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Thursday, September 30, 2004

Almost forgot!

My single favorite moment of the debate:

LEHRER:  New question, Mr. President, two minutes.  You have said there was a, quote, ‚Äúmiscalculation,‚Äù of what the conditions would be in post-war Iraq.  What was the miscalculation, and how did it happen?

BUSH:  No, what I said was that, because we achieved such a rapid victory, more of the Saddam loyalists were around.  I mean, we thought we’d whip more of them going in. 

But because Tommy Franks did such a great job in planning the operation, we moved rapidly, and a lot of the Baathists and Saddam loyalists laid down their arms and disappeared.  I thought they would stay and fight, but they didn’t. 

And now we’re fighting them now.

I thought they would stay and fight, but they didn’t, and now we’re fighting them now. I think that pretty much sums up Bush’s Iraq policy.

Posted by Michael on 09/30 at 06:26 PM
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Debate summary (in which, for once, I do not pretend to be a Republican)

Well, Wolf, I have to say the surprise of the night was that John Kerry did not endorse Susan Watkins’s recent New Left Review essay, “Vichy on the Tigris,” which, as its title suggests, likens the forces of Al-Sistani and Al-Sadr to the French Resistance (thereby also-- subtly-- likening US troops to the Nazis) and closes with the rousing phrase, “the Iraqi maquis deserves full support in fighting to drive them out.” (I must say, though, that “Iraqi maquis” has a nice ring to it, certainly much nicer than “Iraqi theocrats and thugs.") So I think any viewers tuning in to see Kerry shout, “all power to the Iraqi maquis” may have come away dismayed and disappointed tonight.

That said, I thought the opening half of the debate was basically a tie.  Kerry said his bit on Iraq (do it better!), Bush said his bit on Iraq (freedom is good!), and 43 and 45 percent of the TV audience, respectively, said “what he said.” There’s almost no way for Kerry to get around this.  He can say “I have one consistent position-- Saddam was a threat, he needed to be disarmed, and there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it, and this President took the wrong way,” and that’s fine, but Bush comes back with “you can’t say ‘wrong war, wrong place, wrong time’ and ‘grand diversion’ at the same time you say ‘Saddam was a threat’.” That, together with the fact that Iraq is very likely unfixable, gives you a tie.  Kerry did well to mention bin Laden, and mention his relative un-caught-ness compared to guys we’ve actually caught.  But otherwise, I thought, there weren’t any of those “breakthrough” moments.

But then came the discussion of North Korea, and holy Moloch in a chicken basket, it was like watching a real President debate a B-list actor.  My God, Kerry sounded like he knew more about nuclear policy in and on North Korea than the guy who’s actually running the United States, and that’s largely because . . . guess what?  He does!  Then Jim Lehrer asked what Kerry thought would be the greatest threat a US President would face in 2005.  I expected Kerry to take a deep breath and list a couple of things.  I expected wrong.  Kerry calmly said, “nuclear proliferation.” Short but dramatic pause.  Followed by the best goddamn discussion of nuclear proliferation anyone has ever managed in 120 seconds or less.  Followed, in turn, by a confused and defensive Bush demurring about one of Kerry’s statements about Iran before doubling back and saying that he agreed that the biggest threat was “weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist enemy” and then saying that he would be against this.

Let’s go over that again, shall we?

Kerry:  nuclear proliferation.
Bush:  weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist enemy.

Man, nobody told me this Bush guy was so verbose, prolix, and also wordy.

From that point on, folks, it was a rout.  Kerry gathered steam over the last half hour, and Bush was playing defense-- badly-- on just about every question.  But Bush clearly hasn‚Äôt played defense-- or even backchecked-- for a long, long time.  I was watching the C-SPAN dual screen, and when Kerry sounded good, Bush looked pissed; when Bush’s turn came, more than once he did the blinky deer-in-headlights thing we all remember so well from the morning of September 11. Which suggests something that I hope some of us pick up and toss around the Internet as a possible Talking Point:

Four years of sporadic, softball-laden press conferences and loyalty-oath-screened campaign appearances have made George Bush soft.  There’s no question about it-- the bubble boy hasn’t had any serious give-and-take from a real opponent since the Yankees-Mets World Series.  And tonight he went up against someone who really knew how to make a case, and he wilted.

I’m not just a-spinnin’ here.  Every one of Bush’s utterances on North Korea made him look befuddled and amateurish.  And once that became clear-- to both debate participants-- it changed everything.

For all that, I have no idea whether this debate will affect the election.  I still think 45 percent of the electorate is with Bush even if he promises to sear the flesh of their children with branding irons.  But John Kerry-- and his campaign-- have every reason to be proud tonight.  And Kerry voters should be proud of their guy, too.

Posted by Michael on 09/30 at 04:50 PM
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He’s back!

So Jamie’s hospital stay was mercifully brief.  Clearly, all your notes and e-cards and good wishes had a salutary effect-- and he really liked them, too.  (He’s on this kick these days about “what state” X person or thing comes from, so he was especially pleased to be getting mail from all over the place.) Thank you thank you thank you.

He’s resting, as he should be, which at the moment means something like “watching Scooby-Doo marathons and gradually forgetting that he knows how to do long division.” (Note to giant-insect readers:  Scooby-Doo was not my idea.  I urged him to check out the giant-praying-mantis production of Twelfth Night on PBS, but you know how it is with these kids today and their Internet attention spans and their foolish cultural-studies conviction that Shaggy is “subversive.")

I do have one narratable Jamie moment to pass along.  I’ll call it his Weird Developmental Milestone of 2004-- much weirder than driving a go-cart.  It’s Monday night and we’re driving to the emergency room, and Jamie’s in the back seat saying, “I don’t wanna go to the ER” and a wide range of variations thereon, like “no ER, try other kind,” and “maybe go someplace else instead of ER.” (He has a full quiver of such phrases for when he doesn’t want to do something.) But when he finds that these mild, reasonable objections aren’t having any effect, Jamie balls his fists and declares, “I hate the ER.”

Now, since he knows he’s not supposed to use the word “hate” (for example, in our house we say “I don’t care much for Bush lying us into Iraq” or “I strongly dislike the Swift Boat Vets lying about Kerry’s war record"), this is roughly the equivalent of dropping an F-bomb.  Or so he apparently thinks, because he waits a few long seconds to see if we’ll react in some way.  We don’t.  (How can we?  We don’t care much for the ER either!) And then we hear from the back seat, in a markedly different voice,

“Oh!  You hate the ER.  OK, then, we’ll go someplace else.”

Janet and I look at each other sidelong.  “Jamie,” I say, “are you making up words you want us to say?”

“Yes,” he says.

I told him that he was very clever.  And he is, you know.

So remember, folks, when all else fails, try making up things you want your interlocutors to say!  You might even fool your parents into thinking that one of them is actually speaking!  Or you can try it with creditors ("really, it’s OK if you skip this month-- we won’t mind”wink or political opponents ("say, my administration has been incompetent and corrupt!").

Later today, if all goes well, you might find me on the American Street.  In the meantime, thanks again for all your cards and letters!

UPDATE:  All has gone reasonably well.  Here’s today’s Street noise.

Posted by Michael on 09/30 at 05:26 AM
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Monday, September 27, 2004

Indefinite irony hiatus

That nasty pneumonia has landed Jamie in the hospital.  He’s doing OK and we hope it’ll be a short stay, but I’ll be otherwise occupied for a while.  Feel free to chat among yourselves about any old thing, and send Jamie a good wish if you have a free moment.

Posted by Michael on 09/27 at 06:16 PM
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Blogging has sold out and nobody told me

There’s a fascinating essay in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times about how a group of scientists are searching for the reasons blogs are on the verge of extinction.  It seems that they were once vibrant, snarky, and unpredictable, but now their “spontaneous eruption of populist creativity is on the verge of being absorbed by the media-industrial complex it claims to despise.” As a result of losing their evolutionary niche, some scientists say, blogs are being increasingly eaten by corporate megaconglomerates.  But as they fail to reproduce their own kind, some of their features are being absorbed by Enantiornithes, a fairly diverse group of mass-media blogs, mostly political journals; Hesperornithiformes, toothless mass-media blogs which are chiefly apolitical diaries; and the toothed Ichthyornithiformes, salacious sex blogs whose authors probably feed on fish.

According to one researcher, the “commercialization” of blogs’ “culture of dissent” has recently reached the point at which “media steer readers toward the top blogs,” and “the temptation to sell out to the highest bidder could become irresistible.”

OK, I knew I was coming to the party two or three years too late, well after most of the cool kids had left and the best hors d’oeuvres were gone, and believe me, I’ve had my moments of thinking, “man, Kurt and I put that bl?ºsparx website together in the summer of 2002, why didn’t we convert it to a blog then?  I could’ve had my rumpled shirts and my cans of Genny Cream Ale profiled in the New York Times Magazine by now.” God knows I’ve tried to make up for that profound sociocultural mistake by pointing out repeatedly, to all who would listen and many who would not, that twenty years ago I liked H?ºsker D?º before they sold out by signing that megadeal with TimeWarner in 1989 and agreeing to tour as Michael Bolton’s backing band.

But hell, if we’re already on the verge of extinction, that’s OK so long as there’s money involved.  I therefore declare myself ready to be tempted by the highest bidder.  So, Mr. or Ms. Highest Bidder, sir or ma’am, please identify yourself as soon as possible, since I have only recently learned that Blogshares is merely a “pretend” stock market, and that this blog is not actually worth $63,660.08 in real money.  Thanks!

Posted by Michael on 09/27 at 10:57 AM
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Sunday, September 26, 2004

Just so you know

I turned 43 today.  Not that this matters to anybody except the six or seven readers who’ve asked me for what seems like years now, “when are you going to turn 43 already?”

Posted by Michael on 09/26 at 07:37 AM
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