Tom Watson

Now This Is Funny

Via hilzoy:

And yes, they were serious. The Lincoln-Douglass debates - hee hee.

Wolcott v. New York Times

It's Jim, for the win:

Shorter New York Times editorial: Hillary Clinton's ruthless insistence on winning big-state primaries with traditional Democratic voters only hastens and strengthens the case that she drop out of the race and let Barack Obama finish his waffle.

The Heartland Gap

For all the talk of race and gender in this marathon race for the Democratic presidential nomination, the most visible gap on the left is one most often ignored - the yawning chasm between working-class Democrats and the so-called creative class, well-educated liberals who tend to populate the blogging ranks. Barack Obama's ill-considered remarks about the various salves to poverty and job loss that lower middle-class Americans cling to - religion, guns, nativism, protectionism and the like - fairly accurately reflect what many in the creative class kinda, sorta, actually do believe about those in the working class side of the big Democratic equation.

And besides, we're sick of the this media-fueled myth of the heartland that has elected Republican after Republican, and many of us see Senator Obama's candidacy as a way to crush this myth forever, and proclaim the ascendancy of a new American left that recognizes the true leadership of smart, wired progressives. That's why the chorus of "he's right!" echoed through the liberal blogosphere as the extent of Obama's spring-time gift to John McCain became apparent.

You know, I'm tempted to join the chorus.

After all, I'd like to retire the Second Amendment to emeritus status in the Bill of Rights and strengthen our gun laws to roughly parallel Great Britain's. I do think that poor people cling to religion when all hope of economic advance is stilled. I believe that racial hatred and anti-immigrant vitriol is often rooted in class status and economics.

But Senator Obama is running for president in the United States of 2008, not in the country of liberal elitist dreams. The whole point is to win. And while his words may tilt some of the upcoming primaries, its real import is in throwing away his campaign's greatest currency - the love the media insiders showed for his candidacy. In the bowling alleys of Altoona and the diners of rural Indiana, that love took the slightest of hits as Obama's style of retail politicking was derided as less-than-manly. That was small stuff, basically filling the dead air in this six-week slog to Pennsylvania.

Now they've filed for divorce. Despite his apologies, Obama's remarks to big San Francisco donors already have the dons of the Sunday morning roundtables hurling the most vile of Democratic electoral epithets at his candidacy.

Kerry.

Mondale.

And, oh lord, Dukakis.

Words like "Belgian endive" and "windsurfing" are being tossed about. As Lance Mannion pointed out last summer, "In the journalism of the Beltway Insiders, the only real Americans are white, rural, Southern and Midwestern, salt of the earth types." In their heartland myth, created in Georgetown salons over aged port and Cuban cigars, the only kind of president Americans can stand is the regular Joe, the man you'd enjoy a beer with in that bar down on Main Street, in hardscrabble small towns that are hanging on, by God, to the American Dream.

When they listen to their young college-bound and climbing professional kids, these swaggering 60ish blowhards flirt with post-racial creative class hegemony, feeling the occasional thrill up their legs. When the chips are down, they go with their guts - and John McCain is all guts to them.

Hell, even our creative class icons believe in the strength of the manly leader image. Two years ago, Markos Moulitsas, owner of the hysterically anti-Clinton uberblog, DailyKos, nailed the manly stereotype that excites these media types when he - quite without irony - described the he-man Democratic governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer, to The New York Times:

“Schweitzer is the antithesis of the Democrat stereotype. Too many Democrats look like targets for the school bully. Schweitzer is a tough guy. And people like guys who will bar-fight their way across a state.”

Barack Obama doesn't look like that kind of Democrat, but his new coalition was in the process of changing the rules and reorganizing the electoral map; perhaps it had a chance to finally banish this stupid bar-fight mentality - to meld the creative class that reads "ideas" into the word "hope" whenever Obama utters it. I think that chance took a severe hit in San Francisco, even as liberals rally to defend his statement. Perhaps they worry that Obama's boneheaded words will hurt him as he tries to close out Hillary Clinton. Class traitor that I may be -  believing Clinton would be the better president - I have to disagree with that take, though it pains me.

Obama's gift wasn't wrapped up for Hillary Clinton. No, the gift card reads "John McCain."

UPDATE: You can tell how potentially damaging this thing is by the vehemence with which the toughest pro-Obama bloggers try to make the story about the always nefarious Hillary - with a little Mark Penn thrown in as a chaser. Also, John Cole enters full-on freak-out mode - hilarity ensues.

UPDATE II: Riverdaughter catches me with my elitism showing - good thing I'm not on the ballot. Seriously though, a post worth reading.

UPDATE III: I had to share this Stewart video on the whole thing - it's damned funny - hat tip to Tracy Russo:

MoDo Sets Her Gaydar to 'Stun'

Right-wing sex columnist Maureen Dowd of The New York Times starts off her regular Wednesday exploration of political libido with the usual defilement of Hillary Clinton. I could almost picture the swaggering Obama supporters for whom the columnist's conspicuously concupiscent columns have undoubtedly become such a guilty pleasure sipping their coffee and reading approvingly down the page.

Yes. Yes. That Ickes fellow is a ruffian. "Distorted and personal attacks." Quite so. The "unplugged spouse." Terrible thing. The "garroting" style of the evil Clinton camp, the lies about Bosnia, the blackguards actually mentioning the rhetoric of a certain Reverend Wright to undecided superdelegates (how polarizing...will you pass the cream, darling?) - yes, good old Maureen understands "the monster" so well. Old MoDo's on our side. Let's just take a peek below the fold...

Pffttzzttskkkt! What's this?! What is Ms. Dowd suggesting about the Democratic frontrunner for President?

Obama has been less adept at absorbing the lesson of Hillary’s metamorphosis from entitled queen of the party to scrappy blue-collar mama. His strenuous and inadvertently hilarious efforts to woo working-class folk in Pennsylvania have only made him seem more effete. Keeping his tie firmly in place, he genteelly sipped his pint of Yuengling beer at Sharky’s sports cafe in Latrobe and bowled badly in Altoona. Challenging Obama to a bowl-off, Hillary kindly offered to “spot him two frames.”

At the Wilbur chocolate shop in Lititz Monday, he spent most of his time skittering away from chocolate goodies, as though he were a starlet obsessing on a svelte waistline.

“Oh, now,” the woman managing the shop told him with a frown, “you don’t worry about calories in a chocolate factory.”

See Obama fans (and I like him too), did you catch it after the spit-take this morning? The tall, thin, neatly-dressed guy with the Ivy League diction is "effete." Never loosens his tie, does he? Can't bowl. Sips his beer as if he'd never chugged a few on a Friday night. You know what she's saying don't you? Obama's attractive wife and cute giggling progeny don't really signify. But then again, neither did John Kerry's combat medals - hell, Kerry's offshore athletics in the pounding surf actually made him more effete. And so damned genteel.

We've seen this flick before, and although Senator McCain's aged and gnarled hands will never touch this tactic directly, his testosterone-addicted chorus in the media - led by the chief copulation critic of the Sulzbergers - is already laying the pipe, ahem, er, sorry, putting down the meme.

Liberals are just so gay. Wink freaking wink. Hillary's been a lesbian since she first came to public attention. Gore and Kerry - well, a couple of sissy boys. Now it's Obama's turn. Ugly? Yep. Effective? Less so, we'd all hope. But it's out there - the old macho Republican as tough guy leader routine. A sad tactic of a dying breed perhaps. Lance Mannion caught a couple of MSNBC's manly men at it again this week:

Is there a DC Insider Journalist bowling league where all these fat-faced, fat-assed old white gasbags get together on Tuesday nights to toss back the Buds and bowl in the 200s, with Scarborough and Matthews routinely battling it out to see which one of them's going to get the perfect game tonight and this is why these guys who look as though their last great athletic achievement was putting up the shelf for their grandkids' soccer trophies feel entitled to make fun of Barack Obama's bowling form?

Short memo to Barack: don't do it. No clomping through the woods with a 12-gauge. Keep your tie tied if you want. Skip all the chocolate you don't feel like eating. Sip that brewskie. And when they call you gay, do what Hillary Clinton alway has - don't correct 'em. Stay svelte, baby.

UPDATE: Digby, who has been tracking it relentlessly, calls this the media's "Barack ain't quite right" theme.

They Ain't Making Conservatives Like Buckley Any More...

William F. Buckley may be twisting painfully in the eternal hellfires right about now, condemned for rejecting civil rights in a cynical wager against his own views of liberty, but his passing does recall a type of conservative who would gladly make a public argument on the relative merits - and not try to merely shout the opposition down with bully talk and cheap sloganeering.

His death also removes another one of those classic 60s and 70s television personalities from the talk show set, a singular face and voice and style that those of us who can feel those years mourn the dearth of these days. From his half recline, one arm thrown back over a corner of the chair, a pen clutched in the other, Buckley unpacked slow-moving questions on Firing Line - big slow righty curves compared to today's 'roid-raged speedballers - and he inhabited a public world of curling cigarette smoke in black and white, talking world that included names like Mailer, and Vidal and Capote. Jim Wolcott captured that televised eminence perfectly:

Carrying his clipboard like a discus, Buckley slouched into the studio glare of the Jack Paar show or reposed on the set of David Susskind and uncoiled his cobra act, mesmerizing the audience and his antagonists with a battery of mannerisms, his eyes widening with a gleaming twinkle just before he went for the kill. He was a master of the tangential counterattack, to borrow a phrase from Manny Farber, not only removing the stuffing and mummy wrapping from modern conservatism but endowing it with a fizzy bonhomie that enabled him to entertain friendships with liberal foils such as John Kenneth Galbraith and others. Unlike a industrial-strength grievance collector such as Norman Podhoretz, Buckley didn't scrounge for opportunities to cast former friends and allies as enemies and infidels in order to play the role of injured party; he believed in the social emollients of courtesy, banter, and prompt drink refills during the intermission pauses between political jousting matches. His interrogation technique on Firing Line was a marvel of making a guest feel at ease before knocking him off his pedestal, his elaborate foreplay so stylized that it became a comic staple for impersonators ranging from David Frye to SCTV's Joe Flaherty, who didn't miss a trick conjuring Buckley's trademark deployment of fountain pen, flicking tongue, protruding rabbit teeth, sly grin, and reclining posture--his sitting in the interviewer's chair at such a steep incline that he nearly dropped out of camera frame.

It is true that Buckley was a polite man (I once exchanged pleasantries about winter weather and subsidized rail travel with him while waiting out a long delay at the Stamford train station), and he must have recoiled at his so-called heirs on talk radio - the smearing, hateful Limbaughs and Hannities - and the inbred pep squad at The Corner and their giggles about smiley-faced liberal fascists. His humor, too, rose far about the Beavisonian tenor of the right's great comics; asked what he'd do if he was actually elected after a quixotic run for New York City Mayor in 1965, he responded: "Request a recount."

He was also, per the excellent obit by Douglas Martin in today's Times, prolific:

The more than 4.5 million words of his 5,600 newspaper columns, titled “On the Right,” would fill 45 more medium-size books. His collected papers, which were donated to Yale, weigh seven tons.

That discussion, from the National Review to Firing Line to his many books and columns and appearance on endless talking head programs, was an open and spirited one that many of us with a little living experience miss in today's landscape (this blog excepted, of course). Jane Hamsher has it, I think:

I hate to sound like a geezer but after having listened to a bunch of people born in the 70s and 80s lecture me about what an asshole William F. Buckley was, I want to say one thing.

There is a qualitative difference between Bill Buckley and the conservatives of today. I know he had shitty political opinions and the reason I do is because he told me so. Buckley openly embraced racist, McCarthyesque views that he not only acknowledged but defended. Which made it possible to have meaningful, substantive debate between the left and the right.

That isn't possible with today's conservative leading lights, the Straussians who philosophically believe it's their obligation to determine what you should think and then tell you whatever they need to in order to get you to believe it.

So, respect on the left for the Oxford-clothed, button-downed lion on the right as he leaves the field. Well, Buckley's view of civil liberties took an unfortunate political turn early in his career (he recanted them 30 years later), leaving a stain that will always ruin his perfect preppy suit. One conservative blogger's paean to ole WFB elicited this pithy alternative biography from a commenter named angryclown:

Please. Buckley supported Joe McCarthy and opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Privileged upper-class twit spends a lifetime promoting the interests of same, dies. Yawn.

Bohemian Love Pad

Proving once again that it's better karma to laugh at Chris Matthews rather than with him, The Observer's Felix Gillette captures the infamous Hillary Hater channeling New York's own glam punk godfather, David Johansen:

Mr. Matthews offered another musical anecdote about the Clintons. This one taken from closer to home. “Remember Buster Poindexter?” said Mr. Matthews. “His big song was ‘Hot, Hot, Hot.’ Not a great piece of music but it was all right. So Poindexter goes to a society party, east side or something. A very hoity-toity woman says, ‘Do you do private affairs?’ ‘Well, yeah,’ he says. ‘How much will that be?’ He says: $5,000. She calls at 7 o’clock the next morning. She’s says, ‘Oh, last night I forgot to tell you that there will be no mixing with the guests.’ He said, ‘Okay, in that case it’ll only be $3,000.’”

Mr. Matthews grinned.

“That’s sort of my view of the Clintons,” he said. “It’s better to have less than to have more.”

Ah yes, the Washington insiders and their class issue with the Clintons, going way back to '92. A hat tip here to Digby for the link, and for the spot-on commentary on MSNBC's embarassing performance yesterday:

Watching the returns last night I was once again struck by the rank lack of professionalism and complete abdication of journalistic ethics on MSNBC. I noted in my early post last night that if you wanted to see what the early exit polls were saying all you had to do was watch that channel. It was clear that the numbers were very bad for Clinton and excellent for Obama. They could barely contain themselves with broad hints and winks and nods that Clinton was toast. The sheer joy on their faces was a sight to behold.

Gene Robinson showed up before the returns were in claiming that the night was a repudiation of Bill Clinton. Prior to the polls closing Mike Barnicle said that Massachusetts was a clear sign that Clinton had lost her edge. Olbermann, Matthews, O'Donnell, all of them, looked feverish and excited at the beginning of the coverage only to end up dull and uninspired. Although their preferred candidate in the end did very well last night, it wasn't the total rout they had been expecting ans so they were unhappily left spinning excuses and robotically reciting vote counts by the end of the night.

I think I understand what's happened. They have rallied around Matthews, their colleague and friend, who they feel was unfairly forced to apologize publicly after New Hampshire by the Clinton campaign. They said as much outright. And in their desire to stand by their pal, they have become obsessively anti-Clinton and pro-Obama, nearly to the point of parody.

And oh yeah, for you Obamacans in the fold, the Digster has this advice about old Matthews:

Chris Matthews personally deplored Bill Clinton when he was president, loathed Al Gore in 2000, hated John Kerry in 2004 and right now despises Hillary Clinton. And there are huge hints of what's to come if Obama does get the nomination, particularly if McCain, the man who Matthews has already said "deserves to be president" becomes the Republican nominee.

Oh yeah, he's "hot, hot, hot!" for Mad Dog McCain.

Kristol Clear

Has anyone else noticed that the hiring of discredited yapping terrier neocon Bill Kristol as a columnist on the Op-Ed page of the purportedly lefty New York Times makes Kristol something of a "Liberal Fascist?" Good title for his column, or perhaps some other deluded, second-generation, faux intellectual, right-wing hater's book...

Battle-Testing Hillary Clinton

Frank Rich used to wield an awesome power among Broadway's creative corps and financiers, able to close a heavily-financed show with the swipe of his fingers across the keyboard on West 43rd Street. But as a political columnist, Rich has moved from the knife's edge of powerful daily criticism to the backwash of a flabby Sunday Times column that regurgitates what we knew the week before last, applying a more-nuanced perspective to the political maelstrom. In truth, this can be valuable in longer, insightful looks at large issues, like the Iraq war or the economy. But in trying to write the elegy for Senator Clinton's presidential campaign, Rich looks like he's trying to close Les Miserables during previews.

Indeed, this weekend seems to be the time for the wishful political obituary where Hillary Clinton is concerned. But the Clinton haters in the Obama campaign and the Republican Party (a fascinating team of strangely-synced bedfellows of late) are whistling by the headstones before the calendar even shows 2008. Frank Rich may be the most elegant writer trying to close the Hillary Clinton show and consign it to the graveyard, but even he looks clumsy, ham-handed, and intellectually pathetic in reviewing a production that may well have more than 3,000 nights left to run.

Today, Rich joined the hypersexual fantasist Maureen Dowd in the Obama '08 propaganda bureau - otherwise known as the Times Op-Ed page minus Paul Krugman - in finding some pop psychology meaning in this year's polls, and you know, it just happens that this quackery tells him Clinton's experience may be trumped with the authenticity of Obama's calls for change. Disguising his last-minute salvo at Senator Clinton in a lead about McCain and Huckabee (like he cares), Rich quickly veers into the real reason for his column - a last pre-Christmas attack that may have some effect on the January 3rd vote in Iowa.

Experience, the experienced 60-something Times observer actually opines, is "toxic" in the 2008 election, linking both Bill and Hillary Clinton to the experience of John McCain and George W. Bush. Citing nothing other than his thumb in the wind, Rich then proclaims that if Bill Clinton hails his wife's resume, her knowledge of policy, and her travails in American politics as strengths, the 42nd President has pretty much lost his political touch.

Attention Bill Clinton: If that’s what this election is about, it’s already over. No matter how much Hillary Clinton, Mr. McCain or Rudy Giuliani brag about being tested and vetted, it’s not experience that will be decisive in determining the next president.

See how cleverly Rich links Clinton with two prominent Republicans? But Rich has a further linkage in mind - one that is almost an obscenity to the kind of Democrats who vote in primaries. Recounting the controversial statements of Bill Shaheen and Bob Kerrey, Rich spits on a leading Democratic candidate thusly: "The Clinton-camp denials that these tactics have been “authorized” sound like Karl Rove’s denials of similar smear campaigns against John McCain in 2000."

Hung up over the Clintons' marriage as Frank Rich is, just across the page his intellectual doppelganger (though you could also make that claim for Chris Matthews, Michael Goodwin and Andrew Sullivan) is the twisted, Gollum-like MoDo, caressing her Clinton hatred like "the precious." Of course, Dowd is back on her obsession with the "conjugal psychodrama" of the Clintons; it amazes me that the Sulzbergers pay her to write the same unoriginal sex column week after week. You know the drill: blind "friends of the Clintons" quotes, unsourced bimbo eruption libel, oh-so-clever references to skirts and cigars. For God's sake Maureen, put the robe back on - we've seen it all before.

This fall has been about a concerted effort of a large section of the national media to derail the Hillary Clinton express. You can see it in the spit that literally rises to the lips of Chris Matthews when he desperately - and with that shrill, feminine cackle of his - plays up any gotcha moment the campaign provides. You can see it the faux dese-dems-dose Archie Bunker populism of the effete, cuff-linked Michael Goodwin of the New York Daily News. And you can feel it in the anti-feminism served up as commentary by Andrew Sullivan, who actually uses the "some of my favorite public figures are women" defense today on his blog, before serving up the names of Margaret Thatcher and Condi Rice as paradigms of political women, people whose example in public life whose inspiration now leads him to support Barack Obama.

Yet, Hillary is still on the rails. This weekend, John Sasso (who ran the Kerry and Dukakis campaigns and knows something about the right-wing attack machine) contributed a sober analysis of the campaign to the Boston Globe. His take? That Clinton's rough ride is helping her make the case for her Presidency, that she'll be a better, tougher candidate in the long run:

Today Clinton has forged herself into a formidable political leader. She has undergone a remarkable journey. In the face of unending autopsies on her personal and political past, unrelieved targeting at both Democratic and Republican debates, the punishing demands imposed on a woman candidate, she is still standing unflinchingly in place.

....Why the most electable Democrat? Because after a year of being tightly measured, Clinton has won a public acceptance that she has the intellect and inner confidence to do the job. She has reached beyond her political inheritance and shaped a political presence all her own. Hillary belittlers still abound, to be sure. She is still caricatured as calculating. But the senator has taken on some different markings. Gone is the defensive bite, on hand is a new openness to concede mistakes, often with glints of humor.

An Orwellian Read

Is there a more over-used pseudo-intellectual descriptor in American media and politics than "Orwellian?" It's become such a flabby term despite its origins in a mind that despised lard-butted prose. (And the passive voice as well, but there you go). Every large-scale political organization of any type is Orwellian to today's commentators, and any big media company fits the bill as well. Indeed, almost any intervention by the many (or at least, by a bunch) over the less-many can be slapped with the name of a man who died in 1950. Once "Orwellian" has been cast, the usual references to "big brother" and the "thought police" are nigh.

Can the term be made relevant sixty years after the defeat of fascism in Europe and nearly a generation after the fall of the Soviets? The answer is a resounding yes, thanks to a new volume edited by my friend and colleague Andras Szanto.

What Orwell Didn't Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics is a series of essays by contributors like George Soros, Francine Prose, Drew Westen, George Lakoff, Victor Navasky, Nick Lemann, Orville Schell, Samantha Power, Mark Danner, Farnaz Fassihi, Francis Fitzgerald, Michael Massing, Aryeh Neier, David Rieff, Geoff Cowan, and Patricia Williams. The book is timed to celebate the 60th anniversary of Orwell's classic essay on propaganda, Politics and the English Language.

It's become my "train book," a volume I turn to a bit at a time; I'm about three-quarters through and I think it's the right time to recommend it unreservedly.

Conservatives may be offended because many of the essays center on the use of politial language by the Bush Administration to bring this country to war; and the authors are indisputably left-leaning in their politics. Despite those two constructs, Andras and his parter   Orville Schell have still managed to build a vast canvas of contemporary media analysis - one that contains plenty of vicious brushstrokes for liberals as well, especially for our mass surrender to the language of the right over the past decade or so.

Indeed, the surrender of intellectual free will may have been the greatest of the secular sins described by Orwell - the lazy group-think we're prone to falling into, the very opening for those who use messages to control people. What Orwell Didn't Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics takes on the Bush Administration for its wide use of disinformation, but it also points a finger at an uninvolved, disconnected, pleasure-obsessed public.

For anyone interested in media and politics, in the current rhetorical state of the republic, in causes and marketing and policy, it's a must read.

Misanthrope in the Morning

Tomorrow we begin the long-promised national dialogue on race, as Don Imus makes his return to the early morning hours a few kilohertz up the dial on ABC. I'll be listening.

I know it's not a popular call, but what do I care? Imus was a habit, and there's been nothing on since he was run out of WFAN, MSNBC and his national syndication deal by after his mean-spirited and insensitive smack on the Rutgers women's basketball team. I need some crankiness with my morning coffee, and Imus provided it. Many Imus apologists say they were in it for the guests, but the truth is, we were all in it for one man's nasty and iconoclastic view of the world - and how it played with his guests. Unlike everybody else on talk radio, you couldn't put the old I-Man into one ideological box - the guy walked nobody's party line.

Imus was the place where you got to know John McCain and John Kerry, where Republican Rising star Mike Huckabee got his start, where you realized just what a greasy self-promoter Tim Russert really was - and just how shallow the likes of Rick Santorum and JD Hayworth really were. Yeah, my friends on the left don't like him - but they forget he was already calling Dick Cheney a war criminal way back in '03. Jim Wolcott feels like I do, and will undoubtedly be tuning in tomorrow:

It doesn't serve any purpose to cast nuance out the window and characterize a radio host whose daily four-hour broadcast covered everything from politics to country music to sports to the precarious state of Imus's wheezing lungs as if it were a fascist loudspeaker blaring "the most vile sort of dehumanizing hate speech." Most of the time Imus is simply bitching like a bitter old man, and genuine misanthropy has its own kind of craggy integrity in a media biosphere where the on-air talent glisten like fresh produce and need PIN codes to access their emotions.

So come 6 am , it's back to Nicotine Radio for this habitual listener. Blue Girl, too.

Dowd's Warped 'Analysis' - My Letter to The Times

Here is the letter I've just sent to the public editor of The New York Times and to its letter section:

Mr. Hoyt,

I am well aware that opinion columnists in The Times are granted  more leeway in their writing than reporters. Even so, tomorrow's Maureen Dowd column on the sexual roles of the major Democratic candidates for President is well beyond the pale for a family newspaper, and for any paper of national repute that claims to be a major voice of the republic.

Her explicit and wholly imagined "account" of the sexual motivation behind how the candidates behaved in a televised debate brings nothing but shame to the Times, and betrays the newspaper's long-held responsibility for public discourse. Her two-bit "analysis" of a specific sexual fetish as the reason for the candidates' lively give-and-take during the CNN debate coarsened that discourse and the reputation of The New York Times.

How can a paper like The Times continue to run these strange sexual imaginings week after week and refer to them as political coverage? What a disgrace.

Sincerely,

Tom Watson
Mount Vernon, NY

The Case for Old Comments

Fred Wilson is  thinking about closing off his older comment streams to help adapt to a new technology that will make his well-traversed blog's comments a bigger part of the clickstream. I understand the rationale - comments have been buried in blog architecture for too long - but I think it's a mistake.

I love getting comments on old posts, and I get them all the time. My Guitars R Us post from way back in 2004 is great case in point. It's become the de facto public commons for Guitar Center employees (current and former) to dissect the company's management practices, compensation structure, and business plan. My original thoughts have been long since cashiered to mere background status; the commenters have been going at it for years. The most recent post there is from August 19th - indeed, that single post has almost reached full-blown blog status on its own.

There are others. I got a comment from a friend of Marina Lakhman just the other day. In the spring 02 2004, I wrote about Marina, a terrific young woman who died tragically young. It was a short remembrance of a colleague and a friend who didn't live to see Web 2.0, but would have embraced its social aspects in all fullness. I get comment on that post a couple of times a year. Last week, I got this from Manny:

I agree with the poster who said she is one of those people that when you hear they're dead, you go "what the..." One of the saddest days of my ife is when I found out she died.

And, of course, it brought Marina to my mind. That's a good thing. I still get comments on some of my Mukhtaran Bibi posts from awhile back. And punk rock fans of a certain vintage are always liable to drop in and defend Johnny Ramone's politics or mourn untimely demise of Johnny Thunders. That's great. Over on Fred's blog, commenter Shannon Clark nails it, I think:

There is indeed value to the comments in certain old posts - I know of many bloggers whose old posts on a given topic have sparked a small community in the comment threads for a given post (usually on topics hard to find elsewhere online).

Exactly.

We need to open comments to the distributed media model; our posts go everywhere, but comments stay home. And comment spam is an incredible annoyance. But I'd hate to see Fred close off comments to older posts - his is an influential blog and it may lead others to take the same step. and I think he'll miss the little late-arriving gems that can really pick up an old post.

The Religion Called America

There was a line in Lance Mannion's masterly take-down of Time's Michael Duffy last week that I've been turning over in my mind. "In the journalism of the Beltway Insiders," wrote Lance, "the only real Americans are white, rural, Southern and Midwestern, salt of the earth types."

It's the persistent myth of the American heartland, the one Republicans conjure all misty-eyed when they talk about the "homeland" of the "American people." Close your eyes and you see, basically, a Chevy ad; the iconic images of single-family houses with picket fences, Main Street parades, farms and pick-up trucks flickering over the bed of a Mellencamp song. Or maybe some Willie Nelson.

The Beltway media types all see this as a vast "real America," right out of the guide books. These media mavens go out of their way to disparage their own urban, jet-setting, totally-wired existence and look with gullible admiration on the lives they don't lead, some kind of pastoral ideal that no longer exists - if it every did. "The real people." You hear versions of that phrase all the time on Matthews and Russert, and it's born of a certain arrogant line of thinking that runs like this - "most people don't lead lives like mine, hob-nobbing in Georgetown salons and catching the shuttle to New York for meetings with my agent. Regular people don't have what I have, of course, but damn, they're noble." Like Digby said in responding to Mannion:

... the real problem is that the press dishonestly uses this nonsense to pretend to the public that they aren't the very elites they are slamming. There are indeed some average secular people who do not mingle with or understand the concerns of average religious people --- and among them are these two lazy insiders who are clearly so far removed from the salt of the earth, regular Joes they deign to speak for that they might as well be Barry Diller and Diane Von Furstenberg.

It's like they believe in a Religion Called America - not a true faith, of course. But a faith of  image and cultural reality. A Rovian faith of electoral politics - the careful parsing of winner-take-all electoral votes and state lines. As Lance argues:

The Beltway Insiders are privileging a "religion" they themselves despise and arguing for a definition of American that not only excludes the Insiders themselves but everybody who lives on either coast or in a city and who has an office job and a college education and/or a union card and isn't white - in short, the majority of Americans aren't American.

Lost in the Religion of America of Michael Duffy and the sanctimonious Jon Meacham over at Newsweek - and the head-nodding elitists who know they're not from the "real America" of churches - is religion itself. In Presidential terms, it's either cartoonish (think George Bush donning his Christian suit) or relentlessly negative: Kerry's Catholicism in '04, Giuliani's Catholicism this time around, Romney's Mormon background. The "exotic" religions get the microscope; the Protestants get a pass (though there was that little stir when Hillary Clinton's long-worn cross pendant came under scrutiny). As Digby commenter ESaund says:

I'm sick of the right wing's bigotry. I'm doubly sick of the media who give religious charlatans a respectable seat at the table. And I've really had it with the phony Christian they elect like Reagan or Bush. Neither man attended church and both had lots of personal moral failings, but somehow they become Christian icons to a bunch of yahoos.

And most of all I am sick of hearing how liberals don't get religion. I would love to shove a copy of the sermon on the mount into the face of anyone sho says this, like Matthews and his sidekick. The basis of liberalism is a respect of all people and a sense that people who fall on hard times need our help. This is what Jesus' whole life was about.

Not so, says the right - which only equates liberalism with anti-religion Stalinist types.counter culture. Jesus's life was somehow about strict contructionism, which in the conservative twist means that there is evil on the march, and authority is needed. That's simplistic perhaps, but it's true. In a post entitled "Christian Liberal" -- Oxymoron? blogger Les Brown boils down the conservative Christian attitude toward liberal Americans:

Liberal “ism” asserts that human nature is basically good.  If this innate goodness can be extracted through social engineering and judicial manipulation, we have a shot at the elusive “utopia” science fiction writers have always dreamed about.  Human beings are on an evolutionary “upward” trend.  All that is necessary is to weed out the detractors (i.e. Conservatives) either by isolation or elimination, and mankind will be “set free” to realize his own inner godhood and develop naturally toward “universal enlightenment.”  When Hillary Clinton talks about “thinking collectively” she’s not talking about coming together and working things out through compromise.  She’s talking about a lock-step, elitist, I-know-what’s-best-so-do-as-I-say, mentality.  “If you give us absolute power, we will take care of you.”  It’s an Orwellian “groupthink” concept that persists on the Left in spite of failure after failure in social policy-making.  Liberals believe that “evil” doesn’t exist.  It’s simply an “alternate perspective.”  People can be “educated” out of it.  (If this is sounding strangely Stalinistic, ...well, yeah).

Conservatism, however, is realistic and pretty much endorsed by God, it seems. Yet this view of legitimate authority contrasts sharply with the self-determination of politicians of all stripes - just as a "personal" religion goes against, say, traditional Catholicism. This is a problem Kerry faced last time, and Giuliani faces this time. The constant nagging about his religion has worn on Giuliani, as he campaigns for the nod of the Christian party. Here's what he said in Iowa last week:

"That's a personal discussion, and (the clergy) have a much better sense of how good a Catholic I am or how bad a Catholic I am, and that's a matter of individual conscience. And I don't think there should be a religious test for public office."

Neither do I, in any form. But it's going to be tough to win a modern Republican nomination without passing the test - you know, the one Reagan agreed so enthusiastically to take under Lee Atwater's guidance, and the one that caused the second Bush to cite Jesus Christ as his favorite philosopher, completing his own pas de deux with Karl Rove. Forget for a moment that the basis of Christianity is a brilliant philosophy - so simple, if you read it. We all know what Dubya was doing - he didn't cite the Gospel writers after all - and it was a lot less authentic than Hillary's "I ain't no ways tired" spiel.

Besides, the hold of one strain of religion on American power is a myth, a thin veneer created by the direct marketing crowd. Christopher Hitchens, who in famously opining that women aren't funny displayed only a shocking lack of experience for someone of his age, is apparently surprised at the hit status of his atheistic tome, God Is Not Great. In this month's Vanity Fair, Hitchens wrote about his book tour (now there's a self-referential undertaking!) and reports that based on the crowds he attracted, the theistic heartland is largely mythical, but not entirely. My fave diary entry was this one:

May 15, Raleigh, North Carolina: At the airport, strangers approach to say, "Thanks for coming to take on the theocrats." Apparently the good folks at WPTF announced after my appearance on their show yesterday that I was going to hell. This doesn't prevent a huge crowd from showing up, which in turn means that Quail Ridge Books has to move the event into a neighboring Unitarian church. (The rector whispers to me, "I ought not to say this, but the church has never been this full before.") My opponent tonight is the very courteous Dr. Adam English, from the religion department at Campbell University. He's another Baptist, but when I ask if he believes Calvin's teaching about hell and pre-destination, he doesn't love the question. Southern hospitality is rightly famous, and he may think it would be rude to condemn a visitor to hellfire. Then again, he can easily tell that the audience is not with him. Many southerners are annoyed by the presumption that they are all snake handlers and shout-and-holler artists, and the most critical questions all go to Dr. English, who has unwisely told the local paper that he'll win the argument because god is on his team. Again I notice two things: the religious types are unused to debate and are surprised at how many people are impatient with them, or even scornful.

Jerry Falwell—another man who managed to get away with murder by getting himself called "Reverend"—dies without being bodily "raptured" into the heavens. Indeed, his heavy carcass is found on the floor of his Virginia office. The cable shows start to call and I have a book to sell: maybe someone up there does love me after all.

The burden of religion falls on the GOP this time around, and you can see it in action around the two leading Republican candidates, who happen not to be evangelical Christians. From the point of view of modern Republican politics, they're a mess. Romney will have to defend his Mormon faith. And Giuliani will have to find a better Catholic story, I believe.

The Founding Fathers would understand. Washington was a Free Mason deist who flirted with Catholicism, and the crusty old Yankee  John Adams once wondered aloud to Thomas Jefferson in their legendary correspondence: "Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?"

Courtin' Hatred

When New York headline writers drop the "g" from the present continuous tense, the newspaper should come with a warning label: stupid-ass, faux-folksy thumb-speak inside.

Consider the recent column that appeared under the headline "Courtin' trouble" in the New York Daily News. Errol Louis is taking that just wonderin' approach to his column on Assembly's vote to legalize same-sex marriage in New York State.

That's urbane, erudite, Harlem-born, New Rochelle-raised, Harvard-educated Errol Louis who is suddenly just thinkin' aloud the repercussions of the legislators' historic vote - because, you know, folks out there are worried about incest and polygamy:

There are disturbing signs all over the country that conservatives were right to predict that proponents of odd and radical sexual practices would try to slip through the political and legal doors opened by the gay rights movement.

All over the country, mind you. In one Ohio case, a man jailed for having sex with his adult stepdaughter is appealing his sexual predator status to the U.S. Supreme Court and plans to cite the overturning of  Ohio's old statutes banning gay sex in private. Writes Louis:

In Lawrence, the high court ruled in 2003 that state laws banning gay sex in private were unconstitutional, citing "an emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex."

That sounds perfectly fine - but what will happen when this live-and-let-live attitude bumps up against the yuck factor of voluntary incest?

Excuse me, sir, but the yuckfactor is all over your damned newspaper. And your intolerance and bigotry seeps into the creases. Louis should answer a simple question: why does gay adult sex have any greater relation to the crimes of incest and polygamy than straight adult sex?

Instead, Louis wonders aloud where all this homosexual legalizing his really heading, er, headin':

...it's obvious that New York's steps toward legalizing gay marriage won't trigger the collapse of civilization.

But advocates of same-sex marriage should recognize that you don't have to be a religious fanatic or a bigot to wonder, with a certain uneasiness, where all of this is heading.

Yes you do.

Random Bits and Pieces

Some catching up is due, so here goes:

• I did radio bit on NPR when I was in Washington last week, and enjoyed the brief sit-in with Neil Conan on his Talk of the Nation show. An Imus replacement, I wasn't. But if you'd like to hear a discussion of social networking and its potential as a philanthropic instrument, click here and turn it up.
• Kudos are long overdue for the redesign of Joe Gandelman's seminal The Moderate Voice blog. Looks great, Joe!
• I was tagged as a somewhat intelligent blogger by Kid Sally over at Nightbird's Fountain. "Thinking Blogger," rather. It is now my turn to nominate 5 others for the Thinking Blogger Award (see the rules here.) I hate picking five because those not picked will, of course, hold it against me - nonetheless, I'm the "Thinking Blogger Award" on to: Claire, Brendan, Grasshopper, MA Peel, and the Siren. There, done.
• Can you believe it - newcritics is six months old. If you regularly visit here, you should also hang out there. I have a short post up, a virtual suggestion box of sorts. So fill it up!
• Congrats are due to the Right Honorable Tom Watson, my parliamentary namesake and long-time blogger. He's back in government as a whip under PM Gordon Brown. When he took me on a gracious tour of Parliament this spring, several members hinted (one with a wink!) that Tom would return. And so he has.
• Congrats are also due to the prolific blogger Barbara O'Brien, who makes five - count 'em, five - years of the must-read Mahablog.
• Sadly, condolences are due to our blogger friend Lindsay Beyerstein on the sudden passing of her father. They're also offered to the readers of the Rittenhouse Review, an old school blog whose founder-editor Jim Capozzola died this week after a long illness.

MSNBC's Hatefest

Digby on Coulter on Matthews:

If Matthews is so desperate for ratings he should have just showed Paris Hilton's sex tape. It's far less obscene than what I'm looking at right now. This is just vile.

It's all that needs to be said. What an American disgrace.

Hi-Def Blah, Blah, Blah...

Last week, I finally joined the big hi-definition television bandwagon, with a nifty Sony Bravia framed into the built-in bookshelf of the my tiny new study, where I also will keep my guitars. So this morning being the first Sunday since the cable guy did his thing, I settled down with a steaming cup of joe and a stack of papers to watching the talkies and attack poodles.

Oh, the horror. The horror.

To watch Chris Matthews in hi-def is to see the air-brushed foundation splattered on his cheeks and the unwordly color of his lips. To see Tim Russert do Meet The Press in hi-def is to explore long lost canyons and strange hillocks of flesh. To watch Pat Buchanon is to experience the nativist tendencies of rouge and badly-colored hair. Pure Anglo-Saxon age on that beast of burden, I can tell you. You could smuggle small Mexican children in the folds of that forehead.

The detail is stunning: David Broder's lips glisten with decades of Beltway lick-spittle. Hi-def puts 40 years back on Roger Simon's youthful Politico cartoon-head; I swear one liver spot looked for all the world like Arkansas. George Will has some corpuscle damage, and his rakish part is getting ever-closer to his left ear. Ted Kennedy. Really, that's all I can say. Just, Ted Kennedy.

And the women. Wow. I'm too much of an old-school gentleman to get into this, but ... I'd recommend that Gwen Ifill and Dianne Feinstein visit this helpful site. It's a brave new world ladies; a Max Factor drive-by won't cut it.

Next time, it's back to the big old low-def behemoth. I'll be more comfortable. My breakfast will settle more easily. And I can yell at the screen in nausea-free bliss.

As for hi-def, I'm saving it for Jose Reyes.

 

An Irrational Fear of Hippies

There's something in what the newly-unmasked Digby (and I pictured her so, and just as eloquent) says about the reaction the progressive blogosphere stirs in mainstream media and Beltway consulting types. We are an enigma, she said yesterday, that stirs an irrational fear of passion and discourse - and freaky hippiedom - in our economic rivals, which is to say, those whose livelihoods are threatened by an unwashed horde of hemp-wearing, knuckle-dragging English lit types with free lovin' access to mind-bending drugs and keyboards.

Digby's unveiling yesterday as a charming, reasonable, erudite woman in her middle years from Santa Monica (but didn't we already know this?) was the most dramatic event at a conference of liberals marred only by the offensive booing of the likely Democratic nominee by Republican operatives who had infiltrated the hall. Okay, some may have been Naderites - or Bloombergers as they're more currently known - erstwhile liberals who don't really give a damn about electing more failed conservatives as long as they have their say. [The catcalling cadre apparently wore Give Back America buttons - so clever.]

Digby believes that so many insiders think of progressive bloggers are an intolerant, tightly-knit brigade of control freaks marching in lockstep with whatever they believe to be the conventional wisdom of the moment. Funny how that's what we think of the mainstream media, in general.

I'm an unabashed Digby fan. I read her blog most days, and it rarely fails to get me thinking (or writing, for that matter). Here's a quite from her speech at Take Back America yesterday, which I'm lifting from Glenn Greenwald:

We may argue about tactics and strategies, or the extent to which we are partisans versus ideologues. And believe me, we do.

But there's no disagreement among us that the modern conservative movement of Newt and Grover and Karl and Rush has proven to be a dangerous cultural and political cancer on the body politic.

You will not find anyone amongst us who believes that the Bush administration's executive power grab and flagrant partisan use of the federal government is anything less than an assault on the Constitution.

We stand together against the dissolution of habeas corpus, and the atoricities of Abu Grahib and Guantanamo.

And we all agree that Islamic terrorism is a threat, but one that we cannot meet with military power alone.

And yes, a vast majority of us were against this mindless invasion of Iraq from the beginning, or at least saw the writing on the wall long before Peggy Noonan discovered that George W. Bush wasn't the seocnd coming of Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we also all agree that the mainstream media is part of the problem. Democracy sufferes when not being held accountable by a vigorous press.

Pre-Murdoch Ranting at WSJ Scorns U.S. Troops

With 3,500 dead in the fast-descending hellfire of Iraq, there is one man the opinion-mongers on the right do not want to leave behind on that sacred battlefield: Scooter Libby. Yes folks, in a sickening rant that quite literally spits on the grunts doing the fighting and dying in George Bush's war, Journal guest columnist Fouad Ajami equates a paper-pushing perjurist with fallen American troops. The column is entitled "Fallen Soldier: Mr. President, do not leave this man behind," Ajami actually brings himself to type the following paragraph - and the Journal's editors, sniffing Murdoch several floors above their heads, actually bring themselves to post it:

In "The Soldier's Creed," there is a particularly compelling principle: "I will never leave a fallen comrade." This is a cherished belief, and it has been so since soldiers and chroniclers and philosophers thought about wars and great, common endeavors. Across time and space, cultures, each in its own way, have given voice to this most basic of beliefs. They have done it, we know, to give heart to those who embark on a common mission, to give them confidence that they will not be given up under duress. A process that yields up Scooter Libby to a zealous prosecutor is justice gone awry.

Ajami is one of the most politically influential Arab-American intellectuals of his generation, a confidant of Condi Rice and Paul Wolfowitz, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relation. He was a war hawk, and clearly remains one. Dick Cheney cited his "expertise" in Middle Eastern affairs when he said in a famous 2002 speech that the streets in Basra and Baghdad are "sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans."

Like a lot of the conservative think-tankers who got us into this war, Ajami has no clue as to the blood and sacrifice of troops on the ground and their families back home. If he did, he could never have seriously written this sentence:

Scooter Libby was there for the beginning of that campaign. He can't be left behind as a casualty of a war our country had once proudly claimed as its own.

This "casualty of war" metaphor is truly obscene. But then again, as Digby notes, the whole Beltway class seems quite crazed by Libby's downfall:

The entire "village" is beside themselves over this, in much the same way they worked themselves into a frenzy over Clinton's hallway trysts. It's that same phony, operatic fervor that leaves the rest of the country wondering what in the hell these people are smoking. Libby may be a friend, but these bilious paeans to his "goodness" and excusing his behavior from everyone from Joe Klein to Condi Rice is verging on bizarre.

In response to Ajami's truly bizarre column, one soldier wrote a stinging letter to the President of Johns Hopkins, where Ajami is employed. Read it here.

Bartley's Ghost, Ol' Rupe, and His New Journal

One of the more delicious aspects of all-but-certain purchase by Rupert Murdoch of the Wall Street Journal and the large multinational communications company that surrounds it is that it may mark the very first time that Murdoch will push his new editor-slaves to the left.

The thick and tasty fudge on top of that creamy scoop makes the sundae complete: the strange, conservative heritage of the Bancroft family and the late editor Robert L. Bartley has already begun its big, slow melt. A few years after Ole Rupert brusquely flings open those doors, and it will be little more than the faintest hint of a dirty ring left on the counter.

The Wall Street Journal is one of the great newspapers. I read it most days, and its coverage of business-related news and politics goes well beyond the usual scorecard-keeping that constitutes much of financial reporting. The Journal employers wonderful writers and reporters, who, in my mind, write about sociology through finance. They tell stories about who we are and where we're going. I read it and I learn.

Its editorial pages, famously separate from the news department (indeed, often an embarassment to the newsroom), are a cesspool of disinformation, flip-floppy "conservatism," and pure offensive vitriol. I still read 'em. They're the mainstay of the ever-shifting winds of American conservatism, which redefines itself based upon what party is in office or what loose alliance can be cobbled among the social misfits. And there are the rare gems - who doesn't love to hate Dan Henninger?

But the editorial themselves - the voice of the Bancrofts - are like drifting right-wing confetti, blown by a political wind - first here on government power (against our type of people), then there on government power (for our type of people).

That is history, of course.

Bartley is dead these four years now, and billions of bytes have been spilled his legendary inconsistency as a conservative, his myriad vendetti, his disenchantment with facts, his erstwhile claim to knowing "the one truth."

One of the more familiar of Bartley's calumniations involved his dismissal of a polygraph test supporting Anita Hill's contentions against Clarence Thomas. "Lie detector tests," blustered Bartley in a lead editorial entitled "Credibility Gap," "are so unreliable they are rarely allowed as evidence in court." Alas, just eight months later, the Journal argued against an Iran-contra perjury indictment of former Secretary of Defense (and editorial page contributor) Caspar Weinberger. Thundered Bartley: "Mr. Weinberger has taken and passed a lie-detector test on the matter."

But that's in the past. What's present and future for the Journal opinion page is the loss of its freedom; the take-over by a willful press baron who is anything but a liberal to be sure, but possessing of that quality that is antithetical to the high-minded (but shifty) opinion-sneezers at the Journal - pragmatism.

They know it too - they feel it with an intestine-clutching panic that is said not to bother Murdoch at all, as he tested the munchies at that fundraiser he threw for gal pal Hillary Clinton in Los Angeles. The cold sweat dripped off the Journal's lead editorial on the proposed merger this week (I could barely keep a grip on the 6:20 to Bronxville):

At the editorial page, this has meant that for a century we have been able to adhere to a worldview we now distill to the phrase "free people and free markets." This began, more or less, with the classical liberalism of William Hamilton, who as a Scotsman before emigrating had dabbled in British Liberal Party politics. It has continued through a series of editors who have adhered to those principles despite shifting political fashions and partisan winds.

Over the years this independence has also meant the freedom to challenge prevailing media conventions and political power. Following Hamilton as editor in the 1930s, Thomas Woodlock battled Keynesian economics and the New Deal. The Journal was skeptical of FDR's dalliances with prewar Britain -- until the day war began and our short editorial was headlined, "We Have a Duty." The editorial hangs in our office today.

As he campaigned for re-election in 1948, Harry Truman denounced the Journal as the "Republicans' Bible," a line that earned him a rebuke from Editor (of the editorial page) William Grimes because "our loyalties are to the economic and governmental principles in which we believe and not to any political party." In one of his visits to the White House, Editor Vermont Royster was thanked by John F. Kennedy for supporting his free-trade agenda. "Young man," said Royster, "the Wall Street Journal was supporting free trade before you were born." The Journal hasn't endorsed a Presidential candidate since Herbert Hoover, preferring instead to praise or assail the candidates' ideas.

On occasion this has meant the Journal has come under outside pressure, both commercial and political, but the Bancrofts and our publishers have always stood firm.

There is nothing quite like the thrill of being wrong, dead wrong in every sense, vilified-and-mocked-by-history wrong - and still putting on a dusty plaque up in the office to celebrate poor judgment. It's almost admirable. Oh Bartley of sainted memory, how wrong we were -and we do hope Mr. Murdoch understands:

Our former Editor Robert Bartley once told us of being called on the carpet by Henry Kissinger, then the Secretary of State, for opposing detente and arms control with the Soviet Union. Journal Publisher and CEO Warren Phillips accompanied Bartley to the meeting, and started things off by asking Mr. Kissinger what all of his Spengler-pessimism talk vis-a-vis the Russians was about. The anti-detente editorials kept coming, and Bartley and Mr. Kissinger later became friends.

The 1990s were especially controversial with the Journal's reporting about Whitewater and Bill Clinton's ethics, and more than one liberal thought he could mute Bartley's campaign in the wake of the Vincent Foster suicide. But the Bancrofts and Publisher Peter Kann stood up to the pressure.

Yes, the glory of the Vince Foster episode. I'm sure Rupert will get the low-down from Hillary on how the Journal's band of brothers bravely stood their ground on that day, my friends. What, is that pleading I hear from the editorial foisters? Are they arguing economics, now?

We could tell other stories, but the essential point is that our owners have allowed us to speak our mind on behalf of a consistent set of principles. Readers may like, or loathe, those beliefs and our way of defending them. But we like to think this brand of independence is one reason the Journal has attracted such an influential readership. To borrow a phrase from modern business lingo, we hope it is part of our value proposition.

At a dinner honoring their century of Journal ownership in 2002, Bob Bartley expressed his gratitude to the Bancrofts for their support, noting that some of his editorials over 30 years must not have sat well with everyone in the ideologically diverse clan. But Bartley added that his proudest boast was that he ran the only editorial page "that sells newspapers." We can't say what any future owner would do, but we doubt one would be foolish enough to undermine this market appeal.

Rupert enjoys being calls foolish by his soon-to-be-employees - I've known a few of the lads at The Post over the years (indeed my own byline appeared there for a while), and Murdoch, you know, wasn't much a presence. Left the editors alone. Understood the value proposition. Much like Steinbrenner.

This little church-door missive ends with a note nailed up from a 1951 edition of the Journal - ah, the parentheticals are mine. I confess it:

"On our editorial page we make no pretense of walking down the middle of the road. Our comments and interpretations are made from a definite point of view. We believe in the individual, in his wisdom and his decency. We oppose all infringements on individual rights [unless by Republicans], whether they stem from attempts at private monopoly, labor union monopoly or from an overgrowing government [unless led by Republicans]. People will say we are conservative or even reactionary [or inconsistent]. We are not much interested in labels but if we were to choose one, we would say we are radical [especially when Democrats are in power]."

Fear walked the WSJ's editorial page this week - the kind of fear that comes from a terminal diagnosis. For the old war-mongering, classist, anti-government, isolationist (Democrats in power), interventionist (Republicans in power), Wall Street Journal editorial page, that diagnosis is clear.

Condition: Murdoch

Prognisis: Terminal

Prescription: Start a blog.

Nashville is Talking

The tagline of WKRN-TV's Nashville is Talking blog is "creating a dialogue with the world." Well, they've got a whole lotta dialogue goin' on in the home of country music these days after blogger Brittney Gilbert, "working inside the News 2 newsroom," (how dramatic!) quoted a hateful blast about our dearly-departed brother Steve Gilliard. She posted this filth (don't read this next bit if you're easily offended) without comment and under the headline Teaching Libs a Lesson:

It goes without saying that the term “house negro” gets bandied about with great frequency against anyone of seemingly African descent when they are on the Right. Be you Clarence Thomas, Condoleeza Rice, Michael Steele, or J.C. Watts, you can expect a Harry Belafonte, a Danny Glover, or yes - even a Steve Gilliard to call you out for being the race traitor that you are. The sell-out, Oreo cookies who do Whitey’s bidding and put a black face on racist policies that would otherwise be rightly called out for what they are. Uncle Thomas and Aunt Thomasinas alike.

But really, who is doing whose bidding in those situations? Can Howard Dean call Condoleeza his “do right answer mammy who be smart”? Can James Carville call out Clarence for collard greens?

Which brings us to today’s marquee morbidity. The tragic, untimely death of Donk House Negro and all around bigot Steve Gilliard. Who knew that boiling bacon grease in a spoon and mainlining it into the neck vein was bad for your health?

Now, I found myself wishing Gilliard was still around to do battle with the racist-quoting-sans-comment Gilbert and her quotee, Smantix. Gilbert gave her handkerchief-wringing, fainting couch routine - "I can't win for losing!" - but it doesn't play. This is a blog that comes from "inside the News 2 newsroom" as we're told countless times, yet she quotes Smantix straight up. Like a reliable source. Like she's balancing the ticket.

Obviously, she reads Smantix, who calls Chuck Schumer a Nazi, blasts President Bush and the GOP for being too liberal on social issues, runs a good 'ol boy white supremacist video endorsement of Fred Thompson, and carries a picture of a waiter in a Mexican restaurant with this caption: "Ok, now who order the tuberculosis and tamales?  Hot plate."

And that's in one quick scroll.

This is how Brittney Gilbert's blogroll buddy feels about immigration:

As waffle-haired crooner Cyndi Lauper once said, “we see your true colors shinin’ through.” And they look a lot like that dark brown color that you get when you mix all the colors in your paint collection together. Not only that, but the newly-created clump of paint smells a lot like burrito-laden fecal matter.

Yet despite her low linking libel of a brilliant dead guy, she still works for the station, according the website today. And Gilliard's funeral isn't even till tomorrow. Hey Steve, get to work on that lightning strike.

Note: Want to complain to management and advertisers? Jesus' General has the skinny. Want to help Steve's family with funeral expenses? Click here and follow the PayPal link.

UPDATE: Brittney Gilbert, the WKRN-TV blogger who posted the tacky link has resigned - mayhem followed. Her reaction seems extreme, though apparently she'd been under pressure before. The original post was a mistake; just editing it a bit would have changed everything.
 

Coming to Terms with Hillary

There were two ancient, wizened lions of television punditry slapping down their over-caffeinated bobblehead junior on MSNBC the other evening. Pat Buchanan and Bill Press, whose talking head bonafides stretch to the frontiers of the daguerreotype 1980s when they actually rolled magnetic tape, faced off with thick-haired and slab-skulled Tucker Carlson over the political future of an American politician who has rankled the cable talkies almost as long as there have been cable talkies.

Tucker's quarry was Hillary Clinton, Senator from New York and rising tide candidate for the Presidency.

And Tucker was in full prepster super-freak, bouncing wildly in his chair (the lavs actually picked up the thump-thump of his bony young Republican knees against the particle-board desk) apparently in moderate cardiac arrest over the notion that Senator Clinton is actually on to something with her moderately-stated suggestion that fairness in economics was a real talking point that can help her run. Hilariously, Carlson actually thought he had it all tee'd up against Clinton with this intro:

CARLSON: Now back to Hillary, Bill, she explained in broad strokes her economic policy, which sounds, frankly, a little bit Soviet.  Here he is, in the most general way, what she believes about economics. Here is Hillary Clinton.

VIDEO - SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D), NEW YORK:  "It‘s time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few, time to reject the idea of an on your own society, and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity.  I prefer a we are all in it together society. 

"Now, there‘s no greater force for economic growth than free markets, but markets work best with rules that promote our values."

CARLSON: Huh, so the idea is if you don‘t have enough gum for the entire class, you don‘t get to chew it. What does that mean, we‘re an all together society and do you believe that capitalism works best when it‘s managed?

A little bit Soviet - right, fellas? Share the chewing gum - get what I'm saying, boys? Actually, no Tucker. They didn't. Press, the liberal, didn't rise to the bait. And Buchanan, the conservative, swatted it away with obvious contempt.

BUCHANAN:  Let me dissent from you. I think she is really touching on a theme here. And the theme is a lot of Americans think it‘s utter total individualism, let me get mine and get all I can. And she is talking about being more of a community, more of a country, working together. I think that‘s going to touch an awful lot of people. 

An awful lot of feel, you know, you have your CEOs making 500 times what their workers are making, that we all ought to be in this together. And I think that‘s touching on a communitarian theme that is very strong with an awful lot of Americans.

Young Tucker was taken aback. So much so that he opened the curtain on what some conservatives really feel about all center-left progressives - with a simplicity and rube-like stupidity that is shocking for an erstwhile intellectual who used to wear a bowtie to prove his heritage. And the testy back and forth that followed opened a window, in my view, on Clinton's growing inevitability:

CARLSON:  I agree with you, but here‘s the distinction. I actually agree with that, personally agree with that.  I think CEO pay, for instance, is a resident issue with me.  But the only thing that‘s scarier than unbridled selfishness is government control over peoples‘ lives.  She is not advocating a can‘t we all just get along society.  She is saying the government should take steps, backed by force, backed by guns, because where the government gets its power, to make us share the wealth. 

BUCHANAN: Tucker, I have a real problem with that.  The point she says, we really ought to all be in it together, I think that is touching a theme.  I think it is going to appeal to people right now.  I really do. 

PRESS:  She‘s not saying send the guns into the factories and make sure the CEO is paid -- 

CARLSON:  No, she‘s saying use the power of the government to make people behave in a way I approve of.