Saturday, November 16, 2002
Discrimination, Cradle to Grave - Glenn Sacks writes about gender issues from the male perspective.
I bring it up because one of my major issues is discrimination against boys, from elementary school through college. I have a nine-year-old boy myself - the living embodiment of Calvin, from the comic strip, down to hair and stuffed alter egoes. He's a little handful - intensely curious, active, loves nothing more than to be doing things with his hands - in short, utterly typical. Yet schools today are not only not ideal for this type of child - they're hostile:Michelle Ventimiglia, director of a Los Angeles day care center, says "our schools simply aren't made for boys. I see this every September when my students go into elementary school. Our schools are made for children who can sit still with their hands folded, who aren't distracted by a bug on the wall, who keep quiet and do what you tell them to do even if it is boring. Most girls do fine in this environment, but many boys don't.And heaven forbid they cut up - or, in today's uber-PC environment, work off a little energy with a contact sport or a game of Cops and Robbers. Make the universal "gun" shape with your thumb and index finger, the boy can count on a suspension as often as not.
"Children need physically connected activities, particularly boys. They learn best by doing. An early elementary school student can learn a ton of math and geometry skills, as well as problem solving and social skills, from LEGOs, building blocks, and wood working projects. Cooking projects are also very useful.
"Boys love these types of hands-on lessons and activities, but too often teachers find it easier to simply give them worksheets instead. And now, with so much time being devoted to testing and preparing for testing, teachers' repertoires are even more limited, which is bad for children, particularly boys."
This scene is heartbreakingly familiar:Of course, as parents we suffer along with our children, and as our boys are punished we are punished, too. Every day as I pick my son up from school I hope for a good behavior report that can be celebrated with ice cream or a trip to the park. More often I face what I call the "boy parent dilemma"--when my son is "bad" do I punish him because he can't fit into a structure that clearly isn't suited to little boys? Or do I withhold punishment or censure and in so doing undercut the teacher's authority?I've been there, over and over. And I'm about done with it.
I've agonized over this question again and again, but I always decide that it is my duty to support the teacher. But I'll never forget the sadness of my little son who sobs quietly in the back seat after school because I punished him for his bad behavior report. Why did I punish him? Because I simply couldn't think of anything else to do.
Why is it this way? Because the academic educational establishment is no better. Sacks again writes, this time about why so few men are attending college these days:One day, after an hour or so discussing tale after tale where Ms. Smith concluded that the men involved were always wrong or evil or cruel or stupid and the women were always right and good and kind and smart, Ms. Smith began softly describing a soothing tale of a father and his daughter setting off through the woods to go to the big city. "The father....and his daughter....rode together... as they went through the beautiful Spanish countryside," Ms. Smith said softly. I sat back and closed my eyes. "They...were on their way to the big city....the daughter had never seen the city before.....she was happy that her father was taking her..." I imagined a special, loving, father-daughter bond. "…and then.....he rapes her."More - much more - later.
Jolted, I sat up. A male in the back of the classroom pushed his heavy book off of the table and it made a loud, crashing sound. An accident? Or the only protest he could make?
I did sometimes protest in Ms. Smith's class and others, but a 6'2" male confronting a female educator about her bigotry, however politely, is quickly perceived as a sexist bully. In addition, tension and arguing make the days and semesters long and hard, and there were times when it was easier to tune out, as so many other males had done.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/16/2002 10:02:06 PM
Why Males Don't Go to College - Fascinating article on how modern universities have become what feminists would call "hostile zones" to male students.
Early in the semester Ms. Smith informed the class that all folklore was widely believed to be a code of misogyny that was developed and employed by men to suppress women. Ms. Smith did say she considered this to be a slight exaggeration, yet whenever a folktale contained a negative portrayal of a woman, it was cited as evidence of the rampant misogyny in men's dark souls. What Ms. Smith never explained was why this "misogynistic" folklore contained far more negative portrayals of men than of women.
But the academic estabishment's bias aganst men kicks in while they're still boys - about which I will be writing much more next week.
Ms. Smith also informed us that women largely invented folklore, because it was women who had the "long, tiresome, boring jobs" and thus the motivation to invent it. Unanswered were two questions. One, why would we say that folklore was misogynistic if women had in fact, largely invented it? Two, did we really imagine that the men of that era—or at least 98% of them—did not also have "long, tiresome, boring" jobs?
posted by Mitch Berg 11/16/2002 08:08:06 PM
Musical Separatism - A British R'nB singer is being pressured to kick a white guitarist out of his band.
Craig David, to his credit, is pushing back. It's apparently a different world in the UK, where "urban" isn't entirely a euphemism for "black". Craig, son of a half-Jewish white mother and a father from Grenada, said he had no intention of changing musicians: "It shouldn't matter what colour or creed you are. Fraser plays licks that half those urban guys can't even fathom. They can lump it or leave it."
It's interesting to remember back twenty years, when the most interesting, challenging and successful R'nB was benig done by Prince (whose band was 2/3 white) and Michael Jackson (whose big crossover breakthrough single was "Beat It", featuring an Eddit Van Halen guitar solo).
British critics argue that the American outlook reinforces a racial divide by labelling R&B and hip-hop as exclusively African-American music. "In America, the music scene is seriously segregated," said one British record label insider.
"Over there, urban music is just a euphemism for black music, and it's really hard for us to get our white artists played on urban radio."
posted by Mitch Berg 11/16/2002 07:14:56 PM
Like Butta. On Nails.- Barbra Streisand's website, as Rachel Lucas points out, is a rich, reliable vein of material.
The current edition of her "Statements" page doesn't disappoint. There's this bon mot:The Democratic Party was not able to articulate a clear message - was not able to convey the very real and very many differences between the two parties. They did not allow the American people to make a meaningful choice. They never articulated what it was we were voting for, and in doing so they failed to motivate their base to go to the polls.
On the face of it, this seems a reasonable take on it.
Except that the Dems - with Ms. Streisand acting as one of their de facto leaders, in the absence of most of the party's elected officials from the campaign trail - did articulate a message. "America last. Unions before security. Prosperity through taxation. Bush is illegitimate. Josh Bartlett is the real president".
The Dems, especially Streisand, were strident ("Streident"?) enough to get their message to everyone that would hear. And we see the results - and also see Babs spinning like a Huey Cobra. The Republicans, on the other hand, spoke directly to their constituency and gave them a reason to vote.
We spoke to more than our constituency. Here in Minnesota - traditionally as lefty as Berkeley - 80 percent of uncommitted voters in the Twin Cities metro (outside the core cities) voted Republican! These were the voters that put Jesse Ventura in office in 1998 - and whose parents kept Hubert Humphrey and Karl Rolvaag and Fritz Mondale in office for decades.
Ipso Babso.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/16/2002 12:01:58 PM
More Links - I have really come to enjoy Rachel Lewis' entire blog - especially her rather large collection of Second Amendment rants and screeds. She also seems to be the one who picked off some of Babs "Like Butta" Streisand's gaffes of the past few weeks.
Lots of good gun-rights links in there, in and among a lot of acid-tongued screedmongery.
Speaking of which - look for my take on the agenda for Minnesota's Personal Protection Act in the coming session. This should be good.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/16/2002 11:31:22 AM
Woo Hooo! - I heard from Swen Swenson, fellow expat North Dakotan and author of A Coyote at the Dog Show...
...which is, to the best of my knowledge, the first blog to blogroll me! (Sort of a blog mitzvah).
Cool blog, too...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/16/2002 02:48:59 AM
Survival - According to the International Herald Tribune, the UK is going to start advising Britons on how to survive chemical or biological attack.
They could do worse than this - a piece from a retired Army master sergeant. The guy's obviously not a writer, and some parts seem to spring from a desire to create confidence more than fact (but not many). But there's some good advice - specifics on surviving chemical, biological and even nuclear attack, plus some general points that are worth noting, if only as general guidelines:Lesson number one: In the mid 1990s there were a series of nerve gas attacks on crowded Japanese subway stations. Given perfect conditions for an attack less than 10% of the people there were injured (the injured were better in a few hours) and only one percent of the injured died.
Worth reading from time to time.
60 Minutes once had a fellow telling us that one drop of nerve gas could kill a thousand people, well he didn't tell you the thousand dead people per drop was theoretical.
Drill Sergeants exaggerate how terrible this stuff was to keep the recruits awake in class (I know this because I was a Drill Sergeant too). Forget everything you've ever seen on TV, in the movies, or read in a novel about this stuff, it was all a lie (read this sentence again out loud!). These weapons are about terror, if you remain calm, you will probably not die. This is far less scary than the media and their "Experts," make it sound.
By the way, the Israeli government has been teaching their citizens to build simple "safe rooms" in their homes ever since the first Gulf War, to protect most Israelis from potential chemical attack. Here's how it's done. Never let it be said I'm not public service-minded...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/16/2002 01:27:56 AM
Friday, November 15, 2002
So Now What? - John O'Sullivan points out something that's been nagging at me ever since about 6AM the morning after the election:
American politics is a wasteland littered with the bones of parties that won "historic” midterm elections and soared confidently towards defeat two years later. Two examples are the Democrats in 1982 and the Republicans in 1994, and they point to the same bipartisan moral: Overconfidence comes before a fall.
What started me worrying? Trent Lott.
What makes this lesson hard for the GOP to absorb in 2002, however, is that the election was a precedent-breaking one and that it really does contain within itself the seeds of a permanent realignment in a Republican direction. But since it also contains the seeds of an emerging Democratic majority, both parties have a great deal to play for? and to guard against.
Why did the GOP win last week? Because we spoke to a vision that hits a chord with the "American street" - and by that I mean any American, regardless of race, class, gender or even political leaning. We campaigned on National Security, Prosperity and Safety.
So what was the first thing out of Trent Lott's mouth? Partial Birth Abortion. That's like getting a phone call from the governor five minutes before your scheduled execution, declaring your innocence and releasing you from death row...and not leaving until you finish the last meal!
What's next, Trent? Push off discussing tax cuts until we get that pressinggay marriage debate resolved?
Nobody asked me, but here's what the GOP has to do to win in '04:
Note to Senator Lott: Get the vision. Or find yourself a nice ambassadorship.
Safety, Wallet, Children.
In case you missed my point: Safety, Wallet, Children.
UPDATE: A correspendent asks me "I thought you were a conservative?", and wonders how I can justify softpedalling things like gay marriage and abortion.
Answer: Not easily.
But there are two different classes of issues here:
As conservatives in government, we tackle the latter. As conservatives in our neighborhoods, jobs, regular lives, we have to win the former.
that's how I see it these days, anyway.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/15/2002 04:35:21 PM
Social Middle - President Bush again steers clear of the excesses of the far right.
Dems don't get this; Bush is governing using the best lesson from all the 12-step groups. Take what you need, leave the rest.
He's governing using many (not all) of the best ideas of conservatism. He's leaving the baggage - like Jerry Falwell and Jimmy Swaggart - behind.
Spelled another way - he's outflanked the Dems on the right, without smacking into the wall in the process.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/15/2002 02:01:04 PM
Ratzen Fratzen - So I had this huge post about what the GOP needs to do...
...and Blogger won't handle it!
So I'll do it when I get home.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/15/2002 01:55:24 PM
Crunch Day - Big meetings coming up this afternoon, so I'll be a little light on the blogging for a bit here.
Tonight or tomorrow - what the GOP needs to do now.
Wake the kids...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/15/2002 11:41:46 AM
Public or Private? - In yesterday's lutefisking of Keillor, I said that Keillor had had plenty of public financing to get to where he's at.
An NPR personality (who shall remain nameless) sent me some facets to NPR's funding that I hadn't been completely aware of.
Now, another emailer shows me another side of the issue:I wouldn't cave in so quickly on the issue of taxpayer support for NPR, MPR or public broadcasting in general. They are supported by taxpayers. Their burden comes as a result of NPR's non-profit status.
He also sent this link to MPR's fund-raising site, which shows the extent to which pledges and donations are tax-deductible.
Contributions to NPR are tax-deductible, which means money normally headed for the coffers of the U.S. government end up in public radio. The result is that non-contributing taxpayers, who may not agree with the politics of NPR (such as myself) are forced to take up the slack when it comes to providing tax revenue to the federal government. Sure the same is true for churches and other non-profits, but at least they are prohibited from taking political stands. NPR is too, but their contempt for business, Republicans and conservatives is palpable in virtually every aspect of their news coverage.
The fact that Keillor's work is funded by an endowment set up from profits from his book means nothing. If the rest of MPR was not supported by taxpayers, that endowment would not exist, because the money would be spent.
Keillor sucks at the public teat and he sucks it hard, just like Moyers, who also mistrusts the public that supports him. My nipples are raw and with his attack on Coleman and Republicans, they're bruised as well. It's one thing to suck hard at the teat, it's another thing to bite.
OK. Let me rephrase:
Keillor, whose career started in an institution (M/NPR-affiliated radio) that owes its existence to public support - some directly or indirectly via taxes, and a lot directly via public subscription and corporate underwriting - and who lives in a city, county, state and nation that's populated by people that have a God-given right to agree or disagree with his politics, seems to seethe with contempt for his fellow citizen. He shows it in his writings, his behavior, his admitted revulsion for his fellow Minnesotans' free choice made at the polls last week.
Always great to get your emails - keep 'em coming!
posted by Mitch Berg 11/15/2002 10:33:50 AM
Democrats and Defense - Why it never quite clicks with them - written from a Dem's point of view.
The reasons for this apathy aren't hard to discern. Many Democrats who came of age during the Vietnam War retain a gut-level distrust of the military. Younger staffers, who may not carry the same psychological baggage, have few mentors urging them toward military or security issues. I speak from experience: My main qualification for my first Washington job--covering European security for Congress--was that I could locate the Warsaw Pact countries on a map and correctly identify the acronyms of the relevant international organizations.
Remembering the stories of the utter contempt that the incoming Clintonistas heaped on everyone in uniform that walked through the West Wing (except Dominos), it makes sense.
But lack of expertise is only a symptom. The malady is an irresponsible lack of interest. The issues that drive most contemporary Democrats into politics are reproductive rights, health care, fiscal policy, or poverty, not national security. Even those young Democrats who are interested in foreign affairs tend to be drawn to "soft" subjects such as debt relief and human rights. Aspiring foreign policy wonks will often get pulled into military affairs by way of, say, their work on demining. But when these young people visualize exciting jobs in the next Democratic administration, they think State Department, not Pentagon.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/15/2002 08:43:42 AM
It Never Existed, Winston - Michael Moore was predicting last Tuesday would be a Dem sweep. Now, it seems he's removed any reference to that prediction from his website.
Blogger Rachel Lucas, however, has the goods. And the page.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/15/2002 07:03:35 AM
Thursday, November 14, 2002
Call for Merriam Webster - Some new terms have entered the English language from the blogosphere in the past week or two:
More to come.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/14/2002 07:16:20 PM
Just a Minute...- An NPR staffer wrote to take issue with my portrayal of Keillor's funding stream. I said in my ;original screed that Keillor got where he is today using tax dollars.
Apparently, it's a little murkier than that - the end-result being that Keillor, Minnesota Public Radio and National Public Radio are not "tax-funded" in the classic, BBC or Deutsche Welle sense of the term. The correspondent wrote: "National Public Radio" is a bit of a misnomer: since a major financial restructuring in the early 1980s, NPR (as well as PBS) no longer receives any direct public subsidy. Instead, the relatively small amount of taxpayer money appropriated for public broadcasting goes to the independent Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which makes one-time grants, based on their judgement of independent applications. Some of this money goes to projects on NPR. Some of it goes to PBS. Some of it goes to independent stations, or producers, or individuals. On any given year, it makes up a tiny fraction of NPR's income.
So Keillor is not (at least since the '80's, anyway) on any sort of direct public payroll. Sources of mine within MPR also have told me that the endowment set up with the profits from "Lake Wobegone Days" is big enough to float Prairie Home Companion for quite some time, and MPR to boot (although this may have changed over the years), and so it's possible that Prairie Home Companion receives no direct funding itself (I'll have to check that).
So where does the money actually come from? Mainly, listener donations, as filtered through stations and sent to NPR as fees for programming. Also, corporate underwriting, paid to stations or directly to NPR, in return for on-air mentions.
Fair enough. Let's take M/NPR's funding stream off the table, and I'll leave it at this - however Keillor is paid, his views of his fellow citizens - the ones that pledge to his station, buy his books, attend his performances, live on his street, and see the world and their politics differently - are noxious in and of themselves.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/14/2002 06:58:21 PM
Coleman and the DFL - R. Alex Whitlock writes to ask:
You mentioned in your Keiller fisking that Coleman was all but kicked out of the DFL. I've never heard that story... would you mind elaborating on it here or on the blog?
Happy to oblige.
For those of you not from Minnesota, here's how it worked: Norm Coleman was a DFLer (that's Minnesotan for "Democrat"). He worked in the Minnesota Attorney General's office, which is a breeding ground of Minnesota politicians: Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale both served there, and Norm was the protege of Skip Humphrey, Hubert's son and 1998 gubernatorial candidate.
The DFL in Saint Paul is, like Tammany Hall and the Daley Machine, an institution with its own set of rules and traditions. One of those rules is "wait your turn". But when Norm ran for mayor of St. Paul in 1993, he jumped his place in line, beating (if I recall correctly) longtime DFL stalwart Bob Long for the party nod.
This was the first of many transgressions against the party that eventually led to their parting ways after Coleman's re-election in 1997 - although it took a while. Coleman even introduced Paul Wellstone to the 1996 DFL convention! But Norm was a very moderate Democrat - a very Clintonian "New Democrat" in a city and state Democrat organization that isn't a hair to the right of Ann Arbor or Berkeley. He favored privatizing some city services, was openly but moderately pro-life, supported a pilot school voucher program...
...and the final straw; he refused to sign a city Gay, Bisexual, Lesbian and Transgender Pride proclamation. The DFL howled. They parted ways.
I think I got that right.
So when Keillor impugns Coleman for being an "ex-Democrat" - well, he DID have help. The question is, did he jump, or was he pushed?
posted by Mitch Berg 11/14/2002 03:11:30 PM
Update - The Keillor story is bouncing around the blogosphere like a hyperactive six-year-old at a McDonald's Playland.
Tacitus has a superb comparison of Keillor, Bill Moyers (whom we visited earlier this week) and Lewis Lapham (überliberal editor of Harpers), and finds a common thread:I've remarked on this before -- the inability of so many on the left to ascribe humanity or decency to their ideological opponents. Because we don't subscribe to Lapham's vision of democracy, we are therefore against democracy itself!
It's the hatred thread, back again!
Think they'll figure it out?
posted by Mitch Berg 11/14/2002 02:29:06 PM
Keillor-hauling - An email correspondent says he agrees - Keillor is a genuine humorist, which is a sadly endangered species these days - but adds this:
But I could let [previous japes at the right] pass, because he didn't make a point of publicly denigrating conservatives. He's crossed the line, though, and seems to be working at becoming a Michael Moore clone. (Evidently he has the managerial skills to fit right in.)
Exactly.
That's too bad. I'll miss hearing about Lake Woebegone.
This whole thing is not about bashing back at the left, by the way - my mom's a liberal democrat, as it happens. It's about trying to exist in a civil society with those with which you disagree.
Keillor's articles set that goal back a long, long way.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/14/2002 11:46:52 AM
Just Say Whoah - The Strib's Doug Grow - who's an honest fellow, albeit as reflexively pro-DFL as anyone in the Twin Cities' media, amazes by writing - hold the presses - a soft-focus piece about a group of local "peace" activists! In this case, he's helping flog their current pet cause: signs that say "Just Say No to War With Iraq".
Now, if you're not from the Twin Cities, you've not heard of "Women Against Military Madness", but every city certainly has a similar group with an identical cant - America is wrong, every tinpot dictator from Khadaffi to Andropov to Hussein is morally on the same plane as our own leadership, any war is inherently wrong (although WAMM was noticeably quiet about Clinton's involvement in the Balkans). Here's an example:Back in September, Ott was becoming increasingly frustrated by how hard it was to be heard above the ever-growing roar for war with Iraq.
True, the international sanctions were horrific.
Ott and her husband, Gene, both have been to Iraq. Both frequently have spoken to groups about what they regard as the horrors of the international sanctions against Iraq. The innocents in Iraq are the ones being hurt, they say, and a war will cause only more agony for the powerless.
Has anyone asked the Otts why the sanctions are in place? Because Hussein is a ethnocidal madman who invaded Kuwait, killed thousands, and continues to develop weapons of mass destruction capable of destroying entire cities?
Worse, when dealing with "peace" activists, is the sense so many of them have that if you're not repudiating our leadership and prostrating yourself before the world, patria culpa, then you're the enemy.
Yet nobody I know wants peace more than the soldiers of my acquaintance. Nobody wanted peace more than those who went ashore at Normandy. I suspect every soldier that will be involved in any war against Iraq will be staunch advocates of peace as well.
But peace without justice - and I mean justice in the old-fashioned, "the wrong are punished, the good are saved" sense of the term - is meaningless.
The problem with "peace" activists? As long as governments are busy killing their own people, it seems it's all really OK to them.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/14/2002 11:41:58 AM
Bigots of Brixton- The London Police now has a "hate crimes unit", which is criss-crossing the city arresting people; "one for rape but most have been arrested on suspicion of making racist threats and of homophobic harassment."
Worse yet? They're looking for more:Officers will take a mobile hate-crime reporting centre into the heart of London's gay community in Old Compton Street, Soho.
So not only can anyone accuse anyone else of a nebulous, ill-defined crime against society, but the police will bring a special group to you to hear the complaint...
...and all of this, as London's violent crime rate is spiralling upward in the wake of their civilian gun bans?
And people bitch about Ashcroft...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/14/2002 10:30:27 AM
Slice of Life - This Bleat cuts very close to home.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/14/2002 10:19:56 AM
Keillor. Again. - Garrison Keillor's back.
After the drubbing he took in the press for his last Salon article, perhaps he'd have decided to proceed with a bit of tact and grace.
But Keillor has perhaps the most perfectly-developed sense of entitlement of any public figure today. He's spent his entire career living, mostly, from the handouts of others, government and contributors. And while the endowments funded by his book sales (including megaseller "Lake Wobegon Days", back in the eighties) have set MPR up rather nicely, one needs to ask - would the books have sold without the national, tax-funded, pledge-supported platform from which to jump off?
Keillor is a funny man, a generally superb humorist, and Prairie Home Companion is a weekly ritual - even my children (9 and 11) love it. But Keillor is in his entirety a creation of the public sector. And like any public institution, he suffers the public with the same grace as do the cashiers at the Department of Public Safety. Having known, socially and professionally, many who'd worked with him, having met many more who'd dealt with him in a variety of capacities, one notes this: Keillor treats those he perceives as superiors with unvarnished obsequeity; Peers, he addresses with a veneer of respect; underlings, he treats like cat litter, to be rubbed underfoot and...well, you know how it ends, right? Having known a few people who'd worked on PHC, the metaphor basically fits.
Keillor is reacting to a Republican sweep the same way the Teacher's union, or the National Orgization of Women, do; with doomsday rhetoric, with chicken-little doommongering, with nasty, defensive slurs - and the added fun of lots of personal slurs against "the enemy".
Here's what he had to say: The hoots and cackles of Republicans reacting to my screed
Whoah, right there.
Hoots and cackles? I recall a lot of people with serious objections to:
We continue:... against Norman Coleman, the ex-radical, former Democratic, now compassionate conservative senator-elect from Minnesota,
Garry! The DFL kicked him out! You can't blame Norm for being a "former Democrat" when the Democrats all but tied him up and tossed him in the river when he was mayor! was all to be expected, given the state of the Republican Party today. Its entire ideology, top to bottom, is We-are-not-Democrats, We-are-the-unClinton,
And let's hope the Democrats continue to think that's our whole approach. '04 should be a cakewalk.
Garry! Voters aren't stupid! If we'd run as what we're not, Mondale would be the senator-elect.
Hyperbole bordering on "outright lie". Coleman attacked Wellstone's record on defense votes. Think Coleman's attacks were brutal? Ask some of my acquaintances who are in the service.
The old GOP of fiscal responsibility and principled conservatism and bedrock Main Street values is gone, my dear, and something cynical has taken its place. Thus the use of Iraq as an election ploy, openly, brazenly, from the president and Karl Rove all the way down to Norman Coleman, who came within an inch of accusing Wellstone of being an agent of al-Qaida. To do that one day and then, two days later, to feign grief and claim the dead Wellstone's mantle and carry on his "passion and commitment" is simply too much for a decent person to stomach.
A "Decent Person" wouldn't presume to be clairvoyant.It goes beyond the ordinary roughhouse of politics. To accept it and grin and shake the son of a bitch's hand is to ignore what cannot be ignored if you want your grandchildren to grow up in a country like the one that nurtured and inspired you. I would rather go down to defeat with the Democrats I know than go oiling around with opportunists of Coleman's stripe, and you can take that to the bank.
While at the bank - shall I look for the pictures of you and Bill Clinton?
Uh oh.Those smirking neighbors.
I've run into plenty of Coleman supporters since the election and they see me and smirk and turn away and that's par for the course.
The last time Keillor's neighbors smirked at him, he moved to New York in a hissy. I know those people. To my own shame, I know them. I'm ashamed of Minnesota for electing this cheap fraud, and I'm ashamed of myself for sitting on my hands, tending to my hoop-stitching, confident that Wellstone would win and that Coleman would wind up with an undersecretaryship in the Commerce Department. Instead, he will sit in the highest council in the land, and move in powerful circles, and enjoy the perks of his office, which includes all the sycophancy and bootlicking a person could ever hope for. So he can do with one old St. Paulite standing up and saying, "Shame. Repent. The End is Near."
So - Keillor sat on his hand, overconfident,"hoopstitching"...but he detests his neighbors for Mondale's collapse?
Funny Keillor should broach the subject of religion. We'll return to that. "You can take that to the bank"
So you think Norm puts on a different face in public that he does in private?
All you had to do was look at Coleman's face, that weird smile, the pleading eyes, the anger in the forehead. Or see how poorly his L.A. wife played the part of Mrs. Coleman, posing for pictures with him, standing apart, stiff, angry. Or listen to his artful dodging on the stump, his mastery of that old Republican dance, of employing some Everyguy gestures in the drive to make the world safe for the privileged. What a contrivance this guy is.
Good. Hold that thought. We'll becoming back to it very shortly.
How ironic, really, that Garrison Keillor lionizes the late Senator Wellstone for qualities so utterly absent in Keillor himself.
Paul Wellstone identified passionately with people at the bottom, people in trouble, people in the rough. He was an old-fashioned Democrat who felt more at home with the rank and file than with the rich and famous. (Bill Clinton, examine your conscience.) He loved stories and of course people on the edge tend to have better stories than the rich, whose stories are mostly about décor and amenities.
Paul walked the walk. He was a wonder.
I used to be a radio producer. I knew people who'd dealt with Keillor - fellow low-level producers, production assistants, the grunts that do the dirty work that has to be done for show like Keillor's to come off. To a person, they all - every one - describe him as "extremely abusive when angry", "selfish", "never has a good word to say about anybody", "no social skills", "treats his colleagues like dirt", " keeps people hanging on without officially hiring them", "destroys people behind their backs", "acts like his shit doesn't stink", "dumps [employees] without warning". Most concisely, "a complete son of a bitch". Every one of those is from people who've worked with Keillor in some professional capacity, many of whom don't dare say a thing because they want to work in these towns again. Keillor, it seems, also as a reputation for squashing careers.
It was a local joke among radio people in the eighties - Keillor went through "personal assistants" like kleenex. He was as petulant as any caricature of a golden-age movie queen. He demanded his subordinates worship him. He cast them off like old underwear when they displeased him. He was a spoiled, petulant egomaniac.
So to apply Mr. Keillor's logic to Keillor himself - how dare anyone who loved Wellstone for his common-man bonhomie possibly take the hand of Garrison Keillor, solipsistic, arrogant prairie patrician? To gain the whole world and lose your own soul is not a course that Scripture recommends.
Scripture also has some nasty things to say about untrammelled hubris, not to mention treating people like human garbage. You can do it so long as God doesn't notice, but God has a way of returning and straightening these things out. Sinner beware.
Indeed.
So - Keillor, who mercilessly lampooned Republicans who objected to Clinton's philandering, condemns Coleman's personal life;
Keillor, whose treatment of other human beings is - words fail me - execrably horrid, wraps the mantel of Wellstone about himself.
Keillor, whose entire public persona is a three-decade-old artifice, condemns Coleman for being a contrivance.
Keillor, whose entire career and fortune was built on public largesse, condemns and distrusts the public.
Keillor, whose personal life would seem to have had its wrong turns and whose professional life would make Gordon Gekko blanche, calls down the Scriptures on the head of Norm Coleman.
Here's a verse I like, speaking of Scripture: Psalms 10:2 - The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor: let them be taken in the devices that they have imagined.
In other words - if he doesn't start reeling in the abuse and hubris, Keillor's afterlife is an eternal Lutheran Church basement lutefisk supper.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/14/2002 08:03:17 AM
Wednesday, November 13, 2002
Tomorrow - I'll be tackling the big job of fisking the new Garrison Keillor piece in Salon.
But tonight, I have the worst flu I've had in years, and it hurts to look at the monitor.
We'll see you then.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/13/2002 08:38:42 PM
Speaking of Predictions- William Safire predicts that Condoleeza Rice (who by that time will be governor of California) will defeat Hillary! Clinton for the presidency in 2008.
I've been predicting - OK, maybe the better word is "hoping" - for a Rice candidacy of some sort in '08. I hadn't considered the "via California" option.
After last week's Gray-Davis-squeaker against a fairly lame GOP candidate, it seems like she could do it.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/13/2002 01:19:52 PM
The Other Party Found Me - Last night, I attended a party put on by a bunch of participants in the Minnesota Politics mailing list, at Lendway's on University in Saint Paul.
The occasion? On the list, a number of us had placed some (non-financial) bets on the outcomes of last week's races. I'd staked beer and/or appetizers that
Let's just say I did just fine - for the first time in my "gambling" life (my political predictions are usually comically wrong).
Among the wagers was one with Matt Linkert, who bet me straight up on the Senate race - and staked a song in my honor.
Well, true to his word, he delivered! Here's the lyrics:Oh it was a very sad day,
Words to live by, indeed. Except that "...kiss Bush goodbye..." bit, but we'll deal with that in good time...
all the polls went in Mitch Berg's way,
Hey-yay, right on Mitch.
I said I would come and sing a song,
and moan about the way that I was wrong,
well hell, life's a bitch.
I thought we were true, and I thought we were fine.
I even stood on Lake Street and held Mondale's sign.
I really truly thought victory was in hand,
but, Mitch was right.
Now I am here, so is this tongue [that's beef tongue - someone else's bet].
The bell for the next round has already rung
Ding dong, look out Mitch.
Watch out and see these two years fly,
then Mitch Berg can kiss Mr. Bush bye-bye,
So long, President.
I thought we were true, and I thought we were fine.
I even stood on Lake Street and held Mondale's sign.
I really truly thought victory was in hand,
but, (gulp) Mitch was right.
Thanks to all who attended - see you next time!
posted by Mitch Berg 11/13/2002 12:28:40 PM
The Party Finds You- I got this email this morning:
Ridiculous .. how you belittle the Dems on economy, when clearly they handled it so much better under Clinton.
If you consider "aloft in an irrationally-exuberant bubble" to be "much better", yes, I'll completely grant you that.
Especially when that bubble was largely financed by changes in accounting rules (especially as re Stock Options) that took place during the Clinton Administration, and which are now seen to be largely responsible for much of the corporate accounting and CEO Salary scandals - the ones the Dems tried to fob off on Bush (unsuccessfully).
Onward: Liberal governments have proven they can handle economy as well as, in some cases better, than the so called "party of fiscal responsibility".
Indeed? I'd like someone to show me that liberal government and that well-handled economy. Sweden? Japan? France? Germany?
The correspondent goes on to supply an answer.The British increased their income tax last year by public DEMAND ot help pay for their free health service,
...and we'll see how much they'll be demanding when they find that the increase really didn't fix anything in the long term - but I digress...and their economy is still on an unprecedented high, kicking the trend elsewhere. That's a Labor, left-wing, government,
...that happens to be a "third way", Clintonesque, semi-moderate Labour party government - not at all your father's Labour Party.
They are the least socialistic government in Europe. The fact that they're resisting the creeping EU bureau-socialist tide probably has as much to do with their relative health as anything.none of your pansy middle of the road Mondales or US Dems (who are frankly undisguised conservatives).
Hm. The party of abortion on demand, gun control, creeping-single-payer-ism, massive intervention in the housing and transportation markets, the party of the untrammelled welfare state...
...I'd say they're pretty darn well-disguised conservatives.
But thanks for the letter.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/13/2002 12:13:31 PM
Numbers - The PiPress' Laura Billings writes this editorial about how her generation - the so-called "Generation X" - missed its chance to put its imprint on commercial society.
Comme ci, comme ca, - if nothing else, it proves that over-weening self-obsession with one's own generation wasn't limited to Baby Boomers - but the part that got me was:As a result, Chrysler is targeting its products toward the 82 million Americans between the ages of 38 and 57...
Whoooooah, Laura.
The Baby Boom starts at 40, hon. Or, to be demographically correct, it includes people whose parents were of child-bearing age at the end of WWII. As my dad and mom were 9 and 5 in 1945, respectively, I'm sorry (and by "sorry" I mean "overjoyed") to say that, at 39, I'm no @#$@#%^#$^ baby boomer.
I can take a lot of guff, but I have my limits.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/13/2002 08:55:15 AM
Outmaneuvering - It looks like the Homeland Security Bill - originally a Dem creation, which Bush has rechristened under his own imprimatur - may pass as early as this week. David Frum's Diary on National Review Online talks about how completely Bush outmaneuvered the Dems on this issue:
After 9/11, Democrats demanded that the federal government take over airport security. Republicans objected, but the Dems prevailed. In order to win, though, the Democrats had to rebut the GOP’s best argument: the fear that civil service rules would prevent the government from ever firing an inept screener. No problem!-said the Dems at the time. Obviously people in vital front-line positions like this have to be disciplinable.
And Bush is, according to Ivins and Dowd, "the dumb one"...
Then the Dems proposed the creation of a vast new Homeland Security department. Many Republicans doubted the wisdom of regrouping departments rather than reforming them. Surely it matters less whether the Coast Guard reports to the Secretary of the Treasury or the Secretary of Homeland Security than whether it is fit and ready for its new role? But again Republicans gave away – with one proviso. Those promises that the Democrats had made in October about the importance of accountability for front-line security personnel – they would be not be forgotten, right? Well, wrong. The opportunity to enlarge their unionized political base was just too tempting.
So that unnamed official was right. It was the Dems who built and loaded the Homeland Security political trap – and then stepped on it themselves.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/13/2002 08:43:26 AM
MNGOP - The Minnesota GOP made the greatest gains of any Republican party natinwide, according to this Strib articlel
They note something that I'd begun to wonder about in 1998 - the bromide that high turnout benefits the DFL. The huge turnout in '98 certainly didn't pull Skip Humphrey out of third place, and '02 was no different:Strong turnout traditionally is thought to benefit Democrats. But Samantha Luks, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, said that may be because Democrats used to outstrip the GOP in voting drives. In recent elections, she added, Republicans may have put more emphasis on that tactic in their strongholds.
And the independent vote, which went to Ventura in '98, went GOP last Tuesday:This year, he said, 78 percent of independents in the Twin Cities' outer suburbs voted for Republicans.
Four out of five. Amazing.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/13/2002 08:39:12 AM
Tuesday, November 12, 2002
Growing Pains - I just got an email from a local columnist who I, to be fair, insulted last week (ironically, while voicing a very rare agreement with one of his columns). The email was sent with an expectation of privacy, so I won't quote it or name the sender, but it basically said "Oh, yeah? I know you are, but what am I?".
And the kicker was, the columnist had a point. While I disagree with the columnist involved on just about every count - his politics, his transparent bias on many issues (and his mistakenness on a few that are quite important to me) and his style of writing, I was wrong to be gratuitously insulting. (I'll let you figure out the who, what and where on your own).
I've been doing this blog for nine months now. When I started - and, for that matter, up until probably two months ago - it was a low-impact hobby, which collected about eight hits a day, mostly from friends and the occasional morbidly-curious onlooker from the Minnesota Politics mailing list. I could write like I was talking with a friend on the phone or in a bar - in my unvarnished, rather direct style. If I felt like cutting loose and insulting someone, it didn't matter - nobody'd read it!
Since September, though, my daily hit count has been booming. I've gotten a few links from some of the major blogs on the scene. I've gotten some attention from some movers and shakers, and it's showing.
Which means that I have to write this stuff with the expectation that someone outside my immediate circle of acquaintances may read it, and not do anything that I'm not going to be proud of the next day.
Which is what I'll do. There's more than enough material out there. Who needs insults when the record has more than enough stuff to ding people on?
Keillor Redux - Bruce Sanborn of the Claremont Institute has this excellent take on Keillor's tantrum, and the significance of last week's turnaround.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/12/2002 03:23:26 PM
Conservative Women - the National Review's Stephen Moore's list of winners and losers from last week's elections includes this bit:
Winners: GOP Women — You won't hear this from the press, but it was the year of the conservative woman, as GOP adds more skirts to Congress than do the Democrats, including Marilyn Musgrave of Colorado, Katherine Harris in Florida, Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee, and Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina.
And in Minnesota, we have Pat Anderson Awada as State Auditor, perfectly positioned to:
Loser: EMILY's List — Bad hair night for the feminists as virtually all their candidates went up in flames.
a) kick the same no-quarter, confrontational butt she kicked while mayor of Eagan, and
b) position herself for bigger and better things.
Before the election, I predicted she would be our first woman governor. It's still possible, but will she want to wait four (or hopefully eight) years to do it? Especially when there are a raft of possibilities open to her: Mark Dayton's senate seat is up for election in '06, and Dayton has been the invisible man lately - and if the DFL's current fortunes obtain for two more years, it could be ripe for the picking, especially by an mover and shaker like Awada.
Whatever - I'm just going to broaden my prediction; Minnesota's first female senator and governor will be from the GOP. The names are up in the air (duh), and their gender is not their cachet - this is a Republican thing. But that's how it'll go down.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/12/2002 01:41:52 PM
Shades of '79 - Unravelling, Part II - More on the ongoing unravelling of the Iranian theocracy, by Michael Ledeen.
On the one hand looms the terrible regime which, fearing that it may be brought down by the kind of national insurrection that the mullahs led against the shah 23 years ago, is lashing out in an increasingly incoherent wave of thuggery, torture, and public executions and amputations. On the other, those segments of the population able to organize are demonstrating their contempt for the regime, daring the security forces to do their worst...
This was something I hadn't mentioned earlier this morning when I wrote on this - it's distinctly possibly that, as with the USSR, the mere show of resolution and force and disinclination to back down will be what it takes to bring down the Mullahs.
...Both the regime and its opponents are rapidly reaching a point of no return, and the odds certainly favor the people. The mullahs are hopelessly outnumbered, and the forces of freedom in Iran are getting braver all the time. Late last week a commander from the Revolutionary Guards announced he would not order his men to fire on student demonstrators, and was immediately replaced, but this sort of thing can be contagious, as General Jaruselski and Slobodan Milosovic found to their doom. The mullahs are constantly firing and hiring new thugs to protect them against the wrath of the people, and the question is whether or not there is a sufficient supply of killers to forestall the end of this hated regime.
This is yet another test of the courage and coherence of American leaders. President Bush has been outstanding in endorsing the calls for freedom in Iran, as has Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. It would be nice if Secretary of State Powell added his own eloquence to the chorus, especially because many Iranians fear that the State Department is still trying to cut a deal with the mullahs.
As, indeed, it may yet be in Iraq.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/12/2002 01:31:45 PM
Pelosi - Last week, we discussed Glenn Reynolds' notion that the GOP should investigate corruption in Hollywood, especially the very dubious accounting used in artists' contracts, accounting practices crooked enough to make an Enron exec blanche with horror..
Today, Army Archerd (who reminds me of nobody so much as Jackie Harvey) writes about new House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's close, cordial ties to Hollywood. Roz Wyman's association with Pelosi dates back to the Demo Convention in SanFran in 1984. "She (Pelosi) has many friends in the industry," Wyman told me. They include the Kirk Douglases, Warren Beatty (news) and Annette Bening (news) and Sherry Lansing, who co-hosted one of the Hollywood welcoming parties for Pelosi earlier this year.
Read: The RIAA's and MPAA's attempts to coerce Congress to allow the industry to hack your computer to chase down copyrighted material just got themselves a big, powerful friend.
And, of course, Jack Valenti has known Pelosi throughout her career and reminds, "She makes sure that our highest priority is protection of copyrights."
At the risk, indeed the certainty of speaking too soon - it'd seem 2004 is falling into place...
UPDATE: More on this from Jay Caruso.In other words, she's in their back pocket, and that could provide the GOP with an opportunity to tap into a constituency they usually ignore - younger voters, specifically between the ages of 18-30...
True. We just have to convince the likes of Trent Lott that this is a priority.
The GOP should take note of this. They could easily make a case for the 'little guy' in the fight for fair use. Let them make Democrats on national television defend practices that have sent others to jail. Ask them if they want consumers to have to purchase two copies of the same CD so they can listen to it on a stereo and a computer. Ask them if they want a CD crashing their PC.
It's an issue the GOP could easily win.
I'll start with Norm Coleman!
posted by Mitch Berg 11/12/2002 11:42:54 AM
Unravelling? - Students in Teheran are demanding the release of a university professor sentenced to death for apostasy. According to this NY Times story (free registration required):
In a statement, protesters declared that the death sentence against Mr. Aghajari was an insult to university students and professors and demanded an apology from the judiciary. "The death sentence for Mr. Aghajari is punishing him for his opinion, which is against the Constitution and human rights," the statement said. The director of the humanities department at Modaress and several professors resigned in protest over the sentence.
In the meantime, the rule of the mullahs is being challenged in Iran's parliament as well:Parliament continued with its reform agenda, passing a bill on Sunday that was aimed at limiting the judiciary's suppression of activists. It was the second such bill in two weeks; a measure passed last week was aimed at limiting the power of the Guardian Council, the hard-line body that regulates elections in Iran and has barred hundreds of liberal politicians from ballots.
Here's the part that especially grabbed my attention:After their rally in Tehran, students marched through the vast university campus, holding hands and singing "Ey Iran," the national anthem before the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Maybe I've watched too many movies, read too many books. I can read stories of protests, and of a Parliament starting to push the authorities - and that's well and good.
The watching police did not intervene.
But when I hear of students singing pre-revolutionary, Pahlavi-era anthems ("Ey Iran", Farsi for "Hey, Iran"), and police standing around letting it happen - well, I could be wrong, but that seems to me to be the sign of a nation that's lost its stomach for radical theocracy.
What do you think?
posted by Mitch Berg 11/12/2002 10:32:38 AM
Pursuit of Peace - The next time someone says we Americans need to genuflect to Europe on matters of domestic and diplomatic policy, show them this story.
A 35-year-old man from Merseyside is in hospital with head injuries after a smoke or petrol bomb was thrown into a McDonalds restaurant.
This was in Switzerland?
Fifteen people were arrested in the violence on Monday night which involved about 100 people near the railway station.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/12/2002 08:01:53 AM
Bill? It's Us! Earth! - George Bush, as Jason Lewis said, is a master at campaigning from the middle and governing from the right.
But I suggest that, on top of his ability to triangulate on the campaign trail, he's also been a master at coopting the symbols of the GOP that alienate the middle - people who are alienated from some of the symbols of "over the top" conservatism, rather than from simple conservative principles. Lots of people are pro-growth, pro-life (to the extent that they don't regard abortion as a sacrament, whatever their views on abortion), pro-gun - and the GOP under George Bush is adept at playing those cards without the Gary Bauers and Pat Robertsons that have attached themselves to those issues.
But Bill Moyers
I loved this part:And it includes secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine. Above all, it means judges with a political agenda appointed for life. If you liked the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what's coming.
Mangling context - it's what's for dinner. I continue:
And if you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture. These folks don't even mind you referring to the GOP as the party of God. Why else would the new House Majority Leader say that the Almighty is using him to promote 'a Biblical worldview' in American politics? So it is a heady time in Washington — a heady time for piety, profits, and military power, all joined at the hip by ideology and money.
This demigoguery is being paid for by our tax dollars, by the way.
Yes, I'm writing PBS.
UPDATE: Powerline makes the connection that I didn't; among the tropes about the religious right and the control of the GOP by the "wealthy", there's the drumbeat I've been sounding since Paulapalooza: hatred. Moyers, Keillor, Streisand, Sheen and the whole sorry lot are paralyzed by hatred, to the point that reason seems to have left them.
I hate giving in to hyperbole. Am I wrong, here?
posted by Mitch Berg 11/12/2002 07:49:01 AM
Just What I Needed - So here I am, feeling half-past dead, an then this story has to come out.
Speaking of which - I'm a little under the weather today. Maybe a lot under the weather. So it may be a light blogging day.
Of course, every time I say that, I crank out 20 stories...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/12/2002 06:50:51 AM
Twist - Thomas Bray makes the case for Republican Triumphalism.
There's certainly a fine line between overreaching as in 1994, and being to bashful with the mandateThe elections made clear that Mr. Bush now has the trust of the electorate. He shouldn't miss this opportunity to drive home the urgent case for growth-oriented policies. And that's not just because such policies would be good for the whole country rather than just a few favored segments, as some of his advisers seem to prefer. He can also argue that a broad-based tax cut is directly related to his foreign-policy goals.
There you go. Defense, Terrorism and Growth.
Take care of the necessities, and the trimmings'll take care of themselves.
Well, that's one theory. We'll find more, no doubt.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/12/2002 06:46:25 AM
Monday, November 11, 2002
The Thirteen Days - The Strib outdid itself with this superb report, from the points of view of all the principals, of the period between the Wellstone Crash and the election.
Seriously worth a read.
I'll be commenting on it tomorrow. I'm exhausted.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/11/2002 10:13:37 PM
The Dumb One, Part XIX - Compare this article by Andrew Sullivan to Dinesh D'Souza's observation that Ronald Reagan preferred to let his opponents consider him a dolt.
Both seem to realize that not only does it disarm those who are on the fence and cause your enemies in general to underestimate you - but that they were dealing with electoral opponents so awash in hubris they beleived they had to outclass the simple Republicans!
And in both cases, the liberal detractors were wrong. In ways, disastrously so for their own electoral chances:this electoral victory also reveals his mastery of domestic politics. you can see this most dramatically when you compare the Tories with the Republicans. Bush has rallied, united and corralled a once-fractious coalition. One thing Bush would never have done is force his party to split over an issue like gay adoption. His base in the dwindling religious right is still secure. The victory in Georgia - in the Senate and governor's race - was a coup for Ralph Reed, the religious right strategist. At the same time, Bush is gay-inclusive, counting Northeastern liberal Republicans among his closest allies, installing a pro-gay moderate, Marc Racicot, as party chairman, and avoiding any difficult showdowns on the subject. Ditto his subtle outreach on race, both in backing popular policies among African-Americans, like school vouchers, and appointing some of the most high-profile black officials in American history. One reason the Democrats lost last week was that their black base didn't show up. They didn't respond to the alarms that liberal Democrats have sounded about nefarious racist Republicans. And Bush is one reason they don't buy it.
I'll admit it. I didn't support Bush until he was nominated - and then only grudgingly so. Then as now, I had a lot to learn.
Glad to see I'm not alone!
posted by Mitch Berg 11/11/2002 06:59:55 PM
The Imperial Bureaucrat - The European Union is trying to create a sophisticated, nuanced approach to free speech - as Volokh says, "as opposed to America's "absolutist" insistence that people should be able to express even evil and offensive ideas".
Everyone who genuflects to Europe for political and human-rights sophistication should read this.This is a question at the very heart of free speech and democratic self-government: May people criticize their governors, suggest that what the governors condemn as evil is actually good, and therefore implicitly urge that either the governors or the rules they adopt should be changed? In broader and broader areas, the Europeans are answering "no."
How does one get through to these people?
I'll say it again -- I am not an expert on European law, and am thus hesitant to express what rules the Europeans should implement for themselves (though I feel pretty confident saying that this proposal would be a very serious mistake). But I've heard many people, including American law professors, suggest that America adopt a more European approach to free speech principles. It's helpful to see, then, what the more European approach would actually look like. And it's also helpful to see the slippery slope in action -- from banning advocacy of violence, to banning advocacy of discrimination, to banning Holocaust denial, to banning any speech that purports to justify behavior that an international criminal court has condemned as "genocide" or "crime against humanity."
posted by Mitch Berg 11/11/2002 04:14:45 PM
Kicking and Screaming - Many colleges and universities have long barred the US military from recruiting or conducting ROTC courses on campus.
Several years back, the Feds enacted a rule that would bar federal funding from institutions (including private ones) that forbade military recruiting. For years, that policy was applied with kid-gloves.
No more. The Fed is cracking the whip. And the academics, faced with the spectre of losing hundreds of millions in federal dollars, are falling into line.
But not without a fuss, of course. Lee Bockhorn of the Weekly Standard examines the paleo-left academy's peevish acquiescence. As risible as this argument is, Columbia University president Lee Bollinger is employing an additional defense [for acquiescing], one that's both subtler and more radical in its implications. In his letter explaining Columbia's decision, Bollinger echoed Dean Leebron's point, but closed with a more provocative claim:
This mirrors (in a larger arena) the current controversy in St. Paul, where a group of leftist parents opposes the inclusion of Junior ROTC in the St. Paul Public Schools.
"The ready availability of [the enormous funding power of the state] requires self-restraint by officials, for otherwise we will lose our liberties not to official prohibitions but rather to the conditions attached to the purse. Such self-restraint is especially called for when colleges and universities are involved. The principle of academic freedom is one of the hallmarks of our country . . . Respect for the autonomy of these institutions is critical."
Notice the intellectual sleight-of-hand Bollinger is attempting here. The concept of academic freedom--the right of professors and students to teach, research, and publish on subjects of their choosing without fear of reprisal--is being extended to include institutional "autonomy," defined as the right of universities to see themselves as inviolable miniature fiefdoms with no accountability to outsiders. No one doubts the importance of defending academic freedom. But doing so becomes more difficult when the concept is stretched like Silly Putty to justify the whims of college bureaucrats who take unusual pleasure in giving the raspberry to the broader community's sensibilities.
More on that later.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/11/2002 02:48:04 PM
Can Neither Confirm Nor Deny - that this is a genuine NYT front page.
Via Andrew Sullivan...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/11/2002 02:04:35 PM
Gloves are Off - This email, from a reader who describes himself as "not really a conservative, but certainly not a liberal", on the changing perspective of the Strib's coverage since the election:
Have you noticed that since the election that Strib, which always pretended to be objective, has, well, dropped the pretense? Now I know that the editorial page isn't supposed to be objective, but the editorials were always written as if any reasoned, rational, objective person
I agree - although the Strib's especially slanted and cowardly editorial page cartoons have never really been accused of fairness or balance even when the gloves were on...
can see that socialism is a Good Thing. After the two post-election editorials and the op-ed that Lileks was commenting on today, I detect that that perspective is over. Also, if you buy the dead-tree version (I read it at work), the cartoon that accompanies today's article about tax-cuts on the Business page, would seem to indicate the gloves are off.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/11/2002 01:17:06 PM
Snakeeaters - This is a fascinating - and long - article on the life and creation of a special forces soldier - the ones that won the war in Afghanistan, and are probably in action in Iraq even now.
Long - but worth a read.
Linked via Instapundit.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/11/2002 01:10:14 PM
We're Everywhere - I just found this one, from a copy of "The Hill" from last February.
We North Dakotans are everywhere!
(I know - I'm from Minnesota these days, and have been since '85. I probably don't even have an accent any more. But while you can take the guy outta North Dakota, it's harder to take NoDak outta the guy.)
(How does that transfer to the blog world? Well, the great Lileks is another expat in the Twin Cities, too, but his memories of the place are apparent enough).
posted by Mitch Berg 11/11/2002 11:44:49 AM
Minnesota Poll - In recent elections - and some not-so-recent - the inaccuracy of the Minnesota Poll has become a statewide joke.
Scott Johnson of Powerline writes this piece. Here's a money quote:The Star Tribune's final pre-election poll was published on November 3, two days before the election. It showed Mondale leading Coleman 46 percent to 41 percent. In the actual election results, of course, Coleman beat Mondale 50 to 47 percent. The Minnesota Poll understated Coleman's strength as measured in the actual election results by 9 points and missed the margin between them by roughly the same amount.
We know there's a problem. What is it?
Again Daves has attributed the discrepancy to a volatile electorate. However, it is a mysterious kind of "volatility" that somehow manages to disfavor only the Republicans. There appears to be a problem here that has less to do with a volatile electorate than with the Rube Goldberg methodology of the Minnesota Poll. Traditional electoral polling methods call for the identification of "likely voters" and the tabulation of their preferences. These are the methods used, for example, by the Mason-Dixon polling organization that conducts polls for the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
It's been said the art of political polling is dead - but according to some pundits, the major pollsters (Zogby, Mason-Dixon, et al) did quite well this past election.
However, this is not the methodology employed by the Minnesota Poll. The Minnesota Poll takes into account the preferences of all respondents, but it "adjusts" the survey results; it "weights" the preferences of poll respondents according to "formulas verified in past elections."
At the City Center shopping mall in downtown Minneapolis, the fire alarm occasionally goes off accidentally. When it does so, City Center security staff deactivates the alarm and announces that the "alarm has been verified as false." That is the sense in which it appears the Minnesota Poll's formulas have been verified in past elections.
So maybe it's just the Minnesota poll that, while not dead, perhaps deserves a jab to finish it off...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/11/2002 11:18:29 AM
It's Veterans Day - My ex-father-in-law, a Navy vet from WWII and survivor of many wartime scrapes aboard his ship, passed away last January. And with that, yet another link to the Greatest Generation (and the Greatest War) passes too.
That generation has been written about pretty exhaustively lately - and deservedly so. They were, for the most part, people who went and did their jobs - as harrowing and gruesome as they were - and then went back to their civilian lives (for the most part) and, largely, didn't go on about it all that much. In a way, it's a sign of the character of the american male of the day - stoic, not very demonstrative, prone to keeping the bad in with the good. In another way, it's a very bad thing - God only knows how many stories are lost forever. They're stories we need, these days.
In my hometown - Jamestown, ND - the wartime generation was still in their forties and fifties when I was a kid. I was fascinated with military history, and knew that it was all around me - the local National Guard unit, H Company of the 164th Infantry Regiment - had been to hell and back. The 164th - which, along with an artillery regiment was most of the ND National Guard at the time - was the first Army unit to follow the Marines onto Guadalcanal in 1942. They spearheaded MacArthur's "island-hopping" campaign through the Southwest Pacific - New Guinea, the Philippines - and ended up on occupation duty in Japan. About 200 of those men came from Jamestown - and most of them were still alive when I was growing up. It didn't take much reading to know that these were the same guys that threw back the infamous Banzai charge on Bloody Nose Ridge, that liberated Manila...but you'd never know it from talking to them. One of my great unrealized ambitions was to write their history, and those of the 188th Field Artillery Group, which fought in Europe, and the 776th Tank Destroyer Battalion, which fought throughout North Africa, Sicily and Italy. Life got in the way - and, as these men pass, the opportunity grows dimmer and dimmer.
One who is still alive is Bill Devitt. His book (whose first draft I edited ten years ago) is a hilarious yet harrowing look at the life of a very typical lieutenant in the bloodiest battle in American history. If you're looking for some great Vet's Day reading, this is a good start. (I have absolutely no fiscal interest in this book, BTW - I'm plugging it because, well, it's a good book).
At any rate - thank a veteran today. And if you are a veteran - well, good job.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/11/2002 08:45:45 AM
The Hate That Dare Not Speak Its Name - Hate Watch Part II Two weeks ago, I said the Democrats' big problem was the hatred they feel for opposition.
Today, in the Dish, Andrew Sullivan reprints an email: Little tiny incidents of dry leaves kept piling one atop the other: Wellstone, the hate Jeb and George W campaign, the Clintons, Leahy stopping the judges, the trashing of the cars outside the rally in Mass, the appearances every night of Begala and Carville as Dem spokesmen (ugly guys are as bad as ugly women), Belafonte trashing Powell, Barbra blaming Republicans for the Wellstone plane crash, the voter fraud around the country, and hundres of other little things created the fuel for a fire under the Republican base and lots of Independents. GWB came along with his blow torch campaigning and set that fuel off.
That, and the Keillor article, and the recently climb to celebrity status and credibility (among the left) of one "Granny D". Read this article only if you're up-to-date with the antidepressants. Especially noxious:And the reptilism trickles down further, to the weaker minds listening to talk radio or silly enough to spend too much time watching cable television news -- people who buy the lies, who are simply suckered into forking over their own political best interests to the con artists who attempt to pick their pockets at the same moment they are pointing out others who, they say, are the real trouble makers. About 25 percent of our people are susceptible to this kind of con, and they then give us problems by standing against any reasonable reforms. They have been spiritually twisted by the cheap poison of a hundred Rush Limbaughs into the angry, unthinking agents of the superrich...
Or this one:
What we are seeing now from the far right is not conservatism at all. It is fascism: the imposition of a national and worldwide police state to enforce a narrow world view that enriches and empowers the few at the expense of the many, and that gives no respect or honor to other cultures, ways of living, or opinions. Pull any contractor out of his white pickup truck, turn down the talk radio blaring from it, and ask him, "Government good, or government bad?"
Where to start? It's almost too depressing to think that someone could get into her nineties as such an irredeemable idiot.
His glazed eyes will widen. "Government bad!" he will say.
Ok, good. You found one to play with.
At any rate, Democrats - please, please, listen to this woman. Take her rants to heart. Take her, and Babs, and Alex Baldwin, and Garrison Keillor, and Molly Ivins and Paul Krugman and Sacks and Ted Rall and Michael Moore and Oliver Stone and Jessica Lange and Dan Savage as your gospel. Feel the hate. Let it drive you for this next two years.
And all of us "deluded morons" will meet you at the polls.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/11/2002 08:15:04 AM
Endgame?David Ignatius of the Washington Post has an excellent post on the Iraqi leadership's preparations for the endgame.
A faction within Hussein's government is said to be urging him to comply with the U.N. resolution. Give up the weapons, they are supposedly telling the Iraqi leader. The real source of Iraqi power is the country's scientific and technical expertise, they contend, which will still be there in a few years when the Americans have forgotten about Iraq again. The advocates of this compromise approach are said to include officials in ministries that have extensive dealings with the West on issues such as energy, trade and foreign affairs.
Read the whole thing. There are many things in this article that, if confirmed, beg many questions of many anti-war and/or pro-Hussein pundits.
But nobody in Hussein's inner circle is thought to be advocating compliance, and for a simple reason: They know that if he reversed course and gave up the weapons he has secretly been accumulating for so many years, it would amount to a disastrous loss of face. The regime's authority would crumble -- and Hussein, his family and inner circle would be more vulnerable than ever to attack. That's why Saddam Hussein is likely to seek a defiant and probably suicidal last stand, like the famous American battle of the Alamo. He has few other viable choices. He is damned if he doesn't capitulate to the U.N. inspectors and damned if he does.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/11/2002 08:13:39 AM
Animus - A few weeks ago, I wrote about my observation - that while hatred between liberals and conservatives is a two-way street, that hatred is part of the lunatic fringe in the GOP, and more a part of the DFL mainstream.
And my bit wasn't bad.
As usual, Likeks says it better. (scroll down a bit).An old friend who still believes what we believed in college took me to task the last time we met, and wondered where Mr. Middle Ground had gone, why I no longer seemed interested in finding commonality. The simple answer is that there is no common ground with people who think you’re a political leper, a winged monkey in the service of a green-skinned Nancy Reagan in a witch’s hat. Respect works both ways, and if it’s not returned, then something changes. There’s a difference between thinking someone’s strategies are wrong, and thinking them a knave who acts from ignorance at best, and more likely acts from malice. If that’s what you think, I am not interested in changing your mind. I am not interested in working together. I am not interested in suffering your insults or your condescension or any other form your preconceptions take. I am interested in defeating you, and getting down to work with the people who come in your place, and grant me the respect I’ll give them.
Sometimes reading Lileks' writing is like watching Richard Thompson play guitar - you want to toss out everything you know about both and start over from scratch...
posted by Mitch Berg 11/11/2002 07:27:11 AM
Sunday, November 10, 2002
Inspections - Katherine Kersten says this round is unlikely to succeed.
During its seven-year tenure in Iraq, UNSCOM was fairly successful at detecting Saddam's chemical and biological weapons. In part, this was because it operated outside the United Nations' grossly inefficient bureaucracy. UNSCOM arms inspectors were highly qualified experts, on loan from national governments. To evaluate Saddam's Scuds, for example, UNSCOM bypassed scientists with a general knowledge of rocketry, and recruited experts who knew Scuds firsthand.
Read the whole thing.
UNMOVIC will be part of the labyrinthine U.N. bureaucracy, and will have a "college of commissioners" -- made up of career diplomats, not arms experts -- who must approve its decisions. Unlike UNSCOM, UNMOVIC will draw its inspectors only from the ranks of U.N. employees. As a result, many highly qualified arms experts will be ineligible to serve.
UNMOVIC will also differ from UNSCOM in stressing "geographic balance" over inspectors' technical expertise. Some inspectors are likely to have little experience with the weapons systems they are evaluating, since their own countries do not possess them. Worse yet, UNMOVIC will not require its inspectors to complete a security clearance process. Iraqi infiltration -- a problem in the past -- is highly likely.
posted by Mitch Berg 11/10/2002 07:14:36 AM
POW Flap - A few days ago, Art Bell released clandestine photos of Taliban/Al-Quaeda POWs being transported under heavy restraints in the back of a C-130 transport.
The Washington Post comments on the Pentagon's response.
I wasn't originally going to comment on this story - it's from Art Bell, for chrissake - but one of Power Line's writers (John H. Hinderaker, aka Hindrocket) had this to say:On the whole, however, I think it may be good for images like these to be circulated, especially in the Arab world. The rise of Islamofascism has been fueled by a spirit of triumphalism resulting from the U.S. government's feeble response to terrorist attacks after 1992. While most Americans were barely aware of al Qaeda and similar organizations and paid little attention to their attacks, the Islamists thought they were winning what to them was an all-out war. As a supplement to America's current strong military response to terrorism, images of terrorists being defeated and humiliated should help deflate the Islamofascists and cause potential supporters to melt away.
To a point, this is correct. And as we'll talk about in a bit, I don't even know where that "point" is.
But historically, treating POWs well is a good thing. Some of the best PR we ever gave democracy was in our extraordinarily humane (albeit secure) treatment of POWs in World War II. These German, Italian and (few) Japanese prisoners went home and told their wide-eyed countrypeople about that huuuuuge nation full of free people that were doing sooooo well they could feed POWs better than the free civilians in their own countries...
...and so on. Of course, there follows the big caveat to that approach in this case:It is success that breeds enthusiasm, not failure. And in this war, crudeness is no liability. Remember that the terrorists use video footage of the decapitation of Daniel Pearl as a recruiting tool.
We're dealing with a vastly different culture than WWII-era Germans and Italians.
But I wonder if the Japanese don't provide a better example? There are parallels between WWII-era Japanese and Al Quaea. Raised in a culture that was no less absolutist, millenarian, morally lax with regard to violence against ones' foes, and prone to glorification of suicide than that of the Wahabi sect to which Al Quaeda belongs, many were nevertheless struck by the contradictory observation; a nation whose nerve they'd underestimated so completely was capable of such mind-warping firepower, yet such magnanimity to the vanquished. The few that surrendered, once they were safely in captivity, tended to be treated quite well (compared to what they'd been trained to expect, and to how they treated Allied POWs). It made an impression.
I'm not saying I have any answers here - just a few rather pointed questions, the last being "does how we portray ourselves to the worst of our enemies have an impact on how the world sees us".
The first, of course, being "do these pictures harm or help that image". On this question, I'm only asking.
Oh, yeah - and how in the flocking plug does Art Bell land a scoop like this?
posted by Mitch Berg 11/10/2002 02:22:47 AM
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