alternative hippopotamus

From the Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford: Bye-bye Blackboard… from Einstein and Others.

There was a small, but very cool coffee shop that closed down recently, here in my local environs. There’s nothing left at this point. Bits of wiring, a utility closet, the tiles on the floor, that’s it. Nothing else to remind us of the local business that started as Sirius Coffee in Van Ness, and expanded into art house films at Visions Cinema near Dupont Circle.

Andrew Frank, who brought us Sirius has headed off to the Great White North. (Canada, not heaven.)

Here’s what he had to say 6 years ago about his beloved creation, Visions Cinema:

Our objective is to return quality independent films ­ foreign and American ­ to regular screenings in Washington. Not only will we premier films, but we will create complementary programs involving speakers: filmmakers, directors, actors, professors from local colleges, moderators for community-based discussion groups and more!

Visions was one of my regular hangs, and the empty movie house on Florida Ave., near Dupont Circle, still strikes me as something that oughta be.

Thanks for your vision, Andrew Frank.

Yes, I saw Young Peter’s op-ed in the WaPo.

On one hand, there’s not too much to say. Is Beinart posturing for the pundit class? Of course. Does this sort of op-ed ingratiate him to the same folks that would hire, say, a Joe Klein? Sure. Is there a grain of truth contained in his op-ed? Hmm. That’s a question I can’t answer. A grain of truth has never satisfied me, or anyone who might pass by this patch of lawn on the internets.

On the other hand, to quote Tevya, there is no other hand.

The chief fallacy lies in this remark:

The Democratic Party’s single biggest foreign policy liability is not that Americans think Democrats are soft. It is that Americans think Democrats stand for nothing, that they have no principles beyond political expedience.

You know, if Beinart had also questioned Republican expedience, then I might find that remark understandable. Or, if he had sited polls to back up his assertion, then there would be some meat to his op-ed. Or, if he could explain the broad lack of military service in the Bush administration, and somehow square that with the word “soft” that could have made for an interesting read.

Update: I was tempted to retitle the post “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Beinart,” but “Feh” sums it up pretty well. Particularly given Glenn Greenwald’s remarks:

If you want to know what the U.S. should do about the new Middle East war and any other complex, grave national security matter, you have to talk to Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes and Stephen Hadley and Peter Beinart and Joe Lieberman and John McCain and Tom Friedman and Rich Lowry and Newt Gingrich and all the other “serious” tough guys who might have been wrong about every single thing they said about Iraq but, for some reason that is impossible to discern, are supposed to be the only ones with any credibility on these questions — still.

I’ll also note that there’s an article in today’s WaPo about the White House witholding information on India’s missile sales to Iran, so that the House would vote favorably on sales of nuclear technology to India.

In an alternative universe, a Young Peter Beinart, just back from his third tour of duty in Iraq, would be penning an op-ed about how Republicans undermine national security. In this one, not so much.

There’s a couple of things I’ve seen over the last day or two that I wanted to pass along concerning the New Media and the Middle-East.

I try to listen to the On the Media podcast every week, but am just now getting around to last Friday’s broadcast, Balance Beam. It figures, because it deals exactly with what I’ve been trying to wrap my head around: a sense that what is happening now in Lebanon and Israel is critically important while at the same time sensing that we’re not getting the full picture.

Part of the problem is that I don’t live in the Middle-East. And, as Heinlein would probably say, you can’t really grok someone until you eat their food, and breathe their air. Actually, he said you can’t grok someone until you eat them, but eating someone from the Middle-East doesn’t like the surest path towards greater understanding. Instead, the best you and I can do is read about it, and try to form a picture from fragments.

And there’s the rub: while the foreign correspondence from the Washington Post and NYT is okay, okay is not the right standard for an issue of potentially historic proportions. (Here, I’m ignoring acts of journalistic barbarism like Fox News.) So, I’ve been going through BBC, Times of London, AFP, and Nouvelle Obs. (links go to rss feeds)

None of this is perfect either. It’s like learning about New Orleans by talking to people in Boston. Which is still better than learning about New Orleans by talking to people in Sweden.

This brings me back to the On the Media show I linked to above. The point of the piece is that everyone comes to the Israel-Lebanon situation with a set of assumptions. Those assumptions range from the meaning of the word “balance” to whether Palestine, or for that matter, the State of Israel, has a right to exist.

While I can’t tell you exactly what those assumptions are for the NYT and WaPo, I can tell you that it has a different feel to it than the foreign press. It’s kind of like the difference between Bistro D’Oc and an Au Bon Pain. No one needs to tell you which one is more authentic.

I wanted to add that for folks like me who don’t get a regular exposure to French, a couple of resources I’ve run across have been very helpful.

The first is the French Pod Class, an entertaining and educational weekly podcast on learning French.

The second is Radio France Internationale which offers news in basic French.

Et, Bon Appetit.

Just kidding. No, really, she’s one of the hackiest I’ve seen. Her, and her army of flying monkeys.

Today, for instance, she goes after Kofi Annan, telling us that his “smear against Israel is threatening to ‘unravel.’” I’m not sure what “unravel” in quotes means in this context, unless her audience takes things so literally that they’d believe that Kofi Annan’s threads were coming undone. It’s Malkin, so who knows.

Anyway, I think it’s interesting she quotes the remarkably fictitious New York Sun, but misses what her home town paper has to say: (Washington Post)

Also Wednesday, U.N. officials repeated statements that an Israeli air attack that killed four of its border security monitors Tuesday appeared to be deliberate. U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland, concluding a six-day mission that took him to Lebanon, Israel and the Gaza Strip, said in Jerusalem that “precision munitions” had landed a direct hit on the U.N. post, despite repeated requests from the U.N. mission in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, to stop firing.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, U.N. officials in Jerusalem said UNIFIL commanders made 10 calls to Israeli military officers Tuesday over six hours, asking that repeated shelling near the compound be halted. In each case, an official said, Israeli officers gave assurances that it would be.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in a statement that he had expressed “deep regret” over the incident to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, but called it “inconceivable” that the attack was intentional.

The word “inconceivable” does indeed believe in quotes, not just because it was spoken aloud, but because it is believable, much less conceivable, that some degree of intentionality was involved, particularly given the rest of the quote.

I don’t often quote David Brooks. He is, by definition, a movement conservative, being one of the founders of the Weekly Standard. And, in case you haven’t yet noticed, this is not a movement conservative blog. However, on the Newshour last Friday, Brooks gave a concise summary of conservative foreign policy that I found illuminating, particularly with respect to the current situation in Lebanon: (Newshour)

DAVID BROOKS: These are the ancient two branches of foreign policy conservativism, the one — and George Will is another on that side — goes back to Edmund Burke who says societies are extremely complicated. We don’t really know much about them. If you try to do something dramatic, you’re probably going to lead to all sorts of intended consequences, and that’s Burke.

And then the other side, you could say it’s Churchill. You’ve got evil in the world; you’ve got to stand up to that evil; and you’ve got to defeat that evil. And these are two strains, and they’re just playing out.

As I say, I find this to be a very concise summary, and illustrative of the Bush administration, who clearly falls into the Churchillian tradition of good vs. evil, if not the Churchillian tradition of grammar and pronunciation.

The fundamental flaw of posing things as a conflict of good vs. evil, the classic Manichean duality, is that its logic appeals to the lowest part of the brain. It is that part that knows only black and white thinking. You’re either right or your wrong. For me, or against me. Some call it the reptilian part of the brain, no offense meant to reptiles.

Take Hezbollah. The West sees Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. The East sees Hezbollah as an organization that opposes Israeli occupation. The West things the East is wrong, and anti-semitic. The East thinks the West is wrong, and anti-Muslim.

Ann Coulter outs Bill Clinton (Wonkette):

DEUTSCH: But what is the homosexual — that’s — you could say somebody who maybe doesn’t celebrate women the way he should or just is that he’s a hound dog?

Ms. COULTER: No. It’s just random, is this obsession with his…

DEUTSCH: But where’s the — but where’s the homosexual part of that? I’m — once again, I’m speechless here.

Ms. COULTER: It’s reminiscent of a bathhouse. It’s just this obsession with your own — with your own essence.

DEUTSCH: But why is that homosexual? You could say narcissistic.

Ms. COULTER: Right.

DEUTSCH: You could say nymphomaniac.

Ms. COULTER: Well, there is something narcissistic about homosexuality. Right? Because you’re in love with someone who looks like you. I’m not breaking new territory here, why are you looking at me like that?

I hope somebody finds a cure. For Ann’s mouth.

As KCinDC mentions below, babelfish, while a useful tool for those of us trying to get the view from overseas, can be a bit quirky, particularly with idioms.

For instance, the babelfish translation of this AFP article had a couple of hiccups (emphasis mine):

BEIRUT (AFP) - the engagements intensified Wednesday in south-Lebanon between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, whereas the participants in an international conference did not manage to Rome to agree to call with an immediate cease-fire.

The participants in this conference, among whom the United States, the allied main thing of Israel, simply expressed in a declaration their “determination to be worked immediately to arrive urgently to a cease-fire which puts an end to current violence and the hostilities” and specified that this cease-fire should be “durable, permanent and complete”.

I, for one, was very disappointed by the Washington Post article on Michael Steele. But, not for the usual reasons.

Did it really matter who was distancing themselves from the GOP? Not, really. That is, after all, the objective in this election year. It’s necessary that voters understand (if you’re a GOP candidate) that you’re not in cahoots with Bush.

More interesting was where the meeting occurred. And, I think it’s interesting that we’ve found out that the remarks came from Michael Steele, but not where the meeting took place.

Lawn Gnome Milbank described the location as: “a Capitol Hill steakhouse.” And he gave a number of hints who was being quoted, but not the venue.

As someone who keeps track of who hangs out where, I can suggest that reporters didn’t want to “out” the venue, because they didn’t want you, their readers, to know about it. That means the food is probably pretty good.

We recently learned that Ron Suskind does his interviews at Bread and Chocolate, the New Kids on the Blog (Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and Julian Sanchez) can be spotted on 18th street, and while I’m at it, the Townhouse List was not exactly an anagram, if you know what I mean.

So which “Capitol Hill steakhouse” are we talking about?

You may have seen this post from ThinkProgress on Cliff May’s response to K-Lo at the NRO Corner blog:

On Friday, the National Review’s Katherine Jean Lopez wrote a rather innocuous review of the new Oliver Stone movie, World Trade Center. Lopez wrote the movie was “about why we fight.”

Someone emailed Lopez, objecting to the line “it’s about why we fight,” and noting that “you do not fight - you never have and, hopefully, never will have to. You are not a member of any of the branches of the armed forces, nor a reservist.” Lopez was fairly contrite, responding, “To anyone reading from Iraq, Afghanistan, or otherwise serve in our military, let me clarify: I don’t fight. Thank you for serving so we may go about our days of blogging.”

But Cliff May, another National Review blogger and prominent right-wing pundit, objected. May insisted that Lopez, by blogging for the National Review was “fighting a war” and this war was “equally consequential” with the wars that are fought by the U.S. military.

Cliff May concludes, or if you prefer, finishes oozing:

So yes, Kathryn, you are fighting a war. And your e-mailer is ignorant about how wars are fought, about how wars are won and lost, and about the way the world actually works.

A war for what, or against who? And just how, in Mr. May’s opinion, does the world actually work?

It’s interesting to note that May is a product of all the usual east coast institutions that Republicans usually belittle: Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia University (journalism and public affairs), and the New York Times where he was a foreign correspondent.

After leaving his job as communications director for the RNC, May joined the ranks of what some call “wingnut welfare,” a series of think-tanks and NGO’s where folks sit around and talk about eliminating world poverty by eliminating the world poor.

This is the kind of war that May is talking about. A war of ideas, whose basic goal is to a.) advance Republican and particularly neo-conservative agendas, and b.) keep folks like him from being in an actual war. Indeed, the whole idea is to preserve and even strengthen a rigid class-oriented society in which the warrior class does the fighting, while the political intelligentsia, i.e., folks like May, cash the checks.