More Chuck Than I Ever Wanted

Little Green Footballs manages to mischaracterize both Chuck's accusations and the backlash to them. He didn't just use the aftermath of the tragedy to attack Soros, but to claim that liberals must not care about "brown people half a world away." This is cheap, and LGF and Glenn Reynolds should both be ashamed for condoning Chuck's statements. Calling these right-wing blogs out on this does not constitute a "vicious attack."

Safire on Character

Today's Safire op-ed is an interesting combination of fluff, cheap-shots, and some genuinely good points about the states of America's two major parties today:

We also see the mark of character, or lack of it, in political parties. The Republican Party today is characterized by a mission to defeat terror while exporting freedom abroad, and a policy to restrain taxes while increasing social spending at home...The G.O.P. personality will split in a couple of years, as all huge majorities do in America. Idealistic neocons will be challenged by plodding, pragmatic paleocons, who, by fuzzing the party's present character, will someday lead it down the road to defeat.

First of all, I think he's dead-on that the G.O.P., and American conservatism in general, are going to undergo a major internal crisis during this next term. However, I don't believe that the "idealistic neocons" are going to be simply dragged down by the paleocons, but rather by a combination of their own naivete and hubris. You can see Safire predicting the downfall of the neocons and trying to ready an explanation that will put the blame on a simple inability to get others on board with their agenda.

If I were starting out in politics or its commentary today, I'd become a Democrat. That's because the party now is six disconsolate characters in search of an author.

Adlai Stevenson called 1952 Republicans "out of patience, out of sorts and out of office." That tight shoe now fits liberals, who have been drifting toward isolationism abroad and fiscal conservatism at home, which for Democrats is out of character. The spirit of Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson is needed to return the party to ideological consistency: interventionist at home and abroad.

He makes some cheap shots about the pathetic nature of the Dems and says that they are "bantam-weight," but he is right that the party would do well to remember the spirit of Scoop Jackson, and not to eschew the late Senator simply because his proteges are failures.

Paying for Bush

This is beyond comprehension.

Good Press

Tsk tsk, Allawi is going to have to learn to be discreet just like the Bush administration. Thanks to Atrios for the tip.

One Voice

From today's Guardian:

A rightwing Christian group last night vowed to step up the campaign against the BBC after its screening of Jerry Springer - The Opera as details emerged of how a small number of determined activists was largely responsible for the biggest-ever protest against the broadcaster.

[emphasis mine]

Remind you of anything?

Rather

Kevin Drum and Atrios have some good -- and similar -- responses to the CBS investigation of the Killian memos. Like Kevin points out, it is unbelievable that the story ever made it to air, and clearly CBS bypassed any normal journalistic background work that would've made sure the story had been watertight (which would have been impossible in this case) in order to ensure that the story made it to air.

What is not the case, however, is that this is an example of liberal media bias. One thing that conservatives are good at is crowing louder than anyone else, and so of the many journalism scandals of the past years, it is the ones from supposedly liberal outlets that garner big headlines. Nothing pleases conservatives more than seeing their favorite targets crash and burn, and being able to paint any mistakes as examples of liberal bias is a bonus. It's not just the double-standard itself that is worrying, but the eventual ramifications of that standard: media outlets towing the conservative line.

What Rather and Company are guilty of is rushing for a big election-time scoop, not a partisan hack-job.

Chuck "Anonymous" Simmins

Holy crap! I was feeling a bit guilty for giving this Chuck Simmins guy a wider forum and wasn't planning to feed him anymore than I already have, but this stuff is too good. To summarize, I posted below in response to his accusation that liberals don't care about "brown people" and made a similar rebuttal on his blog, and he sends me several rambling emails about the U.N. and compares Egeland to John Gotti and Ted Bundy. That was already enough to give me a hint about him, but then this priceless comment by "anonymous" shows up on his site after mine. Here are the choice bits:

What is real petty criticism is bashing Chuck Simmins, a blogger with a small but growing readership...Chuck, in his career as a fireman and EMT has put his life on the line, many times, for his fellow man. Can the disgusted Gabriel say that? I doubt it...The US is there [in South Asia] now and will be in 6 months. Long after Gabriel’s attention has shifted to the impending extinction of the South American rhino weasel, or whatever.

This kind of bat-shit crazy talk is like the holy grail for me, and it's hard to explain how excited I am about it. Just when I thought our nutty exchange was over, "anonymous" comes along and makes my day. Anonymous indeed.

Politicization

It is amazing that Glenn Reynolds links to this disgusting post approvingly, in which some hack blogger blames liberals and "Hollywood types" for not giving enough toward tsunami relief:

Sandra Bullock gave $1 million, Spielberg $1.5 million, Linkin Park $100,000, Ozzie and Sharon Osbourne $190,000, Leonardo DiCaprio an undisclosed sum... don't hold your breath waiting for more. A bunch of Asian stars have made donations in their own region. Lots of musicians are holding fund raising concerts. But, I just listed all the donations.

Google is bare, beyond bare.

Where are the liberals? Or don't poor brown people half a planet away matter? Soros, and the other who gave tens of millions to defeat George Bush and yet not a penny for this, a far more worthy cause. Where are the screaming horses from MoveOn, the Deaniacs, the folks from ANSWER?

Nowhere to be found. The silence on the left is profound.

In the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, when many Americans were asking that the government give more than $15 million, some conservatives such as David Brooks couldn't help themselves and lashed out at these comments as being liberal politicization of the tragedy. Now this blogger and Glenn Reynolds are going even further and suggesting that liberals don't care about the tragedy. I couldn't care less what the anonymous blogger above thinks, but Reynolds is supposedly the preeminent conservative blogger in the US, and this is what he comes up with. Talk about an obscene politicization of tragedy.

Goldberg on Pragmatism

It's worth checking out Jonah Goldberg's critique of Pragmatism before I make a few comments on his own conclusions. Like Jonah, I rely on the excellent book The Metaphysical Club for most of my knowledge about Pragmatism, in addition to some old college philsophy courses. Oliver Wendell Holmes's impact on legal theory was partly due to his belief in creating law based on the idea of the "reasonable man." From Jonah:

How does one determine what is reasonable? By in effect taking a statistical average of the community's standards. Early Pragmatists were deeply enamored with statistical techniques like the law of errors, which held — sorta kinda — that you could find the true answer to a problem by averaging out the wrong answers.

So Pragmatism in this sense is seen as a stripping away of "metaphysical irrelevancies," and in their place creating law based on the common, or average, man's standards. In such a way, there would be no need and no place in the law for talk of morality or for overly sentimental criteria. As Goldberg quotes Holmes saying, "A man may have as bad a heart as he chooses, if his conduct is within the rules." The epitome of this reasonable man doctrine is the trial jury, where a defendant is supposedly being judged by a representative sample of the community who are, by Holmes's statistically-inclined thinking, themselves representing the community's standards.

Jonah's objections, roughly, seem to be the following:

1) The reasonable man doctrine leads to "corrosion," so that eventually it is the fringes of society that are defended at all costs regardless of where the common man stands.

2) Law should be based on what is right and wrong, not on what is efficient.

Jonah is eloquent and thoughtful in his arguments for both points, particularly the second. If there are only utilitarian underpinnings for a society's laws, rather than learning any sense of right or wrong people merely learn to "play the odds" with regard to the law, i.e. to see what you can get away with. The question is how we agree on right and wrong, and Jonah's conclusion that the law is not value-free and that the only question is "which values will triumph" suggests that his piece is simply a long-winded reminder that this is a culture war.

He is less convincing on the first point and never really explains his fatalistic attitude about the corrosion of the reasonable man doctrine. His description of the mainstream having to bow to the fringes of society is typical of the conservative reaction to the gay rights movement, and I think he actually gets the weakness of the reasonable man doctrine completely wrong: if this doctrine were always upheld, would integration have ever occurred in the South? The reasonable man doctrine is precisely not overly concerned with outliers. In other words, Pragmatism in law doesn't exactly look out for the fringes of society.

The other weakness of using statistics in law, which Goldberg seems to miss in his critique, is that it is not the most helpful technique in a country that is neatly polarized on key issues. If 50% support the availability of legal abortion and 50% oppose abortion, who is the reasonable man? Where does the compromise lie?

I have my own problems with Pragmatism. On a general note, it seems like an excuse to let religion back into serious philosophy (which I think was precisely William James's goal), though that has little bearing here on Holmes and legal theory. As far as creating a society's laws, I find the Rawlsian approach to be the most persuasive, especially the veil of ignorance. It basically poses the hypothetical question of what kind of society you would create if you had no idea what role you would play in that society. Rawls argues that fairness would be your priority when constructing a justice system, as you would want good opportunities regardless of the lot in life into which you were born.

Goldberg once dismissed Rawlsians as people who prioritized fairness over freedom, but I think he misses the crucial point that for a good majority of people -- especially on the lower ends of society -- fairness is a kind of freedom. Julian Baggini not long ago argued that conservatives fail to see that there are two types of freedom, negative and positive. The libertarian strain of conservatism really only recognizes the first.

Poseur

Senator Bill Frist, a medical doctor, instructing Red Cross volunteers in Sri Lanka on how to purify water using chlorine tablets. This is the same medical doctor who recently told George Stephanopolous that you can contract AIDS through sweat and tears, so I'm not sure he should be instructing volunteers in anything. While touring areas destroyed by the tsunami, Frist posed for some pictures and told photographers to "get some devastation in back." 

Money and Missing Balls

Atrios was among the first bloggers to pick up on this startling USA Today story about commentator Armstrong Williams being paid taxpayer money from the Department of Education in order to promote the No Child Left Behind act, and now the story has made it to some of the other bigs, here and here. From the latter:

Williams called criticism of his relationship with the department "legitimate."

"It's a fine line," he told The Associated Press on Friday. "Even though I'm not a journalist -- I'm a commentator -- I feel I should be held to the media ethics standard. My judgment was not the best. I wouldn't do it again, and I learned from it."

Having said that, he doesn't intend to give the nearly quarter of a million dollars of taxpayer money back anytime soon. I'm pretty sure that that call won't be his, and that some Department of Education officials need to go down with him. It's not only Democrats who are rightly noting that the whole thing stinks and needs to be investigated. Here's Jonah, a voice of reason on the right:

I think it was stupid and unacceptable for the Administration to give him the money. If the Clinton Administration had been paying off liberal pundits to promote his policies we would have gone batty, and rightly so. A better explanation is required. The whole thing seems gross to me.

The comparisons with Soviet media are apt. By the way, my favorite article on the Williams affair is from Howie; his piece is infinitely more amusing when you make your way through this.

Oh, and speaking of people who need to return things like really soon, do the right thing, Minky.

Crossfire

"I had no idea that if you want a show cancelled, all you have to do is say it out loud." - Jon Stewart

Taking it to the Max

Through the conservative blog Little Green Footballs I came across this hilariously biased "newssource" called NewsMax, which I'm not sure how I missed before. Note how they report on John Kerry's appearance in Baghdad:

Kerry Trashes Bush in Baghdad

Visiting with U.S. troops in Baghdad on Thursday, failed presidential candidate John Kerry trashed Commander-in-chief George Bush for making "horrendous judgments" and "unbelievable blunders" that have undermined the war effort.

In a series of demoralizing comments first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, the defeated Democrat griped, "What is sad about what's happening here now is that so much of it is a process of catching up from the enormous miscalculations and wrong judgments made in the beginning."

Let's take another look, this time from the Chronicle's original article:

Kerry cheered in Baghdad, decries Bush team's 'blunders'
Once criticized for war stance, he says force alone won't win

Kerry, who repeatedly charged during the presidential campaign that President Bush had botched the war effort, was greeted warmly by U.S. soldiers in Baghdad...U.S. soldiers approached Kerry inside the restaurant of the Rashid Hotel, asking him to pose for photographs and sign T-shirts. The star-struck restaurant manager insisted on serving Kerry the restaurant's specialty, a plate of grilled chicken and lamb.

I won't keep picking on such easy targets as Coulter, Little Green Footalls, and NewsMax, but they are worth periodically checking out for a comic diversion.

Dick II

Holy crap, Jon Stewart really did destroy Crossfire:

The bow-tied wearing conservative pundit got into a public tussle last fall with comic Jon Stewart, who has been critical of cable political programs that devolve into shoutfests.

"I guess I come down more firmly in the Jon Stewart camp," [CNN chief executive Jonathan] Klein told The Associated Press.

Jon Stewart, folk hero. And good for CNN for doing this.

More Coulter Deceit

In responding to those who have suggested that the original tsunami aid package of $15 million from the U.S. was not enough, Ann Coulter made this bizarre but not-surprising-for-Coulter swipe at Senator Patty Murray:

And has some enterprising reporter asked Sen. Patty Murray what she thinks about the U.S.'s efforts on the tsunami? How about compared to famed philanthropist Osama bin Laden?

In December 2002, Murray was extolling Osama bin Laden's good works in the Middle East, informing a classroom of students: "He's been out in these countries for decades building roads, building schools, building infrastructure, building day-care facilities, building health-care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. It made their lives better." What does Murray say about bin Laden's charity toward the (mostly Muslim) tsunami victims?

It's amazing that conservatives are still trying to get some traction out of this lie. Patty Murray was saying that it is crucial to find out why bin Laden is so popular in much of the Muslim world, as U.S. attempts to crush al-Qaeda need to take these questions into consideration. Does Coulter understand what extol means? Any serious student of al-Qaeda and the war on terror would be asking the same question Murray was asking.

Ann Coulter, On the Edge of Reason

I try to avoid linking to people like Ann Coulter, as they are provocative precisely because it gets them more attention, even if it is mostly outrage. Coulter brings nothing to the table in terms of a national conversation, and she is barely coherent, but the sad truth is that a lot of people on the far right read her and The New York Observer saw fit to lavish more attention on her. Anyway, I couldn't skip this challenge:

"I’m thinking about putting up a reward on my Web page for any liberal who will mention either Afghanistan or the Kurds," she said. "I mean, 85 percent of Iraq is free, it’s beautiful—we have about 300 troops patrolling the entire Kurdish area. These poor beleaguered Kurds are free, are happy, are dancing in the streets, and liberals simply won’t mention them. I certainly thought Afghanistan was going to be a tougher nut to crack than Iraq—the Russians couldn’t take Afghanistan! They’ve basically been at war for a hundred years—even when nobody’s there, they’re at war with one another. We took Afghanistan in a month, and now they’ve had elections and women vote, and they didn’t vote for some crazy lunatic mullahs. So that’s a pretty good year."

During this "good year," the head of the CIA's bin Laden unit published a book called Imperial Hubris, and let's see what he thought about the U.S. tactics in Afghanistan 2001-2004:

Ignoring reality, Secretary Rumsfeld -- with the Taleban and al Qaeda intact, Karzai's writ fading, and guerilla warfare flaring -- went to Kabul in May, 2003 to declare victory. Mr. Rumsfeld, to be charitable, is ill-informed; America's Afghan war is still in its infancy.
--
Sadly, firsthand experience [of previous wars in Afghanistan] and sage advice were ignored. In the face of this reality, U.S. government leaders, generals, media, and experts nonetheless have spoken as if our endeavors had brought forth a budding mini-America in Afghanistan.
--
As noted in Chapter 2, the conduct of the Afghan war approaches perfection -- in the sense of perfectly inept.

If Coulter wants to argue that the situation in Afghanistan is better than we could have hoped, fine; but to suggest that our experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq have been so positive as to be beyond criticism is nuts. So what's the reward she's offering, I wonder?

While we're at it, here are a few more gems from the Observer interview:

The Iraqi people didn’t seem to have that great a Christmas.

"That’s right! But they’ll be opening Christmas presents soon enough," she said. "And then they’ll be happy. We’ll see, but things are going pretty well, and in most cases better than expected. We’re going to transform the Middle East by the time Bush leaves office, or it will be within shouting distance of there. I think Arabs flying planes into our skyscrapers will be as likely as a Japanese kamikaze pilot."

Yep, that's our real goal: get Iraqis to celebrate Christmas.

"I’m getting a little fed up with hearing about, oh, civilian casualties. I think we ought to nuke North Korea right now just to give the rest of the world a warning."

Nuke North Korea?

"Right—and this is tied to my point that, in Iraq, let the Marines do their job. There may be some civilian casualties—that’s known as war. Americans can live with that. And when did we become the guardian of the world to prevent all civilian casualties, ever—how about our civilians?"

--

What should we remember about Bill Clinton?

"Well, he was a very good rapist. I think that should not be forgotten."

Staying Fit in Jet City

I love the cliches that national writers always resort to when writing about Seattle:

"Eighty-five percent of Seattle residents get some exercise every month, and that's a really significant thing," Boulton said. The city's jittery love affair with espresso might fuel some of that activity, he noted: "There's not only a lot of it, it's pretty darn strong."

Are you sure it's not because of all the grunge we listen to?

Dick

No matter what anyone says to the contrary, it was Jon Stewart who destroyed Crossfire. Tucker Carlson sinking into the anonymous depths of MSNBC sounds about right.

Social Security

Josh Marshall, with the help of a Rove underling's leaked memo, gets to the bottom of what the Social Security debate is really about: not a debate about an unsustainable course, but a disagreement over what Social Security represents in the first place.

Buruma and Van Gogh

After being gone for a few weeks, I'll be posting more regularly starting in the next day or so. Till then, check out Ian Buruma's account of the fallout from the Theo Van Gogh murder in last week's New Yorker.