Programming Note: I'm off to Oregon until Thursday to visit kin, and then New York. Please don't e-mail unless it's important, and know that I won't have time to respond to comments, etc.

08/22/2004 07:17 AM  |  Comment (6)

Here Is What You Should Be Reading a Week From Now: Hey, readers and blog-folk, if your soul can handle such things, I'd be tickled if you could pay attention to, and even link to, our handy-dandy Reason convention weblog broadcasting live from the NYC. Not only will I and Tim B. Liar be staging a thrilling reunion, we will be joined by hot-blooded (i.e., vaguely Spanish) Reason philosopher/heartthrob Julian Sanchez, and a rag-tag army of technologically over-stocked "friends." There are at least 43 reasons why our New York coverage will beat Boston like a cur; here are four:

* There will be actual human conflict, both inside and outside the convention.
* I won’t have to spend five hours a day trying to figure out how to plug in my own computer.
* We will have photographs -- and photographers -- galore.
* New York bars "close" at 4, instead of the subhuman 1:30.

Anyway, enough with the cheap insults -- What would you like me to cover? Who would you like me to interview? Where do I go for the top hat and monocle The New Yorker was always promising me about? And if you are a New York pal, drop me a private line, and let's get busy. I'll be there from the evening of the 26th to the morning of the 3rd.

08/20/2004 11:38 PM  |  Comment (3)

A Final Convention Look-back, More for Me Than for You: I wanted to put all my Democratic Convention posts in one place, with some minimum explainers. This is that place, and these are them 'splainins. I'd only recommend skimming over the list if you didn't read all the stuff at the time.
* Have You Really Got a Friend? (Wrap-up prediction that temporary Dem unity would lead to eventual gridlock).
* ‘What the American People Need To Hear’ (Judy Woodruff-bashing, mixed with old tension between strategical concerns and ‘where’s the beef’).
* Softballs for Gray (Interview with Gray Davis).
* Hey, Media Personalities! What Did You Think of the Speech?
* The Alan Colmes Exception (Why the Fox punching bag was allowed into the locked-down Fleet Center).
* The Botox Candidate (A Philadelphia delegate spills the beans).
* Great Moments in the Freedom Cage
* All Tomorrow’s Parties (Asking This Modern Tom about his reception as a 2000 Nader vet).
* Benedict Arnold Hawaiians? (Independence-minded Hawaiian delegates bro out with the Kucinichites).
* Clark: I’m Ready for Prime Time, Dammit! (Overheard trivialities from Our Wes).
* Please, John Kerry, Save the Internet From Hype! (An absolutely frightening bit of nonsense from Kerry’s campaign book).
* Benedict Arnold’s Two Americas (A longish look on the ticket’s trade rhetoric vs. projected policy).
* Hey, Senior-Citizen Washington Delegates! What Do You Feel About of Ralph Nader? (Mistah Nader? He dead).
* The Picture of Kerry Enthusiasm (A funny why-do-you-like-the-guy response from California delegate).
* Interview With Dave Barry, Convention Columnist (Watch out for that beer can!).
* The Deaniac’s Dean (Howie talks to faithful the day after his lukewarm Convo speech, and explains how the Deaniacs moved him to the left).
* Confusing Professional Politics With ‘Service’ (Longish rant against a Democratic tic).
* Maybe Comedy Is Pretty (Everybody hearts The Daily Show).
* Party Discipline, Up Close and Personal (California delegate rants about Jerry Brown).
* Second Davio's Anecdote (or, Why Mitt Romney Is Such an Asshole) (Mass guv blows a fuse whilst refusing booze).
* Cheney as a Verb (Funnyish third-hand Patrick Leahy anecdote).
* Pink Alert: Medea Benjamin Arrested
* Jerry Brown Interviews Me (This & the Dave Barry Q&A; were my two favorite bits).
* One Exceedingly Trivial Thing You Probably Didn’t Know About Larry King (And you still wouldn’t know, if I was adhering to the Andrew Sullivan business model).
* One of Those Kerry-Okies (In the flesh).
* The European Leap of Faith (Cross-examining the woe-is-the-Transatlantic-Alliance set).
* Foreign Policy: Blowin’ in the Wind (Divining Demo War on Terror ideas from 35-year-old protest songs, since there’s no substance to chew on).
* Potent Readables (What a terrible headline….)
* Partying Like it’s 192004 (Making fun of people’s speech impediments).
* The Security Paradox (It’s like, security isn’t much of a hassle).
* Forgive Me Father for I Do Not Know Who Dealt it (Guido Sarducci hassles me).
* Goodie-goodie Ho-hum (Goody bags, and how Gilette pissed away $1 million like a bunch of mo-rons).
* The Daisy Chain (Thrilling news about me being interviewed).
* Nader Accuses Dems of ‘Mini-Watergate’ (Dirty tricks to keep Ralphie off various state ballots, especially Oregon’s).

08/20/2004 11:33 PM  |  Comment (0)

Question -- When, Exactly Did You Become Aware of the Abbreviation 'MSM'?: For me, it was something like 10 days ago, and now I see it all over the damned place (or at least, all over the damned place where people are trying to convince other people about why the Magic Hat will tear down the Mainstream Media as we know it). But I assume, like LOL, that this has actually been around awhile, and I'm just a moron.

08/20/2004 09:43 PM  |  Comment (14)

New Daily Star Column From Me -- 'On War, John Kerry Is All Vietnam and No Iraq': Headline more absolutist than what I would have written, but you get the idea. It's actually an attempt to read the foreign policy/Middle East tea leaves based on the Democratic National Convention. The lede:

Ever since the Democratic Convention in Boston last month, the John-John ticket has been grumbling about having to fend off accusations that would-be president John Kerry previously fudged vivid details of his war record in Vietnam and (most controversially) Cambodia. There is indeed considerable merit to the notion that a nation at war should be focusing on 2004 instead of 1968, but if Kerry's convention performance was any guide, his go-to selling point for taking the reigns of the "war on terror" is the fact that he was piloting swift-boats up the Mekong back when Osama bin Laden was busy trying to grow his first beard.

08/18/2004 02:34 PM  |  Comment (8)

A Reading You Need to See, a Book You Need to Buy:

This is This Is Burning Man, Brian Doherty’s fantastical new book about the crazy annual anarchy in the sun-blasted desert a ridge or two away from Pyramid Lake. As Brian puts it in the “What’s it All About?” section of his schmancy new book website, he first went to Burning Man in 1995, because

I was told marvelous tales of adventure about this mysterious setting where people with very strange minds could do whatever they wanted, and because anarchy -- a human culture built around something other than force and violence -- is my deepest intellectual interest. And I went, and I saw the fires and the pulse jet cars and the people -- the people! -- and a fire was set in my brain, kindled by the setting, brought to roaring life by the people and the objects and the scenes they created. That fire never went out.

At any rate, Brian will be reading tonight at the world-famous Book Soup on the Sunset Strip, at 7 pm. He is a funny fellow, and I understand the readings are quite amusing. Also -- don’t forget to check out his This Is Burning Man weblog!

08/18/2004 11:35 AM  |  Comment (3)

Does Anyone Else Remember Opposing Illegal Aid to the Contras While Not Loving the Sandinistas? That seems like a common (and reasonable) enough stance in my memory, but everywhere I stumble across the topic these days, they make it seem like it was an Ortega love-fest there in the mid-'80s. That's certainly not how we ran it in my admittedly narrow neck of the woods. It was Sandinista, not Sandinistas, and no amount of middle-aged I-was-wrongism should ever rehabilitate daffy crooks like Oliver North, or all those other Republican hacks who were punished for mocking the Rule of Law by landing key jobs in the Bush Administration.

08/18/2004 02:20 AM  |  Comment (49)

Poor Hungarians: Listening to the Angel game this afternoon from sparsely attended Tropicana Field, you can hear a belligerent single fan with the pipes and personality of John Herbold. The announcers made note, and sport, of the name on his baseball jersey. "It's spelled S-z-a-s-z (both laugh). Maybe that's what's made him so upset! He's never been able to pronounce his own name."

08/17/2004 04:59 PM  |  Comment (2)

Olympic Entitlement: Sgt. Styrker:

The vibe that I'm getting from these athletes is a sense of entitlement. It's not as obvious and overt as it is from Team NBA, but it's there in the performances. It's a sub-conscious thing, I think, that becomes obvious during the events. I watched a women's volleyball match between the US and China that made it clear. The Chinese were diving for the ball and going the extra mile to get the save and the digs, while the Americans just kind of stood there, as if expecting the ball to magically come to wherever they were standing. I didn't see any hustle or desire to win from the Americans like I did from the Chinese, and that's been the story in almost every event so far. I root for the teams and individuals who act like they want to win and dig deep down to make it so. So far, I've been doing little rooting for Team USA.

08/17/2004 04:29 PM  |  Comment (23)

Layne vs. Blair on the Swifties, and John Kerry as a ‘War God’

08/17/2004 12:39 PM  |  Comment (9)

Tony Pierce on Bukowski: Always a good thing.

08/17/2004 12:18 PM  |  Comment (0)

Birth of a Nation, 1915 and 2004: Some excellent comparative stuff from Geitner Simmons, who's working on a fascinating research project comparing the historical self-narratives of Southern California and the South. The timely hook, in case you didn't know, is that a local art-movie house here tried once again to show D.W. Griffith's racist classic the other week, and was again convinced otherwise by protesters.

While you're over at Geitner's consistently stimulating website, also take a gander at Rosa Parks' California Predecessors; and, for you Slavo-trash out there, enjoy watching Geitner stumble across the horrifi-comic culture-blending wonder of Central European injun fave Winnetou. (And whoever's got a good Winnetou story, please leave it in the comments.)

08/17/2004 10:17 AM  |  Comment (3)

Look Who's Writing a Book About Rock & Roll! It's our very own Dr. Frank! From the press release:

Dr. Frank, the songwriter behind one of punk's most influential bands, has just announced that his novel, "King Dork" will be published by Delacorte, a young adult division of Random House. […]

Quite unusual for the publishing world. Dr. Frank was inspired to write his first novel, "King Dork," after being approached and encouraged by a literary agent who was also a fan. He wrote and sold the book in rapid-fire time, within a few months.

"King Dork" follows the picked-upon and wry Thomas "Chi-Mo" Henderson and his only friend, Sam Hellerman, as they fight their way through the demoralizing, mysterious, ridiculous experience of high school. Tom and Sam have each other, and their band, with its ever changing name; Baby Batter, Tennis With Guitars, Liquid Malice, Green Sabbath, Balls Deep, (to name a few.) The book is funny, and sad, and filled with observations about starting a band and being young, with thriller/mystery elements as well as larger observations about the nature of life. Dr. Frank said, "What I'm going for is an amalgam of Judy Blume, P.G. Wodehouse, Philip Roth, Agatha Christie and Behind the Music."

08/17/2004 09:37 AM  |  Comment (1)

I Agree With Just About Every Word of This Excellent Jesse Walker Review of Outfoxed

08/16/2004 06:21 PM  |  Comment (11)

Prescient? Obvious? Wrong? All of the Above? From this here website, on Jan. 20, 2002:

I am detecting some stronger-than-usual Euro-bashing and unilateralism coming from people more typically associated with Woodrow Wilson-style multi-lateralism. By whom, of course, I mean myself. Seriously, though, the European disdain for the rampaging Yank was an amusing and infrequent distraction pre-Sept. 11; now it is starting to annoy the hell out of people here. A domestic backlash against the Continent would have interesting implications … could the crude stereotype of the gunslinging, my-way-or-the-highway American become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Are mainstream European commentators and politicians expending their moral and diplomatic capital willy-nilly? Will isolationism gain a foothold in the Democratic Party?

08/16/2004 03:23 PM  |  Comment (7)

Tell Me Your Favorite Presidential Campaign Books! Even if everyone just says Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 and Boys on the Bus, I'd be interested in knowing what your favorites are. Doing some research here, etc.

08/12/2004 05:20 PM  |  Comment (26)

While You’re at it, Buy This Record

Them's The Mere Mortals, featuring Fought Down lead guitar-slinger Axel Steuerwald (the vampire to the right) on lead vox & songwriting. They've got a terrific EP out that's been making the heavy rotation on our alarmingly high-quality Indie 103.1 radio station, especially the Steve "Sex Pistols" Jones show. (Check out the gushy Jones quote on MM's main page.) The EP is a limited edition number with neato cover art, and can be had for the low low price of $7 (that includes shipping). Listen to some MP3s if you don't take my word for it, and watch that space for upcoming shows.

08/12/2004 04:12 PM  |  Comment (2)

This Is the Art Opening You Need to Attend:

That’s the world-famous COOP, the rock-and-roll devil-girl poster boy extraordinaire, adding some touches to his absolutely massive new painting, “Parts With Appeal,” that will be making its global debut Saturday night at the sixspace gallery in downtown Los Angeles (549 W. 23rd St., at Figueroa, plenty of parking, reception from 7 to 10). For those of you unlucky enough to live near Southern California, I heartily encourage you to browse through the merch and artworks of an American original.

08/12/2004 12:32 PM  |  Comment (0)

Bonjour, Frenchies! Mais, le meilleur blog c'est jusqu'i.

08/12/2004 11:49 AM  |  Comment (2)

A Reason to Love the 'Continue Reading' Function: Noam Chomsky, in addition to his other accomplishments, is one of the most dreadful prose stylists in the English language. But nothing cuts straight to the comedy of his grave absolutism than the "Continue Reading" cut-offs facilitated by the publishing software on his blog. Check out these gems:

* The basic theory is incontrovertible. The only questions have to do with timing and cost. ...

* The sharp increase in focus on Iran's alleged threat (nuclear weapons, connections to terror, etc.) is very clear. ...

* Regarding the rising price of oil, the first point to remember is that the price of oil is not high by historical standards.

* I won't run through the details regarding Somalia since you can find a lot in print, right at the time and later.

* I think there are many reasons why the South African analogy does not apply to this case.

08/12/2004 02:50 AM  |  Comment (8)

What Bush’s Economic Plan Should Look Like: An interesting list from Tyler Cowen. (Via Les Jones)

08/12/2004 02:16 AM  |  Comment (0)

The Usefulness of Seemingly Partisan-Motivated Obsessiveness: Regarding that kerfuffle below, Glenn Reynolds writes:

I think that this is an important issue, and I would have thought that two champions of the blogosphere like Matt and Jeff would have approved my work to bring in original documents and material not available on the web, and make them part of the conversation.

All that said, if this Cambodia Hat thing turns out to be a creepy lie, then that's pretty damning, and the court of public BSing will owe you & the other drum-bangers a debt of gratitude.

With the Spinsanity guys, the question was never "Are they ready for prime time?" but "Why doesn’t every newsroom with more than 100 employees have a built-in Spinsanity?" After all, newspaper journalists never tire of reminding cynical outsiders about their hard-earned "credibility" and well-trained bullshit-detecting skills. And since newspaper profit margins still exceed 20 percent on average, why not deploy these remarkable resources to tell readers whether their favorite authors or columnists or politicians are full of it?

Keefer theorizes that "reporters really don’t...evaluate the truthfulness of their subject." He says that’s in part because they’re taught in journalism school that to be balanced you have to represent both sides fairly. "They’re good at picking up when someone’s obviously lying, but what they’re not good at is picking up the sort of fudges that people do." John Timpane, the Inquirer editor who made the deal with Spinsanity, says newspapers "are fighting a losing battle, partly because there’s so much stuff [to fact-check] and partly because they're all understaffed....That's not a defense, because we should do a much better job than we do."

Or maybe professionally nonpartisan institutions just aren't the best generators of the political passion that fuels so much amateur media criticism. Both Keefer and Timpane are unusually committed to the elevation of reason over rhetoric. Keefer studied history at Stanford under professors who believed "it's not all subjective impressions; it's not just however you feel or whatever; there really are facts." And Timpane, a former English professor who taught at Rutgers, Stanford, and elsewhere, co-wrote Writing Worth Reading, a textbook that included a large section on "how to avoid the pitfalls of easy argumentation and how to make a strong argument without making some of the errors, like...name-calling."

08/12/2004 01:02 AM  |  Comment (12)

Any Libertarians out There Want to Take a Crack at This? From my pal Cathy Seipp:

My position against gay marriage is essentially libertarian, although I've never managed to convince my libertarian friends of this. But really, why is expanding the state into private living arrangements something that libertarians should wish to do? In any case, declining to legally recognize gay marriage may be right or it may be wrong, but it doesn't take rights away from anyone, despite rather hysterical current arguments to the contrary. You can't take away something that has never, in the history of the human race, existed in the first place.

08/11/2004 12:47 PM  |  Comment (25)

I’ve Just Slashed My Ad Rates in Half! For those with a hankering to give me money. Tragically, BlogAds undercounts my traffic pretty substantially -- I get 2,400 visitors a day, not 6,000 per week -- though I don’t have much sense of whether the ads are useful to anyone or not. Still, there are worse $75 gambles out there. (Like betting that the Redsox will even make the playoffs, for example.)

08/11/2004 12:21 PM  |  Comment (2)

'Matt Welch Is an Assclown' Blog: Yes, the lifelong burden of being a Red Sox fan -- in every sense of the phrase -- has finally caused one grown "man" to snap.

08/11/2004 12:39 AM  |  Comment (9)

New National Post Column -- "Confessions of a 'Booger': The Agony and Ecstasy of Being a Democratic Convention Weblogger": I guess it ends up a little bit short on the "ecstasy" count.

08/10/2004 01:14 PM  |  Comment (1)

Tim Blair = Stalinist: Just let the record show that Tim Blair, Australia's favorite so-called "encourag[or of] global capitalism's savage inequities," has been prattling on, shrimps-on-the-barbie style, for the previous 90 minutes about how "Californians hate the planet" because we refuse to acquiesce to his Third World diktats about "using a clothesline instead of those energy-abusing clothes dryers." (I had to insert the word "clothes" in front of "dryers" in the previous sentence because, as another party rightly pointed out, the Australian race "wouldn't understand what you are talking about.") He literally carried an armful of his terrible under-garments to my backyard this afternoon, asking "where's the clothesline?" I could have sworn he even used the phrase "sustainable development" at some point, but maybe that was just me cursing at him. At any rate, he is basically a Communist.

08/10/2004 12:22 AM  |  Comment (19)

Adventures in Community College Courses: The instructor knows the terrifying answer.

08/09/2004 05:45 PM  |  Comment (0)

This Cartoon Is Worth More Than 1,200 Words: I wrote a hopefully humorous piece for this weekend’s National Post about what it was like to be a blogger at the Democratic Convention (will post it as soon as I can); meanwhile, Tom Tomorrow nailed it in just six panels.

08/09/2004 02:50 PM  |  Comment (1)

Dept. of Dreadful Lead Paragraphs: From the LA CityBeat's Mick Farren:

I learned a lot in the four days of last week's Democratic National Convention. I learned I have a passion for Teresa Heinz Kerry, and that Barack Obama is so brilliantly charismatic, he may well be an alien come to save humanity. I was reminded that Bill Clinton is still the Elvis Presley of political orators, and of why I liked Wes Clark in the first place. The tale of Alexandra Kerry's pet hamster is etched in my memory, but, above all, I learned that I detest Chris Matthews, and the absurd egos of cable-news performers may be the greatest threat to democracy since the Nazi Party.

08/09/2004 02:10 PM  |  Comment (5)

Jose Mesa, Professional Relief Pitcher and Procreator: Alert reader Scott "Look how busy I am at work" Ross asks you to click on the link, note the date of birth, and then read the biographical info at the bottom of the page.

08/09/2004 01:41 PM  |  Comment (6)

Is There a 'Pretty Much' Legal Standard? Glenn Reynolds, writing about the Swift Boat Dudes Who Hate John Kerry:

Indeed, if people start dishing dirt about these guys instead of offering factual refutations, it will pretty much serve as an admission that the charges are true.

What I don't understand is how anyone professes to truly give a flip about what John Kerry and George Bush did 32 or 36 years ago. On Friday, I was given a talking-to by a right-of-center friend (who told me, helpfully, that "even though you're a liberal we still like you") about Why I Should Care About the Swift Boaters, and last night a left-of-the-dial pal wanted to get me excited about Bush's National Guard service … and in both cases my reaction is the same: Is this what you're basing your vote on this November? Really? Whatever happened to the New Seriousness after Sept. 11? And how many people who are feverishly talking up all this nonsense have NOT already long made up their minds on who they're going to vote for?

As far as I can tell, every presidential candidate with military experience has embellished it, and every candidate with a youthful drug habit has tried to paper it over. If either one of these guys has used a dime of taxpayer money to obfuscate their pasts, well that sure is worthy of rebuke, but it would still rank about 1,754th on my list of Decisive Issues come November. Actually, that's not even true, it wouldn't rank at all. I'm going to vote for the guy who I think will do the best job leading the most powerful country in the world in the war against people who want to blow us up, period. Everything else -- only 32,000 new jobs this month! This one dude acted weird at a Wendy's! -- is an increasingly pointless and unfunny diversion. UPDATE: Reynolds says I’m off-base (see also comment# 47); Jeff Jarvis says I said it well; Thomas Nephew says he can’t quite agree with me & Jeff, and JunkYardBlog says Ronald Reagan, for one, didn’t embellish his military record.

08/09/2004 11:51 AM  |  Comment (69)

Hi! What are you doing down here?