Let me say goodbye and good riddance to the dreadful year of 2007 by wishing you good cheer via these counterintuitive findings:flag-waving reduces jingoism

a few extra pounds won’t kill you

Happy New Year, dear readers.

Very interesting discussion of Juno over at Ross Douthat’s place:

Douthat likes the complications suggested by the movie:

I would say that Juno goes further than Knocked Up in presenting abortion as a plausible choice for a girl in the heroine’s position, and doesn’t go nearly so far as Apatow’s movie in making the advocates of abortion look like heartless creeps. And Hulburt’s right that Juno McGuff’s decision to bear her child to term is an act of personal autonomy that’s of a piece with her broader nonconformity, and that deliberately sets her apart from the conformist (and judgmental) world of parents and teachers and too-chatty ultrasound technicians.

He also hopes that other filmmakers take note of this film’s nuanced m.o.:

The only thing that’s remarkable about this cinematic approach to controversy is how rare it is in Hollywood: Juno’s shades-of-gray approach the culture wars ought to be required viewing for Brian De Palma, Paul Haggis, Robert Redford, and just about every other Hollywood filmmaker who’s turned out a lousy movie about the Iraq War in the last year or so.

Douthat’s commenters reflect that various reactions to the movie:

Perhaps it’s our different politics, but I didn’t perceive an anti-abortion message in Knocked Up. My sense is that because it’s not even ever a serious option for the parents, you don’t get a chance to really have a message one way or another. There’s never any sense that Ben and Allison keep the baby because they’re bothered by abortion.

In one of the two scenes where abortion is discussed, whatshisname looks like a heartless creep, but the other whatshisname looks like a ninny–he can’t bear to hear the word ‘abortion’ and ends the scene with him loudly calling himself a patriot as he pounds his maple-leaf tattoo. Meanwhile, Ben (the one who is actually making the decisions) is not even a part of that discussion.

An anti-abortion message would be one where someone who doesn’t really want the child keeps it because the alternative is so terrible. That’s not the dynamic in Knocked Up.

Posted by Justin | December 28, 2007 4:09 PM

“An anti-abortion message would be one where someone who doesn’t really want the child keeps it because the alternative is so terrible. That’s not the dynamic in Knocked Up.”

I’d argue that that is precisely the case in Knocked Up. In the movie, abortion is so terrible, so unspeakable, that neither of the two unplanned parents can bring themselves to discuss it as an option.

Posted by Amy P | December 28, 2007 4:21 PM

The nice thing about both movies is that the pregnant women were able to make a … yes, that’s right … wait for it … CHOICE about their lives, their futures and their families.

No one was forced to have an abortion.

No one was forbidden from having an abortion.

Posted by Woody Bombay | December 28, 2007 5:55 PM

For his part, Douthat hopes that other filmmakers take note:

The only thing that’s remarkable about this cinematic approach to controversy is how rare it is in Hollywood: Juno’s shades-of-gray approach the culture wars ought to be required viewing for Brian De Palma, Paul Haggis, Robert Redford, and just about every other Hollywood filmmaker who’s turned out a lousy movie about the Iraq War in the last year or so.

Apparently, there’s been quite a reaction to the announcement that Bill Kristol will have one of the most coveted bully pulpits in America: a column in the New York Times. I first wrote about this a couple of days ago and then went out of town.

Now the Times has been confronted. Editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal finds it easy to defend his hire:

Rosenthal told Politico shortly after the official announcement Saturday that he fails to understand “this weird fear of opposing views.”

“The idea that The New York Times is giving voice to a guy who is a serious, respected conservative intellectual — and somehow that’s a bad thing,” Rosenthal added. “How intolerant is that?”

Kristol himself is one gleeful culture warrior:

“I was flattered watching blogosphere heads explode,” Kristol told Politico. “It was kind of amusing.”

She’s not in the blogosphere, but could Kristol have meant Katha Pollitt?

Just shoot me. First, it was Sam Tanenhaus, conservative editor of the New York Times Book Review being put in charge of the News of the Week in Review section. That means one conservative will determine how politics,culture and ideas are covered in TWO of the most important sections of the supposedly liberal newspaper of record. Now, says the Huffington Post, the Times is set to announce that Bill Kristol will be writing a weekly op-ed column. That’s Bill Kristol ,Fox commentator , editor of the the Murdochian agitprop factory Weekly Standard, George W. Bush’s propagandist in chief, co-founder of the Project for a New American Century, relentless promoter of the war in Iraq , ideological bully and thug.

Kristol responded directly to that attack (via Exurban League, where you can check out his Thug 4 Life pic too):

Give a holla to my neocons in the Bay,
I’m livin’ in DC still clutchin’ on my AK.
Tell ‘em,
“Thug for life,
High till’ i die”
When ‘em stupid Nation witches ask why!

Among other spicy events to look forward to, election 2008 is about to get a little more interesting (Kristol has a one-year contract).

Bottom line, says The Politico, this is a smart business decision for the New York Times:

Despised or not, Kristol is bound to create controversy (read: Web page views). It’s no surprise that during this overheated election season Newsweek and other such magazines are bringing in political lighting rods like Karl Rove and Markos Moulitsas.

In the new media world of the early 21st century, apparently it’s no longer enough to merely attract attention. You want (or need) to attract lightning to get noticed.

Benazir Bhutto’s 19-year-old son, Bilawal, has been named to succeed her:

Acting in accordance with Benazir Bhutto’s last wishes, her Pakistan People’s Party today named her teen-age son and her husband as its leaders.

Young Bilawal seems to have taken in certain Enlightenment ideas with his mother’s milk [e.a.]:

Phillippa Neal, 19, lives in the same on-campus housing as Bilawal. She says he was not accompanied by any security at Oxford. According to Neal, Bilawal posted a statement from his mother the day of her assassination, which read: “You can imprison a man but not an idea. You can exile a man but not an idea. You can kill a man but not an idea. — Benazir Bhutto.” The day of the assassination his Facebook status read: “Well behaved women rarely make history.” Neal is not sure whether that quote was portentious [sic] or posted after Benazir’s assassination.

During the meeting at which the Pakistan People’s Party succession announcement was made,

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, a tall and composed Oxford student, took the center chair at the news conference at the Bhutto family enclave as he read the announcement that the party would contest the coming election.

“The long and historic struggle for democracy will continue with renewed vigor,” he said. “My mother always said democracy was the best revenge.”

Bilawal sounds like a worthy heir to a worthy cause.

Long may he live.

Philip Weiss discovers anti-democratic extremism.

I was shocked by Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. Any fool knew it was coming, that is the not the point. It was the pure evil infamy of it. They hate democracy. Who hates democracy? Well, some elements of radical Islam. When David Axelrod of Obama’s campaign yesterday hinted that Hillary Clinton was somehow responsible because she voted for the Iraq War, I thought, Don’t be an idiot. …

After the Cold War, Susan Sontag famously said that the National Review was more reliable than the Nation on the Soviet Union. This time around the left must show that it is more reliable than the Weekly Standard and the New Republic about “the war on terror”. We are winning this ideological battle because we have not overstated the threat, and they have, and we do not ignore the fact that the Palestinian situation is a red flag across the Muslim world. Yet we can’t forget: there are forces of darkness out there.

The sewer rats in his comments section are none too pleased about Weiss’s revelation:

We liked you better when you blamed everything on the Jews.

Posted by: Realist | December 28, 2007 at 07:57 AM

For his cheerleading of those other blamers of the Jews, Weiss made a Top Ten Moonbats of 2007 list:

Weiss has become an “Israel Lobby” fundamentalist. In his eyes, to question the scholarship of Walt and Mearsheimer is to question truth. Every page of their book is gospel. Any negative review of their work is automatically dismissed as a “smear,” and every day that passes without an expose of the “Israel Lobby” on “60 Minutes” or the cover of Time magazine is further evidence of Jewish control over the media.

This mild critique doesn’t do Weiss justice. He has to be read to be believed. I’ll give you all the pleasure of finding out for yourselves, but I won’t provide another link.

The ethos of the modern-day campaign is not to sweep unpleasantness under the rug but rather to expose the mud your opponents are slinging at you, in the hope that the charge of mudslinging will stick to your opponent (and that the actual mud will simply slide off you).

Call it Clintonian:

 

 

Breaking — Gen. Wesley Clark responds to the latest Obama attack:

“This is a time for leadership, not politics. Senator Obama’s campaign seems to believe that Senator Clinton’s actions led to the tragic events in Pakistan. This is an incredible and insulting charge. It politicizes a tragic event of enormous strategic consequence to the United States and the world, and it has no place in this campaign.”

…

Headline: Obama Says It Would Be ‘Madness’ To Elect ‘Same People…Over Again’ and Expect Change

Source: abcnews.com

…

Obama attacks Clintons, says ‘problems were there long before George Bush ever took office.’

Source: Chicago Sun-Times

 Clever.

Janet Maslin launched a broadside against publishers the other day.

As it becomes possible to rush books into print ever more hastily, editing ain’t what it used to be.

Though there are many candidates for the honor of Year’s Sloppiest Book, the wall-to-wall bloopers in “Pearl Harbor,” a novel by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forschten, warrant special “wretching noises” from us all. The books that follow, in alphabetical order by author, were, in the “Pearl Harbor” vernacular, “all ladened with” better things.

Too bad the Times buried Maslin’s criticism where it will easily go unnoticed.

Bottom line: As long as there are no consequences in the marketplace, publishers will continue to put out books that are full of errors.

Take your outrageous bullshit and shove it—your employees want more money:

It has become commonplace to say compensation is not the most important thing in determining whether an employee will be happy at work. A pleasant environment or an understanding boss, according to conventional wisdom, is more important.

It appears that conventional wisdom is wrong.

The Society for Human Resource Management’s 2007 Job Satisfaction Survey Report lists the top five contributors to job satisfaction as follows:

1. Compensation/pay

2. Benefits

3. Job security

4. Flexibility to balance work/life issues

5. The ability to communicate effectively with management.

The survey was reported in Family Business Agenda.

This message is especially for J.M., the CEO who was unfortunate enough to meet me (as not-Hepzeeba) face-to-face a few weeks ago, who will never read this blog, but who will certainly remember me.

All my love, and Happy New Year!

Huckabee routinely puts his foot in it. That’s because he doesn’t know jack-shit, according to one of his advisers [e.a.]!

A senior aide to Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee admitted Friday that the former Arkansas governor had “no foreign policy credentials” after his comments reacting to the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto raised questions.

During an event Friday in Pella, Iowa, Huckabee said the crisis sparked by Bhutto’s death should lead to a crackdown on illegal immigrants from Pakistan.

Huh?

Huckabee also claimed that (precisely) 660 Pakistanis had entered this country illegally last year. CNN seems to suggest that, on foreign policy at least, Huckabee is toast:

Huckabee’s Friday comments on immigration came after he appeared to make another gaffe Thursday, when he seemed to suggest incorrectly that Pakistan was under martial law.

But Huckabee would only be toast on foreign if most Americans knew more about the world than he does. And that, sadly, is not the case.

As the National Geographic noted in November 2002, a full year after 9/11:

Survey Reveals Geographic Illiteracy

In a nation called the world’s superpower, only 17 percent of young adults in the United States could find Afghanistan on a map, according to a new worldwide survey released today. …

About 11 percent of young citizens of the U.S. couldn’t even locate the U.S. on a map. The Pacific Ocean’s location was a mystery to 29 percent; Japan, to 58 percent; France, to 65 percent; and the United Kingdom, to 69 percent.

Apparently without irony, a subsection headline of the article asked:

Are Young U.S. Citizens Americentric?

Ya think?

In May 2006, National Geographic released the sobering results of another survey [e.a.]:

Young Americans Geographically Illiterate, Survey Suggests

Young adults in the United States fail to understand the world and their place in it, according to a survey-based report on geographic literacy released today. Take Iraq, for example. Despite nearly constant news coverage since the war there began in 2003, 63 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 failed to correctly locate the country on a map of the Middle East. Seventy percent could not find Iran or Israel. …

“Young Americans just don’t seem to have much interest in the world outside of the U.S.,” said David Rutherford, a specialist in geography education at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C.

Ya think?

Ignorance is mankind’s worst enemy.

I don’t know if there are any more ignorant people today than there were in the past. I do know that, with information technology being what it is—and with information being widely available and mostly free in the United States—there is absolutely no excuse for ignorance except the personal failure of human beings to be curious about the world beyond their immediate vicinity.

And I don’t know what can be done about that—how to make people care. It’s a problem.

The charge that the neocons are running foreign policy is past its expiration date, writes Michael Young:

Maybe 2008 will be the year when we will finally be rid of that vacuous belief that “the neocons” are in control of the Bush administration’s foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East. Habits are hard to break, particularly lazy ones, but if anyone bothered to look more closely, they would see that the United States has not really engaged in what we might call a neoconservative approach to the region since at least 2004, when the situation in Iraq took a sudden turn for the worse.

Defining neo-condom, roughly, as unilateralist, preemptive, and aggressive on behalf of democracy and free markets, Young goes on to cite the specifics of Bush pulling away from that ideology in favor of seat-of-the-pants pragmatism:

[S]oon after the takeover of Iraq, the administration gradually began acting in the Middle East pretty much like its predecessors. It was compelled to rely on the multilateral institutions it had spurned in the run-up to the Iraq war, …

By 2004, the U.S. was resorting to the U.N. in other Middle Eastern crises as well. For example, the Security Council was the preferred route for U.S. efforts in 2004 to push for a Syrian military withdrawal from Lebanon. …

[T]he Bush administration only latched onto the democracy imagery [in Lebanon] after the anti-Syrian rallies had started,  …

Since 2006, the Bush administration has all but abandoned the democracy agenda to rally the despotic Arab regimes against Iran. Containment is the new catchword and, no surprise, it is pretty much what the Reagan, Bush Sr., and Clinton administrations spent two decades applying to post-revolution Iran. …

Similarly, the Bush administration now finds itself back in the oldest gig in town: the Palestinian-Israeli peace process … [which] was always rubbish to the neocons.

Conclusion [e.a.]?

So maybe it’s time to stop referring to the neocon policies of the Bush administration. … What we now have in Washington is a mishmash of old political realism and improvisation, topped with increasingly empty oratory on freedom and democracy. That should please quite a few of Bush’s domestic critics. He’s returned to the futile routine in the Middle East that they always urged him to.

That’s true.

Speaking of which, I’ve been wondering why Walt and Mearsheimer haven’t stepped forward to congratulate the Bush administration for cutting Israel loose and seeing to America’s interests first.

The HuffPo reports that über-neocon Bill Kristol is going to be a columnist for the New York Times starting in 2008.

Kristol, a prominent neo-conservative who recently departed Time magazine in what was reported as a “mutual” decision, has close ties to the White House and is a well-known proponent of the war in Iraq. Kristol also is a regular contributor to Fox News’ Special Report with Brit Hume.

Whoa.

Andrew Sullivan suggests the Times made this move to balance the hyper-partisanship of Paul Krugman (who, I confess, I don’t even bother to read anymore, because he has become so monumentally and unbearably self-important):

I guess some naked partisanship on the right is necessary to balance out Krugman. But ideologically, having both David Brooks and Bill Kristol as the sole representatives of the right-of-center is to focus on a very small neocon niche in a conservative world that is currently exploding with intellectual diversity and new currents of thought.

Sullivan fails to mention who these other geniuses of the conservative world are. He also manages to suggest that lone “conservative” David Brooks has had to go up against at the NYT is Krugman, whereas Frank Rich, Gail Collins, Maureen Dowd, Michiko Kakutani, and the editorial-page editor also come immediately to mind when I think of the NYT’s regular Bush-bashers.

This is a huge move for the Times, and it goes way beyond trying to create buzz for the brand. Kristol isn’t just Mr. Neocon. He is a proud George W. Bush loyalist.

I wonder what’s going on.

UPDATE: via Memeorandum, the leftosphere goes ballistic—here and here and here and here and here

Pakistan’s opposition leader Benazir Bhutto addresses her election rally in Lodhra, near Multan, Pakistan, Tuesday.

Two days ago:

Bhutto Vows to Fight Extremists

LODHRAN, Pakistan, Dec 25–Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on Tuesday accused President Pervez Musharraf of failing to stop the spread of militants and promised to crack down on the groups if she wins next months parliamentary election.

… “The areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan became a haven for extremists, and the extremism and terrorism is flowing down into other areas,” she said.

If elected, her party would clear the extremists from Pakistan, she claimed.

Jules Crittenden asks all the right questions:

Jihadis, ISI, or some combination?

Does this unite them against jihadis or just further fragment Pakistan to the jihadis benefit?

Does the election even go ahead, or is it straight to martial law? Short-term or long-term suspension, and in the event of an election, who rises?

If they buy the “dog Musharraf dog” line, or if it’s true, how bloody will the demonstrations be, and will they lead to a coup? If there’s a coup, who and what ends up on top?

No good answers to any of that yet.

Terrible, and terrifyingly destabilizing.

Whether it’s One Laptop per Child, which apparently is a roaring success in Peru, among other places,

or it’s the New York Times Neediest Cases Fund,

or it’s the Clinton Global Initiative,

or it’s Teach for America,

or it’s New York Cares,

Americans are wild about giving.

Heads-up: There are 7 giving days left in 2007.

The Archbishop of Wales thinks that fundamentalism—especially something he calls “atheistic fundamentalism“—is one of the great problems facing the world.

In his Christmas message, the archbishop said: “Any kind of fundamentalism, be it Biblical, atheistic or Islamic, is dangerous.”

The archbishop said “atheistic fundamentalism” was a new phenomenon.

He said it advocated that religion in general and Christianity in particular have no substance, and that some view the faith as “superstitious nonsense”.

Worst of all—it advocates renaming “Christmas” to “Winterval.” Oh horrors!

Apparently, it was in 1998 that Britain first encountered the dread term Winterval:

Monday, November 9, 1998 Published at 11:41 GMT


UK

Winterval gets frosty reception

Birmingham: Multi-racial community

Church leaders have clashed with a council over its decision to call Christmas festivities Winterval.

Birmingham City Council used the phrase to describe its programme of festive family events over Christmas and the New Year.

The change is being made because city council officials hope to create a more multi-cultural atmosphere in keeping with the city’s mix of ethnic groups.

In 1998, the notion was called “political correctness gone mad.” The BBC article from November of that year continues, quoting Bishop of Birmingham, the Rt Rev Mark Santer [e.a.]:

“No doubt it was a well-meaning attempt not to offend, not to exclude, not to say anything at all.”

The message continues: “Now it seems, the secular world, which expresses respect for all, is actually embarrassed by faith. Or perhaps it is Christianity which is censored.”

His views were shared by his colleague, the Archdeacon of Aston, the Ven John Barton.

“It is a totally unnecessary example of political correctness to avoid sensitivities people simply do not have,” he said.

I can’t help but note that the Festivus holiday was established one year before “Winterval” was launched by the Birmingham City Council. Festivus had its launch on the Seinfeld episode titled “The Strike.” It aired on December 18, 1997, as Wikipedia notes:

George, Elaine and Jerry attend Dr. Tim Whatley’s Hanukkah party. Jerry meets an attractive woman with whom he sets up a date. Elaine meets a man in a bad denim vest (Kevin McDonald) and gives him her fake number. George is offended by Whatley’s gift to him, a donation in his name to a charity. George is also reminded of the Festivus holiday his father created many years ago.

On the other hand, as Vivek Chaudhary recounts at The Times, his not-Christian 3-year-old daughter had been very much looking forward to her first Nativity play in nursery school until …

The moment I was asked what sort of Christmas celebration would be “appropriate”, alarm bells started ringing. As I collected Roshini, my three-year-old daughter, from her nursery, the head teacher Miss T said she wanted to organise a nativity play “with a difference”.

So different that, from what I was hearing, it didn’t have a lot to do with Christmas.

“I think any play that we do has to make the children more socially aware, and I don’t want it to be too faith specific,” said Miss T.

Chaudhary was dumbfounded:

“When the children in the nursery celebrate Diwali, don’t you make it clear to them that it’s a Hindu festival, and when they celebrate Eid, it’s made clear to them that it’s a Muslim festival?” I protested. “So what’s wrong with Christmas being a Christian festival?”

This was obviously a sore point for Chaudhary, because he pressed his cause. He canvased the other parents in his daughter’s classroom and found that they too—although almost 90% of the nursery school is made up of ethnic minorities—wanted a “traditional” Nativity play in the class. Still, he had to twist the teacher’s arm:

I sensed that Miss T needed a bit more persuading so I threatened to alert the tabloid press how she planned to “break the hearts” of two and three-year-olds.

He also pointed out to her the obvious:

As I pointed out to Miss T, not a single parent had approached her and raised objections to a nativity play. She was the one who had a problem with Christmas: she automatically assumed that having a traditional nativity play would cause offence.

She protested that she was only trying to be sensitive, but she eventually admitted it was offensive and patronising of her to assume how I and other ethnic minority parents would react to a traditional nativity play.

In fact, for many immigrants, it is a point of pride when they acculturate in their adopted country. To remove Christmas and replace it with “Winterval” is not only an insult to these immigrants; it also robs them of partaking those traditional cultural traditions that the natives enjoy—and thus of feeling “native” in their countries.

Chaudhary continues:

I am often asked if I celebrate Christmas and my reply usually surprises people. I do not consider myself to be a Christian, but that does not stop me from taking part in what I consider to be as much a cultural festival as a religious one. I have plenty of white Anglo-Saxon friends who feel exactly the same way about Christmas.

The Christmas tree in the Chaudhary household went up last week. Christmas dinner is usually given a bit of an Indian twist with garam masala rubbed onto the turkey …

I know lots of other Asian people, particularly those of Indian origin, who celebrate in the same way. In fact, as far as the Indian community in Britain is concerned, it likes nothing better than a festival that brings together family, and involves eating and giving presents.

Hear, hear!

Bah humbug to stupid PC-ism, stupid anti-PC-ism, and to stupidity.

Merry Christmas, Happy Festivus, and Welcome to Winterval, y’all (from your favorite atheist).

In one of my favorite episodes (it was a while back) of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry and Cheryl argue about whether it’s enough to say “I love you forever” or whether you have to commit to loving your spouse forever and beyond.

That’s what came to mind when I read this report about a study about the nightmare scenario of nuclear war in the Middle East (by the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies), in which it was predicted that Israel would probably survive*** in some form but that Iran would be obliterated: [e.a.]

Anthony H. Cordesman, explor[ing] just such a nightmare scenario, not[ed] that it could lead to the death of between 16- 28 million Iranian civilians, and 200-800 thousand Israelis. …

Given certain conditions, Israel could potentially survive such a nuclear scenario, the study found. Iran, on the other hand, would be completely and utterly obliterated. “Iranian recovery is not possible in the normal sense of term, though Israeli recovery is theoretically possible in population and economic terms,” wrote Cordesman, who compiled this study entitled “Iran, Israel, and Nuclear War”

And a happy Christmas season to you, too!

—————

*** Wasn’t I just saying yesterday that the Jews should be renamed? that they should be called the Survivors?

The Forward notes that in Cairo, Illinois, 55 African American recently converted to Judaism:

A rural community described as “far away from everywhere,” Cairo, Ill., boasts 40 churches, 40 blocks and fewer than 4,000 people - and as of earlier this month, it also has 55 brand-new Jews. …

[The conversion] was the culmination of an 18-month spiritual journey that has brought a number of Reform and Conservative Jews into common cause with a group of spiritual seekers from a town that is predominantly black and poor.

“It was incredible. Who would have thought that rabbis in St. Louis and Memphis would increase the number of Jews of color in America appreciably?” said Rabbi Micah Greenstein, who attended the conversion ceremonies and serves as the spiritual leader of Temple Israel, a Reform congregation in Memphis. “Judaism saved my life,” one of the converts told Greenstein. “That’s the first time in 100 converts that I’ve ever heard that,” the rabbi said.

It all began with Phillip Matthews, a disaffected Baptist. Here’s what he appreciates about Judaism:

In Matthews’s view, rising to meet challenges is part of the essential message of Judaism.

“When you read the Bible, when you read the Old Testament, and you see all the things that the ancestors of old endured, you see what it is to have endured,” Matthews said.

Yes, that’s true. I’ve long wondered whether, if we just changed the name of “the Jews” to “the Survivors,” whether Jew hatred, which refuses to die out even in the hyper-politically correct world we live in, would dissipate somewhat.

After all, the Jews’ skill at survival against the odds is what’s so mysterious about them: how stubbornly they’ve managed to survive as a self-identified collective, so to speak, despite their many travails all over the globe for thousands of years, how resistant they are even to extreme privation and to efficiently planned attempts to exterminate and eradicate them.

  [updated to clarify that this photograph was taken in Afghanistan, not Iran, as might be inferred from what I wrote below]   

Writing in Der Spiegel, Leon de Winter asks us not to turn away from but rather to contemplate the UNICEF Photo of the Year 2007. Click on the link, which will take you to a larger version of the picture of the 11-year-old girl sitting next to the 40-year-old she’s about to be married to.

De Winter writes:

There are people who will look at this image and be able to continue with business as usual — without disgust, nausea and rage.

He is not one of them:

Many of us in the West … ask themselves: Who are we to believe that it is inhumane to sell an 11-year-old girl? Who are we to impose our values so vehemently on the Afghans, on this man and on this girl?

I don’t have a clue who we are. But I know that this universe is not only a universe of iPods, Disneylands, CO2 penalties, tax write-offs, and New Year’s sales in our department stores. No, I know that this is also a universe of human rights. I know that this universe is deeply shaken — right down to its core — by the suffering of this lonely, lonely little girl.

A useful reminder: the legal age of consent for girls in Iran is 9, according to this piece in the BBC.

When Ayaan Hirsi Ali campaigns against the terrible things done the world over in the name of Islam, this is one of the practices she is talking about.

Ann Althouse unearths buried treasure—Queen Elizabeth’s first television address to her nation, in 1957:

That it is possible for some of you to see me today is just another example of the speed at which things are changing all around us. Because of these changes I am not surprised that many people feel lost and unable to decide what to hold on to and what to discard. How to take advantage of the new life without losing the best of the old.

But it is not the new inventions which are the difficulty. The trouble is caused by unthinking people who carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery.

Sounds kinda familiar, and it’s tempting to fall into a little pity party about it. I know because…well, no matter how much you love modern life and modern conveniences and gadgets and social networking and the low bar to entry into the global conversation and all that other cool stuff , who doesn’t hate something about our speeded-up world in which nothing beyond the present seems to matter anymore (in public life as reflected in the media, at any rate) and in which old-fashioned virtues are seen simply as old-fashioned and no longer virtues)? 

I’m beginning to sound like my grandmother—or like someone Queen Elizabeth’s age. Ugh.

So it was really heartening to read this great piece by head Talking Head David Byrne, as committed an artist as anyone in his generation, who, instead of mourning the part of the past that affects him most, has grabbed the future (and the constantly transitioning present) by the horns.

In clear languague, he explains what the “music business” means today, now that musicians have the, ahem, means of production (my choice of words, not Byrne’s) available to them. It’s a new paradigm out there. Byrne offers practical advice about how to get with the program:

David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists - and Megastars

I have seen this business from both sides. I’ve made money, and I’ve been ripped off. I’ve had creative freedom, and I’ve been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will. It saved my life, and I bet I’m not the only one who can say that.

What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that’s not bad news for music, and it’s certainly not bad news for musicians. Indeed, with all the ways to reach an audience, there have never been more opportunities for artists.

Byrne goes on to explain six different types of choices musicians have for modeling their careers:

 Where there was one, now there are six: Six possible music distribution models, ranging from one in which the artist is pretty much hands-off to one where the artist does nearly everything. Not surprisingly, the more involved the artist is, the more he or she can often make per unit sold. The totally DIY model is certainly not for everyone - but that’s the point. Now there’s choice.

It’s all about choice these days—for everyone, from the consumer to the producer.

Every creative artist (and perhaps even every enterprising blogger and new media small businessman or -woman) should read this. There’s much to learn and extrapolate from it. And it sure takes your mind off how rude and crude and chaotic and DIY everything is in today’s world.

Yes, there’s lots of choice—and that’s a good thing: trust me, you wouldn’t want to live in a world with few choices—but there are tons of headaches around all those choices, too.

So it goes. 

Some days, everything you buy comes from Japan.

[Uniqlo sweaters via Flickr/amyslysly]

Muji 

The Flack passes along the news (from Newsweek) that al Qaeda’s main spokesman, Zawahiri, feeling burned by the media, is trying another tack—he’s now making himself available for long-distance interviews by journalists, via email questions submitted to al Qaeda’s media arm, As-Sahaab (The Cloud).

Newsweek rightly labels this a publicity tactic, and it’s a shrewd one, because it garners al Qaeda a different kind of global media attention from what they’re used to [e.a.]:

This is the first time Al Qaeda has made a formal call to journalists, although it will not be the first time the radical Islamic group has granted interviews to Western media. Counterterrorism experts believe that the posting is genuine and that it is part of Al Qaeda’s evolving tactics to use the Web as part of its propaganda arsenal. “This is a continuation of the efforts by Al Qaeda’s senior leadership to push themselves forward in the public viewpoint,” says Maj. Reid Sawyer, editor of “Terrorism and Counterterrorism” and a lecturer of terrorism studies at Columbia University

Zawahiri hopes to put himself on equal footing with world leaders by doing an “Al Qaeda Press Avail,” as the Flack calls it. As a PR pro, he’s calling bullshit on it [e.a.].

By feigning media access, the organization cultivates an image of civilized engagement among the unsuspecting masses, all the while perpetrating or planning unspeakable actions.

“Jarret Brachman, a former CIA analyst now in the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point describes this as playing to the YouTube generation. ‘It completely fits Al Qaeda’s communications strategy over the past two years, which is how to get people more invested in the movement.’”

And Zawahiri is not alone in gaming the court of public opinion by playing the “freedom of the press” card. A free media today seems more of a propaganda tool and less of a requirement to qualify as a modern society.

The Flack is certainly right to note that all kinds of international players are now gaming the court of public opinion. I wouldn’t characterize our free media as a propaganda tool, though, but rather as a rich propaganda outlet or channel-–one that the world’s most mischievous and/or bad actors (dictators and/or theocratic totalitarians) are very savvy about exploiting via PRopaganda^TM (PR-fueled “dramatic narratives”) because they are so savvy about actual propaganda in their own autocracies, dictatorships, and/or totalitarian theocracies.

Influencing public opinion is a black art in totalitarian societies and dictatorships. It is often subtle. (Even autocrats and theocrats find that it is much more effective to persuade the people to come around to their point of view than it is to have to police them and punish them all the time. Understandably, people get impatient and upset with that kind of violence and will try to revolt. So if you want to suppress them and keep them pacified, you have to be less obvious about your control over them, more refined, more convincing. Dictatorships that want to last need the silent consent of their people, so they spend an inordinate amount of time building theories and revisionist histories and other narratives that “justify” their existence. These narratives are constantly “streamed” through their societies—via textbooks, classrooms, party conference papers, academia, and of course the media, which is controlled by the state.)

Of course the world’s bad guys are going to have superlative media skills.

The Flack writes:

Think Putin, Ahmadinejad, Assad and all the other despots who’ve gutted their nation’s free media, without any real retribution.

Well, not quite. These men haven’t gutted their nations’ free media. What free media? Iran has no free media. Syria has no free media. Russia has only a nominally free media since Putin took power.

The absence of freedom (of the press, among other things) in these countries—and the (dictatorial, theocratic, autocratic, or totalitarian) mode of power their leaders hold over their people—is exactly the problem with them.

It’s important that American media organizations and media-related professionals understand how easy it is for them to be used as propaganda outlets by the world’s bad actors.

But if execs like CNN’s Jonathan Klein, for example, are any indication, our media conglomerates are so uninterested in the content of what they air (as long as it brings in plenty of dough) that they notoriously turn a blind eye to the beyond-the-news-cycle impact of glorifying, say, Vladimir Putin:

Platon for TIME

see these movies:

Charlie Wilson’s War***

Oswald’s Ghost

Juno

read this book:

A Fraction of the Whole (in galleys; on-sale date, from Spiegel & Grau, February 12, 20072008)

———–
*** Will Charlie Wilson’s War break Hollywood’s run of back luck with war films? I predict a big, resounding yes.

Dueling opinions here (NY Times) and here (NY Sun)

On Salon, Walter Shapiro convincingly explains the appeal of Huckabee in They Heart Huckabeeland^TM—aka Red America, and especially that portion of it found in Iowa:

The unified field theory of Huckabee also stresses the candidate’s moderate record and rhetoric about education, poverty and, until recently, immigration. Viewed from some angles, Huckabee is either a closet Democrat who opposes abortion (the Mitt Romney interpretation) or the true “compassionate conservative,” rather than the ersatz George W. Bush version.

But these explanations miss something potentially important. The miracle birth of the Republican candidate with the four-word name — Mike Huckabee Iowa Front-runner — has as much to do with social class as religion. There is nothing subtle about Huckabee’s celebration of his humble roots: He gleefully told 150 supporters (some more accurately described as acolytes) in Marshalltown Thursday morning that a “Republican muckety-muck” had recently declared that Huckabee was unelectable because he had a “hick last name.”

This makes sense to me: Huckabee is a very gifted in his delivery of plainspokenness, but he also vigorously and aggressively promotes down-home values that everyday folk can understand and identify with:

For example, as the CBS blog On the Road reports, Huckabee visited Guantanamo and found something there for down-home Americans (his demographic, and the people with whom he identifies)—to resent:

Asked about Guantanamo, Mike Huckabee said he had visited the facility and said it was “disappointing” that military personnel were eating meals that averaged $1.60 while the detainees were eating Halal meals that cost over $4 each.

“The inmates there were getting a whole lot better treatment than my prisoners in Arkansas. In fact, we left saying, ‘I hope our guys don’t see this. They’ll all want to be transferred to Guanatanmo. If anything, it’s too nice.”

So, bottom line: he’s connecting with jes’ folks—people for whom it is jes’ plain courteous to wish people Merry Christmas in a TV ad and who cares if there’s a cross floating in the background? It’s Christmas, isn’t it? Christmas is about Christ, isn’t it?

Why is anyone surprised that the plainspoken, hardworking, God-fearing Americans of Iowa and the rest of Red America—of whom there are lots and lots and lots—would respond to this? He virtually screams authenticity.

On the other hand, if this explanation doesn’t satisfy you, you might want to consider the cui bono-based conspiracy theory floated on The Corner today—that Bill Clinton is behind Huckabee’s rise!

A week or so ago a reader from Arkansas wrote in to offer his theory of how Mike Huckabee has gotten so far. He pointed out that Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee had always had cordial relations. He surmised that Clinton was grateful that Huckabee had not piled on during the impeachment hearings, or the various Whitewater-related investigations, even though, as his successor in the Governor’s mansion, Huckabee might well have known things the national and conservative media wanted to learn.

We all say that the Clintons would do anything to win, the writer noted. Who, he asked, is financing Huckabee? Where did Huckabee get the seed money to start the race, and to fly around, once he had begun to take off? Who would benefit most if Huckabee became the nominee?

Pick your poison, and get prepared to see more of Huck the Hick for a while.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is in a truthtelling mood, and he sounds indistinguishable from Christopher Hitchens!

Archbishop says nativity ‘a legend’

The Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday that the Christmas story of the Three Wise Men was nothing but a ‘legend’.

Dr Rowan Williams has claimed there was little evidence that the Magi even existed and there was certainly nothing to prove there were three of them or that they were kings.

Leaving no stone unturned:

He argued that Christmas cards which showed the Virgin Mary cradling the baby Jesus, flanked by shepherds and wise men, were misleading. As for the scenes that depicted snow falling in Bethlehem, the Archbishop said the chance of this was “very unlikely”.

In a final blow to the traditional nativity story, Dr Williams concluded that Jesus was probably not born in December at all. He said: “Christmas was when it was because it fitted well with the winter festival.”

These comments were in response to a “challenge” from comedian Ricky Gervais, the Telegraph reports.

Sounds like a “War on Christmas” to me! Let’s see how it goes over in the UK.

An Al Qaeda “theologian” has changed his mind about jihad, reports the New York Sun:

One of Al Qaeda’s senior theologians is calling on his followers to end their military jihad and saying the attacks of September 11, 2001, were a “catastrophe for all Muslims.”

In a serialized manifesto written from prison in Egypt, Sayyed Imam al-Sharif is blasting Osama bin Laden for deceiving the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, and for insulting the Prophet Muhammad by comparing the September 11 attacks to the early raids of the Ansar warriors. The lapsed jihadist even calls for the formation of a special Islamic court to try Osama bin Laden and his old comrade Ayman al-Zawahri.

Andrew Sullivan links to this same article and advises his readers to “know hope.”

It seems like a big deal to me and hugely encouraging in the effort to expose and defang the credibility of al Qaeda among many Muslims. …

There are times when the best strategy is to give the Jihadists enough rope to hang themselves in the Arab-Muslim world. Know hope.

I must assume that Sullivan didn’t actually read the article to find out how this miraculous conversion of an Al Qaeda “theologian” came about—namely, through torture:

Last month, in a video produced by Al Qaeda’s production company, Mr. Zawahri said the latest recantations from his one time friend were the result of torture …

On Monday, an American intelligence official familiar with the interrogation of Mr. Sharif said that in 2004 the Al Qaeda cleric was tortured. “All I am saying is that screw drivers were involved,” this official, who asked to be anonymous, said.

n.b.: I am not supporting the use of torture. I am saying that Andrew Sullivan is incoherent on this subject.

I love GalleyCat, but the whiny editors and agents who’ve been writing in to bitch and moan about the publishing business haven’t taught me (or GalleyCat blogger Ron Hogan, as he notes) a thing. Anyone who’s really interested and has a good half hour or so to devote to the subject can delve deep into the reeds by reading recent interviews with two very knowledgeable players.

First up, Andrew Wylie, profiled in Portfolio:

New York literary agent Andrew Wylie seems perfectly happy to be known as “the Jackal”—the nickname that sticks even though he obtained it years ago in Britain during a publishing dustup whose baroque details have largely faded from memory. He’s equally unruffled when book editors and rival agents call him an “evil madman,” a “cold-eyed predator,” and a “monster.”

Much more interesting, detailed, and revealing is this interview with longtime agent Lynn Nesbit. Here are a few highlights:

On book people:

So you miss the personalities

Yes. I miss the fun. I tell Tina [Bennett] and Eric [Simonoff], “You missed the good days.” When I worked for Sterling Lord, I had a loft, a sort of duplex loft apartment on Barrow Street. And Michael Sissons, who’s now the head of Fraser & Dunlop, and Peter Matson, who’s also an agent, used to give these parties at my house. They would make these drinks of half brandy and half champagne, and people got so drunk. One night Rosalyn Drexler, the lady wrestler and the novelist, picked up Walter Minton and just threw him against the wall. I’ll never forget that. There was just more of a sense of fun.

So why was that lost?
It’s the corporate thing. People are too scared. It doesn’t attract eccentrics anymore.

On competition:

You represent so many of the original New Journalists. What was it like to be at the center of a movement like that?
When I first represented Tom Wolfe, I was younger than Tom. I was a kid. And when I went to sell Tom’s first book, his editor, Clay Felker, was the most important magazine editor in New York. I sent Tom’s book out for auction. Viking, with whom Clay had an arrangement as sort of editor at large, brought Tom in for a meeting with Tom Guinzburg. But on the auction day, Viking didn’t bid. So I thought that was curious. But they didn’t, and the book went to FSG.

A few days later I went to this big literary party at Rust Hills’s. I will never forget walking in. It was jammed with every writer and editor in New York. Clay was then dating Gloria Steinem, and Clay walked right over to me—this is like two days after the Tom thing—and he said, “You fucking cunt.” …

On editorial intervention:

How do you see your principal roles and responsibilities as an agent? Have they changed over time?
You are part of a writer’s support system—a very important part. The role of the agent is more important today than it was when I was starting out. Because the publishing world is so corporate, and editors move around so much, you are increasingly the only fixed point for the writer. That’s one way it’s changed. Another thing that I notice here, with younger agents like Tina and Eric, is that they do a lot of editing, and we didn’t do that when we were young. I think it’s partly because of the editors. There is such pressure on editors to come in with something that’s almost ready to go that the agents are assuming part of what the editors used to do.

When did you start to recognize that as a phenomenon?
Probably just in the last [eight?] years, or ten years.

Did you ever edit?
Not to the extent that they do.

On replenishing the ranks of book publishing people:

In terms of the book industry itself, what would you say are the most troubling or frustrating changes today?
What worries me is that there aren’t as many younger people who want to become editors as there used to be. Because at a certain point they get frustrated. There’s not enough money to make the job palatable, and they don’t have enough freedom. So they feel that they have this corporate bureaucracy imposed on them and yet they’re not making a decent enough salary. What I see is this flow of young editors becoming agents. There are hundreds of agents. I can’t believe how many there are. When I was starting out, there were agents, but not at the number there are now. Because today they can operate out of their apartments with a telephone. Or they think they can.

On the biggest problem facing the business today:

What is the single biggest problem with the book world today?
Distribution. Especially for smaller books. Because the bookstores won’t take a chance. And if a writer has a not-so-rosy track record, then they won’t order more and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Then, if the book happens to get good reviews, you’re caught out of print and have to reprint and maybe the books don’t get to the stores fast enough. And distribution is a problem on the other end, too, with books that are overprinted, books that may get on the best-seller list. It may look good to the outside world, but the returns may negate the rosy picture.

On editors’ nerves about buying fiction:

What do you mean exactly by “nervous”?
Nervous that fiction is very difficult to sell. An editor wants to see something that’s more near completion, that the idea or the thrust behind a novel is more fully realized. Twenty-five years ago an editor would say, “Oh, this has promise,” and sign it up. Today, editors want to say no rather than yes. Unless they see it as a big book.

And this is because of corporate pressures? Profit pressures?
Profit pressures. You must know that fiction is very hard to sell. Today it’s almost that fiction needs to seem like it’s going to be an event. It almost has to open like a movie, on the commercial side, or else the editor has to be convinced its going to get such praise, such positive literary acclaim, that even if it doesn’t sell a lot you’re launching a real voice.

On losing readers (as a function of the culture, not as a function of lousy book marketing):

What other changes are you seeing?
I said this earlier as sort of a joke, but I’m beginning to think there are more writers than readers. I get these e-mails pouring in from people who want to write their life stories. It’s because of the memoir. Everybody thinks they have a story. I also feel there are fewer and fewer civilians—I mean people outside of our business—who I meet who have time to read. They all say, “I’d love to read, but I’m just too busy.” What worries me is that people are on blogs, Web sites—there is a lot of that going on—but they aren’t reading books. That phenomenon, to me, is not a product of the industry, it’s a product of how our culture is changing. People’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. And everybody has their specialty. I don’t ever look at blogs or Web sites because I would never get anything done. I’m tempted to because I hear about these great things.

On the future of books [e.a.]:

A lot of people seem to think an iPod-like device will come along for books….
Great. That would be terrific. I have no problem with that. The more forms in which people can read intellectual content, the better. I don’t care if they read it in a real book or on an iPod. If they’re more likely to read it on some device, great. I have no fear about that. I have no idea why people do. It’s the content that matters, the intellectual content. As long as we can keep it copyrighted. I also look forward to books on demand. Jason Epstein*** has been working on this machine for years, and he tells me that other people have been trying to do it too. The modes of distribution are so antiquated.

Epstein also seems to think that publishers are getting too big and will eventually collapse from their own bigness and fracture into smaller shops.
Like what’s happened in Hollywood. I think it will happen. I think it’s happening now, with all these imprints. There are so many imprints. And once they get the distribution figured out…. If these machines really do become effective, and there are more efficient ways of distributing books, then I think there will be more and more independent producers. And independent producers use a distribution outlet. So the publishers will be more like distributors. I think it could happen. I don’t know because this business is so primitive—the publishing business—so unsophisticated. It takes so many years to make a change here …

Well worth reading.

——–
*** Longtime readers will remember that I have written about Jason Epstein and his print-on-demand enterprise several times.

One of Kevin Drum’s e-mailers writes in to ask whether it isn’t time to rehabilitate Pollack and O’Hanlon:

A member in (extremely good) standing of the VSP community emails to suggest a delicate topic for the liberal blogosphere to take a second look at:

One thing you might write about — if only because nobody else has, I think — is how that whole dust-up over the O’Hanlon/Pollack op-ed looks in retrospect. I mean, clearly they were on to something — the relative quieting down of stuff that has taken place in Iraq over the last several months, etc. Completely debatable whether that was due to the surge, or is sustainable, or is deeply significant, etc. etc., but it’s not like the caricature of them put forth in the blogosphere at the time — as paid lobbyists for the Bushies, reporting back what they were told to after checking out a Potemkin village — holds up, does it?

Hmmm. Yes. Seems like I was pretty skeptical of the O’Hanlon/Pollack report myself.

Let’s just take a walk down memory lane and see what the self-assured whippershapper Matthew Yglesias had to say at the time the op-ed was published:

I think the evidence that O’Hanlon and Pollack are wrong here is fairly overwhelming. Statistics don’t really corroborate what O’Hanlon and Pollack say, there’s no particular reason to privilege “on the ground” knowledge if it was just fed to them by official sources (which appears to be the case), and, most of all, the point of the surge was to change the political situation in Iraq, and they concede it hasn’t done that.

Now, in response, Yglesias concedes nothing except that perhaps he should have been more optimistic that things could get better in Iraq. As for Pollack and O’Hanlon, he suggests they were lying at the time and totally in the tank for Bush:

It remains unclear whether or not they actually visited any portion of Iraq that wasn’t a “Potemkin village” of sorts. For some reason or other, for example, they seem to have not noticed that Baghdad had become a network of walled-off ethnically cleansed cantons.

Clearly, though, the summertime decline in violence has proven more sustainable than I thought it would at the time. Equally clearly, Pollack and O’Hanlon have a good relationship with General Petraeus and came back from Iraq speaking from a set of misleading talking points designed to advance the political sustainability of the Bush administration’s policies.

Only a twentysomething think-tank wonk wannabe would use Middle East-themed buzzwords like “ethnically cleansed” and “cantons” and believe that he was fooling people into thinking that he was making a serious argument.

Drum’s commenters, on the other hand, offer the full spectrum of views on the left—from continued assertions that Pollack and O’Hanlon were tools to more forgiving ones.

The most incisive and intellectually honest assessment is this one:

It was the timimg of the op-ed, coming just a little over two weeks before Petraeus’ report, that helped enable the spin doctors to establish the meme “The surge is working.”

O’Hanlan and Pollack were more cautious in their actual assessment than the ensuing spin, but the combination of suggesting some “success” and being presented as “two prior critics of the war” gave the opening.

Now we’re stuck with military success being the metric for “The surge is working.”

All of this is true. Pollack and O’Hanlon, well-known for their knowledge about Iraq, took a trip to there, met with Petraeus (whom O’Hanlon knew from graduate school), and wrote an op-ed that said, essentially: Things might just work out in Iraq after all.

They didn’t make the most convincing case of it, but they did lay the groundwork for a more hopeful view of the eventual outcome—something that Americans wanted then and still want now, so that our sacrifices will not have been in vain.

At the end of July 2007, the leftosphere was unprepared to hear any Democrat offer even such a weak ray of hope and attacked the messengers, especially their fellows on the left (a favorite pastime ever since there has been a left). Some parts of the leftosphere are still in an unforgiving mood.

I don’t know the ways of Washington in particular, but I like to think that I know a thing or two about the ways of the world. Election 2008 is (incredibly) still a year away. The future is unpredictable. It’s not a good ideas to make enemies for life when you’re in your twenties.

And, electorally speaking, I will repeat what I said during the General Betray-us scandal: If the hard left—accompanied by the bleeding-heart left, whose HQ is in Hollywood—thinks it can win electoral victories by offering a narrative about bad Americans (and an evil American hegemon) not worthy of redemption, it will encounter rough seas ahead.

Whatever you think of Karl Rove, he does explain the problems inherent in the “endless campaign” [e.a.]:

A general election campaign that lasts nine months will bore (even more than it has in the past) the American people. It will certainly work to the disadvantage of the better-known candidate, who could appear as yesterday’s news and uninteresting when compared to a fresh face. Some of the candidates already seem like overly familiar figures — and not a single vote has yet been cast.

The media will be partly to blame. By next spring (at the latest), journalists will have tired of the candidates and their messages and demand they say or do something new, different and controversial, or they will be made to suffer. The result of all this is that we’re putting pressure on candidates to act in ways that have nothing to do with how well they will govern. The purpose of a campaign ought to be the opposite.

Perhaps a campaign ought to be sober, but this is the system we democracy-loving Americans have chaotically devised in our let’s-fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants way.

We Americans hate politicians. If they’re such smarty-pants and so eager to profit from the privileges that come with high office—and so eager to rule over us and enforce what they think is in our best interst—let them make it through the tests we devise. Let them earn our votes.

It’s the American way.

Below the radar, something is happening on the Israel-Palestine front post-Annapolis. Earlier this week in Europe, Tony Blair succeeded in getting more than $7 billion in (promised) aid for the Palestinians, which will be channeled–if it comes through, and that’s always a big if—through Abbas’s Fatah.

I’m guessing that Hamas wants in. Duh.

Big cheese Ismail Haniyeh, the deposed Palestinian prime minister, is reportedly looking for a truce with Israel,