"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 Viera 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.