We like watching the Tournament of Roses parade on New Year's morning. I like it because it's not dominated by cartoon-character balloons. It's still primarily a parade, not a television event. I've grown tired of over-produced television events. But why, oh why does the commentary have to be so deliberately and consistently unctuous?
Blogger Andrew Sullivan, who is a staunch fiscal conservative, has this excellent perspective on President Obama's first year. He includes the cartoon where Wile E. Coyote catches the Road Runner.
There's a new USA Today Gallup Poll. See the results here.
Andrew Sullivan today passes along Charles Krauthammer's response to Paul Krugman's thinking. He may have a point, but haven't we seen "free-market control" just about drive us into the ditch? I think I understand that a pure, survival-of-the-fittest free-market is theoretically wonderful to some people. But how much more evidence do we need that such a pure system carries huge risks when carried out by impure human beings?
Paul Krugman worries that our fixation on the fix of our economic system may crush any possibility of long-term change.
"Well, as to that whole reason, she’s, you know, just about the only way she KNOWS how to be from her schooling, I mean going to six colleges and getting a journalism only at the end. But gosh, I mean really, can’t we all see that how much she’s done for the base of Lincoln’s party is everyone now knows that even a gal like her can grow up and succeed at success through doors that are open to her, by God! It’s not like, though, we should take for granted that she’s done so much without the benefit of a great language that so many people have shown isn’t even really necessarily mastered besides when they go into politics! Gosh, give her a break here, she’s only tryin’ to say what she meant to say, and not what you’re all trying to tell everyone she was saying anyway."
— Michael Temlin, New York, commenting on Dick Cavett's column about Sarah Palin
We are seeing a sometimes-disturbing backlash to the election of Barack Obama, unashamedly fanned by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and most other conservative talk-radio hosts.
Folks, these people are in the entertainment business. Their job is to attract and hold an audience. Period. You cannot attract and hold an audience with policy discussion. It must be loud, angry, confrontational or otherwise compellingly entertaining. Do not rely on call-in shows for political or policy information. Do rely on them for entertainment.
Don't we know this?
See Andrew Sullivan's blog.
We are hearing gobs and gobs and gobs and gobs about how the Republican party might reconstitute itself and even come back to power. I'm somewhat interested in this, but can we PLEASE give it a rest for a while?
My theory is that many excellent reporters did their job well over the last eight years. And their job was to carefully develop sources in power and connected to power. In the last eight years, power was strongly centralized in the White House. This power was usually unaffected and unchanged by new facts, data or circumstances--wherever they came from. If the media reported information contradicting a White House statement or policy, it meant nothing. So reporters were rewarded for sticking to the company line.
The result was a dysfunctional dependency on dribblings from the White House and those connected to the White House, such as neoconservative commentators (who had an Oval Office IV) and very conservative think tanks. Over the last eight years, the more ravenously you ate the scraps, the more successful you were as a reporter.
These reporters are still showing up to be fed at the same places a week after the election, and they're hearing all kinds of stuff. But the scraps don't mean what they used to.
So it's time for the media to stop feeding and have a colonic. Then they need to start over, diligently and creatively reporting what's happening from a wide variety of sources never heard from before.
Please.
"The North Carolina county where Palin expressed her delight at being in the 'real America' went for Obama by more than 18 percentage points."
--Frank Rich, in today's New York Times
Recently, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was lambasted for saying that the history of Christian thought shows no consensus on when human life begins. She had done her homework on this. Read more here.
"Bush took Karl Rove into the White House, turned policy into an arm of politics, and governed the same way he campaigned: treat the press as an out-of-favor interest group, control the message at all cost, repeat it incessantly regardless of changing facts, admit no mistakes, show no uncertainty, reward loyalists, and ignore critics or else, if necessary, destroy them. This approach to what’s known as strategic communications won Bush two elections; it also helped destroy his Presidency. Campaigning and governing are not the same. They are closer to being opposites."
--George Packer. The rest of his blog is here.
It's hard to believe. Is it elitist to know that Africa is a continent?
Everywhere I go today, people are talking about the election. In the church office, at lunch in the local cafe, at the coffee shop. This is a phenomenal day.
This morning at my polling place, there were just three people in line, though the parking lot was full.
This is a VERY interesting piece from the Christian Science Monitor that gives a moving perspective on the meaning of this election.
Krispy Kreme, that's right, Krispy Kreme, is offering a free patriotic doughnut to everyone who comes in on Election Day with an "I Voted" sticker. Sign me up! Quick! What day is today?
"Somehow Ronald Reagan’s party of western individualism and limited government has ended up not just increasing the size of the state but turning it into a tool of southern-fried moralism."
"There is no getting around the fact that Mr Obama’s résumé is thin for the world’s biggest job. But the exceptionally assured way in which he has run his campaign is a considerable comfort. It is not just that he has more than held his own against Mr McCain in the debates. A man who started with no money and few supporters has out-thought, out-organised and outfought the two mightiest machines in American politics—the Clintons and the conservative right."
--The Economist, endorsing Barack Obama for President.
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