1,369 lightbulbs

The accidental poet.

2009-11-06T15:24:00.004-05:00

Famed White House correspondent Helen Thomas waxes poetic on the state of modern journalism to Greg Mitchell:

The changes are immense, no noise of clicking
teletypes and typewriters, obsolete technology,
little real editing unfortunately, instantaneous
communication and more superficiality,

competition based on personality
instead of content in depth, insecurity
about where newspapers are headed,
money a big factor in all things

talk show hosts peddling disinformation,
lack of transparency
by even Obama administration,

blocking torture photos,
calling reporters the night before
presidential news conferences to tell them
they will be called on,

Hope all is not lost
in our great business.

On blogging, again.

2009-10-16T16:38:00.003-04:00

Here we go again. I just can't find my rhythm. Perhaps I'm being too hard on myself for my intermittent sojourns away from this blog. Rather than curse the burdens of my day job, or blame Twitter, I feel like I need to return to the source - pardon the Matrixpun - and recharge. And since I find that the same way I felt over a year ago is how I feel now, this bears repeating:

In the past few weeks, I've (re)discovered that blogging is essentially a rhythmic exercise. It can be likened, I suppose, to something as rudimentary as lifting weights. One can visit a gym and "lift" - but if he or she not lifting the proper weight at the right angle, with the pacing and intensity required, the benefits will be fewer...and if done wrong, a person can actually do harm. In search of a metaphor for why I stepped away from the blog this week - the first sustained break I've taken in four months - didn't come because I was simply breathing heavy after a long workout, basking in an exhaustion borne of fruitful efforts. I've been lifting the wrong weights, with poor form and pacing, for weeks now. And the muscle that I've been seeking to work out has suffered as a result.

When I started this blog, I did so out of pure emotion. Jeremiah Wright had gotten on my last nerve, and the space that I'd set up months previously and had done nothing with suddenly had life. Since I was new to this whole thing, I modeled the blog after other political sites that I'm a fan of, thinking more of fitting in as a way to get myself noticed. I was inconsistent at first, but figured out soon that simply posting smaller items in between longer essays worked as a way to ensure that the blog was always offering something new, something topical to that day's events both in the macro (the world at-large) and the micro (my own life). And that seemed to work.

But it can become a crutch, quoting other posts or articles at length and offering brief rejoinders - and it had lately, resulting largely from a sudden lack of time to devote to longer posts, my weariness at this poll-obsessed, negative-meme-driven campaign for our nation's highest office and a general disinterest in writing for the first time in months. I'd just become sick of it all, and throwing up a blurb about Obama's latest campaign stop, the Olympics or Maureen Dowd's latest column wasn't making it anymore.

Pure emotion driving the majority of my writing here has its pitfalls, and when I lost interest in doing things in the conventional political-blog fashion, it really became pointless to offer my opinion about events that mattered very little to me. If blogging is like going to the gym, throwing stuff up just for the sake of attracting traffic and reminding folks that I'm not dead is like running for 10 minutes, doing five push-ups and then heading to McDonald's for your post-workout meal. No nutrients, nothing earned and growth in all the wrong ways.

I decided that I needn't post again until I really had something to say. Really, isn't that the whole point of writing?

Something else occurred to me during this respite: despite having my privileged education, I'm not nearly as well-versed in the world around me as I need to be in order to have the informed opinion that would inspire both constructive debate and appreciation for my particular worldview. I wasn't proud of the stuff I was putting up. It hit me when I went back to read some of my earlier posts. What had happened?

For one, I'd been listening to all the wrong voices. I haven't read nearly enough books of late, spending much too much time investing myself in the musings of columnists, pundits and other assorted loudmouths whose acerbic take on the world had begun to disillusion me and poison my writing. Part of that has been my now-consistent effort to maintain this page, writing as much as I can when I can, but offering up the musings not just of people whose viewpoints interested me, but also the usual suspects who seemingly everyone had posted on their blogs. Instead of offering a fresh perspective, I was merely following the crowd. That speaks only to laziness on my part.

I listened once again to one of my favorite Stevie Wonder songs, "Feeding Off the Love of the Land" today, in which the master laments how man's narcissism, misuse of prayer and inability to listen to the will of the Lord (much less heed it) robs the true essentials - love, beauty - from the world. It's a song that I think of often when I reflect upon the hazardous political discourse that serves as the mode by which we choose our most important leaders, men and women who truly fit Stevie's description of "fools {who} are even more foolish". But even in that kind of cynicism, I only repeat mistakes that I've been making with this blog. By falling in line with that discourse and bringing nothing unique to offer a more healthy alternative, my presence (however small) in the blogosphere had become more problematic than helpful.

So, as I continue to use this blog as a place to revive a muscle that had been largely dormant for over a decade, I will be more judicious with how I work that muscle out. To paraphrase Jerry Maguire, there'll be fewer posts, less news here at 1,369 lightbulbs. This is not to say I won't post the occasional YouTube that makes me laugh, or the random sports item that doesn't necessarily move forward the great national discourse about a particular pressing item of our time. But I consider the right to voice my opinion and inspire debate a gift from the Creator, and I pray that He grants me to ability to be increasingly disciplined in my use of that voice.

Perhaps I might add something after all.

Race, the final frontier.

2009-09-18T21:30:00.002-04:00

@jsmooth995 tells us how to calm down, breather and tell a motherf..a person that they sound racist. Not that they are racist.

A very important distinction:

Schooled.

2009-09-07T12:41:00.001-04:00

The speech President Obama will give to schoolchildren all over America tomorrow - at least those whose nutty parents haven't pulled them out of school - is now online. Mediaite debunks the crazy:

This is really it. It’s very much a pep talk for kids to do their homework, mixed with some “Chicken Soup For The Soul” and a dash of stump speech rhetoric. Parents who complained about not wanting Obama to impart his political beliefs on their children have nothing to worry about. It’s apolitical and beyond mild.

Of course, this will be an enormous media story all day today and likely for the rest of the week.

Which is an enormous, and continuing, failing of the mainstream media. They're more stenographers and gossip-mongers than reporters these days as it is, but it's there job not to just say, "Oooh, look at the crazy", and to say, "Hey, everyone - these people are crazy. Here's why."

This Week in Race has already taken a stab at explaining it:

Adults talk to our children everyday without our input: teachers, firefighters, police officers, other children's parents on "career days," etc. Presumably there is no opposition to such speakers because those folks are not "strangers" -- they are members of our community. In the past, presidents of the United States were very much considered to be members of our community -- even largely in communities of color.

But this president will never be accepted as "family" or even as legitimate to many Whites. Once that is understood, it is not surprising that parents would not want their children to hear what he has to say unless and until they approve the content ahead of time. If you are not "one of us," you do not get to talk to our children.

Perhaps Obama should get Biden to do the speech. You know, to make these racists more comfortable. Because, at the end of the day, it's clear that that is what's most important to them. Using their kids as political pawns? A means to an end.

On "buying time".

2009-09-04T05:22:00.001-04:00

There's a very thin line, as we all know, between explanations and excuses. They are first cousins; at times looking very much alike, but mostly, easily distinguished by how they look and sound. What I'll say now could look like either. I'll leave it to you to decide what it is.

I haven't written here for over four months. I'd been foundering in this space, trying to assess the real value of my writing. When all it seemed like I was doing was reacting to the latest thing I was supposed to be pissed off about - whatever Glenn Beck said, tea-baggers, the latest GOP lie, it didn't seem inspiring to me, or to anyone else (I thought). I'd had serious internal debates about changing the name of the blog (which I will not do, thanks to inspiration.) Since then, there have been many more incidents, many more things to react to in our changing world, under our new President - Skip Gates, Afghanistan, the health care debate - but I didn't think it would make much of a difference if I spouted off about it in this space. Hell, I didn't know if anyone was even listening.

But what i've discovered is, that concern is secondary.

About nine days ago, on Twitter (yes, I know; more on that later), I crossed paths with a young conservative. We were discussing one of my greatest political worries these days - the nutjobs like Chris Broughton who, inspired by even crazier nutjobs, bring guns and other weapons to events where Obama is appearing and, as we later discovered, openly pray for his death. My attitude was, and is, that I can discuss this with my fellow liberals, my fellow Olbermann/Maddow viewers, ad infinitum. Whatever you want to call them - Republicans, conservatives, #tcot - I'm not reaching that audience, the one that a) really needs to hear it; and b) may actually be able to do something to stop it, since the true wingnuts only listen to their own. (And yes, that goes for both the Right and Left.)

It was a long conversation, but the crux of it was this: when I asked the young man what he was doing, now, to quell the hatred on the Right that is stifling needed dialogue and (let's be real) threatening the life of the President. (All things that would have landed your face on a "Treason!" poster if done a year ago, against Bush 43. But I digress.)

He replied,

idrawrobots @JamilSmith oh believe me, I am just buying time. If and when I can raise my voice loud enough it will help bring true change

To say the least, I was unmoved.

JamilSmith @idrawrobots: "Buying time?" Are you fucking kidding me? When will you speak up against these RWNJs - after one takes a shot at POTUS? #tcot

The highlights of me taking his ass to task can be found here. I was angered not by his politics, but at his casual tone. As in, yeah, I'll get to that. Uninspiring, at the least. How can you see blatant injustice, have the unique power to speak to it, and not act?

Then I remembered this blog.

It's rare that we are given the opportunity to speak loudly, and it's even rarer when we make that opportunity for ourselves. Perhaps you'll interpret that last sentence as me going soft on that 24-year-old conservative for not speaking out. Hardly so. It's just that in reminding him of his responsibilities, I am also reminded of mine.

For the last four months, I've been "buying time". Perhaps for even longer than that. All the rally posts I have made in the past, including that one immediately preceding this one, were flailing grasps at the reason why I started writing here in the first place, like a rope just out of reach. Now, I believe that I've finally taken hold of it.

There are too many problems in the world for me not to use what I've been blessed with to try to solve them. Whether it be the insane paranoia on the Right or the panic and lack of backbone on the Left, I feel that there's a need for many, many voices. Add mine to the coming cacophony. I encourage you to add yours as well, reader, for there can never be enough people trying to make sense of the world we occupy. There really can't.

I hear many debates about the value of this kind of media. I think the real question is not about its value, but its purpose. I spent too much time worrying about the value of every post on this blog, and when I concerned myself too greatly with how my writing looked as opposed to what I was writing about. My purpose for starting this endeavor was much clearer: to provide a strong, educated opinion on issues confronting our world; to examine myself and grow as a writer; and to call the powers that be to account.

How I let worries about being reactionary, or whether people would understand what the hell "1,369 lightbulbs" even meant, break me, I'll always regret. I can't get those four months back. But I can move forward with purpose in my stride, pep in my step. I have work to do.

Internal discussions.

2009-04-15T18:25:00.001-04:00

Lately, I've been taking my old collegiate column handle, "Invisible Man", a bit too literally. As my father would say...it's been a minute since I wrote.

Once or twice, I have pondered what I'm even doing here, in this space. There have been so many different things I've done with my time here, I don't really know if there's a way to fit it all into one category. Maybe I shouldn't be looking to. That's been part of my problem - reconciling that. Blogging is a medium to which I'm still adjusting to, and I still have my issues with its basic tenets. And part of my reticence with writing, admittedly, is due to the lack of any perceived readership, outside of a few dedicated friends. (maybe that shouldn't bother me, but I'm not just talking, per se, to hear the sound of my own voice. I love to inspire debate, and thus far I haven't accomplished that.) But those issues shouldn't keep me from writing, and I apologize for being as absent as I have been.

I owe you an explanation.

To put it short and sweet, I've been in the process of determining what the future of this blog is. I have been writing in this space for nearly a year now, but have been pulled in a number of different directions creatively since the election. Some have limited my time, some have broadened my horizons. The result is a delightful confusion that has sparked ideas for where to take this space, but a lack of focus concerning keeping this page vibrant in the meantime.

That ends today.

I have some things in the works, and I can assure you that major changes are in store for this blog. There will be a new direction, and I'm hopeful that it will lead to my making a more significant contribution.

In the meantime, hang with me. I'm not going anywhere.

O.D.S.

2009-04-14T14:37:00.001-04:00

Glenn Beck's been diagnosed:

The tea-tantrums.

2009-04-10T13:30:00.007-04:00

Sullivan classifies the forthcoming April 15 pity parties:

As a fiscal conservative who actually believed in those principles when the Republicans were in power, I guess I should be happy at this phenomenon. And I would be if it had any intellectual honesty, any positive proposals, and any recognizable point. What it looks like to me is some kind of amorphous, generalized rage on the part of those who were used to running the country and now don't feel part of the culture at all. But the only word for that is: tantrum.

These are not tea-parties. They are tea-tantrums. And the adolescent, unserious hysteria is a function not of a movement regrouping and refinding itself. It's a function of a movement's intellectual collapse and a party's fast-accelerating nervous breakdown.

Rachel Maddow had almost too much fun with this on her show last night. (For those that don't get the joke, this should help.) Although I laughed with her, I did so hesitantly. This isn't purely folly, adolescent in nature and easily dismissed like so many Republican antics these days. I'm taking these much more seriously than either she or Andrew are.

I'll write more on this next week.

Piousness, thy name is Pat.

2009-04-10T10:02:00.006-04:00

This guy is apparently an authority on what's moral and what's not. Who knew?

On the issue of President Obama's invitation to speak at Notre Dame's May 17 commencement, watch the inimitable Lawrence O'Donnell tear Buchanan a new one here. It's really a shame that Mike Barnicle cuts this debate short at the end:

It's not worth going into it in-depth, as O'Donnell remarked correctly that this is largely a made-up controversy engineered by much fewer people than the protesters would have you believe. However, O'Donnell hot fire in this segment lays bare the intellectual dishonesty of the Republican "pro-life" movement. (I prefer its more factual, less pious name: "anti-abortion", but let's use "pro-life" for the ironies it brings out.) In calling out Bush's support of the death penalty during his time as the Governor of Texas, O'Donnell played his trump card right away and completely set the tone for what came afterward. Buchanan was on his heels, relying more on Republican philosophy than actual Catholic dogma. He's like an attorney who wants to convict someone, but hasn't shared evidence through discovery with the defendant. And like most current Republican mores, Buchanan's position is fraught not only with contradiction, but with the celebration of ignorance.

It's one thing to avoid answering a question for 10 minutes because you don't know the answer. Quite another to not only know the answer, but attempt to convince your questioner that he's too knowledgeable for his own good. It's almost as if Buchanan tries to convince O'Donnell that if only used less complicated thinking to arrive at his conclusions, that he'd see the light of day.

Doesn't seem too, well, smart, does it? That's a strategy more likely seen coming from a Bond villain than a political operative. While I've never held high esteem for Buchanan's intelligence, I thought he'd be smarter than this.

The thing that's truly offensive both about the base position of the Catholic Church on abortion and those that twist its interpretation for political gain is that they apply a strangely subjective classification for murder that contradicts the ones understood not only by polite society, but also by the Bible. "Thou shalt not kill" is certainly open to interpretation, but how can people like Buchanan argue that abortion is murder and yet, we're justified in killing anyone who breaks the law in particular ways we find abhorrent?

My faith in the Lord is strong, and I believe killing is wrong, no matter whom. But I also don't believe that (most) abortion is murder, and I guess that's where Buchanan and I part ways. But O'Donnell makes the central point here: to try to bar one President who believes in something the Church opposes despite the knowledge that another President who also believed - and actively practiced - another thing that the Church opposed is nothing but hypocrisy.

Quote of the day.

2009-03-31T15:10:00.002-04:00

"I’m telling you, those Cavs...they’ve only lost one game all year at home. Thirty-five and one."

"And they have home court advantage. That’s pretty impressive," President Barack Obama.

Of mountains and molehills.

2009-03-17T20:18:00.005-04:00

One of TPM's best commenters says we gots to chill:

Well, I'm just shocked. Who could possibly have foreseen that the Republicans would find a way to score major political points after Democrats and liberal bloggers tossed aside all sense of perspective and tore into this thing like a pack of rabid weasels?

By "perspective," I would mean the fact that they're trying to pull us out of a dealth spiral somewhere on the good side of 10% unemployment, a death spiral caused by a multi-trillion dollar hole in the economy, and yet everyone has their dudgeon on over the failure to devote all their attention to making sure a lousy couple of hundred million from flowing into the pockets of the evildoers.

Jesus people, if this is the worst thing or the most important thing that happens in this ongoing economic shitstorm, count yourselves lucky.

It's like being mad at a fireman working inside a burning house because he didn't stop to put out a cigarette left burning in an ashtray because cigarettes are so horrible and reprehensible.

Eyes on the prize. I'm guilty, too. Look at my last post, for goodness' sakes.

AIG stays puffed.

2009-03-17T17:06:00.012-04:00

This is indeed something you don't see every day.

But to paraphrase Egon Spengler, I'm furious beyond the capacity for rational thought. So excuse me if this isn't the most coherent post.

There's a metaphor for this in Mr. Stay-Puft. (Stay with me a sec while I talk it out, in hopes of finding it.) Here we have a huge marshmallow dude, evil to the core. (Ahem, cough, AIG, cough, ahem.) He's been conjured by a well-meaning guy (i.e., Ray). Now Ray knew that things were bad, and knew he was faced with an impossible choice (i.e., which crappy Wall Street firm to trust with his money). So, unable to suppress his dreams, he puts his trust in an image that brought him peace in his childhood, with hopes that this image is so benign that it couldn't possibly destroy us. Next thing you know, AIG, er, Mr. Stay-Puft's crushing everything in its path with abandon, all while wearing the biggest grin you've ever seen.

Only this time it's not a church he steps on. It's your house.

Normally, I don't get too upset when I see rich people being drained by other rich people. It always seemed to me that people like that operated in their own, distinctly separate United States economy - much like the high-end casinos on the Vegas Strip. All the while, a high percentage of us have been stuck at the $5 blackjack tables in A.C. or pulling slot levers in Reno. Most of America wasn't been invited to the party. We just foot the bill for the biggest parlor game in the world.

The question with AIG, for me, doesn't lie in the amount these architects of disaster were paid in bonuses. The how much doesn't bother me. I'm furious because of the why.

"Retention bonuses"? Are you kidding?

Look, I know little about Wall Street, admittedly. But if you're telling me that its firms are thriving to the point where MILLIONS of dollars need to be paid in lump sums to their traders merely to discourage them from leaving? (Even that didn't work, apparently.) To say that "I wish my employer did that for me" would be irrelevant; I wish my boss could "franchise" me in the manner of an NFL player, paying me the average of the top 10 producer salaries in America - ain't happenin'. I realize that it's a different world than where I come from. But I thought that you get rewarded for good work, not incompetence that has your superiors holding out the tin cup under the President's nose, asking "please, sir, I'd like some more".

Eliot Spitzer knows dirt when he sees it (natch), and is as pissed as I am:

Everybody is rushing to condemn AIG's bonuses, but this simple scandal is obscuring the real disgrace at the insurance giant: Why are AIG's counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars?

It all appears, once again, to be the same insiders protecting themselves against sharing the pain and risk of their own bad adventure. The payments to AIG's counterparties are justified with an appeal to the sanctity of contract. If AIG's contracts turned out to be shaky, the theory goes, then the whole edifice of the financial system would collapse.

The appearance that this was all an inside job is overwhelming. AIG was nothing more than a conduit for huge capital flows to the same old suspects, with no reason or explanation.

This is exactly the kind of shit Jon Stewart was talking about.

I'll turn it over to people who are much calmer, and are dealing with this from a real-world perspective. Megan McArdle:

The employees of AIG know which traders are good, and which ones are idiots who made a bad mess worse. But they're not going to tell us--or rather, they'll tell us, and the idiot traders will point the finger at someone else. From what I understand, you can't even just ask which traders lost money--some of the traders will be able to argue, with justice, that they lost money because they were helping the company cut its risk exposure rather than taking bets they might win. Others made good trades that were Overtaken By Events.

Why not just say "no bonuses for anyone at AIG"? To hell with the bums! Well, we now own the company. If we hasten the flight of quality employees out of the company, that will cost us money. The answer might be some kind of performance bond. But as in other financial firms, traders often take as bonus what should be salary, which means that they need at least part of their bonuses to maintain their lifestyle. If they're faced with bankruptcy, the traders who are talented will go elsewhere--the financial market is shrinking, but the top traders still have other opportunities. AIG has a lot of positions to unwind. Do we want to leave the job to the dregs of the organization?

The New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin (who upon first glance this past Sunday on the "Chris Matthews Show", appeared to be a huge douche) actually makes a good point, whether we like it or not:

Here is the second, perhaps more sobering thought: A.I.G. built this bomb, and it may be the only outfit that really knows how to defuse it.

A.I.G. employees concocted complex derivatives that then wormed their way through the global financial system. If they leave — the buzz on Wall Street is that some have, and more are ready to — they might simply turn around and trade against A.I.G.’s book. Why not? They know how bad it is. They built it.

So as unpalatable as it seems, taxpayers need to keep some of these brainiacs in their seats, if only to prevent them from turning against the company. In the end, we may actually be better off if they can figure out how to unwind these tricky investments.

Great. March on, Mr. Stay-Puft.

Catfight.

2009-03-17T16:35:00.002-04:00

Dahlia Lithwick on Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham slinging mud back and forth with Meghan McCain, and what kind of, um, image that presents:

You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. This is the female version of the Rush Limbaugh-Michael Steele-David Frum smackdown for the soul of the GOP? One skinny blonde attacking another skinny blonde who is angrily defended by a third skinny blonde, after which everyone retires in a huff to their favorite health blogs to angrily discuss the importance of a positive body image and the need to support a healthy body mass index?

Ever wonder why some men think women are less than serious political thinkers? It certainly helps explain why so many men continue to believe that when it comes to "political discourse," women are all long, sprawling legs and silky blond hair in a tangle on the dessert cart. It's one thing to air your dirty laundry. But are we really stupid enough to be having a front-page battle over a plus-size thong?

One would think not. More from Dahlia:

If you're going to fight about politics, fight about politics. Here's a useful litmus test: As long as the media continue to cover women's political differences in their "Health" sections, we are probably doing something wrong. Just as Michelle Obama has been reduced to a perpetual fashion story, the fight for the future of young women in the GOP has now become a body-image story. Well done, ladies! Way to get your thoughts and preferences taken seriously!

The end of "enemy combatant".

2009-03-14T14:42:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, President Obama and his Department of Justice struck down another pillar holding up Bush's house of horrors, removing the "enemy combatant" classification from further use:

In a filing with the DC District Court, the DoJ said that it would no longer use the term and asserted a new standard for the government’s authority to hold detainees at Gitmo. The Obama administration is still claiming that it has the authority to hold prisoners there, but it will now be based on authority from Congress and the international laws of war. The Bush administration claimed that the president could unilaterally hold prisoners without charge.

Though it is at one level merely semantic - tripping up some of the more reactionary critics of the policy, on both the right and left - Saturn Smith notes why this is an important change:

This doesn't change immediately the situation of any of the detainees. They're still being held in Guantanamo the same as they were yesterday, and their prospects moving through the justice system -- or lack thereof -- are the same.

What it does change is the source of the president's authority for holding them there. No longer, this statement says, are they being held there at the whim -- on the executive authority -- of the president. Instead, the filing rests on both international law and a specific Congressional act. While I (and many) disagree with some of the provisions of that Authorization for the Use of Military Force, what's not arguable is that it's a law that came to being in the regular, old-fashioned way that we make laws here.

We're moving back to the order of law. Flawed law made by flawed people, sure, but still -- law. Instead of decree.

Big step. And about time.

Flawless victory.

2009-03-13T16:20:00.009-04:00

I've actually dealt with Jim Cramer on a professional level before, so I was not at all shocked to see him show up, guns blazing, and...take his beating like a good little boy.

Cramer's a nice guy. He has an uncharted hyperactivity quotient and the volume of a colicky infant, but he's able to tone it down for the rest of us mortals when he's not on his stage. He knew whose house he was in last night. Look at how he approaches the table when he's introduced. He almost bows to Stewart. Like a young man knowing he's gonna get it when he gets home, Cramer knew he was wrong, and the only decision he had left was how he was going to face the music.

What was interesting was how Stewart chose to play the song. He could've just squashed the whole thing. But in a bizarro world in which cable news becomes more theatrical, reactionary and ridiculous by the day, Stewart has to know his "Daily Show" is becoming more a news program than the news itself. And in a world in which guys like Olbermann and O'Reilly are known more and more for their histrionics than their ability to report the news, it's up to the comedian to be the journalist.

Still, some weren't impressed. Megan McArdle disagrees with me and other that think Jon Stewart was practicing journalism (at some level):

I'm very sympathetic to Stewart's deep critique of financial shows, but I don't think the way to go about it was to string together a bunch of very misleading clips. Nor to imply that Santelli, who has been vocally against all bailouts from the beginning, was merely frothing on the forclosure program because ordinary taxpayers were finally getting a taste of federal largesse. But Stewart carefully claims he's just an entertainer, so he has no obligation to hew to journalistic standards on things like quoting out of context.

Financial journalism isn't, as Stewart argues to Cramer over and over, entertainment. So how come Stewart acted as if it was?

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

In all of this, I find myself unsatisfied by the critique. For me, the investigation always begins at home--Who are we? Why is there a market for foolishness? I don't know much about the financial world. I come to this equipped solely with the weaponry I was deeded by the streets of Baltimore, and in the home of Cheryl Waters and Paul Coates. The shield in that arsenal, is the intuitive sense that no one gives you a house for nothing, that you don't base your future on advice from the dude who cameos on Arrested Development. Nothing special there. I think we all have access to the shield of Street Knowledge, and yet in these times, we seem to have put our faith, not in our innate sense, but in the worst sort of clownery.

I like Jon Stewart. I thought he did a good thing yesterday. But I left that interview unsatisfied. I left it wondering about the animal in us I know who Jim Cramer is. I know what wracks him. But what about us? Who are we in all this? Why are CNBC ratings still soaring? What madness has led us to hand off our shields and put our future in the hands of shaman and faith-healers?

I agree, but that said, we can still appreciate the interview for what it was: both a Howard Beale cry to placate the masses and a Schadenfreude-heavy spectacle of entertainment. That's at minimum. Andrew Sullivan believes this was a seminal moment:

It's not enough any more, guys, to make fantastic errors and then to carry on authoritatively as if nothing just happened. You will be called on it. In some ways, the blogosphere is to MSM punditry what Stewart is to Cramer: an insistent and vulgar demand for some responsibility, some moral and ethical accountabilty for previous decisions and pronouncements.
Braver, please. And louder.

Shortcut to success.

2009-03-10T08:27:00.005-04:00

So much for Michael Steele's 12-point plan:

(Source: Salon.)

Off the rails, actually.

2009-03-09T17:53:00.005-04:00

Michael Steele's misadventures continue:

Michael Steele has already said that he's going to implement communications strategies at the RNC that are "off the hook" and "beyond cutting edge." But is he now taking things to a whole new level?

Check out this RNC Request-for-Proposal that's been circulating on the internet, soliciting bids for redesigning the group's website.

It begins with a general (very general) statement of principles:

Chairman Steele made his tech priorities clear at the [RNC Tech Summit]: "...bottom line is if we haven't done it - let's do it. If we haven't thought of it - think about it. If it hasn't been tried - why not? If it's going to be 'outside the box' - then not only keep it outside the box, but take it to someplace the box hasn't even reached yet."

And it doesn't get a whole lot more specific after that. In fact, the two-page document is so light on the kind of details you might expect an RFP of this sort to have, that it's already being slammed on conservative blogs.

A pro tells us why this is so bad:

"It's really hard to write a proposal for that vague of a request," Jennifer Kyrnin, who has been designing web sites since 1995, and teaching web design since 1997, and who frequently responds to RFP's for web design work, told TPMmuckraker.

Kyrnin allowed that she had received RFP's as vague as this one, but never from a company or organization as prominent as the GOP. "Most are from new small businesses who've never put up a site before," she said.

Kyrnin flagged several obvious weak spots in the RFP.

Citing the RNC's view that "an aesthetically pleasing site that is intuitive and fun to use should be the overall goal," she said: "Well, yeah. I mean, that's what everybody wants."

As for the RNC's advice that it want someone with "experience in building social networks," Kyrnin said: "That, I look at and I go, 'what the heck do you mean?' If I were writing a proposal that would make me nervous."

The first TPM page I linked has a decent criticism, even it is from a nut like Erick Erickson. I don't really care if Michael Steele lives up to his promises given to a party populated by many who likely consider him an affirmative-action baby. Those are the folks he's decided to lay down with. But even this seems to stretch the bounds of credulity.

I care more about this country than I do about Democrats beating Republicans. But the Republican Party as it now stands is an impediment to progress. I mean, a spending freeze in the middle of a recession? Paging Herbert Hoover:

In today's economic climate, I find the Republicans' clown act less funny and more troubling by the day. And for that reason, I hope Michael Steele stops making brothers look worse by the day, steps away from the mic and resigns his post.

Beaver, damn.

2009-03-09T17:41:00.004-04:00

John McCain's on his earmark warpath again, mostly because he thinks his charm works on us as well as it works on the media.

While focusing on less than 1% of the budget and making it sound as if that spending's putting us in the poorhouse is quaint, it's not funny to the people who, you know, need the money he's making fun of:

“How does one manage a beaver?” U.S. Sen. John McCain asked his followers from the Senate floor this week.

McCain's derisive comments – “$650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi,” he typed on his Twitter mini-blog – came as part of his continuing campaign against directed spending, or earmarks, in the federal government.

But he angered workers in North Carolina who say they know full well how to manage beavers: Trap the critters, blow up their dams and let the water flow.

State and federal wildlife officials claim to have saved nearly $5 million last year in potential flood damage to farms, timber lands, roadways and other infrastructure through its Beaver Management Assistance Program – the same one McCain was making fun of in Washington.

“Maybe you should ask him how much he knows about this and why he picked it out for ridicule,” said U.S. Rep. David Price, a Chapel Hill Democrat. “We know why he chose this – because it sounds funny.”

The Republicans have turned into a bunch of frat boys.

The devil doesn't take his own.

2009-03-09T17:38:00.001-04:00

"Before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy memorial health care bill," Rush Limbaugh.

On Watchmen.

2009-03-06T19:16:00.007-05:00

As anyone who's been to the movies with me can attest, I don't like to miss the previews. Perhaps I get it from my mother, who refuses to enter a movie theater if the film has started. But I can't recall an instance where the previews, good as they may be, got me to see a film I otherwise wasn't planning to see. Much less got me to read a book that I may not have read in order to prepare for a film I wasn't planning to see.

I'd heard of "Watchmen" a few years back, and since I loved comic book heroes - but not comic books - as a kid, I wasn't particularly inclined to read it. I'd devoured a few graphic novels: "Kingdom Come" and "The Dark Knight Returns", to name a few. But I was enough of a nerd to know the names Rorschach, Comedian, Ozymandias and Doctor Manhattan.

Oh, and I'd seen this:

It's a hell of an image.

The idea that something meant purely to evoke good feelings being stained with blood (and by implication, violence) sets you up well for what happens in "Watchmen", and the meditation it provides on the very notion of heroism. (Some good guides for the uninitiated can be found here and here. Or you could just read the thing.)

In fact, that's what the trailer actually made me do. I checked it out because I saw that same smiley face again, and I had one of those "oh-I've-always-been-meaning-to-read-that" moments that makes me at once excited and regretful. Add that to the fact that I hadn't read a book in an absurdly long time, and I really had no excuses left.

I thoroughly enjoyed the novel. But it's not my opinion that is interesting - it's why certain people have decided that they won’t see the film, and why I think that is.

It's not as simple as "old guys get it, young people do". Roger Ebert gave it four stars:

In a cosmic sense it doesn’t really matter who pushed the Comedian through the window. In a cosmic sense, nothing really matters, but best not meditate on that too much. The Watchmen and their special gifts are all the better able to see how powerless they really are, and although all but Dr. Manhattan are human and back the home team, their powers are not limitless. Dr. Manhattan, existing outside time and space, is understandably remote from the fate of our tiny planet, although perhaps he still harbors some old emotions...

“Watchmen” focuses on the contradiction shared by most superheroes: They cannot live ordinary lives but are fated to help mankind. That they do this with trademarked names and appliances goes back to their origins in Greece, where Zeus had his thunderbolts, Hades his three-headed dog, and Hermes his winged feet. Could Zeus run fast? Did Hermes have a dog? No.

That level of symbolism is coiling away beneath all superheroes. What appeals with Batman is his humanity; despite his skills, he is not supernormal. “Watchmen” brings surprising conviction to these characters as flawed and minor gods, with Dr. Manhattan possessing access to godhead on a plane that detaches him from our daily concerns — indeed, from days themselves.

Indeed, heroism itself can be a burden. It’s rarely shown to be a physical one – with the exception of Kryptonite, rarely do we see our superheroes injured or even limited. But Ebert, upon a second viewing of Watchmen, came out with more revelations:

The next detail is not important to the plot of "Watchmen," but I found it fascinating: Manhattan thinks he might leave this planet altogether, travel to a distant galaxy, and there, he suggests, might try his hand at creating some life himself. He would then, would he not, be the Intelligent Designer of life in that place?

Left unanswered is the question of how life was created here on this planet, and indeed the question of whether Manhattan as he now exists constitutes life. Always remaining is the much larger question, Why is there something instead of nothing? These are questions Manhattan might fruitfully meditate upon, although if you exist on a quantum level, as he himself observes, life and non-life are all the same thing, just nanoscale bits of not much more than nothing, all busily humming about for reasons we cannot comprehend. As he puts it, "A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there's no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned?"

Whoa.

I’m not ruining anything by revealing that the danger that the world faces when Manhattan says these things is cataclysmic. Nuclear war is at hand; the Doomsday clock is at five minutes to midnight. And he chooses to regard us as simple matter, and not something to be concerned about? In what story can you think of did the superman refuse to save us?

But strangely, a similar disconnection from material that those devoted to it see as essential to life as water - a quasi-religious marriage of cultural artifact and acolyte - serves me well when I analyze what I just watched today. I'm glad I'm not a full-fledged, Vulcan-ear, lightsaber-wielding fanboy, even if I have elements of one within me. (A better way of explaining it would be: I get many of their jokes, but I'd be hesitant to try to make them laugh.) The fact that I'm not a fanboy enables me to say that I arrived at the theater to see Watchmen today knowing that I was not about to see the Bible depicted on-screen. (I've already seen that, and to say I was much more emotional about that film than this would be an understatement.) To some, though, it was. I mean, this is the book that spawned the Frank Millers of the world, and without "Watchmen", there is no Dark Knight.

But some folks couldn't care less about any of that. My conversations with many who aren't as captivated as I was by the novel or advertisements for the film fall into two camps: those that have absolutely a) no interest in seeing the film and/or b) have no earthly idea what the story is about, since it doesn't feature a superhero that they've heard of. Can I understand why one wouldn't be into Watchmen? Of course. It's extremely violent; the language is consistently authentic, er, bad; and there's a big, blue, naked dude with his junk hanging out, clearly visible throughout the film. (On the other hand, that might actually help the box office.)

I understand where they're coming from. But they are making a mistake.

The key to approaching something as complex as Watchmen, novel or film, is that you have be willing to give yourself a little more credit. Americans have become engrossed with the very simple psychology of our favorite heroes, but how well do we really know them? Superman, with his alienation complex, daddy issues and mocking imitation of human behavior; Batman, the orphaned trust-fund kid who is driven by psychosis and a sick need for what he perceives as justice; Iron Man, a weapons mogul whose guilt over the destruction he's wrought drives him more than any sense of heroism; Spider-Man, a cocky kid who only stood to profit from his powers until he's spurred into maturity by the murder of the man that raised him; Hulk, a green mass of pure rage spurred from the innards of an innocent scientist, a being that hardly even knows what he's doing.

These are some seriously screwed-up people. But we know them by their fancy costumes and Saturday-morning cartoons, and we didn't even realize that we were watching a bunch of nuts.

I grew up on those cartoons, preferring them to the comics that spawned them. So many of my generation did, as did their kids. If the highly-processed, easily digested version of "Watchmen" that the studio wanted had come to pass, we might have seen something akin to this nightmare:

A comic like "Watchmen" was before its time, but it also, in ways, came too late. Not enough of us were reading comic books, even in 1986. I think Watchmen will have trouble reaching those of us who approached the whole notion of the superhero in a casual fashion, thinking that all we needed to know about Superman was that he had heat vision and could fly. We can't afford to get wrapped up in the fact that Watchmen's alternate 1985 may appear quaint. This is not a time in our history in which we can opt for the dumbed-down version. We have to know ourselves, and we have to know our heroes.

There's a lot more to why these people - in comics or in real life - choose to be the heroes that they are, and that is worth exploring. Watchmen shows you why some of those people put on the costume, and you may not like the answer.

Twitter quitter.

2009-03-06T12:09:00.003-05:00

A few weeks back, I started a Twitter account. Then the Republicans just killed it, with all the flair of a middle-aged dad embarrassing his teenage kids by trying to rap along to Soulja Boy.

I have more to say about that, but ESPN's Bill Simmons captures why I have issues not just with Twitter, but how it and other things are affecting writing on the Web:

The more interesting angle for me is how Twitter and Facebook reflect where our writing is going thanks to the Internet. In 15 years, writing went from "reflecting on what happened and putting together some coherent thoughts" to "reflecting on what happened as quickly as possible" to "reflecting on what's happening as it's happening" to "here are my half-baked thoughts about absolutely anything and I'm not even going to attempt to entertain you," or as I like to call it, Twitter/Facebook Syndrome. Do my friends REALLY CARE if I send out an update, "Bill is flying on an airplane finishing a mailbag right now?" (Which is true, by the way.) I just don't think they would. I certainly wouldn't. That's why I refuse to use Twitter.

I'm done with Twitter before I even started. (Facebook's OK, though.)

Made for you and me.

2009-03-04T15:56:00.003-05:00

Two years ago, I met an angel. In church, no less.

Here's to big time love - happy anniversary, sweetheart.

Overjoyed.

2009-03-04T15:50:00.003-05:00

That's my feeling upon the discovery of a visionary new artist, one who can not only can sing, but plays a mean bass. To say that Esperanza Spalding gives me hope is admittedly a bit corny, but no less true. And that's not only because at the White House concert honoring the great Stevie Wonder, she nailed my favorite Stevie song in a way I didn't think was possible:

On Ash Wednesday.

2009-02-25T23:39:00.003-05:00

I was prepared, when I sat here, to write about the short shrift that Ash Wednesday gets from Christians in this country, especially when compared to the end of Lent, Easter. I just got back from my church's service, and I joked with my lady that it had about a tenth of the people in attendance as would be dressed in their finest on Easter Sunday, packing the pews to capacity. I found it interesting that the end of a period of sacrifice is so much more celebrated, is so much more joyous than the beginning. But in a religion in which suffering became the pathway to our forgiveness, Ash Wednesday serves as a reminder that the pain's the thing, as Shakespeare might say.

But there's something about this day that rings much truer for me. For in reflection, I find that Ash Wednesday wasn't the beginning of a trial for me. It signaled the beginning of the end.

I remember learning, when I was a child, that the ashes used on Ash Wednesday to smear the foreheads of millions at the beginning of Lent were the burned remnants of the dried, dead palms from the previous year's Palm Sunday, mixed with sacred oils. Whether or not that's true for every church, I don't know. But faith is in part a choice, and as I have faith in God and His Son, I choose to believe it.

For me, faith has been a struggle. I have had doubts about the Almighty, stemming mostly from the scientific, pragmatic way I approach problem-solving and investigation. I first found the Bible approachable as a literary text, making some of its flights of fancy (A burning bush? Really?) easier for me to accept when I was younger. I kept my doubts secret, mostly out of cowardice. But my academic nature (similar to many other situations) was won over by passion in fits and starts. It was hard to see that good fortune that befell me as I grew up, to see the faith in works done by so many close to me, to hear the preachings of my beloved pastor and not think that somehow, God was at work.

Then Andre died.

My cousin had been missing for months. Ironically, I learned of his murder when I came home from a church service. The closest thing I've had to a brother was murdered by someone he'd trusted, so in my 15-year-old wisdom, I made the leap that since the prayers for Andre's protection had been cruelly refused, I'd refuse to pray. What's the point of trusting God when the man Andre had trusted had (literally) stabbed him in the back?

My first experience with death had scarred me deeply. After I left for college, I went churchless for over a decade. With one notable exception. See, I worked in midtown NYC, blocks away from the famous St. Patrick's Cathedral. I was no Catholic, but I made a point on every Ash Wednesday to get in the Yankee Stadium-on-Opening Day-length line to receive the mark on my forehead. I hadn't grown up doing so, and there was a part of me that did it merely out of the appreciation of custom. But it was always clear to me that ashes are meant for the faithful, and it seems now that I waited in that line and knelt before the priest because it made me feel that, on one day at least, I was a man of faith again. I could believe.

I could expand on this at greater length, but my point is clear. The ashes didn't put me back on the path, but they gave me a reminder, in a time of my life in which I could have very easily fallen victim to self-indulgence and vanity (in other words, my twenties), that there was a path at all. After all, it was staring me right in the face, every time I looked in the mirror.

My vanity still gets the best of me at times, and I'm far from perfect. But I'm been on the path for a while now, and as I trudge along (with increasing speed) to a faithful life, I'm reminded tonight about how that journey back to Christ began.

Ash Wednesday may get the short shrift. But never from me.

"Fella".

2009-02-20T17:02:00.003-05:00

Michael Eric Dyson really gets Pat Buchanan to remove the hood (or put it on, as it were) and expose what he really thinks about African-Americans: