Month: January 2011

by Patrick Appel

Douthat expands on his critique:

[Palin's negative are] why there’s more Palin coverage in publications like TPM, MSNBC and Vanity Fair (not to mention, of course, a certain Palin-obsessed Atlantic blogger) than in many conservative outlets: Not because they’re the only places willing to tell the truth about her, but because they’ve built an audience that believes the worst about her, and enjoys wallowing in the fear and loathing she inspires.

To be clear: My point isn’t that Palin isn’t a significant political figure, or that she doesn’t inspire ardent devotion from many conservative Americans, or that she doesn’t deserve a significant level of press attention: She is, and does, and does. But the most egregious, obsessive and pointless Palin coverage (of the sort we saw in the wake of the Tucson shootings) has less to do with responding to the scope of her appeal, and more to do with pandering to the millions of Americans for whom she’s become a hate figure, and who are always eager to be confirmed in that hatred.

The Dish doesn't hate Palin.  But she is the first reality TV presidential candidate – which makes her hard to ignore. Jim Newell compares Palin to Coulter:

?You can't make Sarah Palin into an Ann Coulter, who doesn't get as much attention as she used to. Because Palin, unlike Coulter, was nominated for vice president of the United States in the last election! This is why so many people write and talk about her with amazement over every little thing. The coverage goes over the top sometimes, sure. But it's stunning that a person who got that close to the number-two position in a presidential administration speaks and acts the way that she does—and now she's one of the top Republican candidates for president in 2012!

In contrast to Coulter, Palin's gaffes, mannerisms, and personal life get more attention than her policies. The press Palin attracts mirrors celebrity journalism – which is why much Palin coverage often borders on the pointless and irreverent. Journalists report on Palin's every verbal disjuncture the way they report on Paris Hilton's latest bender because Palin's and Snooki's magnetism is of the same origin. Palin is a fundamentally unserious candidate – so the media treats her as such. But she is different than any other reality show celebrity because her actions have serious consequences – as Amy Davidson makes clear:

Her position is serious, even if she is not. She has a good chance of shaping (or deforming) if not winning the fight for the Republican nomination. That’s the nomination for President, of the United States; she may, as Ross Douthat argues in a column that also wishes the whole Palin thing would stop, no longer be the front-runner, but she’s certainly in the mix. Is the month of February also supposed to be a month of not talking about the Republican Party, or only talking about it in a forced or artificial way?

by Zoe Pollock

Rick Ungar unearthed this healthcare historical tidbit:

In July of 1798, Congress passed – and President John Adams signed –"An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen." The law authorized the creation of a government operated marine hospital service and mandated that privately employed sailors be required to purchase health care insurance.

But Paul Waldman refuses to rub it in the Tea Party's face:

It's tempting to play the Tea Partiers' game on this if you find the ammunition — few things are more fun then hoisting your opponents on their own petard — but it doesn't do much good in the long run. The "originalist" position, whether in law or policy, is just indefensible. No sane person can believe that if we just read the Constitution or find a nugget from something the Founders did, all of our policy choices will have only one answer. And joining in the right's Founding Father fetishism is a mug's game.

by Conor Friedersdorf

When I first moved to DC, I sublet a spot in a three bedroom Woodley Park apartment, where one of my roommates would come home every night after his Teach For America gig, fire up the television set, and watch intently as Keith Olbermann proceded through his nightly show. It was misery. I'd spend my days happily working under Reihan Salam and Graeme Wood, and interacting with Matt Yglesias, Ross Douthat, and Megan McArdle. In spare moments, I'd walk down the hall to the room where back issues are kept to read old James Fallows cover stories. Everywhere there were  brilliant people whose insights challenged me to be smarter.

Exhausted by day's end, I'd metro back to Woodley Park, eager for a wind down beer, always forgetting that Countdown would be blaring. I didn't care about its politics. But watching gave me that anxious, vaguely pissed off feeling one gets sitting for an hour without air-conditioning in gridlocked freeway traffic, behind a semi and next to a guy blasting Eminem. It was all about the mood. I needed a mindless break before retiring to my room for some freelancing. Instead I came as close as I'll ever be to understanding what the audience felt during the debut of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring."

My roommate, a sincere liberal and a nice enough guy, got more riled up by the program than I did. His muscles tightened. His blood pressure rose. Sometimes he even muttered to himself under his breath. Then the show ended. I'd switch the channel to a Lakers game or that John Adams miniseries. Fifteen minutes later, my roommate would forget what he was angry about. It seems to me that Olbermann's show often brought out the worst impulses in people: petulance, self-righteousness, and blind anger at "the other side." I appreciate that for others, the experience was different.

Steve Benen at Washington Monthly says this about Olbermann's retirement:

As the dust settles, it's worth emphasizing just how important Olbermann has been in American media in recent years. When he returned to prime time after a four-year absence, Olbermann offered news consumers something we couldn't find anywhere else: honest, sincere, unapologetic liberalism.

Olbermann helped shine a light on important stories that were ignored by other shows and other networks, helped give a voice to a perspective that was discounted throughout the mainstream media, picked fights with those who too often went unchallenged, and featured guests who were frequently and needlessly left out of the larger broadcast conversation.

There's an important caveat that Benen left out: Olbermann offered something that couldn't be found elsewhere on television. For liberals who like that medium, I'm sure the show proved cathartic. But wouldn't they be better informed, more meaningfully entertained, and psychicly happier if just read Washington Monthly instead? Yes, I know, television is a very popular medium (mostly because it demands so little from its audience). But it is the worst way to engage politics in America. Compared to reading it is a wildly inefficient time suck. The format itself often strips the issue at hand of all nuance. It rewards demagoguery, and the host's words disappear into the ether so fast that inaccuracies slip easily past and are seldom corrected for the people misled by them. Often as not, its producers and writers just take insights from the written medium and dumb them down.

Don't get me wrong. Television is extremely hard to do well. Unfortunately, excelling in the medium and improving political discourse are often at odds. Chris Hayes and James Poulos, among others, show it's possible for up-and-coming intellects to do good non-Bloggingheads TV that's smart and engaging. (Milton Friedman, William F. Buckley, Ted Koppel, Mike Kinsley, Christopher Hitchens, Rachel Maddow – certain especially talented minds have always managed.) Since there are so few like them, I suspect that if politics on television were to magically disappear tomorrow, we'd all be better off.

And if more Americans started getting their political fix from cable news we'd certainly be worse off. Let me put it to you this way. You're talking to a recent immigrant at jury duty. He is telling you how determined he is to be a good citizen and civic role model for his kid. a) "So I've been trying to read Tocqueville in the evenings after work." b) "So I try to attend an occasional City Council meeting." c) "So I've been volunteering as a precinct captain during elections." d) "So I keep up with the Supreme Court by reading the most significant opinions each session. e) "So I keep up with what Congress is doing by reading The New York Times." f) "So I read the blogs of a few political scientists each day." g) "So I watch Keith Olbermann every night."

Is there any doubt that "g" is the worst option?

With very few exceptions, the retirement of a popular political talking head is great news: it's likely to result in fewer people watching political television.

(Photo: Keith Olbermann from 'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' attends the 2006 Summer Television Critics Association Press Tour for the The NBC Network at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel on July 22, 2006 in Pasadena, California. By Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)

by Chris Bodenner

He's out sick.

by Chris Bodenner

Tablet columnist Etgar Keret recalls a conversation he had with his mother and wife over the uber-popular iPhone game:

“They sacrifice themselves to achieve a greater goal,” I said quickly. “It’s a game that teaches values.”

“Yes,” my mother said. “But that goal is just to collapse buildings on the heads of those sweet little piglets that never did them any harm.”

“They stole our eggs,” my wife insisted.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s actually an educational game that teaches you not to steal.”

“Or, more accurately,” my mother said, “it teaches you to kill anyone who steals from you and to sacrifice your life doing it.”

“They shouldn’t have stolen the eggs,” my wife said in the tear-choked voice that appears when she knows she’s about to lose an argument.

“I don’t understand,” my mother said. “Did those infant piglets themselves steal your eggs, or are we talking about collective punishment here?”

“Coffee, anyone?” I asked.

(Video via Buzzfeed)

by Conor Friedersdorf

It's a question I've long pondered, so let me ask Dish readers:

Does your local newspaper act as a watchdog on local government? Any interesting examples of successes or failures? And in places where newspapers no longer serve this function, has anything replaced them? Any ideas for what might?

(Email answers to conor.friedersdorf@gmail.com)

by Patrick Appel

Don Taylor explains why:

In the end, I think Progressives have more at stake on the deficit than do Conservatives, because Progressives believe that government does have a key role to play in modern life. Conservatives are happy to cut taxes but not spending and then say the inevitable deficit proves government doesn't work. Progressives must take up the cause of developing a long range balanced budget or else there will be no room for government action where it is needed in the years ahead. Hopefully the President will begin making the Progressive case for sensible deficit reduction in the State of the Union.

by Conor Friedersdorf

Here is one way Rich Lowry characterized the Obama Administration in a recent column:

It flatly boasts that we are “the greatest nation on Earth.”

If you click through, you'll see the conceit of the column is such that this is used as a dig at the left. Still, On many occasions in the past (mostly uncorrected, like here), writers at National Review have insisted that President Obama rejects American exceptionalism. Perhaps this is the beginning of a more factually accurate opposition.

Elsewhere in the column, Lowry raises some trenchant critiques:

It surges American troops into the field, disregarding American public opinion and the opposition of the Left. It persists even though the war has been dragging on for years in a country beset by ethnic divisions, a long history of war and repression, and weak, corrupt political leadership.

It believes it has the right to kidnap people in the tactic known as “rendition,” without due process.

It targets people for assassination, without due process.

It rains missiles down on countries, Pakistan and Yemen, with which we aren’t at war and profess to be friendly.

It reserves the right to assassinate American citizens, and has targeted one U.S. citizen for killing in Yemen. He’s a Muslim religious leader not indicted for any crimes, let alone convicted of any.

Damning as these true statements are, it's a bit weird to see them offered, apparently as criticism, by a guy who runs a magazine that often as not takes an expansive view of executive power and doesn't care much about due process when accused terrorists are involved. It would be awesome if National Review suddenly appreciated that it's outrageous and alarming for a president to do the things Lowry says our president is doing.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

It's fine to allow Santorum to use the slave analogy on the grounds that, as Klein puts it, "Santorum truly believes that abortion is murder–at any point after conception, even when the mother's health is at risk (as it was in the case of one of his wife's pregnancies)." I'm good with that extreme extension of logic beyond abstraction. But you must insist, in turn, that he extend the logic in the other direction. If abortion is pre-meditated child murder in all cases, then women who have abortion commit pre-meditated felony murder in conspiracy with doctors. That's first-degree murder.

In states with the death penalty, that would make them eligible for the death penalty. As a Catholic, I assume Santorum is opposed to the death penalty. So if he's going to argue the rhetorical fireworks of slavery, he has to also argue that his vision requires mass life imprisonment of women murderers – for life or the death penalty in certain states. I promise you he lacks the political courage to do that. So don't praise his fealty to principle. Some dramatic logical exercises are OK, others aren't.

Another writes:

I am a catholic Christian (Episcopalian) and a retired 30-year-plus Texas police officer. It is routine for those who want to restrict abortion to refer to it as murder. However, I personally have never heard this assertion carried through to its logical conclusions. For instance, in Texas, the homicide statute in the penal code makes murder a capital offense under two circumstances relevant to the idea that abortion is equivalent to murder. One is the murder of "an individual under six years of age". The other is where the person either commits murder or "employs another to commit the murder for remuneration or the promise of remuneration."

If the "abortion is murder" principle were in effect in Texas it would mean that every abortion (even those that were truly spontaneous) would have to be investigated by the police in conjunction with the various medical examiner's offices in order to separate the miscarriages from the murders. Assuming that the police would only become aware of such fetal deaths where the fetus was at 20 weeks or more in development (a standard used by the National Institutes of Health), that would increase the number of death investigations in Texas by more than 2,000 per year, based on census data and data from the NIH. By comparison, the number of known homicides in Texas in 2009 was 1,328.

In the cases that were determined to be murder-by-abortion, successful investigations would identify both parents, the person performing the abortion, and anyone who assented to it. Based on the penal code's section on complicity, several people including the mother could be indicted for capital murder. If indicted, the prosecuting entity could seek the death penalty. The idea of a woman being sent to death row in Texas for having an abortion is not something I've ever heard an abortion opponent in the state call for. However, it is a completely proper extension of saying "abortion is murder".

This puts opponents in an awkward position. If they argue that abortion is murder and we should be ready to execute women, doctors and others for having, performing, funding or assenting to abortions then they risk seeming like moral monsters. If they try to criminalize abortion as some kind of lesser offense, then they've ceded to pro-choice advocates the idea that a fetus does not have the same status as a human individual as a human outside the womb. While this would not necessarily prevent criminalizing abortion, it most certainly would bolster the pro-choice stance that the decision as to the moral dimensions of abortion for any particular case can only properly be made by the person most immediately affected – the mother.

The best of all possible worlds would one where there were never any abortions, either spontaneous or induced. That world is not the world we live in and I don't see any way that someone can coherently argue that abortion should be a crime without either discounting the unborn child or the moral-agency of the mother.

Stowe, Vermont, 2 pm