Althouse

Michelle won't let Barack pick Hillary as VP.

2008-05-10T08:45:00.006-05:00

The Democratic front-runner's wife did not comment on other rival candidates for the party's nomination, but she has been sniping at Clinton since last summer. According to Obama sources, those public utterances do not reveal the extent of her hostility.

And please don't call it the "Queen Bee Syndrome."

Do you know what the Queen Bee Syndrome is? There will not be two women sharing power. One of the women will see to it, that the other woman is under the bus.

That definition of the term came from Rush Limbaugh in the context of saying why Nancy Pelosi would want to prevent Hillary from getting the VP slot:

So Nancy Pelosi... was asked about the concept of a "dream ticket" for the Democrat Party.... The Queen Bee in Washington, Nancy Pelosi, threw "cold water" on this whole idea. She said, "Take it from me -- that won't be the ticket." A bunch of reporters then shouted, 'Why?' Pelosi declined to elaborate. 'Do you want me to go through a lifetime of political gut?' said Pelosi... 'I do think we'll have a dream team -- it just won't be those two names,'" meaning, if Nancy Pelosi has anything to say about it, Hillary Clinton will not be anywhere near the Democrat nomination.... The last thing she wants is Hillary Clinton in the White House. That will render her unnoticeable as speaker of the House. Neutered, if you will. Spayed. So what will happen here (laughter) is that Pelosi, who already holds her seat, is going to do whatever she has to, to see to it that Hillary does not get hers. I mean, it's fine if she stays over there in the Senate, and even better if she goes back to the Senate as a loser.

Do powerful women hate to see other women succeed? Do they want to be the only woman? Or do you think "sisterhood is powerful" at the highest levels? Surely, Michelle Obama has plenty of reason to hate Hillary, but don't you think she wants to be the First Lady? If a woman is Vice President, that woman seems to be above the President's wife. She'd be the first lady.

Michelle would even have competition as the top spouse of the land, what with a former President roaming in and about the VP mansion. He'd catch the spotlight, project the glamour.

And speaking of Bill Clinton... Hillary certainly made it her business over the years to keep other women down whenever those women interfered with her plan to ascend to power via the spousal role. There was no powerful sisterhood then. And now: turnabout! Turnabout is... a bitch.

5,000-year-old dancer.

2008-05-10T08:29:00.002-05:00

A figure, found in a tomb from pre-dynastic Egypt. On display at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

"There should be stringent laws, licensing laws, to make sure produce is only used in season and season only."

2008-05-10T08:16:00.002-05:00

Gordon Ramsay.

Obama insinuated that McCain is senile, and the wily McCain took advantage.

2008-05-10T07:59:00.005-05:00

Look at this, which I think CNN obtusely misheadlined:

McCain's campaign reacted with outrage Thursday to Obama's remark that the senator was “losing his bearings” over the course of the campaign — a phrase they said was a dig at the Arizona senator's age. But McCain himself said Friday the language didn't bother him.

“I ignore it,” McCain said. “I don’t take offense to it.”

Asked if the Obama comment was in fact a reference to his age — and whether that topic was a fair issue in the campaign — McCain said voters are welcome to discuss it.

“Any discussion in my view of any issue that the American people think is legitimate is up to them,” McCain said, adding that the topic of Obama’s former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright is also fair game.

“Every issue that the American people want to be an issue, if it's part of their discussions, it's fine with me, it's fine with me,” he said. “Just as the Rev. Wright’s remarks. I don’t believe that Sen. Obama shares his views in any way, but he has said it’s a legitimate topic of discussion. If that’s what the American people want to discuss, that’s fine.”

1. When McCain says it didn't bother him, he's demonstrating that he's not the hothead he's reputed to be.

2. He showed that he's sharp and therefore it's wrong to insinuate that he's getting senile.

3. There really is nothing McCain can do about his age, which is plainly visible and which people — including me — are going to think about a lot whether Obama pushes us to think about it or not.

4. McCain highlights that Obama has stepped down from that lofty, inspiration plane where some people think he dwells.

5. (And this is where he really, humorously took advantage.) McCain turned the occasion into an opportunity to restate some of the most worrisome things about Obama as if he wasn't even the one bringing them up.

Well played!

"I've been to 57 states."

2008-05-09T21:25:00.002-05:00

Whoops! Who's losing it now?

I love the way he pauses and really thinks before adding the "-seven."

AND: Let's try to make a list of the 9 additional states Obama envisions in our audaciously hopeful collection of states. (I'm saying 9 not 7 because he asserts that he's been to 2 less than the total.)

How is it that a picture of me...

2008-05-09T14:45:00.002-05:00

... taken 27 years ago... has come to represent The Law Student?

Coming in out of the rain.

2008-05-09T13:51:00.003-05:00

At the Empire Diner in Chelsea.

Vegetable music.

2008-05-09T09:18:00.004-05:00

This is actually a whole YouTube genre. Music played with vegetables. I've been fascinated by music played on things other than musical instruments ever since I saw the Incredible String Band in concert in 1969 and they kicked an old trunk for a bass drum. Or maybe ever since I was a kid in Delaware playing music with a blade of grass:

No, that's not me! We didn't have videocams in the 50s. Plus, that seems to be Canada.

"He regurgitated in his plate of food when I asked him about it. So I knew there was some truth to the story."

2008-05-09T08:41:00.000-05:00

For the annals of lie detection.

If John McCain said, 'I got the white vote, baby!' his candidacy would be over."

2008-05-09T08:35:00.004-05:00

Peggy Noonan on Hillary.

To play the race card as Mrs. Clinton has, to highlight and encourage a sense that we are crudely divided as a nation, to make your argument a brute and cynical "the black guy can't win but the white girl can" is -- well, so vulgar, so cynical, so cold, that once again a Clinton is making us turn off the television in case the children walk by.

"She has unleashed the gates of hell," a longtime party leader told me. "She's saying, 'He's not one of us.'"

"But they've given a 22-year-old woman the legs and bottom of an 80-year-old."

2008-05-09T08:10:00.003-05:00

Is some nefarious paparazzo photoshopping cellulite onto pictures of Mischa Barton's thighs?

Here's the picture.

There's a whole huge genre of celebrity pics that show flaws: cellulite, pimples, pot bellies, rotting skin, bald spots. In the endless barrage of photography we need this break from the usual glossy, plastic prettiness, don't we? We're only human. Or should we be ashamed? Isn't it enough that we demand authentic cellulite, pimples, pot bellies, rotting skin, and bald spots? Keep it honest, paparazzi. Don't spoil our evil fun.

Does this statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. look too much like that statue of Saddam Hussein we pulled down in Baghdad?

2008-05-09T06:38:00.003-05:00

WaPo reports:

A powerful federal arts commission is urging that the sculpture of Martin Luther King Jr. proposed for a memorial on the Tidal Basin be reworked because it is too "confrontational" and reminiscent of political art in totalitarian states.

The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts thinks "the colossal scale and Social Realist style of the proposed statue recalls a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries," commission secretary Thomas Luebke said in a letter in April.

By law, no project like the memorial can go forward without approval from the commission, the federal agency that advises the government on public design and aesthetics in the capital.

A model of the statue has been built in China. The project's chief architect, Ed Jackson Jr., huddled with advisers this week in Ann Arbor, Mich., to discuss ways to address the commission's objections before sculpting of the granite statue begins.

"We said: 'Okay, this is what the commission said. How best can we achieve that and retain what we have accomplished thus far?' "

It is the second time in recent months that the memorial to the slain civil rights leader has come under fire. Last year, critics complained after a Chinese sculptor known for his monumental works of figures such as Mao Zedong was selected to create King and other elements of the memorial in China.

The sculpture — you can see the model of it at the link — is to be 28 feet tall. That's 8 feet taller than the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Monument, but Lincoln is sitting down, so the scale is somewhat smaller. If you've ever seen the Lincoln statue in person, you know it's huge, much bigger than it seems in photographs. It's actually quite weird, I think. But why shouldn't the MLK monument be on a similar scale? And once you decide you want a large statue of a man, what is going to prevent it from looking like social realist sculptures? It's inherent in the concept. If social realist statues bother you, maybe you shouldn't order a colossus.

That said, perceptions of this particular colossus may be affected by 2 things:

1. The knowledge that the sculptor — Lei Yixin — is Chinese and made big statues of Mao Zedong.

2. Racism. You see a black man and you worry that he's angry or on the verge of a violent outburst. This man looks "confrontational."

Now, are these inappropriate considerations that we need to put aside in order to judge the statue properly? It's not obvious.

As to influence #1, the choice of the sculptor has already taken place, and it's not fair to reject him now for what we knew of him then. Nevertheless, we may expect him to express American values and even to exaggerate those values so that an average viewer who knows the sculptor made Mao statues will not see anything Maoist about the MLK statue. The sculptor has got a deficit to make up, and we ought to think about that as we judge his work. That's the argument that it's acceptable to not to overcome influence #1.

As to influence #2, you know very well that you should not be racist. But perhaps we should take into account that people viewing the statue are human and will therefore perceive a statue of a black man through whatever racism remains in their thought patterns. If there is to be a statue honoring a black man, perhaps the sculptor must make a special effort to avoid a depiction that prompts any racist perceptions. That's the argument that it's acceptable not to overcome influence #2 in judging the statue.

Now, with that in mind, what do we think of the Commission's criticism?

Its general design was approved by the seven-member federal commission that year, based on drawings of the Stone of Hope that showed a more subtle image of King, from the waist up, as if he were emerging organically out of the rock, the commission said....

Commission members said the sculpture "now features a stiffly frontal image, static in pose, confrontational in character," Luebke wrote. They "recommended strongly that the sculpture be reworked, both in form and modeling" and cited "precedents of a figure emerging from stone in the works of sculptors such as Michelangelo and Rodin."

The commission objected to what it perceived as the loss of the subtle way King seemed to be coming out of the stone in the drawings, Luebke said.

"I think that the metaphor of Dr. King being merged with the natural forces of this stone is absolutely essential to avoid colossal monumentalization," commission member N. Michael McKinnell said at the April 17 meeting.

So the large block of stone is crucial to the design. It's abstract and metaphorical. I have to agree that it looks like the sculptor wanted to depict a freestanding human figure and mainly annoyed at the restrictive block of stone connected to it. Yet that itself is metaphorical. Those Michelangelo sculptures Luebke is talking about were slaves. Their oneness with the stone expressed slavery. The MLK image should not relate to the stone in quite the same way. I think the real issue here is whether the thing is well sculpted. To my eye, it is not. The figure-stone relationship is not interesting or beautiful.

But the emerging-from-the-stone problem is less troublesome than the crossed arms. Jackson (the architect) defends the stance, and notes that they had a photograph of MLK with his arms crossed like that. But of course, there are innumerable photos of MLK and most of them, I'm sure, would never suggested themselves as a good model for a large statue. The point is the sculptor and his team liked the attitude of confrontation. They wanted MLK the "warrior." One consultant said they rejected the notion of MLK as "pacifist, placid, kind of vanilla." But crossed arms expressed resistance and even rejection. Much as MLK had cause to express such things in his lifetime, the question is what one expression do we now want carved in stone. Shouldn't he be more positive and welcoming? Shouldn't he love us now that we love him?

Or are we only thinking that way because we haven't gotten used to it?

Would you reject the brooding, downcast Lincoln sculpture if you were seeing it for the first time?

Oh, good Lord, he's so depressed! His clothes are horribly sagging. And he's slumping in that chair with his big, gawky hands hanging over those big Roman fasces. Fascism!

Why bury trees?

2008-05-08T18:21:00.002-05:00

Carbon sequestration!

But wouldn't it be much better to bury paper — like all that newspaper and office paper that we've been wasting energy recycling?

Things draftsmen think that aren't true but make cool drawings.

2008-05-08T17:56:00.004-05:00

Let me recommend 2 exhibits at The Drawing Center in SoHo.

First, there are these Frederick Kiesler drawings, exhibited on this curvy glass table that fits well with Kiesler's concept of the "Endless House."

At the first link, you can find the place to click to hear Kiesler describe his Endless House, which supposedly inspired a lot of modern architects, but really seems horribly misguided in so many ways. It actually doesn't hurt us that rooms have flat floors that are floors and then straight walls that are walls and flat ceilings that are ceilings. We really like that. Right angles are perfectly fine too. But it's touching to hear Kiesler explain that this is not so.

Then there are these very cool Yüksel Arslan drawings, which seem intended to denounce capitalism, but that probably cost a lot of money and, in fact, would make fabulous decor for a young and hip rich man's office suite. You need to go see these drawings in person, because there is a lot of tiny detail and script. (Hope you read French!) For example, there are a lot of businessmen with heads made of quarters or dimes and they are shaking hands, engaging in transactions — ooh, the perfidy!

"Lots of Things Like This."

2008-05-08T17:24:00.003-05:00

You've got only 2 more days to see "Lots of Things Like This," an exhibition of artworks that satisfy 3 criteria devised by David Eggers:

1. An image
2. Some words (usually referring to the image)
3. A sense of humor

If you don't like anything pretentious, this is the show for you. Check out some of the drawings and little paintings — reproduced in this PDF. Eggers says he just wanted "to put an enjoyable exhibit together, to cover the walls with strange and funny things." Or skip the show, get out a pencil and paper and draw your own image with some words and make it strange and funny. Eggers wrote a little brochure to go with the show, which you can read at the link. It contains many pointedly undeep thoughts like:

Why is it that so many of these artists aren’t so great at spelling? And why is it that when they screw up one of their words, instead of starting over, they just cross the word out and write it again? Many people would choose to start over.

Or maybe you think this is pretentious. Stealth pretentious.

Abu Ayyab al-Masri.

2008-05-08T16:45:00.001-05:00

Captured.

UPDATE: Not.

"David Chalmers... admitted he loved some of the negative emotions like sadness, melancholy, anger and jealousy."

2008-05-08T16:42:00.000-05:00

The philosophy professor goes against the grain at the happiness conference.

Yesterday's paper.

2008-05-08T15:59:00.000-05:00

“Eggheads and African-Americans."

2008-05-08T15:29:00.003-05:00

A memorable phrase, a classic encounter:

Man, if my head looked like Paul Begala's, I would not use the term "eggheads." But anyway, isn't he right? Donna Brazile does an excellent job of getting mad on camera, but it's pure pretense. Everyone knows a political strategist has to analyze the various demographic groups.

"Does it not grate on you that Mrs. Clinton's most staunch supporter, most important backer, has been me, Rush Limbaugh...?"

2008-05-08T15:15:00.003-05:00

I love this hilarious, multi-layered flight of humor — in the feminist style:

Ladies, doesn't it all sound too familiar? Once again, a woman is told to put her dreams aside to benefit a man, to benefit a party of men. Obama, a freshman senator who has paid no dues, is treated like anointed royalty; while a hard-working woman who has battled her entire life to break the glass ceiling is treated like a leftover meal, and thrown down the garbage disposal. You know how this feels. You've been in Hillary's shoes. You've seen the pretty boys that come in the office, almost no experience. They glad-hand the boss; they take credit for your work, talk a good game with real specifics, and then what happens? They get promoted while you, the hardworking backbone of the office, are told to go fetch the coffee or set up meetings for these dweebs that couldn't carry your bra if they had to.

Read the whole thing. (Or subscribe and listen to the audio.)

"Well, here we are on top of the world, and we have arrived at this peak to stay there forever."

2008-05-08T14:41:00.003-05:00

"There is, of course, a thing called history, but history is something unpleasant that happens to other people. We are comfortably outside all of that I am sure."

So wrote the historian Arnold Toynbee, describing his childhood impression — he was 8 in 1897 — of the Diamond Jubilee — the celebration of 60 years of Queen Victoria's monarchy.

Quoted by Fareed Zakaria in "The Future of American Power: How America Can Survive the Rise of the Rest" — a very interesting article that is (qualifiedly) optimistic about America — even though we know what happened to Britain.

The problem today is that the U.S. political system seems to have lost its ability to fix its ailments. The economic problems in the United States today are real, but by and large they are not the product of deep inefficiencies within the U.S. economy, nor are they reflections of cultural decay. They are the consequences of specific government policies. Different policies could quickly and relatively easily move the United States onto a far more stable footing. A set of sensible reforms could be enacted tomorrow to trim wasteful spending and subsidies, increase savings, expand training in science and technology, secure pensions, create a workable immigration process, and achieve significant efficiencies in the use of energy. Policy experts do not have wide disagreements on most of these issues, and none of the proposed measures would require sacrifices reminiscent of wartime hardship, only modest adjustments of existing arrangements. And yet, because of politics, they appear impossible. The U.S. political system has lost the ability to accept some pain now for great gain later on.

As it enters the twenty-first century, the United States is not fundamentally a weak economy or a decadent society. But it has developed a highly dysfunctional politics. What was an antiquated and overly rigid political system to begin with (now about 225 years old) has been captured by money, special interests, a sensationalist media, and ideological attack groups. The result is ceaseless, virulent debate about trivia -- politics as theater -- and very little substance, compromise, or action. A can-do country is now saddled with a do-nothing political process, designed for partisan battle rather than problem solving.

Ceaseless, virulent debate about trivia...

Hmmm.... must move on to the next post.

Okay, guys — put on your pants!

2008-05-08T10:06:00.000-05:00

Conservatives are (supposedly) happier than liberals and (supposedly) scientists have discovered why.

2008-05-08T09:42:00.005-05:00

Here's the article (and tell me if the reason the scientists have discovered isn't the same thing that left-wing ideology tells us):

Individuals with conservative ideologies are happier than liberal-leaners, and new research pinpoints the reason: Conservatives rationalize social and economic inequalities.

Are conservatives the kind of heartless/head-in-the-sand people who rationalize away troublesome truths? Or do people become conservative to gain the benefits of the rationalizing escape from troublesome truths?

Regardless of marital status, income or church attendance, right-wing individuals reported greater life satisfaction and well-being than left-wingers, the new study found. Conservatives also scored highest on measures of rationalization, which gauge a person's tendency to justify, or explain away, inequalities.

The rationalization measure included statements such as: "It is not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than others," and "This country would be better off if we worried less about how equal people are."

Face it. Conservatives are assholes. Science says! And don't start rationalizing away what science says, you asshole.

To justify economic inequalities, a person could support the idea of meritocracy, in which people supposedly move up their economic status in society based on hard work and good performance. In that way, one's social class attainment, whether upper, middle or lower, would be perceived as totally fair and justified.

If your beliefs don't justify gaps in status, you could be left frustrated and disheartened, according to the researchers, Jaime Napier and John Jost of New York University. They conducted a U.S.-centric survey and a more internationally focused one to arrive at the findings.

"Our research suggests that inequality takes a greater psychological toll on liberals than on conservatives," the researchers write in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science, "apparently because liberals lack ideological rationalizations that would help them frame inequality in a positive (or at least neutral) light."

They especially lack the rationalization powers that would allow them to frame conservatives as anything but assholes. These liberals must starkly confront the brutal reality that conservatives are too heartless, stupid, greedy, or cowardly to perceive. At least that's the way the liberals like to frame it.

ADDED: Don Surber says factor in age: If older people are happier and older people are more conservative, the pattern is explained. But maybe older people are happier and more conservative because they're prone to rationalize. Those bastards!

Let's judge Hillary Clinton's executive aptitude by the campaign she managed.

2008-05-08T09:01:00.004-05:00

Karen Tumulty at Time has a great list of 5 mistakes Clinton made. Let me focus on #2:

Clinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game. That became abundantly clear in a strategy session last year, according to two people who were there. As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates.

Wow! Mark Penn's awfulness continues to amaze me. And, of course, it's not really Mark Penn that is so awful, but Hillary for choosing and sticking with Mark Penn.

It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all. Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified — and let Penn know it. "How can it possibly be," Ickes asked, "that the much vaunted chief strategist doesn't understand proportional allocation?" And yet the strategy remained the same, with the campaign making its bet on big-state victories. Even now, it can seem as if they don't get it. Both Bill and Hillary have noted plaintively that if Democrats had the same winner-take-all rules as Republicans, she'd be the nominee.

Pathetic.

Read the whole list of 5. As I said to Jeralyn Merritt in the new Bloggingheads episode, we should judge the candidates' executive aptitude by the campaigns they managed. Seen that way, Hillary Clinton would be an abysmal President.

UPDATE: Penn denies that he lacked understanding of the proportional approach to delegates.

Hillary Clinton for VP?

2008-05-08T08:20:00.003-05:00

There's a lot of talk about this exchange

CHARLES GIBSON: Is there any discussion of what kind of an exit strategy there would be?

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: There are various exit strategies right now. Number one would be, go out on a win. So, stay in until West Virginia, where Sen. Clinton is likely the winner, and Kentucky on May 20, and after that, bow out. Two, negotiate for the imposition of Michigan and Florida, to get those delegations seated, declare victory on that, and get out. But the big one, Charlie and this is what some people close to the Clintons are talking about: Is there a way to negotiate a settlement with Barack Obama to have Sen. Clinton on the ticket?

CHARLES GIBSON: And what do they think?

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: It's hard to know. I mean, first of all, would Sen. Obama go for it? Can he get over the bitterness of this campaign? Can he be convinced that it's the strongest ticket? Third, of course, would Sen. Clinton take it? I think if it was offered in the right way, yes.

I hate the idea of Hillary as VP.

Here's Josh Marshall on the subject:

Does Hillary Clinton really want the vice presidency? It seems to me that the senate offers her a better venue for achieving her ambitions and goals personally, politically and in public policy -- and a future in public life with much greater longevity -- than anything she'll find as Barack Obama's number two....

Most people who accept the vice presidency do so either because they believe it will line them up to succeed to the presidency or because it brings them to a level of power and honor their careers held little prospect of bringing them otherwise. But neither applies to Hillary Clinton. She's already of the stature and standing to run for president. She's a genuinely historic figure. And she's already been heavily involved in a successful two term administration.

Remember too that the recent trend for greater vice presidential involvement in key administration decision-making has brought with it a flat requirement that vice presidents be strictly loyal and politically subservient to the president. Quite simply, the vice presidency is beneath Hillary's stature....

Also, I can't understand this notion that Obama would pay Clinton to get out of the race — that is, that his campaign would pay her debts for her. Clinton spent her own money on her campaign. How is it permissible for Obama to refill Clinton's personal bank account? I don't know the election law here. I am simply asking why this outrageous bribery is even allowed.

That last link is also to Josh Marshall, who says:

Helping to retire an opponent's campaign is not unprecedented and can sometimes be justified in the interests of party unity... But using more than $10 million raised in large part by small individual donations to pay back the Clintons who appear to be worth many tens of millions of dollars simply seems wrong....

Frankly, I'm surprised that it's even being suggested. It would be a mistake for the Clintons to ask (and just because people are chattering about it -- don't assume they have or will), a mistake for Obama to offer and one that would risk a severe backlash.

That's not what people gave their money for.

That's for sure.