Wednesday, September 14
Tuesday, September 13
The Kids Are Alwrong
David Brooks, "If It Feels Right". September 12
I WATCHED a passel a' Republican Reality Show last night, and, frankly, I'm not all that impressed with the field.
This was the first time I've (sorta) watched two of these things back-to-back (I mean ever, not just with this collection of oxygen bandits), and the striking feature, for me, was that none of these biting midges can sustain from one week to the next. Even Jon "The Normal One" Huntsman--and how disconcerting is it when the only two candidates who give the appearance, and probably only the appearance, of managing to keep one foot in or near the reality-based gravitational pull of the Earth are Mormons?--can't manage two straight episodes without turning up covered in cotton candy or fire ants; the Green Room must be fulla each. Romney? He gives a very good impression of a Second-Generation Legacy GM board member being forced to work two straight weeks without golf. He's been lying and pulling Jim Rockford 180ºs so long now he can barely keep anything straight, and the requirement that he express a robust opposition to whatever fucking insanity is popular with GOP voters (Executive orders? Germ theory of disease?) this week is beginning to tell on him. I'm sure he'll pull through, though; the man's a pro, and I mean that in the worst possible way.
Last week I almost wrote about how Huntsman and--surprise--Rick Fucking Santorum were the only two guys who belonged, marginally, in a House debate, let alone in a Presidential sweepstakes, but last night Santorum sounded like the guy reading Bible verses out loud while you're both waiting for the bus. There's Professor Gingrich, of course, whose early career was spent assessing just how transparent a liar and crook one could be without getting caught, provided one remained in Georgia ("Like Dan Burton, but 10% smarter and 20% more immoral," my friend Gary once said), and whose second act is designed to prove--probably unintentionally--that character does matter.
The performance of the front-runners last night was just depressing, and not the usual sort of God, This Is Gonna Hurt Republican depressing, either. How th' hell can a Republican of sensible mien sit through one of these things, or sit still just knowing they're out there? This is precisely what the Artificial Draft Mitch Daniels movement was all about, and we'll repeat: when you're reduced to tabbing Mitch Daniels as just the sort of man your party needs, you've taken a wrong turn somewhere, and it was at least a thousand miles ago.
Which brings us to David Brooks. Brooks has the built-in advantage that his vertiginous intellect allows him to merely allude to a certain dissatisfaction, a vague feeling that maybe a Republican or two has overstepped somewhere; this impresses the thinking classes no end, and grants him the freedom to go off on another of these Sociological experiments he enjoys having other people conduct for him. Turns out the durned Kids today are immoral and inarticulate:
Well, on the bright side, at least academics in the empirical, or "empirical", social sciences are finally beginning to pay attention to the college-age population.
In other words, it describes how people who aren't David Brooks fail to consider how David Brooks would have them act.
STANDARD DISCLAIMER: 1) Do not operate toaster while it, or you, are immersed in water. 2) Bear in mind, whenever you're treated to the moral complaints of American "conservatives", that these same people thought 100,000 innocent Iraqis dying for the sin of being governed by Saddam Hussein, a man we helped them choose in the first place, was an acceptable moral calculus.
Or, put another way, it's the debauchery.
Okay, first, I'm guessing here that, despite the disclaimer, we're going to wind up blaming their moral sense, not their vocabulary. Second, isn't this pretty much then the finding of every similar study? Maybe the English department should be doing the research. Finally, we should urge caution here, if only because inarticulacy is the one trait young Americans share with the middle-aged and the elderly.
Confused, inarticulate and amoral young people! Things sure have changed since I was in school.
Okay, so at this point could we ask for the precise date when Sociology solved this problem for all of Western civilization? Was it that day when every Protestant and Jew in Judeo-Christendom agreed that the Pope was infallible? I must've mislaid my notes.
Not to mention what it says about America's sociologists and punditasters. Our young people, it seems to me, have pretty well internalized the same unquestioning belief in the primacy of individual whim the Republican party touts as the solution to all our economic problems. But by all means, let's blame the schools for not eradicating the rabid consumerism every last non-comatose citizen is bombarded with forty-five times a minute.
Resistance is Futile!
So does finding a hidden strength in the knowledge that Corporate America'll knock that immorality out of 'em soon enough. Or just re-channel it.
Wow, thinkers as diverse as Alasdair MacIntyre and Allan Bloom, agreeing that America has failed to live up to the moral guidelines they'd set for it. And Gertrude Himmelfarb! Nearly spanning the complete spectrum of American "conservative" social moralist prescription.
Well, in fairness, a still-sizable portion of the population still comes by its morality the old fashioned way: from a talking tree, or the miraculous scorch pattern in a piece of toast.
Hey, Dave: Allan's no longer with us, but why don't you, and Bea, and Alasdair, and the rest, just get together this weekend and hash out the clear-cut moral code the rest of us are supposed to live by. And then why don't you all live by it for a week, and see who cries Uncle first?
I WATCHED a passel a' Republican Reality Show last night, and, frankly, I'm not all that impressed with the field.
This was the first time I've (sorta) watched two of these things back-to-back (I mean ever, not just with this collection of oxygen bandits), and the striking feature, for me, was that none of these biting midges can sustain from one week to the next. Even Jon "The Normal One" Huntsman--and how disconcerting is it when the only two candidates who give the appearance, and probably only the appearance, of managing to keep one foot in or near the reality-based gravitational pull of the Earth are Mormons?--can't manage two straight episodes without turning up covered in cotton candy or fire ants; the Green Room must be fulla each. Romney? He gives a very good impression of a Second-Generation Legacy GM board member being forced to work two straight weeks without golf. He's been lying and pulling Jim Rockford 180ºs so long now he can barely keep anything straight, and the requirement that he express a robust opposition to whatever fucking insanity is popular with GOP voters (Executive orders? Germ theory of disease?) this week is beginning to tell on him. I'm sure he'll pull through, though; the man's a pro, and I mean that in the worst possible way.
Last week I almost wrote about how Huntsman and--surprise--Rick Fucking Santorum were the only two guys who belonged, marginally, in a House debate, let alone in a Presidential sweepstakes, but last night Santorum sounded like the guy reading Bible verses out loud while you're both waiting for the bus. There's Professor Gingrich, of course, whose early career was spent assessing just how transparent a liar and crook one could be without getting caught, provided one remained in Georgia ("Like Dan Burton, but 10% smarter and 20% more immoral," my friend Gary once said), and whose second act is designed to prove--probably unintentionally--that character does matter.
The performance of the front-runners last night was just depressing, and not the usual sort of God, This Is Gonna Hurt Republican depressing, either. How th' hell can a Republican of sensible mien sit through one of these things, or sit still just knowing they're out there? This is precisely what the Artificial Draft Mitch Daniels movement was all about, and we'll repeat: when you're reduced to tabbing Mitch Daniels as just the sort of man your party needs, you've taken a wrong turn somewhere, and it was at least a thousand miles ago.
Which brings us to David Brooks. Brooks has the built-in advantage that his vertiginous intellect allows him to merely allude to a certain dissatisfaction, a vague feeling that maybe a Republican or two has overstepped somewhere; this impresses the thinking classes no end, and grants him the freedom to go off on another of these Sociological experiments he enjoys having other people conduct for him. Turns out the durned Kids today are immoral and inarticulate:
During the summer of 2008, the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith led a research team that conducted in-depth interviews with 230 young adults from across America. The interviews were part of a larger study that Smith, Kari Christoffersen, Hilary Davidson, Patricia Snell Herzog and others have been conducting on the state of America’s youth.
Well, on the bright side, at least academics in the empirical, or "empirical", social sciences are finally beginning to pay attention to the college-age population.
Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing.
In other words, it describes how people who aren't David Brooks fail to consider how David Brooks would have them act.
STANDARD DISCLAIMER: 1) Do not operate toaster while it, or you, are immersed in water. 2) Bear in mind, whenever you're treated to the moral complaints of American "conservatives", that these same people thought 100,000 innocent Iraqis dying for the sin of being governed by Saddam Hussein, a man we helped them choose in the first place, was an acceptable moral calculus.
It’s not so much that these young Americans are living lives of sin and debauchery, at least no more than you’d expect from 18- to 23-year-olds. What’s disheartening is how bad they are at thinking and talking about moral issues.
Or, put another way, it's the debauchery.
The interviewers asked open-ended questions about right and wrong, moral dilemmas and the meaning of life. In the rambling answers, which Smith and company recount in a new book, “Lost in Transition,” you see the young people groping to say anything sensible on these matters. But they just don’t have the categories or vocabulary to do so.
Okay, first, I'm guessing here that, despite the disclaimer, we're going to wind up blaming their moral sense, not their vocabulary. Second, isn't this pretty much then the finding of every similar study? Maybe the English department should be doing the research. Finally, we should urge caution here, if only because inarticulacy is the one trait young Americans share with the middle-aged and the elderly.
“Not many of them have previously given much or any thought to many of the kinds of questions about morality that we asked,” Smith and his co-authors write. When asked about wrong or evil, they could generally agree that rape and murder are wrong. But, aside from these extreme cases, moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner. “I don’t really deal with right and wrong that often,” is how one interviewee put it.
Confused, inarticulate and amoral young people! Things sure have changed since I was in school.
Many were quick to talk about their moral feelings but hesitant to link these feelings to any broader thinking about a shared moral framework or obligation. As one put it, “I mean, I guess what makes something right is how I feel about it. But different people feel different ways, so I couldn’t speak on behalf of anyone else as to what’s right and wrong.”
Okay, so at this point could we ask for the precise date when Sociology solved this problem for all of Western civilization? Was it that day when every Protestant and Jew in Judeo-Christendom agreed that the Pope was infallible? I must've mislaid my notes.
Smith and company found an atmosphere of extreme moral individualism — of relativism and nonjudgmentalism. Again, this doesn’t mean that America’s young people are immoral. Far from it. But, Smith and company emphasize, they have not been given the resources — by schools, institutions and families — to cultivate their moral intuitions, to think more broadly about moral obligations, to check behaviors that may be degrading. In this way, the study says more about adult America than youthful America.
Not to mention what it says about America's sociologists and punditasters. Our young people, it seems to me, have pretty well internalized the same unquestioning belief in the primacy of individual whim the Republican party touts as the solution to all our economic problems. But by all means, let's blame the schools for not eradicating the rabid consumerism every last non-comatose citizen is bombarded with forty-five times a minute.
Many of these shortcomings will sort themselves out as these youngsters get married, have kids, enter a profession or fit into more clearly defined social roles. Institutions will inculcate certain habits. Broader moral horizons will be forced upon them.
Resistance is Futile!
But their attitudes at the start of their adult lives do reveal something about American culture.
So does finding a hidden strength in the knowledge that Corporate America'll knock that immorality out of 'em soon enough. Or just re-channel it.
For decades, writers from different perspectives have been warning about the erosion of shared moral frameworks and the rise of an easygoing moral individualism.
Allan Bloom and Gertrude Himmelfarb warned that sturdy virtues are being diluted into shallow values. Alasdair MacIntyre has written about emotivism, the idea that it’s impossible to secure moral agreement in our culture because all judgments are based on how we feel at the moment.
Charles Taylor has argued that morals have become separated from moral sources.
Wow, thinkers as diverse as Alasdair MacIntyre and Allan Bloom, agreeing that America has failed to live up to the moral guidelines they'd set for it. And Gertrude Himmelfarb! Nearly spanning the complete spectrum of American "conservative" social moralist prescription.
In most times and in most places, the group was seen to be the essential moral unit. A shared religion defined rules and practices. Cultures structured people’s imaginations and imposed moral disciplines. But now more people are led to assume that the free-floating individual is the essential moral unit. Morality was once revealed, inherited and shared, but now it’s thought of as something that emerges in the privacy of your own heart.
Well, in fairness, a still-sizable portion of the population still comes by its morality the old fashioned way: from a talking tree, or the miraculous scorch pattern in a piece of toast.
Hey, Dave: Allan's no longer with us, but why don't you, and Bea, and Alasdair, and the rest, just get together this weekend and hash out the clear-cut moral code the rest of us are supposed to live by. And then why don't you all live by it for a week, and see who cries Uncle first?
Monday, September 12
Remembering 9/12
The Washington Post editorial board, "Don't underestimate what America has achieved since 9/11". 9-9
THANKS are what I guess are in order to ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© for the above link, and certainly to Suffern AC for the capsule description: "the most important thing to do this day was to shield the elite from criticism."
I don't remember who said that Sentimentality was other people's sentiments, and it was either Doctor Swift or Doctor Johnson who said "Obsequies are always mixed with infusion of poppy." Or it was someone else. I'd look it up, but my quote collection is on Hypercard, and I'm not gonna go plug in the graphite iMac, and find a keyboard, just so I can open it. Not until Apple apologizes.
Anyway, maybe it's just me, but if you want to remember, really remember, the Fallen of that day then you watch a documentary, you look at something that happened in between the planes flying into the Towers and the subsequent shocking collapse that much of the mythology is based on; you share a moment or two in that polarscape of ash with people unable to fully comprehend the scope of what had happened, and no clue about how much bigger it would become, very, very soon. The people--fire, police, civilian--who went, as the popular parlance has it, Up, not Down that day, weren't doing so for America, or "America". They were doing it for their fellow human beings. What it had to do with turning the playing field at Cowboys Stadium into a temporary prop flag I do not know. The impulse to easy patriotic display seems all but irresistible to the profit-driven.
I mean, I don't really care what Chris Berman and Tom Jackson think about 9/11. I care about who won the late games. I'm sure their expressions were heartfelt, but I'm not sure they should bring their show to a halt every time an anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Pearl Harbor, the Normandy Invasion, Washington's Farewell, the Kennedy Assassination, Marbury v. Madison, or the Gadsden Purchase is divisible by five. The one thing I would like to ask is: can we please get rid of Tom Brokaw before the next one? If the humanitarians among us wish Mr. Brokaw a long and happy life, then let's just agree not to celebrate 9/11 again until it's over.
For fuck's sake, the man is a walking Whitman's Sampler of What's Fucked Up About the Culture. At the time of the 9/11 attacks he was making maybe $15 mil a year for reading a teleprompter--which he can't even do in English--and doing vanity reports, and he wants credit for coming in to work early that day. And he had to come into work early because the Today Show hosts--Catie and Matt--had zero gravitas about them, or just the right amount for a program NBC wanted to be gravitas-free. And once he got there he announced we were at War. or, as he put it, "Wah-ah." Imagine Cronkite or Huntley-Brinkley doing that at the height of the Cawd Wah-ah a half-hour after an ammo dump blew up.
But they were reporters, and had a serious attitude about the reach of television; Brokaw is a ratings monkey. Brokaw and Peter Jennings were the first two Q-ratings anchors. Both rose after the News was taken over by Entertainment, both climbed the ladder at networks which were furiously paddling Right in an effort to catch the Silent Majority slipstream and rise to ratings semi-respectability, and both arrived at the top just in time to curl up in Ronald Reagan's grandfatherly lap. Jennings actually became a journalist after that. Brokaw became a corporation.
Just get him off the fucking air. He can write all the stupid pandering books he wants, just so someone else reads the audio version. But, fuck, the man has nothing in his head corresponding to an original thought. His is the wisdom of the man who created the fourth-largest regional grommet manufacturer starting with only the Mom & Pop grommet sweatshop his parents left him.
Fred Hiatt the WaPo Editorialistes:
What channel was that on?
Yeah, about $500 billion each to make sure Qusay and Uday, or Qumoy and Mtsu, didn't succeed their father as Unfriendly President with a Bunch of Oil and a Third-World Sandhole, and another $500 billion to kill bin-Laden. I guess we can take pride in the fact that we're too ethical to've just offered $100 mil to the first person to bring us bin-Laden's head. We could have had the motherfucker in a week, except, of course, that it took that long to locate George W. Bush. Just because a straightforward approach to a criminal act probably would have netted us something closer to justice, in much less time, and at an exponentially lesser cost in innocent lives is no reason to be too hard on ourselves now. Just because we ignored the Geneva Conventions so we could slake our bloodlust, but keep our hands clean, is not excuse to run around contemplating our navels. Just because al-Qaeda turned out to be one guy with a bunch of oil residual money, a Commodore 64, and a porn stash doesn't mean it wasn't SPECTRE, once, and couldn't be again. Hey, we heard credible threats about the Tenth Anniversary! Didn't we?
THANKS are what I guess are in order to ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© for the above link, and certainly to Suffern AC for the capsule description: "the most important thing to do this day was to shield the elite from criticism."
I don't remember who said that Sentimentality was other people's sentiments, and it was either Doctor Swift or Doctor Johnson who said "Obsequies are always mixed with infusion of poppy." Or it was someone else. I'd look it up, but my quote collection is on Hypercard, and I'm not gonna go plug in the graphite iMac, and find a keyboard, just so I can open it. Not until Apple apologizes.
Anyway, maybe it's just me, but if you want to remember, really remember, the Fallen of that day then you watch a documentary, you look at something that happened in between the planes flying into the Towers and the subsequent shocking collapse that much of the mythology is based on; you share a moment or two in that polarscape of ash with people unable to fully comprehend the scope of what had happened, and no clue about how much bigger it would become, very, very soon. The people--fire, police, civilian--who went, as the popular parlance has it, Up, not Down that day, weren't doing so for America, or "America". They were doing it for their fellow human beings. What it had to do with turning the playing field at Cowboys Stadium into a temporary prop flag I do not know. The impulse to easy patriotic display seems all but irresistible to the profit-driven.
I mean, I don't really care what Chris Berman and Tom Jackson think about 9/11. I care about who won the late games. I'm sure their expressions were heartfelt, but I'm not sure they should bring their show to a halt every time an anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Pearl Harbor, the Normandy Invasion, Washington's Farewell, the Kennedy Assassination, Marbury v. Madison, or the Gadsden Purchase is divisible by five. The one thing I would like to ask is: can we please get rid of Tom Brokaw before the next one? If the humanitarians among us wish Mr. Brokaw a long and happy life, then let's just agree not to celebrate 9/11 again until it's over.
For fuck's sake, the man is a walking Whitman's Sampler of What's Fucked Up About the Culture. At the time of the 9/11 attacks he was making maybe $15 mil a year for reading a teleprompter--which he can't even do in English--and doing vanity reports, and he wants credit for coming in to work early that day. And he had to come into work early because the Today Show hosts--Catie and Matt--had zero gravitas about them, or just the right amount for a program NBC wanted to be gravitas-free. And once he got there he announced we were at War. or, as he put it, "Wah-ah." Imagine Cronkite or Huntley-Brinkley doing that at the height of the Cawd Wah-ah a half-hour after an ammo dump blew up.
But they were reporters, and had a serious attitude about the reach of television; Brokaw is a ratings monkey. Brokaw and Peter Jennings were the first two Q-ratings anchors. Both rose after the News was taken over by Entertainment, both climbed the ladder at networks which were furiously paddling Right in an effort to catch the Silent Majority slipstream and rise to ratings semi-respectability, and both arrived at the top just in time to curl up in Ronald Reagan's grandfatherly lap. Jennings actually became a journalist after that. Brokaw became a corporation.
Just get him off the fucking air. He can write all the stupid pandering books he wants, just so someone else reads the audio version. But, fuck, the man has nothing in his head corresponding to an original thought. His is the wisdom of the man who created the fourth-largest regional grommet manufacturer starting with only the Mom & Pop grommet sweatshop his parents left him.
ON THE 10TH anniversary of al-Qaeda’s attack on New York and Washington, the conventional wisdom seems to be evolving from “We will be hit again” to “Osama bin Laden won by provoking us into a decade of overreaction.”
What channel was that on?
The feeling is understandable but incorrect, and it would be dangerous if it took hold. Yes, the nation made big mistakes over the past decade. When has America ever geared up without excess and error? But the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon alerted Americans to genuine dangers that only a relative few had noticed. We have lived safely for the decade since not because we misread those dangers but because we responded to them in a manner in which, on balance, Americans can take pride.
Yeah, about $500 billion each to make sure Qusay and Uday, or Qumoy and Mtsu, didn't succeed their father as Unfriendly President with a Bunch of Oil and a Third-World Sandhole, and another $500 billion to kill bin-Laden. I guess we can take pride in the fact that we're too ethical to've just offered $100 mil to the first person to bring us bin-Laden's head. We could have had the motherfucker in a week, except, of course, that it took that long to locate George W. Bush. Just because a straightforward approach to a criminal act probably would have netted us something closer to justice, in much less time, and at an exponentially lesser cost in innocent lives is no reason to be too hard on ourselves now. Just because we ignored the Geneva Conventions so we could slake our bloodlust, but keep our hands clean, is not excuse to run around contemplating our navels. Just because al-Qaeda turned out to be one guy with a bunch of oil residual money, a Commodore 64, and a porn stash doesn't mean it wasn't SPECTRE, once, and couldn't be again. Hey, we heard credible threats about the Tenth Anniversary! Didn't we?
Sunday, September 11
Compelling Satellite Imagery Of The Early 21st Century
[Shown in increasing number of casualties that resulted.]
Friday, September 9
Well, For Starters, Because They're In On It
Dana Milbank, "The irrelevancy of the Obama presidency". September 9
This just in from Dana Milbank, National Chairperson, Let's Put Gravitas Back Into Politics Foundation.
Why shouldn't those two chuckle at Obama's Big Plans, three years late? He's done more for the Republican agenda than they ever have.
That said--but not for the last time--I wish everyone would sit there respectfully, but whaddya gonna do? Look at what you got to work with.
Lindsey Fucking Graham, Strom Thurmond Chair of Applied Antebellum Studies, Washington, D.C., has been in the United States Congress for fifteen years. What did the employment picture look like when he took office, compared to now? How 'bout the Horrible Baby-Killing Deficit? How much of the current Federal deficit is directly traceable to things Lindsey Fucking Graham voted for? And his party stand for? What's he got to chuckle about except how deeply the rubes are hooked, and how long a Ponzi scheme can go on without anyone catching on or saying something? Of Bob "Bob" Corker, the most that should be said is he holds the Bill Frist Chair for Tennessee (Motto: The Thinking Man's Confederacy!) and aspires some day to fill it.
And I will be saying the same thing thirty-six months from now, about Presidential Addresses and Bob Corker, when one of the bolder Democrats has summoned the courage to cough pointedly at one of President Palin's howlers.
You wanna show disrespect, boycott. Maybe that's just me. If we wanna have Question Time, let's be elitist, just for the sake of viewing an imaginary future, one where we have both British-style rough-and-tumble and a still-functioning government. Okay, so they're both farfetched. Our observation might sound something ike this: There is a distinction between a Shakespearean sonnet and the rude scribblings on a mens' room stall. Not that the latter is entirely without charms; the point is that that distinction is flatly lost on a sizable number of Americans, and an even higher percentage of their elected officials.
Maybe the President should announce a speech every week, and invite the audience to heckle him.
Jobs? It's the Democratic party that sold out the middle class, the Working Man, and that happened more than four years ago. Barack Obama standing there as the deal spared the Financiers both money and prison time was just an acknowledgement of the fact. Of course, there are still more friends of the Lesser Classes among Democrats than their opponents, but only since those opponents have been stuck on Zero since the 1880s, Progressive Era excepted.
I don't know what percentage of the blame to belongs to the Democrats; the Bush administration was such a disaster that disaster was guaranteed to follow in its wake, but what did The Historical Democrats do about it? This is the Historical Congress of Suckitude; what are they doing about it now? Fuck Congress in perpetuity. The President runs the country, and has been since whenever you wanna start counting. Barack Obama is aware of this, since he has invoked emperorhood in order to continue covert surveillance on every American with an internet connection, bail out Wall Street scammers, and justify whatever th' fuck we spend on the Defense, Psychic Investigations, and Really Cool Robots Department, because we let the paranoiacs take over in 1946.
Candidate and President Presumptive Barack Obama professed his admiration for the way "Ronald Reagan brought people together even though and let me clarify my remarks from yesterday I didn't agree with his policies." It perhaps--perhaps!--explains his failure to grasp that the appropriate model was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, since his gazed was fixed 180º opposite.
I do not understand why Barack Obama did not consciously evoke FDR ("The last American President to actually win a war!") and the 100 Days. Or Martin Luther King, for that matter. The minute those Teabagger racist signs went up he should have given a ninety-minute teevee lecture on African-American history. (Granted, yet again, that I also believe he should have let at least one "motherfucker" slip out, early. As in, for example, "that Motherfuckin' Dick Cheney." I am not so delusional as to imagine that I'll be taken seriously.)
Compromise is a joke, but Compromise has been a joke for a long time. Thanks to the work of Restoration nobility, 18th century surveyors and political philosophers, and an insatiable and realizable lust for Indian lands that followed close behind, we have a semi-permanent ruling coalition of Dixiecrats with, frankly, less genetic variability than is ordinarily seen in a population sample that size, and representatives of a vast inland area in which there are no people. Or in which what people there are a disproportionately rewarded with government contracts, land, oil and mineral leases, water, and probably free premium cable.
Obama should'a come out swinging--from December, 2008, and he should have dared the Congressional Republicans, on the ropes but refusing to go down, to call Martin Luther King a Socialist. In public. In the spirit of Compromise, he could have pointed out that what he was asking was a helluva lot milder than what they called him when he was alive. In public.
How did this happen? He missed the fact that people were looking at him as some sort of Rescuer, a handsome and valiant and yes, half-African First Responder to the collapse of the White House? Yeah, he got stuck, economically, in the shorts, with no sweet talk first. Yeah, the President can't exactly go on teevee and announce "We're fucked" ten minutes after he takes office, and there are probably other good reasons he couldn't go on and say, "Our fucking money was stolen, and I'm gonna get it back." Should'a done it anyway. Should'a taken the majority of the American people with him, instead of going out of his way to meet with those who weren't ever gonna like him. Instead he asked the Republicans what he should do. It's not like I'm the only person who thought this was a bad idea. How does the man know the Shining Beacon That Was Ronald Wilson "Dutch" Reagan, and not the bios of James Earl Carter or William Jefferson "First Black President" Clinton?
And, no, I think that Barack Obama did exactly what he intended to do, though probably not as well as he wished. The only connection Centrist Democrats have to the old Democratic party involves the contributions of organized labor. Jimmy Carter--he was elected as a "moderate Democrat", remember--could have done something about it--like run a better PR operation--but he couldn't have seen the scope of the Reagan Revolution of 1981-1985. Bill Clinton could have done something about it, but he was one of the Original Centrist Weasels (Motto: Just Get Elected), and he wasn't prepared for the organized vehemence of the Great Clinton Hunt. But for godsakes, Barack Hussein "One of These Presidents Is Not Like the Others" Obama had to see it comin'.
This just in from Dana Milbank, National Chairperson, Let's Put Gravitas Back Into Politics Foundation.
President Obama gave one of the most impassioned speeches of his presidency when he addressed a joint session of Congress Thursday night. Too bad so many in the audience thought it was a big, fat joke.
“You should pass this jobs plan right away!” Obama exhorted. Sens. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) chuckled.
Why shouldn't those two chuckle at Obama's Big Plans, three years late? He's done more for the Republican agenda than they ever have.
That said--but not for the last time--I wish everyone would sit there respectfully, but whaddya gonna do? Look at what you got to work with.
Lindsey Fucking Graham, Strom Thurmond Chair of Applied Antebellum Studies, Washington, D.C., has been in the United States Congress for fifteen years. What did the employment picture look like when he took office, compared to now? How 'bout the Horrible Baby-Killing Deficit? How much of the current Federal deficit is directly traceable to things Lindsey Fucking Graham voted for? And his party stand for? What's he got to chuckle about except how deeply the rubes are hooked, and how long a Ponzi scheme can go on without anyone catching on or saying something? Of Bob "Bob" Corker, the most that should be said is he holds the Bill Frist Chair for Tennessee (Motto: The Thinking Man's Confederacy!) and aspires some day to fill it.
And I will be saying the same thing thirty-six months from now, about Presidential Addresses and Bob Corker, when one of the bolder Democrats has summoned the courage to cough pointedly at one of President Palin's howlers.
You wanna show disrespect, boycott. Maybe that's just me. If we wanna have Question Time, let's be elitist, just for the sake of viewing an imaginary future, one where we have both British-style rough-and-tumble and a still-functioning government. Okay, so they're both farfetched. Our observation might sound something ike this: There is a distinction between a Shakespearean sonnet and the rude scribblings on a mens' room stall. Not that the latter is entirely without charms; the point is that that distinction is flatly lost on a sizable number of Americans, and an even higher percentage of their elected officials.
Maybe the President should announce a speech every week, and invite the audience to heckle him.
Jobs? It's the Democratic party that sold out the middle class, the Working Man, and that happened more than four years ago. Barack Obama standing there as the deal spared the Financiers both money and prison time was just an acknowledgement of the fact. Of course, there are still more friends of the Lesser Classes among Democrats than their opponents, but only since those opponents have been stuck on Zero since the 1880s, Progressive Era excepted.
I don't know what percentage of the blame to belongs to the Democrats; the Bush administration was such a disaster that disaster was guaranteed to follow in its wake, but what did The Historical Democrats do about it? This is the Historical Congress of Suckitude; what are they doing about it now? Fuck Congress in perpetuity. The President runs the country, and has been since whenever you wanna start counting. Barack Obama is aware of this, since he has invoked emperorhood in order to continue covert surveillance on every American with an internet connection, bail out Wall Street scammers, and justify whatever th' fuck we spend on the Defense, Psychic Investigations, and Really Cool Robots Department, because we let the paranoiacs take over in 1946.
Candidate and President Presumptive Barack Obama professed his admiration for the way "Ronald Reagan brought people together even though and let me clarify my remarks from yesterday I didn't agree with his policies." It perhaps--perhaps!--explains his failure to grasp that the appropriate model was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, since his gazed was fixed 180º opposite.
I do not understand why Barack Obama did not consciously evoke FDR ("The last American President to actually win a war!") and the 100 Days. Or Martin Luther King, for that matter. The minute those Teabagger racist signs went up he should have given a ninety-minute teevee lecture on African-American history. (Granted, yet again, that I also believe he should have let at least one "motherfucker" slip out, early. As in, for example, "that Motherfuckin' Dick Cheney." I am not so delusional as to imagine that I'll be taken seriously.)
Compromise is a joke, but Compromise has been a joke for a long time. Thanks to the work of Restoration nobility, 18th century surveyors and political philosophers, and an insatiable and realizable lust for Indian lands that followed close behind, we have a semi-permanent ruling coalition of Dixiecrats with, frankly, less genetic variability than is ordinarily seen in a population sample that size, and representatives of a vast inland area in which there are no people. Or in which what people there are a disproportionately rewarded with government contracts, land, oil and mineral leases, water, and probably free premium cable.
Obama should'a come out swinging--from December, 2008, and he should have dared the Congressional Republicans, on the ropes but refusing to go down, to call Martin Luther King a Socialist. In public. In the spirit of Compromise, he could have pointed out that what he was asking was a helluva lot milder than what they called him when he was alive. In public.
How did this happen? He missed the fact that people were looking at him as some sort of Rescuer, a handsome and valiant and yes, half-African First Responder to the collapse of the White House? Yeah, he got stuck, economically, in the shorts, with no sweet talk first. Yeah, the President can't exactly go on teevee and announce "We're fucked" ten minutes after he takes office, and there are probably other good reasons he couldn't go on and say, "Our fucking money was stolen, and I'm gonna get it back." Should'a done it anyway. Should'a taken the majority of the American people with him, instead of going out of his way to meet with those who weren't ever gonna like him. Instead he asked the Republicans what he should do. It's not like I'm the only person who thought this was a bad idea. How does the man know the Shining Beacon That Was Ronald Wilson "Dutch" Reagan, and not the bios of James Earl Carter or William Jefferson "First Black President" Clinton?
And, no, I think that Barack Obama did exactly what he intended to do, though probably not as well as he wished. The only connection Centrist Democrats have to the old Democratic party involves the contributions of organized labor. Jimmy Carter--he was elected as a "moderate Democrat", remember--could have done something about it--like run a better PR operation--but he couldn't have seen the scope of the Reagan Revolution of 1981-1985. Bill Clinton could have done something about it, but he was one of the Original Centrist Weasels (Motto: Just Get Elected), and he wasn't prepared for the organized vehemence of the Great Clinton Hunt. But for godsakes, Barack Hussein "One of These Presidents Is Not Like the Others" Obama had to see it comin'.
Thursday, September 8
The Neatly-Coiffed Rich Boy President Of The Student Council vs. The Hunky Binge-Drinking Male Cheerleader? Don't Make Me Choose!
"NOTHING survives being thought of," the sainted Oscar said, and nothing demonstrates that any better than the history of the "Presidential" and "Presidential candidate" debate routines.
I watched, God help me, as much as I could stand last night before taping the rest of it, the MSNBC post-game analysis, and this morning's chatter on CNN, in the way someone might cap off a night and early morning of inadvisable drinking by eating the most disgusting, sugar-laden, marginally non-toxic piece of American Food Goo he could find at the Mini-Mart--by the cartonfull, for good measure--just to make sure the following Sick was as virulent as the offense called for. Then I watched as much as I could stand of the recordings. And I have no idea which was the most offensive.
Nor do I really know what to say about them, except that each was an exercise in setting up a story, including the debate itself, which seemed to've been scripted by Brian Williams' writing staff and management team with the intention of fomenting a Perry/Romney fracas it could sell the way NBC's Sports Division (is that separate from the news?) might tout an NBA final as Kobe vs LeBron.
Who does this serve? Not the viewer. Not the national debate. Not the other Six Specks of Granite. Perry and Romney--fer chrissakes, they both look like The Incredibly Age-Regressing Zombie Reagan with special effects from #5 or 6 in the Lon Chaney, Jr., Wolfman series, don't they?--split the first ten minutes of the thing; the Officially-Proclaimed Also-Rans divvied up the next ten. Everybody's prepped for the sort of question Williams will ask, and Williams is trying to look just competent enough to deflect criticism, but not rile the Right, or not above the nominal, any way. After that it's a two-hour search for soundbites.
I grew up a mile from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I go back to a time when the racing car pilot--a real man untroubled by intellect who wrestled death-trap bullets of real steel on the edge of glory and disembowelment--could not be counted on to remember to thank the car owner when the cameras rolled. Today's slick magazine idol has been chosen in no small part for his ability to say "The boys worked their butts off to get the Pepsi-Fritos-Laetrile Ford, Brought To You By Certs, with Retzin™ back into the field yesterday," as naturally as he draws breath.
C'mon, do we have to work to elicit this sort of thing with politicians? These people are prepared to give their stump speeches, making sure to cough up the Phrase that Pays as often as possible. That is their full-time job. Shouldn't we expect a United States Representative, or even a western Governor, for that matter, to be, at minimum, amenable to the sort of training required to spit out a message, when that's all they have on their plate? For God's sake, they got Schwazenegger to do that. And Fabio. (And yes, I'm looking at you, members of the Press who were so artificially impressed by Bachmann's initial debate appearance, though I'm not Weigeling any names. I mean I'm not mentioning any Weigels.) And they're prepped for the Celebrigossip round. Mitt Romney's response to the sudden Perry supremacy is not a piece of stage business. It's the salient question for his campaign at the moment, and that campaign goes on seven days a week. For the life of me, what is the attraction of having this exchange:
"Michael Dukakis created more jobs than you did in Massachusetts."
"Well, George Bush and his predecessor created more jobs than you did in Texas."
unless we're just really, really fascinated by the spectacle of two empty suits embarrassing themselves? This was not the fault of Williams. It's the fucking silly setup. (By the way, her name was Ann Richards, which is so well-known I can only assume that Romney's people didn't want him to suddenly appear informed.) I don't give a fuck what Republican presidential hopefuls think of the philosophical conundrum of Anti-Gubment "Conservatives" who spend their entire lives living off the taxpayer dime. If this mattered to any of them they wouldn't be politicians, or Republicans. It's an artificial gotcha. It's something for Beltway insiders to chuckle over while on their third Macallan 15 of the evening.
If Mitt Romney's gonna pull some Al Gore Invented The Internet routine * the proper response is to have a Zen teacher walk across the stage and belt him with a stick. If all you're going to do is hold a microphone to the mirror reflection of the thing, just do that. Rick Perry reiterating, for the umpteenth time, his crackpot inaccuracies about Social Security isn't news. It's a pathology. The proper response to that is a straitjacket, not Mitt Romney musing on Perry's electability. Really taking that down would mean exposing the sham Social Security game the Right's been playing since the 80s. Which, of course, no one with a major network job, or a name on the masthead of a nominally financially-functioning website, is going to do. Couldn't we get Matt Taibbi and Christopher Hitchens to moderate one of these things?
______________
* Credit where credit is due, carefully worded, and competently delivered, to invoke the laughter of a Reagan Library crowd without actually saying that Vice President Gore claimed he invented the internet. Still, there's such a thing as a freshness date, and it's surpassed more quickly when the product in question was beaten to death by a parade of drunkards ten years previous.
I watched, God help me, as much as I could stand last night before taping the rest of it, the MSNBC post-game analysis, and this morning's chatter on CNN, in the way someone might cap off a night and early morning of inadvisable drinking by eating the most disgusting, sugar-laden, marginally non-toxic piece of American Food Goo he could find at the Mini-Mart--by the cartonfull, for good measure--just to make sure the following Sick was as virulent as the offense called for. Then I watched as much as I could stand of the recordings. And I have no idea which was the most offensive.
Nor do I really know what to say about them, except that each was an exercise in setting up a story, including the debate itself, which seemed to've been scripted by Brian Williams' writing staff and management team with the intention of fomenting a Perry/Romney fracas it could sell the way NBC's Sports Division (is that separate from the news?) might tout an NBA final as Kobe vs LeBron.
Who does this serve? Not the viewer. Not the national debate. Not the other Six Specks of Granite. Perry and Romney--fer chrissakes, they both look like The Incredibly Age-Regressing Zombie Reagan with special effects from #5 or 6 in the Lon Chaney, Jr., Wolfman series, don't they?--split the first ten minutes of the thing; the Officially-Proclaimed Also-Rans divvied up the next ten. Everybody's prepped for the sort of question Williams will ask, and Williams is trying to look just competent enough to deflect criticism, but not rile the Right, or not above the nominal, any way. After that it's a two-hour search for soundbites.
I grew up a mile from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I go back to a time when the racing car pilot--a real man untroubled by intellect who wrestled death-trap bullets of real steel on the edge of glory and disembowelment--could not be counted on to remember to thank the car owner when the cameras rolled. Today's slick magazine idol has been chosen in no small part for his ability to say "The boys worked their butts off to get the Pepsi-Fritos-Laetrile Ford, Brought To You By Certs, with Retzin™ back into the field yesterday," as naturally as he draws breath.
C'mon, do we have to work to elicit this sort of thing with politicians? These people are prepared to give their stump speeches, making sure to cough up the Phrase that Pays as often as possible. That is their full-time job. Shouldn't we expect a United States Representative, or even a western Governor, for that matter, to be, at minimum, amenable to the sort of training required to spit out a message, when that's all they have on their plate? For God's sake, they got Schwazenegger to do that. And Fabio. (And yes, I'm looking at you, members of the Press who were so artificially impressed by Bachmann's initial debate appearance, though I'm not Weigeling any names. I mean I'm not mentioning any Weigels.) And they're prepped for the Celebrigossip round. Mitt Romney's response to the sudden Perry supremacy is not a piece of stage business. It's the salient question for his campaign at the moment, and that campaign goes on seven days a week. For the life of me, what is the attraction of having this exchange:
"Michael Dukakis created more jobs than you did in Massachusetts."
"Well, George Bush and his predecessor created more jobs than you did in Texas."
unless we're just really, really fascinated by the spectacle of two empty suits embarrassing themselves? This was not the fault of Williams. It's the fucking silly setup. (By the way, her name was Ann Richards, which is so well-known I can only assume that Romney's people didn't want him to suddenly appear informed.) I don't give a fuck what Republican presidential hopefuls think of the philosophical conundrum of Anti-Gubment "Conservatives" who spend their entire lives living off the taxpayer dime. If this mattered to any of them they wouldn't be politicians, or Republicans. It's an artificial gotcha. It's something for Beltway insiders to chuckle over while on their third Macallan 15 of the evening.
If Mitt Romney's gonna pull some Al Gore Invented The Internet routine * the proper response is to have a Zen teacher walk across the stage and belt him with a stick. If all you're going to do is hold a microphone to the mirror reflection of the thing, just do that. Rick Perry reiterating, for the umpteenth time, his crackpot inaccuracies about Social Security isn't news. It's a pathology. The proper response to that is a straitjacket, not Mitt Romney musing on Perry's electability. Really taking that down would mean exposing the sham Social Security game the Right's been playing since the 80s. Which, of course, no one with a major network job, or a name on the masthead of a nominally financially-functioning website, is going to do. Couldn't we get Matt Taibbi and Christopher Hitchens to moderate one of these things?
______________
* Credit where credit is due, carefully worded, and competently delivered, to invoke the laughter of a Reagan Library crowd without actually saying that Vice President Gore claimed he invented the internet. Still, there's such a thing as a freshness date, and it's surpassed more quickly when the product in question was beaten to death by a parade of drunkards ten years previous.
Wednesday, September 7
On The Role Of Deeply-Held Philosophical Beliefs In American Political Life, And Other Comedic Concepts
YOU may recall that late last month the roof and rigging of the outdoor stage at the Indiana State Fair collapsed in high winds, killing seven and injuring dozens more. You might also recall that by the next morning Mitch Daniels was on the scene, informing everyone within earshot, and especially potential litigants, that the whole thing was just one of those freakish acts of Nature, Nature being the goddess who gets the blame when public Christianity-professors like Daniels need a non-monotheistic culprit.
Indiana law limits the state's liability to $5 million in this case; there's been a lot of grumbling about that, such as you'll have whenever the proponents of Small Government for Thee get a prominent part of their collective anatomy caught in a Press. Because, of course, we only mean Libertarian reforms to affect other people, not to absolve us of our own culpability just for the sake of some filthy lucre. We only mean to prohibit frivolous lawsuits by people who aren't the accidental recipients of massive public sympathy.
Daniels had been forced, within 24 hours, to proclaim his intention for a thorough state investigation. Since Hoosiers of any shred of decency had not risen up en masse and pummeled him within an inch of his height-challenged life the day before, there was no chance he'd be made to pay for that little weaselly performance. So it was right in character when, yesterday, he rejected calls to lift the $5 million limit. Here's what the leader of the Anti-Statist Party told Channel 13's Kevin Rader; see how many errors you can spot:
Daniels, whose five favorite books are concordances of Atlas Shrugged, believes, or "believes", that Government is tyranny, and that ours is a kleptocracy at best, when run by Democrats. Yet Mitch has been on the hustings--beginning while people were still in operating rooms fighting for their lives, a fight two would lose--as a spokesman for limiting what innocent people can receive in compensation for the wrongful infringement of their rights by the negligent. From daylight the next morning. And he doesn't say, "Well, this is what the law says, as written; it shouldn't be changed just because it doesn't meet our sense of justice in this case, but should be looked at calmly and rationally", which at least would make an acceptable dodge. No. He talks like a litigant with both hands on his check book cover, trying desperately to keep it closed. He's pitching an arrangement which is clearly unfair and inadequate for many of the victims while absolving himself of any responsibility ("I wouldn't say yes or no") for what his words mean.
And why? Sure, because there's a dollar involved. But also because Daniels' notion of economic Freedom includes the freedom not to be held accountable for anything done in the name of profit.
I don't know which is more disgusting: that he does this sort of thing repeatedly, or that he repeatedly gets away with it.
[By the way, while looking shit up on the internets this morning ("research") I came across this at a quote site; someone had propped it up like it was worthy of Montaigne:
And I though, Wow, that's interesting; school choice is somehow the one area of public life where the underclasses have some sort of right to what the wealthy have "earned". They don't have a right to decent, affordable health care; they have no right to bargain for compensation, or (if they're government workers) to earn more annually than the median Hoosier; they have no right to sales tax--the most regressive tax they pay--relief, the way their landlords get their property taxes lowered. And, of course, they have no right to be admitted to those non-government schools ("Here's a voucher--lemme know what Exeter says, har, har, har"). They have the right to be deluded about choice if it suits Mitch Daniels and the wealthy families lined up behind him. It's Philosophy.]
Indiana law limits the state's liability to $5 million in this case; there's been a lot of grumbling about that, such as you'll have whenever the proponents of Small Government for Thee get a prominent part of their collective anatomy caught in a Press. Because, of course, we only mean Libertarian reforms to affect other people, not to absolve us of our own culpability just for the sake of some filthy lucre. We only mean to prohibit frivolous lawsuits by people who aren't the accidental recipients of massive public sympathy.
Daniels had been forced, within 24 hours, to proclaim his intention for a thorough state investigation. Since Hoosiers of any shred of decency had not risen up en masse and pummeled him within an inch of his height-challenged life the day before, there was no chance he'd be made to pay for that little weaselly performance. So it was right in character when, yesterday, he rejected calls to lift the $5 million limit. Here's what the leader of the Anti-Statist Party told Channel 13's Kevin Rader; see how many errors you can spot:
"I wouldn't say yes or no. We are prepared to go ahead and release the $5 million, which is the state's limit before anybody knows anything about fault or where it lies among all parties. It's just again to give people an option that they otherwise wouldn't have and a chance to have compensation immediately with certainty and not have to share it with trial lawyers. For now that will be our emphasis. Let's see what the inquiry tells us," said Daniels.
Daniels, whose five favorite books are concordances of Atlas Shrugged, believes, or "believes", that Government is tyranny, and that ours is a kleptocracy at best, when run by Democrats. Yet Mitch has been on the hustings--beginning while people were still in operating rooms fighting for their lives, a fight two would lose--as a spokesman for limiting what innocent people can receive in compensation for the wrongful infringement of their rights by the negligent. From daylight the next morning. And he doesn't say, "Well, this is what the law says, as written; it shouldn't be changed just because it doesn't meet our sense of justice in this case, but should be looked at calmly and rationally", which at least would make an acceptable dodge. No. He talks like a litigant with both hands on his check book cover, trying desperately to keep it closed. He's pitching an arrangement which is clearly unfair and inadequate for many of the victims while absolving himself of any responsibility ("I wouldn't say yes or no") for what his words mean.
And why? Sure, because there's a dollar involved. But also because Daniels' notion of economic Freedom includes the freedom not to be held accountable for anything done in the name of profit.
I don't know which is more disgusting: that he does this sort of thing repeatedly, or that he repeatedly gets away with it.
[By the way, while looking shit up on the internets this morning ("research") I came across this at a quote site; someone had propped it up like it was worthy of Montaigne:
And before our current legislature adjourns, we intend to become the first state of full and true choice by saying to every low and middle-income Hoosier family, if you think a non-government school is the right one for your child, you're as entitled to that option as any wealthy family; here's a voucher, go sign up.
And I though, Wow, that's interesting; school choice is somehow the one area of public life where the underclasses have some sort of right to what the wealthy have "earned". They don't have a right to decent, affordable health care; they have no right to bargain for compensation, or (if they're government workers) to earn more annually than the median Hoosier; they have no right to sales tax--the most regressive tax they pay--relief, the way their landlords get their property taxes lowered. And, of course, they have no right to be admitted to those non-government schools ("Here's a voucher--lemme know what Exeter says, har, har, har"). They have the right to be deluded about choice if it suits Mitch Daniels and the wealthy families lined up behind him. It's Philosophy.]
Tuesday, September 6
The Plumb Bob Of Stupidity
FOR some reason this morning, after the standard subjecting myself to the local inane weather blithering, I switched over to CNN. Readers over fifty may remember CNN, which stood for Considered a News Network (it's now just CNN, like Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC when they stopped using real chickens), and be surprised to learn it survived into the holographic news era. I know I was.
The program was American Morning, one of several programs sprinkled throughout the airwaves which began because some producer thought he had a chance with Paula Zahn. And which continues because Dead Air is apparently not an option.
The show is currently hosted by two teleprompter-readers with hairdos and a Frank DeCaro impersonator. They were discussing the impending demise of the US Postal Service. Ad lib.
Now let's reiterate: if it weren't for Barbara Walters, and Roone Arledge, the worst thing that ever happened to "Journalism" would be the debut, in 1975, of ABC's Good Morning America, which not only appropriated a perfectly good Steve Goodman song in that special way only tone-deaf Republicans can (see Reagan, Ronald Wilson, "the words of New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen"), but completed the Nixonization of its news division a full year after his resignation and full pre-pardon. (This, by the way, before it turned over control of its newscasts to a sports producer.) GMA, as it is known to people who need to talk about it but don't have much time, eventually connected with its intended audience: people who enjoyed inane chit-chat, but were made uncomfortable when it came from people who gave the impression of having read something other than magazines at some point.
No such problem here, of course. The general attitude at American Morning was "Who needs the Postal Service when there's email?" This was not intended as a rhetorical flourish. It was evidence of real puzzlement.
But the segment closer was the real treat; one of the hairdos had gotten "pensions guaranteed for seventy-five years" stuck in her head, and kept repeating it so it would sink in and the rest of us could share in the outrage. The other pointed to "no-layoff clauses in some of these union contracts." As though an employer ought to be able to abrogate a contract if he discovers later he's losing money on the deal. I'm not sure how many union contracts she imagines postal workers have. Maybe one for each location.
Look on my works, ye Mighty! Two extremely well-compensated union-represented contract employees whose job it is to read the news gave this no more thought than they would the details of some boring policy debate. Like most questions this one can be solved by applying playground math and the homespun wit of Michele Bachmann. Simple working peons shouldn't have guaranteed pensions! Mailmen shouldn't be allowed to trade dedication to a job for a guarantee it will be there next week!
Good Lord, times are tough! Don't the little people realize this?
The program was American Morning, one of several programs sprinkled throughout the airwaves which began because some producer thought he had a chance with Paula Zahn. And which continues because Dead Air is apparently not an option.
The show is currently hosted by two teleprompter-readers with hairdos and a Frank DeCaro impersonator. They were discussing the impending demise of the US Postal Service. Ad lib.
Now let's reiterate: if it weren't for Barbara Walters, and Roone Arledge, the worst thing that ever happened to "Journalism" would be the debut, in 1975, of ABC's Good Morning America, which not only appropriated a perfectly good Steve Goodman song in that special way only tone-deaf Republicans can (see Reagan, Ronald Wilson, "the words of New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen"), but completed the Nixonization of its news division a full year after his resignation and full pre-pardon. (This, by the way, before it turned over control of its newscasts to a sports producer.) GMA, as it is known to people who need to talk about it but don't have much time, eventually connected with its intended audience: people who enjoyed inane chit-chat, but were made uncomfortable when it came from people who gave the impression of having read something other than magazines at some point.
No such problem here, of course. The general attitude at American Morning was "Who needs the Postal Service when there's email?" This was not intended as a rhetorical flourish. It was evidence of real puzzlement.
But the segment closer was the real treat; one of the hairdos had gotten "pensions guaranteed for seventy-five years" stuck in her head, and kept repeating it so it would sink in and the rest of us could share in the outrage. The other pointed to "no-layoff clauses in some of these union contracts." As though an employer ought to be able to abrogate a contract if he discovers later he's losing money on the deal. I'm not sure how many union contracts she imagines postal workers have. Maybe one for each location.
Look on my works, ye Mighty! Two extremely well-compensated union-represented contract employees whose job it is to read the news gave this no more thought than they would the details of some boring policy debate. Like most questions this one can be solved by applying playground math and the homespun wit of Michele Bachmann. Simple working peons shouldn't have guaranteed pensions! Mailmen shouldn't be allowed to trade dedication to a job for a guarantee it will be there next week!
Good Lord, times are tough! Don't the little people realize this?
Friday, September 2
Ask The Man Who Owned One
LET'S have a quick look back at the newly-ended career of former New York City Deputy Mayor and Chief Morals Officer of Indianapolis Stephen Goldsmythe. Not because of schadenfreude; just because I've always wanted to say "newly-ended career of Stephen Goldsmythe".
First, it's "Goldsmythe". I don't know why the papers are always misspelling it. Back when he was screwing up snow removal in the Midwest it was revealed that he was registered to vote as Stephen Goldsmythe, 123 Fake St., Indianapolis. Since it's a felony to vote under an assumed name, or address, and since he was never charged, this information was apparently correct.
Which is how he should have explained it, instead of claiming he was hiding out from all the bad guys he'd put away as Prosecutor. At the time Rudy Giuliani, who had put away some real bad guys, was living at Gracie Mansion. Okay, plus various love nests, but you get the point. And Giuliani is still with us, as everyone who's about to be subjected to a month-long tenth-year anniversary of his artificially inflating the WTC death toll for the purpose of increasing the political hay harvest can attest.
Anyway, after becoming an Eagle Scout, like Dick Lugar, graduating from Michigan Law, like Ann Coulter, and landing a six-year gig with the US Army Reserves at the height of the Vietnam War, like Dan Quayle, Goldsmythe started work for a well-connected Indianapolis law firm, and shortly after went to work on the government's dime as Corporate Counsel, and later chief trial deputy, for the city. He won a surprise victory for Marion County Prosecutor in 1978, thanks to the popular Nixonian law n' order blather and some fortuitous financing. Goldsmythe spent the next twelve years as Prosecutor, pissing off Bad Guys and carping about Permanent Indianapolis Mayor the Reverend Bill Hudnut, whose job Goldsmythe wanted. Hudnut--a popular, likable, and moderate fellow who could've gone on being Mayor indefinitely--finally decided not to run for a fifth term, citing "that goddam flea infestation in the Prosecutor's office". Though not exactly in those terms.
Goldsmythe, meanwhile, had become a disciple of Government Privatization, on the grounds that this seemed like a good deal for his backers. His antics, which to this point had been only about 10% more disturbing than the run-of-the-mill politician's in these parts--he had a particular fixation on "cleaning up" massage parlors and adult bookstores, and no apparent concern with Constitutional rights, nor the cost to taxpayers of losing extended court fights over overarching prosecutions--now became, in a word, insufferable. Indianapolis did not undertake Privatization under Stephen Goldsmythe for the sake of economic efficiencies or improvement of services; Indianapolis undertook Privatization because Stephen Goldsmythe was metaphysically correct in his every assumption, and on his way to important political office.
Fans of the genre will not be surprised to learn that Privatization, to the Goldsmythe administration, meant selling off contracts to do things the city already did, and that it emphatically did not mean that the Simons should be forced to build their own new stadium for their own basketball team, nor that the Colts should be held to their original lease, nor that the Simons should build their own downtown megamall, nor that Eli Lily should be forced to expand its operations without massive tax rebates, nor that any of this should be accounted for publicly.
In brief--okay, too late for that--Goldsmythe continued the twenty-five year program, beginning with Dick Lugar, and continuing through Bill Hudnut, of propping up the value of downtown property, and the Old Money portfolios it fit in, with taxpayer dollars. Unlike his predecessors, though, Goldsmythe did it while proclaiming loudly how opposed he was to government spending.
Fans of the genre who aren't already way ahead of me will by now be wondering when all the self-flattery went to the man's head. Which would be 1996, when, ignoring the results of the 1995 Indianapolis mayoral elections, which he won easily against a woman who was as surprised as anyone to learn she was running, but with a decided Nobody Really Likes You, Stephen turnout, he ran for Governor, bulling his way through the Republican primaries--Republicans didn't really like him, either--before being pretty much humiliated in the general.
Fill in the rest: 'conservative' sinecures at Lockheed Martin, Harvard's Kennedy School, domestic advisor to the Bush 2000 campaign, public crybaby when he only got the #2 job at the Faith Based Initiatives Boondoggle as a result.
For me Steve Goldsmythe will always be a sort of link between the Nixon Crime Family and the Reagan Snake Oil factory, a guy who never really sounded like he believed what he said, but who sounded like he believed he needed to say it to enrich himself. I swear his blade-dulling swath through the mid-90s Indiana Republican party served as the bad example Mitch Daniels' handlers "learned" from; Goldsmythe's arrogance is why we got Mitch Daniels, plaid-shirted RVer, rather than the accurate Mitch Daniels, Fuck, He Must Know Better Than You, He's Rich. There's been no shortage here, the last two days, of people expressing their surprise that Little Stephen, Former World's Youngest Eagle Scout, would get bunged up on a domestic battery beef. At a time when Indianapolis has elected Gomer Pyle mayor, and just ousted Ratso Rizzo as Prosecutor, I'd just like to say that for some of us who can still remember Steve the real surprise was the news that he'd been hired to get things done in a city that needs things done, and where Rube is just one of many voting blocs.
First, it's "Goldsmythe". I don't know why the papers are always misspelling it. Back when he was screwing up snow removal in the Midwest it was revealed that he was registered to vote as Stephen Goldsmythe, 123 Fake St., Indianapolis. Since it's a felony to vote under an assumed name, or address, and since he was never charged, this information was apparently correct.
Which is how he should have explained it, instead of claiming he was hiding out from all the bad guys he'd put away as Prosecutor. At the time Rudy Giuliani, who had put away some real bad guys, was living at Gracie Mansion. Okay, plus various love nests, but you get the point. And Giuliani is still with us, as everyone who's about to be subjected to a month-long tenth-year anniversary of his artificially inflating the WTC death toll for the purpose of increasing the political hay harvest can attest.
Anyway, after becoming an Eagle Scout, like Dick Lugar, graduating from Michigan Law, like Ann Coulter, and landing a six-year gig with the US Army Reserves at the height of the Vietnam War, like Dan Quayle, Goldsmythe started work for a well-connected Indianapolis law firm, and shortly after went to work on the government's dime as Corporate Counsel, and later chief trial deputy, for the city. He won a surprise victory for Marion County Prosecutor in 1978, thanks to the popular Nixonian law n' order blather and some fortuitous financing. Goldsmythe spent the next twelve years as Prosecutor, pissing off Bad Guys and carping about Permanent Indianapolis Mayor the Reverend Bill Hudnut, whose job Goldsmythe wanted. Hudnut--a popular, likable, and moderate fellow who could've gone on being Mayor indefinitely--finally decided not to run for a fifth term, citing "that goddam flea infestation in the Prosecutor's office". Though not exactly in those terms.
Goldsmythe, meanwhile, had become a disciple of Government Privatization, on the grounds that this seemed like a good deal for his backers. His antics, which to this point had been only about 10% more disturbing than the run-of-the-mill politician's in these parts--he had a particular fixation on "cleaning up" massage parlors and adult bookstores, and no apparent concern with Constitutional rights, nor the cost to taxpayers of losing extended court fights over overarching prosecutions--now became, in a word, insufferable. Indianapolis did not undertake Privatization under Stephen Goldsmythe for the sake of economic efficiencies or improvement of services; Indianapolis undertook Privatization because Stephen Goldsmythe was metaphysically correct in his every assumption, and on his way to important political office.
Fans of the genre will not be surprised to learn that Privatization, to the Goldsmythe administration, meant selling off contracts to do things the city already did, and that it emphatically did not mean that the Simons should be forced to build their own new stadium for their own basketball team, nor that the Colts should be held to their original lease, nor that the Simons should build their own downtown megamall, nor that Eli Lily should be forced to expand its operations without massive tax rebates, nor that any of this should be accounted for publicly.
In brief--okay, too late for that--Goldsmythe continued the twenty-five year program, beginning with Dick Lugar, and continuing through Bill Hudnut, of propping up the value of downtown property, and the Old Money portfolios it fit in, with taxpayer dollars. Unlike his predecessors, though, Goldsmythe did it while proclaiming loudly how opposed he was to government spending.
Fans of the genre who aren't already way ahead of me will by now be wondering when all the self-flattery went to the man's head. Which would be 1996, when, ignoring the results of the 1995 Indianapolis mayoral elections, which he won easily against a woman who was as surprised as anyone to learn she was running, but with a decided Nobody Really Likes You, Stephen turnout, he ran for Governor, bulling his way through the Republican primaries--Republicans didn't really like him, either--before being pretty much humiliated in the general.
Fill in the rest: 'conservative' sinecures at Lockheed Martin, Harvard's Kennedy School, domestic advisor to the Bush 2000 campaign, public crybaby when he only got the #2 job at the Faith Based Initiatives Boondoggle as a result.
For me Steve Goldsmythe will always be a sort of link between the Nixon Crime Family and the Reagan Snake Oil factory, a guy who never really sounded like he believed what he said, but who sounded like he believed he needed to say it to enrich himself. I swear his blade-dulling swath through the mid-90s Indiana Republican party served as the bad example Mitch Daniels' handlers "learned" from; Goldsmythe's arrogance is why we got Mitch Daniels, plaid-shirted RVer, rather than the accurate Mitch Daniels, Fuck, He Must Know Better Than You, He's Rich. There's been no shortage here, the last two days, of people expressing their surprise that Little Stephen, Former World's Youngest Eagle Scout, would get bunged up on a domestic battery beef. At a time when Indianapolis has elected Gomer Pyle mayor, and just ousted Ratso Rizzo as Prosecutor, I'd just like to say that for some of us who can still remember Steve the real surprise was the news that he'd been hired to get things done in a city that needs things done, and where Rube is just one of many voting blocs.
Thursday, September 1
Thursday "It's Olio Week!" Olio
• Maybe you've heard, but my personal Congressman, Andre Carson, did a bad thing by talking like Glenn Beck within Glenn Beck's hearing. Though in fairness, he made up for it by doing a great thing: refusing to apologize.
If you did hear about this I hope it wasn't from the Indianapolis media, which hates to be reminded that the city of Indianapolis is represented in Congress by a scary African-American Muslim fellow who is wildly popular among the sort of people local media can't find much use for except as extras at a shooting scene.
Carson's comments made Indianapolis Star [caution: Indianapolis Star Evapo-Link™] political columnist Matt Tully sad. Because Matt Tully likes Andre Carson, and wishes he'd behave better than the Teabaggers. Because Matt Tully doesn't really like the Teabaggers ("Although I appreciate [their] efforts to increase attention paid to the federal deficit"). So much so that he says he's pretty sure he's written it down somewhere.
Plus, all the people who scream about racist Teabagger comments are now rushing to defend Carson, and all the people who defend racist Teabagger comments are now complaining about him. And it's really, really painful for journalists to have to keep reminding us how above this sort of behavior they themselves are.
I just want to mention here, in my role as shit-tossing apologist, that Carson's predecessor, his grandmother Julia, was so utterly reviled, and subject to such repulsive racial crap in Central Indiana that it was practically impossible for a white person to walk into a public establishment in any Republican enclave (read: the suburban doughnut counties) when she was in the news without getting drenched in racism like gutter water by a passing car. That absolutely includes the other side of closed Republican party doors (former Sheriff Jack Cottey, running against an African-American in 2002 and losing badly, created a Xerox pastiche handbill of his opponent, Ms Carson, and Bill Clinton [!] that made Carson look like the Wild Woman of Borneo). And, undoubtedly, it was heard repeatedly, for years, by every political reporter in this town.
• Here's a proposal: no more budget cutting talk until we get our $60 billion back from the people who stole it, and the people who signed the blank check they cashed in the first place.
Just kiddin'.
• How in the name of Ron Ziegler does the White House 1) try to schedule a Congressional address the night of a Republican debate show; 2) claim it was an oversight; and 3) wind up losing to John Boehner and The Seven Specks of Granite all at once?
I'll just ask again: what did Barack Obama want to be President for? So he could bring to the Executive branch the same studied Wisdom of Consensus Building he'd seen in action in the US Senate? I swear to God this is a guy who thought he was running for Vice President, until he, John Edwards, and the not great but late Tim "Spud" Russert played Let's Hump Hillary for Halloween, 2007. This should have been enough right there to tell C-Student America, let alone the Exceptional one that God favors with the right leader at the right time, that there was no fit candidate in the Democratic primaries.
I'm sorry. Things could be worse, I suppose, but that thought is not anodyne to the throbbing hemorrhoid sufferer. When Barack Obama stood on various stages throughout the United States and called, nightly, for the crowd to give way so the latest Lady Faintee could be ministered to, th' fuck was he thinking about? Was he hoping to bundle all that adoration and positive energy into a legislative package that could be pled down to time served?
And, so help me, if his deal with Boehner doesn't include an obligation on Orange Man's part to say something gratuitously racist just before the general elections then there's no sense to this at all.
If you did hear about this I hope it wasn't from the Indianapolis media, which hates to be reminded that the city of Indianapolis is represented in Congress by a scary African-American Muslim fellow who is wildly popular among the sort of people local media can't find much use for except as extras at a shooting scene.
Carson's comments made Indianapolis Star [caution: Indianapolis Star Evapo-Link™] political columnist Matt Tully sad. Because Matt Tully likes Andre Carson, and wishes he'd behave better than the Teabaggers. Because Matt Tully doesn't really like the Teabaggers ("Although I appreciate [their] efforts to increase attention paid to the federal deficit"). So much so that he says he's pretty sure he's written it down somewhere.
Plus, all the people who scream about racist Teabagger comments are now rushing to defend Carson, and all the people who defend racist Teabagger comments are now complaining about him. And it's really, really painful for journalists to have to keep reminding us how above this sort of behavior they themselves are.
I just want to mention here, in my role as shit-tossing apologist, that Carson's predecessor, his grandmother Julia, was so utterly reviled, and subject to such repulsive racial crap in Central Indiana that it was practically impossible for a white person to walk into a public establishment in any Republican enclave (read: the suburban doughnut counties) when she was in the news without getting drenched in racism like gutter water by a passing car. That absolutely includes the other side of closed Republican party doors (former Sheriff Jack Cottey, running against an African-American in 2002 and losing badly, created a Xerox pastiche handbill of his opponent, Ms Carson, and Bill Clinton [!] that made Carson look like the Wild Woman of Borneo). And, undoubtedly, it was heard repeatedly, for years, by every political reporter in this town.
• Here's a proposal: no more budget cutting talk until we get our $60 billion back from the people who stole it, and the people who signed the blank check they cashed in the first place.
Just kiddin'.
• How in the name of Ron Ziegler does the White House 1) try to schedule a Congressional address the night of a Republican debate show; 2) claim it was an oversight; and 3) wind up losing to John Boehner and The Seven Specks of Granite all at once?
I'll just ask again: what did Barack Obama want to be President for? So he could bring to the Executive branch the same studied Wisdom of Consensus Building he'd seen in action in the US Senate? I swear to God this is a guy who thought he was running for Vice President, until he, John Edwards, and the not great but late Tim "Spud" Russert played Let's Hump Hillary for Halloween, 2007. This should have been enough right there to tell C-Student America, let alone the Exceptional one that God favors with the right leader at the right time, that there was no fit candidate in the Democratic primaries.
I'm sorry. Things could be worse, I suppose, but that thought is not anodyne to the throbbing hemorrhoid sufferer. When Barack Obama stood on various stages throughout the United States and called, nightly, for the crowd to give way so the latest Lady Faintee could be ministered to, th' fuck was he thinking about? Was he hoping to bundle all that adoration and positive energy into a legislative package that could be pled down to time served?
And, so help me, if his deal with Boehner doesn't include an obligation on Orange Man's part to say something gratuitously racist just before the general elections then there's no sense to this at all.
Wednesday, August 31
Wednesday Olio: It's A Cookbook! Edition
• Okay, so my first thought was "This is news for whom, now? The five people who showed up at O'Donnell's book signing?" Then I realized that that might double Politico's readership without appreciably lowering its average IQ. Good move.
• And my first thought here was "Oh, Politico's management gave every employee the same Word-a-Day calendar last Christmas." But that doesn't work, since "panic" in the first instance consists of spokessentients for four "leftist" "special interests" (Women, Gun Violence, the Separation of Church and State, Al Sharpton) stating their dislike for the Governor's politics in what seem like fairly calm, and certainly complete, sentences (and apparently in response to a question some journalist asked); "not panic", in the second, describes being forced to kiss Jim DeMint's ass in public, and having your advisers, real and self-declared, urge you to start swinging at Perry real quick, before the Teabag Party appoints him President.
But even as the primary is fought on conservative turf, liberal leaders say they and their constituents see Perry as far worse than your average, hated Republican, and indeed as bad — if not worse — than his hated predecessor in Austin, George W. Bush.
Y'know, the median age in the United States is around 35, and the median age of voters adds another decade. This suggests that the typical "liberal" "leader" should have a passing familiarity with Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, and probably should have confronted the presidencies of one or more Bushes from a liberal perspective. Th' fuck is there left to panic about? Why would anyone in his right mind imagine that a Romney presidency would be "more moderate" on gun control just because Rick Perry is a pandering loon in a bandolier? What gun control? We fucked this country up royally in 1980. It is the year to which you can trace the decline of the middle class, the ascension of Property over Personal rights, the end of Fairness on the public airwaves, and the national agenda being set by slimy televangelists. The two centrist Democrat administrations in the interim have sought mainly to find a common ground between Reaganism and their own pollsters' notion of what wins elections; historical Democratic majorities in both Houses did nothing whatsoever for their supposed constituencies. I sure don't relish the idea of another Bush, but does that make me feel more confident about Mitt Fucking Romney? No it does not. I'll relax about it when this shit is thoroughly discredited, in the public debate and at the ballot box, the same as it has been in reality. Or else when the tainted Chinese catfood kills me. I'll panic about it never. The people who ought to panic about Rick Perry are the Mitch Danielses and the David Brookses and all the other fuckers who've been whistling past that graveyard for thirty years now.
Maybe Rick Perry is 8% worse than Romney, and 15% worse than Obama; if I had a serious alternative I'd be donating money to the cause. When we fuck up Social Security, Medicare, reproductive rights, the public schools--that is, when we fuck them up to Republican standards, not just Democratic Bargaining Position standards--and arm every citizen so we can gun down anyone who doesn't Pray in school, I'm not going to panic. I'm going to watch, and try to enjoy, as much as possible, as the slow dawning of what they've accomplished seeps over the Republican rank and file, aka the rightward part of the new permanent Serf class. We've had thirty years to wake up from this shit now. The continued slumber is not due to lack of evidence.
• Meanwhile, I hope you weren't too overcome by Perry Panic to enjoy the tour of The Opulent Digs of Aisha Gaddafi, the Uday and Qusay of Libya, as brought to you by teevee reporters outraged by the pretentiousness of Wealth and the stratification of someone else's society.
• South by Southwest Festival gets politicized; proposed lineup includes:
"Poli-Sci-Fi Punditry: Nerdy Political Bloggers," featuring Slate's David Weigel, The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen, The Washington Post's Ezra Klein, the American Prospect's Adam Serwer and the Center for American Progress's Alyssa Rosenberg.
More tainted Chinese catfood, anyone?
Tuesday, August 30
Tuesday Olio
• Shorter David Brooks, "The Haimish Line". August 29:
Slumming can be a lot of fun, if you're a college student or on an African safari.
I do my best to hide it, but between you and me I'm not exactly enamored of American culture (and the feeling seems to be mutual). I turn on the teevee news, or, if you want an example from the former world of literacy, click open the Times, and I'm confronted by idiocy within forty-five seconds. Not merely the idiocy of other people's enthusiasms, but aggressive, intentional, over-boiled tripe. There are any number of "refinements", but this culture has essentially become, in the words of my friend Gary, a dichotomous, good-natured bar-wager struggle between the forces of Beer and Pussy. That tastes differ is not a question for debate. What we probably should be discussing, though, is whether the sum total of all bottom-feeding pleasures justifies the cacophonous and constant attempt to make a buck by lowering them.
Is there a voice anywhere for this? Maybe in academia; maybe Louis C.K. It has to be expressed sardonically. Because it sure ain't gonna cut through the clatter, and it ain't gettin' on the nightly news to make them look like they haven't been doing their jobs for the last forty years. Receding daylight has allowed, or forced, me to tune in local morning news for bicycling weather; I have, in the last two days, witnessed not one, not two, but three stories whose entire point was to inform early-AM viewers of a sale or coupon opportunity available at a fast-food abasement.
Which brings us yet again to Brooks, and to the Times: how, in the middle of this, does the nation's most influential editorial page come to feature the staged worldview of Mr. Scoutmaster?
• What's the emoticon for "rolls eyes skyward and prays for Slate-specific Deluge"? Weigel:
So let's adjust our outrage-o-meters. Cuts-for-aid is the new normal.
No. Let's roll back the thirty years of moronity at least far enough to call it what it is: the latest expression of how far gone the Republican party, and its sycophants in the Press, truly are.
Look: maybe the American public can be boiled by degrees without even noticing, like a frog, for the benefit and amusement of the top 2% of wealth holders (and their sycophants in the Press). But that doesn't make it wise, sensible, or sane, let alone normal.
Y'know, pace Michele Bachmann, His lunatic spokesinmate, God's Latest Message wiped out a lot of Republicans; the ones he sends to the Gulf, or the Prairie, often wipe out little but. It's either our collective will to assist our countrymen in an emergency, or it's not. If not, then let's vote, up or down, to enshrine the principle of 19th century neglect once and for all. In daylight, with Republican fingerprints all over it.
Yeah, we have a budget. Yeah, it's not unlimited, unless we're buying bombs, or buying replacement bombs. Our present deficit was caused by the Bush Tax Cuts, chiefly owned by the Republican party from 2001--2009, which is still the principle partner. In the 21st century, where many of us live, natural disasters do less damage to persons, thanks to technology, and much more damage to property, thanks to incontinent development. So who gets hurt? 1) People directly underneath; and 2) Business.
I honestly don't know which is worse: the cynical games-playing of the hard-core Right, or people like Weigel who think it's all good for a chuckle.
And this is what one always wants to know about candidates who flourish the Good Book or who presume to talk about hell and damnation. Do they, themselves, in their heart of hearts, truly believe it? Is there any evidence, if it comes to that, that Perry has ever studied the theory of evolution for long enough to be able to state roughly what it says? And how much textual and hermeneutic work did he do before deciding on the "inerrancy" of Jewish and Christian scripture? It should, of course, be the sincere believers and devout faithful who ask him, and themselves, these questions. But somehow, it never is. The risks of hypocrisy seem forever invisible to the politicized Christians, for whom sufficient proof of faith consists of loud and unambiguous declarations. I am always surprised that more is not heard from sincere religious believers, who have the most to lose if faith becomes a matter of poll-time dogma and lung power.
Amen.
Michele Bachmann, by the way, blasphemed in speaking for God, then consciously blasphemed in saying she was just joking. Heard anybody mention that? Or is it excused under the Crazy meme?
And remember when she proved she was a Serious candidate in that first debate, by speaking in complete sentences? Does Weigel?
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