Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

What In God’s Name Could He Have Been Thinking?

I’ve noticed that a lot of people are still surprised that Saddam behaved as he did before the war in the face of the fact that he was not as imminently dangerous as we portrayed him to be. Kevin Drum says today, “David is right to say that Saddam’s non-cooperation remains a mystery if he really didn’t have any WMD…”

I can think of several reasonable explanations.

First, Saddam was a strongman dictator who maintained his power, both within the country and in the region, through fear and violence. Kowtowing to the UN and especially to the US would have substantially weakened his reputation as a ruthless tyrant who was willing to do anything to stay in power. If a totalitarian shows weakness, the whole house of cards can come tumbling down. It’s possible that he felt he had to bluff or lose his grip on power from within.

And perhaps he simply made the logical calculation that, as the North Korea situation has shown, the US will not unilaterally invade a nuclear power and will hesitate to put large numbers of troops in the way of lethal unconventional weapons. Anyone in his shoes might have felt it was in his best interests to keep the world guessing about his WMD capabilities and willingness to use them. When it became clear last fall that the US was going to call his bluff, it appears to me that instead of preparing a traditional defense and going down in a blaze of glory, he made plans to go underground or escape (and perhaps live to fight another day.) I doubt very seriously that even crazy Saddam ever entertained the illusion that his army could defeat the US military in a straight up fight. Once that was inevitable, he went to plan B. Plan A was to keep the world guessing as long as he could about what he was really capable of .

On a sidenote, the mere fact that we called his bluff in defiance of the whole world indicated at the time that Bush knew Saddam didn’t really have a large stockpile of unconventional weapons. Would he have staged a long public buildup if he really thought there was a chance that tens of thousands of US troops stationed on the Kuwait border could be killed in their sleep while awaiting the published invasion date of the middle of March? I don’t think so. They knew it would be a cakewalk. They said so. And Saddam, of course, knew this better than anyone.

It was the main reason many people logically didn’t buy the argument for preemption. As with Korea, we would have tried a lot harder to talk him down if we thought he really had the capability of killing large numbers of American boys and girls in one fell swoop. (That much death and carnage for a controversial war of choice would have been terrible politics and Uncle Karl wouldn’t have stood for it.) Those of us who were paying attention knew this when Uncle Dick blew the pooch with his August speech saying that we were goin’ in come hell or high water. The whole UN inspections/cooperation charade was staged for the single purpose of buying time to get the troops in place and to try to get some financial backing from rich countries.

On the other hand, I find it quite interesting that many of the people who claimed Saddam was an irrational actor who blithely dismissed the clear fact that his country would be decimated if he actually launched a WMD at anybody, now seem surprised that he might have acted irrationally in this particular way. Apparently, it hasn’t occurred to them that crazy people could manifest their craziness in any way other than waging a suicidal war with unconventional weapons against innocent people. Who would have ever dreamed that a crazy, megalomaniac would bluster and lie in the face of certain defeat? Nobody’s that crazy, right?

I have no idea whether Saddam had any WMD. If he didn’t, I’m sure he wished he did. But it is quite clear that the US and British governments felt confident that if he had anything it wasn’t catastrophically dangerous. They also knew that, as a hated and brutal tyrant, he was not in a position to become a good and wholesome global citizen by allowing the US and the UN to dictate matters of Iraqi sovereignty. Totalitarian dictators don’t stay in power long if they show that kind of weakness.

Both Bush and Blair made it quite clear that nothing Saddam could have done, short of killing his sons and then blowing his brains out on national television, could have kept the US and UK from invading and overthrowing him once the decision was made. There was obviously no amount of “cooperation” that could have saved him and I don’t imagine that was lost on him. That’s the kind of thinking a guy like him could really appreciate.

Saddam surely knew by August of 2002 that we knew he didn’t have large stockpiles of WMD and that we didn’t care. He was dead meat from that point on. He just hung on as long as he could until the day of reckoning.

Attitude Adjustment

Fine blogs everywhere, these days. Mark Singer of this new (to me, anyway) group blog, Not Geniuses, writes about the MoveOn primary:

Alright, if you’re one of those folks who has actually been writing blog-posts on why MoveOn is unnecessary, I recommend you read this post, ’cause, folks, MoveOn is clutch.

I’m not sure I agree that this primary is an absolutely essential win, but I do think that MoveOn is significant and should be closely watched by all the candidates.

It’s a mistake to tag MoveOn as a particularly “liberal” organization and I hope that the Party doesn’t make the mistake of dividing itself on this. MoveOn is a partisan organization — it’s really not all that ideological. It was formed to try to put a stop to the impeachment charade and its focus is still on stopping the undemocratic power grab of a Republican Party that has become dangerously radical, increasingly unaccountable and verging on open corruption.

This is the reason that Dean is a favorite of rank and file Democrats and is likely to win the MoveOn primary. He’s not really all that liberal, either, but he is a partisan. He’s actually an iconoclastic Democratic centrist who takes some pretty bold stands outside party orthodoxy on both the left and the right. (I don’t think that is a bad idea at all because Democrats are presently such ciphers in the media that any change in predictable storylines is a good thing.) His rivals of both parties want to paint him as a wacked-out hippy Governor Moonbeam, but that’s just politics. And, it’s actually a good test to see how he holds up. Any serious Democrat has to show he can take a punch because if he has the personal misfortune to actually beat President Asterisk, the right wing is going to go completely apeshit. These guys aren’t the first to play dirty politics, but they are the first to privatize and then turn a profit at it.

More pertinently, Dean just doesn’t look like a wacked out liberal when you watch him. He comes off like a slightly cranky, straight talking, no bullshit, common sense, grown-up guy guy. Think Truman, Perot, Bogart, McCain, Sinatra — he’s hot not cool. This is a good American archetype. (Or, using the Lakoff paradigm, he’s one of the strong father types who could make Junior’s inchoate, brittle gibberish look gawky and adolescent by comparison.)

I can’t think of a more conventional strategy than running to the left in the primary, yet everybody’s acting like that is some sort of bizarre, unprecedented move. And, he’s energizing the base which also seems to be interpreted as a grave tactical error, for some reason. You would think that after ’00 and ’02, where only a handful of votes changed the course of history, it would be obvious that motivating every single member to vote would be at the very top of the Democratic Party’s priority list. And, the rallying cry for Democrats is not going to be any particular plan or program, it’s going to be passionate, engaging partisan rhetoric. This is a red meat era and sober moderate statesmanship will be overwhelmed by a shitstorm of right wing fire breathing — and that’s if the torpid infotainers bother to cover them at all.

I don’t think the powers that be are aware of how hopeless many Democrats feel as they watch Junior get away with murder over and over again, particularly after the 8 solid years of brutal partisan attacks on Clinton. I get very worried that enough Democrats are going to succumb to the Rove juggernaut strategy to hand him the election with a low Dem turnout. If you get your news from television it’s very easy to believe that Bush is inevitable, even if you think he’s a menace, if only because the Democrats are almost invisible.

That’s why I think the grassroots are responding to Dean for reasons unrelated to ideology. (And, I think most liberal Dems concur with Jeanne D’Arc on this.) It’s a visceral reaction to somebody who seems willing to take on the Republicans and a belief that it will take somebody with balls, like him, to rouse the somnambulant electorate.

The vein of enthusiasm into which Dean has tapped is Democratic partisanship. I’m sorry if that word is considered unseemly on our side, but it’s pretty obvious that the other side doesn’t have any problem with it. It’s a shame we all can’t get along, but we can’t. Grassroots groups like MoveOn know this is a fight.

I’m not committed to Dean, but I’ve gotta say, I like his attitude.

My Tennessee Doppelganger

The Rush Limbaugh Show is like VIDEODROME or The RING once you are exposed enough there is a point of no return like a bad trip on LSD – you believe in your paranoid delusion that you have come down and re-entered reality, but in matter of fact you are sitting in a padded room in a straight jacket in a mental institution.

This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Thanks to South Knox Bubba for the introduction.

Counterfeit Warhol

Reader Kathryn Zalewski forwarded this to me some time ago. I had planned to post it and then the war happened.

This is what Rove understands about America and the Democrats don’t:

They call my President a “cowboy”?

It used to tick me off when the liberals called our President a

cowboy, but the more I think about it, the more I like it.

When I was a kid, cowboys were heroes. You know, the ones in the

white hats, not the black hats. There was Tom Mix, Buck Jones,

Johnny Mack Brown, Hopalong Cassidy, Red Ryder, Gene Autry, Roy

Rogers, then later Marshall Matt Dillon. Personally, I think Gene

Autry could whip em all, and then sing a song to his girl friend. He

was my favorite.

What were common attributes of these legendary cowboys? Here are a

few:

1. They never looked for trouble.

2. When it came, they faced it with courage.

3. They were always on the side of right.

4. They defended good people against bad people.

5. They had high morals.

6. They had good manners.

7. They were honest.

8. They spoke their minds and they spoke the truth, regardless of

what people thought or “political correctness,” which no one had

ever heard of back then.

9. They were a beacon of integrity in the

wild, wild west.

10. They were respected. When they walked into a

saloon (where they usually drank only sarsaparilla), the place

became quiet, and the bad guys kept their distance.

11. If in a gunfight, they could outdraw anyone. If in a fistfight,

they could whip anyone.

12. They always won. They always got their man. In victory, they

rode off into the sunset.

Those were the days when there was such a thing as right and wrong,

something blurred in our modern world, and denied by many. Those

were the days when women were respected and treated as ladies,

because they acted like ladies.

They represent something good, something pure that America has been missing.

Ronald Reagan was a cowboy. I like Ronald Reagan, he was brave,

positive, and he gave us hope. He wore a white hat. To the

consternation of his liberal critics, he had the courage to call a

spade a spade and call the former Soviet Union what it was — the

evil empire. Liberals hated Ronald Reagan.

They also hate President Bush because he distinguishes between good

and evil He calls a spade a spade, and after 9-11 called evil

“evil,” without mincing any words, to the shock of the liberal

establishment. That’s what cowboys do, you know. He also told the

French to “put their cards on the table” (old west talk), which they

did, exposing their cowardice and greed.

The Arabs are wrong. In the old West, might did not make right.

Right made right. Cowboys in white hats were always on the side of

right, and that was their might.

I am glad my President is a cowboy. He will get his man. Cowboys do,

you know.

OK. Obviously we are dealing with someone who is on serious medication. But, this is actually pretty representative of the kind of feeling that Junior engenders in a good portion of the citizenry. Sure, some of it’s just team loyalty, but there are a number of people who think he’s a straight shooter, an everyman of simple values and authentic virtues, masculine, good hearted and tough.

Needless to say, those paying attention to even the most obvious biographical details know that none of this is true. He’s a spoiled, rich, playboy who fell into politics by trading on his father’s name and contacts. He’s a failed businessman and ex-alcoholic who’s masculine virtues are defined by bullying towel snapping and homoerotic hazing rituals. He’s stupid, thin skinned and easily rattled. He consistently shafts the weak in favor of the powerful and he has a callous bloodthirsty streak.

In Bush’s Brain, How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential the authors quote Rove as saying that most Americans understand politics as “watching TV with the sound turned off.” The thing with Bush is that he looks right in his costumes, whether codpiece or chaps, and his 10 second soundbites are well crafted and effective. And, it’s not because people are dupes or morons that they buy this nonsense, it’s simply because they understand everything in their lives through simplistic TV images.

The poor lady who wrote this surreal tribute to the code of the west doesn’t even know that she was actually writing a paeon to a bunch of smart Jewish immigrants who took the cheap fiction of dimestore novels and created a picture of the American West for the sole purpose of appealing to masses of uneducated urban factory workers. She’s so unaware that she doesn’t seem to recognise that she’s talking about movie actors.

Ronald Reagan wasn’t a cowboy. He was a guy who played a cowboy who later became president. George W. Bush is a guy playing Ronald Reagan playing a cowboy who later became president. And it doesn’t make any difference. Karl Rove, like Michael Deaver before him, realizes that most Americans see life through a media prism that’s now completely self-referential.

It has always been true that politicians and leaders evoked archetypal images for political purposes– Lincoln the rail splitter, TR the virile “mans man.” But, starting with Reagan, we saw for the first time a circular reference between the mythmaker and the image itself. He was a professional actor engaged in making a myth that later became the image for his Presidency.

Junior is like a second generation copy of that same image, slightly off center and lacking clarity. He’s a counterfeit Warhol, an ironic image of an image, made valuable only by the wilfull acquiesence of a lazy media that depends upon the Republican establishment to write its scripts and fill its yawning, greedy mouth. (It is no accident that the Bush team has planted the meme of John Kerry as “Thurston Howell III.” That’s the kind of image the American people understand instantly. According to Salon Kerry’s spokesman, David Wade, suggested the GOP “should lay off the ‘Gilligan’s Island’ imagery before we cast George W. Bush as Gilligan in the remake.” Oh how perfect that would be…)

The Democrats can do better than President Blurry with almost any candidate in the race if they will just feed the beast what it needs to live (a good story) and recognize that the American people don’t care anymore about what a president actually says but only that he is “presidential,” however that image is defined by the current zeitgeist.

We must, of course, give them the subtance this country so desperately needs, but we must realize that that substance is relevant only to the 22 bloggers and 367 activists who give a damn. To win, our candidate must be a first generation copy of an image that the entertainment media have taught the American people to love.

That’s what we’ve come to folks. But then, when you read the kind of drivel that this poor misguided “liberal” hater believes, it’s pretty obvious that there is no turning back.

Clarification: Kathryn Zalewski did not personally write the cowboy nonsense. It was sent to her and she merely forwarded it to me. You can understand why she would not want anyone to be even slightly confused on that issue. Sorry Kathryn.

Total Recall

Can I just say that Democrats really, really need to take some political Viagra, and I mean by the fistfull?

I live in Santa Monica, California fondly known as Soviet Monica. Tom “SDS” Hayden was my state senator for many years, for gawd’s sake. Yet, the anti-recall {of Gov. Davis) signature gatherers in this town are trying to get people to sign the petition by telling them it’s a proposal to “help teachers.” I read the thing and when I realized it was about the recall, I asked the guy why he didn’t say it upfront, the pro-recall people certainly aren’t shy. He said that being pro-teacher is always better than being anti-Republican.

I’m not kidding.

If Democrats cannot get Santa Monicans to sign a petition against an undemocratic, dishonest, power grab funded by a fat cat GOP scumbag for his own purposes, by honestly saying, “please sign a petition against the wasteful Republican recall campaign to unseat the Governor who was just elected last November,” then we really are screwed. People may hate Davis but even William Kristol admits that one of the things that distinguishes us from a banana republic is the fact the we hold the concept of regularly scheduled elections to be fairly sacred.

As Inspector Clousseau says, “naht innymoore!”

Democrats have to learn to face down wing nuts. As long as they are the only ones willing to get in the opposition’s face, then we will lose. This was simply pathetic. And 80% of the people were just walking on by.

As far as I’m concerned the anti-recall petitioners could win just by saying, “please sign this petition to deny the man who made millions ruining your sleep with those infernal car alarms from buying the governorship.” Even Republicans would sign it.

The Forgetful Private, the Missing WMD and The Band of Liars who tie it all together :

I saw the BBC documentary and pretty much thought it was bullshit and here’s why. The rescue sounded pretty pro forma to me. Even if Special Forces knew that the Iraqi bad guys had moved off they would have entered the same way. It was a war zone. They can’t and don’t fuck around. They make a lot of noise for a reason — to scare the enemy.

The problem wasn’t ever Pvt. Lynch or her rescuers. They were all brave people. The problem was always the Bush administration marketing executives who turned it into the embarrassing made-for-television soap opera it became. Who wants to bet me 5 bucks that the guys who wrote the embarrassing little script that is only now being sorta, kinda explored by the stenographers of the media brothel are these fellows, who not so coincidentally include our newest candidate for biggest liar on the face of the planet, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s prevaricating “dodgy dossier” spinmeister, Alistair Campbell?”

The above linked article, dated 11/17/02, contains a piece of information that should be just a little bit interesting to the braindead, botoxed press corp if they ever actually left their dressing rooms — that is that it’s these ratfuckers who were writing the “papers” that supposedly proved that Iraq was crawling with germs, chem and nukes:

It was Wilkinson who spearheaded the successful Afghan women’s campaign last year. A Naval Reserve officer, Wilkinson got his start working with Bush ally Texas Rep. Dick Armey. He’s the go-to guy when the White House needs information against its enemies.

In the last few weeks, he and his underlings have weeded through hundreds of pages of news clippings, U.N. resolutions and State Department reports to compile an arsenal of documents against Saddam Hussein. They released the first round last week: “Decade of Defiance and Deception” (a broken-U.N.-resolutions hit parade).

Then there’s Tucker Eskew, 41, a savvy South Carolinian, who will soon be named the director of the new Office of Global Communications, which will be formally launched this fall. Neither a Texan nor a lifelong Bushie, he earned his stripes during the Florida election mess by becoming the campaign’s tropical smooth-talker.

During the Afghan conflict, the White House sent Eskew to London, where he worked with British spin master Alastair Campbell on setting up the first version of an actual war “war room.” Campbell was an inspiration for Bill Clinton’s 24/7 rapid-response communications team.

Now Campbell is also a member of the Band and is working in tandem with the White House. When Prime Minister Tony Blair meets with Parliament next week, for example, he will release a “white paper”—the detailed argument—that backs up George W. Bush.

Yesterday, Eskew tested the rapid-response skill that he honed working with Campbell. He responded to Iraq’s offer to accept inspectors “without conditions” with a document itemizing every time Iraq agreed to “unconditional” inspections only to go back on his word.

It was Bartlett, Bush’s right-hand man and the 31-year-old leader of the Band, who has insisted that this and all documents be sourced. Wilkinson spent hours footnoting the 22-page “Decade of Defiance” document released last week, for example. “We compiled every single possible bit of research we could find and then set out to verify, verify, verify,” Wilkinson explains.

Wow. Big of them to insist on sourcing. And Wilkinson spent hours verifying the information. I wonder what went wrong?

Apparently it is considered normal in DC for the Bush administration to use dirty tricksters and spin doctors to make the case for war. At least nobody thought it was wierd at the time this perky little item was written. But, you would think that with all the hoopla that’s been raised in recent weeks about why the hell we haven’t found any evidence of the WMD that somebody in Washington would be asking why the White House felt it needed a campaign “war room” full of political operatives to sell the war.

And just so you know the caliber of the people that our Dear Leader put in charge of “spinning” the case for overthrow, I wrote about “GI Jim” Wilkinson back in April when he was threatening Michael Wolfe with bodily harm. (If he didn’t feed Steno Sue that “Rambo” version of Lynch’s humvee accident, I’d be very surprised. The guy has a seriously sickening smarmy streak.) But, Tucker Eskew is a real peach in his own right. Just ask John McCain. Eskew was the guy who ran “communications” for the Bush primary campaign in South Carolina and took his “rough play” style to the Florida recount.. He’s been very richly rewarded for his classy work on both campaigns:

”The McCain campaign is squawking because we hit them where they hurt,” Eskew said. ”McCain and the media created a myth of the military monolith, and we exploded that. We challenged him on his greatest point of pride, and they stomped their feet, pointed fingers, and whined.”

Jim Hightower, unsurprisingly was on to this some time ago.

Digby Phone Home

Reports of my death, deportation, incarceration (and sex change operation…?) are highly exaggerated. My apologies for not leaving word and heartfelt thanks to those of you who wrote e-mails and comments.

In fact, I am alive and well and returned from a journey into the heart of darkness of George W. Bush’s America. Eschewing my pansy-assed effete internet habit for a time, I stupidly got myself hooked on the hard stuff and ended up ripped out of my mind on Rush’s AM Ecstasy. Living on burnt meat and raw porn, Fox news and liberal bashing, my mind devolved into an altered state of consciousness, awash in arrogance and testosterone, transformed into the hostile fugue state of the talk radio junkie.

After the first couple of days of painful cognitive dissonance, the sheer confidence and daring of Right wing propaganda started to work on my subconscious. And, I tell you, it was a relief, a fucking holiday from the frustration, confusion and lightheadedness I associate with trying to limn “reality” these days, just letting my id take over. Critical thinking is for losers. See, RushBillSavageSean remove doubt and free your mind. All you have to do is join the team, and suddenly everything makes sense again.

This drug is potent. A quick hit of Rush in the morning and you’re sure of yourself and the world around you. You feel strong. You look like a winner. You are on top.

In this era of post modern politics and surreal media tidal waves, this is a drug that brings clarity to a confusing world. It’s intoxicating in its simplicity. Unlike the faggoty “nuanced” Democrats, the Republicans (or Real Americans) are providing a road map through the maze of conflicting quick-cut images and babbling 10 second soundbites that pass for “news.” If you listen to AM talkradio or watch FoxNews the strange feeling of living in an alternate reality melts away. They have the answers.

And like a thunderbolt from on high, you quickly realize that the single most important truth in life is that the Democratic Party is the only thing standing between you and perfect All-American happiness. Democrats are weak yet powerful, evil yet impotent, stupid yet cunning, useless, dangerous and insane all at once. Liberal Democrats (which they all are — liberal, that is) aka “the Left”, “Hollywood,” “elitists,” “homosexuals,” “feminists,” “environmentalists,” “ PC Police” etc. are, quite simply, tools of Satan.

If you listen to Rush and his Boyz in the (wrinkle-free, 250 thread count percale) Hood, over time you will come to realize that there is no problem that will not instantly be solved on the day the last Democrat in America cries uncle and the Party ceases to exist. Only then will there be the Republican utopia of gun-toting, Gawd fearing millionaires, no taxes and a big, huge, gas hogging Hummer (you know what I’m talkin’ about, now) in every garage.

But, until the joyous day of the Democratic Party’s Gotterdamerung, Real Americans must remain vigilant and ever ready to smite the unbelievers one by one, using any means necessary. Liberals are the sick and depraved virus that keep REAL MEN —and the women who crochet their codpieces — from becoming the rich and powerful Masters of the Universe that Jesus has anointed them to be.

Yup, there is some powerful mojo out there in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Alls ya gots ta do to get in on the party is listen up. The Mighty Wurlitzer’s got talent on loan from G-O-D.

And, the beautiful thing is that you can feed your monkey anywhere at any time of the day just by turning that radio dial. Even down at the Goodyear tire store or the DMV or the pharmacy or the car pool on the way to work, you can be assured that your RushSeanSavageBillNeal fix is right there if you only perk up your ears. It’s the jungle drum of middle America, relentless and ever present. The good stuff is on tap and free to all takers and once you get a little taste it’s pretty sure you’re going to come back for more. It feels so good to be suuure and strong and IN CONTROL.

I’m only back from the brink because I went online looking for the recipe of a drink called a “Down the (Orrin) Hatch” I had at the Jenna Bush wet t-shirt Sunday school fundraiser on Father’s Day. (It’s two parts ephedra to one part caffeine free-diet coke, by the way.) Anyway, I happened upon this site and suddenly my system was flooded with adrenaline, my mind filled with fragmented memories of a time before when I questioned the holy goodness of My Dear Leader.

I broke out in a cold sweat as I started madly clicking through the blogroll like a crazy person. I went here, and here and here and here— places where people were criticizing my Commander in Chief – in fact he’s considered a virtual idiot by most! There were places where Republicans weren’t thought infallible, places where people were bemused and didn’t understand why 40% of Americans believe that the military had found WMD in Iraq … (“My God,” I thought, “who the hell has them, then?”)

I got dizzy and fell to my knees. I crawled across the floor, desperate to turn on the radio and I couldn’t… quite…reach… it…

When I awoke, several hours or several days later, (I still don’t know how long I was out) I was safely in the bosom of my people – detoxed, cleansed in body, mind and spirit. I am back to my old self – raging at the television, compulsively reading foreign newspapers searching for information rather than entertainment and yes, using ever more foul language to describe the supine sword swallowing circus freaks we call “journalists.” I’m confused again, worried about a country that will, apparently, believe anything if it makes them feel good for the moment, wondering if we are actually, finally, rejecting modernism and the Enlightenment in favor of a po-mo, faith-based, fragmented, focus-group distorted mirror of reality. I’m moody, befuddled and mad.

In other words, I’m back. Blogovia saved me. Thanks, guys.

Dmitriiiii

As anyone who reads this blog knows, Operation Strangelove is an every night event here at Hullabaloo. But, tonight was a very special night in which the Artists Network held a screening of the Greatest Movie Ever Made in Battery Park overlooking Ground Zero, followed by “The Art of Dissent: Satire and Protest” Panel immediately afterwards featuring:

Janeane Garafolo (recent target of blacklist threats)

Art Spiegelman (“Maus”, The New Yorker)

Jeremy Pikser (screenwriter, “Bullworth”, “Reds”)

David Rees (“Get Your War On”)

Gene Seymour (Newsday film and Jazz critic)

representative from the Guerrilla Girls (who make their anonymous appearances in gorilla masks)

Moderator: critic John Leonard (CBS Sunday Morning, New York Magazine, Harper’s, The Nation)

Nile Southern, son of screenwriter Terry Southern, and September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows will introduce.

Wish I could have been there. But, the hearts of Stanley Kubrick and Peter Sellars and little old me beat here tonight on Santa Monica beach right along with them. Terry Southern, the “hippest guy on the planet” is sharing a laugh with all of us too — stunned as we all are that fiction has sprung to vibrant life, resulting in dialog that, until recently, could only have been called satire:

“I’m not into nuance”

“And, does that mean you couldn’t go in there and take a television camera or get a still photographer and take a picture of something that was imperfect, untidy? I could do that in any city in America. Think what’s happened in our cities when we’ve had riots, and problems, and looting. Stuff happens! But in terms of what’s going on in that country, it is a fundamental misunderstanding to see those images over, and over, and over again of some boy walking out with a vase and say, “Oh, my goodness, you didn’t have a plan.” That’s nonsense. They know what they’re doing, and they’re doing a terrific job. And it’s untidy, and freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things, and that’s what’s going to happen here.”

“This is still a dangerous world. It’s a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses.”

“There’s an old poster out West, as I recall, that said, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive. All I’m doing is remembering. When I was a kid I remember that they used to put out there in the Old West a wanted poster. It said, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.”

Even Terry couldn’t have made this shit up.

Reality is Art and Art is Reality and don’t ever forget it. If they can shut you down, they will. They always do.

Many thanks to the great Uggabugga, king of the graphic thunderbolt, for the tip.

The Hips vs The Straights

I would like to applaud TAPPED (a great blog, in any case) for correcting a common misapprehension about Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party. They cite Joe Klein’s egregiously mistaken assertion in Time in which he says, “One could argue that the only winning strategy for Democrats in the past nine presidential campaigns has been camouflage.”

TAPPED responds:

Bill Clinton wasn’t a camouflaged liberal. He was a genuine centrist, who combined liberal views on some issues with moderate, even conservative, views on others. So was Jimmy Carter, more or less. The most successful act of campaign-trail camoflage during the past couple of elections has been that of George W. Bush, a hard conservative who ran as a center-right candidate. Yes, the Democrats have a weak field. But during the last few years it’s been Republicans, not Democrats, who have had to hide their true beliefs on most issues to build a political majority.

Thank You.

Like most purveyors of DC conventional wisdom, Klein persists in seeing Clinton and Bush through his own psychological prism. The reporting about both Presidents says much more about the establishment political press than it does about either men. It’s not about politics. It’s about them.

Back in ’92, Klein and all the others were just giddy with excitement when they realized that the first baby-boomer (like them!) was going to be president. Instead of Guy Lombardo we had Fleetwood Mac, man! It was like being in college again. All night bull sessions, solidarity with the brothas, takin’ down tha man. It was finally happening. A liberal JFK kinda guy was coming to power and it felt good. (Of course, Clinton didn’t run as a liberal, but that picture shaking hands with Jack said it all, right?)

Then they woke up with a morning-after hangover to turn to the face on the pillow next to them and saw that, like them, he was actually a paunchy professional whose adolescent idealism had long ago been subsumed by compromising practical concerns and failed marriage and bloated ambitions and mid-life insecurities. He was a damned politician. They had projected their younger, better selves onto Bill Clinton and saw their older cynical selves reflected back. He was them and they hated him for it.

Klein says Bush, on the other hand, is “bold, decisive, uncomplicated, a man of real convictions who has not been afraid to take unpopular positions.”

This is how Klein sees himself today, cleansed of Clintonian complexity, filled with manly courage and moral clarity. The description bears little resemblance to Bush, however. TAPPED asks,

“Can Klein name a single issue on which Bush has taken a clear position that was deeply unpopular? On the most controversial issues, like therapeutic cloning, Bush has taken muddled, carefully-calibrated stands designed by Karl Rove. Where Bush has pursued a very conservative agenda, he has mostly been forced to adopt moderate rhetoric to shade over hard-right views.”

Klein is being purposefully blind and to such a degree that you can only conclude that he is unable to see Bush in a realistic light. To him, Bush is the anti-Clinton, the modern boomer – a playa, an operator, a winner. Like Klein. He has “a clever team.” (Like Ken Lay.) He’s a man. Like your Dad was a man. A 50’s style man.

Neither of Klein’s CW characterizations bear any relationship with reality. Clinton had never been much of an idealist and Bush is not a man of real conviction. The first was always an ambitious politician driven to power and the latter is the glad-handing celebrity front man for a very powerful political operation. They are both products of their age, but not in the way the media perceive them.

This is another chapter in the long ongoing saga of the baby boomers and it isn’t going to end until the last one of us dies. It will forever be the hips vs the straights even though very, very few of us have consistently been one or the other. I figure the last one of us to be president will probably be 2012 or 2016. I don’t think the country would survive much more.

Stand By Your Man

I’m with Atrios on this:

Great, just what we need – non-stop nitpicking of the candidates by “even the liberal” TNR. Look, I’m not against constructive criticism but this kind of carping isn’t exactly helpful. Besides, I thought that was EVERYONE ELSE IN THE MEDIA’s role.

So, the Dems will get stepped on from the left over at the Nation, smacked into submission from the center by The American Prospect, and bludgeoned from the right by the New Republican – and that’s the liberal media for god’s sake.

I’ve also noticed this self-destructive impulse on the part of the SCLM, even the great Buzzflash, which finds it necessary to slam Tom Daschle every single day on something. Today the screaming headline is “Graham Blames Bush Iraq Strategy for Saudi Blasts. Daschle, As Usual, Waffles.”

C’mon. Daschle is a Democrat and a good human being and he’s being savaged every day by the Republicans. Is this really necessary?

Josh Marshall wrote inThe Hill last week about the thuggish intimidation tactics that the national GOP and the Wurlitzer are employing on him in South Dakota, which should make decent people cut the guy some slack. The machine is using everything it’s got against him. They literally compare him to Saddam Hussein and then have the temerity to cry ”Unpatriotic!” when he does far less than these same people did when Clinton was in office. Trent Lott said “I can support the troops without supporting the President” but these Republican PoMo relativist hucksters simply turn around and say, “and your point is….?”

We know by now that it doesn’t matter what a Democrat actually says or does, he will be attacked via the Mighty Wurlitzer, if it is deemed useful to the cause and according to whatever script has been written for them. And we also know that appeasement doesn’t work and we want the Democrats to fight back. But, what we are failing to understand is that unless the Democratic Party from the grassroots to the elected representatives support politicians who do fight back, they cannot survive. Democrats win with collective power.

Via Salon magazine last month, look what happened when Tom Daschle came out blasting:

As the war abroad continued to escalate last week, the nation’s leading Democrat requested help for someone else under attack: himself. In response to Republican criticism, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle’s reelection committee sent out an e-mail last Thursday to union presidents and other supporters asking for them to “take the time to defend Senator Daschle from his critics.”

The e-mail, obtained by Salon, noted that after Daschle “criticized the Administration’s diplomatic efforts, the conservative attack machine went into full swing.”

[…]

The Daschle e-mail goes on to complain that the Republican National Committee, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, former Rep. John Thune, R-S.D., and their allies “put out scathing attacks on Senator Daschle — going so far as to even question his patriotism.” These criticisms, the e-mail stated, are being used by conservatives to “flood their rhetoric on talk radio and in news rooms across the state and country.” It implored recipients to defend Daschle, who served with Air Force Intelligence during the Vietnam War, “as a veteran, a patriot, and the best friend South Dakota veterans ever had.”

“Please speak out,” the e-mail pleads. “This is important.” Attached to the e-mail is a March 22 column by Beltway pundit Mark Shields defending Daschle.

Remember what it was that Daschle said?

“I am saddened, saddened, that this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we’re now forced to go to war. Saddened that we have to give up one life because this president couldn’t create the kind of diplomatic effort that was so critical for our country.”

It’s perfectly ok for Newtie to say such things. He is, after all, a member of the Republican cabal that now rules the world. But, a Democrat is mercilessly worked over if he says…well, anything except praise for His Majesty, George W. Bush.

So, what happened when Daschle appealed to his supporters to speak out on his behalf?

Zippo. They left him hanging out to dry. He stood alone while everybody criticized his statement as well as his request for support.

One Democratic strategist saw the e-mail as indicative of a larger partywide problem. While Daschle’s e-mail “might be kind of pathetic,” the strategist said, “what’s more pathetic is that his party doesn’t stand behind him more.” Daschle has decided to take on a more aggressive posture, “and is to be applauded for that, but the problem is that there’s no supporting choir for him. At the DNC, the structure is not there, and the Senate is not known as a place of grand alliances — especially when you have six guys running for president.”

[…]

Frist spokesman Stevenson asked whether the “conservative attack machine” also includes a number of Democrats who, when asked for their views on Daschle’s comments, begged off considerably, like Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., who on the day of the remarks said “there is plenty of time later to point fingers and to figure out what went wrong with what. But tonight is a night for us to unite our country and have our thoughts and prayers for our young people out there in the Gulf.” Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said in response that “you have got to say that the blame for the war is Saddam Hussein’s,” as did former Sen. Tim Wirth, D-Colo., who said in response that “the failure is Saddam Hussein’s.”

Daschle’s home state newspapers were harsher, Stevenson notes. In fact, the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader editorialized that “Tom Daschle was out of line” and “went far beyond what was needed”; the Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan condemned Daschle’s “fierce partisan rhetoric” and called for him “to elevate himself from that garbage at once.”

Daschle consultant Dunn says that those taking issue with the timing of the Daschle missive need to address their reservations elsewhere. “In terms of timing,” Dunn said, “this letter came following a period” when Daschle was attacked by Hastert, DeLay, Frist, Santorum, chair of the GOP House Conference Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio, Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., Racicot and Fleischer.

“Many of our supporters were saying, ‘We want to hear from you, all these Republicans are attacking,'” Dunn said.

One Daschle advisor alleged that the attack originated at the White House and was done so for purely political reasons — so President Bush could more easily pass his legislative agenda. “Clearly they recognize that since January of 2001, when the Senate was 50-50, that Senator Daschle as the leader of the Senate Democrats was in a position to heavily influence what happens to the White House agenda and they’ve made him their No. 1 target.”

The Daschle brouhaha came toward the end of the filibuster against the federal appeals court nomination of Miguel Estrada, and just as the Senate was about to defeat the Bush initiative to permit drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It also occurred “right before Senator Daschle defeated a huge part of their tax policy,” the Daschle strategist says, referring to last week’s move by the Senate to cut Bush’s proposed $726 billion tax cut to a mere $350 billion.

The Senate “is the only place in Washington they cannot just roll people.” The Daschle strategist hadn’t “a doubt” that this was a White House-coordinated effort.

The problem is not Daschle’s lack of courage. It’s the Democrats’ failure to stand together even though they know full well that the whole thing is bullshit and that Rove is playing politics. This non-stop criticism and derision of Democratic politicians’ character is only helping the GOP, and they are quite adept at assassinating the characters of Democrats without our help.

Addendum: On an unrelated note, this same Salon article quotes a Republican strategist who ran a campaign against Bush in the primaries (can you say Mike Murphy?) saying that the way to get to the Bushies is to “belittle them.” He offers nothing to back that up, but I think there may be something to that. Bush himself is thin skinned and the wing-nut pundits turn into hysterical old women when anybody successfully makes fun of President Codpiece. On the other hand, I can’t argue with Chris over at Interesting Times when he says “Never NEVER EVER take political advice from the opposition. In fact, pay attention to what they say you shouldn’t be doing because that probably means they are afraid what you are doing might actually work.” So, take it with a grain of salt.

I see Kevin at Calpundit has weighed in this as well.