Month: July 2008

By Patrick Appel
A series of abandoned bicycle photographs by photographer John Glassie. More here.

By Patrick Appel
Dahlia Lithwick points out the inanity of a torture program based partially on 24 and the limits of the comparison:

Jack Bauer operates outside the law, and he knows it. Nobody in the fictional world of 24 changes the rules to permit him to torture. For the most part, he does so fully aware that he is breaking the law. Bush administration officials turned that formula on its head. In an almost Nixonian twist, the new interrogation doctrine seems to have become: "If Jack Bauer does it, it can’t be illegal."

Bauer is also willing to accept the consequences of his decisions to break the law. In fact, that is the real source of his heroism—to the extent one finds torture heroic. He makes a moral choice at odds with the prevailing system and accepts the consequences of the system’s judgment by periodically reinventing a whole new identity for himself or enduring punishment at the hands of foreign governments. The "heroism" of the Bush administration’s torture apologists is slightly less inspiring. None of them is willing to stand up and admit, as Bauer does, that yes, they did "whatever it takes." They instead point fingers and cry, "Witch hunt."

by Chris Bodenner
Ron Paul supporters snapped up 6,217 tickets in six hours for his alternative convention in Minneapolis.  Also, that pro-McCain Dem delegate finally got her status revoked.

by Chris Bodenner
ABC reports:

It’s been one week since Savage made controversial remarks about autism, referring to those diagnosed with the condition as "brats, idiots, and morons." … Sponsors of Savage’s radio show, such as AFLAC Insurance and Home Depot, have pulled their advertisements.

And this is laughable:

Savage’s syndicator, Talk Radio Network, issued a statement in his support: "The network is satisfied that he did not mean any disrespect to autistic children or their families, but was, instead, reiterating his longstanding concerns on public health issues."

By Patrick Appel
Fallows explains why we should want the Olympics to go well:

…the only thing that will happen if these Olympics somehow go bad is a concerted focusing of blame, inside China, on the foreigners who want to "hurt the feelings of the Chinese people" and hold China down.  Outsiders who think that a pollution emergency or a spiraling protest would focus domestic blame on the Chinese government are dreaming.

by Chris Bodenner
In a rare moment of me completely agreeing with the Corner, Roger Clegg:

Obama’s criticism is wrongheaded for at least three reasons:  (1) it is obviously preferential policies that are divisive, not their abolition; (2) the “big problem” of helping people from disadvantaged backgrounds can be addressed by helping people of all colors who are disadvantaged, rather than crudely and unfairly using race as a proxy for disadvantage; and (3) Obama himself has recognized as much, … acknowledging the divisiveness of preferential treatment (in his Philadelphia speech), and the fact that his own daughters, for starters, come from privileged backgrounds and thus are “probably” not deserving of preferential treatment.
…
This is a solid, important commitment by [McCain] to the principle of E pluribus unum, and Americans across the political spectrum, but especially conservatives, should applaud him.  As for Barack Obama: This is a critical moment in his campaign.  Is he a candidate of change who will transcend race and bring us all together, rejecting divisive policies he knows in his heart are outdated and irrelevant—or just another Democratic pol who lacks the courage to stand up to powerful but aging interests in his own party, which remain hopelessly infatuated with identity politics and insist on perpetuating a set of policies that have always been unfair and divisive and are now outmoded to boot?

In her predictable distrust of McCain, Malkin:

The McCain camp can’t push back because there is no difference between the 1998 measure and the one that citizens in his state may finally have a chance to vote on in November. They can’t explain why it’s not a flip-flop, because it is a giant, XXL one.  If, that is, McCain meant what he said. Big if.

[Clegg] argues that McCain should be applauded for his remarks yesterday. I must respectfully disagree. McCain’s ridiculous “have not seen the details” clause gives him just the space he needs to renege–and turn his back on conservatives when his open-borders friends and Big Business donors start pressuring him to back off. Like he’s done before. …  Barack Obama, a lifelong preference-monger, has the wrong convictions on this issue. McCain doesn’t have any.

Describing what I fear most about the fallout of Obama’s resistance, Betsy Newmark:

[Obama supporters will try] to imply that opposition to both the Civil Rights Initiative and Obama is anchored deep in racism, but such accusations are just going to get people’s backs up. Every time they try to portray McCain as a racist for supporting the referendum, they’ll be injecting race into the campaign and not in that gauzy post-racial way that Obama likes. And expect talk radio and conservative gruops to make the connection between Jeremiah Wright’s rhetoric and the demands for race-based preferences. People don’t like to be told that they are racist just because they believe in getting rid of preferential race and gender programs.

The smartest take I’ve seen so far is by La Shawn Barber:

The whole point of the civil rights movement was to bar the government from preferring one citizen over another based on factors like race. But our government continues this odious practice, and I can think of nothing more unfair or divisive, no matter which race or sex benefits from the discrimination. A government with the power to discriminate in favor of blacks has the power to discriminate against blacks.

Here is something that grates on my nerves as much as the term “African American”: People use the terms “affirmative action” and “race preferences” interchangeably, but they are not even synonymous. Affirmative action was a policy designed to provide qualified blacks with opportunities to compete with others for jobs. The “cast a wider” imagery described the process. The goal was to include more qualified blacks into the hiring pool. Affirmative action as conceived quickly became what’s known today as race preferences. Under this standard, blacks are not expected to compete against whites, only against one another. Public colleges and universities are notorious for unofficial separate admissions tracks, for example. It is truly tasteless.

By Patrick Appel
Beer retains its lead. Nate Silver thinks it could be the sleeper issue of 2008.

By Patrick Appel
Poulos shudders at the fist bump going viral:

We are killing the handshake, one of the immortal outward expressions of American genius of all times, for no better reason than boredom. The fist bump is a farcical and inappropriate way of sealing deals and a borderline insult as a personal greeting. There is no way to judge a man’s character by his fist bump. Phonies and fakers receive even greater a pass than the used car salesmen of yesteryear, who at least had to develop strong wrist muscles and suppress the DTs. Amid the madness of an Obama presidency, the worst thing to come would be the nationalization of fist-bumping under a giddy, mandatory rubric — not of Hope and Healing but of a white-bread ‘sense of entitlement’ to some fifth-rate parody of being Down.

By Patrick Appel
Eve Fairbanks is puzzled by Al Franken’s new deathly serious campaign ads:

I tend to think gimmick/celebrity candidates too often err on the safe side, leading them to inadvertently reject the very rationales for their candidacies. There’s a reason, after all, their parties chose them over that vanilla state senator. Al Franken, moreover, is running in Minnesota, which elected a pro wrestler governor who ran ads featuring his own action figure, for God’s sake. I don’t mean Franken ought to make himself ridiculous. But where’s the humor? Comedy can be a great campaign technique — it’s incisive and humanizing at the same time. Franken comes off like he’s embarrassed by the whole concept.

Josh Green profiled Franken earlier this year.

By Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

I think that when people talk about the question of 1963 and 2008, they forget an inconvenient truth:  that a given day often marks more than one anniversary.

Perhaps the best example of this is 11/9, which is the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  When I recently suggested on my blog, Undiplomatic, that Obama should give a speech in Germany on that day instead of last week, a reader rightly reminded me that the problem with that is that 11/9 is the anniversary not just the fall of the Berlin Wall, but also Kristallnacht.

The contrast for August 28th is not even remotely as stark, but it’s still telling.  Yes, it will be the 45th anniversary of MLK’s I Have a Dream speech.  But it also will be the 40th anniversary of the day in 1968 when Hubert Humphrey was nominated while anti-war activists and Chicago police battled on the streets outside the convention center.  As Rick Perlstein points out in Nixonland, it was the day the New Deal coalition fractured and began to disintegrate.

Obama, of course, represents the best chance the Democrats have had since then to build a new majority coalition, albeit one very different from the one that fell apart forty years ago. 

One day, three years.  And on all three, to use a phrase from ’68, the whole world was/will be watching.  The best speech Obama could give would acknowledge not just one anniversary, but both, seamlessly integrating them into a narrative of political redemption and national rebirth.