The Million Dollar Question

Rick Perlstein's obit for "anti-American" Philip Agee.

Deep Throat passed away in December.



Mark Felt, a.k.a. Deep Throat, in
his old-timey FBI action pose.










I hope Obama is pressured into doing something about the warrantless wiretapping compromise the Democrats enacted during the election. (Reformers should point to the Nixon White House.) Glenn Greenwald has been very good on this. In his Salon column, however, he addresses Obama supporters (which I consider myself):

But there is one aspect of the worldview of many Obama supporters that I find genuinely difficult to understand. These supporters insist that by symbolically including and sometimes compromising with even those on the Right with whom he vigorously disagrees, Obama will be able to chip away at the partisan hostilities and resentments, and erode the cultural divisions, that have inflamed and paralyzed our politics. People on the Right may disagree with him, claim these supporters, but they won't be wallowing in rage, suspicions, and hatred towards him. Instead, they'll feel respected and accommodated. They therefore won't be distracted by petty sideshow controversies. As a result, he'll encounter less reflexive resistance to implementing the key parts of his progressive agenda. A New Politics will emerge: one of respectful and civil disagreements, but not consumed by crippling partisan and cultural hatreds.

The one question I always return to when I hear this -- and we've been hearing it a lot to explain the Warren selection -- is this: in what conceivable sense is this approach "new"? Even for those who are convinced this will work, isn't this exactly the same thing Democrats have been doing for the last two decades: namely, accommodating and compromising with the Right in the name of bipartisan harmony and a desire to avoid partisan and cultural conflicts? This harmonious approach may be many things, but the one thing it seems not to be is "new."

In fact, wasn't this transpartisan mentality exactly the strategic premise that drove the Bill Clinton presidency, exactly what Dick Morris' triangulation tactics were designed to achieve? Clinton spent the entire decade extending cultural fig leafs to the Right, from V-chips to school uniforms. Here's how The New York Times explained the 1996 unveiling of his "school uniform" policy:

By supporting measures like the school-uniform option, Mr. Clinton is trying to use the President's bully pulpit in this election year to articulate a moderate Democratic agenda that steps into the area of social issues that have long been the province of Republicans.

Greenwald nicely summarizes what Obama campaigned on, but Morris and Clinton didn't have that strategy in mind. I agree that the wiretapping/FISA compromise during the election was a Morris maneuver, but Clinton and Morris passed rightwing/centrist legislation in order to stay in office. I don't believe Obama will be that transpartisan.* What's "new" is attempting to get beyond the 60s cultural wars without compromising one's principles. In part this mean successfully reframing the debate conservatives want to endlessly engage in. Clinton and Morris engaged in the debate on conservatives' terms and passed conservative legislation without getting much in return.

As I noted earlier, Judis and Krugman point out that the political landscape today is much different - thanks in part to Greenwald and people like him. That's also what is "new" - which Greenwald keeps asking - as is Obama's politcal talent.

Regarding Obama's compromises and political interaction with the center and right, Mandela's quote vis-a-vis the ANC's South African Communist allies I mentioned earlier seems appropriate:

With this victory [1994] came new strains in the ANC-SACP alliance. While a number of Communists, notably Joe Slovo, occupied prominent positions on the ANC benches in parliament and in government, the ANC's programme did not threaten the existence of capitalism in South Africa and was heavily reliant on foreign investment and tourism. In his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela famously remarked:

"There will always be those who say that the Communists were using us. But who is to say that we were not using them?"

Greenwald is afraid that the Left will be "used" as the Communists were, but there's a good chance it will be not the Left but some of those on the Right and in the Center who will be treated this way. This is what Obama has campaigned on. And like the South African Communists, these allies** will get some of what they want and a laudatory footnote in the history books.

___________________
* Like most, I don't like the terms postpartisan and transpartisan because they lead to this sort of confusion.

** Already Robert Gates and Lawrence Summers have expressed opinions more in line with Obama's than with their centrist pasts. Of course what Greenwald and Obama's supporters are waiting on is concrete actions.

As the Pendulum* Swings.
(or be Bold!)

John Judis wrote about the emerging liberal consensus back in November. Could it happen? Kind of exciting. His advice:

These guys--and the others who are counseling Barack Obama and the Democrats to "go slow"--couldn't be more wrong. They are looking at Obama's election through the prism of Jimmy Carter's win in 1976 and Bill Clinton's victory in 1992. Both Carter and Clinton did misjudge the mood of the electorate. They tried unsuccessfully to govern a country from the center-left that was moving to the right (in Carter's case) or that was only just beginning to move leftward (in Clinton's case)--and they were rebuked by voters as a result.

Obama is taking office under dramatically different circumstances.

Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman agrees:

The reality of this [Southern] strategy’s collapse has not, I believe, fully sunk in with some observers. Thus, some commentators warning President-elect Barack Obama against bold action have held up Bill Clinton’s political failures in his first two years as a cautionary tale.

But America in 1993 was a very different country - not just a country that had yet to see what happens when conservatives control all three branches of government, but also a country in which Democratic control of Congress depended on the votes of Southern conservatives. Today, Republicans have taken away almost all those Southern votes - and lost the rest of the country. It was a grand ride for a while, but in the end the Southern strategy led the G.O.P. into a cul-de-sac.

Mr. Obama therefore has room to be bold. If Republicans try a 1993-style strategy of attacking him for promoting big government, they’ll learn two things: not only has the financial crisis discredited their economic theories, the racial subtext of anti-government rhetoric doesn’t play the way it used to.

Will the Republicans eventually stage a comeback? Yes, of course. But barring some huge missteps by Mr. Obama, that will not happen until they stop whining and look at what really went wrong. And when they do, they will discover that they need to get in touch with the real "real America," a country that is more diverse, more tolerant, and more demanding of effective government than is dreamt of in their political philosophy.

--------------------------
*Actually looks like the whole pendulum apparatus is moving to the left.

Bullies and the thorns in their sides

Helen Suzman is dead at 91.

From the obit by John Burns and Alan Cowell:

In 1959, impatient with the United Party’s tolerance of racial segregation, she became a founder of the liberal Progressive Party, later known as the Progressive Federal Party, which favored a more inclusive, nonracial franchise that would lead to black majority rule. Some of the most relentless enforcers of apartheid eventually developed a grudging respect for her, even a hint of affection. James T. Kruger, the justice minister under Mr. Vorster during the Soweto riots, was one of the "bullies" Mrs. Suzman frequently denounced.

Years later, out of office, Mr. Kruger learned that Mrs. Suzman was planning a tourist visit to the Soviet Union with her husband. A keen amateur philatelist, he approached her in the parliamentary lobby and gave her a sheaf of self-addressed postcards and letters, each bearing new South African stamps, asking her to mail them back to him from Moscow.

When she said that the Soviet postal authorities would not accept South African stamps, she recalled, Mr. Kruger was puzzled. For Mrs. Suzman, the incident demonstrated the occluded world inhabited by many apartheid leaders, who often acted, she said, as if they belonged to the 17th, not the 20th century. "Poor old Jimmy Kruger," she said. "Like most of them, he knew very little of the world beyond South Africa."

The BBC has some video.

Martin Peretz had a blog entry at the New Republic comparing Suzman favorably to Nadine Gordimer. I can't find it now - maybe it was deleted - but his criticism of Gordimer is that she was soft on Communism. (It was admirable how Peretz stuck up for Obama over Israel during the election.)

Actually, the South African Communist Party, according to Wikipedia, "played a dynamic role in the development of the liberation movement in South Africa and had an influence beyond its size."

With this victory [1994] came new strains in the ANC-SACP alliance. While a number of Communists, notably Joe Slovo, occupied prominent positions on the ANC benches in parliament and in government, the ANC's programme did not threaten the existence of capitalism in South Africa and was heavily reliant on foreign investment and tourism. In his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela famously remarked:

"There will always be those who say that the Communists were using us. But who is to say that we were not using them?"

In Burns and Cowell's brilliantly written obit, they note that Suzman was aware of her apparent ineffectualness.

This was a variation on a critique she had long endured, and to some extent accepted - that by engaging in what was largely a charade of parliamentary politics in apartheid South Africa, she became complicit, however unwillingly, in the larger deceits of apartheid, which would ultimately be ended not by a small band of white dissenters, but by the more powerful forces of the black freedom struggle and external political pressure.

Among her friends, it was a reality Mrs. Suzman conceded, though she and many opponents of apartheid believed that it was important to keep the hopes of eventual democracy in the country alive and that she could help the victims of apartheid by her efforts to expose the evils of the system in and out of Parliament.

In a 1966 profile in The New York Times Magazine, Joseph Lelyveld, the newspaper's correspondent in South Africa at the time, recounted one of her favorite stories, about an overeager dinner host who gave a black man serving her a lecture on her parliamentary achievements.

"Do you know who this is, John?" the host asked. "This is Helen Suzman, the champion of your cause - the champion of human rights in South Africa."

"She waste her time," John replied, as Mrs. Suzman retold it later, laughing brightly as she repeated the line. "She waste her time."

Hitchens's review of the novel Revolutionary Road

In this microcosmic hell on Earth, there is always a lower circle. Yates shows us the schizophrenic son of the local realtor, on an outing from his asylum, and causes us to feel both the exquisite pain of madness and the unbearable toll that it exacts on the sane. To give you another sketch of the stupendous way in which Yates could both observe and write, here is how a crazy person smokes:

Lagging behind his parents, he stood with his feet planted wide apart on the wet gravel, slightly pigeon-toed, and gave himself wholly to the business of lighting a cigarette - tamping it methodically on his thumbnail, inspecting it with a frown, fixing it carefully in his lips, hunching and cupping the match to it, and then taking the first deep pulls as intently as if the smoke of this particular cigarette were all he would ever have or expect of sensual gratification.

New short story from Lorrie Moore. The context of the quote is that the protagonist Bake is stuck in a coversation with a conservative lobbyist, who says:

"Here is my real problem: this country was founded by and continues to be held together by people who have worked very hard to get where they are." Bake shrugged and wagged his head around. Could he speak of people having things they didn't deserve, in a roomful of such people? Now would not be the time to speak of timing. It would be unlucky to speak of luck. She continued. "And if you don't understand that, my friend, then we cannot continue this conversation."

The sudden way in which the whole possibility of communication was now on the line startled him. "I see you've researched the founding of this country." He would look for common ground.

"I watched John Adams on HBO. Every single episode."

"Wasn't the guy who played George Washington uncanny? I did think Jefferson looked distractingly like Martin Amis. I wonder if Martin is here?" He looked over his shoulders again. He needed Martin Amis to get over here right now and help him.

That ocurred to me also. The actor is Stephen Dillane.

Moore has a new collection out.

Heath Ledger should win all of the awards. Also, Sean Penn is good in Milk and Mickey Rourke is good in the Wrestler.

Robert Gates interview with Charlie Rose.

Gates describes why he changed his mind on the 1975 Helsinki accords.

Jamie Tarabay reports on UN Resolution about religion and freedom of speech.

My theory on why Chinese Democracy took so long to complete is that Axl Rose wanted to time its release with the fall of the Communist Party of China.* If the global economy doesn't recover in the medium term, it's a real possibilty, as durable as they've been. Some of the lyrics to the title track:

If they were missionaries
Real time visionaries
Sittin' in a Chinese stew
To view my disinfatuation

I knew that I'm a classic case
Watch my disenchanted face
Blame it on the Falun Gong
They see the end
And you can't hold on now

Cause it would take a lot more hate than you
To end the fascination
Even with an iron fist
More than you got to rule a nation
When all I've got is precious time

----------------------
* The world's largest political party with 70 million members, comprising 5.5 percent of the Chinese population.

Oh look, mistletoe. Now isn't that awkward?

"Indie darling" Feist made a great angel on Stephen Colbert's Christmas special.

"A MAVERICK Thai general who has threatened to bomb anti-government protesters and drop snakes on them from helicopters has been reassigned as an aerobics teacher, the Bangkok Post said on Friday.

Major-general Khattiya Sawasdipol, a Rambo-esque anti-communist fighter more commonly known as Seh Daeng, reacted with disappointment to his new role as a military instructor promoting public fitness at marketplaces.

'It is ridiculous to send me, a warrior, to dance at markets,' he said, before launching an attack on his boss, army chief Anupong Paochinda.

'The army chief wants me to be a presenter leading aerobics dancers. I have prepared one dance. It's called the 'throwing-a-hand-grenade' dance', he said."

Imagine, there you are protesting, getting your fair share of abuse from the riot police and you get knocked on the head and knocked down, so another protester pulls you off to the side out of further harms way. Then a bunch of snakes drop on you.

(via Obsidian Wings)

I bought Guns N' Roses' album Chinese Democracy and it is both terrifying and beautiful like witnessing a 50 megaton thermonuclear detonation and mushroom cloud. You fear not just for yourself, but for your loved ones and even the human race, everyone you have ever known. It puts an end to Irony, like 9/11 or the election of Obama. No wonder it took so long to create.

Chuck Klosterman pens a review for the Onion.

Jody Rosen's review with some more context.

Video of the paranoid, spitting mad Axl Rose with the original lineup.

Pour Some for the Homies

I'd like to pour a little of my 40 on the ground as a libation to Paul Newman, Studs Terkel and John Leonard.

Leonard was able to vote for Obama, whereas Newman and Terkel passed away before the election.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote of Leonard:

When I read anything by my longtime friend John Leonard, his voice is that of a total stranger. He is too polite in ordinary conversations, with me at least, to set off the fireworks of all he knows and feels after reading and comparing and responding to, in the course of his long career as a literary critic, a thousand times more books than I have even heard of. Only in print does he light the night sky of my ignorance and intellectual lassitude with sizzles and bangs, and gorgeous blooms of fire. He is a TEACHER! When I start to read John Leonard, it is as though I, while simply looking for the men’s room, blundered into a lecture by the smartest man who ever lived."

Newman I loved in Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Slapshot, Nobody's Fool etc. Victor Navasky wrote about how Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward helped save The Nation. Terkel himself had a bit part in the pictures in Eight Men Out.

WORK BUY CONSUME DIE

Bumper sticker which made me chuckle for some reason.

"The Fundamentals of the Economy are Sound"

A little late on the post, but McCain's statement reflecting the Republican view was definitely a Baghdad Bob moment.

Loads of international press are here in Chicago for the election.

Luis Redondo reports for Channel 9 in Valencia, Spain.

REDONDO: Which has an audience of 5 million inhabitants and then through satellite can also be seen throughout the whole country, the whole Spain, so 40-million viewers.

He's been in the States for two weeks covering the election, from New York to Virginia. And today, Redondo was one of about 50 foreign reporters coming from Taiwan to Azerbaijan. They were sitting through a presentation by Chicago election officials, who were trying to explain how the city's voting machines work.

REDONDO: For our audience, it's very interesting because elections in the United States is like a kind of election in the world.

Redondo says he wanted to be in Chicago for election day because Illinois' Jr. Senator is seen as a sort of celebrity in Spain.

For some reason I imagine a guy sounding like Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd in the trailer) "trying" to explain how the voting machines work.

(clockwise from topleft: Randy the Cowboy, Victor the Police Officer, Alex the Sailor, Glenn the Biker, Felipe the American Indian, David the Construction Worker)

When I was a kid in the late 70s, the Village People seemed cool or at least a lot of fun, with their energetic performances of songs like "Macho Man," "In the Navy," and "Y.M.C.A." Little did I know, as Wikipedia reports, "The band's name references New York City's Greenwich Village neighborhood, at the time known for having a substantial gay population. [Composer Jaques] Morali and [business partner Henri] Belolo got the inspiration for creating an assembly of American man archetypes based on the gay men of The Village who frequently dressed in various fantasy attire."

Stephen Colbert appreciates the McCain's campaign tactic of adopting Joe the Plumber in their attacks on Obama.

I for one appreciate the McCain campaign treating us like children. McCain will bring us back to a simpler time. A time when you could identify your neighbors' jobs by the hats they wore. Like Sam the Fireman, Bill the Cowboy and Jose the stereotype. These are the people in your neighborhood. The people that you meet when you're walking down the street. They're the people that you meet each day. And what the people in your neighborhood, the Joe the Plumber, the Wendy the Waitress need are tax cuts for the wealthy and off shore drilling. They don't need universal health care or last names.

(via Crooks and Liars, via Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman)

Procrustes

Procrustes was a host who adjusted his guests to their bed. Procrustes, whose name means "he who stretches", was arguably the most interesting of Theseus's challenges on the way to becoming a hero. He kept a house by the side of the road where he offered hospitality to passing strangers, who were invited in for a pleasant meal and a night's rest in his very special bed. Procrustes described it as having the unique property that its length exactly matched whomsoever lay down upon it. What Procrustes didn't volunteer was the method by which this "one-size-fits-all" was achieved, namely as soon as the guest lay down Procrustes went to work upon him, stretching him on the rack if he was too short for the bed and chopping off his legs if he was too long. Theseus turned the tables on Procrustes, fatally adjusting him to fit his own bed.

Doug Henwood linked to this in his criticism of Naomi Klein's Disaster Capitalism.

A Procrustean bed is an arbitrary standard to which exact conformity is forced.

Stumbled across this at stand-up comedian Marc Maron's MySpace page:

I may be a little late on this but someone recently sent me a link to zietgeistmovie.com. They said, "you're going to like this, man. It's going to explain everything." It's one of those movies that debunk large chunks of history through valid research and some conspiratorial revisionism. You know the territory: the Jesus fallacy, the illuminati, Hitler was funded by the Bush family, the Federal Reserve Bank's control of inflation, 911. I tend to avoid this type of thing in my life right now. Not because I have any problem with people who want to do that kind of work. I'm just not in a position right now to dedicate my life to it. Which seems to be what it requires. I don't want to be the brooding guy that enters every conversation saying, "What about World Trade Center 7? Explain that."

Granted the Kennedy Assassination conspiracy buffs really solved that thing. Look what those guys who relentlessly pursued the multi gunman theory have done with the 40 some odd years of work they put in. Thank god we now know the truth.

So, I got sucked into this zeitgeist thing. It might be true it might not be true. Do I care? What's difference between believing in that and believing in Jesus? You act the same as a religious fanatic if you are a conspiracy theorist. You pick a series of unprovable "facts" that become dogmatic tenets and you commit your life to it. If anyone argues with it you say, "Well, I guess you just don't want to open your eyes to the truth. You want to live in darkness. You don't want to see the light." So, how are they any different? You just pick a different dogmatic system that explains the relatively recent killing of a very attractive president and not the killing of a very attractive Jew thousands of years ago.

So, I'm watching the film. I tried to fight it. I'm fighting it now. I used the phrase conspiracy theorist and I don't like that phrase because I know it's a right wing semantic fuck off and it denies them their place but I don't want to be one of them and I know I'm vulnerable to it. I'd rather use 'independent speculative investigator'. They are doing something. It is unclear how important it is now or if it will ever be but they are committing their life to it and certainly there are questions.

The movie starts out by proving, effectively, that Jesus didn't exist. I'm thinking, "Okay, I know that." The eloquently and cinematicaly show It was a myth constructed from Egyptian astrology and several different creation and sun god myths that were popular in the region. It was compelling, well executed, and logical. Then, BAM, planes are flying into the towers. I'm in Jerusalem and now, in a cut, I'm in smoldering downtown Manhattan. As if to say, "Now we've showed you that Jesus is a lie and your mind is open. What about this?"

I've got to say, maybe they're right. I'll give them that. Here's to the 911 Truth Movement, maybe you're right, good for you, good luck with it. God forbid you do something practical like help change legislation so we can all have health care or not have our hard drives infiltrated by the government. No, what you're doing is much more important because the truth needs to come out. Don't worry about re-legislating bankruptcy laws so were not all just two payments, a divorce or an illness away from abject poverty. No, its important to know what happened to WTC 7 because ultimately if we know that then we are winning and all problems will be solved.
...

The observant Belle Waring caught this:

OK, I expect a certain level of crazy from Dr. Helen, [wife of Instapundit-peter] but I have to say this left my head spinning:

Is your head spinning from all the doom and gloom being blasted from the media and Congress day and night about impending financial disaster? Mine is, and frankly, I sometimes wonder how much of the financial picture is accurate and how much is manufactured in order to get a Democrat elected. One has to ponder about the timing of all of this bad news.

Why the crescendo of economic collapse right before the election? Why didn't the media and congress act just as concerned some time ago or wait until sometime after the election to go into crisis mode? [perhaps an actual crisis occurred at this time?--ed] The timing of the current financial crisis seems too planned and calculating to be just a coincidence. Polls show that people's number one concern right now is the economy and that for the most part, voters believe Democrats are somewhat more likely to help with the economy. Could it be that the liberal media and those in Congress, knowing that, is blaring the bad economic news from the rooftops in order to manipulate voters into voting for a Democrat? If so, it won't be the first time.

The Instapundit often likes to take a similar line: the economy is actually fine but people are being tricked into thinking it's not. I really don't understand what model of the human psyche we're meant to be working on here. If you're underwater on your ARM mortgage, you're going to feel stressed out; likewise, if you are worried about losing your job and have huge credit card bills. There's just no amount of evil MSM scheming that could plausibly negate your actual experience of local economic conditions, unless the TVs at the Instapundit home are tricked out with an array of virtual reality simulators and backed up with generous servings of psychoactive drugs. Which, if true, makes me want to go to Tennesee, because that sounds rad. But this, view, while silly, is as naught compared with the belief that George Bush, Ben Bernanke, and Henry Paulson are part of a scheme to elect Barack Obama. I mean, really.

Yglesias noted Waring's find on Oct. 6, Henry at Crooked Timber on Oct. 21 - with an added link to Barbara Ehrenreich - noting that the conspiracy really isn't about electing Obama, it's about heightening the contradictions, which means electing McCain.

Matthew Yglesias reviews Thomas Frank's The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule.

Let us now praise celebrities who are politically active


The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.





Of course I remember Scarlett Johansson and Larry David were active for Obama early in the primary. David will start work on the seventh season of Curb Your Enthusiasm in Decemeber. Sort of hope he does something about political campaigns.