A compendium of random thoughts regarding politics, society, feminism, sex, law, and anything else on my mind. POST YOUR COMMENTS BY CLICKING ON THE TIME INDICATOR BELOW THE POST YOU WISH TO COMMENT ON. RSS FEED AVAILABLE AT http://feeds.feedburner.com/Dilanblogspotcom

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THE ISSUE OF "INTENT OF THE VOTER" VS. "FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS" (AND WHY IT'S MORE COMPLICATED THAN THE SIMPLISTIC, PARTISAN ARGUMENTS OF 2000 MADE IT SEEM):
Down in San Diego, 120 miles south of where I am, it seems they are having a food fight a la Bush v. Gore to determine who the new Mayor will be. The incumbent, Dick Murphy, was forced into a three way race when surf-shop owner Donna Frye commenced a write-in campaign. (San Diego is one of the few cities in America-- all of which are concentrated in Hawaii and California-- where owning a surf shop is considered serious training for a politician.) The election resulted in a near tie, with Murphy carrying the city by several hundred votes.

However, the new optical-scan ballots used in San Diego clearly instructed voters to darken an oval next to the write-in line in order to cast a write-in vote. This was necessary so that the vote-counting machine would indicate that the ballot contained a write-in vote. Apparently, a state law requires that the oval be darkened for the ballots to count. The media inspected the ballots, and it turns out that if the undarkened oval/write-ins for Frye are counted she wins the election rather than Murphy.

You may remember similar issues in the Bush v. Gore Florida food fight in 2000. Ballot instructions in Florida-- as they did just about everywhere else where punchcard ballots were used-- stated that voters needed to remove the chips (the famous "chad") from the back of the ballot card before dropping it in the box. Nonetheless, ballots of voters who did not follow these instructions were nonetheless counted in some counties (and not in other counties, creating the alleged equal protection violation that was at the heart of the Supreme Court case that eventually stopped the recount). "Hanging chads" that were partially detached from the ballot, and "dimpled" and "pregnant" chads that were completely attached but appeared to have been contacted by the voting stylus, were counted by some counties.

There was, however, one big distinction between Florida 2000 and San Diego 2004. In the Florida recount, the governing law required that elections officials attempt to determine the intent of the voter. Under that standard, voters who disregard instructions can still have their votes counted.

San Diego thus presents the cleaner question-- under California law, the voter must follow the instruction and darken the oval. That instruction is clearly printed on the ballot, which the voter is supposed to read before voting. And the instruction has a legitimate basis, because it allows the City to save money and time and to obtain a more accurate and honest count by using machines to count the ballots rather than counting them by hand.

Nonetheless, we have absolutely no doubt that everyone who did not darken the oval but did write in Donna Frye's name intended to vote for Frye. So we have a clear conflict between the "follow the directions" standard and the "intent of the voter" standard.

I know this opinion goes against what is thought to be the "liberal" position on these issues, but I am in the "follow the directions" crowd. Not that I take any glee or pleasure in disallowing the votes of people who clearly manifested an intent to vote for a particular candidate. But an intent to vote is different than a vote. If you forget what day is election day, or accidentally leave the polling place with your ballot and do not discover the error until after the polls close, you may have intended to vote for someone, but you have not cast a countable vote.

And the fact of the matter is, Americans are way, way too cavalier about not reading instructions. We throw away instructions to appliances without reading them. We don't read the owner's manual when we buy a new car. We sign all sorts of contracts without reading the large print, much less the small print. And in all these circumstances, we can suffer harm, physical or financial, and yet we still do it-- though we sometimes ask the court system to save us from ourselves afterward.

So why, exactly, should we be solicitous with voters who don't read ballot instructions? We print the things in many different languages-- as well we should-- to ensure voters understand them. Yes, I know, the franchise is too important to compromise based on technical rules, but by the same token, the franchise is also too important to casually exercise without even bothering to read the directions. And remember, even under the liberal Florida standard, many votes weren't counted in 2000 (a fact liberals are painfully aware of)-- so it's not like applying liberal counting standards will ensure that everyone's intended vote gets counted. To the contrary, such standards may very well give voters a false sense of security.

If you want to make sure every vote counts, let's have educated poll workers who offer real assistance to voters as to how to ensure their ballots are properly marked. Let's have voter education projects and television and radio and print and billboard ads to remind voters to read the instructions and to vote carefully. Let's encourage political parties to let their members know how to fill out their ballots. And by all means, let's have the easiest-to-understand ballots we can possibly design-- the "butterfly ballot" was a true outrage. (In fact, all these things should be happening even if the counting standard is liberal, because as noted above, even where such standards prevail, it is still possible to have one's intended vote not be counted.)

But in the end, exercising the franchise requires real responsibility. Indeed, in a society that asks far less of its citizens than it once did, this is one of the few responsibilities of citizenship. It may seem like a pointless and silly exercise to require San Diegans to fill in that oval, but doing so would remind citizens of how important it is to take a few minutes to read the instructions before doing something important. Maybe it's a lesson that could carry over to other areas of life as well.

posted by Dilan at 4:48 PM

 
THE WAR AGAINST DONOHUE CATCHES ON:
Josh Marshall has now jumped in, calling Donohue "an extremist and a gamer". That works for me.

posted by Dilan at 11:50 AM

 
WILLIAM DONOHUE, CTD.:
Slate's Dana Stevens agrees with me: "William Donohue, the Catholic League president who was quoted last week as saying that 'Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.' Donohue, who should have been persona non grata on the talk-show circuit after that disgraceful outburst, was back on Hardball last night, cross-talking with a rabbi and an atheist about something or other—I couldn't bring myself to watch."

I couldn't have said it better myself. Take this guy down.

posted by Dilan at 9:10 PM

 
3 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE COMING DEBATE ON SOCIAL SECURITY:
1. Despite what Republicans say, it's impossible to avoid the transition costs caused by the switch to a system of personal accounts. The fact of the matter is that the money to be collected in the next 20 years in payroll taxes is committed to pay the benefits of retirees during that period. That is how the system works. Divert those payroll taxes, or some part of them, to private accounts and you create a shortfall that you have to make up with other governmental revenues.

There's a Republican talking point out there that disputes this, that says that there is no transition cost, but simply the "moving forward" of liabilities from the future into the present. Frankly, I do not understand this argument. Right now, current payroll taxes pay for current retirees. Future payroll taxes (and perhaps some general revenues to pay for shortfalls) will pay for future retirees. If you divert the payroll taxes, you now need another revenue source to pay for those future retirees. Either a spending cut or a tax increase will be needed to do it.

2. Personal accounts won't solve the Social Security crisis, if there is one. There is a big debate as to whether Social Security needs "fixing". However one wants to characterize it, the problem is that the class of retirees figures to increase in size (i.e., the baby boomers) while the class of workers figures to stay stagnant or decrease. Thus, there will be a smaller pool of payroll taxes to pay for a larger pool of retirees.

Everyone agrees that, in broad contours, that's the issue. So what the Republicans propose to do is dip into the pool of future payroll taxes that is supposed to pay for baby boomers' retirement, and use that money to pay for something else (essentially 401(k)'s for current workers). That, quite obviously, won't solve the problem; it will make it worse. The funny thing is that people don't see this. If Republicans proposed to take that money and use it to pay for a tax cut, or a war, or an elementary education program, everyone would understand that they were raiding Social Security. But because they are using it to pay for a program for a different set of future retirees, they are somehow able to pitch that diversion as "saving" Social Security.

Simply put, if there's a future shortfall of revenues, what the program needs is a larger revenue pool (such as a tax increase) or smaller payouts (i.e., benefit cuts, or means-testing, or raising the retirement age), or some combination of both.

Of course, the Republicans are the same party that thinks that it can balance the budget through huge tax cuts and spending increases, so I guess they are being consistent.

3. The problem with personal accounts is that they miss the point of Social Security. The purpose of the program is not the same as a private savings account. Social Security was conceived during the Depression-- when many people had lost a ton of money in the stock market (duh!). The purpose was to guarantee the elderly some minimal income, as a form of social insurance, to keep seniors out of poverty even if their savings was decimated, even if they lost their money in the stock market, even if life dealt them a bad hand. Social Security is not an investment program, but a form of social insurance. It also recognizes that poverty among the elderly can become a tremendous burden on relatives, friends, and society. To put it very cynically, we all have a strong interest in ensuring that senior citizens are not relying so much on the rest of us. Social Security also has a mild and proper redistributive function that rewards people for a lifetime of work, even in low paying jobs. Personal accounts can't accomplish that.

Bottom line-- personal accounts are a VERY bad idea.

posted by Dilan at 8:38 PM

 
I'M DREAMING OF A RIGHT CHRISTMAS:
The latest claim of persecution by the right wing is that Christmas is supposedly out of fashion. Evil secularists are devaluing the importance of the Lord and Savior by saying "Season's Greetings" and "Happy Holidays", the Salvation Army has been booted from in front of Target stores, and kids can't sing carols in school. The right wing media talks about this every day on every talk show, and Fox News features a discussion of it on every program, which indicates that Republican central handed this down as the party line. Obviously, tarring liberals as anti-Christmas would be the ultimate political masterstroke.

But even granting the right wing's premise (which the mainstream media has quite skeptically examined and found to be almost total BS) that Christmas is under attack, has anyone asked these guys about Santa Claus? If there's any single figure that has done more to destroy the "real" (i.e., religious) meaning of Christmas, it's the fat guy in the red suit. As is well known, Santa has nothing to do with the birth of Christ, the Virgin Mary, the manger, the three wise men, or any of the rest of it. Santa was created in the last 500 years, not 2000 years ago.

And Santa-- not liberals spouting inclusive messages of "Happy Holidays"-- is the main and central threat to the religious message of Christmas. Every child thinks of Santa coming down the chimney and bringing presents, every advertiser features red suits and hats in its Christmas ads, and every shopping mall has a Santa Claus. (How many malls have nativity scenes?) I'd say the average American sees 10 images of Santa or Santa iconography for every one image of Christ or Christian iconography this season.

Yes, Santa stands for good values-- gift giving, living a virtuous life, etc.-- as well as a few bad ones, like gluttony and residential burglary. But the point is, the Jolly Old Elf enjoys a stronger association with this holiday than the person whose birth is being celbrated.

In contrast, people who say "Happy Holidays" are being inclusive. They are saying, in shorthand, "Merry Christmas, Happy Channukah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Ramadan, and everything else". They aren't excluding Christians, they are including everyone else. (The spokespeople of the religious right pretend there's no difference between the two, but I hope they repent for the sin of dishonesty after they say such things.)

So I'm waiting for the right wing to turn its fire on the real reason people don't celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday-- Santa Claus. I am not holding my breath, however. The reason the right wing has chosen to go after schools that don't sing Christmas carols is because they are easy targets-- a form of over-the-top secularism. Santa Claus, on the other hand, is extremely popular. But if this issue were about principle and not politics, they would go after Santa, because Santa's vision of a secular Christmas-- with reindeer and stockings and presents under the tree-- is what is really standing in the way of a solemn, pious observence of the birth of Jesus.

posted by Dilan at 1:14 AM

 
TAKE DOWN WILLIAM DONOHUE:
If Hillary Clinton was right and there really is a vast right-wing conspiracy, William Donohue, who leads an outfit called the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, is a charter member. Donohue, whose organization purports to be a grass-roots association of Catholics, performs several useful functions for the right wing: (1) he articulates the fallacious argument that prohibiting the government from endorsing religion is the same thing as discriminating against Christians; (2) he is good at getting on television and getting his name in the papers, ensuring that the "spokesperson" for Catholics on many issues is a person with a very right wing perspective on Catholicism (i.e., Mel Gibson is a saint, abortion and gay rights are evil, the death penalty, war, and poverty are issues on which the Church has no definitive teachings and thus Catholics have every right and obligation to disregard everything the Pope says about them, and sex abuse by priests is either completely legally protected activity shielded by the First Amendment right of free exercise of religion or all the fault of homosexuals in the priesthood); (3) by complaining of anti-Catholic and anti-Christian bias all the time, usually with respect to rather unimportant things like art exhibits, he reinforces the feeling that many Americans have that Christians, rather than being a privileged majority, are put upon and face massive discrimination; (4) he promotes "The Passion of the Christ", a film almost designed to make liberals who object to its content look like anti-religious heathen; and (5) he keeps the media focused on issues of "decency" and "moral values", which plays to the Republicans' benefit because they are seen as the party more likely to restrict sexual expression in the media.

In other words, this guy is a hack-- obviously on assignment from GOP central-- and the media, which either has no appreciation of the difference between a hack and a serious conservative thinker, or, in the case of Fox News and right-wing outlets, actually works hard to blur that distinction, take him seriously as a spokesman for millions of American Catholics instead of taking him for what he is.

Here's the thing, though. Donohue, in defending "The Passion of the Christ" and in engaging in another current right-wing pet project, defending Christmas (I'll post something on this subject shortly), said some blatantly anti-Semitic things. Specifically, on cable television recently, he repeated the old canard that "the Jews control Hollywood", even singling out Harvey Weinstein when it was pointed out to him by another guest that there were all sorts of non-Jews who were major players in Hollywood. That would be bad enough, but Donohue managed to put his foot further into his mouth by remarking that the reason he thought "The Passion of the Christ" would not win Academy Awards was because Hollywood Jews didn't like the movie because these Hollywood Jews, according to Donohue, hate Christians and further because the movie is about Jesus Christ and is "about truth".

Now Donohue has gotten a fair amount of bad press for his statements. My local paper, the LA Times, has written about it (though the article is in the paid section of their website so I can't link to it), and this excellent Frank Rich column ran in the New York Times about the statements. Still, these comments aren't getting the buzz I think they should. I think this is a nice opportunity for my side to take Donohue down. He has, after all, clearly made anti-Semitic comments, but there's more to it than that. Taking him down would take down a guy who does very important grunt work for the right, as noted above. If Donohue becomes known as an anti-Semite or at least someone who has those leanings, the way Pat Buchanan is viewed, he may still get on cable television but never as the purported spokesman of all Catholics. The media would have to find someone else, and maybe that someone else won't be as much of a fascist hack as Donohue is.

But most importantly, making an issue of Donohue's statements will help to remind American Jews of something that they need to hear after over a decade of being courted by the religious right and the Republican Party in general. These people aren't your friends. At best, the religious right supports Israel because it wants to bring on the second coming of Jesus, which they believe will result in either the conversion or the death of all Jews. Hardly an agenda that Jews would want to sign on to. Further, conservatives may agree with some of the more conservative sects of Judaism on some cultural issues like gay marriage, and conservatives are willing to moderate their pitch to increase governmental endorsement of religion by invoking "God" rather than "Jesus" in public ceremonies, in order to be inclusive of Jews. But it wasn't that long ago that everyone understood the religious right and conservativism in general as having substantial anti-Semitic elements. Calling attention to Dononhue's statements should be a way for liberals to remind Jews that the Republicans have never purged these elements from their party and don't plan to, because they represent very important constituencies. In the same way, making an issue of Donohue will remind more moderate and mainline religious voters, and more tolerant evangelicals, that the Republicans still tolerate this stuff and that for significant segments of the Republican party, there is a very specific religious agenda that goes well beyond generic invocations of God at public functions.

I see this as a no-lose scenario for Democrats. So let's get on the horn and get this done!

posted by Dilan at 11:35 PM

 
GOD SAVE THE QUEEN:
I recently had occasion to rent the DVD for the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert. If you don't know what this, this was a huge concert held at Wembley Stadium in London in 1992 in honor of Freddie Mercury, the golden-voiced lead singer of Queen. It was a charity benefit with the proceeds going to HIV research (Mercury, a flamboyant bisexual, died of AIDS). But this particular charity concert, in my mind, soars above any other such concert-- anyone who plans to get the DVD of the 1985 Live Aid concerts that is coming out should check out the Mercury Tribute as well.

The reason the Mercury Tribute worked so well is that it managed to both encapsule what was so great about Mercury while also being a great rock concert. As I said, Mercury was a flamboyant, outsized personality who also had a huge range. Queen's records ranged from quasi-opera ("Bohemian Rapsody") to R&B ("Another One Bites the Dust") to gospel ("Somebody to Love") to hard rock ("Hammer to Fall") to rock anthem ("We Are the Champions"). Other than Freddie Mercury, there was simply nobody who could sing all that stuff. So, the surviving members of Queen decided to invite many of the best rock and pop singers in the world to sing various songs in place of Mercury. This was a wonderful tribute to Mercury, because it stressed how unique his talent was, compared him favorably to some of the best in his profession, and made the show larger than life, just as Mercury was.

But the show also worked as rock and roll, because many of the choices were inspired. Axl Rose singing "We Will Rock You". Gary Cherone, later to join Van Halen, sang "Hammer to Fall" brilliantly. Brit-popper Lisa Stansfield sang "I want to Break Free". Elton John did "The Show Must Go On". Roger Daltrey made "I Want It All" sound like a Who song. And the show closed with Liza Minelli, of all people-- who was one of Mercury's personal favorites. She sang "We Are the Champions" like she meant it.

But there are two highlights to the concert that, in my mind, rank with any concert footage in modern pop music history. The first was "Under Pressure". This was a collaberation between Queen and David Bowie that was recorded for Queen's Greatest Hits set in 1981. Bowie obviously had to be there, but who would he sing it with? They chose Annie Lennox, who wore an outrageous Annie Lennox costume and black eye makeup, and who has a wonderful piercing voice that was perfect for the song. As the song neared its climax, with the two singers singing together about how the pressures of the world could be mitigated if we gave love a chance, Lennox clung closer and closer to Bowie, digging her fingers into the back of his neck. It was a tremendous, emotional performance.

The best performance of them all is one that George Michael is justifiably proud of. "Somebody to Love" is probably one of the most difficult songs in rock and roll to sing. (Try it some time if you don't believe me.) It goes way up and way down, but at the same time, the lyrics have to be delivered fast and conversationally, not operatically. That means the singer needs both range and breath control. Mercury, of course, had both. So does Michael, though he has often wasted his beautiful voice on the most insubstantial of pop songs in his own recordings.

But at the Mercury Tribute, Michael showed us all what he can do with a good song. It sort of came out of nowhere, because he came out to sing three songs, the first two of which were second-tier Queen songs. But when he launched into "Somebody to Love", he sang his ass off. He hit every note, loud and clear, and he sang the song with a great deal of passion. He got the crowd involved; they clapped along in unison and eventually sang the last notes in the song for Michael. And at the end, he let out a Howard Dean-like "Yeah!"-- he was really having a good time. Queen guitarist Brian May cheered him at the end of the song. Michael liked the performance so much he put it on his Greatest Hits album.

If you get the chance, check out the DVD of the Mercury Tribute. Freddie Mercury was unique, and the surviving members of the band created a fitting, unique tribute to him.

posted by Dilan at 6:25 PM

 
CAL HAS NO RIGHT TO GO TO THE ROSE BOWL:
Hey, I hate the Bowl Championship Series as much as anyone. (You'll have to scroll down to the item on the BCS.) But this idea that California is getting screwed because they aren't going to the Rose Bowl is silly. California did not earn a trip to the Rose Bowl this year. Yes, they had a great season, a couple of mistakes and hard-luck plays away from beating USC and going undefeated. But the only Pac-10 team that earns a Rose Bowl trip is the team that wins the conference. And USC won the conference. In the old pre-BCS days, California would have gone to a second-tier bowl-- or maybe, if they were lucky, to a top bowl like the Orange or Cotton Bowl. (It should be noted that a second Pac-10 team went to a major bowl something like once every 30 years.) The BCS creates the possibility that a second place team goes to the Rose Bowl when the first place team goes to the BCS championship game-- but it doesn't guarantee it.

When postseason rewards are keyed to conference championships, teams do get penalized for finishing second in tough conferences. But that doesn't mean that the system is unfair. In the days when only the conference champion went to the NCAA basketball tournament, USC once went 24-2 and was shut out of the tournament-- because its two losses were to conference (and eventual national) champion UCLA. But that system also had its advantages-- USC knew when the season began exactly what it had to do to make the tournament, and wasn't able to do it. In contrast, under the current system, every year the selection committee is criticized for its subjective judgments as to who to let in and who to leave out.

I can't wait for the day that we scrap the BCS and go to a playoff. As long as we have this stupid system, however, everyone knows the rules. If you win a BCS conference, you are guaranteed a BCS bowl slot. Otherwise, you aren't. California didn't win the Pac-10, and therefore can't complain. End of story.

posted by Dilan at 1:23 PM

 
UP FROM SINCLAIR:
In case you haven't heard, Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which owns numerous stations in swing states and which has extensive government contracts, intends to pre-empt local programming and air an anti-Kerry documentary by an organization affiliated with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. This is obviously an end run around campaign finance restrictions and a huge campaign contribution to the Bush campaign. (It might also be a Karl Rove dirty trick.)

Liberal groups are taking a page out of conservatives' playbook and trying to get sponsors to pressure Sinclair not to air the program. (Click here and scroll down for more details.) I feel no differently about this campaign than I do about any campaign by private interests to take something off the air-- on the one hand, the opponents of the program have every right to protest it. On the other hand, I am not completely comfortable with the fact that when such campaigns succeed, those members of the public who would be interested in seeing the program are deprived of that right.

But what's really bad is that this has provided the occasion for the resurrection of all the "public interest" arguments about broadcasting. (See also here and here.) In short, people contend that the airwaves are "public", and therefore, all broadcasters have the obligation to do whatever the public (read, government) tells them to do, on pain of losing their broadcast licenses. Of course, this view has some support in the law. Broadcast licenses have long been conditioned on a requirement that broadcasters act in the "public interest", and the federal government's now-repealed "fairness doctrine" required broadcasters to air "both sides" of major issues. The "fairness doctrine" was upheld by the Supreme Court in a case called FCC v. Red Lion Broadcasting.

The danger with these arguments is obvious. The argument that broadcasters can lose their licenses if their actions are deemed against the "public interest" is essentially a justification for massive government censorship. Indeed, given the Bush Administration's predilections, one would expect that liberals would be a lot more worried than they are about granting the government this sort of power. I could very easily see Karl Rove and company pressuring broadcasters to air smears against their political opponents. Instead, liberal websites are parroting the arguments that conservative anti-obscenity crusaders always make, about how the airwaves belong to the public and the public has the right to prevent anything they don't like from airing on television or radio.

Also, it should be noted that the "public interest" requirement probably doesn't stretch as far as these advocates would like to stretch it. The Red Lion case was based on the fairness doctrine, not the "public interest" requirement. No case has ever interpreted the "public interest" requirement as granting the government the power to pull licenses or punish stations based on the stations' partisan political expression. The "public interest" condition has been invoked in the past not in political speech cases but in connection with things such as the requirement that stations carry the Emergency Broadcast System or a certain amount of educational programming. Even there, there are free speech concerns, but at least there is no danger that the government is attempting to suppress political speech.

Here, the argument that Sinclair must serve the "public interest" is essentially a brief for the censors, a justification for the government to pull the license of a station that takes a position that some do not agree with. And if you think my fears are hyperbolic, check out this quote from a Kerry advisor: "They better hope we don't win."

Media consolidation, biased news coverage, the lack of editorial independence, and attempts to circumvent campaign finance reform are all legitimate issues that should be discussed. But let's keep the government out of the business of deciding whether political expression is in the "public interest". The dangers here are far too great.

posted by Dilan at 5:28 PM

 
KERRY WON:
I don't usually have much of an opinion about which candidate won a presidential debate. I probably should-- I was a successful debater in college-- but I don't. The only exceptions I can think of are that Clinton killed Dole a couple of times in 1996, and Bentsen destroyed Quayle in 1988 in the vice-presidential debate. In 2000, I suppose Bush beat Gore-- he had a good response to Gore on hate crimes and Gore did sigh too much-- but that conclusion is more tentative.

Well this one isn't. Kerry won easily on Thursday night. Two signature moments where Kerry "turned" Bush's attacks to his advantage. (1) When Bush brought up Kerry's awful statement about voting for the $87 billion before voting against it, Kerry replied that yes, he made a mistake in talking about that vote, but Bush made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse? (2) Bush repeated over and over again the obviously focus-grouped phrase "mixed messages", as a shorthand way of describing Kerry's flip-flopping. Kerry turned it around in an unlikely way-- by bringing up the nuclear bunker buster program, something most voters have probably never heard of. Turns out Bush is developing a whole new type of nuclear weapon, with the intention of using it, while telling the rest of the world that they can't have nukes. Talk about a "mixed message".

What does this mean for the campaign? Hell if I know. Debates are notoriously overrated. The Bush-Gore polls were tied before Gore's sighs, tied after Gore's sighs, and essentially tied on election day. Clinton was already killing Dole in 1996. Bentsen's win over Quayle didn't move the polls for Dukakis one bit. Reagan, despite the legend, was beating Carter in 1980 with or without that debate. Kennedy and Nixon were tied in the polls before the supposed 5 o'clock shadow, and tied after that first debate (as well as the other three debates that nobody ever talks about and where Nixon was properly shaven).

That said, one could at least hypothesize why this might be different. After all, the polls were tied until Kerry was attacked by the Swift Boat vets. Bush took a narrow lead and has held it since. To the extent that the Swift Boat attacks swung some voters to Bush based on character doubts about Kerry, perhaps Kerry's strong performance might swing them back. Such voters are not likely to be strong supporters of the Iraq war; otherwise they would have never been for Kerry in the pre-Swift Boat polls.

But let's wait and see. I've seen too many of these campaigns where debates don't matter to think that they suddenly do. I'd still make Bush a slight favorite right now. But if I were a Bush supporter, I'd sure be worried. And since the next two debates are not limited to foreign policy like this one was, it's all downhill from here. (Conservatives will defend Bush to the death on Iraq, but not on the deficit or the prescription drug bill.)

posted by Dilan at 1:39 AM

 
APOLOGY TO KOBE BRYANT:
Turns out he asked the alleged victim for a different selfish, kinky sex act that is generally a no-no on a first date for non-celebrities (except in porn movies). See here and here for details.

posted by Dilan at 5:10 PM

 
700 FOR BONDS:
It's fashionable to hate Barry Bonds. Of course, here in LA, he's hated because he's a Giant. The media hates him because he doesn't play the game of smiling while answering their stupid, lazy-ass questions. The fans hate him because he plays the villain. And everyone hates him because he is suspected of steroid use.

Nonetheless, we are living through the era of a new Babe Ruth and we ought to recognize it. Nobody else out there is hitting 700 home runs. Nobody else has hit 73 in a season. Nobody else has had 200 walks in a season. In fact, if you attend a 3 game series of games between your local team and the Giants, you are almost guaranteed a Bonds home run and will quite possibly see two or three.

Sometime next year, he will pass the magic numbers of 714 (Ruth) and perhaps even 755 (Aaron) home runs. When he does, he will become the first since Ruth to hold both the single season and career home run records. It is said that it is better to be respected than loved. Unloved as he may be, Bonds' hitting prowress has certainly earned our respect.

posted by Dilan at 11:26 PM

 
DAN RATHER HAS GOT TO GO:
As they say, it's not the crime, it's the cover-up. And once it became clear that those documents were forged, it was incumbent on Rather to admit it and investigate what happened. Instead, he is covering his own ass (ironic since the forged documents included an alleged "cover your ass" memo.

Howell Raines was fired, and a lot of people didn't think that could happen. The question is, is Rather too big a fish?

(Of course, I never understood what was so great about Rather in the first place. I mean, the guy isn't exactly Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow, is he?)

posted by Dilan at 7:59 PM

 
CELEBRITIES AND A CERTAIN TABOO SEX ACT:
[Warning, folks, this is very graphic.]
From the Vail, Colorado Daily News comes the edited transcript of Kobe Bryant's interview with police (according to the paper, it has been edited "for language and the most graphic details of the events as Bryant described them"):

"Detective Loya: Did you ever ask her if you wanted, if you could ...
Bryant: Yes. That’s when she said no. That’s when she said no. That’s when she said no.
Detective Loya: So what did, what did you say?
Detective Winters: What did you say, how did that, how did that come about?
Bryant: Um, you know, that’s when I asked if I could ..., she said no.
Detective Loya: So you like to ... ?
Bryant: That’s my thing, not always, I mean, so I stopped. Jesus Christ man. "

And here's more:

"Detective Winters: When did she, when did you stop, what, what made you stop?
Bryant: Well I asked her about the ... thing and she was like no, I don’t know.
Detective Loya: How many times did you ask her?
Bryant: Once.
Detective Winters: Okay, all right, okay. You said, when, did it stop at that point?
Bryant: Um, did I stop? (Inaudible) She went like this (inaudible), I asked her if I could ... and she was like no um, I thought she was cool, you know, I stopped. I stopped pumping and uh, I just, I just stood there like this (inaudible) and um, then she just moved like this."

Pretty obvious what the "..." thing is, isn't it?

Assuming the Kobe Bryant statement is truthful, this isn't the first time that a celebrity has been turned down for anal sex during a one-night stand.

For instance, there was Jenna Jameson and Marilyn Manson:

"Jenna talks about Marilyn Manson trying to have anal with her in the book but she had to turn him down because he was too big for her."

There was also Suzen Johnson and Frank Gifford. I don't have a cite for this one, but I remember that one of the tabloids reported that he asked for anal when he had his affair with the former flight attendant.

I think of consensual anal sex in the context of relationships. It is either something that very kinky women like to do with men that they completely trust, or something that women in long-term relationships will do (even though they don't really like it) to please their husbands or boyfriends who they love very much. I don't think that too many women do anal on the first date. It's painful (especially when there's no lube around, and you know that Kobe didn't have any lube-- he didn't even have a condom), requires preparation and relaxation, and, even at best and with a trusted partner, is far, far less pleasurable than vaginal sex is for a woman.

But, I guess this is one more example of celebrities getting-- or at least expecting to get-- whatever it is they want. Somehow I have a feeling that there are quite a few NBA, NFL, and rock groupies who do have anal sex sans lube with celebrities whom they just met, despite the fact that it is very painful for them, and that's why Messrs. Bryant, Manson, and Gifford apparently felt comfortable asking for it.

One other thing-- in the transcript, Kobe says, apparently about anal sex, "that's my thing". Why do I find it unsurprising, given Kobe's selfish playing style that emphasizes his individual scoring achievements over teamwork, that his "thing" is a particular sex act that gives him great pleasure while likely inflicting pain on his partner?

CORRECTION: It turns out that Kobe actually asked for a different kinky, selfish sex act. See this post. But my points remain valid.

posted by Dilan at 7:55 PM

 
COMMENTS:
I have enabled the "comments" feature on this blog. (I didn't know how to do that before.) Feel free to post whatever you want! (To post a comment, click on the blue time of posting indicator below the post.)

posted by Dilan at 5:59 PM

 
THE SMOKING TYPEWRITER:
The CBS documents are definitely forgeries. I have no doubt about it after reading this blog post:

http://shapeofdays.typepad.com/the_shape_of_days/2004/09/the_ibm_selectr.html

The only question is who forged them? I don't think CBS has much of an obligation to protect the anonymity of folks who passed them forged documents. And this is a serious issue that has serious political repercussions. There's a big story here, and CBS should figure out who snookered them.

posted by Dilan at 5:22 PM

 
THE FALLACY OF THE DEMOCRATS NEED TO BE "TOUGH":
Presidential campaigns always conform to established narratives. Republicans have to demonstrate that they are compassionate and not heartless, Democrats must demonstrate that they are strong and tough, and that they are not big-spending liberals. Each candidate is at times accused of being too ideological, and too captive to his base, and at other times is accused of being a flip-flopper, a wobbler, of cynically "moving to the center" for the general election.

I guess it is easier to use one or more of these prefabricated narratives than it is to actually figure out what makes the candidates tick or to say anything original about them. But the problem is, these narratives are not only lazyman's journalism-- they are also often wrong.

Consider, for instance, the problem that the Democrats are supposedly "weak" on defense issues. It probably started as part of the disgraceful Republican meme in the 1940's that liberalism and communism were one and the same, and thus the liberals could not be trusted to protect this country. So let's look from the 1940's out and see what we can see about Democrats and defense issues:

1948: Truman-- defense issues probably helped him, as he was associated with the successful conclusion of World War II and the dropping of the atomic bombs, which was widely popular.
1952: Truman declines to seek reelection because the Korean War was so unpopular. The Korean War is, along with Vietnam, the classic "Democrat War", to use Bob Dole's phrase from 1976. Truman was clearly trying to show he was as anti-communist as the Republicans. Instead, he got us into a quagmire that took 50,000 American lives and ended in stalemate. Adlai Stevenson is the Democratic nominee aganist Eisenhower, runs primarily on domestic issues, and loses to a war hero whom no Democrat could have likely beaten.
1956: Stevenson faces Eisenhower again, Ike still wildly popular, same result.
1960: Kennedy vs. Nixon. Kennedy argues that there was a "missle gap", and that Eisenhower and Nixon were insufficiently hawkish in the Taiwan Strait and in Cuba. Kennedy wins a close election. Defense issues helped Kennedy.
1964: Johnson vs. Goldwater. Actually, this is a fascinating election because Johnson won it by posing as a dove. (He rewarded the electorate for their votes, of course, by escalating the disastrous hawkish policy that Ike and Kennedy started in Vietnam.) He attacked Goldwater as "trigger happy" and ran the famous "Daisy commercial" which insinuated that a vote for Goldwater was a vote for nuclear war.
1968: Johnson, like Truman before him, doesn't run for reelection because of the unpopularity of the Vietnam War. Democrats could have nominated anti-war Eugene McCarthy but instead nominate Hubert Humphrey, who was compromised by his role in the pro-Vietnam War Johnson Administration. Humphrey barely loses to Nixon, who runs on a promise to get us out of Vietnam. Again, the more dovish candidate wins the election (and again, after posing as a dove, the winner proceeds to escalate the Vietnam War).
1972: McGovern is a big anti-war candidate, but he is also completely incompetent (convention speech in wee hours of morning, Vice-Presidential candidate taken off ticket after it turns out he had been in psychotherapy). Loses to Nixon despite Nixon's unpopularity.
1976: Carter promises a foreign policy based on human rights, isn't particularly hawkish or doveish. Beats Ford, who was crippled by Republicans' association with Watergate scandal.
1980: Carter seen as ineffective President; Reagan was unbeatable anyway. Greatest politician in my lifetime.
1984: Mondale was seen as too liberal, but again, he wasn't beating Reagan anyway.
1988: Dukakis gets bashed on for posing in that tank, but it should be remembered that he was trying to look more tough, not less tough, by doing that. He gets beat by Bush 41, who was running as Reagan II.
1992: Weird election. Ross Perot splits the vote. Clinton ran as a hawk, saying that he would be tougher on China than Bush 41 had. On the other hand, Bush 41 trumpeted what was then seen as success in the first Gulf War.
1996: Clinton vs. Dole. Again, both of them run fairly hawkish campaigns. Clinton wins.
2000: Gore trumpets his role in Bosnia and Kosovo war policies. Bush runs as a dove, promising a more "humble" foreign policy. Bush wins.

So let's see: in 1948 and 1960, out-hawking the Republicans helped Democrats. However, in 1964, 1968, and 2000, the more dovish candidate won. The only elections where Democrats were probably hurt by being doves were elections they were going to lose anyway-- the two to Reagan, and McGovern's incompetent campaign in 1972.

So why, exactly, was John Kerry's vote for the Iraq war seen as such an asset by the Democratic Party establishment in this election cycle? Especially since: (1) it makes it impossible for Kerry to properly and effectively criticize the war that he voted to support, and (2) it is perfectly clear that it was a political vote, an attempt to protect Kerry's electoral prospects if the war went well (all one has to do is look at Kerry's previous doveishness (including on the question of Saddam Hussein in 1991) to see this).

If the Democrats lose this election, they will have gotten what they deserved. Parties without any balls to stand up and oppose bad policies deserve to lose.

posted by Dilan at 11:27 AM

 
BUSH'S PAST:
Apparently 60 Minutes, this Wednesday, is going to run an expose on what President Bush was doing that year when he was supposed to be in the Texas / Alabama National Guard and nobody knows where he was. I am ambivalent about this issue, because I really do wish the Presidential campaign would focus on more important things, like Iraq and the deficit, but here are a couple of observations about this issue:

1. A lot of Bush's supporters have tried to make Bush's National Guard service into some noble cause akin to the current Guard members putting their lives on the line in Iraq, when we all know that in the Vietnam era this was a route for rich kids (like Dan Quayle) to not have to go to Vietnam while not explicitly dodging the draft either. Bush-- who could have defused this by simply having the guts to say that he didn't want to go to Vietnam and admires greatly those who did-- has never said a word about this argument being made on his behalf.

2. The (tacitly) Bush-sponsored Swift Boat ads (falsely) trashed Kerry's service record and his activities protesting Vietnam. Again, Bush could have defused this by simply condemning the Swift Boat ads as false and contemptible (no, not all 527 ads, just the Swift Boat ones). But he didn't (again, he does not have the guts to ever tell members of his base that they are full of it), and if voters have a right to consider whether Kerry has told the truth about 35 years ago, they certainly have the right to consider whether Bush has told the truth about 33 years ago.

The truth is, I am sure Bush did a lot of unsavory and unadmirable things when he was a young alcoholic. I also think it is quite likely that he didn't take his service to his country very seriously and had no intention of going to Vietnam. I happen to admire Bush for having overcome the problems of his youth. But let's face it-- the reason his comeback from alcoholism and youthful irresponsibility is so impressive is because he was so irresponsible in his younger years. He has never been willing to admit this in anything other than oblique terms. He has admitted that he was "young and irresponsible" but has never admitted specifics-- cocaine, multiple DUI's, avoiding Vietnam service, lots of womanizing, etc. (The reason for this is because he has a lot of supporters on the religious right who feel these things reflect badly on one's character even if one later repents for them.)

By the way, I don't think Bush has to admit these things. He really doesn't. I'm fine with him just obliquely saying he was young and irresponsible-- though I do wish he would just admit why he didn't go to Vietnam.

But here's the problem. Kerry was a very responsible youth. Really. He risked his life for his country, and then came back and exercised his First Amendment rights to try to end a war that he thought was immoral and save the lives of other young American and Vietnamese citizens. About the only irresponsible things that you could argue he did were using too extreme rhetoric in the Senate and throwing away the ribbons and medals-- and even those acts are actually quite defensible in context. But here's my point: even if you believe that Kerry went too far in some of his war protesting activities, such acts are probably not nearly as irresponsible as some of the things Bush did before he turned his life around.

So where does this leave us? It leaves us with something I've said for some time. Bush should not be attacked for the fact that in his youth, he was irresponsible. I don't care-- he's clearly turned his life around, and we should all admire that. But Bush-- and his surrogates as well-- have no business attacking Kerry for his actions when he was young, because if what Kerry did at age 27 is fair game, then the vastly worse things that Bush did before he cleaned up his life are also fair game. And the Bush people don't want to play that way. They need Kerry's youthful anti-war activities to portray him as a dangerous leftist peacenik. (Notice, for instance, Zell Miller's out of context quotation of Kerry's remark-- from his college days-- that he opposed US military actions without UN approval. Kerry has never repeated this remark, and voted for Kosovo and Iraq wars without UN approval, but Miller still used it.)

In this context, Bush deserves what he gets in terms of the examinations of his sordid past.

posted by Dilan at 6:32 PM

 
COMING NEXT WEEK, AN ARTICLE BY OLIVER NORTH, DENYING THAT ARMS WERE SOLD TO IRAN IN THE 1980'S:
You know, you would think that National Review would know better than to run an item in its blog, expressing skepticism that Israel could possibly be spying on the US's internal Iran policy debates, written by Michael Ledeen, a pro-Likud neoconservative who reportedly organized back-channel communications between Bush Administration neoconservatives and an infamous shady Iranian arms dealer who played a crucial role in the Iran-Contra scandal. (Nowhere on the National Review site have I found any disclosure of Ledeen's obvious conflict of interest with respect to his post.)

You would especially think that National Review would be cautious about allowing Ledeen to post his thoughts on this issue when Ledeen refused to comment to the Washington Monthly when they reported on Ledeen's activities.

I don't know about you, but to me, a denial that a wrongful act took place, made by someone who is sympathetic to the ideological goals of the suspect, and who organized a blatant attempt to subvert official policy relating to the same subject matter as the suspect's alleged wrongdoing, is not particularly credible as is. But when that person is directly asked to comment to the publication who breaks the story, refuses to do so, and then publishes his denial (i.e., a comment that should have been made to the reporters who broke the story when they asked him to comment) in a sympathetic, ideological publication that will not criticize him or note his obvious conflicts of interest, I don't think it's entitled to any weight at all. In fact, these circumstances make me almost certain that Ledeen is being dishonest and is avoiding commenting in a venue where he might face uncomfortable questions. Shame on National Review for allowing him to get away with this.

posted by Dilan at 1:13 PM

 
NICE DEMONSTRATION OF EXACTLY HOW OUT OF TOUCH THE RIGHT WING IS:
Look at this note by Kathryn Lopez from the "Corner" on National Review's website:

"BARBARA AND JENNA & THE GAY WEDDING [KJL]
"Yesterday it was reported that the Bush twins might be attending an upcoming gay 'wedding.' But before it becomes an urban legend: I am told by White House insiders that they are not attending. The misunderstanding can be chalked up to the young women being polite people."

It says all you need to know about the conservative movement that someone has to go to the trouble of issuing a denial (on background, no less!) to a conservative website that the President's daughters might honor a gay friend by attending the friend's wedding. (Also, note the irony of Lopez implying it was "polite" for the Bush daughters not to explicitly turn down the invitation. If Lopez is really committed to the belief that gay marriage is an abomination, she can't possibly feel that expressing that belief would be "impolite". Come on, Kathryn, if gay marriage has to be opposed to the point of not attending a friend's wedding (an impolite gesture in itself), then not explicitly turning down the invitation would seem to be a terrible compromise of one's principles, wouldn't it?)

And note, again, the use of "scare quotes" around the term "wedding"-- an issue I have commented on before. Apparently if you even use the term "gay marriage" or "gay wedding" without putting a derisive pair of quote marks around it, you are endorsing the gay rights agenda lock, stock, and barrel.

I really don't believe that smart conservatives (and Ms. Lopez is a smart conservative) really believe this trash. (I also don't believe that young conservative commentators believe this trash at all. Most college-educated people under age 40 had openly gay friends in college, and think it's no big deal.) I assume that the folks at National Review (Derbyshire aside) are playing to the bigotry of their supporters. (Lopez may very well believe that homosexuality is a sin-- she is, to my knowledge, a quite devout Catholic-- but that is a very different issue than deriding gays and making snarky and prejudiced remarks about them.)

Or at least I hope that's all they are doing.

posted by Dilan at 8:15 PM

 
LINK TO ERIC MULLER'S POSTS RE: MALKIN ON VOLOKH CONSPIRACY:
With respect to the item directly below this one, here's a link to the comments that Muller posted on the Volokh conspiracy website regarding the Malkin book on Japanese internment:

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_08_00.shtml#1091762547

Note that you will have to scroll down to read all 10 of his posts.

By the way, one of the funnier Malkin responses to all this is that she operates under publication deadlines and therefore couldn't have been as thorough as Muller wants her to be. (See this link and scroll down to "Part 3".) That's really rich. So it's more important to get the book out before the 2004 election than it is to get your history right? Can Malkin's motives in writing this book be any more transparent (and any more unrelated to any serious scholarly interest in history)?

posted by Dilan at 8:51 PM

 
WELCOME TO THE BIG LEAGUES, MICHELLE:
Michelle Malkin is a conservative author who, like many others, is paid big money by the forces of institutional conservativism (in her case, the right wing Regnery Press) to put out books to serve the interests of the Republican Party. (Her book titles all have the telltale colon in them, e.g., "Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists Criminals & Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores". When I see that colon, I run far away.)

Malkin's specialty is immigration issues. It's easy to be cynical as to why that is-- she's a fairly dark skinned woman of obvious Asian descent; she's thus the perfect person to make arguments that might be argued to be racist, nativist, or anti-immigrant if made by whites. But Malkin, let it be said, is also very smart and productive. She churns out a daily column (which is not easy to do) and is very articulate, and has an ability to process large amounts of information. Unlike many other right wing (and some left wing) popular authors, she has heard of the footnote and the primary source document.

As I noted above, she wrote a book a couple of years back advocating restrictive immigration policies. That's a perfectly good subject for a smart conservative to write about-- there are a thousand different opinions about the effects of immigration on society. A person can take an extreme position-- even a racist one (and Malkin, like many advocates of draconian treatment of foreigners, likes to conflate invading Arab terrorists with "invading" Mexican migrant workers)--- and the position can't be proven false. Immigration policy is, after all, a matter of opinion.

But Ms. Malkin has written a new book, and this one tackles a matter of history, not policy. Obviously the folks at Regnery wanted someone to put out a defense of Bush's anti-terror policies in advance of the 2004 election, so she spent the last year writing "In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror". (There's that colon again.) Her approach is to defend Bush's crackdown on civil liberties by saying that FDR's was even more oppressive, and the historical record vindicates FDR.

Needless to say, Ms. Malkin is swimming upstream here. The verdict of orthodox history is that FDR's actions were a grave and needless infringement on civil liberties, motivated by the worst sorts of racial prejudice. Of course, swimming upstream doesn't by itself make one wrong, but the reaction to Ms. Malkin's work by some professional historians is a nice object lesson in biting off more than one can chew.

Essentially, Ms. Malkin's problem is that she is not a historian, and she wrote her book in a year (working part-time, as she also writes her column AND had a baby this past year), drawing on some primary documents, mostly received from other conservatives who thought internment was not such a bad idea. And she is arguing that all the professional historians who have intensively studied the complexities of the historical record, and who have examined tens of thousands of pages of documents dispersed in archives in Japan, California, Washington D.C. and many other places, are full of it.

I've got to say that this has got to be one of the great examples of a conservative believing a bit too much of the movement's own BS. You see, conservatives like to refer to academics as biased pointy headed geeks who forsake rigorous study in favor of hack scholarship such as postmodernism and relativism. I will not deny, of course, that such hack scholarship exists, but that doesn't mean that any smart conservative with internet access, a Lexis account, and some like-minded friends who have collected a small sample of the primary documents is going to be able to disprove the consensus of professional academic historians. As biased as some academics may very well be, the fact of the matter is that the intensive methodologies of academics who are attempting to publish in professional journals or to produce a scholarly book cannot be duplicated by a smart layperson working part time.

In any event, I invite anyone who wants to see a conservative commentator, in over her head, get thoroughly eviscerated by academics who don't appreciate her efforts to discredit their life's work without paying her dues to click on this link and scroll down to all of the updates (and click on the Volokh Conspiracy links that are included down below the updates on the page as well).

Ms. Malkin has picked a fight she can't win.

posted by Dilan at 8:16 PM

 
THE SWIFT BOAT VETERANS AND THE KERRY-BUSH CAMPAIGN:
I can't remember when I have been more pissed off about a political attack than I was about the new advertisement and forthcoming book from a group calling itself the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth", supposedly a bunch of Vietnam veterans who served with John Kerry and contend that he is lying about his war record.

This is despicable on all sorts of levels-- the media has picked up on the fact that this is being supported sub silentio by the Bush campaign (it was funded by a major Bush contributor and Bush could stop it with one phone call, as Vietnam veteran John McCain has urged Bush to do), and that the people involved didn't really serve with Kerry, and that some of the Swift Boat vets are already retracting their claims.

But I don't think the media coverage has given the full picture of why this is such a base political attack. The fact is, John Kerry spent the Vietnam War taking fire and risking his life on behalf of his country. George W. Bush pulled political strings to get ahead of many other people on a waiting list to join the Texas Air National Guard, avoided going to Vietnam and risking his life, and may have also failed to show up for duty (this last fact has not been definitively proven, but no records establish that he really did show up for several months after he had been transferred to Alabama, and he has avoided definitively saying that he had reported for duty during that period). In fact, George W. Bush was probably a rather irresponsible rich kid, a hard drinker and party animal who didn't get his life together until he turned 40. Kerry was, in contrast, an extremely precocious 26 year old.

None of this is really news. And really, none of it should determine who should win the election. I don't support Bush for President, but I do admire that he turned his life around. I think that is one of his best personal qualities. But in order to accept the narrative that he turned his life around, we must also accept that before he did, things weren't pretty. And they weren't. Whatever Bush was doing during the Vietnam War, he wasn't a responsible adult back then. Kerry, on the other hand, was one. And that doesn't mean that Kerry is a better man now; it only means that he was a better man back then.

Nonetheless, Kerry is running on this issue, and Bush's political strategists are scared to their bones about it, because it's impossible to run their normal cheap political attacks against the patriotism of liberals when you are running against a war hero.

So that is the context for George W. Bush's contributors and the right wing media bringing us the Swift Boat vets. And you can tell the political nature of the thing by what the vets say. Let's be clear-- I could totally see Kerry overstating his wounds to get out of Vietnam early, or overstating his war heroism to get elected. I could see that both because he's a politician and because of what we have learned about John Kerry in this campaign.

But that's not what the swift boat vets say, and the reason is obvious-- a John Kerry who may have overstated his military record is still a John Kerry who went to Vietnam and risked his life while Bush didn't. In other words, it wouldn't neutralize Kerry's advantage on the issue, which was the point of this attack.

So what the vets had to do was actually turn Kerry into a coward and a criminal. Thus, they claim that he got his Silver Star for shooting an unarmed Vietnamese teenager in the back. And they claim he inflicted a wound on himself to get a third Purple Heart to get out of the war. And they claim that the man who claims that Kerry saved his life by pulling him out of the water under enemy fire-- an incident that caused Kerry to be decorated with a Bronze Star-- is a liar, and that in fact there was no enemy fire.

You can just see how unbelievable this all is. It would mean that the US Military knowingly and repeatedly decorated a coward and war criminal, and allowed a person to get out of Vietnam by means of a self-inflicted wound, and that further we should believe these fellow servicemembers who never formally protested or complained about the medals when they were awarded but only spoke up when Bush campaign contributors came calling.

So you have a facially unbelievable story, paid for by known Bush supporters, and with an obvious "too good to be true" element to it, i.e., a carefully written narrative that negates each and every element of the claimed war heroism of Kerry, and specifically goes farther than simply criticizing Kerry for being a lousy soldier, instead making him out to be even worse than those who didn't serve in Vietnam. I am sorry, but there is no way in hell that the things the Swift Boat vets allege really happened.

One more thing needs to be said about this attack. While the Swift Boat vets were in Vietnam, the radio talk show hosts and Fox News commentators who are carrying the ball for them were not there, for the most part. And, of course, Bush, the intended beneficiary of the attack, also was not in Vietnam. War service is not pretty. Horrible things happen. Civilians get shot. Young men (and now women) are afraid and sometimes do stupid, even atrocious things. If we are going to honor those who serve our country (and we should), we also cannot turn around and nitpick at every single thing that happens while they are under fire. It is not as though John Kerry ran the Abu Graib prison. I guess the short way of saying this is, I really don't care, in the larger sense, whether the bullets were really flying when Kerry pulled Jim Rassman out of the water or not. I don't care whether the wounds that gave rise to Kerry's Purple Hearts came from a Vietnamese gun or from friendly fire, and I don't even care that they were superficial wounds treated with Band-Aids.

If you go back and question everything that a veteran ever did in the war, and end up elevating the record of someone who never served (and thus cannot be subjected to the same scrutiny), you are no longer honoring veterans-- you are in fact trashing them. Because we ask young people to do awful things on our behalf in war. In the Vietnam War, we did not ask folks in the Texas Air National Guard to do these things. (In a cruel irony, George W. Bush now asks those in the National Guard to die in the line of fire, the very thing he avoided by joining the Guard during the Vietnam War.) The fact that a 26 year old John Kerry did those things, for us, does not make him a worse person than George W. Bush. And it is completely dispicable that anyone would suggest that it does, and try to take down Senator Kerry's honorable service to his country by claiming that he is worse than a draft dodger.

posted by Dilan at 9:19 PM

 
SLATE LINKED TO ME!:
Kevin Arnovitz's excellent Fraywatch (http://www.slate.com/id/2104671/) linked to this blog and gave us a plug. That's reason enough for me to put up some new posts. I really need to pay more attention to this, because people are paying attention to me. I promise I will.

posted by Dilan at 9:16 PM

 
SO HE IS FRENCH AFTER ALL:All these complaints by the Democrats every time that Fox News or some other Republican organ calls their nominee "French"-- and then what do they go and do?  They Kerry come out for his post-convention concert appearance with the Boston Pops right in one of the sections of the "1812 Overture" where the orchestra is playing the French national anthem!
So it was Kerry marching out to the "Marseillaise".  Yeah, great job with the images, guys!

[UPDATE:  Just after I hit the "send" key, it got worse!  They started playing the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love", which starts out with-- guess what-- the Marseillaise!!!  I have to hope that they are just being ironic, but I doubt it.)

posted by Dilan at 9:36 PM

 
GIVING SHORT SHRIFT TO THE 1812 OVERTURE:
In a festive mood for the 4th of July, I watched the Boston Pops on CBS and "A Capitol Fourth" with the National Symphony on PBS. I've watched July 4 concerts on TV ever since I was a kid, with Arthur Fielder and the Pops on PBS. This year, however, something was missing-- the best part of every July 4 pops concert, the 1812 Overture.

It is strange, of course, that the 1812 Overture, by Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky, would become a staple of celebrations of American independence day. The piece, which takes a very typical form for a solemn Russian Romantic overture, depicts a battle between the French and the Russians during Napoleon's march on Russia in the Winter of 1812. (Napoleon eventually was forced to retreat because of the weather and the Russians' battle strategy. This was considered a key event in Russia history, because it boosted Russia's confidence that it would never be dominated by European powers. The Russians (actually the Soviets) later used the winter to repel Hitler's forces as well.) The Overture utilizes portions of the French National Anthem and a classic Russian Hymn that honors the Tsar, to create a contrapuntal sound of the advance and retreat of armies. Of course, what makes the piece famous is the use of chimes, cannons, bells, and everything else Tchaikovsky can muster, with the instantly recognizable closing fanfare playing on top of it (and the Tsar's Hymn playing victoriously in the background).

Why, then, is this explictly nationalist Russian anthem such an American institution. One might guess it has something to do with the year 1812 (after all, America fought a war in 1812 as well), but it really doesn't. There are two basic stories. The first is that Tchaikovsky played the overture in 1891 when he opened Carnegie Hall, and it has played on July 4 since then. But while Tchaikovsky did open Carengie Hall, he didn't do it on July 4; the concert was in May. More likely is that Arthur Fielder, the longtime conductor of the Boston Pops, decided that the way to get attention for his concerts on the Esplanade of the Charles River on July 4 was to do the "1812" complete with the staging that is only possible outdoors, including the cannons, the bells, the fireworks, and the kitchen sink.

Whatever, it became a tradition, and the 1812 Overture is the centerpiece of every Boston Pops July 4 concert. Those concerts used to air on PBS with Fiedler, and later John Williams, conducting. They did a version of the "1812" that deleted a repeated section but still lasted a good 16 minutes or so. It was always a sight to see, with fireworks and cannons everywhere and 400,000 spectators going crazy. Later, A&E network picked up the Boston Pops July 4 concert, and A&E featured the 1812 as well. PBS substituted the Capitol July 4 concert for the Pops, and they also did the 1812, with Erich Kunzel conducting, and usually with a choir to augment the string section at the start of the piece.

In the last 2 years, however, everything has gone to hell. The Boston Pops have been picked up by CBS, but they only show an hour of the concert. For that reason, they can't spend 16 minutes on the Overture. Instead, we get a couple of celebrity singers-- this year it was David Lee Roth (how pathetic), followed by a Sousa march, a patriotic singalong, and a bunch of fireworks accompanied by taped music.

Meanwhile, on PBS this year, to fit in a tribute to Ray Charles and Clay Aiken singing "God Bless the U.S.A." (yecch), we got only 2 minutes of the 1812 Overture, which Kunzel started conducting just before the end. This is truly objectionable-- it is impossible to get excited for the finale of the piece without hearing Tchaikovsky's depiction of the battle that leads up to it. The result is, this great July 4 tradition was completely desecrated by television this year.

Of course, this sort of thing is par for the course for television, which always looks for things to cut and seeks the lowest common denominator-- who needs Tchaikovsky when you have David Lee Roth? But I have a slightly cynical take as well. Perhaps the TV folks have decided that if you are going to cut something out of the 4th, an epic piece about a Russian battle is the right thing to cut. I have noticed that in recent years, Fox has not shown the singing of the Canadian national anthem at the baseball All-Star Game (which is always sung), but has come back after commercial to show the "Star-Spangled Banner". (They also forego a block of commercials-- real money-- to show the singing of "God Bless America" during the 7th Inning Stretch.) Americans can be very crassly nationalistic (witness the renaming of french fries as "freedom fries", and the more general vilification of the French, after the UN votes leading up to the Iraq war), and perhaps no TV station ever went broke pandering to that nationalism. So here's an overture that glorifies the sacrifices of two countries, the French and the Russians, that conservatives bash on every day on talk radio. Gee, is it that much of a surprise that this is what gets deemphasized?

What bothers me more than anything about this is that the 1812 Overture is one of the few exposures to serious music that many Americans have. It may be mildly fun to sing along with Clay Aiken on July 4, or to watch fireworks explode to the music of Mariah Carey records, but the music of Tchaikovsky changes lives, touches souls, and connects us with a history, both musical and military, that most Americans know little about.

Indeed, while I bow to nobody in calling this the greatest country in the world (we get the core issue of individual liberty right in a way that no other society does), the fact is that in many parts of America, not only is nobody expected to know who Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky was or the fact that Russia and France fought in 1812, but those who do know these things are viewed with distrust, as snooty elitists. When TV plays to this ignorance, by imploring God to bless the U.S.A. while not finding 16 minutes to devote to a piece that will still be listened to, and enjoyed, long after Lee Greenwood is forgotten, it disgraces this country. Americans are a tremendously lucky people-- we have freedom, riches, and near-universal access to the canonical works of western culture. We should not spurn this gift in favor of mindless crap on July 4.
posted by Dilan at 10:54 PM

 
JOHN KERRY'S MISSED VOTES:
So Bill Frist, Mitt Romney, and other Republicans want John Kerry to resign his Senate seat because he is missing votes while he runs for President, and delayed a vote on a Veterans' benefits bill so that he couldn't cast his vote during a break from his campaign. (Here's the link.)

Can this be any more transparent and cynical? If Kerry resigns, Romney, a Republican, appoints his successor. And the makeup of the Senate is close enough for one vote to make a difference. (Frist and Romney point to Bob Dole resigning in 1996, but he gave up his seat to a fellow Republican. Think he would have given it up if a Democrat would have had the power to appoint his successor?) The only real question here is why the New York Times doesn't point this obvious fact out in its story.
posted by Dilan at 1:11 PM

 
REAGAN ON THE NEW DOLLAR:
Reagan was a lousy President, and I am not too keen, as you might imagine, of putting his face on a coin or bill. But we do need to get rid of the penny and the one dollar bill. One dollar bills last one year in circulation; coins would last 20. We spend tons of money on dollar bills that we could save by replacing them with coins. Meanwhile, the penny is worthless. Nobody uses them; many places don't even accept them (try finding a slot machine, parking meter, or vending machine that accepts pennies).

I'd offer this trade to get Republican support for coinage reform, which would save lots of money. Agree to get rid of the penny and the dollar bill, and we will have to create a new dollar coin to replace the dollar bill-- we can put Reagan's face on that.

I'd rather reduce unnecessary spending than worry about who's face is on the bill. So how about it, GOP?
posted by Dilan at 11:39 PM

 
REAGAN'S HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD:
A number of people are saying, in their Reagan tributes, that he was a great believer in human freedom. Neoconservatives, who support agressive advocacy of human rights in foreign policy, characterize him as a demigod.

I don't think they are remembering the same Reagan that I remember. Reagan opposed the side of freedom in Angola, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, Haiti, and especially South Africa, where his administration considered Nelson Mandela, who turned out to be one of the genuine human rights heroes of the 20th Century, a giant on the level of Ghandhi and King, as nothing more than a dangerous communist sympathizer. Indeed, Reagan's subordinates used to bash Reagan's predecessor, Jimmy Carter, for a touchy-feely human rights-based foreign policy. Reagan's official policy wasn't support for human rights, but anticommunism combined with realpolitik.

Reagan didn't advocate freedom in domestic affairs either. His Attorney General, Ed Meese, tried to ban porn at a time when the VCR was liberating many American adults to finally explore their sexual fantasies. Meese also took the position that the familiar Miranda warnings that criminal suspects have received since the 1960's only protect guilty people. And Reagan supported the notorious Bob Jones University all the way to the Supreme Court in its attempt to retain its tax exemption while depriving its students of the freedom to date someone of their choice who happens to be of a different race.

Of course, lots of lies are always told about Presidents soon after their death. Nixon got the same treatment in 1994. We don't like to speak ill of the dead. But Reagan was no human rights crusader, and should not be seen as one.
posted by Dilan at 11:29 PM

 
SMARTY JONES:
The Triple Crown is simply very hard to win. The only thing in sports that is harder, that everyone wants to do, is Golf's grand slam. It's never been won in its current form (Masters, US Open, The Open, and PGA in the same year).

Of course, something I saw at Dodger Stadium several years back-- Fernando Tatis hitting two grand slams in the same inning-- is as singular as anything that could possibly happen in sport. But flukes like that are in a different category.
posted by Dilan at 11:39 PM

 
THE "TORTURE MEMO":
That torture memo is pretty damning. Remember how many times the Administration has denied that they engage in torture. And to think that some people still thing these guys are more honest than Clinton!
posted by Dilan at 11:35 PM

 
PLAYING THE LAKERS:
The Pistons were up by 6 late, fouled Shaq to create a three point play, and then allowed Kobe to touch the ball in the last seconds, which gave rise to a 3 point shot which inevitably dropped to tie the game and send it to overtime, where the Lakers won.

This happens all the time. Remember Derek Fisher against the Spurs? Remember Kobe twice against Portland when the Lakers needed to win to clinch the division?

When teams play the Lakers, and they take a single-digit lead late into the game, they have to assume that Kobe or somebody will hit 3 pointers. That means Shaq gets a concession layup to cut the lead to 4, rather than tough defense and a foul allowing the Laker deficit to be cut to 3. And that certainly means that anyone who touches the ball before Kobe gets fouled on the last possession-- 2 shots for Shaq or Luke Walton, both of whom got touches before Kobe.

You can't coach against the Lakers the way you would against any other team. No team I have ever seen is so effective in the last seconds. Not even the Bulls with Jordan.
posted by Dilan at 11:30 PM

 
AL GORE FOR VICE-PRESIDENT:
He'd be the perfect choice for Kerry. Read this to find out why.
posted by Dilan at 2:30 PM

 
JANET JACKSON, FREE SPEECH, AND CHILDREN:
Bill Maher has a wonderful rant about how concern for "the children" is the worst thing in America. He's not really right, of course (and I don't think he really means everything he says about the subject-- he is, after all, a comedian). After all, there are some areas in which we could use more concern for children. Why, for instance, does Michael Jackson still have unsupervised custody of his children? And why is Cardinal Roger Mahony still Archbishop of Los Angeles, still a person who receives numerous honors, and still a power-broker in the city, after having abetted the rape of numerous young boys by covering up for priests who abused children and continuing to place them in positions where they would have access to potential victims?

But Maher has a point. Even issues that have nothing to do with "the children" have to be spun that way. It's no longer simply bad to run a budget deficit. It's borrowing from our children. And policies have to be geared towards children. Every Democratic candidate proposes to make health care universal for children-- as if it isn't just as important to secure health care coverage for adults.

And where concern for "the children" really threatens to destroy what this country is all about is in the area of free expression. Let's start with two premises that I think are unarguable but which most Americans either have forgotten or deliberately ignore:

1. All children (except perhaps, those who are brought up in very traditional conservative households or communes, with homeschooling, no TV, etc.) inevitably are exposed to a certain amount of "adult" expression, whether it is nudity, sexual innuendo, graphic violence, profanity, or sexual conduct, during their childhoods, and the vast majority of those children turn out to be reasonably productive, law-abiding adult citizens.

2. If adults were forced to exclude from their reading, viewing, and expressive activities anything that might be deemed "inappropriate" for children, in any situation where children might be present, viewing, or hearing, there would be very little space left in society for "adult" expression and such expression would be seriously chilled and threatened.

For those reasons, the US Supreme Court has consistently held that the government cannot, in most areas, censor speech for adults merely because some children might be exposed to it. For instance, the government can't keep porn off the internet, can't shut down phone sex outlets, can't pre-screen and censor movies, can't prevent drive-ins from showing movies with nudity in them (it was argued that passing children on the street would see the nude scenes), etc. (There is one narrow exception in broadcasting, which I will get to near the end of this post.)

Middle America, of course, was outraged that their children might have seen Janet Jackson's nipple two weeks ago. My first reaction is to say "big deal". I don't remember when I saw my first nipple other than my mother's, but I wasn't that old. And nipples aren't that harmful, really. They appear on television in other countries all the time, and children who see them turn out fine.

But more needs to be said, since Americans are now calling for the FCC to censor the networks, congressional hearings are being held, and all the rest. I think it is important to remind people that it is good that we live in a country where Janet can flash her breast on TV.

Why? Because people want to see it. TiVo reported that this was the most replayed footage ever since the device was invented. And it also produced one of the biggest internet search query ever.

So, everyone wants to see this nipple. Why shouldn't they be allowed to see it? Because of the children? But get a grip folks, seeing this nipple WON'T HARM A SINGLE CHILD. Whether or not the culture in general adversely affects kids (and I would remind people that in their day, parents thought the Beatles and Elvis and "satanic" heavy metal music would harm kids too), one nipple on the screen for less than 2 seconds is a blip on a very large radar screen. So, even if one believes that certain expression is harmful to minors and would justify denying people who would like to see it the opportunity to do so, this isn't that expression. (This, by the way, is why the FCC's power to regulate broadcast "indecency" has nothing to do with the Janet Jackson matter. That power was upheld in FCC v. Pacifica in the context of the broadcast of a George Carlin monologue replete with profanity. That broadcast could at least be argued to affect children in a way that a quick flash of a nipple could not. Additionally, the Supreme Court has refused every invitation to extend Pacifica beyond its facts.)

I happen to think that if people want to see something, they should be able to see it. But even if you don't think that the free market should decide what sort of expression is valuable, the further danger is that this will chill more serious expression. NBC has already deleted an 80 year old's naked breast from an episode of ER. I could imagine that if someone proposed a documentary on breast cancer, the networks might turn it down. Network television had already been criticized by a congressman for airing "Schindler's List" uncut, because the film contains nudity. Sorry folks, but the Nazis did force concentration camp prisoners to strip. That's reality.

This is the road we go down when we try to make all expression fit for children. Heck, one jurisdiction even tried to prosecute somebody for shouting expletives when something went wrong with his boat, because there were children present. Maybe it's bad form and bad manners to say "Oh, *%#" when something bad happens, but should someone really be fined or go to jail for reacting as anyone might to a mishap? And do we want people in stressful situations to have to be constantly censoring themselves if it will distract from the important tasks at hand. Personally, I'd rather the person on the boat worry about piloting the boat than following a stupid law relating to profanities.

The truth is, I think this society likes to congratulate itself on how much it cares for children precisely because we actually care disgracefully little about actual children. Children don't have health care coverage (as I said before, this isn't more important than the fact that adults don't have health care coverage, but it does nonetheless demonstrate that we don't give a damn about kids). Children are homeless. Children go to awful schools with weapons and drug dealing and torn up, 15 year old textbooks. While we spend millions of dollars on programs to prevent strangers from turning up at the playground to molest children, tens of thousands of American children are molested by close relatives and we do little about that. And we have done little about the Catholic Church's involvement in sex abuse, too.

We can feel good about ourselves being all outraged about Janet Jackson and CBS harming American children by showing them, ever so briefly, a nipple, precisely because it doesn't cost us anything. (Actually, it does cost us something, in terms of free speech, but the American people are blinded to that.) Doing something about those things I mentioned in the previous paragraph would cost us a lot. Of course, the other difference is that suppressing speech won't improve the life of one American child. Indeed, it will only make the future worse for American children-- by depriving them of the free society that should be their birthright.
posted by Dilan at 2:01 PM

 
DRAFT PAPER ON THE ROLE OF 'DUTY' IN TORT LAW:
For those of you interested in such things, I have co-authored a paper (with Professor Gregory Keating of USC Law School) on the role of "duty" in tort law. The link is here. Your comments are welcome.
posted by Dilan at 1:24 PM