I Labor To Be Obscure, Vol. LXXI

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

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

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

Fun With Monogamy, Vol. CCCIX

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

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

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

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

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

PW: Zucchini. I don't like zucchini.

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

PW: Lipstick.


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

Plus, We Owe Deer Trapped In Headlights Everywhere An Apology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dipsticks

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Brooks, "Surprise Me Most". September 9

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daily Grace

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

Mr. Greatest Generation, gracious as always.

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

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

IS that supposed to be some kind of a koan?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, I Think The Speech Went Well. Really. I'm Betting The Slate Staff Stops Rimming Councilwoman Palin Long Enough To Pretend To Admire It.

HERE'S the thing: I don't understand what the McCain campaign is supposed to be about, other than about electing John McCain, and I wonder if he does, either. We're just about to rid ourselves of a guy who seemed to desire the Presidency, to the extent that he did, as a means of giving the finger to his Daddy, and perhaps anyone else who'd bothered to explain to him that he was a lightweight, a sponger of money and power, and a bar-rag of booze, and we've seen how well that's worked out. McCain, increasingly, seems like the guy who wants to be President because the current guy screwed him over.

[Two things, here, and this is partly in response to everyone who says to me, "Gee, Riley, you must spend hours planning out these little rants of yours": first, I was never fully in the grip of Bush administration paranoia (speaking of things which the Psychiatric Industry doesn't feel there's money to be made by shilling). I didn't use the phenomenal power of this blog to warn anyone that they were about to suspend the 2004 elections, or that an attack on Iran was imminent. This is not to say there's no reason to think it capable of just about anything; I'm just trying to add some perspective to the observation that every time I type something about "nearing the end of the Bush II administration" it feels like whistling past the graveyard. While a bug crawls down your back. The other is this: I have a lot of things to say about this country, this culture, and these times that may be fairly regarded as scabrous, or the ravings of a comic, or not so comic, sociopath. Like all men, as Borges said, I have been given bad times in which to live. But, so help me, I could watch a Real World marathon and still not believe this country deserves the politics it actually has. Okay, that's not quite true. I could never watch a Real World marathon.]


I do remember watching George Wallace block the door to admissions at the University of Alabama (funny, though, I don't remember where or how I first heard that the whole thing was theatre; I was nine at the time, and it seemed vaguely threatening, like Wallace might be prepared to order his bodyguard of State Trooper Golem to shoot it out at any moment). I spent my teenaged years with Nixon in the White House, when for the first time, historians tell us, we had people installed at the highest levels of the Executive branch who thought "ratfucker" was a compliment. This was followed, far too closely, by the disheartening ascension of Ronald Reagan, who is sometimes thought of as Barry Goldwater with brain bubbles, but who I think is more accurately described as the Reverend Carl Macintyre with charm. All of this was embroidered with the figures of Strom Thurmond and Jessie Helms, John Stennis and James Eastland, the desiccated sons of Jubal Early, and the--again disheartening--cadre of Confederate bummers that followed in Nixon's wake like hookers in, well, Hooker's: Lott, Gramm, Gingrich, and their Prairie cousins, Dicks Armey and Cheney. (What was disheartening about this bunch of toads was that what would never qualify as crypto-racism in rational society--they, at most, generally remembered not to say "NIG-ra", or "wetback", when the cameras were rolling--was, in the Press, combined with their collection of bumper-sticker slogans and a savvy about television presence equal to the average midsize-market carpet remnant retailer who does his own commercials--apparently, to the Press of the 1980s, any backwoodsman who had mastered the Teevee, or, for that matter, the mysteries of the electrical outlet, was a veritable Technological Pioneer--to form something New! and Different! and Masterful! and never mind it was a tenth-generation Xerox of what States' Rights arguments were left from the 50s and 60s. The disheartenment of Ronald Reagan, meanwhile, had much less to do with politics--those were bad enough, but, beyond his collusion with Democratic Congresses to help bail out the Wealthy, mostly ineffectual--and more to do with a desperate national self-hypnosis to the effect that we could stand Truth on its head, just this once, and, since we weren't really doing anything else important, all pretend to be dress extras in The Space Age Finds Andy Hardy. With Ronald Reagan as the genial uncle with the henna-ed hair who teaches Andy a lot about life, before stealing his car and running off with Polly bound and gagged in the rumble seat.)

So, y'know, to me McCain's a minor leaguer with bum wheels. Sure, his record on the King holiday is shameful, but, let us be honest here, in this he was at least following the will of what seems to have been every single resident of the state of Arizona with the possible exception of Barry Goldwater. And since the major newspaper in those parts was the then-Pulliam-family-owned sister to the Indianapolis Racist Star, I like to imagine I have some insight, however doleful. I have no interest in, and really little tolerance for, the standardized left-blogosphere attacks on McCain, which have come to resemble the worst sort of Kos diarist on a three-day sugar bender. He's a reliable "conservative" vote with a mule streak. He's used his POW experience to further his political career. Of course. He overstates his military expertise. Of course. His reputation as a maverick is overblown, and is contingent upon sharing his party's notion that anyone who speaks civilly to a liberal Democrat--even in the Senate!--is a treasonous rat bastard. He didn't just flip-flop on major issues; he dove into an empty pool hoping to impress the yahoo "wing" of his party. Yes, yes, and yes.

I don't give a fuck how rich his wife is, or if he can remember how many houses (s)he owns, and I don't care if he knows what ROM stands for or if he's ever opened a jewel case. These are double-edged light sabers, batteries not included. I understand the impulse to scratch and claw, and I realize it's worthless to tell anyone not to, but there has never been a plummier election for issues-based harvesting. Maybe the belated recognition of that will not prove fatal.

And if it doesn't, there's John McCain to thank. I may admire the courage of the politician who speaks truth to potulent mobs of his own supporters, or even, in this case, "truth", but I'll be damned if that speech last night didn't half convince me the man would rather rub James Dobson's nose in dachshund dirt than win the election. Which may be the single best reason anyone could have to vote for him. Or at least admire him, with grudge.

The man wanted Lieberman. God knows Holy Joe is ready to help sink another major political party. Instead he had a "conservative" "religious" Veep thrust upon him, and we might now speculate whether he choose Councilwoman Palin the way you'd check the point of a stick before jabbing someone's eye with it. This, of course, might have been made clear had the announcement been met with a serious, and appropriate, round of "Th' fuck?" when the Press knew the mikes were on. And the choice got away from him, and pooches were screwed, first in the vetting, and second in the fact that Commander Palin turned out to be a lying nutjob hypocrite, which, of course made her immensely popular with that 30% of Americans who still tell pollsters they think George II is doing a bang-up job, and, anyway, history will absolve him. This was exponentially increased by the fact that the Press a) pays what passes for attention to these things and b) loves a good roll in the hay, provided there's a nice moral at the end to make them seem less prurient. The result, you may have heard, was a convocation of white people roaring as That New, Hot, Cub Reporter read someone else's wordsmithery off a teleprompter.

And yes, this is the way it's been going for the McCain campaign ever since the polls started telling them they had a chance to win. And yes, one may have flashed a secret smile last night, watching as much of the thing as one could stand, at the fact that McCain would use His Night to remind the religious whackjobs they still had to pull the level with his name on it in November if they wanted that Date With Sarah to materialize. Or one might have admired his brave trust--which had to be called into question when a protest broke out (imagine, Reader, a protest on the Disneyfied American political scene!)--that not one of a barnful of Republicans had smuggled in a handgun.  

But, y'know, he deserves those compromises he's been forced to make. If he were a real maverick he wouldn't have to, and he wouldn't be the Republican nominee. He had the standing, in 2000, to blow the lid off our filthy politics, and to strangle the Bush administration in its cradle. He's had the chance, all along, to denounce the hate-filled, thieving charade of the Republican majority; instead (like my boy Dick Lugar) he crafted himself a mask so he could keep voting with them reliably. It suggests that the McCain of "because her father is Janet Reno"; the McCain who reversed himself on torture--on torture!--and hugged George W. Bush, is the Real McCain. At the very least, his hatred of one extremist sect of his extremist party doesn't make him sane. It just means he might be part-way there.

Knocked Up In Wasilla With The Juneau Blues Again

OKAY, first, it turns out Peggy Noonan may possess half a brain. Fittingly, we learn this only by accident.  With apologies to Tom Lehrer, if I hadn't already lived through Heinz Kissinger's Nobel Peace Prize the news might'a killed me.

The Noonan, Murphy, Todd ménage demonstrates, once and forever, that at least some of these people are in possession of something approaching normal intelligence, which is precisely the point, and that the major requirement for a teevee/wingnut sinecure pundit, after hair and cosmetics in the former case, is the ability to shoehorn it into a single dimension. You don't hear anybody, not a single cable noisemaker, certainly not Tom Fucking Why Are You Here Again? Brokaw, talk like this on the air. You hear discussions of The Experience Question, speculation about the vetting process or the political strategy behind it, and all of that in a sort of Neverland version. What I doubt anyone has heard, really, is an honest What Th' Fuck Is That? regarding Councilwoman Palin.

It's vertiginous. The more people proclaim they Love Uh Murrica, the more willing, even eager, they are to see her in the hands of witlings. The Republican party apparently now sees as its mission the igniting of bags of dogshit on liberalism's door (let's rephrase that; it now embraces that as its mission, the current generation having tired of pretending to read the Cliff's Notes to Reflections on the Revolution in France and The Wealth of Nations).

And people like Chuck Todd, who are supposed to be in a position to, uh, note it, now see as their mission the touting of cartoon horse races, which, above all else, requires convincing the rubes to bet up the losers. Noonan, Murphy, and Todd, behind the scenes, discuss how "bummed out" "everybody" is about the choice--has that been reflected in any of the coverage? None that I've seen, though I restricted myself to PBS, on the grounds that I can do so without hurling very often, which is more of a personal thing than a tribute to their coverage. Still, the Democratic convention was forty-eight hours of Clinton v. Obama, followed by twenty-four of creeping disappointment when it didn't materialize in person like it materialized in the Press.

Look, I'm realistic enough to realize these people will not tell the truth on air, not if they hope ever to return, but if you're going to avoid the obvious, couldn't you at least try to be fair about it, and not compensate by making shit up and treating that as obvious?

By the way, Noonan's mea culpa is a hoot, in that she apologizes--twice!--for using "a barnyard epithet"! Peggy, Peggy: you said "bullshit". In fact, you excused yourself and said "bullshit". Sheesh, it's probably the one thing in your professional life you shouldn't apologize for.

(Was it David Steinberg in his prime who had the bit about finding "bullshit" in the dictionary? "There it is--bullshit, noun,  and it's defined as 'Nonsense'.  How'd they find the only guy who doesn't know what 'bullshit' means?")

My tape of last night's Festival of Patriotic Fart Lighting cut out after only one hour (and two African-Americans), so I had to catch Councilwoman Palin on the YouTube. And, y'know, I understand that the thing got away from McCain a little bit, but they asked for it. Having been buoyed by a month of good polling numbers they finally found themselves with the obligation to do something beyond hope Obama continued to come to them, and they shored up the fucking base. You'd think if there was one Republican out there who wouldn't allow the Convention to become a replay of 1992, except dumbed down two grade levels in reading comprehension, it would be Maverick McCain. It was redolent of that pathetic Joint Session speech of Junior Bush's in Spring 2001, when the Republicans were jumping up to applaud his finishing sentences like he'd just revealed Phryne in all her glory. I know, I know: we're at the Republican National Convention. Hard to miss when there're more black faces at the podium than in the audience. It was either that or a tape of a suburban megachurch during National Brotherhood Week.

But, c'mon, somebody gave Commander Palin that speech to read. Were they really unaware it was being televised, meaning it was going out to people who aren't just killing time and wildlife before The Rapture? Good Lord, you're the party responsible for the mess people Out There--the people you claim Grandma Palin is One Of--find themselves neck deep in. Cheering throngs of yahoos would seem to be the last thing you'd want to show, but then, maybe you're down to your Last Thing. We can only hope.

By the way: spare me any more fucking lectures about how Liberals, or The Angry Left, or however it is you refer to sane people these days, "just don't get" evangelicals. Yes, yes, yes, you publicly excuse your own if your fat gets anywhere near the fire. This does not come as a shock to anyone who's been paying attention. If Young Miss Palin had denounced the war in Iraq and claimed Jesus was the Prince of Peace we'd've seen how quick you are with the shunning. And, yes, you hate sex and love reproduction. Also not new. Sin is only really a sin if people you consider sinners are doing it, though you'll never put it that way, because Jesus puts a premium on artificial humility. At least His sales reps do.  We get it. Now, you get this: we see through it. If you really think it's still 1992, at least quit trying to pretend you aren't the same bunch who thought Murphy Brown was a real person.

And if it's really a private matter then shut th' fuck up. Quit parading that "she chose Life", excuse me, bullshit; none of us has any insight into the real dynamic at work here. We do know two things: that her mother was willing to sacrifice her on the altar of an ambition most sane people believe she had no claim on, and, two, that there is apparently no real hurry on the matrimony thing, which I would imagine would knock the props out from under the immorality/rising illegitimacy rate argument. That is, I would, if I didn't understand evangelicals.

Strap On Your Thinking Caps, America, As Old Gold Cigarettes And Your Local Sinclair Dealer Bring You Well, That's Remarkable!

David Brooks, "What the Palin Pick Says". September 1

John McCain is not a normal conservative.

Well...that's Remarkable! David Brooks, since, starting with the collapse of the Republican party at the beginning of the second Bush term, you've been telling us how awesomely diverse "conservatism" is. But then suddenly, when its political fortunes are tied to a guy who is intensely hated by the biggest lunatics in his own party--not exactly a scarce commodity--for reasons that in the real world could only be termed "microscopic", suddenly there are "normal" and "abnormal" conservatives. And what's especially odd about that is, the more "normal" a person appears in real life, the more likely he is to be an "abnormal" conservative. And--especially,and--vice versa.

He has instincts, but few abstract convictions about the proper size of government.

I'm sorry, David Brooks, but...that's not Remarkable! So this might be a good time to reacquaint you, and the folks playing along at home, with the Old Gold™ Rulebook. Old Gold: not a cough in a carload! Okay, you are an extraordinarily overpaid political pundit whose sole requirement is to squeeze out roughly 1500 words a week, plus your main side gig, teaming every Friday with Mark Shields to reprise your Carl Reiner/Mel Brooks routine as The Prototypes for Disney World's Rejected Hall of Animatronic™ Talking Secretaries of Transportation, which, frankly, is beginning to wear a little thin, if you'll forgive some well-meant criticism. Your job, so far as any of us can tell, involves circulating Republican talking points while giving the impression of an imminent asthma attack, thus making anyone responding to even the most heinous of these seem like a heartless bully, and possibly a legally culpable one as well. To complete the image, you are supposed to seem uncomfortable with the torchlit crusading of the party's Bronze Age "social" "conservatives" without, naturally, denouncing their excesses or turning away their votes.

So in this instance, for example, reciting your high school debate team talking points --oops, sorry, I forgot; you were a "liberal" back then, am I right? Eh?--about "the proper size of government" (now marked down from "shrinking the size of government") is simply too much at odds with "Reality" to be Remarkable. Ronald Reagan talked practically non-stop about his abstract intentions to reduce the size of government, and when he left the federal payroll was 10% larger and the budget was up 25%, and there was a new cabinet position. Bush II, of course, is worse yet, although the cabinet thing remains tied.

He’s a traditionalist, but is not energized by the social conservative agenda.

He seems to pander to it pretty energetically, though.

As Rush Limbaugh understands, but the Democrats apparently do not, a McCain administration would not be like a Bush administration.

Okay, we haven't made it out of the first paragraph yet, and you're already flailing.  Deep cleansing breath.  Let's just run through that list of McCain's supposed apostasies, shall we? First, and foremost, he co-sponsored campaign finance reform. Two, he sass-mouthed Jerry Falwell and Bob Jones U. back in 2000, though seven years later he'd join the choir and endow a pew. Three, he voted against The Bush Tax Cuts, because he insisted on program cuts to go with them. Four, he has, on occasion, behaved like a Senator, notably in that Gang of Fourteen business, which, one might note, got the so-called "Democrats" in the Senate to agree not only to dance at the successive bachelor parties for John Roberts and Sam Alito, but to do so strictly for tips, in exchange for the Republicans not doing something (the "nuclear option") which would not exactly have played well everywhere.  The fact that Limbaugh has chosen to release torrents of intestinal gas while McCain was in the elevator with him does not constitute a GOP policy dispute for most sane people.

And speaking of gas, whenever you fill up, remember to look for Dino the Dinosaur and the fine family of Sinclair gas and lubrication products.

The main axis in McCain’s worldview is not left-right. It’s public service versus narrow self-interest. Throughout his career, he has been drawn to those crusades that enabled him to launch frontal attacks on the concentrated powers of selfishness — whether it was the big money donors who exploited the loose campaign finance system, the earmark specialists in Congress like Alaska’s Don Young and Ted Stevens, the corrupt Pentagon contractors or Jack Abramoff.

Judges? Okay, we're giving that one a Not Truly Remarkable, since simply making shit up about McCain's supposed anti-corruption track record while ignoring his campaign's continuing reliance on lobbyists is not Remarkable at all, but neatly parodying your own parody of Democratic National Convention platitudes from last week--if that's what you were up to--is.

Like McCain, Palin does not seem to have an explicit governing philosophy.

Okay, points for turning the negative space of Palin's accomplishments into a sort of amorphous blob of philosophical incertitude while simultaneously not being George Will. Remember, the "not George Will" bonus is available only once per round.

Her background is socially conservative, but she has not pushed that as governor of Alaska.

Unremarkably, since the "conservative" social agenda is 99% jawbone and 0.001% legislative action.

[Speaking of which, her Eagle Forum questionnaire, with the famous "If 'Under God' was good enough for the Founders it's good enough for me" response, seems to have been taken down, but the social agenda she "hasn't pushed" is still cached here. ]

She seems to find it easier to work with liberal Democrats than the mandarins in her own party.

Judges? Okay, the ruling is Not Remarkable, with a minor dissent on the grounds that reusing leftover Bush 2000 clichés is supposed to be avoided, just like all other references to the formerly misunderestimated Winston Churchill Junior. They're ruling that one inadvertent.

Incidentally, I'm from Indiana, where you get credit (or blame) for "working with liberal Democrats" if you pass Evan Bayh in the hall and wish him a good morning. So I'm just curious as to where Sarah Palin finds liberal Democrats to work with in Alaska? And what do they do--play three-handed Euchre?

Instead, she seems to get up in the morning to root out corruption. McCain was meeting a woman who risked her career taking on the corrupt Republican establishment in her own state, who twice defeated the oil companies, who made mortal enemies of the two people McCain has always held up as the carriers of the pork-barrel disease: Young and Stevens.

Fake bio, David. As Republican as, well, claiming to be a former liberal. That's your second warning.

The Palin pick allows McCain to run the way he wants to — not as the old goat running against the fresh upstart, but as the crusader for virtue against the forces of selfishness. It allows him to make cleaning out the Augean stables of Washington the major issue of his campaign.

Okay, again, we'll pass it, even though Augeas is a registered Republican and the last thirty years worth of oxen shit is the overflow from Reagan's bedpan.

So my worries about Palin are not (primarily) about her lack of experience.

Okay, Remarkable! in that in the previous 350 words you had not a) mentioned her lack of experience; b) talked about your reaction to it; nor c) led anyone to believe you thought the highest office in the Land required anything much beyond a lack of governing philosophy and a PR department with no scruples.

She seems like a marvelous person.

So do most sharpers at cards, except they tend to avoid lying to your face before the pot gets big.

She is a dazzling political performer.

That's Conditionally Remarkable! David Brooks. How many times, exactly, had you seen her before Monday's deadline? Two?

And she has experienced more of typical American life than either McCain or his opponent.

I'm warning you, Brooks. Not only are you out of here if you pull that Bobo shit again, but I'm going to personally give you an asthma attack that'll last til Election Day.

On Monday, an ugly feeding frenzy surrounded her daughter’s pregnancy. But most Americans will understand that this is what happens in real life, that parents and congregations nurture young parents through this sort of thing every day.

Just as an aside, does it hurt when you type something like that? Is there some point where every artifact of self-respect has crumbled to dust?

My worry about Palin is that she shares McCain’s primary weakness — that she has a tendency to substitute a moral philosophy for a political philosophy.

Just like Old Golds™ have a tendency to taste rich, smooth, and mild. C'mon, Brooks. She's a fucking Jesus-addled nutball.

There are some issues where the most important job is to rally the armies of decency against the armies of corruption: Confronting Putin, tackling earmarks and reforming the process of government.

Now, that's truly Remarkable! seeing as how it was the combination of Christ-like certitude and neocon "morality"-based foreign policy that provoked the Sov Russia into jabbing a stick in our eye the minute it had the chance, while Republican-controlled Congresses kept bettering their own earmark records in a way Michael Phelps would have envied. As for "reforming the process of government", what? The biggest dump ever taken on the Constitution, absent rebel armies being camped 100 miles from DC, wasn't enough reform for you?

But most issues are not confrontations between virtue and vice. Most problems — the ones Barack Obama is sure to focus on like health care reform and economic anxiety — are the product of complex conditions. They require trade-offs and policy expertise. They are not solvable through the mere assertion of sterling character.

Wait, David, Vertigo! is on another network. There's a clear-cut moral imperative for us to act as though we can order Russia around--in the Caucases!--but protecting the health of our own citizens is a tricky moral quandary lined with metaphysical landmines? Do you shave yourself in the morning?

McCain is certainly capable of practicing the politics of compromise and coalition-building. He engineered a complex immigration bill with Ted Kennedy and global warming legislation with Joe Lieberman. But if you are going to lead a vast administration as president, it really helps to have a clearly defined governing philosophy, a conscious sense of what government should and shouldn’t do, a set of communicable priorities.

BZZZZZTT! I'm so sorry, but three inadvertent Bush clichés and you're Out! like one of those cigarettes that doesn't use Old Gold's™ luxury blend of carefully selected tobaccos from around the globe! Here's a carton for you, plus our home game, and a $25 gift certificate to Red Lobster.  Better luck next time, David Brooks, and when you see Mark Shields, talk retirement! G'nite, folks!

Dear Senator McCain:

JUST to clarify, I agree that the pregnancy of young Miss Palin is a personal matter.  I do, however, believe that under the First amendment we are justified in asking whether the father is Janet Reno.

Yours,

Riley

Shorter New York Times Sunday Magazine: It Takes A Truly Remarkable Leader To Be So Thoroughly Hated

Peter Baker, "The Final Days of the Presidency of George W. Bush". August 31

CONTINUING the Times Sunday Magazine personality-profile technique pioneered in its pages with Zev Chafets' Rush Limbaugh: Hero or Savior? namely, that the best way to know a man is to crawl up his rectum tongue first, Peter Baker discovers there's no one on the planet who doesn't admire George W. Bush's stoicism in the face of the utter, spit-on-the-ground contempt he's justly held in by the vast majority of his fellow citizens. Or at least none worth talking to.

...friends say that Bush, who just turned 62, has been looser lately, more relaxed, more willing to joke around and even do a little dance for the cameras from time to time....

Whatever the president’s virtues, they remain unappreciated in his own time....

If anything, it may be that the low numbers have become almost a badge of honor for Bush....

Donald Ensenat, a friend of Bush’s for more than 40 years who worked as his chief of protocol before stepping down last year, said that the president’s view, as he paraphrased it, has come down to this: “I’ve already taken my last licks for being unpopular, so these last two years I do what’s right — that’s my job, not with my finger in the air.”...

Stoicism has been a hallmark of his second term....

He can flash anger over what he considers unfounded criticism or at something on his schedule he does not like, but he does not wrestle with his inner demons, at least not out loud....

As Kirbyjon Caldwell, a Texas pastor who gave the benediction at both of Bush’s inaugurations and officiated at Jenna Bush’s wedding, told me, “Assuming the fetal position is just not in his vocabulary.”...

Friends and advisers usually cite what some call “the three Fs” to explain Bush’s seeming serenity in the face of so much tumult — faith, family and friends.

“It’s his deep-seated faith in God,” says Mike Conaway, who once worked for Bush and now serves as a Republican congressman from Texas. “He’s rooted in his walk with Christ. He believes he’s got a role and he’s doing what God wants him to do.”...

And then there is his near-fanatical dedication to his workout regimen, which friends credit for keeping him on an even keel....

The devotion to exercise and schedules seems to stem from the same discipline Bush summoned to quit drinking at age 40....

He also likes to look ahead rather than back....

“I feel so strongly about my principles and my values, and I’m an optimistic guy.” --George W. Bush

...the father said the son could handle the heat. “He’s fine,” he said. “We talk all the time. It’s been a tough run in terms of criticism. But that’s all right. He’s strong.”

Bush's unpopularity moves through the piece like objects in a Robbe-Grillet novel, all shiny and oddly self-propelled; Bush is unpopular because, you know, the Iraq thing, but Iraq is now a success. So now he's suffering from what G.W.H.M.S.Pinafore Bush calls "a bad break on the economy", which is doubly ironic, according to Baker, because back when Iraq wasn't a success no one gave him credit for the sparkling economic recovery his policies had brought to nearly one full percent of the population.  Life's just like that.  

We ask again--we're endless fascinated by this--would you, could you, write this sort of thing without feeling some deep emotional or legal compunction, such as you, your newspaper, and your profession being largely unindicted co-culprits? Would you say this sort of thing just for money? Would you spend good money to get someone to say it? Seventy percent of the public sees George W. Bush as a failure, and one of historic proportions. Are they all misinformed? Are they simply too illiterate to catch on as Washington insiders try to explain things? Does current market research suggest they never read the Times Magazine, nor patronize its fine advertisers? The public has been mislead about The Surge through a successful marketing campaign, but the public had long since tuned out, and rightly so.  

Happy endings, Orson Welles once noted, depend on stopping the story before it's over; crediting The Surge for "progress" in Iraq relies on sculpting it while it's still going on, plus a unique trick of perspective: "Surge" is synonymous with the (desperate) escalation of forces in 2007 back up to circa 160,000. It also credits, by extension, the tactical changes under General David Petraeus, the so-called Seize, Clear, and Hold.

What the "vindicated" Surge does not convey--this is doubly unsurprising when all one's sources are current and former Bush underlings now aiding the production of one's upcoming book--is how much of its "success" consists of redefining failure upward. The Surge, like the Soviet System in the old Solidarity gag, is a success because it solves problems we otherwise wouldn't even have.  My Iraq Adventure, v. 1.0 included as a prominent feature the rubbing of Sunni noses in the sand; the Surge now succeeds on the back of the reluctant admission--as in "having no choice but"--that bribing Sunni tribal chieftans was preferable to the Bizarro World ideological purity which had held (since Vietnam, kids!) that the mere application of US military force coupled with a refusal to let Dirty Hippies, in association with Librul Media, Inc., lose another war for us, guaranteed success. We can couple this with the similar pressure put on the Shi'a-dominated government, or "government", to provide the Republican party with pleasant news going into 2006, and with the largely-complete ethnic cleansing and enormous numbers of (largely Sunni, largely well-off and educated) refugees now gone to Jordan and somewhat north, south, east, and southwest of there. It's difficult to understand what species of historian is supposed to be trumpeting this sort of thing in fifty years time, given even a slightly elevated vantage point on the accomplishments of American imperialism over the past half-century. Latter-day Truman worship (not exactly a universal, to begin with) depends on a continuation of the Cold War narrative; God help us if Bush doesn't prove to be the culmination of that folly.

Of course this points out the dangers of reverse-Santayanaism, the idea that the future will surely be smarter than we are, but in this case it's difficult to see how it could get any stupider than the eager recipients of "The Surge: The Riskiest Presidential Decision in a Generation", and "George W. Bush: The Man Who Makes Tough Decisions Without Regard for Opinion Polls". The Surge was specifically cooked up by what remained of the people who brought you the Iraq Disaster in the first place. It amounted, basically, to a scheme to keep US troop levels elevated by extending tours and reducing the amount of time between them. In this time frame--that is, the run-up to the 2006 midterms, beginning with the massive hemorrhoidal discomfort among his own, majority, party in spring 2005--Bush the Decider had basically three options: A) find a way to double-down; B) accept some sort of wishy-washy Ur-Baker/Hamilton, let's negotiate with the Terrasts scheme; or C) Cut and Run. Is there really any reason to accept the idea of A) as the risky choice? It's his only fucking choice, both in terms of the supreme hubris that got us to that point in the first place, and in terms of the best political calculation with regard to 2006. What in the personal history of George W. Bush suggests he'd have chosen otherwise? What example is there of Bush every making a decision that went against the Republican grain? We are speaking of the most ideological administration in US history, and the titular head who never vetoed a single measure passed by a Republican majority. It's the most risible aspect of the ludicrous notion of George W. Bush, Steely-Eyed, Poll-Averse Decisioner-in-Chief.

This is enough of an indictment (of the simple-minded Surge Be Workin' media coverage; alas, there will never be sufficient indictment of Bush himself), but we surely can add "Compared to What?" We have no way of knowing, now, what so slight a nod in the direction of Reality as the Baker/Hamilton "Do Not Open Until After Xmas Midterms" Report would have accomplished, just as we have no real way of knowing what sort of realpolitik shenanigans have been pulled behind the scenes to bolster our "success". In 2005/2006 the administration was wallpapering Iran with threats of imminent retaliation. Since then the Sadrists have been relatively pacific. Was that another Bush "decision"? If so, when did he announce it? And we have no way to gauge the ultimate fate of post-invasion Iraq. The one thing we can say is that it was sold on horseshit, executed on moonshine, and continued for years after its ultimate failure for the one and only purpose of saving what remained of Bush's face and leaving the cleanup to his successor. Mission Fucking Accomplished, and thanks almost entirely to a Democratic Congress elected in 2006 to force the opposite, and which, refusing to do so, now shares his Sticky Shit on the Dumpster Bottom-level approval ratings, though not his backlog of toadying apologists.