Entries from July 2008 ↓

The Obama/Britney/Paris ad has become the Prometheus Unbound, the creature that has come to life through electricity. By opening up all sorts of discussion about the way our public discourse is distorted by nonsense, it is, in a way, the “daisy girl” ad of this election cycle. For those who may not know, in 1964, President Johnson’s re-election campaign designed and ran and ad, exactly once, of a young girl plucking the a daisy’s petals. The sound of her voice faded out as a countdown faded in, and the image suddenly exploded in to a mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. As the sound of the blast faded, the campaign ran a stump speech of Johnson’s on the dangers of nuclear war. The Goldwater campaign complained the ad was beyond the pale, and Johnson pulled it.

Since those halcyon days, when an ad could be pulled because the opposition complained about it (even if it was fair; Goldwater was going around the country talking about turning North Vietnam in to a glass parking lot, rolling back the Warsaw Pact through military means, and other nonsense), we have had Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Jim Bakker (Reagan’s campaign manager and first Chief of Staff, who, before he became a Washington darling and Secretary of State, was a below the belt hitting political operative who got Reagan to begin his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, MS, site of a notorious Civil Rights-era murder; it should have been obvious to anyone paying attention that Reagan was signaling the bigots still bitter about the Civil Rights era that he was on their side, considering Reagan was a California politician; why else would he be in the sweaty south?), Lee Atwater, and, of course, the Swift Boaters. Screaming about “playing the race card”, preferably in an aggrieved, even Inspector Reynauldish, tone (”I’m shocked, shocked!”) when it is pointed out they are doing something racist is a nice way to divert attention from reality. It has worked in the past. My instinct, however, tells me it isn’t going to work this time.

As I said yesterday, the ad works on a number of levels, all of them legitimate readings. Trying to tease out “the” meaning from the ad is ludicrous, because it is doing a number of things all at once, which is part of its (evil) genius. Yet, now they are being called on it pretty much across the political spectrum, and, as Atrios notes, even Andrea Mitchell (Mrs. Alan Greenspan to those not in the know), in an interview with McCain campaign chair Rick Davis, points out (or attempts to point out; Davis tries to get his talking points in no matter what) the ad can only mean that McCain thinks Obama is an empty-headed slut. One of the nice things about this interview, again as noted by Atrios, is that Rick Davis not only lies and lies some more, but comes off sounding really quite stupid. He needs to be out there even more than he has been in order to give Obama a boost.

I think the kind of “meta” discussions prompted by the Britney/Paris ad are a good thing. They are shining a light in to the most dark recesses of the Republican Party’s political strategy. Obama doesn’t have to do much of anything about it, because the blogs and reporters are doing it for him. This is all to the good, because we can finally talk about the way these folks operate in an honest, open way.

Original post by progxian@northboone.com (Geoffrey Hussein Kruse-Safford)

When tragedy strikes, we try to figure it out. We try to find meaning in a situation that is inherently meaningless. We try to find some link to the larger society and culture that might help us understand how and why such a horrid event could occur. Arguments ensue over the relative strength of the relationships between various cultural factors and the actors who carried out these horrid acts of violence.

Sometimes, however, that meaning just doesn’t exist. In 2000, at my place of employment, a high school student was doing some homework during down time. She had to write an essay on Lord of the Flies, and asked me for help in understanding what the book was describing. Without hesitating, I said, “The Columbine High School shooting is Lord of the Flies in real life.” Some Christians tried to make hay out of the death of one of the students, because she allegedly refused to denounce her beliefs before being murdered. Yet, all the students who died that day, Christian or not, died not because of what they believed or didn’t believe. They died because the two young men who went on that killing spree were interested in killing. Period. No amount of post hoc scrutiny of this or that particular case will wrest anything more out of that event.

When a Luddite left-winger mails bombs to those he believes are destroying our world, the right goes in to overdrive on the dangers of liberal ideology.

When a small group of right-wing extremists bomb a building, killing 159 people, including children at an on-site day care facility, it might be important to look at the way popular anti-government talk - especially all the descriptions of government employees as “faceless bureaucrats” - might have helped depersonalize the victims enough to allow those responsible to carry out their act of terrorism.

When a young man is beaten to death for the heinous crime of hitting on one of a pair of bar-hopping buddies, his body left on display as a warning to any other young gay man, I would think the demonizing of gays might need to be paid attention to just a bit more (although, to be fair to the murderers here, the murder of gays for this particular crime against masculinity goes hand-in-hand with the rhetoric of anti-gay hatred).

Assessing the level of social and cultural culpability in any tragic event is, to a certain extent, a fools errand. Even should clear lines of cause and effect, or at the very least correlation, exist, their relative merits and strengths will always be a matter of dispute. One can allow rage to overwhelm one, as Tony Kushner did in a November, 1998 article in The Nation, in which he hung the death of Matthew Shepard around the necks of every politician and religious figure who ever spoke out against gays and “the gay lifestyle”.

The facts of the David Adkisson case in Tennessee are pretty clear. A man, frustrated over lack of work, and directing his hostility out at “liberals” enters a Unitarian Church and opens fire, killing two and wounding several others before being subdued by members of the congregation as he reloads. At his home are book by radio personalities Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly. The lines of correlation are pretty clear here; these and other right-wingers routinely insist that liberals are responsible for our social ills, even if what they describe as social ills aren’t at all, but figments of their own perfervid imaginations. While the shooter reached a breaking point due to a confluence of unfortunate circumstances, his grievances against a society that seemed to exclude him from making a positive contribution was certainly fed by a book describing liberalism as a mental disorder.

This is not to say that such books should not appear. This is not to say that right-wingers are not entitled to their opinions. This is only to say that when a right-winger goes on a shooting rampage, and leaves a note behind blaming liberals for all his troubles and explicitly targeting these same liberals, and there is abundant evidence that the man in question was exposed to the slurry coming from right-wing talking-heads and blabbermouths, it might be nice to hear a thoughtful word or two from these same folks acknowledging a certain level of culpability.

Stephen King removed from print copies of his pseudonymous novel Rage after Columbine. Are Savage, Hannity, and others who have written pages and pages of scurrilous nonsense about how liberals are destroying our country going to respond in a like fashion? Are they even going to acknowledge that in the fever-swamps of the right, there might be those who take their words so seriously as to end the threat to our way of life by murdering a bunch of church-goers watching a children’s program?

Original post by progxian@northboone.com (Geoffrey Hussein Kruse-Safford)

First, a video of the latest McCain ad against Obama. It seems so innocuous. In fact, I think part of it might hurt McCain, reminding people that Obama can get 200,000 people to come out and hear him speak, while McCain has a hard time filling a room without his advance people dragging in local supporters. Yet, it is the first few seconds of the ad that count. Watch, and I’ll explain after:

I had seen a reference and commentary on this ad over at Talking Points Memo (to which I shall repair in a moment), but it was watching it in this post at Hullabaloo, in which dday points out that McCain has hired the guy responsible for the Harold Ford “Call me, Harold” ad, perhaps the most transparently racist ad since the Jesse Helms “white hands” ad in 1990, that I was gobsmacked.

Here’s the thing. Those images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton last barely a second, fading out as images fade in. The image of Ms. Hilton fades directly to a picture of Barack Obama smiling. Do I have to spell this out for you? I will be honest and say that, before I saw the ad, I thought this was a bit of a stretch. Indeed, textually, the ad seems to imply that Obama is an empty-headed celebrity, famous for being famous, with policies that don’t quite jibe. That might even be a fair criticism to make. Seeing the ad, and the way those images fade out over one another, with the final shot of Obama smiling fading in over a photo of Paris with the only expression she ever wears - I just sat here in my empty house and said, “Wow!”

To be clear, I want to quote at a bit of length from digby’s discussion of “racist dogwhistles”:

I think we need to have a little discussion of what “racist dogwhistle” means. It is a word or phrase that conjures up certain subliminal images in those who are predisposed to see things in racial terms. It doesn’t mean that everyone who hears the word as a criticism sees it in that way — only those who get “the code.” So, when Karl Rove sends out McCain’s minions to spread the word “presumptuous” all over the place, the idea is to signal to the racists among us that Obama is “uppity.” It doesn’t mean that if you think Obama is presumptuous that you are a racist. You might just think, “yeah, he’s acting like it’s in the bag already.” But racists hear that Obama is an uppity black man.

See, it works on two levels. That’s why it’s called a dogwhistle — only the racists can hear the racism in it.

This is a complicated mode of communication that’s been developed on the right for many decades. It’s not something I just made up. There are dozens of examples: “welfare queen” and “Willie Horton,” the “Hands” ad by Jesse Helms and most recently, the Harold Ford “Call Me” ad in 2006. The most famous of all was Ronald Reagan slyly beginning his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where one of the worst atrocities of the civil rights movement happened. Over the years it’s gotten more subtle as the nation becomes less tolerant of overt racism, but it’s never completely gone.

Josh Marshall has a couple things to say about this particular bit of garbage as well.

[I]t is the norm that obvious campaign tactics that are treated as obvious after a campaign is over are nonetheless treated by most reporters as ambiguous or unclear during a campaign. But in this case it would be nice if that were not the case. Because here we have a candidate, John McCain, who is running on a record of straight talk and honorable campaigning running a campaign made up mainly of charges reporters are now more or less acknowledging are lies. But there’s precious little drawing together of the contradiction. What’s more, as everyone will acknowledge after the campaign, the McCain campaign is now pushing the caricature of Obama as a uppity young black man whose presumptuousness is displayed not only in taking on airs above his station but also in a taste for young white women.

Not only is he an empty-headed preener dazzled by all the attention he’s getting, but he’s a (nudge, nudge) black guy who likes (wink, wink) blonde white women (a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind bat, eh?). Obviously, the McCain campaign and his supporters will cry foul - how dare they call Sen. Straight Talk a racist? I am not doing any such thing. What I am doing is calling out the subtle racist message encoded in this ad. It is one of those things you can take or leave. If you take it though, you were looking for it, and I mean that in both a positive - Yeah, he’s an uppity Negro with a hankering for white meat! - and negative - What a bunch of racist claptrap! - way. Just because it’s subtle doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Original post by progxian@northboone.com (Geoffrey Hussein Kruse-Safford)

The Department of Justice’ Office of Inspector General released a report today on the suspicious hiring practices of the Justice Department under former Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Albert Gonzalez. Two key figures, Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling, were repeatedly named as violators not just of department policies and procedures m - usually enough to get someone at least suspended from a job if not fired - to violating federal law by inappropriately asking questions regarding the political views of persons seeking positions at the department. An example of the kind of thing is highlighted at TPMMuckraker, where the pdf. file report is being gone over with a fine tooth comb. I offer this particular snippet for those who might want to argue “they all do this don’t they?”:

Federal immigration judgeships were especially targeted for politicization. In October 2003, shortly after Sampson started working at DOJ, then as Counselor to Attorney General John Ashcroft, he began to overhaul the selection process for immigration judges. “[We] were only considering essentially Republican lawyers for appointment,” Sampson said, according to the IG’s report. (It was not clear from the report whether Sampson said that to IG investigators or in another setting)

Prior to 2004, immigration judges were appointed in an essentially non-political bureaucratic process handled by the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge. Vacancies were posted, resumes sorted, interviews conducted and decisions made by lower-level DOJ officials, according to the report.

Sampson’s new process involved “coordination” with White House and an extra effort to get friends of the Bush administration into the judgeships when possible. Sampson circulated a document outlining the new process.

“Many lawyers seeking positions within the Administration, including judgeships, become known to the White House offices of Political Affairs, Presidential Personnel, and Counsel to the President.” The document stated that some lawyers might qualify to be IJs, and that “coordination” was needed to ensure that such lawyers were “informed of the opportunity” to become IJs.”

Think Progress highlights two examples of Monica Goodling’s antics while working as a liaison between DoJ and the White House. For those who may not have been paying attention, Ms. Goodling was a graduate of Regent University Law School, and appeared out of her depth when called before Congress to testify. Actually, she appeared as if she would have been out of her depth outside a candle party. I felt bad for her, because all those mean Congress folks were asking her tough questions when, as the OIG report clearly shows in detail, all she was doing was trying to make the Department of Justice safe for George W. Bush:

In April, NPR reported that the Justice Department Inspector General was investigating whether former DOJ White House liaison Monica Goodling dismissed a career DOJ attorney “because of rumors that she is a lesbian.”

–snip–

As the report notes, the assistant U.S. attorney (AUSA) received “outstanding” performance reviews, the highest possible rating, and was subsequently granted a work extension in 2006. Goodling, however, opposed it.

–snip–

When Executive Office for U.S. Attorney Associate Counsel Natalie Voris told Goodling she supported the extension, Goodling “responded that Voris did not know the AUSA as well as she thought she did“:

Voris said that Goodling then told her that the [assistant U.S. attorney] had a homosexual relationship with the U.S. Attorney in the AUSA’s USAO and that the two took trips together at government expense. Voris told us she believes that the AUSA’s alleged sexual orientation was a factor in Goodling’s decision not to extend the detail.

Furthermore, when the assistant U.S. attorney sought a detail in the Office of Violence Against Women, Goodling objected “because it would look like the Department was sanctioning the homosexual relationship.”

–snip–

[T]he report states.

“We concluded that Goodling’s actions violated Department policy and federal law, and constituted misconduct,” the report adds. Both the assistant U.S. attorney and the U.S. attorney denied the relationship.(italics added)

So much for a valiant effort to protect us all from Teh Gay. She also figured that it was important to maintain the purity of the Department on a purely partisan basis (for fun, replace the word “Democrat” with the word “Jew” and violate Godwin’s law):

In one disgraceful example, Goodling refused to hire “one of the leading terrorism prosecutors in the country” because his wife was a Democrat

Here are some of the interview questions Ms. Goodling used, via Sadly, No!:

* Tell us about your political philosophy. There are different groups of conservatives, by way of example: Social Conservative, Fiscal Conservative, Law & Order Republican.

* [W]hat is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?

* Aside from the President, give us an example of someone currently or recently in public service who you admire.

As I noted above, the report is clear that these examples all violate the policies and procedures of the Department of Justice. They also, per the report, violate federal law. Whether that matters much - no law enforces itself - only time will tell. It might be nice if Ms. Goodling no longer has a license to practice law, or her version of it anyway, so she can go to some happy Christian home, where the man is the priest, and she can dutifully serve him by providing all sorts of children for him. Isn’t that what Christian women are supposed to do?

Original post by progxian@northboone.com (Geoffrey Hussein Kruse-Safford)

Just back from church, where the preacher talked about Jesus saying, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Had communion - always a good thing. It’s time to rest, as Sunday night is the first day of my work week. Sat and listened to a Schubert Mass this morning, much to the chagrin of my older daughter, who sat impatiently while her father enjoyed some sacred music.

What’s your day been like so far, and what are your plans for the rest of it?

Original post by progxian@northboone.com (Geoffrey Hussein Kruse-Safford)