Sometimes I write stuff on this blog that I’m really proud of. Other times, I cringe at how juvenile and amateurish I allow myself to be. My post on Friday about Jon Stewart is a good example of the latter. I look over that post now and I agree with the sentiment, but absolutely wince at the execution.

Look, I don’t know if at the end of the day I’ll ever be anything close to a good writer. The few folks who visit here notwithstanding (and I’m grateful that you guys check in every once in a while, believe me!), I don’t think I’ve created anything yet of lasting value or even immediate usefulness. The stuff you see here isn’t generally original or different or anything you couldn’t get from a million other blogs. Nor have I really seen it as my purpose to be any of that. Rather, this blog is something I do for me, as a record of what piques my interest, a catalog of the stuff that rises above the level of noise to what I pay attention to. But all that is no excuse for not making more of an effort. More importantly, even if I was the only one who ever read this blog, I would want to be prouder of the work I’m doing.

If how one writes is a reflection of how one thinks, I want my writing to start to reflect more of how I see myself: clear, insightful, funny, honest, with broad interests and strong opinions. Taking some time to develop a point or sitting on a post for a while to give my own thoughts a chance to mature will not be time wasted. Nor will the effort I put into the craft of writing be effort wasted.

Jon Stewart rocks! Jon Stewart is my new personal god. I will build a shrine to Jon Stewart and worship at his altar and sacrifice goats and rubber chickens and drink their blood.

God, I wish I had seen Crossfire today. Jon Stewart was the guest, and he basically told Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala what a lot of us have been feeling for a long time: that these shows are theatre, they’re put-ons, and they are doing an immense disservice to political discourse in America. I’ve stopped watching most news shows because they are uninformative and unenlightening and, in my opinion, bent on making their viewers less clued in than if they never watched any news at all. I’ve given up hope that it’s going to get better, but I wonder if Stewart’s willingness to speak up will encourage others to do the same. Maybe it’ll just draw some attention to the preposterous beast that modern television journalism has become. We can hope.

The Poor Man has a transcript, and one of his commenters posted an edited video of the segment.

There was also coverage at Wonkette and at Hullabaloo.

Jon, dude… I’ll be buying your book, this weekend. Least I can do.

UPDATE: Yes! There’s a Bittorrent, courtesy of Boing Boing.

I drafted a post a while ago on this topic, but I’ve never quite finished it. I think the impulse behind it is good, so I submit the idea for your consideration:

Bush has been fond of talking about the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” (You know, in a bad way; he’s against it.) But of course, he takes every opportunity to shed criticism or be held to any standard of accountability.

It’s too late now, alas, but at some point during the debates I wish John Kerry had kind of explicitly called Bush out on this. Like, “I know that you were handed a recession and then 9/11 happened so you lost a million jobs on your watch, but I expect my Presidents to overcome such difficulties and implement effective plans to meet these unexpected challenges. To accept that you shouldn’t have handled the economy any differently would be to engage in the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

Or, “You told us that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which there weren’t. You told us that Osama bin Ladena and Sadaam Hussein were in cahoots; they weren’t. You told us that this war would cost $30 billion; it is projected to cost upwards of $200 billion. You told us that Osama bin Laden can run but he can’t hide, yet he is still on the loose. To accept that we shouldn’t have to trust the word of our President would be to engage in the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

You get the idea. I wish Kerry had used that line. I wish he’d reminded us more explicitly that we hold our Presidents to a higher standard. That’s all.

Lots of juicy stuff today that you should be reading instead of this lousy blog…

• First of all, can I get some love from my man Jon Stewart? M’boy’s all over the Novak thang. (via First Draft) Of course, that’s not a surprise, as it was Stewart who coined my favorite Novak nickname: Douchebag of Liberty!

• First Draft also has this about a platoon in Iraq that’s been arrested for refusing to go on what they considered to be a suicide mission. (Insignifica: The justice professor quoted in the article is from the tiny college my dad used to work for in my hometown.)

• Lots from Josh Marshall about Republican dirty campaign tricks. Just go to Talking Points Memo and start reading.

• Sid’s Fishbowl has more on the Republican dirty campaign tricks (soon to be a feature on David Letterman!). At the end of his post he quotes from an unnerving PressThink piece about Sinclair Broadcasting, the gaggle of wingnuts who are preparing to broadcast an anti-Kerry propaganda piece the week before the election. In it, Jay Rosen asks the questionm “Is Sinclair a broadcasting empire getting what it needs from politics, or an ideological empire getting what it needs from broadcasting, possibly on the way to some larger and more potent combination?” In other words, what if Sinclair isn’t in it for the money? What if they’re willing to take heavy losses in order to promote their ideological agenda? Free market forces have worked in the past to keep broadcasters fair and honest, but what if those forces all of a sudden weren’t in play?

• Speaking of Sinclair and Republican dirty campaign tricks (soon to be a Penn & Teller HBO special), Kevin Drum has the scoop on the Nightline reporters that went to the village in Vietnam where John Kerry engaged in the action that earned him his Silver Star. I don’t want to spoil his post, but you should read it to find out what this has to do with Sinclair and the Swift Boat Vets and why Drum concludes: “What a revolting bunch of men. What a disgusting, repellent, sleazy operation.”

• Via Boing Boing, we find this kick-ass send up of the School House Rock animations revealing the greatest dirty political trick of all: establishing a government.

• William Gibson is blogging again, and his first post illuminates something about what seems to paralyze many Americans: we can’t come to grips with the fact that some of our leaders don’t share our values and don’t have our best interests at heart.

• Local Boy Ian Spiers just pointed to an article that claims that Bob Barr is now a card-carrying member of the ACLU. Apparently he joined because he felt the Patriot Act went too far. Brain… melting…

Thanks to Sid the Fish for the shout out. Now, here’s more stuff you should be reading instead of this lousy blog…

• Best debate wrap-up: Michael Bérubé swings a mean axe.

• First Draft notes a David Hackworth piece on how the military flexes its muscles to punish dissent. I think I understand why the military takes this hard line, but doesn’t truth outrank discipline?

• Damn. Seems like some Republicans have been… I was going to say naughty, but somehow election fraud goes way beyond naughty and into high crimes territory. Sid the Fish has the short story and a couple of links. Josh Marshall is on the case, too (you may have to scroll down a bit).

• The Fish also points us to this great explanation of Kerry’s health care plan. Any plan, big or small, will be subject to the Law of Unintended Consequences, but this plan does seem to have a lot going for it.

• I’m not operating with a lot of capital these days, but the Iraq War Vets at Operation Truth are going to get a few shekels. (Via Hullabaloo)

• Digby’s also got the question that I keep asking myself: How do the Republicans keep getting away with it?

• Wasn’t the debate in Arizona? How come Bush didn’t mention the hydrogen powered car that these Arizona high school students built? (BoingBoing) After all, hydrogen fuel was his initiative. (WhiteHouse.gov) Was it maybe because the initiative was a brilliant judo throw meant to benefit the oil industry? (The Angry Liberal)

• Blogcritics has the seven rules for How to Identify Bad Science. Here’s a game: Alter the following to apply to Bad Politics:

1. The discoverer pitches directly to the media
2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.
3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.
4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.
5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.
6. The discoverer has worked in isolation.
7. he discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation.

Andrew Cline at Rhetorica writes:

Last week I began to notice the assertion “everything changed on 9/11”—especially as preceded by the ad populum fallacy “everyone knows.” I say “began to notice” because up until last week I have not encountered many situations in which someone actually spoke this assertion to me. I was certainly aware of it otherwise.


I noticed it because in each case my interlocutor wished to frame his/her remarks in a new reality that supposedly proved his/her conclusions, e.g. “Everyone knows that everything changed on 9/11, so we had to invade Iraq to fight terrorism.”

This has been much on my mind lately, too. As Nels wrote in the comments to Dr. Cline’s post, 9/11 gave us a glimpse of our vulnerability in one sudden, shocking, collective experience. The events of that day shifted our understanding of the world in certain fundamental ways, but 9/11 most certainly did not “change everything.”

Here are a few things 9/11 didn’t change, just off the top of my head: it didn’t change our Constitution, our laws, our history, or our traditions. It didn’t change our need for access to healthcare, good jobs, and a strong economy. It didn’t change the meaning of fairness, honesty, or truth. It didn’t change our essential impulse to be good to each other. It didn’t change our need to educate our children, nor did it diminish in any way the importance of a free press. 9/11 didn’t make us any less obsessed with pop culture or with shopping or gossip. 9/11 didn’t make us any less dependent on foreign oil. Our freedom to travel has been subject to small inconveniences, but not curtailed in the least. 9/11 didn’t even change the fundamental safety record of airlines, for crying out loud; flying is still the safest way to travel.

(My wife makes a good point here: It is in times of greatest danger when our essential values are most called upon. We are not a free society only when it’s easy. Our freedoms and our “American character” are supposed to be what carry us through when the going gets rough.)

9/11 didn’t change everything, but our response to 9/11 changed a lot. We are less safe, less respected, less liked, and less powerful. I, for one, am tired of hearing people repeat this worn phrase as prelude to shirking their responsibility or abusing their power. 9/11 did not change the essential character of American society or make us any less a democratic republic. If any of that happens, we will have done it to ourselves.

More stuff you should be reading instead of this lousy blog…

• Yeah. James Wolcott says what I would’ve said if I was a smarter, better writer: George W. Bush is an “empty volcano,” yet no one in the mainstream media will call him on his lack of gravitas. You know, if you look at the way people talk when they criticize Bush, they don’t really criticize Bush. They criticize Karl Rove. It is virtually universally understood that Rove is the puppet master. Yet, like a good puppeteer, the audience is still transfixed by the illusion. We end up looking at the talking head, and paying no attention to the man behind the curtain.

• Every time I read about the Valerie Plame situation, I have difficulty making it through a paragraph without drifting off into violent fantasies involving Robert Novak and a red-hot poker. Michael Kinsley’s op-ed in today’s LA Times makes a good argument that the absolute right to protect anonymous sources should be attenuated by socially-responsible exceptions. However, why don’t I ever hear anyone questioning Robert Novak’s initial decision to report the leak in the first place? Novak knew that he was exposing a CIA agent, he knew that he was endangering her life and the lives of her sources, and he knew that he was abetting an act of revenge by the administration. In my book, that makes him a traitor to his country. Why isn’t he arrested for writing that column?

• Sisyphus Shrugged has a related comment. (via Eschaton)

• There’s a devastating article in the Washington Post today (use BugMeNot.com to get a username and password), quoting some mighty disgruntled and pessimistic members of a Marine platoon based in Iskandariyah, south of Baghdad. Quite a contrast from the current administration’s attempts to portray the situation as “getting better.” Of course, the article doesn’t claim to represent the feelings of the entire military, but it does seem to jibe with other reports coming out of the country via alternative channels.

• I didn’t quite understand Bush’s remark in the last debate about the Dred Scott case, but Brad DeLong catches the explanation. Michael Bérubé is on the case, as well. Read a few of the Supreme Court case synopses he links to (they’re short) and tell me if they don’t blow the “strict constructionist” argument right out of the water.

• Finally, I’ve only gotten about a third to a half the way through this article at the LA Times, but I understand why Kevin Drum thinks it’s an important read. Take a look at If America is Richer, Why are Its Families So Much Less Secure.

Oh, my poor kittycat needed to have an operation this week. I’m writing this from my bathroom, where I’m baby-sitting him while he’s convalescing. The upside is that it’s given me a chance to catch up a bit on the news.

Like others have said, I thought last night was pretty much a draw as far as the actual debate performance—ie, the “externals.” Bush and Kerry both came out swinging, and I was really pleased to see Kerry remain firm and strong and not try to be “likeable.” But, to my mind, Kerry’s still got the edge by dint of his grasp of issues and the fact that he seems more dialed in to reality as we know it. But then, I’m a Kerry man.

Now, here’s more stuff you should be reading instead of this lousy blog…

• Apparently, Bush really does have an alternate information stream available.


• Bush fails the Global Test. (Eschaton)


• My favorite debate coverage, as always, comes via Fafblog.


• Yowtch. Retired Lt. Gen. Claudia Kennedy is embarrassed by her commander in chief. (First Draft)


• Does Bush have a plan for this economy? Look at these graphs and you tell me. (The Poor Man)

Light blogging continues. Enjoy the weekend, y’all.

Been too busy to read the news much the past few days. I’m trying to catch up, but it might be a day or two before I get back to blogging regularly. Here’s a post for you to read, if you must: Athenae bitch-slaps the ostriches. (First Draft)

On a somber note, I would like to mark the passing of Janet Leigh. For several years I worked at Universal Studios Florida, and I had the pleasure of performing in the Alfred Hitchcock tribute show (now closed, alas). The show recreated the shower scene from Psycho, with a Janet Leigh stand-in in a body suit. Mrs. Leigh showed up to do publicity when the venue opened in 1990 (-ish) and, by all accounts from my fellow cast members who were there at the time, was warm, gracious, and charming. If you get a chance, check out some of her films from Netflix. Besides Psycho, you can see Janet in The [original] Manchurian Candidate, Touch of Evil, and Bye, Bye Birdie.