Pseudonymity

I was looking at one of those ridiculous blogosphere-ridiculing articles in the New Republic, this one by a fellow named Lee Siegel, and this quote jumped out at me:

But, then, Zuniga--let's cut the puerile nicknames of "DailyKos, "Atrios," "Instapundit" et al., which are one part fantasy of nom de guerres, one part babytalk, and a third thuggish anonymity--believes so deafeningly and inflexibly that it's hard to tell what he believes at all, expecially if you try to make out his conviction over the noisy bleating of his followers.

Are you kidding me? On top of these misguided and foolish attacks on left blogosphere, and Siegel's idiotic claims that Kos is a fascist, this attack on pseudonymity is ahistorical and just dumb.

Put aside completely that the culture of the internet is one that uniquely embraces pseudonymity, for numerous historical and practical reasons. Remember perhaps that the Federalist Papers, some of the most important documents of the early US, were written pseudonymously. Or that Thomas Paine signed many of his writings "Common Sense." Or that Benjamin Franklin published something called Poor Richard's Almanac. Or we could think about George Orwell, or Mark Twain.

Siegel claims to know what exactly is meant when Instapundit, Kos, or Atrios post as such. First, Insty and Kos have had actually hidden identities for exactly none of the time I've been aware of them. Atrios has been out as Duncan Black since 2004. They are closer to stage names. And I hardly see Siegel attacking Woody Allen as fascistic or thuggish because he doesn't go by Allen Konigsberg.

My point is that imputing motives based on the fact that a writer or performer does his or her business pseudonomously is careless thinking, and beneath even a diarist at TNR.

{and someone like Siegel probably shouldn't be attacking others as peurile, either}

She who must not be named

There are certain public figures whose ugliness is such that sunshine will not disinfect, who are so awful that we are better off never thinking of them. Not that these people should be silenced in some sort of awful totalitarian way, but that people like this, who seem to crave attention and conflict only, are best left where they belong, on the margins, rather than in the mainstream of cultural debate.

There is a certain of these who will remain unnamed, but who recently had published a book calling liberalism a religion and simultaneously tarring liberals as irreligious. Which is of course as vapid and pointless as it is wrong, but that's her beat. It's quite a bit weaker and less inflammatory than calling us traitors, which is a good sign of sorts.

Her indictment is weaker even as she's become more shrill, and her looks (which are central to her draw) become less credibly enticing as she reaches her middle forties. There's something particularly convincing about the argument that she should be ignored, would that it were quite as easy as that.

She is at the outside of her her marketing tour. Like a musician releasing a new album or an actor talking up a new film, she has to sell herself on the teevee. But now it seems that this is her sole purpose, to sell the idea of herself. As a bold "non-PC" truth teller unafraid of slaughtering any sacred cows she might encounter. As a sexy, smart conservative. What she is is a hollowed out mask, the endpoint of any media personality has embraced becoming totally commoditized, whose exchanges only exist to support her brand and to move units.

She's a wretched loose-limbed collection of tics and talking points, and I find myself in sympathy for how hollow her existence must be and how unfulfilling it must be to play such an ugly role. It must be lonely as the Andy Kaufman of "conservatism," ridiculing the 9/11 widows just as Kaufman wrestled women. But i think of what she and those like her have done to this country and I sympathize no more.

For some sad, unknowable reason, people buy her schtick. Not the way Kaufman fans dug his absurdity and daring, but like teenage girls buy bubblegum music hearthrobs. They are conned by her contrived and tailored sexuality, they find her contempt for straw man liberalism not merely trenchant but entertaining, they congratulate her for daring to say ugly things in front of friendly audiences. It's mystifying. It's like watching otherwise sane people champion the infallibility of astrology.

Anyone willing to step back sees a sad little hustler, a skinny aging broad. Anyone can see that her pretences to intellect begin with her contempt for the allegedly inferior and end with her Ivy League degree. Her verbal jousting ability, which is fairly impressive on screen, becomes the self-aware vituperation of a bright and angry teenager on the page. The constant invocation of religiosity from this empathy-devoid ice queen is shown as the flimsy and cynical rhetorical gambit it is.

If we cannot make her disappear, if Leno insists on lobbing this wannabe fascist softballs, then we might as well remind her admirers exactly what they're looking at.

What to Admire

Oh, I admire passion. It's part of the whole charisma thing. People who are passionate get our hearts pumping as well. it's probably something fairly primitive, as if passion indicated vigor, vigor indicated health, health indicated good leadership and suggested one was a good mate or some such crap.

But "saying what you believe in" and showing passion is not an indicator of good character, or trustworthiness, or leadership ability. That is one of the fictions of our age: that apparently sincere, passionate people are the people we should listen to. And the appeal is a lot harder to countenance in times like these. People tend to be more easily taken in by "true believers' in times of chaos and upheaval and crisis. Our historical moment is one of upheaval, perhaps, but our society is in many ways fat and happy. Why then does a run up the AM dial reveal so many demogogues and mad prophets, each in his own way full to the brim with nonsense?

I couldn't tell you, but it has to stop. Because those sorts of people are exactly the last ones to listen to. Because people who come across so militantly sincere are so often cynical and calculating. Because passion is a long time friend of extremism, racism, scapegoating, xenophobia, and cruelty.

This isn't a plea against rhetoric, but a plea against gullibility. Why is it that people who function so well in working life and elsewhere are so easily fooled by obvious emotional appeals? By religion that absolves them from having to make real moral choices and in turn provides them an illusory sense of superiority? By a politics that holds in dark contempt everything that operates north of the medulla oblongata and has the gall to claim higher values?

People simply aren't thinking. We don't teach thinking enough in this culture. Not how to think, but that sometimes you don't just go with your gut, which is pretty lousy at making decisions, and instead weigh options and ideas. It'd also be nice if we taught our kids to value beauty and character and knowledge and good sense instead of cunning and brute strength and shimmering aesthetic trivia. It's not so hard to raise a kid unconvinced and uncompelled by the scummiest and cheapest of pop culture. It's not so hard to raise a kid hungry for the splendor of human existence rather than merely attention and coerced validation. We should try it sometimes.

The big revolution in American culture will happen when we stop endorsing brutality and selfishness. It will happen when people see good judgment and prudence as the hallmarks of common sense, rather than the ability to manipulate others. It will happen when we stop confusing seduction and beauty. It will happen, most of all, when we stop listening to our inner asshole.

Russ Feingold

I was on the plane today watching the cable news networks, which I do not do, and not just because I don't have cable.

I had a dark period of my life during which I struggled for proper employment and consumed more political TV news than is conceivably healthy. One must also consider that this dark period coincided with a terrificly shitty economy, living with my parents, and the stifling and awful political atmosphere leading up to the Iraq War. Later, I discovered blogs and began reading and getting my news from non-wingnuts. But at the time I was willingly exposing myself to the darkest, most hateful and vapid elements in our society at precisely the moment that said elements were most in vogue.

Which is all prelude to saying that all the cowards who seem so squeamish about the potential political fall-out of Russ Feingold's call for censure, and I mean the putative allies of the Democrats, the democrats, etc., are deserving of enormous scorn.

Notwithstanding the fact that, as I saw, the forces of darkness will always drag out reptilian bigots like Tony Blankley to compare Clinton's concealment of an affair to Bush's dismantling of the Constitutional freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, finding Bush's act not merely less offensive but somehow, quite obviously not a crime. Regarding this extrajudicial wiretapping, as there's no proof of it having been abused (and mind you, the project was highly classified until a leak), there's clearly there's no harm and no foul.

This pathological watercarrying for a president who is not merely unpopular, but unpopular in a way that is both rare for a modern president and staggering considering the degree to which he's become the standard-bearer for both the Republican Party and for conservative movement, reduces me to the same incoherent rage that made me so unpleasant in the run-up to the war.

It hasn't ever been Bush that has made me enraged, but the way that he has been fawned over out of all respect for proportion or reality, and the degree to which other people have accepted this bizarre mirrorworld as their own. That is, while I obviously don't like sleazy, vindictive, entitled idiots like the president, there's something genuinely maddening about the fact that the country, for several years, pretended that his sleaziness was charm, his vindictiveness was gravitas, his entitlement didn't exist, and that his manifest intellectual dullness was somehow evidence of a grounded, salt of the earth genuineness. They compared the man to Churchill, for God's sake! Tony Blankley and his crew may be dead-enders for all I know, but their brief reign as arbiters of truth in America has left an ugly scar.

The unwillingness to actually go after an obviously limping president, one whose job approval rating is in the mid 30s, displays a fear of this ghost of a president just as delusional as the myths Tony Blankley and the other Fox news goons spin about him.

It's always important to imagine what would happen if the shoe was on the other foot. Do you suppose for one second that Republicans would hesitate from censuring Clinton for tying his shoes in an unfashionable manner if he was at 33% in the Pew poll? They'd pound him into hamburger, and the press would help them. There would be stories about how Clinton had a history of missing a lacehole, and preposterous analyses of old photographs with him wearing velcro.

Bush's has been a presidency, and in a certain way this has been an era, in which perception has always trumped reality. Bush's approval was in the mid 40s and Chris Matthews was claiming the only people who didn't like him were the wackos.

We have a president who conscientiously extends his constitutional mandate and has people wiretapped without any oversight, and the only discussion is whether bringing this up, and bringing Bush to account for it, is a good strategy for the Dems. Enough!

Everyday people

I'm writing a paper concerning the epic as it regards a certain Early Fritz Lang film called Siegfried. Siegfried is among the legendary heroes of the Germanic peoples, and examining what it is that makes the epic mode what it is, I've stumbled upon something I think rather important.

Most fiction created in contemporary Western culture that serves the purposes that the epic once did are crap. Deeply unsatisfying. In some significant way, the superhero comic stands for the epic mode. Like so many American modes of cultural production, the superhero comic has seen radical changes and inversions in the past few decades. Just as in the pictures, one can't go from a genre featuring heroes to one featuring antiheroes and back without suffering somehow.

Despite the current relative vogue for Superhero film adaptations, there is something unsettling, weird, wrong, about the Spiderman and X-Men movies, and their inferior cohort. What is most troublesome is that the rise of the antihero type and the attendant changes in US society have introduced a Realism into a genre concerned with myth and metaphor. While the two can occasionally coexist (I'm thinking at the moment of The Seventh Seal), there is something about the difference between Tobey Maguire as Spiderman and Christopher Reeve as Superman (and i don't think this is just the difference between the myths of each*) that makes Spiderman small and useless. His world and its stakes are too familiar and quotidian. Take out the superweapons and supervillians, and this is not the majority of the film, and you have a blend of adolescent confusion and realistic angst about intimacy and responsibility.

The Incredibles deals with these issues in an exceptional, perhaps even brilliant manner. But it does so in a way that invites imitation. Just as Scream presented itself as the answer to the stuck, tired horror genre, only to be sequeled and imitated until the product, the self-aware teen horror movie, becomes both ubiquitous and significantly less charming than a fourth-hand Z-grade ripoff of Halloween, so there's a danger of a crop of self-aware superhero flicks that gracelessly recycle and misinterpret this film.

The Incredibles seems to be very much about what it is to be exceptional and how the contemporary world has little use for this. What keeps the film from being stuck in a hellish continuous lecture about responsibility and the ugly consequences of being superhumanly strong in a world where builing collapses flatten children and old ladies is what pulls Mr. Incredible out of retirement- a crisis which turns the ordinary world of 9 to 5 and babysitters and laundry into a world where the stakes are exceptional and all the ugly consequences are thereby mitigated.

it is only by resorting to unreality, or at least a reality so far removed from our own as to be genuinely alien, that myth can really fit into it. It is only through some significant measure of fantasy that a fiction can talk about its culture on this kind of scale. And I can easily imagine Peter Parker with a fever blister or a hangover.

*Superman is unlike either Batman or Spiderman (probably the most beloved superheroes) in that Clark Kent is Superman's costume and not vice versa. Superman's authentic self is a superheroic alien, not a vengeful billionaire or a freakish youngster.

Barton Fink and the Common Man

Barton Fink is, I think, the Coen brothers' most interesting, most trying, most confounding film. It's quite ambitious, even though there are things about it that open it up to the same criticism often made of the Coens, that there work is stylish but empty, deeply unwilling or unable to mean anything.

I think people who approach it this way have a particular sort of viewing experience in mind. I think there's something to be said, as both artist and audience, for being able to walk and chew gum. The film's coolness, and its evident self consiousness (the arty mirrored images and language, particularly the ending which recapitulates the Hotel picture, the story within a story, the surrealist touches), aren't mere special effects. Without being paricularly indigestible formally, the film communicates a number of compelling ideas.

For the moment I want to speak to what is among the most obvious themes of the film, that of empathy and representation. In some significant way these are dealt with through questions simply aren't asked in the same way today. There isn't much of a question, at least posed as this film does, how one should represent the common or mass man. In part because that creature is no longer part of our vocabulary.

The Common Man of Barton Fink, and this is part of the point, is for Barton an exotic. He is today, still, but a different sort. David Brooks, for example, writing about Patio Man, might as well be writing about Peking Man. Barton doesn't listen to Charlie, is utterly irritated by him most of the time, even though he is at least superficially the perfect abstract Common Man that is Barton's subject. The film is about listening, and refusing to listen. It is a cautionary tale about using people as a means to a personal end, rather than as ends in themselves.

Every time I see the film, the line that jumps out at me is uttered by Judy Davis: 'Empathy requires understanding, Barton.' Understanding in this film appears far more elusive than Barton's ersatz understanding. The world is mad, and fickle, and unfair. That is, people are. Understanding requires pain, the pain of dealing with real, messy people. Barton's idealism is the idealism of those escaping the real world, those constructing a better world inside their heads. This is a profoundly pessimistic film, even moreso, I think, than the similarly darkhearted Miller's Crossing.

One of the reasons I like this film so much is that it genuinely confuses me. Sure, it does this with its ripe, complicated symbolism, but it also confuses with its ideas. Does this film try to prove that this life is, for all intents and purposes, hell? Is it calling the artist an arrogant, self-deluded fool? Is the artist's only choice building a levee, as Bill Mayhew has? Do people want or need a fruity story about suffering, or is a story of a big man in tights all the audience deserves?

It's wrong to confuse confusion with sloppiness. This is a fantastically well made film. Its construction shows care and thoughtfulness. Although this film can be clever in the pejorative sense, it is nonetheless, if not a plumbing of the depths of the human condition, then one of the most compelling and provocative explorations of the artist's role and responsibility I know of.

Hit

Reuters has a history of being a little overly politically correct in the terminology it uses. The right wingers had a problem when it refused to call terrorists terrorists, instead opting for "militants" or what have you. But seriously- they have an article up called "Man hit by Cheney to leave hospital".

Not "shot by Cheney". Not "shot in the face by Cheney". "hit by Cheney". Unbelieveable. Admittedly, they refer to it as a shooting in the text of the article, but it really does matter how you headline a story.

Also, the story shows Whittington (the injured party, the one who was "sprayed", or "peppered" with birdsho and who subsequently had a heart attack) apologizing to Cheney and family for all they've had to endure. (!) I have to apologize to Cheney myself. Mr. Vice President, I'm sorry you've had to suffer the indignity of bad press after getting liquored up, shooting a man in face and neck, and pretending it hadn't happened for 24 hours.

Photo Op

The Abramoff story has a newish wrinkle, namely a number of suppressed photographs that show Abraamoff shaking hands with the president. This has a certain potency for the story because the Bush administration has been trying to distance itself as much as possible, and images have a power that should not be underestimated. Pictures can run in newspapers, on television, etc.

One of the things the photo wrinkle of the story has brought out is the position of Reflections Photography as sort of court photographer for political Washington. Greg at Talent Show has a few wonderful and fascinating posts about this. Do look, it shows how very strange, and impersonal, and image obsessed Washington is. Particularly of interest is the post discussing the Glory Wall and the way in which photos continue to serve talismanic purpose.

Uncle Hazim's Neighborhood

Via BagNewsNotes, one of my favorite blogs, I found a story that provides an interesting bookend to the previous post.

First, a word about bagnewsnotes. it's a blog run by Michael Shaw, a psychotherapist and MFA in creative writing candidate. The blog interrogates images that appear in the media, most often in newspapers and newsmagazines. It's a good, thought-provoking site.

Back to the matter at hand. BagNewsNotes links to a New York Times article about a children's show run by Hamas. Hamas is, in fact, following the lead of Hizbollah, which runs Al Manar TV, a station that is viewed throughout the Middle East and, if I understand correctly, has been broadcast selectively in the US.

Most Americans understand Hamas as a terrorist group, but it is not only that. Like Hizbollah, it is a political and social movement. The fact that it isn't just a wrecking ball organization makes it harder to destroy, more a part of the permanent landscape of Palestine.

It's hard to know exactly how to read the development of Hamas as a media organization- is this a stab at respectability? Merely an attempt to indoctrinate? I don't know enough about Hamas to say, but it certainly is interesting.

Mao Tse-Tung hour

Check out Billmon's fascinating look at the state of the Iraqi insurgency, in particular its propaganda apparatus.

Billmon argues that the fact that various components of the insurgency, including the group set up by Zarqawi, have established a sophisticated televisual propaganda apparatus, including themed talk shows and grisly confession/execution videos, tells us that the insurgency is developing into a sophisticated enterprise similar to the Sinn Fein, mixing legitimate and illegitimate components.

Billmon makes reference to the film Network, which you should see if you haven't already. It's a sharp and engrossing satire about the media from 1976, and touches on issues ranging from the corporate ownership of the press, televisual spectacle, the rubbernecking compulsion of television audiences toward the violent and profane, the insoluble confusion and alienation of modern (or perhaps postmodern) life, and radical chic. It stars Peter Finch, who won an academy award postumously for his role here as Howard Beale, as well as Faye Dunaway, William Holden, and Ned beatty in a supremely creepy role.

Aside from the fact that Network is relevant to television shows that make suicide bombing and assasination appear legitimate by wrapping them in the banality of daytime TV, there's something of Network in our times in a more general way. There's a lack of trust in institutions like government or press, one I feel is well earned.

Times are hard for people. Health care and energy spiral in cost. GM, once the measure of America's economic success, has fallen on hard times, but Product Chief Bob Lutz claims it would be a terrible mistake to cut or continue a freeze in executive pay. Lutz made roughly $4.4 million in 2004. Nothing makes sense. The rich get richer. The congress is full of crooks- more than that, politics has become a criminal enterprise.

And TV deals with the chaos with Celebrity Fit Club, and similar pointless absurdities. Oh Well.

We don't want a broken patty

That's a guarantee!

Check out thisWendy's training video from 1989. Apparently rap is the key to efficiency in the fast food business. That or singing beef patties.

A video of mine

It's called "Painting it Black".

Liza has a blog

I's called Art History For The Unrefined and it can be found here. Again, that's Art History for the Unrefined.

Advocacy and Bad Art

As a comment to the previous post, I didn't see the Joe Dante Voting Zombies thing, and not just becuase I don't have cable.

It's because certain types of advocacy/activist art are consistently Bad Art. And I figured this would probably be the case with that. (Not to put down Joe Dante. Gremlins rule.)

But something bad happens when the aesthetics of cultural product take a major back seat to the advocacy of a certain ideology. This is the difference between Christian rock and JS Bach. Art can glorify God, absolutely, but only insofar as it still cares about being art.

In the case of Creed, we have two-bit Eddie Vedder impersonator at vocals, and a bunch of recycled grunge instrumentals beside, all over a bunch of fake spirituality. You can tell it's "Christian" because it sounds like bad advertising.

That's why Michael Moore Hates America, although I've never seen it, is almost certainly bad. Because the motivation, much more than for Moore, is to make a point. I don't too much like Michael Moore, but he is entertaining, and knows how to make an engaging film.

It certainly isn't the case that only the right engages in this kind of bankrupt art practice. The contemporary scene is littered with advocates without vision or perspective, people whose work gains nothing going from the page out into the world.

If I could change one thing about the tendencies of contemporary art practice, I would have more art in it, fewer picnics. Picnic art is only going to get paying customers out of that weird communal sense of guilt that sends art-worlders to shows that are "important" but ghastly.

And if picnic art wants to forego paying customers, it can go right ahead. But art without paying customers is like a sandwich shop without paying customers.

What is it about artists

I was following some links about the Joe Dante voting zombies Showtime thing tonight and I found this link from some right-wing website I've never been to.

It's basically a diatribe against artists. We're parasites, as usual. Propagandists. Perpetually adolescent. Worst of all, liberal. The post itself ends with a call to support conservatiove filmmakers like the Orson Welles behind Michael Moore Hates America.

And so it continues through the comments. A bunch of libertarians and conservatives patting themselves on the back for having no imagination and for being logical.

Only a Daniel Myers came to it with any apparent familiarity with what it is to be an artist and an openness to see what's actually there. What he writes isn't perfect, but is much better than what I expect from such a blog.

More representative:

"Contemplate the fact that "artists," as we usually interpret the word, are and have been for centuries social parasites. Their withdraw from the stressful humdrum into a make-believe world of "creative pursuits" is justified by self-serving rationale. Some very few produce enduring works. The overwhelming remainder produce dreck that, with some luck, reduces to recyclable refuse. "

(There was a lot of talk about the Myers-Briggs on that blog as some sort of scientific, authoratative test- I kind of figured most people think of M-B as a step or two above astrology, but whatever)

In my world, as a graduate art student at a University, and before that as an art student at a private art college, the "withdrawal" is into long nights in the studio working through ideas, producing, discussing work and ideas, etc. Art students, they tell me, are more prone toward all-nighters than any except medical students.

I know a lot of artists are actually lazy, parasitic good-for-nothings who have no intellectual curiousity or any true creativity. These people do not tend to make a living of it. Those that do tend to be industrious, competitive, and fairly charismatic.

Why do these people tend, overwhelmingly, to be on the left side of the aisle? I think Mr. Myers' explanations are good. I would expand the part about an antipathy toward "regular people." It is certainly a two way street. Certain marginalized groups have a long history of association with the arts. I'm thinking particularly of gays and Jewish people. It is no secret that the proportion of these groups in the fine art world and the entertainment industry is higher than outside them.

Conservatives tend, far more than liberals, to demand conformity. Those outcast by conservative authority tend to reject conservatism. This is where the notion that artists and liberals don't think for themselves is just baffling. I guess, when you get down to it, I'm a liberal in large part because I spent my formative years constantly chastized for think for, and being, myself, by figures who were overwhelmingly conservative.

Artists, and people with similar temperments, tend to be vilified by most of society as weirdos and parasites. We don't tend to be paid very well. We're not particularly well represented or lobbied for politically. We tend to share circles with other marginal and marginalized groups. And we tend to be less religious than the majority of the population. What a shock, then, that we aren't, by and large, keen on Republicans.

Puppy Poltergeist

You son of a bitch. You moved the cemetery, but you left the bodies, didn't you? You son of a bitch, you left the bodies and you only moved the head stones. You only moved the head stones. Why? Why?

What's next

I feel a change in the winds. If the Democrats don't screw up, they might actually have a majority in Congress this decade. Blame it on the hubris and carelessness of Gingrich's heirs.

Folks who spent years decrying the narcissism, immaturity, and amorality of liberals and Democrats have reduced the business of running this country to tactics, manipulation, and cheap theatrics. Not that there was some sort of golden age, but we live in a time of relentless anti-intellectualism and apathy, and this has certainly been aided by the Pavlovian conditioning of the words "family values," "compassionate conservative," "reformer with results," et cetera.

It's easy to rag on the timidity and cluelessness of the Democrats. But the job they have is terribly hard. They are playing by old rules. But more than that, they're dealing with institutions of power that Republicans have worked very hard to create. They still have some illusion that the point of politics stretches beyond keeping the party in power and securing a position as an industry lobbyist when it's all over.

I keep hearing from bloggers and columnists and thinktankers and the lot that the Republicans should be emulated in how they've come into and held power. This reflects a failure of imagination, the like of which leads to Democrats losing. Never fight the last war. Beyond that, the Republicans are a disaster. Nothing they do works, they can't get their favored non-tax-cut legislation passed, and their quickly becoming ballot box poison.

Democrats, please do this: embrace reform. Not just rhetorically, really embrace changing the queasy nature of politics. I want to hear hardcore demonization of industry lobbyists. Nobody likes lobbyists.
Don't let Republicans dictate the terms of class warfare. Do a couple Republican things- like identify conservatism with its many sins. Everybody likes lower taxes, but the idea of rich people who live of inheritance or other unearned wealth getting huge tax cuts while they get a pittance bothers people. Paris Hilton, people! Also, nobody likes deficits, wastefulness, bridges to nowhere in Alaska. Educate the public.
Do something about the environment. People still think that anyone who cares about the environment is a patchouli-smelling hippy. Change this. And change it soon. Gas has become dangerously expensive, we're losing topsoil, global warming, the list is endless. I also think it would be good strategy. Republicans don't see the environment as a Dem strength because it's kind of out of left field and it plays to a lot of notions of Democrats being pansies.
Do that Contract with America thing you're talking about. Don't talk about 1994. Nobody cares about it, and referencing makes it sound like you're playing politics instead of trying to change the country. If you're trying to convince somebody of something, you don't preface it by saying "I'm going to run a campaign to convince you of this." If you're going to crib from somebody's playbook, you don't warn everyone about it beforehand.
Foreign policy is tricky at the moment, because Americans have a childish macho pride. But Gephardt admitting he was wrong about the war is a good first step. Build a consensus within the party over a new path forward. The Democratic base is generally less hawkish than the electorate in general, but at least it's a position of some priniciple. The electorate at large is reactive and has few foreign policy core beliefs other than a belief in the superiority, strength, and decency of the US relative to the rest of the world. I think the profile of the Dem position should be humane and internationalist. This isn't possible unless there is a significant withdrawal in forces from Iraq.
In general, it's a good idea to be supporting Iraq vets for office. People like symbolism of that sort. There's a long history of veterans serving in the Capital.
I don't think I'm good for advice about immigration, which I see becoming a campaign issue in '06. Democrats always have it harder on these type of issues because it would be easy for a Republican to adopt an extreme (like, say, turn our Southern border into the 38th parallel) but politically safe position.
Most important, in general, is to articulate a wholistic vision for the country. mingle exciting policy (Mars, bitches, except more practical, and more real for voters) with work on Brand Democrat.
The important thing is not to freeze up, to remain defensive, to avoid issues in a way that pushes you in awkward positions, and to dictate the terms of the debate to the greatest possible degree.

"Criminalization of Politics"

Oooh, Frank Luntz must have been busy. The right, by which I mean the Republican Party and its representatives in the media (both in sense of Fox News and individual pundits like the sometimes almost bearable William Kristol) have seized a new rhetorical strategy to prevent the sinking of the SS. Conservatism. Every legal reaction to the manifest curruption of the modern right is now deemed "the criminalization of politics."

Lord knows if this were a society populated by decent people, that wouldn't float. Are there really people out there who think we hold politicians to to high an ethical standard? The same people promulgating this line spent the years 1993-2001 harping on Clinton's crookedness and immorality, spending millions of dollars to investigate minor infractions and right-wing fictions. Turnabout is fair play.

But it's not even turnabout. These people are real crooks. CIA agent-exposing, rat-fucking, money-laundering, extortionist, power-hungry criminals.

The fact is that the Republicans criminalized politics.(By Republicans, I mean the party, not Jeff, or the guy who lives across the street from me) Not in the way they mean it. They turned the sometimes icky business of kissing babies, raising money, selling yourself like cornflakes, and promising things you can't deliver, and turned it into a criminal enterprise. They have no concern for appearance of propriety (see Halliburton, Frist's insider trading, the selection of crony Harriet Miers) because they have the media bent to their will, and millions of Americans who would vote for Charles Manson if he ran on family values.

Derangement syndrome

From the newest Bobo column, available from Not New York Times Select:

Kerry began his speech by making the point that Bush and his crew are rotten. He then went on to make the point that Bush and his crew are loathsome. In the third section of the speech, Kerry left the impression that Bush and his crew are evil.
Now we all know people so consumed by hatred for George Bush that they haven't had an unpredictable thought in five years, but in Kerry's speech one sees this anger in almost clinical form.

Hey Brooksy, thinking Bush is rotten, loathsome, and evil doesn't mean you are consumed by hatred of him. He is rotten, loathsome, and basically evil. And I'm tired of this "clinical" bullshit. Bobo, diagnosing people who think Bush sucks (now basically a majority of Americans) as crazy is Krauthammer's job, not yours. You don't even have the dusty credentials for it.

And you really are misrepresenting Edwards. In fact, most of what you're doing is misrepresenting. Democrats should be tougher. After all, Republicans only win elections by appealing to fear, hate, and gullibility. Bush only beat McCain in the primaries by lying about his sanity and appealing to the racism of South Carolinians (it works, by the way). Bush only beat Kerry because gay-hating and opportunistic Republicans put Gay Marriage bans o the November menu in several states.

Democrats who vote against Roberts aren't doing it just to show they mean business, but because he's a stealth nominee they think will work to infringe our privacy rights and overturn Roe vs. Wade. And Brooks is either totally unclear about what partisanship means, or is merely disingenuous in the way he uses the term.

The Democratic party doesn't have policy problems, not the way Brooks means it. Never has. Despite the avalanche of bullshit ideological enforcement of this mythic "conservatism," most Americans prefer the actual policies of Democrats. What the Democrats are is always on the defensive and out of power, and this means they never really talk about policy. Nobody does. Columnists like Brooks spill buckets of ink writing about style. This very column, in which Brooks decries Democratic obsession with style over policy, doesn't talk about policy. When Brooks praises Edwards, it's for weaving a moving story, not for his policy prescriptions. This is just another "Democrats should be like this" column.

But yeah, we should be more like Edwards than Kerry in this instance. Democrats have an opportunity here, among the manifest failure and unpopularity of the Bush team and its allies, to talk policy. Not so it will be implemented. If the idiot Republicans want to build the world's largest trailer park to permanently house survivors of Katrina, it will happen. No, the Democrats need to forge their identity. Bush and co. are too busy trying to save their own asses to deliver attacks on liberal weakness, impugn our patriotism etc. with their characteristic effectiveness. Go, talk equality, fairness, giving up these stupid tax cuts for the rich, improving FEMA etc. Do it!

But don't listen for one moment while Brooks first mischaracterizes Edwards as non-partisan, and then warns us to be Clintonite centrists (as if a centrist could avoid being termed a fire-breathing liberal if he/she were running) or else. Brooks has one political aim above all, to keep his party, whose base regards anything resembling Brooks, ie. semi-intellectual, culturally urban, and Jewish, as well beneath contempt, (but this is typical for the Republican party, whose media symbols and representatives, like Armstrong Williams, Michelle Malkin, Anne Coulter, Krauthammer again, Sullivan, even George Will who, despite being thoroughly WASP is a pencil necked geek, are all basically Chickens for Colonel Sanders in a party that is decreasingly accepting of anyone who isn't white, straight, evangelical Christian, if not male at least submissive to male authority, and dumb as a sack of rocks) in power. Would you trust someone like that to tell you the directions to the nearest gas station?

A project

landing7
Originally uploaded by poopruiz.

A set of photos I've taken of planes landing at the Tampa airport.

Taken from approximately this location. It's a little public beach on Tampa Bay. When the airplanes pass over, it's incredibly loud. After they've passed, there's a peculiar effect where little eddies form hundreds of feet behind and produce a sound like papers being rustled by wind hundreds of feet up.

It might interest some that I saw a few roseate spoonbills, a skimmer, numerous brown pelicans, an osprey, and what looked like a shrike. it's a nice place. I suggest you visit