The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Saturday, February 2, 2008

02 Feb 2008 08:32 pm

Typo Of The Day

"And for a Republican to be Hillary or Obama, he'll need to win a large number of moderates and non-Republicans. John McCain has shown that he can do that," - Red State.

02 Feb 2008 07:43 pm

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney makes phone calls before meeting with the press during a campaign rally at Freeway Ford February 1, 2008 in Denver, Colorado. By Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

02 Feb 2008 06:49 pm

Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

I hate to demonstrate the audacity of cynicism here, but isn't your Gandhi post and its implied take on "non-interventionism" a bit oversimplified? There is no doubt that Gandhi was a pivotal, symbolic figure, and that India in particular and resistance to colonialism in general owes a great deal to his influence. That said, it's rather difficult to discount the fact that it was only a British Empire massively weakened, financially and military (for reasons having more to do with German guns than with satyagraha...) that finally granted India its independence; that India was followed by a wave of new states claiming their independence not only from Britain but also from the French empire (and of course that many of these states were born as the result of a far bloodier process than what took place in India - see the Algerian Civil War, or Kenya's Mau Mau for instance), more than suggesting that factors extending far beyond the borders of India were pushing towards the collapse of these two empires at the time; and that the existence of liberal, democratic norms in France and Britain in the first place were fundamentally necessary for the success of Gandhi's "mirror" strategy?

Yeah - that was one sentence. Maybe that's how non-violence wins the day.

Continue reading "Dissent Of The Day" »

02 Feb 2008 06:12 pm

Paper Art

Robert Lang, an origami master extraordinaire, was a physicist and engineer before making origami full-time. A review of his work:

Lang creates creatures of such realism and complexity that it seems impossible that each is composed of a single sheet of paper, no cuts, no glue.

More Images after the fold.

Continue reading "Paper Art" »

02 Feb 2008 06:10 pm

McCain's Mo

This will give Hannity, Hewitt and Coulter a bad weekend:

It is quite possible Huckabee will gain more delegates than Romney on Tuesday.

02 Feb 2008 06:00 pm

Obama In Idaho

His Boise crowd of 15,000 is seven times the total number of people who caucused in the state in 2004.

02 Feb 2008 05:44 pm

"The Tsunami That Is Building"

That's Hewitt's description of the Obama campaign.

02 Feb 2008 05:38 pm

The Paranoid Tendency

Daily Pundit:

I have felt for quite a while that the Bushes made a deal with McCain - that in exchange for his support of the establishment (McCain is about as much a “maverick” as George Herbert Walker Bush or Bob Dole), Bush and the establishment would back him in his run for the Presidency this year. I’ve seen nothing to disabuse me of that notion.

Not so much a crack-up as a melt-down.

02 Feb 2008 05:34 pm

Romney In 2012!

Hinderaker looks on the bright side.

02 Feb 2008 04:10 pm

Quote For The Day

"Ultimately, the choice will say more about our soul as a nation than about the candidates in this election. The boldness of Obama in accepting the Clintons' injection of race as an issue and his insistence on an enlightened answer challenges us all. Even as one's head warns that the strategy will fail, one's heart hopes that it will succeed. Either way, Obama has made the Super Tuesday vote more about who we are than who the candidates running for president are," - Dick Morris. He still has a heart?

02 Feb 2008 03:26 pm

Out And Over It

, Pop">

Boy George has exactly the right attitude about being openly gay:

I don't think of myself as a gay pop star. There are gay pop stars who are totally obsessed with being gay, but I've never been one of those. I love straight people; it takes two of them to make one of us! I've never had that kind of separatist attitude about "gay" and "straight". I love being gay and I support gay culture, but I don't think of myself as being a solely gay artist. [...]

Today's gay pop stars are out of the closet, but they don't express anything about their sexuality. They don't ever use the word "he" in their songs. They think they don't need to, because they think everybody loves them, and they think they're all accepted. You see, they've been lulled into this false sense of security! (Laughs) When I write a song about a boy, I'm not thinking about the radio or any of that; I'm thinking about what I feel. You'll see that in my show.

02 Feb 2008 02:52 pm

The View From Harlem

An intriguing video from Newsweek.

02 Feb 2008 02:20 pm

The View From Your Window

Chicago, Illinois, 4.15 pm.

02 Feb 2008 01:56 pm

"He Has No Honor"

Coulter on McCain.

02 Feb 2008 01:48 pm

Clinton Up Four In National Gallup

Gulp. She now leads by seven.

02 Feb 2008 01:46 pm

La Opinion Endorses

L.A.'s Hispanic paper backs Obama. It's the second biggest paper in LA and the biggest Spanish language paper in the country.

02 Feb 2008 01:10 pm

Malkin Award Nominee

"If you've got a Hillary and McCain race, you've got a third option: That's the pistol on the bed table." - Pat Buchanan.

02 Feb 2008 01:01 pm

Get With Barack

In 1972.

02 Feb 2008 12:54 pm

The Gender Gap Closes

Many of Obama's recent gains have come from women switching from Clinton.

02 Feb 2008 12:48 pm

The Obama Movement

More than a campaign now, much more than a campaign. And it has an anthem:

Do what you can this weekend to help him do it.

"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope."

02 Feb 2008 12:15 pm

What Are Lips For?

One gets the sense it's not procreation:

Human lips enjoy the slimmest layer of skin on the human body, and the lips are among the most densely populated with sensory neurons of any body region. When we kiss, these neurons, along with those in the tongue and mouth, rocket messages to the brain and body, setting off delightful sensations, intense emotions and physical reactions.

Of the 12 or 13 cranial nerves that affect cerebral function, five are at work when we kiss, shuttling messages from our lips, tongue, cheeks and nose to a brain that snatches information about the temperature, taste, smell and movements of the entire affair. Some of that information arrives in the somatosensory cortex, a swath of tissue on the surface of the brain that represents tactile information in a map of the body. In that map, the lips loom large because the size of each represented body region is proportional to the density of its nerve endings.

Hat tip: Mind Hacks.

02 Feb 2008 11:48 am

The Right and Obama II

Susan Eisenhower has endorsed him?

02 Feb 2008 10:45 am

The Right And Obama I

A reader writes:

I live in Vermont. This state is known for its progressiveness but, like every state, we definitely have our hardcore conservative Republican constituency. Today, I was at the video store in my very rural town and I overheard a man and a woman, other customers, loudly talking about politics. It was one of those out-loud conversations that inevitably involves everyone else in a 30 foot radius. Here's what I gathered:

They're both ok with McCain, although not very excited, but they really love his support for the Iraq War. As they browsed the movies, one of them added that he didn't like William H. Macy, the actor, because he heard he was against the war.

They are as anti-Clinton as you might imagine. The thing they agreed about most passionately was that they would never vote for her. One stated - and the other strongly agreed - that if Clinton wins "we're screwed".

And then their tone changed.

Continue reading "The Right And Obama I" »

02 Feb 2008 10:23 am

The Ugliest Hotel In The World

Who wants to visit Pyongyang anyway?

Hat tip: Hit'n'Run.

02 Feb 2008 09:21 am

Correction Of The Day

"In the Jan. 23 issue of Wednesday Journal, River Forest Village President Frank Paris is quoted saying, 'I'll answer any question except if you ask me how many times I sodomized my parent. Those kinds of questions can't be asked.' What Mr. Paris actually said was, 'I'll answer any question except if you ask me how many times I sodomized my parrot,'" - Wednesday Journal, River Valley.

Friday, February 1, 2008

01 Feb 2008 08:39 pm

Evil

Some don't want to use that word about the Islamofascists. But they use women - perhaps with some mental retardation - to kill innocent children delighting in a pet shop. It may not be a very helpful fact in crafting effective strategies against them, but it is a fact.

If they aren't evil, nothing is.

01 Feb 2008 08:06 pm

Two-Day Post-Edwards Tracking

Rasmussen has it a tie:

The last two nights of tracking were the first without John Edwards in the race. For those two nights, it’s Clinton 44% and Obama 42% meaning that Clinton’s support is essentially unchanged. This suggests that many former Edwards supporters now support Obama, many others have yet to make a decision, and few currently support Clinton.

A week ago, she was eleven points ahead. Si se puede!

01 Feb 2008 07:45 pm

Face Of The Day

An Iraqi man, injured in a bombing at a pet market, lies on a hospital bed on February 1, 2008 in Baghdad, Iraq. At least 64 people were killed and many other were wounded when two female suicide bombers blew themselves up at a two separate pet markets in Baghdad, Iraq. By Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images.

01 Feb 2008 07:43 pm

Coulter-Lash

Expelling a toxin.

01 Feb 2008 07:38 pm

The LA Times Endorses

Not sure what difference it makes, but their argument is solid enough:

In the language of metaphor, Clinton is an essay, solid and reasoned; Obama is a poem, lyric and filled with possibility. Clinton would be a valuable and competent executive, but Obama matches her in substance and adds something that the nation has been missing far too long -- a sense of aspiration.

01 Feb 2008 06:38 pm

Obama and the Urban-Rural Divide

Jonathan Raban notices something important:

I've been to those counties, their miles of lonely roads where you can drive for half an hour before encountering another vehicle, their scattered ranches and isolated towns, their seasonal creeks marked by lines of spindly cottonwood trees, the overwhelmingly Caucasian cast of their people. Out there in the mountains, sagebrush and high desert, Obama carried the day by far greater margins than his overall loss of the popular vote to Clinton across the state, and came out of the caucuses with one more delegate than she did.

Remember that in 2004 every American city with a population over 500,000 voted Democrat, and the Republicans won by taking the countryside and the outer suburbs. The blue state/red state division is better expressed in terms of the persistent conflicts between the big cities and their rural hinterlands, over land use, water rights and environmental, class and cultural issues. Red states are simply those where the country can outvote the urban centres, while in blue states the opposite is true. The perception that America has liberal coasts and a conservative interior merely reflects the fact that the coastal states are home to the largest metropolitan areas with the most electoral muscle. Last time around, for instance, Bush easily won the heartland state of Missouri, but was as crushingly defeated by Kerry in St Louis as he was in the cities of New York, Boston, San Francisco and Seattle.

So Obama's victory over Clinton in rural Nevada says something important about his ability as the apostle of national reconciliation.

01 Feb 2008 05:05 pm

A Feminist On Circumcision

Strangely compelling:

Foreskin may arguably not be a huge deal, but I think it's simply wrong to remove a part of a person's genitals without their consent. However, I don't think circumcised men are horribly "mutilated." I don't think that there's anything weird or unattractive about it. I don't think that they're all psychologically scarred. And I think it's shitty to suggest otherwise.

01 Feb 2008 04:33 pm

The TSA Online

They really shouldn't have allowed reader comments, should they?

01 Feb 2008 04:30 pm

The Dish At The Atlantic

Today marks the one year anniversary of this blog's residence at the Atlantic.com, after one year at Time.com and six years of total independence. I'm really grateful to all of you who've stuck with the blog through thick and thin through what is now its eighth continuous year. The last six weeks have been particularly nuts, as the campaign has taken off and I decided to go balls-to-the-wall until this primary season is over. Yep: I put up around 1,600 separate posts in the past month. Forgive me if I'm a bit bleary.

Th Atlantic has allowed me to have a home with real support, fellow-bloggers and writers to cavort with, wonderful editorial guidance with no editorial veto, a now full-time assistant, and a bevy of interns tracking down and highlighting a variety of new blogs, sources, and sites to mine for bloggy nuggets and insight. Video and photography and reader contests have all added to the mix, and I'm hoping to experiment some more in the year ahead. It sounds like a suck-up, but I couldn't have found a better home. I always knew it was an honor to be welcomed into a magazine with the history and reputation and staff of the Atlantic. I had no idea it would be such a blast as well.

We've also soared in traffic. The Dish garnered around 25 million page views in my year at Time. It has racked up a little shy of 40 million page views in the first year at the Atlantic. The last month was almost double our previous record - with 7.6 million page views in January 2008 alone. On Technorati's list of linked blogs, the Dish has leaped up the chart. Thanks for reading, emailing, nudging, caviling, complaining, praising, forwarding, and suggesting. And the beat goes on ...

01 Feb 2008 04:11 pm

Living In America

Huckabee defines freedom:

"The beauty of America is that a person can come and even make a disruption, and you know what, that person is not going to be taken out and shot."

01 Feb 2008 03:27 pm

Skin Art

Ewww.

01 Feb 2008 03:09 pm

Red State For McCain

Feel the love.

01 Feb 2008 02:59 pm

Reaganism RIP

An obit from NRO.

01 Feb 2008 02:59 pm

Home Cinema Porn

Loads of people have mega-sized TVs. Not everyone has a Star Trek home movie theater.

01 Feb 2008 02:56 pm

The Coolest Movie Promotion

A water and laser show creates a Loch Ness monster in Tokyo Bay. Probably more entertaining than sitting through The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep.

01 Feb 2008 02:56 pm

A Literary Quandary

Jessa Crispin wonders:

If you already wrote a memoir about having obsessive compulsive disorder a few years back, are you allowed to publish a new memoir about your hypochondria?

(Hat tip: Tyler Cowen).

01 Feb 2008 02:42 pm

The WSJ Boots Romney

That's gotta hurt:

Mr. Romney spent his life as a moderate Republican, and he governed the Bay State that way after his election in 2002. While running this year, however, he has reinvented himself as a conservative from radio talk show-casting, especially on immigration.

And so he's left with the talk-show hosts, who seem to have persuaded themselves these past few years that they are the GOP.

01 Feb 2008 02:36 pm

Now: Three Points

Within the margin of error. Gallup's latest:

01 Feb 2008 02:08 pm

Beam Me Up, Yoko

, Science">

NASA broadcasts a Beatles classic across the universe. Lovely Rufus Wainwright video here.

01 Feb 2008 01:56 pm

Drawing Obama

, Obama">

And thinking Lincoln. A cool video of Steve Brodner's artwork in motion.

01 Feb 2008 01:44 pm

Yglesias Award Nominee

"I think I should just be on the record that I disagree with the tone, tenor and substance of much — though certainly not all — of the anti-McCain commentary around here. It's not that I object to a single post or comment — though there've been a few. It's that I disagree with the overwhelming impression that supporting McCain is some kind of lunacy. I have serious disagreements with McCain. I think it is entirely right to disagree with him on all sorts of issues and entirely legitimate to think he would be bad for the party, bad for conservatism or bad for the country to have him as the nominee or the next president. I agree with some of those sentiments, disagree with others.

But this disaster talk leaves me cold. McCain wouldn't be my first pick. Then again, none of the candidates were really my first pick. But I think the notion that, variously, conservatism, the country or the party are doomed if he's the nominee or the president is pretty absurd.

And I find such claims odd coming from some people who've insisted for a couple years now that the war on terror is the #1 overriding issue of this campaign," - Jonah Goldberg, NRO.

01 Feb 2008 01:17 pm

The View From Your Window

Cuzco, Peru, 7 am.

01 Feb 2008 01:13 pm

Why Last Night Mattered

I'm going to stick with my hunch and reiterate that last night was a key win for Obama. Why? Chuck Todd explains:

He proved that he belonged on the same stage as Clinton. And that's an important accomplishment, because you keep wondering whether undecided voters are waiting to see if Obama can prove his mettle for the presidency. There's a theory that believes just that. And if that theory is true, then last night's debate could prove to be very important to Obama. The audience was undecided voters and former Edwards supporters, and we're guessing these folks have a fairly low bar for Obama to prove himself to them, compared to the bar they have for Clinton since they are still not on board with the more well-known candidate.

It's what Mark Blumenthal identifies as the "readiness" question. Last night, Obama made huge gains on that question. And Edwards' withdrawal made it possible.

01 Feb 2008 01:11 pm

In Tennessee

The Edwards vote appears to be shifting to Obama. The same dynamic appears at work in New Jersey, where her 17 point lead has collapsed to a mere six in ten days.

01 Feb 2008 12:57 pm

Quote For The Day

"When Sean Hannity says he’s voting for me, when Laura Ingraham says she’s endorsing me ... Rush has been going after McCain pretty aggressively. Michael Reagan has been pretty aggressive. The world of conservatism is pretty solidly behind my effort," - Mitt Romney, today. He doesn't sound like he's conceded.

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Friday, February 1, 2008

Andrew Sullivan

Dish Prep