Month: October 2010

Saturday Night At The Movies

Double Feature: All in the family

By Dennis Hartley

I smell ‘Oscar’: Swank and Rockwell in Conviction

In May of 1980, the body of a woman named Katherina Brow was discovered in her Ayers, Massachusetts home by her daughter-in-law. Brow had been brutally murdered (she had 30 stab wounds) and police found what they believed to be the murder weapon, a bloody paring knife, still on the premises. Brow’s purse and a few other valuables were missing, so the motive appeared to be robbery. Based largely on circumstantial evidence, one of Brow’s neighbors, Kenny Waters, became an immediate suspect; police retained him for questioning the day after the murder, but he was released after providing a verifiable alibi. Several months later, he voluntarily submitted to a voice stress test, which he passed. The case remained opened until the fall of 1982, when the then-current boyfriend of one of Waters’ ex-girlfriends approached investigators, claiming to have incriminating information about Waters, which he would divulge in exchange for money (it has never been confirmed whether he was paid). After receiving corroboration from the ex-girlfriend (which she later would claim to have agreed to give only because police allegedly threatened to charge her as an accessory and take away her children if she did not back up her boyfriend’s story), Waters was officially charged with Brow’s murder. After a relatively short trial, Waters was convicted and sentenced to life in May of 1983.

So far, you’re probably thinking that this sounds like a thousand other murder cases you’ve heard about. Someone was killed, someone was now paying for it; I think I’ve seen this narrative played out once or twice on TV, in one of those sordid “true-crime” re-creations hosted by that silver-haired ghoul who they love to satirize on SNL, ho-hum. However, what ensued during the 18 years between May 1983, when Waters began to serve his sentence, and March of 2001, when he was released from prison and officially exonerated of the crime, is the stuff that a movie producer’s wet dreams are made of.

Because, you see, Mr. Waters had a sister named Betty Anne-a very loving and devoted sister. How devoted? During the 18-year period that Kenny languished in prison, she basically put the rest of her life on hold (at the cost of her marriage and relationship with her two sons) to devote heart and soul to one solitary goal: getting her brother cleared of a crime that she was 100% convinced he had not committed. In order to achieve this goal, she first needed to literally become a lawyer, so she put herself through college and law school, and then got to work. This amazing story of a woman taking on “the system” and winning (yay!), almost purely through the sheer power of her conviction has been turned into an inspirational, Erin Brockovich-ish vehicle entitled (cleverly enough) Conviction.

Director Tony Goldwyn has reunited with screenwriter Pamela Gray for this film (they previously teamed up in 1999 on the underrated sleeper, A Walk on the Moon) and it feels like one of the first serious Oscar contenders on the Q4 release calendar, mostly due to some outstanding lead and supporting performances from the cast. Hilary Swank (getting her Boston brogue on in a big way) plays Betty Anne with a convincing blend of working class spunk, native intelligence and a New Englander’s inborn tenacity. Sam Rockwell, who excels at playing dichotomous characters who manage to be ingratiatingly endearing, yet also darkly unsettling all at once, is in top form as her brother Kenny. And, thanks to the talents of these two lead actors, their relationship is quite touching and real.

Flashbacks to Betty Anne and Kenny’s childhood suggest that their close bond was deeply rooted. This mutual protectiveness could have been necessitated by pure survival instinct; as they spent most of their early years in foster care. It is also clear that Kenny, while possessed of a rambunctiously fun-loving spirit, also had, from a very young age, a propensity for letting it get him into trouble. There are certain people (and I think we’ve all known personalities like this at some point in our lives) who seem like they were born to piss off authority figures, even when they’re not consciously trying to. Kenny was one of those people; suffice it to say he grew up on a first name basis with all the local cops.

Interestingly (at least as depicted in the film) Kenny’s reaction to his arrest and incarceration on the murder charge leans toward a resigned ambivalence throughout the ordeal; it is his sister who, from day one, makes the impassioned case for exoneration. I’m not sure if this was a conscious decision by the filmmakers (perhaps for the sake of adding some dramatic tension) to leave the door ajar to the possibility that his sister could have been blinded by love…or if Kenny, like a character from a Kafka novel, had decided to make peace with the rain of bad karma with a shrug of existential indifference. Or-it could be lazy screenwriting-but I’d have to see the film again to really confirm that.

One wise decision by the filmmakers (IMHO) was to end the film on an emotional high note, with Kenny’s release from prison; because the real life coda was, putting it mildly, fraught with karmic cruelty. Six months after his release and official exoneration, Kenny Waters died from a fall in a freak accident (or this could have been cosmic justice-who can really say for sure?). The film also calls attention to the Innocence Project, a non-profit legal organization dedicated to proving wrongly convicted persons innocent through DNA testing (one of the group’s co-founders, Barry Scheck, played a pivotal role in assisting Betty Anne with her case and is well-played in the film by Peter Gallagher).

Swank and Rockwell are ably supported here with noteworthy performances from Minnie Driver (who I feel should get a Best Supporting nomination), Juliette Lewis, Clea DuVall and the always excellent Melissa Leo (cast against type as a corrupt cop). This is definitely an actor’s movie; which makes sense because director Goldwyn has a long list of acting credits in his resume. At the end of the day, although Betty Anne Waters is undeniably a kind of “superwoman” (and my newest hero) this film is not so much about truth, justice and the American way as it is about real love, dedication and selflessness.

I didn’t do it: The Wrong Man, Framed (1947), Railroaded, The Fugitive (1993), Call Northside 777, Frenzy, I Confess, To Kill a Mockingbird, In the Name of the Father, North by Northwest , In a Lonely Place, The Big Clock, The Shawshank Redemption .

Previous posts with related themes: William Kuntsler: Disturbing the Universe

Part II

Misty mountain hop: Last Train Home

Speaking of family melodramas, one of the best I have seen this year is not fictional, nor even “based” on a true story; but rather an absorbing, beautifully photographed documentary by Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Lixin Fan called Last Train Home. The family in the spotlight is the Zhangs: Changhua (dad), Suqin (mom), their 17 year old daughter Qin, and their young son. Changhua and Suqin are two of the 130 million migrant workers who crowd China’s train depots and bus stations every spring in a mass, lemming-like frenzy to get back to their rural villages in time for New Year’s holiday. And like many of those millions of workers, these are the few precious days they have every year to see their children, who, due to the fact that their parents do not have urban residency status, do not qualify to attend the public schools in the cities where they work.

Changhua and Suqin toil away their days in the city of Guangzhou, working in a factory. Early on in the film, a wordless sequence, wherein we watch the couple performing their evening ablutions before turning in for the night, speaks volumes about the joyless drudgery and quiet desperation of their daily life. They appear to be bunking in a closet-sized cubicle (with only a curtain for privacy) contained within some kind of communal flophouse (possibly adjacent to, or perhaps even part of, their factory building-which is an even more depressing thought). At any rate, one colorless day blends into the next.

The only break in the monotony comes when the New Year arrives, and the couple is followed as they attempt to make their way home in time-and I have to say, this is as far from a madcap romp starring Steve Martin and John Candy that you can possibly get. After several frustrating setbacks, they eventually find a place on a train (at thrice the usual rates). The scenes at the train stations are surreal and harrowing; the press of so much humanity, all crammed into one finite space, and all of one mind (to claim a seat and stash their luggage no matter who gets injured) is mind boggling. Happy New Year.

The real drama, however, unfolds once the bedraggled parents reach their destination. They are greeted by a young son who is much more excited about the toys they have brought than he is in seeing them again (it’s been three years since he’s seen his mother) and a sullen, hostile Qin, who resents their prolonged absences. The children are much closer to their grandmother, who has been taking care of them while Changhua and Suqin work in the city. When Qin announces that she has decided to quit school and follow in her parents footsteps by finding a job in the city, the shit hits the fan (like parents anywhere else in the world, they live in hope that their kids will achieve more than them).

The director was given a amazing degree of latitude by the family in filming their lives; to the point of feeling almost too close for comfort at times (especially during an intense family row that gets physical). As difficult as some of it is to watch, however, the end result is an engrossing portrait of what happens in a country like China, which has seen so much rapid industrialization and exponential economic growth in such a relatively short period of time that the infrastructure and social policies have fallen light years behind. And the saddest (and most ironic) part is that the millions of working poor like the Zhangs, who made the country’s new prosperity possible, are in no position to benefit from it. Hold on a minute. Maybe we have more in common with China than I thought…

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Don’t Be Evil?

by digby

Is Eric Schmidt CEO of Google being evil? You be the judge:

PARKER: One last question, what government spending would you cut?

SCHMIDT: I have always felt that since one half of the world’s defense spending is in America, we could do just fine with a little bit less there. The real — that’s a comment.

Yay! Not evil.

Oh wait … here it comes:

The real issues around costs are all in the entitlements and the fact of the matter is we have had an economic change that people are now living much longer and that the entitlements are unaffordable. So, the only solution to think of is delay the onset, increase the number of years people have to work, delay the onset of the entitlement programs and address health care costs.

The president’s proposal does, in fact, that was passed, does have a health care cost containment part. Could have gone further. Of course, increases retirement age and so forth are needed no matter what. And by the way, every country in the western world is facing this and by the way China will, as well.

Uhm. No. Health care costs are a problem. Social Security is fine.

But we are not living in a world where facts are important. We are living in a world where billionaires love to lecture average folks about how they have to sacrifice for the good of the country while they piss and moan about having to pay another percentage point in taxes on their millions and threaten to blow the world up if anyone even asks them too.

Evil.

You can’t expect important billionaires to care about such triviality, but here are the facts about the retirement age (which, compared to the rest of the industrialized world is already much higher for full benefits.)

One way to cut benefits in Social Security is to the raise the retirement age. Adjustments to Social Security’s “Retirement Age” sound to non-experts like a work incentive or an appropriate adjustment for much longer, healthier lives, when it is simply an across-the board benefit cut, albeit disguised, which falls heaviest on those who are in physically demanding jobs or who find themselves laid off and unable to find new employment. Also, because of age discrimination in the workplace, older workers are often forced out of the workforce and can’t find work even if they do not want to retire.

1) Raising the retirement age will place a greater burden on older workers in physically demanding occupations, like nurses, auto workers and teachers, who may not be able to continue to work in their jobs into their mid-to-late 60s.

2) Males in the top half of the earnings distribution who retired at 65 in 2006 could expect to live 21.5 more years, an increase of 5.0 years compared to their counterparts in 1982. Meanwhile, a male in the bottom half of the earnings distribution who retired in 2006 would have a life expectancy of 16.1 years, just 1.1 year more than his counterpart in 1982. For women, overall life expectancy has stagnated, with lower-income women seeing declines in life expectancy, and upper-income and more educated women seeing modest improvements.

3) Numerous studies have documented that increases in life expectancy in retirement have been skewed in favor of those with higher incomes and more education.

4) Indexing the normal retirement age to life expectancy in retirement is inappropriate because it not only means work years would continue to increase while retirement years were fixed, but it also assumes workers are healthy enough to continue working well into old age, punishing those who are not.

5) With a fertility rate close to the replacement rate, any positive net immigration will contribute to labor force growth, which can in turn offset increases in life expectancy and stabilize the beneficiary-to-worker ratio. Thus, though the beneficiary-to-worker ratio is expected to rise with the Baby Boomer retirement, it will level off after 2035 despite projected increases in life expectancy at retirement.

6) Workers currently qualify for full Social Security retirement benefits at the age of 66. If they retire early, their benefits are reduced by a fraction of a percent for each month before the full retirement age — which currently means a 25% reduction in benefits for a worker who retires at 62.

7) There has been a 17% increase in age discrimination cases since 2007, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), suggesting struggles for older Americans in securing and maintaining good jobs.

8) Often older workers can’t work longer. An analysis of the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data revealed that during April 2010, the job market for Americans 55 and older had never been worse.

9) The decrease in the relative value of benefits is not due to a too-low retirement age or baby boomers retiring, but was caused by other factors, including rising inequality, reduced personal savings and health care costs, and could be addressed by eliminating the cap on taxable income.

10) Additionally, many mid-life individuals are “structurally unemployed” meaning that demand for their now increasingly obsolete skills will not suddenly increase in demand after the recession ends. Many of them are underwater on mortgages and faced with family caregiving responsibilities for aging parents, young children or adult children who cannot find work.

You can also read this post to learn why the people who designed social security in the 1930s weren’t primitive morons living in caves and built greater life expectancy into the system.

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To Hell With The Grandkids

by digby

Kevin Drum’s piece on the coming mega-drought reminds me once again how great it would be if all the people who have been brainwashed into believing that social security is going to bankrupt their grandchildren would understand that this is the real crisis those kids are going to face:

Here are a few recent data points for you: (1) The New York Times reports that “skepticism and outright denial of global warming are among the articles of faith of the Tea Party movement.” (2) In the National Journal, Ron Brownstein notes that “The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones….Of the 20 serious GOP Senate challengers who have taken a position, 19 have declared that the science of climate change is inconclusive or flat-out incorrect.” (3) It’s not just Senate candidates. ThinkProgress notes that an analysis by Wonk Room “finds that 22 of the 37 Republican candidates for governor this November are deniers of the scientific consensus on global warming pollution.”

Read on for the full catastrophe.

Of course all the teabagging old duffers my age and older will be dead by the time the real ramifications of climate change hit so perhaps the truth is that most of them are just posturing to make a point and don’t really care about their grandkids at all. That would be my guess.

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“The People Who Own The Country Ought To Govern It”

by digby

That’s founder and first supreme court justice John Jay.

Must-see video from GRIT TV about the Chamber of Whores:

More GRITtv

More here.

Obviously, Big Money has always been the most powerful influence in American politics (maybe all politics.) But until they adopted the Randian notion that they are so valuable to society that everyone must bow down and worship them like gods, they had the good taste to at least publicly pretend they cared about the country as a whole.

That’s done now. Today they are just blatantly demanding that the 98% of Americans who don’t have the cash to buy in, shut up and do as they’re told. They seem very, very confident that it’s going to work out for them.

Pick Your Progressive And Help

by digby

Mark Twain said “the man who is a pessimist before forty-eight knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.” At this late stage in my life, when it comes to politics especially, I consider myself a pessimist who enjoys being pleasantly surprised.

So, it’s with some trepidation that I allow myself to feel a little bit optimistic that we may avoid the complete blowout that the polling analysts are predicting when I read something like this:

As the Associated Press reports, over three million voters have already cast their ballots this time. Due to the secret ballot, we cannot know how they voted — but in many cases, the media is able to find out who voted, thanks to partisan voter registrations in many states. And across the country, both the Dems and the GOP are performing well in different spots.

The article goes on to show where the two parties seem to be performing well. It’s full of caveats and disclaimers about the meaning of what we know so far, but it’s cause for some small sliver of hope that this thing isn’t going to be the tsunami everyone’s been fearing.

But here’s the thing. There’s still a long way to go and the momentum could be turned on election day if the radical Tea Partiers manage to get their people to the polls in huge numbers to dance on liberals’ graves. The Democrats have to get out every last straggling voter to compete.

Here’s what you can do to help if you’re not in a district where you need to be talking to your own neighbors or knocking on doors: phone bank for progressives around the country. The PCCC has put together a great operation that’s very user friendly and focused on the candidates progressives are trying to help. DFA and Blue America have joined up and are asking our members to help out. We’d be grateful if you could do the same.

Just click here. It’s very easy and won’t take up a huge amount of time.

Here’s the thing: if we can save some of these progressive members, we might just have a chance of changing some conventional wisdom. I know it’s a long shot, but it’s really worth our while to try. If these are the survivors — and some of them, like Grayson, are in very tough districts — we will have sent a message they can no longer ignore.

I don’t want to blow smoke. If this is a tidal wave as everyone’s expecting, then many of these candidates will drown along with the 2006 Emmanuel Blue Dog class. We could lose a lot of good progressives in the surge. But if things are not as dire, and individual candidates are able to get past all the din and make their case, progressives may pull a few of these races out. If that happens, we will have a much clearer playing field after November and a much different argument.

It’s certainly worth trying and its certainly worth doing to show these politicians who’ve stood up for progressive values, that when the chips are down we’ll do everything we can to help them. Here’s the link.

And who knows, maybe we’ll be pleasantly surprised.

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Projection Politics

by digby

One of the more interesting rightwing characteristics is their penchant for psychologtical projection, which is defined as “a psychological defense mechanism where a person unconsciously denies their own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, such as to the weather, or to other people. Thus, it involves imagining or projecting that others have those feelings.”

Now, I don’t know how much of this is real psychology and how much of it is ruthless strategy and how much is self-delusion, but it’s so common that I think of it as a defining feature of rightwing philosophy.

Here’s the latest example:

Republicans are working overtime to help companies move jobs offshore. At this point it’s what they mean by “creating jobs.” But they know that Americans are increasingly upset abou the practice, so they’re accusing Democrats of being the ones who are doing it. (It’s what I used to call “I know you are but what am I” politics.)

This is very confusing to voters and it puts the Democrats on the defensive, having to sputter and explain something that sounds too ridiculous to be true — namely that their opponent is projecting their own weaknesses on to them. It’s a form of “The Big Lie” which is very effective.

It’s a problem.

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For Your Doorknocking

by digby

Dave Johnson has written a very handy piece called: Eight False Things The Public “Knows” Prior To Election Day:

1) President Obama tripled the deficit.
Reality: Bush’s last budget had a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama’s first reduced that to $1.29 trillion. 2) President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy.
Reality: Obama cut taxes. 40% of the “stimulus” was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt, which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been. 3) President Obama bailed out the banks.
Reality: While many people conflate the “stimulus” with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Paulson also wanted the bailouts to be “non-reviewable by any court or any agency.”) The bailouts passed and began before the 2008 election of President Obama. 4) The stimulus didn’t work.
Reality: The stimulus worked, but was not enough. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs. 5) Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts.
Reality: A business hires the right number of employees to meet demand. Having extra cash does not cause a business to hire, but a business that has a demand for what it does will find the money to hire. Businesses want customers, not tax cuts.6) Health care reform costs $1 trillion.
Reality: The health care reform reduces government deficits by $138 billion. 7) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is “going broke,” people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc.
Reality: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to. 8) Government spending takes money out of the economy.
Reality: Government is We, the People and the money it spends is on We, the People. Many people do not know that it is government that builds the roads, airports, ports, courts, schools and other things that are the soil in which business thrives. Many people think that all government spending is on “welfare” and “foreign aid” when that is only a small part of the government’s budget.

Read on for more.

I’ve been having some interesting chats with mildly interested voters. And this is exactly the kind of thing that is really helpful in winning them over. They are busy, they are dealing with these issues in a very haphazard fashion and a lot of their ideas come from a sort of conventional wisdom osmosis. If you can present them with some simple explanations about why things are not as they think, they’re receptive to it.

I’m not talking about the tea partiers, of course. They are “informed” by Glenn Beck and there’s no getting to them. But your average independent voter or casual liberal voter is persuadable on this stuff.

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Alan Grayson Makes Beck Tingly

by digby

So Palin and Beck had a little hen party today where Palin called a reporter a punk and Beck giggled and preened like a junior varsity cheerleader. The two snotty gossips had quite a bitch fest (after which they went down to the mall and made fun of people in wheelchairs.)

But this was the highlight:

A conversation about Tea Party politics ensued, with some frank concern expressed about the tightening of the Senate polls. Then things turned to Grayson and got, well, a bit weird.

“Isn’t he just the oddest duck in the entire political arena,” Palin said of the Florida Democrat. “Is not he just an odd, odd person?”

(Starts around 9:40)

BECK: He is, he is… We were talking about him earlier off the air. And I’ve come to the conclusion that he is just one of those people who has absolutely no moral compass. It was taken out of him and jumped up and down on it and just destroyed his moral compass, he has none.

PALIN: Right, right. Well, what is the deal then, what is the attraction voters to Alan Grayson? He is not effective in a positive sense at all for his constituents. People look at him and say surely, you don’t respect and you don’t reflect the good people of Florida. So what is the attraction there?

BECK: I think it is his hotness… it is all physical. Come on Sarah, you know if Todd wasn’t around you’d be like, ‘yum, yum give me some.’

Putting aside the imagery (however disturbing), it’s worth taking a moment to note just how consumed Republicans are with getting Grayson out of congress. The Florida Democrat is an obvious political target for the simple reason that he comes from a district that has generally been represented by Republicans. Obviously, however, it’s his style as a legislator — cheered by progressives for its unapologetic self-assuredness — that gets the Republican blood boiling.

Sadly, the Democratic leadership apparently feels the same way.

Now, it’s true that Sarah is quite the looker. But one hopes she realizes that she can’t rely on that for too much longer. Time does march on and after a while even the best looking women are tossed on the ashheap of useless females that hot, yummy studs like Glenn Beck no longer want to sleep with.

This represents a change of tune for Beck and Palin, who at one time weren’t quite so chummy:

In recent days, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has indicated that she may be open to a conservative presidential dream ticket in 2012: Palin-Beck (or Beck-Palin). “I can envision a couple of different combinations, if ever I were to be in a position to really even seriously consider running for anything in the future, and I’m not there yet,” Palin told Newsmax. “But Glenn Beck I have great respect for. He’s a hoot.” Fox and Friends plugged the idea yesterday morning and asked Palin whether she would run with Beck. She kept the door open, saying, “I don’t know. We’ll see, we’ll see.”

But just a few hours later on his radio show, Beck shot down the idea, saying he was “absolutely” ruling out a Palin-Beck ticket. He explained that if he had the number two job, Palin would always be “yapping” like they were in “the kitchen”:

BECK: I don’t think things are hoots. I don’t. I don’t think it’s a hoot. I would never use the word hoot, and I respectfully ask that every time my name is brought up she would stop using the word “hoot.” […]

No, no I’m just saying — Beck-Palin, I’ll consider. But Palin-Beck — can you imagine, can you imagine what an administration with the two of us would be like? What? Come on! She’d be yapping or something, and I’d say, “I’m sorry, why am I hearing your voice? I’m not in the kitchen.”

Setting aside the mindboggling prospect of a Beck/Palin ticket and their 7th grade repartee, it’s true that they are all desperate to see Grayson lose. And maybe he will. It’s an R+2 district. This is a tough year. Nobody’s helping except the netroots.

But I wouldn’t count on it. He’s very, very smart. (And yeah, that’s hot.)

“Sarah,” one of Beck’s co-hosts said, in a playful intro to the discussion. “I’m wondering if you are bored with my personal aspirations here for this election, which is, it’s okay if the Republicans lose every seat in the senate and the house except for one, as long as that one is Alan Grayson losing.”

The morning after this election is probably not going to be very bright for Democrats (although it might not be as black as they are predicting.) Consider how much brighter it will be if he wins.

If you’re inclined to put some money toward continued Grayson hotness in the House, you can do so here.

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Subtle They Ain’t

by digby

I’m sure it’s a complete coincidence that they picked a woman to play Barney Frank in this video. There are no male dancers, after all:

H/t to Michael Shaw at Bag News Notes, who dissects the images here. He makes a great point about the whole concept:

Frank might be vulnerable to attack in all kinds of ways, but to frame him as “dancing around the issues” when, as his spokesperson emphasized, Frank is primarily known for his directness, raises flags everywhere.

So this is just an excuse to show a cartoonish ad featuring Barney Frank dancing like a woman. I’m sure the wingnuts will love it. And while they are drying their tears of laughter, they’ll insist that they have nothing against gays so they can’t possibly be homophobes.

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Juan Love

by digby

I haven’t written about the Juan Williams thing because … oh jeez. It’s just so predictable. As Glenn Greenwald writes in his piece today, there have been dozens of firings in recent years for some dumb thing someone said (or didn’t say) in the media. The only thing that sets this one apart is that it’s a FOX contributor who was fired from a so-called liberal network for saying something dumb about Muslims, which in our current climate is usually considered de riguer. This is manufactured hissy fit.

Consider, however, the reaction of the right to a hissy fit from the left. They rallied unconditionally to Limbaugh when he made his comments about “phony soldiers” even though they knew very well that he had violated their own patriotic correctness doctrines. Unlike the frenzied rush to defund ACORN, when the Democrats tried to get Limbaugh tossed off of Armed Forces Radio they were laughed off the floor. They play this game very well, whether on defense or offense.

On the substance of the Juan Williams matter, I do want to make one observation that’s only been tangentially touched upon (as far as I know.) It’s the fact that part of his comment appeared to say that Muslims are being provocative by identifying themselves in public as Muslims.

“I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

I don’t know if that’s widely held idea, but I think it might be. It fits in with the common conservative gripe about multi-culturalism in general, but takes it to a new level when you say that “refusing to assimilate” is a sign of radical politics. It sounds as though he’s saying that practicing Muslims who wear traditional religious garb are being purposefully provocative.

One of the things that has set the US apart from Europe on this issue is our tradition of religious tolerance and all that it entails, including the ability to literally wear your religion on your sleeve. (The Amish or Hassidim, for instance.) Williams’ comment seems to me to imply that we should enact a “French” solution to the problem, if not in law then in custom, at least as it pertains to Islam. I think that’s a fairly new line of thought among the conservatives, although it’s possible it’s been around a while and I just missed it.

Greenwald hits on this as well:

Gerecht hails Williams as a courageous “dissident” for expressing this “truth”:

[W]hile his manner may have been clumsy, Williams was right to suggest that there is a troubling nexus between the modern Islamic identity and the embrace of terrorism as a holy act.

Above all else, this fear-generating “nexus” is what must be protected at all costs. This is the “troubling” connection — between Muslims and terrorism — that Williams lent his “liberal,” NPR-sanctioned voice to legitimizing. And it is this fear-sustaining, anti-Muslim slander that NPR’s firing of Williams threatened to delegitimize.

Williams and Gerecht are talking about an “identity” which is a new thing. Until Obama’s candidacy when the right realized they were going to have to sublimate their neanderthal’s need to use the “N” word and decided that his middle name provided a nice cover, there was a fairly strong national consensus that we weren’t going to attack Islam and certainly not “Muslim identity.” I think that once they unleashed the beast on Obama, there was no containing it. It’s inexorably leading to an attack on “Muslim identity” which is some dangerous and ugly stuff.

It’s not new in America. After all, immigrants used to have their names capriciously changed by customs officials and it was often considered provocative to refuse to “assimilate” properly. But this is slightly different, due to the fact that the identity is religious in nature and the impulse is driven by a belief that we are in a global religious war. Plus, it’s 2010, not 1910 and we’re supposed to have evolved beyond this ridiculous nonsense.

I don’t know if the GOP will be able to ride this NPR defunding horse after the election. It’s possible, but this has the feel of a fairly short lived hissy fit to me, one more in this series of anti-Muslim manufactured outrages. (Not that it isn’t important — there is a cumulative effect with these things until the Village inevitably demands a sacrifice to the Gods of the Vapors and the Fainting Couch.) The ratcheting up of the fear of the “other” when the country is in economic turmoil is an old and ugly American story. The question now is whether the reactionaries and bigots are going to take control of the American government and actually try to do something about it.

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