Teevee

I just returned from a morning of filming a segment for a local talk show called "Outlook Portland." It was about what you'd expect from a balding mumbler of low-middling attractiveness. Fortunately, it airs on an off-network (the CW) at--not joking--Sundays at 6am. So no harm done. It will apparently air the Sunday before the election. I will have the key Youtube segments when they're available.

Brooks and the Culture Wars

David Brooks is smart and observant and also deeply conflicted and venal. The reason is because he is intellectually man enough to admit this:

Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she’d be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.

While at the same time too jejune to leave aside these Rovian lies:

Palin is the ultimate small-town renegade rising from the frontier to do battle with the corrupt establishment. Her followers take pride in the way she has aroused fear, hatred and panic in the minds of the liberal elite. The feminists declare that she’s not a real woman because she doesn’t hew to their rigid categories. People who’ve never been in a Wal-Mart think she is parochial because she has never summered in Tuscany.

Why? Because he signed on with the half-wits.

What Brooks well knows is that the mass of well-educated Democrats in this country are just like me--we live modest lives informed by real information we take from NPR on our way to our (pick one: government, university, nonprofit) jobs in our Priuses. We aren't rich (no Tuscany for us), but we aren't stupid, either. Going to college doesn't necessarily mean earning enough to own seven houses, just knowing that a pinhead like Bush is dangerously incompetent, that a war in Iraq is not only illegal but abjectly stupid, and that Sarah Palin doesn't know Shiite from Shineola, never mind her world class ability to bullshit.

The thing is, Brooks is rich. He doesn't shop at Walmart (invoked in this article for the 2,347th time), and he does summer in Tuscany. And he's smart enough to know that signing onto the Bush Doctrine means sacrificing forever the claim that we modestly-compensated, educated folk take for granted--that we saw the Bush disaster coming from a mile away, that we knew he was stupid and incompetent, and that the GOP were going to sack Washington and steal away in the night with wheelbarrows full of cash. This is a pill too bitter for Brooks to swallow. He wants to be smart and right, but as a Republican apologist, the illusion is spoiled. He's wrong, and rather than owning up to that like a man, he continues to attack the dusty old straw men of the Republicans' now failed culture war.

Obama on O'Reilly

Some folks have commented that O'Reilly didn't treat Obama with respect when he had him on last night, and although they're right, this misses the bigger picture. He was O'Reilly being O'Reilly--a horse's ass--and Obama was graceful, unrattled, and persistent. For O'Reilly, it was a risk to have Obama on there. Now he can't call him scared or say he bullied him. They met, Obama disagreed, and he's off to become the President. Meanwhile, O'Reilly's piece of that was limited to an unmemorable 7 minutes of tape. Obama proved for the nth time that he's capable of handling heat with grace and elegance. It's a winner for him.

Litigating Weakness -- End of an Era?

So I've been listening to my various Sunday news show podcasts, and there's an interesting phenomenon: no one ever talks about McCain. Every issue is looked at through the lens of Obama. Iraq: is Obama going to withdraw soon enough to please the lefties? Christians: can Obama appeal to them? Swing voters: is Obama too [pick one: weird, Muslim, liberal]? Apparently, this is the frame the MSM has adopted: Americans don't particularly like John McCain, but he's a known quantity. There's nothing he can do to win or lose the election. The whole questions comes down to whether Obama is, to use objective and talented* Rich Lowry's phrase, "minimally acceptable." That the MSM buys into this says something about the MSM, but that's another post for another time.

What's more interesting is that it reveals the last hail-mary in a strategy that the GOP have deployed since 1980. It is the strategy of litigating the Democrat's weakness. In 2004, the GOP put several memes into play that ultimately dominated conversation about the entire election: was Kerry a flip-flopper, was he unpatriotic (the swift-boating), and was he too elite and too liberal for America? We did not litigate the presidency of the incumbent. We didn't even investigate the record of George W. Bush, despite the fact that it was riddled with more failure, inexperience, drug use, and cowardice than any president in my lifetime. Those were verboten, apparently. Rather, Gore was on trial for being dressed by a woman, for his sighs and elitism, and because he was wooden. We elected a man** because the other guy was tried and convicted of being wooden. Helluva nice electorate, that.

Now comes Obama, who is perpetually on trial. Let us sift through the various crimes:

• Association with a demagogic pastor
  
• Being a Muslim
• Elitism***
• Dangerous inexperience
• Lack of sufficient, GOP-sanctioned patriotism***
• Excessive liberalism***
  

Did I miss any? Up next: flip-flopping!***

Strangely enough, it works. The media devote single-focused attention on these bogus issues, and in election after election, the Dem is found guilty of these crimes. The pattern is repeating itself now, as Obama must nearly daily defend himself against one unhinged assertion or another. (Today's charge and rebuttal summed up in the AP headline: "Obama denies shifting to reach political center." You expect exclamation points and the issuance of a scarlet letter--"F" for flip-flop, one imagines.)

But maybe it won't work this year. The strategy is effective up until the point when a party's brand is so badly damaged that it must constantly be judged. After the Andy Jackson revolution in 1828, the opposition party was judged so harshly that it folded. Following the humilation of the civil war, the Democratic party was judged time and again as crooks like Grant were re-elected. Following the Roosevelt landslide of 1936, the scarlet letter of greed was affixed to the breast of Republicans, who weren't able to remove it until 1968. This last generation, the old puritan judgment of the citizens held Democrats in contempt. And so we must appear before our interlocutors, the Gibsons and Stephanopouluses, and answer for our shameful affiliations and past crimes.

But the Bush administration has tempered the judgment. Republicans are running the same old crap up the election flagpole, yet they have spent eight years running their own corruption and incompetence up the governance flagpole. It takes a long time of the ship of American public opinion to turn itself around, but once the process starts, it's not clear that baseless attacks hold the same sway they once did. Rich Lowry thinks the Dem has to be just "minimally acceptable" to be elected. He may regret, however, that the rules of acceptance have changed, and that his team no longer dictates them.

_______________
*sarcasm
**okay, elected isn't the best word.
***how original!

MSM Debate Bias

This is interesting: Nico Pitney compared ABC's debate to three others to see whether the scandal questions did in fact occupy more of George and Charlie's attention. They did:

	Policy	Non-Policy	Scandal
CNN (1/31)	31	3	1
CNN (2/21)	23	5	2
NBC	24	17	5
ABC	32	14	13

But wait!--it gets more interesting. Of the 21 questions focused on ginned-up "scandals," what percentage would you imagine were directed at Obama? 81%--or 17 of the 21. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is exactly why black Americans get a tetch conspiracy-theory-y from time to time.

Penn Debate, Continued

In no particular order...

ABC's Failure, Objectively
It is rare when you have a situation as clear as this one. Generally media bias or stupidity is one critics have to make by inference or by drawing together a series of threads--which can look a little conspiratorial. But here it's not a close call. In a debate between Democratic candidates, ABC's journalistic duty was straightforward: give viewers a sense of which candidate best serves their interests. By going so far off the reservation into the Bizarro World of GOP talking points, ABC can't begin to defend this as a service to voters. Last night, we peeked behind the curtain.

[See also: Naill Stanage, Will Bunch.]

Stephanopoulos and the Conflict of Interest
Since the first 45 minutes of the debate were essentially an Obama gang tackle by Gibson, Stephanopoulos, and Clinton, it's reasonable to bring up the point of George's conflict of interest. The debate is on. Personally, this isn't a close call, either. Since the ABC brain trust decided to spend the first 45 minutes hectoring Obama--in the dubious but journalistically defensible act of attacking the front-runner--they needed to put someone out there without a direct link to one of the candidates.

The effect was one in which the moderator and one candidate, former colleagues, were battering the other candidate. Hard to look at that and not feel a little queasy.

Yes, Yes, Yes
In every debate, two hours of talk gets reduced to a sound bite. In the flow of the two hours, it's really hard to predict what that sound bite will be--but it has the effect of characterizing the entire debate, like a boxing match where the only thing you show is the one knock-down. So it's extra-super bizarre that the "yes, yes, yes" sound bite may be the lasting memory from Pennsylvania. Clinton's entire argument comes down to this: "Yes, Obama has won more states, more votes, and more delegates, but you have to vote for me because I am more electable in the fall." So when George asked her if Obama can beat McCain in the fall, her answer was surprising and perhaps devastating. If she not only thinks Obama can win, but enthusiastically, remind me again--what is the raison d'etra of her campaign?

Winners and Losers

Good old David Brooks has another column in which he speaks from the point of view of the common voter, but this time, he's switching gears:

For young people who have grown up on Facebook, YouTube, open-source software and an array of decentralized networks, this is a compelling theory of how change happens....

But Obama sounded like a cross between a social activist and a flannel-shirted software C.E.O. — as a nonhierarchical, collaborative leader who can inspire autonomous individuals to cooperate for the sake of common concerns.

Brooks has risen to prominence by virtue of a single rhetorical point: in a world of elite opinion, he alone has access to the common man, and it is he who will interpret their homespun wisdom into words the degenerate chattering class can understand. For years, he's been able to use it to tweak liberals who put faith into things like fact and reality and research and science. These elitist views didn't appeal to Main Street Americans, who saw through the narrow lens of their own self-interest and into the larger wisdom of (insert catastrophically bad GOP policy here).

But now that the folk seem to be turning from the GOP, his schtick is in jeopardy. Either he continues to play the only tune he knows and follows the people wherever their wisdom leads--even to Barack Hussein Obama--or he serves the Republican Party. This is a tough one to swallow. For the moment, he can praise Obama because the subject of his derision is Hillary Clinton. But what happens if the Dem wins in November?

You can see the toll it's taken on him. In media appearances, he's constantly bitchy. He doesn't like to talk about anything--vascillating between tetchy defenses of Bush and gushing praise of Obama--because it all exposes the coming fault.

Political realignments precipitate a reckoning. There emerge winners and losers. For those who hold tenaciously to the ideas of the vanquished, there is little not to be bitchy about.

Krugman's Weird Jihad

Krugman's pile of capital is almost infinite in my mind, so his bizarre sallies against Barack Obama--in language formerly reserved for the likes of Rove and Rummy--won't do much to make me stop reading or appreciating his column. But, smart as he is, I wouldn't want him operating on my spleen. Campaign analysis is obviously beyond his ken, too:

The bitterness of the fight for the Democratic nomination is, on the face of it, bizarre. Both candidates still standing are smart and appealing. Both have progressive agendas (although I believe that Hillary Clinton is more serious about achieving universal health care, and that Barack Obama has staked out positions that will undermine his own efforts). Both have broad support among the party’s grass roots and are favorably viewed by Democratic voters.

Supporters of each candidate should have no trouble rallying behind the other if he or she gets the nod.

Why, then, is there so much venom out there?

I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody.

That's from the delicately-titled "Hate Springs Eternal."

1) There is no venom between the candidates. Given that this is the most closely-fought campaign in my life, it's especially strange that it's been so genteel. Krugman, unfamiliar with campaign history, apparently doesn't realize this.

2) This is, by my count, the third assault on Barack Obama Krugman has leveled, not to mention other snide asides and numerous anti-Obama blog posts. Given that he has a very large megaphone, it wouldn't surprise me that he's hearing from some of the millions of readers out there. Sorry, Paul, but the heat in the kitchen comes from your souffle. You attacked first; buck up.

Fair and Balanced

Noted.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Karl Rove, the strategist behind President George W. Bush's ascendancy to the White House, will join Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel as a contributor starting with Super Tuesday, the network said.

Link here.

Random Election Item #1

The USA Today, that emblem of journalistic independence, has a candidate-selector quiz. Of course, Kucinich came up top on my list, or would have, had I not answered the idiotic 11th question (asking what experience I think is most valuable--I selected "senator," vaulting my man Obama into first). But what I found interesting were the distribution of questions: three on Iraq, two on immigration, and one each on gay marriage and taxes (the tax question being a series of Republican proposals). Just two questions on health care, none on the economy, and one on global warming.

Pinheads.

Iran, Immigration, and Other Fake Emergencies

You have perhaps seen the Tancredo ad. It asserts, among other things, that "Islamic terrorists now freely roam US soil." It is a spectacular example of the "fake emergency" technique regularly employed by the Republican Party. You select an issue of great value to a panicked segment of your base, flog it like it's Hitler invading Poland (sometimes you actually compare it to Hitler invading Poland), and demand that something must be done. Tancredo is certifiable, and this is more a testament about the degree of derangement on the GOP right. (Compare, for example, to Kucinich, the regularly-derided "nut" on the Dem left. At least he admits the UFOs he sees are unidentified; the terrorists Tancredo sees are panicked phantoms.) I'll go on, but have a look, first:

Nice, eh? I have some desire to go on a thousand-word rant about this, but I'll constrain myself. The reason this technique succeeds is twofold: 1) the media parrot back the talking point as often as the nuts scream it; 2) Democrats, when quizzed by the media to offer a solution, don't say "that's a fake emergency for which no solution is necessary; if you were even a mediocre journalist, you would have done the research to confirm its mendacity." In the Iraq debate, Dems stood up and solemnly agreed: yes, Iraq is the greatest threat to the US on the planet. On immigration, they stand up and agree: yes, the failure to stop Mexicans from running through the baking desert to come work in our apple orchards represents the greatest threat to American security--a fence is most certainly in order. On Social Security: yes, it is indeed a crisis. (Fortunately they're backing off that sufficiently that even Barack Obama, who doesn't believe it, has apologized for not being clear enough that he doesn't believe it.) On Iran: yes ... well, you get the picture.

The entire Republican Party is comprised of a coalition of hysterics. The conservative movement at this point is a negotiation among the hysterics about which phantom emergency should have primacy in scaring the populace. Why the media and Dems take them at all seriously is one of modern politics' great mysteries.

Bizarro World

“Earlier in the day, before a crowd of New Hampshire college students, Romney said that the policies of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards were similar to those of a Communist dictatorship. Their ideas, he said pointedly, 'didn’t work for the Soviet Union.'”
--Mitt Romney, quoted in the New Yorker, Oct 29, 07

“Shirley MacLaine writes in her new book that you sighted a UFO over her home in Washington state, that you found the encounter extremely moving, that it was a triangular craft, silent and hovering, that you 'felt a connection to your heart and heard directions in your mind.'”
--Tim Russert to Dennis Kucinich, Oct 31, 07

One candidate is consistent, straightforward, humorous, and serious about policy issues; one will say whatever leaps to his mind to win a convert, is evasive, slick, and wholly unserious about policy issues ("we ought to double Guantanamo"). One is a vegan, one lies about having been a hunter. One candidate is regarded as a lunatic for proposing a department devoted to actively spreading peace in dangerous regions of the world; the other is taken seriously despite believing that an illiterate in upstate New York found gold plates left by an angel that detail the history of a lost tribe of Israel's visit to North America and resulting war with Native Americans.

Dennis Kucinich is a national laughingstock, and Mitt Romney is the front-runner in the first two primaries.

There are times when I think we are at the moment when the scales fall from our eyes as a nation and we are re-introduced to reality. Then there are times when I think the madness is so profound that we will henceforth dwell in our own private bizarro world. Today I am not hopeful.

Fox News Hurts America

Pew has released findings in a new study that show sharply growing mistrust of the media--results that will surprise exactly no one. Republicans, who have been fed the constant gruel of hatred toward the "liberal media," are far more critical of news sources--particularly national newspapers (the Gray Lady is the right's bête noire). And among Republicans, those who consume Fox News are far more mistrustful of news media, and consequently believe it has a malign effect on the country.

I have reproduced one of the charts from the findings (at right) so you can see some of the egregious things Fox-fed viewers believe. Predictably, they mistrust non-Fox news. But far worse, they actively believe other sources are in the thrall of the powerful (82%), are liars (81%), are too critical of "America" (71%), and most shockingly that they "hurt democracy" [!] (57%). Pause and consider the implications of the mindset of citizens who simultaneously believe that the news is both in the thrall of powerful people and also too critical of America. Or maybe it's all too horrible to consider.

You can actually see the malign effect if you take another of their charts and convert it to a line graph (as I have conveniently done below). The Pew numbers chart the growing gap between Republican and Democratic approval of the various froms of news media from 1985 forward. Approval among citizens of both stripes starts out pretty much even. But then the right-wing spin machine kicks in in the late 80s as Rush rooms and cigars become popular, and the gap widens. You can see the steadily growing mistrust of the GOP toward news between 1985 and 1997, when FOX was founded.


The trend does a funny thing, then, however. Fox-fed Republicans become more sated with their newsy offerings locally and on TV and the gap narrows for the only time. However, since they're being told incessently what a nightmare the New York Times is, the gap widens more precipitously than at any other time during Pew's study. Then the catastrophe that is the George W. Bush administration begins in earnest, news gets far more critical--reflecting reality--and the Fox viewers become raving lunatics.

These findings are a perfect example of how you can have state-sponsored propaganda in a free-market system. People who consume Fox News are roughly as well-informed as those who got TASS in the Soviet Union.

Context

"Thanks to you, I die like a martyr of Islam to inspire generations of the weak and defenseless people."

Had that been the quote of a Muslim who slaughtered three dozen in an American city, we'd invade Iran. Of course, it was Cho, who actually said "die like Jesus Christ." The phrase "nappy-headed hos" got a man fired in one instance, but the subsequent 11,000 times (according to Google News), it was considered journalism or commentary. In a time increasingly dominated by religious fundamentalism, when submission is favored above reason, we ignore the context of things. "Moral clarity" is favored above anything that looks relativistic, even when the nuanced view is the only way to gain actual insight into a situation.

We're lucky Cho wasn't a Saudi, or this week's news would have an entirely different spin.

Brutal

Not an official ad:

Oregonian Gets Two Pulitzer Noms...Probably

Say what you will about the Oregonian, but it manages to stay among an elite crowd of papers who regularly score Pulitzer nominations. Leaks out today have them up for a couple, in Breaking News and National Reporting:

National Reporting
1. Chicago Tribune - Death penalty
2. The Oregonian - Charity investigation
3. The Boston Globe - Signing statements

Breaking News
1. The Oregonian - Lost Family
2. The Denver Post - Blizzards
3. Not yet confirmed

These are leaked, not official, results. So caveat emptor (you get what you pay for). I just pass along the rumors, I don't start 'em.

Hate Speech

Blogospheric navel gazing is low political art, but I don't think I can stomach a post on Iran or the Hillary-Obama scrum for black voters. So it's off to a minor rebellion in the blogosphere, where righties are rallying forces against Ann Coulter.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference [CPAC] in 2006, Coulter referred to Iranians as “ragheads.” She is one of the most prominent women in the conservative movement; for her to employ such reckless language reinforces the stereotype that conservatives are racists.

At CPAC 2007 Coulter decided to turn up the volume by referring to John Edwards, a former U.S. Senator and current Presidential candidate, as a “faggot.” Such offensive language–and the cavalier attitude that lies behind it–is intolerable to us. It may be tolerated on liberal websites but not at the nation’s premier conservative gathering.

It concludes with a request to CPAC to banish Coulter from future events. Righties have begun, reluctantly, to admit that she may not be so hot for the party anymore. (It appears they don't actually disagree with her or disapprove of her words--they were great back when the GOP was attempting a soft coup of the government--but now they appear gauche, and so she's gotta go.) Of course, righties, forever aggrieved, paranoid, and thin-skinned, want to point out that while Coulter is indeed nasty, she's a teddy bear compared to lefties.

This is GOP 101 (aka, the five-year-old's strategy): no matter how great the crime of a Republican, some Dem somewhere has committed a greater atrocity. This is, of course, a further manifestation of the paranoid and thin-skinned personality of a party who has called John Kerry and Max Cleland a traitor, Michael J. Fox a liar, and the Democratic Party traitors and treasonists. But let us examine these charges, just because it's a slow day and it's an amusing diversion. Blogger Patterico prepares a rap sheet, among which are these dandies:

Comedian and (former) talk show host Craig Kilborn [Caption under footage of George W. Bush]:

Snipers Wanted

Comedian Chris Rock:

If President Clinton would pardon me I would whip Starr’s ass right now. I will get a crew from Brooklyn and we will stomp him like, like, we’re Savion Glover. We’ll stomp him like it’s bringing da noise.

You see, Chris Rock and Craig Kilborn--this is the kind of material had had to offer. In fact, scanning through all the horrible things all the Democrats and liberals have ever said, he managed just a single Democratic party A-lister, Howard Dean, whose devastating comment was? "I hate Republicans and everything they stand for." Yeah, that's the equivalent of calling John Edwards a fag (a deeply bigoted comment meant to question Edwards' masculinity and--bonus!--offend gays).

Dems have had their racist comments, as Patterico documents, but when Jesse used the word "Hymie," he was held to account by liberals. But he must cite Louis Farrakhan four times, highlighting the central absence of racism within the liberal orbit.

In fact, Patterico accomplishes something he didn't intend: Dems and liberals, he illustrates, almost never say the kinds of things Coulter does. And, when one does, it is some obscure character like an Alabama Representative or a British pundit (!). Furthermore, by demonstrating that these are isolated cases, he shows that there is no movement approval, as is the case with the very clubby right-wing smear machine (from the Fox pundits to Limbaugh to the attack ads of Rove and coordinated PACs like Swift Boats).

Finally, Patterico highlights the different nature of the attacks and the different ways in which the parties handle racist/offensive language. First, the nature of the attacks. On the one hand, Coulter (for whom gay is a them): "I don't know if he's gay. But [former Vice President] Al Gore -- total fag. ...Everyone has always known, widely promiscuous heterosexual men have, as I say, a whiff of the bathhouse about them."

Now, let's take one of Patterico's "hate speech" examples, from Nina Totenberg, discussing Jesse Helms: "If there is retributive justice [Sen. Jesse Helms] will get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it."

In the first case, Coulter launches an ad hominem attack on Gore based on who he is (or in this case, isn't). Totenberg, whom I assume was talkign about a Helms effort to block AIDS legislation, makes an admittedly harsh comment about Helms based on his actions. Big difference. Except with the racist commments Patterico details, that's the case with all his comments.

And then there's the way the parties handle things. When a Democrat makes a racist comment, as Jesse did, there's a firestorm and he's forced to apologize. When righties attack, they are given key posts in the Bush administration or fat raises by Fox News. In fact, Patterico unwittingly drives this point home with regard to the current Coulter flap: note that no one's asking her to apologize; they're just hoping she'll go away.

Creepy Right-Wing Bloggers

Andrew Sullivan sussed out an interesting survey of right-wing bloggers. 240 were sent an eight-question survey, and 63 responded. The results were . . . bizarre.

1) Do you think the surge should go forward?

Yes (61) -- 97%
No (2) -- 3%

2) Do you think that a majority of Democrats in Congress would like to see us lose in Iraq for political reasons?

Yes (53)-- 84%
No (10) -- 16%

4) Do you think mankind is the primary cause of global warming?

Yes (0) -- 0%
No (59) -- 100%

Some of the responses weren't as unhinged--but they were interesting:

7) If you were grading George Bush on his foreign policy for his presidency so far, would you give him an:

A or B (35) -- 56%
C (18) -- 29%
D, E, or F (10) -- 16%

8) If you were grading George Bush on his domestic policy for his presidency so far, would you give him an:

A or B (17) -- 27%
C (26) -- 41%
D, E, or F (20) -- 32%

By way of assessing how nutty these views are, here's some polling data on similar questions:

• 31% - In favor of the surge (61% oppose) (Pew)
  
• 47% - Americans believing global warming is caused by humans (Pew)
• 31%, 46% - Americans approving of Dubya's handling of the war and terror (WaPo)
• 43% - Americans approving of Dubya's handling of the economy
  

Analysis: right-wing bloggers are paranoid, scared of both the larger foreign world and Democrats, and they don't understand science. (Probably they're paranoid about it, too.)

Dave Brooks, Then and Now

The man who has tried to cultivate the image of himself as above the partisan scrum, an honest, authentic broker of truth, justice, and the American way, today ("No Apology Needed"):

Far be it from me to get in the middle of a liberal purge, but would anybody mind if I pointed out that the calls for Hillary Clinton to apologize for her support of the Iraq war are almost entirely bogus?

I envision him in his signature pose, sadly shaking his head at liberals who fail to see truth as it is, blinded by their own twisted biases.

It was much the same pose he struck in 2003, when he wrote:

I'm curious about how all the war opponents are going to react if things continue to go well. Sure, they opposed Saddam, they will say. They just didn't want to do anything about him. They had no practical suggestion for how to end his murderous reign and spread freedom. They were tolerant. Tolerant of tyranny. They doubted, and continue to doubt America's willingness and ability to serve as a force for good in the world. That was their crucial mistake.

I suspect they will not even now admit their errors. I doubt the people of Europe will say: We were wrong. You really are the liberators of the Iraqi people. I doubt the Arab propagandists will say: We will never spread such distortions again. We will never again be so driven by resentment and dishonesty.

Sad to say, human nature doesn't work that way. The rump 15 percent of Americans who still oppose this war may perhaps grow more bitter, lost in the cul-de-sac of their own alienation.

All of this is via the month-old Horse's Mouth, a subsidiary of the Talking Points Memo media empire, and a very fine addition to the blogosphere.

(Note: I'll be out of town for the next five days and not near any computers. Regular blogging to resume Tuesday 2/20)

Strange Snickers Ad

I watched about twenty minutes of the Superbowl on a friend's Tivo, and so didn't see any of the vaunted ads. It wasn't until this morning that I heard about the huge Snickers fracas. (Thumbnail: two guys are working on a car and one starts eating a Snickers candy bar. The other, bizarrely, starts eating the other end until, ala 101 Dalmations, they arrive lip-to-lip. They jump back, one says "do something manly" and they tear clumps of chest hair out. While it appears to be a parody of homophobia, the reality, detailed at Americablog, is the opposite. A furor thus ensued, and Snickers has been recanting like crazy.)

When I YouTubed the ad to see what the fuss was about, I stumbled across this Australian ad:

Somebody at M&M Mars thinks gay comedy is heeelarious. Is the ad agency foreign, perhaps? I don't have any commentary at all to add.