Friday, July 02, 2004
Supporting the President is nothing to be ashamed of. Bush on the other hand ...
Entertainment Weekly has a good interview with Michael Moore. You can find it here, but it requires a subscription. Here's the final Q&A:
EW Ever worry about your tone? I mean, this guy is the President.
MOORE I understand what you're saying. He is the President of the United States. Look, here's a good example of how I feel about this. A couple of weeks ago, out here on Broadway, a guy comes up to me and says, ''I'm a Navy surgeon. And I was on a ship off Iraq the night you made your speech at the Oscars and I was very angry at you. I remember yelling with the others at the screen. Now I just want to apologize. You were right. You were telling the truth.'' And I said, Listen, you don't owe me any apology. Apologize for what? That you believed your Commander-in-Chief? That you believed the President of the United States? Why should you feel bad? You should believe the President, because if we can't believe our President we're in deep trouble. You don't have to apologize for anything. In fact, I want to thank you for offering to risk your life to defend us. I think it would make the founding fathers proud to see the country still survives in their first belief, that's why it's their First Amendment, that somebody has the ability to express themselves and criticize the top guy. That's the country they created. That's the country that gave us Mark Twain, Will Rogers,
I commented on this a few weeks back when talking about strategies for dealing with people who voted for Bush in 2000. I took much the same tack that Moore takes here: those people have nothing to be ashamed of. They believed in what they voted for. It wasn't their fault that what they got wasn't what they promised.
But, if they vote for Bush again, then it will be their fault.
Inappropriate Familiarity
Does anyone besides me find it condescending for George to always refer to leaders of other countries by their first name? I expect he thinks he is presenting an air of friendly familiarity. But to me it just comes off as belittling of the position of importance held by those leaders. It just seems disrespectful.
He's not Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, leader of a country 82 million people.
He's just some German guy named Gerhard.
Well, I suppose it's better than calling him "Ger".
That was fast
It was only yesterday that a judge ruled that Florida had to release the felon purge list to the media and already the Miami Herald is out with a report that nearly 2,100 voters on that list could be wrongly barred from voting in November. Did they really double-check several thousand listings in a single day? Not likely. It's more likely that the Herald has had access to the list for several weeks but was holding back on reporting this story until the courts ruled on whether the list could be released. I would imagine some upset local election official leaked the list to the media well in advance.
(btw, I love the picture on the story of the guy holding a bible and his clemency document. Nice touch.)
The Power Of Image
Report from Variety (of all places!)
NEW YORK -- U.S. news networks agreed to let the American military censor out certain images of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s court hearing Thursday in Baghdad, one in a bizarre series of events surrounding coverage of the session.
American and Iraqi officials did not want any footage shown of Iraqi guards or court personnel, and they asked broadcast and cable news nets to honor this request.
But the situation took an unexpected turn even before the hearing began, when U.S. officials ordered CNN and Al-Jazeera, the pool camera crews, to disconnect their audio equipment. Officials said it was the wish of the Iraqi judge.
I commented yesterday on the very real danger that these proceedings could be used by Saddam to persuade the Iraqi people that he was as much a victim of the American occupation as they are. Frankly, the stagecraft of this hearing sucked. The only image that was broadcast was of Saddam, hearing the charges and responding to them with apparent vigor. The face of the judge and the guards were not shown. This visual makes it much harder to put across the idea that it was the Iraqis who were in charge of the proceeding instead of Saddam. A better camera view would have been over the shoulder of Saddam, focused on the judge, as he read of the charges.
Now, it turns out, this choice of angles was deliberate, most likely out of a concern that any broadcast of the judge's face would further endanger his life. But then that just leads us back to the failure of the occupation. The fact that they had to avoid showing the judge's face in order to protect him only feeds into the idea that they are working from a position of weakness. The only image of strength in that hearing yesterday was Saddam's
(Aside: several American media people are describing Saddam's performance as rambling and incoherent. But I've seen reports that Middle East media is describing him as being more in control. Could these reports just be wish fulfillment?)
Republican Political Correctness
Republicans have been very successful at using the term "political correctness" to beat back any attempt to paint them as sympathetic to the worst attributes of any of their supporters. This is how Dick Cheney can go on Rush Limbaugh without being asked by the media if he supports some of the more controversial things that Limbaugh has said. If anyone in the establishment press did so they would simply be attacked by the right-wing media apparatus as trying to suppress different points of view.
Democrats, on the other hand, tend to run away at the first sign of controversial support.
Kos notes in this
post that few in the Democratic leadership have embraced Howard Stern's call
to his listeners to vote Bush out of office. They are afraid to do so because
Stern is a controversial figure.
The smart Democrat is one that realizes that there is no such thing as support that is not immune from controversy. They have to be willing to stand up to criticism.
They have to turn the tables on the Republicans and ask, like they do with their
critics, why they want to beat down opposing points of view.
Democratic leaders, instead of fretting about some of the "liberties" Michael Moore allegedly takes with the truth would help their cause far more if they were to make an issue out of right-wing attempts to keep Moore from getting his message out.
It's time to turn the PC tables on Republicans and make <i>them</i> sweat a little.
Fair Warning
DemFromCT posts on the DailyKos about the importance to the Kerry campaign of online donations by small donors:
Kerry, of course, was a relative late-comer to the Internet, but who will remember that tomorrow? And with the obvious corporate edge that the GOP has, the whole concept of the small donor has to be integrated into Democratic politics and practice to keep the playing field even.
Integrating small donors into the Democratic party is going to be the real project in the coming years. Right now the Democrats have a natural fundraising incentive in George W. Bush. Many of those donors are giving money to the Kerry campaign not out of any particular love of Kerry or the Democrats but because they want to defeat Bush and it is the easiest way to help achieve that goal.
But, once Bush is defeated, will those small donors continue to provide the money the Democrats need to make up for the advantages the Republicans have in this area? They won't if the party comes to expect that all it takes to raise this kind of money is to just put up a link on a web page. They won't if the party doesn't understand that it is only because of the rank-n-files distaste for Bush and the Republicans that they are managing to remain within parity with the GOP. In order for the small donor to become a more permanent fixture in the Democratic party the small donors will have to feel that they are actually influencing the direction of the party.
Now, the goal of defeating Bush is so paramount right now that this issue is one that doesn't need to be hashed over right now. I bring it up now only as a warning to the party not to get comfortable with the kind of success Kerry has had this year.
Thursday, July 01, 2004
Triumph Of The Will, Part III
Saddam this morning tried to assert that he was still the leader of Iraq and, as President, he could not be held liable for the alleged crimes since he was functioning as the protector of Iraq and that gave him the authority to do what needed to be done.
Hmmm.... Where have I heard that argument before?
Triumph Of The Will, Part II
From a UPI article on the hearing and Iraqi reaction to same:
In several Baghdad teashops and other gathering spots of the local society, reaction was confused and mixed. But even Saddam's critics seemed to take some national pride in seeing the man that ruled them for so long looking strong and defiant.
"To see him pathetic when he was caught was a shame on all Iraqis, because we had been so powerfully ruled by a man that seemed to be such a coward," one man said, who would not give his name. "Now this is the Saddam that we knew -- and even if you hated him -- you feel proud to see him act like a man."
Others said they would hold their opinion until they heard the evidence against him.
"I need to see what they have as evidence," Abbas, a security guard for the al Dora electric power facility. "I don't know how to see what will happen."
If warning lights aren't going off in the offices of those in charge of this trial than they are risking an awful surprise.
Triumph Of The Will
While watching the first day of proceedings in the trial of Saddam Hussein this morning, I was struck by the thought that there is a real danger of losing the case against Saddam. Contrary to the previous haggard image of him after he was pulled from his hiding place, Saddam projected forcefulness and strength in the opening moments. A proceeding that was supposed to be a listing of the charges against him was instead turned into a forum for Saddam to lodge charges against those who "illegally invaded Iraq". You can imagine that those will be the words and images that will dominate the first day of coverage in the Middle East.
Saddam is once again proving why it is that he is a survivor. He understands the nature of power and he resolved that he would immediately try to take charge of the proceedings from the first moment he stepped into the courtroom. By doing so, and by playing the "illegal invasion of Iraq" card, Saddam is putting himself in the same category of the 70-80% of Iraqis who resent the American presence in their country.
The danger is that the Iraqis, after 14 months of failed occupation, might be susceptible to what Saddam is trying to sell them. The Iraqi people are in the position of the abused spouse who has to reject the overtures of their abuser. And history tells us that the abused spouse usually doesn't have the strength of will to resist those overtures.
Don't get me wrong. I think a public trial against Saddam, run primarily by the Iraqis, is a good thing. The Iraqis need to feel that is them, not the United States, that will convict this monster. But those in charge of this operation have to be aware of the very real danger they are facing. They have to confront him with a presentation as forceful as Saddam's and demonstrate a strength of will above and beyond Saddam's.
The last thing they want is for him to come off as a sympathetic figure to the Iraqi people, let alone the rest of the Middle East. If he does then George W. Bush's failure in Iraq will be complete.
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
"One man's war"
I have to disagree with Suburban Gorilla here:
Media slut Deborah "Whoreville" Norville invited Lila Lipscomb (the mother of the soldier killed in Iraq who's featured in "Farenheit 9/11") onto her asinine show tonight. (Boy, MSNBC is really trying hard to be Fox News, aren't they?)
Well, she just couldn't stop herself. (You knew she couldn't.) She ended up - oh yes she did - asking Mrs. Lipscomb if just possibly, maybe just a little, wasn't it possible she was being used by Michael Moore?
Lila stared at her. "No," she said firmly. She said America was about people having their own opinions.
SG labels Norville's performance as "shameless", but I saw that same interview and I thought the question was a legitimate one and asked in a very respectful manner at the end of the interview. Other than that question, the interview barely even touched on the usual anti-Moore points. Lila, in her first national interview, showed that she is the perfect spokesperson for middle America. She is an apolitical individual who has always believed in the American dream and in the American military and now feels like her faith in those institutions has been ill-used by George W. Bush. She still believes in those things. She just no longer believes in George W. Bush.
Contrary to the attempt to portray all anti-Bush opinion as "wild-eyed", Lila comes across as the epitome of grace. Even if Norville had wanted to drag her over the coals, there just wasn't any opening in the interview for her to do so. At one point Norville asked Lila about some of the criticism Moore has received (it was the only other time in the interview that the controversy was raised) and Lila neatly knocked her back by saying, "Michael is quite capable of defending himself." In other words, the questions about Moore are not Lila's to resolve, so don't get her involved in that battle.
Norville asked Lila what she meant in the movie when she said that people just don't understand what is going on. That she used to think she knew what was going on, but she was wrong. Lila responded that she thought it was about WMD, that it was about the war on terror, that it was about Osama bin Laden. Now she knows that it is all about one man's war.
God bless you Lila.
Update: I understand Lila was on Al Franken today as well. I missed it. I think the thing that is most wonderful about Lila is that she demonstrates to many people that you don't have to give up your love of country or your support for the military if you become disillusioned about the abilities of the president. She is an example to others who might not like Bush but are under the mistaken belief that they have to support him in order to support the country and the troops.
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
The Essential Polemic
Kevin Drum makes the valid point that much of the polemic in Fahrenheit 9/11 is similar in nature to the polemic the pro-war side has used both in the ramp-up to war and in the post-fall-of-Saddam phase.
Take the first half hour of the film, in which Moore exposes the close relationship between the Bush family and the House of Saud. Sure, it relies mostly on innuendo and imagery, but then again, he never really makes the case anyway. He never flat out says that the Bush family is on the Saudi payroll. Rather, he simply includes "9/11," "Bush," and "Saudi Arabia" in as many sentences as possible, thus leaving the distinct impression that George Bush is a bought and paid for subsidiary of the Saudi royal family.
Which is all remarkably similar to the tactic Bush himself used to link Saddam Hussein to 9/11. He never flat out blamed Saddam, but rather made sure to include the words "9/11," "Saddam Hussein," and "al-Qaeda" in as many sentences as possible, thus leaving the distinct impression that Saddam had something to do with it.
I pretty much agree with Kevin's point. Though I think we should consider what end results as well. The end result of Moore's polemic would be the removal of the Bushies from power. On the other hand, the end result of Bush's polemic is the destruction of the Iraqi infrastructure, the death of over 800 U.S. soldiers and many more Iraqis and the conversion of Iraq into a fertile breeding ground for terrorism.
As results go, I know which one I consider preferable.
Moore, like the right-wing, is leading the horse to water but isn't so much forcing it to drink the water as he is leaving little option to do otherwise. He puts forward the evidence, but doesn't assert the obvious conclusion. Instead, he leaves it up to the audience to do so. That way, when they come to the hoped-for-conclusion, it will be cemented in their consciousness to a greater degree than it would be if he just assert it flat out.
Is it unfair? To a certain extent. Especially when there is no comparable means for the other side to refute and/or offer counter-assertions (as was the case for liberals throughout much of the 90s). This kind of polemic has been and will continue to be a part of politics. Railing against it is as useless as shaking your fist at the rain. But it need not be destructive to the overall political dialog if it is allowed to exists within its own sandbox.
It is when the polemic of one side becomes the dominant form of dialog that it becomes destructive.
This kind of polemic serves another purpose: it puts into the public dialog facts which otherwise "objective" journalism might avoid (because "objective" journalism tries to avoid this kind of proof-by-insinuation). Some of those facts should ultimately be dismissed as irrelevant. But some of them may be to important not to discuss (such as the undue influence Saudi money may have on U.S. foreign policy). In other words, just because it is a dirty low-down smear doesn't mean that it isn't true.
Which, I guess, is another way of saying that the smears against Clinton in the 90s were not, in and of themselves, a bad thing. It's just that they were given more weight than smears of a comparable nature against the right.
I've argued for some time that, far from destroying meaningful political dialog, operations like Air America and Michael Moore can provide a leveling effect on the nasty side of the debate. As Moore and Limbaugh fight it out in the mud pits, the more "reasonable" combatants can reach the consensus that will move us forward as a society. It's not the existence of people like Limbaugh, Moore and Franken that have made things worse. It's the fact that, for to long, one side unilaterally surrendered the field of combat out of some idealistic notion that it would bring us all down.
Politics needs its bruisers. The Democrats are finally catching on to this basic fact of life. Let's hope its not to late to make a difference.
Monday, June 28, 2004
A big green wall
I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 over the weekend. Far to many impressions to fit into one post. Like many others, there was little new information here for me since I have been following this stuff closely for years. But I could tell that many in the audience had never heard some of this stuff given the repeated gasps I heard.
There were a multitude of images that struck me, but one that I vividly remember was near the end when Lila Lipscomb went to Washington to visit the White House. The closest she could get was outside on the sidewalk. What struck me most about that scene, even more than the confrontation between Lila and the ditto-monkey, was the big green fence that blocked off the view of the White House from the outside world.
How many of us are used to images of the White House in movies and TV where you can see the full scale of that grand building? In George W. Bush's America, the only thing you can see now of "The People's House" is the roof and the anti-aircraft weaponry stationed there.
What a perfect metaphor.
One of the best arguments I've read for voting for Kerry ...
... and it comes from BigWig, a member of the right side of the blogosphere.
For those now experiencing the onset of apoplexy, I have a question. The Bush team that led a righteously angry America into Afghanistan and Iraq has, in the space of a year, managed to horribly tarnish the reputation of the United States in the eyes of her own people. Should GWB win re-election, is it at all realistic to expect that he will have the political capital needed to expand the conflict to Iran, Syria, North Korea or anywhere else should it become necessary? No matter what George Bush does, no matter how long he remains President, about half of America will oppose him, and a significant minority will do so at every turn.
On the other hand, if John Kerry is elected President, and those who now say they support the War on Terrorism continue to do so--even though they might disagree with some of strategies deployed to fight it--then on this question at least the country will be united to a degree not seen since the halcyon days of the late 90s.
I've been thinking about this lately as well. I frankly don't know that Kerry could fix the mess that Bush has put us in. But I know that Bush will make it worse. Thus, the only alternative we have is to throw our lot in with Kerry and hope for the best.
This post even contains (backhanded) praise for Clinton:
Even while Clinton was urinating onto the body politic he enjoyed the support of the people within it. Even the most ardent Republicans, people whom Clinton infuriated the way George II infuriates Michael Moore, admit that if he had been eligible for a third term he would have won it despite everything--meaning that he would have been President on 9/11, that he would be president...now.
Assume for a moment that Clinton would have made the exact same moves in the War on Terror in his third term that George Bush has in his first. Would Slick Willie's America be nearly as divided as the one presided over by Bumbling George?
I think we all know the answer to that. Despite his 2000 campaign rhetoric, George Bush is a divider, not a uniter--alienating otherwise natural allies with his stands on issues such as stem-cell research, immigration, free trade, federal spending, privacy, energy policy and yes, even gay marriage. That's why he's stuck in a dead heat with one of the limpest dishrags the Democratic Party has nominated since the last time they drew from the poisoned well of Massachusetts.
Now Clinton--there was a uniter. The man kept the support of the country through years of independent counsel investigations, an extra-marital affair and impeachment hearings. George Bush, on the other hand, can't even get 50% of the American population to say that ridding the planet of one of the most brutal dictators in history was a good idea in retrospect.
People may not have liked Clinton as a person like they do Bush(*), but even at the lowest point in his presidency, people still trusted Clinton's leadership more than they do Bush's now. How many people realize that Bush, on the day Saddam's statue fell, had lower approval ratings than Clinton did on the day he was impeached?
(* though I have heard that recent polling shows that Bush personal approval has started to plummet)
A multitude of enemies
Gadflyer editor-in-chief Paul Waldman has noticed that there is a notable lack of Kerry-hatred from the right, at least compared to hatred that Clinton inspired:
It's been five months since John Kerry won the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary and thus became the all-but-inevitable Democratic nominee, and it seems that the Right has been slacking off. Where are the anti-Kerry books? The conspiracy theories? The intimations of murder and drug-running? The maniacal ravings of the unhinged Right we've come to know and love?
Waldman offers some speculation on why the Kerry-hatred movement just really hasn't taken off. I'd like to offer my own suggestion: there are to many targets for them to attack in force.
Just think of it: back in 1992 all they had to hate was Clinton. Now they have Kerry, Michael Moore, Al Franken (and the whole Air America operation), Al Gore, the left-wing of the blogosphere, the French, terrorist rag-heads, etc., etc., etc. Back in 1992, the Democrats and the left generally hung back in the shadows and let Clinton take all the heat. Similarly in 2000 with Al Gore. But in 2004 the right is being challenged on multiple fronts.
One could almost feel sorry for the tough situation they have found themselves in. Beset by enemies on all sides. Not sure where the next attack will come from. Not sure where to direct their fire for fear that, when they do, the real attack will come from the other direction. It sounds almost like the situation our soldiers face in Iraq.
I know some liberals dismiss Moore and Franken and bemoan the degradation of political dialog they represent. But Moore and Franken provide a useful service: they provide cover so that people like Kerry can move closer to the levers of power and thus effect real change.
Good job guys!