It is estimated by The American Cancer Society that 39,510 women will die of breast cancer in 2012. But the death rate, as severe as it is, has plummeted considerably since 1990 — in large part because women were screened at an early stage. One clinic these women went to was Planned Parenthood, which conducted 747,607 breast exams (PDF) (or 14.5% of its total services) during the year 2010.

You’d think these great dents to a serious threat would be celebrated by politicians of all stripes as an American innovation. Breast cancer is nonpartisan. It doesn’t care whether the victim is Republican or Democrat. But the politicians would rather paint the town red with their twisted tales. Newt Gingrich has recently pledged to defund Planned Parenthood by 2013, conveniently omitting the fact that the organization isn’t just about abortion. He said that he would rather use the money “to promote adoption and other pro-family policies.” But how is family unity bolstered by restricting the ways in which women get screened? Gingrich is right about one thing. If the blessed matriarchs of his twisted Handmaid’s Tale fantasy have dropped dead from breast cancer, then someone will certainly need to spring for the adoption costs.

The anti-abortion, pro-breast cancer screening type may well ask why an “abortion mill” like Planned Parenthood should be funded at all. Well, it’s the same reason why Big Mac haters occasionally dip into a McDonald’s for the addictive fries. If the previously cited breast screenings aren’t enough for them, what of the pap smears, the prenatal care, the diabetes screenings, the STD testing, the male infertility screenings, and the menopause help? Even if we confine Planned Parenthood’s acceptable services to breast screenings, consider the many free exams that Planned Parenthood has offered, including gratis screening in Boise last June. Financially strapped and uninsured women were able to get the needed treatment for early stage breast cancer.

Funding for the Boise exams was provided by Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a leading breast cancer charity based in Dallas. This financial support allowed Planned Parenthood to perform more than 170,000 breast exams over the past five years. Yet on Tuesday, Komen put a stop to its PP partnerships. $680,000 of badly needed funds will be withheld because Komen is too gutless and too cowardly to stand up to the ignorant bullies who cannot comprehend that breast cancer is a nonpartisan issue. It has opted to cave to what Nancy L. Cohen identifies as “the sexual counterrevolution” in her recent book, Delirium. And in so doing, Komen aligns itself with a long litany of spiteful mongrels like Jerry Falwell declaring that “AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals, it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals” and deranged outliers like Mike Huckabee, who remarked last year of a pregnant Natalie Portman, “It’s unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out of wedlock children.”

Komen has claimed that newly adopted criteria prevents the charity from offering grants to any organization that is under investigation by local, state, or federal authorities. This would include Planned Parenthood. The investigation which Komen is referring to involves Rep. Cliff Stearns’s probe from last September, in which the Florida Republican ordered Planned Parenthood to turn over numerous financial documents at considerable inconvenience. But as Reps. Henry Waxman and Diana DeGette responded, “The HHS Inspector General and state Medicaid programs regularly audit Planned Parenthood and report publicly on their findings. These audits have not identified any pattern of misuse of federal funds, illegal activity, or other abuse that would justify a broad and invasive congressional investigation.” It’s also worth pointing out that, last year, when an anti-abortion activist attempted a James O’Keefe-style undercover video, Planned Parenthood was quick to alert the FBI.

But which organization is really being the opaque one here? Komen certainly hasn’t been transparent about releasing its new guidelines to the press, much less entering into a discussion about what “investigation” implies under this new policy. Shortly after the defunding news was reported by the Associated Press, Komen spokesperson Leslie Aun scurried away from The New York Times‘s efforts to seek clarification on Tuesday night. Nor did she offer another representative to answer Times reporter Pam Belluck’s claims. It was more cold corporatese about “[implementing] more stringent eligibility and performance criteria.”

In other words, Komen wishes to engage in kangaroo court politics whereby Planned Parenthood is deemed guilty long before the trial is done. As Slate’s Amanda Marcotte has helpfully pointed out, this is hardly the first time that Komen has played needless hardball with organizations fighting the good fight against breast cancer.

That Komen’s move comes in the wake of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signing a bill last May cutting all government funding to Planned Parenthood in his state is fitting. With one draconian sweep of his pen, Daniels refused to consider how federal law already prohibits federal funds from being spent on abortion, as well as the fact that abortion accounts for only 3% of all Planned Parenthood services. Much as Daniels’s preposterous and self-serving effort to woo hard-line conservatives was a redundant piece of legislation unfairly singling out a group providing vital services, Komen’s turncoat tactics are equally callous in the way organizational image has been prioritized over human lives. The Komen capitulation is a disgraceful deracination, a move more attuned to Afghan moral crimes than a country predicated on separation of church and state. It’s a giant gob of spit dripping down the graceful face of a courageous woman who found hope and humor as she was dying and who longed for other women to live. Under the current Komen regime, these noble ideals have evaporated. The time has come to seek more courageous foundations and win the war against breast cancer.

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Wondering why Grover Norquist keeps leaving voicemails about tax pledges.

Author: Thomas Frank

Subjects Discussed: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s notion of “compromise,” the Republican failure to acknowledge Reagan’s complete history, Reagan’s Continental Illinois bailout, efforts to “erase” liberalism from Washington, Barack Obama’s failings, Congressional disapproval by the American people (as reflected by recent polls), how George W. Bush became a toxic Republican figure, the Tea Party movement, the Great Recession, how the Right co-opted populism after 2008, the 2010 extension of the Bush tax cuts and Bernie Sanders’s filibuster, Obama signing the NDAA “with serious reservations,” the Democratic Party less about the working man and more about expertise and technocrats, Obama’s TARP bailouts vs. Roosevelt’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation bailouts, government agencies that become instruments of Wall Street, “purified” capitalism, firing bank managers, conservatives mimicking progressive ideologies of the past and protest movements of the 1930s, co-opting outrage, Orson Welles’s influence on Glenn Beck, The War of the Worlds, being subscribed to Beck’s email newsletter, Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist, the Republican base being united over the past few decades by “quasi-military victory” and lack of civility, Howard Phillips and “organized discontent,” why the Democrats are allergic to discontent and anger, Roosevelt’s tendency to stump and explain legislation vs. Obama’s failure to do so, the Democratic tendency to use experts as a selling point, Jon Stewart and the New Political Privilege, the Rally to Restore Sanity, Occupy Wall Street, blue-collar invisibility in DC, living in a neighborhood in which 50% of the population have PhDs, NASCAR, idiosyncratic hangover cures, diffidence and resistance against righteous indignation in the last few years, the hard times swindle, Scott Walker and attacks on the Wisconsin labor movement, attempts to investigate why liberalism can’t stick in recent years given The Wrecking Crew‘s suggestion that people inherently expect a liberal state, the myth of small business job creation (specific data breakdown on new jobs creation from 1992-2008 from Scott Shane discussed by Correspondent and Frank), George Lucas calling himself an “independent filmmaker,” C. Wright Mills’s White Collar, small business serving as a propaganda front for big business, America’s reticence in discussing how we are all corporate slaves in some sense, Tea Party memorabilia, Glenn Beck’s CAPITALISM painting, Rep. Nan Hayworth’s dodging questions about Verizon with empty utopian bluster, whether it’s possible to take back the term “small business,” the Black Panther Party, ways to organize political movements, whether it’s possible to build a dedicated base to combat a corrupt two-party system, legal blockades to third party movements, protesting out of resentment and self-pity, self-pity and the resurgent Right, whether the Tea Party is protesting with a shared sense of humiliation, populist politics as a gateway drug, searching for good things to say about the Tea Party, liberalism and populist movements, Atlas Shrugged, Walter Issacson’s Steve Jobs biography, Jobs being selfish with his money, why selfishness is a uniquely American draw, retreating into laissez-faire purity, Ayn Rand’s prose style, capital strikes as fantasy, leftist versions of Atlas Shrugged, John Dos Passos, Steinbeck, Frank’s collection of proletarian fiction, Upton Sinclair, the cold sex and descriptions of steel and machinery in Atlas Shrugged, the connections between recent political movements and mythology, German sociologists from the 1930s, the social construction of reality, Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia, how the Left might find political possibilities in passion, pragmatism, and anger, the neutered Left falling prey to forms of mythology that are just as nefarious as present myths on the Right, organized labor, Steven Greenhouse’s The Big Squeeze, how politics tends to inspire perverse behavior, and train wrecks.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: We’re talking only a few nights after a really fascinating 60 Minutes interview with [House Majority Leader] Eric Cantor. I’m not sure if you saw this.

Frank: I didn’t see it.

Correspondent: Well, it was interesting. Because it reminded me very much of your book. I’m about to talk with you and this happens. So [Cantor] appears. And it’s this fairly amicable, typical segment. And then Lesley Stahl basically says, “Will you compromise in any way?” And he dodged the issue of being able to compromise on anything. And then Lesley, of course, brings up the Reagan tax increase.

Frank: The 1986?*

Correspondent: Yes. And he denies that Reagan ever did that. And then, to add an additional monkey wrench into this, there’s an off-camera press secretary who says that’s a lie. And then, of course, they play the clip.

Frank: What?

Correspondent: Yes! And they play a clip of Reagan using “compromise” as a verb** when he’s talking about this tax increase. So this seems a very appropriate beginning to some of the issues in your book.

Frank: That’s amazing. That’s exactly what I’m writing about. These people who are essentially blinded by ideology. But when I say it that way, it sounds like some kind of slang term. Or something like that. But I mean it in a very serious way. That these are people who have bought an entire utopian way of seeing the world and are able to close their eyes to things that are obvious. And what you just said about Reagan, that would be a juicy detail that I would have loved to have had for the book. But there are so many other examples — essentially, they deny. Look, I went to a graduate school and studied history. One of the baseline things that historians agree on is that for the last thirty or forty years, we’ve been in a conservative era. That people around the world — governments, politicians, elites around the world — have discovered the power of markets and have moved in this direction towards markets that are deregulated, have privatized, have done all these things. This is common knowledge. A conservative movement today — you talk to a guy like Eric Cantor? No, that’s never happened. We’re still living under socialism. And we have been since Woodrow Wilson. Or something like this.

Correspondent: But why is it that Cantor and the Freshman Republicans want to just keep their blinders on about history? About their man Reagan? Is there a specific…

Frank: They have to have a hero and they’ve thrown George W. Bush under the bus. Because of the bailouts. But at the end of the day, look, it’s opportunism. Reagan is very popular. Bush is not popular. Nixon is not popular. So they have to have a hero. And it has to be someone who is beloved. Ipso facto, it has to be Reagan. But they have to deny all sorts of thing about Reagan. For example, Reagan bailed out Continential Illinois Bank — at the time, the biggest bank failure in U.S. history. Reagan, as you’ve just mentioned, raised taxes. Reagan sold weapons to Iran. You remember that one? Iran-Contra. I mean, there are all sorts of other crazy things that Reagan did that don’t look so good. I mean, Reagan really liked Franklin Roosevelt. Reagan was a more complicated person. But none of that is admissible. If you’re going to follow this ideology and this utopian vision that they have of what I call “market populism” — if you’re going to follow that all the way — and, of course, part of the idea of this is that you’re going to have to follow it all the way — and we’ll get into that a minute — you basically have to whitewash history. I mean, it’s almost Soviet, what you’re describing.

Correspondent: The phrase you use in The Wrecking Crew. “The Washington conservatives aim to make liberalism not by debating, but by erasing it.” And I’m wondering if there’s any past political precedent that would suggest they could entirely efface liberalism from our political machinations.

Frank: Or from our memory.

Correspondent: Or from our memory. It’s very strange.

Frank: Well, that was the big subject a few years ago — when The Wrecking Crew was published. One of the topics of conversation was these grand schemes that the Republicans kept coming up with. The Republicans in Washington here, I’m talking about. I’m not talking about your rank-and-file Republicans. But the Republicans in Washington kept coming up with the grand schemes for some kind of political checkmate. Some kind of move that would end the debate forever and yield victory for their side forever. And they include — privatizing social security was a big one. Another one — the one that I focused on in The Wrecking Crew — is deficits. And that, I’m sorry to say, I turned out to be right about the one. By deliberately running up the deficits in the Bush years, it doesn’t give them permanent victory, but it does stay the hand of whoever, whatever liberal follows — in this case, Barack Obama — and it has worked exactly as they planned it to. Although Obama pushed it a little farther than they thought possible with the stimulus package. But now look at what’s happened with the debt ceiling catastrophe and all that sort of thing. So that turned out to be effective. They were able to limit the debate by some deeds that they pulled while they were still in power. And some of the other things that they are trying or will try or I predict they’ll try, they are things about tricking the franchise. Somehow keeping or dissuading people from voting. That sort of thing. But there’s always this search for the doomsday device. Yes, and it still goes on.

Correspondent: But this level of no quarter, no compromise. I mean, isn’t there some kind of “uncanny valley” or Hubbert’s Peak to what they can do before it’s just not acceptable? I mean, there was that latest Rasmussen poll where Congress got a 5% approval rating. That was a few days ago.

Frank: 5%?

Correspondent: 5%.

Frank: Well, that makes a difference in the Presidential Election. But that really won’t make a whole lot of difference, strangely enough, in the Congressional Election. Because people might hate Congress, but they like their own Congressman. That’s the classic, the old saw. But, look, what you’re getting at is a really interesting phenomenon of these people, instead of being pulled to the center — as all of your political science theorizing and all of your DC punditry insists that the gravity of politics pulls people to the center. Political scientists have believed this for fifty years. And this is a pet peeve of mine. Because I think it’s rubbish, okay, for reasons that we’ll go into. But it’s been just dramatically disproven in the last couple of years. Think back to 2008. You had the Republican Party in ruins. You had all these scandals in the Bush Administration. All this corruption. And then it ends with this catastrophic meltdown in the market. The housing bubble bursts. The banks start to go under, one after another. Then Wall Street starts shedding 700 points per day. It’s this crazy disaster. The financial crisis. And then they do the bailouts, forever sealing Bush’s fate not only with the general public but with the Right. One of the most unpopular Presidents of all time. The Republican Party is in ruins in 2008. And you have pundit after pundit weighing in and saying, “These people are done for. Bush led them too far to the right.” The era of George W. Bush was where they went too far to the right, and Tom DeLay and all those guys, they went too far to the right, and now they have to make their way back to the center or they will risk being irrelevant forever more. Or for the next twenty years or something like that. And look what happened. They did the opposite. Guys like Eric Cantor, they did not embrace the moderates in their party. They excommunicated them. They purged them. I mean, these guys, they behave like Communists in a lot of ways. This is one of those things. They purged these guys. They throw people out. And they don’t want them in the Party anymore. And they moved deliberately to the right. Way to the right. That’s what the Tea Party movement is all about. And I’ll be damned if it didn’t work. They just scored their biggest victory in eighty years. Or seventy what — a whole lot of years in the 2010 off-term elections. They had a huge victory. So obviously that strategy has vindicated for them. It worked! It paid off! And there’s no reason why they would go back on something that just succeeded. It was a success.

Correspondent: But in the chapter in this book, “The Silence of the Technocrats,” you describe this collapse of Democratic populism from 2008. You point to the failings of the Democrats to challenge the Tea Party, people at the town hall meetings. You point also to the manner in which they formed corporate alliances with healthcare and also the bailouts that we were just talking about. The failure of the stimulus package. The list goes on. Only a few days ago, Obama signed into law the NDAA, which essentially gives the government the right to detain any citizen, and he had this whole “with serious reservations” claause that he did while he signed it. So the question I have is: if Democrats are offering the defense that Obama is being forced into this predicament…

Frank: They’re listening to the pundits. The Republicans did the opposite of what the pundits suggested. The Democrats are listening to them. There’s this DC elite that the Democrats are listening to. This is what Obama’s Presidency is all about — it’s looking for a grand compromise. But the Republicans, they’re not interested. Make him come to us, they say. He can come to us. He can compromise in our direction. Look, at the end of the day, this is something you can figure out with game theory. It’s really simple. If they’re the side that stands pat and makes the other guy come to them, they win. But that’s neither her nor there. I think the Democrats really misplayed the hand they were dealt with. I mean, misplayed it in a colossal manner. In a catastrophic manner. And Obama may well get re-elected in 2012 at this point. Who knows at this point?

Correspondent: Well, with the crop of candidates, it’s a big clown car.

Frank: Elected for what purpose? After what’s happened, why bother? They didn’t understand the needs of the moment. The cultural and political needs of the moment, which were populist. They didn’t understand that all that political science theorizing that I was telling you about, where the center is where the gravity always pulls you — you have to move to the center. You have to make compromises with the other side. That all of that old way of thinking about everything was discredited. The financial crisis. The Great Recession. The huge business slump. We were going into Great Depression II, it looked like back then. And what was called for was 1930s style politics. The conservatives offered it. The Republicans offered it. Or I should say the Tea Party offered it and has since grafted it on the Republican Party. And the Democrats behaved as if everything was just as it was in the 1990s. That if they acted like Bill Clinton, everything would be fine. They did not understand that the old scheme was completely out the window.

Correspondent: Why though would they continue to act as if they wished to rise above partisanship? This notion…

Frank: That’s who they are.

Correspondent: I mean, even after the whole debt ceiling showdown. That whole business.

Frank: Can you believe that? Don’t you think that that would be the big convincer?

Correspondent: But why do you think this is? I mean, why didn’t Obama just go to the people and say, “Look, this is going to have serious actions even if I approve it or veto it. I am actually going to you, the American people, and I am explaining to you that the Republicans want to throw the Bill of Rights into a flaming trash can…

Frank: (laughs)

Correspondent: “So I can’t in good conscience sign this.” Why do you think he can’t do that?

Frank: Well, the point where this really got out of hand — I mean, there were several big turning points in the Obama Presidency, but the one that really just blew my mind because it was such a misplayed moment. And we think Obama’s a very intelligent man. And he is. I met up. He’s a super-duper smart guy. But some of the political moves have just been total rookie mistakes. The one that got me was when he still had a Democratic Congress. It was a lame duck session. This would have been at the end of 2010. And he renewed the Bush tax cuts. Why not make the Republicans come to him and offer something in exchange for that? No. He just gave it to them. It’s like the biggest prize on the table. And he just handed it over.

Correspondent: Leaving Bernie Sanders to do that long filibuster. But that ended up being all for nought. Even though it was an impressive theatrical display. Everybody was behind Bernie Sanders. Finally somebody standing up.

Frank: Oh sure. But it wasn’t up to Bernie Sanders. It was up to Barack Obama. And he just gave it away — the one ace he had in the hole, he just gave it away. And so maybe he did it as a good faith gesture to the Republicans. And look what it got him? This terrible smackdown with the debt ceiling crisis.

Correspondent: An embarrassment.

Frank: The kind of naivete that that takes. To not understand that that’s how these guys play the game. There’s plenty of journalists that wrote about the DeLay Congress and the Gingrich Congress. We know how these guys play. Or George W. Bush. Look at the career of Karl Rove. These guys play to win. They don’t mess around. And the innocence of Washington that it took to make a blunder — let’s call it what it is. A blunder like that is shocking to me.

Correspondent: If he’s so smart, why does he constantly come to them? I mean, why give the game away like that?

Frank: Because that’s who they are. That’s the Democratic Party nowadays.

Correspondent: It’s been like that for a while though, you know?

Frank: It has. And, hey, let’s be fair. Obama isn’t the — all of their last six Presidential candidates have been cut from the same cloth. I think Obama is, in lots of ways, smarter and a better speaker, and more talented than a lot of their previous leaders. But this is who the Democratic Party has become. Many years ago, they were the party of the working man. Everyone knew that. They were also a party that had an ideology. An ideology that arose from organized labor, that arose from the New Deal. And that has been lost. They are the party of technocrats now. Look, everything I’m telling you right now is right on the surface down at Washington DC. The big Democratic Party thinkers talk about this all the time. We are the party of the professional class. And if we aren’t that yet, that’s who we’re going to be when we’re done. We’re going to get there eventually.

* — This is a very pedantic stickler point, but one that nonetheless demands clarity. Reagan raised taxes twelve times during his administration. Frank is referring to the Tax Reform Act of 1986. But, to be clear, Stahl was specifically referring to Reagan’s 1982 tax increase in the 60 Minutes segment.

** — Another highly pedantic (and perhaps needless) stickler point. Reagan used “compromise” as a noun, not as a verb: “Make no mistake about it, this whole package is a compromise.” And while Reagan’s specific words convey the same point (indeed more definitively with a noun), it is important to remain committed to painstaking accuracy — especially when the corresponding approach being discussed over the hour involves how political parties cleave to mythology.

The Bat Segundo Show #428: Thomas Frank (Download MP3)

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Caught in a migratory comedy of errors.

Author: William Kennedy

Subjects Discussed: Resonances in historical fiction that align with the present day, the William Gibson notion (“The future has already arrived. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.”), Guantanamo Bay and waterboarding, the 2008 Greek riots, writing Ironweed while being firmly immersed in the 1930s, referring to the homeless before “homeless” existed as a word, prophetic novelists, Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer, the tradition of torture, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Roscoe, writing about the Albany political machine for forty years, stolen elections and kickbacks, interviewing morally shady figures as a novelist and as a journalist, meeting with Charlie Ryan, Dan O’Connell, how Kennedy coaxed political figures to tell him stories over the years, sources who insist on being on the record as insiders, intrusive noise, the journalist as the intellectual equivalent to the bartender or the barista, politicians who talk differently when microphones are present, Newspaper Row in Albany, lead filings and rats descending from newspaper ceilings, journalistic squalor, Kennedy’s relationship with Hunter S. Thompson, Pulitzer’s notion of journalism, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, fiction vs. journalism, The Ink Truck, Fellini, how a multidimensional fictitious form of Albany sprang from extremely devoted research, writing seven drafts of Legs, invention and informed speculation, the importance of letting imagination settle, Legs‘s resistance to realism, structuring a novel on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, discovering newness as a writer, precedents for Ironweed, parallels between Cuban history and civil rights, efforts to find the right Cuban history period for Chango’s Beads, Fulgencio Batista’s kids going to school in Albany, the “Circe” chapter of Ulysses as a possible inspiration point, The Gut in Albany, Black Power and community action during the late 1960s, Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X sitting in the balcony of the New York Senate, Eldridge Cleaver, the Albany Cycle beyond 1968, telescoping Albany history for the sake of telling a story, arson and riots, the figure of Matt Daughterty, having to publish newspaper stories in out-of-town newspapers to avoid the wrath of the Albany political machine, comparisons between Quinn’s Book and Chango’s Beads, following personalities contained within fictitious families over many years, journeys away from Albany in the Albany cycle, avoiding Albany burnout, a new play based on a departure from Very Old Bones, and fiction driven by bullet-like dialogue.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: We were drawing a distinction between the journalist who is the bartender or the barista — the intellectual equivalent to that — and the novelist, who may in fact have an even greater advantage. Some novelists who were former journalists have told me that they’ll get people to talk with them more if they say they’re a novelist. I’m sure this has been the case with you.

Kennedy: Oh yeah. When the Mayor invited me over to talk about writing a book with him, he didn’t say quite why. I couldn’t understand it. Because I thought he had great antipathy toward me. But I went over. And we just had this conversation. And I sat there and talked to him. And I took a lot of notes. And he said he wanted me to maybe interview him and dredge up whatever I wanted to and write whatever I wanted to. And then he would rebut it. And I didn’t think that was going to work. But I knew that it was a great opportunity to talk to the Mayor.

So anyway we carried on. And it turned out I did write a lot about him in this book. It was kind of a biography. I wrote three pieces actually on him. And he was great in the first meeting. And then the second time, I brought over a mike and a tape recorder. And he clammed up. I mean, he didn’t stop talking, but he didn’t say anything. I mean, he was very salty in the first conversation. And he was a very intelligent man and very well-educated and smart as they come politically. And he had a great sense of humor. But it was boring in the second interview. So I took him out again. I took him to lunch. And he opened right up again as soon as he knew there was no tape recorder. And I took notes. He’s safe with notes because he can say, “He got it wrong.” There’s no proof.

Correspondent: Well, I actually wanted to ask — speaking of history, there are moments in Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game and Quinn’s Book where you have newspapermen who are wearing hats as the lead filings are falling upon them. In the case of Billy Phelan, there’s actual rats falling from the ceiling.

Kennedy: That’s true.

Correspondent: I’m curious. Did you have first-hand experience of this?

Kennedy: No. This was at the newspaper that I was working on. But in their previous incarnation, which was only a few years before I got there, they were on Beaver Street in a very old, old center of the city. The South End. In The Gut. And it was Newspaper Row. The Albany Journal was there. The Albany Argus. The Knickerbocker News. The Knickerbocker Press. Etcetera etcetera. The Times Union was up the street a bit. And then they moved into new digs. But I remember that one of the reporters and the copy editors said that the rats used to come down, walk the ceiling. The composing room was upstairs. Over the city room. And there was always these lead filings that were coming through the cracks in the floor. And so these guys wore their hats around the desks. And the reporters wore their hats indoors.

Correspondent: The pre-OSHA days. (laughs)

Kennedy: You know, it had a practical application, those hats. In addition to being the style of the day. And the rats used to come down and eat the paste out of the paste pots.

Correspondent: Which is also immortalized in Billy Phelan.

Kennedy: That’s in Billy Phelan. They were all stories that these guys who had grown up there, they’d seen it. One of my buddies, he’d been a reporter for ten years or so all during that period in Beaver Street. And he was a great storyteller. And he told me…well, you know.

Correspondent: Did you experience any first-hand journalistic squalor?

Kennedy: Journalistic squalor.

Correspondent: Along those lines. Or perhaps other forms of squalor.

Kennedy; (laughs) Well, no. Not quite like that. The paper had modernized. I mean, I was there in the age of the typewriter and the clacking teletypes and papers would stack up on the floor like crazy. At the end of the work day, everybody threw everything onto the floor. The old newspapers. All the old teletypes. And it was a great mess. There was….hmm, squalor. (laughs)

Correspondent: Rotting walls? Asbestos-laden environments? (laughs)

Kennedy: Sorry, I can’t. I knew all the guys who had gone through it.

Correspondent: Well, on a similar note, Hunter S. Thompson. I have to ask this largely because The Paris Review interviewed you and cut this bit. He said, “He refused to hire me. Called me swine, fool, beatnik. We go way back.” But I also know that he wrote you a quite hubristic letter. How did you two patch things up after this early exchange of invective and all that?

Kennedy: Well, I never called him a swine.

Correspondent: (laughs)

Kennedy: It’s possible in a letter, in later years, I might have called him a swine. But that was his terminology.

Correspondent: He was trying to prop you up.

Kennedy: I would just throw it back at him or something like that. You know, there was no rancor at all. After the first exchange of letters, almost immediately it was patched up. I mean, he was furious at me for rejecting him when he applied for a job. You’re talking about the quote there where he said…

Correspondent: He said that on Charlie Rose.

Kennedy: Charlie Rose. But he was referring to my attitude toward The Rum Diary. Which was the novel that he was writing down in Puerto Rico when I got to know him. And he had just started it. And in later years, he sent it to me. I wish I had kept it. I don’t know why. I can’t find it. I don’t think I have any remnants of it and I’ve got a lot of his stuff. But maybe I have some pieces. But I don’t remember. And I can’t even remember the letter I wrote. But I wrote him a letter and I told him, “Forget about this novel. You can’t publish this. This is terrible.” And it was a big fat novel. It was fat and it was logorrhea. And it was a young man’s ruminations and discoveries of all of that.

Correspondent: A journalist aspiring to be a novelist.

Kennedy: Right, right, right. And he was a smart guy. Very, very smart guy. But that novel just didn’t work. What was published — the book that was published is one third of the text of the old book. It doesn’t have any of those flaws that I could see — I just started to read it again the other day. I tried to see the movie three times, and I can’t.

Correspondent: Oh really?

Kennedy: Well, I’m in the Academy and I get these screeners from the Academy. But it didn’t work. The screener didn’t work. It says “Wrong disc.”

Correspondent: Oh no.

Kennedy: So I have to get another one. But I’m anxious to see it. I think it’s full of probably libelous accusations against the [San Juan] Star, the newspaper down there and the people who run it. But that was expected from Hunter.

Correspondent: What do you think distinguishes your approach — being a journalist turning into a novelist — from Hunter’s approach? I mean, was he just not serious enough and you were more devoted? Was it a matter of being well-read? What was it exactly that distinguished the two of you?

Kennedy: Well, I was a serious journalist. I mean, he presumed to be. That was the basis for our initial argument about that bronze plaque. You know about that? The bronze plaque on the side of The New York Times — it’s a quote from Joseph Pulitzer When that building was home to The New York World, a great newspaper that Pulitzer ran in New York. Anyway, he revered that. You know, it’s this high-minded attitude toward the news. No fear of favor or whatever. Work against the thieves. Whatever. I’ve absolutely forgotten what Pulitzer said.

[Note: The Pulitzer plaque reads: "An institution that should always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty."]

Kennedy; I remember its tone. And I could find it. And this whole episode is summed up in the introduction to Hunter’s book, The Proud Highway — his first collection of letters. He asked me to write an introduction to that. And I told the whole story of how he applied for the job and didn’t get it and so on. But his attitude toward journalism was high-minded. But when he started to practice it, a year or so later, roaming around South America, he started writing — he was winging it, you know? He wasn’t interested in “Just the facts, ma’am.” He was half a fiction writer in those days. Roaming around. Whatever caught his fancy or his imagination, he would write it. I mean, it came to a point where he went to the Kentucky Derby and that was the one that really put him on the map. “The Kentucky Derby is decadent and depraved.” It ran in Scanlan’s Monthly, I think. And it had nothing to do with reporting. He was making it up. And it was fiction.

There may have been some basis in all that happens in the story for it. But he just invents the dialogue that goes on between the various people and follows his own chart and reacts as a novelist, and then presents it as journalism. This is what Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was presumably journalism. But it’s fiction. It’s a novel. And he claimed in retrospect that he had notes to prove every element in that novel. But he didn’t. (laughs) I mean, all the hallucinations. Whatever his hallucinations were, they were hallucinations. And they’re his. And they’re internal. And who’s to say who’s hallucinating when he’s writing what he’s writing. The sum and substance of Thompson was that he started off as a journalist and he became this wild crazy gonzo journalist, which was half a fiction writer’s achievement. And he was always in the early days thinking about the novel and new forms of the novel. And he created one. Novels are very valuable in their wisdom and their insights and their reporting and their historical penetration of the world that they’re centering on. And he was famously talented in all those realms to achieve those things. And he did. But in the end, I mean he comes off as a career journalist and a singular one. There was nobody like him and there never will be. A lot of people have tried. He’s inimitable. But when he started out, he had all the baggage that goes with the aspiring novelist. And he always made the distinction that I started off to be a journalist and turned into a novelist and he started off to be a novelist and turned into a journalist. And that’s true enough.

My journalism very rarely could be challenged — it could never be challenged as a work of fiction. I never did anything like that. I found ways to enliven the text with language. So did Hunter. But Hunter also reimagined history and reimagined daily life when he invented his world.

Correspondent: To go to your work, The Ink Truck — I wanted to ask you about this. Your first published novel. This is interesting because, unlike the topographical precision that you see in the Albany Cycle, the details of Albany in The Ink Truck are not nearly that precise. They’re more abstract. And I’m curious why that sense of place only emerged in the subsequent novels.

Kennedy: Well, because when I wrote that novel, I was reacting to my resistance to traditional realism and naturalism. You know, I had been there with Steinbeck, Dreiser, James T. Farrell, and so on. And Hemingway also was a great realist. Not the naturalist, but the great realist and the great reporter. And I was in a different mode. I was immersed in Joyce at that time and very much aware of Ulysses and the wildness of the invention that pervades that novel. I was thinking of the surrealists. I was in the grip of Buñuel the filmmaker. I loved his work.

Correspondent: Also a wonderful late bloomer too.

Kennedy: (laughs) And Fellini. I though that 8 1/2 was one of the great movies ever made. It may be the greatest to me and I’m not sure I don’t think that still.

Correspondent: What of Satyricon? (laughs)

Kennedy: Well, I thought it was interesting. So much of Fellini I do love. But 8 1/2, because it was in one guy’s head and it just went in and out of reality, that’s what I wanted to do. I used to say that novel was always six inches off the ground. So levitating was important. And I wasn’t really interested in grounding myself in the squalor of that situation. That was a pretty squalid time when we were in the guild room during that strike. There was a strike that I went through and was the inspiration for that novel. But that book is sort of an excursion to comedy and surreal comedy. I mean, it presumes to be serious in certain stages of its intensity. But basically it’s a wild, crazy, surreal story.

Correspondent: But when you have the character of Albany begin to appear in your work, suddenly I think there’s more of a kitchen sink approach. You have very hard-core realism. You have hallucinations. Surrealism. You have all sorts of things. Almost a kitchen sink approach. And I’m curious if the increasing complexity of your books, where this comes from. Does it arise out of your very meticulous and fastidious research? Does it arise from wanting to reinvent the form of the novel? To not repeat yourself? Does it arise from having established a Yoknapatawpha-like universe of characters? What of this?

Kennedy: Well, all of the above. Everything you said. I was always trying to do something that I hadn’t done before, that I couldn’t attach to anybody in particular. You know, you can’t imitate Joyce. You can’t imitate Hemingway. I tried and I did all the way along in various failed enterprises. And I knew that it was a dead end. I was trying for something new. With Legs, I was inundated with research. I spent two years under the microfilm machine. We no longer have to do that. Just punch in Google. Now it’s amazing. But in those days, I would spend days. All day. Half the week inside the library. Not only microfilm, but all the books of the age. All the magazines. I went to New York and got the morgues of all the major newspapers. The Times. The New York Post. The Daily News, which was fantastic. And so on. And I researched everything there was to find on Legs Diamond serendipitously. And then I also kept turning — I probably interviewed 300 people. I don’t know how many. Sort of cops and gangsters. Retired gangsters with prostate trouble. And I really stultified myself at a certain stage in that novel. And I had to stop and take account of what was really going on. And I had to reinvent the book.

Correspondent: You wrote it seven times, I understand.

Kennedy: I guess the seventh was the final time. I wrote it six times. Or was it six years and eight times? The eighth time was a cut. I had finished it but it was too fat. So I cut 70, 80 pages. I don’t remember what I cut. But I don’t miss them. Whatever I cut, it was all right. But I started from scratch really. After six drafts, I went back and spent three months just designing the book all over again and designing history of every character all over again and putting a totally new perspective on it. Because I had too much material. And there was no way to stop it from coming to me. Except to just close it off and say, “I’m not going to read another newspaper. I’m not going to crack another book. I’m going to write the story. I’m done with the research.” Of course, that never really happens. You have to go back and check. But that’s what I did. And that’s how I finished the book.

The Bat Segundo Show #427: William Kennedy (Download MP3)

(Image: Judy C. Sanders)

“All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do. And therefore those who are coerced will only do that which they do not wish to do while they are weaker than the tyrants and cannot avoid doing it from fear of the threats for not fulfilling what is demanded. As soon as they grow stronger, they naturally not only cease to do what they do not want to do, but, embittered by the struggle against their oppressors and everything they have had to suffer from them, they first free themselves from the tyrants, and then, in their turn, force their opponents to do what they regard as good and necessary. It would therefore seem evident that the struggle between oppressors and oppressed cannot unite people but, on the contrary, the further it progress the further it divides them.” — Leo Tolstoy, “The Law of Love and the Law of Violence”

It was a political act committed by a weak man. Don’t let any sugarcoating naif or maundering bumpkin scared to stare down the truth tell you that it wasn’t.

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a pragmatic Blue Dog Democrat in Arizona, was shot in the head at point blank range while holding an informal town hall meeting at a supermarket. A federal judge is dead. Five others, including a nine-year-old, are also dead. They did not want to be dead.

These were assassinations. Assaults on people who, never mind their party, wished to engage in civil discourse. It was a secret attack designed with a political point in mind — one that told us that, no matter where our position on the political spectrum, our thoughts and feelings were lesser if they didn’t mesh with yours.

The assassinations were committed by a psychologically imbalanced and irrational man with a gun. But we still don’t know for sure if Jared Lee Loughner was inspired by Sarah Palin’s now removed, now infamous map, which targeted Rep. Giffords and 19 other people with a prescription to the solution. We may never know. And we may never know if he really wanted to do what he did. What we do know is that Loughner was coerced and he felt that what he was doing was good and necessary. His YouTube videos tell us this. Loughner thought that “the population of dreamers in the United States of America is less than 5%.” A recent study revealed that one in 20 adult Americans experienced psychological problems during their childhood years. Or about 5%. But maybe Loughner was referring to some other faction. It was all set down in his head. Why didn’t we feeble peons comprehend his genius?

The new question — offered not long after the NewSouth scrubbing of words from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — is whether or not an actual assassination, especially one committed by a man with psychological problems, is equal to the suggestion of an assassination.

This afternoon, Jack Shafer made a case for inflamed rhetoric, responding to knee-jerk suggestions that the debate must be turned down with a less classier riff on Voltaire: “I’ll punch out the lights of anybody who tries to take it away from me.” But Shafer’s swiftly typed sentiments may have arrived too late. Already, Rep. Robert Brady will be introducing legislation that will make it a federal crime for a person to use symbols or language that someone might perceive as a threat or an inciting to violence against a federal official.

This is overkill. There are already laws on the book (specifically 18 U.S.C. § 876 and 18 U.S.C. § 876) that deal with this. If you knowingly threaten a judge, a law enforcement officer, or a federal officer with death, you will face a fine and ten years of imprisonment if you are convicted.

What makes Brady’s proposed legislation insidious is the way he takes “knowingly” out of the equation altogether. Threats may be expanded to the manner in which someone perceives a threat. And this is an alarming attack against free expression: an altogether different assassination telling us that some forms of vitriol, swiftly reduced to calmness after one has expressed it, are lesser because they don’t mesh with Rep. Brady’s view of the universe.

Does Brady’s legislation mean that Shafer can be arrested because some looneytune reading his column perceived his “punch out the lights” sentence as an excuse to attack a member of Congress? If I suggest that Rep. Brady’s house should be TPed before the week is up (and I append a symbolic Photoshop image to the clearly satirical suggestion), and some nut job attempts to kill Rep. Brady by stuffing several rolls of toilet paper down his mouth, then should I be accused of inciting the nut job to violence?

The proposed Brady legislation, predicated upon the myth of zero tolerance, assumes that the person who lets off steam can keep track of every person who is listening. The legislation is a perfectly understandable reaction, but one motivated by fear rather than reason. Fear isn’t the best emotion with which to consider the full implications. Consider Rep. Brady’s alarmingly autocratic response at the end of the CNN article: “Why would you be against it?”

And why would you assume that every American will act like Loughner?

Loughner’s videos are an incoherent hodgepodge of senseless syllogisms: an insane nightmare founded upon notions of currency, grammar, the number 8, and a medley of perceived slights. Loughner announces in his welcome video that his favorite activity “is conscience dreaming; the greatest inspiration for my political business information. Some of you don’t dream — sadly.”

We’ve been here before, of course. On November 18, 1978, Congressman Leo J. Ryan was killed in the line of duty. The cause was the cult of Jonestown. The cult killed Ryan, a Temple defector, and three journalists. 918 people drank the Flavor Aid that evening.

But that was in Guyana, not our home turf. The terror went down in a place remote enough for psychological experts to offer “rational explanations of how humans can be conditioned to commit such irrational acts” (as Time put it on December 4, 1978). The news was horrifying, but we still understood then the irrational had infringed upon the rational. Ryan had been assassinated. In 1978, the Internet did not exist to present us with an image.

The above picture comes from Mamta Popat at the Arizona Daily Star. The caption reads:

Jackie Storer, right, tries her best to figure out the clues on a giant crossword as Jared Loughner, a volunteer, stands in the background during the Tuscon Festival of Books.

One is struck not just by the “clues” contained in the photo’s crossword, but by the clues contained in Loughner’s stance. His right foot juts forward against the sidewalk and he hangs his right arm languorously against the crossword display. Does he know the clues already? Even accounting for the photographer’s posing instructions, Jackie Storer clearly isn’t noticing him.

But do any of these observations permit us to better understand Loughner?

There are bullies who horde all the wealth and keep good people unemployed. There are bullies who grope us when we don’t want to be violated by a backscatter X-ray. There are bullies who berate us and scare us and feed us misinformation. There are bullies who foreclose on our homes because we failed to comprehend the language above the dotted line when we were young and hungry and wanted some stake in the American dream.

On Saturday, we learned that the bullies are within our fold. They’re waiting patiently around us, providing us with “clues” just before they pull out the gun. Should we stop believing in humanity?

A cynic will tell you that Saturday’s senseless violence confirmed America’s station as a savage nation. A soul seeking vengeance will point to the Palin map, its three targets hovering over Arizona and impugning the narcissist who saw fit to publicize the two-hour finale of Sarah Palin’s Alaska on her Twitter feed before offering empty condolences.

The cynic and the vigilante are both right, but we may soon be asked to test our core constitutional values.

The time has come to fight tooth and nail to maintain the last of our rights to free speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of mind. This can all be done without a single bullet or a knowing threat. The time has come to stand up to men like Robert Brady, who cannot see how their seemingly helpful acts turn them into bullies who ask the uncivilized question, “Why would you be against it?” Because, Representative Brady, we are not weaker than the tyrants. And we do not want to see another civilized soul fall down the rabbit hole.

“Think for yourselves, and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too. It is the sole consolation of weak minds in this short and transitory life of ours.” — Voltaire, “Toleration”

I did not attend Saturday’s rally because, like many Americans, I could not afford to. I did not have the cash for the $60 Boltbus round trip, the $100 or so to spring for a night in a motel room, and the $40 (very conservative estimate) for food and water. $200.

Now imagine the tab if you have a kid. Factor in childcare and you’re easily getting into the $400 range if you were a parent hoping to participate in a rally that was being compared in some corners to Martin Luther King. Sure, you could blow a few hundred bucks to make a purported difference or you could put that money into your kid’s Halloween costume. Or maybe that’s a few weeks of much needed groceries. Or maybe that’s what you need at the end of the month to make mortgage or rent.

The upshot is that, in this economy, $200 is a lot of money for many people. If you are among the 10% of Americans who remain unemployed, the ones who are being told that economic recovery is just around the corner, then those two Ben Franklins are worth a good deal more. And these are the people we’re not talking about. These are the people we can’t talk about. Because unless it’s a message from the Rent is Too Damn High Party, talking about poverty and class division isn’t nearly as entertaining as an episode of Jersey Shore.

If you could afford to go to Washington last weekend, you practiced your new political privilege. This privilege was reflected in the mostly white demographic that turned up in Washington. It was reflected in Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s performance of “The Greatest Strongest Country in the World”:

Stewart: They don’t care about the gays
Colbert: That’s mostly true
Stewart: They’re terrified of Muslims!
Colbert: Well, they scare you too!
Stewart: But I would never talk about it / Folks would get annoyed
Colbert: You’re a coward
Stewart: Yes, but I’m still employed (going into a falsetto yodel)

The satirical song’s message, a sentiment also reflected in Stewart’s closing speech, is that there is no longer any room for hyperbole, extremist rhetoric, and “insanity.” If you’re lucky enough to remain gainfully employed, maintaining a Spock-like commitment to cold “logic” while others face the savage brunt of rising costs and diminishing prospects, keeping your job is more important than speaking your mind or commiserating with the hard realities of a family who has to skip a few hot meals. The message is this: It could have been you, but, hey, you’re still employed. Don’t take a chance. People might get annoyed.

And how exactly does this represent togetherness? Togetherness doesn’t mean shunning people, but listening to the viewpoints you despise. And while you may be bathing in a Stewart-Colbert afterglow, the “insane” people will be there in the voting booths on Tuesday. There will be hard and possibly irreversible developments because a bright red cluster was just told that its feelings didn’t matter. That the manner, however inappropriate, in which people responded to justifiable concerns about unemployment and foreclosure wasn’t valid. Yes, they amplified their messages until their posters turned into increasingly stranger exemplars for Godwin’s Law. But if the corporations had given them jobs as Wall Street enjoyed its best September since 1939 or someone had listed to justifiable concerns about being forced to pay exorbitant costs thanks to one of the biggest giveaways to private industry in American history, would we even have Christine O’Donnell as a candidate? Would we even be diminishing political discourse by considering the gentlemanly angles on muff diving?

While keeping atavistic sentiments out of evenhanded analysis is a worthwhile goal, there are several problems with Stewart’s overgeneralized view of the way the media and the political conversation operates — hardly limited to what David Carr has courageously and reasonably offered. As Glenn Greenwald wrote in September, where’s the space for someone engaged in genuinely independent and non-ideological inquiry? The fact that the audience applauded strongest when Stewart yodeled about keeping his job suggests that public discourse is not necessarily about the politics, but about keeping one’s privileged position. The new privilege is, irrespective of Rick Sanchez, being able to hold onto your job and being able to spend money to go to a rally. What of those who aren’t part of this illusory middle class? The ones who were left behind like the poor saps missing the rally, stuck in traffic on the “free” Huffington Post buses? Was Saturday, as Mark Ames suggested, more of “an anti-rally, a kind of mass concession speech without the speech–some kind of sick funeral party for Liberalism, in which Liberals are led, at last, by a clown?”

I don’t want to pin the blame on the 215,000 people who attended the rally, particularly since many conservatives are attempting to undermine this number with dubious metrics. These goodhearted people attended this exercise in good faith, seeking confirmation that there was a safer way to express their political commitment. As someone who witnessed firsthand in San Francisco the manner in which suburban people were squeezed out of the Iraq opposition rallies on February 15, 2003 (the largest global anti-war rally in history) after the protest turned bad, discouraged by the loud and loutish voices who caused their swift surrender, it was a great relief to witness a new political unity.

But if the cost of this unity involves slicing the edges off the political spectrum, if it involves ignoring the obvious facts that Goldman Sachs created an orphan month to puff up its earnings and good people had their lives changed by subprime loans and the derivatives casino rewarded the rich at the expense of the poor, then there is something seriously wrong with our priorities. It involves embracing a myth that is just as dangerous as the fabricated Reagan prosperity narrative promulgated by the Tea Party crowd.

The people who attended this rally may very well be without this Wall Street greed. But the ones who have caused our national problems have been anything but civil. The Glenn Becks and the Keith Olbermanns who fulminate hysteria are not, it is important to be reminded, selling our grandchildren into slavery.

In his speech, Stewart talked about the “selfish jerk who zips up the shoulder and cuts in at the last minute. But that individual is rare and he is scorned, and he is not hired as an analyst.” Not at all. These selfish jerks are hired in droves on Wall Street. Reason won’t deter the very insane avarice and the unremitting selfishness of the economic elite. You can’t always bring a book and a calm demeanor to a knife fight.

In fact, few have remarked upon the selfish qualities contained within Stewart’s speech. The first sentence: “I can’t control what people think this was.” Near the end: “If you want to know why I’m here and what I want from you I can only assure you this: you have already given it to me. Your presence here was what I wanted.” You will not find the verbs “want” or “control” in Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. In Obama’s much longer and more nuanced “A More Perfect Union” speech, you will find our future President using the phrase “we want” (not “I want”) numerous times, but never “control.” King and Obama brought people together during these moments not because they dictated to their audiences what they wanted (and thus, as Stewart has done, dictated how they should respond), but because they invited their listeners to become part of their journey.

The difference is that Stewart can rescue himself from any criticisms because he can always play the “I’m a comedian” card. Yet it isn’t too much of a stretch to see that Stewart’s “I want” has now eclipsed Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Stewart suggested to his audience that “because we know instinctively as a people that if we are to get through this darkness and back into the light we have to work together,” but he has, rather brilliantly, sandwiched this facile notion of working together within the troubling crust of “I can’t control” and “I want.” And “I want” is a more dangerous beast than the fleeting optimism contained within “Yes we can.”

“I want” is the mantra of entitlement. “I can’t control” is the sentiment of someone whose view of the “opposition” is relegated to a quick glimpse of someone in a car, where judgments as superficial as Beck and Olbermann reduce a complex individual to a neat demographic label. The mom with two kids who can’t think about anything else. The Oprah lover. What about the people who don’t have the money for gas?

Stewart is on firmer ground when he suggests that racists and Stalinists are “titles that must be earned” and that labels should be granted to those “who have put forth the exhausting effort it takes to hate.” But what about more subtle disgraces? Systemic issues? By these standards, the cab driver who does not stop for a black man, the gay couple that is not permitted the same benefits as a married couple, or the ongoing wage gap between men and women should be given less amplification.

As John Scalzi recently noted in a list, you don’t have to worry about any of this. You can attend a rally and feel good about yourself. What you may not realize is that clowns much bigger than Stewart and Colbert — the ones who took your tax dollars during the bailouts and the ones who speculate on commodities and raise your daily prices — are laughing at you.

Chris Coons: I believe churches have the absolute right to believe whatever religious doctrine they wish to, but you cannot impose…

Christine O’Donnell: And do local schools have the right to teach that?

Chris Coons: They do not.

Christine O’Donnell: Local schools do not have the right to teach what they feel? Well, there you go.

Chris Coons: Religious doctrine does not belong in our public schools.

Christine O’Donnell: Do you want a senator who is going to impose his beliefs? Talk about imposing your beliefs on the local schools! I’m saying that if the local community wants to teach the Theory of Evolution, it’s up to the School Board to decide. But when I made those remarks, it was because the School Board wanted to also teach the Theory of Intelligent Design, and the government said that they could not. You have just stated that you will impose your will over the local school district, and that is a blatant violation of our Constitution.

Chris Coons: And to be clear, Ms. O’Donnell, I believe that creationism is religious doctrine and that evolution is a broadly accepted…

Christine O’Donnell: How about the Theory of Intelligent Design?

Chris Coons: Creationism, which is…

Christine O’Donnell: Theory of Intelligent Design!

Chris Coons: ….is a religious doctrine.

Christine O’Donnell: No, two different things.

Chris Coons: Evolution is widely accepted, well-defended, scientific fact. And our schools should be teaching science. If we want to instruct our children in religious doctrine and religious practice, as my wife and I choose to, that’s wonderful. That’s what our churches are for. That’s what private or parochial schools are for. But our public schools should be teaching broadly accepted scientific fact, not religious doctrine.

Christine O’Donnell: Wow, you’ve just proved how little you know, not just about constitutional law, but about the Theory of Evolution. Because the Theory of Evolution is not a fact. It is indeed a theory. But I’m saying that theory — if local school districts want to give that theory equal credence to intelligent design, it is their right. You are saying it is not their right. Then that is what you’ve gotten our country into this position. It’s the overreaching arm of the federal government getting into the business of the local communities. The Supreme Court has always said it is up to the local communities to decide their standards. The reason we’re in this mess we’re in is because our so-called leaders in Washington no longer view the indispensable doc, uh, principles of our founding as truly that. Indispensable.

Chris Coons: And why doesn’t this…

Christine O’Donnell: We’re supposed to have limited government. Low taxes….

Moderator: All right.

Chris Coons: Can I have one of those? The indispensable principle is the separation of church and state.

Moderator: Okay. With that. We’ve had a very good dialogue. We appreciate that. Let’s move on so we can get through all the panelists and cover other areas.

Christine O’Donnell: Uh, where in the Constitution is separation of church and state?

(Uncomfortable laughter from the audience.)

Here is a listing of racist incidents involving United States Senators presently in office:

On March 13, 1998, during investigations pertaining to the 1996 Presidential Campaign, Sen. Bennett remarked, “I stepped in and said, `No. I have owned a business in Asia. I have done business in Asia. Charlie Trie’s actions are the typical actions of an Asian businessman.’” (CSPAN — video and transcript)

On July 16, 2009, at an Environment and Public Works Committee hearing, Sen. Boxer was speaking to Harry Alford, president and CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce (an organization that Boxer confused with the NAACP), when the following exchange occured:

Boxer: Then we’re going to put the NAACP resolution that passed saying this: The NAACP approved a historic resolution addressing climate change legislation for the first time in the organization’s history.

Alford: What does that mean?

Boxer: Sir, we’re gonna put that in the record, and you can read it cuz I don’t have the time, but I’ll read the rest-

Alford: What does that mean though? I mean, the NAACP has a resolution. What does that mean?

Boxer: Sir, they could say the same thing about what do you mean? I’m just telling you they passed it-

Alford: I’ve got documentation!

Boxer: Sir, they passed it. Now, also, if that isn’t interesting to you, we’ll quote John Grant who is the CEO of A Hundred Black Men of Atlanta. Quote: Clean energy is the key that will unlock millions of jobs, and the NAACP’s support is vital to ensuring that those jobs help to rebuild urban areas. So clearly there is a diversity of opinion.

Alford: Madame Chair-

Boxer: If I can-

Alford: -that is condescending to me.

Boxer: Well-

Alford: I’m the National Black Chamber of Commerce-

Boxer: If this- if this-

Alford: -and you’re trying to put up some other black group up to pit against me.

Boxer: If this gentleman- if this gentleman were here, he would be proud that he was being quoted. Just as-

Alford: He should have been invited.

Boxer: Just as- He would be proud-

Alford: It is condescending to me.

Boxer: Just as so- Just so you know, he would be proud that you were here. He is proud I am sure-

Alford: Proud, proud (bitterly and contemptuously).

Boxer: -that I am quoting him.

Alford: All that’s condescending-

Boxer: Well, Sir.

Alford: -and I don’t like it. It’s racial.

Boxer: What’s racial?

Alford: I don’t like it.

Boxer: Excuse me, Sir.

Alford: I take offense to it.

Boxer: Ok.

Alford: As an African-American and a veteran of this country, I take offense to that.

Boxer: Offense at the fact that I would quote-

Alford: You’re quoting some other black man. Why don’t you quote some other-

Boxer: No.

Alford: Asian? Or some other-

Boxer: Well, lemme-

Alford: I mean- what- You are being racial here.

(Transcript and YouTube clip)

On July 10, 1997, when questioning a witness about a reward from Asian-Americans that Democratic fundraiser John Huang was to receive, Sen. Brownback remarked, “No raise money, no get bonus.” (USA Today, Seattle Times)

At a March 20, 2004 Republican event, Jim Bunning stated that his opponent, Sen. Daniel Mongiardo, looked like one of Saddam Hussein’s sons. (USA Today, Associated Press)

“Senator Byrd quit the Klan in the 1940s and has renounced it since. On the other hand, his history is worth revisiting, since it’s something Democrats have been willing to tolerate, despite Lott-like remarks that would have ended a Republican’s career. Only last year Mr. Byrd told Fox News that ‘there are white niggers. I’ve seen a lot of white niggers in my time, if you want to use that word. But we all–we all–we just need to work together to make our country a better country and I–I’d just as soon quit talking about it so much.’” (Wall Street Journal)

During the 2000 campaign, Sen. McCain told reporters, “I hated the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live.” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 2, 2000)

In 1983, as a young congressman, Sen. McCain voted against the recognition of Martin Luther King Day. (ABC News)

In an August 1, 2008 post, Capitol Hill Blue’s Doug Thompson noted additional anecdotal examples of racism. (Capitol Hill Blue)

In John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s new book, Game Change Harry Reid stated that Barack Obama could become the first African-American President because he was “light-skinned” and because he did not speak with a “Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” (New York Times)

President Barack Obama stood tonight before the seated West Point cadets and revealed himself to be a shallow political opportunist, a man who views mortal sacrifice with all the cold and uncomprehending analysis of a clinical dilettante who is in over his head. Obama stared hard into his twin prompters, as if expecting some illusory plane to crash and conflagrate. One detected the whiff of self-sabotage as this newly christened lame duck spoke without spontaneity, failing to hit any note that even approximated empathy. Yes, he had signed letters of condolence to the families of every American who has given up a life. But there was nothing in his dead eyes to suggest a solace that extended beyond bureaucratic acts or a leader who knew what he was doing. This was shallow and unconsummated political theater, and, for me, a profound feeling of nausea kicked in at the ten minute mark.

Obama preferred to regale the crowd with hollow tough talk, but, judging from the few cutaway shots, the West Point throngs didn’t seem terribly convinced. He reminded us all, including those brave progressives daring to huddle around high-def sets for some benefit of the doubt, that he was the Commander-in-Chief. In a line that will no doubt be fiercely argued by febrile teabaggers, he declared that he had seen “firsthand the terrible wages of war.” It was as if he still needed to prove something just less than a year into his Presidency. But in an age of economic disaster, unseen relief, and international terror, the time for needless reminders and phony platitudes has now passed. Actions that live up to the mandate have become beyond necessary, and Obama demonstrated again that he cannot deliver. This geeky, number-crunching adolescent, who painfully reminded us that he had once stood against the Iraq War, pretended once again to be an adult, and his speech was a firm betrayal of the alleged ethos that secured his November victory. When that dreadful noun “hope” came up thrice, applied to Afghanistan’s untenable wasteland, the linguistic political operator and almost certain one-term President came out of the closet. It was also an unpardonable insult for Obama to suggest that “we must come together to end this war successfully,” a sentiment at odds with the exigencies of healthy democracy and language uncomfortably close to the previous Oval Office hick now laughing his ass off in Dallas. One expects a failure to grasp the realities of human conflict from some desperate corporate leader making an awkward speech at a company retreat, but not the ostensible leader of the free world. Had a cadet yelled, “You lie!” tonight, I would have applauded him as a patriot.

This was a hard spectacle for anyone on the left to endure. The social networks were strangely silent. It was eerily symbolic that YouTube opted to live-stream an Alicia Keys concert over tonight’s cold hard truth. Obama, the man who had fueled his base through the Internet, had been abandoned by his most fervent online boosters. And this sizable cluster was really the canton who needed to hear this speech more than anyone else. Perhaps they will be braver in the morning, when they can stomach some predawn douse of icy and abrasive water. Obama’s speech was a tremendous slur against optimism and possibility, for it invited cynicism rather than respect. This was not a delivery that could galvanize the hardscrabble American heart, for it offered only fungible realities.

Obama failed to sell the brave recruits or the American people on the reasons behind the Afghanistan surge. Lives would be lost, but for what? These unspecified threats and specious connections were the reasons why so many of us opposed Bush. Obama said that he owed us “a mission that is clearly defined, and worthy of your service,” but remained too general on the details. His objectives involved denying al-Qaeda a safe haven, reversing the Taliban’s momentum, and denying them the ability to overthrow the government. But these goals carried distressing echoes of the administrative arrogance depicted in David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest, and remained doubly troubling with the assumptive hubris. For Obama was there to tell us that those seeing another Vietnam were relying upon “a false reading of history” and offered no text in return. His inference rested on the principle that Vietnam was the natural parallel, rather than the failed ten-year campaign by Russia, much less the ongoing clusterfuck in Iraq, which, in Obama’s words, was “well-known and need not be repeated here.”

Obama claimed that “this is not just America’s war,” He preferred to mimic the language of our previous President, awkwardly jutting his chin in deference to the eight-year charlatan’s cowboy tic. But it did not seem to occur to him that such arrogance — conveyed through subdued and unconvincing burlesque and a stunning failure to be even remotely real — is not how any nation builds coalitions.

This was a Powerpoint presentation delivered without the slides. Obama sweated, looking like a boxer past his prime, and didn’t seem to comprehend that human lives were in the balance. When Obama stated that “the days of providing a blank check are over,” one was speedily reminded of the no-strings-attached check handled to the rapacious thugs at Goldman Sachs and the $787 billion stimulus package that has allegedly “created or saved” 640,000 jobs (or about $248,000 spent for each job). Obama offered a timeline, but for all of his talk about “addressing these costs openly and honestly,” he was reticent to drop specific pecuniary numbers for his escalation plan. He offered yet another hollow promise to close Guantanamo Bay, but the travesty that continues to sully alleged American virtues must end with a decisive action.

When speaking about Afghanistan, Obama looked directly into the camera, as if expecting a pockmarked population to watch, and said, “We do not seek to occupy other nations. We will not claim another nation’s resources or target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours.” But I did not believe him. And there is no reason to expect an Afghanistan civilian to believe him. Before the speech, two of his officials had used the word “surge” in relation to these developments. And Malalai Joya, writing bravely in The Guardian, intimated that an escalation of troops is a war crime against her country. (Both links found helpfully through Glenn Greenwald.)

None of these concerns were considered. There remained the cliched faith in “workers and businesses who will rebuild our economy,” but none of this could atone for the pressing reality that more than a tenth of us are without a livelihood and nearly one fifth of African-American males are far worse off. As Obama heads on to Oslo to collect his Nobel Peace Prize, one is reminded of the 1973 Swedish hypocrisy. One begins to hear Kissinger’s duplicities in Obama’s dulcet voice.

Which leads anyone living in the waking world to conclude justly that Obama’s idealism is gone. His rhetoric is hollow. This is a dead parrot.

Alan Grayson: “Well, listen, I didn’t call names. What I said is true. The Republicans have even nothing resembling a plan. And when you don’t have a plan, what that means is your plan is ‘Don’t Get Sick.’”

Or does he? Has Rep. Paul Kanjorski ever known a day without a hot meal? Or a day in which he had to scrape together change from under the sofa to buy groceries so that he could feed his family? Has he ever fallen behind on rent? Utilities? The electric bill? You see, those are the facts that millions of Main Street Americans — many of them recently unemployed — are now living. Or is Kanjorski one of those types who believes that one cannot live in New York City on less than $500K a year? Rep. Kanjorski’s claim in the above clip — that the world economy would have collapsed within 24 hours had not guarantee money been granted to banks — is, to say the least, highly suspect and deserves careful and detailed scrutiny by economists. Like the supply-side schemes of the past, the money has not trickled down. And if the Democrats cannot produce tangible evidence that it will trickle down, then they must be called on the carpet. Assuming that the carpet does not fray up before a reasonable answer.

Robert G. Kaiser has worked at the Washington Post since 1963. He is most recently the author of So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government.

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Still waiting for the lobbyists to work out a deal with him.

Author: Robert G. Kaiser

Subjects Discussed: Obama’s first executive order, revolving door bans, Tom Daschle’s recent troubles, “exceptions in extraordinary circumstances,” candidates for office with lobbying backgrounds, Gerald Cassidy, picking a character for a Washington narrative, the birth of the lobbying firm Schlossberg-Cassidy Associates, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, Cassidy falling into second place, lobbying problems and the 1994 Republican Revolution, the K Street Project, lobbying and partisan politics, Cassidy’s lobbying style vs. Abramoff’s lobbying style, Tom DeLay, safe seats, John Lewis, Richard Lugar, Chuck Schumer, the likelihood of an equitable earmarking system, Columbia’s early lobbying efforts with the chemistry lab, peer review, attempting to sort out differing accounts concerning the Tufts Nutrition Center, Jean Meyer, Edward Bernays and why his influential essay, “The Engineering of Consent,” took a few decades to catch on in Capitol Hill, Joe McGinnis’s The Selling of the President, Roger Ailes, the abandonment of objective reality over the past 45 years, the Jim Wright ethics investigation and whether or not Cassidy was culpable in Wright’s downfall, Newt Gingrich’s rise, and the potential for a return to the comparatively virtuous pre-Nixon Congress.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: You also bring up one moment in the book, where you depict Senator John Stennis — the man, of course, who wrote one of the first Senate ethics codes; in fact, the first Senate ethics code. And who had not raised more than $5,000 for all of his campaigns in the past. Now here he is up for reelection in 1982. And he needs to raise $2 million. He is now forced to accept this devil’s bargain. This leads me to wonder whether, in fact, there is even room for a Sam Rayburn type of Congressman anymore. Whether it’s even possible for someone of any ethical core to be in this deeply ingrained system. If John Stennis can’t do it, then who can?

Kaiser: Well, it’s one of my favorite stories in the book. I’m glad you noticed it. But all these things are complicated. For example, in today’s Congress, in the House, we have 435 members. Probably 200 of them — or even 220 — are in totally safe seats. That is to say, they can win reelection without campaigning at all probably. Or very minimally. And that’s because of the impact of, now, two generations of very aggressive gerrymandering. We call it redrawing of the districts and state legislatures every ten years after the census is done, in which both parties have accepted the same rule of thumb that the ideal outcome is to maximize the number of safe seats for our side and minimize them for the other side. You remember this episode in Texas, which actually lead to DeLay’s downfall, when he overplayed his hand on this subject and got the Texas legislature as soon as it was under Republican control to add four more Republican seats from Texas. Which he got away with initially. But he eventually got indicted for it. And that, I think, was the beginning of the end for DeLay.

Anyhow, there are opportunities because of these safe seats for people who don’t raise any money. And they don’t participate in the corrupt system at all. Which is an interesting footnote. It just means that a large portion of members are exempt from the usual pains and tribulations of trying to raise all this money. Not true in the Senate, where everybody is theoretically more vulnerable in a way. They all try and raise the dough.

Correspondent: But if there are so many safe seats, is it possible that there could be some sort of Sam Rayburn type in a safe seat? Someone who refuses to, of course, accept any money. Pays his own way, as Rayburn did.

Kaiser: John Lewis of Atlanta. The great leader of the civil rights movement and fascinating figure, who I know slightly. I heard him preach on Sunday before the inauguration in a black church in Washington, which I just went to by chance. I didn’t realize he was going to be preaching there. He gave a remarkable presentation. But John Lewis has a very safe seat in parts of Atlanta. He’s a revered figure. I have no idea how much he raises for his elections. I should probably check that out. But Lewis is a good example of a distinguished citizen in Congress who is not corrupted by this system, as far as I know. And there are people who build up a kind of invincible status. Richard Lugar of Indiana would be a really good example of this. Lugar: former mayor of Indianapolis, Rhodes Scholar, good citizen. Conservative Republican. Nixon Republican originally when he came to town in the 70s. Lugar wins reelection, as he did this time, by huge majorities and doesn’t have to do any bad stuff, I don’t think, to raise money. There are a number of such figures who could fulfill your definition, I think, of a Sam Rayburn-like independent man. But they are the exceptions certainly.

BSS #264: Robert G. Kaiser (Download MP3)

Tonight, while delivering a speech at a Washington hotel, Attorney General Michael Mukasey began slurring his words and lost consciousness. He collapsed and was rushed off to George Washington University Hospital. Mukasey’s Wikipedia page has been undergoing numerous revisions, with versions of the page claiming that Mukasey is dead. But there isn’t any hard or credible information to suggest that Mukasey has passed away. If there is any reliable information to report, I will update this post.

Even more amazing than this is the way this correlation is getting a free pass. The only way you can bring a demographic into election statistics is through the exit poll. But exit polls have problems. Back in 2006, Mark Blumenthal initiated a helpful series of posts summarizing some of the flaws: where the interviewer is standing in relation to the polling place, how well-trained the interviewer is, the tendency for voters who volunteer to participate upon seeing the interviewer with the clipboard, the inclination for the polls to favor Democrats in presidential election since 1988, and so forth. In 2005, the Washington Post reported that interviewing for the 2004 exit polls was “the most inaccurate of any in the past five presidential elections.” Large numbers of Republicans refused to talk with interviewers, and this, in turn, led to an inflated estimate for John Kerry. But despite these problems, exit poll faith is a bit like stubborn fabric softener sticking to a hard wonk’s argyle sweater. In a longass Rolling Stone article, even Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. believed in the gospel, suggesting that exit polling was the first indicator that the 2004 election had been stolen. Political slickster Dick Morris went further, stating that “exit polls are almost never wrong.”

Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International were the team behind the 2004 polling botch, and this dynamic duo also spearheaded this week’s California exit polling. The hard data is not yet available at the Edison/Mitofsky site. But the Associated Press has reported that 2,240 California voters (of these, 765 were absentees interviewed by landline telephone), interviewed in 30 precincts, represented the total number of people that Edison/Mitofsky interviewed. Which means that some percentage of these voters were African-American. Let’s give Edison/Mitofsky 50%. That leaves us with a mere 1,120 voters.

A quick jaunt to the California Secretary of State’s website reveals that there are 25,423 precincts in California and that 10.5 million people turned out on Tuesday. In other words, Edison/Mitofsky is making a major claim based on 0.11% (a little more than one-tenth of 1%) of the total precincts, and a sample of voters smaller than a crab louse dancing in a thorny thatch of hair. Is this really large enough? Exit polls have proved somewhat accurate in relation to simple binary choices, but I’m wondering if it all turns to bunk when it comes to correlation. Perhaps a legion of statistics experts can help explain why Edison/Mitofsky can get away with this. Because I’m tempted to view this as a strange offshoot of the Bradley effect.

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Struggling to cast his vote.

Author: David Rees

Subjects Discussed: [List forthcoming]

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: I wanted to also ask about the use of white space, and often the lack of white space, with some of the panels that have this extraordinarily long rant that one of the characters is conducting versus using the clip art and shifting it to the right hard edge of the panel or the left hard edge of the panel, or what not. What is your criteria in terms of white space and filling up the panel? Is it contingent upon the words you have to deliver for any particular strip?

Rees: You probably don’t know this, but the U.S. government allots all political cartoonists a given amount of white space in a year, and a lot of budgetary issues. If you don’t use your white space in a year, you don’t get it back the following year. There’s no rollover white space.

Correspondent: Yeah, yeah, it’s the appropriations and the earmarks I’ve heard.

Rees: So you have to really challenge yourself every year to use just enough white space, so that they’ll give you more white space next year. You have to submit this form. A white space form. Form JKL-202. And you submit this form. And they will give you more white space. And so as a political cartoonist — I mean, if you’re registered with the government, which I am, which all political cartoonists are supposed to be, if you find yourself at the end of the year that you haven’t used enough white space, then you go on a big rant. So there isn’t much white space around. You know what I mean?

Correspondent: Sure. Sure.

Rees: Because you don’t want to go over your limit immediately. Because you’ll be penalized.

Correspondent: But with all the “fucks” within the rant, that can be very problematic. I know you’ve gotten into trouble based off of that. Because of the specific requirements of this act.

Rees: Right. You’re referring to the Left Wing Political Cartoonists Profanity Allotment Act of 2003?

Correspondent: Yeah, yeah, I am. The number of “fucks” are quite frenetic. Exactly.

Rees: Well, I trade on the gray market. I trade — you know, cap and trade with carbon emissions? They set up the same thing for cartoonists, where you get a given amount of profanity. Fuck, goddam, asshole, shit, cocksucker, bitch, all that stuff. And then if you want to use more, you buy a set on the International Profanity Market. You buy a certain amount from other cartoonists.

Correspondent: They come in 200 units, I think.

Rees: Right. Well, it’s 200 syllables. You don’t actually buy the profanity by the word. You buy it by the syllable. So “motherfucker” is four syllables. You can use those four syllables to deploy one “motherfucker” or four “asses.” So I usually just buy them from cartoonists like Bil Keane, who does The Family Circus. He never uses his allotment. In a year, he never says “fuck” in The Family Circus more than ten times. So I will buy him out usually at the beginning of the year, so that I have enough to get me through a season.

BSS #248: David Rees (Download MP3)

I informed a chatty but amicable gentleman behind me that there was free ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s and free coffee at Starbuck’s. He thought I wasn’t serious. I told him that I was very serious, and that I was known to temporarily change my dietary habits on Election Day. I told him that I was prone to screaming at 2 AM in the streets while the results came in. Yes, I said, I am a very serious voter. So serious that I will drink the blood of a rat if it will give me extra energy to vote.

He tried to tell me who he was going to vote for, and I told him that this was unethical and that I would make a citizen’s arrest if he continued. He concealed his partisan button and insinuated that he was wearing underwear that included the name of his candidate. I told him that I approved of his right to run around the streets of New York wearing underwear, or indeed nothing at all. We should all experience the fantastic sensation of a gust of wind drifting up our ass crack. But I would still make a citizen’s arrest if he was wearing political underwear within 100 feet of the polling place. He told me that this wouldn’t be a problem, and we then carried on a conversation about the typography of the Dunkin Donuts logo.

I did manage to place my vote. On the way out, I asked one of the election workers if she required a tip. She pointed me to the exit door and told me to get out — thus cementing in my mind the idea of the polling place as a harried diner. I feel very happy about my decision, but I’m still wondering if I should go back to the polling place and ask for a sandwich.

I’m quite happy that I voted. But I am finding that I am experiencing severe proposition withdrawal. You see, back in California, I was accustomed to a considerable number of local and state propositions on the ballot: anywhere from twenty to fifty. If you couldn’t get another person to agree on a candidate, you could always find some middle ground through one of the crazy props. But in New York, I only had one proposition to vote for: a middling measure on veterans benefits. There was nothing on the ballot for gay rights, nothing that involved naming a sewage treatment plant after George Bush. Presumably, either current government policy or the lack of space on the voting machine’s big board hinders numerous proposition options from presenting themselves to the public. I had not anticipated the sacrifice of my propositions upon moving to New York. I don’t know if there’s much I can do to make up for the missing propositions other than to make impassioned pleas at government meetings.

But I did research all the candidates. And I did vote. Barring a major scandal or the almost total capitulation of the public’s senses, the man I voted for will likely be our next President.

The time has come to drink and wait it all out. This will be something of a nailbiter.

First and foremost, I should point out that I plan to spend Tuesday night with others drinking a considerable amount of alcohol, screaming at the television like a reality show addict waiting for the right people to be kicked off the island, bringing a copy of Gregory Corso’s “Bomb” to recite (just in case), sobbing on sundry shoulders if certain California propositions aren’t defeated, laughing maniacally at all the deserving bastards who go down, and worrying very much about the fate of this nation. (I have decided to not spend Monday worrying, as this is probably better for my blood pressure.) This seems the American thing to do, as no other presidential race in my lifetime has been this important.

And no other presidential race in my lifetime has required such a gonzo approach. Given these circumstances, I do not think clinging to a laptop is a good idea. And I think that I may likewise employ the cautionary measure of disabling my ability to Twitter from my cell phone. (Not that I use the cell much anyway. I have discovered that very often the cell is dead, and that it has been this way for days.) I’ve made these decisions not for my protection, but for yours. The last thing the Internet needs is another jittery crank writing deranged rants in real time. But what the Internet does need, as Colleen rightly points out, are reasons to vote. (Some additional suggestions: I would advise not voting and drinking, given the unreliability of some of the machines. I would also advise not drinking as you are determining who to vote for, as you may begin confusing candidates and regretting who you vote for. I would advise drinking after you vote, no matter when the hour. But gather with friends. Don’t be alone. This is not a night to be alone.)

Let us put such trivial matters as this nation’s trajectory over the next thirty years under one of two administrations, and look upon the situation from a purely mercenary standpoint. On Tuesday, Ben & Jerry’s is offering free ice cream. My neighborhood cafe is serving free coffee to those who’ve voted. Starbuck’s is doing something similar. I’ve even heard of delis offering free heroes. I never expected so many freebies. It’s better than cutting coupons in the Sunday newspaper. Alas, it’s also better than the number of specials you can claim on your birthday. And I feel tremendously sorry for anyone in the position of blowing out cake candles on Tuesday. It’s a bit like having a birthday on Xmas, and having to endure all the assholes who give you a present for both Xmas and your birthday. For those who aren’t celebrating a birthday on November 5, you have everything to gain. But should you have a Scorpio friend in this predicament, do try and allocate some of the perks to your Scorpio friends. That way, they’ll have an added incentive to vote. Also, invite them to your election parties, and offer an option to celebrate their birthdays on a different day.

Here’s where I start to get slightly partisan. I do worry tremendously about the stunning and uncritical pass that the Man With Hope (as opposed to the Man from Hope; let us not forget that hope has been in political vogue now for nearly two decades) is getting from his supporters. In a recent essay for the New Yorker, David Sedaris wrote about the undecided voter, with a hypothetical flight attendant asking, “Can I interest you in the chicken? Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?” This is, I think, regrettable reductionism. So let’s take it further, because suggesting that the American political system is broken has become strangely unfashionable.

Is not just about any politician a platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it? Has there ever been a politician in the past sixty years that’s been anywhere nearly as good as Sam Rayburn? (Rayburn, among other things, set up the SEC, the FCC, and traveled only on his own dime. He didn’t take money. He didn’t cater to special interests. He told everybody that he was not for sale. Perhaps he was the last politician who could get away with this.)

I point this out not to flaunt cynicism, but to point out that Beltway politics is an environment in which the participants are spending much of their time bending over and confusing an act of submission with compromise. I point this out because it is the successful politician’s job to look as good as he can before the cameras.

Why then would anyone want to vote given these realities? Well, because, change happens gradually over time. And if change is slow on the national level, then it is certainly swift on the state and local levels. I may be a realist, but I’m also an optimist. Nevertheless, it remains your responsibility not only to consider the candidate who best serves your position, but to likewise question the candidate you’re voting for. If you are voting for your candidate out of blind faith, almost exclusively out of “hope” or “country first,” then take the time to really think about why you’re really voting for an advertising slogan. Take the time to understand just what your candidate will do well, and what your candidate will not do well. The point here is not to find an ideal candidate, but to find the right candidate for the position. The best-suited candidate for the job. Warts and all. The guy who will fill the slot in best.

If, after months of all this, you still haven’t figured it out, then what you need to do is go to your most intelligent friend and ask her how to vote. You really need to do this, particularly if you live in Ohio or one of the swing states. Let your friend make all the decisions, vote for all the local measures, and, above all, select the presidential candidate. Then you’re off the hook. And you can still enjoy all the ice cream.

The important thing to consider here is that everyone can vote, but not everyone can vote with a clear head. It’s important that you don’t blow this. It’s important to think everything out in the time you have available. It’s important to make calls or look things up if you don’t quite understand something. It’s important not to let anyone get in the way of a decision you’ve made by thinking everything out. And it’s damn important to be flexible enough to change your mind at the last minute. That’s what a good thinker does. And you’re a good thinker. So go to the polls tomorrow and think! Then you can tell everyone you’ve really voted, and you can enjoy your ice cream without ideological consequence.

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Refusing to cut and run from Kenny Loggins and company.

Author: Markos Moulitsas

Subjects Discussed: Speculation on the effectiveness of protests, influencing the gatekeepers, Amy Goodman and other journalists arrested in St. Paul, small-time bloggers, Cindy Sheehan, “Free Mumia” promoters and promoting a message of unity, isolating activist sectors, Peter Dauo’s triangle of influence, Vietnam, whether or not Daily Kos has become a gatekeeper, getting media attention, Sheehan’s run as an independent candidate against Nancy Pelosi, Kucinich and the impeachment option, Ned Lamont vs. Sheehan, political narrative, the aborted Democratic presidential debate on FOX News vs. Obama’s appearance on The O’Reilly Factor, Sarah Palin, getting through to the other side, Moulitsas’s conclusions about FOX News viewers*, spreading misinformation and conjecture vs. open source journalism, why Moulitsas hasn’t employed a fact checker for Daily Kos, whether Moulitsas considers himself a journalist, and doing anything to win for politics.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: I wanted to actually ask you about your site. I mean, the Daily Kos was responsible for spreading the rumor that Sarah Palin’s son, Trig, was her daughter’s son. Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post actually asked you about this. And you said to him, “Our people are doing the vetting. Even if some of it is hitting dead ends, other ones are striking direct hits. My role is to sit back and let the citizen journalists do their job, and I amplify the stuff that shakes out.”

But I’m wondering, if this is misinformation or conjecture, what is this doing to increase the level of political discourse? Or to even help the credibility of Daily Kos? I mean, aren’t you essentially doing the exact same thing as the people who looked to Al Gore and said, “Oh, he invented the Internet.” Even though, as you pointed out in your book, well, it was intended as a joke. It was completely misconstrued. I mean, what of this? I know you have an engineer who you’ve hired. Why not hire a fact checker? Why not try to get it right? Why not actually go ahead and push the levels of reason higher than the mainstream newspapers who sometimes get things wrong?

Moulitsas: So you’re talking about me becoming the ultimate gatekeeper online by stifling anything that hasn’t been vetted by the great and mighty Kos. It is open source. It is a community. People are talking. They’re having a chat. It’s like the corner of — it’s like a sports bar. People get together and they talk about things. And, yeah, some of them are — some misinformation happens. But as a whole, the community shakes things out. This guy, who wrote the one diary, which is now infamous, right?

Correspodent: Yeah.

Moulitsas: Eventually he took it down. Because enough people at Daily Kos pointed out the flaws in the argument. And so the community was self-policing and finally realized, okay, this was a dead end. Now, of course, there was a lot of irregularities about that pregnancy that still are pretty much unexplained. I don’t think they’re explained by the original theory. But there’s some weird stuff. I mean, you don’t have your water break and then you wait ten hours to go the hospital. Because you give a speech and you go on a commercial flight to Seattle, and sit around, and take a commercial flight to Anchorage, and take a one hour drive to your hometown, and then have a baby when your water breaks. Especially a special needs child. Like Trig was. But that said, it’s her choice to make those decisions. You know, I’m a progressive. I’m assuming a doctor said it was okay for her to do that. You know, it’s between her and her doctor.

I am not Sarah Palin. I’m not trying to inject my morality into the public space. But there are some weird things that led people to ask questions. I think that’s perfectly natural. And they led to the reality that Bristol was pregnant. Which normally wouldn’t be relevant. Except that her mother (1) is a fierce opponent of sex education, is all about abstinence-only, and (2) she vetoed funding for a halfway home for pregnant teenagers. Right? So it actually matters when you legislate morality how that will affect your family life. I mean, the hypocrisy and everything else that’s attached to it.

Now that said, there’s also a great deal of investigative stuff that came out of Daily Kos that is now part and parcel of the confirmed background of Sarah Palin. Like her association with the Alaska Independence Party. The separatists.

Correspondent: Sure. But I’m talking about this misinformation here. I mean…

Moulitsas: Well, it’s all…

Correspondent: People are going to catch wind of this early part and then they’re going to look to you and say, “Well, I don’t know about Daily Kos. Sometimes, they get it right. Sometimes, they get it wrong. And I have to constantly fact check on top of this.”

Moulitsas: No, no, no. Good. I want people to look at media with a skeptical eye. Are you kidding me? If people did that, would we have rushed to war in Iraq so quickly? If people didn’t just blindly trust Judith Miller in the New York Times reporting?

Correspondent: Even at the expense of your own credibility?

Moulitsas: It’s not. The question isn’t credibility. Not my own. I didn’t write the stuff. Daily Kos people. I mean, this author’s credibility might be impacted. I don’t know. I didn’t write that stuff.

Correspondent: But the fact of the matter is that “dailykos.com” is in the link.

* Note: The specific report that Moulitsas may be referring to is this 2003 PIPA study which pointed out that FOX News watchers more most misperceptions than those who watched other networks. But there is a significant difference between FOX News watchers experiencing misperceptions and Moulitsas claiming that this audience is “the most reliable Republican constituency in the Republican party.” [sic]

BSS #236: Markos Moulitsas (Download MP3)

The Washington Post is reporting that Democracy Now! radio host Amy Goodman was arrested in St. Paul after inquiring with the police over the arrest of two Democracy Now! producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. Goodman and her producers were in St. Paul to report on the Republican National Convention. Goodman was held in custody for three hours, and Goodman has claimed the Secret Service ripped off her press credentials to get on the floor of the Republican National Convention. Meanwhile, the two producers are still being held in custody. (An audio file of the arrest can be found here. In addition, The Uptake has a camera view from another angle.)

Also arrested (in a separate incident) was Associated Press photographer Matt Rourke. While the charges against Goodman, Kouddous, and Salazar are uncertain, Rourke was charged with a gross misdemeanor riot charge.

Glenn Greenwald has more, writing:

Beginning last night, St. Paul was the most militarized I have ever seen an American city be, even more so than Manhattan in the week of 9/11 — with troops of federal, state and local law enforcement agents marching around with riot gear, machine guns, and tear gas cannisters, shouting military chants and marching in military formations. Humvees and law enforcement officers with rifles were posted on various buildings and balconies. Numerous protesters and observers were tear gassed and injured.

Let us be clear on this. This goes well beyond Josh Wolf refusing to turn over evidence. Journalists who had the decency and the effrontery to ask hardball questions were prevented from conducting their work. None of these people were causing a riot. They were in St. Paul doing their jobs. They were there talking to people and reporting the news. Their collective right to be there, which was confirmed by their press credentials, is protected by the First Amendment. If the St. Paul Police Department does not come clean with details and specific allegations, then it is up to the American public to ensure that the police who arrested these journalists are levied with the appropriate penalties.

[UPDATE: Democracy Now has issued a press release indicating that Kouddous and Salazar have been released. Goodman was charged with obstruction. According to the press release, Kouddous and Salazar were charged with felony riot charges.]

Condition of the Show: Delving into the complexities of the military industrial complex.

Authors: Senator Mike Gravel and Joe Lauria.

Subjects Discussed: Whether Sen. Gravel and Joe Lauria share the same brain, The National Initiative for Democracy, Article VII of the Constitution, rules that prevent people from participating in the electoral process, the military industrial complex, the Civil War and the defense budget, Eisenhower’s transportation system, Harry Truman and Communists, Iran’s missile defense, living in a culture of fear and a culture of information, X-ray machines at airports, Gravel’s involvement in the celebrity culture of politics, “Rock,” involvement with Obama Girl, whether or not Senator Obama or any of the Democratic presidential candidates have been in touch with Gravel since the debates, whether or not Gravel is done with electoral politics, leaving out details of Gravel’s life between 1981-2006 in A Political Odyssey, political visibility, balancing substance and celebrity, the semiotics and audience reaction to “Rock,” the “unnecessary” nature of war, Woodrow Wilson, war as an endless continuum, whether or not Americans deserve the government that currently represents them, Colin Powell and false threats, Daniel Ellsberg, Dick Durbin, Frank Wuterich and Murtha’s defamation suit, the Speech or Debate Clause, morality and collateral damage, Scoop Jackson, Gravel standing up against the ABM, working with hawkish Senators, and political peer pressure.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: A question to both of you. The modifier that frequently ripples, so to speak, throughout this book in relation to war is “unnecessary.” You question Woodrow Wilson’s motives for getting us into World War I, writing that America was not threatened. Yet I must bring up the bombing of the Lusitania. And I must also point out that there was the Kingsland Explosion. The Zimmerman telegram. I mean, what is a necessary war? Was America really not at threat in World War I? Is this what you’re saying?

Gravel: Of course it was not.

Lauria: Well, I’ll just say briefly that the idea of the Zimmerman telegram was absolute nonsense. Why did Wilson send ships into the areas where they could be sunk?

Gravel: Right. And there was an argument that it had munitions. I mean, Woodrow Wilson didn’t have to go into the First World War at all. In fact, had he not gone in, there’s a chance that we never would have had the Second World War. Had we let them, that was their war, bleed themselves out. Well, you realize that after the First World War, the democracies of the world were in command of the world. And who screwed up the 20th century but the democracies? Clemenceau and the British and ourselves were the ones that set up the tobacco of the 20th century. Does it get any worse than that?

Correspondent: Okay, that clarifies…

Lauria: There wouldn’t have been Versailles. There wouldn’t have been a settlement to the war.

Gravel: There wouldn’t. Because…

Lauria: You would not have had Hitler.

Gravel: No, you wouldn’t have had Hitler. Because the Germans could not have refielded their armies that had left. The French could not have refielded their armies. So there would not have been Versailles. This was like the movie, The Last Man Standing. Well, the American troops! The British were not standing. The French were not standing. The Germans were not standing. So there we were. The Americans were standing. And we were the heroes. And old Woodrow Wilson was basking in this light. Woodrow Wilson was not the great President we made him out to be. Believe me, he was not.

Correspondent: I thank you for the clarification, but back to the other question. Is war necessary in any sense? Can you cite specific conflicts? Specific battles?

Gravel: I know of no war in history that did not beget more war.

Correspondent: But that kind of dodges the question very skillfully.

Gravel: No, that doesn’t dodge the question. I know of no war that has not begotten more war.

Correspondent: Is it necessary though?

Gravel: I don’t know if it’s necessary. I don’t know if it’s necessary. You attack me. I gotta kill you. Then your brother says, “Well, you killed me.” It’s the famous American cowboy story. You know, vengeance wreaks more vengeance. What kind of question is it? Maybe the question you ought to ask is to take the question from Jesus. Turn the other cheek and maybe you won’t get the other cheek lopped off.

Download BSS #224: Sen. Mike Gravel & Joe Lauria (MP3)

[UPDATE: And if this flip-flop doesn't piss you off, perhaps Obama's astonishingly sexist remarks on abortion will. "Mental distress?" Why don't you just say that these women are suffering from hysteria?]

Meanwhile, Senator Russ Feingold, one of the few Democrats demonstrating some capacity for outrage, has called FISA “not a compromise. It is a capitulation.” One might say the same of Obama’s recent decisions.

[UPDATE: Some additional context from BLCKDGRD.]

12:18 AM: Listening to WIBC-FM feed. Indiana remains close, with Hillary ahead by only two percentage points. Gary, Indiana remains the big mystery. Hillary has just announced that she will not appear at any public event tomorrow. Does a public event entail a media appearance? Will Hillary concede?

12:22 AM: Gary, Indiana Mayor Rudy Clay’s prediction: “Barack is winning precincts 297 to eight and 153 to two and all that. Gary is going to be a big plurality for Barack Obama, a big plurality.”

12:25 AM: 92% Indiana precincts now reporting, still 51-49. Clinton 588,823 to Obama 568,156. Still waiting on the big bag from Lake County. From WIBC: “The national media is seeing a county that’s just starting to release numbers.” Some playful banter from these guys on the radio, who are marveling over how they’re now the center of attention and how the outside media doesn’t understand Indiana politics. It sure as hell doesn’t involve “hanky-panky.”

12:30 AM: Some additional numbers put Clinton in front. “Gary ain’t come in yet.”

12:33 AM: A report from the Terre Haute Tribune Star, where I am now looking out for a basement. Obama volunteer Casey Chatham began volunteering about a week and a half ago. He spent $57 to FedEx his absentee ballot from Nairobi.

12:35 AM: Also in the Tribune Star: considerable phone mobilization from the Clinton camp.

12:40 AM: Hillary had given a victory speech, but then the numbers began coming in from Lake County. Then there was the mysterious cancellation of public events. 95% of the vote now in, difference now 15,000 votes. Looking for corroboration of this.

12:42 AM: The Oregonian does the math.

12:44 AM: Marc Ambinder offers smart advice. (via Daily Kos)

12:45 AM: It appears that the clock on my computer is a few minutes off. Pardon any chronological confusions as these reports continue. I don’t think I can go to bed until Lake County comes in.

12:47 AM: More info on Hillary’s “declaration of victory.”

12:50 AM: Obama needs to win the remaining precincts by 69% in order to win. But the WIBC guys insist that because these precincts are based in Gary, Indiana, this could happen. Some specific info being blogged here.

12:51 AM: Lake County: 316 out of 561. Obama 46,759 to Clinton 25,100. Wow, this could happen!

12:52 AM: NWI: “We’re updating as fast as we get the results from inside the Lake County Government building.” Keep hitting F5, folks. Keep hitting F5. And thanks to the NWI’s dutiful reporting.

12:54 AM: NWI: Still 7,000 absentee ballots to count. All of Gary’s results in.

12:55 AM: Associated Press: “The northwest Indiana county is the state’s second-most populous with nearly 500,000 people. It had reported no results as of 11 p.m. Eastern Time. A large number of absentee ballots and a record turnout delayed the tallies, and polls there close an hour later than much of the state because Lake is in the Central time zone.”

12:57 AM: I highly recommend the WIBC feed if you’re a political information junkie. These guys are tracking all news updates in real time and providing specific sources. (And there’s some good radio from Indiana!)

12:59 AM: Globe and Mail: “The most unfortunate aspect of the much-maligned Lake County keeping Indiana interesting past midnight is that a completely befuddled Larry King has been forced to take the air while the results are still in question…..Update: After about eight minutes of airtime, Larry King appears to have been sent home in favour of more Anderson Cooper. Although it’s entirely possible Larry is still talking, and they just haven’t told him he’s off the air.”

1:02 AM: Video of Hillary’s “victory.”

1:08 AM: New Jersey Star-Ledger: “The divide feeds the Clinton argument that Obama can’t win in November unless he can convince white voters and those further down the income and education scale — the so-called ‘Reagan Democrats’ — that he understands their needs. It prompted Paul Begala, a longtime Clinton supporter, to complain on a television panel show last night that Democrats ‘can’t win with eggheads and African-Americans.’”

1:10 AM: Slideshow of Indiana voters.

1:12 AM: How Obama Beat the Line.

1:13 AM: WIBC on why we’re in a holding pattern. “We’re up to 98% in Lake County and yet we’re still at 95% in Indiana.” 99%, Clinton 51, Obama 49.

Looks like it’s over. Indiana for Clinton.

Final Thoughts:

Clinton was dealt a major blow tonight. The only way that Clinton was able to win Indiana — and this was a slim victory at best — was through a campaign that involved saying damn near anything and using any slimy tactic in the book to win a vote. These are the actions of a political scum. Nixon is now widely regarded as one of the great American scumbags of all time. But let’s not forget. Nixon’s scummery still nabbed 68.7% of the popular vote in 1972. You could argue that it was George McGovern. But let’s not underestimate the way the casual American voter relates to scums or elects a President based on whether he’s the right guy to have a beer with. I am not certain just what dipsomaniac cachet Clinton has, but let’s not entirely rule it out.

Obama demonstrated that his base is quite strong, that he can maintain momentum based on a more ethical campaign. But was it Hillary hatred or hope that did the trick in North Carolina? It remains to be seen whether Obama’s North Carolina victory will translate into a movement against McCain in November, should he succeed in securing his presidential nomination. The theory of whether Obama has the ability to “close the deal,” however, is beginning to lose credibility. Even with all the superdelegate vagaries, it appears mathematically probable that he will be the Democratic frontrunner.

But it still remains a horror franchise with an endless stream of sequels. Hillary is Jason from Friday the 13th. She’s a candidate who doesn’t understand that she’s dead, but who continues to hack away at any innocuous ideal resembling a few kids fornicating in the forest. Despite skillful attempts at killing her off, she cannot be murdered. Perhaps she’ll succeed in massacring the remaining Democratic ideals before being confined to a space station. Or maybe we’ll all lose interest in the franchise.

The big question mark over Clinton’s head is why she canceled her public appearances today. Whether for health reasons or general fatigue, this is a catastrophic decision on her part. This is no longer a campaign in which you take a day off.

It suggests, by and large, that Clinton herself is the one here who is unable to close the deal, or come anywhere close to offering a fair one. But she’s tried every trick in the book and it’s still not working. If she doesn’t win this, and it looks increasingly likely that she won’t, there will be long memories and many pissed off people remembering what she did to split the Democrats. She could be as much of a political pariah as George Bush is likely to be, come January 2009.

Rudy Giuliani’s smug self-assurance had been legendary during his long career as District Attorney and Mayor in New York City. But he revealed a more off-putting overconfidence to voters with his strange decision to not compete in the earliest GOP Primaries. He calmly assured his followers that he would sweep up victory in Florida, incorrectly guessing that no other candidate would excite voters in the prior contests. This was a bad strategy in several ways, but it may have backfired for one particular reason above all: it reminded voters of George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld’s flippant assurances that they would easily sweep up victory in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2008, overconfident leadership is the polar opposite of what Americans want.

Mitt Romney’s arrogance — a relaxed square-jawed perfection excavated from an earlier age — has always been different from Giuliani’s. Unlike John McCain and Mike Huckabee, Romney rarely revealed any personal frailty or flaw, betrayed few complex emotions, and was never caught agonizing over a decision. In other eras of American politics, this politician might have been highly valued for his Teflon sheen, but again in 2008 we’ve had enough of slick impenetrability. After eight years of “stuff happens” (from Katrina to Pakistan, and stuff is still happening), American voters may need a long recovery period before we’ll vote for a politician with a self-assured, unflappable personality again.

Maybe this is why Hillary Clinton’s biggest rebound moment occurred after she teared up before a TV audience, or why the naturally intense and earnest Barack Obama is catching on with voters. But arrogance hasn’t always been a detriment for a politician. When George W. Bush first emerged as a Presidential candidate a decade ago, his cool arrogance was considered his best feature. It made him “Reaganesque.” Ronald Reagan’s easygoing charm was always rooted in a stern and unshakable confidence that people yearned to find again, and this was no small factor in the emergence of another ex-President’s wayward Texan son as a conservative politician. When the younger George W. Bush’s advisors, pollsters, and image makers assembled him in the laboratory, they marveled at the creature’s unflappable self-certainty.

George W. Bush was constantly referred to as “Reaganesque” in his earlier years, though this image seems so far away now that we easily forget it. It turned out that President George W. Bush did not have the leadership skills of President Ronald Reagan. Just the arrogance.

Of course, U.S. Presidents have been arrogant since the imperious George Washington, who demanded that his subjects kneel. There were perhaps none more blustery than the remarkable Theodore Roosevelt, whose effusive self-confidence is still fondly remembered today. Richard Nixon always presented a face of somber self-righteousness to the public, and a much deeper and insidious arrogance was revealed on the White House Tapes released during the Watergate affair. Jimmy Carter’s inability to rally his government behind his leadership appears to have been rooted in a principled rigidity. It’s probably the case that more US Presidents have been deeply arrogant than not.

It’s a more troubling fact that the United States of America is constantly described as an arrogant nation by many who criticize it, from Noam Chomsky books to Al Qaeda videos to countless casual conversations among concerned citizens. This, again, is nothing new. It was our arrogant Pacific Rim policy that frustrated Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941, for instance. So, is the United States of America actually arrogant? And what exactly does it mean to say this?

ar • ro • gance: (noun) offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride.

Whether this shoe fits or not cannot be easily decided, but it does seem easy to understand how various American policies in Asia, the Middle East, Central America, South America, Africa and Europe can be seen as arrogant. Other world powers like Russia, England, China, France and Germany carry on similar legacies, and more generally it’s clear that a natural belief in the superiority of one’s nation, one’s religion, one’s ethnic group, one’s class, or one’s gender is universal in every society on Earth. It’s hard to imagine any influential nation of any size that has not acted arrogantly towards its neighbors.

Arrogance is as common as the air we breathe. You can’t walk down the street without slamming into it, usually coming at you from several directions at once.

It’s a strange fact that arrogance is not one of the seven deadly sins, while pride is. Dictionary.com defines pride as something much more positive than arrogance:

pride (noun): A sense of one’s own proper dignity or value; self-respect.

So how can pride be a sin if arrogance is not? The seven deadly sins were developed by a number of early Christian writers. One version was endorsed (and thus codified) by Pope Gregory I in the sixth century. I wonder if this pope might have chosen pride over arrogance as one of the seven deadly sins because pride denotes a certain secretive self-regard, while arrogance does not. Pride is a private feeling, whereas arrogance is essentially public and relational. You can only be arrogant in relation to others, and by being arrogant you are being honest about your true feelings. Several of the deadly sins revolve around secrecy, but arrogance is an honest expression of what you believe.

In 2008, the United States of America seems to be reeling from a trauma of arrogant and incompetent leadership, and there’s no telling what ripple effects this trauma may eventually cause. But even if American voters are turning towards more down-to-earth candidates in 2008, it’s hard to imagine that human nature is being fundamentally changed. We were designed to be arrogant, and to admire arrogance in others. We can’t defeat arrogance and we can’t erase it; perhaps all we need to do is avoid being blinded by it in the future and we’ll be okay.

Now I’m not exactly a Hillary lover. Clinton waffled from a 1993 universal health care plan which mandated all employers to provide health care for employees to her latest “universal” plan, which shifts the mandatory financial burden to individual citizens. But a proper universal health care program is single-payer, regulated by the government, and doesn’t abdicate the spoils to HMOs. Clinton is also the senator who received the most money from HMOs in the 2008 election cycle. (Obama was second.)

Like every good left-leaning American, I have been seduced by the seemingly limitless reserves of Obama’s charisma: his smooth handling of Bill O’Reilly’s arrogant attack dog antics, his adroit response to anti-abortion protesters, insert your magical Obama moment here.

The man is slick. Slicker than Bill Clinton. I firmly believe that he can be the next President. He looks good. Too good.

In comparing Obama with Clinton, Moore writes that “unlike her, he is original and of the moment. He embodies, at the deepest levels, the bringing together of separate worlds. The sexes have always lived together, but the races have not.”

I wonder if Moore remains aware that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, women earn 77 cents for every dollar their male counterparts make. (The disparity, incidentally, is better in Washington, DC, where women make 91 cents to the male dollar. This may explain why Capitol Hill remains somewhat out-of-touch on this issue. An Equal Rights Amendment may provide succor to these problems.) Or maybe Moore remains unaware that young women are earning degrees at a higher rate than men do.

This certainly doesn’t reflect a case where the sexes “have always lived together.” Unless, of course, we’re talking garden-variety cohabitation. And while Obama may talk the talk, I fail to see how Obama’s legislation record brings together separate worlds in any way that is substantially different from Hillary Clinton. The oft bandied boast is that Obama was not Senator in 2002 and therefore unable to vote for the congressional resolution authorizing Bush to use force in Iraq. But what’s not to suggest that within this climate of fear, Obama wouldn’t have done so? (The record demonstrates that John Edwards also voted for it. Kucinich and Paul did not.)

The distinction then is predicated on retroactive speculation. Which is a bit like seriously considering the ridiculous question Bernard Shaw asked of Michael Dukakis during the 1984 Democratic presidential debates: “Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?” Kitty Dukakis was not raped and murdered. Obama was not Senator during 2002. Nonetheless, it is an American political tradition to rate presidential candidates according to what they may have done under certain circumstances, as opposed to a more reasonable survey of what they are likely to do based on their past records.

So ultimately the difference between Obama and Clinton comes down to charisma. To watch Obama in action is to experience the most pleasant and capable of political machines. He’ll jazz up a crowd in minutes and give them the fleeting sense that they can change the world. But who is the wizard behind the curtain? Progressives — including myself — were so eager to fixate upon Karl Rove, but why do we fail to apply the same standards to those who run Obama’s campaign?

Last week, Hillary Clinton welled up on camera and was roundly ridiculed. The question arose over whether this was sincere. Cruel YouTube parodies surfaced soon after. For some, the tears confirmed the inevitable. Here are some of the YouTube comments:

I really feel that Hillary Clinton is a worhless [sic] piece of shit.

i hate this woman

This bitch won because she got on national television with her fake crocodile tears in front of million of viewers.

Yea what a fucking cow. She should be making pizza.

This is a very EVIL fricken human being…She should be ashamed of herself! If she had any heart at all she would finally tell the truth!

Go and fuck Bill.. instead of cheating people

Hillary Clinton is a worthless piece of shit.

And so on.

This was not, however, a Muskie moment, even if an op-ed columnist like Newsweek‘s Karen Breslau was keen to dredge up the droplet that careened down Muskie’s cheek and sealed his political fate. Until the primary results dictate otherwise, Clinton is still very much in the game.

What was not factored in Breslau’s article was the double standard with regard to gender. I find myself being one of the few who remains suspicious about never seeing a gaffe from Obama. Real humans screw up. But presidential politics demands perfection or, as Bush’s two victories confirm, a guy you can drink a beer with.

The cult of personality remains so seductive that even adept writers like Moore offer this foolishness: “it is a little late in the day to become sentimental about a woman running for president. The political moment for feminine role models, arguably, has passed us by.”

On the contrary, the present political moment is very much about whether a president has the right to appear sentimental before the cameras, which in turn is very much predicated upon whether the candidate is a man or a woman. It does not matter what Hillary Clinton’s positions are. What matters most of all is whether or not the “bitch” or “the worthless piece of shit” fabricated her tears.

The question we should be asking is just why these gratuitous issues of telegenic interpretation are deflecting more pressing concerns, such as platforms and positions, and why even the best of us are happily swallowing the bait.

I’m fine with the appreciation and education of American history. I’m not so fine on politicians seeing deities and religious influence in every corner and demanding that the country be “educated” about it. In examining Forbes’s endless “Whereases,” I’ve found more than a few historical humdingers and at least one egregious prevarication.

Whereas the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed this self-evident fact in a unanimous ruling declaring `This is a religious people … From the discovery of this continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation’;

The specific case being quoted here is the 1892 case, Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States (143 U.S. 457). But it was Justice David Josiah Brewer who stated this in the opinion, which was not based upon upholding religion, but concerned whether an Act “to prohibit the importation and migration of foreigners and aliens under contract or agreement to perform labor in the United States” applied between an alien and a religious society. And while Brewer’s words do regrettably speak for the Supreme Court, it is highly disingenuous to suggest that the ruling, which dwelt upon an entirely separate decision, had to do explicitly with religion.

Whereas political scientists have documented that the most frequently-cited source in the political period known as The Founding Era was the Bible;

Since the bill fails to cite any specific political scientists, I must conclude that they are referring to the claims made by two University of Houston researchers, where it was demonstrated that of the purported 94% of all Founding Father Biblical citations (or conclusions based on the Bible), 60% of these citations were from the latter and the sources were unclear. Much, it would seem, as Forbes prefers to conjure up the ghosts of “political scientists” as he goes along.

Whereas the first act of America’s first Congress in 1774 was to ask a minister to open with prayer and to lead Congress in the reading of 4 chapters of the Bible;

If we are presumably talking about the First Continental Congress who met at Carpenter’s Hall starting on September 5, 1774, is this truly “America’s first Congress?” The First Continental Congress met up two years before the Declaration of Independence was agreed upon, thus technically making it more of a British colonial congress (or a response to oppressive conditions) rather than a United States congress proper.

Whereas Congress regularly attended church and Divine service together en masse;

How do outside religious activities pertain to what Congress does within its halls? If Congress attends a stag party en masse, we don’t ask for a “Scotch and Hookers History Week?” (Or since we’re talking about Rep. Forbes, why not an “Abramoff Corruption History Week?”)

Whereas upon approving the Declaration of Independence, John Adams declared that the Fourth of July `ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty’;

Well now, let’s take a look at that letter Adams wrote to his wife Abigail on July 2, 1776. First off, Adams was tickled pink that the Continental Congress had that very day unanimously approved the Declaration of Independence. Which is no different from yelling “Holy shit!” when some particularly great news has poured into one’s ears. The fecal matter in question is not necessarily holy, but the speaker is certainly excited. Nevertheless, here’s the full paragraph that Adams wrote:

But the day is past. The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this country to the other, from this time forward, forevermore.

Clearly, deities weren’t the only thing on Adams’s mind. This was an excitable moment in which Adams was rattling off many of the ideas to his wife in Braintree. Adams was lonely in Philly, a bit busy contemplating nothing less a major revolution (inarguably a political achievement far more profound than anything Forbes has planned in his life). So I think, under the circumstances, he should probably be cut some slack. Besides, what of these other ideas that Adams had in mind? What of “guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations?” It’s a pity that the only people who seem to get together to educate themselves on these topics are libertarians.

Whereas 4 days after approving the Declaration, the Liberty Bell was rung;

Whereas the Liberty Bell was named for the Biblical inscription from Leviticus 25:10 emblazoned around it: `Proclaim liberty throughout the land, to all the inhabitants thereof’;

To take these two items at once, while it is true that the Liberty Bell’s inscription was taken from Leviticus 25:10, the Bell was commissioned not to celebrate religion, but to commemorate the 50th anniversary of William Penn’s 1701 Charter of Privileges. Penn was a big God-loving man himself, but he, nevertheless, had this forward-thinking idea:

That no Person or Persons, inhabiting in this Province or Territories, who shall confess and acknowledge One almighty God, the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the World; and profess him or themselves obliged to live quietly under the Civil Government, shall be in any Case molested or prejudiced, in his or their Person or Estate, because of his or their conscientious Persuasion or Practice, nor be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious Worship, Place or Ministry, contrary to his or their Mind, or to do or super any other Act or Thing, contrary to their religious Persuasion.

Well, gee, that sounds like a guy who was pretty hands-off when it came to enforced church going. Funny. When you start examining the specific reasons why certain symbols were established, the origins appear decidedly more tolerant than Bible-thumping pettifoggers like Forbes concocting 21st century malarkey.

Whereas in 1777, Congress, facing a National shortage of `Bibles for our schools, and families, and for the public worship of God in our churches,’ announced that they `desired to have a Bible printed under their care & by their encouragement’ and therefore ordered 20,000 copies of the Bible to be imported `into the different ports of the States of the Union’;

The Daily Kos would prefer to declare this a lie without bothering to look this up. And that’s a very bad precedent for any thinking individual. The specific claim was promulgated in William Joseph Federer’s America’s God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations (p. 146, if you can access it through Google Books). Federer claimed that, on September 11, 1777, the Chaplain of Congress, Patrick Allison, brought this matter to Congress’s attention and that the Committee of Commerce was ordered to import 20,000 copies of the Bible from Holland. Except that, according to the Library of Congress, this did indeed happen.

The bullshit actually comes from Forbes, who puts phrases into Rev. Allison’s mouth that, as we can see and unless I can be proven wrong, simply don’t exist on the official record available to the public. Allison got Congress to move the Bibles not because Congress “desired to have a Bible printed under their care & by their encouragement,” but because, as the record states:

The committee appointed to consider the memorial of the Rev. Dr. Allison and others, report, “That they have conferred fully with the printers, &c. in this city,and are of opinion, that the proper types for printing the Bible are not to be had in this country, and that the paper cannot be procured, but with such difficulties and subject to such casualties, as render any dependence on it altogether improper: that to import types for the purpose of setting up an entire edition of the bible, and to strike off 30,000 copies, with paper, binding, &c. will cost £10,272 10, which must be advanced by Congress, to be reimbursed by the sale of the books: (Emphasis added)

It was a general paper shortage that caused the Rev. Dr. Allison and others to figure out how books in general could be printed under the circumstances.

I’ve Googled around after typing all this, and discovered that Chris Rodda has also done some debunking.

Rep. Forbes’s bill is clearly that of a man quite willing to twist history to serve his religious purposes. It seems that Randy Forbes either does not know his history or he wishes to malign it by not citing events and context properly. On this basis alone, the bill should be rejected by any thinking representative. And if it is not, if a few Democratic cowards actually vote for this flummery because they fear that their constituency will view them as not “religious” enough, then it is time for them to be shamed. Just as that corporate buffoon Hillary Clinton got her ass handed to her in Iowa. The American people are not nearly so foolish.