[updated with a link, and with a repeated sentence cut]

I’m beginning to see a future where we poor consumers of the entertainment nation will no longer be flooded with quite as much shit as we’re seeing now.

First, the NYT’s David Carr reports what we all know, because there are no goddamn movies that are worth seeing—namely, that indies are no longer king:

Why are there no independent movies worth seeing? As Yogi Berra might say, there are just too many of them.

At least, that’s the view of one veteran independent film executive, Mark Gill. In a speech he gave at the Los Angeles Film Festival a little over a week ago (a speech that set tongues to wagging after it was published by IndieWire, a Web site devoted to independent film), he pointed out that the number of films submitted to Sundance, the Valhalla of the indie film industry, has multiplied by 10 in the last 15 years to a total of 5,000. But that embarrassment of riches is really just an embarrassment.

“Most of the films are flat-out awful,” said Mr. Gill, the head of the independent company The Film Department. “Trust me, I have had to sit through tons of them over the years. Let me put it another way: the digital revolution is here,” he said, and boy, is it underwhelming.

Meanwhile, veteran publisher Jonathan Karp, fessing up that he has “sinned” too, notes that what’s coming out of book publishers’ warehouses is also mostly dreck:

Visit your neighborhood superstore, and you will be overwhelmed with ephemera: self-aggrandizing memoirs by recovering addicts; poignant portraits of heroic pets; hyperbolic ideological tracts by insufferable cable TV pundits; guides to staying wrinkle- and toxin-free; odes to Warren Buffett and Jesus Christ; manifestos for fixing America in 12 easy steps; manly accounts of the best athlete/season/team ever; and glittery novels about British royalty, love-starved shoppers, mournful cops and ingenious serial killers. (There are more novels about serial killers than there are actual serial killers.)

I can’t be sure, of course, but he may have been thinking of books like the one being celebrated here. Okay, cheap shot.

Karp digs deeper to analyze the phenomenon:

Popular formulas repeat themselves for a reason: They have visceral, even mythic, appeal. A talented author can bring new vision to the most tired subject, so there’s nothing wrong with trying. Nor is there anything new about the syndrome. But what does seem more pronounced today is the relentless, indiscriminate proliferation of these books — and the underlying cynicism of the people acquiring, publishing and selling them.

That’s when he cops to having sinned:

I am, of course, mindful that people who work in glass publishing houses should not throw stones. I too have sinned. In weaker moments, I’ve been seduced by tales of celebrity, money, gossip and scandal.

Then Karp gets to the heart of the matter [e.a.]:

Books of this ilk have always existed. But in the past, they’ve been balanced by substantive books, crafted by monomaniacal authors who devoted years to the work. I can’t prove it empirically, but when I talk to literary agents and fellow publishers, they acknowledge an unarticulated truth about our business: Fewer authors are devoting more than two years to their projects. The system demands more, faster. Conventional wisdom holds that popular novelists should deliver one or two books per year. Nonfiction authors often aren’t paid enough to work full-time on a book for more than a year or two.

His prescription? Publishers should leave timeliness and buzziness to the newsbiz and focus on quality and longevity and posterity.

In any event, Karp writes, with the barriers to entry in the publishing biz lowered to the point where anyone can join in, publishers soon won’t have much of a choice if they want to survive. So they should protect their natural preserve [e.a.]:

There are thousands of independent publishers and even more self-publishers. These players will soon have the same access to readers as major publishers do, once digital distribution and print-on-demand technology enter the mainstream. When that happens, publishers will lose their greatest competitive advantage: the ability to distribute books widely and effectively. Those who publish generic books for expedient purposes will face new competitors. Like the music companies, some of those publishers may shrink or die.

Many categories of books will be subsumed by digital media. Reference publishing has already migrated online. Practical nonfiction will be next, winding up on Web sites that can easily update and disseminate visual and textual information. Readers of old-fashioned genre fiction will die off, and the next generation will have so many different entertainment options that it’s hard to envision the same level of loyalty to brand-name formula fiction coming off the conveyor belt every year. The novelists who are truly novel will thrive; the rest will struggle.

Consequently, publishers will be forced to invest in works of quality to maintain their niche. These books will be the one product that only they can deliver better than anyone else. Those same corporate executives who dictate annual returns may begin to proclaim the virtues of research and development, the great engine of growth for business. For publishers, R&D means giving authors the resources to write the best books — works that will last, because the lasting books will, ultimately, be where the money is.

This is an important essay—a warning—from an important New York City publisher, just as Mark Gill’s observations are an important warning from a veteran film producer.

We’ll see what happens. (For the record, I predict no earthquakes.)

Glenn Reynolds:

OUCH: In ’survival mode,’ newspapers slashing jobs. …

No wonder they’ve been telling us we’re in the midst of a second Great Depression. For them, it’s been true.

Later, Glenn explains his attitude:

It’s not “glee.” And, in fact — as I’ve said repeatedly — I think the reason that newspapers are tubing is that they’re replaced the kind of hard-news reporting described above with editorializing and “attitude,” often in support of political positions that many people don’t agree with. I’d much rather see them flourish while doing a good job, but they’ve been cutting budgets for actual reporting for decades.

I like it when newspapers do a good job, too. For example, when I read this straightforward piece in today’s NYT about the situation between Israel and her many enemies, I thought: Huh! Why can’t the NYT report like this (factually and straightforwardly) every day?

I reprint a few paragraphs to mark it as a sort of baseline of respectable, neutral MSM reporting on the Middle East.

Hezbollah seized the two Israeli soldiers shortly after the Palestinian group Hamas captured an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in southern Israel, and it was the one-two punch of such actions that partly pushed Mr. Olmert to order such a fierce response against Hezbollah in 2006.

Both Hezbollah and Hamas are armed and supported by Iran, which has repeatedly urged that Israel be forced out of existence.

Nevertheless, apart from the prisoner deal with Hezbollah, negotiated through a German mediator, Israel also agreed with Hamas on a six-month truce that started June 19. The deal, mediated by Egypt, has been violated by dissident Palestinian groups that have fired rockets or mortar shells at Israel.

But so far, both sides seem committed to the truce, which involves Israel opening border crossings and reducing its siege of Gaza. On Sunday, about a third more goods were let through than had previously been, according to Hamas officials in Gaza. The goods included animal feed, diesel fuel, fruit, vegetables and frozen meat.

The acting Hamas interior minister, Said Siam, said in an interview that he had formed an emergency group to monitor truce violations by various factions. Clerics associated with Hamas spoke at Friday Prayer in favor of the truce, saying it was in the interest of the people that it not be violated.

Andrew Sullivan is nostalgic for the McCarthy years, and he thinks William Kristol should be the first one made to account for his errors:

But when you’re this prominent a war-backer and you get things this wrong on a subject this important, don’t you think a smidgen of self-criticism or self-analysis could be in order? (I’m omitting the fact that the WMD casus belli Kristol also asserted as fact was a total chimera, but given the number of Kristol’s errors, this now seems small beer). …

It seems to me that we demand accountability from our politicians and we should demand accountability from our intellectuals. Not that they always get things right - but that they give a full accounting when they are wrong. Instead we reward and celebrate those who not only get things wrong - Kristol and Rove now have prominent columns in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal - but those who have never taken personal responsibility for their own mistakes. Until we purge all these tendencies from Washington, we will not learn from history and we will keep repeating it.

Somehow I doubt that Sullivan’s idea to put the neocons to the screws will get very far. But the urge to purge, to punish, to flay the evil-doers in our midst, to exorcise the demons, reminds me of this movie.

Here’s something Sullivan ought to ponder—that some of those who were purged in this country didn’t weep for themselves; they took it on the chin:

In spite of the subsequent loss of Trumbo’s livelihood and stature (”He probably was the best writer of that time,” Kirk Douglas offers, not inaccurately, in an interview), not to mention the aftereffects of a seminomadic existence with his family and the injustice of seeing his work produced under assumed names, “Trumbo” clearly proves that, if nothing else, its subject endured the deprivations of the blacklist with more wit than any of the rest of the writers in the original Hollywood Ten.

“Get ready to become nobody” is how Trumbo describes the process of divestiture that followed his HUAC adventure.

But since he’s the punitive sort and because the stakes are so very high, perhaps Sullivan has more exquisite tortures in mind for his neocon victims, ways to force them to recant and repent? Waterboarding, perhaps? I hear it’s all the rage.

[reposted, with a new title, cause WordPress is acting up]

Obama rebukes Wesley Clark for saying that McCain’s service to his country was no biggie when it comes to deciding who should run the country.

Josh Marshall thinks it’s a cop-out and that Democrats shouldn’t be afraid to take on McCain’s war record.

John Aravosis wants to know: “Honestly, besides being tortured, what did McCain do to excel in the military?”

For his part, Barack Obama is now not only the proud bearer of a flag pin on his lapel but also a true-blue American patriot, who is offended by MoveOn.org’s accusing General David Petraeus of betrayal.

Now, that is a pivot. And Obama is very smart to execute it, and to run like hell away from attacks on John McCain’s record and character.

p.s. For the record, here’s something John McCain wrote in his 1974 thesis. I’d lay odds that Obama has read it, and everything else McCain has written, and knows a lot better than to attack McCain on his strengths [e.a.]:

[McCain's] fellow prisoners say his [forced] capitulation only redoubled his determination to provoke his captors. “Acts of defiance felt so good that I felt they more than compensated for their repercussions,” he wrote, “and they helped me keep at bay the unsettled feelings of guilt and self doubt my [false] confession had aroused.”

Anyone who ventures to interpret the mood of the country is wading into roiling waters. Still, I note for “progressive” Dems that—Americans are allergic to “income redistribution” as a means of fixing the economy.

Gallup:

When given a choice about how government should address the numerous economic difficulties facing today’s consumer, Americans overwhelmingly — by 84% to 13% — prefer that the government focus on improving overall economic conditions and the jobs situation in the United States as opposed to taking steps to distribute wealth more evenly among Americans.

As the numbers indicate, the sentiment crosses party lines:

Americans’ lack of support for redistributing wealth to fix the economy spans political parties: Republicans (by 90% to 9%) prefer that the government focus on improving the economy, as do independents (by 85% to 13%) and Democrats (by 77% to 19%). This sentiment also extends across income groups: upper-income Americans prefer that the government focus on improving the economy and jobs by 88% to 10%, concurring with middle-income (83% to 16%) and lower-income (78% to 17%) Americans.

There’s even more bad news for “progressives”: about half of all Americans think that the government is already interfering too much in the economy:

A separate question finds Americans more likely to believe government is doing too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses (50%) as opposed to saying government should do more to solve the country’s problems (43%). This broad question is not directed specifically at the economy, but reinforces the general idea that many Americans are leery of too much direct government intervention in fixing the country’s problems.

This philosophical issue appears to divide Americans by both political party and income groups. Republicans think the government is currently doing too much, by 72% to 24%; independents are split, with 47% saying the government is doing too much and 44% saying it is not doing enough; and Democrats say the government needs to do more by 58% to 36%.

Actually, this isn’t only bad news for certain Democratic politicians (namely, “good government” types); it should also send a signal to the MSM, which relentlessly peddles the line that we Americans are perpetually the victims of bad government, unprincipled politicians, nefarious conspirators who secretly serve the interests of a foreign power, oil barons, crony capitalists, etc. That message is getting tiresome, and besides—the people aren’t buying it.

Dennis Jacobe, who wrote up the results of the Gallup report, concludes with only a hint of optimism for “progressives”:

In sum, free-market advocates can take considerable solace in Americans’ overwhelming belief that the government should not focus on redistributing income and wealth, but on improving the overall economy. And, to a lesser degree, Americans also believe government continues to do too much — not too little — to solve the nation’s problems. On the other hand, the economic turbulence of 2008 could end up getting government into significant new income and wealth redistribution programs unless the Treasury and the Federal Reserve act soon to stabilize and reduce today’s unmanageable food and energy price increases.

In other words, just as “another 9/11 would be ‘good’ ” for John McCain’’s presidential prospects, Jacobe says that the roiling markets could be “good” for Obama’s presidential prospects (and thus for “progressives”). That’s what he says, without spelling it out.

However, take note: Lawrence Kudlow, if I read him correctly, seems to agree that the government should do something. :

On the day after an unusually important Fed policy meeting both gold and stocks severely rebuked the central bank’s decision to take no action in support of the weak dollar or to curb rapidly growing inflation.

Gold spiked $30, a clear message that Bernanke & Co. won’t stop inflation. Stocks plunged over 200 points, an equally clear message that the Fed’s cheap-dollar inflation is damaging economic growth.

These market warnings are two sides of the same coin. Inflation, which is caused by excess dollar creation, is the cruelest tax of all. It is a tax on consumer and family purchasing power. It is a tax on corporate profits. It is a tax on the value of stocks, homes, and other assets.

Crucially, the capital-gains tax — the most important levy on all wealth-creating assets — is un-indexed for inflation. Hence, long before Barack Obama or Congress can legislatively raise the capital-gains tax rate, rising inflation is increasing the effective tax rate on real capital gains. That’s an economy-wide problem.

So, no, we’re not a nation of commies. We like the free enterprise and free market system. But under the pressure of economic turmoil—which may endure for a sustained period—some of us will feel compelled to push for our government to do something.

What would Obama do (with or without excessive turbulence)? Paul Krugman (who was once a vocal Obama skeptic) still doesn’t know:

Mr. Obama looks even more centrist now than he did before wrapping up the nomination. Most notably, he has outraged many progressives by supporting a wiretapping bill that, among other things, grants immunity to telecom companies for any illegal acts they may have undertaken at the Bush administration’s behest.

The candidate’s defenders argue that he’s just being pragmatic — that he needs to do whatever it takes to win, and win big, so that he has the power to effect major change. But critics argue that by engaging in the same “triangulation and poll-driven politics” he denounced during the primary, Mr. Obama actually hurts his election prospects, because voters prefer candidates who take firm stands.

In any case, what about after the election? The Reagan-Clinton comparison suggests that a candidate who runs on a clear agenda is more likely to achieve fundamental change than a candidate who runs on the promise of change but isn’t too clear about what that change would involve.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that Mr. Obama really is a centrist, after all.

One thing is clear: for Democrats, winning this election should be the easy part. Everything is going their way: sky-high gas prices, a weak economy and a deeply unpopular president. The real question is whether they will take advantage of this once-in-a-generation chance to change the country’s direction. And that’s mainly up to Mr. Obama.

Um, no. It’s up to voters, who will decide if they’re willing to go with a “change” candidate who doesn’t clearly spell out what he wants to change and how it will affect them.

And the Republicans seem to have settled on their line of attack, and it has nothing to do with Americans’ feelings about the role of government in fixing the economy. Instead, it’s that staple of old politics [e.a.].

Sen. John McCain’s allies have seized on a new and aggressive line of attack against Sen. Barack Obama, casting the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee as an opportunistic and self-obsessed politician who will do and say anything to get elected.

I guess Obama is not exactly believable as the Messiah anymore. Not only that. We still don’t know who he is, apart from being a star—someone upon whom we can project our own fantasies.

Jennifer Rubin expresses it a little differently, but she gets to the heart of the matter:

It is remarkable that now two savvy guys like Krugman and Brooks can’t figure out what Obama is. And neither seems to be playing coy to make a rhetorical point — they really don’t know.

But maybe that’s no accident. Obama has told us there is no there, there. In his book he wrote: “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” So perhaps searching for Obama’s “core” is a fool’s errand. He is glib and clever and seized upon a clever formulation (Agent of Change) to attract young and idealistic people longing for meaning. But perhaps that is all there is.

We don’t know how he will act under pressure and in real circumstances demanding definitive action because he has never developed, stuck with and acted upon a fixed set of principles. So voters will have to figure out for themselves which polar opposite vision of Obama is the real one. The fact that both could be in contention is startling and sobering.

Feh—not that sobering. Obama is no Manchurian Candidate. He is a pragmatist (though so far only in the service of his own political career, and not in the service of any principle or platform or policy prescription), and he has supreme confidence in his own judgment (and in his temperament). He’s just trying to be all things to all people.

Will it work?

Who the hell knows?

I think all feelings of panic (on both sides of the aisle) are misplaced.

Here’s the WaPo with a surprisingly gritty piece analyzing Obama and detailing his changing positions. This stood out as particularly insightful [e.a.]:

Obama has shown himself to be not so much a “post-partisan” politician as a “post-polarizing” politician, projecting moderation in an era of political warfare, said Ross Baker, a political scientist and congressional scholar at Rutgers University. McCain, on the other hand, is the party scold — “sort of tilting at windmills” and putting a “guilt trip on the rest of us because we know he’s right,” said former Senate majority leader Trent Lott.

Plus there’s this, indicating that by “change you can believe in” the Obama camp meant change seen from a certain perspective:

“After eight years of ideology driving decision making, is pragmatism reform? Yes, it is,” said an Obama adviser in Chicago.

Oh dear, his image sure has taken some hits lately.

Andrew Sullivan, who carelessly endorsed Joe Klein’s lashing out at “Jewish neocons,” is very easy on himself in response to being called out by Max Boot:

I can’t speak for Joe, but I obviously feel somewhat shafted by some neocon arguments before the war - arguments that I took in good faith and now suspect were made in bad.

What kind of lame excuse is that for jumping on Klein’s slime wagon? You feel “somewhat shafted” and so you lash out at the Jews once a “good Jew” like Klein has signaled to you that it’s okay to do so?

What a turd.

Russ Feingold—one of the most progressive members of Congress—on Heller:

I am very pleased the Supreme Court finally recognized that the 2nd Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms. This is an important decision for millions of law-abiding gun owners. Public safety must be ensured without depriving our citizens of their constitutional rights.

The HuffPo notes:

Perhaps the most telling aspect of the early reaction to the Supreme Court decision is that it illustrates how non-partisan gun control debates have become.

At the beginning of this month, I started noting some of the positive news stories about improvements in Iraq and the apparent decline of al Qaeda. A lot has been written in this vein since then.

Most interesting of all is this op-ed from Daniel Kimmage in today’s New York Times, in which we find out that AQ, seemingly so far ahead of the technology (and media-saviness) game in 2001, is now eating the dust of Web 2.0:

The genius of Al Qaeda was to combine real-world mayhem with virtual marketing. The group’s guerrilla media network supports a family of brands, from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (in Algeria and Morocco) to the Islamic State of Iraq, through a daily stream of online media products that would make any corporation jealous.

A recent report I wrote for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty details this flow. In July 2007, for example, Al Qaeda released more than 450 statements, books, articles, magazines, audio recordings, short videos of attacks and longer films. These products reach the world through a network of quasi-official online production and distribution entities, like Al Sahab, which releases statements by Osama bin Laden.

But the Qaeda media nexus, as advanced as it is, is old hat. If Web 1.0 was about creating the snazziest official Web resources and Web 2.0 is about letting users run wild with self-created content and interactivity, Al Qaeda and its affiliates are stuck in 1.0.

In 2008, Kimmage points out, you’re at a sizable disadvantage if you’re that far behind the technology curve [e.a.]:

[A] more interactive, empowered online community, particularly in the Arab-Islamic world, may prove to be Al Qaeda’s Achilles’ heel. Anonymity and accessibility, the hallmarks of Web 1.0, provided an ideal platform for Al Qaeda’s radical demagoguery. Social networking, the emerging hallmark of Web 2.0, can unite a fragmented silent majority and help it to find its voice in the face of thuggish opponents, whether they are repressive rulers or extremist Islamic movements.

Of course, the authoritarian regimes of the Middle East are threatened by the notion that online communities could become powerful enough to challenge their authority, so it’s not exactly clear skies ahead for these dissident voices:

[T]he authoritarian governments of the Middle East are doing their best to hobble Web 2.0. By blocking the Internet, they are leaving the field open to Al Qaeda and its recruiters. The American military’s statistics and jihadists’ own online postings show that among the most common countries of origin for foreign fighters in Iraq are Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen. It’s no coincidence that Reporters Without Borders lists Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria as “Internet enemies,” and Libya and Yemen as countries where the Web is “under surveillance.”

Still [e.a.]:

There is a simple lesson here: unfettered access to a free Internet is not merely a goal to which we should aspire on principle, but also a very practical means of countering Al Qaeda. As users increasingly make themselves heard, the ensuing chaos will not be to everyone’s liking, but it may shake the online edifice of Al Qaeda’s totalitarian ideology.

I’m always saying that there’s nothing more important than freedom of expression. This is what I mean. It’s why we must stand behind people struggling for the freedom to express their thoughts, and thus challenge the status quo that oppresses them.

Channel-surfing last night, I happened upon Luke Russert, son of the recently deceased Tim Russert, discussing politics with Larry King, who was holding a “Rock the Vote” special. It was pretty astonishing to see his poise in the wake of the sudden death of his father, but I was soon taken with young Russert’s interesting (and politic) take on politics. He’s non-partisan—indeed, he’s an independent [e.a.]:

KING: Luke, why are you an independent?

RUSSERT: Well, I’m an independent because I believe it’s important to vote for politicians and not a party. I like to see what a politician’s going to do and what he says he’s going to do in Washington. Being here in the District of Columbia, we don’t vote for a governor or senator or congressional representatives. You pretty much vote for mayors, city council members and the president of the United States. And I just really like to wait on my vote until the last second to see what each politician has done, what they say they’re going to do, and what the media scrutiny reveals of each politician.

I think it’s very, very important to see how politician holds up to the questions the media asks. One of the things my dad always liked to say is, how are you going to make tough decisions as a commander in chief if you can’t answer tough questions from media. That’s why I’m an independent. I also think it’s kind of ridiculous how people in the United States, if they’re a member of the party, they don’t even listen to the other side of the issue; oh, the Democrats are voting this way, I agree with that; Republicans vote this way, I agree with that. I might be sounding a little Lou Dobbs, but that’s why I’m an independent in that sense.

Compare and contrast with the unappetizing spectacle I wrote about here. What a refreshing change.

Those mischievous folks at Gawker say that Obama is more popular than Jesus and Angelina Jolie, and they’ve got the evidence:

Barack Obama is on the cover of Rolling Stone again! So soon after the last one. And just one week after he showed up on the front of publisher Jann Wenner’s UsWeekly!

Well, I have it on good (perhaps!) authority that “Nothing sells like celebrity,” and Barack Obama is the Messiah of celebrities and all other correct-thinking Americans.

There is a sickness afoot in the land when a popular non-political blogger makes note of a politician’s lowering of his own standards and his commenters attack him for speaking his mind.

Jeff Jarvis:

Whenever you want to show how soft big media are on Barack Obama, refer back to Howard Kurtz’ column on their coverage of the candidate’s hypocritical flip-flop on campaign financing. Chapter and verse.

Some comments [e.a.]:

Just drop it. It’s clear you were a Clinton supporter, but if you want a Democrat in the White House in 2009, the political reality is that attacking Obama is the same supporting McCain.

Jeff, would you consider some even handed-ness in your political posts ? It makes your position on press bias seem fairly hypocritical.

Jeff replies:

I am likely to be an Obama voter but that doesn’t mean I can’t hold him to high standards. I am not a member of his cult so I can disagree with him. It’s allowed out here. No, I won’t drop it.

Commenter:

Jeff, you’re entitled to “hold Obama to high standards,” just like the rest of us. And I realize, in a post like this, you’re trying to expose the inherent bias of the media, not bash Obama. But that’s what you’re indirectly doing.

I realize you’re trying to change the media, but please don’t (conciously or unconciously) swiftboat Obama in the process.

Commenter Steve:

So, if I support Senator Obama, I am a cultist?

Jeff responds:

No, Steve, but I’m being told I can’t criticize him and hold him to high standards. That’s a cultist talking.

Last word (not on Jeff’s blog but here on mine, where I’m the editor) goes to this commenter from Jeff’s blog:

Obama supporters panic whenever a story appears to question, criticize, or point out the hypocrisies of their candidate.

Indeed! and get a load of this attack, published at the HuffPo, on Jon Stewart for—gasp!—making fun of the Obama Messiah. Joseph Palermo builds his case by accusing Stewart of having been complicit in selling the war in Iraq to the American people:

Slamming the UN weapons inspectors as ineffectual twits dominated right-wing talk radio at the time and The Daily Show was in effect regurgitating the talking points of those who wanted to bring the country to war. Dissing the UN’s efforts on Comedy Central inadvertently helped make the case for war. It is kind of like when Dick Cheney pointed to the New York Times to buttress his warmongering saying: “Hey, even the liberals agree with us!”

Then Palermo goes on to warn Stewart to watch his mouth when he’s making fun of Obama:

When Jon Stewart seeks “balance” for his targets of satire he can end up reinforcing the false impressions that the Bush Republicans want people to have. It’s unfortunate because political humor is a powerful force that can sway some of those “low information” voters the pundits have been flogging lately.

So too was the case last night when Jon Stewart ran a bit about Barack Obama’s decision to eschew public financing. The Daily Show seized the issue as an opportunity to display “balance” and to poke fun at the Obama campaign. But not only did the bit fall flat it played right into the Republican line, which is full of half-truths and outright lies about Obama’s decision.

During the primaries, Keith Olbermann attacked Stewart just for mentioning Obama’s middle name.

Here’s what I think: this attempt by hyper-partisan ideological enforcers to shut down the debate among Democrats about Barack Obama will backfire. Badly.

Intimidating people who are on your own side (Jarvis and Stewart are both Democrats, from what I can tell) is never a good idea, especially here in America, where, as Jeff said, we don’t—and won’t—shut up.

Undoubtedly, those trying to shut down the debate are the product (or the masters) of our elite universities, where diversity is god but where diversity of opinion is unwelcome.

Those often kindly teachers, however, do have a sense of urgent mission. Even if we put them on truth-serum, the academics who dominate the humanities and social sciences on our campuses today would state that K-12 education essentially has been one long celebration of America and the West, as if our students were intimately familiar with the Federalist Papers and had never heard of slavery or empire. Having convinced themselves that the students whom they inherit have been immersed in American and Western traditions without critical perspective—they do believe that—contemporary academics see themselves as having merely four brief years in which to demystify students, and somehow to get them to look up from their Madison and Hamilton long enough to gaze upon the darker side of American and Western life. In their view, our K-12 students know all about Aristotle, John Milton and Adam Smith, have studied for twelve years how America created bounty and integrated score after score of millions of immigrants, but have never heard of the Great Depression or segregation.

Academics, in their own minds, face an almost insoluble problem of time. How, in only four years, can they disabuse students of the notion that the capital, risk, productivity and military sacrifice of others have contributed to human dignity and to the prospects of a decent society? How can they make them understand, with only four years to do so, that capitalism and individual- ism have created cultures that are cruel, inefficient, racist, sexist and homophobic, with oppressive caste systems, mental and behavioral? How, in such a brief period, can they enlighten “minorities,” including women (the majority of students), about the “internalization” of their oppression (today’s equivalent of false consciousness)? How, in only eight semesters, might they use the classroom, curriculum and university in loco parentis to create a radical leadership among what they see as the victim groups of our society, and to make the heirs of successful families uneasy in the moral right of their possessions and opportunities? Given those constraints, why in the world should they complicate their awesome task by hiring anyone who disagrees with them?

Disagreement is at the foundation of human existence, and American democracy is successful (among other reasons) because it takes this fundamental fact of human nature into account.

Plus: If Barack Obama cannot stomach, answer, and withstand criticisms from his own side, he is unlikely to be able to withstand criticism, or attacks, from his political opponents.

It’s amusing to see America’s best-known pundits adjust course as they grapple with a new reality—namely, the unlikely improvements in Iraq.

The other day, David Brooks laid down the gauntlet, declaring that Bush was not only to be reviled for his stubborn insistence on doing things his way but also admired for that same trait, because it seems to have paid off in Iraq (despite his horrible bumbling).

before long, the more honest among the surge opponents will concede that Bush, that supposed dolt, actually got one right. Some brave souls might even concede that if the U.S. had withdrawn in the depths of the chaos, the world would be in worse shape today.

Life is complicated. The reason we have democracy is that no one side is right all the time. The only people who are dangerous are those who can’t admit, even to themselves, that obvious fact.

In response to Brooks’s challenge, yesterday, Joe Klein declared the surge a success, declared himself wrong for having opposed it, and declared himself a worshipper at the altar of counterinsurgency and “new Jesus” Gen. David Petraeus.

I happily acknowledge that I was wrong about the surge. As regular Swampland readers know, I was, and am, a huge fan of counterinsurgency doctrine, and an admirer of David Petraeus–but I doubted that the General would have the time, troops or a coherent local government–in other words, the metrics required by his own doctrine–to make it work.

He also declared himself one of the (few)”good Jews” (and distanced himself from a vast cabal of evil “Jewish neocons” who pushed Bush into war in Iraq to make the world safe for Israel):

The notion that we could just waltz in and inject democracy into an extremely complicated, devout and ancient culture smacked–still smacks–of neocolonialist legerdemain. The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives–people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary–plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.

And to play it safe with the anti-capitalists, he also declared himself a firm “no blood for oil” guy:

And then there is the question–made manifest by the no-bid contracts offered U.S. oil companies by the Iraqis–of two oil executives, Bush and Cheney, securing a new source of business for their Texas buddies.

We’ll see whether these self-declarations help or hurt Klein with the folks he’s trying to impress (his inside-the-Beltway crowd).

Today, Thomas Friedman adds his voice to those who are starting to acknowledge the improvements in the Iraqi landscape. He manages to credit them almost entirely to the Iraqis, giving Bush a scant mention and saying nary a word about Petraeus and the hundreds of thousands of or American troops who have worked to end the conflict[e.a.]:

One of the first things I realized when visiting Iraq after the U.S. invasion was that the very fact that Iraqis did not liberate themselves, but had to be liberated by Americans, was a source of humiliation to them. It’s one reason they never threw flowers. When someone else has to liberate you in your own home, that is humiliating — and humiliation, I believe, is the single-most underestimated force in international relations, especially in the Middle East.

…What seems to have happened in Iraq in the last few months is that the Iraqi mainstream has finally done some liberating of itself. With the help of the troop surge ordered by President Bush, the mainstream Sunni tribes have liberated themselves from the grip of Al Qaeda in their provinces. And the Shiite mainstream — represented by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the Iraqi Army — liberated Basra, Amara and Sadr City in Baghdad from both Mahdi Army militiamen and pro-Iranian death squads.

We may one day look back on this as Iraq’s real war of liberation. The one we led five years ago didn’t count.

Like Friedman, I also have thought about the notion of self-liberation. In October 2006, I wrote:

On the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Hungarian Revolution, during which students, patriots, poets, workers, and intellectuals tried to throw off the totalitarian Russian yoke and died in their thousands as they faced off against Soviet tanks, it’s a question I must ask as a supporter of America’s effort to liberate Iraq from Saddam:

Where are the Iraqi freedom fighters?

Well, those freedom fighters—or something an awful lot like them—have emerged … thanks to the protection, backup, encouragement, teaching, training, and moral support they have received from the American military, and thanks to the great sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of American troops who have given their lives, their limbs, their souls, and their hearts to the effort to help a beaten-down people liberate themselves.

It’s a thankless job, which is something that most people who sign up for the military know in advance: they won’t get glory, because in our culture we don’t glorify war, or even service to our nation. That’s the way it is, and everyone knows it. They sign up and serve anyway, each one for his or her own reasons.

Also, while I think Friedman is grievously callous wrong and ignoble to ignore the contribution of the American military (not to mention the American president) to the recent (fragile) successes in Iraq, he may in fact be right to give the Iraqis the lion’s share of the credit.

The whole idea of the undertaking in Iraq was that the country would eventually serve as a positive role model for what can happen for the Muslim Arabs (and Persians) of the Middle East if they sign on to liberating themselves. It will be a good long while before Iraq is considered any kind of success, but as the successes start to overshadow the images of blood and bombs and fires and panic and rage and unimaginable sorrow, there will be a lot of food for thought among the Muslim Arabs and Persians of the Middle East. Eventually, they’ll see free Iraqis electing representatives to manage the affairs of their state, and they’ll wonder why they allow religious and political tyrants or monarchs rule over every aspect of their lives.

Don’t you hate it when David Brooks uses his New York Times perch to remind his readers that life is full of unexpected turns, expecially ones that reflect well on BushHitler?

Bush is a stubborn man. Well, without that stubbornness, that unwillingness to accept defeat on his watch, he never would have bucked the opposition to the surge.

Bush is an outrageously self-confident man. Well, without that self-confidence he never would have overruled his generals. … The additional fact is that Bush, who made such bad calls early in the war, made a courageous and astute decision in 2006. More than a year on, the surge has produced large, if tenuous, gains. Violence is down sharply. Daily life has improved. Iraqi security forces have been given time to become a more effective fighting force. The Iraqi government is showing signs of strength and even glimmers of impartiality. Iraq has moved from being a failed state to, as Vali Nasr of the Council on Foreign Relations has put it, merely a fragile one.

The whole episode is a reminder that history is a complicated thing. The traits that lead to disaster in certain circumstances are the very ones that come in handy in others. The people who seem so smart at some moments seem incredibly foolish in others.

Yep. (This also applies to Brooks, by the way, who referred to the Iraq war as “a disaster” many times during what he now refers to as “the dark days of 2006.”) He’s not humble enough to acknowledge his own previous cocksureness and foolishness. But he’s out there on the cutting edge of what should be opinion right now. We’ll see how it plays.

Brooks sets the stage:

The cocksure war supporters learned this humbling lesson [about orthodox thinking] during the dark days of 2006. And now the cocksure surge opponents, drunk on their own vindication, will get to enjoy their season of humility. They have already gone through the stages of intellectual denial. First, they simply disbelieved that the surge and the Petraeus strategy was doing any good. Then they accused people who noticed progress in Iraq of duplicity and derangement. Then they acknowledged military, but not political, progress. Lately they have skipped over to the argument that Iraq is progressing so well that the U.S. forces can quickly come home.

But before long, the more honest among the surge opponents will concede that Bush, that supposed dolt, actually got one right. Some brave souls might even concede that if the U.S. had withdrawn in the depths of the chaos, the world would be in worse shape today.

It’s unlikely that there will be many such souls, but count me among those who grudgingly (grudgingly because we are of a certain [anti-Vietnam War] age) admit that Bush’s stubbornness has, on balance, been a good thing for America in the immediate wake of 9/11. Many of America’s cocksure enemies have stood down in the wake of Bush’s cowboy-like cocksure aggressiveness. Bush himself has said he regrets the language he used; I didn’t hear him say that he regrets his “going on offense” against America’s enemies, as indeed he shouldn’t.

Something else has been gained in these long seven years. Brooks doesn’t mention it, but I will:L Islamism now has many respectable enemies—including several of Britain’s most famous public intellectuals and novelists.

The New York Times doesn’t quite approve of such heterodox thoughts as this one expressed by Ian McEwan, the author of Atonement:

“As soon as a writer expresses an opinion against Islamism, immediately someone on the left leaps to his feet and claims that because the majority of Muslims are dark skinned, he who criticizes it is racist.” He added: “This is logically absurd and morally unacceptable. Martin is not a racist. And I myself despise Islamism, because it wants to create a society that I detest, based on religious belief, on a text, on lack of freedom for women, intolerance towards homosexuality and so on — we know it well.”

The Independent, a British paper, referred to McEwan’s words as

an astonishingly strong attack on Islamism

and pointed out that these words could,

in today’s febrile legalistic climate, lay him open to being investigated for a “hate crime”.

Despite adding to the “febrile” climate surrounding this issue, at least the Independent is honest enough to give a full airing to McEwan’s views, which I reprint here with some emphasis [e.a.]:

McEwan – author of On Chesil Beach and the acclaimed Atonement and Enduring Love – has spoken on the issue of Islamism before, telling The New York Times last December: “All religions make very big claims about the world, and it should be possible in an open society to dispute them. It should be possible to say, ‘I find some ideas in Islam questionable’ without being called a racist.”

But his words in the Corriere interview are far stronger, although they do fall short of the invective deployed by Martin Amis. He has said “the Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order”, and told The Independent’s columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a Muslim, in an open letter: “Islamism, in most of its manifestations, not only wants to kill me – it wants to kill you.”

McEwan’s interviewer pointed out that there exist equally hard-line schools of thought within Christianity, for example in the United States. “I find them equally absurd,” McEwan replied. “I don’t like these medieval visions of the world according to which God is coming to save the faithful and to damn the others. But those American Christians don’t want to kill anyone in my city, that’s the difference.”

But McEwan’s specific irritation is reserved for those who find ideological grounds to condemn his and Amis’s views. “When you ask a novelist or a poet about his vision regarding an aspect of the world, you don’t get the response of a politician or a sociologist, but even if you don’t like what he says you have to accept it, you can’t react with defamation. Martin is not a racist, and neither am I.”

Thank you, Ian McEwan. And may others join you in perpetrating the “hate crime” of speaking out in favor of freedom of expression, even (perhaps especially) when your ideas are out of favor with “expert and elite opinion” [Brooks's phrase].

Before it disappears from the ether, I feel it’s my duty to save this bit of almost unimaginable stupidity, just for the record:

Last week, Barack Obama unveiled a new campaign seal — and not the kind that swims, barks and balances balls on the end of its nose. Rather, it was the kind that has a big old eagle on it and some Latin (Vero possumus, which translates very loosely to “Yes we can”). It’s also a seal that combined elements of Richard Nixon’s White House police uniforms and George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished.” And it went over about as well. Andrew Malcolm at the L.A. Times had some fun with it. And Mickey Kaus predicted it would be disappeared over the weekend. His exact words were: “But unless David Axelrod is insane, the thing will never be seen again.” Kaus was right.

The biggest Obama-maniacs are not among his fans; they’re right inside his campaign.

Al Gore won an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize for bringing his message to the world—for naught in Britain, where only a minority trust that he (among others) is telling the truth about global warming. Most people believe they’re being misled, and that it’s a tax scheme:

The majority of the British public is still not convinced that climate change is caused by humans - and many others believe scientists are exaggerating the problem, according to an exclusive poll for The Observer.

The results have shocked campaigners who hoped that doubts would have been silenced by a report last year by more than 2,500 scientists for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which found a 90 per cent chance that humans were the main cause of climate change and warned that drastic action was needed to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Bjorn Lomborg took the opportunity to lay blame exactly where it belongs:

Professor Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, said politicians and campaigners were to blame for over-simplifying the problem by only publicising evidence to support the case.

Ya think?

I’m telling ya—influencing people to change their minds isn’t as easy as it appears. And the world ain’t what it used to be. I mean the guy won the Nobel Peace Prize and no one in Britain believes him!

Maybe George Lakoff is right after all, and only propaganda works.

I should probably point out that I wrote more than two years ago about the overhyping  of the urgency of global warming … but did anyone listen to me? Of course not!

In the rush to announce the success of the Kindle, Jeff Bezos somehow failed to note that print-on-demand is sneaking around behind his back.

The Espresso Book Machine—which I’ve written about before—makes its debut in 50 stores across Britain soon:

Blackwell bookshop announced yesterday that it is to install an “Espresso Book Machine” that will allow customers to print out a novel in just seven minutes.

The self-service machine, which will eventually be installed in 50 stores across the country, offers a choice of around one million titles. The fully-bound books are printed to library quality, including a front cover.

A more sophisticated version of the machine is smaller and prints books in just three minutes. The older version has already been installed in 11 sites worldwide and Blackwell hopes to eventually have the faster machine in its stores.

Britain’s book industry has hailed the machine’s arrival as potentially revolutionary. It means high street bookshops can offer a range of books that will compete for the first time with online stores such as Amazon.

Blackwell is leasing the book-making machine from its American owner, On Demand Books, according to The Bookseller. Vince Gunn, chief executive of Blackwell, described the technology as “trailblazing”.

This is good news for those of us who like paper books, and a deep backlist of titles available at the press of a finger.

All hail Jason Epstein, the brains behind this innovation.

How many examples do you need? Jennifer Rubin’s got ‘em for ya:

McCain communications director Steve Schmidt is weaving a theme through Jerusalem, trade, taxes, and a few other top issues.

It is not quite the flip-flop charge leveled at Kerry — that was an issue of resoluteness. This is out and out fraud, the McCain people claim. He either lied when he snatched the nomination from Hillary Clinton as he ran left and promised a new era of idealism, or he’s lying now as a born again moderate. I suspect this is a theme that will not disappear anytime soon.

Not if Obama’s fans have anything to say about it, because there is a category of political moves that are considered evil when conservatives and Republicans do them, but now they have become Obamanable^TM (i.e., admirable because the Messiah is doing them).

I referred to Obama as reptilian here, and I have long advocated for Dems to take a more reptilian approach—an honest one—here.

I don’t mind Obama’s methods, though they probably won’t sit well with idealists. What makes me uncomfortable is that I don’t know whose interests he will try to serve and who he’ll throw under the bus. His past behavior is not a reliable guide.

Will Saletan doesn’t think so, judging by his skeptical take on George Lakoff’s (he of the “framing” meme) new book.

First Saletan describes the contours of Lakoff’s own frame [e.a.]:

Lakoff blames “neoliberals” and their “Old Enlightenment” mentality for the Democratic Party’s weakness. They think they can win elections by citing facts and offering programs that serve voters’ interests. When they lose, they conclude that they need to move farther to the right, where the voters are.

This is all wrong, Lakoff explains. Neuroscience shows that pure facts are a myth and that self-interest is a conservative idea. In a “New Enlightenment,” progressives will exploit these discoveries. They’ll present frames instead of raw facts. They’ll train the public to think less about self-interest and more about serving others. It’s not the platform that needs to be changed. It’s the voters.

Then he mocks Lakoff’s “arguments”: [e.a.]:

In place of neoliberalism, he offers neuroliberalism. Since voters’ opinions are neither logical nor self-made, they should be altered, not obeyed. Politicians should “not follow polls but use them to see how they can change public opinion to their moral worldview.” And since persuasion is mechanical, progressives should rely less on facts and more on images and drama, “casting progressives as heroes, and by implication, conservatives as villains.” The key is to “say things not once, but over and over. Brains change when ideas are repeatedly activated.”

What should progressives say? That conservatism is “fundamentally antidemocratic.” It “tells us to save your own skin and not to care about your neighbor,” so “conservatives don’t pay that much attention to injured veterans.” As an exemplar of conservatism, Lakoff cites the CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.

It’s hard to take all this seriously if you know any conservatives, just as it’s hard to take Lakoff’s neurodeterminism seriously if you know any science. As he acknowledges, current brain-imaging technology is far too crude to see specific neural activity. Cores? Narrative structures? Issue-to-worldview binding? It’s all speculation.

Lakoff’s historical claims are easier to assess. They’re demonstrably false. In his quest to explain the 21st century, he seems to have forgotten the 20th.

Now, who said the book review is dead?

Today—as opposed to 18 months ago, when Obama was launched as the Messiah—pretty much everybody who matters agrees that Barack Obama is (as I’ve been saying for a while) the coolest Machiavellian dude in the presidential race.

David Brooks launched the debate by positing a “Fast Eddie” Obama (as a peer of “Slick Willie” Clinton).

All I know for sure is that this guy is no liberal goo-goo. Republicans keep calling him naïve. But naïve is the last word I’d use to describe Barack Obama. He’s the most effectively political creature we’ve seen in decades. Even Bill Clinton wasn’t smart enough to succeed in politics by pretending to renounce politics.

Ann Althouse digs deep into Obama’s dissembling and sees a positive sign. Note her response to one of her readers:

mporcius said…”Ann likes that Obama has betrayed a pledge about or changed his mind about campaign financing because Ann doesn’t want to give up on the war effort in Iraq. Ann wants to believe that Obama will change his mind about Iraq (or that he has been lying the whole time) and when Obama pulls something like this, Ann is encouraged.”

[Althouse answers:]That’s basically the answer. In fact, I think Obama may be a better bet than McCain on Iraq.

My number 1 concern about Obama is that he won’t check the Democratic Congress. But I’m not confident that McCain will either.

Look, you can’t trust either man completely. You can’t trust anyone running for President. Remember when George Bush assured us that he opposed nation building?

Jonah Goldberg pokes the biggest hole in Brooks’s and Althouse’s “theory.” He points out that being a great in-fighter and ruthless politician does not make you adept at handling foreign policy:

But it’s worth noting that being cutthroat and savvy in electoral politics doesn’t necessarily translate into being cutthroat and savvy, never mind wise, in power. George W. Bush — we’ve been told — was ruthless in getting elected. When in power, he discovered Putin’s soul. (Bush’s dad, who did what it took to crush Dukakis, is a better example of Brooks’ fast-eddie thesis). Ted Kennedy is arguably the most ruthless politician in America, that hardly means he’d be a great foreign policy president. In fact, I would argue that despite Kennedy’s toughminded political cynicism, he’s still naive about foreign policy. If Brooks is right about Obama’s campaign smarts, my guess is that Obama would still be naive about foreign policy. All his throw-’em-under-the-truck maneuvering is likely rationalized by his desire to “do good” once elected. And that do-goodery is not (necessarily) any less naive simply because he’s doing whatever bad he deems necessary to do good.

Andrew Sullivan, who for months on end tore down the Clinton’s for their “Rovian” tactics, is now a fan of these underhanded tactics when they’re carried out by his American idol Obama, and especially when Obama bests the Clintons by doing them.

As for me: I admire Obama’s political skills—and indeed I’ve advocated for Democrats to get just as tough and ruthless as the Republicans are wont to be. But I just don’t trust him, because I don’t know one thing that he stands for and stands firm on. And I’ve been saying the same thing, like a broken record, ever since I started writing about Obama—and his “narrator.”

Why does a candidate for president of the United States need a “narrator” unless he is spinning tales? Some months ago, I wrote:

[The novelist Richard] Russo gets at the issue: the media’s storytelling reduces everything and everyone to a binary choice—Spitzer is either All Evil or All Saint, take your pick.

A similar dynamic is at play in the Reverend Wright scandal. Obama’s problem is that there isn’t a simple story line that can explain his 20-year affiliation with Wright and allow Obama at the same time to hold on to his own pacific, post-racial Magic Negro Healer image.

In order to keep believing that Obama is the Magic Negro, you’ve got to write off Wright as an inconvenient uncle. If you can’t bring yourself to believe that the bile-spewer is a harmless old fool, then you are left doubting the sincerity of the Magic Negro. He begins to look like just another cynical politician who makes alliances that will advance his career.

Either way, Obama loses (and we voters lose our illusions). And the blame can be laid directly at the feet of his “narrator,” David Axelrod, who manufactured a PRopagandaTM image of Saint Barack Obama that no human being can live up to and thus put him inside a box from which he cannot escape.

I don’t think it’s too much to ask a presidential candidate who is an unknown quantity to the American people (because he has no track record) to be clear about what, specifically, he stands for. Do you?

It has been a long time since I’ve quoted one of my favorite idea-mongers, Charles Paul Freund, about the positive effects of commercial (pop) culture.

The effect of commercial culture, however, is to dissipate conflict by lowering the stakes. Modernist identities (drawing on such influences as fandom) are fluid and changeable; the resulting communities of interest are numerous and temporary.

I thought of Freund today when I read this news on—of all places—Gawker:

The Arabic news network Al Jazeera has signed a five-year distribution deal with Munich-based Studio100 Media to broadcast the live-action children’s series “Bumba the Clown.” Bumba is a moon-faced circus harlequin who plays the drums and imparts pearls of wisdom to the pre-K set …

Gawker notes that this is a marked improvement for children in

Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros Islands, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen

over the kids’ TV from Hamas:

The last big name the region had was Hamas TV’s Islamist mouse Farfour, an obvious Mickey rip-off, whose voice sounded like a Kate Bush orgasm and whose mission was to drive the Jews into the sea. Once Farfour was “martyred“ at the hands of a Mossad agent (see below), his cousin Nahoul the Bee buzzed in to replace him as the cuddliest little jihadist that could.

For the record, this German export to the Arab world sounds really lame:

Targeted at 2-to-3-year-olds, the interactive and educational show follows “Bumba,” a clown who lives in a circus with his human and animal friends.

Is it Olbermann vs. Matthews or Olbermann vs. Rupert Murdoch?

Gawker wants to know [but you'll need to click on the Gawker link to get the links embedded in this quote ---ed.]:

So the Post has posted the Page Six item Keith Olbermann was so worked up about yesterday, and it does indeed say Hardball host Chris Matthews “seemed” to be talking about a strategy for landing Tim Russert’s job at a memorial event for the NBC personality, and that Olbermann is threatening to quit if he doesn’t get Russert’s Meet The Press job. …

But the gossip item also quotes a source, ostensibly from the traditional broadcast side of NBC News, who claims that Russert himself wanted NBC News political director Chuck Todd as his own replacement, and that the network will never install someone from MSNBC on the show:

The insider said,

“They’re cable. They’re far too partisan. They have no gravitas. If gravitas is eight letters, they’re about seven letters short.”

I last wrote about Olbermann and the absurd notion that one of the MSNBC cablers would get to sit in Russert’s chair here and here.

But I reserve the right to hedge by saying that in the brave new media world, anything is possible.

No one can accuse Jack Shafer of being a sap [e.a.]:

Novak and his partner in logrolling, Tim Russert.

…
In his Russert-tribute column today, Novak explains the nature of their logrolling relationship.

“Russert from the start … was an extraordinary source for me,” he writes. By “from the start,” Novak means since 1977, when Russert came to Washington as part of Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s staff. Novak writes of meeting Russert for drinks in Manhattan in 1982, when Russert pulled from his briefcase a batch of opposition research that would ultimately demolish a Republican who planned to run against Moynihan that year.

In a recklessly honest passage, the conservative Novak attributes the “peculiar pro-Cuomo slant” of his column to Russert’s move to liberal Gov. Mario Cuomo’s staff. In other words, Novak fesses to spinning positive columns about a politician whose politics he despised in return for good material from his friend Tim.

Ho hum. Just business as usual inside the Beltway.

He’s completely unlike the old Obama.

WaPo:

BARACK OBAMA isn’t abandoning his pledge to take public financing for the general election campaign because it’s in his political interest. Certainly not. He isn’t about to become the first candidate since Watergate to run an election fueled entirely with private money because he will be able to raise far more that way than the mere $85 million he’d get if he stuck to his promise — and with which his Republican opponent, John McCain, will have to make do. No, Mr. Obama, or so he would have you believe, is forgoing the money because he is so committed to public financing. Really, it hurts him more than it hurts Fred Wertheimer.

Pardon the sarcasm. But given Mr. Obama’s earlier pledge to “aggressively pursue” an agreement with the Republican nominee to accept public financing, his effort to cloak his broken promise in the smug mantle of selfless dedication to the public good is a little hard to take. “It’s not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections,” Mr. Obama said in a video message to supporters

 Jake Tapper:

On Wednesday morning, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, told the pro-Israel lobby the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that he would be a strong ally of the Jewish state. As such, he repeated one of the talking points AIPAC likes to hear, that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” …

In an interview [later] with CNN’s Candy Crowley, Obama said of Jerusalem, “obviously, it’s going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations.” …

Of his feelings about dividing Jerusalem, Obama said: “As a practical matter, it would be very difficult to execute. And I think that it is smart for us to — to work through a system in which everybody has access to the extraordinary religious sites in Old Jerusalem but that Israel has a legitimate claim on that city.”

Some in the media portrayed this as something of a flip-flop. “Facing Criticism, Obama Modifies Jerusalem Stance,” said Reuters. “Obama amended his support for Israel’s stance on Jerusalem on Thursday…”

David Brooks:

God, Republicans are saps. They think that they’re running against some academic liberal who wouldn’t wear flag pins on his lapel, whose wife isn’t proud of America and who went to some liberationist church where the pastor damned his own country. They think they’re running against some naïve university-town dreamer, the second coming of Adlai Stevenson.

But as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now. But then on the other side, there’s Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who’d throw you under the truck for votes.

This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He’s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he’s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside.

Speak for yourself, Brooks. I have not failed to appreciate his ambition. Indeed I have noted it repeatedly (but I’m too lazy to provide the links right now).

Glancing at Memeorandum this morning, these two entries caught my eye:

International Herald Tribune:

U.S. says exercise by Israel seemed directed at Iran  —  WASHINGTON: Israel carried out a major military exercise earlier this month that American officials say appeared to be a rehearsal for a potential bombing attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.  —  Several American officials …

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Buck Naked Politics, Danger Room and Pat Dollard

–

Discussion:

Damozel / Buck Naked Politics:   Is Israel Gearing Up for an Attack Against Iran?

Noah Shachtman / Danger Room:   Iran Attack ‘Rehearsal’ in Israeli War Game

Drillanwr / Pat Dollard:   Israel Is Drilling … Its Military … For Someone

ABCNEWS:

EXCLUSIVE: Hezbollah Poised to Strike?  —  Officials Say “Sleeper Cells” Activated in Canada  —  Intelligence agencies in the United States and Canada are warning of mounting signs that Hezbollah, backed by Iran, is poised to mount a terror attack against “Jewish targets” somewhere outside the Middle East.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati,