Saturday, June 7, 2008

Lots to cover

Oh, for the placid days when it seemed nothing was happening. This past week: Duhbya hates the climate change bill, plus Scott McClellan, the idiocy that is Dunkin’ Donuts, and the end of the Clinton/Obama rivalry (I think).

But first, a word about this humble website.

I’m having trouble keeping up. This is mostly my own fault, but it does bring me to understand why, say, Andrew Sullivan doesn’t write more thoughtful essays—they’re time-consuming, and by the time you post them, the moment has passed.

It didn’t used to be this way, I think. There seemed to be more time for rumination before the Web. Few people seem to want to revisit issues that are more than two weeks old, it seems, and for someone like me, a quasi-Luddite who doesn’t even use a spell-checker, it may be that I just can’t keep up with full-time bloggers who don’t have much in the way of other jobs or responsibilities.

Of course, most of those people tend to make much shorter entries, and rely on photos and videos to carry much of what they want to convey.

However, I’m not quitting anytime soon. Just don’t expect me to keep up with people like Sullivan as far as frequency or number of posts in a day.

GWB: Climate bill might—quelle horreur—raise gas prices

One of the things I’m late on is the climate-change bill that was being debated in Congress this week. Sadly, it fell victim to a procedural vote on Friday morning that ended consideration of the bill until next year.

But before that happened, George Bush and other members of the GOP voiced “serious concerns” about a climate-change bill up before Congress, because it could raise gas prices by 53¢ per gallon by the year 2030.

Coincidentally, the same day I heard that, I found an old gas station receipt that informed me that I was paying $1.87 per gallon just four years ago.

Apparently, Duhbya thinks that raising gas prices by 200¢ per gallon in four years is just fine, but 53¢ per gallon in twenty-two years is just unacceptable.

I suspect that what he really means is that it’s unacceptable to raise prices if the increases aren’t going directly into profits for petroleum companies and Saudi shieks. Also, he’d rather keep the nation on track to a major energy crisis, a major environmental crisis, and a major economic crisis with no change at all.

After all, it’s part of his presidential legacy, and he sure would like it if we felt the full impact of it.

The oil crisis is encouraging more GOP representatives to betray their stupidity by repeatedly suggesting that if we only allowed drilling in ANWR, built more refineries, and removed all barriers to exploiting more finite energy resources, that that it would constitute a “responsible energy policy” that would save jobs and keep gas prices low. Clearly, these idiots still aren’t getting it—and to a degree that smacks of deliberate ignorance.

We need an energy policy that looks for clean sources of energy that can help reduce the amount of carbon we’re throwing into the atmosphere. Corn ethanol doesn’t do that, but drilling in ANWR or delving for oil shale or some such really doesn’t do that. It is the opposite of a responsible energy policy.

And they should be ashamed—except that they’ve apparently all had their shame and brains surgically removed some time ago.

Burning McClellan’s book

So Scott McClellan wrote a book, entitled What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, which revealed that the Bush administration had the gall to lie to him.

Yawn.

The thing is, in spite of McClellan’s newfound vapors over the whole thing, it cannot have been much of a surprise.

McClellan’s predecessor, the slimy Ari Fleischer, was so good at the lying that he came off as an evil parrot. He could lie and lie and lie, and never flinch; you got the feeling that he could blandly and repeatedly claim that a nuclear explosion was actually a gigantic luminescent marigold, and never, ever admit that he was lying, much less apologize for it.

By comparison, McClellan never looked comfortable in the role of Evil Parrot. He blinked, he wibbled, he stiffened, and it was clear that while he wasn’t good at dissemblance, he was at least willing to go along with it: during his term, he was just as slavishly devoted to the administration’s ridiculous assertions that Fleischer had been.

McClellan’s successor, Tony Snow, brought us back to the age of the Evil Parrot, only with extra amphetamines. Snow not only parrotted the lies, but he was just so gosh-darn enthusiastic about promulgating them that the inevitable result was fury and nausea in equal measures.

And now, we have Dana Perino. By comparison, she isn’t good at hiding the lies, or distracting the press—but then, it just doesn’t seem to bother her, leading to that refreshing combination of incompetence and apathy that pervades everything this administration does.

In other words, she’s perfect.

There are several issues at work here. The first is the unfortunate adverserial relationship between the press and . . . well, pretty much everyone.

The state of American mainstream journalism is abysmal. I’m not talking about “liberal media,” that loony phrase that I’ve rightfully dismissed in an earlier entry. I’m talking about a media that isn’t doing its job effectively, a media that isn’t reporting accurately or completely, isn’t telling the story clearly and without bias, isn’t investigating thoroughly, and isn’t displaying any sense of sensitivity or sensibility. I’m talking about a media that has become a bunch of sycophants with regards to their corporate masters and to the all-important advertising dollars. Increasingly, we’re seeing the courage of journalists gone by replaced with careless hostility and vapid disregard, punctuated by increasingly deranged, brainless and disreputable commentators.

Reinforcing this haphazard approach to journalism is a government increasingly focused on “controlling the story,” divulging an equal measure of lies and distraction, not serving the constituents they pledged service to. Since 9/11, the media has rarely bothered to challenge this sort of thing.

It’s hard not to feel that McClellan is just covering his own posterior. Still, that his conscience seems to have bothered him is something, I suppose. And it will certainly result in his being subpoenaed for any trials that come out of this administration.

Dunkin Donuts: Have you lost your mind?

So. Rachel Ray has been advertising for Dunkin Donuts, okay?

Now, I know several people that would think of that as a bad marketing decision in the first place. For whatever reason, Ray seems to galvanize people into pro-Ray and anti-Ray camps. “She’s not a real cook,” some simper. “Nobody can be that perky and still be sane,” others moan.

Well, she’s as much of a cook as Nigella Lawson, or Ina Garten. And so she’s perky all the time. So are a lot of upbeat, positive people.

Whatever. I like her. She has a different style of cooking than I do, but she seems to be a relatively sweet person, someone I wouldn’t mind hanging out with. Of course, there’s no way to know for sure, but it doesn’t seem to me that she deserves so much negativity.

In any case, she’s acting as the spokesthing for Dunkin Donuts. She appeared in a television ad last week wearing a fringed black and white scarf. Whether it was hers originally, or whether it was supplied by a wardrobist, it was a scarf, thrown around her neck like any normal scarf.

So Michelle “Internment Camps are Fine By Me” Malkin threw a fit, accusing Dunkin Donut and Ray of promoting terrorism by daring to show someone wearing a keffiyeh.

The keffiyeh is the traditional headwear for Arabic men. Had Ms Ray worn it on her head, this screech might have made some sense. If Ms Ray had been male, this screech might have made some sense. Instead, Malkin showed us how bigoted and downright insane she has become.

The only proper response would have been for Dunkin Donuts to issue a statement something like this:

Recently, Michelle Malkin accused us of promoting terrorism in one of our television advertisements. Her “reasoning,” if we can generously call it that, is because the person promoting our product in the advertisement, Rachel Ray, was wearing a scarf around her neck that Ms Malkin thought looked an awful lot like a keffiyeh, the sort of thing Yassir Arafat wore on his head.

At no time prior to Ms Malkin’s ridiculous accusation did it occur to us that we were promoting terrorism. Or Arabic dress. Or in fact, anything other than our fabulous coffee and donuts.

We would like to take the time to say that we have nothing against the Arabic culture, which we can thank for invaluable contributions in mathematics, astronomy, metallurgy, and several other areas that benefit our society to this day. Our business plays no favorites; we are here for anyone, of any creed or color, and we welcome them all.

We would gently suggest to Ms Malkin that modern therapeutic methods exist for treating cases of irrational paranoia, and we wish her well as she seeks the help she needs.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, Dunkin Donuts caved into this deranged, lying idiot, and removed the ad.

What utter spinelessness.

End of the primaries

And in the end, I was disappointed once again.

When Senator Clinton began her candidacy, I sent her campaign an email congratulating her, and said something along the lines of “I wish you the best, and I look forward to seeing you campaign.” I really meant it. Early in the primaries, I really wanted her to shine, to kick butt, to win in November.

But as the campaign winnowed down the candidates, and Senator Obama really started to stand out, Clinton started resorting to attacking the wrong target, to ungraciousness, to snippy remarks. She sided with McCain against Obama by taking a personal swipe. She put down his experience, his insight, his candidacy, his campaign slogan. She began resorting to undercutting his campaign with racial overtones, with disingenuous voter mathematics.

In stark contrast, Senator Obama responded to the issues, to the accusations, to the implications; he didn’t spend a lot of time denigrating her campaign, or her personally—he stuck with the high road. Over and over again, he comported himself not as someone fighting to drive someone else out of the campaign, but as a presidential candidate.

I am relieved that the long primary battle is over, of course. It effectively ended on Tuesday, after the primaries closed, but it really started ending that morning, with the endorsement of House Majority Whip (and Democratic superdelegate) J. Clyburn. Shortly after the seemingly delusional Terry McAuliffe said that Clinton was “absolutely not planning to concede” that evening, Representative (and superdelegate) John Oliver endorsed Obama. Minutes later, Representative Carolyn Kilpatrick (and superdelegate) did the same thing. Twenty minutes after that, two more superdelegates endorsed Obama. Forty minutes after that, three more.

Half an hour later, the news media called it: no matter how it panned out now, Obama had the number of delegates he needed for the nomination. But the Obama campaign played it down. Ninety minutes after that, another superdelegate endorsed Obama, and a few minutes after that, President (and superdelegate) Jimmy Carter said that he would officially endorse Obama after the polls closed.

Then ten more superdelegates who had previously pledged to John Edwards switched their endorsement to Obama.

Then another. Then another. Then another. It was as though the Democratic party had reached a limit—they’d been nice up until this point, but they needed it to end, and the only one that could end it was Senator Clinton.

And she didn’t.

She had the opportunity to evoke a graceful, generous exit, to be a real class act. Instead, she chose to play coy—she had to think about how to continue, she wanted input from her supporters via her website (which didn’t actually permit anyone to say anything other than that they were supporting her campaign, and still encouraged donations). In a speech later that week, it was as though she were still campaigning, only making roundabout compliments regarding Obama.

Her speech today started off in a promising way, with the line

Well, this isn't exactly the party I planned, but I sure like the company!

She spent most of the first half of her speech talking about her campaign and her supporters, but all the smiles stopped when she reached the part where she talked about the nominee.

Today as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary race he has run. I endorse him and throw my full support behind him and I ask of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me.

“Suspend”? As though it could be resumed later? And what was up with the almost complete lack of enthusiasm? This is “full support”?

She’s had three full days to absorb the bad news and turn around and refocus her energies away from her own campaign, but it appears that three days weren’t enough. She did what needed to be done, but did it in such a way that it came across with distaste and strain. She could have done this with class and humor, but only the first line of her speech had any hint of that.

I would have liked to have seen more grace, more generosity, more endorsement from Clinton today. Instead, her lukewarm, strained version of it left me saddened.

I do hope that someday, a really good female Presidential candidate comes along. I wish it had been Senator Clinton. But as Obama said in a statement after Clinton’s concession speech:

I honor her today for the valiant and historic campaign she has run. She shattered barriers on behalf of my daughters and women everywhere, who now know that there are no limits to their dreams.

I hope that turns out to be true.