Election Results: An Actual Conversation

Yesterday Morning

Me: Did you hear Mumbles won?

L: Our fearless leader?

Me: Yeah. I didn't hear anything until just now, but yeah.

L: [using "well-obviously" voice] They didn't show any footage last night because if they did you wouldn't have understood a word he said.



Interview with Thomas Menino from Chris Lovett on Vimeo.

Just watch to the 0:10 mark. It's all you need for this to make sense.

Alarming Similarities: An Actual Conversation

Over Breakfast


Me: Is that Conor Oberst?

L: [Looks at picture in Economist article she is reading] No. It's Ayn Rand.

Me: But you can see how I thought it was Conor Oberst.

L: Mmm.

Train wrecks I have seen

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Jim Cramer Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

I'll give Cramer exactly the credit he is due for showing up last night and no more. He was utterly unprepared for the interview, and it was embarrassing to watch him flounder. Stewart asks exactly what journalists ought to ask, so Cramer ought to have been ready to explain himself. Why did he stumble so badly? It's either a lame lack of seriousness or a genuine lack of excuse, both of which are startling. What's upsetting, however, is that the smirking rapacity of CNBC's punditry crew represents only one of the many mistakes we can make when we try and deliver the good life.

The other (opposite, but probably not equal) mistake is to think that good journalism and good policy will weave a shield of invincibility around us, inoculating us all from disasters like this financial crisis, and, oh, let's say terrorism. It is nice but wrong to think that there is a fiscal or military decision that will finally strike the balance between freedom and security, or individual and corporate flourishing.

I'm not saying Jon is wrong; journalism should and could do better. I'm mad at Jim. Bad answers to good questions leave us distracted from the tensions that make these catastrophes possible. The terrible thing about human beings is that a regime that can keep us all safe or keep us all comfortable requires horrible trade-offs, and the promise of endless stability is false in the end. Ultimately, whatever its law, decent society depends on a slim preponderance of sanity. Only those mad with evil would defraud Elie Wiesel, carve a path of death through Alabama towns, or wreak havoc with box knives. Laws and true stories may be our only hope, but we ought to admit that they can only go so far in restraining our selfishness.

It's a time for public intellectuals (mmmmm, like JS?), and it would be oh-so-helpful if Cramer and others in the talking class could bring out the nuances of this opposite tension. There were good answers to those good questions, is what I'm saying. The answers, of course, require honesty and probably some indictments, though, so I'm not optimistic. Better policy would have helped; better policy is going to help. But we are never really safe, because no one ever is.

Gratis: A craigslist miscellany

Why have I failed to spend more time searching the free items on craigslist? If you are in the metropolitan Dallas area today, January 4, or soon after, make note of these deals, selected from those posted today. I have neither fabricated nor altered a thing.


Sun Jan 04

free toilet - (Dallas / 75224)

FREE SINGLEWIDE TRAILER / you haul it off - (Emory, TX)

Free Assortment of Sport Trophies - (Granbury)

FREE gas dryer in need of a good home - (Forney, Tx)

tub chair - (Downtown)

Free baby wipe warmer - (Fort worth) pic

4 Cases of Adult Medium Side Tab Diapers - (Richardson)

Facial Hair Bleach/Remover and Toddler Tooth Paste - (SE Dallas)

Empty Cans - (Mesquite)

house full of green carpet - (SW ft worth)

FREE CRAP - (Allen)

Heavy metal desk - (Mesquite) pic


It's even sweeter when you click for full descriptions. You can step into the looking glass here: http://dallas.craigslist.org/zip/

This is what a patriot looks like

Tucked into the Powell interview this Sunday is a dismissal of the rumors about Sen. Obama's religious background:

He's a Christian; I know he's a Christian. But the real answer is this: What if he is [Muslim]? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?

In an electoral quagmire that has painfully exposed lingering stupidities in our national conversation about gender and race, the equation of Islam with danger is possibly the least questioned assumption in a cluster of bigoted syllogisms. Powell's simple moment of incredulity both recalls and surpasses Eisenhower's soldierly dismissal of religious difference as material to citizenship. In the plainest possible language, it says more than Sen. McCain has been able to muster in his increasingly infrequent moments of moral clarity. Powell even manages more than the unassuming "You'll have to ask him about that," which Sen. Clinton offered when she had the opportunity to dismiss the line of questioning itself as nativist and mad. The logic of Powell's dimissal is, moreover, a more important move than the biographical correctives the Obama campaign has tirelessly issued. Why?

Powell's disbelief that we can fall for this is more important because the issue at hand is not simply Sen. Obama's identity; it is whether or not Americans can recognize themselves in their Muslim neighbors. The inclusion of Muslim Americans in our national self-conception is at stake. No other player at this level of national dialogue has had the moral or political courage to say as much, and, at least to this point, the implications for any Muslim listening in would have to be as alienating as they are clear. It is about time somebody with a name everybody knows called this line of questioning out for the asinine bigotry it is.

Here's the link to an edited version of the interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_DoohQEICw&eurl=http://dailykos.com/

The quote above is around the 2:30 mark.

Gender Trouble

L has pointed me towards Judith Warner on more than one occasion. This column, "The Mirrored Ceiling," is from Sept. 4, and it captures some of the queasiness I've been experiencing from watching the RNC intermittently this past week. The rest of the sick feeling, I've determined, is due to the realization that McCain, whom I felt some discomfort with before (militarism, jumping the shark on his actual reformer impulses, imaginary domestic drilling solutions, militarism) has firmly aligned his campaign's narrative with a) the mythic recreation of small-town America and b) the political future of this startling person, who so vividly calls to mind the attractive electoral power and disastrous actual practices of our most recent chief executive.

Also, though it has nothing to do with electoral politics, and solely because it's on a mix at work, I've had that Fergie song, "Big Girls Don't Cry," in my head, and it makes me hate myself. Some of the nausea might be due to that as well.

W: The Governor

Oh, I get it. She's not Republican Hillary; she's John's George W. Here's a little taste from Politico:

"Palin electrifies conservative base"