How you can tell our media isn’t “liberal.” (#7,536,062 in an ongoing series.)
Fred Clark doesn’t write a weekly column for the New York Times.
How do you do. Welcome to the human race. You’re a mess.
Better bloggers than I have ripped into the Washington Post’s shockingly deficient mea culpa for cheerleading us into an invasion of Iraq—but there’s this one bit that just won’t leave me alone:
Across the country, “the voices raising questions about the war were lonely ones,” [Executive Editor Leonard] Downie [Jr.] said. “We didn’t pay enough attention to the minority.”
You know what I have to say to that?
This is what I have to say to that.
500,000 in New York City.
100,000 in Seattle.
30,000 in Los Angeles.
10,000 in Philadelphia.
200,000 in Washington, DC.
200,000 in San Francisco.
20,000 in Portland.
3,000 in Chicago.
To say nothing of Akron and Amarillo, Anapolis Royal, Antigonish, Arcata , Armidale, Asheville, Ashland, Athens, Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Barrie, Beavercreek, Bellingham, Billings, Biloxi, Binghamton, Birmingham, Bisbee, Blacksburg, Bloomington, Boise, Boulder, Brampton, Brandon, Burlington, Butler, Calexico, Calgary, Canmore, Canton, Cape Cod, Cape Girardeau, Capt. Cook, Carbondale, Castlegar, Cedar Rapids, Charleston, Charlotte, Charlottetown, Charlottesville, Chatanooga, Chico, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Coburg, Colorado Springs, Columbia (Missouri and South Carolina), Columbus, Comox Valley, Concord, Cornwall, Corpus Christi, Cortez, Corvallis, Croton-on-Hudson, Cowichan, Cumberland, Dallas, Dayton, Daytona Beach, Deland, Denton, Detroit, Dubuque, Durango, Ellensburg, Elkins, Encino, Erie, Eugene, Fairbanks, Farmington, Fayetteville, Fillmore, Findlay, Flagstaff, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Smith, Fort Wayne, Fredricton, Fresno, Gainesville, Galesburg, Galveston, Geneva, Grand Junction, Grand Prarie, Grand Rapids, Hadely, Hilo, Holland, Honolulu, Houston, Hull, Huntington, Huntsville, Indianapolis, Ithaca, Jasper, Jefferson City, Jersey City, Johnston, Juneau, Kamloops, Kansas City, Kelowna, Kezar Falls, Kingston, Knoxville, Lafeyette, Lancaster, Lansing, Las Cruces, Las Vegas, Lawrence, Leavinsworth, Lethbridge, Lexington, Lilloet, Lincoln, Little Rock, Long Beach, Louisville, Macomb, Madison, McAllen, Meadville, Medicine Hat, Medford, Melbourne, Memphis, Minneapolis, Miami, Midland, Milwaukee, Minden, Mobile, Moncton, Montpelier, Mount Vernon, Nanaimo, Naples, Nashville, Nelson, New Orleans, Newark, Niagra, Norfolk, North Bay, Olympia, Orange, Orangeville, Orillia, Orlando, Ottawa, Palm Desert, Parker Ford, Parry Sound, Pensacola, Peoria, Peterborough, Phoenix, Pittsboro, Plattsburg, Portland (Maine), Port Perry, Portsmouth, Qualicum Beach, Racine, Raleigh, Richland Center, Riverview, Rockford, Rolla, Sackville, St. Augustine, St. Catherines, St. Charles, St. Joeseph, St. Louis, St. Paul, St. Petersburg, Salem, Salt Lake City, Saltspring Island, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Diego, Sandpoint, San Jose, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Santa Fe, Santa Monica, Sarasota, Sault Ste. Marie, Savannah, Sherbrooke, Silver City, Sioux Falls, Sitka, Sonora, South Bend, South Haven, Spokane, Springfield, Starkville, St. John’s, Sudbury, Summertown, Tacoma, Tallahassee, Taos, Tehachapi, Temple, Thornbury, Tofino, Truro, Tulsa, Tucson, Valdosta, Vallejo, Vancouver, Watertown, Wausau, West Palm Beach, Wilkes-Barre, Williamsburg, Williamsport, Williamstown, Wilmington, Yakima, Yarmouth, York, and Youngstown.
Or 25,000 in Vancouver, Canada. 100,000 in Montreal. 10,000 in Toronto. A million in London. Two million in Rome. A million and change in Barcelona. 100,000 in Paris. 500,000 in Berlin. 100,000 in Dublin (30,000 in Belfast). 35,000 in Stockholm. 150,000 in Melbourne. 100,000 in Sydney. 200,000 in Damascus. 10,000 in Beirut. 100 in Mostar, Bosnia. 25,000 in Baghdad.
Eleven million, around the world. That’s what I have to say to that.
Here’s something else:
Good journalism—in a newspaper or magazine, on television, radio or the Internet—enriches Americans by giving them both useful information for their daily lives and a sense of participation in the wider world. Good journalism makes possible the cooperation among citizens that is critical to a civilized society. Citizens cannot function together as a community unless they share a common body of information about their surroundings, their neighbors, their governing bodies, their sports teams, even their weather. Those are all the stuff of the news. The best journalism digs into it, makes sense of it and makes it accessible to everyone.
Only I didn’t say it, of course.
Leonard Downie Jr. said it. The aforementioned Executive Editor of the Washington Post.
There’s a whole wide world out here, Mr. Downie, and we sure could use some help making sense of it all.
Do let us know when you come out into it.
Here in the United States, for many months it was considered anti-social if not unpatriotic to even broach one’s disagreement with the administration during these troubled times. I believe that yesterday began to fundamentally change all that. Despite some of the unintentionally hilarious commentary by reporters and pundits, who appeared to be gobsmacked by the realization that Junior is not as universally beloved by “normal” Americans as he is by Sally Quinn’s email web ring, it is now quite obvious that Bush is not perceived by one and all as a heroic figure of Churchillian proportions, here or around the world. The sheer numbers of the protesters have given people permission to dissent without the threat of broad social opprobrium and if nothing else we are free of the notion that it is unpatriotic to criticize the President.
What’s next? The war with Iraq is a done deal and who knows what the aftermath will be. But, the real issue is this notion of aggressive American hegemony and the pathetic inability of the current administration to explain their goals in a believable fashion, bring our historical allies along or re-evaluate policies in light of changing circumstances. They have failed the test of a decent civilized superpower and they must go.
—digby, 16 February 2003
Satire closed on Saturday night.
Intelligence, of course, is just another instrument of war. And intelligence, like force, can only be used to a certain extent in any given situation. But a show of intelligence will instill an absolute dread of one’s investigatory powers in the terrorist mind. So while Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan could only accomplish so much as an actual source of hard intelligence—perhaps breaking up a terrorist cell here, exposing a plot there, assisting in the capture of bin Laden lieutenants there—as a show of intelligence, exposed and outed as an intelligence source, Khan is far more valuable—terrorizing the terrorists themselves. The Medium Lobster would not be surprised if Osama bin Laden himself were trembling in some dark cave, marveling at the well-oiled efficiency of the American intelligence apparatus, wondering how many other theoretical Khans were out there waiting to inform on him.
—the Medium Lobster, “A Show of Intelligence,” Fafblog!
However, two days later, another Reuters article allowed that maybe the leak wasn’t the tremendous screw-up the wire service had previously reported. “Terrorism experts,” the piece noted, “said the reasons for the release of Khan’s name could range from a judgment error to a sophisticated ploy designed to put al Qaeda on edge about the extent to which the network has been infiltrated by moles.”
—Lee Smith, “Does the US press know we’re at war?” Slate
Defending marriage.
One of the reasons maybe why I’ve been quieter than usual of late is Creeping Disaffection. When Multnomah County first began granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples (including a number of friends and acquaintances of mine), I said something not unlike the following:
It’s brilliantly savvy theatre—every marriage solemnized in this blazing spotlight (as opposed to the thousands, the hundreds of thousands, that have been solemnized in Unitarian and MCC congregations and liberal synagogues and in the sitting rooms of bed and breakfasts and barefoot on the beach; wherever straights have gotten married, gays and lesbians have as well, for all you did to manage not to see them)—every marriage on the sidewalk outside the county offices in the rain with a news camera present puts a human face on this (thus far) largely abstract battle.
Gays and lesbians are an invisible majority, after all; the only time most of the country has to see them is acting up in sitcoms, or on the news, where every year the coverage of the pride parade skips over the gay police officers and the gay librarians and the gay government clerks and the gay senior citizens and the straight allies and zooms straight for the freakshow eyebite: the drag queen in the feather boa, the bare-breasted diesel dyke. (To trade in unfortunately broad stereotypes, which they do, of course; ignoring the obvious benefits these individuals bring to the world, which we shall take as read: we’re all choir here, for the most part, and this is going on too long already.) —Instead, the media has to focus on long lines of people just like everybody else lining up around the block for the same rights and the same dignity enjoyed by everybody else. Professionals and parents, besotted college students head over heels and sober old folks seeking recognition for half a century together, all of them just like everybody else, except—gay. (Meanwhile, in the background, a scattered handful of protesters behind yellow police tape holds up hateful signs. Radio pundits scream incoherently about intangibles, pushing buttons that don’t work as well as they used to. Respected conservative pundits in the field tell us we must oppress these people because gay sex is so much better than straight sex. It’s like heroin. No, really!)
(Which is why I’m not yet that worried about backlash this fall: Oregon is bigger than that, honest it is, and if the sky hasn’t fallen in because of same-sex marriages, we’ll leave well enough alone. —Always reserving the right to be bitterly disappointed, of course.)
Good thing I reserved that right. Oregon is not only not bigger than that, we’re downright petty little shits:
Not to be cynical or anything, but we’ve always sort of assumed that should the initiative to constitutionally outlaw same-sex marriage in Oregon get onto the November ballot, it was all over. Well, it seems that this afternoon anti-marriage forces submitted a record number of signatures:
Backers of a ban on gay marriage turned in more than 244,000 signatures Wednesday to place the issue before Oregon voters this fall. It was twice the number needed and the highest number of signatures ever submitted for an initiative measure in Oregon.
While there of course will be challenges to the initiative, the signature-gathering process, and the validity of signatures, the proposal needs only 100,840 valis signatures to qualify. That more than twice that number were submitted virtually guarantees that voters this Fall will have the option of enshrining discrimination and unequal protection into the Oregon Constitution.
Oh, there’s been good news since then, and one can always hop up on a soapbox and unleash a hail of thundering invective—and there’s nothing like stupid, heartless, thoughtless bigotry to fuel some truly inspired mockery. But it’s sound and fury in the face of implacable fear and ignorance, which will enshrine bigotry in our constitution and strip (largely theoretical, yes, but) rights from neighbors, friends, family members. And the certain knowledge that this is nothing but a freakshow reflex, a thrumming of nausea through the body politic that will pass and leave its fervent supporters and ridiculous logic clinging to the liner of the dustbin of history is cold comfort; it’s hard to look forward to yet another Measure 14 at some point in the years to come that will strip this foulness away (and we will pat ourselves on the back once more: isn’t great we’re so much better than we used to be?) when what we want is decency now, goddammit.
When I’m directly engaging whatever it is I’ve chosen as the Other Side of the Moment, I’ve lately been trying hard to keep Tarantino 25:17 in mind: I try, real hard, to be the shepherd. (Not least because it means I’m actually the tyranny of evil men, and the Other Side of the Moment is weak; we all need our power fantasies.) —It’s hard to make the Other Side of the Moment see the light when you’re sneering at them, and this is why 90% of all internet punditry is less useful than a hill of beans (at least you can eat the beans). But when it comes to the anti–same-sex–marriage crew, I’ve got nothing but a sneer. (I take some little solace in the fact that folks much better than I have lost their patience on this score—and quite eloquently, to boot.)
Now, if you’re a snowball that’s somehow chanced upon this particular hell, and you for whatever reason can’t countenance same-sex marriage, well, I’ll apologize for my sneer; I’m craven enough in my convictions to feel badly about doing it to your face. But you’re backing the wrong play, morally, historically, pragmatically—if you really want to defend marriage, for God’s sake, it makes much more sense to throw your weight behind something like this—
Stigmatize adultery. Roll back no-fault divorce. Rail against quickies, planned at midnight for a 1 a.m. wedding. I’ll still fight you tooth and nail, but at least I could have some little respect.
(Defend marriage? You pathetic, deluded fools. Same-sex couples have been getting married all around you for decades, and they’ll keep on doing it, long after you’ve passed your little amendment. Men will kiss their husbands as you clap yourselves on the back, and wives will continue to feed each other cake, whether you will it or no. They’ve always had the love and the cherish and the honor, and the recognition of their friends and family, and nothing you can do will take that from them. Nothing. All you’ll manage to do is rewrite the tax code. Make it more of a grinding hassle to deal with insurance and wills. Keep loving families apart at times of illness and accident and death. Condemn children to needless, nightmarish legal quagmires. You will tarnish all our rings, and when we open our mouths to take our vows, we will taste ashes. —In order to save marriage, you will destroy it. Fools.)
IOKIYAR.
Republicans in the House took more than 140 hours of testimony to investigate whether the Clinton White House misused its holiday card database but less than five hours of testimony regarding how the Bush administration treated Iraqi detainees.
—“Free Pass From Congress,” Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Cal.)
Oh, hell, one more political squib won’t hurt.
There’s been a lot of hot air bloviated about why John Edwards ought to be Kerry’s choice for second chair, and I’d link to it, but most of it’s over at Matthew Yglesias’s site, which is currently having Issues. Anyway, Matthew Baldwin just nailed the definitive argument. (Bonus: the second DVD has a priceless making-of documentary.)
Forward, ho!
Do be sure to take the time to thank the fine, fine folks at Move America Forward, purveyors of astroturf since sometime earlier this month: without their hype and handwringing, it’s doubtful Fahrenheit 9/11 would have done nearly so well as it did. Aces, guys! Couldn’t have done it without you!
So. What to do for an encore?
Well, for one thing, team up with jilted Disney to promote a feelgood counterdoc: America’s Heart & Soul, “featuring an original song by John Mellencamp.” —“One of the most inspired and inspiring movies ever made,” says Jim Svejda, a graduate of the Pat Collins school of film criticism. Oh, but I’m being cynical again: America’s Heart & Soul looks like nothing more sinister than a thoroughly inoffensive dollop of feelgood pap: a long-form Chevy truck commerical; a tossed salad of mostly iceberg lettuce with a little cilantro to jazz it up. And I’m sure Svejda is a nice-enough guy. It’s Move America Forward’s puffery that’s a hoot and a half:
Those who oppose the War on Terror have the mouthpiece of the mainstream media to disseminate their propaganda to the entire nation in an almost unchallenged effort. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week it is bash America, bash the military and bash the Bush administration.
So, of course, the only option you have to get your scrappy but beleaguered point of view across in this rigged marketplace of ideas is to team up with the parent corporation of one of the Big Four broadcast networks.
Move America Forward is also (quite) proud that it continues in the footsteps of McCarthy and Birch by hounding and harrassing a scientist guilty of nothing but being the target of an hysterical government lynch mob.
Once you’ve hit the news in a negative light, it’ll stay with you forever, no matter what happens to the contrary. Even if a federal judge in a court of law apologizes to you on behalf of the government.
Witness the strange dust-up in the state Capitol these past several days after a former legislator, Howard Kaloogian, got wind that a group of Asian-American legislators were getting ready to honor Wen Ho Lee with their first ``Profile in Courage’’ award Monday.
Kaloogian took umbrage that “a former accused spy’’ was being honored by “Democratic leaders’’ and shot off e-mails on behalf of his newly formed “Move America Forward’’ organization. The group was launched last week to rally support for the administration’s war against terrorism. He accused the California Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus of violating its oath to “defend against foreign and domestic enemies.’’
Lee, you may remember, was the Los Alamos scientist fingered by the Clinton administration in 1999 for supposedly leaking key nuclear secrets to the Chinese government. He was fired, his name was leaked to the New York Times and the spy case was all over the news. He spent nine months in prison, shackled in leg irons, as the government’s case slowly came apart. Fifty-eight of the 59 original counts—none of them espionage—were dropped and Lee pleaded guilty to a single charge of mishandling nuclear secrets.
Federal District Court Judge James A. Parker took the unusual step of apologizing to Lee and excoriating the executive branch for bringing its enormous power to bear on a case it mishandled: “They have embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen of it.’’
That was four years ago. Sad case, upended lives, a career ruined. But settled. Really.
The Asian Pacific Islander caucus, which is holding a policy summit with community leaders from around the state, chose to honor Lee because of his perseverance in the ordeal and the way he had galvanized Chinese-Americans and Asian-American civil rights groups.
As part of the honor, the caucus planned a legislative resolution, along with a routine five-minute presentation on the Assembly floor, a courtesy routinely extended on a legislator’s request.
Republican legislators, nonetheless, threatened to oppose the resolution. The caucus canceled plans for the Assembly presentation and moved it to Monday’s dinner.
Class act, these folks. —Hey, Kaloogian? Go fuck yourself, would you?
(By golly, I do feel better!)
Ding, dong, the—well, a—okay, one of many wicked witches is dead—
My knee-jerk absolutist First Amendment freedom of speech über alles motherfucker happydance is muted just a smidge by the disquieting notion that this was yet another 5-4 split, and the underlying rationale seems to be well, heck, Congress could have spent time and money promoting (even mandating) dumbass internet filters instead of walling up everything we don’t like behind dumbass credit-card gates and age screens. But nonetheless: a stupid stupid stupid law went down in flames, and Justice Breyer is downright plaintive in his dissent:
“What has happened to the constructive discourse between our courts and our legislatures that is an integral and admirable part of the constitutional design?” Breyer asked, using phrases that Kennedy had used in another case. “Congress passed the current statute in response to the Court’s decision in Reno. . .Congress read Reno with care. . .It incorporated language from the Court’s precedents. . .What else was Congress supposed to do?”
Ultimately frustrated himself, Breyer declared that the Court may have denied Congress legislative leeway to pass laws in this area. He suggested that, if the Court means to say that nothing Congress could do would be sufficient, “then the Court should say so clearly.”
Well, I’d like to think the Constitution did that already, but see above re: First Amendment freedom of speech über alles motherfucker. I’m willing to admit I might have a little dogma in my eye.
Also: the inestimable Eugene Volokh notes a possible slippage in the meaning of “prurience.”
Oh, never mind: it wasn’t struck down, just kicked back for another freakin’ trial. —Boy, do I feel stupid with these happydancin’ shoes on.
Don’t you mean mittelterrestrial?
So apparently Fahrenheit 9/11 is stuck with the R rating, which, as any fule know, will only make it that much more appealing to the kids we’re supposedly thinking of—hot damn! Must be gory. Faces of Death gory! —Maybe Move America Forward can gin up an astroturf campaign to independently card kids at 9/11 showings. Yeah. That’s the ticket.
Actually, though, it isn’t so much the carnage that made the MPAA bar the door to the lucrative under-seventeen market. Apparently, at one point some soldiers are shown listening to the Bloodhound Gang, and they sing along—
The roof!
The roof!
The roof is on fire!
We don’t need no water
Let the motherfucker burn!
Goodbye, PG-13.
What’s distressing though, is this: the distributors tap Mario Cuomo to pinch-hit their appeal. The MPAA declined to listen to the big gun, but here’s (part of) his argument—
Altogether the hard language and graphic pictures consume about 3 minutes in a film lasting 120 minutes.
The raters agree that there was nothing else in the film that required any cautionary notice to parents: no nudity, sexual conduct, inappropriate theme, or illicit drug use. I think it’s fair to say that given the common uninstructed interpretation by the public of the “R” rating, many of the viewers of the film would be surprised to see so few of the undesirable characteristics they expected to find in an “R” rated film.
Why then should the film not be rated a “PG 13” as was “The Lord of the Rings,” a film that is saturated with slaughter, butchery and corpses—human and extraterrestrial?
Extraterrestrial?
What color are the dolphins in her world?
Here’s what Peggy Noonan wants from Bill Clinton’s forthcoming autobiography:
Sometimes candor is an act of patriotism. The patriotic act we need from him in his book is utter frankness and honesty about how it came to be that terrorism was ignored by our leaders throughout the 1990s, that pivotal time.
I’d crack a joke, but why bother? —Anyway, TMFTML totally aced Nicholas Confessore’s question, so, um, why bother?
“...it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long...”
FastNBulbous is one of the house trolls over at Political Animal, and they have a loyalty oath for all us card-carrying liberals—
A poll for you Political Animal Readers:
The following appeared in a theatre review written by Michael Feingold in the Village Voice:
Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don’t give a hoot about human beings, either can’t or won’t. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.
This opinion is presumably not shared by Foreman; you can gauge the breadth of his imaginative compassion from his willingness to extend it even toward George W. Bush, idiot scion of a genetically criminal family that should have been sterilized three generations ago.
How many of you agree with the author that Republicans should be exterminated and that the Bush family should be sterilized? If you don’t agree, should the author be made to apologize and/or resign and/or be fired, a la Trent Lott? Also, would the publication of this review be prosecutable as a hate crime in Canada?
Posted by: FastNBulbous on June 9, 2004 at 8:04 PM | PERMALINK
Oh, heck—we wouldn’t need to exterminate them all. How was it Quentin Tarantino said that Ezekial 25:17 went?
The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.
If we executed enough evil tyrants in order to physically intimidate Republicans by making them realize that they could be killed, too, well, heck. The weak would fall into line. The Democratic party could take its rightful place as the corporatist opposition party, and we could all take a deep breath, smile, and get down to the real work of leaving this world better than we found it.
Sure would make things a heck of a lot easier.
But! Alas. We are all of us here on the sinistral side crippled with the terrible moral burden of trying, trying real hard, to be the shepherd. We are most of us trying so hard we won’t even claim to be better than those we fight: we know that anyone can slip, and that claim no matter how right it might feel in our gut leads to the dehumanization of those who set themselves against us. All we can do is remember that there are no ends, only means, and one of the means we must eschew is their eliminationist rhetoric, no matter how satisfyingly cathartic it might be to stop a moment and say to yourself, what if—
But no. We’re trying, real hard. To the ever-increasing us! —I’ll always drink to that.
But not with just anyone. There’s limits; there’s always limits. A little later in the dicussion, FastNBulbous, responding left and right to those who’ve forgotten Rule No. 1, lays this on us—
I repeat, has any other public figure, or someone as “cultured” as a theatre critic, called for the genocide of millions of Americans based on their political views?
Coulter’s call for the execution of one individual who fought on the side of those who were responsible for the deaths of 3,000 Americans against our troops is not analagous, imho.
Of course, this asshat of a reviewer is entitled to make statements that bely his status as an assclown.
I just find it interesting that when someone calls for the extermination of millions of Americans, the response of most people here is to point out relatively mild statements by Republicans rather than condemn the genocidal wishes.
I was hoping that more people would try to convince me that they don’t agree with this jerk.
Posted by: FastNBulbous on June 9, 2004 at 9:15 PM | PERMALINK
Why should we point out relatively mild statements? Why should we be concerned with hyperbolic calls for genocide from Village Voice theatre critics when smiling Republican ignorance and hate killed so many thousands and laughed about it until they were forced by blood and sweat and oceans of tears to pay the least respect a fellow human being is due?
So I’m only human. I’m not going to rush to buy Bulbous a drink unless there’s some small sign of contrition; some vague gesture toward an apology. But I am only human: I’m not going to spit in their face, either. (Read this, I might say, and think, real hard, about what it is you’re doing, and why.) —Or kill them, for God’s sake. “Execute” them. (Ha! As if I could.)
Oh, one more goddamn thing:
To protect subordinates should they be charged with torture, the memo advised that Mr. Bush issue a “presidential directive or other writing” that could serve as evidence, since authority to set aside the laws is “inherent in the president.”
—from that WSJ story on that torture memo
They were all scum, but only Nixon walked free and lived to clear his name. Or at least that’s what Bill Clinton says—and he is, after all, the President of the United States.
Nixon liked to remind people of that. He believed it, and that was why he went down. He was not only a crook but a fool. Two years after he quit, he told a TV journalist that “if the president does it, it can’t be illegal.”
Shit. Not even Spiro Agnew was that dumb.
—from Hunter S. Thompson’s Nixon obituary
Pumpkinry.
Like many of you, I am a devoted follower of Fafblog!, the world’s only source for Fafblog. I was especially keen on last week’s nigh-exclusive interviews with many movers and shakers, including Dr. James Dobson, Donald Rumsfeld, Osama bin Laden, and Jesus Christ. But the capper to Interview Week was a sit-down with An Enormous Pumpkin:
Fafblog!: Now I understand you are deliverin an address at the World War II memorial this Monday.
An Enormous Pumpkin: That’s true. It’s a great honor, even for such a huge pumpkin.
FB: Can you tell us what it’ll sound like?
AEP: Mostly silence, with some rooty settling noises, seeing that, as a pumpkin, I am incapable of speech.
FB: That’s very appropriate and thoughtful.
AEP: I certainly thought so.
Color me stumped. Certainly, a conversation with An Enormous Pumpkin is important in the scheme of things, but is it really vitally important? Enough so to deserve the attention of Fafnir, Giblets, and the Medium Lobster? It did not appear so. And yet it had. A puzzlement. —And so stumped I remained, until I popped by the Whiskey Bar for a quick one. Billmon had the historical perspective I needed, in the course of comparing Ahmad Chalabi with Alger Hiss:
Handsome and Harvard educated, well connected in Washington circles, Hiss started out with the media and the weight of “respectable” opinion on his side—particularly since his accuser, journalist Whittaker Chambers, was an eccentric flake. But young California congressman Richard Nixon, newly assigned to the House Un-American Activities Committee, heard Hiss testify and decided he was lying. Nixon wound up in control of a three-man subcommittee charged with investigating Chamber’s accusations.
Hiss’s story had holes in it, but he might have avoided prison if he hadn’t sued Chambers for slander. As evidence in the case, Chambers produced a roll of microfilm of classified State Department documents allegedly passed to him by Hiss for delivery to the Soviets. Worried that someone might steal the film, Chambers hid it in a pumpkin on his Maryland farm—thus stamping the documents for all time as “the pumpkin papers.”
Signs! Signs and wonders! Thank you, Fafblog!
(But wait—does that mean that Giblets & co. know Chalabi is really as innocent as Hiss never ceased claiming to be? Will a tell-all book yet tumble from An Enormous Pumpkin, telling us what we need to finally make sense of it all? Is a zombie robot Richard Nixon about to claw his way out of Linus’s pumpkin patch with a bag of toys for all the good children? —Holy shit! George Tenet just resigned! Or was pushed! Golly, politics sure is weird.)
Heh. Indeed.
Though Mr. Yglesias has some distressingly retrograde ideas when it comes to women and their participation in “politics” (I do not think that word means what he thinks it means), one cannot help but be charmed by his attempt to dustbin Godwin’s law:
But while the “two presidents” theory has some merit, it is unsatisfying both intellectually and emotionally. As in physics, where quantum field theory and general relativity coexist uneasily, we yearn for a grand unified theory of Bushism that would put the two halves of the agenda together. Now, at last, with the revelation that Ahmad Chalabi has been passing intelligence information to the regime in Iran, the opportunity presents itself to construct just such a unified theory. The truth, hard as it is to accept, is that Bush is an Iranian agent.
The cheek! The unmitigated cheek!
Civilization gap.
Racism began in the West as a biological explanation for a large gap of civilizational development separating blacks from whites. Today racism is reinforced and made plausible by the reemergence of that gap within the United States. For many whites the criminal and irresponsible black underclass represents a revival of barbarism in the midst of Western civilization. If this is true, the best way to eradicate beliefs in black inferiority is to remove their empirical basis. As African American scholars Jeff Howard and Ray Hammond argue, if blacks as a group can show that they are capable of performing competitively in schools and the work force, and exercising both the rights and the responsibilities of American citizenship, then racism will be deprived of its foundation in experience. If blacks can close this civilization gap, the race problem in this country is likely to become insignificant.
—Dinesh D’Souza, The End of Racism
Greg Palast: In the year 2000, 1.9 million votes were cast and not counted across this country—1.9 million votes. And of those 1.9 million votes, about a million were cast by African-Americans. This investigation was conducted by Harvard and the Civil Rights Commission, and I grabbed the material. There’s a 1965 Voting Rights Act that gave black people the right to vote, but not the right to have their votes counted.
All this came out of my first investigation in Florida. I brought it to the attention of the Civil Rights Commission that the so-called “spoilage rate” seemed to be different among black people than with white people. What that means is that, if you make a mistake on a ballot, or if there’s some problem with reading your ballot, your vote doesn’t count.
In Florida, the researchers went precinct by precinct and determined that if you are a black person, you are 10 times more likely to have your vote marked spoiled and voided than if you’re a white voter—10 times! And what’s disgusting is that that is the national average. So we basically have a big black thumbprint on the electoral scale in our election, and it’s going to be worse in 2004.
BuzzFlash: You’re saying that the Florida 2000 election was just the tip of the iceberg and that there is essentially a national epidemic of erasing or not counting African-American votes?
Greg Palast: There are several things. First, there is the big story I broke last time. As it turns out in Florida, 90,000 mostly African-American voters—which is the latest official number from the courts—were illegally targeted for removal from the voter rolls. Those people were not allowed to even register to vote and therefore didn’t cast a ballot in the election.
But for those African-Americans who did get to vote, their votes were far more likely not to be counted than other votes. I saw this in Florida, and it is deliberate. When it’s 10 to 1, as any statistician told me, unless lightning strikes seven times in one spot, how can it not be deliberate?
—BuzzFlash interview with Greg Palast
via the Sideshow
With less than six months to go before the presidential election, thousands of Florida voters who may have been improperly removed from the voter rolls in 2000 have yet to have their eligibility restored.
Records obtained by The Herald show that just 33 of 67 counties have responded to a request by state election officials to check whether or not nearly 20,000 voters should be reinstated as required under a legal settlement reached between the state, the NAACP and other groups nearly two years ago.
Some of the counties that have failed to respond to the state include many of Florida’s largest, including Broward, Miami-Dade, Orange and Palm Beach.
Those counties that have responded told the state that they have restored 679 voters to the rolls so far—more than enough to have tipped the balance of the 2000 election had they voted for Al Gore. President Bush won Florida and the presidency by 537 votes.
—”Many voters not yet back on rolls”
by Gary Fineout, the Miami Herald
via the Suburban Guerilla
Definition: incompetence.
“It’s extremely difficult to govern when you control all three branches of government,” says Hastert spokesman John Feehery, a burden of which Democrats would happily relieve them.
Via Atrios, of course.
These pictures will not be the last ones of this sort that will see the light of day.
