alternative hippopotamus

From the Washington Post review of the 1/2 Hour News Hour: (my emphasis)

All that aside, “ Hour” definitely has its moments. Anchors “Jennifer Lange” and “Kent McNally” (Jenn Robertson and Kurt Long — why didn’t they just use their real names?) sit at a simple desk and deliver the facetious items without any of the dreadful, overboard mugging and mincing of “Daily Show’s” obnoxious Jon Stewart.

The show opens with something of a sketch, however: It’s 2009 and guess who’s president? Rush Limbaugh, whom we discover seated at an Oval Officey desk and reciting his lines mechanically. When he calls for the vice president, in walks that spooky vampire Ann Coulter, too malicious and frightening to ever be funny. Still, the pair do have a certain star power.

On comes the artificial news. Hillary Rodham Clinton has pledged wide-ranging variety in her version of a Clinton administration, it’s reported; she vows to appoint “a diverse group . . . of angry lesbians.” An overlong segment on politically correct children’s books includes such titles as “Harry Potter and the Alternate Lifestyle” and, for the developmentally challenged, “The Little Engine That Couldn’t Quite.”

There’s a running gag about environmental activist Ed Begley Jr. attempting to get to the studio in a car that runs on, among other things, poopy, and mock commercials trashing the American Civil Liberties Union — “protecting criminals from people like you since 1920.” Here, though, the desire to deliver partisan swift kicks tends to override any impulse to amuse.

Here’s my thoughts:

• It may be true that mugging is overused in standup. As far as mugging goes, though, Stewart’s is way up there. But, what’s with calling him “obnoxious”? If Stewart’s obnoxious, wtf do you call Sean Hannity?
• The soul of comedy is the absurdity of the human condition, and the experiencing thereof with some comic distance. What could actually be funny is a conservative comedy show about how Republicans, even when they’re in charge of the country, see themselves as being victimized by liberals. Oh, and while I’m on the subject, thank Shiva they’re less in charge of the country now than they were a few months ago.
• It’s interesting to note the gay jokes. Freud, in Jokes and their Relationship to the Unconscious, believed that peepee caca humor had its origin in feelings of shame toward toilet training. One wonders what childhood episode resulted in: “Harry Potter and the Alternate Lifestyle.”
• I’m also curious what it is about the Republican lifestyle that makes them so upset at the idea of fuel efficiency that they make alternative fuel poopy jokes. Maybe they just object to the world “alternative” (as in lifestyle, fuel, hippopotami, etc.)

Today on Politico Joementum lacky Dangerstein compares Edwards bloggers to Allen’s Maca moment, sez the bloggers are worse:

Throughout the course of the controversy, the left’s bigger digital diatribers never stopped to address the substance of what the Edwards bloggers actually wrote before joining the campaign. Had the bloggers done so, they might have found the postings were widely deemed by Democrats and Republicans alike as bigoted and patently offensive to many Christians, not just devout Catholics or evangelicals.

Nor did they ever stop to think how hollow and hypocritical it sounded for the same people who ravaged George Allen, for his “macaca” moment in last year’s Virginia Senate campaign to cry “free speech” when confronted with a far more nasty, vulgar, and hurtful display of prejudice from two of their own.

This is actually a pretty revealing bad analogy. Dangerstein knows the bloggers aren’t themselves candidates, knows that the Macaca Moment had nothing to do with offending the sensibilities of a particular group. It was about revealing Allen’s essential prejudices in an unguarded moment.

This is really about throwing mud in the direction of those he dislikes for the level of influence they wield. I’m sure that it was embarassing to be on the losing side in Joe’s primary campaign. And, it’s probably easier to disparage an influence he can’t otherwise effect: the lefty blogosphere.

Still, all in all, this is a pretty hacky piece.

Sometimes life has a nice syncronicity to it.

I recall a drive down from Boston to DC in October of 2003. I was coming down for a job interview for a job I ultimately wouldn’t get. Meanwhile, I was going to make myself at home, and get some pleasure reading in. I picked up John Dean’s Blind Ambition, his first-hand account of the Watergate years, his come-uppance, and ultimately the time he served in Federal prison.

At the time news was coming out sporadically over the leak of a covert agent’s name by someone in the White House. While the details were quite different from Dean’s account the story of the Plame leak was the stuff of Watergate: the abuse of power to serve the ends of those who don’t believe they’re bound by the same rules as everyone else. It’s the privilege of nobility as described by Hans Christian Anderson’s evil half-brother: if the king is naked, but says he’s wearing a charcoal grey Armani, then the king is wearing a charcoal gray Armani.

Meanwhile, back in Cambridge, Chengda and Andy, two comics I knew, guest-hosted the Lizard Lounge Comedy Hour, a weekly comedy show I ran at the time. While this had been an important part of my life, I wanted to do a show that was more politically oriented. It was the Joe Wilson/ Valierie Plame story of power, revenge, and its ensuing consequences that was drawing me to Washington.

I mention this because of last night’s Drinking Liberally book signing with Marcy Wheeler. The first few guests were showing up when who should appear but none other than Joe Wilson himself.

It was one of those evenings when what had gone around, felt like it had come back around.

Come on, DC. You gonna let a bunch of West Coast surf dudes and lotus eaters beat you in the race for wifi nirvana?

(For the record, Alexandria is planning something along these lines. Downtown Silver Spring, like Dupont Circle is allegedly a wifi hotspot, but my experience suggests otherwise. More like a notspot.)

From Washington Monthly:

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced today that Los Angeles will soon create a citywide wireless internet network:

“If successful, the plan would create the nation’s largest municipal Wi-Fi networks in terms of square miles covered and the number of people given access….”With L.A. Wi-Fi, we are dedicating ourselves to the idea that universal access to technology makes our entire economy stronger,” Villaraigosa said.”

Sounds great. But considering that you can’t even use a cellphone in LA’s subway system more than a decade after it first opened, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Surprisingly, phones work in the DC Metro very well. Too, well. This morning I was doing the Express crossword puzzle (who edits the Express crossword these days, btw, Ted Kaczynski ?) when the family from Planet Noise sat next to me. Mother Noise and the Noisettes were trying to see who had the highest pitched scream. Father Noise went back and forth from questioning a woman 20 feet away, and rapping into his cell phone.

Here’s my point(s):

• WiFi power to the people of DC! But make it the kind of wifi that works, like in Elephant&Castle, not the kind that belches and moans like downtown Silver Spring.
• While cell phones on the Metro is a good thing, technologically speaking, that doesn’t make it an excuse to annoy me. Any of you people hear about IM’s?

If you don’t live around here, you may not know that residents of the District can’t vote in Congressional elections. It’s annoying, quite frankly, not to mention contrary to the notion of a representational style of government.

So, there’s a bill that may well get passed to give DC a Represenative, but no Senators. Like many things in this life, it’s a compromise. For all I know the next life will be filled with compromise, too.

Anyway, great legal scholars like Instanpundit have weighed in, saying it’s obvious to them that it’s unconstitutional. DC Vote has lined up some experts on the other side:

The American Bar Association has said the bill is constitutional. Former Judges such as Kenneth Starr and Patricia Wald have also concluded that Congress has the power to use the District Clause of the Constitution to provide voting representation in Congress for DC residents.

These, and other scholars including Viet Dinh, have found that Congress has repeatedly treated DC as if it were a state for purposes of the Commerce Clause and Diversity Jurisdiction section of the Constitution. Therefore, if Congress can use the District Clause for purposes of those provisions of the Constitution, in our view Congress can use that power to provide representation.

I appreciate arguments like the use of the Commerce Clause, etc., but in plain language there’s just no fucking way the founding fathers would have excluded a half-million people from voting rights just because they lived in the capitol city. Moreover, there’s no fucking way that anyone would have signed the Constitution if they foresaw that as a possible outcome. People I’ve tried to explain this to the world over think the current situation is just too weird for words. It’s about time it got changed. Can you imagine would happen if people in Paris, London, Rome, or Vienna couldn’t vote?

That said, I’m always uncomfortable when I’m on the same side with Kenneth Starr and Viet Dinh.

From speaking to various bloggers at Drinking Liberally, I learned I wasn’t the only one who reads the comments at Just One Minute, to see the deranged in their natural habitat. I hesitate to blog about them, if only from the principle that observing a behavior often changes a behavior. But some of these comments are just too over the top.

Remember, essentially all of the commenters there are the 33 percenters, meaning they support Bush. There’s also a decent number of 19 percenters, folks who still support Dick “Dead-Eye” Cheney.

So, here’s a comment I ran across that gives you a feel for the vibe of JOM. This particular commenter likes to put a header on her comments, as if they were at the top of a memo: (link)

FM: CAROL HERMAN
TO: CLARICE

Now that I see that Ted Wells calmly explained to Walton that he’d let the Mitchell “thing” ‘REST ON THE RECORD,’ he has just flagged Walton that, yes, LIBBY APPEALS.

So, if Walton thinks he is “rescued” by higher-ups in the Federal judicial food chain, I think he is mistaken.

I think what Walton “adds” though, to the 2008 mix, is that it’s going to be a wide-open-question again, about letting donks into the White House. Given the crap we tend to get with judicial appointments, anyway. Who would want to give Hillary free reign?

Does Walton get it? He is sitting on all those affirmative action rules that has pissed off most of mainstream America. Like Kofe Anan, from Africa. Getting into a very high job, and picking up the ladder from the ground so it doesn’t benefit blacks. It even ends career opportunism.

That’s just my opinion. And, yes, there are old people on the Supremes. Bush will also get to nominate others;

And, the angrier the public gets? The easier to “go conservative.” Or to let congress-critters hang themselves. The jury’s still out on Iraq, where they are concerned, as well.

Given that some horses only run well on solid ground, a muddy field may actually be an advantage GOP.

Let alone, how Walton has to worry that Wells gets him, coming or going.

If, like me, you decide to watch as the natives converse, tread lightly. We don’t want to scare them off.

It doesn’t sound right to call this “taking off the gloves” in an effort to smear 2008 candidate Obama. It’s more like “let’s throw everything including the garbage disposal”:

Campaign 2008: Those spreading rumors that Barack Hussein Obama is a “closet Muslim” are off the mark. His religion has little to do with Islam and everything to do with a militantly Afrocentric movement that’s no less troubling.

Surrogates for Hillary Clinton and GOP front-runners hope to tarnish golden boy Obama by making him out to be some kind of Manchurian candidate for Islamist masters because he shares a name with Saddam Hussein and is the son of a Muslim.

True, his late father was Muslim, but he can hardly be described as “radical,” as the rumors have put it. He turned atheist in his early 20s before Obama was even born.

Obama: Islamofascist Saddamist or Afrocentric militant? You be the judge.

Yes, I know that most of us look at this kind of hit piece as a perversion of the notion of civilized discourse, and therefore won’t return fire. But, every so every often it’s tempting to get down in the same primordial ooze these guys crawl around in, and give as dirty as has been gotten.

Jonah Goldberg gets mail:

Dear Mr. Goldberg,

I heard you on NPR last evening as part of a discussion on the run-up to the Iraq so-called ‘war’. I must say that I was embarrassed that a man of your intelligence, and probably a Jew given your name, could be so out of touch with the truth. Do you not know what a lie is? Mr. Bush and his cronies obviously lied to get us into this war, have continued to lie, and will continue to lie until they’re out of office. There is no disputing this, for any reason. They did it for Middle East oil. As is usual in a resource war. Now you may compromise your morals because of Israel, but you do the Israelis no good by standing up for evil men. These men have blood on their hands and their souls, and you do too, by standing up for them. So please reconsider why you do what you do, and become a voice for truth. Don’t make excuses for these bozos.
End of story. There is no gray here. Thousands have died for oil.

If the only thing you come away with from this is: become a voice for truth, you are a winner.

One of the stories from last week was about two lefty bloggers, and how they almost got let go by the Edwards campaign. It even made it to a segment on Inside Washington with Gordon Peterson, during which Mark Shields read one of the less delicately phrased blog entries from Amanda, denouncing her, and denouncing the notion of bloggers being part of a campaign. I’m surprised he hasn’t used the platform to denounce Michelle Malkin, John Hinderaker, Glenn Reynolds, or even my buddy Jonah, who wouldn’t know what it means to be a voice for truth if it bit him on Ann Coulter’s Adam’s apple.

Why is the Washington papparazzi so offended by Amanda’s comments, comments that were not politically correct, but comments that sprung from a deep well of frustration with the Catholic church, and yet ambivalent by how deeply we have been lied to? Isn’t the greater thought crime, as long as we’re going to punish acts of verbal expression, defending the Bush administration? Wouldn’t Inside Washington be better served by calling out the Michelle Malkins, John Hinderakers, Glenn Reynolds, and Jonah Golbergs of the world?

As an occasional critic of NRO’s “The Corner”, or more accurately, a virtually 100% critic of “The Corner,” it’s important to point out where I find some common ground with these vociferous youngsters. Even if it’s just a piece of a larger thought, even if I don’t agree with their point on the whole, at least we have a little something we can agree on.

Take Mark Krikorian, please. This is in response to a Karl Rove comment at a recent wingnut convention where Rove said: “I don’t want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas.” While it’s true that given the current state of political patronage it’s unlikely that Rove’s son will need to make much of an effort for a small fortune in return, I like what Krikorian said:

It is precisely Rove’s son (and my own, and those of the rest of us in the educated elite) who should work picking tomatoes or making beds, or washing restaurant dishes, or mowing lawns, especially when they’re young, to help them develop some of the personal and civic virtues needed for self-government. It’s not that I want my kids to make careers of picking tomatoes; Mexican farmworkers don’t want that either. But we must inculcate in our children, especially those likely to go on to high-paying occupations, that there is no such thing as work that is beneath them.

As Tocqueville wrote: “In the United States professions are more or less laborious, more or less profitable; but they are never either high or low: every honest calling is honorable.” The farther we move from that notion, the closer we come to the idea that the lawyer is somehow better than the parking-lot attendant, undercutting the very foundation of republican government.

It’s true that Krikorian uses this to oppose a guest worker program, and it’s there where he and I depart. He’s right that everyone should have the experience of a “menial job.” We also need a guest worker program, or some way for people from other countries to experience life in the US. We also need a way for US citizens to experience life in other countries. That’s a subject for another post, however.

I remember reading in a Freshman year sociology textbook that one of the things that distinguished American society from many other parts of the world is that it was at its ideal a classless society. This is surely one of the meanings behind the phrasing: all men are created equal. Not equal by birth, perhaps, but birth alone should not be too great an advantage, or too great an impediment.

My general observation is that the weight of class membership is heavier, the degree of flexibility is less than I was first out of college. You can see this in things like the ongoing effort to shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class. And in the increase of CEO compensation relative to other employees. And from where we draw the soldiers to defend us in terms of war. And even when we go to war- by this I mean how cheaply or dearly we value the lives of soldiers who will be lost.

You even see this in the story of inside the beltway journalism oozing out in gobs from the Scooter Libby trial. Isn’t the common thread with Russert, Woodward, Miller, Cooper, Novak, Mitchell, etc., etc., is that they see themselves as special? They are not like you and me, they are members of a privileged journalism class. The rules just don’t apply to them as they would to you or I.

TPMmuckraker:

Last June, Glenn Kessler of the Post reported that the State Department’s New Eastern Affairs Bureau received a fax from the Iranians shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq:

“It was a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States, and the fax suggested everything was on the table — including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups.

“But top Bush administration officials, convinced the Iranian government was on the verge of collapse, belittled the initiative. Instead, they formally complained to the Swiss ambassador who had sent the fax with a cover letter certifying it as a genuine proposal supported by key power centers in Iran, former administration officials said.”

Rice, Security Advisor at the time, didn’t deny that the Iranians made such an overture, adding “I don’t remember reading” such a fax.

Really? I wonder what her to-do list was like that day:

• Pick up leather boots from dry cleaner.
• Ask husband President about B&Bs in Kennebunkport.
• Forward “Mushroom Cloud” soup recipe to Karen Hughes.
• Stabilize Middle East vis-a-vis Iranian proposal.

Doesn’t it always work out that it’s the last thing on the list you forget about?