From the monthly archives: September 2014
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This will be interesting. I mean, the basic problem with rape law enforcement is still that it’s one person’s word against another, but this law does mean that there’s no more gray area with respect to unconsciousness. That’s good. The bigger problem is that it is difficult to enforce overall, and the real challenge in beating it will need to be cultural and will take perhaps a generation.
I haven’t been traveling, nor have I not been thinking about current events, politics and all the rest. I haven’t really been able to think of anything new to say at this time about the big issues. I still think the entire Iraq/ISIS venture is ill-conceived at best, that it will turn out badly, and that we’ve already reverted to some degree to the state of politics a decade ago is deeply depressing. That this is likely to happen even more often under either a Hillary or GOP presidency starting in 2017 is even more depressing. So, yeah, Mr. Happy Fun Guy over here. I’ll probably post something lengthier tomorrow.
That’s not a thumbs-up, so much as a symbolic gesture?on how he will attempt to crush workers who vote to unionize.
We need a new scale, people. Its?purpose: for measuring the relative corruption, sleazy buckraking and amoral behavior of former Democratic officeholders, named after Dick Gephardt, who spent a couple decades in the House?insisting he was the banner carrier of New Deal liberalism, before leaving and working on whatever?anti-labor, anti-healthcare, evil corporate lobbying effort paid best (a brief list can of course be found here). Needless to say it’s possible to be a former Dem politico and make some scratch without turning fully to the dark side–Al Gore comes to mind as someone who could very easily have gone this way but, surprisingly, didn’t. So if a guy who’s political career brought him close connections with AIPAC, DLC corporate donors and all corners of Clintonworld can forgo doing bad things for money, there’s really no excuse. Let’s see how this goes in this initial series:
This is a bit old now, but I was traveling at the time and I’ve been meaning to write about it. I actually think Rick Perlstein has the better of?Bernstein?here (in one of his occasional, regrettable lapses into his peculiar form of institutional conservatism), though his conclusion is wrong. The Nixon pardon didn’t change everything, it’s that it stopped things from changing enough. Watergate did change things in Washington considerably–presidential and executive branch misbehavior went from being something held privately among members of the “club” to something that journalists scrambled to get out in the open. That was a big change that threatened the establishment. Jerry Ford–a Washington establishment guy if ever there was one–should be seen as someone working hard to protect the old way of doing things, and with the Nixon pardon, he succeeded quite brilliantly. From Iran-Contra to Bush Jr’s decision to flat-out ignore laws he didn’t like, with signing statements and without, to Obama’s repeated violations of the War Powers Act and due process, lawbreaking is now something that we shrug at when directed from on high. That was not the case with Watergate, where wide swathes of both parties were?disgusted with Nixon’s tawdry antics. The real moral of this particular story is the establishment fighting back after being on the ropes, combined with eventual the changes wrought by partisan polarization. That’s all.
I think we need to create a new maxim like Moore’s Law for the foreign policy arena. Let’s call it Villager’s Law:
If:
(1) the Very Serious talking heads in the opinion columns and Sunday morning talk shows say you’re doing the right thing; and
(2) there is a bipartisan consensus in Congress that you’re doing the right thing; and, finally,
(3) the thing you’re doing involves bombing shit and killing lots of brown people in a foreign country…
Read more on When All Of The Very Serious Talking Heads Say You’re Winning……
Jim Webb should run for president. This is sort of a better version of the Schweitzer for president idea–a presidential run focusing on a critique of hawkish foreign policy would be a worthy endeavor, considering that upwards of 70% of the Democratic base is dovish, and yet the Democratic Party is thoroughly hawkish in its elite makeup. Webb would be easily able to make a strong argument and communicate it well, and it would be unusually credible coming from him–even the mainstream media treats him as an authority on these issues, and he has the right resume–and he has nothing really to lose. It is admittedly very hard to imagine Webb assembling a winning coalition against Hillary–he would be in a good position to attract netroots activists and perhaps some conservative Democrats, though it’s hard to envision him really snapping up minority voters and women who strongly favor Hillary–but if he were to capture media attention and win a couple of primaries, it’s hardly inconceivable that it will force Clinton to make promises on the use of force that would constrain her later. There certainly is merit in providing a voice for the silent majority in any event, and a presidential campaign could be an easy way to create organization around the issue that will serve it going forward. Really, there’s nothing but upside to this whole concept. Also, he doesn’t stick his foot in his mouth every damn day he talks.
The “War on ISIS” has not managed to turn around Obama’s problems with the public (h/t Political Wire):
As Mr. Obama broadens the military offensive against Islamic extremists, the survey finds broad support for United States airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, but it also demonstrates how torn Americans are about wading back into battle in the Middle East. A majority is opposed to committing ground forces there, amid sweeping concern that increased American participation will lead to a long and costly mission.
Why do they so frequently suck? The Dissolve asks the question. In theory, there’s no reason why a prequel couldn’t be good, even great. Sure, you know where the story ultimately goes, but people watch movies and read books and watch TV shows all the time where they know what will happen. Any well-made work will have plenty of other surprises along the way, aside from the ending. I think the real issue is indeed that they tend to revolve around generating origin stories that nobody asked for and are, indeed, quite dull.
Take one of my favorite examples,?Star Trek Enterprise. Like its namesake vessel in the show, it?was rushed onto television without all the aspects really having been thought through, and if you add in the inevitable creative drain of the same crew having produced Star Trek for (by that time) about fifteen years, the end result was a lot of episodes of television that felt a lot like what you’d seen on?Voyager,?Deep Space Nine, or?The Next Generation.?The show also wanted to have it both ways with the prequel concept: by setting it well before any prior?Trek series*, the show wanted to make the show different from the rest so it would stand out, but they also wanted to showcase all the aliens that fans had come to associate with the series, which led to origin stories that actually superseded the original origin stories. Could anything be more superfluous? Guess what? Captain Picard didn’t first encounter the Borg, the crew of the first-ever?Enterprise did. And the Klingons, and the Romulans, the Nausicaans, etc.?We get another whack at the story about how Klingons got their forehead ridges. And did anyone truly want?another origin story about the Ferengi? The question answers itself:
Again, it’s not so much that the concept of the series was unworkable (though it had a lot of shaky characterization and silly subplots, like the “temporal cold war” stuff). And indeed, the series did manage to find something interesting to do right before it was cancelled.?But all too many prequels simply lack imagination and resort to telling boring origin stories, with enough in-jokes to try to fool fans of the original thing that there’s any point to this existing. Say what you like about the misbegotten?Battlestar Galactica prequel?Caprica, which certainly had its share of flaws, it at least?had ambition.?It still told an origin story (of the cylons), but it staked out a different tone, theme, look and feel, etc.?Honestly, given how the network bumped and moved its time slot–and the much, much worse computer-generated effects relative to its parent series–it’s not surprising that BSG fans didn’t stick around for it. But it is the only even modestly successful prequel I can think of**, because it took care to use the familiar to create something new.
Jerry Shepherd: Keep Howard Schultz off the ballot, any ballot.? Can he pass a test on the Constitution??? Does he know anything about...
Metavirus: At least when it came to someone like Ross Perot you got some fun Texas-twanged leprechaun moments out of him.? “Larry,...
lumpkin: Amazing that Schultz doesn’t see what a Quixotic farce his “candidacy” is. The board of directors at...
Lev: Pretty much. Also, these people clearly don’t understand how government works. It’s not like they could just present Trump with a...
