So George Bush called up Robert Bartley to congratulate him on his Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor. Well, he earned it. Not in the sense that he served America or freedom; rather he served Bush and the movement on whose behalf Bush governs; the extreme right. Here are excerpts from an MSNBC.com column I published in July 2001, upon Bartley’s retirement announcement:
“For 29 years, Bartley, together with his large and energetic staff, practiced a form of journalism that is alien to most newspapers and newsmagazines. It was not typical editorial page opinion-mongering. It was not the objective style of reporting to which all national newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, aspire. It was something else entirely. Call it reported polemics, written in a style akin to an old fashioned Sunday sermon on hellfire and damnation As former PBS host Alex Jones once noted, Bartley’s pages had become “perhaps the most influential, most articulate, most ferocious opinion page in the country.” Moreover, he added, they were “without question the prime mover of conservative thought in America.”
Under the curiously soft-spoken Bartley’s direction, the Journal’s edit pages did more than make journalistic history; they made political history. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, as the economic historian Wayne Parsons has written, the Journal “had an absolutely vital role to play in disseminating and legitimating the ideas which became associated with Ronald Reagan and without its support it is difficult to see how the supply-side argument could possibly have achieved such a leading position in the economic policy debates.”
And during the 1990s, the same pages could take responsibility for keeping virtually every anti-Clinton rumor alive, no matter how far-fetched or lightly sourced. When White House aide Vincent Foster committed suicide in 1993, he left a note saying “the WSJ editors lie without consequence.” No indictable wrongdoing was ever found by a host of special prosecutors relating to Whitewater and its related “scandals,” but the Bartley’s team managed to write enough about them to fill six fat collections, which it proudly sells as if had discovered Watergate or Iran-Contra, rather than a non-scandal. Politically, having the imprimatur of the Journal allowed these stories to remain alive far longer than they otherwise would have, and may have been instrumental in fanning the flames that allowed Kenneth Starr’s investigation and the impeachment process, eventually, to take place.
Bartley and company are so deeply committed to their far-right view of the world that they are willing to contradict the reporting in their own newspaper. For instance, in 1980 a Journal reporter broke a story proving that an alleged $100 million administration cost offered up by a group of California oil firms protesting a new state tax, was, in fact, a wildly exaggerated estimate of the expense of administering the tax. Two days later, the editorial page noted that “according to one estimate, enforcement of the tax would cost taxpayers $100 million....”
Four years later, Washington bureau reporter David Rogers discovered that the CIA had been illegally mining Nicaragua’s harbors. The story ran on page six and was picked up by The Washington Post. Six days later, the editorial page, standing foursquare behind the contra war, criticized members of Congress for leaking the information to the Post. More recently, the paper’s reporters won a Pulitzer prize for exposing the misleading statements of tobacco company officials, leading to massive jury awards in tobacco liability cases. Meanwhile, Bartley and company ridiculed tobacco regulations as “further government-imposed nuisances, whose chief direct effect will be to make millionaires of a few more lawyers.”
When it comes to Bartley’s ideological opponents, all gloves come off and most journalistic rulebooks go out the window. During the 1984 election, as the Los Angeles Times has reported, the edit pages ran a story rejected by the newspaper about alleged connections between Geraldine Ferraro and the Mafia, based exclusively on the alleged connections between the mafia and her father. In the following election, it published rumors about Democrat Michael Dukakis’s psychological state; rumors that originated with Lyndon LaRouche, suggesting a “family history” of mental problems because his brother had experienced a breakdown.
While many marvel at the clarity of his vision and the eloquence of his voice, the people charged with policing journalistic ethics have never approved of Bartley’s tactics. In a lengthy profile in the Columbia Journalism Review, author Trudy Lieberman examined six dozen examples of disputed editorials and op-eds in the paper. She discovered that “on subjects ranging from lawyers, judges, and product liability suits to campus and social issues, a strong America, and of course, economics, we found a consistent pattern of incorrect facts, ignored or incomplete facts, missing facts, uncorroborated facts.” In many of these cases, the editors refused to print a correction, preferring to allow the aggrieved party to write a letter to the editor, which would be printed much later, and then let the reader decide whose version appeared more credible.
Frequently, the language one reads in Bartley’s pages is much closer to a Rush Limbaugh or a Bill O’Reilly television broadcast than to the Olympian tone employed by the editors of say, the New York Times or the Washington Post. Citizens committed to strengthening the protection of the natural environment find themselves lumped together as “cocktail party environmentalists in places like Cambridge and Sausalito.” Those who support consumer and safety regulation are termed “no-growth specialists, the safety and health fascists who try to turn real and imagined hazards to some political end.” As one critic has pointed out, this name-calling approach is not be limited to people. For example, one anti-regulation editorial referred to “so-called acid rain.”
While Bartley and company do not have many imitators in the world of newspaper journalism, (with the possible exceptions of Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times and Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post), they can take credit for spawning an entire form of argumentation that is now the rule, rather than the exception, on cable TV.
There’s a new “Think Again” column up over at American Progress. It’s by Husain Haqqani, and it details the catastrophe that the Bush administration’s neglect—together with the media’s—has brought to Afghanistan, as well as unhealthy effects on Pakistan; two very worrisome nations. Husain is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. He has served as adviser to Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif and as Pakistan’s ambassador to Sri Lanka.
If you’re checking for it on Thursday, it’s should be here but if you need the archived version, its here.
To sign up for the Center’s amazingly comprehensive “Progress Report,” go here.
Alter-reviews:
I hesitate to recommend a book by a friend, but what the hell. Michael Waldman was Clinton’s chief speechwriter (and it’s true, he himself did not have sexual relations with that woman, so it wasn’t a lie). He has edited a terrific book, called My Fellow Americans: The Most Important Speeches of America’s Presidents, from George Washington to George W. Bush great for putting under the Menorah.
It’s an anthology of the greatest presidential speeches, with a lot more than that. He wrote essays explaining the “backstage” story behind each one, and there are some fascinating photographs (like Lincoln getting ready to speak at Gettysburg — did you know that existed? I didn’t) and reproductions of speech drafts. One jumps out, from the Cuban Missile Crisis. For years, Kennedyphiles have claimed that JFK’s aides drafted only one speech — the one announcing a “quarantine” of Cuba. The book reproduces the other, long-missing draft, announcing the attack on Cuba. (My friend Mike says this would have been the last speech in the book — given the likelihood of World War III — a great line that he left out of the text for some reason.)
Ted Sorensen probably didn’t write it, but it’s there, anyway in cold type. The book also includes two CDs (narrated by George Stephanopoulos) with the voices of the presidents going back to the late 1800s. Some of the tapes are really fascinating, like a Truman whistle stop speech recorded in Iowa in 1948.
I have quarrels with various judgments in the book, but one sticks in my throat. Waldman includes Bush’s speech announcing the imminent invasion of Iraq. When I read an early draft of the book, I told Waldman that I thought his intro read like it was written by Karl Rove. Now that the war has turned out as it has, just reading Bush’s words are damning to him. For all the “revisionist history,” the stated reason for war was weapons of mass destruction. You can hear it on the CDs. I wish Waldman had been more forthright in calling Bush out, but close enough.
There is a sweeping idealism in the speeches of many of the Democratic presidents that we rarely hear today. I think some of that is a good thing (we don’t need another Wilson). But it’s hard to read and hear these without missing the ambitious optimism about government and even the strong presidency that these guys had. In this age of blinkered expectations, there is history of which we can all be proud.
Correspondents’ Corner:
Greetings,
Long-time reader, first-time e-mailer (altercater? Whatever). In re: the Warner Brothers cartoon DVDs, I went poking around when the Golden Collection set came out and found this site — http://looney.toonzone.net/ — which has a discussion forum on it — http://forums.toonzone.net/forumdisplay.php?forumid=6 — which has a long thread about the Golden Collection, including input from a cartoon historian (a historian of cartoons, not a ... ah, never mind) named Jerry Beck who was also a consulting producer on the set. He mentions definite plans for more DVD collections, presuming the first one does well.
This is the thread with the info:
You’ve got to go through it quite some distance, but he does mention that all the Warner Cartoons are going to be restored. In other words, whatever’s missing on the current set will be out at some point in the not-too-distant future. There’s mention of a “wave two” coming next year, and when someone asked if even the ‘censored 11’ — the racist toons mentioned by one of your
correspondents — would be eventually released, the response was a straight-ahead “Yup!”
Check out Beck’s site at http://www.cartoonresearch.com/index.html; there’s an informative thread about restoration work on his own forums here. Hope this helps.
And a bit about music: let me recommend checking out a band called the High Dials, who have a CD out called A New Devotion. It’s tight, energetic, well-written mod rock with a nod to psychedelia here and there. Don’t take my word for it, take the word of High Dials supporter Little Steven Van Zandt, who picked out the band’s name. The band’s website may be found here
— with a link to Little Steven goodness here. Take care,
Matthew Surridge
I’m sure you’ve heard about Mel Gibson’s upcoming movie “The Passion,” which tells the story of Jesus Christ in the original Jewish. According to Newsmax, America’s most trusted news source, Mel’s in trouble. He’s made some ivory tower Hollywood Big Shots angry, and now they want to burn all prints of this fine film about our Lord. In other words, it looks like Barbra Streisand is at it again! First she writes and directs that smear-job against Reagan, and now this!
You may think that the people complaining about Mel’s movie are just a few loudmouths expressing an opinion. Well, you’re wrong. According to Newsmax, these people have a “hidden agenda.” In other words, IT’S A CONSPIRACY!!!
Poor Mel! He needs our help! And pronto!
If we all get together and raise some money, maybe we can buy back “The Passion” from the money grubbers and save it from being burned. I say church groups across the land should have bake sales and give the proceeds to Mel Gibson!
We can also have book sales. I can donate copies of “See, I Told You So” and “The Late, Great Planet Earth” along with some Tom Clancy stuff. I also have a copy of Ann Coulter’s “Treason” which I spilled coffee on, but I bet we can still get $3.
We can’t expect Mel to carry the burden alone. He’s done so much for us and it’s time we did something for him.
Like me, you’re probably “mad as hell” because Hollywood liberal marxists have forced you to pay for movies containing sex, drugs and filthy words. Seems the only thing they want to censor is our Lord. We can’t let them get away with it this time!
Right now, here are three things you can do:
1. Send whatever you can to Icon Productions (Mel’s outfit), 5555 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90038. Every little bit helps!
2. And while you’re at it, send a message to Barbra Streisand, c/o Martin Erlichman Associates, Inc., 5670 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 2400, Los Angeles, CA 90036. Tell her “Mel is swell! Leave our Mel alone!”
3. If you go to the Drudge Report, the Newsmax “Passion” pole will pop up. Newsmax is going to make sure that George Bush and Congress will all see their pole. Climb aboard! Mel really needs a pole like this behind him.
If you have any further ideas, send them to me or to Icon. And pass this message along to your friends. Let’s do it for Mel.
Yours in Christ,
John Dark
Paranoia Strikes Deep in Hollywood Heartland: David Horowitz is apparently so busy being paranoid and hysterical that he has to pay other people to do it for him just to keep up. Writing about Horowitz on his website FrontPage, someone named Jamie Glazer writes:
“Pretending Horowitz didn’t exist was not unique to Chomsky among leftists and took many forms. Eric Alterman, a commentator for MSNBC and a columnist for the The Nation, wrote a scathing review of The Politics of Bad Faith, but failed to discuss a single idea in the text. Instead, he passed on to readers Paul Berman’s unhinged claim that Horowitz was a ‘demented lunatic.’”
Just one problem. I never wrote a “scathing review” of the book in question or any review of any kind. Horowitz is really not worth the trouble of a “review” these days. What I did, actually, was refer to the book in an aside to a Nation column about something else. This is the third or fourth time I have read this complaint about the imaginary “review” from one of Horowitz’s acolytes on his website. I’ll quote the rest of Glazer’s paragraph just to give you a flavor of the level of demented lunacy that seems to be transmitted at the FrontPage water cooler:
“These attitudes towards Horowitz’s political deviance paralleled those that had caused Soviet dissidents, such as Andrei Sakharov, to be force-fed drugs in psychiatric hospitals. Alterman and Berman, of course, did not have the power to put Horowitz in an asylum-but it is clear from their own words that they wished they did. “When Horowitz finally dies,” Alterman wrote in the same review, “I suspect we will be confronted with a posthumous volume of memoirs titled ‘The End of History.’” The operative word here is finally. Leftists like Alterman evidently regret that Horowitz is still with us.”
Horowitz, by the way, seems to be in a contest with Norman Podhoretz to see who can wring more memoirs out of their allegedly heroic lives, and has apparently managed to farm out the job to a few of his minions as well for the purposes of promotion. This newest volume was published by something called “Spence Publishing,” where conservatives go, I guess, when it’s not good enough for Regnery. (And when you see your therapist Dave, you might want to mention that you keep bringing up this Berman quote for people who might have missed it the first ten times or so. What’s up with that?)
And here is Horowitz’s latest attempt to claim the mantle of Joe McCarthy from that upstart in a miniskirt, Ann Coulter. I see, though it’s not online, that my prodigal comrade Hitchens endorsed Horowitz’s latest missive in the pages of the L.A. Times Book Review. Sad, that. I wonder if Hitch will resign from Vanity Fair now that Graydon Carter has signed up to write an anti-Bush book, based on editorials that could have run in The Nation, except for the fancy paper.
Speaking of which, I think I forgot to mention this “Stop the Presses” column on Robert McNamara.
Quote of the Day: “What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label ‘Liberal?’ If by ‘Liberal’ they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer’s dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of ‘Liberal.’ But if by a ‘Liberal’ they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a ‘Liberal,’ then I’m proud to say I’m a ‘Liberal.’” John Fitzgerald Kennedy accepting the New York Liberal Party Nomination, September 14, 1960
Alter-reviews: I caught the Elvin Jones Jazz Machine with special guest Branford Marsalis at The Blue Note last night. Years ago, Leonard Feather wrote of Elvin: “His main achievement was the creation of what might be called a circle of sound, a continuum in which no beat of the bar was necessarily indicated by any specific accent, yet the overall feeling became a tremendously dynamic and rhythmically important part of the whole group. Jones moved away from the old concept of swinging toward a newer freedom...” At age 76, surrounded by musicians barely a third his age, Jones (who lives half the year in New York and half in Nagasaki) showed both chops and timing that had better not ever go out of style, Jones paid more tribute to Ellington than Coltrane, but swung the big, crowded room, just as God intended when he invented jazz. The music was both relaxed and precise, with each of the four horn players (Marsalis, Robin Eubanks, Duane Eubanks, Mark Shin) paying close attention to what came before and after, and building on it. And the bass player, Gerald Cannon, as Tom Waits used to say, “ought to be chained up somewhere.” Go, if you can.
In the CD Player: Capitol has put out a lovely new four cd box set of 101 Nat King Cole singles. Packaging and sound are both first rate, with more than decent liner notes. It’s called The Classic Singles, and it’s make-out music par extraordinaire. Is it any wonder that Tony Kushner’s “Caroline” can’t stop pining after the guy? Anyway, you should know about the Nat if you don’t. There’s a short bio here. Sinatra learned a lot from this guy and so could you.
(I see there’s a Blue Note tribute to him the week of Christmas with Monty Alexander, Freedy Cole and Clark Terry. See you there.)
Correspondence Corner:
ALTER-REMEMBRANCE OF A LOST TIME
Angels in America retrospection/anticipation edition
Early one evening in the autumn of 1994 we walk up from Union Square to Sutter Street and the Marines Memorial Theater where American Conservatory Theater is staging both parts of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. You can see part 1, “Millennium Approaches,” one night and then part 2, “Perestroika,” a week later. The whole megillah runs seven hours. If like us you are poor and in graduate school you can just about afford the cut-price tickets to the last dress rehearsal before the grand opening, which is what we are doing.
It is early in the evening as we hike up Mason Street because curtain time is 7:30, as ACT has scrupulously reminded all us patrons. There is so much to even one half of Angels it has to start half an hour before the traditional curtain-up, which yields the night’s first big belly-laugh: Roy Cohn bellows over the telephone to a tourist, “Cats! It’s about cats. Singing cats. You’ll love it. Eight o’clock, the theatre’s always at eight.” And, it is San Francisco — a city which, Angels in America tells us, heaven is much like — where in 1991 “Millennium Approaches” made its premiere and then left for parts East. When Kushner’s epic last graced a San Francisco stage it had only one part and ended with The Angel crashing through the ceiling of the theater to announce, “The Great Work Begins: The Messenger has arrived.” Then, three and a half years elapsed: so you can imagine the city, or anyway the theater-going part of the city, delighted finally to see the second half making its San Francisco premiere.
What follows, over two nights a week apart, is great spectacle and grand drama: Flying angels! Flaming Alephs! Heaven! Hell! The Mormon Migration! Ethel Rosenberg says the Kaddish, and looks pretty lively, considering.
The action in the play runs from Christmastime 1985 through the hint of a spring thaw in 1986, with an epilogue in 1990; this attention to the calendar — the calendar of seasons, of religious ritual — is important. So too is the attention to history, and to the theory of history: this play has a dialectician or two among its dramatis personae.
And in the course of the drama we are vouchsafed a second-hand glimpse of the millennium; Prior Walter, freshly minted a prophet, peers for the first time into the future and shouts, “OH! OH GOD NO! OH... That was terrible! I don’t want to see that!” — which apocalypse of the millennium year do you think he foresaw? — but it ends in hope, in a hopeful yet realistic request for a blessing, a limited blessing that is all a world too much in motion can expect. So we walk out into a fine autumn evening with a sense that maybe this small blessing at least, is something we deserve.
In 1994 Steven Culp played closeted gay Republican political operative Joe Pitt; Culp now plays the Republican House Speaker Jeff Haffley on The West Wing. (In the HBO version, Joe Pitt is played by Patrick Wilson, who was I believe four years behind me in school; go Chargers.) Ben Shenkman played Louis Ironson, as he does again in the HBO movie. I recall that just before curtain-up for “Perestroika,” director Mark Wing-Davey remarked that Kushner was still revising the script; he must have done something to it after that performance because the San Francisco cast appears in the published paperback.
Was it excessively innocent to feel cheered by such a play, by such a prognosis for a planet sick with AIDS and environmental degradation? Well, the millennium was still a long way off; it was still October of 1994 and you could read Tony Kushner in the paper glibly claiming that Bob Dole was the devil. Oy, Tony, if that’s what you think of Senator Dole you should see who’s waiting in the wings to eclipse him come November....
But possibly Angels’s limited hope amid the undeniable persistence of wounding history is still about all we can ask. Here’s hoping HBO does it justice. And, in 1994 Kushner said he’d someday write Angels part 3. More life....
—
Eric Rauchway, Associate Professor
Department of History, University of California
Davis, CA 95616
Ralph Nader, the single individual on the entire planet who could have saved us from the presidency of George W. Bush simply by asking his supporters on election night to do the prudent thing, appears ready to do it again.
This website has been formed the Nader 2004 Presidential Exploratory Committee, which means Ralph is, at a minimum, flirting with ensuring Bush’s re-election. What was it Scotty used to tell Kirk vis-à-vis the Klingons? “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
There can be no excuses for any intelligent progressive supporting Nader in 2004 after all we’ve seen from the White House for the past three years. Ignorance? Idealism? I did not put much faith in these arguments in 2000, but now, well, really war, tax cuts, Medicare, Kyoto, abortion.
Remember what Ralph said. “Not a dime’s worth of difference.” If Nader - who could not even bring himself to support Paul Wellstone in Minnesota - wants to further destroy what little remains of his reputation as a progressive leader with this Quixotic race, that’s his prerogative. But let’s be clear. The man is a menace to everything he once professed to represent, which makes him either delusional or hypocritical. I’m not a psychologist, and I don’t really care which explanation holds. Perhaps he’s both. I just hope the only damage he does is to himself, and not, once again, to his country. (via.www.politics1.com)
On this historic day, when the Israeli government is asking the U.S. government to ignore a historic Geneva ceremony that outlines for all to see the terms of a peace agreement commanding majority approval from majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians, let’s take a moment to contemplate these words:
“Continuing to build settlements is to threaten the Jewish character of the state and is to undermine the Zionist dream… My fear is that very soon, it is going to be too late.… Israel will need to choose between a democratic state with an Arab majority, or an apartheid state, and this is not what Zionism is about. We didn’t dream of Zion for 2000 years in order to be a minority in somebody else’s state.”
An Altercation contest? Who’s going to be the first to call Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, an anti-Semite? Of course he speaks for 900 affiliated synagogues across the U.S. and its 320,000 households, and 1.5 million American Jews-the largest affiliation in America, but it’s not as if he’s a gaycatholictoryweblogger or anything.
Speaking of which, David Remnick made this comment in response to an idiotic editorial in The New York Observer attempting to accuse John Updike and The New Yorker -yes, The New Yorker! - of anti-Semitism.
But it holds true for any number of discussions of this vexing issue, and the manner in which it is consistently manipulated by dishonest partisans for their own ends: “There is genuine vigilance, which is real and necessary, and then there is self-admiring nonsense that pretends to be vigilance.… In recent days synagogues were being bombed in Istanbul and defaced in France; many Jews in New York now worship in synagogues ringed with concrete barriers; and, meanwhile, the centuries-old tenets of anti-Semitism are thriving for countless people. …his is a serious situation requiring the .serious attention of serious people. And yet the editorialists of The Observer exercise concern about the phrase ‘rich Jew’ in a book review. Next week they will surely race to the barriers over a ‘poor Catholic’ or a ‘middle-class African American.’” Reading list:
Bruce Cumings on Korea
Matthew Caserta on Joe Klein. Alter-reviews: I saw Bruce Cockburn do a strong, too-short first set last week preceding an acoustic Hot Tuna show. Tuna were their old selves; not a lot different than when I saw them at the Colony Theater in White Plains in the winter of 1975; pretty much the same set list as well.
Cockburn, on the other hands, does not have Jorma’s chops (who does?) but he writes interesting, politically-tinged songs that are both musically interesting and stylistically eclectic. Cockburn is a first-rate guitarist with a calm, steadying stage presence. On Wednesday night at the Beacon, he even rated an enthusiastic encore from a crowd of diehard Tunaheads. (Tuna-ites? Tuna-ists? Tuna-teers?) I used to find myself in agreement with his politics, particularly when the Reagan administration was (undeniably) arming terrorists in Central America. Now I find myself indulgent of them because, well, he’s a folksinger (and a Canadian), which is more than a bit condescending, but there you are.
Anyway, if you like smart, sensitive, politically astute, musically interesting stuff, give Cockburn a chance. You can start with the greatest hits if you like. Go here.
I’ve been thumbing through my copy of According To The Rolling Stones. It’s a combination of interviews with Mick, Keith, Charlie and Ronnie Wood and some terrific photos. It is not quite as elaborate as the Beatles Anthology book, but that is as it should be.
The photos are great, and there are 350 of them, and the history is, well, like the way they contradict one another’s memories and don’t try and clean up the messy parts. I can’t see any Stones fan getting one for the holidays and being disappointed. If you’re in need of cheering up, you might want to get it for yourself. And as we all know, ”you can’t always get what you want...” Gift-giving: Greatest Hits Packages that came out this year that you can feel perfect OK about giving people you don’t know that well, in say, an office Santa thing: The Eagles (two CDs), the whole career, from Rhino; Bonnie Raitt-the later stuff beginning with “Nick of Time,” in 1989, from Capitol; Steve Miller Band, the whole career, pretty much, from Capitol; Sheryl Crow, ditto, from A&M; and Peter Gabriel, two CDs, one of hits, one of misses, from Geffen.
Here’s something to buy them if you want to do a little educating: Robinella and CCstringband; a little Emmylou, a little Alison Krauss, and a smidgen of Billie, read about ‘em, here; The Blind boys of Alabama, “Go Tell it On the Mountain,” with Tom Waits, Solomon Burke, Chrissie Hynde, etc; Diamond Jubilation: 75th Anniversary. If they don’t like this, they don’t like music (and you don’t like them).
Surprised, but I really like this: Cyndi Lauper, “At Last,” on Sony, where she does more than justice to terrific set of eclectic choices. Take a look at the songlist here.
My single favorite album of the year: Joe Strummer, “Streetcore,” on Epitaph. Correspondents’ Corner:
Dear Eric,
I hope you’re having a great holiday.
I’m not terribly concerned about the Warner Brothers marketing plan for the Looney Tunes cartoons on DVD — I think it’s safe to say that several more collections are on the way. What does concern me is that Warner Brothers likely intends to continue its policy of pretending that its “politically incorrect” cartoons don’t exist. These cartoons basically fall into two categories, those that contain stereotypes of blacks and the World War II cartoons which lampoon the Germans and the Japanese. While bootlegs of many of these titles can be found, Warner Brothers doesn’t like to talk about them. Some of the racial Looney Tunes cartoons are: Goldilock and the Jivin’ Bears Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs Tin Pan Alley Cats Uncle Tom’s Bungalow The Early Worm Gets the Bird Jungle Jitters Sunday Go to Meetin’ Time All This and Rabbit Stew Clean Pastures Angel Puss Confederate Honey The World War II cartoons include: Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips Falling Hare Scrap Happy Daffy Daffy the Commando
Ominously, none of these titles are included in the Golden Collection.
Warner issued several collections of Looney Tunes cartoons on laserdisc in the early nineties. The first volume included “Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips,” but it was deleted when the collection went to a second pressing.
I appreciate the fact that some of these cartoons are offensive to many, but they have artistic and historical value and it’s a shame that Warner Brothers seemingly doesn’t want anyone to see them.
Rich Gallagher
Fishkill, NY
Sure, terrorism is not chopped liver, but it is pales besides the level of threat humankind faces from the AIDS pandemic. Call me a bore on this topic. I can live with it. Tens of millions of people in the world cannot. In a BBC interview, Kofi Annan complains that the forty million people who are HIV positive may die in “a world where we have the means, we have the resources, to be able to help all these patients - what is lacking is the political will…. For people in some of the countries we are talking about, AIDS is a real weapon of mass destruction - and what are we doing about that?”
How is this story from Time qualitatively different from the treatment that one could expect in a genuine police state. In Gitmo, under us Government authority, “660 suspects from 44 countries, scooped up in the war on terrorism-cannot challenge their arrest or plead their case or even talk to a lawyer because the U.S. government denies that they have those rights: they are not U.S. citizens, and the base, while under total U.S. control, is not on American soil; since 1903 it has been leased from Cuba for 2,000 gold coins a year, now valued at $4,085 , in perpetuity.”
And did you know “U.S. officials said last week that they are holding roughly 5,000 “suspected terrorists” in Iraq, including 300 with foreign passports. But the officials won’t say where they are, frustrating Iraqis who are desperately looking for friends or family members who have disappeared. The last time Raed Karim al-Ani saw his brother Mohammed, 27, was in mid-May, when the taxi driver climbed into his battered 1983 Volkswagen and chugged out the driveway of his parents’ house. In early July two men came to the door to say they had seen U.S. soldiers pin Mohammed to the ground at a checkpoint, then haul him away.” (Also in Time.)
I did not do much on Medicare because I had nothing to add. This weekend Jeff Madrick wrote me of the awful bill Congress passed: “I am ticked about how so much of the media and others represent the benefits. It is not 75% of first $2250 of annual out of pocket drug costs. It is a maximum of 50 percent, and then only if you spend $2250. It is 40 percent if you spend $1500, 30 percent if $3,000 (no reimbursement after $2250 until $3900, I think.) The press leaves out the $250 deductible and the monthly fee of $35 in their calculations. Amazing. It is a modest benefit for the large majority, and good only for catastrophic cases.”
Let us now praise famous men: Socialist, gay and so very Jewish (according to his friend Maurice Sendak) that “it hurts your eyes,” Tony Kushner is the most talented, most original, and among the most humane artists working in American mass entertainment today.
“Caroline, or Change,” opens at the Public Theater today; the first half of Mike Nichols’s six-hour, star-filled, $60 million adaptation of Mr. Kushner’s epic “Angels in America” has its premiere on HBO next Sunday.
About Angels, I feel the way I felt when I first heard Prince’s “Dirty Mind” back in college. The thought I had then was, “Wait ‘till America finds out about this.” It’s an amazing, entirely alternative world that Kushner inhabits and one that will shock the kind of people who can take George Bush seriously. And to compare it to shlock like “The Reagans” is to demonstrate the wide gulf between what’s possible when artists take genuine chances to reach for greatness and when network television seeks to amass the greatest numbers it can in the cheapest, schlockiest way imaginable. I don’t object to the “history” in “The Reagans” any more than I object to it in Angels. Anyone who gets their history from a network miniseries deserves what they get. It’s not just Kushner’s script that makes Angels so amazing; it’s one of the single most impressive and inspiring works of theater-used in the widest possible sense-ever to make it on television in this country. I know they say “it’s not television,” but as my hero Larry David puts it, “you turn on the TV, it’s on, that makes it television.” Anyway, Mike Nichols has had a hell of a dry spell and Merryl Streep and Pacino have had some rough spots but, I’ll shut up now. Except about Parker Posey.
In the meantime, listen to me about “Caroline and Change.” It’s really something new. I haven’t had much time to go to the theater recently. But way back when, I saw “Rent” before it opened at the tiny New York Theater Workshop performance in the East Village and I saw “Ragtime” at dress rehearsal. This play is a step in a new direction just like those productions were, if not more so. Tony Kushner is brave, brilliant and ballsy American artist. He makes me proud to be an American Jew-if not a homosexual. The play-it’s an opera really—is somewhat autobiographical. Kushner was, like 8 year old Noah, brought up in Lake Charles, La., in a house that looks very much like the set of “Caroline, or Change.” The character of Caroline, the black maid, herself is modeled, in part, on that of the Kushner family’s own maid, Maudi Lee Davis. Noah, is part Kushner and part his brother, Eric. Kushner’s father is a clarinetist and his late mother was a bassoonist. But what he does with this material, well, we should all be so self indulgent. This Jeanine Tesori woman, who wrote the music, is some talent too-or must be. Hurry, while it’s still at the Public. You can read about the plot there.
The New Yorker is all over Tony today.John Lair is down with me about “Caroline and Change.” Nancy Franklin is down with me -and about a million other people- about how great “Angels in America” is. So too, the Times Arts and Leisure section. This is as it should be.
Quote of the Day, from the Rev. Moon’s Washington Times: “Despite the Pulitzer Prize it was just awarded, this play is not for White Bread America. It’s for people who eat bagels and lox, dress in drag and hate Ronald Reagan.”
Packer’s piece is finally online. It’s only 20,639 words.
It’s here! The Orgasmatron! Female Altercation readers are encouraged to undergo the trials and write about it in this space, exclusively, of course.
Correspondents’ Corner, if this were still Friday:
Name: Charles Pierce
Hometown: Newton, MA
Eric — Because Every Day — even Thanksgiving Day — is Slacker Friday. Part XXIII.
During the extended JFK obsequies last weekend, I had one of those toss-the-remote moments when I heard Gerald Posner explain the stubborn persistence of conspiracy theories concerning the events in Dealey Plaza. It happened when Posner’s speculated that conspiracy theories survive because We — you know The People, see Madison, James: The Collected Works — find it hard to believe that a nut with a $12 rifle can take down a major historical figure.
I’m sorry, but this is all bollocks, as my cousins say. It is a perfect statement of the kind of infantilization that is central to our devalued national discourse. You heard the same sort of thing during the extended mishigas in Florida three years ago. “We” had to short-circuit the constitutional process because “We” couldn’t stand the length of time those processes would have taken. This, despite the fact that the country was doing just fine, and it had a president who, you know, really liked the job and likely would have worked the extra couple of hours it would have taken for Tom DeLay to steal the election in the House, the way the Founders intended. Instead, we had Tim Russert holding our binkies for us while Nino and Silent Clarence threw the Constitution under a bus.
Look at the pathetic doings in Washington this week. The Republicans passed a campaign commercial.There is not a single serious person who believes that the new Medicare feedbag — Subsidies for HMO’s and the Democrats couldn’t beat that? — will affect no change on any public problem at all. (And I will bet Bill Frist a dead cat that, when the prescription drug benefit is supposed to kick in in ’06, “budgetary considerations” will call for it to be “postponed.”) It has to do with positioning for the 2004 race, because all “We” are interested in is the horse race. The Congress passed a myth, a fairy tale, the equivalent of a Sense Of The Senate resolution that Unicorns Shall Be Preserved On All Federal Lands. But we got coverage of The Big Win and The Big Loss.
Bad things are making themselves permanent, and it’s time for people to notice. Barney Frank, who does not easily panic, has looked around himself and has seen the “end of parliamentary democracy” in America. HRC sees it, too. A general says one more bad terrorist episode and we’re Pinochet’s Chile. Mainstream political journalism is bad kabuki theater at best. We are spoken to like children, and we deserve (and should demand) better. Grow up, the lot of you down there. We’re already there, waiting.
Name:
Comments:
Eric, it’s Stupid to respond to Tomas Inguanzo’s challenge regarding the effect of ending the economic sanctions. And to wish everyone a great Thanksgiving.
Mr. Inguanzo criticizes my comparing the deaths of Iraqi children caused by 4 months of sanctions to the combined Iraqi war casualty figures because Iraqi children didn’t magically stop dying of disease and malnutrition the moment the sanctions were ended. This is true, but I wrote that by —accelerating— the removal of the sanctions (or should I say “genocidal sanctions”?) we saved those lives. In fact we probably saved even more: my “reality check” is that Iraq under Saddam was always a poor nation, even before the 1991 war. That’s what a militaristic state will do to you (see North Korea). Yes, my comparison involved a bit of time-shifting, and I’ll grant Mr. Inguanzo that we humanitarian hawks can’t assume arguendo that these gains will be achieved. But the history of Kurdish Iraq pre vs. post-Saddam augers well for the future. (Mr. Inguanzo also insists that violent crime deaths should be included in comparing the pre and post-Saddam mortality rates: no objection, but I count Saddam’s political assassinations as violent crimes). And I truly give him credit for hitting this question head-on: if there is more death and less freedom in post-Saddam Iraq, I’ll eat every pro-war word I ever spoke or wrote.
Too bad the victims of 9/11 were not lying, wealthy Iraqi exiles seeking to fool Americans into invading their country. Congress would have given them all the money they could handle. What a shameful legislative season; the worst I think, in about a 130 years.
Was our nation led into war by liars and crooks, or just liars? Ask Dr. Boehlert, here.
Harold Meyerson: “So it’s come to this: When European employers look to the United States, they see roughly the same thing that U.S. employers see when they look to China: millions of low-wage workers who have all but lost the right to organize and a government intent on keeping things just the way they are.
The erosion of worker power and the growth of employer supremacy here have transformed the bottom half of the U.S. workforce into a vast exploitable mass worthy of a colonial backwater.”
A majority of Israelies and Palestinians support the Geneva peace agreement. Both sides are thwarted by leadership that prefers to flatter its ideologically-driven illusions rather than do the hard work of historic compromise. The Palestinian leadership is more debased than that of the Israelis, but of course, they are the ones living in hopeless, oppressive misery. It’s a little bit crazy to hold the victim and the victimizer to the same standard in a case like this, although that is exactly what virtually every pundit in the United States insists on doing. The revanchist Israeli right can depend on William Safire to make its case brilliantly no matter how offensive to common sense. But who stands up for the peaceful majority?
Democrats.com, often over the top but frequently useful, run the risk of destroying their credibility beyond repair with their obsession with Prescott Bush’s Nazi connections. Even if the worst case were true, it would be a case for historians, not newspapers; at least not for more than a day. Are they truly arguing that Bush’s grandfather’s business connections have some bearing on his presidency? Grow up, and quickly. The left does not have the luxury of engaging this kind of juvenile game of gotcha.
Either Naomi Klein is an alarmist or this is genuinely alarming. It’s too early to tell which, and both may be true, but still. Let’s worry.
I had a nice chat with NBC News President Neal Shapiro last night at the CPJ dinner. I reiterated my offer to do a show a lot cheaper than whatever Joe Scarborough is getting paid so long as MSNBC throws in for the food and the booze I would have to serve to get my friends to come on. (My model would be the brief, much-lamented “Studs and Bud” show that Messrs. Terkel and Trillin once did.) I have to say, he did not appear terribly excited by the idea but the offer remains, and what the hell, let’s start a rumor. Maybe it will up my speaking fees. I see Pat Buchanan and Bill Press have been cancelled, which is a little problematic for me because I am supposed to do the show today and if the car is not coming, I already promised the kid a ride and a trip to the Green Room.
Speaking of CPJ, it is one of the great organizations in the world. Congrats to Ann Cooper and its hard workers and its prescient founders, like Michael Massing and Comrade Navasky. Read the bios of the incredibly brave 2003 award winners and give them some money! I promise you, the tyrants of the world -and the men and women in our own government who too frequently support and empower them- will be unhappy you did.
And while we’re all at it, AIDS not terrorism, is the most dangerous threat facing humankind right now. George W. Bush, per usual, is AWOL. So are most of the media. And so, too frequently, am I. It’s Thanksgiving. How about giving some money here.
Alter-reviews: In the DVD Player during School Hours: Here’s Sal on “Lennon Legend”: Not to be outdone by the untimely death of George, Yoko Ono needs to remind us yet again that John Lennon was also a legend by releasing “Lennon Legend,” a (not-so-bad, actually) DVD compilation of videos, most of which have never been seen. It’s a fine release. We just can’t get over the fact that she broke up the Beatles 33 years ago. “J’ACCUSE!” Ringo has nothing new on the horizon, but we hear that a director’s cut DVD of “Caveman” with Shelley Long’s audio commentary is due for early 2004 release.”
Eric adds: He’s kidding people. And I really like this DVD, especially the live performance I don’t recognize. But two things about Yoko. I just moved from living two blocks from the Dakota and there was a guy parked out there every day with a bumper-sticker reading “Still pissed at Yoko.” And I had a birthday dinner a couple of years ago at a fancy Japanese restaurant where my party was getting really lousy service and Jann Wenner and Yoko, right next to us, were getting great service. When they got their third course before we got our second, I lost patience and called out to the model/sometimes waitress, “What do you have to do to get served around here? Break up the Beatles!?” Really happened.
In the DVD Player while the kid’s home during the long-weekend: Looney Tunes Golden Collection, four discs. Lotsa complaining in this CNN story, but the visual and sound quality are terrific. I’m not taking a position on the selection yet. I have enough to argue about.
In the CD Player: Count Basie and His Orchestra: America’s #1 Band. Four CDs of some of the greatest music of all time, featuring Basie in a small group setting, octet, and with the full, never-to-be-equaled Count Basie and His Orchestra: Billie Holiday, Freddie Green, Clark Terry, Jo Jones, Walter Page, Lester Young, “Sweets” Edison, Buck Clayton and Jack Washington, produced of course, by John Hammond. Orrin Keepnews produced the collection, and Loren Shoenberg annotated it, with terrific notes and attention to detail, though nothing terribly fancy in the packaging. Sound, of course, improves as we go along. If you don’t love it, you don’t love jazz.
There’s a review here, and you can find the song list here. Happy 100th to the Count. Is this a great country or what?
Correspondents’ Corner:
Name: Jose Camacho
Hometown: San Diego, CA
Re: Media Notes & Howard Kurtz:
I thought his column was supposed to be an objective analysis of the major news stories from the most influnetial news papers across the US. It turns out that it is more like a gossip columm of bloggers and his own political bias. Perhaps Howard Kurtz and Tom Friedman should get together and write their own daily column of gossip in the New York Post or Fox News web site.
Eric replies: No way, Jose.
Name: Matt
Hometown: NYC
That first right-wing AS watch in yesterday’s entry was awful. He should be fired from that site. The Ann Coulter column was not anti-Semitic - just an attempt at humor. One that I (Jewish) have shared to the amusement of my Jewish wife.
Eric replies: I’ll bet she’s easily amused, Matt. Our kind often are.
Name: Matt Winkle
Hometown: Batavia, IL Eric, I noticed on MSNBC a couple of weeks ago that even Alan Dershowitz doesn’t claim you as like minded person. Wow!
Eric replies: “Wow!” is right, Mr. Winkle.
Name: Phillip
Hometown: Sausalito
Saying that mention of the Packer piece in the New Yorker is “kind of useless because the article’s not online and you can’t buy it on the newsstand anymore unless you live in Booneyville somewhere,” forgets that libraries often have the magazine. That’s where I read the new ones - with old ones found, naturally, at Doctors’ offices.
Eric replies: Libraries need money too. Give it to them, people.
Name: Clarke Cummings
Hometown: Columbus, Ohio (home of a highway sniper)
Dr. Alterman,
Sounds like the espionage case against the chaplain isn’t going to stick. If he is a dangerous spy why did the army assign him to Ft. Benning? Of course, in my daily check of multiple news sites I’ve never seen anything other then the original charges.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Note: Altercation will be idle for the holiday. Posting will resume on Monday. Happy Thanksgiving.
I lost my New Yorker for a week and I didn’t finish my friend George Packer’s long article from Iraq until last night. I admit I was worried about George. He was very squishy about the war in a Remnickian sort of way. And when he got back from Iraq, we talked for a long time, outside Giants’ Stadium, and I worried some more. But I was wrong to worry. (Eds: But Eric, it says about you in today’s Times, “He’s right”. Don’t they mean “always” and “about everything?” It sure read that way to us.) Anyway, this is kind of useless because the article’s not online and you can’t buy it on the newsstand anymore unless you live in Booneyville somewhere, but it really is a brilliantly written and reported piece in which Packer allows the evidence to speak for itself and take him where it needs to go.
Seriously, I really do wish I had been wrong about Iraq and Wolfowitz had been right, but alas, I’ve never been so right about anything in my life. And as Richard Cohen, another wishy-washy war supporter admits today, it may be one of the worst offenses ever committed against this nation by any American president, including the elected ones.
Quote of the day: “I love my country and I love the truth and I always thought the best thing about being an American is that you don’t have to choose.” Richard Cohen, see above.
Update: US soldiers’ bodies were not mutilated. Here.
Tasteless, graceless, and brainless quote of the day: James Taranto in the alleged “Best of the Web.” After discussing an accident in which a man was crushed to death in Alberta, Canada when he dived under a slow-moving semi-trailer to retrieve his baseball cap, the faux-clever Taranto writes: “It’s weirdly reminiscent of the bulldozer accident that killed 23-year-old terror advocate Rachel Corrie in March—though at least Keenan died pursuing something worthwhile.” Now, I’m no fan of Corrie’s politics, but a young girl is dead, for goodness’ sakes, accidentally killed by an Israeli bulldozer, and Taranto thinks it’s a worthy topic for a pathetic stab at humor. We’ll all have a good laugh some day should he meet an untimely demise.
(And while we’re on the topic, Taranto’s headline today, “Dean endorses Rall,” is a lie, pure and simple, which is evident, if you read the rest of the item.) It’s all here.
“In two separate letters to the Pentagon, the press claims that U.S. troops are harassing journalists in Iraq and sometimes confiscating equipment, digital camera disks and videotapes. The Associated Press Managing Editors (APME) wrote a letter of protest to Larry Di Rita, acting assistant secretary of defense for public affairs... The harassment has deprived ‘the American public of crucial images from Iraq in newspapers, broadcast stations and online news operations.’... Separately, 30 media organizations, lead by The Associated Press, fired off their own letter to Di Rita, saying they have ‘documented numerous examples of U.S. troops physically harassing journalists,’ according to a report... The letter was signed by representatives from CNN, ABC, The Boston Globe, Newhouse News Service, and many others. ‘It’s back to the bad old days where journalists are being treated as adversaries,’ AP Washington Bureau Chief Sandy Johnson told the Globe.”
“Straight from the “We Waited 33 Years For This” department comes a remixed version of the Fabs’ star-crossed 1970 swan song. It’s now minus Phil Spector’s heavy-handed string overdubs, which does wonders for “The Long And Winding Road” and “Across The Universe.” It’s also minus the between-song chatter and throwaways like “Maggie May” and “Dig It,” which we never had a problem with. It now has an alternate version of “Don’t Let Me Down,” which was the B-side of the “Get Back” single and never wound up on the original version of “Let It Be,” and a bonus disc with 22 minutes of mind-numbing chat and song fragments. It also sounds about a million times better than the original CD thanks to stellar new remastering. While it doesn’t live up to the expectations of die-hard Beatle fans, it makes for a darn good listen, and like all classic Beatle products, it’s a must for everyone’s collection.”
Correspondents’ Corner: Name: Darwin Overson
Hometown: SLC, Ut Dr. A:
Just an update on the Diebold voting scam. Representitive Rush Holt has sponsored the Voter Confidence and Increased Assessibility Act of 2003 (HR2239). It is currently stuck in committee but co-sponsors are starting to come on board. This bill requires a paper trail and provides from random automatic recounts of .05% of various areas of the state to ensure the machines are accurately tabulating. Thanks for raising this issue in Altercation.
Name: Chris Sonne
Hometown: Yankton, SD
Dear Eric,
Question regarding Ann Coulter — it’s probably an exercise in futility, destined only to waste time and precious brain cells trying to puzzle out what the toxic harpy means when she rants, but there you are. Anyway, what the Samuel Langhorne heck does she mean in her anti-Semitic rant when she refers to Al Sharpton as “circumcised,” apparently as some sort of shorthand for “Jewish”? Is Ann a complete imbecile in addition to being a vile hatemonger? News flash: Not all men who are circumcised are Jewish. Many Christians are (including yours truly, a Lutheran), and to the best of my knowledge and belief, there is no trace of Semitism anywhere in my family tree — not that there’s anything wrong with that — though I can’t rule out that my ancestors along the fjords of Norway may have been covert Hasidim.
Granted, this is probably a news flash only to Ann and her pea-brained brethren, but I thought it bore mentioning. I pity the teacher who ever had to teach her the difference between a rhombus and a square: “No, Ann. For the thousandth time, all squares have four equal sides, and all rhombuses have four equal sides, but not all rhombuses are squares. All squares must also have right angles!” [blows own brains out in frustration]
Similarly, not all circumcised persons are necessarily Jewish; in addition to being circumcised, they have to be... well, they have to be Jewish. It’s a tiny point that any right-wing nutcase could easily miss, but...
Sorry to vent on such a relatively trivial matter, but everybody has a point at which they say, “My God, why does anybody listen to nutcases like her?” This was mine. At least for today. She (?!) is bound to come up with another doozie tomorrow.
Perplexed on the Prairie (and apparently I’m now also Jewish, according to Ann. Oy!)
Was this all part of a plan or are Bush and Cheney making it up as they go along? And who ever would have thought we would have so soon reached the point that suicide bombers could murder 14 people in Baghdad and two more via a missile launch, and the Washington Post would think it worthy only p. A23?
Meanwhile, didn’t Barbara ever teach that boy any manners?
Howie’s in: While precious few people would defend Howie Kurtz from the charge of being a walking conflict-of-interest, quite a few people have a hard time seeing that he is also a handmaiden to the careers of right-wing journalists, like Rich Lowry, Jonah Goldberg, and Andy Sullivan, among many others. Well, you no longer have to take my word for it. The American Conservative Union has given Howie their official endorsement as well. Take a look at their list of reliable right-wingers: Pat Buchanan Bill Buckley Mona Charen Matt Drudge Joseph Farah Georgie Ann Geyer Arianna Huffington *This list is a bit dated, apparently. Charles Krauthammer Howard Kurtz Larry Klayman Bob Novak Wes Pruden Chris Ruddy Bill Safire Phyllis Schlafly Joseph Sobran Thomas Sowell Cal Thomas
Any more arguments?
“A conservative website called GOPUSA.com (though, let’s be clear, *not* affiliated w/ the Republican party) is running a column with these pleasant things to say about George Soros: ‘No other single person represents the symbol and the substance of Globalism more than this Hungarian-born descendant of Shylock. He is the embodiment of the Merchant from Venice. His public reputation as an astute currency speculator is generous, while his skills as a manipulator and procurer of pain and suffering is shrouded in the footnotes of the financial journals...”
Josh notes that in addition to this column, James Hall, the site’s other regular columnists include Austin Bay, Linda Chavez, David Horowitz, Alan Keyes, and Star Parker. Numerous “Republican members of Congress, as Atrios notes, spoke at their conference just a couple weeks ago.”
“In addition to having a number of family deaths among them, the Democrats’ other big idea - too nuanced for a bumper sticker - is that many of them have Jewish ancestry. There’s Joe Lieberman: Always Jewish. Wesley Clark: Found Out His Father Was Jewish in College. John Kerry: Jewish Since He Began Presidential Fund-Raising. Howard Dean: Married to a Jew. Al Sharpton: Circumcised. Even Hillary Clinton claimed to have unearthed some evidence that she was a Jew - along with the long lost evidence that she was a Yankees fan. And that, boys and girls, is how the Jews survived thousands of years of persecution: by being susceptible to pandering.”
(And speaking of blonde, scantily-clad anti-Semites, did our good friend Laura Ingraham ever explain just who she had in mind when bashing “anti-Christian Hollywood elites” who object to Jews being portrayed as Christ-killers? Just wondering…)
Eurowimpiness, often mistaken for anti-Semitism, sometimes purposely-Watch: The European Union’s racism watchdog has shelved a report on anti-Semitism because the study concluded Muslims and pro-Palestinian groups were behind many of the incidents it examined.
More (mostly) Eurowimpiness: On the stupidity and counterproductivity of the boycott of Israeli scholars. For more on this idiotic campaign, go here and to SIVA’s blog.
“The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is ending its emergency food programme in the West Bank, saying the economic collapse there is the direct result of Israeli military closures and that Israel must live up to its responsibility as the occupying power for the economic needs of the Palestinians. The move comes as the Israeli media reported that Francois Bellon, the Red Cross representative, told senior Israeli generals that the Palestinian Authority was on the verge of an ‘explosion’ that could lead to ‘the worst ever humanitarian crisis’ in the occupied territories. Israel is concerned that other international organisations may follow the Red Cross, which would leave Israel to face the cost of providing the services they currently provide - a cost that some estimates put as high as $1.1bn a year.”
Wonder why Pakistan’s a mess? Ask my buddy, Hussain Haqqani.
Alter-reviews: It’s Beatles Week here at Altercation. Here’s Sal on the two CD/DVD:
“Concert for George” is an incredible listen from beginning to end. Recorded at the Royal Albert Hall a year to the day after the passing of the Quiet Beatle, this is a celebration of George’s music by his friends and family, who include Eric Clapton, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Gary Brooker of Procol Harum, Albert Lee, Jim Capaldi of Traffic, George’s son Dhani Harrison, Ravi Shankar and his other, not so famous but just as talented daughter, Anoushka, and Paul and Ringo, better known as The Living Beatles. Covering such Beatle classics as “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “I Want To Tell You,” as well as later hits like “Beware Of Darkness” and the Traveling Wilburys’ “Handle With Care,” this isn’t a throwaway tribute concert. These are musicians who loved George and wanted to do the right thing. The DVD features the entire concert in the order in which it was played, and watching the musicians during McCartney’s emotional performance of “All Things Must Pass” and “Something” is something that needs to be seen and not just heard. This is essential.”
Name: David Witt
Hometown: NYC Is everybody seeing the ‘Do You Support Rush?’ banner ad above this column? Here’s a link. I had to go check it out, and it’s a poll asking about your views on Rush—I encourage you all to go there and...vote your conscience! ;>
Name: Steven C. Day
Hometown: Wichita, Kansas
Dr. Alterman,
Sometimes I think we don’t give William Safire enough credit. I mean, how many people could write a column based upon articles that have not only already been talked to death, but have also largely been proven to be utter nonsense, and still get it published in The Times.
That kind of successful incompetence deserves a medal, a trophy, a pie in the face or something.
Quote of the Day: “I feel like I have been duped, I don’t mind telling you,” Cleland admits. “Everybody in the administration was selling this used car. The problem is all the wheels have fallen off the car and we’ve got a lemon.” Max Cleland, triple amputee Vietnam vet, in an interview with Eric Boehlert.
Speaking of McSweeney’s, this is very funny. This too.
I’ve not had time to read this article on Dick Cheney yet, but perhaps we all should.
A working class hero is something to be. President Bush needed five chefs in England. I’ll say it again. President Bush needed five chefs in England.
I generally believe it’s pointless to argue with morons, but the blogosphere sometimes makes it impossible to adhere to that rule. I keep reading in right-wing weblogs that I have somehow “discovered” Castro’s repression because I happen to sign a letter protesting it. The letter was published in The New York Review of Books and partially republished in The Wall Street Journal.
I must say, even the logic eludes me here. First of all, I’m getting credit I don’t deserve. I didn’t write the letter, not even a comma. I never spoke to the people who did. In fact, I don’t even know who did. More to the point, none of these smart folks can point to a single quotation of mine where I ever said anything remotely sympathetic about Castro or Cuban communism. The argument seems to be that only sensible protestors -the hypocritical supporters of fascist dictators like say, the Rupert Murdoch or the Wall Street Journal editors -should be allowed to condemn alleged dictatorships of the left. Just imagine what these boneheads would have written if they read somewhere that I refused to sign the letter. Reels the mind….
Alter-reviews: I saw John Gorka last night at The Bottom Line which, apparently, still needs saving. It was about as relaxed a show as is imaginable. He had two songs planned, my two favorite as a matter of fact, “Land of the Bottom Line” and “I Saw a Stranger With Your Hair,” and then took requests all night on napkins handed up by the crowd. He said he had been accused of being overly slick in the past but was trying to get past that. He managed. The guy has a beautiful, full, and powerful voice and writes moving honest songs. He could lighten up a little, but so could we all. Anyway, if you’re just starting, start with “Land.”
Here’s Sal on the new Al Green, album, “I Can’t Stop”: “His first album in almost ten years reunites the Reverend with legendary Memphis producer Willie Mitchell, who produced all of Al’s ’70s classics, as well as the Hodges Brothers, who backed Al and Willie up on those classic records. Green’s voice has held up incredibly well over the years, and the vibe of the record will take you back to a time and place when musicians played real instruments, and the highest paid major league ballplayer was Steve Balboni.”
And Here’s the great jazz biographer, Ashley Kahn on same.
This just in: Have fun. I’m on The Nation Cruise:
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN sets holiday benefit concerts with THE MAX WEINBERG 7 & FRIENDS
Asbury Park, New Jersey shows on December 5, 6 and 7, 2003 will raise funds for local charities / organizations
NOVEMBER 20, 2003
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN with THE MAX WEINBERG 7 & FRIENDS have confirmed three holiday benefit concerts in Asbury Park, New Jersey. The shows are set for December 5, 6 and 7 and will take place at the Asbury Park Convention Hall. Local charities and organizations will receive proceeds from the concerts.
Tickets for each concert are scheduled to go on sale Saturday, November 22 at 10:00 AM through Ticketmaster Charge By Phone ONLY. The ticket price is $100.
Showtime is 7:30 PM each night.
Ticket restrictions:
*Two (2) ticket limit per person.
*Two (2) ticket limit per show per phone call
Pierce’s Corner:
Name: Charles Pierce
Hometown: Newton, MA
Eric —
Quick Alter-Review: the new “Let It Be” is as maddening as the original was, although “The Long And Winding Road” is exposed finally as the piece of ur-hackwork from Sir Paul that you always knew it was. And “One After 909” is still my favorite cut on the album, but why the line, “C’mon, baby, don’t be cold as ice,” still cracks me up after 33 years is beyond me. C+, I guess, because I miss Charles Haughtry and the Deaf-Ades.
You may have noticed this week that, when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers got tired of Keyshawn Johnson’s act, they declared him “deactivated,” which meant that he couldn’t play for them or anyone else this season — plus the designation has a nice little Asimovian flavor to it, as though Keyshawn was over in the corner, his head slumped, and the light gone out in his eyes. Can we do that to Wee Tommy Daschle, please? Just deactivate him, until we manage to rid ourselves of the porkpie Energy legislation and the Medicare fraudulence for which the AARP has taken such an ungainly dive. These are monumental embarrassments even by the standards of the Cash ‘n Carry crew in the White House, and they are very big fish in very small barrels for any Senate Minority Leader who actually wants to, you know, like, lead the minority. Line up some revolted R’s and squeeze the rest of them until they sing soprano. There are times to dig down and find your Inner Lyndon, and this is one of them.
One of the unacknowledged subtexts of the controversy over “The Reagans” is the fact that his own family and (most of all) his political family would stick needles in their eyes rather than admit to the possibility that Mr. Reagan was a symptomatic Alzheimer’s patient while he was still president — even though it was obvious during the Louisville debate with Mondale that the president didn’t know where he was, and even though there are hints of it in every memoir of the period from Lawrence Walsh’s to Ollie North’s. Ask me why, and I’ll speculate that: a) there were people around the presidency who preferred an impaired Reagan to VP Poppy Bush, whom they did not trust, and b) darker still, there were people who preferred to have an impaired Reagan around when the subpoenas began to fly. I’d like to see the real neurology reports from Walter Reed, if there are any.
This weekend — official Opening Day for The Roches “Three Kings” season!
P.S. — The pressure’s just too great, now that the Supreme Judicial Court has said the constitution can’t forbid gay people to marry each other here in the Commonwealth. I don’t know whether to dissolve my marriage (Its VERY FOUNDATIONS are in peril, y’know), run off with an Irish Setter (Thanks, Rick Santorum), or ask Barney Frank what he’s doing Saturday night. What can I say, I’m an embattled heterosexual and God has taken a walk on us.
Here’s Stupid:
Eric, it’s Stupid to ignore the biggest battle in the war on terrorism. Not Iraq, energy independence. For the last two days I’ve been surveying the blogosphere and I don’t see any mention of the monstrosity that passed the House. (And unless I missed something this includes Altercation - I’m hurt!) The NY Times covers it...on page 14.
The bill is a sad piece of work. First, it’s tiny in scope: $32 billion over 10 years. We spend that much in Iraq in 8 months! Compare that to the post-9/11 calls for an energy independence version of “let’s put a man on the moon.” Second, it’s largely pork. Third, next to nothing goes towards alternative energy development. Finally, it shows the worst side of the Dems and moderate GOP’ers - the sop that was thrown to them was abandoning ANWAR drilling (though it sets that up in the future by funding a new Alaskan pipeline).
Apologies to Kristof, but ANWAR is an elitist environmentalist issue, especially when you compare it to what passed: immunity for gasoline manufactures for MTBE poisoning. What, the Dems can morph Pat Buchanan when it comes to Iraq, but they can’t trot out his “owls over people” rhetoric for this? There has been some talk of filibustering in the senate, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
Here’s a response to Stupid from last week: Name: Tomas Inguanzo
Hometown: Miami, FL
Dear Alter:
I just read Stupid’s letter from the 14th saying that the war in Iraq saved more lives than it killed, because the sanctions killed 15000 kids every four months, the same number of estimed Iraqi combat deaths.
Reality check: Those kids died because of rampant poverty and a shortage of health related social services. Six months after the fall of Hussein, there is still rampant poverty, and still a shortage of health related social services, so how can Stupid say with any kind of certainty that all of those thousands of kids just magically stopped dying after the invasion?
A much more realistic scenario is that these kids died in even greater numbers since the invasion, because the already overtaxed Iraqi health services were further burdened by the large numbers of Iraqi wounded.
Stupid demanded that all such casualty reports must include the sanction deathtoll in order to be honest. Fine. Let’s get really honest. Let’s look at all deaths due to malnutrition, disease, and other such poverty related “natural causes” from both before and after the invasion. And then lets look at all combat related deaths from the time period after the fall of Hussein, a period that the afore-mentioned report didn’t touch. And when we’re done with that, let’s count up all of the deaths due to the explosion of violent crime.
Name: Jacqueline Swartz
Hometown: Toronto, Canada
Dr. Alterman:
Thanks for mentioning the American Jewish Community’s ignorant and arrogant take on French anti-semitism. The notion that France has regressed to the dangers of Vichy and thus should be boycotted is such nonsense that Jews in France - from Claude Lanzmann, who made the film Shoah, to Roger Cukierman, leader of the Consistery (consistoire) have spoken openly against it. The real anti-Jewish culprits are North Africans who are slamming Israel through attacks on French Jewish Synagogues and schools. These people, mostly angry, dispossessed youth are also considered dangerous by non-Jews in France - even the police won’t go into some suburban “projects” highrises. Lack of security is why so many voted for ultra-right wing law and order candidate Jean-Marie Lepen and his Front National during the first round of presidential elections. That some Jews voted for the antisemitic Lepen is no secret.
Now, under President Jacques Chirac, a cabinet level meeting is planned with members of the Jewish community.
Before the Intifida was imported to France, I was writing an article on a topic very much in the news there: Can French Jewry exist without the holocaust as its center? This led to an interesting exploration of friction between the Sephardic community, which grew tremendously after the war, and the Ashkenazi population, which has shrunk. I dropped the article. In a moment of self-censorship, I assumed that it would seem trivial in the face of Arab attacks on Jewish synagogues and other places. If I had written the piece, I would have included statistics that no one who accuses the French of being a bunch of incorrigible antisemites gets right: the number of French Jews who survived the Shoah is approximately 75%.
To say this number is high might sound disgraceful, considering the 25% of French Jews who were murdered, but it does say something about France’s record, a record most North American Jews prefer to ignore.
Name: Michael Rapoport Eric:
Yeah, I know I promised I’d be quiet for awhile, but your link to the Times’ story on the food-bank struggles is too good an opening to let pass. I wanted to suggest an idea for something Altercation readers can do to help these worthy charities and the people who depend on them - something small and requiring next to no effort or expense, but meaningful nonetheless.
If you shop regularly at a supermarket from a major chain, chances are you have one of those cards that gives you discounts or other benefits once you pile up a certain level of purchases. Around Thanksgiving time, the stores invariably offer you a free turkey. For some people, that’s going to be the turkey they put on their table next Thursday, and if that’s you, go with God, and happy Thanksgiving. But if, like a lot of people, you find yourself with a turkey or two more than you can use ... think about donating it to your local food bank. You’ll help them, and the hungry people who need them.
(And while you’re at it, spend a few minutes digging through your pantry for those cans of soup or beans or whatever that you know you’re never going to eat, and toss ‘em in a bag to donate too. And write a check as well. Go here.
For the Jews among the readers of this blog, here’s a perfect opportunity for tzedakah - which, remember, means giving to the needy not just out of charity or kindness, but because it’s a just and righteous thing to do. (And if anyone needs another reason, don’t forget that food banks are the favorite charities of a certain Mr. Springsteen who gets a mention in Altercation every now and again.)
I know picking up a free turkey and donating it to a food bank isn’t going to change the world, and it certainly isn’t a replacement for the kind of political and governmental change that’s needed. But we all have to do what we can to make someone else’s life a little better. Easing someone’s hunger a bit next week is a start.
Best,
Michael Rapoport
New American Progress column, “Think Again: For 9/11 Investigation, Where Is Fox?” is here today. It will be archived, with the rest of them, here if you check after Friday.
And how amazing isthis? Moral of the story: When you want to organize around a progressive, democratic cause, it’s a good idea to have right-wingers on your side.
It’s been a great week for we fans of schadenfreude, what with Rush, “Jacko,” and Conrad Black. But the gift just keeps on giving. The great thing about the Conrad Black takedown is that it happens to coincide with the interests of mankind, too. If Rush loses his show, that will too. “God and profits”; is there anything better?
Quid Quo Presidential Medal of the Humanities. You, too, can have your own. Well perhaps you could have. But tough luck, Midge Decter, previously known for her attacks on feminists and hairy gays at the beach (or was it the other way around?), came up with the idea of writing and publishing a schoolgirl’s valentine to Don Rumsfeld first. Think I overstate? Here’s Publisher’s Weekly:
“Decter’s doting paean, however, so exceedingly praises its subject that it is nearly impossible to take seriously. The book’s tone is set in an almost surreal prelude where an elegant, anonymous New York socialite confesses to Decter that she has Rumsfeld’s picture hanging in her dressing room. From there, Decter attacks Rumseld’s critics with sycophantic zeal and attempts to build events in the secretary’s life and career into the stuff of legend. Even fans of Rumsfeld’s will find that this overwrought hagiography trivializes the secretary’s impressive, if at times controversial, career.”
What’s next? “Unchain my Heart Dick Cheney?”
(An historical aside: You know, you can trace the entire history of neoconservatism to the time when the then-still liberal Norman Podhoretz was having lunch with George McGovern about three decades ago, and they were picking a table to eat at and McGovern said something unkind about the looks of a woman at one table spoiling his appetite that I fear even included a canine reference. The woman turned out to be Decter, Podhoretz’s wife, and the rest is history. The story originally appeared in Sid Blumenthal’s book, “The Rise of the Counter-Establishment,” and was repeated in a Washington Post’s review of it. With a perfect talent for making an already ugly situation even uglier, Podhoretz wrote in a letter demanding a retraction, thereby calling attention to what must have been a horrifying situation for Decter, only to have McGovern confirm the story for everybody. And yes, this does explain a lot about John P. “Normanson” Podhoretz too, but let’s leave that for another day.)
Next on Oprah: “Communist Dictators and the conservative media moguls who love them.”
Bernie Goldberg is passing along lies in his new book, “Arrogance,” originally perpetrated by Brent Bozell. Anyone can make a mistake, but let’s see what Bernie does to correct them, now that this one, as least, has been revealed.
And what the hell is Howie trying to imply when he writes, “I wonder if the remains would have been found if Dean wasn’t running for president.” Is he saying that Howard Dean is somehow exploiting his brother’s dead remains? Is he saying he took advantage of his candidacy to find them. Is he making any sense at all? You be the judge.
Alter-sortof-review: I’m a great admirer of Dave Eggers both as an author of stunning originality and pathos but also as a dedicated institution builder, something that is far too rare among people on my side of things. He is also an audacious S.O.B., and never more so than in his decision to publish William Vollmann’s Rising Up and Rising Down, “a critique of terrorist, defensive, military and police activity,” along with an attempt to construct a moral calculus for the human use of violence. It’s a mere 3,298 pages long, gorgeously published as seven hardcover volumes and released simultaneously in a burgundy, cloth-covered box with gold foil detail. I was honored when Dave selected me to be one of the reviewers of the set, but if I were to retain any self-respect whatever, I had to decline. I know how to cheat when I read and review but not when I’m allegedly reviewing a work of this magnitude. So I have to admit I have just about no idea whatever you’ll find in this incredible work -but I trust Dave’s judgment and even if I didn’t, look what this erudite fellow in Publisher’s Weekly has to say. You can order it relatively inexpensively -for what it is- here. And congrats to the mad McSweeney’s crew for making it happen. Check out their good works here. And this is pretty funny.
Correspondents’ corner:
Name: Don Dougherty
Hometown: Lynbrook New York
Dear Eric: As a classroom teacher in middle school and high school since 1967, I think that I have a unique perspective on the “No Child Left Behind” fiasco, maybe not unique but certainly cynical. It all makes sense if one accepts the premise that the people running the country are really setting the stage for vouchers, an argument that they will make as soon as the public schools, underfunded and overbureaucratized, fail to meet the standards. The suburban high school where I teach cannot afford to build the labs needed to complete the science requirements in the new laws.
My wife teaches third grade in New York City, and the only thing that the city seems to care about are the test scores (for third graders, for God’s sake). Meanwhile she gets memos about how the chairs are to be aligned. The school cannot afford to hire subs for absent teachers so when someone is sick, their students get placed in already overcrowded rooms. It would make a great comedy but who’s laughing.
The elites do not want the masses educated, not if it detracts from more important matters such as $23 billion in tax breaks for oil and gas companies, and the missile defense system. The media would rather demonize the teachers, and I don’t know if you caught the New York Daily News reporting on Randi Weingarten’s appearence in front of the City Council Committee as a classic case. Eva Moskowitz and Mayor Bloomy were complaining that it’s too hard to get rid of bad teachers (there are currently eleven cases out of one hundred and forty thousand teachers awaiting disposition of their cases). That sounds like a real plague of terrible teachers to me. This sort of thing goes all the time everywhere, even in top-flight suburban districts. It will continue to go in suburbia until the financing of schools is not dependent on the property tax and until in city schools, it is understood that it is in the whole country’s interest to save public schools even when most of the children are not those of the elites. Vouchers would take us back to the pre-Horace Mann concept of the few very well-educated and the many as the cannon fodder for the New American Century. Take Care.
Name: Doug Ratay
Hometown: Gainesville, FL
Dr. Alterman,
Love your site. Thanks so much for the work you do. I’m writing to inform you and your readers that there are Democrats out here who don’t think that No Child Left Behind is Satan’s Spawn.
In response to Pat O’Neill’s post from 11/19, no, a horizontal survey of only new cancer patients wouldn’t tell us much about a particular treatment, but it would tell us how our public health system is doing (e.g. if less people are getting cancer every year, then our system of preventative medicine is working). Likewise, a standards based test in the 5th grade examines the cumulative education students are receiving in K-5. The test is interested in assessing the preparedness of students moving on to middle school given their entire elementary experience. If students don’t have the basic skills after 6 years of school, then we should know why and start trying to fix the problem.
Poor/minority vs. affluent white test score gaps exist in almost every school system in this country. NCLB exposes these gaps by requiring schools to report disaggregated data and further requires improvement among all groups. Maybe Karl Rove thinks he can use this data to dismantle public education. I think that we can not improve public education for ALL students without facing the reality of the system. NCLB can probably be improved. NCLB can certainly be better funded. However, just because W signed the bill doesn’t mean that we should ignore the problem.
You may find it interesting to check out the materials at The Education Trust for more complete info on NCLB.
Name: Keith Kurtz
Hometown: Arlington, VA With regard to crediting the “No Child Left Behind” Act with increasing scores, did Mickey Kaus even look at the data:
Scores have been rising since 1990. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) gives credit for the math score rise to their organization:
“The rise in mathematics scores of the nation’s fourth and eighth graders in the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) released today show the continuing effect of mathematics standards developed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). ”
While I think they may be overstating their case - based on my doubt over the extent to which teachers are familiar with and understand the NCTM standards, especially in the early grades - they certainly have a stronger case than the NCLB Act, since the original NCTM Standards were published in 1989.
And, as anyone familiar with the “Math Wars” debate knows, “Standards-based reform” as used by the NCTM and “Standards-based reform” as pushed by the high-stakes testing crowd are very different animals.
Name: Dan Tompkins
Hometown: Haddonfield, NJ
Eric!
Please be careful!
“...the Post has buried this as it does all of Walter Pincus’ terrific reporting. ”
Pincus IS terrific - and he’s 70 years old! - but you’re wrong. He did 152 stories in 2003, 44 of them on page one. We should all be so buried. For a while he was getting buried, but then the Post woke up. Woodward helped in this, to his great credit.
Name: Glenn Lambert
Hometown: Land of the Dead
Hey Eric,
Glad (and somewhat surprised, since I didn’t know you were a fan) to see your plug for the Dead’s “Closing of Winterland” CD. I was the co-host of the radio/TV simulcast way back when, and the co-author (along with my brother, who works with the Dead) of the liner notes on the DVD and CD. I’m also on one of the extras, interviewing Weir, Hart, and Kesey at 2 a.m. on that very crazy night.
It was my pleasure last week to attend the release party at the Fillmore in SF, where an abridged version was played on a giant screen and superb sound system. What they’ve done with the sound mix is just amazing. Turn it up, and see if your new apartment can survive Phil’s boomiest bass notes!
It was also a pleasure to remember Jerry on a night when his face (and playing) is filled with delight throughout. Seeing this show did a lot to soften my memories of the later, often pained-looking Garcia.
RUSH, BLACK, PERLE AND JACKO: WHO’S GOING TO WALK FIRST?
Is Rush a money-laundering crook? I can’t wait for the perp walk. Conrad Black’s too. “Shame on Hollinger’s directors for letting themselves be used as corporate hood ornaments, lending legitimacy to Lord Black’s financial manipulations and relentless social climbing.” (Is it tempting fate to hope that Perle perp walk isn’t far behind? )
Meanwhile, why is “JACKO” being hounded now when his peculiar tendencies in the sex arena have been known for decades and were laid out quite extensively in a biography -that got no attention? Is it because he is broke and can’t move units anymore and that’s why the industry no longer feels a need to protect him? I have no idea, but I’d like to know how he got away without being criminally investigated for so long. You’d think he was a Catholic priest or something.
More megabucks, Marty, please? “Over the past 12 months, the firmly antiwar Nation’s audited circulation has climbed to 158,810, pushing it past the field’s longtime leader, the National Review, which has 157,616 paid subscribers. The New Republic has made a business decision to allow its rate base - the number of subscribers a publication promises its advertisers - to shrink from an inflated 85,000 to a core readership of about 60,000. As a consequence and, perhaps, in some measure because of the magazine’s stand on the war, audited circulation is now 61,723.” (But you might want to stay away from the Conrad Black fellow.)
“Thank You Sir, May I have Another” If Andy thinks the Massachusetts ruling makes him “FREE AT LAST,” (his words, his caps) but George W. Bush is doing everything he can to overturn the decision, then perhaps he might wish to explain to just how it is that he has lended his talents as a propagandist to the slaveholders and their interests all these years, as in, for instance, here. Or is a little thing like his own “freedom” insufficiently important when it comes to things like beating up the liberals who have been fighting, marching and agitating for it -against Andy’s masters?
Meanwhile, this decision is good news -at least in the short and medium term- for the Republicans. Like the war in Iraq, it will both unite and energize them and divide Democrats, while simultaneously painting them as the party of the fringe. I am not saying this is fair. I am saying this is life -in these good old U Ses of A. Whether it will actually do gays any good remains to be seen.
Who is James Glassman and what is Tech Central Station? Ask Nick Confessore.
Alter-reviews: I’ve seen two amazing movies about death, sex, love, philosophy and politics recently. The first was “Angels in America,” which Frank Rich discusses better than I can, at these rates anyway. But let me say I can’t wait to see the misghigas once it hits. The other is “Barbarian Invasions,” a kind of sequel to Denys Arcand’s 1986 film, “The Decline of the American Empire.” Try not to miss either one. (“Jesus of Montreal” (1989) was great too, by the way.)
There’s a new Dead DVD called “The Closing of Winterland” recorded during my favorite period of the band, with Keith and Donna and a pudgy Jerry just about to go gray at the end of 1978. (The New Year enters riding a massive joint from the heavens.) It’s really terrific, with 6.5 hours of music on two discs, and lots of extras including a New Riders video, “Glendale Train,” and the Blues Brothers. It really shows the band’s amazing versatility from “Dark Star/St. Stephen” to “Good Lovin,” and the sound quality is first rate. There’s a four-cd version too, but I’ve not heard it.
The Allman Brothers Live at the Beacon DVD also has great sound, but, idiotically, they put a single encore “One Way Out,” alone on the second disc, with nothing else but a lot of worthless junk. Also, Warren Haynes must have negotiated a lot of singing parts as part of his deal to return to the band (with Derek Trucks), and this is kind of painful. He almost ruins “Soulshine,” the greatest late-period band-authored song they’ve come up with in the past twenty years, but not quite. I would start with the previous DVD, “Live at the Great Woods,” which still has Dickie on it and hence, avoids some of the sameness of the sound here, as well as said Mr. Haynes’ vocals.
Meanwhile, I also like the “COLDPLAY LIVE 2003” DVD/CD release. They are a very smart, musically imaginative band with a Radiohead/Television like dreamy quality to their songs, though I’ll be damned if I can understand what a single one of them is about.
Correspondent’ Corner: An awful lot of people got angry at my printing Anne Thompson’s letter yesterday. I thought doing so would be instructive. People who read weblogs like this one are not often exposed to views like hers and I didn’t think I was running the risk of her convincing anyone of anything. Many of you wrote in to argue with Ms. Thompson, which I think misses the point. The point is that people like this exist and my guess is, in much larger numbers than is known or understood in the elite media. Of course, I can’t know this, and I am just as likely wrong as right. But I was lectured once in very much these terms by two separate dinner companions on a National Review Alaska cruise a few years ago. It seemed like a decent argument for printing the letter anyway. After all, the president of the United States and his chief law enforcement officer did not pay tribute to the administration and faculty of Bob Jones University because they think the values it professes are rare and unimportant to their respective political bases. Here’s one of the many objections I received. Please consider the subject closed.
Name: Rabbi Michael Bernstein
Hometown: Longmeadow, MA As for the woman who wrote in with a screed about Judaism: You give her too much air-time by keeping her missive on the web-site without comment. While the vast majority of readers will not agree with the totality of what she says, her letter, unrebutted, sparks a variety of prejudicial feelings and enforces several dangerous stereotypes.
No matter what their interpretation of the Jewish religion or the politics of Israel, no responsible person with any understanding of being Jewish or knowledge of the basic tenets of Judaism could come to any of her sweeping generalizations about Jews and Judaism. As you know, “eye for an eye,” lack of forgiveness, biblical descriptions of genocide, and the perceived inclusivity of Jews are all false accusations against the Jewish interpretation of scripture. The ancient world of the Bible is a backdrop to centuries of extraordinary study and thinking about how to live a holy life and improve the world. Rabbinic thought has long understood eye for an eye as a call for just compensation for injury. The Biblical descriptions of the wars and conquest of Israel provide the history of the Children of Israel, not a prescription for the future (G-d forbid). And the role of Jews as part of a faith and common destiny is just one of the relationships between G-d and humanity.
Finally, as you know, the politics of Israel are only partly about the Jewish faith (or Islam for that matter.) The writer is entitled to her opinion, which relegates all who are not Christian to at best “incomplete validity” and perpetuates the worst lies about the motivations of the State of Israel. However, her views do not deserve such an uncritical airing. I know it is sometimes worse to answer folly, but it is also important to know when to answer someone who denies the very authenticity of your own identity.
Thank you and peace (L’shalom)
Name: Pat O’Neill
Hometown: Folsom, PA In regard to “No Child Left Behind”, you wrote:
“Meanwhile, the tests keep changing and therefore make comparisons on a year to year basis quite complicated.”
My local school superintendent makes this comparison. We are testing this year’s fifth graders, and then next year’s fifth graders, and then the following year’s fifth graders, all in an attempt to determine whether the programs we are using are improving student achievement. What we’re NOT doing is testing the same group of students every year—in other words, this year’s fifth graders, who will be next year’s sixth graders, the following year’s seventh graders, etc. This is like doing a medical survey of all those who come down with cancer this year, followed by a survey of all those who come down with cancer next year, etc.—in an attempt to determine if the treatment of THIS year’s cancer patients is effective.
Name: Mark Cashman
Hometown: Yonker, NY This is unbelievable. Yonkers, the 4th largest city in New York State, is eliminating all extra-curricular activities from its schools and cutting 502 jobs. Yeah, let’s cut taxes some more. Gimme, gimme, gimme. Screw the states. Screw the cities. But keep them steel tarrifs and farm subsidies coming. What a mess.
Speaking of which, here’s an entry from David Sirota’s Progress Report which continues to amaze on a daily basis:
9/11 ‘Didn’t Repeal the Constitution’
With today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Bush Administration’s response to 9/11, the question remains: Does the President have the power unilaterally to strip away the constitutional rights of a U.S. citizen? Jose Padilla, a US citizen designated an “enemy combatant” by the President, has been detained on a naval brig in South Carolina for the last 15 months. Padilla, who has not been charged with any crime, has not been permitted to communicate with an attorney (or anyone else). A federal appeals court yesterday, during oral arguments regarding the circumstances of Padilla’s detention, was sharply critical of the President’s actions. Judge Barron D. Parker (nominated to the federal appeals court by President Bush): “Were we to construe the Constitution as permitting this kind of power in the executive…we would be effecting a sea change in the constitutional life of this country and making changes that would be unprecedented in civilized society.” Judge Rosemary S. Pooler: “As terrible as 9/11 was, it didn’t repeal the Constitution.” Deputy Solicitor General Paul D. Clement argued that Padilla’s detention was permissible because the President has a “reservoir of authority to respond when the battlefield is in the United States.” But Jenny Martinez, an attorney who argued on Padilla’s behalf explained the problem with government’s position: “Under their theory, they can do this to any American. They can pick up any person off the street and, so long as the president turns in a piece of paper that says that that person is associated with al-Qaida, that person has no rights and the courts are powerless to intervene… that has never been the law in this country and it cannot be the law.” Yassir Hamdi, a U.S. citizen, has also been designated an enemy combatant and as been held incommunicado in South Carolina for more than two years. (For more about enemy combatants and other civil liberties issues see the American Progress report: Strengthening American By Defending Our Liberties)
And if you never did get to see Matthew Yglesias’s fine column for my Think Again feature for the Center for American Progress, on misreporting of alleged Iraqi-terrorist connections, it’s still there.
All Apologies: It’s been nearly a week since the new testosterone study has made a monkey of Andy and The New York Times Magazine. Anybody seen a correction (or an apology) yet?
Then again, not only has The New York Times continued to ignore the incredible Tiger Force story for more than a month now— Peter Jennings dealt with the story at some length on the ABC Evening News Wednesday and Thursday, and also it was on Nightline Wednesday night— it has been more than fourteen months since Judith Miller and Michael Gordon reported on the front page that Iraq had “embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb” by trying to purchase “specially designed aluminum tubes” that unidentified administration sources believed were for centrifuges to enrich uranium. It added, also as a statement of fact, “Mr. Hussein’s dogged insistence on pursuing his nuclear ambitions along with what defectors described in interviews as Iraq’s push to improve and expand Baghdad’s chemical and biological arsenals, have brought Iraq and the United States to the brink of war.”
Then again, has O’Reilly apologized on that WMD thing like he promised he would?
Alter-review: Taking Heads, “Once in a Lifetime” (Rhino) Name: Sal Nunziato I’ve been a fan of the Talking Heads from day one. From their debut “Talking Heads ’77”, through the Brian Eno produced trilogy of “More Songs About Buildings And Food”, “Fear Of Music”, and “Remain In Light”, David Byrne’s material was ground-breaking and quite honestly, there was nothing like it at the time. The new box set from Rhino, “Once In A Lifetime” has all that terrific music-brains and dancing at the same time, but nothing new, which is more than a bit disappointing. It does come with a bonus DVD featuring a video collection featuring unissued material, but you know, a big suit only goes so far. And where’s that terrific live compilation, still not available on CD, “The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads”; which corrected a lot of misimpressions on the name, too.
Musically, the box set plays very well, though there’s a clear fall-off both in danceability and originality with Disc Three, ten of whose 17 tracks are drawn either from “Naked” and “True Stories” lps, which are really just Byrne solo records. Much of the rest was on “Sand In The Vaseline,” a 2 cd anthology, but it’s sounds cleaner and stronger here. This was the seminal band of the late seventies and early eighties. Listen to Once In A Lifetime: Box Set to remember/find out why.
Eric adds: Sal was reviewing the advance of the box set and was not able to note a few things that I think, more than tip it into the category of “must-have.” In the first place, while it is unlikely to fit on any of the shelves you currently have your cds on, “Once in a Lifetime” has absolutely the coolest packaging I’ve seen in years. It’s like a long, thin child’s picture book, or perhaps a Paul Gauguin-sketchbook, if Gauguin used sketchbooks that were about as tall as a cd jewel case and as long as say, four cd jewel cases. The artwork, beautifully reproduced and signed “Valencia, 2001”-guaranteed to make you stand up and say “Que-ce que c’est?” Lots of essays by the band, Rick Moody, Mary Gaitskill, timelines photos, etc, in the 80 page booklet and five previously unreleased tracks, as well as few that have never been on cd before. All of the bands videos, plus three more, are on the DVD. I also like the third disc better than Sal does, and find it quite danceable, though one cannot help but admit that a certain calcification had set in by this time bloom was off the proverbial rose of the band’s incredible period of sonic innovation. Anyway, there’s more here.
Pierce’s corner:
Name: Charles Pierce
Hometown: Newton, MA
Eric — Because Every Day — even days when I am anointed to be among the “media elite” — Is Slacker Friday, Part The XXI.
I beg the indulgence of the company because I may need to go on at some length here. You may have noticed that Bernard Goldberg - the sole occupant of his own media cosmos — has produced another spasm of richly subsidized typing, Imagine my surprise to find myself on Page 208. Bernie there has ground out a 52-word chapter of which 46 of the words are mine — specifically, a sentence from an Edward Kennedy profile that I wrote in the Boston Globe Magazine last January 5.
The sentence reads: “If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62-years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age.”
This appears under the headline: “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up,” which I presume Bernie actually wrote, shortly before developing the bends at the four-word mark. I also presume that it’s a joke — although that’s hard to determine.
God, is this fathead really the best they can do?
The sentence in question is the concluding line in a long section describing the impact on Kennedy’s public career of the fact that a woman drowned in his car one night. Earlier in the passage, one can read the following:
“Plutocrats’ justice and an implausible (but effective) cover-up followed.”
Or,
“She denies to him forever the moral credibility that lay behind not merely all those rhetorical thunderclaps that came so easily in the New Frontier, but also Robert Kennedy’s anguished appeals to the country’s better angels...He learned to plod, because soaring made him look ridiculous.”
Or, perhaps,
“And if his name were Edward Moore, he would have done time.”
Plainly, the line cited by Goldberg was an ironic twist — meant to suggest a certain unacknowledged moral deadweight in the senator’s career. Some Kennedy staffers with whom I had dinner at a friend’s house a week later spent most of the cocktail hour chaffing me over it, and that noted member of the Weather Underground, James Taranto, quoted the line in Opinion Journal and concluded that I “really must hate Ted Kennedy,” which is also not true, but is evidence that Taranto at least can read. Of course, Mark Steyn, the world’s most embarrassing Canadian not named David Frum, read the line in much the same way that Goldberg did, and blithered around for half a column over it.
In fact, I am willing to bet Bernie half his advance that he read Steyn’s column, and not my entire original piece, before he decided to use me to fill up 30 percent of page 208. Otherwise, he’s being deliberately obtuse for effect. Or he’s a subliterate mook. Anyway, you’d think he’d know better after the beating Al Franken handed him in re: John Chancellor — but I defy him to prove me wrong. You’re a hack, Bernie, or you’re a dishonest hack. Your choice.
Name: Eric Rauchway
Location: London
Geez, your colleague Katrina vanden H. is all over the McKinley assassination — as staged in _London_. Doesn’t she know there’s a fine American, historical recounting of that event on bookshelves today?
Meanwhile, miles away from Buckingham Palace in a rundown part of London, another kind of protest is being staged during Bush’s visit. Americans: A New Century Begins with an Act of Blood, is a play about the rise and decline of imperial power. Eric Schlosser—who demolished the junk food industry in the best-selling Fast Food Nation —wrote it in 1985, at a time when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were giving old imperial attitudes a new spin for a new generation.
Empire has once again become fashionable. So, ironically a play written nearly twenty years ago, about early 20th century America’s determination to replace Britain as the world’s leading imperial power, is being staged for the first time asKing George arrives in London.
Set in the period before and after President William McKinley’s assassination, “Americans” explores the fall of the British empire, the birth of the American colossus, and the historical parallels between the late 19th and 20th centuries. “On both sides of the Atlantic,” Schlosser says, “worship of the ‘free market’, growing corporate power, union-busting and a widening gap between rich and poor suggested the dawn of another Gilded Age.”
Leon Czolgosz,, the anarchist who assassinated McKinley at the Pan American Exposition in 1901, is a central figure in the play, and many of his lines resonate today. “If America chooses to become the big bully of the world,” he tells another US President, “I promise you, America will pay.” Czolgosz saw himself as a Brutus warning his country against the horrors that tyranny and the misuse of power would inflict.
One of the most chilling moments in the play has the unrepentant Czolgosz going to the electric chair warning the assembled witnesses that American cities will one day go up in flames, paying the price for “your outrageous vanity.”
The great Southern writer William Faulkner eloquently noted that the past is never dead. It isn’t even past. Schlosser speaks for the millions of Americans who understand what Faulkner meant.
Name: Anne Thompson Mr. Alterman,
As an American citizen and consumer of both print and television media, I have become increasingly concerned over what I perceive to be a completely liberal-biased slant as well as unquestioning support for both the brutal policies of Israel as well as the Jewish faith. Judaism is an incomplete religion and our country is NOT a “Judeo-Christian” nation. America was founded on the principles of Christianity and Christianity ALONE.
To give any credence to the Jewish faith is to say that it is a true faith, which it is NOT. To give unquestioning support to the state of Israel, despite its horrid brutality, is criminal. Ariel Sharon has spent the last 40 years deceiving the Lebanese Christian community, committing mass genocide, lying to the American and European public and, in general, behaving worse than any tyrant currently recorded in history.
To support Judaism and the state of Israel, in its current form, is disgraceful. Allow me to explain why the Jewish religion is an incomplete religion and why Jews MUST convert to Christianity AT ALL COSTS.
The incompleteness of Judaism:
1. Judaism believes in an eye for an eye, there is no such thing as forgiveness.
2. Judaism consistently promotes mass genocide, while Christianity promotes isolating hostile elements within an opposition group and removing those elements, but leaving the group intact and converting them to Christianity.
3. Judaism is an inclusive group, meaning that the religion does not proselytize nor does it accept outside membership. This essentially sets Jews up for inbreeding, which causes all sorts of neurological and degenerative diseases.
4. Judaism is suspicious and hostile of outsiders.
5. Judaism creates a group of people who are paranoid, isolated, inbred, and unforgiving.
What kind of life is this for anyone? Christianity is an open, loving, forgiving religion. Christianity does not submit to genocide of a group in which there exist bad members, but rather advocates the elimination of those bad members, specifically, while leaving the group intact and converting them to Christianity.
Christianity is superior to Judaism in many ways and Jews must and should convert to Christianity as soon as possible. To state that Judaism, in any form, is an acceptable type of worship to our Lord is deplorable. JUDAISM IS FALLACY!
The media’s ongoing support of this incomplete faith and its false tenets is an injustice to the world. America cannot and WILL NOT TOLERATE the ongoing atrocities committed by the Israelis, the Mossad, and the Jewish people. The Jews MUST CONVERT to Christianity IMMEDIATELY. The violence in the Middle East will go on for a thousand years if they are not converted. The ongoing tensions in American society will continue if the Jews do not convert. It is CRITICAL that Jews convert.
I thank you for your time and consideration and may God bless you and yours.
Case Open Again, and boy, that was quick. DOD to Weekly Standard (and Fox News, as well as about a few zillion prowar bloggerz) re alleged big scoop on Iraq and Al Qaida: “Um, never mind.” We await a corrections. The CIA says it’s nonsense too though the Post has buried this as it does all of Walter Pincus’ terrific reporting.
This ridiculous stretching on the part of the administration and its yes men in the media of the phony Iraq/Al Qaida connection well beyond its breaking point is all the more infuriating when you realize that in order to justify this ruinous war, they had to pretend to be attacking a supplier and funder of “Al Qaida-type” organizations-to borrow the president’s own weasel words, when in fact, they were letting Al Qaida get away and reqroup for more terrorist attacks. We may have seen the results of that colossally counterproductive decision over the weekend in Istanbul and will no doubt see it here someday, where we remain hopelessly unprepared.
In Europethere’s no SCLM, and so nobody has to pretend that this invasion has been anything but a disaster. Still, someone should tell the Post editorial board.
How hated is Bush? Rule of thumb: If you have to get permission to murder people in advance of a presidential visit, it’s probably not such a hot idea to begin with.
“There is something a bit surreal about the idea that the Israeli government is negotiating with Hezbollah over the return of an Israeli hostage and the remains of three soldiers while continuing to insist that the only Palestinians fit to serve as ‘partners’ for negotiations are those without blood on their hands. It suggests that Israel will negotiate with anyone, even Hezbollah, for the return of the dead, but has a far more restrictive policy when it comes to achieving peace for the living.”
And how nice that right-wing American Jews are willing to fight for their ideology right down to the death of the last Israelis. Imagine, denouncing a peace plan for a country in which you do not even live…. Kind of gives chutzpah a bad name.
Meanwhile,this lovely Website classifies writers on Israel/Palestine exclusively by ethnic/religious background and by what anti-Semitic Satalinists say about them. Of course they lack the power and resources of the Zionist Organization of America, so it’s kind of silly to worry too much about them.
Pot calls kettle white; Bennett exonerates Limbaugh: It would be wrong to conclude that all right-moralizers are illegal drug-taking and gambling hypocrites, but a country with 51 percent of its citizens smart enough to have a low opinion of the former, according to Gallup, ought to be smart enough to know that. (Another hopeful sign: 69 percent “never heard of” Ann Coulter.) Still, it would also be wrong to conclude that all right-wing media moguls are crooks just because Conrad Black appears to be one. That would be guilt by association. And it would be wrong. Then again, would it surprise you?
Why social scientists have no use for journalistic-much less blogger-analysis:Mickey writes: “Mickey’s Assignment Desk: Test scores in California are going up. Test scores in New York are going up. Is it possible the much-maligned No Child Left Behind Act, with its crude emphasis on testing and “standards,” is actually, you know, working?” Uh, no Mickey’s it’s not. This is the first year the NCLBA act is allegedly even in effect. Those test scores cannot possibly bear any relationship to its implementation-which is not even really happening in many places because, as you know, it is not being funded, because it hadn’t started yet when the tests were taken. In New York City, it’s caused little beside chaos and hopelessly overcrowded schools. Fortunately, my kid’s school got to opt out of the program because of its-guess what?-high scores. Are they included in this study? Betcha they are, which would screw up the thesis even further, if it had any basis with which to begin. Meanwhile, the tests keep changing and therefore make comparisons on a year to year basis quite complicated. In any case, we think it’s a little early to be passing judgment about anything but ideologically-based wishful thinking….
Nice work if you can get it: “Edison Schools, a company created to run public schools like private businesses, accepted a $182 million buyout from Florida’s pension fund Wednesday in a deal that follows years of losses but promises millions of dollars for the CEO. ”
The Decline of Western Civilization, part XXII: When you move into a new place, you can’t help discovering how dysfunctional our economy is. Last Friday I stayed home all day to observe the following:
The furniture guys who were supposed to replace the kid’s desk and computer table between 11-2 never showed. The electrician who was supposed to put in the ceiling fans never called back. When I called them, they had never heard of me, even though they made the holes in the ceilings. The plumber who is supposed to give us an estimate for replacement of the bathtub showed up, but never gave me the estimate, and the one we called instead never called back. The guy who said it would take a week to re-cane the dining room chairs brought them back unstained when I said I needed them two weeks later because people were coming over, but never picked them up again (and hence, has not been paid). The dinner I ordered from the food store for me and the kid included some unordered lobster bisque and some sort of weird yogurt, together costing me an extra $13.00. (This New York, remember, where yogurt costs $6.99.) When I called up about it, they asked me to come by and return it, a mere fourteen blocks in each direction.
And that was just Friday. The whole move went this way; lawyers lost documents; the bank failed to wire the money to the closing, nearly blowing the whole deal (and sending the whole family to live in a motel); and the moving company overcharged me by more than $500 and lost the refund check. During the 80s, I used to say, “No wonder Japan is kicking our asses.” Now I say, “And those damn neocons thought we could somehow run Iraq…”
Alterreviews: Derek Trucks Band live and “Soul Serenade”
Derek Trucks is so talented and musically inventive, it’s pointless to try to do justice to him in a short description. He joined Allman Brothers, before he was old enough to drink, at least legally. He’s equally comfortable playing Coltrane and Sun Ra, Indian classical music, Santana-esque latin funk as he is southern and Chicago blues. He also plays the serad. “Soul Serenade,” recorded in 2000, is a jazz album, save the killer version of “Drown in My Own Tears” with a Greg Allman vocal. It’s got equally interesting versions of the title track, of Marley’s “Rastaman Chant” and of Mongo Santamaria’s “Afro-Blue,” (which most people know from the Coltrane version). It’s nothing like last year’s “Joyful Noise,” which is also great, but is slightly more conventional. On Saturday night, he played Town Hall and barely said a word, but the music soared. Really, the kid is so poised and talented it’s hard to assimilate. I’m not so crazy about his reading list though.
Correspondents’ Corner:
Name: Tim Hopton
‘Ey Eric,
I meant to comment earlier on your Altereview of ‘Top’s Box Set. You mentioned Billy Gibbon’s “unique tone”... as you may be aware (but some of your readers may not know), Gibbon’s tone is due in no small part to his using a Mexican Peso as a guitar pick. It’s most evident in the harmonic squeals heard in almost every ‘Top song. Queen’s Brian May (another highly under-rated player) employs a similar technique, using a flattened British Pence as a pick. Of course the choice of guitars & amps is key in achieving a unique tone, but you can’t deny the effect of metal on metal.
Bonus Piece of Useless Trivia:
At least one person gave Gibbons his creds — Jimi Hendrix called Billy Gibbons the best “new guitar player” back when Billy was playing in “The Moving Sidewalks”.
New Nation columnhere, on Chickenhawkism and its implications.
Matthew Yglesias has a fine contribution to my “Think Again” series for the Center for American Progress, “Finding the Whole Truth” Should be here any minute now.
Matt Miller is a smart guy and he thinks Howard Dean is Karl Rove’s dream candidate. Fight about it with him, here.
Why Historians thinkpundits are idiots. George Will: “There may be more moral vanity in Howard Dean than in any politician since Woodrow Wilson….”
The president wants to remove taxes on inherited wealth, invested wealth, and put the entire burden on workers while at the same time, remove their incentive to work hard even further by decimating overtime pay. I know he’s never had to work for a living, but some of the rest of us are starting to get a little pissed off.
Is the Republican Senate leadershippart and parcel of Fox News or just vice versa. And nobody bother Andy or anybody at either NRO or the Wall Street Journal editorial page. today. It’s Joe McCarthy’s birthday, and the festivities associated thereto will be taking up most of their days. I hear Ann Coulter is planning to dress up in drag….
A few people have emailed to ask why I didn’t speak at the media/democracy confab in Madison last weekend and was I boycotting because Nader was asked to speak. Not exactly, I just wasn’t asked. Then again, when you have Moyers in top form, you really don’t need me.
Alter-reviews: My copies of The Essential Bruce Springsteen cds and the Live in Barcelona dvds are in hand. I have zillions of problems, per usual, with the song selection. Missing, off the top of my head, are: “Does this Bus? E Street Shuffle, Kitty, Incident, Tenth Avenue, Adam Raised a Cain, Point Blank, Independence Day, Pink Cadillac, Wreck on the Highway, Ramrod, Open All Night, Johnny 99, Highway Patrolman, Downbound Train, Darlington County, My Hometown, Spare Parts, One Step Up, When You’re Alone, The Fever, The Promise, Better Days, If I Should Fall Behind, (thank goodness for “Living Proof” though) and I could go on. But that’s life. The rarities cd is terrific, (though again, I have my differences.) I don’t recall “None but the Brave” but it should have replaced “I’m Goin’ Down” on BUSA.
The sound is terrific, and the price, at less than twenty bucks for 42 songs on three cds, amazing. “Not since the Clash put out Sandinista for $6.99…” The DVD catches the band the night after I saw them in Paris before an enthusiastic crowd and with a set list that’s just beginning to loosen up a little: (Incident, Spirit, etc.) You can read about both of them here. Resistance is futile.
Pierce’s Corner: Name: Charles Pierce
Hometown: Newton, MA Eric —
Once, I put together a Whither-The-D’s? package for Esquire, and one of the people I talked with was John Edwards. (If you don’t recall it, it’s probably because it hit the newsstands on September 9, 2001 and was thus, ah, overtaken by events.) In a small hall, or in a private conversation, the guy is really quite remarkable, and watching him work a jury must have been worth paying to see. And any guy that sets you AND poor Christopher arguably to gushing — Hitch’s Edwards piece in Vanity Fair a few months back made Sidney Blumenthal-On-Bill-Clinton and Michael-Lewis-On-John-McCain read like double-barreled Mencken — has feet worth holding to the fire over every vote.
Which reminds me:
Can we now put up a statue to Russ Feingold for being the only senator to vote against — and, perhaps, the only one to read — the horror that is the USA Patriot Act? That he was alone in declining to hand over to a theocratic loon an authoritarian sham like this one is to the eternal disgrace of everybody else in that chamber. Look at this farce. This month, they uncorked against some strip-joint wiseguys in Las Vegas and, yet, you’d have to look under every Rock of every Age to find anyone in the Ashcroft Brigade who would call a “terrorist” that murderous pro-life lunatic whom the cops just fished out of the ocean in Florida.
Which reminds me why the stand the D’s made in the Senate this week over the Judiciary is the most important thing the party’s done since they held together during the impeachment kabuki. There are some wins you cannot let the other guys have — and enshrining permanently a reactionary ideology based on corporate privilege and white skin is one of them. I watched about three hours of it, off and on, cursing under my breath that vainglorious idiot, Nader. No difference? No difference between Chuck Schumer and John Cornyn? No difference between Barbara Boxer and Rick Santorum? No difference between William Brennan and William Rehnquist? What a putz.
Note to future president O’Reilly: I am certainly not ruling out one day being the Tsar of all the Russias.
Eric replies: And don’t forget Nick Lemann, the biggest gusher of all of us….
And Stupid’s: Eric, it’s Stupid for the Democrats to continue ignoring me. For over a year I’ve been warning them that the economy would be just fine in 2004. Dubya is no idiot - he intentionally timed an economic recovery for his re-election. The Dems should have been sounding a consistent warning about this, but they didn’t and now they look like a bunch of opportunists. But last week Paul
Krugman had a new variation on this, found in a passing blurb. When I read it, I was startled, depressed, excited and frightened.
“...There will eventually be a day of reckoning. As Bill Gross of Pimco, the giant bond manager, says, ‘Sooner, perhaps later, our Asian creditors will wake up and smell the coffee.’ (Yes, the federal budget and the value of the dollar now depend on huge purchases of Treasury Bills BY THE GOVERNMENTS OF JAPAN AND *****CHINA*****”) When they do, he predicts ‘higher import costs, a cutback in spending on cheap foreign goods, rising inflation, perhaps chaotic financial markets, a lower standard of living.’ Something to look forward to.” [my emphasis]
Say what? The Chinese government, the same one which the Weekly Standard used to run cover stories about and call America’s gravest threat (before 9/11, which apparently turned China into harmless kittens), has the ability to call the shots on the U.S. economy? Would the U.S. have anything to retaliate with now that China is in the WTO?
I’m conflicted about this. First, is it true? I remember the “Japan is buying America” demagoguery of decades past. An economic professor once told me that Europe was a much bigger player than Japan, but the “Yellow Menace” made for better propaganda. Still, if it’s true then it’s a legitimate issue, and China is a different matter entirely. It’s bad enough to sell out our kids’ future, now we’re selling it out to a communist dictatorship? And this isn’t the only example of selling our sovereignty for a re-election: our energy policy restrains our relations with Saudi Arabia and Russia.
So I just looked at that “executive summary” of the Iraqi death tolls in the 2003 war you linked to and surprise, surprise - no mention of the word “sanctions.” They put the combined combatant/civilian death toll at about 15,000. The sanctions killed that many kids every four months. Merely accelerating regime change by one year saved three times as many lives as it cost - doesn’t that deserve mention in a document titled “The Wages of War?”
Let’s be clear - any humanitarian discussion of the 2003 Gulf War without accounting for the sanctions is cowardly and dishonest.
Two quick CD recommendations: Salon.com does a great job putting together their samplers (much better than those HEAR Music comps at Starbucks which cover the same musical landscape). The only bum track on the latest one is an Evan “what a waste of talent” Dando snoozer. And the hype about “The Decline of British Sea Power” (by “British Sea Power”) is true!
Name: Allen Brill
The Right Christians
Dear Eric,
You took care of Kristof’s fear of righteous Democratic anger, but you left untouched his announcement of an American “Great Awakening.” He returns to the theme from time to time that the country is headed toward a radical cultural split with secular liberals on one side and an increasingly dominant Christian Right on the other. The column that you critiqued depended upon the recent Pew Research Center survey and the increase in the percentage of respondents who “completely agree” with three statements about prayer, Judgment Day and the existence of God.
The numbers just don’t back up Kristof’s assertion. Membership in religious organizations, including Christian congregations, has actually declined slightly since 1990 as has church attendance and donations. Even the data that Kristof cites shows that strongly traditional religious sentiments on prayer, Judgment Day and God’s existence peaked in the late 90’s and has declined slighly since then.
Kristof’s vaunted “evangelicals” are a vaguely-defined group that is anything but homogeneous from either a theological or political standpoint. The Pew survey finds that 30% of Americans are “evangelicals,” but it lumps together all who consider themselves “born again” under the “evangelical” label to arrive at that figure. This includes liberal Episcopalians who have adopted the “born again” language and African-American Baptists who always vote Democratic. If Kristof or anyone else is interested in using “evangelical” to predict political behavior, the category should at least be limited to the 21% of whites who identify themselves as “born again.” Using more exacting criteria, public opinion researcher George Barna, himself an Evangelical, finds that only 5% of Americans are “evangelicals.”
Finally, Kristof is wrong about Americans moving in two different directions on “moral,” i.e. social issues. The Pew survey shows that the views of even conservative Christians have been moving to the left. In 1987, only 22% of white evangelicals disagreed with a statement that local school boards should have the right to fire homosexuals. By 2000, that percentage had grown to 40%. While white evangelicals were the only group in which a majority still supported firing homosexuals, the trend among them is clear.
American politics is a good deal more complex than what Kristof presents.
Name: David Andersen
Hometown: Washington, DC
Re: Stephen Anderson’s bit about Baxter. I did a quick search of the University of Manitoba Web site and the school does have a department of political “studies” as it is called. Political science departments are notorious for not being called political science departments. (My “political science” department at the University of Maryland is called “government and politics.”) However, Baxter’s claim is still dubious. When someone says they lectured at a University it usually implies that they taught a full course while not a full time faculty. Did Baxter do this or did he just give a talk there? If he just gave a talk then saying he “lectured” would be misleading.
I listened to John Edwards give a short private talk last night. It was the first time I’ve seen him in person and I thought him terrifically compelling; Clintonesque in the best sense: genuine empathy, eloquence, a nice accent and wonkish talents mixed with a convincing personal story and ability to convey it. I think he’d be a really strong nominee, and I don’t think it impossible that he could win. However, and it’s a big however, he was not asked a question about why he originally threw his support to this catastrophic war and was willing to trust Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al, with the fate of the world. He had better have an answer for this if he wants to compete for the heart of the party, which is, appropriately, focused on this disaster into which the president and his advisers so blithely and dishonestly led the nation.
How many were killed yesterday?Where is Saddam? Where is Bin Laden? Who is it, Mr. Bush, that you said can run but cannot hide?
Veterans? We Don’t Want NoStinkin’ Veterans around here. Especially not on Veterans Day. What do they think this is? A free country? A place where they guy who was actually elected gets to be president? Go back to Russia, punk.
Don’t be cute Josh. ”Some CPA documents came into my hands yesterday.” Isn’t why the documents “came into [your] hands” part of the point, guy? Isn’t the arrogance of the Post and the Times in making just this pretense when say, they are carrying the administration’s water -or Kenneth Starr’s -one of the most significant problems in elite journalism today? Ok, so you can’t tell us who the leaker was. You can at least tell us why you think these particular papers were leaked to you. Even the Times is doing that these days, though they can’t bring themselves to acknowledge an enormous atrocity by U.S. troops in Vietnam that is all-but certain to win the Toledo Blade a Pulitzer.
And speaking of evidence, here we have some that Andrew Sullivan, the journalist, is no more reliable than Andrew Sullivan, the hysterical McCarthyite blogger. Three years ago, Judith Shulevitz put the smack down on Andy for his Times Magazine paean to his testosterone regimen, as follows: “By letting Sullivan mix up his subjective reactions with laboratory work, by allowing him to blur the edges between his own powerful longings for a cure-all and several scientific studies whose authors—by the way—aren’t necessarily in the mainstream of testosterone research (though Sullivan doesn’t tell you that), the Times has put out under its imprimatur an account of testosterone, its therapeutic possibilities, and its larger social implications that is dangerously misleading.” She quoted (though Andy did not) Robert Sapolsky, an eminent Stanford University professor of biology and neurology and an expert on testosterone, ”[Sullivan] is entitled to his fairly nonscientific opinion, but I’m astonished at the New York Times.” You can read the whole thing here.
Now the scientific evidence is in and supports Shulevitz one hundred percent. As the Post puts it: “There is no evidence that the testosterone being used by a growing number of American men to boost their strength, mood or virility is doing them any good despite the claims being made for the hormone, an expert panel of doctors concluded yesterday.” So the Times Magazine may or may not have fired Sully on Raines’ orders -there is still no evidence for this, even though Howie Kurtz trumpeted the story as Andy’s unpaid PR agent- but the upshot is, they were lucky they did. Think how many embarrassing corrections they’d have to issue if they continued to let him get away with sloppy, self-serving narcissism like the above. (And we at Altercation will be counting the days until we see a correction.) And far be it for Altercation to give medical advice, but perhaps it’s time for a few bloggers (and radio hosts) on the extreme right to switch to Asprin. I’m pretty sure that one every other day helps prevent heart disease.
And P.S.: As I was trying to explain to Mike Kinsley just a few days ago, the Slate search engine really bites the big one. If you put the words “Andrew Sullivan” and “Judith Shulevitz” into it, you get zero matches. Put it into Google and you get the above article. Perhaps Slate needs to subcontract this kind of thing to a decent software company. I’d be happy to recommend one….
Lunatic Alliance: David Horowtiz’s FrontPage website repeats Wall Street Journal’s off-by 700 percent estimate of George Soros’s contribution to the Center for American Progress, days after it’s been corrected by the Washington Post (which comes up in a Dow Jones search) but ignored by the Journal itself, including its Holy Roman Empire-like website, Best of the Web.
Cute bunch of blokes, those English. Are they all exactly like that Hugh Grant, fellow?
Speaking of blokes, if like me, you like Billy Bragg, but can’t really keep up with him, here’s your answer. I got mine Jack, and it’s in the cd player right now. Don’t ask to paint you a picture.
Pierce’s corner:
Name: Charles Pierce
Hometown: Newton, MA Eric —
Because every day, even days where I fly to Chicago to give a speech, is Slacker Friday. Part XXI.
I was going to write something about Nick Kristof’s piece, but you smacked it down fairly effectively and, anyway, it gets boring ending every sentence with the phrase, “...and the horse they rode in on.” So enough already. (Except, of course, to say — again — that the disreputable and indecent treatment of the late Vincent Foster and his family forever will be unparalleled, and also forever will be a bright and clear line of demarcation between Bush Bashing and Vicious Anti-Clinton Insanity.
And welcome back, Rush, you porcine, pill-gobbling bag of corruption and slander, you.)
Here’s something I didn’t understand. Last weekend, as I was flying into Louisville, we came in over a squadron of FedEx jets on the ground, and I had just finished reading that those ubiquitous Government Officials had warned the nation that The Bad People wanted to hijack cargo jets and fly them into power plants and kill me. I was struck by an important question: Why do I need to know this?
Seriously, how does this threat so affect my life that I have to know about it — and not, say, about what in hell went on in the skies over the Eastern seaboard on Sept. 11, 2001? I am not likely to stow away on a cargo jet any time soon. I can’t be ducking every time I see one fly over. (Speaking of which, have you ever actually SEEN a cargo jet fly?) I could deliver my holiday packages personally, which would be a nice thing, I guess. And an induced catastrophe at a power plant is going to effect me the same way if it’s caused by a cargo jet, an RPG, or a drunk technician. And, as to the ongoing threat that the Bad People will try to kill me, at last, here’s a tip for those ubiquitous Government Officials:
I ALREADY FREAKING KNOW THAT!
Thank you.
This warning can serve only three audiences: 1) the freight companies, who certainly could’ve been notified on the QT; 2) The Bad People, who likely would change tactics once they’d read the Courier-Journal or whatever local newspaper they’re reading these days, and 3) the people who live near airports, so they could keep a weather eye out for Bad People on the tarmac. Oh, wait, I just thought of some others: The Gallup Poll. The CNN/USA TODAY poll. The Zogby Poll.
Everybody Else’s Corner:
Name: Stephen Anderson
Hometown: Los Angeles Eric,
Re: Anti-terrorism consultant Jeff Baxter, who once played guitar with The Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan.
I have trouble reconciling right-wing jingoism and paranoia with the expressiveness of art. John Wayne was an artist (uh, well, maybe) and yet was an intolerant crank with a clear right-wing bent. This may also apply to Baxter, who counts among his friends Dana Rohrabacher, one of the slimiest Republican legislators we’ve ever had here in sunny Calif. And those who know Baxter well (I’ve only met him once, and he was cordial) say that he’s always packing heat in his ever present belt pack.
Regarding his credentials as an anti-terrorism consultant, this reminds me of my old drummer friend of many years ago, Steve Seagal (formerly pronounced Siegel) who reinvented himself as action star, and alleged former CIA consultant, Steven Seagal. Delusions of grandeur, or merely adequacy?
But I thought I’d do a little more research into Baxter’s background, and found some interesting stuff. A bio, found many places on the web, contains the following:
“Although he continues his musical career, Baxter currently serves as Chairman of the Civilian Advisory Board for Ballistic Missile Defense. He has acted in an advisory capacity for Congressmen Curt Weldon and Dana Rohrabacher, both members of the House Science Committee, and has participated in numerous wargames for the Pentagon. Baxter was invited to serve on the Laser Advisory Board at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and has lectured at the University of Manitoba School of Political Science on the topic of regional conflict and missile defense.”
So I googled Civilian Advisory Board for Ballistic Missle Defense, and got mostly hits on the same bio info, no hits for an organization with that name. I did get a hit on The SAFE Foundation which has Baxter on its Board of Directors as well as nutty Reps. Weldon & Rohrabacher, and espouses the viability of Missle Defense, among other far right psuedo-scientific positions.
I next Googled Laser Advisory Board, and got no related hits. At Lawrence Livermore’s site a fairly thorough search revealed no listing for a Laser Advisory Board.
This is getting to be fun now. I’m starting to smell a rat.
On to the University of Manitoba which seems to have no College, School, Department, or Library of Political Science. And searching the course list for the phrase “political science” got this result: “Sorry, no courses matched your search.”
So what to think? Is CABBMD an organization with one member? Is this just a pathetic attempt by someone at self aggrandizement? Another cop/soldier wannabe? Regardless, if Baxter is representing the U.S. in the newly democratized Hungary, then all I can say is Holy Crap!
Name: Joe Burinskas
Hometown: Denver
Hey! Am I the first one to point out the great line in yesterday’s otherwise mediocre-as-usual episode of The Simpson’s? Homer’s Mom returns, and sets up a secret meeting by alerting him via the local newspaper. Homer discovers that the first letter of every line in an article spells out the message intended for him. When Homer asks Mom how she got the idea for the secret code, she begins, “Well, I contacted my friends in the liberal media...”
Liberal wimpiness is the far-right’s best friend. Take Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who has done magnificent work in bringing the crisis in Africa to the mainstream, demanding that liberals lay down and die before the hard-right steamroller that is the Bush administration.
The comparison he makes between Bush-hatred and Clinton-hatred is fallacious on so many grounds one hardly knows where to begin. Here are just a few salient points. Since I’ve been identified by the Wall Street Journal as a prime example of the latter, permit me to point out a few significant differences.
1) Bush “haters” talk about policy not personality. 2) Bush “haters’ support the country and its soldiers in wars they believe to be misguided 3) Bush “haters” do not accuse the president of drug-running and murder 4) Bush “haters” do not accept millions from billionaires to publish their paranoid fantasies in magazines like The American Spectator, and helping to drive unstable people to suicide, only to try to exploit even this tragic act for gain, with even more lurid paranoid fantasies about murder, safe houses and moved bodies. 5) Bush “haters” do not control any media properties remotely as powerful and influential as the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the Murdoch empire, the Moonie network, their own cable network, world-famous internet gossip sites, weekly and bi-weekly magazines, dozens of multi-million dollar “think” tanks, various publishing houses, etc. 6) Bush “haters” are quite removed from the Democratic establishment.
7) Bush “haters” back up their arguments with references and, frequently, footnotes, all of which can be checked for accuracy. 8) Bush “haters” are addressing themselves to a president who ran, dishonestly, as moderate and still managed to lose the election, only to gain the presidency with the support of Republican-appointed judges. 9) Bush “haters” are addressing themselves to a president whose dishonesty has led to the death of thousands of people in a counterproductive war, the looting of the treasury, and the trashing of the environment, for starters.
Now look at the Clinton-haters.
1) One of them, the one who advised David Brock to make stuff up for the Spectator in order to see what would stick, is Solicitor General. 2) Another is House Majority Leader 3) Another is the former House Majority Leader. 4) Another is the former Speaker of the House. 5) Just about all of these refused to vote for a resolution in support of U.S. troops risking their lives for freedom and democracy in Kosovo, when given a chance. 6) Another is the former Republican-appointed special prosecutor, who controlled an unlimited amount of funds as well as the loving sympathy of the Washington journalistic establishment. 7) Another is a radio hate-monger who just got out of rehab, to the delight of 15 million-20 million others. 8) A significant number of the rest of them have their own shows on cable, care of the So-Called Liberal Media. 9) A bunch of others control the editorial page of the most important business publication in the world. 10) Virtually all of their arguments were driven by either paranoid fantasies, planted lies, or at best, personal actions that had no bearing on the well-being of the country. 11) A few of them-including the one who sought to raise money by accusing the president of murder-blamed the attacks of 9/11 on Americans. 12) Clinton-haters abused the constitutional system to shut down the government and later, impeach the president. 13) Clinton-haters were addressing themselves to a president who was honestly elected, and by the way, boasted a 68 percent approval rating on the day he was impeached.
I could go on, obviously, but I’m not getting paid by the word here. And if you don’t get the point by now, you’re probably a bonafide Clinton hater, so congrats on the Kristof column.
Speaking of uncontrolled vitriol, rabid, hysterical Clinton hater James Taranto could have corrected the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page’s misrepresentation of George Soros’ investment in the Center for American Progress, which, as I pointed out yesterday, was off by a factor of a mere 700 or so percent.
But why bother? Instead he merely reiterates the figures used for Soros’ other gifts and ignores the outrageous misinformation the page for which he labors passed on to its unsuspecting readers. Did anyone imagine he would do otherwise? Would he even have a job if he paid attention to silly 700 percent mistakes when it’s liberals he’s bashing?
I don’t think I’ve actually linked to the incredible Toledo Blade series, that the New York Times, unaccountably, continues to ignore. (Even weirder, it has appeared in the International Herald Tribune, completely owned and operated by the Times. Are they protecting their readers from the knowledge?) Anyway, Boehlert is on the case.
What’s significant about CNN’s dishonest intervention in the “Rock the Vote” debate, was not only that they did it, but that they did it in a way designed to dumb down the discourse. And this is supposed to be our “classy” cable network. It is to puke…
By the bedside: I’m amazed to be saying this, but Conrad Black’s mammoth 1200 page- plus biography of FDR, entitled “Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom” (PublicAffairs). It’s smart, argumentative and mostly fair. I haven’t checked the footnotes, but I assume the guy can afford to pay for decent fact-checkers. It’s also officially the most up-to-date bio of the guy available, though I had heard that Arthur Schlesinger planned to return to the topic, I’ve seen no evidence of this.
Correspondents’ Corner:
Name: Sean
Hometown: Honolulu, HI
Comments:
I found this little tidbit interesting. In a speech given at Georgetown University on Oct. 30, 2003, Sec. Wolfowitz lectured a group of students that were protesting the war. He went on further to mention the Marsh Arabs and how they were once a thriving society that made a rainforest in Iraq until Saddam cut off their water. (They also have his speech on CSpan.)
Well, unfortunately, the US Congress cut funding to the Marsh Arabs as was reported in the foreign press, the newspaper ”The Guardian.” From article: “Restoring an area that is said to have been the biblical Garden of Eden, marshlands that Saddam Hussein turned into an arid salt bed in his purge of Shiite Muslims, was one of President Bush’s priorities when he asked Congress for $20.3 billion to help rebuild Iraq.”
It also was among the few items House Republicans decided to cut, at least for now, if the United States had to pay for it. They chopped $100 million from Bush’s bill for resurrecting the Mesopotamian marshlands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. - Guardian, Oct. 15
Kind of makes me wonder, do they really care about the Marsh Arabs?
Name: David
Hometown: Baltimore, MD
Comments: Dear Eric,
I am quite surprised that I have not seen the following story reported on any of my favorite lefty sites.
No projects for Democrats’ districts, House GOP says quote: “House Democrats will get no projects for their home districts in a huge education and health spending bill because none of them voted for an initial version of the measure last summer, majority Republicans say.
Unapologetic GOP leaders say the decision reflects standard procedure in Congress, where uncooperative lawmakers can lose out on money for roads, clinics and other prized items for the folks back home.
“We’re doing business as usual,” House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican, said yesterday. “If you don’t support a bill, you have no right to say what’s in the bill.”
But furious Democrats say the move would be an unprecedented retaliatory blow at an entire political party. They say Democrats voted their conscience against a $138 billion measure they said would shortchange schools and other high-priority programs at a time when Republicans have cut taxes for wealthy Americans.”
This profile of George Soros’ giving puts his contribution to the Center for American Progress at $3 million. I’ve checked it out and it is largely accurate. Yesterday the Wall Street Journal editors termed it to be “reportedly 20 million.” Remember that next time you read anything at all on the page. And let me know when the correction appears, hahaha..
I say this in sadness, but Hitchens is turning into Andy before our own eyes. Let’s hope before he gets to Horowitz-ville. Anyway, virtually every word in this tendentious essay is untrue, beginning with the first sentence. Izzy Stone made his observation exclusively about The Washington Post, not The New York Times. Of course that would have ruined the story, so, never mind. Meanwhile, This column demonstrates how little the administration war party was ever interested in peace.
Oh happy day: one of Ronald Reagan’s favorite genocidal murderers (and really, there are so many) gets his ass handed to him by his fellow citizens. Evidence, you say? OK: The official Historical Clarification Commission of Guatemala charged its own government with a campaign of “genocide” in murdering roughly 200,000 people, mainly Mayan Indians, during its dictatorial reign of terror. The commission’s nine-volume 1999 report singled out the U.S. role in aiding this “criminal counterinsurgency.
The violence in Guatemala reached a gruesome climax in the early ’80s under the dictatorship of the born-again evangelical, Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt. Nine hundred thousand people were forcibly relocated and entire villages leveled. As army helicopters strafed a caravan of 40,000 unarmed refugees seeking to escape to Mexico, Reagan chose that moment to congratulate Ríos Montt for his dedication to democracy, adding that he had been getting “a bum rap” from liberals in Congress and the media. His administration soon provided as much aid to the killers as Congress would allow.
Speaking of which, remember Nicaragua? An AP report: “The State Department is distancing itself from an official U.S. memo released during the visit of Secretary of State Colin Powell that describes Nicaragua as a country with little hope and portrays pro-Americans there in unflattering terms. ‘Nicaragua crawls along as the second-poorest country in the hemisphere after Haiti, battered by storms of nature and their own making with little hope of changing things in the future,’ said the unsigned document released by the U.S. Embassy. ‘Privileged Nicaraguans see the U.S. in a generally favorable light. They prefer to dress in Ralph Lauren shirts, drive large Ford SUVs, watch American movies and, when going out for a meal, brag that they go out to T.G.I. Friday’s.’ The reporters accompanying Powell here found the document in a press packet distributed after Powell arrived late Monday for a 16-hour visit.”
I got mine, Jack.
David Sirota of the Center for American Progress notes, “President Bush visited Winston-Salem, N.C., to tout a $750,000 grant for job training, in an area hit by manufacturing job losses. He then went to a fundraiser and took in $1.1 million. In other words, in a visit to a hard-pressed community, he raised more money for his political campaign than he was announcing for job training - an area he is proposing to slash $179 million out of nationally. For evidence see here and here.
Still not a word in The New York Times about the Tiger Force. This is not merely a “What Liberal Media?” issue. This is a question of effectively quashing up a massive story. What can possibly be its excuse? Anyway, my 30-day search once again yielded nothing.
Also interesting that the Times thinks this is a business story rather than a political one. Working the refs, part zillion and one.
Alter-reviews. I assigned my students in my opinion journalism class at Columbia Journalism School to write reviews of “Shattered Glass.” I thought this one was terrific, so I’m printing it here. The author is Brian Lonergan.
This year’s Jayson Blair fiasco and Rick Bragg melodrama at The New York Times served to shine a spotlight on the entire profession of journalism, and what happens when a field that generally aspires to fairness, accuracy, and objectivity is undermined by journalistic fraud and outright lies. And stories of any substance on journalism’s integrity in the wake of the Times’ troubles inevitably pointed back to an earlier and larger scandal, five years ago, in which a hotshot 24-year-old writer at The New Republic was found to have “cooked,” or fabricated, material in 27 of his 41 published articles.
“Shattered Glass” is the account of that embarrassing episode in the revered magazine’s history, and the mendacious reporter responsible for it. The overwhelming impression of Stephen Glass, played by Hayden Christensen, is that of a 24-year-old child, whose made-up characters and conference room antics in front of TNR staff are all carefully calculated to get people to like him.
There is an implication that Glass is somehow psychologically an orphan; his parents are referred to once, mentioned as living in Highland Park, but they are otherwise conspicuously absent from the film. Instead, we are given surrogate fathers in the form of Glass’s successive editors at The New Republic, Michael Kelly (Hank Azaria) and Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard).
He is portrayed as the child always afraid of incurring his parents’ disapproval-“Did I do something wrong?” and “Are you mad at me?” are the common and heavy-handed refrains, later replaced by the tantrum-bordering “I didn’t do anything wrong!”
Walking around the office in socks-the little boy who delights in being able to take off his grown-up shoes-and wearing his knapsack squarely, arms through both straps, over his prep-school blazer, all his caricature lacks is a Star Wars lunch box and school bus stop.
Like a true child, Christensen’s Glass doesn’t know how to ask for things he wants, instead phrasing his questions circuitously. In a later scene with editor Kelly, Glass pleadingly repeats, “I just don’t know who will hire me after this,” but Kelly this time sees through his boy’s ploy.
But if we’re led to believe Glass’s exploits were driven by psychological frailties-his co-workers, when he begins to unravel, plead that “he needs help”-we never do find out just what drove the young man to such extreme deeds. The portrait painted is of a pathological narcissism, but the picture doesn’t dig deeper into the motivation of his behavior.
Sarsgaard, as Lane, becomes Glass’s stepfather after Kelly is given his notice from TNR’s publisher, Marty Peretz. His is a much more subtle and nuanced performance than Christensen’s, who often has that over-the-top, psycho, Anakin Skywalker-about-to-turn-to-the-dark-side-look about him. Lane is the humble, self-effacing journalistic type that Glass believes to stand out in the world of otherwise brash and aggressive reporters, the irony of course being that Glass is, or is on his way to becoming, the latter.
Lane blushingly concedes he can’t follow Glass’s act in the TNR staff meetings, moves quietly about the office, and peacefully retires to his two-dimensional home at night with his cardboard-cutout wife and infant. He’s the honorable family man, the representative of TNR’s pre-Glass integrity, and the savior of the institution, concerned with salvaging whatever of that integrity may be left.
Rosario Dawson and Steve Zahn are also featured, as the reporters at the on-line Forbes Digital Tool who originally exposed Glass. The conference call scene between them and a nervous Glass and increasingly skeptical Lane is particularly well done, as is the drive to Bethesda that Lane forces Glass to take with him to investigate first-hand the sources and locations for his “Hack Heaven” article.
At the end, the film is a decent dramatization of the Glass story, one that thankfully focuses on a suspenseful unraveling of his lies, and not on grandiose lamentations on the demise of a noble profession. For this reason, it should succeed in holding the interest of more than just journalists and academics.
Correspondents’ Corner
Name: Jerry Levin
Hometown: Baltimore, MD Comments: Listen boychik: I find Soros’s comments repugnant because here is a guy who just “drops in” on being Jewish seeming to justify anti-Semitism. How about this: “I am unhappy with many of the policies of Sharon and Bush. But I denounce and repudiate any link anyone tries to make between them and the Jews throughout the world. Why should Jews in Paris, Los Angeles, and Buenos Aires pay the price of your anger at Bush (president of a country with 280,000,000, of whom 5.5 million are Jewish) or even Israel, a sovereign government with its own policies and interests?”
Name: Nash
Hometown: Columbus OH Comments: Per his usual modus operandi, in this morning’s Media Notes in the WaPo, Howard Kurtz attempts the journalistic equivalent of hiring out a drive-by hit in lifting six grafs from a Jacoby column in the Boston Globe, led by:
“Here’s one heckuva lead from the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby:” .. Mr. Jacoby, citing a 1946 article by Demaree Bess that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, tries to make the case that Iraq in 2003 is the same as Germany in 1946 (and most of us agree the latter turned out OK).
By using Jacoby as his hitman, Mr. Kurtz ends with: “Looking back from the early 21st century, it is clear that the transformation of the shattered Nazi Reich into a bulwark of democracy was one of the signal achievements of 20th-century statecraft. But on the ground in 1946, that happy outcome was nowhere in view. What was in view was an occupation beset by troubles — chaotic, dangerous, and frequently vicious. Just like the one in Iraq today.” (italics added)
All well enough, except it’s a false relationship, and when a mere three hours later, in Media Backtalk, an astute observer from Burke, Va called Mr. Kurtz on the attempt, once again, to revive the “1946 Germany as predictor of success in Iraq meme,” Mr. Kurtz disingenuously tries to detach himself from his own cowardly actions in using Jacoby to make his point.
Howard Kurtz: “Well, but I think the columnist’s point (that some people thought the U.S. occupation of Germany was a disaster in 1946) is that things sometimes look different in history’s rear-view mirror than they do at the time. No one would suggest that there aren’t major differences between Iraq now and Germany then.” (italics added)
The columnist’s point, Mr. Kurtz, is to say exactly that there ARE NO major differences between Iraq now and Germany then, and by extension, that anyone complaining about the current situation should leave off complaining. In fact, for Mr. Jacoby to have said less would not be column-worthy. For you to pretend now that you felt he was saying less is dishonest. And typical.
Name: Steve Clark,
Hometown: Albany, NY Dr. Alterman: Once again, Charles Pierce rocks hard (Nov. 7 Altercation). To paraphrase to Molly Ivins - when Texans think of their public education system (and other “social service” delivery systems) we say “Thank God for Mississippi.” Of course, since Ayatollah Sullivan (good one!) has recently delcared the “Death of Irony” (all caps) concrete thinkers might mistake perceptive wit for one of the dreaded tenents of the “postmodern.”
You know... (as Pierce stated) like one of those “nine, white non-uterine men” hovering over the shoulder of Dubya as he “hancock(ed)” the “new and improved” late-term abortion provisions. For those of us who found that photo both disturbing and (yes) “evil,” it should come as little surprise that next to no funds have been earmarked for women’s groups in Afghanistan from the paultry and under-reported sum that is going to “rebuild” that country’s infrastructure and (ah) culture.
Before I begin flight into some serious ranting, let me close by passing on some good news to Altercation readers. Matt Miller has both a website and a new book out (an interesting and varied resume too). Check out his work at www.mattmilleronline.com, where you can also read recent columns, get info. on his book, and e-mail him as you see fit. Finally, a slightly belated thumbs-up for your Nation column on Cash, Strummer, and Zevon. Three artists who moved from the personal to the political and back again with great urgency and much relevence. “Bad Luck Streak...” gets my nod for “criminally” underated Zevon song (and album as well).
You’d never know it from the tepid media coverage, but Al Gore gave a terrific speech (and here) yesterday to Moveon.org, demanding repeal of Patriot Act, and describes Bush administration of the following:
“They have taken us much farther down the road toward an intrusive, ‘big brother’-style government - toward the dangers prophesied by George Orwell in his book ’1984’ - than anyone ever thought would be possible in the United States of America.”
Meanwhile, spoiler/Bush supporting Ralph Nader continue to live in inside his dangerous delusions, calling Democrats ‘chronic whiners’ for continuing to accuse him of spoiling the 2000 presidential election for Al Gore.”
Al Gore: “In my opinion, it makes no more sense to launch an assault on our civil liberties as the best way to get at terrorists than it did to launch an invasion of Iraq as the best way to get at Osama bin Laden.” Ralph Nader: “There’s not a dime’s worth of difference” between the man who said those words and the man who launched this dishonest, counterproductive war. Don’t go away mad, Ralph…
We are The World: Charles Krauthammer argues in Time: “It is pure fiction that this pro-Americanism sentiment was either squandered after Sept. 11 or lost under the Bush Administration.” It never existed, Krauthammer writes.
“Sympathy is fine. But if we ‘squander’ it when we go to war to avenge our dead and prevent the next crop of dead, then to hell with sympathy. The fact is that the world hates us for our wealth, our success, our power. They hate us into incoherence.”
But of course it is Krauthammer who is incoherent. Iraq had nothing whatever to do with 9/11. We did not go to war “avenge our dead and prevent the next crop of dead,” deliberate administration deceptions not withstanding. We did it as part of a misguided grand imperial adventure that is turning out disastrously for all concerned. Krauthammer and company are so blinded by their romantic ideology and jingoism that they can’t understand that and so they cast about for villains without realizing that it is they who are responsible for much of the hatred America has engendered.
Of course the pundit Krauthammer knows Iraq better than the former chief of Mossad, Major General Danny Yatom, who accuses the Bush administration of not having a clue.
Michael Walzer on The American Empire. Thomas Powers on Thomas Powers on the “horrific, calamitous” mistake in Iraq, here.
Howie “conflict-of-interest” Kurtz attacks NBC does not mention receiving a paycheck from competitor CNN anywhere in story.
Blogging for war is hell. Newsweek has a more than decent wrap-up of the consequences of Dick Cheney’s fanaticism here.
I wonder if all those reporters who touted Bush’s “education miracle” back in Texas, have written follow up stories on the new data that demonstrate it was mostly a fraud.
And what are they so afraid we’ll find out about 9/11?
The Value of working the refs; Communist PBS decides there’s not enough Tucker Carlson on the air….
Hey Vladi, maybe you should throw Rupert into jail. That ought to get your buddy George W’s attention.
I happen to be at a dinner meeting last Wednesday night where I was seated next to George Soros. We had a pleasant discussion in which the state of the Jews was not raised. The following morning I got an email from a reporter from the JTA asking me to comment on Soros’ comments that, he said, partially blamed anti-Semitism on Bush and Sharon. I demurred because when you can’t control the context for your words, it vastly increases the likelihood that they will be twisted. I also could not be sure that Soros’ own words were not being twisted.
Here is the story. Soros says the acts that violently constitute anti-Semitism would be lessened if Israel were able to make peace with the Palestinians and stop behaving so badly toward them. This does not seem to me to be a controversial viewpoint. Indeed, if it is anti-Semitic, than not only are Soros, Krugman, and myself anti-Semites, than so is Roger Cukierman, the senior leader of the French Jewish Community So too, for that matter, are the editors of the Jewish Forward.
Everyone quoted in the story is furious with Soros. They cannot even bring themselves to consider whether what he says may be true. Instead they use words like “obscene.” I say, in sadness, this issue is hopeless. A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.
“He must really have them worried,” bonus: Soros takes a hit for “reportedly” funding the likes of well, me, here. (I was about to ask for the rest of my $20 million until I realized I was reading the Wall Street Journal editorial page.)
P.S. I am pretty sure, based on dinner, that said billionaire had no idea he was “reportedly funding the likes” of yours truly.
Meanwhile, back to the favorite topic of the anti-intellectuals, Ever since The Chronicle of Higher Education published Robert Lieber’s ill-informed screed, about my Nation Piece, I’ve seen my name pop-up in places like this:
“And yet critics of neocon foreign policy embrace the rhetoric of conspiracy with an even greater vengeance. “Cabal” has become the word of the day. For Patrick Buchanan, neocons are a “cabal of intellectuals” luring President Bush into assuming that “what’s good for Israel is good for America.” Britain’s longest-serving MP, Tam Dalyell, believes that Tony Blair was “being unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers.” The Washington Post writes that many in Europe and the Middle East believe that the neocons have “hijacked U.S. foreign policy.”
Prominent commentators-Eric Alterman, Michael Lind, William Pfaff-have pushed a similar meme.”
The above is from TNR online and is by Daniel W. Drezner is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. I read virtually the same thing in the Christian conservative intellectual journal, “First Things,” though I forget who wrote it. I am unfamiliar with the author’s work, but I will say this, he is lazy. Read the piece, dude. I was describing the accusation, not making it. Shame, once again, on the editors of the Chronicle of Higher Education for allowing to debase its pages. And Professor Drezner, this is no way to get tenure at so demanding a university.
“Anti-Semitism” as anti-intellectualism, part III: A quiz. Is Donald Luskin a stalker? A raving lunatic? Or just a little too generous with his meds to be able to read a simple sentence? More here.
Anyway, I might respectfully suggest that Mr. Luskin move to France and start stalking Roger Cukierman? The Krugman/Alterman thing is getting a little old. Wait, they’re baaack! Atrios notices that Tom Friedman is an anti-Semite as well.
Thank Dylan And The Beatles not Ronald Reagan and “Star Wars,” by the way.
Alter-reviews: No Thanks! The ’70s Punk Rebellion reviewed by Mike Waldman:
1976, it was almost unbearable to turn 16 with radio dominated by pretentious art rock, maudlin ballads, and the self-congratulatory bellowing of Br (censored by Altercation) ...een. Punk was a revelation. It seemed downright subversive to measure guitar solos by how short they were, not how long. This suburban kid, at least, was sure punk would sweep the world.
Of course, it didn’t. Most of these bands either exploded on lift-off (Sex Pistols) or got really bad really fast (sorry, folks, that’s The Clash). The better ones were quickly rebranded as “new wave” by a nervous marketing department at Sire Record. Far more people chant “Hey Ho, Let’s Go” between innings today than every did in scuzzy bars in the 1970s.
This box set is a wonderful reminder that a lot of those day-glo singles were really, really good. The music is well chosen and comprehensive, including British and American bands (mostly New York, thankfully few from California). All the major bands are here (Clash, Ramones, Television, Patti Smith, Buzzcocks, etc.) - all but the Sex Pistols, presumably too busy cashing in elsewhere. It opens with Blitzkrieg Bop and White Riot, which in a perfect world would have been chasing each other to number one. The compilers also make a polemical point by including early songs from Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, the Pretenders and others who were considered punk in their day. Some quibbles: it’s great that the Stranglers are here - a briefly popular keyboard-heavy UK band - but why not their best song, ”No More Heroes?” Why no ska?
Happily, there are a lot of “one-hit wonders.” (since they didn’t really sell, at least in the U.S., “one-flop wonders?”) Best of the lot: the Only Ones’ “Another Girl, Another Planet,” a delirious homage to interstellar love, one of the best rock & roll singles ever. It’s hard to listen without po-going.
If you didn’t love this stuff when it first came out, four CDs is probably three (or four) too many. For fans of the Strokes and other “the” bands, this is a good prehistory. For me, it’s a nostalgic trip to a time when punk was supposed to change the world - should have changed the world! - but, mysteriously, didn’t.
Eric adds: Is this the most open-minded website on earth or what? The guy insults Bruce and the Clash and I still publish, because that’s the kind of guy I am. Would Leon Wieseltier ever do a thing like that? Anyway, while we’re on the topic, Let me throw in a recommendation for the recent release of Television: Live at the Old Waldorf, (San Francisco, 6/29/78). I picked it up after a number of readers recommended it, and it’s smokin’.
Recorded during Television’s sole U.S. headlining tour, to promote Adventure there’s not one song (of the eight here) that isn’t played with more urgency, verve and intensity than on the two excellent studio albums, Marquee Moon
and Adventure
It closes with a seventeen minute “Marquee Moon” before launching into a version of (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction that should have shut up Devo before they got started. It’s only available on Rhino Homemade, and limited to 5,000 numbered copies, so it’s a little pricey but if you appreciate Television, I don’t see how you can live without it.
Correspondents’ Corner:
Name: John Shaw
Hometown: Seattle Comments:
Dear Dr. Eric,
Pierce is right that the pile-on against Ho-Dean is self-defeating and self-destructive. Ho-Ho was making a valid point, but the way made it was offensive, and Pierce is wrong about it not being condescending. It came off like a rich highly-educated Yankee saying he wants to be the candidate of ignorant rednecks. I wouldn’t blame Black Americans for taking offense either. The comment was tone deaf to the point of incompetence. Clinton would never have made the mistake. Bush — hell, when Bush wants to appeal to the Stars & Bars crowd, he just goes and makes nice with the bigots at Bob Jones University. Now that’s the way to appeal to the racists. Anyway, congrats on your PhD.
Name: Michael Murry
Hometown: Kaoshiung, Taiwan Comments:
Hey, there, Liberal Media Man. How about earning your pay for a change. Check out the kind of creeping crap we Vietnam Veterans just loathe to read.
A routine message from Newsweek Magazine:
“And while Rumsfeld is routinely restaffing community draft boards, no one is seriously considering that idea-yet.”
Here comes the mission creep, boys and girls, or what we used to call “slow ramping” at Hughes Aircraft Company.
A little web site here. A little draft board there.
A few million young men with names on a computer disk.
And then that boilerplate letter: “Greetings!”
Wake up boys and girls, your government has you in its sights, and if you don’t start screaming now, and voting like nothing ever seen before, you will never know it when the bullet passes through your brain.
A Nation of Sheep? Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.”
In 1994 Steven Culp played closeted gay Republican political operative Joe Pitt; Culp now plays the Republican House Speaker Jeff Haffley on The West Wing. (In the HBO version, Joe Pitt is played by Patrick Wilson, who was I believe four years behind me in school; go Chargers.) 
