The Sound of the Crowd

“If people think in this election, if they think about the choices that have been made and the vision John Kerry offers, we win. Therefore they (the Republicans) have to get people to stop thinking and they’re real good at that. We already see what they do. They’ve got to turn John Kerry from a three-dimensional human being to two-dimensional cartoon. It’s what they know to do.”

Home is behind
The world ahead
And there are many paths to tread
Through shadow
Through the edge of night
Until the stars are all alight

Mist and shadow
Cloud and shape
Hope shall fail
Hope shall fade

–From The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, “The Steward of Gondor” AKA Pippin’s song

Clarke’s a racist. That’s why he criticisizes Condi Rice. It has nothing to do with her incompetence (demonstratable).

Isn’t it my party–or rather, the Democrats, who may or may not be my party–that is supposed to inject race into debates?

Ah, the GOP.
Party of Lincoln.

Salon.com News has a story about, once again, our kind of Republican here at The Sound Of The Crowd: Those against Bush. Salon being Salon, you have to either be a subscriber or click through a brief ad. I think it’s worth it; to convince you, herewith a few ‘graphs…

“Moderate Republicans are often fiscal conservatives but social liberals — in many ways, the exact opposite of this administration. They believe in balanced budgets, environmental conservation and a foreign policy that’s strong without being needlessly belligerent. They see themselves as the heirs of former President Teddy Roosevelt, the avid conservationist and trustbuster, and former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, the philanthropist, statesman and governor of New York. The party they joined was staid and dignified. It was the other party that seemed shrill and radical.”

“Fasciani, a native of Westchester, N.Y., is a Republican of the old school who counts Abraham Lincoln and Roosevelt among his heroes. He’s proud of the party’s tradition of environmental stewardship — it was Richard Nixon, after all, who established the Environmental Protection Agency — and the military valor shown by people like Eisenhower and McCain. The party he loves is one where strength and erudition aren’t mutually exclusive.

“Teddy Roosevelt, this man read more books than Bush could name,” says Fasciani. “He wrote 50 or a hundred books in his lifetime.” (Fasciani is being hyperbolic — Roosevelt authored a mere 36). ”

“Bush, of course, has been superbly willing to alienate such elites — a term that, when used by the right, seems to encompass most educated people who live in coastal cities. “My values are not Mr. Bush’s,” says Susan Cosgrove, a 59-year-old lifelong Republican who owns a communications firm in Pittsburgh. “The Republican Party as I think of it — the party of Rockefeller — had a profound respect for character, and I don’t think Mr. Bush is a man of character. I think his presidency is one of cronyism and pandering to the most radical wing of the party.”

Al Franken was on The Daily Show last night, promoting the launch of his new talk-radio program next week. So I’m here trying to find out where I might listen to his show, be it on a WA station or online, and I do a Google search.

Here’s what I come up with. Since March 2, Google lists 10 major stories on Franken, of which half are right-wing pages like WorldNetDaily complaining that “The nation’s news media is working overtime to help him succeed.”

Let me put that another way: The right-wing media, which is responsible for 50% of the coverage Franken is getting, is complaining because he’s getting too much coverage.

Okay…

Eric Alterman has a good round-up of the latest news on those unpatriotic liars who suggest that “this administration is both incompetent and dishonest.”

The Washington Monthly’s blogger formerly known as Calpundit has a chilling item about Condi Rice and Clarke.

There is part of me that–well, not feels sorry for Rice, but hates to see the uses to which she puts her apparent intellect. In my case this is not because, as the recent book “Bushwomen” suggests often happens with Rice’s potential critics, her sex and race make me want to give her a pass.

No, I feel whatever I feel about her because I once worked with a guy who went to Stanford at a time Rice was on the faculty there. I think she was his advisor or somesuch. But I always remember how highly he spoke of her and how impressed he was with how smart she was. I think I even met her once–not for longer than it takes to say hello and shake a hand, but still.

But it seems to me undeniable that however good she was as Stanford, at her current job…not so much.

BBC News Entertainment item about a certain Python film which is wending its way to a cinema near you in response to Mel Gibson’s multi-million dollar epic. You can say this is a sensible counterbalance, or you can say it’s shameless exploitation. I say who cares? Life of Brian is arguably the Python’s best film (it certainly is their favorite), and in my opinion, one of the best statements on religion in general.

When the Monty Python team had the idea that they wanted to do a biblical parody, each went away and read the bible. What they found is that they didn’t really want to ridicule Jesus, because if you look at what he’s written to have said, there’s not much to argue with. But as for those around him…

And so they made Life Of Brian, a funny and potent film about the dangers of mindlessly following. And ooh, did it piss some of the christians off…

Thanks again to Ian, who’s worth his weight in links, for this one, and for the headline.

ETA: On the other side of the aisle, there’s a group that thinks “The Passion” is causing miracles, and are making a “documentary” of same. Now, again, I haven’t seen the film. I don’t know whether the charges of anti-semitism are true. But I do know that one of the so-called “miracles” they cite is “a Jew who now accepts Jesus as Messiah.”

Things that make you go, “Hmmm.”

Another column, this one by Joe Conason, about the Clarke book.

I’m starting to think that the reaction by Bush and his cronies is as important as any charge Clarke makes. As has been pointed out by a couple of others, if those charges were false, they should be pretty easy to disprove. Instead, they denigrate a man who…well, as Conason puts it:

“Mr. Clarke is a nonpartisan professional who has devoted his life to national security, serving four Presidents of both parties during a distinguished public career that spanned 30 years. Unlike most of those who have rushed to criticize him, he rose to the highest levels of government strictly on merit rather than family or political connections. His devotion to duty and his qualifications in his field may be measured by his role on Sept. 11, 2001. He ran the Situation Room in the hours immediately after the attacks, while the President flew to Offutt Air Force Base and the Vice President sat in a fortified bunker. When the White House was evacuated in fear of another suicidal crash assault, he stayed there to continue his work.”

Now does that sound like man whose motives and ethics you want to question?

And how long do you think it’ll be before we start hearing Kerry/Clarke talk? If only Wesley Clark had won the nomination, we could have had Clark/Clarke…

ETA: Clarke is to be the guest on Fresh Air on NPR this evening. Following that link should help you find where and when it’s on in your area.

ETA, again: I hope more than a few of you listened. .the man makes a hard-to-refute argument. It’s that weird thing of attacking something and actually having information on your side that gives you the appearance of being right. Novel tactic, isn’t it? Here are two accounts of Clarke’s “trial by GOP fire,” one by Mark Evanier, the other from The Washington Post.

A few more thoughts on the way some Angel fans are choosing to spend their discretionary income:

“$700 a day?!? From my own (very small) efforts I know that’s-

Two weeks in a motel for a family from out of town while their mother undergoes chemo OR

About four hundred meals in a local shelter OR

Two months of rent subsidy for a single parent who’s just fallen off the unemployment rolls OR

A month’s utilities, phones, and internet for a clinic OR

A whole lot of other things ranging from pro bono vet care to an eye exam and glasses for a needy child.”

–from “Jixer,” a poster at The Kitten, The Witches and the Bad Wardrobe, a board for fans of the Willow & Tara characters on Buffy, quoted with permission.

Good Jonathan Lethem essay on comic books. Especially liked ‘graphs:

“DC’s heroes are instantly comprehensible, more interesting in and of themselves than in the plots where they nominally reside. Reading a hundred issues of Superman is like watching Andy Warhol’s Empire – even as the object in the center of the frame grows in mythic force, everything else means progressively less until you want to throw yourself off a tall building. Batman, that traumatized vigilante, is a bit richer, but to read a hundred Batman books is to see the failure of his pallid, sycophantic supporting cast: why won’t anyone ever call Batman on his shit?”

“Gerber probably somewhat misunderstood the narrative-aesthetics of his form, which was never actually novelistic so much as soap-operatic. Its greatest practitioner was probably Stan Lee all along, who in Fantastic Four had grasped that he was creating a serial which, like daytime television, generations of readers would want to grow into and out of, and invested it with his big sloppy heart rather than trying to think his way out of it. Lee’s great successor, Chris Claremont, reclaimed Marvel’s angsty sincerity in X-Men, and there was no looking back. Marvel’s creative culmination was a tombstone for its old, clumsily-wielded transformative potential.”

Thanks to Ian for the heads-up.