Shot In The Dark - Politics and Current Events in Minnesota and Beyond

Friday, September 26, 2003

Weekend! - OK, for real this time; I'm really taking the weekend off!

See you Monday!
posted by Mitch Berg 9/26/2003 05:00:36 PM

The German Attitude - Fascinating piece on David's Medienkritik yesterday from an American living in Germany, on the growing anti-American attitude he perceives among Germans.

I'm going to try to make a connection here.

In my comments on the academic roots of liberals' sense of entitlement to power and status yesterday, I quoted a Nozick piece at Cato that connected the sense of stimulus and reward that verbally-excellent children get in school with statist leanings later in life. Now - given what we're seeing among Germans, where the education system is even more centralized and striative (kids are "rewarded" for their "wordsmithing" and test-taking skills at about age 10, with the Abitur exams, which segregate them into University and vocational tracks), wouldn't the same phenomenon be compressed and amplified?

The connection seems valid, especially insofar as while the German academic and "wordsmith" classes seem to be stridently and increasingly anti-American, some of the less academic segments of German society still show indications of fraternity with us (as in the case of the crew of the German warship which "lined the rail" as an honorific for a passing US carrier on or about the 9/11 anniversary, an echo of the famous lining of the rail by the German destroyer Lütjens on passing the destroyer Churchill right after 9/11).

And the educational parallels hold up throughout Europe. Any Europeans in the audience care to comment?

Medienkritik has become daily reading for me this last few weeks. He runs all posts simultaneously in English and German. I love the site if only for the German practice I get - but it's a great site, and you should be reading it early and often.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/26/2003 11:22:03 AM

Blazing Saddle Redux - Brian Lambert, the most unbroadcastworthy broadcast critic ever, has an excellent if typically-blinkered (but oh, no, never politically biased) piece on the departure of Jason Lewis.

Read the whole thing. Especially interesting are the insights into the politics behind the departure:
"Many close to the in-house politics of AM 1500 suggest the fundamental issue was the fact that having both Joe Soucheray and Jason Lewis on the roster made for one too many bulls in the company pasture, and that Lewis knew the Hubbards would always be more comfortable with Soucheray."
Sources of my own at KSTP tell of years of conflict between Lewis and Soucheray. For at least half of his stint at the station, Lewis had to fight with Soucheray for the scraps and leftovers in the promotional budget. For most of the mid-nineties, getting the Hubbards to spend any money promoting anyone but Soucheray was like pulling teeth.

Lambert also cut to the big reason why Jason Lewis is so good at doing what he does, and why everyone who loves to argue politics can't do a good talk show (partially including yours truly); it was a show. Lewis was able to separate the parts of his brain that thought about politics and programming; when he was on the air, he was thinking with the programming side. That's why I'd have trouble, perhaps, trying to do a show like Lewis's - to me, the politics is an end unto itself. I was a good comedy producer and sidekick (for Don Vogel) because it was all just a show, not much different than the user interfaces I design are work product, not personal passion (as much as I love doing both). It's a distinction lost on most people who haven't been there.

Not to say that I couldn't, y'understand...

Anyway - very much worth a read. As is much of what Lambert writes, when he's not insisting that liberal bias is a figment of the conservative imagination...
posted by Mitch Berg 9/26/2003 09:47:41 AM

Job Hunting or Housecleaning? - Housecleaning or job hunting?

Both!

Blogging this morning will be a bit light. This afternoon will be much better!
posted by Mitch Berg 9/26/2003 08:10:27 AM

And The Hits Keep Coming... - After two days of Chait talk, today's Day By Day seems oddly appropriate.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/26/2003 08:07:18 AM

Mongolians Return to Baghdad, This Time as Peacekeepers - When I first read this headline on Kinsley's site, I thought it was Scrappleface.

It's not.

Mongolians. Wow. Hey, too bad the UN isn't involved, so we could get seriously diverse nations to send help, huh?
posted by Mitch Berg 9/26/2003 08:02:34 AM

Anyone Wanna Bet - ...that this story leads all three hours of Joe Soucheray's talk show today?
posted by Mitch Berg 9/26/2003 07:48:35 AM

Will the Real Wesley Clark Stand Up? - Evan Thomas has an excelleng piece on the history of Wesley Clark:
To say Clark was unpopular among his fellow officers in the military is an understatement. As he rapidly rose through the ranks, he was widely regarded as a champion brown-noser and know-it-all, a sort of Eddie Haskell in Army green. In conversation with friends, Colin Powell would privately put down General Clark as “Lieutenant Colonel Clark,” i.e., a perpetual eager-beaver wanna-be. Some officers questioned his judgment. Talking to a high-ranking Clinton administration official, Gen. Hugh Shelton, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who engineered Clark’s firing, bluntly referred to Clark as a “nut.”
There's much more of course - favorable and otherwise. Worth a read.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/26/2003 06:00:51 AM

Look! They Killed PJ! - Fascinating piece by John Tabin in TechCentral about "South Park Republicans" in the "Blue States".

Two issues here:

First - there obviously needs to be some rapproachement between red-state conservatives, who come from environments where social and economic conservatism go hand in hand, and blue-state conservatives who may not toe the red-state line on social issues, but speak the gospel when it comes to the economic issues that, I'd argue, are what draw most of us to conservatism in the long run.
"It's been argued here at TCS that there exists a constituency of culturally liberal South Park Republicans. It's clear that in the Blue States, there exist politicians with corresponding attitudes -- and equally clear that they succeed by sticking to the economic principles that characterize the GOP at its best. "
Perhaps. But this brings us to the second point:

South Park? Give me a break. PJ O'Rourke christened this group, the "Pants Down Republicans", twenty years ago.

Some perspective, please.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/26/2003 06:00:00 AM

Thursday, September 25, 2003

Toys For Iraqi Tots - Chief Wiggles has had one of the most consistently compelling blogs to come out of Iraq. His contributions to the reportage on the war can not in any way be overstated.

And it goes on. He's started his Toys For Iraqi Children drive. The linked post gives some handy dos and donts, and gives the relevant details.

And (as noted on Instapundit), Virginia Postrel points out that it might be a good idea to order toys from an online toy dealer (like Toys R Us) and have them shipped directly to the Chief.

Via whatever means - if you have anything to send, here's the address:
Chief Wiggles
CPA-C2, Debriefer
APO AE 09335
That is all.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/25/2003 02:40:14 PM

How They Make Liberals - I took the opposite route of an awful lot of people; I entered college as a McGovern Liberal, and left as a committed Reagan Conservative.

Shortly after I moved to the Twin Cities, I met a couple of MacAlester College graduates at a party. One of them - an Anthropology major, who, along with his Poli-Sci major girlfriend, were working at miserable temp jobs - voiced his big dream:
What we need is for government to give jobs to smart people".
People like them, of course.

I remembered that exchange on Tuesday night, when I was writing my response to Jonathan Chait's piece in the New Republic. Chait gave voice to the reasons for his (and by extension, many liberals') hatred of President Bush, in statements both illuminating...:
"Bush's personal life is just as deep an affront to the values of the liberal meritocracy. How can they teach their children that they must get straight A's if the president slid through with C's--and brags about it!
...and pathetic...:
"He reminds me of a certain type I knew in high school--the kid who was given a fancy sports car for his sixteenth birthday and believed that he had somehow earned it."
The subtext of the message: "If only real life were fair. Like school. Or, let's be accurate here, the good parts of school, where the smart kids got their rewards for their good grades - not the unfair stuff, like gym class or recess or prom".

A comment to my post yesterday referred me to an excellent article by Robert Nozick, from the Cato Report that examines this phenomenon on a broader scale.

It may go a long way toward explaining Chait's article.
What factor produced feelings of superior value on the part of intellectuals? I want to focus on one institution in particular: schools. As book knowledge became increasingly important, schooling--the education together in classes of young people in reading and book knowledge--spread. Schools became the major institution outside of the family to shape the attitudes of young people, and almost all those who later became intellectuals went through schools. There they were successful. They were judged against others and deemed superior. They were praised and rewarded, the teacher's favorites. How could they fail to see themselves as superior? Daily, they experienced differences in facility with ideas, in quick-wittedness. The schools told them, and showed them, they were better...

...The wider market society, however, taught a different lesson. There the greatest rewards did not go to the verbally brightest. There the intellectual skills were not most highly valued. Schooled in the lesson that they were most valuable, the most deserving of reward, the most entitled to reward, how could the intellectuals, by and large, fail to resent the capitalist society which deprived them of the just deserts to which their superiority "entitled" them? Is it surprising that what the schooled intellectuals felt for capitalist society was a deep and sullen animus that, although clothed with various publicly appropriate reasons, continued even when those particular reasons were shown to be inadequate?
So why does the intellectual - Nozick uses the term "wordsmith", a term I hate as a verb but makes great sense in this context - prefer statism?
The (future) wordsmith intellectuals are successful within the formal, official social system of the schools, wherein the relevant rewards are distributed by the central authority of the teacher. The schools contain another informal social system within classrooms, hallways, and schoolyards, wherein rewards are distributed not by central direction but spontaneously at the pleasure and whim of schoolmates. Here the intellectuals do less well.

It is not surprising, therefore, that distribution of goods and rewards via a centrally organized distributional mechanism later strikes intellectuals as more appropriate than the "anarchy and chaos" of the marketplace. For distribution in a centrally planned socialist society stands to distribution in a capitalist society as distribution by the teacher stands to distribution by the schoolyard and hallway.
Nozick draws a sociological conclusion:
In a society where one extra-familial system or institution, the first young people enter, distributes rewards, those who do the very best therein will tend to internalize the norms of this institution and expect the wider society to operate in accordance with these norms; they will feel entitled to distributive shares in accordance with these norms or (at least) to a relative position equal to the one these norms would yield. Moreover, those constituting the upper class within the hierarchy of this first extra-familial institution who then experience (or foresee experiencing) movement to a lower relative position in the wider society will, because of their feeling of frustrated entitlement, tend to oppose the wider social system and feel animus toward its norms.
This brings to mind two major points.

First: This would seem to explain so much of the Chait article, wouldn't it? Chait's piece fairly exudes a sense of frustrated, denied entitlement. "The dumb guy got what should rightfully have gone to one of the smart guys - and as a fellow smart guy, I resent that". Bush doesn't play the academic game - which is the game that spawned so much of our "wordsmith" intellectual class. It's the same thing that dogged Reagan with the "intelligentsia"; Dinesh D'Souza noted in "Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader" that the thing that most infuriated the intelligentisa of the eighties was the Reagan not only didn't have the trappings and credentials of authority that they so valued (the degrees from prestigious institutions, mainly), he didn't care about them, nor did he especially value them in his associates and advisors. This devaluation of their currency was a huge threat to their sense of legitimacy.

Second: It helps to explain a lot of the facile, social observations I make about lefty society, especially here in the Twin Cities. Take a walk through Highland Park or the Wedge or Kenwood; if you encounter a fiftysomething man wearing a ponytail and beard, and dressed like a college kid, you can probably fairly assume that:
He votes DFL or Green,
Works for an academic, government or non-profit entity
Has had more or less the same style and outlook since college.
They learned their theory of value in school, where their strengths were rewarded; as adults, they favor a system that grants rewards the same way school did; indeed, they haven't changed their appearance since college. It's not "arrested adolescence", it's "arrested worldview".

The whole article is worth a read, by the way - be sure you do. Read it and the Chait piece side by side, and see if you don't make the same connections I (and the person whose original comment sparked this post) did.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/25/2003 09:43:21 AM

Hewitt in the Weekly Standard - Many thanks to Lord High Chamberlain Hugh Hewitt for the mention in the Weekly Standard.

Hewitt piles on the Chait piece with one more essential fact:
Of course, THE WEEKLY STANDARD and other magazines were hard on Clinton, but they kept their critiques closely aligned with objective fact. Chait felt no such obligation. The worst example of his approach was in his assertion that "Bush aides" had "impugned the patriotism of any Democrats" who opposed the creation of the Homeland Security Department. This sweeping and damning charge is backed up by one alleged bit of evidence--the now famous ad that ran against then Georgia Senator Max Cleland that did not challenge the senator's patriotism, but did attack his judgment. That's it--one ad produced and run in Georgia--that does not mention patriotism--is all Chait can muster for the assertion that Bush hatred is justified by the president's embrace of a new McCarthyism.
Last year, when the blogosphere piled on Garrison Keillor after his churlish attack on Norm Coleman, it didn't take long for him to file an even more churlish retort. I'll be interested in seeing what Chait does, now that his article has been so widely and thoroughly panned.

If you're a new visitor from the Standard or the Hewitt website - Welcome!

Come for the fisking of Chait - stay for the relentless, beleaguered Minnesota conservatism!
posted by Mitch Berg 9/25/2003 06:20:03 AM

Da Partay - The Fraters' Elder exhumes something I wrote in February:
It's time to start planning my party, for this October. And I may just make it the first blog-centric decade-late housewarming in history - an occasion to meet the Twin Cities' small but pretty darn high-quality band of bloggers, among many others.

Of course, it's all dependent on finding a job (and there've been some positive developments in the past week, although obviously one development short of where I'd like it to be) by then.
Well, I wrote that in February - and things are still one development short of where they need to be.

There've been quite a few new developments in the past couple of weeks - but at the end of the day, I'm still on the unemployment line.

But keep your fingers crossed. Once I do land the gig, the Housewarming/Blogwarming party will proceed.

Naturally, if you are a blog fan and your company needs an Info Architect/Usability Engineer/GUI Business Analyst/Human Factors guy, you could play a key role in this process - and get yourself an instant invite to the party, if you know what I'm saying.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/25/2003 06:01:20 AM

By Any Other Name - Spoons, on why being anti-Israel is being anti-Semitic.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/25/2003 06:00:03 AM

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

Cold Spring Shooting - A tragic shooting at the Rocori High School in Cold Spring, Minnesota - in exurban Minneapolis.

The Strib takes up the story::
"One of two students shot late this morning at Rocori High School later died, authorities said.

The other student was in critical condition Wednesday afternoon, police said.

Authorities were holding a freshman in the shooting of the two male students."
So at a time when schools adopt ever-more restrictive, borderline paranoid restrictions on students' activities, the schools are still unable to keep students safe.

And I'm counting the minutes until some misinformed left-wing pundit tries to tie this to concealed carry - ignoring (or omitting) the fact that 14 year olds are not eligible for permits, and that schools are, ahem, "Gun Free Zones" in any case.

Good thing they rammed that exemption to the MPPA through, isn't it?
posted by Mitch Berg 9/24/2003 03:13:58 PM

Analyze This - "Folsom" James Phillips writes regarding this morning's article on the Chait article:
Think back to the study by a bunch of shrinks out of California a few weeks ago (Stanford or Berzerly?) identifying the psychiatric traits of conservatives. The Chait article seems to me to scream for psycho-analysis. He and his ilk seem seriously imbalanced.
Two questions arise from this:
Yeah! Will someone be psychoanalyzing the hatred of the left anytime soon? Any psych majors out there wanna tackle this?
I'll join the Fraters in asking - why doesn't James Phillips have a blog?
These and many other questions as we work through the day.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/24/2003 02:25:50 PM

Handicapping Arnold - I haven't written much about the recall effort; I don't live in California, and while I have a broad understanding of the issues, there are many better local bloggers, to say nothing of Hugh Hewitt, who are experts on this situation.

Still, Schwartzenegger's editorial in the WSJ bodes well (as King Banaian from the Scholars notes this morning) for those who worry about his goals:
So how can I be optimistic about California given all of these bleak developments in our state? Because our economic problems are not a failure of our people--they result from a resounding breakdown of our political leadership in Sacramento...

...My plan to rescue the economy in California is based on the opposite set of values: I want to slash the cost of doing business in California; I want to unburden businesses from regulations that strangle economic growth; I want to bring taxes down to levels competitive with our neighboring states. Within three years, I want business groups to trumpet the fact that California is once again one of the best places in the country to do business.
Sure, talk is cheap. Much cheaper than Bustamante's talk, so far...

Pundits like Medved are urging Tom McClintock to get out of the race. Here's my hunch; McClintock puts up a good battle, gets through the debates, and then - knowing he's holding the voters Arnold needs - negotiates himself a place at the table in exchange for endorsing Schwartzenegger. Election over.

Just a hunch, of course.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/24/2003 02:00:33 PM

Yow - My traffic this morning is roughly double my normal rate - which is pretty heavy for a day that I haven't had an Instalanche.

So - where are you all coming from? (Leave a comment, if you'd be so kind! Thanks! There's a virtual mint on the ePillow...)
posted by Mitch Berg 9/24/2003 10:04:51 AM

The Blood of the Infidel - In Islam, there are two states of being: the World of Islam, and the World of Jihad (meaning Struggle, not "Holy War" in this case).

Moslems see the World of Islam as a world of peace, faith, and joy.

They see the World of Jihad as a place of confusion, unease, unfulfillment, ruled by the infidel. It's the true Moslem's mission to annex as much of the World of Jihad into the World of Islam as possible.

Those who resist the World of Islam - infidels - are not subject to the niceties reserved for the good Moslem. Few indignities are spared them.

Islam packages this idea more neatly than most faiths - but the orthodox wings of most major religions share the separation between the world of the believer and the world of the infidel. No indignity in this world, no torture in the next, is spared them by those faiths.

Which brings us to Jonathan Chait's rhetorical fatwa against George Bush.

----

In the New Republic, Jonathan Chait starts his article "Mad About You: The Case For Hating Bush" with this:
I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it.
With this tossing off of one of Western Civilization's great moral laws - the Judeo/Christian/Lennon-McCartney injunction to "Love they Neighbor" no matter what - and the granting of leave to wallow in hatred, that most otherwise-reviled of human weaknesses, Chait sums up the great theme of liberalism since 9/11.

Because it's not about terrorists, or prescription drug benefits, or even hanging chads and stained dresses anymore.

George W. Bush has put an enormous clinker in the left's sense of exceptionalism - maybe even the sense that their worldview, their politics, is the one true faith. And boy, are they angry.

True believers are like that when it comes to infidels.

---

I'm not someone who uses religious comparisons lightly. I think they're appropriate here.

Driving around in Minnesota, you see the little green bumper stickers on the backs of rattling old Subarus and sedate Volvo wagons: "What Would Wellstone Do", the late Senator replacing Jesus in the popular trope in a way that is more than casually symbolic. Paul Wellstone was a messiah to the left in Minnesota: his death was explained by innumerable conspiracy theories (saints and prophets and Messiahs must always die for a higher cause, often martyred; there's a reason none of the saints died by choking on a sandwich); the infamous Paulapalooza resembled an old-time revival meeting, complete with Rick Kahn's call for the Republicans present to repent and give themselves over to the spirit of Wellstone.

This was echoed, after the elections, by Democrats' churlish sniping at the Republican winners and the people that had supported them, like Garrison Keillor's vituperative rants against not only Norm Coleman, but everyone that voted for him; political points took a back seat to an attack on the beliefs, even morals, of Coleman's voters.
The guy is a Brooklyn boy who became a left-wing student radical at Hofstra University with hair down to his shoulders, organized antiwar marches, said vile things about Richard Nixon, etc. Then he came west, went to law school, changed his look, went to work in the attorney general's office in Minnesota. Was elected mayor of St. Paul as a moderate Democrat, then swung comfortably over to the Republican side.
A true believer, y'see - who went and rejected the faith!

Now - if one true believer can reject the One True Faith, that's bad enough. How about when a whole nation shows signs of rejecting the faith?

---

Now, one of the great defining features of modern Liberalism is its belief that "if we bring enough of our brilliance to bear on a problem, we can solve any human malady". The New Deal Liberals thought they could abolish the business cycle; the postwar left thought they could conquer human nature with the UN; the Great Society liberals thought they could spend human frailty into submission; today's left believes...

...well, that's a good question. What is their key belief? Never mind; the one that matters today is the one that underlay all the other forms of exceptionalistic liberalism: that those who believe, those who refuse to "park the bus", are noble and worthy. Those who resist, on the other hand, are beneath contempt; none of the indignities and tortures permitted in civil society are spared them.

We've seen signs of this, of course, continuously ever since the rise of modern conservatism; the left's schizophrenic treatment of Ronald Reagan (ping-ponging between portraying him as a doddering old fool and a slavering warmonger) was the mark of a movement that couldn't quite comprehend disbelief, rather like a congregation of Keillor's stereotypical Lutherans nonplussed to notice a bunch of Moonies sitting in the choir.

After Bush's election, of course, it was about denial; it was an aberration of a rogue court that stifled the voices of the nation's better 48.1%, by their logic.

But since 9/11, and especially since the mid-term elections, it's been more serious. A huge part of the population has actively rejected the gospel. To the mainstream left, this is beyond a crisis; it's a major heresy. And major heresies must be stamped out, their ringleaders punished, their beliefs either hidden or made the targets of abject revulsion, the sinners made to repent and come back to the fold - for the very good of their souls.

Fighting the heretics - it's the one great call for the True Believer.

---

Oh, yeah - Jonathan Chait's article. How does one actually attack something so long-winded and rambling?

In alphabetical order? The article is:
Blinkered: "Certainly Clinton had his defenders and admirers, but no similar cult of personality. Liberal Hollywood fantasies--"The West Wing," The American President--all depict imaginary presidents who pointedly lack Clinton's personal flaws or penchant for compromise." Forget for a moment the Barbra Streisands and Chers and Alec Baldwins and the myriad other sycophantic paeans to the Clinton Magic that plagued this nation for so long. The "West Wing" and The American President aren't about Bill Clinton; they're about the Liberal idealization of themselves. And remember - the left forgave Clinton for all the ways he'd fallen short of Josh Bartlett's monklike example even before they knew what the sins were.
Conveniently Ignorant: "Bush crusaded for an enormous supply-side tax cut that was anathema to liberals. But, where Reagan followed his cuts with subsequent measures to reduce revenue loss and restore some progressivity to the tax code, Bush proceeded to execute two additional regressive tax cuts. " Reagan didn't have simultaneous hot wars and recessions, either.
Extraterrestrially Wrong: "Bush's legislative strategy has revolved around...applying relentless pressure to GOP moderates--in one case, to the point of driving Vermont's James Jeffords out of the party." Jeffords jumped ship before any real legislating got under way. It was a Jeffords power grab, not symptom of a Bush power play.
Immature: "He reminds me of a certain type I knew in high school--the kid who was given a fancy sports car for his sixteenth birthday and believed that he had somehow earned it." Jon - it was high school. Get over it.
Ludicously Selective: "It's certainly true that there is a left-wing fringe of Bush haters whose lurid conspiracy-mongering neatly parallels that of the Clinton haters. York cites various left-wing websites that compare Bush to Hitler and accuse him of murder. The trouble with this parallel is, first, that this sort of Bush-hating is entirely confined to the political fringe...Mainstream Democrats have avoided delving into Bush's economic ties with the bin Laden family or suggesting that Bush invaded Iraq primarily to benefit Halliburton." But this is two issues, isn't it? One needn't be a conspiracy theorist - a fringe player - to hate Bush. And indeed, Bush hatred is mainstream; it explains the popularity of Howard Dean, not only its Bush-bashing rhetoric and lily-white constituency, but the sincerest flattery - the scuttling of eight of the other Dwarves to the Bush-Bashing gospel.
Muddled: "During the 2000 election, liberals evinced far less disdain for Bush than conservatives did for Al Gore. As The New York Times reported on the eve of the election, "The gap in intensity between Democrats and Republicans has been apparent all year." This "passion gap" manifested itself in the willingness of many liberals and leftists to vote for Ralph Nader, even in swing states. " But the voting for Nader was a symptom leftist passion - indeed, leftist fundamentalism; the ultraorthadox liberals flocked to their own sect, to get away from the less-fervent believers.
Paranoid: "There seem to be quite a few of us Bush haters. I have friends who have a viscerally hostile reaction to the sound of his voice or describe his existence as a constant oppressive force in their daily psyche. " Someone needs to get some perspective, here.
Self-Servingly Myopic: "Bush's personal life is just as deep an affront to the values of the liberal meritocracy. How can they teach their children that they must get straight A's if the president slid through with C's--and brags about it!--and then, rather than truly earning his living, amasses a fortune through crony capitalism? " George Bush's grades were no worse than the "meritocratic" Algore's, and his SAT verbals were better than Bill Bradley's. Let's forget the bitter irony of the whole "liberal meritocracy", whose dumbing-down of schools and piddling on merit throughout society, especially in education, is such constant fodder for the Blogosphere and Joe Soucheray alike - it's not germane (although anyone who can say "meritocracy" with a straight face about a movement that includes Ted Kennedy deserves a rhetorical wedgie).
Superficial: "I hate the way he walks--shoulders flexed, elbows splayed out from his sides like a teenage boy feigning machismo. I hate the way he talks--blustery self-assurance masked by a pseudo-populist twang." Better that we all walk, talk, look...think the same, I guess.
You get the point.

Other writers tackle the gist of Chait's article: Powerline exposes many of its errors as well as illuminating more of the results of this hatred, Exultate Justi capably deconstructs the motivations of the hatred, and the Commissioner himself turns a hot light on some of Chait's claims. Read them all - and there will no doubt be more.

But Chait's article is just a symptom. The left today is awash in symptoms. They all tie back to the same illness.

---

Chait sums it up with this passage:
The persistence of an absurdly heroic view of Bush is what makes his dullness so maddening. To be a liberal today is to feel as though you've been transported into some alternative universe in which a transparently mediocre man is revered as a moral and strategic giant. You ask yourself why Bush is considered a great, or even a likeable, man. You wonder what it is you have been missing.
It's been said by many that to the real liberal, politics is the true religion. The religion mustn't be sullied by the mundane any more than by the profane.

Note in this, the story's ultimate paragraph, the climax of Chait's thesis: That Liberals hate Bush because he's "mediocre", not "great", that it's "absurd" to consider him a "hero" - as if the President must be "better" than the people whose government he leads. The leader must be a "hero", like the sainted Kennedy or the "martyred" Wellstone (there's a lot of perversely wishful thinking among the conspiracy theorists), or an...Al Gore? The leader must not merely lead the followers - he or she must redeem them.

That a "mediocre" man can have had such success in stymying the left's exceptionalistic, messianic mission? To be beaten at every turn is one thing. To be beaten repeatedly and consistently, and badly, by one you consider your "mediocre", hated inferior? Unconscionable. To the true believer, it's as if the barbarians (short, dumb ones) are breaking through the gates.

No - it's worse than that; like a pious Moslem would say of the World of Jihad encroaching on the World of Islam, it's an attack, not on your temporal here and now, but on the true believer's chance of eternal redemption.

And you know how true believers are about that sort of thing.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/24/2003 06:03:25 AM

Indoctrination Alert, Part III - Richard Broderick wants to use the St. Paul Public Schools not only as a platform for indoctrinating students with the Green worldview - he also sees it as a potential lobbying and political action resource for liberal causes.

This is his current press release, gotten through a local politics mailing list:
Green Seminar: Peace curriculum in the St Paul Public Schools

Is a comprehensive peace curriculum possible in the St Paul public
schools? What would a peace curriculum look like? How would it be
implemented? How much would it cost? What would be the practical benefits?

These and other questions will be the focus of a panel dicussion and
public forum put on by the Rich Broderick for School Board campaign in
Black Bear Crossing Como Park, Tuesday, September 30, from 7 to 9 p.m.

Broderick, the Green Party endorsed candidate for the Saint Paul School
Board, has proposed the creation of a peace curriculum and the
establishment of student-run conflict resolution committees in every St.
Paul school as one of the main planks in his campaign platform.
In other words, Broderick wants to have the SPPS new "peace" curriculum written by "Friends for a Non-Violent World" - a left-wing "peace" group.
He is also advocating a leadership role for the School Board in next year's fight to repeal Minnesota's Conceal-and-Carry law.
Put more directly, Broderick wants to spend School Board time and resources to lobby for this pet liberal cause.
He is joined by panelists
Frank Schweigert, a peace studies teacher and consultant who has worked with the So Saint Paul public schools in creating Restorative Justice Circles
Mary Eoloff, a peace activist, member of Pax Christi, and subject, along with her husband Nick Eoloff, of the recent BBC documentary "Israel's Secret Weapon"
Phil Steger, Executive Director of Friends for a Non-Violent World
Kim Stanley, from the Coalition to Repeal Conceal-and-Carry.
In a perfect world, I'd say this candidacy is the lunatic fringe. But this is St. Paul, a city nearly as infested with liberal moonbats as neighboring Minneapolis.

Ignoring these people would be satisfying - but I wonder if it'd be counterproductive?

Long story short - is there anyone else from St. Paul that'd be interested in attending the meeting, and "showing the flag", as it were?

Because I certainly am.

Write me.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/24/2003 06:02:13 AM

Can't Fool the Fraters - They're on to me.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/24/2003 06:01:02 AM

Attitude Check - Sgt. Stryker's "Sgt Mom" on Greek anti-American attitudes, then and now.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/24/2003 02:00:31 AM

Tuesday, September 23, 2003

Your Chaiting Heart - Hugh Hewitt has called on the Northern Alliance to tackle Jonathan Chait's article, Mad About You: The Case for Bush Hatred," in the New Republic.

Look for it in this space, tomorrow morning.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/23/2003 03:47:18 PM

Comments Are Back - Hopefully, Haloscan (my new comment server) will not wuss out on me, like my last comment server did.

Enjoy!
posted by Mitch Berg 9/23/2003 01:09:40 PM

Riding the Blazing Saddle Into the Sunset - Jason Lewis is leaving KSTP-AM.

The speculation has already begun as to who's going to replace him.

For starters; I think KSTP program director Joe O'Brien's made a great move, sliding the Soucheray show to 3-6PM. Soucheray's blend of bowling-alley politics and sardonic humor is a local institution, and is perfect for the afternoon drive.

It's there that the problems pick up. Lewis had great ratings, and benefitted greatly from starting before the dreaded 6PM hour. 6PM is often a big brick wall in radio; it's when people get out of their cars and flip off the radios, eat dinner and turn on the TV. Lewis, with his extra hour before the dinner drop-off, could grab the dregs of Soucheray's numbers, whip them into a partisan frenzy, and then - and here's where Lewis' talent comes in - hold enough of them through the news and into the evening to make the show pay off. He used his patented talent as a rabble-rouser - and, let's face it, a whole lot of partisan charisma - to hold onto a crowd through the supper shift and into the early hours of prime-time.

So this leaves the 2-3 PM and 6-8PM shifts to fill. I'd imagine 2-3 will be some sort of satellite program, but who knows? The big question is - what'll KSTP do in the evening?

Fraters and Steve Gigl have commented already - Steve was kind enough to float my name along with Lileks, while the Fraters posited Bob Davis and Dave Thompson. Thanks!

I doubt all four of them. I haven't heard Davis in the morning yet, but I'd suspect he'll click better than most of the contenders in that slot; if I were the program director, I'd wait to see how the momentum was going in the morning before I juggled anything.

Lileks? He's great on the air, but too low-key for afternoons, I think. I say this as a huge fan of his late, great "Diner" show, easily the best late-night talk show ever - but I just don't see it in the afternoon. Also, there used to be some genuine antipathy between Soucheray and Lileks (this is going back at least a decade - but I get the impression that Soucheray is if nothing else consistent), and I doubt O'Brien is going to ruffle his franchise player. Finally, I'd bet dimes to dollars that Lileks has other irons in the fire (to say nothing of his steady gig with the Strib; radio careers being as ephemeral as they are, I can't imagine Lileks ditching the steady gig at the moment anyway).

Fraters tossed out the notion of Dave Thompson. Dave's a great guy and an excellent weekend host. But unless he has a different personality hiding in his desk, I don't see him being the type of partisan firebrand that's going to get the masses out waving pitchforks and torches, which (I think) is what I think you need to succeed during the early evening.

Me? Yeah, I could do it, but Joe O'Brien has no evidence to support that. My outing last January (filling in for Bob Davis) was fun, but it was also tentative; it didn't really have much of a direction. Joe O'Brien wanted to see direction. Enh. I didn't think it was bad for a first show in fifteen years, but such is the breaks.

If I did get a shot at the show, though, it would be very much an online version of this blog; relentless, rabble-rousing conservatism, combined with the sort of informed criticism of the status quo (especially locally) that made Lewis famous. I'd be as relentlessly, even stridently partisan as Lewis was - indeed, as I said in my comments on the subject last winter, Lewis was the host I wanted to be when I grew up - but I'd be even more aggressive about taking it to the streets than Lewis was. In fact, I'd be very much like a continuation of Lewis, only with much, much better bumper music.

What will O'Brien do? Good question. Here are some possibilities; I won't bet money on any of them:
Given KSTP's enamourment with existing institutions (which is what gave us John Wodele and Barbara Carlson), I'd imagine there's a strong chance he goes with one of his small stable of existing fill-in hosts from outside the station; Katherine Kerstin, maybe.
Putting Thompson in the evening as a place-holder until they figure out what do do with evenings
Reviving some form of sports programming in the evenings (although I doubt this - while sports used to be a relatively reliable guarantee of a couple of ratings points in the evenings, I think KSTP was smart to hand that over to KFAN and 'CCO ni the past ten years)
Extending the evening shift to 9PM, and running the tape delay of Sean Hannity at 9, tying the whole evening together. This, of couse, would squeeze out Tom Mischke, which would stink (I love the Broadcast), but might make sense from a programming standpoint, especially if you assume Hannity is a strong property (although I detest Hannity)
Putting Hannity in from 6-9, and filling from 9 until Tinfoil Hat talk (or whatever replaced Art Bell - I never listen to it longer than it takes to reach the tuning knob) with Mischke, which I think would work better than the current situation, sticking Mischke between conservatives Lewis and Hannity, and Davis before that.
I'll check around and see what I can come up with.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/23/2003 09:34:57 AM

Roots of Hatred - Probably no big revelations in this piece by Krauthammer, but it's interesting to see the roots of the Democrats' blind hatred of Bush catelogued so succinctly:
"Whence the anger? It begins of course with the 'stolen' election of 2000 and the perception of Bush's illegitimacy. But that is only half the story. An illegitimate President winning a stolen election would be tolerable if he were just a figurehead, a placeholder, the kind of weak, moderate Republican that Democrats (and indeed many Republicans) thought George Bush would be, judging from his undistinguished record and tepid 2000 campaign. Bush's great crime is that he is the illegitimate President who became consequential "
Worth a read.

In the meantime, Sullivan starts to plumb the depths of the antipathy:
faced. But the intensity of the desire to see him defeated - by whatever means and whoever benefits - is a real phenomenon. It's stronger and more widespread than the antipathy to Clinton in, say, 1996. It will propel the coming electoral cycle. All the frustration that so many felt at the cultural realignment in the wake of 9/11 is going to come to a head. It was bad enough for some that this "moron" was elected. But that he presided over a real shift in the country's mood - against apologizing for American power, against appeasement of Islamo-extremism - is still too much to contemplate with equanimity. This is payback time.
This is going to be an incredibly ugly election; it will pit not only candidates, but cultural emotional mind-sets against each other. On the one hand, there is the still-deep-seated anger, fear and rage - mostly but not exclusively in the red states - left over from 9/11. Middle America is still revolved by the idea that we can be attacked, slaughtered in our workplaces, maybe even gassed in our homes. They want payback, and most importantly, security. They don't see it from the Democrats.

On the other hand, we have the incredibly deep hatred of Bush and all he represents among the rest of the electorate.

I'm trying, hard, to remember a time since Reconstruction, other than perhaps the sixties, where overriding social emotions have maneuvered for such a clash. And I don't know that the sixties pitted such large swathes of the population against each other; remember how well the counterculture left did with McGovern in '72? I could be wrong, of course - I was nine years old in 1972 - but that's the impression I get.

What about you? What do you think? Write me if you have any perspectives on this. Cultural clash, or electoral rhubarb?

Let me know.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/23/2003 07:26:42 AM

Happy Birthday, Brother Ray - Ray Charles turns 73 today. PowerLine and the Big Trunk write their usual wonderful tribute.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/23/2003 04:00:35 AM

Unsustainable Growth - CuriousFurious :: asks the questions nobody else will:
"Senator John Kerry can play the environmental Democrat guy all he wants. But I've got news: a hairdo that looks like that involves some secret hair care ritual that is definitely buggering the environment, no matter how he much claims to the contrary ..."
Hidden WMDs, perhaps?
posted by Mitch Berg 9/23/2003 04:00:24 AM

Monday, September 22, 2003

Kiss Of Death? - Moore Endorses Clark, in an "open letter" to the German newpaper Frankfurter Allgemeine.

Well, almost:
This is not an endorsement. For me, it's too early for that. I have liked Howard Dean (in spite of his flawed positions in support of some capital punishment, his grade "A" rating from the NRA, and his opposition to cutting the Pentagon budget). And Dennis Kucinich is so committed to all the right stuff. We need candidates in this race who will say the things that need to be said, to push the pathetically lame Democratic Party into having a backbone -- or get out of the way and let us have a REAL second party on the ballot.

But right now, for the sake and survival of our very country, we need someone who is going to get The Job done, period. And that job, no matter whom I speak to across America -- be they leftie Green or conservative Democrat, and even many disgusted Republicans -- EVERYONE is of one mind as to what that job is:

Bush Must Go.

This is war, General, and it's Bush & Co.'s war on us.
Well, at least we know we're dealing with civil, even-handed opposition, huh?
It's their war on the middle class, the poor, the environment, their war on women and their war against anyone around the world who doesn't accept total American domination. Yes, it's a war -- and we, the people, need a general to beat back those who have abused our Constitution and our basic sense of decency.

The General vs. the Texas Air National Guard deserter! I want to see that debate, and I know who the winner is going to be.
Think Clark will lead with this?

Think the media will report it?

(Via David's Medienkritic - scroll down for English translation)
posted by Mitch Berg 9/22/2003 04:10:14 PM

"But Liberals Love America, Too" - Martin Sheen reallly doesn't like his countrymen much, according to Drudge:
"American actor and activist Martin Sheen had kind words for Canada when he received an award for being a Christian role model, the CANADIAN PRESS reports.

'Every time I cross this border I feel like I've left the land of lunatics,' Sheen said Saturday, adding he was 'proud' of Canada for not entering the Iraq war.

'You are not armed and dangerous. You do not shoot each other. I always feel a bit more human when I come here.'

Sheen, who has been outspoken recently in his opposition the U.S.-led war in Iraq, was in Windsor to receive the Christian Culture Gold Medal from Assumption University. "
No word if Josh Bartlett will be assuming the premiership of Canada during the upcoming season.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/22/2003 03:45:54 PM

French Humanitarianism - Joe Katzman of Winds of Change, on the French record in nation-building and peace-keeping.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/22/2003 02:07:12 PM

If I Had a Million Dollars - Fraters brought up a great point (and a nice plug) the other day. Let's talk about the Star/Tribune and Pioneer Press - and, by extension, nearly every other major newspaper site that I'm aware of.

Newspaper websites are designed to look, essentially, like online versions of newspapers. Like newspapers, they present their material - news, features, sports - in descending order of what the editor perceives as the reader's interest in the subject: The section A, above the fold story from the dead-tree edition is the top-center item on the website; the next story comes in below; the lead sports or special interest or politics or biz item comes in below that, depending on the news, or, more accurately, how the editorial staff decides to present the news.

Across the top of the webpage, there are menu links which are analogous to the major sections of the print edition. It makes sense - if you're used to operating in the world of print - which, naturally, is newspapers' only frame of reference. And in most cases, the newspapers' online editions are perfectly capable transliterations to the online world - almost as if the paper is being scanned and plopped on a web page (although the Strib apparently plans to make things even worse - creating, literally, a scan of the daily paper. You get all of the disadvantages of the print newspaper (linear, paginated access to stories, visual searching for pieces of content) and all the problems you get online (slow downloads, exacerbated by the size what has to be a big scanned or Java version of the paper).

In other words - they want to take a bad idea and make it even worse.

There are reasons why paper newspapers are organized the way they are, and have been for most of recent history. The traditional organization has hundreds of years' worth of "user testing", and it generally works fine - for print newspapers. It suits the technology involved - once ink is pressed onto paper, it's there, permanently. You can't reorganize it - although newspapers have certainly thought about it. About ten years ago, some newspapers (including the Strib) thought about, even experimented with, custom-designed newspapers - which would allow a subscriber to essentially get a custom newspaper delivered every morning. Want more metro and sports, less A-section and Variety? Voila, it's yours. Of course, while the logistics of gathering and storing all of that subscriber preference information has become dirt-cheap, the cost of actually producing, printing, assembling and correctly delivering potentially thousands of permutations of the basic newspaper (and the advertising without which it just makes no sense!) were daunting. (And the Star-Tribune seems to think that the way forward is

So how can an online newspaper be better than a print paper and the current incarnation of newspaper websites? What does technology have to offer the newspaper, besides a different layout challenge?

Here's a partial list:
Immediacy: News doesn't have to be printed and distributed.
Free Form Access: No pages to turn. No sections to keep track of. No paper layout conventions to follow, if you don't want to. Many ways to access a given piece of material - by browsing, drilling into any section you want, or searching.
But doing that with an online newspaper is not only relatively simple, it verges on the trivial today. Not only is the technology everywhere, but it's being user-tested constantly. It's the common blog - or rather, the uncommonly sophisticated weblog.

Here's a simplified mockup of a hypothetical newspaper - what we call a "wireframe" in the user-centered design business. It's not too-detailed a layout, but it should give you the basic idea.

Rather than cramming the content into a pseudo-newspaper, it presents stories the same way a Blog does - in reverse order, newest stories at the top, as they're published. If the user wants to see nothing but Sports, he/she clicks on the "Sports" link at the top, or the "Sports" (or "Vikings" or "Wild") icon next to the story head, or in the head's footer. If the user wants to find all references to Norm Coleman, he/she types "Nahm" in the "Search" box at the top, and gets all references to the Senator (that haven't been archived) in reverse chronological order. In other words - the user picks his/her own layout. The newspaper doesn't have to.

Of course, there's more to it than just a page layout.
Ditch the long, detailed registrations. Collect the bare minimum of demographic info, if anything, and let the system do the rest.
Use information gathered by the user's usage patterns and click-throughs to tailor the advertising content presented to the user, rather than making the user do the work. Associate the user's "profile" with something user-related (an IP address, a cookie, or whatever), private and automatic, rather than put the user through the laborious, frustrating process of entering personal information to "register".
Use these features - lack of intrusiveness combined with heretofore-unheard-of access to information - as a key marketing hook. Why not? You'll have the best online newspaper - or at least the best-presented one - in the business.
Needless to say, if you're the editor of a newspaper website, I'd be more than happy to help out...

posted by Mitch Berg 9/22/2003 05:50:04 AM

Now, Is This "Praise by Faint Damnation", or "Damnation by Faint Praise"? - Yale Diva spills the bad news for Howie Dean:
According to Newsday, "Jimmy Carter says he sees a little of himself in insurgent Democratic White House candidate Howard Dean." Says Carter, "He claims, at least to me, to have had in part of his campaign technique about what worked for me in those ancient days in 1976."
Some jokes don't need punchlines.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/22/2003 05:34:04 AM

Irony Towers - The Scholars point us toward a treasure trove of academic tomfooloery, Erin O'Connor's "Critical Mass" blog. .

One piece links to details of an associate of Michael Bellesiles, who is in the same sort of trouble.

Another - cited by the Scholars yesterday - is a fascinating piece about the genetics of Political Correctness.

Worth a read.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/22/2003 05:31:44 AM

It's Policy - Lileks wraps up the summer with perhaps the classic Bleat; food observations, Gnat adventures, a trip the the Mac store (where else?) and with a subtle, non-screedy political ding at the end.

I noted this item:
" We have one of those “zero tolerance” cases here, and I’m sure you can guess the details. Kid’s friends are playing around with cap gun. The gun migrates to the car in the course of weekend tomfoolery. Kid drives to school. Security guard notices gun in car while trolling the lot and peering through windows. Kid - who is a good student, and attends Bible class every morning for class - gets in trouble. And by “trouble” I mean he is suspended for the entire year.
Three years ago, I got a call at work around noon. My son had been suspended from school for a week, said the "assistant principal", and I needed to pick him up immediately.

"Er, why was he suspended?" I asked.

"Weapons violation", she said. I leaped to my feet, apologized to my boss about the sudden emergency, and drove the 25-odd miles to school.

My son was sitting in the principal's office, and had been for quite some time. I asked the "assistant principal" - a doughy, 40-something woman who exuded political correctness and "educationese" the way some people exude stale sweat - what happened. The words "weapons violation" careened through my stream of consciousness as the woman held out her hand with grim solemnity. I expected her to show me a razor blade, or a bloody shiv.

Three yellow plastic pellets.

"Er..." I started. "Um - what are they?"

"These are pellets from a toy gun".

I had to take her word on that. "Your son admitted they were from a toy gun - and we're thankful for that", she went on.

My son had inadvertently brought three little plastic pellets from a toy gun to school - he'd been playing with it while waiting to leave for the bus stop, and while he left the "gun" at home, three of the little, yellow, bb-sized plastic pellets were in his pocket. Just the pellets, mind you - the toy gun was at home, ready for any bad guys that would break into his room.

"He was playing with these at recess, and a few kids were concerned..."

Suuuure they were.

"They violate our school's zero-tolerance for weapons policy".

"Did you even KNOW they were from a toy gun before you asked?", I asked.

"No, he told some kids on the playground, and then he told me".

I paused a moment. "So he could have told you these pellets were from one of those little roller-flippy games, and gotten off - but because he was honest, he's being suspended?"

The woman looked visibly confused. "It's policy", she said, Borg-like.

I paused for a moment. Then I laughed out loud - which clearly irritated her. "You're kidding?" I nearly yelled. I stood and left the woman's office (and the phumphering, non-plussed woman) and went to see the principal, an equally-PC person, but one with a thin film of common sense to go with the academic fripperies that seem to attend these people these days. I told her the situation; I'm missing an afternoon's work (at least), son is missing FIVE DAYS of school...over three plastic pellets. Not exactly the stuff of Columbine, no?

After haggling worthy of a Turkish bazaar, we cut Son's suspension down to the rest of the day. "We HAVE to have SOME consequences - it's policy".

As I walked out the door of the building that had been cleansed of plastic toy ammunition, I tallied up the day's balance sheet: Half a day of work missed; half a day of school missed; and a son who's learned one of life's most important lessons:
The Authorities Just Aren't Very Smart
I doubt it's the lesson Doughy-woman wanted to impart.

I mean, kids aren't stupid. They know what the problem is - the abused, neglected classmates with the wretched role models for parents; the ones from homes where violence is accepted; the ones who are just plain crazy. The ones the schools can't touch because the special-ed system has glommed onto them, stamped the "Special Ed" label on them, turned them into long-term projects, problems and all.

Ironically - had my son been one of the "emotional problem" special ed kids, the ones that were most likely to inflict some sort of violence, there'd likely have been no suspension.

It's policy, you know.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/22/2003 05:31:08 AM

Paging Al Franken - Hugh Hewitt with a great piece on the Sacramento Bee's capitulation to PC pressure over the SacBee's political reporter Daniel Weintraub.

Weintraub dinged Cruz Bustamante; the California Latino Caucus squawked; the Commissioner picks up the narrative:
"Usually an editor then stands up for the columnist and the paper's independence, citing a long tradition of press vigilance over entrenched political power and the glory of the First Amendment.

Not this time. Keep in mind that Bee big boss Rick Rodriguez is the only Latino to head a major newspaper in the U.S., and that the Latino Caucus is a powerful force in the state. The Bee responded to the criticism by putting its best writer under close watch and by publishing a clipping that can be sent over to the members of the Latino Caucus. The Caucus gets a scalp and the paper sacrifices its integrity. Along the way a promising innovation in journalism gets trimmed.

All because a lefty politician and his pals don't like what a columnist wrote. What was Al Franken saying about right-wing media? And the gents at FAIR? Too bad Weintraub didn't know it is only safe to blast Republicans and their supporters. If he'd played by the standing rules of print journalism, he'd still have the freedom to blog on and make news with every entry. "
It's in his Sunday entry (scroll down if you need to. Note to the Commish - try permalinks!).

The media's not really liberal, is it?

UPDATE: Instapundit has many other links re this story.

UPDATE II: And the Scholars add their own perspective, also well worth a read.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/22/2003 05:30:28 AM

Clark - Sullivan writes about the cynicism behind Clark:
"[a liberal friend] explained that the white-hot rage at Bush had now tippled over into a cold determination to beat him, by whatever means necessary. I have to say I respect this kind of political argument. But it also strikes me that the left really cannot criticize Bush as a cipher for other forces aligned behind him, when they are doing exactly the same with a general they view as a purely Potemkin figure. 'Look, if it means we get Gene Sperling and Robert Rubin running the country again, I don't much care who they put up as a front-man,' one partisan gleefully explained. All of this reminds me of Bill Kristol's flirtation with Colin Powell as a Republican candidate a few years back. Why the Powell boomlet? He was black and could win. Er, that was it. Powell was a cipher to innoculate the Republicans from seeming too white-bread. Similarly, Clark is a perceived winner and a cipher to innoculate the Democrats from seeming ... what, exactly? Unpatriotic? Weak on defense? Out of the cultural mainstream?
Sullivan puts his finger on something that I've been groping for; so many Clark supporters remind me of friends who had stock portfolios full of dotcoms and high tech issues; they bought some Johnson and Johnson to diversify, but they didn't like it.

Clark seems like a liberal's idea of a palatable attempt to act realistic about the world outside our borders; like medicine doused in sugar. It barely goes down.

More as we go along.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/22/2003 05:30:26 AM

Where Do You Want To Feel Homicidal Frustration Today? - Right of Center, on ATMs switching to...

...Windows!
posted by Mitch Berg 9/22/2003 05:30:13 AM

War Roundup - Porphyrogenitus rounds up the latest war news.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/22/2003 05:29:05 AM

One Step Up, Two Steps Back - I did some cleaning up in my blogroll today, whacking a couple of links to blogs that haven't posted in over a month, adding a few that I've started reading lately.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/22/2003 05:27:46 AM

Berg's Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary:

In attacking the reasons for war, no liberal commentator is capable of addressing more than one of the justifications at a time; to do so would introduce a context in which their argument can not survive