Month: May 2011

Notes From An Alternate Universe

A classic from Andrew Breitbart:

What is at stake here is that blacks and women are creating the "tea party", making it a place that unlike the Republican Party which is a toxic environment for blacks and that's been the media's job for years. This is a place where blacks and women and hispanics can go to recreate this country in its original Constitutional vision.

Ignore the fact that in the original Constitutional vision, blacks were slaves and women couldn't vote. Let's just replace that unfortunate wording with the idea of limited government. I actually believe that Breitbart is sincere here – and he does have a vision of a multicultural small-state future. I do too. But I've found that in America, this idea doesn't actually have a viable constituency. Yes, some opportunists (in the best sense) have grasped some limited government ideas (Haley, Cain, Bachmann, Palin, Steele). But their constituency remains overwhelmingly older, whiter men. And the overlap with the GOP base is considerable.

Does the Tea Party, even in its symbolism, welcome Hispanics? If so, why is the love so unreciprocated? Could it be the virulent cultural xenophobia and nostalgia that pulses through the movement? Does it welcome African-Americans, even as it demonizes and race-baits the first African-American president? Does it embrace women, even as it seeks to abolish all legal abortion under all circumstances? Does it appeal to the young, even as it refuses even to contemplate any civil rights for gay people?

Nice idea. But nowhere to be found.

Hillary On Syria

A telling exchange from a Goldblog interview:

JG: Would you be sad if [Assad's] regime disappeared?

HRC: It depends upon what replaces it.

Funny how she never took that view on Libya, isn't it? The lesson the Arab dictatorships have learned is that if you go house-to-house and detain and torture dissidents, the West will look away. If you take tanks into urban areas and shell civilians … oh, wait! That analogy won't work either.

Shelling Its Own Citizens

The Syrian regime intensifies its violent campaign:

At least 10,000 protesters have been detained in the past several days in a mass arrest campaign aimed at quelling a seven-week uprising in Syria against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, activists said, as fresh shelling of a residential neighborhood was reported on Wednesday from Homs, the country’s third largest city. The shelling, most intense between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m., appeared to mark a further escalation in the crackdown. “The situation is so bad this morning,” Abu Haydar, a resident there, said by telephone. “It’s been continuous shelling since Sunday.”

AJE has more on the shelling. The above video shows part of the damage in Homs. Live-blog updates here. The Obama administration is indicating that it's about to ratchet up its rhetoric against Assad. Meanwhile, the story of the missing Al Jazeera journalist takes an ominous turn:

Syrian officials had previously told Al Jazeera the 39-year-old [Dorothy Parvaz] was being held in the Syrian capital and would be released. "We have now received information that she is being held in Tehran," an Al Jazeera spokesman said in a statement on Wednesday. "We are calling for information from the Iranian authorities, access to Dorothy, and for her immediate release. We have had no contact with Dorothy since she left Doha on April 29 and we are deeply concerned for her welfare."

The Tragicomedy Of Sarah Palin

Palin-wide

Joe McGinniss asks if the Atlantic could have picked a more flattering painting of Sarah Palin. Maybe a slightly more obvious halo?

Josh's piece, while perfectly accurate and fair in describing her big tax increase on the oil companies, seems to me to make a massive amount of inferences about that achievement, and fails to grasp – because establishment Washington cannot really cop to its own recklessness – that Palin is not and never was driven by policy but by resentment. It reads like a piece from the Weekly Standard in 2007.

That oil tax was a way to get back at the Republicans she hated (and who had humiliated her), and to win power by a populist appeal, backed up by a virulent Christianism – hostile to the moneyed elites of the GOP and unmentioned by Josh. It was a massive new windfall for Alaskans, already accustomed to a socialist state, and doesn't hinge on good government reform arguments to make political sense. Which ambitious politician wouldn't see a tax on oil companies as worth trying for? And she wasn't stupid. Sending much fatter checks to Alaskans boosted her ratings into the stratosphere, and created that brief bubble when she was attractive to national Republicans. Yes, she allied with Democrats to get back at the Murkowskis. But does Josh really think there was a unifying, bipartisan, pragmatic  reformer underneath? Does he think she was and is a Republican Barack Obama? That Matthew Scully wrote a speech Palin really didn't want to give? Does he think her entire behavior since her insane selection by McCain has been foisted upon her when she'd really rather be discussing healthcare policy at the New America Foundation? I mean, seriously.

I guess it's counter-intuitive to argue that Palin, deep down, is a bipartisan progressive reformer, foiled by a cynical McCain campaign, trying to galvanize the base. But it's also – from every single thing we know about her – untrue. The only consistent thing about her is not bipartisan reformism, but a will to power, fueled by resentment of whomever foiled her last. More paranoid and vengeful than Nixon, more divisive than Buchanan, more deceptive than Clinton, more delusional than George W. Bush, more psychologically unhinged than any candidate for the vice-presidency in modern times, she is what she always has been. And Josh's attempt to resuscitate her reputation is about as persuasive as the soft-lens, North Korean-style portrait attached to the story.

The Purple Prose Jackpot

A reader writes:

Can you find a review of a rock album that does not qualify for this award? Rock music reviews are probably the most pretentious area of criticism, with the possible exception of architecture.

Another:

If Jason Heller's "Ascension" review garnered a Poseur Alert, you guys must not ever read the reviews on indie trend-setter Pitchfork. From today's reviews alone:

""California" is among Anderson's best works, a stream-of-consciousness rant about displacement and alienation set to a musical backing that feels like civilization collapsing around her. "California" shows off her enviable talent for finding a comfortable place where big-topic sloganeering and personal tales can coexist. It's that sweat-soaked head-rush of repulsion, sadness, anxiety, and nostalgia you get when you feel the tug of home," – Nick Neyland.

"They portray a great deal of motion within superstructures that seem to stand utterly still. Negative space is diligently sought out and eradicated, until we can hear the computer age gently swallowing folk music whole," – Brian Howe.

Pitchfork's reviews are so pompous that it's hard to find a single "most" Poseur-worthy, but David Cross's takedown does a pretty good job.

Another:

I don't think it's going anymore, but for a while there was this great Twitter account recording the most egregious quotes from Pitchfork.com. Consistently hysterical.

Another:

Your Poseur Alert reminded me of one of my favorite segments on The Daily Show – featuring Stephen Colbert as Senior Conceptual Art Correspondent, reporting on Christo's "The Gates" in Central Park in 2005 – "an artistic milestone that may finally put New York on the cultural map." Taking on Poseur as only Colbert can, if you have 3 minutes for a giggle.

How Long Do We Live?

Life_Expectancy

While talking about raising the retirement age, Ryan Grimm caught Alan Simpson peddling some misleading life expectancy numbers. Chait piled on. Aaron Carroll explains how improved infant mortality rates greatly skew the data:

[I]f you made it to 65, even back in 1950, you could expect to be on Social Security for 14 years. In 1970, if you made it to 65 and qualified for Medicare, you could expect to live for about 15 years on the program. So a lot of people were making use of these programs, for a lot of years. The second thing to notice is that life expectancy for someone who lives to 65 and qualifies for these programs, hasn’t gone up as much, or as quickly, as people think.

Divorcing Pakistan

Tim Ricks outlines a "a short-term plan that temporarily keeps us close to Pakistan, followed by a much different long-run strategy that cuts us loose from this wreck of a state":

In the long run, our interests are much more with India, anyway. If Pakistan wants to retaliate by allying with China — knock yourselves out, fellas.