"Blogress."

It was nice to get linked today by the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web, which I've enjoyed reading for years. I see BOTW's James Taranto refers to me as "Blogress Ann Althouse." What do I think of that? Well, first, I see "ogress" in it, and that makes me think maybe a male blogger should be called "blogre." Second, I realize Google will come in handy, since it's an unusual word. Calblog complains about the coinage here (reacting to a usage by Best of the Web). I see some people have used the word "blogress" to refer to blog progress. And here's Boi From Troy noting that Best of the Web called Wonkette's Ana Marie Cox a "Left-Wing Blogress," but not really objecting. Regular BOTW readers know of Taranto's thing about getting people to use the word "kerfuffle," so maybe "blogress" is another one of his projects. Ah yes! So it is! Oh, well, if it's good enough for Wonkette .... if Wonkette is good enough for Wonkette.

Not blogging on trashy TV shows anymore?

I'm really in the mood to blog about trashy TV. Ah! For the days of "American Idol 3" and "The Apprentice." I don't know what's wrong with me, but I'm not watching any trashy shows at the moment. I've given the Olympics high priority on my TiVo "wish list," and there's really not much to say about the Olympics, other than it's getting a bit tiresome, even with TiVo--or maybe especially with TiVo. I've got all those old "episodes" to watch. It's really grueling getting through all those rounds of gymnastics. How many stuck and unstuck landings do you need to see? The mind drifts. I find myself wondering why the men wear long, roomy stirrup pants and the women wear high-cut leotards. Does it have anything to do with the fact that the women have substantial, muscular legs and the men have strangely undersized legs (at least in proportion to their gigantic upper bodies)? And racing: What's to watch, really? Somebody or another is going to get there first. There are no fancy antics on the way. Ennui sets in! Are the team sports better? Not for me. I care least about the team sports. There's the vague amusement at the large amount of airtime given to women's beach volleyball, but to me it drives home the point that much of what we are doing as viewers is ogling extremely specialized, well-developed bodies. That's slightly fascinating for a while. And yet, at this point, I'm quite tired of it all. I've gotten to thinking that it will be fun to watch the Republican Convention next week, which is really rather an absurd thing to think.

Out of vogue word.

You don't normally notice when a word everyone used to say a lot falls out of favor. Then sometimes someone uses that old word again and you notice. Today, I heard a man use the word "interface" to refer to making a phone call, and I thought, yeah, it's nice that people don't say that anymore ... except that guy.

That three strikes Purple Heart rule.

Sam Schechner, writing in Slate, answers the pressing question: How do you get a Purple Heart anyway? Citing various military texts, he paraphrases: "a Band-Aid boo-boo is fair game, so long as enemy action is somewhere obvious in the causal chain." He concludes with the Slate "Explainer" sign-off: "Next question?"

Okay, I have a question. If it is so easy to get a Purple Heart, how was the military able to have that rule allowing you to go home early upon winning three? Three "Band-Aid boo-boos" and you can go home? How did that work exactly? How many people left early that way? How eagerly did people write up scratches in the hope of escape? As I write that, I worry that I'm insulting the people who went to war and did their duty and did not look for an out. But is that not what Kerry did? I don't particularly blame him, because virtually all the young men I knew--I went to college in 1969-1973--openly and on a day-to-day basis looked for ways to avoid Vietnam.

Did the three Purple Hearts rule work because when you were in action, fighting with a group of men, peer pressure would keep you from pursuing that out? If so, and if Kerry overcame the pressure and took the out, then the Swift Boat Vets are the peers returning to express the very anger that those swayed by peer pressure strive to avoid.

The swirl continues.

I complained yesterday that the Kerry camp is trying to create a swirly mass of confusion about the Swift Boat Vet ads (specifically about who's really behind them), and I see today the NYT TV critic Alessandra Stanley is visualizing cable news as a swirly mass: an industrial laundry dryer, tumbling "Facts, half-truths and passionately tendentious opinions ... without the softeners of fact-checking or reflection."

Somehow, on all-cable news stations - CNN as well as Fox News - a story that rises or falls on basic and mostly verifiable facts blurs into just another developing news sensation alongside the latest Utah kidnapping or the Scott Peterson murder trial. (It is particularly confusing on Fox News, where so many of its blond female anchors look like Amber Frey.)

Yes, all those blondes look alike, don't they? I think most Fox News viewers can tell the difference between the beautiful Laurie Dhue and anyone else.

Fox News, which delivers its news with "Fight Club" ferocity, has relished the controversy the most, seizing hungrily on charges that Mr. Kerry lied to gain his medals.

From this, you'd never guess that Bill O'Reilly, by far the most prominent news analyst on the channel, repeatedly states his strong opposition to the Swift Boat ads. Stanley makes this point, however, that I agree with:

[Cable news] has grown into a lazy habit: anchors do not referee - they act as if their reportage is fair and accurate as long as they have two opposing spokesmen on any issue.

This is really the basic "Crossfire" idea for a show. It goes back at least as far as the old "60 Minutes" "Point/Counterpoint" bit that Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd spoofed on "Saturday Night Live" in the 1970s. It seems to work well enough to bring in an audience of the subset of TV watchers who are willing to watch political shows. But I don't know if anyone is getting confused by this sort of thing. People in the middle who want to decide between the two sides just won't watch--you don't sit and watch the laundry tumbling in the dryer. The people who are watching are already bound to one partisan side, and for them it's more like watching a sports match and cheering for your team. You enjoy a lively competition, you don't rethink your support for you team, and you don't long for a more interventionistic referee.

UPDATE; Bill O'Reilly had the Stanley article as "The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day" on his show last night and noted that he'd be vindicated if the Times would print a transcript of his show from the previous night, which really did have a long segment cooly going through the Swift Boat charges (with Chris Wallace) and evaluating them. His final slam unnecessarily slurred blogs, as he said her article "belongs on one of those bomb-throwing websites, not in a national newspaper." Some day, it may be a compliment to say something sounds like what is written in the blogs. To be fair, he did specify the "bomb-throwing websites" and not blogs in general.

Man in the paint store.

I went to the paint store to pick up some special string I had ordered to fix my window blinds, and there was a man in front of me who had a bizarrely robust way of saying everything. His wife was going to come in later to pick something up, so he said the "Sargent Major" would come by. Then, he had had to agree to something and he said "ten four." Then, the clerk handed him something and he declared: 'You're a man among men."

Memorial.

Iran Focus (via Metafilter):

On Sunday, August 15, a 16-year-old girl in the town of Neka, northern Iran, was executed. Ateqeh Sahaleh was hanged in public on Simetry Street off Rah Ahan Street at the city center.

The sentence was issued by the head of Neka’s Justice Department and subsequently upheld by the mullahs’ Supreme Court and carried out with the approval of Judiciary Chief Mahmoud Shahroudi.

In her summary trial, the teenage victim did not have any lawyer and efforts by her family to recruit a lawyer was to no avail. Ateqeh personally defended herself. She told the religious judge, Haji Rezaii, that he should punish the main perpetrators of moral corruption not the victims.

The judge personally pursued Ateqeh’s death sentence, beyond all normal procedures and finally gained the approval of the Supreme Court. After her execution Rezai said her punishment was not execution but he had her executed for her “sharp tongue”.

Judge Posner is blogging!

Over at lessig blog. So far it's all about copyright. Copyright and "The Matrix" is his favorite movie. It's "a portent of one of the directions in which technology is moving us."

Fall semester approaches.

Today is the deadline for getting class materials to the copy shop at the Law School, so I've got to put the finishing touches on my packet of Civil Procedure II cases. Deadlines are helpful: I'm sure I'll get it done today because today is the deadline. (They wouldn't duplicate my materials if I handed them in tomorrow?) But deadlines can cause delay too: I could have polished off the materials two weeks ago, but when I got an email saying August 23rd was the deadline, somehow the materials decided to refuse to be done until August 23rd.

Classes don't begin until next Tuesday [ACTUALLY: Thursday], here in Wisconsin, where leaving the students free to work through Labor Day is good for the state economy, given the many resorts. But elsewhere, law school classes are starting. I'm incredibly excited to hear about my son's classes at Cornell. Most law schools start their first year students with something very much like the same four courses that have started law school for as long as anyone can remember: Contracts, Torts, Criminal Law, and Civil Procedure. But there are some variations. At Cornell, they save Criminal Law until second semester and offer Constitutional Law instead. I don't know why. Perhaps because students always seem eager to study Conlaw, but the reality of Conlaw may be quite a shock. How can anyone deal with Marbury v. Madison as their first assignment? How many class hours would you need to spend on Marbury if it was the first thing you were inflicting on first years? Six?

But I have no first year students in the Fall semester. My students are always the more seasoned type. My CivPro is CivPro2, an elective for second or third year students, who have all had four credit hours of Civpro already. They are onto the ways of Civil Procedure and primed for arcana of jurisdiction and the Erie Doctrine. My other class is "Religion and the Constitution," a Conlaw 2 course that deals with the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. I'm teaching the course as a two credit class this time, after doing three credits last year, so I need to pare down the syllabus. I don't need to rearrange it, but I'm inclined to anyway. There are so many interesting places to start with the religion cases: what inroad should we take this year?

"When those connections are made in this campaign and are imputed to this president, it's going to be a very bad thing for the president."

The NYT reports on the Kerry response to the Swift Boat Veterans ad:

Mr. Kerry's advisers said they believed that voters would turn against Mr. Bush if they were convinced that he was behind what several described as unethical campaign behavior.

That's an interesting "if," because it means that if Bush is not behind the ads, it suggests a hope of gaining the advantage by creating the impression that there is a connection.

A senior Kerry adviser, Tad Devine, said in an interview that there had been a number of instances over the years in which outside groups had run damaging advertisements against Democrats in races involving Mr. Bush or his father.

"When those connections are made in this campaign and are imputed to this president, it's going to be a very bad thing for the president," Mr. Devine said.

How is this not an open admission of a smear campaign against Bush?

Bill Carrick, a Democratic strategist who is not involved in the presidential race, also said: "It may be voters presume there are two sides in this contest and one side is attacking the other and they blame Bush for the attacks."

So it seems that Kerry's idea for how to deal with this huge Swift Boat Veterans problem is to churn up a swirly mass of impressions and imputations and then hope that he is the one who looks clean in the end. The Kerry people seem to be hoping that people are too dim to understand that a group of Bush supporters could operate independently or conspiracy-minded enough to think they all coordinate behind the scenes in plain violation of the law. There is a separate point Kerry has made that Bush should openly denounce the ads and that his failure to do so signifies a willingness to reap the advantages they bring him. That's the clean point, but it has been made, and it apparently hasn't done well enough, because we now see the campaign boat steering over the border into right-wing-conspiracy land.

But what is the solution for Kerry? I'm sure his people are racking their brains now. But they should have thought this through earlier, back when they were so sure that if the candidate stood up at the convention as a war hero that he would be greeted with candy and flowers. They convinced each other that what they wanted to believe was true, and, as a consequence they never had a plan for how to deal with the attacks that they should have known were there.

"Next blog."

I love the new Blogger tool bar, especially the "next blog" feature. It's like channel surfing on TV. There's a certain pleasure to switching to the next blog and the next blog aimlessly. It's more fun than channel surfing really, because it is so unpredictable and most of the places you go are so tiny. Yet each place is a person somewhere, someone sweet or smart or nutty or ordinary. It could be anywhere in the world, especially Brazil, and it might not even say where it is, but you might be able to tell from a picture that it's right in your own home town. Often you encounter a blog with only one post, the very germ of a blog. I'm struck by how charming everyone seems: Today was a lot of fun at church. .... I inked a drawing! ... Met Steph's new kitties and they are absolutely adorable...

Kerry at the VFW Convention.

Right now, C-Span is showing John Kerry's speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention from Wednesday. The lack of response from the group is quite pronounced. There is polite applause at a few key places, but dead silence at many of the applause lines. Kerry realizes what is happening early on and at many points eliminates the natural pause at the end of a sentence to make the unresponsiveness less noticeable. At the end of the speech, he makes his way off the stage, past three rows of veterans, looking for hands to shake. Many decline to reach out their hand for a shake. How awkward.

The return of Bob Dole.

No sooner does the Boston Globe invoke the name of Bob Dole in a carefully constructed editorial against the Swift Boat Veterans than the old man himself rises up and speaks for himself--in a few short devastating words:

"One day he's saying that we were shooting civilians, cutting off their ears, cutting off their heads, throwing away his medals or his ribbons," Dole said. "The next day he's standing there, 'I want to be president because I'm a Vietnam veteran.

"Maybe he should apologize to all the other 2.5 million veterans who served. He wasn't the only one in Vietnam," said Dole, whose World War II wounds left him without the use of his right arm.

Dole added: "And here's, you know, a good guy, a good friend. I respect his record. But three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of. I mean, they're all superficial wounds. Three Purple Hearts and you're out."

What is to stop this story from being the central story of the Presidential campaign? The Kerry camp has relied heavily on expressing indignation and outrage that the issue ever was raised, on pointing to old questions about Bush's military record, and on fussing over who connected to the ad is connected to someone with a connection to Bush, but this hardly seems capable of pulling the candidate out of the quicksand. It's distressing that the candidate did not take this foreseeable problem seriously. Dole's remarks today (on "Late Edition") included the fact that he warned Kerry that he was going "too far" with his use of Vietnam. How could the Kerry people have blinded themselves to the risks they were taking?

UPDATE: Thanks to Instapundit and Lucianne.com for linking. They both answer that last question of mine the same way ("Groupthink"/"Koolaid will do that"). I have some additional comments on Kerry's response to the ads here.

"The most dark, dank, sad, drunken, cheese-riddled, depressing thing in the world."

That wacky Vincent Gallo is describing things again. And he likes the President: "I relate to him in that he has become easily unlikable. In a perfect world, John Kerry would own a restaurant in Connecticut." He responds to NYT Magazine interviewer Deborah Solomon in a way that reminds me of Racter. Remember Racter?

Why are you a Republican?

If we were going to see a show of Dennis Hopper's photographs, do you think Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton would be more sensitive to the work? I see Nixon as an intellectual. I consider Bill Clinton a huckster.

Interrotronning for Kerry.

Errol Morris is turning his brilliantly effective Interrotron camera to making some pro-Kerry commercials, according to The New Yorker, and he's got an idea for the commercials that seems quite likely to reach swing voters: have ordinary Americans, speaking spontaneously about why they've switched from voting Republican to voting for Kerry. Interestingly, Morris's first idea was to aim his interrotronist techniques--seen in "The Fog of War"--on John Kerry himself--just as he'd used them on Robert S. McNamara in the movie.

“I thought that I could humanize him,” he said. “To solve the problem of Bush being seen as a man of the people and Kerry as an aristocrat, I’d film Kerry exactly the way all the other people were filmed. I’d put him in the mix, and, by being one with all the rest, he would become a man of the people, speaking out with other Americans.”

At first the Kerry campaign seemed interested, but in the end they didn't want Morris. Why not? The article suggests that the official campaigns are really attached to the conventions of the political commercial genre. How could they possibly take a chance with something stylistically striking? (Remember Morris's great Apple "Switch" ads?) So Morris ended up working with MoveOn.

"See—part of what I like is that this is not traditional political advertising,” Morris said. “They’re not involved in making a hard sell. The people potentially are likable."

Good point (though you just implied what people all too often say: that Kerry is unlikable). I'd watch Morris's commercials even with the TiVo remote in my hand. I think Morris is a wonderful artist. (One of the most re-watchable movies I've ever seen is "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control.") But maybe the Kerry campaign is right not to want innovative, artistic ads directly associated with it. Maybe arty seems lefty. Or arty seems flaky. Or maybe it isn't a fear of art at all but a fear of making a connection with a specific public figure like Morris, who made a very high profile statement against the Iraq war when he accepted his Oscar for "The Fog of War."

***

Now, having written all of that, I realized I could look at the ads on the MoveOnpac website. So what do I think?

Well, the ads do give you the feeling of being on the receiving end of a conversation with a real person, but that's not necessarily a good thing. If my local car mechanic or barrista were to just start mouthing off about what's wrong with George Bush, I would be thinking: here we go, get me out of here. Watch the Rhonda Nix one, for example, or the Deborah Wood. The Nix one made me want to reread this classic Christopher Hitchens article.

MoveOn.org had its visitors vote on the most effective ad, but the point of the campaign is to reach people who do not traditionally vote for the Democrat, who are not likely to be the people who go to that website and watch a lot of ads and then vote. The one that won is especially irritating to me because of the "Bush lied" theme, though I can see why it appealed the website's habituées.

Bottom line for me: I love Errol Morris, but art and politics are a bad mix.

Maureen Dowd slams Kerry: "one of the lamest things I've ever seen a politician do."

Maureen Dowd appeared on Tim Russert's CNBC show and gave quite an interesting interview. I was especially struck by this statement of hers, responding to Russert's inquiry about the lack of vigorous debate about the Iraq war:

Kerry totally muffed it up by falling for this ridiculous trap that Bush set up. Bush taunted him, in essence, saying if you ... knew then what we knew now that there was no evidence and no weapons, are you man enough to say you'd still go to war? I mean, that, in essence, was what he said and Kerry fell for it and said Kerry didn't want to be a wimp and he didn't want to be a flip-flopper, so he fell for it and said, yeah, I would still authorize you to go to war, even if there was no threat to us, no weapons, you know, no evidence. And at that moment, not only did he show that Bush had outfoxed him--Bush and Cheney immediately began chortling--but it also completely castrated his ability to make the case against war.

RUSSERT: So what does that mean for his candidacy?

DOWD: I think it was a devastating week for him. I just think it was one of the lamest things I've ever seen a politician do.

Dowd never tires of conceptualizing things in terms of a man's struggle to salvage his masculinity, does she? That conceit works quite nicely when the slam is: in your struggle to prove your manhood, you showed not power, but weakness. I'm surprised she hit Kerry though, because her hostility to Bush is so evident. And has the "flop" in "flip-flop" ever seemed so clearly to refer to the male anatomy as in that quote of hers?

UPDATE: Striking personal revelation by Dowd: "I was so paralytically shy."

ALSO, of special interest to bloggers: Dowd talks about learning to Google, and how it is now necessary for a NYT columnist to Google: "You have to go on Google, you know, for a column so now because there's so much opinion, and this Tower of Babel and bloggers and cable. You have to kind of check and make sure that someone hasn't made a joke or used a line or image before you have a chance to put it in the paper, because it's not like the days of Reston where everyone was waiting days to hear Olympian pronouncements."

Star-ratings for "Unfit for Command."

"Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry" is currently enjoying a 4 1/2 star rating at Barnes & Noble.com. "Tony, political junkie," who gives the book one star, observes: "Yawn! Alrighty, those of you that give this more than 2 stars are buying into the typical right wing (BS) campaign." Actually, not one of the 56 reviewers gives the book 2 stars. Nearly everyone gives the book either one or five stars--not surprisingly. But since the average is 4 1/2, Bush supporters seem to be more web savvy.

Amazon, which for some reason only has seven reviews, has the book at 4 out of 5 stars (and only one hostile review). Hmmm ... it provides a link to "Conservative Book Service" where the price is a dollar less, and the Amazon page itself displays that lower price. But that can't account for the dearth of reviews, because the book is Number 1 in sales at Amazon. Either Amazon or some hacker is deleting reviews: here's a blog that notes that there were 20 reviews a few days ago.

And both sides are surely willing to push their agenda through website reviews: Here's the Amazon page for "Michael Moore Is a Big Fat Stupid White Man." There are 569 reviews, most of which are one or five star reviews. The Bush side is winning there too, with the average at 3 1/2 stars.

Possible inference: Bush supporters are more likely to vote.

"In a restless world like this is."

What a very touching appearance by Brian Wilson on The Larry King Show last night:

KING: When you say you heard voices can you describe what that's like? Because we read stories like that about people who -- what happens?

B. WILSON: Well, a voice is saying: "I'm going to hurt you, I'm going to kill you." And I'd say: "Please don't kill me."

KING: It's an actual voice.

B. WILSON: Actual voice in my head. Yes.

KING: Not your voice?

B. WILSON: No. No.

[Brian's wife Melinda] WILSON: That's called auditory hallucinations and if somebody's depression is deep enough that's what happens to them.

KING: And at the same time you're still writing songs?

B. WILSON: Yes, I could still write songs, yes, during that period.

KING: [Write] hit songs.

B. WILSON: Yes.

M. WILSON: That's the thing that's amazing. Right now when he goes out on tour I can look at him and I say to myself: "Oh my God, I can tell just by his face he's hearing voices."

KING: You still hear them.

B. WILSON: Oh yes. I still hear them. ...

KING: Do they ever tell you to do things?

B. WILSON: No.

KING: Just, "I'm going to kill you," or...

B. WILSON: Yeah, right.

KING: That's all they -- it ever says?

B. WILSON: Yeah.

A moment later he contradicts himself and says that sometimes the voices say nice things like "We love you, we love you, we can't do without you." He says several times that he doesn't hear the voices when he is singing and that he can work despite his illness. He says that he doesn't listen to the old Beach Boys records.

B. WILSON: No, we don't wallow in the mire over the Beach Boys. I used to listen to Andy Williams and Kenny Rogers and stuff like that. Perry Como and Nat King Cole, of course, that was our song, "When I Fall in Love" was our song. "When I fall in love, it will be forever" -- you know, that song.

KING: "Or I'll never fall in love/In a restless world like this is ...

B. WILSON: Yeah.

KING: I know that.

B. WILSON: Yeah, it's a beautiful tune.

KING: You're a beautiful guy.

NYT offers huge chunk of Gawker bait.

Too bad Gawker doesn't post on weekends, because this Michael (thick as a) Brick article is just begging--begging--for attention.

UPDATE: Bait duly consumed.

On the pain of not living in a swing state.

When I was in Ithaca a few days ago, I noticed a lot of yard signs that said:

Bush must go!
Bush lied, thousands died.

Of course, I can't stand this sort of hostility and bitterness in general, but, really, what's the point of trying to stir up negative passion when you live in New York? New York's electoral votes are all going to go to Kerry whether New Yorkers have steam coming out of their ears or are lounging around watching sports and laughing and drinking. I support the Electoral College approach to picking the President (and wrote an article about it--Electoral College Reform: Deja Vu, 95 Northwestern University Law Review 993 (2000)), but I really do feel a little sorry for people in the states that are so solidly in the hands of one party. The ones who get all mad about the election remind me of drivers who honk their horns a lot in the middle of completely gridlocked traffic. Except in this case, the people who are all mad are going to get what they want from everyone who's in range to experience their expression of anger. They are like people driving 80 miles per hour through Indiana on Route 90, honking their horn the whole time because of the traffic up ahead in Chicago.

"I think nobody is truly qualified to be president of the United States."

So said Teresa Heinz Kerry in an interview in Reader's Digest. Since I said the same thing in this post yesterday, I was struck to hear the "friends" on "Fox and Friends" this morning laughing about the remark. I didn't keep my "friends" straight--they were talking over each other and I wasn't looking at the TV--but at least one of them thought it was an utterly harebrained thing to say, chiefly because it was a blunt admission that her husband was not qualified. There was a good deal of exultant laughing before one of the "friends" conceded that he could understand what she meant, which launched phase two of the attack: Heinz Kerry is not appropriate First Lady material. That no human being is big enough for the job that the Presidency has become may be a crushingly obvious fact to most people, but the "Fox and Friends" attitude is: What kind of a crazy nut do you have to be to say it when you're running for First Lady? I suppose there are people at Fox (and elsewhere) who comb over ever word Heinz Kerry says looking for anything that can justify a teaser: She's at it again, making trouble for the Kerry campaign ... we'll tell you what she said ... after the break.

Blogads nostalgia.

Remember Blogads? They were an endless source of humor and commentary. But no, don't bring them back. The look of the Blogspot blog is vastly improved.

UPDATE: I've adjusted the color of the new strip that replaced Blogads. The "navigation bar." You can search this blog for words using the tool at the left. For example, type in "Blogads" and see all the times I carped about them. And I feel free to write "gay marriage" again, without worrying about having gay-marriage-related Blogads for the next month. I wonder what the thinking was that led to removing the ads. Maybe it was that the political ads were getting to be a problem. The last ads I had before the end of the Blogads Era were ads promoting Bill Clinton, but the ad-generating mechanism had no way to know whether I liked Bill Clinton or not. I might have hated him, and then complained bitterly to Blogger. I assume plenty of people did.

Champion of the beleaguered incumbent.

Ah! I see our resident public sociologist Jeremy Freese has devised a theory of me--the political me at least. Let's check this out:

toward a unified theory of ann althouse

While I was off in San Francisco, another blogger was examining Ann's voting record and announcing that, despite her professed undecidedness, she was likely to be voting for Kerry. This person is wrong; their error is paying too much attention to the party of the candidate Ann supports. If you look at Ann's electoral-biography, it would seem more reasonable to predict that--and quite apart from whatever eventual rationale she might provide for doing so--she's likely to vote for Bush. Consider her lifetime history of support in incumbent elections:

Supports incumbent: Ford, Carter, Clinton
Against incumbent: Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush I

Plain as day: Ann is more likely to support an incumbent the more unpopular the incumbent has been upon the time of their re-election campaign. She's a contrarian independent. The only instance that doesn't really fit the pattern well is her vote for Clinton over Bush in 1992. One explanation for this would be, if one looks back to Ann's various posts about Clinton, it's clear she thinks he's a hottie. Apart from the "hottie" theory, however, one might suggest that Ann is more likely to support an incumbent the more she feels like the political discourse is unfairly maligning the incumbent (a discourse-contrarian independent, then). ...

So it seems I'm the champion of people who are holding power, but beleaguered! (That, and I think Clinton is hot.) It is true that I have a thing about incumbent Presidents. It's connected with a life-long, unshakable feeling that no one is good enough to be President, especially no one who has the ambition and the nerve to say he should run. I really don't like anyone having the distinction of being President. The incumbent already has the distinction, so keeping the incumbent always involves denying the distinction to one more unworthy mortal. As for the beleaguered incumbent, perhaps it is true that regard for the office of the Presidency causes me to react to disrespectful criticism of whatever poor human being happens to occupy it. The man is doing the best he can at an impossible task: can't you at least make constructive criticism!

I remember truly despising Lyndon Johnson in 1968, then being caught off-guard the night he announced that he would not run for reelection. At the end of a speech about Vietnam, he said:

With American sons in the fields far away, with America's future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world's hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office -- the Presidency of your country.

Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President. But let men everywhere know, however, that a strong and a confident and a vigilant America stands ready tonight to seek an honorable peace; and stands ready tonight to defend an honored cause, whatever the price, whatever the burden, whatever the sacrifice that duty may require.

I was seventeen years old, and I burst into tears. That poor man! That man I had hated. How old and worn out he looked. It still brings tears to my eyes today. It made quite an impression. Johnson's words resonate today. You call upon the President to address "personal partisan causes" that take him away from the "awesome duties of this office," and, yes, I do feel very protective of that beleagured incumbent. To say there are failings, that a more perfect Presidency could exist, is not enough. Everyone will fall short. I hear John Kerry assert time and time again that he would do better, that he has a "better way," and the way George Bush has gone about doing things is defective for one niggling reason after another. But Bush is the one who has actually had to do things. It's easy to look on and say I would have done better. Maybe when you were watching Paul Hamm the other night, all you talked about was how he fell on his ass after the vault. And, of course, you wouldn't have fallen.

UPDATE: Rereading this, I realize that I have similar feelings about Supreme Court Justices: harsh and bitter criticism, especially personal criticism of individual Justices, inclines me to see the legitimate and professional reasons for the arguments they have made and the outcomes they have reached.

Ah, to be back in Madison.

So I did leave Madison, but I came right back. That trip was mostly a big push of a drive there and back, but it was nice to be able to take my son to law school and to see the town for a day. Yesterday, I drove the 835 miles straight through, from 7 a.m., eastern time, to 8:30 p.m., central time. It was hard driving into rainstorms much of the way. The visibility was so poor that I didn't even see the sign for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame off ramp in Cleveland. Approaching Cleveland, I was thinking: so am I going to go? It seemed much like my attitude toward the Presidential Election--if Maureen Dowd can make everything that happens about the election, then so can I--I knew there would be I point where I would make one choice or the other, and perhaps the choice was already in my head, but the answer was not lit up in my conscious mind. I was listening to the radio for most of the drive, hitting the scan button often to try to get a station, and as I neared Cleveland, the rock and roll spirit of the city reached out to me as a hit to the scan button pulled in "Manic Depression." If Jimi wants me to visit the Hall, then surely I'm going. But at some point, squinting through the pounding rain, I was seeing too many trees and I had to admit I wasn't in Cleveland anymore.

With that chance for a significant break lost in the rain, I formed a new aspiration: beat the Chicago rush hour. I tried to calculate whether that was at all possible. Probably not, but at least get into the front end of the massive clog of cars that makes it crashingly obvious every day that Route 90 in Chicago is nowhere near what it ought to be. Newly inspired to make good time, I abandoned the thought of stopping for a mid-trip meal. I drove straight through, subsisting on a woeful Atkins diet of Diet Pepsi and cashew nuts. I reached Chicago at 5:30 p.m. and spent an hour--only an hour--making my way through America's biggest bottleneck. Finally, I broke free of the Chicago snarl to the Wisconsin leg of the trip. I was entertained by a beautiful sunset the whole way.

And now, here I am back in Madison, with three issues of the NYT to peruse and three crossword puzzles to polish off. I'll go in to my office and tie up the various loose ends: recommendation letters to sign, class materials to deliver to the copy shop, etc. I still haven't looked to see what day the first day of class is. Oh, September 2d. Thirteen more days. Half a month is left to vacation! That's an odd realization. I just dropped off my son to begin law school orientation, which gave the distinct impression that classes are about to begin, but thirteen days: that is rather a substantial chunk of vacation time. Which I am happy to spend in Madison, Wisconsin.

Leaving Ithaca.

It's dawn as I sit in the Statler Hotel looking out into the misty city of Ithaca. Time for me to make my way home. Having driven out here with the trusty Beetle packed with things for a law school dorm room, I'm about to toss my little bag into the tiny trunk and head back west. I intend to make it back the whole way today. I plan to see a lot of Route 90. The only real question is whether I'll take the off ramp to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when I hit Cleveland.

The National Anthem at the Olympics.

Maureen Dowd writes (in a column about how our foreign policy has toned down athlete exuberance at the Olympics): "Even our warlike national anthem has been transformed, from blaring horns to peaceful, soothing strings."

I wonder who provided that strange arrangement. I don't have the musical knowledge to express what has been changed about the anthem as played at the Olympics medal ceremonies, but it's beyond "peaceful" and "soothing." It's mournful, even regretful, reproachful, like the reprise of a once-joyful song at the end of a tragic play. Did the U.S. submit the music played like that, or is it a product of Greece or the Olympic Committee? I'd like to know.

And speaking of plays, Dowd uses the Greek Olympics to work in the old Greek play concept of hubris and to lash out against Bush over Iraq, because everything these days has to be turned into an occasion to talk about Bush and Iraq. Good thing she got her column done before Paul Hamm's victory yesterday, because it would have messed up the theme of American defeat she's burbling over. Our basketball players can't win because they aren't allowed to swagger because Bush .... etc., etc.

UPDATE: Geitner Simmons is looking for some answers. One theory is that the mournful sound just happens if your play the anthem without brass instruments. He also has some good material about the words of the anthem: it's not as "warlike" as Dowd assumes. And let me add a few words. Sometimes people say we need a different anthem, one without the word "bombs" in it. But the bombs in the anthem are lighting, making it possible to see the flag from time to time during the night. Dawn, light, twilight, gleaming, stars, red glare, bombs bursting: these words are all about light. Without the words, we have a melody that predates the War of 1812, and isn't even about battles. Here are the original words of the song, which is an ode to drinking. Interestingly enough, for present Olympics purposes, Olympus is mentioned, along with a lot of Greek gods. If Dowd or anyone else hears war in the melody alone, it is the mind calling up a (mis)interpretation of Key's words. I'm sure Dowd could extract a column from the original words. Anacreon, with his sons, is clearly George H.W. Bush. Wisecracks about the younger Bush's drinking are within easy reach. And I can just imagine what she'd do with the line: "So my sons from your Crackers no mischief shall dread."

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Washington Post gets to the bottom of the Olympics rendition of the anthem here.

Wisconsin celebrates.

Hotels with "High-speed Internet Access."

So let's say you want a hotel with internet access, and you find a hotel with a website that says "High-speed Internet Access." What's the least you would expect? I mean, if you followed a sign for drinking fountains, you'd expect more than a hose, right? If the sign said "restrooms," you'd expect more than, oh, a tree, right? I made a point of reserving a room that assured me "High-speed Internet Access," and what was there? A phone jack dangling at the end of a phone cord! Insane hotel dialogue:

How is a phone line internet access? Every hotel has a phone that you could disconnect the jack from and plug it into your computer and use the modem.

Well, you see, some hotels have "high-speed internet access" and some, like ours, require you to use a dial-in connection.

But every hotel has a phone, so every hotel lets you use dial-in, and your website said "high-speed internet access." You mean, just because there's a dangling phone wire that doesn't need to be disconnected from the phone that there's internet access?

You need to understand that there is "high-speed internet access," which some hotels have, and regular internet access.

A phone line? You mean, I need to pay for a phone call to connect?"

It's a local phone call. Here. Just use your AOL account ....

I need to be an AOL customer?

What is your dial-up service provider?

The University of Wisconsin. That would be a long distance call. You expect me to use the phone line, with long distance charges?

I won't dramatize how many times the swarm of desk personnel professed ignorance about the website that you can check for yourself at the link. I'll just proceed to the next subject:

Well, is there somewhere nearby with WiFi? A restaurant or a café?

There's an internet café ....

I mean, a regular café where they have WiFi ... [pause] ... a wireless connection to use with my laptop?

There's the public library ....

Isn't there a Starbucks or ...

[Proudly] We don't have Starbucks ...

Or any café with wireless?

They knew of no such thing or didn't even know what I was talking about. But they were obliging to call the Cornell Statler (which previously hadn't had vacancies) and get me a room with real high-speed internet access. They cancelled my reservation for me and lost my business. Good work, Holiday Inn Ithaca. Wandering around for a place to eat lunch, I passed several cafés within three blocks of the hotel that had WiFi. If the Holiday Inn could have just pointed me toward one, I would not have moved to a different hotel. How deceptive to advertise on the website that you have high-speed internet access when you have nothing but a phone line, and how abysmally lame not to know how to point out the places nearby that have WiFi!

Greetings from Ithaca.

We made it most of the way to Ithaca yesterday, ending up at the northern tip of one of the westernmost Fingerlakes. So yesterday was a day of dogged driving:



Though when we hit New York (the state), we got off the interstate (90) and took a more leisurely drive, with the sun setting in the rearview mirror, along Route 20, where it was fun to slow down and see the tiny towns, like Brockton:



This morning, we had breakfast at the Two Sisters Homestead Café in Waterloo, somewhere on Route 20 between Lake Seneca and Lake Cayuga:



We drove down Route 89, the length of Lake Cayuga, stopping to see Taughannock Falls:



And now, we're in Ithaca, where moving John into the dorm at Cornell Law School was accomplished, and we sat down for some oversized salad at the cookbook-famous Moosewood Café:

Art and the Audi TT Coupe.

Peter Bagge has a cool new comic that goes on at some length about the foibles of the world of fine art but ends up in an interesting place: in love with the beauty of the Audi TT Coupe and Japanese candy wrappers.

Which party can a moderate choose?

A question raised by yesterday's last post is: If I were registering to vote today, would I register as a Democrat? The answer is no. I would have to register as an independent. What I regret, and I think many people regret, is the polarization of the two parties. There used to be liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. Of course, I have no interest in the retrograde conservative Democrats of years ago, but find the old-style liberal Republicans quite attractive. Bring them back, convincingly, and I would feel at home. Now, I know the Republican Convention is planning to present a liberal face. The face of Arnold? I find that attractive, but I suspect it will be no more convincing than the Democrats tough-on-security convention.

"Althouse Independents."

Much as I like to see my name in print, I don't know if I'm to feel flattered by that term, coined over at Daly Thoughts to refer to people who call themselves independent and even feel independent, but are really predictably Republican or a Democrat when it comes to voting. Daly has read this post of mine, in which I recount my presidential preferences going back to 1960 and reveal that I've only voted for one Republican (Gerald Ford)(and that I also supported Nixon in 1960 and Goldwater in 1964, before I was old enough to vote). (Yes, I'm quite old, readers--older than John Edwards.) Daly writes:

She may be undecided right now, but when push comes to shove the overwhelming majority of those just like her are going to end up going for Kerry. And those who are like her except for that they usually vote Republican will overwhelmingly end up going for Bush.

First, a modest point. I've actually never labelled myself an "independent." Everywhere I've ever registered to vote, I've registered as a Democrat. It has, however, been almost 20 years since I've needed to register, but I've never felt the call to go declare myself something other than that. I vote in the Democratic primaries. (I voted for Edwards, in case you're interested.) I do frequently call myself a "moderate" or a "centrist." But this is the much more important point: this is the first election since 9/11. In every other election, I was presumptively for the Democratic candidate all along. When I voted for Ford, I was for Carter until I was halfway to the voting booth. In none of those years--save for the 24-hour period before I voted for Ford--would I ever have called myself undecided. During the 2000 campaign, I was mocking the late undecideds just as many of you are now: What's wrong with these people? Why can't they decide? Why do they keep interviewing these losers on TV? Or are they just posing as undecided to get on TV?

I'm really not one of those people. I'm one of the people whose politics were changed by 9/11. Prior to 9/11, my disagreement with the social conservatives kept me from having much of any interest in Republican presidential candidates. After 9/11, I became quite bonded to George Bush. If I had to vote today, I would vote for Bush, because at this point, I cannot trust Kerry on security matters. Kerry has allowed himself to stand for so many different things, according to what is expedient at the moment. I didn't buy the strong-on-security pitch of the convention, which I know was aimed at shoring up support from centrists like me. The problem there is that I just don't believe them. (And I note that I've just written "them" and not Kerry. I was going to edit that out, but I'm going to leave it in, because it signifies my queasy feeling that Kerry is a device for returning to power a party that doesn't stand for much of any of the things that were promoted at the convention.) What would appeal to me from the Republican side, along with a convincing case that they really are competent about the security issues we assume they care more about, would be a more libertarian approach to social issues.

Unfortunately, both parties have to attend their "base," and, whenever they do, I don't like them. Because of that, I keep my distance. I don't love any of these people, and I don't have to vote today. So I will wait and see what happens in the world between now and November, and I'll watch all the debates (and blog about it). And, given my kiss-of-death history of voting, I'll probably vote for the loser.

Finally, let me just comment on my two recent blogpolls. First, I did not sign the petition to get Nader on the Wisconsin ballot. At the time of this post, 69.6% percent of you thought I did. Why didn't I? One reason is that I don't like to sign any petitions. But another reason is, as a general rule, I don't want to see an overloaded ballot, so a place on the ballot should be reserved only if there are enough people who actually want to vote for Nader. I don't want to vote for him. And I'm not so devoted to Bush that I would sign just to try to help him. What makes all you readers think I would? On this other poll, the votes make more sense. Nearly everyone either believes me when I say I'm undecided or thinks I'm taking an objective perspective as a way to write a better blog. Only twenty percent think I'm posing as an undecided voter as a strategy to influence people to support a particular candidate, and I'm heartened to see that the twenty percent split right down the middle about whether my secret preference is Kerry or Bush.

Iraq TV.

Television is transformed in Iraq, reports the NYT. It's not all propaganda or even all war and politics anymore. "We have no agenda," says the founder of a new Baghdad station, "We just want to inform and entertain and basically to help people to cope with their daily lives." Ah, he wants an Oprah.

What surprises me about the return of the preppy look.

I'm not surprised that the preppy look is replacing the grunge or goth or bondage look or whatever what we've been subjected to lately should be called. The fashion pendulum always swings. Each look provides the reason why the opposite look will seem fresh and new. And I'm not surpised that the NYT is running a front page story to tell us the news that grunge has given way to the preppy. What surprises me is that the NYT has run a front-page article telling us this news without calling upon a single political analyst, popular sociologist, or culture studies guru to tell us what it means. Surely, at the very least, some political expert could have told us this is the leading edge of the Bush landslide victory. Or some academic feminist could have cautioned us about encroaching patriarchy. Or some obscure lawprof blogger could opine that the lack of interest in the quotes of pop-culture-monitoring academics is part of the aftermath of 9/11.

"Warner's Tryst With Bloggers Hits Sour Note."

And the NYT's seduction of bloggers with headlines hits a sweet note. So let's see what the situation is here. Warner music, which is naturally against free MP3 files on the web, wanted to take advantage of blogs that offer music files along with music criticism. The blogs are popular, presumably based on the quality of the music writing. Irresistible marketing opportunity for the big music company? No one familiar with sites that allow comments should be surprised if industry people are posting anonymously defending their product. Outing these people is an old game, isn't it?

But a Warner employee, Ian Cripps, had a new idea. He emailed music files to some bloggers with the message:

"We are very interested in blogs and I was wondering if you could post this mp3," he wrote. "It's by one of our new bands - The Secret Machines. They are an indie rock band and we would love for people to hear the band's music from your site. Here it is, listen to it and let me know if you will post it. Thanks!!"

Those two exclamation points just beg for love and trust, don't they?

Some bloggers saw the message from Warner as a sign that the major labels might spare their sites while cracking on illegal file sharing.

"We didn't know if there was a wink that came along with it that said, 'We don't have a problem with what you're doing,' " said Mark Willett, a contributor to Music for Robots a popular MP3 blog that attracts about 2,400 visitors a day.

Music for Robots--which uses authorized downloads and links to online stores--looks good. The top post right now, which has a cool Peter Kuper drawing, analyzes four anti-war songs.

In an almost apologetic blog entry titled "Music for Robots Sells Out," Mr. Willett wrote that the song was appearing there not because the band needed the exposure, but to establish a relationship with Warner and to let readers know what was going on.

(Would it kill the Times to link to the post?) Most of the blogs snubbed Warners, though, for the reason implied by Robots' post title.

The Robots' comment section drew some suspicious comments like:

"I never heard these guys before, but theyre awesome ... I went to their website and you can listen to a lot of ther other stuff, very cool and very good!"

And it turns out, it was supremely easy for Willett to trace these commenters back to Warners. Warners makes exactly the excuse you'd think they would make: must just be some fans of the band that happen to work in the company. Blog mockery ensued. How pathetic to fall back on the old anonymous fan comment right when you're trying to do something new and blog-friendly! And to write lame, inarticulate, "awesome!" comments with misspellings is a gratuitous insult to teenage music lovers everywhere.

Digression: Remember when Warner was called "Warner Brothers"? I remember an old Jerry Garcia quote, when he was complaining about big record companies: "There isn't even a Warner brother."

My scotoma.

This afternoon, I was reading something on the computer screen, when I realized I could not see a spot about the size of one letter in the center of the screen. Instead of the letter I was trying to read I saw a spot of roiling light. I stopped reading and looked around and the roiling light spot was getting larger and opening up into an arc, a backwards c, that glittered and took on a zigzag shape and moved gradually off to the right. It looked the same if I closed one eye or another, signifying that nothing was wrong with an eye, but that my brain had to be the problem. I did not, however become alarmed. I had read Oliver Sacks's book "Migraine" and knew about the pre-migraine visual disturbance called "scotoma." I googled "scotoma," went to the second item Google retrieved, and found this, an animation of "a classic migrainous scintillating scotoma from a small paracentral bright spot to an enlarging bright, curved, zig-zag line (the scintillation)." The animation was precisely what I saw--save that mine exited stage right instead of stage left. The website predicted it would last 10 to 20 minutes, and in fact that was exactly so: the arc slipped out through my peripheral vision.

That was, for me, the all-time best performance by the internet. But yes, I did still call the doctor, mostly because it happened again a half hour later. I got sent to the emergency room, where I told the story of my scotoma to five different people, with the final verdict coming from the neurologist who said, given that I never did get a migraine headache out of all of this, that it was a "migraine equivalent."

Scintillating!

Two cricket things.

One:

Hong Kong police arrested 115 men for illegally gambling on insect fights on Sunday in the same building that housed a cricket lovers' association, a police spokesman said.

Police seized about 300 crickets and $1,025 in cash during the bust, said police spokesman T.K. Ng. ...

Two:

A rabbit set alight by a bonfire at a British cricket club got its revenge when it ran burning into a hut and set it ablaze destroying costly equipment, the club said on Friday.

Members of Devizes cricket club in Wiltshire, western England, were burning dead branches when a rabbit caught up in the waste sped burning from the flames spreading a fire which destroyed lawnmowers and tools worth $110,000.

"After it had been going 5 minutes, the rabbit shot out of the bonfire on fire and went into the hut which is our equipment store," club chairman John Bedbrook told Reuters.

Two fire engines were called to extinguish the blaze. The rabbit's skeleton was discovered in the charred hut.

"The firemen were certainly concerned about the rabbit. They felt sorry for it," said Bedbrook.

Two blue things.

1. I love this! Click on the "slideshow" for Claude Cormier's "Blue Tree," the first slide.

2. I've only gone to the theater for two movies this year ("Kill Bill, Vol. 2" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"), but unless this gets terrible reviews, I'm going. Click on the "slideshow" and go to the second slide for the beautiful blue. [UPDATE: Rotten Tomatoes is showing 100% freshness for this one, so I will certainly go.]

Ask an econometrician if he's a Republican. Go ahead! Ask!

Pithy NYT Magazine interviewer Deborah Solomon asks Ray C. Fair (who sees fair and is racy):

Are you a Republican?

FAIR: I can't credibly answer that question. Using game theory in economics, you are not going to believe me when I tell you my political affiliation because I know that you know that I could be behaving strategically. If I tell you I am a Kerry supporter, how do you know that I am not lying or behaving strategically to try to put more weight on the predictions and help the Republicans?

Great answer! These econometricians are such cards! Fair is saying Bush will win by a landslide--which is what I've been saying, close associates will confirm--and he's for Kerry, he admits (though apparently, on his own terms, we shouldn't believe him). Personally, I'm undecided.

Leaving Madison.

I'm the only Madison profblogger in town. Nina's in Venice (drinking a Bellini), Gordon's in New Orleans (eating at Bayona), Jeremy's in San Francisco (being recognized by sociologists for looking like his cartoon), and Tonya's in Booth Lake, Wisconsin (having a thoroughly family-style vacation). Don't I ever leave Madison (where I see, from the front page of the NYT, I live next to a nuclear reactor, which I never knew before)? But I will be leaving town soon enough. I'm going to give my son a ride to Ithaca. He's going to Cornell Law School, so it's a big adventure (vicariously, for me). We're going to load up the little Beetle with whatever we can and head out into the wilds of New York. Email me if you have any advice about what to do in Ithaca and where you would stop if you were driving in from the west and wanted to stay for the night someplace that was almost but not all the way to Ithaca.

Redefining sex appeal.

Diana Nyad writes--with approval--in today's NYT about the Olympians posing in Playboy. She likes that they are redefining female beauty:

The definition of sex appeal seems to have gone under the knife, and it is athletes — not just plastic surgeons — who are carving out the new look. Back in the 1960's, when I was a swimmer in high school with sizable shoulders and triceps, wearing a sleeveless blouse inspired unconcealed shock and dismay. Today, the running-back physique of Serena Williams may be setting the standard for a new femininity.

Of course, this new standard of beauty is much harder to achieve than the old one! But at least it's a powerful model to aspire to and you'll get some exercise trying.

UPDATE: Best letter to the NYT on the subject, from Keith Emmer:

It would be fitting if this year's Olympic Games in Athens marked the end of an era of denigrating athletes who choose to pose nude. After all, in the original Olympic Games in Greece, the athletes competed nude.

Not to be a killjoy, but one of the reasons the ancient Greeks thought women could not compete was that they could not compete in the nude, and women were barred from even viewing the Olympics, with the nudity of the men cited as the reason. And then there's this--from the sfgate article just linked--making a point about the politics of nudity that makes an interesting contrast to the more familiar feminist point about "objectifying" women:

So embedded was competing in the nude that our word gymnasium comes from the Greek gymnos for "naked," [UC Berkeley archaeologist Stephen] Miller notes in the book ["Ancient Greek Athletics"], an in-depth account of a culture that loved to watch the well-proportioned bodies of young men, their skin glistening with olive oil, compete not for medals but for a sprig of olive or bunch of wild celery.

On a deeper level, Miller said, nude competition helped foster one of ancient Greece's best-known contributions to posterity -- democracy. Nudity, he said, erases marks of rank and privilege.

"It came to me that the locker room is inherently one of the most democratic places in human experience," he said, "and that -- at the very least -- Greek athletics provided an environment in which democracy could, and did, prosper."

"We do not know the origins of competition in the nude," he writes in the book, but we do know the custom helped doom the Olympics to disfavor when Rome took over the Mediterranean world.

"Athletics were less successfully received in the West because the Romans were highly suspicious of nudity," writes Miller.

Mmmm .... celery.

Kerry--substance and style.

Substance: I'm glad to see John Kerry is taking a strong position on Darfur (as far as I can tell). Not much press coverage about it.

Style: Why does the official Kerry-Edwards blog display text so wide that I'm forced to scroll horizontally over and back to read each line? Is it to give a person who is merely reading Kerry's words the feeling of tedium and exasperation that you could otherwise only get from listening to him?

This display problem occurs using a small-screened iBook, using Safari and Mozilla. Let me try Explorer, which I'm trying to avoid, given various security problems I've heard about. Okay, now it looks right. Don't they test out their page with different browsers?

Fall movie preview.

The big Fall movie preview issue of Entertainment Weekly arrived in the mail today, and on the cover is my personal favorite actor, Johnny Depp. Not only is he clean shaven now, but he's got his hair combed back quite elegantly and he's wearing a suit. He looks quite like my father in the pencil drawing that I keep on the mantel. I'm having a bit of trouble getting past the cover! Hmm… the cover folds out and there are sixteen small pictures of various Fall movie stars. One of them is Maggie Gyllenhall, who looks uncannily like my own mother as a young girl. Okay, I'm finished with the cover. On to the magazine. Here's what caught my eye:

1. "Seinfeld" is coming out on DVD with "deleted scenes, blooper reels, an alternate version of the pilot, and cast commentaries."

2. Ereka Vetrini, Omarosa's nemesis from "The Apprentice," will be Tony Danza's sidekick on the new "Tony Danza Show." It's a talk show. Yeah, Ereka can talk.

3. Jamie Foxx, playing the role of Ray Charles in the biopic "Ray, " "wore prosthetics (modeled on Charles' actual eyes) to simulate the singer's blindness." He asserts that this was needed to avoid "cheating" as he moved around. It would be unaesthetic without prosthetics. But acting is faking it in all sorts of ways. Among the great actors who played blind sans eye prosthetics are: Audrey Hepburn and Bette Davis and Gabrielle Anwar and Patty Duke and Virginia Cherrill. The movies seem to prefer blind women to blind men, but I note the great Mr. Muckle in my all-time favorite comedy "It's a Gift." And the guy in "Butterflies Are Free." Ah! The best performance by a male actor as a blind character was Al Pacino. Hmm… and there was good old Gabrielle Anwar as his love interest. What has become of of Gabrielle anyway? Oh, and another fine performance by a male as a blind character was Gene Hackman. It seems blind men are funny and blind women are dramatic. You can think about why, and think about whether Foxx's film will be a hit. He sure looks like Ray Charles in the photograph. He's also, according to EW, a fine pianist--he went to college on a piano scholarship. So he'll be doing all the piano playing as Ray. Nice fact to know: Ray Charles, who died in June, was able to witness the final cut of the film.

4. John Travolta and Joaquin Phoenix play firefighters in "Ladder 49," which is supposed to be better than "Backdraft," which real firefighters hate (because it's unrealistic). The filmmakers want you to think "Black Hawk Down."

5. They remade "Alfie," with Jude Law as Michael Caine. I've never bothered to watch the Michael Caine one, so why should I care? Well, Law is much cuter than Caine.

6. So what's the Christian Bale diet? "I just didn't eat." He got down to 120 pounds (he's 6'2"). He also only slept 2 hours a night. What role required all that? Some paranoid guy in "The Machinist." He's bulked back up for "Batman."

7. New Alexander Payne movie. "Sideways." I loved "Election" and "After Schmidt" was pretty good. Good lord, this new film is set in a wine-tasting milieu!

8. "The Grudge"—they've hired the director of the original Japanese film ("Ju-on") to do the Hollywood version. Takashi Shimizu. It stars Sarah Michelle Gellar, who looks just like Gwyneth Paltrow in this picture.

9. Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet together at last! "Finding Neverland." A biopic of J.M. Barrie. I hope it's good, because this is one I'd like to see.

10. Kevin Spacey directs himself in a biopic of Bobby Darin. "Beyond the Sea." How could that possibly be good? Spacey is eight years older than Darin was when he died. And who is interested in the life of Bobby Darin? That's just crazy! It seems the only reason for this is that Spacey has always looked a bit like Bobby Darin. What's next for Kevin? A biopic of Lee Harvey Oswald?

11. It's biopic year for the Oscar-craving actors as Leonardo DiCaprio plays Howard Hughes (with Martin Scorsese directing) in "The Aviator." There really is some fascination in seeing Cate Blanchett impersonate Katharine Hepburn and Kate Beckinsale impersonate Ava Gardner.

12. Jim Carey as Lemony Snickett. He rides a Segway. Okay.

13. "Proof," "Closer" … I guess I'm supposed to care about these Oscar-y productions. I'll wait for the reviews. And even if they are good, I'll probably resist, because I still remember getting hoodwinked into seeing "The Hours." Prestige movies for women: leave me alone!

14. Then there's the question: What Don Cheadle movies can I see in December? There's "Hotel Rwanda," in which Cheadle plays the role of Paul Rusesabagina, who saved the lives of 1200 Tutsis in 1994 (a great story). And there's "The Assassination of Richard Nixon," a political thriller that also stars Sean Penn and Naomi Watts.

15. They're making a film of "Get Smart," with perfect casting: Steve Carell.

16. A current film I'd buy right now if it were on DVD: "Los Angeles Plays Itself." It's a documentary about L.A. as it appears in the movies.

17. Ah! Finally, a decent DVD of "Purple Rain." Make sure you get the 20th Anniversary version. Don't buy this one.

Shady grove.

A walk this morning in the UW Arboretum ...



called to mind an old favorite album cover ...



and made me imagine Impressionist figures running around in nineteenth century white dresses like these ...



but there was no one around.

Instructions for a Peavey Rage 158.

John bought a new practice amp for his guitar. It came with "IMPORTANT SAFETY INSTRUCTIONS," a list of 16 separate items, the first four of which are especially important:

1. Read these instructions.

2. Keep these instructions.

3. Heed all warnings.

4. Follow all instructions.

After the 16 items, there's this extra: "SAVE THESE INSTRUCTIONS!"

Okay, silly instructions. I guess they assume a guitar player is an idiot. But it's a nice little practice amp, at a good price. The clean tone is especially appreciated. And it has a nice modern/vintage toggle switch, valuable if you like a 60s-style sound, and not always the maximum distortion.

Answer revealed: the Republican Presidential candidate I voted for.

Here's the final count in the blogpoll asking which Republican Presidential candidate I voted for. I had said that I've been voting in presidential elections since 1972 and have only once voted for the Republican candidate. Seventy-seven people voted and the clear favorite was Reagan:

Ronald Reagan--48.1%--37

Bob Dole--18.2%--14

Gerald Ford--13%--10

George H.W. Bush--13%--10

Richard Nixon--7.8%--6

Now what was the thinking there? Why did Reagan come out on top by such a wide margin? Reagan ran twice, and I could only have voted for him one of those times, so the fact that he's the only one who ran twice in the stated time period should not have caused you to pick him. I guess there was a trend of Democrats switching over to Reagan, and just on sheer numbers, the chances of a Democrat voting for Reagan in 1984 are high, given the abysmal numbers for Mondale. But, in fact, I voted for Mondale. Up until Bill Clinton, I had never voted for the winner in a Presidential election. So now, you have enough information to reach the correct answer: Gerald Ford! Why on earth did I vote for Ford—especially when I voted for every other loser up until Clinton? It means that I voted against Carter when he won and for him when he lost! Who does that?

I was all set to vote for Carter in 1976. I had voted for Carter in the New York primary, and actually set out on Election Day in November intending to vote for Carter. I was walking to the poll with another person with whom I'd been talking about the election throughout the campaign. Both of us had been struck by a statement Carter made the day before the election. Carter was asked what he would do if he lost, and he answered that he would just go back to his peanut farm. That statement undermined my support for Carter overnight, strangely enough. He seemed thin and weak to me after that. Here was this man who'd only been the governor of Georgia, and he thought he could be President, yet he had no other vision of a role in the world for himself than to stay in Georgia and be a peanut farmer. Peanut farm, Presidency—what's the difference? We sat down on a bench on the way to the polling place and talked about it and both decided to vote for Ford! What was there in Ford's favor? He was already President so there was no issue of elevating an inadequate man to the Presidency. He may have been inadequate, but he was already President. And I found something reassuring in the fact that he, uniquely, had not sought the Presidency.

But let me say something about Nixon. I didn't support him in 1972, the first year I voted, or in 1968 (when I was a senior in high school), but I absolutely loved Nixon in 1960, the first election I was old enough to have an opinion about. I was nine. I wore a huge Nixon button to school in those days, and all the kids I knew loved Nixon. I vividly remember a schoolmate observing, "If kids could vote, it would be a landslide for Nixon." As I noted above, I have voted for every loser from the time I started voting until Clinton came along. But if you go back to 1960, the first year I started having an opinion, I supported every loser except Clinton. Not only did I support Nixon in 1960, but I supported Goldwater in 1964, and then Humphrey in 1968. My record of supporting losers, in fact, is so extraordinary—remember I supported Carter when he lost, but opposed him when he won—that my support ought to be dreaded as the kiss of death.

Here's a new poll to test your understanding of my political predilections. I was walking on State Street today, when a young man with a clipboard asked me to sign a petition to get Ralph Nader on the ballot. I'm in Wisconsin, which is an important swing state, as you probably know.

The view from Madison: base ten! lasers!

I've been mesmerized by my laptop screen for a long time, and was slightly irritated that a group of four men decided to set up at the table right next to mine (considering that the place is nearly empty). But I kept my concentration up, not even eavesdropping on these guys, until I heard the words "base ten." Now I'm entirely distracted by these men, all with French accents, talking about math. Ah, they are leaving! So soon? But I've been here for over two hours. I really do need to leave. It's a beautiful day here in Madison, where it's sunny and 67 degrees. And here's a cool thing about Madison:

[The dome of the new Overture Center] which stands four stories above the lobby at the corner of State Street and North Fairchild Street, was lighted about 9 p.m. for a 15 minute demonstration of the building's lighting system.

Three rings of computer-controlled light-emitting diode strips lining the rotunda glowed, faded and pulsed through nearly every shade of the rainbow up into the glass dome. ...

During the demonstration, the lights also went through a sequence in which strips of red, white and blue chased each other around the rings.

Check out the picture at the link.

Hurricane Charley and the presidential campaign.

Hurricane Charley looks big, and I am hoping for the best the people of Florida who live in its path--some of whom are close family members of mine. So forgive me if I look ahead to the time after the hurricane and think about the effect of this attack of the natural world on the state that is the most important state in the presidential campaign. It seems to me that Bush, as President and brother of the state's governor, is in a position to take advantage of this event. I wonder what is being planned, even now, and how the Kerry campaign hopes to horn in on the action. I'm putting it bluntly, of course, and I'm sure part of the plan is about how to be very careful not to seem like you're just taking personal advantage of the disaster.

Andrew Sullivan picked a bad time to take a vacation.

I'd really like to read what he has to say about McGreevey and the new California Supreme Court case. He's a hardcore vacationer, apparently. And when did the little donkey head get added next to his heading "The Daily Dish"? Did he really put that there?

Reacting to the usual email from georgewbush.com

Every morning I get email from Patrick Ruffini who runs the official Bush website. I didn't sign up for this email, but I get it because they linked to me a while back. I've written pro-Kerry things too (and anti-Bush and anti-Kerry things), but the Kerry site has never linked to me and, not that I feel neglected, they never email me anything. I could say the Bush people are spamming me, and the Kerry people are behaving better by not taking advantage of a free way to reach me (me, a swing voter). But every day, Ruffini sends me things. Does that make the Bush side more web-savvy? Well, they are more blog-savvy, as indicated by today's email sign-off: "As always, don’t forget to send any posts you’d like to bring to our attention." It's blog-savvy, because it shows an understanding of the blogger's appetite for links. It means: Say something nice about us and we'll link to you. We will give you traffic!

Okay, so let's see what else Mr. Ruffini would like me to know today. First:

Today, the nation turns its attention to the Olympics. There’s a new ad out today that highlights the triumph of freedom and democracy around the world, with 120 democracies participating in the Olympics, including 2 new free nations, Iraq and Afghanistan. Watch it at: http://www.georgewbush.com

This is going to be a little hard, because I'm sitting in a café at the moment and I don't want to annoy anyone. But okay, I'll look. I think it's kind of cool to make an Olympics ad, but kind of rotten to appropriate the Olympics, as if you are the official presidential candidate of the Olympics. Sodas and various commercial products have to pay extra to link themselves to the Olympics (perhaps only if they say "Olympics" or use the logo). The ad, which shows swimmers getting read to dive, then diving, then swimming, is very short, and displays the flags of Iraq and Afghanistan at one point under the swimmers. The email calls the ad "Victory," but the ad leaves it to the viewer to link up the idea of athletic competition and two newly free nations to two victories at war and victory for Bush in the election. It's a simple little commercial that makes its point, mostly subliminally, and also seems to admit that they know were going to be watching the Olympics and not listening to them very much in the next two weeks.

Second, Ruffini alerts me to this:

Morning Reads focuses on John Kerry’s “more sensitive” war on terror. Only John Kerry could want our troops to fight a “sensitive” war, yet vote against giving them body armor.

I guess the "more sensitive" war on terrorism is going to be right up there with "I voted for the war ... before I voted against it" in the Kerry-quotes most useful to the opposition. You can say this is taken out of context--"The Daily Show" riffed on this last night--but Kerry is a terrible candidate if he doesn't know how to stop himself from dropping in little word sequences that we be extracted, triumphantly, from his public remarks. Even if you wanted to keep his comments in their context, it would be difficult, because he doesn't give good sound bites. But his opponents are combing over his statements, looking for the worst, just as his people are doing to Bush's statements. As Jon Stewart, a big Kerry supporter, said on "The Daily Show" last night: "Is he trying to lose?"

UPDATE: "Subliminably."

FURTHER UPDATE: NYT, Aug. 19: "The United States Olympic Committee has asked the Bush campaign to stop using the Olympic name in commercials. Federal law grants the U.S.O.C. exclusive rights to the name."

Good-bye to Julia Child.

Have a nice meaty meal with lots of butter and a half bottle of red wine tonight in honor of the monumental Julia.

Best take on the McGreevey resignation.

From the front page of the NYT:

"What it reminds me of is Richard Nixon, the Checkers speech or some of the stuff during Watergate," said Steven Cohen, a professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

But he saw already the contrast in the words spoken by the governor and at least some of the reasons for the sudden announcement: "The gender of the person he had the relationship with is irrelevant," he said. "The problem is putting a lover on the payroll in some fashion."

Being impressed that McGreevey came out as gay is like saying "ooh, I love puppies" to Nixon's Checkers speech. I'll stipulate that gay people are as lovable as puppies, but I think it's more appropriate, under the circumstances, to be unimpressed, because he's employing the hard-won positive feeling toward gay people for plain, old political purposes. I'm resigning because I'm gay is no more believable than I'm resigning because I want to spend more time with my family. It's a way to try to hold on to some dignity on your way out. Except that McGreevey is also trying to hold onto his office until November and thus to retain the office for his party.

UPDATE: A question you might find relevant in deciding how sympathetic to feel towards McGreevey is when did he marry his second wife? Answer: late 2000. Are we really to believe he took the "bonds of matrimony" so seriously, that as a gay man, marrying a woman when he was 43 years old, living in the United States in the year 2000, he was planning to refrain from extramarital sex? Either McGreevey wronged his second wife grievously by withholding the crucial information that he is gay or the two of them had an understanding, in which case the bit about violating the bonds of marriage is hogwash! The only other possibility is that he was still deceiving himself at age 43, which is incredibly hard to believe. Yesterday's speech was a shameful, self-serving travesty! "At a point in every person's life, one has to look deeply into the mirror of one's soul and decide one's unique truth in the world ..." Oh, please!

ANOTHER UPDATE: I see that E.J. Graff in TNR Online is saying "Oh, please" too. He also says "Gays and lesbians should leave this guy dangling on his self-constructed gallows" and is irked that McGreevey is diverting attention from the California Supreme Court's case yesterday.

Flaunting a smoking ban.

According to the NY Post: " VANITY Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter continues to flaunt Mayor Bloomberg's smoking ban in his corner office at Conde Nast." How do you flaunt a smoking ban? I've got this fabulous smoking ban. You are not going to believe how stringently I am going to enforce this thing!

Go Iraq!

Olympians in Playboy.

Back in the early days of the women's movement, encouraging young women to take up sports had absolutely no connection to producing the kind of women who would pose nude in Playboy. But the Olympian women of today are posing in Playboy. (Oh, the link is work safe. The only picture in this NYT article is of a high jumper, Amy Acuff, at her sport.)

[F]emale athletes are showing off their bodies in nonsports magazines and making no apologies for it.

That is unlike four years ago, before the Sydney Games, when the swimmer Jenny Thompson's photograph appeared in Sports Illustrated - with only her fists covering her breasts - and generated controversy. At the time, Donna Lopiano, the executive director of the Women's Sports Foundation, told reporters, "Any exposure in a sports magazine that minimizes athletic achievement and skill and emphasizes the female athlete as a sex object is insulting and degrading."

I don't read much about sports, but it seems to me that kind of austere talk is not used so much anymore. I think there is a lessening of feminist sensibility generally, and I think it's a bad thing that people are witlessly saying things like this again, but I think we can safely proceed without the overdone worrying about "objectification" that used to be much more common. And if anyone wants to accuse me of being hypocritical, I'll defend myself.

Giuliani at the Republican Convention.

The NYT has a front-page story on the role Rudolph Giuliani will play at the Republican Convention. Giuliani has had his differences with Republicans in the past, and the article speculates that he has career aspirations that are leading him to offer himself up to the Party to be used to lure swing voters. Let me remind readers that I am a swing voter, in case you've lost track. Key passage in the article:

Many Republicans are hoping that by speaking out forcefully for Mr. Bush, Mr. Giuliani can sway swing voters who may not like some of Mr. Bush's policies but are nevertheless comforted by the idea of leaders who have steered the nation through the Sept. 11 attack and its aftermath.

Aptly put. I didn't vote for Bush, and in fact, I've been voting in presidential elections since 1972 and have only once voted for the Republican candidate (see if you can guess via the blogpoll below). Every other vote was for the Democrat. I did not like Bush in any way, until September 11th. No matter what he's done since then, there has always been a part of me that wants to stick with him, because he was the guy who was there when we were suffering so much, as the Times quote above notes. Giuliani is the one person who most takes us back to those days and stirs up those old feelings that have worn thin in the past three years. Giuliani is going to give a prime time speech at the convention that, in his words, "is largely on the theme of terrorism and how the president's leadership has gotten us through the worst attack in the country and made us stronger." Here's another Giuliani quote from the article:

"One of the reasons the world is safer now is that we are going out and trying to find our enemies and demobilizing them," he said. "I was sitting there in Congress the night Bush announced the Bush doctrine. And I remember leaving that night feeling better that the president of the United States had reversed 20 or 30 years playing defense" against potential enemies, he said.

This is powerful stuff. It is the material that affects me. I know the Democratic Convention had its own 9/11 memorial segment. They had Glenn Close emote over a sentimental description. It felt stagey and did not call up the real emotion of the day, which doesn't, in any event, connect to any memories involving John Kerry or any other Democrats. We will have to see, but I am expecting the Giuliani speech at the Republican Convention to have a very powerful effect.

Here's the blogpoll:



UPDATE: Answer revealed here.

Venice

is where Nina's blogging from now--with lots of cool photos.

Should John Kerry sue the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth?

Kenneth Baer, a former senior speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore, writes in TNR Online that John Kerry should sue the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. When I saw the suggestion, four reasons not to sue sprang to mind immediately. Baer, I was interested to see, deals with all of them. Here are the four reasons:

1. Kerry is a public figure, so under New York Times v. Sullivan, he would need to prove that the SBVT knew the libelous statements were false and proceeded with "reckless disregard." Here, Baer asserts that we already know that there are falsehoods. I'll set out Baer's points in some detail, with my comments in bracketed italics:

One member of the group has already called his participation in the ad a "terrible mistake;" that same veteran and another one in the ad actually defended Kerry from similar charges in his 1996 Senate race; another gave Kerry exemplary ratings as an officer; and none of them have ever initiated official proceedings to challenge the Navy's decision to award Kerry these medals. ...

[One could believe the facts in the ad and still regret making it. And one might easily choose to defend a candidate whose politics you like from an attack based on true assertions. Of course, Kerry knows whether they are telling the truth. We don't.]

Medical Officer Lewis Letson states that: "I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury." Letson offers no proof for his assertion, just details about the dates and places surrounding the injury that are readily available. More damning is that according to official Navy records, Kerry was treated by another medical officer; Letson was not the medical professional who signed Kerry's "sick call sheet."

[The potentially libelous statement is that Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart. We don't know whether that statement is true or false. But if it's true that Kerry is lying about that, then there is no libel, even if Letson didn't treat Kerry and knowingly lied when he claimed to have treated Kerry. You might have actual malice about that statement, but the problem is that Kerry isn't injured or brought into contempt by the statement that a particular person treated him. It's just not libelous. It would not be enough to prove that Letson was lying about treating Kerry. Letson could still defend by showing that Kerry was lying about his first Purple Heart.]

Gunner's Mate Van O'Dell says that: "John Kerry lied to get his Bronze Star. I know, I was there, I saw what happened." O'Dell did not serve on Kerry's boat, but was on another boat in his division. O'Dell claims to have witnessed the entire incident in which Kerry won his Bronze Star. Yet, his account does not show up in any official Naval documents--from the spot reports filed immediately after the incident that detail damage to two boats, including Kerry's, and Kerry's injury report to the eyewitness accounts of Jim Rassmann, the man who Kerry pulled out of the river. Either O'Dell is right, and Rassmann, Kerry, and the US Navy are wrong--or O'Dell has a big legal problem on his hands.

[Same problem! Let's assume that O'Dell did not personally see what happened and he's knowingly lying about that. How is that statement libelous? O'Dell's seeing or not seeing the incident is not a matter that harms Kerry. It is only the fact asserted about what Kerry did that hurts Kerry's reputation and is thus capable of being libelous. If O'Dell is repeating something he heard someone else describe, and he thinks it's true, it might be that the New York Times standard is not met. But surely, if O'Dell can prove that the Bronze Star incident really is as O'Dell describes, he will have established the truth defense with respect to the statement that harms Kerry's reputation.]

2. Kerry will look litigious, a negative quality which will be exacerbated by the fact that he has a trial lawyer as a running mate. Baer concedes this is a "risk," but opines that it's a risk worth taking.

3. The election will be over by the time the case gets anywhere near a judgment. Here, Baer thinks it's worth it anyway in order to "send a message that there will be serious repercussions for anyone who wants to fund or appear in an ad that is patently false." That's the usual upside of litigiousness. Demonstrating your willingness to sue is intimidating. It even intimidates people who are telling the truth. I think in a political campaign, voters want to see issues addressed in public debate that takes place before the election, not squirreled away in a long court proceeding where the truth is learned too late to help them decide how to vote.

4. Kerry will be subjected to discovery requirements, with the court likely to require him to produce all sorts of records of his military service, including his medical records, which he has not thus far been inclined to release. Baer is thinking of discovery from another angle:

Discovery procedures could lift the curtain of anonymity on those funding these ads, potentially compelling them to disclose their financial and political interests and connections. In addition, a lawsuit will have an equally chilling effect on the political consultants who make these ads. Even the largest political ad-makers can't afford costly litigation; from a financial perspective, getting involved with groups like SBVT would be too big a risk no matter a consultant's politics.

Well, that's just admitting that you're using discovery for a purpose other than getting proof of the issues in the case. In other words, you want to abuse the process of discovery! You're admitting you want to intimidate with litigation! In fact, Baer's main idea is to use litigation to overwhelm and intimidate one's opponents, whom he compares to military enemies.

But, quite aside from all of that, is Baer's intense little article helpful to Kerry? I doubt very much that Kerry will want to sue: there are plenty of pragmatic reasons not to. But if voters are made to think Kerry should be suing, because characters like Baer are itching for it, voters may conclude that the reason Kerry isn't suing is that the charges are true.

UPDATE: Here is the Annenberg FactCheck.org analysis of the SBVT ad. The analysis picks carefully through the story of the vet who at one point said he'd made a "terrible mistake" and explains the full basis for Kerry's Silver Star award, with a link to the official citation. This vet (Elliot) seems, in the FactCheck analysis, to be someone who is sadly torn between two positions perhaps because many different people have attempted to enlist his help over the years. O'Dell, according to FactCheck, was "a few yards away" from the events that led to the Bronze Star, and the man Kerry is said to have saved, Jim Rassmann, contradicts O'Dell.

It's not surprising that O'Dell's story did not make it into the record, but I have to say that it seems scurrilous to feature O'Dell in the ad, when his is only one version of a story, and the official record does not back him up. The same is the case for Elliot. I don't know who's telling the truth, but it is deceptive to have an ad with only one version of the story told. Challenging someone's war record is an ugly thing to do, as I've said before, and one ought to have very solid proof that you are right before going down this road. I also think Kerry has some responsibility for motivating an attack in this form by allowing himself to be portrayed as a war hero at the Convention, rather than concentrating on more current issues. But given all the awards, it is appropriate to refer to him as a war hero.

It was overdone at the Convention, but that doesn't justify a scurrilous response. The ad oversold the material that was available, and that really was unfair. FactCheck's conclusion is: "At this point, 35 years later and half a world away, we see no way to resolve which of these versions of reality is closer to the truth." That sounds about right to me, and that's the right criticism of the ad. I will also note, to reclaim this update as it relates to the Baer article, that it is also a reason why Kerry should not sue and should not be faulted for not suing.

UPDATE: Beldar has a lot of good analysis of the Baer piece.

Most money wasted on a product recently ... possibly ever.

That would be the $230 I spent on a Roomba Pro-Elite Robotic FloorVac. I blogged a while back about impulsively buying this seemingly nifty device and about the trouble I had with it (primarily because long hair would coil around the brush axle, which you need extract annoying little screws to remove). I parked it under a sofa back in April and forgot about it until I suddenly felt the need to move the furniture around and saw the thing on the floor. So, I picked it up, and the rubber tread, slightly stuck to the carpet, tore and peeled away from one of the wheels. Ever the optimist, I think: good thing tomorrow is trash day, and now I can throw away this thing I never liked but had been keeping around because I'd paid so much money for it.

Bonus information: I suddenly felt the need to move the furniture because my iBook is in the repair shop, so I'm blogging from my desktop iMac over here next to the east wall of the big room, and given the position of the high-backed sofa, I'd been having to lift my arm too high to remote control the TiVo, something I seem to need to do while blogging quotes from "Hardball," "The Daily Show," etc.

John and Teresa.

Right after the Democratic convention, I wrote:

Teresa Heinz Kerry is going to be a problem---not because she's "opinionated," the characteristic she pointedly defended in her convention speech, and not merely because she is interested in being the feisty, outspoken kind of First Lady, projecting her personality into the public sphere. She is going to be a problem because of that personality-projecting combined with a lack of real interest in helping her husband. I have no way to know what she really thinks of him, but time and again, I get the impression that she can barely tolerate him and doesn't even particularly care about supporting him.

Now we read:

Democrat presidential hopeful John Kerry and his wife got into a heated argument after a campaign rally in Arizona Sunday night -- a heated argument so hot they spent the night in different rooms!

I'd be quite interested in a movie that was a fictionalized account of this. I guess it would be a lot like "Primary Colors." I'm picturing all kinds of people trying to keep Teresa in line, trying to convince her to just keep it together until the election, and all the colorful things a wife might scream at a husband in this position like, "I don't even want you to be President!" But if things like that are really happening, I really do feel sorry for John Kerry. It is so difficult to make it through the campaign, but what a horrible struggle it would be if at the same time your marriage hits the rocks and you can't even engage with that problem as a personal problem, but you must think first about the ways in which your spouse is threatening to undermine the hard work of your campaign! And I feel sorry for her too, if these things are happening, because how horrible it would be if you were struggling at the end of your marriage and you could see that the main thing your spouse cared about was keeping you quiet so he could achieve his career goal. Would you freak out and tip over into vengeance and threaten to tell the whole world what a terrible husband he is? Ah, well, that's just my fictionalized, screenplay version. One imagines fiery scenes. I hope things go well for them.

UPDATE: In light of the above, I suspect this photo from yesterday is miscaptioned. Vertigo, really?

How "Six Feet Under" is "American Beauty 2."

Dale Peck explains how Alan Ball continued the characters from his "American Beauty" screenplay to his "Six Feet Under" series:

[T]he project that followed American Beauty, the HBO series Six Feet Under, is essentially a character-by-character recreation of the movie’s key players. Its family is composed of figures culled from the three households in American Beauty: Allison Janney’s automaton housewife reappears in Frances Conroy’s Ruth Fisher; Kevin Spacey’s selfishly distant father shows up in Richard Jenkin’s Nathaniel Fisher; Wes Bentley’s drifter ’n’ dreamer has grown up to become Peter Krause’s Nate Fisher Jr.; Thora Birch’s ironic-but-wants-to-be-earnest teenager is the mirror image of Lauren Ambrose’s Claire Fisher; and the two Jims have moved into the main house in the form of Michael C. Hall’s David Fisher. Mr. Ball’s beloved plastic bag is back, too, this time filled by an endless series of corpses (there’s more than a little poignancy to this, since the bag that was Ball’s inspiration for his movie was blowing next to the World Trade Center).

Brilliant observation! Now this raises the question of what Ball is really saying about homosexuality in "Six Feet Under," considering the role it played in "American Beauty" (read the article for a reminder of the way homosexuality was treated in AB). Peck analyzes the kidnapping episode of "Six Feet Under" (which many fans of the show hated--and I discussed here). Here's just a part of Peck's great analysis:

Throughout this needless exercise in sadism, the cast and crew of Six Feet Under do their job well. ... But not even Michael C. Hall’s bravura performance—certainly the best of his four years on the show—can distract us from the inexplicable cruelty of what is actually happening. Desire is punished, and the punishment is eroticized, and the erotic, as it always does, seeks its final release in death. This is where gay desire seems always to lead in Alan Ball’s stories: to the innocuous invisibility of "partners" and the two Jims, or to the invisibility of annihilation; somewhere you get the feeling that the two states are indistinguishable.

Kerry and the Cambridgians.

Cambridge doesn’t like Kerry much, Rachel Donadio reports in the August 2 issue of the New York Observer. Her source is New Republic editor (and Cambridge resident) Martin Peretz:

On Sunday evening, at a reception for Harvard alumni in U.S. government held in the airy main lobby of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Robert Boorstin, the senior vice president for national security at the Center for American Progress, summed up Cambridge’s enthusiasm for Mr. Kerry with a noncommittal "Eh!" as he turned his hands palms up in a gesture that drove home the point. "He’s not like Teddy Kennedy," said Mr. Boorstin, eyeing the bar. ….

[T]he Cambridge smart set’s affections for Mr. Kerry are surprisingly lukewarm, not unlike those of so many Democratic constituencies who dated other candidates before marrying Mr. Kerry. Of course, Mr. Kerry is a Yale man, and so perhaps the situation is different in New Haven. As Mr. Peretz put it, "This sounds very parochial, but there’s not the intrinsic Cambridge interest in Kerry the way there was for Kennedy and Gore, simply because there’s no Harvard connection." Still, it’s strange that for all the years he spent as a Massachusetts career politician, this year’s Democratic contender never seems to have forged particularly close ties with the Cambridge intelligentsia.

Unlike Mr. Gore, whose enthusiasm for the environment made him the darling of Cambridge scientists, "such enthusiasm as there is for Kerry is not because of any prior deep commitment that Kerry had to any issue that people identified with intellectually or politically or morally," said Mr. Peretz. "I think that Al—I’m prejudiced about him—that Al was never threatened by meeting with people who were smarter than him. He pursued those contacts to enhance himself. I don’t know that Kerry has ever really done that." …

New grist for the is-Kerry-dumb mill.

"Canterbridgians are a very peculiar, narcissistic lot. But everybody is for him," Mr. Peretz said. "And if one raises a friendly word, however modest, about Bush, one is sent into the dunce corner: ‘How could you?’, etc."

"We’re a little bit spoiled in Cambridge," said firebrand Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, speaking by phone from his home on Martha’s Vineyard. "People my age remember Bobby Kennedy and John Kennedy. Everyone remembers Clinton, and whether you love or hate him, he was the most charismatic guy in the room. Kerry is not the most charismatic guy in the room. He may be the tallest guy in the room. He used to be the best-looking guy in the room."

No way! What room was that? Okay, Dershowitz was there, but who else?

Burger King and me.

That last post reminded me that I've never mentioned that I worked for a year in a famous ad agency, J. Walter Thompson. This was in 1977-1978, right before I went to law school. I had a boring job, but it's kind of fun to remember the excitement that surrounded ad campaigns for important clients. I especially remember how important Burger King was. There was a separate part of the office space that you entered through the sort of doors that would be on a BK restaurant. When the campaign was unveiled, everyone in the office was invited to the posh screening room to watch the first commercial. The commercial looked impossibly beautifully photographed as it appeared on the finest movie screen. Those layers of onion and tomato and lettuce were so perfectly detailed. The little boy riding on the back of a truck was so impossibly adorable as he sang the most wonderful jingle of all time:

Who's got the best darn burger in the whole wide world? Burger King and me!

Ad icons, ad slogans: vote!

Thanks to Throwing Things for pointing to Advertising Week's vote for all-time best ad icon and best all-time ad slogan. I voted for Mr. Peanut for best icon, because I've been a Mr. Peanut fan for a long time. I feel that Mr. Peanut embodies a poignant eternal human optimism. He's just a peanut, yet he's very high class, and being high class, with charming innocence, has to do with a top hat, spats, and a monocle. I considered voting for Mr. Clean or the Jolly Green Giant, because these two guys are quite impressive. Indeed, one family member, when he was very young, pictured God as the Jolly Green Giant.

For best slogan, well, I can see I don't like slogans anywhere near as much as I like icons. A lot of these slogans just make me mad, not barking mad, but irritated. I mute commercials or skip them, so all the recent ones, I haven't heard. For example, I've never heard "Wassup?!" and clearly that's got to be one that's all in the delivery. I considered voting for "You deserve a break today," because it successfully reconfigured attitudes about going out to eat in a restaurant: it was no longer a luxury, an indulgence, for a special occasion, but something you deserved, not because it was your birthday or your anniversary, but on any day, today, just for getting through the ordinary tasks of the day.

They don't have my all time favorite, which was a mystery to me throughout childhood: "Modess, because" (accompanied by a picture of a woman in a beautiful dress). Another old one that is fun to remember is Dupont's "Better living through chemistry." I like that one because of nostalgia for a time when people didn't think of "chemicals" as bad. Look out, there are chemicals in the food!

Speaking of food, I impulsively voted for "Where's the beef?"

And speaking of "Where's the beef?" what about political slogans? Clearly, these have been censored out of the survey. Too divisive? Too hard to include enough to be fair?

Cigarette advertising is censored out of the survey too, even though it is clearly a huge success (shame?) of the advertising industry. What about Joe Camel? What about the Marlboro man? What about "Come to Marlboro country"? Or "Take a puff, it's springtime!"

Does anyone remember feminism?

I note this exchange that took place yesterday on "Hardball" between California Democratic Representative Ellen Tauscher and Chris Matthews, about the First Lady's recent campaign speech dealing with stem cell research:

MATTHEWS: Do you think Mrs. Bush was misused by the White House handlers, sent out there basically as almost a suicide bomber, to take the heat for a very difficult position?

TAUSCHER (with patronizing smile): Look, she's allowed to speak her mind, as every other American is and whether she was speaking of her own position or whether she was actually reading off the notes from the White House, I can't tell you, but I will tell you this. I think that she's a nice lady, that she's a strong person, and that she's been a great mom, and I think that that's really all I have to say about that. I think we need to leave this to the scientists.

Yeah, Laura, get back in the kitchen! Don't worry your pretty little head about this. It's for the scientists.

New Bush ad: "Solemn Duty."

Put on your short-sleeve workshirt, Mr. President. A nice minty green sweater for the newly red-headed First Lady. Got to go with the classic pearl choker and earrings, absolutely solidly iconic pearls for the First Lady. Let's seat them in America's living room, which looks pretty much like a display of living room accoutrements at Pottery Barn, right? Cue the tinkling piano music. Speak in a soothing voice about how much parents love their children and about a terrorist attack at the same time. Sway the camera down for a closeup of the President's and the First Lady's hands for a nice subliminal feeling of caring and hard work and competence. Now back up to the faces. Don't you feel better now?

Highlights of Maureen Dowd's interview on "The Daily Show"

1. She compared President Bush to Luke Skywalker who has "the good light father" who is "his own father who believed in internationalism, getting along with the allies, and leaving the end of the Iraq war where it was" and Dick Cheney who is "the dark father, Darth Vader" (whoops of approval from the audience) "who believes in bullying and unilateralism and not leaving the Iraq war where it was." I haven't seen "Star Wars" in decades, but did Darth Vader believe in unilateralism? The Empire is the other side, so ... ack! I don't know. I'm not a "Star Wars" person, but if you are, feel free to quibble with Dowd on this. (Or go take Prof. Yin's "Star Wars" quiz.)

2. Alternate description of Dick Cheney: "He's barking mad."

3. The NYT columnists have offices next to each other, which they find amusing to call "Murderers Row."

4. William Safire has a private phone that doesn't go through the switchboard, for his secret sources. Jon Stewart says it's probably for phone sex and imitates Safire calling: "1-800-DANGLINGPARTICIPLE."

5. A prompt from Stewart about Safire and grammar gets Dowd to say that she once asked him if it's right to say "war on terror" when you can't really have a war against a tactic, which doesn't seem like a grammar question or a word usage question, per se. Safire said, "Yes, you can," which Dowd thinks is pretty funny because he answered not as "a word person" but as a "conservative." I think the better usage point here is that it should be "war on terrorism," because the war is on the activity, not the result of the activity. We're not fighting against fear. But I think "war on terror" has won out because it's shorter. And there's probaby a fancy name like "metonymy" for the rhetorical device. (What do you say, rhetoric fans? Is it metonymy?)

6. "Tom Friedman is a lovely guy and when he gets very frustrated about what's going on in the Middle East, he'll come into my office, and on a very rare occasion, and go 'Let's go get a daiquiri." Stewart finds this extremely funny and says, "Makes it sound like he's a temp." Does being a temp and getting a dacquiri have the same connotation that preferring daiquiris used to have in the 1970s when Johnny Carson made daiquiri jokes?

"What if he's right?"

Erstwhile Bush-loather Tod Junod faces a question that has been nagging at him. The article appears in the September Esquire, which I had grabbed from the rack at the beauty salon today, meaning to scan for info about facial hair on male models and celebrities. Waiting out the drying of "Cajun Shrimp"-colored nail polish, I finally tore myself away from a description of what it feels like to be bitten on the head by a leopard and read the Junod article. It's a good enough read, though the two main points are: 1. Take me seriously because I hated Bush, and 2. Terrorism is really very important. There's a lot of riffing along the lines of comparing Bush to Lincoln but claiming not to be comparing Bush to Lincoln. There is some snappy, Esquire-y writing, which is fun to read despite the sometimes annoying pseudo-hip tone that mixes breeziness with heavy-handed moralism. I did like this part:

The [Civil War] was, from first to last, portrayed as his [Lincoln's] war, and after he won landslide reelection, he made a vow not only to stay the course but to prosecute it to the brink of catastrophe and beyond: "Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.' "

Today, of course, those words, along with Lincoln's appeal to the better angels of our nature, are chiseled into the wall of his memorial, on the Mall in Washington. And yet if George Bush were to speak anything like them today, we would accuse him of pandering to his evangelical base. We would accuse him of invoking divine authority for a war of his choosing, and Maureen Dowd would find a way to read his text in light of the cancellation of some Buffy spin-off.

That exasperating Cingular phone.

When I lost my cellphone a couple weeks of weeks ago, being the optimist that I am, I saw it as an oppportunity to get a cooler phone. I went over to my Cingular store and picked out a Motorola V400, paying an extra $50 to get the phone with a camera. I usually carry my good digital camera with me, but the phone camera is so small, it would be quite handy. But how do you get the photos into the computer? Is there a USB port? No, I'm told. You just email your photos to yourself. It's all set up for email.

But it's not all set up. In fact, it's nearly impossible to set up. I spent several hours looking for something in the manual, in the brochure I was given, and on Cingular's website, looking for a clue and trying to find a path to the answer through trial and error. Finally, I called Cingular. The first person I got, a bored-sounding woman who made me feel like I was imposing on her, reset some things at her end and, after forty minutes, got me to the point where the phone could at least connect to the internet. Back on my own, I spend another frustrating hour before I call again, this time choosing a different number from the option menu and getting a friendly, patient man with a Southern accent. I spend two hours on the phone with him! We go through multiple screens and he gives me all sorts of new codes to enter (on the phone key pad, which is hard to do).

How could anyone possibly figure out how to do this on their own?

They couldn't.

You must be doing this all day?

Yes.

Why didn't they at least tell me I'd have to call to get it to work?

I don't know.

They must not want to discourage people from buying the phone, but then isn't everyone just annoyed with the phone? They must think people will just give up and not use email ...

[No answer.]

Do they just think people want a camera to send a picture to someone else's phone? Hi, here's what I look like right now! What kind of a way is this to run a business? What a monumental waste of time that was!

At one point the tech guy proved that something worked by sending me a music file. Go ahead open it. What song did he send? "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Clinton versus an amorphous, colluding, racist "them."

Bill Clinton did a leisurely, double-length interview on "The Daily Show" last night. It was mostly quite dull, as Clinton pattered out what felt like prepared commentary, with the assistance of prompting questions from host Jon Stewart, who refrained from his usual interrupting and challenging and joking. The Clinton-tome was laid out on the desk and eventually attracted the usual banter. (It's long, you see.) The most interesting subject, though, was the Swift Boat Veterans' ad. Stewart had mocked the ad in an earlier segment of the show, and Clinton's first comment to Stewart was "I'm glad to be here. I'm glad you did that riff on the military attack on Kerry, too."

STEWART: That was a rough one, wasn't it?

CLINTON: Yeah, but you know, they did the same thing to McCain in 2000.

STEWART: Same group, am I right?

CLINTON: Same group.

STEWART: Nice kids.

CLINTON: Yeah. In support of the same crowd, I might point out.

STEWART: Who .... had nothing to do with it.

CLINTON: They also ... had a calling campaign in the primary in South Carolina in 2000 talking about how John McCain had a black baby, and they didn't want the white voters to forget it. ...

The "they" referred to throughout this discussion is never named, and gets mushy as things proceed. "They" gets melded with the "crowd" in a way that makes it very hard to tell who's who, and makes everyone seem to be acting in concert, when in fact, the election laws require them to keep their activities separate. Were the anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans involved in the South Carolina smear tactics?

STEWART: Do you believe that politics has gotten so dirty ... that these kinds of tactics become so prevalent, that this is the reason half the country doesn't vote or this is the reason that we don't get the officials that we deserve?

CLINTON: No, I think people do it because they think it works.

Interesting example of assuming that a different question was asked. Stewart asked Clinton about the effect of "dirty" tactics on voters, not why people use the tactics. This is one of the places in the interview where I get the feeling Clinton and Stewart had a prepared sequence of questions, and I'm guessing that Stewart, as a result of Clinton's longwindedness, skipped a question, but Clinton stuck with the script. Clinton continues:

And as soon as it doesn't work, they'll stop doing it. I think Senator McCain, whom I admire very much, made a big mistake not bashing the Bush campaign over the attacks on his service. They implied that he betrayed the country as a POW, and he made a huge mistake for not bashing 'em for that calling operation saying he had adopted a black baby. It was blatantly racist. And they'll do this stuff as long as they think it works. They're running this ad against Kerry's military record 'cause they think it's not good for them. I mean Kerry, went to Vietnam, and President Bush and Vice President Cheney were big hawks, were like me: we didn't go. All three of us could have gone and we didn't. And Kerry did. So it's not good for them, so they're trying to put a chink in his armor.

Again, an interesting glitch that makes the remarks seem scripted: the first "it's not good for them" doesn't really fit. He reuses the phrase later, where it makes sense. And why did Clinton say "big hawks"? Did he mean chickens? Chicken hawks? And note how the racist tactics in South Carolina have become the most prominent activity of the "they," who are now "running the ad against Kerry"! For the second time, he makes it seem as though the Swift Boat Veterans have something to do with racism. That's wildly unfair. Clinton continues:

But it's wrong, and if they really disapproved of it, they would have said they disapproved of it, and there's a reason they didn't say they disapproved of it. ... Look what they did to Max Cleland, in Georgia. ... They beat him with it, and until we stop them, they'll keep doing it.

My elisions don't contain any substantive attack on the anti-Kerry ad. They are only a repetition that dirty tactics are used because they work and a long elaboration of the Max Cleland story. Stewart ventures that both sides must resort to various tactics, and asks why there isn't some control on the truth of political ads. Clinton responds:

To be fair, for about the last three elections, starting in '92, actually, the newspapers began to evaluate the truth and accuracy and fairness of the ads. And they do it more often. And this ad that you've featured here has actually been subjected to quite a bit of criticism. So we are getting better at it, but when someone comes after you, you have to go back at them.

That flowed by very glibly, and I was glad I had it TiVoed so I could go back and see where the seams were. So newspapers have been "evaluat[ing] the truth and accuracy and fairness" of political ads? And the anti-Kerry ad has "been subjected to quite a bit of criticism"? That doesn't say that newspapers have evaluated this ad and found a problem with truth or accuracy or fairness. Newspapers have been evaluating some ads, but have they evaluated this one? And this ad has been criticized, but for what reason? Obviously, it's been criticized for daring to impugn Kerry's war record, when at least Kerry, unlike some others, went to war--Clinton himself just criticized it on that ground. But is it untrue?

Clinton just stressed how important it is to bash back really hard. If he's fighting as hard as he can, why was there not one word in all that long flow of words citing factual errors in the ad? Clinton pointed out at some length (another elision in my transcript) that McCain's baby was in fact not black but Bangladeshi (something that hardly matters) but he did not mention one detail in the Kerry ad. Why did Clinton choose to whip up a smooth froth of amorphous, colluding, racist "them," old material about McCain and Cleland, and exquisitely hypocritical protestations about the dirty tactics? May I assume that Clinton, with his express intent to bash back hard, would have made a substantive attack on the ad if he'd had the material?

UPDATE: It just occurred to me that the "them" in Clinton's remarks ≈ "a vast right-wing conspiracy."

Also, the failure of the Kerry campaign to respond substantively to the Swift Boat Veterans seems to be a permanent strategy. The attack on the SB Vets is stooping pretty low, fishing for stray chat-room remarks, as noted by Drudge today, linking this AP article.

"President Bush should immediately condemn this sleazy book written by a virulent anti-Catholic bigot. It says something about the smear campaign against John Kerry that it has stooped to enlist a hatemonger," said campaign spokesman Chad Clanton.

So now you 're a "virulent anti-Catholic bigot" if you call the Pope "senile" and make some harsh remarks about the sexual abuse of children? Outrageous!

Instapundit, linking to Matt Welch, is discussing the extent to which Kerry's failure to respond substantively constitutes proof of the truth of the allegations.

Blogad woes.

How long must my Blogads continue to refer to a topic I've blogged about in the past but don't want to mention now lest my blog forever bear a heading that makes this look like a one-issue blog? I don't think Blogads has a way to know whether the blogwriter is for or against a particular matter mentioned in the blog. I could just as well be against X as for it! If I were against it, it would be quite offensive and aggravating, but it still bugs me, because it's been there so long. What can I write about that would trigger a new ad? I've mentioned Dave Matthews. Dave Matthews. Dave Matthews. Dave Matthews. Dave Matthews. Dave Matthews. Dave Matthews. Dave Matthews. Dave Matthews. Dave Matthews. Dave Matthews. Dave Matthews. Dave Matthews. Dave Matthews. Dave Matthews. Dave Matthews. Dave Matthews. Dave Matthews. (I'm using Tonya's technique for communicating with Blogads.) I've mentioned Sean Penn today. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. And Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. And how about that new Tom Cruise movie? I haven't gone to the movies in a while, but I have a lot of respect for Michael Mann, the director of Cruise's new movie "Collateral," which is getting good reviews. And I have a special place in my heart for Tom Cruise, who revealed his inner nerd on the Letterman show last week when he laughed so hard a booger flew out of his nose. (Fun to rewatch on TiVo!) "Collateral" is kind of a boring name for a movie. I remember when I was a teenager, encountering the word "collateral" for the first time and trying very hard to figure out the meaning from the context, which was "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream":

Now, I didn't mean to be nosy
But I went into a bank
To get some bail for Arab
And all the boys back in the tank
They asked me for some collateral
And I pulled down my pants
They threw me in the alley
When up comes this girl from France
Who invited me to her house
I went, but she had a friend
Who knocked me out
And robbed my boots
And I was on the street again

I've always liked Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. So now can I please have some different ads, Blogads? Please?

UPDATE: This seems to have worked!

Facial hair.

Check out this picture and this picture of Johnny Depp. What do you think of the facial hair? Better without? It's a raging question around here. Note the detail of his facial hair: the mustache and beard (both skimpy) are not connected.

You might say, well, Johnny Depp is just so pretty that mussing himself up a bit is a good move. So look at Sean Penn, who's using the same disconnected skimpy look. Penn is distinctly not pretty, so looking at him helps judge this facial hair style because we're not influenced by the overall facial beauty.

(I tried to do a blogpoll, but I couldn't get it to work! Any clues? I've got the javascript but Blogger tells me the "tag is not allowed.")

UPDATE: I think, with JF's help, I've found out how to get the blogpoll to work, so now you can vote. (The trick is just to ignore the error message.)

More about the Dave Matthews concert.

The previous post is the main thing I wanted to say about the Dave Matthews Band concert, and this post is a bunch of miscellaneous items based on the big show last night:

1. Dave's harping on peeing in his "register to vote" pitch--see previous post--was quite appropriate for this crowd, because a shocking amount of beer was being drunk by the 40,000 fans crammed onto the big hill that overlooks the stage.

2. When you're sitting on the hill, in the crowd, there are no pathways out to aisles, and the slope is very steep, so getting out to where you can take care of your liquid-related physical needs is quite a challenge.

3. You'd think, in light of the difficulty, that one would buy just one drink and then try to make it through the whole concert, but many of the young men in attendance seemed to see the main problem to be getting back to the concession stands to buy more beer. Now, the beer cups were huge, maybe 32 ounces, so even one was a lot. But, these young men were buying two cups, approximately half a gallon, and carrying them down the steep hill, balancing them on the lawn.

4. What did these men, having drunk so much, do when they had to pee? How did they get up through the crowd, up the steep incline to the bathrooms?

5. Alarming thing I overheard said to the man next to me: "Hey, I don't know you, man, but I'm just trying to look out for you. The people behind you are trying to pee on you."

6. And I don't even want to talk about vomit. I only saw one large pool of vomit.

7. I'll talk about soda. I just bought a Diet Coke. It's a long drive back home after the concert. An hour and a half, not counting the possibly very long time it takes to get out of the parking lot. I want to make the 20 ounce soda last a long time, so I'm dismayed that the young woman who took my $4 also twists off the top and throws it right into the trash. Can't I have my cap? I ask like the Alpine Valley neophyte that I am. No! It's a rule. Why? Because people put stuff in the caps and throw them at the stage. What do they put in the caps? What's the worst thing you might put in a soda cap?

8. I say "parking lot," but it is really fields of grass, where people with flags wave you in and assign you to your spot. There are many, many cars, and lots of people tailgating, with circles of lawn chairs and barbecues and shockingly large piles of empty beer cans. And empty beer bottles, which you can enjoy driving you car tires over as you try to get out later that night, driving around stumbling drunks and cars and trucks driven by those stumbling drunks.

9. And how about the concert? The band put on a good show. I'm not a big fan like Tonya, but I liked the music. However, the physical discomforts far overshadowed the pleasures of the music.

10. Any annoying fans in the crowd worth mentioning?

There was the tall man standing right in front of me in the early part of the evening, who was dressed like a three-year-old (baseball cap, striped polo shirt, shorts, sneakers) and whose ass, which I was forced to look at, twitched, one buttock at a time: his minimal but grotesque way of dancing.

There was the extremely drunk, extremely rubbery young man who danced wildly right in front of us later on in the evening. He groped several women, asked scores of people if they had any pot, and tried to befriend everyone around him by imploring them to dance and party. A favorite move was to turn his back on the stage, stretch out his arms and shout, with a strange, unintended reference to The Who: "Wasted! You're all wasted!" And later: "40,000 people--all wasted!"

There was the young woman who suddenly moved from somewhere out in the crowd to a spot right in front of us and began sobbing uncontrollably. Was she having a bad drug experience? Did she just break up with her boyfriend? Asked "Are you all right?" She said yes and returned to her sobbing. Since she understood the question and responded, I was inclined to think she broke up with her boyfriend.

Then there was the pretty young blond woman who, late in the Dave Matthews set, leaned over to me and said, "You know, you can dance." She went on quite a bit about dancing, noting that Tonya was dancing, and then she grabbed our hands and tried very hard to start a group dance with us. She really wanted to hold hands and dance.

11. Anything else? Back in the stands there was a makeshift "oxygen bar." For $2, you could sit on the floor and lie back against a beanbag cushion with one of those oxygen hoses strapped under your nose and breath some oxygen, like a hospital patient, for one minute.

12. And speaking of beanbag, out in the parking lot, a favorite activity of the tailgating fans, for some reason, was playing beanbag.

13. Cameras were banned, but my new cell phone is a camera. If I can figure out how to get the photos from the camera to the computer and if anything is any good, I'll have some photos later. Tonya sneaked her whole regular camera in--even though the bags were searched and squeezed--so she'll have some photos later along with her own descriptions of things and I'll link to that here when I can. [ADDED: Here's that link.] And a couple of photos in her camera were taken by me, and, when she sends them to me, I'll put one up here, and you'll see, it will be my second Who reference of the post, an homage to this classic album cover.

AND: The anticipated photo did not work out right. There were four young men lined up facing this chain link fence, all peeing through the fence. I tried to catch the display quickly and some people walked by:



Here's Tonya's picture of the parking field debris:



This wasn't the worst of it at all. Here's the parking field by daylight, showing the tailgating. I particularly like this picture of Tonya's because of the American flag and the luscious display of manly, freckled flesh:



And this shows I wasn't lying about DMB fans playing beanbag:

Celebrity politics: a compliment to Dave Matthews.

We've heard various accounts over the years about celebrities--the Dixie Chicks, Linda Ronstadt--using their concerts to make political pitches, sometimes in a quite nasty form that leaves a segment of the audience feeling betrayed or annoyed by a person they'd chosen to see because they love their art. They didn't pay to attend a political rally and they don't even want to be at a political rally or at that political rally. I don't remember ever going to a concert where that happened to me. I do remember feeling indescribably outraged when I attended--along with 20,000 other people--the campus memorial for the September 11th victims three days after 9/11 only to find speaker after speaker turning the occasion into a peace rally.

I went to the Dave Matthews Band concert at Alpine Valley last night, and I knew Dave had recently signed up for the "Vote For Change" concert tour and was capable of saying things like:

A vote for change is a vote for a stronger, safer, healthier America .... A vote for Bush is a vote for a divided, unstable, paranoid America. It is our duty to this beautiful land to let our voices be heard. That's the reason for the tour. That's why I'm doing it.

But the Alpine Valley folks had not bought tickets for a political tour concert. I was prepared to hear some unappealing politicking from the stage, so I was quite impressed that the only political content occurred when Dave came on stage to introduce the band (Gusher) that played before his band. Dave just said:

There will be a break after they play and before we come out and play, so if you have to take a leak, when you go up to take a leak, you can also register to vote. If you really have to go bad, then first take a leak, and then register to vote. But if it's just a twinge, you can register to vote first.

And vote for whoever you want. Vote for whoever you want. And if you don't know who to vote for, vote for who I want. You know who I want. But vote for whoever you want.

Well said, Dave. Appropriate use of the forum.

That touchy credential: a Senate career.

Jodi Wilgoren, in the NYT Week In Review, analyzes why a Senate career looks at first like a great credential for a presidential candidate, but then backfires. (Only two sitting Senators have the Presidency.) Wilgoren notes something I hadn't noticed:

Mr. Kerry's campaign aides rarely use the honorific he has earned in nearly 20 years on Capitol Hill, instead referring to the candidate only as "John Kerry'' in news releases, travel schedules and when talking about him.

Most of us have noticed that the Democratic convention speeches and the Kerry ads rarely mention his Senate career. Here, Wilgoren supplies the surprising details:

Only 3 of the campaign's 18 television advertisements since April even mention his day job, describing him alternately as a combat veteran, former prosecutor, husband, father, "advocate for kids," hunter, pilot, even hockey player.

And in accepting his party's presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, as his opponents were quick to point out, Mr. Kerry spent just 26 seconds - 73 of the 5,343 words in his speech - talking about his time in the Senate.

And most of us have noticed the raw material a Senate career provides for the Senator's opponent:

[A] Senate record [Kerry] has cast some 6,000 votes since arriving in Washington in 1985 - is easy ammunition. Hardly a day goes by without Mr. Bush's aides mentioning Mr. Kerry's 350 votes over the years for higher taxes (not mentioning that most were technical votes on minor amendments connected with balanced-budget packages). If not attacking his votes for higher gas taxes or against financing for the Iraq war, the Bush campaign is pointing to votes or hearings Mr. Kerry skipped while out campaigning.

And Kerry seems especially afflicted (unlike Edwards) by the senatorial speech patterns, which are also a problem:

Then there is the way senators speak - at length, often alone in the august hall but for a C-Span camera, with bonus points for detailed digressions and polysyllabic words.

Indeed, on the campaign trail, Mr. Kerry is inclined to "revise and extend" the draft remarks circulated to reporters, often stepping on his own applause lines by stuffing extra examples and explanations into the bumper-sticker slogans.

"You talk differently," explained Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "You tend to emphasize the specifics and the intricacies of legislation. It's hard to describe a Senate career in a way that makes you appear attractive as a president."

Wilgoren also notes that the two sitting Senators who did make it to the Presidency were, unlike John Kerry, had very brief Senate careers:

[T]he senators who made it to the White House, Harding in 1920 and Kennedy in 1960, had unremarkable Capitol Hill careers, each having spent only one term in the Senate. "They had non-records, so to speak," said the historian Robert Dallek. "There wasn't a single major bill that attached to either Harding or Kennedy's name, so they could defend against attacks on their record."

So being a one-termer is the trick? And not orating like a Senator? Isn't everyone seeing that John Edwards would have been the better candidate?

"Quasi": the plausible deniability prefix.

Last week, Jeremy called me "quasi-snobbish" for taking account of the hierarchy of prestige among law schools. Responding to him, I dropped the quasi, and he wrote: "I said quasi-snobbish; I don't deploy Latinate prefixes idly." So, my ears perked up at this interchange between Paul Krugman and Bill O'Reilly on Tim Russert's show last night:

KRUGMAN: The United States is the lowest taxed advanced country, by far ...

O'REILLY: Yeah, because they're not a socialist country. [O'Reilly asserts that Ronald Reagan's tax policy stimulated the economic growth of the 90s.]

KRUGMAN (sarcastically): I love this!

O'REILLY: ... I don't care whether you believe it or not. You're a quasi-socialist. ...

KRUGMAN: ... You take a look at anything I've written about economics and I'm not a socialist. You know, that's a slander.

O'REILLY (serenely and smugly): I said quasi.

KRUGMAN: Well, that's a wonderful out. Then you're a quasi-murderer!

So what's the deal with "quasi"? It's something you tack on to a hot term you really want to use, so that you don't have to take responsibility for using it. So I agree it's not idly deployed. It's the plausible deniability prefix. But I think Krugman was right to perceive that O'Reilly had called him a socialist.

UPDATE: Jeremy has a longish post in response, which winds its way around to talking about John Kerry's assertion that Bush's approach to managing the volunteer military is a "backdoor draft." I realized at some point in reading Jeremy's post that "quasi" can also be used to make an insult out of what is not an insult, for example, in referring to something as "quasi-humorous." Anyway, that doesn't refer to Jeremy's post, which is actually humorous, that refers to a letter I wrote a long time ago, criticizing someone for writing an article insulting someone else and meaning to escape responsibility by casting the article as a humor piece. Not wanting to give the article writer any credit, I called the piece "quasi-humorous." Now that I've made such a big deal out of "quasi," if I ever use "quasi" again, it's going to make me queasy.

Shopping.

So, as I said, I was down in the outskirts of Chicago yesterday shopping. I can't help it, but I like the Oakbrook Center, with its nice mix of stores, including an Apple Store, an Eileen Fisher, a Sephora, Crate and Barrel, a Restoration Hardware, Tiffany's, Brooks Brothers, that sort of thing. It's a non-enclosed mall, with outdoor plazas and walkways, with flowers and fountains. Too pretty, if anything. Not gritty or at all hip. Upscale, modern .... I'm sorry, I like it. It's a serene promenade through tasteful merchandise. I don't really like to go shopping. Shopping is often confusing, physically uncomfortable, unaesthetic, and a waste of time. But at Oakbrook, we had a rational and efficient shopping experience, as well as a nice little lunch at Antico Posto.

The two hour drive is a minus, but that was offset by having my son John in the car reading to me the entire time. He likes to read out loud, and I'm happy driving a long time if I can hear something worth thinking about. John came with me because the main goal of the trip was to buy him a suit and various accessories at Brooks Brothers. Now this had loomed as a big chore, but the idea was that BB would simplify the task, and it did. Our saleswoman Helga, with 20 years of experience, can look at a customer and know what size he wears. She's very good at this, she says, but she gets it wrong in the case of her own children, because she sees them as smaller than the really are. Which I thought was sweet. She led us from jacket to pants to shoes to shirts to ties to socks. We put together the whole outfit as the decisions seemed to fall into place inevitably. There's something really rational and sensible about buying men's business clothes. And doesn't a man look fine in a suit? I find myself saying: why don't men wear suits all the time? It's such a simplified approach to personal appearance, and it makes you look great.

Helga got the tailor to do the alterations that afternoon. We went back out to shop around. and she called my cell phone within an hour to say the suit is ready. John tried it on, and I said again what I said when he first tried the jacket on: you look great! It's quite a pleasure to see your own son dressed perfectly in a nice suit!

I bought some soft sweaters at Eileen Fisher, which is as rational a women's clothing store as I have ever seen. And I wandered around Sephora for a while, which is surely less rational, but isn't it amusing to see all the unusual makeup displays, find the Philosophy products charming, try on six perfumes, and be waited on by numerous beautiful salespersons? Well, you can decide for yourself. I think it's a brilliantly designed store.

I noticed how many of the stores play Big Band music--not all, not Sephora. Is there something about Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald that enhances merchandise? I remember my father telling me so many times, back in the sixties, that Big Band music would come back. Oh, how wrong you are, old man--was my attitude at the time--rock and roll had forever conquered your square music! No, he thought rock was a transitory trend, a novelty. It would have to die. But "Rock and Roll Is Here To Stay," rock has been singing about itself since the fifties. I suppose that my father must have admitted to himself before he died that Big Band music was not coming back. But now, whenever I go shopping, piped into the sleek, fashionable environments of today is the music my parents loved, sounding eternally young and fresh and inevitable.

Ah, I suppose I also believed, back in the sixties, that men were about to toss aside their business suits for good! Didn't we, the know-it-all baby boomers, see the folly of those uptight clothes? Neckties: what were they for? No one would dress like that in the future. But now, I'm shopping for a suit with my son, respecting the rationality and clarity of the traditional men's store, and I'm genuinely impressed by how great a suit looks.

Breastfeeding.

I barely, but polarly, posted yesterday. I took a long drive down to the outskirts of Chicago to do some shopping. That means I was in no position to run into and photograph the protest march for breast milk that took place alongside the Farmers' Market yesterday. Nina has pictures of fruits, vegetables, and breast-promoters. She asks was anyone against breast milk? She asks rhetorically, in the sense of: isn't it silly to march for this because it's completely noncontroversial?

I remember in the early 70s, Ms. Magazine, in its early days, constantly attacked La Leche League, a pro-breastfeeding group. It was considered anti-feminist at the time to encourage women to breastfeed. Breastfeeding promoters had an ulterior motive (according to Ms.): keeping women at home.

Last year, I studied the Family and Medical Leave Act, after the Supreme Court decided that the law enforced equal protection rights. The Court considered whether the federal statute was a remedy for violations of constitutional equal protection rights, and the violation of rights the Court found was that states had given more family leave to women than to men. Key evidence showed that maternity leaves exceeded paternity leaves to an extent that could not be explained by the time of physical disability that follows childbirth (supposedly four to six weeks). I wondered why it violated men's rights to give long maternity leaves to women, considering that only women were physically capable of breastfeeding. A new mother might want to breastfeed for six months or a year. An employer that accommodated the new mother's wish to stay home and breastfeed violates equal protection? I thought it was rather amazing that none of the briefs talked about this subject.

So I think that's an indication that breastfeeding is not treated as important. Sure, go do it if you want, but don't expect a lot of help. I don't know anything about the women who marched in Madison yesterday, but I assume that they are asking for institutions to encourage and facilitate breastfeeding. If they are hoping for long work leaves to allow it, they've got a big problem. But there are still other issues about being accommodated in the workplace (bring the baby to work?) and in various public places (at the next table in at a restaurant?).

Now I'm never going to Iqaluit.

I'm having none of it until they rehire Polar Penny! (Via Metafilter.) Here's the blog.

A cipher who went to Vietnam.

Our local public sociologist Jeremy is taking me to task for raising the indelicate question of whether John Kerry is really as smart as he's made out to be. He doesn't like "the quasi-snobbery of putting so much stock in law school rankings," but the point is not that the law schools really belong where they are in the rankings, but that people hoping to trade on their credentials rationally choose the highest ranked school they can get into unless they have another factor governing their decisions.

Going to Boston College Law School is simply an item of evidence that is part of analyzing how smart Kerry is. In Kerry's particular case, it raises the inference--for reasons detailed in my earlier posts--that his undergraduate record and his LSAT weren't very good, which is evidence that he isn't as smart as he's been made out to be. We do need the President to be reasonably smart, and Kerry has been widely touted as much smarter than Bush. Thus, this is a fair issue. My point is not at all about the quality of the education provided at his law school, as I noted earlier. There's nothing snobby about this line of reasoning, really. It is just a matter of rational inference from the known data points. I can see why fear of being perceived as a snob might have motivated me not to bring this up, but that just means I'm reckless.

Jeremy also considers it snobbish to use someone's academic record as a basis for judging them when they have a work history that can provide an alternate basis for judgment. I disagree. First, if I were hiring a lawyer in a law firm or appointing a new lawprof, I would expect the résumé to include academic credentials, even if they had had some other jobs. Why should voters expect less? Second, I have questions about Kerry's work history. So he got himself elected Senator, and like many incumbents, he's gotten reelected many times. That's just not enough to inspire confidence. He hasn't been relying on his Senate record to show why he should be President. If you're concerned about going too far back in time for credentials, as Jeremy is, why aren't you dismissing Kerry's own heavy reliance on his military service? That predates law school.

In any case, my questions about Kerry's intelligence do not arise solely from my inference that he had a poor academic record and low standardized test scores. My questions are also based on his exasperatingly convoluted and unclear manner of speaking. This has been excused as a propensity for "nuance" and "complexity," but could also be caused by a lack of mental capacity. It could also be willful evasion. I'd really like to know. I'm not that focused on getting Kerry's transcripts and test scores (though we have such things for Bush, and we had them for Gore--Bush's were superior, you remember). I'm concerned about Kerry's abilities. I'm happy to get information from other sources. But I've been listening to him talk for a long, long time, and I'm not impressed at all. And I'm sure not impressed by the mere fact of someone managing to hold a Senate seat for a long time!

I realize people who truly despise Bush don't care about any of this. The fact is Kerry's the candidate, so there's nothing more to say. Unite behind him, whoever he is. It's too late now. And please don't say anything bad about him. Shhhh! But that doesn't work for people, like myself, who don't despise Bush. I am actually trying to assess Kerry! Where is the material? It certainly wasn't presented in the convention last week, and Kerry's speeches and interviews are not exactly brimming with information. I've been looking for an answer to what he plans to do in Iraq for a long time--here's an old post--and I still can't figure him out. It seems to me we're being asked to make a cipher President. A cipher who went to Vietnam. And isn't Bush. Is that enough? If you hate Bush, the answer is a resounding "Yes!" It isn't enough for me.

UPDATE: I've fixed the bad link to Jeremy's post. And he responds here. I won't repeat arguments I've already made. I will say law firms do ask for your LSAT scores, and many employers these days actually do want to know your SAT scores. Jeremy's right that Gore's SAT scores were higher than Bush's, but Bush's academic record was much better. Gore's was quite embarrassingly bad, especially when he went to divinity school. This article gives the details and asks whether which of two job candidates you would hire if one had fine test scores and a terrible academic record and the other had lower test scores but a respectable academic record.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I just wanted to quote this email I just got: "The Thief in Chief a/k/a our moronic leader will lose...what sad news for you, you dumbass grad student."

Mistaken hawk.

My falcon turned out to be a hawk.



NOTE: That's not my photograph of the hawk that lives in my yard. I didn't get a clear photo yet. This photo is from here, and the photographer is Greg Vogel.

Readers respond re: "Is Kerry a war hero?"

Yesterday, I wrote that I didn't think much of the new assertions that Kerry was not a war hero on the theory that if the assertions were true they would probably have come out back in the early 70s when Kerry was a prominent anti-war activist.

Several people wrote in to call attention to the episode of "The Dick Cavett Show," where another Vietnam Vet, John O'Neill, debated with John Kerry and strongly opposed him. I watched this show back in March when it was on C-Span (and took two photos), and O'Neill was not raising questions about Kerry's medals or heroism. The debate was about whether the war was wrong and whether war crimes were being committed.

The best point raised in the email was that Kerry was not claiming heroism back in the 70s. He was expressing shame about what he had done as he criticized the tactics used in the war. So the occasion calling for a response actually did not exist. Only the new version of the story, used in the Presidential campaign, paints him as a hero and motivates his opponents to respond with information they kept silent about before. Of course, his political opponents are also motivated to attack him.

Another good point readers made was that it would have been very hard for a vet who wanted to discredit Kerry to get media attention in the early 1970s. If the media were anti-war--and I believe they were--they would have been eager to give a forum to the thoughtful, articulate vet who was saying how terrible things were in Vietnam. As one emailer wrote: "People (most people) WANTED to believe Kerry and his ilk--they were the glamorous ones."

Then there's the notion [ADDED: emailed by Buddy Larsen] that the accusers in question would not, when they were young, have been the sort of people who would come forward (though, as older men, faced with Kerry's new presentation as a hero, they are behaving differently):

[T]here was a distinct inward-turning of many, many of the cohort in the 70s. The idea of going public for any reason would have been alien to these guys, and the idea of organizing to do so, with the aim of straightening out some part of an entirely bent universe, doesn't fit with these type guys, in that time.

Another emailer notes the difficulty, especially for a young person (especially if they were still in Vietnam), to find a way to make his voice heard. Kerry, as a young man, was an extraordinarily capable when it came to moving into the public sphere and becoming a spokesperson. We ought to remember that before asking why others did not become prominent.

Some have written that only the prospect of Kerry becoming President provided sufficient motivation for the new accusers to come forward. This seems to be the main point made by a vet who appears in the anti-Kerry ad who was interviewed on CNN the other day and asked why he did not come forward earlier: "For one thing, I did not know that John had been put in for a Bronze Star, a Silver Star or, for that matter, a Purple Heart on that day. I did not see the after-action report, which, in fact, was written by John. And as the years went by, John was not running for the highest office in the free world."

Readers respond re "Is Kerry Smart"?

My post yesterday "Is Kerry Smart? Is Kerry a war hero?" has brought a lot of email. Rather than clutter up that post with more updates, I'm going to present some of the email response in two separate posts, this first one about the issue of Kerry's intelligence.

TPB writes:

I feel compelled to defend Boston College Law School. First, being a Jesuit school, BC (which is ranked in the mid-twenties or so today, but was probably not as good in the seventies, when Kerry went there) had a strong tradition of Socratic learning that is particularly compelling to lawyers. In fact, most law schools tend to follow this approach, though perhaps with a bit less enthusiasm than at Jesuit schools.

Second, along with the strong political education at BC law, the school is known within the federal government as one of the places from which to draw critical thinkers (along with Notre Dame and Georgetown). This has been a point raised, on numerous occasions, by Tom Clancy with regard to his "Jack Ryan" books. Back in the sixties and seventies, there was a preference in the FBI and the Secret Service for BC and G-town grads because of the aforementioned Socratic education style. My father, in fact, was a product of this.

Finally, as any law student in any university can tell you, it's not necessarily where you go that counts. The basics of law - the Constitutional theory, the trial practice instruction, etc. - are taught in all law schools. Whether a student grasps or pays attention to this is what counts, not whether the school is highly ranked. Hence, I have classmates from my law school (a top 10 school at the time I went there) that really aren't very good attorneys, whereas students of lower ranked schools - Rutgers-Camden or Cardozo, for example - are exceptional attorneys. From what I understand, Kerry was a lackluster ADA in Suffolk County, MA. His performance as an attorney is more relevant than the school in which he studied.

I want to stress that I was suggesting an inference arising from the fact that Kerry--a law school applicant with extraordinary plus factors, the money to go to any school he wanted, and a history of choosing elite, prestige institutions--went to BC Law School. I was not making the same inference regarding anyone else who goes to a lower ranked law school, and I was not saying anything about the actual education you get at an elite law school compared to other law schools.

The same emailer wrote back to add:

I understand that Kerry did everything he could to hide his BC connection, since it's known as a morally conservative school, going so far as to leave out where he went to law school on his site for a while. BC alums were quite upset with that.

Lily Malcolm makes the point about Kerry's website here. Even if it's great to go to BC Law School--I stipulate that it is!--if Kerry himself has been ashamed of it, then we should assume that he went there because the options he preferred were closed to him.

I'd like to present more of the email, but I can't get to it on this computer and am having a problem with my laptop. Sorry. I got a lot of good email and would like to use more of it.

Blogger woes.

Sorry to anyone who ventured onto this blog when I was seemingly insanely reposting the previous two posts over and over again. I kept getting the message that I wasn't making a connection, so I kept retrying the publish button. All I can say is it's a good thing I figured out what was happening when I did, because there really is no limit to how many times I might have republished. And what bad luck that one of these posts was full of pictures!

Is Kerry smart? Was Kerry a war hero?

Soxblog asks (via Kausfiles) is John Kerry really so smart? I have to admit, like Soxblog, I've been wondering why Kerry went to Boston College Law School. Since he was rich, it can't have been the lure of a free ride. You would think, with his anti-war activism, he would have been a very attractive candidate for admission to Harvard (or another top-ranked law school) if only his LSAT and GPA were at all within range. No offense to Boston College, of course. I think it's similar to attending my school, the University of Wisconsin Law School. And the point is, he had an extremely admirable personal story and record of activism, as well as the ability to pay his way, so he could have gotten into Boston College with numbers well below those of the average students.

We keep hearing about Kerry's ability to deal with "nuance" and "complexity," but could it be that this is spin, and the truth is he actually doesn't think clearly? We know he doesn't speak clearly: he can't get to the point, and he often strays off-topic. We keep hearing that he's "thoughtful," implying that he takes a long time to think things through. Another way of putting that is that he's slow.

There has been so much talk about how dumb Bush supposedly is, that it's surely fair to ask about Kerry's mental capacity. What were his undergraduate and law school GPAs? What was his LSAT score? If we don't hear the answer, I think, we ought to assume the numbers are fairly low.

As to the question whether Kerry was really a war hero or some sort of war villain, the other and much nastier question that is being asked today, I will only note that if these charges were true, why didn't they come out back when Kerry was conspicuously opposing the Vietnam war and relying on his hero reputation for credibility? The motivation to discredit him was quite strong then. It seems awfully late to be bringing out this material. You may think that all the carping about Bush's military records justifies bashing Kerry's military record, but a key difference between the two attacks is that there wasn't a similiar motivation to attack Bush's record closer in time to the events in question. I think the absence of an earlier challenge of Kerry's record is quite probative. In any case, the attack on Kerry's military record is very ugly and is dragging the political debate to a repulsively low level.

UPDATE: Prof. Yin adds: "regardless of what anyone else thinks about the relative merits of Boston College vs. Harvard, doesn't Kerry seem exactly like the kind of person who would think that Harvard is more desirable?" And thanks for calling this post "nonpartisan." I really am nonpartisan about the presidential race!

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader (who wasn't happy with my acknowledgment of the hierarchy in the prestige of law schools) referred me to this biographical article about John Kerry that appeared in the Washington Post last week. It gives an explanation for why Kerry went to law school at Boston College. Kerry ran for Congress in the Fall of 1972, when he seemed to be a fast-track golden boy. He was devastated by defeat and:

The law became Kerry's Plan B. The Yale graduate wanted to return there to law school but could not because his wife, Julia, was expecting a baby. His next choice was Harvard, then Boston University, but he applied too late. Boston College offered the opposite of Yale's theoretical approach -- it was famous as a training ground for politicians -- but BC had an opening, and Kerry took it.

So he couldn't go to Yale because Julia was pregnant, but he couldn't go to Harvard because he was late in applying. How do you figure that? Also, one loses a Congressional election in November. That leaves a good two months to apply to any law school. The article describes Kerry as quite devastated by his election loss, and that may have hampered the application process. Schools do have different deadlines (though not before January). [MORE: The dates for taking the LSAT would also be a factor.] In any event, it was seen as odd that he became a student at BC:

Boston College law professor Thomas Carey strode into his first-year torts class and was stunned to see, near the back of one row, "this tall young fellow I'd been mesmerized by a couple of years earlier testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And there he was, starting off as a regular grunt."

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Instapundit (who links to this post--thanks!) opines that great intelligence may not be that important in a President. He notes Carter and Hoover were very smart. Maybe people somewhat less smart (or, really, intellectual) are better at making practical decisions. I think we all know some terribly smart people whom we would never want to rely on to make an important decision. In fact, supersmart people may be particularly bad at making decisions, because they may be too confident that they know better than others. So I don't disagree there. I'm not saying the smarter man ought to win or that if Kerry isn't as smart as he's made out to be he shouldn't be President. I'm just saying that since he's been promoted for his superior intelligence, it's fair to ask whether he really is all that intelligent. I've spent a lot of time struggling to follow what he's saying and trying to figure out what his opinions are, and this effort is affected by the assumption that he's as smart as they say. If he's not really all that smart, then his manner of speaking seems to be more a matter of covering up his inadequacies, as opposed to the product of a highly nuanced mind that sees all the complexities.

ALSO: I appreciated Lily Malcolm's posts about Kerry going to Boston College (which Instapundit links). She recognizes, as I do, that it sounds snobby to talk about law school ranking. One catches hell for mentioning it. She asked back in March:

By the time he applied to law school, the guy had a resume that should have made admissions offices salivate: St. Paul's, Yale, Skull & Bones, the Silver Star, testifying in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And he couldn't do any better for law school than BC? ... [M]ost people attend the most highly regarded school they can get into. And you'd think an overachieving, hyper-ambitious snob like Kerry wouldn't settle for less than the very best unless he had no other choice.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: I just reread Lily Malcolm's explanation of what makes law school admissions people "salivate." I have read admissions files for many of the 20 years I've been at Wisconsin. Let me say that, while the honored military service and the testimony in the Senate would be highly impressive, it would only justify admission to law school in the case of a person whose record as a whole shows a capacity to do the required work. And attending a series of prestigious institutions is impressive if the academic record itself shows that the person has diligence and aptitude, but if the academic record is poor those institutions scream privilege: here is someone who had great advantages. That is not a plus factor in admissions. All of this is to say, once again, that the known facts imply a weak academic record.

AND ANOTHER UPDATE: I've gotten a lot of email on this post. I provide some reader response for "Is Kerry a war hero?" here and for "Is Kerry smart?" here.

A prairie walk.

Take a walk through the prairie today in Wisconsin. The grass is seven feet high. I think about the settlers years ago who had to make their way through the sea of grass, as I walk on a path cut in the UW Arboretum.



Some of the flowers are nine feet tall:



Through the flowers, you can see the morning moon:



Thistles:



Trees, beautifully aged:



And beautifully dead:

Watching Clinton on Letterman.

We were just watching part of the TiVoed Clinton-on-Letterman show.

I comment on what an attractive character Clinton is--his flowing speech, his easy demeanor, his warmth.

John says imagine if Kerry had all the same policies and qualifications, but spoke and acted like Clinton, don't you think he would win easily?

I say yes, but the same is true of Bush: if Bush had all of Clinton's physical presentation, and kept his own policies and achievements, Bush would easily beat Kerry.

John says it would be fairest if both of them could have the Clinton presentation so that we could then judge them on their real merit.

I say, yeah, it would be like blind grading.

So you were having a brat on the Terrace?

Why, yes. They grill them up outdoors by the lake. Here's the view from my table in the shade, looking out on the Terrace and Lake Mendota:



And here's that brat I was talking about:



Don't eat the bun and it's Atkins-compliant.

Later, I remove to the café:



Don't eat these things, of course, if you're Atkinsing.



Don't worry. I didn't. I was just waiting for my cappucino, which I then took to my table, where I edited my Civpro2 materials for a couple hours.

UPDATE: Thanks to Instapundit for linking and for coming up with the term "bratblogging"!

ANOTHER UPDATE: I'm finding it a bit funny that so many people are stopping by to look at my half-eaten sausage! If you folks are really so interested in sausage, I have blogged about sausage before, here. Careful, it's very golf-y. Scroll down to the dialogue and the paragraph just above it if you want to concentrate on the sausage. For more about bratwurst, the NYT has bratwurst content today in an article datelined Kenosha, Wisconsin, about how regular folk are reacting to the recent terror alert. You know they are regular folk because they are at a small-town diner:

"I don't know who on earth to believe anymore," said Michael Schumacher, a 54-year-old writer who was eating a bratwurst for breakfast. "You feel you're being manipulated all the time."

Additional sausage-related material: the diner is called Franks. I see Schumacher is having his brat for breakfast. Interestingly enough, my golf-oriented, sausage-related dialogue is about eating a frank for breakfast, which makes me feel that everything is connected. There's always a link.

Pronunciation note: "brat" does not rhyme with "cat." For my own catblogging, look here.

An indescribably cool job.

The Onion lead story "CIA Asks Bush to Discontinue Blog" is currently the most linked thing on Blogdex, unsurprisingly. I was out this afternoon having a brat on the Terrace and strolling down by Lake Mendota, taking some photographs, when I ran into into the father of Onion writer Peter Koechley, who let me know that Peter had written the now-famous Bush blog article. I congratulated him on the extreme coolness of his son's job. He told me Peter was the Onion's representative at the Democratic Convention, which is also indescribably cool. I found this story on CNN.com:

The world's great news organizations are here at the Democratic National Convention: the all-news networks, the broadcast networks, NHK and the BBC and The New York Times and the Washington Post.

And, of course, The Onion.

The Onion, "America's Finest News Source" (see Web site) is represented in the person of one Peter Koechley. And he is, indeed, one: Not just the one Peter Koechley here, but the one Onion representative.

"That's 10 or 15 percent of our entire news outfit," Koechley pointed out.

Koechley isn't in Boston so much to report with daily dispatches than to gather material for future Onion stories. "There's no direct reporting happening," said Koechley. "Our concept of what's topical is a little more glacial."

Koechley, 23, "grew up with comedy newspapers," he said, starting one in his hometown of Madison, Wisconsin (also The Onion's place of origin), when he was 13 and another when he was 15. Now he's part of a staff that puts out one of the most notable humor publications in the country ....

Congratulations to Peter. That "comedy newspaper" referred to was "The Yellow Press," written by West High School students, who frequently met at my house. They were a great bunch of kids!

The death of a great photographer.

Pause a moment and mourn the loss of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Here, you can view some of his beautiful, inspiring work.

UPDATE: So maybe you're thinking of buying a book of Cartier-Bresson's work. There are lots of choices. May I recommend this one?

"Eat less, eat different, work out more .... wear pink ties."

That's Bill Clinton's weight loss advice, given at the behest of David Letterman, on his show last night.

"Control the volume for hypnotic eyes up to 6 times."

That's the insane advertisement statement of the day. From a paper NYT ad for Lancome mascara. Sorry I can't do the circumflex over the "o" in Lancome. The mascara name has another circumflex over an "o" which I can't show you, but it belongs in the product name: "Hypnose Mascara." It seems that the notion that gripped the admen and product namers was hypnosis. I guess they were brainstorming about eyes and came up with the idea of "look into my eyes" used in hypnosis and thought it was fabulous for a beauty ad, because there's always the goal of achieving mind-altering control over someone through beauty. But how to process "hypnosis" into a product name? Well, it's for Lancome, so let's just French it up: "Hypnose"! Never mind that you just referred to two body parts that aren't the eyes!

Now, the ad line itself takes the idea of controlling the viewer through the hypnotic effect of blackened eyelashes a step further. It seems as though you can control the degree of hypnotic effect, however, not more than 6 times. Six times what? The original hypnotic effect of your uncoated eyelashes? I really don't know, but it sure sounds powerful and precise. And note that adfolk who write about makeup can never bring themselves to call eyelashes eyelashes (or eyebrows eyebrows or eyelids eyelids)--it's always "lashes" (and "brows" and "lids"). Here we have these tiny eyelid hairs, with their basic limited capacity for screening dust and sweat our of your eyes, and suddenly they are taking on some sort of sixfold power to control people. And they aren't just eyelashes, they are lashes. "With each stroke," the ad tells us, "the patented POWERFULL brush intensifies lashes ..." The double meaning of "lashes" is quite apparent--and a bit frightening. Picture a supervillain with eyelashes that literally possess the qualities that mascara ads talk about: that would be one scary creature!

(The double "L" on "POWERFULL" is not an error, by the way. In fact, the people who thought it up are so pleased with the image of power and fullness contained in that respelling that they've put a little "tm" mark next to it.)

Why are Kerry supporters implicitly conceding that Bush is stronger on terrorism?

I'm watching Howard Dean on Hardball, and he's walking a thin line trying to accuse Bush of raising the terror alert level for political advantage without actually accusing him of doing so. (Here's the story on raising the terror alert.) Dean is pointing to the age of some of the information relied on (though other information is from the last week or so) and the fact that it is coming out at a time when Bush has a motive to overshadow Kerry (though raising the terror alert right before or during the convention would have been more harmful to Kerry). Kerry is distancing himself from these accusations, to his credit. But using Dean's logic--look at what is happening now and who stands to benefit--why shouldn't I suspect that Kerry is sending out Dean as his attack dog?

But quite aside from all of that, a question I have is this: why is heightened concern about terrorism seen as something that advantages Bush? Why doesn't fear of terrorism make us want Kerry? Terrorism really is a huge problem, whether it's weighing on our minds on a particular day or not. If Kerry supporters are saying that worrying about terrorism helps Bush, then we should be for Bush!

I can understand that Kerry supporters want to do what they can to help him, and I understand why it can hurt Bush to make us believe that Bush is manipulating the terror warnings for political purposes. But why are they conceding that that people concerned about terrorism will rally around Bush? Why isn't the argument that Kerry will do a better job of dealing with terrorism?

UPDATE: The answer to my question has to be that Kerry supporters are simply accepting the polls that show that the voters think Bush is stronger on terrorism.

Hey, they brought back the J. Peterman catalog!

Here it is in the afternoon mail, looking the way it always did and bearing no explanation of its long absence and sudden return. "Early evening at Shimba Rainforest Lodge, up in a treetop cocktail lounge ...."

Here's the website. This is interesting.

UPDATE: Here's a much better explanation from the San Francisco Chronicle:

Peterman -- former minor-league baseball player and longtime entrepreneur, now 62 -- found the famous coat, an ankle-length cowboy-style duster, on a trip to Jackson Hole, Wyo., and built a catalog around it in 1987. Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, creators of the television series, became fans of the quirky writing and worldly voice that was J. Peterman, and in 1995 designed a character around it....

But even while "Seinfeld" was spreading Peterman's name, he was losing it. The company expanded rapidly in the late '90s, opening a chain of stores. Too rapidly, it had become apparent by the time J. Peterman opened on the first floor of the San Francisco Shopping Centre, in November 1998. By the next January, the San Francisco store had closed, the company went bankrupt and Peterman was out -- though his name was still in.

"The rapidity of the crash was amazing," he says. "And it was too bad. But we did a lot of things we shouldn't have done."

In the meantime, though, real Peterman had met fictional Peterman (O'Hurley) on national television, and, oddly, the entrepreneur and the actor who played a version of him became friends. Good friends. Good enough that the real Peterman says, "When the company went down, he had a bigger identity crisis than I did," then pauses. "That's a facetious remark."

Good enough also that when Peterman was ready to plunk down $1 million to buy back his name, he told O'Hurley, "I'm going to restart the company, do you want in?" The answer Peterman remembers: "Yep, how much?" And today, the fictional Peterman sits on the real Peterman's board.

Great story!

"Best Performance by an Inanimate Object."

That's my favorite category in the voting for the 2004 Tubey Awards at Television Without Pity. Among the many nominees are:

Drywall, The Apprentice

Janet Jackson's Boob, Superbowl

Paula's Finger Bandage, American Idol

Thing Made out of Stuff, Joan of Arcadia

I voted for "Thing made out of stuff."

Falcon! [Hawk!]

A few minutes ago, I was standing in my kitchen, and I looked out through the French doors to the sundeck, and there, sitting on the wooden railing was a falcon. Before I could get my camera, it flew off. Moments later, I was standing in the big room near the picture window, and the falcon flew right into the window! Birds have hit that window before--and, bird-lovers, I have taken steps to deter them--but the thud of that falcon into the window made me scream. Later, I saw the falcon flying from one large oak tree in my yard to another. It seemed to be staking out the territory of my yard.

Falcon recovery has been an important project in Wisconsin in recent years. Here are some pictures of Wisconsin peregrine falcons.

I will try to find more information about what to do about my bird-luring window.

UPDATE: At 4 p.m., the falcon was back, sitting in my pear tree. I went and got my camera and positioned myself at the window. As I zoomed in, just before I made the shot, he flew away. Maybe the zooming-in lens caught his eagle eye, his falcon eye. I'll get some pictures soon, I think, because it looks as though he's taken up residence in these trees. And as he flew away, he called out, so now I know his call.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Chris says he's seen two falcons, more than once. So there must be a nesting pair in our yard! I say this to Chris, and he chides me for assuming the falcons are of opposite sexes.

FINAL UPDATE: I got a photograph at last, and one of the local bird lovers tells me it's a red tailed hawk, not a falcon, so nothing recently endangered, but a pretty cool hawk nonetheless. Imagine looking out your window and seeing one of these ten feet away from you:

Drudge's siren light.

Drudge is toying with our emotions today by using his rotating siren light to alarm us about the fact that Bush and Kerry have campaign stops today in the same town.

I have to admit that I check Drudge a lot, and I'm sure the old siren light is part of the reason I do. I've developed a sense that the look of the news is the look of Drudge's page. I realize that's a bit absurd, but I can't shake the feeling!

Oh, he's just taken the siren light down. It wasn't up for long. I guess he got some instant feedback about how idiotic it was.

UPDATE: At the moment, the site has a photo of Kerry right next to a photo of Bush. Kerry, wearing sneakers, is standing on a boat deck and the wind is causing his loose clothing to billow comically. Bush, wearing a neat, dark suit and a blue tie, is striding purposefully in front a marble pillar and an American flag. I think we can safely guess which candidate Drudge prefers.

"All the numbers suggest that this convention was a huge success."

So says John Kerry's pollster Mark Mellman. That's pretty sadly desperate, considering the polls he's looking at.

"Cryptocausality."

Our public sociologist Jeremy blasts the NYT for passing along the bad science finding that watching television causes kids to take up smoking.

My previous post asks why we enjoy bad drawings, so I suppose I should ask why we have such an appetite for bad science. Yesterday, didn't we all lap up the news that drinking quite freely sharpens the mind? We like it when we hear that something bad is actually good--e.g., the Atkins Diet (go ahead and ladle butter on that steak, it will help!). And we like it when we hear that doing something virtuous will have bonus benefits--I'm always hearing about additional benefits from exercising or eating vegetables or, as with the Times article, not watching television. I'll bet it wouldn't be hard to find articles about how kids' minds are improved by watching more television. We are entertained by hearing our beliefs confirmed and by hearing them contradicted. And of course, science should entertain us.

UPDATE: Jeremy responds to this post here. Among other things, he doubts that there are studies showing TV is good for you. I seem to remember seeing such things, but maybe I'm wrong. I did some Google-searching and couldn't find anything positive. In fact, based on my search, I'd have to think TV really is quite shockingly destructive. A theory I have, but will leave to someone else to try to prove, is that the alarmism about television and children is a kind of anti-feminism (intentional or unintentional). Many of the articles about the bad effect of television on children's brains harp on the use of television as a "babysitter." There is a shaming and scolding of parents for not devoting far more hours to interacting with young children. This shaming loops in fathers as well as mothers, but it is, I think, women who will feel guilty for failing to do what they imagine women before them did. But, of course, parents have been allowing their children to chill out in front of the TV for as long as there has been TV. I know. I was in the first generation that had TV. And believe me, in the 1950s, parents let their kids watch all the TV they wanted. You would not believe the hours of quiz shows and sitcoms I watched as a kid--without a word of criticism from the parents. Ah, we ate all the candy and ice cream we wanted too. We were the baby boomers and we could do whatever we wanted. And now that we've got all the jobs making scientific studies of all the pleasures we indulged in when we were young, we just can't stop serving up sermons and lectures about all the things you young people shouldn't do.

Spamusement.

Spam subject lines inspire drawings here. The first one I decided to click on made me laugh: "You were wrong cabinet Sanchez."

I found this site by reading My Bad Art Year, which I found reading this Metafilter discussion of Tim's Badly Drawn Cat Site, which is exactly what it sounds like.

Why are bad drawings such refreshingly relaxing fun? Maybe it's like karaoke.

Gunners.

"Law sloth" (and law student) Ava Rice amusingly describes the ways of the law school "gunner." Lawprof Cameron Stracher defends the gunner. (Both pieces via JD2B). Stracher's key point is that the gunner learns more, more quickly. Rice's key point—if you read past all the funny observation and cranky attitude—is that social acceptance counts. I think the well-balanced law student (and lawyer) can find a way, on the one hand, to do the work, gain the knowledge, and contribute to the classroom, and on the other hand, to win the respect of peers and have good social relations. It's not an either/or proposition. You can overdo competition and participation, and you can overdo seeking the approval of others. The gunner's primary offense seems to be seeking the approval of the teacher rather than the other students. Maybe the best strategy is not to yearn too much for either the approval of the other students or the teacher, but to seek what is really valuable: the knowledge that you will need to practice law and the collegiality that makes the practice of law personally rewarding. Not only is this the strategy of a person of good character, but it will feel a whole lot better too.

UPDATE: Ava Rice responds here. Ava Rice is a pseudonym (get it?) for a male, according to the blogger profile. He's expressing some uneasiness about getting linked here:

I never really thought about actual people reading this thing, forget about actual law professors..… I mean, do I really feel comfortable writing about what I really want to write about when I picture actual professors and lawyers reading this?

I think anyone who blogs really ought to picture everyone reading them, because the day is going to come when a prospective employer or prospective spouse or whatever is going to read your blog. You may imagine yourself just writing to yourself, in an impossibly obscure little outpost on the internet. But the fact is, it's on the internet. At the same time, you probably ought to picture no one reading your blog, or maybe just a few close friends, at least to be able to write your blog in a personal voice.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Danny Noonan at The Electric Commentary adds another law student denouncement of gunners. He seems to think a gunner might comment "on the dissenting opinion of one of the cases cited in the case they were supposed to read." I must say that in 20 years of teaching at Wisconsin, I have never had a single student even once refer to anything in a case the was merely cited in the assigned case. I've also never had a student refer to something that was in the full text of the case but not in the edited-down version of the case. I do think Noonan is right that there are many students in the class that are as well-prepared as the students who volunteer a lot. Why don't these people realize how much power they have to dilute the effect of the students that annoy them by talking too much? Well, I guess they do realize they have the power, but why don't they use it? And how can they complain if they have the power to eliminate the effect of the gunners but they won't use it? Gunner-hating is awfully passive-aggressive, isn't it? If all you gunner-haters would just raise your hand once a week and make a contribution, there would be no more room in the hour for gunners to occupy. You may think that it is entirely the prof's job to control the few students who talk too much (or, more importantly, stray off-topic), but in my experience, students will also fault the teacher for cutting off students and for displaying negativity toward a particular student. You may think you hate the gunner, but you will still, I'll bet, sympathize with any student to whom the prof seems to be hostile, even if that student is a gunner. The most effective and positive way to overcome the gunner problem is for all the students to make a decent contribution for the good of the whole.

"A case of wishful thinking reminiscent of the most fevered Bush administration delusions."

Spencer Ackerman, writing in The New Republic, aptly and concisely exposes and punctures the delusion of Kerry's "secret plan" to wind down the war in Iraq: "Kerry is expecting, essentially, that the Europeans, liberated from Bush, will greet him with sweets and flowers."

Running for First Lady.

Tim Russert ended yesterday's "Meet the Press" with a discussion of the race for First Lady. This is a significant subject, like it or not, that I brought up in two posts yesterday--here and here. Here's the MTP dialogue:

MR. RUSSERT: Teresa Heinz Kerry made a very open appeal for support for women voters at the convention. Let's watch. ... Did it work?

MS. IFILL: You know, it's interesting. That's a perfect Rorschach. I was in the hall that night, and the response seemed muted. There were a lot of empty seats. You could kind of only hear her, because she speaks so softly. And I thought, jeez, that wasn't much of a speech. I called my friends at home who watched it on television, and they were blown away.

MR. RUSSERT: Ron Brownstein, let me bring you in here. The Newsweek poll has Kerry-Edwards up amongst women by 16 points, 53-37. ... And Bush ahead amongst men by 5 points. Big gender gap.

MR. BROWNSTEIN: ... Most of the women who would respond to [Heinz Kerry's speech] ... are already in the Democratic camp. Her job was more to do what the daughters did on Thursday night, I think, to humanize John Kerry and to show the side of him that you don't see when the spotlights are on. She did almost none of that. And I think for that reason, the speech was a wasted opportunity....

MR. RUSSERT: All right, Harwood, break the tie.

MR. HARWOOD: Tim, Laura Bush is a spectacularly good red-state spouse. She's smart. But she's also a bit subdued and supportive of her husband. Teresa Heinz is a very good blue-state spouse. She speaks not only to women but also to that larger immigrant story. There's a lot of immigrant voters in this race. She's urbane, she's sophisticated, she's strong. She's going to be an asset for him.

Here's what I think.

Laura Bush is the First Lady from central casting. She perfectly plays the role of an idealized First Lady (not the feisty, outspoken variety of First Lady but the Pat Nixon/Jackie Kennedy type). I assume she is a smart and good person who is not interested in projecting her personality into the public sphere and has chosen to walk carefully through the various scripted performances required of her.

Teresa Heinz Kerry is going to be a problem---not because she's "opinionated," the characteristic she pointedly defended in her convention speech, and not merely because she is interested in being the feisty, outspoken kind of First Lady, projecting her personality into the public sphere. She is going to be a problem because of that personality-projecting combined with a lack of real interest in helping her husband. I have no way to know what she really thinks of him, but time and again, I get the impression that she can barely tolerate him and doesn't even particularly care about supporting him. She too is walking through her public appearances, but she's not willing to play the First Lady role. She surely has a right to express herself, and she used her speech to inform us of this fact, though we all know it. But her honest self-expression seems unlikely to help her husband. This is not because we want to squelch female expression and demand a demure First Lady. It is because her honest expressions do not inspire support for the candidate.

Compare Heinz Kerry to other recent feisty First Ladies: Hillary Clinton and Nancy Reagan. These women had strong personalities (in fact they seemed far more energetic and political than Heinz Kerry), but they also obviously adored their husbands and staunchly agreed with their politics. We could see their love and it rubbed off on us--or at least it rubbed off on those not so opposed to the man as to be immune to such influence. Heinz Kerry shows none of this adoration. In fact, she seems to show a lack of interest in him. Maybe she doesn't even support his politics. (She is the widow of a Republican Senator.) She has an air of world-weariness (perhaps even mourning for the dead Republican). Here is her current husband, a dour-faced man with a droning voice, who is trying his damnedest to look like an optimist, and his own wife will not deign to gaze at him and smile. I'm all for female independence and expression, but why doesn't she want to help him?

UPDATE: Kate O'Beirne, the Washington Editor of the National Review, adds to my speculation that Heinz Kerry does not agree with her husband's politics:

At a Washington party in 2001, Teresa Heinz (then) greeted me enthusiastically with the charming pronouncement, "I agree with everything you say on TV. I'm a Republican and you're my favorite." Her husband, John Kerry, stood uncomfortably at her side, which he was no doubt used to doing by then.

Muzzles, Botox, and baffle gab.

Zell Miller turned in a sharp performance on "Meet the Press" yesterday:

Oh, the Democrats have changed. This time, it's the Democrats who have the party of division and diversion. Have you ever seen anything like this Democratic convention? We've been going to them for a long time. This is the first time I've ever seen the speakers issued muzzles before they went up to the speaking platform. I mean, you have to give them a C+, I guess, for discipline, but it was a convention that was completely deceptive in every way. Somebody back in Georgia said that it's the Botox convention: cosmetically enhanced. ...

I found [Kerry's] speech amazingly evasive. It was the same gobbledegook, same baffle gab that you have always heard from John Kerry. He said that he had a plan for Iraq, but then he never got around to telling you what that plan was. He said that he was going to increase troops by 40,000, and special ops, he was going to double, but I'm not going to send them to Iraq. I don't know exactly where he stands on these things still.

Miller is an excellent speaker, and he seems to represent a style of thinking characteristic of his region of the South. Some of the things he says sound elegant, but--unlike the quotes I've set out above--don't ring true at all to me. These two things jumped out at me:

[H]ow can a person say that they are for American values and for the American family whenever they vote or not vote but oppose an amendment to the Constitution that would define marriage as a union between man and woman?

How can a person ... talk about the glory of Old Glory [when] they voted three times .... against an amendment that would have protected the flag against abuse?

"Ego, I don't know the meaning of the term."

The NYT interviews Ralph Nader. He shows his contempt for the Democratic Party ("decadent") and its little show last week: "This is repressed conformity." Of himself, he says: "Ego, I don't know the meaning of the term."

The article includes a nice picture of Michael Moore and Bill Maher, on Maher's HBO show, on their knees, begging Nader to drop out. Nader is laughing.

A giddy Bush.

Bush on C-Span at a rally in Pittsburgh. He's loose and confident and a bit giddy:

I wish Laura were here. Man, did I luck out when she said "yes." She's a great wife and a wonderful, wonderful person and a wonderful First Lady. Listen, I'm gonna give ya some reasons why you need to put me back in office. Perhaps the most important reason is so that Laura will have four more years as the First Lady.

Now why is Bush saying this now, right at the top of his speech and with such enthusiasm? My guess is that he means to say, implicitly: I'm more of a man than John Kerry. I have a great wife who loves me and I love her. You don't want that "shove it" lady in the White House, now, do you?

Struggling to listen to Kerry.

Chris Wallace interviewed John Kerry and John Edwards on Fox News Sunday. Here's a snippet that had us crying out in exasperation.

KERRY: I think this administration has dropped the ball on homeland security. I think they are now moving to catch up, but what America wants is leadership that's ahead of the curve, which doesn't have to be told by an independent commission, which they, incidentally, fought to prevent--they didn't want this commission--they tried to slow walk this commission. ...

EDWARDS: We're gonna stay focused on what we're going to do for America ...

WALLACE: Senator Kerry, in your convention speech ... you said, let's be optimists, not opponents. Let's take the high road. But in your speech, you said, the President misled us into war. You said that he's playing politics ...

KERRY: No, I said I will never mislead us into war.

WALLACE: Well, the implication was, this President did. In fact, you said he did.

KERRY: I said he did -- correct -- and I have said it several times. But in the speech I didn't. You're quoting my speech ...

Kerry makes this last ridiculous point pedantically, as if it's at the very core of what really matters. We were going "huh?" and then laughing.

WALLACE: Right.

KERRY: I didn't say that. I said I will never mislead us.

WALLACE: But ... you don't disagree with the premise that you have said that he ... that he misled us.

KERRY: Well, all Americans understand what's happened now.

WALLACE: That's not my question, anyway, my question is, there's that and you also said that you won't play politics with the Constitution. Implication: this President has played politics...

KERRY: Correct.

WALLACE: ... with the Constitution. Isn't that what John Edwards calls the negative politics of the past?

KERRY: No, those are comparisons of choices about the values that we bring to politics. You know, you hear a lot of talk about values in America. I think that the choices that you make in your policies reflect your values, and the things that you try to champion. John and I want health care for all Americans. That's a value. John and I believe that you shouldn't talk about no child left behind and then not fund the education system so that no child is left behind. That's a value. Under our plan, we're going to fund education, we're going to respect educators, teachers, we're going to bring our schools up in a positive and affirmative way. They're choosing to do one thing, and we have an affirmative choice. Obviously, we have to talk about the comparative choices. That's not name-calling. That's not petty and small. We have a big idea of health care for all Americans. We have a big idea for young people to afford to be able to go to college, where tuitions are going up. We have a big idea for restoring America's reputation in the world and fighting a more effective war on terror. To compare how we will fight the war on terror is the center of this campaign and that's what Americans want to know.

I was alternately laughing and groaning throughout this meandering evasion. How many times and at what length are we going to have to listen to Kerry chide Bush for going negative and then self-servingly elaborate why all of his criticisms of Bush don't count as negative?

UPDATE: Liberty Corner aptly asks "What on earth does any of that have to do with the Consitution?" I'd say that Kerry was implicitly substituting the less specific question: aren't you going negative? Which he, of course, proceeded to evade anyway. And he was such a stickler a moment before that assertion that the President had mislead us into war was not in the convention speech (though he's said it elsewhere many times and the convention speech implied it).

Teresa Heinz Kerry: "It was pretty surreal."

"This Week with George Stephanopoulos" had a clip of Stephanopoulos interviewing Teresa Heinz Kerry the day after John Kerry's convention speech:

How did you feel about last night?

It was pretty surreal.

Surreal?

Well, you know, you're standing ... until the balloons started dropping, and the kids started playing balloons, and I said, okay, it's playtime now. But until then, it's kind of like happening to somebody else.

What's surreal is that the wife of the candidate would answer that question that way. Stephanopoulos was giving her an opportunity to help her husband's cause by saying something like "He did a fantastic job." Instead of talking at all about how he did, she interpreted the question literally, as if everyone just wants to know about her inner emotional life. And even then, one might have thought that she would have expressed her feelings in terms of her pride in her husband or her nervousness for him or her love and support, but instead, she came out with the hippie's "It was pretty surreal" and nothing more. Prodded to explain, she rambled on about balloons. Not a word about her husband. I give her credit for honesty: she does not try to figure out what is required of her and substitute appropriate answers. But I get the sense that she can scarcely bring herself to care about all the events swirling about her.

Here's a second interchange with Stephanopoulos:

Coming into this convention over half the country said they didn't know that much about John Kerry. What do you think is the big thing they learned this week?

Well, you know, I was saying a little earlier that John finally got a forum where he could be at his best, which is thoughtful, allow passion to come in, allow his ideas to come forth. You know, how often in life do you get that kind of attention and space and time? So it was a very good moment for him.

There, Heinz Kerry doesn't interpret the question literally, or isn't able to think of a "big thing" that people learned about Kerry. Her answer, delivered somnambulently, consists of little more than an acknowledgement that Kerry did have a chance to give a big speech. He "got a forum" where he "could" do a few things, where he had everyone's attention. Well, did he do anything worth noting?

She seems crushed by the boredom of it all.

The template is bugging me.

I'm disgusted with my Blogger template again. It's so unappealing! Please bear with me if I fool around with it again.

UPDATE: Okay, here I am trying to use Minima again. I'd tried it a while back but had trouble with photos lapping into the sidebar. I think I spotted the place in the code to fix that. This template is less obtrusive than the old one. My main complaint is that the subtlety of the template makes the Blogger ads so glaring. Why doesn't Blogger let us pay to get rid of them!

Demoncratic.

A while back I typoed "Demoncratic" for "Democratic" when writing about the convention. Now, the New York Times, of all newspapers, is comparing the Democratic Convention to the assembly of the fallen angels in "Paradise Lost." The source of the comparison is Milton scholar Pitt Harding:

When the devils convene in Pandemonium, a hall even more chaotic than the FleetCenter, their base is energized with rage against the militarist they blame for unfairly defeating them and ruling dictatorially. There are deep divisions in the party - some want all-out war with God, others are doves - but Satan unites them ....

"The Hives Vote on Kerry."

I can't find an online link, but the paper copy of the August 6th Entertainment Weekly has the Swedish band The Hives offering some opinions about The Electras, John Kerry's old garage band. They like it and give it a B-, noting that "half of what makes it good was probably unintentional."

Entertainment Weekly asks the great question "What does being a bass player say about Kerry's leadership qualities?" The Hives bass player says, with classic bassist's modesty, "I think it's strike against him." Lead singer Pelle Almqvist gives an elaborate answer, eliminating the drummer ("an animal"), the singer ("an egotistical maniac"), and the guitar players ("they just want to be the loudest"):

The bassist is a solid foundation, a good person. Maybe bass players don't have the strongest leadership qualities, but they are good at negotiating, they have a basic fairness, which is very important if you're gonna run a country."

Cognac.

I laughed a long, long time at this, from Tonya's post about Thursday's dinner with Nina, Jeremy, and me:

I also learned a few interesting things about the other bloggers. First, the other bloggers like to have a good time. They are my kind of people because I am always, always, always down for having a good time. Second, Ann drinks cognac. I don't think I've ever seen anyone even order a cognac. My only association with cognac is remembering that it was a favorite drink of former DC mayor Marion ("The bitch set me up!") Barry.

Tonya surmises that I have little else in common with Mayor Barry. Probably Barry would have stayed with the group if it started out going out to dinner in an expensive restaurant and then decided to top off the night by going dancing in a club that was playing hip-hop music. I, however, defected.

As to drinking cognac: it was after dinner. We had gone to a bar to kill some time waiting for the club to open. The others ordered Cosmopolitans and Margueritas, which seems just crazy to me. Those are cocktails. Why would you order that after dinner? I find that weird. Tonya finds it weird that anyone ever drinks cognac. Oh, well. Perhaps all can agree "The bitch set me up" will be funny forever.

On picking up a big jar of mayonnaise.

Don't you hate it when some common object forces you to think about someone who has weirdly gotten their identity linked with it?

Thinking about death, thinking about Bush and Kerry.

Reuters reports on some scientific studies that supposedly shed some light on voter behavior and candidate strategy:

Another study focused directly on Bush and his Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.

The volunteers were aged from 18 into their 50s and described themselves as ranging from liberal to deeply conservative. No matter what a person's political conviction, thinking about death made them tend to favor Bush, [Sheldon] Solomon said. Otherwise, they preferred Kerry.

"I think this should concern anybody," Solomon said. "If I was speaking lightly, I would say that people in their, quote, right minds, unquote, don't care much for President Bush and his policies in Iraq."

He wants voters to be aware of psychological pressures and how they are used.

"If people are aware that thinking about death makes them act differently, then they don't act differently," Solomon said. Solomon says he personally opposes Bush but describes himself as a political independent who could vote Republican.

Hmmm ... Solomon sounds a tad biased. And is it unrealistic to be aware of the potential for death when thinking about who ought to be President? And where is the study that shows that if people are aware of a psychological force, it doesn't affect them anymore?

I wonder exactly what was done here to make people "think about death." The article says that in an earlier study the subjects were just told to contemplate their own deaths. If they were just asked to think about dying and then shown pictures of the two candidates, Kerry's physical appearance might have skewed the results. Kerry's undertaker-like appearance may have caused then to lurch toward Bush.

Only the radio.

My New Beetle is now five years old and the original stereo no longer recognizes the CD player that is lodged in the trunk. "No magazine," it tells me. The tape player died a while back, so that leaves me with only the radio. I generally prefer to listen to the radio, because I like to hear people talking about one thing or another when I'm driving. I don't hate music, but I find I rarely want to listen to music. I enjoy a music-free atmosphere. You'd think someone who drives a New Beetle and uses only Macintosh computers would be the sort of person who would have an iPod, but I don't want an iPod, because I don't want to listen to music. I think there is too much music around already. The main reason for an iPod for me would be to play music to screen out other music. When they make an iPod that cancels out music, I'll buy it.

But sometimes the radio is not enough. On a long trip, it can be hard to find anything on the radio. I've driven through places in the West where you hit the scan button and it just goes all the way around the dial over and over. I've driven in other places where the scan button takes you all the way around and back to where you were before (and it was always Cher singing "Believe"--a few years ago). Sometimes, being limited to the radio can draw you into the landscape in a deep and mysterious way. I remember driving through rural Mississippi and hearing the middle of a long gospel song, a sung sermon. The singer was describing how some day she would arrive in Heaven, and she would not want to see her mother, because she wanted to see Jesus, and she would not want to see her father, because she wanted to see Jesus. It went on and on, with different persons the singer did not want to see in Heaven, until my driving took me out of the range of the broadcast.

I could almost convince myself that it is better to be limited to the radio while driving, even when it means driving out of the reach of all broadcasting. That is a stunning and eerie experience, to go with the desert landscape. But sometimes the radio is not enough. If you have a long drive, especially on the boring Interstate, you need something to occupy your mind. I have many spoken word CDs to load into the CD player, and, in any event, I share my car with my sons, and they like to hear music.

But how can you replace the stereo in a New Beetle? It's got a distinctive curve and an oval shape and lighting that matches the beautiful lighting of the entire dashboard. The aesthetic effect would be ruined! The only choice, other than to stay with only the radio, is to go back to the dealer and repair the original stereo, though it's five years old, or buy another one. We had wanted a new stereo with a nice slot to stick in one disc at a time, which we all prefer to loading six CDs into the device in the trunk, but there is no such stereo designed for the Beetle. (What about an iPod that you connect to the stereo? I can't use one of those devices that you insert into the tape player, because the tape player is broken. There's another device that plays through the radio, but I don't trust that to work well enough.) We are forced--by aesthetics--to stay with the trunk CD arrangement, or stick with just the radio. I remember when a radio in a car was an impressive extra, and an AM-FM radio something to brag about. Staying with only the radio is the perfectly cheap, do-nothing solution, which is always a plus. It is my car.

UPDATE: After this paean to radio, the God of Radio smiled upon me and made my CD player start working again. Now, if only I could think of a way to appease the God of Cell Phones and find the one I lost on Thursday.

Hitchens on Kerry.

Christopher Hitchens brilliantly calls John Kerry out for the repulsive isolationism implied by his complaint about "opening firehouses in Baghdad and shutting them in the United States of America." This is especially striking:

A few years ago, many of the same liberals and leftists [who now argue against spending money on reconstructing Iraq] were quoting improbable if not impossible numbers of dead Iraqi children, murdered by the international sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein. Even at its most propagandistic, this contained an important moral point: Iraqi civilians were suffering for the sins of their dictatorship (and from the lavish corruption of the U.N. supervision of the "oil-for-food" program). OK, then, we'll remove the regime and lift the sanctions. Happy now? Not at all! It turns out that 1) the Saddam regime was only a threat invented by neo-cons and that 2) we don't owe the Iraqi people a thing. Also, we could use the money ourselves.

This would mean that all the protest about dead and malnourished Iraqi infants was all for show. Surely that can't be right?

"Instead of making vibrant, relevant movies, he's created his Pennsylvania fiefdom ... "

The main thing New Yorker writer Michael Agger seems to have against M. Night Shyamalan is that he refuses to leave the suburbs of Philadelphia:

He lives outside of Philadelphia with his wife and children and insists on shooting most of his films within a day's drive.

… raised in an affluent Philadelphia suburb, M. Night grew up ensconced in the world of regulated suburban achievement …

On the Philadelphia set, Shyamalan somehow transformed himself into a disciplined director.

He stays put in Philadelphia, refusing to move to L.A. and play ball. He creates a local film industry around his productions.

Shyamalan's interest in creating a vibrant film business and setting his films in a specific place that he knows and loves is portrayed as some sort of sick deficiency: "He's not making movies. He's making cocoons."

Cats' territory.

I don't own any pets. Nevertheless, as I go to unlock my front door just now, I look down next to the front stoop and see this big black cat making a bed for itself in the vinca next to the house.




As I'm pausing to take a few photographs of the black cat, I hear mewing and jingling and here's this second cat, climbing the front steps and posing with an attitude of ownership.

My opinion of Kerry's speech.

Too long. Too many flubs:

We will double our special forces to conduct terrorist operations ... anti-terrorist.

What does it mean when 25 percent of our children in Harlem have asthma because of hair pollution?

... it's not the story of senators and menators ...

Too many overrehearsed hand gestures. Not enough balloons. I wasn't sure how to feel without the sight of tumbling balloons to symbolize overflowing excitement. I want a President who will never ask me to sit through an hour-long speech without a plan for releasing the balloons.

UPDATE: I corrected the first of the quotes above. I had: "We will double our special forces to conduct terrorist operations ... anti-terrorist operations," but in fact Kerry did not repeat the word "operations" when he corrected himself.

"The Daily Show" is faltering.

"The Daily Show" should be at its best this week, as it covers the Democratic Convention. But the funniest thing on the show last night turned out to be the set-up for a completely unfunny punch line. The set-up was a clip of Ron Reagan explaining stem cell research. The whole "Daily Show" audience was laughing at the clip, and we were hysterical at home. What was it about Ron Reagan's overenunciated, pedantic lecture that made it so funny? Surely, it can't be just his opportunistic seizing of the limelight on the occasion of his father's death. That's not that funny.

The show had so much material to work with, and yet they frittered away time with material about their wireless microphones that didn't even refer to anything that took place at the Convention and that seemed like it could have been improvised on the spot by a reasonably smart high school kid. Then Joe Biden appeared and had nothing interesting to say. What could he say? He's pretty much stuck saying whoever spoke at the convention did a great job.

There are times when The Daily Show's support for the Democrats undermines the potential for comedy. That's the sort of media bias I cannot tolerate.

UPDATE: Thursday night's show was an improvement. Skipping the interview was a good move. So was the extended segment analyzing the reactions to Al Sharpton's speech. That was an example of having a specific humor idea and neatly making your point by skillfully editing the news clips of the day. The target of the humor was not the Democrats, though, but the news media.

Is anyone listening to the speeches at the Convention

who isn't listening through a filter of thinking about the way someone else would be hearing the speech? I think not. I think the someone else, for whom the speech was written and to whom it is delivered, is not tuned in at all. Everyone listening is either already a Kerry supporter hoping the speech will convince someone else or a journalistic observer analyzing whether the speech is the sort of thing that will have the effect on the target audience it is intended to have.

ADDED: My son John Althouse Cohen emails:

You wrote about how everyone watching the convention is imagining how the speeches will seem to someone else, even though it might be that none of those "someone elses" are actually watching the speeches. The same thing happened when Kerry won the primaries. Everyone was voting for him because they thought he would appeal to someone else. And those voters believed at the time that that was the politically savvy thing to do. But it was actually politically disastrous: if everyone was just voting for him because they thought someone else would like him, then NO ONE ACTUALLY LIKED HIM.

One problem is that if you're trying to choose the most "electable" person, I would imagine that you'd be likely to do it by process of elimination -- by ruling out all the candidates with obvious political liabilities. I think this is the number-one reason why Kerry won the primaries: he was the only candidate who didn't seem to have anything particularly wrong with him. Edwards was too inexperienced; Clark was a poor campaigner; Dean seemed kind of insane; Gephardt was too liberal; Lieberman was too conservative. So they choose the one candidate who has no qualities that would really make anyone hate him. The problem is that he also has no qualities that would really make anyone like him either.

10 conventionisms I'm tired of.

1. Repetitions of the phrase "health care."

2. Assertions that John Kerry is just now introducing himself to the American people. (This one fills me with a curious mix of ennui and outrage.)

3. "Swift boats."

4. References to the presence of bloggers at the Convention (as opposed to links to great blog posts from the Convention).

5. Explanations of what a blog is: "Blogs are akin to wire services that provide updated news on the fly, though blogs are more opinionated and snarky -- a term so beloved by bloggers ...." (Bloggers love the term "snarky"? Ugh!)

6. Fussing over whether Teresa Heinz Kerry is sufficiently performing her function of imparting warmth to John Kerry.

7. "Hope."

8. "Optimism."

9. References to qualities supposedly possessed by John Kerry (e.g., "thoughtfulness") that are obviously intended as a way to assert that the opposite quality is possessed by George Bush.

10. "Emma Claire."

"He's been encountering some animosity."

That's what I overhear as a walk into a State Street café this morning. Two men are talking about Ralph Nader's problems getting on the ballot in key states, including Wisconsin. I get my cappucino and sit down with my laptop and search for an article on the subject. I find this editorial in today's Register Guard (of Eugene, Oregon).

In Oregon, Nader twice attempted to qualify to have his name listed on the November ballot by holding conventions at which 1,000 voters would sign petitions. At both conventions, organizers fell short of the mark. The second event was torpedoed by Democrats, who were urged to attend the convention and then decline to sign the nominating petitions. It was not an inspiring performance by a party that bills itself as pro-choice.

Republicans are also playing games. In Michigan, the GOP helped circulate petitions to get Nader on the ballot in hopes that he'd siphon voters away from Democrat John Kerry in that battleground state. Republican or conservative groups are also said to be helping Nader's ballot access efforts in Oregon, Wisconsin and Florida. The efforts betray a lack of confidence in President Bush's chances of defeating Kerry on his own, and require GOP activists to work for a candidate they would never consider supporting.

Now, some people might say that Ralph Nader is distorting the process of choosing between Kerry and Bush, and that the Democratic obstruction and Republican help should be conveying the message that he should just stay off the ballot in the battleground states. This is essentially response of the Green Party candidate:

David Cobb says he won't campaign in states where the Bush-Kerry race is close, for fear of pulling votes away from the Democrat. Cobb will offer himself as an alternative, in other words, unless there's a chance that voting for him would affect the result. If the Greens don't want people's votes, perhaps they should disband and reconstitute themselves as an adjunct to the Democratic Party.

The Register Guard looks at the Democratic obstruction and Republican help this way:

Ralph Nader is running for president because he believes both major parties are fundamentally indistinguishable. Nader's quest for ballot access is inadvertently proving his point, as Democrats and Republicans resort to cynical tactics to thwart or promote his candidacy.

I don't think attending the conventions but then not signing the petition really amounts to much of a dirty trick, but this editorial is portraying the tactic as a reason to conclude the parties are "indistinguishable." Well, sure, they're indistinguishable in their willingness to fight hard to win. Are the Democrats supposed to lie down and welcome Nader into the game lest they look like bad sports? Are there really many people who would be so upset that the Democrats aren't nice enough that they'd migrate into the Nader camp? There seem to be at least a few in Eugene.

Al Franken on "The View."

First, why am I watching "The View"? I needed some bacon and eggs, and when I cook I usually turn on the TV. (My kitchen is open into the main TV room, a room we've always called the "big room." Useless information? Doesn't it reveal something about me? We could have gone with the common term "great room," but we didn't, we called it the "big room.")

I try to find the TiVoed "Daily Show" from last night, but the Convention got recorded instead. (We'll pick up "The Daily Show" on an early evening repeat.) Oh, here's "The View," not because I TiVo "The View," but because we have "Al Franken" on our TiVo "wish list." So let's see what "The View" is like.

There's a long chattery opening segment about bridesmaids' dresses and Jennifer Lopez, then a long sequence of commercials, after which, we've been promised, "funnyman Al Franken" will appear. But first, they must set the View-style tone by splattering chattishness about. Can't just cut to Al Franken; gotta chat about the Convention to establish a View atmosphere for the discussion. What did the Viewsters think about John Edwards speech last night?

JOY BEHAR: I thought it could have been a little harder. It was a little too nice, I thought. I'm lookin' for some action here. We hadda go to Al Sharpton for the action.

Why didn't Edwards even mention Bush?

BEHAR: That's the ultimate dis. You don't even say the person's name. Isn't that what you do with an old boyfriend?

Finally, we get Franken, standing by in the empty hall. "Do you think that there's not enough Bush-bashing, Al?"

FRANKEN: Well, not enough for my taste. ... Well, Jimmy Carter hit him pretty hard. ... He said ... John Kerry showed up when he was called to duty, which used to be pretty faint praise, but when you're comparing it to President Bush, it was pretty harsh.

Yes. Ouch! Ooh, Jimmy, that hurt!

How's Kerry going to do tonight? Behar warns "if he drones on tonight ..." The Viewster that isn't one of the three I recognize -- I'll call her Viewsterette -- asserts, "He doesn't drone." Is that an idiotic or a smart point? If I had to defend Viewsterette, I'd say that technically what Kerry does is not droning, per se, because it's not an even monotone, there's more of a rhythmic rising and falling of the voice that is just as soporific as a drone, but more fun to imitate.

FRANKEN: There's somewhere between being more charismatic than Bill Clinton and droning on. I think if he gets there ... he wins."

Franken, who's kept a straight face so far, breaks into his characteristic smile as he says "there," I think because he realizes he's finally said something that can count as a witticism. He prolongs the joke with busy hand gestures indicating other places on the continuum between "more charismatic than Bill Clinton and droning on." Okay, so much for "funnyman Al Franken."

Enough "View" for me. I can see why people watch that show though. Meredith Vieira does a great job of keeping the pace going even as people appear to be merely chatting like girlfriends at a long lunch, and Joy Behar spikes in with jokes at well-timed intervals. Star Jones fills the spaces with sassy remarks, and the Viewsterette chimes in occasionally just to show that a nonentity -- like the home viewer? -- can be in the group.

Wavering efforts at watching the Convention.

I was watching the convention on MSNBC and CNN for a change, and I got tired of the way all the talking heads were only predicting what would happen later in the night. Why aren't they covering the convention now? So I decide to go back to a channel that fixates on the podium. I choose PBS.

Instant rebellion: Go to C-Span! The reception is better!

Really? Oh, okay, I'll go from PBS to C-Span ... but, hey! What is this?

It's "Amish in the City"! The kids are arriving at the house. Hilarious! The non-Amish kids completely embarrass themselves, showing no end of prejudice. Who's unsophisticated here? Clearly, the non-Amish kids. Great scene.

Rebellion in the TV room. Go back to the convention!

Okay. I pick up my wineglass and head upstairs to another TV, so I can watch "Amish in the City."

On a commercial, I go back to C-Span long enough to hear Al Sharpton claim that if Bush had been President in 1954, Clarence Thomas would never have had the chance to go to law school. I guess the tight scripting is loosening up. It's Bush-bashing time. Can't script Al. Bush is just a complete racist! Now Sharpton is repeating himself stumbling through some business about keeping government out of our bedroom and getting government into the kitchen. Apparently, in a Kerry administration, the federal government is going to come over and cook dinner for me. Cool!

I go back to "Amish in the City." It's seeming a bit like an ordinary episode of "The Real World." My attention is flagging.

Suddenly, I hear footsteps on the stairs: "Put on channel 64!"

I quickly punch 64 into the remote. It's Steve Buscemi!

"Steve Buscemi! Hey, he looks good. But he's wearing a ton of makeup. You know, he's a good example of a guy who's really ugly but somehow ends up being quite attractive."

Buscemi: "... I don't feel safer after 9/11." [Long pause.]

Groan.

Flip back to "Amish in the City" for a while. Commercial.

Back to C-Span. It's Governor Ed Rundell. He's come to speak about energy independence. I'm asked if I noticed the noise from the crowd after Gov. Ed said he was going to talk about energy independence. I hadn't -- because I was writing this post -- so I guess: a mass sigh of disappointment? No, I'm told. A big cheer. Crazy!

I flip back to "Amish in the City." They are shopping in L.A. One of the Amish boys really appreciates the help the gay guy is giving him in picking out good clothes.

Aw, Miriam's amazed by a parking meter. "I've never seen one of these things."

They go into an art gallery, and Ruth says "I've never seen art before. ... The Amish don't study art because they don't feel art is important. " She seems to have a real feeling of love for art, and I find this very touching. I get all misty.

Mose goes in the ocean for the first time and almost drowns. In the car ride home, the non-Amish kids lampoon him. That night, Mose has a nightmare and gets up in the middle of the night. He gets out his Bible -- in German -- and reads it aloud to calm himself. In the voiceover, he says that he believes that if he does not remain Amish, he will go to Hell when he dies, and he realizes he could have died that very day. It is exceedingly rare to see religion like that on television.

Now the non-Amish kids have to dress in Amish clothes. They do decently well. One non-Amish girl says, "I look good in black." The gay guy, dressed in Amish clothes, curls his eyelashes. The black girl says, "This looks like a slave get-up." They go to an amusement park, with the Amish kids in ordinary L.A. clothes, and the city kids in Amish clothes. Amish boy: "Now they know how I felt when I was standing on the doorstep in Amish clothes."

The Amish boys leave their dishes lying around. They are used to having women clean up after them. Ruth speaks with some passion about the way the Amish boys take advantage of the women. I adore Ruth. She loves art, and she's experiencing dawning feminism on camera. You don't get to see that on TV very often either.

Conclusion: "Amish in the City" was much more real and human and compelling than the Democratic Convention. But now, "Amish in the City" is over, so I'll head back downstairs to watch the prime hour of the convention with the rest of the household.

Hmmm... they're watching C-Span 2, which is showing Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro's acceptance speeches from 1984. John says: the rhetoric is the same as now. Ferraro was saying that the Republicans will put people on the Supreme Court who would move us back to the nineteenth century. (Sounds like Sharpton.) Same buzzwords: faith, hope, values, family, strength. What's strikingly different though is the strangely sad, downbeat, stern tone. No wonder people preferred Reagan.

Howard Dean explains how he knows Bush is bringing back the draft.

On MSNBC, Chris Matthews is interviewing Howard Dean, taking questions from a group of young people, one of whom asks Dean what he will do to interest young people in the election. Dean answers the question by calling attention to the fact that Bush is about to bring back the universal military draft, which "is going to be a big issue for young people." Chris Matthews asks how he can say that and notes that if Bush were here right now he wouldn't say he was going to bring back the draft.

DEAN: Of course he isn't going to say it.

MATTHEWS: How do you know it?

DEAN: I don't know it for a fact. But the truth is: I was right and he was wrong about the weapons of mass destruction. I was right and he was wrong about al Qaeda's links to Saddam Hussein. I was right and he was wrong about the fact that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, after he told the American people that he did. I've got a much better track record on Iraq than he does.

Stupid Chris Matthews question of the day.

Heard just now. Matthews asks Howard Dean: "Do you think John Kerry should be more like you?"

Television ratings for the Democratic Convention.

So, we all know the ratings for the Convention are down from previous years. A key reason is that all the excitement has been drained out of them, as they've become carefully planned to work as slick commercials for the candidate.

New entry for a modern "Dictionary of Received Ideas":

Presidential nominating conventions: Be sure to use the phrase "tightly scripted."

Though the numbers are low, a few million are watching. But who are these people? Are they the ones for whom the smooth, Bush-bashing-free, hope-'n'-optimism fest was designed? Or are they just people who would actually enjoy some hardcore Bush-bashing but are tuning in to observe whether it seems is the sort of thing that will influence less hardcore people? Consider the cable news numbers:

During the ... 10 p.m. ET hour, CNN averaged 2.54 million viewers, Fox News Channel had 1.44 million viewers and MSNBC had 1.10 million, Nielsen said. ...

CNN won the ratings competition even though Fox routinely has a bigger audience during a normal prime-time.

Politics may play a part: Democrats are more likely to watch CNN and Republicans to watch Fox, according to a study released this spring by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

So there's the evidence that the Convention is mostly playing to existing Kerry supporters. That doesn't suggest that they may as well have had their Bush-bashing fun. If they had, the worst quotes would have echoed in news and commentary and hurt Kerry with the undecideds. And, by the same token, those who don't watch will get a general sense that a well-run, well-behaved, reasonable convention is taking place and that that might allay some worries and inspire some confidence.

But that's not to say the whole extravaganza was a worthwhile use of anyone's time and money.

On being overheard and making a spectacle of yourself.

I'm trying to piece together, over the months, the ethics of blogging. I have a lot of fuzzy rules that I suppose if I tried I could formulate into a code. I avoid saying anything bad about anyone who isn't a public figure, and I generally avoid naming a nonpublic figure who doesn't agree to be named, unless they are blogging under their own name, in which case I have, I believe, an obligation to link them. Sometimes I refer vaguely to a person to tell a story, but then I leave them unidentifiable. I'm quite aware of how disturbing people without blogs may find it to know that someone else has a blog, with hundreds or even thousands of daily readers, and who might some day up and say something objectionable about them.

But what should the rule be about overheard conversations? I reproduced some overheard dialogue from neighbors who talked loudly and drunkenly outside my bedroom window throughout an entire night. (Here's my post: note the time stamp of 3:59 a.m.) And Nina is recounting overhearing a conversation in a café chiefly to make the point that the person ought to have found a private place to have a conversation like that. My neighbors and the café student didn't protect themselves against being overheard, so does that trigger the rule that we can write about them online? Should the world be on notice that if they allow themselves to be overheard that someone may offer up a transcription on the internet? Or, at least, should people who are being outrageous or annoying enough know that they won't just be the subject of privately told anecdotes, they will be written up for the world to see?

As for photographs, I would love to take photographs of strangers, as Walker Evans did with a secret camera on the New York subway. But I don't think it's right. For this reason, I often pick photographic subject matter that doesn't include people. I will use pictures of people who are only seen at a distance. The other day I was taking a picture in a café and the light was low, which caused my camera to focus by projecting a bunch of red dots prior to the shot. That made a woman at a distance turn around with a real look of alarm on her face. It was quite an interesting picture, but I deleted it (and regretted alarming her!). But I do have a rule that it is perfectly acceptable to post a photograph of someone who is making a spectacle of himself. Like this guy:

The law library blog.

I've just added Wisblawg to the blogroll. Wisblawg is the University of Wisconsin Law Library perspective on legal research, especially internet resources and technologies.

Watching the Convention on C-Span.

I've been watching the Democratic Convention the past two nights on C-Span, because that seems to be the way to actually see it. You get the uninterrupted proceedings from the podium and some shots of people in the audience, and nothing else. No one so much as explains, for example, why the wife of a governor is one of the speakers (a question I raised in yesterday's posts). Last night's convention was mindnumbing. I tried to simulblog, but, aside from Ted Kennedy, no one said anything interesting. That was a pleasant enough little film about Teresa Heinz Kerry and she carried out her speaking duty with aplomb, but I had nothing to say about it.

I'm thinking the real convention is what takes place on the network shows as the analysts ignore the convention. I got a sense of what must be on those shows from watching "The Daily Show" last night (when they were dealing with Day 1 of the convention). Were they gabbing about Teresa saying "shove it" and Kerry dressing up in that blue thing? [Apparently.] Maybe I need to abandon C-Span on the theory that those speeches I was watching weren't really meant to be heard. They were just background, something for Dan Rather to sit on the other side of a glass from as the party fed him talking heads. A speech like, say, Christie Vilsack's wasn't meant to be listened to. She was wallpaper--shiny, pink, polka-dotted wallpaper--for the chattering analysts. Watching C-Span, I was staring at the wallpaper, a notoriously tedious activity.

Night 2 of the Convention: Barack Obama.

Now here is a speaker I can stand to listen to. He's modulating his voice and he seems to have the speech memorized, so he doesn't have that awful teleprompter stare. He places some emphasis on personal responsibility. Parents need to turn off the television! Hmmm ... he's on television saying that. This can't be good for ratings.

Obama does a great job delivering the speech, even though the words of the speech are quite banal. There are many references to hope. The speech is blessedly short. Cheers, waving signs. Cue the music. Curtis Mayfield's "Keep On Pushing":

I've got to keep on pushing
I can't stop now
Move up a little higher
Some way, somehow
'Cause I've got my strength
And it don't make sense
Not to keep on pushin'

Night 2 of the Convention: between Kennedy and Obama.

Daschle and Mosely Braun said nothing of interest as far as I noticed. Mosely Braun stressed out her voice and hurt my poor ears. Can't they turn up the sound levels and coach the speakers to speak to the people watching at home in their living rooms? This speaking to the huge auditorium is quite likely to get Kerry in trouble later this week, as his manner of speaking is insufferable when he's projecting into a large room. And we all know that speaking (and screaming) to a large, noisy crowd was fatal to Dean's candidacy.

Speaking of which: Here's Howard Dean. "I bet he screams as a joke," I say. At least, he'll make a joke about it. If he made a joke about his fatal scream or said anything at all amusing or interesting, I didn't notice.

Christie Vilsack is the next speaker, for some reason. Why is the wife of a governor one of the speakers? It can't just be that they needed more women. They had a whole gang of women Senators lined up on the stage last night. Christie is wearing a lovely, shiny, pink, polka-dotted jacket. That counts for something.

Governor Janet Napolitano. Health care, health care, health care. John Kerry knows healthy children grow up stronger! No way that dummy Bush could figure that out.

Night 2 of the Convention: Senator Kennedy speaks.

Ted Kennedy, introduced by a historian, pushes the theme of the Founding Fathers. He cites a phrase from the Declaration of Independence--"a decent respect to the opinions of mankind"—as he argues for pursuing coalitions with our allies before taking action. But the full phrase is "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that [a people declaring independence] should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." That's not saying one has to get other nations to agree with us, only that we owe them an explanation. He also says: "The only thing we have to fear is four more years of George Bush." Not terrorism?

Are bloggers watching the network coverage of the convention?

Instapundit says that although network coverage of the convention getting terrible ratings, at least bloggers are watching it, and when you click on his link you get to his post linking to my simulblogging of the convention from last night. But if I had been watching the networks, I would have included comments about the various yammering journalists and their interruptions of the speeches. The hardcore convention simulblogger watches C-Span. At least I did. TiVoed C-Span.

Giambi/Jambi.

Reading about Giambi (follow the link in the previous post), made me think about Jambi, a character on "Pee-Wee's Playhouse." I am quite nostalgic for this wonderful old TV show, and I would have ordered something on DVD, but nothing is available or even in production. It's very sad the way Pee-Wee was excised from American culture. We still have one of the old Pee-Wee talking dolls around. If you had snapped up a lot of them back when Pee-Wee got into trouble back in 1991, thinking they'd be great collector's items later, you'd be trying to unload them today on eBay for next to nothing. Ah, poor Pee-Wee Herman! Not even a life in the realm of nostalgia?

Bonus Giambi/Jambi reference: In this hilarious episode of "The Isaac Mizrahi Show," Isaac and Conan O'Brien go clothes shopping. Conan riffs about ties at Barney's and makes up a fake name for a designer of ties. The name is "Giambi." (The clip at that link is well worth watching, despite the omission of the Giambi wisecrack.)

"It's like McCarthyism or something.

They're looking to see who looks like a Communist. I'll probably get in trouble for that ..." Yeah, you probably will. (Via Metafilter.)

Political material buried in fiction shows.

Andrew Sullivan reprints a reader's email complaining about anti-Bush material woven into the dialogue on "Six Feet Under." First, there's a statement Nate made on the July 18th episode, which is best described by Television Without Pity's Djb, who writes:

Nate "Go Ahead With Your Own Wife, Leave Me Alone" Fisher sits at the Fisher family kitchen table, reading the paper. He mumbles, "Bush just lies and no one cares" to my endless amusement, in a sparkling pearl of partisan dialogue that is like a gorgeous flower popping up through so much manure.

Second, in this week's episode, as the Sullivan emailer describes:

This time it's Ruth's husband George, reading "Perfectly Legal," a book by a New York Times reporter claiming that the super-rich gouge the middle class. As he puts the book down he says (paraphrasing), "They're just hollowing out the middle class until there's nobody left." Later in the episode he's seen reading the book again. Nothing else in these scenes addresses this activity.

In the same episode, Claire and her friends create art on the walls of her room, making several comments along the lines of "dropping bombs and calling it peace," and painting the phrase "Terror Starts at Home" on the wall.

Sullivan's only comment is that anyone "sophisticated enough" to be watching this show probably won't be influenced. But why even see these lines as functioning as an anti-Bush argument? Only the first one--"Bush just lies and no one cares"--is presented in a context that suggests we ought to believe the character. Nate is the most important character on the show, the one who might be seen as representing the writers' view of things. But at the point when he says this he is deeply depressed, so whatever he says is a development of his character as a depressed person, whose view of reality is dark and distorted.

The context of the other two lines eagerly invites us to reject the statement -- especially since we're "sophisticated enough" to be watching the show. Why would we believe anything George says? That character lies all the time, and we've been given reason to have all sorts of suspicions about him. This "sophisticated" viewer sees the book title "Perfectly Legal" and thinks, hmmm, I wonder what crimes George has committed? Murder? "[H]ollowing out the middle class until there's nobody left"? This is a show about dead bodies! If George said that you should be flashing on a picture of George with a large knife and one of his many former wives that we keep hearing about. The Sullivan emailer seems to think one of the characters ought to address the political arguments in the book. Why is he even watching a fiction show? The fact that no one addresses his activity is just one more place where the viewer is encouraged to be ahead of the family in figuring out that George is a monster.

And as for Claire and the art students slopping paint on the walls and blabbering about the war: These people are all high on drugs! And they are pretty idiotic even when they aren't on drugs. What suggests that we should be buying their political opinions? It is more the case that we should view their statements as the sort of thing flaky, drug-addled, self-indulgent art kids would say.

Truce proposed.

So Schwarzenegger said "girlie men" and the Heinz Kerry said "shove it": Is this a good time to say we're even and call a truce? I know it's going to be hard, but could we please just stop this bad-word-of-the-day politics? Oh, but we were planning to have so much fun with Teresa! No,no, we can't stop now.

Politics and fashion.

There's a nice article by Cathy Horyn in today's NYT about women who pick a style and stay with it (like the socialite who decided in the late 1950s to wear blue tinted glass day and night and is still wearing them and Ivana Trump with her giant beehive). Here's t