Ouch.
Noted on the way to somewhere else:
US Sen. Edward Kennedy will receive the 2003 George Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service.
The award, which recognizes an individual’s or group’s dedication to public service at the local, state, national or international levels, will be presented to the Democratic lawmaker at a dinner ceremony Nov. 7 following a speech by Kennedy at Texas A&M University’s Rudder Auditorium.
[...]
Former President Bush has the sole discretion on who receives the award, said Penrod Thornton, deputy director of the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation. Thornton said he doesn’t think the award is anything other than a way for Bush to honor Kennedy.
“Knowing President Bush, it was more about personalities and contributions of the individuals and it didn’t have anything to do with politics,” Thornton told the Bryan-College Station Eagle for its Saturday editions.
Cutting 41 rather more slack than I myself am wont, Martial respectully disagrees with Thornton’s assessment. (Via Kevin.)
J. Bradford DeLong = minor god.
Oh, sure, he’s a daily must-read, and a great way for liberal arts dilettantes to come to vague grips with what it is they’re starting to figure out that they don’t know about economics, but did you know he’s also a fan of innovative webcomics?
Me neither.
(So if you haven’t plucked a BitPass card from the æther so you can plunk down an airy quarter for the privilege that is Part 3 of Patrick Farley’s Apocamon, hell. You have even less than no excuse, now.)
Know what you know you don’t know.
It’s one of those paradoxes that help make this such an interesting time: collectively, we know more than ever before; the facts at our fingertips double and redouble at a faster and faster pace, yet ignorance—appallingly smug, triumphal, aggressive—brazenly, stubbornly keeps up. Neal Gabler indulges in hyperbole when he calls the Bush administration a “medieval presidency,” but it’s judicious hyperbole. There’s a blatant disregard for facts (which are bunk and “stupid things”) that get in the way of truth (which you just, you know. Know). Call it an all-too-human turning away from the terrifying spectre of the things we know that we don’t know getting bigger and bigger every year, clinging to signals of our own devising, when signals grow so thick and furious we can’t begin to tell them from the noise. Call it an all-too-mendacious embrace of post-modernism at its slippery worst by a fatherly crew that self-righteously claims to know best. —But you can’t deny it’s true.
Well. I suppose you could. Rather the point, really.
So I commend this post over at The Early Days of a Better Nation to your attention. You might not agree with the conclusions reached by some of these struggling (and ex-) creationists, and you might think the drive to reconcile the Bible and science is doomed from the start, but I’d like to hope you’d be moved by anyone’s honest attempts to seek out the stuff they know they don’t know, to aggressively take in as many facts as they can find and hold their truths up against them and see what they can make of the mess.
Doctor who?
Sadly, the Eddie Izzard rumor appears to have been just that. —Ah, well. The list of more plebeian possibilities for the 2005 revival is respectable enough: Withnail, I, and the Third Doctor’s son are all up for the role. —Myself, I was always partial to Peter Davison (who is, of course, the Doctor of choice for Yanks desperate not to appear provincial in these circles by leaping straight for the obvious). The Spouse doesn’t seem to mind the whole stuck-on-planet-Earth-with-bad-hair thing, and so has an especial fondness for John Pertwee. Still, the enormous appeal of snarkily pedantic Victorian gentlemen-scientists with a certain sartorial flamboyance aside, there’s something to Paul McGann’s plea for a different different sort of Doctor: “I’d like to see somebody really scary, Amazonian, highly intelligent and gorgeous in the role: someone who could be a complete handful. Rachel Stirling could do it because she’s got great charisma. Dame Maggie Smith would be brilliant.” While I wouldn’t disagree, still: fanboys will be fanboys. Best ease them into the whole idea of the Doctor as Other. (A snarkily pedantic Victorian gentleman-scientist with a certain sartorial flamboyance is an Other to most fanboys, yes; just not as much of an Other. And whether the idea of Izzard aids that easing or lurches off in strange new directions depends on how simple one likes one’s gender spectra.) —So, as Russell T. Davies plots the adventures of the long-awaited ninth Doctor, we might ask him (and the Beeb) to consider: instead of the respectable same old same old, or the scary Amazonian daughter of Emma Peel, or the stately and dignified Nigerian doctor, perhaps a bit of transoceanic cross-over appeal? Someone whose voice can handle the verbal pyrotechnics of reversing the polarities of neutron flows, but in a different, shall we say, idiom? —Bonus: he’s already played a doctor.
(Aw, don’t mind me. I thought Ed Chigliak: Secret Agent would have made a great spinoff.)
Keeping the bad people away from the good people.
Should future circumstance (in its ineluctable wisdom) require a link to The Corner, mgmt. humbly suggests this eye-rolling assemblage of conservative water-coollery might henceforth be referred to by one of Jonah Goldberg’s own discreetly charming coinages: the Bad People Place. (Thanks again to alicublog.)
Successoratin’ Stan!
We’re in the home stretch of the overtime madness that is my day job, currently (should I provide a link? Oh, all right: a link), so what could be more appropriate than a slew of motivational goodies?
How about a slew of motivational goodies based on Marvel superheroes?
Here’s Elektra, the Greek ninjette:
EXCELLENCE
“Excellence is reserved for those who, even when they fail, do so by doing greatly, so that their place shall never be among those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
How about her sometime paramour, Daredevil?
JUSTICE
“Justice is blind and has no fear. It is selfless, noble, and kind to all who serve it well, but know this… Do not dare justice, for it comes to all—right or wrong.”
Too wordy? Self-contradictory? Perhaps Wolverine’s trademark laconicism will get to the point (bub):
PERSEVERANCE
“Some people want it to happen… Some people wish it to happen… Others tear down the walls of resistance and make it happen.”
Or maybe not. (There’s also murderous vigilante Frank Castle, but perhaps the point is made?)
Luckily, Dirk Deppey also provides us with a link to the high-larious knockoffs. Which reminds one of the magisterially cheap shots scored by Despair.com, knocking off Successories, the éminence grise in this—field?—that Marvel’s knock-offs knock off, in their own unique, ah, idiom.
Contractual obligation post.
As an anti-American, objectively pro-Saddam liberal traitor, I ought to be dancing in the aisles or something over the Plame Game, or Traitorgate, or L’Affaire Wilson, or business-as-fucking-usual, see-I-told-you-this-administration-was-a-pack-of-venal-weasels, or Jesus-H.-Christ-in-a-jumped-up-sidecar, I’m-sick-of-this-game-and-it’s-starting-to-scare-me, can-we-put-the-pieces-away-and-play-something-else? —But I’m tired. And overworked. And suffering from a head cold. And anyway, you’ve doubtless read the incredible coverage Joshua Micah Marshall and Kevin Drum have offered up on the matter.
If not—if you’re still catching up with the latest feeding frenzy—let me suggest a couple of can’t-miss scenic overlooks:
Juan Cole tells you pretty much what the fuck happened.
Brad DeLong tells you why it’s such a fucking big deal.
Doing my bit to hike those productivity numbers.
Sixty-hour work weeks suck, which is about all I’ll say at the moment regarding my recent quietude. —Ah, well. At least we’re getting overtime.
Ne raillons pas les fous; leur folie dure plus longtemps que la nôtre… Voilà toute la differénce.
It’s not a perfect match. Then, what is? —But it’s well known, the love the Norquist-Rovian axis has for Mark Hanna and William McKinley and that golden Gilded Age of yore, and dire prognostications as to what the world will look like if they get their way (nasty, brutish, and Darwinistic) doubtless fueled the savage glee which attended a recent viewing of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd (George Hearn, Angela Lansbury, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 1982). “There’s a hole in the world like a great black pit and it’s filled with people who are filled with shit…” Yeah! you think. And Sweeney’s just the person to do something about it!
Um.
But it’s important, you know, not just to look to your own nightmares, but also the other side’s dreams. (Accepting for just this one quick moment the arrant fiction of a monolithic “other” “side.”) What sugar plums dance in Karl Rove’s head when he lays it on a 550–thread-count silk-and-cotton pillow? I couldn’t begin to guess with accuracy. But I can go searching for biographical information on Robert W. Chambers (in an unrelated matter) and stumble over the text online of perhaps his most famous story, “The Repairer of Reputations,” part of the King in Yellow sequence, regarding the effect that a rather disreputable play (“The King in Yellow”) has on those who read it:
If I had not caught a glimpse of the opening words in the second act I should never have finished it, but as I stooped to pick it up, my eyes became riveted to the open page, and with a cry of terror, or perhaps it was of joy so poignant that I suffered in every nerve, I snatched the thing out of the coals and crept shaking to my bedroom, where I read it and reread it, and wept and laughed and trembled with a horror which at times assails me yet. This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men’s thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the Lake of Hali, and my mind will wear forever the memory of the Pallid Mask.
But we were talking about dreams, and not dire prognostications. —This is standard stuff, 19th c. metafiction and pulpy Edwardian horror, all coy unspeakables and things seen in a glass, darkly, and indeed, Lovecraft swiped quite a bit from Chambers, who was (though this is not saying that much) the better writer. (Lovecraft was the better storyteller, and this made all the difference. —We later learn what became of the author of this play:
“I only remember the excitement it created and the denunciations from pulpit and press. I believe the author shot himself after bringing forth this monstrosity, didn’t he?”
“I understand he is still alive,” I answered.
“That’s probably true,” he muttered; “bullets couldn’t kill a fiend like that.”
(O! What author wouldn’t kill for this immortality?)
Dreams, then: Chambers launches “The Repairer of Reputations” with a utopian vision to be troubled by the undercurrents he roils to its surface with that infamous, unseen play, and whether it’s a deeply personal idea of utopia, a carefully constructed utopia of people whose politics he wishes to disparage, or a utopia slapped together from random memes plucked from the Zeitgeist, I couldn’t tell you—nor does it matter. For it is definitely a utopian vision of a 1920 to come, a clean and shining 1920 on a hill, as seen from Gilded 1895:
Toward the end of the year 1920 the government of the United States had practically completed the programme adopted during the last months of President Winthrop’s administration. The country was apparently tranquil. Everybody knows how the Tariff and Labor questions were settled. The war with Germany, incident on that country’s seizure of the Samoan Islands, had left no visible scars upon the republic, and the temporary occupation of Norfolk by the invading army had been forgotten in the joy over repeated naval victories and the subsequent ridiculous plight of General Von Gartenlaube’s forces in the State of New Jersey. The Cuban and Hawaiian investments had paid one hundred per cent., and the territory of Samoa was well worth its cost as a coaling station. The country was in a superb state of defense. Every coast city had been well supplied with land fortifications; the army, under the parental eye of the general staff, organized according to the Prussian system, had been increased to three hundred thousand men, with a territorial reserve of a million; and six magnificent squadrons of cruisers and battle-ships patrolled the six stations of the navigable seas, leaving a steam reserve amply fitted to control home waters. The gentlemen from the West had at last been constrained to acknowledge that a college for the training of diplomats was a necessary as law schools are for the training of barristers; consequently we were no longer represented abroad by incompetent patriots. The nation was prosperous. Chicago, for a moment paralyzed after a second great fire, had risen from its ruins, white and imperial, and more beautiful than the white city which had been built for its plaything in 1893. Everywhere good architecture was replacing bad, and even in New York a sudden craving for decency had swept away a great portion of the existing horrors. Streets had been widened, properly paved, and lighted, trees had been planted, squares laid out, elevated structures demolished, and underground roads built to replace them. The new government buildings and barracks were fine bits of architecture, and the long system of stone quays which completely surrounded the island had been turned into parks, which proved a godsend to the population. The subsidizing of the state theatre and state opera brought its own reward. The United States National Academy of Design was much like European institutions of the same kind. Nobody envied the Secretary of Fine Arts either his cabinet position or his portfolio. The Secretary of Forestry and Game Preservation had a much easier time, thanks to the new system of National Mounted Police. We had profited well by the latest treaties with France and England; the exclusion of foreign-born Jews as a measure of national self-preservation, the settlement of the new independent negro state of Suanee, the checking of immigration, the new laws concerning naturalization, and the gradual centralization of power in the executive all contributed to national calm and prosperity. When the government solved the Indian problem and squadrons of Indian cavalry scouts in native costume were substituted for the pitiable organizations tacked on to the tail of skeletonized regiments by the former Secretary of War, the nation drew a long sigh of relief. When, after the colossal Congress of Religions, bigotry and intolerance were laid in their graves, and kindness and charity began to draw warring sects together, many thought the millennium had arrived, at least in the new world, which, after all, is a world by itself.
But self-preservation is the first law, and the United States had to look on in helpless sorrow as Germany, Italy, Spain, and Belgium writhed in the throes of anarchy, while Russia, watching from the Caucasus, stooped and bound them one by one.
No, it’s not a perfect match; one doubts Norquist’s America would have a Secretary of Fine Arts, and we all know what Rove’s cadre thinks of being represented abroad by other than incompetent patriots. But it is a glimpse of the roots of the light at the end of the tunnel through which some seem determined to drive us.
Simple questions, simply answered.
That’s all it would take to lay to rest this foofooraw of how the federal government is or maybe isn’t spying on our public libraries, or might could start spying if we all don’t sit down and shut up about it. —Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act allows the government broad powers to request the reading lists of individuals from the libraries they frequent, over and above powers already in place, and makes it illegal to inform anyone that such a request has been made; US Attorney General John Ashcroft, under fire, pitched a hissy fit and then insisted via a memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller that no libraries, bookstores, or other businesses had yet been requested to turn over any such lists; libraries have asserted that they have been requested to turn over such lists, though what with the gag order and the other laws on the books it’s terribly unclear whether this was under the ægis of the USA PATRIOT Act (thereby rendering Ashcroft a bald-faced liar) or not.
So: here’s the questions to ask your elected representatives to ask the Bush administration:
If these new powers are needed to fight terrorism, why aren’t they being used?
If these new powers aren’t needed to fight terrorism, why do you have them? And why did you misrepresent your reasons for seeking them?
If these powers have been used, why are you lying to us now?
That’s all we need to know, really. —Further reading: links via the invaluable librarian.net (home of the ever-popular signs that have contributed to Ashcroft’s froth); Lis Riba is on the case, like, hardcore, with another possible misstatement from our beloved attorney general; and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is among the many people lining up to kick Jonah Goldberg’s sorry, ignorant ass.
Sputtering, frothing rage.
Which is about all I can muster at the moment:
KIDNAPPED AT FEDERAL PLAZA
Immigrant Families Expecting Greencards & Citizenship Get Deported Instead
WHAT:
Immigrant families are facing a deportation crisis. In the last month immigrant advocates have received emergency calls from New Yorkers whose loved ones—on the road to obtaining a greencard or citizenship—were deported from Federal Plaza after responding to government appointment letters. Others who are not being deported immediately are being shipped away as far as Louisiana without seeing a judge. Devastated and enraged, the relatives left behind will return to the site to speak out against the rapid-fire detentions and deportations that have broken apart their homes.
WHO:
MARIANA TAPIA, cousin of 19-year-old Juan Jimenez, who was deported to the Dominican Republic 16 hours after reporting to Federal Plaza for citizenship.
GEORGIANA FACEY, U.S. citizen whose husband was deported to Jamaica. She is left to raise 4 children alone in Brooklyn.
Many others…..
Watch TalkLeft for the changes. Read up on how our utterly disgraceful immigration system has acquitted itself in the past. Start making phone calls. Start writing letters. Start sharpening your votes.
In April, in response to the unprecedented cultural destruction that attended our invasion of Iraq, Secretary Rumsfeld had this to say:
The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it’s the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, “My goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?”
Let this become their mantra—or a variation of it. Tomorrow, when the phone calls come in. Next week, as the email piles up. Next year, when the votes are counted, and this entire benighted administration, this foul and unspeakable blot on our liberal, inclusive, democratic history has been kicked to the curb. I want them—all of them, from Rumsfeld to Rove, from Rice to Powell, from Bush himself to Ashcroft, at whose feet this latest particular outrage can be laid, I want them all sitting back, dumbfounded, their heads in their hands, staring at the mailbags and ballots, muttering to themselves.
My goodness. Were there that many decent people? Is it possible there were that many decent, humane people in the whole country?
Couldthisbereal.com?
Good lord, of course not. And for a myriad of reasons beyond how hard it might (must? might?) be to hack such a secured line in the first place. But don’t let that stop you. (As ever, stay for the comments; they’re half the fun.)
A riot of manliness.
Kevin’s spouse Jenn (no web presence) has this thing she hollers whenever some asshole in a sports car or SUV pulls a lame-ass highway stunt to squeeze his vehicle just ahead of hers or cuts a corner too impatiently or runs a red light or just in general drives like a get-out-of-my-way-you-insignificant-speck megalomaniac: “Sorry about your dick!” she cries. Try it sometime: it’s surprisingly cathartic—and with a sufficiently advanced and fluid concept of gender, works just as well on female get-out-of-my-way-you-insignificant-speck megalomaniacs. (Badda-bing, to coin a phrase.)
Jay Nordlinger, Managing Editor and Impromptuiste for the Corner-hosting National Review, undertook on the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Page to explain the gender gap in American politics. (Thanks, Roy!) Really, honestly, this thing must be seen to be believed. Calling Rumsfeld a “riot of manliness” (sincerely!) is but the tip of the rhetorical iceberg. Thrill to his implacable defense of Cheney’s chickenhawkery! Shiver at Giuliani’s (exceptionally) manly flirtation with drag! Delight in untangling the coded insults! But please, don’t drink coffee while reading this. I can’t be held responsible for your keyboards, but I’d hate to see something happen to them.
Oh, and, Jay? Mr. Nordlinger?
Sorry about your dick.
Tanner, rested, ready.
So all this twitterpating about K Street and all I can think of is Tanner ’88.
Movie Madness has the run. The Film Snobs might object, but I remember enjoying it a hell of a lot more than not.
(Also: it has a listing in the Female Celebrity Smoking List.)
Team Micropayments!
Actually, Dirk Deppey has some very sensible things to say about Clay Shirky and Scott McCloud and Joey Manley and paying 25 cents for comics on the web, and his good sense doesn’t preclude a guarded optimism about the idea.
Have no idea what this is about? Do anything creative with your spare time that you could post to the web for others to see or read or listen to or download? Enjoy buying more beer than not? Get up to speed on the pros and cons; you’re going to want to figure out where you stand. —A handy guide to debating the issue: if someone says, “Would you pay a quarter for MetaFilter?” they’re missing the point entirely. No one would pay a quarter or a dime or a penny a hit for MetaFilter or BoingBoing or Plastic—or Electrolite, or Daily Kos—or wood s lot, or Ftrain, or Brad DeLong’s semi-daily journal—some of the value they bring to the table is quick and frequent and easy to access and free free free. (Though we might pay for Bellona Times. Or D-squared. I’m just sayin’.)
What we’re (to plant my flag) talking about is paying a quarter for Wary Tales or The Right Number or Apocamon. Or Babe the Blue Ox, say, the best band in the goddamn world, who wandered into the wilderness out of a nasty recording contract, and who now post MP3s and ask you to send them a buck a song for the privilege of downloading, when you get around to it—wouldn’t you rather click a button and give them a buck right there and then than write a check and fill out an envelope and dig up a stamp?
That’s a hint, y’all.
Micropayments will never be the only way content is supported on the web. But it is a way. One with a lot of plusses and a few minusses, but one that shows a great deal of promise in putting not just the opportunity to speak up in more hands than ever before, but the nickel-and-dime ability. It will never drive free content off the web—but it isn’t trying to. No one will ever pay nickels for blog entries and portal links—but no one is expecting them to. It may never make anyone stinking rich—but so what? Making art for money has always been something of a crap shoot; anything that smooths out the contingency and rates a better-than-even chance of making a steady stream of beer money would itself be a miracle, and deserves as fair a shake as we can give it.
Your mileage may vary, of course. But you will want some mileage on this one. I don’t think micropayments are going to dry up and blow away any time soon.
Thank you, Professor Krugman.
Required reading. It’s that simple.
Information wants to be free, fine—but art isn’t information.
Clay Shirky, an information and technology guru who’s written some really interesting and insightful stuff, has a mad-on against micropayments. For whatever reason, he doesn’t like the idea of charging users a small amount for content delivered over the web—his essay, “The Case Against Micropayments,” has been the go-to piece since it was written in 2000 for the camp that insists information wants to be free, and paying for content over something as immediate as the web will never work. Of course, no workable micropayment system has emerged since then—certainly nothing to match the grandiose dreams of 1998—so there’s been no need to say anything more on the subject.
Until BitPass. This simple system, still in its beta test, is gathering steam and making noise, so Shirky has updated his stance with an essay entitled “Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content.” Here’s the entirety of his argument against BitPass:
BitPass will fail, as FirstVirtual, Cybercoin, Millicent, Digicash, Internet Dollar, Pay2See, and many others have in the decade since Digital Silk Road, the paper that helped launch interest in micropayments. These systems didn’t fail because of poor implementation; they failed because the trend towards freely offered content is an epochal change, to which micropayments are a pointless response.
The failure of BitPass is not terribly interesting in itself. What is interesting is the way the failure of micropayments, both past and future, illustrates the depth and importance of putting publishing tools in the hands of individuals. In the face of a force this large, user-pays schemes can’t simply be restored through minor tinkering with payment systems, because they don’t address the cause of that change—a huge increase the power and reach of the individual creator.
He then goes on to say some interesting and insightful things about blogs and news, but almost nothing at all about art, and artists, and the power of fandom.
Shirky’s argument fails ultimately because he seems to see an audience’s need for art as a hole that can be filled by any old content: and if you can fill it with free content, why on earth would you pay? Sure, blogs will (rarely) be important enough to inspire their audience to plop down a dime for every entry—but a Firefly fan isn’t going to just as happily sit down and watch Fastlane just because they want some entertainment on a Friday night.
Luckily, Scott McCloud and Joey Manley are both there in the clench, with eloquent, powerful rebuttals. Dirk Deppey says he’ll have something to say on Monday. —But I’ve got to go to work at my day job right now, so that’s all you’re going to get from me at the moment.
