of the media on many issues, but at the same time I'm tired of repeatedly being made to feel that I should consider not supporting Barack Obama due to the looniness of the hype surrounding him.
I guess when it comes to reading your blog, I am impressionable that way. But there's a reason for that -- it's because I always believe what you say.
Posted at 09:22 AM
Sun - July 13, 2008
MCSAME AS IT EVER WAS
yowza!
I've said it before (and before, and before, and
before), and I suspect I'll say it again (and again, and again, and again):
New kind of politics, my ass.
No one -- and I mean no one -- who writes, plans, approves, or distributes a radio ad like this can ever -- and I mean ever, ever -- lay claim to being a new kind of politician or representing a new kind of politics or perpetrating anything -- and I mean anything -- but the most old and tired and cloying kind of pandering political hackery. It's embarrassing. Or at least it should be. But I suspect it won't be, if only because so many people are by now so used to hearing and accepting and probably even knee-jerk responding to crap just like it.
The problem isn't the theme of the ad; Senator Straight Talk approved an RNC ad full of lies and distortions (what are the odds?), and Senator Breath of Fresh Air was quick and smart -- you know, in a very non-John-Kerry-way -- to respond. And the problem isn't so much that the fourth line of the ad links Senator McCain to President Bush and Karl Rove in ways that are not fair (not yet, anyway) and more than a little slimy; you expect that sort of old-school gamesmanship even from a candidate who's promised not to do it, and besides, we've already seen and heard it from him before.
No, the problem with the ad is that Senator Hope and Change has invited himself to sit down at the kitchen table -- or in this case, the computer keyboard -- with citizens Harry and Louise. It's just another awful, poorly scripted, even more poorly acted, spoon-fed bit of intelligence- and good-taste-insulting pablum with a husband and wife trading the some of the most stilted, artificial, no-real-human-beings-talk-like-this-except-maybe-the-Romneys dialogue you'll ever hear outside of these rancid, cookie-cutter, idiot-assemby-line productions. My OralComm students used to do better in sixty minutes, from first concept to final, recorded commercial.
Think I'm exaggerating? Of course I am. But not by much. Listen for yourself. And try not to laugh. Really. Go ahead. I dare you.
Is there some sort of strange, archaic rule that says only crappy actors can participate in political radio ads? Even at bargain-basement voice talent prices, they can't find someone, anyone who sounds like he didn't just mosey out of his first acting class, or like she didn't just wander over from her accounting office? And don't even get me started -- well, okay; technically, I'm already started -- on the writing. The husband sounds like someone who exists only in the realms of political ads and erectile dysfunction commercials, and the wife, whose scintillating dialogue includes lines like What now, honey?, Yeah., Uh-huh., and Yowza!, sounds like someone who exists only in political ads and Leave it to Beaver reruns. (Oh, Ward, Wally and Beaver were fighting again, and I just don't know what to think about John McCain...)
And, yes, she actually says Yowza! In 2008. In a message that Barack Obama approves. For that alone, he should be forced to decline his party's nomination. Or at least be forced to admit that he's not one-tenth as hip and cool as he likes to pretend to be.
Though, of course, what he should really do is renounce -- I hear he has some experience with that -- the consultants who came up with that ad. And the consultants who came up with the consultants who came up with that ad. And the advisors who came up with the consultants who came up with the consultants who came up with that ad. And vow never again to put his name, his campaign, or his seemingly excellent chance of winning the White House in the hands of people who, through that most foul and fetid combination of political access and intellectual hackery, continue to suck the life, and indeed the very soul, out of modern political discourse.
No one -- and I mean no one -- who writes, plans, approves, or distributes a radio ad like this can ever -- and I mean ever, ever -- lay claim to being a new kind of politician or representing a new kind of politics or perpetrating anything -- and I mean anything -- but the most old and tired and cloying kind of pandering political hackery. It's embarrassing. Or at least it should be. But I suspect it won't be, if only because so many people are by now so used to hearing and accepting and probably even knee-jerk responding to crap just like it.
The problem isn't the theme of the ad; Senator Straight Talk approved an RNC ad full of lies and distortions (what are the odds?), and Senator Breath of Fresh Air was quick and smart -- you know, in a very non-John-Kerry-way -- to respond. And the problem isn't so much that the fourth line of the ad links Senator McCain to President Bush and Karl Rove in ways that are not fair (not yet, anyway) and more than a little slimy; you expect that sort of old-school gamesmanship even from a candidate who's promised not to do it, and besides, we've already seen and heard it from him before.
No, the problem with the ad is that Senator Hope and Change has invited himself to sit down at the kitchen table -- or in this case, the computer keyboard -- with citizens Harry and Louise. It's just another awful, poorly scripted, even more poorly acted, spoon-fed bit of intelligence- and good-taste-insulting pablum with a husband and wife trading the some of the most stilted, artificial, no-real-human-beings-talk-like-this-except-maybe-the-Romneys dialogue you'll ever hear outside of these rancid, cookie-cutter, idiot-assemby-line productions. My OralComm students used to do better in sixty minutes, from first concept to final, recorded commercial.
Think I'm exaggerating? Of course I am. But not by much. Listen for yourself. And try not to laugh. Really. Go ahead. I dare you.
Is there some sort of strange, archaic rule that says only crappy actors can participate in political radio ads? Even at bargain-basement voice talent prices, they can't find someone, anyone who sounds like he didn't just mosey out of his first acting class, or like she didn't just wander over from her accounting office? And don't even get me started -- well, okay; technically, I'm already started -- on the writing. The husband sounds like someone who exists only in the realms of political ads and erectile dysfunction commercials, and the wife, whose scintillating dialogue includes lines like What now, honey?, Yeah., Uh-huh., and Yowza!, sounds like someone who exists only in political ads and Leave it to Beaver reruns. (Oh, Ward, Wally and Beaver were fighting again, and I just don't know what to think about John McCain...)
And, yes, she actually says Yowza! In 2008. In a message that Barack Obama approves. For that alone, he should be forced to decline his party's nomination. Or at least be forced to admit that he's not one-tenth as hip and cool as he likes to pretend to be.
Though, of course, what he should really do is renounce -- I hear he has some experience with that -- the consultants who came up with that ad. And the consultants who came up with the consultants who came up with that ad. And the advisors who came up with the consultants who came up with the consultants who came up with that ad. And vow never again to put his name, his campaign, or his seemingly excellent chance of winning the White House in the hands of people who, through that most foul and fetid combination of political access and intellectual hackery, continue to suck the life, and indeed the very soul, out of modern political discourse.
Posted at 11:32 AM
Thu - July 10, 2008
CRAPPED OUT
and we have to wipe it up.
If anyone in Pittsburgh -- or, hell, in the whole
tri-state area -- was not yet convinced that the Pennsylvania Gaming
Control Board made one of the biggest, most boneheaded blunders in the
history of the commonwealth when it awarded this city's casino license to Don
Barden and his Majestic Star House of Financial Cards, you should read the
(let's face it, inevitable) piece that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's
Mark Belko posted about a half hour
ago.
Everyone on that board should be fired. Or at least severely beaten. And then made to march from the Hill to Station Square, back through downtown and over to that padlocked North Shore construction site, where we could all chant No due diligence, no peace! over and over and over again. Or at least until we'd permanently branded each and every one of their forheads with the scarlet letters DA.
For Dumb Ass.
Everyone on that board should be fired. Or at least severely beaten. And then made to march from the Hill to Station Square, back through downtown and over to that padlocked North Shore construction site, where we could all chant No due diligence, no peace! over and over and over again. Or at least until we'd permanently branded each and every one of their forheads with the scarlet letters DA.
For Dumb Ass.
Posted at 01:42 PM
Wed - July 9, 2008
SAME OLD SONG & DANCE
my friends.
I've been working on another major web project the
last few days and so haven't gotten around to a whole bunch of topics that have
been rattling around my mind lately. Stay tuned later in the week -- and quite
possibly next, once things settle down -- for more on those, but for
now...
...let's pause, a moment, to lament the early demise of what might have been a fair and rational and civilized presidential election. Now that Senator Straight Talk has aired a radio ad that, according to FactCheck.org, gets nearly all its facts wrong, and now Senator Breath of Fresh Air has aired a television commercial that, at least to my nose, and surely for the first 14 seconds, smells an awful lot like old school negative politics, it's time to drop any pretense to which you may have been clinging about this year being any different.
The Maverick vs. The Motivator? Please.
Let's just call it The Fibber vs. The Phony. And then, being sure to hold our nose and cover our ears and forfeit our dignities, prepare ourselves for another four months of another four years of the same old political song and hypocritical dance.
...let's pause, a moment, to lament the early demise of what might have been a fair and rational and civilized presidential election. Now that Senator Straight Talk has aired a radio ad that, according to FactCheck.org, gets nearly all its facts wrong, and now Senator Breath of Fresh Air has aired a television commercial that, at least to my nose, and surely for the first 14 seconds, smells an awful lot like old school negative politics, it's time to drop any pretense to which you may have been clinging about this year being any different.
The Maverick vs. The Motivator? Please.
Let's just call it The Fibber vs. The Phony. And then, being sure to hold our nose and cover our ears and forfeit our dignities, prepare ourselves for another four months of another four years of the same old political song and hypocritical dance.
Posted at 04:50 PM
Thu - June 12, 2008
THIS MUST BE A RECORD
in which i praise barack obama for a second
consecutive day.
Oh, don't worry. I haven't gone soft on Senator
Breath of Fresh Air. Nor have I begun to lose my considerable distaste for
Senator Make Stuff Up. But every once in a while, Senator New Kind of Politics
does something that is, well, actually a new -- or at least a rare -- kind of
politics, and I think that, like this, deserves some
mention:
Obama knows that — notwithstanding John McCain's pledge that his own campaign will not engage in smears — more rumors can be expected in a general-election campaign. Trying to kill them with oxygen and openness is a risky approach. But Obama is attempting to find the humor — and the votes — by taking the rumors head-on.
The passage comes from a Karen Tumulty Time piece about the Obama Campaign's plan to fight the (often atomic) power of political rumors, smears, and innuendos with rapid response, direct confrontation, and a clearing house for both at a slick new fact-checking web site, FightTheSmears.com. What is not astonishing, but most assuredly maddening, about this passage is its acceptance -- indeed, its perpetuation -- of the first-rate political fallacy that responding to lies with truth is somehow risky. Only in an arena as cold and calculating as American electoral politics could we find the notion, discredited but still endlessly repeated, that few things are more dangerous than defending yourself against baseless, bullshit allegations.
If we learned anything from John Kerry -- and if we were paying any attention at all, we should have learned a lot -- it's that the truly risky approach to these sleazoid attacks is to withhold the oxygen and the openness, to ignore them or wait for them to go away or just quietly, diffidently deny them and then slink back to the campaign bus because some overpaid, underperforming political consultant told you that to talk about them is to dignify them. To ignore them is to dignify them. And, worse still, to inflame them. To talk about them is to refute them. To fight them. To beat them down and stand up for yourself and show not just your slimy enemies but your loyal supporters, and everyone in between, that you stand for truth and on principle, that you will not abide lies or deceit, and that, when challenged, you will rise to the challenge and overcome it with the full force of fact.
If Senator Obama is willing to do this, and if he and his campaign team are prepared to follow through on the effort all the way to early November, then he will, at least in one important way, be introducing a new kind of Democratic Presidential politics to a party, and indeed to a nation, that deserves it.
Now. That said...
(see, I told you I wasn't going soft on him)
...if I were to give the good Senator and his team one key piece of advice about their new web site, it would be this: Watch those declarations of truth.
In response to the silly rumors -- which have, these last few weeks, been zipping around the blogosphere and rattling mixing with all the rest of the talk radio detritus -- that Michelle Obama repeatedly used the word whitey from the pulpit at Trinity United, or at a Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Conference, or during a séance in which she communicated with the spirits of Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammed, or some such horseshit, and that the whole sorry spectacle was captured on some sort of audio or video or digital or masking or duct tape that someone somewhere will produce even though they have yet to do so, the web site's main page offers a far too simple refutation: No Such Tape Exists.
It's like being accused of killing five people on film and responding that there is no film; it's just not enough.
If you click on either of the two links -- Continue Reading, or Spread the Word -- you arrive at a (slightly) more detailed page, one that makes more clear and pointed refutations like Michelle Obama has not spoken from the pulpit at Trinity and has not used that word. But the extra click is an unnecessary effort. You don't, of course, want to gum up the homepage with too much information, but neither do you want to save your simple, unequivocal denials for a page to which a casual reader must navigate. Especially when the routes by which they must navigate -- Continue Reading appears under the Smear section and thus suggests no forthcoming response; Spread the Word appears under Truth, but sounds like a plea for activism, not an offer of information -- are at best unclear.
Since even the expanded version of the refutation is not all that expansive -- keeping it short and sweet is smart, though the extreme economy of the responses strikes me as a kind of rhetorical bet-hedging, making sure not too much oxygen or openness evolves around the claims -- it would have been wiser and far more effective to produce just a little more text on the homepage. Something like: Michelle has not spoken from the pulpit at Trinity, nor on a Rainbow/PUSH conference panel. She has not used that word, and no such tape exists. It spares the click, saves some work, and, most importantly, keeps the homepage refutation simple and economical while also making it clear and unequivocal.
Perhaps this is nitpicking. Or perhaps not. Because it seems to me that if you're going to make this effort work -- if you're really going to engage in a new kind of politics and go all the way through it to the end -- then you need to stop hedging your bets and hamstringing your web site. You need to lock away the consultants, lock down those links, and fight the smears with all the unabashed oxygen and unapologetic openness you can produce.
Obama knows that — notwithstanding John McCain's pledge that his own campaign will not engage in smears — more rumors can be expected in a general-election campaign. Trying to kill them with oxygen and openness is a risky approach. But Obama is attempting to find the humor — and the votes — by taking the rumors head-on.
The passage comes from a Karen Tumulty Time piece about the Obama Campaign's plan to fight the (often atomic) power of political rumors, smears, and innuendos with rapid response, direct confrontation, and a clearing house for both at a slick new fact-checking web site, FightTheSmears.com. What is not astonishing, but most assuredly maddening, about this passage is its acceptance -- indeed, its perpetuation -- of the first-rate political fallacy that responding to lies with truth is somehow risky. Only in an arena as cold and calculating as American electoral politics could we find the notion, discredited but still endlessly repeated, that few things are more dangerous than defending yourself against baseless, bullshit allegations.
If we learned anything from John Kerry -- and if we were paying any attention at all, we should have learned a lot -- it's that the truly risky approach to these sleazoid attacks is to withhold the oxygen and the openness, to ignore them or wait for them to go away or just quietly, diffidently deny them and then slink back to the campaign bus because some overpaid, underperforming political consultant told you that to talk about them is to dignify them. To ignore them is to dignify them. And, worse still, to inflame them. To talk about them is to refute them. To fight them. To beat them down and stand up for yourself and show not just your slimy enemies but your loyal supporters, and everyone in between, that you stand for truth and on principle, that you will not abide lies or deceit, and that, when challenged, you will rise to the challenge and overcome it with the full force of fact.
If Senator Obama is willing to do this, and if he and his campaign team are prepared to follow through on the effort all the way to early November, then he will, at least in one important way, be introducing a new kind of Democratic Presidential politics to a party, and indeed to a nation, that deserves it.
Now. That said...
(see, I told you I wasn't going soft on him)
...if I were to give the good Senator and his team one key piece of advice about their new web site, it would be this: Watch those declarations of truth.
In response to the silly rumors -- which have, these last few weeks, been zipping around the blogosphere and rattling mixing with all the rest of the talk radio detritus -- that Michelle Obama repeatedly used the word whitey from the pulpit at Trinity United, or at a Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Conference, or during a séance in which she communicated with the spirits of Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammed, or some such horseshit, and that the whole sorry spectacle was captured on some sort of audio or video or digital or masking or duct tape that someone somewhere will produce even though they have yet to do so, the web site's main page offers a far too simple refutation: No Such Tape Exists.
It's like being accused of killing five people on film and responding that there is no film; it's just not enough.
If you click on either of the two links -- Continue Reading, or Spread the Word -- you arrive at a (slightly) more detailed page, one that makes more clear and pointed refutations like Michelle Obama has not spoken from the pulpit at Trinity and has not used that word. But the extra click is an unnecessary effort. You don't, of course, want to gum up the homepage with too much information, but neither do you want to save your simple, unequivocal denials for a page to which a casual reader must navigate. Especially when the routes by which they must navigate -- Continue Reading appears under the Smear section and thus suggests no forthcoming response; Spread the Word appears under Truth, but sounds like a plea for activism, not an offer of information -- are at best unclear.
Since even the expanded version of the refutation is not all that expansive -- keeping it short and sweet is smart, though the extreme economy of the responses strikes me as a kind of rhetorical bet-hedging, making sure not too much oxygen or openness evolves around the claims -- it would have been wiser and far more effective to produce just a little more text on the homepage. Something like: Michelle has not spoken from the pulpit at Trinity, nor on a Rainbow/PUSH conference panel. She has not used that word, and no such tape exists. It spares the click, saves some work, and, most importantly, keeps the homepage refutation simple and economical while also making it clear and unequivocal.
Perhaps this is nitpicking. Or perhaps not. Because it seems to me that if you're going to make this effort work -- if you're really going to engage in a new kind of politics and go all the way through it to the end -- then you need to stop hedging your bets and hamstringing your web site. You need to lock away the consultants, lock down those links, and fight the smears with all the unabashed oxygen and unapologetic openness you can produce.
Posted at 10:01 AM
Sat - May 31, 2008
YET ANOTHER BREATH OF HOT AIR
from senator make stuff up.
Remember late last year, when Senator Breath of
Fresh Air made a habit of lying (or pandering, or both) to his audiences,
telling them that there are more young black men in prison than in
college, when in fact the numbers (193,000 vs. 530,000)
weren't even close?
Well, here he goes again:
A certain segment has basically been feeding a kind of xenophobia. There's a reason why hate crimes against Hispanic people doubled last year. If you have people like Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh ginning things up, it's not surprising that would happen.
There are several things wrong with this argument -- the sophomoric conflation of correlation and causality, the lazy, sleazy insinuation that blowhards like Dobbs and Limbaugh incite real violence -- but the biggest is this: it's just not true.
Slate's Mickey Kaus has the breakdown here. The most recent FBI hate crime stats show a 14% increase from 2005 to 2006, and a total increase of only 35% from 2003 to 2006. The FBI -- as you can see here, on its Civil Rights-Hate Crime web site -- hasn't even published its hate crime statistics for 2007 yet. Unless they're leaking information to the Obama Campaign, and unless that information shows hate crimes against Hispanics rose three hundred percent faster in the last year than they did in the previous three combined, then Senator Make Stuff Up has once again proven that among the things he's most eager to change this election year are cold, hard facts.
In a week when Scott McClellan reminds us what can happen when a President prefers facts of his own making to those that actually exist, it is also worth remembering that at cynical, self-righteous times like these, the Audacity of Hope can look and feel (and smell) an awful lot like the Mendacity of Bush.
UPDATE 6/4:
The source of Senator Make Stuff Up's claim appears to be a recent report by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which found that hate crimes against Hispanics more than doubled from 2006 to 2007. In Tennessee. Not in Florida, where he was speaking. Or in the nation as a whole, as he implied. Total number of offenses rose from 14 to 47. Which means they constituted 10.6% of the total offenses. Or roughly 1% more than the total number of offenses against whites. From 2005 to 2006, they fell by 26%. From 19 to 14. The same report also found that hate crimes against the disabled in Tennessee rose 3,000% (from 1 to 30) between 2006 to 2007.
I wonder whose fault that is.
Well, here he goes again:
A certain segment has basically been feeding a kind of xenophobia. There's a reason why hate crimes against Hispanic people doubled last year. If you have people like Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh ginning things up, it's not surprising that would happen.
There are several things wrong with this argument -- the sophomoric conflation of correlation and causality, the lazy, sleazy insinuation that blowhards like Dobbs and Limbaugh incite real violence -- but the biggest is this: it's just not true.
Slate's Mickey Kaus has the breakdown here. The most recent FBI hate crime stats show a 14% increase from 2005 to 2006, and a total increase of only 35% from 2003 to 2006. The FBI -- as you can see here, on its Civil Rights-Hate Crime web site -- hasn't even published its hate crime statistics for 2007 yet. Unless they're leaking information to the Obama Campaign, and unless that information shows hate crimes against Hispanics rose three hundred percent faster in the last year than they did in the previous three combined, then Senator Make Stuff Up has once again proven that among the things he's most eager to change this election year are cold, hard facts.
In a week when Scott McClellan reminds us what can happen when a President prefers facts of his own making to those that actually exist, it is also worth remembering that at cynical, self-righteous times like these, the Audacity of Hope can look and feel (and smell) an awful lot like the Mendacity of Bush.
UPDATE 6/4:
The source of Senator Make Stuff Up's claim appears to be a recent report by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which found that hate crimes against Hispanics more than doubled from 2006 to 2007. In Tennessee. Not in Florida, where he was speaking. Or in the nation as a whole, as he implied. Total number of offenses rose from 14 to 47. Which means they constituted 10.6% of the total offenses. Or roughly 1% more than the total number of offenses against whites. From 2005 to 2006, they fell by 26%. From 19 to 14. The same report also found that hate crimes against the disabled in Tennessee rose 3,000% (from 1 to 30) between 2006 to 2007.
I wonder whose fault that is.
Posted at 02:27 PM
Wed - May 14, 2008
WE GO BACK TO WEST VIRGINIA
to follow-up.
Interesting email last night from a regular TWM
reader who, in response to yesterday's post about Tony Norman's
self-righteous, ahistorical insult to West Virginia voters, admits to being
long troubled by the assumptions made about Appalachia. Here's the key
paragraph:
I have checked out West Virginia -- time and again -- and can tell you that there is, no doubt, a certain, tacit racism that informs some of the vote. Much of it, though, is a distrust of anyone they sense is condescending to them, and Obama gives off that aura. Tuesday's vote was an extension of the phenomenon that has turned West Virginia into a Republican state in the last two presidential elections: with economic issues mooted by a permanent recession that has turned its youth into emigrants and its unions into ghosts, the state's remaining, older voters make their decisions on social issues that turn on guns and religiously informed values.
Here, just to clarify a couple of points from yesterday, is the relevant part of my response to the email:
I do not, of course, dispute the presence of racism either tacit or overt in West Virginia. Just as I do not dispute its presence in Pennsylvania or, for that matter, anywhere else in the world. But I sure as hell dispute that West Virginia's preference for Hillary is a boiling up of the Confederate rebel yell, and that Pennsylvania's preference for Hillary was the bubbling up of a slack-jawed, lobotomized populace. Mr. Norman has been out front on both of those claims, and I still can't decide whether I'm amused or disgusted by them. I suppose it depends on the day.
Or the post.
I have checked out West Virginia -- time and again -- and can tell you that there is, no doubt, a certain, tacit racism that informs some of the vote. Much of it, though, is a distrust of anyone they sense is condescending to them, and Obama gives off that aura. Tuesday's vote was an extension of the phenomenon that has turned West Virginia into a Republican state in the last two presidential elections: with economic issues mooted by a permanent recession that has turned its youth into emigrants and its unions into ghosts, the state's remaining, older voters make their decisions on social issues that turn on guns and religiously informed values.
Here, just to clarify a couple of points from yesterday, is the relevant part of my response to the email:
I do not, of course, dispute the presence of racism either tacit or overt in West Virginia. Just as I do not dispute its presence in Pennsylvania or, for that matter, anywhere else in the world. But I sure as hell dispute that West Virginia's preference for Hillary is a boiling up of the Confederate rebel yell, and that Pennsylvania's preference for Hillary was the bubbling up of a slack-jawed, lobotomized populace. Mr. Norman has been out front on both of those claims, and I still can't decide whether I'm amused or disgusted by them. I suppose it depends on the day.
Or the post.
Posted at 10:22 AM
Tue - May 13, 2008
BARACK GOES TO WEST VIRGINIA
to pander. at least a little
bit.
While we're on the subject of cheap political
points...
You will also remember, I'm sure, that one of the (few) things I like(d) and respect(ed) and admire(d) about Senator Obamais was his steadfast refusal to pander to the all
the rabbling, quasi-patriotic bullies out there, his firm belief that love of
country resides in your head and in your heart, in your civic actions and public
policies, not at the end of your flag pole and certainly not atop the pin on
your lapel. And yet there he was yesterday at the Charleston Civic
Center, making some of those same, excellent points to a crowd of (presumably)
non-racist Appalachians, while wearing a flag pin on his
lapel.
How disappointing. If not especially surprising.
You can bet we'll see a whole lot more of those sorts of -- I'll be kind -- compromises as the general election draws nearer.
You know, the kind that carry the untoward, distinctive aroma of politics as usual.
You will also remember, I'm sure, that one of the (few) things I like(d) and respect(ed) and admire(d) about Senator Obama
How disappointing. If not especially surprising.
You can bet we'll see a whole lot more of those sorts of -- I'll be kind -- compromises as the general election draws nearer.
You know, the kind that carry the untoward, distinctive aroma of politics as usual.
Posted at 11:25 AM
TONY GOES TO WEST VIRGINIA
to condescend. a lot.
You will remember, I'm sure, that in the wake of
the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary, the editorial board of the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette declared
anyone who voted for Hillary Clinton an idiot and quite possibly a racist. At
the time, I
was certain that I spied -- among other, equally heavy hands -- the
ham fists and unctuous words of PG columnist and editorial board member
Tony Norman. So you will imagine my lack of surprise when, on the eve of the
West Virginia Primary, I opened up the PG and saw even more
proof of my theorem:
With the presumptive Democratic nominee running 30 points behind Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in West Virginia, the sound we're most likely to hear when the polls close in Appalachia tonight is the Confederate rebel yell boiling up from the swamps of time.
We'll set aside, for now, the questions of when swamps boil, how a yell boils, and what a boiling yell sounds like. And we'll even ignore that Appalachia -- which is hardly synonymous with West Virginia, since the region extends from Georgia to New York state and the Appalachian mountains stretch from Georgia through New England all the way to Canada -- is almost certainly a code-word for Land of the White Trash Hillbilly Racists. But we can not ignore the ahistorical silliness.
You would think someone so seemingly well-versed in -- or at least so willingly haunted by -- the ghosts of the Confederacy would know that West Virginia seceded from the Confederate State of Virginia in 1861, then joined the Union in 1863, when it ratified constitutional assurances of abolition and was thus officially recognized as a state. You would also think that someone so eager to cast aspersions and condescensions upon the sons and daughters of that state's 20,000 or so Confederate soldiers would know that West Virginia provided an equal number of soldiers to the Union. (They all, presumably, have moved to more sophisticated states; if any remain, they will no doubt be voting for Obama.)
But, hey, who cares about rhetorical or historical accuracy when there are cheap political points to be made and even cheaper, self-righteous insults to be hurled? What's a little contempt or dishonor among Appalachian plebes?
With the presumptive Democratic nominee running 30 points behind Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in West Virginia, the sound we're most likely to hear when the polls close in Appalachia tonight is the Confederate rebel yell boiling up from the swamps of time.
We'll set aside, for now, the questions of when swamps boil, how a yell boils, and what a boiling yell sounds like. And we'll even ignore that Appalachia -- which is hardly synonymous with West Virginia, since the region extends from Georgia to New York state and the Appalachian mountains stretch from Georgia through New England all the way to Canada -- is almost certainly a code-word for Land of the White Trash Hillbilly Racists. But we can not ignore the ahistorical silliness.
You would think someone so seemingly well-versed in -- or at least so willingly haunted by -- the ghosts of the Confederacy would know that West Virginia seceded from the Confederate State of Virginia in 1861, then joined the Union in 1863, when it ratified constitutional assurances of abolition and was thus officially recognized as a state. You would also think that someone so eager to cast aspersions and condescensions upon the sons and daughters of that state's 20,000 or so Confederate soldiers would know that West Virginia provided an equal number of soldiers to the Union. (They all, presumably, have moved to more sophisticated states; if any remain, they will no doubt be voting for Obama.)
But, hey, who cares about rhetorical or historical accuracy when there are cheap political points to be made and even cheaper, self-righteous insults to be hurled? What's a little contempt or dishonor among Appalachian plebes?
Posted at 11:15 AM
Wed - May 7, 2008
WE WANT TO FOLLOW THE RULES
except when we don't.
You know, this is the kind of crap that makes my
head explode...
[From a memo (An Update on the Race for Delegates) sent to the Superdelegatessent by Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe. Emphases mine:]
...Just as the Presidential election in November will be decided by the electoral college, not popular vote, the Democratic nomination is decided by delegates.
If we believed the popular vote was somehow the key measurement, we would have campaigned much more intensively in our home state of Illinois and in all the other populous states, in the pursuit of larger raw vote totals. But it is not the key measurement. We played by the rules, set by you, the DNC members, and campaigned as hard as we could, in as many places as we could, to acquire delegates. Essentially, the popular vote is not much better as a metric than basing the nominee on which candidate raised more money, has more volunteers, contacted more voters, or is taller.
The Clinton campaign was very clear about their own strategy until the numbers become too ominous for them. They were like a broken record, repeating ad nauseum that this nomination race is about delegates. Now, the word delegate has disappeared from their vocabulary, in an attempt to change the rules and create an alternative reality.
We want to be clear – we believe that the winner of a majority of pledged delegates will and should be the nominee of our party. And we estimate that after the Oregon and Kentucky primaries on May 20, we will have won a majority of the overall pledged delegates According to a recent news report, by even their most optimistic estimates the Clinton Campaign expects to trail by more than 100 pledged delegates and will then ask the superdelegates to overturn the will of the voters.
But of course superdelegates are free to and have been utilizing their own criteria for deciding who our nominee should be...
I could highlight the presumption (that onerous first sentence, most of the first two paragraphs, and the transition to the last sentence). Or criticize the condescension (like a broken record...ad nauseum...alternative reality). Or even complain about the grammar (it should be were somehow, Mr. Plouffe, not was).
But all I really want to do is note the incredible irony -- by which I mean, duplicity; by which I mean, hypocrisy -- of a campaign that crows about playing by the rules and then, two paragraphs later, argues that the rules shouldn't apply, and that following the rules will be a very bad thing indeed. You know, as long as doing so may hurt Senator Obama.
It would be funny, were it not so infuriating. Maddening, were it not so sickening. And surprising, were it not so typical.
Last night in his North Carolina victory speech, Senator Obama lamented that John McCain's plan to win in November appears to come from the very same playbook that his side has used time after time in election after election. He warned of attempts to play on our fears and exploit our differences to turn us against each other for pure political gain. He said that the real question, then, is not what kind of campaign they'll run; it's what kind of campaign we will run.
Your campaign manager's memo to the Supers, like many other things we've seen and heard these past few months, gives us a pretty good idea, Senator. And you know what? It may sound different, but it sure does look -- and smell -- the same.
[From a memo (An Update on the Race for Delegates) sent to the Superdelegatessent by Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe. Emphases mine:]
...Just as the Presidential election in November will be decided by the electoral college, not popular vote, the Democratic nomination is decided by delegates.
If we believed the popular vote was somehow the key measurement, we would have campaigned much more intensively in our home state of Illinois and in all the other populous states, in the pursuit of larger raw vote totals. But it is not the key measurement. We played by the rules, set by you, the DNC members, and campaigned as hard as we could, in as many places as we could, to acquire delegates. Essentially, the popular vote is not much better as a metric than basing the nominee on which candidate raised more money, has more volunteers, contacted more voters, or is taller.
The Clinton campaign was very clear about their own strategy until the numbers become too ominous for them. They were like a broken record, repeating ad nauseum that this nomination race is about delegates. Now, the word delegate has disappeared from their vocabulary, in an attempt to change the rules and create an alternative reality.
We want to be clear – we believe that the winner of a majority of pledged delegates will and should be the nominee of our party. And we estimate that after the Oregon and Kentucky primaries on May 20, we will have won a majority of the overall pledged delegates According to a recent news report, by even their most optimistic estimates the Clinton Campaign expects to trail by more than 100 pledged delegates and will then ask the superdelegates to overturn the will of the voters.
But of course superdelegates are free to and have been utilizing their own criteria for deciding who our nominee should be...
I could highlight the presumption (that onerous first sentence, most of the first two paragraphs, and the transition to the last sentence). Or criticize the condescension (like a broken record...ad nauseum...alternative reality). Or even complain about the grammar (it should be were somehow, Mr. Plouffe, not was).
But all I really want to do is note the incredible irony -- by which I mean, duplicity; by which I mean, hypocrisy -- of a campaign that crows about playing by the rules and then, two paragraphs later, argues that the rules shouldn't apply, and that following the rules will be a very bad thing indeed. You know, as long as doing so may hurt Senator Obama.
It would be funny, were it not so infuriating. Maddening, were it not so sickening. And surprising, were it not so typical.
Last night in his North Carolina victory speech, Senator Obama lamented that John McCain's plan to win in November appears to come from the very same playbook that his side has used time after time in election after election. He warned of attempts to play on our fears and exploit our differences to turn us against each other for pure political gain. He said that the real question, then, is not what kind of campaign they'll run; it's what kind of campaign we will run.
Your campaign manager's memo to the Supers, like many other things we've seen and heard these past few months, gives us a pretty good idea, Senator. And you know what? It may sound different, but it sure does look -- and smell -- the same.
Posted at 01:51 PM
Mon - May 5, 2008
AN OLD KIND OF STATISTICS
not a new kind of politics.
With a tip of the hat and a tilt of the axis to
Chadwick Matlin (great name) over at Slate.com, I offer here my own, slightly
souped-up graphic to illustrate the creative -- by which I mean, phony;
by which I mean, unprofessional; by which I mean, unethical --
graphing strategy they were, until about an hour ago, using on the
BarackObama.com ResultsCenter
page:
The first bar graph is the one they had been using before Mr. Matlin's piece (charitably titled Obama's Fuzzy Delelgate Math; it should have been called Obama's Bullshit Delegate Graph) appeared at 5:35 this afternoon. The second bar graph illustrates the correct proportion that Senator Clinton's 1,611 delegates should have filled. It's a considerable difference. And so a considerable ginning of both the image and the relative strength of the numbers.
Now. The Obama Camp deserves some credit for correcting the image so quickly. (You know, the kind of credit deserved by a teenager who, caught in a lie, admits the truth instead of just lying again.) But it deserves far more blame, and at least a little bit of scorn, for producing and posting the image in the first place. It's a simple case of Stats 101. Or Graphic Communication 101. Or Ethics 101. (Hell, my BusComm sophomores knew better by the third week of class.) You don't tweak or twist or fudge or otherwise knowingly misrepresent proportions on a graph. Not when you want to be honest and forthright about the data. And especially not when you claim to possess the ethical and intellectual high ground.
I've said it before (and before, and before, and before), and I'll say it again: new kind of politics, my ass.
The first bar graph is the one they had been using before Mr. Matlin's piece (charitably titled Obama's Fuzzy Delelgate Math; it should have been called Obama's Bullshit Delegate Graph) appeared at 5:35 this afternoon. The second bar graph illustrates the correct proportion that Senator Clinton's 1,611 delegates should have filled. It's a considerable difference. And so a considerable ginning of both the image and the relative strength of the numbers.
Now. The Obama Camp deserves some credit for correcting the image so quickly. (You know, the kind of credit deserved by a teenager who, caught in a lie, admits the truth instead of just lying again.) But it deserves far more blame, and at least a little bit of scorn, for producing and posting the image in the first place. It's a simple case of Stats 101. Or Graphic Communication 101. Or Ethics 101. (Hell, my BusComm sophomores knew better by the third week of class.) You don't tweak or twist or fudge or otherwise knowingly misrepresent proportions on a graph. Not when you want to be honest and forthright about the data. And especially not when you claim to possess the ethical and intellectual high ground.
I've said it before (and before, and before, and before), and I'll say it again: new kind of politics, my ass.
Posted at 08:40 PM
Wed - April 30, 2008
TWO WRIGHTS STILL MAKE A WRONG
or, why that lunatic egomaniac still
matters.
Before we move on to even more controversial matters, let's talk once
more about the star-crossed, now-mercifully-divorced relationship between
Senator Breath of Fresh Air and Reverend
Race-Baiter.
First, let's give credit where it's due: despite an over-reliance on his favorite vowel and at least a couple of slippery equivocations -- more on those in a moment -- Senator Obama yesterday wisely dispensed with the emotional aloofness and rhetorical sleight-of-hand that have so far characterized his remarks about Reverend Wright and, avoiding the airy rationalizations (a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice) of his wildly overpraised (if occasionally dissected) More Perfect Union speech, got right down to business:
When he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS; when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st century; when he equates the United States' wartime efforts with terrorism, then there are no excuses. They offend me, they rightly offend all Americans, and they should be denounced. And that's what I’m doing very clearly and unequivocally here today.
That's well-said and well-crafted. It hits right at the dark heart of Wright's paranoid absurdities, exposes them to the lights of sense and reason, and does not attempt to do anything but heap upon them the scorn they so richly deserve. It is precisely what he should have done last month: rather than teeter on an oratorical tightrope as he did in Philadelphia, Senator Obama went underground in Winston-Salem and stopped playing co-dependent to his former pastor's whack addiction. He did the same thing in the Q&A a few minutes later:
I want to make absolutely clear that I do not subscribe to the views that he expressed. I believe they are wrong. I think they are destructive.
From a candidate and a campaign that have repeatedly addressed political "distractions" with little more than rhetorical dissertations, this felt, finally, like one of those much-vaunted, little-delivered breaths of fresh air. It took a lot more hot air and a few personal attacks to provoke it, but the result was refreshing nonetheless.
Less refreshing was Senator Obama's claim that he hadn't heard Reverend Wright's AIDS comments until Monday...
Q: Have you heard the reports about the AIDS comment?
BO: I had not. ... And so when I start hearing comments about conspiracy theories and AIDS... then that goes directly at who I am and what I believe this country needs.
...when they were, in fact, a matter of public record (and video infamy) weeks ago. They emerged, after all, long before the Philadelphia speech in which they were not addressed or even acknowledged. Does Senator Obama expect us to believe that, in all of the earlier eruptions over Reverend Wright's comments, he had never once heard, not even from his own aides, that Reverend Race-Baiter made those accusations? And if we do believe it -- which I don't -- then what does that say about Senator Obama's ability be informed on even the most simple and sensational of cultural matters? I mean, it's not like Bush and Brown and Chertoff failing to know about the evacuees at the New Orleans Convention Center, but neither is it a reassurance that Senator Obama will know even the most obvious facts of the problems to which he must respond.
Which leads us, finally, to why Senator Obama's Better Late Than Never Remarks yesterday still qualify as a Too Little Too Late Response today. It leads us to why the Reverend Wright, in all his loony, egomaniacal vainglory, still matters today just as he has mattered all along: because of what he suggests about the judgment of a man who, lacking enough experience or accomplishment to make his case, has repeatedly told us to trust his judgment.
And yet there he was yesterday, in the second paragraph of his opening statement, admitting that he may have erred in his (twenty years) of judgment of Reverend Wright:
And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I may not know him as well as I thought either.
If you don't well know a man who, in your own words, has been like family to [you,] a man who officiated [your] wedding and baptized [your] children and strengthened [your] faith and was a part of your life for the past twenty years, then who or what do you know well? What does that say, in the end, about your ability to see and to judge and to divine the true heart of a person, the true power of a moment, the true importance of an issue? If your judgment has been that intimately and consistently wrong for the last twenty years, how can you expect us to trust it for the next four? And how can you expect us to believe that you will not, as our current president so often has, be swayed by the thoughts and mistakes and sometimes even rank incompetencies (or, in this case, lunacies) of the men and women in your administration to whom you turn for counsel?
The closest Senator Obama comes to an answer, and it is hardly a reassuring one, appears earlier in the paragraph:
The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago.
That is fair enough. And almost certainly true. But surely that change did not occur just this week. Or month. Or year. Surely that change occurred, as all metamorphoses do, in distinct stages, with marked and obvious differences, with such sight and sound and occasional, irrational fury that someone whose great judgment, whose acute ability to assess a situation and divine a solution, is repeatedly being touted as Oval-Office-worthy, would have noticed, and then duly reacted, sometime between 1988 and the day before yesterday.
First, let's give credit where it's due: despite an over-reliance on his favorite vowel and at least a couple of slippery equivocations -- more on those in a moment -- Senator Obama yesterday wisely dispensed with the emotional aloofness and rhetorical sleight-of-hand that have so far characterized his remarks about Reverend Wright and, avoiding the airy rationalizations (a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice) of his wildly overpraised (if occasionally dissected) More Perfect Union speech, got right down to business:
When he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS; when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st century; when he equates the United States' wartime efforts with terrorism, then there are no excuses. They offend me, they rightly offend all Americans, and they should be denounced. And that's what I’m doing very clearly and unequivocally here today.
That's well-said and well-crafted. It hits right at the dark heart of Wright's paranoid absurdities, exposes them to the lights of sense and reason, and does not attempt to do anything but heap upon them the scorn they so richly deserve. It is precisely what he should have done last month: rather than teeter on an oratorical tightrope as he did in Philadelphia, Senator Obama went underground in Winston-Salem and stopped playing co-dependent to his former pastor's whack addiction. He did the same thing in the Q&A a few minutes later:
I want to make absolutely clear that I do not subscribe to the views that he expressed. I believe they are wrong. I think they are destructive.
From a candidate and a campaign that have repeatedly addressed political "distractions" with little more than rhetorical dissertations, this felt, finally, like one of those much-vaunted, little-delivered breaths of fresh air. It took a lot more hot air and a few personal attacks to provoke it, but the result was refreshing nonetheless.
Less refreshing was Senator Obama's claim that he hadn't heard Reverend Wright's AIDS comments until Monday...
Q: Have you heard the reports about the AIDS comment?
BO: I had not. ... And so when I start hearing comments about conspiracy theories and AIDS... then that goes directly at who I am and what I believe this country needs.
...when they were, in fact, a matter of public record (and video infamy) weeks ago. They emerged, after all, long before the Philadelphia speech in which they were not addressed or even acknowledged. Does Senator Obama expect us to believe that, in all of the earlier eruptions over Reverend Wright's comments, he had never once heard, not even from his own aides, that Reverend Race-Baiter made those accusations? And if we do believe it -- which I don't -- then what does that say about Senator Obama's ability be informed on even the most simple and sensational of cultural matters? I mean, it's not like Bush and Brown and Chertoff failing to know about the evacuees at the New Orleans Convention Center, but neither is it a reassurance that Senator Obama will know even the most obvious facts of the problems to which he must respond.
Which leads us, finally, to why Senator Obama's Better Late Than Never Remarks yesterday still qualify as a Too Little Too Late Response today. It leads us to why the Reverend Wright, in all his loony, egomaniacal vainglory, still matters today just as he has mattered all along: because of what he suggests about the judgment of a man who, lacking enough experience or accomplishment to make his case, has repeatedly told us to trust his judgment.
And yet there he was yesterday, in the second paragraph of his opening statement, admitting that he may have erred in his (twenty years) of judgment of Reverend Wright:
And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I may not know him as well as I thought either.
If you don't well know a man who, in your own words, has been like family to [you,] a man who officiated [your] wedding and baptized [your] children and strengthened [your] faith and was a part of your life for the past twenty years, then who or what do you know well? What does that say, in the end, about your ability to see and to judge and to divine the true heart of a person, the true power of a moment, the true importance of an issue? If your judgment has been that intimately and consistently wrong for the last twenty years, how can you expect us to trust it for the next four? And how can you expect us to believe that you will not, as our current president so often has, be swayed by the thoughts and mistakes and sometimes even rank incompetencies (or, in this case, lunacies) of the men and women in your administration to whom you turn for counsel?
The closest Senator Obama comes to an answer, and it is hardly a reassuring one, appears earlier in the paragraph:
The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago.
That is fair enough. And almost certainly true. But surely that change did not occur just this week. Or month. Or year. Surely that change occurred, as all metamorphoses do, in distinct stages, with marked and obvious differences, with such sight and sound and occasional, irrational fury that someone whose great judgment, whose acute ability to assess a situation and divine a solution, is repeatedly being touted as Oval-Office-worthy, would have noticed, and then duly reacted, sometime between 1988 and the day before yesterday.
Posted at 10:15 AM
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Published On: Apr 10, 2009 10:37 AM
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Published On: Apr 10, 2009 10:37 AM