Intriguing (if too short) profile in the Washington Post today:
… For Ta-Nehisi Coates, “here” is bigger than a star turn on the stage of the Sixth and I Synagogue, where hundreds lined up down the block to hear him talk last week about his blockbuster Atlantic cover story making the case for slave reparations. No, here is a place of prominence in the stream of American thought, a perch that positions him as an ascendant public intellectual with a voice that stands out in the white noise of a wired and word-flooded era, an object of praise and a target.
At 38, Coates has already been a trenchant observer of America’s fraught relationship with race, both in his well-read Atlantic blog and in the printed magazine. But his exploration of reparations in this month’s Atlantic — a 16,000-word report that calls for a national “airing of family secrets, a settling with old ghosts” — has supercharged his profile. The piece, titled “The Case for Reparations,” intricately and provocatively traces the history of racism in the United States from slavery to recent examples of housing discrimination…
Coates’s accounting of his personal costs begins with the menace of West Baltimore, a place where young black men — such as himself — were ever at risk. His father, Paul Coates, is a former Black Panther who chose a first name for him inspired by the ancient Egyptian word for Nubia. Its non-intuitive pronunciation—Ta-nuh-ha-see — and its unfamiliar spelling are the source of frequent errors. Coates delights in needling critics who misspell his name….
…. In the late 1970s, his father founded a small publishing house that he still runs, Black Classic Press. It specializes in republishing works of black authors that have gone out of print. “There were books everywhere,” Coates says. “There were books in our basement; there were books out in our garage. There were black books in our living room, black books in our bedroom, black books in the kitchen, black books. It was everywhere around me. . . . I was bathed in it. I couldn’t escape it.”…
***********
What’s on the agenda for the day?
Amir Khalid
Agenda? I have no agenda. I’m here to figure this out, just like you.
Mustang Bobby
Trying to get through life without bumping into the furniture.
BillinGlendaleCA
I’m listening to the great IT sage, Joe Scar. Damn, what a moron.
Schlemizel
Ta-Nahisi is a regular stop, I’d recommend it over Joe as the visit leaves me feeling smarter and as if there were a reason that humanity should be saved. Even his comment section is smart, informative and almost always highly readable.
I am afraid though that his latest piece, this one about reparations, is going to bring a shit storm down on him. There is a billion dollar industry built just to silence people with opinions that offend a certain segment of society and he just kicked their fire-ant hill.
Anya
Trying to figure out Hillary Clinton’s stand on racism or even her understanding of it? After her despicable 08 utterances and actions she should have a better answer than babbling on and on instead of answering a simple question. This interview makes me conclude that Hillary has s has some issues around race. She’s uncomfortable at best.
Baud
Yep. He’ll always be just Coates to me.
socraticsilence
@Anya:
That was, wow that was clumsy at best and blatant pandering to those who claim their opposition to Obama isn’t based on race at worst.
raven
I had my hearing tested yesterday and I’m going to try the VA today but I’m not expecting much.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: TNC. I don’t even have to worry about multiple jackets.
Schlemizel
@Anya:
Yup, the tone deaf and fumbled answers, given that she is under no particular pressure at the moment, are really annoying. I was not a fan in ’08 and nothing she has done in the last month or two when it is obvious she is running again has given me any confidence she has what it takes to win the election. I think she probably would be a decent President – hell we all know she would be 100 times better than whatever goofball bastard the goopers run – but if she runs a campaign that appears designed to turn off the base, annoy her natural constituency and embarrass itself is “all of them Katie” like answers she may well never get the chance. That would be sad for her and a disaster for the nation.
Schlemizel
@OzarkHillbilly:
I almost used that in my earlier comment but decided to double check the spelling & use his name. I had no idea how it was pronounced for several years until he popped up on the radio a couple years ago.
amk
@Anya: Guess one can’t get rid of innate triangulation, despite the past defeat. The use of multiple you know’s is a giveaway.
Matt McIrvin
@Schlemizel: When the piece first came out I was afraid that TNC was just going to be vilified for it, but the reaction has actually been way more positive than I expected. Not everyone agrees with it, of course, but there’s not the level I expected of contempt for him for even bringing up the subject.
I think my expectations were developed during the last time the reparations question got some coverage, when David Horowitz was buying trollish ads in college newspapers about how blacks were better off because of slavery.
Anya
@socraticsilence: @Schlemizel: What most frustrating about this is that she should know by now the reactionaries are voting republican anyway. I think she’s just uncomfortable.
This is what Joan Walsh said about HRC’s anwer:
Even Joan Walsh couldn’t put a spin on it.
Schlemizel
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah and I expected that to be mild compared to this time. Not just because the nutters are more out front now but it appears they are losing in some places so desperation could set in.
Schlemizel
@raven:
Is your hearing loss service related? My son says he is having trouble with one ear that he thinks was caused by extended periods of loud noises while in Afghanistan. He refuses to deal with the VA though.
I hope you get what you need from them.
Matt McIrvin
@Anya: Clinton’s instincts were probably similar to mine and Schlemizel’s reading Coates’ reparations piece: that you can’t even suggest what she wanted to say without making white people go apeshit.
OzarkHillbilly
@amk: It’s what the Clintons do.
Cheryl from Maryland
@raven: Since you are a Vet, I understand the VA, but if there is a Costco near you, you might want to consider it. Testing and providing hearing aids are one of their customer priorities.
Jay C
@Anya: @Matt McIrvin:
My reactions to Hillary Clinton’s interview were somewhat similar: even given that TPM’s reportage had a faint malodor of “gotcha!” about it; it was blatantly obvious that Mrs. Clinton was trying to deflect or skirt the question. Though it’s easy to see why: as public a figure as she is, she must know that she would bring down one sort of shitstorm or another by giving an unambiguous answer either way. I believe the “racial” component to President Obama’s opposition IS a question ( despite all of our probably firm opinions on the matter) that demands a bit of nuance. And nuance, sadly, is one thing that our national media – nor apparently, at the moment, Hillary Clinton – doesn’t do very well.
In a way. I can’t really blame her much,: as Ta-Nehisi Coates makes clear, racial “issues” in this country are, at best, only partially “solved”.
raven
@Schlemizel: I don’t know, we had zero ear protection ever in those days 66-69. Guys that went in 2 years later had protection at least in training. The one’s I looked at were $3600+ and the audiologist said I should go to the VA first. Apparently their aids are caddy’s because they buy so many.
gnomedad
@Schlemizel:
I’m hoping he’ll move the Overton Window at bit. Plus, he can be Hillary’s Sistah Souljah (spelling?).
raven
@Cheryl from Maryland: Thanks
Randy P
RIP Daniel Keyes, author of “Flowers for Algernon” (Hugo for Best Short Story, 1960, Nebula for Best Novel, 1966).
I remember reading Isaac Asimov describing his (Asimov’s) remarks introducing the Hugo award for “Algernon”, looking at the heavens and saying “How did he do it?”. When Keyes came on stage he said “If you find out, let me know so I can do it again”.
Schlemizel
Oh gawd, I just threw up a little in mu mouff.
SIGH, yeah its probably necessary even as depressing as it is. I am coming to the conclusion that a lot of people really shouldn’t vote but thats not very nice of me. I would hope when that moment (Sistah Souljah) comes it would be against some pop culture ‘soft target’ not against an intellectual well grounded one.
danielx
NYT article title this morning:
Former Envoy Pipes Up in Conservative Chorus of ‘Told You So’ on Iraq
That would be one John Bolton, aka “The Mustache of Belligerence” (vs Tom Friedman, The Mustache of Understanding). I must take issue with the title of the article – John Bolton never “piped up” about anything in his life. “Bolton’s Bellicose Bellow Sounds Once Again” would come a lot closer to the mark. Having things go to hell in Iraq is certainly a boon for Bush-era luminaries. They get to conveniently ignore their parts in contributing to George and Dick’s Excellent Adventure while declaiming about how the current debacle is all the fault of That (Black) Man In The White House, who obviously lacks their sure hand at the foreign policy steering wheel.
More to the point, The Liberal Media is giving these fucking idiots yet another chance to explain how right they were and how wrong Obama is – to once more be taken as Very Serious People who have earned to the right to be taken seriously, as opposed to having earned a period in the stocks having garbage thrown at them. So far the only wingnut to express any remorse or admit any error over his or her role in promoting the worst US foreign policy decisions of the last hundred years is Glenn Beck(!!!). Not that this is a surprise, exactly; a complete lack of shame, complete lack of sense of irony, and complete lack of self awareness are all more or less prerequisites for becoming “a regular Fox News contributor”*.
*Generally speaking, the appellation “regular Fox News contributor” attached to anyone’s name tells you everything one of these human shaped piles of excrement is going to say on any given topic, even before they say it.
Alex S.
@Anya:
Her problem is that she wants or needs the role of some of these racists, mainly the white democrats in red states who vote democratic in local elections but republican in state or national elections, in Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, but also in the Dakotas and Montana.
raven
@Cheryl from Maryland: Holy smokes! Just hit a newspaper article explaining how COSTCO does it! It would be worth the 100 mile round trip.
Baud
@Schlemizel:
How awesome would it be if Hillary’s Sistah Souljah ended up being John Cole.
I find the things Mr. Cole suggests we do to kittens’ skulls to be abhorrent and offensive.
Betty Cracker
@raven: Good to know about the quality hearing aids at the VA. We generally use our insurance for any medical care, but the mister is a vet and could access VA benefits. He needs to have his hearing tested. He was in the Air Force band, which undoubtedly caused hearing loss!
WereBear
@Randy P: I remember that story as though I’d just read it.
“Put some flowers on Algernon’s grave for me.”
OzarkHillbilly
@Randy P: “Flowers for Algernon” blew me away when I first read it. RIP DK.
Betty Cracker
@Jay C: HRC seems rusty — this isn’t the first question she’s flubbed on the “book tour.” I think I know what she was trying to say, but she said it poorly.
She bungled the wording of a response to a question on gun control the other day; what she was trying to say was pretty powerful — that the majority of sane people are being held hostage by a handful of loons. But her wording was kind of fucked up.
Botsplainer
The crackup may be starting. Yesterday, on one acquaintance’s immigration post, I served a heaping helping of how coldly I view the Mayberry Machiavellis, their “accomplishments”, their hagiographies, their heroes. This acquaintance is the father of one of my middle daughter’s best childhood friends; he’s a local Clear Channel sports broadcaster, a nice guy with a pleasant disposition, but reflexively votes GOP and gravitates through acculturation to right wing positions.
By the time I’d bored of the exchange, he had retreated to “both sides” equivocation and plaintively begged to not be lumped in with or called “conservative”, but to instead be referred to as “pragmatic”.
It is a very small step, but a form of progress, nonetheless. To have them start to create distance from the label they’ve so proudly bandied for decades is recognition of the toxicity they’ve injected into the body politic. The real trick is going to be in denying them a safe haven label – I want them to wear Conservative forever, like one of Lt Aldo Raine’s swastikas.
Schlemizel
@Betty Cracker:
In retrospect I felt so bad for my high school band teacher. He was probably near 60 & pretty deaf by that time. 40 years of listening to kids massacre music, thats not a nice way to go either.
@Baud: Maybe we should encourage Mr. Cole to try to get out front on this issue!
Raven: The kids now get hearing protection in training for sure, they are required to wear it. I think I remember the kid saying they gave them ear plugs in the field too (I might be wrong about that) but nobody wore them. Its just another of the million little cuts war makes, unaccounted for in the bloodthirsty call for totalar krieg like so many other hidden* costs.
*hidden because many don’t want to see and a few intentionally ignore.
Emma
Can we please stop shoehorning Hilary into every freaking conversation? Can we just agree that some of you hate her so badly you’ll do anything to bring her down and that some of us have decided that in spite of praying every day for someone much more to our liking we will vote for her if she’s the nominee? Maybe we could do a “limitation on campaigning” rule, that is, we’ll limit the battle to the real campaign when it actually happens, or to posts about Hillary? Please?
There are other things in the world we could be talking about. Really. Honestly.
Schlemizel
@Betty Cracker:
How hard would it have been to say EXACTLY that BC? If she would simply stop trying to not offend anyone, particularly those who are offensive, she would be much better off.
Instead of the kick off to her Presidential campaign this book tour could be sucking the air right out of her balloon. Too many unforced errors.
OzarkHillbilly
@danielx:
I prefer to think of it as the Liberal Media is showing the great unwashed masses of America that these idiots are still idiots. Really, I don’t think anyone outside of the 27% is buying what they’re selling.
Schlemizel
@Emma:
No, I will not agree.
I actually was ready for Hillary. Of the current crowd I thought she would make the best actual President but if she runs this badly we will never find out. The rap on her is that she is inauthentic and she seems to be doing her best to prove her critics right.
If you think we are hard on her imagine what American Crossroads et al will do to her. We are hard because we need to be. Giving her a pass on this shit could lead to disaster and I really don’t feel the nation, the world or humanity has that much leeway.
Feel free to talk about whatever interests you, now it seems like the only thing that interests you is whining about our not giving HRC a pass on some pretty serious stumbles.
EDIT: also too, please stop pretending she is not running – everything she is doing is geared toward the nomination fight. That is obvious pretending it is not will not change that.
Cervantes
@Anya:
And, like too many other politicians, highly risk-averse.
Obama’s courageous and thoughtful response to the same issue — particularly the thing about his pastor — was the exception in American politics, not the norm.
Cervantes
@Matt McIrvin: OK, but have you seen anyone else take the opportunity to follow up or discuss the issue at length? (I don’t mean in agreement, necessarily.)
xenos
@Alex S.:
What’s more, this approach turns the disadvantage of the post -2010 gerrymandering on its head. A bit of racialist coding could help a bit, and when the GOP loses the popular vote in NC and still gets 9 out 13 seats in congress, you know that the electoral advantage in each district has been drawn quite thinly.
What if a subtly racist Hillary campaign flips all these districts? It is a revolting thought, but it is also tempting. Hillary can reach out and get a lot of white female middle-American “hard working American voters”. She knows how to get them, too. What do the rest of us on her left flank do about it? We remember FDR fondly but would be pretty offended by his racial positions today. But damn, I would love to see the Democratic party have a fraction of the power he had.
Betty Cracker
@Schlemizel: It seems simple enough to me from the comfort of my kitchen table, but I can’t image what it would be like to be grilled for hours on end by people who spend days preparing questions to throw me off my game. I’m not making excuses for HRC — she needs to get her shit together. I’m just saying it’s really not an easy thing, handling the media onslaught. Everyone stumbles here and there.
currants
@Schlemizel:
I’ve been worrying about that too. Went to see him and Tom L at MIT sometime recently (last year? year before?)–I’m really glad I did. He was much taller than I expected, and his speaking style (from that brief experience) is very similar to his writing style, by which I mean recursive (in an expanding and elaborating way) and thoughtful. In person, of course, one can also notice that he is soft-spoken and seems very gentle. And maybe that is why I worry. (Also because he exists for me not just on paper anymore, of course.)
currants
@OzarkHillbilly: *grin* me too.
aimai
@Betty Cracker: I just read that exchange, via Althouse and the actual transcript, and I don’t have any problem with it. She used words colloquially (such as “terrorize”) and she spoke conversationally about the issue–so what? She is clearly pro-gun control and Althouse’s hysterical reaction and attempt to parse the statement down into its component Hitlerian parts is just an example of what the right wing is going to do to each and every politician, all the time, who tries to do anything about the sea of guns flooding this country. I just don’t get where we think we are going to get by helping the right wing tear down a major political figure with a decent chance of being President.
The amount of bitching and moaning about HRC and her imperfections just boggles my mind–attacking HRC from the supposed left, finding her statements insufficiently appeasing to the left will not produce a run by Elizabeth Warren or some new Obama. It just won’t. It just feeds into the right wing story that HRC is both too left and too right, both too liberal and too racist like all liberals.
She wants to be elected, she wants to get into actual power to do things that she thinks Democrats need to do to run this goddamned country. She is guilty of no more or less triangulating and pandering than Obama was–than any presidential candidate is going to be. The special hatred for HRC and the special demands that she kneecap her own candidacy to pander to an eternally unsatisfied Democratic base just blow my mind. I didn’t care–in fact I preferred it–if Obama lied about thinking he was going to be transformative as a President. I would actually have preferred it if he’d been deliberately lying when he talked all that bullshit about transcending race or being conciliatory or reaching across the aisle. Of course he had to say stuff like that to get over on the racist white voters of this country. I’m only shocked that he seems to have believed it so long and behaved as if it were a real possibility.
People need to say whatever they need to say to get elected. Look hard at the person and their previous political stances and acts when they had power and decide on that basis whether to support them but for fuck’s sake can we stop trying to destroy one of our own political actors in the search for the perfect purity poney?
Schlemizel
@currants:
I got the impression that he is a gentle soul from his writing but given his background I think he is tough as nails. He would be the very quiet guy ignoring a bullys taunt until they actually started something & then he would finish it.
But I don’t think he could stand against the mob of howler monkeys they would send against him.
raven
@Schlemizel: I wouldn’t wear no earplugs in the bush!
Schlemizel
@aimai:
I am not attacking her from the left. I do not read much of what is here as attacks from the left. They are critiques on style: how is this going to play with the ‘swing voters’.
As I said earlier, the rap on her is that she is inauthentic, a conniver, a slippery pol. Has any of the mealy-mouthed, stuttering attempts to not be offensive done anything but reinforce that perception? I’d have fewer complaints if she took a forceful, concise position I opposed than I do about her recent performances. There is not a question she has fumbled that could not have be guessed, could not have been prepared for. She has a staff, what are they doing if not preping her for these things?
Cervantes
And Vietnam vet.
@Schlemizel: He was always the shy one, not nearly as gregarious as his siblings.
Schlemizel
@raven:
I have no experience but I couldn’t imagine it. But then I see film of guys in combat not wearing helmets and I think I probably have no clue what it is like. Stuff like hearing loss really should be mentioned in the build up to war.
martha
@raven: I can’t speak for their audiology services, but mr m and I used their optometrist this last time around and were very happy with his services and our glasses/contacts. They filed all of our insurance too. If you go and aren’t a member, you can join right there. Bring a cooler since it’s far away! I’m guessing you might do some shopping to maximize your time :) Even though there are only two of us, I still buy some things in quantity and divide and freeze…
Also, they only take AMEX, debit cards, cash and checks. Be prepared!
Cervantes
@aimai: Just curious: is there a difference between “insufficiently appeasing to the left” and “insufficiently left”?
Baud
@Schlemizel:
This book tour is her spring training, not her world series. I’d rather her work out the kinks now than during election season.
Betty Cracker
@aimai: I agree with what you’re saying in general, and yes, Althouse is a hysterical ass, but HRC gave her an opening with a clumsily worded statement.
WE know what she meant — that we can’t allow a handful of loons to drive POLICY, and only a paranoid jackass like Althouse would believe she meant mind control. But HRC walked into that one.
She’s just rusty, I think. She’ll get better as she gets back into the swing of campaigning.
dmsilev
@WereBear:
Sigh.
RIP.
currants
@Schlemizel: Agreed, and I’ve read some of his work that indicates he’s a strong soul. But standing against the howler monkeys, as you say, is an entirely different order of magnitude, especially if they target your family, as these will.
FlipYrWhig
@Schlemizel: Seems gratuitous to be attacking her on style grounds at a moment when no one is paying any attention to any of this anyway. Like Emma and aimai were saying, I’d kinda like us all to calm the fuck down. What it reminds me of is all the Sturm und Drang about Elizabeth Warren’s weak campaign that she was totally blowing and getting pigeonholed by her opponents and woe is us and why can’t anyone here play this game? Remember that? Probably not. I do.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
Is what follows the statement in question?
Althouse’s reaction is disingenuous and, like the rest of her oeuvre, beneath even contempt.
FlipYrWhig
@Cervantes:
A huge one. No major politician is “sufficiently” left for the leftmost edge of the citizenry, pretty much by definition, because the left doesn’t have the numbers to anoint their own candidates. The Democratic Party is center-left on a good day. So the way to keep the left marginally satisfied rather than restive is to be inclusive and sympathetic — to keep them in the tent — IOW, to “appease” them.
Eric U.
I just hope Clinton is learning from these crummy performances. Similar bad performances killed Ted Kennedy’s chances to be prez
Chyron HR
@aimai:
If you insist.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker:
I hope so. I didn’t find her answers to be all that objectionable, just kind of awkward and as @Schlemizel: said, a little too trying to have it both ways.
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes: Of course Althouse is disingenuous and contemptible. But you see the problem with HRC’s statement, right? Would you not agree that wording is problematic?
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: Provocative, yes. Problematic, no, because it’s true. It might antagonize some people, but fuck them, they were already pre-antagonized.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker: I agree with you that “HRC gave her an opening with a clumsily worded statement” (albeit not a statement in a speech or written article). I also agree with you that “it’s really not an easy thing, handling the media onslaught.”
But we can’t have it both ways: if we want our candidates to be not pathologically risk-averse, then we have to defend them, sometimes, when, in good faith, they stumble here and there.
By the way, I do not agree with you that Althouse is contemptible; she’s not worth the energy. Why are you people even reading her twaddle? (And now you’ve got me doing it.)
schrodinger's cat
Forget Hillary and her sideshow, what I find most disconcerting is that the Dark Lord is back and he along with his minions is beating the war drums again. He is also making contemptible insinuations against the President. These amoral lying warmongers have some nerve.
FlipYrWhig
@schrodinger’s cat: Even the flamingest of conservatives don’t want an actual war. They just want to be able to say that the president is a pu55y.
Cervantes
@FlipYrWhig:
There are people who desire war, death, and destruction. Whether one calls them conservatives or not is simply a matter of taxonomy.
(For example, look at Sheldon Adelson, who realio, trulio wants us to launch a nuclear attack on Iran.)
schrodinger's cat
@FlipYrWhig: I saw McCain on the Snooze Hour yesterday, he wants boots on the ground. He sounded deranged.
catclub
@Baud: I still think it should be pronounced Tennessee.
Kind of like naming a black kid ‘Tex’
WereBear
I used to see a similar trend in HR — they become obsessed with finding the “perfect” candidate when people are somewhat malleable… I’d rather hire on character and train them than try to find that elusive combo.
FlipYrWhig
@schrodinger’s cat: Even there, though, do you think there’s any way he’d be actually satisfied if there were said boots on said ground? That’s not how they reacted to Libya. They don’t want soldiers there, they just want shows of force and to fault Obama for failing to use Mystic Testicle Power.
shelley
Speaking of the Washington Post:
“St. Louis Post-Dispatch Dumps George Will, Apologizes for his Offensive Column”
catclub
@schrodinger’s cat: I think Carney’s comment ‘Which President does he mean?”
and Reid’s “if you are on the opposite side of an issue from Cheney, you are in good company”, both express the actual feelings of the US population. When Bush popularity was at 23% Cheney was at 11%. There just happens to be an 0.01% that love him.
schrodinger's cat
@catclub: Their popularity among the Beltway media is much higher than that even now.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
Re Costco, per Marta: “Also, they only take AMEX, debit cards, cash and checks. Be prepared!” Not exactly so. They’ll also take any DEBIT card, Visa, MS, or whatever.
schrodinger's cat
@FlipYrWhig: McCain is just a sore loser. He can’t get over the fact that he was beaten by “that one”.
J R in WV
There are bright women serving in the Senate who would be great Presidential candidates, educated, well spoken, attractive Democrats.
There are women working in education, effective leaders with great credentials, who would be great Presidential candidates – think Donna Brazille. How well-spoken is she?
So we aren’t limited to Mrs Clinton. I would enjoy seeing right-wing heads explode as she took the oath after winning the election, but I can also live without that gleeful moment, just holding it my my imagination.
Yukoner
For all you bird people, beware the flaming raven!
gnomedad
@Schlemizel:
To be clear (and a bit less snarky), I was thinking of something along the lines of “I’m opposed to reparations, but …”
Comrade Scrutinizer
@OzarkHillbilly: The groups “HRC” and “Effective campaigner/politician” don’t intersect. After the obligatory “I’ll vote for her in the general if she wins the primary”, I don’t think Clinton has a vision for America; I think she is more interested in the power and the prestige of being the President. HRC has never been an effective campaigner, and her fumbles in softball interviews this year as she “decides whether to run” show that she hasn’t overcome her vacillation and the thin skin (extraordinarily thin, for a politician) that she put on display in 2008. It’s not about “Hilary hate” with me, I just don’t think she’s a particularly good standard bearer for liberal policies—she’ll twist and turn and triangulate the same way Bill did. I hope that there is a better choice coming out of the primary system, but I fear that the choices on the Dem side are as thin as the choices on the GOTP side.
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: I don’t think it is true; HRC didn’t mean we can’t let people “hold a viewpoint,” which is what she said. What she meant is their fringe viewpoint shouldn’t drive policy. It takes a fool like Althouse to make the leap from that statement to “OMG Hitlery mind-control,” but HRC gave her an opening with a poorly worded response.
Unfortunately, wingnut memes make the leap into mainstream discourse all the time, and therefore, it pays for sane candidates to word statements on hot button issues carefully. That doesn’t mean she’d have to be mealy-mouthed or lawyerly about it, just more precise.
mai naem
It would be fascinating to have an hourlong conversation with Geroge W. Bush. Maybe after he’s sloshed enough to where all filters are off and he tells you how things really are. To find out his relationship with his parents, his brother, Laura and the kids after his disastrous presidency. His relationship with Dick Cheney. His relationship with the other neocons and Ari Fleischer and Dan Senor. What he thought of his own presidency? I mean honestly, not just the stuff they pump out for public consumption.
Punchy
3 more futbol games to comment on….
gnomedad
Years ago, this photo of Hillary got wedged in my mind and I thought of her as a hippie trying to pull Bill to the left. Guess not.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: Eh, the meaning was clear enough. “Terrorizes” is the provocative point. I can’t think “cannot let… hold a viewpoint” is going to stick. I hadn’t even noticed it until now, and it doesn’t square with any pre-existing script about Hillary Clinton and thought-policing.
Cervantes
@Comrade Scrutinizer: I agree that she’s no great shakes as a campaigner and, in fact, I think this statement of yours:
is largely a measure of how imperfectly her campaigns have been conceived and managed.
She does have a vision, however poorly communicated on the campaign trail — but there again, it’s not an all-or-nothing now-or-never proposition with her; she has seen that compromise and “triangulation” are often necessary, depending on who else the voters send to Washington.
Which brings us to the 2014 mid-terms, which is where our practical focus should be now — not so much on Mrs. Clinton or 2016, I would say.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@mai naem: That would be interesting. In some ways post-Presidency Bush reminds me of post-Presidency LBJ: almost a complete retreat from the world into their own heads. Pictures of Hippie Lyndon were always disturbing to me, especially after all he accomplished with the Civil Rights Act and the Great Society—all pretty much overlooked because he continued JFK’s escalation in Viet Nam. I am much less disturbed (read “gleeful”) at the thought of Bush painting in his bathtub, abandoned by everyone except as a source of schadenfreude, but I think there is a parallel.
raven
I must say, now is the time if you are going to the VA. They scheduled lab work for tomorrow and a specialist on Monday! Then I went next door to the state office and the filed a compensation claim! A few years ago they just lost my paperwork!
Comrade Scrutinizer
@gnomedad: The blouse is the giveaway. That picture looks like someone playing at hippie.
raven
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Fuck LBJ.
Emma
@Cervantes: The right wingers got what they wanted, really. The left is fighting about Hillary and doing damnall about the midterms.
Cervantes
@mai naem:
Do you think he’s ever had an hour-long conversation with anyone?
Comrade Scrutinizer
@raven: See what I mean :) ?
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Cervantes: Don’t think he can if he’s not sitting on Cheney’s knee with Cheney’s hand up his ass to move his lips.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: He’s dead.
Tone in DC
I remember the optimism of late 2008. I remember the incessant “hope and change”. It most certainly hasn’t fallen through the memory hole.
I think he did wait too long to stop trying to reach across the aisle. Not because he’s so naive or a triangulating liar regarding bipartisanship (a truly overused word). He made every attempt to work with these people because he thought it would show 73% of the country that he was willing to do so. To a fault, I think.
I think the reaching across the aisle should have stopped in January of last year. I think he knew well before 2013 there was no compromising or negotiating with this Congress and the 27% who insist on cutting off everyone’s noses to spite their own deluded faces.
I think he tried too hard because he had a very faint hope that one quarter of the population was not completely, irredeemably, unutterably batshit.
Thing is, that segment of the country is. To me, BHO’s last 18 months of trying to make this situation with Congress in any way viable say more about the crazies than it does about Obama.
/end rant
raven
@Yukoner: Tay for flaiming raven’s!
Corner Stone
@gnomedad:
What has been covered up all this time is that immediately after the picture was taken, her right hand shot forward like a striking snake. She deftly plucked out both eyes of the picture taker and serenely stated, “Now you can’t steal my essence, any longer…man.”
The Thin Black Duke
When all is said and done, I don’t have a problem with the idea of Hillary Clinton as President. What I’m afraid of is the idea of Bill Clinton using his wife as a sock puppet to leverage his third term in the Oval Office.
Corner Stone
@Gin & Tonic:
Tacit consent!
Cervantes
@Corner Stone: You’re incorrigible!
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Thing is, while I think I know what she means, I’d like to be better informed. Maybe President Obama has spoiled me because of his speaking. Even when he is pulling his punches or the issue is one I disagree with, he speaks in a manner that tells me he has thought the issue through and come to a conclusion. I don’t get that with Hillary. She’s old enough and been around long enough now, she should have figured out that speaking clearly about an issue is important. I’ve given live interviews and spoken before hundreds of people and it is a different environment and requires a different approach to thinking and speaking about issues to be clear and reasonable, especially if the issue is one some disagree with. Some can find this and some can not. Maybe it’s just her public speaking/interviewing, maybe it’s really her. I get this is really her. I’d like to know rather than just assume.
NotMax
@gnomedad
Looks to be from her time as a booster in the “Gals for Goldwater” (or whatever its name was) group.
No joke, she was out there arduously campaigning for the Goldwater/Miller ticket in ’64.
Cervantes
@NotMax:
“Arduously”? She was seventeen, still in high school, in a conservative family where anti-communism was the key.
In college the civil rights movement turned her into a (Gene) McCarthy liberal.
Eric U.
@Ruckus: Obama has been refreshing in that way. You know he’s holding back, but he doesn’t hold back by talking around a subject like the Clintons have the tendency to do. They hint at what they mean in a way that is almost guaranteed to produce gaffes. Granted, mostly they are “Kinsley gaffes,” but it’s still the sort of thing I hate to hear. I have never been embarrassed to be a Democrat by Obama, I can hardly say the same thing about the Clintons.
I have to say I wish he would stop holding back on his approach to the right wing terrorists out west, but my preferred approach would likely drive them into open rebellion, which would be bad.
Corner Stone
@Emma:
Nope. No no no no no!
We’re going to play a little game I like to call The Damsters. That’s where, no matter what statement HRC does or does not make, she’s damned. Says she’d let conditions on the ground guide her actions on military action? She’s a damned warmonger rightie hawk!
Says she agrees with the president’s decisions on force? She’s a damned panderer! Says something tepid about one of the hottest topics in America since the founding of our nation? She’s a damned inauthentic parser!
We’re going to make damned sure that no position is tenable for her to hold. “Why, oh why won’t she just BE HERSELF?”, we’ll demand time again. When the fact is we just simply hate her, and if she dared be herself for one second we’d all see the inner ugly that all that inauthentic lying has curdled up into her inner inside soooouuullll!!
She’s Dick Cheney in a pantsuit!
Belafon
@Corner Stone: I just can’t decide if this is her fault or Obama’s fault, but I’m gonna have to go with Obama, since we blame everything on him.
Paul in KY
@Alex S.: She won’t get their votes in the national election. I guess she’s counting on them in a primary election.
Paul in KY
@Schlemizel: I attend a lot of concerts & I get up close. earplugs are an absolute must. You should note that all the performers wear them.
gnomedad
@NotMax:
I know about her “Goldwater Girl” past, though I’m not sure that this photo is contemporaneous with that. But those pants … I think another view shows her in sandals as well. Just struck me as stereotype hippie chick.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Mrs. Clinton should have her own team of people who come up with jerky questions & then figure out the best way to answer them & then prepare & rehearse. If she’s not doing that or doesn’t have what I said above, she probably won’t win.
FlipYrWhig
@Paul in KY: You gravely underestimate the number of people there are who lean Democratic in local elections but resist national Democrats whom they find too liberal, too “PC” and so forth. Think of West Virginia, Montana, Arkansas. If those people, some of whom are kinda racist, vote for Hillary Clinton instead of a Republican, Team D wins in a blowout, probably nearing a 60-40 split.
Belafon
@Paul in KY: She’ll get back some of the Democratic racists who couldn’t vote for a black man (and there were some). The question becomes how many would she lose for being a woman.
Corner Stone
@Belafon: I blame it on Bill, actually. If she hadn’t just rode her way up on his coattails, and had actually earned her way in the world, then maybe she’d be prepared for all these book interviews Q&A’s she’s failing.
Paul in KY
@aimai: Good points, as usual. Pres. Obama really did seem to believe that stuff.
Mrs. Clinton needs to be on her ‘A’ game though. All the time. She’s running now (even if she hasn’t announced) and needs to watch her comments (like the ‘broke’ one). I will HAPPILY vote for her in November 16, but I need her to be at her best to get in there for all of us.
FlipYrWhig
@Paul in KY: If the difference between a good answer and a disappointing answer is that in one version she says “We cannot let people who hold a minority viewpoint terrorize the majority of people” and in the other she says “We cannot let a minority of people hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people,” no amount of preparation is going to guarantee that it comes out like the first and not like the second. It’s an overblown concern.
Paul in KY
@Schlemizel: We know you are attacking her from the right ;-)
Corner Stone
@Paul in KY: On the whole, her answers have been blandly acceptable. She’s not exactly knocking them out of the park but I mean, how many questions in a row can you answer about Benghazi when you’re selling a book?
Some here have a rather tin ear, and start out listening for the worst.
“Oh man! I can’t believe she just said that sometimes she likes mayo in her potato salad but she doesn’t mind the mustard kind once in a while! She’s such a phony faker!”
Paul in KY
@Baud: Problem is, her flubs now can be made into campaign commercials & fixed up so that Joe & Jane Dweebo think she said them yesterday.
In this arena, your Spring Training stats can carry over into the regular season.
FlipYrWhig
@Belafon: Not many, because her rep is that she’s a tough woman, not a sensitive and nurturing one, so she doesn’t trip many people’s wires about being too feminine (read: emotional and weak) to do the job. IMHO the sexist part is going to be re-coded as “I’m afraid she’s going to be dominated by Bill.”
Paul in KY
@Eric U.: Thoughts are that Sen. Kennedy worked on killing his own chances for the presidency (via Chappaquidick & those bungles you mentioned).
Edit: Some of that may have occurred subconsciously.
FlipYrWhig
@Paul in KY: What campaign commercial is this going to be fodder for? “Hillary Clinton says gun owners are terrorists?” Nothing that’s been tagged as a gaffe is even remotely in the same ballpark as “bitter”/”cling” or even “spread the wealth around,” both of which Obama weathered with relative ease.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig:
Meet:
What I’m afraid of “is the idea of Bill Clinton using his wife as a sock puppet to leverage his third term in the Oval Office.”
Paul in KY
@Cervantes: Ann Althouse is a POS, Republican toady. HRC, though, has to know she is completely against her & thus should be very careful in any response.
Paul in KY
@J R in WV: Donna Brazile botched (along with VP Gore, it must be said) VP Gore’s presidential campaign. She is not Presidential material, IMO.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: I noticed.
Cervantes
@Paul in KY: As far as I know, there was no live interaction between Clinton and Althouse in this instance. The latter simply took something the former had said on CNN and ran with it.
Cervantes
@Paul in KY: Nor has she ever run for elective office herself, as far as I know.
Paul in KY
@Cervantes: Probably Rove or with his old man when he was being told what a fuckup he was.
Cervantes
@Paul in KY: Yes, perhaps, although I’m not sure I’d characterize either of those instances as a conversation.
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: I think I was saying that. Those people are registered ‘Democratic’ & thus will have to vote (or not) in the Democratic Presidential primary in their state. She would like their votes. She could get them, but in the general election, they will go with the POS Republican.
That’s what I was trying to get across.
Paul in KY
@Belafon: Good point on the women thing. She will lose a few votes for that, I would think.
Edit: Although, hopefully she will get back some votes also due to her gender.
Paul in KY
@Corner Stone: She’s a freaking lawyer! A damned good one too. She should be better at fielding these gotcha questions, IMO.
Morzer
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/john-huppenthal-arizona-republican-official-anonymous-blog-comments
I am slightly disappointed that “Thucky” hasn’t apparently considered Balloon-Juice worthy of his attention. Maybe it’s time for John to beef up the Arizona-based front-pagers?
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: I’m thinking more about her ‘we were broke’ comments & how tone deaf that was.
Pro tip: When running for office & being in those circumstances you must never, ever say anything that sounds like whining or bragging. You let other people say that stuff. You must always sound humble & positive.
Belafon
@Paul in KY:
What we’re trying to say is that most of these votes went to Republicans only because a black man was running as a Democrat. The fact that she’s white will bring a lot of these back even during the general election.
D58826
OT but Krugman nails it even when it isn’t economics
And now there are reports that we ar planning on replacing Malaki. That worked so well in Vietnam when we got tired of Diem. (sigh)
Paul in KY
@Corner Stone: You have your best answer & then you keep on repeating it. I was impressed (I must say) by GWB’s message discipline. We were never able to get him to veer off his script (the fucker).
Matt McIrvin
@Cervantes: Well, Coates has covered it repeatedly in the past: his “Fear of a Black President” essay is another classic.
Another thought I had, though, is that Clinton probably remembers she and Bill came under fire for saying racially charged stuff during the ’08 primary, and she may not want to go there for that reason.
schrodinger's cat
@Belafon: But will there be misogynists who will defect to the R column?
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: You’ll probably see in about year :-)
Maybe not this one per se, but I’m just not getting a good feeling right now about her ability to be short & concise.
Paul in KY
@Cervantes: My bad on that. Should have read more of the article.
Corner Stone
@Paul in KY:
But it just doesn’t matter what she says. It’s not the right answer. Is it the wrong answer? No, but it’s obvious she’s pandering and could have said it better!
Right here, on the very liberal blog Balloon Juice, she was blasted and castigated for saying The Bible was her favorite book. No way! Nuh uh! Can’t be, that lying liar who panderingly lies!
Well, guess who else has The Bible as one of their listed favorite books? No, not Hitler. Not Stalin either, who I fully denounce by the way.
One President Barack Obama “Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison), Moby Dick,
Shakespeare’s Tragedies, Parting the Waters, Gilead (Robinson), Self-Reliance (Emerson), The Bible, Lincoln’s Collected Writings”
Man, what a lying fucking panderer we have for a president! HRC is perfect to continue on for that liar’s third term!
Cervantes
@Paul in KY:
Was it discipline and force of will or, rather, the sure and fearful knowledge that if he had tried to extemporize, disaster would have followed (for him) as surely as night follows day?
I suppose it could have been both.
Rob in CT
1) 2014 mid-terms should be the focus for Democrats. The GOP doesn’t make the mistake of ignoring mid-terms.
2) Hillary does not seem to be a great campaigner. I hope this doesn’t hurt in 2016. Hillary has faults (her foreign policy views in particular worry me), but we need the Dems to win. And win big.
FlipYrWhig
@Paul in KY: I know what you were trying to get across, but I think you’re wrong, because, for better or worse, there are a fairly large number of (white) people who happily vote for Democrats as long as those Democrats aren’t (1) “too” liberal, (1a) too identified with black interests (e.g., n-words or n-word-lovers). The people voting for Manchin, Tomblin, Beebe, Schweitzer, Tester, Jay Nixon, etc., might prefer Romney over Obama but might well prefer Clinton over Cruz or Paul.
Paul in KY
@Morzer: Thanks for the link. What a creepo. Just like a Republican, the Great Depression happened under Republican presidents & he tries to pin it on FDR.
I tell you, they look at 1984 as a ‘how to’ manual.
Paul in KY
@Belafon: Nope. Not gonna happen. They will find a way to not vote for her either. I live with em.
Corner Stone
@gnomedad:
Did people really wear shit like that back then? I mean, looks like she ripped off a canvas circus tent and slapped a belt on it.
She should be disqualified from high office just for those crimes against fashion.
Frankensteinbeck
TNC’s article moved me. I had no interest in giving money to people alive now for the oppression of their ancestors. I have every interest in giving people alive now whatever will help to overcome the systematic racism that holds them down right now, and has held them down since before they were born. He completely won me over. Of course, it helps that I’d have to be blind to deny how virulent racism is in this country thanks to the freakout over our first black president.
At a guess, I don’t think he’s in any danger. I generally assume the media are stuck in the 80s, so when you say the word ‘reparations’ the light turns off in their head and you are dismissed forever as Nonserious rather than a target for vengeance. Something similar happens with the rabid right, because hearing the word ‘reparations’, in their minds, turns TNC from a threat into an example they can point at about how blacks want a free ride.
@FlipYrWhig:
I think most conservatives, and I include national journalists in that group, want manly belligerence and to bring back the ‘Democrats are weak on defense’ meme. However, the neocons want war. Period. Cheney wants us to reinvade Iraq, and to invade Iran, and to invade and conquer everyone we can so that the world will bow down and worship America for its awesomeness. He’s pissed at America for not understanding that he is and has always been right about this (and everything).
@mai naem:
Not useful, but… yeah, very interesting. Does he know he screwed up? Did he gain wisdom, or is he as idiotic and self-absorbed as he was then?
@Tone in DC:
I think Obama’s keeping a hand publicly held out was critical to the public now believing that the Republican Party has jumped the shark. In private he made better deals than I thought were possible against enemies ready to burn down the country.
Paul in KY
@Corner Stone: The Repubs are not going to run attack ads about how she says the Bible is her favorite book. All I care about is her saying stuff that they can twist around. I don’t particularly care what some BJers say about the answer she gave that they didn’t like (I was at Bonnaroo last week & missed that one).
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
Hey, look, another thread that got derailed into a discussion of HRC. How quaint.
FlipYrWhig
@Paul in KY: Someone’s out there voting for both Romney and Beshear. A lot of someones.
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: When’s the last time Montana, Kentucky, Tennessee, WV, etc. voted Democratic in a Presidential election?
Cervantes
@Frankensteinbeck:
I agree, in general, but let’s see in a few months exactly how much the public distrusts the Republican Party and its candidates for House and Senate.
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: They voted for Romney though. In 2000 & 2004 they voted for GW Bush over whitey-white, male Democrats. All Mrs. Clinton needs to do is take the states Pres. Obama took in his 1st run & we’ll all be fine.
MomSense
@Frankensteinbeck:
This. Nancy Letourneau of Immasmartypants did some excellent short essays on “Conciliation as Ruthless Strategy”. Anyone with a background in community organizing will also recognize this strategy. Very effective.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Paul in KY: West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee all were in the D column in 1996.
Gin & Tonic
@Paul in KY: All four of those states went for Bubba in 92. Only MT flipped in 96.
FlipYrWhig
@Frankensteinbeck: I see it differently. I think the “manly belligerence” crowd, d/b/a the Republican Party, thinks that toughness, used correctly, makes shooting war unnecessary. War in Iraq was necessary, they think, because the world needed to see that the toughness wasn’t all talk. But once it’s been shown to be real, it’s also a permanently successful bluff. “You want a piece of this, bitch? Didn’t think so.” So their principal criticism of Obama is that they think he’s incapable of properly intimidating the world with personality and style, which, done right, would make the weaponry superfluous. That’s what they think Ronald Reagan did.
Corner Stone
@Paul in KY: The R’s are going to run attack ads on every little thing no one ever thought of. But through it all, they are going to continue hammering home the overall message that, “she’s divisive, she’s untrustworthy” and some here are right on board with them.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Thank you for answering & I would love them to be back in, but 20 years is an eternity in politics. All those states (when voting in National elections) have got more Repub, IMO.
Now, how much of that was due to the blah running (and winning!), I guess we will find out in 2016.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): I had a question about it.
Paul in KY
@Gin & Tonic: Thank you for answering.
Frankensteinbeck
@FlipYrWhig:
I generally agree with that. They think cowboys keep you safe. Actually invading someone occasionally just to prove you’re that tough is great, but mostly it’s the codpiece and speeches about the Evil Empire.
My proviso is that the neocons are a step beyond this. They follow a fantasy land dogma along the lines of ‘We will be greeted as liberators.’ with an end goal of global hegemony. Cheney is the poster child for this thinking.
Corner Stone
@Paul in KY: It was in this thread:
“That is just stupid, it buys her no good will with the mouth breathing morons and adds to her litany of phoney-baloney bullshit that actually makes a good avenue for loonies attacking her.”
FlipYrWhig
@Paul in KY: IMHO both Gore and Kerry lost by getting smeared as weak and liberal, which isn’t really Clinton’s problem. At any rate, I don’t want to just be “fine,” I want the Republicans decimated and crying for mercy.
ThresherK
@Corner Stone: I’m getting flashbacks to the fake NBC game show “Homonyms” (on 30 Rock): No matter what Hillary answers, “Sorry, it’s the other one.”
Morzer
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
Buckle up, pardner. It’s going to be a long, long next two years.
Corner Stone
This is what kind of unironic irony HRC gets for saying The Bible was her favorite book:
“I seriously doubt it is the favorite book of any person who should be sitting in the Oval Office but worse I seriously doubt it is HRCs favorite either.”
Somebody get the impeachment fires blazing. We’ve got a theocrat to run outta town!
It just doesn’t matter what she says.
burnspbesq
Props to Mark Tushnet for speaking plainly about Lindsey Graham, et al.
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2014/06/conservatives-abu-khattala-and.html
Paul in KY
@Corner Stone: See your point. I don’t think that (divisive/untrustworthy). I just think she’s (at the present time) somewhat inarticulate & a bit tone deaf on how certain comments about their personal situation are going to be received by the courtier press class (who then disseminate their opinions/comments to the greater public).
As I said before: No whining, no bragging. Let your allies make those observations. Never make them yourself (one of the things that derailed VP Gore. He should have had his allies talking about how instrumental he was in helping to fund the World Wide Web, NOT him saying it).
Morzer
@Paul in KY:
Montana is something of an outlier – it went for McCain over Obama by 2.5% in 2008, but then went for Romney over Obama by nearly 13%.
gene108
@danielx:
The dilemma, I think, the media has is who are you going to go to, in order to critique what this Administration is doing?
You could get people from President or Secretary of State Clinton’s Administration on, but if you want a Republican, you have to wade into the scum of the neo-cons from Bush & Co.’s Mal-Administration, because that is all the Republicans have on their foreign policy side.
Unfortunately the media cannot bring itself to accept the Republicans – even the 2016 candidate, like Romney in 2012 – will be relying on these jokers for foreign policy advice and will have them back in power, if elected.
burnspbesq
@Anya:
Which makes her no difference than vast numbers of Americans, so what’s your point?
Paul in KY
@Frankensteinbeck: The Neocons are all about us defeating Israel’s enemies for her. That’s it, that’s all they care about.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Cervantes: I saw a flurry of links to the reparations piece on avariety of blogs, but I have not really seen the “serious” press take up the discussion.
Mike E
@Paul in KY: True DAT. I think it’s ADHD, or reliance on DVR, this urge to hit the FF button on politics now. I get how people cringe at the thought of another dance with the traditional consumers of tire rims and anthrax, but it really isn’t the time to gird up and hone steel just yet.
How does that southern expression go? “Don’t be in such a hurry for your ass-whuppin’, it’s a-comin’ in due time…”
FlipYrWhig
@Frankensteinbeck: You’re probably right, but there aren’t that many people ready to buy what the true-believer Pax Americana neocons are selling, not after the last war(s). The rest of the criticism about “weakness” is in essence that they say no one thinks Obama is actually going to drop the hammer — IOW, that everyone can tell he’s bluffing, and then he throws in his cards, whereas when Bush or Reagan were in charge, you never know, they might be bluffing or they might be serious. It’s stupid, but I think all the “weakness” talk and how Obama “invites” this and that are much more about how he plays the part of President than about what he actually chooses to do.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Too soon, maybe.
I’ll be keeping an eye open.
Gin & Tonic
@Morzer: At 3 EV’s it doesn’t matter much.
Paul in KY
@Corner Stone: That’s just Schlemiziel, a known ‘Hillary Hater’ ™. I don’t think he/she speaks for the blog. No more than you or I do.
Morzer
@burnspbesq:
It seemed to me that HRC was trying to say that not all opposition to Obama/Democrats is based on racism – there’s also misogyny and homophobia etc to take into account. How that amounts to stumbling on race is a bit of a mystery. I thought the piece in question was a pretty unimpressive bit of work by TPM.
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: See your point.
Morzer
@Gin & Tonic:
No, it doesn’t matter either way for the presidential race – but it does suggest that the sturdy people of Montana are more open to Democrats than the Deep South – which matters for things like the Senate, Congress, implementing Obamacare and so forth.
Morzer
@FlipYrWhig:
I’d like to do better than taking out 1 in 10 Republicans. Annihilation is my fixation.
FlipYrWhig
@Paul in KY: The Gore stuff all started as “He seems dull and uncomfortable and needs to reinvent himself,” then became “He’s trying too hard to reinvent himself,” which then became “He brags and lies and you can’t trust him,” and then various non-stories were shaped to match that storyline. There was no right way for him to talk about anything, as far as the punditocracy was concerned. So let’s try not to resurrect “inauthentic” / “trying too hard” for Clinton, who AFAICT doesn’t seem guilty of either of those things.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Morzer: One can look at the list of senators from MT and see that. They weren’t/aren’t necessarily the best of Democrats, but there have been a lot of them.
Morzer
@FlipYrWhig:
Of course, if Clinton does fight her corner, people immediately rush to denounce her as angry, not ready for prime time, thin-skinned etc etc. It’s interesting to hear the old tropes thrown at minority politicians being recycled that way.
FlipYrWhig
@Morzer: The “Deep” South may be out of play, but places like Ark. and Tenn. elect Democratic governors and statehouses.
Frankensteinbeck
@FlipYrWhig:
I agree with all of that.
Cervantes
@FlipYrWhig: It started sotto voce as “He’s unforgivably smarter than we are; we don’t have to take it any more.”
Morzer
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
Right, which is exactly why thinking in terms of EVs is a dangerous way to go. Those two senators elected by five men and a dog really do matter.
Morzer
@FlipYrWhig:
They do when Democrats bother to organize themselves on the ground. Lots of legacy Democrats out there, less than ideal though many of them may be.
Corner Stone
@burnspbesq:
They don’t have to say torture. That’s what everyone knows they mean when they say enhanced interrogation techniques.
It’s why I was so frustrated with President Obama when he recently used the term instead of saying torture. We can’t let them hide behind the normalization of torture. And that’s what happens each time someone doesn’t just call it what it is: torture.
Gitmo is an awful stain. Beyond the deaths and misery he caused, I think the Gitmo Mentality is the worst thing Bush did to us.
FlipYrWhig
@Morzer: I think the campaign Clinton’s people really need to study is the Gore ’00 campaign, because I can already tell that’s the frame that’s looming: “How does a competent but less charismatic candidate follow an exciting yet polarizing predecessor?” I guess the George H.W. Bush campaign in ’88 had a lot of the same issues, and they handled it by going hard negative Culture War, so that’s an option too.
Corner Stone
@Morzer:
“The (rhymes with witch) is Back”
Joel
@Emma: to be fair, Bill did have the original “sista souljah” moment and Hillary race baited the fuck out of the 2008 primaries. They deserve a lot of criticism, collectively.
schrodinger's cat
@FlipYrWhig: Gore did choose holy Joe. Talk about a self goal.
Morzer
@schrodinger’s cat:
*cough* Own goal
rikyrah
Lupita Nyong’o on Winning the Oscar, Becoming the Face of Lancôme, and Her First Cover of Vogue
by Hamish Bowles | photographed by Mikael Jansson
In little more than a year, Lupita Nyong’o has made the leap from serious student to Oscar-winning actress and head-turning fashion star. Hamish Bowles catches up with Hollywood’s newest golden girl.
Marrakech in May is unseasonably tagine-hot. Hapless tourists are being felled by sunstroke merely from sauntering across the city’s pulsing medina square, which is all but abandoned by the native food and trinket traders, snake-charmers, and storytellers who will throng it in the desert cool of evening.
But in the oasis sanctuary of the Ksar Char-Bagh, all is balmy dolce far niente. A luxe spa hostelry built in imitation of a castle-like fort in the middle of the Palmeraie, it has crenellated towers that hide a private dipping pool and afford views down to a central marbled courtyard modeled on Granada’s Moorish Alhambra, and across the palm groves to the distant Atlas Mountains. Guests are lounging poolside in the shade of an allée of date palms, seemingly oblivious of the Academy Award–winning deity in their midst, who is the focus of the Vogue cover shoot in full fluster around them.
Lupita Nyong’o is cucumber-cool, as beautiful and hieratic as an ancient Egyptian statue of a cat goddess, dressed in Prada’s magenta Deco-print dress licked with silver that is dazzling against her luminous skin. Lupita instinctively falls into graceful attitudes; she can’t help herself. “She knows the camera, she knows her angles,” notes an approving Phyllis Posnick, Vogue’s Executive Fashion Editor, who, it should be noted, does not suffer fools gladly but is in some kind of awe of this particular subject.
http://www.vogue.com/magazine/article/lupita-nyongo-first-vogue-cover/#1
Villago Delenda Est
TNC is one of those bookworm types, eh? Reads a lot? Well, reading rots the mind. Just ask Rush Limbaugh, or Bill O’Reilly, or Sean Hannity. Books give guys like TNC these strange ideas that they’re just as good as the aforementioned three. TNC should get back to his cotton field and do the work that the Almighty intended for his people.
Emma
@Joel: I don’t bloody want to be fair. I come here to read up on Cole’s pets, Mayhew on insurance, Doug’s snark, the gardening threads, interesting stuff from a variety of people with whom I may or may not agree. Two threads about interesting things, Manning on how the press became mouthpieces for the military, and Coates and his reparations articles, got derailed by the Hillary’s-not-good-enough folk. It’s beginning to turn into GOS, and I am tired of it.
schrodinger's cat
@Morzer: I stand corrected.
Villago Delenda Est
Noisemax is with us:
Lieberman Slams Obama Foreign Policy
Shut the fuck up, you fascist git. Just shut the fuck up. Forever.
Elizabelle
PBO to speak on Iraq crisis at 12:30 today. Stay tuned. (Maybe a thread for that? I love liveblogging someone smart …)
ETA: and it gets the points (and feel of the speech) out to those not able to watch in real time. (Which set includes the gainfully employed.)
Elizabelle
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yeah, don’t read those books. Write them. (Or have your ghostwriter write them.)
Or ban them from libraries. Or go rogue.
Bobby Thomson
@Morzer:
Agreed. That particular writer has laid a few other eggs.
Elizabelle
@Corner Stone:
Did Hillary list several books as her favorite? Or just the Bible?
The second would upset me. Strikes me as pandering.
Cervantes
@Villago Delenda Est:
Joe Lieberman in public (Politico), this month:
He was ostensibly talking about global warming.
Joe Lieberman at a private meeting for “investors,” also this month:
He was ostensibly talking about foreign policy.
muddy
@Emma: One of the things that makes me not want Hillary is that I am tired of hearing about her and Bill. I’m bored of that! It just sucks the air out of the room for me. I don’t have an opinion on whether I’d be in favor of her or not – YET – because it’s too soon. There are things from her past and from the present that I both like and dislike, same as any person. Obligatory note: of course I would vote for her if she were the candidate. This ought to go without saying on this blog, but anyway.
There is no possible way for me to have an opinion about whether I want Hillary or *anyone* to be the president, because it is not happening now. What happens this year will inform what’s to come next. The outcomes in this election will determine who will be a good choice going forward. The background and skills of one person could be totally different than what is going to be required under different circumstances.
It’s like having to decide which person to hire when you are not sure what the job consists of yet. Yes, the job is “President”, but it’s President2016, with no knowledge of the previous 2 years. I know people enjoy speculating about it, I just feel like it’s a time waster (says the one writing a very long comment on the topic). I love to speculate on a number of topics, but this just isn’t one for me. It seems unreal, sci-fi or something. Empty choice.
I think in the general media talk of the next president in off years is what makes people not turn out in between. It’s no wonder, when all you hear about is the presidential race, even beginning the night of the last election.
gwangung
On the other hand, one can be a devout Christian without being a right wing extremist. One could also be a Democrat.
Cervantes
@Elizabelle: Why? Could it not actually be her favorite book? The KJV is quite beautiful even as mere (!) literature.
Corner Stone
@Elizabelle: The person making the charge didn’t link or give attribution to where the sourcing was coming from. With a little google, I find the NYT Sunday Book interview:
Where she answers other reading questions. The Bible is my mom’s favorite book, and she reads from it every day. Of course, she’s never been a politician, so I guess she’s free to actually like it instead of merely panderingly like it.
Emma
@muddy: That’s fine and good. I’m all in favor of all of us making up our own minds, though I am on the record as saying that I will vote for Vlad Tepes over any Republican. But that has nothing to do with Coates and reparations or Manning and the failures of our press. I just don’t want to fight the Hillary war in every freaking thread of my favorite blog.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: Literature is my line of work. When I’m asked about my favorite book, or most influential book, I never have any idea what to say, but I know that if I say “Jane Austen” they’ll accept that and stop asking me and we can move on to something else, so that’s what I do.
Cervantes
@FlipYrWhig: Not Don Quixote? For shame.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: I could not tell you my favorite book, or even favorite author. I am unable to tell you any single work that has been the most influential on my thinking.
Just like I didn’t care if GWB was actually reading Camus’ The Stranger, or if he was told to say it, I do not care what’s in her Kindle or on her bedstand. Beyond mere curiosity, I guess. Maybe as future suggestions to look into.
Up until a couple years ago I finished a book every other day. Some old reads torn through again and some new material across the spectrum. If I told you I was reading Fernand Braudel today and had just finished Louis L’Amour yesterday, that would not be unusual for me.
So, in sum, as I have said a few times now, this is all just catty 90210 bullshit from people with their grudge on.
Corner Stone
@Cervantes: It’s almost like he just doesn’t care about you. At all.
FlipYrWhig
@Cervantes: Maybe I should say _Los trabajos de Persiles y Segismunda_.
Now that you mention it, _Don Quijote_ would be a pretty good answer. Haven’t read it from start to finish in 20 years, but had done it repeatedly before that, and loved it every time. I’ll consider it.
muddy
@FlipYrWhig: Maybe you could help me find a story I have been looking for, I’ve been going nuts. I read it as a kid, a short story involving a drunk Englishman and a cannibal in a boat in the South Seas. I can’t remember the author, I was thinking it seemed like Robert Louis Stevenson, but it’s not him
Any ideas?
Cervantes
@Corner Stone:
Famously, I am entirely without bitterness or self-pity.
FlipYrWhig
@muddy: Nothing’s ringing a bell. I would have guessed Stevenson too.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@muddy: @FlipYrWhig: Conrad?
Cervantes
@FlipYrWhig:
That would shut most people up right quick.
FlipYrWhig
@muddy: Googling suggests it might be Jack London, The Heathen.
FlipYrWhig
@Cervantes: You’d think, but, no, they’d say, “Oh, what’s that about?” and “Can I buy it for my Kindle?” and so forth. “Jane Austen” has the virtue of being something they already know and probably like, or that they can pretend to like, and can feel affirmed by hearing said back to them. But _Don Quijote_ is definitely a good choice.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: That book question, put in terms of a single book rather than a lifetime of reading, is just a mildly highbrow version of some Barbara Walters shit about what kind of tree you would like to be.
muddy
@FlipYrWhig: I thought maybe London too. It’s not that story, tho. This one had an alcoholic kidnapped by this native guy. They’re on the native’s boat, and this guy is detoxing and suffering and doesn’t know why the native doesn’t just kill him already.
Eventually he gets it together, and is grateful to this native guy for saving him. But then it turns out the native was going to eat him, take his head, I don’t remember, but wanted the white guy to get his soul back first, so it would be meaningful.
I have the impression (it was over 40 years ago tho) that the guy was so glad to have his self back that he was okay with it? I’m not sure.
Cervantes
@FlipYrWhig: I was thinking either that or something by Robert Ballantyne.
Cervantes
@FlipYrWhig: Middlebrow at best.
Cervantes
@FlipYrWhig: Do you read it in the original or in translation? If the latter, whose do you like?
Corner Stone
@Cervantes:
Well, I got the bitterness and the clinging to my Gods and my Guns.
I’ve never forgiven Obama for that statement! Even though it was 6 years ago and during a campaign fundraiser. Rawr! Argh!!
muddy
@Cervantes: Oh, there’s a long long list of Ballantyne at Project Gutenberg. I’ll take a skim through those (for the next 4 hours possibly, there are so many!)
Emma
@FlipYrWhig: On the other hand, because I am of hispanic background everyone assumes I will say Quijote. When I say “anything written by Robertson Davies,” the conversation dies right quick. Mostly because any idiot who would ask the question wouldn’t have read Davies.
Cervantes
@Emma: He’s great. Funny as the Dickens.
So to speak.
FlipYrWhig
@Cervantes: I read the old yellow Clásicos Castalia in college and early grad school. I taught the Ormsby in a Norton Critical edition years and years ago, and have wanted to play around with the Smollett version for a while.
@Emma: That’s why having a fake answer is useful. Like having a fake number to give a persistent schmuck at a bad party.
Emma
@FlipYrWhig: I can understand that. For people who really read — especially those who spend their professional lives among books — being asked “who’s your favorite author” is just about the stupidest question they can be asked.
Elizabelle
@Emma:
I got to meet Robertson Davies in life! He was doing a reading at Georgetown U for What’s Bred in the Bone (if memory serves), and I had my book signed.
Joked with him about Canadians getting no respect (because some track star had just gotten tossed — from the Olympics or what, I don’t recall).
But very warm, generous and approachable man.
Love Robertson Davies. Still have not read all his stuff. (Just came across a copy of “Leaven of Malice” short stories in the house yesterday. Put it bedside.)
He should have gotten the Nobel. His use of language, and humor, is superb. Maybe the humor is what kept him out of Nobel contention?
Elizabelle
@Emma:
I will give Hillary credit for not saying “all of them.” [re favorite book]
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: His problems began years before he ran (IMO). He just didn’t play the schmoozing game & it cost him.
FlipYrWhig
@Elizabelle: @Emma: Whoops, I just realized I was mixing up Robertson Davies and Nicholson Baker.
Paul in KY
@Corner Stone: Saw Elton play that song at Bonnaroo. IMO, best set of weekend!
Emma
@Elizabelle: I think that he wasn’t “significant” in the way the Nobel committees like their winners. The fact that he was such a trenchant observer of all brands of human bulls_it while at the same time appreciating the good that often lives alongside it passed them by.
I would have loved to meet him. I started reading him in graduate school. I traveled back home for holidays on Greyhound, a day and a half trip. One December as I was getting on the bus I realized I had left my “bus reading” back in the dorm. The friend who had given me a ride to the station reached into the back seat of her car and handed me a paperback. “Keep it, I already read it,” she said. It was Fifth Business. I didn’t sleep a wink the whole trip. Now I collect all his fiction and I’ve started in his non-fiction. In hardbound, no Kindle stuff.
FlipYrWhig
@Paul in KY: Think of the contrast between McCain and Gore. The press loved, and still loves, McCain because of dirty jokes and war stories. They disliked Gore because of his tone of voice and goody-goody affect. Their McCain is uncensored and rip-roaring, their Gore is buttoned-up and over-earnest.
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: You are certainly correct. The other thing is that McCain talks to them, seeks them out, kisses ass to them (IMO). VP Gore did very little of that, wouldn’t have them in for ‘exclusives’, help them out with a column, etc.
Generally speaking, you don’t piss off people who buy their ink in 50 gallon drums.
Cervantes
@FlipYrWhig: Smollett’s translation is fine overall but it is (a) not quite as playful as the original, and (b) appears to miss the point of — the humor in — the stylistic variation in the original.
Still, any Quixote is better than none, so I hope you do find the time for it.
FlipYrWhig
@Paul in KY: Gore ’88 was the darling of the The (Even The Liberal) New Republic. I don’t know when his problems with the press fraternity first surfaced.
Cervantes
@FlipYrWhig: I hear that Bob Somerby has some thoughts on the subject.
FlipYrWhig
@Cervantes: Indeed! But I’m not sure even he takes into account the period between when Gore was his roomie at Harvard and 1999.
Cervantes
@Emma:
Fitting, in a way, as he used to joke about enjoying even the smell of his books.
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: I’m not sure either. Might have been when he assumed the VPency.
Emma
@Cervantes: My favorite form of enjoying Davies is in bed, with a cup of coffee and some meringues on the side table. And a good solid book in my hands.
Cervantes
@FlipYrWhig:
Marty Peretz, then owner, had favored Gore for a long time (having encountered the lad at Harvard). In the ’90s, editors Andrew Sullivan and, particularly, Michael Kelly disparaged Clinton and Gore, to the point where Peretz fired each of them in turn (granted, there were several good reasons to fire Sullivan).
Steeplejack
@Cervantes:
I labored through Don Quixote in Spanish in college as the acme of my (checkered) career with that language.
The Edith Grossman translation (2005) is excellent.
FlipYrWhig
@Cervantes: Andrew Sullivan is the origin of ills yet again.
Cervantes
@FlipYrWhig: Sort of, but I was commenting only on Gore’s treatment by the New Republic, not by the press as a whole.
Cervantes
@Steeplejack: Yes, Grossman is probably the best Spanish-to-English translator in the business today. Her versions of Gabriel García Márquez are justly admired and her translations of less famous writers (for example, Julio Ortega) are superb as well.
Suffern ACE
@FlipYrWhig: It was largely Maureen Dowd and the NYT who started it. I believe she had just won her pulitzer for her Lewinsky commentary. She is as bad as the nitwits at Politico when it comes to Clinton disgust. But I believe her personal Gore hate began when he decided not to play the role in the clinton drama she wanted him to. She wanted the thing to end with Hillary divorcing Bill and Al Gore making calls for him to resign “for the good of the country”. Or something like that. She basically wanted the whole story to end with those unscrupulous Clintons alone and friendless. Gore did not play along. That was the source of her disappointment. Yeah, Gore didn’t use Clinton effectively during his run, but he never tried a coup when they wanted him to. Hence the idea that Gore just was an unmanly nerd. Too unmanly to be president.
Cervantes
@Suffern ACE:
In a sane world, the above sequence of words would be laughable if not completely unthinkable.
Except after the fact, when he selected Lieberman — and a whole lot of good it did him, too.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
They praising this guy or saying he’s just a dick?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@FlipYrWhig:
They can also be kind of sexists. On the other hand Hillary seems to be billing herself as a return to the good old days of the ’90s and that, next to the wide eyed bomb thrower the GOP will put up against her, will get the conservatives attention.
The Lodger
@Villago Delenda Est: To Rush, O’Reilly and Hannity, books are produced by peon ghostwriters and are useful only to make money.Reading them? Feh.
Ramalama
@Corner Stone:
She did and got hell for it. She didn’t want to change her name to Clinton when the Cletus was running. HELL. Then she said she wasn’t going to stay at home and bake cookies, that that was not her – HELL. Then she said in a fit of pique that there was a right wing conspiracy…. And people are still talking about her as a murderer.
HRC learned the hard way by the country’s horses arses to temper her language. I’d prefer her the earlier, HiIlary 1.0 but the likes of me apparently do not make enough high pitched whiny squeals.