Copyright © 2009 Frank Lynch.
Copyright © 2009 Frank Lynch.
Me: Frank Lynch Home These are my mundane daily ramblings.
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Something is happening, that you don't understand... Well, the Right has had successive Fridays where some of them have shown their worst sides. A week ago it was the vicious exuberance over Chicago having lost its bid for the Olympics, merely because Obama comes from Chicago and supported the effort; and yesterday, obviously, it was the unrestrained frustration over Obama having won the Nobel Peace Prize. Last week, it was glee that, although they saw Obama as a world-wide celebrity, they had a combined sense of vindication and schadenfreude. To an extent, they felt that Obama had run up against limits in being unable to transform Chicago into the bid winner. Perhaps they hypothesised that the rest of the world was seeing him as the same empty suit they thought they were seeing? Well, if that was so, it came crashing down yesterday, at least in Norway. Even though I count myself among the "huh?" over Obama, I acknowledge that it's not unprecedented. Last night in her opening segment, Rachel Maddow laid out several examples of past Peace Prizes which were for short-lived efforts or unsuccessful ones (starts around 2:23). Even if you don't buy her argument; even if you still think it's too early to award the prize to Obama; even if you feel the committee should have aimed higher: you don't react the way some on the Right did. I mean, really: it's their prize to award. You don't get all bent out of shape, it's not like Obama is a mass murderer or a sponsor of terrorism. If he was a war mongerer, invading countries without justification, I could understand a similar vituperative reaction. But not over Obama. For me, "huh?" is enough, and then move on to some more important discussion. (If they want, they can move on to establishing their own awards, for all I care.) Something else must be behind it: I suspect that the Right never really internalized the international unpopularity of Obama's predecessor, never really let it sink in as a possibly valid perception. Perhaps Obama did win the award as some kind of anti-Bush phenomenon; perhaps the Right continues to be baffled that the world didn't love W. And never having acknowledged any legitimacy to that opinion, cannot — refuses to — acknowledge any legitimacy to positive feelings about Obama. 
Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. I wish I could spend the whole day reading conservative blogs and message boards.
Yeah, like the GOP leader was going to vote for it anyway. The Congressional Budget Office came out with a cost analysis of the health care reform bill which came out of the Senate Finance Committee. And guess what? It covers 94% of the people in America and actually reduces the deficit by about $81 billion over ten years. So what does Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell have to say?
Such an irrelevant point: McConnell didn't say, "well, then, I would vote for the committee bill as is, but I fear it's going to morph into something else." This is one of those instances where preference is a measure that doesn't count, because even if he prefers the committee bill it's still not good enough. And he'd rather avoid the politically unpopular position of being impossible to please. But he is.
Betsy McCaughey runs up against the truth. Every alternative she poses ("tort reform!") runs up against truthful statistics, to the point where she's left to resort to name calling (ignorant! you're not behaving like a moderator! browbeater!). Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy The people at Media Matters have it right: why give her air time? Perhaps the kindest interpretation is that if you do't put her on, you can't shoot her silliness down. The Sky is Falling! It's All Obama's Fault! Kudos to McClatchy for pointing out that White House czars aren't new. And it's not like a big "step function" took hold in 2009:
Wasn't Karl Rove basically a czar? Bit by bit, Glann Becks "Oligarchy" acrostic is withering away. Jonah Goldberg's bad math. For some reason, he sees the need for expanding the House of Representatives to 5,000 members. One of his reasons is to correct for the underrepresentation of Montanans vs. Rhode Islanders, but certainly there's a lower denominator than 5,000 which could acommplish that. Like 600. No need for 5,000 on that account, unless he thinks our Founders were so infantile that they hoped to achieve the mathematical precision of Mr. Spock. Many of the other benefits he sees are similarly fragile. For instance, he sees the benefit of "new blood," but that's probably a one-time benefit; as time marches on and "new" representatives learn their slivered districts better, reelection rates will return to their current levels or better. Influx of minorities? That can be accomplished by redistricting, if so desired. Elimination of perks and pork? Try an expansion, Jonah: no rule of politics says the trough will stay the same size. And we'll have more Representatives competing for it, at the same time. If the newspaper syndicates are so interested in throwing their money away by feeding people like Jonah Goldberg, perhaps they'd like my address. I can say just as little, for a lower cost in ink and wood pulp.
The Glenn Beck advertising pull-out... is even spreading to the UK. I wonder how Beck will try and act like this doesn't matter... The wrong parts of the 90's are back. Joe Conason follows up on Bill Clinton's discussions of the reenergized Right Wing Conspiracy, and finds disturbing signs: for instance, one organization doing reprehensible smears, and "rais[ing] and spend[ing] enough money to qualify as the single largest non-party purchaser of airtime in the 2008 election" in the final two months. The names of the organizations may be new, but the people behind them didn't spring up without a past, like Botticelli's Venus. The resumes show their prior engagements, and they were here before.
Is finding a commercial play space too difficult? When our teenager was a toddler, our au pairs would contrive play dates with other kids in the neighborhood. And on weekends we would usually do the same. When that wasn't possible, or greater variety was needed, we'd (well, Ab, mostly, to be honest) would get kiddo onto the subway, and head off to some commercial play room some entrepreneur had set up. Perhaps the fact that I can't remember as many as a half dozen is a testament to their rarity, but in addition to these commercial play spaces there were playgrounds, parks, and children museums. They still exist. One of the advantages of going to any of these many places is that we'd encounter different people. I'm sure that kiddo wasn't assessing the diversity, but that had a value to us at least. Fast forward, and the dispersion and isolation and "can't be bothered" nature of NYC produces not only Internet-based grocery delivery companies (our local one is called "Fresh Direct"), the rise of Netflix (which, in addition to being wonderfully convenient, means no more neighbor-encounters in the video store), but also in-building playrooms as a marketing asset. And some of the residents resent the intrusion of "others"!
I'm not sure what variety of "Heavens!" I want to exclaim. Is it that the parent felt disappointed that she couldn't meet other parents, and use it for social networking? Or was it that nannies' friends weren't her sort? The kids are playing, that's what counts. The parents should just be grateful they don't need to take their kids to the nearby park (!) or some commercial play space.
We Were Promised Jetpacks. Tonight's entertainment, down the block at Southpaw. The Right Wing glee over Rio. I guess it's reasonable that the Right Wing would get ecstatic over Chicago losing to Rio. I mean, partisanship over jobs, and all that. Their hearts are in the right places. If NRO wants to stop losing money, they should fire Mark Steyn. Here's his "Corner" post regarding Chicago losing the Olympics:
Well, it makes sense to those fools who don't understand history and want to bring Hitler into every question, I guess. This would apparently include Steyn, who forgets that the 1936 Olympics were awarded Berlin in 1931, "two years before tha Nazi's came to power", and when they only had 18% of the vote. Hitler garnered 32% of the votes for chancellor in 1932, but lost. In short, there's no way anyone could really say Hitler "won Germany the Olympics," unless you're a fool or a liar. Which is it, Mark?
A time and place for everything, even Roman Polanski. I'm not going to go into a long bit of moral high dudgeon over Roman Polanski, because personally I'm glad he was captured in Switzerland. I'm more surprised at the number of people (and colleagues) who are making their "Leave Roman aloooone" videos as we speak. But an article in the New York Times today explains that any shunning which Hollywood has done has a lot to do with money. Boswell had this relevant exchange with our pal Sam:
Polanski should face justice. And his supporters, having shown their insufficiencies as moral philosophers, should go back to their day jobs.
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