un artista è morto

Michelangelo Antonioni
1912-2007

Watch it.

give me a break, joan

Gawker linked to this brief interview with Salon's Joan Walsh on MediaWatch yesterday evening.

And Gawker is right: she must be high. I love her and I love the website, but Joan sort of makes a fool of herself here. She is not the most talented writer on Salon, but she is at the helm of one of the better written news and politics sites around. Still, to say that Salon is not liberal is stupid. It absolutely is lefty; it may not speak for all progressives, and it may not identify as movement press, but c'mon.

Also, in her rundown of opinion on '08 candidates, she betrays Salon's apparent and reflexive support for Hillary Clinton, both for the Democratic nomination and success in the general election. This is the one area I've consistently found lacking on Salon. Maybe Joan's refusal to call the site liberal is behind its abdication of responsibilty to scrutinize the front runner from within her own party. Even if we, as Democrats, ultimately choose to support Clinton, it should be after serious critique and soul-searching -- otherwise the conservative media will dominate all discussion about her if and when she wins the nomination. Think of it as pre-emptive war.

Joan, your site is great and I love reading you. But get with the program.

the compassionate misanthrope

She's human (sort of). Is this a problem?

the ugly american apparel

Dear American Apparel,

I think I really fucking hate you. I know your clothes fit me, which is why I don't care that they can be a rip off. But you've got some major kinks to iron out of your 100% cotton tees.
Basically, can you please hire some grown ups? I understand you're selling a hipster aesthetic, but don't the too-tight, occasionally neon clothes suffice? I don't really need both the average age AND body mass index of the people waiting on me to be under 23, since they clearly have no idea what is happening, how to use their registers, etc. And please ask them to refrain from stopping the transaction at the checkout to skip the song on their iPod that's broadcasting throughout the store because it's so "six months ago." Also, tell them to wait to discuss the show they're going to on the LES tonight until after I've paid for my t-shirt.
Sorry to have my Baby Rib Men's Briefs in a bunch, but the people need their metallic leotards and Tyvek jackets, and your underweight and overestimated staff is fucking shit up.

Best regards,
Jesse

lessons from john yoo

Glenn Greenwald has a terrific (in both senses of the word) post today about John Yoo's recent Wall Street Journal Op-Ed.

Here's Yoo's psychotic contribution to the political discourse.

I say psychotic not just for the obvious reasons, but because Yoo is no stranger to the WSJ Op-Ed page, and looking back on a 1998 appearance on the page is disconcerting, to say the least. In his earlier Op-Ed, Yoo is criticizing President Clinton's invocation of Executive Privilege. Clearly, it's nothing new to approve of the President you like and disprove of the one you don't, but it's alarming to see the exact same reasoning used for totally opposite conclusions.

Anyway, Glenn Greenwald picks this apart very nicely.

But this all brings up an important point that no one seems interested in discussing, and that is how Clinton's conduct in office laid so much of the groundwork for the unfortunate Constitutional crisis in which we are currently embroiled. Glenn Greenwald's post makes mention of the distinction between person and office in a democratic government. Follow that trail: Clinton's likeable politics, persona, whathaveyou, does not recuse him of at the very least criticism over his own actions in office, and the degree to which they expanded presidential power and routine abuse of the justice system. These issues seem to be Democrats' new mantle against Bush (justifiably so), but we won't get very far with people who disliked Clinton (there are a lot of them, and we need at least a few of their votes to ever win national elections again) unless we are honest about the role he played in getting us to this place.

the madness of king george

From that illustrious list of the Most E-mailed on nytimes.com comes Adam Cohen's excellent editorial, "Just What the Founders Feared: An Imperial President Goes to War."

Here's some James Madison wisdom from the same:

“In war, the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered; and it is the executive brow they are to encircle.”

go big or go home, literally

I stumbled upon this book review on salon.com this morning.

The book is called The Trap; the author is Daniel Brook.

In the tradition of Strapped (Tamara Draut) and Generation Debt (Anya Kamenetz), The Trap is another exploration of the economic realities of being a 20-something in the US today. Draut's book discussed the ballooning costs of living and the stagnation of wages, especially for entry-level toilers like yours truly. Kamenetz's book, as its title suggests, analyzed some of the implications of the crushing educational debt being shouldered by recent grads (also, incidentally, just like yours truly!).

According to Astra Taylor's review, Brook takes the analysis a step further, into political territory. His idea is that the system - the one described by Draut and Kamenetz - conspires to create a stark dichotomy in career and lifestyle choice for young Americans. We must choose between being saints or sellouts. There is nothing in between; we work for a pittance in something altruistic, or we decide we want houses, families, and middle class life and are forced to sell out and go corporate. It's a sad and alarming reality with incredible political and cultural consequences (the death of the middle class in the new century?), and its development can be traced back from the radicalism and egalitarianism of the Sixties to the conservative backlash that dismantled the progressive tax code, the healthcare system, and free or cheap education, among other things.

Anyway, I'm going to read this book, but it'll probably put me over the edge. Because this reality sucks.

a lead that tells it like it is

Bush and Cheney's tortured secrecy
By David Cole, for Salon.com


Here's the lead:
"The Bush administration, already arguably the most aggressive advocate of unchecked executive power in the history of the American presidency, has done it again."

Yeah, it's not new news. But isn't it refreshing to see a reporter actually write that sentence?

The thing the Bush administration is doing "again" is claiming executive privilege, this time as a rebuttal to Congressional subpeonas requesting the release of documents and the testimony of two White House counselors as they investigate the U.S. Attorney dismissal scandal.

It's pretty easy to launch into the laundry list of executive power grabbing, Constitution stretching and smashing, and general insane secrecy and legal breaches perpetrated by the regime. Cole does a bit of that, if you are feeling masochistic and want to read about it.

Here's what all this makes me think about though: if we were NOT currently embroiled in the midst of a disastrous and unpopular war (that is, if we were already out, or if it were going really well), would Bush's ratings still be abysmal? I have a very disturbing feeling that they wouldn't be, even though this anti-Constitutional behavior is potentially a much greater crisis than the sectarian sinkhole on the other side of the world.

Iraq is undoubtedly a hugely important issue - it's been a foreign policy blunder that will totally destabilize a vital region (to world peace, religious freedom, human rights, our security, and everyone's access to energy) for a long time. But the erosion of our own Constitutional system is potentially even more far-reaching, if not for the whole world, then at least for those of us marooned in the US.

I really hope we start thinking about our priorities in hatred here: what has been Bush's bigger sin? Or at least, why are we satisfied with an '08 field who criticize the hell out of the war, but remain mum on the reckless and illegal ballooning of executive power (save Ron Paul)?