Nader, in France: Fast-Food Restaurants Are ‘Weapon[s] of Mass Destruction’: The Green Party perennial is taking a tour through Europe, exhibiting the same carelessness with words as he honed during the 2000 presidential campaign. What, pray tell, is the purpose of drawing equivalence between Big Macs and nuclear weapons? One can only speculate, and darkly.
Earlier, in Sweden, Nader complained that European leaders have become George Bush’s “lap dogs” since Sept. 11: For years we've looked to Sweden as a national demonstration of conscience on issues wide and far, domestic and foreign. There seems to be a decline in that level of performance in (Sweden) as well as other countries in Western Europe. Insert Tim Blair joke here.
05/18/2002 11:07 PM
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Tracking all the Blog-Reviews of the new Star Wars Movie: That’s what Mat Honan’s doing. Check it out, and send him yours. (Via Britney’s beau)
05/17/2002 10:40 PM
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Fine New Piece About the Prospects for a New L.A. Newspaper: By L.A. urban/suburban thinker Joel Kotkin, in the Jewish Journal.
05/17/2002 06:29 PM
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Tony Pierce Now Has Comments: And you know what that means -- unmediated Ashley. Also, my slightly unhinged neighbor is flirting with the idea, and soliciting your comments on the matter.
05/17/2002 04:17 PM
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Bill Kovach’s Public-Blaming Address: Two weeks ago, I criticized a whither-journalism speech given by Conscience-for-hire Bill Kovach, to a convention of newspaper ombudsmen. Here’s the full transcript, if you’re feeling brave.
05/17/2002 03:46 PM
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Possible New Motto for the Warblog: Tim Blair, safely back on his island, described me thusly: Matt really can play. Bats right- and left-handed, sees the ball early, hits hard. OK, it was about hitting a baseball (and at a measly 72 mph at that), but I’ll take it!
05/17/2002 01:30 PM
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Dan Rather: ‘In Some Ways the Fear Is That You Will Be Necklaced Here’: The ancient CBS anchor tells the BBC a bunch of fantastic bullshit: “What we are talking about here — whether one wants to recognize it or not, or call it by its proper name or not — is a form of self-censorship. […]
“It starts with a feeling of patriotism within oneself. It carries through with a certain knowledge that the country as a whole — and for all the right reasons — felt and continues to feel this surge of patriotism within themselves.
"And one finds oneself saying, `I know the right question, but you know what? This is not exactly the right time to ask it.’” If Dan Rather was my employee, he would be fired before tonight’s newscast. I can’t fathom paying a salary to a journalist who ever says “this is not exactly the right time to ask” a question of a government. What absolute cowardly rot. And it gets much worse: At one point during the interview, Rather compared the problems that American journalists sometimes face regarding patriotism with the price that dissidents paid in South Africa years ago during apartheid.
"It is an obscene comparison. You know I am not sure I like it. But you know there was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around peoples' necks if they dissented," he said.
"And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions... And again, I am humbled to say, I do not except myself from this criticism."
Rather said that "patriotism run amok" is making it difficult for journalists to provide Americans with all the information they need about the war in Afghanistan and to hold the Bush administration accountable. You’re right about one thing, Dan -- it is an obscene comparison. It’s wrong, disgusting, weak, and narcissistic.
05/17/2002 01:17 PM
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Two Choice Dentons: First, a plea to stop giving Bush the benefit of the doubt, especially when he makes disastrous, protectionist decisions on trade: He caved. Say it. I respect Bush's prosecution of the war, and his managerial ability, but people have given Bush the benefit of the doubt for 18 months, for all his life, for that matter. On vision, articulacy, trade, the Saudis, the Middle East, global development. It takes a really smart guy like Andrew Sullivan to justify such dumb actions. Let's just give him the benefit of the doubt? Bush is the welfare queen of benefit of the doubt; it's time he fended for himself. Followed by this angry dart about trade, entitled “The Irresponsible Superpower.” The US may be the world's only superpower, but it's behaving like a moral pygmy by blocking goods from poor countries. With good links as well.
05/17/2002 11:45 AM
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‘Be in Their Face, But With a Breath Mint’: Eugene Volokh contributes five very sensible thoughts to the stimulating discussion under the Fear of Speaking Your Mind post below. He's a First Amendment specialist, remember.
05/17/2002 11:29 AM
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The Bemused, Passionate, Commonsensical Hyper-Rationalist: I keep trying to come up with brief phrases to describe Eugene Volokh, but my lack of vocabulary, coupled with Volokh’s irreducibility, fails me every time.
05/16/2002 11:46 PM
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Guy-I-Probably-Don’t-Agree-With-Often Link of the Day II: It’s journo & San Fernando Valley immigration-worrier Steve Sailer!
05/16/2002 09:30 PM
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Guy-I-Probably-Don’t-Agree-With-Often Link of the Day: It’s British journo Brendan O’Neill!
05/16/2002 07:18 PM
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How the Oppressed Have Used Deception: Interesting historical essay by the Omaha World-Herald’s charming Geitner Simmons.
05/16/2002 06:14 PM
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Testing the Guardian’s Brezhnev Analogy: Damian Penny, who is about to lose a basketball bet, notes that today’s foolish Guardian column had the dumb gall to compare Noam Chomsky’s treatment by CNN with Soviet TV’s handling of dissidents Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Read the whole thing; I’ll just excerpt this one bit: Solzhenitsyn: ignored and/or demonized by the Western "peace movement".
Sakharov: ignored and/or demonized by the Western "peace movement".
Chomsky: worshipped by the Western "peace movement".
05/16/2002 04:47 PM
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Reducing Fear Since 2001! The joint’s jumpin’ in the comments section below the post “Fear of Speaking Your Mind,” below. Read it all, it’s thought-provoking stuff. At the risk of Warblogger Triumphalism, I’d like to quote this excerpt, by dedicated blog-consumer Ray Eckhart: Until I discovered the *warblogging* anti-idiotarian discourse post 911, I would have been very reluctant to talk to folks on how I really felt about things, without knowing full well, up front, how my words were going to be spun by the controllers of the forum wherein they were to be portrayed - whether that was among folks who listened to NPR, Chris Matthews, CNN, Talk back live, Dr. Laura, or Rush Limbaugh. Within a small circle of like-minded folk, sure, but where's the growth in that?
For what it's worth, I admit to a bit of juvenile glee (schadenfreude?) of this *weakness* being applied to folks who, in my mind, practiced and set the standard for shouting down and demonizing opinions that did not mesh with *known* assumptions about the *others*.
It is, I believe, why I am so attracted to, and hopelessly addicted to the Blogosphere, and read regularly, the thoughts and opinions of a frickin' Nader voter, as well as a leave me the f**ck alone libertarian, filthy Dashiel Hammett columnist, Dynamic women, left of center bad dudes and weiner dog owners, fundamentalist Christians, Aussie oppressors, liberal gay Catholics, conservative gay Catholics, straight Ann Coulter worshipers, bisexual right of center nominally Jewish women, Bellicose women, Persian/American Jews, European libertarians and seamstresses, Boldly-going Space adventurers, atheist enyclopedic essay writers, genius web designers with a grateful fix on Arab perfidy, NYC economists, Gnat-raising rational sentimental prolific Journalists, creative writing and rhetorical argumentative, and gun nut Socratic law, professors, plus all the links they send me to. It's exhausting, and correspondingly - liberating and enlightening.
05/16/2002 04:26 PM
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Yglesias Gets Mugged in Amsterdam: Bad luck, Matthew! He’s right about comparing big-city Western Europe to New York (and other U.S. inner cities) of the 1980s. I’m literally scared to be in some parts of downtown Paris; there are just too many unruly young teen boys, up to no good, roving in packs without any semblance of restraint. Graffiti, even in quiet little Swiss towns, is freakin’ everywhere. The “crime problem” is treated with a sort of fatalism; people attack you as a racist (and have attacked me, in French-language blogs) for even pointing out that the wretched suburbs with high concentrations of Arab immigrants are often ridden with crime. It’s Giuliani time, les enfants!
Amsterdam in particularly has always bummed me out; last time I was there, terrible circumstances involving dishonest travel agents forced me and a couple of friends to attempt some desperate busking in a pedestrian zone. People did everything they could to avoid eye contact, and I couldn’t blame them -- there are so many damned freaks and sketchers on the streets of Amsterdam, it’s best to keep your head down and your hands around your wallet until you find safe haven. We might have made three guilders, and few things kill the soul faster than singing happy songs when you’re seething inside. The next morning, circumstances brought us to clean, charming Luxembourg, where our little three-part harmony act earned us squeals of Germanic delight & about a hundred bucks, in damned short order. By evening we had a regular gig at an Irish bar … I was downright sad when the Air Hitch voucher finally turned into a seat on a flight back to New York.
05/16/2002 02:28 PM
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Time to Start a Blog, Trageser!: Layne’s old buddy Jim Trageser writes a blog story for Layne’s old magazine, and makes two points I’d like to take issue with: Now, I may well take a beating for this in Layne’s daily blog, but it seems to me that the entire purpose of publishing something is to reach others — as many as possible. A good piece of writing is able to create a sense of something shared, a sense of community, if you will. Part of the joy of reading a magazine is to find someone else who also reads it, and then talk about the articles in the last issue.
If only a couple thousand (being generous, frankly, in the case of most blogs) read the same writing, where’s the community in that? How many times have you actually found a stranger who read the same recent print-magazine article as you, and wanted to embark on a stimulating conversation about it? It would take me a while to remember 10 such occasions. Now, how many times, through the magic of blogs, e-mail and comments, have you and others jointly discovered, dissected, discussed and expanded upon a specific piece of writing? I can remember 10 such occasions … from this week.
I’ve never encountered such a “sense of community” as I’ve found with my 2,000 unique visitors a day, and with the other several hundred bloggers engaged in this loose group conversation. Unlike a print publication or wire service, when you just spit some words out in the ether and hope people read them (without ever having any idea of how many do), this medium allows you to see and talk with, directly, the people who have sought you out. And you’d be surprised how many individuals you can fit within the number 2,000. One other quibble with the Tragmaster: What we need is better journalism, not more. Does anyone really believe that adding 40,000 more opinion columns is going to make ours a better-informed society? That’s a false dichotomy. What we need is better journalism, and more journalism. Monopolist newspapers publish the same foreign coverage, the same page-two sports section jokes, all provided from the Associated Press. We need more APs, more newspapers, more amateurs, more professionals. Will 40,000 more opinion columns make ours a better-informed society? Damned right it will, Jim -- by forcing people to have and form opinions, and by forcing ossified media companies to include a far broader & more representative diversity of opinionizers. Democratization of the media is actually a good thing, as obvious as that seems to point out.
05/16/2002 10:33 AM
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Fear Follow-ups: Eve Kayden, who feels no fear herself, talks about how the grateful campus readers of her Unpopular Opinions newspaper [H]ad been afraid. They couldn't stand up for their own opinions because they didn't want to be mocked by professors, shunned by students, and subjected to heated denunciations from the more organized, politically-correct groups on campus. Well, bully for Eve, but I still say Buck up, Young Righties! Also, blogger Peter Briffa slaps around an obnoxious Guardian column from just today that claims, offensively, that “New York is Starting to Feel Like Brezhnev’s Moscow.”
05/16/2002 09:51 AM
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Fear of Speaking Your Mind: Here’s another LA Weekly bit, about the woes of lefty L.A. Jews who oppose Ariel Sharon and the Occupation. It is positively flecked with passages like this: Perhaps most difficult of all to overcome is a general fear among Jews of publicly criticizing Israel, no matter how they may feel individually -- what Not in Our Name organizer Susan Goldberg called "the silence thing," which she repeatedly encountered while trying to publicize the protest. "We can debate about lots of issues," she said, "but somehow when it comes to Israel, you're not supposed to talk about it." Italics, obviously, are mine. I’ve heard this line of argument dozens of times since the Sept. 11 massacre, and each time I’m can’t help saying: Really? You’re actually afraid to speak your mind? I honestly cannot understand what they are talking about. As I have mentioned before, I don’t comment about the Mideast wars much at all, because I’m an ignoramus on the region. And yet, regardless of the suspected pro-Israel sympathies of you wonderful readers out there, I feel positively no fear in stating my belief that Ariel Sharon is an unsavory mutha who very likely committed war crimes in 1982. I might get some nasty e-mail; more likely, I’ll receive some thoughtful argument (preferably, in the comments section below!). Sure, I will choose Sharon over that awful war criminal Arafat … but beyond my own weird politics, I just don’t understand the fear of saying whatever the hell. I thought Reagan was a dangerous, doddering dack-wad in the 1980s, and said so whenever someone asked … but could one actually feel fear while saying such things? I think Ashcroft is a jackass unfit for his post, and said so several times before his confirmation … but am I scared to say that now? I like that first Rage Against the Machine single; that WarblogWatch dude makes me laugh; I tear up at Barry Manilow’s “Mandy” (and especially “Could This Be the Magic”) … forgive me for seeming to take the piss, but I just don’t understand the Fear Factor of saying what you actually think.
So, I’m asking you for help. Have any of you ever felt tangible fear of speaking your mind? Beyond, you know, telling your boss bluntly that she’s an asshole, etc. I’m truly curious, and open to the idea that since my ideas are so obviously majoritarian (anti-Death Penalty, pro-drug legalization, etc.), I have become numb to the real knee-rattling terror of speaking your mind. But to be honest, I expect these people are just weak. Please prove me wrong.
05/15/2002 10:19 PM
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Why Gray Davis Still Has a Chance to Win: The man is utterly despicable; he is to my mind the worst and most dangerous Californian public servant since Richard Nixon, yet he will still probably win because of four factors: Enron, abortion, Bill Simon’s boggling unwillingness to woo Davis-despising non-Republicans, and the gullibility of California lefties to let Davis persuade them on the first two issues.
The LA Weekly’s Bill Bradley, a political reporter I admire, demonstrates this week precisely what I’m talking about. After several paragraphs detailing Davis' latest miserable week of tawdry revelations, Bradley trots out that awful “shocked, shocked” cop-out of a line, then says: All of this, however, is a sideshow that is distracting public attention from critical issues, such as the manipulation of California's energy market and the fate of a bill that would begin to take on global warming. Bull-feathers, Bill. My first priority is to remove from my payroll a venal, corrupt man with no core principles and a visceral hostility toward the people he’s supposed to be serving. Democrats, liberals and progressives readying themselves for a nose-holding vote for Singapore Gray this November are precisely as wretched, in my view, as Republicans who plumped for Nixon in 1972.
05/15/2002 09:49 PM
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Jimmie Rodgers in Space: A painting (in progress) by (who else?) Greg McIlvaine.
05/15/2002 09:01 PM
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Here Are Those Armenia-Diaspora Links You Were Asking About: I live in the middle of Little Armenia, don’tcha know. We even have our very own gang, called Armenian Power! So when you see “AP” spray-painted around these parts, that’s not necessarily because Los Feliz and Glendale have more AP Stylebooks per capita than any other L.A. neighborhood. … I know what you’re thinking -- do gangbangers blog? Well, I’m looking around, but for now all I’ve found is this disturbing but somehow comical message board….
05/15/2002 06:10 PM
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Good Column From Glenn Reynolds About SFSU Incident: If, like me, you hadn’t really followed this ugly story, Glenn’s column is a good place to start.
Here’s a tangential if unoriginal thought: Can we stop, already, with the whole hypocritical Campus Speech Codes crapola? They’re so … so 1988. It’s really hard to believe they still exist.
05/15/2002 05:30 PM
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How Can You Master English as a Second Language? Read Noam Chomsky! Doing unrelated research today, I stumbled across this resource website designed for Los Angeles City College ESL students. Included among the handful of recommended sites are The Noam Chomsky Archive, www.indymedia.org, and la.indymedia.org. Well, I guess they are categorized under “Literature Sites” …
05/15/2002 03:18 PM
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To Be 18, and Playing Basketball With Your Friends in a Weird City, While Life Convulses: This is the topic of Eric Neel’s latest touching column. He only spends a paragraph talking about the epic five-on-five we played (more than understandable, given the tragedy that came just later), but I’d just like to add for the record that, after being taunted and dismissed, we came out in a desperate zone press, and jumped to an 18-2 lead (for some inexplicable reason, the Golden Gate Park game was scored by twos). The old-timers sitting in lawn chairs on the sidelines started giving our cocky opponents serious grief. We were playing very, very far over our heads. It was about then that the lob-dunks started raining down from above. … We lost 32-26, but that was the most honorable defeat of my long and undistinguished street-ball career.
05/15/2002 02:16 PM
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Check out This Fun-Looking Magazine: It’s called Real Health Care. And it actually looks fun and interesting, from a first glance at its website & headlines. Weird, huh?
05/15/2002 01:48 PM
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Jealousy of Those Who Reject Complexity: Emily Jones, in a terrific post, talks about encountering some anti-war protesters blasting “Imagine” in Venice Beach: I'm jealous that life isn't that simple for me; that my firm belief that War Really Sucks doesn't lend itself to a moral certainty that it is wrong under any and all circumstances. I'm jealous that the adolescent know-it-all in me that once had all the answers lost them in that nasty flit known as "growing up". I'm jealous that I can't "imagine no possessions", because I really like Stuff, and that I don't want to "imagine no religion", since mine is such a wonderful part of my life. I wish I didn't feel compelled to take the time to examine more than one side of an issue in order to understand it better, but would prefer that instead, I could choose to take a self-righteous nose-dive into some dark pool of relevance that can dismiss little things like "details", "facts", "human nature", and my own personal nemesis, "reality". Complexity takes time to wrestle. Imagine all the time you’d save if you didn’t have to bother!
05/15/2002 12:32 AM
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Pointless Pop Culture Interlude: Saw About a Boy tonight, and it’s pretty good. That Nick Hornby may be overly facile, but it’s a good little pop genre he’s mining, and his characters remind me more of my London pals than any of those insufferable Notting Hill-type atrocities. Speaking of which, that Hugh Grant fellow just keeps getting better with every new crease in his face. He’s always made me laugh (despite his inevitable presence on ABSOLUTELY EVERY IN-FLIGHT MOVIE I HAVE SEEN IN THE LAST FOUR YEARS), but now he has fully grokked how the Dark Edge can prolong a man’s sexiness well past the hapless-shrug days. Solid movie. Even the Badly Drawn Boy theme song was pretty good, despite the band’s inevitable association (in Los Angeles, anyway) with that dreadful, arrogant sourpuss Nic Harcout.
While I’m prattling on about the plumbing, I’d just like to say that it’s pretty entertaining to witness a lifelong cricketer take his first rips at the batting cages. It’s all about a dipped back shoulder, inside-out Derek Jeter swings, a raised lead elbow, and a dragged back foot. He hit some impressive shots to right-center, though.
05/14/2002 11:55 PM
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Yahoo News is a Month Late: Or at least it was five seconds ago. Eerie, reading about Colin Powell in Lebanon, Tiger Woods winning the Masters, etc. Let’s see if it lasts more than 12 seconds….
05/14/2002 11:35 PM
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Quick Thought About Jarvis’ Weblog Nonprofit Plan: For those weary of bloggers writing about blogging, skip this post.
Jeff Jarvis quotes Oliver Travers today as saying: I personally don't see the problem Jeff Jarvis is trying to solve. I would encourage Oliver and others to think of the concept differently. More like this: Within three months, there will be at least five companies dedicated to monetize and enhance the blogging phenomenon. Two or three will be owned by especially smart friends of mine; from what I’ve heard we’ll have all kinds of exponentially different new toys at our disposal very soon, plus some handy variations on the different tip-jar concepts. What Jeff’s idea does, in theory, is to pre-emptively organize a big batch of bloggers (and only those who wish to join), so that they can negotiate/brainstorm/act as a sort of bloc, when the day comes that people want to implement these new schemes. It could be like a much looser and far more interesting National Writer’s Union (which, incidentally, treats online writers like the plague when it comes to things like libel insurance). Yes, there’s the usual cat-herding problem, and I’m guessing many of the blog kids aren’t exactly AFL-CIO types (nor am I), but I’m continually surprised by the stimulating fun generated whenever three or more bloggers actually meet in person, and I think there’s some tangible use in having a loose, opt-outable organization of a bunch of us for when the Idea People knock on our doors.
05/14/2002 05:39 PM
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Foul Ball: How a Communist Dictatorship and a U.S. Embargo Has Silenced a Cuban Historian: My latest for Reason, detailing the sad story of Cuban baseball historian Severo Nieto.
05/14/2002 01:36 PM
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Tony Pierce Reviews the New Weezer Record: You can buy it, and give Tony a cut, by clicking here. SPEAKING OF WHICH, my blogging friends, if you belong to the Amazon referrals program, make sure, in the coding of the items you recommend, to paste in “ref=nosim/” between the end of the ASIN or ISBN number, and your name. You’ll get the highest possible percentage that way. A little trick Postrel was kind enough to teach me.
05/14/2002 01:11 PM
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Consider Giving These Men Money, oh Kind Souls! Dr. Frank and Gary Farber are two of my favorite bloggers. I nominated both of them for The American Prospect’s “Best Liberal Bloggers” deal. Please read them if you don’t, and see whether you agree. Now comes word that both lads are feeling mighty destitute. If you enjoy their work, please consider contributing to Frank’s Amazon tip-bucket, and Gary’s PayPal. Thanks!
05/14/2002 12:10 PM
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In Praise of Historical Complexity: Sasha Volokh has a nice post favoring a warts-and-all approach to U.S. history. Reminds me, tangentially, of when I read one of those dreadful hit-piece is-he-gay bios on Hemingway, or John Lennon, or some other artist/character I admire. The attempt is to sully a reputation; the effect on me is to sully the reputation of the hack, while enhancing my respect for people who make great art while living complicated lives. Humans are flawed creatures, countries are flawed constructs, and may they ever be thus, even while striving mightily to improve. Amen.
05/14/2002 11:50 AM
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Layne Drinks With a Wookie at the Rustic: That Layne. Always going on about Wookie families and such.
05/14/2002 10:56 AM
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Greatest Fisking Hits: War correspondent Robert Fisk is complaining about the nasty things people have said about him, especially on the Internet. And he’s right! He has received a lot of foul correspondence, the worst of which he quotes in this column. Of course, he does not quote from a single actual “Fisking”; i.e., when someone, usually a web-logger, picks apart the factual accuracy of his reporting.
What might be nice, in response, is if someone collects all the factual challenges to Fisk’s post-9/11 work. I haven’t done any myself; here’s one by Ken Layne. Here’s what looks like another, by Gary Farber, but in fact is just a collection of post-9/11 headlines atop of Fisk’s work. Seen any good fact-based Fiskings? Conducted one yourself? Nominate it in the comments section below. I’ll send a list o’ links to the Independent editors.
05/13/2002 06:24 PM
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Delicious Fish Tacos, Honest People: For my Southern Californian pals, please go frequent your local El 7 Mares restaurant, especially the Silver Lake location at 3131 Sunset. I’ve only tried the fish tacos at the adjacent “fast food” stand, but they’re excellent; plus, last night, when we poked our heads in the restaurant, I somehow left my wallet there, and in the morning they had it waiting, unmolested, and with a smile. The Spanish word for wallet, incidentally, is monedero.
05/13/2002 05:50 PM
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Here’s a New L.A. Weblogger Who’s Sticking to his Guns: He’s called ArmedLiberal, with an “EA Blair” pseudonym for the moment, though I’m sure we’ll eventually talk him out of anonymity. Speaking of armed liberals in Los Angeles, I’m going to a Beverly Hills Cigar Club with one just tonight. Shame I don’t really like cigars….
05/13/2002 05:28 PM
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Basketball Playoffs With the Sound Off: Terrific and perceptive descriptions, from Eric Neel. Also worth a spin is his take on Allen Iverson’s recent press conference.
05/13/2002 03:04 PM
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The Duty of Criticism: In yesterday’s L.A. Times book-review section, L.A. Lefty Marc Cooper (of The Nation, the LA Weekly and Pacifica’s KPFK-FM) reviews Gore Vidal’s latest collection of insta-polemic, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated.
It’s mostly a positive nod to Vidal, with some caveats for how Cooper doesn’t necessarily agree with some of the old guy’s most recent opinions. Let’s skip straight to the conclusion; italics will be mine: Vidal's suggestion that American liberty will turn out to be the greatest victim of Sept. 11 may or may not be hyperbole. […]
Nor do I find very convincing Vidal's prescription for what the proper response to the perpetrators of Sept. 11 should have been. He suggests sending U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to negotiate a grand detente between the fundamentalists and us, the infidels. I found the work of the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan to be more appropriate and effective. But so what? Vidal pretends to be neither a policy wonk nor a military strategist, and he spends little more than a few paragraphs in arguing for what should be done to Bin Laden. Instead, he's a powerful, urgently needed and near lone voice of national conscience.
The suffocating and self-indulgent consensus in which most of America has swaddled itself since Sept. 11, reinforced by cable-babble framed in patriotic bunting and unquestioned by "opposition" Democrats who purr like a collection of domestic pets on Dubya's Crawford, Texas, ranch, could use a bit of shouting down by the likes of Vidal. And if someone wants to shout back half as eloquently as Vidal, then please hop to it. That way we'd have at least the semblance of a grand national debate. The operative thing to remember here, is that this is a book review. This is filed under a category called “criticism.” And as criticism, this is an all-too familiar cop-out.
By saying that some of Vidal’s rhetoric “may or may not be hyperbole,” and giving his own disagreement with Vidal’s insane 9/11 remedies a big “so what?”, Cooper is basically arguing that specific ideas and statement simply don’t matter. What matters, as Cooper states elsewhere in the review, is that Vidal “writes not from hatred but from a profound love betrayed and defiled, proudly casting himself as a noble defender of ‘the American Republic against the American Global Empire.’” What matters is that Vidal has been prolific, that he stands in opposition to things Cooper doesn’t like, and that he writes “eloquently.” Gore’s heart is in the right place, so why bust his chops on an exaggeration or two?
Well, because that’s the role of criticism. For too long, ideologues on any chunk of the political spectrum have been issuing critical free-passes to those with similar worldviews. Chomsky, bless his black heart, refuses to criticize any of the excesses of his incoherent followers, because it’s more important to focus all energy fighting the Imperial Power. Nader, as I have pointed out, similarly refuses to call B.S. on the Seattle Coalition kids (which is expected behavior from a normal politician, but hypocritical from a guy who claims to “speak truth to power”). The politically correct L.A. Times, in its endless profiles on illegal immigrants, can’t even screw up the courage to ask them questions like “Why did you come here?” or “Hey, you broke the law by coming here, and you break the law by staying here … why should we tolerate that?” Tough questions indicate respect. Mumbled avoidances indicate a condescending fear.
Failing to challenge those we sympathize with actually ends up insulting their intelligence, infantilizing them. Think of it as intellectual protectionism -- with these barriers up, they aren’t exposed to the brutal, competitive realities of the idea marketplace. And, maybe even more importantly, poisonous beliefs and untrue facts are left to fester in the criticism-free enclaves of the like-minded, rather than challenged at their source. It is impossible to tell, and probably presumptuous to even suggest, but maybe that pipe-bomber kid, or those Weathermen, or that McVeigh creep -- maybe these people would have acted differently if their insane ideas were fact-checked, on the spot, by comrades, instead of nurtured as part of a “broader context” critique of the Evil U.S. Government.
Is Gore Vidal spreading around poisonous ideas? Maybe! Sounds like it! I don’t really know; I haven’t been reading him much, and truth be told I am predisposed toward liking the guy, because he’s such a freak. But here’s a difference between me not challenging him, and Marc Cooper -- Cooper was writing a damned book review. Fashioning a response to 9/11 is the single most crucial question of our time; praising a policy critic who advocates a vague and foolish response policy reveals nothing more than comfy ideological brotherhood, and a basic lack of nerve. Encouraging people to follow such a man’s lead (in being “eloquently” incoherent, apparently), does not, in fact, contribute to a “grand national debate.” On the contrary, it pre-empts even half-way useful conversation.
Wanna good debate? How about Vidal versus Den Beste, at high noon, on the cliffs of La Jolla. After all, Steven’s been begging for a quality point-counterpoint for eight months. I’d love to watch Gore in that scenario try to paint the right-wing as the bastion of the elitist rich….
05/13/2002 02:12 PM
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Comment (13)
The Weblog Foundation: Jeff Jarvis sketches out an interesting and detailed plan to create a non-profit interest group to represent web-loggers. Though I tend to shy away from most organizations (especially any that create “standards” or prattle on about “ethics”), I find this an intriguing idea, one that could have practical uses once the new blog-mining companies are up and running.
05/13/2002 12:27 PM
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Comment (0)
Sneering at the ‘Castro Haters’: I rarely make comments about the L.A. Times’ editorials, because they are usually too silly and poorly written to get excited about. If you think that judgment harsh, I invite you to read any three consecutive days’ worth, and tell me I’m wrong.
Still, the second editorial in the Sunday edition, about Jimmy Carter’s trip to Cuba, is worthy of study and scorn. In paragraph three, the Times is already sneering at those Castro haters, including the Cuban American National Foundation, and expatriates, mainly in Florida, New Jersey and California What, people in Nebraska don’t have any legitimate reason to hate Fidel Castro? Sure, I’m in California, but I’m no closet Cuban … and I hate the guy’s guts. He’s a murderous dictator, yo, and the general impulse among the freedom-loving is to confront and condemn the freedom-hating. Isn’t it?
While we’re on the topic, I’d love to see a search done across monopolist newspapers for the following terms: “Clinton haters,” “Bush haters,” “red-baiters,” and “red-white-and-blue-baiters.” According to this coded language, anyone who “hates” or “baits” is by definition too unreasonable and hot-headed to take seriously. Also, they are a bit gauche. Well, bullshit.
There’s more to loathe (italics mine): He's not there to issue ultimatums or go belly to belly with Castro but as an American citizen with a background in defending human rights. He's there to initiate a dialogue with Cuban citizens on such matters as racial, sexual and religious discrimination. They'll talk about the inequities that are creating a two-tiered society on the communist island as dollars flood in from relatives who escaped to the U.S. Good jumping Jeebus! Here’s the only “dialogue” about “sexual and religious discrimination” I'd like to see Carter have on that island: Carter: Fidel, even my Baptist God will have a hard time forgiving you for creating concentration camps for homosexuals and the HIV-positive. You are a disgrace to humanity. If you have a single moral fiber left in that stanky beard, apologize, resign, announce free elections, find the nearest slab of balsa and head East.
Fidel: Jimmy! Why can’t you just get drunk and kiss my ass like all those other visiting politicians? And what's this about "inequities that are creating a two-tired society ... as dollars flood in from relatives"? It is Fidel Castro's disastrous version of Communism that has created a "two-tiered society," not "inequities," and certainly not relatives who are sending money back home.
I’m all in favor of ending the embargo (which seems to be the underlying point of the editorial), but this is just embarrassing.
05/13/2002 12:09 PM
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Comment (5)
Hi! What are you doing down here?
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