Category: The Dish

[Patrick Appel] John Heilemann tries to explain the media coverage of Obama and Clinton:

Campaigns are, at bottom, a competition between memes: infectious ideas that gather force through sheer repetition. The most powerful of these memes are what Just refers to as meta-narratives, the backdrops against which everything plays out in the media. Clinton’??s meta-narrative,? she says, ??is that she’??ll do anything to win; she can’t be trusted, she’??s ethically challenged; she’??s manipulative, calculating, and programmed. Obama’??s meta-narrative is decidedly otherwise. It’??s the same, in a way, as John McCain’??s, says Just. ??He?’s authentic, honest, free of taint. Then you add in new, charismatic, and an agent of change.? […]

By arguing that one of Clinton’??s key virtues was her ability to go toe-to-toe with the GOP attack machine, her campaign exacerbated instead of ameliorated her reputation for ruthlessness. By bragging about how tough they were,? says John Edwards’s former chief strategist, Joe Trippi, ?they reinforced the sense of the media that everything they did had a negative cast to it.? At the same time, Trippi argues, ??it made it really hard for them to call Obama on his shit. How can you complain about Obama being negative when you’??re bragging about your willingness to do the same thing against the Republicans?

Obama, by contrast, was in the enviable position of being able to author his own meta-narrative. With his two autobiographies, he was able at once to accentuate his positive qualities and, in pointing out the potentially damaging aspects of his past (his teenage drug use preeminent among them), to inoculate himself against attacks. The grassrootsy, bottom-up, decentralized campaign structure that he and his team built, funded by small donors via the Internet, enhanced the impression of him as a man committed to a different kind of politics. And his strategists were wise enough to understand that when it was time to go negative, they should never do so with TV ads but stick instead to more sub-rosa media, from radio and direct mail to robo-calls. ??In my experience in politics,? Trippi says, ?nobody ever really gets called out on that crap.

(hat tip: Isaac Chotiner)

[Patrick Appel] A new blog. An excerpt:

And of course, it goes without saying that white people who ride bikes like to talk about how they are saving the earth. If you know a person who rides to work, you should take them aside and say “Hey, thanks. Sincerely, The Earth.” Then give a thumbs up. That white person will ride home on a cloud.

(hat tip: From The Archives )

[Patrick Appel] This time with a Cheney look-alike:

[Peter Suderman] Greetings, Andrew Sullivan readers! Many thanks to Andrew for inviting me to help look after his place while he’s gone this week.

I should say up front that I’m a bit of a gear head, and also a complete movie fanatic. That means that for the last few weeks, much of my attention has been devoted to what appear to be the final moments in the high-def format war. The good news for movie geeks is that the high-def format war is all but officially over. After a series of developments in which all the news seemed to be bad for Toshiba and its HD DVD format, the company has leaked that, sometime early this week, it will officially announce that it’s ceasing production of HD discs and players. This unequivocal winner here is Sony’s Blu-ray format, which will now become the standard in high def video. And it means that, for film and gadget nuts looking to upgrade to high definition home video, now’s the time. 

But although peace may be a good thing, the end of a battle doesn’t necessarily mean that the right side won. And in this case, a triumphant Blu-ray regime may not actually be the optimal outcome for those of us on the buying end. For one thing, the discs and the equipment are more expensive. Increased demand may take care of some of the cost difference, but prices are likely to remain higher for a longer period of time than they would have had HD prevailed. For another, up until now, whenever Blu-ray and HD released concurrent versions of the same title, the HD releases tended to have more features, and many folks reported preferring the interactivity of HD.  

The biggest problem, though—at least as far as I’m concerned—is that Blu-ray was released as an unfinished format. Early players aren’t able to play all the features on newer discs (this has already resulted in some legal trouble for Sony Samsung*), and players with the final hardware profile aren’t expected to hit the market till late this year. So although there are some clear benefits to Sony’s format (larger storage capacity, multiple lossless audio tracks, ubiquity via the PS3), I’m not sure the winner here was really the best.

On the other hand, I’m also currently researching Blu-ray players with the intention of upgrading as soon as possible. To the victor go the spoils.

*Corrected to say Samsung.

[Patrick Appel] "I discovered long ago that, if you write a book about cats or dogs, everybody loves you, but if you dare to write a book about human beings, all hell breaks loose. It is impossible to write an uncensored, honest book about human behaviour without offending at least part of your audience. If you feel you have a basic truth to tell, then you must tell it and be prepared to suffer the inevitable criticisms," – Desmond Morris.

[Patrick Appel] Ross makes a good point:

[Clinton’s] been campaigning as if the Democratic primaries were winner-take-all, essentially giving up on the run of states where Obama looked likely to win (thus allowing him to rack up huge margins of victory, and overtake her in the delegate count) while doubling down on the later states where she’s ahead. It’s the Giuliani strategy all over again, in a sense – except that the Giuliani strategy at least made sense in theory, because it promised to deliver Rudy an enormous delegate haul in winner-take-all states like Florida, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. (A haul that McCain eventually claimed, as it happens.) Whereas even if Hillary’s strategy works, it won’t really work, since she’d need enormous, unrealistic margins in Texas and Ohio to make up the ground she lost by essentially ceding two weeks worth of contests to Obama.

[Patrick Appel] As always, your e-mails are welcome. I’ll be checking the account this week.

I’m taking next week off for a vacation. Don’t get pissy. I haven’t had one since August. And the good news is that my guest-bloggers are among the best the web has to offer: Hillary Bok, Hilzoy from Obsidian Wings; Jim Manzi and Peter Suderman from The American Scene; Reihan Salam of the Atlantic and a Dish vet; and Patrick Appel, my assistant for the past two months. See you next Sunday.

Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, 5.10 pm.

And why the fuck not? He is asking for money to campaign in Texas. The pitch:

A few weeks ago, I stood at Chuck Norris’ ranch before a crowd of people and said that Texas would be the place where the dynamics of this race changed dramatically in our favor.

Since then, after winning West Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas and Louisiana and fighting close races in Washington, Oklahoma, Missouri and Virginia we have positioned ourselves to do just that.

Remember the Republican nominee must have 1,191 votes to claim the nomination or else there will be a brokered convention where the Party’s top candidates will have an opportunity to make an impassioned plea as to why they are the best choice to represent the Republican Party in the fall against the Democrat candidate.

Before we get to a brokered convention however we will need to win Texas and seize the momentum.