If your presidential campaign has problems convincing Jewish voters that you’re on their side, I’m not sure it’s in your best interest to assemble a rally of 200,000 Germans. I’m just sayin’. . .
A Chip off the Old Karadzic
Last weekend, I wrote about my Sunday sidewalk brunch with Samuel Delany. I should have known something was wrong, the way Chip kept looking down the sidewalk and back into the restaurant, the way he kept nervously fingering his beard, the way he patted me down and confiscated my phone before we sat at the table.
But I didn’t understand why he kept trying to explain how the biggest influence on Dhalgren was actually the poetry of Dragan Dabic, in between complaints about how Marko Jaric was disastrously underused by the Timberwolves last season.
Now it all becomes clear: I wasn’t having lunch with Chip Delany! I was having lunch with Radovan Karadzic!
We’ve gone through the looking-glass, people.
It’s always the end of the world for somebody
Courtesy of Hit & Run, here’s a neat article from World Affairs on how the current crop of “America-in-decline” books & articles is nothing new:
As with the pessimistic intellectual troughs that followed the Depression, Vietnam, and the stagflation of the late 1970s and early 1980s, there is a tendency among declinists to over-extrapolate from a momentous but singular event—in this case, the Iraq War, whose wake propels many of their gloomy forecasts.
It’s always easier to
- call for the end of the world, and
- pretend that now is how things are always going to be.
Unrequired Reading: July 18, 2008
I have come back to tell you all . . . it’s time for links!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: July 18, 2008”
What It Is: 7/14/08
What I’m reading: The Dunwich Horror, by H.P. Lovecraft, Against the Gods
What I’m listening to: A stack of Mad Mix CDs
What I’m watching: Superbad and Cartwheel Fu
What I’m drinking: G&Ts with Plymouth Gin
Where I’m going: To NYC tonight to participate in a NYU graduate school panel on “media relations” or something. I find this funny because I’m the editor of a trade magazine, and thus not held in very high esteem by “legit” journalists.
What I’m happy about: Continuing to pile items like that one onto the resume of my career-by-accident/attrition.
What I’m sad about: Having no excuse not to get started on the September issue of the magazine, as well as preparing for our conference at the end of that month.
What I’m pondering: Whether the editors of the New Yorker are utterly tone deaf or just in the bag for Hillary.
Unrequired Reading: June 20, 2008
Soft side successfully deployed, sir!
Now that Obama has crossed the delegate finish-line for the Democratic nomination . . . it’s time for the finger-pointing! Today’s WSJ has a fun article that details the mismanagement, backbiting and strategic idiocy of the Clinton campaign.
For a while now, I’ve been marveling over the Clinton camp’s contention that the Obama has had a free ride, what with his, um, being, half-black and having middle and last names that are markedly similar to those of America’s recent public enemies #1a and #1b.
Even more audacious, I thought, was the complaint that sexism was holding Sen. Clinton back. This was utter BS, as the candidate actually benefited from the lowered expectations the public has for women. Think back to the days before the New Hampshire primary in January, when Sen. Clinton cried on camera. It’s clear to me that if a male candidate had done such a thing, he’d be laughed off the campaign trail as a weakling (I deleted several much harsher terms before settling on that one).
(Oh, and her crying-jag lament of, “I have so many opportunities for this country. I just don’t want to see us fall backwards,” struck me as a really chilling choice of words.)
The WSJ article is a hoot, because it explores what a mixed-up organization Sen. Clinton assembled, in concert with her lack of understanding of the nomination process. One of my favorite lines was about the campaign’s chief strategist, Mark Penn (dutifully put through the Drew Friedmanizer, below):
Critics’ bigger complaint was that from the campaign’s start Mr. Penn had been its only pollster. Other campaigns typically use many pollsters to provide alternative views; Sen. Obama has had up to four. Ms. Solis Doyle says that throughout 2006 and 2007, she urged Sen. Clinton to add more. Sen. Clinton told advisers Mr. Penn is “brilliant,” and multiple pollsters would slow consensus on strategy.
But top aides chafed that Mr. Penn used his control of “the numbers” to win most disagreements. “He could go straight to the [former] president of the United States, who in turn got to Hillary,” says a senior strategist. “After a while, people just shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘Hey, look, this is how she wants her campaign run.'”
Mr. Penn defends his polling analyses, and counters that others were responsible for budgets and field operations. “The misleading thing here is, the title of chief strategist connotes that I was in charge of things,” he said. “It was a much more complex structure than any title connotes.”
Anyway, congrats are in order to Sen. Obama and his campaign. As Eddie Griffin recently put it (according to Page 6), “Barack Obama is about to get the Democratic nomination. It’ll be the first time in history that a black man beat a white woman and didn’t go to jail for it.”
Unrequired Reading: May 30, 2008
If elected, I promise to deliver links every Friday morning!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: May 30, 2008”
Get low
Happy 60th anniversary week, Israel!
Photo of the Dead Sea by xnir. As he put it:
The Dead Sea is a salt lake between the West Bank and Israel to the west, and Jordan to the east. At 420 metres (1,378 ft) below sea level, its shores are the lowest point on Earth that are on dry land. At 330 m deep (1,083 feet), the Dead Sea is the deepest hypersaline lake in the world.
Beer-goggling at the WSJ
Last November, I wrote about how the Wall Street Journal’s infamous headshot illo-style — which I like to call The Drew Friedmanizer — had a vested interest in, well, portraying Hilary Clinton a bit unflatteringly:
Nowadays, I think they’re more concerned about derailing Sen. Obama’s campaign. Why, in today’s article about how both Democratic candidates are pandering sacks of shit reframing their messages on free trade as they campaign in Indiana and North Carolina, Sen. Clinton has been transformed:
Maybe she visited Glamour Shots by Deb.
(I like the carefully placed flag pin, although I think giving her a pearl necklace is a bit cruel.)