Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Monday, May 01, 2006
More Colbert
From Salon:
Then he turned to the president of the United States, who sat tight-lipped just a few feet away. "I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound -- with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world."
It was Colbert's crowning moment. His imitation of the quintessential GOP talking head -- Bill O'Reilly meets Scott McClellan -- uncovered the inner workings of the ever-cheapening discourse that passes for political debate. He reversed and flattened the meaning of the words he spoke. It's a tactic that the cultural critic Greil Marcus once called the "critical negation that would make it self-evident to everyone that the world is not as it seems." Colbert's jokes attacked not just Bush's policies, but the whole drama and language of American politics, the phony demonstration of strength, unity and vision. "The greatest thing about this man is he's steady," Colbert continued, in a nod to George W. Bush. "You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday."
It's not just that Colbert's jokes were hitting their mark. We already know that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that the generals hate Rumsfeld, or that Fox News lists to the right. Those cracks are old and boring. What Colbert did was expose the whole official, patriotic, right-wing, press-bashing discourse as a sham, as more "truthiness" than truth.
...
Political Washington is accustomed to more direct attacks that follow the rules. We tend to like the bland buffoonery of Jay Leno or insider jokes that drop lots of names and enforce everyone's clubby self-satisfaction. (Did you hear the one about John Boehner at the tanning salon or Duke Cunningham playing poker at the Watergate?) Similarly, White House spinmeisters are used to frontal assaults on their policies, which can be rebutted with a similar set of talking points. But there is no easy answer for the ironist. "Irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function," wrote David Foster Wallace, in his seminal 1993 essay "E Unibus Pluram." "It's critical and destructive, a ground clearing."
So it's no wonder that those journalists at the dinner seemed so uneasy in their seats. They had put on their tuxes to rub shoulders with the president. They were looking forward to spotting Valerie Plame and "American Idol's" Ace Young at the Bloomberg party. They invited Colbert to speak for levity, not because they wanted to be criticized. As a tribe, we journalists are all, at heart, creatures of this silly conversation. We trade in talking points and consultant speak. We too often depend on empty language for our daily bread, and -- worse -- we sometimes mistake it for reality. Colbert was attacking us as well.
Trustees Report
It's out. Haven't had a chance to look at the details yet.
Later I'll see what assumptions have been tweaked.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - The trustees of Social Security and Medicare now estimate that the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted in 2040 while the Medicare trust fund will be depleted in 2018, slightly sooner than previously forecast.
Those projections are part of the trustees' 2006 annual report, which was released Monday afternoon, roughly a month after its original due date.
In their annual report last year, the trustees estimated the trust fund for Social Security would run out by 2041 and the one for Medicare in 2020.
Later I'll see what assumptions have been tweaked.
Unserious
I tend to assume too often that these things are obvious and don't need to be explained, as Yglesias does here. But, I suppose they do. Very simply, if you attempt to engage in a "serious debate" on American Iran policy you are doing nothing but providing an opportunity for the warmongers, unless your fundamental point is "war with Iran is crazy." I'll re-run what I wrote a little while back. How It Goes:
Depending on whether or not the Bush administration crazies are in ascendance, that last part could be wishful thinking.
History, tragedy, farce, armageddon...
Winter/Spring - The clone army of foreign policy "experts" from conservative foreign policy outfits nobody ever heard of before suddenly appear on all the cable news programs all the time, frowning furiously and expressing concerns about the "grave threat" that Iran poses. Never before heard of Iranian exile group members start appearing regularly, talking about their role in the nuclear program and talking up Iran's human rights violations.
Spring/Summer - "Liberal hawks" point out that all serious people understand the serious threat posed by serious Iran, and while they acknowledge grudgingly that the Bush administration has fucked up everything it touches, they stress, and I mean stress, that we really must support the Bush administration's serious efforts to deal with the serious problem and that criticisms of such serious approaches to a serious problem are highly irresponsible and come only from irrational very unserious Bush haters who would rather live in Iran than the U.S.
Late Summer - Rumsfeld denies having an Iran war plan "on his desk." He refuses to answer if he has one "in his file cabinet." Andy Card explains that you don't roll out new product until after labor day.
Early Fall - Bush suddenly demands Congress give him the authority to attack Iran to ensure they "disarm." Some Democrats have the temerity to ask "with what army?" Marshall Wittman and Peter Beinart explain that courageous Democrats will have the courageous courage to be serious and to confront the "grave threat" with seriousness and vote to send other peoples' kids off to war, otherwise they'll be seen as highly unserious on national security. Neither enlists.
Late October - Despite the fact that all but 30 Democrats vote for the resolution, Republicans run a national ad campaign telling voters that Democrats are objectively pro-Ahmadinejad. Glenn Reynolds muses, sadly, that Democrats aren't just anti-war, but "on the other side." Nick Kristof writes that liberals must support the war due to Ahmadinejad's opposition to gay rights in Iran.
Election Day - Democrats lose 5 seats in the Senate, 30 in the House. Marshall Wittman blames it on the "pro-Iranian caucus."
The Day After Election Day - Miraculously we never hear another word about the grave Iranian threat. Peter Beinart writes a book about how serious Democrats must support the liberation of Venezuela and Bolivia.
Depending on whether or not the Bush administration crazies are in ascendance, that last part could be wishful thinking.
History, tragedy, farce, armageddon...
The Rule of Law
Balkin:
Bush has already adopted President Nixon's view that if the President authorizes something, it isn't illegal, despite what the text of the law says. Now Bush has taken the converse position that if the President doesn't agree with legislation, even legislation that he signs, it isn't law. Together, these two attitudes are deeply corrosive of the Rule of Law and move us down the path to a dictatorial conception of Presidential power-- that is, the conception that the President on his own may dictate what is and what is not law, rather than the President merely being the person in constitutional system entrusted with faithful implementation and enforcement of the law.
Results
Took a little while but finally the Inky noticed:
Following the lead of the blogger Atrios, the Murphy people recently released their own research on Gerlach's record and found at least eight instances in which he claimed others' words and writings as his own on issues such as frivolous lawsuits, homeland security, protecting gun makers from lawsuits, and reauthorization of the Patriot Act.
Gerlach spokesman Mark Campbell said Gerlach's press releases were frequently the product of the Republican Conference, which has a staff whose full-time job is writing materials for members. The Democrats do the same, he said.
Murphy campaign spokesman Mark Nevins said Gerlach failed to meet his own standards of integrity, which call for full attribution of ideas and words. "There's no exception for it being written by the House Republican Conference," he said. "That's not the standard they set."
Lapdogs
I've finished Boehlert's book and I highly recommend it. Like Tom Tomorrow says, for those of us who have been obsessively following this stuff for a few years the book won't be a big surprise, but it does an excellent job bringing it all together. One thing Boehlert doesn't manage to do, however, is explain why things are the way they are. Some of the explanation is 9/11, but that doesn't explain why the press pretty much slept through the Bush presidency until that day. The traditional-for-Republicans 100 day "honeymoon" lasted right until September 11.
Colbert's best line might have been:
Why does the press continue to internalize every right wing critique of them, all of which come from people who "have nothing but contempt for these people." Why did Bernie Goldberg get such a wide airing for his idiotic book? Why does CNN hire Bill Bennett who thinks journalists who report on the illegal activities of the federal government should be put in jail? Why are people like Hugh Hewitt and Assrocket, who simply believe that the news media should be entirely in service of a radical conservative agenda, regularly given a platform? Why is it in the "liberal media" there are so few liberal voices ever given an opportunity to speak? How was it that the New York Times, which spent years covering a land deal in which the Clintons lost money, decided to "discourage pieces that were at odds with the administration's position on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction and the alleged links of Al Qaeda"?
I don't have the answer to this basic question. I wish I did.
Colbert's best line might have been:
I was vying for the job. I think I would have made a fabulous press secretary. I have nothing but contempt for these people.
Why does the press continue to internalize every right wing critique of them, all of which come from people who "have nothing but contempt for these people." Why did Bernie Goldberg get such a wide airing for his idiotic book? Why does CNN hire Bill Bennett who thinks journalists who report on the illegal activities of the federal government should be put in jail? Why are people like Hugh Hewitt and Assrocket, who simply believe that the news media should be entirely in service of a radical conservative agenda, regularly given a platform? Why is it in the "liberal media" there are so few liberal voices ever given an opportunity to speak? How was it that the New York Times, which spent years covering a land deal in which the Clintons lost money, decided to "discourage pieces that were at odds with the administration's position on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction and the alleged links of Al Qaeda"?
I don't have the answer to this basic question. I wish I did.
Ignoring Colbert
Chris Durang writes:
Stephen Colbert was the star attraction at the White House Correspondents Dinner Saturday night, and his performance was thrilling or insulting or uncomfortable, depending on your point of view. Apparently, according to Editors and Publishers.com, President and Mrs. Bush looked very uncomfortable, and quickly left right afterward.
But the mainstream media is apparently ignoring this part of the evening, and instead is covering the early entertainment where Bush and a look-alike imitator do a "he says this, he's really thinking this" routine. Moderately amusing, but very mild.
This, by the way, is the same Washington event where Bush previously charmed many (and horrified others) by pretending to have trouble finding Weapons of Mass Destruction (after we'd started to realize they weren't in Iraq), and wandered the room looking under tables. Really cute, huh? They should send videos of that to the families of soldiers killed.
The media's ignoring Colbert's effect at the White House Correspondents Dinner is a very clear example of what others have called the media's penchant for buying into the conservative/rightwing "narrative."
In this instance, the "narrative" is that President Bush, for all his missteps, has a darling sense of humor and is a real regular guy, able to poke delightful fun at himself and his penchant for mis-using and mispronouncing words.
The Good Fight Against Straw
Where we first came in, Peter Beinart was fretting that if Democrats opposed the Iraq war "the Democratic Party becomes the anti-war-with-Iraq party...we really will no longer have a 50-50 nation, we'll have a 60-40 Republican nation," concerned that what he considered to be a kind of naive isolationism would turn off voters. Next Beinart began fretting that the fact that since the Iraq war, which he supported, was going badly Democrats would... turn to a kind of naive isolationism which would turn off voters. 3 years later Beinart's... calling on Democrats to reject this naive isolationism and embrace what is pretty much their current position on foreign policy. As Yglesias writes:
I know when one doesn't have many ideas it's tempting to cling to the few you do have, but at some point you just gotta let it go Petey.
- As best as I can tell, it's just not the case that any substantial bloc of liberals has "grown suspicious of intervening in other countries' affairs" if this is done through the mechanism of "powerful international institutions" and with the "legitimacy" that entails. There haven't been many instances in the Bush years of the US government acting constructively with international institutions to address issues of common concern, but in the handful of instances when it has happened (Ukraine and Lebanon come to mind) what you mostly heard from liberals was "now that's how it should be done." I haven't seen influential Democrats agitating to cut off the various NATO deployments in the Balkans or Afghanistan.
I know when one doesn't have many ideas it's tempting to cling to the few you do have, but at some point you just gotta let it go Petey.
Social Security Day
The Social Security Trustees are belatedly releasing their annual report today. Bad press coverage presumably to follow.
Progress
I'll assume this is a technical glitch and not snark, but in this Bloomberg article about the sad state of Iraq reconstruction, after listing all of the various problems the article concludes with:
Signs of Progress
The advancements listed include:
Happy Mission Accomplished Day
I'll let G. Gordon Liddy say all that needs to be said:
LIDDY: Well, I -- in the first place, I think it's envy. I mean, after all, Al Gore had to go get some woman to tell him how to be a man. And here comes George Bush. You know, he's in his flight suit, he's striding across the deck, and he's wearing his parachute harness, you know -- and I've worn those because I parachute -- and it makes the best of his manly characteristic. You go run those -- run that stuff again of him walking across there with the parachute. He has just won every woman's vote in the United States of America. You know, all those women who say size doesn't count -- they're all liars. Check that out.
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