Month: January 2011

Yes, Pawlenty. The power of the anti-gay animus in the current GOP is, at times, shocking.

Kolkata, India, 12 pm

Novelist Michael Chabon is one hell of a blogger, and particularly good here discussing how he handled the n-word while reading Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn to his young children.

Jason Kottke explains:

Jenny McCarthy just won't call it quits on the whole vaccines cause autism thing. Cause she's a mom! And moms love their children! And are strong! QED.

Five years ago, ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff was stuck in the head by shrapnel from an Iraqi bomb. Woodruff recovered and went back to work less than a year later. Lee Woodruff, his wife, tells their story:

There are few miracles and lots of hard work in the excruciatingly slow process of recovering from a brain injury. People ask me when it was I knew Bob would be OK, and I tell them it was a full year before I let my breath out. I would have chosen absolutely any other kind of injury or disease but this. Every other horror I could think of at least had odds or prognoses. A brain injury is as individual as the people who receive them. The brain is our most complicated and complex organ. Some of the deficits and ways people are tinkered with in the aftermath can be painful to bear. Yes, spouses are lucky their loved one is alive, but that creates guilt over grieving the loss of both little and big things. It’s a complicated grief.

This piece, titled "Obama Speech Undercuts Federal Charge For Judges Murder," contradicts itself:

“Judge Roll was recommended for the federal bench by John McCain 20 years ago, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, and rose to become Arizona’s chief federal judge,” Obama told the crowd at the University of Arizona. Roll’s “colleagues described him as the hardest-working judge within the Ninth Circuit. He was on his way back from attending mass, as he did every day, when he decided to stop by and say, ‘Hi,’ to his representative.”

In the complaint supporting Loughner’s arrest, federal prosecutors argue that Roll wasn’t simply seeking to pay a social call on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) when he showed up at the community outreach event where the shooting spree took place Saturday. Prosecutors and the FBI insist that Roll “was engaged in official duties” because he wanted to talk to Giffords and her staffers about problems with a surging caseload in federal courts in Arizona, particularly along the Mexican border.

A paragraph from later in the same piece:

As a legal matter, Obama's view (which tracks with the public narrative offered by Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik) may be irrelevant, but it probably doesn't help to have the President of the United States emphasizing the social aspect of Roll's stop to see Giffords on Saturday, rather than the reason prosecutors claim drew him there.

But if it's irrelevant as a legal matter, then it's… well, you get the picture. Basically it's an article that's worthless to everyone except Politico, which managed to bait Drudge and Instapundit into linking by offering up the only headline about the Obama speech that casts the president in a negative light. There's also the weird disregard for the truth here. Shouldn't the president give the most truthful, accurate narrative possible, the strategy of prosecutors be damned?

First Pawlenty, now Christie. He makes the obvious point that a viable politician has to be able to parry open questions from the press:

“You have to look at it and see, what are they like when they’re tested, what are they like when they’re not scripted, what are they like when they’re pushed. And I would contend to you that if Governor Palin never does any of those things, she’ll never be president, because people in America won’t countenance that. They just won’t.”

But they let her run for vice-president without a single open press conference – and the MSM went right along. Here's hoping Christie is right. He is, to my mind, an immensely attractive political figure – an unPalin as it were. And he has more understanding of the role of the press in a democracy than the MSM that all but abdicated responsibility in the 2008 campaign.

More cracks in the edifice: Jennifer Rubin faults Palin for surrounding herself with loyalists rather than veteran political consultants.  

Rebecca Mansour is, reportedly, Palin's "primary speechwriter, researcher, online communications coordinator and all-purpose adviser." Read Mansour's twitter feed for an unvarnished look at the epistemic closure machine Palin has built around herself. Rubin:

[Palin's] excessive reliance on her own and her husband's political antennae are proving to be her undoing. Well, you ask, doesn't that mean she lacks the judgment to be president? That's precisely what many conservatives are pondering these days, when they don't get distracted by the chaos she creates in her wake.

A reader writes:

Please note the two little words "and honest" in this quote from Obama's address last night in Tuscon:

“Only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation.”

Those two words hold a world of meaning. Civility – the form of our discourse – is one thing. Honesty – the content – is another. As Robert Wright pointed out in the NYTimes yesterday, the lack of honesty in our discourse may be a greater provocation to potential violence than lack of civility:

"[T]he emphasis the left is placing on violent rhetoric and imagery is probably misplaced … Palin’s much-discussed cross-hairs map probably isn’t as dangerous as her claim that “socialists” are trying to create “death panels.” If you convince enough people that an enemy of the American way is setting up a system that could kill them, the violent hatred will take care of itself." 

But in his quote, Obama has raised the stakes even higher: the unintended consequence of dishonesty in our public discourse – death panels, socialist conspiracies, faux deficit reform, climate change denial – is not merely the threat of fringe violence, however horrific, but the failure of our nation to face up to the many challenges history has now placed before it. Obama is calling for more than civil discourse, he's calling for honest discourse – and for immensely higher stakes.

The deliberate cultivation of social paranoia, of untruth, robs us of the ability to face reality: to speak realistically, to think realistically, to act realistically. It's only excuse is immediate, selfish and often cynical advantage. Its costs are incalculable.

Untruth is the sign of intellectual and moral bankruptcy. The only solution to that sickness is, simply, honesty. The truth will out, eventually. But given the nature of the challenges facing us – economic, military, technological, social, environmental – it might be good if that eventuality came sooner than later: The price of indulging untruth, of indulging cynicism, paranoia and ignorance, is national failure. We are already on that road.

Only a return to realism, to honesty and civility, offers us any hope.

Adam Serwer tweets:

This speech reminds me that the criticism I find most incomprehensible is the idea that the president does not love his country.

Fallows:

The standard comparisons of the past four days have been to Ronald Reagan after the Challenger disaster and Bill Clinton after Oklahoma City. [Yesterday's] speech matched those as a demonstration of "head of state" presence, and far exceeded them as oratory — while being completely different in tone and nature. They, in retrospect, were mainly — and effectively — designed to note tragic loss. Obama turned this into a celebration — of the people who were killed, of the values they lived by, and of the way their example could bring out the better in all of us and in our country.

First Read:

While Obama tried to uplift, Palin tried to settle scores. While the president called for more civility, the former Alaska governor talked about duels and 'blood libel.' And while Obama's message was, well, presidential, Palin's was not. We'll say this: If Palin has ambitions for the White House — and we're still not sure she does — then her tone, message, and timing from her eight-minute video was a serious miscalculation.

Amy Davidson:

We do need civility, and one hopes we get more of that, and less scorn. We also need politics. And true civility can be disruptive—it is not civil, for example, to abandon the unpopular or unfairly treated. There are times when smiling blandly is far more cynical than raising one’s voice would be—when politeness is uncivil—just as there are times when cheering at a memorial is a profound act of mourning.

Allahpundit:

Note the rhetorical move at the end: Civil rhetoric may be a virtue but that doesn’t mean it’s a lesson of the shooting. He’s obviously aiming this at the left, although naturally they’ll conclude that that can’t possibly be the case. Ace heard a different speech than I did, I guess, but for what it’s worth, this is playing remarkably well thus far among righties on Twitter: Rich Lowry, Jonah Goldberg, Jim Geraghty, Andy Levy, S.E. Cupp, Philip Klein, and Ace’s own co-bloggers Drew and Gabe all thought it was rock solid.  

Jonathan Bernstein:

It's an easy speech because everyone watching wants the president to succeed.  It's an easy speech because that's how representation works, at its best.  He's not only Barack Obama speaking; he's speaking on behalf of the American people. 

Noam Scheiber:

I found myself reacting well to the speech emotionally even if it didn’t always hang together for me intellectually. Still, by nodding at the ways the Tucson tragedy might nudge us toward self-improvement, then not following through, Obama’s otherwise eloquent speech left me a bit unsatisfied. 

Josh Green:

My own impression is that he provided what had so far been missing from this tragedy: a response that dignified the memories of the victims and properly placed them at the forefront of public attention. 

Ed Morrissey:

Some of my friends may criticize Obama for not defending Palin specifically, or for waiting until the memorial to have rebuked those attempting to exploit the deaths for political gain.  On the first point, though, this was a memorial service and it wouldn’t have been appropriate to name other names than the dead, the wounded, and the heros who helped save lives.  The second point may be germane criticism of the previous couple of days, but even if it came late, Obama stepped up and led last night.

(Photo: Kevork Djansezian/Getty.)