Author: Andrew Sullivan

MY MESSY DIVORCE

I’m a Washingtonian. This is, all in all, a wonderful thing, except that for many years it denied me the pleasure of a home baseball team. As a child, this meant adopting the nearby Baltimore Orioles. And for a time, this relationship served me well. But then, when puberty and political awareness hit, I began to feel less than comfortable with the team. In part, my alienation was cultural. Baltimore plays “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” during the 7th inning stretch. At that moment, I wasn’t clear on my belief in God, but I was certain about the fact that I’m no country boy. Then, team owner Peter Angelos began to sacrifice the soul of the club. Namely, he bought a goon named Albert Belle to the team. This purchase caused my entire world view to explode. How could I argue the Orioles’ moral superiority when they had Belle? I couldn’t. That year marked the beginning of my long divorce from Baltimore. The pace of our separation has accelerated rapidly with the arrival of the entirely loveable Washington Nationals. To establish our identity as Nats fans, we have had to agressively distance ourselves from our neighboring fans. More to the point, we need to despise them and foment a rivalry with them. Angelos has stirred this pot by conspiring to keep the Nationals off television. (A long story that I won’t get into here.)

In other words, I take some pleasure in watching the Rafael Palmero crisis unfold. I hope that it redounds against the Orioles, and I hope that the Nats sweep the Birds next year in interleague play. Amen.

posted by Frank.

TORTURE FETISH II

Marty Lederman shows how the latest revelations of brutal murder by torture of prisoners by U.S. soldiers was clearly authorized by Bush administration policy. Must read posts here and here. Eventually, the denialists will realize what has been authorized from the highest authorities. More reason to back the McCain and Graham amendments to rid the military of this metastasizing cancer of abuse-as-policy.

– posted by Andrew.

BRIT PRIGS EVERYWHERE

Yesterday, I asked the question: Why do American audiences take such pleasure in reality shows filled with nasty Brits like Ramsay, Cowell, etc. For days, readers had generously suggested how I could enrich myself in African investments and enhance my penis size. Yesterday, the inbox began filling with cultural criticism. I’ll post a few compelling theories today. This comes courtesy of Alex Massie:

“To answer your question, however, I’d hazard that for some reason American TV executives are happier with the harsh judgements on success and failure being handed down in a British accent preciesely because failure has, as a concept and fact of life, been largely outlawed in American television (this is, I think, proved by any of the daytime talk shows in which someone else is always responsible for everything bad and miserable in your life). Cowell, Ramsay and the nannies are refreshing, therefore, precisely beacuse they are candid and demand that contestants or struggling parents be responsible for their actions. Their (comfortable yet sufficient) foreignness helps them do this and gives them a patina of authenticity that would denied an American presenter for whom the audience might feel little sympathy if they were seen to be too “judgemental”… A British judge, however, offers just the right mix of familiarity and distance so as to make such nastiness acceptable and, even, mildly thrilling.”

AL FROM MUST BE QUAKING:

The Daily Kos, a liberal blogger who has acquired a strange prestige within Washington, has a plan for destroying the DLC. How good is Kos’s plan? So good he won’t reveal it for a whole four weeks. Now, that’s hardball, Kos! Let them sweat for a while before landing the jab.

Before Kos goes nuclear against the DLC, perhaps he might to want to consider a few things. First, he should check out DLC president Bruce Reed’s funny, erudite blog on Slate, chock-full of devastating Bush bashing. Then he should compare it to his own. Do you really trust yourself to do a better job guiding the Democrats than Reed? Is that guy really the enemy within? Next, Kos should consider the modern history of the Democratic Party. Does he really believe that the pre-DLC Mondale-Jackson strategy was working so well? I’m not blindly or wildly pro-DLC, but the answers to the questions seem blindingly obvious to me.

Yes, the DLC had a problem with Howard Dean in the primaries. Their critique had nothing to do with corporate money, and everything to do with a real fear that Dean would get his ass kicked by Bush. Get over it, man.

posted by Frank.

FREIDMAN IS FLATTENED

John Gray is always worth reading, even when his arguments take him to highly idiosyncratic conclusions. When assigning Gray a Thomas Friedman book, as the New York Review did, you know that the hatchet will emerge from the philosopher’s desk. His essay, however, isn’t just entertaining. It is powerful. The key passage:

Unfortunately the problems of globalization are more intractable than those of corporate life. States cannot be phased out like bankrupt firms, and large shifts in wealth and power tend to be fiercely contested. Globalization is a revolutionary change, but it is also a continuation of the conflicts of the past. In some important respects it is leveling the playing field, as Friedman’s Indian interlocutor noted, and to that extent it is a force for human advance. At the same time it is inflaming nationalist and religious passions and triggering a struggle for natural resources. In Friedman’s sub-Marxian, neoliberal worldview these conflicts are recognized only as forms of friction -grit in the workings of an unstoppable machine. In truth they are integral to the process itself, whose future course cannot be known. We would be better off accepting this fact, and doing what we can to cope with it.

Although I’m not sure what Isaiah Berlin would make of this passage, his influence is evident in it. I’m sympathetic to Gray. Believe me or not, this is the same point that I made in my book about soccer

posted by Frank.

IRANIAN NUCLEAR SUMMER

The CIA’s reassessment of Iranian nuclear ambitions, reported in today’s Post, took me completely by surprise. When I looked into the matter late last year, there was a broad agreement about the mullah’s intentions and the speed with which they could manufacture a bomb. Everybody-from Ray Takeyh to Reuel Marc Gerecht-said that Iran would obtain nukes in five years, or perhaps sooner. Now, a forthcoming National Intelligence Estimate says that it will take Tehran ten years. Given the CIA’s understandable caution in predicting WMD, I’m not sure what to make of this revision.

I hope that this new finding doesn’t prove to be counterproductive. There’s currently a broad consensus that the mullahs must be stopped. Heck, even Chirac has talked about sending the Iranian case to the Security Council. Will John Bolton and the French ever be on the same page again? I fear not, and I fear that this finding will give the Bush administration and the Europeans a chance to revert towards their old state of willful ignorance towards Iran.

From an American policy perspective, this new timeline is a big deal. For the last five years, this administration had muddled its Iran position, refusing to chose either a course of engagement or regime change. Instead, it has sent the mullahs and the Iranian people lots of confusing, mixed messages.

For better or worse, the revised estimate gives the U.S. more time to push for regime change. The logic: If the U.S. had only a few years to prevent the nightmare scenario of a nuclear Iran, it was pointless to promote political revolution as an anti-proliferation strategy. That revolution would be highly unlikely to happen before Iran gets the bomb. But if the country has ten years until it joins the atomic club, the likelihood of nudging Iran into political uprising is much greater. It might make sense to investment more in pursuit of such a policy.

Since the administration has consistantly made a hash of Iranian policy, I’m not optimistic that this respite will improve matters.

posted by Frank.

POSEUR ALERT

I just re-read my first post from last night and hereby nominate myself. An acceptance speech, with requisite allusions to Habermas and Vico, will be posted tomorrow. Also, apologies for the faulty French accent. Unfortunately, I’m not cosmopolitan enough to go back and fix it.
posted by Frank.

FOER IN HELL

I’ve got a massive deadline looming and a five-month old who insists on waking at 4:30 a.m., so I spent tonight doing the only conscionable thing: I watched the finale of Hell’s Kitchen. To be sure, this isn’t that unusual. Reality television, even the non-sweeps stuff, consumes an ungodly amount of my leisure time. Scotsman Gordon Ramsay, the brutal Calvinist head chef who runs Hell’s Kitchen with a studied authoritarianism, is a compelling host. Like any good Great Leader, he inspires fear and respect. (To be sure, the Fox show doesn’t really compare to Ramsey’s far rawer, far more authentic BBC show, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares Revisited.) It goes without saying, but Hell’s Kitchen suffered from an extraordinary number of the genre’s clichés. I wasn’t surprised in the least when the vanquished contestants returned (Apprentice style) to assist the two finalists in their showdown. Nor was I left hanging on my seat when Fox cut to commercial breaks at all the tensest moments. That said, the show has a whiff of meritocracy that makes it rare in the reality genre. Ramsay, unlike, say, Donald Trump, isn’t a poseur. He wanted to reward quality and fairly searched it out. There were no unreasonably good-looking contestants who survived deep into the competition. The winner, Michael, is covered in rather unseemly tattoos. (Do you really wanted those inked up hands working their way through your foie gras?) As far as I could tell, he is an arrogant ass.

The show raises a question that you might help me answer. What is it about the nasty, priggish Brit–here I’m thinking of the Weakest Link bitch, Simon Cowell, and those omnipresent nannies–that makes them such a stock character on American television?

posted by Frank.