Month: September 2008

Trevor Paglen’s new series documents military satellites. From the artist’s statement:

Photography is an act of concentrated seeing, and by extension an act of knowing. Its origins are intrinsically linked to the idea of the “document,” although our understanding of both the uses and abuses of photography has expanded over the years as its possibilities for recording image and event have been debated and manipulated. Trevor Paglen is interested in the idea of photography as a kind of truth-telling, but his pictures often stop short of documentation, with their blurry subjects and barely discernible detail. Paglen’s nearly constant subject is the “black world” of the United States government, and through research and visualization he attempts to outline the edges and folds of this hidden world of military and intelligence activities.

Georgian congressman Lynn Westmoreland:

"Just from what little I’ve seen of [Michelle] and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they’re a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they’re uppity," Westmoreland said. Asked to clarify that he used the word “uppity,” Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.”

Somehow, I don’t think Westmoreland needs to see much of the Obamas to believe they’re "uppity". But it’s interesting that he calls them both "elitist" and "uppity". Is "elitist" now code for "uppity", I wonder? Over to you, Ta-Nehisi.

[Update: D’oh! In the first draft, I feminized Westmoreland. I wasn’t trying to be that gay.]

A reader writes:

As an independent, regular reader of your blog I have been so disappointed in the double standard I have seen you apply over and over again to the McCain and Obama campaigns. It’s pointless to be more specific when my point is your lauding of this article. What Roger Simon fails to address in his sarcastic and snide (the very criticisms of Palin’s speech I have been hearing ad nauseam this morning) diatribe is not that anyone should apologize for the reporting and/or vetting of this candidate; it is the breathtaking hypocrisy of the majority of the media that deserves a massive apology.

This week I have seen feminists question whether Sarah should be working, what with her five children and special needs son; I have seen them savage her decision about HER BODY to get on a plane when she was perhaps in early labor. I have seen the majority of the media mock and cast doubt on her experience, her character, her intelligence etc. to the degree that they have NEVER done to Obama, in truth lesser qualified on paper than Gov. Palin. Notice I said on paper because I don’t necessarily believe that "experience" as defined in this presidential campaign is the most important factor in choosing the president whether it’s Obama, McCain or Palin.

I could go on and on or cite lots of examples but don’t have time; got to pick the kids up from school. That the media doesn’t understand how this plays to the general public just shows how insulated and out of touch they are. I have followed campaign after campaign because I am a junkie, and I have never seen this type of venomous treatment of a candidate before. I am not even sure that I won’t vote for Obama, but the treatment of Gov Palin makes me sick to my stomach. The media and the bloggers, yourself included, had better prepare for a backlash. If someone like me, 37 years old, mother of three, fiscal conservative but social liberal feels this way, I can guarantee I’m not the only one. I have been so disappointed in this blog; usually so fair and even handed. I am saddened that whatever disillusion you have with the current administration seems to have led you to join the ranks of the rest of the rabid, hypocritical, and out of control media.

What the reader doesn’t get, I think, is that all the revelations about Obama took place over a very long period of time – months and months. Because Palin is a total unknown and because her past is so colorful, to say the least, and because there are only two months before the election, the media has jumped all over it. That’s our job. They have compressed in five or six days what was raised about Obama over twelve months. Of course it seems tougher right now. But I don’t believe it is. If Obama’s family were as colorful as Palin’s, you can bet the press would have been all over it. If Obama’s sister had nine kids from two fathers neither of whom she is currently living with, do you really think the press would not have written about it?

This is an illusion created by a very compressed schedule and a totally unvetted candidate who is utterly unready to be president of the United States. And it’s being sustained by the Republican machine because at this point, targeting the media is all they’ve got.

That’s how many people Nielsen reports watched Palin’s speech last night. Almost as much as Obama’s speech. She really is the candidate now, in some ways, isn’t she?

Glenn Reynolds explains.

Drum weighs the politics of the Pakistani kerfuffle:

I wonder what the political fallout is going to be? In one of those weird inversions that you occasionally get in presidential campaigns, Barack Obama is semi-committed to supporting this kind of action and John McCain is semi-committed to opposing it. Both would probably prefer to stay quiet about this particular raid, but what if the Times is right and this is just the "opening salvo in a much broader campaign"? Then they have to say something. But what? McCain strongly criticized Obama earlier in the year when Obama suggested he might follow actionable intelligence over the border ("Pakistan is a sovereign nation," McCain said), but that’s not a winning formula in these latter days of base-appeasing jingoism. So I imagine he’ll change his mind on this. There’s an election to win, after all.

"Jesus was a community organizer. Pontius Pilate was a governor," – Mudflats.

Of course, I’d vote for Pilate. But Mudflats homes in on another unhinged untruth in Palin’s speech:

The stunner of the speech for me? “I said thanks, but no thanks to that Bridge to Nowhere”. Frankly, I was surprised she said it the first time, shocked she said it the second time, but again? Almost incomprehensible. This must be her test to see if that old George Bush theory that if you say something enough, people will just believe it’s true. No other explanation seems possible.

I’m not sure whether I’m more stunned by Palin or McCain. I’m not stunned by the ecstatic response of Christianists, Karl Rove or Bill Kristol. I wrote this book, after all. I am stunned that McCain has proved himself this reckless and incompetent. But that’s what we have campaigns for: we see their executive skills up close.

McCain makes George W. Bush look prudent.

After viewing it live and twice on TV Ross weighs in on Palin’s speech:

Instead of opening new vistas for conservative politics, it reinforced the perception – which is unfair, but not all that unfair – that the only thing John McCain’s GOP has to offer on the domestic front is a big yes to drilling, an end to earmarks, and a big no to Obama’s tax increases. It’s possible that this is enough of a message to win this Presidential election; it’s definitely not enough of a message to rebuild the GOP over the long haul. Sarah Palin gave the kind of speech she had to give, and good for her. But I hope she has some other kinds of speeches in her.

I feel for Ross as I feel for serious conservative foreign policy thinkers right now. This pick is so unserious in so many ways it is as much an insult to intelligent conservatives as it is to the rest of the country.

And I have one nagging question: we are told she is a reformer. Can anyone tell me anything she has actually reformed?

Yes, she won against an aging, decrepit corrupt Republican party establishment on populist boilerplate. But this was simply in her own self-interest as a rising Pentecostalist politician. Yes, she championed new ethical standards for pols – but her record in that matter is no different than Obama’s, only he did it on a national stage. She then gave everyone in the state a big check from oil revenues. I could do that. So could you.

Is that it? The more I reflect on this decision by McCain, the more insane and reckless and shallow it gets. I’ve always respected McCain, even when I disagreed with him. I find it very hard to square that with this decision.

Obama donors have been jolted awake. I hear McCain and Palin will be in the Christianist world capital, Colorado Springs this weekend. Palin is McCain’s final bending of the knee to Dobson.

In the Bush-Rove era, only a comedy show can expose the truth. Here’s Karl Rove exposed in real time as one of the most dishonest, reality-free hacks in American political history: