Mamet's Plays vs. Political Commentary

I've seen David Mamet interviewed, so I know he's no slouch. He seems to be writing his political drivel in earnest, so I can't say that he's a fraud. So what does that leave me with? Some form of narcissism crossed with life in a self-imposed bubble. Back when Mamet "came out" as a conservative, he did so through an essay that reflected a surprising lack of depth and intellectual rigor. But the surprise is not that a smart person can be foolish, or that his initial comments on a subject that he has consistently overlooked will demonstrate the fact that he's new to the issues. The surprise is that somebody whose work suggests that he grapples with serious issues would be so inept at grappling with actual issues.

Five years later, Mamet shows no more sophistication as a political thinker than he did on day one, and if anything his positions are even further removed from objective fact and history. My inference is this: Mamet is good at picking up on serious issues, and of creating fictional scenarios that expand upon those issues, but he's not particularly good at relating his scenarios to reality. Meanwhile, he restricts himself to a circle of similarly minded people who gush over his brilliance, but have no greater knowledge or capacity for analysis than he does. That appears to have been true when he was coasting through life giving essentially no thought to politics except for occasionally fuming that NPR was too sympathetic to Palestinians.

Paul Waldman opines,

To be clear, the point isn't that Mamet is conservative, even though it's true that the overwhelming majority of artists are liberal, so that makes him unusual. The point is that he brings to his political analysis none of the things that make him a good playwright. It would be one thing if Mamet was, let's say, a widely admired painter or photographer who turned out to have simplistic political views. Visual artists sometimes disappoint their fans by not being particularly eloquent when they're called upon to discuss their work, but words are not their tools. A playwright, on the other hand, spends his time studying and manipulating language, ideas, and characters. That someone who has produced insightful art about corners of American life and the human condition more broadly would then turn around and offer political analysis with all the sophistication of the twelfth caller to Sean Hannity's radio show this afternoon is profoundly puzzling.

But it's a good reminder of something: Political writing is a craft, just like writing plays. Pretty much everyone who has ever read a newspaper thinks they could do it as well or better than those who do it for a living, but most of the time they can't. David Mamet spent a lot of time and energy working on his craft, but the fact that he got famous doing it doesn't mean he has any opinions about or analysis of politics that anyone would gain anything from hearing.

I agree with the latter part more than the former. That is, I agree that somebody who has great gifts in one area may lack gifts or skills in another. But I think the things that make Mamet an interesting playwright and screenwriter are the same things that make him a terrible political analyst.

I have enjoyed a lot of Mamet's work, but I have the impression from some of his work that he tell into the same sort of trap that we have seen with other writers, that of thinking he's smarter than his audience. Works like The Spanish Prisoner succeed based upon the strength of the acting, the "solution" to the protagonist's problem was obvious and I find it a bit painful at times to watch "brilliant" characters do one stupid thing after another when the solution is right before their eyes - and when the character finally figures it out, rather than applying a logical ending (not very dramatically interesting) he resorts to the deus ex machina. Even in works I like a lot more, such as The Verdict, Mamet demonstrates little patience with reality. When he needs to force an outcome, his characters do what is necessary to force the outcome - absurd evidentiary rulings, a "feel good" jury verdict without regard for what would happen on appeal. But in Mamet's better dramatic work, the deviations from reality are a form of poetic license. It's not important that the courtroom scenes are often absurd, because the goal isn't realism - Mamet is showing us the flaws of the characters, the arbitrariness of the legal system, how a case can turn more on the personality of the judge than on the law and facts.... And sometimes he's just spinning a ridiculous yarn about one con game or another, with uneven results.

To me, it seems that Mamet is doing the same thing in his political commentary that he does in his scripts, but that he has somehow lost track of the difference between spinning an entertaining yarn that happens to address some important issues and speaking about the real world. Much of Mamet's fiction leaves me with the impression that he does little research, that he's not interested in interviewing experts or poring over books to try to determine if his stories are plausible or if he could accomplish the same dramatic effect while hewing closer to what actually might happen in real life. His political writing displays a similar disdain for research - he'll go with the common wisdom, the buzz from his sycophants and adherents, with reality being less important than belief, perhaps justified by the narcissistic conceit that "If my friends and I believe it, it must be true."

From his political "conversion",

The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

From his latest screed,

The Founding Fathers, far from being ideologues, were not even politicians. They were an assortment of businessmen, writers, teachers, planters; men, in short, who knew something of the world, which is to say, of Human Nature. Their struggle to draft a set of rules acceptable to each other was based on the assumption that we human beings, in the mass, are no damned good—that we are biddable, easily confused, and that we may easily be motivated by a Politician, which is to say, a huckster, mounting a soapbox and inflaming our passions.

Has Mamet truly grown less informed about government over the past five years? Perhaps he floats in a circle of ignoramuses, and their ignorance is catching. Or perhaps he doesn't want to let the facts, even facts he has previously acknowledged, get in the way of his story. I recognize that many of Mamet's factual errors, such as his ignorance of Marxism, may simply be that - repeating the conventional wisdom of his new circle of peers, a reflection of the aforementioned conceit, "If we believe it, it must be right." But with mistakes like "The Founding Fathers... were not even politicians" it's difficult to imagine that Mamet even cares about whether his assertions of fact are correct. For the story he's telling, it's better that the founding fathers be non-ideological non-politicians so, just as with the fictional characters of one of his plays, he changes the facts and personalities to fit his story.

Another flaw of Mamet's political analysis? His logic is terrible. One small example,

As rules by the Government are one-size-fits-all, any governmental determination of an individual’s abilities must be based on a bureaucratic assessment of the lowest possible denominator. The government, for example, has determined that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people, and, so, must be given certain preferences. Anyone acquainted with both black and white people knows this assessment is not only absurd but monstrous. And yet it is the law.

Except government rules are not "one size fits all". Even if they were "one size fits all," that would not necessitate that a "any governmental determination of an individual’s abilities" (whatever Mamet means by that) "must be based on a bureaucratic assessment of the lowest possible denominator". Mamet statement about race is absurd. It appears that he's alluding to affirmative action and civil rights laws, but those programs are not predicated upon a government determination "that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people". They're predicated upon this nation's history of institutionalized racial inequality and racial discrimination. Based upon Mamet's false and absurd distortions, anti-discrimination laws become "monstrous", proof that the government can't believe what everybody knows, that the races are equal in every respect. And yet, in a wonderfully ambiguous flourish "it" is "the law".

Mamet continues,

President Obama, in his reelection campaign, referred frequently to the “needs” of himself and his opponent, alleging that each has more money than he “needs.”

But where in the Constitution is it written that the Government is in charge of determining “needs”? And note that the president did not say “I have more money than I need,” but “You and I have more than we need.” Who elected him to speak for another citizen?

We can start from, is Obama's statement true or false? Does Mamet believe that the President has insufficient money to meet his needs? Does he believe that Mitt Romney is struggling by on his quarter billion dollar fortune, barely able to keep the heat on in his five houses? From any reasonable standpoint the President was correct. But facts are boring, right? So Mamet goes off on a tear about how the Constitution does not place the government in charge of determining "needs". And after that non sequitur whines that the President is speaking for another person. As if Romney denied the charge. As if any person with a brain between his ears would dispute the charge. And then what he seems to think is his pièce de résistance, his brilliant and irrefutable point, "Who elected [the President] to speak for another citizen?" (Well, you see, David, we live under this system of government referred to as a representative democracy, and we do in fact elect our representatives to speak for us.) And yes, it gets worse from there - for the President to suggest that Romney has more money than he needs is the same thing as the government imposing "one-size-fits-all", never mind that the President was speaking about treating different classes of people (notably the ultra-rich) differently than the average working stiff. And there is no difference between that and slavery.

Mamet makes one ridiculous assertion after another.

What possible purpose in declaring schools “gun-free zones”? Who bringing a gun, with evil intent, into a school would be deterred by the sign?

The purpose of the law, of course, is to allow the police to stop and detain, and when appropriate prosecute and imprison, somebody who brings a firearm into the gun-free zone. If it's not illegal to have a gun in a school zone, the police are constrained in their ability to act before the gun is drawn.

We need more armed citizens in the schools.

Why? Because Mamet says so? And this is a universal truth? A school with a gang problem will be a better and safer place if every kid above the age of 18 has the right to bring a gun to school?

Walk down Madison Avenue in New York. Many posh stores have, on view, or behind a two-way mirror, an armed guard. Walk into most any pawnshop, jewelry story, currency exchange, gold store in the country, and there will be an armed guard nearby. Why? As currency, jewelry, gold are precious. Who complains about the presence of these armed guards? And is this wealth more precious than our children?

Actually, no, in most such stores there are no armed guards. But where they are, it's to protect against robbery. Fundamentally, Mamet knows the difference between children, money, precious metals and jewels - not one of the scam artists in any of his plays or movies has mused over whether it would be better to scam somebody out of a valuable patent, tens of thousands of dollars, $millions in gold, or their kids. I doubt we would have to explain to Mamet that just because banks transport cash and securities in armored cars, it does not follow that we need to replace the nation's school buses with armored cars. Businesses don't invest in bulletproof glass and armed security because they are protecting against obscure risk and enjoy wasting money, but because due to the nature of their operations they are under genuine risk of armed robbery.

Q. How many accidental shootings occurred last year in jewelry stores, or on any premises with armed security guards?

I'm not sure how many of the shootings were accidental, but it would seem quite a number - often by somebody who disarms the security guard. ("In 23% of shootings within the ED, the weapon was a security officer’s gun taken by the perpetrator."). As if we needed further confirmation that Mamet does no research and has little interest in facts. Mamet believes that all that is involved in having armed security in schools is "the cost of a pistol (several hundred dollars), and a few hours of training (that’s all the security guards get)" - reflecting his deep ignorance both of the cost of gun ownership and maintenance, and of the actual and continuing training required to make sure that the person with the gun has the necessary skills to use it safely and appropriately.

Did I mention Mamet's inaccurate claim that the President "just passed a bill that extends to him and his family protection, around the clock and for life, by the Secret Service". Does Mamet even know how a bill is passed? That the House of Representatives is controlled by Republicans? Apparently not. Mamet makes the absurd assertion that by recognizing that the President and his family have different security needs than the average American, the government is "regulat[ing] gun ownership based on its assessment of needs", which is... Marxism. Wait - you thought Marxism was when the government treated all people as if they were the same, and that "one size fits all" solutions were tantamount to slavery? That was paragraphs ago. Things have changed. And is Mamet seriously suggesting that the only solution that avoids Marxism is to either extend Secret Service protection to everybody in the nation, or to leave the President unprotected? To the extent that you try to find logical coherence in his arguments, yes, in fact he is.

Getting back to Mamet's plays for a moment, some defend his often stilted, stylized dialog as being "how people talk in real life." I've met a lot of people in my life and none speak in the manner of the characters of, say, House of Games. But the manner in which Mamet spins into a verbal frenzy, taking the President's true statement about Romney's wealth and, in a matter of a few sentences, equating it with slavery? Perhaps the reason I don't think Mamet's dialog is realistic is that I can't hear the voices in his head.

Waldman's commentary on the craft of political analysis is fair to a point, that people underestimate what is involved in writing good political commentary, but if we look at the most commercially successful political analysts of the day we often see little of that craft in their work. If I open a newspaper, I might find Charles Krauthammer opening a column with a dig at the President's use of a teleprompter, an absurd, racially-tinged attack that long ago passed its expiration date. I might find George Will spouting off about how climate change is a myth, with no more interest in the facts than Mamet. And if I flip open a Newsweek... make that click open... I might find... Mamet.

Sorry to say, the biggest money makers in the world of political commentary are charlatants - Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the like - and many of the faces pushed upon us by the "respectable" media are well past their prime, or were never up to the task. Many of the best political analysts would struggle to get a column published by a major newspaper or to get invited to sit among the talking heads on a televised panel or news show. The shocking part is less that Newsweek is so eager to gain readers that it posts an editorial that is on par with an episode of "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo". The shocking part is how many people who you would think would have more respect for themselves eagerly line up to play the role of Honey Boo Boo.

It's a Conspiracy, I Tell You!

"We're through the looking glass here, people. And down the rabbit hole. And we've just had some kind of mushroom...."

Charles Krauthammer and Glenn Beck are on the same page: General Petraeus is the victim of a vast, left-wing conspiracy. As they say, "Great minds...."

I can't wait to learn about how Eric Cantor is actually a Democratic Party mole, or what "they" have on Darrell Issa that would prevent him from issuing a subpoena to Petraeus.

Politics vs. Religion - Looking for Converts

One of the oddities of the G.W. Bush era, it seems to me, was the number of celebrity political conversions (or claimed political conversions) following 9/11. Many of the full or partial conversions seemed reactionary - Ed Koch and Ron Silver, and to some degree Dennis Miller, seemed to be excited at the idea of going to war with the Arab world, with Koch's embrace of Republicans as the only party willing to fight a war on Islam seeming to be consistent with his past statements on the Middle East.

I've never really understood why you would want to trumpet conversions such as these. To the extend that you're talking about a person who understands the issues, a more intense examination is likely to reveal that the conversion is largely limited to a single issue or is nominal. In the former case the conversion is likely to reflect a knee-jerk reaction, not a thoughtful response to changed circumstances. Otherwise you should see a shift in political thinking across the person's spectrum of beliefs, not just an announcement to the effect of, "I'm still liberal on everything else, but I'm a Republican because only they'll pursue this war to its bitter end." If it's the latter, the relabeling doesn't carry much significance. "I'm switching from Team A to Team B, but my opinions haven't actually changed."

Dennis Miller seems to fall, to some degree, into both categories. He's generally regarded as a bright guy, and he historically has included any number of obscure references into his humor in order to both convey that impression and to appeal to a more educated audience. He also had a caustic element to his humor that held no sympathy for the far left, and often seemed to take positions that were fundamentally conservative - did you ever get the impression that he favored a progressive tax code? But if you saw his monologues during his final year on HBO, it was hard to miss the fact that he had spent very little energy learning about, and even less thinking about, the Middle East. He also qualified his political conversion by insisting that he remained liberal on a wide range of social issues, such as reproductive freedoms and gay marriage. So the actual conversion was pretty narrow, and on a subject for which he had a new and shallow understanding, and that shallowness was evidenced by the new, shallow, Manichaen position he took on that narrow issue.

Not that I want to be cynical... (want doesn't actually enter into it - I am cynical)... but you sometimes also have to "follow the money". The counterpart to Dennis Miller would seem to be Arianna Huffington, although her claimed political conversion was much more broad-based. Both Miller and Huffington capitalized on their political conversions, Huffington more successfully than Miller. And with Huffington's recent sale of the Huffington Post to AOL, and her associated announced plan to try to harness as much free labor as possible to fill AOL's coffers with cash, some who previously accepted her conversion are taking another look and asking, "Was it sincere?" You could start by asking if her conservatism was sincere. Frankly, in politics, being able to fake sincerity is a valuable commodity. I suspect that if she possessed that talent, Ann Coulter would presently be a self-professed liberal - her ranting doesn't get her much face time on television and, no matter how absurdly titled, her books don't sell like they used to. Coulter does indignant, self-righteous anger quite well, and certainly there's a crowd that finds such displays to be appealing, but at best that's preaching to the choir. But it is interesting to see how these conversions have boosted (most often temporarily) the public profile of celebrities whose careers are on the wane.

The thing is, even though I see lots of evidence that high profile converts think highly of themselves and their insights, and by virtue of their celebrity they manage to get face time on the television to advance their brands, there's not a one of them whom I would point to and say, "That person gave a really good explanation for their political conversion and why their former positions were incorrect," or even for the single issue conversions, that such an explanation was offered for the one issue that supposedly pushed them over the edge.

Celebrities can be strong advocates for specific issues. Some celebrities are smart, informed people in their own right, and can be respected on that basis. But I'm not seeing the appeal of trumpeting the supposed conversion of a celebrity from one political column to another, and even less so when the celebrity's explanation for the conversion reflects that they remain weak, uninformed (even if self-impressed) political thinkers.

At The American Conservative, Clark Stooksbury recently questioned the political conversion of David Mamet,

Now he has a book coming called The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture— in which according to the the publicity material provided to Amazon.com—Mamet will “take on all the key political issues of our times, from religion to political correctness to global warming.” That sounds distressingly like the sort of right-wing tract published several times a year by conservative talk radio hosts, politicians and teenagers.

Stooksbury accepts that, as described by him, Mamet's liberalism could fairly be characterized as "brain dead" but that "His conservatism doesn’t sound particularly compelling either". Initially, Mamet claimed that his conversion to conservatism was driven by exposure to Thomas Sowell (who at least used to make interesting and thoughtful observations); now he claims that he "doesn't read political blogs or magazines. 'I drive around and listen to the talk show guys,' he said. 'Beck, Prager, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved.'" Ouch? But far from a surprise if you remember the column in which he explained his conversion.

From the publisher's description of Mamet's new book,

In 2008 Mamet wrote a hugely controversial op-ed for the Village Voice, "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'", in which he methodically attacked liberal beliefs, eviscerating them as efficiently as he did Method acting in his bestselling book True and False.

I can't speak for his arguments about method acting, but the only thing left excoriated by Mamet's village voice essay was the idea that he should be taken seriously as a political thinker. If the publisher's strongest endorsement of Mamet's credentials remains that editorial, it's reasonable to infer that this is a "follow the money" situation - that Mamet, perhaps a few years too late, is trying to cash in on his political conversion. I wouldn't be surprised if his M.O. remains the same, "I was brain-dead in my political beliefs, but the wisdom and insight of Thomas Sowell Glenn Beck has set me straight." Authors pitching to a common audience frequently exchange endorsements; I suspect that Mamet his hoping to get his favorite right-wing radio hosts to endorse his book.

Is the problem that there aren't enough strong political thinkers available, such that people see it as necessary to pretend that a little league player is qualified for the All-Star team? Are we so far into a culture of celebrity that, on the whole, we can no longer tell the difference? Or is the problem that, as compared with the most brilliant stars with which they compete, celebrities with half-baked, high school level understandings of politics actually are thinking at the same level as the professionals? ("Hi, I used to write speeches for a President but other than that have no apparent qualification to write on political issues." "Congratulations, welcome to the op-ed page of the New York Times.")

David Frum on the Fourth Estate

Since I'm dredging up memories of Canada, perhaps a bit unfairly, I sometimes wonder if David Frum benefits from the fact that next to nobody in this country knows who his mother was. In fairness, among U.S. conservative political commentators, nepotism reigns supreme. By moving to the U.S. Frum gave up the direct advantage of having a famous mother, although I expect that his family's political and media connections provided him with a significant boost even after he crossed the border.

Perhaps I need to take a couple of steps backward. Who is David Frum? He's a conservative commentator, originally from Canada, and son of the late and highly respected Canadian journalist Barbara Frum. I remember Barbara Frum most clearly from her role as host of "The Journal", a news magazine that came on after "The National", the evening news programming on CBC television. Despite watching The Journal for a period of years, I didn't get a sense of Frum's politics. Based upon David's politics I suspect that she, her husband, or both were relatively conservative by Canadian standards, but while on the air she didn't push an ideology.

Once he stopped personally attempting to impose ideological litmus tests on conservatives, and once he was cast out of the inner circle of conservative commentators, apparently for his suggestion that the Republicans erred by attempting to stonewall healthcare reform, Frum adopted the public position that conservative litmus tests can be counter-productive and started to speak out against the dominant Republican media personalities, and their influence on the Republican Party.

On a recent episode of Real Time, Frum made a comment to the effect that we don't want media figures influencing political decision-making. His statement was not specific to the Republican Party, but was offered as a general statement about the way things should be. It did not appear to occur to Frum that he is essentially a media personality who would very much like to influence the political debate. But I think it's important to point out that there are no media figures on the left who compare to Limbaugh, and even with his declining influence there are none that compare to Beck. The last comparable media figure who comes to mind would be Walter Cronkite, a man credited with helping to extract this country from the Vietnam War.

Now you can make an argument that politics don't belong in the media, or that news figures should be careful not to influence policy debates, and... well, growing up in Canada Frum perhaps didn't have much exposure to the First Amendment, its origins and purpose, but he should be sufficiently familiar with journalism to recognize that you cannot keep opinion out, that opinion can actually contribute positively to a debate, and that responsible journalists can reasonably assert that one side in a debate has a better argument, or that the other side has its facts wrong. (For all of The Journal's objectivity, the joke song about Brian Mulroney that I mentioned here was aired on that show, aired as part of a brief recurring segment devoted to political humor.) Frum must be familiar with the Canadian news magazine show, "The Fifth Estate," something of a Canadian "60 Minutes", and even if only out of that exposure it's difficult to believe that he's unaware of the concept of the media as the "fourth estate", an unofficial societal or political force.

If you accept that the media can responsibly take issues on controversial subjects of the day (as news magazines routinely do, by choosing which subjects to cover and what position to advance), you can draw a distinction between the media figures that Frum is willing to name as having a corrosive impact on political culture and those that might act responsibly, but whose work might advance a political agenda inconsistent with Frum's preferred policies. Or, for that matter, to admit that he's a media figure and to reconcile his own work to advance a specific political agenda through the media with his implication that doing so is a bad thing.

[Edited to correct some data corruption from the Blogger outage.]

Language of Violence and Revolution by Politicians and Opinion Leaders

What mythago said.

I sense that we're going to be overwhelmed with attempts to distance Loughner from the right wing world. "Somebody who knew him in high school says he's a liberal (not that it matters)" kind of stuff. We'll probably also hear "He was crazy, so the fact that politicians and commentators use the rhetoric of violence may not have actually made this shooting more likely." But that misses the larger point, which is that the rhetoric of the likes of Palin, Beck and Coulter legitimizes a mindset that is inherently anti-democratic (small "d" - in a democracy we solve our political disputes at the ballot box, not with guns) and whatever the intention will inevitably be taken literally by some percentage of the population.

It's not acceptable to shrug, "They're speaking metaphorically, so it doesn't count." They only back away from their statements when a price is imposed - and a price is rarely imposed and is even less likely to be significant. "Oh, the crosshairs on targeted Members of Congress were 'crosshairs that you would see on a map'? [Added: the latest 'explanation'.] I don't think I've ever seen that, and it doesn't explain the associated slogan, 'Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!', but... good enough for us."

The more common result appears to be reward - the violent rhetoric or imagery is covered by the media but not criticized (or criticisms are reported from political opponents while the news show depicts the exchange as routine politics), the speaker continues to get "talking head" spots on mainstream media shows... or gets hired to host shows... the sky's the limit. Let's recognize this for what it is in the hands of people like Beck, Palin and Angle: the deliberate use of a known political formula that brings fame, money and political influence.

The political views of Loughner are irrelevant to this issue, as are the political views of the likes of Palin and Beck. Their conduct is the problem, not their political beliefs. If there were a left-wing radio firebrand using equivalent rhetoric, he too would be part of the problem. If he were embraced by the Democratic Party, were an opinion leader for that party, or were considered to be a serious contender for its next presidential nominee, that would highlight a serious problem within the Democratic Party. It's well past time for the mainstream media and the Republican Party to stop embracing the crazy, but if they choose to continue do so they should do as mythago suggests - take credit for legitimizing violence in the political arena and for its bloody consequences.

What Does Glenn Beck Believe?

I don't think you'll get a valid sense of his beliefs by listening to him talk. He's quick to criticize the religious beliefs of others, for example, but how much time does he spend discussing his own? His lists of "principles and values" appear to be a reworking of AA's Principles and Virtues - substitute a dash of nationalism for the references to alcoholism, stir, and look what comes out. During his recovery from alcoholism Beck would have seen how the 12-step program can be a powerful tool for self-improvement. Skepticism of AA being duly noted, I'll give Beck the benefit of the doubt on this one.

But I am not going to cut Beck any additional slack. The book that gives me the best sense of where Beck is coming from is Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven. No, not the parts about the largely forgotten history of the Mormon Church, and not the front-and-center story of a cruel and bizarre homicide, but the material that describes how various schemers, scammers and grifters take advantage of their fellow Mormons.¹ And although I could assume that some of these people are sincere, I find it hard to offer benefit of the doubt to a guy who proclaims that he has had a vision from God to build a gold mine, and that the gold will be found when Jesus returns to usher in the Millennium. "So give me your money, don't ask for any proof that there's gold at the site because I've already told you when the gold will be found and to challenge that is to question God." What if the mark is skeptical? "Pray on it."² Krakauer describes a law enforcement official's effort to remind the people of Utah that God is not an investment counselor. How does this relate to Beck? See the following video, most notably the content starting at 3:08:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Beck - Not So Mellow Gold
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Among the eccentric offshoots of Mormonism, Krakauer details how self-described prophets or cult-like leaders often deify the Founding Fathers and the foundational documents of the nation, even as they misunderstand, misrepresent, or take out of context the beliefs, statements, and principles of those people and documents.

A charitable interpretation of Beck would be that he learned the tricks of the trade of the scammers and decided to employ them for a cause he believes will do good. In the alternative, f course, he's a scammer. "We report, you decide."

---------------
1. I don't mean to suggest that all of the scammers are sincere Mormon, but according to law enforcement officials quoted in the book it's common for the type of scammer under discussion to use their claims of shared faith as a foundation for building trust with their victims.

2. The concept of praying on important issues and decisions is very familiar to Christians, but within Mormonism there's also belief in Moroni's promise, that if you pray with true faith and a sincere heart, God's truth will be revealed to you.

John Hancock's Signature Seems So... Small

I can't quite put my finger on why....

(If you want your own laser-engraved, Glenn Beck-signed copy of the Constitution, bid here.)

I Can't Believe Palin Got It Wrong

Despite her keen grasp of history, Sarah Palin flubs a "who's your favorite founding father" question?

She should have answered, "My favorite founding father is Jesus." Call "bullcrap" on that, Glenn Beck - I double dog dare ya.

What If They're Not Planning to Run as Republicans?

Ross Douthat doesn't believe that Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin represent the future of the Republican Party... although he apparently likes them better than anything else he sees.

This means that there are substantial political rewards awaiting the politician who becomes the voice of an intellectually vigorous conservatism. It probably won’t be Mike Huckabee or Sarah Palin.

Probably? What potential does Douthat see that either Palin or Huckabee is suddenly going to become intellectually curious?

If Republicans are lucky, though, it will be somebody who shares their charisma — but who prefers the responsibilities of leadership to the pleasures of celebrity.

No, if Republicans are lucky they won't be looking at a Palin/Huckabee ticket on a Conservative Party ticket, Douthat himself having all-but-blessed abandoning the Republican Party in the name of ideological purity, even when the third party candidate offers nothing of substance.

Huckabee chooses celebrity because that's the only way he can remain relevant. If you listen to him speak, he's clearly thinking about running for President, trying to stir up anti-incumbent sentiments with talk of "flushing the toilet" (no party reference attached), and making a case that people should quit their day jobs before running for President. Palin seems content to rake in the bucks, literally capitalizing on the fact that you can fool some of the people all of the time. Her habit of quitting whenever the going gets tough probably does disqualify her as a presidential candidate, but what if she throws her weight behind Huckabee? If necessary, on a "flush 'em all" Conservative party ticket?

I know Douthat sees no benefit in trying to enforce ideological purity at the Presidential level, but he just might get his wish for a "scapegoat-priest-king" in the form of Pastor Mike. And really, if the first three potential Republican Party leaders that come to his mind are "Huckabee, Palin, and... I got nothing", his party has a problem.

Update: While Palin wouldn't rule out running with Glenn Beck, Beck has scoffed at the notion of a Palin/Beck ticket as opposed to Beck/Palin. How could Palin not have seen that coming?

The Perils of Democracy

When I watch the Obama Administration forming its policy on Afghanistan, I'm reminded of the Bush Administration (and, well, every administration I've seen in my lifetime) - Push back the date for decisions that may cause blowback such that any negative consequence, that is anything that might hurt the incumbent President in the polls, occurs after reelection (or after his successor takes office).

I suspect that Obama will order an approach that he believes will improve the situation in Afghanistan, but with the idea of wrapping up major military operations by mid-2011. At that time he can begin withdrawing troops without fear of a Najibullah-type collapse of the Karzai government before the election. His Republican opponent will have to decide if he wants to run on a platform of re-escalating and perpetuating the war, or effectively endorsing Obama's policies - and I suspect that in a national election there's a lot more danger to a politician who does the former.

This is hardly unique to the U.S. - there are issues around the globe that could be resolved if elected leaders spent less time worrying about getting reelected and more time worrying about what's truly in the best interest of their country and countrymen. And no, I'm not calling for the abolition of democracy - a cure far worse than the disease. And I would probably be arguing against human nature if I were to ask politicians to treat the public as if it has the knowledge, respect and maturity to accept that it can take years to see the benefits of good policy choices, and that a significant short-term price tag (figurative or literal) can be a small price to pay for those benefits.

Alas, I'm dreaming of a world without lobbyists, and in which people would treat the notion of "Sarah Palin, 2012" as a joke, and where it would be laughable to conceive of people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck as thought or opinion leaders. I don't mean to single out the political right, but it's difficult to think of a current "thought leader" or "political leader" on the left who offers so little substance yet is taken seriously by the media and the majority of the members of a major political party. People are people, and history tells us that the political left is far from immune from the dubious charms of similar "leaders".

In the Washington Post's tepid "America's Next Great Pundit" contest, a Nobel Prize winning scientist asked why our nation doesn't make an effort to separate science from partisanship, recreating the Office of Technology Assessment to try to "help Congress arrive at a common starting point for complicated legislation". Why not? Because the facts, or scientific consensus, frequently aren't politically convenient. Consider, for example, the British Government's decision to appoint a genuine scientist to advise it on drug issues, only to be embarrassed when he pointed out that much of the hysteria surrounding ecstasy and marijuana were exactly that. So he was fired.

Armed conflicts pose a similar problem, with proponents of war eagerly declaring any action with which they disagree to be a sign of weakness, empowering the enemy. We of course see that in pretty much every pro-war analysis of the War in Afghanistan. And, as Roger Cohen's column on Israel-Palestine implies, it's an argument that can lead to self-destructive behaviors that drag out a problem to the point that the best and easiest solutions may no longer be viable. When things are going well, the politicians respond to the popular sentiment that "Things are going well so why do we need to make any sacrifice," and when things aren't going well they respond to the sentiment, "Why do they deserve anything?" And the problem drags on for years, decades, potentially even for centuries.

As the experience of Britain in the Republic of Ireland indicates, the form of government can change dramatically without any significant impact on how the government responds to a serious issue, problem or conflict. Perhaps it's true that we get the government that we deserve - small-minded, foolish, vengeful, irrational, selfish, short-sighted... just like all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time.

And The Missing Letter Is....

"Y"? Kind of... Mikey Mouse, if you ask me.

I think even Mr. Potatoe Head could have spelled that one.

Timing Is.... Difficult

In relation to the anti-healthcare reform propaganda campaign, Paul Krugman writes,

So far, at least, the Obama administration’s response to the outpouring of hate on the right has had a deer-in-the-headlights quality. It’s as if officials still can’t wrap their minds around the fact that things like this can happen to people who aren’t named Clinton, as if they keep expecting the nonsense to just go away.

What, then, should Mr. Obama do? It would certainly help if he gave clearer and more concise explanations of his health care plan. To be fair, he’s gotten much better at that over the past couple of weeks.

What’s still missing, however, is a sense of passion and outrage — passion for the goal of ensuring that every American gets the health care he or she needs, outrage at the lies and fear-mongering that are being used to block that goal.

Personally, I think it's a bit silly to suggest (as many do) that Obama can somehow make a speech or hold a press conference and transform the moment. From what I can see, we have a two-fold problem:

• Irresponsible politicians who are willing to lie to a gullible public, to create an atmosphere of fear, anger and uncertainty about reform; and

• A media that fans the flames, presents false equivalence rather than debunking the lies, or engages in the type of meta-analysis Krugman offers.

In fairness to Krugman (and to myself) there's room for meta-analysis. His column could be viewed as a commentary on President Obama and his critics, not a commentary on healthcare reform. This post is about the weaknesses of our nation's media and its effect on politics, not about healthcare reform. It seems that that the two competing media themes right now are the advancement of anti-reform lies versus "This is a referendum on Obama so he needs to find a solution - all by himself." Except that latter theme is a right-wing talking point, not in any sense a valid approach to the issues or to Obama. (But boy, the media loves the "referendum on Obama" theme.)

People who were watching this phenomenon develop, such as Robert Reich, pushed hard for a vote before the August recess. I don't think that anybody estimated the amount of astroturfing, fear mongering, and lying - not just by professional hysterics like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, or astroturfoing organizations and lobbyists such as Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity, but by prominent Republicans like Sarah Palin and Michael Steele. The amount of media attention on the failure of the Republican Party to stamp out the lies? Next to nothing. Is deliberate lying now an accepted part of party politics, such that it isn't worthy of media attention? Is it "objective" to fail to call out a liar, instead putting on a "he said, she said" show and pretending not to know who's telling the truth? Or deferring to Obama to magically save the day?

What does Obama have to do? He has to line up enough votes to get an acceptable reform package through, then worry about fixing it in future years. Just as happened (and continues to happen) with programs like Social Security and Medicare. Does it make sense for him to launch his massive effort right now in the face of the deliberate, willful lying of the Republican Party coupled with a media more interested in the outrage the lies inspire than in their truth? I suspect we will receive a solid speech from Obama, addressing healthcare reform, as we get closer to a vote. Offering such a speech now would, in my opinion, be followed by a blitz of right-wing distortion and misrepresentation, with the media again taking primary interest in "whose message is winning" rather than who was presenting better policy or even telling the truth.

Some are comparing the present right-wing propaganda campaign to the Swift Boat Liars attacks on John Kerry. There are parallels: People are coming forth with misrepresentations and lies, the target of those lies seems slow to respond, the media is happy to make it the target's responsibility to debunk the lies rather than its own, and the media focus is on "whose message is winning" instead of "whose message is true." So I can understand supporters of healthcare reform being concerned that Obama may "lose control of the message" and be unable to recover the momentum needed to get healthcare passed... never mind that if he had that momentum we would have had a vote before the August recess.

But there's an important difference. Obama isn't trying to win a primary or an election. He's trying to get enough votes to pass a bill. If he gets those votes it doesn't matter if Sarah Palin and Micheal Steel have successfully convinced a third of America that Obama will personally preside over death panels to kill their grandmothers and children - it will have passed, and those lies will be betrayed by history. Seriously, what would Obama's speech accomplish right now - will he change one mind among those who eagerly embrace every insane lie of a Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin or Michelle Malkin? Will those right-wing commentators suddenly become contrite, apologize and tell the truth? Get real. He's not going to win over people who believe - and who are encouraged to believe - that this is a "government takeover of Medicare". To the extent that some "independents" are wavering, due to the extent of the propaganda and their ignorance of the issues, his best bet to win them back is probably not to start a personal campaign right now, but to let the gun-toting nut jobs undermine their own credibility, then to step in at a more crucial juncture with his explanation of the reform bill.

When Congress resumes session, I expect Obama and his team will do a lot of arm-twisting to get votes on board, and to keep votes already committed, and that Howard Dean wasn't just speaking for himself when he fired this shot across the bow of the "Blue Dogs" - "I do think there will be primaries as the result of all this, if the bill doesn't pass with a public option". And Obama has to give enough of a speech to let the country know, in advance of the vote (and after the present round of childish, Beck/Limbaugh-fueled, astroturf driven hysterics are "old news") that their Member of Congress has done the right thing.

Update: I came across a Mencken quote that highlights both that the problem with our news "elites" is far from new:

A good reporter used to make as much as a bartender or a police sergeant; he now makes as much as the average doctor or lawyer. ... His view of the world he lives in has thus changed. He is no longer a free-lance in human society, thumbing his nose at its dignitaries; he has got a secure lodgment in a definite stratum. ... The highest sordid aspiration that any reporter had, in my time, was to own two complete suits of clothes. Today they have dinner coats, and some of them even own plug hats.

Mencken saw some rotten apples in the barrel, but nobody took them out and now.... Actually, I think the problem is more than the celebrity journalist who now, more than anything else, strives to advance his social status - it's that they've been joined, perhaps supplanted, by a class of pundits and commentators who do the same thing, but do no actual reporting (and in many cases never did).