"Michael Hiltzik’s Golden State blog is doing him and his employer, the LA Times, proud. Smart, tough work from the newspaper’s best columnist. He’s a absolute natural in this medium," – Dan Gillmor, on his blog, last November. Gillmor recently gave the Hearst New Media Lecture at Columbia University.
(For a glossary of this blog’s awards, click here.)
An unusually profound pleasure.
Speaking of welfare reform, I just got back from a long lunch with Hitch. It was one of those rare occasions when I was able to introduce him to a new word: "chavs." It was quite the rage in London when I was 
there. Chavs are a sort of English combination of ghetto bravado and white trash delinquency: the worst of American pop-culture, bundled into one white, English underclass package. They are also known as Hoodies, Neds, Townies, Kevs, Charvers, Steeks, Spides, Bazzas, Yarcos, Ratboys, Kappa Slappers, Skangers, Scutters, Janners, Stigs, Scallies, Hood Rats. They have a dress code. They have a website. If I had a son and I were a chav, I’d call him Jake Gary; if I had a girl, she’d be called Jade Chardonnay. Are you chav or not? You can find out. Where does the term come from? Like all great words, no one really knows. This is Wiki’s best shot:
The Collins English Dictionary suggests that it derives from a distortion of the Anglo-Romany word chavi meaning "child". In contrast, the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary suggests that the word derives either from a nickname for "Chatham girls" or from the Romany word chavo (boy), which is also the source of the Spanish word chaval. It also reports that the word can be used as an adjective e.g. "The bus was full of chav kids." …
Many folk etymologies have sprung up to explain the origins of the word. These include humorous backronyms such as "Council Housed And Violent". Another commonly cited false etymology derives the word from Cheltenham Ladies’ College. Here, it is claimed, the term was coined from the words "Cheltenham Average" (Ch-av), used by the young women of the school to describe less desirable young men of the town.
Chavtastic.
We forget now how adamantly the old left opposed it; Kay Hymowitz helps us remember. Money quote:
Marion Wright Edelman of the Children‚Äôs Defense Fund called the bill ‘national child abandonment’ and likened it to the burning of Vietnamese villages. Immediately after President Clinton signed the bill, some of his top appointees quit in protest, including Edelman‚Äôs husband, Peter, who let loose with an article in The Atlantic Monthly titled, ‘The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done.’ No less appalled, the Chicago Tribune seconded Congresswoman Carol Moseley Braun’s branding the bill an ‘abomination.’
It was the Clinton-Gingrich combo at his best – the high watermark of conservative reform in the 1990s. But more work, of course, still needs to be done.
Both Gallup and CBS now have Bush at all-time lows in approval numbers; and the ratings for the GOP appear to be way below the water-line for November. Things can change. But I have a feeling that Bush has now become Carterized. It is very hard to see how he can regain his footing at this late stage. After six years or so, the public knows who you are; and they have come to a judgment. With the economy now booming, who can imagine where his polling might be headed if his reckless fiscal policies bring disaster sooner rather than later? Ironically, his main hope might be Iraq. It’s possible that things will improve – and any halfway decent outcome will seem like good news given the recent past. The NYT had a helpful piece today on a place where things are going right. Maliki may exceed expectations. I sure hope he does. On Maliki, Bush’s future hinges. And it’s not much within the White House’s control.
The more successful integration of deaf people into mainstream society is a hugely beneficial development for all of us. And the debates within the deaf world – about identity, "normality", and "disability" – are fascinating to me. The first deaf president of Gallaudet, an immense figure, is now retiring. And students are up in arms about his successor. I take it as a good sign that the issue now is simply whether she is up to the job from the students’ point of view. Isn’t that in itself a positive development?
The great theme of the Bush administration’s war on terror is that the executive needs to break or ignore or side-step the law at times in order to defeat our deadly enemy. Hence the relaxation of 
strict legal bars on torture; hence the NSA warrant-less wire-tapping, which circumvented the law; hence the several hundred laws that the Bush administration has insisted it does not have to enforce or execute. A reader recently watched the great movie, "A Man For All Seasons," by Robert Bolt about St Thomas More’s resistance to lawless executive power and the fusion of church and state in Henrician England. ("This is not Spain," Cromwell keeps reassuring us, as torture is practised, and property confiscated. Sound familiar?) Back from England, we rented the movie last week again. The great family group portrait of More stands in the National Portrait Gallery in London, and my confirmation saint was on my mind. In the screenplay, Bolt gives us the classic debate about whether it is permissible, as Rumsfeld and Cheney believe, to break the law to pursue and defeat evil. The conversation is between the hot-headed future son-in-law Roper and one of the great lawyers of his time, More. More sticks up for legal procedures in every case. Roper objects.
Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast – man’s laws, not God’s – and if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it – d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.
It’s rarely been put better. Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo should be forced to sit through it.
(Portrait of Thomas More, sketch by Hans Holbein.)
An ideological dispute has broken out in the blogosphere about the various merits of Coke Zero and Diet Coke. As Eric Cartman would put it, you can follow this debate hyah, hyah and hyah.
This is a subjective call, hence my certainty that Jonah Goldberg is correct and Matt Yglesias should go back to Tab. Diet Coke is an excrescence, a vile concoction that leaves a sickly, Rumsfeldian taste in the mouth (his company created Nutrasweet), and deyhdrates the soul. Coke Zero is a diet drink that simply doesn’t taste like one. The fiance orders it in large boxes, which fill up the bottom third of the fridge. If I have to, I drink it as well. But I’m a Coke Classic man myself. So who’s the real conservative now, Jonah? Huh? Yeah?
"There is no substitute for Presidential power, but Gore is now playing a unique role in public life. He is a symbol of what might have been, who insists that we focus on what likely will be an uninhabitable planet if we fail to pay attention to the folly we are committing, and take the steps necessary to end it," – David Remnick, the New Yorker.
I don’t mean to belittle climate change. It’s real; much of it is almost certainly man-made; I’m open to arguments about how best to slow or deal with it. (I don’t believe that in a world where India and China are fast developing, we have any serious chance of stopping or reversing it.) But I have yet to hear of any predictions that it is "likely" that global warming will make the earth "uninhabitable" by humans. Is there any basis in fact for this assertion? (A different take on Al Gore can be found here.)
"If illegal aliens had stayed home the twin towers would still be standing," – Lucianne.com, the website created and run by Lucianne Goldberg. (Hat tip: Pete.)
The Dish 
