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Consider:

"It is better to be drunk with loss and to beat the ground, than to let the deeper things gradually escape."

- I. Compton-Burnett, letter to Francis King (1969)

"Cynical realism – it is the intelligent man’s best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation."

- Aldous Huxley, "Time Must Have a Stop"







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Friday, 13 August 2004

Topic: The Culture

Racial Identity: Who Gets to be Black?

I'm not sure my friend John is stereotypically African-American or not. We worked together for a few years in Pasadena trying to hold the computer systems for a chain of hospitals together through the Y2K business and lots of real crises, and had a pretty good time. He's a Vietnam veteran about my age, and a pretty good photographer as you can see in Just Above Sunset here and here. But I'm a white guy from Pittsburgh living in Hollywood. What do I know about what is typically African-American?

John recently sent me a note with an attached article that that made me wonder about it all.

The note:
Well, well, well.... It was bound to happen. A new way to be black. Or is it really new? Or does it matter?

How are Black Americans viewed when Bill Cosby makes a comment about some black households or this comment that Obama "is not black in the usual way?"

What do the French say about such comments? Do they ever hear them? How about the Germans or Brits, or Russians?
Barack Obama, running for the open Senate seat in Illinois, is the son of black African exchange student and a white woman, and a bit of an overachiever - as in Harvard Law School and President of the Law Review. His paternal grandfather herded goats in Africa. Beat that story, Horatio Alger! Now he is said to be presidential material - articulate, charismatic, generous, thoughtful, and positive - maybe our first black president somewhere down the road. That is possible. A rising star.

But John was referring to this -

Black Like Whom?
Vanessa Williams, The Washington Post, Thursday, August 5, 2004; Page A19

Williams, the assistant city editor at the Post says she is stumped.
Scott L. Malcomson, writing in Sunday's New York Times, declares that Barack Obama, the Democratic Senate nominee from Illinois, "is not black in the usual way." To bolster his argument, he cited an article in the New Republic by Noam Scheiber, who voiced the opinion that Obama is "not stereotypically African-American."

How is one black "in the usual way"? What does it mean to be "stereotypically African-American"?

Malcomson tried to explain by emphasizing Obama's mixed-race heritage -- his father is a black Kenyan, his mother a white Kansan. He pointed out that Obama was raised by his mother and her parents in Hawaii, as opposed to being brought up in a black household. He argued that Obama's keynote address at the Democratic National Convention last week "did not . . . sound the familiar notes of African-American politics."
Geez, I guess Obama doesn't qualify or something. [His speech in Boston was covered in Just Above Sunset here.]

I think the idea is the Democrats are trying to foist a fake black man on us, those crafty devils!

Williams says -
After noting that Obama identifies himself as a black man, Malcomson seemed to be trying to prove that the Senate candidate is mistaken about his own identity. "[W]hile he is black, he is not the direct product of generations of black life in America: he is not black in the usual way," Malcomson wrote. I wonder: Is there a "usual way" to be white?
Now THAT is a curious question. I'm just doing my best, but I'm not sure I'm doing this white thing right, really.

Well, Williams was covering a Washington "Unity" convention for African American, Asian American, Hispanic and Native American journalists. She says the group lobbies the industry to diversify its newsrooms, but its core mission is to challenge to the media to "improve coverage of people of color by dispelling stereotypes and myths." And I guess it isn't working.
In presenting Obama as some new template for black success, Malcomson offered an analysis as shallow as the one sometimes spouted by discouraged black teenagers (and roundly criticized by the black middle class): that to embrace the values and behaviors that lead to achievement is to "act white." Worse, his reasoning as to why white voters find Obama attractive is reminiscent of color biases many thought had long been retired: that society favors those black people with particular bloodlines, schooling and mannerisms, while seeing the lot of black Americans through almost-cartoonish generalizations from the dark days of Reconstruction and Jim Crow.
Okay, I take it back. The idea wasn't to foist a fake black man on us. The idea is the guy is so popular because he acts white and isn't threatening and is still black, sort of.

Some of us thought he was impressive because he made sense and inspired hope and offered fine ideas and was a good man - a natural leader - and that would have been true even if he were purple or green. Ah but he was black, or something like it.

And we have to have the back-story, as we say out here in Hollywood, and this frustrates Williams -
... the news media for the most part continue to cover black people in America through a narrow prism of extremes. I call it the first and the worst approach, focusing on black people who soar to unprecedented heights (Obama was the first black Harvard Law Review president) or sink to unspeakable lows (see the suspects on your local television station almost any weeknight at 11).

What of the majority of black people whose activities are not good enough or bad enough to attract headlines? How often do the news media include the names, faces and voices of African Americans in stories that are not about "black" issues, such as affirmative action, or that don't reveal the latest social epidemic?
Well in a world where news is entertainment, that's just not good material. It's just real. Where's "the hook?"

We want that hook, but Williams see a problem with this top-bottom no-middle media view of black folks -
The other byproduct of the media's inadequate coverage of African Americans is its creation of "black leaders," who are called upon to speak for all black people, regardless of the subject. In many instances these spokesmen are simply the nearest, loudest and glibbest people.

Some of these quote machines have been speaking for "the black community" for decades, sounding like broken records on a tinny Victrola. Is it too difficult or time-consuming for journalists to go out and find black parents, wage earners and professionals who can speak for themselves?
No, it is not too difficult or time-consuming. It just doesn't boost the ratings.

While Williams points out there are, "like Obama, scores of middle-class black professionals who have mastered the art of peacefully coexisting with - and excelling among - whites" that is of course, boring. That doesn't grab audience share.

And John asks what the French say about such comments? I suspect the French are laughing their asses off at this kind of crap. From Sidney Bechet and Josephine Baker in the twenties to Dexter Gordon and Miles Davis and all the rest - and don't forget the very gay and pretty black James Baldwin - folks just know where they are welcome. Or where these things don't matter as much. Tony Parker of the San Antonio Spurs - the one back Parisian in the NBA - does not spend the off-season in Texas. Why would he?

Are the French laughing their asses off? Ric Erickson, editor of MetropoleParis, has a comment on that -
I don't think so. Sure the French like circuses, they like black comedy, and on rare occasions they'll vote for ultra right-wing Jean-Marie Le Pen for laughs, to 'send a message.' But, generally, people who are educated get respect - I write 'educated' and not 'rich' - so idiotic attacks on John Kerry and Barack Obama are more puzzling than funny.

They are also annoying. It's like the Republicans have drafted the Marx Brothers' 'Animal Crackers' and this is their whole campaign. They are running Jerry Lewis, but everybody here wants Dean Martin to win, because he's the real thing and old Jerry is the house buffoon....

Excuse me for using the Marx Brothers in this context. They would, if still around, be destroying the GOP with ridicule. Or maybe they wouldn't. The GOP is ridiculous, utter nonsense, and they are not doing too badly in the polls. Americans appear to be bamboozled.

No, I don't think the French are laughing.
My advice to John? Don't want to deal with this are your brilliant or a gang-member murderer stuff? Go to Paris. Meet Ric. And why come back? I'll come along. I like the place.

But this business that Barack Obama isn't really black - or is a new kind of black - or something? Okay. Whatever.

But the joke is Alan Keyes - the guy the GOP just decided to run against Barack Obama in Illinois for the open Senate seat - is the real black guy? Whatever.

The joke making the rounds is Bush and his crew couldn't find the WMD in Iraq, and now they couldn't even find a black man in Chicago and had to borrow on from Maryland. A cheap shot, but funny.

Here's the view from The Economist (UK) this week - The politics of tokenism.

The title says it all -
Three weeks ago in Boston, the Democrats witnessed the birth of a new black star in Barack Obama, their candidate for the open Senate seat in Illinois. Now the Republicans have conjured up a black star of their own to do battle with the self-described skinny guy with an odd name. Alan Keyes, talk-show host, holy-roller social conservative, Maryland resident and sometime presidential candidate, will take Mr Obama on.

The thinking behind this is beguiling in its simplicity: the Democrats have a black man who can give a rafter-raising speech, so we had better find a rafter-raising black man too. Beguiling, but stupid. Mr Keyes's Senate run will produce nothing but disaster--humiliation for Mr Keyes, more pie on the face of the already pie-covered Illinois Republican Party, and yet another setback for Republican efforts to woo minority voters.
A stupid mistake? Republicans make stupid mistakes? Couldn't be!

And why is this a mistake?
Mr Keyes's problems start with his personality. The Republicans' new champion is the very opposite of cool. In 1996 he chained himself to the front door of a television station in Atlanta, Georgia, to protest against a decision to exclude him from a presidential debate (he was then mounting the first of his two bids for the presidency). His speeches can certainly be eloquent. But they can also be intemperate and plain weird, particularly on the subject of gays.

Mr Keyes's politics are of a piece with his personality. He is a genuine intellectual, a disciple of the great Allan Bloom, and has a PhD in political science from Harvard. But his intellectualism drives him to take absolutist positions on some of the most divisive subjects in American politics. He doesn't just call for a reduction of taxes; he calls for the complete abolition of the "slave" income tax. He doesn't just want to blur the line between church and state like George Bush; he argues that the division between church and state has no basis in the constitution. He doesn't just disagree with Mr Obama on abortion; he castigates him for holding "the slaveholder's position" on the subject.
Yeah, Keyes has been saying Obama is a tool of the white slave master and a vote for Keyes is a vote for what God wants. Charming.

Oh, everyone has his or her little eccentricities. But the real problem, as The Economist (and everyone else) sees?
The Keyes candidacy ... smacks of tokenism. The candidate routinely denounces affirmative action as a form of racial discrimination. But what other than racial discrimination can explain the Illinois Republican Party's decision to shortlist two blacks for the Illinois slot--and eventually to choose Mr Keyes? He brings no powerful backers or deep pockets, and was thrashed in his two runs for the Senate in Maryland.

... The Illinois Republicans are not just guilty of tokenism. They are guilty of last-minute scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel tokenism. The local party has been undergoing a sort of collective mental breakdown ever since Jack Ryan's Senate candidacy collapsed in June over a sordid sex scandal. The party tried a laundry-list of candidates, including two former Illinois governors, two state senators, several wealthy businessmen, a former football coach and, according to Dennis Hastert, "a 70-year-old guy who was a great farm broadcaster in Illinois", before turning at last to Mr Keyes.

To make matters even worse for the Republicans, Mr Keyes's numerous defects as a candidate are only magnified by the comparison with Mr Obama. Mr Obama has spent almost 20 years in Illinois--seven as a state senator--and is married to a woman from the South Side of Chicago. He won an impressive 53% of the Democratic primary vote against six strong opponents. He is optimistic where Mr Keyes preaches Sodom and Gomorrah, and moderate where Mr Keyes is intemperate. He is also a rising national star, with unrivalled support from the national party, while Mr Keyes is a serial failure.

The Republicans' fatal mistake was to think that the best way to counter a black man was with another black man. The point about Mr Obama--as the Republicans might have realised if they had paid greater attention to his speech in Boston--is that he is a post-racial candidate.
Exactly. Obama could be purple or green and it wouldn't matter. What he has done and could do, what he thinks and is willing to consider, are what matter here. A lot of the country would rather have things going better than worry about variations on blackness and all the rest. That's so last century.

Yes, the Republicans have made serious attempts to court blacks. Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell aren't chopped liver - even if their actions can be questioned. But how have to agree the Illinois Republican Party's decision to choose Alan Keyes is not a serious attempt at outreach. The folks at The Economist have it right. It is a ridiculous parody of outreach.

It's just sad. Illinois wanted an election campaign based on issues, or one can assume that. The Republicans think a minstrel show would be more fun. They'll lose this one - and look like pandering fools.

___

And then there is the matter of Teresa Heinz Kerry. See Just Above Sunset for information - here and here for notes on her background. She was born and raised in Africa.

Rick, The News Guy in Atlanta, this week raise the question - So if Kerry wins, will that mean that Teresa will be this country's first African-American first lady?

My sometimes cynical friend John answered that - If Kerry wins and Teresa is loved by world and she does good things for everyone is showered with respect and admiration, the answer is NO. Otherwise, the answer is YES.

The idea is if she turns out to be a fine first lady, well, she's white. Easier to deal with. Fits the national narrative.

But then we get this odd story of well, a white man who puts on blackface to call John Kerry's wife a fraudulent African-American. Really.

The GOP Minstrel Show
A white tycoon in blackface race-baits Teresa Heinz Kerry.
Timothy Noah - Posted Thursday, Aug. 12, 2004, at 2:26 PM PT at SLATE.COM

Noah comments on the new radio advertisements this week by a nonprofit called People of Color United that rag on Teresa Heinz Kerry - saying she's no African, or at least no African American.

The copy? Here's some of it -
His wife says she's an African American. While technically true, I don't believe a white woman, raised in Africa, surrounded by servants, qualifies.
And there more of it. I heard it all.

The spots run in minority communities of course.

Noah points out the odd part -
What's interesting about this blacker-than-thou statement is that it's underwritten by a white man. People of Color United, although run by a black woman named Virginia Walden-Ford, got nearly half the money for its media buy from a Caucasian insurance tycoon named J. Patrick Rooney. Walden-Ford confirmed ... that Rooney gave the group $30,000 for a series of ads that are running in swing-state urban areas, and that the total ad buy thus far cost $70,000. Rooney, she said, was the group's biggest donor. All its funding information will eventually be public, but the law does not require People of Color United to file with the IRS before the ads go on the air. It will be interesting to learn whether a single person of color has written a check to People of Color United.
Hey, whatever works.

But Noah is angry -
I don't know about you, but when I hear a statement meant to inflame gratuitous resentment of white people, I prefer that it come from a black person. A white man who puts on blackface to call John Kerry's wife a fraudulent African-American is committing so many kinds of bad faith that I scarcely know where to start. Why did he do it?

The answer has nothing to do with the struggle for civil rights. Rooney is a medical-privatization pimp. His former company, Golden Rule Insurance Co., and its successor, Medical Savings Insurance Co., market private savings accounts of the type that Republicans are gradually using to displace health insurance provided by the government under Medicare and Medicaid (most recently in last year's Medicare prescription bill). In pursuit of this goal, Rooney, his family, and his employees have lavished more than $5 million on the GOP. Rooney's latest game, according to a recent story in Business Week, is to mau-mau hospitals into lowering rates for uninsured patients while simultaneously (and much more quietly) securing debt forgiveness for his company.
Well, Rooney claims he goes to an all black church - except for him I guess - and was elected to the church board. He says he's one of them. Really.

So he's got brass balls or bad eyesight - or both.

Ric Erickson, editor of MetropoleParis, shot me a few choice, terse comments.
She was born and raised in Mozambique.

Makes her an African-American, more than the 95 percent of black Americans. It's another case of someone knowing absolutely nothing - about Africa. If Americans whose forefathers came from Africa 300 years ago want to identify themselves with Africa they are making a serious mistake. They aren't 'Africans.' Teresa Heinz Kerry is. Millions of whites in Africa are.

This J. Patrick Rooney guy is a total, evil, witless buffoon.

But what has she got to do with anything? Is somebody putting her on a ballot? It's the kid's stuff again.

If we actually cared about Teresa Heinz Kerry's background in Africa, we might want to ask which side she was on in Mozambique. But let's not. It's old history now and she didn't have any choice when it came to parents.

From people I've met who were born or brought up in Africa, I've learned that they are Africans regardless of color. Isn't the business of saying Teresa is a 'fake' African just another way of saying she's 'not American' - a bit like Canadians are 'nice' because they're 'not American'?
Yeah, I guess that is the argument - she's not one of us. Fear of "the other" works in elections.

But Ric's perspective comes from living most of his adult life in Europe, I'd guess - a much smaller place with many languages and cultural differences all jammed together on a chuck of land less than half the size of the United States. The "other" for Europeans can be a two-hour drive down the road - where everything is different, where people speak a completely different language and eat odd food and all the rest. One shrugs, and tries to get along.

We, on the other hand, have always had the luxury of relative isolation. The exotic was always way far away and safe. Fat men in lederhosen swilling beer and doing that dance where they slap each other, and telling what seem to be jokes in an incomprehensible agglutinated language - that was far, far away - except for some German polka halls in Cleveland, and no one goes to Cleveland. Africa - we know that from "Born Free" and "The Lion King" - and all those old Tarzan movies MGM used to shoot down in Culver City (the back lot is now an apartment complex that still has a few of the little lakes they used for the river scenes - and I used to live there). France we know from that Gene Kelly film with Leslie Caron.

And now Kerry wants to foist this odd woman on us. It is un-American or something.

But was the exotic was always way far away and safe for us? Ric in Paris wonders about that.
It you are ever in New York City an interesting trip is the one in the harbor to Ellis Island, which also includes a stop at the Statue of Liberty.

At one time, say from before the founding of the United States, until the 1960s or 1970s, America was exotic itself. Millions of 'exotic' foreigners were filtered into America via Ellis Island, and the statue was a result of a subscription made by the French.

From what I hear, many Americans are now only 'at home' if they live close to a 'mall' containing cloned shops, that are reproduced endlessly across the land. A narrow, twisty, Paris street evokes no affection or awe - it's too annoyingly complicated.

But to Europeans America is truly exotic. Even your hurricanes are exotic. Imagine - you can't leave the 'safety' of your house being destroyed by water and winds because of all the alligators flying around!

It's time for Americans to recognize the exotic at home. The risks of living in America are real. Coming soon - homemade 'boutique' cheese!
Indeed yes.

But it's not, however, that we're racist (the Obama-Keyes issues) or xenophobic (Teresa Heinz Kerry is too odd and neither black nor white). We're just... what? Careful?

This is one interesting culture here.

Posted by Alan at 21:52 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Saturday, 14 August 2004 10:10 PDT home


Topic: Election Notes

Questions from our man in Paris to Americans over here....

I've been trading a lot of email with Ric Erickson, editor of MetropoleParis, on the topics that have appeared this week on this web log.

In regard to this week's posts he asks some questions.
I can't believe how confused potential voters are. A dozen times I've heard something like, "Uh, I guess I'll have to vote for Kerry." It almost sounds like they're thinking of voting for Goering to stop Hitler from getting elected.

What is supposed to be wrong with Kerry? Why is it worse to marry nice rich ladies than to suck up to the Saudis? Why is it worse to have gone to Vietnam, gotten shot, gotten medals and promotions, than to have bugged out from a bug-out unit? Why is it worse to have a French cousin than to fake 'cleaning the yard' on a turn-key ranch? Why is it worse to have army buddies who've lost arms and legs than to have a buncha buds in the Houston Petroleum Club?

Why is it that Americans can't remember who got them into the mess they're in? Why should they trust the guy who dunnit, rather than a guy with clean hands? Is it because he can pronounce words with seven letters?

And then there's this recent talk about Americans loving to have a dodo for president in time of war. How many thought Professor Woodrow Wilson was a dodo? How many thought Franklin Roosevelt was a dodo? Or Harry Truman? Or Ike? Or did it change with Nixon? Not a dodo either, but a liar. Well, a politician. Maybe needs to be a liar. But if you've got a worldwide conspiracy of terrorists on your ass, do you want a dodo as leader? Or are you so terrified that you need one? It's all nonsense. Nonsensical.

Same goes for that macho shit. Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Ike WON wars. The Russians collapsed, ran out of steam, so Reagan doesn't count. He, run by Nancy, trail-driven by Nancy; he wasn't a second-rate drugstore cowboy? The only war he really won was the wreckage of the University of California. It was Berliners who tore the Wall down, not Reagan's cunning. He beat up the professors. He would not have lasted a minute up against Woodrow Wilson.

California is a crazy place. Americans shouldn't be blamed for it.

But if people can't figure out who is causing the trouble, then they're not likely to pick the right guy to fix it.

The place is about one ballot away from being a banana republic.
Feel free to respond in the comment area below, or drop a line to editor@justabovesunset.com - and Ric and I will get back to you.

Posted by Alan at 17:10 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
home


Topic: Couldn't be so...

Running with the story - Say your can't do the job and it's yours....

This item has been in the news for a few days. And it was a big deal on French television this evening.

Unfit for Bottom? Then Try the Top
[no byline], The New York Times, August 13, 2004

The bare bones -
Working for the Central Intelligence Agency is not for everybody. Just ask Porter J. Goss, a onetime covert operative.

In a brief video clip posted Thursday on Michael Moore's Web site, www.michaelmoore.com, Mr. Goss says he would not be able to get a job with the modern-day C.I.A.

"I am not qualified," says Mr. Goss, President Bush's nominee to run the agency. "I don't have the language skills. I, you know, my language skills were Romance languages and stuff. We're looking for Arabists today. I don't have the cultural background probably. And I certainly don't have the technical skills. As my children remind me every day, 'Dad, you got to get better on your computer.' "

The clip was taken from an interview conducted with Mr. Goss on March 3, 2004, for Mr. Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11." Mr. Goss, 65, appears briefly in the film, but the excerpt on the Web site does not.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Goss, Julie Almacy, said his comments had concerned the skills needed to be an operative.

"He's certainly qualified to be the director," Ms. Almacy said. "He's talking about a case officer."
Oh.

UPI covers it this way -
Washington, DC, Aug. 13 (UPI) -- The prospect of Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., facing a tough confirmation has grown with news he once said he was not qualified for a job in the agency.

In March Goss told left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore: "It is true I was a case officer, clandestine services officer, and yes, I do understand the core mission of the business. But I couldn't get a job with the CIA today. I am not qualified."

Goss said that was because he lacked the language and computer skills needed now, the New York Daily News reported. ...
The BBC has this -
US Congressman Porter Goss, nominated to be the new director of the CIA, may be talking himself out of the job, according to film-maker Michael Moore.

Moore, who directed the film Fahrenheit 9/11, has released an interview with Mr Goss in which he says he lacks the qualifications for the top spy post.

"I couldn't get a job with CIA today. I am not qualified," Mr Goss told Moore's production company in March.

The White House has dismissed the interview as "ridiculous hearsay".

The interview did not make it into the final edit of the film, which criticises President George W Bush's policy on Iraq.

But following Mr Goss's nomination by the president, Moore has released the transcript and video excerpt on his website. ...
Well, it had to hit France, right?

In a Friday night email from Ric Erickson, editor of MetropoleParis, he notes -
This might be 'old' news by now. In any case, my report isn't complete because I wasn't paying attention. This is from tonight's France-3 evening TV-news, broadcast between 19:30 and 20:00. (No TV news on France-2 tonight on account of showing the curtain-riser in Athens.)

Starts off kind of like this - Bush announced yesterday or the day before some dude was going to become CIA head. He's the best, the brightest, blah blah.

France-3 says, 'But!' there's this bit of video tape, left out of Moore's '9/11,' shot last April (2004), where this same dude says he's incompetent to run the CIA - absolutely incapable of doing it.

I didn't see or hear the whole report. The guy in question was talking in English, while French TV-news ran the audio of the French translation over him.

(I've since heard that this is about an old CIA hand, who was operating in the '70s or '80s. But in Moore's video taped in April, the guy says there's no way he can begin to run the CIA.)

What did he say the other day when Bush showed him off to the White House press corps?
Goss said little. Bush said he was wonderful.

Some folks don't think so -
During an announcement made in the White House Rose Garden, Bush described Goss, 65, a Florida Republican as "the right man with strong experience in intelligence and in fighting against terrorism."

This was immediately disputed by two former senior agents.

"When was he in the CIA?" asked former top CIA Iraq analyst Judith Yaphe of Goss's agency career.

When told that Goss had been a case officer from the mid-1960s until 1971, dealing with Latin America, Yaphe said: "But that is so long ago. It's not as if the cultures at the agency now were anywhere near what they were back then. I would worry about his genuine depth of knowledge."

Yaphe said weeks ago Goss deliberately made statements that undercut Acting CIA Director John McLaughlin, adding, "John is a decent, well-meaning man, and Goss really screwed him."

... Former CIA agent Larry Johnson also questioned Goss's qualifications. "There is one thing Goss didn't really do for the last several years -- he didn't chair the House Intelligence Committee, in spite of what his resume claims," said Johnson. "Instead, he did the dead man's float."

Johnson said Goss did not have the experience claimed. Goss did not "push through real reforms, for example, getting more funding for badly clandestine assets. He didn't do any of it."

Former CIA Counter-terrorism Chief Vince Cannistraro agreed: "Goss has never been very distinguished, but he's protected. He's a Bush loyalist and has been in the forefront of those who have tried to place the major blame for the 9/11 attacks on the agency."

... Goss was born in Connecticut, graduating from Yale in 1960, according to his office bio. He went to work for U.S. Army intelligence and after two years, moved to the CIA. He left the agency in 1971, was active in business, and in 1989 was elected to Congress where he has remained. He is currently chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the bio says.

Goss's appointment comes at an awkward time. His nomination, which must be approved by the Senate, comes as Bush is expected to act on a number of executive orders for intelligence reform recommendations from the commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks.

Yaphe, who thinks Goss would be too partisan said: "This whole appointment is a cheap political trick. One of the recommendations of the commission is that no political appointee be made director. But this is so clearly political. If Goss isn't a political appointee, than I don't know what is."
Business is usual.

On 30 January 1976 Gerald Ford made George Bush's father, who later became the first President Bush, the CIA director, where George Herbert Walker Bush stayed up to 20 January 1977 - all of eleven months.

George Herbert Walker Bush came to that post directly from his job as head of the Republican National Committee. Some folks see the job as Director of Central Intelligence as a political position - as you want information you like, not information that upsets you.

Well, Carter became president and that was that.

Oh, don't feel sorry for George Herbert Walker Bush. After leaving the CIA in 1977 he was made director of Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals by Dan Quayle's father and family, who owned controlling interest in the Lilly company and the Indianapolis Star. And it all came out just fine - Bush then got to be president and young Dan got the vice presidency.

Anyway, now Porter Goss is the man of the hour. The Democrats won't oppose him. Not that they don't want to - but they don't have the votes in the Senate and they'd just look bad by raising a fuss in these trying times.

Let the French point out the issues on the Friday night news in Paris. Our press gave up, and we gave up, a long time ago. This is our leader.

Ric in Paris says this -
Considering that many think '9/11' was a failure of intelligence, of spy craft, Bush's choice is astonishing.

Let the CIA candidate speak for himself, as he did to Michael 'Born Troublemaker' Moore.
Well, he spoke, and everyone shrugged. Let him have the job.

Posted by Alan at 16:34 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Friday, 13 August 2004 16:40 PDT home


Topic: Sport

Sidebar: The Apolitical Side of Rugby

In The Bad-Boy Vote you will find a discussion of George Bush's undergraduate years at Yale, what someone who knew him there has to say about it, and the photo from the Yale yearbook of Bush punching out a rival player in a rugby game.

Bob Harris at the website This Modern World published the photo and made some comments about the game.
Incidentally, while rugby is a contact sport, every player knows that tackling above the shoulders is a foul. So is leaving your feet during a tackle. Either of these is serious enough that the other team is immediately awarded a penalty kick, often directly resulting in points for the other team.

So even without throwing a punch, Bush is already well outside fair play.

Grasping an opponent by the back of the head and punching him in the face is beyond the pale - I've watched rugby avidly for years, and I've never seen it during an open-field tackle like this, honest - and will typically result in a player being immediately sent off.
And I said this... Rugby has rules? Yeah, I suppose it does.

My friend Joseph, the expatriate fellow now living in France, doesn't much care for the game and said this -
I've seen a lot of rugby over here, and while a good sport, playing it doesn't much impress me. Having played a bit of both, let me assure you that despite the padding, American football is a lot rougher, and would have most rugby players crying in ten minutes.
Had Bush played varsity football at Yale, would things have worked out differently? Perhaps - but a useless speculation.

And I commented to Ric Erickson, editor of MetropoleParis, that I found Rugby an odd sport. He likes the game. His reply?
In France rugby is an elite sport in the sense that it isn't professional, it is played 'for sport.' The guys who play it regularly are very tough - mostly stonemasons from the Pyrenees. No wimpy Parisians. Some rugby players are fragile little guys - fast sneaky guys who flummox the oxen. They try to stay untouchable - for their health.

What's so odd about it? It's a faster, rougher game than US football. It moves more. It's not static. It's fluid. There are fewer set pieces - more flow. A lot of chance happens in it. While the stonemasons are in a tangled heap, some little guy gets the ball and runs half the field with it - with not a touch on him. The game doesn't stop for commercial breaks. They can't flash them in like they do with soccer because there's usually too much happening.
Okay, I'll have to look into rugby.

Posted by Alan at 15:21 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Friday, 13 August 2004 16:41 PDT home

Thursday, 12 August 2004

Topic: Election Notes

Eschew nuance, and odd words. Notes on what really matters...

I cite the Guardian in the UK too much. Consider this -
When the BBC quizzed Britons on the greatest battles in the nation's history, to accompany its Battlefield Britain series, it got some curious responses, particularly from the nation's youth. Less than half of 16-24 year olds knew that Sir Francis Drake defeated the Spanish Armada, with a fifth crediting Christopher Columbus, 13 percent C.S. Forester's fictional navy hero Horatio Hornblower, and 6 percent Gandalf, the wizard in J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy "The Lord of the Rings" for the achievement. Some say that the findings are not surprising given that too little history is taught in schools, the BBC has scaled back its educational programming in favor of entertainment, and that the universities accept too many students, dumbing down exams accordingly. Others suggest that British intellectualism has always been overhyped. As Cambridge historian John Adamson told the Christian Science Monitor "in the broader culture, we have a certain disdain for clever-cleverness."
Ah well, same on this side of the pond. Thus Bush is preferred to Kerry, the overly clever one. Keep it simple. Eschew nuance, and odd words.

But screw Drake. Imagine Gandalf at Trafalgar. I have to admit that would have been way cool - he slams his wizard staff down on the deck of the HMS Victory and proclaims, "You shall not PASS!" Cool. But we got Admiral Nelson instead. Too bad.

So, the British kids and most American adults don't like detail, or don't mind getting it wrong. And most Americans hope their leaders don't get bogged down in all this detail and nuance.

What do most American adults care about? Just what has Bush tapped into that assures him the election?

A University of Arizona psychological researcher, Mark Landau, has they answer. Folks just don't want to die.

UA study suggests people reminded of 9/11 support Bush
Judd Slivka, The Arizona Republic, Aug. 12, 2004 12:00 AM

This covers the University of Arizona study that suggests, when reminded about Sept. 11 and mortality, people wanted Bush as their leader and not John Kerry.

Of course. And the detail?
... the more someone thought about Sept. 11 or their own mortality, the more prone they were to support President Bush. "The strength (of the responses) was ridiculous," said Landau, who plans to vote for John Kerry. "These effects were found regardless of a person's political orientation."

The results from Landau's study dovetail with a recent Arizona Republic poll, which found that a majority of Arizonans surveyed felt more comfortable with the president when it came to domestic policies. Three previous academic studies seemed to confirm the UA doctoral student's findings: In times of trouble, people gravitate to charismatic leaders. It also reinforced the Bush campaign's strategy of using Sept. 11 and war-on-terror imagery in the campaign.

"Because the prosecution of the war on terror has become a touchstone of Bush's re-election campaign, one might wonder whether references to 9/11 are effective in increasing support for President Bush and, if so, why," the study says.

... In three other surveys, Landau and eight researchers around the country found that when confronted with thoughts of Sept. 11 or mortality and given a choice of types of leaders, those studied most often chose Bush rather than an anonymous, less charismatic candidate.

"We had another type of leader, also," Landau said, "a task-oriented leader who said, 'Let's get it done, let's put the Stars and Stripes away and just do the job.' That leader did really badly. People need leaders. I don't think it's a liberal vs. conservative or Democrat vs. Republican thing. It's more than a practical decision people are making."

Results will be published in the September issue of Psychology and Social Psychology Bulletin.
This will be a "primal" campaign, or so it would seem.

We want our Gandalf. It really is more than a practical decision people are making. We want the myth, not detailed and accurate truth.

It's not exactly that we want our leaders to lie to us, but we want something like that. John Kennedy in 1962 said this when he gave the commencement address at Yale that year - "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie deliberate, contrived and dishonest but the myth persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." But that's what we want, or so it would seem.

Rick, The News Guy in Atlanta, comments on people wanting the myth, not the reality -
Voters make practical decisions in times of trouble by voting for the charismatic bobble-head in much the same way that a non-swimmer who is drowning, on spotting his rescuer approaching across the water, makes the practical decision to climb on top of him; often as not in such cases, they both die.
Yes, such "practicality" has its limits.

And people will believe what they need to believe. I guess we need myths.

Posted by Alan at 17:52 PDT | Post Comment | View Comments (2) | Permalink
Updated: Friday, 13 August 2004 19:43 PDT home

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