Walter E. Lewis
March 6, 1899--September 14, 1981
Tuesday, March 6
Monday, March 5
Say What, Now?
David Brooks, " Neither Clinton, Nor Obama," Times, March 4
So there I was, sitting in my office, quietly contemplating suicide. I was watching a cattle call of Democratic presidential candidates on C-Span. In their five-minute speeches, they were laying it on thick with poll-tested, consultant-driven clichés of the Our Children Are Our Future variety. The thought of having to spend the next two years listening to this drivel set me wondering if it was literally possible to be bored to death.
Our attention is elsewhere, but it is impossible to re-type that paragraph without giving some consideration to Why Conservatives Aren't Funny. One: the punchline goes at the end of the joke. The rule may be violated, but not in the service of something as unimaginative as "the political speeches were so boring I was contemplating suicide". An oblique reference might have worked: "I was watching C-Span in my office and, as always, I'd taken the precaution of opening the phone book to the Suicide Prevention Hotline". Two: most authorities recommend a single use of the punchline; the waterlogged reprise is best left to Renaissance lute airs. Three: it is always wrong to attempt to revive a lifeless cliché with the smelling salts of "literally". This is true of all forms of writing, but in comedy it is an absolute. Four: Describing something which threatens to bore you to death (literally) as "drivel" over-eggs the custard. It may be tempting for the middle-aged man, finding himself surrounded by belly-shirted teevee cooks of no discernible taste or talent, to imagine that all culinary rules are made to be broken. They are not.
On top of all of this, of course, is the matter of the Faulty Premise: We do not believe that David Brooks is capable of being bored to death, least of all by politics. He's a carrier. He's a fucking source.
DAVE: Boy, those Democrat presidential candidates are boring!
CROWD (unison): How boring are they?
DAVE: They're so boring I was reminded of something Hayek said about price mechanisms. I think it was in...
Which reminds me that I had a point when I started out. I knew I should have written it down. Well, for one thing, the "bunch of boring Democrats who spout crowd-pleasing, special-interest-group, PC-approved drivel" is at least thirty years old now, and the only time it wasn't trotted out in a presidential campaign season was when the fascination with Bill Clinton's masculine unit overrode it. If the public--bless its horribly stunted cerebrum--tackles the subject it's politicians who are boring, poll-approved, both-sides-of-the-mouth-talkers-out-of, but somehow for the punditry--who, after all, are vocational volunteers--this sort of thing affects only Democrats.
This is bad enough in itself, but then, after all, Brooks isn't some centrist Republican laboring to be fair, nor do we expect that of him. We do think he might aim for something like persuasiveness, which requires giving the impression, at least, that one has a nodding acquaintance with "reality", and so might be able to acknowledge that it is the Republican hopefuls who have demonstrated a mastery of the poll-driven Two Step. We note that this is the same David "Bobo" Brooks who four short winter months ago was criticizing John Kerry's "handling" of Jokegate while denying there was any reason to suspect the misinterpretation was intentional. Now he complains that politicians give safe little speeches. It's like watching football with my father-in-law. "Shoulda called a running play," being his standard response to an interception.
This comes on a day when I watched Lindsay Graham respond to Tim Russert's poll-driven question about escalating a war 2/3 of the population opposes by saying he thought the American people were "beginning to doubt whether the Iraqis can get their act together." This sort of Up is Downism is the frickin' currency of political "debate", yet a few clichés uttered on C-Span send Brooks to his office window sill.
The piece ostensibly touted Bill Richardson ("ostensibly", of course, because the real point was "write a column that makes you sound like a reasonable, open-minded conservative" to that small group of conservatives who still enjoy making the claim) apparently on the grounds that dull speechifier Barack Obama, the Brooks favorite of a couple months back, is now dangerously close to being electable. It's difficult to understand what Richardson has done to deserve this, but there was this classic, Won't Somebody Convince Him His Lunch Money Is Now Safe? Brooks moment:
On cultural issues, Richardson has the distinct advantage of not setting off any culture war vibes. He was in college in the late 1960s, but he was listening to the Beach Boys, not Janis Joplin. He was playing baseball in the Cape Cod League, not going to Woodstock. He idolized Humphrey, not McCarthy.
We will simply remind the reader that David Brooks claims to have started life as a liberal. We will not bother reminding him that Brooks writes for the New York Frickin' Times, as we suspect that point is already bouncing around in his skull like shrapnel.
Friday, March 2
The Chuck Norris Solution
I don't remember what time the email came. It was from Buzzflash, and the subject line said something like "Breaking News: Plane Hits World Trade Center".
I knew watching that the world had changed. Not in the sense that people who say 9/11 Changed Everything mean it. In the sense that there were now going to be people--a lot of people, at first, as the shock wore off--going around saying "9/11 Changed everything". And that what that would engender was not going to be good unless you were a defense contractor.
I also knew that some day we'd revisit what we'd done, and when we did it wouldn't be on a timetable we dictated. That's just common sense. I had no idea it would come around so soon.
There was no use arguing the manichean reaction. Our enemies see the world exactly as we do just reversed. Our enemies understand that free enterprise and representative government are the best possible systems, but they desire the worst. They hate us for our freedoms, after all.
Such an attitude can't be pulled off without insisting that those Americans who believe that the worst excesses of capitalism are something civilized people should be protected from, or who imagine that being buried under tons of crappy disposable merchandise is not the next thing to Paradise are in fact not real Americans at all. Andrew Sullivan was hunting fifth columnists before the fires were out. And he's from the rationalist wing. It was clear that we meant to have our revenge, that revenge meant people were going to die, and that we weren't too particular about who.
There's no use being a voice of moderation in the middle of an angry mob. The only place that'll work is out in front. In this we were doubly cursed, and not just because we had no idea whether that position was being fillied by a twisted psychopathic liar or the pee-puppy titular Commander so far out of his league they had to design standing ovations into his first address to Congress like he was a second-grade violinist butchering "Greensleeves" at a school recital. Any US President, however deep his understanding, would have been hard-pressed to resist the cries of War! In the era of modern (that is, post-Napoleonic) warfare the United States has been blessed by two of the greatest political leaders, and they both made serious blunders while playing to public bellicosity. And this time the Law of Averages had returned, looking to settle the score in spades. The a) Bush b) Cheney administration wasted no time in proclaiming the World Trade Center/Pentagon attacks "an act of War!" Well, a small amount of time was wasted physically extracting George W. Bush from the well of his desk, but otherwise...
We have no idea whether the dire warnings of an imminent Taliban offensive are accurate. This is, after all, military intelligence, what the noted philosopher Rocket J. Squirrel once referred to as a Contradiction in Terms. But if not this Spring, then the next, or the next. What is plain now is that, had we been able to act like rational people then, we wouldn't be in these straits now. Is there anyone left to argue that the Hell-for-Leather attack on Afghanistan achieved something that wouldn't have been achieved otherwise? Remember, we didn't accuse the Taliban of complicity in 9/11, only of harboring al-Qaeda, and our response was to demand that they cede their sovereignty to us and hand over people we said were guilty, and all Before Sundown, Pardner. We wouldn't have done so ourselves, mutatis mutandis, to the Israelis, let alone the Afghans.
The point of all this, which was conveniently ignored if not actively disputed, was not that one should observe all the niceties of international diplomacy out of some sense of propriety. It was that five seconds after the first-round bell is too soon to start swinging from the heels, regardless of how much you outweigh the other guy. No one can say whether international pressure could have caused the Taliban to turn over bin Laden. All we can say at this point is that the opposite approach sure didn't get the job done. Haste caused us to grant far too much for Musharraf's cooperation, which, not surprisingly, did not seem to extend to committing political suicide in order to serve us up a heaping bowlful of al-Qaeda. We stuck our noses into the most dangerous potential conventional nuclear confrontation on the planet (on China's doorstep, no less), which we had to resolve (if that) by rewarding India for failing to sign the Non-Proliferation treaty.
I guess we should all be thankful that the government of Pakistan is so stable.
Every month's "delay" in 2001-02 would be one more month's rest for what's now left of US ground forces, one less month's worth of junked equipment, one less month's worth of disabled GIs being strongarmed for reporting appalling hospital conditions to the press. (Throw in, if you wish, that after four years of horseshit about the Clinton administration and North Korea we eventually forced ourselves to make essentially the same deal but from a position of weakness.) But we were the aggrieved party, and we were going to show the world who the superpower was.
Honestly, I have no idea whether or how long a President could have been held off the demand for action, for A Military Response. But it should be remembered, every now and then (like whenever further disaster looms). that it's not just the Bush administration or the neocon cabal which is responsible for the false sense of invincibility and the smug perpetual rightness of our every act, and the mess that landed us in.
I knew watching that the world had changed. Not in the sense that people who say 9/11 Changed Everything mean it. In the sense that there were now going to be people--a lot of people, at first, as the shock wore off--going around saying "9/11 Changed everything". And that what that would engender was not going to be good unless you were a defense contractor.
I also knew that some day we'd revisit what we'd done, and when we did it wouldn't be on a timetable we dictated. That's just common sense. I had no idea it would come around so soon.
There was no use arguing the manichean reaction. Our enemies see the world exactly as we do just reversed. Our enemies understand that free enterprise and representative government are the best possible systems, but they desire the worst. They hate us for our freedoms, after all.
Such an attitude can't be pulled off without insisting that those Americans who believe that the worst excesses of capitalism are something civilized people should be protected from, or who imagine that being buried under tons of crappy disposable merchandise is not the next thing to Paradise are in fact not real Americans at all. Andrew Sullivan was hunting fifth columnists before the fires were out. And he's from the rationalist wing. It was clear that we meant to have our revenge, that revenge meant people were going to die, and that we weren't too particular about who.
There's no use being a voice of moderation in the middle of an angry mob. The only place that'll work is out in front. In this we were doubly cursed, and not just because we had no idea whether that position was being fillied by a twisted psychopathic liar or the pee-puppy titular Commander so far out of his league they had to design standing ovations into his first address to Congress like he was a second-grade violinist butchering "Greensleeves" at a school recital. Any US President, however deep his understanding, would have been hard-pressed to resist the cries of War! In the era of modern (that is, post-Napoleonic) warfare the United States has been blessed by two of the greatest political leaders, and they both made serious blunders while playing to public bellicosity. And this time the Law of Averages had returned, looking to settle the score in spades. The a) Bush b) Cheney administration wasted no time in proclaiming the World Trade Center/Pentagon attacks "an act of War!" Well, a small amount of time was wasted physically extracting George W. Bush from the well of his desk, but otherwise...
We have no idea whether the dire warnings of an imminent Taliban offensive are accurate. This is, after all, military intelligence, what the noted philosopher Rocket J. Squirrel once referred to as a Contradiction in Terms. But if not this Spring, then the next, or the next. What is plain now is that, had we been able to act like rational people then, we wouldn't be in these straits now. Is there anyone left to argue that the Hell-for-Leather attack on Afghanistan achieved something that wouldn't have been achieved otherwise? Remember, we didn't accuse the Taliban of complicity in 9/11, only of harboring al-Qaeda, and our response was to demand that they cede their sovereignty to us and hand over people we said were guilty, and all Before Sundown, Pardner. We wouldn't have done so ourselves, mutatis mutandis, to the Israelis, let alone the Afghans.
The point of all this, which was conveniently ignored if not actively disputed, was not that one should observe all the niceties of international diplomacy out of some sense of propriety. It was that five seconds after the first-round bell is too soon to start swinging from the heels, regardless of how much you outweigh the other guy. No one can say whether international pressure could have caused the Taliban to turn over bin Laden. All we can say at this point is that the opposite approach sure didn't get the job done. Haste caused us to grant far too much for Musharraf's cooperation, which, not surprisingly, did not seem to extend to committing political suicide in order to serve us up a heaping bowlful of al-Qaeda. We stuck our noses into the most dangerous potential conventional nuclear confrontation on the planet (on China's doorstep, no less), which we had to resolve (if that) by rewarding India for failing to sign the Non-Proliferation treaty.
I guess we should all be thankful that the government of Pakistan is so stable.
Every month's "delay" in 2001-02 would be one more month's rest for what's now left of US ground forces, one less month's worth of junked equipment, one less month's worth of disabled GIs being strongarmed for reporting appalling hospital conditions to the press. (Throw in, if you wish, that after four years of horseshit about the Clinton administration and North Korea we eventually forced ourselves to make essentially the same deal but from a position of weakness.) But we were the aggrieved party, and we were going to show the world who the superpower was.
Honestly, I have no idea whether or how long a President could have been held off the demand for action, for A Military Response. But it should be remembered, every now and then (like whenever further disaster looms). that it's not just the Bush administration or the neocon cabal which is responsible for the false sense of invincibility and the smug perpetual rightness of our every act, and the mess that landed us in.
Wednesday, February 28
Forget It, Jake
Norbizness, in comments:
Time for a another Brief Survey of Public Education In Indianapolis:
In the 1920s, when the Klan (motto: "Up Nort' Here We More of a Social-Club-Type Thing") ran the state, Indianapolis created a segregated high school, the storied Crispus Attucks, which remained segregated until the early 1970s. (The state Legislature mandated school desegregation in 1948, and other Indianapolis schools were integrated, but Attucks remained exclusively Negro.)
In the 1960s, with whites in full suburban flight and the old-money landlords of a crumbling downtown in high dudgeon, Mayor Dick "The Munificent" Lugar and a fortuitous Republican majority simply moved the city boundaries out to the county line, creating a Republican majority that would last another thirty years.
Of course, sacred democratic principles dictated that the Township system, with its independent schools, be maintained, lest the fleeing whites suddenly whirl on their heels and cudgel Dick Lugar into a Persistent Moderative State. For this foresight we can be doubly grateful, as mob violence is never The Answer, and the unthinkable results would have deprived the entire nation of one of the most outstanding foreign policy experts ever to vote to authorize a war and then say, "I told you so!" when it failed. So the Township schools remained, white and shining and separate, until a Justice Department suit over the still de facto segregated Indianapolis Public Schools (the old city limits) resulted in court-mandated busing to achieve racial balance throughout the county.
And guess who had to foot the bill?
If you said "The old city" you're a right cynical bastard, not to mention just plain right. Center Township would, under court order, pay to bus African-American students to the white suburbs in order to balance them. This went on until the mid-1990s. The poorest Township, whose residents were, increasingly, the very people who'd been discriminated against, saw their own schools deteriorate as they paid to send some of their students to more prosperous districts.
Of course, that wasn't all...in the interim public moneys built a Convention Center, basketball arena, Dome, baseball stadium, another basketball arena, and now another Dome, plus two major shopping centers and remodeled several office buildings, all downtown, which increased the value of aging existing buildings while eliminating a lot of property tax revenue. At the same time, as with a lot of urban areas, existing property owners helped pay for leapfrog development into the outer reaches of the county (and those other Township schools).
(We do not mean to seem one-sided about this; redevelopment has brought a lot of good things to the city. Downtown Indianapolis is now vibrant and vital, and seems even more so if it happens to be the only large city you've ever been in, and the thousands of surrounding acres of agricultural land, once bumpkin-ridden, and much of it not even used four months out of the year, is now a Starbucks, open year-round. )
Due to budget cuts in the mid-90s my wife spent three years teaching at three different middle schools. Two of the three did not have a single computer in the building for student use. Four of the six surrounding townships have student radio stations. All within fifteen miles. All in the "same" city.
So broad proclamations of the Failure of our Public Schools, which are uniformly based on a) facile use of test scores; b) parental grievances which always fail to find a single sympathetic teacher or administrator willing to help, or compromise, or offer alternatives; or c) the simple declaration that Everybody Knows This To Be the Case, never surprise me. Because beyond having a wife teaching in public schools, and speaking to her co-workers, and volunteering myself, I've grown up watching the shameful extension of institutional racism into the 21st century. Right up the block.
My favorite public education trick is to make the quality of a child's education dependent on the value of the property in their school district, because that teaches them about a cold, unfeeling universe governed by arbitrary standards.
Time for a another Brief Survey of Public Education In Indianapolis:
In the 1920s, when the Klan (motto: "Up Nort' Here We More of a Social-Club-Type Thing") ran the state, Indianapolis created a segregated high school, the storied Crispus Attucks, which remained segregated until the early 1970s. (The state Legislature mandated school desegregation in 1948, and other Indianapolis schools were integrated, but Attucks remained exclusively Negro.)
In the 1960s, with whites in full suburban flight and the old-money landlords of a crumbling downtown in high dudgeon, Mayor Dick "The Munificent" Lugar and a fortuitous Republican majority simply moved the city boundaries out to the county line, creating a Republican majority that would last another thirty years.
Of course, sacred democratic principles dictated that the Township system, with its independent schools, be maintained, lest the fleeing whites suddenly whirl on their heels and cudgel Dick Lugar into a Persistent Moderative State. For this foresight we can be doubly grateful, as mob violence is never The Answer, and the unthinkable results would have deprived the entire nation of one of the most outstanding foreign policy experts ever to vote to authorize a war and then say, "I told you so!" when it failed. So the Township schools remained, white and shining and separate, until a Justice Department suit over the still de facto segregated Indianapolis Public Schools (the old city limits) resulted in court-mandated busing to achieve racial balance throughout the county.
And guess who had to foot the bill?
If you said "The old city" you're a right cynical bastard, not to mention just plain right. Center Township would, under court order, pay to bus African-American students to the white suburbs in order to balance them. This went on until the mid-1990s. The poorest Township, whose residents were, increasingly, the very people who'd been discriminated against, saw their own schools deteriorate as they paid to send some of their students to more prosperous districts.
Of course, that wasn't all...in the interim public moneys built a Convention Center, basketball arena, Dome, baseball stadium, another basketball arena, and now another Dome, plus two major shopping centers and remodeled several office buildings, all downtown, which increased the value of aging existing buildings while eliminating a lot of property tax revenue. At the same time, as with a lot of urban areas, existing property owners helped pay for leapfrog development into the outer reaches of the county (and those other Township schools).
(We do not mean to seem one-sided about this; redevelopment has brought a lot of good things to the city. Downtown Indianapolis is now vibrant and vital, and seems even more so if it happens to be the only large city you've ever been in, and the thousands of surrounding acres of agricultural land, once bumpkin-ridden, and much of it not even used four months out of the year, is now a Starbucks, open year-round. )
Due to budget cuts in the mid-90s my wife spent three years teaching at three different middle schools. Two of the three did not have a single computer in the building for student use. Four of the six surrounding townships have student radio stations. All within fifteen miles. All in the "same" city.
So broad proclamations of the Failure of our Public Schools, which are uniformly based on a) facile use of test scores; b) parental grievances which always fail to find a single sympathetic teacher or administrator willing to help, or compromise, or offer alternatives; or c) the simple declaration that Everybody Knows This To Be the Case, never surprise me. Because beyond having a wife teaching in public schools, and speaking to her co-workers, and volunteering myself, I've grown up watching the shameful extension of institutional racism into the 21st century. Right up the block.
Tuesday, February 27
Real Guns and Butter-Flavored Butter Substitutes
Mr. du Toit:
Thanks for the rapid response, and welcome. This sorry blog is a catch-time-as-available vanity operation and not a full-time gig. I often don't even see comments for a day or so. So apologies for the appearance of tardiness. Your response was a fair return of fire, sir, and sportsmanlike; we commend it, and staunch a trickle of blood.
We're glad to hear your daughter is doing well, though it was not her vocabulary or syntax we worried about but a superfluity of adjectives. We call our wife "Wife" in print, or more often "Poor Wife", in part to give her plausible deniability as to even knowing us, yet that, coupled with the nom du blog, has not prevented members of the local School Board from discovering us. That event would seem even more likely (mutatis mutandis, of course), regardless of what you call her, since you post under your own name. But we accept the explanation, certainly, without withdrawing any of the attempts at humor that followed. "Hardscrabble," just to clear up any possible confusion, refers to our distaste for your Wolf at the Door blegging and was meant solely as a cheap shot. This is among the many reasons why we aren't blogging for John Edwards. And since you ask we find "Father Figure" to be rather witty.
Okay, I hope that clears the air. We still wonder why, or if, there was no attempt on your part to correct the situation? This formed a sizeable chunk of our apologia. We are not so foolish as to imagine that every public school in all circumstances is run or staffed by reasonable people. In fact, we know better. But the same is true of my local grocery store, where my status as a taxpayer impresses them not at all, and my legal rights are at a minimum. (Which reminds me, that "Lileks of the Left" was a sort of running gag, the result of someone's comment about my habit of outlining the vexations of power tools and supermarket conveyor belts.)
One would have thought that a progressive like yourself would think more about fixing what's wrong, but perhaps you believe the public school system is just dandy.
What I believe is this: Chinese is a language--many languages, technically--which, to Western ways of thinking, have a remarkable dependence on ambiguity. And the Chinese aphorism commonly quoted as "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" may be interpreted as "...begins under one's feet." Hitting the road doesn't get us where we're going any faster if we're headed in the wrong direction.
And that's precisely what the argument--I would rather characterize it as "the use of public education as a political football"--has been about since the days when I was a student. Every time I engage in such discussions somebody tells me I must not imagine there's anything wrong with public schools. It's gone on so long now that I'm being asked to explain or excuse a fall from grace which took place after I first started hearing the complaints. Today's Good Old Days (from a test score standpoint, not our endless hurtling down the Open Mineshaft of Secular Humanism) were yesterday's Hell in a Handbasket. It is rather for people who make little effort to deny they'd prefer little or no public education at all to demonstrate that their ideas lead us in the right direction. Until then it's hard to gaze that way and see anything other than the politics of racial and class divide, anti-trade unionism, and religious bias. We task the public schools with living up to the highest ideals of democracy and then we pepper them with long-range artillery for every perceived failure. The urban ones, at least.
Lemme tell ya, there's a lot that's wrong, systemically wrong, with public schools, much of it the result of political interference, some of it the result of the peculiarly American species of hubris. Read that tale Doc Helen linked to again. What would you have us do? How do we tailor the educational system to one mother's son when she expects problems to be solved without her input and imagines that the other kids calling him "Calculator" is some sort of bellwether of the Apocalypse?
I've heard a lot--maybe all--of the "solutions" from the Right. I haven't heard any that solve anything but its own objections. Sue me if you'd like, but I don't really imagine the Hoover Institute gives two shakes about the times I've held my wife in the dark while she sobbed into my shoulder over the wretched homelife of one of her students. I doubt the day we packed up the artwork of her seventeen-year-old student, killed in a house fire with her younger sister after the gas company shut off service last winter, affected anybody's belief in the holy perfection of laissez-faire capitalism. I don't think any of these "solutions" is informed by a sense of just what sort of work it takes to be a teacher, to make endless calls to parents, to file complaints against employers working 16-year-olds until 1AM on school nights, to spend out of pocket for paper when a six-mile drive to the white suburbs takes you past a football stadium that'd be the envy of most Division II programs. "Solutions"? Pah. If we're really concerned about Every Last Child then before we "reform" the educational process we need to give those born into poverty decent healthcare and nutrition. After that we can set our sights on eliminating Sadism from the nation's dodgeball arenas.
Best wishes to you and your daughter,
J. B. S. Riley
Thanks for the rapid response, and welcome. This sorry blog is a catch-time-as-available vanity operation and not a full-time gig. I often don't even see comments for a day or so. So apologies for the appearance of tardiness. Your response was a fair return of fire, sir, and sportsmanlike; we commend it, and staunch a trickle of blood.
We're glad to hear your daughter is doing well, though it was not her vocabulary or syntax we worried about but a superfluity of adjectives. We call our wife "Wife" in print, or more often "Poor Wife", in part to give her plausible deniability as to even knowing us, yet that, coupled with the nom du blog, has not prevented members of the local School Board from discovering us. That event would seem even more likely (mutatis mutandis, of course), regardless of what you call her, since you post under your own name. But we accept the explanation, certainly, without withdrawing any of the attempts at humor that followed. "Hardscrabble," just to clear up any possible confusion, refers to our distaste for your Wolf at the Door blegging and was meant solely as a cheap shot. This is among the many reasons why we aren't blogging for John Edwards. And since you ask we find "Father Figure" to be rather witty.
Okay, I hope that clears the air. We still wonder why, or if, there was no attempt on your part to correct the situation? This formed a sizeable chunk of our apologia. We are not so foolish as to imagine that every public school in all circumstances is run or staffed by reasonable people. In fact, we know better. But the same is true of my local grocery store, where my status as a taxpayer impresses them not at all, and my legal rights are at a minimum. (Which reminds me, that "Lileks of the Left" was a sort of running gag, the result of someone's comment about my habit of outlining the vexations of power tools and supermarket conveyor belts.)
One would have thought that a progressive like yourself would think more about fixing what's wrong, but perhaps you believe the public school system is just dandy.
What I believe is this: Chinese is a language--many languages, technically--which, to Western ways of thinking, have a remarkable dependence on ambiguity. And the Chinese aphorism commonly quoted as "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" may be interpreted as "...begins under one's feet." Hitting the road doesn't get us where we're going any faster if we're headed in the wrong direction.
And that's precisely what the argument--I would rather characterize it as "the use of public education as a political football"--has been about since the days when I was a student. Every time I engage in such discussions somebody tells me I must not imagine there's anything wrong with public schools. It's gone on so long now that I'm being asked to explain or excuse a fall from grace which took place after I first started hearing the complaints. Today's Good Old Days (from a test score standpoint, not our endless hurtling down the Open Mineshaft of Secular Humanism) were yesterday's Hell in a Handbasket. It is rather for people who make little effort to deny they'd prefer little or no public education at all to demonstrate that their ideas lead us in the right direction. Until then it's hard to gaze that way and see anything other than the politics of racial and class divide, anti-trade unionism, and religious bias. We task the public schools with living up to the highest ideals of democracy and then we pepper them with long-range artillery for every perceived failure. The urban ones, at least.
Lemme tell ya, there's a lot that's wrong, systemically wrong, with public schools, much of it the result of political interference, some of it the result of the peculiarly American species of hubris. Read that tale Doc Helen linked to again. What would you have us do? How do we tailor the educational system to one mother's son when she expects problems to be solved without her input and imagines that the other kids calling him "Calculator" is some sort of bellwether of the Apocalypse?
I've heard a lot--maybe all--of the "solutions" from the Right. I haven't heard any that solve anything but its own objections. Sue me if you'd like, but I don't really imagine the Hoover Institute gives two shakes about the times I've held my wife in the dark while she sobbed into my shoulder over the wretched homelife of one of her students. I doubt the day we packed up the artwork of her seventeen-year-old student, killed in a house fire with her younger sister after the gas company shut off service last winter, affected anybody's belief in the holy perfection of laissez-faire capitalism. I don't think any of these "solutions" is informed by a sense of just what sort of work it takes to be a teacher, to make endless calls to parents, to file complaints against employers working 16-year-olds until 1AM on school nights, to spend out of pocket for paper when a six-mile drive to the white suburbs takes you past a football stadium that'd be the envy of most Division II programs. "Solutions"? Pah. If we're really concerned about Every Last Child then before we "reform" the educational process we need to give those born into poverty decent healthcare and nutrition. After that we can set our sights on eliminating Sadism from the nation's dodgeball arenas.
Best wishes to you and your daughter,
J. B. S. Riley
Monday, February 26
I (Heart) Emo (Philips)
"My Dad, after dinner every night, used to give me Hebrew lessons...how to spot them."
(follow-up visit with Dr. Katz, season two DVD)
(follow-up visit with Dr. Katz, season two DVD)
Beatniks Are Just Reverse Conformists Watch, Day 18257
"Mosh Pit Meets Sandbox", Times, February 25
I mean, don't today's much-discussed [sic] hipster parents notice that their claims to rebellious individuality are undercut by the fact that they are fascistically turning their children into miniature reproductions of their hipper-than-thou selves? Don't they observe that with their inevitable hummus snacks, their pastel-free wardrobes...
Oooh, you can just tell that last bit there came from the heart.
Hothouse Cabbages
Kim du Toit, "Not That Kind"
"Dr." Helen, "Is Eye Rolling a Sign of Intelligence?"
I'm not sure what happened; I had written one of those howlingly funny slice-o'suburban-life pieces about my wife's proclivities with the remote control (she hogs it; she runs endless laps at subliminal speed; she drives me crazy doing it: the sort of thing which has made me the much-admired Lileks of the Left). It turned--on a dime--into a screeching rant about a fashionably persecuted young Christian spelling bee champ, who, it turns out, doesn't know the definition of "Sabbath", and his mother, who graciously donates the time required to be Spokesperson for All of Christendom. Before I knew it this stuff was coming at me from all sides, including this comment from Tom Hilton at HFPST:
which I can't improve on however long I prattle away. Plus I thought the sudden darkening of tone destroyed the delicate interplay of our debate over The Gilmore Girls, which my wife thinks of as a quirky comedy and I think of as what the CIA got up to when surreptitiously dosing US population centers with psychotropic drugs proved infeasible.
And somehow I found myself reading "Dr." Helen, who gets the ball rolling downhill by indeed-linking to the hardscrabble du Toit clan, which linked right back to Madame Insty linking to a related piece she found "quite humorous and sad, both at the same time" and which, it turns out--you're sitting down, right?--was neither, (unless she meant the attempted humor was sad and the "factual" claims were funny, but I don't think she did, and besides, "ludicrous" is a perfectly good word and would have saved all that further exposition.)
Our theme here is that the Educational Establishment--you know, the one Establishment these people don't kowtow to--has conjured up the concept of Socialization (using Federal grant money, no doubt) in their never-ending efforts to wound homeschoolers. Du Toit calls the concept "a risible canard" and "specious nonsense", which raises the hope that it's Mrs. Pussification who's teaching the kids grammar.
We'd say the same thing about argumentation, but we've seen her work. The assumption of an opponent's bad faith--doesn't that demonstrate a lack of social skills? Maybe Kim du Toit is not the best person to evaluate the benefits of socialization.
But let's not waste too much time here. I don't have any more interest in the du Toit household than the Educational Establishment does. But there was one little bit I found somewhat shocking:
We're going to ignore the fact that he calls his daughter "Daughter"; I'm guessing he'd already given all the good names to his guns.
First, this must be the sort of thing one encounters thirty times a day working in a complaint department or on a tech line: the "everything is totally fucked up and it's all your fault" routine, and we'll hazard a guess that at least 75% of the complainants have failed to read the manual or are flat out wrong. (The guy who manages my neighborhood liquor store keeps his competitors' ads in a folder under the cash register, and says that 90% of the time when a customer waves a bottle at him and tells him "you advertised this a dollar cheaper!" it's somebody else's ad.) Every time I hear these complaints about the system screwing somebody's precious Dependent I wonder how they live without telephones. My wife's email and school phone are posted in the student handbook. She deals with parents complaining about something or other all the time, not to mention the fact that there are four evening open houses per year. If little Dowry can't run a mile, if PE class was an exercise in sadism, who did you tell? Why didn't you tell the teacher, the principal, her guidance counsellor, and the school board that she would not run a mile, do anything outdoors, or get any exercise, and would sit out all those activities with your permission and at your insistence?
And don't get me wrong: being nominally socialized myself, I see both sides. Bullying and teasing are serious problems, and the response is not always sufficient. Our schools are, and traditionally have been, centers of enforced conformity and stifled creativity. But who wants them that way? Back to Basics, Increased (Armed) Security, harsher discipline, forcible "moral instruction"--what end of the political spectrum has been riding that pony for the past few decades?
Meanwhile, Dr. Mrs. Insty--the Anna Chennault of the Blogosphere--has unmasked the culprit: teachers are just skin-wrapped bags of ego and insecurity who channel their personal misery into the Educational Establishment. Really.
The woman is, so far as we know, a practicing psychologist and the mother of school-aged children who are not tutored at home--has she ever met, or spoken with, her children's teachers? Does she still allow those Ticking Time Bombs near her precious offspring?
Pfui. Read the satire that inspired this crap--we know it's a satire, because it says so right in the title, but feel free to read it with a mouthful of coffee. Little Elasah, the gifted scion of a family of religious maniacs, throws hissy fits worthy of the roadshow choreographer at a Chorus Line revival because he's smarter than all the other children, imagines the rules don't apply to churchgoers (where'd he ever get that idea?), and Doc Helen's diagnosis is "his teacher's probably frustrated because she doesn't have a man"? I have to wonder what would have happened had she found out that Norah Vincent was posing as the boy's gym teacher?
And Mom objects to little Kohath being given extra work! What the H-E-double hockey sticks did she expect the school to do? Stop teaching everyone else whenever little Zephaniah started acting out? Granted, I was educated in the last century, but it seems to me that one good punch in the nose would do more for that kid than forced isolation in the Scripture factory will ever do.
"Dr." Helen, "Is Eye Rolling a Sign of Intelligence?"
I'm not sure what happened; I had written one of those howlingly funny slice-o'suburban-life pieces about my wife's proclivities with the remote control (she hogs it; she runs endless laps at subliminal speed; she drives me crazy doing it: the sort of thing which has made me the much-admired Lileks of the Left). It turned--on a dime--into a screeching rant about a fashionably persecuted young Christian spelling bee champ, who, it turns out, doesn't know the definition of "Sabbath", and his mother, who graciously donates the time required to be Spokesperson for All of Christendom. Before I knew it this stuff was coming at me from all sides, including this comment from Tom Hilton at HFPST:
You know what a whole lot of religious people should give up for Lent? They should give up their exaggerated sense of grievance. Just a suggestion.
which I can't improve on however long I prattle away. Plus I thought the sudden darkening of tone destroyed the delicate interplay of our debate over The Gilmore Girls, which my wife thinks of as a quirky comedy and I think of as what the CIA got up to when surreptitiously dosing US population centers with psychotropic drugs proved infeasible.
And somehow I found myself reading "Dr." Helen, who gets the ball rolling downhill by indeed-linking to the hardscrabble du Toit clan, which linked right back to Madame Insty linking to a related piece she found "quite humorous and sad, both at the same time" and which, it turns out--you're sitting down, right?--was neither, (unless she meant the attempted humor was sad and the "factual" claims were funny, but I don't think she did, and besides, "ludicrous" is a perfectly good word and would have saved all that further exposition.)
Our theme here is that the Educational Establishment--you know, the one Establishment these people don't kowtow to--has conjured up the concept of Socialization (using Federal grant money, no doubt) in their never-ending efforts to wound homeschoolers. Du Toit calls the concept "a risible canard" and "specious nonsense", which raises the hope that it's Mrs. Pussification who's teaching the kids grammar.
We'd say the same thing about argumentation, but we've seen her work. The assumption of an opponent's bad faith--doesn't that demonstrate a lack of social skills? Maybe Kim du Toit is not the best person to evaluate the benefits of socialization.
But let's not waste too much time here. I don't have any more interest in the du Toit household than the Educational Establishment does. But there was one little bit I found somewhat shocking:
Another response is that the kids “miss out on so much”. Yeah, Daughter really misses that experience of perpetual teasing about her weight, and the physical bullying that went along with it, coupled with sadistic gym teachers who forced her to run a mile during PE class, in the hot sun.
We're going to ignore the fact that he calls his daughter "Daughter"; I'm guessing he'd already given all the good names to his guns.
First, this must be the sort of thing one encounters thirty times a day working in a complaint department or on a tech line: the "everything is totally fucked up and it's all your fault" routine, and we'll hazard a guess that at least 75% of the complainants have failed to read the manual or are flat out wrong. (The guy who manages my neighborhood liquor store keeps his competitors' ads in a folder under the cash register, and says that 90% of the time when a customer waves a bottle at him and tells him "you advertised this a dollar cheaper!" it's somebody else's ad.) Every time I hear these complaints about the system screwing somebody's precious Dependent I wonder how they live without telephones. My wife's email and school phone are posted in the student handbook. She deals with parents complaining about something or other all the time, not to mention the fact that there are four evening open houses per year. If little Dowry can't run a mile, if PE class was an exercise in sadism, who did you tell? Why didn't you tell the teacher, the principal, her guidance counsellor, and the school board that she would not run a mile, do anything outdoors, or get any exercise, and would sit out all those activities with your permission and at your insistence?
And don't get me wrong: being nominally socialized myself, I see both sides. Bullying and teasing are serious problems, and the response is not always sufficient. Our schools are, and traditionally have been, centers of enforced conformity and stifled creativity. But who wants them that way? Back to Basics, Increased (Armed) Security, harsher discipline, forcible "moral instruction"--what end of the political spectrum has been riding that pony for the past few decades?
Meanwhile, Dr. Mrs. Insty--the Anna Chennault of the Blogosphere--has unmasked the culprit: teachers are just skin-wrapped bags of ego and insecurity who channel their personal misery into the Educational Establishment. Really.
It seems to me that the main source of socialization for many kids, especially smart ones in public school, is found in learning how to cope with the egos of teachers who can't teach and other kids who are uninterested in learning anything beyond dominating the social hierarchy.
The woman is, so far as we know, a practicing psychologist and the mother of school-aged children who are not tutored at home--has she ever met, or spoken with, her children's teachers? Does she still allow those Ticking Time Bombs near her precious offspring?
Pfui. Read the satire that inspired this crap--we know it's a satire, because it says so right in the title, but feel free to read it with a mouthful of coffee. Little Elasah, the gifted scion of a family of religious maniacs, throws hissy fits worthy of the roadshow choreographer at a Chorus Line revival because he's smarter than all the other children, imagines the rules don't apply to churchgoers (where'd he ever get that idea?), and Doc Helen's diagnosis is "his teacher's probably frustrated because she doesn't have a man"? I have to wonder what would have happened had she found out that Norah Vincent was posing as the boy's gym teacher?
And Mom objects to little Kohath being given extra work! What the H-E-double hockey sticks did she expect the school to do? Stop teaching everyone else whenever little Zephaniah started acting out? Granted, I was educated in the last century, but it seems to me that one good punch in the nose would do more for that kid than forced isolation in the Scripture factory will ever do.
Friday, February 23
Lincoln Quotes, Provided At No Charge, Plus Free Citation For Kids 12 And Over
"Some, if not all the gentlemen on the other side of the House, who have addressed the committee within the last two days, have spoken rather complainingly, if I have rightly understood them, of the vote given a week or ten days ago, declaring that the war with Mexico was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the President. I admit that such a vote should not be given, in mere party wantonness, and that the one given is justly censurable, if it have no other, or better foundation. I am one of those who joined in that vote; and I did so under my best impression of the truth of the case....When the war began it was my opinion that all those who, because of knowing too little, or because of knowing too much, could not conscientiously approve the conduct of the President, in the beginning of it, should, nevertheless, as good citizens and patriots, remain silent on that point, at least until the war should be ended.....and I adhered to it, and acted upon it, until since I took my seat here; and I think I should still adhere to it, were it not that the President and his friends will not allow it to be so....
"I more than suspect already, that he [President Polk] is deeply conscious of being in the wrong; that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to heaven against him; that originally having some strong motive...to involve the two countries in a war, and trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory...he plunged into it and has swept on and on, till, disappointed in his calculation...he now finds himself he knows not where....His mind, tasked beyond its power, is running hither and thither, like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no position on which it can settle down and be at ease....He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man. God grant he may be able to show there is not something about his conscience more painful than all his mental perplexity!"
-Representative Lincoln (R-IL), speech from the House floor, January 1848
"I more than suspect already, that he [President Polk] is deeply conscious of being in the wrong; that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to heaven against him; that originally having some strong motive...to involve the two countries in a war, and trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory...he plunged into it and has swept on and on, till, disappointed in his calculation...he now finds himself he knows not where....His mind, tasked beyond its power, is running hither and thither, like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no position on which it can settle down and be at ease....He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man. God grant he may be able to show there is not something about his conscience more painful than all his mental perplexity!"
-Representative Lincoln (R-IL), speech from the House floor, January 1848
Frank Gaffney or 10,000 Monkeys Typing--Which Would Get Something Right First?
So last week Frank swallows a bogus Lincoln quote which, if you've read the great man's actual words above you will likely agree didn't sound anything like Lincoln and should have given anyone with a passing familiarity with them pause stopped any halfway-honest reader in his tracks. But Frank was using a certified "Conservative" source--one which could not be bothered to correct the error when it appeared--and so had no earthly reason to spend five seconds double-checking it, when he would have tumbled onto FactCheck.org debunking it six months ago.
[The "quote", just for the record: “Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.”]
The Moonie Times reportedly took two days to get around to pulling Frank's column, though it's still available at Town Hall, if that tells you anything about Gaffney's commitment to accuracy. So this week offers up a steaming bowl of mea culpa, right?
Well, funny you should mention it, because Frank seems to have learned contrition from Dick Cheney, back when the two warhawks were serving in 'Nam:
Well, no. It was a statement of the author, Insight contributor J. Michael Waller, who now says it appeared as a quotation due to an editor's error (or intent), though a couple of factors argue against that explanation. There's certainly no cogent basis for the claim that it paraphrases, approximates, or even halfway resembles Lincoln's personal views. And had Gaffney been interested enough to investigate his mistake, instead of finding a way to rewrite it, he'd have known that.
Well, no. Vallandigham was not a Representative. He was a former Representative, having been (handily) defeated in 1862. Vallandigham was arrested, not by Lincoln or with his knowledge, and not for treason or sabotage, but for violating General Order #38, issued by Ambrose "Most Incompetent Union General Who Did Not Write Ben Hur" Burnside as Commander of the Department of Ohio, which had provided the death penalty for overt acts of treason and declared that "the habit of declaring sympathy for the enemy...will not be tolerated." Burnside hadn't bothered to consult anyone about the order, including an attorney. Vallandigham made a speech in Mount Vernon, Ohio, on May Day, in which he claimed, for one, that Republicans were prolonging the war for political purposes. He was arrested by Burnside's men on May 5th, convicted by military tribunal on the 15th of violating the order and sentenced, not to hang, but to close confinement for the duration of the war. Vallandigham had refused to plead, arguing that the military court had no jurisdiction over a private citizen.
Lincoln, unaware of the arrest until after the fact, did issue his famous expression of support ("Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier-boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?"). Lincoln's comments demonstrate a clear recognition that the two situations were matters of very different legal jurisdictions, but not his desire to avoid having civil courts take the matter up nor his awareness that Vallandigham was now becoming something of a cause célèbre, and his words from jail, widely reprinted in both anti-war and moderate newspapers, were a hundred times more damaging than they'd ever been before. Lincoln, as he was frequently able to do, got out from under: he managed to find the possibility of using "exile" under Burnsides order, and Vallandigham was eventually escorted to Tennessee. (This is the reason why "exile" turns up in that phony quote, and why Waller's latter-day explanation rings hollow; exile made sense in a Civil War, but what sense does it make today?)
Of course all this simply circles around the bullshit factor which should have been obvious any of the few hundred times the "quote" was picked up by the Right: throughout his presidency Lincoln dealt with serious opposition in Congress and throughout the nation. He could have hanged two dozen Congressmen if that were really his attitude, and uncounted numbers of Southerners who were actually committing treasonable offenses. Of course in the actual event--and though he obviously stepped into illegality several times during the conduct of the war--Lincoln had the wisdom and the patience to find common cause with any number of people, in and out of public life, who differed with him on the war or the question of slavery. But that's not the sort of accomplishment they praise at the Moonie Times, is it?
[The "quote", just for the record: “Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.”]
The Moonie Times reportedly took two days to get around to pulling Frank's column, though it's still available at Town Hall, if that tells you anything about Gaffney's commitment to accuracy. So this week offers up a steaming bowl of mea culpa, right?
Well, funny you should mention it, because Frank seems to have learned contrition from Dick Cheney, back when the two warhawks were serving in 'Nam:
I began this column last week with a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln in which harsh treatment was deemed warranted for congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military. It turns out to have been a paraphrase of our 16th president's attitude toward those who engage in such behavior, rather than a direct quote.
Well, no. It was a statement of the author, Insight contributor J. Michael Waller, who now says it appeared as a quotation due to an editor's error (or intent), though a couple of factors argue against that explanation. There's certainly no cogent basis for the claim that it paraphrases, approximates, or even halfway resembles Lincoln's personal views. And had Gaffney been interested enough to investigate his mistake, instead of finding a way to rewrite it, he'd have known that.
I regret the error and should, instead, have used the following, verbatim excerpt from a letter President Lincoln wrote in June 1863, as Robert E. Lee's army was on the march north to the fateful battle of Gettysburg. Mr. Lincoln wrote this letter after the arrest of a leading Confederate sympathizer legislator (or "Copperheads" as they were then known), U.S. Rep. Clement L. Vallandigham, Ohio Democrat. It forcefully explains the commander in chief's thinking about the latitude the Constitution affords to "silence" anti-war "agitators" whose conduct "damages the Army" and threatens to leave the nation without the military means to "suppress" its enemies...
Well, no. Vallandigham was not a Representative. He was a former Representative, having been (handily) defeated in 1862. Vallandigham was arrested, not by Lincoln or with his knowledge, and not for treason or sabotage, but for violating General Order #38, issued by Ambrose "Most Incompetent Union General Who Did Not Write Ben Hur" Burnside as Commander of the Department of Ohio, which had provided the death penalty for overt acts of treason and declared that "the habit of declaring sympathy for the enemy...will not be tolerated." Burnside hadn't bothered to consult anyone about the order, including an attorney. Vallandigham made a speech in Mount Vernon, Ohio, on May Day, in which he claimed, for one, that Republicans were prolonging the war for political purposes. He was arrested by Burnside's men on May 5th, convicted by military tribunal on the 15th of violating the order and sentenced, not to hang, but to close confinement for the duration of the war. Vallandigham had refused to plead, arguing that the military court had no jurisdiction over a private citizen.
Lincoln, unaware of the arrest until after the fact, did issue his famous expression of support ("Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier-boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?"). Lincoln's comments demonstrate a clear recognition that the two situations were matters of very different legal jurisdictions, but not his desire to avoid having civil courts take the matter up nor his awareness that Vallandigham was now becoming something of a cause célèbre, and his words from jail, widely reprinted in both anti-war and moderate newspapers, were a hundred times more damaging than they'd ever been before. Lincoln, as he was frequently able to do, got out from under: he managed to find the possibility of using "exile" under Burnsides order, and Vallandigham was eventually escorted to Tennessee. (This is the reason why "exile" turns up in that phony quote, and why Waller's latter-day explanation rings hollow; exile made sense in a Civil War, but what sense does it make today?)
Of course all this simply circles around the bullshit factor which should have been obvious any of the few hundred times the "quote" was picked up by the Right: throughout his presidency Lincoln dealt with serious opposition in Congress and throughout the nation. He could have hanged two dozen Congressmen if that were really his attitude, and uncounted numbers of Southerners who were actually committing treasonable offenses. Of course in the actual event--and though he obviously stepped into illegality several times during the conduct of the war--Lincoln had the wisdom and the patience to find common cause with any number of people, in and out of public life, who differed with him on the war or the question of slavery. But that's not the sort of accomplishment they praise at the Moonie Times, is it?
Wednesday, February 21
On the Feasability of a Unified Wingnut Theory, or, Jonah Goldberg Is Overweight
"The Beer Test: Presidential personalities." NRO February 21
This Goldberg column means absolutely nothing to me and, although one should carefully consider before espousing universal truths where human behavior is concerned, I think we can say with absolute certainty that goes for the rest of the planet aside from Jonah and the 3.5 mouths that are keeping him from volunteering for combat duty. But Scott put the possibility of a Unified Wingnut Pundit Theory in my head last week so I checked the Goldberg archives this AM.
I'm not sure that Jonah is the linchpin of a potential global understanding of the phenomenon, but absent grant money and a squad of sweating co-ed volunteers one starts by looking for some nice loamy soil in which to dig. If we find some artifacts, not to mention some co-eds, somebody young and strong'll show up with a pickaxe before we hit bedrock.
So let's deal with today's nugget first: That's it, in the headline. No, really, it is: "Which Presidential candidate would you want to have a beer with?" And yes, any question of Goldberg authenticity is settled in situ:
• Opening with a lowbrow pop culture quotation which is then treated like some snippet of Montaigne (Men in Black; extra credit for vague sci-fi-y-ness).
• Disavowal of any responsibility for knowledge of, or accuracy in, the subject he is presently involved in writing about ("Please don’t be scandalized by all of this. It’s just something to think about. For the record, I think everyone should vote based on principle.").
Now, it is a fact that practically any major print pundit could have written such a column, mostly likely as a deadline-assisted tree-killer, possibly as a bunny-cautious bit of snark. It's even possible that other Jonah-Class pundits (most of whom are deployed to various career-ending outposts like Townhall) would similarly discover that, once again and by any reasonably objective standard they could imagine, it's the Republicans who are likable. But could any of them be this fucking unconvincing?
Interestingly, the GOP has a significant likability advantage (and disadvantages almost everywhere else). John McCain may be unpopular with much of the Republican base, but Americans would love to go to the pub with him. Rudy Giuliani, too, seems like a good guy with whom to watch a baseball game at the bar. The super-polished Mitt Romney’s a tougher call, and Duncan Hunter would be a pain because he’d keep asking the immigration status of the busboys.
Frankly, in some places I can name Duncan Hunter would spot Guiliani, motion the waiter over, and ask when they started letting in Jews.
But here's where we begin to analyze this pathetic pottery shard. McCain "may be unpopular with much of the Republican base," but he still passes the Beer Test. Okay then, what's the fookin' relevance of what the base thinks? The only possible answer is that Jonah has to feed the Anti-Fluoridationists at NRO or they'll steal his lunch sack. And what, exactly, is his insight based on? Can't be the polls: McCain's still in the race despite losing a big chunk of his "moderate" and "independent" support over the past eighteen months, presumably because Mr. Straight Talk has shown the consistency of Mr. Silly Putty™ over that period. But perhaps those people are teetotalers anyway, or perhaps what people like in a drinking buddy is shameless venality.
And Rudy, of course, has those qualities in spades, not to mention a few that would give you pause before hiring him as a guard dog or a strike breaker.
Okay, we already knew we had to account for outright fabrication in the face of readily-available public information to the contrary, and we knew (having snuck a peak or two before) that a Goldberg column was fertile ground for unearthing fragmentary evidence. But we must at present remain non-committed as to the cause of the reflexive knee bends over "the Republican base," and admit to no small amount of confusion over the use of the term to describe (one assumes) educationally-deprived Rapture enthusiasts and that segment of the population which finds Jeff Foxworthy "kinda funny, but a little too cerebral". This has indeed been a vital Republican voting bloc since the day Strom Thurmond switched parties, but hardly seems its historical "base", which is more Small Cap Hedge Fund than Small Engine Cylinder Decarbonizing. In fact we imagine that Jonah considers himself the Republican base, as do all those self-professed independent libertarians who still manage to toe every Republican line. And the weird exemption of Giuliani's own unpalatability to that same faction merits further consideration.
[Okay, a guess, but no wagering: it's not that Rudy is leading the polls, meaningless as that is, nor that he's the only candidate who leads Senator Clinton, let alone a Democrat who might actually become popular. I think the real answer is that Rudy's personal life and his abilitiy to weasel, opposed to McCain's public self-flagellation over his starting position on the Keating Five (however hypocritical), his personal valor, and his ham-handed acrobatics the past few months have convinced Republican tastemakers, if not kingmakers, that Rudy's venality is of the easily-controlled variety while McCain might one day, under serious pressure, do something because it was right. Plus, and this cannot be over-emphasized, McCain was stupid enough to head right in 2006 and beyond, when the GOP power structure was pissing itself over the Bronze Agers naming the next nominee. They don't want that shit enacted; they want to maintain it as a voting spur. It's possible that they've gone one bridge too far already, but they don't have much choice. Pandering to the right loses the next election. That McCain couldn't see that is evidence he's barely bright enough to be a Senator.]
But turn the thing over:
[T]he GOP front-runners (save perhaps Newt Gingrich) all have the advantage over Hillary. She may have star power, but you get the sense that most Americans would like to have their picture taken with her and then drink alone.
Here's a curiosity: Newt (10% and falling) and Mitt (8% and panicking) are "front runners", but the only Democrats Jonah can think of are Hillary and Chris Dodd. He seems to have left that Obama fella out, which is too bad. Not because I'm curious about his Beerability Quotent on the Goldberg scale. What I'd like to know is how many Cornerites would take a swig of beer from a glass Obama had already drunk from?
We're a long way from any serious hypothesizin', but I do recommend interested parties take a look at Jonah's NRO archive, which even in terse headlinese bears a remarkable similarity to an aerial shot of Wingnuttatopia as viewed from a hovering blimp.
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