A fascinating little detour through the brilliant design of the Obama campaign. Like the campaign as a whole, it evolved as a result of clear strategy and tactical experimentation. My favorite loser below the fold:
Proving both his media savvy and his masochism, Frey volunteered to intern at Gawker, the very site that ruthlessly and relentlessly ridiculed him in the aftermath of that little tiff Frey had with Oprah and the rest of the country a while back. Gawker, another connoisseur of publicity, enthusiastically agreed, and Frey spent yesterday at their offices.
Naturally, he was asked to fact-check several posts...
Bubble wrap protects a framed photograph of President-elect Barack Obama available at Political Americana's inaugural store near the White House December 12, 2008 in Washington, DC. Opening in time for the holidays, the store carries thousands of items including life-size photographic cutouts of Obama, t-shirts, buttons, mugs and golf balls. By Chip Somodevilla/Getty.
A new study questions the wisdom of graphic anti-meth ads:
Erceg-Hurn told the Sydney Morning Herald
that teens “look at those ads and they don’t see themselves or their
friends because the first few times they use ice (a nickname for meth),
they simply feel euphoria. (Unlike the kids depicted in the ads) they
are not becoming prostitutes or killing their parents, so they reject
the message. These ads could be backfiring, and it’s time for a new
approach.”
The Smoking Gun has found Van Halen's infamous "no brown M&M's in the band's dressing room" rider. Why did the band ask for this?:
While the underlined rider entry has often been described as an example of rock excess, the outlandish demand of multimillionaires, the group has said the M&M provision was included to make sure that promoters had actually read its lengthy rider. If brown M&M's were in the backstage candy bowl, Van Halen surmised that more important aspects of a performance--lighting, staging, security, ticketing--may have been botched by an inattentive promoter.
Marriage is a religious concept that should be defined and administered only by churches.
This is a very strange reading of Catholic history and American history. Marriage was not a sacrament until the thirteenth century; many Protestants, most famously Luther, denied its sacramental quality through the sixteenth century. The first marriages in America were civil, not religious in nature:
When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620, among the first things
they did for the well-ordering of their new commonwealth was to
institute the Dutch custom of civil marriage with which they had become
familiar during their long sojourn in the Netherlands.
I realize this is ancient history. As a friend who doesn't see why I am raking this all up argues, it's not as if today's left is bristling with macho streetfighters. It's hard to imagine anyone now applauding the Manson murders, as Dohrn notoriously did in l969, or dedicating a manifesto to, among others, Sirhan Sirhan. But just because it's ancient history doesn't mean you get to rewrite it to make yourself look good, just another idealistic young person upset about the war and racism. We were all upset about the war and racism.
There was a certain amount of unnecessary condescension toward fundamentalists in Lisa Miller's essay on the Christian case for marriage equality. But the spluttering anger of the responses struck me as excessive. Larison oozes contempt for Jon Meacham in ways that seem intended to miss Meacham's point. The essence of fundamentalism is not, it seems to me, the assertion that Christ is the same “yesterday, today and forever” (I believe the same and my faith is anti-fundamentalist); it is the assertion that every single aspect in the bewilderingly expansive and contradictory and over-determined texts we call the Bible are literally true in every particular and every injunction should be applied today as literally as possible. This crude recourse to Biblical authority, without any larger theological argument, is what Meacham is rightly complaining about. Larison agrees, in fact, when you read his full post. He notes that it is simply impossible to deduce one simple meaning from the Bible on most complicated current issues. The texts have
a richness and depth that cannot be exhausted by one kind of interpretation alone.
So a vast document that has only a handful of opaque references to sex between two heterosexuals of the same gender and no concept of homosexuality as such requires interpretation. We cannot resolve this issue by the plain meaning of the text alone. The minute we do this reduction - with, say, the Leviticus proscriptions - we are required to explain further why the prohibition of eating shell-fish is no longer operable. And an attempt to insist on the eternal, literal authority of Scripture with respect to marriage in churches that accept divorce - plainly and clearly ruled illicit by Jesus himself - reveals the deep intellectual confusion among the fundamentalists.
Larison knows all this, which is why he, in fact, does not resort to Scripture, but smuggles in natural law, to make his case:
In a fallen world, everyone has a predisposition to act contrary to our
true nature, but in no other case that I can think of do we pretend
that indulging such a predisposition is inevitable, much less something
to be embraced and approved.
My italics. The root of Larison's argument here is a Thomist assertion that homosexuality is actually an "objective disorder" contrary to our "true nature." By marrying the man I love, I am, according to Larison, violating my true nature. We are all defined as heterosexuals in this universe, and heterosexuality is defined primarily by sex acts that cannot ever be divorced from reproduction.
This concept of nature is, however, itself divorced from modern science - which finds that same-sex orientation is close to universal among all natural species and that sexual orientation is far deeper and broader than sex acts - and rests on medieval conceptions of the teleology of sex. I deal with these natural law arguments at great length on homosexuality in Virtually Normal, and on abortion and end-of-life issues in The Conservative Soul. From a Catholic perspective, I am forced to respond that these neo-Thomist assertions about "our true nature" are philosophically circular, incompatible with the vast increase in our knowledge of human psychology and sexuality and evolution over the last two centuries, and have ended up marginalizing a small minority of humans as the one true symbol of moral righteousness.
None of this advances caritas or veritas. And in the end, a Christianity resistant to truth and terrified of love is the real objective disorder.
I tried to avoid too much news last week but should say I found the Blagoyevich story as rich as most people seemed to. I will not, however, express shock, for that would be silly. And frankly, I don't see the connection to Obama or the inevitable "distraction" not being guilty of anything requires in media-land. Meanwhile, Christopher Buckley captures the core truth:
Thank heavens Mr. Fitzgerald has given us another juicy political crisis to keep our mind off bailouts, the greatest economic crisis since the depression, and our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. For a minute there, it looked we were might have to concentrate on The Big Picture. How much more diverting to focus on the villainy of a potty-mouthed Illinois pol. He manages to make Rahm Emmanuel sound like an altar boy.
Gates puts the world on notice as the transition approaches:
Mr. Gates, who was speaking at a conference on regional
security, said that Mr. Obama and his advisers had done more extensive
planning across the government for the transition than at any time he
could remember and asserted that they would therefore be prepared from
their first day in office. Mr. Gates, who is staying on as defense
secretary, has worked for seven presidents; Mr. Obama will be his
eighth. “So anyone who thought that the upcoming months might present
opportunities to ‘test’ the new president would be sorely mistaken,”
Mr. Gates said at the conference. “President Obama and his national
security team, myself included, will be ready to defend the interests
of the United States and our friends and allies from the moment he
takes office on Jan. 20.”
My thanks to Patrick and Chris for their work this past week. As the Dish has evolved at the Atlantic, I've been lucky to nurture a team who know what this blog is about as deeply as you and I do, and being able to leave it in their hands and know it will probably be better in my absence is what my shrink would call "a gain." After eight years of Dishing, I know my work is done when my Number Two tears me a new asshole while I'm away. It's the way we roll. Speaking of which ...
Andrew is due back tomorrow. As always, I've had a fabulous time guest-blogging for him. Chris is right that the Dish's catbird seat makes one feel like a kitten running on a slide, but it's a great gig and I thank Andrew for trusting me with the reins. Blogging this week wouldn't have been nearly as enjoyable without readers' e-mails and tips. Many thanks to everyone who wrote in. Even greater thanks to Chris, who managed to do a remarkable amount of posting while also working his regular job at the Hotline and battling a cold.
Lastly – for the record – my natural blogging environment is much closer to this than this.
by Chris Bodenner Alvaro Vargas Llosa reviews "Slumdog Millionaire" (already getting Oscar buzz):
Latin American soap operas and oldish Indian melodramas have many things in common. One of them is a fascination with victimhood and a
redistributionist idea of wealth.... By contrast, the hero of "Slumdog Millionaire" never complains,
never suggests that others owe him something, never envies what he
sees. And he is relentless in his determination to go on, and on. Every
little victory--and the final prize, which is not the money--is the
result of ingenuity meeting opportunity.
As Hayes, reminds us, we should be skeptical of those who make a fetish of pragmatism. The scariest thing, to me, about Barack Obama's cabinet is that many of the people who are saluting him, the ones celebrating his "pragmatism" and alleged rejection of the nutty left, are the same people who were dead wrong about the greatest foreign policy question of our era. That's just a feeling, but it's the reason why I get so vexed over reporters parroting the talking points of any administration. Our job is to think, to question--not to babble on about the latest cute handle Obama has awarded to his cabinet.
A girl with her face painted with the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe prays inside the Virgin's sanctuary in Guatemala City on December 12, 2008. The worshipping of the Virgin of Guadalupe started in Guatemala during the second half of the XVIII Century. By Eitan Abramovich/Getty.
The publisher of the Detroit Free Press, the country's 20th largest paper by weekday circulation, is expected to announce next week that it will cease home delivery of the print edition of the newspaper on most days of the week, according to a person familiar with the company's thinking.
Am I the only one who finds it absolutely crazy that anyone is this concerned about Obama’s answers on Blagojevich when we have just had a Senate report released that confirms that the highest levels of the current administration were implicated in and responsible for serious violations of the law? This is the sort of thing that some people have insisted not be investigated and prosecuted during the next administration’s tenure for various unpersuasive reasons, and not least because of the concern that it would appear to be a partisan witch-hunt. Obviously, we are not concerned about such appearances in Blagojevich’s case, because we think it important to enforce the law here, so why not enforce it when the crimes involved are far more serious and far greater breaches of the public trust?
The STUMP project began in 1999 on the sidewalks of New York City — the sidewalk plots where there are tree stumps are generally neglected spaces left to collect debris. The tree stumps reminded me of the childhood story, The Giving Tree by Shell Silverstein, in which a tree has given of herself to the point of being diminished to a stump, but selflessly perks herself up to give to the last, by providing a seat for the beloved boy who is now an aged man.
Obama will probably often end up defining himself against progressivism, rhetorically, even when he's embracing progressive ideas. (See his campaign's extremely effective health-care ads for an example of how this works in practice.) The President-elect's ability to hold his coalition together, then, may depend in no small part on whether the Democratic Party's left wing feels that it's getting enough out of his Presidency in practice to justify playing the bad guy in the narrative Obama will be selling to the country as a whole, in which post-partisan "whatever works" pragmatism triumphs over ideologues of the left and right alike.
By Patrick Appel Gideon Rachman gets Drudged. I'm fairly used to angry and insane e-mail by this point. Here's an e-mail from one of the Dish's regulars:
Obama is a Marxist trying to convert our Country into a one party Marxist state. Paying journalists to print their propaganda has been the trademark of totalitarian states. Putting as many people on the Government’s payroll is Obama’s way on ensuring more Democrat Seats in the 2010 elections. I can see why you support his anti-American agenda, but hopefully the rest of America will realize what our affirmative action surrender monkey in chief is up to.
By Patrick Appel Freddie DeBoer crosses party lines and gets all Freudian on us:
I think the idea that social or cultural conservatives are generally people who are afraid of sex is little more than a gross caricature. As I've tried to demonstrate, I equally think a lot of self-professed "sexually liberated" people are, in fact, the ones most likely to feel actual fear for sex, because their attempts to make sex mundane are usually about removing the danger, immediacy and emotionality of sex-- that is, the things that make sex so special in the first place.
By Patrick Appel Nathan Hodge reports on how the SOFA agreement is impacting operations in Iraq:
The new catchphrase here is "warrant-based targeting": U.S. forces will need to secure warrants from Iraqi judges in order to conduct missions to detain suspects. How this will work in practice, however, is still something of an open question.
By Patrick Appel Chris Hayes questions the sudden surge of pragmatism in DC:
Indeed, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, "pragmatists" of all stripes--Alan Dershowitz, Richard Posner--lined up to offer tips and strategies on how best to implement a practical and effective torture regime; but ideologues said no torture, no exceptions.
by Chris Bodenner In response to Huckabee and Stewart sparring over gay marriage, Ta-Nehisi writes:
The case for/against gay marriage is hung-up on this idea of
choice--i.e. we should frown on gay marriage because it's a deviant
lifestyle. Or we shouldn't frown on it because it isn't a lifestyle,
it's a biological fact. This is where the comparisons with race come
in. But I always hated this argument. Whenever people say, "You should
not discriminate against people because they didn't chose to be black,"
I hear the mild tones of wild liberal condescension.
Implicit in
that logic is a kind of judgment, the notion that if I could choose, I
obviously would choose to be white. But what if I just like being
black? What if I could choose and would still choose black? Ditto for
homosexuality. So what if you do choose to be gay? I understand that a
lot of the science says you don't, but why do we accept this implicit
idea that heterosexuality is, necessarily, what everyone would chose?
Dish researcher Patrick Appel, in his natural environment:
That photo is attached to a news release with this tantalizing intro: "A Japanese research team has revealed it had created a technology that could eventually display on a computer screen what people have on their minds, such as dreams."
Given the deteriorating fundamentals, the limited room for further use of conventional monetary policy, and the uncertainty about the effectiveness of non-conventional monetary policy options, the recession likely would be long and deep in the absence of a fiscal stimulus package. Specifically, we project that output would decline for five consecutive quarters, spanning the second half of this year and the first three quarters of next year. The peak to trough decline in output in the pre-stimulus baseline would be about 3%, roughly on par with the 1981-1982 recession. Positive but modest growth would reemerge in the
fourth quarter of next year. GDP would decline 1.1% over the four quarters of 2009. The unemployment rate would peak at 9½% in mid 2010, and remain above 9% through the first half of 2011.
by Chris Bodenner The Economistpegs Buenos Aires as a new destination for gay tourists:
The city’s combination of European architectural elegance and Latin
American flair at knock-down prices has attracted tourists of all
sexual orientations. But unlike many other Latin American cities,
Buenos Aires has established a reputation as being open and tolerant in
a region where homophobia remains prevalent. It has been a regional
leader in expanding gay rights. The city council has approved a law authorising same-sex civil unions....
You accuse Thomas Frank of believing that "women shouldn't
have full control over their bodies when it comes to surrogacy."
Exactly where in Mr. Frank's article does he make this claim? Is he
demanding legislation to prevent women from seeking pregnancy
surrogates? Is he advocating the bombing of fertilization clinics?
There is an enormous difference between expressing distaste for
someone's choices and attempting to mandate someone's choices through
legislation or through force.
I
think Colbert does better interviews than Stewart. Stewart's
interviews are usually, but not always, too cautious when he's talking
to someone he disagrees with, but his real weakness is with people he
agrees with, where his interviews are basically boring. Colbert is most
interesting with people his character disagrees with, since he'll ask
people really good questions that they should be able to answer, and
which they're usually unprepared for. From where I sit, going
mano-a-mano with Colbert looks a lot harder.
This report is the beginning of a necessary process of bringing to light repeated abuses condoned or encouraged at the very highest levels of government. I doubt that any of the top officials who encouraged or approved these practices will ever be criminally prosecuted, in part because of the immunity granted by the infamous Military Commissions Act of 2006 and in part because the Office of Legal Counsel was repeatedly employed to justify the Administration's detention and interrogation practices in the equally infamous Torture Memos. People relying on OLC advice will likely have strong defenses under the criminal law, even though the OLC's advice giving capacities were corrupted during the Bush Administration precisely to allow the Administration to do whatever it wanted in this area.
By Patrick Appel Carr frets over cognitive enhancement pills:
I worry more, though, about the possibility of leveling the cognitive playing field, as institutionally supported programs of brain enhancement impose on us, intentionally or not, a particular ideal of mental function.
According to a bipartisan Senate report, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush bear responsibility for the torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Bagram and Guantanamo and the tossing aside of the Geneva Conventions, which are part of US law.
It mystifies me as to why this report is being announced now, at the end of the week and at a time of the year in the political calendar when it will not get much play.
by Chris Bodenner Check out this footage from 1905 (!) shot from the front of a moving NYC subway car. (It doesn't get really cool until the 5:00 mark, so you may wanna skip ahead.)
by Chris Bodenner Stuart Taylor highlights a pending Supreme Court petition that may become Obama's first big test on affirmative action. The case:
[New Haven firefighter Frank] Ricci studied for eight to 13 hours a day to prepare for the combined written
and oral exam in 2003 that he hoped would win him a promotion. He spent more
than $1,000 buying the books that the city had suggested as homework and paying
an acquaintance to read them onto audiotapes. (Ricci is dyslexic and learns
better by listening.) And he got one of the highest scores.
But Ricci and other would-be lieutenants and captains with high scores did
not get the promotions they expected. The reason was that -- because not enough
black firefighters had done well enough to be eligible -- New Haven decided to
discard the test results and make no promotions at all.
Taylor argues:
The city's other reasons for wanting to give more promotions to minority firefighters -- diversifying the upper ranks, and providing role models for younger black and Hispanic firefighters -- are entirely laudable. But at what cost to those who work hard and play by the rules only to be turned aside for being the wrong color?
Obama decided to something radical in the context of traditional campaigns. They decided to construct their entire budget around field. This proved to be a wise investment, as it was the nose-to-the-grindstone focus on caucus states that won them the primary and their massive investment in field in the general that shifted the electorate 3-4 points in their direction. That turnout wasn't dramatically up from 2004 misses the point. Every serious person who's looked at this agrees that their turnout was way, way up, and ours was down. So: a relative wash in overall vote count but a sea change beneath the surface.
By Patrick Appel The transcript from an interview with Powell yesterday:
Gov. Palin, to some extent, pushed the party more to the right, and I think she had something of a polarizing effect when she talked about how small town values are good. Well, most of us don’t live in small towns. And I was raised in the South Bronx, and there’s nothing wrong with my value system from the South Bronx.
And when they came to Virginia and said the southern part of Virginia is good and the northern part of Virginia is bad. The only problem with that is there are more votes in the northern part of Virginia than there are in the southern part of Virginia, so that doesn’t work.
People find this transaction so unappealling in part because women are not supposed to acknowledge that pregnancy can be a burden; rather, it’s “what we’re made for,” “deeply fulfilling.” “You’re glowing!” men say, patting you on the back for a job well done, an evolutionary purpose fulfilled. Surrogacy exposes pregnancy for what it is: work.
Under normal economic conditions we would prefer that markets determine the ultimate fate of private firms. However, given the current weakened state of the U.S. economy, we will consider other options if necessary - including use of the TARP program -- to prevent a collapse of troubled automakers. A precipitous collapse of this industry would have a severe impact on our economy, and it would be irresponsible to further weaken and destabilize our economy at this time.
I beg to differ. I think he's the best in the
business. The guy has a unique ability to tell his guests that he thinks
they're slinging bullshit while still giving the impression that he's being
respectful. The guy isn't a newsman; he's an entertainer. That being
the case, he's not going to go berserk on a guest, as he needs to make sure that
he'll still have guests tomorrow and next week. Still, he generally
refuses to let a guest come on his show and utter bullshit talking points
without being taken to task for it.
The interview with Huck isn't unusual; he's done
this with numerous guests over the years. And it's one of the reasons I
never miss his show.
Stewart has said in the past that asking hard-hitting questions isn't his job, nor should it be, I suppose. But I still find his interviews painfully dull much of the time.
by Chris Bodenner I was prepared to discount this endorsement by celebrity Alec Baldwin, but it's actually quite compelling:
When Hillary Clinton ran for President, she ran as a woman, in my
opinion, and I believe that is why she lost. She invoked her Glass
Ceiling Sister Act whenever she found it useful while Obama made far
less of his race during the campaign. ... This country has been run for centuries by men only.... To
break that mold, you almost had to avoid the subject of breaking any
mold whatsoever.
But in a state like New York, teeming with talented, ambitious and
dedicated women within its political circles, [Paterson must appoint a woman.] ... There are names being tossed around now, but let's spare New
Yorker's the Celebrity Senate Seat dynamic.... Most of the
names thrown around now are smart, caring New Yorkers. But only one is
both fair and makes real sense for our state. Nita Lowey doesn't want
it. Appoint Carolyn Maloney.
December 7, 2008 - December 13, 2008
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