Shock And Awww

News came late yesterday that crashing almost as hard as World Series ratings is newspaper circulation.

Missing from any account I've read so far is something along the lines of, "The persistent decline comes in the face of accelerated changes to newspapers which have drastically increased lifestyle and entertainment features at the expense of news reporting, as well as staff reductions of reporters, writers, and out-of-town and overseas bureaus. Advertising for products and services far beyond the means of readers has not attracted customers and a persistent rightward drift in editorial content, as well as a proliferation of inane family-and-workplace oriented daily comics, amazingly seems to have done nothing to reverse the downward trend."

The only paper to buck the wave in a remarkable way was the, yes, New York Post, so remarkable that I am sure this morning there is at least one fraud prosecutor, maybe a whole office full, interested in looking into practices of a circulation department that has long been suspected of ties to, ahem, certain people. The first thing you need to do when cheating on a test is to make sure you don't do too well. Maybe the loss of revenue after the breakup of the Page Six extortion racket sent Rupe's kids in pursuit of less-than-modest gains elsewhere.

There is still a very good niche for dailies, but, being full of college boys and girls, I doubt the dailies will ever figure out what to do. There's talk of counting online numbers, which is something I guess, but then all of a sudden they are competing on nearly equal terms with, oh, kos and Rawstory, Drudge and Huffington. Bruting money around will help a bit in this regard, but their money has a tendency to run out lately.

God forbid they should take steps to become smarter, smaller, more serious, interesting and, oh gee, useful? Crazy idea, I know.

Twilight Of The Goads

The very brill Billmon rendered another beaut th'other day. (Okay, Firesigners: "No, that's our sacred mound.") This one on the subject of the slipping big media grip on the body politic.

He spends much more time and thought to explain better than I ever have here about the changing calculus the Networks are employing in the face of the fracturing of the mass audience by cable and new media.

One smart highlight:

Forgive me for belaboring the obvious here. I'm obviously not the first guy to make the point that ignoring the truth is not the same thing as telling the truth (genuflects before pictures of Paul Krugman and Stephen Colbert) but where I might go beyond most liberal critics is in arguing that the "objectivity" convention itself is primarily a commercial arrangement, not a political one. And, like all arrangements in a dynamic capitalist economy, it has a finite life cyle, one which may be nearing its end.

The mass media -- the TV networks, the news weeklies, the large, national circulation newspapers like the New York Times -- have been under enormous economic pressures for over a decade now, and those pressures are only getting worse. The mass market itself is being torn apart, into smaller and smaller niches. For most old media, the networks in particular, it's become a zero sum game. Just trying to hold the audiences they have is a losing battle. This loss of market power is one of the forces driving the trend towards consolidation (oligopoly). It's a defensive reaction in an industy that is getting more competitive, not less.

In this kind of environment, the old journalistic tradition -- balancing partisan viewpoints across a relatively narrow, centrist ideological spectrum -- becomes more and more problematic. So does the old "liberal bias," which could more accurately be described as a kind of cool, technocratic disdain for populist passions, which in this country since about the 1950s, has meant the populist right. The market for that kind of centrist pablum is receding almost as quickly as David Broder's hairline.

He makes a good case that the rightward swing of the Networks is to chase whatever intact collection of eyeballs remains, mainly the dependably fooled, FOXed and frightened footsoldiers of the GOP.

[...]to me it looks as if a conscious, corporate decision has been made to try to hold (or win back) the conservative "red state" news audience even if it means losing the liberal "blue state" audience. Whether this is because the conservative news audience is larger and more affluent, or because the strategists at Viacom, Disney, GE and Time Warner have decided that liberals are less likely to change channels when their ideological beliefs are offended, or because the more demographically desirable blue state audiences have long since "self selected" their way out of old media's reach all together, I don't know.

He goes on to draw a dark conclusion which is logical, but I think misses a couple points. The main one being that the Networks are moving right not to gather audience, that is what they are trying to do, but to please their very conservative advertisers, which is what they have to do.

More to the point, it is the only thing they can do. Unfortunately, for them, this audience they think they need is aging by the hour and dying by the day. Billmon sees a new order in the world, I see one more last stand.

For there is nothing to be done if people, either from poverty, death or passing fads, stop bulk buying, or paying attention to the shit the TV's selling. And if the eyeballs continue to migrate, or close forever, politics - especially the politics of fear, exclusion and privilege - is not the sort of thing to draw them back.

Sports will, and FOX invests heavily in sports. Apparently they just took a bath with another dull, minor-market World Series. In fact it was a record low audience for the Fall Classic.

Hard Brain

After all my immodest kvelling this fortnight past, I will cop to being wrong. My sense was that cutting and running from "Staying the course" would cost that creep about two/three further percentage points in the approval dept. Seems 'twasn't so, though I'm not positive the polls reflecting the tick-up were not taken before that new tack of rhetoric. The Drip has a steady 39-40% at his back.

Well, as Louis Armstrong once said on a record to Billie Holiday, "Fuck 'em, Baby." If the good people of Virginia prefer "Okay" Allen over Webb, If Connecticut thinks Lieberman best reflects its dark heart, then by all means return them to Washington. The experience will serve them more kicks than coppers in the coming days, weeks, months...

The temptation is great, especially among those of us with a little something on the ball, to disparage the smarts of the electorate. This cynicism is certainly at the center of the GOP brain, which insists that the malign blandishments of a perfidious media are enough to sway people from the support of a just and mostly successful campaign in Iraq, even turn a good economy bad. I mean, how stupid, how malleable, do they think people are?

The answer is very.

Now if our politics have devolved to the point that all we have are two money machines churning out propaganda to somehow goad a bovine electorate to some result, then I see no further point in even thinking about the election. But I am here to say that I am not a cynical person and I do believe in progress, or at least renewal. Cynicism is a corrective at first, but inevitably becomes corrosive. The corrosion is everywhere in DC, and pervades the GOP. You can hold on to your cynicism if you want, but I have let mine pass.

Now I am not dumb enough to maintain that Americans are what you might call smart. But I submit that brains are not all they are chalked up to be. Most of us bloggy types value brains because they were the currency that got us whatever advantages we gained from a system of higher education that (for my money anyway) has deformed the social life of this nation over the last 40 years. Brains, I tell you, are a vastly inflated commodity. As facile as it may be to proclaim so, stupid people did not get us into Iraq, as they did not get us into Vietnam. Nope. Very smart people talked themselves and the country into throwing our army and treasure down that sand hole. VERY smart people, from very distinguished institutions (here the University of Chicago, aka "Where Fun Goes to Die", deserves special mention) are behind the tragedy.

These people do not lack brains, what they are missing completely are hearts and souls.

So, from here on out, let's not concern ourselves with stupid people. A dumbbell with a soul will always end up doing the right thing. A PhD without a heart will fuck shit up forever. The greatest danger resides, of course, in the heartless and stupid; but they rarely advance. If they do manage election to the highest office in the land, it is a sign of the decadence of a system, not its strength. Mayhem ensues.

I believe the system can, and will, right itself in unexpected, interesting and painful ways. Another fallacy us brainy types rely on is extrapolating from previous causes. Well sometimes shit happens that never happened before. And when that, to quote the poet, hard rain falls, brains are not such a big individual advantage anymore. Looking long term, you better be more resourceful than cynical too.

Screeching To The Choir

Sometime in the last two weeks someone looked at a private poll and announced to a table of shell-shocked Administration stooges, "Jesus, we're getting hammered on Stay the course now. The numbers on it have fucking tanked in the last month."

And, lo, (or maybe it is "low") it came to pass that they cut-and-ran from Stay the course, only this time the Newspeak volte face made things worse. I say that squalid little man hits 31% approval before election day. Why? Because the only people who take that jerk seriously anymore are those who approve of him. Most Americans hear "I've never been Stay the course" and feel a pounding behind their eyes. His cement head supporters will hear it and more than a few may feel a slap in the face, or piss on their shoes.

All around us the creeps are defending the indefensible. Limbaugh just jammed his fat head into a bees nest going after M.J. Fox. I submit that he did it not to save a few seats in Congress, but because he knows that after the election he and his kind are going to be looking at drastically fewer big paydays.

In other news I am pleased to report that re: yesterday's post, John Kerrey, and Ted Kennedy, have apparently both donated 500 Large to needy fellow Dems.

Now was that so hard?

Cha-cha-cha Changes

Since I'm on a fucking roll in the Perspicuity Dept. I might as well make a few more observations.

Last month, when I scouted the imminent death of the GOP, I did not mean to imply that digital info technology would not threaten the Dems with up-ending force as well. Rather that the Dems, by reason of their history as a fractious coalition, would be in a better psychological position to accept and account for the changes.

One example of what I had in mind has blown up in just the last few days, the campaign started (at myDD, I believe) to get well-funded Dems not running for office, or with money to spare for their own reelection, to donate to the grunts who need it. Some people, like the wonderful Louise Slaughter (and I swear to God, that woman should be the next Speaker), get it. Some people don't.

An issue like this would have been impossible to formalize two years ago; two years from now it might be one way in which the Dems do business. The point is that this whole affair is another way of looking at the business of winning elections that would have been impossible without new information and communication technology.

Speaking of new information and communications, another casualty, as I alluded to last night, of the coming GOP crash, is a mainstream media that is not so much in the GOP's pocket as wearing a suit from the same tailor. The traditional assumptions of Main Street, which newspapers and TV networks have rested on for decades, the Junior Chamber of Commerce verities of shut up, work hard and trust Republicans more than Democrats, have all leaked out of the cracks in the pool.

There are a lot of reasons why, but, frantically, it comes down to advertising - eyeballs as the ad guys say. Newspapers have been mortally wounded by Craigslist. Classified ads used to be a goddamn gold mine, "permission to print money" as one of my old Boston J-school profs put it once. All gone now. Even alternative weeklies are hurting (The Chicago Reader recently scaled back from four sections to three. Why? Its old classified section 4 had gradually filled up with post-modern comics to replace the column inches of agate type they couldn't sell anymore.)

That leaves newspapers to rely more on display ads, display ads for stores that are losing customers to online retail. There is no upside for papers.

And how have papers responded? Like dumbasses; stupid redesigns emphasizing lifestyle content to appeal to the richer few, and speaking less and less and less to the mass audience - you know, the man in the street, Joe Sixpack, rate paying union hardworking moms and dads - which once upon a time were the very reason large circulation newspapers existed at all.

TV's problems are different but not unrelated. Because the networks and their worker bees are used to making money hand over fist, their interests have always been with the Money Party. It was Murdoch, who has been losing a million dollars a week on the N.Y. Post for years, who gave everyone permission to be obvious about that. But, there again, it is a question of eyeballs. When times are good, it is easy to sit and watch nitwits like O'Reilly give credence to your own selfish thoughts and cranky desires. When times are hard, a message you will never find on the networks, people either ditch the cable, or stop paying attention to fatheads who talk about how grateful they should be to live in a free country.

I could, and often do, go on for hours about shit like this; though it is usually only a close circle of friends who have to endure it. My last observation for today is something Josh Marshall touched upon nearly a couple weeks ago. Just watch how quickly the MSM changes its stripes once the GOP goes all rotten and gooey. Alas, rhinos may be close to extinction in Africa, but so are their human counterparts, I need not name them here, at the poisoned and shrinking waterhole of right-wing broadcasting.

A News Cycle Built For Two

From an ABC News story this evening:

Midterm Election: Referendum on War

In What Comes Down to a Referendum on Iraq, the Center Peels Away

Oct. 23, 2006 — It's two weeks away, and the 2006 midterm elections look like a referendum on Iraq, a war in which President Bush and his party have lost not just the political center but significant chunks of their base.

An improving economy notwithstanding, opposition to the war remains the prime issue driving congressional voter preference. And the war's critics include not just eight in 10 Democrats but 64 percent of independents, 40 percent of conservatives, 35 percent of evangelical white Protestants and a quarter of Republicans.

And from Yr. Obdt. Hmbl. last March:

From The New York Times site this evening:

"Mr. Bush once again refused to set any timetable for the full withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, saying any such decision will fall to "future presidents and future governments of Iraq." This seemed to suggest that American forces would be in the country until 2009."

Is it my imagination or did that numbskull just make the next two elections referendums on the war? Like "Paint your party of assholes and con men into a tight hot corner' referendums?

I'm sure that's not what he meant to do; not at all...


Christ on a fucking cane. "An improving economy notwithstanding..." Notice how both the GOP and the MSM are going tits up at the same time? Maybe it's because both have been staffed for at least two generations by college-educated, steady-state compartmentalists who have not drawn an honest thinking breath since that day in junior high when their parents told them how smart they were.

The End Of The Mean

The Great Gilliard hit one out of the park yesterday, re: the character of that moral dwarf in the Oval Office:

George Bush has never explained Iraq in terms which a logical person could understand. Iraq has been an emotional appeal from the first day going after Saddam was raised. It was never about any actual threat, but an emotional desire to prove we could dominate anyone who opposed us.

For Bush, who has failed at every task ever put before him, from work, to the military to school, this was going to be his vindication. He so desperately wanted to be a hero and Iraq was going to solve all of his issues. He would defeat an enemy, prove himself worthy and gain the respect from his family he so desperately wanted.

Which is why he chose men his father kept at arms length. Bush never wanted advice, he wanted confirmation of his beliefs. His narrow world view, shaped by the dust dry plains of Midland as much as any movie, this idea thata man didn't need or want questions, he just did.

Which is how he approached the American people, not with facts, but an emotional appeal. He's out there, he's guilty, let's get him first. That was the goal, get them first, show them who is boss, Those who don't get that are weak, even if they are in uniform. We will show the world they better not fuck with us again. Iraq will be first, and the rest will bend to our will. We will show them what a superpower does.

This was never a logical argument, it was never a reasoned one, it was pure emotion, which the anti-war movement never got. Iraq was a challenge to us, our manhood, our power and anyone in the way just didn't care.

Read the whole thing.

The point I would like to make here while standing on the shoulders of a giant has to do with the systemic nature of the collapse this nation is facing. Think of the GOP as the first rotten grandstand to fall. There are plenty others. For at the heart of Gilliard's insight is that that fucking wart appealed to millions of voters who projected on him either a grander version of themselves, or the sort of person they wanted to be; the apotheosis of every country club nitwit who ever turned a fast buck selling land his father bought first. This has been a big problem from sea to shining sea, an essential unworthyness. But Lincoln knew that the people cannot be wrong for long.

Forgotten is an early brief against the Texan Tot, unmentioned since, gee, 2000 -- that no one had reached the highest office in the land with such little political experience. Let that sink in a bit, Mr. GOP, before you start honking more about how unfairly he's being treated by the press. You gave the keys of the kingdom to a fuckwit, one highly supervised, but a ding-dong nevertheless. The machine was supposed to run itself, and it certainly did.

My previous post suggesting a National Reconciliation Tribunal is not based on the idea that a Speaker Pelosi is going to ram it through a fractious Congress. No, it will happen because people will demand it. I've got news for you, the Army has only just begun to collapse, and all those people who sent their sons and daughters to be horribly maimed or die for the GOP machine, who are homeless after serving their country, who need to collect food from shelters to augment soldiers pay, for all in the officer corps who did not sign on to the Repub agenda, and a few who did, all those grunts who are going to be elected to Congress in two weeks, and in two years, you'd best believe they will want some fucking answers, some apologies and maybe a few trials.

Then add in all the people who've lost their jobs, savings, health insurance, who can't pay their student loans, living with rotten roads and busted electrical grids, all the Mommies and Daddies who lost the McMansions, the big cars and swell schools. They might be looking for some answers too.

This week the MSM is beginning to twig to the notion that maybe the Democrats will do pretty well this cycle. (Though you never know, do you??) The center/right beef against the D's is that they don't understand flyover country. (Bobo Brooks said so again yesterday.) I think that the people most missing the Big Picture are the corporate monks who've decided that all that needs doing is some correct policy thinking.

As the good Dr. Thompson used to say, Ho-ho.

-------

Update: As usual, Billmon describes the nature of the collapse far better than I.

What, Then, Is To Be Done?

Sometimes I don't know if I am looking into an especially filthy kaleidoscope, or falling down a fucking mineshaft. I am speaking metaphorically, of course, of my feelings when contemplating the open wounds that have blossomed all over our body politic in the months since Katrina hit.

More metaphors in service of reality...

Any writer with a heart is bound to feel a stomach-eating rage over their essential helplessness when the world's widespread suffering comes to demand action far more than compassion. Billmon stated it beautifully a few days ago. Robert Bly, in his epic poem about the obscenity of the American war against Vietnam, The Teeth Mother Naked At Last put it far more starkly:

But if one of those children came near that we have set on fire,
came toward you like a gray barn, walking,
you would howl like a wind tunnel in a hurricane,
you would tear at your shirt with blue hands,
you would drive over your own child's wagon trying to back up,
the pupils of your eyes would go wild.

If a child came by burning, you would dance on your lawn,
trying to leap into the air, digging into your cheeks,
you would ram your head against the wall of your bedroom
like a bull penned too long in his moody pen.

If one of those children came toward me with both hands
in the air, fire rising along both elbows,
I would suddenly go back to my animal brain,
I would drop on all fours, screaming,
my vocal chords would turn blue; so would yours,
it would be two days before I could play with one of my own
children again.

If you feel like weeping for fifteen-twenty minutes, go read the whole thing.

I guess my point is that though we are helpless to effect change today no one is in a better position to guide the future better than you and I. In 1970, or thereabouts, Bly identified our destruction of Vietnam and the official lies that enabled our long campaign as America's death wish for itself. An earlier passage which, now that I'm at it, I may as well put up:

The ministers lie, the professors lie, the television lies, the priests lie.
What are these lies?
They mean that the country wants to die.
Lie after lie starts out into the prairie grass,
like enormous caravans of Conestoga wagons crossing the Platte.

And a long desire for death goes with them, guiding it all from beneath:
"a death longing if all longing else be vain,"
stringing together the vague and foolish words.

snip

Now the Chief Executive enters, and the press conference begins.
First the President lies about the date the Appalachian Mountains rose.
Then he lies about the population of Chicago,
then the weight of the adult eagle, and then the acreage of the Everglades
Next he lies about the number of fish taken every year in the Arctic.

He has private information about which city is the capital of Wyoming.
He lies about the birthplace of Attila the Hun,
Then about the composition of the amniotic fluid,

snip

These lies mean that something in the nation wants to die.
What is there now to hold us to earth? We long to go.

If this country is to survive, we will need a drastic reimagining of the national mission, a reevaluation of our politics, the economy, the entire social compact; a radical transformation that will leave those thirty percent of people who, somehow, still approve of the disgusting little man in the White House howling with rage. Possible? Yes. Easy? No. Complete? These things never are.

Inertia and the decay of old ideas of American Exceptionalism have brought us to this point. How are the Democrats going to solve the problem of Iraq? I would suggest we start by reimagining what should be done. Iraq is not a problem that can be solved until the problem of America is solved first. The first thing the new majority should do is set up a Truth and Reconciliation Tribunal to take public testimony from everyone involved in promoting and prosecuting the Iraq War. (If it worked in South Africa, it can work here.) Those willing to sincerely reflect on their lies, the killing they were pleased to indulge in, can be forgiven. Those who refuse, and I have a pretty good idea who they would be, will be bound over to the Hague, where they do war crimes trials pretty well.

And that's just for starters.

Can't happen? Crazy? Maybe, but you got any better ideas?

Well, Mets Fans...

Beltran up in the 9th, bases loaded, two strikes, two out, down by two; I turned to my friends laughing and reminded them that this is why we are Mets fans. I did not elaborate further, but we live in hope, not confidence. Of course, Beltran is paid to fucking swing at the ball. They won games like this all season. Fucking-A, Mookie would have swung.

Long and short: the Cards stepped up and the Mets stepped back. Reyes didn't become a legit leadoff hitter until this year, sometime in May, and he was a joy to behold thereafter. But he suffered an October regression. He is 23.

All things being equal, the Mets did a great job frustrating Pujols, but the Cards bench and lower order produced. The Mets equivalents? Not so much.

But, En-dy Cha-vez... En-dy Cha-vez... He can play for me forever.

One horseshit pitch from Heilman was all it took. He is not to blame. And I was delighted to see him in the 9th. Losing with Wagner would have been intolerable.

Maybe Willie could have jiggled the lineup a bit last night, but he really didn't have the bodies. He worked the staff superbly this week.

I feel good about next year.

New York State Of Things ii

Eric Massa seems to have a healthy lead in the NY-29th and I've seen a couple comments in and around Blogville recently proposing a collapse, a point raised here two-three weeks ago, of the GOP in NY. Tom Reynolds in Erie Co., he who convinced/coerced Mark Foley to run just once more, has since run into a fucking lumber saw back home, and saw fit to hide behind children at a press conference. Western NY voters are lunch bucket types, not wildly smart, but they also don't take outright shit from guys in ties. (Jack Kemp, earnest, single-minded old football player, is still the paradigm there).

As for the coming implosion of the Republican Party; what will it look like? Something like this, (Hat tip to kos/MyDD):

How often do you get a three-way race in which the Democrat is supporting the Republican while fighting against the Democratic infrastructure, the Republican party is supporting the liberal New England Jew instead of the right-wing millionaire, and the Republican nominee is running against the Republican party?

I think we'll be seeing stuff like this more and more.

There's more I need to get around to here too, but just can't concentrate at the mo. Game Seven, Baby. Game Seven...

Book, Ma, No Hands!

It may be The City That Never Sleeps, but I’m a mess now if I don’t put in at least two hours napping in it most afternoons. If, as Charles de Gaulle opined, old age is a shipwreck, then middle age might well be a barge with a snapped bow line. You still get places, but without knowing exactly how. Drift is everything.

So I was drifting along peacefully enough last Sunday, preparing for the evening’s baseball excitement by netting a few Z’s under the black and white awning of the N.Y. Times when I was startled from my demi-doze by what I took at first to be a vicious exchange of spite and rude opinion from the street outside. Turns out it was only me reading the Book Review aloud in my sleep.

Christ what a nuisance that publication has become. Once a dull, reliable compendium of earnestly written opinion and a fairly reliable judge of stature, if not merit, now that no one reads anymore, the Book Review has devolved into a reptile house of sharp-toothed, myopic and cold-blooded fauna that have burrowed into inert masses of text to tear and hiss at all who may venture too close to the window.

I will bet that if they could, the Times art department would banish words completely from the Review’s front cover. As it is, they cobble an illustration together with several sentences in 20 point type to whet the appetite for what’s inside. This week it was a review ostensibly written by Henry A. Kissinger, a noted war criminal, on a biography of Dean Acheson, Secy. of State for Harry Truman.

Oooo, Mama, let’s dive in.

Predictably the Kissenger essay was an exercise in name-dropping and glowing fustian observation from a man who in his own career found no situation which could not be improved, if only a little, by bombing. The upshot? Henry admired ol’ Dean, especially when he came 'round to Nixon's side. Statecraft can be thankless and complicated. The book is okay.

Dashing to subjects I actually care about, I went over the reviews of new biographies of Johnny Cash and the late founder of the National Lampoon, Doug Kenney.

For the Kinney piece the Times set loose its television critic, Virginia Heffernan. Between you and me, I don’t think anyone reads TV criticism, except those editors required to insert such pieces into otherwise decent newspapers and magazines. In reviewing a mere book, Heffernan stretches no further than to generally pick on TV writers from Harvard (E-Z) and those of Kinney’s self-involved friends still alive who care enough about Kenney to speak to his first biographer a quarter-century after his death.

Heffernan, who I'm guessing went to Princeton and is all of 26, closes the pan with a pean to, of all people, P.J. O'Rourke, the man who, paraphrasing Michael O'Donohue, turned the Lampoon into a collection of tit and barf jokes. It is O’Rourke, who got famous mocking Democrats, Koreans and the rest of the silly uncool for Rolling Stone when Reagan was prez, and who was swallowed by the conservative dinner circuit decades ago, whom Heffernan sez changed comedy forever. Inasmuch as Heffernan has herself certainly changed criticism forever, she must be right.

Far worse than the critic who unloads on bystanders, though, is the one who shows off for the class. Step right up, Douglas Brinkley and tell us what you know about Johnny Cash...

Long before Johnny Cash became immortalized as the “Man in Black" because he refused to wear rhinestones at the Grand Ole Opry, he was grappling with twisted visions of sin and salvation, like a soapbox preacher trying to decode God’s Plan in the public square. Gospel songs like "I'’ll Fly Away" filtered through him and never left. Raised impoverished during the Great Depression, this brooding young Arkansan absorbed tall tales and hillbilly banter like a kerosene-hungry railroad lantern.

That's the lead. You get the feeling that Brinkley wishes he wrote the book and Michael Streissguth reviewed it? I do. Brinkley liked the book, but he likes himself better.

What else was folded into the meatloaf this week? Well, Jacob Heilbrunn, "a frequent contributor to the Book Review" gave a pretty good account of Hubris, one of the new How We Fucked Up Iraq books that are now appearing like pumpkins this fall. Yeah, Jake liked it, but he cautions, "Where Isikoff and Corn themselves go astray is in their own obsessive focus on Judith Miller and The New York Times[...] out of all proportion to their true significance." Having contributed several dozen column inches to another section of the Sunday Times years ago, I can assure you that the paper does not pay nearly enough for such hysterical, in all senses of the word, loyalty. Heilbrunn is a pet.

The French court is IN thanks to that Sophia Coppola flick, so two reviews, on over two pages, consider books on the women and clothes which made the deluge so apres moi. Half a page goes to J.C. Oates' 311th novel dealing with murder, madness and girls; Margaret Atwood and Edna O'Brien get fair appraisals of their latest works. Bill Bryson and Adam Gopnik also get their tickets punched, but in ways that nip a little flesh from their writing hands. But the hatchet job this week is reserved for the deserving Jonathan Franzen.

I have no opinion of Franzen, other than he appears to be just another not-untalented careerist schmuck who rode a good agent to the top. One Daniel Mendelsohn unloads on him here. "Excessively lofty sense of himself" is part of the first, rather long, sentence.

You know what I think? I think if a mediocre writer produces a bad book you don't have to review it. Use the ink to seek out merit, and praise the deserving and obscure. Believe me, I am all for pilloring jackasses and mocking connected, overeducated fools, (I mean, what are blogs for anyway??) God knows our literary life is in such extremis that maybe regular shocks are the only thing that keep it respirating. But just in case it is being killed by the very forces of avarice and spite that have made our journalism and politics such a vale of light, the goons with blood on their hands look like the ones in charge of the patient.

The Last Straw, Man

Hard to stop laughing over here, wheezing actually, gasping for breath, almost hysterical, mad looking for an angry fix kind of mirth. What's so goddamn funny? you ask? Only the look on the faces of the Republican faithful as it gradually dawns on them that that worthless puke is treating them now exactly as he treated Iraqis; with a mix of heartless paternalism, rank contempt and a self-centered overconfidence in his own powers that may as well be a definition of clinical insanity.

Hoo... lemmie catch my breath.

Now that Coach Hastert and that squalid little man will be running in the three-legged race from here to election day, one that is now promising bloodletting on a scale that even I would not have predicted, the endgame is appearing with an appalling, or ridiculous, clarity.

What we have learned since the last election is that Americans are remarkably tolerant of amoral behavior, indeed have come to expect it from politicians. What they will not tolerate is immoral behavior (and there is a difference). The Foley story was the trigger that turned the vast amoral machine the GOP had made of itself, quite deliberately and proudly too, into an immoral beast with its head jammed in a tight spot. Even otherwise mild-mannered individuals who normally avoid the political realm now feel no qualms about breaking its neck with a shovel. In fact, under the circumstances, it is the only decent thing to do.

Okay, Mets Fans vii

Well, I asked for more double plays and home runs, and the boys complied handsomely, didn't they? I don't know what Pujols was doing so far off the bag on a ball that looked like it was going to be caught, though Beltran had to make a good play to do it. Anyone out there shocked that Floyd came up lame in his first at BAT?? Not me. Nor was I surprised by the sterling play in left by My Favorite Met, Endy Chavez. Ditto the seven shutout innings from Glavine or Beltran's homer. The Metropolitans have been winning games this way all season, though admittedly not always for Glavine. Wright has been looking a bit human in the field lately, so his two dazzling snags last night were a promising sign.

If they can smack Carpenter around tonight, it will go a long way towards breaking the Card's will. I'm not sure exactly how Trachsel does what he does, besides pitching exactly in his own rhythm (fast with no one on, sloooow with runners aboard) and waiting for the guys to score some runs for him, which they usually do. Yep. Tonight will be interesting. If everyone plays as they have been, and if Reyes can break out of his slump, or at least get on base consistently, this contest might be over.

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Update: Well, according to the Daily News, which I read over lunch, it's Maine starting tonight. Good. Better to have the undaunted Trachsel go in St. Louis and give the kid a start at Shea. He's very effective pitching at night and offers something to the faithful which Trachsel does not, and that is an element of, dare I say it, fun.

Pressure Drop

A few thoughts before I cool it here for a bit.

That dumb homunculus who is at this very moment spinning 'round and 'round and 'round in his Oval Office desk chair, has reached a new low for the ol' approval rating in some polls: 34%. Here I will reiterate my prediction from, gee, almost 11 months ago, that that number will eventually rest at 25%. Of course, that's assuming that once he crosses 28% someone, maybe his hateful mommy, won't take him, heavily sedated and strapped to a cot, back home somewhere.

I don't remember much from high school science class, but I do recall that a catalyst is not a cause. A catalyst simply provides the optimum circumstances for a chemical reaction to occur. So the de-Foley-ation spray (HA!) that has hit the elephants' Washington rain forest only heated the top cover those few degrees necessary to set the whole dead acreage ablaze.

Unnoticed, what with all the screaming, in last Wednesday's Tribune was another page one story, set right next to a big photo of Hastert's flabby phiz:

As Dow surges, many left behind

Right below that was a kicker for a story running on pg 12:

GI death toll spikes in Baghdad

Of course, many were left behind the last time the Dow "surged". But to call attention to that at the time would have been, like, y'know, class warfare or something. But maybe now the Tribune, which is hemorrhaging readers as fast as FOX News is losing viewers, is in the mood to hedge some bets.

The few comments and emails I've received from friends and strangers about this blog seem to reflect a certain demoralized posture among some who believe that nothing will keep GOP hands off the power switch. Hogwash. Our times are not for the timid, I'll grant you, but the best way to smash the rotten Republican machine into tiny, selfish pieces is to take up a hammer yourself and start swinging.

Wednesday will find me hurrying across New York State as fast as the Lakeshore Limited can carry me. I don't have NLCS tickets, but there are a couple bars where I plan to watch a game or two. Though it has but one TV set, the Old Town Bar, a refuge for grownups on W. 18th for over a century, usually tops the list.

--

Update: You probably won't believe me when I say I wrote the above before reading this gem from the Great Gilliard.

And from the Wretched Excess Desk: Just wait for someone to say "For the Republicans, this has turned into a Perfect Storm of perfect storms." I will go to my grave denying I thought if it first.

Go. Read. Listen. Donate.

The great Gilliard yesterday quoted in-full a fascinating essay from a Washington state blog, by a woman apparently all-too-well-acquainted with the psychology of fundamentalist Christians, on the devastating effect the Foley scandal will have on the G.O.P. base. Read it here.

Quentin Hardy is Silicon Valley Bureau Chief for Forbes Magazine as well as one of the very few liberals you will find regularly on FOX News (on the Forbes on Fox show). Quentin has been a good friend since college. (How he can put up with those klaxon-voiced nitwits constantly interrupting and shouting him down is beyond me, though he is certainly well-compensated for the noise.) He is astonishingly bright, well-read like you wouldn't believe, caustic and very funny.

All of his fine qualities are on display in a lecture on the humanities and digital technology which Quentin gave last March at Berkeley. You can download it from here. I don't care how smart you are; give that sucker a listen and you will be that much smarter.

Did you know that the NY-29th congressional district is bigger than Connecticut? I didn't until I sent some dough to Eric Massa. If you are as intested in crushing the G.O.P. in western New York as I am, I suggest you do likewise.

Okay, Mets Fans vi

Contrary to my earlier prediction of impending and constant agita, no one who has followed the Mets this season, or noted the Dodgers' depleted lineup, should have felt even a twinge of unease over the eventual outcome last night. I sure didn't. Dodger enthusiasm, fueled by two months of ballsy, over-achieving baseball, led directly to the baserunning debacle in Game One, the aftermath of which is pictured above (and you gotta love Lo Duca here looking for the possible triple play at second base). I said the Mets had to take control of that game early and boy did they.

If I had to pick nits (and, what the hell, why not?), I'd have liked the lads to have turned a few more double plays in the series. I can think of only three, including that routine 9-4-2. They could have hit a few more homers too. That said, everyone gets an A. Willie "Captain Hook" Randolph gets an A++.

History ii

That faint sound of castanets you hear clattering in the distance is only my teeth. I'm a little on edge now, having to take public issue with one of the best in the biz, Mr. Billmon.

In a recent post, in one of those strange coincidences to which I am now becoming accustomed, Billmon gave his own history lesson as to explain why he thinks it is the Democrats who will soon join the Whigs in the ossuary of American politics.

This came hard upon the heels of my own look at the political past, which, indeed, did not go as far as Mr. b's post in connecting the Then and Now, something I'll try to address here.

Billmon's cogent analysis is a political one; mainly that the Whigs were made irrelevant by their cautious, centrist policies in increasingly polarized times. And he's right. And I further agree that the Democrats, for the health of the party and the good of the nation, will very soon have to enunciate a foundation for broad social changes - in foreign affairs, domestic policy and laws - which they will then need to carry out to the best of their abilities with whatever majorities they will most certainly gain in the next two national elections.

But they do not have to do so quite yet. He may not look it, but Harry Reid is one tough mo-fo, a former amateur boxer and a guy who took zero shit from the Vegas mob. It is not my intention to go all Mailer on you, but speaking as one well acquainted with the fine art of milling, a knowledge purchased with a slightly bent beezer, I can tell you that if the other guy is taller, you do your best to dodge, wait for an opening (nothing better than the side ribs, imho) and hit that spot as hard as you fucking can.

No, I trust Harry Reid, and suspect that the Democratic agenda will appear in good time, soon as they retake Congress.

But back to cases. Where I think billmon misses the plot, and why I think it is the GOP about to start floating at the top of the DC fishbowl, is not a question of politics per se, but how a political coalition can stay together as the stresses of new communication technologies undermine its ability to keep everyone in line and moving in the same direction.

Who said; "Our system obviously isn't designed for this electronic age of instant messages."? A McLuhan scholar? Insofar as Coach Hastert is rapidly becoming one, yes.

The Democratic Party, a coalition from its inception; fractious, clumsy, a veritable prairie dog town of policy speakers and interests, is in a far better position to adapt to a very rapidly changing environment of public media communications. (Needless to say, I am a big fan of Dr. Dean's and believe his grassroots policy is spot on.) The Republican Party, a top down, message-of-the-day monolith of crackpot control freaks, will NEVER adapt. They can't. Their coalition is pretty new and, until Katrina, was utterly untested. Distaff thinkers, moralists and centrists were purged from the party in the Clinton years. And now that it is well and truly fucked, no one in any position of power in the GOP knows how to act to save it.

From Buffalo To Washington

A.P. Carter took a jocular ballad about the McKinley assassination (those were the days, right?) and turned it into a song about eternal departures, Cannonball Blues; here played by Mother Maybelle and her cousin, A.P.'s ex-wife, Sara Carter.



When I am tempted to feel bad about America, I think about the Carter Family.

The Beast Of Times

Slightly over a year ago, in a fit of clairvoyance, I wrote:

Some attention should be paid today to the effective end of George Bush's presidency; finished unexpectedly this morning when he said, before live national television cameras:

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

Four days following, as that worthless puke was heading toward his first visit to the Crescent City after Katrina, I followed up with this astonishing bit of foresight:

The gang of incompetents leading the party in power are today desperately trying to clear some space for that squalid little man - I have vowed never to utter his name again - and though it may do to patch a leak or two, rest assured those people and perhaps their whole rotten party are doomed.

snip

Very shortly that squalid little man is going to look back at this morning as the good-old-days of rich photo-opportunities and bright hopes of tactical advantage.

It is interesting to consider that when disaster strikes, most organizations, especially ones previously successful, can only do what they have done in the past. That is how they see their world working, even after that world has stopped. The Titanic'’s captain, once he realized that too many of the ships bulkheads were flooded, ordered the ship abandoned. Our delusional captain does not have the wit, or strength [to do the same] and I'd advise any decent Republicans to start heading immediately for the lifeboats.

And at this point I was going to observe that our national politics has, one year later and in the space of five days, descended to a Grand Guignol. But the Guignol is entertainment. All its blood is fake. Not so with the Washington spectacle we are presented with this week. No, what makes the current situation so intolerable for decent human beings to contemplate is the profound moral squalor these many hideous men, and a few disgusting women, have left ongoing in Iraq. The situation there declines hourly.

These numb-eyed, pasty-faced fucks, these murderers, these war criminals; these insane actors hold no mystery to me. They have made this country what it is today, and I've lived here my whole goddamn life. You can tell by looking at them what they are capable of, which is nothing more morally exalted than a gang rape; nothing more strategically acute than beating a man tied to a chair.

I will close with the simple observation that while the GOP seems chock full of leaders, trotted out every Sunday for the talk shows, not one of those sorry bastards has exhibited a jot of leadership in six years. When a political organization is run solely on on the basis of Fear, all its King Snakes eventually turn into big worms.

You're Informed. I Divide.

A cheery "Halloo" to those of you here at Neddie Jingo's kind recommendation. I'm not quite as cute as Ned, nor nearly as good around the home. But I can spin bowls on sticks and bowl spin on a sticky wicket, (Cricket joke, wot?) and I will do my demmdest not to let down the old connections (Pynchon, out of Perelman, Liebling dam) when it's post time.

(Jesus, that one came out of nowhere.)

Is Will Divide my real name? Fuck no; I saw it on a sign, and took it as such. I do live in Chicago, though, and any ramblers among you will find me at Dunlay's rather-too-slick bar on Logan Sq. today after 3pm CTD, watching what will very likely be the Mets' third choice for pitcher, a fine, if dismayingly untested, young right-hander named John Maine, start today's game. I will be the slim, middle-aged man with the bright, jagged bolts of anxiety shooting from his temples.

History

A couple days ago I promised to explain why I think the Democratic party will mainly benefit from the same forces which are poised to forever wreck the GOP. I intend to soon, but I need to put down a little history lesson first.

The great Indigenous American wit, Will Rogers, used to say "I don't belong to any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!", a line that is still trotted out by pundits around election time, usually without attribution. It's good for a laugh, but it points truthfully to the historic nature of Democrats as members of a coalition party. At times this has been a liability, but is now it's bedrock strength.

The Democratic party was created in 1827 by Martin Van Buren, of Albany, New York, as a vehicle for the presidential ambitions of Andrew Jackson, of Nashville, Tennessee. Jackson had run in the previous contest as a Republican. Indeed all the presidential candidates in 1824 were Republicans.

To elect Jackson, Van Buren was the first politician to tie specific southern interests (more cotton land, no check on slavery) to the mercantile needs (mainly cheap federal bank money) of the dawning industrial north. Van Buren toured Georgia and the Carolinas that year to find out what southerners wanted and tell them what his northern business backers were interested in getting in return. The deal was done, and in more ways than one.

What southern politicians mainly wanted in 1827 was the removal of the Indian nations south of the Mason-Dixon and east of the Mississippi. And that is what they got. Jackson basically liked the Cherokee (Will Rogers' people, btw; good fighters who helped ol' Hickory take New Orleans) and had even adopted a Creek boy during his military campaign against those people. But Jackson had no problem instituting a policy of Indian removal (called ethnic cleansing today) which was completed by Van Buren's own administration in 1839.

Indian removal, a subject never much taught in our schools, is the central infamy of our young republic. It polarized bad feelings north and south, sharpening attitudes on both sides for the twenty years leading up to Ft. Sumpter, and was brought to us by Democrats. Meditate briefly on that, all ye who now cherish the liberal spirit of human freedom, and then we will move on.

Speaking broadly, in the century following the Civil War, the Democrats remained a coalition between the interests of northern, immigrant, Catholic, urban working people and southern whites (Big northern money, made even bigger by the war, had gone Republican with Lincoln, who was the nation's top railroad lawyer before he ran for president). The Democratic coalition held for two reasons: One-party rule south of the M&D, and a lack of any powerful political/emotional connection between people north and south. Each side of the party tended its own garden and mainly ignored the other until the convention every four years. By FDR's time, the coalition had become one of New Deal, ehh, socialists and Jim Crow segregationists. The stresses were beginning to show.

I submit, though, that it was the stress caused by television in the 60s which finally ruptured the old Democratic coalition. We got to see how terribly black people were treated in Dixie, and what a fucking mess the Vietnam war was becoming. TV made that political/emotional connection possible.

Besides Lincoln, Lyndon Johnson was the greatest politician ever to have gained the White House (though FDR, Clinton and Van Buren were champs too). He saw what was happening in '64 and did what he could to shake the old order down the best way he knew how with passage of the Civil Rights Act. Johnson knew the act would deliver the south to Republicans for two generations. An old New Dealer, he very likely trusted that eventually the Democrats would be far better off with the "Dixiecrats" absorbed into the GOP. Forty years later, we can see, Mr. Lott, Mr. Allen, how right LBJ was.

Okay, Mets Fans v

What with the playoffs and election breathing down our metaphoric necks, I could write a post every day for the foreseeable; which I just might...

Today, kiddies, will be about baseball, as the Metropolitans finished the season with a flourish, if not 100 wins. Julio Franco, who may be older than I am, stole second base on Friday (made it to third on a bad throw) and had five rbi's Saturday. The guys scored four runs before Glavine even took the mound for Saturday's game; something I'd like to think of as a "Thank you" from hitters who by all rights should have given Glavine another five wins this season.

I have to say that I was expecting Pedro to be ready to go now after resting the second half. Ah well... Denial is a powerful river. At least the rotation, and a fine one at that, is set going in.

Like Lupica, I am not sanguine about the Metsies' prospects. Los Padres e Dodgers both finished under a good head of steam, a condition lacking in the Cards and our lads, which makes the first game of a short series all that more crucial to take control of early, something now in the very capable, if often mystifying, hands of Orlando Hernandez.

Duque, however, will be fine. It's me I'm worried about.

Because the '86 season was such a cruise, I had a feeling then that the post season would be fraught with tension. Boy was I right. The Mets have to deliver a specific amount of agita to their suffering faithful each year, and if, like this year, they don't serve it up during the regular season, you can bet they will pour it into whatever games remain.

1930

What with all the excitement in DC yesterday, I may have to amend my day-old prediction of the GOP's end to be complete in two years rather than four. Like I said, now when things crash, they crash fast. And, really, do you think Foley was the only one of those assholes involved in such behavior? The way Hastert treated it - in an election year! - sure makes it seem like that Florida bitch was just one more cowboy who got too frisky in town, easy enough to handle by men who know the territory. But, I digress...

Speaking of crashing. The following story was part of last Friday's bad-news document dump, and got no wide notice, what with all the juicy gay GOP sex news.

Lenders gone wild
Can U.S. curb the 'exotic mortgages' frenzy that puts homeowners at risk?

Last Update: 7:41 PM ET Sep 29, 2006

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- More than a year after Alan Greenspan warned of the "potential for individual disaster" from a new breed of mortgages that were helping to fuel the housing boom, federal regulators finally are trying to do something about it.

On Friday, in a jointly crafted message on so-called exotic mortgages, multiple government agencies warned banks in strong terms to make sure borrowers can pay back the full amount of what they borrow and that homeowners know that a low monthly payment today could be shockingly high later.

America's real-estate boom may be over now, but millions of homeowners who thought they were borrowing their way into wealth find themselves instead holding a ticking time bomb, a toxic mortgage with a potential payment far larger than they can afford.

Bank regulators knew more than a year ago that lenders were aggressively marketing interest-only and payment-option adjustable-rate mortgages to consumers who didn't fully understand what they were buying. In July 2005, several government agencies teamed up to write guidelines intended to set lenders straight.

In the meantime, the runaway writing of these mortgages went on unchecked, and the fact that nobody in government stood in the way highlights the fact that a patchwork of government bureaucracies was ill-equipped to bring the practice under control, lawmakers and regulators say.

Read the whole thing.

If you were ever curious, in an historical way, about how things felt in 1930, after the last big crash but before times got really hard, back when the social fabric of the nation was peeling apart and Republicans only made it worse, you now have a chance to find out.