 |
 |
 |
| |
|
Sooprise Sooprise
I'm somewhat surprised at the surprise some folks seem to be having at the results of a survey that found that 79% of blog readers are more male than female -- Josh Marshall laments his 81%, Kos responded with his own single question mini-poll, and Matt Yglesias pins it on women's indifference to politics. As a lady myself, I have two thoughts. One, the war details that were in many ways blog miracle-gro may have been less than engaging for many women, for whatever reason. And two, there may be for some women something slightly off-putting about the authoritative tendencies of some bloggers. When I read political blogs I'm pretty much looking for two things -- facts I don't know yet and perspectives I haven't thought of. The "quite so," look at me I went to grad school, retort/rejoinder nit-pickity blogging style might just strike those charged with the keeping the species alive as somewhat petty. I'm just saying. If I had to bet, I'd put money on a fall off in that sort of thing in the near future. What I think will stay interesting is folks who find news that is hard to find in mainstream press and those who are able to fit both little details and the big events into a bigger-picture understanding of what's going on.
Just Two
I was at an event in New York
City yesterday that looked at the role and future of technology in politics
and while I normally don't spend too much time thinking about who's
a girl and who's a boy, even I was struck by the lack of the ladies -- of
the 24 or so panelist, two were female and one of them was Arianna Huffington.
This field is still very much in its infancy and it makes sense that right
now it's dominated by guys who know each other from the presidential campaigns.
But yesterday made clear that nobody's got much of anything figured out
yet and there's still plenty of need for good ideas, coming from whomever's
got them.
And Another Thing
By way of follow-up on that last post, I think we tend to think of and talk about the impact of the increased connectivity wrought by the Internet -- again, for lack of a broader way of talking about it -- as a matter of superlatives: things are faster, easier, that sort of thing. Instead, what I'm thinking is that the real impact is more along the lines of looking at how we functioned maybe five years ago and shifting to the left about 15 degrees -- a change not of degree (despite the crappy image I just painted) but of entire nature. Again, rough thoughts that don't make much sense yet but I'm pretty sure there's something there. (By the way, right now it's so incredibly humid in DC that, combined with the heat from my laptop, I'm sweating just sitting on the couch.)
On Jon Stewart
Reading Jon Stewart's spectacular William & Mary commencement address got
me to thinking about something. I'm too worked up both by the big cup of
coffee I'm drinking and my weekend plans -- which do in fact involve
a plane, a plan, and a surprise -- to think it through too much. I'll come
back to it later but here's what I'm thinking. We all know that the Internet (for lack of a broader thing to call it) has
changed everything. But what I think we may not yet fully appreciate that
it has really really changed everything. What got me thinking this is that
while I really do very much enjoy Jon Stewart, I rarely watch the Daily
Show -- far more often I'll watch the clips online on the Comedy Central
site. And these days I rarely watch the West Wing (when I'm not on it) for
the most part because it is a very bad program. Here's where it gets extra
crazy -- I regularly read the brilliant recaps on Television Without
Pity, not as a substitute, or even critique, but rather as stand-alone
entertainment. A fuller exploration of this "everything is so different
now" idea that might actually begin to make some cohesive sense could
include tons more non-television related examples -- just to start and off
of the top of my head right this second, the rapidity of the unfolding of
the Washingtonienne saga, Defamer's attempts to attach names to Ted
Casablanca's horrific little celebrity blind items, and the whole
moblogging thing. This make any sense?
Love and Family
Andrew Sullivan has written, beautifully I might add, about how the realization that he was gay was for him meant making a choice between the family he was born into and the, awright, love he felt. It is well worth reading. It makes me wonder if my long-held gut feeling is right on -- that for many gay people, marraige at this point is much more about retaining a place in your birth family than it may be for those who already have the right to marry everywhere.
Mahwidge
I'm surprised about how little we've been hearing about the marrying of gay people up in Massachusetts. The war has clearly been a help, both because attention is elsewhere and with the focus now on the struggle for freedom and unfortunately death, expecting people to rally the energy to try to stop people from marrying is just asking a lot. It seems like opposition groups are waiting for the public outcry on this, but I just don't think they're gonna get it. Of the couples now married in Massachusetts, two-thirds were women, half have been together for at least 10 years, and a third have children. And conservative politicians aren't gonna go to bat over this because deep down most of them they just don't care that much -- as long as they don't think they're in danger of being held responsible for it, they'll just move on. This whole thing makes me wonder how good it might feel to leave a whole bunch of things better than we found them.
Television Appearance
The West Wing episode I'm in ran last night. I'm the one wearing an orange hat with a bird on it, 24 rows up behind first base. (The story line in the show -- that sushi-eating, New York Times-reading Jed Bartlet can't throw a baseball -- seems to belie my assumption that the five takes were an attempt to get one where he actually tosses a decent pitch. I guess it took that long to get his face scrunched up just right. Making TV might be hard.)
Crazy Like a Melty Watch
I've put together something of a personal home page that I use at work to gather all my links in one place. It's one of the better ideas I've ever had -- it's quite the time saver and moreover I like seeing everything I'm into in one place. I've admitted before that I like quotes, so, just for fun, I put on this page a little function that I think of as "the Quotater." The Quotater shows me one quote, from a set of 31 I've selected, based on the day of the month -- quote number 1 on the 1st, 2 on the 2nd, that sort of thing. I get a kick out of today's quote, number 19, every time: "Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure - that of being Salvador Dali." Dali was just detached enough for that to be for him a natural state. But even if you have to try for it, not a bad way to get up, no?
Shake Hands with the Devil
Last night I finally finished Roméo Dalliare's book about his experiences as a UN force commander. One line, right near the end, gave me the shivers: "Human beings who have no rights, no security, no future, no hope and no means to survive are a desperate group who will do desperate things to take what they believe they need and deserve." This helps him understand what happened in Rwanda, and that scares the bejeebees out of me.
Adopt-a-Race Program
As promised and
much anticipated, the launch of the Adopt-a-Race program, beginning with my
home fifth district of New Jersey
(by home district I mean my ancestral Mom-Dad-high-school home district. I'm
now a full-time committed resident of the District of Columbia, but, you see,
we don't get to really play
politics here.) You may notice in visting newjerseyfifth.com
that I don't actually yet have any of what the kids call content, but the
mission is nontheless clear -- personalize the congressional races in our home
districts and singlehandedly influence the election in the way we, and by we
I mean you, find most appropriate. I, for example, want her
to beat him. And that's what
I'm going to work to have happen.
Much more information will of course follow. Promise.
Sing me something brave from your mouth
I'll admit that I'm unsure of just how much David "The
Real Anita Hill" Brock should be forgiven or trusted, but his new group
Media Matters is doing work that needed
to be done. Their latest effort is a TV
ad that more or less just rolls tape of Rush Limbaugh's "Abu Ghraib as frat
hazing" pondering. It may come as a surprise to those of us that don't happen
to listen to this Limbaugh that it seems as if perhaps you and I and my mother
are perhaps the only ones who don't. His is allegedly the highest rated radio
show in the country and I've heard said that one tracking of global Internet
traffic reflects a noticeable drop at the close of his webcast ends each day.
So if it seems as if millions of folks want to spend precious time listening
to someone who is quite clearly, and I mean this as an objective assessment,
a dangerous jackass, I think I may be able to relate. I myself am a big big
fan of someone often somewhat similarly derided. I speak of course of Eminem,
who numbers among my true heroes even though I of course do not affirm as fact
some of his more pungent statements. Em, you see, is an artist creating great
art. It seems likely that at least some of Limbaugh’s fans somehow interpret
his angry lunacy as some sort of creative riff on, oh, I don't know, angry lunacy.
And, of course, listening to any creative artist is a choice, and if I'm pro
nothing else, I'm pro-choice.
However, it does seem though as perhaps someone of such artistic temperament
mightn't be the most appropriate choice of discussion partner for the Vice President
as he reflects on
September 11, 2001 on the day's one year anniversary or weighs
the United Nations role in Iraq or contemplates
the concerns about the state of our national security raised by a former
White House anti-terrorism director. And maybe, and I'm pretty sure about this
one, someone of such creative sensibilities does not so much actually qualify,
in a more, say, O'Connor than Thomas understanding of the concept of qualification
for one's position, as an
election night commentator on a major television network. Unless, that is,
we've really have finally rid ourselves of the habit of drawing our news reporting
and commentating from the well of reality and fact and decency and relevance,
and have instead decided to allow the creative interpretations of angry lunatics
to serve as the soundtrack for what a more mature nation might regard as one
of the more important nights of year. If so, if that's the choice we've made,
next time around let's at least make it a party and invite Em too.
Monday Morning Quote
A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.
- John F. Kennedy
Say it and then do it
If I tell you that by Monday I will have posted information on my new Adopt-a-Race program and then by Monday I have not done so, I will have lessened myself in your eyes. And that, I am not prepared to do.
Sounds like a plan, no?
I've more or less been in a constant state of rage the
last couple of weeks. I'd been on sort of a low simmer about just how
badly and with what thoroughness we've managed to mangle the entire order
of the, you know, world. Then came the sudden hideousness of Abu Ghraib
and I started waking up in the mornings in a small fury.
Two weeks later, turns out that sustaining full-bore anger like this is
somewhat exhausting and not all that much fun. [And when Nancy's not
having fun, ain't nobody having any fun.- Ed.] [This Ed. thing
I stole from Wonkette. - NS] So what I've decided to do is to try to,
first, put all them bad feelings back in their little box. Then, focus
on enjoying myself again. I'm gonna do things like play mini-golf,
finally figure out how to get Movable Type to delay-post, have a bunch
of beers with my friends on an Adams Morgan roof deck, and read Vanity
Fair in the tub for so long that I get all wrinkly-toed.
By this method, I think I can get myself to stop myself from fixating
on how everything is so badly out-of-sorts that we won't be able to get
it even close to right for a very long time. I'm really looking forward
to trying.
Damn. I was starting to feel a little bit of sweetness and light when
I sat down to write this. Now, realizing that the current state of my
existence is that I have to actively work on enjoying myself, not so good.
Come, Work With Us
We need more people who really get technology working in the House and the Senate. So if you consider yourself a technologist -- professional or otherwise -- please, check out the House job listings or call the Senate job line at 202-228-5627. (For some reason the House site isn't really listing any jobs right now. Usually does, so that should be fixed soon.) (Update -- Been fixed.)
Inhofe and McCain
Today at the second Senate Armed Services hearing on the Abu Ghraib prison abuses,
morning session:
Senator James Inhofe: [A]s I watch this outrage everyone
seems to have about the treatment of these prisoners I have to say and I'm
probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage
than we are by the treatment. … I am also outraged that we have so many humanitarian
do- gooders right now crawling all over these prisons looking for human rights
violations while our troops, our heroes, are fighting and dying...
Afternoon session:
Senator John McCain: Do you think we should have signed the Geneva Conventions
for the treatment of prisoners of war? I'll begin with you, General Burgess.
Major General Ronald Burgess: Yes, sir. I do.
McCain: And why do you
think we should? Because you know this keeps us from getting information
that may save American lives. This is restraint by humanitarian do-gooders.
Why don't we just throw them in the trash can and do whatever's necessary?
We certainly have developed sophisticated techniques that we could just go
after these people and get what we need and save American lives.
Burgess:
Sir, two things. One, it applies to us as well. And we're...
McCain: Good point, general.
Burgess: We're a nation of law, sir.
Two different kinds of senators.
Just How Far Gone We Are
This right here is the Defense Department Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary
Medal, given to veterans of the campaigns in both Afghanistan and Iraq. I guess
it might be difficult to remember that there is no connection between what happened
to this country on September 11, 2001 and any possible reason we may have had
for going into Iraq. Or maybe it's not hard to remember and instead by saying
that there was you're just lying. And maybe you know you're lying, so you make
up a medal to desperate attempt to convince our brave soldiers that there is
some connection because if there wasn't than our Defense
Department wouldn't really make a medal implying that there was, now would
they. Would they?
(By way of Richard
Leiby)
Reaching Out Into the Seats
I regularly read publications of a certain flavor, like the Washington Post,
the New York Times, the New Yorker. In one day of reading
this sort of thing, I can get outraged a hundred times over about what's going
on in the world -- most recently, I've worked myself into many a fury over Abu
Ghraib. And I also read a good number of liberal/progressive blogs, much of
which consists of commentary on stories that appeared in the Washington Post
and the New York Times and the New Yorker.
And lately I've been wondering why we bother thinking and talking and writing
about these things so much. I have a tough time shaking the feeling that all
this talk, all this commentary, pretty much amounts to preaching to the choir.
And while that's useful and necessary, to really get gymnastic with this analogy,
the choir ain't gonna be picking the next preacher.
I took a look today at what someone in, say, Ohio might be reading if they get
their news from only their local paper, as I think many people do. Today in
the Akron Beacon Journal
on Abu Ghraib, we have 'Bush praises Rumsfeld'. In the Cleveland
Plain Dealer, 'Bush at Pentagon today; President talks about prisoner
abuse, shows support for Rumsfeld'. The home page for the Cincinnati
Enquirer, one of Ohio's bigger papers, shows nothing on Abu Ghraib.
Also showing nothing: the Toledo
Blade, the Youngstown Vindicator,
the Canton Repository, the Portsmouth
Daily Times, and the Ashtabula
Star Beacon.
That's not to say that Abu Ghraib isn't and won't continue to be a wide-reaching
story -- as I predicted
last week, I'm pretty sure this is the beginning of the end of this presidency.
And I know that what starts in the 'big papers' often works its way to the more
local ones. This one will, and not the least of the reasons is that abuse like
this speaks to basic human decency and our understanding of ourselves as Americans.
That's why were seeing Republican senators like Lindsey
Graham say things like:
"[W]e're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking
about giving people a humiliating experience."
and
John McCain say things like:
"I have seen a lot of people die. I've seen a lot of terrible
things in my life. But to see it done by Americans to human beings is what's
so appalling. It's so outrageous, I can't describe it."
So I do think Abu Ghraib, both the abuse and its larger meaning as a reflection
of the conduct of this Administration, will come to define the next couple of
months. In the meantime, though, so much of the other detail on how just how misguided
this war slips through the cracks. There's a whole lot of people not reading SF
Gate (and who might be scared away by Mark "Where
Is My Gay Apocalypse?" Morford) who should know, and know now, that
the cost of the war "could top $150 billion through the next fiscal year --
as much as three times what the White House had originally estimated" and that
that this tough on terrorism president is spending "about $3 in Iraq for every
$1 committed to homeland security."
I think it's the sort of thing that Andrew Sullivan, a well-known conservative
commentator, is alluding to when
he writes:
You could feel the psychological barometric pressure drop this weekend in Washington. Maybe the rest of the country won't react the same way. Or maybe there will be a time-lag in which the country as a whole realizes it has lost confidence in this administration as profoundly as Washington now has. But every time I try to think of a way in which this is not catastrophic to the cause of democracy and peace in the Middle East, I come undone.
(To be fair, the Administration is doing their best to speak to this difficult moment. Our Vice
President has addressed the concerns, the outrage, the profound loss of confidence
in this Administration. Witness "I think Don Rumsfeld is the best secretary of Defense the United States has ever had.")
A three-quarters brilliant idea that came out of the Dean campaign was to have
devoted supporters write letters to voters in early primary/caucus states. I
say three-quarters brilliant, because I think in practice it may have done more
harm then good to have a nice lady in Iowa to get a letter in January from say,
'Nancy, Washington DC,' that read, "Please help the Governor take back our country!!!
He's our only hope!!!"
But the idea was right. The idea was to reach beyond the choir. I guess the
question now is how to take all the outrage, all the hope, all the dedication
found in the liberal and progressive blogs, all the questioning of this Administration
that's now standard issue in the Washington Post, the New York Times,
the New Yorker, and find them all a home in the Akron Beacon
Journal . In a way that the folks of Akron will read.
(edited early on May 11 cause I wrote it real tired)
Next Up, Cuba
About 600 or so prisoners, mostly Taliban captured in Afghanistan, are being held in Guantanamo Bay. Reports suggest that the sort of thing that went on at Abu Ghraib may be a symptom of a pervasive disease.
Monday Night Quotes
"I have an obligation to the Army, and I have an obligation to follow my orders," one of the soldiers said. "I also have an obligation to be a decent person and do what's right and to do what I can to get the truth out."
"Here's my point," one of the soldiers said. "All this that's going on? All these pictures all over the place, the whole world hating even more the United States? If two specialists could see how serious it was, how come nobody else could?"
- Members of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade assigned to Abu Ghraib
Oh, Senator, Must You?
Here's our last candidate for vice president, hand-picked by our last candidate for president:
Mr. Secretary, the behavior by Americans at the prison in Iraq is, as we all acknowledge, immoral, intolerable and un-American. It deserves the apology that you have given today and that have been given by others in high positions in our government and our military. I cannot help but say, http://www.nancyscola.com/mt.cgi
Movable Typehowever, that those who were responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11th, 2001, never apologized. Those who have killed hundreds of Americans in uniform in Iraq working to liberate Iraq and protect our security have never apologized. And those who murdered and burned and humiliated four Americans in Fallujah a while ago never received an apology from anybody. So it's part of -- wrongs occurred here, by the people in those pictures and perhaps by people up the chain of command. But Americans are different. That's why we're outraged by this. That's why the apologies were due.
Can't figure out why we lost.
Confirmed: Drudge is a Jackass
I admit it, I read him too. But this is it for me, I'm done. From today's Report:
Headline: Kerry's wife calls Cheney 'Unpatriotic'...
Headline: Maria Teresa Thierstein Simoes-Ferreira Heinz Kerry Opens Up to Barbara Walters...
Score.
This guy is a first-generation Internet wonder that we've all ougrown. Let's move on.
But this does raise a good question: can we really have someone like this married to our President?:
"It would be interesting to show young people that sexuality and sensuality are very different, and that being sensuous is more charming, more sustainable, more beautiful." When she was raising her boys, in any case, her husband took care of the sex talks, but she set down three nonnegotiable rules: you treat people with respect, you never drink and drive, and if you do drugs, "tell me, because I want to know what it was like. But if you ever do cocaine, I will kill you."
How Could We Have Known?
"It is a common thing to abuse prisoners," said Sgt. Mike Sindar, 25, a National Guardsman with the 870th Military Police Company based in the San Francisco Bay area. "I saw beatings all the time. A lot of people had so much pent-up anger, so much aggression."
"We were constantly being attacked, we had terrible support ... also being extended all the time, a lot of us had problems with our loved ones suffering from depression," said MP Dave Bischell. "It all contributes to the psychological component of soldiers when they get stressed."
Nowhere Close to Over
Seymour Hersh on The O'Reilly Factor:
First of all, it's going to get much worse. This kind of stuff was much more widespread. I can tell you just from the phone calls I've had in the last 24 hours, even more, there are other photos out there. There are many more photos even inside that unit. There are videotapes of stuff that you wouldn't want to mention on national television that was done. There was a lot of problems. There was a special women's section. There were young boys in there. There were things done to young boys that were videotaped. It's much worse. And the Maj. Gen. Taguba was very tough about it. He said this place was riddled with violent, awful actions against prisoners.
Update: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld before the Senate Armed Services Committee:
"There are many more photographs and videos that exist."
How Angry Would You Be?
U.S. Troops Said to Mistreat Elder Iraqi:
LONDON - U.S. soldiers who detained an elderly Iraqi woman last year placed a harness on her, made her crawl on all fours and rode her like a donkey, Prime Minister Tony Blair's personal human rights envoy to Iraq said Wednesday.
The envoy, legislator Ann Clwyd, said she had investigated the claims of the woman in her 70s and believed they were true....
Clwyd, 67, is a veteran politician of the governing Labour Party and a strong Blair supporter who regularly visits Iraq and reports back on issues such as human rights, the delivery of food and medical supplies to Iraqis...
Clwyd said the Iraqi woman was arrested in Iraq in July and accused of having links to a former member of Saddam Hussein regime — a charge she denied.
The abuse occurred last year in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison and at another coalition detention center, Clwyd said. "She was held for about six weeks without charge," the envoy told Wednesday's Evening Standard newspaper. "During that time she was insulted and told she was a donkey. A harness was put on her, and an American rode on her back."
Rush Limbaugh explains:
CALLER: It was like a college fraternity prank that stacked up naked men --
LIMBAUGH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?
Abu Ghraib
Bremer on Abu Ghraib:
According to these interviews, Bremer repeatedly raised the issue of prison conditions as early as last fall -- both in one-on-one meetings with Rumsfeld and other administration leaders, and in group meetings with the president's inner circle on national security. Officials described Bremer as "kicking and screaming" about the need to release thousands of uncharged prisoners and improve conditions for those who remained.
Powell on Abu Ghraib:
Other U.S. officials said Rumsfeld and the Pentagon resisted appeals in recent months from the State Department and the Coalition Provisional Authority to deal with problems relating to detainees. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell urged action in several White House meetings that included Rumsfeld, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "It's something Powell has raised repeatedly -- to release as many detainees as possible -- and, second, to ensure that those in custody are properly cared for and treated," said a senior State Department official familiar with the discussions.
Red Cross on Abu Ghraib:
The International Committee of the Red Cross, for its part, said Thursday that its representatives had been visiting Abu Ghraib and talking privately with detainees for months. It said it repeatedly asked U.S. authorities to improve conditions.
This Gets Tiring
From Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article, "the Taguba study noted that more than sixty per cent of the civilian inmates at Abu Ghraib were deemed not to be a threat to society, which should have enabled them to be released."
Kinda like this guy, who was locked up because the taxi in which he was a passenger had a gun in the trunk. I guess the thing to do now is to wait for the talk to start about the connection between the prisoners and September 11.
Brain Hurt From Awfulness
Tonight's thought: You start a war. You forget to have a plan for it. It goes bad. Your fault.
I Really Enjoyed What You Did Last Night
I think it might be important for to remember that the man leading the "we're Vietnam swift boat men who think John Kerry's not fit to be President" charge never ever ever spent one single second with Senator Kerry in Vietnam. Ever. Never. Not one.
When a General Talks, Me, I Listen
According to this story, Powell "repeatedly" raised the need to "release as many detainees as possible and . . . to ensure that those in custody are properly cared for and treated."
Get a Geek for a Geek's Job
Do you think it fantastic that the exact amount of Google's planned IPO is $2,718,281,828, which we know off the top of our heads is Euler's number, the base for natural logarithms? Or silly? Or irrelevant?
Won't Have This General to Kick Around
If the presence of Colin Powell makes you feel better about this President, you need to know he's leaving.
I'm Grown Up and Can Almost Handle It
When I was a kid, there was a Chinese restaurant in Midland Park that had two big mirrors hung on opposite walls and I was frightened by them because I couldn't figure out when or if they would stop reflecting back at each other. Kinda like this.
As Jerry Said to George, "We're Trying to Have a Civilization Here"
I made the mistake of reading the funnies today. I should know better, given that the inanity of Family Circus has long had the capacity to fill me with a red-hot burning anger like few other things. In today's Non Sequitur, we’re learn that the nicest thing that can be said about a lawyer is that "at least he never ran for Congress." Why, why, why don't we know by know that if we don't run for Congress, or make damn sure we have a decent person representing us in Congress, we're gonna get scr-hewed in a million ways large and small? (Except here in DC, where our lack of representative governance really seems to streamline things.) One million! I might even start a list. Mr. Wiley Miller, way to go with nudging folks towards opting out of the democratic process. Not sure how one might go about being funny, relevant, and even intellectually honest all at the same time? Here.
So Hard to See That Line Sometimes
So cute how they confuse a juvenile stunt that I would have judged beneath me when running for student council president in 1997 and I wore Z. Cavaricci's with actual behavior befitting a United States Senator. Or maybe not so cute and more humiliating for everybody. I hope someday to grow up and find my name in the same sentence as "cartoon of a chicken wearing a military uniform."
Worth a Try
Senator Kerry,
I don't think Sen. John Edwards would mind if you built a whole entire speech, or even campaign, around his "this is not our America" idea. In fact, he might enjoy having an actual Democrat to vote for.
-Nancy Scola
|
| «
April 2004 | Main
| June 2004
» |
|
|
|
