Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

On The Internet No One Knows You’re A (Singing) Dog

by tristero

Thanks, folks, for all the nice comments about my music – including the ones that that truly were LOL. Just a few things before once again scooting back, more or less, into the closet.

I sent Digby the Times review and he asked if he could mention it. I said it was fine with me. The main reason I don’t write more about what I do is that I’m really not trying to promote my musical career in my blogging.* It’s not that I’m above promotion; no one is. Even Stravinsky was shameless when it came to hyping his work. It’s rather that it seems like a blog is the wrong place to flack external reputations.

For me, the most interesting aspect of blogging has nothing to do with anyone’s accomplishments but rather the present quality of their thought and the extent of their knowledge. While it is much less true now than it was in the olden days five years ago, it is still the case that prior reputation counts for much less in the blogosphere than it does Out There. You are read, or not read, based entirely on your ability to persuade from post to post. And in order to be persuasive, not only must you be a decent writer, but you damn well better know how to back up your assertions with convincing, relevant, links. Whether you’ve got a doctorate in political science from Stanford or are an 11 year old afraid to come out of your bedroom really is besides the point.

That is how it should be. If it does anything, blogging can make hash of the rhetorical fallacy of appealing to authority. One’s authority as a blogger, to the extent anyone has any, comes entirely from the merit of the posts. And that is wonderful. You don’t read Josh Marshall’s blog because he’s got a reputation as an ace reporter. You read his blog because with every post, he reports. He is actively making a reputation in a way that, say, a NY Times reporter doesn’t have to. The mere act of being hired by the Times confers (even now, of course) an authoritative reputation, whether or not it is deserved. To put it into big words: At its best, blogging transmutes reified power – authority – back into something contingent. Authority is no longer a noun, but a verb. You earn your reputation with every word. It’s never assumed.

And brother, do we need to stop listening to unearned authority.

In 2002, the experts in the press gave the experts in the Bush administration a free pass to market an insane, unnecessary war. It was so obviously a mistake that even a musician immediately could understand it was doomed to catastrophe. During 2002 and early ’03, I went all over the world for concerts of my music. It was an exciting time, and I loved every minute of it. But there was one thing that was quite striking, wherever I went. Everyone, and I mean I everyone from cab drivers to diplomats, thought the United States had gone insane in its advocacy for an Iraq invasion. And yet, back home the experts assured us it would be a cakewalk.

A few weeks after returning from Sydney, Australia where, John Howard aside, everyone was as alarmed as I was at the impending war, I began blogging in February, 2003. I figured that, artist or no, I knew an imminent foreign policy disaster when I saw one. And to my horror, I was right. I have never wanted to be more wrong than I was about the Bush/Iraq war, but I never doubted that it would end up, more or less, where it has.

And so here I am, still blogging and hoping against hope that this country I love will no longer heed the advice of people who understand the world a lot less well than a fellow who’s spent most of us life composing. It’s not that I know so much, although I’m not stupid or uneducated. It’s that the Bushites know so very, very little.

What the present crisis teaches us, a crisis in which the country is being led by clowns posing as experts, is that the opinions of ordinary citizens are vital to the running of a major democratic power. It’s not that expertise isn’t essential. Of course it is. But political expertise in a democracy must always confront the full range of public opinion in a meaningful manner. Otherwise, there lie monsters.

Today, the public discourse is so clotted and constrained, so limited to the right and far right, that it really is imperative for those of us who object to the direction the country is going to speak out, strongly and often. Not because we all deserve a prominent media role but rather in the hopes that eventually the media will be forced to broaden its coverage of political opinion to acknowledge voices like ours. Voices expert and persuasive enough to articulate alternatives to Bushism. Heaven knows we need them, and fast.

****

*When I first started to blog, I was a bit concerned about how my politics would affect my career, but didn’t care that much. If anything, I care more now. By which I mean that I think it is extremely important to stand up and be counted in opposition to Bush. But I like being Tristero, it’s part of who I am, and I don’t see any reason to bump the guy off, any more than there’s a reason to promote my music.

Democrat Libre

by digby

Matt Stoller has a fiery exchange going with Hotline Blogometer and Washington Examiner opinion writer, William Buetler, about the normally navel gazing subject of the blogosphere’s influence on politics. I don’t have a lot to add, except to take issue with one little bit that Buetler writes in his piece:

The phrase [Vichy Democrats]was timely, punchy, and summed up the anger I saw directed against moderate and conservative Democrats.

No, no, no and no. The anger was not and is not against moderate and conservative Democrats. Paul Hackett is a conservative Democrat. It is against those who seek to either make deals with or capitulate to Republicans, particularly on issues of fundamental principle. “Vichy” is a term I don’t use because I think the Republicans do such a fine job of demeaning Dems that I don’t need to help them. However, it is a particular term of art that means something quite specific: to sell out your own people to the enemy.

The grassroots of the Democratic Party see something that all the establishment politicians have not yet realized: bipartisanship is dead for the moment and there is no margin in making deals. The rules have changed. When you capitulate to the Republicans for promises of something down the road you are being a fool. When you make a deal with them for personal reasons, you are selling out your party. When you use Republican talking points to make your argument you are helping the other side. When you kiss the president on the lips at the state of the union you are telling the Democratic base that we are of no interest or concern to you. This hyper-partisanship is ugly and it’s brutal, but it is the way it is.

It’s not “left” and “right” or “liberal,” “moderate,” or “conservative” that animates the grassroots. We argue some amongst ourselves on policy, of course, but that’s not the rap on the establishment. It’s the desire that our representatives wake up and recognise that we are in a new political era in which these designations take second place to “Democrat.” That’s the environment we are in whether we like it or not — a country sharply divided by party, not ideology.

The Democratic party did everything it could to alleviate the culture war and the partisanship in the 90’s by electing southern moderates to the white house and helping the Republicans pass a lot of legislation born of major compromise of Democratic principles. Nothing was good enough. The culture war raged, not on the basis of policy — there was much in Bill Clinton’s policies for a Republican to love. It was based purely on the tribal instincts of the culture warriors who insisted that liberals not only be marginalized (fair enough in politics) but that they be annihilated. They gave no quarter unless public opinion absolutely forced them to.

The grassroots believe that after all that, after moving to the right, after offering to compromise, after allowing our “red state Democrats” to run with the other side who then treated them with nothing but bad faith, now is the time for politicans to make a choice. Submit to them or stand with the resistance.

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What You See Is What You Get

by digby

I was just watching Bush give a speech and he said “it makes sense for the government to incent people.”

I’ve never really subscribed to the great man theory, but I have to say that in my experience organizations do take their cues from the person at the top. When you have a president who says things this ridiculous every single day, for more than five years, I think it’s safe to say that he is a boob. And his government is a perfect reflection of him: incompetent, arrogant, short-sighted, impulsive, secretive. A failure. That is the story of Bush’s life. let no one ever say again that it doesn’t matter who the president is becuase he’ll have great people around him. Bush’s government is as bad as anyone could have predicted when we saw him flub that answer about foreigh leaders back in 1999 — he was clearly unprepared and unqualified. And he’s proven it.

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Filling In The Blank Check

by digby

Be sure to read Glenn Greenwald’s piece today about the undercurrent in DC that suggests that the Republicans aren’t so sanguine about the NSA scandal accruing to their benefit after all. This is clearly becauase of the pressure coming from within, but I think that mostly has to do with Bush’s unpopularity generally (as I write below.) The bottom line is that the Eunuch Caucus needs some viagra, and quick.

Glenn links to this very revealing editorial in Pat Roberts’ home paper:

Many Kansans, including members of The Eagle editorial board, have long admired Sen. Pat Roberts for his plainspokenness and reputation for fair brokering of issues.

So it’s troubling that Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is fast gaining the reputation in Washington, D.C., as a reliable partisan apologist for the Bush administration on intelligence and security controversies.

We hope that’s not true. But Roberts’ credibility is on the line. . . .

What’s bothering many, though, is that Roberts seems prepared to write the Bush team a series of blank checks to conduct the war on terror, even to the point of ignoring policy mistakes and possible violations of law.

That’s not oversight — it’s looking the other way.

This is Kansas we’re talking about.

It’s also a sign that Rovism may have run its course. His MO, after all, is to entirely dominate the party from the top down, something that only works if the “top” can wield the whip. The Cheney episode was a window into the inner workings of the white house in this respect and it’s quite clear that Rove does not have the clout he once did. He couldn’t control Cheney. It’s going to be harder and harder for him to control this nervous congress. All lame ducks have a hard time retaining control — a lame duck at 39% is an albatross around his party’s neck.

Of course, Rove is probably a little bit distracted by certain personal matters too. And that’s one very good reason to keep the pressure on. Even if we can’t advance our own agenda, we can certainly help make it difficult for them to advance theirs. That’s just as important to successful politics as anything else.

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Ombusdman On The Runway

by digby

This is rich. Julia catches Daniel Okrent, erstwhile “public editor” of the NY Times, being critical of the war coverage after he vociferously defended it in his column a while back:

He said poor press coverage lead to the Iraq war, because “in a time of war, editors being [sic] to wear epaulettes on their shoulder” and The Times’ were not exceptional in jumping on the bandwagon.

I think Julia’s being much to hard on poor Mr Okrent. When he was defending the media’s coverage of the war, the Iraq invasion was the all the rage. Epaulettes were the new little black dress of imperialism. Sadly, it’s now as out of date as stone washed jeans. He’s just keeping himself on all the best invitation lists for fashion week.

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Institutional Apostasy

by digby

Kevin Drum has written a review of Bruce Bartlett’s “Imposter” (the heretical consrevative anti-Bush tract for the Washington Monthly.

Here’s an excerpt:

Put in plain terms, Bartlett’s charge is simple. George W. Bush, he says on page one, is a “pretend conservative.” Philosophically, Bush actually has more in common with liberals than he does with true conservatives.

Now, there’s not much question that this is overstated. Bush won’t be getting an invitation to join The New York Times editorial board any time soon. Among other things, he’s appointed hundreds of conservative judges, cut taxes repeatedly and dramatically, signed into law a ban on partial-birth abortions, and committed America to its biggest and costliest war of choice since Vietnam.

And yet, in a narrower but still provocative way, Bartlett makes a persuasive case. I’m a pretty conventional FDR liberal myself, but several years ago, I came to the same conclusion Bartlett did: Bush may be a Republican—boy howdy, is he a Republican—but he’s not the fire-breathing ideologue of liberal legend.

Kevin may be right that Bush has not governed like a doctrinaire conservative. But what’s important here is that it’s not the lack of conservatism that makes a guy like Bartlett jump ship. It’s the failure. As long as Bush was riding high you heard almost nothing from these people. Oh sure there was a column or two from iconoclasts like Paul Craig Roberts or the occasional jab from Pat Buchanan. But there was no real outcry over the prescription drug benefit or the steel tariffs or the deficit during the entire time Bush has been in office. Certainly the anti-conservative notion of nation building, which Bush ran on, was totally jettisoned from conservative discussion. (We are all Wilsonians now.) Conservatives supported him so enthusiastically that they frequently compared his oratory(!) to Winston Churchill’s:

To a greater extent than any politician since Churchill, President Bush has set forth and defended his policies in a series of speeches that combine intellectual brilliance and philosophical gravity. Today’s speech in Latvia was the latest in this series, and, like the others, it will be studied by historians for centuries to come.

This was the cult of Bush. But, as with all modern Republican presidents who become unpopular, he will be ignominiously removed from the pantheon. They did it to Nixon, they did it to Bush Sr and they are now doing it to Churchill the second. It’s always the same complaint. They failed not because of their conservatism, but because they were not conservative enough. It’s nonsense, of course. Even St. Reagan was no more “conservative” than the others — highest tax increase in history, remember?

Kevin discusses this and has a great insight about why liberals loathe Bush so much:

Although the popular perception of Nixon is still that of an archconservative who infuriated liberals, Bartlett reminds us that on domestic policy Nixon routinely caved in to public opinion and betrayed his conservative principles—for example, by creating the EPA, supporting enormous increases in Social Security, and proposing a guaranteed-incomes policy. Likewise, Bush spent nearly his entire first term talking tough but then caving in with barely a whimper to any interest group that might help him win a few more precious votes in 2004. Tariffs were enacted in order to appeal to steelworkers; the Medicare bill was designed to buy the votes of the elderly; and McCain-Feingold was signed in the hope that it would provide a temporary fundraising advantage for the Republican Party. If all of these actions were precisely the opposite of what a real conservative would do, so what? As Nixon might have said, don’t you know there’s an election coming up?

As far as all this goes, Bartlett’s argument is a good one, and the Nixon comparison even provides a neat and underappreciated explanation for why liberals hate Bush so much. After all, it’s possible to respect someone with whom you have a principled disagreement, but not so easy to respect someone whose only real principle is to crush anybody who gets in his way. (Bush’s alter-ego, Karl Rove, summed up this philosophy within earshot of journalist Ron Suskind when he yelled to an aide about someone who had displeased him, “We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!”) As with Nixon, it’s not really Bush’s conservatism that gets liberals seething. In fact, it’s just the opposite. It’s precisely his lack of political principle, combined with a vengeful ruthlessness so dark it’s scary, that makes liberals break out in hives.

Exactly. He’s the perfect president for Limbaugh Nation (the successor to Nixonland.) But then, that’s really what the modern Republican party is all about — the big money boys and the ruthless operatives. Everybody else in the party are just dupes:

“The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees…Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them.” Michael Scanlon, former communications director to Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff’s first lieutenant

(And by the way, so-called principled conservatives are just another brand of “wackos” to these guys.)

Rick Perlstein knows this terrain very, very well. In the course of interviewing various ideological leaders of the movement over the years he came to see that the activists and intellectuals have an amazing capacity for compartmentalization in which they quite willingly adopt the “ends justify the means” strategy of the ruthless operatives. But they are, unsurprisingly, incredibly dishonest about it. Perlstein writes:

This past year, I interviewed Richard Viguerie about conservatives and the presidential campaign. I showed him an infamous flier the Republican National Committee had willingly taken credit for, featuring a crossed-out Bible and the legend, “This will be Arkansas if you don’t vote.” “To do this,” Viguerie told me, “it reminds me of Bush the 41st, and not just him, but other non-conservative Republicans.”

Republicans are different from conservatives: that was one of the first lessons I learned when I started interviewing YAFers. I learned it making small talk with conservative publisher Jameson Campaigne, in Ottawa, Illinois, when I asked him if he golfed. He said something like: “Are you kidding? I’m a conservative, not a Republican.”

But back to Viguerie’s expression of same. With a couple of hours’ research I was able to find a mailer from an organization that was then one of his direct-mail clients that said “babies are being harvested and sold on the black market by Planned Parenthood.”

Why not cut corners like this, if you believe you are defending the unchanging ground of our changing experience? This is what many Americans of good faith seem to be hearing conservatives telling them.

It is what they are telling us. But, ofcourse, the modern Republican party is not conservative by any definition of conservatism. I’m not even sure it’s ideological at all, but to the extent it is, it’s radical. Yet the allegedly conservative party has enthusiastically supported a president who believes that you can wage wars, lower taxes and expand government all at the same time. That’s not just radical, it’s magical. And they can hardly raise their heads even today to oppose an administration that is radically expanding the police powers of the federal government. But it’s starting to happen. They can adjust their principles to anything except failure. A president at 40% simply cannot be a conservative. Conservatism is, after all, supposed to be tremendously popular in this country.

Here’s a little preview from the ultimate Bush worshippers, Powerline:

For reasons I don’t fully understand, there is something about “leaders,” especially self-appointed leaders, and most especially those who are drawn to intensive participation in organizations, that tends toward liberalism. We see this in politics all the time, of course: it is one thing to vote for conservatism, something else entirely to get it from our elected leaders.

All of which makes me especially thankful, this year, for democracy, limited government and free enterprise: the best measures yet devised to protect us from our leaders.

By the time it’s all over Bush is going to be seen as a coke-sniffing, frat boy hippy by the movement conservatives. This is how they do it. And then they’ll go back to doing the same things they always do — whatever it takes to win.

“Go after ’em like a son of a bitch” Richard Nixon

“I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics.” Newt Gingrich

“This whole thing about not kicking someone when they are down is BS – Not only do you kick him – You kick him until he passes out – then beat him over the head with a baseball bat – then roll him up in an old rug – and throw him off a cliff into the pounding surf below!!!!!”Michael Scanlon, former communications director to Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff’s first lieutenant

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Conduits

by digby

Jane is admirably doing battle with the WaPo again. Deborah Howell’s column today is the usual bizarre mixture of harsh theatre critic and sycophancy. I don’t get it.

I remember fondly the work of Geneva Overholser who actually worked as the readers representative and honestly attempted to analyse and assess the paper’s performance. Here was her take on the Lewinsky scandal (after she left the job):

“We allowed ourselves to be used by leakers, and we gave people cover — and encouraged their underhanded methods — by constantly quoting people anonymously.”

Here was Downie’s take:

In the deposition story, Downie said, the Post was asking readers to trust the paper, “which is why it is very important not to make mistakes. At the moment, I’m pleased to say to readers, look at our track record. Everything has been shown to be accurate and fair.”

That, of course, was utter crap. Read this study conducted by the Committee of Concerned Journalists, about the behavior of the press during the Lewinsky scandal:

“The findings of the study, conducted by the Committee of Concerned Journalists, raise questions about whether the press always maintained adequate skepticism about its sources. There were occasions, moreover, when the press got ahead of the facts in its basic reporting. Others then used that work to engage in sometimes reckless speculation and propaganda. … Overall, the research paints a picture of a news media culture that in breaking stories usually relied on legitimate sources and often was careful about the facts in the initial account. But even in these careful stories, the press at times tended to accept interpretations from those sources uncritically and may have had a penchant to emphasize the perspective of investigators over those being investigated. … At other times, reporting was based on sources whose knowledge was second hand, and this occasionally got journalists into trouble. … On occasion, the press also ferried speculation, some of which could have been construed as threats, from investigators into news accounts, raising questions about whether the press was sufficiently wary of being used by sources, especially law enforcement sources.”

Now we are supposed to take the reporting by people like Susan Schmidt, a primary Republican leak recipient, at face value on the Abramoff story. Sorry, fool me once … won’t get fooled again. There is no more “trusting the paper.” (Not to mention that she appears to have simply worked off the report of a dead man.)

Jane links to one terrific point that Paul Lukasiak made in her comments (which was inexplicably purged from the new WaPo comments section):

Paul said (among other things):

… I mean, personally, I stopped asking for the documents that Harris, Howell, Willis, Schmidt, and the rest of the Post claims provides proof that Jack Abramoff “directed” contributions to Democrats. When I looked into what little Howell and her cohorts did provide, I discovered that their “evidence” actually disproved their assertions. So I did further research…..and there is literally nothing which in the public record that suggests that Jack Abramoff was personally and directly involved in getting any of his clients to contribute to a single Democratic candidate. Zero. NADA. NOTHING.

Now, Howell, and Brady, and Schmidt, and Willis know this as well as I do. But the more we keep asking this question, the more likely it is that they will come up with a new “spin” on the meager facts that they do have that can indirectly tie Jack Abramoff to contributions made to Democratic politicians. Of course, those “ties” are no more solid than the “ties” that connect Jack Abramoff to the 9-11 attacks because some of the terrorists visited a casino owned by Abramoff.

If Susan Schmitt and the Post wanted to build a circumstantial case implicating Abramoff with the 9-11 attacks, she could do so. If Schmitt and the Post wanted to tie Jack Abramoff to Mafia hit men involved in the murder of the former owner of his casino, she could do so. But Schmitt and the Post have decided to tie Abramoff to the Democratic Party — with the same level of circumstantial and indirect evidence the Post could use to tie Abramoff to the 9-11 attacks and a mafia hit.

After everything they did during Lewinsky, they are back at it again without missing a beat. To make such assumptions about Abramoff’s “ties” to Democrats truly is not much different than tying Abramoff to the 9-11 attacks. And in this case there is evidence of the opposite being true. The tribes had long been Democratic constituents yet gave less to Democrats than Republicans once Abramoff began representing them. Abramoff was a long time Republican operative. There is documentary evidence that Abramoff was frustrated with his clients for failing to do everything he told them to do.

As Paul points out, the only documentary evidence ever used to back up the claims of the Post and elsewhere that Abramoff “directed” funds is the fact that funds went to Democrats. That is meaningless circumstantial nonsense.

Until there is something more substantial on which to base this claim of Abramoff “directing” funds, it is nothing but rank speculation. Susan Schmidt (who actually got an award for this nearly plagiarized coverage!) is particularly not credible on any speculative reporting. I simply do not trust her unless all the facts and all the sources are on the record. Her history requires it.

Pounding the Washington Post on this issue is a good idea. We may find that Abramoff did personally direct some money to Democrats. But it is outrageous that they continue to assert this as fact when they have none. If bloggers “look bad” somewhere down the road that’s a chance we’ll have to take. The Post “looks bad” right now and they should have to explain why they are continuing to assert something for which they can offer no proof.

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Teaching Them A Lesson

by digby

I got a very interesting trackback from “Right Thinking From The Left Coast” to my post “haters vs haters” that was unfortunately zapped when blogger deleted posts and comments.

Here’s an excerpt:

Sully’s got an interesting post up about how the left is more hateful than the right. First read this post, then this one. In the second post Sully links to this leftie blogger who disagrees, saying the right is more hateful.

[…]

In support of his assertion of Limbaugh’s “hatred” he offers this quote.

I said at the conclusion of previous hours—part of me that likes this. And some of you might say, “Rush, that’s horrible. Peace activists taken hostage.” Well, here’s why I like it. I like any time a bunch of leftist feel-good hand-wringers are shown reality.

[…]

Okay, a few comments here, if I may. I’ll preface my remarks by stating that I’m not a regular Limbaugh listener, though since Howard Stern has gone off the air I have found that I’ve tuned in to him a lot more during my ten minute morning drive. I’ll also stipulate that you could very reasonably make the argument that Michael Savage and Ann Coulter speak hatred. But Limbaugh? He’s always struck me as being provocative and opinionated, but I’ve never heard anything from him that I would consider “hatred.”

Take the quote above, which the leftie blogger has taken totally out of context. He’s not cheering the fact that people have been kidnapped. What he’s saying is that he likes the fact that, because of their own actions, these “peace” activists are being forced to deal with the consequences of their own stupid beliefs. It’s like when you have a guy who makes a living sticking his head into the mouths of alligators, and the alligator chomps down on his head. Can anyone really look at the guy with sympathy? He voluntarily stuck his head into the mouth of an alligator. Would it be “hateful” for someone like me to come along and say, “See? This is why you shouldn’t stick your head into an alligator’s mouth.” So when some raving moonbat “peace” activist assumes a haughty air of moral superiority and goes to where the Islamists are, and then the Islamists capture them and hold them for ransom, it’s not hateful at all to then say, “See? This is what your lofty ideals of peace get you.”

There is nothing hateful about enjoying the suffering of other people when that suffering is due to their own stupidity. We do this all the time. Some dumbass climbs an electricity tower and gets electrocuted. He had to climb over fifty signs warning him of the danger, telling him to keep out, yet he did it anyway. Most pragmatic people would say, “Let this be a lesson to everyone else.” I remember a story a few years back about a protest over a ban on BASE jumping off Half Dome here in California. The park service banned it because it was unsafe. To demonstrate how safe it was a bunch of jumpers climbed up there and began jumping off. One of the jumpers leaped off the edge, her chute failed to open, and she plunged to hear death. The less on to be learned here is that BASE jumping is indeed unsafe, and those who engage in it run the very real risk of dying from it. Such is the case with the peace activists.

I had a friend once a few years ago, a die hard leftie, an admitted capital-S socialist. We were discussing the situation in the Middle East, and I referred to the Islamists as our enemies.

[…]

He simply refused to recognize the fact that the Islamists would hate him simply by virtue of being who and what he was. He honestly believed that, if he had the chance, he could convince the Islamists that he was not their enemy, that they could peacefully coexist with his kind. He steadfastly refused to believe in the concept of enemies. The peace activists suffer from the same delusion. So, when people on the right say “These people hate you and will kill you,” and the lefties subsequently get kidnapped, how is this substantively different from a guy who voluntarily sticks his head into an alligator’s mouth and expects nothing bad to happen to him?

I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether it’s hateful to enjoy the suffering of others regardless of how “stupid” they are. (Psychologists would call it sociopathic.) Let’s just say that I think it’s cold and inhuman and leave it at that.

But there is a leap of logic here that’s worth exploring. If it is true that this suffering and death serves as a sort of teachable moment, we should also “kind of like” the beheadings of the other civilians captured in Iraq and Pakistan. They are dead at the hands of the same people who are teaching those peace activists a lesson. And they too were told that it is dangerous to do what they did and they did it anyway.They jumped off the same cliff as the peace activists. Of course they did it for different reasons. One did it purely for money. Another lived there for years working for Lockheed. One did it to tell “a story.” Another was there for decades doing humanitarian work. Should the lesson we take from their deaths be that they deserved what they got because they were too stupid to know that they might be killed?

Do soldiers deserve to die forbeing soft and doing good deeds in a violent war zone?

“When he got to Iraq, one captain was telling us that you were trained not to get out of your vehicle,” said his father, James McGaugh of Springdale. “He said he looked over and Dustin was out giving candy to a bunch of kids.”

Their commander in chief’s stated motivation is to “help the Iraqi people” because “freedom is the Almighty’s gift to each person in this world.” How earnest and naive is that? Perhaps he needs to be taught a lesson about war and killing and violence too.

These enjoyable teachable moments get complicated, don’t they? You really have to delve into people’s minds to be able to figure out whether it’s ok to enjoy their suffering or become enraged. Peace activists are easy. The right knows that they are putting their hands into the fire and deserve to get burned so they’ll understand that being a peace activist in a war zone is stupid. They can’t help but “kind of like it.” The kidnapping and beheading of the kid who went over to build satellite towers, on the other hand, made everyone crazy with anger. But it certainly appears that he quite stupidly put his head into the alligator’s mouth for no good reason at all. And the soldier who gets killed because he gives candy to children — well, he’s a hero, isn’t he?

It’s a good thing the right doesn’t believe in moral relativism or they might really get confused.

BTW: They are still threatening to kill the four Christian peace activists.

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“The Beltway’s Madwoman of Chaillot*

by digby

You really have to wonder who is ever going to be dumb enough to ever hire Mary Matalin again? This shooting mess was clearly her deal and she couldn’t have fucked it up worse than she did. She couldn’t handle her client and she’s still out there spinning like a top — and badly — when she should just shut the hell up. What a fun, fun day it was on Press the Meat.

Crooks and Liars has the full catastrophe on his web-site. Wolcott documents the strange facial expressions of the Madwoman of Chaillot.

But I haven’t heard anyone comment on Paul Gigot, GOP good ole boy who apparently lives somewhere in rural Nebraska:

Not looking at this, by the way, David, from—you know, I didn’t speak to anybody from the White House or the vice president’s office all week on this. It was looking at it from outside the Beltway and saying where did this story stand on the relative scale of importance? Looked to me to be a human tragedy, the vice president made a mistake, it was probably in not disclosing it himself, letting someone else do it. But that’s a relatively minor mistake. I think scandal standards are declining in Washington if this becomes another big, huge scandal which this is supposed to be a metaphor for for governing, a bunker of secrecy which is, I think, what some of the Democrats in the Senate were saying. This is a metaphor for the way this administration operates. I just don’t think that’s true. And so I think mockery was appropriate.

[…]

Well, I think—well, let’s make some distinctions between stories that really matter …

Yes, let’s do. For instance, let’s remember what it was like back when standards for scandals were much higher:

“Mr. Blumenthal’s [grand jury] testimony reveals a president doing much more than hiding an affair. He was using the powers of his office to create a false story that would destroy Ms. Lewinsky… Mr. Clinton was telling his most fervent supporter that his president was the victim of lies and a gross injustice. Wouldn’t Mr. Blumenthal want to tell everyone in the White House and around the world why his hero was innocent? If Mr. Clinton didn’t want his chief political communicator to broadcast this phony tale, he could have said so. There’s no record he did… In her interview with House managers on Sunday, Ms. Lewinsky seemed surprised when they asked her about Mr. Blumenthal’s testimony and the ‘stalker’ line. Maybe this explains the furious Democratic opposition even to videotaping her testimony.”

Now that’s a scandal with standards. About issues that really matter.

Gigot, I recall, was, at one time, none too pleased with those “outside the beltway” who didn’t seem to be too interested in impeaching the “evil” Bill Clinton. He didn’t think the American people’s standards were high enough:

The good news is that Mr. Hyde can finally step back and laugh about such nonsense, which he did in an interview yesterday. With impeachment ending, the 74-year-old chairman reflected on the duty he never wanted, his errors along the way and the meaning of Senate acquittal. He’s more cheerful than he has a right to be.

“I had a naive, utopian hope that as we documented the record, people who paid only passing attention would come to the conclusion that this was serious,” he says. “That just never happened.”

Like many others, he isn’t sure why. “I’m a little bewildered by the American people,” says the World War II Navy man. “I just don’t know if our standards have got so low that this behavior is tolerated.” He acknowledges that “this was a culture war,” and maybe the 1960s’ generation “revels in this guy’s success. I don’t know.”

One culprit Mr. Hyde is certain of is modern polling, which he now believes can be politically self-fulfilling. Snapshot polls are taken and then echoed by politicians and the media until their biases harden into concrete, if not wisdom. “Nobody wants to be the oddball,” he says.

Mr. Hyde won’t say so, but he also wasn’t helped by Ken Starr or his fellow GOP leaders. Mr. Starr waited too long to cut a deal with Monica Lewinsky, declined to indict anyone in the case, then dumped a referral on Congress that was only about Monica’s case and two months before an election at that.

“You’re right, we got sex, and that was the least viable topic for us to run on,” he concedes, after praising Mr. Starr for his perseverence.

Gigot won the Pulitzer prize for that. And it wasn’t for fiction.

Everybody let Gigot and Hyde down. The people, Ken Starr, Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in the senate — they all failed to remove the evil Clinton from office. Now Gigot is on television complaining that our standards for scandals have been lowered.

How do these people manage to live normal lives with this lack of self awareness?

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Genius Over Genius

by digby

The New York Times

Should the composer Richard Einhorn’s “Voices of Light” be heard as an oratorio that accompanies the 1928 silent film classic “The Passion of Joan of Arc”? Or is it the film, by the Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer, that accompanies Mr. Einhorn’s 80-minute musical work?

That is the question raised by Mr. Einhorn’s ambitious score. In any event, the audience that packed the Winter Garden in Lower Manhattan on Thursday night for a free performance seemed too swept away by “Voices of Light” to care about its category.

Presented as part of the World Financial Center’s Arts + Events series, “Voices of Light” brought together the Ensemble Sospeso, a contemporary-music group beefed up here to an orchestra of 37, the New Amsterdam Singers, four fine vocal soloists, and Anonymous 4, the officially disbanded early-music vocal quartet, which reunited for this performance. As intended, Mr. Einhorn’s work was performed while the film that inspired it was screened.

“Voices of Light” has been performed more than 100 times around the world over the last 10 years, providing a nice income source for Mr. Einhorn, who has also been a record producer. If nothing else, the composer deserves thanks for introducing new audiences to Dreyer’s masterpiece, which was nearly lost.

Shortly after its premiere, the film was destroyed in a fire. Though shattered, Dreyer reconstructed an acceptable version using negatives from outtakes. Incredibly, the replacement film was lost in a second fire. For decades the work was known only through various bastardized versions. Then, in 1981, as Mr. Einhorn explained to the audience, an intact copy of the original film was discovered in a janitor’s closet in a mental hospital in Oslo. When Mr. Einhorn saw this wonderfully restored print, he was moved to compose his score.

“Voices of Light” has a libretto of Latin and French texts assembled by Mr. Einhorn. Anonymous 4 sing quotations of Joan’s words from the transcript of her trial for blasphemy in 1431. The chorus and soloists sing a patchwork of writings from medieval mystics, mostly women. Mr. Einhorn’s sensitive score deftly shifts styles from evocations of neomedieval counterpoint to wistful modal murmurings over droning pedal tones, from bursts of Minimalistic repetitions to moments of piercing modern harmony.

While never getting in the way, the music heightens the impact of this pathbreaking film, which tells the story of Joan’s trial at the hands of French clerics who supported the occupying English forces in 15th-century France. Most of the characters are shot in discomfiting close-ups. You see the faces of officious and accusing priests, with warts, creviced skin, bad teeth and bulbous noses. You are riveted by the face of Joan (Renée Maria Falconetti), which conveys an eerie mix of wide-eyed fear and delirious elation.

David Hattner conducted a calmly authoritative performance that featured Susan Narucki (soprano), Janice Meyerson (mezzo-soprano), Mark Bleeke (tenor) and Kevin Deas (bass) as the vocal soloists. The score can be heard on a Sony Classical CD. But ideally this music should be experienced as a live complement to Dreyer’s stunning film.

The performance was taped for broadcast on the WNYC-FM (93.9) show “New Sounds” on March 2.

I thought you all should see this because I imagine most of you don’t know that the brilliant “tristero” is also the brilliant Richard Einhorn.

If you haven’t had the opportunity to see this film on DVD, accompanied by Richard’s amazing score, then I urge you to get it. It’s not like any silent film you’ve ever seen — and of course it’s not actually silent. The score speaks more eloquently than any dialog short of Shakespeare could match.

The film and score are great artistic achievements, but they are also extremely interesting for their sociological insight. Based as it is on the transcripts of Joan’s trial for heresy, I never thought this film would have such resonance to events in my own lifetime — but it does. Same as it ever was.

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