So: Walzer.

Me and Jason watched last night (after the Michael Jackson Private Home Movies special--it was a good night) an interview with Michael Walzer on PBS. Not surprisingly, they focused on his views on terrorism, which I will summarize in a second.

First, though, let me give a brief summary of Walzer himself. He is one of the most important living American political philosophers. He has written Just and Unjust Wars and Spheres of Justice and edits the journal Dissent. I wouldn't go so far as to say I agree with him about most things, but Dissent is a fine (if a bit too Hitchens-y / old-guard Jewish leftist) magazine, and he manages to be a public intellectual in America, a rare enough feat in this day and age that he deserves respect for that alone.

Here, then, is a ridiculously reductionary summary of his argument about terrorism.

- Terrorism is any indiscriminate act of aggression against noncombatants (aka "civilians" or "innocents"). That indiscriminate is imporant, for Walzer, since what he calls the "Revolutionary Code of Honor" that existed pre-WWII allowed for the selective assasination of political leaders, but not innocent bystanders. Thus, "terrorism" encompasses not only suicide bombings, but the fire-bombing of Dresden and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War Two.

- Although we primarily think of terrorism today as the weapon of the weak and the fanatical, the responsibility for modern terrorism's origins (aka the Revolutonary Code of Honor being violated) lies with the West during WWII, specifically with the American actions above and the German holocaust and bombing of London. Thus, although he never states this explicitly in the interview, it is the responsibility of the rationalist west to end terrorism.

- Terrorism, by dint of its refusal to recognize barriers between combatants and non-combatants, and its indiscriminate choice of targets, makes the group targeted by terrorism worthless in the eyes of the terrorists; if any of them are worthy of being killed, all of them are worthy of being killed, and there is no group for which that is true. Thus, terrorism is an absolute moral wrong and should be universally condemned.

- Since terrorism is universally wrong, it should be universally opposed, and excusing it for any reason is simply to encourage evil. Thus, the police force should be encourage to defend against individual acts of terrorism.

- Terrorism was started by the rationalist western powers, although upon reflection Japan would be in here too with the Rape of Nanking, but whatever. Thus, the way to end modern terrorism as a phenomenon is for it to be universally condemned through rationalism, and for knowledge of the history of terrorism and revolution be spread throughout the world so that all might see it as a moral wrong.

So let's look at this. (Hopefully I haven't misrepresented it.) It starts off good, but then it goes a bit downhill as he gets twisted up in his logic--I tend to agree with the first two points, but less so with the last three. It was interesting to watch the program because you could kind of see this happening as the interviewer started pressing Walzer for solutions, although he pulled it all out after a brief bit of confusion. The bit at the end in particular, though, is a decent example of why I'm embarassed for political theory sometimes--it's just so, you know, blinkered intellectual, "show them the truth and they will be set free" etc., the idea that if people all just know what I know the problem would be solved. That, in other words, political theory can solve all the world's problems. I think that's kind of wishful thinking, but hey, maybe it could work, and it's not necessarily the biggest piece of his argument anyway, so let's move on.

Next we have the unqualified assertion that the best defense against individual acts of terrorism is the police force. Well, here we have a problem, given how the current technique of fighting terrorism with the police force is leading to strong erosion of key liberal democratic values like civil liberties and limiting the power of government. It's interesting to see Walzer slip into the trap that much of America is falling into today (or Britain was falling into twenty years ago, or Japan was falling into ten years ago, or Israel has been in for the last thirty years) of becoming so concerned with terrorism because it has the capacity for utter annihilation of individuals that they lose sight of issues that have far more importance for the polity as a whole or large groups within it. I think Walzer is obviously not there as much as John Ashcroft is, but I still see a tendency in Hitchens and some of the other lefty folks who fancy themselves followers of Orwell to become so reactionary against the (perceived or actual) views of the radical movement that they start to inch uncomfortably close to the neo-conservatives--a faith which is, after all, far more the evil twin of leftism than old-guard conservativism, given their Israel policy, their foreign-policy rhetoric, and their faith in government control. I'm not saying police shouldn't be involved in stopping terrorism; I'm just saying that for that to be Walzer's only answer is a bit weird, given that he even admitted earlier in the interview that, in areas that become involved in terrorism, past foreign policy is often partially to blame, and finding some way to correct these mistakes might be an effective technique. It's like he's so worried about being an apologist for terrorism that he loses sight of the practicalities of the situation and the fact that you need the carrot, not just the stick, to correct most political problems.

Indeed, it is this weird blindness to practicalities that is so confusing about Walzer's position. Early in the interview, while making the case for terrorism being an absolute wrong, he qualifies it by saying that he's sure some moral philosopher could come up with a situation where killing a thousand innocents prevents a million deaths, but he preferred not to think about so horrible a situation, and so terrorism = bad, that's it. But this is a weirdly abolutist moral position for an ostensible political philosopher. It seems to me that, right or wrong, terrorism is a reality of our world, and it's not going to be going away anytime soon, no matter what Michael Walzer has to say about it. It has become another weapon in the arsenal, and I think it's something we're going to have to engage with instead of simply condemning; I think the Israeli response to terrorism has been that of simple condemnation, and we can all see how well that's working.

So let me skirt the issue of the morality of terrorism as something those silly moral philosophers would be concerned about and instead focus on whether or not people will think it is morally wrong and how to get them to think that, as befits a political theorist. Walzer is, I think, quite deliberately including the atomic bomb in his definition of terrorism not just to condemn it but also to bolster his argument by equalting suicide bombing with nuclear bombing. But there are many differences, not least of which is the impetus for use and the consequences thereof. It is easier to absolutely condemn nuclear war because if an individual employs that tool, the reaction to it is very likely to result in his death, and so condemning something that will probably get you killed is logical. With terrorism, sad to say, one could very easily play the odds and assume that placing a bomb in a market will result in a net gain for you and your group, and as horrible as that may be, that is politics--we oppose welfare because it raises our taxes, we support tax hikes for the rich because it makes our public transportation run better. (Trying to be fair to both sides here.) Those are, of course, non-fatal issues, but they are issues for a polity that does not live under a tyrranical regime. So while I see Walzer's point, I have a hard time seeing its application; in a situation where absolute moral wrongs like torture and genocide are being carried out against your people, the fine points of terrorism's morality fall to the wayside in favor of the politics of getting yourself out of danger. The unfortunate reality is that terrorism sometimes works, and in the face of that fact, a lot of things stop mattering. Walzer has not given groups whose members practice terrorism any incentive to condemn that practice aside from saying that it is wrong.

Walzer's says that oppressed peoples should not have to use terrorism because it is an "elite" tool and that mass movements can acheive success just as well, so terrorism is simply what those groups that can't mount enough support to work politically do to get their way. But again, there's a difference between the technocratic elitism of the atomic bomb and the guy-in-the-basement individualism (not elitism, I don't think, although I don't mean to imply that one's good and one's bad by making that distinction) of suicide bombing. Besides which, as mentioned above, there are some situations where traditional political movements simply won't work, and there are other situations where, outside of liberal democracy, a minority is being oppressed by the majority and cannot mount a popular movement because, simply, they are outnumbered. He checks off a convenient list of examples where mass movements succeeded--India, Poland, etc.--but forgets the advantages these people enjoyed that were such a big part of their success.

So, as Jason says, I think Walzer has a lot to respond to here before his theory stops being Bushian "moral clarity" and starts being politics we can use. I think he's constructed a good theory, but simply saying terrorism is evil and believing it no matter what doesn't help us figure out situations where, evil or not, terrorism might seem like a good idea.
posted by Mike B. at 3:07 PM 0 comments

Good review by W. Bowers today of the Uncle Tupelo rereleases which he leads off with quotes from Jeff Tweedy's blip in Bookforum. How charmingly dorky! Here's the full Tweedy quote:

JEFF TWEEDY (MUSICIAN, Wilco)
I recently read a collection of essays: BUBBLEGUM MUSIC IS THE NAKED TRUTH: THE DARK HISTORY OF PREPUBESCENT POP, FROM THE BANANA SPLITS TO BRITNEY SPEARS, edited by Kim Cooper and David Smay. If an anthropologist from the distant future came back to our time, *NSYNC would tell him more about our culture than any Will Oldham record—definitely more than a Wilco record. People have this misperception that if something's easy to listen to or easy to read or easy to understand, then it was easy to do. I think the opposite is true. The circuit between Justin Timberlake and a fourteen–year–old girl is what's really important about music, and I definitely would argue that that connection is more profound than the one between an Interpol record and a fifty–year–old rock critic. Me? I'm just trying to connect with myself.

This is interesting given the following three facts: a) I hate Jeff Tweedy, b) I disagree with what he's saying, and c) it's pretty much exactly what I was saying yesterday. Crap. Of course, Tweedy is somewhat skirting the issue--anthropologists (or, more accurately, social historians) will focus on pop bands, and good for them, but it does seem likely that music historians will be more interested in stuff like Autreche, Beck, and Kool Keith--and, I guess, Wilco, although probably not Palace, if there's any justice in the world. (I will let the "connect with myself" bit slide except for this: Jeff, maybe that's your problem, huh guy? Shoot for the thirteen-year-old girl, it'd be hilarious if nothing else.) I think it would be more accurate to say that the connection between a thirteen-year-old and girl and Justin is just as important as that between default.hipster and Interpol, or my hippie neighbor and the Slip, or Robert Christgau and his scrotal sac, or Greil Marcus and his portable Derrida reader. Tweedy is engaging in the almost-as-annoying indie-rock reverse snobbery cliche, wherein instead of 7"'s with a run of 50 hand-etched copies being the only thing that matters, top 40 radio is the only thing that matters. Well, no, they both matter, and there's good and bad in each. There are some shitty Backstreet Boys songs and there are some good ones. (Most prefer "I Want It That Way," but I can't help but love "Backstreet's Back." I guess I'm a sucker for any song with the group's name in the title.) It's just--it's all valid, Jeff, and some of it's good, and all of it is something you can steal from, and learn from, and comment on, and with, and to. Eek.

The Walzer entry will have to wait a few minutes now--didn't mean to make this so long. I shall return.

posted by Mike B. at 12:34 PM 0 comments

Thursday, April 24, 2003

The Nation gives it up for the Daily Show and mentions that it has a bigger audience than Fox News. Score!

posted by Mike B. at 6:22 PM 0 comments

black like them
Simon Reynolds takes off on an ILM thread in his latest post and goes off on how difficult it must be to be a white American who wants to be involved in hip-hop, the "most significant and exciting form of American popular music these last 25 years." It's interesting, but it's also very British (sort of the equivalent of Americans pitying Brits for not having nice big cars or something like that) and about 6 years out of date, I'd reckon. Certainly this used to be true, and was a clear source of discomfort for a decent number of white kids, and maybe even remains that. But the fact of the matter is that hip-hop being "our music" doesn't really mean "black music" anymore, at least not for most people. The idea is more that hip-hop is a culture unto itself, and as long as you remain "true" to the culture, it doesn't matter what race you are. So, for instance, we're seeing in places like Def Jux and Anticon and a lot of the other undie hip-hop (to say nothing of Eminem) the first generation of white kids who, growing up in urban areas, essentially grew up in hip-hop culture. And while rap-rock was the first (embarassing) incarnation of this, in 5-10 years you're going to see suburban white kids exhibit this same degree of trueness, I expect, since hip-hop has become the dominant mode of popular music in America lately and so they've grown up with it, too. There's a surprisingly degree of equanimity in hip-hop these days from what I can see, and while some of this is based on embarassing superficialities (dressing the part, where you grew up) there's also an element of meritocracy--if you've got the skills, you can at least get your foot in the door. Whites do enjoy a lower status on the worker end of hip-hop (as well they should, all things considered) but a white kid needn't necessarily be embarassed to like it anymore. It's accepted, and it's a far more rebellious act in terms of parental approval than being into rock.

The ILM thread doesn't really get into this though, as far as I can tell, and in fairness the whole thing is supposed to center around the whiteness of indie-rock, not about white kids in general not being able to get into hip-hop. I don't agree with a lot of what I saw on my limited viewing of the exhaustive thread--for instance, I think anyone who thinks the Rapture is only drawing on Gang of Four instead of "actual" black music hasn't heard anything besides House of Jealous Lovers, as their more DFA-heavy stuff is extremely dancy in an R&B way--I tend to agree, in a qualified way. I mean, I think it's OK for indie-rock to be white, although I'd like it to own up to that a lot more, as admission of an actual white culture could be quite interesting. The people on the thread who seem to be saying that Amerindie (great term there) is bad because it's lost contact with black music are being annoyingly reductive, and you do have to recognize that Jack White's (for instance) opposition to hip-hop is based largely on its ubiquity, not its actual content or race. Now, I have a big beef with that attitude, too, but let's not pretend it's racism. And let's be willing to admit that white music has its peaks, too.

But if you replace "black music" with "popular music" (as Reynolds would like to, I think) stamp my passport for that excursion, ma'am. It's just so strange to me to see the way indie rock divorces itself from the mainstream, and the attitude of "ew that sounds like it could be on the radio, you sold out man" (cf Pitchfork) is weirdly similar to activists' notions of politics as an all-or-nothing proposition. Just because music is put out by a corporation doesn't mean that it was made by a corporation, and just because it's on the radio doesn't mean it loses all merit. Hip-hop has a much broader view of this conundrum--see, for instance, the Majesticons/Infesticons project, which alternates one album sounding like slick mainstream hip-hop with one of undie hip-hop, entered into this imaginary feud with each other. Indie rock can be embarassing when it tries to do that, but I think that's less because it shouldn't do it and more because it doesn't know how--or, more accurately, because it has the wrong attitude towards it. Indie rock has a very condescending attitude toward everything else in culture (for instance, can you see any indie-rocker sincerely using the hook Jay-Z uses for "The City is Mine" without being drummed out of the club?), and that's one of the most annoying things about it, not least because it results in the music being stifled artistically. I like the Beatles and, I dunno, Motorhead just fine, but I don't think their talents overwhelms all other talent, nor do I think that music has to be twenty years old to be a valid reference point. Why the hell wouldn't you steal stuff from the mainstream and repurpose it? If you have a critique of the mainstream, why do you avoid it instead of engaging with it? It's that weird, absolutely maddening repulsion to anything smacking of being too popular or too well-known that makes me want to take a fucking blowtorch to my fellow hipsters sometimes, although mainly I love them.

As for myself, I admit that not everything I do sits comfortably besides a Neptunes song, but some of it does. I don't know if I want to go platinum, but I want to at least sound like I could, both because the songs are good and because I'm not afraid to limit myself to what's acceptable. The mainstream is hugely interesting, at least as interesting as the underground, and I do wish more of my contemporaries would see through the hype and try to engage with it.

posted by Mike B. at 5:53 PM 0 comments

Here is what the New York State legislature wants: more funds for schools, and a tax increase of 7/10 of a percent for people earning over $100,000 a year. Seven-tenths of a percent.

Here is what the New York State Governor, George Pataki, has to say about that:

"I would hope that they will not pass it. But I have made it very plain that I will oppose and fight any job-killing tax, such as a personal income tax surcharge, that I believe would really hurt this state's economic competitiveness and drive jobs out."

Not surprisingly, his ratings are dropping, given that favoring the rich over schoolchildren is not the most popular stance. I bet GOPAC is wetting its collective trousers, though.

posted by Mike B. at 4:55 PM 0 comments

Oh, and I had a letter in the Review this week, the Review being the ol' college paper. Here it is, in case it gets archived out:

To the Editors:

A few years back, Lawrence Summers visited Oberlin. His visit had been preceded by a slew of negative publicity about his pro-globalization stance, and as he took the podium in Finney Chapel to speak, a large banner was unfurled from the balcony and he was drowned out by the shouts of many students. When I asked some if they could please be quiet so we could at least hear what he had to say first, the response was, and I quote: “Uh, democracy?!”

Now, I confess I don’t know entirely what this meant, but I suppose it was pointing out our right to free speech. But this is indicative of the problems of the left. While it is true that we enjoy various rights, it might not be in the interests of the responsible citizen to exercise them all simultaneously, as the activists seemed to want to do. After all, the Constitution does not require us to speak, worship or congregate (or bear arms); it simply stipulates that we be allowed to if we so choose. And while I respect my fellow citizen’s choices, I do get the feeling sometimes that they might be more effective if they spoke softly on occasion, or even did not speak at all, since this is how politics sometimes operates, as opposed to talk shows on the Fox News Channel. That is to say: the left needs to choose between being right and being successful, because when you’re successful, you’re just not always going to be right. And that’s okay.

The left’s obsession with speech issues, recently highlighted here in the debate over the anti-Zionist (or, I guess, pro-racist) graffiti, seems strange in light of its interests. I think that at heart most on the left shares the same attitude about Israel — that it deserves to exist, but the policies of the Likud party are fundamentally unjust — and yet all involved scream at such a pitch that this consensus view slips through the cracks, and our Israel policy continues to be driven by the neo-conservative point of view. Take a gander at that movement: you don’t very often see Richard Pearle publicly dressing-down Donald Rumsfeld for using a term anathema to his ideology, yet we on the left seem obsessed with speech issues among ourselves, constantly debating not only who has the right to speak, but who feels comfortable speaking. This seems very, very strange to me when the people actually opposed to our interests think some of us should be taken off planes, kept from positions of authority, deported, jailed, etc., which seems a far more egregious act of silencing. Isn’t what they’re saying a more worthy object of criticism?

Some students will be graduating soon, and at that point they face a choice. They can continue within the activist culture that (regrettably) dominates the Oberlin political discourse, but they must recognize that this is a culture above all else, often more concerned with its own internal workings than with actually affecting the larger world. Or they can begin to fully participate in electoral politics, instead of screaming at people. It would be nice if the left was more interested in creating the good than simply criticizing the bad, and while I recognize that neither the Democrats nor the activists are really there yet, I think that with the help of some of our very smart Oberlin students — even ones who say confusing things to me in Finney Chapel — our nation can get a little closer to where it should be.

—Michael Barthel
OC ’01

posted by Mike B. at 10:30 AM 0 comments

So if you're Bill O'Reilly, and you're emceeing a Washington benefit for inner-city schoolchildren, and one of the groups of children is late, what do you say to break the tension?

"I hope they're not in the parking lot stealing our hubcaps."

Musta been a pleasant chill in that room.

posted by Mike B. at 10:24 AM 0 comments

People can make some pretty cool sculptures with Peeps.

Also, an oldie but a goodie: Peep Research.

posted by Mike B. at 10:22 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, April 23, 2003

A very good op-ed about governing Iraq which I am far too tired to comment on right now.

posted by Mike B. at 6:15 PM 0 comments

Our old friend Newt Gingrich made a speech to the American Enterprise Institute, and Salon has printed the transcript. Let's gut this baby.

The State Department took the President's strong position and negotiated a resolution that shifted from verification to inspection. This was in part done because of internal State Department politics because verification would have put the policy in the hands of people who disagreed with the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs' propensity for appeasing dictators and propping up corrupt regimes.

Uh, isn't that the CIA? Newt here is playing to the AEI's prejudices, so I don't entirely know what he's talking about, but presumably it's some sort of neo-conservative bugaboo. Anyway, it's far too glib.

From President Bush's clear choice between two worlds, the State Department had descended into a murky game in which the players were deceptive and the rules were stacked against the United States.

Alternately, Bush's myopic, reductive worldview was destined to fail in a world that is, in fact, murky, and largely distrusts the U.S. But.

The State Department communications program failed during these five months to such a degree that 95 percent of the Turkish people opposed the American position. This fit in with a pattern of State Department communications failures as a result of which the South Korean people regarded the United States as more dangerous than North Korea and a vast majority of French and German citizens favored policies that opposed the United States.

And [descending slide whistle noise] here's where it starts to get wrong. This is absolutely untrue. The reason State was pressing for increased UN efforts was because public opinion was already well on its way to child-molester levels. Newt's argument would be, I guess, that since everyone was so impressed by the military success in Iraq, if we had just done it sooner the numbers would never have gotten that high. But in the case of Turkey, just as a for instance, we had a problem wholly unassociated with the UN where their democratic system rejected putting our troops on their soil, and we ended up having to wait for these troops to work their way south in order to start the invasion anyway. And surely a lot of the problems were due to Rumsfeld's groaningly ham-handed public pronouncements. These are all separate from the UN, and the decision to go back there obviously didn't cost America that much because we invaded after canceling a vote. We lost a few weeks, and the world hated us just as much either way. Some neo-conservatives are at least honest enough to admit that they don't care.

Now the State Department is back at work pursuing policies that will clearly throw away all the fruits of hard won victory.

1. The concept of the American Secretary of State going to Damascus to meet with a terrorist-supporting, secret-police-wielding dictator is ludicrous. The United States military has created an opportunity to apply genuine economic, diplomatic and political pressure on Syria. The current Syrian dictatorship openly hosts seven terrorists' offices in downtown Damascus, in public, with recognized addresses. The current Syrian dictatorship is still developing chemical weapons of mass destruction and will not allow inspections. The current Syrian dictatorship is still occupying Lebanon to the disadvantage of peace in the region and is still transmitting weapons and support for Hezbollah in southern Lebanon where there are more than 11,000 rockets and missiles aimed at Israel. This is a time for America to demand changes in Damascus before a visit is even considered. The visit should be a reward for public change not an appeal to a weak, economically depressed dictatorship.

I've never really understood the political reasoning that posits that visiting is appeasement, not engagement. I think Powell has actually learned a hard lesson from Gulf War II, which is that he needs to get out of the fucking country in order to get anything done. This aside, however, the idea that now is the key time to engage with Syria is ludicrous. They pose no threat to us whatsoever, and to the best of my knowledge, none of the terrorist groups they house have every lifted a finger against the US. Let's not let our military bite off more than our diplomacy can chew. It's true that they are a serious issue in the extremely important peace negotiations with Israel, but whatever happened to "Speak softly and carry a big stick?" The big stick is there. Now we will be more likely to achieve success through treating them with some degree of respect rather than coldly shutting them out. Politicians know damn well that sometimes you need to shake the hand of the person you hate to get what you want.

3. The people the State Department has sent to Iraq so far represent the worst instincts of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. They were promoted in a culture of propping up dictators, coddling the corrupt and ignoring the secret police. They have a constituency of Middle East governments deeply opposed to democracy in Iraq. Their instinct is to create a weak Iraqi government that will not threaten its Syrian, Iranian, Saudi and other dictatorial neighbors.

Oh, bullshit. How is Defense's sponsorship of Chalabi, a man who defrauded Jordan of $200 million, any more moral? All I know is that State does seem a lot more concerned with creating an actual functioning representative democracy rather than an administration blindly pro-American which will probably fall to Islamist groups within ten years.

4. The announcement that someone from the Agency for International Development would work to help reconstruct Iraq was a further sign that nothing has been learned. As of two weeks ago, not one mile of road had been paved in Afghanistan. This absolute failure of American entrepreneurship was a direct result of the State Department blocking the Corps of Engineers from being directly involved. There is no reason to believe AID will be any better in Iraq than the disaster it has been in Afghanistan. As one AID official told the Post, "Afghans need to understand the lengthy bureaucratic processes of AID and not become impatient." That is exactly the wrong attitude and helps explain why the State Department should be transformed but AID should be abolished.

You mean the organization that we forgot to give money to? That one? That one that is, for some weird reason, failing? Underfunding an agency and then declaring it a failure is a classic conservative technique. The gall anyone connected with the administration has to bring up Afghanistan as a "failure"--the absolute fucking gall--is cynicism of the highest order.

Our ability to lead is more communications, diplomatic, and assistance-based than military. People have always admired us more than feared us.

The collapse of the State Department as an effective instrument puts all this at risk. We must learn the transforming lessons of the last six months and apply them to create a more effective State Department.

And here I agree with him--well, except that we totally disagree. See, I think the reason that State's had so many problems is that because every time they say something, Rumsfeld comes out and says the exact opposite. How is this fostering anything besides "a broken instrument of international communication"? Time and time again, the DoD has come out and undermined State's authority in a very public way that has, time and time again, angered our allies. Let's not pretend that the "failure" of State is due to its own desire to prop up dictators when it's clear that the Pentagon opposes its policy choices at every opportunity, refusing to conduct these discussions behind the scenes and instead presenting a squabbling and vindictive administration that cares far more for its own internal working than for its image abroad. Let's not pretend State is this evil subversive bureaucracy when Powell's deputy is an ally of the neo-cons at Defense.

Gingrich's speech is a unique distillation of the cynical, manipulative politics of the neo-conservative movement: when they see an institution they don't like, they undermine it and then declare it defunct, when it never had a chance to maneuver in the first place. It's unclear what Newt wants State to be like in the future, but all I know is that I like having competing interests in government, because then maybe we won't fuck up quite so much. Give State room to breathe, let it do its job, and then we'll see how it does, OK? Claiming that they work counter to the President's interests implies that Paul Wolfowitz's wishes are the President's, and for now that's just not true.

posted by Mike B. at 4:56 PM 0 comments

So who was stealing those antiquities from the Iraqi National Museum, you ask?

A Fox News employee.

I shit you not. How perfect is that?

Oh, also, we're rattling some sabres at Iran, but what else is new?

posted by Mike B. at 4:18 PM 0 comments

So France goes, "I am rubber, you are glue! Nyeh!" I guess if I ever become an actual columnist, I can't represent tense diplomatic affairs in terms of schoolyard taunts, huh? Oh well, live for the moment.

The article also gives us some additional info about the spat. Excerpts:

Secretary Powell's comment on Tuesday, during a television interview, came a day after a White House meeting aimed at finding ways to punish France, which led the opposition to the United States-led military attack against Iraq and thwarted Washington's attempt to win United Nations support to the move.

Participants in the meeting reportedly considered actions ranging from lessening French influence in NATO to excluding the French from some international forums. "They are trying to find ways to create alternative mechanisms for dealing with the French, or rather without them, and not just at NATO," Agence France-Presse quoted a senior American official as saying...The vice president's office, backed by the Defense Department, was said to have been particularly vocal in pushing for punitive measures against France. There were indications that Mr. Powell, who wants French cooperation in the reconstruction of Iraq, was going along with talk of sanctions in order to help set limits to something he had been unable to block.

[snip]

Some analysts said that while administration frustration with France was understandable from Washington's viewpoint, a punitive response might be short-sighted, given the countries' complex range of common interests. Jeremy Shapiro, associate director of the Center for the United States and France, at the Brookings Institution, said that the administration's approach appeared to be "a policy more of revenge and retaliation than of working toward the future."

Last week, President Jacques Chirac of France telephoned President Bush — their first talk in two months — in what was seen as a clearly conciliatory gesture; and earlier this week, France, in a move that at first blush appeared welcomed by the United States, conditionally supported an end to United Nations sanctions on Iraq. The comments by Mr. Powell seemed to show that Washington was hardly appeased. Some in the administration are disdainful of what they see as a broader effort by Mr. Chirac to limit, or supplant, American power.

[snip]

In Brussels, a spokeswoman for the European Commission noted that rules of international relations limited the ways Washington could express its irritation. "I am sure that Colin Powell was not implying that any of those rules would be broken," said the spokeswoman, Emma Udwin.

posted by Mike B. at 4:14 PM 0 comments

I'm sorry, I didn't think I was going to talk about "man on dog" with a United States senator, it's sort of freaking me out.

Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), aka "the guy who thinks women who get partial-birth abortions don't know what they're doing" and "the guy who blamed liberals for the priest abuse scandal," has hopefully stepped in a big pile of it. In an interview with the Associated Press, he said:

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything."

Now, this sure sounds a lot like he's equating homosexuality with incest or polygamy, and it sure also sounds a lot like he thinks the government should stop faggot sex--or, even, mistress sex--because otherwise it's OK to rape your sister. Which is probably not true, it seems to me. Andrew "I'm only gay when it's convenient" Sullivan points out that the parenthetical "(gay)" is questionable (he also points out that Texas passed the anti-sodomy law under discussion the same year it repealed the beastiality laws), but a quick look at the transcript reveals that the foot is well implanted in the mouth as regards homosexuality. He proceeds from asserting that since the pedophilic priests having sex with young boys was "a basic homosexual relationship" because--get ready for it--they weren't three or five years old, it's our acceptance of homosexuality that leads to that rather than, say, the power structures of the church. (You know this practice has been going on for about 1000 years, right Rick?) He then goes on to assert that he doesn't believe in the right to privacy and that homosexuality is just like paedophilia. Wait, he already did that.

So he hasn't apologized, of course, and some people support that:

Santorum won some backing for his comments. Concerned Women for America, a conservative interest group in Washington, released a statement criticizing the "gay thought police" and saying Santorum was "exactly right."

Genevieve Wood, vice president for communications at the Family Research Council, another conservative group, agreed.

"I think the Republican party would do well to follow Senator Santorum if they want to see pro-family voters show up on Election Day," she said.

As Rachel put it, "Hahaha, gay thought police." Yeah, there's pretty much only a gay thought police in three places in the country. Everywhere else it's pretty much the straight thought police. And hahaha, pro-family voters. Do you really want "pro-family" to start explicitly meaning "homophobic"? Well, I guess if you want to appeal to homophobes (of which there is not a shortage in America), you do. Oh, although the Log Cabin Republicans did criticize him, thankfully:

"If you ask most Americans if they compare gay and lesbian Americans to polygamists and folks who are involved in incest and the other categories he used, I think there are very few folks in the mainstream who would articulate those views," said Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the group.

So the White House is saying nothing, and Rick is defiant. You'd think they'd have learned something from the whole Trent Lott thing, huh? Well, then again, I guess Trent didn't do too badly for himself in the end. Still: let's pick this one up, folks. The esteemed senator is free to believe this, of course, but I don't think we should have someone who "hates" the behavior of a decent proportion of our population as one of our leaders--Howard Kurtz notes that Santorum is "the third-ranking member of the Republican leadership." Barney "Fag" Frank thinks that "He knows exactly what he's doing. He's getting the right-wing vote." And the New York Times points out:

Earlier this month, as the chief Senate sponsor of President Bush's religion-based initiative, he aroused the ire of conservatives by stripping out a provision that would have helped religious groups get government grants. In fact, the Human Rights Campaign went so far as to praise Mr. Santorum in a news release.

In recent weeks the sensitivity of gays' relationship with Republicans came into the spotlight after Marc Racicot, chairman of the Republican National Committee, met with the Human Rights Campaign. The session enraged the conservative Family Research Council, whose president, Kenneth Connor, said Mr. Racicot was holding "secret meetings with the homosexual lobby."

Today, Mr. Connor came to Mr. Santorum's defense, saying, "I think the senator's remarks are right on the mark."

(the headline, by the way, is a quote from the AP interviewer in the transcript, and makes me very happy.)

posted by Mike B. at 3:56 PM 0 comments

"The only vehicle to defeat Bush next year is the Democratic Party -- you start there, or you don't start with reality," says Dugger. "Not running a Green candidate for president does not mean abandoning party building...That's denying the history of the Green Party in Europe -- they built their party by running for local offices, and now they have power at the cabinet level in countries like Germany...This is the most emotionally ragged fissure in the American left in my lifetime. It's an astonishing split and it's very deep."

This article in Salon affords actual Green party sympathizers an opportunity to make a much better argument for why Nader shouldn't run in 2004 than Charles Taylor's (writer of the article and editor of Salon) whiney letter of a while back, which basically amounted to "Green suck! You guys are why Bush is in office! Just shut up and go away!" The party isn't necessarily a bad one, just badly run, and viable third-party movements are important. They should continue to build power, but a far smarter way of doing that is through building up local power. Look at the Christian Coalition, after all--they started with school boards and are now a key Republican demographic that any Presidential candidate has to kowtow to in order to get the nod. Greens could probably get to this point too, if they wanted to. It's just that a lot of them seem like they don't want to. Take this bit, for example, which makes me have a lot more respect for Michael Moore:

According to Dugger, Lawrence Goodwyn, a respected historian of populist movements, has floated the idea of a national unity meeting of progressives to lock arms behind a Democratic presidential candidate that Greens could vote for. "Someone like Michael Moore could easily call such a meeting," says Dugger, who adds that he is trying to track down Moore to get him onboard.

Moore was one of Nader's more celebrated campaigners in 2000, but when "things at Nader Central went crazy," as Moore wrote in his book "Stupid White Men," and it was decided to target swing states where Gore might win or lose by a razor-thin margin, Moore got off the bandwagon. In the final days of the race, Moore writes in his book, he wisely advised the Nader campaign to cut a deal with Gore, throwing him its support in return for major progressive concessions in a Gore administration. A Nader campaign official told the filmmaker that the party could not abandon its goal of getting 5 percent of the vote, which would trigger federal matching funds. But the day after the election, Moore pointed out, "that's all you'll have -- five percent of the vote, and zero percent of the power."

This attitude is just weird to me--it's like they know nothing about third parties and want to keep pretending they're a major party, which they're just not. Third parties cut coalition deals with the major parties whose policies closest resemble theirs in order to avoid leeching the vote away. Maybe they felt the need to assert their power, but if so, it very much backfired, and the Democrats would be forgiven for being leery about trying to cut a deal with the Greens in the future. It's so, so strange. Gore could have won, with the push of people who recognized that the Democrats were their party, like it or not, and the Greens could have had a lot more of what they wanted. There's the theory out there that Nader wants to give the right so much power that things come swinging violently back to the left, but I don't know how much farther you would need to go at this point, and I'm not entirely sure how much I believe that theory in the first place. Anyway, it's bad politics on their part, and they need to start thinking with a bit less purity and a bit more practicality.

Still, at the end of the article, Dugger makes the important point that the Democrats have a responsibility in this, too, to start up a dialogue, maybe even in public, and start offering some key tidbits to make Green voters actually want to get on board. And now would be the time to do it, of course, when they're courting the more hard-line primary voters. We'll see.

posted by Mike B. at 12:39 PM 0 comments

Well, we all figured Colin Powell was just closing his eyes and thinking of England with the whole war flip-flop, but apparently the excuse that he was hoppin' mad at France was true!

"It's over and we have to take a look at the relationship. We have to look at all aspects of our relationship with France in light of this," Powell said, according to a transcript of the interview provided by the State Department.

Asked if there were consequences for having stood up to the United States, Powell replied "yes" but did not elaborate.

In other news, 54% of Americans who have had at least three beers think we should fucking invade those French fuckers, goddamn it, they'd roll over like little pussies.

Hey, do you think the French would loot the Louvre? Grab me some tapestries!

posted by Mike B. at 11:48 AM 0 comments

Of course, then again, it looks like the MTA cooked the books to make it look like they had a bigger defecit, thus helping their case in the negotiations with the union last year and the upcoming fare hikes. Anyone remember when we were talking about the greedy unions? Yeah. Greedy unions.

posted by Mike B. at 11:42 AM 0 comments

More on the Republican convention: the really infuriating thing about it is that the Republicans have systematically worked to screw New York City out of money, even after September 11th, which you think would have generated a wee bit more sympathy, but I guess not. Pataki's grandstanding and national ambitions lead him to refuse to raise taxes in order to keep the GOP honchos happy while simultanously fucking over the city, which still pays out far more taxes than it gets in. I think that situation is OK, but I do think it means that we should be able to get some of that back if we're looking at cutting firefighters, cops, and teachers, you know? And, of course, Congress and the administration reneged on their promise for funds--I think they cut it by half or so in the actual allocation, although I guess we made off better than those poor bastards in Afghanistan.

Anyway, the weirdest thing is that they're all doing this to another Republican. I'm having a hard time faulting Mayor Mike for his cuts since we don't want to end up back in a 70's-style default situation, but he is being pretty politically stupid and letting Pataki walk all over him. Times are tough everywhere, but there's a plan to help the city that the Republicans just aren't even considering. The point is that there's capitalizing on the tragedy, and there's capitalizing on the tragedy in a city you've screwed over since the tragedy. Shame on them. Let 'em have their convention in the field in Pennsylvania or something.

posted by Mike B. at 11:40 AM 0 comments

more rants about Pitchfork and fountains
I never thought I would be annoyed by a Pitchfork news item, but now I am. It's about Fountains of Wayne. Now, admittedly, I'm a FoW fan, but this is just annoying. Voila:

Just when you thought the wave of returning 90s radio bands had ebbed out, Fountains of Wayne bubble back to life. Not that they've really gone anywhere, it just takes them an unjustifiable 3-4 years to make an album...Fountains of Wayne haven't graced us with an album since 1999's Utopia Parkway, and haven't graced us with a decent album since their eponymous 1996 debut. We suppose the theme-song writing has got to take priority. As you might know, back in the day Adam Schlesinger wrote the theme for the 1996 Tom Hanks flick That Thing You Do! Since then, Fountains of Wayne penned the theme to Comedy Central's Crank Yankers, and, according to Billboard.com, will do the theme, write original songs for each episode, and appear as animated characters on the upcoming VH1 series Hey Joel. Amazingly, they go around admitting all of this. These guys are like the Dorian Grays of being perpetually fifteen!

Still, we kinda find ourselves rooting for this album...

Well jeez guys, I'm glad you told me you like them, because otherwise I woulda been confused. Generally I tend to try and assess the work of people I like fairly instead of sneering at it because it's on VH1 or has Tom Hanks in it, but that's up to you, I guess. I'm assuming the thing about "an unjustifiable 3-4 years" is a deliberate error, since it's common knowledge (and public record) that they got dropped from their label after Utopia Parkway and have been looking for a new one. And it's my knowledge that the album's been demoed and ready to be recorded for at least a year, if not more.

As for being "the Dorian Grays of being perpetually fifteen!" they are fairly mature and have wives and like that, you know? If anything, they're a bit too professional, this all harking back to the pre-band days, when publishing was king and songwriters had all the power, professionals who cared about the craft and the business. Adam and Chris are, above all, songwriters, and their music and aethetic reflects that, which I think is something weirdly lacking in a lot of music today. I don't know why music biz people love FoW so much, but it does seem to be a common trait--they're the band everyone wishes had really broken wider than "Radiation Vibe." And that's why they keep going on, after all, since they clearly have an embarassing number of great songs in them. We're just waiting for everyone else to catch on. And seriously, how cool does that VH1 thing sound? Fucking cool, that's how.

OK, OK. But then I clicked through to the Utopia Parkway review which was written by none other than...Brent DiCresenzo! And oh, it's annoying. Once again, Brent doesn't like it, but less because it's bad and more because it doesn't feel right, you know? Also, he has philosophical issues.

He writes: "This album is suburbia perfectly captured by four suburbanites with suburban sounds-- neon, sod, and concrete pressed into DAT plastic. Perhaps their accomplishment is to be commended, but then again... it's suburbia, and how banal is that?" Well, fuck, Brent, as banal as songs about girls, or school, or drinking, or music--as banal as fucking rock and roll. Sigh. Besides that, though, I think he misses the point. This is actually a profoundly local album. I've been in a decent number of suburbs--I do love the suburbs--and the amazing thing about Utopia Parkway is how exactly it captures the suburbs around New York City. This album just sounds like driving through Long Island on a summer day. And that's fairly specifically stated in the context of the album--the Hayden Planitarium, Coney Island, and the LIE all make appearances, and the name of the album comes from a Long Island parkway. Brent's reducing it to something so he can better make fun of it, but I think that's unfair. Check the last paragraph:

One of Utopia Parkway's highlights is a well- acted ballad about Senior Prom that would break Seth Green's heart. It's a nice song and all, but I can't help hearing it playing over the slow- dance scene in "She's All That 2: A Bag of Chips." If an album could ever be accused of being too nice, this would be it. Nothing offends. No sound feels out of place. No vocal is out of harmony. And you know what? It's boring. Move to the city or the woods.

First off, that song ("Prom Theme") is great because you can, as I have, play it at high school dances and get the kids to slow-dance to a song which includes the vers "We'll pass out on the beach/our keys just out of reach/soon we'll say goodbye/then we'll work until we die." More broadly, though, what the fuck? You can only make good music if you live in "the city or the woods"? What kind of toothless-old-blues-guy-worshipping bullshit is that, huh? Goddamn, I bet Brent's from Woodlawn or Towson or Crystal Lake or some shit and is really embarassed about it.

Well, this is just getting overly vituperative, so I will cut it off, but grr.

posted by Mike B. at 11:24 AM 0 comments

Sweet, merciful crap!

Are the Republicans really considering kicking off the 2004 convention in New York City on September 11th?!? What the fuck?

Anybody out there have any taste left? Yes? You? Is there a hand raised in the back? Yes? Guards, seize him!. 'kay, anybody else? Right, then, who's making punch?

Anyone wanna take bets on whether or not the Republicans will let their own convention put their terror alert system to a higher rating? (Assuming, of course, they haven't forgotten about it by that point...)

Well, at least it'll clearly be the party of the year. The Quaylemonster will surely be in effect. Keg stands with Danny-boy!

posted by Jesse at 11:06 AM 0 comments

In case you are really bored, here are some farting fetish videos.

Wait, I just looked at the page and now it smells like farts in here. Scenternet?

posted by Mike B. at 10:38 AM 0 comments

LOU turns to TANK. REED: I know kung fu, baby.


Yes, that's Lou Reed. Yes, this is an interview with him about kung fu. Goddamn Lou, that's some Elvis Presley shit right there.

Reed now studies privately with America’s top tai chi master, Ren Guangyi. Ren himself immigrated from a poor province in Mainland China to New York City a decade ago, surviving in various menial jobs and gradually making his name as top tai chi teacher in the field. Ren’s own rags-to-riches American dream immigrant story has made him a “superstar” of tai chi here in the States, strangely paralleling Lou Reed’s musical superstardom. Together they have an easy friendship, a real camaraderie, a mutual respect, and a drive to perfect their art that forms an intimate connection between them. It is also a great New York story, a tai chi story, an accidental but somehow fated destiny. While Reed is modest about his kung fu and pays traditional deference to his master, his story sets an example for all students of the martial arts. Read on, and discover how an artist becomes a martial artist.

Lou Reed? Modest? Damn, Master Ren.

posted by Mike B. at 10:27 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, April 22, 2003

Very nice, long article about Vaclav Havel in Reason.

In April 1975, facing an utterly demoralized country and an understandable case of writer’s block, Havel committed an act of such sheer ballsiness that the shock waves are still being felt in repressive countries 30 years later. He simply sat down and, knowing that he’d likely be imprisoned for his efforts, wrote an open letter to his dictator, Gustav Husak, explaining in painstaking detail just why and how totalitarianism was ruining Czechoslovakia.

"So far," Havel scolded Husak, "you and your government have chosen the easy way out for yourselves, and the most dangerous road for society: the path of inner decay for the sake of outward appearances; of deadening life for the sake of increasing uniformity; of deepening the spiritual and moral crisis of our society, and ceaselessly degrading human dignity, for the puny sake of protecting your own power."

It was the Big Bang that set off the dissident movement in Central Europe. For those lucky enough to read an illegally retyped copy or hear it broadcast over Radio Free Europe, the effect was not unlike what happened to the 5,000 people who bought the Velvet Underground’s first record: After the shock and initial pleasure wore off, many said, "Wait a minute, I can do this too!"

It's an interesting comparison, but one seemingly in keeping with Havel's character. It's not so much that he's populist, since "the common people" come in all sorts of flavors (George Bush, for one, does a remarkably good impression of populism, one effective enough to give him a lot of power), and more that he's human. A key quote would be: "As for heads of state, I haven’t met anyone yet whose eyes didn’t shine with delight when I suggested that after the official reception we should go get a beer somewhere really quick." There is something in many of the more rational leftists--my father, certainly, along with almost every politics teacher I've ever had--that really wants to see someone we could go get a drink with as our leader, or compatriot. We can respect someone like that, someone who attends to the banalities of life in a public way. It was part of Clinton's appeal, the idea that we could have some fries with him down at McDonald's, and a big part of why the whole getting-a-hummer thing didn't hurt him as much as some people wanted it to. (I'm not exactly thrilled that he did it, although strictly for reasons of politics.) Is this just good-ol-boyism, though? Is it something that women wouldn't identify with, or might call stupid boyism? Well, not the girls I hang out with, but I'm not sure, I guess.

It's hard to follow Havel's example totally into American politics, since we're far from living under a dictatorship and "speaking truth to power" is often a far more complicated proposition than Orwellites would have you believe, but the style thing--style being a hugely important part of political communication--is key. For instance, there was a certain rhetorical tendency in the anti-globalization movement (back in the benighted pre-war days) to talk about their "taking back the street" protests as a kind of party, a reclamation of joy from the oppressive funlessness of corporate culture by dancing around like, I guess, the happy natives would once the yoke of industrialization was lifted from their societies. Aside from the fact that this wasn't the most effective technique since a lot of corporations seem to be solely concerned with pandering to our mindless self-indulgence (and god bless 'em for it!), the problem was that what the activists seemed to be promoting wasn't a whole lot better. At the few I attended, for instance, the party seemed to involve smoking pot, listening to folk music, and playing frisbee, which is a source of joy for a fairly small slice of the population. For me, though, and presumably for anyone else who wandered in without wearing an item made of hemp, it was kind of boring and smelly. Oppressive tool of the ruling class or not, getting wasted once in a while and stumbling home singing Abba songs is a fucking blast.

The mistake they made, and continue to make, is confusing the appearance of joy with actual joy. Playing frisbee in the sun is always going to look fun, because it's frivolous and there's no risk and there's no conflict. But it might not actually be fun. Going to the bars, however, could be sad and pathetic, a bunch of mindless, depressive, deluded individuals nacotizing themselves into unthinking comas in order to dull the pain of their worthless existence. Or it could be, as I said before, a fucking blast. We could get nicely buzzed and play darts and yell jokes at the barkeep and put on Prince and dance around, even as people are suffering and between the times where we try and figure out how to make things better. This is maybe an overly intellectual and, er, artistic view of the world, maybe, but it's one I believe in strongly. I also believe that change can't come without hope, and hope can't come without some bit of happiness, and that striving for happiness is not without some risk. Trying to have a good time always means that you might have a bad one and be disappointed and go home alone, but it's that unsafe striving that, at its heart, drives political movements seeking to bring the margins to the mainstream.

posted by Mike B. at 6:37 PM 0 comments

This review of Andrei Konchalovsky's House of Fools in the Onion AV Club sounds really good. It also sounds like something I might make if I were old and Russian:

Moving Konchalovsky about as far away from Hollywood as possible, House Of Fools heads to a remote corner of the former Soviet Union, revisiting a real-life 1996 incident in which the Chechen war spilled over into a mental hospital in nearby Ingushetia. When the hospital's small staff leaves it unattended–some leave to get help, some just leave–the inmates are forced to fend for themselves. What follows frequently resembles the French lunatics-freed-from-the-asylum peacenik classic King Of Hearts, but with blood and explosions in place of dewy idealism. As Chechen rebels move in, one reluctant soldier (Sultan Islamov) forms a particular attachment to the cheerful, accordion-toting Yuliya Vysotskaya. But several problems impede their potential romance, including the war and her imaginary fiancé, pop star Bryan Adams, who plays himself in sequences bringing Vysotskaya's glossy fantasies to life.

An insane asylum! Bryan Adams! That's the perfect movie right there.

posted by Mike B. at 6:01 PM 0 comments

Sorry so few posts today--it's been a wee bit busy here. I did want to pass on this e-mail from the Future of Music Coalition (FMC), a good group working against deregulation and media consolodation and like that. I would help, but I currently have every moment of my time scheduled until Monday night, so I don't think my e-mail should make promises my sanity can't keep.

***

Dear FMC volunteers

This is Kristin Thomson writing. I hope you're well and not swamped with
school/work etc. I'm emailing you today because the FMC is looking for
about twenty volunteers to help us with a quick but potentially vital
research/data project.

As many of you know, the FMC has been very involved in issues surrounding
radio deregulation in the past year, in particular, the impact of the 1996
Telecom Act on musicians and citizens. While we were aware that there's
really no way to "fix" commercial radio by re-imposing rules and ownership
caps on the radio industry, we hoped that our research could serve as a
cautionary tale for policymakers and FCC commissioners -- something they
could look at to predict the effects of further media deregulation.

Because of our work last year we've found ourselves in the middle of a
groundswell of organizing, activism and advocacy surrounding media
deregulation. Jenny Toomey has testified in front of the Senate Commerce
committee and at two of the FCC field hearings, and we have continued to try
to educate citizens and the press through various papers, fact sheets and
data analysis.

That's where you come in! Some of you may know that the FCC collects
comments from citizens via its website, which is a pretty cool feature. The
other nice thing about this FCC tool is that any citizen can *read* the
comments posted by others. You can check it out here:

http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/comsrch_v2.cgi
This proceeding is 02-277

What we'd like to do is to review these comments state by state, and in an
Excel file note the comment maker's name, city/ST and "rate" their comment
on a scale of 1 to 3. At the end of this project, we'd have an accurate
tally sheet of folks who were against lifting the rules versus folks who
were in favor of fewer rules, sorted by state or taken as a whole. This
could be a very powerful data set that we can then present to policymakers
to show them just what the public record reflects, something that the FCC
has *not* done itself.

If you're interested in helping us with this project, let me know. All you
need is access to the Internet (DSL or faster will help), and a computer
with Excel and Adobe Acrobat Reader. I will send you an Excel template and
the list of states you'll need to check out. I'd predict that it might take
3 hours of your time but it depends on how many folks respond. We'll need to
have this project completed by April 30 so that we have time to prepare the
materials for upcoming Senate Commerce hearings, so I'm looking for folks
who have a few hours to spare in the next five days.

That's the gist of it. Let me know if you're interested! Thanks in advance!

Kristin
************************************
Kristin Thomson
Organizer, Future of Music Coalition
http://www.futureofmusic.org
************************************

posted by Mike B. at 5:57 PM 0 comments

For some reason, the New York Times piece on gay rappers makes me inordinately happy. Like this bit:

He calls himself "the weave king," an extensions specialist. He's done hairdos for J-Lo and Sarah Michelle Gellar, and he's the stereotype of the celebrity hairdresser. He's a b-boy with a poodle named Wesley and an apartment with ornate pillows with silk flowers on them and beautiful vases filled with giant lilies. Caushun is a 25-year-old openly gay rapper from the same neighborhood as Biggie Smalls, with flippy wrists, a gay twang and a flow that is liquid and cool and ready for the big time. He wants to be hip-hop's homosexual Jackie Robinson.

And I want to let you!

posted by Mike B. at 5:20 PM 0 comments

Monday, April 21, 2003

A wallace-l'er points me toward the New York Times review of Frey's book. It's, um, a pan, and written in a sort of parody of Frey's style, and with a twelve-step motif.

Step 5: Meet a Girl. And go all soggy whenever she appears. Another patient
is the beautiful Lilly, who smiles warmly, if predictably, whenever she sees
James. She is there to comfort him when it is time for the next phase.

Dear god, he has a fucking romantic subplot?

I kind of disliked the review since it was hella snarky, but at the same time, Frey seems to be more or less requesting it with his "fuck everyone" attitude. He presumably takes this as a compliment. I dunno. A more studied response might have been nicer, since there seems a lot to shoot down, but I guess creative book reviews are nice, too. Eh.

posted by Mike B. at 6:34 PM 0 comments

It's a good day at Salon, as they also feature this interview with Fareed Zakaria, which is essential reading. (Also, with luck I will learn how to spell his name without referring to Newsweek one day soon.)

I generally like Zakaria's stuff, and while I agreed with a lot of what he has to say here, there were certainly things to quibble with. For instance, his insistance on having outside forces moderate the transition to a liberal democracy is smart in theory, but he seems to be taking it to the point where it would be OK for the US, say, to install heads of state in order for them to bring about democratic reforms. His insistance that this transition be mediated ignores the prime example of America itself, which became a republic purely through internal debate. While I agree that once an unjust form of government is deposed it is important to keep those that still weild its power (through social rather than political forms of oppression) from authority, it is easy for this to go too far, and he does a poor job here, at least, of contrasting the popular will of democracy with the guiding light of republicanism. I think liberal democracy is pretty great, but I'm not entirely convinced that the model we have in the US, which seems to be the one Zakaria is proposing, is the best for the whole world, and strange though it may seem, there are probably enough people (including, even, woman and minorities) who want to live under a fundamentalist state to justify at least one somewhere in the world. While I think it would be nice if the oppressive force of religion was wiped out, I recognize that's not going to happen, and for a mass phenomenon that relies on martyrdom and underdog-ism for much of its power, to depose all clerics of governmental influence will end up helping their cause in the end, yes?

The aha moment for me, however, came here:

American democracy has always been safeguarded by strong institutions that protect liberty and it's also been enriched and ennobled by a whole set of informal institutions that Tocqueville called intermediate institutions -- everything from political parties to rotary clubs to choral societies to bowling leagues. If those intermediate associations wither away, if the sense of the civic culture of America decays and is replaced by a kind of polarized populism in which each side is simply trying to use the political system as an arena where you simply have to capture the government however you can, then American democracy is impoverished and loses some of its vibrancy. It doesn't mean American democracy will become Nigerian democracy. It means it won't live up to its promise.

"Bowling leagues" = Bowling Alone = Michael Sandel = communitarianism / republicanism. Bing! This, for students of political theory, probably provides a much more useful avenue into Zakaria's ideas. So, for instance, the interviewer asks (in reference to Zakaria's theory of domestic politics as well as international ones) what this new paradigm should mean for the strategies of leftist activists. Zakaria says something about shifting the focus to human rights, but of course this is just canoodling because this is sort of the wrong question. His book is saying that activists either have or should have far less influence than they currently do, and certainly less than they want to. So what they should do isn't shift their protesting strategies, because Zakaria seems to be basically saying that you have to give the leaders a little more credit and, on occasion, the benefit of the doubt. So what activists should do, this would imply, is either (a) quit with the self-aggrandizing, self-centered politicking and go do something that actually helps people, like become a social worker or a teacher; or (b) get involved with electoral politics. What I think people could easily miss in Zakaria's argument is that while it is an endorsement and an encouragement of the power of elites, the thing about democracies is that, theoretically at least, anybody can become an elite. He seems to be clear-eyed about the fact that this is not, in fact, the current situation in America, but it seems to be an angle that the article didn't pick up on.

Still, I haven't actually read Zakaria's book yet, so maybe he addresses these things more directly, and maybe he doesn't share the many weaknesses that Sandel's arguments do. And I do very much agree with this bit:

Q: I think many liberals would ask how they can trust this government to export liberty abroad when it seems to undermine liberty at home.

A: Again, this is part of the problem of liberalism today. The United States has problems, no question, but they are in no way and on no scale comparable to the problems of Nigeria. It's necessary to get some perspective. There is simply no question that getting some form of constitutionalism and some form of democratic governance would be better for the vast majority of non-democracies. To be hobbled by fears and self-doubt seems silly. What one should do with those concerns is channel them into domestic reform programs rather than losing faith in American democracy. It's entirely possible to be a reformer at home and a universalist abroad. Look at Harry Truman.

Damn straight.

posted by Mike B. at 6:30 PM 0 comments

James Frey, cute little kitten
I read the interview with James "Fuck David Foster Wallace" Frey at Salon and was amused.

First off, take this excerpt:

From the onset, he breaks rules, rebels against clinic authorities and rejects the 12-step pieties propagated by his well-meaning counselors -- refuses, in effect, to follow the Recovery Arc. And so "A Million Little Pieces" ends up following an arc of its own. It's about a stubborn, prickly, fucked-up guy who, with the help of the Tao Te Ching and some appealingly unsavory rehab mates, finds his own road back to life. "There is no God," he declares, "and there is no such thing as a Higher Power. I will do it with me. Alone ... Every time I want to drink or do drugs, I'm going to make the decision not to do them. I'll keep making that decision until it's no longer a decision, but a way of life."

Doesn't this sound a wee bit like Don Gately from Infinite Jest? Like, more than a wee bit? Like a lot? Gately is a career criminal who gets caught on a job gone wrong and ends up in a recovery house. While there, he totally rejects AA (and NA, and all the A's) but eventually figures out that you don't really have to believe in any of that bullshit to make it work, and after he succeeds he becomes a nice mentor for the new folks who have a similarly (Frey-ish) disdain for all the sincerety of the program. So basically Frey's 347-page book is equivalent to 100 very, very good pages of IJ. Hmm.

Then there's the actual prose. I have no idea how representative it is of the book, since reading an "addiction memoir" sounds about as great to me as listening to my abusive uncle whine about his hard life for 3 hours, but I wonder about it, given this bit:

"I open the door and I walk out. I make my way back to the Unit. Night has fallen and the Halls are dark. Overhead lights illuminate them. I hate the lights I want them gone. I wish the Halls were darker. I am craving the dark the darkest darkness the deep and horrible hole. I wish the Halls were fucking black. My mind is black my heart is black I wish the Halls were black. If I could, I would destroy the lights above me with a fucking bat. I would smash them to fucking pieces. I wish the Halls were black."

No offense to the man, but it kind of sounds like Trent Reznor, doesn't it? I mean, I recognize the importance of teenagers having starter literature about naughty stuff to get them to the harder stuff (so to speak), but it seems like Trainspotting would do the trick as well as this. Dunno.

The result is a book that makes other recovery memoirs look, well, a little pussy-ass -- a book about the body in all its horror. Spit, snot, urine, shit. The deadly shakes, wall-rattling screams. Skin gouging, hair tearing. Nails pulled off toes.

Yeah, because postmodern literature isn't about the body at all, is it? *cough*Bakhtin*cough*

I think James Frey, by contrast, is serious. I like how, in his Observer interview, he talks about "moving against the trend of irony" and being "a bullet in the heart of that bullshit." A writer unafraid of feeling is someone to stick around for.

Eh, I dunno. I think Wallace's views of sincerety are much more compelling and, frankly, convincing--he's much more focused on the good sincerety can do than the bad irony can do. This "fuck irony" impulse comes from essentially the same place the "yay irony" one does, it seems to me--a half-hearted desire to rebell against conventional opinion. Yawn.

Anyway, he seems to like talking about punching people a lot, so perhaps I will go sometime and tic at him and throw peanuts and see what happens.

posted by Mike B. at 5:56 PM 0 comments