The Sideshow
Archive for December 2002
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The SideshowArchive for December 2002 |
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14:48 GMT: Permalink
Tuesday, 31 December 200212:08 GMT: Permalink
There's what we got for Xmas, and there's what we wish we got.I had a nice birthday. Did you know there's a nice boxed set of the first three Byrds albums on CD (with the usual additional material, of course)? That and the two separate CDs of their fourth and fifth albums makes me feel much better about a certain person having made off with my Byrds LPs lo, those many years ago. (Yes, that's right, I'm really only interested in the Crosby-era Byrds. And the thing about the horse was unforgiveable.) I also got the Bob Dylan Bootleg Series, and some amusing books, and the now-traditional Buffy calendar. I've listened to all the Xmas music, now - you know what one was; the others were a Blind Faith re-issue in a little box with a tastefully semi-censored cover and two Bill Hicks CDs (that I haven't had a chance to listen to yet because you have to pay attention to that stuff). And the CD with Fred Neil's firt two albums. Haven't had quite as much time for reading over the holidays, more because I was doing stuff with The Sideshow Annex than because the holidays got in the way, but here's a bit of catch-up from TBogg:
The check is in the mail. I'll call you. Yes, I'll respect you in the morning. No, that doesn't make your ass look big. The Bush Administration uses "sound science".TBogg later notes, "I know everybody didn't get their Christmas wish because I hear this guy didn't resign in shame over having blown the surplus as well as putting us on the cusp of WWIII." Well, yes. *sigh*.All lies.
Read this.
When psychologist William R. Miller was asked to join a panel that advises the National Institute on Drug Abuse, he thought he had been selected for his expertise in addiction. Then a Bush administration staff member called with some unexpected questions.The government has been taken over by theological thugs and American industry whores.Did Miller support abortion rights? What about the death penalty for drug kingpins? And had he voted for President Bush?
Apparently, Miller said, he did not give enough right answers. He had not, for example, voted for Bush. He was never appointed to the panel.
Researchers are complaining with rising alarm that the Bush administration is using political and ideological screening to try to ensure that its scientific consultants recommend no policies that are out of step with the political agenda of the White House.
Administration officials say they are merely doing what their predecessors have always done: using appointment powers to make sure their viewpoints are well-represented on the government's scientific advisory boards, an important if unglamorous part of the policy-making process. There are more than 250 boards devoted to public health and biomedical research alone, composed of experts from outside the government who help guide policy on gene therapy, bioterrorism, acceptable pollutant levels and other complex matters.
But critics say the Bush administration is going further than its predecessors in considering ideology as well as scientific expertise in forming the panels. A committee that merely gives technical advice on research proposals, as opposed to setting policy, has even been subject to screening, something the critics say was unheard of in previous administrations.
"I don't think any administration has penetrated so deeply into the advisory committee structure as this one, and I think it matters," said Donald Kennedy, past president of Stanford University and editor of Science, the premier U.S. scientific journal. "If you start picking people by their ideology instead of their scientific credentials, you are inevitably reducing the quality of the advisory group."
Thanks again, Ralph.
Monday, 30 December 200220:41 GMT: Permalink
Charlie says: Finally, a solution to the DMCA and copyright fascism! It turns out there's an exemption to the DMCA for the exercise of religious freedom. So ...01:17 GMT: PermalinkJimmy Breslin is pissed off again.
Jonathan Chait on WHY THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS WORSE THAN DIIULIO SAID in The New Republic.
Oh, look, it's my birthday again. Here, have some politics: Who runs the government?Meanwhile, you Tolkien scholars will find more updates to the 21st Century Tolkien Studies page, with fresh letters from Eric Tam, Randolph Fritz, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and David Bratman.
Sunday, 29 December 200217:29 GMT: Permalink
Matt Yglesias has a nice bit of back-and-forth going over right-wing response to Paul Krugman. Krugman referred to the fact that King Richard II promised the peasants relief and then, when they'd all gone home, betrayed them. Donald Luskin retorted:16:40 GMT: Permalink
The peasant rebellion was triggered by the imposition of new higher taxes. That's right, Krugman, taxes. The thing that your "plutocrats" want less of. The thing you want more of. Taxes.And Glenn Reynolds referred to it, saying, "It's always about taxes." But Bruce Moomaw mailed Matt to point out that the issue was whose taxes:
Needless to say, the peasants were rebelling against higher taxes on themselves, not higher taxes on the rich (which is what Krugman wants). Ever notice how Rightists always refer to "raising our taxes", while carefully failing to specify who "we" are? (I wonder if any of the English nobles referred to the peasants as "lucky duckies"?)In the comments, Jesse (of Pandagon) says:
This is pretty much emblematic of most righty "fact checks" - off-topic and easily refuted. Substantive critiques are dropped by the wayside as soon as they think they have a factual error - and then the entire argument comes down to debating whether or not it's a factual error rather than whether or not the point is true.And the point, of course, is that these aren't our taxes the Bush administration wants to reduce, it's their taxes, which is something else altogether. They want to raise our taxes, to pay for all wars and things they want spend our money on - but undergod forbid they should have to spend their own. Those of us who make less than $300,000 a year really shouldn't be asked to foot the bill for games the very wealthy want to play with our money - and our lives.Let's do this again: The more money we have, the more money is likely to be circulating and therefore the more robust is the economy, as a result of which investors, including those in other nations, have more faith in our economy. It is this that keeps our economy strong. As the rich hoard more and more of the wealth, our economy weakens.
Things are really rockin' at blah3, and Stranger's got an interesting take on that under-reported poll:10:06 GMT: Permalink
A new CNN-Time poll came out the other day, and in Time's print version, the news wasn't very good for the Thug Cabal. Under the headline 'Bush's Poll Numbers Come Down To Earth,' it showed support for Chimpy nearly down to pre-9/11 numbers, with 55% approving and 37% giving thumbs down:Which leads us to the latest animation at Take Back the Media: Lie, Cheat & Steal:
[graphic]
In addition, it shows that 55% of Americans believe that Chimpy's advisors are running the show (only a third think the Lil' Dictator himself is calling the shots), and that just over half of us don't trust 'Re-Animator' Cheney. Fair enough.Hard to spin that, right? Well, think again.
If you look at the story about this same poll on CNN's web site, the headline is 'Bush Advisers Get Favorable Marks'! We'll forgive you if you sit down at this point - we understand you might be getting a bit dizzy.
Even more incredibly, both Time and CNN passed on reporting the most important aspect of this poll - that if the Thug Cabal tries to invade Iraq without UN support, then American support of the war plummets from 55% to just 27%. We had to check AP's report on this poll to get that little nugget. This poll does not appear on Time's web site, and is has yet to be mentioned on the air on CNN.
Could it be that both Time and CNN are doing a little selective reporting in order to create the impression that there's more support for the Thug Cabal than really exists? Nah...
More News From Middle EarthTurbulent Velvet has now joined the discussion of Tolkien, fantasy, and politics over at UFO Breakfast. (Hey, TV, it really is Patrick Nielsen Hayden.)
On another note, Stephen Bates looks at that original piece by Eric Tam and doesn't like this bit:
...this stirred up a revulsion within me that I imagine is somewhat akin to what a lot of music lovers felt when they heard that Kenny G had performed the unhallowed blasphemy of recording a synthesized duet with a reanimated Louis Armstrong.Y'know, I missed that the first time. Stephen didn't:
Eh? say WHAT? As a mostly retired semi-pro classical musician who loves jazz, I know a lot of serious jazz musicians, and they agree on two things: 1) whatever they may think of Kenny G (and opinion varies), they agree that "Classics in the Key of G" is the CD that proves the man can, after all, really play jazz, whatever else he may record and sell for a living, and 2) in jazz, there are no sacred texts; everything is open to additional creative input. For the most part, the musicians I know actually like Kenny's track with the resurrected Satchmo. Speaking only for myself, I imagine it is a track much like what Kenny and Armstrong might have recorded together, had their careers overlapped: I think Kenny G shows exceptional sensitivity to the original in both style and content. There is no violation taking place here, but rather an excellent instance of music-making spanning the generations. I'm sorry, but on this particular point, Tam is full of crap, and Kenny was right to do what he did.So there.And as long as we're on this fannish excursion, I note that Alison Scott's Macadamia says that the Map of Middle Plokta (and the rest of the issue) are now online. Naturally, I'm very proud to be the only person who got two landmarks named after them.
Saturday, 28 December 200220:14 GMT: Permalink
21st Century Tolkien Studies14:05 GMT: PermalinkYes, there's more! David Bratman has responded to Patrick in a letter that begins:
Patrick is essentially right, but I think a little more elaboration might better explain Eric Tam's perceptions.And Patrick responded to that in a letter that starts with:
I always enjoy discussing Tolkien with David Bratman, who is assuredly a world-class expert on the subject.At which point I conclude that the full exchange deserves it's own page. So, I give you yet another addition to The Sideshow Annex: 21st Century Tolkien Studies.
Orcs again13:13 GMT: PermalinkRandolph Fritz provides this quote from The Silmarillion to back up Patrick's position below on the redeemability of the orcs:
"...and by slow arts of cruelty were corrupted and enslaved; and thus did Melkor breed the hideous race of the Orcs in envy and mockery of the elves, of whom they were afterwards the bitterest foes. For the Orcs had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of Iluvatar; and naught that had life of its own, nor the semblance of life, could ever Melkor make since his rebellion in the Ainulindale before the Beginning; so say the wise. And deep in their dark hearts the Orcs loathed the Master whom they served in fear, the maker only of their misery. This it may be was the vilest deed of Melkor, and the most hateful to Iluvatar." - "Of the Coming of the Elves"
Bartcop asks if this is what Bush meant when he said, "Help is on the way."12:52 GMT: Permalink
FORT BRAGG, N.C. - They put aside their civilian jobs and marched off to help in the war on terrorism.Bart also has another one of those quotes up (on the main page) that "President Game Boy" periodically makes:And when the North Carolina National Guard's 211th Military Police Company came home after seven months guarding detainees in Afghanistan, they were welcomed with outstretched arms, a parade ...and a $13,000 bill.
"No excuses. If the president can make the time to exercise every day, anyone can."I guess he's already answered for himself Kendall Payne's question:
Think it over once or twice -
What lasts the longest in this life?
Character?
Or rock-hard thighs?"
Lisa English seconds my emotions about corporate media (see? I told you she was a kindred spirit) with enough smarts and vigor to make it worth hearing again.12:23 GMT: Permalink
Language Lessons12:09 GMT: PermalinkIf you liked Latin for breakups (via Epicycle), you'll love "Oh my god! There's an axe in my head." (Thanks to Patrick for the pointer to the latter.)
History Lesson11:55 GMT: PermalinkHeh. I can hear them saying it....
I love this.
Friday, 27 December 200215:59 GMT: Permalink
I knew that quote about interpreting fantasy would pique Patrick Nielsen Hayden's interest, and sure enough, he sent me a Letter of Comment:14:02 GMT: Permalink
I agree with Eric Tam that it's tricky to draw analogies from fantasy tales to real-world political situations. But stories of any sort have moral weight and resonance to the extent that they manage to connect to our own lives.Tam writes:
"Let me say it again: fantasy milieu have specific characteristics that make them fantastic. One such particularly important characteristic that often reoccurs is a very clear divide between Good and Evil, whereas morality in the real world is usually Very Difficult and Complicated, at least regarding the Issues that Matter. It is exactly this divide that makes the genre wonderful and diverting."
In other words, what's best about fantasy is that it's simplistic, and it should stay that way. I leave it as an exercise for you to speculate what our friend Terry Carr would have said about that.
Personally, it seems to me that while Tolkien has plenty of flaws, this business of THE LORD OF THE RINGS having a "very clear divide between Good and Evil" is a bum rap. Certainly the novel contains as many characters who mix good and evil, and who struggle with difficult choices, as any number of serious mainstream novels I can think of. Boromir is an obvious case, a man led into evil by his passionate desire to do a particular sort of good. Galadriel is another--she's partly responsible for a _great_ deal of the ill in the world, which is why her temptation scene is so important. Most importantly, if the divide between good and evil in Tolkien were truly as "very clear" as Tam asserts, Frodo and Sam would have killed Gollum the first chance they got, and the book would have ended with the triumph of Sauron.
A small example of the sort of bad reading that turns Tolkien into a D&D scenario is Tam's claim that orcs are "iredeemable." In fact, what we're told about orcs is that they came into existence when Morgoth tormented and twisted elves back at the beginning of the First Age. Now, what we know about evil in Tolkien's cosmology is that it has no power of true creation, only the power to twist and corrupt. So it's hard to believe that Tolkien, a Catholic who quite specifically rejected Manichean notions of Satan having powers coequal with God, would sign off on notion that any living thing is "iredeemable". In fact, Tolkien--both in the appendices and in the mouths of wise characters like Gandalf and Elrond--is wisely taciturn on these kinds off teleological specifics.
The better a story, the more likely it is that people are going to elicit a wide range of readings from it. Glenn Reynolds reads the "King of the Golden Hall" chapter of THE TWO TOWERS as a reminder that sometimes it's necessary to stand and fight. Well, sometimes it is. For me, the moral center of THE LORD OF THE RINGS is Gandalf's advice to Frodo: "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends." Cue Saturday Night Live routine: "Stop! You're both right!" Eric Tam says this sort of thing demonstrates that "such hermeneutics can cut many ways." I daresay this is true. But it accords oddly with his claim that moral simplemindedness is an essential characteristic of fantasy.
Is it about liberals being more boring? About the market separating unpopular media from what people really want? Think again.13:27 GMT: Permalink
The Pornography of PowerBut, if you are an honest political commentator, telling it like it is, not afraid to attack corporations and other rightwing forces in our society, then you don't last long. Progressive political commentator Jim Hightower, mentioned above, is a prime example. Mr. Hightower had a hugely popular talk-radio show based in Texas and broadcast throughout the country. It was one of the fastest-growing political programs in the United States, poised to get Lush-Rimbaugh-Big. Americans loved h is witty, homespun, Will Rogeresque, common man (and woman) viewpoints.
So what happened to his show? It got axed. Why did it get axed? It was profitable, it was popular, and it was growing. It got axed because Mr. Hightower wasn't a rightwing, pro-corporate mouthpiece like the Wills and Norths and Liddys and Rimbaughs and all the rest. Hightower attacked corporations for their stupidity, greed, and intolerance. He openly discussed America's shameful disparity in wealth (the worst in the world, besides Brazil), he attacked the 2-Party Dictatorship. He told Americans how money has so corrupted our democratic system (one dollar=one vote, a million dollars=a million votes). In short, he was a progressive populist who told it like it was-a MORTAL SIN in U.S. Mass Media. When you tell it like it is, you are erased from media existence. That is the power of our Monopolized Media.
Many years ago, noted scholar and professor of journalism Ben Bagdikian, in his visionary book, The Media Monopoly, warned Americans that the number of corporations that owned the vast majority of our media was terribly small, and getting smaller. But, too many Americans never heard the siren sound. Sadly, the trend that Bagdikian noted, has only accelerated in recent years. Thanks to Mega-Merger-Mania, the number of corporations that control our Media is down to around ten, maybe less.
Holiday Cheer13:16 GMT: PermalinkNathan Newman found this wonderful story:
A police officer got a Christmas bonus of $3,000 from homeless people who wanted to thank him for standing up for them.(Of course, you should be checking Nathan out regularly, anyway. Always lots of illumination of the real issues we are facing.)Officer Eduardo Delacruz was suspended for 30 days without pay last month after he refused a sergeant's order to arrest a homeless man found sleeping in a garage.
In gratitude, organizations for the homeless put together the fund for the 37-year-old officer, his wife and their five children. Homeless people also contributed change scrounged from passers-by, money earned from recycling cans and bottles, even a portion of their welfare checks.
I'm not gonna quote from this delightful story Mark Evanier has up, but you should take a look.
Lingerie Barbie! . (Via Max.)
Thursday, 26 December 200215:19 GMT: Permalink
Eric Tam takes issue with Glenn:
So if you're still with me after my pop heresy, I want to complain about a little comment that Instapundit slipped in with his Two Towers review:It's hard to describe anything that generates a more visceral irritation than this kind of tendentious politicized interpretation of a text that I know and love. Since the LOTR trilogy was basically my first exposure to fantasy, this stirred up a revulsion within me that I imagine is somewhat akin to what a lot of music lovers felt when they heard that Kenny G had performed the unhallowed blasphemy of recording a synthesized duet with a reanimated Louis Armstrong.And yeah, Viggo Mortensen's occasional off-camera antiwar blather notwithstanding, the inevitability of war, and the importance of having the will to resist evil despite the burdens and the horror is a repeated theme, twined in and around the despair and temptation points I mention above. Indeed, one speech in which Aragorn explains to Theoden that this isn't just the usual raiding, but an effort to stamp out his civilization, seems especially on point.I've previously noted (with respect to Buffy) the fallacious disanalogies that frequently ensnare people when they attempt to marshal fantasy plots to make real-world political points.
Let me say it again: fantasy milieu have specific characteristics that make them fantastic. One such particularly important characteristic that often reoccurs is a very clear divide between Good and Evil, whereas morality in the real world is usually Very Difficult and Complicated, at least regarding the Issues that Matter. It is exactly this divide that makes the genre wonderful and diverting.
A ready example: Sauron and the orcs are a very different kind of evil than Muslim fanatics. For one thing, orcs, like Buffy's vampires, are irredemable creatures without human souls. They are a different, inhuman species. If we were fighting orcs, we wouldn't need to consider the things that any moral human would have to consider if faced with the decision of whether to authorize actions like the bombing of Dresden or Hiroshima. Viewing Aragorn's urging of Theoden to go to war as "on point" with regard to our current situation vis-a-vis Iraq is about as nonsensical as viewing the interactions between elves, hobbits, and humans as carrying an applicable message about race relations in the U.S. I mean, I'd acknowledge that one race was superior to the others if it possessed a 1,000-year lifespan and had leaders who wielded the power of the Silmarils.
If, regardless of the disanalogies, we do decide to pursue the risky business of attempting to draw themes from fantasy worlds that can be applicable to ours, I should note that such hermeneutics can cut many ways. Its just as easy to draw heavily anti-war themes from Tolkien as it is to draw the hawkish themes that Instapundit wants to draw: war is only tolerable if it is absolutely and truly inevitable (i.e. when it is carried by the soulless forces of ultimate, unwordly evil); evil is characterized by imperialistic, expansionist aims and the desire for (or current possession of) overwhelming force. The most dovish symbol is perhaps the central trope of the One Ring, a good example of WMD if there ever was one: it can only be handled safely (and even then only temporarily) by an intensely pacifistic, agrarian, inward-regarding, and unambitious people who have no aspirations whatever for shaping the world in their image or for spreading their culture. The only safe way of dealing with the Ring is not to insure that it is in the hands of trustworthy people with good intentions, but rather to destroy it utterly, for its power inevitably corrupts even the purest of heart.
Greg Greene found a remarkable quote from Ann Coulter in the NYT: "I don't remember liberals being this indignant about the 9/11 terrorist attacks."Before he ran off on holiday, Bob Somerby ran a four-part series on just how liberal media coverage has really been, and asks a question that's troubled me since the first time I ever read an article by Michael Kelly: Why on earth does The Washington Post publish that guy?
Liberal Oasis is, as always, excellent. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to round up the Democratic leadership and throw them in an outdoor swimming pool in Vancouver. Bill Frist is at least as bad as Lott and all the Dems can do is praise him? Gah!
Elton Beard finds out more about the lack of a heart in the Republican party. Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, last night blocked a global deal to provide cheap drugs to poor countries, following intense lobbying of the White House by America's pharmaceutical giants.
I'm lame, I know, it's taken me this long to change the link for Mac Thomason's page. Anyway, he grossed me out with this one.
Wednesday, 25 December 200223:59 GMT: Permalink
The Sideshow Annex05:25 GMT: PermalinkI've spent the day fiddling around with some pages I've been meaning to put up. I should tell you about The Sideshow Annex anyway since:
I've put up an old fanzine article, Clues, because it relates fairly directly to the piece I wrote today. That piece starts like this:
- It's where emergency blogging will take place in the event of something disastrous happening here (it's with another ISP).
- It's also where the Sideshow Media Page, We Want the Airwaves!, is being built; send appropriate links!
- It's also where I'll be putting separate articles and any other personal writing.
Gifts of the Heart
In the back of my mind I've been writing this article for about 15 years. God, how can it be that long? But today I'm listening to a CD I got for Xmas - all of my Xmas prezzies were either money or CDs - and listening to this particular album has brought all these thoughts close to the surface. In some ways, this is a review of that album.
In 1974 I was sitting in Ron Bounds' living room waiting for something or other having to do with getting ready to hold the World Science Fiction Convention, Discon II, and I picked up a a book of short stories and started reading. I think I borrowed the book from Ron so I could finish it. I knew I recognized the name of the editor and got a good vibe from it, having read one or two others of his collections, but at that stage I hadn't quite gotten who he was. But when I finished reading Fellowship of the Stars, I knew that Terry Carr was one of the good guys, and maybe a particularly special one. It was the first time I'd fallen in love with an editor. More
VisitorsThose I know who experienced the dubious benefits of "charity" as children speak of insult and humiliation. Jeanne D'Arc has such a story to tell, about the man who delivered the charity food box:
I thought of the man who sucked the air out of Christmas a few days ago, as I was reading an article about President Bush urging Americans to give more to the needy. I'd second the idea, of course. It certainly wasn't his plea for time and money that bothered me. It was a president being photographed putting canned peaches and spinach in a bag, without thinking about the fact that there are more important and effective things he could do to help the needy. But of course that assumes that the point is to help those in need, and not to provide photo-ops for presidents, and chances for the middle class to feel good about themselves while getting rid of their garbage.George Bush instead hides from the public he's sworn to serve. Which makes me think of this:
"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world -- oh, woe is me! -- and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!"Nathan Newman can tell you about how much charity we can find in the GOP heart.
[...]
"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?""I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?"
Scrooge trembled more and more.
"Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!"
[...]
"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself."Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"
Tuesday, 24 December 200205:18 GMT: Permalink
Another great Flash animation by Mark Fiore: Whole Lotta Racism.TBogg socks it to Dr. Laura. He's also got some good weirdo news about a Human Sacrifice At The Bizarre Bazaar and the No Parking sign of Turin. Another nice Michael Kelly take-down, too.
Jody at Naked Writing knows the score on abstinance-only sex miseducation.
MadKane announces the top humorous law blogs for 2002.
Anger Management Course has a great post on sleazy Republican policies, especially on how school vouchers are just more of the same. (And I hadn't heard the term "CHINO" before, for Christian in Name Only.)
Public Nuisance has a good go at righties whining about how mean the librul media is to Bill Frist.
Salon addresses something that's driving me crazy, too.
Charles Dodgson has some thoughts on l'affaire Lott and wonders whether The Mighty Casio can keep making waves.
Tuesday, 24 December 200205:18 GMT: Permalink
Another great Flash animation by Mark Fiore: Whole Lotta Racism.TBogg socks it to Dr. Laura. He's also got some good weirdo news about a Human Sacrifice At The Bizarre Bazaar and the No Parking sign of Turin. Another nice Michael Kelly take-down, too.
Jody at Naked Writing knows the score on abstinance-only sex miseducation.
MadKane announces the top humorous law blogs for 2002.
Anger Management Course has a great post on sleazy Republican policies, especially on how school vouchers are just more of the same. (And I hadn't heard the term "CHINO" before, for Christian in Name Only.)
Public Nuisance has a good go at righties whining about how mean the librul media is to Bill Frist.
Salon addresses something that's driving me crazy, too.
Charles Dodgson has some thoughts on l'affaire Lott and wonders whether The Mighty Casio can keep making waves.
Monday, 23 December 200223:37 GMT: Permalink
Patrick Nielsen Hayden has some free time, it seems, and is doing some serious posting today. Lots of great stuff, but I particularly liked this one:22:58 GMT: Permalink
Liberals enchanted by good ol' straight-shooting John McCain might want to recall that, for the 2000 South Carolina primary, McCain retained the editor of Southern Partisan magazine--the pro-segregation, pro-Confederate publication that Trent Lott and John Ashcroft have taken heat for appearing in--as a campaign consultant for $20,000 a month. Arizona journalist Sam Coppersmith discusses it here.McCain was certainly cold-cocked by the Bush campaign, but it's obvious that he was as willing as the rest of the GOP to sidle up to the hard-core racists. Keep that in mind the next time you're being charmed by McCain's skillful handling of the national media.
Soreyes says: This may be the cutest Flash-based Xmas card I've seen this year. He's also found a passel of alternative LOTRs.15:48 GMT: Permalink
The Daily Brew has a letter telling the story of the 1914 Christmas Truce in the first person. You may remember I posted a song that refers to this incident on Christmas of last year, here.15:02 GMT: PermalinkJust found a new one, The ReachM High Cowboy Network Noose, from which I learn that Zal Yanovski, guitar-player for the Lovin' Spoonful, has died at 58.
Dig this:14:14 GMT: Permalink
Yo! This site is your ultimate resource for information about Stephen Hawking the gangsta rapper. While there are dozens of other sites on the web devoted to Stephen Hawking's scientific achievements, I am unaware of a single site (aside from this one) devoted to his career as a lyrical terrorist.On the same page, a pointer to an even more essential resource:
On another note, I've found what may very well be the most useful site on the internet. You're a God fearing Christian right, just hanging out waiting for the Rapture (which is, of course, going to occur any minute now), but suddenly you realize: "when the rapture comes and I'm taken up physically into Heaven, my friends and family are going to wonder what happened to me." If only there was some way you could send them a message; introducing RaptureLetters.com.
Here's a useful item from a month-old post on rec.arts.sf.fandom by Rob Hansen:
Between 1910 and 1970 British Pathe newsreels were shown before the main feature in cinemas over here. Now, at www.britishpathe.com, some 3,500 hours of these have just been made available for free (higher quality versions can be licensed for website use). I used it the other day and the search function took me right to what I was looking for - some old news reports of bell installations featuring the current owner's father that we're thinking of adding to my company's website. Worth a look.
Sunday, 22 December 200216:31 GMT: Permalink
VisualsAnother blah3 flash at Take Back the Media recounts The Year With George W. Bush.
Planet Swank has found an important item in The British Medical Journal - complete with illustrations:
The Xmas edition of the British Medical Journal traditionally carries material in a less serious (*ahem*) vein. This year's edition continues that tradition with the results of an analysis of Playboy centerfolds over that magazine's entire 50-year run. They found that, over the years, models have become less curvaceous, trending toward a slimmer, more "androgynous" body profile.
Saturday, 21 December 200217:32 GMT: Permalink
A lovely Solstice weekend to you all, folks, and a little gift I never get tired of: A one-page cartoon version of A Christmas Carol, from an ancient Xmas edition of Ansible.17:00 GMT: Permalink
By now quite a number of people have posted the painfully ironic Ashcroft speech inveighing against the evil Clinton administration's desire to eavesdrop on all your electronic communications, and standing up proudly against any government (that happens to be the Clinton administration) invading our privacy. Some parts of the speech provide such strong advocacy of civil liberties that even I might have written it. Of course, it was always a joke coming from Ashcroft, who already had a pretty considerable history of trying to overturn your civil liberties, but never mind that. Seeing the Forest rubs it in real good:16:12 GMT: Permalink
Let's look at what was going on. At a time when anyone could listen in on any phone call or e-mail message because no one was using encryption, the Clinton Administration was proposing to implement a universal encryption chip, called the "Clipper Chip," into all phones and computers, so that our phone and computer communications would be secure and no one could listen in except law enforcement - with a warrant. The Republicans intentionally spread the ridiculous lie that this was an attempt to listen in on our communications. Because of the cynical, suspicious anti-government environment that Republican messaging had created this lie caught on.The basis for the Republicans' smear was that the Administration had a plan to allow law enforcement officials to break the code if they obtained a warrant. (Nothing would stop people from using their own encryption if they wanted to.) Ironically, this was specifically so they could listen in on potential terrorists. This is what the Republicans claimed was Clinton planning to listen in! Now remember, without the chip the government theoretically could listen in on any communications, because no one was using encryption. Clinton's plan to keep people from being able to listen in was described as a plan to listen in, and people bought it.
And because they were able to block this chip, no one is encrypting now. In fact, this is the very reason why the Bush plan is so dangerous! This new Bush plan to monitor all of our internet activities is possible BECAUSE they blocked Clinton's universal encryption chip. It just makes you want to scream.
Knowing that The Bush Administration is now proposing a plan to monitor our internet use, and even to monitor all of our e-mail messages, and this is possible because he was able to block Clinton's plan to get us all using encryption, read the rest of his speech. It's almost comical if only it weren't so terrible.
Epicycle with a good rant on those evil Recording Industry Swine:15:59 GMT: Permalink
Two fascinating and closely-connected stories today, featuring those stalwart defenders of corporate greed the Recording Industry Association of America. Firstly, it emerges in The Register that the RIAA have been distinctly "economical with the truth" about their recent sales figures - although it may well be true that CD sales have fallen by 10% over the last few years, they have just admitted that their actual production has fallen by 25% - the industry released only around 27,000 titles in 2001, compared to 38,900 in 1999. In other words, despite fewer albums being released, despite the evils of copy-protection, despite the terrible threat of file-sharing, the war against it, and the price increases that it has been used to justify - in spite of all that people are buying more CDs than ever! Obviously, this news casts an even greater shadow over the RIAA's increasingly hysterical demands for aggressive powers against file-sharing networks and mandatory copy-protection for all, but with Intel and Microsoft both firmly behind the idea of digital rights management we may be at the stage where facts don't matter much, any more... Elsewhere, and acting as a timely reminder of the exact corporate nature of the recording industry, it seems that after the success of the anti-trust suit alleging widespread price-fixing of CDs by the industry giants, we've finally come down to the pay-out. Under the terms of the proposed settlement, every US citizen who bought pre-recorded CDs, tapes or records between 1995 and 2000 will be eligible for a refund to a maximum of $20 each. A little over $67 million has been allocated (along with $75 million's worth of CDs, destined for various public and non-profit groups), but the final amount will depend on the number of claims made - and if the individual payments would be less than $5, the whole amount will go instead to those same non-profit groups. It's grim stuff - an organisation who's members have admitted to being sleazy and corrupt, both individually and as a corporate mass, is successfully lobbying the government into passing new, invasive, un-constitutional laws merely to allow it to sell less product at greater profit. Damn, but it's the 19th century robber-barons all over again! <sigh>
Blogissimo15:01 GMT: Permalink1. Awards again
Mike Finley has set up his own blogging awards, using a quite different formula from the Koufaxes. Good for him. Skippy, our favorite kangaroo, has his own take.
Meanwhile, I was startled to note that when I was talking about really good weblogs by women, I left out one of my favorites, Lisa English's Ruminate This. I suspect this mental block was a result of frustration; I don't know why, but I get more errors when I try to read that page than I get from any other site. It's probably just a local phenomenon, and maybe has something to do with the oddities of my clunky little 'puter and lousy dial-up and all that, but the page isn't there about half the time I look for it. However, it always rewards the effort when I finally do get to it. Hell, I might even have included Ruminate This as an essential blog if I could load it more reliably. I get a strong feeling that Lisa is very much a kindred spirit. For example, check out her response to the recent outrageous round-up of Middle Eastern men:
Do you recognize this country anymore? I sure as hell don't.And I love her reaction to the administration's latest floater about how we non-wealthy folks are not paying enough taxes:
[...]
We'll say it again: it's a surreal American reality that the petrified are leading the home of the brave. There are ways of combating terrorism without eviscerating the land of the free.
You might ask, "What on earth is going on here?" Well, Bob McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice has an answer for you. He says, "The administration has finally admitted that its maniacal zeal to cut taxes for the very wealthy will have to be paid for by much higher taxes on the vast majority of Americans. Now that the cat's out of the bag, it's time for the public to wake upbefore it's too late." He's right.Right on, sister! Oh, and by the way, bear in mind that when we're talking about "the poor and working class" in this instance, we mean people who make less than $100,000 a year. Isn't that you? Well, they want to add another three grand to your tax bill, sucker.You know, the media finally got it straight when they eventually jumped on the Trent Lott story last week - a story that is as much about the American media's lackluster performance at informing the public interest, as it is one man's loathsome life of bigotry. Isn't it about time this issue - the royal screwing of America's poor and working class - got the media's attention? If the newspapers and talking heads won't bring it up, don't you think that it's about time that We The People, pushed them to it? Maybe we need to devote as much space and outrage to this story as we did to the one about that bigoted Republican politician?
[Yes, I know there is at least one visitor to The Sideshow who actually makes more than that - but I doubt he likes this, either.]
Elsewhere, Matt Yglesias might just win a Swine Award for this - I don't so much care about where my name falls on his blogroll as that I'd rather be listed anywhere as "Sideshow" rather than simply "Carol". And if he can do it for Capazzola (listed as "Rittenhouse"), he can bloody well do it for me. Fink.
Nevertheless, he's got several interesting items up, including this one:
Sarah Wildman says that Jeff Sessions has a worse record on civil rights than Trent Lott's and that he's got a track record of racist remarks as well. In his defense, I should say that when I was a Senate intern I heard that Sessions was working behind the scenes to try and forge a consensus on the Judiciary Committee that something should be done about the crack vs. poweder cocaine sentencing disparity issue.And sorry, guys, I still say if these Republican honchos walk like racists and talk like racists, it's a bloody good bet that they are racists - and if their constituents continue to vote for them, a lot of them might just be racists, too.Unfortunately, the attempt at consensus fell apart when it turned out that what Sessions had in mind was making the cocaine sentences harsher which wasn't exactly what drug law reformers had in mind. At any rate, that was just a second-hand report, and hence quite possibly false (but hey, possibly false stories are what the internet's all about), but it jibes nicely with this story:
Another damaging witness--a black former assistant U.S. Attorney in Alabama named Thomas Figures--testified that, during a 1981 murder investigation involving the Ku Klux Klan, Sessions was heard by several colleagues commenting that he "used to think they [the Klan] were OK" until he found out some of them were "pot smokers."The man may have a problem with blacks, but his hatred for drug users is color-blind.Jesse Taylor has a good rejoinder for GOPpers who whine about how liberals are the real racists.
2. The Referrers
I've always been vaguely amused by the disparity between the stats I get from Extreme (that little purple logo up in the title header), Sitemeter (the striped square down below the blogroll and archive links), and the web stats my ISP gives me for this site. But for the last few days I've been amusing myself by including the referrer list down at the bottom of the pink column, and it's added whole new levels of absurdity. Last night I asked Patrick if he had any idea why it wasn't registering click-through (of which I get a lot) from Electrolite and Making Light, and he said that when he looks at my page they show up at the top of the list. When I look at the page, I see Eschaton at the top, and he doesn't see it at all. He figured it was different browsers, but I'm seeing the same thing in IE/Crazy Browser as I'm seeing in Mozilla. Patrick's diagnosis is that it bites, but I think it's funny. I'll probably leave it there until it ceases to entertain me, but in the meantime, please don't make any silly assumptions about it being accurate.
From Private Eye, 15-28 November 2002:
'MOON IS A FAKE'
Claim Nutters
by our NASA staff Loon O'TickA GROWING body of internet-based madmen are now convinced that the moon is nothing more than a giant photo hanging in the sky, put there by the U.S. government to fool the Russians. (Reuters)
Friday, 20 December 200216:08 GMT: Permalink
Among other things, Ted Barlow has a fascinating post on transsexuals up. I'm not surprised by what he found out, but some people might be.15:30 GMT: PermalinkI have a lot of good friends who are transsexuals, and I have no objection to people wanting to re-identify in this way, but when it comes to people trying to impose on me the "woman trapped in a man's body" theory I have to put my foot down. I've never seen any evidence that m2f transsexuals have any special knowledge of what it feels like to be a woman in a woman's body, and I'm not prepared to re-define that experience just to comfort people who would rather think they do.
I don't care what kind of clothes you like to wear or who you like to date; if you think women run around all day surrounded by some aura of "feeling like a woman" in our every endeavor, you're a guy. If you think we open the door to the plumber thinking about his maleness rather than thinking about what it's going to cost and whether we're going to get ripped off, you're a guy. A lot of guys have stupid ideas about what it "means" to be female, and the "woman trapped in a woman's body" theory starts right at the foundation of those same stupid ideas. If you're in a man's body and you feel like you'd rather be in a female body, that's your own subjective experience - and you are certainly entitled to feel that way - but it tells you absolutely nothing about what it feels like for me to have been in a female body all of my life. 90% of the things I do don't make me think about being female at all, and the other 10% are a direct result of the effects of being raised in this body and living in it. "I wonder if it's time for my period." "Damn, I forgot my diaphragm, I hope he's got condoms." "I hope this doesn't hurt." "Is it too early for menopause?" "Should I take HRT?" "This damned underwire chafes."
A lot of the time you can think, "I feel like a woman," because some guy is making you so crazy with lust that you feel like you'd let him do anything he wants with you, but there's nothing particularly female about wanting someone to have their wicked way with you. We have a societally-imposed myth about male sexual dominance, but in real life the division is between different individuals (or different days of the week, or how we react to specific individuals based on their behavior), not different sexes. As I've remarked before, life would be a whole lot easier if all women had one sexuality and all men had the corresponding sexuality, but much of our confusion comes from the fact that we often believe that when it isn't true. In reality, a lot of men feel exactly the same way. Being sexually submissive is not more common among women than it is among men. And plenty of women are sexual dominants without ever having a moment's confusion about whether they'd rather be men - they know they're women and they like it like that. Moreover, sexual dominance and social dominance are two different things that don't necessarily track with each other, so someone who "acts manly" or "butch" in their business life or in public generally may be very, very different sexually. You can't say they're different sexes depending on whether they are in or out of bed. And then there are people who "switch"....
The only things we really, really know about the difference between men and women are what our bodies actually do, and those things are mostly about reproduction. A large part of "being a woman" is about being surrounded by people who assume that someday, at least, you will become pregnant, and you will do the sorts of things that mothers do, and that will be the principle focus of your life. Even if you have some genetic inability to conceive, that will be your experience - people don't discuss it with you, they just behave a certain way because they perceive you as female. You are not conscious of all of these things. You don't even know you are adjusting your own behavior on the basis of their expectations. But it happens, because people just get used to the way other people react to them, even though we don't know why people react to us the way they do. So you may think you know what my life is like, but you don't. Please don't tell me you do.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden finds even more to dislike about Woodrow Wilson, who brought Jim Crow to Washington with him: Don't forget that Richard Nixon, architect of the modern Republican "Southern strategy," liked to mau-mau easily-confused journalists by describing himself as a "Wilsonian liberal." How right he was.Elton Beard chimes in on Nora Vincent, but then discovers he's already been scooped. Ah, but he does it so well!
Video clip of Al Gore on The Daily Show.
Thursday, 19 December 200203:03 GMT: Permalink
I haven't voted in the Koufax Awards. There are a lot of reasons, but one is that I have too much trouble deciding. (Another is that it's all going by too fast for me.) Over on the blogroll there's lots of good stuff, and most of those listed have a lot to recommend them. Most of them have had days when they were better than anything else going. (And anyway, I just don't have time to go back over everything that's been posted all year and pick the best single post, and stuff like that there.)01:27 GMT: PermalinkYou're all the best. Even on your bad days. Even when you've been away for a week or three and I'm bummed out that you haven't posted lately. You all contribute something special, in your way. How can I not vote for you?
I'll go this far: There are a few blogs that I consider so essential that I read them every single day without fail, no matter what. That's saying a lot, by the way, because between my natural slow reading speed, my lousy dial-up connection, and the fact that my right eye is making reading a bit more tiring lately, it's hard to fit much in. There are a number of blogs that I'm very fond of but don't get to more than twice a week, or even once a week, and sometimes maybe not even that often.
Essential Weblogs
Now, you'll notice there are a lot of obvious omissions in this very short list. There are other pages I do read every day but don't really think of as "blogs" in the usual sense (at least three of which are nominees in the Koufax shortlist). There are other pages I would read every day but when it's late and I'm tired and I think about how slowly Altercation loads, I decide it can wait 'til tomorrow night.
- Every day, I read Electrolite as soon as I've finished checking my mail. I need to know if Patrick has something to say today. Yes, it's true, a lot of that is personal, but one reason Patrick and I are so close is because he sometimes has a real knack for zeroing in on a point and articulating it unusually well. And when you think he's wrong, he's willing to be convinced - politely, of course. There are days of the week when Patrick is the best writer there is, and he's smart. He has a giant stefnal brain that is hungry for information on many subjects and sops it up eagerly - and sees patterns that other people miss. I'll probably check there again before I log off for the night, too.
- I told Atrios he had to start a weblog because I could see from the way he posted to the Bartcop Forum that he was really, really good at finding the sparky stuff. Eschaton succeeds beyond even my own expectations. I'd feel like I didn't know what was going on if I let the day go by without checking his page at least once - and I might check more than once.
- Maxspeak gives me the background on policies, and
- Liberal Oasis gives me the politics. (Yes, there are other good sites that do that, but I feel really comfortable with these guys and I want to see what they have to say first.)
- Tapped is excellent, I always find something neat and useful there.
And what - no girls? How can I leave out Talk Left when it's so good (yes, it is) and it's talking about such an important subject? (Important to me, too - I'm really into that stuff.) How can I leave out Body and Soul? And undergod knows Teresa is a first-class thinker as well as a top-flight writer. Well, what can I say? I read them on most days, but sometimes they get left out if I'm trying to concentrate on checking on people I read less often. (And Teresa generally posts infrequently, so checking up on her only seven days out of ten, or something like that, usually doesn't mean I'm likely to miss anything for any length of time.)
But see, I vote for you guys every day. I have you on my blogroll, and sometimes I vote for you twice, by linking to you here in the rolling entries as well. These are The Sideshow Awards.
I learned more from this Charles Dodgson piece about the weird goings-on in Venezuela than I have learned from anything else. It's a bit scary.00:13 GMT: PermalinkGary Farber seems to be posting again - and speaking of scary (although you probably already thought so), he's found a few not-much discussed paragraphs in that Esquire piece about Karl Rove, about a guy who used to work teamed up with Karl Rove before something changed it all: "What can I say?" Weaver says quietly. "Like me, all the moderate Republicans have been run out of the party by the Right. I'm doing what I've always done politically; these guys just call themselves Democrats now."
From the intelligent right, our favorite extremist, Jim Henley, offers A Brief History of the Future via The Stars My Destination, E is for Effort, and Starship Troopers.
Josh Marshall is just full of great stuff.
Jeanne D'Arc suggests a good poll question: Does America have a moral obligation to help rebuild Afghanistan?
At last! Liberal Oasis finally has permalinks! You should read the whole thing, of course, but at least now I can tell you to read this and this.
Bruce Baugh has the numbers:
These are not precisely the data I was looking for, but George Ziemann has gone through the RIAA's figures on sales and production. The upshot of it is that profit per release is up. The number of new releases has been cut drastically, by a quarter or so--after the closure of Napster, as Reimann points out. But the remaining releases are each earning a lot more. The overall decline is in the realm of 6% over the last couple of years, which is by no means unusual in the midst of a recession. Ziemann claims, and I think these figures bear him out, that if the number of releases had not been slashed so far, the music industry would be enjoying net growth in revenue.You said it, sugar.In short: they are lying lying lying about the impact of piracy. What's hurting the music industry is apparently bad managerial response to the basic fact of recession, cutting production more than was warranted and without doing things like reforming accounting practices, refraining from sales hikes, and not alienating customers with poorly conceived and presented anti-piracy schemes.
Wednesday, 18 December 200216:39 GMT: Permalink
Uppity Negro says:15:22 GMT: Permalink
And possibly -- I can really only speak for myself, you know -- possibly, other Black people do as well, and this is the reason we avoid the fuckers like the plague. Not because of any great love of the Democrats, but because the Republicans are more openly, blatantly racist.No kidding. Personally, I find it offensive that the Democrats have been so silent about this - I don't mean this week, I mean generally. Like when they failed to keep Ashcroft out of the AG seat when they knew perfectly well what kind of a creep he was. They're afraid of being accused of "borking" someone, I suppose, but let's not forget that Bork was "borked" for a damn good reason - his hostility to basic civil liberties was no secret, and he deserved what he got. The RNC likes to pretend that it was some sort of "politics of personal destruction", but it wasn't; a man who wants so desperately to explain away the Constitution can not be trusted to uphold and defend it. And that's what's wrong with virtually all of the current Republican leadership.It's really not acceptable to decide to sacrifice the rights of Americans to political expediency. When the Democratic leadership decides to keep quiet about the reprehensible attitudes (and legislative history, and criminal activities) of Bush's minions because they want to show everyone how willing they are to play nice, they're taking a morally indefensible position. There are some things you just have to stand up against, and out-and-out racism is one of them.
And I'm tired of hearing that these Republicans aren't "really" racist because of the southern strategy, which is "just" a political strategy and nothing to do with where their hearts are. Look, you don't decide on a strategy of deliberately encouraging racism, of exploiting it and even using rhetoric that is intended to stir it up, with all of the horror that that entails, if you actually regard black people as human beings who deserve to be treated with the respect that is due any human being.
But I disagree with Matt Yglesias that the southern strategy is unnecessary for the RNC. He argues that racism alone isn't required for people who agree with other parts of the Republican agenda, but I think he fails to understand how much racism and, say, anti-feminism, or opposition to legal abortion, are part of the constellation for this type of social reactionary. Once you believe that certain groups of people have a "place" in society that exists outside of the context of what they are best at and how much potential they have to contribute to society - and regardless of how awkwardly they fit into that "place" - you are already playing in their ballpark. Racism is as much a part of that social philosophy as anti-abortion/anti-feminism. Essentialist bigotry isn't just about race, but it's also about race.
But even when you get away from the more overt racist, you still run into some of that essentialism, and it would be a mistake to pretend that the more "intellectual" and less visibly racist social reactionary arguments don't also contain that component. There are people who are exceptionalists - that is, they think some blacks are good enough to stand beside them (given enough white blood, or given pure blood, depending on their type of prejudice) - but they still think that most blacks are disproportionately poor or more likely to end up in jail because, basically, most blacks are (genetically) intellectually inferior. They don't get that racism really does play a part in this, that maybe more black people end up in jail because cops are more likely to look for crime among blacks in the first place, or that maybe black people have more trouble getting good jobs and developing businesses because color has something to do with why they don't get called in for interviews or receive bank loans. I've known some pretty smart people - people who weren't anti-feminist or anti-abortion - who have fallen for that one. Don't think for a minute it didn't influence which party they tended to vote for and which programs they supported.
I realize some people are simply too young to realize how vacuous - how totally ahistorical - many of the Republican arguments against liberal social programs really are. They like to blame those liberal programs for what they perceive as increases in crime among blacks, but they're unaware that crime among blacks simply didn't used to count; only crimes against whites were important. Yes, it's really true that in some parts of the country, killing a black person wasn't murder - it was littering.
How willing you are to believe arguments that lead to the conclusion that "we're doing too much for blacks" has a lot to do with how unwilling you are to believe that black people are just as good as white people. The easy acceptance on the right of books like The Bell Curve, and the unwillingness to acknowledge the racist motivations behind such documents, tells you a whole lot about just what field the RNC is playing in. Yes, they need racism to win. If it was just that some of the more libertarian arguments the right makes were what counted, it wouldn't be a southern strategy, and it wouldn't deliver southern states so dependably.
Yep, it really is better if you read those Krugman articles in their entirety instead of just the excerpts. Here's a little tip from Epicycle:01:32 GMT: Permalink
Elsewhere, here is a rather neat online login generator for the annoyingly-restricted New York Times online news archive. If you haven't signed up already, avoid giving them a huge mass of annoyingly personal details by saving the page locally and connecting as a different anonymous user each time. Hah!
Interesting Times goes through his own little evolution after the announcement that Gore isn't running, first deciding Gore has missed a message:12:59 GMT: Permalink
For all of Gore's talk about learning the lessons of the 2000 election, I think he still doesn't get it. The word behind the scenes is that he doesn't want to run because he doesn't think he can get the support he will need. He is wrong. It is only amongst the power-brokers in the DNC and DLC that he has problems. But the rank-and-file want DESPERATELY for him to run. It is precisely the bowing and scraping to the powers that be that, I think, doomed his run in 2000.But maybe not. One of the big problems Gore had during the 2000 campaign is that leading Democrats did very little to support him. If those same people have already made it clear they plan to do even less in 2004, he's going to have an even harder time of it. It's hard enough even to run for a local election without the support of the party; running for president on your own just doesn't seem very do-able at all.He's listening to the wrong people once again.
He's angry at the usual suspects, too:
Look, Kutner's advice is not bad advice, and in a better world it would be well to listen to it, but it misses one of the key dynamics of the 2000 election: the GOP has an extremely sophisticated smear machine that is hooked into the establishment media (as well as the fifth columnists at FOX) at many levels. There is no Democrat out there, no matter how "comfortable he or she is in their own skin", that will be able to avoid getting the same kind of treatment that Gore got.But he seems to be calming down.This is the mistake that the Democrats have made repeatedly for the last two decades (at least). They continue to think the problem their candidates have has something to do with the nature of the candidates. Whether it is the blandness of a Mondale or a Dukakis, the philandering of a Clinton, or the stiffness of a Gore, Democrats like Kutner have convinced themselves that, if they just find the right candidate, they can avoid these problems. But the problems these candidates had were primarily due to the one trait they have in common: they are Democrats.
Gore made the same mistake in 2000 that Kutner is making now. He thought that, since he wasn't the womanizer that Clinton was, that he could skate on the good record of the Clinton years and get into the White House on a breeze. He never really caught on to the fact that it wasn't his association with Clinton that caused him so much grief. It was solely because he was standing between the Republicans and the throne that they feel they are entitled to.
Many political junkies, especially on the left, have already come to terms with the fact that we no longer live in a Democracy. We all know how painful a realization that was. I still feel traumatized by it. But many of the citizenry (and probably more then a few in the establishment press and the leadership of both parties) have not. To vote for Gore, to "re-elect" him, would require admitting that Bush is illegitimate and therefore, our system has failed.Maybe that's right, I dunno. I'll think about it. Still doesn't answer the question of who can beat Bush, of course. But this does seem to be a blog after my own heart.That's a mighty big pill for people to swallow. Perhaps Gore wisely chose not to force it down their throats.
I'm not sure I'd seen Mark Kleiman's weblog before, but I found it via Gailonline, when she quoted this:12:45 GMT: Permalink
CLASS WARFARE FROM THE BUSH ADMINISTRATIONRemember how the Bushies denounced any attempt to determine the allocation of the Bush tax cuts among the income percentiles as "class warfare"? Turns out Republicans don't believe in preaching class warfare; they just go ahead and practice it. As in all wars, truth is the first casualty.
The Treasury Department and the Council of Economic Advisers are hard at work on increasing taxes for the non-rich. First step: redefinition. Let's make the current system look more progressive than it is, so we can then make it less progressive without feeling guilty.
[The convention of ignoring the regressivity of state and local taxes, and treating the federal system as if it existed in a vacuum, is too well established to be worth mentioning, so I won't. But Timothy Noah at Slate does, with links to the numbers.]
Since the payroll tax for Social Security is the federal tax that hits the non-wealthy hardest, the folks at Treasury have now decided that -- could I possibly make this stuff up? -- they're not taxes after all. Why not? Because the people who pay them later collect benefits. (No one who pays income tax, of course, gets any benefit at all out of the programs the income tax supports.)
Two different people sent me URLs for two different Wired articles today:12:02 GMT: PermalinkJack Heneghan found this piece about how artists are using different types of copyright to make their music available free for non-commercial use, among other permutations. It also points to Roger McGuinn's website, which points you to free .mp3s he has made available. And just in case you had any illusions:
Roger McGuinn, founder of legendary folk-rock band The Byrds, has made over 25 albums in his recording career. But besides modest advances, he's never made money on record royalties.And Ulrika O'Brien sent this link for a story about what happened when someone decided to turn the tables on John Poindexter and his personal details ended up all over the net.
According to Simon Bradshaw at PNN, the London Circle meeting is still up in the air. The Silver Cross is definitely booked for the Christmas Ton, but after that it's still confusion.
Tuesday, 17 December 200223:14 GMT: Permalink
From Charles Kuffner:15:25 GMT: Permalink
There's a point at which all "state's rights" arguments break down for me, and that's the point at which the exercise of state's rights leads to a lessening of freedom for some class of Americans who happen to live in the wrong state. If we can't agree that all Americans, in all 50 states, have the same basic right to vote, buy property, hold a job, marry, raise children, and live free then we may as well declare this whole "United States" thing to be a failure. Let all 50 states go their own way and be done with it, for if the federal government cannot guarantee the rights of all its citizens then it truly has no purpose. At least then we won't be subjected to tedious debates about how those overreaching know-it-alls in Washington have cruelly and arbitrarily ended someone's precious way of life just because it clashed with an inconvenient sentence in an old document in a museum somewhere.There's more, but I've run out of energy to deal with it. Suffice it to say that any attempt to defend Trent Lott's words as an endorsement of "state's rights" is just a defense of the right of some Americans to oppress other Americans over the right of all Americans to live as free men and women. If you truly believe there's a palatable way of phrasing that, then you're as bad as he is.
Paul Krugman's Gotta Have Faith says:14:10 GMT: Permalink
Last week the Bush administration made an important announcement. I'm not referring to the selection of a new economic team, which will make absolutely no difference to policy. I'm talking about the executive order removing longstanding barriers between church and state.Krugman worries that the illumination of Lott's crackpottery is just a one-shot, and the media will just go back to its usual trivia and pretend that he was an aberration. But he's obviously not. The entire Republican leadership is riddled with these people. As I've said before, fruitcakes like Lott, Ashcroft and DeLay did not just get there by accident - they were chosen by George W. Bush and by those in Congress to take these powerful positions. It's not like no one knew what they were like - it was all on the record and has been for years. (Compare that with Cynthia McKinney, who, while not nearly as far out on the fringes as these right-wing weirdos are, was never given a leadership position in the party and was abandoned by them in short order.)The announcement didn't attract much attention amid the furor over Trent Lott. Yet it contains the seeds of a similar future uproar. The media were shocked, shocked to discover that prominent Republicans have a soft spot for segregation something that was obvious long before Mr. Lott inserted his foot in his mouth. One of these years they'll be equally shocked to discover that prominent Republicans have a soft spot for theocracy.
Of course, the administration insists that the new policy isn't intended to allow government-funded proselytizing. And it would surely deny that by explicitly permitting religious discrimination in hiring organizations that receive federal contracts can "take faith into account in making employment decisions" it is opening up a new source of patronage for its friends on the Christian right.
Why am I not reassured?
For one thing, we are well advised not to trust anything the administration says about the goals of its domestic policy. John J. DiIulio, who initially headed the Bush administration's faith-based initiative, told a reporter, Ron Suskind, that this White House had no interest in the substance of policy, caring only about political payoffs: "What you've got is everything and I mean everything being run by the political arm."
[...]
George W. Bush is always careful to speak in favor of faith in general, not any faith in particular. Congressional leaders are less careful. Last spring Tom DeLay, soon to be House majority leader, told a church group that: "Only Christianity offers a way to live in response to the realities that we find in this world only Christianity." He also said he was on a mission from God to promote a "biblical worldview" in American politics.By the way, one piece of that biblical worldview involves scientific education. After the Columbine school shootings, Mr. DeLay suggested that the tragedy had occurred "because our school systems teach our children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial mud." Guns don't kill people; Charles Darwin kills people.
Mr. DeLay isn't an obscure crank; he's the most powerful man in Congress. Still, is he an outlier? No. Don Nickles, now challenging the wounded Mr. Lott for Senate leadership, is less given to colorful statements, but is as closely aligned with the religious right as Mr. DeLay.
And the influence of the religious right spreads much further. The Internet commentator Atrios, who played a key role in bringing Mr. Lott's past to light, now urges us to look into the secretive Council for National Policy. This blandly named organization was founded by Tim LaHaye, co-author of the apocalyptic "Left Behind" novels, and is in effect a fundamentalist pressure group. As of 1998 the organization's membership contained many leading Congressional figures in the Republican Party, though none of the party's neoconservative intellectuals.
George W. Bush gave a closed-door speech to the council in 1999, after which the religious right in effect endorsed his candidacy. Accounts vary about what he promised, and the organization has refused to release the tape. But it's notable that he appointed John Ashcroft as attorney general; Mr. Ashcroft gives every appearance of placing his biblical worldview above secular concerns about due process.
But at least - thanks to Atrios and Josh Marshall - the light has been focused on one of these cranks and may actually weaken him. And for that, I'm glad. Well, I'm just glowing with pride, really, because it might not have happened, and the Council for National Policy would not have been mentioned in The New York Times this way, if I hadn't brow-beat Atrios into doing a blog.
Patrick said to me on A.I.M. recently something to the effect that all this is proof that the forces of good can triumph. And I said that right now, the forces of good seem to be Atrios. "Atrios rocks," said Patrick.
Well, I clearly missed an important story last week:13:01 GMT: Permalink
Yesterday was hopefully a historic day in the effort to start telling the truth about Bill and Hillary Clinton.Did I hear someone say something about "moving on"?The launch of THE COUNTER CLINTON LIBRARY here on NewsMax and on Sean Hannity's radio program and on Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes" is the first step in fighting back against the purveyors of lies and deceptions.
From Bloggy I learn that there are More reasons to love Viggo Mortensen: He appeared on Charlie Rose, ostensibly to promote the new Lord of the Rings movie, while wearing a No More Blood For Oil t-shirt.
Monday, 16 December 200216:38 GMT: Permalink
Well, I'm feeling bummed out about Gore's announcement. It's not that I didn't suspect he was leaning away from running, but I was hopeful all the same. In my heart I knew that the Gore we'd been seeing for the last few months was too good to be true - not too good to be real, but too good to ever be allowed to have a shot at the title. I figured he knew that, too.15:40 GMT: PermalinkI wish he'd waited a few more weeks to bow out - I figure as long as he was seen as a contender - the front-runner, in fact - the press was more likely to pay attention to him. Couldn't it have waited 'til after the holidays, at least?
And then I thought, OK, then, now who? And, with all respect to my friends who are hot for Kerry or Dean or whoever, none of them really do it for me. The guy who has been saying what needs to be said is Al Gore, dammit.
So far, the public seems to feel the same way. Gore's numbers in the polls have gone up considerably during his book tour, which should tell you something, just in case you forgot what happened in the '00 campaign: when Gore gets exposure, people like him.
The press has already started it's we-don't-like-Kerry thing, and if you've missed the potential anti-Dem talking points so far, check out the comments in Kos' post on the announcement and at Eschaton. Don't forget that Gore is also the greenest of all the candidates - Nader included - and had the best chance of defusing the Nader vote next time around.
I guess the party leadership made it clear to Gore that they weren't going to get behind him. This doesn't speak well of them, of course, which is worrying enough. The purported hopefuls in Congress - Lieberman, Kerry, Gephardt, Edwards, and Daschle - are all men who, mysteriously, have never really spoken up to defend Gore, two years ago or now. Yes, even Lieberman, who was on the same ticket, was not principled enough to say, "I'm not going to just sit there and let them call an honest man a liar." (And no, it doesn't matter if Gore asked him not to - a man of principle stands up.) In fact, this time around those guys pretty much made a point of refusing to acknowledge that he had given them a way out of kissing Bush's hiney. He paved the way for them and they were too craven to take up the challenge. The message there is pretty unmistakable: they weren't going to do anything that had the potential to make him look good; they're out for themselves, even if it means permitting the Bushies and their reprehensible policies to continue to hold sway.
The DLC's own spin machine has been full of reasons why Gore shouldn't run, and every one of them has the cynical sound of meaning, "We want me, not you." I particularly like, "We need a fresh face" - a line that, strangely, I have only heard so far in reference to Gore, and yet not to Lieberman. Of course, there are so many other reasons not to support Lieberman that I suppose the unfreshness of his face is hardly worth remarking on. But why is it only Democrats who ever need "a fresh face"? Anyone remember Nixon?
It's not that I'm not willing to give Kerry or Dean a chance. It's just that I can already see that they have more minuses than Gore and fewer pluses. You can say what you want about needing a nominee who hasn't been tarnished by years of RNC spin, but you're in dreamland if you think the GOP can't make them up about your favorite candidate the same way they did with Gore. Remember, the things they said about Gore were lies. They said a guy who'd been captain of the football team was unable to make friends. They tried to pretend the Internet in no way benefited from Gore's input. They claimed that a man with a 20-year reputation as a straight-arrow was "a serial liar" with dirty hands. And these were things everyone in Washington knew were not true. They had to make it all up, because they had no head-start with Gore, he didn't give them anything to attack. So they had to take every good thing about him and turn it into a minus. He was known for his integrity, so they called him a liar. He inspired the lead character in Love Story, so they pretended that he just made it up and he'd been unpopular since grade school. He spent years working to see the piddly little arpanet turned into something we all had access to, so they made fun of his daring to say so and pretended it wasn't true.
So they can do it to anyone. They're already doing it to Kerry, and you can be sure they will do it with Dean. The spin on both is that they are arrogant and unpopular. Sound familiar? They've only just gotten started, and Dean isn't even particularly high-profile yet.
Oh, and remember one more thing: If your candidate doesn't win by a landslide, we have all the problems we had in 2000. Al Gore won more votes than any Democrat in history. Can yours?
If not, here's your bumper sticker: Draft Gore.
This cartoon from Amptoons says it all: The Real Apology.Patrick has a good post up on states' rights and slavery. (He also announces the world premier of his new band, Whisperado.)
Max thinks the White House may be backing down on tax cut advocacy, and cites this lovely quote from what he calls "the Roval Office": "The president does not get pushed around by self-appointed leaders of groups that represent wealthy elites that want their taxes cut and don't have any real constituency outside of New York or Washington," said an official close to the White House. (Also: Max found a delightful illustrated version of our lifetime.)
Sunday, 15 December 200212:00 GMT: Permalink
The Daily Howler is looking into the "dirty little secret" of racism in the Republican base. But how, he wonders, can it be a secret? He illustrates with an example from the 2000 campaign. Remember this one?11:03 GMT: Permalink
Naomi Wolf was a mainstream figure. There was nothing odd about her campaign role. There was nothing odd about her salary. (And nono one ever presented evidence that she told Gore to wear earth tones.) But Wolf's role was reported in Month 8 of the press corps' twenty-month War Against Gore, so they gimmicked up a set of wild claims. To what extent will they lie in your face? Fakers and frauds, they even pretended to be deeply disturbed by Wolf's salary.The press corps went to town over the "controversial" nature of Gore paying a reported $15,000 monthly to Wolf as a campaign advisor, although she had been doing this professionally for some time and had done so for the previous Democratic nominee as well. However, they had nothing to say about a highly-placed member of a preferred Republican candidate's campaign:
What are the views of these GOP southern base groups? Consider John McCain's favorite race-man from his 2000 primary run. On February 8, 2000, USA Today's Jim Drinkard wrote a brief piece about Richard Quinn, the head of McCain's South Carolina campaign. Quinn was the editor of Southern Partisan, a journal holding racial views which are rarely discussed in the mainstream press. In Slate, Jacob Weisberg described Quinn as "a neo-Confederate revanchist who is one of the leaders of the state's pro-flag faction." According to Weisberg, Southern Partisan was "a magazine that publishes apologias for slavery and sells paraphernalia celebrating the assassination of Abraham Lincoln." Earlier, the New Republic quoted a reviewer who said the journal was "to the right of National Review but to the left of the Klan." In the New York Times, David Firestone reviewed Quinn's mag. "In issue after issue, writers in Southern Partisan vilify Abraham Lincoln and other Union leaders, and venerate the rebel soldiers who fought to secede from the United States," Firestone wrote. "The quarterly regularly takes the position that the Civil War was fought not over slavery, but over the preservation of a Southern way of life that to this day is worth preserving." McCain was paying Quinn $20,000 a month to head his campaign in the state.Without racism, the GOP could not hold the south, but until this week, that fact remained largely buried where the mainstream media is concerned. Now, why would that be?Somerby also notes that the Fox News answer to the troubling question of Trent Lott's recent conduct is to make up new lies about Al Gore and his family. I can't boil this down to a couple of quotes, so check it out yourself for another dose of outrage.
Gore ReportListen to another interesting Al & Tipper Gore interview, on NPR's The Connection. In this one, Gore advocates full public financing of campaigns.
Transcript for Al Gore's appearance on Hardball (Update: Streaming video - Windowsmedia; RealVideo; QuickTime.)
Transcript of Al Gore's "American Morning with Paula Zahn" interview, in which he doesn't give George Bush high marks for his performance. ("But understand, I'm biased. ... I didn't vote for the guy.")
I make no comment on the claim that these cool pictures are spoilers from tonight's episode of SNL with guest host Al Gore. [Addendum: Yes, I wrote this post last night and then forgot to upload it, and then forgot to fix the wording.]
Friday, 13 December 200215:44 GMT: Permalink
Earlier this month The Daily Howler had some fun with Mickey Kaus' fascination with Kerry's hair and "phony furrowed brow" (how does he know?) - straight from Drudge's keyboard to the Washington press corps' mouths, of course. The hair story turned out to be inaccurate to begin with and anyway should have been too trivial to blast all over the media. Even someone at The Washington Times noticed:13:42 GMT: Permalink
When John Kerry put his toe in the presidential waters last weekend, he immediately was hit by riptides. The Washington press corps strongly dislikes him (a point in his favor). After his appearance on "Meet the Press" last Sunday, where he announced his plans to run for president, Washington has been atwitter with criticism.He goes on to have fun with the haircut story, noting that he shares a stylist with Kerry and Hillary Clinton. This is from someone who doesn't seem too enamored with Kerry, either, but at least he talked about Kerry himself rather than what should be an unremarkable haircut:In keeping with the seriousness of the times, the elite journalists here in the capital of the world went straight to the heart of his shortcomings. The Washington Post complained that "Kerry has a warmth problem. He recites his positions but doesn't tell any folksy stories. . . . " USA Today's lead critique was that "the Washington press corp doesn't much like John Kerry . . . that's important." The much-respected journalist Mickey Kaus, in trying to identify why he was a non-admirer of the senator, focused on Mr. Kerry's countenance: "I think it starts with the phony furrowed brow. Perpetually furrowed and perpetually phony. It's been furrowed for so long I doubt he could unfurrow it." (All of these examples were conveniently reported in Howard Kurtz's media review column in The Post.)
Well, you can see how seriously Washington takes its responsibility to act as a shrewd explainer of national policy to a waiting American citizenry. I confess, as one plows through the "Meet the Press" transcript, it is hard to find solid, specific policy assertions to comment on. My favorite Kerryism is found in the first few paragraphs when he claims: "I think there's a deep anxiety in the American people about security, and they put it all under the word 'security' job security, income security, retirement security, health security, education security, physical, personal security and, of course, national security." That's nine times he squeezed the word security into one sentence. You don't suppose his pollsters have told him to use the word security as often as possible?I don't think it's a fair criticism, though - I independently came up with the same formulation weeks ago, and if I'd been speaking publicly I might easily have phrased it much the same way, without benefit of pollsters and focus groups. It's not as if "job security" and "retirement security" are brand-new phrases, and it's worth pointing out that these are the issues that concern Americans, not just the fear that terrorists will bring another big building down. And it's the administration - particularly Rumsfeld and Bush - who keep using "national security" as a mantra to cover every nasty aspect of their policies. Credit where it's due: At least Kerry doesn't think he can explain away soaking the treasury, eliminating the Bill of Rights, and wrecking the economy by invoking 9/11, like Bush does. (Not to mention Rummy, who thinks he can explain away ignoring Al Qaeda and going after Saddam instead by invoking 9/11.) A year ago that kind of Bushista rhetoric carried some weight because Americans were traumatized, crazy with grief, and people in that state have trouble focusing on much more than the thing that traumatized them.But crazy with grief is still crazy, and after a year, most people have started to pull themselves together. When members of the administration try to guilt-trip you about not still being in a crisis state after the anniversary has been and gone, they are bad people. The last thing you want to do to someone who has been traumatized is tell them, "You should still be dwelling on it! You should still be unable to think about ordinary things! How dare you start trying to put things in perspective!" But, you know, sane people can't help noticing that, in perspective, it's bloody important to secure your own and your family's economic stability, health care options, and everyday stuff like that.
Of course, it would be reassuring if the administration showed any interest in focusing on Al Qaeda and the causes of 9/11 - and what went wrong on the day, for that matter - rather than their weird obsession with Saddam Hussein. Americans certainly do worry about national security; it would be nice if the Bush administration appeared to do so as well.
Paul Krugman says the two-faced party is just showing The Other Face:12:52 GMT: Permalink
"Right now we're debating whether the Republican Senate majority leader is a racist who yearns for the days of segregation or just a good ole boy who says a lot of things that make it seem like he's a racist who yearns for the days of segregation." So writes Joshua Marshall, whose talkingpointsmemo.com is must reading for the politically curious, and who, more than anyone else, is responsible for making Trent Lott's offensive remarks the issue they deserve to be.And if they do replace Lott, it probably won't be with someone who is the very essence of tolerance. There are plenty more where that came from.But this discussion shouldn't really be about Mr. Lott. It should be about how a man who sounds like Mr. Lott came to be leader of the Senate.
Let's be clear that last week's remarks were in no way out of character. On the contrary, they were entirely consistent with Mr. Lott's statements on many other occasions.
The great majority of Americans don't share Mr. Lott's views. For example, he opposed declaring Martin Luther King day a holiday, telling Southern Partisan magazine that "we have not done it for a lot of other people that were more deserving." Most Americans, I think, believe that King was pretty deserving.
So why is Mr. Lott in a position of such power?
The Republican Party's longstanding "Southern strategy" which rests on appealing to the minority of voters who do share Mr. Lott's views is no secret. But because the majority doesn't share those views, the party must present two faces to the nation. And therein lies the clue to Mr. Lott's role.
To win nationally, the leader of the party must pay tribute to the tolerance and open-mindedness of the nation at large. He must celebrate civil rights and sternly condemn the abuses of the past. And that's just what George W. Bush did yesterday, in rebuking Mr. Lott.
Yet at the same time the party must convey to a select group of target voters the message nudge nudge, wink wink that it actually doesn't mean any of that nonsense, that it's really on their side. How can it do that? By having men who manifestly don't share the open-mindedness of the nation at large in key, powerful positions. And that's why Mr. Bush's rebuke was not followed by a call for Mr. Lott to step down.
Blogging aroundTed Barlow has another long, informative post on medicine in America, and Devra says she can confirm from her family experience that it's getting to be a lot harder to function as a doctor in our country. (And, by the way, she's taking nominations for Blog of the Week.)
Dwight Meredith has some outstanding posts up, like this one about the value of keeping your word and the fact that the Republican leadership is a bunch of oath-breakers. He also links to Eriposte's chart of where the lies come from. And he's instituting The Koufax Awards for blogging on the left.
T. C. MITS: Here's a little game I'm going to be playing for a while. It's called "What if Jesus ran for President as a Democrat?"
Patrick links to this cool flash animation - "Technical Difficulties".
Thursday, 12 December 200214:54 GMT: Permalink
Headblast on reading the Sunday New York Times in "Airport Media Mind Blitz":14:23 GMT: Permalink
But after a while the spin becomes absolutely unbearable. Little irritations mount and after a while it is too much. It's all the things they hide and pointedly omit and how much trouble they go to avoid embarrassing the powerful. It's the way they tiptoe around everything that might make Bush and cronies look bad, and that is getting harder and harder to do. There is more and more that must be hidden.Much more, go read it.So the Times becomes more and more of an excursion into a fantasyland. It takes some effort to read through the spin. One becomes accustomed to making the effort, but it does become tiresome after plowing through the pile of sections that constitute the Sunday Times.
Some examples: Today's edition has an article called "Does Democracy Help Pakistan?" The sore thumb in that headline is the underlying assumption that anything resembling democracy exists in that country. Remember the coup that took place during our 2000 election campaign. And when they asked Bush about what he thought of it he was ready, for a change, and said he thought it would help stability in the region. Of course we didn't know as much as we do now about his own plans for the region. The Times article refers to Musharraf as a "semi-authoritarian president." What is "semi" about it? He's a general who took over the country in a military coup. Near the end of the article it actually touches on the subject of the coup, but does so in a passive voice, saying Musharraf is "the beneficiary of a coup himself." As if -- oh, just coincidentally he happened to have this country fall under his power, as if the coup happened all by itself.
Of course the Times doesn't want to portray Musharraf in an unfavorable light because Bush has chosen Pakistan as an ally -- as exempt from his Axis of Evil -- in spite of the coup, in spite of the fact that Pakistan certainly harbors terrorists, in spite of the fact that it really does have weapons of mass destruction. And it also doesn't want to say too much about coups because that may remind us of how our own "president" rose to power.
Test your Bias (via Amygdala).14:12 GMT: PermalinkTranscript of Lott on Larry King at Josh Marshall's site.
Gregory Harris found an interview with Elija Wood, who plays Frodo in Lord of the Rings.
I rather like Gailonline, another blog that's turned up recently in my referrers.
Progressive Gold is trying to keep track of "the best of the left" in Blogtopia.
Dan Kennedy makes some excellent points about talk radio.
Crackpots revisited13:55 GMT: PermalinkArmed Liberal responds - sorta - to my post below. Except, damn, that post wasn't really about AL at all, it was a response to the suggestion that Ann Coulter is not a crackpot. I only included AL's original post, and my response to it, to create context - what I wrote in AL's comments was all I really had to say about his post.
Let me see if I can make this simple:
1. Ann Coulter is a crackpot. Spike Lee saying dumb things doesn't change that; Coulter is still a crackpot.
2. Our crackpots are just entertainers; the right's crackpots get elected to the Senate and even the Senate leadership.
However, if you really want to go back to that original Armed Liberal post again: Hey, it's not liberals who think the best way to go after Usama bin Laden is to attack someone bin Laden hates. Liberals want to go after Al Qaeda because that's who attacked us. (And, by the way, it sure wasn't me who entertained Saudi Arabian leaders at my ranch in Texas.)
Illiberal MediaTed Barlow has an interesting piece on A few things that I learned working in market research, a question about why Pat Buchanan is allowed on television, and says that Al Gore, media critic, is right (I liked the pet names for Robert Novak, too.)
Well, it's not a radical things to say - hell, now even E.J. Dionne has admitted there's no liberal media anymore.
It's always so weird reading the comments on these things, with all the "conservatives" leaping out of the woodwork to insist that the media is liberally-biased. What do they mean? Where are they finding all this liberalism in the media? Do they turn on their radios and hear three hours a day of commentators who advocate lifting the cap off of the maximum salary that is subject to Social Security taxes? Does the TV news seem to be advocating a state-paid national health care plan available for free to all? Do they insist on using the proper term for late-term abortion (that was it), rather than "partial-birth abortion", even?
No, of course not. Even Newt Gingrich expressed thoughts to the effect of "I can't believe they bought it!" when he started pushing the "liberal media" meme and the media itself seemed to eat it up. His own words, if I recall, were, "Everyone knows there's no liberal media!"
When asked to explain what they mean, "conservatives" say that, hey, 80% of media bosses voted Democratic. Leaving aside that the figures they cite are decades-old (and highly suspect to begin with), does voting Democratic mean voting for a liberal? No, of course not. The Democrats haven't had a real liberal nominee for a long time now. They were in love with Carter, the first presidential nominee to say he was a born-again Christian - but then trashed him in office, falling in love with Reagan instead. Reporters who pursued the Iran-Contra story or the October surprise ended up losing their jobs. Then the media were in love with Clinton, who campaigned by making a point of executing mental defectives and criticizing some black woman who most people had never heard of - but
