Entries Tagged 'America' ↓

Barack Obama doesn’t approve of political satire.

Barack Obama doesn’t approve of Bernie Mac’s comedy routine.

Barack Obama doesn’t approve of his daughters offering up personal details about their family life.

Unfortunately, John McCain doesn’t approve of political satire, either; and he never talks about his family. Plus, he thinks Viagra vs. birth control is a very serious debate.

Lighten up!

Folks: We are in for an excruciatingly moralistic four (or eight!) years.

I wish our culture warriors would get cracking! (Though, truth to tell, from the controversy surrounding the latest animated blockbuster from Hollywood, it seems like they’re not moribund after all.)

In the wake of the flawlessly executed rescue operation that liberated fifteen hostages (including three Americans and the cause celebre Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt), who had been held in the jungle, in chains around their necks, by the Colombian terrorist group FARC for more than five years, Charles Krauthammer describes the hard problems facing the world that have only hard-power solutions:

Everyone knows it will take the hardest of hard power to remove the oppressors in Zimbabwe, Burma, Sudan and other godforsaken places where the bad guys have the guns and use them. Indeed, as the Zimbabwean opposition leader suggested (before quickly retracting) from his hideout in the Dutch embassy — Europe specializes in providing haven for those fleeing the evil that Europe does nothing about — the only solution is foreign intervention.

And who’s going to intervene? The only country that could is the country that in the last two decades led coalitions that liberated Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Having sacrificed much blood and treasure in its latest endeavor — the liberation of 25 million Iraqis from the most barbarous tyranny of all, and its replacement with what is beginning to emerge as the Arab world’s first democracy — and having earned near-universal condemnation for its pains, America has absolutely no appetite for such missions.

And so the innocent languish, as did Betancourt, until some local power, inexplicably under the sway of the Bush notion of hard power, gets it done — often with the support of the American military. “Behind the rescue in a jungle clearing stood years of clandestine American work,” explained The Washington Post. “It included the deployment of elite U.S. Special Forces … a vast intelligence-gathering operation … and training programs for Colombian troops.”

Upon her liberation, Betancourt offered profuse thanks to God and the Virgin Mary, to her supporters and the media, to France and Colombia and just about everybody else. As of this writing, none to the United States.

The United States will get no thanks. Nor should the United States expect any thanks in this political and geopolitical climate.

Nevertheless, the United States should continue to do this kind of job.

Anybody disagree?

Idiotically and through a lens of partisanship, Jonah Goldberg tries to make this a patriotism problem for Barack Obama—it’s not only a low blow, but it detracts from his argument. Nevertheless, Goldberg hits on something that makes certain people allergic to Obama—his air of melancholy [e.a.]:

After 9/11, he wore it. During the debates over the Iraq war, he stopped because he saw the flag as a sign of support for President Bush. (He started wearing it again in May.) “I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest,” he added in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “Instead, I’m going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great and, hopefully, that will be a testimony to my patriotism.”

Read that line again: “What I believe will make this country great.”

Not to sound too much like a Jewish mother, but some might respond, “What? It’s not great now?”

This sense that America is in need of fixing in order to be a great country points to Obama’s real patriotism problem. And it’s not Obama’s alone.

I noted Obama’s melancholy in April 2007, called him “Dr. Blue,” and said he is a downer!

It’s a problem, all right. It’s just not a patriotism problem.

Calling it a patriotism problem is partisan hackery (which is to be expected by someone who wrote a book titled Liberal Fascism, which I won’t link to. Feh).

[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.”

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.

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.

If I were in the Obama camp, I would quit trying to sell the idea that the “change” he’s offering is generational, because, as I recently noted, the Clinton generation (of which I’m nominally a part) is not exactly ready to hand over the reins (and Obama’s tendency to talk like a punk doesn’t help matters).

But generational change is how some Dems are painting the “differences” between the Clinton and Obama camps—differences that are being elided as Obama “Moves to the Center,” claims Thomas Edsall in the HuffPo [e.a.]:

In the international relations policy arena, sources in and out of the Obama camp described a more subtle process taking place, as Obama is forced to decide which Clinton experts to add to the team, and at what level in the hierarchy.

“While there are exceptions on both sides, one of the key differences between the Clinton and Obama foreign policy gurus is generational. And this generational split has significant consequences,” one knowledgeable expert said, speaking on background. “In the main, the senior folks in the Clinton administration (1993-2001) went with Hillary, while many of the less senior people went with Obama.”

Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy advisers came of political age during the Cold War, in many cases during in the Carter administration, and tend to see the world in terms of states and state conflicts, this source said. In addition, many of Hillary Clinton’s top advisers “spent eight years dealing with Saddam [Hussein's] intransigence in the 90s,” making them more receptive to the arguments for invading Iraq.

Conversely, this expert argued, many of the Obama advisers are post-Cold War theorists who tend to see the world in terms of failed states, the influence of technology, food crises, non-state actors like Osama bin Laden, the spread of nuclear weapons, and the uneven distribution of the benefits of globalization.

Another way of seeing this “generational difference,” of course, is this: having experience (aka coming of political age is a form of experience, which the Clintonistas have) versus having smart-(ass) ideas (aka being post-Cold War “theorists”—which the Obamabots think they have).

Meanwhile, one prominent California family lives out a different kind of drama at home, where it’s not a left-sectarian fight but rather a GOP-vs-Dems debating (sorta) society:

Of all the supporters behind the two presumptive nominees for president this year, none are quite as intriguing as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who has thrown his support behind Senator John McCain, and the governor’s wife, Maria Shriver, a Democrat and vocal backer of Senator Barack Obama.

The lawn of their Brentwood home has dueling campaign signs. The breakfast table has become a casual debating society. Ms. Shriver is even threatening to bring a life-size cutout of her preferred candidate into the house, something the governor has seen her do in other elections. “When one of the candidates screws up,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said of the cutouts, “the kids carry them outside.”

And to my great relief, the Dem side in this battle is represented by a fair-minded person—a “little-d democrat” [e.a.]:

“I think there are great benefits to having kids grow up understanding that we do not live in a one-party system,” Ms. Shriver said. “That there are two ways at looking at an issue. To be patient, and to compromise, those are good lessons not just in politics but for life. I grew up believing there was only one way to think. There isn’t.”

All hail the friendly enmity between people with different politics!

Here’s a straw in the wind that I’ve been waiting for, and a possible indication that our pop culture may soon begin to catch up with 21st-century reality.

The Independent reports that the Brits’ love affair with memoirs about misery and wretchedness is over.

Depravity, drink, drug addiction and abuse are hardly the most uplifting subjects for a leisurely read. But for years, misery memoirs have been the toast of the book world, with stories of human suffering generating huge sales. But new figures suggest readers have reached their pain threshold and the mis lit boom may be over.

At its height, profits topped £24m a year and authors could be sure that the more they plumbed the depths of despair and depravity, the deeper publishers would reach into their pockets. But industry research firm Nielsen now estimates that sales for the top 10 best-selling misery memoirs will be down from £3.87m last year to £2.59m this year.

Regular readers know that I’ve been appalled at the poverty of imagination that’s been on display in the pop culture for a long time. The wretched-family-and-dysfunctional-child memoir has been one of the most prominent features of this trend. There is no more grappling with big ideas in the culture; instead there’s the obsessive focus on the minutiae of miserable everyday life and on the unique ways in which individuals suffer their particular wretchedness.

It’s a fucking bore! Leon Wieseltier agrees with me (sorta)!

The decline of The New York Times remains worthy of comment, as does the poverty of imagination in American theater and film.

I’m no expert, and there are plenty of people discussing the culture, in depth, all over the interwebs. What I am, though, is a very disappointed reader and movie-goer, because I’m not being presented with any big stories and big themes—books or music or movies or plays that address things that are way larger than individuals and larger even than the sum of individuals—that get my juices flowing.

Two decades ago Tom Wolfe called for more novelists to stalk what he called the “Billion-Footed Beast“ (subscription to Harper’s required). You can read all about it here, at the NYT blog Paper Cuts.

Wolfe has for decades complained that in about 1960 American novelists made the decision to turn inward, to take their work in abstruse directions and to reject realism. All this was a disaster, Wolfe has maintained, especially because the social changes in America during this period offered such rich material. With “Bonfire,” he set out to reclaim the ground once occupied by Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, James T. Farrell and the other Americans of the first half of the 20th century who wrote in the tradition of Balzac, Dickens and Zola.

About two years after “Bonfire” came out, Wolfe published a famous essay in Harper’s, “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast,” (subscription required) laying out his theory in detail, and what really struck me while reading it again was that he could have written it yesterday and hardly changed a thing. He has gained no followers.  [e.a.]

More’s the pity. There is one exception: Jonathan Franzen, whose novel The Corrections was in fact a correction to the obsessive inward-looking trend in writers—a sprawling social novel in the tradition that Tom Wolfe had talked about (albeit, one with postmodern touches as well)—as James Collins notes in Paper Cuts:

The only book I can think of that has reached for something like the same realistic density, sweep and accessibility is “The Corrections” by Jonathan Franzen. But the core of that book is a bourgeois family drama, and so it is really more like a gargantuan short story than a novel of the type that Dickens or Balzac would recognize.

Franzen himself addressed the discouraging landscape of contemporary fiction in a 2002 essay titled “Mr. Difficult,” in the New Yorker. It’s not available online. It provoked a dispute between him and Ben Marcus a few years later; discussion here.

Though Marcus’ essay extends over 13 pages of small text, at its core is a very simple premise: Contemporary American fiction has lost its innovative edge and its interest in language as art, and Jonathan Franzen is largely, if not exclusively, to blame. In particular, Marcus focuses on Franzen’s 2002 essay “Mr. Difficult,” in which Franzen chronicles his growing disenchantment with the novels of William Gaddis, and more generally with the modernist-inspired ideal of “difficult” literature—the belief that “the greatest novels were tricky in their methods, resisted casual reading, and merited sustained study.” Writers like Gaddis, Franzen argues, are “Status” authors, who see themselves (again, in the modernist mold) as obligated only to their art, and who for the most part ignore the interests and desires of the reader. With some reluctance, Franzen places himself in an opposing camp: “Contract” authors, who place a high value on the relationship between narrator and reader, who primarily see the novel as a device for social and cultural communication, and who take human life (rather than, say, language or ideas per se) as the ultimate subject of their fiction.

While I’m waiting for all these novelists to sort themselves out and to start to grapple with 21st-century realities—and there’s a new generation of writers who seem eager to engage—I enjoy dipping into old pop culture favorites.

Like this 1961 movie (based on—gasp!—a trilogy of books! in French! which inspired a Broadway musical!), which was featured on TCM last night:

David Carr, writing in the New York Times, notes the dearth of media coverage of Iraq:

Even as we celebrate generations of American soldiers past, the women and men who are making that sacrifice today in Iraq and Afghanistan receive less attention every day. There’s plenty of blame to go around: battle fatigue at home, failing media resolve and a government intent on controlling information from the battlefield.

According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index, coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has slipped to 3 percent of all American print and broadcast news as of last week, falling from 25 percent as recently as last September.

One “expert” offers the usual bland and unrevealing “explanations”:

“Ironically, the success of the surge and a reduction in violence has led to a reduction in coverage,” said Mark Jurkowitz of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. “There is evidence that people have made up their minds about this war, and other stories — like the economy and the election — have come along and sucked up all the oxygen.”

There is nothing ironic about the reduction in violence leading to a reduction in coverage. It is totally to be expected. The viewing audience, both for TV and for the movies, has proved to be allergic to the subject of Iraq, as Carr himself notes [e.a.]:

[W]hen Katie Couric, CBS’s embattled anchor, went to Iraq to report the story, she and her network were rewarded with their lowest ratings in over 20 years. Hollywood producers who had hoped there would be a public interest in cinematic perspectives on this war have been similarly punished.

Despite those callous Americans who are “punishing” well-intentioned media types who insist on bringing Iraq to their attention, some noble stalwarts continue to tell the story of Iraq [e.a.]:

Earlier this spring, Alissa J. Rubin of The New York Times wrote about flying in a C-130 in Iraq, accompanied by soldiers, including one in a coffin at the back of the plane.

“I wondered what exactly he had died for. And although I did not know him, I felt melancholy as we flew onward, accompanied now by ghosts and memories of loss,” she wrote.

I wonder if it has ever occurred to Carr that this kind of coverage—or, rather, the mind-set that frames this kind of Iraq coverage—is one of the reasons for the audience’s lack of interest in media coverage of Iraq. It’s poisonous, and worse than no coverage at all.

When a reporter writes that she wonders what exactly a just-dead soldier died for, that isn’t a display of compassion, as Carr suggests. Because while Ms. Rubin is scoring “compassion” points with her own cohort, she is pouring salt into the wound of that soldier’s grieving family.

But never mind. Chances are, his family won’t be reading the New York Times. Chances are, they’ll be at a commemoration like the one I attended today:

—in a district where the supposedly bitter folks cling to their guns and their religion, a district that voted for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama by about 75% to 25%—no one expressed the least doubt about what our war dead have died for, and continue to die for: their country, if it came down to that.

There were no movie cameras recording the event I attended in rural America. There were no luminaries, or representatives from the government. Soldiers, sailors, local guys from the VFW, a pastor, the high school marching band, and maybe 100 local residents gathered to remember their neighbors, and their neighbors’ kids.

It was very moving. I wish David Carr had been there. Perhaps he would have understood that Ms. Rubin’s kind of reporting is worse than no reporting at all.

Memorial Day in rural America

Click here to enlarge.