Hullabaloo

Monday, December 13, 2004

 
Tie It All Together

LiberalOasis catches the Democrats wising up:

Wouldn't ya just know it?

On the day LiberalOasis gets all mad at the Dems for not knowing how to fight, they go and do something smart.

From the AP:

[Sen.] Harry Reid said Monday his party will launch investigative hearings next year in response to what he said was the reluctance of Republicans to look into problems in the Bush administration.

"There are too many unasked and unanswered questions and the American public deserves better," the Nevada senator said...

...Sen. Byron Dorgan…said the first hearing will be at the end of January and he suggested it might focus on contract abuse in Iraq...

They said issues that "cry out" for closer investigation...include the administration's use of prewar intelligence and its reported effort to stifle information about the true cost of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit.

Reid also mentioned global warming and the "No Child Left Behind" education program as topics that needed a closer look.

In all likelihood, they recognized the great success Rep. Henry Waxman and his staff had publishing their own report on federally funded abstinence-only programs.

That showed how a minority party can make news and put the majority party on the defensive.

Now the key is to tie all of this corruption, misdirection and ineptitude into Bush's plan to destroy Social Security. I'm more and more convinced that this is not only necessary for its own sake, but will result in many other political rewards for the Democrats. Bush is a lame duck. He has far less political capital than he thinks he has. He's fucked up the War on terror and he knows it and this is his last big chance for a "positive" long term legacy. If we are able to stop him we may just show the American people that we have some guts after all and position ourselves for a big come back in 06 and 08.

The alternative is to allow him to destroy the most succesful social program in the history of this country, an act that will affect real human beings in our towns, neighborhoods and families. If SS isn't worth fighting for with everything we have then we truly are worthless.




digby 12/13/2004 11:15:00 PM |

 
Dumblogger

Is there something about MSnbc that makes some writers particularly dumb about blogging? I just heard Chris Matthews say (as he does every night) "if you want to blog, go on over to Hardblogger at ..."

Then you have:

MSNBC - The Alpha Bloggers


The bloggers who follow technology consist of a particularly evolved community. The alphas, or "A-listers," as they call themselves, commonly cross-link to one another, with the effect of having one of their comments amplified and commented on.

Ooooh. You say these "A-listers" cross link one another? And then people comment on their comments? Wow. I can hardly wait until the rest of the blogosphere is as evolved.

In the tech conferences you can often spot them in person, clustering toward the wall so they can keep their laptops plugged in. No matter where they are, they maintain a running conversation with their unseen audience, which can be as big as 20,000 visitors on a good day.

If that's a good day then these "A-listers" are a bunch of punks. Atrios and Kos get that in an hour.

There is, of course, plenty of blog action in the tech sector but it is a tiny specialized corner compared to the much more highly evolved political blogosphere. But then, Newsweek probably thinks that Chris Matthews is a real blogger. Or rather they think that anyone reading Chris Matthews' "blog" is a blogger.




digby 12/13/2004 09:11:00 PM |

 
Fighting Social Security Privatization :A Primer

Highlights from this PBS Timeline:

September 22, 1993 - Bill Clinton, delivers his health care speech to a joint session of Congress ... Response is overwhelmingly favorable. During TV interviews immediately afterward, House and Senate Republicans criticize Clinton for failing to provide specific details. HIAA and NFIB lobbyists, as well as lobbyists for other organizations, condemn the President's remarks and repeatedly charge that the Clinton plan will lead to a "tremendous dislocation of employees" and prevent American families from keeping the health care they already have.[They begin a series of ads colllectively known as the "Harry and Louise spots."]

September 28, 1993 - Hillary Clinton begins several days of testimony on health care before five congressional committees... Its very success, however, triggers new and intense activity among opponenys who see in her a foe whose defeat will require their most determined efforts.

October - November 1993 - Ira Magaziner is besieged by interest group representatives and members of Congress, all demanding last-minute adjustments.

October 27, 1993 - Clinton, in an attempt to recapture public support, formally presents his plan to Congress in a staged media event in the old chamber of the House. ...House Minority Leader Bob Michel of Illinois stuns observers with a forceful, bold, and unsparing attack on the very premise of the Clinton plan. Even those who have not closely followed the debate immediately understand what this laying down of the gauntlet by a moderate like Michel means: It is a clear signal of all-out Republican opposition.

November 1, 1993 - Hillary Clinton launches a scathing attack against the insurance industry to counter the highly damaging "Harry and Louise" ads...Her assault makes front-page newspaper stories, network TV news shows, and calls more attention to HIAA's role and message.

The success of HIAA ads give an immense boost to the organization's fund-raising. In the space of a few weeks, the budget for the campaign expands fivefold from $4 million to $20 million.In the end, HIAA raises and spends about $30 million more than its normal annual operating budget of $20 million -- a grand total of almost $50 million to the lobbying effort. The money HIAA accumulates for the fight pays not only for the Harry and Louise ads but also for a grassroots campaign that dwarfs anything the interest group has ever done. The effort produces more than four hundred fifty thousand contacts with Congress -- phone calls, visits, or letters -almost a thousand to every member of the House and Senate.

November 20, 1993 - The Health Care bill is finally presented to Congress.

December 2, 1993 - Leading conservative operative William Kristol privately circulates a strategy document to Republicans in Congress. Kristol writes that congressional Republicans should work to "kill" -- not amend -- the Clinton plan because it presents a real danger to the Republican future: Its passage will give the Democrats a lock on the crucial middle-class vote and revive the reputation of the party. Nearly a full year before Republicans will unite behind the "Contract With America," Kristol has provided the rationale and the steel for them to achieve their aims of winning control of Congress and becoming America's majority party. Killing health care will serve both ends. The timing of the memo dovetails with a growing private consensus among Republicans that all-out opposition to the Clinton plan is in their best political interest. Until the memo surfaces, most opponents prefer behind-the-scenes warfare largely shielded from public view. The boldness of Kristol's strategy signals a new turn in the battle. Not only is it politically acceptable to criticize the Clinton plan on policy grounds, it is also politically advantageous. By the end of 1993, blocking reform poses little risk as the public becomes increasingly fearful of what it has heard about the Clinton plan.

December 19, 1993 - Stories about a new Clinton scandal continue to chip away at the reserves of political capital the President and First Lady will need when Congress returns in January.

January 3, 1994 - Republicans link Whitewater with health care reform in an allout campaign coordinated with the conservative talk radio network. The result: rising doubts that the public can trust Clinton in either case.

January 25, 1994 - The barrage of Whitewater stories continues, creating a siege mentality at the White House. Republicans openly embrace William Kristol's latest advice: Oppose any Clinton health care reform "sight unseen" and adopt a stance that "There is no health care crisis." Bob Dole uses this approach in his State of the Union response. During his talk Dole uses a chart -- depicting a bewildering array of new government agencies and programs -- to hammer home his point that the Clinton plan is government-run health care. The chart becomes a centerpiece in Capitol Hill debates and further frightens a public already Suspicious of government and increasingly distrustful of the President and the First Lady who have designed this new government program.

Late January 1994 - A critically influential -- and intensely controversial -- pair of articles appears on the Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial page and in the liberal New Republic...The White House, and other independent experts, say the articles are filled with patent falsehoods and distortions...Newt Gingrich will later characterize them as "the first decisive breakpoint" in support for the Clinton plan.

Early February 1994 - Another blow is dealt to the President's credibility as former Arkansas state employee Paula Corbin Jones announces a lawsuit against him for sexual harassment and civil rights violations...the Business Roundtable, perhaps the most prestigious of all business groups, endorses the rival Cooper plan >as the best "starting point" for congressional action on health care reform.

The Chamber of Commerce of the United States changes its position and comes out against the Clinton plan. Behind the change of direction is an intensive grassroots campaign, waged against the Chamber's national leadership by congressional Republicans and the No Name Coalition.

February 5, 1994 - The board of the National Association of Manufacturers passes a resolution declaring its opposition to the Clinton plan.

March 1994 - Democrat John Dingell approaches Carlos Moorhead of California -the senior Republican on his committee -- to raise the possibility of working out a health bill together. According to Dingell, Moorhead responds: "There's no way you're going to get a single vote on this [Republican] side of the aisle. You will not only not get a vote here, but we've been instructed that if we participate in that undertaking at all, those of us who do will lose Our seniority and will not be ranking minority members within the Republican Party."

March 4-5, 1994 - Newt Gingrich...implicitly warns GOP senators that any Republican concessions will be met with more Democratic demands. Phill Gramm also weighs in against any Republican compromise on health reform. This meeting becomes a crucial step, not in forming a Republican alternative to the Clinton plan but in demonstrating to Dole how dangerous it will be for him to be part of any compromise.

End of March 1994 - Republicans seize on Whitewater even more aggressively, once more linking it directly with health reform, House Republican Lamar Smith of Texas sends a letter to each of his House colleagues and all their administrative assistants and press secretaries urging them to focus on one theme in their speeches, columns for the press, and media and constituent contacts for the next week: "Whitewater and Health Care." Included in the four-page letter is a list of suggested attack sound bites and quotes to be used by all GOP colleagues. In all this time nothing has been done by the White House to launch any kind of grassroots support campaign for health care reform.

April 19, 1994 - The Finance Committee begins holding closed-door sessions to discuss health care reform and deal with a central problem: how to finance the program the President wants. That same day,Rush Limbaugh, echoing the Republicans strategy line, tells his listeners that "Whitewater is about health care."

May 31, 1994 - ... pressure from the Republican Right increases. Six prominent conservative activists -- Richard Viguerie, Phyllis Schlafly, L. Brent Bozell, and three others -- send Dole and Gingrich an open letter warning that any "willingness to coinpromise on behalf of Big Government" will make it "impossible" for Dole and Gingrich to find conservative grassroots support in 1996.

A federal grand jury indicts Rep. Rostenkowski on seventeen counts of conspiring to defraud the government. He is required to step aside as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee -- a crippling blow to any effort to pass health care reform through the House.

Spring 1994 - Republicans other than Newt Gingrich begin to see a tantalizing prospect of winning control of Congress by opposing the Clinton health plan as a quintessential example of Big Government Democratic liberalism run wild. An article in the right-wing American Spectator Suggests Dole's presidential prospects hinge on his ability to block any govemment-run health care system. Dole's top aide, Sheila Burke, quickly finds herself the target of abuse from ultraconservatives because of Dole's seeming moderate stance.

Early June 1994 - Archconservatives plant stories in the news media targeting Republican moderates or anyone else who is not a "true believer." During Senate Finance Committee deliberations on the reform bill, the Washington Times weighs in with more of the same. "Some GOP colleagues and their staff view Mr. Dole's chief of staff and health care guru, Sheila Burke, as a liberal Democrat," the paper said, adding, "'Our No. 1's No. 1 is a liberal Democrat."'

June 11, 1994 - At a Republican meeting in Boston, Dole promises to "filibuster and kill" any health care bill with an employer mandate.

June 15, 1994 - Bill Clinton begins individual Oval Office exploratory meetings with Senate Republican moderates Chafee, Durenberger, and Danforth. Clinton impresses them with his detailed knowledge of compromises tinder discussion and his eagerness to move the process forward. He complains to Durenberger, "Every time I start in the middle, Bob Dole moves the middle to the right."

June 1994 - HIAA brings back its "Harry and Louise" campaign for another month's run, this time targeting provisions in the Clinton plan that will impose backup controls on health care spending and require standard premiums for all those insured. At the same time, HIAA -- in a blatantly cynical move -- runs a print ad that appears only in Washington and is obviously intended to be conciliatory to the playmakers of the capital. The ad emphasizes HIAA's support for universal health care coverage and insurance reform. Pro-reform groups fight back but are badly out spent. The DNC, for example, announces a one-week, $150,000 ad campaign, ostensibly designed to produce phone calls to Congress demanding "the real thing" in reform. But the DNC buys time only on Washington, D.C., stations -- not in the grassroots, where it counts.

June 29, 1994 - The major business lobbies fighting the Clinton plan swing behind the Dole-Packwood bill in the Senate, as they had done behind the Rowland-Bilirakis bill in the House. Incremental reform is all they will support. The Republican National Committee, happy to have something to be for, launches ads saying this is the way -- the only way -- to achieve bipartisan agreement.


July 22, 1994 - Trying to win back the kind of political support that brought them to the White House, the administration plans a bus trek across America to generate their own grassroots message to Congress for reform. A kickoff rally in Portland, Oregon, is marred by anti-Clinton protesters. When the first buses reach the highway they find a broken-down bus wreathed in red tape symbolizing government bureaucracy and hitched to a tow truck labeled, "This is Clinton Health Care." The anti-bus trek protests are the crowning success of the No Name Coalition and especially of the conservative political interest group Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE). By the time the ill-fated bus caravan takes to the highways, CSE operatives, working closely -- and secretly -- with Newt Gingrich's Capitol Hill office and with Republican senators, have mapped out plans to derail the Reform Riders wherever they go.

July 23, 1994 - Following several days of anti-Hillary rhetoric on local talk shows, Hillary Clinton -- at a bus rally in Seattle -- is confronted by hundreds of angry men shouting that the Clintons are going to destroy their way of life, ban guns, extend abortion rights, protect gays, and socialize medicine. When she finishes speaking and tries to leave the rally, her Iimousine is surrounded by protesters. Each of the four caravan routes becomes an expedition into enemy territory -- with better-armed, better-prepared, better-mobilized anti-Clinton protesters at each stop along the way. Local reform groups and caravan organizers are forced to cancel scheduled stops because of implicit threats of violence.

July 24, 1994 - In an interview with Newt Gingrich, the New York Times reports that Gingrich has united House Republicans against passage of health reform and hopes "to use the issue as a springboard to win Republican control of the House." Gingrich goes on to predict that Republicans will pick up thirty-four House seats in the November elections and that half a dozen disaffected Democrats will switch parties to give Republicans control. The story attracts little attention.

August 3, 1994 - Clinton gives an emotional address in the White House Rose Garden, where he and the First Lady greet six hundred Reform Riders after their buses finally arrive in Washington -- timed to coincide with the day Mitchell introduces his health care reform "rescue" in the Senate, and Gephardt introduces his bill in the House. Mitchell's compromise is much less bureaucratic and government-driven than the Clinton plan. It puts off any requirement that employers provide employees health insurance until early in the next century. It makes a major concession to small businesses by exempting any employer with twenty-five or fewer employees from providing coverage. And it aims at guaranteeing insurance for 95 percent of Americans by the year 2000.

Mid August 1994 - Newt Gingrich strikes. For more than a year, he has marshaled his forces like a guerrilla army and coordinated the Republican attack strategy with the congressional Theme Team and economic allies in the grassroots campaign. Now he springs his ambush by attacking -- not the Democratic health bill being introduced in the House, but the least expected target, the crime bill. His plan is to bring Congress to a halt, strand the health effort, send lawmakers home, and deny Democrats the opportunity to record a vote on health care reform before the fall elections.

August 11, 1994 - Foley and Gephardt try to bring the crime bill before the full House for debate and then a vote. They know the procedural vote to begin debate will be close but they expect to prevail. Instead they lose by fifteen votes after fifty eight Democrats bolt their party and join the opposition. Congressional leaders announce that health care will be delayed indefinitely. Delay and obstruction also tie up the Senate.

August 15, 1994 - Mitchell threatens to keep the Senate in nonstop, round-the-clock session until Republicans agree to start voting.

August 16, 1994 - The final round of "Harry and Louise" commercials begins airing nationally. At the same time, the final outpouring of faxes, phone calls, and letters mounted by the small-business lobby floods Washington offices.

August 18, 1994 - Democrats gather for a private leadership luncheon. Though the initial remarks by senators are polite, they clearly contain strong criticism of the Mitchell bill. The meeting erupts into a stormy confrontation between Ted Kennedy and Bob Kerrey, who get into a shouting match that shows how deep the divisions in the Democratic party have become. This leaves observers stunned and convinced the party is falling apart.

August 25, 1994 - Democratic leaders of both congressional chambers give up on health care and announce they are letting their members go home for their much-postponed vacation. Neither the Senate (where Democrats outnumber Republicans fifty-six to forty-four) nor the House (with a Democratic majority of 257 to 176) has come close to passing, or even voting on, any health bill.

Late August 1994 - Democrats begin preparing for the November elections by distancing themselves from their President -- and from the reform he has attempted.

September 19, 1994 - The New York Times reports remarks -- never subsequently denied -- that Bob Packwood made to his Republican senatorial colleagues during closed-door strategy sessions while he was managing the Republican attack during the summer. "We've killed health care reform," Packwood told his fellow Republican senators. "Now we've got to make sure our fingerprints are not on it." For many this is the "smoking gun": proof of a carefully plotted, and secret, Republican strategy.

Congress reconvenes. Mitchell hopes to set aside four days for Senate debate on the new Mainstream bill and then schedule a straight up-or-down vote. Republicans begin mobilizing for a filibuster to keep the bill from reaching the floor. Supporters realize they don't have enough votes to break the filibuster.

September 20, 1994 - Newt Gingrich privately warns Bill Clinton in the White House that if he continues to push for health reform in the closing days of the session, he will lose the Republican support needed to pass GATT, which the President believes is critical to the U.S. economic position as the leader of the Western alliance. George Mitchell, repeating this Gingrich threat to colleagues privately immediately after, describes it as "an atomic bomb blast."

September 26, 1994 - At a news conference in the Capitol, George Mitchell pulls the plug on health care reform.

September 27, 1994 - William Kristol of the Project for the Republican Future spell out the next stage of the battle plan to change the makeup of Congress. "I think we can continue to wrap the Clinton plan around the necks of Democratic candidates." Some observers urge the White House to make some kind of public statement about special interests, all the money expended, and the fact that most Republicans were clearly committed from day one to killing reform, but no statement is forthcoming.

October 7, 1994 - Congress adjourns.

November 8, 1994 - Voters deliver a massive repudiation of President Clinton, break the forty-year hold of Democrats on Congress, restore Republicans to power at ever level of government, and set the stage for a further test over the nation's ideological future in 1996. In two years the Democrats have gone from a controlling majority 258 seats in the House of Representatives to a minority of 204. In all the contests House, Senate, and gubernatorial seats, not a single Republican seeking reelection loses.

Late 1994 - As the Gingrich Revolution in Congress prepares to assume office, a Gallup poll shows that 72 percent of the public lists major health care reform as a top or high priority. Only crime and deficit reduction rank higher.



REMINDER: The Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and the Presidency when this went down.



digby 12/13/2004 08:47:00 AM |

 
Lobotomized Castrati

The Poor Man says,

Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) sends a nice letter to the lobotomized castrati who edit the Washington Post...I like how we have to rely on career politicians to provide a check on the corruption and idiocy of the media. That's a quite healthy situation, and not at all fucked up. Sleep tight.

This really is reaching crisis proportions. In order to appease the mouthbreathing neanderthals who insist that science is just another "opinion", the L.C. are actually disseminating total bullshit to the public and calling it fact.

This is a problem. The people who believe Republican science are the ones driving big cars and handling your food. It's dangerous.




digby 12/13/2004 08:34:00 AM |

Sunday, December 12, 2004

 
On Hard and Soft

I’m ridiculously busy and I don’t have time to write much about the circular firing squad. Still, I’ll write a few words in passing on which I’ll elaborate later.

If, in order to be “hard” we must support irrationality and grievous error then we are doomed as a country. We are simply too big for that. We will not have many chances to make the kind of mistake we've made with Iraq without suffering serious consequences. It is the very definition of hard nosed, cold hearted realism to say that we should not squander our military resources during a national security crisis by fighting the wrong goddamned war. It is not “soft” to note that sexually torturing citizens whom we were ostensibly liberating and whose cooperation we needed was a lousy war plan. And it is nothing short of hawkish to point out that proving to the whole world that our vaunted intelligence services couldn’t find Baghdad on a fucking map made this country and all its allies less safe. We are the reality based community and facing up to facts is the single most important thing we can do to protect this country. Letting the faith based morons who planned this debacle of a response to 9/11 off the hook and holding their hands in solidarity not only looks weak, it is weak.

But, as usual, all of this braying about repositioning and purging obscures the fact that we aren’t dealing with a policy issue at all, are we? We are once again drowning in perceptions, in which the alleged Democratic tough guys are accusing the alleged Democratic sissies of fucking things up and losing elections because the American people won’t support a party that is “soft” on … anything. They are right in a way but they fail to see why this perception is so widely held, who is responsible and how to change it. Mainly this is because the ones making this accusation think they are hard when they are actually soft.

I agree that we need a change in strategy. But, we’ve hit a wall compromising or cooperating with this modern Republican Party on issues. They have left us no room on policy except total capitulation. Anybody who doesn’t see that is definitely soft. (In the head.) Politics is now beyond issues. For Democrats, it’s existential.

Do we want the public to understand that we’re “hard?” Do we need for people to take us seriously as tough guys who will keep the country safe from the “ism” of the moment? Of course. But does anyone believe that we can demonstrate our powerful rigid tumescence to the public with academic papers or scholarly op-ed’s or earnest senate speeches? This argument always implies that we are campaigning in a vacuum and fails to take into consideration the nature of the opposition. We could be Beinartian Hawks or Kucinichian doves or George Patton or Ulysses S. Grant and it would mean nothing as long as the opposition comes up with simple marketing slogans to position our candidates and our ideas as soft and we do not respond in kind.

Let’s talk about flipping and flopping for a moment. That phrase didn’t come out of nowhere, you know. “Flip-flop” was not some complicated concept in which people were persuaded by examples in his record that Kerry was unprincipled or indecisive. “Flip-flop” was an uncomplicated, symbolic slogan that stood for flaccid penis. Yes, it’s really that simple, folks. People may not have been consciously aware that the term flip-flop was meant to unman our war hero candidate, but it did so just the same. And it played off of 35 years of exactly the same kind of imagery from “with hair that long, hippie, you can’t tell if you’re a man or a woman,” to “he’s been botoxed.” This image doesn’t come from Michael Moore or indeed from any Democrat. It comes directly from the propaganda shop of the Republican party and it plays right into the lizard brains of certain white males and the women who inexplicably love them. It wouldn’t matter if Michael Moore joined the marines and MoveOn decided to merge with Club For Growth. The right has a tremendous investment in framing the left as too “soft” to keep the nation safe and they will continue to play that card no matter how tough we sound on terrorism. It is how they win.

But there is one surefire way to convince the American people that Democrats are “hard” enough to take on the enemies of the United States. And that would be for us to take on the goddamned Republicans. As long as we do not respond in kind to their in your face bully boy style of politics we will continue to look weak in the face of an existential threat --- because we ARE weak. We can look to history for Scoop Jackson lessons or Arthur Schlessinger lessons, but they are not relevant to the problem at hand. Our problem is that since 1968 the Republicans have waged a take-no-prisoner war against the Democratic party and they use that proxy war to prove to the American people that they are tough enough to protect the American people from threats, both internal and external, and the Democrats are not. (Indeed, to listen to their most skilled polemicists, Democrats are the threat.) And despite the fact that they are completely full of shit, it works quite well because they practice what they preach by fighting every last Democrat to a standstill and when they lose they get right back up and start fighting again with everything they have. People can see exactly what they are about. They demonstrate it. We, on the other hand, talk a lot.

The father of the modern Republican party (perhaps modern American politics) is not sunny Reagan, it’s darkling Nixon. Until we finally grasp the nature of the opposition we will continue to lose. It is the central problem we face.

One word of advice. When George Will backs your ideas you need to rethink your position. Prominent Republican mouthpieces do not have our best interests at heart. Ever.





digby 12/12/2004 07:49:00 PM |

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

 
Cult Leader Fashion Show











digby 12/08/2004 08:47:00 AM |

Sunday, December 05, 2004

 
Shop Locally

And by local, I mean the left blogosphere.

For those of you looking for a special gift for that angler in your family (and they are legion) check out these beautiful handcrafted split cane flyrods made by reader and penpal JDW and family. I don't know much about fishing, but I certainly can appreciate fine craftsmanship. These are incredible:



Even if you don't fish, check out these beauties at the J.D Wagner web page.

Support your local left blogospheric craftsman.




digby 12/05/2004 09:55:00 AM |

 
Evolutionary Theology

Those of you who follow the religious beat more closely than I do have probably seen this article called The Fundamentalist Agenda, by Davidson Loehr. I may not have religious experiences, but I do have epiphanies and reading this was one.

From 1988 to 1993, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences sponsored an interdisciplinary study known as The Fundamentalism Project, the largest such study ever done. More than 100 scholars from all over the world took part, reporting on every imaginable kind of fundamentalism. And what they discovered was that the agenda of all fundamentalist movements in the world is virtually identical, regardless of religion or culture.

The five characteristics are

1) Men rule the roost and make the rules. Women are support staff and for reasons easy to imagine, homosexuality is intolerable.

2) all rules must apply to all people, no pluralism.

3) the rules must be precisely communicated to the next generation

4) "they spurn the modern, and want to return to a nostalgic vision of a golden age that never really existed. (Several of the scholars observed a strong and deep resemblance between fundamentalism and fascism. Both have almost identical agendas. Men are on top, women are subservient, there is one rigid set of rules, with police and military might to enforce them, and education is tightly controlled by the state. One scholar suggested that it's helpful to understand fundamentalism as religious fascism, and fascism as political fundamentalism. The phrase 'overcoming the modern' is a fascist slogan dating back to at least 1941.)"

5) Fundamentalists deny history in a "radical and idiosyncratic way."

All of this is interesting and it's interesting because it crosses all religions, cultural and regional boundries. When the scientists were presenting their abstracts, "several noted that all their papers were sounding alike, reporting on 'species' when studying the 'genus' was called for, that there were strong family resemblances between all fundamentalisms, even when the religions had had no contact, no way to influence each other."

Now, evolutionary psychology theories of the moment can be awfully facile because mostly they reinforce certain social norms that can easily be explained in other ways. (No Virginia, women do not necessarily practise fidelity and men do not "need" to spread their seed far and wide because of their alleged biological programming. It's a lot more complicated than that.) Still, this explanation for fundamentalism --- and more importantly perhaps, why it rears its ugly head from time to time is very thought provoking:

The only way all fundamentalisms can have the same agenda is if the agenda preceded all the religions. And it did. Fundamentalist behaviors are familiar because we've all seen them so many times. These men are acting the role of “alpha males” who define the boundaries of their group's territory and the norms and behaviors that define members of their in-group. These are the behaviors of territorial species in which males are stronger than females. In biological terms, these are the characteristic behaviors of sexually dimorphous territorial animals. Males set and enforce the rules, females obey the males and raise the children; there is a clear separation between the in-group and the out-group. The in-group is protected; outsiders are expelled or fought.

It is easier to account for this set of behavioral biases as part of the common evolutionary heritage of our species than to argue that it is simply a monumental coincidence that the social and behavioral agendas of all fundamentalisms and fascisms are essentially identical.

What conservatives are conserving is the biological default setting of our species, which has strong family resemblances to the default setting of thousands of other species. This means that when fundamentalists say they are obeying the word of God, they have severely understated the authority for their position. The real authority behind this behavioral scheme is millions of years older than all the religions and all the gods there have ever been. It is the picture of life that gave birth to most of the gods as its projected champions.

Fundamentalism is absolutely natural, ancient, powerful—and inadequate. It's a means of structuring relationships that evolved when we lived in troops of 150 or less. But in the modern world, it's completely incapable of the nuance or flexibility needed to structure humane societies.

Perhaps it is facile to suggest that these people are less evolved but well...if the shoe fits. I actually think this is a fairly decent explanation for the phenomenon.

The author goes on, however, to suggest that the reason for fundamentalism's rise is that liberalism has failed to properly incorporate progress into society which leaves many people uncomfortable thus "defaulting" to the basic human response.

But for the liberal impulse to lead, liberals must remain in contact with the center of our territorial instinct and our need for a structure of responsibilities. Fundamentalist uprisings are a sign that the liberals have failed to provide an adequate and balanced vision, that they have not found a vision that attracts enough people to become stable.

Just as it's no coincidence that all fundamentalisms have similar agendas, it's also no coincidence that the most successful liberal advances tend to wrap their expanded definitions in what sound like conservative categories.

John F. Kennedy's most famous line sounds like the terrifying dictate of the world's most arrogant fascist: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Imagine that line coming from Hitler, Khomeini, Mullah Omar, or Jerry Falwell. It is a conservative, even a fascist, slogan. Yet Kennedy used it to effect significant liberal transformations in our society. Under that umbrella he created the Peace Corps and vista programs and through them enlisted many young people to extend our hand to those we had not before seen as belonging to our in-group.

Likewise, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used the rhetoric of a conservative vision to promote his liberal redefinition of the members of our in-group. When he defined all Americans as the children of God, those words could sound like the battle-cry of an American Taliban on the verge of putting a Bible in every school, a catechism in every legislature. Instead, King used that cry to include Americans of all colors in the sacred and protected group of “all God's children”—which was just what many white Southerners were arguing against forty years ago.

When liberal visions work, it's because they have kept one foot solidly in our deep territorial impulses with the other foot free to push the margin, to expand the definition of those who belong in “our” territory.

He's basically saying that in order to pave the way for change, liberals have to first be aware of the sacred symbols and rhetoric of traditionalism and then attempt to harness those symbols to advance our cause. I think there is some truth in that.

The Bible is one, of course, but so are the "sacred" texts of our nation, those that outline the rules and beliefs of our territory and tribe. Those symbols and totems are powerful mojo for the other side if we don't lay claim to them. They mean more than just surface martial nationalistic nonsense --- indeed, if this thesis is true, they may be more powerful than Christian fundamentalism. At the very least, liberals should embrace the symbols like the flag and the constitution and all the apple pie traditions with the knowledge that if we don't, a more pernicious force will. It's about the power of deeply held territorial impulses. Christianity and Islam are only a couple of thousand years old. As the author says, the [fundamentalists] have "severely understated the authority for their position." Perhaps we should stake that authority for our side in service of our ideals.

I can think of a few ways we might do this. The first that comes to mind is to pit fundamentalism against territory. If this retreat to fundamentalism is really a default to primitive biology, then we can frame this as America vs the fundamentalists. And lucky for us, it's easy to do and will confuse the shit out of the right. We have a built in boogie man fundamentalist named Osama on whom we can pin all this ANTI-AMERICAN fundamentalist dogma while subtly drawing the obvious parallels between him and the homegrown variety.

We start by having the womens' groups decrying the Islamic FUNDAMENTALIST view of womens rights. These FUNDAMENTALISTS want to roll back the clock and make women answer to men. In AMERICA we don't believe in that. Then we have the Human Rights Campaign loudly criticizing the Islamic FUNDAMENTALISTS for it's treatment of gays. In AMERICA we believe that all people have inalienable rights. The ACLU puts out a statement about the lack of civil liberties in Islamic FUNDAMENTALIST theocracies. In AMERICA we believe in the Bill of Rights, not the word of unelected mullahs.

You got a problem with that Jerry? Pat? Karl????

Pit American liberalism against Islamic Fundamentalism. Since it's pretty much exactly like Christian fundamentalism, perhaps at least a few people will draw the obvious conclusions. But more importantly, it places us with, as the author says, "one foot solidly in our deep territorial impulses with the other foot free to push the margin, to expand the definition of those who belong in “our” territory." This way we define the territory as being ours while at the same time placing the fundamentalists firmly outside of it by using the symbols of territory instead of religion.

I am concluding more and more that we are dealing with a pre-modern political situation in a post modern world. It's not about issues, it's about tribal identity. We have to start thinking in terms of how to communicate our ideals and our vision in symbolic terms. Go for the gut, not the head. My view is that we can do this by using our sacred political symbols to illustrate what we believe in. People use the Bible and that's just fine. But it isn't the only game in town. "This Land Is Your Land" can bring a tear to the eye as well. And if this fellow is correct in that religion is being used in service of something far more primal than we realize then there is definitely more than one way to skin a cat.

I'd be interested in hearing other ideas you may have about how we might communicate by keeping "one foot solidly in our deep territorial impulses with the other foot free to push the margin," without compromising our principles or our agenda.

(And yes, I've read Lakoff. He's great, but we need to consider not only framing, but the context of the argument and the "feelings" into which we want to tap. I think this issue of territorial impulse and biological default settings in times of rapid social change is one way to think about it. There are, undoubtedly many others.)


Thanks to this exceptional rundown of the "abstinence only" story from Barbara O'Brien, from which I got the link to the article. I highly recommend you read both if you are interested in this topic.


Update: My apologies to Barbara O'Brien, whose name I got wrong and have since corrected.





digby 12/05/2004 09:55:00 AM |

 
Stop!

I don't care about the stupid weblog awards. My post was a joke, a little poke of fun at myself and the rest of the left blogosphere. I do not endorse "rigging the vote" nor did I issue a call to arms to do so. If people took my little joke that way then they are a) stupid and b) stupid.

I don't care about shit like this. So please, stop with the e-mails. Go bother somebody else. I don't even know who you are.




digby 12/05/2004 08:25:00 AM |

Saturday, December 04, 2004

 
The Good Guys

The Donkey Rising has a very useful list for us to use during this shopping season. May I suggest e-mailing it to your Democratic friends?

With the holidays upon us, some of us might wish to be mindful of who we patronize relative to their Election Cycle political donations, as reported by the Center for Responsive Politics.

WITH US:
* Price Club/Costco donated $225K, of which 99% went to democrats;
* Rite Aid, $517K, 60% to democrats;
* Magla Products (Stanley tools, Mr. Clean), $22K, 100% to democrats;
* Warnaco (undergarments), $55K, 73% to democrats;
* Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, $153K, 99% to democrats;
* Estee Lauder, $448K, 95% to democrats;
* Guess ? Inc., $145K, 98% to democrats;
* Calvin Klein, $78K, 100% to democrats;
* Liz Claiborne, Inc., $34K, 97% to democrats;
* Levi Straus, $26K, 97% to democrats;
* Olan Mills, $175K, 99% to democrats.
* Gallo Winery, $337K, 95% to democrats;
* Southern Wine & Spirits, $213K, 73% to democrats;
* Joseph E. Seagrams & Sons (includes beverage business, plus considerable media interests), $2M+, 67% democrats.
* Sonic Corporation, $83K, 98% democrat;
* Triarc Companies (Arby's, T.J. Cinnamon's, Pasta Connections), $112K, 96% Democrats;
* Hyatt Corporation, $187K, 80% to democrats;


AGAINST US:
WalMart, $467K, 97% to republicans;
K-Mart, $524K, 86% to republicans;
Home Depot, $298K, 89% to republicans;
Target, $226K, 70% to republicans;
Circuit City Stores, $261K, 95% to republicans;
3M Co., $281K, 87% to republicans;
Hallmark Cards, $319K, 92% to republicans;
Amway, $391K, 100% republican;
Kohler Co. (plumbing fixtures), $283K, 100% republicans;
B.F. Goodrich (tires), $215K, 97% to republicans;
Proctor & Gamble, $243K, 79% to republicans;
Coors, $174K, 92% to republicans; (also Budweiser - sd)
Brown-Forman Corp. (Southern Comfort, Jack Daniels, Bushmills, Korbel wines - as well as Lennox China, Dansk, Gorham Silver), $644, 80% to republicans;
Pilgrim's Pride Corp. (chicken), $366K, 100% republican;
Outback Steakhouse, $641K, 95% republican;
Tricon Global Restaurants (KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell), $133K, 87% republican;
Brinker International (Maggiano's, Brinker Cafe, Chili's, On the
Border, Macaroni Grill, Crazymel's, Corner Baker, EatZis), $242K, 83% republican;
Waffle House, $279K, 100% republican;
McDonald's Corp., $197K, 86% republican;
Darden Restaurants (Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Smokey Bones, Bahama Breeze), $121K, 89% republican;
Mariott International, $323K, 81% to republicans;
Holiday Inns, $38K, 71% to republicans

(Does anybody know what the restaurant chains are so anxious about? GM foods? Minimum wage hikes? Why are they all giving big bucks to the Republicans? It kind of freaks me out.)

Let's be sure to spread some Holiday cheer to the good guys --- and stick it to the others. This is America, after all.




digby 12/04/2004 06:10:00 PM |

 
Can't Keep A Good Girl Down

Rittenhouse reveals that the torrid, heaving, breathless tome known as Sisters has been disappeared from the web:

...Mrs. Biscuitbarrel dropped me a note this afternoon telling me Live Journal has blocked her access to the site’s template. And I notice that Mrs. Biscuitbarrel’s web site has been taken down, presumably by Live Journal.

No word yet on who instigated this attack.

I don’t know, I have the feeling this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Sisters.

Oh, it will be impossible to keep this panting paeon to Montana's sapphic history away from a public that demands it. If Mrs. VP were a real capitalist she'd option it for a seven part series on Showtime. Barring that, we shall have to be content with furtive peeks into her fertile imagination from the far corners of the internet. A raging thirst for softcore GOP bodice ripping girl-love must and will be slaked.




digby 12/04/2004 01:45:00 PM |

 
This Will Not Stand

In The Return of the Curse of the Creature's Ghost Norbizness breaks the news that I am being dealt a humiliating setback in a weblog contest I've only just now been informed existed:

It's official: if you are linked by The Left (d/b/a "Happy Furry Puppy Story Time With Norbizness"), the chances of your winning the 2004 Weblog Awards (previously known as "The Awardies", "The Cable Ace Awards", the "Cross de Guerre with Palm Leaf", and "The 12th Annual Montgomery Burns Award For Outstanding Achievment in the Field of Exellence") are virtually nil. There is simply no other non-insane explanation for this phenomenon, as you will see in the following bill of particulars,:

-- in the Best Overall Weblog category, the combined votes of Talking Points Memo and Political Animal, whose hits are in the millions, are approximately one-eleventh the total of The Corner at the National Review, a repository of two-word posts, fake e-mails, and John Derbyshire. These cretins also are also outdoing the combined efforts of Reason's Hit & Run and Crooked Timber by 10-to-1 in the Best Group Blog category.

-- in the Best Humor Weblog category, Jesus' General, the only recognizable left-of-center site out of 15 nominees, is garnering only 5.5% of the vote, distantly trailing some tepid Onion-lite and Dave Barry-lite right-of-center sites. Even resident Martha Stewart in bondage fetishist, Jeff G. at Protein Wisdom, is getting smoked like a Doral Light by Fred Leuchter, proving that the curse of The Left makes no distinction in its thorough disembowelings.

[...]

-- Dan Drezner and Digby's Hullabaloo are being dealt humiliating set-backs in the Best of the Top 100 category. Sorry guys, it's nothing personal.

In fact, Matthew Yglesias is the only liberal winning in any category. It happens to be "best liberal blog." In all other categories, the left is getting its ass kicked.

Ah, I remember those good old days when we could make a publicly held media company back down in a matter of days. Seems like only yesterday. Now we are a bare hulk of a blogospheric movement. The shame.





digby 12/04/2004 01:30:00 PM |

 
Useful Idiot

I see that certain people in the Democratic leadership have been listening to Rush Limbaugh again:

We've got to repudiate, you know, the most strident and insulting anti-American voices out there sometimes on our party's left ... We can't have our party identified by Michael Moore and Hollywood as our cultural values. – Al From, CEO, Democratic Leadership Council

Yes, it's always a good idea to sling the word "anti-American" around when talking about members of your own party. It's so helpful to reiterate Republican talking points in public and suggest that Michael Moore and "Hollywood" must be repudiated because they are unacceptable to the public despite the fact that their "product" seems to sell quite well to a rather significant faction of the party.

Meanwhile, the Republicans have been very successful inviting their sociopathic lunatic fringe right onto the dais and treating them like royalty. You didn't see the Republicans rejecting Falwell or Coulter because they say inflammatory things, do you? No, because a large number of their constituents think they are terrific. It's called having respect for your grassroots.

Perhaps the reason the Republicans are winning is because the American people simply appreciate something other than a bucket of lukewarm spit in their leaders and instinctively see through all this silly "Sistah Soljah" bullshit for the half assed, lame symbolic capitulation it really is.

It's a thought.





digby 12/04/2004 01:25:00 PM |

 
Little Signs Everywhere

I normally don't weigh in on this endlessly stultifying topic of academic liberalism, but it's getting a bit more interesting now that professors are being physically threatened. From Marie at The Left Coaster: Brown Shirts in Cyber-Space I find that a poor little Republican girl at Cal State Long Beach is upset because one of her professors is a liberal and it's inappropriate for him to be talking politics in his English class, especially since he doesn't like the president. Oh boohoohoohoohoo!

This story wouldn't even be worth discussing (this snivelling woe-is-me victim whine is like a broken record) except that this quivering little Republican twit put this professor's name on this right wing "complaint" web site and the story was picked up all over the wingnut press. Predictably, the professor started getting death threats.

For a real treat, read the original complaint posted by our future Harpy of America.

I am taking this English composition class to fufill my general education (GE) requirements. On the first night of this class, Sep. 1, 2004, Dr. Snider went over the the class syllabus for the semester. This syllabus includes 5 essays that are to be turned in over the semester. One of these essays is to be written on a film that he will show in class, as he so stated will most likely be Farenheit 9/11. (Because Michael Moore is a genius and his film exposes how our so called "President Bush" is an idiot.) He then proceeded for the next hour and a half of this ENGLISH class to talk strictly about his hate of "president" (he kept doing the quote signs with his fingers) Bush and the Iraqi War. There were no more attempts made my Dr. Snider to talk about the true subject matter of the class, ENGLISH. I have been in this class for almost 2 weeks now and politics seems to be the main issue lectured on, however he makes lame attempts to tie his own liberal propaganda into an english example, (; Newspaper articles, Presidential Speeches, etc. )Furthermore, a second essay that we are to wirte must be written on a book we have read that appears on his "approved reading list". The list of books in his syllabus has a dominant theme: Sexual perversion and anti Bush rhetoric. ( A copy of this list can be found on his website at www.csulb.edu/~csnider) This website which indicated in his syllabus "contains important class material" is a website dedicated primarily to his own gay literature and anti Bush poetry.

[...]

On the first night of this class, a student sitting next to me who had apparently become disgusted by the teachers quote that "Bush is just as evil as Saddam Hussein" raised his hand and asked how Dr. Snider could even make such a comparison. I too spoke out and said that there is no way that you can compare a dictator who gasses thousands of people with our President.

[...]

This other student and I were instantly ridiculed by the rest of the class and told by Dr. Snider that it was all "the fault of the Fox so called "news" media's propaganda and that he would also like to show the class "OutFoxed" and another film on the Lies of Bush and Tony Blair to the world to show us what is really going on.
Time of Posting : Saturday, September 11, 2004.

Oh my, Gawd! It was so, like, totally, unfair! This fag was, like, teaching junk that me and, like, one other guy, like, didn't want to he-ar! Even though I'm, like, in college I shouldn't have to listen to stuff I don't, like, agree with!

Of course that huckster David Horowitz is on the case and published the poor little girl's story (in which she reveals that she believes college English is supposed to be sixth grade remedial grammar class.) Townhall got into the act and lil' Melissa even got a shot on FoxNews.

I wrote my paragraph very tongue in cheek and purposely ridiculed the insufficient evidence that Michael Moore used in his film. However, when I received my paragraph back, I found it marked up in red ink by Dr. Snider with comments like, " You miss the point of the film", or that advisor "was Richard Clark… a terrorist expert!" I was blown away by these comments. I didn’t realize that I was being graded on the way I interpreted the film! From what I understood about our in class paragraphs, Dr. Snider was only supposed to grade grammar, spelling, and mechanics, of which I had no corrected errors. Funny though that I still received the lowest grade in the class on this assignment (after receiving all A’s on past assignments), while papers with numerous spelling errors and mechanical corrections but with an anti-Bush perspective received A’s.

[...]

Dr. Snider has taken it upon himself to give us a moral/ ethical and spiritual lesson before each class begins. I have no problem with morals and spirituality, however the university offers ethics classes; I enrolled and paid for an English class. I do not believe that Dr. Snider is trained to lecture on such topics. Moreover, from what I do know of his ethics and morals, I feel slightly offended that he somehow believes that his morals are superior to mine. (I am unable to draw an ethical comparison between President Bush and Saddam Hussein, as does Dr. Snider, which he so stated on the very first night of class.)

I am disheartened to see a class full of students whom simply do not seem to know any better, being brainwashed by the leftist views of Dr. Snider only weeks before the Presidential elections. I believe that what has gone on in this course is an all too typical example of the blatant abuse of power by university professors nationwide.

It's a good thing that Uncle Davey Horowitz doesn't grade his papers as harshly as Dr. Snider because he might have asked 18 year old Melissa to back up her assertions that Dr. Snider is not trained to lecture on certain topics or that this is an all too typical example of blatant abuse of power by university professors nationwide. But then, he almost certainly "helped" little Melissa write those words didn't he?

Yes, the poor, poor little conservatives on campus, so scorned, so dissed. And all those poor brainwashed classmates who aren't as wise and as knowledgeable as little Melissa. The only thing to be done is kill the professor. Marie's post discusses other similar incidents. Apparently, it's not at all rare for liberal professors to get death threats these days after their names are posted on the internet.

Republicans may have total control of the government, but that isn't good enough. As Lincoln said in the Cooper Union Speech I posted about the other day:

... what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

They will not be satisfied until we agree with them and prove that we agree with them in thought, word and deed. Clearly, whatever brainwashing has been going on on college campuses these past twenty years or so has not resulted in a loss of political power from the right. But that doesn't matter. Liberalism must be utterly destroyed, its adherants converted and all remnants of its philosophy purged from the discourse.

When, I wonder, will we be willing to admit that this culture war is a war of survival?




digby 12/04/2004 10:18:00 AM |

Friday, December 03, 2004

 
Juicy Nugget

Seems there's word on the street that the Clintons are pushing Joe Lockhart for DNC chair.

I dunno. I have a soft spot for Lockhart from the Starr Wars, but isn't he primarily a defensive player? I think we're looking for some offense in this position.

Even though I was not a Deaniac, I came out way back in June for Dean as DNC chair mostly because I believe that the next chairman has to be able to harness some of this grassroots energy. And frankly, I think the party would be well served by a reformer who simultaneously represents the party. The activists have to take ownership of the party label and start to defend it against the GOP or we aren't going to get anywhere. As long as Democrats berate themselves more than the Republicans we're in trouble.

Still, I don't have a real dog in this fight. I'm worn out with this stuff. Lockhart's a good guy. I don't hate the Clintons or the Deaniacs or the Kerry people. I don't even know if this position is really as crucial as some think. Were Jim Nichols or Jim Gilmore or Ed Gillespie crucial to the GOP's success? Not really.

May the best Democrat win.




digby 12/03/2004 10:36:00 PM |

 
Long Memories

The Belmont Club has an interesting post up about the reason for the Franco American "troubles." Seems they think the French are still fuming about a slight from 50 years ago:

Some readers have argued that French intriguing against the US in Iraq is payback for the "abandonment" of the French Army at Dien Bien Phu by the US in 1954 when all they expected was "some air cover".

This is, of course, nonsense. The French intriguing is clearly payback for John Adams' dispatches to congress before the Quasi-War of 1798-1800 in which he said:

“I will never send another minister to France without assurances that he will be received, respected, and honored, as the representative of a great, free, powerful, and independent nation.”

Ohh lala, they were very upset and they obviously still are.

Certainly, their "intriguing" couldn't possibly have anything to do with current events because U.S. actions have been nothing short of perfect. They just can't let go of the past. That's why we call it old Europe.

Via The Daou Report




digby 12/03/2004 09:45:00 PM |

 
The Merchant Of Porno

First, I'd like to apologise for the dearth of posting this last week. I've been unusually busy, but I'm also pretty burned out. Sometimes my muse (who I think may have voted for Schwarzenegger) just decides to take a vacation at club med and leave me sitting at the terminal unable to write anything but rude defenses of my spelling errors.

Hopefully, I'll be back at it in force before too long.

Meanwhile, there is always the daily atrocity of the morals police:

The Moderate Voice kindly alerted me to this:

US distributors of the film Merchant of Venice, which premiered in London this week, have asked the director to cut out a background fresco by a Venetian old master so it is fit for American television viewers.

US networks have been embroiled in controversy over naked flesh since Janet Jackson exposed a breast during a half-time performance during the Superbowl. A lesser fuss has blown up about a trailer for the hit television series Desperate Housewives on Monday Night football, in which an actress with her back to the camera drops her towel in a locker room.

Distributors regularly ask for cuts in films so that they can be shown on US tele-vision and by airlines. The request to "paint-box the wallpaper" - cover over the fresco - was contained in a letter from the US distrib-utors, Sony, to Michael Radford.

The director had already anticipated one request by shooting extra scenes for television in which bare-breasted prostitutes are fully clothed.

He was also asked to remove scenes of male kissing, a brief female kissing scene - and simulated slaughtering of goats.

The fifth request was to cut out footage showing meat carcasses.

Finally, according to Mr Radford, there was "a very curious request which said 'Could you please paint-box out the wallpaper?'. I said wallpaper, what wallpaper? This is the 16th century, people didn't have wall-paper."

When he examined the scenes, he realised the letter was referring to frescoes by Paolo Veronese, the acclaimed Venetian 16th-century artist, which, when examined closely, showed a naked cupid.

"A billion dollars worth of Veronese great master's frescoes they want paint-boxed out because of this cupid's willy. It is absolutely absurd," he said.

Here is some more filthy trash by this 16th century pornographer:



In Hollywood some nobody gets the word to crack down on sexual images because "people" are up in arms about morality and the children. The nobody who makes the decision about what is morally acceptable is completely clueless about everything. This is the result.

Get ready. We are going to see more and more of this. The only thing worse than putting the cops or the preachers in charge of deciding what is acceptable for people to watch is letting some nameless loser bureaucrat do it.

I'd love to hear the rationale for censoring meat carcasses. Either somebody is very kinky or we are going beyond self-censorship of sexuality and violence to include general ickiness. The good news is that if icky meat carcasses are out of line then we can expect that Jerry Falwell's continuous television appearances will soon be severely curtailed. There's a silver lining to everything.




digby 12/03/2004 08:23:00 AM |

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

 
More Outrageous TV

"Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations," reads an explanation from CBS, "and the fact the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the [CBS and UPN] networks."

All the hoopla about Monday Night Football is a misdirection from bullshit like this. If there is a problem with television, I would suggest that this is by far the most important problem that we face --- the voluntary censorship of certain political speech by the networks. Remember, most people get all their information from television.

If anybody wants to burn up the switchboards of a television network, this might be the one that should get those fingers walking.




digby 12/01/2004 09:27:00 AM |

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

 
I'd like to address this meeting of the Harper Valley P.T.A.

Apparently, some people are still upset that certain liberals have the temerity to suggest that the moral values voters the media believe decided the election might just be the teeniest bit hypocrital. We are petty elitists, and intellectual lightweights to boot.

I have to say that this critique is driving me nuts coming from sophisticated thinkers like Somerby. He claims, ridiculously, that Frank Rich was misleading when he said that nobody complained about the "Desperate Housewives" skit until political groups got them all riled up, using the fact that a spokesman says he didn't get any calls at home. Clearly the spokesman means that nobody from the network called him to let him know there was an uproar, which is what would normally happen. This argument is beneath Somerby. Rich made a very good case that this was a ginned up controversy.

The bigger issue is that Somerby and others claim that those of us who find all this moralizing a bit suspect are using the fallacy of composition --- we are applying the hypocrisy of some moralizers to all red state morals voters. But that criticism ignores the fact that this entire discussion is taking place within a broader "culture war" as defined by those who have decided to wage it. The "Desperate Housewives" flap didn't happen in a vacuum. Of course voters are individuals and there are certainly some who sincerely believe that the skit in question crossed the line. But the real subject of this conversation is this false construct of the Republican Real Americans appalled at the horrible values of the Democratic libertine cosmopolitans. It is not a stretch to use the "Desperate Housewives" flap as an example of hypocrisy on the part of the moralizers considering that it is an immensely popular mass market television show among the very Real Americans who are alleged to be so moral.

Via Sommerby (who takes a different lesson from these quotes) here's an example of what we are dealing with:

MR. RUSSERT: Two interesting developments over the last month or so. A report came out that the state with the lowest level of divorce is Massachusetts. The states with the highest level are the so-called Bible Belt in the South.

DR. FALWELL: Yes.

REV. SHARPTON: That's because they watch "Desperate Housewives."

MR. RUSSERT: Also "Desperate Housewives"...

REV. SHARPTON: That's right.

MR. RUSSERT: ...a widely viewed television series, particularly in the South.

REV. SHARPTON: Because...

MR. RUSSERT: Why is it that the red states...

DR. FALWELL: Because the South doesn't belong to the New Testament Church anymore than the North.

MR. RUSSERT: Right.

DR. FALWELL: We have a responsibility to preach the Gospel. But I would take that poll a little further. Among born-again, Bible-believing Christians who take the Bible as the word of God, you'll find those stats are non...

MR. RUSSERT: They don't watch "Desperate Housewives"?

DR. FALWELL: I hope they don't.

REV. SHARPTON: You don't know. Look, Brother Russert, Brother Russert...

DR. LAND: I don't...

DR. FALWELL: I have never watched it and I've...

DR. FALWELL: I have never watched it and I've...

DR. LAND: We're in church on Sunday night. The point is--you know, look. He said we shouldn't impose values on others. Look, when a mother has an abortion, she is imposing her values on an unborn child. And it is always a fatal imposition because the baby dies.

DR. FALWELL: Amen. Amen.

REV. SHARPTON: Brother Russert, I'll tell you that people...

MR. RUSSERT: On "Desperate Housewives," Newsweek says that the creator of "Desperate Housewives" is a conservative, gay Republican.

REV. SHARPTON: That's what I was going to say. Do you find that...

DR. FALWELL: Well, the fact that he's a gay Republican means he should join the Democratic Party.

What I would give to be able to sit down in a living room somewhere and watch that unbelievable Sunday sideshow with Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis, John O'Hara, Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, Erskine Caldwell, Flannery O'Connor and about a dozen other great American writers. If there is a greater All American, mom and apple pie, flagwaving tradition in the great country of ours than deflating pompous gasbags like those guys, I don't know what is.

Exposing the phony piety of middle American life goes back a long, long way. In fact we could say that our earliest literary superstar, Nathaniel Hawthorne, made his name with the subject of the preacher and small town sin. The greatest American writer ever (imo) Mark Twain, wrote:

We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are afraid to express; and another one - the one we use - which we force ourselves to wear to please Mrs. Grundy, until habit makes us comfortable in it, and the custom of defending it presently makes us love it, adore it, and forget how pitifully we came by it.

The progressive movement was inspired and energized by novels and stories that laid bare the twofaced nature of bourgouis American morality. Sinclair Lewis wrote "Main Street" in 1920:

The doctor asserted, 'Sure religion is a fine influence - got to have it to keep the lower classes in order - fact, it's the only thing that appeals to a lot of these fellows and makes 'em respect the rights of property. And I guess this theology is O.K.; lot of wise old coots figured it out, and they knew more about it than we do. He believed in the Christian religion, and never thought about it; he believed in the church, and seldom went near it; he was shocked by Carol's lack of faith, and wasn't quite sure what was the nature of the faith that she lacked.

In 1927 he wroteElmer Gantry:

"He had, in fact, got everything from the church and Sunday School, except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason."

Just last year, Rick Perlstein visited Ronald Reagan's home town and found, you guessed it, quite a bit of shall we say ... cultural dissonance among the pillars of the community.

I could go on and on. There is nothing new about questioning the sincerity of public people who preach private morality. Politicians may believe that they need to preach morality for strategic reasons. Fine. But that does not require writers and social observers to pretend that we live in a country in which the natural course of human nature has been suspended in certain more "moral" regions or that it is disrespectful to question why Viagra commercials and close-up Cheerleader crotch shots do not elicit the same shocked moral outrage from NFL fans like Rush Limbaugh as the blond's naked back in the arms of a leering black football player.

I do not watch "Desperate Housewives." In fact I watch almost no network television at all. I don't defend any of popular culture on aesthetic or moral grounds. I'm sure that traversing the shoals of modern life is very difficult for those with young children. If I had young kids I probably would severely restrict their viewing. But, I'm not going to listen to anyone tell me that that "Hollywood" and "New York" values are infecting any region of this country against its will because every corner of this land is filled with people who eat that stuff up.

Parents should probably use the V-Chip that Clinton pushed through to give parents a tool to keep their kids from seeing things they don't want them to see, use TiVo to screen programs or better yet, turn off the TV. I have a feeling that as unpopular as that might be, it might just be for the best. Having TV executives hold a seance to figure out what Michael Powell and his cronies believe should be on television just doesn't seem to me to be much of a solution in a free society.



And one more thing: Somerby approvingly quotes President Clinton numerous times saying that the Pentecostals deserved respect because even though they didn't believe in a right to abortion they took in unwanted babies and gave them a home. He uses this as an example of how liberals should talk about fundamentalist Christians. Falwell repeated on Press the Meat that his church sponsored adoptions.

It's a nice story, but it would be a lot more meanigful if it weren't for this:

African-American babies are going to parents overseas even as US couples adopt children from other countries

Adrian, Emma, and Elisa have more in common than their charm and being the apple of their parents' eyes. All are black children born in the United States and adopted as infants by parents in other countries.

They also are representatives of a little-known trend: At the same time the US is "importing" increasing numbers of adoptive children from Russia, China, and Guatemala, it is "exporting" black babies to be adopted in other countries.

[...]

The majority of [american] couples seeking to adopt are white, but there aren't nearly enough Caucasian babies available in the US to meet the demand. Although exceptions certainly exist, American parents generally prefer babies to toddlers, girls to boys, and Caucasians to African-Americans, adoption professionals report. Other ethnicities fall in between, depending on their skin color. African-American boys are at the bottom of this "ranking" system, they say, which is why they're harder to place.

"We have to work much harder to find homes for our African-American babies," says Robert Springer of Christian Homes, an adoption agency in Texas.

No one is equating babies with commodities, but the principles of supply and demand apply. Adoption costs and waiting times in the US vary depending on a baby's ranking in the "desirability list."

The children who are in the greatest demand are also in the shortest supply. Those who want to adopt healthy white babies in the US may wait as long as five years, agencies say. In contrast, they add, the waiting for African-Americans is often measured in weeks and months, especially for baby boys.

Now I realize that not every pentecostal who opposes abortion would refuse to adopt a black child. But, the evidence shows that while the fundamentalists may be willing to adopt unwanted babies in theory, in practice they only want to adopt certain unwanted babies. I don't know why that deserves any special respect.




digby 11/30/2004 01:54:00 PM |

Monday, November 29, 2004

 
Commies and Patriots




I have to agree with Boarshead Tavern that this WorldNet Daily story about kids wearing Commie Che shirts is chilling. The man, after all, justified many horrible actions in the name of his revolution with no regard for universal ethics or morals:

Guevara was proud of the fact that he personally put bullets in the backs of the heads of many he considered counter-revolutionary.

Once again, in rallying his guerrillas in Angola, he wrote: "Blind hate against the enemy creates a forceful impulse that cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the soldier in an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people without hate cannot triumph against the adversary."

Yikes

Now this on the other hand is a stocking stuffer for the whole family:

Support our Marine
$17.99


The Marine who killed the wounded insurgent in Fallujah deserves our praise and admiration. In a split second decision, he acted valiantly.

On the otherhand, Kevin Sites of NBC is a traitor. Beheading civilians, booby-trapped bodies, suicide bombers?? Sorry hippie, American lives come first. Terrorists don't deserve the benefit of the doubt. This Marine deserves a medal and Kevin Sites, you deserve a punch in the mouth.

Printed on high quality superheavyweight, preshrunk cotton (6.1oz)

Via Crooks and Liars and The Daou Report
digby 11/29/2004 04:40:00 PM |

Friday, November 26, 2004

 
Crack A Book

Some people need to read some history before they get snippy:

Here's my post, from Polipundit.com, on the jaw-dropping liberal self-parody of the day. What planet, exactly, are these people from?

Far-left Democratic Congresswoman, Zoe Lofgren, of the San Francisco Bay Area, plans to introduce a prospective Constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College.

Cute, huh?

Incidentally, this will not be Ms. Lofgren’s “15 minutes,” so to speak.

Last March, a woman who had worked for Lofgren as a Congressional aide, back in 2002, was arrested by the F.B.I., on charges that she had served as a “paid agent” for the Iraqi Intelligence Services, both prior, and subsequent, to the U.S.-led military assault to take down Saddam Hussein’s government.

And in a final bit of liberal irony, Congresswoman Lofgren’s former aide began her political career as a reporter for the Pravda-like Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Um, could you have scripted all that for an uproarious political satire?

Um, not intentionally. You see, there have been many, many calls to abolish the electoral college, going back to James Madison and Andrew Jackson. In the last 35 years alone there have been dozens of proposals to eliminate it or change it, many of them coming from Republicans. Yep, even Republican president Nixon and Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole and respected Republican senator (and Reagan chief of staff) Howard Baker were in favor of abolishing it. And guess what? Public opinion polls have repeatedly shown that the public favors abolition of the electoral college too.

Imagine that:: In a 1968 Gallup survey, 81% of Americans favored a direct popular vote, 12% favored retention, and 7% had no opinion. In 1992, pollsters asked Americans this question, 'If Perot runs, there is a chance that no presidential candidate will get enough electoral votes to win. If that happens, the Constitution gives the House of Representatives the power to decide who will be the next President. Do you think that is a fair way to choose the President, or should the Constitution be changed?' 31% said it was a fair way, and 61% said the Constitution should be changed.

By some counts, there have been over seven hundred proposed amendments to the Constitution to change, or abolish, the electoral college. In 1969, in the wake of an election where a third party candidate almost sent the election to the House of Representatives, an amendment to do away with the electoral college passed the House of Representatives with 83% of the vote, 338-70. Richard Nixon favored the amendment, and so did three-quarters of state legislatures, Republican Senator Howard Baker denounced the electoral college with 'Any system which favors one citizen over another or one state over another is ... inconsistent with the most fundamental concept of a democratic society.' Predictably, the amendment failed in the Senate; however, it was not small states who blocked the reform but rather Southern states, who saw the electoral college as part of states' rights. Also, because the Senate itself is an institution which gives each state an equal say in the formation of laws; a body which helps to protect the small states from their more populous analogues.

I know it's great fun for people to get all snotty and snide over things about which they apparently know nothing. But it's also a good way to make a fool of yourself on the internets.

Via The Daou Report






digby 11/26/2004 06:59:00 PM |

Thursday, November 25, 2004

 
Puritan To Yankee and back again


In responding to my post below Kidding On The Square writes a very nice treatise on the life of the Puritans, a subject so relevant today....for so many reasons. He quotes from Richard Bushman's book From Puritan to Yankee

No attempt to trace the history of liberty can deal with the detached individual in isolation. Freedom is a condition not of the single man alone but of man in relationship to a community. The group protects him against the misuse of the power of others and provides the setting within which he can advantageously exercise his own powers. Therefore, changes in the nature of the community, which necessarily either increase or restrain the capacity of the individual to act, affect his liberty.
...

Particulary significant in the analysis of the process by which the Puritans became Yankeees is the light it throws on the relationship between society and individual personality. The description of the forces in the community that gave birth to the wish to be free, among men brought up in a closed order, illuminates an important, and neglected, facet of the history of liberty in the United States.

Happy Turkee Day.




digby 11/25/2004 07:39:00 AM |

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

 
Rolling Their Eyes Maybe

Via Peter Daou I see that the right wing bloggers are all atwitter about this article in which a teacher is reported to be suing his principal for allegedly refusing to let him teach the Declaration of Independence because it mentions God.(Well, technically it mentions a Creator.) According to these furious Republicans, the founders are rolling in their graves:

Steven Williams, a fifth-grade teacher at Stevens Creek School in the San Francisco Bay area suburb of Cupertino, sued for discrimination on Monday, claiming he had been singled out for censorship by principal Patricia Vidmar because he is a Christian.

"It's a fact of American history that our founders were religious men, and to hide this fact from young fifth-graders in the name of political correctness is outrageous and shameful," said Williams' attorney, Terry Thompson.

"Williams wants to teach his students the true history of our country," he said. "There is nothing in the Establishment Clause (of the U.S. Constitution) that prohibits a teacher from showing students the Declaration of Independence."

Vidmar could not be reached for comment on the lawsuit, which was filed on Monday in U.S. District Court in San Jose and claims violations of Williams rights to free speech under the First Amendment.

Phyllis Vogel, assistant superintendent for Cupertino Unified School District, said the lawsuit had been forwarded to a staff attorney. She declined to comment further.

Perhaps the facts are just as the lawsuit alleges in which case the principal has some explaining to do. But before we make that judgment it might be worth our while to find out if what this teacher is saying IS ACTUALLY TRUE. Nobody from the other side has commented and nobody knows the whole story. Anybody can file a lawsuit and call the press. It doesn't make it a fact. Indeed, somebody really ought to ask themselves if an attorney making the statement "there is nothing in the Establishment Clause (of the U.S. Constitution) that prohibits a teacher from showing students the Declaration of Independence," isn't just a little bit too cute.

Certainly, it's a stretch to evoke the founding fathers on this religiosity issue, particularly Jefferson. He wasn't a Christian, he was a Deist. I know that's inconvenient, but it's true. Back in those days you didn't have to pass a religious test to be in government like you do today. Why, they even put it in the constitution.

". . . Some books against Deism fell into my hands. . . It happened that they wrought an effect on my quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist."

Franklin

"... I am not afraid of priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering. I have contemplated their order from the Magi of the East to the Saints of the West and I have found no difference of character, but of more or less caution, in proportion to their information or ignorance on whom their interested duperies were to be played off. Their sway in New England is indeed formidable. No mind beyond mediocrity dares there to develop itself."

Jefferson

What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not."

Madison

. . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind."

Adams

The 1796 treaty with Tripoli, negotiations begun under Washington and signed by Adams states:

[As] the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion

Please spare us the rewiting of history. There were Christians, Deists and atheists among the founders. But they were all products of the Enlightenment which the current Christians seem determined to reject. The founders are rolling in their graves, all right.



Update: Seeing The Forest informs me that this is one of those tiresome bogus lawsuits brought forth by the Alliance Defense Fund whose founders are:

Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ

Larry Burkett, founder of Christian Financial Concepts

Rev. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family

Rev. D. James Kennedy, founder of Coral Ridge Ministries

Marlin Maddoux, President of International Christian Media

Don Wildmon, founder of American Family Association
(And 25+ other ministries)

That's the best case for lawsuit reform I've ever heard, right there.

STF points out that this is coordinated to come out the day before Thanksgiving so that they can pound it over the holiday week-end without anybody being able to properly respond. These precious little stories are becoming commonplace these days. I remember the one about the teacher who was allegedly discriminated against because she put a picture of Bush on the bulletin board. It turned out that she had a fucking shrine up there and was insulting 12 year old kids whose parents were voting for Kerry. All the wingnuts keened and wailed about the unfairness of it all, always being the first to claim victimhood. As each tale is debunked they just move to the next.

These little personal stories are a very effective way to spread propaganda. We need to figure out a way to deal with this stuff.




digby 11/24/2004 06:19:00 PM |

 
Preznit Give APEC Turkee

digby 11/24/2004 01:03:00 PM |

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

 
Honor, Dignity and Civility

Mr. Daschle is the first Senate party leader in more than half a century to lose a re-election campaign. His emotional talk, in which he also urged his colleagues to find "common ground," was attended by nearly all of the Senate's Democrats, who gathered him in their arms and hugged him afterward.

But only a few Republicans showed up, and Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, who broke with Senate tradition to campaign against Mr. Daschle in his home state, South Dakota, did not appear until after Mr. Daschle finished speaking.

Has there ever been a group of more graceless winners in history?

The scant Republican showing provoked Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, to speak out. "I don't know why, why in the closing days, some element of comity, some element of grace, some element of respect for a human being, could not have gotten some of our friends out of their offices," Mr. Lautenberg said.

Because they are assholes, all of them.

The Real American people have spoken. These fuckers represent them. They are going to lecture me about values and I'm supposed to respect them and believe them when they tell me they are concerned about their children. God help this misbegotten country.




digby 11/23/2004 01:19:00 PM |

Monday, November 22, 2004

 
Pandering To Hypocrisy

There seems to be something of a scold mentality emerging about those of us who question the sincerity of those who are up in arms about the libertine ways of the liberal elite. I had perceived this as saying that the Red States are just as "immoral" as the Blue States. But some, like Bob Sommerby, see it as a case of liberals claiming moral superiority. To the extent that honesty is more moral than hypocrisy, then I suppose he may be right.

We could argue this all day, but the crux of this is Sommerby's assertion that Democrats would win if we used Bill Clinton's formula and respected the views of these citizens with whom we disagree. Well, yes. As a general rule we should always be respectful of others. But, that does not necessarily mean that those who disagree with us are sincere or that we will win by being respectful of them.

The problem is that the evidence suggests that those who are sincerely shocked by what they saw on MNF are not representative of the vast majority of the so-called Real American voter. How can we explain, for instance, how those NFL fans who complained about the "Desperate Housewives" skit on MNF were shocked by the brazen sexuality of it but have never before raised hell about the tittilating beer commercials that have been shown on that same broadcast for years? And, we can pretend that the sexy show the skit was was advertising isn't hugely popular in the states that voted en masse for George Bush, but that doesn't change the fact that it is:

Many Who Voted for 'Values' Still Like Their Television Sin

The results of the presidential election are still being parsed for what they say about the electorate's supposed closer embrace of traditional cultural values, but for the network television executives charged with finding programs that speak to tastes across the nation, one lesson is clear.

The supposed cultural divide is more like a cultural mind meld.

In interviews, representatives of the four big broadcast networks as well as Hollywood production studios said the nightly television ratings bore little relation to the message apparently sent by a significant percentage of voters.

The choices of viewers, whether in Los Angeles or Salt Lake City, New York or Birmingham, Ala., are remarkably similar. And that means the election will have little impact on which shows they decide to put on television, these executives say.

[...]

"Desperate Housewives" on ABC is the big new hit of the television season, ranked second over all in the country, behind only "C.S.I." on CBS. This satire of suburbia and modern relationships features, among other morally challenged characters, a married woman in her 30's having an affair with a high-school-age gardener, and has prompted several advertisers, including Lowe's, to pull their advertisements.

In the greater Atlanta market, reaching more than two million households, "Desperate Housewives" is the top-rated show. Nearly 58 percent of the voters in those counties voted for President Bush.

And in the Salt Lake City market, which takes in the whole state of Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Wyoming, "Desperate Housewives" is fourth, after two editions of "C.S.I." and NBC's "E.R."; Mr. Bush rolled up 72.6 percent of the vote there.

This doesn't mean, of course, that those fans who complained about the MNF sketch watch "Desperate Housewives." (It's that the blatantly sexy beer commercials and close-up crotch shots and cleavage of the cheerleaders on MNF for years have not provoked a similar outcry from fans that speaks to their hypocrisy.) But these ratings do suggest that contrary to the emerging myth about Bush voter outrage at libertine Blue State immorality, somebody isn't being entirely truthful about their attitudes toward popular culture. After all, according to E&P the
"top three states for readership of Playboy magazine are Iowa, Wyoming, North Dakota ... and they all top heathen New York by 2-1 margins." Of course, they read it for the same reasons. The articles on stereo equipment.

Sommerby complains about Jeff Greenfield saying that the NFL fans who complained were the same ones who lied to their wives and went to strip clubs. A correspondent wrote in:

And to make sure the shocked fathers and mothers associate the descent of sexual morality with liberal Democrats, you tell me that Jeff Greenfield thinks that we fathers who complain about TV trash are hypocrites who "lie to their wives and drive to a topless bar". He's been watching The Sopranos too much; most of us family men don't do that. Chances are, those who do that would agree with Jeff that everyone complaining about Hollywood and TV immorality is a lying hypocrite.

By the way, I'm a long-time Democrat living in the Philadelphia suburbs, and I was shocked by that sexual introduction to a football game. And we wonder why more middle class Catholic and Evangelical voters keep shifting from Democratic to Republican.

I'm not going to defend Greenfield's comment because I have no way of knowing who is going to strip clubs and neither does this guy. It's possible that married football fans are not primary among those who frequent these places. There are an awful lot of them, however, all through the country, many in the heartland. Somebody's going to them.

But, what is relevant in his comment isn't family men going to strip clubs, anyway. It's family men who obviously watch the Sopranos complaining about the so-called immorality coming from Hollywood and implying that the Democratic party is responsible for it.

Does that guy in the Philly suburbs use the V-Chip? I don't know. But I do know that Democrat Bill Clinton championed them and pushed through legislation that mandated them but only 7% or so of family men who have them use them. Evidently, he watches the NFL with all those sexy beer commercials and big pom pom waving babes. Does he shoo his kids away from the TV when they come on? Maybe. Does he keep his kids from watching "The Sopranos?" I certainly hope so. But hewatches it, that's clear. (He sure seems to know about the Bada-Bing.) So, it's a complicated situation, isn't it? Lots and lots of things for parents to be concerned with. I understand that. But, considering what we can surmise about his viewing habits, you'll have to excuse me if I'm not entirely moved by his Claude Raines act.

Yes, we may be in different tribes. But vast numbers of people from both tribes are watching the same "trash" on television and getting divorced and having children out of wedlock and all the other horrible outgrowths of a society that is evidently in horrible decline. The difference is that one of the tribes seems to like to consume this crap and then pretend not only that they don't, but that the other tribe is forcing it on them.

Perhaps pandering to this is the way to win votes. Our politicians have certainly made an effort to do it now for years. But as I have discussed elsewhere, it doesn't seem to be working. But sure, we can keep pretending that that swathe of red America is really offended by the popular culture that we blues evidently represent, even though most Americans are the same consumerist purple from sea to shining sea.

It just seems to me that if you incorrectly diagnose the problem, you probably won't prescribe the right cure. But, hey, words are cheap. Phony moralists have proved that from time immemorial. Except for the non-stop character assasination, Monica's big mouth and impeachment, being respectful of conservative values (and Ross Perot)worked like a charm for Bill Clinton.

So, by all means let's pander till we can't stand up. We'll all pretend to be duly chastised by our libertine ways and pay obeisance to those good heartland values that neither they nor we actually live by. Whatever. But, don't expect me to actually believe that George W. Bush's majority represents those things any more than we depraved liberals do. Politicians and preachers lie. Neilson ratings and product sales don't.




digby 11/22/2004 05:30:00 PM |

Sunday, November 21, 2004

 
Pop Goes The Populism

David Niewert has written a very important post about Democrats and rural America that is worth reading and thinking about as we work out how we need to go forward. Ezra homes in on the point that young Democrats tend to leave rural America because there aren't many opportunities for those who are interested in progressive politics because the national party is concentrated in the urban areas. This is an important point and one that I hope party activists and organizers are thinking long and hard about. It isn't just the lack of direct political opportunity it's the lack of local opinion leaders in the media as well. Everybody listens better to their neighbors than to strangers. They have the better hand.

But, I think that Niewert has hit upon the essence of the problem when he says:

People listen to their radios a lot in rural America. Maybe it has something to do with the silence of the vast landscapes where many of them live; radios break that silence, and provide the succor of human voices.

If you drive through these landscapes, getting radio reception can sometimes be iffy at best, especially in the rural West. Often the best you can find on the dial are only one or two stations.

And the chances are that what you'll hear, at nearly any hour, in nearly any locale, is Rush Limbaugh. Or Michael Savage. Or maybe some Sean Hannity. Or maybe some more Limbaugh. Or, if you're really desperate, you can catch one of the many local mini-Limbaughs who populate what remains of the rural dial. In between, of course, there will be a country music station or two.

That's what people in rural areas have been listening to for the past 10 years and more. And nothing has been countering it.

[...]


It has to be understood that rural America is hurting, and has been for a couple of decades now. Visit any rural community now and it's palpable: The schools are run down, the roads are falling apart, the former downtowns have been gutted by the destruction of the local economies and their displacement by the new Wal-Mart economy.

People living in rural areas increasingly feel that they have become mere colonies of urban society, treated dismissively and ignored at best, the victims of an evil plot by wealthy liberal elites at worst.

Liberals, largely due to their increasing urban-centric approach to politics, have mostly ignored the problem. And conservatives have been busy exploiting it.

It's important to understand that they have been doing so not by offering any actual solutions. Indeed, Republican "solutions" like the 1995 "Freedom to Farm Act" have actually turned out to be real disasters for the nation's family farmers; the only people who have benefited from it have been in the boardrooms of corporate agribusiness, which of course bellied up first to the big federal trough offered by the law. Even conservatives admit it has been a disaster.

No, conservatives have instead employed a strategy of scapegoating. It isn't bad policy or the conservative captivity to agribusiness interests that has made life miserable in rural America -- it's liberals. Their lack of morals (especially embodied by Bill Clinton), their contempt for real, hard-working Americans, their selfish arrogance -- those are the reasons things are so bad.

These audiences are feeding on a steady diet of hate. And as with all such feedings, they never are sated, but only have their appetites whetted for more. So each day, people come back to get a fresh fill-up of hate.

People are hurting and they are told relentlessly day in and day out that liberals from big cities are the ones inflicting the pain. This would be funny if it weren't so tragic. This is the new American nativism. Minorities and immigrants have been joined by a blurry, indistinct non-American urbanite. (I suppose this is progress of a sort.)

I hear a lot about how Democrats need to stop with the so-called identity and rights based politics in favor of a populist message. It would certainly seem that that would be the way to reach these folks. They are getting the shaft from the very people for whom they are voting with a classic misdirection. It may be true that the liberal elites in the big cities don't care much about rural America, but it's the conservative elites who are actively and vigorously screwing them. But the Republicans have a way of dealing with that.

Via temple of democracy here's a classic dodge from Haley Barbour, good ole boy gazillionare lobbyist:

One of the most extensive national reports has been a New York Times Magazine piece headlined, "Mr. Washington goes to Mississippi." The story opens with Barbour getting kicked out of a cow auction, and quotes people who portray him as race-baiter, an expert schmoozer and a shrewd fund-raiser with "despicable clients."

Barbour, a Washington, D.C. lobbyist, quickly denounced the story.

"I am certainly never surprised when The New York Times attacks a Southern, conservative, pro-life, Christian Republican. Ask Charles Pickering," he said, referring to the Mississippi judge whose nomination to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was held up by Democrats who questioned the judge's record on civil rights.

"It's what I expected from The New York Times because they don't like guys like me."

And, therefore, they don't like guys like you.

Democrats will say that we need to let the red state voters know who the enemy really is. We need to stop talking about guns, god and gays (and race) and get to the meat of the matter. As Max Sawicky wrote in his article "Why a Right Winger can't be a populist,"

Culture and values, among other things, are highly contested. For the sake of this essay I put them aside to focus on Money.

The problem is that we can't put them aside and concentrate on money because culture and values dictate what people think about money. And the culture and values of a large part of this country says that when it comes to money the government always gives it to the wrong people. We have a much more complicated problem on our hands than just moral values vs economics. And it goes all the way back to the beginning.

I wrote some things before (in response to the Dean campaign's insistence that you could appeal to guys with confederate flags on their pick-ups because they need health care too) about studies that show that Americans rejected the European style welfare state largely because a fair portion of our people have always believed that the government only helps the undeserving. This stems from the fact that most social programs were traditionally handled through churches and immigrant organizations which meant that the government mostly funded African American welfare programs because they didn't have the institutions or the money to do it for themselves. This led to a widely held belief in rural America that the government doesn't help the white working man and woman, it instead takes their tax dollars and gives it to blacks.

It is from this basis that modern Republicans have built their case against the liberal elites who allegedly hold Real Americans in contempt. It is the essence of the Southern Strategy and it's been highly successful for decades.

It's worth repeating that despite what Dean said in the primaries about putting the FDR coalition back together, there has never been a time when a majority of southern whites and blacks in the south voted for the same party. Blacks were not allowed to vote in the south in the 1930's. Indeed, it was only during the recent party realignment process that they overlapped at all. Let's not kid ourselves about why this is.

We cannot make a populist case to rural America as long as rural America continues to believe, as it has for centuries, that the government only takes their money and gives it to people they don't like. This belief is why people who should naturally support our programs instead vote for tax cuts. In the past, populists often shrewdly coupled their argument with nativist causes and were able to scapegoat either immigrants or blacks as part of their argument, thus partially nullifying this cultural resistence. Even FDR agreed to set aside the issue of civil rights for the duration. Needless to say, we aren't going to go down that path.

So, Democrats are left with a difficult problem of how to deal with a region that is in economic distress but whose culture traditionally believes that government only helps people unlike themselves.

Now, we could, of course, make a fetish of pointing out the awful truth --- that most federal transfers come from the blue states to the red states. But, that doesn't really address the problem, which comes down to attitudes about the big city poor (blacks) vs the rural poor (whites.) And all that is tied up with the monumental social changes of the last fifty years, which mostly benefit them but which Rush and Sean tell them is the cause of all their problems. Every day, all day, with relentless precision. The message is that liberals are taking their money, giving it to people they don't like and then forcing their decadent culture on them to the point where they ... cannot ... resist.

Yes, if people were rational about these things you could sit down and have a nice discussion with spreadsheets and diagrams showing that the rural red states benefit far more from federal redistributon of wealth than the metropolitan blue states. You could explain that many of the social changes that have happened have benefitted them in their own lives while acknowledging that there has been a cost and that changes of this magnitude can be frightening and destabilizing. You could show that the massive New Deal programs and the post war expansion benefitted primarily the middle class, not the poor. You could rally the people to the side of their own class instead of the corporations who benefit from the policies currently in place.

But, as we've seen, people are not rational. In fact, when it comes to modern American politics there seems to be a conscious embrace of the irrational, an epistomological relativism that renders such reasoned arguments completely inneffectual. People who listen to Rush or absorb his message through osmosis in their social group are operating on the basis of some very long standing tribal hueristics that have been very sophisticatedly manipulated by the real elites in this country. It will take more than fiery speeeches about sticking it to the man to penetrate this mindset.

Certainly, a populist message should work for the Democratic party. But, our populist message cannot obscure the fact that we represent blacks, urban dwellers and those who appear to be agents of rapid social change. And even if it could, the Republicans are hardly going to sit back and be quiet about it.

This problem needs some fresh thinking and I think that the article I posted about earlier about undecided voters provides us with some clues. The first is that we have to stop thinking in terms of issues or a combination of issues. People think in terms of worldview and tribal identity.

The next thing we need to recognise is that we are living in a post modern environment in which straight appeals to reason are not very effective. We have to begin to use symbols and semiotics more effectively. This means that we have to be more stylistic and sophisticated in our presentation. TV with the sound turned off.

But that won't be enough. We need to consider the American character and use it to shape our message. There is tremendous complexity in our national character and racial or social resentment is only a part of it. And there is a lot of tension, for instance between Equality/freedom --- Community/individualism. This tension has always been present and the line isn't drawn by region --- it's drawn within each person. We have to use some of these commonly understood and believed American values to illustrate our wordview in ways that people can understand hueristically instead of intellectually. We do this with a certain kind of candidate, a certain message and a certain kind of presentation. But we have to embrace this way of communicating before we can possible hope to use it to relate to Americans who are conditioned to buy and consume on the basis of their feelings not on the basis of their reason.

This is the world in which we live whether we like it or not. The Republicans are selling a vision and a sense of belonging to a certain tribe. We are selling an argument and a program. They are using 21st century tools to manipulate primal human needs and simplify the world. We are using 20th century methods to appeal to reason in a complicated way. They have the better hand.



Note: Over the past couple of weeks, I've written a few posts on this subject and others sort of tangentially related. A couple of readers asked me to put them all together in one place. Here they are.

TV With the Sound Turned Off

Heartland Values

A Very Old Story

It Won't Work

More Culture War




digby 11/21/2004 01:16:00 PM |

 
Ohferchristsake

It's a Small Story...but it illustrates why so many of us not only support President Bush as a politician with whom we agree most of the time, but love and respect him as a man:

President Bush stepped into the middle of a confrontation and pulled his lead Secret Service agent away from Chilean security officials who barred his bodyguards from entering an elegant dinner for 21 world leaders Saturday night."

That's why everybody loves and respects him. He's a natural born hero. If the Democrats could find one of those, maybe they'd get some respect too.

On July 12, 1988, Hecht was attending a weekly Republican luncheon when a piece of apple lodged firmly in his throat.

Hecht stumbled out of the room, thinking he might vomit but not wanting to do it in front of his colleagues. Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., thumped his back, but Hecht quickly passed out in the hallway.

Just then, Kerry stepped off an elevator, rushed to Hecht's side and gave him the Heimlich maneuver -- four times.

The lifesaving incident made international news, and Dr. Henry Heimlich, who invented the maneuver in 1974, called Hecht to say that had Kerry intervened just 30 seconds later Hecht might have been in a vegetative state for life.

"This man gave me my life," the 75-year-old Hecht said Thursday.

Yeah. A man who grabs his secret service guy's arm in a melee is worthy of your love and respect. A man who won the silver and bronze stars in combat and later saved a man's life with quick thinking while all around him were quaking with indecision is worthy of nothing but the most vile, personal contempt.

Oh, but I understand that Junior once said he felt bad for calling Al Hunt a fucking son of a bitch in front of his four year old. He is worthy of love and respect as a man in so many ways.





digby 11/21/2004 11:45:00 AM |

 
The Captain Of The Ship

"I'm very proud of the fact that we held the line and made Congress make choices and set priorities, because it follows our philosophy," Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said in House debate.

[...]

Also enacted during the postelection session was an $800 billion increase in the government's borrowing limit. The measure was yet another testament to record annual deficits, which reached $413 billion last year and are expected to climb indefinitely.

While the spending bill was one of the most austere in years, it had something for everybody...[including] a potential boon for Bush himself, $2 million for the government to try buying back the presidential yacht Sequoia. The boat was sold three decades ago, though its current owners say the yacht is not for sale.

Well, Junior is the true heir to Nixon and proud of it. Why shouldn't he asssociate himself with Nixon's iconic imperial toys. It's only fitting.




digby 11/21/2004 01:06:00 AM |

Saturday, November 20, 2004

 
Brazen

Via The Daou Report, I see that those wacky Republicans are boldly trying to stick their noses into people's private business again. According to kd4dean over on Kos the Republicans tried to slip in another provision into the spending bill that would have allowed acouple of committee chairmen or their henchmen access to any American's tax returns for any reason. Somebody noticed.

"This is a serious situation," said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. "Neither of us were aware that this had been inserted in this bill," he said, referring to himself and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Florida.

Questioned sharply by fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, Stevens pleaded with the Senate to approve the overall spending bill despite the tax returns language.

But Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota, said that wasn't good enough. "It becomes the law of the land on the signature of the president of the United States. That's wrong."

Conrad said the measure's presence in the spending bill was symptomatic of a broader problem -- Congress writing legislation hundreds of pages long and then giving lawmakers only a few hours to review it before having to vote on it.

Stevens, who repeatedly apologized for what he characterized as an error, took offense at Conrad's statement. "It's contrary to anything that I have seen happen in more than 30 years on this committee," he said.

Pounding on his desk, Stevens said he had given his word and so had Young that neither would use the authority to require the IRS to turn over individual or corporate tax returns to them. "I would hope that the Senate would take my word. I don't think I have ever broken my word to any member of the Senate."

"... Do I have to get down on my knees and beg," he said.

Both Young and Stevens will cede their chairmanships when the new Congress elected earlier this month takes office in January.

Some Democrats didn't accept the assertion that the provision was a mistake and demanded an investigation.

"We weren't born yesterday, we didn't come down with the first snow," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California. "This isn't poorly thought out, this was very deliberately thought out and it was done in the dead of night."

Members of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee now have limited access to tax returns, but there are severe criminal and civil penalties if the information is disclosed or misused.

Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the measure will "bring us back to the doorstep to the days of President Nixon, President Truman and other dark days in our history when taxpayer information was used against political enemies."

We crossed that threshold some time ago, I'm afraid.

I do enjoy the fact that the guy who made the "error" was offended that nobody would take his word. That's what happens when your leadership tells people to go fuck themselves over and over again, Ted. It tends to erode trust.




digby 11/20/2004 11:25:00 PM |

 
Liberals

Here's a nice personal piece about what it means to be a moderate liberal on ThatColoredFellasweblog. At the end of his post, he links to a number of online political quizzes, one of which defined my philosophy quite succinctly, and correctly I thought, the following way:

LIBERALS usually embrace freedom of choice in personal matters, but tend to support significant government control of the economy. They generally support a government-funded "safety net" to help the disadvantaged, and advocate strict regulation of business. Liberals tend to favor environmental regulations,defend civil liberties and free expression, support government action to promote equality, and tolerate diverse lifestyles.

Got a problem with that?




digby 11/20/2004 08:02:00 PM |

 
Huh?

At the Republican governors' conference in New Orleans, Ken Mehlman, the Bush campaign manager, answered the question, Who's your daddy party? "If you drive a Volvo and you do yoga, you are pretty much a Democrat," he said. "If you drive a Lincoln or a BMW and you own a gun, you're voting for George Bush."

Those BMW driving gun owners are just fabulous.




digby 11/20/2004 07:26:00 PM |

 
Semper Falafel

O'Reilly understands that war is hell:

Having survived a combat situation in Argentina during the Falklands War, I know that life-and-death decisions are made in a flash. If that wounded insurgent had a grenade or other explosive device, the entire marine squad and the photographer could be dead right now. In a killing zone, one cannot afford the luxury of knowing what is certain.

As with all literary greats like Mailer, Jones and Heller, O'Reilly has memorialized his scorching experiences in his novel, "Those Who Trespass" a murder mystery set in Argentina during the hell on earth that was the Falklands war:

The policemen were clearly frightened. Their fascist powers were being brazenly challenged. Standing directly in front of the police were nearly ten thousand very angry Argentine citizens screaming curses and revolutionary slogans:

ALa gente unida venceramos!

AMuera la Junta!

AMuera Galtieri!


GNN News Correspondent Shannon Michaels translated the chant and wrote it into his notebook: "The people, united, will never be defeated! Death to the Junta! Death to the dictator Galtieri!" Shannon and his video crew stood behind the police, five hundred strong crowded together in a massive show of force. Their assignment was to guard the presidential palace, called the Casa Rosada--the Pink House--and to protect President General Leopoldo Galtieri. But the crowd was getting more and more aggressive, pushing toward the large metal gate that provided access to the palatial grounds. Shannon saw that The Plaza de Mayo, the huge square in front of the Casa Rosada, was now filled to capacity. Something very ugly was going to happen, Shannon thought, and happen soon.

The sky was clear, but clouds were assembling in the west. Shannon ran his fingers through his thick mane of wavy brown hair. His teal blue eyes were locked on the agitated crowd. It was his eyes that most people noticed first--a very unusual color that some thought materialized from a contact lens case. But Shannon, the product of two Celtic parents, didn't go in for cosmetic enhancements. His 6' 4 frame was well toned by constant athletics, and his pale white skin was flawless--another genetic gift. Shannon's looks, which he thoroughly capitalized on, made him a natural for television.

As the mob continued its boisterous serenade, Shannon slowly shook his head. Most wars were foolish, he thought, but this one was unusually idiotic. The Argentine Junta, a group of military thugs led by General Galtieri, had ordered an invasion of the British-administered Falkland Islands on April Fool's Day, 1982. The government claim was that the islands, which the Argentines called the Malvinas, became a part of Argentina through a Papal declaration in 1493. The British disagreed. So, nearly five hundred years after the grant of land, the Argentine Army swarmed ashore, startling eighteen hundred British subjects and tens of thousands of bewildered sheep.

[...]


During his seven-year career as a TV news correspondent, Michaels had seen rank stupidity, but this moronic government strategy boggled the mind. Anyone who read a newspaper knew that the British Parliament, and especially Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, would never allow British honor to be besmirched. It took the Brits just three months to thoroughly humiliate the Junta, further angering the Argentine citizenry. No wonder they were now filling the streets in passionate demonstration against the Galtieri government.

Sends chills down your spine, doesn't it? Has anyone matched this kind of searing prose in the Falklands chronicles? I don't want to ruin the story by revealing the fiery hell that our blue eyed Celtic hero had to endure. Let's just say that that marine in Fallouja won't know what hell is until he's had to film a news story with his flawless white skin covered in dust and dirt. It just makes you sick to even think about it. The horror...




Via: BCF




digby 11/20/2004 05:46:00 PM |

 
Frame Up

Here's a re-frame for you, from a passionate young Deaniac in a libertarian Red State, Matthew Whitmyre:

Abolish the FCC

Why do we need a government censorship and moral regulation department? Sounds like those pointy-headed Washington types are trying to force their values on me. Damn conservative intelligentisia, living in their ivory towers, trying to impose their twisted values on a hard working Amurican like me. Shut those Washington Bureaucrats down!

Two can play at this game, you know.

Update: Jeff Jarvis has the same idea. And James Wolcott endorses it.

Damn Guvmint bureaucRATS.


digby 11/20/2004 02:22:00 PM |

 


Oliver Willis is a genius.

This is what I'm talking about. And here's why.

I don't know how many of you elitist limousine liberals listen to country music, but if you do, you know that all this disgust with blue state morality is something of a crock. Popular culture is much more indicative of what people do than what they say they do.

Check out this ditty by the king of country music, Bush supporter extraordinaire, Toby Keith:

His name was Steve, her name was Gina (You've never been here before have you?)
They met at a bar called the Cabo Wabo Cantina
He was an insurance salesman, from South Dakota
She was a 1st grade school teacher, Phoenix, Arizona
(No, my first time here)
They started dancin' and it got real hot, then it spilled over to the parkin' lot
One more tequilla, they were fallin' in love
One more's never enough

Don't bite off, more than you can chew
There's things down here the Devil himself wouldn't do
Just remember when you let it all go
What happens down in Mexico, stays in Mexico

He woke up in the mornin' and he made a little telephone call
To check on his wife and his kids back at home in Souix Falls (Hey babe, everything ok?)
She hopped right in the shower with a heavy, heavy mind (What am i doing?)
He knew it was the first time Gina'd ever crossed that line
They walked down to the beach and started drinkin' again
Jumped into the ocean for a dirty swim
One more margarita, they were fallin' in love
One more's never enough

Don't bite off, more than you can chew
There's things down here the Devil himself wouldn't do
Just remember when you let it all go
What happens down in Mexico, stays in Mexico
Oh, Mexico

Waitin' at the bar at the terminal gate
She said Steve i gotta go, i'm gonna miss my plane
He said one more tequilla 'fore you climb on up
She said one more's never enough

Don't bite off, more than you can chew
There's things down here the Devil himself wouldn't do
Just remember when you let it all go
What happens down in Mexico, stays in Mexico
Stays in Mexico, Stays in Mexico
Oh, Mexico

Whatever will we tell the children?

That song has been in the top five of the Country Billboard charts for 12 weeks. It's at number 5 right now.

Or how about this one:

Well I'm an eight ball shooting double fisted drinking son of a gun
I wear My jeans a little tight
Just to watch the little boys come undone
Im here for the beer and the ball busting band
Gonna get a little crazy just because I can

You know im here for the party
And I aint leavin til they throw me out
Gonna have a little fun
gonna get me some


I may not be a ten but the boys say I clean up good
And if I gave em half a chance for some rowdy romance you know they would

I've been waiting all week just to have a good time
So bring on them cowboys and their pick up lines

Dont want no purple hooter shooter just some jack on the rocks
Dont mind me if i start that trashy talk

You know im here for the party
And I aint leavin til they throw me out
Gonna have a little fun
gonna get me some

You know I'm here, I'm here for the party

That song by Gretchen Wilson's been on the top 100 country radio playlist for 17 weeks. It's been in the top 10 Billboard country charts for the same amount of time, spending several weeks at number 1. It's at number 5 this week.

The last I heard, the country music capital of the United States isn't Hollywierd or New York City. It's Nashville, Tennessee. And a vast number of country radio stations that play this stuff are owned by Clear Channel. Are they getting complaints from the same distraught parents whose children saw the opening credits of Monday Night Football? I don't think so.

Country music dominates rural America. This stuff is everywhere and everybody is listening and singing along. You cannot tell me that Americans, both Real and Unreal don't share modern sexual attitudes because it's obvious that they do. (Gay rights is another thing and it's going to take some time. But, we're getting there too. Garth Brooks stood up for his gay sister and it didn't cost him any record sales.)

What we are dealing with is hypocrisy on the one hand and deft exploitation on the part of the Republicans to cast differences in style as differences of "values." It's not true and we should try to make that argument.

Democrats are known as the party of tolerance. And that has become a pejorative term. But, it's just a small step from tolerance to freedom. We are tolerant because we believe in freedom.

Let them have their crusade against freedom. They are swimming against the tide even amongst their own. Maybe we should suggest that they begin their crusade a little closer to home, though. Maybe they need to start by telling Toby Keith and Gretchen Wilson and Clear Channel that they don't want any more of their music on the public airwaves. Let's see how that works out in Real America, shall we?




digby 11/20/2004 11:49:00 AM |

 
Falwell's Chattel


Negotiators Add Abortion Clause to Spending Bill

"It's something we've had a longstanding interest in," said Douglas Johnson, a spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee. He added, "This is in response to an orchestrated campaign by pro-abortion groups across the country to use government agencies to coerce health care providers to participate in abortions."

This clause sounds like something the GOP would tell us Real Americans would all be thrilled with. So, why are negotiators tucking it in a spending bill in the dead of night? Why not pass it separately and bask in the glow of Real American approval?

This bill, of course, is going to pass. But, an opposition party might vote against it en masse in order to bring the issue to the attention of the American people. "They are hiding anti-choice legislation in spending bills at the last minute in order to secretly enact their radical agenda."

I'm sure Joe Lieberman will use this as an excuse to show that he is bi-partisan. Reid should corral everyone else to hang tough. Every other word coming out of Democrats' mouths should be "extremist", "radical", "secretive" and the like as Kerry did yesterday in his video.

Regardless of the merits of "moving to the middle" on abortion, this particular action should be opposed by Democrats because of the way in which it was done. They should raise holy hell that these contentious issues are being slipped in under the radar without debate. You want to frame these things in the public's mind as something the Republicans are ashamed of or afraid of and force them to explain why they are not.

This should be done over and over again so that Americans get the message that these guys are trying to hide their radical agenda. This serves to wake up the somnambulent middle who didn't vote for extremism and piss off the social conservatives who are itching to take credit.

And speaking of this, I want to take a moment to commend Josh Marshall for his "Shays handful" work. It's very important that Republicans be forced to account for their cowardice. If Josh hadn't done this, I'm not sure that we would have these wimps on record. As it is, challengers throughout the country now have a potent weapon if the Democrats can get it up to make use of it.




digby 11/20/2004 09:27:00 AM |

Friday, November 19, 2004

 
Correction

Remember the post I wrote a month or so ago about the romance novelist who was rousted by the Patriot Act police? It turns out that it was A Convenient Smoke Screen.

She was actually busted for collecting disability while making money writing, using her husbands social security number. Or at least that's what the government says.




digby 11/19/2004 05:00:00 PM |

 
Kerry Speaks

John Kerry is asking for our help to Protect Every Child in America. Sign the petition.

People have been talking a great deal about behaving as a real opposition party, presenting alternate plans, boldly defining ourselves as a government in exile. This is a smart politics. There is a leadership vacuum in the Party and if John Kerry wants to step in, I say more power to him. But for a few thousand votes in Ohio, we'd be calling him President-elect Kerry today.

This is a classy move from a classy guy. Perhaps that's not in fashion at the moment but it means a lot to me.




digby 11/19/2004 01:30:00 PM |

 
I'm Officially Depressed

I hate puritanism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism. I can't stand the idea that free adults aren't allowed to make their own choices about what to read, watch and think.

A while back, I wrote about Academy Award-winning writer and director Bill Condon who has produced a brilliant film on the life and work of sex-researcher Alfred Kinsey. Here are the first and second links to my posts about this important film and director.

I saw this film as one that depicted the ongoing battle in our society between rationality and science on one hand versus dogma and a strain of empirically-hostile religious extremism on the other.

Well, a cold current of censorship has now just hit even New York's flagship PBS station, WNET Channel 13.

I expect this crap from corporate media outlets who don't want to offend their advertisers and so try to play both sides as much as possible. But, PBS was begun for the very reason that they would be above such parochial concerns. Now, even in New York, the home of blue state elitism, they are opting for pedestrian conformism. If I were a New Yorker I might just have to decline to support them during the next pledge drive.

I do have a couple of questions for Real America on this. If vast numbers of middle Americans are upset about the loose morals on television, how can we explain this:

Parents who own a TV set manufactured after January 1, 2000 have a blocking technology called a V-chip that can be programmed to screen out shows with TV ratings they deem inappropriate.

By 2001, 2 out of 5 parents (40%) owned a V-Chip TV set and 7% had used it to monitor their children’s TV viewing. Of all parents who have a V-Chip TV set, more than half (53%) don’t know it. Of all parents who know they have a V-Chip TV set, two-thirds know(64%) have chosen not to use it and one-third (36%) have used it.

The two most common reasons parents give for not using the V-Chip are that an adult is usually nearby when their children watch TV, and that they trust their children to make their own decisions.

Approximately one-third of parents with home Internet connections have installed blocking technology such as filtering software or Internet Service Provider (ISP) controls to prevent children from accessing objectionable material.

It sure sounds to me as if somebody's not taking personal responsibility for what their children are watching.

Unless, of course, this isn't about children at all. In which case this is really about a bunch of tightassed, busybodies sticking their noses where they don't belong because they want to control everybody's lives.

Welcome to Massachusetts, Red States. Massachusetts circa 1692, that is.




digby 11/19/2004 01:28:00 PM |

 
MYOB

Atrios and Yglesias make an argument for the Democratic Party to position itself on the side of personal freedom. Those who read this blog know I believe that this is a fertile field for us in this political environment.

Individual freedom is as All-American as apple pie and Let The Eagle Soar. The corporate police state theocracy is hostile to that All-American "value" and it is going to begin to encroach on people in ways that they will feel in their personal lives. There are at least three million votes there. Possibly many millions more. Plenty of Americans don't like being told how to live their lives by a bunch of priests, politicians or bureaucrats. And it ain't all about taxes.




digby 11/19/2004 09:12:00 AM |

Thursday, November 18, 2004

 
The Stupidest People On The Planet:


France
Favorable 25%
Unfavorable 57%


United Nations
Favorable 44%
Unfavorable 42%



France
Ally 22%
Enemy 31%
In Between 43%



United Nations
Ally 33%
Enemy 17%
In Between 47%


Golly Monsieur DeLay, you sure do have a purdy name. I hope one of your dipshit constituents doesn't get it in his head that you are the enemy.




digby 11/18/2004 10:16:00 PM |

 
I Know You Are But What Am I

Kevin Drum discusses the new wingnut political correctness about calling people who support right wing Israeli policy, "Likudniks" --- which is like calling people who believe in affirmative action "Democrats." It may be slightly imprecise, but it's not racist.

But this is becoming common on the right and you can tell even they know it's a stupid bully taunt. When wingnut freaks like Ann Coulter pull this stuff out of her strappy little thong, she can hardly keep a straight face.

From the November 17 edition of FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes:

COULTER: I don't know why you [Beckel] keep talking about [the unfair treatment received by] Bill Clinton when your party -- I mean, I understand why you'd like to change the subject, but your party is being biased and condescending about a black woman.

[...]

COULTER: I understand why you are so terrified of letting us point out what racists the Democrats are and how they have a big problem with black women.

BECKEL: You better be damn careful about using that word. I'll tell you something, I worked in the civil rights movement.

COULTER: Sean, stop him!

SEAN HANNITY (co-host): Bob -- Bob --

BECKEL: When you were sitting in your little schools up in New England.

HANNITY: Bob --

COULTER: I keep trying to get to this.

BECKEL: Don't start with me about that. Ann, you just crossed the line.

HANNITY: Bob -- Bob --

COULTER: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[...]

COULTER: It goes beyond the cartoons. It goes to the fact that...

ALAN COLMES (co-host): Bob Beckel.

COULTER: ... it is Condoleezza Rice who keeps being attacked for not being the most qualified person for the job, as I know Clarence Thomas was. No one ever said that about Warren Christopher. What were his qualifications for the job?

[...]

COULTER: You're [Beckel] racist. You do the same thing with Clarence Thomas.

[...]

COULTER: You keep talking about these cartoons. I'd only seen one of them before this program tonight. And I said I think liberals have a problem with blacks. They have a little race issue going on here.

You know, it's often said that blacks feel like they have to be twice as good as whites for the same position. Well, when it comes to blacks working for a Republican administration, that's true. They have to be 10 times as good or they have their credentials questioned [by liberals]. That really is...

COLMES: You think liberals have a problem with blacks?

COULTER: ... the puppet Bush.

COLMES: Do you think liberals have a problem with blacks? You want to make that statement in a vacuum?

COULTER: Yes. No, I think I've given a few examples, and I'll give more. There's Clarence Thomas, who was constantly made fun of, is he the most qualified one of the job. I don't remember anybody ever asking that of Justice William Brennan or [David] Souter.

[...]

COULTER: Dick Clarke, the flamboyant opponent of the Bush administration, came out with a book earlier this year, claiming that Condoleezza Rice, when he talked to her about Al Qaeda, her face showed that she was perplexed, that she had never heard of Al Qaeda before.

Can you imagine somebody saying that about, you know, Wolfowitz? No. That's my fourth example now of liberals having a problem with blacks.

[...]

BECKEL: I have no problem with her [Rice] because she's black. I have a problem with her because I don't think she's up to the job [of secretary of state]. Do not begin to say that people like me are racist when I spent a lot of time out in the vineyards on the civil rights movement.

I don't think you can type one credential where you've had -- You've got to be careful here, Ann.

COULTER: And you listen to jazz

She is amazing. Notice how she characterized "Dick" Clarke as "flamboyant" while she's admonishing Beckel for being a bigot. People should not argue with her, they should laugh at her. She's a clown.

This notion that if you criticize minority Republicans, you are a racist is not confined to the lunatic fringe, however. It is one of their talking points and we are going to be hearing a lot more of it. They are using the language of liberalism to beat liberals over the head. But two can play at that game.

In our new Dadaesque politics we should expect this absurd stuff and be prepared to counter. Beckel should have immediately accused Coulter of being unpatriotic for criticizing President Clinton.




digby 11/18/2004 09:15:00 PM |

 
PoMo Puffery

In his post Rodeo Bloodbath, James Wolcott brings up something that's been making my gorge rise for the last few days --- this fetishization of the "Marlboro Man" GI photo. Apparently it's making bunches of Real Americans all moist and quivery.

It is, however, nothing more than warmed over WWII movie iconography which even news editors are eager to admit:

One cited the ``strong emotional pull, close and intimate.'' Another noted the intensity in his eyes, calling the Marine ``a modern-day Robert Mitchum.'' Another said, ``You can almost feel what he feels. This is war. This is real life.''

What exactly are they teaching in J-School these days? "He's a modern-day Robert Mitchum." "It's real."

As a reader reminded me the other day, it isn't reality, it's hyperreality. Robert Mitchum played the role of GI Joe in the movies. Now we have real GI's being iconized for looking like Robert Mitchum.

What a sad confused culture we have become.




digby 11/18/2004 01:57:00 PM |

 
The Ownership Society

Atrios notes the happy news that the AEI administration is thinking of dropping the business tax deduction for empoyer-provided health insurance in order to pay for making interest, dividends and capitals gains tax free.

I don't know what he's so unhappy about, though. George W. Bush is just trying to empower the working man here. With those fancy new medical savings accounts, the guy who works at Pep Boys and his wife who works in the hospital gift shop will be able to save the 10k a year (tax free!) to pay for his wife and 2 kids' health insurance. Then he'll be a member of the ownership society because he'll own his own health insurance policy. Isn't that great?

I'm assuming, of course, that if employers drop health insurance they will then be required to give their employees a raise in the amount of what they were paying for their health care, less the tax break. They will do that, won't they? Of course they will. Otherwise, these working people will be forced to "save" money that they don't have. That wouldn't be right.

But if that happens let's face it, if you can't afford to make ends meet that's what churches are for. Be good and maybe you'll be allowed some charity. (Or you'll be allowed to pray for some, anyway.) Meanwhile, just work harder. Like our good ole boy, Real American president who knows the meaning of hard earned dollar. He's tough, tough, tough and we have to be tough just like him. Why, a real man would rather gnaw off his leg or put his wife out of her misery than have his boss pay for his health insurance. This whole issue is an excuse for lazy Democrat losers looking for a handout.




digby 11/18/2004 08:05:00 AM |

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

 
Decidedly Different

Christopher Hayes spent time with undecided voters in Wisconsin and lived to tell the tale. His experience confirms my impression that these people were pretty stupid, but they are stupid in interesting and unusual ways I didn't expect.

Undecided voters aren't as rational as you think. Members of the political class may disparage undecided voters, but we at least tend to impute to them a basic rationality. We're giving them too much credit. I met voters who told me they were voting for Bush, but who named their most important issue as the environment. One man told me he voted for Bush in 2000 because he thought that with Cheney, an oilman, on the ticket, the administration would finally be able to make us independent from foreign oil. A colleague spoke to a voter who had been a big Howard Dean fan, but had switched to supporting Bush after Dean lost the nomination. After half an hour in the man's house, she still couldn't make sense of his decision.

[...]

Undecided voters do care about politics; they just don't enjoy politics...The mere fact that you're reading this article right now suggests that you not only think politics is important, but you actually like it. You read the paper and listen to political radio and talk about politics at parties. In other words, you view politics the way a lot of people view cooking or sports or opera: as a hobby. Most undecided voters, by contrast, seem to view politics the way I view laundry. While I understand that to be a functioning member of society I have to do my laundry, and I always eventually get it done, I'll never do it before every last piece of clean clothing is dirty, as I find the entire business to be a chore. A significant number of undecided voters, I think, view politics in exactly this way: as a chore, a duty, something that must be done but is altogether unpleasant, and therefore something best put off for as long as possible.

A disturbing number of undecided voters are crypto-racist isolationists. In the age of the war on terror and the war in Iraq, pundits agreed that this would be the most foreign policy-oriented election in a generation--and polling throughout the summer seemed to bear that out...But just because voters were unusually concerned about foreign policy didn't mean they had fundamentally shifted their outlook on world affairs. In fact, among undecided voters, I encountered a consistent and surprising isolationism--an isolationism that September 11 was supposed to have made obsolete everywhere but the left and right fringes of the political spectrum.

[...]

In fact, there was a disturbing trend among undecided voters--as well as some Kerry supporters--towards an opposition to the Iraq war based largely on the ugliest of rationales. I had one conversation with an undecided, sixtyish, white voter whose wife was voting for Kerry. When I mentioned the "mess in Iraq" he lit up. "We should have gone through Iraq like shit through tinfoil," he said, leaning hard on the railing of his porch. As I tried to make sense of the mental image this evoked, he continued: "I mean we should have dominated the place; that's the only thing these people understand. ... Teaching democracy to Arabs is like teaching the alphabet to rats."

That may have been the most explicit articulation I heard of this mindset--but it wasn't an isolated incident. A few days later, someone told me that he wished we could put Saddam back in power because he "knew how to rule these people." While Bush's rhetoric about spreading freedom and democracy played well with blue-state liberal hawks and red-state Christian conservatives who are inclined towards a missionary view of world affairs, it seemed to fall flat among the undecided voters I spoke with. This was not merely the view of the odd kook; it was a common theme I heard from all different kinds of undecided voters.

[...]

The worse things got in Iraq, the better things got for Bush. Liberal commentators, and even many conservative ones, assumed, not unreasonably, that the awful situation in Iraq would prove to be the president's undoing. But I found that the very severity and intractability of the Iraq disaster helped Bush because it induced a kind of fatalism about the possibility of progress.

[...]

To be sure, maybe they simply thought Kerry's promise to bring in allies was a lame idea--after all, many well-informed observers did. But I became convinced that there was something else at play here, because undecided voters extended the same logic to other seemingly intractable problems, like the deficit or health care. On these issues, too, undecideds recognized the severity of the situation--but precisely because they understood the severity, they were inclined to be skeptical of Kerry's ability to fix things. Undecided voters, as everyone knows, have a deep skepticism about the ability of politicians to keep their promises and solve problems. So the staggering incompetence and irresponsibility of the Bush administration and the demonstrably poor state of world affairs seemed to serve not as indictments of Bush in particular, but rather of politicians in general.

[...]

undecideds seemed oddly unwilling to hold the president accountable for his previous actions, focusing instead on the practical issue of who would have a better chance of success in the future. Because undecideds seemed uninterested in assessing responsibility for the past, Bush suffered no penalty for having made things so bad; and because undecideds were focused on, but cynical about, the future, the worse things appeared, the less inclined they were to believe that problems could be fixed--thereby nullifying the backbone of Kerry's case. Needless to say, I found this logic maddening.

Undecided voters don't think in terms of issues. Perhaps the greatest myth about undecided voters is that they are undecided because of the "issues." That is, while they might favor Kerry on the economy, they favor Bush on terrorism; or while they are anti-gay marriage, they also support social welfare programs. Occasionally I did encounter undecided voters who were genuinely cross-pressured--a couple who was fiercely pro-life, antiwar, and pro-environment for example--but such cases were exceedingly rare. More often than not, when I asked undecided voters what issues they would pay attention to as they made up their minds I was met with a blank stare, as if I'd just asked them to name their favorite prime number.

[...]

But the very concept of the issue seemed to be almost completely alien to most of the undecided voters I spoke to... So I tried other ways of asking the same question: "Anything of particular concern to you? Are you anxious or worried about anything? Are you excited about what's been happening in the country in the last four years?"

These questions, too, more often than not yielded bewilderment. As far as I could tell, the problem wasn't the word "issue"; it was a fundamental lack of understanding of what constituted the broad category of the "political." The undecideds I spoke to didn't seem to have any intuitive grasp of what kinds of grievances qualify as political grievances. Often, once I would engage undecided voters, they would list concerns, such as the rising cost of health care; but when I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief--not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue. It was as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December.

[...]

In this context, Bush's victory, particularly on the strength of those voters who listed "values" as their number one issue, makes perfect sense. Kerry ran a campaign that was about politics: He parsed the world into political categories and offered political solutions. Bush did this too, but it wasn't the main thrust of his campaign. Instead, the president ran on broad themes, like "character" and "morals." Everyone feels an immediate and intuitive expertise on morals and values--we all know what's right and wrong. But how can undecided voters evaluate a candidate on issues if they don't even grasp what issues are?

Liberals like to point out that majorities of Americans agree with the Democratic Party on the issues, so Republicans are forced to run on character and values in order to win. (This cuts both ways: I met a large number of Bush/Feingold voters whose politics were more in line with the Republican president, but who admired the backbone and gutsiness of their Democratic senator.) But polls that ask people about issues presuppose a basic familiarity with the concept of issues--a familiarity that may not exist.

As far as I can tell, this leaves Democrats with two options: either abandon "issues" as the lynchpin of political campaigns and adopt the language of values, morals, and character as many have suggested; or begin the long-term and arduous task of rebuilding a popular, accessible political vocabulary--of convincing undecided voters to believe once again in the importance of issues. The former strategy could help the Democrats stop the bleeding in time for 2008. But the latter strategy might be necessary for the Democrats to become a majority party again.

I suspect that there are more than a few of these types of voters out there and they unfortunately gain in significance hugely with the electorate so evenly split. These are the people you reach through showbiz values. Logic, self interest, philosophy are useless. Gotta put on a better show. It's not that hard to do.







digby 11/17/2004 01:29:00 PM |

 
Unconventional Wisdom

Read this from Jonathan Rausch in National Journal.

Quick post-post-election exit poll: Which of the following two statements more accurately describes what happened on November 2?

A) The election was a stunning triumph for the president, the Republicans, and (especially) social conservatives. Because the country turned to the right, President Bush received a mandate, the Republicans consolidated their dominance, and the Democrats lost touch with the country.

B) Bush and the Republicans are on thin ice. Bush barely eked out a majority, the country is still divided 50-50, and the electoral landscape has hardly changed, except in one respect: The Republican Party has shifted precariously to the right of the country, and the world, that it leads.

Usual answer: A. Correct answer: B.

For the record, only time will tell, the truth is somewhere in the middle, and all that. Still, level-headed analysis -- which is not what this year's post-election commentary produced -- shows that every element of Statement A is suspect or plain wrong.

Begin with that stunning triumph. "Stunning" implies surprising. Any observers who were stunned this year lived in a cave (or on Manhattan's Upper West Side). All year long, month after month, opinion polls averaged to give Bush a lead in the low-to-mid-single digits, depending on when the poll was taken and who took it. Only toward the end, after the debates, did the gap narrow to that now proverbial "statistical dead heat." Even then, the statistically insignificant margin generally favored Bush. Another indicator was the University of Iowa's electronic election market, which lets traders bet on election outcomes; it consistently showed Bush winning with a percentage in the low 50s. Rarely has an election been so unsurprising.

A triumph? Only by the anomalous standards of 2000. By any other standard, 2004 was a squeaker, given that an incumbent was on the ticket. The last conservative, polarizing Republican incumbent who slashed taxes and campaigned on resolve against a foreign enemy won 49 states and received 59 percent of the popular vote. That, of course, was Ronald Reagan, who did not need to scrounge for votes to keep his job.

Most incumbent presidents win in a walk. The prestige and visibility of the White House gives them a powerful natural advantage. Bush enjoyed the further advantage of running against a Northeastern liberal who had trouble defining himself and didn't find the battlefield until September. By historical standards, Bush in 2004 was notably weak.

The boast that Bush is the first candidate to win a popular majority since 1988 is just pathetic. Bush is the first presidential candidate since 1988 to run without effective third-party competition, and he still barely won. No one doubts that Bill Clinton would have won a majority in his re-election bid in 1996 if not for the candidacy of Ross Perot.

A new political era? A gale-force mandate for change? More like the breezeless, stagnant air of a Washington summer. Despite much higher turnouts than in 2000, only three states switched sides -- a startling stasis. Despite Bush's win, the House of Representatives barely budged. In fact, the Republicans might have lost seats in the House had they not gerrymandered Texas. The allocation of state legislative seats between Republicans and Democrats also barely budged, maintaining close parity. The balance of governorships will change by at most one (at this writing, Washington state's race was undecided). If that's not stability, what would be?

In the Senate, the Democrats were routed in the South and their leader was evicted. Those were bruising blows, to be sure; but it was no secret that the Democrats had more Senate seats to defend, that most of those seats were in Republican states, and that five were open. "Early predictions were that the Republicans would pick up three to five seats overall," notes my colleague Charlie Cook. (See NJ, 11/6/04) In the end, the Republicans picked up four.

Here is the abiding reality, confirmed rather than upset by the election returns: America is a 50-50 nation. According to the National Election Pool exit poll (the largest and probably most reliable such poll), voters identified themselves this year as 37 percent Republicans, 37 percent Democrats, and 26 percent independents. That represents a shift in Republicans' favor, from 35-39-27 in 2000 -- but it is, of course, a shift to parity, not to dominance.

The political realignment that Republicans wish for is real, but it has already happened.


[...]

...the electorate's center did move, but only about 3 percentage points. That was about how much Bush improved his showing over 2000 in the average state he won twice, and it is also about the size of his margin of victory this year. It was enough to win him a close election, but hardly a breakthrough.

If anything structurally important happened in 2004, it was that the country moved to the right a little, but the Republican Party moved to the right a lot. John Kerry's Democrats aimed for the center and nearly got there, whereas Bush pulled right. He won, of course, but in doing so he painted his party a brighter shade of red -- especially on Capitol Hill, and above all in the Senate, some of whose new Republican members seem nothing short of extreme.

Read it all. I've written some of this same myself, so I'm partial, but really all is not lost. With all they had to work with to come down to a few votes in Ohio, gerrymandering Texas and picking off Red State Senate seats doesn't exactly speak to great electoral strength.

Via Donkey Rising




digby 11/17/2004 11:05:00 AM |

 
Real Men Don't Like Sex

This Is Rich:

It was the most disgraceful thing I've ever seen," Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney said in a telephone interview yesterday. "It's on at 9 o'clock. Kids are watching, and everyone starts to think this is the NFL. I've written a letter to the commissioner [Paul Tagliabue], and I don't think he can be very happy about it, either. We can't allow that kind of thing to happen."

In a prepared statement, ABC, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, said, "We have heard from many of our viewers about last night's 'Monday Night Football' opening segment and we agree that the placement was inappropriate. We apologize."

The segment opened with actress Nicollette Sheridan, clad in only a towel, standing near Owens in the Eagles' locker room. On ABC's new hit series, Sheridan plays a character named Edie Britt, a multiple divorcee who has had a number of sexual conquests in her fictional neighborhood.

Sheridan: "My house burned down and I need to take a long, hot shower. . . . So where are you off to looking so pretty?"

Owens: "Baby, it's 'Monday Night Football.' Game starts in 10 minutes."

Sheridan: "Oh, you and your little games. . . . I've got a game we can play."

Later, with her back to the camera, Sheridan dropped the towel and Owens said, "Aw, hell, the team's going to have to win one without me."

At that point, she jumped into his arms, and the scene cuts to two other "Desperate Housewives" actresses, Felicity Huffman and Teri Hatcher, who uttered MNF's signature slogan: "Are you ready for some football?"

My Gawd, those NFL fans must have felt so dirty.

Here's another example of all those Hollywood elites forcing this awful deviant culture on Real America. Still, it is kind of interesting that Neilson reports that while 12 million people tuned in to Monday Night football last week, 24 million watched "Desperate Housewives" the night before.

Needless to say, all the people watching "Housewives" in Real America were gay tourists from San Francisco.

pdate: Reader jjt mentions something that I missed but that is probably significant:

I wonder if what has gotten some people upset on Monday night is not Nicollette Sheridan's naked back but that she ends up in the arms of a black athlete.

Never underestimate the ability of racists to rationalize their bigotry with calls to morality. It's an old dodge. A hostile reaction to a scene like that is part of the lizard brain of too many Americans.

I'm also enjoying the moralizing on Fox News today about this story. They are very concerned about this terrible association between sex and sports. Which is why they hire experts like this (warning at work) on Fox Sports. Another of these professional sportscasters appeared earlier and showed one of her modeling sessions for Maxim as an example of what she wouldn't do on Monday Night Football. It was very instructive, I'm sure.



Also a correction: The "Desperate Housewives" numbers were from the previous week. It was pre-empted last Sunday.




digby 11/17/2004 10:31:00 AM |

 
Bad Medicine

Reader Joseph Musco sent me a copy of a letter he wrote to Ron Hayes of the Palm Beach Post and Candy Crowley of CNN about the Green Tea Incident. He points out something very interesting:

The Prostate Cancer Research Institute notes that some chemicals in green tea (and not black tea) are useful in fighting parts of cancer and may aid in keeping some cancers in remission. The American Cancer Society lists prostate cancer is the second deadliest cancer among men. John Kerry lost his father to prostate cancer. John Kerry himself was diagnosed with prostate cancer sometime in early 2003 and underwent successful surgery just weeks after the breakfast Ms.Crowley mentions. Couldn't John Kerry's preference for green tea be a small way maintain his health, coping with an illness as best he can to ensure a long life as a father and husband? Is it uncommon for people to have an illness in their family history and alter their diet so they can lead longer healthier lives? Isn't that a quality to be admired and not scorned?

Candy Crowley was interviewing him at the time so asking John Kerry why he liked green tea would have been easy. She might have found out that his doctor recommended it rather than that he was a sensitive new age bi-coastal liberal elite freakshow who she could make a tidy profit trashing after the election with stories like this. But, that would make her a reporter instead of a tabloid entertainer and that isn't her job.








digby 11/17/2004 01:06:00 AM |

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

 
Liberal Conspiracy

Blogs For Bush via The Daou Report:

Real Clear Politics also has an excellent look at the real issues driving the election - and it wasn't just 'moral values' as the MSM and the leftwing apologists would have us believe

So this is an MSM and leftwing apologist narrative, hmmm?

I wonder if anyone's told James Dobson, Richard Viguerie and the Concerned Women of America? The last I heard they weren't the MSM or leftwing apologists but maybe that's what they want to be called these days. It's so hard to keep up.

Why are the Republicans running from their most loyal constituents?




digby 11/16/2004 10:50:00 PM |

 
American Anthropology

Here's a must read by Rick Perlstein on the subject of American tribes.

I've been doing a lot of ruminating on this blog lately about that topic so this article about a writer named Paul Cowan who did some very interesting journalism for the Village Voice back in the 70's is a timely addition to my thinking on the subject. It's a fascinating look at a writer of the left who delved into tribal America and came away with a complex and insightful view of the longstanding culture war during a period of liberal dominance. (One of the more jarring things about the article is the realization of the extent to which the "liberal reform" impulse that so offends the Real Americans is in retreat today.)

Perlstein finds some intriguing parallels with a radical apostate of the period, Norman Podhoretz one of the godfathers of neoconservatism. Podhoretz, unsurprisingly, does not come out so well by comparison. But then radicals are often full of shit.

It's a very interesting read and worth thinking about as we launch ourselves into what looks to be an all out cold civil war for the next little while.

Correction: John Podhoretz changed to Norman Podhoretz.


digby 11/16/2004 10:12:00 PM |

 
Think Big

I'm so relieved that we are having the discussion about which Democratic values we can safely shed early instead of waiting until closer to the next election like we usually do. I think we should get out ahead on these issues and put the Republicans off their game. I'm already on record as being in favor of scrapping our pesky insistence on teaching evolution. Clearly, it's disrespectful to those who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible to insist that it is true. That elitist fealty to reason and fact is why they hate us so.

Matt Yglesias and others think that Roe vs Wade is probably a goner and may even be a good thing because if we expend a bunch of energy defending it, more important things will be sacrificed. If some women have to take one for the team, well, nobody ever promised them a rose garden. Everybody knows that an adult's inalienable right to make a unique and difficult moral choice for herself is a leu-seur. (Check here for a list of countries around the globe that we'll be joining in the 19th century.) I think the sooner we dump that albatross the sooner everyone will relax and support our superior economic philosophy. Besides, it will still be legal in certain expensive blue states so it's not like anybody whose father was governor of a red state and went on to become president couldn't catch a flight and take care of business, if you know what I mean. Big whoop.

Chris Bowers thinks we might want to adios gun control and get with the faith based program. I'm pretty sure that gun control was the issue we ditched after 2000, so I don't think we can use it again. The rules for proving your bona fides as a Real American require that once you discard a liberal issue you can't Sistah Soljah it again.

And you know, we already embraced faith based initiatives but with the requirement that they adhere to federal non-discrimination statutes. If we want to wring out a Real America forelock tug from this one, we're need to insist that the government use federal money to discriminate against women or minorities or people who don't practice a specific religion. If we couple that with the creationism move and actively work to dismantle public schools, we might just be getting somewhere. Perhaps we could really shake things up by proposing to reverse Brown vs Board of Education, the damned case that lost us Real America in the first place. "Separate but Equal" has some real resonance these days, don't you think? It fits so nicely on a bumper sticker.

But, will any of this really be enough? I have to wonder. It seems that we just aren't getting there with these baby steps toward rejoining Real America. I think we need to think big. Really big.

When you look at it, our whole problem can be laid at the foot of the Bill of Rights. Maybe it's time to take a good hard look at how much good defending that puppy has really done the Democratic Party, eh?

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

I've already pointed out the damage that the separation of Church and State has done to us. Besides, it says an establishment of religion, not religions. If we make laws that establish more than one religion then we don't even have to feel bad about it! If a few Buddhists, Muslims, pagans and atheists don't like it, well that's getting just a little too fine. They let in the Catholics, fergawdsake. Even the Jews. That's enough "religions" for anybody.

Free speech forces us to defend the right of people to say things that Real Americans don't like and it's costing us. We end up getting associated with all those liberal TV stars from Friends that Real Americans hate, but we get no love for defending the right of Rush Limbaugh to call us traitors every day. I can't see how it helps us to stick with this one.

Right of Assembly? That is so September 10th. Fuggedaboudit.

Redress of grievances? Petitioning of the government? Hello? Can we say, "I vote yea on the confirmation of Alberto Gonzalez for Attorney general?" Enthusiastically? Thank you.

What is this free press you speak of?

Amendment II

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Now we're talking some sense.

Amendment III

No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

whatever

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Hey, a little sneak 'n peak never hurt anybody. It is long past time for this to go.

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The founders were a little naive, weren't they? This is all well and good, but all it does is empower a bunch of bleeding hearts. "Due process" is just an excuse for judicial activism. It's gone.

Well, except for the takings clause. That's a keeper. Some principles we just can't toss and still be able to look ourselves in the mirror.

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Yeah right, Messrs. Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and the rest. I'd like to introduce you to a couple of guys names Hamdi and Moussaoui. And some guys down in Gitmo who might have known some guys who killed people on September 11th. Maybe if you knew them you wouldn't have HAMSTRUNG decent Americans from doing what they need to do to keep this country safe. (They obviously didn't have a clue about what it takes to defend liberty. Sad.)

Amendment VII

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Getting rid of this would be the ultimate tort reform. And gawd knows Real Americans want tort reform almost as much as they want the flag burning amendment and prayer in schools. This is a big winner, folks.

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

A little waterboarding is good enough to determine who is and isn't a witch or a terrorist and there's no reason we shouldn't be able to inflict a little pain on those actually convicted of crimes either.

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Well, that's a bunch of crap. Any rights not explicitly enumerated in the constitution are "special rights" and should be denied without a second thought.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

This would be fine as long as we attach the addendum that says, "unless Republicans control the federal government." I think they'll go along with that.

Repeal The Bill Of Rights: Vote Democratic!

It's got a real ring to it, don't you think?






digby 11/16/2004 07:07:00 PM |

 
Press Corpse Zombies

Kevin Drum says what I was going to say about the completely inexplicable decision of the LA Times to publish an editorial by the discredited John Lott. If he is considered credible then there is absolutely no reason why Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair have been drummed out of the business. When you make stuff up our of whole cloth, it should have some effect on your credibility.

Oh wait...I forgot. IOKIYAR

Which leads me to this unbelievably tendentious piece of garbage by Patrick Goldstein in today's LA Times calendar section. Apparently, Michael Moore and Jennifer Anniston offended some Republicans with their criticism of George W. Bush and that is why we lost the election.

"The Democrats really paid a price for their association with strident Hollywood activists and their palpable contempt for regular people," says Mike Murphy, the Republican political consultant who ran John McCain's 2000 presidential bid and now works with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Yeah. Arnold and Maria are jes reglar folk, watchin' NASCAR, drankin' Dr Pepper and listenin' to some Toby, I guess.

This construction about "regular" people comes up throughout this article in varying forms. It would appear that the 55 million of us who voted for John Kerry are not regular people. If we were we would have rejected him because he was supported by those who hold Regular People in contempt. Therefore, we are held in contempt. Interesting.

Take the case of newly minted Real American Ron Silver who evidently was raised on a potato farm in Idaho and rides the bull down at Gillies whenever he gets the chance. He says in the article, "There's an incredibly unhealthy uniformity of opinion in Hollywood. When you're at a dinner party and the subject of the president comes up, it's just assumed that all 20 people are thinking, 'how are we going to get rid of this [jerk].' I can't think of any colleague in the entertainment community having a serious conversation with someone who's pro-life or a born-again Christian. There's just a real disconnect from the rest of the country."

Haha. Yes, darling, it's so true that at dinner parties in Real America all twenty people engage in lively erudite political discourse in which all sides are viewed with equal interest. That's what makes Real America so special, after all. It's the fact that it isn't closed minded like those disconnected Hollywood liberals. In real American, pro-choice and pro-life, black and white, Christian and Jew all break bread together. (And, they serve the tastiest little crab cake hors d'ouevres, too. Yum.)

To be fair, there were a few artists who displayed a touch of class, most notably the Bruce Springsteen-led coalition of rock stars who did Kerry concerts around the country, all without engaging in incendiary political rhetoric. If only their movie star brethren could've shown such discretion...Instead Jennifer Anniston called Bush "an idiot," along with an expletive we can't print here, while Cher dubbed the president "stupid and lazy."

The low point of self defeating activism came at a Radio City Music Hall fundraiser at which Chevy Chase said the president had the intellect of an "egg timer" John Mellencamp called Bush a "cheap thug" and Meryl Streep, in a performance that brings new meaning to the word sanctimonious, belittled the president's faith.

Is it any wonder that the Bush campaign tried in vain to get the Democratic National Committee to release a tape of the event? If there was one thing everyday Americans didn't want to hear, it was self-involved celebrities trashing the president.

[...]

If the showbiz world is every going to connect with voters, it has to learn to respect them first. Just ask Kirk Wagar, a Miami trial lawyer who served as the Democrat's Florida finance chairman. Upset over the party's inability to speak to real Americans, he's launching an organization devoted to helping Democratic candidates communicate a values-driven message to lower and middle income voters who have a natural affinity for the party's economic message.

If today's Hollywood activists want to learn how to communicate with real people, maybe they should try the [Preston] Sturges approach --- go out an meet them. No preaching, just lend an ear. When you actually shut up and listen, it's amazing what you can learn.

No preaching. What a fine idea for limousine liberals, Christian proselytizers and big city show business reporters alike. But, perhaps I shouldn't say anything being that I'm so irregular, unreal and unusual. We odd Americans who agreed that the president is an idiot and said it out loud to anyone who'd listen at our soirees and dinner parties thought, strangely, that there was a presidential campaign going on, not a coronation. We thought our passionate opinions, and those of the hated "limousine liberals" were as valid as any other. But, we were wrong. We are not everyday Americans. All 55 million of us are not quite right, not quite real.

No one's saying the industry should temper its views or stop funneling money to the democrats. After all, the GOP rakes in tons of cash from ardent conservatives, but most of its far-right supporters are shrewd enough to avoid the limelight.

That's going to come as a helluva surprise to Rush Limbaugh's bosses, who gave him a 250 million dollar contract to say things like this every single day to millions and millions of those wonderful Real Americans:

The left is scared to death of God. They think Bush is a believer, and they got quotes from people that say Bush doesn't think, he just follows his instincts based on how he feels after he prays. He's just -- "this is horrible." They're out there and they're scared to death because they don't understand God. They don't understand a personal relationship with God. They can only think it's trouble.

The -- the Kerry campaign has finally gotten a chocolate chip. The Kerry campaign has announced that civil rights activist, the Reverend Jackson, has joined the campaign on Wednesday

[O]ne of the things we've learned is that [Senator John] Kerry has two elements of his base. And that's why, no matter what he says, he angers half the base.
Half the base is so-called old reasonable Democrats, and they don't hate the military. The other half of the base hates the military, hates America, hates Bush, hates the world except for France and Germany.

Well, try to figure, just imagine Lurch from The Addams Family hanging out a bus window underneath his face is "JohnKerry.com." He's got this sort of weird looking grin on his face with Evita hanging over his left shoulder.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is reporting that the new Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi has executed six insurgents in front of witnesses, wanting to send a clear message to these people. Good. Hubba-hubba.

And before anyone suggests that he is a fringe dweller of the Right, let's not forget:

"[I]t's always an opportunity and a thrill for someone like me to be able to talk to somebody like you, the vice president of the United States, and so some of these questions may appear to be leading, and I really don't mean to do that.

This entire critique of the liberal elites who allegedly don't understand Real America, and the 55 million of us Unreal Americans who agree with them is another example of this frustrating epistemological relativism to which the press corpse seems consciously oblivious. Up is down and black is white. Entertainers shouldn't get political unless they agree with Republicans, in which case they can have radio shows that are beamed to more than 25 million people a day in which they can viciously insult Democrats all day long. The contempt with which Rush Limbaugh holds the entire Democratic party day after day after day is down to earth and real. The contempt with which Hollywood Democrats held George Bush at a fundraiser is unamerican.

Rush Limbaugh is the voice of the Republican Party --- the allegedly "Real" Americans we liberal elitists don't understand. His swill is endorsed by the highest reaches of the GOP. If Patrick Goldstein and Ron Silver don't believe me, maybe they'll listen to Mary Matlin:

MATALIN: This is a -- this is another reason you're my hero, of all the reasons. I have to read these papers every day because I have to do the defense to them?

RUSH: Yeah.

MATALIN: And it's not until I listen to you that I actually can crack a smile for the first time in the day. And the reason that they're -- I know most of the country doesn't read them ["these papers"], but they do drive a lot of the coverage. As a for instance -- not -- not to pick on The New York Times, but they are particularly egregious when it comes to the Bush administration.

[...]

MATALIN: [Y]ou inspired me this morning. There's no reason that I have to do that. I'm -- and at least I think I do, but when I listen to you, I get all the information I need, and I -- and I -- it is -- I have a confidence in the President, in the policies, in the goals. I have -- I know his conviction. I know he's right and I know he has the leadership to do it. What I don't have, and what I can only get from you, is the cheerfulness of your confidence --

I think the picture is pretty clear here about Real America, don't you?

There are 55 million of us freakish, irregular, unReal Americans who refuse to accept that it is a-ok for this asshole (and all of his clones) to infect this country with his hateful bile uncontested and unrebutted anymore. If that means we have to use harsh language, then fine. Real Americans are just going to have to get used to it coming from our side.

Patrick Goldstein may have been born yesterday, but some of us have been watching the Right disseminate it's eliminationist propaganda for a long, long time. The Left isn't shutting up because a bunch of effete "journalists" are too stupid to know when they're being played.. Again.

Gawd, has there ever been a less insightful, less informed, more gullible press corps in history? I can hardly wait for the conservative prom this year. Patrick Goldstein will undoubtedly get the "Richard Cohen Useful Idiot" award, although it's going to be a very competitive category.




digby 11/16/2004 04:26:00 PM |

 
Bloggerrific

For your one stop blog shopping, check out The Daou Report.

It highlights the right thinking Left (a fine service in itself) but, it also gives you the lowdown on the wrong thinking Right, thus saving you from having to wade through the wingnut hell-broth yourself.



digby 11/16/2004 01:22:00 PM |

Monday, November 15, 2004

 
CAKEWALK


Fallujah in Pictures



An Iraqi nurse treats 2-year-old child Mustafa Adnan, at a Baghdad hospital, who lost a leg when his house in Falluja's Jolan district was shelled during fighting between U.S. forces and insurgents in the war-torn city November 14, 2004. U.S. tanks shelled and machine-gunned rebels still holding out in Falluja in heavy fighting that was preventing an Iraqi Red Crescent convoy from getting aid to civilians trapped in the city for six days. (Ali Jasim/Reuters)


Eliana Aponte / Reuters







digby 11/15/2004 05:36:00 PM |

Sunday, November 14, 2004

 
Liberation

"Destruction was everywhere. I saw people lying dead in the streets, wounded were bleeding and there was no one to come and help them. Even the civilians who stayed in Fallujah were too afraid to go out," he said.

"There was no medicine, water, no electricity nor food for days."

By Tuesday afternoon, as U.S. forces and Iraqi rebels engaged in fierce clashes in the heart of his neighborhood, Hussein snapped.

"U.S. soldiers began to open fire on the houses, so I decided that it was very dangerous to stay in my house," he said.

Hussein said he panicked, seizing on a plan to escape across the Euphrates River, which flows on the western side of the city

"I wasn't really thinking," he said. "Suddenly, I just had to get out. I didn't think there was any other choice."

In the rush, Hussein left behind his camera lens and a satellite telephone for transmitting his images. His lens, marked with the distinctive AP logo, was discovered two days later by U.S. Marines next to a dead man's body in a house in Jolan.

AP colleagues in the Baghdad bureau, who by then had not heard from Hussein in 48 hours, became even more worried.

Hussein moved from house to house dodging gunfire and reached the river.

"I decided to swim … but I changed my mind after seeing U.S. helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river."

He watched horrified as a family of five was shot dead as they tried to cross. Then, he "helped bury a man by the river bank, with my own hands."

digby 11/14/2004 08:14:00 PM |

 
Walking To Church

I want to make one little addition to my post about hypocrisy in the values laden swath of Republican Red. I think that it's important to point out that this notion of hyperactive church attendance in the US is largely a crock.

The Gallup organization has pegged regular weekly church attendance at around 40% of the population for decades. This is a self-reported statistic, usually arrived at by asking the question "have you attended church in the last seven days" or something like it. It was largely unremarked upon until the 90's when some sociologists decided to follow up. What they found is that people vastly "overreport" their church attendance.

This was tested in a number of ways, through actual headcounts followed up by telephone polls to checking a long term study of driving habits (PDF) that showed that people somehow "neglected" to mention driving back and forth to church every week but reported that they attended when asked directly.Religious writers have looked at these numbers and found them to be overstated, as well.

I don't write this to indict the fine churchgoing people in this country who obviously number in the tens of millions. But, before the Democrats go off half cocked and move too far in the direction of the social conservatives, they need to insure that they are dealing with reality and not Republican hype.

I have lived in states both blue and red and towns both small and large. And it is certainly true that people tend to talk about religion more openly in the smaller, redder areas. But, this is likely because they are more homogenous than big cities where there is a lot more religious diversity and therefore a bigger chance of getting into an argument or having an uncomfortable social interaction. It's not surprising that people in rural America are more likely to lie about their church attendance because there is more social pressure to conform to what is perceived to be required as an upstanding citizen. (It's also possible that people in big cities lie to pollsters about their opinions about contentious issues because of the social pressure to be tolerant in places where there is a lot of diversity.) The point is that if people are actually lying about their religious fervor to pollsters there is every liklihood that acceding to a religiously based political agenda is counterproductive. For reasons outlined in my previous posts of these past couple of weeks, I don't believe it will work in any case. It isn't about values with "values" voters.

As I look at the situation as it's likely to play out over the next four years, I think that with the theocratic, authoritarian Right in ascendance, an old fashioned freedom cry of "Mind Your Own Business" might have some salience in the libertarian southwest and mountain states. Everything from the Patriot Act atrocities to corporations selling your personal information to compelling you to adhere to specific religious teachings goes against the western grain. The key to this would be to continuously highlight the corporate and extremist religious right's stranglehold on a Republican Party that seems to believe that the president is the public's boss instead of its servant. This does not sit well with the individualistic strain of the west. Combine it with a critique of their trashing of the environment without consideration of local concerns and their overwhelming fiscal irresponsibility and you've got the beginning of a helluva wedge. (This oft cited article about the Montana governor's race is instructive. This blog post from Left In The West is even more so.)

Here's the hook. Democrats believe in freedom. The Republicans believe in forced conformity and injecting themselves into every aspect of their citizens' lives. Turn their own libertarian message against them. Clearly, they were full of shit about everything but the tax cuts. If there are any libertarian types out there who value their personal freedom as much as their money (and I think there are more than few) our message might just speak to them. Nobody likes the IRS, but unelected preachers and businessmen using the power of the state to tell you how to live is against all first principles of what it means to be a free American.

I am a left libertarian by philosophy and temperament. I'm big on civil liberties and the Bill Of Rights. I don't think that reasonable taxation comes anywhere close to being as coercive to the individual as unregulated business, theocratic political factions or an unfettered police state. I think there are some people in the current Republican coalition who might hear that message and I think they are far more likely to be open to it than the (largely hypocritical) "values" voters who are fighting a tribal war for dominance. The west isn't about dominance or submission. It's about live and let live. They consider themselves true independents. We can do business with these people.




digby 11/14/2004 04:13:00 PM |

 
The Pageant

Atrios is full of 'tude these days and rightly so. This nonsense about finding leaders who are immune from GOP criticism is just ridiculous. I thought we all understood that the attack machine has no relationship to the truth. There is no such thing as an acceptable Democrat anymore. There isn't even such a thing as an acceptable moderat republican anymore. Look what they are doing to Specter.

I simply cannot believe that after the last twelve years any Democrat still believes that there are limits to what the Republicans will say to assassinate someone's character or how far the SCLM will go to promulgate it if the story is juicy enough. Perhaps Mr Nelson needs to make a run for the presidency and see if all that Red state love sees him through.

And ditto what Josh said, too. Loyalty is a principle, guys. Not blind loyalty, but that good old fashioned notion that you don't trash your friends for personal gain. If there is one thing I admire about the Republicans is that they treat their candidates with respect. As far as I'm concerned, any Dem who goes out there against the Republican attack machine and puts himself or herself on the line for us deserves at least that.

Marshall also makes some good points here.

...Democrats don't do anywhere near as good a job at telling a story with their politics.

If you want an example think of a movie with great acting and set-design but no discernible plot.

Yes, you're for this and that policy and you have this, that and the other plan. But what story or picture does it all amount to? What things does it say are important and which things less important? What does it all amount to in terms of who we are as Americans and who we want to be?

I think I can tell you what the Republicans are for and without referencing hardly any policy specifics. They're for lowering taxes in exchange for giving up whatever it is the government pretends to do for us, (at a minimum) riding the brakes on the on-going transformation of American culture, and kicking ass abroad.

That’s a clear message and a fairly coherent one, whatever you think of the content --- it’s about self-reliance and suspicion of change. And Democrats have a hard time competing at that level of message clarity.

I think it's true that our movie just isn't as good as theirs. But rather than being a great production without a plot, I think we are one of those disjointed, arty films with lots of great moments, but afterwards you really can't explain what it means to someone who hasn't seen it.

The Republicans do big technicolor blockbusters with a big predictable plot. It's called "They're Comin' Ta Git Ya!" (Parts I through XX.) It's a franchise in which the government or the blacks or the gays or the liberals or the terrorists are trying to tear apart your way of life and the Republican party is all that's standing between you and them. It's not about self-sufficiency, it's the opposite. It's about being a perpetual victim.

Democrats can make a wonderful, big budget picture for the whole family, called "America." It's about freedom and courage. It would be an uplifting tale starring ordinary individuals working together for common goals and achieving success through equal opportunity and hard work. Our heroes insist that the community should help the less fortunate because it is the right thing to do. Period. They are Americans who live by the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights --- individual liberty, inalienable human rights and an equal playing field. When those ideals are attacked from without or within they fight like hell. In the end, we all live together peacefully because our freedom, rights and responsibilities as Americans to live as we see fit are what make us strong. Our democratic government becomes a force for good because it reflects those values. It reflects us.

It's true that we have lost sight of how to tell our story. Indeed, we are still consumed with the idea that if only we adjusted our positions on the issues, then we would win --- even though we already poll higher on most issues that people say they care about. But this has gone way beyond issues. It's about what people think we stand for vs what we actually stand for. We have not recognized that we are living in brand America and we have to sell people on the "idea" of our brand. Civics isn't even taught anymore and nobody knows jack about history. What they know is story and we have to tell them ours.

And one thing simply cannot be overlooked again, by those of us on the left who tend to blame our party and those in the middle who ..... also blame our party. This is the fact that we are competing with an organization and a movement that has no limits. If we tell our story perfectly with total clarity and beauty and we present it with the finest production values and the best candidates in the world to embody our national character, we still have to contend with a professional character assassination machine that is not hindered by any if the so-called morals and values they pretend to revere. This is a formidable obstacle and one that we will have to learn how to deal with before we can hope to break through this morass.

Therefore, we take this on from both angles if we expect to win this war. We must disable their noise machine and we must put on a bigger, better pageant. Both of things will be required to break through the static and get the attention of those people in the country who are part of OUR story but have been subsumed in propaganda and programmatic rhetoric for so long that they think that we don't have one.

One of these requires a willingness to go for the jugular and another requires a big creative vision. They aren't mutually exclusive but this might be a case for some division of labor. Any ideas?




digby 11/14/2004 01:56:00 PM |