The Daily Texan, newspaper for my alma mater, endorses Hillary Clinton. Fair enough—but really?:
But during Thursday's debate, Obama made a major gaffe in incorrectly stating that he had received endorsements from every major newspaper in Texas. We may not be considered a "major" paper to many, but we represent a crucial constituency of close to 50,000 young and enthusiastic voters, and we've been scrutinizing every move of the candidates leading up to today's endorsement. Sure, Obama took many under his spell when he graced our city with his presence early in his campaign, but we think he prematurely considered his work in Austin done.Aw come on you whiners! Obama wouldn't give you tickets so you're going to prove him wrong after the fact about saying he'd snagged every major newspaper endorsement?We've taken into account our communication with each campaign as an indication of how each candidate's government would function. Upon finding out the debate would not be open to students, Obama's campaign told us there was nothing they could do to get more students into the debate, whereas the Clinton camp was sympathetic in offering assistance. This makes us wonder how far Obama would go for us as president.
I'm wondering today: How are soundtracks written? Doesn't the movie need to be shot and edited in its entirety before a composer can know what moods to match and for how long within a given scene?
A conversation today about art-music videos reminds me that the Wpa hasn't hosted a lecture in its Experimental Media Series in some time. I hope it's an ongoing program that will return to the Corcoran soon.
In the meantime, and acknowledging that I'm totally copping out on the lack of posts around here lately—art videos!
OCDJ!
Dan Deacon!
Videohippos!
All good things come from Baltimore. Note that if you play all these videos at the same time, it sounds like any song by your run-of-the-mill, cool-kids Baltimore DJ.
Finally, this gem:
I can't explain that one but I adore it.
That is a lyric in need of a good a home. Feel free to drop it into a caring and particular slow jam, one that captures the groovy kind of love between a presidential candidate and his lobbyist.
I for one think this story does John McCain no favors, even if the New York Times clearly didn't get the goods and is never able to follow through. The way the right deals with this, or any brewing scandal, is by decrying it immediately as another example of the perfidies of the liberal, mainstream, insider-obsessed media run amock. The right doesn't wait for the other shoe to drop—the right chops both feet off at the ankles.
Though the GOP and its sympathizers know when and how to deploy the conservative bluster machine, will they? In a post titled "A Lesson for John McCain," Michelle Malkin writes: "If you lie down with MSM dogs, you wake up with stories like this." I think that if the right doesn't form a unified defense for McCain there's a risk that McCain's straight-talk enchantment over the media will be broken. Therefore I think it's highly likely that McCain's straight-talk enchantment over the media will be broken.
UPDATE: Snark aside, I'm with Yglesias: This is a loathsome move on behalf of the Times. It's innuendo as reporting and I'd be outraged if McCain were my man. McCain has a substantive scandal on his hands related to Iseman and corruption, so the paper of record doesn't need to resort to wink-wink, nudge-nudge allegations in order to report a shady discovery.
UPDATE II: Spencer is calling (well, fictionalizing) Huckabee for McCain's Vice President. With those shadowy allegations of an affair sure to eat up headlines, McCain will need the light of Huckabee's virtue more than he will need a Wall Street–vetted veep.
Obama campaign poster for the March 4 Texas primary by the Date Farmers (Carlos Ramirez and Armando Lerma)
Just in time to remind us that the Texas primary is not over yet and Western-hemisphere Communist imagery hasn't fallen out of fashion just because Castro's left office. This nifty campaign poster comes courtesy of California's Upper Playground, who has made some limited-edition screenprints available for purchase, proceeds of which will benefit other artists who are creating materials to support Obama's campaign. Which is sort of like giving to the Obama campaign itself.
Sorry to be so short lately. Here's something I thought I'd pass along: More people have personally seen or felt the presence of a ghost than approve President Bush's job performance. Which is in the basement. Where the ghosts live.
Spencer Ackerman, Kay Steiger, Ezra Klein, Ann Friedman, Matthew Yglesias, and I—along with new addition Sam Rosenfeld—bring you the re-up. WireTAP, round two. Look for two more drops as the season and series winds down.
So artDC is leaving DC. Should DC be concerned? I don't think so. There were organizational problems with artDC—and with the Convention Center—from the start. I'm not as convinced as some that this market can support an international fair but I'm certain that the failure of artDC does not prove that the city can't.
National Journal contributing editor Chuck Todd is saying on MSNBC right now that that given the incredible margins of Obama's victories tonight, Clinton will need to take Texas and Ohio by 60 percent at least.
What an exciting night! For reasons not least of which being that my Air-O-Swiss Ultrasonic Humidifier 7135 arrived today.
Virginia exit polls show Obama leading among nearly every voter cohort. Seemingly the only thing Virginians like better than Barack Obama is personalizing plates.
Photo by Matt Wright
Read Marc Ambinder on the Texas primaucus. It warms my heart to see that in a primary system that's funky nationwide, Texas has nevertheless carved out an especially screwball way of doing things. Obama fans may take heart: All the talk of the race coming down to Texas and Ohio ignores the fact that they are different states with very different methods for choosing delegates. Ambinder (emphasis added):
[T]here aren't any delegates awarded to the winner of [Texas]—no statewide bonus delegates, nothing. For another, a third of the delegates will be chosen through a complicated caucus system.So the state senate districts are determined by some equation factoring the performances of John Kerry and Chris Bell. (This doesn't quite make sense, since Kerry ran in 2004 and the last gubernatorial contest was in 2006, but I guess that the math accounts for the disparity.) That "liberal third party challenger" is Kinky Friedman, bless his heart, that old hellraiser. Ambinder needs to know that in the primary, those voters who supported Friedman (and Nader before him in 2000) have all glommed onto the "Paulistinian" plight. The white vote will not split evenly: Ron Paul will siphon voters from Obama in the most liberal, delegate-rich districts.* And as Chris Hayes learned the hard way, it's unwise to forget about Mike Gravel.And instead of proportional allocation by congressional district, the rest of the delegates will be proportionally allocated by state senate districts. George W. Bush's '04 performance really changes the math. That's because the number of delegates allocated in those districts are based on how well (or poorly) John Kerry did, as well as the performance of the last Democratic gubernatorial candidate (who himself had votes taken away by a liberal third party challenger.)
The delegate-rich districts are the most heavily liberal state senate districts. According to this calculation, they're in Austin and in two of the most concentrated African American parts of the state. Advantage: Obama.
Clinton will get plenty of support from Latino voters, but they tend to be more spread out and thus will see their votes somewhat diluted in the 31 separate primaries. In order to "win"—both enough delegates and statewide, you need to organize what amounts to caucus-like campaigns in each of these districts.
The white vote in Texas will probably split, with Obama taking men and Clinton taking women. Though Latinos make up a slightly larger share of the electorate than African Americans, they tend to vote in lower proportions.
The process has two steps. First, folks vote. 126 delegates will be accorded proportionally via state senate district. Then, when polls close, they caucus in more than 1,000 precincts.
Be that as it may, the Lone Star Primaucus sounds to be better news for Obama than the Ohio primary. His campaign made the decision to send the South Carolina team there, and may their efforts not be wasted. The last poll, conducted in January, is not emboldening—with Clinton at 48% and Obama at 38%—but there have been momentum-shifting contests since then and polls don't necessarily tell the story in a primaucus contest.
Needless to say it will thrill me to no end to see this contest come down to Texas (and Ohio). If Obama shaves even a nominal victory from Clinton's delegate edge, there will be barbecue. I find the notion so distasteful that we might effectively emerge from the primary contest with a draw, with the candidate to be selected then by backroom bargaining, intra-party intrigue, and superdelegate shuffling, that I'm definitely holding out hope for that queer Texas orneriness to see this contest finished. Hook 'em hope! Remember the Alamo!
* Note that the Texas system is a semi-open primary. Paul supporters will need to declare before entering in the booth that they wish to vote on the Republican ballot (no matter how or whether they're registered with the parties). Two things could cost Paul votes: ignorance of Paul's party status (he's not the head of the Re-Love-Ution party or however you write that) or distaste for voting on the GOP ticket (after all, there are twenty other contests on the ballot, none of which offer an equivalent protest-option candidate for liberal dumbass college students).
UPDATE: Burnt Orange Report breaks down exactly how Texas delegates are awarded (in fewer than 5,000 words).
I don't see that Al Gore has to endorse one of the candidates merely because he is a superdelegate. He will cast his vote long after the point his endorsement would have any effect on the candidates' campaigns—all he needs to do is not call a press conference within the next few weeks. I would welcome Gore's endorsement, though, and Gore he does play kingmaker I hope he's selecting the candidate with the wisest plan on and most likely path to market caps on emissions and other reforms to curb global warming.
Turner arrives in Dallas and the Dallas Morning News has a review claiming that "No artist has a greater claim to being the last of the traditionalists and the first of the moderns." I register a similar note in my review for the Guardian, though I am less sanguine about what it means for Turner to be such a transitional figure. There's a premium for transitional painters, and I think that we can get carried away in the search for those missing-link artists who bridge modernism and what came before: "A 1966 exhibit of 100 watercolours and oils that visited the Museum of Modern Art - not the Met - enrolled Turner in the ever-expanding chronicle of 19th-century painters whose work would prefigure the advent of Modernism."
Frankly, I think it was seeing Constable billed as the first modernist just several months before the Turner show (in the same museum, no less) that gave me pause. Had Constable painted for another 20 years, he would not have arrived at the earliest Impressionist works. Had Turner worked for another 10 years he would have—though, had his mental state not deteriorated to the degree that it did, he would not have arrived at the canvases that are most often greeted as Modern. There's a limit to these kinds of counterfactuals—what an artist might have discovered given the time to follow down some road he started on—and yet that seems to be what we are saying when we say that so-and-so non–Modernist painter was in fact the first Modernist painter.
This video portrait business by Ryan McGinley on actors nominated for Oscars is just gay. How is this not parody? We're all going to be doing this on Facebook or whatever we're using in a year's time. (Courtesy the Governess)
This is pretty funny:
though I think it misses the point. There is a massive population to whom this sort of language is fundamentally appealing. Many, many people respond to this category of talk about blood sacrifice, endless war, greatest generations, cultural decline, and neverending occupation. It's a weird marriage between American exceptionalism and conservative defeatism that causes some people to shake their heads, more in sadness than in anger (but also in anger) at the sorry state of America and these kids today, etc., while advocating for U.S. presences across the globe and planetary hegemony in general. Maybe that isn't exactly what McCain is selling—he seems to lack the religious component, although his candidacy will have that if he tacks on Mike Huckabee. What McCain is selling is very close to the cultural conservatism I'm thinking of. Relatedly, Yglesias: "[John McCain] appears to regard the self-sacrifice of the military man not as admirable because it helps protect and sustain a liberal society at home, but because it's actually preferable to have people's lives organized around regimentation, comformity, and sacrifice."
Semi-finalists for the $25,000 Sondheim Prize (artists from the District listed in bold):
Becky Alprin, Laura Amussen, Rachel Bone, Ryan Browning, Mandy Burrow, Linda Day Clark, Brent Crothers, Melissa Dickenson, Eric Finzi, Laurie Flannery, Shaun Flynn, Dawn Gavin, Geoff Grace, Maren Hassinger, Kay Hwang, Courtney Jordan, Bridget Sue Lambert, Youngmi Song Organ, Beverly Ress, James Rieck, Christopher Saah, Lynn Silverman, Molly Springfield, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Calla Thompson, Edward Winter, Erin WomackMany fewers artists from the capital this year than in last year's crop.
Tyler Green is right: A primer on the Democratic candidates' dedication to funding and supporting arts would be very useful. Naturally a prospective plan for fundings arts ranks some ways below foreign policy outlook and universal health coverage as a concern in a primary campaign. Even slim, marginal differences between the candidates on these crucial issues would outweigh in my estimation very great differences between the two vis-á-vis the arts.
Priorities noted. And that said, the political situation of the arts still matters greatly and there is an opportunity for a candidate to take a leadership role in communicating to the nation and to the Congress what those issues are. So I'll agree with Green's tentative proposition: It's both worthwhile and timely for the arts community to debate and identify three federal/national policy issues that we want to see a Democratic candidate embrace. Three that come to mind would be the estate tax, public art, and local access.
The first one I'll be discussing in a piece on a new exhibition at the Phillips Collection, "Degas to Diebenkorn: The Phillips Collects". I don't want to scoop myself so some of those comments will have to wait for the time being. I've debated the value of publicly funding art at every libertarian happy hour I've ever attended, so I feel familiar with the for and against arguments on that score. Local access is a more loosey-goosey category but I think it's important to discuss art as it happens beyond the coasts—and pace the conventional wisdom it's in the flyover country where things like National Endowment of the Arts grants have their greatest impact.
More to come.
I've been too tied up on the phone today to do much writing, but I did manage a quick pun. Fierce head-nod to Spaq for the link.
I invite the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library (for which I've publicly spoken and written as a devoted advocate) to host one of these video game–based amnesty contests so as to give me a shot at winning away the double-digit penalty I owe in outstanding library fines. This platform would be just fine.
(Via JPYG)
I'm in over my head with work. Go read Marc Ambinder about how inside DNC baseball may wind up deciding the Clinton/Obama contest after all. It seems grossly unfair that Florida and Michigan delegates could be considered after the states moved ahead with early primaries under the full knowledge (assented by all the Democratic candidates) that delegates from those states would not be credentialed if they did so. Can't Howard Dean do something equally unfair to ensure an outcome that preserves DNC rules/the primary schedule as it stands?
Richly deserving of the many nods they received last year, Helen Yentus's designs for the new Camus edition are fine.
An brief profile on Yentus by the art director of Print. Yentus's designs for Camus are cousin to the 2006 Grove Centenary Editions of Samuel Beckett boxed set, designed by Laura Lindgren; I'd call both successes. What fun exercises.
Matthew Langley, Stylus, 2007.
A short item in the City Paper on Matthew Langley: "His paintings draw easy comparisons to a host of latter-day abstract-expressionist titans, from Agnes Martin and Sean Scully. Make no mistake, Langley courts those comparisons—his emphasis on the grid places him squarely within that Lacanian camp that finds the sublime through repetition, variation, and trauma."
And so on. The artist keeps a blog—here he mentions former WPA director, Jock Reynolds. I have heard that Reynolds's name was bandied about for director of the Corcoran after Levy's departure, back when.
