Photoshopped! And congratulations to the Badgers.

Hey, the Scrawl did a cool Photoshop of one of my peace rally pictures! I feel like I've arrived somewhere or other.

Oh, and let me take the opportunity to refer back to my other photo essay of the day and say congratulations to the Badgers on winning the last home game of the season. I went back to my office in the Law School after that peace rally and worked there for a while. I wanted to leave before it got dark so I could enjoy the walk home on such a beautiful day. But it got dark awfully early, and I ended up staying until five. Walking home on University Avenue, in the late twilight, I passed within a block of the lit-up stadium. I could hear the blurred but loud sound of the public address system, and as I walked by I suddenly could make out what I was hearing. "Shake it up, baby!" It was the great Beatles version of "Twist and Shout." It felt good to walk by at a distance, feeling the vague energy of 80,000 human beings emanating from the stadium and hearing a beloved recording of my youth. When I was younger, things like that used to make me feel sad and alienated from the real life that other people seemed to live squarely inside of. But now that I'm older, I don't feel like that at all. I find the existence of exciting life at a medium distance and not being part of it quite pleasant!

Is marriage a union of one man and one woman?

An answer. (Warning: it's audio.)

"1-2-3-4! We don't want the U.S. war! 5-6-7-8! Organize! Stop the state."

My first inkling that there is a peace rally up ahead is the sight of this woman:



Is that what peace rally folk wear this season? The makeshift poncho says "Sometimes I don't think I'm being sufficiently appalled." That's subdued and bemused. But I do see her later at the rally.

Here's where the rally comes in sight, on Library Mall. It's a very small group gathering at one end of the Mall:



People are standing around, many of them seem to be onlookers, not particularly involved in the event.



Some have brought signs. This is the most artistic one:



It reads "O Come Let Us Abhor Him" and pictures Bush as the infant Jesus. This is the most crude one (the woman holding it poses for photographs):



A speaker holds forth. "I look out at all you people. And there are so many of you!" Yeah, why not start off with a lie? It sets a nice tone. The speaker goes on to tell an elaborate story about Native Americans refusing to sign some document, which has a punchline expressing cynicism about the government, but it doesn't seem to have much to do with the war.



The speech, delivered through a bullhorn, seems to patch together lines from ancient speeches. There are bits related to the election tied to tattered dreams of revolution: "We'll show you what democracy really looks like!" Didn't we just see what democracy looks like? Isn't that what you have a problem with?

A man with a flag in the back of the crowd listens:



The speakers make an effort to get the crowd to yell out responses like "YES!" or "NO!" or (in answer to "What do we want?") "PEACE!" and (in answer to "When do we want it?") "NOW!" The most coherent part of the speech is the statement that "the coffers of the peace movement are thin" and that a bag is going to be passed around and money ought to be put in it. There is a lot of emphasis on "organizing," but the people telling us about the importance of organizing don't seem very organized. Note the speaker in the corner:



I'll just say if you're going to ask people for a contribution, we'd all love to see the plan. Well, at least there was a plan to get the banners at the front of the group to the back of the group and then march the group up toward the Capitol to tell these lawmakers what we think about the war.



But the state government isn't really running the war, and they aren't there on Saturdays anyway, and isn't it a bit lunkheaded to schedule your rally at the very time everyone is getting all psyched up about the last home game of the football season?

The crowds of Badger revellers on State Street vastly exceed the peace marchers in number and spirit. The peace movement leaders, bullhorn-amplified, try to get a chant going as they march up State Street:

"1-2-3-4! We don't want the U.S. war! 5-6-7-8! Organize! Stop the state."

If my 1960s memories are still in order, that's an old anti-Vietnam War chant -- except that it wasn’t "the U.S. war," it was "your f**king war," and it wasn't "stop the state," it was "smash the state."

Here's a good overview of the signage:



The one all the way to the left says: "The Madness of King George/His war on terrorism is licensing terrorism/His support for Israel makes the U.S.A. enemy #1." The top center one, near the rainbow flag, reads "No flag is big enough to cover the wrongness of killing." One sign refers to the debunked news story about 100,000 civilian deaths. Another (near the bottom) has a drawing of a teddy bear under the word "yes" and a drawing of a gun under the word "no."

I walk in the opposite direction, pausing for a moment to check out a man who has set up an elaborate display of signs, books, DVDs, and stickers ("9/11 = Neo-con con"). I've seen him before. He's trying to sell the theory that Bush is responsible for the 9/11 attacks. He's standing a few feet from a group of dressed up people who seem to have just come out of a campus chapel. They seem to be a wedding party. The women are dressed in high heels and glittery dresses, and the 9/11 conspiracy man is having a loud argument with a passerby. He says, "I've yet to hear an argument from anyone who's read this whole book. Read the book, and then come back an argue with me and tell me why it's wrong." I laugh out loud at the pre-condition he's set for any argument: you have to read the damn book he's promoting first. Contemptible though his 9/11 theory is, I'm more disgusted that he's crass enough to go ahead and spoil the happy atmosphere around someone's wedding. He's horribly self-involved, yet he probably imagines that he's trying to save the world.

Today, the streets of Madison ran red.

The morning after the election, I noted a chalking on the sidewalk outside of the Law School, promoting an anti-war rally for Saturday, and I wrote that I'd attend and have some pictures and descriptions for you. So now it is Saturday, and I have come downtown, and I can tell you that today the streets ran red! Not red with blood or anti-war-demonstration-style paint symbolizing blood. No, the streets were teeming with Badger fans appropriately clad in red sweatshirts and T-shirts. Here you see the good people of Wisconsin stoking the fires of fanship at State Street Brats, under the watchful gaze of our leader, Bucky:



Many brats were consumed – we call them brats, Senator! – and much beer, under the sacred protection of our lady, Liberty:


I hear a cheer ring out, and I look up, here's the Bucky Wagon tearing around the corner.



Everybody's happy. It's the last home game of the season, and we've got a pretty damn good shot at finishing this day – it's a beautiful day, too! – with an unbeaten at-home record. So good luck to the Badgers, and may all the wonderful visitors have a great time. Don't get too drunk. It was only noon, and I saw a few people staggering drunkenly. I hear a beautiful girl – the streets are full of beautiful girls! -- say to a boy, "Are you going to be completely wasted when I see you later?" A little dog tied up outside of Chin's is lonely, but people stop now and then to pet him and tell him how cute he is:



And he is:



I go to my usual café, but it's crowded, and I worry that by the time I get to the front of the line, there won't be a table, so I leave and go over to the new café that's just off State Street. "Free Internet" says the sign, and I go in and take some pictures while I wait for my latte. Here's the table I choose:



Pretty! And there's this cool used bookstore off to the side:



There's a nice little tented alcove, which is probably most fun in the evening, when people come here for drinks and desserts:



Sounds nice! Why don't you tell us the name of the place? I'm afraid I'm going to have to punish them because the WiFi did not work. First, it asked for a password, and I went up and had to call "hello?" into the backroom to get a person to come out and let me know if I needed a password. She wrote down a 10-digit code for me to enter, but it still didn't work, after several tries. I went back up, had to call out again, and said the password wasn't working. Her response, in its entirety, was "I'm not an IT person." Arrgghh! At least say you're sorry. And give me a cookie or something!

So I won't give them a free advertisement on my popular blog. And I will probably never come back here again. I will continue to frequent my favorite State Street cafés: Espresso Royale, Michelangelo's, and Fair Trade. Business owners, take note: do not disappoint the people who care about WiFi!

But maybe everything happens for a reason, because without WiFi, I leave the café early, and I walk back toward Library Mall. There, in the distance … can it be? … it's the peace rally! Did I get some pictures? Oh, yes I did! But it will take me a few minutes to sort through them, and this post is already long enough, and I don't want all that peace rally stuff in this post anyway. I just want to end this post by saying: GO BADGERS!

Or are Bush voters just dumb?

Yeah, they must be dumb! That would explain it. Jeremy's trying that theory. [UPDATE: The post was withdrawn.]

Meanwhile, to continue my trip around the UW profblogs:

Tonya thinks an apple pie might help cure the post-election gloom. Apple pie? Isn't that a bit red state-y? She has some other ideas too, ranging from shopping to blue-state secession.

Nina notes the effects of three sleepless nights, including the fact that she forgot everything she and I talked about over a comfort food dinner (meatloaf and mashed potatoes) at Crave on Thursday night. Great, now I can stop worrying about all the wrong things I said. And, no, I didn't gloat or say anything mean about politics. I'm just embarrassed at a couple gossipy things I said! One in particular. And I hope that doesn't prompt memory recovery by Nina! By the way, aren't you impressed that a bitter Kerry supporter went out to dinner on Thursday with someone who voted for Bush?

"The Columnist Manifesto" is still fuming that Kerry didn't fight a legal battle in Ohio. Looks like somebody needs to go shopping! Or maybe some pie...

Gordon ended up voting for Bush. You may remember that I linked his blog (from my temporary Instapundit perch) on Election Day, letting people know he was undecided and had a comments section, so there's the old blogosphere in action. Right now, Gordon is one of the many lawprofs who are in Washington doing the "meat market" interviews for new appointments. Now that's an experience that might require a lot of pie to recover from.

Cross-country driving mania.

Yesterday, I did a post on long cross-country drives, which is a special little mania of mine. The post brought this email:

I once drove straight through from (approximately) Ft. Madison, IA to Monck's Corner, SC (just north of Charleston). A bit more than 1150 miles, as I remember it, and I made it in just over 21 hours. The most amazing think about the whole trip was that, while well over 75% of it was via Interstate, I saw not one, single police car the whole way. Wonder what the odds of that are?

Also, back in the '60s, when I was younger and dumber (I hope) a fellow cadet and I drove back from the St. Louis area to Denver on the way to the Air Force Academy. We were taking his sister-in-law to Denver prior to returning to the Academy. It was a bit over 850 miles and we made the trip in a bit over 11 hours, counting all stops. That's an average of over 75 MPH, and most of Interstate 70 (or 40 or whichever one it is) didn't exist. We used mostly old US 40 between St. Louis and Denver. Other than that, it was all two-lane highway. Once when we stopped in Kansas for gas, I went to check the oil and popped the hood. The engine block was glowing a dull orange. I figured since the oil pressure gauge was registering good pressure I really, really didn't need to touch that dipstick. We were driving a 327 '65 Chevy Impala with a Muncie 4-speed. We drove US 40 in the middle of the night pretty much flat-out, pedal to the metal, and the speedo registered pegged. Don't know how fast we were actually going. Plus 100 MPH, for sure. Nice car. Wish I still had it.

Yikes! A glowing orange engine. In the middle of Kansas. I've gotten myself in trouble a few times driving. I've made some mistake that I still shudder to think about. Like the emailer, I've driven very long distances -- from Orlando to Madison -- without seeing one police car. Now, I'm thinking I'd like to do another long drive again. Kansas is one of the states I've never been to. I'd like to drive through all the states, including Alaska (and some day I'll get to Hawaii). I could hit the most as-yet-undriven-through states if I did a northwestern trip: North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon. If I did that, then the only states I haven't visited, aside from Alaska and Hawaii, would be Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and South Carolina. My all-time favorite drive was through Death Valley. Also great: the Badlands. And it is just great fun driving across Nevada on Route 50 --the "loneliest road in America" the signs posted along the way tell you. It's nice to do the two-lane blacktop through the desert. I also loved driving from Boulder to Sante Fe, especially the Arkansas Basin and the northern New Mexican landscape that let me know I'd overestimated Georgia O'Keeffe's powers of imagination.

That email reminded me that I used to drive an Impala, a 1961 seafoam green convertible. My father had bought it new and passed it on to me when he bought another car a few years later. I now realize what a fabulous classic car I drove to high school every day in the late 1960s. I also realize that I need a new car now to do the kind of driving I like! I loved my New Beetle when I got it five years ago, but the fun has worn off. Yesterday, I got a big black envelope in the mail, obviously an advertisement.

"What the hell is this? Chevrolet is wasting money sending me a big advertisement. What's the point of putting it in this big envelope?" I say with my usual outrage that anyone would dare to send me an advertisement in the mail and amazed that they would put it inside an envelope, which would normally end up in the trash, unopened.

"You're opening it," said Chris, making me laugh.

"Oh! It's for Corvette!" I say and pretty soon I am literally petting the glossy pages of the brochure. Within the minute, I'm checking out the Corvette websites, trying to find a price, discussing with Chris the problem of a person with two sons buying a car with no backseat, and comparison shopping for an Audi TT Coupe, which does have a place to put a third and fourth person in a pinch. "Mmmm ... what color?"

"Red! Then you could sing 'Little Red Corvette.'"

"If I got red I would think the song 'Little Red Corvette' whenever I was in the car. Every time I parked it, I'd think about parking it 'sideways.' Much as I love Prince, that might get a little annoying. Plus, if I got a red car, I'd have to have my house painted. Or move."

"Black."

"Or blue. I like the blue ... this particular blue. I'm really quite opposed to most blue, especially for a car. I object to a blue car, as a general principle. But this blue -- 'Le Mans Blue Metallic' -- I like that!"

Spinning the election: it's all about religion.

I've been watching the post-election news analysis shows and trying to catch up with my paper and on-line reading, and though I'm seeing a lot of material, it's awfully repetitious. Exactly how does a single message, a single explanation for a complex event, get framed and spread so quickly? Sure, there were some polls, but the exit polls that seem to provide the fuel for the analysis were wrong in predicting a big Kerry win, and, in any event, someone had to predetermine which choices to put on those exit polls, and the "moral values" option that got picked by so many people doesn't necessarily mean what those who picked that option meant to say. Now, pundits are purporting to describe the state of mind of millions of human beings, and they've swooped down on religion, specifically fundamentalist Christian religion, and even more specifically, antipathy toward gay people.

This explanation seems to be appealing to those who are disappointed that Kerry lost because it is a way of saying: there's nothing wrong with us, we lost because you are bad people. Folded into that idea is an assumption that antipathy toward gay people is an outrage, but antipathy toward fundamentalist Christians is completely acceptable. Folded even more deeply into that is an assumption that unreadiness to accept gay marriage equals bigotry toward gay persons and an assumption that Christians with traditionalist attitudes adhere to a literal, Biblical form of Christianity.

The wide margins by which the gay marriage referenda passed in all of the states where it was on the ballot, including the usually socially liberal Oregon, shows that there is a wide range of persons who aren't ready to accept gay marriage. And, frankly, it was not that many years ago that the strongest proponents of gay rights were hostile to the gay marriage movement and were very critical of Andrew Sullivan in particular for pushing this issue instead of a more socially and politically left agenda. It was not very long ago that clever gay rights lawyers tried to think of ways to prevent gay marriage proponents from setting the gay rights agenda. It seems as though everyone has forgotten the real history of the gay rights movement.

Being against gay marriage is itself a complex matter that can channel all sorts of thoughts. Some people are just trying to stop courts from imposing it on the country; they may simply think it is the sort of question that needs to work through the political process more slowly. Some people just haven't gotten past the traditional definition of marriage. I've talked to some people who are not particularly religious and don't seem to care about any fundamentalist religious beliefs who just repeat "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman." It seems obvious to them and impervious to more complicated arguments. I think over time that will change. I, myself, favor the recognition of gay marriage. But I certainly don't think those who mean to thwart the judicial recognition of a gay marriage right are necessarily or even usually expressing hatred toward gay persons. Demonizing your opponent -- which includes 57% of Oregonians -- should marginalize you. And yet somehow this Bush-voters-are-religious-bigots meme has pervaded the post-election commentary. Can we please get a grip?

Marines "eager to prove their mettle and at last confront the insurgency head on."

Will MSM give us more positive-sounding reports from Iraq now that there's no longer an incentive to affect the election with Iraq-is-a-mess slanting? (I hope we can never quite figure out the answer to that question because the insurgency flags now that it has lost its hope of pressuring a new, more pliable President into abandoning Iraq.) Here's a taste -- from Robert F. Worth of the NYT -- of what feels to me like a new attitude toward covering the war:

Many of the young marines expected to lead the attack have not yet been part of a major battle. Most of those who took part in the operation in Falluja in April have been sent home. And though some of the commanders here fought the first phase of the war last year, many of the rank and file arrived here for the first time in June.

All of them, though, seem eager to prove their mettle and at last confront the insurgency head on.

"It's kind of like the cancer of Iraq," said Lt. Steven Berch, a lanky platoon commander, speaking of Falluja. "It's become a kind of hotel for the insurgents. Hopefully getting rid of them will help to stabilize the whole country."

Others point to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who is said to be using Falluja as a base.

"We're doing the right thing here," said First Lt. Christopher Wilkens, pausing for breath during a drill. "These guys are terrorists, there are connections to Al Qaeda, and fighting them is what we came here to do."

And note what is not there. Last week, wouldn't there have been some material about misleading connections between Iraq and al Qaeda? Wouldn't numbers of the dead and wounded have been juxtaposed to the Marines' gung-ho statements to make them seem naive? Wouldn't they have located a Marine who'd say he didn't like Bush or longed to go home? Instead, we get the extra information that the Marines who've already fought in Falluja have gone home.

The article ends with this rousing tribute to the Marines:

None of the dangers seem to rattle their confidence. Between drills, they do pull-ups and play touch football. In the evening, laughter echoes around the barracks where they live, along with heavy metal music blasting from CD players.

"I don't think about it," said Pfc. Anthony Mells, a 20 year-old marine from Queens, when asked about the risks of battle. "It's all about motivation. Getting wounded is not in my job description."

It's a Gallia day.

Silflay Hraka remembered that post I did last Sunday about Bob Kerrey saying the people of Gallia, Ohio "don't give a damn about the war in Iraq" and checked the election results. Kerrey was trying to help John Kerry with this remark, but it turns out those people, who according to Kerrey, only cared about their own immediate economic interests, actually, overwhelmingly voted for Bush.

Note: The post title is intended to be a reference to this Groucho Marx joke I like. [NOTE: It's audio!]

"The Threepenny Opera" plays in Madison.

I love the music of "The Threepenny Opera" and wore out my vinyl LP of the Shakespeare Festival Production's cast recording (the one with the brilliant Raul Julia). I have never seen a live production of the play though, and I was going to go to the version playing now in Madison, but then I saw this in the the Capital Times:

The decadence of the Weimar Republic led to the horrors of Nazi Germany. Imagine someone turning that chilling historical scenario into a musical.

Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill did in their portentous 1928 classic "The Threepenny Opera." ... In this show Germany's future resembles America's present, the director says. ... The show's director, Patricia Boyette, a UW-Madison professor of theater and drama, talked about the production in a recent phone interview:

What are the basic connections you will make between the two political eras?

Well, we're not making it time- and place-specific. So the play really has the flavor of 1928, the year it was originally set in. It's like the Weimar Republic or Chicago in terms of thhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gife corruption and the excessive qualities of those times.

Whether it's Al Capone or pre-Nazi Germany, there's a real similarity to our times. And I think people were not paying attention to what was happening. There was a very self-indulgent behavior and incredible corruption which was accepted.

That's part of the parallel to our times and that's really frightening. So I think it laid the groundwork for Hitler and Nazi Germany to move in. People were more focused on their own pleasures.

Are there parallels in Brecht's play to how the Patriot Act has imposed social restrictions in the guise of personal freedom and protection?

I think so, in the crimes that come up in the play. And the army song glorifies war and it's just devastating, and it's this little new musical number that's very upbeat and great fun. It's chilling. And the government's attitude toward crime is, whatever is good for the individual. If they profit from a murder, then that's great. If not, they get very moralistic. It's all money. Like it's all oil today.

UPDATE: I see this post is drawing a lot of people from here, where a blogger says that I go to the theater except when I "don't like the director's politics." Now, how does that make any sense? I've said I'm very interested in the play itself, and obviously I don't agree at all with the playwright's politics! It's not the director's politics per se that keep me away from this production; it is that the way those politics are expressed that makes me infer that the production will be inferior. I'm not opposed to things that challenge me, but I'm severely opposed to wasting my time on bad or boring things, and I make harsh decisions about what to avoid wasting my time and money on. Most play productions (and most movies) are BAD, and I have many other things I like to do with the time I have left on this earth.

Madison and driving.

The End Zone has lots to say about the drive from Ft. Worth to Madison and about Madison itself, where I read it is a beautiful day, so I glance out my window and see that, in fact, it is. I've got to get out more.

Departed 5:30 AM. Arrived 10:00 PM. Traveled 1030 miles in 990 minutes, breaking mythic "1000 minute" barrier. Woo hoo!

Gear: 2 turkey sandwiches, 2 Peanut Butter and Red Plum Jam sandwiches, carrots, Tootsie Pops(orange), Snickers, Dr. Pepper, water, ice chest, road atlas(w/route highlighted).

That's the way I drive too. Straight through. I've done Boston to Madison in one day and even Madison to Wendover, Nevada in one day. That second one, I must admit, was a lot further than I really meant to go in one day, but I made the egregious geographical error of thinking it was a minor matter to decide to go past Salt Lake City and just stop in the next town.

Anyway, I like End Zone's choice of food. If I prepared ahead of time I probably would just make a pile of all peanut butter sandwiches or, if dieting, a lot of cashew nuts. (I recently drove from Ithaca to Madison in one day entirely on Diet Pepsi and cashews.) But what I usually do in my extra long driving days is stop only when the car needs gas and only consume whatever strikes my fancy in the gas station store. I've driven long distances on caramel corn and Twizzlers and bottled Frappucino and that sort of thing. It's fun! (And crazy.)

Teresa's look of relief.

On Teresa's look of relief -- noted here -- consider this (again, from the Newsweek article):

Later came Kerry campaign's post-convention "Sea to Shining Sea" tour: a 3,500-mile bus and train trek that was not a happy trip for Teresa. With each passing day she made less effort to hide her displeasure. Audiences were mystified when Teresa turned her back to them at daylight rallies and wore dark sunglasses and a hat at night (backstage, the candidate's wife complained of migraines and sore eyes). As they reached the climax of the tour, an hourlong "family vacation" hike in the Grand Canyon, the planned happy-family- vacation was disintegrating in plain view. Daughter Vanessa didn't enjoy being a prop, Teresa was complaining of migraines and telling her husband she couldn't walk anymore. The candidate tried to bravely soldier on, pulling his sullen wife and children to show them the magnificent condors flying overhead.

Teresa was an interesting character in the drama of the campaign. Who knows what was really going on, but if I were writing a screenplay, fictionalizing her story, I would say that she was still deeply in love with her husband who died, that she even agreed with his (Republican) politics, and that the whole campaign was for her a horror show. She (the fictionalized Teresa) tried to stand by her vows to the man she had married, at the expense of great personal pain. I would write that he (the fictionalized Kerry) really loved her and wanted to help her, but had to put the campaign first and had to work with his advisors, even though he knew they cared nothing for her personally -- she was just a whining rich bitch to them -- and only heartlessly damned her for not living up to the responsibility to be a political asset, a responsibility that the other candidate's wife fulfilled brilliantly.

I went back to find what I had written about Teresa at the time the Grand Canyon trip was described in the press and I was a bit surprised to see that I had thought of writing a fictionalized account of Teresa before at exactly that point:

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.

Let's not forget this tragic photograph and that the press, at the time, wrote that Teresa had an attack of "vertigo" on looking into the canyon. Let's not forget that her beloved first husband died in a plane crash.

UPDATE: Here is another earlier post I wrote about Teresa. An excerpt:

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?

The advice from Clinton that Kerry didn't take.

Another (and more significant) revelation in the Newsweek article is that Bill Clinton advised Kerry to support the local efforts to ban gay marriage! Kerry just didn't have Clinton's hardcore political instincts. But if that's the sort of betrayal of core values that is needed for the Democrats to win an election, the party really does have a terrible problem.

Carville wept.

A striking picture, painted in the Newsweek retrospective on the campaign:

At several critical junctures Kerry's campaign (and the candidate himself), struggled to find sure footing. Following the missteps of August, Clinton veteran James Carville confronted Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill, telling her she had to step aside and let newly arrived Joe Lockhart run the campaign. So worked up, Carville began to cry, imploring Cahill: "You've got to let him do it." Carville continued, "Nobody can gain power without someone losing power." Carville threatened to go on "Meet the Press" the next day "and tell the truth about how bad it is" if Cahill didn't give effective control to Lockhart.

A happy Teresa?

My first reaction to this picture (on seeing it, much larger, in the paper NYT) was that Teresa has a look of happy relief on her face. I wish the couple well. But my second reaction, I can't resist saying, is to think of the caption: Teresa Heinz Kerry carries a cardboard cutout of her husband off the political stage.



Picture credit: Stephen Crowley/The New York Times.

UPDATE: Speaking of the irresistible, the author of the news piece accompanying this photo, like Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show" and countless others, could not resist connecting Kerry's concession speech to his campaign theme song "No Surrender." He surrendered!

"Something of a woozy existential hangover."

That describes residents of "an island off the coast of Europe" -- aka Manhattan -- as they wake up after the election, in this nicely written piece by Joseph Berger in the NYT. This struck me:

[Some New Yorkers] spoke of a feeling of isolation from their fellow Americans, a sense that perhaps Middle America doesn't care as much about New York and its animating concerns as it seemed to in the weeks immediately after the attack on the World Trade Center.

"Everybody seems to hate us these days," said Zito Joseph, a 63-year-old retired psychiatrist. "None of the people who are likely to be hit by a terrorist attack voted for Bush. But the heartland people seemed to be saying, 'We're not affected by it if there would be another terrorist attack.' " ...

Many who are analyzing the election right now comment on how Bush voters don't know their own real economic interests. If only they'd unscrew their tight focus on moral questions, they would have voted for Kerry! If that sort of reasoning about voting patterns is acceptable, we should also consider whether New Yorkers are failing to perceive their own real security issues, and that they ought to have voted for Bush, but that they did not because they maintained a tight focus on the other side of those same moral issues.

Dr. Joseph also had this to say:

"I'm saddened by what I feel is the obtuseness and shortsightedness of a good part of the country - the heartland," Dr. Joseph said. "This kind of redneck, shoot-from-the-hip mentality and a very concrete interpretation of religion is prevalent in Bush country - in the heartland."

"New Yorkers are more sophisticated and at a level of consciousness where we realize we have to think of globalization, of one mankind, that what's going to injure masses of people is not good for us," he said.

Ah! How familiar I am -- out here in Madison, Wisconsin -- with that sort of thinking. The Times turned to Joseph's seatmate at the little café table on New York's West Side. She interviewed that "New Yorkers are savvy ... We have street smarts. Whereas people in the Midwest are more influenced by what their friends say." But, wait ... it turns out she's from -- of all places -- Wisconsin! Not Madison, Wisconsin, though, I'd hazard to guess. I'm not sure what the big difference is between so called "street smarts" and being influenced by what your friends say. There is a lot of self-flattery that goes into the belief that your side is the sophisticated, savvy side. My view is that all human beings indulge in self-flattery and stoke their own self-esteem by visualizing those on the other side as ignorant and inept. If only you would think straight and get some information, you would agree with me!