Salon.com > Politics

My break with the extreme right

Thu, 24 May 2012 11:45:00 +0000

Gosh! When did I end up in bed with Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber? Could it be because I did specialize in blowing things up while serving my country for four years as an airborne combat engineer? I also watched human beings blown up. I had friends and Navy SEALs I was in battle with blown up. My own intestines exploded on the first of my four combat embeds, three in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. Took seven operations to fix the plumbing. I later suffered other permanent injuries.

Yet now I find myself linked not only with the Unabomber, but also Charles Manson and Fidel Castro. Or so says the Chicago-based think tank the Heartland Institute, for which I’ve done work. Heartland erected billboards depicting the above three declaring: "I still believe in Global Warming. Do you?" Climate scientists now, evidently, share something in common with dictators and mass murderers. Reportedly bin Laden was scheduled to make such an appearance, too.

Long hair: The final political frontier

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 14:00:00 +0000

“I look down to see the people that are governing me and making my rules — and they haven't got any hair on their head. I get very uptight about it.” —Bob Dylan, 1963

“Don’t touch the hair!” —Mitt Romney, 2008

The phrase "presidential hair" has probably never been used more than in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, where in the Republican primaries, Mitt Romney and his rivals, vanquished or still in the race, are bristling with intent. The phrase refers to a (presumably male) haircut that looks as though it’s been pasted onto the candidate’s head and groomed extensively. It’s clippered and blowdried — buzzin’ and behavin’.

Serious commentators are right to balk at the notion of judging candidates by their appearance. It diverts attention from the candidate’s ideas and policies, the stuff that actually matters. But hair is sometimes more than a matter of dumb fashion, as the sociologist Anthony Synnott writes: “The debate over hair symbolism is both ancient and complex, and applies not only to gender but also to politics.”

Wolf Blitzer writes perfect political blog post

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 22:26:00 +0000

You know that computer program that automatically generates baseball game reports based on box scores? Wolf Blitzer is like an extremely primitive and unsophisticated version of that, for political news. (Or "news.") Today, the CNN anchor takes to "Blitzer's Blog" to report that the 2012 election campaign has been very intense. He also predicts that it will get more intense later, when it gets closer to the general election.

BLITZER'S BLOG: It’s going to get nasty!

By Wolf Blitzer, CNN
(CNN) – If you think it’s been a rough ride for the Republican candidates during this current campaign season, just wait. This will be seen as child’s play once the general election campaign begins.

I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again: the war of words between President Obama and his campaign supporters versus the eventual Republican nominee and his supporters will be fierce.

The right’s Shepard Fairey

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:55:00 +0000

For many progressives, Shepard Fairey's HOPE poster now evokes the same riot of emotions that comes from picking through photos of a friend taken before an epic falling-out or of parents before a divorce: regret, anger, queasy self-consciousness, a stray pang of old joy.

But, in its day, the tricolor masterpiece of Barack Obama did its work magnificently. Fairey's genius innovation was to flavor hearty, comfort-food nationalism with a bright dash of counterculture. His aesthetic, a May-December marriage of social realism and post-millennial stencil graffiti, borrowed from the protest art of two generations. In cribbing the signifiers of rebellion, the screen-painted image exalted a simple wish for a better tomorrow to the level of a radical act -- all while making the slyest wink at the inescapable ridiculousness of campaign posters. And, of course, in Obama's abstract, almost Fauvist face, progressives saw not just their candidate, but themselves: youthful, noble, sophisticated, iconoclastic and superlatively patriotic. The man was modern.

In defense of flip-flopping

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:30:00 +0000

“Flip-flopper” is the accusation du jour in American politics. Critics attack President Obama for flip-flopping on the Patriot Act, Guantanamo and a single-payer healthcare system. Mitt Romney is bludgeoned for his changing positions on healthcare, abortion, immigration and gay rights. In these attacks, the failure of leaders to stick to their proverbial guns is cast as a symbol of America’s cultural and political decline, raising calls for third-party candidates boasting ideological purity.

Did Chris Christie make a crude, sexist joke?

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:00:00 +0000

While stumping for Mitt Romney on Sunday night, Chris Christie made what some have interpreted as a blow-job joke. A couple of female hecklers in the crowd shouted something about jobs "going down" and Christie responded, "You know, something may be going down tonight, but it ain't going to be jobs, sweetheart" (the video is below).

His body language, tone and diminishing use of "sweetheart" -- not to mention the "oooh" of the crowd -- made me hear it as a blow-job joke, but I didn't exactly trust my interpretation, seeing I hear sexual double-entendres everywhere. Some cleaner-minded commentators have picked up on it too, though: XX Factor's Torie Bosch called it an "oral sex joke" that was "flagrantly demeaning, even misogynistic." Slate's David Weigel, who was present at the event, writes, "I can honestly say that the fellatial joke didn't occur to me at all … it sounded like the 'something' was just the Occupy movement, as in 'you're gonna go down.'" In this case, it seems hindsight was … X-rated: Weigel ends his blog post with, "But now that I think about it ... ."

The many fictions of Huckabee’s abortion forum

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Yes, there was another Republican presidential forum in Iowa last night, an opportunity for four candidates to outdo each other as saviors of babies and makers of elaborate promises about overturning Roe v. Wade.

The Family Leader, whose leader Bob Vander Plaats spoke at the event, already had its own "social issues" forum a few weeks ago. And before that, there was plenty of anti-choice red meat at Sen. Jim DeMint's, R-S.C., forum. But none of that abundant genuflecting to values voters sufficed -- it wasn't enough to erase the massive sense of grievance the candidates were clearly trying to mobilize.

Conservatives dominate religious advocacy in D.C.

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 14:00:00 +0000

A Pew study released this week shows that the growing number of religious advocacy groups in Washington spent nearly $400 million last year to influence public policy.

The groups are ideologically diverse, but data collected by Pew shows that conservative groups tend to have the biggest budgets:

For more on religious advocacy in Washington and why conservatives are dominating the field, I spoke to Allen Hertzke, the report's author and a professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma.

So who are the biggest religious players in Washington advocacy?

One of the findings is that the tremendous religious diversity of America is reflected in the advocacy community in Washington. Just about every large and small religious community has some sort of Washington representative or office. In terms of the number of groups, Catholics account for about 19 percent, evangelicals for about 18 percent, Jewish groups about 12 percent, and Muslims and mainline Protestants about 8 percent each. The Muslim groups have actually come to the fore in an important way in terms of the number of groups -- and they also have some sizable budgets. The largest category is actually interreligious groups -- issue-based concerns that have broad religious coalitions behind them.

America’s broken Senate unlikely to confirm many judges next year

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 19:28:00 +0000

Our useless vestigial Senate remains a lavish old folk's home for America's worst people, and it will only get worse next year. Joe Lieberman has announced his intention to block a bill that will send states money to hire and retain public employees, because he is Joe Lieberman, the mascot of all this is awful and detestable about the world's most deliberative body. This after Senate Republicans "defeated" the larger jobs bill by preventing it from being debated in a vote that they won with a minority. That is business as usual, reported by the objective political press as "gridlock" that "both sides" are responsible for. And as Al Kamen writes today, the Senate's slow trickle of judicial confirmations will likely cease once the presidential election is underway.

Mitt Romney proposes “partnership agreements” for gay couples who happen to be emotionless cyborgs

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:28:00 +0000

Mitt Romney once celebrated gay pride weekend when he was running to be the governor of liberal Massachusetts, but now he is running for the Republican nomination for president, and so he does not like to talk about his shameful history of tolerance (or at least willingness to pander to a potential constituency). But at a recent New Hampshire town hall, Sam Stein reports, the audience peppered Romney with questions about AIDS funding and gay marriage, and Romney did not seem thrilled. Still, he has a great proposal to completely defuse the entire gay marriage debate in a way that will surely please everyone.

"What I would support is letting people who are of the same gender form, if you will, partnership agreements," he replied. "If they want to have a partnership with someone else and have, as a result of that, such things as hospital visitation rights and similar benefits of that nature."

Karl Rove’s weekend of indignities

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:34:00 +0000

Karl Rove, the Republican Party's master of Atwaterian campaign tricks and primary architect of the updated Southern Strategy, had a bad weekend. He was the victim of an attempted glitter-bombing, and he's apparently fighting with his good friends the Koch brothers.

Rove, in Bloomington, Minn., for the Republican Midwest Leadership Conference (can't believe they held it the same weekend as the Values Voters Summit), was glittered by LGBT activists on Friday, in part because Rove was the one who decided Bush should endorse an anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment in 2004 but mostly because he's just an all-around repulsive person who has made America a meaner, poorer place.

The glitter mostly missed him. But still: Good show, glitter-bombing folks.

Less embarrassing but probably more aggravating to Rove is the growing rift between him and his wealthy political allies, the Koch brothers, that Politico's Kenneth Vogel reports on today.