Isaiah Wilner

Spitzer to NJ: I see you, and I raise you

2008-03-11T14:01:00.007-04:00

Never one to shrink from a challenge, Eliot Spitzer did Jim McGreevey one better in True Empire State Style, dropping all pretense of forbidden romance and setting up an appointment for the Mayflower.

Back when I worked at ABC, we always used to joke about that hotel as being dirty, disgusting, ever to be avoided, and likely a place of political assignations. We did not know how right we were.

"Never talk when you can nod, and never nod when you can wink, and never write an e-mail because it’s death," Spitzer said to ABC in 2006. "You're giving prosecutors all the evidence we need."

A perennial rule of politics: It's always the ones who pose as good guys who are the real bad guys. With the exception of the ones who never win.

McCain: Fair Game

2008-02-21T15:46:00.006-05:00

Who would you vote for: John McCain or an embalmed corpse? You could have confused the two quite easily today at McCain's press-conference as McCain, his skin so thin, so white, so shriveled and old, took on the frightened pallor of a wax sculpture from Madame Tussaud's. I had no trouble believing the sexual favor never happened--this is a man who has ascended far above the purely carnal pleasures--but he gave that Cindy-look-a-like of a lobbyist what she lusted over, which was power not sex, in the form of access to the federal government. Cindy clearly knew it -- hey, she married it. Charles Keating was HER FAMILY'S buddy first, and that's why she grinned furiously forward like some kind of demented Jack O'Lantern, a plastic-surgery smile scarily gashed into her face. The fact that there are still people out there who, despite polls, money, organizing power, and widespread opposition to a deeply unpopular war, actually think this decrepit failure of a broken man with a Dr. Strangelove theory of global conflict, a foul mouth and nasty temper can beat anyone in the general election -- especially a charismatic and far younger and more attractive man with a movement behind him and a gift for political oratory -- is a tribute only to the fearmongery and hate that has kept this nation quaking since long before Bill Clinton unzipped for Monica Lewinsky. What follows is a little e-mail debate that outlines some of the issues bouncing around among New York media addicts today, some of the quibbling and some of the quivering, that is nothing, I think, but pure nonsense. PRAISED BE the New York Times, which finally found the courage to print a controversial story of national interest.

READ WHAT FOLLOWS FROM THE BOTTOM UP...

Hey I like bringing up the Keating Five scandal as much as the next new york pinko jew, but it was more about the purpose of the article vs what was alleged vs sources.

But since I have to leave this moment, I will let Greg Sargent continue this conversation. I would love to hang out soon. Glad to see that we are now g-chat buddies.

Outsourced to Greg Sargent:

Horses Mouth February 21, 2008 10:45 AM: The gist of [the New York Times story held since December and released today] seems to be that according to anonymous sources, eight years ago McCain's aides intervened in a relationship between him and a female lobbyist that may or may not have been sexual, and may or may not have constituted improper influence peddling, because they were worried that something untoward might be happening and were concerned about what her appearances with him in public looked like.

This is basically the core allegation....

The suggestion that the relationship might have been sexual, which is made at the top and towards the end of the story, basically amounts to an allegation that anonymous sources said there was concern that the relationship might have become romantic. Anonymous sources say McCain acknowledged behaving "inappropriately," but the story doesn't say how....

To be clear, there very well may be much more to the story that is yet unknown. As Josh wrote last night, the story reads as if it had the meat lawyered out of it, and it's perfectly possible that The Times went with this because it knew lots more that it couldn't report. And as Mark Kleiman notes, more reporting by the AP is showing that there may be some meat to the lobbying side of the story.

But if you merely evaluate the words that are on the page of The Times... you can't help but conclude, as Matthew Yglesias did, that they just didn't have or couldn't share the goods on an alleged romantic relationship and thus shouldn't have gone there.

On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 3:31 PM, Isaiah Wilner wrote:
This is a matter of public interest that calls into question the judgment and character of a Presidential candidate. She's a lobbyist, not an intern, and he exercised power on her behalf. The Times could have printed the story sooner, but two months is not a long time to hold a big piece. It's quite safe, staying well within the bounds of what the aides saw and worried about, and making no speculations about an affair. Keating Five can and will be retread, as it should be, since McCain ought to have resigned at the time. Without newspapers like the Times (as opposed to TMZ), senators would do anything they want.

On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 3:04 PM, NAME REDACTED wrote:
What you say is true. But a good part of the article is filled with retreaded Keating Five backstory and the allegations of a romance never seem to pierce the surface. Point being, keep the article within the confines of the special access angle. Leave the rest to TMZ until you get what you need. The fact that Keller seemed to be so on the fence about this article means something. And holding it for two months and having four reporters dig up no new info is not a good sign.

On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 2:58 PM, Isaiah Wilner wrote:
There's no reason to wait for named sources if the reporters know what they're printing is true. They told the story in terms of special-interest access to the Commerce Committee, which is a matter of public record. Iseman had access to the senator that you or I would not have had, and that in itself is newsworthy. What do you think?

On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 1:46 PM, NAME REDACTED> wrote:

What's your take on the Times' reporting on the McCain scandal? If you missed it, here's the apparent backstory from The New Republic: http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=8b7675e4-36de-43f5-afdd-2a2cd2b96a24

Would be interested in hearing your views.

Super Wednesday

2008-02-06T18:42:00.000-05:00

Some post-convention musings, for what they are worth (free, of course):

1. Hillary won the big states. She won the machine states. Where endorsements, the corralling of districts, and the familiarity that comes with media star power is what counts, she owns the contest.

2. Obama won the small states, where "just folks" respond to his message of comity. These states suffer from Clinton fatigue and respond more quickly and eagerly to young organizers than machine states.

3. Every white woman I know who is over forty years old voted for Hillary, with no exceptions, even among progressives and radicals who used to hate her. Women compose a decisive majority of the Democratic electorate.

4. Obama is bringing out an unprecedented youth vote and black vote.

5. But he has failed to galvanize the anti-war vote -- or to link Hillary's flip-flopping hawkiness to her character. It may be difficult to do so now without appearing "angry" and losing the small-state vote, but he has to try because ...

6. The faster the economy tanks, the less Hillary's hawk stance will matter.

7. Obama would run better than Hillary in the general election, picking up independents and even Republicans. But he won't be nominated by the Dems without winning a couple of big states.

8. There's a distinct possibility Obama will pick up momentum in Washington state and the Beltway, propelling him to victory in either Ohio or Pennsylvania (but not Texas, where Hillary should win the Hispanic vote).

9. If he doesn't pick up a couple of big states, the nomination process will end in a tie. And in politics, the tie goes to the machine candidate -- Hillary.

10. If this thing goes into overtime, it will be decided by the super-delegates at the Democratic Convention. And Billary have just enough dirty tricks left in their threadbare bag to steal those votes ...

11. unless DNC Chairman Howard Dean steps in and exacts his revenge for the DLC destroying him in 2004 ...

12. but Dean, like Obama, is focused on growing the party across the nation, and anyway he plays too nice.

13. If Hillary wins the nomination at the convention, all rational, right-thinking people will tell her to breathe deeply and make Obama her Veep -- like it or not -- or risk alienating half the Democratic Party.

14. But she might not do it -- since she loves herself most and can't stand to be overshadowed by a smarter, better politician ...

15. who also just happens to remind her husband of himself.

16. Obama, having lost partly on the experience factor, won't be able to turn down the Vice Presidency, if he is offered it.

17. Such a development, were it to occur, could lead to a long period of Democratic rule paralleling the New Deal years.

18. But, during the ensuing round of horse-trading, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party -- progressives, labor, environmental activists, women, the poor -- will be traded away like so much horse manure.

19. And that's why John Edwards should have stayed in the race.

20. Where is Al Gore? Would his endorsement amount to "the kiss of death"?

A penny for your thoughts!

Disenfranchised

2008-01-17T11:35:00.000-05:00

In a campaign that's provoked record interest and voter turnout, it's also disheartening that a former President would angrily -- and aggressively -- support the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters. But that's what Bill Clinton did in Nevada, speaking with an ABC reporter.

The Female Chauvinist Pig

2008-01-16T14:01:00.001-05:00

There is something very deeply troubling about a former President barnstorming the country, saying anything he likes -- true or not -- to get his wife elected President. It's troubling because it's not democratic. The reason we have presidential term limits is because power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. After eight years, any President becomes too entrenched, his control of the political levers too absolute, for a representative democracy such as ours to function fairly and openly. Bill Clinton's power -- the charismatic power of a popular ex-President, seemingly above the fray yet none too subtly delivering lies and digs--- is equally dangerous. George Washington knew that. He retired to Mount Vernon. But Bill Clinton can't bring himself to comply with precedent; he wants to die in the lights, or better yet, in White House sheets. If Hillary is a real feminist, she should run on her own two feet instead of relying on her better-liked husband to trash her rival. But she's not a feminist -- she's a Female Chauvinist Pig. I'm referring to the dictionary definition of a chauvinist: one who displays exaggerated or aggressive patriotism (hint: Iraq) or prejudiced loyalty for one's own cause. Prejudiced? Hillary has shown she will do anything to get elected, even if it means voting for an unjust and murderous war, playing the race card, lying about her rival's positions, or destroying the federal balance of power, already pushed to the brink of annihilation by the Bush administration. All is well, so long as she gets to be Queen.

A Race

2008-01-15T09:15:00.000-05:00

We have ourselves a race in the campaign for President, which means that in the big states our votes will finally count for something.

From today's WSJ:

"Democrats award delegates on a proportional basis, meaning candidates get a share of a state's delegates based on their share of the vote in that state. Thus, it's hard for a second-place Democrat to catch up, because the front-runner keeps picking up at least some delegates in each state, even if losing the overall vote."

Therefore, any candidate who pulls in 15 or 20 percent of the vote is going to have a sizable say at the Democratic convention, if the nomination fight goes that late. And that's why John Edwards -- the only Southern candidate

Cecil Payne

2007-11-30T18:52:00.002-05:00

WKCR, Columbia's music station, is playing the music of Cecil Payne tomorrow from 2-7. The sax great died this week. A few minutes ago they played a mind-blowing set from his 1968 album Zodiac, with Kenny Dorham on the trumpet. That is a seriously hot date -- with the kind of live soloing and forward motion you could imagine Jack Kerouac trying to capture in On The Road. At first I thought I was listening to Lee Morgan's Live at the Lighthouse, but if anything this album swings harder. Payne played the baritone, an unusual choice. He had his own sound and his death is a loss to jazz. There is nothing in contemporary American culture that can make up for the recent loss of so many preeminent jazzmen. They are America's true classical composers.

From www.whowalkedinbrooklyn.com...

Cecil Payne of Brooklyn, 1922-2007
Nov 28th, 2007 by admin
The Music Director regrets to announce the death yesterday of baritone saxophone player & flautist Cecil Payne, just weeks shy of his 85th birthday. A native of Brooklyn, Payne is perhaps best known for his early associations with Dizzy Gillespie and a mid-60s one with the towering Randy Weston, also of Brooklyn, & composer of “African Village Bed-Stuy,” among many other great accomplishments. A fuller appreciation of Mr. Payne, his place in jazz, & an unjustly obscure chapter in Brooklyn’s abundant cultural history will be forthcoming. In the meantime, check the library, new & used record stores– anything with Cecil blowing on it of some quality. WWIB’s favorite of Payne’s leader dates is perhaps Zodiac, recorded in 1968, released on the Strata East label in 1973, & dedicated to two of its then deceased players, trumpeter Kenny Dorham & pianist Wynton Kelly– the latter born in Jamaica but raised in… Brooklyn.

Cecil Payne

2007-11-30T18:52:00.001-05:00

WKCR, Columbia's music station, is playing the music of Cecil Payne tomorrow from 2-7. The sax great died this week. A few minutes ago they played a mind-blowing set from his 1968 album Zodiac, with Kenny Dorham on the trumpet. That is a seriously hot date -- the kind of live soloing you could imagine Jack Kerouac tried to sum up in On The Road. At first I thought I was listening to Lee Morgan's Life at the Lighthouse, but if anything this album swings harder. Payne certainly had his own tone and his death is a loss to jazz.

From www.whowalkedinbrooklyn.com...

Cecil Payne of Brooklyn, 1922-2007
Nov 28th, 2007 by admin
The Music Director regrets to announce the death yesterday of baritone saxophone player & flautist Cecil Payne, just weeks shy of his 85th birthday. A native of Brooklyn, Payne is perhaps best known for his early associations with Dizzy Gillespie and a mid-60s one with the towering Randy Weston, also of Brooklyn, & composer of “African Village Bed-Stuy,” among many other great accomplishments. A fuller appreciation of Mr. Payne, his place in jazz, & an unjustly obscure chapter in Brooklyn’s abundant cultural history will be forthcoming. In the meantime, check the library, new & used record stores– anything with Cecil blowing on it of some quality. WWIB’s favorite of Payne’s leader dates is perhaps Zodiac, recorded in 1968, released on the Strata East label in 1973, & dedicated to two of its then deceased players, trumpeter Kenny Dorham & pianist Wynton Kelly– the latter born in Jamaica but raised in… Brooklyn.

The man to watch

2007-11-06T00:20:00.003-05:00

Since when was the Democratic nomination supposed to be a coronation? People say of Hillary that it's "her turn" -- actually it's time for the voters to decide.

With two months to go before the Iowa caucus, John Edwards is the man to watch. He upstaged Obama last week by landing all the punches against Hillary during the Democratic debate -- and his punches are landing because they're well placed.

As the Bush administration ratchets up the anti-Iran war rhetoric, voters are finally considering the question Hillary has avoided throughout the "fund-raising race": whether she would prevent our country from entering yet another unjust war.

John Edwards is the only candidate who has fastened on this most crucial topic of the race, and the moral question beneath it: where is Hillary's backbone? An hour ago, he made the following statement to the voters in Iowa:

"Senator Clinton is voting like a hawk in Washington, while talking like a dove in Iowa and New Hampshire. She's giving the administration exactly what it wants again."

And this:

"George Bush, Dick Cheney and the neocon warmongers used 9/11 to start a war with Iraq, now they're trying to use Iraq to start a war with Iran."

If Obama had questioned Hillary's anti-war credentials months ago, he'd be leading in the polls today. He missed his chance, and that's why Edwards is the leading challenger.

As for electability, does anyone seriously believe that this man would lose to Rudy or Mitt?

A furry little woodland animal

2007-11-05T16:56:00.000-05:00

Nora Ephron on HuffPo:

It's especially hard to remember that the real enemies are the Republicans, when the Democrats tend to break your heart and the Republicans are just the boys you'd never go out with anyway.

It's hard when you watch a debate and decide that in the end you're probably going to throw your vote away in the primary and vote for someone who doesn't have a chance, like Dennis Kucinich. I mean, look at them, look at the front runners: Hillary Clinton, who can't help being Hillary Clinton; Barack Obama, who was a disappointment from the beginning and whose new-found attack mode is as dispiriting as his low energy level used to be; John Edwards, whom I am afraid I will never be able to think of again (after this week's Peggy Noonan column in the Wall Street Journal) as anything but a desperate furry little woodland animal.

Jupiter Olympus

2007-11-04T08:59:00.000-05:00

William Grimes, whose food criticism cannot be topped, has an interesting piece in today's Times on Jerry Thomas, the "Jupiter Olympus" of the bar and grandfather to today;s leading mixologists and "bar chefs." His signature drink was the Blue Blazer (a favorite of Time founder Briton Hadden), the preparation of which involved throwing. Little is known about Thomas -- but David Wondrich, an Esquire correspondent, has tracked him from New York to California and finally the place where he died, Keoku, Iowa.

Grimes writes:

Thomas himself appears, for the first time, as a living presence: a devotee of bare-knuckle prize fights, a flashy dresser fond of kid gloves, an art collector, a restless traveler usually carrying a fat wad of bank notes and a gold Parisian watch. A player, in short.

And:

As he wandered, he picked up on the latest developments in the art, inventing new cocktails and building a serious following for his particular blend of craftsmanship and showmanship, epitomized in his signature drink, the Blue Blazer, a pyrotechnic showpiece in which an arc of flame passed back and forth between two mixing glasses. At the Occidental, Thomas was earning $100 a week, more than the vice president of the United States. When he died, in 1885, newspapers all over the country observed his passing in substantial obituaries.

Folklore: why we have toasters

2007-11-02T06:58:00.000-04:00

I've seen studies saying atheists compose 10 to 15 percent of the population. But you never heard from them until Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens published their books. Now all of the atheists are coming out of the woodwork with their various reasonings and rationales. Here's an essay titled "An Alien God" from the blog Overcoming Bias. It was written by Eliezer Yudkowsky:

"[W]hen you look at all the apparent purposefulness in Nature, rather than picking and choosing your examples, you start to notice things that don't fit the Judeo-Christian concept of one benevolent God. Foxes seem well-designed to catch rabbits. Rabbits seem well-designed to evade foxes. Was the Creator having trouble making up Its mind?

...

When I design a toaster oven, I don't design one part that tries to get electricity to the coils and a second part that tries to prevent electricity from getting to the coils. It would be a waste of effort. Who designed the ecosystem, with its predators and prey, viruses and bacteria? Even the cactus plant, which you might think well-designed to provide water fruit to desert animals, is covered with inconvenient spines.

The ecosystem would make much more sense if it wasn't designed by a unitary Who, but, rather, created by a horde of deities - say from the Hindu or Shinto religions. This handily explains both the ubiquitous purposefulnesses, and the ubiquitous conflicts: More than one deity acted, often at cross-purposes. The fox and rabbit were both designed, but by distinct competing deities. I wonder if anyone ever remarked on the seemingly excellent evidence thus provided for Hinduism over Christianity. Probably not."

But even the Hindus don't have a toaster god.

Like a painting

2007-11-02T06:44:00.000-04:00

From Art Forum: an essay on Antonioni by Seymour Chatman. (Thanks to Morgan Meis at 3QuarksDaily):

Here was a director who was not only a serious student of form, color, and mise-en-scene but perhaps the medium's most visionary practitioner. Antonioni's striking frames and at times astonishingly beautiful shots, however, do not distract from but rather intensify his principal preoccupation -- the depiction of the human condition. His art is like Goya's: often sad and unpleasant in content, yet gorgeous in appearance.

And again:

To an unusual degree, Antonioni's art is governed by his keen attention to the ground against which he placed his figures. Like the Abstract Expressionists, Antonioni, with his telephoto lens, flattened things against broad surfaces. Particularly in the '60s, he sought out framing boxes; for instance, to pin Monica Vitti against the wall in L'eclisse and Red Desert. Rothko's signature bisection of the horizontal dimension (and Barnett Newman's of the vertical, and Mondrian's obsession with the whole box) may well have lingered in the filmmaker's mind. (Antonioni once famously compared his work to Rothko's, saying that it is 'about nothing . . . with precision.')

Finally, a bold move from Barack

2007-11-01T19:52:00.000-04:00

The brightest kid in class is raising his hand -- and standing up to the schoolmarm.

Barack Obama announced today that he will conduct high-level negotiations with Iran if elected President. In one fell swoop, he's turned the weakness of his youth into a strength -- and revealed Hillary Clinton for the hawk that she is. The peace wing of the party cannot stand idly by as Hillary calls Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group, opening the door to a full-scale invasion. Barack, on the other hand, presents a different approach. He will negotiate with anybody:

"In his Democratic presidential bid, Mr. Obama has vigorously sought to distinguish himself on foreign policy from his rivals, particularly Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, by asserting that he would sit down for diplomatic meetings with countries like Iran, North Korea and Syria with no preconditions.

The suggestion, which emerged as a flash point in the campaign, has prompted Mrs. Clinton to question whether such an approach would amount to little more than a propaganda victory for the United States’s adversaries and to question the experience of Mr. Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois."

Hillary will give Barack an F in Foreign Relations. She will call him inexperienced. But to the average voter, it's just common sense to talk to your enemy before bombing them. Unlike Hillary, Barack has an open mind. In a single move, he's identified himself as the candidate for change -- not just home but abroad, too.

He should have been doing this along, but hopefully he's not too late to give us a real race.

Bees v. Immigrants

2007-11-01T16:51:00.000-04:00

Comedy Smack, a new web site created by David Moore, sends you three of the funniest items bouncing around the blogosphere and e-mails them to you every day. Today Comedy Smack quotes Chelsea Peretti, who lots of guys are getting obsessed with in the way that they are with Sarah Silverman. Here's Chelsea on food:

I don't get Vegans. They're like: 'I can't eat products that come from living animals. I like cows and bees and it's not right for us to mistreat them.' What, you like them better than the immigrant workers who pick our vegetables?

What do plumbers read?

2007-11-01T14:06:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week I lunched at Tamarind with a prominent executive who proclaimed that The Economist was his favorite read. He never has time to more than scan The New Yorker -- though he must, for work -- but The Economist! The Economist! He reads it cover to cover.

In the last year no fewer than half a dozen people have told me this -- and that's on top of the dozens who say they read The Economist a bit, pick it up sometimes, or even subscribe, and the dozen more who say, while discussing the old Time, that it sounds a lot like The Economist. In fact, a million U.S. readers now subscribe. Why?

Like the old Time, The Economist brings us news from all over the world. It's organized, and it never changes from week to week. We know where we are when we open that magazine and so we have no fear of getting lost. It features crisp, mildly humorous writing (though not nearly as funny as the old Time). And it's not afraid of dispensing OLD NEWS. The Economist is a magazine one can pick up with a sense of safety: here, at last, is all that stuff you're really supposed to know and feel a little bit embarrassed about not having read already. All of which makes The Economist a convenient read -- but that's not why people love it.

People love The Economist because it presents a world view. The editors put "spin on the ball." They are for small government and free markets. They are realists -- more concerned with tactics than moral constructs, except where Communism is concerned. The are "liberal," in the European sense of the word. Whether or not we agree, we enjoy having the news wrapped up and tied in a bow rather than served "raw."

For this reason, I subscribe to The Economist, just as I subscribe to The Nation. But there are times when The Economist's world view borders on the ridiculous -- and I'm surprised people don't discuss this more often. The Economist's grasp of history is not only selective but shaky, its knowledge of the Americas shallow and inhumane. This week's cover story -- "Brains, not bullets. How to fight future wars" -- selects El Salvador as the best example of an American counter-insurgency campaign.)

Then there's "Let them eat Kafka," an article in this week's issue about a new literacy program in Chile. In that most economically liberalized of countries, the new president, Michelle Bachelet, is promoting reading giving 400,000 of the poorest Chilean families a box of books. She selected popular but literary books for the program, including one by Chile's own Isabel Allende, Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, and Kafka's Metamorphosis.

The cost? Eleven million dollars -- not much to spend considering that hundreds of thousands of people will learn to read and the whole country will focus on great books, spiking everything from library lending traffic to literacy rates. But The Economist manages to find a supposed "critic," a reading-charity spokesperson who compares the book drop to "dropping bank notes out of the sky." She asks: "Who says that a plumber in a poor district of Santiago will actually want to read Kafka?"

To which the obvious answer is: Why not? Did Kafka write something bad about plumbers? Kafka himself didn't have such a great job; he worked in insurance, purely to pay the bills. And if Gregor the bug isn't exactly an Ant and Bee alphabet book, it's still quite entertaining, emotionally affecting, and not at all hard to get through. If a plumber wants to learn the alphabet, he will pick up Allende, or Salinger, or Kafka. It beats The Economist.

A new definition of empire: Michael Hardt

2007-11-01T13:51:00.000-04:00

Rain Taxi has posted an interested interview with Michael Hardt, co-author, with Antonio Negri, of Empire and Multitude, two books that caused a sensation within the radical left during the invasion of Iraq. Despite all the excitement, few people really read the work, much less understood it. This interview provides a nice outline of Hardt's thinking, and some observations on what it's like to write with a collaborator. For me the most interesting part comes when the interviewer, Leonard Schwartz, asks Hardt to explain the difference between his idea of empire as opposed to the old notion of a "military industrial complex." For Hardt, communications -- a.ka. big media -- plays a central role in today's transnational empire:

LS: You reject the term “military industrial complex” as a piece of language that has outlived its utility, or is not descriptive of the enemy. Can you say what, in the description of “Empire” you just offered, differs from the older notion of a “military industrial complex”?

MH: It used to be much easier to recognize a single locus of power -- if there was a Winter Palace that we could invade, if it was really all coming out of the White House -- if we could locate power in that way, it would make political practice, at least at a conceptual level, very easy. You know who the enemy is. You know where it is. On the other hand, if in fact power, global power, is tending towards this kind of network that we’re describing, it makes it much less clear where to attack or where to stand. It really poses a new challenge for politics. Philosophers like Toni and I, and of course larger social movements and political movements, have been trying for the last ten years to grasp this new de-centered power structure and find ways to challenge it.

LS: In Empire you suggest “Imperial control operates through three global and absolute means: the bomb, money, and ether.” Now we know what the bomb is, and we know what money is, but it’s your third term ‘ether’ that it seems to me is the most important, at least from the point of view of a poetics. You say about this third term:

MH: Ether is the third and final fundamental medium of imperial control. The management of communication, the structuring of the educational system, and the regulation of culture appear today more than ever as sovereign prerogatives. All of this, however, dissolves in the ether. The contemporary systems of communication are not subordinated to sovereignty; on the contrary, sovereignty seems to be subordinated to communication—or actually, sovereignty is articulated through communication systems. In the field of communication, the paradoxes that bring about the dissolution of territorial and/or national sovereignty are more clear than ever.

A modest proposal

2007-10-31T22:23:00.001-04:00

Impeach the bums! Or at least make them stand up and defend themselves -- not just now, but always. That's the modest proposal of one commenter on the Huffington Post boards. His name is J. Sarets, and he takes his inspiration from how things worked in college:

"The issue of impeachment reminds me of my fraternity days. The bylaws required that every officer stand for a vote of confidence (VOC) at least once during his term. These votes were a formality scheduled ahead of time. The officer does a minute speech on his performance, maybe the brothers ask a couple questions, then we vote to keep him in his position.

But we did this for a reason. By repeating this process every year, we defeated the psychology that calling a VOC is a huge deal that should be done reluctantly. So when an officer wasn't doing a good job, we were prepared to call him on it. Officers realized that, at the very least, they would be accountable for their performance at their scheduled VOC and whenever they screw up.

So here's an outlandish suggestion: A Constitutional Amendment that requires the president to stand for impeachment at least once during each term. Usually it would be a formality, or so we would hope. But it would hold the president accountable to Congress (and therefore the public) for his actions, and in the event of any wrongdoing, Congress wouldn't be so uptight about impeachment."

Hillary to class: Sit down and shut up!

2007-10-31T16:56:00.001-04:00

The schoolmarm was having some trouble with the kids in class. So she went to the principal's office. Now she's returned with a pair of boxing gloves, to beat those kids black and blue -- especially the one who refuses to sit down, John Edwards.

Things I notice about Hillary Clinton in this clip:

1. She claps her hands like a puppet! She never bends her hands in order to produce a "sound cavity," the way an Alpha Male would. Instead, she slams them against each other like two stiff boards.

2. There is something Halloweeny about her today! Her "smile" spreads across her face like a gash knifed into a jack o'lantern.

3. She constantly says one thing: "I'm tired!" Or her supporters are. Today Gerald McEntee, even while endorsing her, said, "We are tired! Tired! Of close elections."

Who is she, Rosa Parks?

There is lots to be tired of these days. One thing I am tired of is the Clintons. I am tired of being asked one last time to summon my energies against those evil Republicans who have been hounding her for almost twenty years now -- only to find out she just voted with them again. On the other hand, I'm very, very frightened of her! There is no question that America would do its homework in a Hillary administration.

Boo!

2007-10-31T13:40:00.001-04:00

Halloween in the Bronx, my father tells me, was not a festive affair in the 1950's. Only a few of the nerdier tykes went out to trick-or-treat, invariably hounded by gangs of their elders -- preteen "J.D.'s" who haunted the streets swinging chalk-filled socks, with which they lashed the younger kids, imprinting their ridicule in puffs of white dust.

As America geared up for the obesity epidemic, Halloween began to turn on the wheels of gluttony. In Seattle, I lived in prime candy-collecting territory -- block after block of upper middle-class families in mid-sized houses, with few winding roads or steps. Some kids went out bearing garbage bags and, it seemed to me at the time, filled them up much of the way.

There were families -- dentists, mostly -- who handed out tiny boxes of Sun-Maid raisins. They were fun to laugh at. But while sugar reigned, "values" prevailed in the holiday's arts and crafts aura. Halloween was an imaginative holiday, a time when kids could invent and pretend. I remember one year in particular, when I went out as a detective and together my mother and I made a giant magnifying glass out of cardboard, with cellophane in the middle.

Now Halloween has taken a new turn. It's become more like Mardi Gras: a chance for people to cross boundaries of identity and behavior that they would never dream of crossing on any other day of the year, particularly not in daylight. A few years ago, a friend of mine went as Private Lynndie England, the She-Wolf of Abu Ghraib, and her friend, an Indian American, dressed up as a torture victim (a variation on the costume of ghost).

Joel Stein writes in a hilarious column for the L.A. Times that adults are ruining the children's holiday:

"This year, I was invited to six Halloween parties, which would not be strange if it weren't for the fact that I'm older than 12. Meanwhile, I was invited to zero New Year's Eve parties last year. People vastly prefer Halloween parties because New Year's Eve involves dressing up like an adult, whereas Halloween involves dressing up like a slut.

I understand that the masquerade ball is a classic that faded away, and that people need an opportunity to hide behind a mask in order to safely express their hidden selves. It makes sense that once a year I get to peek into your psyche and find out whether you think of yourself as a whore nurse, a whore pirate, a whore angel or a whore whore.

That's fine. But not on the kids' favorite day. It's transforming formerly child-friendly costume shops from fun-creepy into Chris Hansen-creepy."

I confess to staying in Brooklyn tonight, far away from the Village drag queens, slutty house parties, and marauding frat boys who travel south from the Upper East Side. But I'm not a chalk-swinger either. I like the idea of people getting a chance to try on new selves.

Now you tell us

2007-10-31T08:30:00.000-04:00

A quote from this week's Economist:

"Running Baghdad is not like trying to police New York City; it's like the Iraqi police trying to run New York City."
--David Kilcullen, counter-insurgency advisor to General Petraeus

Mini Misses

2007-10-30T16:25:00.001-04:00

A long, long time ago there was this woman who wrote sexually revealing columns about her life as a single woman in New York City. She was named Candace Bushnell and her column was called Sex and the City. Somewhat less long of a time ago there was this girl, Natalie Krinsky, who wrote sexually revealing columns about her life at Yale. The column was called Sex and the (Elm) City. Since then a hundred young flowers have bloomed. Spit or swallow? Spit or swallow? It's a question that consumes the Ivy League -- or would seem to, based on the number of quadrangle feminists vigorously tugging bananas in pursuit of book deals. Welcome to the Age of Confessional Depilation, in which no secret remains unshaven.

Are these girls vagitarians? For the most part not, though Yale had a gay sex columnist. At Dartmouth they have not one but TWO flirty provocateurs -- one straight and the other not, though some think she's a LUG (lesbian until graduation). Whatever -- she knows where a clitoris is. Which takes us to Harvard's Lena Chen, who turned the Crimson red with her writing samples, and therefore writes a blog instead. Its title: Sex and the Ivy. Last week Lena debated with Janie Fredell, leader of the campus abstinence group True Love Revolution. Now there's a girl who won't be getting a book deal. Put it out, Janie! Are you a feminist or not?

Not a bubble

2007-10-30T11:18:00.000-04:00

How big is Web 2.0? Not as big as it's going to get -- but that doesn't mean it's a bubble. John Heilemann is just back from the Web 2.0 Summit, where he spoke with former journalist and now big-time venture capitalist Michael Moritz. Heilemann writes in this week's New York:

"I asked Moritz what sort of piece he would have done, were he still a hack, to capture the industry’s gestalt. Cheekily, Moritz replied that he would have written about the irrelevance of such stories: Who reads newspapers anymore, anyway? (Touché!)"

Is there speculation? Lots. Will companies fail? You bet. There's no reason why they won't. But the fundamentals beneath the speculation suggest an industry with a strong growth curve, backed by powerful technologies that are changing people's lives -- and the most invasive advertising presence known to mankind:

"Despite some tremors, online advertising is now a juggernaut that promises to only become more powerful as companies like Facebook start creating sophisticated networks where fine-grained behavioral targeting is possible. More than 1.3 billion consumers around the world now use the Internet, and the global growth curve is steep. Meanwhile, the main source of unbridled mania in the nineties, IPOs, are a nonfactor this time around. Instead, the boom is being driven by giants with riverine profit flows and vast reservoirs of cash."

Slapped with the ruler

2007-10-29T23:46:00.000-04:00

If you had a choice between being governed by a schoolmarm or the guy who was running for class president, who would you choose? (Or, as the schoolmarm might ask, WHOM?) Exactly! Which is why Hillary's winning the race for President.

Barack Obama announces he's finally going to start running for President of the U.S. instead of class president on the EXACT SAME WEEKEND his great supporter Donnie McClurkin gets up and starts bashing the gays at Barack's "Embrace the Change" gospel concert series. If this were Hillary's campaign, whoever forgot to kick McClurkin off the stage would get slapped with the ruler.

Here's how CNN reports it:

"Don't call me a bigot or anti-gay, when I have been touched by the same feelings," McClurkin went on. "When I have suffered with the same feelings. Don't call me a homophobe, when I love everybody … Don't tell me that I stand up and I say vile words against the gay community because I don't. I don't speak against the homosexual. I tell you that God delivered me from homosexuality."

I have two things to say about this. First, Embrace the change, Donnie! Don't fight it, switch! Second, doesn't Barack Obama know that you ALWAYS round up the hard-core haters before you make a big announcement? It's that kind of distraction that kills a campaign.

Barack says the gloves are coming off. Perhaps -- but it's a case of a velvet glove wrapped around a velvet fist. (Or, as McClurkin might put it, a limp wrist.) There is no steel to be had in the Obama campaign, except in the case of Michelle.

The Structure of Cultural Revolutions

2007-10-29T10:42:00.000-04:00

From a Metafilter discussion on "Rave Culture in North Carolina" comes a brief personal bio on the ups and downs of living inside a cultural revolution. The poster's name is Unicorn on the Cob:

Um... I was a raver in 1989. It was my senior year of high school. I can attest to the immense sense of freedom and future social benefits that this culture had on me.

I attended my first warehouse party in November 1989. I remember every fiber in my being telling me that this sound, this music, was the future. I was listening to "Welcome to Techno City" by the legendary Juan Atkins. At this time, ecstacy was legal and pharmaceutical grade in Dallas and I ingested it. Not frequently, but still...

I began funding and throwing parties out of my own pocket around 1994.

Joined a DJ collective in 96.

And subsequently lost somewhere in the neighborhood of five grand, while also helping throw one party that netted 20 grand.

Imagine if you printed up flyers, set up three tents in a field that was three acres big, made $20,000, and eight thousand people showed up.

Imagine if when the sun came up, your body flooded with ecstacy, surrounded by friends, you were dancing and the entire body of people felt like it was levitating.

A rolling wave of sound, then literally, several hundred people's hands, filled with sunflowers, shot into the air at the same time and everyone screamed the word YES. YES. YES.

Look around. Tears are streaming down everyone's faces. You genuinely feel like the vibrations from eight thousand people dancing will draw the Earth's energy into a light-beam of pure goodness and shoot straight up. People cannot ignore it. You have CHANGED THEIR LIVES FOR THE GREATER.

An informal survey of the party reveals that people from as far away as Scotland have come to your party... without being paid or booked to play. There are famous people there (at least, famous to you).

Shyly, Roy Davis Jr. asks if he can play a sunrise set, even though he isn't booked. You laugh and agree, asking your boyfriend to wait an hour to play The Orb, et al.

Imagine opening XLR8R magazine a month later and seeing photos of your parties. Your dj collective is world famous now. You are putting out records. You are all going to be a cultural force that is going to make a positive impact on Texas, and maybe, just MAYBE, the world.

You marry your DJ sweetheart and enjoy 10 years of parties, events, nightclub ownership, your own record label, and you see your friends disperse and tour the world. You see them open their own record labels in different cities.

Now, imagine that slowly, everyone gets married. Has kids. Become alcoholics. A vast amount of them become addicted to methamphetamines. As in, sixty percent. Including your husband. He turns into someone you don't know and leaves you in crippling debt. Your "friends" are suddenly protecting him and lying to you. You are forced to flee everything you know and, with a good credit rating and a decent job, have to start over your entire life from scratch. Your identity doesn't exist any more; but then again, there is opportunity in that, too...

Suddenly you don't like house music any more. Rave is a four-letter word. Anything with a 4/4 beat brings back bad memories for you; your former compatriots, when you see them, look nocturnal. Shifty. Diseased.

You stumble upon the occasional post online or link to photos of parties thrown by "new ravers on the block" or "neo-ravers." Your youngest friends were maybe 6 years old when you were raving; to them, it's "retro night."

You look back on the past and realize that for a while, you had it. Shangri-La. Nirvana. You had respect, community, music, freedom, love, a real family made by choice.

But the thing about being part of a zeitgeist is, that moment passes. I've read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and I know that I was part of one... and now, it's been superceded. It's a joke, like disco was in the mid-80's.

Oh well. I have my memories, and I look forward to Life 2.0.

But I can't look at anything with the word RAVE in it and not feel saddened and tainted by it.

If you were there, you know. If you weren't, my god, I wish I could show you what it was like.

We can never have that moment again. But me? Je ne regrette rien.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 11:00 AM on October 24 [167 favorites]