Blogger is back. Sort of. I think. If I can get this to actually publish I will be back in business today. Thanks for hanging in.
Sadly, I have to go out for a bit. Until I get back, I thought I’d update you on the blue state country song comments from over the week-end. A lot of people suggested Springsteen or Dylan, which makes sense. There were also a number of commenters and emailers who suggested “The Man In Black” by Johnny Cash — and Cash is always transcendently cool. Most impressively, there were a bunch of songs written by readers themselves that were great.
But I particularly liked this one, written by reader MJS:
Listen to the Wind
I’m living in the blue states I’m living in the red Somebody took the common man And filled his common head And poisoned all our brothers And all our sisters too Only one kind of person is happy When I start to hate on you
I’m working in the factory Working on the big combine I can’t afford a doctor And the baby won’t stop crying Our sons and daughters fight a war Our sons and daughters die They want us blue and red ones To never hear each other’s cries
(chorus) Listen to me brothers Listen sisters too Listen to the melody That plays inside of you Listen to the silence And listen to your heart Who gets to making money Whenever fighting starts? Listen to the wind It carries all our songs Listen to the wind Everybody join along
I’m searching for the Jesus Who aimed to help the sick Who gave solace to the poor of us Who knew love was not a trick I’m searching for the Jesus The man, the Prince of Peace Teach me not to cast stones Teach me to slay that beast
I’m searching for some honor I’m searching for a life Where I can feel compassion Put an end to needless strife I’m hoping that I’ll find it Right here inside of me Forget about red and blue states My country ’tis of thee Sing it like you mean it Turn a them into a we
(chorus) Listen to me brothers Listen sisters too Listen to the melody That plays inside of you Listen to the silence And listen to your heart Who gets to making money Whenever fighting starts? Listen to the wind It carries all our songs Listen to the wind Everybody join along Sing it like you mean it Everybody join along
I’m living in the blue states I’m living in the red Somebody took the common man And filled his common head And poisoned all our brothers And all our sisters too Only one kind of person is happy When I start to hate on you
I’m working in the factory Working on the big combine I can’t afford a doctor And the baby won’t stop crying Our sons and daughters fight a war Our sons and daughters die They want us blue and red ones To never hear each other’s cries
(chorus) Listen to me brothers Listen sisters too Listen to the melody That plays inside of you Listen to the silence And listen to your heart Who gets to making money Whenever fighting starts? Listen to the wind It carries all our songs Listen to the wind Everybody join along
Poor Joe Klein’s head will explode if populist sentiment like that catches on.
I notice that everyone’s on the case of the latest Ben Domenechist hire, Karl Zinsmeister. He’s quite the guy. A liar, of course, and completely full of shit but he’s perfect to replace the person who was arrested for shoplifting toiletries from Target. In an administration that cares nothing for policy, these jobs are all just patronage gigs. And old Karl has been a good little wingnut. He deserves a nice Whitehouse gig on his resume.
John Amato has all the dirt on this fine fellow, but he leaves out what I think is the most impressive item on Karl’s list of accomplishment. It seems he writes comic books too:
Longtime embedded journalist Karl Zinsmeister (Boots on the Ground: A Month with the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq) and penciler Dan Jurgens (Thor, Superman) chronicle three months in the lives of the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq in this groundbreaking series. Collects Combat Zone: True Tales of GI’s In Iraq #1-5.
Some people love it for its classic “Sgt Rock” quality. Others, not so much:
I bought this because of the positive reviews and because it sounded like it might be pretty good. It’s not. The drawings are well-done. Beyond that, this could easily have been written during the WWII Africa campaign with a few updates on weapons and jargon.
All the sterotypes are here. There’s Duhon, the dumb but friendly Southerner, Kulzinski, the brawny Pole, Dean, the third-generation Army brat, Marco, the tough Texan, Gordon, the wet-behind-the-ears Lieutenant, and Brown, the token black. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen all these guys in a John Wayne movie or three. Oh, right, Wayne’s there too, playing the cowboy sharpshooter.
The dialogue is wordy, freighted with needless backfill, and just plain corny. Here are a couple of example quotes:
Lt. Gordon: “I know we’re still in shock over losing Sgt. Kramer. But we’ve got a job to do. Now I know I’m just a kid out of college, and that my joining the Army to try to make the world safer may seem a little goofy to you. But we all agree we have to succeed here.”
Capt. Kirkwood: “There’s a good chance one of those cavalry gun trucks could get ambushed and pinned down. If that happens, I want you to treat it like a downed helicopter, understand? We are not going to lose another one of those men. You drop everything until those soldiers are saved. That’s what we do for other Americans who risk their lives with us.”
These wingnut guys are all living out their Hollywood war fantasies. It’s pathetic.
The documentary [Soundtrack To War]is simply a series of interviews with soldiers about the CDs they’ve brought with them to Iraq and which ones they prefer to play when they roll out on a mission. Turns out, every Humvee, Bradley fighting vehicle, and Abrams tank is wired in such a way that it’s easy to hook a CD Walkman up to the internal sound system that each soldier hears in his or her headphones. And though it’s an open secret that the military’s own psy-ops folks are partial to AC/DC as a means to psych up their troops for battle, there don’t appear to be any official regulations regarding what a tank commander can and can’t play. Both 50 Cent and Jay-Z turned out to be popular among rap-loving crews; here the filmmakers might have asked how the military brass feels about the message of some of 50’s rougher raps. Among those in the know, Mystikal was a favorite because he himself is a former military man. One white private turned out to be a big fan of Jay-Z because he’s from the same part of Brooklyn and The Black Album reminds him of home. (I did find myself wondering whether psy-ops distinguish between pre– and post–Bon Scott AC/DC: though Scott’s “Highway to Hell” would have to be high on anyone’s list of kick-ass rock and roll, the post-Scott albums Back in Black and For Those About To Rock are more explosive. I’m sure they’ll be convening a committee to recommend regulations on the use of AC/DC any day now.)
More typical are the tank crews who blast new metal by the likes of Drowning Pool with lyrics like “Let the bodies hit the floor,” drums that sound like artillery explosions, and shrapnel-spraying guitars set to hard-hitting martial rhythms.
[…]
The most disturbing part of Soundtrack to War is the revelation of how closely rolling out into a tank battle resembles playing a tank-battle video game. With Drowning Pool blasting through the headphones, the gunner targeting the enemy with a joystick on a digital computer screen, and “smart” ammo directing the shell to its target before the enemy even knows he’s under attack, you get a real sense of how life imitates art in the confines of an Abrams tank. The experience is depersonalizing in a way that doesn’t prepare the average soldier to deal with the reality of blown-apart bodies once he or she emerges from the tank.
Now that’s interesting. Retread comic book dialog from episodes of “Combat” in 1963 isn’t interesting. It’s so typical of conservatives to be culturally stuck in their grandparents era. It’s always been like that. When I was a kid they were talking about getting a malted down at the olde soda shoppe while the rest of us were getting stoned. (Not that we wouldn’t have greatly enjoyed a malted down at the soda shop under those circumstances, but you get the picture.)
This guy has gone on to advise the president of the United States about domestic policy, which he seems highly qualified to do. He’s a comic book writer for a cartoon administration.
None of this should be construed as a put down of comics or graphic novels in general. It’s this comic I’m dissing.
Hat tip to a reader. You know who you are. I lost your email.
This dailyKos diary by Captain Doug linking to to my earlier post led me to an interesting document that I haven’t come across before.
As we contemplate why Joe Klein the DLCers and the rest of the Democratic establishment are stuck in 1972 mode, petrified of the “angry left” and worried sick that we are going to scare away the real Americans, take a look at this FBI report:
May 9, 1968
Our Nation is undergoing an era of disruption and violence caused to a large extent by various individuals generally connected with the New Left. Some of these activists urge revolution in America and call for the defeat of the United States in Vietnam. They continually and falsely allege police brutality and do not hesitate to utilize unlawful acts to further their so-called causes. The New Left has on many occasions viciously and scurrilously attacked the Director and the Bureau in an attempt to hamper our investigation of it and to drive us off the college campuses. With this in mind, it is our recommendation that a new Counterintelligence Program be designed to neutralize the New Left and the Key Activists. The Key Activists are those individuals who are the moving forces behind the New Left and on whom we have intensified our investigations.
The replies to the Bureau’s request have been analyzed and it is felt that the following suggestions can for counterintelligence action can be utilized by all offices.
1. Preparation of a leaflet designed to counteract the impression that Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and other minority groups speak for the majority of students at universities. The leaflet should contain photographs of New Left leadership at the respective university. Naturally, the most obnoxious pictures should be used.
2. The instigating of or the taking advantage of personal conflicts or animosities existing between New Left leaders.
3. The creating of impressions that certain New Left leaders are informants for the Bureau or other law enforcement agencies.
4. The use of articles from student newspapers and/or the “underground press” to show the depravity of New Left leaders and members. In this connection, articles showing advocation of the use of narcotics and free sex are ideal to send to university officials, wealthy donors, members of the legislature and parents of students who are active in New Left matters.
5. Since the use of marijuana and other narcotics is widespread among members of the New Left, you should be alert to opportunities to have them arrested by local authorities on drug charges.
6. The drawing up of anonymous letters regarding individuals active in the New Left. These letters should set out their activities and should be sent to their parents, neighbors and the parents’ employers.
7. Anonymous mailings should be made to university officials, members of the state legislature, Board of Regents, and to the press. Such letters could be signed “A Concerned Alumni” or “A Concerned Taxpayer.” [emphasis added]
8. Whenever New Left groups engage in disruptive activities on college campuses, cooperative press contacts should be encouraged to emphasize that the disruptive elements constitute a minority of the students and do not represent the conviction of the majority. The press should demand an immediate referendum on the issue in question.
9. There is a definite hostility among SDS and other New Left groups toward the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA), and the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). This hostility should be exploited wherever possible.
10. The field was previously advised that New Left groups are attempting to open coffeehouses near military bases in order to influence members of the Armed Forces. Whereever these coffeehouses are, friendly news media should be alerted to them and their purpose. In addition, various drugs, such as marijuana, will probably be utilized by individuals running the coffeehouses or frequenting them. Local law enforcement authorities should be promptly advised whenever you receive an indication that this is being done.
11. Consider the use of cartoons, photographs, and anonymous letters which will have the effect of riduculing the New Left. Ridicule is one of the most potent weapons which we can use against it.
12. Be alert for opportunities to confuse and disrupt New Left activities by misinformation. For example, when events are planned, notification that the event has been cancelled or postponed could be sent to various individuals. Director to All Field Offices, July 5, 1968
I’m sure this had nothing to do with why the “silent majority” voted Republican. Nor does it have anything to do with why Joe “gag me with a spoon” Klein is so hostile to liberalism even today or why the Democrats in washington scurry at the slightest conflict. It’s not like they could have been played by a disinformation campaign that became conventional wisdom, right?
This report is also a good reminder of why some of us don’t trust the FBI to be the good guys in these political battles and why we think there should be pretty strict separation of powers and very strong oversight. Police agencies have a tendency to forget their limitations. And so do presidents:
CHENEY: All right. But in 34 years, I have repeatedly seen an erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job. We saw it in the War Powers Act. We saw it in the Budget Anti-Impoundment Act. We’ve seen it in cases like this before, where it’s demanded that presidents cough up and compromise on important principles.
ROBERTS: And they always do.
CHENEY: Exactly, and that’s wrong.
ROBERTS: So in the end, it always comes out anyway, so why…
CHENEY: It’s wrong. And–well, but the…
ROBERTS: … go through this agony?
CHENEY: Because the net result of that is to weaken the presidency and the vice presidency.
And one of the things that I feel an obligation, and I know the president does too, because we talked about it, is to pass on our offices in better shape than we found them to our successors. We are weaker today as an institution because of the unwise compromises that have been made over the last 30 to 35 years.
That was in January of 2002. Cheney has been upfront about this from the get. He believed that the nation was better served when someone like Nixon could do whatever he wanted. He believes that the FBI should be able to do what he thinks is necessary to “protect” to country from people like me.
He just simply believes that the presidency should be more powerful than the other two branches (as long as a Republican occupies it, of course. Let’s not kid ourselves about that):
ABOARD AIR FORCE TWO — Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday said President Bush is aggressively consolidating the powers of the presidency, reversing a weakening of the office dating back more than 30 years.
“We’ve been able to restore the legitimate authority of the presidency,” he told reporters after inspecting earthquake-relief efforts in Pakistan.
Mr. Cheney, who was President Ford’s chief of staff, said “an erosion of presidential power and authority” emerged during that era but that the pendulum has now “swung back.”
“At the end of the Nixon administration, you had the nadir of the modern presidency in terms of authority and legitimacy,” he said. “There have been a number of limitations that have been imposed in the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate.”
He said the Bush administration has reversed that trend in a variety of ways, ranging from its successful fight to keep secret the deliberations of its energy task force to its muscular assertion of authority at home and abroad in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks.
“We’ve been very active and very aggressively defending the nation and using the tools at our disposal to do that,” he said.
[…]
Speaking to reporters while flying from Pakistan to Oman, the vice president also suggested that the strengthening of the presidency is not finished. He noted that no president has eliminated the War Powers Act, which he said “many people believe is unconstitutional.”
“That was an infringement on the authority of the president,” he said. “It’s never been tested. It will be tested at some point.”
Again he’s totally candid. He did it, he believes he has the right to do it and the fact that war protestors or political dissidents are being monitored is a feature not a bug.
And about that disinformation and propaganda, I think we have a little hint about where that’s going in this era as well:
Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies’ products.
Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are seeking information about stations across the country after a report produced by a campaign group detailed the extraordinary extent of the use of such items.
[…]
The range of VNR is wide. Among items provided by the Bush administration to news stations was one in which an Iraqi-American in Kansas City was seen saying “Thank you Bush. Thank you USA” in response to the 2003 fall of Baghdad. The footage was actually produced by the State Department, one of 20 federal agencies that have produced and distributed such items.
As far back as 1968 they were doing this in other forms and I have little doubt that among their many lies they are spreading disinformation about the left today as well. Cheney sees the GWOT as equivalent to the Cold War (or maybe the War of the Worlds.) He sees nothing wrong with expanding the police powers of the executive branch as far as he thinks necessary.
Keep your eyes wide open for signs of the kind of program outlined above against the New Left. Everything old is new again.
If you have an interest in seeing Richard Pryor’s FBI file you can see it here. He was a very serious threat to the nation, you know. He made people like Dick Cheney feel all wierd. You can understand why it was important for the government to keep tabs on him.
I have long thought, and written, that the “GWOT” is a false construct. And common sense says to most people that it is pretty nonsensical. We might as well have a war on sadness or a war on jealousy or a war on hate. As Pach writes in this post from the week-end, terror is a human emotion and you can’t fight a war against it. In fact, war creates it.
But then it isn’t really fair to deride it as a “war on terror,” is it? That’s just the shortcut phrase. The real term is “war on terrorism” which makes just as little sense but in a different way. Terrorism is a method of warfare — a specific type of cheap and dirty violence which is not eradicatable, certainly not eradicatable by force. It is special only in the sense that it makes no distinctions between civilians and warriors. (And if you could eliminate a particularly harsh and inhumane method of warfare, it would certainly make no sense at all to try to do it by throwing aside all civilized norms and engaging in even more odious taboos like torture.)
When you think about it, a “war on terrorism” is actually a “war on warfare” which kind of brings the whole damned thing home, doesn’t it? All warfare is terrifying. Metaphorically, a war on warfare is a nice concept. I can picture some lovely bumper stickers and t-shirts along the lines of “War is not healthy for children and other living things.” “Let’s declare war on warfare” expresses a rather basic premise that war is a bad thing. (Somehow, I don’t think that’s what the architects of the GWOT had in mind.)
A war on warfare is entirely absurd, however, in a literal sense. Using war to eradicate terror or terrorism is an oxymoron. And yet the nation has been drunkenly behaving as if it is a real war, spending the money, deploying the troops, inflicting the violence.
Setting Iraq aside, which was a simple imperialist invasion with no ties to this threat of terrorism, we are dealing with a “war” against certain stateless people who are loosely affiliated with Muslim extremism but could just as easily be nationalists or Christian fanatics or even environmentalists, as our justice department has recently decreed. make no mistake: the GWOT is not a simple shorthand for fighting the “islamofascists.” Islamic extremism is an ideology centered in a religion and it has no “place” — it is not a nation or even a people. Warfare as it has been understood for millenia will not “beat” it. The GWOT masterminds knew this which is why the phrase War on Terrorism was coined: it represents a permanent state of war, which is something else entirely.
This is the problem. This elastic war, this war against warfare, this war with no specific enemy against no specific country is never going to end. It cannot end because there is no end. If the threat of “islamofascim” disappears tomorrow there will be someone else who hates us and who is willing to use individual acts of violence to get what they want. There always have been and there always will be. Which means that we will always be at war with Oceania.
I am not sanguine that we can put this genie back in the bottle. The right will go crazy at the prospect that someone might question whether we are really “at war.” They are so emotionally invested in the idea that they cannot give it up. Indeed, the right is defined by its relationship to the boogeyman, whether communism or terrorism or some other kind of ism (negroism? immigrantism?) They will fight very, very hard to keep this construct going in the most literal sense. And they will probably win in the short term.
But it is long past time for people to start the public counter argument, which has the benefit of appealing to common sense. Many Americans are emerging from the relentless hail of propaganda that overtook the nation after the traumatic events of 9/11. Iraq confused people for a while, but that confusion is leaving in its wake a rather startling clarity: the “war” as the governmehnt defines it is bullshit. It will take a while for this common sense to become conventional wisdom, but it certainly won’t happen if nobody is willing to say it out loud.
What we do about Islamic fundamentalism is a topic we must deal with. I suspect that it will take a global effort and a willingness to deal intelligently with the impending global oil crisis. There will be other challenges as well, including potential wars and regional strife and any of the other things that have marked civilization from the beginning. All peoples must deal with such things.
But there is no war on terrorism. The nation is less secure because of this false construct. We are spending money we need not spend, making enemies we need not make and wasting lives we need not waste in the name of something that doesn’t exist. That is as politically incorrect a statement as can be made in America today. But it’s true.
And I suspect, too, that I will be long in my grave before the “war on terrorism” is a thing of the past. It was a terrible accident of history that September 11th happened when the lunatic neocon cabal was in power. Nothing could have been worse. It was more damaging than the attacks themselves. We’ll be dealing with the fall out from that strange happenstance for a generation.
Good news. South Dakotans got the repeal of the coathanger law on the ballot. But what’s most impressive is that they got 37,846 signatures on their petitions. That’s a lot of signatures in a state than only has about 770,000 people and almost 27% of them are under 18 and can’t vote. Let’s hope they vote this cruel law down in November. South Dakota is as red a state as there is. If this things has gone too far for them then there’s no way anyone can claim it is a mainstream position.
I hadn’t seen this cartoon by Stephanie McMillan about our good friend Bill Napoli, the creator of the Sodomized Virgin exception. You can buy a print or a t-shirt here and it will go to benefit family planning clinics.
And it will greatly annoy Bill Napoli:
“The cartoon generated a huge amount of filth, intolerable filth.” — Senator Bill Napoli
A real-life description [of an exception] to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.
This is a man who thinks he has right to tell women what they can do with their own bodies.
Please don’t get me wrong: I’ve been a member for a very long time of MoveOn, and I love the group. I’ve also given them thousands of dollars I can’t afford to give, and I have every intention of continuing to do so. But I happened to notice that there is one set of major issues missing from this list.* Care to guess what it is? Three hints:
1. The Democrats did their best to try to ignore it during the 2004 elections.
2. The Democrats are still doing their level best to sidestep the issue because so many of them behaved like fools from the beginning, and are still doing so.
3. The issue begins with “I” and ends with “raq.”
And there can be no list of “big, positive, goals” that doesn’t meet this issue head on. “Global leadership through diplomacy” – you gotta be joking. That makes “Cumbayah” sound like a thoughtful plan.
I know what they’re trying to do – come up with something we’re all “fer” and not just always be “a’gin.” However, we’re living in a time when our tax dollars are being used to prosecute a thoroughly illegal and pointless war which has included the wholesale murder and torture of innocents. To pretend otherwise is stupid; Iraq must be addressed. Directly. And MoveOn is one of the few organizations in a position to do so and actually have a chance to hold a few feet to the fire. Not much, but some.
Ezra took Jonah Goldberg to task for his egregious Gore trivia column this week-end but I don’t think he goes far enough. Jonah clearly thought this would be an entertaining riff for his little circle jerk to giggle over as they sipped their frappucinos, but I think it’s actually a perfect example of the symbiosis between the wingnut noise machine and the robotic mainstream media, which Jonah Goldberg (!) now embodies.
The “Gore is a crazy liar” meme just pops out naturally, as does the speculation about the Clintons’ sex lives or the idea that Dean is a screaming freak. These are established GOP narratives that the lazy media, both right and mainstream, just pull out of mothballs for their own amusement and I’m not sure it isn’t too late to stop them. I’m frankly a bit stunned they still feel comfortable doing it what with all the death and destruction of the last five years, but it’s quite obvious they have done no introspection whatsoever. If, after all that’s happened, the media can slip so effortlessly into both the Clenis and Crazy Gore memes without even a moments pause, then a bold new strategy is required.
As a card carrying member of the rightwing noise machine Goldberg is very aware that trivializing Democrats is helpful to his cause. His harpy mother made a career out of it. And he is also aware that ridicule and cheesy gossip are very effective ways to make liberals’ appear to be insubstantial and beside the point. It gets people’s attention in ways that other forms of criticisms don’t. The cartoonizing of Democratic politicians is one of their most effective tools and we’ve made a grave error in not better understanding it and using the same methods to equalize the playing field.
Here on the blogs we have some masterful voices of ridicule and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are liberal heroes for the same reason. Wr have tons of biting, dizzyingly precise take-down artists on our side. But none of these themes seem to capture the mainstream media as do the wingnut themes and I have concluded that it is because they are too sophisticated. Just like Goldberg and his frappucino sipping sycophants, we too entertain ourselves with this stuff. But unlike them, we only entertain ourselves. They entertain the press.
The right specializes in schoolyard taunts and sleazy gossip because they must attract the stupid vote in order to get elected and that’s the only humor stupid voters understand. But it’s also because it’s what the media prefers — they too have to attract the masses.
We have tried their comic book insult method on occasion, but it has always seemed to backfire. The Republicans, having shrewdly capitalized inherent rightwing insecurity, are remarkably successful at parrying. My favorite was this:
Dean: “You think people can work all day and then pick up their kids at child care or wherever and get home and still manage to sandwich in an eight-hour vote? Well Republicans, I guess can do that. Because a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives.”
The right went into a full-on screaming frenzy over that. It was as if Dean had said the Republicans eat children for lunch. They went nuts, claiming that you should never insult average voters. Many Democrats agreed that it was clumsy and crude to put it that way. But put the word liberal or Democrat in there and see if it works a little bit better:
“You think people can work all day and then pick up their kids at child care or wherever and get home and still manage to sandwich in an eight-hour vote? Well liberals, I guess can do that. Because a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives.”
I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard that kind of thing thousands of times from every strata of the right’s hierarchy. Bashing rank and file liberals is so common that you don’t even have to make the explicit argument anymore — you just say it with an appropriate sneer and everyone gets the picture. Of course, some on the right do enjoy spelling it out:
Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston, conservatives are deploying a series of covert signals to identify one another, much like gay men do. My allies are the ones wearing crosses or American flags. The people sporting shirts emblazened with the “F-word” are my opponents. Also, as always, the pretty girls and cops are on my side, most of them barely able to conceal their eye-rolling.
[…]
As for the pretty girls, I can only guess that it’s because liberal boys never try to make a move on you without the UN Security Council’s approval. Plus, it’s no fun riding around in those dinky little hybrid cars. My pretty-girl allies stick out like a sore thumb amongst the corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons they call “women” at the Democratic National Convention.
And it’s not just the cranks and the professional provocateurs like Coulter. Remember this?
U.S. Sen. Trent Lott today told an enthusiastic Neshoba County Fair crowd that Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry is “a French-speaking socialist from Boston, Massaschusetts, who is more liberal than Ted Kennedy.”
Imagine if Ted Kennedy had used similar stereotyping and said “George Bush is a slow-talking hillbilly from the old confederacy who is more racist than Strom Thurmond.” Do you even want to think about the uproar? (And has any Democratic politican in recent years said anything close to that?)
Lott’s remark got big laughs down in Mississippi. And I have little doubt that it got big laughs in press rooms all over the country. I don’t recall anyone but a few bloggers being a bit insulted by his comment.
Certainly, New England didn’t rise up in high dudgeon and demand that Lott retract his comment. That’s partially because the phrase “Massachusetts liberal” is now simple shorthand for cowardly jerk-off and people in Massachusetts seem to have resigned themselves to it. (Birthplace of the American revolution be damned. Only the secesssion is to be revered as an inviolable symbol of our heroic heritage these days.)
If someone from Massachusetts had said anything, they would have been told to lighten up. It’s only a little gentle ribbing. God you Democrats are a bunch of frail little wusses. How can you protect America? Meanwhile, you’re walking on the fighting side of Trent if you go after him with stereotypical taunts about southern culture. They can play into all these subterranean psychological currents, but nobody else can. Works great. For them.
We could play their game too, but it’s very difficult for liberals over the age of twenty to get in touch with their inner seventh grade asshole. I’m not sure why, but we seem to prefer a more subtle form of humor. I suspect it could be because of this:
An investigation by Simone Shamay-Tsoory and colleagues shows that the ability to understand sarcasm depends on a carefully orchestrated sequence of complex cognitive skills in specific parts of the brain.
Dr Shamay-Tsoory, a psychologist at the Rambam Medical Centre in Haifa and the University of Haifa, said: “Sarcasm is related to our ability to understand other people’s mental state. It’s not just a linguistic form, it’s also related to social cognition.”
The research revealed that areas of the brain that decipher sarcasm and irony also process language, recognise emotions and help us understand social cues.
“Understanding other people’s state of mind and emotions is related to our ability to understand sarcasm,” she said.
[…]
The study showed that people with damage in the prefrontal lobe struggled to pick out sarcasm. The others, including people with similar damage to other parts of the brain, were able to correctly place the sharp-tongued words into context.
The prefrontal lobe is known to be involved in pragmatic language processes and complex social cognition. The ventromedial section is linked to personality and social behaviour.
Dr Shamay-Tsoory said the loss of the volunteers’ ability to understand irony was a subtle consequence of their brain damage, which produced behaviour similar to that seen in people with autism
“They are still able to hold and understand a conversation. Their problem is to understand when people talk in indirect speech and use irony, idioms and metaphors because they take each sentence literally. They just understand the sentence as it is and can’t see if your true meaning is the opposite of your literal meaning.”
Now, I would hesitate to say that the right does not understand irony and therefore, are brain damaged. That would be very rude. Still, you have to admit that this proves my point:
A good sign that Tom DeLay doesn’t have the facts on his side: the top source for his latest defense against his critics is Stephen Colbert.
This morning, DeLay’s legal defense fund sent out a mass email criticizing the movie “The Big Buy: Tom DeLay’s Stolen Congress,” by “Outfoxed” creator Robert Greenwald.
[…]
DeLay thinks Colbert is so persuasive, he’s now featuring the full video of the interview at the top of the legal fund’s website. And why not? According to the email, Greenwald “crashed and burned” under the pressure of Colbert’s hard-hitting questions, like “Who hates America more, you or Michael Moore?”
Apparently the people at DeLay’s legal fund think that Colbert is actually a conservative. Or maybe they’re just that desperate for supporters.
This is not surprising to me. You can tell when some of the rightwingers go on the show that they don’t know what they are dealing with. They suspect that something is up because of the audience, but they really don’t get it. “Their problem is to understand when people talk in indirect speech and use irony, idioms and metaphors because they take each sentence literally.”
I have also long suspected that the media doesn’t know that Stewart and Colbert are satirizing them as well. They get the part about the politicians. everybody makes fun of them. But they don’t see that the entire premise of the show is that TV news people and pundits are idiots. It explains why more than few of them weren’t quite sure what to make of Colbert’s “partisan” speech at the White House correspondents dinner.
They operate on the same seventh grade level as the Republicans. Here’s Joe Klein:
SCARBOROUGH: You know, it’s interesting you say that. If — of course, if Hillary Clinton were to be elected and then re-elected, you could go back to 1980, and there would have been a Bush or Clinton as president or vice president from 1980 to two thousand — I guess it would be 2016.
KLEIN: Gag me with a spoon.
I rest my case.
What do we do about it? I don’t know. But we can’t pretend that the press’ willingness to run with this puerile crapola for their own amusement doesn’t hurt us. We would like to stop them by appealing to their better natures, but that hasn’t exactly worked out. And now they are behaving like shocked little schoolmarms that the left is “angry” about what they’ve done. It appears that no matter what happens — even Armageddon apparently — they are going to run with the breathless, sophomoric Democratic narrative the Republicans created. And they are too powerful to ignore.
So perhaps we should think about how to give them what they want: a Republican narrative that appeals to their seventh grade sensibilities. I throw this out there for you to discuss. (I’m going to have to have an aspirin and coke and listen to “Last Train To Clarksville” before I can properly get into the mood.)
Chris Bowers writes about one of my favorite subjects today: American tribal identity.
Over the past year and a half, I have slowly developed an argument that the electorate is, in general, non-ideological, not interested in policy, and generally unmoved by the day-to-day minutia of political events that, within the blogosphere, are treated as cataclysmic events. Sure, most people hold general political beliefs, but in general national voting habits are motivated by something else–something more basic. As we look for ways to motivate voters in November, we need to remember the powerful role that identity plays in political decision-making. As progressives, we shrug off concepts such as the “battle of civilizations,” but if you look closely at demographic data, maybe it is a battle of civilizations taking place after all. We may very well be living in an era of identity politics. Who knows, maybe every era of American politics is an era of identity politics.
I think the evidence is overwhelming that it is. He reproduces one of those great maps that break down everybody by something or other and like most of them, it ends up showing the south as being a homogenous region surrounded by a hodgepodge of different things everywhere else. In this case it’s religion, but it could be anything, including electoral results or sociological indicators. It’s just a fact that the south has a very strong regional identity of its own. And I don’t think the rest of the country is quite like it. That divide has been with us since the beginning and it far transcends any mommy/daddy party dichotomy.
I watched the country music awards the other night and saw what looked like a typical bunch of glammed up pop stars like you’d see on any of these awards shows. Lots of cowboy hats, of course, but the haircuts, the clothes, the silicone bodies were not any different from any other Hollywood production. But the songs were not. There are plenty of Saturday night honky tonk fun and straightforward gospel style religious and patriotic tunes. But there is a strain of explicit cultural ID that wends through all of them.
Gretchen Wilson and Merle Haggard’s song “Politically Uncorrect” perfectly captures the sense of exceptionalism and specialness of southern culture:
I’m for the low man on the totem pole And I’m for the underdog God bless his soul And I’m for the guys still pulling third shift And the single mom raisin’ her kids I’m for the preachers who stay on their knees And I’m for the sinner who finally believes And I’m for the farmer with dirt on his hands And the soldiers who fight for this land
Chorus:
And I’m for the Bible and I’m for the flag And I’m for the working man, me and ol’ hag I’m just one of many Who can’t get no respect Politically uncorrect
(Merle Haggard) I guess my opinion is all out of style (Gretchen Wilson) Aw, but don’t get me started cause I can get riled And I’ll make a fight for the forefathers plan (Merle Haggard) And the world already knows where I stand
Repeat Chorus
(Merle Haggard) Nothing wrong with the Bible, nothing wrong with the flag (Gretchen Wilson) Nothing wrong with the working man me & ol’ hag We’re just some of many who can’t get no respect Politically uncorrect (Merle Haggard)
Now that’s identity. I emphasized the “can’t get no respect” part because I think that’s key, as I have written many times before. The belief that these ideas are particular to this audience, that they stand alone as being politically incorrect and are “out of style” for holding them, is a huge cultural identifier. And it’s held in opposition to some “other” (presumably someone like me) who is believed not to care about any of those things — particularly the welfare of the common man.
Bowers writes:
Motivating voters and pulling off a landslide election will require a gut-level change of attitude about the two parties among millions of Americans. For all of the great policies everyone will suggest Democrats to run on this fall, ultimately winning will be based just as much on how Americans view their identity in relation to the image of the two coalitions as anything else. We need to avoid falling into the wonk trap of assuming that people are motivated by policy details. It is the identity, stupid. We need to explore ways to motivate voters for progressive causes with that in mind.
The conservative southern coalition has a very clear sense of identity. They always have. I would suggest that back in the day the New England and Midwestern cultural identifiers were pretty solidly Main Street bourgeois — if you made it your kids got to go to college and you got to join the chamber of commerce and the country club. But that’s no longer the case. The non-southern Party appears to exist mainly as a repository of opposition to conservative policies. Is that true?
Perhaps the big question is this: If you could write a country song about Blue State identity, what would the lyrics say?
Media Matters has determined that the alleged “concern” about this woman Big Bill (the 60 year old quadruple bypass survivor) is supposed to be schtupping comes from one year old Globe Magazine cover story:
Healy offered no specific reasons for this purported interest among “prominent Democrats” aside from the amount of time the Clintons spent apart, a mention of a decade-old affair, and a reference to year-old “concern[]” over a “tabloid photograph showing Mr. Clinton leaving B.L.T. Steak in Midtown Manhattan late one night after dining with a group that included Belinda Stronach, a Canadian politician.” Healy continued: “The two were among roughly a dozen people at a dinner, but it still was enough to fuel coverage in the gossip pages.”
It was also enough to fuel a front-page New York Times article, and the rapt attention of the Washington press corps, as Media Matters has documented.
Healy did not identify the “tabloid” in question, but he seems to be referring to the Globe magazine, which in the spring of 2005 ran a headline about Clinton and Stronach that read “Bill caught with blonde AGAIN! New divorce battle with Hillary.”
The New York Times is literally circulating rumors from the Globe and the giggling schoolmarms of the DC press corps are eating it up. Ok. Fine.
But as Jane pointed out the other night, and Media Matters notes today, the Globe has another shocking cover story up right now, and one that should be of grave concern to the screeching magpies:
Has anyone informed David Broder and Chris Matthews of this development? Not only isn’t the president sleeping with the first lady, he’s drinking again. I am very “concerned.”
There is a lively debate going on in the blogosphere about whether the FBI should be allowed to raid a congressman’s office. I will let others make the legal and philosophical arguments. I would just offer this from the Church Committee files:
The historical backround of political abuse of the FBI involves at least three dimensions. The first is the Bureau’s subsurvience to the Presidency, its willingness to carry our White House requests without question. When L. Patrick Gray as Acting FBI Director destroyed documents and gave FBI reports to Presidential aides whom the FBI should have been investigating after the Watergate break-in, he just carried to the extreme an established practice of service to the White House. The other side of the practice was the Bureau’s volunteering political intelligence to its superiors, not in response to any specific request. And the third historical dimension was the FBI”s concerted effort to promote its public image and discredit its critics.
[…]
The committee staff found in these “O” and C” files (“Official and Confidential”) such special memoranda on … all the members of the Senate Subcommittee chaired by Senator Long which threatened to investigate the FBI in the mid-1960’s. Some of these “name check” reports and special memoranda contained derogatory information about his wife. The reports on members of the Long Committee were compiled in a briefing book, with tabs on each senator.
[…]
In 1965, the FBI declined a request of the Justice Department Criminal division to “wire” a witness in the investigation of former Johnson senate aide Bobby Baker. Although the FBI refused on grounds that there was not adequate security, the Criminal Division had the Bureau of Narcotics in the Treasury department “wire” the witness as a legitimate alternative. When the Baker trial began in 1967 this became known. Presidential aide Marvin Watson told the FBI that President Johnson was quite exercized, and the FBI was ordered to conduct a discrete “run-down” on the head of the Criminal Division in 1965 and four persons in Treasury and the Narcotic Bureaus, including specifically any associations with former Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
[…]
At the request of President Johnson made directly to FBI executive Cartha Deloach, the FBI passed purely political intelligence about United States Senators to the White house which was obtained as a by-product of otherwise legitimate national security electronic surveillance of foreign intelligence targets. The practice also continued at the request of Mr. H.R. Haldeman.
That is just a tiny bit of the Church Committee summary of the historical political abuses perpetrated by the FBI through the mid-70’s. It was bipartisan, which is why I chose to highlight the incident with Johnson.
I am quite sure that Congressman Jefferson is nobody I want to defend (for his politics and much as his criminality.) But the FBI and the executive branch have a long sordid history of using their power for political ends. (Even Hoover never believed they could raid a congressman’s office, however.)
Recently, the FBI’s conservative culture has led to some in the bureau covertly helping Republicans as we saw during the Clinton years. Convicted spy Robert Hanssen had a relationship with Robert Novak that seemed to be based upon his political loathing of Janet Reno, although as with so many of these cases, it’s hard to tell what motivates individuals. But history shows that the FBI can be used by any party for nefarious purposes which is bad enough and requires constant vigilance and oversight. When it is used for partisan reasons directly against the congress you have a problem of an even greater dimension.
The reason to be against this is political and constitutional, not legal. It’s entirely possible that the warrant they got was proper and that their cause is just. And I have no doubt that Hastert had a hissy fit and got Bush to seal the documents to cover his own ample ass. But the bigger issue is something that someone wrote in an email a couple of days ago: This Republican Justice Department, led by a lifetime Bush loyalist and good friend to Karl Rove now has every Democratic strategy memo that ever came across Congressman Jefferson’s desk. Trust ’em?
