Looks like the rightwing operatives who hide behind the skirts of priests are so pissed they are threatening to tell their followers not to vote for Republicans this fall. Good.
I think it’s important, however, to make a distinction that Dave Neiwert made when Judge Roy Moore – he who blasphemed the Ten Commandments by turning them into a textbook example of idolatry – was thinking of running for president and many of us including yours truly were cynically and wrongly cheering him on.
It’s one thing to encourage the Republican party to tell the christianists to crawl back underneath whatever rocks they hale from. The sooner the Dobsons of the world are politcally marginal in the US, the better. It’s quite another, in an effort to defeat Republicans, to root for a splintering of the GOP into two groups such that the christianists establish a seriously powerful second national party* in opposition to Republicans.
As the past five plus years have shown, the last thing this country needs is a wealthy politcal party hellbent on inflicting its nutty theocratic agenda on the rest of us. Divested of the (admittedly weak) secular anchor of the rest of the GOP, these people could wreck this country even faster than you could say George W. Bush.
So if the christianists are to break away and establish a National Christianist Party – let’s call it the NaXi Party – it should be accompanied by strenuous efforts to exacerbate their tendency to fight amongst themelves, thereby making it impossible for them to cohere around a national agenda. This is not as far-fetched as it sounds at first glance, what with their alarming goose-stepping solidarity in opposing marriage rights and adequate healthcare for the poor. There are major differences between Catholic christianists and Protestant ones and they can be exploited. And there are other ways to weaken them politically. Let’s not forget that evangelicals had a long tradition of focusing on their own salvation and avoiding national political organizing, as they did in the decades immediately post-Scopes. This, too, can be used to limit their effectiveness (yes, I know it’s a lot more complicated than that, but Christianity is supposed to be a religion, for crissakes, not a political movement, and it’s time evangelical leaders looked at the log in their own eye).
So, yes, Republicans should boot the Bible-thumpers out of positions of serious influence in their party. But no, the christianists should not be encouraged to form a NaXi Party as that could rapidly lead to Very Bad Things which all of us, especially liberals, would come to regret. And let’s not make the mistake many liberals (and mainstream conservatives, too) made in the 70’s and 80’s. The christianists represent a very, very dangerous element in American culture; they should not be ignored, dismissed, underestimated, or in any way encouraged.
*For many years, the Democrats have failed to demonstrate they are serious about being a national politcal party. Although Dean’s work as Chairman is encouraging, and more so the more I hear of what he’s doing, the jury is still out as to whether other influential Democrats actually will permit him build a viable party, ie, one capable of winning and retaining either house of Congress, not to mention the presidency.
Some of us are gathering over at Jane’s place at 2pm (5 ,est eDt) to discuss Rick Perlstein’s classic book “Before the Storm” about the Goldwater campaign. It has much to teach us now…
Once, after his mother banished him from the golf course, she turned to Hannah and declared, “That boy is going to have optical rectosis.” What did that mean? “She said, ‘A shitty outlook on life.'”
Even if he loses, his friends say, he doesn’t lose. He’ll just change the score, or change the rules, or make his opponent play until he can beat him. “If you were playing basketball and you were playing to 11 and he was down, you went to 15,” says Hannah, now a Dallas insurance executive. “If he wasn’t winning, he would quit. He would just walk off…. It’s what we called Bush Effort: If I don’t like the game, I take my ball and go home. Very few people can get away with that.” So why could George get away with it? “He was just too easygoing and too pleasant.”
Another fast friend, Roland Betts, acknowledges that it is the same in tennis. In November 1992, Bush and Betts were in Santa Fe to host a dinner party, but they had just enough time for one set of doubles. The former Yale classmates were on opposite sides of the net. “There was only one problem—my side won the first set,” recalls Betts. “O.K., then we’re going two out of three,” Bush decreed. Bush’s side takes the next set. But Betts’s side is winning the third set when it starts to snow. Hard, fat flakes. The catering truck pulls up. But Bush won’t let anybody quit. “He’s pissed. George runs his mouth constantly,” says Betts indulgently. “He’s making fun of your last shot, mocking you, needling you, goading you—he never shuts up!” They continued to play tennis through a driving snowstorm.
It is something of an in-joke with Bush’s friends and family. “In reality we all know who won, but George wants to go further to see what happens,” says an old family friend, venture capitalist and former MGM chairman Louis “Bo” Polk Jr. “George would say, ‘Play that one over,’ or ‘I wasn’t quite ready.’ The overtimes are what’s fun, so you make your own. When you go that extra mile or that extra point … you go to a whole new level.”
Yessirree, that’s Bush, alright. And for those folks who think this is merely the Cheney administration with a total puppet for president, please recall the fall of 2000 and the numerous congressional battles, and the total ignoring of any and all laws. Then re-read the above. That’s Bush’s personality at work, my friends. Yes, it’s Cheney too, but don’t misunderestimate Bush’s influence.
And then there’s this, which gives us a sense of the seriousness with which the man takes his job. For in fact, as Bush sees it the presidency is just a necessary evil on the journey to his true destiny:
“He wanted to be Kenesaw Mountain Landis,” America’s first baseball commissioner, legendary for his power and dictatorial style. “I would have guessed that when George grew up he would be the commissioner of baseball,” says Hannah. “I am still convinced that that is his goal.”
One assumes that this close pal of the Republican presidential candidate is speaking with tongue in cheek. But no. “Running for president is a résumé-enhancer for being the commissioner of baseball,” he insists. “And it’s a whole lot better job.”
Truer words have never been written about the character of George W. Bush. No wonder that memo in August 6, 2001 didn’t make an impression. And then:
He proudly rejects introspection and has no interest in looking back over the “youthful indiscretions” that characterized his first 44 years. In interviews Bush repeatedly says, “I’m not one of those people who say, ‘Gosh, if I’d have done it differently, I’d have … ‘” He pauses for a few seconds to contemplate his life, then confidently concludes, “I can’t think of anything I’d do differently.”
Man, that’s so painful to read now, because we know that in a few years he will stand in front of the nation, having launched a useless war, having ignored intelligence of an imminent bin Laden attack, and be totally stumped when asked to name a single mistake he had made.
Be sure to read the entire Sheehy article if you haven’t already.The article’s long, but the ending will give you tremendous insight into Bush’s plans to tackle the related problems of air pollution and global climate change.
It’s the recklessness at the top of our government, not the press’s exposure of it, that has truly aided the enemy, put American lives at risk and potentially sabotaged national security. That’s where the buck stops, and if there’s to be a witch hunt for traitors, that’s where it should begin.
…
It’s often those who make the accusations we should be most worried about. Mr. Goss, a particularly vivid example, should not escape into retirement unexamined. He was so inept that an overzealous witch hunter might mistake him for a Qaeda double agent.
…
It was under General Hayden, a self-styled electronic surveillance whiz, that the N.S.A. intercepted actual Qaeda messages on Sept. 10, 2001 — “Tomorrow is zero hour” for one — and failed to translate them until Sept. 12. That same fateful summer, General Hayden’s N.S.A. also failed to recognize that “some of the terrorists had set up shop literally under its nose,” as the national-security authority James Bamford wrote in The Washington Post in 2002. The Qaeda cell that hijacked American Flight 77 and plowed into the Pentagon was based in the same town, Laurel, Md., as the N.S.A., and “for months, the terrorists and the N.S.A. employees exercised in some of the same local health clubs and shopped in the same grocery stores.”
If Democrats — and, for that matter, Republicans — let a president with a Nixonesque approval rating install yet another second-rate sycophant at yet another security agency, even one as diminished as the C.I.A., someone should charge those senators with treason, too.
Do I need to point out the obvious here to you folks? That Rich is accusing not only the people he directly names of incompetence so profound it looks like treason, but also the person who nominated them? I thought not.
Leading Democrats tell the New York Times that it would be better if the party doesn’t win in the fall — and if it has the sad misfortune to do so, it would be better off not holding any investigations into the Bush administration.
And if, somehow, the party does unfortunately win and “the loud left” insists that the party holds Bush responsible for his misdeeds against the wishes of these wise men, we already know Democrats will be like the Republicans in 1996 who lost seats because they shut down the government and like Republicans in 1998 because they impeached Bill Clinton. (Lord knows the Republicans have suffered in the wilderness ever since then.)
Besides, everything’s a big old mess and you just know the Republicans are going to blame it all on us. Wouldn’t it be better to let Bush stew in his juices until 2008? Of course, the country will still be in a mess then (undoubtedly worse than it is today even) and the loud left will be causing all sorts of trouble so maybe it would be just as well if they don’t win then either.
In fact, the best thing to do would be to keep losing until everything is perfect so they don’t have to do anything unpleasant and the loud and angry left will have nothing to scream about.
If anyone’s wondering what the Democrats’ master plan has been for the last few years, I think we’ve found it.
Memo to the party mandarins dispensing all this wise advice: If you have a chance to win, you win. Not because you want to do a victory lap but because you care about the country and you will do anything you can to stop the hell these crazy bastards have unleashed and start down a new path. Do you want them to continue to have free reign over the next two years while they pump up this phony threat with Iran? Do you want them to be in charge of another natural disaster like Katrina? More money thrown into the black maw of GOP contributors? What are you thinking?
This is why the establishment is becoming irrelevant. It isn’t a game to us hicks out here in America. These are our lives these people are talking about.
Boston attorney James Otis was especially offended. The British were free people. When he argued in 1761 against the Writ of Assistance, that scurrilous document which allowed the British government access to a citizen’s home and personal records — without having first obtained a court issued warrant — Otis used the British constitution as evidence that the writs were illegal.
He did not make any claims that Americans were unique and deserved special freedoms, but instead asserted the rights of the British citizen, of which he and the others in Massachusetts Bay colony were one. There was no thought of rebellion or independence. At trial on February 24, 1761, Otis argued against his own government that the writs were…
“…the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law-book. I will to my dying day oppose, with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery and villainy as this Writ of Assistance is.”
Otis spoke before the five judge panel in opposition to his own government for more than four hours. He cited English law and the precedents against entering someone’s home:
“One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one’s house. A man’s house is his castle; and while he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. This writ, if it should be declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege.”
“Custom-house officers may enter our houses when they please; we are commanded to permit their entry. They may enter, may break locks, bars, and everything in their way; and whether they break through malice or revenge, no man, no court can inquire. Bare suspicion without oath is sufficient.”
Otis continued by calling the general writs a “wanton exercise of power” and warned the Royal Court in Massachusetts about what happens to political tyrants who wrap themselves double-speak:
“I argue with the greater pleasure, as it is in favor of British liberty at a time when we hear the greatest monarch upon earth declaring from his throne that he glories in the name of Briton, and that the privileges of his people are dearer to him than the most valuable prerogatives of his Crown. And as it is in opposition to a kind of power that cost one king of England his head and another his throne, I have taken more pains in this cause than I ever will take again.”
At this point Otis shifted to the natural liberties of man, which, along with the Magna Charta formed the foundation of English law. Although no transcript exists, another Boston lawyer, twenty-five year John Adams, was in the courtroom and described Otis’ dissertation:
“Otis asserted these rights were inherent, inalienable, and indefeasible by any laws, pacts, contracts, covenants, or stipulations which man could devise. These principles and these rights were wrought into the English constitution as fundamental laws. And under this head he went back to the old Saxon laws, and to the Magna Charta and the fifty confirmations of it in Parliament, and the executions ordained against the violators of it, and the national vengeance which had been taken on them from time to time.”
“He asserted that the security of these rights to life, liberty, and property had been the object of all those struggles against arbitrary power, temporal and spiritual, civil and political, military and ecclesiastical, in every age.”
“He asserted that our ancestors, as British subjects, and we their descendants, as British subjects, were entitled to all those rights by the British constitution as well as by the law of nature and our provincial character as much as any inhabitant of London or Bristol orany part of England, and were not to be cheated out of them by any phantom of “virtual representation” or any other fiction of law or politics or any monkish trick of deceit and hypocrisy.”
Historian John Galvin in a work titled “Three Men of Boston” summarized Otis’ court room speech:
“But it was not simply because of the dangers involved that the writs of assistance should be rejected. Otis assured the court that the greatest legal minds had supported the assertion that any act contrary to the unwritten British constitution was void. British law was based on the Magna Charta and the undeniable rights of man. Parliament, as a part of the scheme of this constitution, had to act with reason and justice, and could not be arbitrary. It had the power to create laws but had to frame its legislation within the bounds of equity and reason set by the constitution and natural law. It was therefore simple enough for any man to see: if writs violated the natural law, the basis of the British constitution, no amount of approvals, imprimaturs, or precedents could make them legal.”
“Since every barrister for miles around had been present in the room, Otis’ words were prime news in Boston and the province for days. He had detailed the drift away from charter rights, constitutional principles, and most of all from the former respect for individual rights. He had illuminated for all to see the movement of arbitrary power away from the traditional democratic bases of British government.”
Next, a most important point from Galvin:
“In these aspects Otis was not at all revolutionary; in fact, he was calling for a reestablishment of ancient liberties under common law and saying that power was dangerous when it became arbitrary, overtopping the bounds of the constitution. It was soon clear to perceptive political thinkers that he had seized on theories that could match the power of parliamentary decrees. No single arbitrary act, he said, could stand against the constitutional history of the country or against the rights of free men.” [Galvin, Three Men of Boston, Washington, 1976, 33-34]
Otis wasn’t revolutionary at that moment, but because his government continued, and accelerated its act of coercion, Otis’ disagreement with his government indeed became a revolutionary cause. Recalling the emotions he felt watching Otis on February 24, 1761, John Adams pinpointed that day as the beginning of a chain of causation:
“Otis was a flame of fire; with a promptitude of classical allusions, a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical events and dates, a profusion of legal authorities, a prophetic glance of his eyes into futurity, and a rapid torrent of impetuous eloquence, he hurried away all before him.”
“American Independence was then and there born. The seeds of patriots and heroes were then and there sown. Every man of an immense crowded audience appeared to me to go away, as I did, ready to take arms against Writs of Assistance. Then and there was the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain.”
I’m a big believer in privacy as people can probably gather from the fact that I guard mine so zealously. It’s a matter of temperament as much as anything. But it has also been my experience that busy bodies, witch hunters and authoritarians always find good reasons for not minding their own business:
It all seemed darkly funny at first.
Eric Haskett was merely taking a nap in a car when he roused suspicion in a rural Frederick County neighborhood. A neighbor traced Haskett’s license plate to an address once used by a registered sex offender.
Then his girlfriend’s parents told him to scram; law enforcement officials, including three FBI agents, began investigating; and Haskett began fearing that the suspicions could cost him his job at a gag shop that sells such kid-friendly items as whoopie cushions.
“It blew me away that a federal agent was sticking a badge in my face. Three agents, dog — like I’m the ringleader!” said Haskett, 28, of Mount Airy.
After allaying the concerns of several law enforcement officials over the past few weeks, Haskett also asked them what he could do to clear his name.
“They said the best bet is to leave the area,” Haskett said.
Every night on the local news here in LA there’s another story of “pedophiles living in your neighborhood.” I’m not defending pedophiles living in your neighborhood, but it’s obvious that this culture is working itself up into another one of its periodic frenzies about satanism or crazed day care providers or whatever. These stories are hysterical. But then, it’s sweeps, isn’t it?
The blond teacher bumping and grinding in her web cast for the 14 year old kid was played over and over again, all with a narration of shocked priggishness (barely covering a lewd snicker.) Dateline is running this entrapment series where they get these creeps to show up to what they have been led online to believe was a 14 year old girl. They’re all scumbags, but the sanctimonious “journalist” pruriently going over every tittilating detail of the emails for their TV freakshow is no better.
And then the bored TV watchers get all worked up to the point where they report some poor schlub for taking a half hour nap in his car before he goes in to dinner and turn his life into a nightmare. With no regrets, I might add.
This article in Facing South asks why it is that all the American Idol favorites are southerners:
One theory points to the South’s rich music tradition, and the fact that most forms of American music — jazz, blues, country, gospel, and their progeny such as rock — can be traced back to the region. The Southern church alone is a crucible that has cast many singers, especially the working-class, small-town kids like those who end up on Idol. Says Nigel Lythgoe, one of the producers of Idol:
I think there’s a lot of church-going [in the South] where they literally learn their craft and they’re singing there every single week and [perfecting] the performance that goes with that. And I think there’s a lot of soul there.
But Ken Warwick, another Idol producer — who says “we’ve asked this question ourselves time and time again” — has a different explanation, related to the economics of the music industry:
The thing is, if they’re [from the] North and they’re talented, then they tend to go professional. They go to New York, they come to L.A., they go to San Francisco and they get jobs. But if they’re in the South, maybe there’s a little less opportunity, so there’s more talent … floating around. And that’s what we’re after. We like the fact that the kid comes from nothing and becomes a huge star.”
Then there’s the “fanatic voter” theory, which postulates that Southern voters just get more excited about things like Idol and are more motivated to vote (the Post dismisses speculation that more Southerners are watching Idol — while it’s true the show rates high in areas like Birmingham and Raleigh/Durham, the actual number of watchers this translates into is dwarfed by the millions tuning in from California and New York).
What do I think? I think all of the above have some merit, although I’ll throw in a fourth theory. As writers like John Egerton and later Peter Applebome have noted, the South holds an idealized place in our culture. Like family farms or Norman Rockwell paintings, the South is held up as a symbol of what’s real and authentic about America — a simpler place that, like “roots music,” is a “roots place” with an enduring soul able to withstand the glitter and insanity of mass culture.
Given the spread of Wal-Marts, bank towers, and other influences in the South, it’s often more myth than reality. But it’s a powerful myth, one that the country especially yearns for when the frenzied pace of “progress” feels out of control. That makes a plain-speaking, down-to-earth American Idol kid from the South — and maybe even a Southern presidential candidate — so appealing, not just in the South but across the country.
I think it’s because the roots of all great American popular music come from the south. It’s no surprise to me that southerners would be the leaders in a vocal talent show.
But there’s also merit in that last argument. For whatever psychological reasons, contrary to myth, most Americans of all stripes actually like southern culture, southern people, southern music — all of it. (I like the food, which isn’t good for me.) It’s their politics the rest of us (and that includes at least 40% of southerners themselves) aren’t so crazy about.
Viva Dixie, baby. Go Taylor.
Update: John Tierney used to think that Idol was like watching a car crash. Now he thinks … this:
I no longer think the Nascar theory is sufficient. “Idol” taps deeper emotions. My new Meistersinger hypothesis is that the “Idol” formula for success comes from Wagner, the composer who turned timeless passions into endless operas.
Wagner created the “Idol” format in “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg,” his opera about a 16th-century song contest that has traditionally been judged by the guild of master singers according to their own set of convoluted rules. But a burgher named Sachs, arguing that singers should instead be wooing the “untutored” hearts of the masses, proposes letting the winner be chosen instead by a young woman named Eva along with the rest of the public.
The prospect of a “Bavarian Idol” appalls the guild members, who warn that their art will be ruined “if it runs after the favors of the people.” They also reject Sachs’s suggestion that the contest include an outsider, a handsome young knight with an unorthodox singing style.
But after much scheming (this is a five-hour opera), Sachs manages to open up the competition, first by arranging for the guild’s ultraconventional singer to suffer through a Nascar-style flameout. The crowd laughs at his song and mocks him as a “booby” with no sex appeal.
Then Sachs explains to the crowd that it’s actually a beautiful song that has been “distorted” by the performer. (Or, as Simon Cowell put it to one “Idol” contestant: “I think you just killed my favorite song of all time.”) Sachs brings on the handsome knight to perform the song. The crowd loves the rebel in shining armor — “No one can woo like him!” — and he ends up winning the competition and Eva’s hand.
