Rest Assured, Nervous Americans
Phew!
White House officials acknowledged yesterday that the public's gloomy mood about the Iraq war is forcing President Bush to take a more assertive and public role to reassure nervous Americans and Republican lawmakers about the White House plan for victory.
Bush had hoped the successful January elections in Iraq would boost the popularity of the conflict and allow him to distance himself from it. But his aides have concluded that recent events in Iraq have contributed to an erosion in support for the president — and that he needs to shift strategies. Bush's new approach will be mostly rhetorical, however, as the White House does not plan any changes to the policy or time frame for bringing home the 140,000 U.S. troops, as some lawmakers are demanding.
"The president takes seriously his responsibility as commander in chief to continue to educate the American people about the conduct of the war and our strategy for victory," said Dan Bartlett, a senior adviser.
[Jim VandeHei, "Bush Is Expected to Address Specifics on Iraq", The Washington Post, 16 June 2005.]
I was worried there for a minute that the President was actually thinking of doing something different in Iraq, but it turns out that he's just going to talk about it more. I presume, of couse, in light of the Downing Street Memo and such things, that "to reassure nervous Americans" means to tell them more things that aren't true. (We don't say "lie": it's so shrill and anti-war.)
Can we expect the same approach, using multi-city tours with "town-hall meetings", that was such a success with reassuring Americans about social security and "private accounts"?
If so, this move might be a good thing and help end the war sooner rather than later.
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Splenetics
Traditional Atomic Theory
Reminding us that atoms were "just a theory" until the twentieth century when experiment finally established atomic reality (in some quantum mechanical sense yet to be understood fully):
But as late as 1894, when Robert Cecil, the third Marquis of Salisbury, chancellor of Oxford and former Prime Minister of England, catalogued the unfinished business of science in his presidential address to the British Association, whether atoms were real or only convenient and what structure they hid were still undecided issues:
"What the atom of each element is, whether it is a movement, or a thing, or a vortex, or a point having intertia, whether there is any limit to its divisibility, and, if so, how that limit is imposed, whether the long list of elements is final, or whether any of them have any common origin, all these questions remain surrounded by a darkness as profound as ever."
[Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1986) p. 31.]
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*Perhaps the idea of atoms is the oldest surviving scientific concept in that "just a theory" category — far older certainly than the continually changing, ever evolving "traditional marriage".
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, The Art of Conversation
To Be Seen as a Great Leader (BBA X)
So that we might satisfy the President's delusions of greatness (bold is mine):
Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.
"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind.[*] He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' "
[Russ Baker, "Two Years Before 9/11, Candidate Bush was Already Talking Privately About Attacking Iraq, According to His Former Ghost Writer", 28 October 2004.]
"Nothing could be farther from the truth," Bush said last week, responding to a question about the July 23, 2002, memo [explaining that Bush was already planning to invade Iraq well before diplomatic efforts had failed]. "Both of us [the US and UK] didn't want to use our military. Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option."
[John Daniszewski, "New Memos Detail Early Plans for Invading Iraq", the Los Angeles Times, 15 June 2005.]
[This continues my series of posts concerning the pre-Iraq-war actions of the US administration, aimed at increasing awareness of those activities, as part of the Big Brass Alliance (or BBA) and it's support of AfterDowningStreet.org. For more information from me, see my first posting on The Downing Street Memo: "Worth Remembering"]
———-
*Which is to say, he was looking for something to invade so he could grow up into a wartime president. Here is a further excerpt from the Baker piece that clarifies that idea:
According to Herskowitz, George W. Bush's beliefs on Iraq were based in part on a notion dating back to the Reagan White House – ascribed in part to now-vice president Dick Cheney, Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee under Reagan. "Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade."
Bush's circle of pre-election advisers had a fixation on the political capital that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher collected from the Falklands War. Said Herskowitz: "They were just absolutely blown away, just enthralled by the scenes of the troops coming back, of the boats, people throwing flowers at [Thatcher] and her getting these standing ovations in Parliament and making these magnificent speeches."
Republicans, Herskowitz said, felt that Jimmy Carter's political downfall could be attributed largely to his failure to wage a war. He noted that President Reagan and President Bush's father himself had (besides the narrowly-focused Gulf War I) successfully waged limited wars against tiny opponents – Grenada and Panama – and gained politically.
Atheistic Compulsion
I think the most frequent charge levelled at atheists by the religious, usually evangelical Christians, is that we must be immoral* people without [their] God's laws to guide us. Utter rubish, of course, but these critics are not renowned for applying the brains their God gave them.
At any rate, I found the following amusing, and so modern sounding in its hyperbole. The discussion is about attitudes that manifested themselves in contemporary (i.e., later 19th century) reaction to Charles Darwin's ideas:
More was apparently at stake than mere science. The Times of London put it succinctly: "If our humanity be merely the natural product of the modified faculties of the brutes, most earnest-minded men will be compelled to give up those motives by which they have attempted to live noble and virtuous lives, as founded on a mistake."
[Chet, "On Morality", Science Musings Blog, 15 June 2005.]
The apparent implication is that all these "earnest-minded men", upon hearing the un-Godly idea that monkeys were indeed their uncles, will at once cast aside all their moral adherences and run screaming into the streets to rape, pillage, and plunder.
In fact, they will be compelled to do so. Imagine hordes of roving, immoral atheists breaking down the doors of "earnest-minded" men's houses and dragging these same men kicking and screaming into the streets, requiring them to rape, pillage, and plunder.
Such a vivid imagination.
———-
*For this crowd who, as we shall see, cling unquestioningly to the Law of the Excluded Middle, we cannot be merely "amoral" — either we're "moral" or "immoral", and it can't be the first one.
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Splenetics
Joyful Military Weddings
Halifax — The Canadian military is marking its first gay wedding.
Two men, who do not want to be identified, exchanged vows in a small ceremony at Canadian Forces Base Greenwood in western Nova Scotia.
It was the first time the military has presided over a same-sex union after introducing guidelines in 2003 dealing with the contentious issue.
["Canadian Forces sees first gay wedding", The Toronto [CA] Globe and Mail, 14 June2005.]
Wealth-Gap Dangers
The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide, and is growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself.
Is that a liberal's talking point? Sure. But it's also a line from the recent public testimony of a champion of the free market: Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.
[…]
Greenspan's comments at a Joint Economic Committee hearing last week were typical, for him. Asked a leading question by Sen. Jack Reed (D) of Rhode Island, he agreed that over the past two quarters hourly wages have shown few signs of accelerating. Overall employee compensation has gone up – but mostly due to a surge in bonuses and stock-option exercises.The Fed chief than added that the 80 percent of the workforce represented by nonsupervisory workers has recently seen little, if any, income growth at all. The top 20 percent of supervisory, salaried, and other workers has.
The result of this, said Greenspan, is that the US now has a significant divergence in the fortunes of different groups in its labor market. "As I've often said, this is not the type of thing which a democratic society – a capitalist democratic society – can really accept without addressing," Greenspan told the congressional hearing.
[Peter Grier, "Rich-poor gap gaining attention", The Christian Science Monitor, 14 June 2005.]
Faith-Based Fear of Flying
Do People of Faith (hereafter PoFs) fly in airplanes? I would think that they'd feel faced with ever-present and fatal danger if they do.
Many of us in this semi-rational, post-enlightenment age believe that airplanes are kept aloft through the thoughtful application of the predictable laws of godless, atheistic aerodynamics. We enjoy with good humor those laughable images of PoFs trying to fly through the application of faith-based principles and crashing to the ground. Their effors were universally more ballistic than aerodynamic.
For PoFs to fly today should seem equally risky. Setting aside for the moment that their use of airplances marks them as taking advantage of the atheistic, rational science for which they claim disdainful lack of belief and which they pretend to eschew completely, there are still reasons that PoFs should avoid travel by heavier-than-air machines.
- In a faith-based approach to science, it is essentially the strength of collective faith in revealed "scientific truths" that establishes the credibilty of those "truths".
- We know that their God, from whom all "scientific truths" flow, can appear unpredictable and capricious ("working in mysterious ways" and all that), not to mention vindictive, in the eyes and tiny little minds of mere mortals.
- In particular, we know (from PoFs themselves) that said deity frequently expresses disapproval by, e.g., allowing very tall buildings to be destroyed by airplanes [!], or by sending hurricanes, earthquakes, mudslides, and other "natural" disasters to devastate areas of our country, generally as retribution for the PoF's lax attitudes towards homosexuals, people who have abortions, and others who offend said deity.
- Presumably, this category of people towards whom the PoFs are too lax also includes the godless airplane designers who dare use atheistic aerodynamics in the first place, since by doing so they mock the "natural scientific truths" provided by the deity.
- Immersed in modern, technological society as they are — one might even say imprisoned — PoFs find themselves virtually surrounded at all times by those who would flout the "natural laws" given to the PoFs by their "faith-based science".
- This makes it increasingly likely that:
- They will find themselves the minority among the passengers on an airplane whose majority is made up of godless, atheistic homosexuals, people who have had abortions, and other followers of aerodynamics; and
- Their deity, in an unpredictably capricious and vindictive mood, may choose their flight as a perfect opportunity to smite down a choice batch of the godless by witholding his grace and letting the plane fall from the sky.
Unfortunately, estimating the smiting probability is precluded at this time because it is not clear whether the contribution from the Power-of-Prayer term (PP) is a first-order term or a second-order correction.
Wolfowitz on Iraq
Testimony by then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, one of the chief architects of Iraq policy, before a House subcommittee on Feb. 28, 2003, just weeks before the invasion, illustrated the optimistic view the administration had of postwar Iraq. He said containment of Hussein the previous 12 years had cost "slightly over $30 billion," adding, "I can't imagine anyone here wanting to spend another $30 billion to be there for another 12 years." As of May, the Congressional Research Service estimated that Congress has approved $208 billion for the war in Iraq since 2003.
[Walter Pincus, "Memo: U.S. Lacked Full Postwar Iraq Plan — Advisers to Blair Predicted Instability", The Washington Post, 12 June 2005.]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Unshaved Legs
Let me be clear about one thing right up front. In a faulty analogy, one of the parties to the, um, altercation at hand asked in a snide, rhetorical way "Would you condemn the ad if it had featured Speedo-clad beefcake instead?" For my part, the idea of Speedo-clad hunks throwing pies at each other — or doing anything to each other, for that matter — sounds like a pretty okay idea. But that's just my own perversion. This isn't about that.
The present story goes something like this:
- Straight-male-A-list liberal blogger has an ad featuring bikini-clad buxom babes in a pie fight.
- Outspoken feminist [= "uppity feminazi" in this context] suggests that the ad might be dissonant with respect for issues of women's equlity.
- Straight-male-A-list liberal blogger cops attitude and suggests that outspoken feminist stop being so sensitive about a divisive issue, that she get a life and realize there are bigger things at stake ("important shit").
- Straight-male-conservative-blogger, disillusioned with his own Republican party's headlong rush away from their own principles, runs towards the fracas*, exclaims "yeah, me too!" and suggests that the reason Democrats keep losing is thanks to the "the crowd who dares not shave their legs."
- In response to the raised eyebrows elicited by that remark, straight-male-conservative-blogger trots out the tired old online excuse that it was all just a joke anyway.
My favorite summary is at What Do I Know ("Stuff This Wherever You Keep Your Important Shit"); it names names and links links. Sean Carroll, another physicist, wrote a thoughtful, analytical piece that says stuff that I'd like to have said myself if I were more attentive and serious about it.
First, about the "it was just a joke" gambit mentioned in #5: it's so 1990. That excuse didn't work a decade ago in Usenet flame-wars, and it doesn't work today any better, even if we do have a Republican administration.
I suspect that I'm not a very good feminist. I'm an aging white male, albeit a gay one, but that leaves me with a good chunk of the "white male" part, I expect. I also suspect that I just don't care about women's issues as much as women feminists do, but maybe that's okay, since I don't really expect other people to care about things like gay issues, or diabetic issues, or physicist issues as much as I do. I can try to understand and respect them, however.
My operating principle in this situation outlined above is this: offense is in the eys of the offended.
One gets tired after awhile of hearing the angry straight white male tell one that there's no need to be offended, that there's nothing to be offended about. For at least 4 decades that I can remember, straight while males have been offering strategic advice to: a) black people; b) women; and c) gay people (I'm sure there are others) about how we can help advance our cause, or about how something — tsk! — that we've said or done undoubtedly sets our cause back. It's most helpful of the gentlemen, who are always surprised by the lack of gratitude from those on the receiving end of their wisdom. It's the last vestage of the White Man's Burden and no one appreciates their efforts.
Well, it's wasn't their place then and it's still not their place. I know that this notion offends them — perhaps they should just get over it.
One claim in the present altercation is that there is more "important shit" than worrying about whether a bunch of women are offended by an ad or an attitude. It's a specious argument: there is nothing more important for a principled, liberal stance than valuing others. Ours is a co-operative philosophy. Contrary to claims, we are not cultural elitists.
I've been pissed off for years by Republican Gays who point their fingers at Liberal Faggots like me and claim that we're "single-issue voters" when there are "more important issues" to consider than "gay rights".
More important than Life? More important than Liberty? More important than the Pursuit of Happiness? Nowadays I may be willing to go along with the idea that there's a single issue at stake, but it's not the one they think it is.
Imagine a group of people, a large crowd of Americans gathered together perhaps in a room to listen to some speakers.
A conservative steps to the dais and surveys the crowd. What does he see? A uniform crowd of yokels, powerless peasants looking to be led and exploited, by him if he can manage it. God helps him who helps himself.
A liberal steps to the dais and surveys the crowd. What does she see? A diverse group of people with an abundance of hopes and dreams, anxious to join together in a cooperative effort to realize those dreams, knowing that as a group we can accomplish that which might otherwise be impossible.
The biological metaphor that comes to mind here is that of genetic diversity in corn. We recall the concern some years ago that too many farmers around the world were using just one or two strains of corn; genetic diversity was being lost, leaving the corn crops vulnerable to unknown future pests or diseases. Tactically, unformity might increase yields; strategically, diversity is the only viable solution. (I like this metaphor since it invokes ideas of evolution and selection, making the bad guys look even worse since they hate reality-based science.)
There is no more "important shit" than respecting our diversity as a reservoir from which we can draw deeply to slake the thirst of those who dream of liberty and toil endlessly to have it.
By the way, I don't shave my legs either, nor do I care for my lovers to shave their legs. In fact, I rejoice in unshaved legs!
———-
*The appropriate joke would be the one, usually told of an Irishman, who sees two men fighting outside a pub. "Is this a private fight," he yells, "or can anyone join in?"
Brazen & Corrupt
Sometimes it's just too challenging, over and over, coming up with properly* excoriating language to describe the current President and his Administration; there are just too many occasions that require just too many words, that mere vocabulary tends to fall short. Sometimes, too, my memory lets me down. I've had the feeling that, on the short list of particularly apt words, there was (at least) one that I was overlooking.
In the context of comparing the pressure that the Nixon White House brought to bear on the media to say nice things with the machinations of the current administration directed at the same, Arthur Silber quotes Frank Rich:
The main difference is that in the Nixon White House, the president’s men plotted behind closed doors. The current administration is now so brazen it does its dirty work in plain sight.
"Brazen"! That's it! Brazen, brazen, brazen. Just the word I was trying to remember.
———-
*Which is to say: properly accurate and precise, avoiding the tired clichés and the merely hyperbolic.
In: All, Splenetics, Such Language!
Look at the Body! (BBA IX)
Okay, I've already said I'm tiring a bit about all the talking about all the not talking about the first Downing Street Memo. Now we have the excitement of a Second Downing Street Memo, not to mention the promise of Rep. Conyers' hearings to be held this week.
At this point, I'd like to suggest that we stop talking about who's not talking about whether the first DSM is a "smoking gun" or not.
Disregard the smoking firearms for a moment.
May we, instead, start talking about the body lying dead in the room where the gun was found?*
[This continues my series of posts concerning the pre-Iraq-war actions of the US administration, aimed at increasing awareness of those activities, as part of the Big Brass Alliance (or BBA) and it's support of AfterDowningStreet.org. For more information from me, see my first posting on The Downing Street Memo: "Worth Remembering"]
———-
*By this, of course I mean that the DSM are an arrow — of the giant, neon and flashing-light variety — that point to a metaphorical warehouse filled with facts and figures about the [ahem, alleged] deception of the American people before the US invasion of Iraq. Presuming that the DSM are serving as notice that the emperor is wearing no clothes, it's time to take a fresh look and re-evaluate the obvious.
Instant Hindsight
Marty Kaplan* was writing about the expected MSM yawn that will greet the second Downing Street Memo, when he wrote this:
I'm reminded of the moment in Tom Stoppard's play Jumpers, when a character reacts to the news that the Radical Liberal party's spokesman for agriculture, Sam Clegthorpe, an agnostic, has been named Archbishop of Canterbury: "Sheer disbelief hardly registers on the face before the head is nodding with all the wisdom of instant hindsight. 'Archbishop Clegthorpe? Of course! The inevitable capstone to a career in veterinary medicine.'"
It just says so many things.
———-
* "Archbishop Clegthorpe", The Huffington Post, 12 June 2005.
Supporting Imperial Fashion
Isaac and I rarely watch TV anymore; there just doesn't seem much point to it really.
Now I think there's even less point, since apparently Driftglass watches all those tedious Sunday-morning talking-heads programs and then summarizes ("Sunday Morning Comin' Down…Redux") the results (far better than the TV Guide ever could) — at least he did this week..
Just consider these little excerpts, in which he also manages to capture, in the most vivid language, modern challenges to science and an eternal truth [?] of the Republican guidelines for political life*:
Back on Face The Nation – Bob Schieffer gives a little reason and shines a little clear light when he points (I’m paraphrasing) out that, with regards to Science generally, our national debate has become an embarrassment. We used to be the leaders and the trailblazers. And it used to be the job of Government to regulate the PRODUCTS of science…not science itself. Now we are governed by scared little idiots who want to ban science because it threatens their Hillbilly Cult superstition.
[…]
Brit Hume informs that that it would be a terrible mistake to shut down Guantanamo Bay and that basically all the charges leveled against and the charges are OUTRAGEOUS.After all, that fella from Human Rights Watch who said all of them bad things, he worked for the Clinton Administration! Horrors! Because as we know, Every Single One of the hundreds of thousands of people who were employed by the Executive Branch during the eight Clinton years were all America-Hating Liars.
And then he comes with the Sentence of the Week. The words perfectly sum up Republican Thinking, that, “To close the prison down would be an acknowledgement that what is going on down there is wrong.”
The issue for propagandist traitors like the Hume-unculus is not whether on not something is actually Wrong…it is acknowledging that something is Wrong. When, through a concerted assault of the Truth you actually get away with parading the Naked Emperor all over the teevee and demanding fealty to the Lie that he is dressed to the Nines…the only Unpardonable Sin is not going along with the scam.
(BTW, does anybody remember that we were going to bulldoze Abu Ghraib? That it was such a symbol of dread to the Iraqi People that it was to be razed as a sign of good faith…instead of repurposing it as Uncle Sam’s Anal Rape and Genital Electrocution Spa?)
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*To serve my own nefarious purposes, I have switched the order of driftglass' original presentation, putting Bob Schieffer ahead of Brit Hume.
In: All, Common-Place Book, Speaking of Science, Splenetics
Conservative Elitist Backlash
For more than thirty-five years, American politics has followed a populist pattern as predictable as a Punch and Judy show and as conducive to enlightened statesmanship as the cycles of a noisy washing machine. The antagonists of this familiar melodrama are instantly recognizable: the average American, humble, long-suffering, working hard, and paying his taxes; and the liberal elite, the know-it-alls of Manhattan and Malibu, sipping their lattes as they lord it over the peasantry with their fancy college degrees and their friends in the judiciary.
Conservatives generally regard class as an unacceptable topic when the subject is economics—trade, deregulation, shifting the tax burden, expressing worshipful awe for the microchip, etc. But define politics as culture, and class instantly becomes for them the very blood and bone of public discourse. Indeed, from George Wallace to George W. Bush, a class-based backlash against the perceived arrogance of liberalism has been one of their most powerful weapons. Workerist in its rhetoric but royalist in its economic effects, this backlash is in no way embarrassed by its contradictions. It understands itself as an uprising of the little people even when its leaders, in control of all three branches of government, cut taxes on stock dividends and turn the screws on the bankrupt. It mobilizes angry voters by the millions, despite the patent unwinnability of many of its crusades. And from the busing riots of the Seventies to the culture wars of our own time, the backlash has been ignored, downplayed, or misunderstood by liberals.
[Thomas Frank, "What's the Matter with Liberals?", The New York Review of Books, 12 May 2005.]
Transactional Congress
Just a taste from a breath-taking report by Elizabeth Drew, "Selling Washington", in the New York Review of Books (23 June 2005):
An analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics shows that pharmaceutical manufacturers, who received a windfall from the new prescription drug program in the 2003 Medicare bill—including a provision prohibiting the federal government from negotiating with drug companies on prices— contributed more than three times as much to those who voted for the legislation as those who voted against it. A bill passed this year in the Senate and the House to tighten the rules for filing bankruptcy had long been sought by finance, insurance, and real estate interests, and particularly by credit card companies. Taken together, they all contributed $306 million to congressional campaigns, 60 percent of it to Republicans, during 2003 and 2004. The richest interests also spend the largest amounts of money on lobbying. According to a recent study by the Center for Public Integrity, the makers of pharmaceuticals and health products spent the most—$759 million —on lobbying between 1998 and mid-2004, when the last lobbying reports were filed. Next came insurance companies. Oil and gas companies were seventh on the list.
The effects of the new, higher level of corruption on the way the country is governed are profound. Not only is legislation increasingly skewed to benefit the richest interests, but Congress itself has been changed. The head of a public policy strategy group told me, "It's not about governing anymore. The Congress is now a transactional institution. They don't take risks. So when a great moral issue comes up— like war—they can't deal with it." The theory that ours is a system of one-person-one-vote, or even that it's a representative democracy, is challenged by the reality of power and who really wields it. Barney Frank argues that "the political system was supposed to overcome the financial advantage of the capitalists, but as money becomes more and more influential, it doesn't work that way."
My Five-Inch Style Manual
Last year, as part of a project for which I was paid in actual money, I wrote a "Submission Guidelines Manual" for a website*. One section of the manual discussed style issues. Officially, we followed The Economist Style Manual, much of which is online.
I distilled the style manual into a very short list of guidelines that I try to follow in my own writing:
- Avoid tired, overused metaphors
- Favour# short words over long words
- Avoid unnecessary words
- Use active voice, not passive voice
- Avoid jargon; do not use foreign words or phrases unless there is no English alternative
- Use everyday language; don't be stuffy; avoid legalisms, beaurocratese, euphemisms and circumlocutions
- Avoid using slang words and expressions
- Be discriminating with Americanisms#; don't verb nouns
- Use good syntax
- Do not be sloppy in sentence construction
- Do not split infinitives
- Avoid contractions (can't, don't, won't…)
- Make sure that plural nouns have plural verbs
- Use the subjunctive properly
- Respect the gerund
- Be lucid
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*If you're really interested, e-mail me and I can share it with you. I thought at the time, and still do think, that's it's nicely written and succint. I would link it here except that we expect the URL to change someday soon.
#Remember, The Economist is a British publication.
Appealing to Conservatives
[…] Remember 9/11 France and Germany are sissies Remember 9/11 Remember Poland Remember 9/11 Forget Poland the pulling out bastards Remember 9/11 Gays hurt sanctity of marriage Remember 9/11 Stem cell research immoral Remember 9/11 We hate fags Remember 9/11 Gays caused 9/11 Remember 9/11 Abortion also caused 9/11 Remember 9/11 The Constitution says… Remember 9/11 Who cares what the Constitution says Remember 9/11 Gays cause abortions Remember 9/11 […]
[an excerpt — my favorite, most dramatic part! — from "Post to appeal to conservatives", Me4President2008, 10 June 2005.]
No Apology Here!
It seems that Jesse Helms, the homophobe who refuses to die, has written his life story. I am beside myself with anticipation.
The œuvre was given brief notice in The Washinton Post (9 June 2005, thanks to the AP), in a piece titled "Helms Apologetic on AIDS in Memoir".
Woo hoo! I thought. Helms actually apologizing for something to do with his 16th-century attitude about homos. What next? Has anyone heard the weather report from Hell?
Here, it seems, is the part that suggested the "apologetic" part of the title.
Helms also was an outspoken opponent of laws to protect homosexuals from discrimination and of funding for AIDS research, but he writes in the book that his views evolved during his final years in the Senate. He cited friendships he developed with North Carolina evangelist Franklin Graham and rock singer Bono, both of whom got him involved in the fight against the AIDS epidemic in Africa.
"Until then," Helms writes, "it had been my feeling that AIDS was a disease largely spread by reckless and voluntary sexual and drug-abusing behavior, and that it would probably be confined to those in high risk populations. I was wrong."
Yeah, this is an apology just like Rumsfeld "took responsibility" for Abu Graib.
This is no apology; this is a recognition of fact. Sure, it might sound like he feels contrite about his backwards attitudes and the devastating effects his bigotry had in not stopping the spread of AIDS. But, all he is saying is that he was wrong in thinking that AIDS would kill only the homos; he now recognizes that it has indeed spread beyond that boundary.
He does not, however, apologize for anything. This doesn't even come close to the "apology" favored among the Bush administration: "I'm sorry you found out that I did something I shouldn't have done."
When Helms finally passes to his unearthly reward, it will be interesting to see how the reactionary crowd laud his "accomplishments" without themselves appearing to be white-supremacist homophobes. If they even bother. I certainly don't expect much apologizing to be going on.
———-
[Update made a few minutes later.] I clean forgot that I wanted to make mention of driftglass' take on this "apology" (and the Republican strategy of thinking they can make things go away by not looking at them) if for no other reason than to mention the title:
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Splenetics
Corporate Media: Who Cares? (BBA VIII)
A shot from the Whiskey Bar ("Downing Streed Redux"):
In my own screed on the subject yesterday, I should have included links to two other organizations that are working to keep the story alive — afterdowningstreet.org and the Big Brass Alliance, a coalition of lefty bloggers who are also pushing the issue with admirable intensity.
Some folks have told me they think I'm being too pessimistic about the odds of actually persuading/pressuring the corporate media drones into doing their jobs. Pessimism is definitely my natural state, but in this case I'm speaking from a certain amount of personal experience (about 14 years) with how the news business works.
Prodding the media into revisiting a story it has collectively decided to ignore isn't impossible, but it's extremely hard.
This makes me think that it's time to clarify my own expectations, and what I hope to happen from being part of the Big Brass Alliance.
I've written several times about my opinion of corporate media, not to mention how tiresome I think it is when people waste all their conversational energy talking about what the media is not talking about, and using all their activist energy to try to get the corporate media to talk about what they'd like to see them talk about.
Sure, this was once a viable tactic when those newspapers and radios and TV outlets had an interest in journalism, before they were bought by largely reactionary business interests who use them to advance their own self interest. All liberal political activists of a certain age grew up learning tactics for generating publicity and news reporting for their cause. Largely, these days, I think it's a waste of time.
I write about the Downing Street Memo, as part of the BBA, to do my bit towards keeping the issue alive by actually talking about it, forcing my three readers to learn about it and read my opinions and tell others, and maybe get congressional leaders to take appropriate action and investigate the pre-war activities of the President and his administration in "fixing the intelligence" about Iraqi WMDs as a pretext for invasion.
I am most decidely not aiming at getting the corporate media to talk about it. They're not much use anyway, except as another form of popular survey. If some real journalist comes along who wants to investigate and expose, more power to her. But, overall, I don't care. (Oddly enough, if enough of us keep talking about it, then they will conver that "story".)
Each of us has a voice; we can speak for ourselves. I'm talking about it because I think we should talk about it, and if we keep talking about it more people will talk about, and then more people, and then maybe enough people will see that which is lying in plain sight right in front of their noses and recognize it for the corruption that it is.
And then we might find the collective will to do something about it.
[This continues my series of posts concerning the pre-Iraq-war actions of the US administration, aimed at increasing awareness of those activities, as part of the Big Brass Alliance (or BBA) and it's support of AfterDowningStreet.org. For more information from me, see my first posting on The Downing Street Memo: "Worth Remembering"]
One More Time
In the 1950s, Joseph McCarthy and his minions charged that there was a plot against America and that no one could support the Democratic Party "and at the same time be against communism." He decried "liberals" whose "pitiful squealing would hold sacrosanct those communists and queers" who had sold China into "atheistic slavery." And during the Vietnam War, Vice President Spiro Agnew charged that "the leaders of the anti-war movement" were "avowed anarchists and communists who detest everything about this country and want to destroy it."
[Geoffrey R. Stone, "O'Reilly's Dishonor", The Huffington Post, 10 June 2005.]