The Commentariat -- July 7, 2015
Internal links removed.
Afternoon Update:
James Kanter of the New York Times: "Greece's newly installed finance minister arrived [in Brussels] at a crucial meeting of his eurozone peers on Tuesday without the new bailout proposal the group had expected to receive." CW: So the balance of Europe depends on a guy who's been on the job for half a day. Couldn't the other ministers come up with a less draconian plan & present that? ...
... Paul Krugman: "However things play out from here -- I find it hard to see a path other than Grexit -- the troika's program for Greece represents one of history's epic policy failures."
Glass Houses. Justin Moyer of the Washington Post: "Bill Cosby etched his legacy in stone with a speech in 2004 that took black parents to task. It became famous as the 'Pound Cake' speech.... The Pound Cake speech ... was cited by a U.S. district judge as a legal justification for unsealing a deposition that was deeply damaging to Cosby.... Judge Eduardo C. Robreno said the speech, and Cosby's general posture as a 'public moralist,' made the deposition a legitimate subject of public interest.... 'The stark contrast between Bill Cosby, the public moralist and Bill Cosby, the subject of serious allegations concerning improper (and perhaps criminal) conduct, is a matter as to which the AP -- and by extension the public -- has a significant interest,' the judge wrote."
*****
John Parkinson of ABC News: "[Monday], after meeting with his top military brass and senior administration officials in a rare visit to the Pentagon, the president outlined a strategy, step-by-step, that he believes will be a winning approach over time. The president did not call for more bombs or more troops, but instead announced a shifting focus to counter ISIL's public relations machine while training local forces to sustain progress made on the ground there":
... Michael Gordon & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "Seven weeks after their frenetic retreat from Ramadi, Iraqi security forces are preparing to mount a counteroffensive in the coming weeks to try to reclaim the pivotal western Iraqi city from the Islamic State, American and Iraqi officials say.... At the Pentagon on Monday, President Obama said the fall of Ramadi was a setback that had 'galvanized' the Iraqi government and accelerated an American effort that had been 'moving too slowly' to better train and equip Iraqi forces, including Sunni fighters."
Jennifer Rankin of the Guardian: "In a coordinated press statement, the leaders of France and Germany called on Greece to come up with 'serious and credible proposals' at Tuesday's eurozone summit consistent with its wish to stay in the eurozone." ...
... Justin McCurry of the Guardian: "The US treasury secretary, Jack Lew, told Greece's prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, and its new finance minister, Euclid Tsakalotos, that Washington 'looked forward' to a swift resolution to the crisis unfolding in Europe." CW: Quit worrying, people. A finance minister named Euclid is bound to get both the numbers & all the angles right.
... Here's the Guardian's liveblog. ...
... Liz Alderman & Jack Ewing of the New York Times: "Germany maintained a hard line with Athens on Monday after Greek voters rejected Europe's austerity policies in a referendum, intensifying pressure on Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to restart bailout talks and opening a rift with European countries that appeared more inclined now to consider softening the push for austerity. As Mr. Tsipras changed his finance minister Monday and laid plans to restart bailout negotiations with creditors, however, it appeared the jubilation that followed the no vote in Greece could fade quickly as signs of financial collapse become more evident." This is an update of the story linked yesterday.
Edward Krudy of Reuters: "A U.S. supreme court [CW: actually, the First Circuit Appeals Court] affirmed a lower court decision to strike down Puerto Rican legislation aimed at granting local municipalities the right to enter bankruptcy, but said excluding the U.S. territory's public entities from federal bankruptcy law was unconstitutional.... 'Besides being irrational and arbitrary, the exclusion of Puerto Rico's power to authorize its municipalities to request federal bankruptcy relief should be re-examined in light of more recent rational-basis review case law,' the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said in the ruling late on Monday.... While the 75-page ruling ostensibly vindicates the bondholders' position, it also makes a forceful case that Puerto Rico should be given access to Chapter 9 of the U.S. bankruptcy code, which deals with municipal bankruptcies." ...
... Peter Schroeder of the Hill: "A looming debt crisis in Puerto Rico is setting off a fresh fight in Congress, where lawmakers are debating a statutory fix that could allow the island territory to declare bankruptcy.... A 1984 update to the nation's bankruptcy laws left Puerto Rico out of the picture, apparently by accident. Chapter 9 of the bankruptcy code gives states the power to allow agencies or municipalities to declare bankruptcy, as happened most recently in Detroit."
Ed Kilgore on why Republicans won't support universal pre-K, a Democratic priority. CW: Ed should add this: Republicans don't even support universal 1-12 public education; they favor privatization.
Washington Post Editors: "It is alarming that 150 years after the Civil War's end children are learning that slavery was, as one Texas board of education member put it in 2010, 'a side issue.' No serious scholar agrees.... By distorting history, Texas tells its students a dishonest and damaging story about the United States that prevents children from understanding the country today. Also troubling, Texas's standards look likely to affect more than just Texans: The state is the second-largest in the nation, which means books designed for its students may find their way into schools elsewhere, too."
Patrick Temple-West of Politico: "Elizabeth Warren and her liberal allies appear to be on the verge of another victory in their battle to stop the White House from choosing financial regulators with ties to Wall Street. President Barack Obama was planning to nominate corporate attorney Keir Gumbs to fill a Democratic seat on the Securities and Exchange Commission last month, according to four sources familiar with the matter. But now that's on hold at least until August after activist groups aligned with Warren raised an outcry over Gumbs' work, including his advice to companies on how to dodge scrutiny from shareholder activists."
Joanne Kenen of Politico: "Advocates for better end-of-life care expect Medicare to soon announce that it will start paying physicians for having advanced-care planning conversations with patients -- reviving the widely misunderstood provision that gave rise to 'death panel' fears and nearly sank the Affordable Care Act." ...
... Norm Ornstein in the Atlantic: "One reason for the continued resistance to the Affordable Care Act is a badly distorted narrative of how it became law.... Thanks in part to the overheated rhetoric demonizing the plan, guerrilla efforts to undermine its implementation and disrupt the delivery of its services continue apace. Perhaps they will end as it becomes clear, in the aftermath of King v. Burwell, that the law in its fundamentals is not going away. It may help a bit if more Americans, including prominent commentators, stop repeating a false political narrative about the genesis of Obamacare.
White Men Rule. Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "Sixty-six percent of states that elect prosecutors have no blacks in those offices, a new study has found, highlighting the lack of diversity in the ranks of those entrusted to bring criminal charges and negotiate prison sentences. About 95 percent of the 2,437 elected state and local prosecutors across the country in 2014 were white, and 79 percent were white men, according to the study, which was to be released on Tuesday by the San-Francisco-based Women Donors Network. By comparison, white men make up 31 percent of the population of the United States.... Prosecutors decide in most criminal cases whether to bring charges."
Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News: "Former Attorney General Eric Holder said today that a 'possibility exists' for the Justice Department to cut a deal with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that would allow him to return to the United States from Moscow. In an interview with Yahoo News, Holder said 'we are in a different place as a result of the Snowden disclosures' and that 'his actions spurred a necessary debate' that prompted President Obama and Congress to change policies on the bulk collection of phone records of American citizens.... His remarks to Yahoo News go further than any current or former Obama administration official in suggesting that Snowden's disclosures had a positive impact and that the administration might be open to a negotiated plea that the self-described whistleblower could accept...."
Lindsay Dunsmuir of Reuters: "Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will return as a partner at the law firm he had left [-- Covington & Burling --] to become the nation's top law enforcement official, his new employer said in a statement." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Maryclaire Dale of the AP: "Bill Cosby admitted in 2005 that he secured quaaludes with the intent of giving them to young women he wanted to have sex with and that he gave the sedative to at least one woman and 'other people,' according to documents obtained Monday by The Associated Press."
... Via Madison Johnson of the New Republic. (Link fixed.) Also via Johnson:
Marie's Sports Report
Men Rule. Judd Legun of Think Progress: "The U.S. women's soccer team defeated Japan on Sunday to win the World Cup. For their dominant performance, the team will collect $2 million from FIFA, the international body that runs the tournament. The championship prize for women pales in comparison to the $8 million in prize money awarded to men's teams who lose in the first round. Every men's team was awarded $1.5 million just for participating.... The U.S. women's team has won the World Cup three times. The U.S. men have never won the tournament." ...
... Jill Sergeant of Reuters: "A record 25.4 million TV viewers in the United States watched the United States beat Japan 5-2 in the final of the FIFA Women's World Cup, a new high for any soccer match televised in the country, according to Nielsen ratings data on Monday." Emphasis added. ...
... CW: I do hope the ladies don't embarrass our fair sex by complaining about inequality (the way they did about that little artificial turf thing -- see Legum). In the U.S., they're more popular than the men & they're being paid far less. Seventy cents on the dollar? Hah. They wish. Nonetheless, a proper sportswoman would play for the joy & honor of the game & would not concern herself with crass trivialities.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Erik Wemple of the Washington Post: "Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, today ripped the committee and Politico for printing inaccurate portrayals of e-mail traffic between then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others in fall 2012...." Wemple goes on to show how Ken Vogel & Rachel Bade of Politico, Jonathan Karl of ABC News, & Bob Woodward all relied on Republicans to "abridge the correspondence" without seeing the e-mails themselves. Big surprise: these Republican sources deceptively elided e-mails to create false narratives, all in service of Benghaaazi! And the reporters, as Stephen Colbert famously joked, "just put 'em through a spell check and go home." ...
... Here's how it works: (1) Blumenthal to HRC: "Gaddafi was a monster." Blumenthal to HRC: "Love the blue pantsuit, Hil." HRC to Blumenthal: "de la Renta designed it. I just loved him. So sad he passed away." (2) Republican mashup, leak to Politico. (3) Politico report: "Exclusive! Secret Clinton E-Mails Revealed. Blumenthal to HRC: 'Gaddafi is a monster.' HRC to Blumenthal: 'I just loved him. So sad he passed away.'"
Presidential Race
Kevin Miller of the Portland (Maine) Press Herald: "Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont made his populist presidential pitch to an energized crowd of more than 7,500 people in Portland on Monday night, pledging to fight for universal health care, free college tuition and a 'living wage,' and against what he sees as the corruptive influence of big money on American politics.... Although exact figures weren't available Monday night, staff at Portland's Cross Insurance Arena estimated that the crowd could have exceeded 8,000 in the roughly 9,000-capacity arena for an event originally planned as more of a town hall-style forum than a rally." ...
... Amy Chozick & Patrick Healy of the New York Times: "The ample crowds and unexpectedly strong showing by Senator Bernie Sanders are setting off worry among advisers and allies of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who believe the Vermont senator could overtake her in Iowa polls by the fall and even defeat her in the nation's first nominating contest there. The enthusiasm that Mr. Sanders has generated ... has called into question Mrs. Clinton's early strategy of focusing on a listening tour of small group gatherings and wooing big donors in private settings. In May, Mrs. Clinton led with 60 percent support to Mr. Sanders' 15 percent in a Quinnipiac poll. Last week the same poll showed Mrs. Clinton at 52 percent to Mr. Sanders's 33 percent." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... New York Times: "... this afternoon, [Hillary Clinton] will sit with the CNN reporter Brianna Keilar in Iowa. The interview comes as Mrs. Clinton has faced increasing criticism for avoiding questions on policy (the trade deal supported by President Obama but opposed by many Democrats) and on personal issues (her use of a private email account at the State Department and the fund-raising practices of her family's foundation)." ...
... Josh Voorhees of Slate: "Republicans have spent much of this year attacking Hillary Clinton where she appears weakest -- her trustworthiness and transparency -- without doing overwhelming damage. Starting this week, the GOP will shift its attention to where the Democratic frontrunner appears strongest in the eyes of voters: Her competency as a government executive. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Republican National Committee is launching what will be a sustained attack on Clinton's record as a manager at the State Department." ...
Desperately Seeking Debate Time. Steve Yaccino of Bloomberg: "A month from now, 10 Republican presidential candidates will walk out onto a primetime debate stage in Cleveland and confront each other face to face for the first time. If the debate were held today, Donald Trump would be one of them. Two sitting governors, a U.S. senator, the runner-up for the 2012 GOP nomination, and the first female CEO of a Fortune 50 company would all be excluded.... Campaigns who are in danger of not making the cut may try everything possible to improve their chances over the next four weeks -- taking extreme, news-making positions; dumping opposition research on opponents; inundating e-mail inboxes; and blitzing the Sunday television circuit, late-night talk shows, conservative radio airwaves, and cable news programs."
Paul Waldman: "... it sure looks like Trump's particular brand of vulgar straight talk has vaulted him to the top tier of Republican candidates, with recent polls showing him competing with Jeb Bush for first place.... This controversy has accelerated the pivot [other GOP presidential candidates] probably didn't think they've have to make for at least another six or eight months. So one after another, they've been asked about Trump and (with the exception of Ted Cruz) have condemned his remarks.... Trump's remarks were so vulgar that any candidate who wants to look like a reasonable person has little choice but to reject them. And if they all do it (or almost all), then at least for a while they've sidestepped what many of us expected to see during the primaries: a competition for who could talk the toughest on immigration." ...
... Katherine Krueger of TPM: "In a lengthy written statement Monday, Donald Trump doubled down on his recent remarks about Mexican immigrants being 'rapists' and criminals, making the additional claim that 'tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border.' Accusing his critics of distorting his words, Trump's statement did nothing to appease them after a days-long mass exodus of business partners and fellow Republicans trying to distance themselves from his comments. In the three-page-long statement posted online, the billionaire reality TV star reprinted the text in question from his now-infamous presidential announcement speech, which he says 'is deliberately distorted by the media.'" ...
... More from Hunter Walker of Business Insider. Walker interviewed Trump shortly before Trump released the statement. ...
... Here's the Donald's statement, in full, via Lisa de Moraes of Deadline. AND Philip Bump's WashPo "annotated edition." "We are sensitive to the argument that parsing Trump's words is like writing a dissertation on a fourth-grade book report, but Trump is currently one of the leading Republican candidates for president." ...
... ESPN: "ESPN has moved the site of its upcoming ESPY Celebrity Golf Classic from Trump National Golf Club to Pelican Hill Golf Club in greater Los Angeles in response to GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump's derogatory comments about Mexican immigrants." ...
... Carrie Dann of NBC News: "Donald Trump reportedly retweeted -- and then deleted -- a tweet suggesting that Jeb Bush 'has to like the Mexican Illegals' because he is married to a Mexican woman. On the evening of July 4, Trump's account retweeted a post by user @RobHeilbron, who wrote '#JebBush has to like the Mexican Illegals because of his wife.' That tweet appears to have been deleted from Trump's account on Sunday." ...
... ** "We're More American than Him." MEANWHILE, the construction workers building a Trump luxury hotel on the site of Washington, D.C., old Post Office Pavillion are not amused. Many of them are Central American immigrants, some without papers. Antonio Olivo of the Washington Post: "... some of the workers at the site said they are now worried about their jobs -- while others simply expressed disgust over the opinions of the man ultimately responsible for the creation of those jobs."
... Philip Bump on why Ted Cruz is backing Trump: Trump has "very quickly built up a vocal base of support on this issue — a base of support that will be looking for a home if and when Trump bails. And Cruz will greet them with arms wide open.... It doesn't take much imagination to envision a scene a few weeks from now in which Trump, for reasons ostensibly beyond his control, announces that he's not going to run after all. And shortly thereafter, throwing his arm around Cruz to offer some support. 'I respect Ted Cruz for the view he's got,' Trump said on CNN last week. 'He was really out there and strong on it.'" ...
... Rudy Giuliani says Trump is "an unbiased, unprejudiced man." Aliyah Frumin of MSNBC: "The ex-mayor argued that while Trump could have phrased his thoughts better, he's still tackling the important issue of border security." Yup, it's all about inartful phrasing.
Adam Raymond of New York: Scott "Walker’s two sons, Alex and Matt, are in favor of same-sex marriage and his wife Tonette is 'torn,' she recently told the Washington Post. She went on to mention a married gay cousin 'who I love dearly,' in what sounded like an attempt to distance herself from her husband's opposition." CW: I didn't bother to read the WashPo piece, which was prominently featured on the site all day Monday; I guess Raymond has the "news" part of it. However, don't be fooled by Tonette's tone. ...
... digby: "This was a method deployed successfully by Republicans for years when their wives would tell the press that they differed from their husbands on some thorny social issue thus allowing them to have it both ways. It's cheap." ...
... Patrick Marley of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Gov. Scott Walker announced over the weekend that Republicans were abandoning their plan to create new exceptions to the state's open records law, but for months the all-but-certain presidential candidate has been operating as if one exemption already was in place. Two months ago, Walker declined to release records related to his proposal to rewrite the University of Wisconsin System's mission statement and erase the Wisconsin Idea from state law. He argued he didn't have to provide those records to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and others because they were part of his office's internal deliberations. The Progressive magazine and the liberal Center for Media and Democracy sued Walker over those denials." ...
... Wisconsin to Return to Feudal Society. Walker won't oppose Magna Carta provisions because rights apply only to barons; wife Tonette "torn":
... Alice Ollstein of Think Progress on the other provisions Scott Walker, et al., sneaked into the Wisconsin state budget this past week. "Governor Walker and his allies in the statehouse used the 4th of July holiday weekend to insert several more controversial provisions into the massive document, which local press called 'a grab bag of pet projects.'... The other additions remain, including provisions that censor information about police shootings, scrap factory workers' right to one day off per week, and completely eliminate the state's 100-year-old definition of a 'living wage,' which now says workers deserve pay that provides 'minimum comfort, decency, physical and moral well-being.'' Read the whole post. CW BTW: I can't see where most of these pet "budget items" have anything to do with the state's budget. ...
... Here's the State Journal story, dated July 4. ...
... Patrick Marley, et al., of the Journal Sentinel: "Republicans who control the state Senate plan to insert a provision into the state budget Tuesday that will repeal the prevailing wage law for local governments. The law sets the minimum salaries for construction workers when they build roads, schools and other publicly funded projects.... The changes are strongly opposed by unions and Democrats, who say it amounts to a pay cut for the working class. Republicans say they would save money for taxpayers."
Transgender Huckleberry. May 2010, via Andrew Kaczynski:
Senate Races
Steven Shepard of Politico: "Democrats can take back the Senate in 2016 after a stinging, nine-seat defeat last year -- but their path is narrow, and any gains could be fleeting. The party needs to capture four or five seats -- depending on the results of the presidential election -- next November. While the 2016 map is favorable, flipping control of the Senate would require winning most of the toss-up races and defeating several well-funded GOP incumbents in pricey swing states that will also be crucial in the race for the White House."
Beyond the Beltway
Elahe Izadi of the Washington Post: "A proposal to remove the Confederate flag from South Carolina's statehouse grounds moved ahead Monday after state senators voted 37-to-3 to advance the bill. Final passage on the bipartisan measure, set for Tuesday, requires a two-thirds majority in the Republican-controlled body, the Post and Courier reported. The proposal would then go to the South Carolina House, which could happen as early as Wednesday." ...
... "The Devil Is Taking Control of This Land." David Edwards of the Raw Story: "South Carolina state Sen. Lee Bright (R) began debate about removing the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds on Monday with a passionate plea for lawmakers to focus on same-sex marriage instead":
... CW: A commenter on one of the news items I read Monday wondered what "Southern pride" was all about. What, exactly, does the South have to be particularly proud of? It's a good question.
News Ledes
TPM: "Federal authorities raided Subway spokesman Jared Fogle's home early Tuesday morning, reportedly in connection with a child pornography investigation.... Anonymous FBI sources told [TV] station [WXIN, Indianapolis] that authorities were serving warrants at Fogle's home in connection with a child pornography investigation.... The raid comes a little more than two months after the then-executive director of The Jared Foundation, his childhood obesity charity, was arrested on child pornography charges. Fogle dismissed Russell Taylor in April and told WXIN in a statement at the time that he was 'shocked' by the 'disturbing' allegations against Taylor."
Washington Post: "Iran nuclear talks will push past an extended deadline set for Tuesday, a senior European diplomat said, but negotiations will continue in possible last-ditch efforts to find ways to limit Tehran’s atomic program."
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Reader Comments (22)
"What, exactly, does the South have to be particularly proud of?"
Damn little, which is why they make things up. Necessity is the Mother of Invention.
The Donald's beef about about Mexico sending their baddest people ever over to our fair country is in contrast to an influx of foreign retirees flocking into Mexico. I'm waiting for Scotland and Ireland to come forth at this time and tell us how this Trump guy ruined their landscapes and trashed their locals.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/foreign-retirees-flocking-mexico/
From Vox–––Greece's debt crisis explained in charts and maps:
http://www.getbriefme.com/s/2XEV/http://www.vox.com/2015/7/1/8871509/greece-charts
@PD Pepe: The Vox link you provided didn't work for me (I got the title of the story only), but this one works.
Those charts, I should say, are mostly Greek to me. But that's my fault, not the charts'.
Marie
On regional chauvinism -- North vs South:
It's an interesting phenomenon. People in the north or south of pretty much anywhere I've observed, have similar stereotypes of each other and themselves. Northerners are perceived as hardworking and industrious, but straight laced and humorless, while Southerners are thought to be laid back and fun loving, but a bit lazy and disorganized. This seems to be highly sub-divisible. Northern Germans think of Southern Germans the same way all Germans think of Italians, while Southern Italians think of Northern Italians as all Italians think of Germans. Seems to hold true in Europe and North America. I wonder if it does in the rest of the world, and whether the directions reverse in the Southern Hemisphere.
"Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude" ~ Jimmy Buffet
After learning that Cosby acquired Quaaludes to hand out to his many unsuspecting victims of sexual abuse (and maybe other more willing partners) I was puzzled because I knew a few from back in the rowdy days who took Quaaludes to enhance whatever, but not to go into a coma-like state as most of these women are testifying. So I dug around a bit and found this article that explains the drug somewhat, but I still wonder what amount or what kind of combination of drug Cosby gave to these women.
This article mentions the Polanski "rape" in a slanted way; the facts in that case were very different from Cosby's alleged rapes.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/07/quaaludes-from-bill-cosby-to-the-wolf-of-wall-street/?tid=hp_mm
The Didactic Confederate
Some time ago I mentioned that I had given up reading Our Miss Brooks for a panoply of reasons too well known to bother repeating.
But this morning on the Google news page, I caught the opening line for his latest glob of weasel smegma and had to check it out. Brooks starts out with "I thought I knew the basic life story of my friend Clemantine Wamariya. She was born in Rwanda 27 years ago."
And my first thought was "Wow. Brooks says he's friends with a black girl from Rwanda". My second thought was "Bullshit". Hard on the heels of learning that snarling, Old Testament science denier and Confederate hater Jim Inhofe claimed to have "lots of gay friends", I had to hear about Brooks' "black friend".
This isn't some treacly Reader's Digest story although with Brooks you can never tell; he always manages to bring the creepy. But it certainly sounds like this poor girl has had a hell of a time, escaping the genocidal madness in Rwanda, making her way through the camps and ending up after a long twisting journey at Yale.
She won an essay contest and appeared on Oprah where Oprah produced the parents she'd lost in the madness of the Rwandan strife. But, as Brooks tells us, gently shaking his all-knowing head and wiggling his oft-wagged finger, life isn't that easy.
No shit David. Who the fuck ever said it was?
So why bother with this? First, the girl's story is quite compelling, but I needed to figure out why Brooks was pretending she was "his friend" and to what purpose he intended for her tale of hardship and hard won victories. Then it hit me. Of course. Brooks is first and always a didactic. His pieces are little tales of wingnut morality. In this one, the moral is that it doesn't matter how tough your life is, suck it up and fix it. Go to Yale. Write. Make a better life for yourself. Only don't ever look to anyone else, whether Oprah or the guv'mint, for help. It's only good and rewarding and fulfilling if you do it all yourself. You see? You CAN build it yourself. And no whining!
I'm taking nothing from Ms. Wamariya. She seems like an amazing person. A good writer with more than a tinge of hardness (well earned) combined with a finely developed sense of self-awareness, of who she was, who she is, what she has and doesn't have and might never have.
And normally, I'd read something like this and come away with a renewed appreciation for human resilience in the face of some pretty terrible shit, shit that doesn't ever really go away. But Brooks and his Confederate confreres can never just leave it at that. There's always a hidden, or not so hidden agenda. Brooks presents himself both in print and on screen as a professorial, friendly, avuncular type, but under the surface he's a finger-wagging, mendacious, didactic scold whose fealty to Confederate ideology, while perhaps not so arresting and jagged as a Ted Cruz, is no less dangerous for his manufactured facade of wisdom and discernment.
Do I write with an agenda? Of course. Most of us do. But I don't try to hide my true goal behind platitudes and silken sociological bullshit.
But to Brooks, this young woman's story is just more kindling for the wingnut bonfires of FREEEDOM. And Arthur Sulzberger has given him plenty of matches.
(Also, new word: Complexified. Oh David! You're so smart. I try my best to decomplexify Brooks when the mood strikes. That is, if an ass kicking is not immediately possible.)
@Akhilleus: Okay, you made me bite, & I read Brooks. This is one of his columns -- maybe copped from his latest book (I have no idea) -- where he's trying to work through his midlife crisis. This column is more evidence that Brooks is almost two-dimensional.
Don't worry; in the end, it will work out for Brooks. He will find himself a lovely new life partner, whereupon his new mysteries of life will return almost exclusively to cooking up justifications for cutting "entitlements" & variations on a Rodney King riff.
Marie
Yeah, we're all encased in our own black boxes, never wholly knowable to anyone else, not even to ourselves.
Having read Akhilleus' take on the latest Brooks drivel (and Marie's followup comment), my black box has me wondering what Clemantine Wamariya, now that Brooks has made such fine use of her, thinks of it all. Is she an unadulterated admirer of her new friend, maybe seeing in the life he's made for himself a personal goal to be assiduously emulated, or does she detect and maybe resent the same load of baloney we have all come to expect from David, the Right's kindergarten moralist, that he has now foisted, without a by-your-leave let alone actual permission, on her?
And Akhilleus, thanks. This was a good one. I'd rather read you on Brooks, than Brooks himself, any day. Or so my black box is telling me.
@Akhilleus & Ken Winkes: Yastreblyansky has a great post on Brooks' column. Also, commenter susanoftexas makes Brooks' point for those who are unfamiliar with Brooksian motivations: "Like the Rwandan refugee, I, David Brooks, have also suffered from the gritty, mottled nature of women who don't want me."
Marie
Marie,
Thanks for the tip. I think you're right about Brooks working out some personal problems through his columns. In a way, almost everything he writes (as with MoDo) is about him. Yasterblyansky's suggestion that Brooks sees this young woman's harrowing life so far, escaping genocide, trying to stay alive, working her way, through years of hardship, as very similar to his own hard times is scarily close to the truth, methinks.
Makes me think of Ken's reference to the black boxes that surround our lives. Solipsism is a distinct danger to those, who, like Brooks, don't get that there is any box at all. It's like someone inhabiting Plato's cave who doesn't realize they're in a cave. This was, if you recall, Plato's great fear for the future of any republic, the lack of self-awareness that could preclude an ability to look for the good, for the ideal, perhaps another reason Plato was never too keen on democracy, opting instead for rule by philosopher kings who knew the difference between the cave and the world outside the cave, the world of ideals towards which all should strive.
The problem with Brooks is that he thinks he's qualified to be one of those philosopher kings, vide his regular snooty pronouncements, all the while having no awareness of the myriad unresolved problems and pathologies that cloud his ability to distinguish between the real world and his carefully constructed interior world of wingnut tenets.
In Wamariya's article, she recalls a particularly startling thought experiment presented to her, in the abstract, by a teacher at a prep school. The teacher asked the class to imagine they were captain of a ferry boat with only two passengers, one young, one old. The boat is sinking. Which one do you save and which do you let die? Wamariya, for whom such a question was no abstraction, was stunned. "Do you want to know what that's really like?" she demanded.
I get the feeling, to answer Ken's question about what this young woman might think of how Brooks used her story for his own end, that she could do no better than to put that question to him, he who thinks his life's problems are pretty much the same as a Rwandan refugee who escaped being murdered as a very young child by fleeing barefoot into the African wilderness, crossing rivers littered with dead bodies. Yeah. JUST the same. Poor Brooksie.
I doubt Plato had in mind a king whose sublimated mantra was "It's all about me! It's all about me! It's all about..."
12:48, 12:49, 12:50...ding, ding, ding.
Okay kids, time to kvetch.
This isn't going to be a major kvetch, but then again, I guess it should be. I'm not going to get overly analytical here but I'm continually frustrated by the way certain ideas and points of view are presented in the media, especially, as in this case, points of view that have a certain limited validity but which are clotheslined by a rather simplistic headline.
To wit: Bernie Sanders is the left's Ron Paul.
Seriously? Just kill me now, why doncha?
So Jamelle Bouie, a rational guy who typically turns in interesting pieces, writes in Slate that Bernie Sanders, because of his lack of general standing with party traditionalists, but who is making a go of it anyway, is to the Democratic Party as Ron Paul was to the Republican Party.
Arrrrggghhhhh!
Okay, his point is not bad, but in trying to compare the effect Paul had on Republicans and the effect Sanders may have on Democrats, he ends up seeming to compare the two men. So Bernie Sanders = Ron Paul.
NO NO NO NO NO!
Ron Paul was/is a whacko. A bigot, a fantasist, and a guy who subscribes to a weird iteration of a half-assed philosophy that has never ever, ever worked anywhere in the world, libertarianism. Bernie Sanders is no such thing. And this easy comparison makes it look like, especially to the casual reader, that they're pretty much the same kinda guy. Both crackpots.
Well, sometimes kvetching makes you feel better, but now I feel worse.
I have no real hope that Sanders will win the nomination and Bouie outlines why not, but that does not make him or his stances the same as the guy Charlie Pierce refers to as Crazy Uncle Liberty.
Fuck!
Can we please find a vaccine for the Bothsiderism Virus?
re: Wamariya
This beautiful, intelligent, miss personality plus certainly has a heart warming tale to tell but she arrived in America as a child of 12. Not at that age the mistress of her fate.
The story I want to hear is that of her sister Claire who at age 16 took her 6 year old sister in hand and kept her alive and protected in a 6 year trek through the hell of Africa to America and bore 2 children of her own in the process. By the odds they should have ended in some ditch as the broken discards of passing feral men. This woman must have a story to tell worth hearing but seems totally ignored.
David Brooks' old mentor, William F. Buckley, in a column long ago, coined a memorable phrase: "the egomania of democratism". Brooks embodies it: "The world would be perfect if only everyone was just like me." There's quite a lot of that around.
Just a little humor then I'm done.
An article in the Boston Globe in referring to the Keystone Kops chaos that is the GOP clown van heading towards the first debate, addresses Trump's many PR gaffes. In this case, the writer directs our attention to the sentiment retweeted on the Trump site about how Jeb! has to like immigrants because his wife is Mexican.
Jeb! has taken exception to this and although Trumpy the Trumpet has not apologized, his "...spokeswoman Hope Hicks on Monday said that, 'Mr. Trump did not write this tweet. This was a retweet from somebody else on the posting of a major story that appeared on Breitbart.'"
Did you catch it?
"...a major story that appeared on Breitbart."
Isn't that a little like referring to Spam as a gourmet cut of meat?
And not for nothin' but isn't retweeting something from Breitbart akin to editing bathroom graffiti into the body of an important public speech?
For a little insight about "The Dominatrix of Austerity" (dba Angela Merkel) and her handling of the Euro/German/Greek situation.
Scott Walker, after being outed by the Wisconsin Senate majority leader, has admitted to having a hand in the brazen attempt to gut open records laws by using a last-minute addition to the state budget. BUT! He did it to protect us!
For details, see
Jsonline.com
Or Madison.com
One more thought on Brooks' well-earned vivisection.
We all write about ourselves, something evident to those with the discernment to see the ego hidden in the thicket of words.
It's just that some selves are more agreeable company--I almost said nicer but "nicer" doesn't cover it--than others.
Sometimes the ego is not so hidden. George Will, for instance, looks dyspeptic. Maybe his appearance makes him an an unhappy but honest man.
I notice Brooks himself looks sadder every day. Maybe that's why I seldom read him. I fear that were I prone to it, he might induce in me his own brand of ego-eroding unease, and I don't need more of that in my life.
The sorry state of the world is burden enough.
Let's end the day on a happy note -- with a good old fashioned sing-along. Here's a tune as I was taught to sing it in Elementary School:
Carry me back to old Virginny,
Dere's where de cotton and de corn and taters grow,
Dere's where de birds warble sweet in de springtime,
Dere's where dis ole darkey's heart am long'd to go,
Dere's where I labored so hard for old massa,
Day after day in de field of yeller corn,
No place on earth do I love more sincerely
Den ole Virginny, de state where I was born.
(Join me kids!)
Carry me back to old Virginny,
Dere let me live 'till I wither and decay,
Long by de ole Dismal Swamp have I wandered,
Dere's where dis ole darke'ys life will pass away.
Massa and missis have long gone before me,
Soon we will meet on dat bright and golden shore,
Dere we'll be happy and free from all sorrow,
Dere's where we'll meet and we'll never part no moe.
Now don't you feel better?
@DC Clark: Thanks for that. I think.
I grew up in Florida, where "Swanee Ribber" was the state song. Stephen Foster's original lyrics appeared in our Dade (now Miami-Dade) County kiddie Florida history books. That is what Mrs. Woosley, my second-grade teacher, taught us to sing. She explained to us who "darkies" were -- don't remember the synonym she used; she was a white Southern lady -- & provided me my first rudimentary understanding of dialect. I so wish I had a recording of us sweet, ignorant little white children singing our hearts out in what we -- and Stephen Foster -- imagined was de way de darkies sang & how heartily dey lubbed de old plantation.
I notice that Foster, a Southern man, did not use phonetic spellings for words like "I" (Ah), "my" (muh) & "old" (ole), no doubt because he thought the pronunciation of "I" was "Ah."
"All de world am sad and dreary,
Eb-rywhere I roam;
Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary,
Far from de old folks at home!"
I can still sing the song that way, from memory.
Marie
You're welcome Marie.
It's just a little nostalgia, and a rueful reflection on how some of our old friends never outgrew that innocent childish image of The Old South.
Just wanta tell y'all what wunderfil comments you made today. I think I have enjoyed and appreciated them to the max! Thank you, thank you.
Of course, part of my enthusiasm is because I love, love all the send ups on Davey Brooks, the Cleveland Park Yuppie Moralist. Oops, he may have been kicked out of Cleveland Park by his ex after their deevorce! In which case, Davey Brooks, the Marriott Residence Inn Yuppie Moralist.
I cannot agree with you, Marie, that he will have (or now has) "a lovely new life partner," that is, unless he gets a labradoodle. I cannot imagine any woman of high or low standerds who would get involved with this befuddled prick. But I do forgit about the phenomenon of "star fucking." There are probly some very misguided girlz out there who think this guy has Star Power. Hard to believe, I know, but the NYT does confer some kinda fame to its op eders.
Anywayz, thank y'all agin for the wunderfil entertainment tonite--way down upon the Swanee Riber!