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Table of Contents
foreigners
What Is the Arab World's Problem?
gabfest
ad report card
The Cursed Gabfest
Buy This Car Because It's Ugly
gardening
Advanced Search
Wall-E's Plant Apocalypse
books
human nature
Rock the Mullahs
Food Apartheid
chatterbox
human nature
The McCain Record: Taxes
Troops Out, Drones In
corrections
human nature
Corrections
The Gambling-Addiction Defense
culture gabfest
jurisprudence
The Culture Gabfest, Monopoly Edition
Obama Takes His Own Law Exams
culturebox
jurisprudence
Let's Step Outside
Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii
day to day
jurisprudence
Gamers Do It Better
Let Them Be Lawyers
dear prudence
jurisprudence
No Parents Allowed
The Bauer of Suggestion
did you see this?
map the candidates
Quake Disrupts Court!
96 Days
explainer
medical examiner
Can I Sell You a Bridge in Brooklyn?
The Nightmare of Night Float
explainer
moneybox
Obama at the Western Wall
Who Needs the Tech IPO?
explainer
moneybox
Is Killing Liberals a Hate Crime?
Highways Paved With Gold
explainer
moneybox
Do Gas Prices Rise Faster Than They Fall?
Freddie and Fannie's Healthy Cousin
explainer
movies
Funky Chicken
Dances With Roves
family
music box
The Downside of Redshirting
Ligeti: A Sound Odyssey
fighting words
other magazines
Oh, Lucky Man
China's Low Self-Esteem
food
poem
The Great Vegan Honey Debate
"Swifts"
foreigners
politics
"The Hour of Europe" Tolls Again
The Iraq Equation
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
1/92
politics
today's business press
Party Crasher
Don't Bank on Banks
press box
today's papers
The Untouchable
Inside Man
reading list
today's papers
Horror Stories
Rove Is in the Air
Science
today's papers
The Forgotten Ape
The Worst Gift
slate v
today's papers
Leave Barack Alone!
All in the Family
slate v
today's papers
Interviews 50 Cents: War Witness for Hire
The Red Zone
slate v
today's papers
How To Photoshop Propaganda
A Drop in the Bucket
slate v
today's papers
Dear Prudence: Stop Bringing Kids to Work!
Joined at the Hip
technology
webhead
Turn Here, Trust Me
The Search Engine Litmus Test
technology
Even Lamer Than Second Life
television
The Lifetime Original Movie 2.0
ad report card
the chat room
Scion's peculiar new ad campaign.
The Bush Problem
By Seth Stevenson
Monday, July 28, 2008, at 6:56 AM ET
Buy This Car Because It's Ugly
the green lantern
Are Revolving Doors More Energy Efficient?
the has-been
Romneymania
the highbrow
The Outsider Artist
the undercover economist
But My Neighbor Has a Cell Phone …
today's business press
Happy Birthday, Credit Crisis
today's business press
Wall Street Is Hiring!
The Spot: A wrecking ball sweeps back and forth, barely
missing a pair of identical cars parked just beyond the two ends
of its arc. An off-screen child's voice intones, "He loves me, he
loves me not" as the ball swings closer and closer to the cars.
Finally, one of the cars gets smashed, and the camera trains its
eye on the carcass. "Love it or loathe it," says the narrator. "The
2008 Scion xB." (Click here to watch the ad.)
Generally, ads portray products as pristine treasures. Lighting
and camera angles conspire to conjure a glossy, gotta-have-it
glow that beams out from laptops, cell phones, blue jeans, and
hamburgers. Thus it's jarring to come across an ad like this one,
in which the product is first obliterated and then put on display
as a crumpled mess.
today's business press
Doha, Bennigan's RIP
today's business press
Obamanomics 101
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
But Scion has lately seemed to harbor a bit of a self-destructive
streak. Walking around my neighborhood a little while back, I
happened on a large billboard for the Scion xB. It had a photo of
2/92
the car and two big check boxes. One was labeled "Champ," the
other "Chump." Both were empty.
The billboard struck me as a risky ploy, marketingwise. That
"Chump" box was far too tempting. Some mischievous kid with
a spray can could easily climb up there and X it in. Even
nonvandalizing passers-by might feel welcome to place a mental
check mark there. Why would Scion invite us to think poorly of
its product—and even suggest specific, disparaging language for
us to associate with it?
It turns out the Champ/Chump billboard is part of an ongoing
Scion campaign called "Polarization." Other outdoor and print
ads offer further check-box choices. Among them:
"Adore/Abhor," "Eye Candy/Eyesore," and "Hell yes!/Hell no!"
This TV spot—with its two identical xBs on either side of the
screen and the "he loves me, he loves me not" voice-over—
continues to hammer home the stark-duality theme.
Kimberley Gardiner, national marketing communications
manager at Scion, explains that the campaign springs from the
xB's polarizing design. The blunt and boxy wagon has a vaguely
Brutalist, flirting-with-ugly aesthetic. Instead of cracking selfdeprecating jokes (perhaps about function trumping form), Scion
decided to get confrontational. "It's not something you often see
from a car company," says Gardiner. "Usually, a car ad is about
how everyone should love it and run out to the dealership to buy
it."
The approach is in large part dictated by Scion's target audience:
18- to 24-year-old men. This demographic tends to favor brands
with a bit of in-your-face attitude. To reach them, Scion has used
niche marketing—street teams, music industry tie-ins, etc.—and
is airing this ad late at night on guy-centric cable networks like
Spike, G4, Fuse, and the Adult Swim programming bloc on the
Cartoon Network.* (Time was also bought on BET and the
Spanish-language SiTV. Gardiner says Scion "does well with
younger African-American and Latino male buyers.")
The ad itself borrows its mood and direction from horror films.
Listen to the opening sounds: dripping water, creaking metal.
The spookily flat, disinterested voice of a child is another horror
staple, dating back to chillers like The Shining, The Omen, and
The Bad Seed. With the wrecking ball's mechanized, impassive
destruction, set in a dank void lit by dim fluorescence, the ad
seems particularly indebted to the more recent Saw series—a set
of torture-gore films that appeals strongly (perhaps only) to
young men.
ad shows us the xB after it's been totaled by the wrecking ball
(smashed glass, bent metal), it looks like there's been a horrific
car crash. This sort of raw, extreme imagery is unlikely to play
well with older consumers, who'd rather not imagine exactly
how their car would look in the wake of a violent collision.
Scion would argue that older drivers just aren't who they're after,
and that the brand is better served by laser-focusing on a specific
target. And pissing off the olds is an excellent method of sucking
up to aggro youths. According to Ad Age, Scion was the most
efficient car advertiser last year, in terms of ad dollars spent per
vehicle sold, so they've clearly worked out a cost-effective
means of reaching the groups they want to reach. Those young
buyers—once roped in by an entry-level Scion—might well
graduate to corporate cousins Toyota and Lexus somewhere
down the line. But Scion, in its current form, is a very lowvolume brand with a lot of room to grow. And the fact is, you
never know who a goofy-looking car might end up appealing to.
Consider the Honda Element, another modestly priced, boxy
wagon. Honda designed the car with young people in mind,
labeling it a "dorm room on wheels," but when the Element hit
showrooms the average age of its buyers turned out to be 41.
Likewise, the xB—with its generous cabin space, solid
engineering, and low sticker price—might, in time, find a fan
base among practical-minded car buyers of all ages. Unless
Scion succeeds in stiff-arming everyone but the youngsters.
Grade: C. Setting aside the ad's effectiveness as a sales tool, I
didn't find the execution of the spot all that artful. I wasn't
gripped by suspense, wondering whether or not the wrecking
ball would hit a car. I didn't find the cinematography or art
direction especially compelling. It was low-grade horror—a
neutered version of an R-rated frightfest. If Scion insists on
aiming its pitch at young dudes (who are the only people
watching the late-night programs these ads are aired against),
they'd better make ads that will grab young dudes' attention and
hold them riveted to the screen. I just can't see this spot
achieving that.
Correction, July 28, 2008: This piece originally stated that
Adult Swim is a programming bloc on Comedy Central. It
appears on the Cartoon Network. (Return to the corrected
sentence.)
Advanced Search
Knowing your core market and how best to grab it by the lapels
are of course important marketing skills. But it's also possible to
attune your brand to one demographic without pushing away all
others. There's a real danger in adopting an aggressive,
intentionally polarizing tone, as Scion has: You can repel buyers
who might otherwise have considered your product. When the
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Friday, October 19, 2001, at 6:39 PM ET
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books
Rock the Mullahs
Can heavy metal music help transform the Middle East?
By Reza Aslan
Monday, July 28, 2008, at 1:43 PM ET
Click here for a video slide show on metal heads in the Islamic
world.
Pink Floyd's album The Wall takes on a whole new meaning
when brought to life by an Arab metal band in Lebanon. Imagine
100,000 teens—Sunni, Shiite, Christian, Druze—headbanging in
sync, pumping their fists in unison, screaming, "Hey, teacher,
leave those kids alone!" even as another civil war, waged by
their parents, threatens to tear their country apart yet again.
Welcome to the new Middle East, a region where, by some
estimates, nearly half of the population is under the age of 25.
This is a highly literate, politically sophisticated, technologically
savvy, and globally plugged-in generation. It speaks English; it
knows its way around the Internet; and, according to historian
and part-time metal head Mark LeVine, it wants to rock.
LeVine, a professor at University of California, Irvine, has spent
the last few years headbanging his way from Morocco to
Pakistan and almost everywhere in between. The premise of his
book about the Middle East's underground music scene, Heavy
Metal Islam, is simple. "To understand the peoples, cultures, and
politics of the Muslim world today, especially the young people
who are the majority of the citizens," LeVine writes, "we need to
follow the musicians and their fans as much as the mullahs and
their followers."
Follow them he does, and with all the dogged determination of a
seasoned Grateful Dead fan. In Cairo, he rocks with Hate
Suffocation, "the best death-metal band in Egypt, if not the
Middle East and North Africa," dancing along with a gaggle of
screaming girls dressed in tight jeans, torn Iron Maiden T-shirts,
and Islamic headscarves: Muhajababes, LeVine calls them. In
Beirut, still "one of the world's cutting-edge locations for dance
music, hip-hop, and alternative rock," he jams onstage with
perhaps the biggest hard-rock band in the Middle East, The
Kordz, as they rip through a set in front of thousands of
Lebanese kids still reeling from the assassination of Prime
Minister Rafik Hariri. In Iran, he watches a gang of teenagers
gathered illegally at a park for an impromptu rap battle in
Persian, the beats echoing through someone's mobile phone.
When the dreaded basij, or morality police, show up, everyone
scatters.
The danger of arrest, even execution, is real for these young
metal heads, and not just in Iran. In Egypt, more than 100 people
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
were arrested when pictures surfaced of a heavy metal concert
where fans seemed to be carrying an upside-down cross. "Devil
worship!" the Egyptian police cried, rounding up kids as young
as 13 and throwing them in prison. In 2003, Moroccan
authorities arrested 14 heavy metal musicians and fans and
charged them with "shaking the foundations of Islam" and
"attempting to convert a Muslim to another faith" with their
music, as though heavy metal were a religion.
Yet these musicians and their fans continue to thrive in such
authoritarian societies precisely because, as LeVine notes, this is
the first generation to arise in the Middle East that has managed
to tap into the promise of globalization. For example, when the
pioneering Iranian heavy metal band O-Hum (Illusion), which
blends hard rock and traditional Persian melodies with lyrics
swiped from the famed 14th-century Sufi poet Hafez, released its
first album, the album was, predictably, rejected by Iran's
Ministry of Culture. Iran's draconian censorship laws allow the
government to ban any music it deems offensive or un-Islamic.
If a song has "too many riffs on electrical guitar" or if the
musicians display "excessive stage movements," then the CD is
confiscated and the band prohibited from any public
performances. But rather than surrender their album to the
Ministry of Culture, O-Hum uploaded their songs on to the
Internet and allowed fans—not just in Iran but throughout the
world—to listen to the album for free.
The mullahs rightly fear the heavy metal scene in Iran because it
reflects the mood of a volcanic youth culture fed up with religion
and desperate for alternative ways of expressing itself. A
member of Iran's most popular metal band, Tarantist, tells
LeVine, "Metal is in our blood. It's not entertainment, it's our
pain, and also an antidote to the hypocrisy of religion that is
injected into all of us from the moment we're born." One of the
patriarchs of Morocco's heavy metal scene, Reda Zine, puts it
this way: "We play heavy metal because our lives are heavy
metal."
But can music contribute to cultural and political transformation
in the region? It's hardly the first time the question has arisen.
Where Tom Stoppard, looking back at Eastern Europe's revolt
against Communism in Rock 'n' Roll, answered yes, LeVine is
not so sure. The problem, as he sees it, is the failure of the
politically active heavy metal scene and the more progressive yet
entrenched Islamist opposition groups like the Muslim
Brotherhood to make common cause. Indeed, the two are more
often in competition with each other, with the Islamists, many of
whom have struggled for decades against their authoritarian
regimes, fiercely antagonistic toward the young, politically
minded metal heads who seem to enjoy a level of freedom that
the Islamists could only dream of. A band like Hoba Hoba Spirit,
Morocco's insanely popular rock/reggae/African/post-punk
rockers, can draw 100,000 kids to one of their concerts, whereas
members of Morocco's chief Islamist opposition party, the
Justice and Spirituality Association, are prohibited by law from
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congregating in groups of more than three people. While Egypt's
most famous political prisoner, Ayman Nour, rots in a prison
cell for his work promoting democracy, his teenage sons, Shady
and Noor, are free to preach a watered-down version of their
father's message to thousands of Egyptians through their popular
metal band, Bliss.
The animosity between the Islamists and the metal heads is
partly a result of a generational divide and partly a matter of
their differing political and cultural agendas. (The metal heads
are hardly interested in building an Islamic state.) But the truth is
that these two dissident groups who seem to occupy opposite
ends of the political spectrum have more in common than one
would think: Both have similar aspirations to build a freer, more
democratic society, and both have had their political views
shaped by the same sense of despair and lack of opportunity that
exists throughout the region.
And yet there seems little chance of a convergence between the
two, though not because of an inherent conflict between religion
and rock 'n' roll. As a Muslim sheikh in Lebanon proudly
declares, "We're doing heavy metal, too." Rather, it is because
the Islamists seem not yet ready to expand their political ideals
to include activist kids who prefer Ozzy to Osama, while the
metal heads are not yet willing to apply their music (and, more
importantly, their credibility with the youth) to help the Islamists
challenge their governments.
That is too bad. Because as we learned in Eastern Europe, music
has the power to express ideas (especially subversive ideas) in a
manner that mere words cannot; it can serve as a net to gather
disparate elements together under a single identity and with a
single purpose. LeVine imagines a day when the mutual mistrust
between the metal heads and the Islamists will transform into
cooperation, when they will fight the power together as one
united oppositional force. But reading Heavy Metal Islam, one
cannot help feeling that day is far away.
chatterbox
The McCain Record: Taxes
Toward a unified field theory of McCainsian fiscal policy.
By Timothy Noah
Wednesday, July 30, 2008, at 7:06 PM ET
Throughout his quarter-century in Congress, John McCain has
consistently upheld one bedrock fiscal principle: He opposes tax
increases. He opposed them in the years prior to 1998, when his
voting record in the House and Senate was pretty consistently
conservative. He opposed them as he drifted leftward between
1998 and 2006. And he's opposed them since 2006, as he has
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
drifted back to the right. "I've never voted for a tax increase in
24 years," he told columnist Robert Novak early last year.
"Never, ever, not under any president including President
Reagan, and I will never vote for a tax increase, nor support a
tax increase." In 1993, McCain went so far as to seek
(unsuccessfully) a change in Senate rules that would have
required a 60-vote majority to raise taxes. Read his lips. No new
taxes.
Breaking that promise cost President George H.W. Bush the
1992 election. In McCain's case, though, nobody takes the
promise seriously enough to care that he's already broken it.
McCain voted for a $1.10 per-pack tax on cigarettes in 1998.
That measure failed, but in 1983 McCain voted to raise Social
Security taxes as part of a reform package that was enacted into
law. The payroll tax hike was necessary to maintain Social
Security's solvency, but that didn't keep it from being denounced
by the Heritage Foundation, bastion of the same sort of red-meat
conservatives who constitute the base of today's Republican
Party. As recently as July 27 of this year, George
Stephanopoulos asked McCain on ABC News' This Week
whether he might consider a new payroll tax increase. In
response, McCain said, "I don't want tax increases," but "There's
nothing that's off the table."
All right, then. McCain has never voted for an income-tax
increase, defined as an increase in rates. (You can also raise
income taxes by eliminating loopholes, as McCain has supported
in the past.) Read his lips. No new tax brackets above the current
35 percent maximum. That's the rock upon which McCain's
fiscal principles stand. McCain's campaign tax plan calls for an
extension of the Bush tax cuts to block "the Democrats' crippling
plans" to raise the top rate in 2011 to 39.6 percent. But McCain
himself was happy to live with a top rate of 39.6 percent back in
2001. That was the status quo under President Clinton, and when
President Bush's first tax bill phased in a top-rate reduction to 35
percent, McCain voted no. McCain also voted no in 2003 when
President Bush proposed accelerating the earlier tax cut. McCain
was one of only two Republicans to oppose the first Bush tax cut
and one of only three to oppose the second. But, technically,
voting against a tax cut isn't the same as voting in favor of a tax
increase. In 2006, when it came time to vote on whether to
extend the Bush tax cuts McCain had previously opposed, a
"nay" vote now constituted a tax increase. Consequently,
McCain voted in favor. Explaining his apparent flip-flop on
NBC News' Meet the Press, McCain said, "The economy had
adjusted, the tax cuts were there, and if it would have been—and
that's the way it was designed. It would've been tantamount to a
tax increase." (Emphasis added.)
No one bought it, of course, because it was too plainly apparent
by 2006 that if McCain continued to oppose Bush's 2001 tax cuts
he wouldn't have a prayer of winning the Republican nomination
in 2008. "Out of favor with the Republican base," observed the
rabidly anti-tax Americans for Tax Reform, "McCain has slowly
5/92
tried to reinvent himself as a taxpayer friendly Senator." The
similarly rabid Club for Growth pronounced, "John McCain is
no supply-sider." This year, McCain has tried to recast his earlier
opposition to Bush's rate cuts as a vote in favor of budgetary
prudence. In a January appearance on Meet the Press, McCain
said, "[T]he reason—major reason why I was opposed to it was
because there was no spending cuts. I was proud to be part—a
foot soldier in the Reagan revolution. And we had tax cuts, but
we had spending cuts that went right along with it."
There are three problems with this statement.
1) It's absurd to cite Ronald Reagan as a model of budgetary
prudence. Under Reagan, the budget deficit ballooned from $74
billion to $155 billion, setting at one point a still-unbeaten record
of 6 percent of gross domestic product. "Reagan proved that
deficits don't matter," Dick Cheney famously confided to thenTreasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, a proposition subsequently
defended by Irwin M. Stelzer in the Weekly Standard. Cheney
and Stelzer were wrong on the economics but right in
summarizing the central message of Reagan's domestic policy.
Indeed, nine years ago, inspired by Americans for Tax Reform
President Grover Norquist's Reagan Legacy Project, I proposed
that the budget deficit be renamed "the Reagan." I still think it's
a good idea.
2) If McCain is such a deficit hawk, why does he refuse for all
time to raise income-tax rates?
3) Look at McCain's Senate floor statement from the 2001 tax
vote. It included not one word about the need to keep spending
in check. Why should it have? As Jonathan Chait has noted in
the New Republic, during that brief historical moment the budget
deficit was in surplus. What McCain actually said was, "I cannot
in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the
benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of
middle-class Americans who most need tax relief." Six years
later, the Club for Growth still couldn't forgive McCain for
having "aligned himself with the likes of Ted Kennedy in his
rhetorical attacks in 2001 and 2003."
If I had to guess, I'd say that McCain drifted leftward on taxes
partly to impress the media, which by the mid-1990s were
paying him ever-more attention; partly to piss off George W.
Bush, for whom, during the 2000 primaries, McCain had a
palpable dislike; and partly out of conviction. He drifted back
rightward because, as noted before, he had to get right with the
Republican Party mainstream.
But no one should underestimate the role played by sheer
irrationality. Take another look at that 2001 floor statement. In
it, McCain pointed out something that's seldom remembered.
Three days before McCain cast his famous vote against Bush's
tax cut (on final passage), he voted for it (on Senate passage).
Why the change? It seems that McCain had wanted to cut the top
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
rate one point, from 39.6 percent to 38.6 percent. When the
Senate voted that down, Sen. Charles Grassley, who then chaired
the finance committee, offered as a compromise to set the top
rate at 36 percent. That version cleared the Senate with McCain's
support. When the bill came back from House-Senate
conference, however, the top rate had been knocked back down
to 35 percent. Based on that one-point difference, McCain
declared war on his president and his party. Similarly, although
McCain campaigned in 2000 in favor of restricting the estate tax
to the very wealthiest families rather than eliminating it—a
position he still holds, though after 2005 he stopped filibustering
against outright elimination—in July 2000 he voted to phase it
out entirely. In this instance, he doesn't appear to have made any
floor statement or put out any press release. Did he just get out
of bed on the wrong side?
corrections
Corrections
Friday, August 1, 2008, at 7:13 AM ET
In the July 31 "Explainer," Noreen Malone failed to mention that
the Israeli newspaper Maariv had retracted its claim about how it
obtained Barack Obama's prayer note from the Western Wall.
Spokesmen now say the Obama campaign did not submit the
note.
In the July 31 "Moneybox," Chris Thompson misspelled Sharon
Wienbar's name as "Weinbar."
In the July 30 "Moneybox," Daniel Gross included a significant
numerical error. The piece linked to a Bureau of Transportation
Statistics report, which can be seen here, that shows public
construction spending on roads and highways in monthly totals.
That Census Bureau reports the data as monthly totals expressed
at an annualized rate. Because we read that annual rate as a
monthly rate, the original article overstated public spending on
highways and roads by a factor of 12.
In the July 29 "Green Lantern," Jacob Leibenluft incorrectly said
that using the revolving door would save about 74 percent of the
energy needed to heat and cool Building E25 on MIT's campus.
Using the revolving door would save about 1.5 percent of the
total energy required to heat and cool the entire building and
about 74 percent of the total energy required to heat and cool the
air exchanged when people pass in and out of the building.
In the July 28 "Ad Report Card," Seth Stevenson incorrectly
wrote that Adult Swim is a bloc of programming on Comedy
Central. Adult Swim appears on the Cartoon Network.
6/92
In the July 25 "Explainer," Amaka Maduka neglected to mention
that an explosion in New Jersey was the result of 16 "bug
bombs," not regular cans of bug spray. She also misstated the
number of cans of spray necessary to create an ignition hazard
by failing to convert the liquid volume of propellants to a
gaseous volume.
If you believe you have found an inaccuracy in a
Slate story, please send an e-mail to
corrections@slate.com, and we will investigate.
General comments should be posted in "The Fray,"
our reader discussion forum.
The Culture Gabfest weekly endorsements:
Julia's pick: the Boggle-like Facebook word game Prolific
(Facebook login required).
Stephen's pick: Scottish novelist Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir
trilogy.
Dana's pick: WWII-era singer Jo Stafford, as heard on WNYC's
Evening Music, hosted by David Garland.
Posted by Matt Lieber on July 31 at 10:59 a.m.
July 17, 2008
Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 12 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana
Stevens, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the audio
player below:
culture gabfest
The Culture Gabfest, Monopoly Edition
Listen to Slate's show about the week in culture.
By Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner
Thursday, July 31, 2008, at 10:59 AM ET
Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 13 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana
Stevens, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the audio
player below:
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Culture Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by
clicking here.
In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics discuss Joss Whedon's
new Web-only musical miniseries Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along
Blog," Starbucks' abrupt move to shutter a number of its stores in
the United States and abroad, and Google's newest challenger in
the search field, Cuil.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
The new Web miniseries from Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator
Joss Whedon, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.
The pre-eminent Joss Whedon Web community, Whedonesque.
The Guild, another Web series (preferred by some Culturefest
gabbers) .
Eulogies from Slate readers for some of the 600 U.S. Starbucks
stores set to close.
Taylor Clark's Slate piece explaining how Starbucks actually
helps mom-and-pop coffeehouses.
The new search engine Cuil.
Slate's reader contest: Figure out the best questions to ask Cuil,
or any other search engine, to gauge its strengths and
weaknesses.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Culture Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking
here.
In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics discuss the new
Batman movie The Dark Knight, The New Yorker's cover
depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as anti-American
mujahideen, and the mysterious relationship between Madonna
and Alex Rodriguez.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
The Dark Knight Web site.
The New Yorker cover depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as
anti-American fist-bumpers.
Jack Shafer's critique of the members of the press fretting about
the corrupting power of the cover.
Christopher Beam's confession that in a roundabout way, he
might be the one who gave rise to the cover in the first place.
The New York Times' Bill Carter's piece asking why comedians
have such trouble making fun of Obama.
Us Weekly's take on the A-Rod-Madonna liaison.
The New Yorker's explanation of how Kabbalah figures in.
Madonna's history with '80s slugger Jose Canseco.
The Culture Gabfest weekly endorsements:
Julia's pick: Curtis Sittenfeld's forthcoming novel American
Wife, a fictionalized portrait of Laura Bush.
Dana's pick: Carla Bozulich's album Red Headed Stranger, a
song-by-song remake of Willie Nelson's classic concept album.
Stephen's pick: Haven in a Heartless World, by American
historian Christopher Lasch.
7/92
Posted by Matt Lieber on July 17 at 10:45 a.m.
July 2, 2008
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Culture Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking
here.
Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 11 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana
Stevens, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the audio
player below:
In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics discuss the unexpected
outcome of the R. Kelly trial, the song of the summer (or which
hit you'll unexpectedly know all the words to by Labor Day),
and the Atlantic's recent story: "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"
You can also download the program here, or you
can subscribe to the biweekly Culture Gabfest
podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics discuss the re-release
of Liz Phair's feminist indie-rock masterpiece Exile in Guyville,
the media's semihysterical reaction to news of a "pregnancy
pact" among teenage girls at a high school in Gloucester, Mass.,
and the death of comedian George Carlin.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville.
New York magazine's culture blog Vulture interviews Liz Phair.
Meghan O'Rourke's 2003 critical re-evaluation of Liz Phair.
Liz Phair's response.
Time magazine's original report on the "pregnancy pact" at a
Gloucester, Mass., public high school.
Time follows up.
Christopher Caldwell considers the political dogmas at play in
the Gloucester story.
George Carlin, RIP.
Jerry Seinfeld remembers George Carlin.
Cullen Murphy explains why flight attendants really talk like
that.
The Culture Gabfest weekly endorsements:
Josh Levin's Slate article "Long Live the Little Man Defense!"
explains why R. Kelly was acquitted.
R. Kelly and Usher fall for the "Same Girl."
New York magazine predicts the song of the summer. (Leona
Lewis' "Bleeding Love," Usher's "Love in This Club," and the
New Kids on the Block's "Summertime" are contenders.)
The Atlantic's Nicholas Carr wonders: "Is Google Making Us
Stupid?"
The Culture Gabfest weekly endorsements:
Dana's pick: MSNBC's surprisingly touching yet seemingly
endless tribute to Tim Russert
John's pick: The Mary Tyler Moore Show, now available on
iTunes
Julia's pick: Autobiography of a Wardrobe by Elizabeth Kendall
Posted by Amanda Aronczyk on June 18 at 11:54 a.m.
June 4, 2008
Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 9 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana
Stevens, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the audio
player below:
Julia's pick: Listener Robin Winning's song of the summer,
"That's Not My Name" by the Ting Tings.
Dana's pick: Stephen Colbert's green screen challenge: Make
John McCain interesting.
Stephen's pick: The greatest song of any summer ever, the
Rolling Stones' "Miss You."
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Culture Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking
here.
Posted by Matt Lieber on July 2 at 6:02 p.m.
In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics discuss Vanity Fair's
sprawling, dishy takedown of President Clinton, Sex and the
City's boffo success in movie theaters, and the earsplitting arrival
of mixed martial artist Kimbo Slice on CBS.
June 18, 2008
Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 10 with Dana Stevens, John
Swansburg, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the audio
player below:
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
Vanity Fair profiles Bill Clinton, paying particular attention to
his post-presidential rat pack and his id.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
8/92
Clinton responds, officially, in a press release.
Clinton responds, harshly, off the cuff.
Slate's Jack Shafer offers Clinton a lesson in press criticism.
Dana Stevens reviews Sex and the City.
Julia Turner considers the sartorial deficit between the Sex and
the City movie and the television show.
CBS' Elite XC mixed martial arts page.
ESPN introduces Kimbo Slice.
David Plotz defends Ultimate Fighting.
The Culture Gabfest weekly endorsements:
Julia's pick: Josh Levin's coverage of the bizarre, sad, and
hilarious R. Kelly trial.
Dana's pick: The new D.I.Y. suburban taekwondo comedy, The
Foot Fist Way
Stephen's pick: Bo Diddley, The Chess Box.
Posted by Matt Leiber on June 4 at 11:14 a.m.
May 21, 2008
Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 8 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana
Stevens, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the audio
player below:
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Culture Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking
here.
In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics discuss a New York
magazine critique of monogamy, the aesthetically
promiscuous—and recently departed—artist Robert
Rauschenberg, and Barack Obama's affinity for the work of
novelist Philip Roth, the great bard of infidelity.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
New York magazine's skeptical inquiry into the sanctity of
monogamy in American culture
Jim Lewis' fond remembrance of Robert Rauschenberg in Slate
Also in Slate, Jack Shafer's takedown of the overly generous
eulogizing of Rauschenberg in the press
Dana's pick: Eric Asimov's eulogy in the New York Times of the
Mei Lai Wah Coffee House in New York's Chinatown
Stephen's Pick: John Seymour's great achievement in garden
writing, The Guide to Self -Sufficiency
Julia's picks: This American Life's explanation of the housing
crisis; the season finale of NBC's The Office.
Posted by Matt Leiber on May 21 at 6:31 p.m.
May 7, 2008
Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 7 by clicking the arrow on the
audio player below:
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.
In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics Stephen Metcalf, Dana
Stevens, and Julia Turner discuss the rollout of the summer
movie season, including the superhero movie Iron Man, Robert
Downey Jr.'s nimble performance in it, and which of this
summer's blockbusters look most promising.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
Entertainment Weekly's summer movie release calendar
Iron Man, reviewed by Dana Stevens
The New York Times profiles Robert Downey Jr.
You Don't Mess With the Zohan official site
Indiana Jones official site
A 2006 New York Times profile of Mike Myers and his hiatus
from films
Mike Myers and Deepak Chopra, together at last
The Culture Gabfest weekly endorsements:
Dana's pick: Carrier on PBS
Julia's pick: Project Runway
Stephen's pick: Jimi Hendrix's live performance of Bob Dylan's
"Like a Rolling Stone"
Posted by Matthew Lieber on May 7 at 11:00 a.m.
The New Republic's Jed Perl's dislike of Rauschenberg's work
April 23, 2008
Barack Obama's revelation of his affinity for Philip Roth to the
Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg
The Culture Gabfest weekly endorsements:
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 6 with critics Stephen Metcalf,
Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the
audio player below:
9/92
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the new, dedicated Culture Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by
clicking here.
In this week's Culture Gabfest, critics Stephen Metcalf, Dana
Stevens, and Julia Turner discuss whether personal virtue can
solve global warming, the possible failure of personal virtue in
the travel writing business, and the utter failure of personal
virtue inside Abu Ghraib.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the cover of Rolling Stone,
photographed by Annie Leibovitz
Hillary Clinton's 2007 tax return (as disclosed by Hillary)
The Guild: official show site, YouTube channel
World of Warcraft
Quarterlife (no longer) on NBC
M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel
AC/DC
Am I That Name? by Denise Riley
BBC Radio 4's Start the Week
Posted by Amanda Aronczyk on April 9 at 11:12 a.m.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
Michael Pollan's New York Times Magazine article "Why
Bother?"
Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan's Slanted Truths: Essays on
Gaia
Thomas Kohnstamm's book Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?
Lonely Planet responds to the Kohnstamm scandal
Errol Morris' Standard Operating Procedure
Film: Iraq in Fragments
"Photo Finish: How the Abu Ghraib photos morphed from
scandal to law," by Dahlia Lithwick
Julia's pick: Hot Chip
100 best novels from Random House
Dana's pick: Elizabeth Bowen's The Death of the Heart
Stephen's pick: The Bachelor
Posted by Andy Bowers on April 23 at 11:37 a.m.
April 9, 2008
Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 5, with critics Stephen Metcalf,
Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the
audio player below:
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.
In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics discuss whether the
latest Vogue cover is racist (or just the subject of misplaced
outrage in the blogosphere), whether Hillary's tax return
explodes the Clintons' middle-class image, and whether the new
online sitcom The Guild is for nerds only.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
March 26, 2008
Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 4 with critics Stephen Metcalf,
Meghan O'Rourke, and John Swansburg by clicking the arrow
on the audio player below:
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.
In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics discuss whether
Barack Obama was channeling Walt Whitman, whether the head
of JPMorgan was channeling Gordon Gekko, and whether
English professors should be channeling Wal-Mart associates.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
Barack Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech
Walt Whitman's Song of Myself
New York magazine's profile of Jamie Dimon
Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street
Joseph Schumpeter's "Creative Destruction"
The New York Times' "You Say Recession, I Say 'Reservations!'
"
NOBU restaurant in New York City
Gerald Graff's Professing Literature: An Institutional History
Meghan's pick: The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine
John's pick: Dispatches by Michael Herr
Stephen's pick: Boys and Girls in America from the Hold Steady
Posted by Andy Bowers on March 26 at 8:16 p.m.
March 12, 2008
Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 3 with critics Stephen Metcalf,
Dana Stevens, and John Swansburg by clicking the arrow on the
audio player below:
Vogue's "King Kong" cover
Slate's take on the Vogue cover
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
10/92
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.
Our newest podcast, the Culture Gabfest, is back just in time to
take on the Eliot Spitzer meltdown and how it's echoing through
the media. Critics Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and John
Swansburg also discuss the recent rash of fake memoirs and a
breakout blog that claims to shed light on stuff white people like.
Here are links to some of the items mentioned in this week's
episode:
"The Fake Memoirist's Survival Guide" on Slate
A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley
The Stuff White People Like blog
Stuff White People Like on NPR's Talk of the Nation
Dana Stevens' pick: Chop Shop
John Swansburg's pick: Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the
First Women To Play in the National Hockey League by Cleo
Birdwell (aka Don DeLillo)
Stephen Metcalf's pick: Top Gear from BBC America
culturebox
Let's Step Outside
The evolution of the fight scene, from the Duke to the Dark Knight.
By Dennis Lim
Monday, July 28, 2008, at 6:28 PM ET
At one point in Michael Ondaatje's book of interviews with
Walter Murch, the venerable film editor reflects on how
effective cutting keeps audiences grounded as one shot, often
imperceptibly, becomes another. The trick is to determine where
the viewer's attention is trained in a particular shot and to cut to a
shot that contains a focal point in the same area of the frame. But
there is at least one major exception to this rule: the fight scene.
"You actually want an element of disorientation—that's what
makes it exciting," Murch says of his approach to splicing
together a fight. "So you put the focus of interest somewhere
else, jarringly, and you cut at unexpected moments. You make a
tossed salad of it, you abuse the audience's attention."
Posted by Andy Bowers on March 12 at 11:55 a.m.
Feb. 28, 2008
Here's the sophomore outing of our newest audio program, the
Culture Gabfest, with critics Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and
Julia Turner. To listen, click the arrow on the audio player
below:
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.
In this edition, the panelists discuss the aftermath of the Oscars,
the challenge Barack Obama poses for comedians, and Lindsay
Lohan's Marilyn Monroe impression. Here are some of the links
for items mentioned in the show:
Daniel Day-Lewis' Oscar acceptance speech
Saturday Night Live's Obama/Clinton debate sketch
Lindsay Lohan's New York magazine photo shoot
Julia Turner's Oscar fashion dialogue with Amanda Fortini
The Encyclopedia Baracktannica
Posted by Andy Bowers on Feb. 28 at 3:07 p.m.
Attention abuse is certainly one way to describe the on-screen
tumult that is by now a summer multiplex ritual and that
increasingly suggests even more aggressive terms than Murch's.
(Try pureed instead of tossed.) In last year's The Bourne
Ultimatum, directed by shaky-cam virtuoso Paul Greengrass, the
action often approximates epilepsy (and, according to some,
induced motion sickness). This year, the murky, jerky aesthetic
dominates the whiz-bang scenes in Christopher Nolan's The
Dark Knight. Despite general enthusiasm for the movie's popNietzschean gloom, some critics have grumbled about the blinkand-miss-it action, especially the sequences of hand-to-hand
combat. "Nolan appears to have no clue how to stage or shoot
action," David Edelstein wrote in New York magazine,
complaining that it was impossible to make "spatial sense" of
some of the fight scenes. Even in her New York Times rave,
Manohla Dargis noted that the finale was "at times visually
incoherent."
The fight scene as it usually turns up in today's action
spectacles—smeared, destabilized, fixated on chaos at the
expense of clarity and precision—reflects the changing syntax,
the all-around acceleration, of movies in general and Hollywood
blockbusters in particular. The current vogue for chopped-up
fights also raises the question: Are these hyperedited brawls any
more successful than their more straightforward predecessors?
Feb. 14, 2008
To play the first Culture Gabfest, click the arrow on the player
below.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Click here for a video slide show on the evolution of the fight
scene.
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day to day
Gamers Do It Better
Tuesday, July 29, 2008, at 5:27 PM ET
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Human Nature: Gamers To Redesign Real-Life Drones
Raytheon, a contractor to the U.S. military, is trying to improve
its drones by calling on video game developers to redesign the
controls. Alex Chadwick speaks with William Saletan about the
future of military technology. Listen to the segment.
dear prudence
No Parents Allowed
Mom and Dad don't respect my privacy, and I'm almost 30!
Thursday, July 31, 2008, at 6:58 AM ET
Get "Dear Prudence" delivered to your inbox each week; click
here to sign up. Please send your questions for publication to
prudence@slate.com. (Questions may be edited.)
Dear Prudence,
I am a professional in my late 20s and purchased my own home
a few years ago. I am also planning to get engaged to a
wonderful woman soon. Due to increased work demands, I have
gotten badly behind in my housework in recent months. My
parents, who live nearby, decided to help by straightening out
my house but didn't tell me their plans. They used the spare key I
had given them and cleaned the house from top to bottom.
Drawers and closets were rearranged and things were moved
around—including contraceptives and literature on engagement
rings. A personal item belonging to my girlfriend was apparently
discarded. Granted, some much-needed repairs were done
(blinds put up, a light fixture repaired, etc). But I was furious
that my personal space and privacy were invaded. I called my
parents and, in a very loud, profane, and mean-spirited rant, told
them that they had no right to do what they did and that they
were not welcome in my house. I know that I was wrong to lose
my temper with my parents, and I want to apologize and restore
our relationship. But I don't want to give them the impression
that they have the right to come over and rummage through my
things. My father is now convinced that my outburst was a sign
of a mental-health problem and has demanded that I go to the
doctor to discuss going on medication. Now my girlfriend thinks
my parents are irrational and controlling, and is nervous that
they will continue to do stuff like this after we are married. What
can I do to straighten everything out?
—Clean House, Messy Relationships
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Dear Clean,
There your parents were, whistling while they worked like a pair
of Snow Whites, knowing that you would be stunned with
pleasure at the transformation of your home from shambles to
showplace. When you called, they were expecting to hear
gratitude, but instead, Grumpy lays into them with an invectivelaced diatribe. I'm not defending your parents—they grossly
violated your privacy. There is a sanctity to anyone's home, and
they were treating yours as if it were your teenage bedroom and
they'd gotten sick of telling you to clean it up. You had a right to
be furious about their "gift." But it's usually preferable to contain
your anger before expressing your displeasure, especially when
the recipients are your well-meaning parents, who are oblivious
to the wrong they've done. So, go see them with a bouquet of
flowers. Apologize for what you said and the way you said it.
Then explain to them that while you appreciate their
generosity—and how much better the house looks—it's your
house, and you need them to respect your privacy and territory.
Let's hope they forget the suggestion that you seek medical
attention. If your father brings it up, laugh it off by saying you
temporarily snapped because you missed your dust bunnies. If
your parents get it, then you can reassure your girlfriend there
won't be anymore break-ins. But if they don't, then change your
locks.
—Prudie
Dear Prudence Video: Stop Bringing Kids to Work!
Dear Prudie,
I am in my early 20s and have been in my first and only
relationship with a great—perhaps perfect—man for more than
two years. The problem isn't him, it's me. I have recently put my
foot in the door of the modeling/acting business. This new career
has given me the opportunity to meet so many interesting and
beautiful people. I've twice been offered a flight to rendezvous
with an industry person I had just met! I'm very upset to admit I
have been tempted by these offers. I'm flattered that they find me
attractive enough to drop some dough and give me a boost in the
industry. I can't help but be intrigued by the possibility of new
sexual encounters and a leg up in my field. I'm not interested in
any emotional relationship because my boyfriend fills me to the
brim with his unconditional love and affection. Since I'm
inexperienced with relationships, is this just typical temptation
that every woman must fight, or is this a warning sign that I'm
not in my relationship as deeply as I thought?
—Fighting Temptation
Dear Fighting,
It's perfectly common for a young woman who's had only one
relationship, and is just entering the wider world, to wonder
what it's like to be involved with other people. It's less common
for a young woman to be ecstatically happy in a relationship but
think it may be a good idea to let guys fly her around so she can
12/92
have sex with them. And it's really uncommon for a young
woman to be able to convince her perfect boyfriend that flying
around and having sex with other guys has nothing whatsoever
to do with their relationship—it's just a career-building thing.
(It's probably best to leave off your résumé, "Had lots of sex
with Client No. 9.") Usually it turns out that beautiful, willing
young women are a renewable resource for well-connected men,
and that such men aren't actually that interested in making you
the next Heidi Klum; they're just interested in making you. But if
you do decide to give in to temptation, at least be decent enough
to break up with your great guy before you get on the plane.
—Prudie
Dear Prudence,
I have recently started frequenting a popular clothing-optional
beach. This beach is fairly secluded, so I feel very comfortable
tanning and swimming naked. The other day, however, I had a
very embarrassing encounter. As I lay naked on my towel trying
to improve my tan, one of my old college professors walked by
me. (He was fully clothed, incidentally.) We recognized each
other; however, neither of us said hello out of (I assume) mutual
embarrassment. Afterward, I felt rude for not acknowledging
him and am now concerned that he may feel that I snubbed him.
Was it appropriate not to greet him? Do you have any advice on
how I should behave if this happens again?
—Not a Never-Nude
Dear Nude,
There are certain situations in which not acknowledging an
acquaintance can be the most graceful thing to do. One is if
you're in a restaurant, and the spouse of a friend in mid-canoodle
with someone who is not your friend looks up and sees you. The
other is when you are lying nude on a beach towel and strolling
by is your former professor, who may be doing field work,
though I doubt his field is conchology. While you are worrying
that you snubbed your professor, he's worrying that you think he
likes to ogle the shore life. If he comes wandering by again, this
is an occasion in which it would be perfectly acceptable to roll
over and, figuratively, bury your head in the sand.
—Prudie
Dear Prudence,
My grandmother has dementia and has recently been
hospitalized. Every time my parents visit her, they encourage me
to tag along. I never go. I love her and all, but she doesn't
remember that we've been to visit her. She left me some money,
and my dad tries using that to make me feel guilty when I don't
go with them. To me, her body may still be there, but her mind is
pretty much gone. When I used to go visit her, she often started
conversations in her native language. (English is her second.)
She has even confused me with her niece that passed away. I
can't talk to my dad about this because it's his mom and he's
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
really sensitive about it. I feel I'm too young to be dealing with
something like this, so how do I talk to my dad about it without
him becoming upset?
—Teen Going on Adult
Dear Teen,
You've probably already discovered that life as a child or teen is
full of doing stuff you don't want to do because it's your
obligation and because it's the right thing to do. Since you're
"going on adult," you might as well know that when you grow
up, you're going to have to do lots more unpleasant stuff because
… you get the picture. There are few things more depressing
than seeing a beloved person be overtaken by dementia. But it
doesn't matter that your grandmother is not sure who you are,
because when you are there, she will know that a sweet young
person kissed her on the forehead and said, "I love you,
Grandma." And you will know, especially when you get to be an
adult and look back on your teenage self, that you don't have to
be ashamed that you abandoned your grandmother because she
was sick and visiting her was a drag.
—Prudie
did you see this?
Quake Disrupts Court!
Thursday, July 31, 2008, at 11:53 AM ET
explainer
Can I Sell You a Bridge in Brooklyn?
Or maybe you'd like to rent one …
By Jacob Leibenluft
Friday, August 1, 2008, at 11:57 AM ET
New York state "may have to sell off roads, bridges and tunnels"
to address a growing budget deficit, the New York Post reported
Wednesday. How would you go about selling someone a bridge
in Brooklyn?
Start by offering a long lease with lots of conditions. (New York
Gov. David Paterson has clarified that he doesn't want to sell the
state's infrastructure outright.) The agreement would transfer
control of the bridge—and the right to collect tolls—to a private
company in exchange for a large upfront payment. The company
would then be responsible for maintaining and operating the
bridge for a specified period of time—perhaps the traditional 99
years. Under the terms of the lease, the state and the operator
would agree to hundreds of provisions outlining, for example,
how much the operator could raise tolls, what kind of safety
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standards must be maintained, and who would pay in case the
bridge were expanded.
explainer
Obama at the Western Wall
Did an Israeli newspaper break the law by publishing his prayer note?
If Paterson wants to lease out bridges or tunnels, he'll need to
convince the state legislature to give the New York Department
of Transportation the right to negotiate a contract with a private
company. That legislation could be very broad—giving the state
the right to lease out infrastructure more generally—or it could
apply to specific projects. (For a model enabling bill presented
on the U.S. Department of Transportation's Web site, click here.)
Former Gov. George Pataki proposed similar legislation in
2005—the Tappan Zee Bridge was mentioned as a prime
candidate for a "public-private partnership"—but his bill didn't
go anywhere in Albany.
One high-profile model for leasing out a New York bridge is the
Chicago Skyway, a 7.8-mile toll road that had been under public
control since 1958. In 2004, the city of Chicago agreed to lease
out the Skyway to a private Spanish-Australian consortium for
99 years at a total cost of $1.83 billion. The terms of the
agreement—which can be found here (PDF)—specify maximum
toll fees through 2017, after which point they will be determined
by a formula that takes into account inflation and economic
growth. The agreement also specifies how quickly potholes must
be repaired (within 24 hours), how often the shoulder must be
swept (three times a week), and when grass by the side of the
road must be mowed (before the turf gets to be more than 6
inches tall). Similar deals have been signed in Indiana and
Virginia. (For Slate columnist Daniel Gross' take on why these
deals might not be such a good idea, click here.)
In theory, New York might also be able to sell its bridges
outright, but such arrangements are very rare today. Through the
19th century, it was much more common for governments to
issue charters that gave companies the right to build and operate
their own toll roads or bridges. (The Brooklyn Bridge itself was
initially owned by the private New York Bridge Co., but the
corporation got caught up in a political corruption scandal, and
its charter was revoked during construction.) There are still a
handful of privately owned bridges left in the United States, like
the Dingmans Bridge between New Jersey and Pennsylvania,
which was created under an 1834 charter that specified it
wouldn't charge people traveling to funerals or to church—a rule
the bridge still follows today.
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
Explainer thanks Maria Doulis of the Citizens Budget
Commission, Karen Hedlund of Nossaman LLP, and Peter
Samuel of TOLLROADSnews.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
By Noreen Malone
Thursday, July 31, 2008, at 4:42 PM ET
A prayer note that Barack Obama left in Jerusalem's Western
Wall was removed last Thursday and published in an Israeli
newspaper. Traditionally, visitors fold these notes and leave
them wedged between the stones in the wall, where the prayers
remain until their official collection and burial. But Obama's
note was taken by a student at a Jewish seminary (after several
others had searched for it) and passed along to reporters. The
newspaper that published the note, Maariv, came under sharp
criticism for exposing a private prayer—but did it break the law?
At least from a religious point of view. By publishing the note,
the paper certainly went against Jewish law. Prayer notes left on
the Western Wall (or Kotel, in Hebrew) can be considered God's
property since they are intended for the deity. Thus the notes
constitute a kind of hekdesh, or something dedicated to God, and
under Jewish law, it's forbidden to take something dedicated to
God and use it for other purposes—like selling newspapers. If
the notes weren't God's property, they might be the property of
the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, which administers the
Kotel. In that case, removing them would be a violation of the
Jewish law against theft.
Furthermore, the Talmud contains laws meant to protect people
from unspecified damages caused by neighbors snooping or
eavesdropping on their property. The 10 th-century rabbi
Gershom ben Judah extended these laws to private
correspondence, making it forbidden to open a letter without
explicit permission from its owner. Since the well-known
tradition of the Kotel provides for the confidential and
anonymous disposal of the letters, it's reasonable to assume that
Obama left his written prayer with the assumption that it would
remain private. The publication of the note by Maariv could also
be considered a behavior that reflects poorly on the Jewish
people, known as a Chillul Hashem, since it violates a tradition
adopted by Christian pilgrims to the wall (like Obama).
In Israel, however, religious law is only legally binding in cases
of marriage or divorce. One Jerusalem lawyer has requested that
the attorney general investigate Maariv for violating secular
state laws protecting sacred sites and those guaranteeing
personal privacy. Desecration of the Kotel is outlawed under the
Protection of Holy Places Law of 1967. Israel's Basic Law on
Human Dignity and Freedom contains a clause stipulating that
"There shall be no violation of the confidentiality of the spoken
utterances, writings or records of a person."
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But Maariv could make the case that the note isn't part of the
Western Wall itself, so the student who took it wasn't
desecrating a holy place. The newspaper's lawyers might further
argue that a public figure like Obama cannot have reasonably
expected privacy at the wall, since he knew it was a public area,
and that there was a chance his note would be read and
disseminated.
(A spokesman for Maariv originally said that the Obama
campaign submitted the note to the newspaper, in which case the
senator would indeed have forfeited all legal protection to
privacy. The newspaper has since recanted that claim.)*
Bonus Explainer: Has anyone ever grabbed a high-profile note
from the Western Wall before? Yes. The last high-profile
publication occurred in 1967, when Israeli Defense Minister
Moshe Dayan had his prayer note taken from the wall by a
reporter covering the Six-Day War.
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
Explainer thanks David Kraemer of the Jewish Theological
Seminary, Re'em Segev of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
Mark Washofsky of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of
Religion, and Chaim Waxman of Rutgers University.
*Correction, Aug. 1, 2008: This article originally neglected to
mention that Maariv had subsequently retracted its claim that
the Obama campaign submitted the prayer note to the
newspaper. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
explainer
Is Killing Liberals a Hate Crime?
victim's "race, religion, color, disability, sexual orientation,
national origin, ancestry, or gender." That could still apply to
Adkisson, since he was targeting homosexuals as well as
liberals, but any enhancement to his sentence might be
superfluous: If convicted, he would likely face multiple life
sentences or the death penalty. The second state law makes it a
felony to intimidate someone for exercising his or her civil
rights, and specifically mentions "race, color, ancestry, religion
or national origin," leaving out both political and sexual
orientation.
Just a handful of states designate political violence as a "hate
crime." West Virginia makes it a felony to target a person
because of "race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin,
political affiliation or sex." Oregon includes labor unions as
well, protecting "race, color, religion, national origin, sexual
orientation, marital status, political affiliation or beliefs,
membership or activity in or on behalf of a labor organization or
against a labor organization, physical or mental disability, age,
economic or social status or citizenship of the victim." The
District of Columbia defines "bias-related crime" according to
"race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, marital status,
personal appearance, sexual orientation, gender identity or
expression, family responsibility, physical disability,
matriculation, or political affiliation." Iowa also protects political
affiliation, and the Louisiana code mentions "creed."(The federal
government, like most states, does not include political
affiliation in its definition of hate crimes.)
Actual prosecutions of hate crimes based on the victim's political
affiliation are rare in the United States, according to legal
experts. Annual crime compendiums from the individual states
mentioned above occasionally categorize hate crimes as
politically motivated, though such cases often involve another
protected trait like race or religion. The Anti-Defamation League
does not include "political affiliation" in its model legislation for
anti-hate laws.
Only in a few states.
By Chris Wilson
Wednesday, July 30, 2008, at 6:43 PM ET
Jim David Adkisson, who confessed to opening fire in a
Knoxville church last weekend, told police that he was
motivated by a hatred for gays and liberals and, in particular,
that "liberals should be killed because they were ruining the
country." Authorities are now investigating the shooting as a
hate crime. Do liberals get special protections under the law?
Not in Tennessee. The Volunteer State has two laws dealing
with crimes motivated by hatred toward a particular group of
people, but neither one specifies "political affiliation" or
anything similar as a protected characteristic. The first law,
Section 40-35-114 of the Tennessee code, allows a court to
enhance the sentence for a crime committed because of the
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
Explainer thanks Steven Freeman of the Anti-Defamation
League, John W. Gill Jr. of the Knox County District Attorney's
Office, Jack Levin of Northeastern University, Philip Morrison
of the West Virginia Prosecuting Attorneys Institute, and
Jonathan Turley of George Washington University.
explainer
Do Gas Prices Rise Faster Than They
Fall?
The economics of rockets and feathers.
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By Martha C. White
Tuesday, July 29, 2008, at 6:27 PM ET
Oil prices have dropped to about $125 a barrel this week after
reaching a peak of $147.27 earlier this month. Meanwhile, gas
prices are still hovering around the $4 mark, down just a few
cents from an all-time record average of $4.11 two weeks ago.
Why does it seem like gas prices go up faster than they come
down?
Because they do. Analyses of gasoline economics show that
when the price of oil rises, it takes up to four weeks for gas
station prices to catch up, with most of the increase taking place
within the first two weeks. But when oil prices sink, it takes up
to eight weeks for the savings to be passed along to consumers.
The phenomenon is known as "asymmetric price adjustment"
(PDF) or, more informally, "rockets and feathers."
A busy gas retailer will take delivery on a daily basis, so there's
some pressure to pass along price hikes without too much delay.
The stations can't raise prices too much, though, because
consumers tend to be extra-vigilant about shopping for bargains
when oil prices are on the rise. When the newspapers start
reporting upwardly mobile barrel prices, drivers tend to
comparison shop down to the penny. This keeps gas prices from
rocketing even further.
The asymmetry that economists cite comes into play as soon as
oil prices start to deflate. Freed from the constant reminders
about rising fuel costs, drivers become less invested in looking
for a bargain—and retailers don't have to worry as much about
the competition. As a result, station owners can keep drivers
happy by knocking just a few cents off the "old" price.
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
Explainer thanks Severin Borenstein of the University of
California-Berkeley, Matthew Lewis of Ohio State University,
Mariano Tappata of the University of British Columbia, and
Bart Wilson of Chapman University.
explainer
Funky Chicken
Do American birds taste funny because we chlorinate them?
By Nina Shen Rastogi
Monday, July 28, 2008, at 6:58 PM ET
Barack Obama was vague about key trade issues during his
recent trip to Europe, according to an analysis published in
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Friday's New York Times. The article referred specifically to the
11-year European ban on importing chlorinated chickens from
the United States, a sanction that "is less about safety than about
taste." Does chlorine really make our chickens taste funky?
It might. In 1999, researchers at the University of Georgia
conducted a thorough taste comparison of chlorinated vs.
nonchlorinated chicken. The researchers made light- and darkmeat patties out of both treated and nontreated meat, then baked
and refrigerated them. An eight-member panel was trained in the
use of a standard taste-intensity scale and then sampled reheated
portions of the patties over the course of four days. The panelists
tested for several distinct aromatics: "chickeny," "meaty,"
"rancid," and "warmed-over." On the initial day of testing—
before the patties had been refrigerated—there was no
significant difference in taste between any of the patties. But by
the fourth day of testing, the chemically treated patties tasted
significantly more reheated than the nontreated ones.
In any case, the chlorine won't make your bird smell or taste like
a swimming pool. Since the mid-1990s, when nationwide E. coli
and salmonella scares prompted the U.S. Department of
Agriculture to establish strict microbiological regulations for the
meat and poultry industry, the chemical has become a popular
agent for disinfecting chickens. After birds are killed,
defeathered, and eviscerated, the carcasses are chilled in massive
bathtubs to prevent bacterial buildup. Chemical disinfectants—in
about 80 percent of cases, that's chlorine—are added to the water
to reduce cross-contamination and stem further bacterial growth.
Chlorinated solutions may also be used in the evisceration
process as well as during online reprocessing, during which
traces of fecal matter are power-washed away.
The USDA has a strict cap on the amount of chlorine that can be
used in these chiller baths: no more than 50 parts per million, or
50 ounces for every 7,800 gallons of water. As a point of
comparison, the federal limit on chlorine used in drinking water
is 4 ppm, and swimming pools usually contain 1 to 3 ppm. (That
distinctive pool smell usually attributed to chlorine is actually
produced by the combination of chlorine and perspiration, body
oils, and urine.) In the disinfection process, the chlorine added to
the chiller bath reacts with the meat in such a way that no free
chlorine—that's the active, germ-killing stuff—remains. If the
chlorine is used correctly, most people won't be able to detect
any traces of it, particularly after cooking.
Chlorine is used in the treatment of other food products besides
chicken, such as seafood and produce. There are other poultry
disinfection options—radiation, for one—but for now, chlorine
and other chemical agents remain the most cost-effective
options, particularly since the perceived taste difference doesn't
seem to be much of an issue for American consumers.
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
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Explainer thanks Michael Batz of the Food Safety Research
Consortium, Stephen Pretanik of the National Chicken Council,
and Scott Russell of the University of Georgia. Thanks also to
reader Landon Hall for asking the question.
family
The Downside of Redshirting
The trouble with older kindergarten.
By Emily Bazelon
Friday, August 1, 2008, at 7:18 AM ET
At what age should children go to kindergarten? At what age
should your child go to kindergarten? What if these questions
appear to have different answers?
Increasingly, that seems to be the conclusion of upper-middleclass parents who redshirt their kids when it's time for
kindergarten. The calculus goes like this: You look at your 4year-old, especially if he's a boy, and consider that his summer
or fall birthday (depending on the state and its birthday cutoff)
means that he'll be younger than most of the other kids in his
kindergarten class. So you decide to send him a year later. Now
he's at the older end of his class. And you presume that the
added maturity will give him an edge from grade to grade. The
school may well support your decision. If it's a private school,
they probably have a later birthday cutoff anyway. And if it's a
public school, a principal or kindergarten teacher may suggest
that waiting another year before kindergarten is in your kid's
interest despite the official policy.
Individually speaking, no harm done, perhaps, though the
presumed benefit is an open question. But collectively, delaying
kindergarten is a bad idea—especially for poor kids, for whom it
often means one more year of no school. Kindergarten is free. In
most states, preschool and pre-K are not. Sending kids to school
early is a major initiative of the childhood education movement.
Putting off kindergarten takes us in the opposite direction,
toward less access to school for younger kids.
Fine, but choosing to keep your little Hudson out of kindergarten
doesn't affect the low-income kindergartners out there, does it?
Well, it might. A new study suggests that the effects of
kindergarten redshirting are more serious and long-term than one
might have thought.
To begin with, 6-year-old kindergartners create an age span in
the classroom that extends not only more than 12 months, but as
much as 18 months. That's significant, developmentally, and it
can make it harder for the younger ones to keep up—especially
in this age of academic kindergarten, which can involve more
sitting still and pencil work than play or naptime. In addition, the
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
trend toward older kindergarten among well-off families may be
fueling the trend toward state laws that delay kindergarten for
everyone. As Elizabeth Weil noted in a great piece on
redshirting in the New York Times Magazine last year, almost
half the states have pushed back their birthday cutoffs since
1975, several of them fairly recently.
It's easy to see what the states are up to: They're worried about
test scores, and they figure that older kids plus academic
kindergarten will produce better ones. But this approach turns
out to be extremely shortsighted, according to new research by
David Deming of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and
Susan Dynarski of the University of Michigan. The authors find
that starting kindergarten late correlates with dropping out of
high school and earning less afterward. "There is substantial
evidence that entering school later reduces educational
attainment (by increasing high school drop out rates) and
depresses lifetime earnings (by delaying entry into the job
market)," the authors write. Also, "recent stagnation in the high
school and college completion rates of young people is partly
explained by their later start in primary school."
This does not mean that redshirting upper-middle-class kids
turns them into high-school drop-outs. Deming and Dynarski
show that in 1968, 96 percent of 6-year-olds were enrolled in
first grade or higher. In 2005, the rate was 84 percent. (Forget
about skipping a grade—that went out at least a generation ago.)
Redshirting explains two-thirds of the change, the authors find,
and changes in state laws explain the rest. The kids who start
later because of the legal changes—a group that is socioeconomically broad—are probably fueling the second trend that
Deming and Dynarski point to: fewer 17-year-olds in 12th grade
or in college, which translates to fewer years of school for more
kids. Laws in the United States (as opposed to some European
countries) mandate that kids stay in school, not for a requisite
number of years but until they are 18. "Poor kids are
disproportionately likely to drop out as soon as they can, when
they turn 18," Dynarski explains. "If they start at 6 instead of 5,
that's one year less of school."
The increasing availability of public pre-K becomes, then, not
the additional year of school that early childhood educators and
advocates wanted for families that can't afford private preschool.
Instead, pre-K, when it's offered, just replaces what the first year
of kindergarten used to be.
One more knock against delaying kindergarten: It doesn't
produce better test scores over the long run. If this delay did
help, we could expect to see a cheery rise in the scores of 17year-olds along with the rise in the number of 6-year-old
kindergartners. Instead, the basic level of proficiency of 17-yearolds on the National Assessment of Education Progress "has not
risen at a rate that would suggest the majority of students are
learning at a grade level higher than they were 20 years ago,"
Deming and Dynarski write.
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All of this should make us leery of governmental policies that
delay kindergarten. But back to your kid, because, well, he's
yours. He's little. And immature. He could be the kid who won't
sit on the rug for reading time or the one who will cling to his
mother's leg. Won't he be better off if he waits?
Deming and Dynarski do their best to argue no. "There is no
evidence of a lasting benefit to education or earnings from being
older than one's classmates," they write. Another recent study,
by Sandra Black of UCLA, crunched data from Norway and
actually found a small boost in IQ for starting school early, but
little effect on educational attainment—how well kids do in
school in the long run. The place where redshirting is a proven
advantage is the sports field. For example, 60 percent more
Major League Baseball players are born in August than in July,
and the birthday cutoff for youth baseball is July 31. But
athletics, Dynarski points out, isn't academics.
No evidence of a lasting redshirting benefit, though, isn't the
same as convincing evidence of no benefit. What a lot of parents
really want to know is whether redshirting improves a kid's
chances of grabbing the brass ring—admission to an elite
college. Deming and Dynarski say they are "exploring whether
age effects persist in this competitive arena." Those are the kind
of research results that will interest parents who can afford to
choose between another year of preschool and kindergarten. For
the sake of parents who can't, it would be better if the perceived
advantages of redshirting lose their shine.
fighting words
Oh, Lucky Man
Why Obama's attitude on the surge hasn't harmed his campaign.
By Christopher Hitchens
Monday, July 28, 2008, at 12:19 PM ET
It's almost certainly too late, after his coronation tour of the
Middle East and Europe, to amend the story and to show
precisely how and why the conventional wisdom about Barack
Obama and the surge is wrong, but just out of curmudgeonly
pedantry, let me attempt the task.
On Feb. 21, Sens. Obama and Hillary Clinton had one of their
"debates" in Austin, Texas. The question of the surge—just then
beginning to show serious and lasting results—came up. Sen.
Clinton, of course, having apparently been decisively out-lefted
by Obama at the beginning of the campaign, felt compelled to
put the sourest face on all matters Iraqi. And then Campbell
Brown of CNN asked the following question:
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Sen. Obama, in the same vein, you were also
opposed to the surge from the beginning. Were
you wrong?
At that point, sitting at home, I suddenly realized what Obama
ought to do if he wanted to show that he was capable of thinking
on his feet and stealing a march on his rivals. He should praise
the surge without withdrawing from his opposition to the war.
And so he did, in the following words:
Well, I think it is indisputable that we've seen
violence reduced in Iraq. And that's a credit to
our brave men and women in uniform. In fact,
you know, the First Cavalry, out of Fort Hood,
played an enormous role in pushing back alQaida out of Baghdad. [APPLAUSE] And,
you know, we honor their service. But this is a
tactical victory imposed upon a huge strategic
blunder. [LAUGHTER] And I think that
when we're having a debate with John
McCain, it is going to be much easier for the
candidate who was opposed to the concept of
invading Iraq in the first place to have a debate
about the wisdom of that decision
[APPLAUSE] than having to argue about the
tactics subsequent to the decision.
[LAUGHTER]
Not bad for a performance in the liberal-skewed primaries and
(with its rather obvious nod to the local heroes of Fort Hood) not
entirely unpremeditated, either. I felt almost sure that this—
"Obama Has Kind Words for Surge"—would be the headline
next day. Instead, there was no mention of it to speak of, and
most people with whom I later talked seemed not to have noticed
the moment at all. In some way, the notion that Obama was
beating Sen. Clinton mainly because he was more anti-war than
she was the story, the whole story, and nothing but the story; and
no statement that was in any way incompatible with it could be
considered newsworthy. I took this up with the late Tim Russert,
who shrugged a bit and added that the line of the evening—
"Change you can Xerox," a vulgar taunt about Obama's alleged
plagiarism from Sen. Clinton via Sidney Blumenthal—had
swiftly become the agreed headline among those who decide
these things. Really, there are times one is ashamed to be in the
profession.
However, it isn't just the famous "liberal bias" that explains all
this groupthink and on-the-spot editing. The right wing had no
interest in highlighting Obama's nuanced position in Austin,
either, because there was (and is) a conservative interest in
painting Obama as a heedless and irresponsible pacifist, with
absolutely no experience of crashing an expensive aircraft on the
territory of a country on which the United States had never
declared war.
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In fact, the worst you can say of Obama's position on Iraq
(where we also didn't declare war but where we did have a long
series of U.N. resolutions putting the Saddam Hussein regime
outside international law) is that he was a member of that quite
large and undistinguished group that constituted the president's
fair-weather wartime friends. Shortly after Baghdad had fallen at
a then-cost of perhaps 100 U.S. fatalities, he said publicly that
there was no serious difference between the Bush position and
his own. It was only by retro-engineering his politics, and
pointing to a speech he had made in Chicago very much earlier
in the Iraq debate, that he was able to create the idea that he had
been both braver and more prescient than his rivals for the
nomination.
According to your taste, then, this succession of local and
national and now international shifts and adaptations makes
Obama either a very ordinary politician or a highly extraordinary
one. The timing of events in Iraq and Afghanistan seems to
make him an astonishingly fortunate nominee. And fortunate,
too, it must be said, in his opponent. Sen. John McCain could
have said gravely that only the surge made the talk of American
withdrawal—whether it came from Nouri al-Maliki or Obama—
possible in the first place. He could have taken Obama's words
from last February, about the 1st Cavalry vanquishing al-Qaida,
and used them wryly and dryly to congratulate the younger man
on being willing to learn. Instead, he peppered everything but
the target with the inaccurate charge that Obama had always
been anti-war and anti-surge. Obama may indeed have been
serially for them after he was against them, but that's different
from (and better than) the other way around.
The cliché for the Obama phenomenon is jujitsu, where the
strength of your opponent is precisely what you use against him.
McCain had one particular strength when this campaign began:
his fortitude in respect of Iraq, which entailed (as some people
forget) his willingness to criticize the commander in chief in
time of war. Now he is in real danger of confusing the two
things and trying to make criticism or disagreement appear to be
suspect in themselves. If last week hasn't taught him that this is a
doomed tactic—and strategy—then he is unteachable.
food
The Great Vegan Honey Debate
Is honey the dairy of the insect world?
By Daniel Engber
Wednesday, July 30, 2008, at 2:20 PM ET
There's never been a better time to be a half-assed vegetarian.
Five years ago, the American Dialect Society honored the word
flexitarian for its utility in describing a growing demographic—
the "vegetarian who occasionally eats meat." Now there's
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
evidence that going flexi is good for the environment and good
for your health. A study released last October found that a plantbased diet, augmented with a small amount of dairy and meat,
maximizes land-use efficiency. In January, Michael Pollan
distilled the entire field of nutritional science into three rules for
a healthy diet: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
According to a poll released last week, Americans seem to be
listening: Thirteen percent of U.S. adults are "semivegetarian,"
meaning they eat meat with fewer than half of all their meals. In
comparison, true vegetarians—those who never, ever consume
animal flesh—compose just 1 percent.
The flexitarian ethic is beginning to creep into the most ardent
sector of the meat-free population: the vegans. In recent years,
some in the community have begun to loosen up the strict
definitions and bright-line rules that once defined the movement.
You'll never find a self-respecting vegan downing a glass of
milk or munching on a slice of buttered toast. But the modern
adherent may be a little more accommodating when it comes to
the dairy of the insect world: He may have relaxed his principles
enough to enjoy a spoonful of honey.
There is no more contentious question in the world of veganism
than the one posed by honey. A fierce doctrinal debate over its
status has raged for decades; it turns up on almost every
community FAQ and remains so ubiquitous and unresolved that
radio host Rachel Maddow proposed to ask celebrity vegan
Dennis Kucinich about it during last year's CNN/YouTube
presidential debate. Does honey qualify as a forbidden animal
product since it's made by bees? Or is it OK since the bees don't
seem too put out by making it?
Old-guard vegans have no patience for this sort of equivocation:
Animal products are off-limits, period. Indeed, the first Vegan
Society was created in 1944 to counter the detestable, flexitarian
tendencies of early animal rights activists. Founder Donald
Watson called their namby-pamby lacto-vegetarianism "a
halfway house between flesh-eating and a truly human, civilized
diet" and implored his followers to join him in making the "full
journey." That journey, as the society has since defined it, takes
no uncertain position on honey—it's summarily banned, along
with bee pollen, bee venom, propolis, and royal jelly.
The hard-liners argue that beekeeping, like dairy farming, is
cruel and exploitative. The bees are forced to construct their
honeycombs in racks of removable trays, according to a design
that standardizes the size of each hexagonal chamber. (Some say
the more chaotic combs found in the wild are less vulnerable to
parasitic mites.) Queens are imprisoned in certain parts of the
hive, while colonies are split to increase production and
sprinkled with prophylactic antibiotics. In the meantime, keepers
control the animals by pumping their hives full of smoke, which
masks the scent of their alarm pheromones and keeps them from
defending their honey stores. And some say the bees aren't
making the honey for us, so its removal from the hive could be
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construed as a form of theft. (Last year's animated feature, Bee
Movie, imagined the legal implications of this idea.)
So, any vegan who eats honey but avoids milk is making the
tacit assumption that the pain experienced by a bee counts for
something less than the pain experienced by a cow. It's exactly
the sort of compromise that so appalled Watson and the early
vegans. Once you've allowed yourself to equivocate on animal
suffering, how do you handle all the other borderline cases of
insect exploitation? What about silkworms and cochineal bugs?
Come to think of it, does a bee feel any less pain than a scallop
or an oyster? Why can't we eat them, too?
(For the record, pearls aren't vegan. Oysters are killed during the
harvest and often suffer the indignity of having a hole cut into
their gonads.)
The flexitarians counter that if you follow the hard-line
argument to its logical extreme, you end up with a diet so
restrictive it borders on the absurd. After all, you can't worry
over the ethics of honey production without worrying over the
entire beekeeping industry. Honey accounts for only a small
percentage of the total honeybee economy in the United States;
most comes from the use of rental hives to pollinate fruit and
vegetable crops. According to food journalist Rowan Jacobson,
whose book Fruitless Fall comes out this September,
commercial bees are used in the production of about 100 foods,
including almonds, avocados, broccoli, canola, cherries,
cucumbers, lettuce, peaches, pears, plums, sunflowers, and
tomatoes. Even the clover and alfalfa crops we feed to dairy
cows are sometimes pollinated by bees.
this logic, it's not a sin to treat a termite infestation that's
imperiling your house, nor should you worry over the gnats that
get squashed on your windshield whenever you drive to the
farmer's market. But that doctrine won't absolve us for eating
honey. In the first place, honey is quite easy to avoid—
especially compared with everything else in the Vegan Society's
codex of forbidden foodstuffs. (A scrupulous eater must also
attend to calcium mesoinositol, sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate,
disodium guanylate, and dozens more unpronounceable, animalderived chemicals.) Honey doesn't fill any nutritional gap, nor is
it the only acceptable vegan sweetener.
From a practical perspective, all this back-and-forth doesn't help
anyone (or any animal). You either eat honey or you don't; to
debate the question in public only makes the vegan movement
seem silly and dogmatic. According to Matthew Ball, the
executive director of Vegan Outreach, the desire for clear dietary
rules and restrictions makes little difference in the grand calculus
of animal suffering: "What vegans do personally matters little,"
he says. "If we present veganism as being about the exploitation
of honeybees, it makes it easier to ignore the real,
noncontroversial suffering" of everything else. Ball doesn't eat
honey himself, but he'd sooner recruit five vegans who remain
ambivalent about insect rights than one zealot who follows every
last Vegan Society rule.
That may be the most important lesson to come out of this
debate: You'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Life for these rental bees may be far worse than it is for the ones
producing honey. The industrial pollinators face all the same
hardships, plus a few more: They spend much of their lives
sealed in the back of 18-wheelers, subsisting on a diet of highfructose corn syrup as they're shipped back and forth across the
country. Husbandry and breeding practices have reduced their
genetic diversity and left them particularly susceptible to largescale die-offs.
foreigners
Even the vegans who abstain from honey end up dining on the
sweat and hemolymph of exploited bees. There isn't really an
alternative: We can't replace our insects of burden with
machines, as we've done for the mules that once pulled our
tractor rakes. You might try to do right by seeking out windpollinated grains and fruits tended by wild insects. But what
about the bugs that inevitably perish in the course of any largescale agriculture? Even the organic farmers are culpable: They
may not spray synthetic pesticides, but they do make use of
natural chemicals and predators to kill off unwanted animals.
Way back in 1991, when an otherwise forgettable foreign
minister of Luxembourg infamously pronounced that sentence, it
seemed to portend great things. It meant that in the post-Cold
War world, Europeans, not Americans, would resolve the
conflicts that were about to become the Bosnian war—and
maybe a lot of other things, too. He was wrong. Those Balkan
conflicts were eventually "resolved," up to a point, not by
Europe but by the United States and NATO. European influence
in Washington dwindled—and then dwindled further during the
Bush administration, which mostly treated the very idea of
Europe as a kind of pointless distraction.
"The Hour of Europe" Tolls Again
But are European politicians up to the task?
By Anne Applebaum
Monday, July 28, 2008, at 8:00 PM ET
"This is the hour of Europe."
In the face of this insectile carnage, vegans fall back on a
common-sense dictum that animal suffering should be
"reasonably avoided" as opposed to "avoided at any cost." By
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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Fast-forward to 2008: The Bush administration is discredited,
leaving a wide, gaping hole where America's Europe policy (or
absence of policy) used to be. Once again, an opportunity looms:
As a friend in Washington puts it, "three Mongolians and a
camel" could have an impact on whichever president takes over
in January, so desperate will any new administration be for new
ideas, for new policies, for "change."
In a very real sense, 2009, not 1992, truly will be the "hour of
Europe." By that, I mean that if the chancellor of Germany, the
prime minister of Great Britain, and the president of France—
backed by their counterparts in southern Europe, Eastern
Europe, and Scandinavia—were to walk into the White House
on Jan. 21 and propose serious, realistic, new contributions to,
say, the war in Afghanistan, the reconstruction of Iraq, the
nuclear negotiations with Iran, and perhaps even climate change,
the White House would listen.
Or perhaps I should put it more strongly: Not only would the
White House listen, the new administration, Democratic or
Republican, would immediately offer the Europeans the
"leadership" and "partnership" they so often say they desire.
Between the sinking housing market and the soaring price of
food, the high price of fuel and low growth, the new president is
going to have so much on his plate that a group of Europeans
who appear from across the Atlantic announcing, say, a plan to
fix southern Afghanistan would be welcomed with open arms. In
fact, I'll wager I could find a dozen future members of either
administration who would roll out the red carpet and greet them
like envoys of a fellow superpower if the Europeans so desired.
Yet at the same time, I'd also wager that I could not find a dozen
current members of any European government who have even
thought about coming up with any ideas at all. This is the hour
of Europe—but do the Europeans even know it?
Judging by the press and the popular reaction to Barack Obama's
visit there last week, they don't. Just about every account of the
speech noted the dearth of applause for its single line
encouraging European participation in world events. "America
cannot do this alone. … The Afghan people need our troops and
your troops" was not a crowd pleaser. Neither was "We can join
in a new and global partnership" to fight terrorism. German
Chancellor Angela Merkel, meanwhile, spoke tartly of "the
limits" of Germany's contributions to the Afghan cause, making
it clear she didn't favor such upbeat talk, while another senior
German official worried that his colleagues "will have trouble
meeting [Obama's] demand to assume more common
responsibility."
In a narrow sense, their reserve is understandable: Nobody is
going to break new ground with a visiting presidential candidate.
Still, the public reactions to Obama struck me as significant
because they match private opinions I've been hearing for
months. "Nobody has thought about this yet," said one European
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
diplomat when I asked what plans might be presented to the new
administration. The truth, revealed by the brief Obama visit, is
that few European statesmen look on changes in Washington as
an opportunity to propose something new. Most simply feel
relief that Bush will be gone, coupled with anxiety about what is
to come next.
And as the election gets closer, the anxiety will grow. In a
strange sense, Bush's catastrophic diplomacy was a gift to
Europe's politicians. "Bush allowed them to explain away radical
Islam as an understandable, even legitimate, response to the
hypocrisies and iniquities of American policy," wrote one British
columnist this week. Bush also allowed them to blame American
"unilateralism" for their own lack of initiative, to use bad
American diplomacy as an excuse for doing nothing.
No wonder the adulation of Obama was tempered by a note of
unease. What with one presidential candidate talking of "global
partnership" and the other reminding Americans that "the United
States did not single-handedly win the Cold War," the potential
for the renewal of the trans-Atlantic alliance is terrifyingly
real—and the election isn't even over.
foreigners
What Is the Arab World's Problem?
Kenneth Pollack's grand strategy for the Middle East.
By Lee Smith
Monday, July 28, 2008, at 6:55 AM ET
In recent years, former CIA analyst and Clinton-administration
National Security Council staffer Kenneth Pollack has found
himself so close to Bush administration Middle East policies—
like regime change in Iraq and Gen. David Petraeus' surge
strategy—that it's hardly surprising he'd now like to put some
distance between himself and an unpopular White House. Thus,
in A Path out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the
Middle East, Pollack adopts a countermeasure perfected over the
last several years by Arab liberals concerned that any association
with Bush is likely to lose them respect, if not their freedom or
their lives: trash the White House pre-emptively and then restate
the general principles of its Middle East policy.
Pollack's grand strategy—"an overarching conception of what it
is that we seek to achieve, how we intend to do it and how to
employ the full panoply of foreign policy tools"—is reform, just
as it is for the Bush administration. And yet unlike the White
House, Pollack clearly spells out his ideas about the Middle East
and Washington's role there in securing U.S. interests. He
identifies America's chief vital interest in the region without
embarrassment: Persian Gulf energy resources. Until the United
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States develops an adequate substitute for oil, we are stuck in the
Middle East protecting the free flow of affordable fossil fuel that
not only fills American SUVs but also ensures the stability of
global markets. Pollack makes a good case that were it not for
our presence in the Gulf, we would not be such a valuable target
on the jihadist hit list, and were we to leave tomorrow, the threat
to the United States from Arab terror outfits would largely
subside.
Since we are not leaving, we need to repair the region with a
broad program of economic and political reform, different from
the Bush administration's quick-fix obsession with elections that
merely lent democratic legitimacy to Islamist groups in the
Palestinian Authority, Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt. Pollack argues
that a process of real liberal reform will take decades, if not
longer.
Here he is surely right. The problem, however, is that the U.S.
policymaking body whose institutional memory and resources
equip it to deal with long-term solutions is not interested in
change, whether it be fast or slow. The State Department prizes
stability, which is partly attributable to the temperament of
people who are likely to seek employment in Washington
bureaucracies. But State's caution and fear of unintended
consequences also issue from an accurate reckoning of its own
priorities and capabilities.
Consider Egypt. For more than two decades, Washington has
provided Cairo with $2 billion annually, a deal that binds the
Egypt-Israel peace treaty, guarantees our carefree passage
through the Suez Canal, and buys a certain amount of
cooperation on military and security issues. President Hosni
Mubarak's regime is not the easiest friend we have in the world,
but for a bureaucracy with a lot on its hands already, our bargain
with Egypt gives us one less thing to worry about. Should we
pressure Cairo to make reforms? Sure, and we do. However, as
Pollack notes, our capacity is limited. Even if there were 50
people at Foggy Bottom tasked specifically to the Egypt desk—
instead of the two there are—we are still up against a regime
whose sole strategic goal is to ensure its own survival at any
cost. Multiply that by 22, the number of Arab League member
states, and it is clear that we just can't afford the luxury of
employing thousands to push a stone up a hill only to see it roll
most of the way back down again.
In Pollack's view, it is the regimes themselves that are largely
responsible for the state of the region. "The principal problem of
the Middle East," he writes, "is the failure of the contemporary
state system." Again, this is a diagnosis widely shared on both
sides of the aisle in Washington. Immediately after 9/11, the
charges against Arab regimes were direct: Through violence,
repression, and incitement in the media, mosques, and
educational system, Arab rulers had turned their people into a
fanatical anti-American and anti-Semitic horde. In time, the
rhetoric mellowed some, but still, the chief goal of the current
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
administration's democratization program was to make Arab
countries responsible for the welfare and actions of their citizens
within and beyond their borders—i.e., to stop dispatching
jihadists to kill and die in foreign lands. Indeed, trying to make
Arab regimes act like real states is the only good reason U.S.
policymakers continue to keep a Palestinian-Israeli peace
process on life support. We want a Palestinian state because our
bureaucracy deals effectively with states and less well with
armed NGOs.
But here's another way to look at it: The Palestinian Authority is
neither a nascent state nor a failed state project. Rather, it is a
clan system of frequently competing interests that no Palestinian
leader in his right mind would try to turn into a state, regardless
of how much financial incentive the international community
makes available. The problem is not that the Arab state system is
breaking down, but rather that it never existed. And the proof is
unfolding before us in, among other places, Hamas' Islamic
Republic of Gaza, the autonomous Hezbollah regions of
Hezbollah Lebanon, and perhaps even someday soon in Iraq, as
the Arabs redraw the borders of the region to their own taste
with little concern for the international state system.
So, let's step back for a second: Given that Arab states do not act
like real states, why try to democratize them and push for a
reform agenda like Pollack's that aims to promote freedom of
speech and "protections for minorities so that the state or the
majority cannot oppress unpopular groups"? Because the Arabs
want democracy, writes Pollack—albeit without some of the
elements that the West tends to associate with the social values
of Western democracies, "like gender roles, abortion,
homosexuality," and other issues like "sex on television and antireligious speech and behavior." Well, which is it: Arab reform or
respect for Arab cultural norms? It is one thing to say that Arab
democracy will embody the traditions and morals of Arab
society. But a polity that continues to limit freedom of
expression and persecute Middle Eastern minorities like, say,
homosexuals, is a very poor version of "representative
government," and it is not clear why Americans have any stake
in funding and fighting for it.
A Path out of the Desert reflects not only the confusion of
Washington officials but also the idées fixes of a great many
Americans. For instance, Pollack seems to be channeling the
junior senator from Illinois when he writes, "The fear and
frustration that so many Arabs feel comes from the cultural clash
between the forces of modernity and their own traditions. …
Historically, this clash has often prompted people to retreat into
religiosity."
Muslims in the Muslim Middle East are religious because they
believe in God, the perfection of his final revelation in the
Quran, and his prophet Muhammad. And Islamism, which
Pollack is at pains to distinguish from Islam, is a vital force in
the region precisely because it represents the progressive and
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rational current of Islam that sought to reconcile a society
marked by fatalism and backwardness with "the forces of
modernity" embodied by the West.
That trend, starting with 19th-century Muslim reformers Jamal
al-din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abdu, gave rise to the
Islamist movement, from the Muslim Brotherhood all the way
down to the most notoriously violent organizations in the region
like Hamas and al-Qaida. For Pollack, as for many U.S.
policymakers, a key question is whether Islamists should be
allowed to participate in the democratic process and, if so, which
ones should qualify. However, the Islamists, both moderate and
extreme, are already a part of Middle Eastern political culture,
whether we like it or not. The problem is with our intellectual
framework: By focusing on how to jump-start the "democratic
process," we have failed to recognize what the region really
looks like.
Besides Lebanon and now Iraq, there is no mechanism for
power-sharing or transmitting authority from one ruler to the
next, except through inheritance or coup d'état. Arab politics is a
fight to become what Osama Bin Laden called the "strong
horse," which means if you want power, you have to take it.
Islamist violence is not attributable to a lack of economic
opportunities, as Pollack contends, or to any other "root cause."
The Islamists are simply playing by regional rules, where terror
and repression are two sides of the same bloody coin—
insurgents and oppositionists wage terror campaigns to win
power, and the regimes use torture and collective punishment in
order to repress their domestic competition.
That is to say, Middle Eastern regimes are not the source of the
region's problems. As the decapitation of Saddam Hussein's
regime showed, the psychopaths, princes, and presidents for life
who rule Arab states are merely the hothouse flowers of a
poisonous political culture. "The States are as the men are,"
Plato writes in The Republic. "They grow out of human
characters." The failure to respect this basic and ancient political
principle marks by far the greatest intellectual error of neocon
Middle East policy and thus of the entire liberal intelligentsia
from which it arises. As we saw with Hezbollah's orgiastic
celebrations for released child-murderer Samir Kuntar, the
problem with the Arab world is Arab societies themselves.
The Iraq war should have cured us of any illusions about the
Middle East, but the administration's incoherence let us put
many of the region's problems on Bush's tab. American opinion
will be easier on the next president and harder on the Middle
East itself as we come to distinguish between our problems,
mistakes, and limitations and those of the Arabs. The paradox is
that one of our sharpest limitations is that we believe democracy
is a universal cure-all, good for all people at all times, when that
is almost certainly not the case. However, as Pollack argues,
democratic reform seems to be the only thing that will save the
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Middle East from consuming itself in violence, for the region
can get worse than it is now, much worse.
gabfest
The Cursed Gabfest
Listen to Slate's review of the week in politics.
By Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz
Friday, August 1, 2008, at 12:25 PM ET
Listen to the Gabfest for Aug 1 by clicking the arrow on the
audio player below:
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.
Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, nad David Plotz talk politics.
This week, John McCain accuses Barack Obama of playing the
race card, Obama's law school exams are under review, and the
Justice Department faces charges of illegal hiring.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
McCain accused Obama of "playing the race card."
David says McCain can win the presidency only by scaring
people into voting for him.
This week, the New York Times put class materials from
Obama's time as a law professor at the University of Chicago
Law School on its Web site.
The inspector general of the U.S. Justice Department testified on
Capitol Hill this week, telling a Senate committee that Bush
administration appointees politicized the hiring process at the
DoJ.
John chatters about a new book that explains all the policy
decisions the next president will face.
David talks about a new study that shows it might one day be
possible to take a pill to increase your athletic endurance without
exercise.
Emily discusses LifeStyles Condoms' offer to teenage singing
star Miley Cyrus to become the company's spokeswoman in
return for $1 million.
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David and Emily speculate about how much money it would
take for Cyrus to promote condom use, comparing it with the
hypothetical posed in the overrated 1993 movie, Indecent
Proposal, starring Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore, and Robert
Redford.
The e-mail address for the Political Gabfest is
gabfest@slate.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the
writer stipulates otherwise.)
Posted by Dale Willman on Aug. 1 at 12:23 p.m.
July 25, 2008
Listen to the Gabfest for July 25 by clicking the arrow on the
audio player below:
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.
Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz talk politics.
This week, it's Barack to Iraq, the state of the presidential race,
and John Edwards vs. the National Enquirer.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
Sen. Barack Obama completes a trip to the Middle East,
including Iraq. It was considered a major success. However, he
has not done so well in talking about his Senate vote against
supporting President Bush's surge strategy. When asked if he
would still vote the same way today, he said that he would.
John reminds critics of Obama's trip to Iraq that they should also
remember John McCain's visit there in 2007. McCain said Iraq
was safe enough that "there are neighborhoods where you and I
could walk through those neighborhoods, today." It was later
revealed that during his stroll, McCain wore body armor and was
accompanied by U.S. soldiers and that several attack helicopters
were flying overhead.
McCain, meanwhile, continues to criticize Obama's trip as well
as his position that the troop surge was not the only reason for
recent success in Iraq, saying it is "pretty obvious he [Obama]
took this position in order to secure the nomination of his party
by taking the far-left position and being dictated to by
MoveOn.org and others.''
There are conflicting public-opinion polls. According to a poll
from Quinnipiac University, McCain is gaining ground in three
key states—Colorado, Michigan, and Minnesota—despite the
positive coverage of Obama's Middle East swing. Yet polling by
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
the Gallup organization finds Obama's lead growing in a number
of key swing states.
The Gabfest goes nuclear over a story in the National Enquirer
alleging that John Edwards recently met with a mistress in a Los
Angeles hotel.
John chatters about political columnist Robert Novak, who
struck a pedestrian while driving on a Washington, D.C., street
earlier this week. Novak drove on after hitting the 66-year-old
man, only to be stopped a short time later by a witness to the
accident. Novak said he was listening to National Public Radio
at the time.
Emily talks about a release on Thursday of three more
documents pertaining to the Bush administration and torture.
The documents were obtained by the American Civil Liberties
Union under the Freedom of Information Act.
David is frustrated with a series of books he is reading with his
daughter. Called Percy Jackson and the Olympians, they are
suspiciously similar to the Harry Potter series.
The e-mail address for the Political Gabfest is
gabfest@slate.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the
writer stipulates otherwise.)
Posted by Dale Willman on July 25 at 1:25 p.m.
July 18, 2008
Listen to the Gabfest for July 18 by clicking the arrow on the
audio player below:
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.
Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz talk politics.
This week, the economy takes another hit or two, Barack Obama
tries to improve his foreign-policy credentials, and the flip-flop
stages a comeback.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
The economic outlook for the United States is rough. The fallout
surrounding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continues as Congress
attempts to ride to the rescue. Also, a California bank failed this
week, and inflation was up for the month of June.
24/92
David discusses John McCain's former economic adviser Phil
Gramm and what he had to say about whiny Americans.
Despite all that is happening with the economy, the two
presumptive nominees seem to have relatively little to say about
the country's problems.
A new Washington Post/ABC News poll has some interesting
findings.
Obama's plan to withdraw troops from Iraq continues to evolve.
Is good news from Iraq better for McCain or Obama?
The trio discusses whether it would help the economy to lift
tariffs on ethanol from Brazil.
David asks whatever happened to the plan for a series of townhall debates between Obama and McCain.
The e-mail address for the Political Gabfest is
gabfest@slate.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the
writer stipulates otherwise.)
Posted by Dale Willman on July 18 at 11:21 a.m.
July 11, 2008
Obama appeared on Access Hollywood this week with his wife
and two daughters. It's the first time the entire Obama family has
taken part in an interview.
Iran launched missiles, drawing two very different responses
from the presumptive nominees. Meanwhile, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice issued a strong statement.
Emily complains about the hedonism of a recent New York
Times article about the search for the perfect chocolate chip
cookie recipe.
Emily chatters about a study by researchers at Brigham Young
University that finds sitting down to a family dinner not only
helps keep kids healthier, it's better for working parents as well.
Lynette says the Asian tiger mosquito has become a major
menace for barbecues in the Washington, D.C., area.
David says McCain is missing a lot of votes. He has missed
more than any other member of the Senate, 374 so far in the
110th Congress. Obama has missed 263 votes.
The e-mail address for the Political Gabfest is
gabfest@slate.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the
writer stipulates otherwise.)
Posted by Dale Willman on July 11 at 12:20 p.m.
Listen to the Gabfest for July 11 by clicking the arrow on the
audio player below:
gardening
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.
Emily Bazelon, David Plotz, and Lynette Clemetson, the
managing editor of The Root who is substituting for the
vacationing John Dickerson, talk politics. This week: Barack
Obama and Jesse Jackson clash, Iran launches some missiles,
and the Gabfest crew discusses the way the cookie crumbles.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
Jesse Jackson threatens Barack Obama's manhood in a comment
picked up by a live microphone. There are a number of possible
explanations for Jackson's gaffe, for which he has since
apologized.
The accusations of Obama as flip-flopper continue to gain
traction this week, leading to an interesting analysis on Slate.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Wall-E's Plant Apocalypse
As seen from a botanist's point of view.
By Constance Casey
Friday, August 1, 2008, at 7:17 AM ET
Yes, it's charming and thought-provoking and amazing. But for
those of us in the green world, the really striking thing about the
animated film Wall-E is that a plant is the object of desire, the
grail, the Ark of the Covenant. This happens so rarely in movies.
(One exception is an obscure but admirable satire, released a
couple of years ago, called Idiocracy, in which the hero teaches
really dumb people on an apocalyptic future Earth that plants
need to be properly tended so that people will have food to eat
and air to breathe.)
The precious little green thing on which the Wall-E plot turns
consists of just a few leaves clasping a viney stem.
25/92
To get a botanist's perspective on the plant as plot-driver, I took
Gerry Moore, director of the Department of Science at the
Brooklyn Botanic Garden, to the movie. Moore, who monitors
the rise and fall of plants within a 50-mile radius of New York
City, was looking quite collegiate in shorts and a Phillies
baseball cap that belied his weighty résumé. He was modest and
flexible enough to say, "I hate to impose scientific rigor on a
movie."
Maybe the exercise he got pushed into (I paid for his ticket) is a
bit on the literal side, but it is interesting to see where he found
the movie departing from credibility.
The movie's setup: Apparently nothing is left on Earth but ruins,
piles of trash, and Wall-E, a solar-powered, trash-compacting
robot. It seems that the only living thing around is a single
cockroach. Earth's human population has fled to a gigantic space
colony. A scout from the space ship, the feminine and graceful
robot Eve, meets Wall-E and returns to the ship with a plant he's
discovered. The small green plant registers with some back at
the colony as a foreign contaminant, dangerous to the status quo,
but with others—including the good-guy captain—as a sign that
life on Earth might be possible again.
The biggest problem for Moore is that only one plant was found.
"It's a stretch to believe that the Earth could be restored to lifesustaining status because of the presence of a single live plant,"
he said over dinner after the movie.
Behind the closing credits, we saw plant life unfurling quickly
on Earth—sunflowers, fruitful vines, trees.
"They're down to one plant—a seedling of some kind of vine,"
observed Moore. "There's no way a single individual plant could
give rise to wheat, grapes, and re-vegetate the earth. Not in
human time, anyway. In evolutionary time, of course, that's what
really happened."
Still, Moore was thrilled to have green things seen as important.
"The story line puts plants front and center. It wasn't the roach
they were looking for."
One of the merits of the movie is that it avoids being obviously
didactic; no one ever uses the word photosynthesis. But,
implicitly, the movie stresses the life-giving talent plants have—
that is, to make an organic product from strictly inorganic
ingredients.
Provide a little carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight, combine
those with a molecule of the green pigment chlorophyll, and the
plant can feed itself and, happily for us, release oxygen as a
byproduct.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
We know there is sunlight on the degraded Earth; Wall-E
himself is solar-powered. He finds the precious plant in a closed
refrigerator, which is worrisome from a scientific point of view.
Green plants can't live long without sunlight. But, even without
light, a plant can sprout and live for a while by using the
reserves in its seed coat.
The plant, rooted in some soil in a boot, gets tossed around like a
football in the chase scene on the space ship. I wondered how
realistic that was, considering the care we gardeners take not to
jostle our petunias as we drive them home in the back of the
Forester. "That, I can live with," said Moore, "Think what you
see plants go through in vacant lots."
The space colony's captain says, "You made it somehow, little
guy. You didn't give up." Because there was no green growing
thing in evidence on the ship, Moore observed, "A plant is not
only front and center, but it's assumed that human beings passed
the concept of a plant down through many generations."
"Life is sustainable now," says the captain to his passengers.
"Look at this plant. It's green and growing."
The movie's last utterance from a human being is the captain
speaking to toddlers as they disembark on Earth and plant the
little vine: "This is called farming."
We get a glimpse of a hill with other plants, but they're the same
kind as the little vine. It's going to take a long time, especially
with no pollinating insects, to spread out from monoculture.
It's good the movie ends there, with the line about farming,
Moore said. I thought so, too, because the next line might be:
"Who here knows how to find clean water or build a latrine?"
We agreed on what we believed to be the two major lessons
from the movie. First, honor your trash collectors. Not since
pitcher John Franco regularly wore a New York Department of
Sanitation T-shirt under his Mets uniform as a tribute to his
father has a garbage man been as honored. Wall-E is a hero.
This, too, happens rarely in movies.
Second, treasure the wide variety of plants we have and, for
god's sake, save seeds. The 52 acres of the Brooklyn Botanic
Garden are home to 10,000 species of plant from all over the
world. (The whole state of New York has only about 4,000
naturally occurring species.) The Millennium Seed Bank based
at Kew Gardens is well underway, so we're already far more
provident than the human beings depicted in the movie.
Incidentally, and maybe this is a hopeful note, the trash piles
alone wouldn't have wiped out almost all plant life. Moore and I
assumed there must have been some additional catastrophe—to
kill plants you need long-lasting drought or dramatic
26/92
temperature change, which the optimists among us think can still
be avoided.
us. You can regulate what our kids eat in school. But you'll get
our burgers when you pry them from our cold, dead hands.
human nature
How did the L.A. City Council get around this resistance? By
spinning the moratorium as a way to create more food choices,
not fewer. And by depicting poor people, like children, as less
capable of free choice.
Food Apartheid
Banning fast food in poor neighborhoods.
By William Saletan
Thursday, July 31, 2008, at 8:21 AM ET
The war on fat has just crossed a major red line. The Los
Angeles City Council has passed an ordinance prohibiting
construction of new fast-food restaurants in a 32-square-mile
area inhabited by 500,000 low-income people.
We're not talking anymore about preaching diet and exercise,
disclosing calorie counts, or restricting sodas in schools. We're
talking about banning the sale of food to adults. Treating French
fries like cigarettes or liquor. I didn't think this would happen in
the United States anytime soon. I was wrong.
The mayor hasn't yet signed the ordinance, but he probably will,
since it passed unanimously. It doesn't affect existing
restaurants, and initially it will impose only a one-year
moratorium. But that period is likely to be extended to two years
or more, and the prohibition's sponsor hopes to make it
permanent.
What we're looking at, essentially, is the beginning of food
zoning. Liquor and cigarette sales are already zoned. You can't
sell booze here; you can't sell smokes there. Each city makes its
own rules, block by block. Proponents of the L.A. ordinance see
it as the logical next step. Fast food is bad for you, just as
drinking or smoking is, they argue. Community Coalition, a
local activist group, promotes the moratorium as a sequel to its
crackdown on alcohol merchants, scummy motels, and other
"nuisance businesses." An L.A. councilman says the ordinance
makes sense because it's "not too different to how we regulate
liquor stores."
A few other cities and towns have zoned restaurants for
economic, environmental, or aesthetic reasons. But L.A. appears
to be the first to do it for health reasons. Last year, a publicinterest law group at Johns Hopkins outlined the rationale:
"Given the significance of the obesity epidemic in the United
States and the scientific evidence and legal basis supporting the
zoning of fast food outlets, municipalities have an effective, yet
untried, tool to address obesity in their communities."
I assumed this idea would go nowhere because we Americans
don't like government restrictions on what we eat. You can nag
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Start with the press release (PDF) issued a week ago by the
moratorium's sponsor, Councilwoman Jan Perry. Its subhead
says the ordinance will "help spur the development of diverse
food choices." In the second paragraph, Perry declares,
This ordinance is in no way attempting to tell
people what to eat but rather responding to the
need to attract sit-down restaurants, full
service grocery stores, and healthy food
alternatives. Ultimately, this ordinance is
about providing choices—something that is
currently lacking in our community.
How does blocking new fast-food outlets provide more choices?
It helps local officials "attract grocery stores and restaurants to
the area, by preserving existing land for these uses," says the
release. And why does the moratorium apply only to the poor
part of town, around South-Central L.A.? A fellow council
member explains: "The over concentration of fast food
restaurants in conjunction with the lack of grocery stores places
these communities in a poor situation to locate a variety of food
and fresh food." Supporters of the moratorium call this state of
affairs "food apartheid."
It's an odd slogan. As the encyclopedia Africana notes, apartheid
was a racially discriminatory policy "enforced by white minority
governments." Opening a McDonald's in South-Central L.A. is
not government-enforced racial discrimination. But telling
McDonald's it can open franchises only in the white part of
town—what do you call that?
And what about the argument that people in South-Central need
the government to block unhealthy food options because they're
"in a poor situation" to locate better choices? This is the
argument normally made for restricting children's food options
at school—that they're more dependent and vulnerable than the
rest of us. How do you feel about treating poor people like
children?
It's true that food options in low-income neighborhoods are, on
average, worse than the options in wealthier neighborhoods. But
restricting options in low-income neighborhoods is a
disturbingly paternalistic way of solving the problem. And the
helplessness attributed to poor people is exaggerated. "You try to
get a salad within 20 minutes of our location; it's virtually
impossible," says the Community Coalition's executive director.
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Really? The coalition's headquarters is at 8101 S. Vermont Ave.
A quick Google search shows, among other outlets, a Jack-inthe-Box six blocks away. They have salads. Not the world's
greatest salads, but not as bad as a government that tells you
whose salad you can eat.
custom, denied knowledge of the missile strike and whether it
had been carried out by the United States," the Los Angeles
Times reports. "One U.S. official familiar with the incident said
the Pentagon was not involved and that 'it was an agency-run op
all the way.' "
Already, the majority leader of New York's city council wants to
adopt food zoning, and several cities have phoned L.A.'s
planning department to request copies of the ordinance. Hey, I'm
all for better food in impoverished neighborhoods. Incentives for
grocery stores are a great idea. But telling certain kinds of
restaurants that they can't serve certain kinds of people is just
plain wrong, even when you think it's for their own good.
That deniability came in handy Monday morning, when
Pakistan's prime minister met with President Bush at the White
House a few hours after the killer-drone attack. Here's a lovely
picture of them standing together on the South Lawn. "Pakistan
is a strong ally and a vibrant democracy," the president declared.
"The United States supports the democracy and supports the
sovereignty of Pakistan." The prime minister proudly agreed. He
said of the insurgents on his border, "This is our own war."
human nature
Troops Out, Drones In
Policing the world with remote-controlled aircraft.
By William Saletan
Wednesday, July 30, 2008, at 8:04 AM ET
Client states can be so annoying. You can't get them to police
terrorists along their borders; you can't get them to countenance
publicly your troops inhabiting their country. So when you can't
be there in the flesh—and you can't persuade your ally to help—
the next-best thing is to be there in the nonflesh. Send in the
drones.
That's what we've been doing in Pakistan. Remotely operated
American unmanned aerial vehicles have been hunting and
killing al-Qaida and Taliban honchos there for years. Six months
ago, we took out a high-level al-Qaida commander. Monday
morning, we took out another. After complaining for weeks that
Pakistan isn't doing the job, we took care of it ourselves, killing
a top al-Qaida trainer and weapons expert with missiles fired
from a "remotely piloted aircraft." In an interview with Reuters,
a local tribesman identified the killers: "We had heard the sound
of a drone engine just before the explosions. These drones have
been flying since late Sunday night."
Drones, as I've said before, are the future of warfare. The tactical
reason is that they don't bleed. They let us hunt enemies abroad
at no risk to ourselves. The political reason is slightly different:
They spare us the difficulties of an official troop presence.
Pakistan's government doesn't have to approve or explain our
incursion into northwest Pakistan on Sunday night, because,
strictly speaking, we weren't there.
The U.S. military doesn't even control our killer drones over
Pakistan. The CIA does. This doubly insulates the Pakistani
government from responsibility. "The Pakistani military, as is its
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
An hour later, reporters asked Bush's press secretary about the
missile strike. "I'm not able to comment," she replied. They ask
three more times. She repeated her nonanswer.
So that's our M.O. in Pakistan. And guess how we're going to
patrol Iraq after we "pull out"? That's right: with drones.
According to the New York Times, Iraqi leaders and American
politicians of both parties agree that
there are three critical military tasks the Iraqi
forces still cannot fulfill: providing combat
support and logistics, carrying out high-tech
surveillance and conducting close-air support
for combat missions. So American forces can
be expected to perform those three
requirements for the foreseeable future.
Lt. Gen. Gary North, commander of allied air forces in the
Middle East, tells the Times that he plans to "complement our
manned airplanes with an increased amount of unmanned attack
platforms." In fact, the transition is already underway:
For the first time in Iraq, the Air Force is
flying missions this month with the new
Reaper, a large remotely controlled vehicle
that carries not only advanced surveillance
sensors, but also bombs and missiles
comparable to those on top-of-the-line piloted
fighters. Not only do Reaper pilots sit in a
trailer at a safe distance from the front lines,
but the vehicles require less refueling and thus
can stay aloft for long periods, so the number
of airborne tankers would diminish as Reapers
take on a growing role. "The capability that I
am providing comes at less manpower on the
ground," General North said.
That's our future in Pakistan, Iraq, and the next theater of war:
less manpower on the ground, more unmanned power in the sky.
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We promised to pull out our troops. We didn't promise not to
replace them.
series of doctrinal moves and countermoves—this Supreme
Court case sends me north, but then this other one turns east, or
is that ruling heading upside down? You can write a lot that's
descriptive rather than proscriptive. As in, "The courts have
never recognized unmarried persons as a 'suspect class.' "
human nature
At one point, Obama asks his students to sound off about their
own policy views. But after asking whether the hypothetical
"Ujamaa School" for black boys is "good public policy," he
doesn't write out his own potentially enlightening model answer.
Instead he retreats to finding it "interesting" that a slim majority
of students came down on Ujamaa's side, "based on a justifiable
skepticism in the prospect of truly integrated schools and an
equally justified concern over the desperate condition of many
inner city schools." Isn't it lucky that cagey politics is consistent
with respectfully deferring to students' views?
The Gambling-Addiction Defense
Does Tim Donaghy's gambling excuse itself?
By William Saletan
Tuesday, July 29, 2008, at 2:38 PM ET
jurisprudence
Obama Takes His Own Law Exams
How did he do?
By Emily Bazelon
Wednesday, July 30, 2008, at 7:02 PM ET
Could this guy really be running for president? I asked myself
this question about Barack Obama after reading his, at turns,
quite angry memoir Dreams From My Father. I'm asking it
again today after reading through the exams he gave when he
was a constitutional law professor at the University of
Chicago—and in particular the model answers he wrote up for
his own questions.
It's not that the book or the class materials scream fomenting
liberal or fomenting anything. If they did, you'd have heard
about it already. These writings are tempered and thoughtful and
sophisticated and nuanced, as the law professors asked to
comment on the exams point out on the Web site of the New
York Times, which posted the exams. Obama either kept sharp or
out-there views out of the classroom because he had an eye on
his political future or because he wanted to make sure his
students felt comfortable expressing opposing ideas. (For what
it's worth, most of the professors I took classes from in law
school did the same, at least in front of the lectern.)
But even more than his memoir, Obama's exam answers offer
complex ruminations on some of the most contentious social and
legal questions out there. Can a state pass a law barring doctors
from treating unmarried couples for infertility, with a special
slap at gay couples embedded in the statute? Can a city in which
black students are failing open a special career academy for
black boys?
Can a presidential candidate really afford to sail into these
roiling waters, however skillfully? Obama gets away with it—if
he does, come November—primarily because … law exams are
hard! The questions are long fact patterns that branch out in all
directions. The answers rely on tracking the facts through a
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
More revealing, however, are passages in Obama's 1996
discussion about whether a lesbian couple could successfully
challenge the constitutionality of his made-up "Preservation of
Family Values Act," which would block the women from
conceiving via in vitro fertilization. Obama writes of a
"troubling" issue: "the Court's tendency, in cases since Roe, to
embrace notions of 'tradition' as a means of curtailing the
potential expansiveness of rights recognized under the Due
Process Clause." Then he starts duking it out with Justice
Antonin Scalia. As Chapman University law professor John
Eastman points out in the NYT discussion, Obama calls Scalia's
approach to defining the scope of substantive due process rights
"cramped." And then he parries. Scalia would argue, he thinks,
that the right to procreate applies only in the context of a
"monogamous, heterosexual marriage." But how do you square
that with the court's abortion jurisprudence and with Eiesenstadt
v. Baird, the 1972 case that gave unmarried couples the right to
have contraception? Scalia isn't just cramped; when Obama
reads the justice against his colleagues, he also finds him to be
wrong.
This mano a mano repeats in Obama's answer to a 1997 exam
question about whether a state ban on cloning violates the
constitutional rights of parents who want to clone their daughter,
who is in a vegetative state, after turning off her life support.
Obama channels Scalia here by pointing out that the justice
might argue that cloning isn't even "procreation," according to
the dictionary definition of that term. He goes on, "In the
absence of any deeply rooted tradition, Scalia would argue," the
Supreme Court should mind its own business and let the state
ban stand. But whether a majority of the court would "embrace
such a cramped reading"—that word of distaste again—Obama
says, "is not entirely clear." In some ways, the argument for
upholding the cloning law is stronger than the one for upholding
the fertility-treatment ban in the earlier exam, because the
science behind cloning is so much less certain than for in vitro
and because there's no anti-gay impulse at issue. But Obama
doesn't give Scalia an inch. The justice gets his due, and then he
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gets stuffed into the box for judges who talk loudly but don't
carry a majority.
and teased" about it—and asserted legal custody over the child
so as "to ensure that a proper name was found for her."
And then there's this flourish in Obama's model answer to his
1996 question: He picks up on a suggestion from some of his
students "that courts do not use the tools of Equal Protection or
substantive Due Process doctrine … to guide their analysis, but
rather, use these labels to justify, after the fact, what are
inescapably decisions based on policy calculation, ethical and
political considerations, and the idiosyncratic values of
particular justices." Here's another similar sentiment, "What is
safe to say is that the views of particular justices on the
desirability of rearing in [sic] children in homosexual
households would play a big part in the decision."
Now that this has been validated as a matter of global legal
significance, I present the following brief work of legal
scholarship. Would-be 1069s and Talulas Do the Hulas, here are
the precedents:
Whoa. So here are the roots of Obama's statements that he will
pick judges who have "heart" and "empathy" because he thinks
that in a small but key set of cases, a judge must fall back on "his
or her own perspectives, his ethics, his or her moral bearings."
Obama is not a man, or a lawyer, who believes that at least in
these hellishly difficult matters of constitutional interpretation,
judges are truly guided by legal precedent, or abstract reasoning,
or anything other than their gut and the outcome they prefer.
This is not the way most politicians talk about the court.
Certainly not John McCain. And it's not clear that Obama's
candor about the role of the judicial gut is a political winner.
"These are tricky questions," Obama confides to his law students
at another point in his exam answers. No kidding.
jurisprudence
Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii
And other names so weird that judges forbade them.
By Eugene Volokh
Wednesday, July 30, 2008, at 7:13 AM ET
Everyone needs a hobby. Mine is Fun Name Change Cases. I
first got hooked 15 years ago, when I read about Michael
Herbert Dengler, who wanted to change his name to 1069. "The
only way [my] identity can be expressed is 1069," he insisted.
Twice. To state supreme courts. With an elaborate theory for
each digit: For instance, "The third character, 6, is equal to the
relationship I have with the universe in my understanding of
space of my spatial occupancy through this life." Now this was a
field of law to watch, I knew.
Then came the news last week about Talula Does the Hula From
Hawaii, a 9-year-old New Zealand girl. A New Zealand Family
Court judge apparently viewed this name as a form of child
abuse—the girl had complained that "[s]he fears being mocked
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
1. 1069. No dice. The North Dakota Supreme Court (1976) and
Minnesota Supreme Court (1979) both say: Names can't be
numbers. [Petition of Dengler, 246 N.W.2d 758 (N.D. 1976);
Application of Dengler, 287 N.W.2d 637 (Minn. 1979).]
2. III, to be pronounced "Three." Nope, on the same grounds,
said the California Court of Appeal in 1984 to Thomas Boyd
Ritchie III. A concurring judge asserted that the problem was
that III was a symbol, rather than just that it was a number. Such
subtle distinctions are what law is all about. [In re Ritchie, 159
Cal. App. 3d 1070 (1984).]
3. Mary R. No, decided the Pennsylvania Superior Court in
2000, dealing with a petition by Mary Ravitch, who no longer
wanted to use her ex-husband's last name and who didn't want to
return to her maiden name (Gon). "Appellant's desired surname
is so bizarre that it would likely be met with repeated suspicion
and distrust in both business and social settings." [In re Ravitch,
754 A.2d 1287 (Pa. Super. 2000).]
4. Misteri Nigger, second "i" silent. No, said the California
Court of Appeal in 1992, because it constitutes "fighting words":
"[I]f a man asks appellant his name and he answers 'Mister
Nigger,' the man might think appellant was calling him 'Mister
Nigger.' Moreover, third persons, including children hearing the
epithet, may be embarrassed, shocked or offended by simply
hearing the word. This example illustrates how use of the name
may be 'confusing' with the potential for violence." Definitely
does sound like asking for trouble; "Russell Lawrence Lee" is
much safer. [Lee v. Superior Court, 9 Cal. App. 4th 510 (1992).]
5. Santa Claus. A split among the courts: An Ohio judge in
2000 rejected Robert William Handley's attempt to become
Santa Robert Clause, because:
The petitioner is seeking more than a name
change, he is seeking the identity of an
individual that this culture has recognized
throughout the world, for well over one
hundred years. Thus, the public has a
proprietary interest, a proprietary right in the
identity of Santa Claus, both in the name and
the persona. Santa Claus is really an icon of
our culture; he exists in the minds of millions
of children as well as adults.
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The history of Santa Claus—the North Pole,
the elves, Mrs. Claus, reindeer—is a treasure
that society passes on from generation to
generation, and the petitioner seeks to take not
only the name of Santa Claus, but also to take
on the identity of Santa Claus. Although
thousands of people every year do take on the
identity of Santa Claus around Christmas, the
court believes it would be very misleading to
the children in the community, particularly the
children in the area that the petitioner lives, to
approve the applicant's name change petition.
But the Utah Supreme Court in 2001 let David Lynn Porter
become just plain Santa Claus, and never mind the children:
"Porter's proposed name may be thought by some to be unwise,
and it may very well be more difficult for him to conduct his
business and his normal everyday affairs as a result." (D'ya
think?) "However, Porter has the right to select the name by
which he is known, within very broad limits." [In re Handley,
736 N.E.2d 125 (Ohio Prob. Ct. 2000); In re Porter, 31 P.3d 519
(Utah 2001).]
6. Koriander, with no last name, apparently chosen because of
Rosa Linda Ferner's "attraction to a name that sounds
appropriate for her work as an artisan." Just fine, a New Jersey
judge ruled in 1996. [In re Application of Rosa Linda Ferner to
Assume the Name Koriander, 685 A.2d 78 (N.J. Super. L.
1996).]
7. They, again with no last name. OK, said a Missouri judge to a
petition by the inventor formerly known as Andrew Wilson.
They (not they, They) explained the rationale: "'They do this,' or
'They're to blame for that.' Who is this 'they' everyone talks
about? 'They' accomplish such great things. Somebody had to
take responsibility."
8. Darren QX [pronounced 'Lloyd'] Bean!. No problem!, holds
our friend the California Court of Appeal in 2006. [Darren Lloyd
Bean v. Superior Court, 2006 WL [pronounced 'Westlaw']
3425000 (Cal. App.).] Bean!, who recently sat for the Oregon
State Bar, reported that, "Many of his close friends greet him as
'Bean!' When saying his name, friends raise the pitch and the
volume of their voices above their usual spoken tone." The court
didn't opine further on this, because "this information is not
contained in the appellate record." Still, the court reasoned, if
O'Rourke is fine, so is Bean!. What's more, the court reported,
At least three people have changed their names
to the names of websites with a ".com" in the
name. Virginia animal rights activist Karin
Robertson legally changed her name to
GoVeg.com in 2003 to bring attention to a
website of her employer, People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals. Other activists also
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
changed their personal names to websites with
".com" in the names, including "Kentucky
fried cruelty.com" and "Ringling beats
animals.com." We do not find a legal
distinction between a period inside a word, a
hyphen between words, an apostrophe in a
word, and an exclamation point at the end of a
word.
Speakers of !Xóõ and similar click languages must be happy
about that.
9. Boys changing their names from, or to, Sue. No known
cases.
jurisprudence
Let Them Be Lawyers
The Supreme Court on the dignity of the mentally ill.
By Cullen Seltzer
Tuesday, July 29, 2008, at 5:03 PM ET
Indiana v. Edwards, decided at the end of the Supreme Court
term, hasn't gotten a lot of press. Ostensibly, it's about a
technical matter of criminal procedure—the Sixth Amendment
right to represent yourself in a criminal trial. But the case
deserves a close look because at root it's about the nature of
human dignity, a term that appears nowhere in the Constitution
yet permeates its meaning. Plus, this June sleeper features a
lesson by Justice Antonin Scalia to liberals on the court about
what civil liberties should mean.
Ahmad Edwards is a schizophrenic. In 1999, he came to the
attention of the Indiana police after he tried to steal a pair of
shoes from a department store. When he was discovered, he shot
at a store security officer and wounded a bystander.
After Edwards' arrest, there were periods of time when his
mental illness made him so addled that he could neither
understand the charges against him nor aid in his defense. By
that measure, he was legally incompetent to stand trial. The state
of Indiana spent the better portion of the next six years
medicating and treating Edwards so that he might be lucid
enough to be found competent. In 2005, a judge finally found
that Edwards met that standard.
Competence meant going to trial. Edwards, determined to take
his newfound stability out for a spin, asked to represent himself.
He told the trial judge that his court-appointed lawyer wasn't
spending enough time on the case, wasn't sharing with Edwards
legal materials for use in the defense, and wanted to pursue a
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line of defense with which Edwards didn't agree. In response, the
trial judge said that Edwards was "competent to stand trial, but
I'm not going to find he's competent to defend himself." In short,
the judge forced Edwards to accept representation by a lawyer
Edwards didn't want along with a defense in which Edwards
didn't believe.
If that result sounds odd, it should. In 1975, in Faretta v.
California, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution, by
operation of the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of the right to
counsel in a criminal case, entitles a defendant to represent
himself if he "voluntarily and intelligently elects to do so."
Faretta notwithstanding, the Indiana trial judge found Edwards
was competent enough to understand the proceedings against
him and could assist in his defense but was nevertheless not
competent enough to represent himself.
By a vote of 7-2, the Supreme Court agreed with the Indiana trial
judge. Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the majority, reasoned
that being competent to stand trial, and even to plead guilty,
required less mental faculty than being competent "to conduct
trial proceedings." The majority emphasized that mental illness
varies by degree and over time and that litigating a case can be a
complicated and difficult matter, only more so if the person
handling it is mentally ill. With those considerations in mind,
Breyer reasoned that a trial judge ought to have the discretion to
require a mentally ill defendant to go to trial with an attorney.
Breyer had to contend with Faretta's reasoning, however, that a
defendant's Sixth Amendment right to represent himself is
grounded in notions of individual autonomy and, implicitly,
human dignity. His opinion concedes that those concerns
underpin the right of self-representation. But Breyer found them
insufficient when weighed against a different sort of indignity.
"The spectacle that could well result from self-representation at
trial is at least as likely to prove humiliating as ennobling," he
wrote. "Moreover, insofar as a defendant's lack of capacity
threatens an improper conviction … self-representation
undercuts the most basic of the Constitution's criminal law
objectives, providing a fair trial."
Justice Scalia, writing in dissent for himself and Justice Clarence
Thomas, and channeling Ayn Rand, took the opposite view.
Even though defendants who represent themselves usually harm
their cases, the "choice must be honored out of 'that respect for
the individual which is the lifeblood of the law,' " Scalia wrote.
He said that the indignity a defendant suffers by making a fool
of himself in court is of less concern than "the supreme dignity
of being master of one's fate rather than a ward of the State—the
dignity of individual choice." Scalia concluded, "Whatever else
may be said of those who wrote the Bill of Rights, surely there
can be no doubt that they understood the inestimable worth of
free choice." Could any general counsel to the ACLU have said
it better? (Evidently not. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once had
that job but sided with the Breyer majority in Edwards.)
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
In short, Breyer is appalled at the prospect of a mentally ill
person being paraded to debase himself in a proceeding he can't
intelligently navigate. Scalia is equally dismayed at the
Kafkaesque prospect of suspending constitutional rights because
Important State Officials know best about what makes a fair
trial. In the end, Scalia got this one right, and Breyer got it
wrong. While both Justices consider the defendant's dignity,
Breyer's concern is ultimately about the criminal justice process,
while Scalia's is about the individual with skin in the game.
Breyer's majority opinion also has the disadvantage of rendering
murky what once was clear in a number of respects. Going
forward, mental health evaluators will have the burden of
deciding whether some defendants are competent to plead guilty
without counsel but aren't competent to plead not guilty on their
own. And there is also the unhappy possibility that the court's
ruling will primarily serve to conceal from public view the
limited capacity of some defendants. A mentally ill defendant
who has been found barely competent but can't represent himself
despite his wish to do so won't have the opportunity to expose
his relative incapacity the same way he might if he were
standing up in court. In that manner, compulsory counsel
operates not just as a controller of the accused's defense but also
as a screen that shields us from the truth of a defendant's
limitations.
At the same time there is a heartening aspect of Edwards. The
concept of human dignity, explicit nowhere in the Constitution
but implicit everywhere, was the touchstone of the court's debate
about what the Constitution should mean for defendants like
Ahmad Edwards. Breyer and Scalia disagreed about how best to
protect his dignity. But they were both asking the right question.
If we're to look, for a concept that animates the Constitution's
provisions regarding our relationship to our government, we
could surely choose worse than "fulfillment of human dignity."
jurisprudence
The Bauer of Suggestion
Our torture policy has deeper roots in Fox television than the Constitution.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Saturday, July 26, 2008, at 7:25 AM ET
The most influential legal thinker in the development of modern
American interrogation policy is not a behavioral psychologist,
international lawyer, or counterinsurgency expert. Reading both
Jane Mayer's stunning The Dark Side and Philippe Sands' The
Torture Team, I quickly realized that the prime mover of
American interrogation doctrine is none other than the star of
Fox television's 24: Jack Bauer.
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This fictional counterterrorism agent—a man never at a loss for
something to do with an electrode—has his fingerprints all over
U.S. interrogation policy. As Sands and Mayer tell it, the
lawyers designing interrogation techniques cited Bauer more
frequently than the Constitution.
According to British lawyer and writer Philippe Sands, Jack
Bauer—played by Kiefer Sutherland—was an inspiration at
early "brainstorming meetings" of military officials at
Guantanamo in September of 2002. Diane Beaver, the staff
judge advocate general who gave legal approval to 18
controversial new interrogation techniques including waterboarding, sexual humiliation, and terrorizing prisoners with
dogs, told Sands that Bauer "gave people lots of ideas." Michael
Chertoff, the homeland-security chief, once gushed in a panel
discussion on 24 organized by the Heritage Foundation that the
show "reflects real life."
John Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer who produced
the so-called torture memos—simultaneously redefining both the
laws of torture and logic—cites Bauer in his book War by Other
Means. "What if, as the popular Fox television program '24'
recently portrayed, a high-level terrorist leader is caught who
knows the location of a nuclear weapon?" Even Supreme Court
Justice Antonin Scalia, speaking in Canada last summer, shows a
gift for this casual toggling between television and the
Constitution. "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. … He saved
hundreds of thousands of lives," Scalia said. "Are you going to
convict Jack Bauer?"
There are many reasons that matriculation from the Jack Bauer
School of Law would have encouraged even the most cautious
legal thinkers to bend and eventually break the longstanding
rules against torture. U.S. interrogators rarely if ever encounter a
"ticking time bomb," someone with detailed information about
an imminent terror plot. But according to the Parents' Television
Council (one of several advocacy groups to have declared war
on 24), Jack Bauer encounters a "ticking time-bomb" an average
of 12 times per season. Given that each season allegedly
represents a 24-hour period, Bauer encounters someone who
needs torturing 12 times each day! Experienced interrogators
know that information extracted through torture is rarely
reliable. But Jack Bauer's torture not only elicits the truth, it does
so before commercial. He is a human polygraph who has a way
with flesh-eating chemicals.
It's no wonder high-ranking lawyers in the Bush administration
erected an entire torture policy around the fictional edifice of
Jack Bauer. He's a hero. Men want to be him, and women want
to be there to hand him the electrical cord. John Yoo wanted to
change American torture law to accommodate him, and Justice
Scalia wants to immunize him from prosecution. The problem is
not just that they all saw themselves in Jack Bauer. The problem
was their failure to see what Jack Bauer really represents in
relation to the legal universe of 24.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
For one thing, Jack Bauer operates outside the law, and he
knows it. Nobody in the fictional world of 24 changes the rules
to permit him to torture. For the most part, he does so fully
aware that he is breaking the law. Bush administration officials
turned that formula on its head. In an almost Nixonian twist, the
new interrogation doctrine seems to have become: "If Jack Bauer
does it, it can't be illegal."
Bauer is also willing to accept the consequences of his decisions
to break the law. In fact, that is the real source of his heroism—
to the extent one finds torture heroic. He makes a moral choice
at odds with the prevailing system and accepts the consequences
of the system's judgment by periodically reinventing a whole
new identity for himself or enduring punishment at the hands of
foreign governments. The "heroism" of the Bush
administration's torture apologists is slightly less inspiring. None
of them is willing to stand up and admit, as Bauer does, that yes,
they did "whatever it takes." They instead point fingers and cry,
"Witch hunt."
If you're a fan of 24, you'll enjoy The Dark Side. There you will
meet Mamdouh Habib, an Australian captured in Pakistan,
beaten by American interrogators with what he believed to be an
"electric cattle prod," and threatened with rape by dogs. He
confessed to all sorts of things that weren't true. He was released
after three years without charges. You'll also meet Maher Arar, a
Canadian engineer who experienced pretty much the same story,
save that the beatings were with electrical cables. Arar was also
released without explanation. He's been cleared of any links to
terrorism by the Canadian government. Jack Bauer would have
known these men were not "ticking time bombs" inside of 10
minutes. Our real-life heroes had to torture them for years before
realizing they were innocent.
That is, of course, the punch line. The lawyers who were dead
set on unleashing an army of Jack Bauers against our enemies
built a whole torture policy around a fictional character. But
Bauer himself could have told them that one Jack Bauer—a man
who deliberately lives outside the boundaries of law—would
have been more than enough.
A version of this article also appears in this week's issue of
Newsweek.
map the candidates
96 Days
Obama is in Iowa for a town hall and Texas for a fundraiser. McCain stumps in
Wisconsin.
By E.J. Kalafarski and Chadwick Matlin
Thursday, July 31, 2008, at 11:35 AM ET
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medical examiner
The Nightmare of Night Float
Is an ignorant doctor really better than a tired one?
By Sandeep Jauhar
Wednesday, July 30, 2008, at 1:29 PM ET
On my first evening as a night-float intern at Memorial, the
world-famous cancer hospital in Manhattan, an intern handed me
a list of her patients with their major medical problems,
allergies, and a short summary of their hospital course. "There is
one patient I have to tell you about," she said almost
parenthetically. A patient with colon cancer had been
hallucinating all afternoon. "He's quiet now, so he shouldn't give
you any trouble," she quickly added. "But if he does, just snow
him with more Haldol and Ativan." Then she left.
Night float was the scene of my worst moments as an intern.
Your shift began at 5 p.m., when the other interns departed for
the day, and ended at 7 a.m., when they returned. Meanwhile,
you had to make critical decisions for other doctors' patients,
about whom you knew next to nothing. You're an inexperienced
intern, tackling potentially serious problems with not enough
information.
That first night at Memorial, within minutes, my beeper went
off. The patient whose care I had just assumed responsibility for
was delirious, and his blood-oxygen saturation was dropping.
When I went to his room, he was sprawled in bed, his arms and
legs tied to the rails. He apparently did not speak English—apart
from obscenities—because a German translator was there,
grinning nervously. "He says that things are coming down at
him," the translator said. "He feels that things are crawling on
his skin."
A nurse asked me what I wanted to do. I had no clue. About the
only thing my colleague had said to me before leaving was that
this patient wasn't going to give me any trouble. I asked about
his base-line mental state. The nurse shrugged. "I'm just a float,"
she said, meaning that she worked only per diem shifts. "I'm
meeting him for the first time, too."
When I finally called the delirious patient's family, hoping for a
clue, his daughter informed me that he had undergone a brain
scan that afternoon. His intern had forgotten to mention it. What
were the results? I did not know. So I gave the patient more
Haldol and hoped for the best. (Later, I learned the scan showed
a vaguely abnormal speck in the brain—a possible metastasis—
which could have explained the delirium.)
Night float is the product of reforms in medical education that
limit the number of hours that residents and interns—doctors in
training—can work. Because they can no longer rely on the
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
same doctor caring for a group of patients day and night,
teaching hospitals have had to arrange more cross-coverage
when the primary resident is not on duty. Most have created the
position of a resident who works the night shift, usually for a
few weeks. The upside is that other residents can sleep. The
downside is frequent patient handoffs, which can result in the
transfer of faulty or inadequate information. The nightmare of
night float raises a central question about work limits for interns:
Is it better to be cared for by a tired resident who knows your
case or a rested resident who does not?
The push to limit interns' and residents' work hours gained
momentum with the death of a woman named Libby Zion at the
emergency room of New York Hospital, after the intern and
resident treating her were slow to respond when she reacted
adversely to a drug they gave her. If the young doctors had been
more rested, soul-searching medical educators asked themselves,
would they have been able to save her? In 1987, a special
commission proposed a number of changes in residency training
in New York state. Residents were prohibited from working
more than 24 hours at a stretch or more than 80 hours per week,
averaged over four weeks. They also got one day off a week.
After intense debate, in 2003 similar changes were instituted at
residency programs throughout the country.
At first glance, reducing the number of hours that residents work
would seem a no-brainer. In a survey of American medical
residents, 41 percent reported fatigue as a cause of their most
serious mistakes. Studies have shown that residents after a call
night score lower on tests of simple reasoning, response time,
concentration, and recall. Indeed, a single night of continuous
sleep deprivation has been shown to be roughly equivalent to a
blood alcohol level of 0.10 percent—that is, being drunk.
Once, as a sleep-deprived intern, I had to take an elderly woman
with severe angina for a CT scan in the middle of the night.
When we arrived in the radiology department, I made what
seemed like a reasonable decision: I stopped my patient's IV
drips to get her onto the radiology table. Midway through the
scan, she started moaning because of severe chest pains. I
suddenly realized that I had stopped her nitroglycerin drip, used
to treat angina, and that she was in the early stages of a heart
attack. I tried to get the drip restarted, but the IV machine just
kept beeping, mixing with her groans. Panicking, I raced the
stretcher alone back to the cardiac-care unit, getting lost on the
way. I finally got her back to the CCU, and experienced nurses
took over. My patient ended up fine.
As harrowing as that experience was, it was nothing compared
with night float, in which one was operating from a position of
ignorance, in the environment of a teaching hospital, which
reveres knowledge and competence. That first night at
Memorial, I went to see a patient with esophageal cancer and
intractable hiccups. Walking into his room, I felt almost
relieved. After what I had dealt with so far that night, hiccups
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seemed almost laughably unserious. But these were no ordinary
hiccups. They had been going on for more than 24 hours, leaving
the patient sleepless and utterly demoralized.
I didn't know what caused hiccups, let alone how to treat them.
When I asked a nurse, she mentioned that a drug called
chlorpromazine was sometimes used, so I wrote an order for it.
Walking through the nurses' station, I casually checked the
patient's chart. There, amid his papers, was a brief note. He had
once suffered a severe reaction to this particular drug. It wasn't
documented as an allergy on the sign-out sheet I'd gotten but was
scribbled in a progress note. I immediately canceled the order,
relieved that I had caught the mistake in time but alarmed at how
easily it might have slipped through.
Night float felt worse to me than working when I was exhausted,
but is it really worse for patient care? The data are mixed. A
study published in 2004 in the New England Journal of
Medicine showed that interns working in an intensive-care unit
made 36 percent more serious medical errors during a traditional
schedule as compared with a schedule that eliminated extended
work shifts and reduced the number of hours worked per week
from 80 to 63. On the other hand, a study in the Journal of the
American Medical Association appeared to indict the crosscoverage hospitals have been relying on to conform with the
work limits. It showed that increasing cross-coverage in a large
urban hospital caused delays in tests and an increased number of
complications that could have been prevented, like drug
reactions and infections. Work limits have other troubling
consequences as well, including interruption of resident learning,
fracturing of traditional hospital teams, and the creation of a kind
of shift-work clock-watching mentality among young doctors.
If tired residents hurt patients, but the ignorance of night float
and cross-coverage also pose a danger, what should hospitals
do? No doctor can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so
cross-coverage is essential. The optimal system would provide
rested night floats with all the information they need. The best
way to accomplish this is for teaching hospitals to have
standardized, electronic handoff systems. In medicine, as in
aviation, most errors occur at transitions: by pilots, during
takeoff and landing, and by doctors, after handoffs. Because of
work limits, an intern today might be involved in more than 300
handoffs during an average monthlong rotation. Too many
hospitals continue to rely on one intern signing out verbally to
another, an invitation for error. Less than 5 percent of hospitals
have electronic handoff systems in place.
Without better handoff systems, work limits may well weaken
medicine more than exhausted residents ever did. As a doctor in
training, you have to see a patient's illness through its course—
observe the arc—to get a grip on the dynamics of disease. It is
possible to overcorrect for even the most serious of problems.
And in trying to get young doctors a bit more rest, we may have
come up with a cure that is worse than the disease.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
sidebar
Return to article
"These regulations are horrible for teaching, horrible for patient
care, horrible for our profession," a former chief resident at a
major New York City teaching hospital told me. At least some
young doctors agree. In a letter to the New England Journal, two
wrote, "Although few residents object to having time off, the
change in policy misses the point of why we are physicians in
the first place. Physicians have chosen a difficult profession,
presumably because they feel called to heal and comfort the sick
and dying. We have seen the focus of our training program shift
abruptly from the needs of the patient to the needs of the
resident, and education has taken a back seat to the calculus of a
shift-work schedule."
moneybox
Who Needs the Tech IPO?
Open source and Facebook have completely changed the economics of Web
startups.
By Chris Thompson
Thursday, July 31, 2008, at 1:31 PM ET
For weeks, Silicon Valley's tech entrepreneurs slavered over the
rumors that Google was in the final negotiations to buy Digg, the
social networking and news aggregation site, for a remarkable
$200 million. The deal would give them a desperately needed
morale boost; if Digg's founders could slap together a Web site
with $11 million in venture capital and a few strings of opensource software, and then sell it for almost 20 times what they
put into it, maybe there was hope for all the startups. So when
Google suddenly backed out on July 25, you could hear the
groans up and down Sand Hill Road. The money train, it
seemed, was still derailed.
Indeed, there hasn't been a high-tech dry spell like this in
decades. According to officials with the National Venture
Capital Association, not a single technology initial public
offering was made in the second quarter—the first time this
happened since 1978. At the height of the bubble in 1999, some
90 IPOs were issued per quarter, and the number had hovered
around 25 or 30 as little as a year ago. Now, it seems, no one
thinks the public will bite on any tech offering, no matter how
cool. "A lot of companies that were vested right around the
bubble, they're maturing," says NVCA spokesman John Taylor.
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"But the IPO market is so inhospitable, these companies aren't
even trying to go public. … The public money isn't coming, and
the VCs have to write another check."
For startups watching their reserves dwindle, a deal like the one
Digg was contemplating is their best hope. If public investors
don't have the cash to gamble on an online dating service, the
only buyers left are big media companies like Google or
Microsoft—and Google announced this week that it will create a
venture capital arm—or an old-media firm like Viacom. Yahoo's
chaos has taken one of the biggest buyers out of the mergers and
acquisitions market, and that leaves only one or two companies
with the cash and the will to put it to work changing the face of
the Web. This may well be the worst time for tech startups to
cash out in history.
But strangely, no one's panicking. Despite the doldrums, despite
the fact that tech may not get out of this slump for several
quarters, startups and venture capital executives are barely
breaking a sweat. Here's why: In the last 18 months, new
developments in open-source software and cloud computing
have made it cheaper to run a Web company than anyone
thought possible. Just a few years ago, startups had to build their
own IT services and administrative software, and the costs
would soar into the millions. Today, tech leaders can just rent
prepackaged software from Microsoft. Operating costs have
plunged so low that companies vested with just a few million
bucks can easily afford to wait until the good times roll around
once more. "It's simply a matter of economics," says Bob
Ackerman, a managing director at Allegis Capital. "What would
it cost to build a house if you also had to create all the nails?"
Sharon Wienbar*, a managing director at Scale Venture
Partners, is flabbergasted at how little it costs to run a digital
media company these days. "I have one company, Merchant
Circle, that provides advertising businesses," she says. "They
have only 15 employees, and they have 5,000 paying customers.
I was meeting with a few entrepreneurs from [social gaming
site] Playfish who told me they don't own a single server.
Everything is on a cloud. E-mail, accounting, file-sharing is
hosted on a cloud. And they're serving millions of game players
a day. … If you're burning $1 million a month, it's a really
expensive experiment to fail. But if your burn rate is $100,000 a
month, you can go a long way with just a little bit of angel
financing and see if you can tweak your product just right. So
you can afford to wait."
According to Maha Ibrahim of the venture firm Canaan Partners,
it's not just infrastructure costs that have plummeted. Thanks to
Facebook's willingness to let other applications piggy-back on
its Web site, advertising and promotions costs for digital media
firms have plunged as well. "Before Facebook, in order for a
dot-com or an app to woo users to their site and get them go
come back 10 or 15 times a week, you had to spend a lot of
money with Google and others promoting your wares. With
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Facebook, an app doesn't have to spend their money on customer
acquisition." The same phenomenon will only grow with mobile
Web use, as Apple's App Store lets users troll a bazaar of thirdparty mobile applications.
But there's a downside to all this innovation. Because it's so
easy, cheap, and fast to throw together a new digital media
company, the window of opportunity in which startups can think
of a neat new trick, generate buzz, and cash out has become
smaller than ever. Consumer media firms have sunk their costs
lower than ever, but now they have an entirely new challenge:
how to remain the coolest thing going long enough for the public
or one of the big media companies to buy you out.
"The more unique your company, the greater the value of your
company," says Ackerman. "If you're one of 20 companies doing
the same thing, there's not a lot of differentiation. And if a large
company wants to buy one, they have 20 to choose from. The
lower the barriers to entry, the noisier the marketplace."
And that means that the companies with the most buzz this
month are in a terrible position. Getting hot and popular in a few
months is one thing; staying that hot until the investment market
recovers is another, particularly when the metric of cool is so
viral and intangible.
According to Wienbar, even Facebook has suffered from the
vagaries of the digital consumer market. "Facebook could have
sold the whole thing for $15 billion, but they won't be able to get
that in a year," she says. "Even now, they can't get it. So there
was a feeding frenzy six months ago. Maybe they should have
taken the money and run."
Which is why the Digg deal's flameout was so telling. At first
glance, it seemed like the ideal model for the new digital media.
Kevin Rose started the firm in 2004 with a handful of cash;
soon, he was on the cover of Business Week, and he barely had
to spend a cent. But without a clear plan to monetize the buzz,
Rose had no choice but to wait for a bigger company to buy him
out. Now that Google's taken a pass, he'll have to wait a little
longer, while rival social news sites like Yahoo Buzz are already
challenging Digg for supremacy. Rose had no problem dealing
with the cost of doing business. Staying cool until the money
comes back … well, that's a different kind of animal.
Correction, Aug. 1, 2008: Sharon Wienbar's name was
originally misspelled as "Weinbar." (Return to the corrected
sentence.)
moneybox
Highways Paved With Gold
36/92
You think the government is wasting a few billion a year on mass-transit
subsidies. But what about the huge subsidies for cars and trucks?
By Daniel Gross
Wednesday, July 30, 2008, at 5:31 PM ET
The Transportation Department reported that Americans drove
9.6 billion fewer miles in May 2008 than in May 2007, a 3.7
percent drop. The result: rising demand for mass transit and
declining revenues for the Federal Highway Trust Fund, which
is funded by gas taxes. The Bush administration's
counterintuitive policy response, as the New York Times
reported, has been for the Highway Trust Fund to borrow funds
from the department's mass-transit account.
Naturally, many urban-dwelling, car-hating socialists (as well as
suburban-dwelling, Jeep-driving moderates like me) believe this
is precisely the time to put more government funds—not less—
into alternate modes of transportation: natural-gas powered
buses, bicycle-sharing programs, trains, light-rail systems,
subways, ferries, and rickshaws. The notion that the government
should invest more in mass-transit infrastructure has always
raised conservative hackles. As they sit on the Amtrak Acela, or
ride the New York City subway or Washington, D.C., Metro, to
their think-tank jobs or to the Wall Street Journal's offices, freemarket types frequently fulminate against the systems that ferry
them around. (New York Times house libertarian John Tierney's
"Amtrak Must Die" from 2002 is a classic in the genre.) To such
critics, money spent on mass transit, such as the $1.3 billion
2007 appropriation for Amtrak (here's Amtrak's 2007 annual
report) represents an unconscionable waste of taxpayer funds.
With their top-down bureaucracies and public ownership, they
argue, mass-transit systems can never hope to compete
economically with the private-sector alternative—driving
gasoline-powered cars. They can't compete culturally and
socially, either, since rugged American individualists prefer
sitting by themselves in traffic to rubbing shoulders with
strangers. And for those few areas where it does make sense to
have mass transit, the market will step in and provide.
This is one of the oldest political arguments in America. For a
good chunk of the 19th century, the prospect of the federal
government supporting "internal improvements"—i.e., canals,
ports, roads—was a major source of partisan contention.
Ultimately, the Jeffersonians and Jacksonians (and their heirs)
lost out to the Whigs (and their heirs). Whether it was the Erie
Canal, the first transcontinental railroad, or the interstate
highway system, state and federal resources have repeatedly
been deployed to build new types of transportation infrastructure
that the private sector couldn't, or wouldn't, fund. Over time,
these investments paid huge economic, social, and nationalsecurity dividends to the country.
What hasn't been acknowledged is that the automobile is
supported by a government subsidy that dwarfs anything
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
provided to mass transit. How big is the subsidy? By my
(admittedly extremely crude) calculations, it could total nearly
$100 billion per year*.
Americans can drive so much because there is an extremely
extensive system of (largely free) roads for us to use. Despite
some private-sector efforts, maintaining and building the nation's
roads remains almost exclusively the preserve of government.
Data from the Census Bureau on construction spending shows
that this year, public spending on highways and streets is
running at an annual rate of about $75 billion.*
But that's not all. Tax credits and breaks for particular types of
economic activity constitute a public subsidy of that activity.
Taxpayers effectively subsidize home ownership through the
mortgage interest deduction. They subsidize the use of mass
transit through programs that permit people to purchase masstransit tickets with pretax money. And taxpayers subsidize the
purchase and operation of gas-powered automobiles in at least
two big ways.
First, just as they can with other types of equipment, businesses
and self-employed individuals can write down the cost of cars
and trucks they own against their taxable income. This decade,
the relevant portion of the tax code dealing with the issue,
Section 179, was changed to provide extra taxpayer support for
the purchase of very large cars. In 2003, as part of an effort to
stimulate business investment, the law was changed to
significantly increase the amount of deductions businesses could
take on equipment, including vehicles that weighed more than 3
tons. (In the past, that category would have been limited to
commercial vehicles, such as pickup trucks and moving vans.
But in SUV-crazy America, that also means Hummers and
Escalades.) So if a Realtor bought a $75,000 Hummer and used
it mostly for business, she could take a $25,000 deduction from
her taxable income in the first year of ownership. The stimulus
package passed earlier this year included provisions that boosted
the amount of total deductions businesses could take on
equipment. But taxpayers aren't just subsidizing the purchase of
gas-guzzlers by businesses. Thanks to tax credits for hybrids,
they're also subsidizing the purchase of gas-sippers by
individuals.
Self-employed individuals and businesses can also deduct the
costs of operating a car for business purposes from their taxable
income. In light of higher gas prices, the Internal Revenue
Service this year boosted the mileage allowance to 58.5 cents per
mile. A self-employed salesperson who drives 5,000 miles a year
and is in the 33 percent tax bracket can thus save about $1,000 in
tax payments. (The language of the allowance suggests that it
applies only to cars—not to bicycles, scooters, or motorcycles.)
There are doubtless many other examples of taxpayers
subsidizing the automobile and its related industries. (The
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Chrysler bailout comes to mind.) Send your nominations to:
moneybox@slate.com.
Correction, July 30, 2008: The original version of this story
contained a significant numerical error. It linked to a Bureau of
Transportation Statistics report, which can be seen here, that
shows public construction spending on roads and highways in
monthly totals. That Census Bureau reports the data as monthly
totals expressed at an annualized rate. Because we read that
annual rate as a monthly rate, the original article overstated
public spending on highways and roads by a factor of twelve.
Mea culpa 12 times. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
moneybox
Freddie and Fannie's Healthy Cousin
There's another quasi-governmental agency that's lending hundreds of billions
to troubled banks. Fortunately, it's not a mess. Yet.
By Daniel Gross
Monday, July 28, 2008, at 7:21 PM ET
The Federal Reserve's extraordinary efforts to help investment
banks have effectively put the taxpayer on the hook for
enormous potential losses. If borrowers can't make good on their
debts, we could end up paying tens or hundreds of billions to
cover losses tied to Bear Stearns, mortgage-backed securities at
other banks, and the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debacle.
But the actual amount of credit extended so far through these
public-rescue efforts pales in comparison with the credit that has
quietly been extended to banks in the past year—another lifeline
that taxpayers could end up paying dearly for. Here's the story:
Last summer, as the subprime rot spread throughout the credit
market, the process through which banks make loans to
borrowers and then package and sell them to investors came to a
screeching halt. For the past 12 months, an obscure agency
created by President Herbert Hoover during the Great
Depression has come to the rescue of the banking industry. It is
called the Federal Home Loan Banks.
banks present mortgages they've issued—high-quality ones, not
junky subprime ones—as collateral to the FHLB and borrow
money so they can have more cash to lend. To finance its
activity, the FHLB sells debt to big investors in the capital
markets. As with Fannie and Freddie, the FHLB benefits from a
unique status. The FHLB doesn't pay federal income tax, and it
borrows "at rates just slightly higher than Treasury bonds,"
thanks in part to the high ratings of its debt. While the FHLB
takes pains to note that "Federal Home Loan Bank debt is not
guaranteed by, nor is it the obligation of, the U.S. government,"
there's an assumption afoot in the marketplace that were the
FHLB to encounter serious trouble, the government would step
in. In return for this special treatment, the FHLB provides some
vital public services. Twenty percent of its net earnings are used
to help cover interest on debt issued by the Resolution Funding
Corp., which paid for the Savings & Loan bailout. The FHLB
also channels one-tenth of its profits to affordable-housing loans
and grants.
During the mortgage boom, FHLB quietly did its job and
avoided many of Fannie and Freddie's excesses. A year ago,
loans to member banks accounted for only 62 percent of total
assets. The rest was held in safe investments like the government
bonds and bonds issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Subprime holdings were minimal. And since commercial banks
were able to raise capital from Wall Street to make any kinds of
loans they wanted, they didn't have all that much need for the
FHLB's services. As the chart below shows, the number of loans
extended to member banks rose modestly in the boom years, up
7 percent in 2005 and only 3 percent in 2006. As of June 30,
2007, the FHLB had $640 billion in loans outstanding to
members.
Like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the FHLB (here's Hoover's
July 1932 signing statement, a brief history, and an overview) is
a government-sponsored enterprise. But it differs from the
wounded giants in some significant ways. Instead of being
owned by public shareholders, as Fannie and Freddie are, the 12
independent regional FHLBs are owned by their 8,100 members.
Banks large and small, representing about 80 percent of the
nation's financial institutions, own shares in the FHLB and share
in the profits.
But last year the mortgage house of cards began to collapse. And
as Wall Street's securitization machine, which had enabled banks
to raise cash with alacrity, broke down, banks staged their own
run on the FHLB. In its 2007 third-quarter report, the FHLB
noted that "in light of the extraordinary events affecting the
credit markets during the third quarter," loans to members soared
by 28.6 percent from the first quarter, to $824 billion—an
increase of $184 billion. Since then, as the broken-down Wall
Street mortgage securitization machine was sold for scrap,
FHLB loans to member banks continued to rise: to $875 billion
at the end of 2007 and to $914 billion at the end of this June. In
the past 12 months, FHLB loans to its members have risen by 43
percent, representing an additional $274 billion in real credit
provided by the system to its member banks. That sum dwarfs
the actual amount of credit extended to investment banks by the
Fed—or by the government to Fannie and Freddie.
The FHLB has a simple business model (PDF). Basically, it
funnels cash from Wall Street to banks on Main Street. Member
Does the increase in FHLB's balance sheet mean taxpayers may
be on the hook for another trillion dollars in mortgage debt? It's
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
38/92
unlikely. FHLB has a much better track record than Fannie and
Freddie. Because it maintains high standards, it has never
suffered a credit loss on a loan extended to a member. It doesn't
spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year on executive
compensation or lobbying, as Fannie and Freddie did. And it
didn't lower standards or shift into riskier markets as a way of
increasing market share, as Fannie and Freddie did. Seventy-six
years after it was created by a president whose administration
was hostile to government intervention in markets, the FHLB
stands as an enduring and (so far) effective example of socialism
among capitalists.
movies
Dances With Roves
Kevin Costner in the political "satire" Swing Vote.
By Dana Stevens
Thursday, July 31, 2008, at 5:19 PM ET
Swing Vote (Touchstone Pictures) isn't exactly a toothless
political satire. It's something worse: a satire with dentures.
What little bite it manages to apply against the American
electoral system is fake, to be removed at will whenever a truly
chewy topic comes up. Some of the issues the movie gums
include abortion, immigration, and the unacknowledged
alcoholism of its own main character.
For starters, the moment in American politics this comedy
spoofs now feels so remote, it might as well be the Harrison/Van
Buren race of 1840. (Tippecanoe and Costner too!) Given our
current political reality: two foreign wars, a terrorist threat, and
the first racially diverse presidential campaign in American
history—the hanging-chad woes of the 2000 election are the last
thing on our minds. The film's premise, that a hotly contested
presidential race somehow comes down to a single vote, is not
without its populist charm. Frank Capra could have done
something with it. But I knew Frank Capra (OK, I've seen a lot
of his movies) and you, director/co-writer Joshua Michael Stern,
are no Frank Capra.
Nor is Kevin Costner a Gary Cooper. But it isn't Costner's fault
that Swing Vote is such a formless, pasty blob of a movie. As
Bud Johnson, a divorced father on the verge of losing his job at
an egg-packing plant, he's in his comfort zone as an actor,
playing the kind of dim-bulb, salt-of-the-earth loser he's carried
off nicely in movies such as Bull Durham and Tin Cup. (It's
when Costner roles get steely-eyed and morally upright that you
need to start worrying.) Bud and his young daughter Molly
(Madeline Carroll) live in semi-squalor in a trailer on the
Texas/New Mexico border. Their relationship—he's a lowfunctioning drunk; she's a hectoring enabler—is depressing to a
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
near-tragic degree, though the filmmakers seem convinced of its
bantering charm.
Molly, a precocious political junkie (when she grows up she
wants to be "either a veterinarian or chairman of the Fed"),
spends Election Day nagging her father about his civic
responsibility to vote. But while she waits for him at the polling
station, he's passed out drunk in the cab of his parked truck.
Molly then sneaks past the dozing poll workers and tries to vote
in her father's stead. Thus, in a series of events as
incomprehensible as they are unconstitutional, an incomplete
ballot with Bud's name on it becomes the deciding factor in the
election.
In the ensuing 10 days before he casts his vote, this apolitical
dumbbell is desperately courted by both the fatuous Republican
incumbent (Kelsey Grammer) and his spineless Democratic
challenger (Dennis Hopper). The efforts of these two are
coordinated, respectively, by Stanley Tucci, as a Rove-esque
Republican operative, and Nathan Lane, as a Bob Shrum-style
Democratic strategist who can't seem to win an election. The
scenes of pandering one-upmanship that follow afford some of
the movie's rare mirthful moments, including a pro-life political
commercial that's just sick enough to be funny.
But the country's most waffling swing voter can't be as confused
as this movie's script is. Besides the central have-your-cake-andeat-it-too problem—how do you combine cynical satire with
sappy civic idealism?—there's a fundamental flaw in the fatherdaughter plot. Costner's Bud Johnson is not a lovable rascal of a
dad; he's a boozing derelict who ignores and betrays his daughter
in scene after uncomfortably painful scene. But the 12-year-old
Madeline Carroll is the only person involved—including the
director and screenwriter—who seems to perceive just how
terrible Molly's life is. As the grownup actors go through their
purportedly comic antics, she skulks at the edge of the frame, her
little face pinched in agony. It's a reaction entirely consistent
with the crappy treatment her character receives, but the
unresolved question of Molly's neglect lends the movie's fauxuplifting ending a sour taste. A late appearance by Mare
Winningham as the girl's drug-addicted absentee mother also
hits a disconcertingly realist note: Is this a political comedy or a
drama about child abuse? If it's the latter, that would at least
explain the lack of laughs.
music box
Ligeti: A Sound Odyssey
Remembering the genius whom Stanley Kubrick stole music from.
By Jan Swafford
Tuesday, July 29, 2008, at 7:22 AM ET
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First, a confession. In the 1970s, I got familiar with a recording
of avant-garde composer György Ligeti's Adventures and New
Adventures for a small group of instruments and "singers" but
had to wait 10 years and hear those pieces live before I realized
that they're falling-down funny: absurdist chamber "operas"
expressed by shouts, wheezes, squeaks, sighs, whoops,
blitherings, bellows, and so on—. Before then, it hadn't occurred
to me that the avant-garde and the comic could cohabitate. They
didn't teach you that in music school. They taught you retrograde
inversions, pitch classes, parameters, Klangfarbenmelodie, i.e.,
the gamut of formal/intellectual shibboleths that were supposed
to explain contemporary music.
Ligeti had his own singular and unpredictable parameters.
Sometimes he's almost alarmingly funny, other times
mesmerizing, uncanny, hyperbolic, touching, ironic—all the
good stuff music used to do. It's characteristic of his
individualism and rapport with the past that as a nominal
"experimental" composer, he could bring it all off. Listening to
the two Adventures with enlightened ears, I kept thinking, with a
certain manic glee, of Mozart. As with the old guys, here was
music that was exquisitely what it was, with a splendid harmony
of expression and form and content. It was Ligeti's genius to take
the ideas and techniques of the late-century German
experimental school and make them musical, which is to say:
humanize the avant-garde. Which in turn is to say: To make new
sounds and forms expressive is to discover new territories of the
human.
Ligeti died at 83 in June 2006, working on a third book of his
already legendary etudes for piano. Even though most great
artists start off as ordinary blokes in ordinary circumstances, he
still managed an unusually long and painful journey. He came
from a cultured Hungarian Jewish family that ended up in
concentration camps in World War II. His father and teenage
brother died there. György managed to escape from a slave-labor
camp and walked home to find there was no more home. After
the war, he studied music intensely and settled into a teaching
and composing career in Budapest. Having survived the Nazis,
Ligeti now had to contend with the Soviets. In communist
Hungary, writing strange chords could have nasty consequences.
Following the Russian clampdown of 1956, he fled Hungary and
found himself broke and unknown in Cologne, where Karlheinz
Stockhausen was the presiding genius. It was hearing
Stockhausen's electronic masterpiece Gesang der Jünglinge on
an accidentally unblocked radio broadcast, accompanied by
gunfire in the streets outside, that had inspired Ligeti to flee
Hungary in search of broader creative horizons.
Ligeti was given a place to work in the studios of Cologne
Radio, where pioneering electronic music was being put together
with remarkably primitive means. In those days they edited tape
pieces with scissors and generated sounds with old engineering
equipment. Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez became Ligeti's
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
mentors and friends; the three of them eventually came to be
seen as peers. But Ligeti's path diverged from his mentor's in
important ways. In the '60s and '70s, Stockhausen was the most
visible of the European avant-gardists; he was on the cover of
the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's as one of their inspirations for doing
innovative things with electronics and recording. Stockhausen
had decreed that every piece must constitute a revolution,
starting with the very tone color of the music.
Ligeti needed models but didn't care for gurus and absolutes.
Finding his voice in the heart of the European experimental
scene, where ultra-rationality was the answer to the war's
irrationality and everything had to be justified by theory, he
never fit the mold. Ligeti, responding to the horrors of
midcentury he had experienced first-hand, went in a direction
more about feeling than intellect. Like his colleagues, Ligeti was
all for invention, but new forms and sounds were for him means
and not ends. Meanwhile, he had an anti-dogmatic passion for
everything musical, including Caribbean, central African, and
East Asian traditions, and American Minimalism of the Steve
Reich and Terry Riley persuasion.
True, his kind of eclecticism was not necessarily comfortable. "I
am in a prison," Ligeti once said. "One wall is the avant-garde;
the other is the past. I want to escape." He declared his later
music to be neither tonal nor atonal. To hell, in other words, with
both camps.
One form of escape was an all-consuming outlandishness. He
was, after all, a serious student of Charlie Chaplin and the Marx
Brothers. In his comic mode, Ligeti was arguably the funniest
composer who ever lived, though his humor has an unsettling
edge. His full opera, Le Grand Macabre, is an exercise in
apocalyptic madness, on the subject of the end of the world as a
supernatural scam. Ligeti described it as "some kind of flea
market: half real, half unreal ... a world where everything is
falling in." Growing up where and when he did, Ligeti knew that
things "falling in" can be funny, but ultimately it's no joke.
Here's in the opera.
The religious works have an unearthly aura that made them a
natural for Stanley Kubrick in 2001. Ligeti's music remains the
most sublime element of that transcendent film. Still, if the
Requiem and Lux Aeterna used in the movie resemble anything
else, it's not apemen and monoliths on the moon; it's the
ululations of mythical beasts, the sighing of lonely stars in
forgotten nebulae, the ritual songs of wraiths. Try .
Another overwhelming work, alternately hectic and spiritual, is
the Violin Concerto. Its hymnlike second movement has a
climax on a chorus of ocarinas (that flute thing shaped like a
potato) that manage to sound at once goofy and creepy, like .
Here Ligeti opened a vein of intoxicating weirdness that, maybe,
music had never reached before. But, as always, he wasn't
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screwing around with sound for the sake of it; he was expressing
something beyond analysis, in the realm of the heart.
not considered what people were going to make of what he did
and said. He didn't quite live in this world. Ligeti did.
His hypervirtuosic Etudes for piano are spoken of with awe and
fear in keyboard circles. Listen to Ligeti's favorite pianist,
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, playing, with his usual aplomb, .
For me, Ligeti is the most interesting, most expressive, most
important tonal artist to appear since Stravinsky died.
Stockhausen was a great inventor in sound, but Ligeti was a
great composer in a long tradition. I don't see any replacements
on the horizon. I doubt anybody alive, for example, could set
Lewis Carroll's "A Long, Sad Tale" with anything like his .
I saw Stockhausen give talks in Boston in the '60s and '70s, and
in the '90s saw Ligeti as a guest composer at New England
Conservatory. Stockhausen was the image of the German
modernist, proclaiming tidily arranged dicta about the
imperatives of history. Though in private Ligeti could be quite
impossible, at the Conservatory he just charmed everybody. He
had no theories whatever to offer. He was unpretentious, witty in
his scrambled English, and in contrast to Stockhausen's sharp
features and burning eyes, there was Ligeti's wonderful face of
an old spaniel. For a taste of his ruminations, here's a late BBC
interview.
Ligeti told us that when his music was first being performed in
European new-music festivals, he had to hitchhike to the
concerts. "I didn't have the money to buy a girl a cup of coffee."
Then one day somebody told him, "Did you know there's a
movie with your music in it?" Ligeti didn't know. Kubrick had
simply ripped off his things for 2001. Ligeti duly sued Kubrick
and in the end, he told us, received the grand sum of $3,000.
"But do you like the movie?" somebody asked. "Yah, I really
like it," Ligeti said. And of course, 2001 did for him what Sgt.
Pepper's did for Stockhausen—helped make him famous beyond
the esoteric circles of the European new-music scene. By the
'90s, the two were the dominant figures of their generation, but
by then Stockhausen was mostly out of sight, sunk in his
mystical cycle of operas called Licht, or "light."
So via mass media and pop culture some wildly innovative
music emerged from underground and made its mark. The
difference between that generation and now was that while
Stockhausen and Ligeti were not aloof to pop culture, they
expected it to come to them. Many of the current generation of
classical composers swear allegiance to hip-hop, salsa, and so
on. In the arts formerly known as "high," you can't go wrong
sucking up to pop culture. I think the older attitude got better
results.
In later years, Ligeti and Stockhausen kept their distance. They
united in the public mind one last notorious time when, after
9/11, Stockhausen declared of the disaster: "This is the biggest
artwork that exists at all in the whole universe. ... I couldn't
match it." His statement was condemned worldwide. Actually,
what Stockhausen was trying to say, from his distant planet, was
that 9/11 was a titanic piece of theater, mass murder created for
television. Not so generously, Ligeti declared that Stockhausen
had joined the terrorists and ought to be locked up. Even in that,
Ligeti was showing his allegiance to the here-and-now in
contrast to the remoteness of his old mentor. Stockhausen had
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
other magazines
China's Low Self-Esteem
Newsweek on why the Olympic host suffers from a national "inferiority
complex."
By Morgan Smith
Tuesday, July 29, 2008, at 3:31 PM ET
New Republic, Aug. 13
The cover story describes the "demographic inversion" occurring
in American cities like Chicago, which is "coming to resemble a
traditional European city. … The poor and the newcomers are
living on the outskirts" while the white and affluent dwell in the
center. The "deindustrialization" of the city, decreased street
crime, and higher gas prices contribute to the inward movement.
But it's also a case of "young adults expressing different values,
habits, and living preferences than their parents." … A piece
details John McCain's "lifelong romance" with boxing—and his
ferocious opposition to Ultimate Fighting. Boxing is a "cultural
throwback … but it also appeals to [his] impish side." It
represents "the pure, noble, manly art of fighting"—as one
source puts it. To McCain, its no-holds-barred cousin, Ultimate
Fighting, violates a "core sensibility: that there is such a thing as
a good fight—one that is both clean and fair." (In 1997, Slate's
David Plotz detailed McCain's beef with Ultimate Fighting.)
Newsweek, Aug. 4
In the cover package on the Beijing Olympics, an article
considers China's national "inferiority complex," arguing that
"the most critical element in the formation of China's modern
identity has been the legacy of the country's 'humiliation' at the
hands of foreigners, beginning with its defeat in the Opium Wars
in the mid-19th century and the shameful treatment of Chinese
immigrants in America." One Chinese filmmaker says, "There is
something almost in our DNA that triggers autonomic, and
sometimes extreme, responses to foreign criticism or putdowns." … A piece looks at the field of "oncofertility," which
studies how cancer patients can preserve their fertility after they
recover from the disease. Oncologists now refer younger patients
to reproductive specialists before they begin cancer treatments.
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One common tactic is to harvest a woman's eggs and freeze them
for later use.
who frequently fall into drugs, prostitution, and gang life when
they can't make it to the United States.
The New Yorker, Aug. 4
An article investigates the legacy of Alan Rogers, a gay soldier
who was killed in Iraq. After his death, gay advocacy groups
wondered "if he might not qualify as the first known gay
casualty of the Iraq war" while some in Rogers' circle moved to
conceal information about his sexuality. They removed
information about his sexual orientation from a Wikipedia entry
and threatened to press defamation charges after the Washington
Blade outed him in an article. But "the cover-up, such as it was,
was not the result of any coördinated government campaign but
a freelance effort enabled by the good intentions of colleagues
and friends whose own experiences with Rogers made it hard to
conceive of him as a dissident of any kind." … A profile of
Tavis Smiley examines his "tangled web of alliances." The
political commentator and entrepreneur generated controversy
within the black community when he held back support for
Obama in the primaries because "[y]ou can't short-circuit the
process of holding folk accountable just because you fall in
love."
Weekly Standard, Aug. 4
An article criticizes "Every 15 Minutes," a program that stages
drunk-driving accidents at high schools to educate teenagers.
The program's point, says the piece, "isn't to provide accurate
information, it's to scare the bejesus out of a bunch of
impressionable kids." Every 15 Minutes "capitalize[s] on the
deep love of drama in the heart of every teenager" while
exaggerating the number of deaths caused by drunk driving and
making money off the "ridiculous" merchandise on its Web site.
… A piece advises "anyone who wants to understand Barack
Obama … to stay away from the radio and the TV" and read his
speeches instead so as not to be distracted by "that rich baritone,
the regal bearing, the excellent drape of his Burberry suits." … A
piece observes France's reaction to Obama's visit, noting that the
candidate, whom the French press calls "le Kennedy noir," is
"the ultimate arm-candy for embattled European leaders"—like
French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Texas Monthly, August 2008
A piece tells the story of four high-school football stars who, one
post-season Friday night, gruesomely clubbed two deer to death
in their small West Texas town. A few weeks after the animals
were discovered with bashed-in skulls, the boys (who many in
the piece describe as "good kids") confessed to their school
principal and received light punishments. Almost a year later,
after a PETA-fueled online explosion of discussion about the
misdeed, those who know the perpetrators still remain "baffled"
as to why they did it. … An article explores the Texas School for
the Blind, a haven for visually impaired students, where "they
can star in a school play, compete on a team, be a cheerleader,
have a boyfriend. And they don't have to miss out on that
quintessentially American rite of passage, the prom."
poem
GQ, August 2008
In the comedy issue, a profile of cover boy Seth Rogen asks
whether he will be "the Woody Allen of Generation Xbox when
he's 35—acting, writing, unlikely-sex-symboling, creating his
own material, making his own lane." … An article, punctuated
by vignettes about the dead, reports on the grisly rapes, killings,
and disappearances in Juárez, Mexico. President Felipe
Calderón's aggressive offense on drug trafficking "may be
hurting the Mexican people more than it hampers the drug
trade." More government patrols and conflict between federal
and local enforcement means destroying the little order
previously imposed by drugs lords, allowing "little gangs" to
proliferate. The border city also attracts hopeful immigrants,
The tendons in my wrist are visible.
What will I do now I have made this fist?
To loosen it feels weird, anticlimactic—
a misuse, a misunderstanding, of fists.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
"Swifts"
By Dan Chiasson
Tuesday, July 29, 2008, at 7:14 AM ET
Listen to Dan Chiasson read .
1. Fist
It is impossible for me to remember
the cozy room I slept in as a child.
Somebody made my bed up to be paradise.
It was hard for me, a hard night, when I entered art.
That's how it was with me that night.
And so, mysteriously, I lost my sweetness.
Weird, to feel intended for violence,
when what I wanted was an hour of rest.
2. Wind
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Find some other reason to sway, forest;
old people get bent over
from vitamin deficiencies; trees,
take them as your inspiration.
For I have neither time nor energy
any longer to write poems, to make feeling
out of what, without me, is silent;
I find your standing there disgusting.
And you, reader, I see you nod your head,
treelike, appraising these lines;
I find your standing there—
not disgusting, but not inspiring either.
3. Tree
All day I waited to be blown;
then someone cut me down.
I have, instead of thoughts,
uses; uses instead of feelings.
One day I'll feel the wind again.
A moment later I'll be gone.
6. Sound, 2 a.m.
A minute ago I was a child coughing: having had
too much of everything today, except for air.
Now I am an animal, feeling, tonight, perplexed—
I fled the outside, the cold, the lack of food;
I meant to enter a house, which I connect with warmth,
which my body told me was the appropriate move.
Instead I entered a person's mind. Like the child,
I am trapped: I have no will, no life to call my own.
7. Swifts
Reality isn't one point in space.
It isn't one moment in time—
look at time, a spool of twine
one minute, idle in a sewing kit,
the next minute a shooting star.
Reality is an average of moods,
strike that, a flock of birds,
strike that, a single bird
tracked through dense forest:
4. Cause
Whitman wrote this, before he started writing poetry.
He was a journalist for years, you know;
a radical, a partisan for some ridiculous cause.
you can lose it for hours or days,
but it isn't lost. You tired of the metaphor.
8. Caress
He wrote this to support—or was it to condemn—a cause.
It doesn't matter since he wasn't Whitman yet.
Now that he's been Whitman for so long, it would.
5. Effect
Everything scatters as the night wears on:
but you, don't scatter, will you?
I think we could make this night last forever.
The tendons flattened and the knot untied.
You could do anything, then, with your hand;
you could forget the fact you had a hand.
This lasted, or so you were tempted to think,
for years; winter didn't matter,
yet spring arrived as a blessing to your body.
Sweetness, or what passed for it, returned;
and then, like an anchor yanked suddenly
from the sea, your muscles clenched.
With our joined heads, like mathematicians,
we could work all night, so that
where night once was, work would be; and night,
politics
as long as work went on, would never end.
It is starting to sound a little tiring:
all this working, just to stave off morning.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
The Iraq Equation
McCain and Obama don't think that differently on Iraq.
By John Dickerson and Chris Wilson
Wednesday, July 30, 2008, at 7:47 PM ET
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Over the last few weeks, Barack Obama and John McCain have
seemed to get perilously close to agreeing on what to do in Iraq.
Obama continues to talk about a 16-month withdrawal but would
let military commanders determine the pace of the withdrawal.
McCain is also now in favor of a 16-month timeline—as long as
the commanders determine the pace of the withdrawal. After the
withdrawal, how many soldiers would be left and what would
they do? Both candidates agree on that, too. U.S. forces would
continue to train Iraqi soldiers, fight al-Qaida, assist Sunni tribal
leaders, and fight Shiite militias. How long they would do all of
this, and in what numbers, would be up to the commanders on
the ground.
How close are the two candidates? Below are two mathematical
formulas derived from their public statements. Mouse over each
number and variable to see the source.
X. Advice from commanders: If conditions improve, X will
equal 1 or greater, Obama will bring one to two brigades home
each month, and McCain will complete the withdrawal in 16
months. (One brigade=2,500 troops.) If the military advisers
recommend a less expeditious withdrawal, X decreases, the
number of troops that Obama withdraws each month lowers, and
McCain's overall timetable expands. The residual forces both
candidates envision (which are a function of X) will also get
larger.
Y. Residual Force: The result of the equation equals the number
of U.S. soldiers who would remain in Iraq to continue to train
Iraqi soldiers, fight al-Qaida, assist Sunni tribal leaders, and
fight Shia militias.
politics
Party Crasher
What should McCain do with Bush at the convention?
By John Dickerson
Thursday, July 31, 2008, at 3:02 PM ET
The last time a two-term president spoke at his party's
nominating convention, he sparked a grand celebration. It was
2000. Bill Clinton was introduced, and the Democrats gathered
in Los Angeles went nuts. Instead of taking the stage, though,
Clinton first showed up on enormous screens. For the next 30
seconds, the crowd watched as he walked the narrow
cinderblock hallway to the podium. By the time he arrived, the
popcorn had spilled, the funny hats were askew, and the entire
arena was in a deep frenzy.
This happy convergence is not likely to repeat itself when
George Bush speaks at the Republican convention in St. Paul,
Minn., in September. With approval ratings in the high 20s,
Bush has a standing more than 20 points lower than Clinton's at
the time of his saunter. In 2000, 51 percent of the country said
America was on the right track. Now 13 percent does. The
Obama campaign tries to take advantage of the ill will by
claiming that John McCain represents merely a third Bush term
and by linking the two in an ad. It's working. In recent polls, the
majority of respondents believe that McCain, as president,
would continue Mr. Bush's policies in Iraq and on the economy.
How much of a liability is Bush? One McCain aide refers to him
as kryptonite. The irony, says a McCain supporter, is that Bush
could end up beating McCain on both his runs for the
presidency.
Conventions are usually a place to finesse a candidate's
liabilities. And yet McCain has to give kryptonite a prime-time
speaking spot. When I asked GOP veterans whether there was
any way to minimize the damage for McCain, their first reaction
was to laugh. Since the convention starts on a Monday, one
member of the McCain campaign joked that Bush could speak
on Sunday night. Another veteran Republican suggested putting
up an onstage dunking booth for the president. McCain could
break tradition by arriving at the convention early in the week so
he can take a few throws at the target.
The main trick at a convention, which every campaign faces, is
to present a candidate to a general-election audience—which
usually means appealing to the political center—at a gathering of
his most partisan supporters, who flock to the convention center
to cheer loudly for his most conservative appeals. It would be
easier for candidates if their conventions were held the day after
they grabbed the nomination. Then they could wave to the base
and go on to make their move to the middle uninterrupted.
McCain faces an acute version of the usual dilemma. Polls in
recent days suggest that disaffected Republicans are coming
home to his campaign (or, given his rocky relationship with the
party, saying hi for the first time). McCain doesn't want to
alienate those party faithful who may not be thrilled with the
president but who also don't want to see him insulted. But he
also has to show that he's a different kind of Republican in a year
when the party brand is so damaged that 10 of the 12
Republicans running in the most competitive Senate races this
fall are either skipping the convention or have not decided
whether to attend.
So other than crack grim jokes, what should McCain do to limit
the damage Bush could do to him? Here are a few suggestions
from several people in the business who have planned
conventions before:
1. Make it a family affair. Matthew Dowd, Bush's former
strategist who is now with ABC, suggests bringing in George
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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H.W. along with his son and maybe other family members as
well. While the current Bush is unpopular, voters have warm
feelings about his father. (Even Barack Obama praises his
foreign-policy acumen.) The downside is that the 41st president
was the last one who was considered sorely out of touch with a
bad economy.
2. Make Bush a character witness for McCain. By talking
about the arc of his presidency—the attacks of 9/11 and the
response of the American people and American military—Bush
can stay on relatively noncontroversial ground, which he can
link to McCain's biography. His speech could touch on the
underlying theme of McCain's message—serving your country
in crisis and doing the right thing even when it's politically
unpopular. The problem with this approach is that it reinforces
the idea that McCain is all about war and military.
3. Talk about conflict. Each night of a convention has a theme.
Monday is traditionally former president's night. McCain could
change things and make it "gadfly night," in which his GOP
opponents testify to his irritating oppositional streak. The night's
kickoff speakers could be members of the GOP with whom
McCain has clashed over the years: Tom Tancredo on
immigration, Dick Cheney on torture, James Inhofe on climate
change, Mitch McConnell on campaign finance. Bush would
then take over for the keynote, pointing out the various areas in
which he and McCain have disagreed. This would highlight
McCain's independence. Then they could kiss and make up over
their big area of agreement—the latest military strategy in Iraq,
which is increasingly viewed as successful. This will never
happen.
As the McCain campaign weighs the options, it has no historical
precedent to follow. Richard Nixon didn't speak at Ford's 1976
convention. The benefits of resignation. Maybe, one aide
suggested, this time around Bush could just embrace his own
unpopularity and say: "If John McCain had had his way, I
wouldn't be here."
cataloging the tough pieces published by reporters exhuming the
candidate's past: his financial relationship with friend and
fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who is now a convicted felon;
his friendship with former Weather Undergrounder William
Ayers; his casting of 130 "present" votes as an Illinois legislator;
his nuclear energy compromise in the U.S. Senate, said to
benefit a contributor; incendiary comments made by his pastor,
the Rev. Jeremiah Wright; and more.
To that list add the recent critical dispatches tarring Obama as a
flip-flopper. The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg found "the big
papers … assembling quite a list of matters on which the
candidate has 'changed his position,' including Iraq, abortion
rights, federal aid to faith-based social services, capital
punishment, gun control, public financing of campaigns, and
wiretapping."
What's unique about Obama and his candidacy is that almost
none of the stuff the press throws at him sticks. Nor is the press
alone in its inability to stick him. Hillary Clinton hurled rocks,
knives, and acid at her rival even before the primaries (see this
Jake Tapper piece from ABC News) and later upped the ante in
desperation. She claimed that he was unprepared to serve as
commander in chief and accused him of insulting gun owners
and the religiously faithful. The eleventh-hour tactics may have
won Clinton votes, but they failed to undermine Obama.
You could call Obama the Teflon-coated candidate, but this
would miss the fact that his slickness goes all the way to the
core. What has gone unexplored until now is this: How did
Barack Obama achieve superslipperiness without becoming
greasy?
In a 2006 profile in Men's Vogue by Jacob Weisberg, Obama
acknowledges that every politician, himself included, has "some
of that reptilian side to him." To win public office, a politician
must powder his scales, trim his nails, and tame his swinging
tail. It's called persona-building, and everybody does it. But just
compare the persona Obama crafted to the one crafted by Mitt
Romney. The Romney bodysuit is all snapping teeth and empty
glad-handing. Obama, on the other hand, projects a remarkably
appealing and authentic character. He's the koala of iguanas.
press box
The Untouchable
Why nothing the press throws at Obama sticks.
By Jack Shafer
Tuesday, July 29, 2008, at 8:05 PM ET
You're welcome to believe otherwise, but I don't think the press
has gone in the tank for Barack Obama.
As long ago as March, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz
demolished charges that the press was soft on Obama by
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Whether by design or by chance (I'd say design), Obama took
possession of this public face with the publication of his
confessional memoir, Dreams From My Father, in 1995. Written
before he ran for office, Dreams shrewdly moots his youthful
drug use as "some bad decisions." When the New York Times
rereported this period in Obama's life for a Feb. 9, 2008, piece, it
probably expected to uncover spectacular dope-crazed tales.
Instead it found evidence that Obama's memoir might have
exaggerated his drug use. An Obama friend—now a
fundraiser—tells the Times Obama was somewhat of a reticent
drug user: "If someone passed him a joint, he would take a drag.
We'd smoke or have one extra beer, but he would not even do as
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much as other people on campus. … He was not even close to
being a party animal."
Obama's poise and discipline allow him to resist whatever bait
the press and politicians dangle in front of him. When he does
address scandalous material, he generally does so to his
advantage. In June, when the Web and cable news advanced
false rumors that Michelle Obama had called white people
"whitey" on a videotape, Obama squelched the gossip with a
denial and, as Ben Smith of Politico reported, put the press on
notice by questioning the appropriateness of the question.
Smears undermine a politician only when they appeal to voters'
pre-existing idea of what sort of person a politician is. Seeing as
the pre-existing idea of Obama is so positive, the Obama-haters
have had trouble portraying him either as a literal bomb thrower,
like William Ayers, or a figurative one, like the Rev. Wright.
When the smear artists dress him up as a radical or as
"madrassa"-educated, the ploys only backfire.
Like Chief Justice John Roberts, Obama has constructed a
professional résumé low on embarrassing material. In this
regard, Obama's lack of legislative accomplishment is a genuine
achievement. They can't hit you where they can't find you, which
is a gambit that worked for Roberts in his confirmation hearings.
Separating the real Obama from the persona is probably
impossible, as Ryan Lizza hints in The New Yorker, where he
writes:
[Obama] campaigns on reforming a broken
political process, yet he has always played
politics by the rules as they exist, not as he
would like them to exist. He runs as an
outsider, but he has succeeded by mastering
the inside game. He is ideologically a man of
the left, but at times he has been genuinely
deferential to core philosophical insights of the
right.
Obama has maintained his persona by keeping the campaign
press corps on a starvation diet. Yet such a strategy becomes
self-limiting as the race for the White House narrows down to a
two-person contest. Voters in the general election, as opposed to
the primaries, tend to want more answers and fewer gestures.
At some point he's going to have to start answering questions, an
observation that shouldn't come as a surprise to Obama's chief
strategist, former journalist David Axelrod. Last week, Slate's
John Dickerson excoriated Obama for his double-talking ways in
an interview with NBC's Brian Williams about his position on
the surge. Writes Dickerson: "[H]e suggested that he'd always
said the surge would decrease violence in Iraq. That's not just
spin. It's not true."
******
Throw your correspondence at slate.pressbox@gmail.com and
see if it sticks. (E-mail may be quoted by name in "The Fray,"
Slate's readers' forum, in a future article, or elsewhere unless the
writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned
by the Washington Post Co.)
Track my errors: This hand-built RSS feed will ring every time
Slate runs a "Press Box" correction. For e-mail notification of
errors in this specific column, type the word persona in the
subject head of an e-mail message and send it to
slate.pressbox@gmail.com.
reading list
Horror Stories
The best new reads about law and the war on terror.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Saturday, July 26, 2008, at 7:22 AM ET
This week saw the start of jury selection in the first military
tribunal at Guantanamo Bay. After six years of waiting, Osama
Bin Laden's alleged chauffer, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, went on
trial for dangerous acts of driving in furtherance of terrorism.
Whether he is convicted or acquitted, Hamdan may live out the
rest of his lifetime at Guantanamo. The tribunal probably won't
do much to improve the Bush administration's reputation for
making up the rules on the run in the legal war on terror. The
summer of 2008 offers up a bumper crop of great new reads
about law and the war. Will you sleep better or worse at night
after reading this stuff? Probably not at all if your last name is
Hamdan.
For starters, Howard J. Bashman's law blog How Appealing is as
close as you'll get to an up-to-the-minute legal newsfeed. Lyle
Denniston at SCOTUSblog knows more about the ongoing legal
happenings at and around Guantanamo Bay than just about
anyone. So do the folks at the Brennan Center and the ACLU.
So many outstanding bloggers have been on the front lines for
years, drilling down to get the real story on FISA violations,
torture, the "state secrets" privilege, national security letters,
secret renditions, Patriot Act abuses and various other executive
branch extracurriculars. Some of the very best include Scott
Horton's wonderful No Comment; Jack Balkin's indispensible
Balkinization; and TalkingPointsMemo's TPMMuckraker on the
U.S. attorney scandal, fun with Alberto Gonzales, and torture
policy. Particularly in light of the new FISA legislation, Salon's
Glenn Greenwald and group blog Firedoglake are not to be
missed.
It's one thing to stiff-arm the press, but quite another to lie.
Lying isn't something that becomes Obama—or his persona.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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One of the best ways to keep up on what's happening at
Guantanamo Bay is through the foreign papers. Canada's Globe
and Mail and the Toronto Star write about Omar Khadr, the
young Canadian who's been detained at the camp since he was
15, almost daily. While the happenings at Gitmo rarely break the
A section of U.S. papers, the British, French, and Australians are
always on top of them.
or interrogation policies. But Wittes is right to suggest that the
time to devise a thoughtful and rational new architecture for a
new legal era is before the next terror attack and not in the
panicky aftermath.
Some of the best books about how the Bush administration has
moved the legal goalposts in the past few years are some of the
earliest. Slate contributor Jack Goldsmith's The Terror
Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration
is almost two years old but still invaluable, as is Charlie Savage's
Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency. A crop of
newer books about torture include Philippe Sands' Torture
Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values.
Sands argues that the change in torture law came from the
highest levels of the Bush administration and not just a few bad
apples at the bottom. Darius Rejali's chilling Torture and
Democracy is a sort of taxonomy of torture. Jane Mayer's
forthcoming The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on
Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals offers another
behind-the scenes look at the U.S. interrogation policy and the
price we've paid by resorting to torture. Each of these new
offerings, plus a handful of books from former detainees, remind
us of the social and moral costs of hasty decisions to cheat on
long-settled humanitarian norms.
Science
Speaking of cheating, another must-read for those curious about
the back story in the legal war on terror is Eric Lichtblau's The
Remaking of American Justice. Lichtblau won a Pulitzer Prize
for reporting on the secret NSA wiretapping program. His book
is a riveting account of the Bush administration's various steps
and missteps in chasing down terrorists.
There are five types of ape. Four are considered "great." The
fifth is the gibbon. Greatness in apes is largely a matter of size,
and the gibbon, maxing out at 30 pounds, doesn't make the cut.
To primatologists, it is known instead as the "lesser ape"—or, as
its partisans prefer, the "small ape." As a result, it's overlooked
in everything from environmental protections to fantasies of
simian domination. (There are no slave-driving gibbons in
Planet of the Apes.) Humans have resolved to protect our
evolutionary family, yet we continue to ignore one of our closest
cousins.
Reading all of these books and blogs together starts to illuminate
the connections between the black hole we've built at
Guantanamo Bay, the black hole that is our torture policy, and
the black hole that is our eavesdropping law. We may not have
all the answers yet, but we can begin to understand how we
arrived at this point: through a process of secret legal memos,
decision-making by a tiny cadre of powerful insiders who could
accept no answers but their own, and denials and finger pointing
in lieu of legal course-correction.
That's why I want to close with a thoughtful new book by Ben
Wittes called Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in
the Age of Terror. It is one the first serious attempts to bridge the
gap between fear-mongers on the right who insist that the legal
nips and tucks of the past seven years have saved lives and the
flamethrowers on the left who see every move by the Bush
administration as a power grab. Ultimately, Wittes blames a
supine Congress for its failure to play any meaningful role in
crafting modern solutions to the war against terrorism. You may
not agree with him on the merits of U.S. detention, surveillance,
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
The Forgotten Ape
Why can't the gibbon get any respect?
By Ben Crair
Tuesday, July 29, 2008, at 4:20 PM ET
At some point in the next four months, Spain will likely become
the first country to extend legal rights to great apes, thereby
protecting gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, and bonobos from
abuse, torture, and unnatural death. The measure will, in
practical terms, prevent the inhumane confinement of and testing
on great apes, which are singled out among nonhuman animals
for their cognitive abilities—on par, it is believed, with a 1-yearold human child. But there's another ape that might be just as
sensitive and intelligent as the great apes, and yet the Spaniards
are prepared to offer it no special rights or protections. No one
stands up for the gibbon.
Gibbons may be small, but they bear all the requisites of
apehood: large brains, no tail, and rotary shoulder blades. Like
orangutans, they populate Southeast Asia. They're typically
black with white markings around their faces, as if dressed in
furry habits. Swinging through the treetops at speeds up to 35
miles per hour, they look a bit like flying nuns.
The gibbon's arboreal lifestyle is unique among the apes and,
along with its small size, often leads people to mistake it for a
monkey. (An ape, of course, is not a monkey: Both are primates,
but they're not in the same superfamily.) Peter Gabriel, for
example: His music video for "Shock the Monkey" stars a
gibbon. The creators of the popular YouTube video "Monkey
Death Wish" similarly misattribute their leading role. And a
child swinging from monkey bars emulates the brachiation of a
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gibbon more than the movement of any monkey. They should be
called gibbon bars.
The laboratory turns out to be no better than the playground. "I
think quite often some researchers just look at gibbons like
monkeys," says Alan Mootnick, who runs the Gibbon
Conservation Center in California. That's one reason so little is
known about them, even though they're more common and
diverse than any other ape, with four genera and at least a dozen
species. (Seventy percent of all apes are gibbons.) Louis Leakey,
the famous paleoanthropologist, encouraged Jane Goodall, Dian
Fossey, and Birute Mary Galdikas to study chimpanzees,
gorillas, and orangutans, respectively, but never dispatched an
emissary to the gibbons. The practical difficulties faced by
primatologists in the field also contribute to our ignorance:
Gibbons live in small families in remote tropical canopies, while
great apes like the chimpanzees and gorillas stay in large,
terrestrial groups.
The scarcity of scientific knowledge about gibbons hampers
advocacy on their behalf. In 1993, Princeton bioethicist Peter
Singer co-founded the Great Ape Project, a nonprofit animalrights organization based in Seattle. Singer's group champions
the principle enshrined in the new Spanish law—extension of
human rights to great apes on account of their self-awareness,
sense of the future, and ability to use human language. Does the
Great Ape Project leave out gibbons because they don't possess
these special abilities? No. According to Singer, it's because "we
just didn't know enough about them."
Scientists haven't proven gibbons deficient so much as they
haven't bothered looking. The few who have relate encouraging
results: Thomas Geissmann, director of the Gibbon Research
Lab in Zurich, has observed mirror self-recognition in gibbons,
which is generally regarded as a sign of self-awareness; others
have observed tool use by gibbons in captivity. Alan Mootnick
says he's met a gibbon capable of rudimentary sign language and
suggests that gibbons may have more difficulty signing than the
great apes because of the unique morphology of their hands—
which are equal in length to human hands but half the width.
However, all of these observations are anecdotal; high-level
cognition in gibbons has not been systematically studied.
Meanwhile, there are whole institutes devoted to the study of the
cognitive abilities of great apes. And many of their vaunted
discoveries have come only after long and arduous work. For
example, gorillas are often celebrated for their ability to
recognize themselves in a mirror, but the earliest studies found
just the opposite. Scientists began testing for self-recognition in
gorillas in 1981 but did not find it until 10 years later. Koko, a
research animal in California (and an alleged nipple fetishist),
was able to identify her reflection. But she was a very special
case: Humans had reared her since the age of 1. Some
researchers are skeptical of mirror self-recognition in gorillas,
but they have no problem rationalizing its absence, suggesting
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
that the gorillas' aversion to eye contact might prevent them
from looking in the mirror long enough. Gibbons have not had
the benefit of such attention and large sample sizes. "In the
initial studies, they just tested one or two gibbons and said, 'Oh
yeah, they failed,' " says Geissmann.
Tests of animal self-recognition sometimes seem more like
exercises in human self-recognition: Gorillas appear humanlike,
so we test them repeatedly until we can prove they have some
form of consciousness. Gibbons, on the other hand, look like
monkeys, so we're inclined to dismiss them as "lesser" without a
second thought. While it's true that the great apes are more
closely related to each other than they are to gibbons, it's also
true that the gibbons are more closely related to the great apes,
including humans, than they are to any monkey.
As a result, interesting aspects of gibbon ethology have long
been ignored. The lesser apes, for example, are the only apes
besides humans to live in monogamous couples. Among the
apes, their songs are second in acoustic sophistication only to
humans', and they walk bipedally when grounded, unlike the
great (nonhuman) apes. But it's hard to generate interest in the
lesser apes, especially given that no charismatic human
researcher—à la Goodall or Fossey—has ever taken up their
cause.
What makes this particularly frustrating is that the most
endangered species of ape isn't a gorilla, chimpanzee, or
orangutan. Certain types of gibbon are in far greater trouble. The
orangutan may be the beneficiary of a high-profile conservation
campaign in Indonesia, but it's not as rare as the Javan gibbon. In
four decades, the western hoolock gibbon has declined in
number from 100,000 to just 5,000. The Hainan gibbon, of
which only 20 or so individuals survive, is perhaps the most
endangered primate in the world. The eastern black-gibbon
population in Vietnam has similarly dwindled to a few dozen.
Such species are unlikely to survive as long as humans treat
gibbons as second-rate apes. Recently, there have been some
encouraging signs: Legislation introduced in the U.S. House of
Representatives would prohibit laboratory testing on all apes,
including gibbons. This wouldn't have much of a direct impact
since small apes are rarely studied in labs. But it would have
symbolic importance. The petite, tree-dwelling gibbon may not
be as easily anthropomorphized as its great ape cousins, but
that's no reason to ignore it. In protecting the great apes, the
Spaniards overlooked at least one vital human right: Freedom
from discrimination based on appearance or lifestyle.
slate v
Leave Barack Alone!
48/92
A daily video from Slate V.
Thursday, July 31, 2008, at 10:40 AM ET
Every other Dash driver does the same. Using this data, Dash
can paint a stunningly accurate picture of traffic patterns. Have
you ever been stuck in a jam and wished there were some way to
look two miles ahead to see whether things are still ugly? Dash
essentially does that for you.
slate v
Interviews 50 Cents: War Witness for
Hire
A daily video from Slate V.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008, at 11:01 AM ET
slate v
How To Photoshop Propaganda
A daily video from Slate V.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008, at 10:32 AM ET
slate v
Dear Prudence: Stop Bringing Kids to
Work!
A daily video from Slate V.
Monday, July 28, 2008, at 1:50 PM ET
technology
Turn Here, Trust Me
Dash's amazing new GPS gizmo guides you around traffic.
By Farhad Manjoo
Thursday, July 31, 2008, at 3:52 PM ET
Most of the time, you can get along fine without in-car GPS.
Your daily commute is marked by well-worn drudgery: You
drive to work, to the store, and back home, rote trips for which
you don't need help. And nowadays when you are lost, your
phone can probably assist you. So it's no surprise that GPS firms
are suffering. This week, shares of Garmin, the once-high-flying
market leader, plummeted after the company lowered its revenue
expectations for the year and delayed the launch of its longpromised smartphone, a device investors hoped would unshackle
Garmin's fortunes from the apparently sinking GPS market.
But a few months ago, a Silicon Valley start-up called Dash
Navigation put out a product that could well revive the sagging
business. The Dash Express navigator packs a killer feature that
other GPS systems lack: the Internet. Network connectivity
powers Dash's primary attraction: what the company calls
"crowd-sourced traffic." As you traverse your favored
metropolis, the Dash Express anonymously transmits
information about its location and speed to a central server.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
I've been testing the Dash Express for a week, and I'm floored.
One morning rush hour this week, I drove from my home in San
Francisco to Stanford University. At the start of the 30-mile trip,
I plugged my destination into the Dash Express. The device gave
me three possible routes, each with an estimated travel time
based on traffic conditions gleaned from other drivers currently
moving down those roads. I chose what Dash said was the
fastest route, a straight shot down the congested 101 freeway.
The device guessed I would arrive at Stanford in 59 minutes.
Sixty-two minutes later, I was there. Along the way, the Dash
predicted nearly every hurdle along my trip with eerie accuracy:
Traffic slowed down just where the color-coded map showed
yellow, orange, and red roads, and speeds picked up again
exactly where Dash's map was painted green.
The Dash isn't perfect—its navigator-lady voice-over has terrible
pronunciation skills, and its software and hardware isn't nearly
as sleek as those in Garmin's GPSes. Plus, at $299 for the device
and at least $10 a month for traffic service (after three free
months), the Dash Express isn't cheap. Yet its ability to predict
traffic and, most important, guide you around congestion makes
it a must-have for commuters. Dash transforms the GPS
navigator from something most people rarely need into one of
those revolutionary applications—think TiVo, the iPod,
Napster—that you can't imagine doing without once you've tried
it.
It's true that traditional GPS devices can be souped up with
traffic-alert services. (Most receive traffic data through an FMradio receiver; Dash connects to the Internet through open WiFi
and cellular connections.) You can also get a picture of road
conditions by consulting online maps; the iPhone's Google Maps
application colors many highways in red, yellow, or green, for
instance.
But the Dash's system is much, much better. First, it's more
accurate. To predict conditions on your route, traditional GPS
devices and Web maps rely mainly on what traffic scholars call
"incident data." These systems get updates about car crashes,
road construction, and other slowdowns and then estimate how
fast traffic might flow around the holdups. Some systems add
information from sensors implanted in major roads. But sensors
are also imprecise. In traffic jams, cars move in a stop-and-go
pattern—and if the sensor happens to be located just under the
"go" portion of the jam, your GPS device will think the road is
much kinder than it really is.
Dash also receives incident and sensor data, but it adjusts all its
numbers with on-the-ground conditions fed back by real drivers.
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The system uses this info both to plan your route and to suggest
changes as you're driving. If Dash senses a sudden slow-down
ahead, it will ask whether you'd like to be routed around it.
Sometimes, it will even guide you off the freeway and through
surface streets, for which Dash also knows traffic conditions.
(The system tracks traffic patterns over time, compiling a
database of how quickly all roads move during 672 discrete
intervals during the day.)
There's an obvious chicken-and-egg problem with Dash's
system. In order to get good traffic data, Dash needs a lot of
drivers—but to get a lot of drivers, it needs good traffic data.
The company argues, though, that because many drivers follow
similar routes, it can achieve a critical mass relatively quickly. In
an average-sized metro area, Dash needs only a few hundred
drivers before most of its data is coming from the crowd, says
Mark Williamson, Dash's director of product marketing. In the
largest areas—New York City and Los Angeles—Dash needs
only a few thousand devices to get a good picture of traffic.
(Dash won't say how many drivers it has in each of those areas.)
Dash's Internet connectivity helps with things besides traffic.
Traditional GPS devices ship with databases of millions of shops
and attractions across the country. Like a printed phone book,
these databases go out of date: If you bought your GPS a couple
of months ago, for instance, it will think there are 600 more
Starbucks in the country than there now are. Over time, as roads
shut down and new developments spring up, maps go stale. In
order to refresh your device, you've got to buy an update disk.
Dash updates itself automatically with the latest maps, and it
offers something an order of magnitude more useful than a builtin database of attractions: a Web-based search engine. When you
look for nearby shops in Dash, you're really searching Yahoo,
which already knows about all those shuttered Starbucks.
For all this great functionality, Dash faces a major vulnerability
as a business proposition: Many of its features can be replicated
on smartphones. Technically, the iPhone can do everything Dash
does—it's got the Internet, GPS, and a touch-screen interface. It's
possible to imagine another start-up building a Dash clone on
Apple's device or on any other advanced phone. Considering
how many of them are out there, the crowd-sourced traffic
information generated by the iPhone would put Dash's data to
shame.
Williamson told me that the company is keenly aware of that
possibility. For now, he says, Dash is offering its service on only
its own GPS device, but he did mention the possibility of porting
it to other gadgets, like the iPhone.
In the meantime, the traffic data that Dash learns from its drivers
could also prove valuable. The licensing possibilities look
lucrative—Google, Microsoft, and Apple might all want better
traffic data for their maps products. UPS, FedEx, and the Postal
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Service could probably also do with a clearer picture of road
conditions. And Dash might even be able to help Starbucks out.
At a recent tech conference, a Dash executive pointed out that
Dash knows where people drive and knows where people search
for coffee. That means it knows exactly where Starbucks should
open up its next location in Arkansas: Highway 40, between
Little Rock and Memphis, Tenn.
technology
Even Lamer Than Second Life
Google Lively, yet another pointless virtual world.
By Farhad Manjoo
Monday, July 28, 2008, at 1:49 PM ET
In retrospect, I was a fool to mention Barack Obama in a place
where I could get body-slammed. But I was well into my first
hour as an avatar in Google Lively, the search company's
frustrating and dull new virtual world, and I was bored. I'd
already explored the room designed to resemble Google's gleeful
corporate headquarters; conversation there never progressed
beyond "Hello," "How old are you?" and "What should we do
here?" Now I was in a room that looked like a high-school
science lab. It was a rough scene. A guy shaped like a bobbleheaded baby was punching and kicking the female avatars, and
another dude kept blowing things up. "So, have you guys been
following Obama's overseas trip?" I ventured, to break the ice.
"Didn't catch it," one woman said. Then the baby dropped a huge
anvil on me, and that was that.
Digital worlds have won a great deal of press attention—the
Sims Online made the cover of Time when it launched in 2002,
and there have been perhaps billions of news stories about
Second Life. Despite all this hubbub, none of these virtual
worlds has managed to gain mainstream appeal. The Sims
Online never took off; Electronic Arts, its parent company, plans
to shut it down at the end of this month.
Google's new service, which launched in early July, looks like it
will fit perfectly in a field littered with failures. Lively is still
rough, but even in a more complete form, it seems unlikely to
take virtual worlds mainstream. The service is freighted with
technical problems: I've had trouble using it for more than an
hour without seeing it crash, and even when it works, it's terribly
slow (also, it runs only on Windows machines). But tech
difficulties are the least of Lively's troubles. Its oppressive
dreariness is more worrisome.
Imagine an amusement park that lacks any rides, games,
entertainers, and junk food. That's Lively: The place looks fun,
and you're sure to spend a few minutes exploring its pretty 3-D
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landscapes, but then what? Your only option is to talk to
people—and that's where the trouble begins. Google's avatardesigning tools are not yet as sophisticated as those in other
online worlds, so everyone in Lively looks pretty similar. You
find yourself repeating the same questions to every avatar: How
old are you? Where do you live? Oh, that's interesting, and what
do you do? Fascinating, tell me more.
Some people may find this a thrilling use of their time; I kept
switching back to my e-mail, hoping I'd received some
interesting spam. And I wasn't alone. Like prisoners in solitary,
everyone here keeps lamenting that they've got nothing to do. It's
no wonder people turn to violence. Among the actions Lively
allows you to perform on others are body-slam, kick, kung fu,
punch, slap, and squash. True, there's also kiss and hug, but
boredom doesn't inspire generosity of spirit. Lifting another
avatar and throwing him to the ground produces a thrilling
animated sequence, and for an instant, at least, you're having
fun.
It's entirely possible that in my trips to Lively, I simply visited
the wrong places. Unlike Second Life, Lively isn't technically a
virtual world—it's more like a virtual apartment complex, a
common architecture that connects a group of unrelated
"rooms." In Second Life, you're allowed to interact with pretty
much everyone else who's using the software. In Lively, your
conversations are limited to the other people nearby; anyone else
using the software is as good as dead to you.
Google's setup is a clever attempt to widen Lively's appeal.
Because different groups of people can hang out in different
rooms, Lively could become all things to all people: The jocks
can party in one room while the nerds study in another, neither
troubling the other. Lively works through a Web interface, and
each room can be "embedded" on a Web site as easily as a
YouTube clip. Google imagines that sites will use Lively to add
a three-dimensional chat space to their existing communities.
Lefty politicos might hang out in a Lively room embedded on
Daily Kos, say, while those on the right congregate in a room on
Red State. Perhaps in those niche-interest rooms, conversation
would flow more easily than in rooms on Lively's most-popular
list. There's always the chance, though, that a griefer will stop in
and drop anvils on everyone.
Virtual worlds haven't yet taken off for the simple reason that
talking to strangers in a 3-D space is not for everyone.
Multiplayer games like World of Warcraft have a built-in
advantage here; if people get sick of each other, they can always
just play the game. Purely social worlds like Second Life, places
that lack any obvious elements of gameplay, are known to have
a large "churn rate"—the vast majority of people who try them
out don't take up permanent residence.
Second Life, which garnered tremendous enthusiasm when
worldwide brands and political campaigns began advertising in
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
it, has had little luck getting users to stick around. Only 500,000
people regularly log in, and when you land there, it's easy to see
why. The service seems to offer nothing more than the chance to
do what you normally do on the Internet—IM, e-mail, buy
stuff—through a harder-to-use interface. The people who take to
this tend to be those comfortable with typed banter, people
interested in the aesthetics of online space, people looking for
cybersex. The one positive note: Second Life has been held up
as a bastion for disabled people, who use it as a way to fantasize
about life in other bodies.
For the rest of us, virtual worlds can seem pointless. The other
day I was in a crowded Lively room, surrounded by avatars who
were dancing, punching, screaming, and laughing. "Nothing to
do here, I don't think I'll come back," one guy announced to the
room. Finally, I'd made a real connection.
television
The Lifetime Original Movie 2.0
A new generation of delightful schmaltz.
By Troy Patterson
Thursday, July 31, 2008, at 4:52 PM ET
The great joke about the original movies on Lifetime, the grande
dame of gynocentric cable channels, is that they present
unvarying visions of women as victims—pap weepies about
cancer and kidnapping or plump melodramas about awful men.
No one has made this joke better than the satirists at the Onion,
which once reported that wife murderer Scott Peterson was
"issued a Lifetime Channel sentence during the penalty phase of
his trial" and elsewhere imagined such fare as the "Emotional
Manipulation Hour" and "The Abused Wife Who Didn't Mean
To Kill Her Policeman Husband in Self-Defense." But the times,
they do change, and the network's new slate of Saturday-night
movies sees those melodramas getting a moderate makeover.
Bright and loud and sort of peewee post-feminist, this is your
daughter's Lifetime, belatedly curtsying to the culture of Us
Weekly, girl power, and hooking up.
We begin with Fab Five: The Texas Cheerleader Scandal
(Saturday at 9 p.m. ET), based on some nonsense that transpired
two years ago in the town of McKinney. The new cheerleading
coach found herself outgunned by the squad's most imperious
clique, students more powerful than administrators. They
misbehaved, got drunk rather ostentatiously, and flouted both
school rules and "the cheerleader constitution." The coach,
daring to challenge them, got fired.
The scenario would seem to call for a John Waters kind of
treatment, with tons of fun sadism and salacious kitsch, and
51/92
Lifetime, within its sappy limits, delivers this—a corruption of
the uplifting-teacher plot. The outfits pop with outré color, and
the girl-on-girl violence is quite lively. Tatum O'Neal, having
developed into a fine camp figure, sells her performance as a
cheerleader mom (also the school's principal) whose main
concern about her daughter's boozing is that there's enough
tequila left over for her to make a decent margarita. Everyone
learns an important lesson in the end, of course, but the
naughtiness presented along the way intends to thrill.
The same dynamic is at work in True Confessions of a
Hollywood Starlet (Aug. 9 at 9 p.m. ET), which stars young pop
singer Joanna "JoJo" Levesque. It cannot be a coincidence that
Levesque's pinchable cheeks and squeezable chin closely
resemble those of Lindsay Dee Lohan. Her character, Morgan
Carter, is a hard-drinking movie star. In lieu of a proper stint in
rehab, Morgan takes refuge in Fort Wayne, Ind., which certainly
does sound sobering. Morgan's guardian is her aunt Trudy,
played by Valerie Bertinelli, who, with Meredith Baxter and
Judith Light, was a mainstay of the old Lifetime and thus serves
as a link between the network of old and this odd new thing,
which simultaneously celebrates glamour and valorizes us
regular folk.
The premise is that Morgan slips into a public high school
incognito, assuming an identity as just your average transfer
student and keeping up the ruse well into the film's second act.
That she's able to pull this off is an affront to the tabloid literacy
of kids today, but whatever; we get to cock our heads at the sight
of a Lohan figure enduring the taunts of mean girls and to play
along as she develops a crush on a thoughtful young man (She:
"You don't watch reality TV?!" He: "No, I read."). Just below
the surface of Hollywood Starlet, the only thing below the
surface, is the idea that a glossy kind of victimology—one that
tweens and twentysomethings might want a vicarious jolt of—is
ascendant. Morgan has been abused by the entertainment
industry. Tune in!
And how do you follow that? With a flick that seems to be titled
Confessions of Go-Go Girl (Aug. 16 at 9 p.m. ET). Are these
confessions, in contrast to the starlet's, not true? Absolutely,
given their utter implausibility. The setting is Chicago—that
urban atrium in the heartland—where lives Jane McCoy. Oh, the
prim plainness of that Jane! She's graduated from college to find
herself bored with the upper-bourgeois life determined for her by
her prissy parents and ratified by her preppy boyfriend. She
chucks law school on the eve of matriculation because she needs
to express herself and so enrolls in acting school, supporting
herself with a job at a department store. But spritzing perfume
does not pay the bills. Lugging her pragmatic backpack around
campus one day, Jane meets a wanton-eyed minx with a 10gallon handbag. This is Angela, who is hustling the head-shot
skills of her no-good photographer boyfriend and who ultimately
explains that Jane can earn great gobs of dough by working the
stage at a "go-go club." She doesn't even have to take off her
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
underthings at this establishment! Doing so is forbidden,
moreover!
Jane yields to temptation, choosing "Dylan" (with its touch of
the rebel poetess) as her stage name, doffing and donning outfits
evocative of schoolgirls and farmers' daughters (for that whiff of
spoiled innocence). It is not my place to inform anyone's
unworldly wife of what adult entertainment consists of, but
c'mon. Nowadays, go-go dancing exists as an entr'acte at
burlesque shows and as an amusement at nightclubs. If there
exist venues where men give scads of cash and pledges of ardor
to female performers who do not remove their brassieres, then I
would like to know where they are, so as not to lurch
erroneously into one.
The concept is perplexing enough to inspire the thought that "gogo girl" here stands as a euphemistic metaphor for more
plausibly lucrative types of sex work. But then you get to the
scene where the heroine buys an inappropriately racy dress to
wear to her brother's wedding, and the possibility slinks into
view that Jane/Dylan's situation speaks to the generic nightmare
of parents that their little girls will become fast women—and
also to the generic daydream of every well-raised daughter of
looser inhibitions and tighter skirts. Go-Go Girl, in its synthesis
of cautionary tale and very soft-core porn, represents the essence
of the new Lifetime movie. It's a guilty pleasure with a
traditional sense of shame.
the chat room
The Bush Problem
John Dickerson takes readers' questions about how McCain should handle his
ties to the president.
Thursday, July 31, 2008, at 3:02 PM ET
Slate political correspondent John Dickerson was online on
Washingtonpost.com to chat with readers about John McCain's
campaign and how the candidate should handle President Bush
at the Republican convention. An unedited transcript of the chat
follows.
John Dickerson: Hello everyone. Lots happening in politics
today. I look forward to your questions.
_______________________
Alexandria, VA: Thanks very much for attending this chat.
With the initial disclosure that I am an avid Dem, may I ask
whether you think there would be value for the Dem
spokespeople to entirely stop referring to McCain, and instead
adopt the style of "Bush-McCain," as in "the Bush-McCain
52/92
position," the "Bush-McCain platform," etc? And would it be
harmful to Obama to start doing that himself as well?
John Dickerson: Very good question. It's already happening.
The Obama campaign has been doing this for some time and
they'll keep at it until December. Clinton did this in 96 tying
Dole to Newt Gingrich.
_______________________
San Diego, CA: How long until we see a 527 ad with the creepy
McCain-Bush hug photo?
John Dickerson: You don't have to wait for a 527. The hug (and
the kiss) were in Obama's first ad hitting McCain.
_______________________
New York: John, hope you can take an early question. I agree
Bush is unpopular, but don't the GOP stalwarts at the convention
comprise that 20 percent who still like him? Thanks.
John Dickerson: Yes the convention folk still like Bush
(although at 65% his approval among Republicans is low). So
McCain has to be careful. He can't look like he's casting Bush
aside. There will be lots of talk of his effective response to 9/11
and then they'll try to talk about popular Republicans like
Arnold.
_______________________
Washington, D.C.: Will Slate be doing an Obama/Carter thing
like this? When Carter was president...unemployment was
double what it is now and we were literally being take hostage
all over the world. Seems like a more astute comparison,
considering their policy similarities.
John Dickerson: Nice try! There may be similarities but we're
talking about a nearly 30 year gap. As a political matter the link
to Bush is rather obvious and therefore of greater peril to the
nominee whose party leader is at very low approval ratings. That
isn't to say McCain didn't try to link Obama to Carter, but he
ultimately dropped the idea because it didn't work.
_______________________
Kingston, Ontario: Mr. Dickerson: No matter what McCain's
original intentions were, it seems he is being forced back into the
standard GOP playbook. The opponent cannot be trusted
because 1. he is un-American, too concerned about foreigners,
etc. 2. he is a defeatist, doesn't support the troops, etc. 3. he will
raise taxes, believes that the government should be involved in
the economy, etc. These charges have been highly successful in
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
the past. Is there any reason to think they won't be again?
Regardless of the actual facts of the case, they cater to an
entrenched mindset.
John Dickerson: You've got a very good point. They might
work again (though Obama's offbase charge about racism dilutes
his more reasonable claims that McCain has been making a
series of baseless claims recently). But I wrote last week why
this is a problem for McCain: 1. His brand was supposed to be
more high-minded. Let's see if independents bolt because of this
new harsher attack. 2. People are sick of this kind of
campaigning. McCain will be seen as the slasher and people will
forget Obama took the first swings (which he did).
_______________________
Northvillle, N.Y. : Okay, an obvious question, but I'm sure
others want to know: what does he do with the real president,
Cheney? Prime time? Middle of the night? Other?
John Dickerson: I don't know what they do with Cheney.
McCain's not a big fan of Cheney's so maybe they send him
hunting.
_______________________
Champaign, Ill.: Hello Mr. Dickerson. Thank you for your
great pieces at Slate. The recent polls baffle me. What effect can
we expect the conventions to have on the candidates' (as of late,
seemingly stagnant) popularity? Will they both receive bumps
and cancel each other out, remaining strangely close in the
national polls? Or will the visual difference between McCain's
convention troubles that you describe here and Obama's
stadium-sized victory speech lead to starker differences in
popularity?
John Dickerson: The polls baffle me too. They should. It's too
early. People are paying attention but not making up their minds
much, I don't think. In a lot of ways the polls haven't moved or if
they have the movement has been somewhat meaningless—
statistical blips or the result of low information voters picking up
on the latest ad they've seen. A lot of people out there are
undecided. Having said that, and adding normal pound of salt:
Some things I'd like to know the answer to. The swing of
independents to McCain in FL? Is that about drilling? Also, 17%
of D's say they'd vote for McCain only 9% of R'say they'd pick
Obama. I thought McCain had the base problem.
_______________________
New York: Bush is accused of damaging the Republican Party
and diminishing its chances at gaining either the presidency or a
majority in congress, but I have the feeling that he really doesn't
care—and that he never really did care. If this is true, what does
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he care about? Only his legacy? Or did 9/11 completely obscure
any other issues/beliefs for him? Thanks.
John Dickerson: I think he does care about his party and his
legacy. He thinks his legacy will be peace in the Middle East
through a free Iraq. He thinks he'll be proven right after he's
dead. On politics though, he used to talk about an entire
generation of people who would go into the Republican Party
saying " I am a Bush Republican," the way they did with
Reagan.
_______________________
St. Paul, Minn.: Hi John—Thank you for taking questions
today. It's always good to hear your insights on Washington
Week as well. My question is a little broader than the
convention, but somewhat related. It's clear that Sen. McCain,
despite promises to do things differently than Bush, is adopting
Bush's playbook in terms of the campaign so far (going after
Sen. Obama on character issues—witness the "skipped visit with
the troops" ad, the "Obama is too famous to be president" ad). Is
it your sense that, this time around, these tactics are not being
well-received? And even if that's the case, might they still work
well enough to hurt Obama?
John Dickerson: Hey, thanks for watching Washington Week,
the show in which I somehow can't talk at less than 100 mph. I
think these attacks do damage to a candidate with what we might
call a nontraditional résumé, but McCain has a big downside I
think. He can't talk about Straight Talk when he's been running
the ads he has.
_______________________
Crestwood, N.Y.: Thanks for the article; I was wondering about
this myself. Since the attendees are mostly big fans of Bush, I
would think he'll give a valedictory talking about how he saved
us from another attack and made the tough choices, blah blah
blah with no apologies. A Giuliani speech; 911 all the time.
Anything else would be hugely out of character—can't you hear
"My Way" playing in the background already? My question is
how the nets and cable will cover it, or if they will cover it at all
live.
Also, has McCain taken on so many Rove people, neocons and
federalistas at this point that the strategy regarding the Bush
appearance won't necessarily be that of the candidate, but one
made by loyal Bushies? The guy currently calling the shots, who
is behind all these crypto-racist ads, is from the Rove family; the
former McCain advisers have been shunted to the side.
John Dickerson: I haven't seen a single ad that fits this
description or comes close.
_______________________
NYC: Bush had several heavy handed domestic policies that
mostly failed (Social Security, immigration). How much do you
think it hurts McCain that he's more of the same?
John Dickerson: Interesting question. SS was a huge failure.
People didn't want it. For a time, the country did want
"comprehensive immigration reform." McCain is all over the
map on these two issues. He was for SS reform and has talked
about it recently (getting in trouble with his base for appearing to
countenance a payroll tax increase). On immigration he's moved
around some but still ticks off huge portions of his base because
he supported what they called amnesty.
St. Paul, Minn.: John,
_______________________
Love your reporting keep up the good work!!
Do you think it's possible President Bush won't even speak at the
convention? His approval ratings are as low as Nixon's, but
didn't have the "benefits of resigning" (as you mentioned in your
piece). Could these ratings cause McCain's campaign to ask him
not to show? What do they have to lose, especially after the bad
summer McCain has had thus far? If Bush does speak at the
convention, will this be the first time a sitting President will
significantly hurt his own party's nominee by giving a
convention speech? Looking forward to my hometown being the
center of the storm.
John Dickerson: He can't duck out now. It's on the schedule and
the WH has announced it.
Re: Bush's 20 percent: His base, his supporters will be there.
Will we see a convention dedicated to them or to the TV
audience that checks in for about 5 minutes a night, 3 times
during the week?
John Dickerson: The convention is all about the TV audience.
_______________________
St. Louis: Is the Presidential race actually closer than the polls
indicate. The reason I ask is I work as a door greeter at a large
"box" store, and the only Obama campaign buttons I see are
worn only by African-Americans. Seems like even "yellow dog"
white Democrats are hesitant about their support. Or, is my
impression wrong?
_______________________
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
54/92
John Dickerson: Hard to say where the race is. It's a horrible
year for Republicans so McCain should be in worse shape. But
people still have doubts about Obama. McCain is trying to
increase those doubts. Here's the question though: when people
pay attention to Obama will they buy in. That's what happened
in many places during the primaries. He was stuck in July 07 and
then he took off—slowly up up he went.
_______________________
Pure Cynicism: Do something that temporarily worked for
Clinton when the Lewinsky stuff was supposed to be first
breaking: Find a new country to bomb, so he gets called away
from the convention. How's that work out?
Re: St. Louis: The example of "buy-in" I've seen bandied about
is the 1980 example. Carter and Reagan were even going into
the debates, where neither side really 'won' but people overcame
their doubts. So far, it seems like people lean Obama but have
doubts rather than are split between Obama-McCain.
John Dickerson: Yes, this example has gotten lots of play.
Makes sense to me except for the fact that these historical
analogies usually have one huge flaw which we don't discover
until after the analogy breaks down. The alternative is
Ford/Carter. Carter was up by a big margin but then Ford
chipped away and only barely lost because people were worried
about Carter's untestedness.
_______________________
John Dickerson: My former colleague Hugh Sidey used to joke,
quoting a Johnson adviser during Vietnam: "we need a new
war." Not a joke any more...
_______________________
Helena, Montana: President Bush has recently given us
numerous glimpses of his sense of rhythm and tap dancing skills.
I suggest giving him a 4 or 5 minute slot (and a company of
backup dancers) to star in a well-produced number ala the Tony
or Grammy Award shows.
This could be construed as below the US President's dignity, but
it would be a fitting swan song... and party conventions are all
about theatre these days anyway.
John Dickerson: There might be dancers outside the arena
during the speech to distract from it.
_______________________
Alexandria, Va.: I would just like to comment that it would be a
mistake to disrespect the President in any way. Even though his
approval ratings are very low, there is a core group of people
that really love President Bush. It's amazing to me how high his
approval ratings were after 9/11, but then when having to make
the tough decisions to prevent another 9/11 many people change
their opinions completely. This is the price you pay by not being
a poll driven President. Unlike Bill Clinton who didn't kill Bin
laden when he had the chance for fear or what the rest of the
world would think.
John Dickerson: I don't think there will be any disrespect. I just
think the McCain camp will do everything short of putting an
enormous book on page and actually having the candidate turn
the page.
_______________________
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Green Bay, Wisc.: It seems that the latest Republican scandals
(Sen. Stevens, in particular, but also the embezzlement mess
with the Republican committees, etc.) have been breaking in
time to affect the convention. How will they avoid the glow of
indictments and inquiries affecting their big show?
John Dickerson: By holding it in the dark? It's a problem. The
Republican brand is a mess.
_______________________
Ashland, Mo: The most popular regular TV program is
American Idol, which is seen by less than 15 percent of the
population. Even fewer people watch the evening news.
Newspaper circulation is declining. Few people read many
books. This isn't the '60s (or even '70s or '80s) any more. Is it
possible political reporters and politicians assume more people
are paying attention than actually are? That, in fact, politicallyoriented people now live in a bubble or echo chamber instead of
the "real" world?
John Dickerson: You can never go wrong questioning whether
we all live in a bubble. I think people aren't paying much
attestation-- certainly not now. But I think conventions play out
in local papers and on the national news in a way the normal day
to day doesn't play out. So I think conventions can punch
through. Also, team Obama can work hard to make it stick.
_______________________
Baltimore: Love the Republican effort to tie Obama to Carter.
Not only is Carter's administration ancient history for those 40
and under, but Carter (1) named Paul Volcker Fed chief with the
mandate to choke off inflation, which Volcker did after years of
its rise under Nixon/Ford (2) forged a still extant piece between
Israel and Egypt after those countries had fought 3 wars and (3)
correctly prophesied the coming energy crisis and actually began
substantive work on alternative energy sources by the federal
55/92
government, all of which were undone by the Reagan
administration.
I would say that wasn't a bad record for four years. The fact is, if
the Iranian hostage rescue had worked, Carter would have had a
second term and Reagan would not have gotten 200 plus
Marines blown to bits in Beirut.
John Dickerson: You make a good case though I think Obama
won't make that case. He's also got to keep his distance from
Carte on the Israel question. I wonder what they'll do with Carter
actually. The hero of the convention will be Kennedy, if he's
well enough, Carter' 80 primary opponent.
_______________________
Odessa ,Tx: Put a sack over his head & duct tape his
mouth?
John Dickerson: The Secret Service discourages this behavior.
_______________________
John Dickerson: Okay everyone, I'm off. Thanks very much for
your questions.
the green lantern
Are Revolving Doors More Energy
Efficient?
What about the ones that turn automatically?
By Jacob Leibenluft
Tuesday, July 29, 2008, at 11:51 AM ET
My office building just had its entryway refurbished. Now,
we have a huge revolving door flanked by two regular,
swinging doors. I heard somewhere that revolving doors are
supposed to make heating and air conditioning more
efficient. Is that true, or can I use the regular doors guiltfree?
_______________________
Harrisburg, Pa.: I was just sitting at the bar with some of my
fellow Pennsylvanians, debating whether today to turn to God or
to our Gods to get out of our dispair, when we saw the new
commercial where Britney Spears and Paris Hilton support
Obama. We realized that if Britney Spears and Paris Hilton,
whom we presume are Republicans, can support Obama, then
Obama must not be all that bad afterall.
John Dickerson: I hear many people do still drink at lunch.
_______________________
Seattle, WA: Somewhat cynically, is there a way for Bush to
speak in a way that's only covered by Fox News or other
conservative outlet? That'd be my pick.
John Dickerson: I think it would only happen if Bush held up
the Fox logo. It'll be interesting to see what the networks do
though. Will they carry the president live?
_______________________
Dallas, Tx: Are there any updates on Debates or Co-Hosted
Town Halls? Is it going to be a restrictive as 2004?
John Dickerson: There are supposed to be 4 debates but that'll
shrink and the town hall idea seems dead for the moment. The
Obama team kinda dinked out on it though part of the current
back and forth is about whether the idea will come back
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Right now, it's 71 degrees Fahrenheit in the Lantern's Manhattan
office and 87 degrees outside. It takes a lot of electricity to cool
this entire office building by 16 degrees—but it would take even
more if people didn't use the two large revolving doors between
the building lobby and the hot sidewalk outside.
Generally speaking, air flows in and out of a building because of
differences in air pressure. (In the winter, heated air rises toward
the top of a building, and—as long as there are any openings on
the ground floor—cold air rushes in to replace it. The opposite
happens in the summer, with the cold air flowing out the front
doors.) Regular foot traffic in a large office building can result in
air leaks of up to 30,000 cubic feet per minute.
That presents a challenge for engineers: How do you allow
people and things to move in and out of a building while
minimizing unwanted air flow? The revolving door was
presented as a solution for this age-old problem more than 100
years ago, long before anyone was talking about carbon
footprints or global warming. (The primary purpose, according
to the original patent application—filed by one Theophilus Van
Kannel of Philadelphia—was to prevent the "entrance of wind,
snow, rain or dust.") A revolving door isn't airtight (PDF), but
the barrier it creates makes the impact of that air pressure
differential less important. Every time the door spins, some air
will leave the building and some will come in, but overall, much
less passes.
How big a difference can using a revolving door make? In 2006,
a team of graduate students at MIT conducted an analysis of
door use in one building on campus, E25, where they found just
56/92
23 percent of visitors used the revolving doors. According to
their calculations, the swinging door allowed as much as eight
times more air to pass through the building than the revolving
door. Applying average Boston weather to their equations, the
MIT team found that if everyone used the revolving doors, it
would save more than 75,000 kilowatt-hours of energy—about
1.5 percent of the total required to heat and cool the building—
and prevent 14.6 tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted.*
(By way of comparison, the EPA says an average American
vehicle emits about six tons of carbon dioxide over a year.) The
gains are also big enough that they could easily cover the energy
needed to power an automatic revolving door like this one,
which has a 250-watt motor.
So, how do you get people to use revolving doors? The MIT
group didn't come up with an obvious answer. They were able to
increase revolving-door usage by putting up signs, but the rates
at E25 never rose above 63 percent (PDF). (A sign that politely
asked people to use the door turned out to be more effective than
one detailing the energy savings.)
Here's the good news: The research team found that in another
building on campus—one where a simple and polite sign had
long been posted before researchers started tracking door
usage—revolving-door use was higher than anywhere else on
campus, even after those signs were taken down. And the MIT
team also noticed that there appeared to be a snowball effect—
once one person used a revolving door, other people often
followed, particularly since it required less force to push
through. That's a particularly good finding given that the gains
from using the revolving door aren't linear: You save much more
energy by raising usage from 50 percent to 75 percent than you
would by raising it from 25 percent to 50 percent.
Of course, buildings need to provide options besides revolving
doors for people in wheelchairs, parents with strollers, or anyone
carrying an unwieldy load. But if you can help it, it makes sense
to forget holding the door open for someone and take them for a
spin instead.
Is there an environmental quandary that's been keeping you up at
night? Send it to ask.the.lantern@gmail.com, and check this
space every Tuesday.
*Correction, July 29, 2008: The original story incorrectly said
that using the revolving door would save about 74 percent of the
energy needed to heat and cool Building E25 on MIT's campus.
Using the revolving door would save about 1.5 percent of the
total energy required to heat and cool the entire building, and
about 74 percent of the total energy required to heat and cool
the air exchanged when people pass in and out of the building.
(Return to the corrected sentence.)
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
the has-been
Romneymania
Could he be the first completely programmable running mate?
By Bruce Reed
Tuesday, July 29, 2008, at 12:51 PM ET
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Trader Mitt: As if John McCain didn't have enough
reason to keep quoting JFK's line that life isn't fair,
consider this: According to the political futures
markets, Mitt Romney now has a better chance of
being McCain's running mate than McCain has of
winning.
Since the primaries, Romney has steadily gained
ground in the VP sweepstakes through hard work
and a disciplined message: He'll help on the
economy, he grew up in the swing state of
Michigan, and he makes his current home in the
right wing of the Republican Party. He seems at
ease with the unattractive chores of being the vicepresidential nominee: raising money, playing the
attack dog, telling the base what it wants to hear.
On paper, Romney's VP bid looks as picture perfect
as his presidential campaign once did. Yet even as
Mitt watchers revel in the current boomlet, we
can't help wondering whether this Romneymania
will last.
With that in mind, Romneystas everywhere need to
start making new and urgent arguments on his
behalf:

The French Are Coming!: Romney was
widely mocked last fall when he warned that
France posed a clear and present danger to
the American way of life. But after watching
French President Nicolas Sarkozy embrace
Barack Obama in Paris last week,
conservatives may finally warm to Mitt's
"First, Not France" slogan after all. Romney
has impeccable credentials as a
Francophobe; Sarkozy would never dream
of saying of him, "If he is chosen, then
France will be delighted." In a few short
hours in Paris, Obama claimed the president
as a convert. Romney spent two whole
years in France and converted no one
whatsoever.
57/92


Leave 'Em Laughing as You Go: One of
McCain's heroes, Mo Udall, loved to tell the
story of primary voters who heard him say,
"I'm Mo Udall and I'm running for
president," and responded, "We were just
laughing about that this morning." Poor Mo
wouldn't know what to make of this
campaign. Two months into the general
election, nobody's laughing about anything.
No one much wants to joke about Obama or
McCain. If Romney were the VP, pundits
across the spectrum would exult that at last
they had someone fun to mess with. He's a
good sport and a happy square, with a track
record of supplying ample new material.
WALL-E's World: Mitt Romney's Web site
is a shadow of its former self—no Five
Brothers blog, no ad contests, no
animatronic Mitt messages for your
voicemail. Yet like WALL-E's stash of
charming knickknacks, the few surviving
objects on Planet Romney carry greater
meaning. For example, a striking photo
highlights a strength few politicians reveal:
Unlike McCain, Mitt Romney was born to
read a teleprompter. In the official
campaign photo of him rehearsing his
concession speech, Mitt is barely visible. All
the focus is on the words in big type to be
loaded on the prompter.
McCain doesn't much like giving speeches and
treats teleprompters accordingly. But you can see
how a campaign that has struggled to follow a
script might be tempted by the first completely
programmable running mate. In 2000, McCain
often joked that he was Luke Skywalker. This time,
Romney could be his C3PO. ... 12:47 p.m. (link)
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Make My Day: What a difference a month makes.
At its June meeting, the D.C. City Council debated
Mayor Adrian Fenty's emergency legislation to ban
sparklers. After the Supreme Court struck down
the city's gun ban, the Council spent last week's
July meeting debating emergency legislation to let
residents own handguns. Here in the District, we
couldn't shoot off firecrackers over the Fourth
because they're too dangerous, but we can now
keep a loaded pistol by our bedside, ready to shoot
down prowlers in self-defense.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Like most D.C. residents, I have no plans to
stockpile guns in the wake of the Supreme Court
decision. But if the city wants to take away my
sparklers, they'll have to pry them from my cold,
dead, slightly charred hands.
When I was growing up, the rights to keep and
bear firearms and fireworks went hand in hand. My
grandmother used a revolver to shoot garter
snakes in her garden. Well into her eighties,
however, her greatest pleasure in life was to spend
the Fourth setting off massive strings of
firecrackers, 200 at a time. When she came to
visit, she'd step off the airplane with a suitcase full
of firecrackers purchased on an Indian reservation.
As soon as we got home, she'd light the fuse with
her cigarette, then squeal with delight as serial
explosions made the gravel in our driveway dance.
In recent years, firearm regulation and firework
regulation have gone their separate ways. The
National Rifle Association has successfully opposed
most gun laws, even ones aimed primarily at
criminals. Armed with Justice Scalia's maddeningly
unhelpful ruling on the D.C. ban, the NRA already
has begun to target the rest.
By contrast, although fireworks aren't nearly as
deadly as guns, the government treats them like
what they are – a widely popular, sometimes
dangerous American tradition. The federal
government long ago banned once-commonplace
explosives like cherry bombs. Most states – even
the libertarian bastion of Idaho – have banned or
restricted the use of firecrackers. According to the
website AmericanPyro, five states, including Iowa
and Illinois, permit only sparklers and snakes. Five
others, including New York and Massachusetts,
allow no consumer fireworks whatsoever. In general,
states insist that fireworks must be "safe and sane"
– a balance that has been all but impossible to
strike with firearms.
Thanks to the enduring power of pyromania, sales
haven't suffered. Since 1976, fireworks
consumption has increased ten-fold, while
fireworks-related injuries have dropped. Fireworks
manufacturers can take heart in knowing that this
year's survivors are next year's customers.
58/92
Because there is no Second Amendment right to
keep and bear sparklers, fireworks law is a
straightforward balancing test – between the
individual right to burn a hole in the back porch
and the mutual responsibility not to burn entire
communities to the ground, the personal freedom
to pyromaniacal self-expression and the personal
responsibility not to harm oneself and others.
These days, the fireworks industry has more to
fear from climate change than from the authorities.
This summer, the threat of wildfires led Arnold
Schwarzenegger to ask Californians to boycott
fireworks. Drought forced John McCain to forego
fireworks at his annual Independence Day
barbecue in Arizona.
The trouble with the Supreme Court ruling in the
Heller case is not that it interprets the Second
Amendment as an individual right. The Second
Amendment is the constitutional equivalent of the
grammatical paradox Eats Shoots & Leaves, but
whatever the Founders meant by its muddy
wording and punctuation, most Americans now
take it for granted. The real problem with the
Court's decision is that the balancing test for gun
rights and responsibilities is even less clear than
before. Scalia's opinion devotes 30 pages to a
grammatical history of the Second Amendment and
a single sentence to how the courts should apply it
to most other gun laws already on the books.
Alongside such vast imprecision, the Court went
out of its way to strike down the requirement for
trigger locks – an extraordinarily modest attempt
to balance freedom and safety. Trigger locks can
help prevent gun accidents and keep guns out of
the hands of children. Far from impeding selfdefense, new trigger locks can be unlocked with a
fingerprint or a special ring on the gun owner's
finger. That means today's gun owner can arm
himself to shoot an intruder in an instant –
compared to the 30 seconds or more it took to load
a pistol or musket in the 18th Century.
Over the long term, it's not clear how much of a
boon the Heller decision will be for gun rights
advocates. In winning the case, the gun lobby lost
its most potent argument – the threat that at any
moment, the government will knock on the door
and take your guns away. With that bogeyman out
of the way, the case for common-sense gun safety
measures is stronger than ever. Perhaps now the gun
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
debate will revolve around more practical and less
incendiary issues, like what can be done to reduce
illegal gun trafficking and trace guns used in
crimes.
If it's any small consolation, the real winners in
Heller may turn out to be the sparkler lobby. If
cities have trouble banning handguns, they will be
hard-pressed to take away sparklers. Of course, as
with guns, the threat to sparklers may well have
been exaggerated. The D.C. Council rejected Mayor
Fenty's sparkler ban by a vote of 11-2, as members
nostalgically recalled playing with them in their
youth. Councilman and former mayor Marion Barry
voted no "with a bang." As Barry knows, there are
worse things in life to light than a sparkler. ... 9:51
A.M. (link)
Friday, June 6, 2008
The Fight of Her Life: Ten years ago, at a White
House farewell for a favorite staff member, Hillary
Clinton described the two kinds of people in the
world: born optimists like her husband who see the
glass as half-full, and born realists like herself who
can see the glass is half-empty.
As she ends her campaign and throws her support
behind Barack Obama's remarkable quest, Hillary
could be forgiven for seeing her glass as, quite
literally, half-empty. The two candidates traded
primary after primary down the stretch, two titans
matching each other vote for vote. In the closest
race in the modern era, she and Obama split the
Democratic wishbone nearly right down the middle,
but she's not the one who got her wish.
Yet for Hillary and the 18 million of us who
supported her, there is no shame in one historic
campaign coming up just short against another.
History is a great deal wiser than Chris Matthews,
and will be kinder, too. The 2008 contest has been
one for the ages, and the annals will show that
Hillary Clinton has gained far more than she lost.
The Obama-Clinton match will go down as the
longest, closest, most exciting, most exhausting
ever. Obama ran an inspired campaign and seized
the moment. Clinton came close, and by putting up
a tough fight now, helped fortify him for the fight
ahead.
59/92
Our campaign made plenty of mistakes, none of
which has gone unreported. But Hillary is right not
to dwell on "woulda, coulda, shoulda." From New
Hampshire to South Dakota, the race she ran
earned its own place in the history books.
While the way we elect presidents leaves a lot to
be desired, it has one redeeming virtue, as the
greatest means ever invented to test what those
who seek the job are made of. In our lifetimes,
we'll be hard-pressed to find a candidate made of
tougher stuff than Hillary Clinton. Most candidates
leave a race diminished by it. Hillary is like
tempered steel: the more intense the heat, the
tougher she gets.
And has any candidate had to face fiercer, more
sustained heat? As a frontrunner, she expected a
tough ride, and as Hillary Clinton, she was
accustomed to it. But if she was used to the
scrutiny, she could not have anticipated – and did
not deserve – the transparent hostility behind it. In
much the same way the right wing came unglued
when her husband refused to die in the '90s, the
media lost its bearings when she defied and
survived them. Slate at least held off on its
noxious Hillary Deathwatch until March; most of
the press corps began a breathless Clinton
Deathwatch last Thanksgiving. The question that
turned her campaign around in New Hampshire –
"How do you do it?" – brought Hillary to tears out
of sheer gratitude that someone out there had
noticed.
For a few searing days in New Hampshire, we
watched her stare into the abyss. Any other
candidate forced to read her own obituary so often
would have come to believe it. But as she went on
to demonstrate throughout this campaign, Hillary
had faith that there is life after political death, and
the wherewithal to prove it.
In New Hampshire, she discarded the frontrunner
mantle and found her voice. For a race that was
largely won or lost in Iowa, the discovery came a
few days too late. But the grit Clinton showed with
her back to the wall all those months will make her
a force with a following for years to come.
The chief hurdle for Clinton's presidential bid
wasn't whether she could do the job; Democrats
never doubted she would make a good president.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Ironically, the biggest question she faced for much
of the race is one she answered clearly by the time
she left it: whether America was ready for a
woman president. No one asks that question any
longer. For all the sexism she encountered as the
first woman with a serious shot at the White
House, voters themselves made clear they were
ready. The longer the race went on, the more
formidable she looked in the general election. In
this week's CBS News poll, she was beating John
McCain by nine points, even as she was losing the
Democratic nomination.
Last year, the press and other campaigns insisted
that Clinton was too polarizing and that half the
country was united against her. Now, a woman
who was supposed to be one of the most polarizing
figures in America leaves the race with handsome
leads over McCain in places like North Carolina, a
state her husband never carried.
When her campaign started, aides often described
Hillary as the least known, least understood
famous person in America. During this campaign, it
became clear that in certain quarters she's the
most deliberately misunderstood person as well.
The recent RFK flap was yet another attempt to
suggest that her every miscue was part of some
diabolical master plan.
Yet while talking heads imagined the evils of Hillary
Clinton, voters finally came to know and
understand her. They saw someone who knew
what they were going through, who would stick
with them, fight for them, and get back up when
she got knocked down. The phony, consultantdriven shadow boxing of the last few years has
dulled Democrats to the party's historic mission –
to defend the values and stand up for the interests
of ordinary people who are doing all they can just
to get ahead. For those voters, Hillary Clinton was
the champion they've been looking for, a fighter
they can count on, win or lose, not to let them
down.
That's a fight she'll never quit. Like the woman in
New Hampshire, we still wonder how Hillary does
it, but this time, the tears are on us. As we wish
her well, our hopes are high, our hearts are full –
and if our glass is empty, it was worth every drop.
... 11:58 P.M. (link)
60/92
Friday, May 30, 2008
The Adventures of Bobble-Foot: For enough
money, any McClellan or Stephanopoulos in
Washington will write a kiss-and-tell book these
days. But the memoir Larry Craig just announced
he's writing could launch a whole new genre:
don't-kiss, don't-tell.
Craig revealed his plans on Boise television during
Tuesday's coverage of the Senate primary to
choose his potential successors. For the senator, if
not his viewers, it was a poignant moment, one
last point of no return in a three-decade-long
political career.
With a touch of empathy, the local reporter told
Craig, "You're looking forward now to a much
different life for yourself." Alas, the life Craig
described isn't much different from any other
retiring pol's, nor does he sound like he's looking
forward to it. He hinted that he is entertaining a
number of lobbying offers. Because of ethics rules,
he explains, "There are some one-way
conversations going on, 'cause I've said I can't
talk, but I certainly can listen." Perhaps they can
figure out some kind of code.

These are heady times for the Idaho senator. Last
Sunday, on National Tap Dance Day, the first-place
St. Paul Saints, a minor league baseball team,
drew their biggest crowd of the year with a special
promotion in Craig's honor: a bobble-foot doll
commemorating the bathroom stall at MinneapolisSt.Paul airport. The team website reported, "Saints
Have Toe-Tapping Good Time, Win 9-3."
The bobble-foot promotion gave Craig a way to
test his market value even beyond the lobbying
and book worlds. Scores of Craig bobble-feet are
now available on eBay, selling for upwards of $75
apiece. You'd better hurry: Like successful appeals
of uncoerced confessions, supplies are limited.

The upcoming memoir may be the last we ever
hear from the man, so it's worth asking: What kind
of book will Larry Craig write? Consider the
possibilities:

The Broken Branch: Left to his own devices
(never a good idea), Craig seems likely to
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

write an insiders' version of the woe-isgridlock lament popularized most recently
by political scientists Norm Ornstein and
Tom Mann. "The thing that's important for
someone with my experience to talk about
is the state of politics in Washington," Craig
said Tuesday. "It's created what I call a
extremely dysfunctional, hyperpartisan
Senate. We're getting little to nothing
done." Craig cites immigration and energy
policy. As his agent and editor will surely
tell him, this sober approach is not the way
for Craig to put his best foot forward. No
one wants to read the case for decisive
action written by a man who claimed his
innocence after pleading guilty and
remained in office after promising to quit.
Then again, Craig might not be a household
word if he had listened to the advice of
Ornstein and Mann, who urged members to
bring their families to live with them in
Washington.
The Packwood Diaries: With slight
modifications, Craig has modeled his entire
Senate career after his friend, former
Oregon Sen. Bob Packwood. Craig sobbed on
the Senate floor the day Packwood resigned.
Packwood dug in his heels and remained in
office for three years after his sex scandal
became public. Craig has done the same,
and is only leaving because his term is up.
Considering how much Packwood served as
his role model, it's possible that Craig tried
to emulate another part of the Oregonian's
legacy: the Packwood diaries. Packwood
kept a meticulous journal of all his exploits,
with an eye to history and none on the
lookout for satire or federal prosecution. We
can only hope Craig has done the same.
What Happened: Every publisher is looking
for the next Scott McClellan, who told lies
for a living but was scared straight after his
escape. Craig could play this role with
gusto. The pitch: It wasn't his idea to stand
up in front of the press time after time and
insist he wasn't gay. Karl Rove made him do
it, in a deliberate cover-up to protect the
Republican brand – and he'll never forgive
Rove for it.
If I Did It: O.J. Simpson never got to keep a
dime of his controversial book, If I Did It:
Confessions of the Killer. Craig, on the other
61/92
hand, could hypothesize all the way to the
bank. Senators love to write loosely
autobiographical fiction. Gary Hart and Bill
Cohen wrote The Double Man about a
politician who wanted to be president.
Barbara Boxer wrote A Time to Run about a
woman who becomes a liberal senator from
California. Craig could write a great book
about an imaginary conservative senator
who happens to be gay. His hypothetical
musings would wow the critics and sell like
crazy. Besides, what does Craig have to
lose? Hinting he did it would be no more an
admission of guilt than the misdemeanor
plea he was just kidding us about last June.
... 8:48 P.M. (link)
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Mr. Romney's Neighborhoods: Mitt Romney has
a new motto: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. In
the past two months, he has transformed himself
from John McCain's sharpest critic to one of his
most active surrogates. For more than a year,
Romney traveled the country talking up his
chances of becoming president. Now he coyly
downplays any chance of gaining the vicepresidential nod.
On Saturday, we learned of another surprising
reversal. In mid-May, the state Supreme Court
voted to allow same-sex marriage in California.
This weekend, news leaked that Romney has
decided to buy a house there. With property in
Massachusetts and California as well as New
Hampshire and Utah, the crusader who once
warned his son that Democrats would usher in
same-sex marriage now owns homes in two of the
eight jurisdictions on earth that allow it.
Diane Bell of the San Diego Union-Tribune—who
began her column Saturday with the immortal
words "Mitt Romney is in escrow"—sparked a rush
of rumors by asking: "Could Romney be planning
to establish residency in California with an eye on
the governor's seat? Gov. Schwarzenegger is
forced out by term limits in 2010. Stay tuned ..."
If Romney wanted to buy into a slumping market,
his timing couldn't be better. San Diego real estate
prices are down 18 percent from a year ago,
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
making even La Jolla beachfront a bargain. When
Schwarzenegger's term runs out, the California
Republican Party will likewise be the political
equivalent of a vacant lot.
Romney's staff quickly shot down any Golden State
ambitions. A spokesman told the Associated Press,
"Governor Romney has been looking at property on
the West Coast because he has family in California,
and because his wife, Ann, spends a good deal of
time there riding horses." The AP noted that son
Matt lives in San Diego, "while son Josh lives in
Salt Lake City." That's 750 miles away—less than a
month's ride on horseback!
Romney spent the weekend at John McCain's
Western getaway with other vice-presidential
hopefuls. The La Jolla purchase gives him one
more advantage over the rest of the field: He now
brings the most undisclosed secure locations.
This isn't the first time homeownership has
emerged as an important theme for Romney. When
he ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, he
had to amend his tax returns, which showed he
had actually been a resident of Utah. His
presidential bid made much of his vacation home
on Lake Winnipesaukee, but a second home in New
Hampshire wasn't enough to save him after he lost
the first caucus in Iowa. If Romney had bought a
summer place in Cedar Rapids instead, he might be
the presumptive nominee today. Then he could
have been the one to invite prospective running
mates to spend Memorial Day weekend at his
home, wherever that might be.
Last week, Mitt launched a new campaign vehicle,
Free and Strong America PAC, which is backing
candidates like … John McCain. He even has his
own blog. While it's a far cry from the Five
Brothers Blog, the Mitt blog brings welcome news
of how they're doing. Ben is expecting his first
child, Craig his second, Josh his fourth. Matt had
his fourth a few months ago. Clearly, the Romney
boys have put their blogging days behind them.
Remarkably, the Romney plan seems to be
working. While housing prices plunge, Mitt vicepresidential futures are soaring. On Tuesday,
Romney stock hit its highest price on Intrade in six
weeks, moving into first place ahead of Minnesota
Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
62/92
Why the rebound? One of Romney's greatest
weaknesses may also be his greatest strength:
He's always making up for his last mistake. When
Politico asked leading Republicans how to save
their party, Romney had the best answer: new
ideas, a better agenda, and "a very clear set of
principles."
The GOP is in trouble if Mitt Romney is its go-to
guy for principle. But if a house on your block is for
sale, you have to admit: He'd make a great
neighbor. ... 9:53 a.m. (link)
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
On the Rocks: After years of comparing
illegitimacy rates around the world—which were
low in Italy, moderate in Germany, and
astronomical in the United States—Sen. Pat
Moynihan used to joke that out-of-wedlock birth
rates increase in direct proportion to distance from
the Vatican. Now another member of the New York
delegation has gone out of his way to confirm
Moynihan's theory. Vito Fossella Jr.'s office is a
long way from Rome.
Moynihan offered an even more prescient
explanation of Fossella's behavior in his famous
essay "Defining Deviancy Down." Citing a
sociologist's rationalization that "the number of
deviant offenders a community can afford to
recognize is likely to remain stable over time,"
Moynihan feared a vicious cycle of what another
New Yorker, Fred Siegel, dubbed "moral
deregulation": The more people bend the rules, the
further some will go in bending them.
Human weakness may be a renewable resource,
but public attention is not—so, no matter how
many cads live in the tri-state area, only the most
shameless can make the front page of the tabloids.
According to the tabloids, Rep. Fossella's troubles
began in December 2002, when he fell for Air Force
legislative liaison Laura Fay on a junket to Malta.
The Daily News marvels that their union could take
root on such rocky soil: "Malta is not an obvious
place for a love affair to flourish. Not unlike Staten
Island, it tends to be a conservative place."
Of course, in those days, so was the House of
Representatives. Speaker Dennis Hastert himself
led that congressional delegation to Malta. The
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
following summer, Hastert took Fossella and Fay
along on another European junket. One person on
the trip told the Daily News that the affair became
an open secret in Spain, somewhere near the
Alhambra. The newspaper claims that "word about
the affair spread, and Republican officials soon
became concerned, fearing it would be exposed,
sources said." The tabloid implies that the Air Force
dropped Fay as a legislative liaison because she
was a little too good at it.
Obviously, Vito Fossella's personal life is not Dennis
Hastert's fault. Perhaps the speaker had his nose in
a guidebook or was rereading Washington Irving's
classic Tales of the Alhambra. (Unexplored tabloid
angle: The namesake for Irving's most famous
character, Ichabod Crane, is buried on Staten
Island—just like Fossella's political career.)
Moreover, once you've accepted the ethics of
congressional leaders and Pentagon staffers taking
taxpayer-funded fact-finding missions to the tourist
capitals of Europe, you don't have to be above the
legal blood alcohol limit to have trouble seeing any
bright lines.
Still, the leadership's avoidance and denial in this
case is eerily similar to the last great House
Republican sex scandal, involving former Florida
Rep. Mark Foley. A House ethics committee
investigation determined that Hastert's chief of
staff, Scott Palmer, learned of Foley's page
problem in 2002 or 2003, the same period as
Fossella's budding romance. The House leadership
did nothing about it. As the ethics committee
report declared, "A pattern of conduct was
exhibited among many individuals to remain
willfully ignorant."
In time, those years may be remembered as the
Era of Willful Ignorance. Mark Foley was busy
IMing House pages. Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed
were busy e-mailing each other. Tom DeLay was
busy hounding the FAA to track down Texas
Democratic legislators who had flown to Oklahoma.
Today's New York Post reports that Scott Palmer,
the Hastert aide, knew about the Fossella-Fay
problem, too. He did something but not about the
wayward congressman. Instead, Palmer called the
Pentagon and reported Fay for unprofessional
behavior. "I lost confidence in her and I'm not
going to kid you," Palmer told the Post. "I was also
63/92
concerned with this other relationship thing. It
didn't look like it should."
Five years later, Republicans no doubt wish their
leaders had lost confidence in Fossella after the
Alhambra instead of waiting for the mistress, love
child, and DUI. But as Pat Moynihan warned,
there's a limit to the number of ethically deviant
members any community can afford to recognize
at one time. … 10:52 a.m. (link)
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Three's Company: For Democrats who still can't
decide between Clinton and Obama, a third
candidate has put his name on the ballot in the
Idaho primary later this month. Keith Russell Judd
is pro-choice, opposes No Child Left Behind, wants
to end the war in Iraq, and once bowled a 300
game. There's just one catch: he's an inmate at a
federal prison in Beaumont, Texas, and won't get
out until 2013.
Two decades ago, Idaho nearly re-elected a
congressman who was on his way to prison. So
perhaps it was only a matter of time before
someone already in prison would see Idaho as a
springboard to the White House.
Asked how a federal prisoner could qualify for the
ballot, Idaho Secretary of State Ben Ysursa told the
press, "We got conned." The state recently
eliminated the requirement for candidates to
gather signatures; now they just need to fill out a
form and pay a $1,000 fee. According to the
Spokane Spokesman-Review, Keith Judd sent
forms and checks to 14 states, but only Idaho put
his name on the ballot.
Judd isn't the only out-of-state candidate on the
primary ballot. Hal Styles Jr. of Desert Hot Springs,
California, who has never been to Idaho, is seeking
the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. For all
the heartache and suffering that Larry Craig has
caused the state, his arrest and subsequent
humiliation have done wonders for candidate
recruitment. Far from frightening people away,
Craig has lowered the bar so much that even
hardened criminals think they could win there.
Judd's 35-year membership in the NRA might give
him an edge with some Idaho voters. But the road
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
from Beaumont to Denver is a tough one. Idaho
already selected its delegates in caucuses on Super
Tuesday. The May 27 primary is just a beauty
contest, and Judd seems to be going for the Willie
Nelson look.
Even in a year when come-from-behind victories
have become the norm, a come-from-behind-bars
campaign requires exceptional resourcefulness.
Judd used a Texas newspaper tip line as the phone
number for his campaign office, and an IRS line in
Ohio as the number for his campaign coordinator.
He paid the $1,000 with a U.S. Treasury check
drawn on his prison account.
Although no one has contributed to his campaign,
Judd diligently files a handwritten FEC report every
quarter. The FEC database shows Judd for
President with $532,837 in total receipts, $11,285
in total expenditures, and an impressive $387,561
in cash on hand. With more than half a million in
receipts, Judd's reported total exceeds that of Mike
Gravel, who is practically a household name. The
Huckabee and Giuliani campaigns would have done
anything to match Judd's figure for cash-on-hand.
Running for president isn't a habit Judd picked up
in prison, where he has spent the past decade
since being convicted of making threats at the
University of New Mexico. He has been running for
office his whole life. He ran for mayor of
Albuquerque in the early '90s, and tried to run for
governor. He sought the presidency in 1996, 2000,
and 2004 – when he won 3 write-in votes. He has
filed more than 70 FEC reports going all the way
back to 1995.
Judd has shown the same persistence in the
courts, firing off appeals at a faster clip than Larry
Craig. In 1999, after receiving a dozen frivolous
cert petitions from Judd, the U.S. Supreme Court
barred him from filing any more non-criminal
claims unless he paid the required fees. In 2005,
the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals prepared an order
noting that Judd had filed "at least 70 frivolous,
duplicative and repetitive actions in this Court." By
the time the order was issued, that number had
reached 82.
Idaho has a long history of embracing maverick
long shots, and Judd's iconoclastic background and
platform won't hurt. He passes the Mickey Kaus
64/92
test on welfare reform but not immigration. He
favors eliminating all federal taxes so "the
government can operate on its own self produced
money." He wants to require gun licensing but let
people carry concealed weapons. He says his
national security views are "classified," but his Iraq
position is "withdraw ASAP and forget it."
Judd plays the bass and bongos, belongs to the
ACLU and the NRA, and admires JFK and Nixon. His
nicknames are "Mr. President" and "Dark Priest,"
and his favorite athlete is a professional bowler.
Bowling is hardly the rage in Idaho: In a fitting
tribute to Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's famous
theory of social alienation, my hometown turned
the bowling alley into a self-storage complex. Still,
Judd's rivals can only envy his claim to have once
bowled a perfect game.
Idaho pundits, who've had their fill of national
attention, cringe over Judd's candidacy. "Jailbird
Makes Us Look Silly," wrote the Ketchum Idaho
Mountain Express. Others around the country note
the irony that a felon can run but can't vote. The
Illinois State University student newspaper, the
Daily Vidette, defended Judd's right to run, but
warned voters and party leaders not to support
him: "All superdelegates should save their
endorsements for candidates with a real shot."
At one particularly low moment of the 1988
campaign, a news crew tracked down Willie Horton
and found out that if he weren't behind bars, he
would vote for Dukakis. Give Keith Judd credit for
passing up the chance to endorse Obama or
Clinton, and running against them instead. ...
12:28 a.m. (link)
Monday, April 21, 2008
Running With the Big Dogs: While Hillary Clinton
and Barack Obama deflected Charlie Gibson's
question about running together, last week was a
big one for Democrats' other dream ticket: any
Republican pairing that includes Mitt Romney. With
a well-received cameo at a national press dinner
and nods from Great Mentioners like George H.W.
Bush and Karl Rove, Mitt is back—and campaigning
hard for the No. 2 slot.
When John McCain wrapped up the Republican
nomination back in February, the odds against
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
picking Romney looked long indeed. The two spent
the entire primary season at each others' throats.
Romney trashed McCain over "amnesty" for illegal
immigrants; McCain joked that Romney's many
flip-flops proved he really was "the candidate of
change." Even Rudy Giuliani, not known for making
peace, chimed in from Florida that McCain and
Romney were "getting kind of nasty," implying that
they needed to come chill with him at the beach.
Sure enough, after a little time off, Romney felt
better—good enough to begin his vice-presidential
audition. He went on Fox to say, "There really are
no hard feelings." He interrupted his vacation in
Utah to host a fundraiser for McCain. After months
of dismissing McCain as a Washington insider,
Romney flip-flopped and praised him as a longtime
congressional champion of Reaganism. Lest anyone
fail to notice, Romney confessed that he would be
honored to be McCain's running mate, and
practiced ripping into the potential Democratic
nominees: "When it comes to national security,
John McCain is the big dog, and they are the
Chihuahuas."
Of course, any big dog should think twice before
agreeing to a long journey with Mitt Romney. The
past would not be easy for McCain, Romney, and
their staffs and families to overcome. Before New
Hampshire, McCain's alter ego, Mark Salter, called
Romney "a small-varmint gun totin,' civil rights
marching, NRA-endorsed fantasy candidate." After
the primaries were over, Josh Romney suggested
that the Five Brothers wouldn't be gassing up the
Mittmobile for McCain anytime soon: "It's one thing
to campaign for my dad, someone whose principles
I line up with almost entirely," he told the Deseret
News. "I can't say the same thing for Sen.
McCain."
For Mitt Romney, that won't be a problem: Any
grudge would vanish the instant McCain named
him as his running mate. And by the Republican
convention in September, Romney's principles will
be due for their six-month realignment.
The more difficult question is, What's in it for
McCain? Actually, Romney brings more to the
ticket than you might think. As in any partnership,
the key to happiness between running mates is a
healthy division of labor. When Bill Clinton and Al
Gore teamed up in 1992, Clinton had spent most of
65/92
his career on the economy, education, health care,
and other domestic issues; Gore was an expert on
national security, the environment, and
technology. Even the Bush-Cheney pairing made
some sense: Bush cared only about squandering
the surplus, privatizing Social Security, and
running the economy into the ground; Cheney was
more interested in hoarding executive power,
helping narrow interests, and tarnishing America's
image in the world.
So, McCain and Romney are off to a good start:
They come from different backgrounds and share
no common interests. McCain, a soldier turned
senator, prefers national security above all else. As
a former businessman and governor, Romney
rarely brings up foreign policy—for reasons that
sometimes become apparent when he does so. In
his concession speech, Romney said he was
dropping out to give McCain a united front against
Obama, Clinton, and Bin Laden. "In this time of
war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of
aiding a surrender to terror," he said. "We cannot
allow the next president of the United States to
retreat in the face of evil extremism!!"
For the general election, the McCain campaign
must decide what to do with conservative positions
it took to win the Republican primaries. Here again,
Romney is a godsend: a vice-presidential candidate
who'll flip-flop so the nominee doesn't have to. No
one can match Romney's experience at changing
positions: He has been on both sides of abortion,
talked out of both sides of his mouth on same-sex
marriage, and been for and against his own health
care plan. It's a market-based approach to
principle—just the glue Republicans need to
expand their coalition. Moderates might assume
Romney was only pretending to be conservative,
and conservatives will thank him for trying.
Straight talk is all well and good for presidential
candidates. But as Dick Cheney demonstrated, the
job of a Republican vice-presidential candidate is
quite the opposite—keeping a straight face while
saying things that couldn't possibly be true. Take
the economy, for example. McCain gets visibly
uncomfortable whenever he ventures beyond fiscal
conservatism. Romney is more flexible. In an
interview with National Journal last week, he had
no trouble contending that corporate tax cuts help
the middle class. He spent the primaries warning
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
that the United States was on a slippery slope to
becoming the next France. Now he's perfectly
happy to argue that we have to cut corporate taxes
to keep companies from moving to France.
In his surprise appearance at the Radio &
Television Correspondents dinner in Washington
last week, Romney showed another virtue that
makes him perfect for the role—a vice-presidential
temperament. With his "Top 10 Reasons for
Dropping Out," he proved that he is ready to poke
fun at himself on Day 1.
A vice president needs to be good at selfdeprecation, yet not so skilled that he outshines
the boss. By that standard, Romney's audition was
perfect: He chose good material ("There weren't as
many Osmonds as I had thought"; "As a lifelong
hunter, I didn't want to miss the start of varmint
season") and delivered it just awkwardly enough to
leave the audience wondering whether to laugh or
feel slightly uncomfortable.
After watching him up close in the primaries, Team
McCain no doubt harbors real reservations about
Romney. Some conservatives distrust him so
much, they're running full-page ads that say, "NO
Mitt." A Google search of John McCain, Mitt
Romney, and food taster produces more than 100
entries.
But looking ahead to a tense fall campaign, McCain
should put those concerns aside and listen to
voices from across the spectrum. This could be the
issue that unites the country across party lines.
Democrats like a little fun at Mitt Romney's
expense. The McCain camp does, too—perhaps
more so. And after last week, we know that—ever
the good sport—even Romney's all for it. ... 2:14
p.m. (link)
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Twist and Shout: When the news broke last
August that Larry Craig had been arrested in a
restroom sex sting, he had a ready answer: The
Idaho Statesman made him do it. He claimed that
the Statesman's monthslong investigation into
whether he was gay made him panic and plead
guilty. Otherwise, he said, he feared that what
happened in Minneapolis might not stay in
66/92
Minneapolis, and the Statesman would make sure
the voters of Idaho found out.
which might have staved off the Statesman
investigation before it got started.
Craig's jihad against the Statesman didn't go over
too well in Idaho, where people are more likely to
read the newspaper in the restroom than worry
about it afterward. On Monday, the Statesman was
named a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in
Breaking News Reporting for what the committee
called "its tenacious coverage of the twists and
turns in the scandal involving the state's senator,
Larry Craig."
Craig's latest revelation undermines his defense in
another way as well. If he is telling the truth that
he had made up his mind not to run before his
arrest, that would be the best explanation yet for
why he risked putting himself in a position to get
arrested. Eliot Spitzer's re-election prospects
plunged long before he got caught, too.
The story took yet another strange twist and turn
this week. For the past six months, the entire
political world has been wondering why Craig
promised to resign when the scandal broke, then
changed his mind a few days later. In a rare
interview Wednesday with the congressional
newspaper the Hill, Craig finally found someone to
blame for staying in the Senate: The people of
Idaho made him do it.
According to the Hill, Craig said "support from
Idahoans convinced him to reverse his pledge to
resign last year." This was news to most Idaho
voters, who have viewed the whole affair with
shock, outrage, embarrassment, and dismay. But
Craig didn't stop there. The Hill reports that he also
said his decision not to run for re-election "predated the controversy."
Last fall, Craig stunned Idahoans by insisting he
was not gay, not guilty, and not leaving. Now he
says it's our fault he never left, he was leaving
anyway, and if he's not running, it's not because
we don't believe him when he says he's not guilty
and not gay.
Unfortunately, Craig's latest explanation casts
some doubt on the excuse he gave last fall. If he
had already decided long ago that he wasn't
running for re-election, he had less reason to panic
over his arrest, and much less to fear from voters
finding out about it back home. In September, he
made it sound as if he pled guilty to a crime he
didn't commit to avoid a political firestorm back
home. If politics were of no concern, he had every
reason to fight the charges in court. For that
matter, if he was so sure he wouldn't run again, he
could have announced his decision early last year,
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Nothing can fully explain why public figures like
Craig and Spitzer would flagrantly risk arrest. But
we can rule out political suicide if they'd already
decided their political careers were over. ... 3:55
p.m. (link)
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
B.Looper: Learned reader Kyle Sammin recalls
that Idaho's Marvin "Pro-Life" Richardson has
nothing on 1998 Tennessee State Senate candidate
Byron "Low-Tax" Looper. Besides changing his
name, Looper also murdered his opponent. Under
Tennessee law, the names of dead candidates are
removed from the ballot. So even though he was
quickly charged with homicide, Looper nearly ran
unopposed. The victim's widow won a last-minute
write-in campaign. Looper was sentenced to life in
prison.
Bloopers: The Pittsburgh Pirates are now the most
mediocre first-place team in baseball history. In
their season opener Monday night against Atlanta,
the Bucs provided plenty of evidence that this year
will turn out like the last 15. They blew a five-run
lead in the ninth by walking four batters and
booting an easy fly ball. Pirate players said they'd
never seen anything like it, not even in Little
League. For an inning, it looked like the team had
gone on strike to demand more money.
But to every Buc fan's surprise, the Pirates won,
anyway—12-11 in 12 innings—and with no game
Tuesday, Pittsburgh has been above .500 for two
glorious days. New General Manager Neal
Huntington e-mailed me on Monday to promise
that the team's new regime is determined to build
an organization that will make the people of
Pittsburgh proud again. That might take a while.
For now, we're content to make the people of
67/92
Atlanta feel really embarrassed. ... 1:35 p.m.
(link)
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Danger Is My Middle Name: Outgoing Senator
Larry Craig can take consolation in one thing: out
in Idaho, everyone wants his seat. Fourteen
candidates have filed to run for the Senate,
including eight Republicans, two Democrats, two
Independents, and a Libertarian. Hal Styles Jr. of
Desert Hot Springs, California, entered the
Republican primary, even though he has never
been to Idaho. "I know I'll love it because, clean
air, clean water and many, many, many
mountains," he says. "My heart, my mind, my
body, my soul, my thoughts are in this to win."
The general election will likely be a rematch between former
Democratic congressman Larry LaRocco and Republican Lt.
Gov. (and former governor) Jim Risch. If Idahoans find those
two insufficiently embarrassing, however, a number of fringe
candidates have lined up to take Craig's place. According to CQ,
one Independent, Rex Rammel, is a former elk rancher who is
angry that Risch ordered state wildlife officials to shoot some of
his elk that got away. The Libertarian, Kent A. Marmon, is
running against "the ever-expanding Socialist agenda" he claims
is being pushed by Democratic congressmen like John Dingell.
But by far the most creative third-party candidate is Marvin
Richardson, an organic strawberry farmer who went to court to
change his name to "Pro-Life." Two years ago, he made that his
middle name and tried to run for governor as Marvin "Pro-Life"
Richardson. State election officials ruled that middle names
couldn't be used to make a political statement on the ballot. As
plain old Marvin Richardson, he won just 1.6% of the vote.
Now that "Pro-Life" is his full name, the state had to let him run
that way on the ballot. He told the Idaho Press-Tribune that with
the name change, he should win 5%. He plans to run for office
every two years for as long as he lives: "If I save one baby's life,
it will be worth it."
As the Press-Tribune points out, Pro-Life is not a single-issue
candidate, but has a comprehensive platform. In addition to
abortion, he opposes "homosexuality, adultery, and fornication."
He wants the pro-life movement to refer to abortion as "murder,"
although he has not yet insisted pro-choice candidates change
their name to that.
Idaho Republicans and anti-abortion activists don't share ProLife's enthusiasm. They worry that conservative voters will
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
check the box next to both Pro-Life and the Republican
candidate, thereby spoiling their ballots. So last week, the Idaho
Secretary of State persuaded both houses of the legislature to
pass emergency legislation to clarify that "voters are casting a
vote for a person and not a political proposition." Under the
legislation, candidates who appear to have changed their names
to "convey a political message" will be outed on the ballot as "a
person, formerly known as …." The Prince Bill will go to the
governor for signature this week.
According to the Associated Press, Pro-Life accuses legislators
of "trying to legislate intelligence"—a charge not often hurled at
the Idaho legislature. "The people that vote for me are more
intelligent than to have something defined in legislation like
this," he says.
Of course, Idahoans who really want to make a political
statement will still be able to outsmart the Prince Bill. Nothing
in the legislation prohibits Idaho parents who feel strongly about
issues from naming their children Pro-Life or Pro-Gun at birth.
For that matter, Marvin Richardson has changed his name so
many times that if he changes it again, the ballot might have to
describe him as "a person formerly known as 'Pro-Life.'" Or he
could just change his name to Mitt Romney.
On the other hand, Republicans and Democrats alike can breathe
a sign of relief over another unintended effect: the new law foils
Larry Craig's best strategy for a comeback. Before the law, Craig
could have changed his name to "Not Gay" and won in a
landslide. "A person formerly known as Not Gay" is more like it.
... 5:27 p.m. (link)
Friday, Mar. 28, 2008
We Are Family: Midway through the run-up to the
next primary, the presidential campaigns are
searching for fresh ways to reach the voters of
Pennsylvania. My grandparents left Pittsburgh
more than 80 years ago, so my Pennsylvania roots
are distant. But I still think I can speak for at least
half the state in suggesting one bold proposal we
long for every April: a plan to rescue one of the
most mediocre teams in baseball history, the
Pittsburgh Pirates.
Granted, the nation faces more urgent crises. But
in hard times, people often look to sports for
solace. To blue-collar workers in taverns across
western Pennsylvania, watching the Pirates lose
night after night is as predictably grim as the Bush
economy. The lowly Bucs are the reigning
disappointment in the world of sport—with a
batting average that seems pegged to the dollar
68/92
and prospects of victory in line with the war in
Iraq.
The Pittsburgh franchise hasn't finished above .500
since 1992. If, as universally predicted, the Pirates
turn in their 16th consecutive losing season this
year, they will tie the all-time frustration record for
professional sport set by the Philadelphia Phillies in
the 1930s and '40s.
Pittsburgh is still a proud, vibrant city, which has
rebounded handsomely from losses far more
consequential than the Pirates'. The once-proud
Pirates, by contrast, show plenty of rust but no
signs of recovery. In 1992, the team was an inning
away from the World Series, when the Atlanta
Braves scored three runs in the bottom of the ninth
to steal Game 7 of the National League
Championship Series. The Braves soon moved to
the NL East en route to winning 14 consecutive
division titles, the longest in sports history. The
Pirates moved from the East to the Central and
began their soon-to-be-record-setting plunge in
the opposite direction.
On Monday, the Pirates return to Atlanta for
Opening Day against the Braves. Baseball analysts
no longer give a reason in predicting another lastplace Bucco finish. This year, the Washington Post
didn't even bother to come up with a new joke.
Last season's Post preview said:
Blech. This Pirates team is so
mediocre, so uninteresting, so
destined for last place, we don't
know if we can squeeze another
sentence out of it for this capsule
we're being paid to write. But
here's one. … The Pirates haven't
had a winning season since
1992, and that streak will
continue this year. That's still not
long enough? Well, here's
another line! Hey—two sentences
in one line! Make that three! And
here's another! See how easy
that is?
This year, the same Post analyst wrote:
Okay, folks, here's the deal: We
need to fill precisely 4.22
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
column-inches of type with
information about the faceless,
tasteless Pirates, and as usual
we're not sure we can do it. But
guess what? We're already at .95
inches, and we're just getting
started! Wait—make that 1.19
inches. ... Should they finish
below .500 again (and let's be
honest, how can they not?), they
will tie the Phillies of 1933-48 for
the most consecutive losing
seasons. (By the way, that's 3.53
inches, and we haven't even had
to mention new manager John
Russell, Capps's promise as a
closer or the vast potential of the
Snell-Gorzelanny duo.) There:
4.22 inches. Piece of cake."
So now the Pirates even hold the record for
consecutive seasons as victims of the same bad
joke.
Pittsburgh faces all the challenges of a smallmarket team. Moreover, as David Maraniss pointed
out in his lyrical biography, Clemente, the first love
for Pittsburgh fans has long been football, not
baseball. These days, no one can blame them.
Seven years ago, in a desperate bid to revive the
Pirates' fortunes, the city built PNC Park, a
gorgeous field with the most spectacular view in
baseball. From behind home plate, you can look
out on the entire expanse of American economic
history—from the Allegheny River to 1920s-era
steel suspension bridges to gleaming glass
skyscrapers.
The result? As Pittsburgh writer Don Spagnolo
noted last year in "79 Reasons Why It's Hard To Be
a Pirates Fan," Pittsburgh now has "the best
stadium in the country, soiled by the worst team."
(The Onion once suggested, "PNC Park Threatens
To Leave Pittsburgh Unless Better Team Is Built.")
Spagnolo notes that the city already set some kind
of record by hosting baseball's All-Star game in
1994 and 2006 without a single winning season in
between.
Although the Pirates' best player, Jason Bay, is
from Canada, if Pittsburgh fans have suffered
69/92
because of trade, the blame belongs not to NAFTA
but to an inept front office. Jason Schmidt, now
one of the top 100 strikeout aces in history, was
traded to the Giants. Another, Tim Wakefield, left
for the Red Sox. Franchise player Aramis Ramirez
was dealt to the Cubs. When owners sell off
members of a winning team, it's called a fire sale.
The Pirates have been more like a yard sale. In
2003, when the Cubs nearly made the Series, the
Pirates supplied one-third of their starting lineup.
never let you down, the Pittsburgh Pirates could be
your team, too. ... 12:06 p.m. (link)
In the early '80s, an angry fan famously threw a
battery at Pirate outfielder Dave Parker. Last June,
fans registered their frustration in a more
constructive way. To protest more than a decade of
ownership mismanagement, they launched a Web
site, IrateFans.com, and organized a "Fans for
Change" walkout after the third inning of a home
game. Unfortunately, only a few hundred fans who
left their seats actually left the game; most just
got up to get beer.
Conservative blogger Michael Medved of Townhall
offers a long list of reasons why Craig doesn't need
to go as urgently as Spitzer did. He finds Craig less
hypocritical ("trolling for sex in a men's room,
doesn't logically require that you support gay
marriage"), much easier to pity, and "pathetic and
vulnerable" in a way Spitzer is not. Liberal blogger
Anonymous Is a Woman counters that while Craig
and Louisiana Sen. David Vitter remain in office, at
least Spitzer resigned.
This year, fans are still for change but highly
skeptical. In an online interview, the new team
president admitted, "The Pirates are not in a
rebuilding mode. We're in a building mode." One
fan asked bitterly, "How many home runs will the
'change in atmosphere' hit this season?"
Warning, much political baggage may look alike.
So, party labels aside, who's the bigger hypocrite?
Certainly, a politician caught red-handed
committing the very crimes he used to prosecute
can make a strong case for himself. In his
resignation speech, Spitzer admitted as much:
"Over the course of my public life, I have insisted, I
believe correctly, that people, regardless of their
position or power, take responsibility for their
conduct. I can and will ask no less of myself."
I've been a Pirate fan for four decades—the first
glorious, the second dreary, the last two a long
march from despair to downright humiliation. In
more promising times, my wife proposed to me at
Three Rivers Stadium, where we returned for our
honeymoon. On the bright side, the 2001 implosion
of Three Rivers enabled me to find two red plastic
stadium seats as an anniversary present on eBay.
Our children live for baseball but laugh at our
Pirate caps—and, at ages 12 and 14, haven't been
alive to see a winning Pirate season. Yet like so
many in western Pennsylvania, I've been a Pirate
fan too long to be retrained to root for somebody
else.
After 15 years, we Bucs fans aren't asking for
miracles. We just want what came so easily to the
pre-2004 Red Sox, the post-1908 Cubs, and the
other great losing teams of all time: sympathy.
Those other teams are no longer reliable: The Red
Sox have become a dynasty; 2008 really could be
the Cubs' year. If you want a lovable loser that will
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Thursday, Mar. 13, 2008
Craigenfreude: In a new high for the partisan
divide, a mini-debate has broken out in far-flung
corners of the blogosphere on the urgent question:
Who's the bigger hypocrite, Larry Craig or Eliot
Spitzer?
Moreover, for all the conservative complaints about
media bias, the circumstances of Spitzer's fall from
grace ensure that tales of his hypocrisy will
reverberate louder and longer than Craig's. Already
a media star in the media capital of the world, he
managed to destroy his career with a flair even a
tabloid editor couldn't have imagined. Every detail
of his case is more titillating than Craig's—call girls
with MySpace pages and stories to tell, not a lone
cop who won't talk to the press; hotel suites
instead of bathroom stalls; bank rolls instead of
toilet rolls; wide angles instead of wide stances; a
club for emperors, not Red Carpet.
Spitzer flew much closer to the sun than Craig, so
his sudden plunge is the far greater political
tragedy. No matter how far his dive, Craig couldn't
make that kind of splash. You'll never see the
headline "Craig Resigns" splashed across six
70/92
columns of the New York Times. Of course, since
he refuses to resign, you won't see it in the Idaho
Statesman, either.
Yet out of stubborn home-state chauvinism, if
nothing else, we Idahoans still marvel at the level
of hypocrisy our boy has achieved, even without all
the wealth, fame, and privilege that a rich New
Yorker was handed on a silver platter. Many
Easterners think it's easy for an Idahoan to be
embarrassing—that just being from Boise means
you're halfway there.
We disagree. Craig didn't grow up in the center of
attention, surrounded by money, glamour, and all
the accouterments of hypocrisy. He grew up in the
middle of nowhere, surrounded by mountains.
When he got arrested, he didn't have paid help to
bring him down. No Mann Act for our guy: He
carried his own bags and did his own travel.
Larry Craig is a self-made hypocrite. He achieved
his humiliation the old-fashioned way: He earned
it.
Unlike Spitzer, who folded his cards without a fight,
Craig upped the ante by privately admitting guilt,
then publicly denying it. His lawyers filed yet
another appellate brief this week, insisting that the
prosecution is wrong to accuse him of making a
"prehensile stare."
While it's admittedly a low standard, Craig may
have had his least-awful week since his scandal
broke in August. A Minnesota jury acquitted a man
who was arrested by the same airport sting
operation. Craig didn't finish last in the Senate
power rankings by Congress.org. Thanks to
Spitzer, Craig can now tell folks back home that
whatever they think of what he did, at least they
don't have to be embarrassed by how much he
spent. In fact, he is probably feeling some
Craigenfreude—taking pleasure in someone else's
troubles because those troubles leave people a
little less time to take pleasure in your own.
Like misery, hypocrisy loves company—which, for
both Spitzer and Craig, turned out to be the
problem. But Spitzer was right to step down, and
Craig should long ago have done the same. Politics
is a tragic place to chase your demons. ... 5:30
p.m. (link)
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Wednesday, Mar. 5, 2008
All the Way: As death-defying Clinton comebacks
go, the primaries in Ohio and Texas were very
nearly not heart-stopping enough. On Monday,
public polls started predicting a Clinton rebound,
threatening to spoil the key to any wild ride:
surprise. Luckily, the early exit polls on Tuesday
evening showed Obama with narrow leads in both
do-or-die states, giving those of us in Clinton World
who live for such moments a few more hours to
stare into the abyss.
Now that the race is once again up for grabs, much
of the political establishment is dreading the
seven-week slog to the next big primary in
Pennsylvania. Many journalists had wanted to go
home and put off seeing Scranton until The Office
returns on April 10. Some Democrats in
Washington were in a rush to find out the winner
so they could decide who they've been for all
along.
As a Clintonite, I'm delighted that the show will go
on. But even if I were on the sidelines, my reaction
would have been the same. No matter which team
you're rooting for, you've got to admit: We will
never see another contest like this one, and the
political junkie in all of us hopes it will never end.
It looks like we could get our wish—so we might as
well rejoice and be glad in it. A long, exciting race
for the nomination will be good for the Democratic
Party, good for the eventual nominee, and the ride
of a lifetime for every true political fan.
For the party, the benefits are obvious: By making
this contest go the distance, the voters have done
what party leaders wanted to do all along. This
cycle, the Democratic National Committee was
desperate to avoid the front-loaded calendar that
backfired last time. As David Greenberg points out,
the 2004 race was over by the first week of
March—and promptly handed Republicans a full
eight months to destroy our nominee. This time,
the DNC begged states to back-load the calendar,
even offering bonus delegates for moving primaries
to late spring. Two dozen states flocked to Super
Tuesday anyway.
Happily, voters took matters into their own hands
and gave the spring states more clout than party
71/92
leaders ever could have hoped for. Last fall, NPR
ran a whimsical story about the plight of South
Dakota voters, whose June 3 contest is the last
primary (along with Montana) on the calendar.
Now restaurateurs, innkeepers, and vendors from
Pierre to Rapid City look forward to that primary as
Christmas in June.
But the national party, state parties, and Sioux
Falls cafes aren't the only ones who'll benefit.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the biggest
beneficiaries of a protracted battle for the
nomination are the two contestants themselves.
Primaries are designed to be a warm-up for the
general election, and a few more months of spring
training will only improve their swings for the fall.
summer. They didn't sign on to spend the spring in
Scranton and Sioux Falls. But, like the rest of us,
they wouldn't miss this amazing stretch of history
for anything. ... 11:59 p.m. (link)
Monday, Feb. 25, 2008
Hope Springs Eternal: With this weekend's
victory in Puerto Rico and even more resounding
triumph over the New York Times, John McCain
moved within 200 delegates of mathematically
clinching the Republican nomination. Mike
Huckabee is having a good time playing out the
string, but the rest of us have been forced to get
on with our lives and accept that it's just not the
same without Mitt.
And let's face it: These two candidates know how
to put on a show. Both are raising astonishing
sums of money and attracting swarms of voters to
the polls. Over the past month, their three headto-head debates have drawn the largest audiences
in cable television history. The second half of last
week's MSNBC debate was the most watched show
on any channel, with nearly 8 million viewers. An
astonishing 4 million people tuned in to watch
MSNBC's post-debate analysis, an experience so
excruciating that it's as if every person in the Bay
Area picked the same night to jump off the Golden
Gate Bridge.
But soft! What light through yonder window
breaks? Out in Salt Lake City, in an interview with
the Deseret Morning News, Josh Romney leaves
open the possibility that his father might get back
in the race:
The permanent campaign turns out to be the best
reality show ever invented. Any contest that can
sustain that kind of excitement is like the World
Series of poker: The value of the pot goes up with
each hand, and whoever wins it won't be the least
bit sorry that both sides went all-in.
That's not much of an opening and no doubt more
of one than he intended. But from mountain to
prairie, the groundswell is spreading.
Endorsements are flooding in from conservative
bloggers like this one:
No matter how it turns out, all of us who love
politics have to pinch ourselves that we're alive to
see a race that future generations will only read
about. Most campaigns, even winning ones, only
seem historic in retrospect. This time, we already
know it's one for the ages; we just don't know
how, when, or whether it's going to end.
Even journalists who dread spending the next
seven weeks on the Pennsylvania Turnpike have to
shake their heads in wonderment. In the lede of
their lead story in Wednesday's Washington Post,
Dan Balz and Jon Cohen referred to "the
remarkable contest" that could stretch on till
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Josh Romney called speculation
that his father could be back in
the race as either a vice
presidential candidate or even at
the top of the ticket as the GOP's
presidential candidate "possible.
Unlikely, but possible."
Mitt Romney was not my first
choice for a presidential
candidate, but he came third
after Duncan Hunter and Fred
Thompson. … I would love to see
Mitt reenter the race.
Even if re-entry is too much to hope for, Josh hints
that another Romney comeback may be in the
works. He says he has been approached about
running for Congress in Utah's 2nd District.
That, too, may be an unlikely trial balloon. Josh is
just 32, has three young children, and would face a
Democratic incumbent, Rep. Jim Matheson, who is
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one of the most popular politicians in the state.
Matheson's father was a governor, too. But unlike
Mitt Romney, Scott Matheson was governor of
Utah.
If Mitt Romney has his eye on the No. 2 spot, Josh
didn't do him any favors. "It's one thing to
campaign for my dad, someone whose principles I
line up with almost entirely," he told the Morning
News. "I can't say the same thing for Sen.
McCain."
Even so, Romney watchers can only take heart that
after a year on the campaign trail, Josh has
bounced back so quickly. "I was not that upset," he
says of his father's defeat. "I didn't cry or
anything."
In his year on the stump, Josh came across as the
most down-to-earth of the Romney boys. He
visited all 99 of Iowa's counties in the campaign
Winnebago, the Mitt Mobile. He joked about his
father's faults, such as "he has way too much
energy." He let a Fox newswoman interview him in
the master bedroom of the Mitt Mobile. (He showed
her the air fresheners.) He blogged about the
moose, salmon, and whale he ate while
campaigning in Alaska—but when the feast was
over, he delivered the Super Tuesday state for his
dad.
As Jonathan Martin of Politico reported last
summer, Josh was campaigning with his parents at
the Fourth of July parade in Clear Lake, Iowa,
when the Romneys ran into the Clintons. After Mitt
told the Clintons how many counties Josh had
visited, Hillary said, "You've got this built-in
campaign team with your sons." Mitt replied, to
Ann's apparent dismay, "If we had known, we
would've had more."
We'll never know whether that could have made
the difference. For now, we'll have to settle for the
unlikely but possible hope that Mitt will come back
to take another bow. ... 4:13 p.m. (link)
Monday, Feb. 11, 2008
Face Time: When Ralph Reed showed up at a
Romney fundraiser last May, Mitt thought he was
Gary Bauer – perpetuating the tiresome stereotype
that like some Reeds, all Christian conservatives
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
look alike. Now, in Mitt's hour of need, Ralph is
returning the favor. According to the Washington
Times, he and 50 other right-wing leaders met with
Romney on Thursday "to discuss the former
Massachusetts governor becoming the face of
conservatism."
Nothing against Romney, who surely would have
been a better president than he let on. But if he
were "the face of conservatism," he'd be planning
his acceptance speech, not interviewing with Ralph
Reed and friends for the next time around.
Conservatives could not have imagined it would
end this way: the movement that produced Ollie
North, Alan Keyes, and ardent armies of true
believers, now mulling over an arranged marriage
of convenience with a Harvard man who converted
for the occasion. George Will must be reaching for
his Yeats: "Was it for this … that all that blood was
shed?"
For more than a year, Republican presidential
candidates tried to win the Reagan Primary. Their
final tableau came at a debate in the Gipper's
library, with his airplane as a backdrop and his
widow in the front row. It was bad enough to see
them reach back 20 years to find a conservative
president they could believe in, but this might be
worse: Now Romney's competing to claim he's the
biggest conservative loser since Reagan. If McCain
comes up short like Gerald Ford, Mitt wants to
launch a comeback like it's 1976.
Even conservative leaders can't hide their
astonishment over finding themselves in this
position. "If someone had suggested a year ago
and a half ago that we would be welcoming Mitt
Romney as a potential leader of the conservative
movement, no one would have believed it,"
American Conservative Union chairman David
Keene reportedly told the group. "But over the last
year and a half, he has convinced us he is one of
us and walks with us."
Conservative activist Jay Sekulow told the
Washington Times that Romney is a "turnaround
specialist" who can revive conservatism's fortunes.
But presumably, Romney's number-crunching skills
are the last thing the movement needs: there are
no voters left to fire.
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To be sure, Mitt was with conservatives when the
music stopped. Right-wing activists who voted in
the CPAC straw poll narrowly supported him over
McCain, 35% to 34%. By comparison, they favored
getting out of the United Nations by 57% to 42%
and opposed a foreign policy based on spreading
democracy by 82% to 15%. Small-government
conservatism trounced social conservatism 59% to
22%, with only 16% for national-security
conservatism.
As voters reminded him more Tuesdays than not,
Mitt Romney is not quite Ronald Reagan. He
doesn't have an issue like the Panama Canal. Far
from taking the race down to the wire, he'll end up
third. While he's a good communicator, many
voters looking for the face of conservatism couldn't
see past what one analyst in the Deseret News
described as the "CEO robot from Jupiter.'"
If anything, Romney was born to be the face of the
Ford wing of the Republican Party – an economic
conservative with only a passing interest in the
other two legs of Reagan's conservative stool. Like
Ford, Mitt won the Michigan primary. He won all
the places he calls home, and it's not his fault his
father wasn't governor of more states.
Romney does have one advantage. With a
conservative president nearing historic lows in the
polls and a presumptive nominee more intent on
leading the country, heading the conservative
movement might be like running the 2002
Olympics – a job nobody else wants.
Paul Erickson, the Romney strategist who
organized the conservative powwow, called
McCain's nomination "an existential crisis for the
Republican Party," and held out Mitt as a possible
Messiah: "You could tell everybody at the table
sitting with Romney was asking himself: 'Is he the
one?'"
Romney has demonstrated many strengths over
the years, but impersonating a diehard
conservative and leading a confused movement out
of the wilderness aren't foremost among them. It
might be time for the right to take up another
existential question: If conservatism needs Mitt
Romney and Ralph Reed to make a comeback, is
there enough face left to save? ... 3:37 p.m. (link)
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Thursday, Feb. 7, 2008
Romney, We Hardly Knew Ye: When Mitt
Romney launched his campaign last year, he struck
many Republicans as the perfect candidate. He was
a businessman with a Midas touch, an optimist with
a charmed life and family, a governor who had
slain the Democratic dragon in the blue state
Republicans love to hate. In a race against national
heroes like John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, he
started out as a dark horse, but to handicappers,
he was a dark horse with great teeth.
When Democrats looked at Romney, we also saw
the perfect candidate—for us to run against. The
best presidential candidates have the ability to
change people's minds. Mitt Romney never got that
far because he never failed to change his own mind
first.
So when Romney gamely suspended his campaign
this afternoon, there was heartfelt sadness on both
sides of the aisle. Democrats are sorry to lose an
adversary whose ideological marathon vividly
illustrated the vast distance a man must travel to
reach the right wing of the Republican Party.
Romney fans lose a candidate who just three
months ago led the polls in Iowa and New
Hampshire and was the smart pick to win the
nomination.
With a formidable nominee in John McCain, the
GOP won't be sorry. But Romney's farewell at the
Conservative Political Action Committee meeting
shows how far the once-mighty right wing has
fallen. In an introduction laced with barbs in
McCain's direction, Laura Ingraham's description of
Mitt as "a conservative's conservative" said all
there is to say about Romney's campaign and the
state of the conservative movement. If their last,
best hope is a guy who only signed up two years
ago and could hardly convince them he belonged,
the movement is in even worse shape than it
looks.
Had Romney run on his real strength—as an
intelligent, pragmatic, and competent manager—
his road to the nomination might have gone the
way of Rudy Giuliani's. Yet ironically, his eagerness
to preach the conservative gospel brought on his
demise. Romney pandered with conviction. He
even tried to make it a virtue, defending his
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conversion on abortion by telling audiences that he
would never apologize for being a latecomer to the
cause of standing up for human life. Conservatives
thanked him for trying but preferred the genuine
article. In Iowa, Romney came in second to a true
believer, and New Hampshire doesn't have enough
diehards to put him over the top.
Romney's best week came in Michigan, when a
sinking economy gave him a chance to talk about
the one subject where his party credentials were in
order. In Michigan, Romney sounded like a 21stcentury version of the business Republicans who
dominated that state in the '50s and '60s—proud,
decent, organization men like Gerald Ford and
George Romney. As he sold his plan to turn the
Michigan economy around, Mitt seemed as
surprised as the voters by how much better he
could be when he genuinely cared about the
subject.
By then, however, he had been too many things to
too many people for too long. McCain was
authentic, Huckabee was conservative, and
Romney couldn't convince enough voters he was
either one.
Good sport to the end, Romney went down
pandering. His swansong at CPAC touched all the
right's hot buttons. He blamed out-of-wedlock
births on government programs, attacks on
religion, and "tolerance for pornography." He got
his biggest applause for attacking the welfare
state, declaring dependency a culture-killing poison
that is "death to initiative."
Even in defeat, he gave glimpses of the Mitt we'll
miss—the lovably square, Father Knows Best figure
with the impossibly wholesome family and perfect
life. He talked about taking "a weed-whacker to
regulations." He warned that we might soon
become "the France of the 21st century." He
pointed out that he had won nearly as many states
as McCain, but joked awkwardly with the
ultraconservative audience that he lost "because
size does matter."
He didn't say whether we'll have the Romneys to
kick around anymore. But with the family fortune
largely intact and five sons to carry on the torch,
we can keep hope alive. In the Salt Lake City paper
this morning, a leading political scientist predicted
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
that if Democrats win the White House in 2008,
Romney "would automatically be a frontrunner for
2012."
It's hard to imagine a more perfect outcome. For
now, sadness reigns. As the Five Brothers might
say, somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere
children shout; but there is no joy in Mittville—Guy
Smiley has dropped out. ... 5:42 p.m. (link)
Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2008
Mittmentum: With John McCain on cruise control
toward the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney
finds himself in a desperate quest to rally true
believers – a role for which his even temper and
uneven record leave him spectacularly unsuited.
Romney knows how to tell the party faithful
everything they want to hear. But it's not easy for
a man who prides himself on his optimism, polish,
and good fortune to stir anger and mutiny in the
conservative base. Only a pitchfork rebellion can
stop McCain now, and Luddites won't man the
ramparts because they like your PowerPoint.
So far, the Republican base seems neither shaken
nor stirred. McCain has a commanding 2-1 margin
in national polls, and leads Romney most
everywhere except California, where Mitt hopes for
an upset tonight. Professional troublemakers like
Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are up in arms,
trying to persuade their followers that McCain is
somehow Hillary by other means. On Monday,
Limbaugh did his best imitation of Romney's stump
speech, dubbing Mitt the only candidate who
stands for all three legs of the conservative stool.
Strange bedfellows indeed: Rush-Romney is like a
hot-blooded android – the first DittoheadConehead pairing in galactic history.
On Saturday, Mitt Romney wandered to the back of
his campaign plane and told the press, "These
droids aren't the droids you're looking for." Oddly
enough, that's exactly the reaction most
Republicans have had to his campaign.
But in the home stretch, Romney has energized
one key part of his base: his own family.
Yesterday, the Romney boys set a campaign record
by putting up six posts on the Five Brothers blog –
matching their high from when they launched last
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April. Mitt may be down, but the Five Brothers are
back.
The past month has been grim for the happy-golucky Romney boys. They sometimes went days
between posts. When they did post, it was often
from states they had just campaigned in and lost.
Bright spots were hard to come by. After South
Carolina, Tagg found a "Romney girl" video, set to
the tune of "1985," in which a smiling young
Alabaman named Danielle sang of Mitt as the next
Reagan. One commenter recommended raising $3
million to run the clip as a Super Bowl ad; another
asked Danielle out on behalf of his own five sons. A
few days later, Matt put up a clip of a computerized
prank call to his dad, pretending to be Arnold
Schwarzenegger – prompting a priceless exchange
between robo-candidate and Terminator. Then the
real Arnold spoiled the joke by endorsing the real
McCain.
In the run-up to Super Tuesday, however, a spring
is back in the Five Brothers' step. On Sunday, Josh
wrote a post about his campaign trip to Alaska.
Richard Nixon may have lost in 1960 because his
pledge to campaign in all 50 states forced him to
spend the last weekend in Alaska. That didn't stop
Josh Romney, who posted a gorgeous photo of
Mount McKinley and a snapshot of some Romney
supporters shivering somewhere outside Fairbanks,
where the high was 13 below. He wrote, "I
sampled all of the Alaskan classics: moose, salmon
and whale. Oh so good." Eating whale would
certainly be red meat for a liberal crowd, but
conservatives loved it too. "Moose is good stuff,"
one fan wrote. Another supporter mentioned
friends who've gone on missions abroad and "talk
about eating dog, horse, cow stomach, bugs."
Rush, take note: McCain was ordering room service
at the Hanoi Hilton while Mitt was keeping the faith
by choking down tripe in Paris.
The rest of the family sounds like it's on the trail of
big game as well. Ben Romney, the least prolific of
the Five Brothers, didn't post from Thanksgiving
through the South Carolina primary. Yesterday, he
posted twice in one day – with a link to Limbaugh
and a helpful guide to tonight's results, noting that
in the past week members of the Romney family
have campaigned in 17 of 21 states up for grabs
on Super Tuesday. Now we can scientifically
measure the Romney effect, by comparing the
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
results in those 17 states with the four states
(Idaho, Montana, Connecticut, Arizona) no Romney
visited. After Huckabee's victory in West Virginia,
the early score is 1-0 in favor of no Romneys.
Tagg, the team captain, also posted twice, urging
the faithful to "Keep Fighting," and touting Mitt's
evangelical appeal: "The Base Is Beginning to
Rally." Back in June, Tagg joked with readers about
who would win a family farting contest. Now he's
quoting evangelical Christian ministers. The
brothers are so focused on the race, they haven't
even mentioned their beloved Patriots' loss,
although there has been no word from young
Craig, the one they tease as a Tom Brady
lookalike.
Of course, if the Republican race ends tonight, the
inheritance Mitt has told the boys not to count on
will be safe at last. By all accounts, they couldn't
care less. They seem to share Tagg's easy-comeeasy-go view that no matter what happens, this
will have been the best trip the family has ever
taken, and this time no dogs were harmed along
the way (just moose, salmon, and whale).
At the moment, the Five Brothers must feel the
same nostalgia to keep going that the rest of us
will feel for their antics when they're gone. Back
when the campaign began, Tagg joked that they
would love their father win or lose, although he
might become something of a national
laughingstock in the meantime. Mitt did his part,
but whatever happens tonight, he can be proud the
firewall he cares most about – his family – has held
up its end of the bargain. ... 6:15 p.m. (link)
the highbrow
The Outsider Artist
Assessing Kay Ryan, our new poet laureate.
By Meghan O'Rourke
Tuesday, July 29, 2008, at 12:26 PM ET
Kay Ryan, who has just been named America's new poet
laureate, is a miniaturist. She favors compression the way Walt
Whitman favored expansion. Like oysters, she has said, her
poems take shape around "an aggravation." They are also small
(most are only about 20 lines long), rich, and dense. A single one
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might not always make a meal, but a well-selected plate will
satiate most readers.
If Ryan's language is spare, her concerns are broad and
philosophical. A typical Ryan poem begins with a proposition—
"Everything contains some/ silence" or "It's what we can't/ know
that interests/ us." She explores old bromides, wondering what
the fabric of life is like ("stretchy") or what it might be like to
live on an island where silence is revered. Each poem twists
around and back upon its argument like a river retracing its path;
they are didactic in spirit, but a bedrock wit supports them.
Here's "Green Hills," from The Niagara River, her sixth (and
most recent) book:
Their green flanks
and swells are not
flesh in any sense
matching ours,
we tell ourselves.
Nor their green
breast nor their
green shoulder nor
the langour of their
rolling over.
This little lyric contains many of Ryan's hallmarks: the
juxtaposition of unlike things (green mountains and human
flesh); the skinny, syncopated lines ("are not/ flesh in any
sense"), which propel the unfolding thought by emphasizing the
musicality of the language; and heaps of internal rhyme
("shoulder" and "langour" and "rolling over"), which help create
a sense of closure. Internal rhyme and assonance (the repetition
of vowel sounds) are crucial to the success of Ryan's poems, in
part because her epistemological investigations of the human
condition can hardly be called completist or definitive; rhyme
adds a crucial layer of complexity. She practices dipstick
philosophy, taking a quick reading of the oil in the motor and
slamming the hood. She moves away from her themes as rapidly
as she engages them, which may be why some critics have
compared her to Emily Dickinson, even though her dramatic
imagination is far more detached—less blasphemous and
exalted—than her predecessor's.
Born in California in 1945, Ryan, who succeeds Charles Simic,
has been described as an "outsider," largely because she has
managed not to be drawn into the great peristalsis that digests
most "creative writers" in America today; she has taught
remedial English in California's Marin County for many years.
And yet it's hardly a surprise that the Library of Congress tapped
her. Ryan rejects the pained, stylized self-consciousness that
characterizes so much contemporary poetry. Where many poets
today are engaged in issues and questions that would be
meaningful mainly to other practitioners of the art, Ryan's
concerns about the nature of reality are relatively translatable to
a general audience. She has called herself a "rehabilitator of
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
clichés," an apt description of the way the ordinary is
transformed through close attention so that a mockingbird
becomes a "distempered/ emperor of parts" or the moon
becomes "evening's ticket/ punched with a/ round or a crescent."
What might be a geyser of explication in another poet's hands is
condensed in hers to a single shot: "The satisfactions/ of
agreement are/ immediate as sugar—/ a melting of the/ granular,
a syrup/ that lingers, shared/ not singular./ Many prefer it."
In a sense, Ryan is an American pragmatist, making her more
like Robert Frost (about whom she's written enthusiastically)
than Dickinson. Hers is a parsing imagination, given to trying to
differentiate between the real and the imagined, the real and the
taken-for-granted. In "Carrying a Ladder," she writes "We are
always/ really carrying/ a ladder, but it's/ invisible. We/ only
know/ something's/ the matter:/ something precious/ crashes;
easy doors/ prove impassable." While her work has deepened
over the years—The Niagara River is her strongest book—she
has always been most interested in the idea that "whatever
reality is, it is something we only know in the negative—by
being constantly wrong about it." Many of the poems end on a
note of deflation, pointing up the traps our expectations set for
us.
Of course, being "wrong" is compelling only insofar as it reveals
just how limited—or self-serious—our ideas about being "right"
are, and Ryan's poems pack the greatest punch when she not
only inverts an improbable juxtaposition or takes an old bromide
literally—Q: What might "lime light" really look like? A: "A
baleful glow"—but presses forward to formulate a more exacting
ars poetica. For example, in "Repulsive Theory":
Little has been made
of the soft skirting action
of magnets reversed,
while much has been
made of attraction.
But is it not this pillowy
principle of repulsion
that produces the
doily edges of oceans
or the arabesques of thought?
And do these cutout coasts
and in-curved rhetorical beaches
not baffle the onslaught
of the sea or objectionable people
and give private life
what small protection it's got?
Praise then the oiled motions
of avoidance, the pearly
convolutions of all that
slides off or takes a
wide berth …
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The tone is both ironic and sincere; it is the case, I think, that
repulsion is genuinely seen as a virtue, but there is a loss that the
speaker skates over—namely, the loss of true intimacy, of the
possibility of sustaining a genuine "private life" while also not
withdrawing from the clamor and love and pain of the world
around you.
the undercover economist
The risk posed by radical compression is that the poems become
merely whimsical. In the lesser work, the poem and reader meet
cute ("Outsider Art": "Mostly it's too dreary/ and cherry red")
but fail to develop much of a relationship. At other times, Ryan
battles with her own highly developed armature. Sometimes her
categorical imagination remains resolutely vague, and many
poems invoke a "someone" about to do "something" while
declining to name just what these forces are. This can make for
unsatisfying poetry—sort of B-minus Frost, as in "New
Clothes," a revisiting of the fable about the emperor's new
clothes that fails to find firm footing:
Seebohm Rowntree was the son of wealthy Quaker businessman
Joseph Rowntree but was acutely aware of the poverty that
surrounded him in late-Victorian York, England. In 1899 he set
himself the task of defining a "poverty line" by working out how
much it would cost to supply basic food, housing, and clothes.
Anyone who couldn't afford to buy those basics—including a
helping of pease pudding with bacon on Sunday—was below the
poverty line.
You will cast aside
something you cherish
when the tailors whisper,
"Only you could wear this."
It is almost never clothes
such as the emperor bought
but it is always something close
to something you've got.
Ryan's sly humor and elusive categorizing is intended in part to
subvert the high earnestness of Modernism and Postmodernism.
Indeed, her poems could be read as a retort to the sprawling
complexities of "ellipticism" and Postmodernism, as well as to
any post-Romantic nostalgia that poets may harbor for an age of
Keatsian splendors. (As Ryan puts it in one poem, "Romantics
are/ always fingering/ some discolored fabric or other/ feeling a
deep nostalgia for sepia.") Her dramatic imagination is deeply
pragmatic, stressing what is known over what is longed for and
choosing diffidence over despair, even if she does so ironically.
It's these layers of complexity that make her best work more
nuanced than the Library of Congress' descriptions of its
"accessibility" might have you think. A pervasive darkness
catapults her strongest poems beyond the more quotidian
decrescendos into profundity. And every now and then—
because Ryan prides herself on her intransigence—a touch of
sublimity creeps into the usual irony. For example, in "Desert
Reservoirs," which opens, "They are beachless basins, steepedged/ catches, unnatural/ bodies of water wedged/ into canyons,
stranded/ anti-mirages/ unable to vanish…./ Nothing/ here
matches their gift."
But My Neighbor Has a Cell Phone …
Finally, a sensible way to measure poverty.
By Tim Harford
Saturday, July 26, 2008, at 7:25 AM ET
The idea of a poverty line has stayed with us, but the candidates
have multiplied. The World Bank has two poverty lines: $1 a
day and $2 a day (strictly, those are 1985 dollars adjusted for
inflation). In the United States, the poverty line is $29.58 a day
for a single adult under the age of 65. All these are absolute
income standards, just as Rowntree's was.
Eurostat, the European Union's statistics agency, takes a
different approach: It defines the poverty line as 60 percent of
each nation's median income. (The median income is the income
of the person in the middle of the income distribution.) This has
an unfortunate consequence: Poverty is permanent. If everyone
in Europe woke up tomorrow to find themselves twice as rich,
European poverty rates would not budge. That is indefensible.
Such "poverty" lines measure inequality, not poverty, and they
do so clumsily.
On the other hand, absolute standards of poverty are creepy,
reliant as they are on expert definitions of a nutritionally
balanced diet. (Rowntree was a Victorian philanthropist, so
we're willing to make allowances.) The U.S. definition dates
back to early 1963 and the efforts of a Social Security
Administration researcher called Mollie Orshansky. Lacking
decent statistics, she based her poverty line on government
nutritional advice. It was a decent estimate given the limited
resources of the time, yet the threshold has changed only to take
account of inflation.
So, the U.S. definition of poverty is stuck in the 1960s. Had
Seebohm Rowntree been working for the U.S. government,
perhaps it would now have a poverty standard that was based on
the price of pease pudding and that assumed that electricity and
indoor plumbing were luxuries. This cannot be right.
Adam Smith put his finger on the problem back in 1776. In The
Wealth of Nations, he wrote: "A linen shirt, for example, is,
strictly speaking, not a necessity of life. The Greeks and Romans
lived, I suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. But
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a
creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public
without a linen shirt. ..."
Smith's point is not that poverty is relative but that it is a social
construction. A person can lack the money necessary to
participate in society. Whatever Eurostat may say, people don't
become poor just because the median citizen receives a pay
raise, but they may become poor if something they cannot
afford—such as an Internet connection—becomes viewed as a
social essential.
That is why a new unofficial poverty threshold, published this
month by—appropriately—the Joseph Rowntree Foundation,
makes more sense than it at first appears. The standard was set
by focus groups working out what was and was not necessary "to
participate in society." The results are frugal—there is a budget
of £40 ($80) every two years to buy a suit, for instance—but
they were always bound to be controversial. The list of essentials
includes a self-catering vacation, a cell phone, and enough booze
to get drunk twice a month.
But the new threshold's apparent weakness—its subjectivity—is
in fact its strength. Poverty is not relative, and it cannot be
objectively determined by an expert. Adam Smith understood
that very well.
today's business press
Happy Birthday, Credit Crisis
By Matthew Yeomans
Friday, August 1, 2008, at 7:08 AM ET
The credit crisis turns 1 this month, Business Week writes. What
can you say? Certainly not "Many happy returns," given that the
latest government data shows the economy is contracting so
quickly that a number of economists now believe "that a
recession began late last year." Even though President George
W. Bush (and the Washington Post) pointed out that gross
domestic product rose at a 1.9 percent annualized rate (after
adjusting for inflation) during the second quarter, newly revised
data showed "the economy contracted at a 0.2% rate in the final
three months of 2007," notes the Wall Street Journal. We'll get
another barometer today on the potential effects of the credit
crunch's terrible 2s when the Bush administration offers up its
latest job-market forecast. Analysts suggest 75,000 jobs were
lost in July, "signifying the seventh straight month of declines,"
notes the New York Times.
The grim economic news put a dent in the price of oil, not that
Exxon Mobil will worry too much. It recorded the "best
quarterly profit ever for a corporation," notes the NYT, with
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
second-quarter returns jumping 14 percent, to $11.68 billion.
The previous record for quarterly mega-profits was held by—
you guessed it—Exxon Mobil. Not many other companies are
smiling. British Airways boss Willie Walsh bemoaned "the
worst trading environment the industry has ever faced" as he
announced an 88 percent drop in profits (the carrier made $73.3
million pretax) from this time last year. Northwest would agree.
It just announced a whopping $80 fuel surcharge for many
domestic flights. Even if oil plummets and air travel rebounds,
the current crisis guarantees a long-term problem for the
industry. As the NYT reports, U.S. airlines are "putting off plans
to update and expand their fleets" in the wake of their combined
$6 billion losses in the second financial quarter of this year.
You can be forgiven if, up until now, you've not paid too much
attention to all the allegations swirling around UBS. The Swiss
banking giant has been cited by several regulators for deceiving
investors about the arcane financial instruments called auctionrate securities. But now, courtesy of the WSJ, comes the much
sexier allegation that one of the key executives who supposedly
participated in this scheme is a former Bush administration
official: David Aufhauser, onetime general counsel for the
Treasury Department. Although Aufhauser hasn't himself been
charged, the Journal cites "people familiar with the matter" who
say he was one of the UBS officials who personally dumped
auction-rate securities even as the bank continued to sell them to
customers as safe.
Don't expect Wal-Mart to be stocking extra copies of Barack
Obama's books anytime soon. The Wall Street Journal reports
the uber-retailer is warning its managers and supervisors that, "if
Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change federal
law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies—
including Wal-Mart." The company is worried that reinvigorated
labor unions would agitate for higher payroll and health costs for
companies.
For weeks, the technology press had been looking forward to a
good old fist fight at Yahoo's annual shareholder meeting. Now
that CEO Jerry Yang and activist shareholder Carl Icahn have
averted all-out war, the media can't hide its disappointment.
"What was supposed to be the season's biggest corporate
showdown is now shaping up as a giant snooze-fest," mopes
CNN Money, while the Financial Times reports that Icahn won't
be attending the event, defusing "what little tension remained
around the meeting by announcing his non-attendance on
Thursday." At least the WSJ is keeping its hope up, suggesting
that Yang and Co. need to bolster Yahoo's "bread-and-butter"
display ad business in order to assuage still-fuming shareholders.
With those investors "breathing down Yahoo's neck, accelerating
[display ad] growth could be the company's best hope for
changing its trajectory," notes the WSJ.
Finally, the NYT has a clever spin on the proposed $4.5 billion
Bristol-Myers Squibb takeover of the storied biotech firm
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ImClone. It was an infamously hasty stop-loss sale of ImClone
stock, after all, that sent Martha Stewart to prison. Given the
stock spike on news of the takeover, had Stewart and her broker
held onto their shares back in late 2001, "they might have done
just fine, and avoided jail time."
forced into part-time work from the spring of 2007 to the spring
of 2008, 73 percent were men and 35 percent were Hispanic."
today's business press
In these lean times for consumers, it might appear
counterintuitive that at least some credit card companies are
cleaning up. It's easy to forget, but in March, Visa pulled off the
largest IPO in U.S. history. Today, the business press is filled
with reports that Visa has announced a 41 percent hike in
quarterly income over last year. How does that happen? Doesn't
nearly everyone cut back spending when the economy sputters,
and doesn't the credit crunch curtail Visa's ability to extend
credit to its customers?
Wall Street Is Hiring!
By James Ledbetter
Thursday, July 31, 2008, at 6:11 AM ET
That is the surprising conclusion of a CNNMoney
story: While some 7,600 jobs have been slashed
on the street in the past year, there is active
recruitment going on, especially "at buy-side
institutions like hedge funds looking to pick up
talent on the cheap," notes writer David Ellis. The
Financial Times agrees; it reports that Morgan
Stanley chief John Mack is telling associates that
the financial sector's recent tumult "is a historic
opportunity to recruit bankers, traders and risk
managers."
Ironically, there seems to be particular demand for
bankers who got us into this credit mess in the first
place, those with "experience dealing with some of
the structured mortgage and credit products that
have fueled billions of dollars in losses and
writedowns at the nation's largest financial
institutions." They would appear to be the only
ones who know how to value these noxious
financial instruments.
Outside Wall Street, however, the job environment remains
cloudy. More than a few economic observers have asked
themselves recently: If, as so many believe, the United States is
in the midst of a recession, then why has there not been a major
leap in unemployment? The New York Times has a grimly
fascinating story that may help explain the anomaly: "The
number of Americans who have seen their full-time jobs
chopped to part time because of weak business has swelled to
more than 3.7 million—the largest figure since the government
began tracking such data more than half a century ago."
Involuntary part-time workers, you see, do not get measured as
"unemployed." But they nonetheless represent what the Times
calls "a stealth force that is eroding American spending power."
Drilling a little deeper, the Times cites Labor Department figures
indicating that men, and especially Hispanic men, are particular
victims of these slow-motion layoffs: "Among those who were
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
That, apparently, has to do with the decline in the construction
industry and other sectors that heavily employ Hispanics. In this
election year, some observers think disproportionate economic
hardship among Latinos will undermine John McCain's ability to
woo that critical voting bloc.
Not really, because, despite popular perception, Visa is not a
credit card firm. As MarketWatch succinctly explains: "Visa
processes payments on debit cards and other types of payment
cards and charges fees for these services. Unlike credit card
companies, it doesn't lend money to anyone. That means it hasn't
suffered as the global credit crunch begins to dent consumers'
ability to repay debt." Moreover, ample evidence suggests that
the more Americans suffer economically, the more debt they put
on their credit cards. Visa gets a chunk of the transaction fees
without having to assume the debt. Now that's a business to be
in.
Unlike, say, the auto industry, which seems to rust by the day.
The Detroit Free Press notes that GM is about to slash another
5,000 jobs by Nov. 1 from its depleted payroll and is scheduled
to announce a "significant second quarter loss" on Friday. The
Wall Street Journal reports that Chrysler, having recently pulled
out of the once-lucrative leasing business, "is scrambling to slash
costs and line up partnerships with foreign auto makers to shore
up its finances amid a painful downturn in sales and a
deteriorating outlook for the company."
Specifically, India's Tata and Italy's Fiat are mentioned as
partners—none of the major American papers asks today why
those companies are doing reasonably well when domestic
dinosaurs are on the brink of extinction. Here's a hint from
Honda, via Bloomberg: Build affordable cars that
appeal to drivers in growing markets like Russia
and China.
today's business press
Doha, Bennigan's RIP
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By James Ledbetter
Wednesday, July 30, 2008, at 5:36 AM ET
Most major financial papers and Web sites lead with the collapse
of the Doha round of global trade talks, a seven-year tragedy of
errors in which the convergent agendas of developed and
developing worlds have become starkly drawn. In times of
soaring food prices, the United States and Europe are bound to
cling to free trade as a solution as fiercely as China, Brazil, and
India cling to tariffs. Thus, the papers find plenty of blame to go
around; the Financial Times quotes European trade
minister Peter Mandelson faulting American
agricultural expansion by Congress this spring as "
'one of the most reactionary farm bills in the
history of the U.S.', though he did give credit to
President George W. Bush for attempting to veto
the bill."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the American papers did
not include that quote, even though many have
opposed, on their editorial pages, American farm
subsidies. Instead, the New York Times cited a
European consultant who indicated that "the sticking
point this time was countries like China and India, which have
become more aggressive in advancing their interests." The Wall
Street Journal has for several days been trying to place failure or
success on the shoulders of India's commerce and industry
minister; in a profile last week, the paper quoted a U.S. Chamber
of Commerce official who said, "Success or failure of the Doha
Round may very well lie in the hands of Kamal Nath alone."
That seems overdone, as the Journal notes today: "China broke
its traditional silence in global trade talks and dug in its heels
over the weekend," which turned out to be a chief factor of the
breakdown. Regardless, few dispute that most countries need to
continue trading, even as they bicker over terms; Bloomberg's
analysis is that the cessation of talks "may be only a
bump in the road for world commerce, which
continued to expand while negotiations sputtered."
As we noted Monday, the American auto sector continues to
suffer from shriveling demand for those
emblematic SUVs of the last decade. A Page One
WSJ article notes that Ford and GM "are significantly
scaling back their auto-leasing business," echoing Chrysler's
announcement on Friday. Maybe it seems
inevitable to you that one company's woes would
be echoed across the sector—banks don't want to
lend money for leases, and fewer people want to
buy the used gas-guzzlers. But consider the
predictions made on CNBC on Friday by auto
analyst Rebecca Lindler: "I don't see Ford or GM
doing this. I don't think that they will do that. I
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
think they are going to try and manage their losses
in a different way." We'll see if CNBC invites Lindler
back for more crystal-ball reading.
Along with free trade and the SUV, another '90s-era
icon that seems to be dying is "casual dining." The
Bennigan's and Steak and Ale chains closed down
and will file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, "the latest
casualties in the so-called casual dining sector, considered a cut
above fast food," as the NYT puts it. Technically, only the 150 or
so corporate-owned branches—not the roughly equal number of
franchisees—are immediately affected, "but the franchisees now
find themselves owning a brand with no corporate cousins," as
the Dallas Morning News points out.
It seems hard to believe, but no one has ever
before compiled definitive numbers on how much
food and beverage companies spend on advertising
to American children; it was $1.6 billion in 2006,
according to a newly released Federal Trade
Commission report. As the Washington Post notes,
"the biggest category, $492 million, was
carbonated-beverage advertising." Inevitably, such
measurements provoke what the NYT calls a "tug
of war" over not only questions of who should
regulate these ads, but also over definitions of
what constitutes marketing and even, it would
seem, what constitutes a child. How else to
interpret this sentence—"Cadbury Adams has
stopped marketing Bubblicious gum to children,
said a spokeswoman, Luisa Girotto"—from the
Times? Perhaps the gum is targeted at Wall
Streeters, always in search of that next bubble.
today's business press
Obamanomics 101
By James Ledbetter
Tuesday, July 29, 2008, at 6:16 AM ET
Fresh from his lengthy tour abroad, presumed
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama
surrounded himself with economic heavyweights on
Monday in what the BBC and others labeled an
"economic summit," even though the entry on the
on the official Obama blog called it an "economic
meeting." (The campaign also misspelled the name
of legendary investor Warren Buffett.) The account
on Marketwatch noted the presence of former
Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Google CEO Eric
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Schmidt, and former Federal Reserve Chairman
Paul Volcker.
Aside, however, from the rather generic goal of
"restoring balance to the economy," it was difficult
to find any specific plans that Obama is offering.
The Wall Street Journal's version does include
Obama's opposition to the Bush tax cuts and his
willingness to renegotiate parts of free trade
agreements; it also notes that "Sen. Obama will
hold town-hall style events in Missouri and Iowa
this week where he is expected to focus on job loss
and the economy." No doubt those events will yield
greater detail.
Regardless of whether Obama wins in November, it is certain
that the next occupant of the Oval Office will inherit a budget
deficit that, by some yardsticks, is the largest in U.S. history.
The projected $482 billion in red ink, says the
Washington Post, is "driven by war costs, tax
rebates and a slowing economy that will leave the
next president little room to fulfill costly campaign
promises."
As a strict dollar amount, that unwelcome gift is a
record figure, although as a percentage of gross
domestic product, the Bush White House can at
least claim that Ronald Reagan and George H.W.
Bush had larger deficits. But it seems likely the
$482 billion figure is too low; as the Post notes,
that number "does not include the costs of the massive
housing bill Congress approved last weekend, nor does it reflect
the new law reversing scheduled cuts in Medicare
reimbursements to doctors."
Merrill Lynch knows a bit about red ink as well. A
mere 10 days after declaring a $4.65 billion
second-quarter loss, the investment bank
announced another $5.8 billion writedown and the
need to issue $8.5 billion in new common stock,
which will substantially dilute the value of current
stock. As the Financial Times disturbingly puts it:
"[T]he latest Merrill writedowns raise new
questions about whether banks themselves
understand the extent of their problems." The
Journal puts its Merrill story on Page One and
highlights the massive amount of "toxic mortgagerelated assets" that the investment bank is selling
at a fraction of their once-presumed value. More
than other outlets, Bloomberg's story puts
particular emphasis on the role played by Temasek
Holdings, the sovereign wealth fund controlled by
Singapore's government. Temasek will buy $3.4
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
billion of the newly issued Merrill stock. Has anyone
asked Temasek if they'd like to buy the debt-ridden
portions of the U.S. government while they're at it?
Finally, the Starbucks implosion has gone global.
As Slate amply documented earlier this month, the
announcement that 600 Starbucks outlets will close nationwide
left many communities—particularly in rural areas—feeling
deprived. Now that pain is being felt Down Under: Starbucks
International has announced that it is shuttering 61 of its 84
stores—or 72 percent—in Australia, eliminating nearly 700 jobs
and leaving just Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane as the
remaining Aussie locales for Starbucks.
"Speculation of widespread closures was sparked when
every Australian store was ordered to close at 2pm so all staff
could attend 28 meetings around the country," reports the Sydney
Morning Herald. The company cited the need to
"concentrate its attention and resources on
profitable growth," and will disclose the full list of
closures on July 31, according to the corporate
Web site. For a company that once seemed intent
on global domination, this is a sobering retreat,
and it's hard to believe that Australia will be the
only non-U.S. country affected.
today's business press
Don't Bank on Banks
By Matthew Yeomans
Monday, July 28, 2008, at 6:38 AM ET
If anyone has a spare $300,000 to invest in a new manufacturing
robot, could you please let Drew Greenblatt, president of Marlin
Steel Wire Products, know? Normally he'd be getting this loan
from his bank, Wachovia, but nowadays it seems it isn't so keen
on lending money. As the New York Times explains, the
financial sector's newfound frugality "has intensified the strains
on the economy by withholding capital from many companies,
just as joblessness grows and consumers pull back from
spending in the face of high gas prices, plummeting home values
and mounting debt."
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was forced to close two
more regional banks, 1st National Bank of Nevada and First
Heritage Bank N.A., on Friday, just two weeks after the run on
California's IndyMac. The closed branches will reopen this
morning as Mutual of Omaha with no loss of deposits for any
customers, the FDIC said. So, how safe is your bank? CNN
Money looks to answer that question by analyzing just how the
FDIC compiles its quarterly list of banks on the brink—currently
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standing at 90. When you look at the numbers, banking health is
not as bad as you may have been led to believe. "Considering
there are about 8,500 banks in the United States, 90 problem
banks is not that large a number," L. William Seidman, a former
FDIC chairman, tells the site.
An IPO is normally a buoyant time for any company. Not so for
legendary private-equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.,
says the Wall Street Journal. Though KKR shares could be
valued as high as $15 billion when it floats on the New York
Stock Exchange, the IPO "reflects the troubled times roiling the
investment industry" as KKR is selling the shares partly to bail
out its struggling European affiliate, KKR Private Equity
Investors. KKR has been angling to go public for nearly a
year—part of a strategy to "expand its business beyond private
equity to become a much broader asset manager," notes the
NYT—but has been stymied by the credit crunch. Famous (or
infamous, depending on your point of view) for pioneering
leveraged buyouts, KKR's newfound desire to go public, along
with others from the private-equity ilk, has some investors
"questioning whether the firms are undermining the very model
that they have said makes their investments so successful,"
writes the NYT.
The Guardian reports that Ryanair, one of Europe's most bullish
budget airlines, has reported an 85 percent fall in first-quarter net
profit and warned it could make a full-year loss of up to $94
million if jet fuel prices remain high and passengers continue to
cut back on flying. High fuel prices continue to roil the U.S.
economy as the WSJ illustrates in two stories, one documenting
how "an unprecedented cutback in driving is slashing the funds
available to rebuild the nation's aging highway system," and
another describing how a combination of falling leased-car
values and the credit crunch mean that Chrysler LLC must
"refinance $30 billion of its lending arm's working capital by
Friday." Chrysler is weighed down by plummeting lease values
of its SUV, crossover, and light-truck fleet. (Business Week
looks at the dire second-hand SUV market in some detail.)
Chrysler's business is so tight that it will stop offering auto
leases starting in August.
Just when you thought the trend in American apparel was less is
more, skimpy lingerie phenom Victoria's Secret is trying to
cover up. Forbes reports that the risque division of Limited
Brands has launched the "Collegiate Collection" of T-shirts, tote
bags, and panties, branded for the likes of Harvard, UCLA,
Boston College, and the University of Michigan. "Co-branding
with universities is another way to try to moderate their image,
to get to where you can still be sexy but wholesome at the same
time," a retail analyst tells Forbes. What is academia coming to?
They'll be letting Playboy on campus next.
He dates Chinese superstar actress Zhang Ziyi; he's best buddies
with Lachlan Murdoch, Ronald Perelman, and Lenny Kravitz;
and he just happens to be the largest private shareholder of Time
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Warner. Why have you never heard of Vivi Nevo? Because he's
the Zelig of the media industry, says a long NYT profile, which,
to prove the point, interviews 16 different friends of Nevo's,
including Perelman, former TW CEOs Richard Parsons and
Gerald Levin, as well as Kravitz ... and still leaves us wondering
about this Romanian-Israeli mini media baron.
today's papers
Inside Man
By Daniel Politi
Friday, August 1, 2008, at 6:51 AM ET
The Los Angeles Times leads with word that a government
scientist who was about to face charges for the 2001 anthrax
attacks apparently committed suicide. Bruce Ivins, 62, a "skilled
microbiologist," worked at the government's biodefense labs at
Fort Detrick, Md., for the last 18 years and, according to people
who knew him, had been informed of his impending
prosecution. Ivins helped the government investigate the anthrax
mail attacks that killed five people shortly after Sept. 11, 2001.
The New York Times leads with word that U.S. intelligence
officials have concluded that members of Pakistan's intelligence
service helped militants plan the bombing of the Indian Embassy
in Afghanistan last month, an attack that killed more than 50
people. The link had long been suspected, but intercepted
communications finally brought confirmation.
The Washington Post leads with news that five American troops
died in combat in Iraq last month. When noncombatant deaths
are added, the number increases to 13, which is the lowest
American death toll in any single month since the war began in
2003. The Wall Street Journal also leads its world-wide
newsbox with Iraq and highlights that President Bush praised the
"durability" of the security gains even as he took pains to
emphasize that "the progress is still reversible." Bush suggested
that the decrease in violence could lead to further U.S. troop
withdrawals before he leaves office. USA Today leads with new
figures that show state and local governments have been on a
spending binge lately. State and local governments increased
spending 7.8 percent in the second quarter of this year compared
with the same period last year, while revenue rose a mere 2.5
percent. Some states are taking drastic measures to reduce
spending, and some predict there will be deep cuts in 2009 as
governments begin to feel the effects of a weakening economy.
The news about Ivins, who had never been publicly identified as
a suspect, comes on the heels of the FBI's settlement with Steven
Hatfill valued at $5.82 million. Hatfill, a former biodefense
researcher, was long the main suspect of the anthrax attacks, and
the payout "was an essential step to clear the way for prosecuting
Ivins," reports the LAT. Ivins was being treated for depression,
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but his condition apparently quickly worsened after the
settlement was announced, and he was committed to a facility
for treatment.
Ivins had already been questioned by Army officials for failing
to report anthrax contaminations. Ivins admitted he had made a
mistake by cleaning up the contaminations and staying quiet, but
the Army didn't discipline him. Some now say that the
investigation raised some red flags that should have been looked
into. The main suspicion comes from Ivins' claim at the time that
he couldn't remember whether he tested contaminated areas that
had been cleaned to make sure that they were, in fact, free of
spores. The thinking now is that he may have been reluctant to
give a definite answer in case someone checked and found
spores in his office.
The NYT notes that the confirmation of the link between
Pakistani intelligence officers and militants in Afghanistan have
provided "the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence
officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat
militants in the region." Along with the link, officials also say
that "new information" gave them evidence that Pakistan's spy
service has also provided militants with details of American
operations in the region.
Although there's little detail about what this new information
consists of, significantly, officials emphasized that the
cooperation with militants was not the work of intelligence
officers operating on their own, "indicating that their actions
might have been authorized by superiors," says the NYT. "It
confirmed some suspicions that I think were widely held," one
American official said. "It was sort of this 'aha' moment." The
WP, which, along with the LAT, also fronts the news but credits
the NYT with breaking the story, says there's disagreement
within the intelligence community about how much of Pakistan's
intelligence service is populated with militant allies. "You will
find folks who will say there is significant penetration," one
official said. "But others are saying that certainly, there's
penetration, but we don't think it's top to bottom."
Bush made his statement about the possibility of withdrawing
troops from Iraq on the same date that had originally been
informally set as a deadline for Iraqi and U.S. officials to reach a
new security agreement. Everyone notes that the two sides are
close to reaching a deal. The LAT says the deal won't establish a
strict timetable for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq
but rather "outline a conditional time frame for Iraqi troops to
take charge of the country and U.S. combat troops to be
withdrawn." Whatever ends up being decided, it seems clear that
it won't look anything like what administration officials had
initially hoped. "The whole thing has been spun around," a
senior Iraqi politician tells the LAT.
The NYT fronts more bad news from the economic front. New
figures showed a weak expansion of the U.S. economy from
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
April to June while numbers for the last couple of months of
2007 were revised and now show "the first official slide
backward since the last recession in 2001," says the NYT.
Economists say these new numbers increase the likelihood that
the country is in a recession. All eyes will be on the jobs report
this morning as analysts widely expect that it will show the
seventh straight month of losses.
The NYT is alone in fronting, and everyone mentions, how, for
the first time, the issue of race was openly discussed on the
presidential campaign trail. Of course, race was much discussed
during the primaries, but yesterday John McCain's campaign
helped push its debut in the general election by accusing Barack
Obama of playing "the race card." The statement was a response
to Obama's remarks from the previous day when he said that
McCain and his allies would try to get voters to be "scared" of
the Democrat, who has "a funny name" and "doesn't look like all
those other presidents on those dollar bills."
McCain said he agreed with the "race card" comments, while
Obama's aides emphasized that the Democrat had uttered similar
lines throughout the campaign. Although it's true that Obama has
frequently made comments about what the LAT describes as his
"otherness," the WP says that "Obama did appear to expand
upon the theme by linking the attacks to McCain by name." The
NYT points out that by simply raising the "race card" comment,
McCain's aides made sure that "race would once again become
an unavoidable issue" and "would again be a factor in coverage
of the presidential race." Indeed, attention to this issue made sure
that Obama's attacks against McCain's energy policies didn't get
much coverage.
A dream (could) come true … The NYT and LAT front, and
everyone notes, that scientists have discovered a drug that could
provide the benefits of exercise without moving a muscle. Yes, it
has been tested only on mice, but scientists are optimistic that it
could some day help humans, too. In fact, the scientists have
discovered two drugs that improved the athletic performance of
mice, although one has to be combined with (gasp!) actual
exercise in order to work. "It's a little bit like a free lunch
without the calories," one researcher said.
today's papers
Rove Is in the Air
By Daniel Politi
Thursday, July 31, 2008, at 6:22 AM ET
The Wall Street Journal's world-wide newsbox leads with word
that the White House will announce "the largest overhaul of
intelligence powers in a generation" today. President Bush
signed an executive order updating spy powers yesterday that
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boosts the power of the director of national intelligence. The Los
Angeles Times leads with a look at how John McCain's
campaign is focusing its energies on trying to shape the public's
view of Barack Obama. Funnily enough, that's exactly what
Obama's campaign is trying to do as well. While McCain has
turned increasingly negative—"even derisive," says the LAT—in
trying to portray Obama as inexperienced and out of touch, the
presumptive Democratic nominee is attempting to convince
voters that he can be trusted as commander in chief.
The New York Times leads with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert's announcement that he would resign after his party
chooses a new leader in the September elections. The
Washington Post leads with a new National Defense Strategy
that Secretary Robert Gates approved last month and hasn't been
officially released. In the document, Gates describes the fight
against extremists and terrorists as a "Long War" that will not
end with the fights in Afghanistan and Iraq. As a result, the
Pentagon must master "irregular" warfare, and the country needs
to embrace the use of "soft power" if it hopes to be successful.
USA Today leads with a look at how air travelers have been
experiencing lots of flight delays despite government efforts to
alleviate the problem after last year's disastrous summer. The
problem has improved in some airports and worsened in others.
But in roughly the first half of the year, the number of on-time
arrivals across the country improved by less than one percentage
point from last year.
Under the executive order signed by Bush yesterday, the director
of national intelligence will have more power over staffing and
coordinating work between agencies. The director will also be
responsible for nurturing relationships with foreign intelligence
services and developing policy, which the CIA would have to
implement. The order "largely steered clear of prickly civilliberties issues" regarding domestic surveillance but did assign
the attorney general a greater oversight role, "which intelligence
officials cast as an enhancement of privacy," reports the WSJ.
Some in Congress expressed frustration that the White House
didn't consult with them about the changes.
The news of Olmert's resignation was hardly unexpected
because the prime minister has been severely weakened by a
series of corruption scandals, although he has never been
charged. But the move has raised doubts about the recently
stepped-up efforts at peace talks with the Palestinian Authority
and Syria. The LAT notes that if the party's new leader fails to
form a new government without general elections, Israel could
be "without effective leadership" until early next year. And, as
might be expected, uncertainty about Israel's political future
makes it unlikely that Olmert would be able to reach a deal with
either the Palestinians or Syria.
In the new National Defense Strategy, Gates also points to China
and Russia as potential threats and says the United States needs
to work toward preventing conflict with them by building
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
"collaborative and cooperative relationships." The Post says it is
"unusual for a defense secretary to offer a comprehensive
military strategy so late in an administration's tenure." But the
paper for some reason fails to mention that, as has been widely
reported, both McCain and Obama appear open to the idea of
asking Gates to stay put at least temporarily. In the document,
Gates wrote that it could be used by a future administration as a
"blueprint to success."
The WP hears word that the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq may have
recently moved to Afghanistan with several of his closest aides.
This development comes as U.S. intelligence officials say they
are seeing hints that the Sunni insurgent group is encouraging
new recruits to avoid Iraq and go to Afghanistan and Pakistan
instead. The Post reports that even some al-Qaida in Iraq leaders
acknowledge their organization has suffered serious setbacks,
but many blame the failures on a lack of leadership, and some
say they have split off and created their own insurgent group.
Obama's efforts to "portray himself as presidential … run the
risk of appearing arrogant or presumptuous," says the LAT.
That's exactly what the McCain campaign is hoping for as it
released an advertisement yesterday that compares—"and not in
a good way," the NYT helpfully specifies—Obama to celebrities
like Britney Spears by showing pictures of his speech in Berlin
last week. "Right now, both campaigns have to do the same
thing, which is establish who Barack Obama is," a Republican
pollster tells the LAT. "That's the real battle going on."
Something the LAT fails to mention but the NYT points out in its
off-lead is that McCain's tactic comes straight out of the
President George Bush playbook that seeks "to make campaigns
referendums on its opponents." The WP goes one step further
and directly states that McCain is "adopting the aggressive, takeno-prisoners style of Karl Rove." Everyone says that even some
Republicans have been taken aback by the recent aggressiveness
of McCain's attacks. Espousing such a persistent negative
message about his opponent could easily evaporate one of the
main aspects working in McCain's favor—his image as a
politician who doesn't play by the normal rules of Washington.
Still, it's clear that since much of the public is trying to make up
its mind about Obama, McCain has a great opportunity to plant
doubts about the Democrat that could persist until Election Day.
That is assuming he can stick to the message. In a front-page
piece that almost (but not quite) implies that McCain's aides are
thrusting this aggressive style on the candidate against his will,
the Post notes that the senator from Arizona is unpredictable and
dislikes parroting talking points over and over again. As a result,
McCain's "advisers cringe" when he "keeps talking" and
subsequently dilutes what could have been a good sound bite.
McCain's campaign has been criticized for lacking a consistent
message, but to some Republicans that failure has more to do
with the candidate's shortcomings rather than the campaign's
failures. And the NYT points out that there are those who believe
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that trying to "apply the Bush model" to McCain simply won't
work. "It could be the Coca-Cola strategy of marketing that
they're trying to apply to Dr Pepper," a former McCain strategist
said.
In the Post's op-ed page, David Ignatius flat-out suggests that
what we're seeing now isn't the real McCain. In a fawning piece
that goes through McCain's biography, Ignatius says the
presumptive Republican nominee needs to stop listening to
advisers and start being himself. "What's damaging the McCain
campaign now, I suspect, is that this fiercely independent man is
trying to please other people," writes Ignatius. "He should give
that up and be the person whose voice shines through the pages
of his life story."
Not everyone agrees. In a piece that is bluntly (disrespectfully?)
titled "Is John McCain Stupid?" the WSJ's Daniel Henninger
writes that McCain is constantly making things harder for
himself on the campaign trail by talking too much and failing to
make things simple. "Someone in the McCain circle had better
do some straight talking to the candidate," writes Henninger,
who suggests that, essentially, the presumptive Republican
nominee needs to be saved from himself. Instead of playing to
win, McCain is "competing as if he expects the other side to lose
it for him."
In the LAT, Jonathan Chait also essentially says that Obama
needs to let go of his instincts, but in the other direction. Instead
of just presenting himself as the better candidate, Obama must
tell voters why they shouldn't vote for McCain. Just like McCain
seems to be following Bush's playbook, Chait says Obama
appears to have picked up John Kerry's strategy that worked so
well in 2004. Now, instead of relying on his usual "weak-tea
replies" that "express 'disappointment' with McCain," Obama
needs to go on the offensive and start attacking. "Obama doesn't
need to engage in character assassination and baseless charges,
as his opponent has done," writes Chait. "All he needs to do is
stop letting McCain paint a wildly distorted self-portrait."
today's papers
The Worst Gift
By Daniel Politi
Wednesday, July 30, 2008, at 6:30 AM ET
The New York Times and Wall Street Journal's world-wide
newsbox lead with, while the Los Angeles Times and
Washington Post devote their top nonlocal spots to, news that
Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska was indicted on public corruption
charges. Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate,
was charged with seven counts of making false statements on his
financial disclosure forms about more than $250,000 in gifts
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
from VECO Corp., an oil-services company. The indictment
states that Stevens "knowingly and willfully engaged in a
scheme to conceal" the gifts, which included extensive home
renovations and a Land Rover, among other items. "I am
innocent of these charges and intend to prove that," Stevens said
in a statement. The indictment clearly clouds Stevens' bid for reelection this year, and Democrats quietly celebrated as they
savored the prospect of winning a Senate seat in Alaska for the
first time since 1974.
USA Today leads with a look at how environmental groups and
big businesses are filling a void left by the government by
directly cutting "unprecedented deals" that involve trade-offs
between new development and conservation. The deals permit
businesses to carry out new projects, such as oil drilling or the
construction of new power plants, without worrying about
opposition from environmental groups. In exchange, companies
often agree to preserve undeveloped land or to adhere to strict
environmental standards. "These private deals are a pragmatic
way to accomplish good things," an environmental lawyer
explained.
The NYT and WP point out that Stevens is the highest-profile
figure to be indicted in a wide-ranging political corruption
investigation in Alaska that was launched in 2004. He also has
the rare distinction of being the first sitting senator to face
criminal charges in 15 years. And there might be more coming.
The WSJ points out that the "indictment was narrow" but the FBI
is still investigating "a variety of real-estate deals in Alaska and
elsewhere" and is looking into whether friends of the senator
benefited from specific earmarks or federal spending that
Stevens supported. And there's a lot of that to look into. The LAT
notes that Alaska has received the most "pork per capita every
year since 1999."
It's no coincidence that Stevens' home state has received so
much money from the federal government over the years. He's a
powerful senator who has served in some of the chamber's most
powerful positions, including as a chairman of the appropriations
committee. Everyone describes him as an outsize figure in his
home state who was once described by a local paper as "the
second-largest engine of the Alaska economy." But the light has
been fading, and there were already signs of trouble in his
political future before the indictment became public. A poll
released earlier this month showed Stevens trailing his
Democratic rival by nine percentage points. But before he
worries about that election, he must first beat six Republican
challengers in the state's primary next month. The LAT reports
that some think Stevens might decide to back out before the
primary rather than risk losing his seat to a Democrat.
In the Post's op-ed page, Michael Crowley, a senior editor at the
New Republic, writes that if Stevens is convicted, "few tears will
be shed" for the "meanest man in Washington." Throughout his
years in the Senate, "Stevens cultivated a tyrannical image and
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personalized politics to an extreme degree, dividing the world
into friends and enemies," Crowley writes. One of his most
famous outbursts involved a promise to travel the country to
campaign against every senator who had helped defeat efforts to
open an Alaskan wildlife refuge to oil drilling.
Well, in reality, there might be a few tears shed by Republicans.
Then again, this was merely the latest in what seems to be an
endless stream of bad news for the GOP, so the reaction might
not be as dramatic. "We've had nothing but challenges all the
way through, so what else is new?" said Sen. Orrin Hatch of
Utah. The WP notes that some think the Stevens indictment
might even help Barack Obama win in a state that hasn't voted
for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964.
The NYT, WP, and WSJ all front the collapse of global trade
talks in Geneva after seven years of negotiations. Everyone sees
it as a sign of the growing power of developing countries,
particularly China and India, to set the global agenda. The talks
formally broke down after India and China refused to give up the
power to increase tariffs on crops if there is an increase in cheap
imports. The so-called Doha Round of talks is now "dead in the
water," says the WSJ, and there's little hope that it will be
revived anytime soon. Many had described it as the last chance
to increase free trade worldwide before protectionist sentiments
take over in weakening economies. USAT says that the "talks'
failure may mark a watershed after two decades of increasing
globalization."
The NYT fronts word that the CIA's deputy director recently
traveled to Pakistan to confront some of the country's most
senior officials with evidence that members of Pakistan's spy
service have deep ties to militants operating in the practically
lawless tribal areas. The fact that these ties exist is hardly new,
but the White House has often steered clear of directly
criticizing Pakistan for fear of alienating an ally. The NYT
describes the decision to have such a senior CIA official pass on
the message as "an unusual one" and says that it could be "a
sign" that the relationship between the two countries' intelligence
services "may be deteriorating."
Although talks between Washington and Baghdad about a longterm security pact seemed to have reached a deadlock last
month, the WSJ reports the negotiations started to move forward
after the White House agreed to a "general time horizon" for
troop withdrawals. There is still no agreement on a pullout date.
While Iraqis are pushing for a 2010 withdrawal, a compromise
could tack on a year or two to that goal, along with the necessary
caveat that the plan could change if violence increases.
The WP devotes a front-page story to looking into the
allegations John McCain and his allies have been repeating over
and over again in the last few days claiming that Obama
canceled a visit to a military hospital in Germany because he
was forbidden from taking reporters along. This is all part of
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
McCain's strategy to portray Obama as a shrewd political
operative who has no real interest in the well-being of American
troops. There's just one problem: It's not true. Obama's campaign
didn't help itself by "offering slightly different reasons at
different times" for canceling the visit. But ultimately, "there is
no evidence that he planned to take anyone to the American
hospital other than a military adviser," says the Post.
Devoting front-page real estate and more than 1,000 words to
debunk what seems to be a clearly scurrilous attack could be
overkill, but, as the NYT points out in a piece inside, McCain's
claim has received lots of attention lately. The Republican
released an advertisement detailing the claim, and although it ran
as a paid commercial "roughly a dozen" times, it has been shown
repeatedly on newscasts across the country. This all amounts to
"a public relations coup" for the candidate who was able to get
millions to see his ad, mostly without paying a penny.
The WP fronts news that Scrabulous, a popular Facebook
application, was disabled for U.S. and Canadian users of the
social networking site. The companies that own the Scrabble
trademark, Hasbro and Mattel, had been asking Facebook to take
down the application since January, but the action was taken
only after a lawsuit was filed last week accusing Scrabulous of
copyright infringement. "I was getting creamed, so it's probably
a good thing in that respect," a Scrabulous fan tells the Post.
"The country is probably 10 percent more productive today."
today's papers
All in the Family
By Daniel Politi
Tuesday, July 29, 2008, at 6:22 AM ET
The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal's world-wide
newsbox lead, while the Washington Post goes across its front
page, with an internal Justice Department report that details how
department aides broke civil service laws by taking politics into
account in hiring decisions. Close aides to former Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales asked inappropriate questions at
interviews for nonpolitical jobs and frequently hired those who
were vocal about their conservative and Christian views, even
when they were less qualified for the job. The aides also carried
out Internet searches to identify conservatives and screen out
applicants whose views were seen as too liberal.
The Los Angeles Times leads with word that plans are currently
in the works to move a unit of Pakistan's army into the country's
tribal regions. The United States has long advocated such a
move because Pakistan's Frontier Corps, currently assigned to
guarding the largely lawless region, is ineffective. USA Today
leads with a new poll taken over the weekend that shows a
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tightening presidential race. Among registered voters, Barack
Obama's lead over John McCain decreased a few points as
registered voters preferred the Democrat 47 percent to 44
percent. Among likely voters, McCain comes out ahead 49
percent to 45 percent, although both cases are within the margin
of error. Perhaps most worrying for Obama is that 41 percent of
respondents said they don't think he has what it takes to be
commander in chief, which is at the same levels as last month.
The revelation that the hiring process at the Justice Department
was politicized under Gonzales is hardly new. But the report
gives more details about how pervasive the problem was and
how it affected some of the department's most important
positions. For example, everyone mentions the case of an
experienced prosecutor who was denied an important
counterterrorism job because of his wife's activism in
Democratic politics. The report noted that the inappropriate use
of politics in hiring decisions was most widespread in hiring
immigration judges. The LAT also fronts the report out of Justice
and focuses on how it hints that one of the U.S. attorneys who
was fired in 2006 may have been dismissed because of rumors
that she was having a sexual relationship with a female career
prosecutor.
The WP focuses on Monica Goodling, who came under the
heaviest criticism in the report for implementing what one senior
official described as a "farm system" that was designed to
increase the number of Republicans in the department.
Democratic lawmakers suggested they would look into whether
they could charge Goodling and others with perjury for failing to
fully disclose the extent of the practice when they testified
before Congress. Realistically, no one expects much to happen,
particularly since most of those named in the report are no
longer at the department. As many as 40 immigration judges
were recruited because of their political views, and they're likely
to remain on the job.
In the Post's op-ed page, a former deputy attorney general
wonders: "Where were the career people on whom we count to
keep the department honest?" Jamie Gorelick notes that the
report details how several senior officials at the Justice
Department had enough information to know that there was
something strange going on but failed to say anything. Besides
making sure this never happens again, the department "needs to
hold individuals responsible for their actions" and "offer
opportunities to those who were improperly denied them."
Even as U.S. officials praised Pakistan's plans to move a regular
army unit into the country's tribal areas, they still question how
much good it could do if the government continues to be
unwilling to recognize the extent of the problem. The unit itself
will likely run into trouble because, according to U.S. officials, it
has been trained to carry out conventional war and not
counterinsurgency operations. It's also unclear whether the unit
would be able to do much good in an area that has long resisted
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
military involvement. But some think there might be an opening
for progress because there are hints that extremists might have
alienated some tribes by betraying or killing tribal leaders.
The WP devotes its traditional lead spot to, and the NYT fronts,
the violence that shook Iraq yesterday as four female bombers
(the NYT says three were suicide bombers and another left a
bomb in a bag and walked away) and the subsequent chaos
killed at least 61 people. It marked yet another example of how
women are increasingly carrying out attacks because they can
evade security checkpoints more easily, and it was a reminder of
how fragile the situation continues to be in Iraq. One of the
bombers blew herself up in the middle of a political
demonstration in Kirkuk, in northern Iraq. As the NYT recounts
in detail, many blamed Turkmen extremists for the attack and
angry Kurds quickly began to attack Turkmen offices and
confront guards who then shot into the crowds. The Baghdad
bombers carried out what appeared to be a coordinated attack
against Shiite pilgrims.
The LAT and WSJ front looks at how Beijing continues to be
shrouded in a gray haze despite recent efforts to curb pollution
that have forced hundreds of thousands of residents to change
their daily routines. Now the government is considering
implementing even tougher measures that could lead to more
factory closings, and officials might ban as many as 90 percent
of private cars from the streets. If China fails to improve the
situation, many athletes are likely to wear masks while in
Beijing, which would be extremely embarrassing for the
Communist government. The WSJ notes that many are looking
to the efforts as a learning experience about what can be done to
decrease pollution. Experts say that if an authoritarian
government that can order businesses around more easily than
most other countries can't control the problem then it's unlikely
that other industrialized nations could have much success in
reducing pollution.
In other Olympics-related news, the NYT takes a look at how the
Chinese government is so determined to show the world a
sanitized picture of Beijing that it has put up walls and screens
around some of the city's more unsightly buildings and blocks.
The WP says Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine appears to be on the
vice presidential shortlist. Kaine has apparently told "close
associates" that he's had "very serious" conversations with
Obama. Sens. Evan Bayh and Joseph Biden are also under
serious consideration. Besides Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius,
most of the others being considered are senators with lots of
foreign-policy experience. Kaine seems to fulfill many of the
characteristics Obama is looking for in a running mate, but he
has no foreign policy experience and is a first-term governor. To
the shock of no one, the NYT notes that Sen. Hillary Clinton
doesn't appear to be a contender for the job.
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The LAT fronts a look at how fire commanders are often
pressured to deploy military planes to drop water and retardant
to fight a wildfire even if they won't do any good. Firefighters
call them "CNN drops" because they're often launched because
of pressure from politicians who want to demonstrate that
everything is being done to put out a wildfire. No one doubts
that aircraft can play an important role in putting out a fire, but
the increasing, and often unnecessary, use of air power is one of
the reasons why the cost of fighting wildfires has skyrocketed in
recent years.
In an interesting piece on the first trial of a Guantanamo
detainee, the NYT notes that while the proceedings might look
like they could take place in the United States, the truth is that
things are far from normal. FBI agents have testified about how
they didn't inform Osama Bin Laden's former driver, Salim
Hamdan, about his constitutional rights, and a psychiatrist has
said that the isolation and repeated interrogations have so
warped Hamdan's sense of reality that he sometimes thinks the
trial itself is another method of interrogation. The whole process
sometimes takes on a surreal nature. At one point, a prosecution
witness showed a chart of al-Qaida's leadership that includes
Hamdan far below the supposed leader, who was released from
Guantanamo in 2004. Plus there's the small fact that the
administration has made it clear that even if Hamdan is
acquitted, he could still face indefinite detention. "Where else in
the world," an ACLU lawyer said, "is someone being prosecuted
for a crime who is already serving a life sentence and will
continue to serve one if he's acquitted?"
One would like to think that when voters weigh in on whether
their state's constitution should be amended, they've thought
about the issue and have a clear point of view. But those who are
campaigning for and against the proposition that would amend
California's constitution are betting that how the ballot measure
is worded can change votes, notes the LAT. Supporters of the
proposition are up in arms because the attorney general's office
changed the language on the ballot to say that it would
"eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry" instead of
stating that the amendment seeks "to provide that only marriage
between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in
California." Political analysts say people are less likely to vote
for something that is seen as taking away existing rights.
today's papers
The Red Zone
By Daniel Politi
Monday, July 28, 2008, at 6:28 AM ET
The New York Times leads with a look at how banks are
reducing the number of loans they give out to businesses. Over
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
the last year, two key credit sources for companies have
collectively declined 3 percent, which "is the largest annual
decline since the credit tightening that began with the last
recession, in 2001." USA Today leads with word that the White
House has increased its estimate for next year's deficit to a
record $490 billion. A previous estimate for the deficit in the
fiscal year beginning on Oct. 1 was $407 billion, but the
numbers have been revised to reflect a weakening economy and
"larger-than-anticipated costs" of the fiscal stimulus package.
The Los Angeles Times leads with a look at the "rickety calm"
that has engulfed Iraq as the last of the "surge" troops leave the
country and citizens wait to see what happens next. Even as
they're getting used to living with much less violence, Iraqis
"tread carefully" out of a generalized fear that gains could
quickly unravel. The Wall Street Journal plays weekend catchup and leads its world-wide newsbox with Saturday's bombings
in India, which killed more than 45 people. A group calling itself
the "Indian Mujahadeen" claimed responsibility for the
explosions. The Washington Post leads locally but goes high
with the efforts by Barack Obama's campaign to increase
registration and turnout among African-Americans. Black voters
could be the key to an Obama victory in several battleground
states, including some in the South. But the campaign has a steep
hill to climb, and there's uncertainty about whether spending so
much time and effort on reaching citizens who have long tuned
out of politics will actually pay off in November.
The examples cited by the NYT to illustrate the way credit has
tightened for companies make it clear that money is still
available, but banks are being more careful about approving
loans. Indeed, businesses "with solid credit and profitable
businesses can generally still get loans, but rates are higher and
wait times are longer," says the paper. The paper notes that until
about a year ago, banks could easily sell most of their loans,
which passed the risk on to someone else. But now that banks
are risking their own money, they're more motivated to make
sure a borrower can actually afford the credit payments. That
doesn't necessarily sound like a negative development, but some
contend that banks have gone from one extreme to the other.
Whereas banks used to give almost anyone credit, they now have
"an equally arbitrary aversion to lend," and even profitable
companies are having to jump through hoops in order to get
credit to expand their businesses.
USAT makes clear that the projection for next year's deficit is
likely to be even higher than the revised projections because the
estimate doesn't take into account the full cost of the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. Also, if the economy worsens the number
is likely to increase further. Despite its record-breaking sum, as a
share of the economy, the 2009 deficit would be 3 percent to 4
percent and falls below the post-World War II record of 6
percent that was set in 1983. Still, it's a sobering reminder of
how much the deficit has increased under Bush, who inherited a
$128 billion surplus in 2001.
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The Post fronts the second story in its series about oil that
focuses on China, a country that "accounts for about 40 percent
of the world's recent increase in demand for oil." Whereas
private cars in China were a rare sight 15 years ago, there were
15.2 million of them last year. That number has plenty of room
to grow as fewer than 4 percent of people in China have actually
bought a car. Even as demand skyrockets, China, along with
other developing countries, heavily subsidizes oil so there's little
incentive to conserve fuel. The NYT also takes a look at
subsidies around the world and notes that, according to one
estimate, countries with fuel subsidies "accounted for 96 percent
of the world's increase in oil use last year."
The NYT fronts a look at John McCain's 15-year leadership of
the International Republican Institute, a role that has brought
him into close contact with many of Washington's most powerful
lobbyists. The group's mission of promoting democracy around
the world is certainly consistent with McCain's stated values, but
a closer examination "reveals an organization in many ways at
odds with the political outsider image that has become a
touchstone" of his campaign for the White House. McCain has
helped the institute raise millions of dollars from lobbyists and
companies who have interests before the Senate. And lobbyists
have also been an integral part of the institute, as 14 of them
served on the group's board during McCain's tenure.
The NYT and WP both note that the Senate will devote much of
its time this week to considering a huge omnibus package that
contains 35 bills. The brainchild of Majority Leader Harry Reid
is officially known as the Advancing America's Priorities Act,
but the NYT calls it the "Tomnibus" since it's devoted to
thwarting the efforts of one man, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.
Coburn, known as the Senate's "Dr. No," is an expert at using
parliamentary tactics to block the passage of legislation. Much
of the legislation in the $10-billion package has overwhelming
bipartisan support, but Coburn says it involves unnecessary
government spending.
There's such poor oversight of contractors in Iraq that one
company got paid for work it never completed, notes the WP.
The special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction says
Parsons received $142 million of a total $333 million, even
though it completed only about one-third of the projects
stipulated in one of its contracts. Parsons questions the findings
and says its work was hindered by the violence in Iraq. A
separate Post story points out that the government has apparently
decided that its experience with contractors in Iraq has been so
successful that it's expanding efforts to award new contracts for
work in Afghanistan.
The NYT points out that the phrase "jump the shark," which is
used to denote things that are perceived "as being past their
prime," could be on its way out and replaced by a new
expression: "nuked the fridge." The original phrase refers to an
episode of Happy Days in which a character jumped over a shark
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
while water skiing; the new version was inspired by the latest
Indiana Jones movie, in which the rogue archaeologist survives a
nuclear blast by hiding inside a fridge. Jason Nicholl, who runs a
Web site dedicated to the new phrase, characterized it as a "new,
fresh take" on an old expression that probably doesn't mean
much to many of those who use it. " 'Jump the shark' is for
people over the age of 60, who remember the show."
today's papers
A Drop in the Bucket
By David Sessions
Sunday, July 27, 2008, at 4:32 AM ET
The Washington Post leads with economists' doubts that the
"sprawling" housing bill currently headed for President Bush's
desk will do much to soften the crunch. The bill makes the front
page in all three papers, but the Middle East also gets plenty of
face time: The New York Times leads with the "profound
weakening" of the Mahdi Army, Iraq's Shiite milita, "in an
important, if tentative, milestone for stability in Iraq." The Los
Angeles Times turns the spotlight on the war on terror in
Pakistan, leading with a grim portrait of "a counter-terrorism
campaign ... that has lost momentum and is beset by frustration."
The Democrat-sponsored housing bill received 72-13 Senate
approval in a rare Saturday session, giving the Treasury
Department sweeping authority to prop up the country's two
largest mortgage finance companies and potentially costing the
government billions of dollars. "The bill raises the national debt
ceiling to $10.6 trillion … the first time that the limit on the
government's credit card has grown to 14 digits," the NYT
reports. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., mentioned in both stories, told
the WP that that the Treasury's new authority "crosses the line
into socialism"; John McCain and Barack Obama both support
the bill. The Post's economist sources say that the end of the
crunch won't come nearly as fast as the bill's passing. In fact, one
says, the 400,000 households the bill hopes to assist are "a drop
in the bucket."
The Mahdi Army's decline is "part of a general decline in
violence that is resonating in American as well as Iraqi politics,"
the NYT reports. The anti-American fighters were the primary
defenders of poor Shiites in Iraq, but the miltia's violent tactics
weakened its appeal "to the point that many quietly supported
American military sweeps against the group." The army
formerly held large portions of Baghdad but was forced back by
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki's military operation this
spring. The weakening is a victory for Iraq's government and
particularly for the prime minister, who is increasingly seen as a
legitimate national leader. Seventeen Iraqis in formerly militacontrolled areas, each interviewed by the Times, say the group's
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grip on the local economy has slowly "ebbed"—cooking gas, for
example, now costs less than a fifth of its former price under the
Mahid Army.
If that's the good news, the LAT has the bad: CIA operations
against al-Qaida fighters in Pakistan are all but fruitless.
"Dozens of interviews" with (anonymous) senior security
officials give a bleak picture of the CIA's attempts to straddle an
uneasy dichotomy in Pakistan, a nation that is by turns an ally
and a threat. In the current state of affairs, officers are "confined
largely to a collection of crumbling bases in northwestern
Pakistan. Most are on remote Pakistani military outposts, where
they are kept on a short leash under an awkward arrangement
with their hosts—rarely allowed to leave and often left with little
to do but plead with their Pakistani counterparts to act." The
piece is filled with depressing quotes from CIA officials, such as
one's observation that "everyone who serves in Pakistan comes
back frustrated." The only thing that might change the agency's
approach? "Another attack on the homeland," a high-ranking
counter-terrorism official says.
The war on terror shares front-page real estate with Barack
Obama, whose recent world tour gets A1 analysis in both the
WP and the LAT. The Post wonders if the trip, widely considered
a success, will have any real payoff for Obama. The candidate
himself openly told the paper he hoped it would have an
impressionistic effect on voters later in the game: "Hopefully, it
gives voters a sense that I can in fact—and do—operate
effectively on the international stage," Obama said. "That may
not be decisive for the average voter right now, given our
economic troubles, but it's knowledge they can store in the back
of their minds for when they go into the polling place later." The
LAT piece quotes Obama strategist David Axelrod, speaking
with a remarkable frankness about the theater aspect of the trip
("Any campaign, in part, is about whether people can picture a
candidate in that role"). The Times also notes that a Thursday
Fox News poll shows Obama slipping to within a "statistically
insignificant" margin over John McCain.
A column by WP ombudsman Deborah Howell examines reader
reactions to the paper's 13-part series on the unsolved murder of
D.C. intern Chandra Levy. "All but two" readers who called or
wrote were critical of the series that, in one's phrasing, "pushe[d]
real news off the front page for 13 days." One reader who did
like the series compliments the appeal of serial reading, adding
to the anticipation of opening the morning paper. Howell
ultimately sides with the majority, concluding that "to me, the
project wasn't worth 13 days, all on Page 1, and the new
information wasn't highlighted sufficiently."
A piece in the NYT's Arts & Leisure section eulogizes album
packaging and liner notes, which are increasingly scarce in the
digital music age. "Scanning the small-print data crammed into
album packaging can be tremendous fun, revealing aspects of an
artist not always evident in the music," the pieces muses, amid
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
quotes from various experts who don't seem too worried about
the disappearance of physical liner notes. The best part about
album booklets? They "are the domain of too-much-information
moments," like when Gwen Stefani told her husband, in her
latest album's credits, "I still want you all over me."
today's papers
Joined at the Hip
By Morgan Smith
Saturday, July 26, 2008, at 5:24 AM ET
The Washington Post leads with news that the Federal
Communications Commission approved the "long-delayed
merger" between Sirius and XM satellite radio companies. The
merger passed after the FCC agreed the "marketplace has
changed" since the companies started; satellite radio now
competes with its Internet counterpart and podcasts for listeners.
The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times both lead with
California's passage of a law that requires trans-fats to be
removed from restaurant cooking by 2010 and retail baked
goods by 2011. The Wall Street Journal tops its world-wide
news box with an account of Barack Obama's cozy meeting with
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, during which he "appeared
close to securing an endorsement" from the foreign leader.
The Sirius-XM union, which detractors opposed for fear of a
monopoly, won't come without stipulations, notes the WP. The
companies "must cap prices for three years after joining and
allow consumers to choose the channels they want and pay less
for packages of channels." They will also pay a combined $19.7
million in fines because "some of their radio receivers sold to
consumers and signal-boosting radio towers violated FCC
technical rules." In its B-section coverage, the WSJ says the FCC
member who cast the tie-breaking vote in the decision "held off
on voting in favor…until she was satisfied that the enforcement
part of the deal was completed."
The NYT declares that having the trans-fat ban "imposed on the
most populous state's 88,000 restaurants, as well as its bakeries
and other food purveyors, is a major gain for the movement
against trans-fats." It notes the California Restaurant Association
opposed the requirement, arguing that "singling out trans-fats as
a singularly harmful food product was arbitrary and that a
mandate would prove expensive" and such a job should fall to
the federal government. The LAT says that the CRA resisted the
legislation since "it would not substantially affect public health
because people eat most of their meals at home."
The U.S. military may be restricting photojournalists' access to
operations in Iraq, reports the NYT above the fold. Embed rules
forbid using images of wounded soldiers without their written
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consent and prevent "showing identifiable soldiers killed in
action before their families have been notified." But some
photographers contend the military has been using a catch-all
clause in the rules that states "no information can be published
without approval" to further limit the photos that come from the
war zone.
chefs debate "which Sonoma farmer's market is the best source
for organic tarragon and consulting on the chemical attributes of
emulsions."
The WP off-leads with the prevalence of American donations in
Israeli politics after recent scrutiny of U.S. tycoon Morris
Talansky's "bankrolling" of luxury vacations for Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert. In Israel, the revelation of Talansky's donations of
"expensive cigars," "a fine watch," and "five-star suites" has
prompted an examination of foreign political patrons. "[M]ostly
American," overseas donors are especially friendly to rightleaning politicians—those who "advocate aggressive military
action against Iran and Hamas and who maintain an
uncompromising stance against ceding land to the Palestinians."
Below the fold, a piece questions the growing number of reality
TV shows featuring children that push "the ethical envelope"
and wonders if exposing kids' struggles is "exploitation, or
edutainment?"
webhead
Despite downturns in general consumer spending, luxury-goodsmakers say U.S. sales of high-end products remain constant,
confirms the WSJ in an above-the-fold article. An increase in
"entry-level items" and foreign spending spurred by the low
dollar help explain the steady sales, but investors "appear to be
betting that the boom won't last." The NYT rounds out its front
page with a look at how sleep-away camps cope with
"increasingly high-maintenance" parents. Modern moms and
dads commit a variety of offenses, including making "unsolicited
bunk placement requests," giving their kids illicit items like junk
food and cell phones, and deciding that summer is "an ideal time
to give their offspring a secret vacation from Ritalin."
Nowadays, not so many people use dictionaries—why bother
when you can look up the definition online? Vonnegut's idea is
no less relevant today, though. Monday's launch of Cuil, the
latest search engine gunning for Google, brings us to this
question: What queries can you give a search engine to quickly
expose its strengths and weaknesses?
Elsewhere, the NYT details molestation charges against a Judo
instructor who serves as the top official in two of the sport's
national associations. The coach allegedly groped his teenage
female athletes during training, provided them with drugs and
alcohol, and had sex with them on road trips to competitions.
Though one girl's parents brought a complaint to local police as
early as 1981, authorities didn't take action because of confusion
over jurisdiction, since "the suspected incidents were said to
have occurred on the road and at tournaments in different cities."
The charges resurfaced when a former student posted on her
blog after seeing her former coach at the Olympic trials.
Ever wondered about bartending's competing schools of
thought? A WSJ piece dispatches from the "Tales of the
Cocktail" convention in New Orleans, where it's avant-garde
"bar chefs" vs. the nostalgic "classicists." But don't worry, the
two camps are easy to tell apart: the classicists argue "over
whether the correct recipe for a Clover Club is found in Albert
Stevens Crockett's 1931 'Old Waldorf Bar Days' or Harry
MacElhone's 1921 'ABC of Mixing Cocktails,' " while the bar
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
The Search Engine Litmus Test
How do we know if a Google competitor is any good? A Slate reader contest.
By Chris Wilson
Tuesday, July 29, 2008, at 7:16 AM ET
In a 1966 review of the new Random House Dictionary, Kurt
Vonnegut wrote that the key to understanding a new dictionary
was to "look up ain't and like." These two definitions are the
quickest way, Vonnegut promises us, to determine whether a
dictionary is "descriptive" or "prescriptive"—if it explains how
language is used or if it decrees how it ought to be.
Slate wants your suggestions on the most useful queries that,
when given to a variety of search engines, neatly show the
differences between them. To borrow an example from my
review of Powerset, the phrase "Who shot John Lennon?"
demonstrates the semantic search engine's ability to answer
simple questions better than Google; more conventional queries
usually favor the incumbent. Or, to take another approach,
perhaps a given keyword returns pages on one search engine that
another refuses to crawl altogether.
When you send us your search queries, make sure to include
your thoughts on what the results reveal about Google, Cuil,
Ask, etc. Different engines prioritize results in different ways,
based on notions of a page's authority, usefulness, or popularity.
Like dictionaries, does this make some search engines
descriptive and others prescriptive? Or are those terms out of
date? If so, send us some new ones.
Please post your submissions to the Fray or send them to
slate.search@gmail.com. E-mail may be quoted by name unless
the writer stipulates otherwise. Entries will be compiled for a
future column.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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