The senior members of McCain’s campaign team have undergone a painful odyssey of their own. In recent rounds of long conversations, most made it clear that they suffer a kind of survivor’s guilt: they can’t quite believe that for two frantic months last fall, caught in a Bermuda Triangle of a campaign, they worked their tails off to try to elect as vice president of the United States someone who, by mid-October, they believed for certain was nowhere near ready for the job, and might never be. They quietly ponder the nightmare they lived through.
Despite the passion and furor of the 2008 presidential campaign, I actually have some respect for Senator John McCain. The same cannot be said of Sarah Palin, and as this new article in Vanity Fair shows, America avoided one hell of a close-call by rejecting her last November. Should the unthinkable happen to McCain in the next eight years, the only thought in the minds of millions of Americans will be that they came painfully close to having to witness the inauguration of Sarah Palin.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
Belgian Liar
Do you remember the Belgian girl who claimed that she fell asleep while her tattooist put fifty-six stars on her face against her will? Well, she finally admitted that it was all a lie to get herself out of trouble. What a shock!
http://wandaphullworld.com/2009/06/27/liar-liar-but-whos-surprise/
http://wandaphullworld.com/2009/06/27/liar-liar-but-whos-surprise/
Paul Krugman on Climate Change
While normally I am a bit skeptical of Paul Krugman's articles - while I agree with him ideologically, he has a streak of reflexive contrarianism that is almost unbefitting a man of his intelligence and egregious nature - I found this piece to be right on target. I have pasted it below.
Betraying the Planet
By Paul Krugman
So the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political terms, it was a remarkable achievement.
But 212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases.
And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.
To fully appreciate the irresponsibility and immorality of climate-change denial, you need to know about the grim turn taken by the latest climate research.
The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying rate. And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe — a rise in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable — can no longer be considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome if we continue along our present course.
Thus researchers at M.I.T., who were previously predicting a temperature rise of a little more than 4 degrees by the end of this century, are now predicting a rise of more than 9 degrees. Why? Global greenhouse gas emissions are rising faster than expected; some mitigating factors, like absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans, are turning out to be weaker than hoped; and there’s growing evidence that climate change is self-reinforcing — that, for example, rising temperatures will cause some arctic tundra to defrost, releasing even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Temperature increases on the scale predicted by the M.I.T. researchers and others would create huge disruptions in our lives and our economy. As a recent authoritative U.S. government report points out, by the end of this century New Hampshire may well have the climate of North Carolina today, Illinois may have the climate of East Texas, and across the country extreme, deadly heat waves — the kind that traditionally occur only once in a generation — may become annual or biannual events.
In other words, we’re facing a clear and present danger to our way of life, perhaps even to civilization itself. How can anyone justify failing to act?
Well, sometimes even the most authoritative analyses get things wrong. And if dissenting opinion-makers and politicians based their dissent on hard work and hard thinking — if they had carefully studied the issue, consulted with experts and concluded that the overwhelming scientific consensus was misguided — they could at least claim to be acting responsibly.
But if you watched the debate on Friday, you didn’t see people who’ve thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don’t like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they’ve decided not to believe in it — and they’ll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial.
Indeed, if there was a defining moment in Friday’s debate, it was the declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate change is nothing but a “hoax” that has been “perpetrated out of the scientific community.” I’d call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists. After all, to believe that global warming is a hoax you have to believe in a vast cabal consisting of thousands of scientists — a cabal so powerful that it has managed to create false records on everything from global temperatures to Arctic sea ice.
Yet Mr. Broun’s declaration was met with applause.
Given this contempt for hard science, I’m almost reluctant to mention the deniers’ dishonesty on matters economic. But in addition to rejecting climate science, the opponents of the climate bill made a point of misrepresenting the results of studies of the bill’s economic impact, which all suggest that the cost will be relatively low.
Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn’t it politics as usual?
Yes, it is — and that’s why it’s unforgivable.
Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an “existential threat” to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole — but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.
Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.
Betraying the Planet
By Paul Krugman
So the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political terms, it was a remarkable achievement.
But 212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases.
And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.
To fully appreciate the irresponsibility and immorality of climate-change denial, you need to know about the grim turn taken by the latest climate research.
The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying rate. And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe — a rise in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable — can no longer be considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome if we continue along our present course.
Thus researchers at M.I.T., who were previously predicting a temperature rise of a little more than 4 degrees by the end of this century, are now predicting a rise of more than 9 degrees. Why? Global greenhouse gas emissions are rising faster than expected; some mitigating factors, like absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans, are turning out to be weaker than hoped; and there’s growing evidence that climate change is self-reinforcing — that, for example, rising temperatures will cause some arctic tundra to defrost, releasing even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Temperature increases on the scale predicted by the M.I.T. researchers and others would create huge disruptions in our lives and our economy. As a recent authoritative U.S. government report points out, by the end of this century New Hampshire may well have the climate of North Carolina today, Illinois may have the climate of East Texas, and across the country extreme, deadly heat waves — the kind that traditionally occur only once in a generation — may become annual or biannual events.
In other words, we’re facing a clear and present danger to our way of life, perhaps even to civilization itself. How can anyone justify failing to act?
Well, sometimes even the most authoritative analyses get things wrong. And if dissenting opinion-makers and politicians based their dissent on hard work and hard thinking — if they had carefully studied the issue, consulted with experts and concluded that the overwhelming scientific consensus was misguided — they could at least claim to be acting responsibly.
But if you watched the debate on Friday, you didn’t see people who’ve thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don’t like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they’ve decided not to believe in it — and they’ll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial.
Indeed, if there was a defining moment in Friday’s debate, it was the declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate change is nothing but a “hoax” that has been “perpetrated out of the scientific community.” I’d call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists. After all, to believe that global warming is a hoax you have to believe in a vast cabal consisting of thousands of scientists — a cabal so powerful that it has managed to create false records on everything from global temperatures to Arctic sea ice.
Yet Mr. Broun’s declaration was met with applause.
Given this contempt for hard science, I’m almost reluctant to mention the deniers’ dishonesty on matters economic. But in addition to rejecting climate science, the opponents of the climate bill made a point of misrepresenting the results of studies of the bill’s economic impact, which all suggest that the cost will be relatively low.
Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn’t it politics as usual?
Yes, it is — and that’s why it’s unforgivable.
Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an “existential threat” to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole — but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.
Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Follow Up on Transformers Controversy
Two articles that should be read on the controversy surrounding two characters from the new Transformers movies who embody racist caricatures:
http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/news/orci-and-kurtzman-respond-to-claims-of-racism-in-transformers-2.php
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/41512
What makes this so sad is that it sounds to me like a lot of individuals connected with this project, but who had no involvement with the creation of those offensive characters, are being unfairly dragged by their existence. Orci and Kurtzman, for example, appear to have crafted a screenplay that was then altered by a third writer (Ehren Kruger) and the director (Michael Bay) to include numerous elements that they never put in there, including the characters of Skids and Mudflap. While of course their claim at having been shocked could just be so much smoke screening, Hollywood's history of mutilating the work of other screenwriters is well-known, and Michael Bay films are not renowned for their storytelling prowess; to paraphrase Stephen Colbert, their claim has "truthiness". Likewise, although Steven Spielberg is being lambasted by at least one critic (Harry Knowles) for his involvement here, Spielberg is the same man responsible for such racially progressive motion pictures as The Color Purple and Amistad, to say nothing of an upcoming biopic about Martin Luther King, Jr. While I do not doubt that Spielberg played a large part in bankrolling this film (as producer), it seems a little unfair to assume that he played any significant role in the film's creative composition, especially since he held the Executive Producer title over a large team of co-producers (who quite likely did most of the work for him).
So who ought to be blamed? In my eyes, the responsibility lies with four people: Michael Bay, the director; Ehren Kruger, the screenwriter who inserted these two racially offensive characters (as well as a third less-discussed individual who actually is a buck-toothed African-American and talks about needing to earn money so that he can replace his disgusting teeth with fancier alternatives); and the two actors voicing these robots, Tom Kenny and Reno Wilson. I have never been impressed with Michael Bay, and I am completely unfamiliar with the previous work of Ehren Kruger and Reno Wilson, but I must say I am more than a little upset at Tom Kenny's involvement here. As a long-time fan of SpongeBob Squarepants, a show whose titular character is voiced by Mr. Kenny, I have been a fan of Kenny's work for almost a decade.
So how important is this? In the grand scheme of things, it is more unfortunate than it is downright problematic. I strongly doubt that it will lead to any direct harm being inflicted on African-Americans, and although it certainly promotes and reinforces racist stereotypes, it is unlikely that it will cause those views to be any more widely disseminated or believed than they would have been had this movie not existed. Even so, the film is unfortunate because it puts a permanent aspersion on the careers of four individuals and, in a year that ought to be a highlight in the history of the black community, permanently etches into American cultural history some of the most repugnant racial prejudices out there. If this movie becomes the highest grossing film of 2009, then the first year in which an African-American ever served as President of the United States will forever be remembered as a year when the most popular entertainment medium of this country had as its champion work a film that promoted the very legacy that the election of the first black president hoped to put to rest, or at least weaken.
http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/news/orci-and-kurtzman-respond-to-claims-of-racism-in-transformers-2.php
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/41512
What makes this so sad is that it sounds to me like a lot of individuals connected with this project, but who had no involvement with the creation of those offensive characters, are being unfairly dragged by their existence. Orci and Kurtzman, for example, appear to have crafted a screenplay that was then altered by a third writer (Ehren Kruger) and the director (Michael Bay) to include numerous elements that they never put in there, including the characters of Skids and Mudflap. While of course their claim at having been shocked could just be so much smoke screening, Hollywood's history of mutilating the work of other screenwriters is well-known, and Michael Bay films are not renowned for their storytelling prowess; to paraphrase Stephen Colbert, their claim has "truthiness". Likewise, although Steven Spielberg is being lambasted by at least one critic (Harry Knowles) for his involvement here, Spielberg is the same man responsible for such racially progressive motion pictures as The Color Purple and Amistad, to say nothing of an upcoming biopic about Martin Luther King, Jr. While I do not doubt that Spielberg played a large part in bankrolling this film (as producer), it seems a little unfair to assume that he played any significant role in the film's creative composition, especially since he held the Executive Producer title over a large team of co-producers (who quite likely did most of the work for him).
So who ought to be blamed? In my eyes, the responsibility lies with four people: Michael Bay, the director; Ehren Kruger, the screenwriter who inserted these two racially offensive characters (as well as a third less-discussed individual who actually is a buck-toothed African-American and talks about needing to earn money so that he can replace his disgusting teeth with fancier alternatives); and the two actors voicing these robots, Tom Kenny and Reno Wilson. I have never been impressed with Michael Bay, and I am completely unfamiliar with the previous work of Ehren Kruger and Reno Wilson, but I must say I am more than a little upset at Tom Kenny's involvement here. As a long-time fan of SpongeBob Squarepants, a show whose titular character is voiced by Mr. Kenny, I have been a fan of Kenny's work for almost a decade.
So how important is this? In the grand scheme of things, it is more unfortunate than it is downright problematic. I strongly doubt that it will lead to any direct harm being inflicted on African-Americans, and although it certainly promotes and reinforces racist stereotypes, it is unlikely that it will cause those views to be any more widely disseminated or believed than they would have been had this movie not existed. Even so, the film is unfortunate because it puts a permanent aspersion on the careers of four individuals and, in a year that ought to be a highlight in the history of the black community, permanently etches into American cultural history some of the most repugnant racial prejudices out there. If this movie becomes the highest grossing film of 2009, then the first year in which an African-American ever served as President of the United States will forever be remembered as a year when the most popular entertainment medium of this country had as its champion work a film that promoted the very legacy that the election of the first black president hoped to put to rest, or at least weaken.
Health Crisis
An article that everyone should read. We need another Upton Sinclair, another Robert La Follette, another Rachel Carson. Enough is enough.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/opinion/28kristof.html?_r=1
More investigation in aluminium (a product common in antiperspirants) and its correlation with Alzheimer's Disease also warrants further study and, more importantly, public attention.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/opinion/28kristof.html?_r=1
More investigation in aluminium (a product common in antiperspirants) and its correlation with Alzheimer's Disease also warrants further study and, more importantly, public attention.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Deflating Reagan
I found this excellent article online about Barack Obama's professed admiration for Ronald Reagan (!). Granted, the piece comes from early in the 2008 primary season, and there is an above average chance that Obama's language was intended to win over the infamous "Reagan Democrats" (who he had to court for the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries). Even so, this author's deflating of the Reagan mythology - as well as his explanation as to why the Republican party is promoting it in the first place - is incisive and apt.
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3263
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3263
Inducing Hypochondria
I can understand that the authors of this article were trying to provide a public service by mentioning how common medical ailments may indicate cancer (or at least, I hope that that was their motivation). I can't even bring myself to really condemn them for doing this. My problem, of course, is that as a hypochondriac, I know that reading this piece will cause me to overanalyze my own health to such an extent that I will soon become convinced that death lurks behind every unexplained lump and twinge. There ought to be some disclaimer on these articles making it clear that just because a symptom COULD indicate cancer doesn't mean that it IS cancer, and that, in all probability, it probably is something more innocuous. Of course, such a disclaimer wouldn't draw readers to the web article, and the lack of hits would take a toll on advertising revenue.... nah, that's way too cynical of me.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Michael Jackson: Jew-baiter
They suck - they're like leaches. I'm so tired of it. They start out the most popular person in the world, make a lot of money, big house, cars, and everything, end up with, penniless. It is conspiracy. The Jews do it on purpose.
Those were the words spoken by Michael Jackson nearly four years ago, regarding his financial and professional woes. They were underreported by a media which had already written off Michael Jackson as a man whose disturbing idiosyncracies and bizarre antics had become old news (unless they involved allegations of child molestation or baby dangling). At roughly the same time he also released a song, "They Don't Care About Us" that featured these lyrics:
Jew me/Sue me/Everybody do me/Kick me/Kike me
Why do I bring this particular piece of news up so soon after Michael Jackson's death? Because I want to explain why, despite the heaps of praise being lavished upon his immediately post-mortem (which is more than a little distasteful, considering how many of these same media outlets held him up to abject ridicule only days before), I find it hard to sympathize with him. If you put aside the fact that he almost certainly molested children, that he definitely behaved in inappropriate ways with those same children, that he took advantage of Beatles songs to which he had acquired the rights in a manner that did a grave injustice to that band, that he spent the last decade of his life bandying about the "racist" card whenever misfortunes of his own making plagued him (such as when he accused Sony's CEO of racism because his album underperformed, even though they sunk $30 million in it and it was widely views as being well beneath the quality of his earlier work, or when he accused prosecutors of similar motivations in his child molestation cases), and that in general plunged into narcissistic indulgences and self-pity in his later years... if you ignore all of that, I have a very personal reason for lacking sympathy. You see, I am Jewish, and whether I am told that I should take comments such as these personally or not, the fact that I am a Jew means that they are now and always will be very personal.
Michael Jackson, the man who preached compassion and empathy throughout his work, reverted to scapegoating the Jews as soon as the chips were down for him, and I do not believe this aspect of his character is at all inconsequential. Where here was the loving man who he so often trumpeted himself as being? Was it the Jews who caused him to destroy his reputation by sleeping in the same bed with little boys who were not his own children, or bankrupted him by splurging on lark projects?
I know that you aren't supposed to speak ill of the recently deceased, but just as I will understand when African-Americans seethe after the death of Michael Richards and homosexuals after the expiration of Isaiah Washington, so too am I feeling less than distraught over the loss of Michael Jackson. Granted there is a part of me that is stunned - he was a major cultural figure from my childhood, and it is hard for me to imagine a world where he is not in the news. What's more, his contributions to the world of American music and pop culture - from the rise of the Jackson Five in the late-1960s to the release of Thriller and Bad in the 1980s - are undeniable, and overwhelmingly positive. Nevertheless, my sympathy is mitigated by my sense of self-respect.
Those were the words spoken by Michael Jackson nearly four years ago, regarding his financial and professional woes. They were underreported by a media which had already written off Michael Jackson as a man whose disturbing idiosyncracies and bizarre antics had become old news (unless they involved allegations of child molestation or baby dangling). At roughly the same time he also released a song, "They Don't Care About Us" that featured these lyrics:
Jew me/Sue me/Everybody do me/Kick me/Kike me
Why do I bring this particular piece of news up so soon after Michael Jackson's death? Because I want to explain why, despite the heaps of praise being lavished upon his immediately post-mortem (which is more than a little distasteful, considering how many of these same media outlets held him up to abject ridicule only days before), I find it hard to sympathize with him. If you put aside the fact that he almost certainly molested children, that he definitely behaved in inappropriate ways with those same children, that he took advantage of Beatles songs to which he had acquired the rights in a manner that did a grave injustice to that band, that he spent the last decade of his life bandying about the "racist" card whenever misfortunes of his own making plagued him (such as when he accused Sony's CEO of racism because his album underperformed, even though they sunk $30 million in it and it was widely views as being well beneath the quality of his earlier work, or when he accused prosecutors of similar motivations in his child molestation cases), and that in general plunged into narcissistic indulgences and self-pity in his later years... if you ignore all of that, I have a very personal reason for lacking sympathy. You see, I am Jewish, and whether I am told that I should take comments such as these personally or not, the fact that I am a Jew means that they are now and always will be very personal.
Michael Jackson, the man who preached compassion and empathy throughout his work, reverted to scapegoating the Jews as soon as the chips were down for him, and I do not believe this aspect of his character is at all inconsequential. Where here was the loving man who he so often trumpeted himself as being? Was it the Jews who caused him to destroy his reputation by sleeping in the same bed with little boys who were not his own children, or bankrupted him by splurging on lark projects?
I know that you aren't supposed to speak ill of the recently deceased, but just as I will understand when African-Americans seethe after the death of Michael Richards and homosexuals after the expiration of Isaiah Washington, so too am I feeling less than distraught over the loss of Michael Jackson. Granted there is a part of me that is stunned - he was a major cultural figure from my childhood, and it is hard for me to imagine a world where he is not in the news. What's more, his contributions to the world of American music and pop culture - from the rise of the Jackson Five in the late-1960s to the release of Thriller and Bad in the 1980s - are undeniable, and overwhelmingly positive. Nevertheless, my sympathy is mitigated by my sense of self-respect.
Another Rebirth in Harlem
Langston Hughes. Zora Neale Hurston. Paul Robeson. W. E. B. Dubois. Duke Ellington. Louis Armstrong.
What do each of these names have in common? All of them belong to prominent intellectual, artistic, and political figures within the black community whose rise to prominence in America between the end of World War I and the beginning of World War II is known today as the Harlem Renaissance.
The flowering that occurred during this two-decade period and centered around a small neighborhood in Manhattan was brought about by the rise of a black middle class. As more and more African-Americans were allowed opportunities for education and socio-economic advancement (which had been denied to their ancestors for hundreds of years), scores of black men and women cultivated these benefits into a cultural movement that affected not only the growing black minority in America, but soon the rest of the nation and the entire world.
That voice has not been silenced by the passage of the years. The textured human mosaic that is the Harlem district of Manhattan continues to seeth with words, actions, ideas, and political and cultural movements, all of which have the potential to change the American landscape as profoundly as their antecedents did three generations ago. The only question is whether the attention that it was paid in the Interbellum years will be offered again. Now that one man who insists that it should is now beginning to speak up, it is my hope that America will decide to listen.
http://www.vimeo.com/5324572
What do each of these names have in common? All of them belong to prominent intellectual, artistic, and political figures within the black community whose rise to prominence in America between the end of World War I and the beginning of World War II is known today as the Harlem Renaissance.
The flowering that occurred during this two-decade period and centered around a small neighborhood in Manhattan was brought about by the rise of a black middle class. As more and more African-Americans were allowed opportunities for education and socio-economic advancement (which had been denied to their ancestors for hundreds of years), scores of black men and women cultivated these benefits into a cultural movement that affected not only the growing black minority in America, but soon the rest of the nation and the entire world.
That voice has not been silenced by the passage of the years. The textured human mosaic that is the Harlem district of Manhattan continues to seeth with words, actions, ideas, and political and cultural movements, all of which have the potential to change the American landscape as profoundly as their antecedents did three generations ago. The only question is whether the attention that it was paid in the Interbellum years will be offered again. Now that one man who insists that it should is now beginning to speak up, it is my hope that America will decide to listen.
http://www.vimeo.com/5324572
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