Bawer On Obama

Questions Bruce doesn’t quite answer:

What does it say about the young Obama that he was well-nigh obsessed with his vain braggart of an absentee father but trivialized his mother’s accomplishments? What does it mean that he himself plainly can’t see that his father comes off in these pages as a world-class jerk and his mother as a woman of admirable self-discipline and quiet achievement? What does it mean that throughout his account of his work as a community organizer in Chicago, Obama himself is in sharp focus while the underprivileged folks he’s supposedly trying to help are hazy figures in the distant background?

Greens Against Waterboarding

It wastes so much water:

Hammil recommended the government switch to more eco-friendly means of enhanced interrogation, such as waterboarding with a return-hose device in order to reuse old water, or simply beating suspected terrorists to a bloody pulp.

Well, they’ve got the last one covered, if Bagram and Abu Ghraib are anything to go by.

Psychoanalyzing Rudy

"I would ascribe this to an Orwellian technique of transference. He transfers his own motives of vicious personal attack on me – transfers it to me. I never liked him, incidentally, and I think that he today represents the worst continuation of this ‘war on terror’ false metaphor – he’s got all the same advisors who advised us to invade Iraq now advising him," – George Soros on the former mayor of New York City.

Poseur Alert

"During my years as editor of Harper’s Magazine, I could rely on the post office to mark the degree to which I was living in what Goethe surely would have regarded as straitened circumstances. Every morning at ten oclock, I sat down to a desk occupied by five newspapers and seven periodicals (four of them embroiled in politics, the others concerned with socio-economic theory or scientific discovery), three volumes of ancient or modern history (the War of 1812, the death of Christopher Marlowe, the life of Suleiman the Magnificent), a public opinion poll sifting Americas attitude toward family values and assault weapons, and at least fifteen manuscripts, solicited and unsolicited, whose authors assured me in their cover letters that they had unearthed, among other items of interest, the true reason for the Kennedy assassinations and the secret of the universe," – Lewis Lapham, just clearing his throat.

Is this the winning 2007 Poseur Alert? Don’t Forget To Vote Here!

The American Psychological Association And Torture

The excuses for inaction are running thin:

The APA talks obsessively about "influencing policy" through engagement, but has precious little to show for it. The CIA still tortures, using the techniques that were designed by psychologists. We all know it. The press reports on it. But the APA has yet to utter a word condemning these misuses of psychological knowledge and expertise.