This is one of the best political ads I have ever seen.
I really do intend to start posting here more often. I promise.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Law Roolz.
An extraordinary speech by Chris Dodd.
Take my advice: read the text version, rather than watching the video. His delivery leaves much to be desired. But the speech itself is fairly astonishing. If I were a member of his Senatorial constituency, I'd be damn proud today.
Take my advice: read the text version, rather than watching the video. His delivery leaves much to be desired. But the speech itself is fairly astonishing. If I were a member of his Senatorial constituency, I'd be damn proud today.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
See? Alberto J. Mora gets it!
Former Navy general counsel Alberto J. Mora, in a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee: ". . .our Nation's policy decision to use so-called 'harsh' interrogation techniques during the War on Terror was a mistake of massive proportions. . . . This interrogation policy -- which may aptly be labeled a 'policy of cruelty' -- violated our founding values, our constitutional system and the fabric of our laws, our over-arching foreign policy interests, and our national security. . . . The United States was founded on the principle that every person -- not just each citizen -- possesses certain inalienable rights that no government, including our own, may violate."
He'd probably punch me if I hugged him. Oh well.
He'd probably punch me if I hugged him. Oh well.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
Hey, whaddaya know?
A victory for the rule of law. How 'bout that.
And I actually do think it's appropriate to put things in such stark terms. (Here's where I get all twinkly-eyed and ridiculous. Just a warning.)
When I was a kid, reading in school about presidents and Congresses and courts and all that, and history, I used to wonder - occasionally out loud - what stopped this or that president from just unilaterally overruling laws and court decisions he didn't like. Like, for example, I used to wonder why, during the 60s, John Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson didn't just say, "Oh, we'll not be having any of that segregation stuff anymore," and send the friggin' Army in to stop people from mistreating black people. Or, when I read about impeachment, about how the Congress could basically fire the president, I used to wonder what would stop the president from just saying, "Nope, I think I'll stay president." When a president had served his two terms and it came time to elect someone else, who could stop him from deciding he wanted to stay president? Who, I wondered, was going to stop him? He doesn't have a boss, in the vertical, linear sense. And nobody else in the country gets to have direct authority over the military. What stops a president from doing whatever he wants? Doesn't he basically rule the country?
Reading about and wondering about this crap, I eventually found my way to a couple of really elusive, ethereal concepts that I was terrified to discover basically amount to the entire fabric of constitutional democracy. The first is the concept of checks-and-balances, which is to say that the branches of government (the executive, the legislative, and the judicial, plus the unofficial fourth branch, the free press) are each others' bosses and each others' employees, at the same time. The other concept is even more frustrating: the concept that neither the Congress, nor the presidency, nor the courts actually rules the United States. What rules the United States - what unites them and has sovereignty over them - is Constitutional law. And the three branches of government are servants of the Constitution. Congress addresses contemporary issues by adapting the Constitution into practical legislation; the Executive enforces and upholds that legislation and defends it from the outside; the Judiciary ensures that neither the legislation nor the execution of it conflict with the Constitution. The word "Constitution" isn't what I thought it was when I was a kid: a fancy-sounding, archaic, meaningless word that basically means, "Really Important Old Piece of Paper." It means what it says: the Constitution constitutes the United States. The United States are made of the Constitution.
Of course, the Constitution is, literally, an old piece of parchment. It doesn't rule anything. So that queasy feeling you might get from thinking about this stuff might come from the fact that this blog post is a pedantic, intellectual, silly waste of time - or it might be the quiet background realization that the sovereignty of Constitutional law in this country basically boils down to an uneasy and mostly-unenforceable agreement between very powerful, very ambitious parties, any of whom could decide to test the limits of their authority at any time. This danger is embodied by the presidency: it's an office occupied by one single person, and awarded by a process that weeds out everyone but the very most single-minded, ambitious, power-hungry, obsessive lunatics in the world. And, it's an office that gives this single-minded, ambitious, power-hungry, obsessive lunatic authority over the military, the police, the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet, foreign-policymaking, and last but not least, the ability to unilaterally veto legislation on a whim. If any branch of the government were to say, "Yeah, this democracy stuff is nice, but I've decided to cancel it and give all the power to myself," it'd be the Executive branch, if only because the president doesn't really have to compromise with anybody, when you get right down to it.
But that gets me thinking about other ways in which the fabric of our society is held together by nothing more than the good faith, goodwill, and - to a depressingly large extent - inertia of individuals. If the president gives a direct order to a soldier, that soldier must obey it, says the law. But what enforces that law? The soldier has a gun, and in most cases the president doesn't. If that soldier says no, he's not going to follow that order, the law says that soldier must be arrested. If that soldier says no, he's not going to allow himself to be arrested today, what's left? Force? Getting a bigger gun? More guns than he's got? Holy shit-balls, why isn't this country ruled by roving bands of renegade soldiers, taking whatever they want? Why aren't we in a military dictatorship?
To a large extent, democratic society holds together for no greater reason than that people have a distaste for warring over every little damned thing we don't like doing. But no, things really aren't that bleak and inhuman. To an even larger extent, democratic society holds together because we just kind of have an innate sense that it has to. It should. Because we people have evolved over the centuries an understanding that ultimately, the reality that we all have to make sacrifices in order to have the peaceful, prosperous, comfortable lives we want is inescapable. Either we can make those sacrifices peacefully, by participating in a herky-jerky, wildly imperfect, bottomlessly messy democratic society that as often as not yields results that will bitterly disappoint us... or we can make those sacrifices violently, by living brutish, dangerous, blood-soaked, spiritually empty lives trying to have exactly what we want at any given moment. And, the peaceful option works better - because the secret, the ingenious subtlety that tends to hold things together, is that ultimately, all anyone really wants is peace and a sense that the world operates justly. And that reality - the paradoxical and endlessly frustrating reality that in order to have peace and justice, we can never have everything that we want, even if all we want is peace and justice all the time - applies to everyone. Even presidents.
Which, ultimately, is what this most recent Supreme Court ruling is about. Law rules, because when we 'Mericans are forced to make a decision, we tend to prefer the benevolent and cooperative sloppiness of law's rule to the horrifying and chaotic void of autocracy. And I know "autocracy" is a scary and loaded word, conjuring up images of storm troopers and thought police and rigid control, and I know the Bush administration has never lived up to these nightmare images. I'm not using that word accidentally, but literally. Autocracy denotes, quite simply, a society in which authority is consolidated in a single person. Not in a single elected office, but in a single person - and that's an important distinction. An office - even one held by a single person - has abstract but defined boundaries. When authority is consolidated in a person, rather than in an office, that individual person's whims are unbound by law. And it's neither an exaggeration nor a political attack to say that the Bush administration has advanced an autocratic notion of government since 9/11: their basic message has been that these are extraordinary times, requiring the president to be able to act quickly and unilaterally as he - and no one else - sees fit. They've advanced the notion that when existing law conflicts with the president's agenda - his self-appointed mission - his personal authority trumps the existing law.
Think about how dangerous this notion is. Suppose Barack Obama turns out to be a secret Maoist? Suppose John McCain decides he wants to lob hydrogen bombs at China, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela? Just because we might agree with a particular president's agenda doesn't change the fact that it's unforgivably irresponsible to hand over unchecked authority to him. Many of the same folks who supported George W. Bush's attempts at claiming boundless executive power would likely feel quite differently if the next president decided to use the term "enemy combatant" on, say, Christians, and ship us all off to Guantanamo Bay for some "enhanced interrogation techniques."
Which is why we have a Supreme Court: they take all this in, review it, and give it a resounding thumbs-down. (Actually, not so resounding: a 5-4 decision is hardly a thunderous statement.) There's no small amount of irony to it, either: the very least democratic branch of government - justices aren't democratically elected but rather appointed, serve for life, and are not accountable for their decisions - strikes a staggering haymaker for the rule of law. I'll take it.
And I actually do think it's appropriate to put things in such stark terms. (Here's where I get all twinkly-eyed and ridiculous. Just a warning.)
When I was a kid, reading in school about presidents and Congresses and courts and all that, and history, I used to wonder - occasionally out loud - what stopped this or that president from just unilaterally overruling laws and court decisions he didn't like. Like, for example, I used to wonder why, during the 60s, John Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson didn't just say, "Oh, we'll not be having any of that segregation stuff anymore," and send the friggin' Army in to stop people from mistreating black people. Or, when I read about impeachment, about how the Congress could basically fire the president, I used to wonder what would stop the president from just saying, "Nope, I think I'll stay president." When a president had served his two terms and it came time to elect someone else, who could stop him from deciding he wanted to stay president? Who, I wondered, was going to stop him? He doesn't have a boss, in the vertical, linear sense. And nobody else in the country gets to have direct authority over the military. What stops a president from doing whatever he wants? Doesn't he basically rule the country?
Reading about and wondering about this crap, I eventually found my way to a couple of really elusive, ethereal concepts that I was terrified to discover basically amount to the entire fabric of constitutional democracy. The first is the concept of checks-and-balances, which is to say that the branches of government (the executive, the legislative, and the judicial, plus the unofficial fourth branch, the free press) are each others' bosses and each others' employees, at the same time. The other concept is even more frustrating: the concept that neither the Congress, nor the presidency, nor the courts actually rules the United States. What rules the United States - what unites them and has sovereignty over them - is Constitutional law. And the three branches of government are servants of the Constitution. Congress addresses contemporary issues by adapting the Constitution into practical legislation; the Executive enforces and upholds that legislation and defends it from the outside; the Judiciary ensures that neither the legislation nor the execution of it conflict with the Constitution. The word "Constitution" isn't what I thought it was when I was a kid: a fancy-sounding, archaic, meaningless word that basically means, "Really Important Old Piece of Paper." It means what it says: the Constitution constitutes the United States. The United States are made of the Constitution.
Of course, the Constitution is, literally, an old piece of parchment. It doesn't rule anything. So that queasy feeling you might get from thinking about this stuff might come from the fact that this blog post is a pedantic, intellectual, silly waste of time - or it might be the quiet background realization that the sovereignty of Constitutional law in this country basically boils down to an uneasy and mostly-unenforceable agreement between very powerful, very ambitious parties, any of whom could decide to test the limits of their authority at any time. This danger is embodied by the presidency: it's an office occupied by one single person, and awarded by a process that weeds out everyone but the very most single-minded, ambitious, power-hungry, obsessive lunatics in the world. And, it's an office that gives this single-minded, ambitious, power-hungry, obsessive lunatic authority over the military, the police, the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet, foreign-policymaking, and last but not least, the ability to unilaterally veto legislation on a whim. If any branch of the government were to say, "Yeah, this democracy stuff is nice, but I've decided to cancel it and give all the power to myself," it'd be the Executive branch, if only because the president doesn't really have to compromise with anybody, when you get right down to it.
But that gets me thinking about other ways in which the fabric of our society is held together by nothing more than the good faith, goodwill, and - to a depressingly large extent - inertia of individuals. If the president gives a direct order to a soldier, that soldier must obey it, says the law. But what enforces that law? The soldier has a gun, and in most cases the president doesn't. If that soldier says no, he's not going to follow that order, the law says that soldier must be arrested. If that soldier says no, he's not going to allow himself to be arrested today, what's left? Force? Getting a bigger gun? More guns than he's got? Holy shit-balls, why isn't this country ruled by roving bands of renegade soldiers, taking whatever they want? Why aren't we in a military dictatorship?
To a large extent, democratic society holds together for no greater reason than that people have a distaste for warring over every little damned thing we don't like doing. But no, things really aren't that bleak and inhuman. To an even larger extent, democratic society holds together because we just kind of have an innate sense that it has to. It should. Because we people have evolved over the centuries an understanding that ultimately, the reality that we all have to make sacrifices in order to have the peaceful, prosperous, comfortable lives we want is inescapable. Either we can make those sacrifices peacefully, by participating in a herky-jerky, wildly imperfect, bottomlessly messy democratic society that as often as not yields results that will bitterly disappoint us... or we can make those sacrifices violently, by living brutish, dangerous, blood-soaked, spiritually empty lives trying to have exactly what we want at any given moment. And, the peaceful option works better - because the secret, the ingenious subtlety that tends to hold things together, is that ultimately, all anyone really wants is peace and a sense that the world operates justly. And that reality - the paradoxical and endlessly frustrating reality that in order to have peace and justice, we can never have everything that we want, even if all we want is peace and justice all the time - applies to everyone. Even presidents.
Which, ultimately, is what this most recent Supreme Court ruling is about. Law rules, because when we 'Mericans are forced to make a decision, we tend to prefer the benevolent and cooperative sloppiness of law's rule to the horrifying and chaotic void of autocracy. And I know "autocracy" is a scary and loaded word, conjuring up images of storm troopers and thought police and rigid control, and I know the Bush administration has never lived up to these nightmare images. I'm not using that word accidentally, but literally. Autocracy denotes, quite simply, a society in which authority is consolidated in a single person. Not in a single elected office, but in a single person - and that's an important distinction. An office - even one held by a single person - has abstract but defined boundaries. When authority is consolidated in a person, rather than in an office, that individual person's whims are unbound by law. And it's neither an exaggeration nor a political attack to say that the Bush administration has advanced an autocratic notion of government since 9/11: their basic message has been that these are extraordinary times, requiring the president to be able to act quickly and unilaterally as he - and no one else - sees fit. They've advanced the notion that when existing law conflicts with the president's agenda - his self-appointed mission - his personal authority trumps the existing law.
Think about how dangerous this notion is. Suppose Barack Obama turns out to be a secret Maoist? Suppose John McCain decides he wants to lob hydrogen bombs at China, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela? Just because we might agree with a particular president's agenda doesn't change the fact that it's unforgivably irresponsible to hand over unchecked authority to him. Many of the same folks who supported George W. Bush's attempts at claiming boundless executive power would likely feel quite differently if the next president decided to use the term "enemy combatant" on, say, Christians, and ship us all off to Guantanamo Bay for some "enhanced interrogation techniques."
Which is why we have a Supreme Court: they take all this in, review it, and give it a resounding thumbs-down. (Actually, not so resounding: a 5-4 decision is hardly a thunderous statement.) There's no small amount of irony to it, either: the very least democratic branch of government - justices aren't democratically elected but rather appointed, serve for life, and are not accountable for their decisions - strikes a staggering haymaker for the rule of law. I'll take it.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Oh, so NOW he's a bad guy...
Evidence of the vital importance of Jewish voters in the upcoming presidential election: John McCain wouldn't reject John Hagee's endorsement when he found out Hagee called the Roman Catholic Church the "great whore," wouldn't reject Hagee's endorsement when he said Hurricane Katrina was an act of God's retribution, but he rejects his endorsement now, over a nearly 20-year-old sermon about Adolf Hitler.
Look, obviously the stuff Hagee said about Hitler - that Hitler was carrying out God's work of driving the Jews to Israel - is insane, offensive, horrible, and utterly intolerable. And, yes, on a measure, it has to be considered worse than what he said about the Church, at least. But why is it OK for Hagee to suggest that God likes to wipe out poor black people in the Mississippi River delta, but not OK for Hagee to suggest that God likes to wipe out Jews?
The point I'm trying to make here is not that Hurricane Katrina and the Holocaust are in any way equal, because they're not. Nor am I trying to suggest that McCain shouldn't have rejected Hagee's endorsement, because he absolutely should have. I'm just saying I'm awfully disappointed that he didn't get around to it until now. The time to reject John Hagee was back when he first endorsed McCain - why didn't he do it then?
Well, I've got a (very dispiriting) theory about it. Back when Hagee endorsed McCain, McCain was still trying to sew up the Republican nomination and needed as much support from far-right Protestantnutjobs voters as he could get. More importantly, back then the Democrats were still thickly embroiled in their own nominating battle and had neither the political capital nor the time to sharply criticize McCain for accepting the endorsement of a fringe anti-Catholic bigot who likes to preach that one of the worst mass murderers in human history was an instrument of God's hand. Now, of course, the Democratic nominating process is perceived to be all but technically over, so McCain's new focus is to try to beat Barack Obama to the political middle. One thing he definitely cannot bring with him on this trip is an affiliation with a guy who thinks Adolf Hitler was doing God's work. Now it's politically expedient to ditch Hagee. Now there's political capital to be gained by stridently renouncing his particular brand of lunacy.
One of the groups of voters that sits squarely in the political middle - that turf McCain and Obama will be clawing to reach between now and November - is American Jews. Generally speaking, they're profiled as being progressive on most social issues but leaning hard to the right on one particular issue: the security of Israel. So, how does this play for McCain? On the one hand, no rational person, no matter how grateful they are for Israel's existence, would say that Adolf Hitler did a good thing by damn near exterminating the entire Jewish diaspora. And remember, Hagee said Hitler did God's work, and God's work is always good, right? On the other hand, Hagee is also one of the United States' most prominent and fanatical supporters of Israel - the term "Christian Zionist" was practically coined in reference to him.
And, on the third hand (use your imagination), doesn't it just kind of seem absurd that McCain's camp is claiming they didn't know Hagee was a lunatic back when they accepted his endorsement? What, they don't have a single person on the entire campaign whose job it is to make sure the candidate doesn't publicly and proudly accept the endorsements of fringe lunatics whose positions are repugnant to damn near the entire world?
The reality is, I suspect, that McCain's camp had a pretty good idea this stuff was true about Hagee back when he endorsed McCain. And, because they're mostly savvy people who know their way around a campaign, they knew it would eventually come out, and that when it did, McCain would have to renounce Hagee. But they went ahead and made a show of accepting the endorsement anyway. Because at the time, it was politically valuable: it gave McCain a foothold with the Christian right, and by refusing to reject Hagee's endorsement when his offensive statements about the world's largest Church and one of its oldest and greatest institutions came to light, McCain could also pump a little more air into his "maverick" persona. John McCain for President in 2008: Right-Wingers Like Him, And He Also Don't Back Down For No Man!
And now, there's even more political capital to be wrung out of Hagee - political capital that wouldn't have been available if McCain had rejected him back when the party nominations were still the primary focus, rather than the general election run-to-the-center bonanza. Now, McCain can distance himself from the religious right exactly at the moment that he's trying to endear himself to the independent and moderate voters he'll be courting in the fall... and by rejecting the endorsement of a prominent conservative, he can pump yet more air into his "maverick" persona.
Look. Here's where I'd say something conciliatory and moderate about how this kind of manipulation and cynicism isn't a characteristic solely of McCain but rather of the sick political culture in this country. Or something about how all politicians do it. But the thing is, this is characteristic of McCain, even if it's also a regular feature of our diseased political culture. The media cut McCain a lot of slack because he feeds them quotes and cultivates friendships in the press, but this is the same guy who raked the Bush administration over the coals for the war in Iraq before pulling a complete 180 and raving about what a great success it's been. Remember his infamous tour of Baghdad, the one after which he said the city was perfectly safe for a stroll, only it turned out he was surrounded by more military security than the friggin' White House the entire time? That was John McCain, playing the game. The administration needed one of its prominent critics - the "maverick" with the reputation for integrity and honesty - to get on board with the troop surge so Fox News could beat their drums and let the air out of the anti-war movement. McCain needed to get his toe in the door with conservatives so he could start financing his presidential campaign early. So they cut a deal. Just like he cut deals a thousand other times. Just like the thousand other times he talked big, called out members of his own party, made a big deal of being the guy who was Bigger Than Partisanship, and then rolled right the hell over when it came time to put some actual action behind it.
The truth is, John McCain's got all the integrity in the world, right up until he spots something he needs, and then all those much-discussed convictions go flying right the hell out the window. He couldn't sell himself out quickly enough once this presidential campaign got tough. And every step of the way, he's worked the sniveling, buddy-buddy, lapdog media like a damn hand-puppet, and they've been all-too happy to comply. When it got tough to raise funds for his campaign, he sold off campaign jobs to powerful lobbyists. When he got busted for having a campaign full of lobbyists while presenting himself as the anti-special-interest candidate, he instituted a new "ethics" rule that led to the shit-canning of all the lobbyists on his campaign... and what did the media do? Not a damned thing, except maybe go another round of selling John McCain as the guy who's so opposed to special interests, he gutted his own campaign just to clean it of the stain of lobbyists. And pump a little more air into his "maverick" persona.
Recognize the pattern? You ought to. He's been at it for decades. Sell out early, then rebound by working the media. Or work the media early, and sell out later.
Look, obviously the stuff Hagee said about Hitler - that Hitler was carrying out God's work of driving the Jews to Israel - is insane, offensive, horrible, and utterly intolerable. And, yes, on a measure, it has to be considered worse than what he said about the Church, at least. But why is it OK for Hagee to suggest that God likes to wipe out poor black people in the Mississippi River delta, but not OK for Hagee to suggest that God likes to wipe out Jews?
The point I'm trying to make here is not that Hurricane Katrina and the Holocaust are in any way equal, because they're not. Nor am I trying to suggest that McCain shouldn't have rejected Hagee's endorsement, because he absolutely should have. I'm just saying I'm awfully disappointed that he didn't get around to it until now. The time to reject John Hagee was back when he first endorsed McCain - why didn't he do it then?
Well, I've got a (very dispiriting) theory about it. Back when Hagee endorsed McCain, McCain was still trying to sew up the Republican nomination and needed as much support from far-right Protestant
One of the groups of voters that sits squarely in the political middle - that turf McCain and Obama will be clawing to reach between now and November - is American Jews. Generally speaking, they're profiled as being progressive on most social issues but leaning hard to the right on one particular issue: the security of Israel. So, how does this play for McCain? On the one hand, no rational person, no matter how grateful they are for Israel's existence, would say that Adolf Hitler did a good thing by damn near exterminating the entire Jewish diaspora. And remember, Hagee said Hitler did God's work, and God's work is always good, right? On the other hand, Hagee is also one of the United States' most prominent and fanatical supporters of Israel - the term "Christian Zionist" was practically coined in reference to him.
And, on the third hand (use your imagination), doesn't it just kind of seem absurd that McCain's camp is claiming they didn't know Hagee was a lunatic back when they accepted his endorsement? What, they don't have a single person on the entire campaign whose job it is to make sure the candidate doesn't publicly and proudly accept the endorsements of fringe lunatics whose positions are repugnant to damn near the entire world?
The reality is, I suspect, that McCain's camp had a pretty good idea this stuff was true about Hagee back when he endorsed McCain. And, because they're mostly savvy people who know their way around a campaign, they knew it would eventually come out, and that when it did, McCain would have to renounce Hagee. But they went ahead and made a show of accepting the endorsement anyway. Because at the time, it was politically valuable: it gave McCain a foothold with the Christian right, and by refusing to reject Hagee's endorsement when his offensive statements about the world's largest Church and one of its oldest and greatest institutions came to light, McCain could also pump a little more air into his "maverick" persona. John McCain for President in 2008: Right-Wingers Like Him, And He Also Don't Back Down For No Man!
And now, there's even more political capital to be wrung out of Hagee - political capital that wouldn't have been available if McCain had rejected him back when the party nominations were still the primary focus, rather than the general election run-to-the-center bonanza. Now, McCain can distance himself from the religious right exactly at the moment that he's trying to endear himself to the independent and moderate voters he'll be courting in the fall... and by rejecting the endorsement of a prominent conservative, he can pump yet more air into his "maverick" persona.
Look. Here's where I'd say something conciliatory and moderate about how this kind of manipulation and cynicism isn't a characteristic solely of McCain but rather of the sick political culture in this country. Or something about how all politicians do it. But the thing is, this is characteristic of McCain, even if it's also a regular feature of our diseased political culture. The media cut McCain a lot of slack because he feeds them quotes and cultivates friendships in the press, but this is the same guy who raked the Bush administration over the coals for the war in Iraq before pulling a complete 180 and raving about what a great success it's been. Remember his infamous tour of Baghdad, the one after which he said the city was perfectly safe for a stroll, only it turned out he was surrounded by more military security than the friggin' White House the entire time? That was John McCain, playing the game. The administration needed one of its prominent critics - the "maverick" with the reputation for integrity and honesty - to get on board with the troop surge so Fox News could beat their drums and let the air out of the anti-war movement. McCain needed to get his toe in the door with conservatives so he could start financing his presidential campaign early. So they cut a deal. Just like he cut deals a thousand other times. Just like the thousand other times he talked big, called out members of his own party, made a big deal of being the guy who was Bigger Than Partisanship, and then rolled right the hell over when it came time to put some actual action behind it.
The truth is, John McCain's got all the integrity in the world, right up until he spots something he needs, and then all those much-discussed convictions go flying right the hell out the window. He couldn't sell himself out quickly enough once this presidential campaign got tough. And every step of the way, he's worked the sniveling, buddy-buddy, lapdog media like a damn hand-puppet, and they've been all-too happy to comply. When it got tough to raise funds for his campaign, he sold off campaign jobs to powerful lobbyists. When he got busted for having a campaign full of lobbyists while presenting himself as the anti-special-interest candidate, he instituted a new "ethics" rule that led to the shit-canning of all the lobbyists on his campaign... and what did the media do? Not a damned thing, except maybe go another round of selling John McCain as the guy who's so opposed to special interests, he gutted his own campaign just to clean it of the stain of lobbyists. And pump a little more air into his "maverick" persona.
Recognize the pattern? You ought to. He's been at it for decades. Sell out early, then rebound by working the media. Or work the media early, and sell out later.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Ongoing (Scaled-Back, Perfunctory) Feature!
More Netflix Movie Reviews!
In advance: I'm sorry. Not all movies are going to motivate me to write extended, sprawling, rambling reviews. Maybe that's a good thing. I swear I'm going to get back to writing serious entries. After we move, when I've got a tad bit more time to actually, y'know, think about things.
Dave Chappelle: Killin' Them Softly
This is the great stand-up routine at Washington's historic Lincoln Theater, the one that really seemed to kick Dave Chappelle's career into high-gear. I remarked to my wife that it's amazing to watch that routine, which is eight years old now and features a Dave Chappelle who's much rougher around the edges than the guy who left Chappelle's Show and put together the block party in Harlem. It's amazing because, funny as the stand-up routine is, he gets away with a ton simply because of his innate likability. The first half of the routine plays almost like someone doing a parody of the rote, by-the-book, utterly uninspired typical cookie-cutter Def Comedy Jam stand-up comic: "Black people are like this; white people are like that! And women are all, blah blah blah feelings feelings feelings!" This type of comedy is rarely funny or well-observed, and truth be told, many of the jokes in the first half of this Chappelle routine earn nothing better than a mild, appreciative chuckle (from me and my wife, that is, and not so much the audience, who could scarcely laugh harder without dying in the aisles). But damn if I didn't enjoy the hell out of it, just as much as I did back in 2000 when it first appeared on HBO, and the reason is simple: Dave Chappelle is just an insanely, impossibly likable guy. When he kicked up the self-deprecation and the energy level in the second half of the routine, he had us dying on our couch. I could go into greater detail about which bits worked the best, but I'm not going to. This is a fun stand-up comedy show, and like Jim Gaffigan's Beyond the Pale, it gets better as it goes along. I recommend it.
Shaolin Soccer
Really funny, really silly, and occasionally truly inspired in a surreal, mind-blowingly random way. The sudden, spontaneous group-dance scene outside of the bun stand is an example of this. Another example would be the scene that made me laugh so hard I nearly vomited out my lungs: when the female love-interest goes to a beauty parlor to have her hair and ghastly skin condition addressed, and the woman comes out to greet her at the door. I'm not going to spoil the joke. See it for yourself. Stephen Chow is awesome, and is officially one of my favorite actor-directors alive, even if it turns out the rest of his movies suck ass.
In advance: I'm sorry. Not all movies are going to motivate me to write extended, sprawling, rambling reviews. Maybe that's a good thing. I swear I'm going to get back to writing serious entries. After we move, when I've got a tad bit more time to actually, y'know, think about things.
Dave Chappelle: Killin' Them Softly
This is the great stand-up routine at Washington's historic Lincoln Theater, the one that really seemed to kick Dave Chappelle's career into high-gear. I remarked to my wife that it's amazing to watch that routine, which is eight years old now and features a Dave Chappelle who's much rougher around the edges than the guy who left Chappelle's Show and put together the block party in Harlem. It's amazing because, funny as the stand-up routine is, he gets away with a ton simply because of his innate likability. The first half of the routine plays almost like someone doing a parody of the rote, by-the-book, utterly uninspired typical cookie-cutter Def Comedy Jam stand-up comic: "Black people are like this; white people are like that! And women are all, blah blah blah feelings feelings feelings!" This type of comedy is rarely funny or well-observed, and truth be told, many of the jokes in the first half of this Chappelle routine earn nothing better than a mild, appreciative chuckle (from me and my wife, that is, and not so much the audience, who could scarcely laugh harder without dying in the aisles). But damn if I didn't enjoy the hell out of it, just as much as I did back in 2000 when it first appeared on HBO, and the reason is simple: Dave Chappelle is just an insanely, impossibly likable guy. When he kicked up the self-deprecation and the energy level in the second half of the routine, he had us dying on our couch. I could go into greater detail about which bits worked the best, but I'm not going to. This is a fun stand-up comedy show, and like Jim Gaffigan's Beyond the Pale, it gets better as it goes along. I recommend it.
Shaolin Soccer
Really funny, really silly, and occasionally truly inspired in a surreal, mind-blowingly random way. The sudden, spontaneous group-dance scene outside of the bun stand is an example of this. Another example would be the scene that made me laugh so hard I nearly vomited out my lungs: when the female love-interest goes to a beauty parlor to have her hair and ghastly skin condition addressed, and the woman comes out to greet her at the door. I'm not going to spoil the joke. See it for yourself. Stephen Chow is awesome, and is officially one of my favorite actor-directors alive, even if it turns out the rest of his movies suck ass.
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