Month: April 2006

At the Livingston, Montana coffee shop where I’ve been forced to work this week due to an Internet meltdown at my farm, they play a lot of Bob Dylan on the stereo, especially a lot of sixties Dylan. This means that while I’m poking around the Web, reading stories about Donald Rumseld and how the White House is ‘shaking’ itself up by unloading its top media liason and forcing Karl Rove to give up his ‘policy’ duties and concentrate on ‘politics’ (a distinction whose very existence pretty much sums up what’s wrong in Washington), I get to hear ‘Masters of War’ and ‘Hard Rain’ in the background. The songs haven’t dated. They’ve matured. What seems dated are current events, which seem so much like events from forty years ago that I wasn’t surprised to read this morning that Neil Young is releasing a new album that sounds as though it will be filled with protest songs similar to the ones he used to sing during the last big civil war that we inflamed by trying to stop.

I’m a fan of Neil Young, and yet I’m not so sure I want to hear this album. Nor would I be eager to jump up and buy a new Dylan album with the same concept. I sense self-imitation in the air. I sense too much satisfaction all around. “You loved it when they took on Johnson, but you’ll be ecstatic when they slam Bush!” It’s not that Young’s not perfectly entitled to a political second act, it’s that his musical protests this time will come with a stamp of cultural approval and a solid-gold provenance that will make them too respectable, I fear. Lashing out against power just isn’t the same when an artist can be assured, up front, that he’ll be loved and applauded for doing so just as he was when he did it before, when it was a risk.

“I ain’t going to work on Maggie’s farm no more.” The song was playing as I wrote this. It’s got one of those lyrics that seem applicable to about a million situations then and now and in the future. Rebellion. Frustration. Humiliation. Come-uppance. The fundamental human right to be a squirelly, ungovernable wise-ass (as long as one can handle the whippings it brings.) A song of vignettes, of savage little sketches. A song which doesn’t need a sequel.

–Walter

Since Walter has brought up the newest addition to the Tom & Katie freak show, I gotta ask: Does it strike anyone besides me as eerily coincidental that the TomKat daughter arrived on the same day that the stork also delivered a baby girl to Brooke Shields, Cruise’s nemesis in the Scientologist vs. psychiatry debate? Conspiracy theories welcome.

—Michelle

If unborn children really had rights, the infant daughter of the actress Katie Holmes and the temporarily-humanoid immortal starseed that styles itself ‘Tom Cruise’ would have been delivered by a lawyer. Breaking the absolute silence of the delivery room, the lawyer, on the infant’s behalf, would have sued for spiritual guardianship and demanded that all profits earned from sale of the child’s story and image– including ‘virtual’ profits in the form of publicity for its parents — be deposited in a trust account to fund its lifelong psychotherapy needs. It would also be stipulated that such therapy could not be interfered with or curtailed by ‘Cruise’ or his religious representatives.

Of all the world’s great traditions of exploitation — master over slave, husband over wife, rich man over poor man– parenthood is the most absolute and the least subject to scrutiny or pressure. Not only do the stronger parties involved have the right to construct the weaker one’s reality and then imprison their subject inside of it, they have the right to create the subject at a moment not of its choosing and not necessarily to its advantage. For Holmes and ‘Cruise’ to have marched a helpless new spirit into the global media s***-storm that they, their publicists and their clerical overseers have been whipping up for many months now should not only be an actionable infraction but a grave reminder to all of us not to toy around with unformed soul material.

Suri, lovely child, you are free. You just don’t know it yet. You don’t even have to, ultimately, keep that name they gave you. You can be an ‘Amy’ like your friends. None of what happened is your responsibility. Your mother, she chose to relinquish her personal liberty. Your father, he chose to forsake his humanness. But you, at eighteen, as an American citizen and– in the words of the Desiderata– ‘a child of the universe’ will have the right to hop any bus you want and take it as far as you want and never return.

I’m a stranger, child, but I’m a parent, too, and on behalf of many millions of parents who cherish the awesome power that we wield over those who come to earth with none , I make you this promise:

You shall be released.

–Walter

I’m pleased to report that I’ve begun receiving semi-regular emails from the Jim Webb for Senate campaign. For those not paying attention, Webb is the Vietnam War hero who went on to become Secretary of the Navy (he briefly served under the Gipper before resigning over planned military budget cuts) and then a successful novelist (his “Fields of Fire” is considered quite good), and who is now running as a Democrat to unseat Republican Sen. George Allen in Virginia. (For a taste of Webb’s military years check out Robert Timberg’s celebrated “The Nightingale’s Song.”)

At this point, Allen enjoys a fat lead–20-plus points according to the last poll I saw. But the race is still young and Webb could prove a formidable opponent. For starters, the guy is a military legend with a record on which it will be tough for the GOP to work its increasingly popular trash-the-veteran strategy.

Just as importantly, Webb has a strong, clearly articulated foreign policy vision that just so happens to clash with the current administration‚Äôs. Namely, Webb fits into Walter Russell Mead‚Äôs Jacksonian school, while the Bushies are currently of a Wilsonian bent. (In summarizing the four schools of thought laid out in Mead‚Äôs ‚ÄúSpecial Providence,‚Äù allow me to swipe a graph from tnr colleague Peter Beinart, for whom this issue has become an obsession: ‚ÄúWilsonians believe America must make the world safe for liberty. Hamiltonians believe America must make the world safe for commerce. Jeffersonians fear that both of these crusades threaten liberty at home. And Jacksonians believe in destroying America’s enemies and defending America ‘s sovereignty, no matter what the rest of the world thinks.‚Äù)

Anyway, as a proud Jacksonian, Webb won’t be vulnerable to the usual criticism that Democrats don‚Äôt have a foreign policy position other than ‚ÄúBush bad.‚Äù You may not agree with Webb‚Äôs vision, but the man clearly has one and is unafraid to talk about it. (Check out his site for recent articles and speeches.) So while it may be that the colorful, outspoken Webb is ultimately unelectable–this is the guy, after all, who penned a 1979 piece for The Washingtonian entitled, ‚ÄúWomen Can‚Äôt Fight"–at the very least, Rove, Mehlman, and the rest of the GOP smear hounds will have to find a fresh line of assault.

—Michelle

The more I think about it, the more astonished I am that even this President, not exactly known for his verbal grace under pressure, would come out with a bone-headed remark like "I’m the decider." If Karen were around, you can bet this wouldn’t have happened.

—Michelle

“I’m the decider, and I decide what’s best. And what’s best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.” Thus spake Presidnt Bush in yesterday’s Rose Garden defense of his embattled Defense Secretary. And there, in a nutshell, is the Bush governing philosophy. I know best. Period. Leave everything to me. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it. Don’t question my decisions. Don’t bother looking at the facts—at least, not at any facts that might contradict my version of reality. And don’t you dare criticize my decisions unless you want to wind up branded an unpatriotic, fuzzy-headed, soft-on-terrorist type.

I can see how, once upon a time, this sort of macho, decisive, take-no-prisoners, govern-with-your-gut approach to the presidency had a certain appeal. Who wants a wishy-washy leader when the Islamist baddies are plotting the nation‚Äôs demise? And even if we suspected Bush wasn‚Äôt exactly the most curious or engaged or well-informed commander-in-chief, we were assured that he had a gift for picking smart, curious, engaged, talented advisers‚Äîpeople with ‚Äúgood hearts‚Äù–who would keep our CEO-president just informed enough to make good decisions.

But three-plus years of Iraq have pretty much shown the absurdity of that claim. Or at least it has introduced enough doubt into the equation that we really ought to demand more of an explanation for the seemingly ill-advised actions (or inaction) of our leader other than: “I’m the Daddy, that’s why.”

No one doubts that Bush knows how to make decisions. The increasingly pertinent question is whether he knows how to make good ones.

—Michelle

Oops. Sorry guys. Somehow managed to screw up the earlier link to Reihan. Try this. (Scroll down until you hit the "full-spectrum" item) Deepest apologies. —Michelle

While I’m the first to agree with new White House C.O.S. Josh Bolten’s bold assertion yesterday that it’s time to “refresh and re-energize” the president’s top staff, I can’t help but suspect the Bushies will try to fudge their noisy reinvention pledge by making a handful of basically meaningless staff changes, like replacing Scooter Libby with David Addington. Almost certainly, the end is nigh for poor Treasury Secretary John Snow, perhaps the most pointless and serially humiliated senior member of this administration. But unless Rummy, Dick, or Karl is sent packing, I fear none of us should take all this talk about change too seriously. As much as I’d like to see Rove returned to the private sector, I vote for Rumsfeld.

—Michelle

I’m sure the point has been made before, but in her “My Time” column, (also in the Post’s “Health” section), Abigail Trafford makes a couple of interesting observations about immigration and America’s aging population.

—Michelle

Of all the weekly newspaper sections I slog through for work, my favorite may be the Tuesday “Health” pages in The Washington Post. One interesting tidbit today is a brief write-up of yet another faith-based medical study. This one purports to find a connection between weekly worship-service attendance and increased life expectancy. The author of the study, a University of Pittsburgh Medical Center physician who also happens to be an Episcopal priest, suggests that weekly worship may increase one’s life by 2 to 3 years. (As a point of comparison, cholesterol lowering drugs add 2.5. to 3.5. years).

This report comes on the heels of the recent high-profile prayer study, which found that having strangers pray for you doesn’t help, and may actually harm, your recovery from serious surgery. While on one level the studies’ findings seem contradictory, to me they appear to point in the same direction, at least secularly speaking. If you are devout enough in your faith to regularly haul your carcass to worship service every week, you most likely have a solid network of fellow worshippers to provide emotional support during life’s stressful times. (Isolated people tend to be less healthy than those with friends and family.) Moreover, you probably also enjoy some of the more nebulous psychological benefits of faith, such as the belief that even bad things happen for a purpose, that a higher power is looking after you, that life isn’t some cruel, random series of events totally beyond your control. Such emotional comfort helps to reduce stress levels, which in turn produce happier, healthier worshippers. By contrast, if in the wake of serious surgery you are told that a bunch of strangers have been assigned to pray for your speedy recovery, this seems like it could very well raise your stress level by increasing your expectations or making you feel somehow pressured to perform.

Non-spiritual message of both studies: God or no God, stress is a killer.

—Michelle