Reason, Farewell

The cold, gnawing emptiness inside gets a little worse:

In the latest instance of inflammatory outbursts at McCain-Palin rallies, a crowd member screamed "treason!" during an event on Tuesday after Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of criticizing U.S. troops.

"[Obama] said, too, that our troops in Afghanistan are 'air raiding villages and killing civilians,'" Palin said, mischaracterizing a 2007 remark by Obama. "I hope Americans know that is not what our brave men and women in uniform are doing in Afghanistan. The U.S. military is fighting terrorism and protecting us and protecting our freedom."

Shortly afterward, a male member of the crowd in Jacksonville, Florida, yelled "treason!" loudly enough to be picked up by television microphones.

(via AS)

Fight the Press

This is terrible:

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Palin, Poet

"Challenge to a Cynic"

You are a cynic.
Because show me where
I have ever said
That there's absolute proof
That nothing that man
Has ever conducted
Or engaged in,
Has had any effect,
Or no effect,
On climate change.

(To C. Gibson, ABC News, Sept. 11, 2008)


"On Reporters"

It's funny that
A comment like that
Was kinda made to,
I don't know,
You know ...

Reporters.

(To K. Couric, CBS News, Sept. 25, 2008)

(via cf, original source here)

Harry Belafonte and DNC '68

(via BB)

“I didn’t know you were Catholic”

This is some weird shit going down.

In the Roosevelt Room after the session, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to “blow it up” by withdrawing her party’s support for the package over what Ms. Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal.

“I didn’t know you were Catholic,” Ms. Pelosi said, a wry reference to Mr. Paulson’s kneeling, according to someone who observed the exchange. She went on: “It’s not me blowing this up, it’s the Republicans.”

Mr. Paulson sighed. “I know. I know.”

Foreign Relations

(via BB)

Capitalism is The Worst Enemy of Humanity (Mostly)

On Wednesday, Evo Morales addressed the United Nations General Assembly. He denounced capitalism in no uncertain terms:

"What we are talking about is the fight between rich and poor, between socialism and capitalism," Bolivian President Evo Morales said late in the day. "This historic fight is being repeated now. There is an uprising against an economic model, a capitalistic system that is the worst enemy of humanity."

Meanwhile, perhaps his closest ally in South America (no, not Zapatero!), Hugo Chavez, "signed a series of energy co-operation deals with China." Chavez explained humbly, "While the world enters an energy crisis, we are investing." His next stop is Russia, with whom he "has signed arms contracts [...] worth more than $4bn."

prescience

In 1936 Walter Benjamin wrote the second version of what has become his most well-known essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of its Reproducibility" (some versions use "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"). In a footnote for a section considering how film alienates the actor from his own image by taking his image to another site "in front of the masses," Benjamin begins to apply this same idea to the politician. The "mode of exhibition" that film offers, he argues, affects politicians by replacing their traditional "public," the parliament, with the masses. The politician no longer knows exactly to whom he is speaking, and it could be an infinite number of people. He goes on:

This means that priority is given to presenting the politician before the recording equipment [...] Radio and film are changing not only the function of the professional actor, but, equally, the function of those who, like the politician, present themselves before the media. The direction of this change is the same for the film actor and the politician, regardless of their different tasks. It tends toward the exhibition of controllable, transferable skills under certain social conditions, just as sports first called for such exhibition under certain natural conditions. This results in a new form of selection--selection before an apparatus--from which the champion, the star, and the dictator emerge as victors.

(Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of its Reproducibility." p.128 Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings Vol. 3, 1935-1938. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2002.)

person no more

In the synopsis for the headline "Michelle Obama, Reluctant No More" the New York Times employs a terrible neologistic phrase (italics added):

Michelle Obama is at the center of what may be the most closely managed spousal rollout in history.

seriously, no joke, watch your step

Those "tech-artist" protesters who were detained by the Chinese received a ten-day jail sentence, according to Boing Boing. This doesn't exactly burnish China's free-speech credentials, but, on the other hand, anyone identified as a "tech-artist/student/protester/activist" is probably young, healthy and of at least middle-class origins (also likely annoying). A ten-day stint in a jail surely isn't pleasant for anyone, but it seems like they will get out and probably have a solid support system at home. They can blog/twitter/facebook/myspace and otherwise relate their experience and express their righteous discontent.

But now, reports Deadspin and the New York Times, China has arrested two septuagenarians and sent them to "re-education" camps. No one is happy about this:

The two women, both in their late 70s, have never spoken out against China’s authoritarian government. Both walk with the help of a cane, and Ms. Wang is blind in one eye. Their grievance, receiving insufficient compensation when their homes were seized for redevelopment, is perhaps the most common complaint among Chinese displaced during the country’s long streak of fast economic growth.

But the Beijing police still sentenced the two women to an extrajudicial term of “re-education through labor” this week for applying to hold a legal protest in a designated area in Beijing, where officials promised that Chinese could hold demonstrations during the Olympic Games.

better watch your step

A blog called Stryde Hax has done a very thorough job of looking into the whole He Kexin age controversy using "only publicly available, primary, linkable information." The results suggest that she is fourteen and that, possibly, Google has cooperated actively or passively with the Chinese government in hiding this fact.

From the post:

Much of the coverage regarding Kexin's age has only mentioned "allegations" of fraud, and the IOC has ignored the matter completely. I believe that these primary documents, issued by the Chinese state, directly available from China by clicking on the links above rise to a level of evidence higher than "allegation". The following points bear mentioning:

1. Google's cached copy of the spreadsheet does not contain Kexin's age record, and Baidu's does. This does not necessarily imply that Google allowed its data to be rewritten by Chinese censors, but the possibility does present itself.
2. From the minute I pressed the publish button on this blog, the clock is ticking until Kexin's true age is wiped out of the Baidu cache forever. It is up to you, the folks reading this blog, to take your own screenshots and notarize them by publishing them. If you put a link in the comments section, I'll post it.

However, this is minor compared to some other totalitarian moves the Chinese government has been pulling. The government has detained several "tech-art" activists for an attempted LED-based protest, which BoingBoing has been following closely.

More stories of attempted protests and arrests can be found here, here, here, here, here and here.

(gymnast age post via Deadspin)

stupid questions

You shouldn't feel bad if you missed all those debates between Obama and Clinton. Scott Horton at Harper's explains, using a memo generated by the Clinton campaign, that those debates contained literally zero substance:

As the authors noted in reviewing some 352 questions asked in 17 debates that involved Hillary Clinton in the 2008 campaign through January, not a single question was asked about the actual operation of the machinery of government.

Almost all the questions that the candidates fielded were either "puff" or "gotcha" questions. Horton provides perhaps the ultimate example of the latter at the beginning of his post. :

In 1988, the decisive moment in the presidential campaign may have come when CNN’s Bernard Shaw asked Dukakis this question, opening one of the Bush-Dukakis debates: “Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?”

Needless to say, the response Dukakis provided didn't do him any good.

aspirin

The August 13, 1936 diary entry of Victor Klemperer, "a German-Jewish literary scholar who managed to survive the entire Nazi era in Dresden," offers, by way of George Packer's Interesting Times blog, a cool, damp cloth on the forehead for those suffering from Olympics fever:

I find the Olympics so odious because they are not about sport—in this country, I mean—but are an entirely political enterprise. “German renaissance through Hitler,” I read recently. It’s constantly being drummed into the country and into foreigners that here one is witnessing the revival, the flowering, the new spirit, the unity, steadfastness, and magnificence, pacific too, of course, spirit of the Third Reich, which lovingly embraces the whole world. The chanted slogans on the streets have been banned (for the duration of the Olympics), Jew-baiting, bellicose sentiments, everything offensive has disappeared from the papers until August 16, and the swastika flags are hanging everywhere day and night until then too.

Packer's entire post is worth reading. He doesn't recommend a full-scale boycott of the games or even a principled abstinence from viewing it. It's too late to boycott and not watching would only harm the non-watcher.He just hopes they fail:

When I was in Burma in June, where China is deeply resented for propping up the military regime, an outspoken woman told me, “We hope the Olympics go a-flop.” I love track and field and will be watching the 1500-meter finals. But I also hope the Beijing Olympics go a-flop.

"the audacity of bleak despair"

This Modern World breaks down McCain's campaign tactics this week.

"character matters"

Perhaps Monica Goodling had grown tired of more standard interview questions when she started asking applicants to the Justice Department slight variants of Stephen Colbert's standard question to congresspeople: "George W. Bush--great president or the greatest president?" Goodling, who attended Regent University Law School (a school, according to Dean Jeffrey Brauch, that is "committed to the proposition that there is truth--eternal principles of justice--about the way we should practice law and about the law itself. We believe character matters. We talk openly about how an attorney can have integrity and humility in a profession that challenges both"), asked applicants what it was about George W. Bush that made the applicant want to serve him. According to the New York Times, Goodling scanned resumes for “abortion,” “homosexual,” “Florida recount,” or “guns.” She also made notes that ensured the applicant was sufficiently conservative on, as she put it in her interview notes, "god, guns + gays."

Goodling displayed her commitment to "eternal principles of justice" in many ways. In one exemplary case, she propagated "unfounded rumors" that an applicant was gay and having an affair with her superior, Margaret Chiara, one of the nine U.S. Attorneys fired without explanation.

The applicant did not get the job.

(Monica/Angela picture via Swampland.)

(Link to NYT article)

"Where is that marvelous ape?"

The Huffington Post, self-described on their homepage as "The Internet Newspaper," may not abide by the highest journalistic standards.

Reporting on a joke that John McCain might have told over twenty years ago, Sam Stein, "reaches out" (perhaps he will "go forward" with his reporting if he has enough "bandwidth" and/or "cycles," but, hey, "it is what it is") to a reporter who covered the possible initial incident. She helpfully tells him,

"I'm not sure exactly what the wording was of the joke, but something was said. Some joke involving a rape and ape was said. Enough women repeated it to me at the time and the McCain campaign had a non-denial denial," said Coile, now with the Arizona Daily Star. "It came after his 'Seizure World' joke, in which he referred to the [retirement community] Leisure World as Seizure World... I just think it reinforced this idea that John McCain is humor-challenged." (Link)

Even though she's "not exactly sure what the wording was of the joke" she is certain that "something was said." Excellent. It's a good bet that something was said at an event where speeches were made. To bolster her claim that "something" was said, she cites another questionable joke McCain made, which almost adds up to circumstantial evidence. Then she goes on, after an unbracketed ellipses (did she just pause or were words taken out of her quote: HuffPo, what style manual are you using?), to vaguely confirm that McCain in fact told the joke: "it reinforced this idea that John McCain is humor-challenged." What does "it" refer to? The joke that was confirmed through rumor? "Enough women repeated it" to Coile to confirm? How many women is "enough" to qualify for fact checking?

Whether or not McCain actually told the joke is obviously irrelevant here. With but a wink and a nod to objective reporting, The Huffington Post clearly wants only to extend the narrative of John McCain-as-chauvinist-douchebag. Trying to pretend otherwise is low--exactly the kind of thing HuffPo would jump on Fox News for running with. Sure, he might not be the most sensitive speaker, but what of his actions, the substance? The article ends with a another nod to the idea that substance trumps innuendo (it quotes Linda Barter the head of the Arizona Women's Political Caucus, who says, "John McCain has not been pro-choice or supportive of issues related to women's reproductive health"), but this only adds a sheen of respectability to a petty partisan hack job.

Att: Obama

W.H. Auden, in "September 1, 1939," was on to something:

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

(Link)

magic wand

There is undoubtedly a rhetorical virtue in stating the obvious, in getting back to the fundamental crux of the argument, but President Bush takes this virtue to a disturbingly tautological extreme. A few months ago, when asked at a press conference about rising gas prices, the President declared that, if he had one, he would wave a magic wand to reduce them; the stark reality was, however, that he didn't have a wand, magic or otherwise. (This was also the same press conference where he said he had yet to hear about gas prices nearing four dollars per gallon.) Today, at another press conference, the President invoked the same device, and pleaded the same impotence: that magic wand just doesn't exist:

There is no immediate fix. This took us a while to get in this problem; there is no short-term solution. I think it was in the Rose Garden where I issued this brilliant statement: If I had a magic wand -- but the President doesn't have a magic wand. You just can't say, low gas. It took us a while to get here and we need to have a good strategy to get out of it. (Link)

Extemporaneous speaking is difficult, especially when dealing with complex issues. But a pattern of this kind of non-logic substituting for genuine thought and argumentation belies a deeper, more disturbing problem.

Witness, for example, President Bush's recent gag at a "private meeting" at the G8 summit:

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Mr Bush, whose second and final term as President ends at the end of the year, then left the meeting at the Windsor Hotel in Hokkaido where the leaders of the world's richest nations had been discussing new targets to cut carbon emissions. (Link, via clusterflock)

This kind of critique is almost too easy to make, but apathy presages a surrender of freedom. By focusing, perhaps necessarily, on the larger themes, the press fails to take note of the nuances of these arguments, which are not arguments at all but weak apologetics for a hardened epistemology.

(The New York Times and NPR on the today's press conference)

growtown

In the midst of much bad news--Iran launching missiles with the capability to reach Israel and then photoshopping photographs of the launch to make it seem like they launched more missiles than they actually did; Rice delivering very thinly veiled threats in reaction to Iran's launches; Obama voting for a bill that gives legal immunity to telephone companies that participated in the government's unconstitutional wiretapping, rendering any legal action against those companies effectively useless; massive suicide attacks in Afghanistan, forgotten almost as soon as they happen (hey, you can now download applications directly to your iPhone?)--it does a body good to read something simple and hopeful like this.

idealist

Ted Sorensen is eighty years old. He worked for John F. Kennedy as an adviser beginning in 1953, when Kennedy was still a senator. Sorensen continued to work for Kennedy until his assassination and then Sorensen worked briefly for Lyndon Johnson. He never held any official position of influence, but he was apparently extremely influential in Kennedy's administration. He also wrote the majority of Kennedy's Pulitzer-prize winning book, Profiles in Courage. Despite his age and lawyerly manner of speaking with excruciating precision (you can see Charlie Rose's exasperation at this habit a couple of times during the interview), he gives an unexpectedly compelling interview.
(Link to video on Charlie Rose's site)