Category: The Dish

Timothy Egan considers the myopic media coverage on race:

In 2000, George Bush won West Virginia 52 to 46 percent.  Four years later, he’d increased his margin to 56-43. In Kentucky, Bush won 57-41 in 2000, and padded that to 60-40 four years later.

Appalachia, we now know, is Clinton’s heartland – but it does not resemble the Democratic landscape. If these are Democratic states, there’s some strange serum in the local brew at party headquarters.

This quote from Kentucky from George Packer’s new piece on American conservatism is helpful context:

“He’s a Muslim, isn’t he?” an aging mine electrician asked. “I won’t vote for a colored man. He’ll put too many coloreds in jobs. Colored are O.K.—they’ve done well, good for them, look where they came from. But radical coloreds, no—like that Farrakhan, or that senator from New York, Rangel. There’d be riots in the streets, like the sixties.”

The California court had a more direct response:

It is sophistic to suggest that this conclusion is avoidable by reason of the circumstance that the marriage statutes permit a gay man or a lesbian to marry someone of the opposite sex, because making such a choice would require the negation of the person’s sexual orientation.

Of course, the negation of gay people’s sexual orientation is the goal of D’Souza. We do not exist, as far as he is concerned.

A blogger laments:

Reihan’s struggle against Comcast is every person’s struggle. Or at least every blogger in the DC area’s.

Some day, I plan to write a full-length, filmed musical about one man’s struggle to defeat Comcast. Hopefully, it will end with our hero triumphant, a beautiful lady in his arms while he downloads a movie to his new Netflix box, which has triumphed in the video-on-demand market and become a benevolent monopolist.

A reader writes:

I just listened to Webb’s Fresh Air interview–thanks for the link. If Obama does not pick Webb for VP, he’s not half as smart as I think he is.

Besides all his personal qualifications, besides all the obvious political benefits, Webb could do something for Obama that only he could do, and that would fit perfectly with Obama’s larger goals–indeed, complete them: he could bind up the internal wounds that have plagued the Democratic Party since the anti-war days of the 60’s and 70’s, and through that healing, begin to heal the larger American body politic–that great Boomer schism you have talked about at length. Who else could serve that function? Not Edwards, not Strickland, good as they might be in other ways. Internally, Webb’s experience as a citizen soldier, coupled with his early and adamant opposition to the Iraq war, could bring the two sides of the Democratic Party together; externally, Webb is the only one with the experience and the personality to take on McCain and the neo-cons. This interview–and what I’ve learned about Webb recently–have sold me on the guy. He’s as smart as they come, he’s got the creds, and he’s a thoughtful, progressive force.

Freud would have a field day with this.

Gallup has now compiled an index. The Dow of our discontent?

Much happier than many social conservatives would predict or believe.

So says Poulos.

Jonathan Chait explains why not supporting Clinton isn’t an attack on feminism:

Typical politicians only stay in a campaign if they have a realistic prospect of winning. A majority of pledged delegates are now in Obama’s camp, and with his total delegate lead nearly as large as the number of still-undecided superdelegates, Clinton’s chances are essentially nil. But like the Japanese military in World War II, Clinton die-hards have a culture of perseverance. They see surrender as worse than defeat and fighting as a worthy end that need not have any real prospect of victory. In Tuesday’s New York Times, a full-page ad from a group called WomenCount PAC announced, "Hillary’s voice is OUR voice, and she’s speaking for all of us."

It looks pretty crazy to those of us not old enough to fight in the second-wave feminist wars. If I spent years being disrespected and discriminated against in my household chores and my workplace, though, maybe I’d see it differently.

But Clinton’s candidacy, unlike those of so many other women, is not and could never be a triumph for feminism. It’s a triumph of nepotism and dynasticism.

“We are open to comprise.  We are willing to go more than half way.  We’re willing to work to make sure that we can achieve a compromise.  And I guess the question is: is Senator Clinton’s campaign willing to do the same?” – David Axelrod, to NPR’s All Things Considered, to be broadcast tonight.