Month: May 2010

I'm not sure there's a single word of truth in this profile – apart from the notion that her parents never talked to her about sex or abstinence, even as she shared a room in their house with her boyfriend. The phoniness is, apparently, inheritable. C'mon, Levi, McGinniss needs you.

Jack Shafer goes to bat for McGinniss

McGinniss' stunt will outrage those who believe reporters should get close but not too close, who believe that there is something sacred about an individual's place of residence, who would prefer reporters to behave more like Boy Scouts and less like gumshoes.

Taking up residence next to Palin doesn't even approach violating her legal right to privacy. She has no legal right to blind eyes looking at her property from an adjoining property or even from the street. If McGinniss didn't live next door, he'd be completely within his rights to interview Palin's neighbors about her. In fact, he'd be remiss if he didn't grill them about her.

Kate Pickert has a half-hearted defense of Palin:

Isn't this what a journalist writing a critical book about a subject should expect? To be bullied and boycotted by supporters of the subject? This is not new. What is new is the way Palin chose to react to McGinniss's move. Rather than hunker down and use back channels and legal threats to stymie McGinniss's work – as public figures have historically often done in cases like this – she's using Facebook to bring it all out into the open.

"If Sarah Palin took to her Facebook page tomorrow and posted a note that said, "well, whaddya know, I's'a jus' out trawling' for catfish with my ol' hubby Todd, and a neighbor tol' me that he saw Rahm Emanuel crushing an endangered tropical frog to death while saluting a portrait of Mao, and also the sky is green," you can bet that the next day's "Fox & Friends" would treat the greenness of the sky as a self-evident fact, and Glenn Beck would ask Sarah why Rahm threatened Willow like that," – Alex Pareene.

Today on the Dish, BP was compelled to stream footage of the "top kill," bloggers vented over the dire situation in the Gulf, and John Hudson shone a spotlight on the seediness of regulators. Senator Nelson gave his go-ahead on DADT, Gates sounded circumspect, readers gave their thoughts on the surge of support from Obama, Ben Smith relayed some intriguing details, and Steinglass called out homophobia-phobia.

In other news, McChrystal made Afghanistan sound even worse and Obama revived the line-item veto. Stimulus updates here and here. In Palin coverage, Weigel unloaded on her targeting of McGinniss and readers differed over her interpretation of the Frost poem. More Palin crack here and here. Premium coverage of Ralph the Swimming Pig here, here, and here. Home news here.

Andrew and Chait went another round over Zionism, we spotted an unsettling bit of news out of the West Bank, and we posted a follow-up on that disturbing photo of the taunted Palestinian woman. Horton turned up the heat on the administration over detainees, Scott Morgan divined the their response to legalization in California, Douthat dumped on the paleocons, and Balko bowed before vending machines.

Christ conversation continued here. More discussion of DC here and especially here. Creepy ad here, Malkin Award here, Saddam-sodomy blogging here, and Bruni-sodomy blogging here. Idol-blogging here and 24-blogging here. Especially lovely window here and especially fucked-up face here.

— C.B.

Hampton Stevens takes stock of the show that just ended its eighth and final season:

24 is the most influential TV drama of all time. There isn't even a close second. No other series—not The Sopranos, The Wire, Hill Street Blues, or ER, has had a tenth of the cultural impact. There simply has never been another protagonist as loved and hated as Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer—lambasted by a Brigadier General and defended by a Supreme Court judge. There has never been another television show that so profoundly and directly influenced how this nation fights a war, and discussing the significance of 24 without mentioning the political debates that swirled around the show is practically impossible.

And now a Senate candidate is explicitly blurring the line between fiction and reality by pretending he interacted with Jack Bauer during his military career. James Parker's column on 24 and Jane Mayer's profile of creator Joel Surnow from 2007 are still worth reading. Thoreau complicates the normal reading of the show's politics. But that it formed a critical backdrop to America's embrace of torture in the Bush-Cheney years is indisputable.

… Scott Morgan expects that the Obama administration won't stand in the way:

Sure, we'll continue to hear the drug czar whining from time to time about the perils of legalization, but if Californians decide to go through with it, don't expect a federal occupation in the streets of Oaksterdam. Obama's base is decidedly supportive of marijuana reform, thus he has nothing to gain and a considerable hassle to endure should he be foolish enough to stand between Californians and their cannabis.

Of course, while I highly doubt Obama will interfere in any meaningful way with the legalization effort in California, I am curious as all hell what he'll say about it if asked.

The last time he was asked, he treated the entire question as a joke.

A Lebanese commando kills a chicken during a demonstration by the Lebanese Army to students at a school in the southern port city of Sidon on May 26, 2010. The army holds demonstration at schools and colleges across the country hoping to attract recruits and to show off the country's army following years of civil and sectarian strife. By Mahmoud Zayat/AFP/Getty Images.

TNC has more qualms with Conor’s attacks on New York. E.D. Kain thinks Friedersdorf’s criticisms of both NYC and DC are off the mark:

The question to me is not whether centers of power or culture or economy are good or bad, but whether there are appropriate checks and balances on their influence, and whether that influence then results in (cultural/political/economic) growth across the country or whether it simply saps the rest of the country of its resources. Is New York robbing the rest of the country of its art and culture? Probably not. Likely quite the contrary occurs. Wall Street, on the other hand, is a lot more culpable when it comes to our financial situation and the drain bad finance has placed on people on Main Street as it were – and there is certainly a problem with letting one industry, largely centered in one city, become so dominant. And in that regard, DC is also culpable. The two cities are partners in that crime, and they really have become tyrants in a way, or at the very least the relationship between the two – between our financial sector and our political elite on both left and right – has become incestuous and unsustainable.

On that I agree. I’ve lived in DC for twenty years or more and I always find myself defending it –  usually in Manhattan. Its theater and fine art are world-class; it’s easy to get around everywhere on a bike; we have marriage equality and medical marijuana; there’s the Great Ape House at the zoo (better viewing than the Senate); the men are beautiful, if somehow unsexy (the white ones, that is); the general level of education and smarts is extremely high; and vast expanses of it have nothing to do with politics at all. Really. I couldn’t live there if it were the way outsiders see it. Yes, there are a lot of future Elena Kagans, punctiliously networking their twin-set way to total elite acceptance.

But there are also oddballs and eccentrics, musicians and actors, potheads and tech-nerds, old soldiers and drunk spies, a litany of ethnic groups that reads like an index for the failures of American foreign policy, and more folks straight out of Middle America (and not always escaping it) than most places I’ve lived in. I’m a rural boy at heart, except for the boredom. But this is the best way of being urban in a very green and lush and low-storied gully.

The swamp thing is why I found myself a place in Provincetown years ago. I figured if I had only a few more years to live, I sure wasn’t going to endure another unbreathable pressure-cooker atmosphere for three months of the year (but the late afternoon thunderstorms had their moments). I’m not sure if I would have survived DC intact for decades without the annual safety-valve of Ptown. But Ptown has the same combo as DC: in the summer, it’s essentially a tiny slice of deeply urban living on a deserted sandbar. And sixteen years later, I find myself today on a ferry to the little town of award-winning fudge and mannish women. In fact, as I write this, I can just see the awful Pilgrims Monument on the horizon as the ferry approaches the harbor.

At last, as a friend of mine once said, some normal people.

And my husband and my beagles. It’s been so long.

Obama is trying to revive it. Bernstein explains the significance:

[W]hat it's about is transferring influence from the Hill to the White House, not biasing the process against spending.

Damn. My fiscal conservatism is getting itchier with these guys. If the Brits can do this after a deeply divided election, why can't Obama offer his own fricking plan to cut the debt over ten years?