I just read Elisabeth Ladenson's Dirt for Art's Sake: Books on Trial from Madame Bovary to Lolita (it wasn't bad; I might discuss it later). Ladenson reminds me that in his "On a Book Entitled Lolita," Nabokov wrote that apart from the topic of his book, there are two "themes which are utterly taboo as far as American publishers are concerned":
a Negro-White marriage which is a complete and glorious success resulting in lots of children and grandchildren; and the total atheist who lives a happy and useful life, and dies in his sleep at the age of 106.
You can tell a lot about a society by its taboos and who it likes to see punished, I suppose is the point.
Some of us -- in my case, a political conservative and evangelical
Christian -- are getting a queasy feeling when it comes to the
presidential campaign of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, and
much of it has to do with his use of faith in this political campaign....
Some of these episodes are by themselves unproblematic; others are more
troubling. They are certainly different in degree, and even in kind,
from what President Bush, an evangelical Christian, has said.
Ummm... what?
And taken together, they raise a concern: Is Mike Huckabee, a man of
extremely impressive political gifts and shrewdness, playing the Jesus
card in a way that is unlike anything we have quite seen before?
Why, no. Or to put this another way, are you high, or do you just think everyone else is?
I get that the muckety-mucks in the GOP are worried because Huckabee actually means and believes all this God-bothering bullshit, and they've just been pretending and pandering. That's clear.
But the cynicism of this essay is just way off the charts. After the Huckabee poll surge, I can see why Peter Wehner wants to pretend that his party hasn't been pretending and pandering and dog-whistling and Christ-invoking and code-talking and cross-waving, very goddamn loudly and ostentatiously, for a couple of decades now. Similarly, for private reasons of his own he may someday wish to appear in public dressed in chainmail and a fruit-hat demanding he be worshiped as the Supreme Empress Susan. However, that doesn't place any obligation on anyone to play along with such sports.
That's your modern conservative thinker for you, though, especially of the Bush/Bennett variety. As soon as the immediate past that everyone knows about becomes inconvenient -- pretend it never happened. This is what they call "personal responsibility."
"Is Mike Huckabee, a man of
extremely impressive political gifts and shrewdness, playing the Jesus
card in a way that is unlike anything we have quite seen before?" Jaysus! It is in fact rather comical.
Sorry for the double-decker post, but I just wanted to point your attention to this interesting piece by CBS News' Chip Reid, which might explain why my man Edwards is receiving such little press (though it does seem to be improving slightly).
Reid notes that, from the perspective of political journalists, Edwards is No Fun:
I’m a bit unhappy with John Edwards. I’ve been covering his campaign
for 10 days and he hasn't made a lot of news. Let’s face it – a lot of
what political reporters report on is mistakes. The campaign trail is
one long minefield, covered with Iowa cow pies, and when they step in
one – we leap.
I’ve done very little leaping – and I blame Edwards. While other
candidates misspeak, over-speak, and double-speak, Edwards (at least in
these 10 days) has made so few mistakes that I end up being transported
-- newsless -- from town to town like a sack of Iowa corn .
He has a remarkable ability to stay on message. Not just in “the
speech,” but even in Q and A. Nothing throws him off. He turns nearly
every question into another opportunity to repeat his central theme.
Global warming? We need to fight big oil. Health care? Fight the big
drug and insurance companies. Iowa farmers’ problems? Blame those
monster farm conglomerates. And the Iowa populists eat it up. We'll see
how well it works in other states. He’s even disciplined in his daily routine. While most reporters
use the campaign trail as an excuse to over-eat and abandon their
exercise routines, Edwards squeezes in a run EVERY DAY, rain, sleet, or
shine.
Come on John – relax. Step in an Iowa cow pie and let me do my job.
Maybe that's why they're so anxious to gin up confrontations between the candidates: they're more fun. I honestly believe that any of the Dem candidates *could* be president, and well, but as with everyone else, I have my fave. Still, this is pretty starkly confessional on Reid's part, and surprisingly honest.
Reid's other observations, that Edwards is a regular guy who really believes what he says and understands the crises that matter to most Americans, that he respects his wife and hands over the mic to her readily, that he's an idealist, don't surprise me.
But it was a commenter at Bleeding Heartland that really put it in a nutshell for me:
You know why Iowans "eat it up" Chip? I was at three of these events
and I know why I and they eat it up. It's because his "theme" is about
rewarding work over wealth. All the other candidates' themes are about
themselves i.e. how much experience they have. How their judgment is
perfect. How many times they voted the right way.
But Edwards central theme is about us , not about him. He has a
crystal clear vision of the kind of America he would like to see in 30
years and how we can get there; all of us together. It's because of
the passion in his voice that you feel in your gut as he speaks. It's
like going to church and hearing a sermon that has you raring to go out
and do something useful. He's the candidate with a clear and powerful
agenda that can be achieved. It's not about him. It's about us. He's
a champion, not a rock star.
Beautiful. The commenter, Montana Maven, loves Edwards maybe even more than I do. All hail the rural liberal shitkickers! My peeps!
As I've noted, I'm generally quite keen on Senator Clinton as my senator, and I hope she stays my senator for a good long time, maybe another eight years.
Today, Ariel's soliloquy returns to her favorite subject, and then blames the objects of her derision for her fascination. It's umm, a little weird, even by her standards. (But thank christ she's not shooting for humor.)
Observe:
Our ubiquitous ex-president is playing his favorite uxorious game,
and it goes like this: Let’s create chaos and then get out of it
together. You ride to my rescue or I ride to yours. We come within an
inch of dying and then recapture the day by the skin of our teeth.
While we’re killing ourselves, we blame everyone else. We’ll be heroes.
..........
Just when I thought I was out, the Clintons pull me back into their conjugal psychodrama.
Yes, that's right. It's their fault that she's obsessing about their marriage. The Clintons are clearly the soap opera Mafia, who drag her, kicking and screaming from her thoughtful analysis of actuarial tables and the financial nightmare of the Big Shitpile to worry about how his ego affects her and vice versa. Because what she really wants to do is get Canadian-priced drugs for senior citizens. That Premarin's not free, you know.
And so, reluctantly, she straps on her hip-waders and cap guns and wanders into the fray. Well, someone has to do it.
Maybe the Boy Who Can’t Help Himself is simply engaging in his
usual patterns of humiliating Hillary and lighting an exploding cigar
when things are going well.
“They’re not Scott and Zelda
Fitzgerald, who had jealousy as the lifeblood of their marriage,” said
one writer who has studied the pair. “The lifeblood of their marriage
is crisis, coming to each other’s rescue.”
Bill is staying up
late strategizing and recasting her message and speeches. But he’s off
his game on the trail, making clumsy mistakes like his remark — bound
to be shot down by Poppy Bush — that Hillary would send 41 and 42
around the world to restore prestige lost by 43.
Hillary
advisers noted that when Bill was asked by a supporter in South
Carolina what his wife’s No. 1 priority would be, he replied: C’est
moi! “The first thing she intends to do is to send me ...” he began.
He got so agitated with Charlie Rose — ranting that reporters were
“stenographers” for Obama — that his aides tried to stop the interview.
He also got in the way of her message with stretchers about opposing
the Iraq war from the start, and — in a slap at Obama — deciding not to
run in ’88 because he lacked experience. Truth is, he didn’t run for
fear of bimbo eruptions.
It's so nice of her to take the bucket and dredge out the long-settled sludge at the bottom of the swamp for the rest of us, isn't it? So what's the juiciest piece of innuendo here? Oh, where to start? "The Boy Who Couldn't Help Himself"? "Scott and Zelda"? "C'est moi!"? "Bimbo eruptions"? Gah, it's like crab leg night at the Chinese buffet. Too much! And me without my extra-loose pants.
Thank jeebus we don't have any nasty policy to talk about and can go through all this shit instead! Forgive me, then, if I think the war, the economy, health care, the mortgage
crisis, how to help the broken veterans, shit, even Mitt Romney's dog's shit,
all take precedence over how many times The Clenis uses the word "I" in a
speech.
One wonders whence the venom comes, but maybe it's just simpler than that. Maybe, for her, this is just all about the Glory Days when she could ruminate about semen stains and have it taken as Serious Political Journalism.
You can almost see the empty spot on her mantlepiece just waiting waiting for the another Pulitzer for Excellence in Clenis-Bashing. After all, when else have so many obsessed so profitably (for themselves) about so little (the the rest of us)? And MoDo was Queen of the Ball.
Can we keep it light, can you keep it clean, Maureen?
And Thers, *this* is powerpop, dood.
UPDATE: Guess who? : "Maureen Dowd sounds absolutely right to me. "
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked...
You saw them naked?
Come on, Allen. Don't tell us that somehow you "figuratively" saw them.
You said you saw them, and either you saw them or you didn't. Facts are stubborn things.
Very clever! Here's another poem that Ann Althouse should consider, though:
Pollution
All around
Sometimes up
And sometimes down
But always around.
Pollution, are you coming to my town?
Or am I coming to yours?
We're on different buses, pollution
But we're both using petrol
Bombs.
Think about it. But not too much. That would be unseemly and perhaps partisan.
The difference between Ann Althouse and Chia Pets is that Chia Pets don't take nearly so many shitty photographs.
Remember last summer, when speculation was rife that Fred Thompson would announce his candidacy, and the attention turned to Bubbles, his child bride? I weighed in myself, in one of my first posts here. We were assured then that Jeri was a brilliant political strategist, that her career at the RNC was stellar, followed by the inevitable accusations of bitchy backbiting and women's control. (In fact, it looks like nothing so much as the made-up Travel Office Scandal of 1993--how retro! Where'd I leave my flowy skirts and hiking boots?)
Well, I sort of lost track of Jeri after that, though watertiger's been doing a bangup job with Grandpa Daddy and his eyebags. The snark was clearly in good hands.
But then I happened across this interview with the illustrious Mrs. Thompson, who's now embracing her trophy wifitude and sneering at the idea that a first lady is anything more than a pleasure worker.
Now, if you become First Lady, would you have any role in Fred's
Administration? Would you sit in on cabinet meetings, for example?
(Laughs) The only meeting I'd be sitting in on would be the meeting
when he gets off the clock -- well, you really don't get off the clock
-- when he gets together with the family. One thing he learned growing
up is the importance of sitting down, counting your blessings, and
having dinner together. That's the only one I would be involved in.
Okay, so let's translate: as First lady, I will stay at home all day
waiting breathlessly for the moment when Daddy comes in to give my life
meaning. (Is there anyone who seriously doubts that she calls him
"Daddy"? Paging Dr. Freud to the white courtesy phone.) All I'm saying
is that a buff young gardener could do a lot worse than seek White
House employment at this point, because if Fred gets elected, there's a
Desperate Housewife with a verge just aching to be trimmed.
Now Hillary Clinton has been touting her "experience" as First
Lady on the campaign trail, as if it's an enormous asset that makes her
particularly well qualified to be President. She's even taking credit
for some of the things her husband did as President. As a potential
First Lady, what do you think of that?
Well, I try not to pass judgment on a lot of this stuff because
everyone has had different experiences. What I know is that the
experiences Fred has had, from getting married at 17 and working in a
factory, putting himself through college and then through law school,
being a federal prosecutor at 28, being minority council at 30, moving
on to help Marie Ragghianti take down a corrupt governor, playing
himself in the movies, being a U.S. senator, and doing all the things
he has done since then qualifies him to be President.
Marrying (him) doesn't qualify me to be in any of those decision
making processes with him. All that qualifies me for is to be his wife
and that's what I ought to do.
I love him, support him, and try to be a good wife and a good mother. That's the role I signed onto when I married him.
Remind me: did June Cleaver have a boob job? (And forgive me, but I don't personally think that "playing himself in
the movies" is any more of a qualification for president than playing
with himself at the movies would be, but I note that the 2008 field is
surprisingly Paul Reuben-free.)
Of course all of this is a veiled and ugly critique of Hillary Clinton, though dressed in a soft fluffy nightgown, not unlike a dagger with a Hello Kitty handle. Of course there are First Ladies who spend the day in a Xanax-and-Marlboro haze to conceal their deep misery over the fact that they're married to sociopaths, but, you know, there are also First Ladies who have a great influence on public policy. Senator Clinton noted at the outset that her model was Eleanor Roosevelt, not Mary Todd, and she conducted herself accordingly. But I don't believe for one second that, had she been a shy, retiring type, she would have been spared the barrage of shit which has poured down on her head for the last 15 years like an Iraqi police barracks. But in Jeri's world, if only Hillary hadn't prioritized things like health care and had instead waited in lingerie for Bill to walk through the door, we would never have had to go through that farce of an impeachment.
Which brings me to Jeri's next point:
What I think is probably of more interest to some of your readers is
the fact that conservative women get such a different treatment in the
press, including the women's press, than the Democrats.
For goodness sake, Hillary has been on the cover of most women's
magazines and had glowing reports on everything she has ever touched.
Michelle Obama actually could stand up in an Annie Leibovitz spread in Vogue
magazine with her finger pointed at her husband's campaign manager,
telling him what to do in the caption, and I don't think that Cindy or
Judith or I could get away with such a thing.
So, you don't think Republican women get fair treatment compared to the Democratic women?
Generally speaking, no, I don't.
I agree with you.
Now that's some disinterestered reporting!
How anyone, ideological bent aside, could possibly think that Hillary Clinton has "had glowing reports on everything she has ever touched" is beyond me. Objectively, it's simply not true. As far as the odious form of journalism known as women's magazines (You're too fat! Your orgasms aren't good enough! Why didn't you make a homemade gingerbread house with lemon mousse snow this holiday season?!?), I have only this to say: No Search Results For: hillary clinton. It's possible, I suppose that there was a write-up or two when she was First Lady, back in the days when she was required to come up with cookie recipes and take shit for her hairstyle, but they don't seem to have much interest in her as a political figure.
Women who ally themselves to retrograde gender roles unattainable to most people (how much does it take to keep spouse at home? I shudder to think) don't do other women any favors. Women who dress like mermaids and princesses don't really ask to be taken seriously. Women who attack other women for attempting to help drag the country out of the cesspool of the Bush administration deserve no sympathy. And when it's all done with a giggle and a shiv, well, no, I don't particularly think that requires whatever her backwards-ass idea of fairness might be.
And now, the kicker.
Now, let me ask you a question you've probably heard 500 times:
you have been called a trophy wife quite a bit during this campaign. Do
you find that insulting given what you've accomplished in your life?
You know, your perspective changes as things in your life change. At
first, it was kind of a strange experience to go through, but now,
after being on the bus with the boys, and being 41 years old with two
kids under 4, I am thinking that's not such a bad thing to be said
about me.
(Laughs) Yeah, it is kind of a backhanded compliment, isn't it?
(Laughs) As I said, my perspective has changed and I'm not so sure
it's bad. All my girlfriends and my aunts have been telling me, "You
know what? You'll look back on that and you'll be happy..."
I also have 2 kids under 4, and I don't look like a trophy wife. Are there days when I wish I could wake up in Jeri's bod? Sure, but if that means waking up with her brain, then the exchange is not worth it. With apologies to NTodd, I don't think most people are deciding this
election on the FLILF issue. (If they were, Dennis would be polling
much higher, as his wife is by far the most beautiful and exotically foreign one in the running.) But Fred makes this joke all the time.
I never read such a backward-looking retrograde piece of crap in my life. The whole interview could have been given in 1927 or 1957 or 1977, with very few changes. Jeri defines herself through her man Matlock, and any woman who does not is not a real woman. Interest in public affairs and public service are clearly unseemly when there's primping to be done.
Feh.
Below: Jeri prepares for the inauguration, January 2009.
Greater Wingnuttia is a positioning of queer locale and unusual clime, an imperceptible perplexity. Apparently there anything whosoever can be said and articulated and it will be true and insoluble and will have to be believed, on pain of bemusement inexorable.
So everybody and their brother is listening to
Rush today, wondering if he'll take a shot at Huckabee after an unnamed
Huckabee aide in DC criticized Limbaugh...
The first comment,
moments into the show: "You want to whine like Mike Huckabee's
whining... I hoped it wouldn't come to this, but it happened."
Now he's going after Rollins, for claiming Rush (and Rich) don't like Huckabee simply because they didn't foresee his rise.
Rush is now playing audio of him talking about "what if Mike Huckabee wins Iowa" from November 8...
"I saw it coming... and I now may be seeing it going."
UPDATE: Rush is on fire.
"These
people are coming after me personally, something I have not done.
They're coming after me personally the way the libs do."
Rush,
discussing how he differs from the NY-DC media axis, lists off Harriet
Miers, Dubai Ports World, Republican spending abuses, illegal
immigration...
On the argument that he secretly wants Hillary to
win, to make him a bigger star: "I became a megastar long before the
Clintons got into the White House."
"I really am uncomfortable with this, I was hoping it wasn't going to come to this."
"I've never called him a Huckster, I've called his fans Hucksters."
Rush points out Rollins ran the Christie Todd Whitman campaign, calling him the "DC-Manhattan Axis campaign manager."
"I'm part of the Cape Girardeau-Middle America Axis."
"Stop with this Clintonian spin."
"McCain's starting to look better to than this guy, and that's saying something."
"The Huckabee campaign is trying to dumb down conservatism in order to get it to conform with his record."
Limbaugh is now comparing Huckabee to H. Ross Perot.
"Who
is this campaign to decide who is and who is not conservative? I hadn't
heard of Huckabee in any serious manner before this campaign began.
Believe me, I know who the conservatives are and aren't."
"It's elites who want to talk to Iran, not Middle America. It's the elites who are soft on crime, not Middle America."
Hmm. I can buy that. Yes, Middle America just threw up in its mouth a bit. I sure did.
But DAMN. On the whole this stuff is even more puerile & embarrassing than the slap-fight I witnessed over the lead for "Damn Yankees" when I was 16 -- and I went to a weenie all-boys Catholic high school, motherfucker.
UPDATE: Would Molly I classify the following as "Power Pop"? I wonder.
NARRATOR: By 1995 Pantera was the heaviest metal band in the world. Propelled by
guitarist Dimebag Darrell's frenzied fretwork, the Texas outfit's
bone-rattling brand of musical mayhem shook the senses of millions of
delirious fans.
Or:
SINGER PHILLIP ANSELMO: I was unapproachable. My mind was not my own. It was filled with... discord -- if anything.
Or:
VINNIE PAUL ABBOTT (on Anselmo's heroin overdose): At the time I didn't know anything about heroin, I had no clue what it was.... Somebody comes running around the corner and says "Phil's out!" I saw him laying on the ground blue and people hitting on him and all this, and I was like, "damn, dude had heat frostrations!" and "no dude, he ODed on heroin!" and I'm like "heroin! You gotta be kidding! No fucking way, not Phil Anselmo!"
And if you need more: "Phillip's struggles turned Pantera into a powderkeg. Even vivacious guitarist Dimebag Darrell began tiptoeing around the volatile vocalist."
The War on Christmas seems to be more of a low-intensity conflict this year than an outright conflagration, as in Holiday Seasons past. Perhaps that's because it's hard to keep a hate on for something so stupid year in, year out.
Or perhaps not. Either way, one clear effect of the War on Christmas nonsense was and is to further aggravate the already overblown sense of victimization, isolation, and indeed entitlement on the part of those who are interpellated and hence flattered by Bill O'Reilly-standard propaganda.
And that's depressing, because that's kind of made Christmas suck, a bit. I'm not particularly sentimental by nature but I do have something of a soft spot for the Christmasy peace on earth, good will towards men stuff: we need more of that in this nation. But the War on Christmas baloney points in the other direction. Let us not feel charitable: let us feel aggrieved!
I thought of this the other day when I passed the little marquee sign for the Baptist church at the bottom of our hill. Here's what it read:
"Christmas" is not "the 'C' word," and never has been. (The "C-word" of course is "cunt.") But pretending that "Christmas" IS a swear word reinforces and indeed helps to invent a particular kind of social identity for a particular group, a group united around an array of shared grievances that are not less deeply felt merely because they're largely imaginary or even preposterous.
Fox News and Greater Wingnuttia decided they wanted to politicize -- and consequently take ownership of -- Christmas. And that has quite literally made my neighborhood a little less neighborly.
