Poseur Alert

"This piece — in its textual and sculptural forms — is meant to call into question the relationship between form and function as they converge on the body. The artwork exists as the verbal narrative you see above, as an installation that will take place in Green Hall, as a time-based performance, as a independent concept, as a myth and as a public discourse.

It creates an ambiguity that isolates the locus of ontology to an act of readership. An intentional ambiguity pervades both the act and the objects I produced in relation to it. The performance exists only as I chose to represent it. For me, the most poignant aspect of this representation — the part most meaningful in terms of its political agenda (and, incidentally, the aspect that has not been discussed thus far) — is the impossibility of accurately identifying the resulting blood. Because the miscarriages coincide with the expected date of menstruation (the 28th day of my cycle), it remains ambiguous whether the there was ever a fertilized ovum or not. The reality of the pregnancy, both for myself and for the audience, is a matter of reading," – Aliza Shvarts. Oy.

Carter and Hamas

A qualified defense from Joe Klein:

Not that I have any illusions about Hamas. They’re violent, they don’t believe in the right of Israel to exist, they may not ever change.

BUT…they did win an election in 2006, an election we–not the Palestinian Authority and certainly not the Israelis–insisted upon. If the Bush Administration is going to push a "Freedom Agenda"–admittedly, a dubious proposition, especially the way that Bush has pushed it–then it has a certain responsibility to deal with the people who win the elections, no matter how odious.

Final Polling Thoughts

From Charles Franklin:

Now the key question is whether undecideds push her over a 10 point win, or whether increases in turnout by new "unlikely" voters raises Obama’s total.

…remember, since the polls don’t allocate undecided, both they and the trend estimates are leaving some 8 percent of voters on the table. They will go somewhere, and if they break disproportionately for Clinton you have a "huge win", while if they go overwhelmingly for Obama you have a nail biter or a dramatic come-from-behind win. In previous primaries, the "winner" has usually enjoyed a significant increase in support beyond what the last polls showed.

The Key Gallup Finding

More interesting than Obama’s ten-point national lead and Bush’s continued unpopularity is this statistic:

A record number of Americans, 63%, now say the invasion of Iraq was a mistake.

The war remains the great issue of this campaign, as it has been the great issue of the past six years. Yes, McCain can and should argue that what matters is the future, not the past. We should judge the candidates based on what they propose to do about the many wars now percolating in Mesopotamia. But if it is Obama versus McCain, one candidate will have opposed this war from the start and one will have supported it. I think that will matter in deciding which path to take going forward.