Booked Up

Here's the deal. As I mentioned a couple of months ago, I am working on a book about generational attitudes toward work and technology, called Generation Blend. The good news is that the book is scheduled to come out in February. The bad news is the manuscript is due in September and I am working my ass off to get it a) done and b) right. Despite its somewhat-oblique topic, I guarantee that anyone who likes the work I've been doing here at EA will find it at least a little bit interesting.

Unfortunately, writing the book is taking all my time and mental energy at the moment. As much as I'd like to blog about all the dastardly stuff that's going on, I just can't dilute my focus right now. Thanks to everyone who has patronized this site over the past nearly-five years. I hope to be back someday, either at EA or in another incarnation. Those of you with your own blogs - I will see you in the comments!

6:53:55 AM    Emphasize This! []

Technical Problems

If anyone out there is still paying attention, you might notice that there's something strange going on with the blog. Over the weekend, I migrated to Vista for reasons too messed up to explain. Anyway, it didn't go quite as terribly as the last time I tried it, but one weird byproduct is that my blog reset itself to January 19, 2007. Why then? I dunno. Anyway, the comments were all messed up and out of sync when I tried to post. The only solution was to repost pretty much everything I've written this year (fortunately, not very much) in one LONG day's post. It looks like we're back up to date now. The original pages are probably still in the archive, but the main page is pretty seriously norked. Anyway, hope to post more about the topics Raven discussed and others as time permits.

9:59:37 PM    Emphasize This! []

Campbell’s Latest: a Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma

There are a couple of ways to follow up a tour-de-force. One is to try to top yourself (in the American, not British, sense of that term – although the latter has certainly been tried more than once) by producing something even more ambitious and grandiose. As often as not, this can backfire and leave the original work somewhat tarnished by the failure of the follow-up. The second tactic is to produce something small but perfect. The best example I can think of is Bob Dylan following 1966’s baroque epic, Blonde on Blonde, with the spare masterpiece, John Wesley Harding.

Eddie Campbell, whose  The Fate of the Artist (2006) has to rank as one of the most thematically complex and well-realized graphic novels yet produced, has opted to go the John Wesley Harding route with his latest, The Black Diamond Detective Agency. Black Diamond is a heavily-plotted crime story set in the dying moments of the 19^th century, based on a film screenplay by C. Gaby Mitchell. The opening pages establish a gritty, realistic tone reminiscent of Robert Altman’s dark Western, McCabe and Mrs. Miller. The story soon develops into a police procedural involving the Secret Service, a gang of Chicago hoodlums, counterfeiters, missing persons, mistaken identities, explosions and a particularly dramatic gunfight.

Campbell illustrates this rich but straightforward genre narrative with tight watercolors and a static, inside-the-lines approach to storytelling. He dispenses with both the charming looseness of his autobiographical Alec stories and the audacious experimentalism of The Fate of the Artist. The art is assured and accomplished. Characters are developed through close attention to features, gesture and posture. The compositions are smooth and punctuated with drama at all the right moments. There is scarcely a doubt that the period details of costume and architecture are picture-perfect.

Does this sound just a little bit…well, dull? Perhaps. It’s dull in the way that “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” is dull compared to “Visions of Johanna” or Picasso’s “Hands with Bouquet” is dull compared to “Guernica.” It’s dull in the manner of a world-class chef preparing a meatloaf. On one hand, why go the miniaturist route when you’re clearly capable of more? On the other hand, simplicity can be much harder to get right because there’s nowhere to hide. And besides, who wants to eat seared ahi with reduced mango-pomegranate salsa on a bed of black rice every night of the week? A good chef understands the importance of comfort food every now and then; a really good chef knows how to make the meat-and-potatoes dishes just as impressive as the exotic ones.

Indeed, the closer one explores Black Diamond Detective Agency, the more one can see what attracted Campbell to this story in the first place, and what special ingredients he brought to the party. The themes of the concealed identity, the investigation, and the slow untangling of layers through observation and deduction that Campbell deployed with postmodern irony in The Fate of the Artist are here reprised as traditional plot devices. Whereas The Fate of the Artist questioned the relevance of the artist in the modern world, Black Diamond Detective Agency casts the artist as one of the most instrumental, practical roles in the story. It is, in fact, the skill of the forensic artist at capturing the likeness of her subject – the most defiantly pre-modern artistic endeavor imaginable – that leads to a break in the case. In the final pages of the denouement, a dialogue between two of the characters explicitly foreshadows the confusion and unraveling that lays ahead (which create the preconditions for the existential crisis Campbell explores in Artist), just as the clock rings in the first moments of the 20^th century.

On its own, Black Diamond Detective Agency would be worthwhile as a literate, satisfying and well-illustrated graphic novel in the solid tradition of Max Allen Collins’s and Richard Peirs Raynner’s Road to Perdition or Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber’s Whiteout. But in contrast with its immediate predecessor in Campbell’s  oevre, Black Diamond Detective Agency achieves a kind of sublime resonance with the bigger themes of Campbell’s work.

Campbell, I suspect, knows that once you’ve produced a challenging and critically-acclaimed magnum opus like The Fate of the Artist, the next work will be met with special scrutiny. Being the contrary bastard he is, he does everything he can to throw casual readers off the trail and confound expectations. It’s not enough just to shift gears. He goes 180 degrees from self-referential ironist to earnest, straightforward storyteller; from stylistic polyglot to detail-oriented realist; from meta-commentator on the whole graphic novel enterprise to workaday practitioner.  This decision to eschew the attention-getting melodrama of Artist for the impeccable craftsmanship of Black Diamond isn’t merely incidental. The adherence to genre conventions and conventional narrative approach are the conscious choices of an artist who understands better than most what those choices mean and how they came to be choices in the first place.

With Black Diamond Detective Agency, Campbell reassembles what he blew apart in The Fate of the Artist, a feat as audacious and arrogant in its own way as anything attempted in Artist. Campbell isn’t just making a statement about his eclecticism and versatility: he’s asserting, boldly and successfully, that his thematic interests transcend setting, style and genre and that he can even turn the space between his works into a vehicle for advancing his views on the role of art and the artist. It’s a neat trick, made all the more compelling for its subtlety and understatement.

9:54:24 PM    Emphasize This! []

Napa'd Out

Just back from a lovely family wedding in the hills of Napa. I'm here to tell you it is possible to drive from Napa to Seattle in just about 12 hours, but it takes a little time to recover. It also appears possible, in theory, to maintain a splendid, content-rich blog while writing a book, as Glenn Greenwald proves. However, such may be beyond my capabilities, and in that eventuality, the book comes first. Sorry folks.

9:54:04 PM    Emphasize This! []

Politically Whacked

I was just watching a little of the Senate debate over the no-confidence motion in Alberto Gonzales. Arlen Specter (R-PA), presumably speaking for a fair number of Republican Senators, had his panties in a bunch because the no-confidence vote (which he supports, interestingly enough) is a political maneuver staged by the Democratic leadership to embarrass Republicans. Specter said that Republicans stand to be embarrassed either way – either for supporting the President’s plainly dishonest Attorney General, or for abandoning the President and voting with the Democrats.

Gee, how sad. You know how our friends in the GOP found themselves in this predicament (other than losing the last election, that is)? It’s because they blithely went along with the crazy, illegal shit that Bush, Rove and Gonzales were up to. Instead of being appalled at the politicization of the Justice Department, the pressure on US Attorneys to manipulate investigations, the firings, and the ham-fisted cover-up that followed, most of these guys were right on board with the program. Some, like Senator Dominici of New Mexico, were up to their own eyeballs in it.

If the GOP Senators had acted with any trace of responsibility or institutional pride when they were in power and actually asserted the rule of law when Bush and Gonzales tried to cut corners, they’d have nothing to worry about with this vote. But no. They chose to be loyal to a person that I’m sure many of them knew or suspected was criminally unqualified and batshit crazy. Now, having been caught asleep at their posts or worse, they cry, Paris Hilton-like, about having to face the embarrassment of either calling for accountability or publicly defending the indefensible.

So, yeah, it’s political. Chuck Shumer is sending out fundraising letters and Howard Dean is beating his chest. That’s what the opposition party should do when they catch the Administration in web of lies and wrongdoing. The best way for the legislative branch of the GOP to stay out of that trap was to get out in front of Bush when they had the chance. They made their choice – party ahead of country. Now they’re getting whacked. Cry me a river, Arlen.  

9:53:45 PM    Emphasize This! []

Justice is for Little People

Bad luck for Scooter Libby that his orchestrated appeals for executive clemency are crowded off the front pages by news of Paris Hilton's early release from prison due to an undisclosed medical condition (a release which may be short-lived). Scooter's pals are doing their best to explain why it's not in the public interest for a convicted fellon to serve time for a crime considered serious enough to impeach a President over - just at the moment that the poster-child for irresponsible self-indulgence would have us believe that the hard conditions of jail are just too stressful for her dainty little self. The contrast here may be too much, considering that the core GOP constituency most up-in-arms about poor Scooter's plight are most often found screaming about the leniency of our permissive justice system and the need for strict sentencing guidelines.

Guess what? When you break the law, you go to jail. And jail is no fun. It's even less fun for the people who don't have limitless money and powerful friends, and serve the majority of their time in the company of other desperate, violent individuals. It's an old saying that a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, and a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested. But somehow, I find it hard to picture Scooter and Paris leading a prison-reform movement anytime soon. As always, this is about them - their power, their influence, and the patent absurdity of expecting people like them to be held to the quaint standards of behavior that govern the filthy rabble.

9:53:27 PM    Emphasize This! []

Why the Dems Backed Down

(this from a recent exchange of emails with Duffy and Gleason - might be blogworthy)

The cave-in on the war funding strikes me as the Dems’ typical problem. Because they position themselves as the more responsible party on, well, pretty much everything, they end up getting blamed more when they don’t live up to their rhetoric. Republicans don’t actually promise honest, effective government, sane foreign policy, environmental protection, or economic justice, so no one is surprised when they’re corrupt, incompetent, insane, rapacious of natural resources and blatantly indifferent to middle class economic issues. But if a Dem spends too much on a haircut or doesn’t have full-on solar panels on his roof, they’re painted as phonies and hypocrites. This isn’t, in my opinion, a productive way to look at the policy options.

Here the Dems are being blamed for failing to stop a war they didn’t start and didn’t lose, because everyone expects them to be more restrained and responsible in the use of military force than Bush and his band of gung-ho draft dodgers.  Meanwhile, people sympathize with Bush and the R’s being (understandably) unwilling to admit that they were too stupid to win a war against a gang of criminal fanatics with history’s best fighting force. They have a lot more to lose by putting the national interest first than Dems do, so obviously it’s up to the Democrats to be the sensible ones and clean up the mess.

The reason we’re at this point is because Bush is impervious to reasonable levels of political pressure (or reason, period). Basically the only policy levers available to Dems are the extreme ones of cutting off funding or impeaching the Administration. Neither of these should be necessary under normal circumstances.

The sad fact is that at this moment in history, Democrats are far more respectful of the traditions of civil government and are not as eager to reach for the nuclear option. On one hand, it’s hard to blame them for that. Do we really want a Constitutional crisis? On the other hand, will it take anything less to stop Bush and the war at this point? Bush and the Rs are using the Democrats’ moderation and responsibility against them, which is despicable and destructive. But again, that’s what we’ve come to expect of the modern Republican party, so why even bother to complain?

9:53:03 PM    Emphasize This! []

Not That Anyone Would Notice, but...

I'm going to be out of town in NYC for the next seven days, bringing a halt to my obviously frenetic recent blogging schedule. For the record, it's sunny and beautiful in Seattle, we are about 30 days from the end of the fiscal year of one of my biggest clients, and I am working on a book that is due in September. And also, a whole bunch of stuff is happening that I don't care much about.

Talk amongst yourselves if you wish. See you next week.

9:52:45 PM    Emphasize This! []

Day of Shame

Former Israeli Foreign Minister and author Abba Eban once said of the Palestinians, "they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." The same could certainly be said of Congressional Democrats, who today appear to have gotten rolled by an appallingly unpopular President and condemned the country to another four months of the pointless and counter-productive war in Iraq. I have searched the blogosphere in vain for anyone with anything good to say about the impending passage of the blank check supplemental, or even explain it in coherent terms.

To right-wingers, it confirms their opinion of Democrats as spineless weaklings, afraid to stand up for their principles. Dream on if Democratic officeholders think they will get a shred of credit from the Iraq War dead-enders for their "support of the troops." The anti-Iraq majority is equally enraged by the Democrats' craven betrayal of their mandate and their inexplicable refusal to offer the country an alternative to Bush's delusional and destructive policies.

I guess the Dems are banking on the existence of a constituency so soft-headed and gullible that they'd be swayed by the criticisms of a thoroughly discredited administration, or would somehow think that de-funding the war means that soldiers would run out of bullets in the middle of the battlefield. Who knows - maybe they're right. Maybe there is some vast vein of Americans who oppose the war (70% now do) but really really want the Dems to sit calmly in the ditch of indecision rather than take any action to oppose Bush.

Seriously, I want to hear someone defend this on either policy or political grounds. If a majority opposes the war, a huge majority hates and distrusts Bush on practically everything, and a narrow majority tells polsters they are fine with cutting off funding now in order to bring the troops home - positions that most Democratic officeholders also share - then what's the problem? Why is this thing about to pass?

9:50:48 PM    Emphasize This! []

Heart of Darkness

The Raven pointed me to this excellent piece by Sydney Blumenthal in today’s Salon. Blumenthal has long been one of the most trenchant critics of the Bush administration because he dares to extend his analysis to the root cause of all the crimes, failures, embarrassments and scandals: Bush’s own deeply flawed character. He has done so despite the risks of being branded “shrill” and a “Bush hater” (e.g., one whose irrational antipathy to Bush precedes and thus motivates any actual policy disagreements). The “Bush hater” charge has been deployed very craftily by the Right as a way to misdirect the most penetrating criticisms of the Bush the man, by suggesting that the judgments of those who raise these troubling and, frankly, terrifying issues are not to be trusted. What we’ve seen consistently throughout Bush’s tenure in office, however, is that the most radical and extreme theories have the most explanatory power. It is only in the darkest ruminations of Blumenthal, Krugman and the blogosphere’s Digby and Glenn Greenwalt that we can make sense of Bush’s otherwise-senseless pattern of behavior.

Mainstream reporters who fear “going too far” in teasing out the implications of Bush’s policy are left to blindly wonder how the disasters and scandals continue, month after month, year after year, with not even a whiff of self-reflection or accountability on the part of the President. It seems inexplicable unless you are willing to do the dirty work of connecting the dots in Bush’s history and behavior. Blumenthal and others have spoken frankly of his inferiority complex with respect to his accomplished yet aloof father and domineering mother, his alcoholism and drug use, his shallow and opportunistic embrace of dim-witted fundamentalist Christianity, his long history of cruel and boorish behavior, his series of business failures in which he was bailed out by his father’s cronies, and of course his problematic military service record.

What this adds up to is a profoundly insecure man determined to show all those smug bastards who put him down that their intellect, courage, moral purpose, financial acumen, charm, humility and sophistication don’t mean a thing compared to the only thing really worth having in this life: complete power. There may be other ways to explain Bush’s apparent indifference to the effectiveness of his policies, the honesty of his henchmen, the increasingly disastrous political damage he’s doing to the Republican party, or even his legacy, but none of them are any less unsettling.

We've seen this character before in literature. He's not Othello or Jay Gatsby, the tragically flawed hero undone by pride, or even the doomed Colonel Kurtz who gains terrible insight into the enormity of his failures before meeting his end. No, he's Flem Snopes, the vicious, squint-eyed scion of a degenerate clan out of William Faulkner - a black-hearted anti-hero through and through.

Once you arrive at this measure of Bush’s character – and I think most of Washington has, in its private moments – there’s really no good exit strategy so long as he remains in office. Unfortunately, the insights about Bush that best predicted the outcomes of his policies have been available since before he took office. They were just dismissed by people who didn’t want to see the truth, or thought for their own reasons that it was worth tolerating Bush’s obvious limitations to prevent the unthinkable eventuality of an Al Gore presidency. History, I think, will judge those who saw but said or did nothing nearly as harshly as it will judge Bush himself.

9:50:19 PM    Emphasize This! []

Random Thoughts on Immigration

Last night’s unusually turgid episode of Boston Legal revolved in part around the issue of illegal immigration, which got me thinking some random thoughts before drifting off to sleep. Along with trade, immigration seems to appeal more explicitly along class lines than practically any other issue in the US. Immigration divides both Democrats and Republicans more rancorously between elites and rank-and-file within their own parties than across partisan affiliation, which is in itself extremely unusual. About the only kind words I can ever muster about President Bush, for example, are to praise his relative restraint and moderation on this issue.

I’d like to think that my positions arise out of principle and dispassionate analysis – that even illegal immigrants bring necessary labor and energy to the country and, by and large, contribute far more than they consume in public resources, that we’re a nation of immigrants and have no moral basis for judging recent arrivals more harshly than our own forebears, and that the benefits of having people available for low-wage jobs helps our economy and keeps prices of necessary goods and services within reach. However, I recognize that as a prosperous person in a relatively secure job, I can afford “liberal” (e.g., generous of spirit) views on this subject that my fellow Democrats in unions and economically-threatened communities cannot.  If it were my own livelihood or community at stake, would I feel the same way?

My differences with nativists on the conservative side are more profound. I enthusiastically embrace the concept that seems to animate their most vehement opposition to immigration: the vision of a multi-cultural society where Anglo-America doesn’t simply assimilate Latino and Asian immigrants, but affirmatively changes to incorporate aspects of their cultures and languages. I think the whole idea of English-only education is preposterous and short-sighted, rooted in racist ideas of cultural supremacy that we simply can’t afford to indulge any further. We could become a bilingual nation within our lifetimes, opening both social and economic opportunities for engagement with the vast majority of our neighbors in the hemisphere. That’s a good thing. Historically, every immigrant group that has arrived in great numbers in America has added something rich to our artistic and intellectual tradition that contributes directly to our economic and cultural power in the world. And every time, that contribution was initially perceived as an alien threat by those already here. Let’s learn from experience for once and recognize that change can make us stronger.

There is one element to the illegal immigration puzzle that I do find hard to swallow, however:  the sense of entitlement that people feel to come to this country for economic betterment. I suspect that this is the part of immigration that is hardest for Americans to relate to. With very few exceptions, poor Americans don’t leave the United States to seek gainful employment elsewhere, even though opportunities may exist. Remittances don’t constitute a significant source of our national economy, as they do in the Philippines, for example. And other nations don’t welcome American labor or capital even when they might need it. Japan, for example, will face enormous labor shortages in the coming decades in both professional and blue-collar positions. Does anyone think Americans would be considered for those jobs should they decide, for economic reasons, that emigrating to Japan is a good option for themselves and their family?

When I hear about Mexicans or Filipinos or Dominicans coming here to seek a better life, I understand the self-interest motive, but can’t help wondering why they don’t channel their obvious ambition and energy into creating opportunities in their own country. Those nations are poorer than the US, but they’re not basket cases. So why is flight the first option? Yes, it’s easier than challenging entrenched political and economic interests that hold their own societies back, and it’s easier to take advantage of social infrastructure that’s already in place somewhere else than to build it up oneself. But convenience is not a moral justification. By coming here instead of taking the harder road of investing in the development of their own societies, they are indeed getting away with something that is not available in a reciprocal way to their gracious hosts. Immigrants who arrive here from places that don’t welcome foreign workers or foreign investors should pause a moment to reflect on the virtues of tolerance as a universal value, not just as something that is instrumentally useful when directed toward them but not necessary to extend to others.

Our willingness to accept foreign labor and to find ways to make foreign immigrants feel welcome in our society is both morally admirable and economically advantageous, and it would be a shame to turn our back on it. However, I would feel better about advocating such a progressive view of immigration if I could be more certain that it were shared by the people and societies that benefit most from it.

9:49:55 PM    Emphasize This! []

How to Lose the Cheesehead Vote

According to Wolfrum over at Shakes' place, Republican flat-earther Sam Brownback, the Kansas senator running a long-shot Presidential campaign, told the Wisconsin GOP convention that Peyton Manning was the greatest quarterback in NFL history (as part of some numb-nutted metaphor about family values). The crowd of Green Bay Packers fans, who take their football more seriously than either their politics or their religion and tend to think a guy named Brett Favre might have something to say about being the greatest QB ever, were not impressed. According to the report on ESPN:

Realizing what he had said, the Kansas Republican slumped at the podium and put his head in his hands.

"That's really bad," he said. "That will go down in history. I apologize."

His apology brought a smattering of applause and laughter. He tried to recover, saying former Packer Bart Starr may be the greatest of all time, but the crowd was still restless.

"Let's take Favre then," Brownback said. "The Packers are great. I'm sorry. How many passes does he complete without a line?"

"All of them!" more than one person yelled from the back.

"I'm not sure how I recover from this," Brownback said. "My point is we've got to rebuild the family. I'll get off this."

9:49:38 PM    Emphasize This! []

Why the GOP is Hanging Tough

News this morning that the House GOP has once again swallowed its growing misgivings about Bush's handling of the war and is pushing for a bill that gives him a blank check on funding, despite earlier calls for accountability. Considering that the vast majority of the public now understands that our best strategy in Iraq is withdrawal, that things are certain to get worse over the summer with the Iraqi Parliament on vacation (!) and temperatures rising over 110 degrees, and Bush is a lame duck while most of them still need to face the voters in 18 months, this seems like an odd strategy.

Is this Republicans just being stupid? Or suicidal? Or so rigid that they can't change old habits even in the face of impending extinction? Could be. But my bet is that Bush has a secret bargain on the table: Back me now and I will stage the October Surprise to end all October Surprises in 2008. Given what these people are capable of, I shudder to even speculate. Any thoughts?

9:49:15 PM    Emphasize This! []

Some News

Sorry for the posting gap. I’ve been on the east coast since Thursday seeing family and friends. A few quick bites to get the week going:

·         My wife and I were honored to be guests at Duffy’s 40^th birthday gala, thrown by his lovely wife Mary at the Waterworks Restaurant in Philly. Duffy definitely married better than she did.

·         Saw the Will Eisner documentary mentioned earlier on Sunday morning as part of the Tribeca film festival. Kudos to director Andrew Cooke, writer/co-producer Jon Cooke, and the entire gang for a job exceptionally well done. This is not only the definitive biographical statement about a major figure of 20^th century American art and culture, it’s one of the top two or three films about comics ever done (on a list that includes Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb).

·         Word out to my distant (in every sense of the word) cousins in South Africa, whom I’m told read this blog from time to time.

·         Saw a cool art exhibit at the soon-to-be-extinct Stay Gold gallery in Brooklyn, featuring the personal art projects of people who work in the animation business (such as the Venture Brothers’ Jackson Publick).

I’m also pleased to announce that publisher John Wiley and Sons has accepted my proposal to write a book exploring generational attitudes about technology in the workplace. It is going to be called Generation Blend: Managing Across the Technology Age Gap and it is scheduled to be out next February. That means I am going to be working hard on the manuscript all summer and will have limited time and energy for blogging. Please bear with me.

9:47:50 PM    Emphasize This! []

Hitchens vs. God

Yesterday while out shopping for the new Lord of the Rings book (out of stock everywhere I looked), I happened on a new offering from Christopher Hitchens entitled God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Now despite Hitchens' recent bout of dementia regarding the war, he remains our most gifted polemicist and a devestatingly clear thinker on the subject of religion. God is Not Great is an equal-opportunity rant against practically all forms of faith, from the big-three monotheistic creeds to Hinduism, eastern mysticism and faith-based political ideologies like Communism and fascism.

I'm about halfway through it (it's a quick read, especially if you are somewhat familiar with the topic) and give it a B or B- so far. While typically witty and well-written in spots, it has all the hallmarks of a quickie rushed out to divert attention away from Hitchens' unfortunate lapse of judgment about Bush and the war, and remind everyone that he's such a prickly, contrary bastard that his position on Iraq can be explained away as ideosyncratic. Surely if he believes what he says in God is Not Great, Hitchens must be deeply troubled by the delusionally faith-based natures of the people standing next to him at the neo-con barricades.

But regardless, the evident joy that Hitchens expresses in challenging the saintly credentials of Mother Theresa, taking apart the muddled arguments of creationists like a jewler disassembling an old pocketwatch, and comparing Hassidic mohels to child-molesters (among many other delightful examples) brings us perilously close to the point of forgiving Hitchens for his misplaced enthusiasms. Despite its occasional elipses in argument and propensity for the too-clever-by-half turn of phrase, God is Not Great is a welcome antidote to the epidemic of sanctity and the cordon of unearned respect that discourages the public challenge of bizarre, atavistic and superstitious beliefs in a world that should, by all rights, have moved past such nonsense.

9:47:23 PM    Emphasize This! []

Ready for His Close-up

Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist, a documentary by Andrew Cooke, is slated to debut this weekend at the Tribecca Film Festival. As a longtime fan of Eisner and an acquaintance of Andrew and his brother Jon, I am delighted to see this work get its public premier in New York, the inspiration for much of Eisner's great work. Andrew has a video blog discussing the film over at Huffington Post.

9:46:59 PM    Emphasize This! []

Impending Doom

9:43:13 PM    Emphasize This! []

John McCain Attacked by Scanners!

(image courtesy of Shakes)

9:42:41 PM    Emphasize This! []

Straight to the Pet Cemetery

I had the Gonzales hearing on in the background while I was doing some work today. Man, it's hard to recall a shabbier performance by a public official on the hot seat. And there's been some tough competition.

Not even Tom Colburn of Oklahoma, who is a strong contender for the most conservative Republican in the Senate, was impressed. In fact, he probably asked the question of the day - basically, why not hold yourself to the same standards of performance that you claim to have sacked the US Attorneys for? Needless to say, the Democrats were at least as relentless, and no one turned in the kind of cringeworthy embarrassing performance that, say, Joe Biden is often capable of.

Shame and contrition are not exactly the defining characteristics of the Bush Administration, so there is no guarantee that an Attorney General who enthusiastically cops to egregious incompetence as the only plausible excuse for political hackery and massive corruption will not get some kind of Presidential Medal of Freedom. However, the writing on the wall is now about ten feet tall. Even “unnamed sources” in the White House are trash-talking behind Gonzales’s back, according to CNN. Surely the time must be nearing when Abu Gonzales is tossed over the gunnels.

If so, it will be a good day for the country when the architect of our enemy combatant policy, the author of the torture memo (“events render quaint certain provisions of the Geneva Conventions”), the legal mind behind the unitary executive and Presidential signing statements, and the superintendent of the largest domestic spying program directed at American citizens at least since Nixon’s time, is finally dragged from office in well-earned disgrace. Even better, with this performance, he has been exposed for posterity as a figure so thoroughly dishonest that even Senate Republicans will have nothing further to do with him.

9:42:16 PM    Emphasize This! []

Freedom in Theory and Practice

Matthew wrote, in a comment to the thread below:

Hugo Chavez? When did you start guest-blogging here?

Seriously, Rob - that little rant sounds like a practice speech for a tinpot dictator looking for justification to nationalize or shut down the media. Every opponent is an enemy of the state, every idea in opposition is an attack on the fundamentals of the country.

Do you guys even listen to yourselves any more? I think Brent touched on it the other day - you guys have internalized your hate and rage to such an extent that you can't even see it any more (my words, not Brent's).

Gah. I'm going to stop typing right now before I say something I regret. You did good a couple of weeks ago when you condemned Chavez as an authoritarian thug. You might want to ponder just how much you have in common philosophically.

I guess it's a matter of degree. As I touched on the other day in my post on impeachment, I am convinced by the evidence that we're dealing with a unique threat to the whole basis of American civil society, secular government and "freedom" as we've defined it since the Enlightenment. The policies advocated by the far Right in this country go well beyond simple policy disagreements. They represent an existential threat to everything I believe in and stand for, and in everything I believe America stands for. Just listen to what they say, and what they've persuaded millions of confused, resentful, and (justifiably) afraid people to believe. Orcinus is a good place to start.

History shows that allowing these movements to build and spread is how republics turn into empires and democratic states become authoritarian ones or worse. Almost always, somewhere along this process, the anti-authoritarian majority fragments because one side is committed to the longterm preservation of the democratic state, and the other is fixated on uncompromising adherence to certain principles, even if the application of those principles ends up undermining the civility and general political concensus on which civil society depends. This is what opens the door to the minority who hates freedom and has no internal conflicts about how to advance their political goals (or what to do about their political enemies).

It's a tough decision. Sticking to principles always looks like the brave and right choice, up until the very moment when it's suddenly the most foolish of all possible options. Just ask the German Socialist party of the 1930s that refused to form a coalition with the centrists, thereby allowing Hitler to be named Chancellor. Or the feuding democratic socialist parties in Russia in 1917 who fell to the Bolsheviks.

So, no, it doesn't please me to be compared to Hugo Chavez, especially because it is clear how and why you would make that comparison. There are good reasons to distrust authoritarians of the left, and good reasons to fear undermining the principles of a free society. Everyone has to decide for themselves where to draw the line. My stand is, I won't hand someone a baseball bat and let them beat me over the head. Your mileage may vary.

9:42:02 PM    Emphasize This! []

Basic Fairness

(this started out as a response to comments in the thread below, but then I thought, "wait, this is my blog - I can just post!")

A couple of points about the Fairness Doctrine as it relates to free speech and the free market:

First, boradcasters don't own the airwaves. Those are owned in common by the public and licensed on our behalf to station owners by the government, so this is not strictly a free enterprise scenario. In fact, I think what undid the Fairness Doctrine in the 80s was the growing prevalance of cable outlets, which were not regulated in the same way. Broadcasters claimed the doctrine put them at a competitive disadvantage with cable carriers, which is entirely a separate argument from the ideological point. As a practical matter, it would be difficult to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine simply because the government has no legal basis for regulating signals carried on private networks. I believe there is a communication worker in the house who might be able to enlighten us further on the legalities of this situation as it applies to cable lines, phone lines and wirleine data networks...

But on the underlying point, it's disingenuous to suggest that all speech and all participation is a good thing. Propaganda based on the spreading of lies is demonstrably destructive to free societies. Examples abound. Sometimes there's nothing you can do about it, but in this case, the public owns the airwaves and doesn't have to be complicit in its own deception by licensing people (or entities) whose sole purpose is to influence political decisions by distributing disinformation and inflamatory rhetoric.

And that's what it comes down to: the lies and the hate, not the conservatism, per se. If Limbaugh or Hannity or any of these other guys were just commentators with an agenda, that would be one thing. But they systematically distort the truth, to the point that their listeners consider a number of things to be "true" that are contrary to established facts (for example, Saddam's lack of WMDs, or the utter absence of evidence of a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda, etc. A growing number of studies testify to this). People who consume this stuff thinking it's news are not just uninformed - they are being deliberately fed disinformation that leads them to policy positions that they would likely not support if they knew the truth. Or, sometimes worse, they are hearing public figures validate prejudices and stereotypes (against Arabs, against Mexicans, etc) that verge on justification for ethnic violence.

Does this happen on the Left? Sometimes, although it is hard to find an example as prominent and popular as those on the right. The appetite for hatred and pleasing lies certainly seems to be greater among conservatives these days.

Lest this sound partisan, recall that one of the motivations for the Fairness Doctrine in the first place were the activities of left-wing agitators on the radio, like the socialist priest Father Caughlin ("share the wealth!") and others of that ilk. Today's worst malefactors happen to be conservatives, but the principle of setting rules for balanced discourse on the public airways was not ideologically aimed at the right in its conception.

Again, sometimes there's nothing you can do about this. If these folks want to spout off in newspapers that they own and distribute or broadcast their lies on networks where they own the carriage, that's life. But broadcast frequency is public property. It is often remarked that the antidote to bad speech is more speech. The Fairness Doctrine was an attempt to address that balance by regulating the private use of a public asset. It seems to me that objections to the Fairness Doctrine are at least as motivated by politics and partisanship as the arguments in favor of it.

Update: It has been pointed out to me in private communications that advocating government control or ownership of banks and expressing distrust of capitalism were features not just of the Left, but also of fascist ideology in the 1930s (the Nazis were "national socialists" after all), and that Father Coughlin is probably best characterized as advocating a kind of statist-racist-ultra nationalism based on Catholic principles (think Pat Buchanan with a state-ownership-of-banks plank). As such, it was plainly wrong to suggest he was any kind of leftist. However, he was clearly an extreme and irresponsible political agitator who trafficked in fear and ethnic stereotypes through the medium of radio, which was my basic point.

9:41:24 PM    Emphasize This! []

So It Goes

Word this morning that author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. died yesterday at the age of 84. As a teenager, I read most of his books, starting with Slaughterhouse Five and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. He was my first "favorite writer" of any real quality or significance, and he probably had a lot to do with the formation of my attitudes toward war. A lifelong smoker, Vonnegut appeared to be in precarious health a few months ago when he appeared on the Daily Show with (an obviously worshipful) Jon Stewart. It is doubtful we'll see his like again - which is too bad, because we need men like that more than ever these days.

9:40:56 PM    Emphasize This! []

Bad Reception

The whole Imus thing really pisses me off. I never listen to the guy and really don’t know much about him or his show, and I recognize that it can be unfair to judge someone by their worst moment. I’m also no big fan of political correctness or of going through life perpetually offended by the utterances of insensitive idiots.

No, what pisses me off about Imus is not just the tastelessness of his remark, but the  whole circumstance of the situation. He wasn’t making fun of some celebrity or politician, and he wasn’t making some general comment about no one in particular. No, for some reason known only to himself, Imus decided to make fun of a group of college girls  – probably around the ages of 19 or 20 – the day after what had to be a terrible disappointment (losing a national championship). The guy has three million listeners, and he uses his microphone to ridicule a team of amateur athletes who have a lot to be proud of, to get some kind of a cheap laugh. It’s only the icing on the shit-cake that he chose to use a crude and ugly racial slur to express his disrespect.

Imus claims he’s not a bad guy – he just said a bad thing. And it’s true that bad words sometimes pass the lips of good people. Generally speaking, I don't think people should be fired when that happens. But no good person uses a position of power and visibility to pick on the powerless. The words he used were beside the point. It was the meanness, the cheapness and the cruelty that offends. He didn’t merely slander an entire race or gender. He hurt real people – people with friends and families they have to face – for no reason other than he found something funny about the way they looked. And he didn’t give it a second thought until someone raised a stink about it.

Tell me again, with so many talented people toiling in obscurity in this country, why we need to excuse or protect pissants like Imus? There must be 30 or 40 people in the New York area alone who could step into his shoes in a second and run a radio program just as edgy and entertaining as his, without the baggage of being an egregious bullying dickhead. Instead, his bosses “suspend” him for a couple of weeks, no doubt secretly hoping that this notoriety will increase his popularity. The media plays the whole thing out as another regrettable incident of naughty language and “inappropriate attitudes” to cluck their tongues about – as if it were simply the words that were unfortunate and not the genuine ugliness behind the act. And once again, we get the message that, once you are famous – for whatever reason – there’s no such thing as bad publicity and no such thing as real consequences.

Update: Ron's got a good rant on this subject over at his place.

9:40:32 PM    Emphasize This! []

Play Ball

This week marks the great occasion of the start of baseball season. Here in Seattle, where losing springs eternal, we are girded for another disappointing season from our fightin' M's. Nevertheless, they surprised us by bursting out of the chute with two wins against the hated Oakland A's, including a satifying throttling by our hot young phenom pitcher "King" Felix Hernandez in the opener. Alas, on Wednesday night, reality intruded. I could tell you about it, but it would be hard to top this gameday summary by the inimitable Jeff from Mariner uber-blog Lookout Landing:

Today was kind of like that Simpsons episode where Marge and Homer tell the kids they're going to Disneyland, but then drive to the dentist. Only instead of thinking we were going to Disneyland we thought we were getting a day off from being lashed with a belt, and instead of a dental appointment we were taken to the friendly neighborhood colonoscopist. And the colonoscopist is Canadian and likes his new office and says he thinks he'll stick around for a while, and that you'll probably want to schedule another check-up exam in a few weeks. And all his instruments are cold and pointy and whirr like drills, and he can't wait to see how well they work on an actual human patient. Yeah, that's kind of what today was like.

Go M's!

9:40:15 PM    Emphasize This! []

Lives of the Rich and Empty

I’m not one to complain unduly about the overabundance of celebrity gossip that dominates the news. Gossip is hot. I get that. I admit to being surprised and even a little curious to hear that Anna Nicole Smith just suddenly died. She wasn’t the picture of health or anything, but she was my age, which I still like to consider in the “too young to die” range. So I watched the coverage – at least the first few days of it – because it was interesting in a morbid, indulgent kind of way.

No, what disappoints me is the low quality of the people being gossiped about. Anna Nicole, Brittany, Tom Cruise, the British Royals, Paris Hilton – these are boring, empty people whose acts of stupidity and self-destruction seem motivated by the most banal and trivial types of character flaws. If I’m going to waste my time worrying about other people’s problems and feeling better about myself because, hey, they might be rich and famous but they’re way more screwed up than I am, I at least want the object of my attention to have done something worthwhile to gain their initial fame. Where’s the tragedy in the fall of someone who was no higher than dirt in the first place? “Trailer trash princess acts like trailer trash.” Big shocker there. Come on, folks, we can do better.

Now Robert Downey, Jr – there’s someone worth gossiping about. Why? Because he’s obviously incredibly talented, and his problems app