Brother Al on Polanski and "Hollywood" - and just what *does* "Hollywood" mean to our "cultural warriors"?

Brother Al Mohler, Jr., who as President Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville KY has a large influence on Southern Baptist theology, uses the Polanski case to bash liberals and "Hollywood" in Morality, Hollywood Style Christian Post 10/04/09.

Mohler is too slick to slip into crass anti-Semitism. But, as the late blog pioneer Steve Gilliard used to remind us, to many conservative Republican Christians, "Hollywood" and "cultural elite" are among other things, synonyms for "Jews". So when I see big-name rightwingers start bashing groups they identify that way, I try to pay attention to what subtexts may be at work.

And its worth it for Democrats and liberals to actually use their heads on this one.

As I mentioned in my post on the Polanski case last week, I was uncomfortable with how Katha Pollitt formulated her criticism of what she called "the liberal cultural elite" in Roman Polanski Has a Lot of Friends The Nation Online 10/01/09: "The widespread support for Polanski shows the liberal cultural elite at its preening, fatuous worst. ... No wonder Middle America hates them." As I said in the earlier post, seeing as how even TV news has morphed into infotainment, I'm not convinced that "Middle America" hates Hollywood stars and directors.

Brother Al quoted those same words (without the ellipsis.) Hey, Brother Al, if you picked that up from my post you could have at least given me an "h/t"! Maybe Brother Al will pick me as the Unknown Liberal to pray for me to see the error of my Democratic ways. But he couldn't even cite her approvingly without identifying her as, "the feminist left-winger supreme". Which in Christian Right circles is pretty much the same as calling her a Satan-worshipping witch.

But Patrick Goldstein in the industry's hometown paper the Los Angeles Times writes in Is Hollywood really a hotbed of support for Roman Polanski? 10/06/09, responding to a claim by Terry Teachout in the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal:

Teachout rattles off the names of a host of filmmakers -- including Woody Allen, Jonathan Demme, Sam Mendes, Mike Nichols and Martin Scorsese -- who signed an international petition that "demands the immediate release of Roman Polanski."

There's only one problem: All of those filmmakers, along with Harvey Weinstein, live far, far away from Hollywood and, with occasional exceptions, make their movies outside of Hollywood as well. If you look up the rest of the names on the best-known petition in circulation, it is filled with the names of foreign filmmakers, writers and actors -- including the likes of Pedro Almodovar, Wong Kar Wai, Alfonso Cuaron, Isabelle Adjani and Salman Rushdie -- who also rarely set foot in Hollywood. If critics like Teachout want to claim that high-brow artists and writers have rushed to Polanski's defense, fair enough. But to say that Hollywood is in his corner, as part of a political argument that Hollywood is a liberal elite woefully ignorant of mainstream values, is just hogwash.

There's no petition going around with the names of the real Hollywood elite -- A-list filmmakers and studio chiefs like Steven Spielberg, Alan Horn, James Cameron, Amy Pascal, Jerry Bruckheimer, Brian Grazer, Tom Rothman, J.J. Abrams, John Lasseter or Michael Bay -- because the real Hollywood elite isn't supporting Polanski. In fact, they haven't offered the slightest hint of backing for Polanski. It's only European and New York-based artists, who clearly see the world in a very different light than the real Hollywood elite.

His observations apply to what Brother Al and to Katha Pollitt wrote, as well.

It's perfectly possible for people to have a more complex position on a complicated issue than for-or-against. It's also possible to take a straight-up for-or-against position on Polaski's extradition and still pay attention to reality. I would like to think that a leading writer for a liberal flagship publication like The Nation would take the time to do a little of the research Goldstein did for his article before holding forth with rightwing "culture war" buzzwords like "the liberal cultural elite" and applaud the (dubious) notion that "Middle America" (whoever she thinks that might be) "hates them" and with good reason.

Goldstein incorporates and essay by screenwriter Josh Olson into his article which is worth reading. Olsen reports that he counted 650 signatures on the two pro-Polanski petitions that he knew of that were circulating in Hollywood, and in using an expansive definition of which ones really belong to Hollywood, he finds only 35 names. Citing two writers who had said in the LA Times that “Hollywood is rallying behind the fugitive filmmaker,” he responds:

Well, speaking as someone who actually lives and works right in the heart of the city and the business, I can assure you that this isn’t even remotely true.

Their entire argument rests on just three things -- an incredibly poorly conceived off-the-cuff comment by Whoopi Goldberg, a petition that Harvey Weinstein is circulating, and that there isn’t a great hue and cry from Hollywood demanding that Polanski be brought to justice. I cannot speak to Ms. Goldberg’s painfully unfortunate comment, except to say that I have no doubt she didn’t mean it to come out quite the way it did. As for the lack of a hue and cry, I’m not entirely sure what we’re supposed to do.

I cannot pretend, as some have, to have spent the last thirty years gnashing my teeth at the fiend Polanski’s escape from justice, but neither can I pretend to be outraged that a convicted criminal who fled prosecution has been caught. Perhaps I missed the meeting where these things were explained, but it just never occurred to me that I was supposed to stage a rally when something happened that doesn’t bother, interest or affect me in the least. ...

What we are NOT, however, is sitting around fretting about whether or not Roman Polanski will be displeased with us if we publicly state that we think raping children is a bad thing. ...

Then there’s Jonathan Kuntz, who’s quoted as believing “the local reaction may be a version of the ‘there, but for the grace of God, go I.’" Well, again, no, but thank you for the extremely ugly insinuation, and when DID you stop beating your wife, Mr. Kuntz? Does it occur to ANY of these people that we’re not all sitting around in a clubhouse smoking crack, patting each other on the back and hoping not to get caught molesting children? [my emphasis]

Melissa Silverstein has a blog called Women and Hollywood from a feminist perspective. She did a post just today called Women in the Entertainment Business Speak Out About Polanski. Among those she finds not siding with Polanski are Rosie O’Donnell, Eve Ensler, Rosanne Barr (who Republican rightwingers particularly hate), and Jamie Lee Curtis.

It's also very possible for someone to use the Polanski case to talk about the problem of this kind of rape without giving easy ammunition to rightwing culture warriors to bash all them thar' Hollywood Jew elitists. Silverstein provides a couple of good examples in these posts, Rape is a Feminist Issue 10/01/09 and Does Being an “Artist” Trump Being a Rapist 09/29/09. In the earlier post, she notes that the actual "Hollywood" that she saw had signed on to the pro-Polanski petition didn't include any women from Hollywood. She's also critical of what she sees as the silence of feminist leaders and Hollywood notables on the issue. But what she says on the latter is quite interesting and does not pander to rightwing stereotypes, e.g., "In my gut, I believe that the women of Hollywood are appalled by what is happening. The fact that they are silent is a reminder of how little clout they have."

This is already long. But I want to get back to Brother Al. As a very influential leader in the country's largest Protestant denomination, is it too much to expect that he would also have done some basic fact-checking (beyond quoting Katha Pollitt's careless generalizations) on just how many prominent figures in the movie business in Hollywood were actually supporting Polanski in fighting extradition before he used the case to bash "Hollywood"? Here's what Brother Al has to say:

The response of so many Hollywood leading lights to the arrest of filmmaker Roman Polanski now suggests that, at least when it comes to one of their own, sex with children is within the pale. This deserves and demands a closer look.

The cultural left has responded to the arrest a week ago of Polanksi with outrage -- directed not at Polanski but at the arrest. [my emphasis]

He goes on to claim, apparently with no basis in fact, that "over 100 Hollywood luminaries had signed a petition demanding Polaski's release." And he effectively adds this to the Christian Right's bill of complaints against all them Jew liberal Democrat elitists:

The moral gap between Hollywood and "Middle America" is vast, though for some reason many Americans blind themselves to this fact. The Hollywood embrace of Roman Polanski and their outrage at his arrest in Switzerland shines a floodlight on this gap.

Are art and artists above moral accountability? The Hollywood elite seem to believe so -- and even to be willing to lend their names to the defense of the morally indefensible. Is the celebrity above the law? Watch this case closely. [my emphasis]

On the latter point, as I explained in my earlier post, the careless reporting that has become chronic with our Establishment press will make it too easy to claim that Polanski got off light because of his alleged "Hollywood" support. As I understand it, even the most stringent sentence is likely to be no more than a year in prison. And given what seem to be real misconduct problems in the first trial - and, yes, even confessed scumbags have the right to a fair and legal trial - it's more likely that Polanski won't do any jail time.

I'm guessing that one of the Law and Order franchise shows will do an episode this season based on this case. Maybe their version will have a more satisfying outcome than the real-life one is likely to bring.

Tags: albert mohler, christian right, culture war, fourth roman polanski

After Iraq and Afghanistan, why are so many people putting so much faith in war?

From the Pew Research Center Most Would Use Force to Stop Iranian Nukes 10/06/09:

The public approves of direct negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, although most Americans are not hopeful the talks will succeed. And a strong majority – 61% – says that it is more important to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if it means taking military action. Far fewer (24%) say it is more important to avoid a military conflict with Iran, if it means that the country may develop nuclear weapons.

There is broad willingness across the political spectrum to use military force to prevent Iran from going nuclear. Seven-in-ten Republicans (71%) and two-thirds of independents (66%) say it is more important to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons even if it means taking military action. Fewer Democrats (51%) express this view; still, only about three-in-ten Democrats (31%) say it is more important to avoid a military conflict with Iran, if it means Tehran may develop nuclear weapons.

Since both the International Atomic Energy Agency and US intelligence are saying that Iran does even currently have a nuclear weapons program, these results are particularly striking. For one thing, they do show an excessive faith in the use of force, i.e., war, and an unhealthy willingness to resort to it. But it also shows what a pitiful job our sad excuse for a national news media is doing reporting on this. Steve Hynd gives some of the details on the New York Times' latest entry for the Judith Miller Warmongering Prize in The Man-Judys Of The N.Y. Times Newshoggers blog 10/04/09.

Tags: iran, iran war, militarism

Ardi and the creationists

The dishonesty of the creationist quoted in this Christian Post article just gripes me: 'Ardi' Reverses Common Understanding of Human Evolution by Eric Young 10/02/09. So does the bad journalism.

The article is about an exciting new scientific story about the reconstruction of the the skeleton of a 4.4 million-year-old hominid, the biological line one branch of which led to modern humans (homo sapiens): Long-Awaited Research on a 4.4-Million-Year-Old Hominid Sheds New Light on Last Common Ancestor Scientific American Online by Katherine Harmon 10/01/09; Ethiopian desert yields oldest hominid skeleton by Robert Sanders, UC-Berkeley Media Relations 10/01/09; Before “Lucy,” There Was “Ardi”: First Major Analysis of One of Earliest Known Hominids Science by Kathy Wren10/01/09.

One reason for the excitement is the unexpected features the skeleton, dubbed "Ardi" but scientifically designated as Ardipithecus ramidus, has revealed. As Harmon reports:

Ardi is, in fact, "so rife with anatomical surprises, that no one could have imagined it without direct fossil evidence," wrote C. Owen Lovejoy, a professor of anthropology at Kent State University in Ohio, and his colleagues in a summary of one of the papers.

Among the surprises: Ardi's jaw and limbs show she was a forest-dwelling omnivore, not a fruit-eater like today's chimps or an open savanna–dweller like other early hominids. Ardi had a brain about the size of a modern chimp's relative to body size (about a third the size of a modern human's). And Ar. ramidus's foot is strikingly unlike that of a modern chimpanzee, the authors of another paper (led by Lovejoy) explain.

Sanders writes of this research:

The female skeleton, nicknamed Ardi, is 4.4 million years old, 1.2 million years older than the skeleton of Lucy, or Australopithecus afarensis, the most famous and, until now, the earliest hominid skeleton ever found. Hominids are all fossil species closer to modern humans than to chimps and bonobos, which are our closest living relatives. ...

The team's reconstruction of the 4-foot-tall skeleton and of Ardi's environment — a woodland replete with parrots, monkeys, bears, rhinos, elephants and antelope — alters the picture scientists have had of the first hominid to arise after the hominid line that would eventually lead to humans split about 6 million years ago from the line that led to living chimpanzees. [my emphasis]

Harmon explains what also makes this an important example of how science works:

Like any significant scientific discovery, Ar. ramidus raises more questions than it answers. "It's going to keep generations of students busy," CASHP's Richmond says of the research. It will also likely usher in a change in the common understanding that modern humans descended directly from chimpanzees — as popularized by the illustrated "quadrupedal monkey to upright man" sequence. Accepting the new view of human evolution that the Ardi analyses suggest, says Ward, will mean "tearing that [depiction] up and throwing it out the window."

Richmond may be a bit optimistic. Because the current "common understanding that modern humans descended directly from chimpanzees" was different from the already-established paleontological view that humans diverged from the line that led to chimpanzees around six million years ago.

But the new discovery provides new clues to how and when two legged mobility and paternal involvement with offspring evolved.

Eric Young's Christian Post article, however, provides a good example of the shameful way creationists promote hostility to science among Christian believers with whom they have credibility. Young reports in the first few paragraphs on the discovery itself. He then radically misstates the significance of the discovery's significance:

Simply put, this means the new skeleton reverses the common understanding of human evolution. Rather than humans evolving from an ancient chimp-like creature, "Ardi" provides evidence that chimps and humans evolved from some long-ago common ancestor - but each evolved and changed separately along the way.

The most generous interpretation of that is that he didn't understand what he was hearing and reading about the find. This is a good example of how to give a wrong impression without technically saying something incorrect. Yes, the find does provide more evidence "that chimps and humans evolved from some long-ago common ancestor". And if the "common understanding of human evolution" is that humans evolved from chimpanzees, it could possibly change that. Or not, as discussed above. But if it "reverses" that common understanding, wouldn't that mean that people would now understand that chimpanzees evolved from humans? Young leaves the impression - without actually explicitly saying so - that the Ardi discovery is the first evidence that humans and chimpanzees diverge from a common ancestral line, rather than humans evolving from chimps. But that recognition of a common ancestor has been around for a while. Harmon writes:

The analysis of Ardi gives new poignancy to the notion, set forth nearly 150 years ago by Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley, that there was likely a common ancestor quite different from both modern humans and great apes. Darwin knew, White noted in the recorded interview that, "the only way we're really going to know what this last common ancestor looked like is to go and find it." [my emphasis]

Young then proceeds to write:

Following Thursday’s announcement, some critics of evolution theory used the latest buzz to point out that “faith” is required to believe pro-evolution scientists who are themselves unsure about many things and constantly changing what they believe to be true.

"’Six months ago, we would have said our common ancestor looked something like a chimp,’" Christian preacher Ray Comfort cited White as having said. "’Now all that has changed.’ Sure has. And it will change again, and again, and again. I know, ‘that's what real science does.’”

Comfort, who has been drawing attention and controversy this past week for his plan to distribute tens of thousands of anti-evolution books to university students, said he needs “hard evidence,” and for him, that comes from Christianity.

“I know where we came from (on the highest Authority), I know why we are here and I know where I am going after death,” he stated Thursday.

“[I]t’s hard to argue with the sort of devotion that evolutionists have,” Comfort added, calling the findings of the Ardi researchers a “faith matter.”

Comfort's comments are dishonest on more levels that one. Unfortunately, it's common for Christian fundamentalists to try to dismiss the entire enterprise of science by denigrating it as simply one point of view. Comfort's particular twists denigrates both science and religious faith by encouraging his listeners to dismiss evolution because it is based on faith.

Out here in the real world, of course, the theory of evolution - and the findings about "Ardi" - are based on evidence, not faith.

But his argument is a common one among fundis when he refers to "scientists who are themselves unsure about many things and constantly changing what they believe to be true". This reminds me an anecdote about the economist John Maynard Keynes, who was challenged by someone for having changed his opinion about something or other. Keynes replied, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

One might even say that the need to constantly re-evaluate specific assumptions based on new relevant evidence builds a kind of humility into the process of science. Though there is abundant evidence that individual scientists are sometimes now blessed with excesses of humility.

Such humility is also relevant to religion and theology. If a Christian minister or theologian comes to realize that the way he has been interpreting some aspect of Christian belief and practice has been inadequate or wrong, shouldn't he, you know, change his mind? Like Martin Luther, to take just one example? Changing your mind based on new and better information isn't just a scientific way of thinking. It's a grown-up way of thinking?

But the quotes there from Ray Comfort express only one side of the Christian fundamentalist attitude toward science, the side that says that faith (specifically the fundamentalist version of the Christian faith) trumps science. Since it began in the 19th century, Christian fundamentalism has also insisted that science actually supports the fundi version of the world, which requires reading the Christian Scriptures like a science text. And even that requires quite a bit of imagination.

The outcome of this strange mixture of approaches has been in practice to reject real science, embrace junk science and promote an untenable version of Christian theology.

Simon Maloy at Media Matters has more in Pulling fossilized heads from the sand -- and burying live ones in it 10/05/09. He includes information on the crackpot connections of Ray Comfort, which the Christian Post didn't think its readers needed to know in their article. I would say that Maloy could have described the meaning of "theory" in science a bit better. Creationists play on a quirk of English in which "theory" is used colloquially to mean something like a guess, as in "that's just a theory". A scientific theory is a systematic description that consistently explains the given facts of a topic. Discovering something new that may superceded one theory doesn't mean the earlier one was false. Newton's theory of gravity doesn't explain as much of the universe as Einstein's theory of relativity, which says among other things that gravity is a result of the fact that spacetime is curved. But (with some exceptions for the outer planets), Newton's theory of gravity still explains how gravity works in this solar system. That famous (if maybe apocraphal) apple still falls to the ground. But Albert Einstein had better telescopes than Isaace Newton did. So he could make factual observations that were inaccessible to Newton.

Tags: christian fundamentalism, christian right, christianism

New "moderate Republican" scam under way?

Alex Isenstadt reported on Friday 10/02/09 in Politico on the latest adventure of that bold Maverick McCain: John McCain's mission: A GOP makeover. The Maverick, it seems,

By coincidence (?), David "Bobo" Brooks in his column for Friday, The Wizard of Beck New York Times 10/02/09, says we should just ignore those prominent Republican hatemongers - he doesn't use the word - like Rush, Glenn Beck and so on. Nobody is paying attention to what they say, Bobo assures us. Don't waste time paying any attention to them. They have no influence in the Republican Party.

No, I'm not kidding. He continued making the argument over the weekend. Bobo is a good bellwether for pitches we can expect to hear from Republicans who want to be seen as clean-shaven and reassuring - but without going so far as to break with their Party on anything important.

If we take Bobo's "analysis" at face value, it largely misses the point. Limbaugh may not be able to control primary elections. But with the Republicans' Mighty Wurlitzer (their network of partisan media outlets including FOX News that airs Glenn Beck) slings sleaze at Democrats furiously 24/7. And to a large extent, the Mighty Wurlitzer defines the terms of public debates, not least because the mainstream media looks to them for stories to flog. As Glenn Greenwald noted sourly on Twitter 10/04/09 about David Gregory's Meet the Press interview with US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice: "David Gregory's sources for his questions today: Charles Krauthammer on Iran and Newt Gingrich's Twitter feed." That would be neocon warmonger columnist Charles Krauthammer and long-ago Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, whose every utterance for some unfathomable reasons seems to important in the eyes of our Great Pundits.

Earlier in the week, Bobo's own "public editor" Clark Hoyt at New York Times wrote (Tuning In Too Late 09/26/09) that the Times wasn't paying enough attention to movement conservatives' favorite issues. And wrote reported:

Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, agreed with me that the paper was “slow off the mark,” [on the ACORN story] and blamed “insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.” She and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies. Keller declined to identify the editor, saying he wanted to spare that person “a bombardment of e-mails and excoriation in the blogosphere.” [my emphasis]

Given the context, something tells me the new, anonymous "opinion media" monitoring editor isn't going to be expected to devote large amounts of his time to reading Digby, Marcy Wheeler or Aimai.

The Tea Party and Hate Radio factions of the Republican Party also have the function of energizing the base. And, in practice, firing up the paranoid and violent fantasies of the "patriot militia" types. And, weirdly enough, Brooks points out in his article that Republican politicians in Congress do pay close attention to what characters like Beck and Limbaugh say. He's arguing that they should ignore them to.

But surely he knows that's not going to happen. The columns seems to me directed more at the rest of us. It's also striking that he uses a metaphor from The Wizard of Oz:

So what is the theme of our history lesson? It is a story of remarkable volume and utter weakness. It is the story of media mavens who claim to represent a hidden majority but who in fact represent a mere niche — even in the Republican Party. It is a story as old as "The Wizard of Oz," of grand illusions and small men behind the curtain.

But it was the devious Wizard himself who told Dorothy and her companions to pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Just as Bobo is telling us to pay no attention to the ideological shock troops of the Republican Party.

Ari Melber at the Huffington Post looks at this development in When Pundits Attack: The Beck-Brooks Fight 10/05/09.

Meanwhile, here's a hint of how fastidious the Maverick and his faux "moderates" are likely to be about the company they keep. From the Maverick's Twitter feed today: "Great to be back on with Don Imus again, congrats to his whole team - Bernie, Charles, and Warner!"

In another facet of this "moderate Republican" dog-and-pony shows, Politico reports that senior Republicans are at least going throught the public motions of reining in Party Chairman Michael Steele (GOP leaders to Michael Steele: Back off by Manu Raju and Jonathan Martin 10/05/09).

Heather at Crooks and Liars has the video on transcript of Bobo's Meet the Press appearance at David Brooks: Beck, Limbaugh and Levin Don't Control the Republican Party 10/04/09. In that one, he elaborated on his ignore-the-demogagues-setting-the-agenda-for-the-Republican-Party line.

In another part of that MTP appearance, Rachel Maddow gave Bobo a chance to apply his theory after he made the observation: pay no attention to Sarah Palin! I mean, she's only one of the favorite figures on the Christian Right, the hard core activist and voter base of the Party. From the transcript:

GREGORY: But, but, but, but the issue of influence, whether the, the harshness of the debate becomes what controls the politics and ultimately influences who emerges to the top of a political party, which is still a question for Republicans.

MR. BROOKS: There's no evidence--Barack Obama was not evidence of that harshness, John McCain was not evidence of that harshness. The people who actually vote, even in primaries, who are pretty hard-core people, they don't go for that. So it's a, it's a margin on the edge. And if Sarah Palin is the nominee, the Republican nominee, I'll eat my hat. I'll eat this cup on the air. But she will not be, because people just don't like that style of politics.

But then Maddow initiates the following exchange with "Republican strategist" Mike Murphy and liberal New York Times columnist E.J. Dionne, which Bobo sits out:

MS. MADDOW: I, I do think that there's a little bit of reckoning that needs to happen on the right for Sarah Palin's success. I mean, she was the vice presidential nominee, she is going to sell a kazillion books and she is the biggest brand name in Republican politics still right now. And she's chose--the person who's writing her book, her last--the last person who she co-authored a book with was called "Donkey Cons" and it was co-authored with a guy who's widely believed to be and I believe him to be a white supremacist. So she's chosen Lynn Vincent, who's written a book with a white supremacist, to write her book, and she's the biggest name in Republican politics.

MR. MURPHY: Oh, but, Rachel...

MS. MADDOW: And you can dismiss her and say she's not going to be the nominee, but I do think the right needs to sort of answer for what's happened to conservatism.

MR. MURPHY: But let me just say, I am a well-documented nonfan of Sarah Palin, at least as a national politician. I don't know her personally. But that's guilt by association stuff. That's the cable stuff. That's the problem.

MS. MADDOW: But why would you--you can pick anybody to be your ghostwriter.

MR. MURPHY: Sarah Palin's a lot of things, but she's not a white supremacist. And...

MS. MADDOW: You could--no, I don't think she is. But when you can pick anybody, why would she pick somebody who's associated with the League of the South, who said that Americans are revolted by the idea of having a black sister-in-law. I mean, she--this is who she picked to write her book.

MR. MURPHY: Yeah, but there's...

MS. MADDOW: Why do you do that?

MR. MURPHY: That's sort of guilt by association stuff, which I don't know and it can--I--check it out.

MS. MADDOW: It's guilt by choice. It's guilt by choice.

GREGORY: OK.

MR. MURPHY: It is, is so, so not important to the central questions in the country right now. But that's what cable TV has become, so I...

MS. MADDOW: Sarah Palin's popularity is a central question in the Republican Party right now.

GREGORY: Quickly, E.J.

MS. MADDOW: And you can make fun of her, but it doesn't make it go away.

MR. DIONNE: Forget guilt by association. Governor Rick Perry may win a Republican primary because he talked about secession. You haven't had somebody win an election on secession since 1858.

MR. MURPHY: Yeah. E.J., I can tell you...

MR. DIONNE: There's a radical strain in the Republican Party. It's not guilt by association, it's right out there.

MR. MURPHY: Yeah, but look...

GREGORY: All right, final thought here, Mike.

MR. MURPHY: Professional political consultant, that one line which you're deducing a complete definition of Perry from, who I oppose in that primary, is not the reason he's going to win. [my emphasis]

Republicans like Mike Murphy and Bobo would much prefer that we pretend that the Republican Party of today is led by marvelous "moderate" mavericks like their adored John McCain. And that we don't hang the kind of politics they are practicing with the Tea Party demagoguery around their necks. But when it comes to Bobo or Murphy criticizing high-profile like Sarah Palin or Rick Perry for their publicly expressed neo-Confederate sympathies, for close involvement with theocratic religious groups like Palin's Third Wave Pentecostals, or even for teaming up with white supremacists and Birchers, they would prefer to avoid that. Or, as we see with Murphy and Perry, defend it. But they would rather that no one hear literate criticism of important Republicans for such things.

I think it's quite revealing that Murphy tried to brush off Palin selecting a neo-Confederate to write her book for her by saying, "That's the cable stuff." This may be a sign of something we can expect to see more of, Republicans accusing Democrats of employing "cable stuff". While refusing to even admit that the torrent of invective and wild accusations that the Mighty Wurlitzer direct at Democrats non-stop has any effect. And while the Reps pick up the "cable stuff" like death panels as laundered through the broken national press and demands that Democrats address them as serious issues.

Aimai at No More Mister Nice Blog speculates on the Republicans' calculations behind the Palin- and Steele-bashing in Palin and Steele Represent the Same Problem 10/05/09. She does a good job articulating something important about today's Republican Party that I would never have been able to formulate as well. The Republican Party is hostile to women's rights and to needs blacks and Latinos, especially blacks. It's part of their "culture war" identity. Yet at the same time, electoral demographics and the general zeitgeist of the 21st century requires them to put up a front to the general public of not being that way. And so they've found token figures like Palin and Steele to present what we might call a "compassionate conservative" face, to pick a phrase at random.

The catch especially in Steele's is, as Aimai writes, "their base really hates token blacks." And even Palin's biggest fans among the Christian Right must be suffering some cognitive dissonance at the thought of having a woman and a mother with children at home in the role of Commander-in-Chief, as they prefer to call their Republican Presidents. Aimai thinks that what is up is that some Republican bigwigs are trying to set up Palin and Steele to take the fall if the Tea Party strategy produces a nasty backlash against their (Republican) Party. I should warn you that she's being, oh gosh, shrill and partisan!

Palin and Steele are both being sent to stand in the corner--to pay for the failures of the actual leaders of the party. The whole party is essentially made up of old, stupid, white guy *gamblers*--just as McCain made a gamble that by picking Palin he'd get just enough support and excitement to get over the hump and get into the White House[,] they thought that they could somehow, for a short time, parlay Steele's blackness into a short term benefit vis a vis the Democratic party and Obama. He was the default choice but he was their choice and that was fairly explicit in their public reasoning on why he was chosen--he was there to reassure suburban whites that the GOP weren't stone racists. [my emphasis]

She also has more to say on the tokenism issue in the comments. Check it out.

Tags: david brooks, republican party

What Krugman says

He tells the truth about what today's Republican Party has become in The Politics of Spite New York Times 10/05/09:

The key point is that ever since the Reagan years, the Republican Party has been dominated by radicals — ideologues and/or apparatchiks who, at a fundamental level, do not accept anyone else’s right to govern.

Anyone surprised by the venomous, over-the-top opposition to Mr. Obama must have forgotten the Clinton years. Remember when Rush Limbaugh suggested that Hillary Clinton was a party to murder? When Newt Gingrich shut down the federal government in an attempt to bully Bill Clinton into accepting those Medicare cuts? And let’s not even talk about the impeachment saga. ...

It’s an ugly picture. But it’s the truth. And it’s a truth anyone trying to find solutions to America’s real problems has to understand.

Tags: paul krugman, republican party

Shakira Mebarak on Mercedes Sosa

Mercedes Sosa and Shakira

The Colombian superstar Shakira Mebarak posted this note on her Facebook page paying tribute to the Argentine singer and pro-democracy human rights activist Mercedes Sosa, who passed away Sunday (today) at age 74. I notice that she signed the note "Shakira Mebarak" and not just Shakira; in most of her publicity she uses the single name. The text of her note:

Mercedes fue la voz más grande y tuvo el más grande corazón para el que sufre. Fue la voz de sus hermanos de la tierra que elevó el canto del dolor y la justicia.

Artista conmovedora y admirada primera en la lucha solidaria.

Sufrió el exilio dando ejemplo de coraje y volvió con naturalidad a su sitio de elegida.

Nos deja la sencillez de su gesto y de su danza y la luz de su palabra y de su afecto.

Su canto era la idea: no repetía estrofas sino que transmitía el pensamiento hondo del verso y de la música.

Cantó a su gente y su tierra americana, pero su canto universal fue oído en todo el mundo.

La voz de Mercedes resonaba en el corazón como un abrazo.

Fue un honor cantar con ella. Lo hizo tan fácil, como una hermana mayor en el canto y en la causa de los niños.

"¿Nada quedará de mi paso aquí en la tierra? Al menos versos, al menos cantos", decía el ancestro mexicano. Mercedes deja el mundo lleno de sus cantos, poblado de sus versos.

Somos más buenos después de haberla conocido.
Nos mostró que la canción puede ser una enseñanza.

Shakira Mebarak

Mercedes Sosa 1973

My translation (I tend to go for the literal meaning and can't pretend to capture the grace of Shakira's Spanish prose):

Mercedes was the greatest voice and had the biggest heart for those who suffer. She was the voice of her brothers and sister of the earth, who raised the song of pain and justice.

A moving artist and admired above all in the solidarity of struggle.

She suffered exile, giving an example of courage, and returned naturally to her chosen place. [She was exiled during the brutal military dictatorship of 1976-83 but returned to Argentina in 1982.]

She left us the simplicity of her gesture and of her dance and the light of her word and of her feelings.

Her song was the idea: don't repeat strophes without transmitting the inner thought of the verse and of the music.

She sang to her people and to her American land, but her universal song was heard in all the world.

Mercedes' voice resonates in the heart like an embrace.

It was an honor to sing with her. She made it so easy, like an older sister in the song and in the cause of the children.

"Will nothing remain of my through through here on the earth. At least verses, at least songs", said the Mexican ancestor. Mercedes left the world full of her song, populated by her verses.

We are better after having known her.
She showed us that a song can be an education.

Additional articles on Mercedes Sosa:

Mercedes Sosa My Space page

Emotivo adiós a "La Negra" Sosa en el Congreso Clarín (Argentina) 04.10.2009

Mucho más que una cantante extraordinaria Clarín (Argentina) 04.10.2009

Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa, 'voice of Latin America,' dies at 74 CNN 10/04/09

Argentine folk legend Mercedes Sosa dead at 74 Dawn (Pakistan) 04.10.2009

Tags: mercedes sosa, shakira, shakira mebarak

The danger of sloppy reporting about public figures and sex

I suppose we'll always have sex stories about politicians. Especially as long as we have the kind of mass media personnel we have in the US right now.

But as we saw in the Clinton era, sex stories that are poorly covered by the media can not only be unfair to the individuals involved. They can also become a major tool of sleazy politics.

Now the FOXists are going after another Clinton official, Kevin Jennings, who is openly gay. They are accusing him of a vaguely sex-related instance of bad judgment when he was a teacher, playing to the far right's favored bigoted stereotype of gay men being child molesters. (In the real world, the most common profile of a child molester is a straight married man with children of his own.) The accusations have proven to be 100% b******t. It would be technically accurate to add "so far". But that would imply there was some vague plausibility about the accusations.

Media Matters has been following this, e.g., Statement from former student at center of Fox-fueled Jennings controversy by Karl Frisch 10/02/09. There are several other links about the (non-)story there.

Tags: radical right, republican party

Now we're talking!

This has seemed an obvious perspective to me for a while now. From Brian Beutler, Progressives Prepare to Pressure Reid to Include Public Option in Senate Health Care Bill TPMDC 10/01/09:

Major progressive organizations see a golden opportunity to resurrect the public option, and are preparing a campaign, which will include television ads in Nevada, to pressure Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to get on board. ...

"If Harry Reid does not have the leadership skills to get 60 votes for cloture and give a Democratic president an up-or-down vote on health care, progressives will help defeat him in 2010, even if that means Republicans take that seat," said the head of one progressive organization, who's still working out the detail of the campaign. "There is no use for Reid's vote if 60 Democratic votes means nothing on cloture, and no use for Reid's leadership if his leadership is so blatantly ineffective."

That might not be such a troubling threat if Reid, who's up for re-election in 2010, wasn't suffering at the polls.

It's not clear why Beutler should have granted the person saying that anonymity. But the concept makes sense. We don't have a liberal/progressive party in the US. We have the Democratic Party, with a popular/progressive wing and a corporate-conservative wing. The Republicans are a reactionary party; conservative is not really a good description of their Party. The only way for liberals to increase their clout is to target Blue Dog Dems in primaries. And insist that the Party leaders respond to the needs of the Party base.

Reid's Majority Leader status is a conceptual holdover from the decades in which the Dems, for whatever reasons, felt they needed to have majority leaders who projected a "moderate" image. What that meant in practice was selected characters like Harry Reid from less secure Democratic seats who often felt they needed to vote with Republicans on important issues to show their centrism. Not a good criteria for a Party majority leader in Congress. Nancy Pelosi is working out much better.

Tags: harry reid, democratic party

That extradition case, the ick factor and the "culture war"

I've pretty much tried to ignore the Roman Polanski extradition case. But it seems to be well on the way to becoming an international "culture war" issue. I hate these kinds of issues for two main reasons. One is that the "ick" factor of an fortysomething adult accused of having sex with a 13-year-old is high no matter what, whether it's in Hollywood or Afghanistan. The other is that probably no one but a legal specialist in this particular area of law actually has a good and reasonably objective opinion on what should actually be done or is customarily done in these kinds of cases.

But it's already become a symbolic issue, I'll state my own position, such as it is, up front. Really more of an understanding of the facts than a "position". It makes good sense to me that the Los Angeles District Attorney would seek extradition. The State of California has a real interest in seeing its judicial processes upheld. But it appears likely that no additional penalties will be because of some combination of the victim's wishes, the time since the crime, and serious concerns about improper conduct by the judge in the original case.

And, this being the real world, French and Polish concerns about their citizen Polanski's expedition shouldn't be dismissed out of hand out of anti-European sentiment or even genuine concern over the nature of the crime. An apparently unintentional AP leak has suggested that the Switzerland is cooperating in the extradition request due to political efforts related to defusing conflicts over criminal misconduct by the Swiss bank UBS rather than to the merits of the case. And Americans need to remember that it's not 2000 any more. The US is a country that tortures people and refuses to prosecute known torturers. Even if there is no particular concern that Polanski would be tortured, it is a serious concern that casts a shadow over all extradition cases involving the US. (This report, French government drops support for director Roman Polanski as he faces extradition to the U.S. over child sex charge by Peter Allen Daily Telegraph 10/01/09, says that the French government is now taking the position that Polanski should be freed from Swiss jail while extradition is pending but that it is not opposing the extradition.)

The "culture war" aspect comes out in this piece by Doreen Carvajal and Michael Cieply, France Divided Over Polanski Case International Herald Tribune/New York Times 09/30/09. In fact, it was skimming the first few paragraphs of this article that made me think it might be worth knowing a bit more about the case, because it's become an issue because the French government has publicly defended Sarkozy's case against extradition to California.

Apparently in France as in the US, politicians not surprisingly think that the safer position is not to side with people in Polanski's current situation. I can't say the Carvajal/Cieply article was necessarily enlightening on the case. But they note in the third paragraph opposition to the conservative-led government's defense of Polanski from both the Greens and the "extreme right" party of Jean-Marie Le Pen. Given it's the New York Times, the writers and/or editors probably think that the xenophobia Le Pen party is their "this-side-says, the-other-side-says" style of reporting on what the Green leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit says. In the fifth paragraph, they at least get around to telling us that Polanski is a citizen of France and Poland, so the French government would have some reason to take some public position on the case.

Dany Cohn-Bendit was the most famous leader and symbol of the famous/(infamous) May-June 1968 uprising by students and workers in France. Carvajal and Cieply say he "criticized Sarkozy administration officials for leaping too quickly to Mr. Polanski’s side despite the serious nature of his crime". It's probably a good thing that the Times article didn't go into it. And maybe not a good thing that I'm mentioning it. But Cohn-Bendit does have a special reason to look like his siding against Polanski in this situation.

Several years ago, the German journalist Bettina Röhl dug up an embarrassing quote from Cohn-Bendit. As I explained at some length in an earlier post, Bettina Röhl harshes on former "68er" activists with a zeal that outruns the case she tries to make against them. She has her own family demons to deal with: her mother was Ulrike Meinhof of the "Baader-Meinhof Gang", her father Klause Rainer Röhl is a former flaming leftwinger turned flaming rightwinger and both parents were secret members of the East-German-directed underground Communist Party in West Germany. But she's a good researcher. And she turned up an interview with Cohn-Bendit that he had given years ago when he worked as a teacher in school with young children which seemed to suggest that he had engaged in inappropriate play with young children in that capacity.

Cohn-Bendit denied ever having done such a thing. And he said the quote was a poor attempt at humor, and a very inappropriate one. But from what I've seen of the case, there was never any reason to question his version. There were no such complaints at the time and no collaboration of such a thing from parents or students. I would say it was questionable ethics on Röhl's part to publish that information without any substantial collaboration. But, according to what Digby calls the Cokie Roberts Rule, the information was "out there" - it had been published in a small-circulation but public magazine before - and therefore it was fair game to report.

Still, it's a reminder of how sloppy reporting can damage people unfairly. The one time I saw the late great Molly Ivins speak live, back in the mid-1990s as the current plunge of press quality into the bottomless abyss was still in its early years, she was talking about factors in how reporting had deteriorated and become more irresponsible. And one example she gave was that it had for a long time been the practice of most papers not to publish the name of someone who had been accused but not convicted of molesting children. Because even if the charge was totally false and the accused unquestionably exonerated, the stigma was such that it could damage the accused permanently.

So I decided I would see what I could find that had been factually reported on the Polanski case before I tried to wade through the "cultural war" accusations.

Dismissal denied in Polanski child-sex case by Harriet Ryan 02/18/09. This is an interesting piece because it is recent but still months before the high-profile controversy of the past couple of weeks. This was an piece about a legal effort by Polanski to have the original case thrown out:

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza told a packed courtroom that he found the core argument in Polanski's request for a dismissal of charges -- allegations of unethical and, in some instances, illegal conduct by a prosecutor and a judge three decades ago -- to be credible.

"There was substantial, it seems to me, misconduct that occurred during the pendency of this case," Espinoza said.

But, the judge said, Polanski's fugitive status left him no choice but to deny the request. ...

In 1997, a prosecutor and a defense attorney worked out a plan for the director to surrender, be arrested at the airport, brought to court, sentenced and immediately released. The agreement fell apart with Polanski's side saying he objected to television coverage in court. ...

The victim, Samantha Geimer, settled a civil suit against Polanski and publicly forgave him. She has asked that the case be dismissed. Her attorney on Tuesday argued to Espinoza that she could make the motion to dismiss the charges if Polanski's fugitive status prevented the judge from doing so, but Espinoza said in a written ruling that there was no "legal justification" to support that argument. [my emphasis]

Samantha Geimer, Polanski's victim, doesn't back prison time for the director Los Angeles Times Online by Shelby Grad 09/27/09

Judge the Movie, Not the Man by Samantha Geimer Los Angeles Times 02/2303. In this op-ed, the victim describes clearly what occurred as non-consensual sex, i.e., rape. She also says, "He should have received a sentence of time served 25 years ago, just as we all agreed."

Roman Polanski arrest: Hollywood unties in his defence The Guardian Online 09/28/09. This article refers to the victim as "the girl whom Polanski raped at the age of 13", but includes what appears to be an editorial note appended at the end saying, "Some commentators have simply used the term 'rape' in relation to Roman Polanski's 1977 conviction. The offence he pleaded guilty to is often described as 'statutory rape' but more precisely as 'unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor'." This article also discusses the AP leak connected the Swiss action to concerns over banking controversies.

Prosecuting Polanski Los Angeles Times editorial 09/29/09:

Finally, in a caricature of European cosmopolitanism, France's culture minister fumed that the harrying of such a cultural icon revealed the face of "a scary America."

Some of these arguments are more persuasive than others. For example, Polanski may have a due-process claim based on improper behavior by the judge in his case. By contrast, he shouldn't be left alone because of tragedies in his life or his status as a legendary director. Nor is it relevant that his victim seeks no further punishment for him. Prosecutions are brought in the name of the state, not the victim.

Plausible or preposterous, these arguments are eclipsed by a simple fact: Polanski fled the country.

The one part of that quote with which I would disagree is the sneer at the French culture minister, an implicitly at the French Foreign Minister who made an even stronger statement about his concerns over the extradition, as "a caricature of European cosmopolitanism." And while it's true that the state prosecutes on its own behalf and not in the name of the victim - an important legal reality that some of the rhetoric around "victim's rights" over the years has tended to obscure - it's unlikely in practice that in the event the original charges were thrown out that the DA would attempt to reprosecute the case with a victim unwilling to proceed on a now decades-old charge.

So, we have a case in which the accused accepted a plea bargain and served the agreed sentence, where there is substantial reason to believe there was prosecutorial and judicial misconduct, in which the Los Angeles prosecutor had agree in 1997 to another deal in which the accused would have appeared in court and then gone free, and in which the victim actually agrees that the original charges should be dropped.

The "ick factor" notwithstanding, this doesn't seem like a very good case to make another totem in the "culture war". And while it may be a reminder that the criminal justice system in the US generally thirty years ago tended to treat perpetrators in such cases too leniently, it seems unlikely that this 32-year-old case is likely to produce a very satisfactory outcome for anyone if it's retried. And the prospects seem good that the the original charges will be dropped, for better or for worse.

A number of prominent Hollywood movie-industry figures have publicly come to Polanski's defense over the extradition. So far as I've seen from the news reports, they haven't made a terribly strong case. At the least, they would have presented a more sympathetic case if they had focused more narrowly on due process and official misconduct in the original trial.

At least some of those who are treating it as a straight-forward outrage that anyone would express reservations about official conduct of the case also seem to be more concerned about immunizing themselves from conservative culture-war attacks than sorting out the issues raised by the case. But so long as they are doing it, it's worth flagging that a number of liberals have take a hardline anti-Polanski position in the case:

Katha Pollitt, Roman Polanski Has a Lot of Friends The Nation Online 10/01/09: "The widespread support for Polanski shows the liberal cultural elite at its preening, fatuous worst. ... No wonder Middle America hates them." Seeing as how even TV news has morphed into infotainment, I'm not convinced that "Middle America" hates Hollywood stars and directors.

Glenn Greenwald gets into the act with Post editors should read their own columnists Salon 10/01/09. He seems to be genuinely disgusted at Polanski's defenders. But his main point is that the Washington Post's editorial position attacking Polanski's defenders is in pathetic contrast to its staunch opposition to prosecution of Bush officials for official crimes that include offenses regarded by the law as even more serious than the crime to which Polanski pleaded guilty.

Glenn criticizes three particularly fatuous defenses of Polanski:

The Outrageous Arrest of Roman Polanski by Anne Applebaum Washington Post Online 09/27/09. Applebaum is married to the Polish Foreign Minister, who in his official capacity has expressed concern about Polanski's extradition, a fact she didn't bother to disclose in this piece.

Let Polanski Go -- But First Let Me At Him by Richard Cohen Washington Post Online 09/28/09

Artist Rally Behind Polanski by Bernard-Henri Lévy Huffington Post 09/28/09. Whatever side of the "culture war" Levy is on, I'm pretty sure it's not the same as mine.

For other developments:

The Smoking Gun site has the transcript of the victim's grand jury testimony from 1977 (if you're thinking about reading it at work, remember that it involves descriptions that screening software could flag as pornographic).

Polanski's Lost Alibi by Marcia Clark The Daily Beast 09/30/09

Reminder: Roman Polanski raped a child by Kate Harding 09/28/09.

In Roman Polanski case, is it Hollywood vs. Middle America? by John Horn and Tina Daunt Los Angeles Times 10/01/09

There are lots of polemics about this at the Huffington Post, including:

Why Arrest Roman Polanski Now? by Robert Harris New York Times 09/29/09

Why Robert Harris' NY Times Pro-Polanski Op-Ed Is an Offensive, Self-Serving Disgrace by Andy Ostroy 09/30/09

Wonder Why Middle America Doesn't Trust Hollywood Liberals? Three Words: Weinstein and Polanski by Keli Goff 09/30/09

Tags: bernard-henri lévy, culture war, roman polanski