Human Failures and Worthless Men

Slavoj sets us straight

2007-01-05T15:27:00.000-05:00

If you're looking for a portly, post-modern, Marxist antidote to David Brooks on the Times op-ed page, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek might fit the bill. His piece today, on the contradictions of America as empire and nation-state is pretty awesome.
My favorite quote:

One can imagine how, if President Bush were to be court-martialed by a Stalinist
judge, he would be instantly condemned as an “Iranian agent.”

Zizek's writings on Hollywood, Politics, Psychology and combinations of the three are always a lot of fun. Though I suspect that given his normally discursive writing style, the Times' editors left a lot on the cutting room floor.

Break out the Haterade

2007-01-05T14:58:00.000-05:00

So normally I get my New York Times (or Bourgeois Bulletin, as my Marxist professor calls it) online, but when I'm home in Brooklyn I read the print edition, which means that I get to hear what David Brooks has to say. Now, I've said pretty much all I have to say about Brooksy here, but still manages to stake a claim to a special place in my cold hateful heart.

What bothers me most about Brooks are not his politics, which are a fairly innofensive iteration of what passes for moderate these days or even his bizarre moralizing tantrums, for instance, how anyone who has sex with more than two partners in a year is committing spiritual suicide.

What really bothers me about Brooks is how his writing comes up with these convenient tropes to categorize people by class and identity, even as he rails against the left for being to reliant on outdated notions of class and identity. Add to that, the hipocrisy of an upper-crust New York pseudo-intellectual lecturing his BoBo readers about the misunderstood simple pleasures of NASCAR and Home Depot as well as his penchant for speaking to any subject, no matter how far outside his realm of expertise and you get...well...one of the most inflential pundits in the nation.

His Thursday collumn casting the Bush-Pelosi power struggle as a war between the Vinyard-owning and Ranch-owning constituencies of the American upper class is vintage Brooks. We've got the cliche-ridden social critique:

"She is part of the clash of the rival elites, with the dollars from Brookline
battling dollars from Dallas, causing upper-class strife that even diminutive
dogs, vibrant velvets and petite salades can't fullly soothe."

As well as the phony populism:

"It pains me to see plutocrats fight because it sets such a poor example for
those of us in the lower orders who fly commercial. It pains me even more
because politicians form th erival blueblood clans go to embarassing lengths to
try to prove they are the most authentically connected with working Americans."

Notice, his choice of "fly commercial" rather than the more common "fly coach." David probably hasn't flown coach since the mid-80s.

I'm not sure exactly what his point is here. Is he trying to argue that the lower orders who fly business class are the ones who should storm the gates and take over the political elite or does he want to the upper class to stop disagreeing about important issues over which there is to be sure a large amount of room for disagreement and get around to that benevolent dictatorship we've all been counting on.

His only mildly salient point, about Pelosi as a product of the party fundraising systems is interesting and probably could have made a decent collumn if Brooks hadn't again fallen victim to his notorious penchant for bobo cliches.

Fight the power Fridays

2007-01-05T14:49:00.001-05:00

The late great Godfather of Soul sings "Say it Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)" to a room full of white girls.

Apology

2007-01-05T14:41:00.000-05:00

Given how much I always rag on Ben for not posting, the last week has been unforgiveable. Anna's even been calling me out. Will post more on the regular back in O-H-IIIIIII-O.

Wynton Marsalis is clearly the smartest man in the universe

2006-12-25T16:32:00.000-05:00

So the New York Times's unfailingly mediocre sports section thinks it worth valuable column inches to interview Wynton Marsalis about the Saints' chances in the playoffs. It's high time I opened up a 20 ounce bottle of Haterade and poured it all over this dude.
It's bad enough that Ken Burns crowned him the Official Authority On All Things Related to Jazz. Despite his undeniable talent the guy's taste is totally boring and conservative, with no room for free-Jazz , fusion or anything else that happened to the genre after the mid-sixties. He, Burns and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra have helped to promote an image of jazz as "America's Classical Music" a neutered, Starbucks-friendly bastardization that is severely damaging toward any further evolution of the genre.
After Katrina, Marsalis was all of a sudden the media's go-to spokesman for the Big Easy's cultural heritage even though he hasn't lived there since he was 17. I'm not saying he doesn't have love for his home own, I'm just saying, it might be more appropriate to interview a musician who actually lived in the city and was displaced by the Hurricane. I'm sure Trick Daddy would have been available.
Now we're supposed to care when he says totally inane things about football! Wynton Marsalis clearly knows everything. We should get that motherfucker to figure a way out of Iraq. It would probably have somehting to do with having soul and believing in something.
If you ask me, anyone who doesn't realize that In a Silent Way and On the Corner rank just as high as Miles' post-Bop albums shouldn't be asked for his opinion on anything.

Comrade Rockstar

2006-12-25T16:15:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas! With God's help we should be able to keep it going for another few years until those secular Jews totally fuck it up. (I'm half Jewish, I can say that.)
Just finished reading Comrade Rockstar, Reggie Nadelson's pseudo-biography of American Communist pop sensation Dean Reed. I'd never heard of Reed before but he had a pretty fascinating life which took him from Allende's Chile to Brezhnev's Russia to Honecker's East Germany. I'd recommend the book somewhat tentatively, as there's a bit too much detail about the life of Reggie Nadelson as she travels around the Eastern Bloc losing her own preconceptions about state socialism. The real strength of the book is as an illustration of how a horrendously oppressive political system managed to take on the romantic air that so attracted young idealistic Americans like Reed. It's always been sort of hard for me to understand how young people who were reflexively anti-authority could have come to believe is such a blatantly authoritarian system as communism. Luckily there's nothing comparable today—even the most strident anti-war leftists seem to stop short of seeing the merits of Islamic Extremism.
Tom Hanks has apparently bought the movie rights, seems like a promising film premise. Unfortunately, a quick listen to the clips posted at Reed's German web site seem totally mediocre, further confirming my suspicion that good communist art is only possible under capitalism.
I got Richard Dawkins' The God Illusion for Christmas (I have that kind of family) which I will start reading soon. Despite my own atheism, I have my doubts about Dawkins' atheistic fundamentalism but I'll do my best to approach this with an open mind.

2006-12-22T01:05:00.001-05:00

It has been 25 days since Ben posted anything on his Catalyst blog.
59 since he posted anything substantial.

More Zappa

2006-12-22T01:01:00.000-05:00

Continuing with the Zappa theme. Here's a piece I did two years ago for Radio Prague about Frank Zappa's legacy in the Czech Republic. As it turns out, the story Napoleon Murphy Brock told me about touring the Czech Republic with Frank was completely made up. Oh well. It was still an honor to meet him.

Fight the Power Friday

2006-12-22T01:00:00.001-05:00

Frank Zappa's birthday was yesterday so he's a shoe-in for today's Fight the Power Friday. Here's a clip of him on SNL in 1976. FZ was a libertarian of the truest sort, an advocate of freedom in all its forms, a friend of Vaclav Havel and also happened to be one of the most prolific and influential composers in the history of rock.
RIP: FZ

Turkmenbashi is dead. Long live Berdymukhammedov

2006-12-21T21:01:00.000-05:00

Turkmenistan's brutal and eccentric leader Saparmurat Niyazov has died, just two weeks short of the month that he renamed after himself. Turkmenbashi as he was known, cultivated a personality cult that Kim Jong Il would have considered tacky and enforced draconian measures of political control. Leadership has passed for now to the unpronounceable Deputy President Berdymukhammedov but don't expect that to be the end of it. Turkmenistan is a prized bit of real estate, situated right on the Iranian border and containing some of the world's largest natural gas fields. Expect all manner of unsavory influence-peddling by the Russians, Americans and Chinese as well as a full-fledged push for democratic change from the NGOs, but with little in the way of civil society or governing institutions, chances for democracy seem pretty thin.
Let the great games begin.

again and again

2006-12-17T14:27:00.001-05:00

How could I have missed this vintage Matthews moment with the totally uncomfortable Edwardses?
And what DID ever happen to Stepford wifes?

2006-12-17T14:12:00.001-05:00

It has been 20 days since Ben posted anything on his Catalyst blog.
54 since he posted anything substantial.

An announcement

2006-12-17T13:29:00.000-05:00

I hereby announce that I'm forming an exploratory committee for a 2020 presidential campaign

Not really. An Accidental College graduate from the People's Republic of Park Slope will probably sit in the oval office around the same time we beat Ohio State at football, the last time was 1906 or something. Though I do think we need another president with a beard, the last one was Benjamin Harrison, though there was an impressive run of mustaches between 1893 and 1913, McKinley notwithstanding...and look what happened to him.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah. Campaign fever is starting ridiculously early this year. Bayh announced he's dropping out and righteous white people everywhere have caught Obama fever. Predictably, the best FNC can come up with is dissing his name and comparing his fashion sense to a vicious anti-semitic dictator.

Meanwhile my boy Bill Richardson has sort of but not really announced that he's running. Fox jumped the gun for sure, but I'm sure Bill knew what he was doing. He's toodling around New Hampshire now and though its high skiing season I think he has other things in mind. He's also been negotiating with North Korea. (Wolf Blitzer dopily believed that this meant the former U.N. Ambassador and lifelong diplomat was "working on his foreign policy credentials." Also today: The Pope is taking meetings with prominent spiritual leaders to bolster his image as a religious man.) Richardson's also been hammering the benighted John McCain's plan to raise troop levels in Iraq.

"There’s no military solution” Richardson, a Democrat, said. There’s got to be a political solution. Richardson lambasted McCain’s call for the additional troops saying that it would only foment sectarian violence.
Instead, Richardson suggested a fixed withdrawal date sometime in 2007 along with a redeployment of troops to Afghanistan which would aid America’s efforts to combat terrorism.

Richardson is far from perfect. He was almost certainly the source of the Wen Ho Lee leak, he vetoed eminent domain reform while governor and worst of all, he was the ambassador at the U.N. during America's shameful response to the Rwanda genocide.
Still, if the top priorities for a new president are recalibrating our foreign policy and repairing our image abroad, reforming immigration policy, getting us back on a path to fiscal responsibility and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels before I need a gondola to go uptown in Manhattan (if you haven't guessed I think they are) Richardson seems like the guy with the best credentials all-around.

I think he's got a shot too. America's only Hispanic governor has good-old-boy charm to balance out his policy expertise and I think he'll remind people of Clinton in the good way rather than Hillary who'll remind people in the bad way. Here's a decent editorial on his appeal.

Kos is saying that the race is Obama's to lose but he said that about Dean as well and I think some of the charm will wear off as we get into really primary season, not fake primary season. Not that there's anything wrong with Barack, I just want to see what kind of policymaker is behind the charmer before I jump on the bandwagon.

Now I'll go back to planning by campaign for Jose Reyes's bid to become the 2007 World Series MVP. I don't care what happens between now and then. It's his to lose I tell ya.

Fight the power Fridays

2006-12-16T02:28:00.001-05:00

Dead Prez: Hip hop

Who shot Biggie Smalls if we don't get 'em they gon' get us all
I'm up for runnin' up on them crackas in they city hall

Couldn't have said it better myself.

2006-12-16T02:24:00.001-05:00

It has been 21 days since Ben posted anything on his Catalyst blog.
55 since he posted anything substantial.

How alone are we?

2006-12-15T23:56:00.000-05:00

According to the new U.S. Census American's spend much more time watching TV and on the internet. Shocking!
The NYTimes quotes Robert "Bowling Alone" Putnam:

“The large master trend here is that over the last hundred years, technology has privatized our leisure time,” said Robert D. Putnam, a public policy professor at Harvard and author of “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.”

“The distinctive effect of technology has been to enable us to get entertainment and information while remaining entirely alone,” Mr. Putnam said. “That is from many points of view very efficient. I also think it’s fundamentally bad because the lack of social contact, the social isolation means that we don’t share information and values and outlook that we should.”

But what about the 13 million Americans (myself included) who created a blog last year? Why are traditional offline social interactions the only ones that help to build social capital. I, for one, feel far more connected to the 4 people that read this blog.

For the record, I admire Putnam's thesis about voluntary associations a lot but my honors work is largely about how it is misinterpreted and misused by many policy-makers, in this case foreign-funded NGOs in Russia.

Talkin' Sense

2006-12-14T21:14:00.000-05:00

Michael Mainville has written a mercifully rational summation of all the Litvinenko buzz for Salon. (you have to watch a little advert thingy)
Excerpt:

Many long-standing critics of Putin doubt he would have personally ordered Litvinenko's killing. "It just doesn't make sense. There was no reason to kill him," said Boris Kagarlitsky, a Soviet-era dissident who is now a political analyst in Moscow. As subsequent events have shown, Litvinenko has been able to inflict far more damage to the Kremlin's standing in death than he ever did in life.

While the article concludes that Putin is unlikely to have ordered to the hit on Litvinenko or Politkovskaya, he nonetheless believes that Vladimir Vladimirovich deserves a large portion of the blame for creating the environment in which these crimes could be committed.

I particularly like this bit at the end:

"Not that his death wasn't serious and shouldn't be investigated," said Allison Gill, the director of the Moscow office of Human Rights Watch. "And of course everyone is fascinated because it's like a spy novel," she said. "But what about all the human rights abuses in Russia that are being ignored? Why isn't the international press corps talking about Chechnya, where people are dying and suffering every day?"

Right on! Clearly Sullivan hasn't gotten the memo yet though cause he's still writing bullshit like this:

I assume that Vladimir Putin is behind the poisoning of several political opponents as well as the assassination of Anna Politskaya. I also assume he's smart enough to hire various middle-men to protect his own involvement. He's a mafia-boss, trained by the KGB.

I'm putting this dude on notice. He has not heeded my warning thus-far and its time to get serious. Either he cuts out the Birch Society-esque paranoia about Russia or he officially off the blogroll. That'll show him.

2006-12-14T20:26:00.001-05:00

It has been 19 days since Ben posted anything on his Catalyst blog.
53 since he posted anything substantial.

Priceless

2006-12-14T01:21:00.000-05:00

So, while we were on the topic of the prez's idiosyncratic world view. Foreign Policy's Passport blog has this quote from Bush. He's talking about his recent meeting with South African president Thabo Mbeki, which I guess got around to the subject of world trade:

“We talked about, interestingly enough, [about] the Darfur round,” he said.

That would be the Doha Round Georgie. I know its hard. They both begin with D and are things you have to pretend to care about.
Reyes is pretty bad, but the Dems are going to have to work hard to find someone to top this guy.

The Agony of victory

2006-12-14T00:56:00.000-05:00

I'm having trouble deciphering this one from Agonist:

It pains me to see the media pick at Democrats the way they do, micro-analyzing everyting in a way Republicans never get analyzed. Hyper-criticized in a way Republicans never get criticized. So, if or when it happens Reyes will deserve it.

He's talking of course about the fact that newly elected House Intelligence Chair Antonio Reyes turns out not really to be that intelligent. For instance, not knowing the religious makeup of Al-Qaeda.
What is Sean Paul Kelley saying here? That because democrats don't get treated as harshly by the media Reyes deserves to be treated harshly. (He does by the way. This shit is truly embarrassing.)
And where does he get off saying that republicans never get challenged on their knowledge of foreign affairs? Bush's ignorance about the world (with the possible exception of Mexico) has become such a well covered topic he's almost made it part of his shtick. The lack of Arabic speakers in the Bush's State Department and Intelligence services is a well-established meme as well. The proper response to this story is not to grumble about how we get beat up in the media when the other guys get a free-ride. That's what Ann Coulter is for. The proper is response is "GODDAMMIT DIDN"T THEY INTERVIEW THIS GUY BEFORE THEY GAVE HIM THIS POSITION IN WHICH HE'S LARGELY RESPONSIBLE FOR SETTING A LEGISLATIVE AGENDA DESIGNED TO PREVENT THE NEXT LARGE-SCALE TERRORIST ATTACK!"
That's what pains me.
It certainly seems like Agonist may be in need of a reality check. Check out this circling-the-wagons response to a Washington Post story about Congress cracking down on self-bottling dairy farms on behalf of the dairy lobby:

When you read the story, you realize that much of the deal making was Republican lawmaker Kyl of Arizona, and the story fails to explain both sides of the conflict clearly - there are, after all, free riders who take advantage of exposed price points. It's the perception that Reid participated in taking milk out of the mouths of babies that is going to be harmful, and something his office should be on top of responding to, before it becomes "conventional wisdom".

I don't know much about this story but on first glance it certainly seems like an example of lawmakers cracking down on a crafty entrepreneur on behalf of big business interests. There's something eerily Rovian about the emphasis placed here on controlling the spin rather than examining the facts, which should be a blogger's primary responsibility.
This is not a good start to the blogosphere's reaction to the new Democratic majority. For six years, we've watched an administration and a conservative political and media establishment unwilling to self-examine or take legitimate criticism and lashing out at the media whenever the facts became inconvenient. A new political mandate doesn't give liberals the right to do the same. If we're to claim to represent the reality-based community we ought to start acting like it.
I may post more examples of this phenomenon if I find them.

2006-12-14T00:08:00.001-05:00

It has been 18 days since Ben posted anything on his Catalyst blog.
52 since he posted anything substantial.

Reflexive Russophobia Alert

2006-12-12T17:42:00.000-05:00

From Daily Dish:

A friend mentioned to me an interesting coincidence. Anna Politskaya was murdered on October 7. October 7 is Vladimir Putin's birthday. A present?

So isn't Sullivan's whole "conservatism of doubt" schtick about viewing the world as it really is rather than what is politically convenient? While I admit that the world might make more sense if Vladimir Vladimirovich was some combination of Stalin, Don Corleone and Goldfinger, the reality of the situation is of course much more complex. The Politskaya and Litvenenko murders undoubtedly revealed the dark side of Russian politics but there are a lot of players involved here, who are under varying degrees of Kremlin control. Some under no control at all. It does no service to the truth to immediately endorse the simplest scenario.
Back in the real world, the NYT's piece on the remnants of Soviet-era Security Services in Eastern Europe is quite interesting, particularly the bit about Romania.

Also, for all those reflexive Putin-bashers out there (and I am myself generally a Putin-basher) you might want to take a look at his main competition.

Also, repeat after me: Po-lit-KOV-ska-ya

Catalyzer watch

2006-12-12T17:31:00.001-05:00

It has been 17 days since Ben posted anything on his Catalyst blog.
51 since he posted anything substantial.
Linkings will continue until morale improves.

Think again

2006-12-12T17:25:00.000-05:00

So yesterday I was all on my high horse about Craigslist representing some new form of socially responsible capitalism. I compared it to a fucking nobel peace prize winning enterprise actually. Then one of my best friends goes and writes a piece in the Harvard Crimson about using the site for sleazy anonymous sex.
Sample:

For the uninitiated, here’s how a Craigslist hook-up works: people looking for “nsa” (no strings attached) fun can locate a page for the desired city and sexual orientation. Respondents e-mail anonymous addresses, and, if there is mutual interest, cheap, slutty sex can be enjoyed within minutes. In theory, at least.

By tommorow I'll have figured out how this makes the world a better place.

Catalyze this

2006-12-12T01:17:00.000-05:00

It has been 16 days since Ben posted anything on his Catalyst blog.
50 since he posted anything substantial.
I'm going to keep doing this Keith Olbermannesque thing until he does.