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One of the 20th Century's most culturally influential scientists has passed away at the age of 102. I had no idea he'd been alive all these years.
I'll likely return to Hofmann's life in a future post, but I'm on the road for the next couple of days . . . so Happy Trails until then.
---Vitelius
So it has really come down to this.
Just this week, the US Supreme Court issued a ruling that, dovetailing its decision in Bush v. Gore, enshrined into law the principle that government has no Constitutional obligation to allow you to vote, or even allow you to register. The Green Zone in Baghdad came under heavy shelling, and more soldiers died in the month of April than had in any of the previous six months. The world's leading investment guru warned from his Nebraska home that our recession will be longer and nastier than virtually anyone else in the financial community is predicting. Home foreclosures and energy prices reached record levels. The Consumer Confidence Index fell to its lowest levels in six years. Sworn testimony revealed that terror detainees at Guantanamo are being tortured by Americans to extract confessions of wrongdoing from them.
And what, pray tell, has been the most pressing news item of late, the most urgent issue demanding the attention of our citizens? Yeah, that Wright guy.
Viewed through the muddied filter of our mainstream media, our search for perpetrators after 9/11 has taken us along an endless series of diversions and detours, starting with a real foreign enemy (Bin Laden), then veering sharply towards a past foreign enemy (Saddam) and hence careening wildly between assorted foreign non-enemies (Hamas, Iran, Syria). Now, more frustrated and befuddled than ever, our media guardians turn our attentions inward, to root out domestic non-enemies---and first on the block, the minister from Chicago. His crimes of disloyalty? For suggesting that America's original sin of slavery, and our treatment of others in past and present days, could be probable cause for divine retribution; for refusing to 'buke and scorn media-designated pariahs; for holding unusual and/or unpopular opinions about issues such as AIDS, Zionism and racism. In other words, for daring to think for himself, and to give voice to his thoughts as a free American, regardless of whether those thoughts are popularly held---to exercise his Constitutional rights as a citizen.
Silly man. These things aren't permissible anymore in this country. At least not from anyone. On the other hand, if you're a well-connected radio talk show host, you are free to exhort your listeners to riot at an upcoming political convention, or to call for the mass slaughter of Muslims. If you're a conservative evangelist, you are free to blame the deaths of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina on our nation's tolerance of gays and abortion, and it will scarcely raise an eyebrow. You can invent lie after lie, spread falsehood after falsehood, year after year after year, about who killed Vince Foster or who invented the Internets or who attended an Indonesian madrassa, and there will be no price to pay, and no retribution to be exacted, from your reputation or from your career.
But there are some thoughts, silly man, to which you are forbidden to give utterance:
First, you must never, ever question the motives of the government of Israel; they are God's chosen people, not an assortment of political parties, like all others, with self-interested agendas and scores to settle. You must never ascribe base motives to Anglo Americans; we only enslaved you to shield you from savagery. And you must never, ever, ever suggest that God does not favor America above all other nations, that we are all subject to the same divine codes of conduct as everyone else; for we are blessed above all the powers and principalities of this wicked world, and a beacon of hope to a lost and dying civilization.
And if you don't believe that, silly man, we'll invade your country, kick your ass, and by the way, you won't mind if we consume half of the world's resources while we're at it, now will you.
Barack Obama did what he necessarily had to do today, though the greater shame to me lies in an entirely contrived and media-driven non-crisis that forced him to commit an act of personal betrayal which, judging by his demeanor today, must have been a wrenching and sickening experience for him. But I also believe---contrary to a lot of folks in the blogosphere, apparently---that Jeremiah Wright did exactly what he needed to do the other night in Washington, too. Just as Barack Obama should (and will) act in his own best interests, so should Reverend Wright. And frankly, if I were in that silly old man's shoes, I would likely have thought something like this:
"They've already destroyed my name and reputation. But they can never take away my self-respect and beliefs. Barack? He's a scrapper---he'll get along fine without me."
And I think he'll get along fine, too . . . assuming our national media newsjackals give him half a chance. At least Jeremiah Wright, MSM-certified Bigot & Crackpot™, can retire with his dignity intact. Do not go gently, silly man, and God speed.
---Vitelius
Shorter Pastor Wright: Guilt by association? Ain't my problem:
Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and he didn't make me this color.
It never fails to amaze me how folks in the white newsmedia routinely trot out Farrakhan every few years like some kind of voodoo fetish, to be invoked as part of a loyalty test for black political and religious leaders. Either you must formally 'buke and scorn him, the reasoning goes, or . . . perhaps you're really not the good Negro you claim to be, or perhaps your loyalties to America are suspect, or perhaps you hate all Jews, or perhaps you believe we're all white devils too. Conversely, I cannot for the life of me recall any similar yardstick ever being applied to Anglo-American religious and political leaders. Can you ever recall a Russert or a Matthews or any other MSM flunky asking any white politico if he or she is willing to formally rebuke the racist asides of David Duke? of Trent Lott? of Strom Thurmond? Of course it's never asked of white political leaders, because it is deemed by the wise men in our MSM to be a settled matter, that no mainstream Anglo civic leader in this day and age could possibly harbor racist or anti-Semitic sentiments; hence it is deemed unworthy of discussion. And when some Respected Political Figure® like Trent Lott actually gets caught giving voice to some racist sentiment---well, good heavens, we're all like Claude Rains in Casablanca, now, aren't we?
The fact that a man such as Barack Obama, who has in many ways run the most deracinated political campaign ever attempted by a national black political figure, still has to fend off accusations of being some kind of closet black nationalist or (gasp!) a Manchurian Muslim---that he is still somehow perceived as that suspect "other," about whom Pastor Wright spoke so eloquently at the National Press Club today---speaks volumes, to me, about the state of Anglo America's collective political culture in the present day: overtly hostile expressions of racism may have been consigned to the past, but the racist attitudes that begat them are still sadly in flower, in the fetid and festering brain-stems of many, many members of our political ruling class.
And yes, I know, perhaps it would've been in Obama's best interests if Jeremiah Wright had laid low after the Moyers interview and not picked a fight with the Washington press corps today, but you know what? It wouldn't much matter in the bigger picture because the self-anointed racial healers in our Anglo-Saxon MSM will press onward with their already-scripted narrative, to join the two men together at both hips, ideologically, intellectually and politically---no matter what either if them says separately: Because they're both in the same church, and because they're both blacks, y'see, and those people, y'know . . . they all kinda look alike, and talk alike, and, well . . . they all kinda think alike too, doncha know.
This what we are up against in the Year of Our Lord 2008.
---Vitelius
This is what we are up against.
I will leave it to you, dear reader, to slog your way through the whole turgid essay, but all you need to know about it can be found in its closing passages:
The arc of New York Times columnist David Brooks is illustrative. The widely read and influential Brooks, a onetime neocon who had moved somewhat to the middle or at least become unpredictable in his politics, first seemed to fall in love a year ago. He was interviewing Obama and asked about foreign-aid programs. "His voice was measured and fatigued, and he was taking those little pauses candidates take when they're afraid of saying something that might hurt them later on," wrote Brooks. "Out of the blue, I asked, 'Have you read Reinhold Niebuhr?' Obama's tone changed. 'I love him. He's one of my favorite philosophers.' So I asked, 'What do you take away from him?' " Obama went on to dazzle Brooks with his grasp of Niebuhr's "The Irony of American History." The junior senator from Illinois showed a subtle feel for the need for America to act humbly but not passively in the wicked world, to be prudent but also bold and tough. At times Obama lapsed back into vacuous generalities, but Brooks's interest had been piqued.By March of this year, Brooks was writing about Obama's "defining moment," how in November 2007, a couple of months before the Iowa caucuses, Obama had showed Clinton up. Hillary had given a rousing partisan harangue ("We are here tonight to make sure that the next president is a Democrat!") and used the word "fight" or "fought" 15 times in one passage of her speech. Obama, on the other hand, ignored partisanship. He described a whole new order, way beyond politics as usual---a theory of social change that was not top-down, dictated by the old party hacks, but bottom-up. Obama sounded like "a cross between a social activist and a flannel-shirted software CEO---as a nonhierarchical, collaborative leader who can inspire autonomous individuals to cooperate for the sake of common concerns." The audience, particularly the younger members described by Brooks as raised on "Facebook, YouTube, open-source software," loved it. Brooks loved it.
Yet, just five weeks later, Brooks was writing "How Obama Fell to Earth." The columnist was discouraged by Obama's performance in the pre-Pennsylvania primary debate. "Obama has emerged as a more conventional politician and a more orthodox liberal," Brooks wrote. "He sprinkled his debate performance Wednesday night with the sort of fibs, evasions and hypocrisies that are the stuff of conventional politics."
Obama might win Brooks back if he returned to his high-mindedness and stopped pandering. But winning over the great mass of American voters is tricky. Obama has stood for change, and when it comes to changing politics, many Americans are with him. But change, more broadly imagined, is threatening to a lot of people, and not just high-school dropouts who own guns and live in rust-belt states. McCain, too, is out preaching change---attacking the political arena of Washington, where he has worked for more than two decades. But McCain drapes himself in red, white and blue; he is a thoroughly familiar figure, the war hero. Obama represents something newer and stranger in presidential politics, a black man with a Harvard degree who reads Niebuhr but is perfectly at home shooting hoops on a Chicago playground. To get the Democratic nomination, and to win the presidency, Obama has to show that he is not just a rock-star speechifier---or a worn-down pol trying to limp over the goal line without saying something that could possibly be used against him. He has to show voters who he really is. Most of them still don't know.
Think about it: David Brooks, graduate of the University of Chicago and formerly of the Weekly Standard and the Moonie Washington Times, is a Man of the People®, not a Republican partisan with a political axe to grind. David Brooks, proven fabricator, can be trusted to speak on behalf of the American voter in a way that no other political pundit apparently can. And David Brooks was displeased with Barack Obama's performance at a debate that was dominated by discussions of pastors and lapel pins. Therefore, Barack Obama is not a trustworthy figure since he has lost the trust of David Brooks. Even worse, Barack Obama has a complex persona----he's an intellectual and a jock, an Ivy Leaguer and a B-Boy---and is hence not easily defined in the one-dimensional caricatures that we prefer from our political leaders: The War Hero. The Ivy League Elitist. The Cowboy. The Brush-Clearer. The Steadfast and Resolute Leader. And because of these things, his candidacy lacks the legitimacy needed for him to assume the presidency.
Why? Because in Newsweek-land, policy doesn't matter. Positions don't matter. Even politics and rhetoric and intellect don't matter. Personality is all that matters. And one-dimensional personalities trump all. Because someone who can take equal pleasure from hooping it up at the local playground and studying postwar Christian theology is someone who simply can not be trusted with the levers of power because they can't be stereotyped in 12 column-inches by the David Brookses of this world.
Someone convince me---anybody, please!---that the political media in our country isn't diseased beyond redemption.
---Vitelius
A funny thing happened over the weekend. A guy named Jeremiah Wright went on Bill Moyers' show, talked for an hour, and the Republic somehow managed to wither the assault.
It has been interesting, actually, at how muted the reaction has been in the Dingbatsphere over the Wright interview over the weekend, and I'm guessing it's largely due to the fact that it was a lengthy and largely dispassionate discussion of history, theology and hermeneutics that didn't lend itself to 20-second clips on Fox and hence was unworthy of broadcast. Of course, it might also be due to the possibility that the Fox Volk don't really want to draw any more attention to it because, as anyone who actually watched the interview the other night will attest, it becomes patently obvious over the course of an hour that Jeremiah Wright is a scholarly, learned, and perfectly rational man:
Moyers: What did you mean when you said that [God Damn America]?Wright: When you start confusing God and government, your allegiances to government---a particular government and not to God---then you're in serious trouble because governments fail people. And governments change. And governments lie. And those are three points of the sermon. And that is the context in which I was illustrating how the governments biblically and the governments since biblical times, up to our time, changed, how they failed, and how they lie. And when we start talking about my government right or wrong, I don't think that goes. That is consistent with what the will of God says, or the word of God says, that governments don't say right or wrong. That governments that wanna kill innocents are not consistent with the will of God. And that you are made in the image of God, you're not made in the image of any particular government. We have the freedom here in this country to talk about that publicly, whereas some other places, you're dead if say the wrong thing about your government.
Moyers: Well, you can be almost crucified for saying what you've said here in this country.Wright: That's true. But you can be crucified, you can be crucified publicly, you can be crucified by corporate-owned media. But I mean, what I just meant was, you can be killed in other countries by the government for saying that. Dr. King, of course, was vilified. And most of us forget that after he was assassinated, but the year before he was assassinated, April 4th, 1967 at the Riverside Church, he talked about racism, militarism and capitalism. He became vilified. He got ostracized not only by the majority of Americans in the press; he got vilified by his own community. They thought he had overstepped his bounds. He was no longer talking about civil rights and being able to sit down at lunch counters, that he should not talk about things like the war in Vietnam. He preached---
Moyers: Lyndon Johnson was furious at that. As you know---
Wright: I'm sure he was.
Moyers: That's where they broke.
Wright: And that's where a lot of the African-American community broke with him, too. He was vilified by Roger Wilkins' daddy, Roy Wilkins. Jackie Robinson. He was vilified by all of the Negro leaders who felt he'd overstepped his bounds talking about an unjust war. And that part of King is not lifted up every year on January 15th. 1963, "I have a dream," was lifted up, and passages from that---sound bites if you will---from that march on Washington speech. But the King who preached the end of---"I've been to the mountaintop, I've looked over and I've seen the Promised Land, I might not get there with you,"---that part of the speech is talked about, not the fact that he was in Memphis siding with garbage collectors. Nothing about Resurrection City, nothing about the
poor---
Moyers: Resurrection City was the march in Washington for the poor.
Wright: For the poor. That part of King is not talked about because we want to keep that away from the public eye, and the public memory, and it's been 40 years now.Moyers: What is your notion of why so many Americans seem not to want to hear the full Monty---they don't want to seem to acknowledge that a nation capable of greatness is also capable of cruelty?
Wright: I think I come at that as a historian of religion. That we are miseducated as a people. Or because we're miseducated, you end up with the majority of the people not wanting to hear the truth. Because they would rather cling to what they are taught. James Washington, now a deceased church historian, says that after every revolution, the winners of that revolution write down what the revolution was about so that their children can learn it, whether it's true or not. They don't learn anything at all about the Arawak, they don't learn anything at all about the Seminole, the Trail of Tears, the Cherokee. They don't learn anything. What they learn is 1776, Crispus Attucks was the one black guy in there. Fight against the British . . . "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal while we're holding slaves." No, keep that part out. They learn that. And they cling to that. And when you start trying to show them you only got a piece of the story, and lemme show you the rest of the story, you run into vitriolic hatred because you're desecrating our myth. You're desecrating what we hold sacred. And what you're holding sacred is a miseducational system that has not taught you the truth.
Pastordan at Street Prophets sums it all up, for good and for ill:
Rev. Wright presents a huge problem for the way religion gets talked about in our mass media. First of all, as we're all painfully aware, his preaching doesn't lend itself to bite-sized pieces. Nor does it accommodate an easy faith, as he says over and over again . . . I think it's quite right to say that Obama's "problem" with Rev. Wright is not going to go away. Wright represents too much that is unresolved and perhaps unresolvable about our nation. Our society is not ready to hear the simple truth that we, too, will have to someday stand naked before God and face the judgment that is to come.
Anyway, if you missed the Moyers show, and you have the time, check out the video at PBS. By the standards of television in our era, it's an amazingly complex and compelling dialogue.
---Vitelius
Five suggestions for our future Hoopsta-in-Chief:
1. Demolish White House bowling alley. Replace with 94 feet of hardwood.
2. Invite representatives from the Iraqi Army, the Badr Brigades, the Sadr Militia, the Mahdi Army, the Sunni Awakening and the Kurdish Militias to the White House for a midnight 3-on-3 roundball tournament. Winner gets to run Iraq.
3. Declare November 6 a National Hoops Day.
4. Purge State Department of GOP-loyalist ambassador corps; replace with qualified candidates.
5. Do not offer Isiah Thomas a job in your administration. Ever.
---Vitelius
Over at Hullabaloo today, the estimable Dday makes a crucial point that's getting lost in the din of voices bemoaning the impending demise of the Democrats this fall:
One thing that is getting lost in this primary fight is that John McCain is a pretty terrible campaigner and general election candidate. The only thing going for him is media interference, but even they can't hide the contradictions and the gaffes and the essential conservatism he's boxed himself into.
Spot on. From his conflating of Sunni and Shia in Iraq, to his incoherent remedy for the people of New Orleans, to his nonsensical and contradictory positions on tax policy, to his tone-deaf remarks on the role of government in the lives of poor people, McCain just can't seem to stop betraying his true political nature, which is that of an intellectually lazy martinet who has authored only one significant piece of legislation in the past 30 years, who has spent more time grandstanding for the creation of a National Boxing Commission than reading up on the principles of Keynesian economics, and whose most noteworthy political skills have been his ability to sucker the media and to turn on a dime. The main reason he's going to be his party's nominee isn't because of the strong appeal to voters he exerted throughout the GOP primary season, but because he was not a Mormon, or a serial adulterer, or a Pentecostal populist, or an anti-war Libertarian. Which is to say, because he sucked less than all the other guys. In that sense, the candidate he most closely resembles isn't George Bush the 1st---who won election by artfully distancing himself from some of Ronald Reagan's most regressive policies---but Bob Dole, another aging careerist who staked his general-election campaign on the issue of tax cuts when nobody in the electorate gave a rat's ass about it. That's not to say he still can't win in November---and he will have plenty of aid and assistance from all the Beltway blowhards---but I still think the odds are predominantly in the Democrats' favor this fall, no matter how the convention in Denver plays out, or how hard folks like Russert and Matthews labor to paper over McCain's obvious deficiencies.
Another thing lost in the ongoing Hillary-Obama feud was the GOP primary in Pennsylvania last week, where 27% of the voters went for someone other than McCain, and this points out another weakness in his candidacy that has been largely overlooked up to now---namely, that there have always been a substantial chunk of the GOP faithful who don't particularly like or trust him, and if any appreciable number of those voters decide sit out the general, he's finished.
--Vitelius
From today's Post, another study in efficiency, courtesy of our first MBA President:
"The competitive sourcing initiative did little to improve management, produced a ton of worthless paper, demoralized thousands of workers and cost a bundle, all to prove that federal employees are pretty good after all."
Yet again proof that the private sector is invariably better, faster and cheaper than government. Except when it isn't which is most of the time.
---Vitelius
Dear Lord, I am about to have a reflux attack:
Miami -- Florida drivers can order more than 100 specialty license plates celebrating everything from manatees to the Miami Heat, but one now under consideration would be the first in the nation to explicitly promote a specific religion.The Florida Legislature is considering a specialty plate with a design that includes a Christian cross, a stained-glass window and the words "I Believe."
Rep. Edward Bullard, the plate's sponsor, said people who "believe in their college or university" or "believe in their football team" already have license plates they can buy. The new design is a chance for others to put a tag on their cars with "something they believe in," he said.
Uhhhhhh . . . yeah. Well, I suppose I can live with this---provided that we're allowed a little equal opportunity for symbols of other faiths and religious experiences. Guess there are some inmates down in Florida who are gonna need to put in some overtime at the prison library studying Religious Symbology. Heck, this could even be an educational experience! Who says prisons can't teach folks a worthwhile trade?
---Vitelius
Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, Turkish Consulate, Wilshire Boulevard at Crescent Heights, Los Angeles, California, 4:30 pm.
---Vitelius
George Antheil fans will surely be envious, but for the rest of us . . . Good Lord:
Honda's versatile ASIMO will finally spread its wings and embrace the artistic future it's always hoped for. On May 13, the automaton will conduct the Detroit Symphony Orchestra---and Yo-Yo Ma---in a performance of Impossible Dream. The DSO and Honda have combined forces to bring music education to children in Detroit, and ASIMO's concert will be the launching point for a number of projects the Japanese monolith will be sponsoring in the industrial city.
---Vitelius
See what can happen when people, y'know, like, actually talk to each other?
Beirut --- A Cabinet minister said Wednesday that Israel has passed a message to Syria saying it is prepared to return the Golan Heights in exchange for a peace treaty.Israeli officials declined to comment on the report, but the message could be a sign of progress in back-channel contacts that the two nations have reported in recent days.
Syrian Emigrant Affairs Minister Buthaina Shaaban told satellite television al-Jazeera that the message from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was relayed to Syrian President Bashar Assad by Turkey's leader.
The message said Olmert "is ready for peace with Syria based on international conditions and the full return of the Golan Heights," Shaaban said.
Compare and contrast to this shrewd purveyor of statecraft:
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice mocked anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as a coward on Sunday, hours after the radical leader threatened to declare war unless U.S. and Iraqi forces end a military crackdown on his followers."I know he's sitting in Iran," Rice said dismissively, when asked about al-Sadr's latest threat to lift a self-imposed cease-fire with government and U.S. forces. "I guess it's all-out war for anybody but him," Rice said. "I guess that's the message; his followers can go to their deaths and he's in Iran."
What I don't understand is: The Syrians harbor and support the terrorists. I know this because Dear Leader has told us so. Therefore the Syrians are evil, and they hate us for our freedoms and our very way of life. Yet the Israelis want to actually negotiate with . . . the evil harborers of terrorists!?! . . . Why oh why does Israel hate America?
--Vitelius
Feed the Baron
