Halloween is objectively the best holiday in the world. It's the single major holiday that doesn't involve potentially stressful family gatherings but does mandate gluttony by way of candy or alcohol (age accordingly)—and is topped off by costumes to boot. Plus it's explicitly sacrilegious! To mark the happy day (and burn up some time before I head out; without fail, every Halloween I find myself in costume by 5:30 p.m. and jumping to get out and raise some hell, since, as you can see, I am 8 years old, and Halloween elevates eight-year-olds to apotheosis), I thought I'd post one of my favorite grotesque images from contemporary art.
Tom Friedman, Untitled, 2000, construction paper.
It's a perfect intersection of comedy and horror. Moreover, Friedman obviously applies himself to his art with the sort of obsessive compulsion you find in the best Halloween costumes. There's something approaching disturbing about spending hundreds of hours cutting scraps of construction paper in order to make a squashed, guts-exposed sculpture of yourself. If it's in the name of the macabre, I definitely approve. (It's currently on display at the SITE Santa Fe biennial, curated by Robert Storr.)
Later I'll post some pictures of my and my roommates' costumes, and maybe some crazy shit I see out on the street. Last night I came home at around 3 a.m., and though I maybe wasn't in a state to say with any certainty, I'm nearly sure I saw a naked man milling about in the large crowds by the bars near my house. See? You don't get that at Thanksgiving.
UPDATE: I would be remiss in discussing obsessive determination without an example from the Halloween side of the aisle. Here's my friend Justin as Bender from Futurama:
Nice job! I typically tilt the balance away from "skillful rendition" and toward "distastefulness."
Chris Suellentrop, reporting for Slate from the campaign trail:
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla.—"I want you to stand, raise your right hands," and recite "the Bush Pledge," said Florida state Sen. Ken Pruitt. The assembled mass of about 2,000 in this Treasure Coast town about an hour north of West Palm Beach dutifully rose, arms aloft, and repeated after Pruitt: "I care about freedom and liberty. I care about my family. I care about my country. Because I care, I promise to work hard to re-elect, re-elect George W. Bush as president of the United States."The desire for monarchy among red-staters is so palpable that I think American democracy would be best-served if we could elect a Celebrity-in-Chief parallel to the office of the President: a handsome official who could have beers with the commoners, extoll the virtues of Midland-Odessa high school football, and serve as the top ceremonially religious pol in the nation. That way real politicians could, you know, govern rather than cheerlead. Obviously, in writing this story off as bad aesthetics/bad ethics on behalf of the crowd, I'm giving President Bush credit that he doesn't deserve, since he's made it his campaign's business to win the office I've proposed.I know the Bush-Cheney campaign occasionally requires the people who attend its events to sign loyalty oaths, but this was the first time I have ever seen an audience actually stand and utter one. Maybe they've replaced the written oath with a verbal one.
(Just imagine, for a moment, how a Kerry Pledge would be received.)
The New York Times:
Republican Party officials in Ohio took formal steps yesterday to place thousands of recruits inside polling places on Election Day to challenge the qualifications of voters they suspect are not eligible to cast ballots.The Los Angeles Times:Party officials say their effort is necessary to guard against fraud arising from aggressive moves by the Democrats to register tens of thousands of new voters in Ohio, seen as one of the most pivotal battlegrounds in the Nov. 2 elections.
[. . .]
Ohio election officials said they had never seen so large a drive to prepare for Election Day challenges. They said they were scrambling yesterday to be ready for disruptions in the voting process as well as alarm and complaints among voters. Some officials said they worried that the challenges could discourage or even frighten others waiting to vote.
. . . Republicans said they had enlisted 3,600 by the deadline, many in heavily Democratic urban neighborhoods of Cleveland, Dayton and other cities. Each recruit was to be paid $100.
Bush administration lawyers argued in three closely contested states last week that only the Justice Department, and not voters themselves, may sue to enforce the voting rights set out in the Help America Vote Act, which was passed in the aftermath of the disputed 2000 election.And that is how it's done. $100 is the market price for a mercenary. Call me shrill, but if John Ashcroft is permitted exclusive authority over access to the courts regarding voter intimidation, the majesty of American democracy has been molested.Veteran voting-rights lawyers expressed surprise at the government's action, saying that closing the courthouse door to aspiring voters would reverse decades of precedent.
Since the civil rights era of the 1960s, individuals have gone to federal court to enforce their right to vote, often with the support of groups such as the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, the League of Women Voters or the state parties. And until now, the Justice Department and the Supreme Court had taken the view that individual voters could sue to enforce federal election law.
But in legal briefs filed in connection with cases in Ohio, Michigan and Florida, the administration's lawyers argue that the new law gives Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft the exclusive power to bring lawsuits to enforce its provisions. These include a requirement that states provide "uniform and nondiscriminatory" voting systems, and give provisional ballots to those who say they have registered but whose names do not appear on the rolls.
When Catherine Herold received mail from the Ohio Republican Party earlier this year, she refused it.I hereby rescind my even-keeled suggestion that the apocalyptic wouldn't come to bear. These Republicans deserve to be penalized severely.The longtime Barberton Democrat wanted no part of the mailing and figured that by refusing it, the GOP would have to pay the return postage.
What she didn't count on was the returned mail being used to challenge the validity of her voter registration.
Herold,who is assistant to the senior vice president and provost at the University of Akron,was one of 976 Summit County voters whose registrations were challenged last week by local Republicans on behalf of the state party.
[. . .]
The challengers, all older longtime Republicans -- Barbara Miller, Howard Calhoun, Madge Doerler and Louis Wray -- were subpoenaed by the elections board and were present at the hearings. Akron attorney Jack Morrison, a Republican, volunteered to represent the four.
Democratic board member Russ Pry suggested that the four could be subject to criminal prosecution for essentially making false claims on the challenge forms. The form states that making a false claim is subject to prosecution as a fifth-degree felony.
...The angry voters had the Republicans on the defensive.
"Why'd you do it?'' one challenged voter shouted out at Calhoun. "Who the hell are you?'' the man asked.
"What the hell do you care?'' replied Calhoun, an attorney.
What with the election and all I haven't had time to flesh out a few observations on some arts developments in the District (particularly the arresting Ana Mendieta review at the Hirshhorn). You may have noticed that things have been slow here—I've been engaged in some pretty heady debates over at Begging To Differ. I'm going to note this in the much-neglected side panel over the weekend, but when I'm ignoring the ol' G.p, it's usually because something is going down over at BTD.
I have some stuff that's itching to be unleashed from the "Draft" cage, but for the moment, I've written up my official endorsement (posted earlier at BTD). Since my goal was to limit myself to 200 words, I'm pleasantly surprised that I managed to express my irrational Bush hatred in just over 500 frothy, spittle-fueled packets of pro-Kerry letters.
It seems to me that the president elect in 2005, whoever he may be, will have his hands tied. It's an irony that in oppressive times circumstances would conspire to limit the efficacy of the office most capable and obliged to affect global problems. One of the preventable circumstances that is most responsible for dismal present conditions is President Bush.Obviously there's a lot that I didn't cover. You're invited to add or subtract in comments.Anyone will acknowledge the severe stress currently placed on our armed forces: there is simply no capacity for conflict expansion, either for neocon wish fulfillment or even bolstering our present positions. John Kerry has recommended internationalism as a solution to our problems in Iraq, an option unavailable to Bush for reasons of obstinance; I have my reservations about the degree of success Kerry will achieve in internationalizing the occupation of Iraq, but I will give him credit for outlining an unexplored avenue in the face of a no-win scenario. I think that in turns he will be successful and our some share of our burden will be relieved. Insofar as this share may likely be small, I point to the incumbent. President Bush has no new strategy to offer; he has exhausted his options, which have amounted mostly to unrestricted, unwarranted, and uninformed optimism.
The Rumsfeld doctrine of warplanning provided limited successes in Afghanistan and failed to unforeseeable degrees in Iraq—a mistake in and of itself—and he should be terminated as soon as possible. President Bush will not do so. A reversion to the Powell doctrine of warplanning is necessary for the security of the American interest, people, and military. In the instance of another attack, President Bush cannot be trusted to prosecute our enemies effectively. It's absurd that anyone should believe that a Kerry administration—really, any administration—would not respond forcefully to a domestic attack in the post-9/11 world, so "resoluteness" is not a quality that concerns me greatly. Kerry promises nonideological analysis of our threats, and that is what we need most—we need to be strong, but moreover we need to be right.
Again, I emphasize that a Kerry administration would be a restricted one: hamstrung by the greatest deficits in American history and an oppositional Congress, two limitations the incumbent did not face. Given the hand that Bush was dealt when he entered the office, his domestic policy has been inexplicably awful, and probably the single greatest mark under the Kerry column in this respect is that he will not be George W. Bush.
My outlook on the prospects of a Kerry administration is admittedly grim—but certainly not because Kerry will fail to be a resolute drinking buddy, or any of the other personality qualifications over which President Bush would like you to vote. My hesitations stem from the enormity of the work to be done, but I do think John Kerry possesses the thoughtful determination necessary to begin the process of reversing our course in terms of global esteem, moral authority, economic might, political partisanship, and military strategy—and I will vote for him enthusiastically.
If you want to test how horrible a person you are today, check out 2004's Scariest Halloween Costumes. I'm torn between "The Littlest Prisoner at Abu Ghraib" and "Jenna Bush's Liver," but I think I know what I'm doing for Halloween now.
Courtesy of Lindsay Beyerstein.
Dana Milbank pokes America with a stick:
Could one of these electoral college nightmares be our destiny?Absolute hell on Earth. If you see Dana Milbank, bite him.President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry deadlock on Tuesday with 269 electoral votes apiece -- but a single Bush elector in West Virginia defects, swinging the election to Kerry.
Or Bush and Kerry are headed toward an electoral college tie, but the 2nd Congressional District of Maine breaks with the rest of the state, giving its one electoral vote -- and the presidency -- to Bush.
Or the Massachusetts senator wins an upset victory in Colorado and appears headed to the White House, but a Colorado ballot initiative that passes causes four of the state's nine electoral votes to go to Bush -- creating an electoral college tie that must be resolved in the U.S. House.
None of these scenarios is likely to occur next week, but neither is any of them far-fetched. Tuesday's election will probably be decided in 11 states where polls currently show the race too tight to predict a winner. And, assuming the other states go as predicted, a computer analysis finds no fewer than 33 combinations in which those 11 states could divide to produce a 269 to 269 electoral tie.
According to the WSJ (subscription required; link courtesy of Political Wire), both the Democratic and Republican Parties are involved in efforts to suppress the other side's voters. Which one does not belong?
Democrats "see suppression efforts in Republicans' well-advertised plans to vigorously check the registrations of those who show up to vote. In their eyes, such efforts are designed to convince voters that trying to cast a ballot will be too much of a hassle."One sounds very much like voter intimidation while the other sounds like free speech. A bunch of yahoos on Democratic Underground does not voter suppression make.Republicans "see suppression efforts in Democrats' attempts to sow doubts about Mr. Bush's character and his fealty to social conservatives. They believe Democrats will use the Internet to spread fresh rumors about Mr. Bush's youthful behavior among conservative Christians."
Meanwhile, Ed Gillespie—chair of the same Republican National Committee that hired the voter registration firm Sproul and Associates, who misrepresented themselves in several states and destroyed Democratic voter registration cards—accuses the Democratic Party of Tammany Hall–era voter registration fraud:
Republican Party chairman Ed Gillespie charged on Sunday that Democratic-backed groups had registered thousands of fraudulent voters.In other words:In Ohio, he said there were "people with fictitious characters being registered to vote, Dick Tracy and Mary Poppins. In New Mexico, we've seen 13- and 15-year-olds get registration cards in the mail they didn't even ask for. In Nevada, we've had illegal immigrants being registered."
In [swing state], we will challenge Democratic voters.No wonder The Economist reports that 90% of Republicans assume that the election will be fair, whereas nearly 2/3 of Democrats have declining confidence in the election.
This is all astonishing and scary stuff—but here's the deal. I think we ought to put the most apocalyptic visions out of mind. (Though the story about 60,000 mailed absentee ballots "missing" from Democratic Broward County is almost titillating, it's so screwy. . . .) I'll say this: This election has turned a significant stripe of the GOP leadership into a roving band of motherfuckers. But it's still entirely reasonable and probable that GOP staffers, while hoping that their guy wins, would not entertain cheating (Stroll and Associates, an extension of the motherfucking GOP leadership, notwithstanding).
Anyone will tell you that the sort of voter suppression some GOP bandits or Democratic doomsayers envision actually comes, if it happens, likely in the form of delays: polls being moved; polls opening late (forcing people to abort and get back to work); polls closing early; excessive voter challenges (creating bottlenecks, which may mean that voters leave without voting); etc. This is what voter supression looks like:
Thousands of Cook County voters were disenfranchised after the March primary, their votes thrown out due to election judge mistakes.Voter intimidation is a soft bigotry—not the product of menacing Excel spreadsheets and Rovian machinations (Florida's distinctly flawed voter-purge data notwithstanding). The best defense against voter intimidation is, well, voter access protection statutes at the federal level. But observation also helps, and if you have the legal background to help with the Election Protection Program, consider doing so.Records show most of those mistakes were made in Chicago precincts.
Provisional ballots, used for the first time in Illinois, were issued to 9,982 Cook County voters because their registrations couldn't be verified at the polling sites that day.
Post-primary research led to 8,615 of those ballots being rejected, but that includes more than 4,000 that were rejected because voters cast them at the wrong precinct or didn't fill out an affidavit with the ballot.
Grammar.police's girlfriend took off today to monitor elections in Ukraine. Wish her your best! For what it's worth, Ukraine could teach us a thing or two about partisan politics—the main presidential opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, was recently poisoned with ricin. And yet Susan would be the first to tell you that she's all too eager to be leaving the hell on earth that is the 2004 American presidential election, and not just for the Beluga caviar at Bessarabka. (Actually, not at all for the beluga. She'd rather try ricin. Beluga's what I'm hoping to get out of this deal.)
One reason is that the upcoming American election has come to be a target for mockery/lame-ass excuse for nations who engage in electioneering shenanigans as a matter of course. When Vladimir "Mistakes Weren't Made" Putin is sneering at us, we have problems—so if there are any lawyers, law students, or paralegals reading, I'd encourage you to check out the Election Protection Program, which trains the legally oriented among us how to serve as election monitors. It's very simple and does not require much of your time, and those of you living near minority communities or willing to travel can serve an especially important function. Now, if there are any Ukrainians reading, you'll have to explain this whole ricin situation, and while you're at it, why Osetra caviar is so much more expensive than Sevruga when Sevruga is superior. [adjusts monacle]
So we're getting down to the wire and this is when the tricks go from dirty to fascinating. To wit: The Bush campaign released a television ad recently that accuses John Kerry of voting to slash the intelligence budgets. The Bush ad does this partly by employing mischaracterizations of Kerry's voting record, and partly by implying that if you vote for Kerry, America will be eaten by wolves.
Now this is an extremely grave scenario. Still, I think we can put even this dark portent into perspective. Like the Poor Man, you may be inclined to write off these wolves as being somewhat adorable—a pre-September 11 sentiment if ever there were one. This isn't quite right—I don't think these are the sort of wolves that end up on calendars and for-charity T-shirts and shed single tears for the fallen warriors with whom they share a mutual respect. Or perhaps like Kerry supporters and the Associated Press, you decry Bush's ad as fear-mongering. Hardly: for people like me, who have always been afraid of wolves, the message is fear-affirming. It's the kind of fear I remember from better days! But I think we can do better. I think we can come up with a solution:
As far as I can tell I'm getting this before it's hit the presses—this comes from a press release issued by the office of Texas Representative Lon Burnham, which an agent deep in the heart of Texas politics just forwarded to me [One ought to note that the subpoena is for a civil case. —ed.]:
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R) was subpoenaed in Houston to an October 25, 2005 deposition concerning his role in the controversial dispute between Democratic Legislators and the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) during last year's redistricting struggle. Texas State Representative Lon Burnam (D--Fort Worth) subpoenaed DeLay in his ongoing lawsuit challenging DPS's use of public funds to achieve political ends and for its destruction of documents following the exodus of Democratic Legislators from the State to prevent a quorum in a redistricting effort that Democrats claim was illegal.
Burnam's subpoena of DeLay comes just days after the Republican House Majority Leader was officially rebuked by the House Ethics Committee for his inappropriate use of government resources in an effort to track down and arrest House Democrats--including Burnam--who went to Ardmore to block redistricting efforts of the Texas Republicans.October surprise indeed! (*****MUST CREDIT G.P****** and all that.) You can read more on the TRMPAC indictments (and a non-sequitor on the Justice Department's Voting Section) here.Burnam's lawsuit alleges that the DPS destroyed documents regarding their efforts to apprehend the Legislators and that DPS had no lawful authority to arrest Democratic members who went to Ardmore. A number of high ranking DPS officials have given their depositions, as has Burnam in the case. An Austin Appeals Court recently held that Burnam's case on the open records issue could go forward.
"Questions have been raised about Majority Leader DeLay's role in directing both DPS and Homeland Security personnel in the use of the state and federal funds in the search for House Democrats. We believe these funds were improperly used for political gain and House Majority Leader DeLay should be required to testify about his role in the matter," said Fort Worth lawyer, Art Brender, who together with Austin lawyer Catherine Mauzy represents Burnam in the case.
"I believe DeLay's testimony is especially important in light of the Supreme Court's recent decision ordering a reconsideration of the redistricting plan to determine whether it was overly partisan," Burnam said. This Monday, October 18, 2004, the United States Supreme Court reversed the three judge lower federal court ruling that upheld the Republican drawn congressional lines and remanded the matter back to that court in light of the Supreme Court's ruling in a similar case in Pennsylvania.
Burnam claims DeLay continued a pattern of obstruction and abuse of power in avoiding service of the subpoena. Burnam had sought to subpoena DeLay at a major Republican fundraising event in Austin on the evening of October 1, 2004, but DeLay and his supporters secretly rescheduled the event to 7:00 a.m., thwarting Burnam's process server. Preventing execution of civil process is a misdemeanor under the Texas Penal Code. On Wednesday, DeLay's attorneys agreed to accept the subpoena for him to prevent service at the event.
"I brought this lawsuit because no government official should be able to use government resources for partisan political purposes and to oppress duly elected officials who are acting in their official capacity," Burnam stated. "If they can do this to an elected official and get away with it, then no citizen's rights can be protected against abuse."
Let me tell you, the office watercooler is a-buzz about the Boston Red Sox' holiday-making victory last night. I've got two stories to share for the occasion.
One is this actual guy at my office. He's this tough sounding New Yorker who looks like his face was carved out of asphalt. Normally we talk about funny stuff from The Daily Show or maybe the occasional "This Land" video clip that people in offices pass around instead of working. (Most office relationships don't go even that far, since most office conversations recognize the two-pronged embargo on dinner table conversation instituted by Emily Post: politics and religion are not discussed in polite company.) But the wider culture has granted office-going people everywhere another subject to discuss with the strangers with whom they spend all their time: a sports event. A momentous sports event! So this office guy, this poor schmuck, he gets a little too enthusiastic about the opportunity and reveals to me and a small band of office guys that he had to google the Curse of the Bambino. He didn't know what it was.
What? That's not sports trivia. That's like a gaping whole in your brain. That's like, I don't know, not knowing what a plum is—sure, you don't eat plums, you don't think about plums every day, you don't know if they're vegetable or fruit, but you're not going to get away with asking, "What's plums?" The pack of office guys acted immediately, of course, and not only is this poor fool eating lunch in the back kitchen, he's totally off the Anti-Bushie listserve.
My other Boston-related story comes courtesy of my friend Delbow. Delbow, a horrible GOP-shill who recently appeared in this site's comments posing as a Kerry-slammin' Nader supporter—you could call it Nader-baiting—loves hisself some New York Yankees. He lurves 'em. He even went so far as to say in comments on October 20, 2004, at 12:57 PM, that the New York Yankees got "A-Robbed" on that first-base-swipe reversal in Game 6, thus taking another principled stance against the reality-based community in all its manifest forms. So I was eager to see what he thought of last night's comeback, the biggest in sports history—and it turns out that Delbow had a victory pegged for Boston the whole time! He says that there wasn't anything that stunning about pulling that kind of comeback, and I must agree, so long as you're some office jerk sitting alone in the back kitchen with no funny jokes in your inbox who never turned the channel to ESPN once over the last 86 years and wouldn't know a plum from the head he's shoved up his ass.
Shills like my friend Delbow can't stand being wrong, so I make this prediction now: Watch for him to 1) admit to always being the world's greatest fan of the National League 'cause who needs these damned designated hitters anyway go Cards or alternatively 'Stros!, and 2) cut and paste from his I-was-right boilerplate this exact post on November 3 with "Kerry" replacing the BoSox and "Bush" standing in for the NYY 'cause Bush's star burned too brightly and Kerry pulled out the dirty tricks and men of history know when to hand over the reigns and go Jeb/McCain '08!
I think this picture 'bout sums it up:
Seriously, could last night's game have been more stressful? And where were they playing, Sarajevo? I thought NYC's days of chucking solid objects onto the field went out with the D battery.
All I know is that if Boston loses tonight after coming back from a three-game deficit, the First Law of Soxology will have been recognized: Maximum tragedy is always preserved. Won't happen, though, 'cause we all know the curse has been reversed! Incidentally—and obviously—my new friend Dellis the Elbow, or as I like to call him when it's just us buds, Delbow, is a Yankees fan. The case for regime change has never been so dire.
UPDATE: At least, I think he's a Yankees fan. Delbow says he roots for the Evil Empire, but he said he was a Nader supporter and turned out to support . . . the other Evil Empire. Difficult to tell with these GOP-shill types, but I can't imagine that anyone could stomach impersonating a Yankees fan.
UPDATE II: What's this I hear about, what was it, astronomy? Astrophysics?
I'm as baffled as J. T. Kirkland and Lenny Campello over the WPA\Corcoran's decision to fire Philip Barlow from his position as curator of the Options 2005 Biennial for comments he made to the Washington Post. Short story: Barlow said that he would not consider for the biennial any artists who participated in either the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities' Party Animals or Pandamania projects. Annie Adjchavanich, the executive director of the WPA\C program, issued a press release that did not clarify matters for me.
(That's the most hyperlinked paragraph I've ever written. I swear, with these Macs, you don't get the little hyperlink button, so that took like half an hour.)
I met Ms. Adjchanvanich a while back and I think she's a competent director, so it is with respect that I say that she seems to be mystifying the curatorial process by some degree to suggest that art is somehow graded in a vacuum. I'm not entirely sure how she envisions curation but it sounds mealymouthed. She wrote of Barlow that "[i]t is inappropriate to base curatorial decisions upon the political, social or intellectual opinions an artist may hold," it would be unimaginable to evaluate art without assessing its political, social, or intellectual offerings, and art that does none of these things—e.g., these goofy pandas—well, that's not art. Curating is discriminating and a good place to begin discriminating is with the art that isn't art.
Barlow's mistake was to speak too bluntly ("They made a bad choice, and there are consequences to bad choices") and maximally. Obviously had Maggie Michael decided to pour some latex on a ceramic donkey for the city because she really needed the cash, that wouldn't be reason to disqualify her—she's a great artist, people compromise for complicated reasons, art already features enough class-oriented conflicts, etc. So I'd listen to a prostrate panda painter, but should I seek one out?
Barlow's litmus sounds to me to be wrong as a concrete rule, right as a general trend, and indispensable as a curatorial right.
Todd Gibson of From the Floor just missed the "Charged Image: Work from the Collection of Douglas Cramer" show at the University of Hartford, the source of some recent controversy.
Who knew this painting would cause such a stir?
This painting by Damien Loeb was pulled from a University of Hartford exhibition, purportedly over—believe it or not—"copyright infringement concerns." It would appear that Loeb appropriated the image of the three boys from a photograph by a woman named Tina Barney. I'm not aware that this claim has any teeth whatsoever, but strictly speaking, the "case" is clear-cut:
This struck me as simply a mealy-mouthed flip-flop on behalf of the University of Hartford, but after clicking around and reading a few associated news links (helpfully collected by Newsgrist), it seems that the Hartford Courant (link unavailable) discovered the more likely reason that the painting was pulled: The three boys pictured are the sons of a wealthy local arts patron and university donor. Now that's a story.
Loeb's painting Service Station especially strikes me as a less cerebral John Currin, but I'm intrigued.
I was also immediately reminded of one of my favorite figurative painters from the last couple decades, Eric Fischl.
So imagine my surprise when I saw that works from Douglas Cramer's collection on display at "Charged Image" included Loeb, Currin, and Fischl—along with Inka Essenhigh and Cecily Brown, two more top-shelf painters. It's really a shame that the University of Hartford absolutely screwed everyone out of what sounds like a wonderful exhibit. It's all well and good for the university to recognize great figurative painting, but if they don't have the courage to stand behind work that is edgy in a substantial way, they're not doing their jobs as facilitators of the arts.
UPDATE: To be clear, it's probably not the gallery director but some nefarious university administration agent who did the screwing here. My own alma mater has the distinction of refusing a museum design by Herzog and de Meuron in favor of a more traditional building by a firm that had previously designed . . . factories. (In response, the dean of the architecture school resigned, and I refused to vote for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Tony Sanchez, who served then as a university regent and had some hand in screwing up the deal.)
Sinclair Broadcasting Group, whose Vice President for Corporate Relations Mark Hyman compared critics to "Holocaust deniers," has a more slippery definition of free speech than Hyman's extreme denunciation might imply:
Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. on Monday fired its Washington bureau chief after the newsman publicly protested plans for a program about Sen. John F. Kerry's anti-Vietnam War activities that is scheduled to run this week on about 60 Sinclair-owned stations.Apparently there is some dispute as to whether the "news" or "commentary" department will be producing the program; the distinction arises from the fact that FCC provisions mandate that political programming broadcast over the public spectrum (i.e., channels you don't pay for) serve the public interest in one of these capacities. I figured it would go to the People's Department for the Informing of the Republic on America Hating Activities From Three Decades Ago.Jon Leiberman, who had worked for the TV broadcaster for nearly five years, called the upcoming program "blatant political propaganda, not objective journalism," because it was airing so close to election day. He added that he had told his boss that he refused to work on it.
It was news to me that anything had to be put together at all, but according to this article it's not at all clear yet what Sinclair intends to broadcast. My guess is that after taking a beating from the market—the company's shares feel a whole 8 percent on Monday and a whole host of advertisers have pulled out—Sinclair is looking to dilute the Stolen Honor broadcast to some degree while still keeping the (virulent) message intact. Apparently this was news to Carlton Sherwood as well:
Sherwood, the "Stolen Honor" filmmaker, said Monday he was under the impression that Sinclair was planning to run his entire work, and expressed surprise that it could be cut.Admit it: There's something quirky, almost cute about a SBVT propagandist defending the integrity of his work."If you start editing somebody's work," he said, "you've got to worry about whether the context is going to be there." He said he had not been in touch with Sinclair because he did not want to meddle.
While Sinclair's defenders say that the "equal time" rule doesn't apply to this broadcast, it's telling that Sinclair objected to the rule immediately after announcing their broadcasting plan, and investors are pressuring Sinclair to air Going Upriver, a pro-Kerry propaganda film. Interestingly enough, if they're trying to fulfill the equal time provision, I don't think this cuts it: After all, it's Kerry on-screen the entire time, right? Wouldn't Sinclair be obligated to invite Bush on? Is airing pro-Kerry propaganda following anti-Kerry propaganda meeting the obligation? The FCC provisions don't really fit this situation because propaganda isn't intended for the public spectrum—and the gate-keepers (in this case, FCC chair Michael Powell) have given the crazies the keys to the asylum.
What I know for certain is that a Kerry appearance to explain his Vietnam-era statements would be just what the doctor ordered, if Kerry's intention were to abort his presidential campaign. That the media has publicly discussed this option is totally absurd. Maybe George W. Bush can join him, read My Pet Goat, and tell us all what it's like to cruise through Maine on an eight-ball? Please. (Not like we don't all know.) The hope is that all this scrambling means that Sinclair's plan is unraveling, but there's no way they'll somehow "fairly" abuse their license to broadcast for the purpose of slurring John Kerry.
For those of you watching from home, here's the run-down: A couple of entries ago, Elbow posted an impassioned non-sequitor for Kerry supporters to consider voting for Nader. Thinking that an authentic Naderite has to be far rarer in this day and age than a Bush supporter pretending to be one, and spurred by the ostentatious clue he left in linking to a very conservative blog, I outlined my skepticism in a post—to which Elbow protested, saying that he is indeed a mean green Nader fiend. Still unsatisfied I summoned 15 minutes' worth of energy and discovered that, in fact, Elbow is Dellis, the proprietor of Wunderkinder, to which Elbow provided an innocuous link from the start. (As it happens Dellis trolls a friend's site pretty frequently, so confirming his IP address wasn't exactly unraveling the Grassy Knoll.)
There you have it. I don't know about you but I am shocked to discover that there are tools on the Internet. From the Party of Lincoln, no less!
Timothy Noah writes a DC gallery review for Slate and manages to mention art not once. The show at Conner Contemporary is by Harry Shearer, whom Noah mentions in only one eentsie paragraph. The review covers the subject of the show: "raw feeds," telomeres of video footage of pundits recorded before and after appearances and then broadcast by satellites. Because it's easy enough to listen in on these streams with a satellite dish, talking heads sit quietly until game time. Taegan Goddard links to an example: John Edwards fixing his hair (obviously).
This is fun enough stuff for political buffs, but it leaves me wishing that Slate would make an effort to give an art story an art gloss. This happens all the time with "specialized" art—insiders get all caught up in how the work relates to their knowledge, and forget that the work ought to answer some artistic questions, too. (Occasional conflicts between me and my astrophysicist thesis advisor over how one should intepret the work of a science-oriented artist, the subject of my thesis, made this point indelibly clear to me.)
To nitpick—the installation of this show is senseless. Since all the screens show homogenous footage, and the footage is the whole point, why were the screens installed askew? Just 'cause? Generally speaking it seems that the raw feed is a new-ish and admittedly fun found object, but raw feed doesn't say anything that all the other found objects haven't said before.
I'll give Noah some credit for touching on the people-watching fetishism of the objects (though I'll disagree that they are "absurdist"). But when he says that "[the pundits] are much more compelling in silent repose than they'll ever be once they finally get to speak about the Iraq war, or the budget deficit, or the latest political polls," I think he's missed the forest for the trees.
Exclusive content that you're not going to find anywhere else: First, Jon Stewart slaps Tucker Carlson around on Crossfire. Mars, bitches! . . . I don't really know how that's appropriate, but it is. The clip's true and funny, for a moment anyway, until the vid feed fades to black and you realize that there's likely no force in the media with the will to put an end to the Tucker Unfiltered experience. The other night I saw Big Tuck wind down his show with an entreaty to undecided voters to partake in the time-honored American tradition of staying home on Election Day so as to not break for the challenger be swayed by the dastardly liberal media.
I also give you The Gospel of Ron, a NYT Magazine piece by Ron Suskind about the faith-based presidency. In the article Suskind uncovers a tremendous contribution to the lexicon on the Bush administration:
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''Interestingly enough, an anecdote that illustrates the depraved limits to which we factamentalist zealots have plunged in our obsession with reality comes from none other than Tucker Carlson:
[The response from the Bush team over a 1999 profile of W.] was very, very hostile. The reaction was: You betrayed us. Well, I was never there as a partisan to begin with.I can't tell whether I'm listening to Stinker or Smeagol when I hear Tucker talk—my guess is that he won't give up The Precious no matter how badly he's treated. Still, I think it's all for the better that we judge his relative prickitude on a more tangible characteristic: that bowtie. That's all the evidence you need for a judicious decision.Then I heard that [on the campaign bus, Bush communications director] Karen Hughes accused me of lying. And so I called Karen and asked her why she was saying this, and she had this almost Orwellian rap that she laid on me about how things she'd heard -- that I watched her hear -- she in fact had never heard, and she'd never heard Bush use profanity ever. It was insane.
I've obviously been lied to a lot by campaign operatives, but the striking thing about the way she lied was she knew I knew she was lying, and she did it anyway. There is no word in English that captures that. It almost crosses over from bravado into mental illness.
I don't like to go j'accuse on commenters, but in comments to the Rove post below, Elbow makes some points in support of Nader that would seem to be contradicted by the Web site to which Elbow links, Wunderkinder. For example, here's what Wunderkinder has to say yesterday about Kerry's deterrence:
Kerry has made no new proposals, which I suppose isn't that surprising based on the fact that he doesn't really stand for anything and is running for president primarily via demagoguery.I don't know whether Elbow is one of Wunderkinder's authors or just some tool, but it's clear that there's not a huge intersection between that site and Nader supporters—so, you know, don't waste your breath on Elbow. (I'm pleased to be a target medium for a disinformation campaign, though. It's all so symbiotic.)
UPDATE: I thought I should clarify that, while Elbow specifically ought to be ignored because he or she is comment spam, Nader supporters in general ought to be ingored as well. I didn't mean to encourage conversation between Democrats and Naderites—far from it. Naderites have "gone native" and are therefore unlikely to be persuaded by your demonstrations of logic, balance, and relevance. If you should happen to come across a protesting band of Naderites, I encourage you to simply ignore them. Whatever you do, please don't feed a Naderite.
Link.
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." —Keyser Söze
Since this Clark County voter registration scandal is the topic of the day—everywhere but in the MSM—let's note a few related articles on the bigger picture of US voting this election season. From an editorial by the dean of UC-Berkley Law, Christopher Edley, Jr.:
[O]nly weeks before the election of 2004, thousands of ballots in minority communities are at risk of going up in smoke, as they did in the presidential election of 2000.And from a noteworthy New Yorker piece by Jeffrey Toobin on voting rights enforcement:The cure for chad-phobia was a surge nationwide in voting technology investments, but funding evaporates when it comes to training poll workers and educating voters. This produces confusion, breakdowns and frustrated efforts to cast ballots by voters who actually care enough to show up. At the rate we are going, unavoidably high numbers of ballots again will be spoiled - generally by voting twice for the same office or unintentionally failing to vote for an office.
The single greatest voting rights threat, revealed in 2000, is the huge difference in rates at which ballots are tossed out in predominantly poor and minority communities, as compared with others. In Florida, some minority precincts had more than one in five of their ballots go uncounted as spoiled, while in precincts on the other side of the tracks it was as few as one in 200. Six states had worse records than Florida, among them Georgia, Illinois and Indiana, but of the 100 worst-performing counties nationally, 82 were in the deep south.
The Attorney General had come forward to launch the Voting Access and Integrity Initiative, whose name refers to the two main traditions in voting-rights law. Voter-access efforts, which have long been associated with Democrats, seek to remove barriers that discourage poor and minority voters; the Voting Rights Act itself is the paradigmatic voter-access policy. The voting-integrity movement, which has traditionally been favored by Republicans, targets fraud in the voting process, from voter registration to voting and ballot counting. Despite the title, Ashcroft’s proposal favored the “integrity” side of the ledger, mainly by assigning a federal prosecutor to watch for election crimes in each judicial district. These lawyers, Ashcroft said, would “deter and detect discrimination, prevent electoral corruption, and bring violators to justice.”I think that incidents like today's in Nevada would be a lot less likely if the Justice Department would make a public effort to address the actual barricades to good voter registration in America, which would seem far more likely in this day and age to involve poor and minority voter access than voter integrity. One way for the JD to start on this path would be to shut down the afore-mentioned bogus operation's other offices in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Florida, and Nevada. (Where is the MSM on this?) It would also be appreciated if the Republican National Committee would refrain from committing fraud and tearing up Democratic voter registration cards.Federal law gives the Justice Department the flexibility to focus on either voter access or voting integrity under the broad heading of voting rights, but such shifts of emphasis may have a profound impact on how votes are cast and counted. In the abstract, no one questions the goal of eliminating voting fraud, but the idea of involving federal prosecutors in election supervision troubles many civil-rights advocates, because few assistant United States attorneys have much familiarity with the laws protecting voter access. That has traditionally been the province of the lawyers in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division, whose role is defined by the Voting Rights Act. In a subtle way, the Ashcroft initiative nudged some of these career civil-rights lawyers toward the sidelines.
Some time ago I started to feel a certain amount over the zeal with which I wrote about the new designs for the World Trade Center. It seems that it was opportunistic and cynical of me to argue that since the new WTC and memorial would be built regardless of whether anyone thinks it should be, we might as well thoroughly, unreservedly enjoy the critical debate about the art and architecture being erected. No matter, those opinions on Ellsworth Kelly's design and Agnes Denes's precedent survive for posterity (and readers who weren't around for the blogspot days).
I intended to stay out of the fray regarding any more 9/11-related architectural hubris, but when J. Scott Barnard tipped me off to the fact that Frank Gehry has been selected to design the Ground Zero Theater Center, I suspected that I wouldn't be able to let it pass without comment. Well, I don't want to impugn with my own mixed emotions about the 9/11 reconstruction process—but I'll say that Gehry has lent his signature to nearly every major city in America, and New York City is not one with which Gehry has strong ties, so if the case for architectural diversity was ever to be made I think Ground Zero presented it. That's all.
From DCRTV:
The filmmaker of "Stolen Honor," Carlton Sherwood, once worked for DC's Channel 9. In 1984, then 9 News Director Dave Pearce went on the air to issue the apology for a four-part series by Sherwood, who questioned the finances of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. According to the Post, Sherwood has said he felt vilified by Kerry's antiwar comments and believes the candidate branded all Vietnam veterans as "war criminals."It's no surprise to me to see that Sherwood has an O'Neill-like obsession with John Kerry. That's fine, and he has a right to his belief and say-so—but his movie isn't for the public spectrum, which broadcasters may use to profitably broadcast material so long as the material benefits the public interest. Swiftboat porn does not meet that criteria.
Along with pressuring the sales departments of Sinclair network advertisers (Josh Marshall tells you how), investment-minded readers might want to check their portfolios for shares in institutional investors to Sinclair Broadcasting. We here at G.p are happy and saddened to report that our investments are tied up primarily in variant-cover premiere-issue comic books. (Curse you, Reed Richards, for our dwindling prospects!)
So the Swift Boat Douchebags made an anti-Kerry propaganda movie and now the rightwing media conglomerate, Sinclair Broadcasting, is requiring all their affiliates—television stations that reach 25 percent of American homes—to play it. For more, click on any blog, anywhere, that isn't a shill for President Bush. (Conservative bloggers appear to be, now and forever, discussing how they'd rather have a beer with the alcoholic candidate.) Take special note of two quotes from Josh Marshall's house. First, compassionate conservatism speaks through the person of Sinclair's Vice President for Corporate Relations, Mark Hyman:
However, the accusations coming from Terry McAuliffe and others, is it because they are some elements of this that may reflect poorly on John Kerry? That it's somehow an in-kind contribution of George Bush?Nothing like dismissing the importance of the Holocaust to prove that your programming preserves the public interest—since, because Sinclair is (nominally) a steward of public spectrum . . . well, I'll let former FCC chairman Reed Hundt explain:If you use that logic and reasoning, that means every car bomb in Iraq would be an in-kind contribution to John Kerry. Weak job performance ratings that came out last month would have been an in- kind contribution to John Kerry. And that's just nonsense.
This is news. I can't change the fact that these people decided to come forward today. The networks had this opportunity over a month ago to speak with these people. They chose to suppress them. They chose to ignore them. They are acting like Holocaust deniers, pretending these men don't exist.
Dear Josh:I'd love to say that this inspires some warm feelings in me for the FCC, or even just confidence that the FCC will do its job and block Sinclair from donating two hours' free broadcasting time to the Bush administration on more than 25 percent of American televisions.Why is it important that Sinclair Broadcasting be urged in all lawful ways that can be imagined to reconsider its decision to broadcast on its television stations the anti-Kerry "documentary"?
Because in a large, pluralistic information society democracy will not work unless electronic media distribute reasonably accurate information and also competing opinions about political candidates to the entire population. Certainly, for the overwhelming number of voters this year, controlling impressions of the candidates for President are obtained from television.
In all countries, candidates for public office governments aspire to have favorable information and a chorus of favorable opinion disseminated through mass media to the citizenry. In a democracy, on the eve of a quadrennial election, the incumbent government plainly has a motive to encourage the media to report positively on its record but also negatively on the rival. But its role instead is to make sure that broadcast television promote democracy by conveying reasonably accurate reflections of where the candidates stand and what they are like.
To that end, since television was invented, Congress and its delegated agency, the Federal Communications Commision, together have passed laws and regulations to ensure that broadcast television stations provide reasonably accurate, balanced, and fair coverage of major Presidential and Congressional candidates. These obligations are reflected in specific provisions relating to rights to buy advertising time, bans against the gift of advertising time, rights to reply to opponents, and various other specific means of accomplishing the goal of balance and fairness. The various rules are part of a tradition well known to broadcasters an honored by almost all of them. This tradition is embodied in the commitment of the broadcasters to show the conventions and the debates.
Part of this tradition is that broadcasters do not show propaganda for any candidate, no matter how much a station owner may personally favor one or dislike the other. Broadcasters understand that they have a special and conditional role in public discourse. They received their licenses from the public -- licenses to use airwaves that, for instance, cellular companies bought in auctions -- for free, and one condition is the obligation to help us hold a fair and free election. The Supreme Court has routinely upheld this "public interest" obligation. Virtually all broadcasters understand and honor it.
Sinclair has a different idea, and a wrong one in my view. If Sinclair wants to disseminate propaganda, it should buy a printing press, or create a web site. These other media have no conditions on their publication of points of view. This is the law, and it should be honored. In fact, if the FCC had any sense of its responsibility as a steward of fair elections its chairman now would express exactly what I am writing to you here.
Make no mistake, if Sinclair's actions are not blocked, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth will be remembered as a more heinous operation than Willie Horton or even Bush's slander of John McCain's child. It's worse than bad people telling lies. The public spectrum should not be used to improperly transmit party propaganda. The left bank of the blogosphere is right on this one, and we should all do our part to pressure the market and our government leaders to ensure that this shit isn't tolerated. I'll collect some information and post it here later.
The debate is on and I see the President has his pen out now. A furious game of tic-tac-toe, I'm sure! (He still looks bored.) I'll be posting some wrap-up commentary at Begging To Differ if you're interested.
INTERACTIVE: I'm on AIM as Cappseus if you're watching near your computer. Holla at your boy.
Nothing like a little irresponsible conspiracy theorizing to fire up the message boards, and here's the latest: Was President Bush wearing an audio device during last Thursday's debate? Dave Lindorff furnishes the premise:
Was President Bush literally channeling Karl Rove in his first debate with John Kerry? That's the latest rumor flooding the Internet, unleashed last week in the wake of an image caught by a television camera during the Miami debate. The image shows a large solid object between Bush's shoulder blades as he leans over the lectern and faces moderator Jim Lehrer.But the plot thickens:The president is not known to wear a back brace, and it's safe to say he wasn't packing. So was the bulge under his well-tailored jacket a hidden receiver, picking up transmissions from someone offstage feeding the president answers through a hidden earpiece? Did the device explain why the normally ramrod-straight president seemed hunched over during much of the debate?
Suggestions that Bush may have using this technique stem from a D-day event in France, when a CNN broadcast appeared to pick up -- and broadcast to surprised viewers -- the sound of another voice seemingly reading Bush his lines, after which Bush repeated them. Danny Schechter, who operates the news site MediaChannel.org, and who has been doing some investigating into the wired-Bush rumors himself, said the Bush campaign has been worried of late about others picking up their radio frequencies -- notably during the Republican Convention on the day of Bush's appearance. "They had a frequency specialist stop me and ask about the frequency of my camera," Schechter said. "The Democrats weren't doing that at their convention."I think the best case against the cheat theory is that Bush lost. Miserably. Also my guy feeling is that I could probably order a more discreet radio transmitter from an ad in a comic book, and Bush has access to the blimp-deploying CIA, assuming he still has any friends over there. I'm inclined to attribute Bush's weirdo outbursts—e.g., "Let me finish!" with time on the clock, which would make more sense if someone, somewhere, were interrupting him—to, I don't know, delerium tremens. My guess is that the hump on his back is just the evil threatening to protrude through his skin, maybe in the form of a tentacle or leathery wing.
The thing about Bush's bizarre Wednesday-morning "major policy speech" that, as Fred Kaplan and others have noted, it was nothing more than Bush's wanting to address the fact that he got his ass kicked by John Kerry in their first debate. Free of the demands of extemporaneous speech, an opposing debator, a time limit, a moderator, and a nonobliging audience, Bush capably delivered his soliloquy, and took the media for a ride by dressing his run-of-the-mill stump address as a "major policy speech." It's fine—he failed the math test, so he's taking it again with a calculator. We know who this man is.
But as Mike Allen describes in today's Washington Post, the root of the damage done to President Bush wasn't to be found in the one devastating debate, but rather the strict, self-imposed isolation the Bush campaign has insisted on for the President. Even for his "major policy address," the crowd was cherrypicked to cheer without abandon. He's taking the test that his advisors wrote for him.
Then there's Cheney, who proved in his debate that he isn't restricted by the factual limits of arithmetic or anything else. 2+2=5, there are three lights!, whatever you want. (. . . Underneath that splayed metaphor is a worthwhile link, I promise.)
The Bush campaign's strategy with his "major policy speech" may have been to buffer the damage between debates, but bullshitting a bunch of yes-citizens isn't going to erase that image of a testy, uninformed President in voters' minds or help Bush prepare for the unexpected tonight (the debate will be in townhall format). As we witnessed last Thursday and probably will see again this evening, Bush isn't even reasonably prepared for the expected. One assumes that that serious, uncommitted voters will ask him tougher questions than where he likes brocolli, and I'm not at all sure that Bush can cram for the sort of quiz in which the right answer is the one that alleviates the serious doubts cast over the last four years of his administration. I think he'll prove the doubters right.
UPDATE: At the very least, he ought to give me something for this bloated bitch of a metaphor. Kerry will rap Bush's knuckles like a Catholic gradeschool teacher? Bush will fail the test globally? The possibilities are . . . kind of irritating.
Well, hell. All this time spent monitoring the horserace, following the debates, registering to vote in DC and anticipating the opportunity to do so for John Kerry—all for naught. The AP reported today that Bush won the November presidential re-election. The details are grim:
At this hour, President Bush has won re-election as president by a 47 percent to 43 percent margin in the popular vote nationwide. Ralph Nader has 1 percent of the vote nationwide. That's with 51 percent of the precincts reporting.Show's over, folks. Glad that Kerry took DC without my help. I heard the news from Political Wire, but maybe you caught it on your local news affiliate if you live in Arkansas, Arizona, Delaware, Illinois, or Wisconsin.Bush has won 324 electoral votes in 33 states. He is leading in 4 states for a total of 43 more electoral votes.
Kerry has won 105 electoral votes in 8 states and the District of Columbia. He is leading in 5 states for a total of 48 more electoral votes.
I received some questions regarding the Knife Party transmission submitted in comments by one "R," whom I suspect to be that notable brigand who appears here from time to time, R™. He has done us all a great service today: if you watch that video again, tovarisch, you will see a Project for the Affirmation of the New of the likes to make even our departed Party Brothers El Lissitzky and Aleksandr Rodchenko proud. Slavsya Otechestvo nashe svobodnoye, druzhbi narodov nadyozhniy oplot. Partiya Busha, sila narodnaya, nas k torzhestvu GOP vedyot! Who can combine the one true style of the patriarch with the traditional views of our Republican Party? Do not be afraid, friends! It is a glorious morning in Amerika!
I was at the Dan Flavin retrospective on Sunday, a few rooms into the exhibit, checking out a piece and jotting some notes, when a security guard came up to me:
GUARD: So what do you think his chances are?When it occurred to me that the guard was referring to the Kerry/Edwards button on my satchel. We both agreed that beyond Kerry's strong performance and Bush's bizarre falter, the fact that neither brought up Vietnam (not that they were expected to) emphasizes the real topics at stake in this election, which Bush couldn't defend. The guard really didn't think much of Flavin, however.
ME: Hmm. . . pretty good? I mean, he's got this big retrospective. . . .
I'll have more thoughts on the retrospective in longer form later (I know yer sweatin'!) but I have a few, mostly technical observations:
Flavin, The Diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Constantin Brancusi), 1963
(Did I get that right?)
Chris from Bah, Bah, Black Sheep:
This morning, Glenn pointed to a metrobus ad for DC Text Alert, a service that provides "information during a major crisis or emergency."V. funny. Uh-oh TROS* TTYL"Now that you'll be working downtown, hon, maybe you should sign up for that," he joked.
"As soon as the blimp overhead sees trouble it automatically texts your cell."
"Do you think the messages are like a 14 year-old girl's?"
"OMG WMD WTF!"
"U R N Dngr! :-("
"RICIN@IMF! CUL8R!"
* Tom Ridge Over Shoulder
It irritates me to no end that I have to wait until tomorrow to see Dan Flavin's retrospective at the National Gallery of Art when critical articles are already sprouting everywhere. If geography prevents you from seeing the show at all, you can watch WaPo chief art critic Blake Gopnik tour the show. (I'm not clicking anything—my ears are plugged, my eyes are sealed.)
You should know who won the debate tonight. Suppose you don't, though. If not, don't listen to your cerebral cortex. Listen to your lizard brain. Watch the video without the sound. Get in touch with your ancestors. Think way back. Don't even think. Thousands of years of evolution have prepared you for this decision. You are ready for justified true belief. If you must, consult the following reference, Nonhuman Primate Models to Study Anxiety, Emotion Regulation, and Psychopathology.[Primal howl]The grimacing, the lip-smacking, the rapid-fire blinking... How many glasses of water did George W. Bush have under the lip of the podium? He was downing them like Mescal shots towards the end. You all know how the sympathetic nervous system shuts down the salivary glands during extreme stress, right? (cf. Relationships Between Various Measures of Stress and Salivary Flow Rates)
As a vertebrate, a primate, and as a citizen you know it was crushing victory.
Good stuff, but I wonder whether Bush's evident lack of verbal intelligence actually signifies—assuming you subscribe to a many-intelligences model—that Bush is incompetent. (I don't have any expertise in the intersection of disciplines into which I've steered this post, so remember that we're just bullshitting here.) I believe that Bush is not competent or qualified for the job exactly because he can't speak or relate conceptually, and he can't do those things because he doesn't process information in the highest of verbal frameworks. I'd imagine that, in part, the degree to which you identify verbal intelligence with overall intelligence informs the level to which you've already written off Bush. I think that's unfair in many different assessments, but not for the office of the presidency—the job (so it seems) is to process arguments, synthesize policy, and defend your decisions. Highly efficient debaters—master debaters, you might say—are the ones who are good at doing these things. We don't test candidates with a debate in every election because it's fun, we do it because it's a good predictor for how or whether a President will address problems. Sure, fine, he's no captain of the debate team—I keep hearing that. But he's the president, and that requires something more.
Had Bush been obligated to talk about his job more frequently during his first administration, I think we'd have come to picture the President the way he's being envisioned today by nearly everyone today. That's the President he is when he's not talking about Jesus or cracking jokes. Very beta.
I was listening to NPR and Roger Noll, a Stanford economist and author of various books on the economics of sports, estimated that the retrocession of the Expos to DC should cost District residents, per capita, $50 a year. I suppose someone might actually not know that the District will end up paying for this deal, but this jibes with some commonsense data: There's never been a long-term gain to a sports franchise and the jobs it creates, to the extent it creates nonseasonal jobs, are crappy. Fifty bucks a year per each resident is quite a bit of money—sounds like a bad idea.
Still, there's intangibles to consider: Baseball live is great even if you don't like baseball; Baltimore's too far; hot dogs are awesome; the nation's metropolises will finally welcome the District back into their fraternity as a viable city with a culture all its own and big-market teams in every sport; or something like that; Yankees suck. Then I had a powerful revelation: DC baseball will be built on a foundation of half-smokes, the evolutionarily superior cousin to the frank and bun you know in your own major sports market. Sign me up.
Adding to the intangibles, there's some support out there behind an effort to rename the expat Expos in honor of the city's most successful Negro League team: the Washington Grays. Sounds very reasonable to me, though I don't really know how to root for [a] "Gray" I don't expect to get that much more enthused about a "Senator." (Once we're on the other side of November.)
DC will survive baseball and I'll try to get my $50 worth. Insofar as baseball survives Steinbrenner, that shouldn't be too hard.
First things first: John Kerry is significantly taller than George W. Bush. But last night, millions of unknowing Americans tuned in and saw a split-screen image of the pair looking exactly the same height.Good catch. I think in the end FOX's reaction shots did Bush a disservice, as he either stared blankly or frowned woundedly when Kerry spoke, while Kerry scribbled away when Bush had the floor. (On another meta note, the built-in light timer on the podium is brilliant. It generates a traffic-light anxiety that all the people watching at my place noted, meaning that the speaker is held accountable to the viewer. Wrap it up, we're saying at yellow.)Leave it to FOX News to distort the truth. The network was charged with camera control for the entire media during the debate tonight, so no matter which network you watched it on, the cameras were run by FOX’s crew. The camera angle on Kerry focused from his chest upward, keeping the podium out of sight. But the Bush shot left the top four or so inches of the podium in the frame -- thus rendering the two men vertical equals.
Then Ayelish really lights him up:
Bush needed all the help he could get in the authoritative department last night. His traditional hunkered stance at the podium left him looking narrow and slight, not thoughtful and intense as was probably intended. And try as he might, Bush cannot wipe his trademark grimace-smirk (“smirmace,” if you will) off his face when someone dares to take him on.Sounds like someone forgot about Poland when she woke up this morning!
You're going to feel like an ass if you spent all this time watching the presidential debate but tarried on your voter registration—and the date of assitude is nigh. Check here to see what your state's policies are; most stipulate that you're fine so long as it is postmarked 30 days before the election. Which is like now.
Nevada says they want your form by "9:00 p.m. on the fifth Saturday before any primary or general election," so you may be screwed if you haven't mailed your form. You're kind of already screwed for living in Nevada anyway—why can't they just say 35 days or whatever? North Dakota doesn't bother with voter registration, probably 'cause who cares, there's only 15 of them. (And these people get Senators when DC doesn't.) Most cryptic of all, though, is what the FEC has to say about the good Vice-President's home state: "Wyoming by law, cannot accept this form unless State law is changed."
He was really really hott tonight. I think that in the earliest stagest of the post-debate spin, I'm seeing a defensive Bush campaign. Kerry was concise; Bush was regurgitative. CNN is citing a USA Today/Gallup poll that I can't find yet online that showed Kerry winning the debate 53/37 among people who favored Bush.
UPDATE: It's a CNN/Gallup poll. 53/37.
<3 <3 <3
