Category: Old Dish

I can’t be the only person mildly perturbed by the glee with which two Slate writers have lampooned Dick Cheney for having heart problems. Tim Noah yucked it up within hours of Cheney’s return to hospital, throwing in a few, tired, Bush-is-a-bonehead remarks that doubtless had some of his readers rolling in the aisles. “It goes without saying that George W. Bush isn’t up to the job,” Noah blithely remarked, pronouncing Cheney all but dead before he’d even had his operation. Then comes the usually impeccable David Plotz with a comic tale depending on the notion that a) Cheney is all but dead; and b) that Bush would happily milk this for personal gain. The humor-fantasy piece quotes from future press releases: “Time, July 23, 2001: It was an extraordinary scene: The vice president, just two days out of open-heart surgery, was wheeled on a gurney to the Senate floor to beg confirmation for the president’s controversial supreme court nominee, Judge Kenneth Starr. Cheney, who couldn’t speak, scrawled on a pad that “I will lose my will to live if you don’t vote for Starr.” Three Democrats, calling it their “patriotic duty,” immediately announced that they would cast votes for Starr, ensuring his confirmation … The New York Times, Dec. 16, 2001: President Bush today threatened “to unplug Dick from the respirator” if House Democrats don’t go along with his plan to privatize Social Security and Medicare …” I’m sorry but this isn’t funny. A perfectly decent man is having health problems. Leave him alone.

BEAT THIS SENTENCE: “Geminates never lenite, unless they concomitantly degeminate.” – Segmental
Phonology in Optimal Theory, edited by Linda Lombardi (forthcoming).

Two “beat this sentence” sentences, forwarded by some readers with too much time on their hands:

“The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.” – Judith Butler, “Further Reflections on the Conversations of Our Time,” Diacritics (1997).

“Total presence breaks on the univocal predication of the exterior absolute the absolute existent (of that of which it is not possible to univocally predicate an outside, while the equivocal predication of the outside of the absolute exterior is possible of that of which the reality so predicated is not the reality, viz., of the dark/of the self, the identity of which is not outside the absolute identity of the outside, which is to say that the equivocal predication of identity is possible of the self-identity which is not identity, while identity is univocally predicated of the limit to the darkness, of the limit of the reality of the self).” – D.G. Leahy, “Foundation: Matter the Body Itself.”

It’s actually possible to come up with this stuff yourself. A couple of bright sparks have set up a random post-modern sentence generator on the web. If you’re dong “queer theory” in some goddawful graduate school and need to pull an all-nighter, this is the solution you’ve been waiting for. An instant, computer-generated meaningless, i.e. pomo, essay at your finger tips. <a HREF = "http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern” TARGET = NEW>Enjoy.

“As it happens, the level on which Bush is not intellectually impressive is the only one that most journalists respect: verbal intelligence, the ability to understand and manipulate logic and language. This is precisely the sort of intelligence Bush does not possess, and so, many journalists stupidly thought of Bush as, well, stupid. I include myself in this and hereby renounce and regret my repeated past use, in connection with Bush, of the word “pinhead.” … [His are] politics played on a high and nuanced plane of intelligence, the sort of level that signifies a natural ability — natural political smarts. George W. Bush: smart guy. Who knew?” – Mike Kelly, by no means a Bush-whacker, but coming to see W’s smarts, in today’s Washington Post.

NOW THEY TELL US II: “The question is not one of Bush’s legitimacy. The new President – so the highest authorities assure us – holds office by virtue of a process that was legal and constitutional.” – Rick Hertzberg, the current New Yorker. By “highest authorities,” I assume Rick is referring to the Palm Beach Post. Anyway, it’s good to see two former New Republic editors, of very different ilk, come round to W. A little, anyway. Now all we need is Kinsley. Oh well.

A chilling memo from the epicenter of the new economy. It was first posted on Jim Romenesko’s invaluable website. It’s a memo sent from San Jose Mercury News publisher, Jay Harris. Can we say NASDAQ 1000?

Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 1:00 PM
To: ALL
Subject: Update on the Budget Situation
TO: All Mercury News Employees

“This is a letter I have worked very hard not to have
to write to you. It is a letter that brings news you
will not be pleased to receive. But the information
that follows reflects reality and, as always, I want
to make sure you know what’s ahead.
“As you all know from reading the paper and my
recent e-mails to employees, the national economy
generally – and local high tech companies in
particular – are in decline. This continuing decline
has had a significant impact on our business.
“Most problematic is the reduction we’ve seen in
recruitment advertising. With fewer and fewer Valley
companies hiring, and more and more announcing
hiring freezes or layoffs, we are experiencing a sharp
drop in recruitment advertising.
“To understand the speed and size of the decline,
consider this:

“In January, our recruitment revenue fell $103,000
short of the same month last year. In February,
recruitment revenue fell about $2.5 million below the
same month last year.”
Yikes.

“The last time Marc Rich called off a party was in Spain, about five or six years ago. His Mossad-trained bodyguards were tipped off that his private jet would be forced down the moment it left Swiss airspace by Yankee F-16s, so he stayed put. No reason was offered back then. Although the US government was out to grab him, Rich had the proverbial ace up his sleeve. By giving lotsa moolah to Israel, he was being fed information by Mossad that even the top brass of the Pentagon weren’t getting. Mossad knew that the snatch was on by listening in on the Americans. They tipped off the fugitive fraudster, a move that eventually made Bill Clinton rich, pun intended… Marc Rich, however, has done us a favour… By bribing everyone and sundry, … [he] proved what we, soi-disant anti-Semites for daring to protest about soldiers shooting at kids, always knew. The way to Uncle Sam’s heart runs through Tel Aviv and Israeli-occupied territory.” – Taki, The Spectator [of London].

You might also be interested in Conrad Black’s response to Taki in the following issue. <a HREF = "http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old&amp;section=current&amp;issue=2001-03-03&amp;id=488″ TARGET = NEW>Here it is.

A short extract forwarded by a reader from the classic Elvis Costello song, with regard to our Robert Byrd discussion. Speaks for itself:

“Oliver’s army is here to stay
Oliver’s army are on their way
And I would rather be anywhere else
But here today

There was a checkpoint charlie
He didn’t crack a smile
But it’s no laughing party
When you’ve been on the murder mile
Only takes one itchy trigger
One more widow, one less white nigger.”

A Democratic activist, Juanita Yvette Lozano, has been indicted for the theft of Bush’s debate prep tape. Some obvious, immediate questions: How dumb was Mark Mackinnon to hire this woman? Did it really take the Justice Department this long to figure it out – or was it put on hold until John Ashcroft showed up? Would a low-level staffer do this on her own initiative with no imput or encouragement from the Gore team? Why did she pick Tom Downey as the recipient? Let the inquisition continue. Or as Matt Drudge would breathlessly say, “Developing …”

Well, if that headline doesn’t bring us some traffic, what will? Thanks for all the subsequent emails about Senator “I’m-Not-A-Racist” Byrd. They raise an interesting question: what happens when an offensive term for a particular group then gets generalized to others? Byrd’s defense is that he doesn’t think the term “nigger” is racial any more. It can apply to whites and blacks – so it’s not racist. But its origins are clearly racist; and the term is clearly derogatory. Similarly, a 20 year-old reader points out, Chris Rock has a famous routine which starts with: “I love black people, but I hate niggers.” Is Rock racist? And what’s the difference between him and Byrd? Well, Rock is black, of course. And he’s deliberately funny, unlike Byrd, who’s merely a joke. But different standards for black and white discourse is a little, er, racist, isn’t it? In my neighborhood, the n-word is ubiquitous. But it’s a mainly black neighborhood and the word is interchangeable with ‘dude’. I wouldn’t use it in a million years -especially in the ‘hood. There are similar problems with the term ‘faggot.’ In his early days, Eminem said he had nothing against gay people, just faggots. Just as not all gay men were faggots, not all black guys are niggers. The question is whether this is one step toward enlightenment or one step back toward bigotry. I’m inclined to think that, in the younger generation, the use of such terms need not be prima facie case of prejudice. It’s quite common, for example, for high school kids to use the word ‘gay’ to describe anything they don’t particularly like. It has no tangible reference to homosexuals – although it hardly bespeaks acceptance. But in general, the use of the term now is far less ominous than it would have been ten years ago. So let the linguistic waves roll and the racial, post-racial epithets mount. And let old Klansmen like Byrd look before they mumble.

BEAT THIS SENTENCE: “Indeed dialectical critical realism may be seen under the aspect of Foucauldian strategic reversal – of the unholy trinity of Parmenidean/Platonic/Aristotelean provenance; of the Cartesian-Lockean-Humean-Kantian paradigm, of foundationalisms (in practice, fideistic foundationalisms) and irrationalisms (in practice, capricious exercises of the will-to-power or some other ideologically and/or psycho-somatically buried source) new and old alike; of the primordial failing of western philosophy, ontological monovalence, and its close ally, the epistemic fallacy with its ontic dual; of the analytic problematic laid down by Plato, which Hegel served only to replicate in his actualist monovalent analytic reinstatement in transfigurative reconciling dialectical connection, while in his hubristic claims for absolute idealism he inaugurated the Comtean, Kierkegaardian and Nietzschean eclipses of reason, replicating the fundaments of positivism through its transmutation route to the superidealism of a Baudrillard.”
– from Roy Bhaskar’s “Plato Etc: The Problems of Philosophy and Their Resolution.” (Verso ) Nominations now open for the single most incomprehensible, pretentious sentence published in “English.” This one courtesy of reader, Gerard Vanderleun.

The Chicago Sun-Times is on a roll. Their most recent story about Jesse Jackson’s racket, ahem, charity, Operation-PUSH, features an unholy alliance between Jackson and Republican governor George Ryan. Jackson had long attacked Ryan for failing to do enough to enroll poor kids in the state health-care program for children, KidCare. Then Ryan awarded Jackson a $763,000 no-bid contract to promote KidCare to Operation PUSH kids. All Jackson and his acolytes need to do is promote KidCare three times a week in any context. No wonder Jackson responded by giving Ryan an operation-PUSH Peace Award. (The event qualified as one of the thrice-weekly KidCare promotions.) PUSH claims to have moved 151 families into KidCare in the first seven months of the contract. Let’s say they can claim 250 families by the end of the twelve months. That’s $3,000 an enrollment. Nice work if you can get it. Does Governor Ryan support websites as well? Or do I have to attack him first?

Thanks to those of you offering definitions of Byrd’s ‘W.N.’ Here are the most persuasive. One reader explains: “‘White Nigger’ is a pre integration southern term for the very worst white trash. The Bad guys in the movie “Deliverance” are archetypal White Niggers. I have seen a lot of old people regress into the prejudices and language of their youth as they become senile. It does not mean that he was insincere during the years he claimed to be a liberal, but that part of his mind is now gone.” Another offers: “In the early 1980’s I worked in a large discount store in a small town. In the lunch room a group of us were discussing our various religions. It was a good-natured chat, and I mentioned my Catholic upbringing – the altar boy days, the “dominus vobiscum” of the Latin Mass, the incense. I noticed an older worker at a nearby table visibly stiffen at my comments. This person, a rather odd, solitary guy, was known for being something of a survivalist of the Conspiracy bent. A few hours later I passed him in a storage section of the store. As we walked past each other he turned to me and said, “I always thought Catholics were white niggers.” I was too surprised to say much of anything, so I just shrugged and went on my way. The next day, he walked up to me and whispered, ‘N*****r.'” Well, the consensus seems to be that it’s not very nice.