Month: July 2008

Prima Donna Bloviators

by digby

Now here’s some trivial, insider gossip made just for us blogofascists. Who are the most loathed cable gasbags among their peers? Well, it’s the usual suspects, with a couple of surprises.

I wasn’t expecting this guy to be an orange juice thrower, for instance:

BRITT HUME
Host, Special Report With Brit Hume
Hume, who will step down as host of Special Report after the election, but will stay on as managing editor of Fox News, has a reputation for being the most understated personality on a roster stuffed with loudmouths. Unfortunately, to many in the industry, his quiet patina masks a nasty streak. “He drips with sarcasm and self-importance,” claims a former senior producer at Larry King Live who dealt with Hume in the past. “He used to be a class act, but he got toxic real fast after drinking too much of the Fox Kool-Aid.” And while Hume is a model of restraint on air (some might call him smug), frequent outbursts behind the scenes have done little to endear him to his younger staffers. “There was one meeting a few years back when he got so pissed off he threw a full carton of orange juice across the room,” says a onetime researcher who is now out of the business altogether. “He can be incredibly snippy and dismissive if you don’t do things his way.”

Hume always reminded me a little bit Kevin Drum a little bit in terms of looks and temperament (certainly not politics.) So I was surprised to find out that he was a diva, which Kevin most certainly is not.

Check out the rest of the article. I particularly like Tucker Carlson saying “most people in cable news are assholes. If they’re not assholes, they have dysfunctional sex lives. But they’re usually assholes.” I mean, self awareness is always a very rare commodity among television personalities, but Tucker … dude.

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Anatomy of a Noise Machine

by dday

As I’m slowly rotating back to blog life, I’m focusing on this Maliki/withdrawal story, because it’s of course really important, but the response from the right-wing noise machine is important as well, in fact almost a microcosm of how they’ve reacted to any story that punctures their narrative over the last eight years.

Before this even happens, Bush has been forced into acknowledging a mealy-mouthed general time horizon for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Then Maliki makes the comments to the German magazine Der Spiegel. It didn’t get full recognition in the states until the White House accidentally emailed their entire reporter list the article when they intended to email their internal list to coordinate message. After the uproar, the White House and the McCain campaign claimed it was a mistranslation, but the audio tapes of the interview prove that the translation was correct.

But the interpreter for the interview works for Mr. Maliki’s office, not the magazine. And in an audio recording of Mr. Maliki’s interview that Der Spiegel provided to The New York Times, Mr. Maliki seemed to state a clear affinity for Mr. Obama’s position, bringing it up on his own in an answer to a general question on troop presence.

The following is a direct translation from the Arabic of Mr. Maliki’s comments by The Times: “Obama’s remarks that — if he takes office — in 16 months he would withdraw the forces, we think that this period could increase or decrease a little, but that it could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq.”

That having failed, the White House starts putting massive pressure on the Maliki government to walk back the comments. He responds with a sort of restatement, only it was put out by CENTCOM and not the independent Iraqi government. In the background, it’s clear that Maliki is using the Presidential election to negotiate the best deal, and despite this pressure he won’t really be that cooperative with Bush Administration entreaties to stop with the withdrawal talk. In fact, just today, the spokesman who walked back Maliki’s comments walked them forward again, in ENGLISH, essentially re-endorsing Obama’s withdrawal plan:

Iraq’s government spokesman is hopeful that U.S. combat forces could be out of the country by 2010.

Ali al-Dabbagh made the comments following a meeting in Baghdad on Monday between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama, who arrived in Iraq earlier in the day.

Don’t believe the dumb spin from Fred Hiatt’s Washington Post, that al-Dabbagh somehow contradicted Obama. The assertion here is clear, and the difference between eight months and indefinitely, as McCain would have it, is pretty wide.

Now for the “disengaged with reality” part. The McCain camp is still disputing the Maliki translation, even though it has been confirmed true and his top spokesman has now said the same thing in English. (Someone should ask them if we’d have better translation skills if all those Arabic translators weren’t fired from the military for being gay.) Then, in a tip of the “daddy party” hand, McCain basically said today that he knows better than the Iraqi government or its people how to best manage their future. It’s the colonial mindset to a T.

Vieira: “Senator Obama’s timetable of removing U.S. troops from Iraq within that 16-month period seemed to be getting a thumbs up by the Iraqi prime minister when he called it ‘the right timeframe for a withdrawal.’ He has backed off that somewhat, but the Iraqis have not stopped using the word timetable, so if the Iraqi government were to say — if you were President — we want a timetable for troops being to removed, would you agree with that?”

McCain: “I have been there too many times. I’ve met too many times with him, and I know what they want. They want it based on conditions and of course they would like to have us out, that’s what happens when you win wars, you leave. We may have a residual presence there as even Senator Obama has admitted. But the fact is that it should be — the agreement between Prime Minister Maliki, the Iraqi government and the United states is it will be based on conditions. This is a great success, but it’s fragile, and could be reversed very easily.”

So we have the conservative response to crisis: secrecy, incompetence, muddying the waters based on irrelevant and untrue technicalities, continuing the zombie lies after they’re disproven, and finally revealing the truth, that they think they know better than the wogs anyway. Also, the media has repeatedly soft-pedaled Maliki’s remarks and at times tried to sow contradictions where none exist.

This story has everything.

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Great Game

by digby

I don’t pretend to be an expert on Afghanistan, but I do know that it has been the definition of “quagmire” for hundreds of years for Western powers. It’s a strange, impenetrable country in a strategically important place that ties modern, arrogant imperialists up in knots over and over again. So, it is with some trepidation that I see Barack Obama saying things like “this is a war that we have to win.” I honestly don’t know what that means. No western power has ever “won” a war in Afghanistan.

I realize that Democrats have been using this “took his eye off the ball” for years now in their criticism of Iraq. And maybe it’s true. But frankly, I’ve never seen the evidence that if we had just put more troops into Afghanistan we could have “won.” It seems to me that this war in Afghanistan isn’t really even a war — it’s a manhunt. And we’re looking for a man who probably isn’t even there, but is rather holed up in neighboring Pakistan, our ostensible ally. And further complicating matters he may not even be alive, but even if we captured him and “brought him to justice” we’ll just make him into a martyr and create a whole bunch more terrorists, many of them in European countries and maybe even here. I don’t get the end game of this great game.

So what’s this “war” all about and why are we agitating so strongly to escalate it? Can we accomplish anything by putting more troops over there? I hope so. But the Soviets had their 40th Army in there for ten years and it didn’t work. I know that one American troop is worth twenty Russians and all, but itdoesn’t seem like there are very good odds of success, even if we knew what that meant.

Like I said, I’m not a expert and I don’t have answers. But I’m skeptical. I’m skeptical that the Democrats are using the notion of an Afghanistan escalation to bolster their macho street cred and that it’s going to end up biting us all in the ass just like the last time a Democratic president escalated a war out of fear of being baited by the right. I hope that isn’t the case.

I also hope that this escalation and tough talk doesn’t set back the movement to close Guantanamo and end the torture and rendition regime. I worry that since we will be focusing once more on the threat of the biggest baddest terrorist boogeyman that all those guys down in Gitmo who were captured on “the battlefield” are suddenly going to look a lot more dangerous and be a lot more useful for the right to demagogue. If we are focused on Afghanistan as the big prize, then the idea of these low level grunts being a danger suddenly looks more real to a lot of people.

Here’s our old pal Mike Mukasey setting the table with his remarks to the congress today. He’s fear mongering and insisting that the congress come up with a new regime. As with FISA, they are going to insist that if the congress doesn’t legalize and validate a repressive and unjust scheme, the terrorists are going to come into our homes and kill us all in our beds. And the congress will probably go along — again. (After all, you wouldn’t want to be called a terrorist symp nancy boy, now would you?)

“… uncertainty is not the only, or even the main, reason these issues should not be left to the courts alone to resolve. There is also the question of which branches of government are best suited to resolve them. . . . Congress and the Executive Branch are affirmatively charged by our Constitution with protecting national security, are expert in such matters, and are in the best position to weigh the difficult policy choices that are posed by these issues. Judges play an important role in deciding whether a chosen policy is consistent with our laws and the Constitution, but it is our elected leaders who have the responsibility for making policy choices in the first instance.”

“So today, I am urging Congress to act – to resolve the difficult questions left open by the Supreme Court. I am urging Congress to pass legislation to ensure that the proceedings mandated by the Supreme Court are conducted in a responsible and prompt way and, as the Court itself urged, in a practical way. I believe that there are several principles that should guide such legislation.”

“First, and most important, Congress should make clear that a federal court may not order the Government to bring enemy combatants into the United States. There are more than 200 detainees remaining at Guantanamo Bay, and many of them pose an extraordinary threat to Americans; many already have demonstrated their ability and their desire to kill Americans.”

“Second, it is imperative that the proceedings for these enemy combatants be conducted in a way that protects how our Nation gathers intelligence, and what that intelligence is. We simply cannot afford to reveal to terrorists all that we know about them and how we acquired that information.”

“Third, Congress should make clear that habeas proceedings should not delay the military commission trials of detainees charged with war crimes. Twenty individuals have already been charged, and many more may be charged in the upcoming months. Last Thursday, we received a favorable decision from a federal court rejecting the effort of a detainee to block his military commission trial from going forward, but detainees will inevitably file further court challenges in an effort to delay these proceedings.”

“Fourth, any legislation should acknowledge again and explicitly that the Nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans—soldiers and civilians alike.”

“Fifth, Congress should establish sensible procedures for habeas challenges going forward. In order to eliminate the risk of duplicative efforts and inconsistent rulings, Congress should ensure that one district court takes exclusive jurisdiction over these habeas cases and should direct that common legal issues be decided by one judge in a coordinated fashion. And Congress should adopt rules that strike a reasonable balance between the detainees’ rights to a fair hearing on the one hand, and our national security needs and the realities of wartime detention on the other hand. In other words, Congress should accept the Supreme Court’s explicit invitation to make these proceedings, in a word repeated often in the Boumediene decision, practical….”

“Sixth and finally, because of the significant resource constraints on the Government’s ability to defend the hundreds of habeas cases proceeding in the district courts, Congress should make clear that the detainees cannot pursue other forms of litigation to challenge their detention. ”

The point of all of this is to get bipartisan buy in. If they can do that then they can keep the Villagers from suffering the consequences of their actions. And because it looks like we’re going to be in a full scale Afghan war, come hell or high water and with all that that implies for the foreseeable future, the powers that be of both parties undoubtedly feel it is necessary to keep up the fear and the fakery regardless of who is the president.

Marcy Wheeler has more on Mukasey’s gambit.

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TGFTiVo

by digby

…or I would have missed this, from Todd Gitlin.

Imagine! Almost an entire installment of Meet the Press devoted to an interview with a private citizen who is not running for office—who receives the attention not only because he is famous but because he…knows something. Quite a lot, actually. He is, of course, Al Gore, and he knows quite a lot about how our Earth became unstable after centuries worth of humans tampering with carbon.

Tom Brokaw sat still for this rampant seriousness. He did not force Gore to debate a crackpot from cloud-cuckoo-land who is still waiting for the evidence to arrive about human sources of radical climate change. He cited Gore’s challenge to break our dependence on carbon-generating electricity production within ten years as if such an idea were not prima facie evidence of raving insanity. He gave Gore a chance to warn against the folly of continuing the reckless addiction to coal and oil without treating him as a stick-figure “ozone man,” as did a certain politician—without being ridiculed by the curators of the national dialogue—not so many years ago. He gave Gore the chance to argue against “just taking baby steps and offering gimmicks and, instead,” defend the proposition of “a strategic initiative.”

Brokaw broached a doubt: cost. “Let’s talk about the cost.” “What would electricity cost?” “What do we have to give up to reach the cost of a trillion and a half to three trillion dollars? There’s going to have to be some pain, some sacrifice on the part of the American taxpayer, isn’t there?” Somehow I don’t remember any of television’s talking heads acting so vociferously as surrogates for the American taxpayer in questioning the cost of the Iraq war during the heroic run-up days. But never mind. The cost question is legitimate, as is the question of how those costs will be paid. Brokaw rightly inquired.

He invited Gore to condemn Hillary Clinton for her provisional gas tax rollback (not noting that she joined John McCain in this). Gore refused to play the great game of inside baseball. He said that he disagreed, and more: “The real way to bring gasoline prices down is not by going back to try more of the same things that have not worked in the past, but to say, ‘Wait a minute, now is the time for a really dramatic shift over to renewable energy.’” He stayed on message: “Incremental baby steps are no longer responsible proposals.”

Brokaw could have nitpicked around the edges. To his credit, he didn’t. So, for a change, we got a TV talk show for grown-ups, where a burning issue of our time was discussed without a single gotcha moment, a single accusation of flip-flopping, a single objection from a representative of the Flat Earth Society. Hallelujah.

Far be it for me to speak ill of the dead, but let’s just say that I’ll be much more inclined to tune in to Meet The Press with interest instead of dread if this keeps up. It goes to show you that you don’t have to cover politics like some sort of high school competition.

NBC is already changing without Russert at the helm. It’s more substantive less insider villager. I haven’t noticed a change at MSNBC yet, but that’s probably coming too. Is it possible that his passing marks the end of the kewl kid gasbag era in political journalism?

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Who Needs Eggheads?

by digby

I’m under the weather and don’t have the energy today to delve into this article about Leah Daughtry in today’s NY Times, but I will point out that it’s fairly startling to find out that a high level member of the Democratic Party derisively refers to those who would credit chemotherapy with a cancer remission as “eggheads:”

Dancing down front, in an aisle between pews, was a woman in an elaborate dress with a lace corsage whose breast cancer had been eradicated, Daughtry had said, through the prayers of her church sisters: “The eggheads will say her chemotherapy worked, but everyone who uses chemotherapy isn’t cured.”

[…]

“The intellectuals, the egghead types — Pentecostalism is incomprehensible to them. They don’t understand the spirit-driven. I can make the trains run on time, and they have a hard time reconciling that with my religion.”

I know this is all part of the Democratic party’s new identification with faith and to the extent it doesn’t require that people who believe in science are derided, I guess it’s none of my business. But is it really necessary for everybody on both the left and the right to take every opportunity to adopt anti-intellectualism as a way of distancing themselves from the loathed “eggheads?” I just don’t see how it’s good for the country.

I had one of those Tom Friedmanesque taxicab moments today on my way to the airport in Austin. My driver was a very talkative African American guy from New Orleans who had no idea I was in town for a political event and just started talking about the plight of the African American family, church leaders’ inclination toward rewarding themselves at the expense of their parishoners, the government failure of Katrina, the need for people to be given a fair shot early in life so they don’t have to catch up etc. He used a lot of Bible verses to illustrate his points, was obviously very religious, well educated and concerned. He was just a lovely guy, open, passionate, friendly — the kind of person who has really thought about these issues and really works at trying to figure out ways to change the status quo.

Anyway, he talked a mile a minute and I didn’t say much until we were almost there when I asked him if he was excited about Barack. He smiled broadly and said, “Oh it’s so wonderful to see. I never thought I would see the day. But I don’t know what to do because he isn’t pro-life and he believes that marriage isn’t just for a man and a woman. And I’m afraid that if he gets in he’s going to put Hillary Clinton on the Supreme Court and she’s going to outlaw everything I believe in.”

I don’t really have a moral to this story. We parted ways smiling and laughing and I wandered into the terminal to cough and sniffle for a while before I got on the plane. Clearly the vast, vast majority of black Americans are thrilled with Obama’s candidacy (as was this guy)and are very excited to vote for him. But for the social conservatives among them, he presents a dilemma, just as the Democrats do in general for all social conservatives. Our big tent doesn’t require that you have abortions or be gay, but it does require that you do not believe the government should make laws prohibiting others from doing so. And it’s pretty fundamental, definitional stuff — civil liberties and equal rights are matters of moral belief and principles. Social conservatives just can’t sign on that. Can these beliefs be reconciled under one political party?

Meanwhile, the institutional religious right is unimpressed with the Democratic outreach. Indeed, they are slowly and reluctantly making their way to the guy who doesn’t really give a damn about any of their concerns — but because of the make-up and tradition of the party will probably give them as of what they want as he can:

“I never thought I would hear myself saying this,” Dobson said in a radio broadcast to air Monday. “… While I am not endorsing Senator John McCain, the possibility is there that I might.” Dobson and other evangelical leaders unimpressed by McCain increasingly are taking a lesser-of-two-evils approach to the 2008 race. Dobson and his guest, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler, spend most of the pretaped Focus on the Family radio program criticizing Democratic candidate Barack Obama, getting to McCain at the very end.

In an advance copy provided to The Associated Press, Dobson said that while neither candidate is consistent with his views, McCain’s positions are closer by a wide margin.

“There’s nothing dishonorable in a person rethinking his or her positions, especially in a constantly changing political context,” Dobson said in a statement to the AP. “Barack Obama contradicts and threatens everything I believe about the institution of the family and what is best for the nation. His radical positions on life, marriage and national security force me to reevaluate the candidacy of our only other choice, John McCain.” Earlier, Dobson had said he could not in good conscience vote for McCain, citing the candidate’s support for embryonic stem cell research and opposition to a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, as well as concerns about McCain’s temper and foul language

It’s all about the courts to Dobson and friends. They know very well that Justice Hillary Clinton is going to outlaw the religious right if Obama becomes president. At least McCain won’t allow that to happen.

I don’t know how this works out. The underlying differences can’t just be swept under the rug while we all hold hands and work on poverty and global warming together. At some point, something will have to give. (And I think I know what that will be.)

Update: Teddy San Fran has more on Daughtry

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Perfect

by digby

Congratulations to my friend (and this blog’s longest running, and most valued patron,) Michael Shaw for winning the first Annual Gilliard Grant Of Merit at Netroots Nation:

Michael Shaw, clinical psychologist, blogger/writer, visual journalist, and curator of BAGnewsNotes, was awarded the first annual Gilliard Grant of Merit by Group News Blog.

The presentation was made immediately preceding the final keynote speech (Van Jones, with introduction by Mayor Gavin Newsom) at Netroots Nation in the Austin Convention Center, Austin, Texas.

Presenting The Gilly were five members of GNBs’ staff: Jesse Wendel, Publisher; Lower Manhattanite, Chief, National Affairs Desk; Hubris Sonic, Chief, Foreign Affairs Desk; The Littlest Gator, Staff Writer; and Sara Robinson, Managing Editor.

The Gilliard Grant, named after blogger Steve Gilliard (November 13, 1964 – June 2, 2007), including a monetary award, will be awarded annually.

Dr. Shaw was awarded the Gilliard Grant of Merit for Excellence in Journalism and News Blogging.

Michael does amazing, unique and necessary work, day in and day out. It’s great to see him getting the recognition he deserves.

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Louie, Do You Like Movies About Gladiators?

by digby

Sometimes they pretty much just come right out and admit that they have issues:

Real Men Vote for McCain
Top 10 reasons why.

By Lou Aguilar

1. Barack Obama spent 20 years sitting in church while his preacher and others bad-mouthed the United States of America. Navy pilot John McCain spent five years being tortured in the Hanoi Hilton, and refused a chance to walk out ahead of fellow POWs with more seniority.

2. Obama wants to cut and run from Iraq regardless of conditions on the ground or future consequences. McCain took on the president and secretary of defense in demanding more troops for Iraq, a policy that is inarguably winning the war. He also has two sons who fought in Iraq.

3. McCain supports nuclear power. Obama backs wind energy.

4. Obama wants restrictive gun control because only economically depressed middle-Americans “cling to God and guns.” McCain unwaveringly supports the Second Amendment.

5. McCain has deviated from his party’s conservative base on several occasions (McCain-Feingold Bill, Gang of 14, McCain-Kennedy Bill, opposition to torture). Obama has voted the left-wing line every single time, and been designated the most liberal Senator in Congress.

6. Obama is willing to meet with hostile state leaders like Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez without preconditions. McCain will set conditions first, talk later — maybe.

7. Obama is married to a bitter, angry lawyer who became “proud” of her country for the first time this year. McCain’s wife is a beer heiress who founded an organization to provide MASH-style units to disaster-torn world regions. Did I mention that she’s a beer heiress?

8. Obama supports higher taxes for a government-run nanny state that will coddle all Americans like babies. McCain trusts people to spend their less-taxed money however they wish.

9. The name John McCain sounds like “John McClain,” the action hero played by Bruce Willis in the manly Die Hard series. “Barack Obama” sounds like the kind of elitist villain John McClain has to outwit and defeat.

10. McCain is endorsed by Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Obama gets support from Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, and every weenie in Hollywood. Plus, Susan Sarandon has vowed to leave the country if McCain gets elected. Case closed.

How much do you want to bet that Aguilar spends an inordinate amount of time admiring David Beckham’s manly attributes in those Armani underwear ads too?

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Punk is a feeling: The Gits

By Dennis Hartley

Viva Zapata: Mia and her fans, circa 1991

Back in the fall of 1992, I moved to Seattle with no particular action plan, and somehow stumbled into a job hosting the Monday-Friday morning drive show on KCMU, a mostly volunteer, low-wattage, listener supported FM station broadcasting from the UW campus with the hopeful slogan: “Where the music matters.” I remember joking to my friends at the time that my career was going in reverse order, because after 18 years of commercial radio experience under my belt, here I was at age 36, finally getting my first part-time college radio gig. I loved it. I couldn’t believe I was getting paid to cue up whatever I felt like playing, as opposed to kowtowing to the rigid, market-tested “safe song” play lists at the Top 40, Oldies and A/C formats I had worked with previously. A little Yellowman, Fugazi, Cypress Hill, Liz Phair, maybe a bit o’ Mudhoney with your Danish this morning? Followed by a track from Ali Faka Toure, some Throwing Muses, topping the set off with an oldie like the Velvet Underground’s “Heroin” to take you up to your first coffee break? Sure, why not? I was happier than a pig in shit. What I didn’t realize until several years following my brief 7-month stint there, is that KCMU was semi-legendary in college/alt-underground circles; not only was it literally the first station in the country to “break” Nirvana, but counted members of Mudhoney and Pearl Jam amongst former DJ staff. To me, I was just a music geek, enthusiastically exploring someone else’s incredibly cool record collection, whilst taking my listeners along for the ride; in the meantime I obliviously became a peripheral participant in Seattle’s early 90’s “scene”.

One of the countless bands that migrated to Seattle during the city’s brief and shining heyday as America’s D.I.Y Mecca was a quartet hailing from Ohio, who called themselves The Gits (in honor of a Monty Python sketch). Led by talented singer-songwriter Mia Zapata, the band mixed the musical tightness and aggressive melodic punch of L.A.’s X with the art-punk lyricism of San Francisco’s Romeo Void. Zapata’s powerful, bluesy Janis Joplin-meets-Exene Cervenka vocal delivery and charismatic stage presence made her a formidable front woman, and the band quickly gained a strong local following. They also soon gained the attention of local music producers, and were on the verge of being courted by some of the major labels, when it all came crashing to earth with a resounding thud. In the summer of 1993, Mia Zapata was beaten, raped and killed, her body unceremoniously dumped in a vacant lot. Her murder remained unsolved until an astounding break in the case in 2003 helped bring her killer to justice (thanks to a carefully preserved saliva sample taken from the crime scene and advancements in DNA forensics technology). Her frighteningly random and brutal murder not only had a profoundly disheartening and long-lasting effect on Seattle’s incestuous music community, but at the time, symbolically represented the beginning of the end for the city’s burgeoning music renaissance; it was sort of the grunge era’s Altamont, if you will.

In a new documentary simply entitled The Gits (available on DVD) super-fans and first time filmmakers Kerri O’Kane (director) and Jessica Bender (producer) have constructed an engrossing, genuinely moving portrait of the band and Zapata’s legacy. When O’Kane and Bender were doing initial research for their project, they starting snapping up all the Gits memorabilia they could get their hands on, acquiring much of it via eBay, and mostly through one particular seller. That person turned out to be the band’s drummer, who was beginning to wonder who these two particularly obsessed fans were. This serendipity eventually led to the full cooperation of all the surviving band members, after they were fully assured that O’Kane and Bender weren’t a couple of weird stalker fan types. This was a legitimate concern due to the fact that Zapata’s killer was then still unknown and presumably still at large. Thus began a six year labor of love for the pair.

The first half of the film is devoted to the history of the band, beginning with their formation at Antioch College in Ohio in 1986. By the time they moved to Seattle in 1989, the band had developed a sonic sensibility that was more simpatico with classic punk rock than it was to the trendy “grunge” sound of the time (speaking strictly as an “old school” rock fan, grunge always sounded like warmed-over Blue Cheer or Sabbath to me, while punk was closer to the spirit of The MC5 and The Ramones). O’Kane does a nice job encapsulating their Seattle years with well-chosen performance clips and archival photos. Interviews with the band, some of their friends and members of Mia’s family are supplemented by recollections from professional peers like Joan Jett and members of 7 Year Bitch, an all-female Seattle band who were generously mentored by the Gits (and ironically, signed by a major label long before their more musically accomplished mentors were “discovered” themselves). The music business is a harsh mistress, indeed.

The second half of the film deals with Zapata’s death. Much to their credit, the filmmakers don’t exploit the sensationalistic aspects of the crime or dwell on all the gory details of the murder itself. Instead, they take the high road and examine the profound effect her loss had on her family, friends, fans and fellow members of the music community. The sensitive and respectful handling of the latter part of the story ultimately accentuates what lies at the heart of a film that could have been a real downer: an inspiring portrait of a group of close friends truly committed to each other, their music and their fans. With all the soulless pap oozing from the music charts and Stepford Idol marionettes warbling their glorified karaoke at us from our Empty Vee these days, it’s enough to give one a glimmer of hope that, somewhere out there in the ether, there will always be someone making Music That Matters (well, I can always dream, can’t I?)

O’Kane even manages to find and highlight one bittersweet “positive” (for want of a better word) that resulted from the tragedy, which was the formation of Home Alive, an anti-violence non-profit organization that is perhaps best described by the mission statement posted on their website:

Home Alive is a Seattle based anti-violence non-profit organization that offers affordable self-defense classes and provides public education and awareness. We believe violence prevention is a community responsibility as well as an individual issue. Our work in self-defense encourages everyone to recognize their entitlement to the basic human right to live free from violence and hate. Our goal is to build a cultural and social movement that puts violence in a context of political, economic and social oppression, and frames safety as a human right.

Sounds like a damn fine plan to me. Now, if we just could convince the rest of the world to start acting so…punk rock.

Grrls gone wild: Edgeplay: A Film About the Runaways, Bandits, Streets of Fire, Ladies and Gentlemen The Fabulous Stains, Prey for Rock ‘n’ Roll, Breaking Glass, Smithereens, Times Square, Starstruck, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Light of Day. Previous posts with related themes:

Kurt Cobain: About a Son
The Devil and Daniel Johnston/Mayor of the Sunset Strip

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My Interview with Bob Barr

by dday

You may know that Bob Barr has arrived at Netroots Nation. He bought a one-day pass and decided to mingle with the assembled conventioneers. And he drew a crowd. I first spied him when Kate Sheppard of Grist was interviewing him about his environmental policies (a lot of “we don’t know if man is causing global warming, we need further study, etc). All of us wanted to talk to him, but we didn’t quite know what to ask. But after a couple of minutes it hit me, and my good buddy clammyc lent me his voice recorder and I sidled up to Barr to ask my first question.

Me: Rep. Barr, do you believe the impeachment of President Clinton was a good deterrent to the expansion of executive power and the establishment of the rule of law for the executive branch?

Barr: (chuckling) Good Lord no!

Me: So do you regret your role in the impeachment of President Clinton as House manager?

Barr: No, having public officials adhere to and be answerable to the rule of law is very, very important. What distresses me greatly is that Congress has not done, in the case of this President, what they should have done. And that is to inquire into what this Administration has done with regard to breaking the laws, on the electronic surveillance of people without warrants, the improper use of US Attorneys, etc.

Me: Would you have endorsed the impeachment articles that were referred to the House Judiciary Committee last week?

Barr: I’m testifying this Thursday before the House on some of these issues, not in the context of impeachment, but in the context of the rule of law and the separation of powers. So we will be getting into some of these things. But I think it would make no sense at this point to do impeachment–

Me: At what point would it have made sense? What year would it have made sense?

Barr: You’re not going to let me answer a question!

Me: I’m sorry, I’m just trying to follow up.

Barr: Go ahead, ask your question.

Me: Well, you’re talking about a timeline, that it wouldn’t make sense 6 months before the end of the President’s term to begin an impeachment inquiry…

Barr: We’re getting into the heart of a Presidential campaign. Anything that Congress would do at this point would be seen as totally political, and probably from their standpoint be counter-productive, because the other side would rally around the President, and possibly hurt the other side in the election.

Me: I have one final question. Do you feel that the impeachment of President Clinton, in effect, poisoned the well of the practice of impeachment, and always made it a political act, so that the current executive can always count on the fact that it would be seen as political to call for accountability in this fashion?

Barr: Impeachment is always going to be somewhat political, you are never going to get away from that. One of the things that I learned, and what I wrote about in my book, is that when I filed in November of 1997, the very first inquiry of impeachment, none of us knew anything about Monica Lewinsky. That didn’t come up until three or four months later. The basis of which I believed it was necessary and appropriate had nothing to do with that, it had to do with national security matters, improper campaign donations from foreign sources and so forth. But even had we moved in that direction, the Republicans didn’t want to, that would have been seen as political. You’re never going to get away from that. That’s why it’s so important in any impeachment to lay your groundwork, marshal your evidence, have those Congressional hearings first, rather than reaching your conclusion first.

Audio is coming in a moment, I’ll update.

UPDATE: Audio (it’ll show as soon as it’s processed):

I think the intellectual bankruptcy of this argument speaks for itself, so I won’t say much. What do you think?

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Jess Folks

by digby

Jamison Foser has a good column this week about the Village media’s obsessive desire to help the Republicans depict Barack Obama as some sort of exotic freak that “regular people” (according to Chris Matthews) can’t relate to. He points out that they insist on this despite ample evidence in the polling that says “regular people” relate to him just fine.

It’s infuriating to watch these gasbags presume to speak for Real Americans on this matter in the first place. I know that Brian Williams loves to shop at Target, but I still think they might, on the whole, be a little bit removed from the cares of the average American, seeing as they are multi-millionaires and all — just like their favorite maverick flyboy, the fabulously wealthy everyman St. John McCain.

Foser points out that no matter how many times they fail to make this case, they just keep on trying:

Like cliquish teens, the D.C. pundit class is all too happy to make up a reason why you should dislike a candidate if a real reason fails to present itself. They told you again and again that Al Gore was a liar, lying about things he had said in order to do so. They attributed a bogus quote about NASCAR to John Kerry in order to portray him as a stiff. And Barack Obama … they’re desperate to find a reason why people don’t like Obama (even though they do). The bowling thing didn’t stick as well as they had hoped, and it’s probably safe to assume that, Chris Matthews’ best efforts notwithstanding, Barack Obama’s orange juice consumption is unlikely to spark much of a backlash against his candidacy. So this week they took a new one out for a spin, arguing that Obama’s undoing will be that he is uptight and cannot take a joke because his campaign criticized a magazine cover that depicted him as a terrorist.

He contrasts that with another media flap from a week or so ago:

Just two weeks ago, the very same Washington media elite was in an uproar, visibly offended that Wesley Clark had said that John McCain was a war hero, but that heroism didn’t qualify him for the presidency. They were offended and outraged that Clark hadn’t been quite enthusiastic enough in professing his admiration for McCain’s heroism. And now, when a national magazine runs a cover depicting Barack Obama as a flag-burning disciple of Osama bin Laden, they tell him to lighten up. Get a sense of humor, buddy – the cover may have depicted you as a terrorist, but at least it didn’t say you are a hero whose heroism nevertheless doesn’t necessarily qualify you to be president. That would be an outrage!

David Sirota also wrote an interesting and informative column this week about the ridiculous Village obsession with “running to the center,” what Michael Kinsley called “the fundamental move of politics, like the basic steps of the fox-trot.” Sirota points out that “the center,” as defined by the political establishment, is something that bears no relationship to what the majority of Americans profess to want, which would seem to be the truly fundamental move of politics — winning the election.

The media atrocities are piling up in the cycle just as they always do. We see them in real time, we document them and it just goes on. One of these days we’re going to have to figure out a way to derail the engine of this quadrennial train wreck before it leaves the station. But not this time. It just chugs along, doing its thing, turning politics into some bizarre spectacle that bears as much relationship to leadership and governance as an episode of Fear Factor.

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