The Sound of the Crowd

1. Danny Goldberg, whose book “Dispatches From the Culture Wars: How The Left Lost Teen Spirit” should be required reading for all future democratic presidential candidates, has an article on Alternet. It’s about the ludicrousness of holding Hollywood responsible for the failure of democratic politicians and consultants.

Paragraph I agreed with most:

it is pretty silly to ask Republicans for advice on how Democrats can win. They want Democrats to lose and they know that anything they say in the media is part of what political pros call “the permanent campaign.” It is more likely that the Republicans are trying to psyche out their opponents so that they stay distant from one of their most valuable allies.

Paragraph I agreed with least, or maybe just wish Danny had clarified:

A few weeks before the election, Time Magazine asked voters whether each candidate “stuck to their positions.” Bush got the affirmative answer from 84 percent while Kerry got a “yes” from only 37 percent. Bush’s most popular line on the campaign trail had nothing to do with Hollywood, it was “You may not always agree with what I do, but you will always know where I stand.” Until the Democrats produce candidates who can say that and be believed, tens of millions of American progressives will be forced to turn to Michael Moore and anyone else who stands up for a modern, moral progressive politics.

See, I would argue that most people in fact don’t know where Bush stands, because he has a proven tendency to say one thing and do something different. And if Kerry had just said that, firmly, plainly, and with the mountain of incontrovertible evidence he could have cherry-picked, we might not be in this mess.

(Yeah, I know, I know. John Kerry couldn’t say anything firmly and plainly if you pointed a gun at his wife and daughter. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one)

2. From the no good will come of this dept, via Democratic Underground: We’re now using a secret weapon in Iraq. Saddam’s old commandos. What could possibly go wrong?

3. It looks like the Republican candidate for governor has won in Washington state. The Democrats can demand a hand-recount, but at the moment they don’t have the money for one. But it might not be a bad idea, given that they’re trailing by a mere 42 votes.

As noted here before, a Republican victory in WA isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world. But it isn’t the best, either. The always-lovely Amy Sullivan writes in Political Animal:

It’s true that Washington is really two states–Seattle and, well, the rest of the state–but it’s not really a toss-up. Kerry won the state by a good seven percentage points, the state legislature is now completely controlled by Democrats, Democrats have ruled from the governor’s mansion for the past twenty years, and Patty Murray handily beat Rep. George Nethercutt this year to hold onto her Senate seat.

4. You’ll need a Salon day pass for this if you aren’t a subscriber. It’s a very sad story about what can happen when the abyss looks also into you. And it scares me, just as what happened to Spalding Gray scares me, because here’s someone who seemingly conqured a lot of the fears that keep me from…that keep me from.

And she was celebrated, and she was the toast of the town, and her books were acclaimed and read. And she shot herself earlier this month.

Questions found in the book Love All The People by Bill Hicks. Answers found in my soul, he said pompously. Feel free to answer ‘em yourself in email or comments.

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Damned if I know. If I did, you think I’d still be doing this?

2. What is your greatest fear?

Dying young before I figure this shit out.

3. With which historical figure do you most identify?

Any number of people in the arts who managed to overcome their fucked-up head cases and produce a body of work. One that made people still talk about them when they were gone, and try to figure out how their head-cases were fucked up.

4. Who do you most admire?

People who get their souls on display for anyone to see–and manage to sculpt it into something artful.

5. What do you most deplore about others?

Being opinionated without being informed.

6. What vehicles do you own?

An uninsured car.

7. What is your greatest extravagance?

Nothing in my life is extravagance. Everything in my life is extravagance.

8. What do you always carry with you?

Watch, wallet, keys, denial.

9. What makes you most depressed?

The occasional glimpses through the fog of what my life has really become. It’s usually followed by flicking on the TV or going to sleep.

10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?

I hate to say, but if you know me, I think you can probably guess.

11. What is your favorite smell?

Grass. Or baking bread, like you get walking past a Boulongarie store or something. Even though I’ve never had fresh-baked bread in my life.

12. What is your most unappealing habit?

Cynicism to the point of toxicity, a friend of mine once said. And that’s a man who claims to love me like a brother.

13. What is your favorite word?

Brouhaha.

14. What is your favorite building?

Wow, what a great question. I don’t know if I’ve found it yet.

15. What is your favorite journey?

From here to California.

16. What or who is your greatest love?

G-. And again, anyone who knows me knows what that stands for. If not her, Nancy, Anne, Annabel & Keitha.

(For any of you who don’t know, those last four represent my muse that whispers in my ear when I’m writing, They’re characters I created for plays I’ve written)

17. Which living person do you most despise?

Not to wimp out but despise is a pretty strong word and I don’t know that there are any people I despise…certain character traits, tho (see 5)

18. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

Probably “I.”

19. What is your greatest regret?

Resisting tempation for Sinatra quote here…Maybe I should have gone to college. Maybe I should fought harder to stay in Californa. Maybe I should have told the amateur divas in Tennesee that if they spoke one word, did one thing on that stage that I didn’t write I was going to bash in the back of the men’s skulls with a baseball bat and choke the women with my bare hands.

Yeah, the last one.

20. When and where were you happiest?

I can’t give you date and time, but it was almost certainly sometime when I’d just seen a good drama either onstage or onscreen. Either that or watching the space hippy freaks die on that episode of “Star Trek.”

21. How do you relax?

I sleep. When I’m awake I’m always intense.

22. What single thing would improve the quality of your life?

Money. Lots and lots of money. They say it can’t buy you love, but I aim to test that theory. Because it can buy you an apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it might even help you get another play produced. Money can’t get everything, it’s true, but what it don’t get, I can’t use, I want money! (That’s…what I want…)

(Am I sure I’m on the left-wing?)

23. Which talent would you most like to have?

To be able to play the piano.

24. What would your motto be?

You have to throw the stone to get the pool to ripple. It’s a quote from the band Squeeze.

25. What keeps you awake at night?

See number nine.

26. How would you like to die?

With a lot of advance notice so I can inflict mix tapes on all my friends that they will feel guilty about if they don’t listen. With somebody who loves me and wants me at my side. Like Eric Roberts in It’s My Party.

27. How would you like to be remembered?

If I’m remembered at all, that would be a surprise to me. You know how I have kind of a reputation for being one of those unfiltered brains who’ll say just about anything? I’ll tell you a little secret: It’s easy when you don’t believe in your heart that anybody is really listening. (Admit it, you’re not listening to this, are you? You’ve moved onto the next sociopolitical rant. And well you might.)

That wouldn’t be too bad.

Very interesting interview in Mother Jones with Timothy Garton Ash, British historian and author of a new book called “Free World: America, Europe and the Surprising Future of the West.”

It’s long and there’s too many good paragraphs to quote them all. But here’s a starter:

MJ.com: You don’t think we’ll see a kinder, gentler Bush administration, chastened by its experience in Iraq?

TGA: Well, I think they feel vindicated by the American people, but they also feel — at least some of them — that they’re in a mess in Iraq. Also, Bush is looking to his place in the history books, and I think that’s very important. So, I think they will make a new opening to Europe and other allies, they’ll start with a more conciliatory tone. But the question is, will it survive another crisis? And I’m very skeptical about that. Iran could be the next crisis. If it looks like Iran has renewed uranium enrichment, for example, I think the Bush administration would get very tough, and they’ll say to hell with the consequences and to hell with the allies, and you’ll have another crisis.

The word that keeps pounding through my head as I’ve been travelling around — and I spent about a week in Washington — is hubris.

From The New York Times (via MotherJones)

“It’s like the twin strands of a double helix of a DNA molecule. One strand is the technical and operational part. We are basically on course for that one, in perhaps 70 or 80 percent of Iraq. But the other strand, without which you can’t have DNA, is the overall environment. There we have a problem.”

–An official involved in planning for the Iraqi elections, scheduled for Jan. 30.

Newsweek says (via Taegan) that Matt Lauer and Tim Russert “are on a wish list of outsiders that CBS has considered as successors to Dan Rather.”

Of those two, let it be Russert. At least he occasionally fact-checks.

“Political analysts warn that overly aggressive efforts to push a conservative agenda could leave Bush and his allies vulnerable to charges of political overreaching, and ultimately cause a voter backlash.

So far, no such backlash is in sight”

–From the Chicago Tribune, registration required.

“No such backlash is in sight?” Hello? We haven’t had another election yet. Although, as Pandagon points out, “Poll after poll after poll shows that the American people don’t think Bush has a mandate.” Some might think that mean something.

A woman just walked who hasn’t been able to walk for almost 20 years. How? Stem cells.

Breathe easy, Bush supporters.

Don’t you think you should?

From a Roger Ebert essay on movies and the meaning of life:

“I find that when I am actually writing, I enter a zone of concentration too small to admit my troubles. Although I might feel uneasy or unwell when I sit down at the keyboard and feel that way again when I stand up, while I am working I feel — what? There is a kind of focus or concentration, a gathering of thought, language and instinct, that occupies all the available places and purrs along satisfied with itself. I am known around the office as a “fast writer,” but while I’m engaged in the process, I don’t feel as if I’m writing at all; I’m taking dictation from that place within me that knows what it wants to say.

This has been true all of my life. When I was 15 and starting out as a sportswriter at the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, I would labor for hours over my lead paragraph. Bill Lyon, who was a year older than me and would later become a famous columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, advised me, “Get to the end of the piece before you go back to revise the beginning. Until you find out where you’re going, how can you know how to get there?” I took his advice and have never looked back. It condenses into a rule most writers discover sooner or later: The Muse visits during the work, not before it.”

Last night, ABC’s 20/20 newsmagazine broadcast a report on what they call “new details” in the Matthew Shepard murder. It was very disturbing.

But I’m trying to make up my mind whether I’m more disturbed by:

1. The fact that I think it was a slanted piece relying on less than credible sources. Those sources being, primarily, the murderers and their friends and family.

2. The fact that it was such a repellent example of what network TV news has become. All picture-perfect anchors nodding empathetically as they intervew murderers, and evil music that takes the place of presenting real information.

There are a number of things about the report that don’t hold up, and relying on the word of the punks who committed the crime is only the most obvious. This viewer’s guide from GLAAD and the Matthew Shepard Foundation lists 10 of them.

Question raised by the viewers guide include:

Why would 20/20 so aggressively - and sensationally - attempt to rewrite the factual record of this case without a single piece of incontrovertible evidence to support their claims?

Molly Ivins said the trouble with TV news is that they never have time to get to the next paragraph. Another of the things that’s really weird is that almost none of the so called “new details” about the murder presented by ABC are really new, they appeared in such sources as Vanity Fair and Harper’s. Both those articles, which are lengthy but recommended if you want to grasp some of the context 20/20 omitted, were published in 1999.

The viewer’s guide concludes by saying:

Clearly, there may have been factors in addition to anti-gay bias involved in this case. But why is 20/20’s piece so determined not to examine the complexity of this crime, but instead to develop an inaccurate single-cause motive that runs counter to the facts of this case?

I can only speculate. But I can’t help thinking that:

By attempting to show that Shepard’s murder was not a homophobic “hate crime,” but just another example of why people should “just say no,” they take it out of a realm that (some) Democrats are comfortable with. And into one that Republicans dote on. Even though we know they’re as hypocritical about their drug use as they are their protests about sex on Monday Night Football.

But perhaps the most disturbing possibility of all was voiced by the “Kitten” (Willow & Tara fan) who made me aware of this story in the first place. Why would ABC run such a story?

since the Election showed that we queers are Society’s Scapegoats, it’s become like Open Season on us.

And I want to finish, for reasons that I don’t fully understand, with this:

If a child ever rose on the wings of a dove
Or the claws of a vulture
Then a man ain’t a man when he don’t understand…
–Thomas Dolby, “Pulp Culture”