Only Natural

THAT'S Bristol, the dominant hummingbird at our feeder the past three months, posing atop the shepherd's crook it hangs on. Her usual perch is in the electric wires running to the garage, up where the sky precludes getting a usable shot even if you did have access to the good camera, which I never do. I hope she wasn't saying Goodbye just yet, but I didn't see her the rest of the day. You never know when they leave; you just keep putting out fresh nectar every two days until it gets all slushy. Bristol and the slightly smaller Piper still fight it out occasionally, but Bristol was the obvious winner of their two-day dive-bomb-a-thon of early August. (That's assuming that there are only two of 'em. One year we thought it was a single male-single female fight to the finish, until one afternoon when we counted seven at one time.)

My Poor Wife says that Summer is officially over--the day before the equinox--because Big Shirtless Roy, the 54-year-old fireworks aficionado and lawn care cultist across the street, was mowing the lawn this morning with a shirt on. Which may, in fact, actually mark a new Millennium, or the Dawning of the Age of Aquariums. I typed that by accident and decided to leave it in. I don't recall seeing him wearing a shirt while mowing the lawn in twelve years. I'm not even sure he wears one operating his snowblower.

Did I ever mention that the man owns his own parking cones? So do the people next door to him. The cones turned up the last time we had a neighborhood yard-sale day, in mid-afternoon, sometime after he'd come storming onto our property and berated an elderly couple who'd parked with two wheels on his lawn. If I recall, that was the same year his lawn developed mysterious, random, circular dead spots almost overnight, which someone suggested to me looked like the result of person or persons unknown making herbicide ice cubes and hurling them on his lawn from somewhere nearby on some warm summer night, when they'd melt without a trace before morning. All I can say about that is, you really wanna be careful about that sorta thing. Like wearing first-rate hazmat gloves.

The other sign of seasonal gradation this time came in yellow and black, and nested in my woodpile out back, near the compost bins, and without permission. Naturally I found this out by getting stung, twice, a week apart, the second time being last Saturday morning and taking place in the vicinity of my left ear. Prior to that I'd never been stung by a wasp in my 54 years, and, having gone through it twice now, I'd urge you to skip the whole business altogether. A wasp sting is quite different from a bee sting; since the stingers are thinner and reusable, there's a sensation like someone trying to create a 1/2" hole by plunging a 1/4" drill bit in and around repeatedly. Except with burning. The first one got in my shoe. I felt her there about a half-second before the shoe closed in on her, which she took rather poorly. I went into the house to get oatmeal, only to realize I'd pitched the two-years-post-dated container of oatmeal out a week earlier in one of those half-decade cleaning frenzies of mine. So I settled for baking soda, which really did nothing whatsoever. Which makes me think the oatmeal would have been a Fool's Errand anyway, though it works well for me with honeybee stings. I then wrapped it in ice for a hour, and periodically after, which did an excellent job of numbing about the top 35% of the pain. There was a distinct impression of having been drilled. It hurt like a sumbitch until the middle of the following afternoon, after which it merely began itching me to distraction for 48 hours.

We ought to note here that this was the second medical emergency I'd faced that week, and started the official countdown on These Things Always Happen In Threes which would be fully realized behind the garage a week later. On the previous Monday I'd managed to stab myself, not too badly, with a poultry needle. Since the needle had already passed through a poult before entering my left index finger about halfway up the first joint,  I took several hygienic precautions: I let the thing bleed quite a while, then did a hospital scrub, then applied triple antibiotic and a bandage, which I reapplied three times more in the next few hours. It stayed sore, but didn't puff up or anything, until Wednesday night, late, when I half-woke and realized my friggin' finger was on fire. It was puffy and blistered medially, right up against the nail, from about Two to Six O'Clock; this was not good. I blamed my carelessness in not reopening the wound each time I redressed it. The goddam thing now kept me awake the rest of the night, hurt like hell at the slightest touch--which means, of course, that I whacked it on a succession of doorknobs, jambs, countertop edges, and an assortment of inlays, filigrees, crenellations, merlons, cornices and dentils I didn't even realize we owned--and refused to remit more than temporarily to either cold or heat. I resolved to give it a single day before seeking the attention of an allopath, though I foolishly mentioned this plan to my Poor Wife that evening, guaranteeing I would go the next morning no matter what I thought. Which I did, even though it had begun to feel a little better.  I showed up early at the immedicare clinic place where I was eventually greeted, for want of a better word, by Dr. Surly, the same defrocked quack who'd looked at my knee nine months ago. "Looked at" in this instance was replaced by "glanced at from ten paces", at which time he announced I had a paronychia, and that if it did not improve I'd "need to see a hand surgeon". He said paronychia twice--that's in thirty seconds--which naturally led me to suspect he might simply possess an associate's degree in medical Latin plus a lab coat.  And it was fairly obvious he hadn't even looked at my chart, or account, since he otherwise might have remembered he'd already pulled the You Need a Specialist routine on me within what would be assumed to be most people's recent memory. Hand surgeon? You're either out of your fucking mind (which, I suspect is the reason you lost your medical license in the first place) or the kickback deal is sweeter than I imagined. I actually needed a specialist with the knee; for this I need an LPN with a lancet and an alcohol-soaked cotton ball, plus a course of antibiotics. I got the antibiotics. Which is all I fucking wanted from you, "Doctor"; we could have saved those twenty seconds you begrudged (three steps out of the exam room he told an underling, "Put a Band-aid on it."  As though I'd not only wasted his time by coming in to ask him to kiss a boo-boo, but insulted all those years he'd spent at all those med schools throughout the Third World.  You're not supposed to fuck around with a paronychia, Doc. Otherwise, believe me, I wouldn't be here.)  At any rate, once I got home and looked up paronychia, I realized my chicken-sticker wound was fine, and the whole thing was caused when I bit a friggin' hangnail on the same finger a day later, and accidentally tore it too far. Do not bite hangnails! I'm 54 fucking years old, and no one ever told me that.

So I guess the Third of Three I was waiting for was actually the first yellowjacket sting, and the second was the result of my false expectations. That, plus the fact that I thought the first one was a random encounter, and failed to check for a nearby nest until I got stung the second time. Little fuckers are mean this time of year, plus they don't have any pupae to attend to so they've got time on their hands. I'd never been stung in the head before, and if I ever am again I'm hoping for something more along the midline, since with it just above the ear it felt like I had a brick tied to that side all day. This time I went upstairs and put deodorant on it, which worked surprisingly well on the pain, though I still relied on an ice pack for the next four hours. I'm not disturbing the nest; I'm just gonna buy or rig a bee hat so I can work the compost piles once the leaves start to fall. I figure it's my little sop to non-partisanship.

LAST Wednesday, along about dinnertime, the phone rang, as it will.  I answered it, in the presence of my Poor Wife.  It was the clinic.  "Hi, I'm Roger, and Dr. Surly wanted me to call to find out how you're doing."

(Funny; that's more concern than he showed when I was there.)  "The finger's great.  The swelling is way down, and the pain is gone."

"Okay." (It's always "okay".  It's never "Glad to hear it," because that's not something you say when you're simply ticking items off on a checklist.)  "Was the doctor helpful during your visit?" (Right to the Customer Satisfaction Survey, I see.) "Did he answer all of your concerns?  Were you satisfied with the experience?"

"Yeah, oh yeah.  He was great!"

I hung the phone up.  My wife gave me the "I don't have anything better to do" look, so I filled her in.

"Why did you tell them that asshole was great?" she, like any sane person, wanted to know.

"Look.  I'm sure they get plenty of complaints about the guy--when I was there for my knee the two X-ray techs were grousing about him, openly, right in front of me.  If I really wanted to complain it wouldn't be to the kid who has to make the follow-up calls; I'd have called the home office myself, and kept at it until I got the VP of the malpractice section.  And they'd be thrilled to learn he'd given me twenty-seconds of his time, once they'd learned the finger was still attached.  If you wanna exact revenge, the best way to do it is to keep him there long enough that he tells the receptionist to put a Band-Aid on a sucking chest wound, or sends someone with a chicken bone in her throat to a speech therapist.  Six more months, tops."

"You're still the man I fell in love with," she says.

There's No Agreement Financial Markets Collapsed Due To Laissez-Faire Capitalism Run Amok, Says Spokesman For Laissez-Faire Capitalism Run Amok

David Brooks, "The Post-Lehman World". September 19

HERE, in handy run-on sentence form, is both the sum total of everything I know about economics (as would become obvious even without the explanation) and the reason for it: as a second-semester sophomore in 1974 I signed up for the introductory Macroeconomics course. It was one of many completely inexplicable gestures that litter my student record; it wasn't a requirement, had nothing to do with my degree, and I wasn't particularly interested in the topic. I lasted one hour, though I'm sure I'd decided to drop the course five minutes in, at most. The professor--actual professors taught intro classes in those days--looked remarkably like Hugh Hefner's slightly nerdier, myopic brother, circa 1957, and he spent the entire session "laying down the law" about the huge workload every student was going to have to meet, without fail or exception. This is, in fact, the reason I sat out the entire hour instead of getting up and walking out earlier; I didn't want him to imagine I was doing so because of his pathetic threats. By this time I'd spent a good twelve credit hours with actual European scholars, the sort who expected you to read three books a week for their class alone; the two-page course syllabus Mr. Business School laid on everyone with Jonathan Edwards-ish portents of doom and unceasing toil was risible.  I'm pretty sure I went right from the class to wherever it is you went to drop one.

So here's the thing. I can't tell you whether "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were probably the world's most heavily supervised financial institutions"--though neither, apparently, can Brooks, since he has to rely on quoting someone else saying so. I don't ordinarily loiter in the sort of areas where one hears lamentations about Clinton-era banking reforms, though I've spent plenty of hours hearing many of those same folks, presumably, lamenting Everything Else Clinton, not to mention Anything Which Gets The Rabble To Imagine It Can Interfere With What The Quality Know Is Best.  I'm old enough to remember somebody--perhaps the great-great-grandfathers of these economic Jeremiahs--blaming the Carter administration for the Great S&L Swindle, so you'll have to excuse me if I don't try to Google my way to the bottom of this. Hell, I'm not even going to say anything about a New York Times opinion columnist quoting Meganjane Galt-McArdle as an authority on this or any other topic, except, you know, don't.

Nah, let's try it this way. Don't like the impending era of re-regulation? Try blaming yourselves.

We’re going to need regulators who can anticipate what the next Wall Street business model is going to look like, and how the next crisis will be different than the current one. We’re going to need squads of low-paid regulators who can stay ahead of the highly paid bankers, auditors and analysts who pace this industry (and who themselves failed to anticipate this turmoil).

We’re apparently going to need an all-powerful Super-Fed than can manage inflation, unemployment, bubbles and maybe hurricanes — all at the same time! We’re going to need regulators who write regulations that control risky behavior rather than just channeling it off into dark corners, and who understand what’s happening in bank trading rooms even if the C.E.O.’s themselves are oblivious.

Try blaming yourselves! I know, in the popular imagining of its adherents--what others call "mythology"--the ecstatic defense of unfettered capitalism is supposed to result from Deep Philosophical Insight informed by dismally scientific observation and regular weekend retreats, but the fact of the matter is it's been sold, over the past three decades, as a magic cure-all and a talisman against falling objects. And it's failed. It's failed miserably, and spectacularly, and twice, twice with regard to holding the barn door open so unfettered financial institutions could gorge themselves on taxpayer corn. Twice. If a lot of us imagined that the whole thing was a transparent cover for the holders of wealth to accumulate more, and more again, well, that sure ain't the way you've been trying to sell it. It's a little late, now, to start moaning about the Epistemology of Regulation when you rejected anything other than ethical--or, as others might have it, metaphysical--certitude your entire adult life. You fucked up, man, and you fucked up in part because you believed--or chose to pretend you believed--that a slightly favorable tilt in your political direction was a permanent confirmation of that metaphysical certainty. Meganjane may yet plead youthful ignorance, though we think anyone who exits academia still imagining Ayn Rand as a thinker ought to sue for a tuition refund. You, David Brooks, cannot. You cannot pretend personal ignorance of The Great Savings and Loan Swindle, just as you cannot pretend the appeal to the Vast Complexities of Financial Markets--so recently so simple--obscures our view of the sleeping Republican at the switch each time these things occur. It would be best, of course, if you came clean, or acknowledged that Fucking Up is, rightly, punished by voters just as Hubris is punished by the gods. I'm no more sanguine about the prospects for real, intelligent reform out of Washington than you are, though in my case that's realism, not despair. But I'll say this: I think it's a lot more likely that we'll get useful and meaningful reform out of Washington than it is that we'll see the Sadducees of Reaganism accepting the blame.

Triple-Super-Anti-Reverse Contrarian Advice For Barack Obama, Deluxe Edition: This Time, We Really Mean We Don't Mean It!

John Dickerson, "What, Me Worry? Why Obama acts like he's 10 points up in the polls". September 17

Christopher Beam, "Barack Obama Does Not Need Your Two Cents". September 16

BACK Home Again in Indiana, we've now been subjected to six months straight of political advertising, which reminds me It fucking burns! Ow! Dear God, Put Out My Eyes! I'm sorry I didn't masturbate more! Jesus, fuckin' kill me now! uh, which reminds me that the one thing the Obama campaign has done exceptionally well, at least on occasion--produce some of the best political ads ever--it has managed to dilute the effectiveness of through oversaturation while simultaneously reducing the impact of the best of the lot by replacing them at the Speed of YouTube.  

[Memo:  add to To Do List "Go to sleep while imagining  killing everyone who thought it was so goddamned exciting that the Indiana primaries quote meant something end quote this time, starting with the usual gang of teleprompter semi-readers. "  Kill anyone who doubled down when Indiana "Democrat" Evan Bayh was placed on the "short list" last, and slowly.  Bayh hasn't been heard from since his Convention speech; he was last heard from in Indiana as he snubbed "his party's" gubernatorial candidate on his way to another VP whistle-stop.  His fucking  website  (caution: don't bother) looks like he's running for Indiana Secretary of State.  As a Republican.  We're six weeks from a national election (which he's not involved in) and his latest press release includes his signing on with a bipartisan Senate energy group.  In his defense, I suppose meeting with your top political aides, your plastic surgeon, and his computer software showing how much you'll have aged by 2016 takes up a lot of your time.]

This is just more of the same for me--the Obama campaign seems to have no concept of time whatsoever, alternating with that of a 13-year-old. You'd imagine that the one thing a few hundred million dollars worth of media consultancy would buy you is a sense of timing, which, after all, these people do year-in, year-out and not just quadrennially. Yet he's been getting wrong-footed all along, to the extent that a candidate with a remarkable skill set managed to have that used against him, and without need of Republican help (not that plenty wasn't offered). Just consider, for a moment, that Brandenburg Gate appearance, which must've looked good on paper to someone--someone, that is, who imagined that the average US voter gives a shit about what Europe thinks of us (sure, he should, but Americans believe, even at the lowest ebb in their international standing since the Great War, that we call the tune and Europe dances in colorful historic garb), or desires to repair our image, and someone who had, somehow, missed out on exactly how the massed crowds of domestic Moonie-eyed rhythmic chanters had been playing with non-Obama-intoxicated voters for the previous six months.

(Yes yes yes, he fills stadiums because he can; yes, Nixon and Reagan drones chanted Four More Years!   Neither of them was a forty-something with a slim resumé, or in a primary fight. Apparent Absence of All Contrary Thought worked well for them, but both were running against Smart Ass Hippies and Bearded College Professors. Obama was running in 2008. I've given up reading every die-hard Obama site, not even to glance in to see how they took the McCain Surge, but I'm wondering how some people took the news of a) moving the acceptance speech to the Rose Bowl, and b) then trying to make the place look like a 10,000 seat convention hall again. I'm guessing they thought both were "great".)

This is not a lead-in to that "Obama: Ignore Advice" piece which--remain calm; your seat cushion will act as a floatation device!--spends two pages ticking off diametrically-opposed advice offered by Democratic punditasters, thus proving that the sort of people who give free advice on the Internets don't know what they're talking about. So Obama should just ignore them all. Q.E.D. How one ignores both ends of a binary argument is not explained. The whole thing is redolent of that "both sides complain about us, so we must be doing a good job" mantra which, coupled with a quart of vodka, presumably helps The Media sleep through the night like it sleeps through Issues.

We bring this up, mostly, to express our continued amazement at just how much air Slate can whip into Lo-Fat Twinkee filling, but also to note that a race which shouldn't be close is neck-and-neck, so maybe you could use someone's advice. Also, that if that list includes Arianna Huffington's electoral strategy, George Lakoff's turnoffs, or anything whatsoever Dee Dee Myers might have to say, you're already in trouble.

Instead, let's ask ourselves Why He Remains So Calm?

Obama can also stay calm because he got a break this week. The public focus is now on the economy, an issue where Obama has advantages. It's also harder for McCain to manufacture distractions—it would look out of touch. Plus, the Palin novelty has started to wear off. Obama is back in the lead in some polls. All of this means he doesn't have to do anything flamboyantly out of character to get attention.

In other words, a major issue cropped up which is unlikely to have prompted any of his advisors to urge a swift move to the Right, and close enough to the election to prevent a The Buyout Surge Is Working! campaign from flat-footing him. Being lucky in your choice of opponent is the best sort of good fortune to have.

He's terrifically placed--again. He's already squandered three 8 oz. glasses of political good fortune--his anti-Iraq War cred, the concerted media attacks on his primary opponent, and the natural Democratic advantage of a Republican White House with a 28% approval rating--where most candidates are lucky to get a single serving.  And it's not just the economy--Palin's a huge mistake; McCain's advisors need to huddle for the next two weeks and come up with some incapacitating, non-lethal but extremely rare condition to give her that even Jesus couldn't cure in six weeks.

[M]aybe they're not rattled because they've been through this before. If they'd listened to the polls and Democratic experts, they'd never have gotten in the race. In the summer of 2007, there were lots of Obama supporters who thought he should panic a little more—or risk losing to Hillary Clinton. The Obama campaign stuck to its plan and won. Aides often cite this lesson in explaining why they're not going to overreact now.

Except, of course, they didn't; they spent last summer becoming convinced by the likes of MoDo and Frank Rich. Are we supposed to believe it was a coincidence that everybody save Bill Richardson jumped Hillary Clinton last October? If he'd have come out and defended her that night, and attacked Tim Russert and Brian Williams, not to mention their MSNBC chums, into the bargain, he'd have won the nomination outright in January, because the sexist backlash wouldn't have caromed off him. Or so I say. It's easy. Just please don't try to sell me that "the campaign has stayed the course" routine. It's jumped, frequently, and generally in the wrong direction, but Fortuna has decreed he become a Democrat at just the right time. And she's been a lot better to him than his advisors.

That Woman Who Called Me A Misogynist Was Only Half-Right

David Leonhardt, "Perhaps, Time for Someone to Play Offense". September 16

FULL disclosure, clipped from yesterday in my never-ending quest to provide a succinct summation of the Day's Events: Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., who has too many consonants in his name, and whom I, lover of the Coen Brothers earlier, funnier films, am always in danger of calling "M. Emmet [sic] Tyrrell" (or simply "sic"), once provided my mother-in-law with a "Nuke the Whales" t-shirt, or else with the necessary purchasing information for the one she gave me one Christmas, after I'd laughed about the one he was wearing--I must be remembering this correctly, since it'd be too bizarre to have hallucinated, even for those days--in a late-70s People magazine profile. I hadn't asked for one; I'd just laughed at the gag, which was later to be driven so far into the ground that pneumatic caissons were required to keep the gagsters from developing the bends. As I remember it he lived near them--maybe in the bunkhouse of Bircherite Channel Four founder Sarkes Tarzian, who later, I think, moved entirely underground. My in-laws found Tyrrell more than a little distasteful--which couldn't have been caused by political differences--and mom-in-law said he balked more than once about coughing up the shirt. For all I know it may be the one he wore; if I'd'a known she was doing it I would have requested he autograph it.

At any rate, the thing turned out to be powder blue, which is a color I'd already sworn off wearing after my sister's wedding, which dates to the same period. Not that there really was any question. And so I think it's still folded up in a box in the basement, so that under the right set of circumstances, Tyrrell DNA could still be recovered from the thing. Better go find it and run it through the HOT cycle two or three times.

Two things: first, I hadn't asked for it, and then I had to act seasonally joyous to get it, and there was no question of my explaining that what I'd found funny was the self-deprecating humor of the thing, which wouldn't translate if I were the one wearing it. Though, to be perfectly honest about it, I'd been subject to walking through the IU Student Activities Center on a regular basis, where some Ur-PETA had commandeered a table and a Victrola in order to play Songs of the Humpback Whale unceasingly and at high volume while begging for Spare Change, which prompted my friend Gary to approach them one day and ask if they'd dedicate the next one to his girlfriend.  (He had a talent for such things.  He's the same Gary who called a local AOR station earlier in the decade and asked the jock, "Do you take requests, or are you personally responsible for the shit coming out of my radio?")  Second, the illustration was funny, if somewhat crudely executed: a friendly, smiling whale with a mushroom cloud coming out of his blowhole. The cartoonishness made the violence acceptable and let more people in on the joke.

So when I thought about that shirt yesterday, and went looking for the People illustration, I was prepared to find that some people think this sort of thing still sells, but, really, not that they'd illustrate it with a knee-slappingly indiscriminate strike at ocean life. But then, you know, Meh.

Anyway, this got me thinking about political slogans which have held on like kudzu despite everything changing underneath. And about the fact that I used to imagine wingnuts engaging in self-deprecating humor.

I mean, "conservatism", back when one might have considered typing it without the quotes, used to be about conserving values; now it's about enshrining data points from a June afternoon when the sun was particularly flattering to its own dog's ass. Flag decals still announce one's support of spending American blood and American treasure, if any, in hopeless overseas gestures, despite their earlier invocation having resulted in loss of blood, gilt, and international standing. Tax cutting and Smaller Government are still wowin' 'em at the bumpersticker factory, despite their being a) disastrous or b) chimerical. A "Conservative" is still a liberal who's been mugged, except that "mugged" has been redefined as "forced to pay minimum wage to brown people". "Drive 90: Let the Yankees Freeze In The Dark" is about the only one that's disappeared. Not that I've forgotten it.

"Fiscal conservatism" and "free markets" still make a strong showing, despite five Republican administrations resulting in two major banking meltdowns which directly resulted from gaming the rules, not reforming them; and which are to be made good through what is described, in other, more favorable-to-the-GOP situations, as "seizing your money", "You" being the long-suffering Taxpayer whose side they take. (If nothing else, one has to admire the dedicated husbandry that goes into maintaining the breeding stock: David Brooks, for example, hasn't written a word about gas prices since July, and then only to suggest, in passing, that they shouldn't be as big a campaign issue as Folks think they oughta be; it's remarkable how stupid the public becomes, and how fast, when it starts meddling with the economic intentions of its erstwhile champions.) Still, somebody has to be paying attention. Right?

The Bush administration, the Fed and Congress, meanwhile, continue to focus on the immediate crises, with little attention to the underlying reasons that the economy has gotten into this mess — a stagnation of incomes, an explosion of debt and a decidedly outdated, and limp, approach to government oversight. Remarkably, the presidential campaign has gotten less serious, while the economy’s problems have become more so.

I'm sorry, did you just say "remarkably"? You're a young man, Mr. Leonhardt, but a smart one, and you work for the New York Times. Search the archives for "1988 Presidential campaign" and "any mention of the multi-billion-dollar bailout of S&L criminals". If you find one kindly report it. It's been missing for twenty years now.

A good way to see the problems with a fingers-in-the-dikes strategy is to look back to the first big bailout of modern times. Before A.I.G., before Fannie and Freddie, before Bear Stearns, there was Chrysler.

Okay, let's just zip this along: sure, the Chrysler "bailout" was a roaring success, and returned a premium to the US Treasury, ahead of time, even, but it allowed the Big Three to pursue antiquated ideas and production techniques without fear of failure, leading to the present climate of...

Is there someone, somewhere, who really believes that? That major corporations are run like preteen slumber parties? That in 1978 executives at the two largest auto manufacturers in the world were utterly flabbergasted by the realization they were too big to fail? That under the circumstances they'd just as soon not bother to succeed? Olly, Olly Oxen-fuckin'-Free, the Democrats have opened the Treasury?

Bullshit. Whatever's wrong with management culture in Detroit--and it's a small internet; I'm not sure there's room enough to cover it--it's not this sort of crappy Welfare Cadillac For Rich, Well-Born Idiots routine the hidebound free-market mouseketeers hope to peddle. You think a lightbulb suddenly went on over Hank the Duce's head? They just then decided they could push the Government around? For cryin' out fuckin' loud, by 1978 the Big Three were more than fifteen years into tying the Gee in knots over mandated safety, emissions, and milage regulations. It's kinda curious that today's free marketers don't remember that, or how working to meet, rather than defeat, government-imposed standards would have meant The Big Three would have been producing the sort of cars Americans wanted after Gas Crisis #1, reducing the impact of the Germans and the Japanese. For that matter, maybe Ford picked up some notions about the relationship between Big and Washington in WWII, when friendly military brass slipped it American Bantam's Jeep blueprints.

But then, y'know, that's always the risk when you try to turn the evils of Government Intervention (even when it works) into simple Morality tales: you take one step back too many, trying to get the bigger picture, and you fall into an even worse pit of cess, and no "principled" way out without eating some.

Would You Buy A Used Car From Dick Nixon? Would You Let Bill Kristol Make Change?

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I Labor To Be Obscure, Vol. LXXI

OKAY, so, first, the "What's the difference between x and y?" "Lipstick." is, you may recall, "Sarah Palin's" "joke", which led to a minor tussle last week. It was, of course, written for her, and was, I was later informed, the reworking of a PMS joke. I don't recall ever engaging in the form, but I'm not censorious where humor's concerned; I just think caution ought to be applied in consideration of the fact that what people find funny often reveals more about them that they might wish. To me the sum total of the joke there, whether in praise of Councilwoman Palin's surgically-enhanced reputation for "toughness", or in comic exaggeration of someone else's medical affliction, is the fleeting image of a beast indulging in cosmetics. About as funny as you'd imagine it to be, and as long-lasting. It is, I think, a cautionary tale about working such things like a rawhide chew toy, or concerning oneself overly with swarming gnats. It's a minor objection, if that, that her ventriloquists would put a PMS joke into her mouth. It's a far greater one that a woman must be portrayed as a critter-pated pugilist in order to deserve political respect, and by far the worst thing is that Commander Palin and her party could be perfectly presumed to think that way without the matter ever being raised.  Except, of course, that it was necessary to paint her that way to allay the fears of the conservers of Neanderthal values, or, as they're also known, the Party.  Fight the real enemy, a wise woman once said.  Palin's the (typical Republican) defender of the Traditional Family who personally focuses on her own career, with the tenaciousness of a bull terrier, but who would prevent other women from terminating pregnancies that would interfere with theirs. Fight the real enemy.

And, since I thought I was just setting up a gag, it didn't occur to me to explain the dietary business further, but I don't add salt to anything and haven't for years; maybe potatoes in a casserole, certainly in baked goods where it's required, but not much more. My Poor Wife's difficulties with sodium, as she'll admit, comes from her own reliance on too many processed foods, generally not of my choosing, though, as usual, when one begins to rely on nutritional information one is quickly shocked to the core about such things.  My own cooking is unapologetically rich judged by the standards of contemporary fadishness, but never incontinently salted, though you'll be offered salt to your heart's content if you join me at table. The recipe-hunting process was an effort to get her to choose some healthier alternatives, out of my concern; I'm not a food fascist. As for "adding flavor" I basically reject the notion of excessive herbalization as I do the application of hops to beer governed, apparently, only by toxicity studies. I've spent years in kitchens pursuing both Italio-French and Chinese regional cooking, and despite the diametrically opposed approaches--melding vs. accumulation of flavors--the signal idea with each is to make ingredients taste like themselves, not like whatever you dumped on them.

Also, since I never get to cook that vegetable stew--I rarely make much of an effort if I'm just feeding myself--I pulled the recipe card rather than type from memory. The card excludes garlic, but julia's right; 2 cloves, to taste, minced and added when the onions are nearly cooked, not before. Alternately one might fry whole cloves in the oil before the onions go in.

Fun With Monogamy, Vol. CCCIX

MY Poor Wife, informed Thursday that her blood pressure was elevated, and I were going over low-sodium  menus.

PW: There's the vegetable stew* you make. I like that.

DR (who couldn't possibly be a source of hypertension): You never eat it! I don't make it anymore, because you never eat any! You won't eat summer squash.

PW: I'll eat squash. It's one of the other ingredients. What's in it?

DR: squash, zucchini, turnip, onions, tomatoes...

PW: Zucchini. I don't like zucchini.

DR (who might be mistaken for flabbergasted at this point, if you didn't know him): Zucchini! What's the difference between summer squash and zucchini?

PW: Lipstick.


___________
* Heat 2 T. olive oil in heavy-bottomed casserole
Saute 2-1/2 cup coarsely cubed onions until soft
Add 1c. vegetable stock, aromatic spices (say 1 tsp each ginger, chili, coriander, 1/4 t. cardamon, cinnamon, allspice, plus cayenne to taste), 1-1/2 cups chopped peeled Roma tomatoes,
Bring to boil
Add 1-1/2 cups sliced carrots, cover, reduce heat to low, cook 10 min.
Add 2 sliced summer squash, 2 sliced zucchini, 1 medium turnip, coarsely cubed, 1 cup chick peas, 1/2 cup raisins which have been plumped in hot water
Cover, simmer 30 minutes Serve over cous-cous.

Plus, We Owe Deer Trapped In Headlights Everywhere An Apology

Michael Smerconish, "Why this lifelong Republican may vote for Obama". Salon, September 11

OKAY, you gotta love that illustration, meant, I guess, to show the bittersweet cooling of bloodlust as though it were akin to a lost summer love and not its twisted pathological replacement for the likes of Michael Smerconish. Of course, to the wizened veteran of a thousand mall encounters with American cartoon spokesrat Mickey Mouse giving Iran the finger (it was funny on so many levels, though it would have been even funnier if Disney had, as is its custom, sued loudly), through what seemed like the first two decades of the 80s, the message is more along the lines of "Hey, World! You've pissed US off, and we've got T-shirts!"

First off, I think I can safely say I join with Americans of every political persuasion in saying I don't give a fuck who Michael Smerconish may or may not vote for, or who he actually votes for, and I can't imagine the circumstances under which that would change. I mean, the obvious one--that he's on a jury, deciding my fate--does not apply the way it would seem to at first glance, since if he's on a jury deciding my fate I've already slashed my lawyer's throat, right there at the defense table, and the whole thing's moot.

I'm a little more interested--but not much--in why Salon seems to continue to believe the lunatic ravings of a tedious, overeducated professional self-promoter (see, make that do not see, Paglia, Camille) represent some needed counter-weight to the likes of Glen Greenwald.

Who's supposed to be swayed by Smerconish's brave declaration that he "might" vote for somebody? For Salon readers common sense dictates that the likely outcome (after "None", I mean) would be a mass defection from the Obama camp, on the grounds that anyone who can inspire even conditional agreement on the issues with Michael "I Went To Fantasy War Camp!" Smerconish--let alone granting the man two interviews--is suspect.

Which he is; Obama's "hot pursuit into Pakistan" was an enormous gaffe, the first official confirmation that his campaign had been crafted in 2005 and was about as navigable as a supertanker. McCain rightly, but tellingly, criticized him for the least egregious feature of this nonsense, that of "tipping his hand". Of course, this was ameliorated somewhat by the fact that McCain's foreign policies contain 80% more batshit, which was then followed by his nominating for Bi-Monthly Acting President While McCain's Under Anesthesia a woman who was overmatched sitting opposite Charlie Gibson, a woman whose foreign policy c.v. includes helping her children with their civics homework. And that's the top of the list.  

(I mean, look: it's over. Not the election; I have no real idea of how America will vote, and though I have to believe her people, as individuals, are generally smart enough to prefer practically anyone, an African-American, the real Tina Fey, even someone outside their own species, to four more years of Republicanism, I'm too old to discount the IQ-lowering effects of crowds, television, and alcoholic beverages made from corn. I'm not banking on sanity. I'm just saying there's no way a sane person could possibly pull a lever thinking it would help put Councilwoman Palin a metaphorical 72-year-old heartbeat away from a metaphorical button. Nor, for that matter, would he or she help make the guy who pulled the stunt which put her there The Most Powerful Man on Earth, Formerly. Not that I, despite my misogyny, do not appreciate the bold move that made the GOP the second major party to nominate a woman for Vice-President, and the first to nominate someone, regardless of gender, from an alien culture. But let me just speak from my own experience: you fucked up. Bad. The best thing for all concerned is to fake Bristol Palin's death, have Commander Choo-Choo resign in grief, and move the whole family further up the glacier for the next two decades, there to await The Rapture. As for the public demonstration of severe psychosis on John McCain's part, well, he'll just have to live with it. Never stopped him before.)

Okay, Pakistan, which we are glad to learn that extensive training by Republican operatives can get someone which no previous experience to identify as "a country" and "vaguely threatening" in just one week: it's a nuclear power. You can look this sort of thing up. India's nearby, somewhere, and they don't like each other much. The Bush administration--it is difficult to exempt the Loyal Opposition or the American people from shared responsibility for this particular fuck-up--decided the attacks of 9/11 required a satisfyingly lethal military response, justified under international law by our having given Afghanistan until the day before 9/11 to turn over the culprits. This required our dealing with Pakistan's military Thug-in-Chief Musharraf, because there were actually some people involved somewhere who are less rash than Michael Smerconish. Surprising, yes. Musharraf wound up with all the people we were chasing moving into Waziristan--totally unexpected, of course--as well as a robust new personal account in Zurich. Fortunes and Fogs of War aside, it was an utterly predictable result, and reckless, and if Michael Smerconish complained about it at the time I haven't yet found the record.

Let's note here that it is the Pakistanis, not the United States of What's Right, which captured the actual mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and did some of the early loosening up work on him and his family for us. This was, Musharraf apparently believed, Value for the Money. Since then, Musharraf's lost his job, former Prime Minister and uranium mule Benazir Bhutto lost her life, and her deadbeat husband was elected President. So it's hard to see how there could be any problems there in the near future. Oh, did I mention the nukes?

It's also hard to see what Smerconish--or Obama, for that matter--imagines we're going to do about it now when we did nothing about it with a bunch of pretend Duke Waynes in charge. We might--might--get away with military hot pursuit or low-grade combat in the Pakistani Badlands; then again, we might destabilize a government which has thus far been, oh, amenable, and acceptable to India provided we give them enough fissionable material for their wink wink peaceable wink programs wink wink winkywinkwink.  Is the game worth the candle, just so someone in Cairo somewhere can accidentally kink the hose of bin-Laden's dialysis machine? Just so loudmouths like Smerconish can feel vindicated vicariously, the same way they felt victimized? It's been his boy in the White House all along, until it became necessary to disavow him.  Smerconish applauded every step of the way. And it failed, and failed spectacularly, and not because of any convenient post-facto failures of execution, but because it was Stupidity on the March.  And, make no mistake about it; they held that banner high. You fucked up. Some CIA spook's thumb may wind up in bin-Laden's eye some day, but it won't change matters. In the meantime, if you want to gamble with lives, start with your own; Bush has given you plenty of opportunities.  Despite the attraction, I hope Obama doesn't give you any more.

Dipsticks

LAST week the staff of The Daily Show had an incredible run, even granting that a political convention is, for them, a four-inch putt. From a McCain bio that portrayed him as the maverick reformer of the previous John McCain, through a three-minute segment that flattened, in rapid succession: Karl Rove (Tim Kaine's inexperience--3 years as governor, 4 as lieutenant governor, plus a bonus ridiculing of the size of Richmond, Virginia, vs. exorbitant praise of Sarah Palin's c.v. less than three weeks later): Bill O'Reilly (the "private matter" of Bristol Palin's vs. the "pinhead parents" of Jamie Lynn Spears who are to blame for her pregnancy); Dick Morris on the pervasive sexism behind the "attacks" on Palin, vs. Hillary Clinton's whining ("In his defense," says Jon, "Dick Morris is a lying sack of shit."); and that McCain spokeswoman and former Ladies Against Women president Nancy Hasenpfeffer or something, playing the same game, objecting to Clinton "playing the gender card", then objecting to the criticism of Palin on behalf of all female woman ladypersons. The week ended with some genius virtually syncing McCain's acceptance speech promises of a new tone in Washington with George W. Bush's from eight years before. It underlined a couple of things: one, that the Galloping Vapours which meet the occasional public notice that some Americans actually get their news from a mock news show is seriously misplaced, and, two, that the real shame is that more don't.

Yeah, I know: it's shocking. I'm not trying to tell you something new. I've been watching this shit for forty years myself, ever since Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement convinced Republicans that not only were the facts against them, but that they had essentially washed away the metaphorical tripod holding the Dry Erase Board of their Sales Program. They weren't just on the wrong side of the debate, or the wrong side of history, they were on the wrong side of democracy, and the only way out was The Electoral Strategy That Dare Not Speak Its Name, Not Too Loudly, Anyway, and the resultant forty years of lying about its racist underpinnings.

(Memo to Mr. Colbert: Yeah, I know it's a comedy program, and the bit was funny, but this is why the Sixties still matter. Not because of some mystical Boomer vibe, or because a bunch of fogies chose to tie up our current politics through a combination of nostalgia and undying hatred. It's the wellspring of the wholly-fictional Reagan Revolution, which has informed everything since. )

Including its informing the current political climate. I'm way too old to be a starry-eyed idealist. I realize truth doesn't win every argument. I just like to think it's usually the way to bet, and I think Democrats abandoned it as a defense prematurely, having lost two elections sandwiched around a win by a guy they didn't really like and helped shoot down. As a result, little truth is to be found, and what is found isn't recognized, and a guy can go on teevee news programs and loudly annihilate what he said just over two weeks previously--not slide around, not finesse, self-annihillate--and not even feel he's trying to get away with something he ought to be hiding. Why is this so fucking difficult to understand? How is it that people ignore the result of this faux-balance crap, which is that one party doubles down on Dissimulation every freakin' time?

I find it impossible not to link this sort of thing directly to the fact that the holiest of Holy Days on the Republican calendar (incidentally, correct me if I wrong, but is this not the first such anniversary without Homeland Security warning of possible celebratory attacks?) dawns with the major campaign issue being lipstick on a pig. And it's not just the usual crackpot yammerers--the candidate himself repeated it. John Maverick McCain, the brave Republican who actually came out and moderately deplored the swiftboating of a fellow veteran, before ducking for cover, now looks at the camera and tells America something he knows no one can honestly believe is true, on the grounds this might swing a Swing State.  Honest John McCain actually said that "lipstick on a pig" was a personal attack. It's certainly not the first, nor the lowest such attack of all time, but it may well be the most poignantly stupid.  Would you hire such a man to work on your car? Does he really want to be President of the Land of Three-Hundred-Million Self-Serving Liars? Is there any possible excuse for this, or any possible outcome that does not include the word "doomed"?

David Brooks Is Going To Take His Ball And Go Home Now, If Someone Will Please Give It Back To Him

David Brooks, "Surprise Me Most". September 9

OKAY, first: "Surprise Me Most"???? I'd let it pass if it were just the title, on the chance that someone else wrote it, but he uses it twice more. Th' fuck is that? It sounds like a collection of Mickey Spillane's newly-discovered love sonnets.

Mr. Brooks urges our national parties to get weirder. Would that he truly meant "weird"; would that he truly wanted it. By the way, full disclosure: for over forty years almost every mention of the word, outside of Dr. Hunter S's, has caused me to grind my molars. "Weird" is how the suburban grillmeister describes Stravinsky. It's how Lawrence Welk described the British Invasion. It's how David Brooks describes this:

Last winter, Barack Obama succeeded by running a weird campaign. He wasn’t just a normal politician aiming for office, he was going to cleanse the country of the baby-boom culture war mentality. In his soaring speeches, he denounced the mores of both the Clinton and Bush eras and made an argument for unity and hope over endless partisan warfare.

Now then: we are not going to spend much time (this time) with the trite recognition that David Brooks' advice to Democrats might possibly be suspect. This is, at least in part, the other Brooks, the one who occasionally murders a few thousand trees the better to sigh wistfully about the unpleasant necessity of his sharing a political party with huge numbers of embarrassing Neanderthals he'd just as soon would disappear back into the woods after they vote; the sort of people who occasionally provoke a companion's cutting rudeness over cocktails that spoil his entire evening. How grand if we could just return, instead, to those heady days of early winter, when Barack Obama promised to wish them away, along that strident PC Left they're always arguing with, and usher in a new birth of...I'm sorry, of what? Dynamic unfettered Corporatism? What is Brooks' idea of Heaven, anyway? Row after row of neatly-uniformed school children, sitting attentively at their desks, liberally sprinkled with various Credits to their various Races, instructed by non-union teachers, eagerly vying, through hard work and personal merit, to climb right up to the point where the wealthy white people who actually own everything tell the butler to shut the door in their faces? Burghers who pay just enough taxes to keep the US technologically bristling with major weapons systems, and the video-game-trained poorer classes who operate them? The colorful pageantry and native garb of (legal) Ethnics who never forget a Holy Day and can't afford to call in sick? Th' fuck does the man want? If you think that the American culture war is bad, try to imagine the American culture at peace.

It's funny how this When You're Wishy-Washy Upon a Star routine never shares any of the blame for...whatever it is we're blaming. Why don't you Centrists solve the problem for us? You know, the same way you solved Racism by putting Martin Luther King on a stamp, thirty years after you wished Sheriff Clark would stop beating prisoners and Negroes would stop provoking him.

We consciously invoke above the great bugbear of the Mild-Mannered "Conservative" columnist pretending to plea--never sue--for Peace. The third anniversary of Katrina--and a new, scarifying hurricane season--are excellent mnemonic devices for considering just how over Racism we truly are, especially members of Brooks own party. Or don't you read the fun folks at the flagship National Review, Mr. Brooks? Of course, they were Centrist about the whole thing, too, finally allowing as how the government might have acted a wee bit quicker if it hadn't had to stop to shoot all those looters, and how the Negroes of Nawlins were unconscionably tardy in the development of gills. Veritable wellspring of hope for the future over there, they are.

Don't get me wrong; I still will defend to Voltaire's death your right to say any stupid thing you please, but when it reaches the pages of the Times somebody ought to demand you show your work on occasion. If Senator Obama was able to craft a political campaign over this Magical Return to Reaganism, When Everybody Got Along bullshit--aimed primarily at vast numbers of younger voters who didn't know the difference and who have now, apparently, vanished--well, he's a politician; we make allowances.  If that sounds cynical to you it's because you never looked at your own Reaganism from the other side, or considered his accomplishments in cold morning light. Obama is at least subjected to questioning (unfortunately, conducted by members of your own profession); you risk what? I doubt a kick in the shins from Jim Lehrer. Explain to me, just once, how far we are from apodictic: that one side of the Baby Boomer "culture war" supported civil rights, gender equality, reproductive self-determination, economic justice, responsible stewardship of the environment, and an end to US wars of imperialism, whereas the other side wanted to, well, bomb the shit out of everyone it disagreed with. Oh, and in fairness, run the economy well, where "well" is defined as "principally in the interests of the people who have the money in the first place". Now tell me how you rectify this, or how you hoped Obama was going to rectify it, back in those days when his message was so electrifying you didn't notice the cold. By chattering about it on PBS? Presumably you imagine your own side to be at fault, partly. Given your rent-free kiosk in the country's most important opinion mall, what have you ever done about it, besides occasionally stroking your eyebrown twice and frowning like a disappointed uncle? You squirmed in your chair over Schiavo--that curiously revelatory moment among those Republicans who were somehow previously unaware of the Religious Right--and you criticized the response to Katrina. Big deal. There's no distinction between that and the party-preservation instincts of your faction.

So now Senator Obama finds himself in a race, not a speechifying contest; now he speaks to issues, not that Land of Friendly Unicorns where everybody has realized David Brooks was right; and now he sounds like a Democrat. Content yourself with the memory that you once shared the same, beautiful dream, before the fucking alarm clock went off and you had to grub up some reality.

But by campaigning in this traditional way, Obama ceded the weirdness edge to McCain.

The old warrior jumped right in. Think about how weird last week was. The Republican convention was one long protest against the way the Republicans themselves have run Washington.

I'm sorry, do you expect to earn plaudits for recognizing the Republican party's disconnect from reality? In 2008?

McCain’s convention speech barely mentioned his own party. His vice-presidential nominee came out of the blue and seems totally unlike the regular crowd of former eighth-grade class presidents who normally dominate public life.

Right, she seems more like the quiet girl who always wore ankle-length woolen skirts of a medium gray, and a head covering, who you once saw eating handfuls of paste behind her upraised desk top.

McCain’s campaign ideology, exemplified in a new ad released on Monday, is not familiar conservatism. It’s maverickism — against the entrenched powers and party orthodoxies.

Good Lord, no wonder you quoted David Broder; nobody combines Conventional Wisdom and Persistent Vegetative State  quite like The Dean. But, c'mon, the salient feature of the entire McCain campaign to this point--aside from trying to trip up Obama--has been his shameless rush to disavow every last maverickical opinion he'd ever proclaimed, and bring it into line with the Bronze Age wing of the party, which he supposedly despises. Reprising the maverick routine--we note, again, that he is a "maverick" only in the way The Beatles were "weird", that is, strictly to an audience well-accustomed to monochromatic life--may have been good politics, with America, presumably including that portion of the electorate which hasn't completely taken leave of what senses it once had, watching. Or, again, it may have been another of his legendary attacks of the crochets, and a small retaliation for his having been forced to let James Dobson pick his running mate. I have no idea. If Brooks has some insider dope on the thing he has an Excuse Me, Weird way of eliciting confidence in it.

If the Obama campaign seems, belatedly, to have realized that the arrival of November 4 will make the odds on there being a November 5 something of a lock, the scattergun "weirdness" of the McCain campaign has, basically, assured that he'll have no means of governing come next January. Which is weird, since he'll be the first Republican in forty years who might actually have preferred to do so.

Daily Grace

When The Left Attacks The Press, It Proves It's Doing Its Job. When The Right Attacks, It's A Lark. Plus, People Still Took Pictures With Brokaw. QED

Mr. Greatest Generation, gracious as always.

Mark Leibovich, "Who, Us? Media Bashing 101". September 7

SARAH PALIN’S national opening last week was judged an unqualified success by the media elite, even though much of her debut speech Wednesday night was devoted to whacking the media elite.

IS that supposed to be some kind of a koan?

“I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone,” Governor Palin of Alaska said, drawing the wildest applause of what would be the raucous night of the Republican convention.

Okay, so we may as well start right there; we might find we can finish right there, too. I taped convention coverage specifically so I wouldn't have to sit through vast stretches of this sort of thing--the speeches, not the vapid post-speech commentary, I mean. I caught a little bit of Giuliani, the way you'd watch a high-school biology filmstrip about the mating habits of the praying mantis, i.e., just for the goo. I spent a little longer with Fred Dumbo Thompson, on the grounds that I believe he's the very personification of modern-day Republican party power: 1) it's impossible to decide how much of his political philosophy he truly "believes", and what percentage is attributable to a long-sublimated potty-training mishap or a prom date's derisive laughter; 2) it's next to impossible to figure out who buys that image of him as a man who feasts on 'possum and cream gravy twice a week when a glance tells you he berates the waiter if his '85 Romanée-Conti is still at cellar temperature; 3) he's a star, politically, without ever having accomplished anything even he can point to, other than raising money; 4) as such he's the poster boy for that "federalism" of which he is also perhaps the staunchest, and hence most plug-ignernt, advocate; and 5) he's perfectly described by Woody Allen's old line about John Mitchell (spoken on the cusp of Nixon's first inaugural): "I think when Trick or Treaters ring his doorbell he probably tear-gasses them." In fact, if Thompson loses Death Race 2010 to Dick Cheney he'll stand as the living embodiment.

Alas, on that night Thomspon's Mayberryisms had been penned by the writers of the Ken Berry version, so I skipped ahead to Commander Palin. And I skipped, and skipped, and skipped, and never found a two-sentence segment that wasn't met by uproarious applause. That speech was the "Freebird" of political theatre, and, as such, it's difficult to credit anyone who totted it up in the Unqualified Success column unless you know they also voted Skynnerd Best Band Ever in Rolling Stone's Readers' Poll.

I have since been subjected to more than one punditaster--Pat Buchanan comes immediately to mind--simply declaring the councilwoman had captivated "millions". And maybe she did, but Buchanan knows no more of the numbers, or the emotions welling inside, than do you or I. Meanwhile, that unqualified and (mostly) disproportionate roaring, of a sort last heard from a cattlebarnful of white people that time the Washington Generals got mad and kicked the Globetrotters' ass, signified what exactly? The last time these people got together they slimed a fucking war hero. Yes, they were given the opportunity to vent at Thuh Librul Media, but they'd've been stomping and hooting non-stop regardless, for the simple reason that McCain had selected an unqualified wingnut; the stomp lines were intended to drown out the first while trumpeting the second. See, again, Bush's first speech to a Joint Session, assuming you can get naked ladies out of your mind; it's the same thing, and it would have occurred if there'd been no previous coverage at all of Palin, her crackpot theology, her doctored record, or her Striking Good Looks. She got a wildly positive reception ex parte. How do you use that to judge her results, other than, perhaps, among the same Blood n' Guts Republicans who created the din in the first place? And, sheesh, she's a right-wing crank; did you really need to check the V-U meter to gauge their opinions?

Compare, naturally, Senator Obama (Things to Do Today: 1. Fire campaign staff) and the criticism of the response of masses of Germans (Things to Do Today: 1. Go back in time, retroactively fire campaign staff) who, whatever else might be said of massed Germans at a political rally, were not there as a partisan prop. I did go back this weekend and look at a bit more of Governor Adenoid's speech, just to see if my revulsion to her party, her ideas, her political and intellectual heft, and that guy in the back who kept yelling, "Sweet Home Alabama!" had colored my consideration of what I'd watched of her performance the next morning.  On second look I think, if nothing else, Senator Obama ought to be glad he can now relinquish the title of Most Overpraised Political Orator of the modern era, especially since she went around him like Ursain Bolt. Isn't that self-same media elite which called her an Unqualified Success supposed to be, uh, listening to her and not the home-town crowd? She's not exactly awful, now that the Acting President has buried that bar so far in the ground we'll have to drill for it if we ever need it back, but Weekend Fill-in Sports Anchor on a Long Frozen Tundra Night on the Only Channel That Comes In Clearly would have been a good place to stop, talent-wise.

Speaking of them media elites, which is what we were supposed to be doing: somehow "That's just the White People cuttin' up; lucky for us they doan mean it none, and they'll be sorry tomorrow when they sober up" falls a little short of what I'd term "analysis".

We have played this video game before. Indeed, the Republican tradition of media-bashing goes back decades, at least to the convention of 1964 when former President Dwight D. Eisenhower called out "sensation-seeking columnists and commentators," and the Cow Palace in San Francisco burst into jeers and catcalls at the reporters there. The sentiment was immortalized in Richard Nixon’s vice president Spiro Agnew who memorably charged that many in the press corps were mere “nattering nabobs of negativism” — and for good measure — “an effete corps of impudent snobs.”
In other words, the bashers and bashees have been through this and know the drill. There was an almost homey familiarity to the ritual. And despite the hot words from the podium, it was hard to find a journalist last week who felt any unusual sense of siege or discomfort.

Krishna H. Vishnu, it's like finding it remarkable that a sixty-year-old streetwalker didn't blush when you propositioned her. The Librul Media stuff occupies the same position in American politics that anti-Evolutionism does: it continues to market the same empty PR blather, occasionally and transparently modified to seem up-to-date (and not, it must be stressed, to deal with new evidence; neither engage in an actual debate). Professional biologists finally tired of the blatant lies spread about them, fought back, and have won every battle. Journalists, meanwhile, seem to think that three generations of right-wing smears about them are "sorta fun". This is why we call Biology "a science" and Journalism "an abomination".

Too bad it's not harmless fun, not like noting that the front-page, graphic-bigger-than-the-piece, Week in Review examination of forty-year-old (excuse me) bullshit quotes, along with a strict cast of strict Republicans broken only by The Liberal Tom Brokaw, both Peggy Noonan, and Michael Murphy, just four days removed from their having inadvertently revealed to the world that they think the whole thing's a Big Fucking Playground, with Cake (Noonan is actually quoted from her Thursday mea culpa, minus the part about how she really didn't mean to be overheard saying Palin is a joke).  Too bad it's actually managed to slant our news rightward over those past forty years  (and look what that's accomplished!). 

Isn't Journalism supposed to reflect on this sort of thing? Either the Right had a legitimate grievance over the coverage of Councilwoman Palin--in this we exempt the pregnancy story, as the Right has relinquished, for All Time, the standing to object to scabrous tabloid personal intrusions of whatever type, including the Toilet cam, not that we're trying to give anyone any ideas--in which case it ought to be addressed, or it was blowing smoke, in which case you ought to try putting up your dukes for once, and see if you might like the view from your own two feet once in a while.