Sorry if you’ve already seen this. I was delayed in posting it because I was watching the Redskins win an ugly one in Detroit. Go Skins.
Oct 262008
Jun 182008
*But not really.
Michael Gerson is very worried about vulgarity in politics:
In 2006, after a long monologue about a dog and its vomit, Franken impersonated the deceased Sen. Strom Thurmond as saying: “Yeah, I screwed a woman who was vomiting once.” He once proposed a television sketch about a female CBS reporter being drugged and raped. He has suggested that his next book title might be “I F — – — Hate Those Right-Wing Motherf — – — !” At an event hosted by the Feminist Majority Foundation in 1999, Franken offered this thigh-slapper: “Why don’t we focus on what Afghan women can do? They can cook, bear children and pray. As I recall, that was fine for our grandmothers.”
Our popular culture, of course, violates even these expansive boundaries of tastelessness with regularity. We laugh at comedies featuring the C-word and at cartoons of foul-mouthed third-graders. In the cause of relevance and realism, our common life is already decorated with excrement. Why should political discourse be any different?
For at least one reason: Because vulgarity is often the opposite of civility.
Incidentally, I think “I F — – — Hate Those Right-Wing Motherf — – — !” would make for a great title. It makes its point quite artfully, and is much better than the title of Bill O’Reilly’s upcoming tome.
My favorite part is where he explains that when his friend is vulgar, it’s okay, but when RAPPERS do it, it’s loathsome. Not sure I understand why that is… maybe because his friend has a terminal degree? But a lot of rappers, apparently, have doctorates, so that can’t be it. Hmmm… what could it be?
Also, remember when Dick Cheney told a senator, on the floor of the Senate, to “fuck yourself“? Or when George Bush called a reporter “a major league asshole“? Weird how Gerson, former Bush speechwriter and policy advisor, doesn’t mention those incidents in his condemnation of Al Franken (who has, as of yet, never even been elected to any office that I know of).
What a load of (to pick a civil word) manure.
But let’s get back to Franken for a minute. Gerson takes great offense to Franken’s description of his work as “satire.” Because it uses naughty language, and stereotypes, and even sexual imagery. Well, yes, I think we can all agree that it does those things. But, last I checked, in pursuit of satire we aren’t limited to the scrabble dictionary and the Comics Code. Sometimes, offensive content and objectionable imagery is the most effective way of making a point. Let’s look at an example from Gerson’s op-ed:
At an event hosted by the Feminist Majority Foundation in 1999, Franken offered this thigh-slapper: “Why don’t we focus on what Afghan women can do? They can cook, bear children and pray. As I recall, that was fine for our grandmothers.”
Okay. So does anyone out there think that Franken, a dyed-in-the-wool liberal who loves taxes, abortions, and homosexuals, said those words sincerely? AT A FEMINIST MAJORITY FOUNDATION EVENT??? Of course not. This is, what’s the word, sarcasm. Franken is making a point–to limit women to these traditional roles is horrible, stupid, and maybe even terrorism! Okay, probably not really terrorism, but you can’t deny the Afghanistan connection. Better send in some troops, just to be safe.
Okay, where was I. Oh, right. Gerson is just being disingenuous. He knows Franken doesn’t seriously believe women should only cook, bear children, and pray. He knows Franken was joking. And, more generally, he knows that there’s nothing seriously objectionable about Franken’s humor–except that he is a liberal and is running for the Senate. This piece is deeply cynical, condescending, and just plain wrong.
For the record: I like Al Franken and think he would make a very good representative. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a few more politicians who are funny on purpose?
I don’t mean to be glib, but why am I supposed to be concerned by the increase in gas prices? McCain wants to get rid of the federal tax on gas for the summer, to keep the price down–does he not understand how economics works? All that does is shift the cost from gas buyers to everybody in the country. If we were talking about a public good, like, I dunno, PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, it might make sense to distribute the burden among all citizens. But gas is a pollutant the use of which we’re trying to cut down on. I, for one, welcome anything that encourages the conservation of such a limited (and harmful) resource–including high prices.
I know that there are lots of people out there who can’t afford gas as it is, and who will be seriously hurt by further increases in fuel prices. But in the long run, we need to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels–and obscuring the true cost of gasoline only exacerbates the problem.
Short version of the above:
Why should my tax dollars be used to subsidize the cost of your gasoline? Tell you what–if gas is so important to you, YOU pay for it. I’ll just keep investing my money in bus passes and my own two feet.
FundRace is kind of amazing and kind of disturbing:
Want to know if a celebrity is playing both sides of the fence? Whether that new guy you’re seeing is actually a Republican or just dresses like one?
FundRace makes it easy to search by name or address to see which presidential candidates your friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors are contributing to. Or you can see if your favorite celebrity is putting money where their mouth is.
So yeah, remember what I said about everything you say or do inevitably ending up online? Believe it.
Man, last week’s episode of This American Life (aka, Radio Programs White People Like) is hard to listen to. I don’t have much to say about it, except that it’s a pretty harsh indictment of the current administration. Some of the behavior described in the (one-sided) reporting–like refusing citizenship to widows of Americans whose husbands died before the paperwork went through–truly boggles the mind.
Jan 222008
The Times has a truly astonishing story about Giuliani’s political “ruthlessness” that is a must read.
Mr. Giuliani paid careful attention to the art of political payback. When former Mayors Edward I. Koch and David N. Dinkins spoke publicly of Mr. Giuliani’s foibles, mayoral aides removed their official portraits from the ceremonial Blue Room at City Hall. Mr. Koch, who wrote a book titled “Giuliani: Nasty Man,” shrugs.“David Dinkins and I are lucky that Rudy didn’t cast our portraits onto a bonfire along with the First Amendment, which he enjoyed violating daily,” Mr. Koch said in a recent interview.
After seven years of governmental overreaching and the iterative dissolution of civil rights in this country, Giuliani sounds like the worst possible candidate to take over the White House. Truly horrifying.
Bonus material from the article:
Mr. Giuliani says he prefers to brawl with imposing opponents. His father, he wrote in “Leadership,” would “always emphasize: never pick on someone smaller than you. Never be a bully.”As mayor, he picked fights with a notable lack of discrimination, challenging the city and state comptrollers, a few corporations and the odd council member. But the mayor’s fist also fell on the less powerful. In mid-May 1994, newspapers revealed that Mr. Giuliani’s youth commissioner, the Rev. John E. Brandon, suffered tax problems; more troubling revelations seemed in the offing.
At 7 p.m. on May 17, Mr. Giuliani’s press secretary dialed reporters and served up a hotter story: A former youth commissioner under Mr. Dinkins, Richard L. Murphy, had ladled millions of dollars to supporters of the former mayor. And someone had destroyed Department of Youth Services records and hard drives and stolen computers in an apparent effort to obscure what had happened to that money.
“My immediate goal is to get rid of the stealing, to get rid of the corruption,” Mr. Giuliani told The Daily News.
None of it was true. In 1995, the Department of Investigation found no politically motivated contracts and no theft by senior officials. But Mr. Murphy’s professional life was wrecked.
“I was soiled merchandise — the taint just lingers,” Mr. Murphy said in a recent interview.
Not long after, a major foundation recruited Mr. Murphy to work on the West Coast. The group wanted him to replicate his much-honored concept of opening schools at night as community centers. A senior Giuliani official called the foundation — a move a former mayoral official confirmed on the condition of anonymity for fear of embarrassing the organization — and the prospective job disappeared.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think America can do better than an egotistical demagogue more interested in retribution than the truth.
Humbling thoughts from a BU Law alumna:
I’m on a one-woman mission to talk people out of law school. Lots of people go to law school as a default. They don’t know what else to do, like I did. It seems like a good idea. People say a law degree will always be worth something even if you don’t practice. But they don’t consider what that debt is going to look like after law school. It affects my life in every way. And the jobs that you think are going to be there won’t necessarily be there at all. Most people I know that are practicing attorneys don’t make the kind of money they think lawyers make. They’re making $40,000 a year, not $160,000. Plus, you’re going to be struggling to do something you might not even enjoy. A few people have a calling to be a lawyer, but most don’t. [WSJ.com Law Blog]
See? I’m not the only one who thinks going to law school isn’t always a good idea.
I’m on vacation in beautiful, sunny, marginally above freezing Florida right now, so I’m not going to write much, but I wanted to say a little something about Iowa.
I know it’s a big deal that Obama won, and that Hilary took third, and that Huckabee won, and that Giuliani finished well behind Ron! Paul!, but let’s not get too carried away here. There are quite a few primaries ahead of us, and a lot can happen in the next few weeks. If your guy or gal did well in Iowa, of course that’s a good thing, and if your guy or gal did poorly in Iowa, of course that’s a bad thing. What it isn’t, either way, is conclusive.
Our current president got WALLOPED in Iowa by Bob Dole in 2000. Suffice it to say that Bob Dole has spent the last 8 years pushing Viagra, not ordering retaliatory strikes on insurgents.
We’ve got some big primaries coming up in the next few weeks, and the picture will be a lot clearer once they’re over. In the mean time, don’t give up on anybody. Except for Biden, Dodd, Kucinich, Thomson, and some guy named Hunter.
Now that that’s out of the way, it’s time for some uninformed speculation!
Until last night, I didn’t really think Obama had a chance at this thing. Clearly, I wasn’t getting a full squeeze out of my mind grapes, because there’s something big going on here. Even if this guy doesn’t end up with the nomination, he’s forced the Democratic party to start blathering about change and to take actual stands beyond being against the GOP and W’s legacy. Whether you like the Dems or not, their articulating an actual policy platform can only be a good thing. I think Clinton is screwed, because she can’t go left of Obama and the country (well, Iowa) didn’t seem to respond too well to her being right of Obama. If being a middle-of-the-road candidate fails in Iowa, how do you think it’s going to play in California?
On the other side, obviously Huckabee is psyched. McCain doesn’t care how he did. Ron Paul did respectably. Giuliani was never going to win, but the sheer magnitude of his failure is a problem. Thomson slept through the whole thing, and is a non-entity at this point. Romney is in some trouble. Again, it’s just one state, but for Romney to lose in a state that seemed like the linchpin in his campaign strategy is a significant setback. And clearly he can’t just spend his way out of this one.
Prediction time!
Obama will edge Edwards for the Democratic nomination. Huckabee will outlast Romney’s checkbook for the GOP. The debates will be the most entertaining in many years (although I don’t expect anyone’s lesbian daughters to get mentioned, sadly).
I think any of the top three Democratic candidates will beat any of the Republican candidates in the general election. Although McCain might make things interesting.
Follow me on Twitter