Category: Old Dish

Here’s William Raspberry on some liberals’ embrace of Michael Moore:

But why did the mostly liberal crowd at last week’s Washington premiere — people who like to think of themselves as thoughtful and fair-minded — applaud so unrestrainedly?
They applauded, I suspect, for much the same reason so many members of the black Christian middle-class applaud the harangues of Black Muslim minister Louis Farrakhan. Some of his facts may be wrong and some of his connections strained, but his attitude is right. What’s more, he’ll say in plain language what nice, educated people cannot bring themselves to say: The man is a devil.

Moore as Farrakhan. Yep, that’s about right. And Raspberry thinks of this as a good thing? My fisking of his column can be found here.

MOORE AND GIBSON: Some more thoughts on the Gibson/Moore parallels. It occurred to me as I witnessed the unanimity in the audience watching “Fahrenheit 9/11” that I had been in a similar situation before. Yes – this was exactly what it felt like at an early showing of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” Both movies were designed for people who already held – as theological certitude – the basic line of the work. Both used the most egregious devices of propaganda to reinforce this point. Gibson used extreme and constant violence – as if to say that recoiling from that horror was proof that his vision of Christianity was correct. The loving camera shots of pure pornographic pain and gore were devices to end thought, short-cut any audience autonomy, and reinforce orthodoxy. And that was Moore’s device as well. The long views of the faces of various villains; the camera edits to create menace; the emotional manipulation of a bereaved mother; the swelling, ominous orchestral swoops. All we didn’t have was a Pieta scene. One was designed for the unthinking hordes of the far right; the other for the unthinking hordes of the far left. Both were deeply depressing indicators of how far our culture has curdled into unthought and emotional extremism. Neither sought to convert or explain or persuade. Both were designed to bludgeon the viewer into ideological conformity. And if you resist? You are a heretic or a dupe. Whatever happened to “intelligent viewer”?

Try not to gag as you read the Chicago Tribune’s pompous defense of outing seamy details of Jack Ryan’s sex life. (The site is registered, alas. But it’s free.) The argument is: all court records should be open to the public, even divorces; there could have been something in those files that voters might consider pertinent to Ryan’s ability to serve in public office; and, “because we could.” Here’s a particularly loathesome sentiment:

Voters need information about the views, background and character of the people they elect to office. Voters can’t make informed decisions about a candidate’s positions or character without such information.
That’s why, as part of their coverage of candidates for political office, reporters seek a wide range of documents and opinions to help voters understand the candidates.
Case in point: the once-sealed divorce files of former Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Blair Hull. After the Tribune reported that Hull’s ex-wife had sought an order of protection against him during their divorce proceedings, Hull relented to the release of his divorce documents.
Many voters took into account the revelations in those documents that his ex-wife said he had struck her and threatened her. Hull was leading the field before he released the file. He finished third in the primary in March.

So taking a wife to a sex club is now equivalent to beating her? You’ll notice not one word in the editorial about something called privacy. The very concept doesn’t exist for the Trib editors. Well, one response to this would be to investigate the private married lives of journalists and editors at the Chicago Tribune. Readers could call them up and ask them about their sex lives. They hold a public trust. Shouldn’t the public have a right to know if the editor or reporter had some difficulties in his marriage years ago? The next time the Trib’s editor appears in public for questioning, he should be asked whether he has ever committed adultery. Why not? The stunning aspect of the Tribune’s self-defense is that it admits that it was on a fishing expedition. They had no reason to believe that there was anything in a sealed divorce document that could be in any way related to someone’s ability to hold public office – except, of course, something privately embarrassing. Well, they got their scalp. On to the next one.

THE TRANSCRIPT: Part of it now exists on the web. Fisk away.

The Republican governor of the most populous state in the country says he doesn’t care “one way or the other” on the legality of marriage rights for gay couples. You think he’d be able to say that at the Convention? Meanwhile, Bush’s Vatican lobbying seems to have paid off. And Presbyterians move in the opposite direction.

The view from one of my windows on my Provincetown wharf has been particularly stunning this summer. As I sit here typing, the water encroaches into the great coil of the harbor – always a different color, depending on the time of day, the tide and the weather. In front of me is a patch of reclaimed beach, an up-turned kayak in the dune grass, Poor Richard’s Landing – another old wharf building – behind it. And in the middle, a patch of bare sand that has become an impromptu wedding place. I’ve witnessed three weddings there in four weeks – all between two women, some with kids, some formal, some New Agey. It seems quite routine now, but it was only ten years ago that I sat down on this very beach to figure out “Virtually Normal” and came to the conclusion that civil marriage was the lodestar of homosexual equality. Now it happens when I’m not looking, or when I’m napping, or walking the beagle. And life goes on. And the tide comes in again.

More evidence that the GOP cannot be trusted with your money. Subsidies for tobacco and rum?

It’s been extremely difficult to get a full transcript of the Michael Moore movie. So here’s a thought: why doesn’t some enterprising blogger take a tape recorder to a screening, transcribe the narrative, and post it? Then it’s a fiskathon. On your marks, get set …

John Kerry will be the next victim. It’s no use complaining. Every intimate detail of his first marriage will soon be dissected on the web and elsewhere. And liberal papers, having delighted in exposing the consensual adult sex of Jack Ryan, will not be able to resist. Get ready.

Well, I broke down and went to see the Michael Moore movie. I was expecting to be outraged, offended, maddened, etc etc. No one told me I’d be bored. The devices were so tired, the analysis worthy of something by an intern in the Nation online, the sad attempts to blame everything on Bush so strained and over-wrought even the most credulous of conspiracists would have a hard time giving them the time of day. This won the top Cannes prize? Only hatred of America can explain that. The one thing that did interest me was part of Moore’s technique. Much of the movie focused on various objects of hatred: Bush, Cheney, Bush pere, et al. The camera lingered for ever on their facial tics, it used off-camera moments where anyone looks awkward and dumb, it moved in with grainy precision in order to help the audience sustain and nurture its hatred. It was like the “1984” hate sessions. Cheap shots would be an inadequate description. This was tedious propaganda, using the most ancient of devices, and reflective of a pathology that can only be described as unhinged. (In that respect, eerily similar to Mel Gibson’s recent piece of hackneyed, manipulative pornography.) I’d address the arguments, if there were any. There weren’t. There was just a transparently failed attempt to construct conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory on the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence, and when the entire framework was teetering into absurdity, the occasional necessary lie. I left before the end. A bar in Ptown on a Sunday night was more interesting.

WHAT NATURAL LAW IS: Garry Wills had, as usual, an interesting piece in the NYT yesterday. It’s indisputable, I think, that there is no Biblical treatment of the question of when a fetus becomes a human person; and equally indisputable that, within the Church itself, there have been many different views throughout history. But Wills’ most interesting point is about “natural law.” This tradition of reasoning, essentially pioneered by Aquinas, and resting on Aristotle, posits that there are some truths that are available to anyone who looks at nature with an open mind. (And this reasoning is self-evident to non-blievers as well.) But, of course, what was available to Aquinas, let alone Aristotle, was a deeply inadequate biology. A new natural law would try to absorb all that science has since told us about fetal development, heterosexual intercourse, evolutionary biology, other species, etc. But the Church does not always spend enough time absorbing scientific developments – especially when they conflict with established dogma. Case in point: there’s an obvious distinction between personhood and life – as Wills points out. Sperm is life, but it is not a person; fertilized eggs are routinely aborted naturally (is nature murderous?); miscarriages are a sad but permanent part of our biology; intuitively the abortion of a two week old fetus does not seem to us as equivalent to the abortion of one at six months; and so on. To my mind, life and personhood are so important as values that considering conception as their mutual origin is the safest moral option. But I wouldn’t insist on baptizing or formally burying a miscarried fetus. And I can see perfectly well how others might disagree on when personhood begins; indeed, how the Church itself once disagreed. This makes the issue not one of theological certitude but of moral judgment. And that’s why I believe that in the political realm, keeping abortion legal in the first trimester differs from condoning it. It’s a balance between women’s control of their own bodies, the prudential difficulties of making abortion illegal, the allowance of a free people to make such moral judgments for themselves, and the need to retain respect for human life – even if it is not indisputable that a person is at stake. If I were a public official, that judgment alone would make me ineligible for the sacraments. And that shows how rigid the Church has now become.

Isn’t it telling that the Bush administration wants McCain, Arnold and Giuliani as prime-timers for the convention? They’re the three Republicans least in sync with the Bush administration. McCain is as close to a dissident as you can find. And Arnold keeps Bush at arm’s length. A more representative selection would be: Santorum, DeLay, Ashcroft. And then you see why the Bushies won’t let them hog the limelight. Too much honesty could wreck the campaign.

NO THIRD WAY: Britain’s experiment in keeping marijuana illegal but refusing to police it is making life impossible for the police. How are they supposed to respond when stoners blow smoke in their faces? The answer, of course, is full legalization of what is a far less harmful drug than alcohol.

BORING UPWARD: Kerry’s stealth strategy: to win by default. Again.

FEDERALISM AND MARRIAGE: How can I believe that marriage is a fundamental civil right and yet allow for each state to decide for itself? It’s not an easy balance. But here’s my best shot at explaining the conflict.

BOOKS FOR SUMMER: I’ve been reading two great books these past couple weeks. I’m a little biased because they’re both written by old friends from Oxford days but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth checking out. John Micklethwait’s and Adrian Wooldridge’s “The Right Nation” is a really helpful, crisp, smart look at the conservative movement in America. I have a feeling that the phenomenon is past its peak but the past few decades are still worth remembering in lucid Economist-style prose. Then there’s Niall Ferguson’s latest, “Colossus,” an examination of the necessity and impossibility of American empire. Challenging, smart and essential. Everything Niall writes is.

Socially liberal and fiscally conservative? Then same-sex marriage is a two-fer. According to an authoritative CBO report, allowing for marriage rights for gay couples would affect outlays “by less than $50 million a year in either direction through 2009 and reduce them by about $100 million to $200 million annually from 2010 through 2014.” Cut spending and advance civil rights. No wonder today’s Republicans are so opposed.

NYT VERSUS NYT: “Stretching across four columns of the front page, the June 17 headline “Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie; Describes a Wider Plot for 9/11” caused some readers, including Vice President Dick Cheney, to accuse The Times of “outrageous” (Cheney’s word) distortion of the 9/11 commission’s staff report. I don’t buy “outrageous,” but “distortion” works for me – specifically, the common newspaper crime of distortion by abbreviation. The staff report was largely concerned with attacks on United States soil, whereas the headline bore no such qualification. The headline also leaned on two of those words whose brevity makes them dear to all newsrooms: the resolute “no,” and the imprecise “tie.” Assistant managing editor Craig Whitney, who oversees the front page, argues that “tie” in the headline is “a correct shorthand summary” of the report’s conclusion that there appeared to be no “collaborative relationship” between Al Qaeda and Iraq. … Willful distortion? I don’t see it. Misstep? Sure. Is an apology needed, as Internet columnist Bob Kohn, one of the paper’s most forceful (and, often, most incisive) critics on the right, demanded by e-mail? No. Good reporting and careful presentation are what’s needed.” – Dan Okrent, New York Times obudsman, yesterday.

“First Vice chewed out The Times for accurately reporting that the 9/11 commission said there was no collaborative relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda.” – Maureen Dowd, defending inaccuracy – quelle surprise! – yesterday.

KRISTOL ON THE NYT: A gently devastating analysis.