“It is not quite the ‘right wing conspiracy’ that Hillary Clinton described, but it is an impressive organization built consciously, carefully and single-mindedly. The Ann Coulters and Grover Norquists don’t want to be candidates for anything or cabinet officers for anyone. They know their roles and execute them because they’re paid well and believe, I think, in what they’re saying.” By way of Blotter Spotter and The Late Adopter, Bill Bradley emerges from hiding to dissect the organizational problems of the Democratic Party. “If Democrats are serious about preparing for the next election or the next election after that, some influential Democrats will have to resist entrusting their dreams to individual candidates and instead make a commitment to build a stable pyramid from the base up. It will take at least a decade’s commitment, and it won’t come cheap. But there really is no other choice.” I agree wholeheartedly…but to help build this pyramid, Senator Bradley, we need to hear much more from you more often.
Category: Politics (2005-2006)
Do the Dems have a pulse?
“Instead of allowing themselves to be cowed by the fear of looking like they’re coming down on the immoral side of the moral values debate, Democrats should snap out of it and demand that the president interrupt his next vacation and that Bill Frist hold another midnight session of Congress to address the moral disgrace of 45 million people with no health insurance and 36 million people living in poverty.” Salon‘s Arianna Huffington argues convincingly that the Congressional Dems blew it (again) in addressing the Schiavo fiasco. You’d think they could at least do a better job of hammering on the Hammer’s hypocrisy.
On Life Support.
Dubya’s ailing Social Security PSAs take another hit, with even conservative intellectuals starting to turn against Dubya’s plan in print. Yep, seems like a goner.
The F-Chip.
“I might as well be reading tabloids out of the grocery store…Anything to get a rise out of the viewer and to reinforce certain retrograde notions.” Sam Kimery, a former Republican precinct captain, builds and markets a device that blocks FOX News from infecting your television. Looks like Christmas will be easy this year.
Puppets of Industry.
“Fortune 500 companies that invested millions of dollars in electing Republicans are emerging as the earliest beneficiaries of a government controlled by President Bush and the largest GOP House and Senate majority in a half century…Bush and his congressional allies are looking to pass legal protections for drug companies, doctors, gun manufacturers and asbestos makers, as well as tax breaks for all companies and energy-related assistance sought by the oil and gas industry.” In the stating the obvious department, the Washington Post discovers the Republicans are in the thrall of corporate power.
Hammer Blows.
“The point is, the other side has figured out how to win and to defeat the conservative movement, and that is to go after people personally, charge them with frivolous charges, link up with all these do-gooder organizations funded by George Soros, and then get the national media on their side.” Boy, I wish it were that simple. Boss DeLay comes out swinging against the Dems, who he blames for everything from Terri Schiavo to the separation of church and state…oh, yeah, and his multiple ethics and fund-raising violations too.
Million Vote Baby (Redux).
Articles worth reading on GOP involvement in the continuing Schiavo fiasco:
Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick: “This morning’s decision by Congress and President Bush — to authorize new federal legislation that will obliterate years of state court litigation, and justify re-inserting a feeding tube into Terri Schiavo, based on new and illusory federal constitutional claims — is not about law. It is congressional activism, plain and simple; legislative overreaching and hubris taken to absurd extremes.”
Salon‘s Eric Boehlert: “The Schiavo episode highlights not only how far to the right the GOP-controlled Congress has lunged — a 2003 Fox News poll found just 2 percent of Americans think the government should decide this type of right-to-die issue — but also how paralyzed the mainstream press has become in pointing out the obvious: that the GOP leadership often operates well outside the mainstream of America. The press’s timidity is important because publicizing the poll results might extend the debate from one that focuses exclusively on a complicated moral and ethical dilemma to one that also examines just how far a radical and powerful group of religious conservatives are willing to go to push their political beliefs on the public.“
A Public Funeral for Private Accounts.
“George W. Bush’s plan to remake the Social Security system is kaput. This is not a value judgment. It’s a statement of political fact.” While Dubya, Cheney, and McCain (carrying water for the administration as usual) continue their respective privatization dog-and-pony shows, Slate‘s Jacob Weisberg puts PSAs in the fridge.
Self-Ordained Professors’ Tongues.
An event of note last night here at Columbia’s Miller Theater: Music critic Greil Marcus, Princeton historian Sean Wilentz, and Oxford poetry scholar Christopher Ricks came together to contemplate Dylania old and new. Marcus began by speaking on the many lives of “Masters of War,” including Dylan’s Gulf War I Grammy performance and the recent “Coalition of the Willing” episode at a Boulder, Colorado high school. Wilentz followed by discussing Dylan’s debts of gratitude (and debt to history) in the recent Chronicles. And Ricks punned his way through a priceless disquisition on Blonde on Blonde and the differences among poetry, prose, and song, finishing his remarks with a defense of “Just Like a Woman,” which apparently has been deemed misogynistic in certain academic corners. (I asked the panel about the mixed reception to Masked & Anonymous, and Wilentz & Marcus in particular praised it as an underrated film…I’ll probably have to see it again at some point.)
All in all, it was quite an interesting evening of Dylanology, although I must admit, I was a bit put off by some of Ricks’ comments in the Q&A session — He called “Masters of War” (and, for that matter, “The Death of Emmett Till“) self-absorbed and overly tendentious songs, which I think there’s a good deal of truth to, but then proceeded to castigate the audience for indulging its generally anti-Bush sentiment (via some mild chuckling) during Marcus’ Coalition of the Willing anecdote. Ricks began by deploring knee-jerk political responses in either direction as a typically American (and occasionally Dylanian) vice…ok, fine, that’s a criticism we’ve all heard before. “Fist fighting is here to stay,
It’s just the old American way.” But Ricks then went on to bemoan the tribulations faced by his poor right-wing friends in Massachusetts, who thought — correctly, in Ricks’ view — that “John Kerry didn’t deserve the presidency.” (As you might expect, this gave the smattering of right-leaning folk amid the audience a chance to clap vociferously and to indulge anew the currently-popular fallacy that they’re an oppressed minority.)
Yes, unfortunately, the decline of civility in debate and the “MacNeill-Lehrerization” of every issue into two opposite and irreconcilable poles are lamentable repercussions of the way politics is practiced today, as Jon Stewart famously noted on Crossfire several months ago. (Or, as Bob once put it, “Lies that life is black and white spoke from my skull…Ah, but I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now.“) But that doesn’t mean that Americans’ opinions of the war in Iraq aren’t well-thought out and hard-won. Ricks treated the issue as basically six-one, half-dozen-the-other, that to voice an opinion about the Iraq War is somehow irresponsible and — worse — uncouth. (Whatsmore, I had no idea what anybody’s politics were until Ricks began complaining about the presumed incivility in the room, at which point the audience immediately bifurcated into lefties and righties.) In sum, incivility is a serious problem, sure. But, for that matter, so is war.
The Q&A aside, though, the evening made for an eloquent appreciation of the many gifts of Bob Dylan, gifts further illuminated by the warmth and regard with which Marcus, Wilentz and Ricks held these songs to the light and uncovered some of their fragile tendrils of meaning and allusion. And if nothing else, the conference made for an excellent excuse to go home and delve into Bob’s back pages for the remainder of the evening, and listen to old songs with new ears.
Million Vote Baby.
I haven’t been following all the recent vagaries of this Schiavo fiasco either, but my feelings on the matter aren’t going to surprise anybody. With this blatantly unwarranted attempt to mint political capital from a terrible family tragedy, the Republicans in Congress are making a mockery of the American legal system, constitutional process and their own small-government, states-rights philosophy in one fell swoop. And for what? “In a memo distributed only to Republican senators, the Schiavo case was characterized as ‘a great political issue’ that could pay dividends with Christian conservatives, whose support is essential in midterm elections such as those coming up in 2006.” Naturally…we’ve all seen this Grand Old Party sell out more principle for less gain in the past.