Category: The Dish

Phillip Carter reacts to news that Jay Hood won’t be named U.S. military attache to Pakistan because of his ties to Guantanamo Bay:

The cancellation of Hood’s appointment shows a promising new willingness among senior administration officials to listen to world opinion. It would have been incredibly tone-deaf of us to send an officer with Hood’s assignment history to Pakistan — probably about as smart as using an officer like Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a man with a history of worrisome public comments about Christianity and the war on terrorism, to engage with Arab and Israeli officials. The military attache position in Islamabad deserves a soldier-diplomat par excellence, and unfortunately, that’s not Jay Hood.

An excerpt from Taylor Clark’s article on vegetarianism:

To demonstrate what a vegetarian really is, let’s begin with a simple thought experiment. Imagine a completely normal person with completely normal food cravings, someone who has a broad range of friends, enjoys a good time, is carbon-based, and so on. Now remove from this person’s diet anything that once had eyes, and, wham!, you have yourself a vegetarian. Normal person, no previously ocular food, end of story. Some people call themselves vegetarians and still eat chicken or fish, but unless we’re talking about the kind of salmon that comes freshly plucked from the vine, this makes you an omnivore. A select few herbivores go one step further and avoid all animal products—milk, eggs, honey, leather—and they call themselves vegan, which rhymes with "tree men." These people are intense.

The rest is here.

The big state gave Clinton a ten-point victory in its primary. A new SUSA poll gives Obama a 6 point edge. When you look at the demographic date, you find that the black vote hasn’t changed much, unlike in other states. And Latino support for Clinton has dropped, but Obama hasn’t managed to gain. White males have moved decisively to Obama but the biggest swing appears among Asian-Americans. The Asian vote has gone from 71 – 25 for Clinton to 54 – 37 for Obama.

That’s been Ellen Malcolm’s career: seeing politics as all about gender. And seeing gender as synonymous with being a very liberal Democrat. No wonder she’s bitter about a chance to get past identity politics and the big money politics she represents.

"They’re convinced [Obama] is a Muslim, a terrorist, a guy who’s coming to take away their guns. It’s just sad," – an Obama supporter in West Virginia.

The paranoia and delusions of some parts of white America are no less irrational than the paranoia and delusions of some parts of black America. But the right response to this is not acquiescence: it’s engagement.

The general buzz on American Idol this year has been that it’s a dud. I disagree. Watching Andrew Lloyd Webber leer at young male talent is always entertaining. And I watch Ryan Seacrest with morbid fascination: how can someone be that smooth, that good, that professional, that young?

But I’ve been most engrossed in the character contrasts, which is what reality shows are best at. David Cook is a fantastic poseur, very talented but so obviously straining for Seriousness it’s painful to watch at times. There are few people as sad as rock performers who think they are philosophers – especially those who don’t have a drug habit. He’s obviously the smartest performer, and probably the most all-round talented one, but who wants to encourage the pretension?

And then Jason Castro: the kid who didn’t really want to be there. How wonderful was that? Stoners the world over tuned in to see what this young, dreadlocked, mellow charmer would do next. I was blown away by his "Over The Rainbow" but his singing in general is pretty weak and his main attraction was his sweet-eyed nonchalance, his obvious ambivalence to the commercial cheesiness of the show, his indifference to the cult of celebrity and vanity and ambition that Idol represents. He actually seemed comfortable being himself. He didn’t need this shebang. And to see that personal security on network television – a walking (well, meandering) rebuke to the need for external validation and celebrity culture – evoked pure wonder. I was smitten.

And then poor David Archuleta. He is obviously the best singer in the competition, is almost certainly going to win it, but just as obviously is totally lost. If Castro was indifferent to the process, Archuleta seems as if his entire life has been directed toward it. Clips show him crashing the show years ago; he won his first singing competition at 10 years’ old, and is a veteran Star Search competitor. The kid is still only 17 years’ old. He has, alas, a classic over-bearing show-biz dad, who has now been banned from backstage. David looks to me like a Michael Jackson in the making: a brilliant talent sacrificed to the cult of celebrity and stardom at so young an age that his own emotional and spiritual development has been frozen. When he is asked to speak, he has nothing to say, except a Bambi-style mode of total humility, amazement and innocence. I feel for him and it’s had not to hope someone could still rescue him from the machine that is about to consume him.

Between Jason Castro and David Archuleta, you see two ways of living in the world: one sacrificed to external recognition and one indifferent to it. We all have a bit of each in us in this tabloid, celebrified world. But Jason, to my mind, will probably live a much happier life. And he’ll know, at some level, why. There’s a lesson in there somewhere – even on a reality show.

(Photo: David Archuleta and friend by Ethan Miller/Getty.)

Listen to her say that whites cannot and will not vote for a black man for president. Money quote: "This country is about race." That’s the Clinton argument at this point. Sad.

Rasmussen sees a statistically insignificant but persistent lead over McCain nationally, led by unaffiliated voters: 

One key to this changing dynamic is that Obama now leads McCain among unaffiliated voters by nine percentage points. McCain is supported by 81% of Republicans, Obama by 70% of Democrats.

Once Clinton is finally dispatched, it’s hard to see Obama’s Democratic support being lower than McCain’s GOP backing. This contest will be for independents and leaners. Which can only be good for this excessively polarized country.

By the way, Rasmussen just dropped their Obama-Clinton tracking poll.

Don’t watch this video. If you’re not, it’s stunning.

A rip-roaring endorsement from my old friend, Niall. My thoughts later: