[In no particular order]
1. SHOULD we boycott the Beijing Olympics? Point: China executes about 20 people per day. Counter-point: What a crappy thing to do to the athletes, who have nothing at all to do with China’s human rights record. Plus, we execute people, too. To boycott on that principle would be a little hypocritical, right? Conclusion: Still unsure.
2. WHY did Michael Johns get booted from American Idol?
3. WHY are we still in Iraq? No, really, why? I want to hear good reasons for staying there.
4. WHAT’S UP with that 28 percent that approves of President Bush’s performance? Sub-question: What would Bush have to do to get their disapproval?
5. WHY are you using Evite when you can use Pingg? I can understand using Evite only if you like poorly designed, shaming invitations that are filled with ugly ads.
Also, while I can’t put it into question form, I thought I’d acknowledge how cool it is that Spain recently appointed Carme Chacon as defense minister. Chacon is the first female to become a top defense official—and she also has a bun in the oven.
Published on April 15, 2008
in politics.
I’M BITTER. I’m bitter about the bitter flap. Bitter that Hillary has made such a big deal about it. Bitter that she’s given John McCain a prefabricated, Hillary-approved bludgeon for the general election.
And I’m confused. If it were still a competitive race, I could understand it a little easier—the Clintons, after all, are ruthless competitors, and we can credit their ruthlessness for ending Republican hegemony in 1992. But this race is pretty much sown up (any scenario in which she wins would surely be Pyhrric for the party), making it clear that Hillary’s will to power is so strong that she’s willing to take everyone down with her.
This isn’t winning at all costs. It’s losing at all costs.
[Update: Frank Rich coins the perfect term for Hillary's against-all-logic drive toward the nomination: "kamikaze narcissism."]
Published on March 21, 2008
in politics.
Andrew Sullivan regrets his initial support of the Iraq invasion, says it was born of a “narrow moralism”:
I recall very clearly one night before the war began. I made myself write down the reasons for and against the war and realized that if there were question marks on both sides (the one point in favor I did not put a question mark over was the existence of stockpiles of WMD!), the deciding factor for me in the end was that I could never be ashamed of removing someone as evil as Saddam from power. I became enamored of my own morality and the righteousness of this single moral act. And he was a monster, as we discovered. But what I failed to grasp is that war is also a monster, and unless one weighs all the possibly evil consequences of an abstractly moral act, one hasn’t really engaged in a truly serious moral argument. I saw war’s unknowable consequences far too glibly. [Emphasis added]
Roger Cohen in the Times:
I understand the rage of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, however abhorrent its expression at times. I admire Obama for saying: “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.”
Honesty feels heady right now. For seven years, we have lived with the arid, us-against-them formulas of Bush’s menial mind, with the result that the nuanced exploration of America’s hardest subject is almost giddying. Can it be that a human being, like Wright, or like Obama’s grandmother, is actually inhabited by ambiguities? Can an inquiring mind actually explore the half-shades of truth?
Yes. It. Can.
Published on March 19, 2008
in politics.
Is the difference between Obama and pretty much every other mainstream politician, including, sad as it is to say, Hillary:
From the Times:
Mr. Obama had to address race and religion, the two most toxic subjects in politics. He was as powerful and frank as Mitt Romney was weak and calculating earlier this year in his attempt to persuade the religious right that his Mormonism is Christian enough for them.
When pushed against the fence, he didn’t take the demagogic route and seek refuge in a common enemy, as Romney did in secularism.
Published on March 18, 2008
in politics.
I didn’t hear him deliver it, but I read the transcript. Impressive.
Ezra Klein calls it “honest”:
Indeed, Obama could have given another speech. Shorter, to start. More focused on hope than on pain. More talk of tomorrow and less emphasis on the past. More dismissive of Wright and less insistent on the legitimacy of Wright’s experience, and the ubiquity of his thinking. He didn’t have to dwell on the black community’s frustration and the white community’s bigotry.
But this speech was something I didn’t expect: Honest. It was honest about Obama’s affection for Wright, even as it repudiated Wright’s comments. It was honest about the tragic history of race in America, even as it expressed faith in a redemptive future. It was honest about the resentment peddlers and racial charlatans who try and recast the increasing rarity of the American Dream as the consequence of ethnic competition rather than gross power imbalances. It was honest in its recognition that racial memory influences contemporary thought, honest in admitting that there’s anger in this country, and it’s justified, and that there’s fear in this country, and it’s real.