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Random commentary and senseless acts of blogging.
The first Republican president once said, "While the people retain their virtue and their vigilance, no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can seriously injure the government in the short space of four years." If Mr. Lincoln could see what's happened in these last three-and-a-half years, he might hedge a little on that statement. Blog critics Gryffindor House Slytherin House Ravenclaw House House Elves Beth Jacob Prisoners of Azkaban Muggles
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Tuesday, December 31, 2002
CalPundit has listed all of Heinlein's fiction, in order of preference. I can't comment on his whole list - about half the works in question I've never read. But I certainly wouldn't agree with his choice of the rambling, overlong Time Enough For Love as #1. My own unoriginal pick for the top would be Stranger in a Strange Land. I would also probably raise his low rankings of The Puppet Masters and Podkayne of Mars, while knocking down several spaces the short story collection The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag. Heinlein's late work has a God-awful reputation among fans. The only late Heinlein I've read was Job, which I thought was actually quite good, and led me to wonder at times if the other late books were underrated. But Kevin singles Job out for a rather high rating while trashing all of the other late novels.
But in an otherwise fine post, I do have to take exception with the offhand and completely gratuitous swipe at the terrific writer Lois McMasters Bujold.
In other SF blogging, Electrolite suspects that the entire world is now starting to act like fans.
Avedon Carol has a fascinating discussion of the political implications of Tolkien that offers so many interesting points, from the moral qualities of orcs to the nature of fantasy, to write about that it's hard to pick one out. So I'll just head back to the starting point, whether LotR is 'pro-war' in a way that can be meaningfully compared to current policy disputes. In a crude sense, Tolkien is pretty clearly pro-war. Tolkien drew on the heroic literature of pagan and early Christian northern European cultures. One way that he imitated this literature was in making his villain absolutely, unconditionally evil. There isn't much point to trying to deal with Sauron by negotiating with him - the only alternative is to fight him. And characters in the book seem to say pretty clearly at several points that he has been growing stronger while the forces of good looked away and avoided all out war. This is one of the major reasons that LotR has often been read as a parable about WWII.
Tolkien is obviously not a pacifist. But the suggestion that he's trigger happy doesn't seem consistent with the story. The war against Sauron and Saruman is fought by soldiers to a considerable degree, but look at who actually wins it. Saruman is overthrown by the ents, and Sauron defeated by hobbits. Each culture is pacific and non-military. Both keep to their own corners of Middle Earth so thoroughly that the ents are believed to be legends and hobbits are hardly known to those who don't live in or near the Shire. There seems to be no such thing as an army, a militia, or a professional soldier in either culture.
Tolkien also suggests the dangerous temptation of power. The ring is the most obvious symbol; not only is Boromir tempted by it, but even Sam has to struggle with the temptation. Saruman himself was once good, but seduced to evil in the course of his own struggle against it. Saruman uses jealousy and suspicion to trick some humans into becoming allies against Rohan, although it is clear that if he succeeds he intends ultimately to destroy his allies. Sauron has human allies coming up from the south; although just why they have allied themselves with Sauron is never made clear, they aren't portrayed as being inherently evil. Even Theoden becomes in some sense a tool of evil when he is under the influence of Wormtongue. It is obvious Tolkien understands that those who are not 'objectively pro-evil' can be made into tools of evil if they are not extremely careful. The ideal of heroism and military glory is one way they can be seduced, as is a dislike for what is foreign or strange to them.
In real world situations, the problems are not so simple. Even the struggle against Hitler, as close to a war against absolute evil as you are likely to get in real life, required an alliance with another tyranny only marginally less evil. Orcs may well be completely irredeemable things without human qualities (I am inclined to think so, although Patrick Nielsen Hayden doubts it); Moslems quite certainly are not.
It has been a trope among hawks for the past 50 years to see every war or peace question as another Munich, and every enemy as another Hitler. Bringing Sauron into the equation is the same thing in a more contemporary reference. As a culture, we remember Munich 1938 but have largely forgotten Sarajevo 1914, where unwillingness of key leaders to be perceived as backing down led to a war that nobody wanted, that could have been prevented, and cost millions of lives without really settling anything. Monday, December 30, 2002
Tapped has recently declared something of a Jihad against Bob Somerby, devoting a series of four posts to criticism of the Daily Howler. Tapped does score a few points in this debate, more against a private e-mail from Somerby that was accidentally cc'ed to Tapped than against the Howler itself. But on the merits, their essential case is weak. It started with an off-hand suggestion in Tapped that the Lott story was originally ignored in major media due to a reluctance to criticize Washington insiders. Somerby fired back strongly, suggesting that this account deliberately ignored a media tendency to go soft on Republicans. The theory that Washington insiders or useful sources get soft treatment from the media contains some truth, but doesn't explain nearly enough unless you also include a conservative bias. The Clintons first came into Washington as outsiders, as did Jimmy Carter earlier, and that status was used by some to explain the harsh media treatment they got. But Al Gore is very much a Washington insider, indeed, it was one of the things he was criticized for in 2000. (At the same time, the media uncritically pushed the theory that the key to the personality of George W. Bush, whose family lived in Washington and vacationed in Maine, was his deep Texas roots.) More to the point, he was an insider who had received generally favorable press treatment for 20 years until the run-up to the 2000 campaign began and the right wing spin machine stopped focusing on Clinton and made him their primary target. A man who for years had been seen as squeaky clean became overnight a pathological liar who was likely to be indicted at any moment, and stories which were known falsehoods were printed repeatedly and never retracted. In spite of the eagerness of Tapped and some others to do so, I don't think that the sociology of the chattering classes alone can explain that strange event. Only the willingness of the establishment media to bend to the conservative agenda, and the fact that most of the key members of the press and all the senior executives of the corporations that control them are part of the 1% financial elite who receive real benefits from Republican economic policies, explains it.
In the Lott case, many people have noted the early silence of the mainstream media. Fewer have commented on the fact that the real media piling on only began after Bush himself criticized Lott. Until Bush gave permission, which assured that criticism wouldn't be regarded as 'liberal bias' and made it clear that the most powerful conservatives were quite willing to throw Lott overboard, there wasn't nearly enough momentum to force Lott out. So even in the only incident of recent years which seems to run against the pattern, an underlying fear to offend right wing power can be seen.
Tapped provides no explanation of why a press corps so friendly to Washington insiders and valuable news sources turned on Daschle after he criticized Limbaugh, why they disemboweled Gore, or why they embraced every scandal story that came down the chute during the Clinton years, even though one story after another proved fake. Tapped also refuses to make an attempt to refute Somerby's explanation, instead dismissing it as "such a mush of twisted logic and impenetrable non sequiturs that we're not sure where to begin". They also bizarrely claimed not to understand what Somerby might mean by "bow[ing] to conservative power", and labelled him as "consumed by his obsessive-paranoid worldview" . It isn't hard to figure whether it is Somerby or Tapped who is "attack[ing] people who basically agree with him".
At the same time, Tapped has an article up on its web site discussing the media attacks on Gore. The article contains little, perhaps nothing, that hasn't already been discussed more thoroughly in the Howler, much of it years ago, but fails to mention Somerby's prior work. Thursday, December 26, 2002
Gandalf the Gay This is a sick, sick mind at work. The funniest thing I've seen this month. Link from Judith at Kesher. Wednesday, December 25, 2002
Merry Christmas and happy Channukah (you do know it ended about 3 weeks ago) to all. And in the spirit of the season, a little bad will towards you-know-who. Tuesday, December 24, 2002
The Two Towers The second movie in Jackson's adaptation of Tolkien's famous trilogy is better than the first. There are two big problems in adapting The Two Towers. The first, that it doesn't really come to a payoff until the final installment, is insoluble, although Jackson has used the battle of Helms Deep as something of a finale. The worse one is Gollum. Unless you throw away Tolkien's story and start from a blank page, you can't tell the last two volumes of Lord of the Rings without Gollum as a major character, and that begs for disaster. He's mostly an irritating presence in the books, sniveling and lisping, and handled poorly on screem could easily make you long for Jar Jar Binks. But just as Phantom Menace is a lesson for filmmakers on how not to integrate an animated character into a live film, The Two Towers is a lesson in how it can be done right. Jackson's Gollum, voiced well by Andy Serkis, is remarkably lively and expressive, both in facial movement and body language. He is alternately disgusting, pathetic, nasty, comic, decent, and always compelling. What could easily have been the weakness of the film becomes its greatest strength.
With a strong Gollum, and a solid cast still led by Elijah Wood as Frodo amd Ian McKellen as Gandalf, the rest of the movie flows gracefully. The visualization of the ents was a bit less impressive than I had hoped for, but the panoramic sweep and visual splendor of the action in scenes like the battle of Helms Deep, the battle of Isengard, and Frodo and Sam traveling through the Dead Marshes easily made up for it.
There are significant changes in the story. Without going into spoilers, the main one is that Frodo and Sam take a side trip they didn't take in the book, and at the end of the movie they have not yet reached Cirith Ungol, which is where Tolkien left them (in a cliffhanger) at the end of the book. That episode will presumably be entirely in the final chapter, which is fitting since it is the shortest of the three volumes - very short indeed if Jackson chooses to omit the final anti-climactic episode in the Shire. There is also an added romantic subplot, with the elf Arwen (Liv Tyler) and the Rohannan princess Eowyn (Miranda Otto) both falling in love with Aragorn (Viggo Mortenson).
Overall, the film is not to be missed for anyone who enjoyed the first installment and even those, including myself, who thought it mildly disappointing.
Monday, December 23, 2002
Jeanne d'Arc has a wonderful post remembering the emptiness of some Christmas 'charity' from her own childhood. H. D. Miller notes an original, although apparently ineffective, means of fighting a traffic citation. Sunday, December 22, 2002
Tilting at Windbags Mark Kleiman did a fine post a few days ago showing how phony claims of 'liberal bias' are drummed up out of nowhere, referencing an article on Bill Frist. Today, Instapundit and the liberal bias whiners are at it again. Glenn accuses the Times of 'recycling lies' about Frist, citing a post by Tennessee blogger and journalist Bill Hobbs.
The Times article referred to does say, in the 14th paragraph of an overwhelmingly positive profile, that Frist 'is certain to face new scrutiny over racial issues'. The next paragraph refers to the Marion Barry quote that Josh Marshall has recently mentioned. Paragraphs 16 - 19 say:
Also in that campaign, Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., Democrat from Memphis, demanded that Mr. Frist apologize to African-Americans for remarks that he and a supporter made. Mr. Frist, going to a largely black march against crime, had asked a worker to obtain imprinted pencils to distribute, requesting unsharpened pencils. "I don't want to get stuck," he told the aide. A supporter also said the bus was getting "deeper into the jungle" as it approached a black neighborhood. Mr. Frist said at the time that his remark was not racial and that he could not be held responsible for his supporter's remark. But some blacks said he had been racially insensitive.
Hobbs and Instapundit both call this a 'lie' without giving any explanation of what they mean. No claim is made that Frist never made the remark about 'get[ting] stuck', so they appear to be referring to the claim that this remark had racial connotations - something that the Times never says, but attributes to 'some blacks', the only named critic being plainly identified as a Democratic elected official. At most the Times is making a mountain from a mole hill - or, more accurately, with an offhand reference 16 paragraphs deep into the story, making a slightly larger mole hill out of a miniscule mole hill.
Hobbs, however, isn't finished. He has another post 'exposing' liberal bias which surely sets some kind of record. Check out the opening paragraphs of the sloppy kiss that Hobbs labels 'the liberal media's biased attack on Sen. Bill Frist':
WASHINGTON -- Lawmaker by day, Good Samaritan by night, Sen. Bill First, R-Tenn., is a wealthy doctor-turned-politician who occasionally attends art openings at his family-endowed museum -- but prefers to spend his vacations visiting remote African villages to dispense lifesaving care. It goes without saying that he pilots his own plane. So Frist fits neatly into the melodramatic script of Trent Lott's fall from power, cast as the new majority leader called on to rescue the party in a moment of peril. "He really shows the true compassionate conservatism," in the words of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. But this plot twist raises a thorny question that only time will answer: Can those delicate surgeon's fingers manage the backslapping, arm-twisting, hand-holding and pocket-picking that comprise the sometimes grubby backroom reality of a Senate leader's life?
Some of the phrases applied to Frist later in the article include: "notoriously independent...superstar surgeon... expertise... idealism...a Dr. Kildare idealism...the son of a Tennessee legend... a daredevil lad...cosmopolitan...personified the Bush administration dream of conservatism with a friendly face...Party leaders get dreamy-eyed when they picture the new majority leader saving a life on the Capitol grounds-as Frist has done a couple of times in the past eight years. (Once, he resuscitated a collapsed tourist; another time, he tended to the grievously wounded gunman who killed two Capitol police officers. )...toured AIDS-ravaged countries with rock star Bono... an astute and willing negotiator...Tarplin said he was struck by Frist's `ability to synthesize very, very complex subject matter`... worked to provide greater access to health care in impoverished communities... a Boy Scout in all the positive ways... smooth demeanor..."
It's just shocking that the liberal media can use such vicious language about a public figure and get away with it. I hope Sen. Frist has a good libel lawyer.
Here's how the nasty liberal media handles the most dodgy part of Frist's background:
In the late 1980s, the Frist family company was swallowed in a hostile takeover, and Frist's father and brother ceded management control to the owners of what became Columbia/HCA. In 1997, FBI raids on company hospitals turned up widespread Medicare fraud. According to attorneys for the whistleblowers who revealed the massive overbilling, HCA engaged in illegal practices even before the takeover. But Thomas Frist Jr. returned to the helm of the company as unpaid chairman and chief executive, and worked to restore trust in the company.
The account is sloppy on the facts. The merger took place in 1994, not the 1980s, and no other report I found described it as hostile. According to this acount, written during Columbia founder Rick Scott's glory days, HCA initiated the deal. Business Week mentions that after the merger Thomas Frist, Jr remained vice-chairman. The article attributes the claim that illegal practices existed before the merger to "attorneys for the whistleblowers", but briefs filed by DoJ also allege illegal acts preceding the merger by over 5 years. Note that the merger is again described as a takeover. And Forbes stated that HCA's guilty plea on criminal fraud in December, 2000 followed "a seven year investigation" - i.e. an investigation started before the merger. And the article doesn't mention at all the NLRB ruling that Columbia/HCA illegally refused to recognize a nurses union in Kentucky - in this case also some of the illegal acts preceded the merger, although most took place afterwards. These inaccuracies give a false impression maximizing the distance between the Frist family and the illegal activities at HCA. The article also mentions that Thomas Frist returned as CEO without pay in 1997 after the company fell into legal trouble, but neglects to mention that in 1992, his income of $125 million from stock options made him the highest paid executive in the country.
With all this, why does Hobbs find the article to be a "biased attack"? Exactly one word, 'wealthy', which the freeper Hobbs cites favorably complains is applied to Frist but not to Hillary Clinton (who is in fact far less wealthy than Frist). Never mind that the article is glowing enough to have been written by an unusually devoted mother, and soft-pedals or even falsifies some facts to make Frist look better. The presence of one word, neither negative nor inaccurate, alters everything. That one word is enough to prove 'liberal bias'. Wednesday, December 18, 2002
Flogging a Dying Horse Some passages in Trent Lott's bizarre apology from BET deserve notice. I am for affirmative action. And I practice it. I have had African-Americans on my staff, and other minorities, but particularly African-Americans, since the mid-1970s.
In other words, the fact that he actually hires black people demonstrates that he practices affirmative action. These are, in Lott's mind, the same thing. Apparently Mr Lott thinks that if he hired by merit, his staff would be entirely white. Lott is not far from admitting that the charge Democrats have been making for years, that the blacks prominent in conservative circles are tokens, is true. So it's appropriate that at this moment J C Watts, the only black Republican in Congress and recently largely invisible should be reappearing in Lott's defense. Watts is leaving Congress largely because his inability to move up in the leadership after Armey retired suggested that criticisms he had been put in the leadership as a gesture were accurate.
Look, I have a lot of good friends, young African-Americans, business men and women, people in my state that I have reached out to and helped and going to continue to help, and a number of them are speaking up about it.
No, really, some of my best friends...
Well, yes, that's what I'm saying, my actions, I think, don't reflect my voting record.
I am not what I am. - Iago
Really, it's gotten bad when even I'm feeling sorry for the guy. Somebody should get a sharp knife and put this poor jackass out of its misery. Watching it writhe around is just painful.
Punditry note: My feeling is that Nickles wouldn't have made a potential challenge unless he knew he had support - either from within the Senate or, quite likely, a commitment from the White House to back his challenge behind closed doors. Lott will agree to stay on until the next election, in return for a cushy sinecure after his retirement. Nickles will be the new Majority Leader and will push an aggressive right wing agenda.
Saturday, December 14, 2002
The Gwielo Diarist, both a Mississippian and a conservative, has a strong post condemning Lott. Permalinks seem broken, look at Friday under headline "Trent Lott is a Racist". If you still need more reasons to despise Lott (why would you?) try looking here. Tomorrow's News Today Once again, you can find it in the blogosphere. On Thursday, I was sure, along with many others, that Lott was out as majority Leader. But that day Daily Kos wrote: Say Lott is pushed out. In the past, disgraced leaders (like Livingston) have resigned their seats. Really, the humiliation of getting the heave-ho is better swallowed back home, than sitting amongst those who gave you the boot. BUT, if Lott resigns his seat, Mississippi's Democratic governor will (theorertically) appoint a Democrat to replace him. Normally, this wouldn't be the worst thing possible. It's not as if MS wouldn't return a Republican to the Senate in a 2004 special election. But these are not ordinary times. If Lott is replaced by a Democrat (a Zel Miller Democrat, no doubt, but one that would vote for Daschle), that would make the Senate 50-50 once again. And THEN, a Chaffee switch is not inconceivable. The beauty of this scenario is that Republicans couldn't cry that Democrats "stole" the Senate. Lott's resignation would be his fault alone, while Chaffee's switch would be seen by moderates as a repudiation of the GOP's dominant Southern wing. Partisan Republicans couldn't seize on this the way they did with the Jefford's switch. So, it's clear that for Republicans to assure themselves the majority, they could not afford to have Lott resign his seat. But if he was pushed out, could he really go from the number two Republican to essentially a back-bencher? (Indeed, who would even work with him? He'd be radioactive!) The pressure for him to quit the Senate would be intense (from pundits, his own pride, and, perhaps, even feelings of betrayal and spite). Today, Atrios reports from the Weekly Standard that Lott may indeed be unwilling to stay on as a back bencher, leaving Republicans with a nasty choice between keeping on a damaged Majority Leader and risking an outright loss of their majority. Meanwhile, more news of Lott's past is surfacing. From today's New York Times: In 1969, when Trent Lott was a young legislative aide to a staunch segregationist congressman from Mississippi, one of his jobs was responding to angry letters from constituents outraged by the progress of integration. "Mississippi is no more," one woman, Justeen Strange, wrote to her representative, William L. Colmer, a longtime Democrat from Pascagoula, that July. "Thanks to our politicians, we are slaves to the gorilla race, our proud white race is now in servitude to the NAACP jews and negroes." Mr. Lott, writing above Mr. Colmer's signature, politely replied that he was "not insulted" by Ms. Strange's letter, adding, "I was just disappointed that you were not more appreciative of my efforts in behalf of sound government and against the things you complained of."
Howard Fineman is a typical example of the Washington media, and his column on the Lott meltdown is a good example of the lengths they'll go to to find excuses for Republicans - and themselves. Lott comes from a time and place—Mississippi in the ’50s and early ’60s—when segregation was a way of life and defending it was still a route to power. He was a cheerleader at Ole Miss and has been cheerleading for the old days ever since. As a young congressman, he filed a friend of the court brief in favor of preserving the right of Bob Jones University to bar blacks from admission. Lott, by the way, was eventually joined by the Reagan administration itself. A year before that he said what he repeated the other week: that the country would have been better off had Strom won election in 1948. I’ve covered Lott for quite some time and find him to be a courteous, gentlemanly fellow in person. But I think he just is incapable of understanding how offensive it is even to joke—even at Strom’s birthday—about a segregationist campaign. How exactly did Fineman determine Lott was joking? Lott didn't deliver it as a joke, nobody laughed, and none of his numerous semi-apologies has cliamed he was joking. Lott's history, which Fineman knows and at least does mention, hardly suggests he was joking. The only plausible reason to say it was a joke is to spare Lott the embarassment of having said it seriously, even though he plainly did.
As usual in Washington, the statement itself isn’t as damaging as his reaction to having made it. Indeed, when he first made his comments at Thurmond’s 100th birthday party, none of the reporters watching the event gave the remarks a second thought. It was only two days later, when The Washington Post explained the history that Lott had invoked, that the brushfire began. To which I can only say, What the F***?! What history did the Post explain that reporters weren't already familiar with? I can match anybody in the room in my contempt and loathing for the Washington punditocracy, and even I can't accept that none of them already knew that Thurmond ran as a segregationist, or that blacks had a hard time in the South before Civil Rights. Even I don't buy that they're that stupid. Is there any meaning here at all beyond an utterly lame excuse for the media's failure to lead on this story? Thursday, December 12, 2002
Selective Outrage The [Lott] incident did come up on "Meet the Press," where Robert Novak said: "I think it was a mistake. I don't think he was at all serious, and I don't even think we should dwell on it."... Novak wouldn't budge: "I mean, this is the kind of thing that makes people infuriated with the media, is they pick up something that's said at a birthday party and turn it into a case of whether he should be impeached." Republican Sen. Pete Domenici, who canceled his own re-election campaigning in New Mexico because of Sen. Paul Wellstone's death, was appalled that Tuesday night's memorial service in Minneapolis turned into a Democratic political rally. Domenici had worked closely with Wellstone on mental health issues and was crushed by the news of the Oct. 25 plane crash. He hurried to Washington and then went to Minneapolis for the Wellstone service. Friends described him as disappointed by the tone there, especially when Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott was booed. Trent Lott, who is now clearly getting desperate, has followed up his non-apology apology with a non-explanation explanation. According to the Times via Jim Henley: "It was certainly not intended to endorse his segregationist policies that he might have been advocating, or was advocating, 54 years ago." Rather, Mr. Lott said, he meant to hail Mr. Thurmond's record on issues like national defense, balancing the budget and economic development rather than the views on race Mr. Thurmond held when he ran for president on a Dixiecrat platform opposing "social intermingling of the races."
In explaining the similar statement he made at a 1980 rally,
A spokesman for Mr. Lott, Ron Bonjean, said the remarks at the 1980 rally did not pertain to race but were made after Mr. Thurmond, then a top draw on the Republican circuit, had complained mightily about President Jimmy Carter, the national debt and federal meddling in state matters. "We want that federal government to keep their filthy hands off the rights of the states," Mr. Thurmond was quoted as saying. Mr. Bonjean, when shown the article, said, "Clearly, Senator Lott was praising the policies of Thurmond and Reagan, of smaller government and reducing the federal deficit."
The balanced budget defense is even weaker. According to the US Treasury, the debt at the end of FY 1945 was $260.1 bn. When Truman left office after FY 1952, it was almost exactly the same, $259.1 bn. (The debt went down from 45 - 48, so it did rise, about 6%, in Truman's elected term. Still, Truman was probably the only President in history to fight a major war without increasing the national debt.) By contrast, Ronald Reagan almost tripled the debt, from FY 1980 $909.0 bn to FY 1988 $2,601.3 bn.
Wednesday, December 11, 2002
The Twelve Mitzvot of Christmas All you need to know about the halakhic rules for celebrating Xmas, via Teresa Hayden. Tuesday, December 10, 2002
Like a lot of leftists, I was hardly surprised by Trent lott's recent absurdities. I have always assumed that most of the old guard southern white Republican leadership privately thought that way, and this really isn't the first time Lott has slipped up and let his racism show, just the first time he's been so blatant about it. I was pleased, but also not surprised, when conservative bloggers jumped on the story; most conservatives of the baby boom generation and after support racial equality in reality and not as a pretense. It would be too much to ask for bloggers like Glenn Reynolds, who has been all over this, and Andrew Sullivan to shut up about the 'liberal media', now that they have demonstrated that their own liberal credentials are in better shape than much of the mainstream media they complain about. But they might try a bit of reflection.
I was honestly shocked that Lott failed to make a quick apology. Especially since the remarks were made on the verge of a very close election in a southern state with a large black population. The reluctance to apologize really shows that the far right of the Republican Party is feeling profoundly confident after the last election. The suggestions in some circles that they are going to press a modest agenda are likely to be far off base.
Another strange thing is that the national media seems to be picking up on the story only now, after an apology of sorts has been issued. It's as if, no matter how outrageous a statementy made by a leading Republican is, the media is afraid to criticize or mention it unless an retraction is made that concedes the excess. So maybe Lott's delay in apologizing showed more media savvy than I thought. Friday, December 06, 2002
Josh Marshall has been describing in Talking Points how the latest right wing bullet point, mocking John Kerry's hair cut, has been picked up by NRO, CNN, and the Washington Times. In addition, it has been covered by Limbaugh and was discussed on Tonight by Dennis Miller. This is all a big coincidence, obviously. Why shouldn't all these commentators suddenly start talking about John Kerry's hair? I mean, it would be one thing if we were on the verge of war, or the economy was falling apart, or al-Qaeda was still going strong, or crime was going up. But with none of these things happening, it's apparent that there just isn't anything else to talk about more compelling than John Kerry's hairdo.
In spite of the obvious logic of this, some people continue to see shadowy media conspiracies, as John Fund points out:
Although most of the media gave Mr. Daschle a pass, some commentators questioned his mental stability. Morton Kondracke, executive editor of the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, diagnosed the departing majority leader as suffering from "post-election stress disorder." He criticized Mr. Daschle's office for claiming it was "not permitted to discuss what threats had been leveled at Daschle or his family or even whether the number has increased." Charles Krauthammer, a psychiatrist as well as a pundit, joked on Fox News Channel that while he doesn't "usually practice on camera," he thought Mr. Daschle's comments were "the edge of looniness."
It seems that some liberals believe that these people, who largely live and work in the same city and attend the same parties, know each other. Some give voice to a bizarre claim that they keep sophisticated electronic devices in their homes and offices which allow them to communicate among themselves instantly, and often use them. A few conspiracy freaks go so far as to claim that they often carry such devices around in their pockets. Fortunately, the legitimate media ignores these lunatics and continues to print reliable infomation on important topics, like liberal media bias, the color of Al Gore's suits, and John Kerry's harcut.
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