The Ever Circled Wagons

The recent blog war between Kos and The New Republic has exposed a rift in Democratic politics as deep as it is tiresome. I've come away believing neither the Kos charge that TNR is a gay-friendly National Review, nor the TNR charge that Markos is Julius Streicher. Everyone's coming out of this looking pretty silly, while back in the grim world the tortures, the illegal detentions, and the ruinous Iraq policies of the Bush regime go on. I realize that nobody involved in this intra-blog squabble can actually do very much about these problems, but it would be nice if they could at least have some dignity in the face of them.

Then again, as George Constanza so aptly put it: "I lived my whole life in shame! Why should I die with dignity?"

With all the feces flying around, though, it's easy to forget that some good articles come out of TNR. Take this article by Rick Perlstein called "What Is Conservative Culture?" It addresses how the various factions of conservativism--from the vapid "South Park" conservatives to the prudish evangelicals; from the erudite, bespectacled scholars who've memorized Hayek and Friedman to the beer guts with pick'em up trucks who think that Straussianism refers to a fanatical belief in the power of loose fitting denim--hold themselves together by their common love of rebeling against a supposedly hegemonic liberalism (a belief that persists even though conservatives run almost everything worth running). I'd always wondered how these very different people succeed in getting along, and now I know. They hate me.

I'm not sure what it says about the left that we can despise George W. Bush but still have the energy to hate each other too, but four words spring to mind--The People's Front of Judea.

It is done.

At least unti the next revision.

I'm spent.

Good night.

The Future of Labor Relations

Felt a moment's despair over Majikthise's post on the Labor Department's collaborating with corporate lobbyists to shut down card check organizing of unions. During that moment, I saw a vision of the future, and it looked a lot like this:

From Blackadder the Third:

Edmund: (returns with Buxomly, who staggers) Your Highness: Sir Talbot Buxomly, MP.

Prince George: Ah, Buxomly! Roaringly splendid to have you here. How are you, sir?

Sir Talbot Buxomly: (Heartily?) Well, Your Highness. I dined hugely off of servants before I come into town.

Prince George: Um, you eat your servants?

Sir Talbot Buxomly: No, sir -- I eat *off* them. Why should I spend good money on tables when I have men standing idle?

That Rumbling Sound You Hear

is a nearly finished second novel.

That Old Move

Mike McGavick, our local Senate candidate, just came out to say that an ad from The Free Enterprise fund goes too far: (Fome the Seattle Times)

Mike McGavick, the Republican candidate challenging Sen. Maria Cantwell, says a television commercial that shows Cantwell's head superimposed on a vulture's body should be taken off the air.

But the Free Enterprise Fund, the pro-business lobbying organization running the ad that advocates repeal of the federal estate tax, says it's not pulling the plug.

"This isn't the kind of ad that I think is helpful to the political process, and I wish it would be taken down," McGavick said in an interview Thursday.

He called the commercial an "inappropriate and personal attack."

"I have said over and over that my campaign will be a civil one that does not attack Senator Cantwell personally," McGavick said in a written statement.

Yeah, sure. This is an oldie but a goodie in the GOP playbook. Get some "independant" organziation to run a untrue/racist/over-the-top attack on a Democrat, wait for it to do damage, then meekly call for its withdrawl. I first remember it from the Bush/Dukakis race, when Americans for Bush ran the Willie Horton ad. It's most recent variation was the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth in 2004. It's a sweet political move. It allows the GOP candidate to slime his opponent, then come out and say "See what my divisive opponent inspires in political discourse? How coarse and rude! Vote for me to return decency and civility to politics." You wouldn't think it would work every time, but it does.

Note to Cantwell: this is just the warm-up. The really nasty variations on this move won't come until Labor Day.

Thirteen for Fourteen

Like Matt Yglesias, I know my Hitler well. I've read about as much of Mein Kampf as a sane man could bear. (Hitler was not just a moral sewer; he was a lousy writer.) I've also read or seen a large sample of his speeches and other documents, and even perused, with great interest, the psychological profile of Hitler the OSS put together in the forties.

So I actually found it pretty easy to distinguish Ann Coulter from Adolf Hitler. (Take the quiz before you read on.) For one, A.H. seldom referred to Democrats in the sense of the U.S. Democratic Party. To him the word "Democrat" would have meant either someone who believes in democracy as a form of government, or a Social Democrat, the major left wing party in Germany; Hitler hated both. (As Yglesias points out, there's also a semantic difference between Coulter and Hitler in the meaning of "bourgeois")

For another, repellent as Ann Coulter is, her prose style is considerably sharper and more succinct than Hitler's. Hitler, who dictated most of his prose work to a secretary, favored long, rambling sentences and lists. Consider the original title of Mein Kampf. It was, in English, "Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice." (Hitler's editors were able to talk him out of that title, but they could only do so much with the rest of the book.) Coulter, as Ygelsias points out, works in the sound bite era of cable TV, and her prose fits it. The only way the quiz was able to make her quotes look as long as Hitler's was to use a lot of elipses.

So yeah, Ann Coulter's a noxious creature, but I can tell her apart from Hitler. Who she'll brag to about that, I don't want to know.

A Wish

Among the habits I'm less than proud of is my penchant for playing James Bond video games. I didn't get to play Goldeneye, which I understand to be a classic, but I've had loads of fun with Nightfire, Brosnan's Everything Or Nothing, and with Connery's From Russia With Love.

My one complaint about FRWL is that the film doesn't really make the best video game material. It's a taut story with lots of wonderful characters, but aside from the group battle at the gypsy camp, there aren't a lot of moments that seem ripe for videogame adaptation. The video game elements seemed tacked on, imported as they were from other Bond pictures (the Aston Martin from Goldfinger, the jetpack from Thunderball). The classic scenes on the Orient Express take place in cut scenes, depriving the player the opportunity to fight Red Grant as Bond did in the film. If they wanted to do a Connery film as a videogame, You Only Live Twice might have been a better choice.

Still, that is not my wish. What I'd kill to see EA do is release a videogame version of The Spy Who Loved Me. Now there's a Bond film with lots of gaming potential. Ski chases, car chases, submarine chases, a battle on a Supertanker, the fight with Jaws at Atlantis. It would be the ultimate 007 game, and I'm sure they could coax Sir Roger into doing the voice part.

I Think You Hear Me Knocking

I've been checking out a couple of takes on the Supreme Court's Hudson ruling. (The one that allows cops to keep any evidence they get when they barge into your home unannounced.) Because I'm almost finished writing my second novel, I don't have time to get into why I think Publius is wrong. Fortunately, Majikthise does it for me.

Pretty Lame Ad

I first read about Lieberman's ad on Talking Points Memo. I've also got to wonder what's on his campaign manager's mind. Lieberman beat Lowell Weicker for the Senate 18 years ago. Younger Democratic primary voters are probably too young to remember much about Weicker, or the issues that animated that particular race; and for older ones the memories of the Lieberman/Weicker race are less present in their minds than is the war in Iraq or the Liberman/Bush televised kiss.

Now it's possible that Lieberman knows his territory better than I do, and that Lowell Weicker remains some sort of bogeyman in the minds of Connecticut Democrats; but I don't see that. Indeed, though I'm sometimes wary of Wikipedia's information, their article on Weicker does fit with what I remember reading about the man in the old days. If anyone would see him as an ogre whose influence in Connectitcut politics should be eliminated, it would be hardcore anti-tax conservatives. Unfortunately for Lieberman, few of them vote in the Democratic primary.

Besides, just how firm is the connection between Weicker and Lamont? Yes, Weicker endorsed Lamont against Lieberman, but Weicker also endorsed Howard Dean against Lieberman. Does that mean that Howard Dean is also one of Weicker's bear cubs? Weicker also endorsed Bill Bradley over Al Gore in 2000. What does that suggest about Bill Bradley's connection to Lowell Weicker? Certainly Ned Lamont and Lowell Weicker share a distate for Joe Lieberman, but that doesn't imply mentorship.

In the end, what's more likely, that two left-leaning politicians of different generations happen to share a dislike for a more conservative incumbent; or that Lowell Weicker has been secretly grooming Ned Lamont for years, all the while nursing his hatred and plotting his revenge against the White Whale Lieberman, until finally Weicker decided the time was ripe and struck?

Lieberman probably believes the latter. Then again, Lieberman believes a lot of weird things politically, which is why he's in trouble now.

I can use the same sort of rhetorical tactic Lieberman uses in his commercial against Lieberman, by the by. Once upon a time, the National Review endorsed Joe Lieberman, and this year so did Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. Does that mean that Lieberman belongs to William F. Buckley and the No Spin Zone? Well...possibly yes. Certainly, Lieberman's behavior gives us Democrats reason to wonder. But instead let's give him the benefit of the doubt: though Lieberman and Sean Hannity share a disdain for Ned Lamont in particular and liberals in general, one is not necessarily the mentor of the other. In that sense, Lieberman and Lamont are in the same boat.

Well, not quite. I don't think Democratic primary voters hate Lowell Weicker nearly as much as they hate Sean Hannity (though again, maybe Joe Lieberman knows them better than I do). And in this race, it's Democratic primary voters who count. It seems to me that this ad, far from hurting Ned Lamont, actually raises a lot of questions about Joe Lieberman that he'd rather not have out there. Does Lieberman really think (or expect voters to believe) this is all a Lowell Weicker plot? Does Lieberman actually want to get into a conversation about who endorsed whom? Does Lieberman really think that condescending to, and insulting the intelligence of, Democratic primary voters is a good strategy in a Democratic primary?

Just When You Think All Hope Is Lost

Weird Al gives us a necessary song parody for free. True, all hope is still lost, but at least it's a funnier ride through the abyss.

Roethlisberger Hurt

Big Ben, riding his motorcycle without a helmet, crashed and flew into the windshield of a car. I'm not a huge Steeler fan, as such, but I hate to see a player as exciting as Roethlisberger ruin himself and his team by taking stupid chances. Dude, isn't the prospect of having Jevon Kearse or Ray Lewis flatten you risk enough? Ben, if you recover, ditch the bike, buy a Mercedes, and save the Easy Rider fantasy for your retirement years.

Republican Admits that Society Causes Crime

Or, at least, his crime. From Political Wire:

Allen Raymond, the Republican strategist convicted in the New Hampshire phone-jamming scheme, told the Boston Globe that while he's responsible for the crimes that landed him in jail, he also blames "a Republican political culture that emphasizes hardball tactics and polarizing voters."

"In his first interview about the case, Raymond said he doesn't know anything that would suggest the White House was involved in the plan to tie up Democrats' phone lines and thereby block their get-out-the-vote effort. But he said the scheme reflects a broader culture in the Republican Party that is focused on dividing voters to win primaries and general elections. He said examples range from some recent efforts to use border-security concerns to foster anger toward immigrants to his own role arranging phone calls designed to polarize primary voters over abortion in a 2002 New Jersey Senate race."

Said Raymond: "A lot of people look at politics and see it as the guy who wins is the guy who unifies the most people. I would disagree. I would say the candidate who wins is the candidate who polarizes the right bloc of voters."

Pity these attacks of conscience don't take place before elections, or before convictions in court. Oh, well. It's worth a chuckle anyway.

While I'm Reviewing

Neil and I caught the first preview of ACTs production of Wine in the Wilderness Friday night. It's a great show, and though I didn't have to pay to get in, those of you who have to should, so that you can to treat yourself to two of the finest performances I've seen in Seattle theater in a long time: April Yvette Thompson as Tommy and William Hall, Jr. as Oldtimer.

So if you're in the city, take advantage of it.

An Inconvenient Truth

This is a compelling look at what carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are doing to our planet, as well as a revealing look at how much fun Al Gore can be. The scariest information comes in the description of how quickly, and catastrophically, ice fields like the land ice in Greenland and Antarctica can melt. The best news it delivers is that we have the technology to get out of trouble, if only we take the trouble to deploy it.

See it. Live it. Love it. Be it.

Professionally Foul

I haven't had a lot of time to actually view Ann Coulter during her book tour, but it seems like a lot of people wonder why TV programs like The Today Show or Whatever the Hell Tucker Carlson's Show Is Called put her on. Actually, there's not much to get there. Ann Coulter is a woman who makes her living by calculating just how horrible her colleagues have been, then taking it one step further. She's a right wing carnival geek act who hopes to appall her audience with the sight of her own degraded filthiness. Right wingers watch her because they sometimes love to view the nether regions of their own souls. Those leftists who do pay attention to her do so, I guess, because she's a distillation of everything the left finds repugnant in the right. And if you're willing to be an object of disgust, revulsion, and a certain kind of morbid curiosity, cable TV news has a camera waiting for you.

Actually, there have been times that I've watched more than a few seconds of Ann Coulter. (Yes, some of those times involved losing the remote, but stick with me here.) What I wait for on those occasions is the moment when she takes off the blonde wig and reveals that she is in fact Andy Kaufman, and that Coulter's entire act has been Kaufman's twenty year metajoke on news organizations, Regnery publishing, Andy Kaufman fans, and the world at large. I'll bet that's why Bill Maher brings Coulter on his show. If Andy Kaufman is going to step out of his Ann Coulter disguise, it's going to happen on Maher's set. You can come out now, Andy. We're wise to you.

Once More, Tugging A Tired Thread

The DLC has a column up accusing Democrats who support Ned Lamont over Joe Lieberman of "liberal fundamentalism" or, in their words "an intolerance toward dissent and diversity that can repel voters and make an enduring Democratic majority more difficult to achieve." The article goes on to argue that what "the left" is doing in opposing Joe Lieberman amounts to a purge of dissenting voices from the party:

The Democratic Party today is far more unified in its basic values and policy positions than it was two decades ago, and also urgently needs to expand its electoral and geographical base. There's less of an excuse than ever to indulge in liberal fundamentalism, litmus tests, intimidation of dissenters, and purges, and much more to lose from shrinking the party's big tent.

But that's exactly what the national movement to purge Joe Lieberman represents. Comparing him to apostates like Zell Miller is crazy. As Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid points out in a recent letter endorsing him, the most recent independent analysis of Lieberman's voting record shows him in solidarity with Democrats 90 percent of the time, about the same as Reid's own record. He's a recognized leader among progressives on issues ranging from the environment and labor to taxation and fiscal policy. He was a loyal partner of Al Gore's in the bitter 2000 presidential election, less than six years ago.

Some Lieberman foes, dubbing him "Holy Joe," are angry at him for championing the expression of religious faith in the public square, and for standing up against corporate-sponsored trash culture on behalf of families struggling to control their kids' values and upbringing. But his main sin appears to be his staunch and very consistent belief that the war in Iraq was and is right, even if that means occasional agreement with a Bush administration that he criticizes on almost every other issue.

Okay. I wasn't aware that primary voters in Connecticut, opposing one Senate candidate, constituted a purge. If the left were really trying to purge moderate-to-conservative Democrats who don't support their agenda, you'd think the knives would be out for Kent Conrad of North Dakota or Ben Nelson of Nebraska. (An attempt to run to the left of those guys in their states would be suicidal, but since the column already calls Lamont supporters crazy...) Hillary Clinton looks like she'll cruise to re-election in New York, a fairly liberal state from what I hear, despite her support for the Iraq venture. And though John Edwards now expresses regret for his vote for the Iraq war, he wasn't doing that when he ran for President in 2004, and primary voters supported him fairly deep into the season. The only other candidate who might arguably be in trouble because of her Iraq war vote is Maria Cantwell, but her problem in her own party is much less severe than Lieberman's. You'd also think that lots of Democratic House candidates who voted for the war would be getting it in the neck, but I haven't heard anything serious there either.

Besides, is the comparison of Joe Lieberman to Zell Miller all that crazy? Voting records notwithstanding, both guys are best known for going to the political chat shows and trashing Democrats for being too mean to the Bush administration. (I covered this in an earlier post.) Joe Lieberman may vote with the Democrats a lot, but he goes out of his way to be seen as cozy with Republicans. The DLC's shock that this behavior irritates Democrats around the country demonstrates that the DLC is dangerously out of touch.

Joe Lieberman's problem with the party stems from a failure to recognize that his adopted persona of a moderate maverick who likes to reach across the aisle is not one with which many Democrats, tired of watching their party bend to the Republicans on issue after issue, can feel comfortable. After six years of Bush, Lieberman's act has long since passed its sell-by date. Now I know Lieberman's response is that he votes with the Democrats 90% of the time, that he's not really with the Republicans as often as he appears, and that he has much more sympathy with liberal causes than he demonstrates. But, as Kurt Vonnegut so aptly put it in Mother Night "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

Witness Howard Dean, whom the DLC column lumps in with these renegade leftists. For Howard Dean's entire tenure as Vermont governor he was fiscally conservative and socially moderate. But the vehemence of his opposition to the Iraq war and his freewheeling public persona transmogrified him into Eugene Debs among both his supporters and his critics. Is he really a leftist, as the DLC claims? Is Joe Lieberman really Zell Miller? Is Howard W. Campbell Jr. really a Nazi? Does it matter? Consider this quote from Mother Night, where Campbell visits his father-in-law one last time and receives the most devastating compliment from him:

"Did you know," he [Werner Noth] said, "that until almost this very moment nothing would have delighted me more than to prove you were a spy, to see you shot?"

"No," I said.

"And do you know why I don't care now if you were a spy or not?" he said. "You could tell me now that you were a spy, and we would go on talking calmly, just as we're talking now. I would let you wander off to wherever spies go when a war is over. You know why?" he said.

"No," I said.

"Because you could never have served the enemy as well as you served us," he said. " I realized that almost all the ideas that I hold now, that make me unashamed of anything I may have felt or done as a Nazi, came not from Hitler, not from Goebbles, not from Himmler--but from you." He took my hand. "You alone kept me from concluding that Germany had gone insane."

Right now, Joe Lieberman serves the Republican party better than he serves us, which makes the question of whether he's really a liberal or a moderate or a conservative shill irrelevant. Lieberman gives the Republicans bipartisan cover, and he makes it harder for everyone in the Democratic party to make the case the the Republicans under Bush have gone off the deep end. Over the last few years he's gone on FOX News repeatedly to lend his name and his moral legitimacy (such as it is) to some despicable ideas. Given that, I'd say that the response of the so-called "angry left" has been altogether measured and proportionate. If only the DLC could make the same boast in its columns.