The Dish

A reader writes:

It seems to me, as someone who spent a couple of decades working in cubicles, that Franz totally misses the significant feature of the cubicle from the perspective of the office worker.  It is not that it makes everybody equal — after all, managers still tend to have offices in most companies.  Intel under Grove notwithstanding, virtually all second-level managers and above do.

No, spotting the critical factor requires knowing that, pre cubicle, most office floors were laid out as an open sea of desks.  The change was not the loss of individual offices for workers.  Rather it was that workers acquired some kind of privacy in which to work.

The walls are not high, and there are no doors. But at least they provide some muffling of sound from those surrounding you — which can be important if you spend a lot of time on the phone, or if you are trying to concentrate on the program that you are writing.

Perhaps as important, from a quality of life perspective, the workers now have some wall space to personalize their work space.  Put up your kids pictures.  Put up posters, even.  Add a couple of shelves full of books, or manuals, or just pretty little dust-catchers.

In short, far from being the step back that Franz seems to assume, the cubicle was actually a step forward from the open floor covered with desks that actually existed.

John Cole vents:

Enough is enough. Go ahead and call me “Sullivanesque” in my rants about this awful person. Sullivan was right about her essential character and who she really is, and we all know what we will get if she is elected. Four years of bullshit, division, victimhood, and failed policies that would have been great, but those mean old Republicans just didn’t let it pass or people just were not smart enough to do what she wanted. It won’t be her fault, it will be the opposition party for opposing her, or it will be our fault because we didn’t support her enough, or, well, you know how it is with her.

It’s the war, stupid. If you want a taste of what McCain will face, Joe Biden just unveiled it.

If you’re gay and settle down as a couple, the government will make sure that you pay more. The important thing is to deter gay people from being supported in their relationships. And that, remember, is a allegedly conservative position: punishing commitment and responsibility.

This ad has managed to actually shock me. Yes, me, rabid Clinton-hater, second only to Hitchens in Clinton Derangement Syndrome, proud holder of the view that Senator Clinton is one of the ghastliest examples of pure political cynicism and opportunism in public life, an empty, reverberating shell of a human being, a case study in how power and the search for it do indeed in the end corrupt absolutely. I still didn’t quite expect this:

This is far too crude even for Karl Rove. It is a parody of a brutal Rove ad. Without batting an eyelid, Clinton effortlessly adopts the entire worldview of the most cynical of Republican operatives and applies it with the delicacy of a shovel to the likely Democratic party nominee. This is a) how desperate she must know feel; b) how utterly irrelevant it is to her what happens in this election unless she is the next Democratic nominee for president.

Simply put: how could the person who approved this ad and the argument it represents logically vote for Barack Obama over John McCain this fall? If it is an Obama-McCain race, how would that person not feel vindicated if Obama lost? In fact, making Obama lose is now manifestly the prime objective of the Clintons. There is no other plausible interpretation of their recent actions, statements and behavior. I find this pretty gob-smacking as an observer; but if I were a Democrat?

Now answer this question: do you believe that the Clintons actually believe that Obama is an effete, ineffectual elitist piece of roadkill for John McCain … but still somehow impossible to beat by the rules of the Democratic primary system? Or do they think he’s better than that? Are they cynics or narcissists? Or, as anyone with an eye and the stomach can see, some horribly perfect combination of the two?

This ad and Clinton’s insistence on personally making this argument again and again in the baldest ad hominem ways in a state critical to Democratic hopes this fall should remove any illusions anyone has about the core character of the junior senator from New York. The best gloss is that her own vanity has genuinely persuaded her that she and she alone could possibly beat John McCain. The worst is that after decades of hardball politicking, she and her husband have become completely indistinguishable from the forces that first tried to destroy them.

Just less artful and even less ashamed.

Phillip Carter ponders the question.

The great historian endorses Obama.

A reader writes:

I imagine that George Will and yourself would have no trouble retiring at 75 if you needed to.  Of course, you’ll probably be able to retire much sooner if you so choose because of your high-profile nicely paying careers as desk-jockeys. But let me tell you about my dad.  He’s 62 and doing his best to keep his body together to get to 65 to collect his full Social Security check which will allow him some much needed rest.  You see, his heel is always in pain from standing on concrete for 30 years doing carpentry for a furniture manufacturer.  He can’t get worker’s comp for such a chronic condition and he would never qualify for disability but it’s also true that he can barely stand at the end of the day.  I can’t imagine him working to 75.  It would kill him.

Another adds:

George Will’s bit about life expectancy and Social Security is simply wrong.  A man who reached age 65 in 1940 could have expected to draw Social Security benefits for 12.7 years.  One who reached 65 in 1990 could expect to draw benefits for 15.3 years.  Social Security’s long-range problem is related to low birthrates and a falling ratio of workers to retirees, not to longevity.  (And anyway, it’s not Social Security that’s the big burden for the future, it’s Medicare.)

Here is Dave Barry to help you cope:

Yes, this is a pesky chore, but remember that paying taxes is not a ”one-way street.” When you send your money to the government, the government, in return, provides you with vital services, such as not putting you in prison. The government also uses your money to pay for programs that benefit all Americans, such as the Catfish Genome Project.

Marc has had enough of elitism:

…it’s silly to debate elitism by pointing to the alleged elitism of your opponent. Because this is Washington, D.C., and if you’re a presidential candidate or a national political figure, chances are pretty good that you’re developed a bit of an ego and a bit of a sense of entitlement.

James Joyner adds:

Really, elitism is almost an inherent assumption in politics, especially at the national level. Campaigns involve people asking “the little guy” to trust them to “take care of” them on the basis that their unique experience makes them best suited to do that. It’s hard to be more elitist than that.