Month / January 2004

by DrMabuse

Kucinich for 2004

November really boils down to one choice: Anybody But Bush. But since we’re in the primary stage, why not have a little bit of fun?

Kucinich doesn’t stand a chance in hell, but he’s got my vote in the primary. Despite what scaredy-cats decry as a wacko platform, Kucinich hasn’t managed his campaign with incompetence. Kucinich has never wavered from his stance. Kucinich has never had to clarify a comment or sleep with the Gore 2000 boys to save his bacon. Because Kucinich has a bigger pair of balls than Dean. He’s against the Patriot Act (unlike Dean). He’s audacious enough to end Star Wars and NAFTA. Kucinich has stayed in the race and remained true to his convictions.

I had problems with Dean’s position on the death penalty and his loose stance on civil liberties, as well as his intricate health care plan (compared to, say, a clear-cut Canadian style one). But I had contemplated voting for Dean because he had what I perceived to be courage. Now it turns out that Dean has been flying by the seat of his pants in nearly every capacity. And that’s no way to run a campaign or a country.

So while I’ll vote Anybody But Bush in November, I’m voting with my conscience in the primary. Do any of you lefties have the balls to do the same?

by DrMabuse

Dean’s Dead in the Water

New York Times: “Tricia Enright, the campaign’s communications director, said Dr. Dean was forming ‘a new creative team’ to overhaul its television advertisements. She said the campaign was not firing its media firm, in which Mr. Trippi is a partner. Many Dean supporters have been critical of the ad campaign, particularly in Iowa. Some questioned the arrangements by which Mr. Trippi forfeited a salary as a campaign manager but collected commissions � said to be as high as 15 percent in some cases � based on advertising buys.

Forget the Iowa yell. The Dean campaign’s financial incompetence stinks of cronyism and irresponsibility. And Trippi’s profiteering comes on the heels of the depleted war chest and Dean telling his 500 staffers to skip their paychecks for two weeks.

I’d say at this point that Dean’s goose was cooked. If Dean can’t manage the finances of his own campaign, then how can he manage the budget? Stacked against Bush’s deficit, Dean certainly comes across as fiscally conservative.

by DrMabuse

Clarifying the Conspiracy

There’s something which needs to be stated for the record. I am TMFTML. Neal Pollack is too. (And here you all are wondering why Pollack’s been quiet. Well, I assure you, the crazy bastard’s been a workhorse.) And sometimes the Hag and Moby (curiously absent too — with purpose, I assure you) get their say in. I’ve tried to throw you folks off, what with riffs against the first person plural. However, in the case of TMFTML, the entity that speaks is not unlike the one depicted in Theodore Sturgeon’s More Than Human, which is why “we” is sometimes invoked.

So you can stop pestering the purported singular author. We’re all laughing our asses off over the fact that you care and that you think that we’re one individual. When, in fact, we’re several people who cooked this idea up back in 1999, when we were drunk and wondering if all the computers were going to collapse because of Y2K.

The fact that you’ve believe us for so long has us chortling with laughter. The fact that you believe we have a day job and that we’re actually in New York has us reaching for the bottle. Because the gambit’s funnier with liquor.

The other great revelation, that has smething to do with all this, is that BOOG is actually Bill Keller. The Times has been paying cash installments to much of the blog cabal in an effort to increase its subscription base.

Terry Teachout and OGIC, however, have nothing to do with this.

by DrMabuse

Can Houghton Mifflin Handle the Truth?

Some distressing news from Publisher’s Lunch. The ironically named Committee for Truth in Psychiatry has sued Houghton Mifflin and writer Daniel Smith for $20 million in punitive damages. The suit comes about because Smith’s investigative piece on electroshock treatment appeared in The Best Science and Nature Writing, 2002.

Even if this suit is settled or dismissed, there’s still the larger issue of whether hard-hitting exposes will appear in Houghton Mifflin’s compilations. Will Houghton Mifflin backpedal on future selected essays? Even if the author were to prove all of the facts were on his side, my fear here is that tomorrow’s compilations will be fluff that maintains the status quo.

[1/21/06 UPDATE: It is difficult to determine what happened with this suit, for there has been no news reported during the past two years. The CTIP website looks like it hasn’t been updated since early 2004. A Google search reveals only Ron Hogan and myself dwelling upon the lawsuit. I’ve sent off an email to Natalie Angier, who edited The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2002, to see if she knows anything. Should I hear back from her or get any leads, I’ll report it in a followup post.]