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Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Because today seemed like a good day to have this argument again

From Walter Shapiro’s Salon interview with Bill Ayers:

This is where we probably part company. One of the reasons, in my view, that Nixon got away with pursuing the war was that, in part, the violence of the Weather Underground—and some of the other extreme parts of the antiwar movement—discredited the overall antiwar movement. And that led to a further polarization of American life, which led to the first round of demonology involving yourself.

I don’t see it that way. You could be partly right. I don’t know how to make those cause-and-effect relationships. I would posit a different explanation. I think what happened was cynical and thought through and it was deliberate. And I think what happened was that the Nixon administration determined that they could keep the war going without a domestic upheaval that they couldn’t handle. So they stopped bringing dead soldiers home. So they made it an air war and a sea war that was no longer a ground war. So they withdrew troops and they punished Vietnam and pounded it into the ground. When I say it was a war of terror, that is not idle talk. There were entire areas of Vietnam that were designated free fire zones. If you were a pilot and had leftover ordinance, you could just drop it in those villages and they did. So a couple of thousand people every month were dying, innocent people ...

It was a crime against humanity on an enormous scale. We were trying to end it. In the six years that the Weather Underground existed, we did everything we could to end it. We never hurt or killed anyone—by design. We didn’t want to. Was it risky, were we a little nuts, were we a little off the track? Yes. Did we cross lines of legality and propriety and common sense? I think we did. On the other hand, I don’t think we were the cause of any kind of reaction. I think we were a small part of an upheaval against war and against killing.

No, seriously, I’m glad Shapiro said this – the interview would have had a great big gaping hole in it otherwise.  And while I’m usually sympathetic to Shapiro’s line of argument (no surprise there, I suppose), I’m a bit puzzled by the indirectness of Ayers’s reply.  Not that I expected him to say, “up against the wall, Walter motherfucker,” exactly, but perhaps something like “yes, we went too far, and we alienated just about everybody.  But surely you’ll remember, Walter, that it wasn’t as if nonviolent protests and marches were having any effect on the war policies of either party.  And it wasn’t like proper parliamentary procedure was working in our favor, either.  What’s more, people tend to get their chronologies all confused and compressed when it comes to the New Left, and everybody now thinks everything happened in 1968, as if we had a demonstration in Chicago, got beaten up by police, and went out blowing shit up the next day.  Lots of stuff happened in between the Democratic National Convention and the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion in March 1970, such as, oh, the secret bombing of Cambodia.  So when you say that the violence of the Weather Underground allowed Nixon to get away with pursuing the war, I think maybe you have things a bit, how you say, ass-backwards.” Maybe something like that.  Certainly, something better than “I don’t think we were the cause of any kind of reaction.” Anyway, I’m curious about what you all think—if you’re interested in having this argument again, of course.

On a more-or-less obviously related note, I’d also like to hear what you all think of a bunch of questions Cathy Davidson asked the other day:

If the Frankfurt School’s idea of critique is rooted in a horrific historical moment, one in which intellectuals were not just derided but jailed and killed, if the major theorists of the late twentieth century, virtually all of whom consider critique to be foundational to their method, came of age in the 1960s in the midst of struggles, riots, assassinations, unjust wars, and radicalism generated by a sense of political urgency and agentive hopelessness, what will the cultural criticism of the future look like for eighteen year-olds who voted for the first time for an utterly improbable and historically unlikely president who won. In other words, in the gross world of power politics and partisan politics in the U.S., what happens if what no one could have predicted was even possible a year ago could, through concerted collective effort, become possible? If you believe you have agency in democracy, what is the affective, critical imperative borne of that agency? What is the relationship between theoretical critique and collective action? What is the continuity between success in one improbable arena and the sense that you can enact change in other arenas as well through organized, determined, focused, collective action? What form of progressive critique, evaluation, and analysis emerges when you believe that you have the collective power to enact change in a progressive direction, even against a generation of anti-progressive and highly repressive politics? What form of analysis and future action emerges when you demonstrate, through action as well as through theory, that it is possible to succeed against all predictions, against the assumptions of history?

I know, I know, it’s like Chou En-lai said about the French Revolution—it’s too soon to tell.  But for now, lest anyone suggest that Davidson isn’t being properly dour enough about Obama’s election, let me point out one interesting thing about those 1960s.  No, not the end of them, the beginning.  Take a look at this handy chart of the first 100 days of Presidential administrations since FDR.  Pay special attention to the JFK part, because, you know, Obama gets likened to that guy sometimes.  Youthful energetic charismatic fellow coming in after eight years of Republican rule, right, Camelot and new frontiers and stuff, and look!  On Day 41 he creates the Peace Corps, and on day 88 he invades the Bay of Pigs.  Now there’s disappointment for you!  Even before the struggles, riots, assassinations, unjust wars, and radicalism generated by a sense of political urgency and agentive hopelessness.  Whereas it appears quite possible that Obama’s first-100-days Cuban adventure will involve closing Guantánamo.  So there’s that.

Oh, and this post just wouldn’t be complete without a big hearty bwah hah hah hah to everyone who’s going around saying that the academic left elected Obama.  Everybody now, on the count of three!

Posted by Michael on 11/19 at 11:16 AM
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Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Senate Dems Vote to Punish Lieberman

In an apparent response to Joe Lieberman’s recent support of Republican presidential candidate John McCain, Senate Democrats voted 42-13 today to strip Lieberman of some of his Senate cafeteria privileges.  “I know that Senator Lieberman worked closely and enthusiastically with John McCain, spoke prominently at the Republican convention, and repeatedly suggested that Barack Obama was a danger to the United States,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.  “But this should be a happy occasion.  Let’s not bicker and argue about who betrayed who.”

Reid then announced that Lieberman would retain his position as chairman of the powerful committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, but would henceforth be limited to one side dish at all Senate cafeteria lunches.

Asked about liberal “anger” towards Lieberman, Reid said: “I pretty well understand anger. I would defy anyone to be more angry than I was.”

But he added: “If you will look at the problems that we face as a nation, is this a time we walk out of here saying boy did we get even?”

“I feel good about what we did today,” Reid said. “We’re moving forward.  And Senator Lieberman knows that in the future, he will have to choose between a salad and a vegetable, instead of ordering both.  I think we sent the right signal.”

Posted by Michael on 11/18 at 12:42 PM
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Monday, November 17, 2008

Security and Sudafed

Dear Transportation Security Administration,

I understand that your job is very important.  Why, back in 2002 I even wrote a whimsical little essay in the New York Times Magazine defending the new post-9/11 regulations for airport security.  Of course, that was before things got really baroque—before the personal-care-products industry had persuaded you to confiscate everyone’s toothpaste, aftershave, body lotion, moisturizer, shampoo, conditioner, hand cream, and saline solution.  But on the whole, I’m in favor of everything that prevents crazy people from blowing up airplanes.  So did I complain when you went through my checked bags in 2004 as I was coming back from San Francisco?  No.  And that was the time you left a zipper open—the zipper to the very pocket in which I had stashed all my keys.  I decided that one was my own dang fault for not wanting to sit through a five-hour flight with my keys in my pocket, so I just went ahead and got new keys, even though the electronic key to the Passat was well over a hundred bucks.

Nor did I complain last year when you searched my checked bag, went through my toiletries kit, and opened my electric razor, strewing thousands of tiny facial hairs all over everything else in the kit, from my Vanceril inhaler to my toothpaste.  You know how sometimes there’s a teeny bit of toothpaste right around the cap?  Well, it turns out that that little white spot of fugitive, extratubal toothpaste is a lot easier to see when it’s covered with minuscule beard shavings.  But, again, I didn’t complain.  I am a patriotic American, and I know full well that if you can’t open my electric razor and spill its contents into my toiletries kit, the terrorists will have won.  So I didn’t trouble you the first time it happened—or the second.

Even now, I don’t flinch every time I see that piece of paper that tells me you’ve selected my checked bag to be opened and searched.  Usually, you put things back in good order.  But this time I really think you’ve gone too far. 

I checked one small bag on my recent journey from Harrisburg to Omaha.  I did so not only because I wanted to bring shaving cream and aftershave and a Fusion razor in place of the electric one (see above), but also because my son, Jamie, has a nasty runny nose and needed to travel with Triaminic and Sudafed.  And again, I understand that you need to go through my toiletries bag for national security purposes.  Freedom isn’t free.

But when we arrived in Omaha and I unpacked, I found that the plastic zip-lock bag into which Janet had carefully placed Jamie’s meds (and into which I had re-placed them after giving him a dose of the Sudafed prior to checking in for our flight) was very messy.  Apparently, a member of your staff had gone through my toiletries kit, opened the medicine bag, and even opened the Sudafed itself, replacing the child-proof cap in a strangely haphazard manner that allowed a couple of teaspoons of Children’s Sudafed to spill into the bag.  Thankfully, this employee of yours then sealed the plastic zip-lock bag properly, or I would have had an entire toiletries kit soggy with Sudafed, and no Sudafed.

Amazingly enough, on the way back from Omaha to Harrisburg, another of your employees (I’m really hoping it wasn’t the same one) did it all again, opening my checked bag, my toiletries bag, my plastic zip-lock medicine bag, and the Sudafed bottle, replacing the cap badly yet again, leaving me once more with a plastic bag with a sticky purple liquid lining.  And much less Sudafed.  Oh, and that piece of paper informing me that my bag had been opened and inspected in the interests of safety.

So hey, hey, TSA, what’s going on with your staff these days?  Are some of them addicted to Children’s Sudafed?  Is someone poaching travelers’ Children’s Sudafed supplies and boiling ‘em up into Children’s Crystal Meth?  Or do they simply have nagging cold symptoms for which they need a bracing hit of my son’s over-the-counter medicine?

Like I say, I’m not given to idle complaints.  I don’t even mind cleaning up messes in my toiletries kit.  But, you know, Jamie really did need that Sudafed.  You should probably apologize to him for spilling so much of it.  And if you ever feel like replacing the bottle, that would be a nice gesture too.  In the meantime, I’ll send a version of this letter to your Got Feedback? page, referencing both the Harrisburg and Omaha airports.  Thanks for your attention.

Sincerely,
Michael

Posted by Michael on 11/17 at 08:36 AM
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Friday, November 14, 2008

Postcard from Omaha

Jamie and I are off to watch a team of Mavericks.  So much for all you Palinophobes who said there couldn’t be such a thing.

Posted by Michael on 11/14 at 06:28 PM
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Thursday, November 13, 2008

The whole world’s only source

If I were a better blogger—nay, if I were a better person—I would have seen the Fafblog interview with John McCain when it was published ‘way back on the 2 of November.  Had I only known that McCain promised Fafblog that he would “rescue America and, and take her for my demon bride,” I would have reconsidered my infatuation with Barack Hussein “The One” al-Obama.  And that would probably have tipped the gates of Hell rural Pennsylvania decisively to McCain, not to mention Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina, Iowa, Ohio, and Florida.  And also New York, because I grew up there and my blog is hugely influential in the outer boroughs.  Trust me on this one.

I apologize to Fafblog, and to history.

But by the time you read this, Jamie and I will be off on our Latest Adventure:  a trip to Nebraska and South Dakota.  Why do we keep going west, you ask?  Why else?  To undermine Western Civilization!  In the meantime, we leave you with the immortal words of, um, Fafblog:  Oh no! Not Western Civilization! That’s where all my friends live!

Posted by Michael on 11/13 at 09:29 AM
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Wednesday, November 12, 2008

On birth certificates and Bill Ayers

Some people think that Camille Paglia has a column at Salon because Paglia has some deeply incriminating photos of David Talbot.  But I think that Camille Paglia has a column at Salon because (a) back in the 1990s, guys like Talbot were charmed by her contrarian contrarianicity and (b) now, everyone else in the English-speaking world truly enjoys watching her make an abject fool of herself.  It’s kind of cruel in a way, and yet I doubt that anyone can say she doesn’t deserve it.

I hear that Slate and Salon might team up to create a whole entire Special Edition Extra Deranged Internet, with Gregg Easterbrook as chief science reporter and Camille Paglia as senior political analyst.  Sort of like Pajamas Media, only without the pajamas.

Posted by Michael on 11/12 at 12:49 PM
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