Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Uninvited

I’m thinking that along about now Ezra Klein is wishing that he had invited Mickey:

We non-elite writers learn something just from watching the sausage get made. One thing we learn is it’s just sausage. Ezra Klein has taken a lot of what could be highly informative back and forth on the World Wide Web and privatized it, much as rich people in gated communities reclaim green space from the public sphere and wall it off behind guards and fences. It’s not an egalitarian or democratic impulse.

I for one, am unshocked. These folks have a much higher opinion of their democratic impulses than is justified by their actual behavior.

[Update a couple minutes later]

An Instapundit emailer has an amusing suggestion:

Funny, isn’t it, how during the Bush Administration, the New York Times and the “mainstream” news organizations spilled national security secrets on a whim, but Journolist is a sacrosanct temple of secrets. The CIA should run all secret programs from within a “tea party” protest, it will guarantee a media blackout.

And note, we’re discussing all this stuff, making the sausage, in public.

General

Finally

9 Comments

It’s raining.

This is the first serious rain we’ve had in months. If you only looked at the freeway medians in south Florida, you’d think you were in Arizona. I have brown patches on my lawn where the irrigation is inadequate, even though we water on the days prescribed by the local fluid commissars. I think we’ve gotten an inch so far, with more forecast for the next day or so.

I hear about people who move to the Pacific northwest and get depressed at days of endless clouds and rain. I’m the opposite. In California, near the beach, it would often be cool and foggy all day (with sunshine just a mile or so to the east) and I loved it. Down here in the sunshine state, I tend to go into a funk at the prospect of yet another depressing day of Sol unhindered. Even though it’s not particularly cold, I think I’ll make a pot of soup and revel.

[Update a while later]

Wow, it’s really coming down. This is where the expression comes from, “when it rains, it pours.” Unfortunately, it will quickly saturate and then run off into the canals and ocean. And looking at the radar, the bulk of the activity is offshore, giving water to the fish, who probably don’t notice much. It would be better if this was happening over the lake.

Humor, Popular Culture

The Dummy Killer

1 Comment

Lileks reviews (his assessment) the greatest comic-book cover ever.

If he’s really a dummy killer, we need to send him to Washington.

Also, a screed on the NEA:

The Federal-funding argument was lost a long time ago. As with so many things, opposition to Federal funding is equated to opposition to the thing itself. The existence and healthy survival of these things before Federal intervention is meaningless; what seems to count above all is the satisfaction some get from knowing there is a National Something or other, complete with assistant special directors for coordinating things, because God knows we couldn’t produce art if someone in Washington wasn’t coordinating it all.

But before we go on, consider the National Endowment. I’m just guessing, but I’ll bet the National Endowment for the Arts was conceived as some sort of middlebrow self-improvement program – sending Pablo Casals LPs to schools, helping small towns put on “Our Town,” subsidizing museums so they could put on challenging works like gigantic Calder mobiles, and paying off the survivors when the damned thing snapped a cable and carved a tour group in stir-fry slices. I’m sure it still funds good things. But let us risk a headache and try to think of a few art forms we managed to create without its assistance:

Jazz

Blues

Rock and Roll

Every movie made in America

Skyscrapers

Painting that looks like something

Sculpture that looks like someone

As it happens I like modern art, so this isn’t some philistine sneer at funny pitchers what don’t look like Whistler’s Mama. I’m not even opposed in principle to state funding of the art, for two reasons: 1) the monarchs and the church did a fine job of it for millennia, and 2) if some small town wants to help defray the cost of a play in the school gym, fine. But I have to draw a line, because if I say it’s good to support orchestras in large cities with Federal money, then anyone gets to support their favorite kind of art, even if it happens to be guillotining paper-mache replicas of the Founding Fathers on Presidents Day. You get your art, I get mine.

Read all. The banks are discovering what artists should have long understand — when you start to take handouts from the government, your integrity is hopelessly compromised.

I should note that it gets better:

What does he propose?

. . . and move into a broad, far-reaching series of projects that question the role of religion and commerce in the life of the nation

Ah. Of course. It’s the perfect distillation: take the money from people who have used commerce to succeed in the arts, so we can question the role of commerce in the life of the nation. Ideally, common people will become Aware and have Consciousness Raised from its gutter-state to the Olympian heights where one can see a magnificent future, a time when the role of commerce has been questioned with the force and incisive detail you only get from people who can’t get anyone to pay them for what they do.

To quote the Iron Lady, the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples’ money.

Political Commentary

A Harbinger?

Is this a blip, or a trend?

…it will almost certainly flip back and forth from last week’s Dem +3 and this week’s Rep +2. Nonetheless… you do have to wonder just how badly we are getting hurt by actually sticking to principles for a change.

I think a good indicator will be the special election in New York. If the White House throws everything it has at it, including ACORNs, and the Republicans win anyway, it will be the same kind of portent that we saw when the Democrats were losing special elections in 1993.

Political Commentary

The Clown Show Continues

4 Comments

The same morons who are whining about AIG bonuses are the ones who put the requirement for them in the Spendulus bill.

I’ve got this really radical idea. How about if our legislators are allowed time to read bills before they vote on them? You know, just so they might have a half a prayer of knowing what’s in them? I know that some of my commenters think that’s crazy talk, but I just can’t help but feel that it might not be a bad idea.

And it makes the Maine Mushheads and Arlen Specter look all the more stupid.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Incompetent or crooked?

Let’s see: the AIG bonuses were public knowledge last year. But, says Team Obama, the facts were “extremely complex and not easily understood.” So they are relying on the incompetent excuse.

But Tim “only man who could solve this problems so we have to overlook the fact that he cheated on his taxes” Geithner was head of the Federal Reserve when the Feds bailed out AIG and had the bonuses in place. Score another goal for incompetence.

It’s not an exclusive or.

[Update a few minutes later]

I’d like to think that this is becoming obvious to more and more people (particularly people who previously imagined that governments are competent to run economies):

Our political class lacks the self-discipline needed to handle a crisis. They’re too busy reacting to headlines, polls, and fears of headlines and polls. The result is . . . well, endless screwups like this.

Not that there was any evidence prior to this that they’d behave any differently.

[Update again]

He’s gotten Modo’s Irish up:

Barack Obama even needs a teleprompter to get mad.

When a Democrat President has lost Maureen Dowd, things are getting pretty bad.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!