Category Archives: culture

snakes, snarks, and that ol’ time religion

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What’s news? When I first read of the arrest and roughing up of Amy Goodman and a news team from Democracy Now as they attempted to cover protests outside the RNC in St. Paul, there had been “a virtual news blackout” about these events. And to this day, the mainstream media outlets seem to be ignoring the story. As protesters and journalists were arrested and brutalized outside the DNC in Denver, not much was made of it outside ABC News. YouTube features several videos about both sets of occurrences here and here. Perhaps one reason why such things aren’t news is that they are becoming routine in this country, as Tim Burke explained in a good piece a couple of days ago.

You make a pitch to have the RNC or DNC come to town, or for the WTO to meet in your city, or anything with a similar possibility to attract protest. Not only do you budget for additional security, you budget the cost of the legal judgments you’re almost certain to lose from permitting law enforcement to illegally confiscate property, harass protesters, bend the terms of warrants or ignore them altogether, and carrying out false arrests.

But that shouldn’t stop anybody from supporting the Free Press effort to have charges dropped against Goodman and the other journalists. You can do that here.

Then there was last night, when the tag team of Romney, Huckaby, Giuliani, and Palin showed us forcefully that we can expect the same mixture of lies, ad hominem atacks, and wedge politics from the Republicans this year that we’ve grown accustomed to since the days of Richard Nixon. Why should they change. It’s been a winning formula for them. And they have another pointy-headed intellectual and an unpopular Democratic congress to run against. Indeed, the only surprise in the first couple of days of Republican Schlock and Awe (for me) was the extent to which Joe Lieberman was willing to lend himself to the lies and ad hominem; though perhaps I was a bit surprised that the TV pundits took it as seriously as they did. Early this morning the folks at MSNBC were falling all over themselves praising Sarah Palin, claiming that she will be the first female president, etc. She was good, but she wasn’t that good. And there’s a deeper issue, as Frank Rich pointed out in last Sunday’s column.

Indeed, the disconnect between the reality of this campaign and how it is perceived and presented by the mainstream media is now a major part of the year’s story. The press dysfunction is itself a window into the unstable dynamics of Election 2008.

Part of the difficulty has got to be that the twnty-four hour news cycle, so new just a few short years ago, is now a thing of the past. So much happens in today’s mediascape, and happens so fast, that significances elude us. The Clinton/Obama duel is now forgotten in the unfolding stardom of Sarah Palin. But Republicans might realize, as they gloat over the skewering of Barack, that Sarah Palin’s star will likely wane pretty fast. Many are now comparing Obama unfavorably with her, but the shots at the Democratic nominee are as cheap and sleazy as Lieberman’s lies about Obama’s record in the senate and Giuliani’s sneering references to community organizing. They’ll have about as much shelf-life as Hillary Clinton’s “No way, no how, no McCain.”

And before anybody gets carried away with the fresh face of Sarah Palin, it might be well to reflect that she carries a good deal of political baggage. Yesterday’s New York Times carried a pretty good summary of what has come to light at the moment about her political past. I doubt seriously that these stories will be the end of it. Palin is competitive, pragmatic, and apparently quite ruthless. Nor is she above using her religion to make political capital. as she did before an Assembly of God audience back in June, saying in a speech quoted by The Huffington Post, “I think God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that.” And, in spite of the fact that Palin constantly alludes to this $40 billion pipeline as an accomplishment of her governorship, it isn’t a $40 billion pipeline, it isn’t built, and there’s no plan on anybody’s books to build it. It’s pie in the northern lights.

Rick Davis has said that this election isn’t going to be about issues. In the last couple of days we’ve seen pretty much what the Republicans want the election to be about. Obama may lose the presidency to these charlatans. I used to think John McCain was better than his party. It’s hard to think that any more. He clearly intends to wage a relentlessly negative campaign. But Obama is tough, and a little ruthless, himself. Nobody should forget the campaign he’s run for better than a year now. He’s not the nominee of half the Democratic Party. That’s pie in the sky over Fred Thompson’s Tennesee. And I’m thinking, even though I can imagine a different scenario, that Hillary Clinton believes her own words and will work hard to help her party and her policies win in November.

home from Door County and back to school with Obama, who is no Michael Phelps and no St. Patrick either

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No posting from Door County, but here’s a picture of The Alpine, the funky old-fashioned resort where we stay there. It sits right on what I take to be the harbor in Egg Harbor that opens out into Green Bay (not the town, the body of water). I love the place, love especially to sit on the porch and read — though I have to say that listening to Johnny Belmont and the Fabulous Cheeseheads runs a close second. I try never to miss the Cheesehead dances. They’re always crowded and feature various musics. I tend to like dancing to rock chestnuts like “Taking Care of Business” and “YMCA” rather than to the tunes that belong to my generation. That’s partly because almost everybody in the room dances to the rock tunes, grandmothers and geezers like me, young moms and kids, and even some teenagers and their youngish parents. I also love the chicken dance and the polkas.

Which reminds me to say that polka is Czech. I never knew that before last summer when my beloved and I spent some time in the Czech Republic. I recall dancing with a fine, strapping Czech person of the feminine persuasion who startled me by exclaiming “heeyaah” a good many times rather loudly in my ear during the experience. Apparently Czech women do this to indicate pleasure, though I can’t imagine having been the cause of such a thing. At any rate, polka is Czech, and the famous song which in the US begins with the words “Roll out the Cheese Whiz” (as the Cheeseheads’ have it), is really a sad song in which a woman dumps her lover . . . no heeyahs there. My good polka memories also extend to an Oktoberfest back in Denton a couple of years back when we danced to music from Brave Combo, who play a mean chicken dance.

I had resolved to hate the Olympics, but I failed to do so. Mostly because I became a fan of Michael Phelps as he swam his way to contention with whoever breaks all his records thirty years from now. It was a little sad to see past winners Mark Spitz and Mary Lou Retton as youth surpassed them, though they are hardly irrelevant and many of their exploits will remain in media libraries to be parsed by whatever future comes. The crowd of them makes me think of Houseman:

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.

A commentator for an online pony thinks that “Housman’s cynical view of life may have a certain perverse appeal for young people” but scolds that the poet “neglects to mention that people . . . remember important men and women who lived well beyond middle age.” Houseman was a better classicist than this commentator, who, though he knows the ages of Sophocles, Queen Victoria, and a long list of other luminaries who died old, like Houseman’s Mithridates, doesn’t seem to remember that the classical tradition recognized two sorts of fame: one earned over a long life, such as that of Odysseus, and the other earned by brilliance in youth followed by early death, such as that of Achilles. And the fleeting nature of all fame is also a classical trope. But let that go. It’s clearly time for me to go back to school.

Speaking of racers, my guy Obama has seemed a bit underwhelming for a while. His FISA vote really disturbed me, because I need to be able to hope for the restoration of the rule of law by an Obama presidency. His campaigning since the trip to Europe has seemed pretty lackluster. And now he has participated in a widely publicized conversation with Rev. Rick Warren and John McCain that has given Warren license to claim that he has helped the rest of us understand Obama’s world view. If this claim were true, I doubt that Wm. Kristol would be crowing in The New York Times that McCain “won” the conversation and calling for Warren to replace one of the media types scheduled to moderate the three TV debates scheduled this fall. Apparently McCain “won” because he interpreted a question about evil not in a theoretical way, as Obama did, but as a question about, what else, 9/11. I am so sick of this horse shit and of the way it is hyped as profound, and I’m almost angry at Obama for lending himself to it. If he wished to put his piety on display, he’s certainly not chasing any snakes out of the country with it.

Then I remember Jeremiah Wright, and I realize that the hallmark of my guy’s campaign has been to accept a host of arbitrary and unfair “tests” of himself and his abilities as he continues to allow white voters the luxury of thinking that they live in a post-racial society. Shelby Steele, whom I’ve mentioned before, is good on the racial dilemma that Obama faces, and now Adam Serwer has written another good piece at The American Prospect arguing that Obama only loses if he acknowledges the racism to which campaigns against him have appealed, first the Clintons and now McCain, the Paris Hilton ad being only the most recent in an ongoing series of coded racist messages about the Illinois senator.

According to Serwer, we have now reached a point at which “saying the race card has been played is actually the ultimate race card.”

The McCain campaign’s apparently race-neutral approach, and its subsequent accusation that the Obama campaign is playing the race card, is a well-thought-out strategy — it is pure Nixon. In his recent chronicle of conservative political history in The New Yorker, George Packer describes Pat Buchanan’s plan for exploiting political divisions, particularly ones of a racial nature. Buchanan’s assessment was that they could “cut the Democratic Party and country in half; my view is that we would have far the larger half.”

Is there a counter strategy? None, as Serwer sees it. “The brother needs to keep it together. There’s simply no way he can win this one.” Obama needs to stick to policy. So I hope for the future he’ll not venture into any other megachurches where his successes can be turned against him.

It’s very much like the racially charged sentiments of some white basketball fans that black basketball players are overpaid. No one resents franchise owners for being fantastically rich, the same way no one resents McCain for being fantastically rich, because presumably, their riches are “deserved.” But fans do resent the players for million-dollar salaries the same way the Obamas are resented as elitists for owning one nice home.

Back to Michael Phelps and fame. I have to think, too, of Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and the other African American basketball players who are presently carrying the day for the U. S. in Beijing. If they win it all, they’ll be touted as having reversed a condition brought about by past teams of overpaid professionals who had a poor work ethic. If they lose, they’ll be painted as overpaid professionals (read black professionals) with a poor work ethic.

more about some of the same snakes

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Snakes: My first post on this topic explained the rationale for the title. Maybe I should think of the category as “variations on the trope, ‘Let’s talk about snakes.'”

Obama in Berlin: My guy has now spoken at the Victory Column in Berlin, in spite of my reservations and those of some other observers. Deutsche Welle quotes statements from various German pols who seem to have thought as I did a couple of days ago. But today I’m thinking of the size of the crowd Obama drew in Berlin, close to 200k, and also of the column’s association with contemporary political and popular culture. As Puja Deverakonda points out, “[T]he Column’s symbolism and importance to German history culture has already evolved.” Deverakonda also suggests that “Obama’s Siegesäule visit is supposed to allude to another victory: his own.” That suits me fine, even though it has already given McCain opportunity to aim a shot at Obama’s internationalist rhetoric.

Anheuser-Busch InBev: Back before the sale, Obama also lamented the loss of Anheuser Busch to InBev, striking a note that resonates with a good many here in St. Louis and prompting predictable criticism from pols and pundits that he is “anti-trade.” In order to consummate its forced marriage with A–B, InBev will sell off some assets, borrow $45 billion, cut the St. Louis workforce, and, non-profits fear, scale back philanthropy. There may be some long term good in this for the city of St. Louis, but most people here don’t see it now. With everybody from Claire McCaskill to Lewis Black after him Carlos Brito has got to feel like one ugly Brazilian.

Lambeth Conference: I haven’t paid overmuch attention to the news from Lambeth Palace, but it appears that the bishops, as usual, are up to no good. The latest flap appears to concern a Buddhist chant that Bishop Duleep de Chickera, of Colombo, Sri Lanka, used to conclude a sermon. The sage and serious Robert Duncan is quoted at Stand Firm to the effect that “the inclusion of the chant was ‘very, very troubling’ since it was an ‘invocation of something other than the God we know.'” One of his colleagues has posted a trenchant disagreement at the Lambeth bishops’ blog. Apparently Bishop Duncan shot from the hip, as he often does.

But Duncan’s remarks are among the mildest at the Stand Firm post. I’m sure that many will share the Bishop’s thought that Buddhist=unChristian, no thought required, and pile on. Indeed I’m beginning to expect that the entire conference will be a series of flaps like this one. We’ve already been treated to stentorian condemnations of gays and lesbians and demands for Gene Robinson’s resignation. It’s too bad. My bishop, George Wayne Smith, has expressed the hope that the Anglican Communion will survive this meeting in spite of boycotts and the walkouts that are likely.

I’m having trouble caring very much about the communion any more. Bishop Smith confesses to some emotional exhaustion. Perhaps I’m feeling some of the same. But I’m getting really tired of the pretensions of the so-called orthodox.

. . . snakes

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Cheap at the price: So, today, The Washington Post tells me the EPA has devalued my life. I used to be worth $8.04 million, but now I’m less expensive, only about $7.22 million. Of course, this is my statistical worth. It has nothing to do with me personally, the elderly gent with high blood pressure, arthritis, and relatively few of his own teeth. It’s a worth that goes into cost benefit analysis designed to enable decisions about policy. Is some environmental plan worth its cost of 275 million, if it will save 37.5 lives? Assuming those lives are worth $8.04 million apiece or $301.5 million total, the answer is yes. But if those lives are worth only $7.22 million each the total drops to $270.75 million, and the cost of the program exceeds its benefit.

I like the Post’s title, “Cosmic Markdown: EPA Says Life Is Worth Less.” And I like the lead:

Someplace else, people might tell you that human life is priceless. In Washington, the federal government has appraised it like a ’96 Camaro with bad brakes.

Specifically, it looks as though the Bush EPA is up to more deviousness about environmental matters.

“By reducing the value of human life, which is really a devious way of cooking the books, the perceived benefits of cleaning up the air seem less,” said Frank O’Donnell of the District-based group Clean Air Watch. “That has the effect of weakening the case for pollution cleanup.”

I couldn’t agree more. And I also think the various federal agencies who put dollar values on life should at least agree with one another. Apparently the department of Transportation values life even less than the EPA does, only about $5.8 million. Transpo needs a lower value, no doubt, to make its case for continued neglect of the nation’s roadways and bridges.

According to Jack Wells, chief Transpo economist, “We could eliminate a lot of the [highway] fatalities by imposing a 10-mile-per-hour speed limit,” but we tolerate increased risk of death at higher speeds “in return for the economic benefits of faster travel.” It’s the old false analogy trick, and it doesn’t explain (not even to an economist) how or why society (another statistical abstraction) should tolerate everything from unimproved and decaying interstate highways to dangerous construction zones and collapsing bridges.

On the road: My guy has gone to the Middle East, I see, with a great big media entourage. The Washington Post editors and Wake Up America are keeping their powder dry in the expectation that Obama will lack the judgment to admit he was “wrong about the surge” which reversed earlier Bush policy “and is finally winning the war”: an amazing claim, it seems to me. Lives continue to be lost, some of them to the Bush/Cheney legacy of malfeasance in contracting; other valuable resources continue to be wasted.

Present developments in Afghanistan are proving Obama’s judgment to have been correct there though, like McCain, he has had some trouble with the small stuff. Gail Collins wonders in today’s New York Times if Obama needed to make the trip at all, if a series of phone calls wouldn’t have done just as well, especially since John Mccain can’t seem to decide whether he thinks Obama is remiss for having stayed away from Iraq or for going there now, or apparently going there.

He’s not there yet (not in Iraq, that is), and I’m now reading that he he will not speak at the Brandenburg Gate on his way home. It’s too bad. The gate is regularly available for show business (which there’s no business like) in spite of Angela Merkel. Last year about this time our German guide explained to me that the military looking folks in the jeeps with the guns that seemed to be keeping a watchful eye on a group of Falun Gongers, were actually actors.

I’m sorry I missed the opportunity to kvetch about the now infamous New Yorker cover. But if showbiz wins elections these days (and it’s always played a big part in them), there’s no way McCain can win. Unless, of course, the stuff the New Yorker cover spoofs has more influence than I think it does. Obama may need this trip abroad for the favorable media he may generate, and not just for now. It really is too bad about the Brandenburg Gate. Future sound bites could have presented Obama as JFK (though the famous Ich bin ein Berliner speech was delivered at Schöneberg Town Hall), and that may be important when the swift boat ads have given us shots of Obama’s Indonesian school, interspersed with images of dark fists in the air all tied together by an announcer with a Walter Cronkite voice and backed up by ominous music.

It’s now being reported that Obama will speak in Berlin at the Victory Comumn. Here’s a long telephoto of it shot from the top of the Reichstag. What you see all around is the Tiergarten, and even though it looks as if there’s no space around the tower, there’s plenty. What looks like smog is actually something else, the result of a hand-held camera shooting with a 300mm lens through a glass window. It was a beautiful clear day when I took this picture. I’d stay away from the column if I were Barack–too much association with German imperialism. What about the Reichstag? Though I think I’d go here. This courtyard lies between the old Royal Library (now the Humboldt faculty of Law) along Unter den Linden, and the historic Staatsoper. Here’s a shot of the stage house. I don’t know why I didn’t take a picture of the front door. This was once the principle courtyard of the University of Berlin, which was renamed for its founder in 1949. It was here that books were burned by the Nazis in 1933. There’s a monument to lost learning in the courtyard’s center. I think Barack could do something good by speaking in such a place instead of the Kaiser’s monument to militarism.

. . .

If we count the lives lost in Iraq — just the American soldiers, 4,122 acording to one recent count — that’s an expenditure of almost $30 billion if we use the EPA’s valuation. I wonder if that cost is factored into present cost estimates for the war that are being bandied about. I wonder what the Department of Defense would claim to be the value of a life.