Just how many people in America are paying attention to the Democratic convention? It’s hard to say, of course, but early indications are that more people tuned in (to the networks, at least) to see Hillary on Tuesday than to watch the action with Biden (and with Bill Clinton) on Wednesday night:

All the broadcast networks’ numbers fell, with NBC holding the largest audience, based on Nielsen’s overnight metered household ratings from 55 markets. NBC brought in a 4.1 rating/7 share, slipping 16% from Tuesday’s numbers.

ABC’s audience declined 24% to a 2.9/5, while CBS dropped by 11% to a 2.4/4.

I’ve only done a bit of convention-watching myself. If I’m representative of the population, the excellent entertainment provided by the Dems for an hour last night may have been for naught.

Here’s what you missed, according to David Gergen, speaking last night on CNN immediately after the end of the onstage events [e.a.]:

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I thought it was a fine speech [by Biden]. It was a serviceable speech. I don’t think it’s a memorable speech. It will never make Bill Safire’s anthology.

But what was most important in the speech, Anderson, and what I think worked both in the hall and on television was the tableau that unfolded here over the past hour.

And that I thought the Democrats had their best hour of television of the convention starting with the moment they rolled out that Spielberg film on the veterans, on honoring the Veterans in a poignant way, moving on to Beau Biden’s speech, which I thought was a home run.

That was a remarkably good speech. And then when the cameras went to Michelle Obama and you saw her tearing up as she heard again the story of the loss of the family early on, I thought that was a revealing moment for television viewers, some of whom have thought she’s an angry woman. That wasn’t an angry woman you saw tonight. She was very human.

And I think it was consistent with her own speech earlier in the week. And then Joe Biden gave a good speech. It was a solid speech but then — but what I think really helped was Barack Obama coming on. And then, it was as if the Democrats brought it all together tonight for the first time.

And I must tell you, I think the importance of tonight is that perhaps the Democrats have begun to reverse the momentum of the campaign.

John McCain has been coming on very strong against them; he’s caught up with them. They desperately needed to reverse momentum if they were to win in November. I think they started to turn it. My one single voice, it’s really the voters who counts about this, it’s the public who counts on this. We’ll wait to see what they did. But I think tonight and tomorrow night if they can reverse momentum, the Republicans will have their chance to take it back next week but I think that’s very, very important as a potential opening for the Democrats to reverse the momentum

Well, it might reverse the momentum if a lot of on-the-fence voters were watching the Dems celebrate themselves, but that doesn’t seem to be the case (outside the blogosphere, that is).

Plus: attentive readers will note that Gergen, the ultimate spouter of inside-the-Beltway conventional [no pun intended!] wisdom, says that the Dems need desperately to reverse the momentum. That should worry Obama fans—oops!—I mean: Obama supporters; they’re in love and so they’re not attentive to the arrows being slung at him from all directions.

And the arrows are coming fast and furious. Obama isn’t oblivious to them. Quite the contrary.

But first things first: he’s got a really big shew to put on tonight, folks!\

TigerHawk notes that despite Americans’ rising confidence in winning the “war on terror” (per this Rasmussen Report), they are still deeply unhappy about President Bush (as they well should be, because he has been a dreadful, incompetent, moronic “leader” despite his having had one correct impulse: to respond forcefully to 9/11—and these are my thoughts, not TH’s; he seems to be a lot more generous toward GWB).

TH writes [e.a.]:

The place of the presidency of George W. Bush in history will almost certainly turn on the state of the Middle East in another generation. If the ruling class in the region remains a teeming hive of scum and villainy, then Bush will land in the lower ranks of American presidents (although not “the worst president ever,” insofar as it would be virtually impossible for Bush to sink below James Buchanan). If, however, the major governments in the region have become more representative, more transparent, less corrupt and less oppressive, history will remember that George W. Bush was the first world leader to declare that end as his aspiration.

Sadly, Bush will not live to see the result. It takes around half a century for history to judge an American presidency. People have to die, records have to be declassified, and, most importantly, the judgment must be rendered by historians who were not themselves caught up in the partisan politics of the day.

That’s an interesting observation, especially in light of George Packer’s comments the other day about LBJ and his persona non grata status in the Democratic Party:

For decades Johnson has been a pariah in the Democratic Party, because
of the disaster into which he led the country in Vietnam. And
today, because of our complex racial politics, even his successes, which partly redeem the sins of his war, can’t be attributed to Johnson. When Hillary Clinton, during the New Hampshire primary, made the historically unimpeachable point that there would have been no Civil Rights Act without a President Johnson to push the bill through, she was accused by everyone from the New York Times to the Obama campaign of somehow denigrating King. These charges were false, but they showed that there is something unmentionable about Johnson’s courage and his accomplishment.

Upshot: it probably takes a lot longer than 50 years for history to make its judgments—and even then they will not always be what we hope.

Those of us who like to think of our blogs as political diaries get a morale boost from this project, in which George Orwell’s diaries are being reprinted in real time 70 years after he wrote them. What a great idea!

The NYT reports:

The scholars behind the project say they are trying to get more attention for Orwell online and to make him more relevant to a younger generation he would have wanted to speak to.

“I think he would have been a blogger,” said Jean Seaton, a professor at the University of Westminster in London who administers the Orwell writing prize and thought up the idea of the blog. …

Like any good political blogger, Orwell devoured the news, making clippings and looking for shifts in public and government opinion, Professor Seaton said. “He’s partly obsessed by the newspapers because of the start of the world war,” she said. “The diary is written against this almost traumatized understanding that there is going to have to be a second world war.” [e.a.]

Serializing it in a replay of real time is pure genius as a means of drawing people into the diaries, because one of the most enticing aspects of any drama is that you don’t know how things will turn out:

Professor Seaton said the material was full of tension.

“You do know how this story is going to end,” she said, “but one of the brilliant things is that Orwell doesn’t know how it is going to end.”

A most excellent way to tell the story of part of the twentieth century to a new generation: with hyperlinks!

Bravo!

It seems like a shrewd pick if Obama is interested in sending a reassuring signal to Dem centrists (not so much for the netroots, of course, but what are they gonna do? vote for McCain?).

I like Ann Althouse’s take:

I discussed this a couple days ago, and I was guessing that maybe Bob was reflecting his Baptist background, and I my Episcopalian background, while McCain was had a basically Episcopalian orientation, but had, more recently switched to Baptist, and perhaps this could help us understand McCain’s varying levels of expressed religiosity. And now, here is Biden showing what I’d theorized was the Episcopalian style. Biden is Catholic.

Episcopalian, Catholic, whatever… I like this modesty about religion in public life.

Yep, that’s important to me, too. This is a secular society, and I like it that way. Plus, Biden is a liberal hawk, and so am I.

Stars are fans, too:

Kobe [Bryant] took a moment to talk to NBC about how exciting it was to watch Phelps and how he hopes to share in the gold medal winning. While NBC showed footage of LeBron and Kobe cheering the race, Kobe gushed, “Me and LeBron both just felt like fans for a while. It was incredible.”

Yep, the thrill of losing yourself is incredible.

Martin Kramer unearths the mysterious role of Persia scholar Ann Lambton, who recently died at the age of 96, in the 1953 ousting of Mohammed Mossadegh:

Her obituaries tell some of her remarkable story as a pioneering scholar and a formidable personality. They are also interesting for what they omit, regarding her role in the idea of removing Mohammad Mossadegh from power in Iran.

The Independent obit says nothing. The Times obit makes an all-too-brief allusion: “She was consulted by British officials on developments in Irano-British relations, especially during the crisis in 1951 when Iran’s Prime Minister, Muhammad Mussadiq, caused a furore by nationalising British oil interests in Iran.” Yet we are not told exactly what she proposed in these consultations. The Telegraph is more explicit: “Lambton’s insights into the strengths and weaknesses of Iran’s then prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, proved a valuable aid to Britain’s eventual success, in concert with America, in precipitating an end to Mossadegh’s premiership and in ensuring a continued, though reduced, British share in Iran’s oil production.” Yet we are not told just how she imparted these “insights,” or why they were “valuable.” The Guardian quotes a historian as saying her advice “marked the beginnings” of the 1953 coup, but does not explain what she advised or how she had such a profound effect. So what is the fuller story behind these allusions?

Read the whole thing. Kramer sets up his inescapable conclusion nicely:

The present incumbents in power in Iran are careful to shut out Western Orientalists, not because they fear the situation in Iran will be misrepresented but because it might be accurately represented, exposing the weaknesses of their regime. The historian Ervand Abrahamian, mentioning Lambton (and Zaehner), writes that it should not be surprising that the coup “gave rise to conspiracy theories [among Iranians], including cloak and dagger stories of Orientalist professors moonlighting as spies, forgers, and even assassins. Reality—in this case—was stranger than fiction.” The reality is that it isn’t easy to hide one’s vulnerabilities from an intimate stranger such as Lambton. The fear of Orientalist professors, both there and here, has never been that they might get things wrong, but that they are very likely to get them right.

There are many ways to know thine “enemy,” and none is better than to live in his midst.

Andrew Sullivan lavishes some fond attention on—gasp!—John McCain.

Maybe it’s my upbringing, in an all-boys British high school, where this kind of banter was quite normal. But there’s a great deal about McCain’s humor, sense of fun, emotional reticence - and not the dry drunk psychic shutdown of Bush - that appeals to people. Even his obvious emotionalism in a situation like Georgia - which may not make him the steadiest commander-in-chief.

Then he casts out his favorite son:

The coolness of Obama is hard to latch onto.

That’s kinda surprising! So is this, in which Sullivan’s disappointment is palpable:

Since Obama’s hubris in Berlin, he has lost almost every cycle of this campaign, and lost all of them quite badly. I’m not sure his campaign gets how far they have sunk, and how ineffectual and passive Obama has seemed these past few weeks. The total capitulation to the Clintons at the convention is particularly lame

Obama’s hubris?  I thought he just came off an “objectively miraculous” streak two weeks ago!

Did you guys see the 4×100 relay?

United States’ Michael Phelps, right, and his teammate Garret Weber-Gale celebrate winning the gold in the men’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay final during the swimming competitions in the National Aquatics Center at the Beijing 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Monday, Aug. 11, 2008. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Paul Chiasson)

Teh Red Sea parted and teh heavens opened, and our president got a positive notice from Matthew Yglesias, writing from his new digs:

Call me crazy, but I think Bob Costas’s interview of George W. Bush has been way more enlightening and substantive than what you typically see when people interview politicians. No horse race stuff, no goofy gotchas — just serious questions about the US-China relationship and the conflict in Georgia along with, of course, some stuff about sports thrown in. If you could see that kind of attitude brought to Meet The Press, I think it’d be a good thing.

What’s more, to his credit faced with serious questions Bush mostly gave serious, reasonably impressive answers (UPDATE: Of course there was the “I don’t see America having problems” moment, but still…) .

One of the commenters was pretty impressed, too:

Maybe it’s because he was talking to a sportscaster and, in part, about sports, but I think a big part of the success of the interview (on both sides) was that Bush actually seemed both to know what he was talking about, and care about it. He wasn’t saying anything totally remarkable about US-China relations, but he was also very much not taking the neocon Great Powers Conflict line on China. Which is of course exactly what McCain is doing.

Overall, just kind of bizarre in that Bush wasn’t totally embarrassing or terrifying. And kudos to Costas for an excellent job.

Whoa!

I guess I’d better rewind the TiVo and watch that interview.

Michael Crowley characterizes his worries about the Dems’ convention as “hand-wringing.”

More handwringing about Obama’s optics: I see that tickets for his acceptance speech at Denver’s Invesco Field stadium sold out instantly. In light of the apparent traction Republicans got with their ‘Celebrity’ meme you have to wonder if the Obama team is reconsidering the wisdom of this move. I would recommend any possible stagecraft to minimize the event’s scale.

For the most part, his commenters disagree with him—many of them snottily. Here are a couple of the more polite responses [e.a.]:

August 8, 2008 1:02 PM This strikes me as a terrible overreaction. That Obama is well-liked, able to stir crowds and capable of motivating previously disaffected voters is the overarching story here, not his supposed “celebrity.” That line of attack was a stupid ploy that’s been ridiculed even by many of McCain’s supporters. I see no reason to let the Republicans’ boneheaded taunts scare Obama into diminishing his popularity.

That was true before McCain launched his “celebrity” line of attack. It isn’t true now, according to the London Telegraph, which isn’t quite so caught up in the minute-by-minute state of play as we are:

The punchline is this: the more seriously he took himself, the more Barack Obama has become a laughing matter.

Only a month ago American comedians and satirists were complaining that they found it hard to get people to laugh at the first black presidential nominee. A New Yorker cover cartoon showing him as a Muslim extremist was roundly denounced.

But growing Obama fatigue among voters after his pseudo-presidential visit to Europe and the Middle East has unleashed a wave of satirical fire, mocking Mr Obama for his apparent belief that he has the election in the bag.

Another one of Crowley’s commenters writes:

August 8, 2008 1:08 PM Right. Obama should pretend he’s as unpopular with the Democratic base as McCain is with the Republican base. Maybe they should put him in front of a green screen and have him mumble about compromise and bipartisanship: that will get out the vote. Look, Obama’s ability to motivate new voters to register and exercise the franchise will give him a serious advantage in November, and this venue is a way for him to do that. If the Republicans want to equate Invesco with a Nuremberg rally, let them have at it. I think that there are plenty of ways to counter that. Who would you want to support: the fresh guy who inspires or the old doddering flip-flopper who ridicules large-participation in the electoral process? Yes, that is a simplistic formulation, but so is McCain’s idiotic celebrity meme. And Obama’s path actually gets people to the polls.

I agree with the point in bold, too. It would be risky to make too much of the “empty suit” meme, and it is certainly politically risky to accuse Obama’s followers—every single one of them a potential voter—of being cultists. Some of them are, but many of them are not.

He is inspiring, and he has inspired a lot of people to pay attention to politics, which is a tremendous accomplishment, since most people (everywhere) prefer to go about their daily lives and to be narcotized rather than to pay attention to the outside world…until it impinges on their freedom.

They certainly prefer watching to reading books. Even in Russia! (home of the ultra-serious, morally purposeful writer)!

I was pretty surprised to read that in addition to being involved in a shooting war, Russia and Georgia are also involved in a PR war—at the same time:

Armed not just with guns but public relations agencies, Russia and Georgia are fighting a propaganda war to shape public opinion at home and abroad with a constant stream of disputed facts about their conflict. …

Both sides are employing Brussels-based public relations specialists who arranged a succession of conference calls for the international media in recent days, with senior government figures striving to put their side of the story across first.

Russia wants to convince the world of its role as an honest broker, reluctantly intervening against an out-of-control Georgian president whose forces have carried out ethnic cleansing against the Ossetian people.

Georgia in turn portrays itself as a plucky little country fighting off the resurgent Russian bear and suffering unfair Kremlin punishment on account of its drive to become a Western democracy and NATO ally. …

But the spin hasn’t helped clarify the many disputed facts.

You don’t say! But war isn’t about facts! It’s all about spin.

Stanley Bing was writing about business war in Sun Tzu Was a Sissy:  But what he says is still to the point:

Let’s take a minute about your PR effort.

Jesus himself had the four apostles, plus, at a later date, Mel Gibson. Samuel Johnson, a fat, witty guy who illuminated the 18th century, had a talented scribe named Boswell, who followed him around and captured his every fatuity. Trump has himself. Every war master controls the story while the whole thing is going on. You always know that a side has lost a war when they lose control of the press.

The thing you need to know about the press, if you have any dealings with the nice, smart people who do that grubby job, is that the thing they want most is a story. If there is no story, still they want a story. Stories they like:

fiduciariy irresponsibility

sex stuff

cultural dissonance

celebrity gossip/factoids

The most important thing for them, without fail, is the need to feed the beast every day. Think about it.They have a hundred pages of content to frame around their advertising each time they show up at work. Imagine that. It’s tough. So if you give them a story, no matter how gooshy, fractile, or brain damaged, they will listen. This is terrific for you in your war, because if you are [as] aggressive in this sphere as you are on the battlefield, you will define the way the war is perceived, and that, my friends is the whole deal.

(pp. 166-67)

Gawker reports [e.a.]:

Edwards Off Paternity Hook… For Now

Despite the wishes of her sister, former John Edwards bedmate Rielle Hunter doesn’t want the haircut-and-pants to take a paternity test to determine whether or not he is the father of her baby. “Hunter said through her attorney that she would not take a genetic test ‘now or in the future.’

How very convenient for Mr. (and Mrs.) Edwards.

Neal Gabler says that, yes, Barack Obama is in fact a star—the star of his own movie [e.a.].

Kennedy was the first politician to realize that the best politics wasn’t politics at all. It was a form of popular culture — dream-making. Or, as [Norman] Mailer put it, Kennedy turned politics into a movie.

All campaigns are movies now, consisting of competing narratives with competing stars. Part of Obama’s appeal, as it was for the Kennedys, is that he has what all rising stars have. He has youth. He has good looks. He has charisma. He has an ability to spellbind. He has had a rapid ascent that makes him new and unfamiliar. He has, in this McLuhanesque age, unflappability that plays especially well on television. And as the biracial son of a single mother, he has a great personal story that provides a terrific vehicle for his role.

But, above all, Obama has something else that all great stars have — he embodies a theme. …

Obama’s theme is a potent one. Whether one buys into it or not, he promises to cross divides — political, ideological, racial, geographic — and to transcend the old politics of fear and hate that has commandeered recent elections. He believes that America can — and should — be the moral beacon for the world by returning to its core values. In analyzing his own appeal, Obama says he has become a symbol — which, again, is exactly what all stars are. He is providing a really good, uplifting movie.

That’s all well and good, except let’s forget about Barack Obama for a minute and think about John Edwards. Didn’t he also provide us with a “really good, uplifting movie”? Wasn’t he also a star?

Do we want a star as president?

The New York Times barely even attempts to defend itself for failing to report on the John Edwards story [e.a.]:

A number of news organizations with resources far greater than The Enquirer’s, like The New York Times, say they looked into the Edwards matter and found nothing solid enough to report, while others did not look at all. …

The New York Times looked into the Enquirer reports last fall, though none too aggressively, editors said.

Bill Keller, the executive editor, said in an e-mail message that Mr. Edwards’s dark-horse status and the “added hold-your-nose quality about The Enquirer” contributed to the lack of interest by The Times and the mainstream media generally.

Tim Rutten, writing in the L.A. Times, smashes that reasoning to smithereens:

As pressure mounted on major newspapers to take some aspect of the unfolding scandal into account, editors and ombudsmen issued statements saying it would be unfair to publish anything until the Enquirer’s stories had been “confirmed.”

Well, there’s confirming and then there’s confirming. One sort occurs when an editor mutters, “Find somebody and have them make a few calls.” Then there’s the sort that comes when that editor summons an investigative reporter with a heart like ice and a mind like Torquemada’s and says, “Follow this wherever it goes and peel this guy like an onion.”

Suffice to say that the follow-up of the Enquirer’s story fell into the former category in too many newsrooms, including that of The Times.

Some of this reticence may have reflected a regard for the feelings of Edwards’ wife, Elizabeth, who has incurable cancer. There was, however, every reason to set that deference aside.

First, it was less than unlikely that Elizabeth Edwards was unaware of the allegations. (She says now she knew of the affair in 2006.) Second, Edwards’ name has surfaced as a possible running mate for Barack Obama and as a possible attorney general or Supreme Court nominee — posts in which character and candor matter. Finally, throughout his political career, Edwards has made his marriage a centerpiece of his campaigns.

The hypocrisy angle alone (Rutten’s point number 3) should have had the MSM on Edwards’s tail.

This was not the MSM’s finest hour, but John Edwards is certainly being dragged through the mud by them now, like he deserves.

He’s just gross—he’s got an excuse for everything, and he’s his own judge and jury. Yuck.

Kaus is still on the trail of the story, natch, and he’s not sparing Elizabeth Edwards’s feelings, because she has already named the villain in this story, and curiously it’s not her husband.

Update: Elizabeth Edwards is already up on Kos with a diary attacking “the present voyeurism.” … HuffPo’s Lee Stranahan, a former Edwards supporter, responds “Say It Ain’t So, Elizabeth: You Knew But Let Him Run.” Excerpt:

[I]f you’re an Edwards supporter, let me put this bluntly; if you gave John and Elizabeth Edwards time, money, support, or goodwill, they played you.

They made a conscious decision to make their relationship a focus throughout the campaign. That emotional goodwill you feel for them? They not only let you feel, they took actions and made statements specifically so you would feel it.

Now do you see why I hate politics?

The New York Times reassures me that China was trying hard to reassure the rest of the world about its obvious ambitions, appetites, and might [e.a.]:

An ecstatic China finally got its Olympic moment on Friday night. And if the astonishing opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympic Games lavished grand tribute on Chinese civilization and sought to stir an ancient nation’s pride, there was also a message for an uncertain outside world: Do not worry. We mean no harm.

Usually, that message is delivered by the dour-faced leaders of the ruling Communist Party, who dutifully, if sometimes unconvincingly, regurgitate the phrase “harmonious society” coined by President Hu Jintao. But in the nimble cinematic hands of Zhang Yimou, the filmmaker who directed the opening ceremonies, the politics of harmony were conveyed in a visual extravaganza.

The opening ceremonies gave the Communist Party its most uninterrupted, unfiltered chance to reach a gargantuan global audience. At one point, thousands of large umbrellas were snapped open to reveal the smiling, multicultural faces of children of the global village. Benetton could not have done it better.

Maybe! But the children soon gave way to soldiers, pictured here:

Have you ever seen soldiers at the Olympics before?  Me neither.

That was pretty goddamn weird and disturbing and intimidating.

How can that creepy image stand side by side with the beauty of this?

and this?

and this?

And that is just one of the many, many conundrums of contemporary China.

The fascinating background story of the film director who staged the opening ceremony extravaganza is told in the NY Times here.

Nearly two years in the making, his spectacle is intended to present China’s new face to the world with stagecraft and pyrotechnics that organizers boast have no equal in the history of the Games. Whether or not it succeeds, it will underscore one reality of a rising China: many leading artists now work with, or at least not against, the ruling Communist Party.

Rising nationalism and pride in China’s emergence as an economic power, and robust state support for artists who steer clear of political defiance, have transformed China’s cultural landscape since the early part of this decade. Today, directors, writers and painters who seek to expose the darker side of authoritarian rule not only enrage the censors, but also often find themselves shut out of the lucrative market for Chinese art, books and film. Many of those who find less political outlets for their talent, on the other hand, can get rich.

“People really are selling their talent in a way that can make them money,” said Ai Weiwei, an internationally recognized artist based in Beijing. “They really know that if they work with the government, they’ll benefit.”

The opening ceremonies will represent a particularly momentous conversion for Mr. Zhang, whose experience during the horrors of Mao’s Cultural Revolution appeared to inform several of his internationally acclaimed — and domestically banned — films, including “Ju Dou” and “To Live.”

Mr. Zhang said in a recent interview that he never had political aims. His supporters say it is the Communist Party that has become more sophisticated, seeking to harness the country’s top talent and embrace a broader notion of national culture.

But critics accuse Mr. Zhang of making a pact with a political leadership that has a long record of restricting artistic freedom, playing the role of favored court artist — a kind of Chinese Leni Riefenstahl, creating beautiful backdrops for iron-fisted rulers.

“He went from being this renegade making films that were banned and an eyesore for the Chinese government to kind of being the pet of the government, in some people’s eyes,” said Michael Berry, who teaches contemporary Chinese culture at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It’s almost a complete turnaround from his early days.”

The country’s fervor about the Olympics was so great that even blase twenty-something Beijingites were roused:

Ms. Tian, 29, an executive assistant at GlobalLogic, an American software company, said she had overcome her initial lack of interest in the Games and organized a viewing party for 20 friends, human resource executives, marketing managers and public relations strategists.

“To be frank, at first I didn’t feel connected to the Olympics,” she said. “I was annoyed by all the restrictions.”

But once the opening ceremonies started, Ms. Tian was transfixed. The eyes of some of her friend welled up with tears. They screamed and cheered when the Chinese team appeared on the screen. They shouted, “Go China.” They put down their smartphones and hugged each other with joy.

“I’m so proud of my country,” Ms. Tian said, a Chinese flag affixed to each cheek. “When I see this, I suddenly appreciate all the things the government put us through.”

Edwards screwed but didn’t impregnate.

Are we surprised? No—especially not by the weaselish statement he released.

One of his punishments is that despite that it’s the opening night of the Olympics and despite a shooting war between Russia and Georgia, CNN is playing this story to the hilt. Every commentator has looked or sounded like he/she wanted to take a shower after talking about this story.

Kaus is taking his laps.

Glenn Reynolds echoes my thoughts.

EDWARDS ADMITS THAT HE LIED ABOUT AFFAIR: But the real story is how the mainstream press, despite knowing or strongly suspecting that he was lying, covered for him.

There are two Americas — the real one, and the one the press tries to fob off on us.

True dat. But people seem to prefer storytelling to the truth, so the press has no real motivation to tell it like it really is. Oh well!

On December 9, 2007, this headline appeared in The Gothamist:

Oprah Calls Obama “The One”

The headline was followed by this picture:

The picture was followed by this paragraph [e.a. and e.a.]:

Oprah Winfrey introduced one of her favorite things people at what the NY Times called “the largest spectacle of the campaign cycle” - the Oprah for Barack Obama rally in Des Moines, Iowa. Winfrey said, “For the very first time in my life, I feel compelled to stand up and to speak out for the man who I believe has a new vision for America,” and told the audience of 15,000 said, “I am here to tell you, Iowa, he is the one. He is the one!“

This morning on This Week, David Gergen asserted that, being from the South, he knew that the McCain ad’s use of the Obama nickname “The One” was actually racist code, suggesting that Obama is being “uppity.”

And to think it all started with Oprah.

Should law students take the bar exam on laptops and allow the potential for technological problems to add to their anxiety, or to be sure that nothing goes wrong, should they write their answers the old-fashioned way, by hand?

Some students are out of practice:

“I was kind of scared to do the handwriting,” said Katie Brandes, a recent graduate of Columbia Law School.

Read all about it here.

Sleaze scuppers Democrat golden boy

Gotcha: Senator John Edwards, whose wife has cancer, has been caught in a sex scandal that ends his vice-presidential hopes

—via The Times, London, because the American MSM (with the exception of Fox) has failed to mention it

If I see the word “reign” misused one more time today, like this [e.a.]:

Reid attacked and scolded correspondents in attendance, telling them he’s “really disappointed” in how they have been writing his energy plans, which include a bill to reign in speculation in the energy futures markets.

I’m gonna scream!

You rein in speculation.

Queen Elizabeth reigns.

When it rains illiteracy, it pours.

I was sifting through some piles of paper and came across this February 2006 NYT article by Kit Seelye, which was also the subject of one of my first blog posts. Seelye noted both the evolving pace of news-making and the evolving prominence of political newsmakers (in relationship to other public personalities, like, say, sports stars, daytime hosts, and various kinds of opinion-mongers in many different media) [e.a.]:

[I]n 1998, Monica-mania struck.

”I told CNN there was no reason to take this briefing live,” Mr. McCurry recalled. ”But they said, ‘We get 100,000 more households when you’re on the air.’ ”

Ever since, the White House briefings have played out in real time against the daytime dramas, giving the world a glimpse into the daily push-me, pull-you in a democracy of making news (or not) and trying to report it. Now, with cable channels, reality television, talk-back live and blogging on the spot, with viewers and readers hip to stagecraft and expecting to be taken behind the scenes, there seems no turning back.

Mr. McClellan, for one, said he wouldn’t dream of trying to unplug the briefings.

”We have no intention of not broadcasting them,” he said. ”They serve a purpose for both the White House and reporters.”

That was a wise decision on McClellan’s part (back when he was still loyal to GWB), for the reasons he stated. And he was backed up both by a Republican predecessor and a Democratic predecessor [e.a.]:

Mr. Fleischer recalled a virulent period with the media (and Democrats) in May 2002 after a New York Post headline proclaimed that ”Bush Knew” in advance about the Sept. 11 attacks.

”That was a vicious explosion that lasted a week,” he said. ”But the president calculated the press would go too far, and they went so far in their accusations that the country was far more inclined to believe the president than the press.” Several polls at the time showed President Bush maintaining his high approval ratings of 75 percent throughout the episode.

”The public perceives the press not as watchdogs but as attack dogs,” Mr. Fleischer said.

Mr. McCurry saw the same dynamic.

”The public hates the people in that room,” he said. ”My standing up there and getting pelted with rotten tomatoes during Monica probably helped Bill Clinton because people say, ‘What is wrong with the people in this room?’ ”

Check out the required character traits, look inward, cleanse yourself of impurities, and sign on … if you dare:

Brought to you by the Center for American Progress.

Did you know that there is a special kind of “progressive” “thinking”?

Matthew Yglesias, CAP’s highly touted new hire, still writing from his old perch at the Atlantic, may just give a hint of it. Last time I read his blog, he was proposing that public intellectuals simplify their commentary to a level that even a Manhattan-bred and Cambridge (Mass.)-educated ignoramus like him can understand without, you know, actually having to read or study the wisdom of the ages.

This is perhaps a good time to note that I’m not really a fan of historical analogies as a mode of argument. The reason is that accuracy in historical characterization is rarely particularly relevant to the point the analogy-maker was trying to make. But under the circumstances, there’s actually not much need to make the analogy. At the end of the day, I think I understand what Brooks is saying here perfectly well and I don’t know anything about Disraeli. To me, the interesting thing about the use of the analogy is simply that for whatever reason modern-day conservative reformers don’t like to site Eisenhower and Nixon as predecessors even though they would make more familiar references.

No more references to Disraeli! We don’t know anything about him! We’re only Harvard graduates!

Having just watched a particularly unedifying half-hour of Campbell Brown’s CNN show, I can attest that the media free-for-all surrounding campaign ‘08 is well captured by Victor Davis Hanson:

What is fascinating about the tingly-leg press is that they are exhibiting the very symptoms of arrested development and star-struck immaturity that they always accuse America in toto of suffering. The usual critique of the elite media is that we are a nation of mindless followers, who go from one fad to another, and value looks, youth, and pizzazz over substance.

But the current spectacle suggests something worse — that the press who claims they know better and are more sophisticated are, in fact, far more infantile than most Americans, and essentially Access Hollywood, People Magazine, and the National Enquirer dressed up with network logos and NY-DC bylines.

Dude, that’s what I’ve been sayin’ all along! But everybody knows it—if you’ve got a pulse and you watch even ten minutes of cable “news,” (which is pretty much the only “news” that exists on TV, since network “news” amounts to about 19 minutes per every 24 hours) you can’t possibly miss it.

It’s just how things are now, and the viewing audience is showing a lot of skepticism, as Rasmussen reported earlier this week. Television is an entertainment medium. All the information we get from it is dressed up in some kind of showbiz clothes. Our job as viewers is to try to figure out what we can trust and what we can’t trust.

Happy viewing!

The WaPo clears away the smoke and fog and nails Obama’s make-believe foreign policy:

Mr. Obama’s account of his strategic vision remains eccentric. He insists that Afghanistan is “the central front” for the United States, along with the border areas of Pakistan. But there are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered. While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country’s strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world’s largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama’s antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.

Byron York says what every blogger thought as soon as he or she read all about John Edwards, his mistress, and his love child on Memeorandum:

Today Is Fitzmas for Mickey Kaus

Ann Althouse isn’t happy that onlookers at the hotel where Edwards was caught visiting his paramour and their baby were reportedly amused that he had to sneak around.

[quoting the Enquirer] “He was clearly surprised that we had caught him at this very late hour inside the hotel.

“Some guests up at this late hour watched the spectacle in amusement from a staircase nearby.”

Amusement.

Certainly there’s nothing amusing about this for Elizabeth Edwards, if that’s what Althouse is thinking. However, some of us don’t sympathize with the wives of presidential candidates, even the ones with breast cancer. Oh, we’re sorry about the breast cancer. But we certainly don’t sympathize with them as wives of obviously unprincipled men: power-mad, arrogant, self-loving, self-aggrandizing sleaze bags, every last one of them. They’re politicians!

So some of Althouse’s commenters, like me, can’t wait to hear the inevitable upcoming exchange between Kaus and Bob Wright.

All hail Mickey Kaus’s nose for undernews.

In a country of conformists, Barack Obama doesn’t fit into anyone’s preconceived notions. He does, however, fit Marc Ambinder’s notions of the dream candidate:

after the Democratic pollster, Peter Hart, whose focus groups of Pennsylvania voters showed that many just didn’t identify with Obama; they didn’t know what to make of him; their life was not his life; they could not hang their experiences on any of his. Now — race may certainly be a major reason for this lack of projective identification, particularly among older whites. But it is also true that Obama’s life is a 21st century American life; one of different countries, an unusual name, two races, a meteoric rise, a life of the mind (and a talented, incredible gift of a mind) and devoted to the ideals of expression. [e.a.]

Ambinder is clear-headed enough to admit that:

Those facts aren’t enough.

They’re not enough to sway voters in Obama’s direction and indeed make them vulnerable to be swayed away from Obama. Where Ambinders gets lost is in asserting that this makes Obama vulnerable only to all the terrible things people might say about him:

But absent a way for her connect to Obama, it stands to reason that she will be more likely to believe just about anything.

In this version of the scenario, Obama is obviously a superior being—anyone can see that, according to Ambinder: after all, his life is “a life of the mind (and a talented, incredible gift of a mind [--my emphasis])”—and 86-year-old Maria VanderMolen is just ripe to be duped, the poor old dear.

In my version of the scenario, it is Marc Ambinder and the Obama-bots who have bought into a notion that the Obama Messiah is, well, the Obama Messiah.

The Messiah himself gives them plenty of reason to believe in him:

Logan: “Do you have any doubts?”

Obama: “Never.”

What I wanna know is why nobody has named me a Messiah, me with my 20th-century life, and four out of six traits that I share with the Obama Messiah:

different countries? check

an unusual name? check (but you’ll have to trust me on that one; if you don’t trust me, look at my nom de guerre: Hepzeeba; is it unusual enough for you?)

a life of the mind? check (”talented” and “incredible”? you’ll have to ask my clients and colleagues)

devoted to the ideals of expression? check (I’m a blogger, ain’t I?)

Take it from someone who’s “different”: it’s not a plus.