Sharpton & Obama: There's No Business Like Race Business
Al Sharpton criticizing Barack Obama for urging non-violence in the Sean Bell verdict protest puts into dramatic relief the major racial conflict of our time - and it is inside the African-American community, not outside. Outdated racial profiteers like Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and now the formerly obscure Reverend Jeremiah Wright are clinging for dear life to their reactionary views that have impeded progress in their own community for years.
(You can read the rest of my hot-blooded screed on PJM.)
It takes a lot of chutzpah to want to be President at the age of 46. I guess it take a lot of chutzpah in general, but, for me at least, the age problem is Obama's, not McCain's. In an era when 70 is the new 60, McCain's age doesn't seem a problem at all. [Aren't you being a bit self-serving there?-ed. Maybe.]
What's interesting in this, however, is that both men trumpet being able to cross the line into bi-partisanship but only one of them has actually done it. I have been thinking about that for some time and was pleased to see Chris Wallace digging into the question:
WALLACE: And we are back now with Senator Barack Obama. Senator, one of the central themes of your campaign is that you are a uniter, who will reach across the aisle and create a new kind of politics. Some of your detractors say that you are a paint by the numbers liberal and I'd like to explore this with you.
Over the years, John McCain has broken with his party and risked his career on a number of issues, campaign finance, immigration reform, banning torture. As a president, can you name a hot button issue where you would be willing to cross (ph) Democratic party line and say you know what, Republicans have a better idea here.
OBAMA: Well, I think there are a whole host of areas where Republicans in some cases may have a better idea.
WALLACE: Such as.
OBAMA: Well, on issues of regulation, I think that back in the '60s and '70s, a lot of the way we regulated industry was top down command and control. We're going to tell businesses exactly how to do things.
Blablabla.... Actually, Obama has done pretty near Zippitty Doo Dah in this regard in real life - and what puny amount he did didn't come within a country mile of "risking his career" on it, as Wallace described McCain. In fact Barack could be called a Profile in Extreme Liberal Traditionalism as opposed to a Profile in Courage, to channel that other forty-something who ran for President in a very different era.
Of course Obama hasn't had the chance to prove himself at all in this. And therein lies the point. In this day and age, only someone of unbelievable arrogance would think himself qualified to be President at 46. You can tell me that Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War - the Cuban Missile Crisis and all that - but I was there then and I remember. We had nowhere near the divided country that we have now in the post-Vietnam era. Now... reaching across the aisle, which was once pro-forma, is far more difficult, while being if anything more crucial. Someone who has walked the walk in that regard has the potential to be an invaluable leader. Someone who has just paid it lip service and then walked the other way is suspect from the outset.
MEANWHILE: This should go viral, although I wish the tempo had been a little faster and they flipped a few more cards... oh, well...
I used to be friends with Nora Ephron back in the day. [What day was that?-ed. You know, when "Hector was a pup!" Como? You're obviously not a Laker fan. If that's another of your Chick Hearn-isms, please get over yourself. Just as soon as the Nuggets win a game. Not fair.]
Okay, now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
As I was saying, one of the old saws of the left.... I mean the real left, back in the day... was the famous Maoist phrase about "breaking with old ideas." This alluded to the obvious difficulty people have in breaking with their past way of thinking. Most of us have that problem. But, as yet an even hoarier cliché goes, what "goes around comes around." And now those same leftists, especially those who were rewarded richly for their views, have a great deal of trouble facing new realities. Hey, as yet at least, it does not profit them to do so.
To wit: Ms. Ephron - who takes on "White Men" in what is now a highly-bourgeois screed on the Huffington Post, that comfortable home of the bourgeoisie. Nora still thinks the problem is los white guys. [Does that include bin Laden? He's a white guy too.-ed. As long as he doesn't vote Democratic.] Earth to Nora - the problem is Islamofacism. [You're wasting your time there.-ed. Yeah, you're right.] Anyway, I'm not even going to go on about how beloved Old Europe is far more racist and sexist than we are, etc., etc., because "breaking with old ideas" is hard. Bernard Chapin takes on Nora on PJM today from a more purely conservative stand point than I would, although he does a good job. Ideologically speaking, from my point of view, having broken with old ideas once, I'm not so keen on doing it again. I will remain a Groucho Marxist - as in, "I wouldn't join a club that would have me as a member".... most especially the fuddy-duddy club of 1972 revolutionaries Ephron seems to remain a member of. [Don't end with a preposition.-ed. But... And don't go quoting Churchill on me.]
Will people talk out of school? What accounts for the decline? Well, we know some - but there are undoubtedly be some interesting tid-bits. The big question is... Can Pinch take a punch?
There is the old saw "If you lie down with dogs, you get fleas." And like a lot of those saws, there's something to it.
And, if you're running for president, I submit, the bar should be a bit higher than it is for the rest of us. Fewer fleas, as it were. [I'm glad you got some of that new stuff from the vet.-ed]
So speaking of fleas, there's the Reverend Wright character who is trying to resurrect himself on Bill Moyers (where better?). On Pajamas Media the going is not so easy. From my point of view, identity politics is about as reactionary as it gets.
If I were a publisher, I'd snap up Charlie Martin's article on PJM today as the basis for a future book on computing by Charlie. [I thought you were a publisher.-ed. Not of books. Not very generous of you - you made your living writing books for a number of years. You're hanging by a thread here.]
Used to be you made a prediction in print and it was gone in a day - lost in the morgue of some newspaper or the bowels of the public library. Nowadays, it's written in indelible digital ink that can make you look almost instantly ridiculous- like the "wise words" of this basketball expert predicting a Nugget victory over the Lakers yesterday. What really happened is here.
Which leads me to that other sport - politics. I'm not makin' any predictions here, but as that cliche of cliches goes, it ain't over 'til it's over and the fat lady sings at the end of the day. Hillary, as her most loyal of vassals Lanny Davis implies in The Top Ten List of Undisputed Facts Showing Barack Obama's Weakness in the General Election Against John McCain could actually pull this one out. [I think Davis is a secret neocon.-ed. He'd never admit it to himself.]
Have a heart, Mickey. You may be right... in fact, no doubt you are... when you describe exit polls in general as "crappy" and then have the temerity to ask the logical question: "If the exit polls are this unreliable for press' result-predicting purposes, why aren't they also unreliable for all the scholarly purposes they are supposedly put to? Garbage is garbage, no?"
No! It's something for pundits to chew on for hours of empty screen time while waiting for actual results to come in. What if they didn't have this? They'd just have to... make stuff up. [Wait a minute. You just said the exit polls were essentially made up.-ed. Okay, now I'm confused. No surprise there. Okay, I'll give you the last word. Where'd I hear that before?]
Ross Douthat has been checking the polls (his way - not paying too much attention to Rasmussen who seems to have the best track record these days for fear that their stats upset his apple cart) and come to the conclusion that McCain should be doing better since the Dems are so busy bashing each other.
Ho-hum... I guess he has to fill some time and so do I. But excuse me if I think he is spinning and lying to himself. He knows bloody well McCain is a formidable candidate and is trying to downgrade him in the most obvious fashion. In truth McCain is running practically dead even with Obama and slightly ahead of Clinton in the national polls in a year when the economy is in the toilet (supposedly) and the Republican president has an approval rating somewhere South of Mozambique. And, as he knows, and will likely be true in this case, Dems tend to do better in polling than Repubs than they do in actual votes. In fact, the major issue for the Democrats is now who has the best chance of beating McCain, not vice-versa. And look for that issue to heat up now that Hillary has fared pretty well in Pennsylvania.
Because I work with Glenn Reynolds... or Glenn Harlan Reynolds, as he prefers to be called when writing outside the more informal blogosphere... on what sometimes relates to a daily basis on Pajamas Media matters, I sometimes forget what an original thinker he can be -- or, more precisely, what a superb synthesizer. He shows it in a piece today for the NY Post: Green & Smart.
What I like about Glenn is he marches straight past the Gore Vidal bloviators and global warming religious fanatics on one side and the AGW-can't-be-be-and-keep-your-liberal-hands-off-my-SUV cabal on the other and goes directly to real energy solutions. He dusts off the hair-shirt approach (tell that to the Chinese) and opts for new technology, specifically his favorite, nanotechnology: Nanotech is starting to yield super-strong, super-light materials, too. Imagine how much more efficient a family car could be if you cut the weight in half, even if you kept burning gas. But nanotech is also likely to produce better batteries and better motors, meaning that your lighter car may also be electric, powered ultimately by those nanodot solar panels.
All of these things are in the works now to greater and lesser degrees, but they could happen faster if there were more research and development support.
Makes sense to me. [Do you understand nanotechnology?-ed. Shhhh....]
Bush: To be great is to be misunderstood... or is it?
Bush's disapproval rating is now the highest of any President for seventy years! To be specific, that's since Truman who was evidently at an even lower ebb in the midst of the Korean War. [Hey, wait a minute, isn't everybody making hero of Truman these days? You know--if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen and all that. And Gary Sinise played him in the movie.-ed. It was only HBO. Oh, right, I forgot.]
So... before I was once again so rudely interrupted... I was saying about Bush's horrendous approval rating... well, wait I don't have that much to say about it because, well, it's a completely old story and hasn't changed much for what seems like years. These days I suspect it's more the economy than Iraq that is causing him trouble. My question is - does the President even have much to do with the economy? My guess is far less than meets the eye.
The end was swift for a relationship begun in the year 2000. [Longer than some of your marriages.-ed. At least one.] In came Timer Warner cable, out went Earthlink DSL this morning nearly one week without high-speed internet at home. How much can a fella stand? I felt like I was back in the 1980s. So far, early days here, the cable connection seems faster. As soon as the wifi gets connected, late this afternoon, our house can return to its normal online self -everyone buried in his or her own computer. Thank God for iChat or we wouldn't know each other. (Okay, kidding here, but the world seems headed that way.)
If you're looking for further proof... assuming that any is necessary... that the daily newspaper as we know it is headed for extinction, look no further than McCain: A Question of Temperament by Michael Leahy in today's WaPo. It reads somewhere between a discarded talking points memo for party functionaries and a post on some minor blog by a third-string research assistant to Howard Dean. And yet the WaPo has it on the front page!
As with most journalistic enterprises of the standard biased form, you can skip down to the ultimate paragraph for the writer's final "impartial' point....
McCain's defenders today include an old nemesis -- Grassley.
"It doesn't mean I'm buddy-buddy with McCain," the senator said recently. "He may have a short fuse. . . . But I've come to the conclusion that his strong principles, sometimes backed up by considerable" -- Grassley paused -- "not temper, but considerable conviction, is what a president ought to have."
One man's bulldozer is another's bully. "I don't think that he forgets anyone who ever opposed him, that he can ever really respect or trust them again," said Karen Johnson, the targeted secretary-turned-state senator. "That goes for people here and overseas."
For a moment there it seemed as if McCain's temper might not be such a big deal--one man's bulldozer is another's bully, after all--but NO! Karen Johnson--whoever she is--gets the last word: McCain is a hothead who never forgets... people here...and lest we forget...overseas. [Does that mean he'll hold a grudge against Ahmadinejad? -ed. Beats me.]
Well, since this is my blog, I have the last word for Mr. Leahy: "You're a hack!"
UPDATE: McCain collaborator Mark Salter (who is frequently quoted, or rather misquoted, in the article) says the whole thing is BS and has plenty of citations to prove it. He goes on: "But for the infamous NYT story, I'd say it was the worst smear job on McCain I'd ever seen." Undoubtedly, he's right. But if I were McCain I'd be a pretty happy camper if this puerile nonsense is all they could dredge up.
As an approximately ten-year Earthlink user, I must say I am mucho unhappy with their DSL service of late. I have been down for the last twenty hours or so here in Hol Hills (blogging on an oh-so-slow Verizon card because the cell connection weak here) with no end in site. This is the second time Earthlink, which supposedly has a reputation for stability, has gone down in the last two weeks. And on Passover.No me gusta.
Tax Follies: Obama is one strange dude and the mainstream media is stranger
As with most people who are interested (somewhat anyway) in intellectual consistency, my ears perked up during the interchange on taxes between Barack Obama and Charles Gibson during yesterday's debate. The folks at the WSJ were obviously listening as well:
Time and again, the rookie Senator has said he would not raise taxes on middle-class earners, whom he describes as people with annual income lower than between $200,000 and $250,000. On Wednesday night, he repeated the vow. "I not only have pledged not to raise their taxes," said the Senator, "I've been the first candidate in this race to specifically say I would cut their taxes."
But Mr. Obama has also said he's open to raising – indeed, nearly doubling to 28% – the current top capital gains tax rate of 15%, which would in fact be a tax hike on some 100 million Americans who own stock, including millions of people who fit Mr. Obama's definition of middle class.
Mr. Gibson dared to point out this inconsistency, which regularly goes unmentioned in Mr. Obama's fawning press coverage. But Mr. Gibson also probed a little deeper, asking the candidate why he wants to increase the capital gains tax when history shows that a higher rate brings in less revenue.
"Bill Clinton in 1997 signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20%," said Mr. Gibson. "And George Bush has taken it down to 15%. And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased. The government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28%, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?"
Mr. Obama answered by citing rich hedge fund managers. Raising the capital gains tax is necessary, he said, "to make sure . . . that our tax system is fair and that we are able to finance health care for Americans who currently don't have it and that we're able to invest in our infrastructure and invest in our schools. And you can't do that for free."
But Mr. Gibson had noted that higher rates yield less revenue. So the news anchor tried again: "But history shows that when you drop the capital gains tax, the revenues go up?" Mr. Obama responded that this "might happen or it might not. It depends on what's happening on Wall Street and how business is going." And then he went on a riff about John McCain and the housing market.
Very strange. Meanwhile, the wise men of the mainstream media like Tom Shales are complaining that Gibson and Stephanopoulos were engaged in a gotcha game.... Well he might have a point there because he definitely "got" Obama in that exchange as something of an economic nincompoop. McCain looks like Bernard Baruch by comparison. Actually the MSM deserve to be flayed alive for the free ride they have been giving Obama. And now that their emperor seems indeed to have few clothes, they are whining like the proverbial stuck pigs, rather amazing since most of them are lucky to have jobs.
No wonder Howard Dean wants the Democratic delegates to "decide now." Dean's no rocket scientist, but it's pretty obvious much more of this and the donkey might as well take a vacation for four years.
Obama says that last night's debate focused on "gotcha," not substantive, issues. Good spin on his part, I suppose, and maybe he has a point on Bittergate. Yes, it could be argued he misspoke - and even if he didn't, elitism isn't the biggest crime in the world. But his nose is as long as Pinocchio's on the important question - the Reverend Wright. And it couldn't be more substantive. Because Wright is a racist/race baiter -- a despicable reactionary -- and Obama chose to make him his spiritual adviser twenty years ago. He kept him in that role until less than a year ago. Obama also expects us to believe that he didn't know the kinds of things Wright was saying until quite recently. Planet Earth!... If you believe that, I have a borough-full of bridges to sell you. Also Obama wants us to excuse Wright because his church did some "good things." Well, I've heard that argument before. ("Thank you, Il Duce, for making the trains run on time!") The Presidency is in large measure about character. At the very least of it, Obama has character problems of gigantic proportions.
Debate Report:It's the "Special Interests," Stupid!
Hillary said it again tonight when asked why she should be elected. America needs someone strong enough to... you guessed it... "take on the Special Interests."
Is this now the most moribund cliché in American English or is it still "At the end of the day..."? Or is it too close to call? You decide. I vote for the "Special Interests." Obama referred to them too in his response to the same debate wrap-up. [Who are the "Special Interests"?-ed. Stop being a phony. You know very well. I don't. Oh, come on... it's those..."Special Interests." I still don't know. C'mon, you idiot - it's everyone you don't like. Oh, those "Special Interests." At last, you understand.]
UPDATE: "Special Interests Google Derby"
I googled the following - "special interests" = 13,600,000 hits
"special interests" + obama = 2,300,000
"special interests" + clinton = 436,000
"special interests" + McCain = 210,000
The Arizona Senator clearly has some catching up to do in this area.
For the record - "at the end of the day" still very strong at 12,700,000
And, in case you're interested - "special interests" + "at the end of the day" = 42,800... and guess which one is first !
I know - not much. Zogby particularly has disgraced himself recently. But here he is back, teamed up with Reuters, to tell us today the McCain and Obama are neck and neck, but that the Arizona Senator has a slim lead over Clinton. Meanwhile, Rasmussen's daily tracking poll--which for some reason Drudge seems not to link--has been showing McCain in the lead over both Democrats for some time now.
The latter makes more horse sense since the NYT is already "sounding the alarm" for Democrats to straighten up and stop abusing each other. It will be interesting to see how Obama and Clinton treat each other tonight since they both clearly hate each other's gut at this point. I would love to find someone with enough background to write a good analysis on the politicization of polls for Pajamas Media.
Reading Bill Bradley's piece on the Bittergate scandal last night, I was struck by the amazing size of David Geffen's yacht and this morning we injected a photo into the story. At 454 feet it is slightly less than half the length of the Queen Mary (1019') - for one person! [What's Geffen's carbon footprint?-ed. Twice all the elephants in Africa squared?] We are of course here at a level that makes hypocrisy a weak term. Sure, Geffen and Huffington (with her umpteen thousand square foot home ameliorated by a Prius) are hypocritical in the sense that "hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue," but there is something more complicated afoot. The word liberal no longer exists. It has been hijacked and placed in the deep freeze... or ... to paraphrase Preston Sturges (who was talking of chivalry at the time)... "Liberalism is not only dead. It's decomposed."
The following quote gives a good look inside Jimmy Carter's head:
"The most important single foreign policy goal in my life has been to bring peace to Israel, and peace and justice to Israel's neighbors. I have done everything I could in office and since I left office to do that," the paper [Haaretz] quoted Carter as saying.
"If you don't mind a little constructive criticism from someone who respects you, I think that is an impression the press should work on correcting," he said.
I hope he wasn't including Pajamas Media in this because I am not opening up my desk drawer. [Thank God for that.-ed. Who gave you the key?]
I'd sell my stock (if you have any) in those "Lonely Planet" travel books after the revelation that one of their (apparently main) writers dealt drugs and plagiarized to support writing their Colombia guidebook. He never even went to Colombia. Here's the fun part: "I wrote the book in San Francisco [California]," he is quoted as saying in the Telegraph. "I got the information from a chick I was dating -- an intern in the Colombian Consulate."
[Hey, did you ever use one of those "Lonely Planet" books in all your travels?-ed. I plead the Fifth... but, funny thing, there was this supposedly great Pho joint in Phuket I traveled fifty miles for... and it turned out be a laundromat.]
It's not surprising that Jimmy Carter is meeting with Hamas. They both share an extreme religious view of the world, high on sanctimony, low on reality. Of course missing among the questions Jimmy will supposedly be asking Hamas-leader Meshal is "Why don't you recognize Israel as a state?" The answer would be interesting because Hamas, being Islamic true believers, never could without renouncing their religion. The existence of Israel doesn't fit under Sharia Law. [Does Jimmy support the existence of Israel?-ed. Only when pressed.]
From the AP: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday that he would fight an initiative to amend the California Constitution to ban gay marriage if it qualifies for the November ballot.
That's easy for me since, unlike the current three presidential candidates, I favor gay marriage. But the following may be the more interesting part of the AP article: "I will always be there to fight against that," Schwarzenegger said, prompting loud cheers and a standing ovation from about 200 people at the annual convention of the Log Cabin Republicans, the nation's largest gay Republican group.
The Austrian-born governor immediately cracked that he wished activists would instead focus on passing an amendment to allow naturalized citizens to run for president.
Excuse me for finding Barack Obama a disingenuous creep. The candidate has now been widely quoted as saying as per rural America: "And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Reality check. Who really has been "clinging" to religion? Not Barack Obama, by chance, who joined the racially-inflammatory Trinity Church lo these twenty years ago, never bothering to rock the boat on its pastor's extremist statements and racist associations (Farrakhan) until forced to do so by extenuating recent circumstances? No, not Barack Obama, whose apologists privately explain that they he joined this church to get "street cred" and that it is therefore okay. He doesn't really believe its rancid rhetoric.
Well, I know one thing I believe about Obama. He's a big time careerist (and evidently now an elitist). And I'm pretty sure I know the mysterious "change" he has been proffering. He's the change... as in La change, c'est moi!
I just want to thank Zombie for his dynamite photo essay on the Olympic demonstrations in SF. He certainly gets to the heart of the matter. Don't miss it. More to come from Zombie on Pajamas, I hope.
In this clip from MEMRI, an Iranian filmmaker tells his interviewer that 9/11 was a combined Al Qaeda/Mossad plot - and he does it with a straight face!
The best indicator of Republican John McCain's surprisingly strong presidential prospects in what should be a slam-dunk Democratic year is not his solid general-election poll numbers but rather the increasingly shrill attacks from Democrats.
The latest was a grotesque slam from Barack Obama supporter Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia. In a newspaper interview in his home state, Rockefeller let loose this stinker: "McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues."
Never mind that laser-guided missiles hadn't been invented during the Vietnam war.
Meanwhile, Howard Dean opines: "We didn't bring it up, but they volunteered it," said Dean who explained that voters have two concerns about McCain's age. "One was a health concern, the other was, and this is really interesting . . . that his views are old-fashioned."
"Old-fashioned" views. Some of us might characterize Dean that way as well. Or maybe even Obama, whose "politics of hope" seems virtually geriatric when you scratch the surface. The obvious thing in all this is that the cards continue to fall in McCain's direction and his opponents are already 'runnin' scared.' This can't continue, of course, permanently. But it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
I wrote my refutation of Revered Lee's explanation of his behavior toward Daphna Ziman on Pajamas. (A pdf of Lee's entire statement is linked there.) This business is indeed sad. Lee strikes me as the kind of individual who sees racism as a kind of zero-sum game. The only people, in his world, who have experienced it are African Americans therefore all calumnies are justified.
Apropos of the question of the day ... I Second That Emotion...
An interview I did with Daphna Ziman concerning remarks made by a man named Reverend Eric Lee is now up on Pajamas. Since doing the interview and writing the accompanying text, I have learned that Reverend Lee has written a response, which I had read over the phone to me. I want to read it in detail, but from what I gathered he essentially acknowledges that Ziman is correct, at least in part, in what she said he said. Lee seems genuinely to espouse the belief that African-Americans should only reconcile with Jews if Jews apologize for the supposed evil stereotypes they created of blacks via, I assume, the movies. I wonder if Lee means that Jew Stanley Kramer who made Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and The Defiant Ones. Or that Jew Ed Zwick who directed Glory? Maybe he's talking about me for scripting Richard Pryor's Bustin' Loose? It's not the greatest film in the world (though it did win an Image Award that year from the NAACP), but if I was trucking in black stereotypes, I'd like to know. Richard might have too, if he were with us. Or what Jew does Lee really mean? I'd like to see him name names. I'll name one - The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Lee is reading from that old racist playback. He is a racist himself.
Separation of Church and State in the Schools is a Serious Matter
Recent events at Harvard have reminded us of the fragility of our most august educational institutions when it comes to the separation of church and state. Today we have a report of a humbler institution in Minnesota turning into what may be an Islamic parochial school. While there is of course a difference - Harvard is a private school and the TIZA charter school is public - they both represent a significant trend, paying obeisance to Sharia Law within the US educational system.
Kathrine Kersten writes in her article: Evidence suggests, however, that TIZA is an Islamic school, funded by Minnesota taxpayers. If that can be proven, it is obviously bad and most probably against the law. But the actions of Harvard in carving out special hours for Muslim women at their gym are not so benign either. I suggest they provide moral justification for what is happening in Minnesota (even more so because this is Harvard).
There is lot of silly chatter about the separation of church and state in our society ... people worrying about Christmas trees in public parks, etc... but our educational institutions are a different matter. They are the bastion of a free society.
Yes, many are disappointed in him, but I still think he says more interesting things than almost any politician. This post by Daniel Finkelstein is absolutely worth reading. Blair says it all about the current presidential campaign.
I see all the usual suspects jumping around San Francisco, decorating the Golden Gate Bridge, gonging-gongs and bhonging-bhongs... or whatever... in behalf of the put-upon Tibetans... and I'm all for that. I don't much care for what China has done to these people either. But do you ever see any of these demonstrators protesting the repressive actions of radical Islam, which are far worse than those of the Chinese? Somewhere between not-very-often and never. The selectivity of protest is fascinating.
Now that great idealist Hillary Clinton is leading the charge against the Chinese. Does anyone take any of her opinions on anything seriously anymore? I've never seen anyone run such a terrible campaign since... since... Rudy Giuliani. [Weren't those two supposed to be running against each other?-ed Maybe Rudy should take a stand against the Chinese.]
Something strange about CNN's coverage of the Olympic protests. The word Tibet does not appear until paragraph eight. Is this deliberate - or just bad journalism? I noticed something similar from AP yesterday.
If I were the McCain people, I'd make a lot out of this. More than mildly contradicts the "he doesn't know about the economy" rhetoric coming from the Dems. I mean - do Clinton and Obama know more about economics than Greenspan. I. don't. think. so.
Dept. of Pot to Kettle: The New York Times Urges "Truth"
Sometimes I think the NYT is a secret comedy act and I am missing the joke, their bias is so extreme. Take a look at today's editorial "Some Truth About Trade" in which the solons at the Times urge Obama and Clinton to stop pandering on trade protection. Of course, the NYT seems to be blaming Rove for what the Democrats are doing. But never mind that. It's a reflex. Kind of like picking your nose in public when you think no one's watching (but they are).
What is astonishing in the Times editorial is this: Democrats need to tell voters the truth: First, trade is good for the economy, providing cheap imports and markets for exports, spurring productivity and raising living standards. And second, while trade can drive down some wages and displace some jobs, Democrats have real ideas to help workers cope. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama should base their approach on these ideas. They would not only make sound policy, they would also provide a competitive advantage over John McCain.
Say what????
Are these people illiterates? It is John McCain who has been running around the last few months making speeches against trade protectionism and supporting help for workers. Not only that, he spoke against protectionism in Michigan during the primary when Romney, like Obama and Clinton, was pandering to the protectionists and pretending he could save dead industries. Indeed McCain, again unlike Obama and Clinton, has repeatedly registered his support for NAFTA.
Is the Times so stupid they don't know this? Or do they just think we are too stupid to notice?
More likely it's just they are such determined idiot-ideologues (sorry for the tautology) they choose to ignore it. What a repellent newspaper. What reactionaries.
I met Chuck Heston a few times years ago when he would come to a PEN fundraiser we used to give at Harry's Bar in Century City and officiate at the Hemingway writing contest. Same old stuff. Lot of people writing "I met Harry and it was good." That kind of thing. I looked down on Chuck in those days because he was a Republican and I thought they were mostly dumb. (Sorry, Chuck, I was the idiot.) Anyway, Heston himself was always gracious. So was I, actually, because he was, after all, Ben Hur and Moses. And besides that he was Ramon Miguel 'Mike' Vargas in Welles' Touch of Evil. With a credit like that, you don't have to do anything else. Requiescat in pace.
Clinton Book Advances: Are They Payola or the Most Expensive Door-Stoppers of All Time?
Even with the announcement by HarperCollins that they are creating a division to (essentially) do away with the venerable author's advance, I can't say I was stunned by the size of the advances offered the Clinton's -- a total of some 30 million, 15 of which went for Bill's My Life. (He did very well with Giving too. I guess what goes around comes around.)
Now I am no judge because I hardly ever read books by politicians (the exceptions being Churchill and Moynihan). You would have had to pay me to read The Audacity of Hope on the basis of the cliché-ridden title alone - and that was before I learned its words came from "The Quotations of Chairman Wright." And you can consider me jealous, since I am the author of ten books (an eleventh in the hopper) and only one of them had an initial advance in excess of fifty grand, even though they appeared on best seller lists, were made into movies, translated, reprinted, won prizes, etc. So I'm just envious but...
I would love to see the Clintons' royalty statements. I would faint if one of the tomes involved here came within a country mile of earning out their advances. When I read that My Life had a fifteen million dollar advance - read that and weep, Stephen King - I could only roll my eyes. The number of books that would have to be produced and sold is staggering. Call Al Gore. On ecological grounds alone, it's a major disgrace.
So what was Alfred Knopf (or rather Random House and its owner Bertelsmann) thinking when it shoveled this giant - until now hidden - sum of 15 million in Clinton's direction for his book? What were they financing? Why not make a direct donation to Clinton Foundation and save all the paper? Beats me.
UPDATE: I have been informed in email by a fellow author that the Clintons did earn out their advances. If true, this unfortunately speaks yards about the reading habits of the American public. Frankly, I prefer a good Jacqueline Susann novel. [I loved Valley of the Dolls. -ed. There's a new Special Edition of the movie.]
I can't say I was overwhelmingly shocked by the Clintons' overwhelming income (109.2 million) since Bill left office. The nearly 52 million for speech-making seemed about right too. [It's hard to find good speakers these days.-ed. I know you mean- ever since Will Rogers died.] But call me a skeptic, there's something about 10.25 million in charitable deductions that's making me raise an eyebrow. How much of that went to Bill's own charitable foundation and library. [Not more than 8 million, I promise. -ed. Hey, maybe you could get one of those nice administrative salaries. Are you firing me? No, but you might want to quit. There are some good real estate buys in Little Rock right now.]
Freedom of the Poll belongs to the man who owns one: Rasmussen vs. NYT/CBS
I thought of AJ Liebling's famous quote when comparing two current political polls -Rasumussen and NYT/CBS - showing diametrically opposite results for the general election. In the former, McCain leads the two Democrats; in the latter, the reverse. Of course it's way too early anyway, but it would be interesting to have a serious study of the polling methods.
According to this article, I should be receiving an award I have been bad-mouthing... what - twenty times?... on this blog. Would I accept it? In a minute.
But speaking of hypocrites... Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the greatest of all?
HarperCollins to Authors: Sorry, no money... but we will publish your book
Major publisher HarperCollins is responding to the crisis in publishing in this manner: In a radical departure from traditional book-publishing practices, News Corp.'s HarperCollins Publishers is launching a new business that won't accept returns from retailers. In addition, the new entity intends to pay little or nothing in the way of advances to its authors.
Instead, the unit, which hasn't yet been named, will share its profits with writers and focus much of its sales efforts on the Internet.
No returns? I welcome that as a man who has seen many of his books returned only to end up as pulp. [Weren't they pulp in the first place?-ed. Ah, a Tarantino fan.] But what interests me here is the second part of ths strategy - that the publisher will pay little or no advance and go into partnership with the author on potential profits with sales focussed, evidently on the Internet.
My question then is - what's the point of the publisher?
Well, there's editing (which one can get elsewhere) and the fancy publishing house imprimatur, maybe a little help with production and publicity (again available elsewhere - many authors pay for their own publicists anyway). It this really enough? The author can do much better on percentages, I am sure, by self-publishing. And that same author may know his or her way around the Internet better than the publisher, when it comes to publicity. So I am skeptical of this model. But I'm not surprised that it is happening - it is another symptom of the huge shakeout in the arts and letters instigated largely by the online world. I will be interested in the results.
Thanks, in part, to Lisa Kaplan, the spouse of Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), the State Dept. has issued a new report to Congress on anti-Semitism, for the first time linking the ancient bias to its new avatar, antiZionism. Bill Bradley and I did a video interview with Shermna (you can also find a pdf of the report there) and naturally the subject of Rev. Wright came up. Isn't the reverend's language similar to the anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism of the Durban Conference, etc.?
Is Sen. Robert Casey Jr. auditioning for national dunce...
... or is he secretly planning a new career as a late-night infomercial huckster if things go belly up for the Pennsylvania senator? It would have to be one or the other given the senator's recent statement while endorsing Obama: "I believe in this guy like I've never believed in a candidate in my life." You'd think by now no sentient adult would make such a comment about any politician. But it certainly works for tomato slicers, exercise machines, etc. [What about a third reading- he doesn't believe in Obama at all? - ed. You are cynical.]
Speaking of Obama, he certainly is looking good this morning. If he is nominated, I am not looking forward to the general election. It could be bleak time indeed as the question of race comes into the campaign in an ugly manner from many unpredictable directions.
Drudge predictably goes for the big headline from a Sid Blumenthal talk at Barnes and Nobel (Sid was promoting his new book) - Blumenthal Claims Inside Knowledge that McCain Flirted with Leaving GOP. My reaction to that is... zzz... so what if McCain flirted with leaving the GOP? Even if he did, we will never know how serious he was. Certainly Blumenthal doesn't and I will wager even McCain himself doesn't, since I imagine, like most of us, the depths of his decision making process are mysterious even to himself. I happen to admire McCain for trying to think things through and searching for truth, maybe changing his mind on occasion. I do and have. Everyone intelligent I know personally has. Consistency is the hobglobin of small, etc...
But that's not what's important in Blumenthal's comments. The concluding comments by the longtime Clintonista are far more significant:
Although McCain has disappointed some members of the conservative movement, Blumenthal said he did not think this would hurt McCain on Election Day.
"I think Republicans as a whole - even though they're suspicious, many of them of McCain and have been angry at him in the past - are much more disciplined as party members than Democrats are," Blumenthal said. "There’s the famous saying of Will Rogers, 'I'm not a member of an organized political party - I'm a Democrat.' So, I think Republicans will rally behind their candidate to a greater degree than people will recognize right now."
Blumenthal even supplied advice for McCain.
"So I do not think this will hurt him and if I were advising McCain right now, I would say he's slightly overreacting to his conservative base," Blumenthal said. "I don’t think he needs to do that so much. I think they don't have any choice right now."
The Huffington Post and Pajamas Media - Who's got the magic?
Arianna Huffington got quite a shout out from the New York Times yesterday as Citizen Huff. Apparently the Huffington Post's unique visitors on Nielsen has risen to 3.7 million, placing this home for the liberal devout number two on Technorati behind Tech Crunch--an impressive total after only three years and a benchmark in Arianna's goal of being an online newspaper.
Pajamas Media got started about a half year after the Huffington Post with a "distributed model." We amalgamated about ninety independent blogs more loosely around a main portal site. This was chosen deliberately as a more "democratic and bloggy" approach, although we think we are building a newspaper in our way too.
Pajamas Media's total unique visitors in its network for March (also based on Nielsen stats) were four million - three hundred thousand more than the Huffington Post - although this doesn't appear on Technorati because we have many different URLs, a result of our original choice.
April 30, 2008