The public policy arena can be compared to a grand opera house, whose foundations were laid in turmoil, and which despite the magnificence of the Grand Staircase and Grand Foyer is reputed to contain numerous secret passages and dank cellars. Two of the chambers marked “do not enter” are the Hall of Race and the Chamber of Journalistic Collusion respectively. This week the patrons of the opera, unsettled by the changing times, have taken a turning into these dark chambers. Now they’re there what is going to happen next?
The open rooms of public discourse were marvelous to behold. The maze of corridors was “almost as bewildering as it was agreeable. Giant stairways and colossal halls, huge frescoes and enormous mirrors, gold and marble, satin and velvet, met the eye at every turn.” But beneath the gorgeous passageways were places deemed to dangerous for the casual to enter.
The site of the Opera House was chosen in 1861. It was determined to lay the foundation exceptionally deep and strong. It was well known that water would be met with, but it was impossible to foresee at what depth or in what quantity it would be found. Exceptional depth also was necessary, as the stage arrangements were to be such as to admit a scene fifty feet high to be lowered on its frame. It was therefore necessary to lay a foundation in a soil soaked with water which should be sufficiently solid to sustain a weight of 22,000,000 pounds, and at the same time to be perfectly dry, as the cellars were intended for the storage of scenery and properties.
That’s what holds everything up. Now the public stumbled into the place where all the race cards are stored — whether played by the conservatives or the Left — through the Shirley Sherrod affair. There’s something in this rambling hall for everyone and one can make Andrew Breitbart, NAACP, the Obama Administration or the media the designated goat in this affair as they please. To consternation of the Opera House management a food fight has broken out in the Hall and and looks likely to continue. Reuters calls the food-fight a “Race Mess”. Almost forgotten in all of this is the question of whether any government organization can hand out subsidies or penalties without in some way becoming involved in the toils of race. Perhaps more government means more perceived ‘racism’ since somebody somewhere will always disagree with the way the pie is sliced.
Particularly in a depression, when taxes bite more and benefits are subjectively needed more desperately. Any transfer of economic benefits in which different races are on different sides of the redistribution arrow means that the more transfer payments, the greater the racial tension. But so much for the hall of Racial Iniquities. What about the Chamber of Journalistic Collusion? Or as it is sometimes known, Journolist?
This, if anything is where the Phantoms of the policy opera reside. To some observers this is where the ropes which cause chandeliers to fall unexpectedly from the ceiling must be located; the place from which voice pipes send eery, echoing words through the halls; this too is where the dynamite that might bring down the whole opera is piled; floor to ceiling, amidst cigarettes, matches and ash-trays. Its inmates complain of the public intrusion into their private space. But can they really run their own private editorial board? To James de Long the basic problem is that Opera House management has allowed things to be run from beneath the floors for too long. Who is really running the show? The directors listed on the playbill or the secret rope-pullers?
The real problem with JournoList is that much of it consisted of exchanges among people who worked for institutions about how to best hijack their employers for the cause of Progressivism. Thus, the J-List discussion revealed yesterday in the Daily Caller was about how the group could get their media organizations to play down the Reverend Wright affair and help elect Barack Obama.
Were I an editor of one of these institutions, I would instantly fire any employee who participated in this gross violation of his/her duty. For example, the J-List included Washington Post reporters, and the idea that the paper has been turned into a propaganda organ is a big reason it is bleeding readers and influence.
Of course, it is possible that the Post’s editors were on the list, since the membership is not known, in which case the corporate executives should fire the editors, or the board should fire the executives, or the stockholders should fire the board.
Fired? It is unlikely to happen: if the Angel of Journalistic Musik were cashiered the Opera itself might stop. But never mind: the really significant thing is that the stately opera of public policy has had its boundaries significantly expanded into the spaces and sewers beneath the street. The rope barriers have momentarily collapsed, and having fallen down, are unlikely to be set up again. The public is now milling in places where they were never meant to be and it will be the devil to get them out again. Because while the Journolist incident is of itself relatively small potatoes, the idea that the Fourth Estate is either just an extension of the Democratic Party or that its splinters are just mouthpieces of Bible-toting, gun-clinging Klan Members is now being openly debated.
What effect will this spillage have? One possibility is that the political and media establishment are in danger of losing control of the narrative. The verboten subjects are now being discussed: the foundations of redistributive politics and the legitimacy of the elites — or the right to criticize the elites — are now themselves open to debate. Since the drivers of both are economic hard times and an explosion in information technology, which are long term trends, they cannot easily be put back into the bottle. The questions are now basic and unavoidably so. Political discourse has left the channels of business as usual and will not return until a new consensus is established. It may be that they will be answered in favor of more redistribution and more centralization. Or the answer may be the opposite. But whatever befall the Opera will either have its Ghost or be rid of him.
I have prayed over his mortal remains, that God might show him mercy … It was his skeleton. I did not recognize it by the ugliness of the head, for all men are ugly when they have been dead as long as that, but by the plain gold ring which he wore and which Christine Daae had certainly slipped on his finger, when she came to bury him in accordance with her promise. The skeleton was lying near the little well, in the place where the Angel of Music first held Christine Daae fainting in his trembling arms, on the night when he carried her down to the cellars of the opera-house. And, now, what do they mean to do with that skeleton? Surely they will not bury it in the common grave! … I say that the place of the skeleton of the Opera ghost is in the archives of the National Academy of Music. It is no ordinary skeleton.
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Meanwhile, the hammy baritone Senor Obama, playing Faust, swaggers to the front of the stage to transfix the increasingly restless audience with yet another encore performance of his Damnation aria. BEHOLD, HE IS SINGING TO BRING DOWN THE CONSTITUTION!!!
Well, let us hope that the opera house in Wretchard’s metaphor does not lead to a disaster like the fire in another opera house: the Ringtheater in Vienna in December 1881:
“On December 8, [the Ringtheater] was featuring the second night of Jacques Offenbach’s opera Les Contes d’Hoffman, which was proving popular with both the wealthy and middle class of Vienna. According to the custom of the time, the wealthy theater patrons who sat up front near the stage did not arrive until the last minute so the two balconies at the Ring filled up first. It was about 6:45 p.m. when a stagehand took a long-arm igniter to light the row of gas lights above the stage. He inadvertently also lit some prop clouds that were hanging over the stage.
The flames quickly hit the stage curtain, but the theater’s established fire procedures were not followed. The theater’s iron fire curtain, used to restrict fire, was not lowered, nor were available water hoses used immediately. Worse, the stage managers panicked and shut off the gas totally, cutting off light in the theater. At this point, the situation dissolved into chaos. The balconies became clogged as the exits jammed. A fire brigade brought ladders, but they were too short to reach even the first balcony. Despite an attempt to use a curtain to create a net, some people jumped from the balconies, not only killing themselves but also crushing people on the ground floor. . . . The estimated death toll was somewhere between 620 and 850 people.
The remainder of the structure was demolished and replaced with the Suhnhof building. This memorial was destroyed when Vienna was bombed during World War II. Today, a police station [per Wikipedia: 'the federal headquarters for police in Vienna and the general inspectorate of the federal security guards, and the new police commandos'] sits at the site.”
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/theater-fire-kills-hundreds-in-vienna
Wretchard can doubtless extract another morality tale from this incident too.
So, now that this is all coming out into the open for everyone to see that “the right” and “the left” operate with different, or even disparate, rules; the right must ever be constrained in political discourse while the left is free to operate under the “by any means necessary” mindset. What happens next?
Hearing echos of Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle”, Richard? Be mindful of what lies behind those locked doors.
Say I could get behind a new production.
“The Phantom Of the Opera” as written by Carl Marx, Directed by Groucho, Lead Male singer Harpo, Lead Female singer Roseanne. There will be different orchestras for each act. There is some controversy about the knife fight scene in a dumpster behind a KFC between Moore and Rosie over a half eaten drumstick. The Chorus is somewhat uneven due loss and replacement of members. Cannibalism amongst the members seem to increase with each performance. Because of his objection to the castration scene Obama was demoted from lead to a minor character.
After learning today a coloratura soprano in a supporting role was contacted on her blackberry while at center stage and “ordered” to immediately switch to her death aria, I can’t help thinking one side or the other has lost all sense of responsibility and reality. Now, more than ever, is the time to hope for change. Sooner than later would be best.
So, now that this is all coming out into the open for everyone to see that “the right” and “the left” operate with different, or even disparate, rules; the right must ever be constrained in political discourse while the left is free to operate under the “by any means necessary” mindset. What happens next?
It is this quality of near-open enmity which is variously described as the ‘decline in civility’ or ‘hate speech’ which is notable in the current atmosphere. How far will “they” tolerate things. The bile in journolist is matched I think, by an equal hostility in parts of the conservative blogosphere.
Will things begin to heal and move back towards consensus or will they get even more strident? My guess is that it will get worse before it gets better, as it has when fundamental issues have been at stake in history. Right now the major issue is the role of government. In the past the idea has been that government should fix things like historical racial problems by intervention. The possibility is now emerging that it is in some way adding to the problem by creating dependency on the one hand and taxpayer resentment on the other.
The lines have got to be redefined so you don’t have coincidence between economic flows and race. My guess is that the way to racial equality is probably more overall economic development and conceivably less government. Otherwise society can wind up in a cycle of failure where transfer payments become the only way to keep people from destitution. The other question that emerges is whether the social policies which have smashed up families can be reversed. If so they should be reversed by neglect. A government policy to “build up families” is probably going to be a hash. Better to let people alone and they will figure it out.
In Australia there have been a lot of articles trying to understand how “Asian immigrants” capture the vast majority of the places in selective schools. The basic theory is that these Indians and Chinese types achieve success by putting their kids through relentless reviews and tutoring schools. But the answer is likely to have nothing to do with the tutoring schools. It has to do with family values. First of all the Indian and Chinese-type immigrants are from the right hand tail of the distribution. They are not your average Chinese or Indian. Secondly they have cohesive family cultures which drive and motivate the kids. The tutoring schools are the effect, not the cause of this drive to academically achieve.
It’s a curious example of the way in which a culture reacts to a selective immigration. An immigration system built around the points system effectively recruits the elite of the Third World. Your average Indian or Chinese may be less enterprising than your average Aussie, but certainly the selected Indian or Chinese will be a different proposition. And hence you get this disparity. The question becomes how do you transfer those values back into a culture which has in many ways is in danger of losing its drive to excellence. Culture is a powerful factor in determining achievement.
The subject of Max Hasting’s recent article Ideologues of illiteracy: The terrible damage wrought on our schools by Left-wing educationalists was how a ‘white’ culture is effectively threatening turn itself ‘black’ in stereotypical sense.
Given enough Welfare and Public Housing you get the Chav who is racially white but completely hopeless. This is not strictly due to government and even if government was reduced, some kind of cultural debate would probably have to take place to evolve a culture of success. But in any event the defects of the current model are now being revisited and in the acrimony of the debate there will be a lot name calling and hair pulling.
The obvious counter to the Sherrod set of travesties and to the alluded problems comes from the Basics:
All
No exceptions, additions, passes, you take them as they come.
Men
In the context of the time and the view of the original writers (even outside of the current zeitgeist extant): humanity, male, female, black, white yellow, brown, other
Are
State of being, being of the present tense not past nor future
Created
Made, By God, YHWH, or whatever frame you use. (The islam thing excepted, because it reserves its right to recreate at will, which gives no constancy. God is consistent.)
Equal
Nobody is protected or special than those beside you in the
voir dire. Before the law you are neither as good as
Mother Theresa or as bad as OJ Simpson, you just are.
Not a bad set of rules for governing your dealing with your fellow man (in the old context)
Given that set of circumstances nobody loses.
cant make the html edit thing work. needs some……..crap: you all know what it needs……….
Yes, there was also a missing part to the clip of National Security Advisor, General Jim Jones, telling an anti-semitic joke. The part that was edited out had him confess his realization that such jokes are hurtful to people and that the telling of these jokes did not advance the national security interests of the United States.
Richard, this is an excellent analogy. It also points to the reality that the arena of public discourse is in fact an entertainment venue. The journalists on the left and right are successful because they have a receptive audience. The narratives succeed because they resonate. Breitbart seems to have a masterful grasp of how to frame a story and set in motion an idea that is appealing; this makes him a threat to the Left, who like to think they have no serious competition in this game. But when security concerns become vivid, as happened for a few weeks in 2001, entertainment becomes secondary to survival. At such times the vestiges of the old narratives heavily influence the credibility of sources of information. IMHO the Democratic Party (and the Left more broadly) has firmly established that it cannot be counted on to protect and defend the country. Now in fact I don’t know what Obama or Hillary would in fact do in the face of, say, detonation of a nuclear device in New York. Maybe they’d be as tough as nails. But it would fit their existing frames to “not jump to conclusions”, “give sanctions a chance”, ask for a resolution condeming “violent extremism”, and perhaps advise us that we should “make soup.”
The United States federal government is histories largest hate based organization and Barack Obama is fittingly the head of it. The KKK was never so well financed, organized, and armed.
When the government love-love-love-love-love- love-love-love-love-LOVES Mexican foreign nationals and bequeaths them with extra-legal rights, it is fair to say in comparison that they HATE white, black, and Asian taxpayers. Yes more of the same, that is what hate-based organizations do.
Wretchard #7
The question becomes how do you transfer those values back into a culture which has in many ways is in danger of losing its drive to excellence. Culture is a powerful factor in determining achievement.
Sonny Bunch has an interesting review of three new documentaries on the role of teachers’ unions in the deplorable state of American public education. “For the first time in living memory, poor-performing teachers and the unions that protect them are under real scrutiny. So much so that even documentarians—the most liberal enclave of the most liberal institution (the entertainment-industrial complex) in American society—are now taking aim at union excesses. Theaters across the country have seen an explosion of films that cast a critical eye on public schools and the reasons for their failures.”
The three films are The Cartel, The Lottery, and Waiting for “Superman”:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/bright-lights-bad-schoolhouses
“Ask pupils questions rather than give answers”
The teacher has a deal with the students; they can do what ever they want as long as they support the teacher’s ideological extremism and unionist thuggery. Hard sciences in college teach hard science, any other classes, like foreign languages, are a mental gulag of Leftist cant.
Wretch is exactly right.
Immigrants ALL come from the right hand tail of the distribution. Thats why they are immigrants. Your usual stick in the mud insurance salesman or fruit merchant aint gonna leave a solid (but limited) living for the risky travel to Oz or US or wherever. That risk-taking is an outgrowth of intelligence. So you get what you expect: Andy Grove, Albert Einstein, Carnegie and an endless list.
The consequences for their youth is to be expected. Calif., as I understand it has limited the access of Asians to their better Universities. Fine. Some guy named Cho from UC Long Beach will own the state by 2045. No problem, Cho said.
Thats why Mr Fernandez lives where he lives and why he got his education where he got it. (He is absolved; he had no way of knowing of either Auburn or Tech from whence he came)
Like Toadold, my first reaction to Richard’s metaphor was to recall the Marx brothers, specifically the final part of Night At The Opera in which they manage to destroy a production of Il Trovatore in the escalating mayhem that nobody else did so well.
However, I take exception to Richard’s comment that “The bile in journolist is matched I think, by an equal hostility in parts of the conservative blogosphere.”
The difference is that the conservative blogosphere is on the fringe, the Journolistas are sitting at the center of power. Their hands are on the levers, they own the opera house, they set the agenda and drive the narrative. To toss another layer of metaphor into the mix, we don’t even have a seat at the table.
W/7–”The possibility is now emerging that it is in some way adding to the problem by creating dependency on the one hand and taxpayer resentment on the other.”
The biggest source of racism in our society is the very government that claims to deplore it and those who feed off it. They need it, they thrive on it. In my everyday doings with ordinary citizens I almost never hear anything I’d call racist or, at worst, mild teasing or jokes. Maybe that qualifies but shrinks in the face of the constant barrage we experience from hundreds of govt agencies.
Re “selective immigration”–immigrants are already self-selected by pulling away from their comrades who are content to stay home and put up with it. They will come here despite all the cultural, social, dietary, and legal differences, not to mention depression, homesickness, and often a loss of status–just to be here. We have constantly received the cream of all those countries and been enriched.
On day a fellow from Guatemala, talking about the difficulty of life as a non-English speaking immigrant, said to me: “Life here is hard and pretty; life in my country is hard and ugly.” He made his choice and, with his attitude, I have little doubt his offspring will benefit this country.
PA Cat #2: The opera-house disaster you described is remarkably similar to a more recent, and closer to home disaster: The Station nightclub fire of 2003. It even started in a similar manner.
I can almost hear Obama and his fellow Dems repeating Jack Russell’s words when he realized the place was going up in flames: “Wow…this ain’t good.”
DER RISEN KAVALIER
Enter stage left, the Journochorus
To the tune Love Is Here To Stay
It’s very clear, our love is here to stay
Not just this year, but ever and a day
They say our papers may crumble
Our ratings may tumble
When people have their say
But our love is here to stay
To the sound of only left hands clapping, Harry Reid sings, to the tune I’ve Got Rhythm
I’ve got sixty, I’ve got sixty
I’ve got sixty, who could ask for anything more
Don’t like health care, what do I care
I’ve got sixty, and we’ve got more like it in store
The orchestra swells, the lights go dim, as the risen knight, Der Risen Kavalier, strides to center stage, and sings that enchanting aria, Chicago, joined by Harry and the Journochorus
Chicago, Chicago, that toddlin’ town
Chicago, Chicago, I’ve turned it around
Every little piece of the pie I have given
To my many friends who are livin’
In Chicago, Chicago, my home town
The curtain comes down to riotous applause, and the audience files out into the night, as darkness closes in.
#17 Joshua
The Ringtheater fire and the Station fire are also similar to the Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire in Boston in 1942, in that it was flammable decorations combined with open flame (in this case, a busboy’s lighted match) that triggered the disaster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoanut_Grove_fire
Responsible as she is, I think Caroline Baum might still be low balling the potential unemployment numbers a bit, as I think the administrations target unemployment rate is, will end up being, about 90 -95%.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-19/obama-omits-jobs-killed-or-thwarted-from-tally-caroline-baum.html
Wretchard said, “The bile in journolist is matched I think, by an equal hostility in parts of the conservative blogosphere.”
I think the Right has been, even now, too restrained in pushing back against the continues depredations of the Left, hoping against hope that one day they will be satisfied and leave us alone; see the complete lack of interest in Codevilla’s essay at NRO for instance.
For a long time, the Country Class, which is interested in getting things done rather than politics, has let the Left have their little bits of Affirmative Action and Political Correctness; it’s not that big a deal and the US is a rich country.
But two things have changed:
1) The money has run out
2) The Country Class is beginning to realize that the Left will -never- be satisfied until the US is “fundamentally transformed”, in the words of BHO.
To quote this excellent article, “The country class sees the ruling class as the a**holes who won’t let them live their lives freely.” and sees the Ruling Class’s attempts to better them “as a desire to enslave them.”
The Left started this, and I hope there is enough of the Don’t Tread on Me spirit left in this country that it can be stopped. But as Edmund Burke said, “All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”.
Walt #18
and the audience files out into the night, as darkness closes in.
While the brass band plays “There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” as a cue for the rioting to begin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJOGg7hIJ_g
Just how flammable race can be is suggested by the behavior of everybody. You can make the argument that Andrew Breitbart shouldn’t have run the incomplete video; or that the unseeming alacrity to fire Sherrod is a reflexive result of people who having something to hide and hide it anyway out of sheer guilty habit. Or it maybe that even the call for apologies from both sides of the political divide, initially for Sherrod and now for Breitbart is the result this hair trigger getting pulled by the slightest twitch.
Sometimes it seems like one of these family disputes in which the sole entertainment in the clan consists of ascribing the worst motives to each other. Nothing can be said without the ascription of an ulterior motive. Maybe the reason Black and White relationships in America are this way is because they have in some perverse way become family to each other. If so then it will rage on until doomsday, with lawsuits and thumb-tacks on the seats and scenes at Thanksgiving. But so long as the tinder doesn’t catch things will shamble on if the economy keeps ticking over and sanity prevails; just like those chronic diseases which are irksome but don’t become life-threatening as long as the immune system stays up.
The problem is that with the ending of the age the organism is going through a phase change. Its vulnerable and its leaders, instead of going home and nursing the fever are burning up the credit card on the red hot town and making whoopie. Then if the car doesn’t start and they have to walk 10 miles home in the snow then they just might get more than they bargained for. A little sanity, a little patience and some common sense and it will all work out. Unfortunately there is so little of that in this world. Why that is so has always been a mystery. We don’t need to be saints to survive on the earth. Maybe the bar to Heaven is low, seeing as it’s all we can climb over.
PA CAT/19
The Coconut Grove fire in 1942 was interesting in another respect. In 1942 Boston College was undefeated, ranked number 1 college football team in the country, with their last game against a mediocre Holy Cross team. Holy Cross won the game 55 – 0 (iirc) and BC canceled their celebration party at the Coconut Grove. they lost a game and saved their lives. Such are the twists and turns of fate. The captain of that Holy Cross team later became the head football coach at my high school.
I think we are only in act 2 of the Bureaucrat of South Georgia starring Shirley Sherrod as the bureaucrat. Andrew Breitbart as Portia and Barack Obama as Shylock. like a similar play by a guy named William something or other I think this Shylock loses his ducats in the end. This race card was dealt from the bottom of the deck methinks.
I listened to the whole tape and I think the ultimate winer might be Blago because in context there is nothing this lady said that could offend. Indeed rather the opposite. if I was Blago’s attorney I would be hoping that a couple of the jurors would be following this controversy when I tell them that the government only showed you tapes and the parts they wanted you to see.
America is in turmoil today because the elites in the media, government, the universities, and foundations have become deaf to the people and representative democracy is no longer working. The problem cuts across party lines and even to a certain extent ideology and it is being exasperated by a woefully mismanaged economy that is crashing hard on everymans head. The MSM has no street cred left and neither do the politicians.
Our first female president shouts, “Off with Shirley’s head. Sentence first then the verdict!” And under the bus she goes along with the Rev, grandma, Bill Ayers and so many others. Most fascinatingly though she apparently took less than five seconds to throw herself on her sword. Allah himself should have such devoted followers. Even the old purged Bolsheviks confessing to crimes they knew they didn’t commit for the good of the Party didn’t do it with the alacrity of this woman.
#25 Joe Hill
the ultimate winner might be Blago
Blago seems to have learned the art of keeping his mouth shut for once: he’s signing autographs for his courthouse fans instead: “He stopped to sign autographs twice today; the first time was during a break in court proceedings, for a group of regulars who show up everyday, the second time was when he walked out of the courthouse. . . . A double decker bus passed the courthouse filled with tourists, one of whom made everyone on the bus turn to look when he said ‘Hey, that’s where that Blago guy with the hair is on trial!’
Blago, who was arrested by the feds in December 2008, says the biggest lesson he’s learned from this trial, is that he talks too much.”
http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/07/21/blago-trial-silence-is-f-ing-golden/?test=latestnews
With a bit more economic stress the sanity that Wretchard is hoping will save us won’t be there to do it. The revelation of the hidden “gold” tax in the health care Trojan horse has got some fevers running higher, and I don’t think it’s just the gold bugs who are catching.
All of you econ smart folks… can we expect a downturn in the fall? Isn’t it almost a seasonal event?
Just enough heat to finish this fine stew. Then it’s Grandma’s suppertime rules: first everyone gets a helping, then we look to pass around seconds.
After visiting primary schools, talking to teachers and attending classes, Gross paints a portrait of a mad world dominated by the theory that education must be ‘child led’.
That is just how I have been describing business management as working these days too. Teachers don’t teach, managers don’t manage, POTUS don’t POTUS.
Welcome To The Nu Darc Ajis.
can we expect a downturn in the fall?
Mebbe. Let’s say the Saudis convince Obambus that the US should support a joint attack against Iran, maybe two weeks before the election. How’s that strike you?
News as entertainment:
I remember years back when Rush Limbaugh explained the reasons that he was succeeding and leftist on the airwaves were not. One of the reasons was that he saw himself as an entertainer. If your show doesn’t entertain then your ideology won’t keep your audience. That is also one of the reasons that he would talk about other things than politics.
It seems in all endeavors that the left has gained control of those endeavors are failing and more and more people are realizing it. Monopoly makes the people who have it lazy and eventually the monopoly gets broken. Once the 1968 crowd and the Saigon Commandos took over the News Media it has been a down hill slide.
I agree that technology is passing them by.
I agree with Wretchard that there have been plenty of intemperate voices on the right’s blogosphere, but the key difference between the right and the left at this moment is that the left-wingers who wrote on Journolist were “important people”, rather than some angry dude with an internet connection. I have rarely seen such bile on behalf of significant cultural representatives on the right that could even come close to what was written by those men and women who have so much power in controlling public opinion.
Maybe this is why the “black bloc” protestors get a pass when-ever they’re shown on TV smashing windows, assaulting cops (and civilians), setting fires and causing mayhem- because the people in charge of feeding us our messages don’t just tacitly support them, but in reality wish they could be doing the same.
Fred Barnes has posted his reflections on l’affaire JournoList over at WSJ:
“I think JournoList is— or was— fundamentally different, and not simply because one of its members proposed to make palpably false accusations. As best I can tell, those involved in JournoList considered themselves part of a team. And their goal was to make sure the team won. In 2008, this was Mr. Obama’s team. More recently, the goal seems to have been to defeat the conservative team.
Until JournoList came along, liberal journalists were rarely part of a team. Neither are conservative journalists today, so far as I know. If there’s a team, no one has asked me to join. . . .
My experience with other conservative journalists is that they are loners. One of the most famous conservative columnists of the past half-century, the late Robert Novak, is a good example. I knew him well for 35 years. He didn’t tell me what stories he was working on nor ask what I was planning to write. He never mentioned how we might promote Republicans or aid the conservative cause, nor did I.
What was particularly pathetic about the scheme to smear Mr. Obama’s critics was labeling them as racists. The accusation has been made so frequently in recent years, without evidence to back it up, that it has little effect. It’s now the last refuge of liberal scoundrels.
The first call I got after the Daily Caller unearthed the emails involving me was from Karl Rove. He said he wanted to talk to his ‘fellow racist.’ We laughed about this. But the whole episode was also sad. I didn’t sputter at the thought of being called a racist. But it was sad to see what journalism, or at least a segment of it, had come to.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704684604575381083191313448.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
OK, all these years of commenting at the BC, and I finally have an excuse to brag on my construction business!
We recently finished the Winspear Opera House in Dallas. Designed by Spencer de Gray at Foster and Partners of London, it is a visually striking and aurally magnificent hall, and we are very proud of it.
Here are some photos. And here is their website.
And, we won the Build America Award, the Oscar of the construction business. We won not only in our division, but also the Grand Award, the top prize across all divisions. Here is the press release.
Anyway, no time to add further comment. Just wanted to brag.
L3
21. jWarrior
I think the Right has been, even now, too restrained in pushing back against the continues depredations of the Left, hoping against hope that one day they will be satisfied and leave us alone; see the complete lack of interest in Codevilla’s essay at NRO for instance.
……….
Rush mentioned that that people should be alert for who mentioned Codevilla’s essay and who did not.
What’s up with the NRO?
My dad was inside the pentagon in 1968 when the Viet Nam War protesters surrounded the Pentagon and attempted to “Levitate” it.
The incident was memorialized in Norman Mailer’s chaotic book “Armies of the Night.”
I used to tell people that those demonstrators succeeded-because of the radically changed demography of Washington DC suburbs.
Now those demonstrators have been rewarded by stint in the White House.
For some strange reason, this post brings both “The Rabbit of Seville” and “Inglorious Basterds” to mind.
I wonder which is more appropriate?
#33 L3
Congrats!
Winspear sounds a bit Wagnerian, a good name for a Festspielhaus West.
The Journolist threads that I’d like to see are the ones concerning Sarah Palin. I’ve heard no mention of them but with the revelation of journalists back-stopping for Obama on l’affaire Wright, I surmise that threads on Palin must also exist. I further surmise that they are full of very ugly smears and perhaps even greater levels of collusion. If and when the Palin threads are released we’ll see some truly hideous faces behind the masks of objectivity–faces that will make the Phantom look like Brad Pitt in comparison.
Wretchard @ 23: “You can make the argument that Andrew Breitbart shouldn’t have run the incomplete video.”
Completely invalid argument. The incomplete tape still reveals something even the NAACP ought still be ashamed of.
It wrote that the reaction of those in the audience before Sherrod got to tell of her now reformed view (that all poor needed to be treated equally).
The reaction of the crowd is newsworthy — the mirror image of a klan rally in development — and the journalists have clearly decided not to do their job of exposing it. And that malfeasance is apparently to be an ongoing criticism because these guys are not gonna be fired (in your own estimation). Exposing what the MFM won’t is what Breitbart is best known for.
It should be alarming to all anti-Statists how some “conservative” talkshow hosts were ready to toss Breitbart to the wolves today. We are fighting the nascent Minitrue, and so we can expect more half true videos to be mailed out for gotcha purposes. Count on it.
wretchard (#7):
The King’s horses and men certainly can’t do it, but can anyone?
As to today’s strident climate, I spent some time the other day reviewing the Scopes Trial.
#38 starling
Ed Driscoll just posted the daily document drop from Daily Caller: it’s the Palin material you were looking for.
Sample: “The conversation began with a debate over how best to attack Sarah Palin. ‘Honestly, this pick reeks of desperation,’ wrote Michael Cohen of the New America Foundation in the minutes after the news became public. ‘How can anyone logically argue that Sarah Pallin [sic], a one-term governor of Alaska, is qualified to be President of the United States? Train wreck, thy name is Sarah Pallin.’”
http://pajamasmedia.com/eddriscoll/2010/07/22/your-daily-caller-journolist-document-drop-du-jour/#comments
I have a relative in the IT business. He has an eccentricity. He will receive Email but he will not reply to it. If he wants to communicate, he will use the telephone or go directly to someones office. He keeps note in a note book. His reasoning is that Email is damn near forever. You can erase it locally but more often than not it can found on a server somewhere, and that it can be taken out of context, or you can make a misstatement that will be used against you due to some fishing expedition lawsuit. I used to think he was overly paranoid but after seeing the number of people and business brought to grief by Email I’m beginning to think he is right. Apparently it is a lesson that conspirators can’t wrap their little minds around.
What’s striking about journolist is the the depth of malevolence so openly shared among the participants. It does not require a great leap of faith to imagine that same conversation alive and well among the Democratic party apparatchiks, or even in the WH or among Pelosi’s staff.
You do not have to scratch very deeply into the 20th Century to see how things turned out when the “we know better” crowd got the opportunity to enforce its progressive ideology on the rest of them, and not just coincidentally gain control of their societies’ engines of wealth and prestige.
Machiavelli did a pretty good history of republics. John Adams expanded on Machiavelli’s work with his eye on the dangers hanging over the nascent Great American Experiment. The story has been told and retold a hundred times.
The Left has pushed politics beyond the boundaries of civil conversation. I suppose it’s only a matter of time until it becomes obvious to every Tom, Dick and Harry that their survival forces them to join a faction of one sort or another. The Left has killed the Republic. There ain’t no going back. That doesn’t necessarily make the future permanently dark, but it will be different.
Of course, these Indian and Chinese are far from being “ordinary”, and elective immigration rules have little import on this. Indians who immigrate are most probably belong to high Brahman caste, cultivating language learning skills for many generations, and Chinese belong to bureaucratic intelligentia, learning Mandarin Chinese and Confucian canon for untold generation. This is alike high educational achievements of Jews: they also have generations of scholars and religiously mandated family values, including universal cultural value for the best possible education for their children.
When the US Army got to the German city of Achen they faced a heavily fortified position. It probably would have been best to simply bypass the place but the imagry of a Allied capture of the first German city would not be denied.
The Germans had prepared very carefully, with overlapping fields of fire covering every street. But the US Army, experienced with both the capture of Brest and the hedgerows of Normandy, refused to play by those rules. They went not down the streets but house to house – through the walls. The Germans finally retreated to their final impregnable redoubt – the opera house in the middle of town. With plenty of supplies and a massively constructed building offering good fields of fire all around they could hold out indefinitely.
Or so they thought. The Army brought up a tracked 155MM gun, and firing from horizontally from a short distance away proceeded to knock the opera house down around the Germans ears. The defenders soon gave up, and the German general in command complained that such use of heavy artillery in a direct fire role should be outlawed.
Today’s fascists, the Left, burrow down into the opera house and think its strong construction and noble origins will protect them. Each effective weapon deployed by Conservatives is decried as criminal. We are going to have to be willing to break some bricks.
Herb, #8
Interesting that Kagan in her hearings refused to endorse the Declaration of Independence as having any bearing on her duty to judge according to the content of the Constitution. The Constitution, of course, does not specifically declare that all men being created equal. And Kagan’s Constitution, I fear, is evolving away from that specific declaration of the Declaration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ortona
It’s rather amusing that the German general wanted to outlaw that use of artillery, since that of course was artillery’s original purpose – to knock down the castle walls) Your story reminds me of an account I read of the second battle of Fallujah, the one where the marines completely cleared that city of it’s Al Qaeda elements. The story was rather quickly glossed over, which was a shame since it was a remarkable military accomplishment.
Fallujah, as you may recall, had become the headquarters for AQ in Iraq, and they treated it as such. Not only were there multiple car bombs planted along every access road towards the city center, and multiple firing positions, AQ had also created a central fortress of sorts, a final redoubt from an existing large, public building with multiple underground levels. (I think one of Saddam’s old military installations) They had filled it with welded steel doors and protected firing positions – the AQ planners envisioned a full-on infantry assault in which their last group of fighters (estimated to be a couple of hundred) could inflict massive casualties even if they died in the process. That was their dream – that was their plan.
AQ, and the Iraqi’s in general, never understood artillery – that was one of their great military failings. They had never seen accurate fire, and thus had no concept of it; apparently they saw it as akin to the rockets they would like to launch, noisy and scary but with no true aim. But today’s howitzers can hit a target with an accuracy of a couple of feet from 20 miles away, and there was a battery standing by outside Fallujah. The Marine field commander saw that the remaining AQ fighters were all breaking from their positions and heading for this final redoubt, and he called on his howitzer battery. A short time later, with AQ buttoned up in their great final bunker, 20 155mm high explosive concrete penetrating shells dropped through the roof in one 60 second span. A marine witness commented later that the last 5 or 6 shells to drop did little but make the rubble bounce.
And that was it – the great Final Battle of Fallujah, prepared by AQ for months, over in less than 60 seconds with no further American casualties and 100% AQ casulties. (all those in the bunker) For them, unrealistic assumptions and wishful thinking had finally met up with hard reality.
regarding the opera house metaphor: if there is so much dynamite stored in the basement, it may just be time to take a match to all of it. I’ve been feeling quite Nietzchean lately – that which is about to fall deserves to be pushed.
34. Charles
What’s up with the NRO?
What’s up, for one thing, is whoever’s in charge of hiring new contributors (e.g. Daniel Foster, Reihan Salam). It’s turning into an Above-It-All, A-Pox-On-Both-Their-Houses convention over there – a snotnosed one to boot. Between that and Goldberg, et al’s chronic cases of fanboi syndrome for Ross Douthat and his ilk, I’ve started to scroll over more items than not on The Corner.
If not for Steyn, McCarthy, Sowell and a few others, NRO would be worthless.
It’s hard to say this, but legally I’ve got to agree with Kagan about the Declaration. Much like the Gettysburg Address it is a fine, inspirational document which lays out many of the principles we believe in – but it has no power of law, and never has. Neither of those are legal documents, and thus it would indeed be incorrect for any judge to base a legal, Constitutional opinion on them.
And lest you recoil, this is a GOOD thing. Since the Declaration is *not* a legal document but an aspirational one, it has no guidelines as to how it is to be implemented. Therefore it, if used as you envision, would be nothing but an open ended invitation to any judge to insert their own personal prejudices and opinions into the interpretation. We already have too much of that as it is.
wws, you are correct.
The Constitution’s Preamble did not convince all the states that forming “a more perfect Union” would necessarily “Secure the Blessings of Liberty.” Hence the eventual need for ratification of the Bill of Rights, which incorporates the ideas present in the Declaration. I would have appreciated Kagan saying something to this effect rather than stonewalling the question.
This is what I told the spouse this morning.
I wouldn’t put it pass Obama that he is going to have a ‘beer summit’ with Shirley Sherrod soon, and make it into a ‘There is a NEED to control right-wing smear media’ push.
Of course, it has nothing to do with (1) NAACP crowd reaction, just like those cheering in Jeremiah Wright’s church; and (2) WH jumped the gun that their reaction to ‘fire’ the woman should be the real focus. After all, you can’t waste any ‘crisis’, right?
Buzz K – And Mark Steyn is off on holidays and incommunicado right now. I hope he’ll be back before September.
45. RWE
That’s a fine piece of hypocrisy from that general- the Germans employed plenty of artillery in direct fire mode during city fighting, most notably their enormous Sturmtiger, which fired a 380mm (15 inches) rocket-boosted round. So, just like the left of today, they decry our use of a smaller weapon than they employ!
Simply the flip-side of the selective immigration coin. Immigrants to free and prosperous societies come from the right-hand side of the bell-curve of ability and ambition because they’re likey to get a better deal from a place where abilities and ambition are rewarded. The flip side is that the people left behind tend to be from the left-hand side because they’re likely to do better where something else is rewarded.
Politicains are the left-behinds within a free society. Not the complete dregs, but merely the left-hand side of the bell-curve for people together enough to learn how to tie a tie and speak in mostly complete sentences. I remember a humor book about engineering from the 80′s called “Toolies.” The difference between an engineering degree and a, say, Literature degress was “no partial credit.” Either the bridge stands up or the bridge falls down. If it falls down, no partial credit. There’s also limited room to claim the collapsed bridge was in fact a wonderful success, or to claim that the reason it fell down was someone elses fault.
“We just didn’t build enough bridge. If we want it to stand up, we need to build a bigger bridge next time!”
Well, perhaps that’s true, but in that case maybe we should hire engineers smart enough to know how big a bridge to build the first time.
Anyway, point being, people who can build real, as opposed to metaphorical bridges and have them stand up have “immigrated” to jobs that build stuff and where they are judged on objective criteria, like whether the bridge stands up or the products get delivered or the doors stay open. The left-behinds end up in professions with subjective standards where success comes from spinning the best story about what just happened rather than from what just happened.
Solutions? I have one, but enough writing for now.
“But so long as the tinder doesn’t catch things will shamble on if the economy keeps ticking over and sanity prevails; just like those chronic diseases which are irksome but don’t become life-threatening as long as the immune system stays up.”
Perhaps the reason things are so flammable right now is not because this is all just some big, messy family dynamic going on – that’s one of the last metaphors I’d use to describe the simmering resentments between left and right, white and black, elitist and country party. Perhaps decades of PC rigidity have left America like one of those national parks where every broken branch, every dead leaf, every single piece of fire-ready crap has been carefully treasured and preserved, to the point where the whole thing is one spark away from exploding into an uncontrollable firestorm.
The disgraceful open secrets of black racism and leftist corruption of the press have been kept untouched and inviolate for years. The Breitbarts of the past were shooed away from the forests and nobody was allowed to clean up or even examine the dead brush piling up on the forest floor. The hard work of pulling out and destroying the weak and unworthy garbage filling up society was shunned, and now everyone’s living in fear that the whole thing will go up in flames. It could have been avoided, but there were too many rewards for doing the wrong thing.
7. wretchard :A government policy to “build up families” is probably going to be a hash. Better to let people alone and they will figure it out.
Should not the tax cuts based on number of children be reversed? More children = more services, which should mean increased taxation, not decreased? Which is my biggest problem with taxes overall; Are they for services rendered or public largess? IOW, should you be taxed (charged) for only the services you receive (and I include in these the common good enumerations specified in the constitution) therefor allowing you to have some say in your maximum participation and able to better predict what you will need to earn to survive and/or thrive during your lifetime? This is really the best way to ensure you are paying your own way and not becoming a burden to anyone else. Isn’t that part of letting people “figure it out?”
33. Leo Linbeck III : Congratulations. Glad to hear there are still people who create great things in America but more importantly, they are unabashedly proud of their accomplishments.
45. RWE : I am with you on this. Ask no quarter, give no quarter.
During the Battle of Manila, according to this monograph from Fort Sill, 155 mm, 8 inch and 240 mm “Black Dragon” howitzers were used to breach the Walled City of Intramuros and take any strongpoints under fire. If you look at the monograph, you will see exactly what that does. It doesn’t just punch holes it pulverizes 40 foot thick walls, saws buildings in half like a chainsaw and turns everything into a fine dust. They used 155s like machine-guns.
Whatever else may be said of the Imperial Japanese Armed forces, give them this: nothing in recorded annals of modern Jihadi warfare even comes close to the fanaticism of the soldiers of the emperor. After buildings were reduced literally to piles of dust a few rifles shots would emerge from the rubble. And then the US Army brought up hoses and soaked the whole heap with gasoline. Then they torched it so the heaps of ruin blazed for hours.
When I was a child every now and again a construction crew would bring up some carbonized skeletons of the Japanese. The Battle of Manila was the greatest urban battle fought on American territory in the 20th century. More civilians died there than in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
Interesting.
ABC news reports that Obama has pronounced that Tom Vilsack — his own choice for Secretary of Agriculture— “Rushed” to judgment in forcing Sherrod’s resignation.
I heard a tape of Sherrod being interviewed the day after her resignation in which she stated several times that as she was driving home from somewhere, her bosses at USDA were calling and telling her “THE WHITE HOUSE” insisted that she resign, even that she should pull over to the side of the road and do it by cell phone.
It is entertaining to see how the liars dance and somersault trying to keep out of the glare, once the foundations of their flimsy fabrications get jostled.
Evidently, structures engineered by students who cheated their way through class…
Maybe they ought to take a few days to coordinate their stories.
But that might run afoul of certain parties’ plans for juicy lawsuits for wrongful dismissal & such.
RWE #45: Going house to house and through the walls? That was not the first time those tactics were employed.
I have in mind the Siege of Bexar, Dec 1835.
WHO WILL GO WITH OLD BEN MILAM INTO SAN ANTONIO?
The difference between that and Achen? In 1835 the Mexicans had all the cannon.
So the decisive element were those rifles. Final score was 20 to 30 men lost on the Texan side, including Ben Milam. Mexicans lost over 400 dead and took numerous wounded.
I rather imagine that General Perfecto de Cos thought lands and grooves should be outlawed.
34. Charles
21. jWarrior
I think the Right has been, even now, too restrained in pushing back against the continues depredations of the Left, hoping against hope that one day they will be satisfied and leave us alone; see the complete lack of interest in Codevilla’s essay at NRO for instance.
……….
Rush mentioned that that people should be alert for who mentioned Codevilla’s essay and who did not.
What’s up with the NRO?
____________
This lone artist and unemployed technical writer read Codevilla’s article last weekend. I highly recommend reading John Taylor Gatto’s article on the education system created by this very same ruling class. Put together, the two articles detail a centuries old movement against the Country Class that began within a few years of the creation of this country.
Wretchard #59:
You reap what you sow. By their own brutality the IJN forces gave us the permission to respond in kind.
During the battle for Luzon there was an area of high ground with a water reservoir and dam that was known to be heavily fortified. American casualties would have been heavy taking it the normal way.
So what the USAAF did was literally line up, wingtip to wingtip, waves of P-51’s, P-47’s and P-38’s loaded with napalm bombs. They doused the whole area with flame. When the ground troops moved our casualties were remarkably light.
Quote @ 35. Charles:
‘My dad was inside the pentagon in 1968 when the Viet Nam War protesters surrounded the Pentagon and attempted to “Levitate” it. The incident was memorialized in Norman Mailer’s chaotic book “Armies of the Night.” I used to tell people that those demonstrators succeeded-because of the radically changed demography of Washington DC suburbs. Now those demonstrators have been rewarded by stint in the White House.’ July 21, 2010 – 10:27 pm
And I was among those gathered around it, then just in high school. If your beloved father is still with us, please tell him I’m sorry for the grief I helped cause. Only dumb luck got me off the front steps just before the protesters there were rushed, and I spent the night huddled around a small fire as the ambulances went back and forth for hours. I’m sorry about all that foolishness of my youth.
Best regards, Peter Warner.
RWE, you said we might have to break a few bricks, but not if we just let it all burn!
We may have to line up Cessnas wingtip to wingtip (not many Mustangs, Thunderbolts or Lightnings left, but I’d bet they would join in), with soap & gasoline containers, but it’ll work! Surround the structure with interlocking fields of fire, it’s not like there is a shortage of “marksmen” in this country, and we could guarantee 100% casualties as well.
Buy ammo, and invest in at least one “precision” weapon system, as well as optics to compliment it’s capabilties.
Me, I’m a fan of 3rd Generation NV (PVS-14 & AN/PVS-22) & USO (SN-3) day scopes. Better investment than the Casino Stock Market where the game is rigged worse than Vegas.
RWE (#63):
Reap what you sow