Have at it.
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking
It’s been a tough week, so I say we continue our enjoyable generation-on-generation warfare with a completely masturbatory post (and hopefully subsequent discussion) about the 60s and early 70s.
I was born in 1969, a little after the moon landing, and yet to me, Kennedy’s assassination, the Civil Rights marches, and the 1968 Democratic convention are more real to me than any political event that has happened in my own lifetime (Obama’s inauguration and the fall of the Berlin Wall come close). The French New Wave and early Robert Altman are more real than anything that was made when I was an of age to see adult movies (Pulp Fiction comes fairly close). Ditto for What’s Going On, Exile on Main Street, and the Beatles with popular music (the Clash and the Sex Pistols might come close but not really). There’s no journalism today that has the ring of Hunter S. Thompson or Slouching Towards Bethlehem (not to me). And in terms of scandals, nothing will ever come close to Watergate, even though by some measures what went on under Bush was worse. I’m not really talking about the 60s per se, it’s really about 1962 to 1975.
I don’t mean that cultural and political stuff was better then. More that there was a sense that these were things everyone might attention to, not just weirdos or pajama-clad blogofascists or graduate students or whatever.
I don’t think I’m alone this way. Why is this? Is it that what’s real to people is what happened to them between 15 and 25 and the country was, in effect, between 15 and 25 during that period? Does the Hunter S. Thompson “wave speech” explain it all?
I’ve never understood this and I don’t think it has to do with me or exactly when I was born.
All in all, this is probably an open thread.
DougJ +5
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinkingPost + Comments (250)
Attention Yankees And Mets Fans
Busy on Sunday?
Assemblymember Brennan and Congress Members Yvette Clarke and Anthony Weiner Host Community Forum on the state of National Health Care Legislation
When: Sunday, January 24th from 2:00 to 4:00 pm
Where: MS 51, 350 5th Avenue at 4th Street, Park Slope, Brooklyn.
via email.
Where We Stand
First, the good news. People who work in DC tell me that teabaggers have been screaming into their phones since Obama took office. They yelled about the stimulus before HCR came up. When HCR passes or dies they will yell about something else. For those of you who worried about it (I didn’t) that means the real added impact of Jane and her firebaggers most likely adds up to very little. Unless the FDL guys use some special identifier I doubt most staffers know that anything new is going on.
The bad news, of course, is that teabaggers are kicking our ass. Whatever their numbers (I would peg it as higher than you think and well below what Glenn Beck thinks) they have leaders who get activists to use the phone. Take that as a recrimination if you want. It simply is. Before January almost nobody called their Reps to support health care, least of all that stinker passed by the Senate*. I honestly don’t know how much you can blame Representatives for acting skittish when, at least to the people who answer their phones, the world sounds a lot like a sub-par diary at RedState.
If you belong to any sort of civic group, spend the weekend getting organized. Put together a phone bank and give your Representatives some support. Everyone I have contacted tells me that your calls have an impact.
First-time callers should use the guide here.
New poll.
(*) I would rather choose some other hillock to die on as much as the rest of you, honest, and I would if I had a choice about it. Sadly, no. Either the House passes the Senate bill and then we fix its problems in reconciliation, or nothing happens and Evan Bayh will effectively run the Democratic party until he gratefully hands Congress off to Republicans in 2011. Your call.
Early Morning Open Thread: Curious If True
According to Vanity Fair, Charles Johnson has found a new way to… complicate… the blogosphere:
Aside from taking issue with the conduct of many online pundits, Johnson is far more alarmed by the failures of the orthodox news media to provide reasonable and accurate analysis to the citizenry at large. I am, too, having recently had occasion to go through a decade of published output from widely-respected and widely-read Pulitzer-winning columnists who turn out to have been wrong about an incredibly significant portion of what they’ve asserted over the years, yet who have almost no chance of losing their undeserved positions of influence… This damaging nonsense in which our allegedly serious news outlets are collectively engaged will continue until such time as it proves to be embarrassing for those in charge of such things. As such, Johnson and I have decided to channel our concern and general crankiness over this issue into a productive response.
Later this year, we’ll be launching a two-pronged campaign by which we hope to increase both the reach and efficiency of the blogosphere, as well as to bring pressure to bear on the media at large. Much of this effort will involve a loose network of bloggers that we’re now in the process of recruiting in order that we might all coordinate on exposing the failures of certain news outlets, for instance. This campaign is being planned in large part around software that’s currently in development by open-source advocate and information technology specialist Andrew Stein and which we believe will assist bloggers in making better use of their medium’s existing advantages; this system will provide for a measurable advance in the manner by which bloggers may distribute, obtain, evaluate, and build upon segments of information. Between the software in question and that skill set unique to those bloggers who have successfully adapted to the information age, we expect that we’ll have some success to the extent that we receive the assistance of others who are similarly concerned about the manner in which Americans are informed about crucial issues.
As Johnson recently reminded me, he once attempted a similar improvement on the blogosphere in 2004 by co-founding the conservative blog compendium Pajamas Media. He later repudiated it as “just another right-wing parrot organization” and sold off his share in 2007. I suggested to him that, in contrast to that particular project, we try to recruit bloggers who aren’t completely deranged. He agreed that this might be an effective approach.
I do not remember previously seeing the names of either author Barrett Brown or “technology specialist Andrew Stein”, but that probably means only that I am not aware of all internet traditions…
*****
On a completely different topic, I really love this mix, but does it seem somehow appropriate that a joyful mashup of 2009’s Top 25 Pop Hits should lean so heavily on the words blame and down?
Early Morning Open Thread: Curious If TruePost + Comments (75)
One More For The Night
From an anonymous friend who works on Capitol Hill.
We–and by we I mean all Democrats in Congress–need to hear from more supporters. It is clear that the teabaggers have been far more organized than liberals and progressives, but your efforts are reminding us that the American people are on our side and giving us the morale boost we need to get this bill passed. Please keep up the good work.
You know what to do.
Another Open Thread
90 minutes in, I have no clue wtf Caprica has to do with BSG. Is this a personal failing?