Category: The Dish

Virgina Postrel:

It’s infuriating how all three presidential candidates prattle on about the need to fight global warming while also complaining about the high price of gasoline. The candidates treat CO2 emissions as a social issue like gay marriage, with no economic ramifications. In the real world, barring a massive buildup of nuclear plants, reducing carbon dioxide emissions means consuming less energy and that means raising prices a lot, either directly with a tax or indirectly with a cap-and-trade permitting system.

A stunning National Geographic classic.

Karl Clinton’s future attacks on McCain.

Ross defends the freak show:

Cast your mind further back, to 1992, and consider something as seemingly insubstantial as the controversy over Bill Clinton’s draft-dodging – or something less substantial still, like the mini-controversy over Hillary (Rodham) Clinton’s now-she-uses-it, now-she-doesn’t approach to keeping, or not keeping, her maiden name. I think you can make a pretty strong case that Clinton’s peculiarly Boomerish relationship to the military brass – the mix of suspicion, condescension and ignorance on both sides – had a more decisive impact on American foreign policy in the 1990s than, say, what Clinton-the-candidate said about China policy in the run-up to the ’92 vote. And while there’s a sense, obviously, in which nothing could be further from the actual work of governing than the question of whether the First Lady of the United States has her husband’s last name, in hindsight I think that the mix of echt-feminist principle and political opportunism that Hillary displayed in her changing choice of last and middle names probably told us as much about her approach to politics than most of the speeches she gave in the course of the campaign against George H.W. Bush.

You can make the case that almost anything is relevant to understanding candidacies. And with hindsight, you can draw all sorts of lessons. The point is: the details that are currently being assembled to smear and re-define Obama are not just random small details that help us understand him more fully. They are a carefully choreographed series of anecdotes and details designed to tell a specific story: that Obama is a Marxian super-lefty with dubious ties to terrorists, an anti-American, an alien, an outsider, an elitist, a threat, and so on. This is McCarthyite pointillism. None of these specific details have been brought to the surface – in a life that is crammed with details – by accident. Some may tell you something, as in: Obama is a liberal who has long been at home with other liberals. But the idea that the Wright YouTubes tell us anything more real about Obama’s faith experience than his own writings is silly. The idea that a lapel pin, or lack of one, tells us anything about Obama is absurd. That is should be the prime focus of the mainstream media in the week before a critical primary says much much more about ABC News than about Obama.

This blog has now ascended to #44 on Technorati’s list of most linked or "authoritah". That’s the highest we’ve ever been, I think. Thanks for making it happen. And thanks especially to Jessie Roberts, Patrick Appel and the Atlantic interns who have done so much to expand the blog’s reach and coverage.

Mah Su, 19, a Long Neck Padaung hill tribe woman smiles as she poses inside her home July 13, 2006 in Chiang Dao, Thailand. All the Long Neck villages are set up for tourists and just over a year ago the hill tribe members were hand picked to move closer to Chiang Mai from more remote communities so that they could be more accessible. The Padaung women famously wear brass rings around their necks, beginning at five-years-old, to distort the growth of their collarbones and making them look like they have long necks. They are originally from eastern Burma near the Thailand border. By Paula Bronstein/Getty.

What has emerged in 2008 is more than a single campaign.

Callimachus compares the NYT’s coverage of Expelled with its review of Fahrenheit 9/11:

Perhaps, you will say, my accidental convergence of opposition to both Moore’s self-serving America-skeptic pseudo-pacifist showmanship and "Expelled’s" shabby special pleading for anti-scientific Trojan horses allows me to appear to take a higher ground than the "Times." I have spent the day trying to think of a single cause I advocate, however earnestly, that I would wish to see promoted by such tactics as these filmmakers use. One undeniable good that I think would be advanced by propaganda and deception and lies.

I cannot think of one. If I were framed for murder and on death row, I would not want Michael Moore to try to win sympathy for me.

How he condescends. Why is it okay to talk about the next generation as "Kool-Aid" drinkers, deluded fools, idiots, suckers … but fatal to say anything actually sympathetic about the struggling white working classes? The contempt the Clinton campaign has for Obama voters is remarkable. And offensive:

One thought that this video inevitably raises: what if Obama had ever said such a thing or been to such an event? Given what we know now about this campaign, would it not be the conventional wisdom that it would be the end of his candidacy? And yet, Rendell is still a pillar of the Democratic party, central to the Clintons’ Pennsylvania strategy, and praised as a classic old-style white ethnic pol. I don’t imagine his credibility or reputation will be affected one iota by this. Even if it were Rendell running for president this year, I don’t think this video would have Hannity and O’Reilly and Steyn and Coulter in a lather.

What do we learn from this? That Obama has to be even more distanced from these things because he’s black. That’s all. Race matters. The double standard endures. And the MSM perpetuates it. As do the Clintons.