US politics

She’s so Vain…. She Probably Thinks This Post Is About Her

Activism, Blogs, Bloody Lawyers, Sensible Liberals, US politics, Women
Published on 6 Comments on She’s so Vain…. She Probably Thinks This Post Is About Her

Surprise, surprise. It is.

Tbogg, as have so many other bloggers who loathe the self-obsessed Wisconsin law lecturer, has the video up of the video head to head between Ann Althouse and progressive writer Garance Franke-Ruta, in which Ann Althouse comes over as the vindictive, vain and bullying Queen Bee type she is by going off on an ad-feminam rant halfway through, much to the consternation of Franke-Ruta.

See it for yourself:

I mean jeez, Franke-Ruta only mentioned Jessica Valenti’s breasts because pressed by Althouse for a reason why the progressive blogs loathed her so much. A full-on mauling seemed a little excessive. As Franke-Ruta comments on her own blog:

But I do want to provide some additional background to my use of the phrase “Jessica Valenti breast controversy,” which was neither intended to provoke nor chosen out of a a soup of total ignorance. In preparation for our BHTV encounter and to get a sense of Ann Althouse, since we’d never met and I mainly knew her through her New York Times columns, which I enjoyed, and the occasional persual of the cultural criticism on her blog, I watched her previous BHTV episdode with Glenn Reynolds and Helen Smith. It included a segment where Althouse and Smith went into some detail discussing various blogospheric breast controversies, including how one AutoAdmit commenter calling himself “Hitler Hitler Hitler” had said of Althouse that she had a “decent rack.” In that earlier episode, Althouse and Smith talked openly about blogospheric breast commentary, much of which I agree is incredibly juvenile and stupid, with amusement and good humor and suggestions that laughing off criticism is the best response. Althouse said (forward to 4:30): “They constantly talk about me and connect me to the subject of breasts. They constantly portray me as someone who, um, is opposed to the fact that women have breasts…Which is, I guess, sort of funny.” She didn’t seem particularly thin-skinned about the issue.

On looking at that bit of video again Althouse’s unjustified attack on seems just a little too fortuitous to me, a little too preplanned. Althouse didn’t come unprepared – you can see that, it looks as though she’d even done her hair and makeup for the occasion – and that was an ambush, in my opinion.

What’s sad is that athough she was in the right, nevertheless I don’t think Franke-Ruta came over particularly well at all, as talented or as capable as she may be off-screen. (Though I do find it hard to believe she’s over 30. Is it me or are police officers and polciy wonks getting younger these days?).

Head to head video debate is obviously not her metier, though I’m told she regularly appears on televiison as representing the progressive point of view. I don’t wish to be cruel, but is she really the best talking head we can put up against Althouse, who should be easily defeated in open debate given the paucity of her political positions and the mendacity of her arguments?

Franke-Ruta was easily perplexed and derailed by that fabricated and theatrical (but then real as she started to enjoy it) bit of business by Althouse; she immediately gave ground by apologising (what the hell for?), and then kept on doing it. She was totally nonplussed.

Even allowing for the element of surprise, if Franke-Ruta’d only had a little gumption Althouse would’ve been totally deflated, because right and logic were patently on her side, not Althouse’s. But as it was, even if Athouse did lose it for a while and come across as more than a little crazy, she still did what she meant to do and kept to her own agenda the whole time – ie the evil that is progressive bloggers.

Althouse and her mouthbreathing fans’re now chalking that one up as a win over the progressive blogosphere. Technically they’re right, Althouse’s temper tantrum notwithstanding. And that stinks.

“Sovereignty left”

Sensible Liberals, US politics, War on Iraq
Published on 4 Comments on “Sovereignty left”

Michael Bérubé has gone back to blogging at Crooked Timber and as one of his first posts there has written a hit piece on his usual enemies, at the heart of which is his invention of the socalled “Sovereignty left”

In the US, the Z/Counterpunch crew have a symbiotic relation to Berman, Hitchens, et al., just as in the UK the Galloway/Respect crowd have a symbiotic relation to the Eustonites. To this day, each needs the other. And it is in both camps’ interest to pretend that Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq were all part of the same enterprise: all three wars were wars of liberation for the Hawks, and all three were exercises in imperialism for the Sovereignty Left. The Hawks wound up agreeing, in whole or in part, with Bush’s premise that Iraq was the next logical front in the War on Terror. And the Sovereignty Left has never quite explained what American empire was established in the Balkans, and they’ve never quite explained why they opposed the Taliban from 1996 to 2001 but opposed the Taliban’s removal after al-Qaeda’s strikes against the US. But both groups share the common goal of aligning supporters of war in Kosovo and Afghanistan with supporters of war in Iraq.

Now this all came about because Bérubé was a bit miffed that he was lumped in with the cruise missile left and the Decentists, that is the people on the left who think the US should be justified to intervene military in other countries in the name of human rights. After all he opposed the War on Iraq, so he couldn’t be part of this group. Oh but wait, the main reason for opposing the war he gives was because “Iraq was a terrible diversion from Afghanistan”; what’s more, he supported the Kosovo war. In other words, he is somebody who thinks the US is justified in using military force to enforce its idea of human rights, at least under some circumstances, yet he doesn’t
want to be identified with people who are slightly more enthusiastic about which cases qualify.

Which he seems to want to invent an “equally bad” counterpart to the Decentists on the left of the debate, which he has christened the “sovereignty left”: the problem is this group does not exist. According to him, this group is terribly concerned about respecting the sovereignty of the countries the US has attacked. But the examples he gives do not actually bear this out. The people he talks about are much more concerned with the effects of such attacks, not with an abstract concept like sovereignty.

There is of course a kernel of truth in his idea: there are people on the left who have consistently opposed any US military intervention, just as there are people on the right who never do. But he seems to think that opposing Kosovo or Afghanistan is self evidently wrong, when there were good reasons to oppose both. Even taking both operations at face value, there is the simple question of whether the goals stated at the time could be reached by military action and whether or not these goals were worth the cost in lives lost and countries damaged. It is possible to differ on these points.

But there are also more fundamental reasons to oppose any socalled humanitarian intervention by the US and/or NATO. The question is whether or not you believe that the US and NATO are forces for good in the world. Despite the impression given by Bérubé, this is not self evident. Here you have the main divide between him and Chomsky, Berman, Cockburn et al: on the whole he believes it is, with some exceptions, while they don’t. None of this has to do with sovereignty, so why pretend it has?

Because the latter is easier to ridicule?

Always Twirling, Twirling, Twirling Towards Freedom

Bloody Lawyers, Madness of King George, Manufacturing consent, Media, US politics
Published on

Last night it was Bush, accusing congressional Democrats of staging political theatre over the Attorneygate hearings whilst himself flanked by theatrical props, ie military families:

Bush appeared at the White House alongside veterans and family members of troops to accuse Democrats of staging nothing more than “political theater” that delays the delivery of resources to soldiers fighting in Iraq.

This morning it’s this headline re corrupt US attorney general Alberto Gonzales:

Gonzales Launches PR Campaign
Will Tour And Letters Of Support From Latino And Law Enforcement Groups Burnish Embattled AG’s Image?

A PR campaign? It’s a little bit late for that, surely?

I’ll give Bushco one thing, they are at least consistent: anything and everything they do gets spun. Sometimes they spin so hard and so fast they disappear up their own arsesholes in a puff of ridiculousness.

But what do they care as long as the actual truth is muddied by falsehood? The mainstream media will report this, as they do all other Bushco spin, as though it were gospel. I predict that by next week the conservative media narrative will be ’embattled yet brave president and his unfairly picked-upon Hispanic hero sidekick’. Job done.

Diversionary Tactics

Blogs, Manufacturing consent, US politics, Wingnuts, Women
Published on 5 Comments on Diversionary Tactics

Oooh, ooh, go get the lawn chairs and the chips and dip! There’s one of those old queen/new queen fights to the death going on over in the hateosphere.

Those were the days, my friend...

Sskeletal former neofascist pinup Ann Coulter and her up and coming anchor-baby rival Michelle Malkin are conducting the fight by proxy,the proxy being the once-powerful Matt Drudge.

As both women are unpricipled and hateful it’s all very catty and entertaining and is no doubt pushing up their hits. But, as is usual with wingnuts, at bottom it’s all about the money.

After Coulter’s ‘faggot’ comment at CPAC Malkin saw her rival wounded and attacked her without delay; not just because Republicans eat their own but because,as Malkin’s popularity with the provisional psychopathic wing of the Republican party is rising in contrast to Coulter’s, she’s also taking over Coulter’s syndicated column slots. That of course means more moolah for Michelle and husband/amanuensis Jesse and to fund Michelle’s vanity projects like the lame Hot Air vlog.

There’s more at stake here for both than just high-school bitchery:

Two More Papers Drop Ann Coulter Today: They Explain Why

By Dave Astor

Published: March 09, 2007 12:10 PM ET updated 1:30 PM ET

NEW YORK The Sanford (N.C.) Herald has become at least the sixth newspaper this week to drop Ann Coulter’s syndicated column following her March 2 remark concerning Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards that included the term “faggot.”

The DeKalb Daily Chronicle in Illinois, a Lee Enterprises paper, then became #7. That paper explained on its Web site today that it took issue with her syndicate, Universal, saying it had no intention of dropping Coulter because her offensive remark did not appear in a column. “That’s a lot like the Chronicle saying, ‘She didn’t say it in one of the columns we ran, so it isn’t our problem.’ Wrong. It is our problem, and not dealing with it is a cop-out,” the newspaper declared.

“So yesterday we called Universal Press Syndicate and ‘fired’ Coulter. What she said was wrong and hurtful and stepped way beyond the line of human decency, much less political commentary.”

[…]

Other papers dropping the conservative Coulter this week were the Lancaster (Pa.) New Era; The Oakland Press of Pontiac, Mich.; The Mountain Press of Sevierville, Tenn.; The Times of Shreveport, La.; and The American Press in Lake Charles, La.

Read whole story

A trumped-up public spat with Coulter is just what Malkin needs to finally step up to the throne of Bitch Queen of All Wingnuttia while there’s still a bit of money in it. Malkiin’s real advantage in this fight is her horde of smitten inadequates who’ll pile on the email pressure with their local papers.

The problem for Coulter is that that she’s playing by rightwing rules, and rigjhtwing rules say that once you get old and ugly then it’s curtains for you, sweetie. Nobody loves a harpy when she’s forty. The still youngish and attractive (if she keeps very still and doesn’t say anything) Malkin knows this; indeed her whole career is built on it. So Coulter’s bound to lose this one, and then there’s her prosecution for voter fraud…. With her star so precipitously on the wane’ she could almost be the Gloria Swanson of wingnuttery. You could almost feel sorry for Coulter.

Not.

To don my tinfoil hat fr a moment, I wonder if this isn’t about the hidden hand of the market as much as the hidden hand of Republican online psyops. What’s really interesting is how all this blew up just about the time Attorneygate was getting hot, nicely diverting away any wingnuts who might’ve been tempted to actually focus on what’s happening in Washington.

They know damned well that their supporters, given the choice between egging on a bit of brunette-on-blonde bitchslappery or facing their own accountability for having elected a bunch of crooks, would choose the former, no contest.

This leads me also to wonder about this big White House email dump that so many bloggers are poring over. Might this not also be a diversion? While the left is handily bogged down documenting the atrocities at the White House and Justice department and the right enthralled by fighting totty, what’s quietly being planned for Iran?