The Dish

A quiz for typeface nerds.

Pretty funny result for this online poll at the LA Times. Asked whether they’re bitter, over 60 percent answer:

Yes. I’ll show you bitter when I vote.

Yeah, I know: it’s a meaningless online poll. But telling Americans they’re a cheerful happy bunch when the wrong-track number is at an historical high seems a slightly dubious political strategy to me. Almost – oh, I don’t know – out of touch?

Back in 2006, Joe Lieberman couldn’t get enough of Barack Obama, and Obama stoutly defended Lieberman from parts of the anti-war left. Lieberman begged Obama to come to Connecticut to speak on his behalf. It would be a good question for the press to ask Lieberman after his description of Obama as "far-left" today. In what way is Obama "far left" now in a way he wasn’t "far left" then?

Of course, no reporter will ask Lieberman this question, will they?

From the New Yorker:

Ask a vertical-transportation-industry professional to recall an episode of an elevator in free fall—the cab plummeting in the shaftway, frayed rope ends trailing in the dark—and he will say that he can think of only one. That would be the Empire State Building incident of 1945, in which a B-25 bomber pilot made a wrong turn in the fog and crashed into the seventy-ninth floor, snapping the hoist and safety cables of two elevators. Both of them plunged to the bottom of the shaft. One of them fell from the seventy-fifth floor with a woman aboard—an elevator operator. (The operator of the other one had stepped out for a cigarette.)

Saved by nicotine-craving. The poor woman survived, mercifully.

The senator thinks Kristol’s smear from one sentence is "a good question." Then this on Obama:

He’s got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America.

I’m curious as to what those positions might be. I presume an opposition to permanent occupation of Iraq is not now some function of Marxism. Tax rates at the Clinton levels? Cap-and-trade? What actually does Lieberman mean by this?
 

"As a native-born, small-town Pennsylvanian, a son of native-born, small-town Pennsylvania parents – one from the coal region, one from Lancaster County – let me assure you that the so-called offensive, condescending things Barack Obama said about the people I come from are basically right on target," – John  Baer, Philly.com.

A reader writes:

As we get closer to the general, the statement "Obama is just another liberal" seems to be popping up more and more.  Or as your recent dissenting reader put it, Obama is just another "opportunistic, heavily secular left liberal who looks disdainfully on "quaint" traditional American lifestyles." Given your own conservative predilection, I’m mildly disappointed that you (or anyone else for the matter) haven’t offered any serious rebuke to the charges.  You’ve been content, rather, to admit that your conservative philosophy sometimes admits that a liberal is the best choice at times, and perhaps mention the possibility that Obama transcends such labels.

Yet I think the significant thing to note in relation to the label of liberal or conservative, as applied to Obama, is that it stands or falls with how one would characterize the politics of Christopher Lasch:  whether Lasch is a malcontent Leftist or an eccentric Paleoconservative.   In either case, Obama represents the most prominent Laschian politician we’ve yet to witness.

Obama, like Lasch, argues that the foundations of a strong social order are to be found in the small communities.  These communities are themselves built upon individuals united in an Emersonian virtue ethics, which allows for religion (and hunting) to play a prominent role in social stability without attributing to it any role in macro-policy.  Critiques are forcefully leveled at the corporate elite, not because it’s some zero-sum game and the elites are winning (vis-a-vis Edwards), but because the essential role of any business is to provide a service to its community; those banks which underwrote loans for duplicitous mortgage brokers failed in this responsibility.

As my own copy of The True and Only Heaven (and for that matter my copy of Revenge of the Elites) is currently on loan, I’ll simply reference a few quotes on Lasch’s wikipedia page:

"The tradition I am talking about … tends to be skeptical of programs for the wholesale redemption of society… It is very radically democratic and in that sense it clearly belongs on the Left. But on the other hand it has a good deal more respect for tradition than is common on the Left, and for religion too."

"…any movement that offers any real hope for the future will have to find much of its moral inspiration in the plebeian radicalism of the past and more generally in the indictment of progress, large-scale production and bureaucracy that was drawn up by a long line of moralists whose perceptions were shaped by the producers’ view of the world."

And, of course, no comparison of Obama and Lasch would be complete without at least mentioning Lasch’s extensive apology of Hope (hardened by memory and tragedy) that together we may yet build a better future against (blind) Optimism in the progress of the modern machine (over and against quaint beliefs and traditions that "divide us").

Roger Kimball is aghast at Obama for being a pointy-headed elitist. Check out the photograph of Roger Kimball.

Noam on Clinton overplaying her hand:

This was unquestionably a serious stumble on Obama’s part. But the high-percentage move would have been to get out of the way and let the media run with it. If this were going to do Obama in, it would have done so without her help. Instead, she’s thrown Obama a lifeline. She’s made herself look completely cynical, she’s once again reminded superdelegates of everything they hated about the Clinton era, and she’s started making claims about her own cultural authenticity that don’t pass the smell test.