I spent the long weekend being lazy, and had more time than usual to devote to reading the dead-tree New York Times, a daily indulgence I still enjoy.
Here are a few stories that stood out:
—a really cranky and cheeky one, un-Timesian … or maybe I just haven’t been paying attention. It’s about Joe Lieberman:
In Washington, Democrats prefer frozen smiles at mention of his name, if only because their majority — their chairmanships, their fancier offices, their power — hangs on his whim. “Senator Lieberman is a valued member of the caucus, and he votes with the Democrats a majority of the time,” said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader.
Upon further questioning, Mr. Manley made clear that he was prepared to continually repeat that sentence. [great line! ---ed.]
“The Senate Democrats are like volcano worshipers,” said Bill Curry, an adviser in the Clinton White House who once sat alongside Mr. Lieberman in the Connecticut State Senate. “If Lieberman blows, their whole island sinks into the sea.”
—a faux-culture studies story about the Guantanamo of the public imagination vs. the real thing, although the real thing gets decidedly short shrift, in favor of the “evil tropical prison” frame:
In retrospect, it was probably inevitable that Guantánamo would be an irresistible subject. It is an international cause set on a secretive, fenced military base next to the shimmering Caribbean. Echos of the cold war practically bounce off the arid Cuban hills.
Dorothea Dieckmann, a German writer whose novel “Guantánamo” was released in English last year, said she felt compelled to write about the detention camp as soon as she learned of it.
“You have a bizarre and surrealistic place in the heart of an enemy’s country. You have the Caribbean,” she said. “It is already a novelistic setting. It’s half fantasy. It’s half horror.”
The story fails to mention the evil detainees the prison was meant to house: enemy operatives, wanted for the mass murder of Americans.
Finally: surprisingly, while seeming to endorse Obama’s use of rhetoric, the Times exposes a chink in his armor: his defensiveness about it, and his borrowing of a defense from his friend Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts.
Senator Barack Obama adapted one of his signature arguments — that his oratory amounts to more than inspiring words — from speeches given by Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts during his 2006 campaign. …
“Don’t tell me words don’t matter,” Mr. Obama said, to applause. “ ‘I have a dream’ — just words? ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’ — just words? ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself’ — just words? Just speeches?”
Um, no, not “just words” or “just speeches.” But the other speeches were made by great leaders at times of national crisis.
This country is not in crisis, despite the fact that many people feel lost and dejected. It’s not a national problem, much less a national crisis.
Tellingly, Obama is getting even more defensive in response to Clinton’s attacks:
“Speeches don’t put food on the table,” [Clinton] told voters last week in Ohio, arguing that she offers solutions, not just rhetoric.
As Mr. Obama responded last week, his voice rose several decibels.
“It’s true that speeches don’t solve all problems,” he said. “But what is also true if we cannot inspire the country to believe again, it doesn’t matter how many policies and plans we have.” [e.a.]
For even more analysis of Obama’s rhetoric, read Jack Shafer, who unpacks it in a link-rich piece here in Slate.
The NYT’s Alessandra Stanley is concerned about the incorrect characterization of women in the upcoming spinoff of Grey’s Anatomy [e.a.]:
On “Grey’s Anatomy” at least two female characters, Christina (Sandra Oh) and Dr. Bailey (Chandra Wilson) have confidence, big egos and an ability to keep their sorrows to themselves most of the time. The female leads on the new series are fragile and pitiable, and it’s a worrisome imbalance. The HBO series “Sex and the City” made light of female insecurity and let its flighty heroines come out ahead. Here even the most successful women are left behind in life.
Then Stanley steps back to second-guess her own silly critique of fiction:
It wouldn’t matter, since the show is admittedly over-the-top escapist fantasy for women,
And then she steps forward once again to pass judgment:
except that it is troubling that even in escapist fantasies, today’s heroines have to be weak, needy and oversexed to be liked by women and desired by men.
Memo to dramatists: plausibility and heightened tension are no no longer your first concerns. Make sure your women behave correctly.
When I have time to read my local paper at a leisurely pace—and when it doesn’t annoy me to death with its stooopid politics—I find a lot of thoughtful and insightful reporting. Maybe I should call this feature Little Noted Nor Long Remembered: too many of these gems are buried, within the stories themselves and inside the paper—but that’s another story: a boring one.
Without further ado, items to file away from today’s New York Times, filtered [or "mediated" or "edited" (as in selected) by yours truly]:
from “Despite Tension, Millions Vote in Congo,” a gentle reminder that Darfur and Somalia aren’t the only trouble spots in Africa.
Congo is one of the poorest, most chaotic nations on the planet, ruined by unrest that is estimated to have claimed millions of lives in the past 10 years. In many corners of the country, law, order, electricity and medicine are virtually nonexistent.
Even here in the capital, the most developed area of the country, some people are so poor that they eat fried crickets.
It is lawless here, too. Bands of street kids roam ramshackle neighborhoods, swinging iron bars and lengths of wood, and set up roadside checkpoints to shake down drivers.
from “Attackers Set Fire to Bus in Marseille, Wounding One” [the "one" is described; the attackers are not]:
Mama Galledou, a 26-year-old Frenchwoman of Senegalese descent, sustained burns over 60 percent of her body, according to the police.
from “Afghans, Returning Home, Set Off a Building Boom,” very surprising good news from Afghanistan:
The return of Afghan refugees over the last four years, and their ability to adapt and survive, has been one of the real successes of the international intervention here and of President Hamid Karzai’s government. Since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, an estimated 4.7 million refugees have flooded back from neighboring Iran and Pakistan, 3.7 million with assistance from the United Nations refugee agency and another million on their own.
from “Pelosi Serves as Focal Point for Both Parties,” a rare ironic description of a Democrat:
Oops!
I didn’t mean to play Gotcha! Really. I swear. But I’ve got a little news-break. Stop the presses!
Someone at the NYT edited this story between the time the dead-tree copy that showed up at my door at 7 a.m. went to bed and the time the story was put online.
Words included in the dead-tree copy version and elided in the online copy [reprinted below] are bolded:
Her voting record is among the most liberal in Congress. She gets an “A” from the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League and an “F” from the National Rifle Association. She favors alternative sentencing over prison construction, schools without prayer and death with taxes. She voted against the use of force in Iraq, though after the war started she voted to finance it.
Here is the version I found online:
Her voting record is among the most liberal in Congress. She gets an “A” from the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League and an “F” from the National Rifle Association. She favors alternative sentencing over prison construction and opposes prayer in the schools. She voted against the use of force in Iraq, though after the war started she voted to finance it.
“Schools without prayer and death with taxes“—that has a certain je ne sais quoi, dontcha think? [[oops: before I corrected this mistake, I typed "death without taxes"---my bad, ed.]]
Obviously, some paranoid second-guessing busybody at the New York Times doesn’t agree!
And, really, I was trying to tip my hat to the Times, because I enjoyed reading it so much this morning. Now I’m annoyed. Maybe I’ll go back to posting the other interesting tidbits I found in the paper. Grrrrr.
