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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

(Spoiler alert!) Ultimately, the woman in the article chose private practice, and this is the cute way the article describes it:

In mid-November, over beer with friends at a bar near the law campus, just off Capitol Hill, Roose-Snyder announces she has been scanning the Internet for condominiums in Chicago. Nothing too fancy. She’s looking for a two-bedroom place, near public transportation — maybe something with exposed brick walls? Besides, she says, not all the firm’s clients are profit-pumping corporations.

“My firm represents tons and tons of hospitals,” she says, explaining her leaning. “I consider that helping the public good.”

Her friend Shai Kalansky, 26, also a third-year, explains why he took a job at the corporate law firm where he worked during the summer. “I think about the people I met. I reflect on the experience. It’s about the people,” says Kalansky, clad in a dark hooded sweat shirt that bore the firm’s name.

“I really like that hoodie,” Roose-Snyder says.

Is anyone else getting a hint of Anakin Skywalker in that passage?

Now here’s the thing. I and my classmates face the same choice this year, and for those who are interested in non-profit or government work it can be a pretty frustrating situation.

Many firms make offers in September, expecting an answer by November; meanwhile, the low-paying public service jobs don’t get meted out until the spring. So unless you’re a seriously awesome candidate, you can’t really afford to hope that firm job offer will still be on the table in March or April. And, of course, you can’t know for sure that you’ll get a public service job, either. Meanwhile, half of your classmates have already accepted their offers and are spending all of their time drinking, relaxing, playing World of Warcraft, or whatever they want to do. How do you turn down a huge salary and an easy academic year when the alternative is so nebulous, risky, and (let’s not forget) un-lucrative?

On paper, it looks like a tough choice, weighted heavily toward the firms. But in practice, from what I’ve seen, for most people it’s not a choice at all. And I don’t mean that in a cynical, “lawyers have no souls” kind of way.

I think the article (and many others like it) are a little bit too judgmental of law students. While I understand the temptation to portray law students as money-hungry mercenaries who don’t care about anything but themselves, it’s not really fair (or at least not universally fair). When you graduate with $100k or more of debt, salary is important. When 90% of the job opportunities you hear about are big firm jobs, and applying for them is as easy as checking a box on a website, and you’re so busy with classwork that you don’t have time to think about filling out a form listing everywhere you’ve lived and worked in the last ten years, you end up applying for a lot of firm jobs. When you’re dead broke, and you know that a firm will pay for your bar exam fees and your moving costs at the end of the year, it starts to look like a much better alternative to going even deeper into debt.

The Post’s Andrew Cohen, a columnist who writes about legal issues (and a BU alum!), put up a blog post about it as well, in which he makes the very welcome point that blaming law students for this is pretty myopic. As he notes, the circumstances that lead to this result are in the hands of law school administrators, law firms, big firm customers, and others. The whole damn system’s out of order! As a step toward ameliorating that, Cohen recommends that all law students be required to do 2 years of public interest work before being unleashed upon the big firm ecosystem. While I think that’s a bit unrealistic, I do think he’s on the right track.

It would be one thing if these low-paying government jobs were easy to get, but most of them are highly competitive–probably more competitive than the firm jobs are. When you’re trying to make the decision, everything is stacked against opting for a public interest job.

The entire system, from signing up for the LSAT on, is built to channel law students into the big firm world. When you’re deeply in debt, and every email you get from your career development office is about big firm jobs, and everyone you know is pushing themselves to get the best grades and the best summer jobs so they can get the best firm jobs, and accepting an offer means your last year of law school is a cakewalk, and you have to give up on a sure thing just to take the chance at getting a public interest job, and everything else… it’s not a choice at all. It’s an inevitability.

I’m not sure how to fix this–there’s so much money in the business of law that it seems inevitable. And despite Cohen’s assertion that law schools are graduating too many students, there don’t seem to be enough to go around: witness the ridiculous increase in starting salaries at firms, a response to a seller’s market. The biggest problem as I see it, though, is that the public interest job market is the opposite. There are too few jobs for too many interested candidates, so the employers offer less money and introduce additional hurdles (like the later decision time for offers) to weed out all but the most passionate applicants. So people like the subject of the article end up pushed toward a job they are, at best, ambivalent about.

That being said, it doesn’t make much sense to me that firms are so hard-up for good applicants, while public interest jobs seem so hard to get. Maybe it’s just a problem of perception–if a law student put the same amount of time and effort in pursuing a public interest job, it might be no more difficult to get. But the fact that my perception is otherwise suggests that, if nothing else, there’s a problem of communication somewhere in the pipeline.

Ultimately, I’m not even sure this is a problem. While a crapload of young lawyers start out taking firm jobs, many of them move on to something else fairly quickly (partly because law firms more or less kick them out after a few years). And although Cohen makes a lot of good points in his column, the fact remains that law firms need somebody to do the drudgery–document review, routine research, and other basic legal tasks–and that work would be a waste of an experienced associate’s time (not to mention the fact that it would be billed for more money if an experienced lawyer were doing it). It may well be that a few years’ “indentured servitude” to a big firm is a good thing for everyone involved.

In a perfect world, everyone would get paid big firm money to do public interest work. But, for many reasons, this isn’t a perfect world. If it were, we wouldn’t have lawyers at all.

I am a boingboing fan, and your posts are generally right up my alley. But at times you’ve got a certain problem I like to call “michaelmooritude,” whose primary symptom is that you preach to the choir in a particularly polarizing way. The end result is that your sycophants and antiponents (it should be a word!) get pumped up while people without a dog in the hunt get turned off by your over-the-top rhetoric. Here’s the latest example (naughty word in the subject line!):

I still use the Reasonable Agreement EULA at the bottom of all my emails: “READ CAREFULLY. By reading this email, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies (“BOGUS AGREEMENTS”) that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.”

That’s terrific, Cory, but I don’t think it has any positive effect. Anyone who is inclined to agree with you and knows enough about the issue to do so will probably still agree with you after reading this. But Anyone who has drafted a real EULA before will get only one thing out of this: Cory Doctorow thinks I eat babies. And anyone who has no idea what a EULA is will still manage to get one thing out of this: Cory Doctorow seems willing to go out of his way to antagonize people over an issue that doesn’t really matter very much.

My point is that because of the huge readership you have, you’re in a rare position to popularize relatively obscure but relatively important issues. Copyright law innovations, net neutrality, freedom of speech and, yes, unconscionable legal agreements (not to mention unicorns and lolcats). But all too often you take a confrontational, aggressive stance that does nothing more than froth up the waters on both sides without actually persuading anyone to consider the issues and, potentially, change their mind. There’s a great justification for this kind of thing–the other side does it, and if nobody on my side does it, the other side will win!–but I don’t actually buy that. In more or less every big election in America (and probably other countries, but I don’t know enough to speak about them), each side has its kneejerk supporters. And those kneejerk supporters get excited when their leaders rev them up with high-energy, accusatory rhetoric. But everyone who isn’t a kneejerk supporter gets turned off by this stuff–they’re looking for someone to help them work through the issue for themselves, not just tell them what to think.

It’s easier to take that kind of position, and in some ways more rewarding. I’m sure you get tons of “hell yeah! keep on fighting!” emails every day, and I’m sure you get plenty of “you’re the devil!” hate emails every day–but people don’t bother to send “I didn’t understand this issue, but something about your tone bugged me so I’m not going to look into it anymore–but from now on I’ll have an unconscious aversion to your point of view” emails.

Anyway, to get back to this particular example. The interesting thing here is that you’re managing to make the same mistake twice, with two different effects. The first time is when you append the message to your emails–here, you’re pushing people’s buttons individually. The second time is when you post on boingboing to tell everyone about it. And here, of course, you’re broadcasting your rigid and kinda obnoxious message to the unwashed masses.

Just to clarify a couple of things:

1. It’s not that I disagree with you about EULAs (or most of the other issues you write about often). In fact, I write this only because I think that the way you advocate for these things is often hindering the improvements I care about–and I want you to use your powers for good.
2. It’s not that I think you’re bugging most people, or even a sizeable minority. I think you’re just bugging the most important people–the undecided 25% whose opinions will make or break a campaign for change. Who cares if your natural adversaries get pissed off? It’s not like they were going to change their minds and agree with you. And by that same token, who cares if the people already on your side get excited by what you’re writing? They were already on your side! The big issue is the people who don’t know or don’t care–these are the people you’re trying to reach.

On the whole, I certainly think you do much more good than harm to these movements, but I think you could do quite a bit more by focusing on getting the right information to the right people (while still, of course, “mobilizing your base” to increase general awareness and interest–just not doing the latter at the expense of the former).

A Cary-Grove High School student charged with disorderly conduct for writing a violently descriptive class essay had received an assignment that said: “Write whatever comes to your mind. Do not judge or censor what you are writing.”

[cut for brevity]

Lee’s English teacher, Nora Capron, and school officials found the senior’s stream-of-consciousness writing so alarming that they turned it over to Cary police, who arrested him Tuesday morning while he was walking to school.

There are plenty more interesting details (like the fact that he’s a straight-A student with no disciplinary problems in his history) in the the story. The distinction between this arrest and the bailiwick of the literal Thought Police is so fine it cannot be detected by human eyes.

That didn’t take long.

White House staff, including one Karl Rove, used outside email accounts for official communications–to get around the fact that all White House email is supposed to be permanently saved and publicly available.

The White House acknowledged yesterday that e-mails dealing with official government business may have been lost because they were improperly sent through private accounts intended to be used for political activities. Democrats have been seeking such missives as part of an investigation into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

Administration officials said they could offer no estimate of how many e-mails were lost but indicated that some may involve messages from White House senior adviser Karl Rove, whose role in the firings has been under scrutiny by congressional Democrats.

Democrats have charged that Rove and other officials may have used the private accounts, set up through the Republican National Committee, in an effort to avoid normal review. Under federal law, the White House is required to maintain records, including e-mails, involving presidential decision-making and deliberations. White House aides’ use of their political e-mail accounts to discuss the prosecutor firings has also fanned Democratic accusations that the actions were politically motivated.

Of particular note is how egregious a violation of White House policy this is:

“Federal law requires the preservation of electronic communications sent or received by White House staff,” says the handbook that all staffers are given and expected to read and comply with.

“As a result, personnel working on behalf of the EOP [Executive Office of the President] are expected to only use government-provided e-mail services for all official communication.”

The handbook further explains: “The official EOP e-mail system is designed to automatically comply with records management requirements.”

And if that wasn’t clear enough, the handbook notes — as was the case in the Clinton administration — that “commercial or free e-mail sites and chat rooms are blocked from the EOP network to help staff members ensure compliance and to prevent the circumvention of the records management requirements.” (from Froomkin’s blog)

Yeesh. How is this not a huge issue? Why did this story disappear from the Washington Post front page so fast? (The link to Froomkin’s blog is up there, at least for now, but I had to delve into the bottom of the politics page to find the actual story.) Is there any question that as soon as this story got legs every White House staffer implicated by the scandal initiated a scorched earth campaign on his/her inbox? Why does every administration think it can or should get away with this kind of obfuscatory malfeasance? The American People demand answers!!!

[Dan Froomkin's blog post, Washington Post story]

Anyway, whenever I read something like this, I wonder how much (if any) of the writing comes from the celebrity whose name is on the top. I know that people ghostwrite books all the time, but do they ghostwrite these bite-size polemics? Just based on the eloquence of the language and the artful structure of many of these pieces, I’m guessing yes, but it just seems wrong. Outsourcing a heartfelt plea for global justice smacks of inauthenticity–it’s one thing to hire a hack to help you make a quick buck off your hardcore fans (not a good thing, necessarily, but defensible at least) but it’s another thing to say to a staffer, “I’m against landmine use, could you put together an emotional essay about it for the Times?” Of course, this whole post is incredibly unfair; I have no idea whether Jolie actually wrote that thing, and there’s no evidence suggesting that she didn’t. But it doesn’t feel very likely to me.

At any rate, I actually think it’s great that Jolie is using her celebrity for a good cause (and “suggesting” to Brad that he might want to do the same). And she’s been doing it for a decade now, so it’s hard to chalk it up to a cynical stunt. Ultimately, even if she’s just lending her name to someone else’s writing, she’s contributing to a cause she cares about and trying to make the world a better place. That’s a huge improvement over this guy, even if he did write it himself.

Guest Name: ________________________________ (check one) Performance: ___ Interview: ___ MOS: ___
ENTRANTS NAME:
DATE: __________

GUEST/PERFORMER RELEASE
This release is made to allow (“you”) to include me as a guest performer in a production and/or publication tentatively entitled (the “Programming”). I am giving this release in consideration for you allowing me to participate as a guest performer in the Programming and I recognize that my signature on this release is a condition of your permitting me to be a guest on or a performer in the Programming or both.

But my favorite part is definitely:

I confirm that, to the best of my knowledge any statements made by me during the Performance will be true and will not violate or infringe upon any third party’s rights.

Somehow, I couldn’t find anything guaranteeing that everything Colbert says must be true.

Anyway, aside from the email submission contract and the guest appearance contract, keep an eye out for the bonus “hazardous activity” language and the location use waiver. It’s a thrill a minute at Integrity Justice!

What happened here? I assume an intern just goofed up and cut-and-pasted all the legal language they could find on the show’s LAN. At any rate, it’s a nice insight into just how boring (yet restrictive) even an absurd TV show’s contract can be.

O.J. to discuss killings of wife, friend in TV interview

“O.J. Simpson, in his own words, tells for the first time how he would have committed the murders if he were the one responsible for the crimes,” the network said in a statement. “In the two-part event, Simpson describes how he would have carried out the murders he has vehemently denied committing for over a decade.”

The interview will air days before Simpson’s new book, “If I Did It,” goes on sale Nov. 30. The book, published by Regan, “hypothetically describes how the murders would have been committed.”

In a video clip on the network’s Web site, an off-screen interviewer says to Simpson, “You wrote, ‘I have never seen so much blood in my life.’ ”

“I don’t think any two people could be murdered without everybody being covered in blood,” Simpson responds.

I guess he must really need the money. This is going to be a repugnant, undignified spectacle, and not in a fun way. The worst/best part about it is how the title of the book (“If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened”) fails to even clearly state that O.J. isn’t responsible for the killings–which is strange, since if I killed two people and lied about it for years (sometimes under oath), I wouldn’t suddenly have any qualms about lying in print. Why not just go with “If I Had Done It, Here’s How It Would Have Happened”? Well, I think we all know the answer, but it’s just too depressing to think about any more.

I hate to channel Aaron Sorkin, but is there no level of indecency so outrageous that even a television executive will draw the line? I know this is Fox we’re talking about here, but even so, this is pretty disgusting. I wonder if we have the makings of another civil case here.

At any rate, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Fox will never actually air this. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

More from the Washington Post.

What is the difference between the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader of the House, and the Majority Whip? I mean, I know that they are different, and I’ve got some general suspicions, but I don’t really have a strong idea of how it all works. And will the answer to that query explain to me what the Minority Leader and Minority Whip do? And are there other positions that I should be asking about also?

And how embarrassed should I be that I don’t already know these things?

Looks like a convincing House win for the Democrats and (probably) a narrow hold in the Senate for the GOP. I’m hesitant to even guess what the result of this will be except that with the Democrats’ new position of responsibility each party can now credibly blame its opponent for every problem. And I don’t anticipate President Bush reaching out to anyone across the aisle. So, okay, I guess I have a prediction: two years of stalemates and mutual finger-pointing, with little accomplished as each side prepares and postures for 2008.

But I’d be happy to be wrong on that point.

– Mysterious Internet Writing Below–

“Marines Are From Mars, Iraqis Are From Venus”
30 May 2004 | Major Ben Connable

First Marine Division G-2

Introduction: Marines find themselves regularly frustrated by the behavior and reactions of the Iraqi people. There are very fundamental cultural differences between Americans and Arabs, but for a variety of reasons these differences are exaggerated between the Marine tribe and the Iraqi tribe. Our fundamental differences lead to fundamental misunderstandings. As we enter a period of ambiguity leading up to the transition, it may be helpful to look at how we deal with our Iraqi counterparts from a fresh perspective. American Marines and Iraqis are hardwired at far ends of a cultural void not by genetics, but by social conditioning.

These descriptions are necessarily simplified, skewed and hyperbolic toward the ideal to make a point. No two people are the same, not everyone lives up (or down) to the ideal.

AMERICAN MARINES:

People in general are hardwired to see obstacles or problems, find solutions for those problems, and execute those solutions. The American culture reinforces this natural instinct in what most other cultures consider an extreme manner. Americans focus on winning, achieving, succeeding, and producing. Our children learn and play aggressive, competitive sports from a very early age.

For example, football, arguably the most popular and widely played American sport is a linear, aggressive, goal-oriented endeavor that usually ends with concrete results. This is a simple construct that satisfies our basic needs. We see a problem (the other team, the goal line), we see a solution, (drive forward, score more points), and we can easily envision an end state – unambiguous victory. Ties are a disappointment, not a means to an end. In professional football we have done away with ties entirely because they don’t satisfy our Manichean need for a concrete solution.

As children, most of us are taught that lying and cheating are wrong, and that “honesty is always the best policy.” You might say that “honor” to an American means never quitting, never betraying your word, living up to a high standard of performance and behavior. “Honor” on the athletic field means playing by the rules and giving your best performance no matter what the conditions. People who give excuses for poor performance are deemed weak and are shunned.

When we are presented with challenges, we are expected to overcome them with personal initiative. People who overcome personal disaster are held up as examples to the rest of us. The worse the disaster faced, the greater the comeback, the better the story. The skier who breaks both legs in a fall and drags himself five miles for help is a hero, but it’s even better if he crawls all the way back to save his dog from an avalanche. Most Americans are generous to a fault, but we tend to lack respect for those who don’t help themselves. Most of us can (still) relate to statements like, “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” “Self-made man,” “I don’t take handouts.”

We see ourselves as separate and distinct individuals. Choosing our own relationships, memberships, associations, and path in life, we see it as standard practice to move 3000 miles across the country, away from family and friends, to “start over.” If we don’t like our families, we simply dissociate ourselves from them and seek other relationships. We marry and divorce with impunity, and often without input from friends or family. We decide what is best for ourselves. If we fail, we’re generally expected to view it as our own fault. We have responsibility to take care of our parents in their old age, but we often pay someone else to take this burden off our hands.

Most Americans are lucky enough to have a fairly high standard of living compared to the rest of the world. More than ninety percent of families can afford three full meals a day for their children and nearly everyone has an opportunity to go to school. Our safety is buffered by regulatory agencies that protect us from dirty water, dirty air, and even noise pollution. Although we have many bad neighborhoods, there is little threat from brutal torture, state-sponsored mass murder, oppressive martial law, or enemy invasion across our borders. Our health care isn’t perfect, but our life expectancy is high and most of us feel good about our futures.

In fact, our ability to envision our future is one of our greatest strengths. Because most of our basic survival needs are met, we have the luxury of a long-term view. Retirement planning is a normal part of life. Most Americans envision their children going on to college, and have no reason to expect they won’t be able to fulfill this expectation even if they have to take out student loans. We save money and plan our careers.

Our system of government gives us the perception that we also have a greater role in our collective future. Although many Americans say they feel disenfranchised, our ability to vote elected officials in and out of office gives us an avenue of participation. Our anger and frustration can be vented with the pull of a lever or a letter to our congressman. The fact that the congressman writes back and will probably look into each individual case would shock most people from the developing world.

The respect for the rule of law is the foundation of our way of life. We modify our daily behavior based on the belief that it’s our responsibility to follow laws, we will be punished if we don’t follow laws, and that most other people will follow laws. Law gives order, protects us from each other and from the government, and oftentimes from ourselves. Our faith in this system of laws is reflected in the amount of time we dedicate to following the creation of law in congress and the adjudication of law in the courts. Publicly, corruption is unacceptable, and when discovered it is usually rooted out.

We take great pride in being a free people. Our unquestioning belief in our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness make us uniquely American. Unencumbered by the shackles of tyranny, our hearts host the seeds of generosity and altruism. Most of us have an unfailing belief that we make the most of our freedom, living good lives, helping others and trying to live up to our personal standards.

Our altruism and earnestness often make us somewhat naïve. We expect that everyone else can see that our hearts are pure, and we expect them to play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules that we try to live by ourselves. When we find out that people in the rest of the world necessarily live by a more survival-oriented set of rules, we’re often overly disappointed. We have trouble adjusting to other people’s way of life because we think our way of life is the ideal. We have trouble seeing things from other people’s eyes because we think they should always see things from our perspective.

Our sense of moral superiority comes from a real desire to help others and do the right thing, but it also gets in our way when we have to deal with those that live by more nebulous rules. Our earnest overtures are seen as false and naïve instead of moral and brave. Europeans cannot believe that we would sacrifice so much in Iraq just to prevent a WMD attack and to help the Iraqi people, because they would never do it themselves. If they have a hidden angle, we must have one too. Sometimes our lack of street smarts catches up to us. When we don’t live up to our own expectations on the national stage, we are our own worst enemies. The shame-fest over Abu Ghraib is a case study in American guilt.

Our national character is built on high moral concepts that not many of us live up to, but most of us aspire to. Our nature is to be strong, moral, and productive. We set the bar high.

American Marines take these characteristics and drive them to a new level. With notable exceptions, we tend to be exceptionally aggressive, mission focused, and strong believers in the American ideal. We do not accept weakness, indecision, laziness, or incompetence because we know that these things lead to death in combat. We drive ourselves past normal points of endurance, often damaging our own bodies just to reach a finish line or save a buddy. We expect no less from anyone else, a point that often leads to friction with our old high school friends, our families, and especially other Marines. We have been called extremists, and in many ways we are. Marines can best be described as “extreme Americans.”

…American Marines have unusually high expectations…

IRAQIS OF AL-ANBAR:

Although we don’t like to call ourselves “Arabs,” the Iraqi culture is an Arabic culture. We are a communal people, and our lives revolve around our family; close, extended, and tribal. The paths of our lives are less lineal than the Americans, less “A to B,” more nebulous. Our sport of choice is also football, but not the American variety.

We play the sport played extensively everywhere in the world except America. Soccer isn’t a direct, aggressive kind of sport like the game you play. In fact, we spend a lot of time kicking the ball backwards instead of towards the goal. Much time is spent on the field lining up shots, less time shooting. The goal is to win, but a tie is okay as long as it was a good tie. We often view a tie as a victory if it is against a better team.

Our perception of victory and success is often malleable to the circumstances. Our honor demands victory, we have trouble accepting anything less. We’re not lying to ourselves; we just adjust the standards to fit the situation. The Gulf War was a victory for Saddam because we prevented you from driving into Baghdad. Despite the fact that we were losing on the field, Fallujah is a victory because you could not finish the attack – our will to hold out defeated your will to crush our forces. If you push us into a position where we have obviously lost, we become distraught and angry, and our honor demands that we seek a victory to balance things out. This is no different from you – Americans hate losing as well. It is different from you because to us it is all that matters.

This sense of honor permeates everything we do. This isn’t the Western definition of honor; it’s more like Hispanic honor. Perception of manhood is vital, and in fact it can be a matter of life and death. A man without honor gets no wife, often no work, and in Iraq he may be shunned or killed by his family depending on how grave the offense. Defending honor is part of our cultural heritage and it is a focal point for our behavior. We protect the virtue of our women and the pride of our family. We are disgusted that American men allow their women to act and dress like “sharmuta,” or whores. If our wives dressed in public like Brittany Spears we would kill them or burn them with cooking oil.

An Iraqi man unable to support his family has no honor and must take action to counterbalance this loss. It doesn’t necessarily matter how we support our families as long as we provide. In many cases, we are pushed out the door by our wives to conduct attacks against the Coalition to regain our honor and to make money. An Iraqi woman knows that a husband without honor is worthless to her and her children.

Saddam was a terrible father, but many of us loved him as an abused child loves the parents who beat him. We still act like abused children, playing one side against the other, looking for an advantage, support, and acceptance. We will play you against your boss, against the CPA, and against the government to get what we want. Don’t expect loyalty from us, we are survivors. When we give loyalty to a cause it is to God’s cause. When we give loyalty to people it is to our family.

When we are presented with challenges, we accept the fate prescribed by God. Acceptance of fate is an Islamic trait, and it guides almost everything we do. If we are poor, then it is Gods will that we are poor. If there is a task to be completed, then by the will of God it will be completed – In Sha Allah. In many cases, except for those of us educated in Baghdad or the west, we see no reason to put extra effort into succeeding beyond the norm. Getting by is good enough because that is our lot in life. We have basic expectations and these are tied into our honor – we need food, shelter, water, electricity, and medical help just like everyone else.

Don’t expect any miraculous stories of hardship overcome, “personal best” in the Marathon, or an “I can make it on my own” attitude. These concepts are luxuries for people who live in pampered societies like America. Even when we are poor we have our families and that is enough to keep us happy. When you ask us to do something, we rarely think to ourselves, “Gee, how can I do a great job?” We are answering the call of our stomachs and our screaming wives. After that, a little coffee, some shisha, and leave us alone.

Our families make us who we are. The family is everything, and only those on the margins of society live without family support. Because we live in a developing country, and our needs are more survival oriented than yours, we have to rely on common survival techniques. People group together to survive, to protect each other, to look out for each others interests. The closer the grouping, the closer the interest of the group. Our immediate families are most important to us, then our larger families, then sub-tribe, then tribe, then tribal confederation.

Our loyalty expands and contracts based on our survival needs, but we almost always work within this construct. If you kill or imprison one of us, you have taken some of our pooled resources and reduced our chance of survival. Because we survive as a group, an attack on one is an attack on all. This is why we demand blood money for death, injury, and damage. You must replace the resource you have taken from our pool to balance things out. As long as you recognize that need, we can work together. Here’s a real-life example of how seriously we take our tribal resources:

The tribal feud started when three members of one tribe borrowed some money from a sheikh of another tribe. They had borrowed the money because they could not find jobs to support their families. After allowing sufficient time for repayment of the loan, the sheikh attempted to collect the money he was owed by taking possession of a vehicle that the three borrowers had purchased in an attempt to start a small business carting groceries from the market to surrounding towns. An argument ensued between the two groups, and the sheikh threatened to harm members of the three men’s families if they didn’t repay the money. Upon hearing this, the three men shot and killed the sheikh. The sheikh’s tribe immediately vowed revenge. Soon, all three of the borrowers had also been killed by a member of the sheikh’s tribe. The feud will continue until blood money is paid, balancing out the losses on each side. Very much like your Hatfield and McCoy’s, no?

Pooling resources and interest within a family means that there is little room for individualism. We rarely choose our own path in life. If a father owns a business, the son will almost certainly work for his father. If marriage to another tribe solves an inter-tribal conflict, we marry who we are told. Our parents pick our spouses, and we often have little or no input in who we marry. Only the rich and the elite choose their own life. This lack of individuality further reduces our sense of individual responsibility. Again, don’t expect us to act like independent Americans.

Our tribalism is tightly bound to our sense of honor. Just as honor is vital to each one of us, it is also vital to the tribe. A dishonored tribe loses “wasta” and therefore influence. Less influence means less money, less power, less ability to support the members of the tribe. Therefore, a tribe’s honor is jealously guarded as a group resource. Mistreating a sheikh of our tribe makes him less powerful, making all of us less powerful. Less power means fewer contracts, less money, less food, angrier families. We must regain this honor any way we can. Because Iraqi tradition is violent, we often choose violence to regain our honor. If you dishonor our tribe, we have to negotiate with you…. or attack you until our honor is restored.

We don’t ask for much. Our standard of living is low compared to the Western world. If you put us in the United States, most of us would fall well below your poverty level. Since the collapse of the economy last year, many of us cannot afford to feed our families without finding odd jobs, begging money from family members, or supporting the ACF. Look around – most of us live in humble homes, farming small plots with a few animals and a broken down car. If we have a big home, we may have had a good job before the war and now we have nothing and are twice as angry as our poor neighbors.

There are certainly rich people amongst us, but they don’t represent the majority. When you tell us you can improve our lives and make us rich, you have an image of your own homes in mind. Most of us cannot even imagine what your lives must be like in America, and we do not necessarily value what you value. We don’t dream of Outback Steakhouse. We are proud of our lives even if they don’t meet your expectations.

Unlike you, we do not enjoy the protection of concerned government leaders. Nobody cares if there is lead in our water or pollution in the air. Sometimes our leaders feign concern about our healthcare system, but that’s only because our harried tribal leaders take up our cry. Your system is so refined that every little whimper draws the ire of a champion congressman. Our system is so broken our raging screams barely make a sound. We must use the power of our tribes and our religious groups to effect any change, so again, if you weaken our affiliations you weaken our only hope of being heard.

Where you have been protected from invasion, martial law, and torture for nearly two centuries, we have experienced nothing but invasion, martial law, and torture for our entire lives. We have been in a state of almost constant warfare with either the US or with Iran. When we weren’t fighting you, we were fighting ourselves in the north and the south. Our sons and brothers were killed fighting to keep Saddam in power, and our lives seemed painfully short. At any time, a government official, police officer, or secret policeman could decide that we had done something wrong and have us killed. They might have to pay off some blood money, but so what?

Just as many of you have become callous about death in combat, we have grown up to be callous about death in everyday life. We are not the Baghdad elite. All of us have seen animals slaughtered and have helped pull their guts from their bodies, so blood is nothing new to us. Beatings are a part of life, pain is a part of life, and death is an ever-present part of life. If pain and death are our lot in life, we accept that as part of God’s plan. This is how we are able to accept money for a relative you have killed – we accept God’s will, and you have balanced out our resources. What can we complain about?

Because our lives are so brutal, we have almost no capacity to view the long term. Our inability to envision our own futures is our greatest weakness. We are faced with a simple hierarchy of needs. One must breathe before he can think about shelter and security, shelter and security before water, water before food, and so on. It is only by building a normal, healthy society that you can extend that focus into the long range, to think about things like education, leisure time, investment, and retirement. You have heard our complaints. We want shelter, security, water, and food. Your talk about democracy and culture and prosperity mean little to people who are simply surviving.

With this short term view, if you give us money we spend it. If you give money to one of our public officials, he’ll steal as much as he can because he doesn’t even know if he’ll have a job next week. He has to get more, now, to fulfill basic needs. He can’t see into the long term, to see the effect his corruption will have on the future of his community. He may even be a good person, but he has to look out for his family first.

What you see as corruption we see as part of the normal process of doing business. Because most jobs underpay, we always take a cut. This is built into the price of the job. Iraq follows the trend of many other Arab countries – there aren’t enough jobs for the expanding population so the government hires everyone. The government can’t afford high salaries for so many people, so the pay is low. Because the pay is low, it’s expected that you accept bribes and cheat to get by. Everyone knows the rules, even the government.

Typically, we’ll take a slice of 10% to 15% off the top of a contract or a work order. Nobody will really get too upset if we keep things in this “normal” range. If we go too far, and take 30% or higher, then we know we are stepping over the line. However, unless you catch on we’ll take what we can get. If you’re too stupid to figure out what we’re doing, it’s your fault, not ours. There is no real shame in corruption; after all, we’re looking out for our families as expected.

Corruption is natural in a country without the rule of law. We do not respect law the way you do because for us law comes from the end of a gun. In the absence of the gun, we try to respect our families and friends and live by God’s will. If the government passes laws, or you give us a transitional law, we don’t respect it because we don’t respect the government. Government to us means corruption, violence, dictatorship, and rule by fear. In the absence of fear, there is no rule.

We know that Saddam lied to us often. We feel that he did this to protect us, but also to protect himself. We have never trusted our social institutions as much as we trust our families and our friends. It all comes back to the family and tribe. If the government tells us that the Americans are going to enter our town in peace, but our cousin tells us they are coming to murder everyone and rape our women, we will almost always believe our cousin. You have made many promises to us, but kept so few. Why should we believe you? In the absence of trusted institutions, our lives are ruled by rumor, and rumor is spread by word of mouth.

In such a nebulous society, where life is a tenuous prospect, we rarely take responsibility for our own actions. “Owning up” for our poor performance or behavior would be a stupid thing to do if it reduces our chance of survival and success. If we can put off our mistakes on others, we’ll do it in a heartbeat not because we’re lazy or incompetent but to avoid damaging our honor and possibly losing our jobs. Remember, without honor and a job, we are nothing. So we break a few rules and lie about our mistakes. We don’t care about rules anyway; we do things to achieve an effect not because they’re right or wrong.

We’re masters of achieving effect. Everything we do is designed to coax, cajole, trick, or steer you into doing what we want you to do. This is a standard survival skill, one that you obviously haven’t mastered. Your naiveté never ceases to amaze us. You either take us at face value, or you get mad when we “lie.” It’s not lying if you get what you want, and we almost always get what we want from you. We are in a constant state of negotiation, and there are no permanent solutions to any problem. You pretend to be so honest, but we see you as the biggest liars of all. You promised us security, jobs, and peace. All we have is crime, unemployment, and war. Who’s the liar?

You may have noticed we have a very emotional nature. There’s no imperative to control our emotions, and in fact we’re encouraged to express ourselves. We wear everything on our sleeves, and we change our minds at will. We can be furious at you one minute when you offend us, and truly love you the next minute. Every death is a massacre, every accident a murder, every threat is an impending disaster.

Iraqis are complicated people. We can be kind, generous, and forgiving in the worst circumstances. If you are a visitor in our homes, we will feed you our last morsel of food. If you become a true friend, we will die for you. But we see no future for ourselves or for our families.

We are stuck in a rut, and we need someone who has the capacity to see a better future to guide us onto the right path. We may take your hand, or we may bite your hand because we do not trust you. It is on your head to be patient and forgiving, not ours. Do not expect us to be American Marines. If you expect too much from us, you will be disappointed. There is nothing worse than unmet expectations, my friend.

…Iraqis will never live up to the Marines’ expectations because they are Iraqis, not American Marines. We haven’t lived up to their expectations either…

– Mysterious Internet Writing End–

So there you have it. All we need to do to win peace in the middle east is drop football and adopt soccer as our national pastime. Of course, for a lot of Americans, that may be too high a price to pay.

Seriously, though, I think it’s safe to say that whoever wrote this was trying to make the point that America is awesome, and that we just assume that people in other countries are capable of being so awesome and righteous and honest when maybe they’re not. The writer suggests that Americans are moral and honest to a fault–it’s akin to the classic job interview answer, “sometimes I’m a little too much of a perfectionist.” It’s self-flattery in the guise of analysis. And, likewise, the other half of the piece is character-assassination in the guise of compliment. Saying that Iraqis are corrupt and untrustworthy because they care about their families (this is, of course, a generalization of a generalization, but I think it’s a pretty fair characterization of the tone of the piece) is a pretty good example of damning with faint praise.

For plenty more criticism, check out the comments at the livejournal I linked up top.

All that said, I think we’d do well to take from this that the American mindset may not be compatible with the Iraqi mindset–and that our foreign and military policies ought to take that into account.

Alton Verm, of Conroe, objects to the language and content in the book. His 15-year-old daughter Diana, a CCHS sophomore, came to him Sept. 21 with her reservations about reading the book because of its language.

“The book had a bunch of very bad language in it,” Diana Verm said. “It shouldn’t be in there because it’s offending people. … If they can’t find a book that uses clean words, they shouldn’t have a book at all.”

[Daring Fireball, among others]