Category: The Dish

The most striking result of the ARG poll about the Libby commutation was not just the large number of Republicans ticked off by the president’s abuse of his pardon power. It’s the intensity of the Independent opposition. On reflection, I don’t think it’s that surprising. Independents tend not to think of themselves as protected by group loyalty or a partisan establishment, so they tend to be very skeptical of one side’s capacity to rig the justice system for its own members. Independents get mad at many aspects of the partisan game – from pork to deficits. And the most striking data to come from the polls these days is how many Independents are leaning toward the Democrats. Look at how it might tip even Virginia.  I think it’s less a function of some ideological shift as a shrewd attempt to use one side to police the excesses of the other. If you care about abuse of power, you’ll be anti-GOP right now. That may change. But not for a while.

Bradenton, Florida, 8.30 am.

For a newly updated, global gallery of Dish readers’ window views, click here.

In the heyday of the Cold War, the CIA had its fingers in almost everything. Not like today, of course. Among their projects was bankrolling John Halas and Joy Batchelor’s 1954 movie of Orwell’s Animal Farm. Alas, Orwell wasn’t completely on message. From an engrossing review at the LRB:

Most problematic … was Orwell’s pessimistic ending, in which the pigs become indistinguishable from their human former masters. No matter how often the movie’s screenplay was altered, it always concluded with a successful farmyard uprising in which the oppressed animals overthrew the dictatorial pigs. The Animal Farm project had been initiated when Harry Truman was president; Dwight Eisenhower took office in January 1953, with John Foster Dulles as his secretary of state and Allen Dulles heading the CIA. Leab notes that Animal Farm’s mandated ending complemented the new Dulles policy, which – abandoning Truman’s aim of containing Communism – planned a ‘roll back’, at least in Eastern Europe. As one of the script’s many advisors put it, Animal Farm’s ending should be one where the animals ‘get mad, ask for help from the outside, which they get, and which results in their (the Russian people) with the help of the free nations overthrowing their oppressors’.

And all in a movie designed in part to warn against propaganda.

(Hat tip: 3QD.)

In Australia, the gauntlet is thrown down:

While the successful applicants will not be paid, each will receive a pack of Durex sex products, a chance to win 1,000 Australian dollars ($857 U.S.), plus professional prestige, the company said in a statement.

A reader writes:

One of the more frustrating aspects of dealing with Bush apologists is highlighted by the reader accusing you of "Bush Derangement Syndrome", which is just one of their more desperate methods of avoiding debate on substance. These people are afraid to acknowledge that it is possible, even most likely, that citizens develop animosity towards political figures because of things they actually say and do, not because of who they ‘are’ or which tribe they’re from. But as the last six years have shown, once a person is accepted as part of their tribe, it becomes ‘derangement’ to point out any flaw in that person’s conduct, however insignificant.

You have documented this as an authoritarian impulse in your book, but for many Bush followers it isn’t that sinister. They just like their world clean and simple – My Guys vs. Their Guys. The imperative is to quickly diagnose into which camp the political figure falls, and everything beyond that point is a matter of propaganda and name-calling. It goes without saying that there are numerous examples of this mindset on the Left as well.

Like millions of Americans, I was not a pre-9/11 Bush supporter, but gave his administration the benefit of the doubt to proceed responsibly in the War on Terror. When you swallow your pride like that in the name of comity and love for your country only to see it tossed into the Rove/Cheney bag of dirty tricks, yeah, you can get a little upset.

From the "You Think You’ve Got Problems" file: some poor wretch inherited Paris Hilton’s old cell-phone number.

"I don’t care," – Tommy Lee Jones.

The iPhone backlash continues on this satirical site called iDea. They’re just jealous. If you really can’t abide the AT&T mess, you can always get your mom to knit one:

The Christianists really can’t catch a break, can they? Ambers notes:

Which is more credible? Fred Thompson denying that he ever departed from the pro-life orthodoxy? Or literally a half dozen questionnaires, news accounts, and numerous eye-witnesses who insist he did?

Well, with a lot of democracies, actually:

The political knowledge of the average voter has been tested repeatedly, and the scores are impressively low. In polls taken since 1945, a majority of Americans have been unable to name a single branch of government, define the terms "liberal" and "conservative," and explain what the Bill of Rights is. More than two-thirds have reported that they do not know the substance of Roe v. Wade and what the Food and Drug Administration does. Nearly half do not know that states have two senators and three-quarters do not know the length of a Senate term. More than fifty per cent of Americans cannot name their congressman; forty per cent cannot name either of their senators. Voters’ notions of government spending are wildly distorted: the public believes that foreign aid consumes twenty-four per cent of the federal budget, for example, though it actually consumes about one per cent.

This isn’t too encouraging either.