The past 10 days have been a busy time for me. A week ago Monday I delivered my zoom lecture on the game theoretic analysis of the central argument in John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice. The next day, I made a zoom appearance in a course at NC State for tech seniors who had read my book The Ideal of the University. Then on Saturday, I appeared by zoom in the 50th anniversary celebration at the University of Massachusetts of a program I started there in 1972 called Social Thought and Political Economy. On Monday I taught again, giving the last of my series of lectures on the use and abuse of formal methods in political philosophy, and then on Tuesday I wrote a new preface for the Arabic translation of In Defense of Anarchism.
Now my calendar is clear and I am available if anyone has an
interest in having me drop into their university for a zoom visit. Since my Parkinson’s continues to get worse,
I do not think I can easily travel, but my cognitive faculties seem reasonably
intact and I do love to teach.
Another $100 has been pledged in my matching campaign so I will
send off $200 to the DLCC. So many terrible things have been happening in the
United States recently that it takes all of my Tigger instincts to keep
from getting depressed, but there are good signs as well as bad and I shall
keep fighting as long as I am able.
59 comments:
Will the NC lectures be available? There was a problem signing in for at least a couple of us.
The DLCC focuses on statehouse races. Currently several Republican states are morphing into laboratories of fascism. Michigan demonstrates that this trend can be reversed. I hope more readers take advantage of Prof. Wolff's generous matching offer as there are several important races next month and the rest of the year.
W/r/t DLCC contributions, I encourage others to give. For my part, “I gave at the office”.
I’m only partly kidding (“I pledge $50!” As the old Woody Allen routine had it). One result of my political largesse was enjoying a recent intimate dinner with a Democratic up-and-comer and spouse. That’s right, I ate dinner with a “Corporate Democrat”!
I mention this shameful act only as an antidote to a certain moralizing view of politics, one that is especially common among lefties (and notably absent among righties): what I’ve always thought of as the morally-pristine-candidate fallacy. What do I mean by this? Let me illustrate.
For most of my legal career I worked as a plaintiff’s class action attorney, bringing mostly consumer law cases. Some many years back (2002, I think) a certain Senator from a certain state that is dominated by the banking industry managed to get passed certain legislation that was so grotesquely unfair to consumers that I swore — on my mother’s LIFE! — through gnashing TEETH! – my eternal enmity to this person.
Then my mother died. And a few years after that Joe Biden was the vice-presidential candidate. Did I vote for him? Yes. Was I happy about this? Not really, but here’s the one good thing about our two-party system. You don’t really have to think or care all that much about who to vote for and this frees up a lot of time that would otherwise be wasted thinking and caring about this stuff. All you really need to do is know which of the two candidates (or parties) *you hate more*.
This task can be accomplished nearly instantaneously. Romney? A prick. Palin? A moron. Obama and Biden? I didn’t know much about the first and I hated the second, but between Biden and Palin I hated her more. This “deliberation” took me all of 10 seconds (if that), because even if I didn’t hate her more, I still wouldn’t have voted for her. And because I simply cannot imagine voting Republican under any circumstances ever, there is no need for me to even peruse the vast amount of written material comparing and contrasting candidates across the two parties. Think of the amount of time I’ve saved over the years!
Which brings me back to my dinner companion. This person has been targeted by the “Brooklyn Left” for not only seeking and obtaining corporate contributions but for seeking out (or at least pocketing) money from *morally wicked* corporations. You may be, like Claude Rains in Casablanca, shocked, SHOCKED! to discover a) that politicians need lots of money and b) that this money by and large resides in corporate coffers … I know I was when I learned this! But that was when I was twelve and I’ve since gotten over it.
But I’m not sure I can say the same for most of my lefty pals. As an alternative to the dreaded “Corporate Democrat”, just today the house organ of the Brooklyn Left (Jacobin Magazine) is extolling the virtues of … Marianne Williamson. Who would vote for Marianne Williamson (or Jill Stein)? Better said, who would bother with the performative exercise of voting for either of these two and thereafter telling the rest of us about it? This kind of voter seeks a candidate who is morally pristine. That is to say that this kind of voter has a view of politics that has not changed since the age of twelve (or freshman year).
There is an argument to be made that Williamson will somehow push Biden to the left on various issues. What this means in practice is that she might push Biden to make various lefty noises, but would this ever result in any substantively “left” achievement, like Medicare for all? Hope springs eternal, but I doubt it.
The interesting paradox here is that the lefty tendency is to treat politics as a kind of idealized fairyland. It is the right wing that actually understands how political and economic power works.
Somewhat resonating with John Pillette's comment, Chomsky once noted that there's no reason to spend more than five minutes thinking about who to vote for in our two-party system. Perhaps one might need to spend more time for local elections and propositions, where there are a variety of choices and things sometimes are not what they appear to be. I registered as a Democrat back in the 1980s in order to vote against Dianne Feinstein in the primaries, and so live with that burden; but even in the primaries and local elections it mostly doesn't take all that much time to figure out which are the neoliberal Democrats and which, if any, are leftists.
John Pillette: an antidote to a certain moralizing view of politics, one that is especially common among lefties (and notably absent among righties): what I’ve always thought of as the morally-pristine-candidate fallacy....
Who would vote for Marianne Williamson (or Jill Stein)? Better said, who would bother with the performative exercise of voting for either of these two and thereafter telling the rest of us about it?
Ironic.
That's true, here in California it usually takes a WHOLE AFTERNOON to figure out which interests are hiding behind the various "propositions". If you happen to be in the right mood it can be (sort of) a fun exercise. If you're not in the right mood ...
The ballot proposition system has been a disaster on the whole: Prop 13 alone did more damage than all of the works of the Koch Bros. combined. And yet it began (1911) as "progressive" legislation. I imagine that Poli Sci professors like to use this system as THE example of good intentions gone wrong?
Here's the Woody Allen routine, it's still hilarious, his cancellation notwithstanding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clrFI7Muqf0
I guess those Progressives never figured that signature gatherers could be hired.
I just look at who is endorsing and who is contributing. Takes a few minutes most of the time.
"...more damage than all of the works of the Koch Bros."
Or not (not taking any credit/blame from Howard Jarvis, of course, but ALEC alone...):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_Maze_of_Money.png
I don't live or vote in the U.S., but a friend of mine who lives in California, sure that
the state would vote Democrat, voted for Jill Stein in 2016. I understand that and it seems rational to me since his position on most issues was closer to that of Jill Stein than to that of Hillary Clinton.
The electoral college system allows people in solid blue states to vote for third parties.
I just learned of a witty quote of Harry Truman on the PBS News Hour that I was not previously familiar with. In 1949, President Truman stated, “Can’t anyone find me a one-handed economist?’
John Pillette,
I am sorry, but I do not find lynching jokes funny, even if made by a Jewish comedian, any more than I found Larry David’s Holocaust jokes funny. Jokes about racist genocide, regardless the race, are not funny.
That IN ITSELF is funny, but OK. The joke was "about" 1) being so utterly oblivious as to confuse a Klan meeting with a costume (kostume?) party; 2) making a gratuitous (and therefore unenforceable) promise versus paying cash; and 3) nevertheless somehow turning Klansmen into *bien pensant* upper-west-side mid-1960's liberals.
USE is one thing, MENTION is another thing altogether.
You can, of course, choose to see this joke as being "about" racist genocide, and therefore unfunny. In that spirit, let me recommend that you NOT watch "The Producers" and do NOT listen to "Springtime for Hitler", as both of these are so unfunny you'll need a bottle of Prozac afterwards.
I differ again. In “The Producers,” Mel Brooks succeeded in making the Nazis look life fools, and “Springtime For Hitler” is a witty parody of Nazi expansionist ambitions. Nowhere in “The Producers” did Brooks make jokes about concentration camps, gas chambers, or crematoria. In the Woody Allen shtick, on the other hand, he is trying to poke fun at lynching, and in particular the lynching of a Jew, which was not funny when it happened to Leo Frank, nor when it happened to the untold number of Blacks who were lynched. And this has nothing to do with the “use/mention” distinction. I am generally a big fan of Woody Allen, but this was not one of his better routines.
By the way, Carolyn Bonham, the woman who falsely claimed that Emmett Till had whistled at her, passed away on Tuesday. May she rot in hell.
Also very unfunny, warning DO NOT WATCH: 153&bih=729&dpr=1#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:a23bdb35,vid:Co_BhTxgWys
Sorry, I meant DO NOT WATCH this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co_BhTxgWys
You're right of course, the invasion of Poland was HILARIOUS. In comedy your opening joke is essential, and invading Poland set just the right light-hearted tone for the rest of the act!
This is totally unrelated to anything above, but for some unknown reason, the expression “The rabbit died” popped into my head today. The boomers (and pre-boomers) among us will recall this expression from the 1950’s and 60’s, which a guy’s girlfriend would tell her boyfriend, meaning she was pregnant. Most guys (including me, although no girlfriend ever told me this, because I did not have any) thought this meant that something in a pregnant woman’s blood or urine, when injected into a rabbit, killed the rabbit. Well, as it turns out, all the rabbits die, whether the woman is pregnant or not. Guys did not know this back in the 50’s and 60’s, because we did not have the internet, Google or Wikipedia to educate us. But I learned today that, actually, nothing in a pregnant woman’s blood/urine kills the rabbit. Pregnant women produce a hormone, human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), which, when injected into a female rabbit, causes the rabbit’s ovaries to enlarge. The rabbit dies because it is dissected to see if the ovaries are enlarged, not because bCG is toxic to female rabbits. So, now you know.
The development of other tests has made the rabbit test obsolete, saving the lives of a lot of rabbits. (My wife, who is nine years younger than me, said she had never heard the expression.)
I see we have a putsch in North Carolina.
Thanks John Pillete for the link. That was pretty fun. What is the year of the recording?
Going to go off script and respond to the actual post - good things happening in my home state.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna79816
As a person with ties to the trans community, I can say I know of at least 2 families moving to Minnesota from southern states to protect their trans children.
It is dark, but there are points of light.
MAD, the Woddy Allen routine ("Down South") dates from circa 1965. To simultaneously beat a dead horse and reference professor Wolff's Mannheim tutorial, the joke here is "about" a particular political ideology, the one shared by everyone in the nightclub, which is why they're all laughing so hard. See Ideology and Utopia 197.
The good honest bien-pensant liberal thinks that if he just travels from the Upper West Side all the way Down South and shares his wisdom with his benighted political enemies, they will be instantly won over to his obviously correct way of thinking. You can thereafter sell these folks not just Israel Bonds (as in the joke) but you can get them to endorse the rest of the package--a subscription to the NYRB, a Chopin box set, a used Volvo, how to find a decent bottle of $15 wine--and all of us may thereafter live in glorious harmony! The utopian mentality is shown to be delusional and narcissistic, which is why it's so funny.
I will waste my breath one more time – this Woody Allen routine is NOT FUNNY, AND FAR FROM HILARIOUS! This a Northern Jew making fun of Southerners, saying things like, “I said grits four times”; and “going down to the general store to get a piece of gingham for Emmy Lou,” It is smug, patronizing and condescending, the kind of “humor” which engenders anti-Semitism. Is the audience laughing? Of course they are laughing, because they share the same smug, patronizing and condescending attitude towards presumed ignorant, hick, tobacco chewing Southerners. And for extra laughs, why not throw in a joke about a Jew getting lynched in Dixie. Very funny, ha ha. Well it was not very funny when Leo Frank was lynched in Georgia in 1919, after being falsely accused of raping a 13-year old girl; nor was it funny to the several hundred individuals, mostly African-American, who have been lynched in the United States. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lynching_victims_in_the_United_States#1900%E2%80%931909
Anybody who thinks this routine is funny has extremely poor taste in humor, and is insensitive to boot.
I find your reaction to all this to be not merely funny, but hilarious. Of course, I am in fact “insensitive” and my taste in humor is in fact "extremely poor"!
It may come as a shock to you, but you are not the first person to point this out to me. All my life I’ve tried (oh how I’ve tried!) to do better but last year I fell of my motorcycle, injured my head (I dented my superego), and now I can’t stop saying things that are “inappropriate”, “problematic” and yes, “insensitive”.
This is my cross to bear, but unfortunately you are now in the wrong, by berating a person with a disability. For shame!
(I’ll be in contact separately with you to discuss settlement.)
John Pillette,
I don't wish to incite any lengthy off-topic-of-the-post comments, but I think you might enjoy my favorite 'insensitive' comedian, 'Scotland's Jesus', Frankie Boyle (many hours on YouTube). As Frankie says, "Those of you who find my jokes offensive, please feel free to tweet your outrage on a phone made by a ten-year-old in China." There's also a recent video of Frankie doing a remarkably restrained and fine interview with Bernie Sanders after Sanders's stump speech in England: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FqXDJkko_I&ab_channel=HowToAcademyMindset
"...the kind of “humor” which engenders anti-Semitism."
Marc, the antisemitism doesn't need a bit by a Northern Jewish comedian to be engendered - murdering Jesus and owning the general store already did that for them. Those kids in the lynching postcards are the grand and great X parents of today's MAGATS. Unfortunately the Constitution empowers them well beyond their numbers.
https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1652156859544113153
aaall,
Among Southern anti-semites, undoubtedly there are some that so fanatical that nothing that one does can convince them to give up their bigotry.
But, as with all human groups, there are also undoubtedly some who aren't so convinced of their anti-semitism and who can be won over with a bit of diplomacy and empathy and above all, showing that one does not look down on them as "crackers" or "rednecks".
Above all, laughing at other human types feeds one's own sense of superiority to others, which is a very ugly human trait, whether found on the right or on the left.
John Pillette,
Your feeble attempt at humor making light of your so-called “disability” is even more off-putting than your praise of Woody Allen’s offensive “comic” routine, which makes light of lynching. I would recommend that you not give up your day job, but seeing as your day job includes (or has included) representing plaintiffs in consumer protection class actions, your tongue-in-cheek suggestion that you may sue me for failing to accommodate your “disability” hardly recommends your skills as a legal advocate. Since I am not your employer, I have no obligation under the Americans With Disabilities Act to accommodate any disability you may have, including your egregious taste in humor and your insensitivity to the history of lynching. Moreover, even if I had such an obligation, I would be relieved of any obligation to accommodate your so-called “disability,’ which consists in an egregious sense of humor and deplorable insensitivity to the history of lynching, since such an accommodation would create a hardship, which, even were I your employer, I would be acquitted of having to bear.
aaall,
While “engender” may not be the appropriate word to apply to some dyed-in-the-wool Southern anti-Semites, smart aleck Northern Jews need not fortify or reinforce their bigotry by mocking them. On this, I agree with s. wallerstein.
The insanity doesn’t stop.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/04/29/cleveland-texas-gunman-kills-five-8-year-old/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newslett
It is time that the victims of assault weapon attacks, and their relatives, start suing the manufacturers of assault weapons and argue in the lawsuits that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), 15 U.S.C. §§ 7901-7903, which insulates gun manufacturers from being sued, is unconstitutional, because it violates the 5th and 14th Amendment which requires that the federal and state governments protect the life and liberty of American citizens.
@John Pillette
I haven't watched the Woody Allen routine so can't comment on it directly, but how many Northern liberals in c. 1965 thought they could convert Southerners to their point of view by persuasion? 1965 was among other things the year of the Selma to Montgomery march and of continuing violence by white officials and other whites against Blacks in Alabama and elsewhere in the South. Even a naive Northern liberal reading the headlines would have seen the depth of racism and opposition to civil rights. Now maybe some Northerners still clung to what you, following Mannheim, describe as a "utopian" attitude, but I wonder how many.
The Woody Allen routine might indeed be funny (as I say, I haven't watched it) but perhaps for reasons other than those you suggest @11:36 a.m.
P.s. Of course white Southerners weren't a completely monolithic bloc in terms of viewpoints, but that doesn't change the pt.
It is perhaps appropriate, while denouncing Woody Allen’s mockery of Southerners, to describe my own bona fides in experiencing Southern anti-Semitism first-hand while I served in the Army Reserves and encountered anti-Semitism at Fort Campbell, Ky., and Fort Sill, Oklahoma, during the years 1971-72. One of these incidents, at Fort Sill, could well have ended in my death, had I fought back. A less violent episode occurred while I was waiting on the morning chow line at Fort Sill, standing next to two guys from Lubbock, Texas, both of whom were taller and heavier than me. One of them looks at me and says, “Susselman, the hair on your head looks like the hair on my cock.” As Bob Seger sings in “Looking Back,” “You always seem outnumbered, so you dare not make a stand.” But I did think to myself, “Well, the hair on your mouth looks like the hair on my cock.” Had I actually said it, I am quite sure I would have ended up in the base hospital.
That is an excellent point, and borne out by the history of the era. For example: not a lot of people know this, but Bull Connor worked as a nightclub comedian for a brief period in the mid 1960’s. It’s true!
He was mostly wildly successful, but the very uppermost stratum of the redneck intelligentsia didn’t find him funny. In particular, the editor-in-chief of the Alabama Review of Books, Jeffrey Beauregard Davenport, felt that Connor’s humor was bad for north-south relations, as most of his jokes (OK, all of them) were smug, condescending, and patronizing, e.g., “How many Klansmen does it take to lynch a class action civil rights attorney? … just one, but it takes eight years!”
I think WE CAN ALL AGREE that this kind of humor is no longer funny.
LFC, not monolithic but enough that, after the diaspora that gave Michigan to Wallace and turned ~100 miles east of moi (still California) into Mississippi, there was left a solid MAGA majority.
John Pillette,
I suggest you edit the Wikipedia article on Bull Connor, since it fails to mention your inside knowledge of his stint as a nightclub comedian.
Your continuing feeble attempts at “humor” do nothing to enhance your character, or your point of view.
@ John Pillette
Even fewer people know that Bull Connor, when he did his nightclub routine, brandished a copy of Mannheim's _Ideology and Utopia_ onstage while asking "how many writers of theoretical treatises does it take to lynch a Park Avenue liberal?"
These are indeed strange and troubling times we are living in. Putting aside Putin’s war on Ukraine. Trump’s presidential run, and a new mass shooting almost every day, those of us who remember and admired Robert Kennedy may be puzzled by his son’s own presidential run, with a campaign focused on his anti-vaxxing convictions. I have listened to some of Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s, speeches, and as one would expect of the son of Robert Kennedy, he is clearly not stupid. And he did some wonderful advocacy work on environmental issues. So how does one explain his anti-vaxxer commitment? I don’t get it. If he wants to save lives, why doesn’t he launch a campaign centered on gun control?
RFK Jr. is anti-vaccine because he's running against Biden and the Democratic establishment, which are pro-vaccine. He needs to differentiate himself and to pick up swing voters, who may be anti-vaccine too.
Could he have picked a more ethically lofty issue with which to differentiate himself? For sure, but he or his advisors probably feel that anti-vaccine sells better.
s. wallerstein,
I guess that’s as good an explanation as any, but I cannot imagine there are enough anti-vaxxers out there to give him the Democratic nomination, let alone beat Trump. The rest of the Kennedy clan are opposing him, and he is not doing any honor to his father’s legacy.
A few observations re RFK Jr.
1) It is not correct to say, as s.w. does, that RFK Jr. is anti-vaccine because he needs to differentiate himself from the Dem. establishment. RFK Jr. has had his anti-vax position for a long time. It is clearly not something adopted recently as a campaign tactic. Rather, this has been a position of his, a hobbyhorse if you prefer that word, for a very long time.
2) I listened to large chunks of his very long announcement speech in Boston (available on YouTube). Although he hinted at it around the edges, he did not actually mention anti-vax explicitly in the portions of the speech I listened to. Rather, he emphasized things like the opioid crisis and other public health problems (obesity e.g.). He mentioned a rise in autism around 1989 but refrained from explicitly linking it to vaccines in the speech (though he has argued before for such a link). His remarks on U.S. foreign policy were a mix of "we don't need 800 bases scattered all over the world" (not a direct quote -- more a loose paraphrase -- a position I agree with) and a position on Ukraine that struck me as not very coherent. He was generally critical of the military-industrial complex, the CIA, the "natl security state" etc. So on foreign policy he's clearly well left of Biden. On Ukraine specifically his position though (our goals shd be humanitarian not military) didn't make much sense. There's an actual war (and a war of aggression) going on there, which makes a humanitarian-aid-only stance somewhat irrelevant. He cd have talked more about diplomacy and negotiations, but of course neither side is really interested in that right now.
3) Unfortunately for RFK Jr., he is so identified w anti-vax in the media and the public that, even though he was clearly downplaying and avoiding it in his announcement speech, at this point it's probably impossible to distance himself from the position effectively. For instance, PBS NewsHour, in mentioning his candidacy and announcement, mentioned anti-vax even though RFK Jr. himself did not mention it in the portions of the announcement speech I watched. This is a mainstream media outlet's way of signaling that RFK Jr. is not to be taken seriously. It's also bad or at least questionable journalism, since they did not report on what he actually said. And if PBS NewsHour, which is generally fairly good for a mainstream outlet, does this, then the other mainstream outlets are going to do it too.
"...questionable journalism, since they did not report on what he actually said."
What one says at any one time is largely irrelevant when one has an actual record - actual journalism isn't stenography. Of course, if all one has is a current speech and no real record, one should be judged as not a serious candidate. Any person not named RFK jr. with his record wouldn't merit much attention at all. Kennedy (and Williamson) are dummies and their "candidacies" a carney sideshow.
(BTW, as I recall the whole vaccine/autism thing stems from a long discredited (and repudiated) paper in Lancet that was found to be fraudulent and resulted in the author losing his UK medical license.)
BTW 2, we should remember that "reporting" the kayfabe is how we got President Trump. Actual journalism should have broken that fourth wall not enabled it.
"... I understand that and it seems rational to me since his position on most issues was closer to that of Jill Stein than to that of Hillary Clinton."
Politics isn't like choosing Tide over Cheer. Voting for a third party in the U.S. is more often then not empowering a narcissistic grift. Jill Stein (and other Greens) not only run in way Blue states, they actively run in swing states where they are constructively supporting far right Republicans (N.C. is a maybe R+1 or 2 state with a Democratic governor - Stein actively supported a Green senate candidate in 2022).
aaall,
Sometimes voting is a way of expressing one's political positions rather than trying to elect a candidate.
Thus, a vote for Jill Stein in a safe blue state (my friend in question is very well informed politically and reads all the polls) is way of calling the attention of the media and of conventional politicians to radical left postures that otherwise are not covered in the mainstream liberal media.
He voted for Jill Stein in 2016, which has nothing to do with what her position or those of the Green Party may be 6 or 7 years later.
aaall,
You say that RFK Jr., if not for his name, wouldn't merit much attention, but is he getting much attention? PBS NewsHour basically dismissed his candidacy as a joke, without using the precise word "joke." Although I have digital subscriptions to both New York Times and Wash Post, I haven't followed their coverage of RFK Jr. My guess is they were equally dismissive.
So, despite the fact that his name is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the press is not taking his candidacy seriously. There could be several reasons for that:
1) They think he is an anti-vax nut.
2) They think he has no chance to make a showing in any primaries.
3) They think that anyone other than a sitting Senator or Governor who challenges an incumbent President of his own party for re-election is, by definition, not a serious candidate.
4) All of the above.
The point is, though, that PBS NewsHour could still have been dismissive while giving a very brief flavor of what he actually said. But it's easier to pin on the anti-vax label and leave it at that. That is lazy, bad journalism, and I hope that the PBS NewsHour's official partner, the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University, is not teaching its students to emulate everything the NewsHour does.
To be clear: RFK Jr. may be a nut. But he obviously has enough sense to know he can't run on an anti-vax platform, because, judging from his announcement speech, he's not doing that.
Of course his candidacy is probably not going to go anywhere. For one thing, his announcement speech was ridiculously long. He has to get more concise. For another thing, the Biden forces in the DNC have maneuvered Iowa out of first position and put South Carolina there instead. For a third thing, v difficult to beat an incumbent of one's own party. Ted Kennedy tried and fell short vs Carter in 1980 as no doubt you, aaall, with your extensive knowledge of Dem politics, recall v well.
This is last comment here by me today, so you get the last word.
Fair enough.
"For another thing, the Biden forces in the DNC have maneuvered Iowa out of first position and put South Carolina there instead."
Nothing nefarious and long overdue. Iowa is demographically unrepresentative and no longer a swing state. The caucus process is clunky and problematic. Incumbents don't engage in primary debates anyway and no way he will be able to seriously campaign.
His name got him a segment on the NewsHour and on going play on the horseshoe side of Twitter (Stein, Greenwald, Dreher, etc.) as well as a few print stories, all of which is more than he merits. What little he got is more then anyone not Bernie level would have gotten.
My point on the journalism was that most folks have lives and are likely unaware of the most important fact about him. His speech was a over long nothing-burger while recent experience makes vaccines somewhat important.
Perhaps we come from different places. I have long been aware of RFK Jr. being an irresponsible nut and see that as the most important fact to communicate about him. Your mileage may vary.
I often disagree with you, aaall, but this time from what I read, I agree.
I use the Guardian because I'm not subscribed to the NYT or Washington Post and they allow very few free articles.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/06/robert-kennedy-jr-announces-run-for-president-anti-vaccine-activist
s.w.:
Your mention of The Guardian brings up something that may be of interest to you.
Given my own interests I happen to read several versions of The Guardian—-the UK, the Australian, and the US ones—-on a daily basis. That said, I used to have a running argument with a friend regarding his frequent appeal to the US Guardian. It’s true, I think, that the US Guardian often takes what might be interpreted as a ‘progressive’ ‘left-of-centre’ position on things American. I’ll confess, however, that I am more inclined to view what it does vis-a-vis things American as trying to poke mainstream America in the eye. I tend to doubt its supposedly rather left credentials because its British version tends to be quite dismissive of anything to the left of centre-left. I’m also aware, as some of its readers may not be, because I had a friend who used to write for the Guardian, that a few years ago under a newly installed editor there was a great clearing out of all those who were further to the left than the centre-left. The Guardian seems to hold true, in other words, to the Manchester liberalism of its Manchester origins. But that—-rather than poking America in the eye—-may actually help explain why so many Americans of progressive persuasion seem to think the Guardian is truly progressive?
I have the international edition of the Guardian, not the U.S. one.
I read the Guardian because the NYT has a paywall and I'm not even sure that I can pay with my debit card in Chilean pesos and in any case, I have no interest in paying for the NYT when I can read the Guardian for free.
I don't know what "progressive" means any more. The Guardian international edition is very hawkish about Ukraine, much more than I am and is very pro-Biden, much more than I am.
It's obviously directed towards a younger (than me), cooler (than me), more upwardly mobile (than me), more tech savy (than me), more into fitness (than me) readership.
It's the only non-Chilean media which I look at every day and I do that because I feel some kind of obligation, I'm not sure why, to feel connected to the rest of humanity.
s.w.
Here are a couple of things (there are lots) you might find interesting.
1. do a search on: REVIEWS Truly critical and honest appraisals of The Guardian’s record as a guardian of power still needed
2. https://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/assets/documents/research/working-paper-series/EWP39.pdf
R McD,
Thanks.
I started reading The Guardian Weekly edition in the late 1980s, and have been looking at it regularly on-line for the past decade. The Guardian's center-right turn was manifest to everyone with their relentless anti-Corbyn campaigning, and some accordingly renounced reading it (David Graeber publicly renounced writing for it). I still read it daily, for (as usual) the same reasons s. wallerstein does. The biases are evident, but there are still plenty of articles I'm glad to have read. I automatically get the Australian edition, for no reason I can imagine other than that I religiously read The First Dog on the Moon comic. Besides the local papers, the other freebies I read on-line occasionally are Al Jazeera and the World Socialist Website (this latter was particularly good in exposing the NYT's racialist 1619 Project by publishing many interviews with major historians). And again like s. wallerstein, I find some sense of connection, however fanciful, with humanity thereby.--By contrast I haven't looked at the New York Times in decades after a period of many months working in NYC and reading it daily. The NYT's biases became hyper-salient, and with them the rightness of Chomsky's and Alasdair MacIntyre's critiques of the 'house journal of liberal modernity' (MacIntyre).
The “Gran” is a fascinating case study. When I started reading it (in 1989), it was a substantive newspaper with some comic aspects (for these see Private Eye), like a nice roast with gravy, and it has since become a parody of itself. It’s now all gravy. And by gravy I mean “responsibly sourced and environmentally sustainable vegan gravy, delivered by electric vehicle and endorsed by transgender celebrities …“ (you get the idea).
A few years ago I came across a very minimalist website started by some disaffected London hacks and hackettes documenting all of this … I think it was called “Peak Guardian” or something like that. I’ve since tried to find it and it’s disappeared, but it was hilarious, and it documented all of this in great detail.
But why? It must have something to do with the evaporation of advertising revenue. Newspapers have been obliged to change from general interest publications that appealed to a broad base to specialist publications that appeal to one kind of reader only. So while Private Eye could make fun of the some of the tendencies of the stereotypical Gran reader in 1989, those tendencies have since taken over, like that boil on Richard E. Grant’s shoulder that grew into an alternate, successor head (“How to Get a Head in Advertising”).
Now the Gran just tells this readership only what it thinks these people will want to hear. Marshall McLuhan (I think it was) described a similar problem in the 1950’s. Watching the editorial staffs of the New Yorker and Reader’s Digest sneering at each other, he said it was like watching a wrestling match between two men, each of whom was locked in a separate trunk …
This tendency is endemic. The 1619 Project was ridiculous. Just as bad was the whole Steven Donziger business. In all the stories I read about this fiasco--in places like Jacobin and Common Dreams--not one of them talked about what was in the actual legal opinions from (1) the SDNY and (2) the 2nd Circuit. But this was why he got slapped with contempt charges IN THE FIRST PLACE!
It would have taken less than a minute to find these, 20 minutes, tops, to read them, and maybe 15 minutes to write them up … but they didn’t fit the narrative, so into the memory hole they went. Now every nitwit in Brooklyn is convinced that Donziger was the innocent victim of a vast right-wing conspiracy. Don’t get me wrong, right-wing conspiracies are out there, but this wasn’t one of them.
John Pillette,
For once you and I agree on something – re Steven Donziger. Some time back I posted a comment about his case, criticizing Michael Moore’s distorted defense of Mr. Donziger, claiming that he was being railroaded and that his constitutional rights had been violated, while ignoring the ample evidence that he had colluded with some Ecuadoran citizens and had committed multiple frauds in order to obtain the verdict against Chevron. But I would not entirely fault non-lawyer readers for not understanding what had occurred. Had they read Judge Kaplan’s decision, or the appellate decisions, they would not have understood a lot of the legalese,
I was talking about the journal side. If you choose to write and publish a story I think you owe it to yourself and to your readership to at least TRY to approach it as a disinterested person would and this means including relevant facts even if they’re uncomfortable.
But that’s just me, I’m funny that way, I’m an old man who reads the “papers” and then screams into a void. As my S.O. likes to ask me, “why are you so upset?” Good question!
If you probe a lot of these “stories” you’ll find that they are PR releases from groups with an interest in the matter under discussion. And a lot of the so-called “journalists” describe themselves as “activists” first.
If one does not want to end up as isolated as a 3rd rate Nietzsche, it's wise to keep up with whatever myths and narratives circulate among one's fellow citizens, so as to be able to politely make small talk and smile when conversing with them. That's the main reason to "read the papers".
Old? You passed the California Bar in 2002, which, I estimate, puts you in your mid- to late forties (assuming you attended law school immediately after graduating undergraduate college). I have been practicing law more than twice that. Unfortunately, the legal system does not get better as you age. I am starting to think it is actually getting worse. The plight of Crosley Green as an example. And I can cite at least six other examples, all my clients.
Well one of the problems with law, maybe THE problem, is that it’s full of pedants.
“Old Man” was a sideways reference to “Gerontion”. Please feel free to lose your shit about Eliot’s antisemitism now.
Law was (is?) my second career ... or third trade, depending on how you look at it. In any event, the California bar was my second one, and no, I did not go straight to law school after undergrad.
So I’m a *middle-aged* man in a dry month … my house is a decayed house, and so on …
Great day, the Supremes take a case to ax Chevron and CNN is doing a Trump town hall in NH next week.
John Pillette,
You are correct, I am not a fan of Eliot, his anti-Semitism being one reason, but not a good reason to reject his poetry. I find The Wasteland annoyingly pedantic and pretentious. He shares this trait with his friend, and fellow anti-Semite, Ezra Pound.
I do like Eliot’s poem “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” which was transformed into the song “Memory” in Cats. It is lyrical and has some superb imagery.
aaall,
I assume you are being facetious about axing Chevron. This is not – NOT – a good sign. The Chevron doctrine refers to a 1984 S. Ct. decision in which the Court held that the rulings and regulations of administrative agencies, in this case the EPA, are to be given deference by the courts. If the Chevron doctrine is overturned, as the granting of certiorari by this Court suggests, then all manner of administrative decisions and regulations intended to protect the public stand to be overturned.
Welcome to Galt's Gulch.
Another enigmatic comment by the enigmatic commenter nonpareil, aaall.
Galt’s Gulch is the name of the utopian community in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
So, what is aaall saying - that his belief that the Supreme Court’s granting of certiorari to review the Chevron doctrine will, despite all indications, turn out well for administrative agencies and the protection of the American public, is, or is not, a utopian fantasy?
I'm assuming our libertarian overlords will get the capstone for their ridiculous Major Questions Doctrine/Rucho/citizens United that they paid for.
https://img.assets-d.propublica.org/v5/images/20230405_SCOTUS_ClarenceThomas_03.JPG?crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=webp&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&h=994&q=75&w=1200&s=1b105480c2535d7539fc724e8feed7cb
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pXga5i1hbsA/WxBzHRy4viI/AAAAAAACBS8/5dHiknU_vX8TRrwPaElhDPd5gO_h1W2jgCLcBGAs/s1600/Humans-and-pigs2.jpg
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