A modest proposal...

...that we all stop frothing at the mouth over the cover of the latest The New Yorker. I'm with Jack Shafer on this one:

Calling on the press to protect the common man from the potential corruptions of satire is a strange, paternalistic assignment for any journalist to give his peers, but that appears to be what The New Yorker's detractors desire. I don't know whether to be crushed by that realization or elated by the notion that one of the most elite journals in the land has faith that Joe Sixpack can figure out a damned picture for himself.

Yes, I understand why some people are taking offense, and as an Obama supporter I certainly understand the danger the cartoon poses. Satire can be easily misinterpreted or taken at face value. My grandmother, I'm sorry to say, was one of the most bigoted people I've ever known (rest her soul), yet she loved "All in the Family." And I'm sure she wasn't the only one. That doesn't mean that Norman Lear or Carol O'Connor should have been pilloried for lampooning racism.

What I find depressing about this episode is that it reinforces the stereotype that liberals are humorless, politically correct scolds. Some have even gone as far as to call The New Yorker "gutless" for failing, on its cover, to criticize John McCain for benefitting from the ugly rumors being floated about Obama.

Come on. Few mainstream media outlets have been as aggressive in covering the Bush administration as The New Yorker. They don't have to prove their chops to anyone. Besides, the Internet echo chamber aside, if Obama needs to rely on a magazine whose readers probably already support him, then he's got problems.

"Wait -- which football team plays here?"

John McCain told Jon Delano that the Pittsburgh Steelers helped him endure torture at the hands of his North Vietnamese captors:

"When I was first interrogated and really had to give some information because of the physical pressures that were on me, I named the starting lineup -- defensive line -- of the Pittsburgh Steelers as my squadron-mates!"

There's just one problem with that story:

...the Steelers aren't the team whose defensive line McCain named for his Vietnamese tormentors. The Green Bay Packers are. At least according to every previous time McCain has told this story. And the McCain campaign just told ABC News that the senator made a mistake -- it was, indeed, the Packers.

In McCain's best-selling 1999 memoir “Faith of My Fathers,” McCain writes:

“Once my condition had stabilized, my interrogators resumed their work. Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I did not cooperate. Eventually, I gave them my ship’s name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant. Pressed for more useful information, I gave the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line, and said they were members of my squadron. When asked to identify future targets, I simply recited the names of a number of North Vietnamese cities that had already been bombed.”

In 2005, A&E ran a movie version of "Faith of My Fathers."

And McCain discussed that precise clip on CNN.

The actor playing McCain, asked to name the men in his squadron, says: "Starr; Greg; McGee; Davis; Adderly; Brown; Ringo; Wood."

Cut back to real life. The CNN anchor asks McCain: "For those who don't know the story, were those NFL football players?"

"That was the starting lineup of the Green Bay Packers, the first Super Bowl champions, yes," McCain responded. But it's -- it was the best I could think of at the time."

The movie actually shows this act of defiance twice.

INTERROGATOR: The names of your squadron...
MCCAIN: Starr, Gregg...McGee, Davis...Adderley, Brown, Ringo, Wood.
INTERROGATOR: Ten points, McCain.
MCCAIN: Ray Nitschke, our C.O.

The Packers anecdote is not only a key part of the McCain biography, it's part of his argument against torture.

Explaining why he thinks torture can result in erroneous information, McCain wrote in Newsweek in 2005, "In my experience, abuse of prisoners often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear--whether it is true or false--if he believes it will relieve his suffering. I was once physically coerced to provide my enemies with the names of the members of my flight squadron, information that had little if any value to my enemies as actionable intelligence. But I did not refuse, or repeat my insistence that I was required under the Geneva Conventions to provide my captors only with my name, rank and serial number. Instead, I gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line, knowing that providing them false information was sufficient to suspend the abuse."

McCain's valor as a P.O.W. is beyond admirable, but this business of substituting the Steelers for the Packers is odd, though as I said, the McCain campaign says this was an honest mistake.

Yes, a mistake he just happened to make while he was in Pittsburgh, a town with a singular devotion to its football team and the second largest city in a critical swing state.

Thanks, Supremes

Boy, did the Supreme Court do Barack Obama a solid today. Never mind gay marriage amendments. Can you imagine the furor among conservatives had the court ruled 5-4 that the Second Amendment does not allow for individuals to own guns? They would have forgetten real quick whatever beef they have with John McCain as he fell all over himself promising to appoint gun-loving judges to the high court.

Besides, the court's ruling leaves plenty of wriggle room for sensible restrictions on gun ownership:

But the court held that the individual right to possess a gun “for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home” is not unlimited. “It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose,” Justice Scalia wrote.

The ruling does not mean, for instance, that laws against carrying concealed weapons are to be swept aside. Furthermore, Justice Scalia wrote, “The court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” (link)

In other words, the Second Amendment is no more absolute than any of our other constitutional protections, just about all of which have had some kind of Supreme Court-approved sanctions imposed on them throughout the history of the republic. Somehow, I doubt that little nuance will merit much attention by those who praise the wisdom of today's ruling.

One nation, under God

The New York Times reports that conservative 527 groups are having trouble raising money to defame Barack Obama. The Times cites as an example a group dedicated to unmasking Obama as a Muslim:

The second spot highlights a Roman Catholic elementary school roster from Indonesia showing that Mr. Obama registered as a Muslim. The campaign said that the notation was probably made because Mr. Obama’s stepfather was nominally a Muslim but that the candidate had never been a Muslim. He is a committed Christian. (link)

I'd like to think I'm a pragmatist, so I understand that given the political climate in the U.S. since 2001, Obama has to quash the rumor that he is a Muslim. But wouldn't it be nice if instead he could engage his opponents in a debate over whether we really want to live in a nation in which a candidate for office, or any person, has to prove what his or her religion is, or isn't. Isn't a religious test contrary to just about everything we are supposed to stand for as Americans?

Some people would answer that question differently than I would. But I think the debate would do us all good.

More things I learned by reading the newspaper

It turns out that John McCain would be the first person born in the 1930s to become president, which may be more than mere demographic anomaly, according to this New York Times essay. I found the article fascinating because my parents were born in the 1930s -- my father in 1933, my mother in 1936. (The same year as McCain.) They are part of what is known as the silent generation -- almost, in some ways, a lost generation. They have vivid memories of World War II but were too young to have participated. They were too old to enjoy the cultural revolution that rock 'n' roll ushered in, and while they may have been sympathetic to the civil rights and anti-war movements, many didn't participate.

Interestingly, one of my favorite TV shows, "Mad Men", set in 1960, focuses on this generation, and it portrays them -- sometimes to the point of caricature -- as woefully ill-prepared for the social and cultural upheavals that were to come.

Mister we could use a man like Jimmy Carter again

Smarter people than I have already weighed in on how ill-advised it would be to suspend the federal gasoline tax, as John McCain has proposed. Let me add my own voice nonetheless: This is a really, really, stupid idea. Our so-called leaders should be telling us to consume less fuel, not giving us license to use more. (Not to mention the loss of funds for road and bridge repair.)

And I'm not letting the Democratic candidates off the hook. They can spar all they want over oil company profits, or who did or didn't vote for the Bush administration energy proposal, but I don't hear either one of them giving the hard truth to the American people: The age of cheap energy is gone, probably for good, and neither technology nor alternative fuels will save us unless we make fundamental changes in the way we live.

Context? We don't need no stinkin' context

Bram posts Obama's "bitter" remarks in their entirety. He could have chosen his words better, but it's nowhere near the condescending tripe it's made out to be.

Someone needs to take away his copy of "What's the Matter with Kansas?"

Cling to guns? Really?

At issue are comments Obama made privately at a fundraising gathering in San Francisco last Sunday. He explained his troubles winning over working class voters, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:

"It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

The comments, posted on the Huffington Post political Web site Friday, set off a storm of criticism from Clinton, Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain and a number of other GOP officials. (link)

So much for narrowing Clinton's lead in Pennsylvania.

This is your hometown

The New York Times visits the birthplace of yours truly and allows readers to draw thei own conclusions.

Second verse, same as the first

Hillary Clinton doesn't want to rock the boat:

Sen. Hillary Clinton is planning a smooth honeymoon.

Her plan for the first 100 days of a second Clinton administration, traditionally a period of comity for new presidents, is made up mostly of practical proposals that are likely to succeed, analysts said.

But if Clinton wins the Democratic nomination and general election in November, she doesn't plan to use the popular support new presidents typically enjoy as leverage for major battles over issues such as universal health care. (link)

Just like her husband -- play it safe, split the difference and allow our serious problems to fester. No thanks.

Really?

Here's an interesting statement:

Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said Clinton had made the case superdelegates should exercise independent judgment about who would be the best for the party and the country.

"Few have done more to build the Democratic Party than Bill and Hillary Clinton. The last thing they need is a lecture from the Obama campaign," he said. (link)

Let's not forget that Bill Clinton was president in 1994, when the Democrats suffered their historic electoral route. I could be mistaken, but I believe there were not only fewer Democratic members of Congress when Clinton left office than when he assumed it, but fewer Democratic governors as well.

How is that building the party?

Another city, not my own

Why do I have the feeling that Camille Paglia has never been to Pittsburgh:

Current scuttlebutt -- a frail reed in this mercurial race -- is that the multiracial metropolises of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia will go for Obama, while the vast rural and small-town heartland will endorse Clinton, whose family roots are in coal-country Scranton. (link)

Multiracial? Metropolis?

Hodge podge

This article suggests the long knives are out for the Clintons. Closer to home, the URA is finally lowering the boom on Bernardo Katz. (More here and here.)

With superdelegates like these...

Ed Rendell doesn't think white Pennslyvanians are ready to vote for a black candidate for president, but Tony Norman would like to think otherwise. Congrats to Tony for getting linked by The New Republic.

That's going to leave a mark

Frank Rich delivers a smack-down to Hillary Clinton in today's New York Times.

Zing!

George Will won't make too many friends among Christian conservatives with this passage about Mike Huckabee:

Huckabee says "only one explanation" fits his Iowa success "and it's not a human one. It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people." God so loves Huckabee's politics that He worked a Midwest miracle on his behalf?

Should someone so delusional control nuclear weapons? (link)

Will is conservative, of course, but this is one of several columns in which he heaps praise on Barack Obama:

Barack Obama, who might be mercifully closing the Clinton parenthesis in presidential history, is refreshingly cerebral amid this recrudescence of the paranoid style in American politics. He is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee -- an adult aiming to reform the real world rather than an adolescent fantasizing mock-heroic "fights" against fictitious villains in a left-wing cartoon version of this country.

The truthiness ticket

The Westminster College Mock Convention -- which I discussed here -- nominated John Edwards for president and Stephen Colbert for VP.

Speaking of Edwards, the New York Times dissects the rocky relationship he had with John Kerry in 2004. It is truly depressing reading.

Flock to the mock

My alma mater, Westminster College, will hold its quadrennial Mock Convention Nov. 7-8. Normally, the convention is held in a presidential election year, but the front-loaded primary schedule has prompted WC to move it up to this fall.

The college holds its mock convention for the party out of power in the White House, so that means it's a Democratic convention this year. When I was a freshman, in 1992, I was the state chairman for Alabama, and the convention nominated the Paul Tsongas for president and Barbara Roberts, then governor of Oregon, as the candidate for VP. My brother, also a Westminster alum, participated in the 1980 convention (he is 13 years my senior), which nominated Gerald Ford for president and George H.W. Bush for vice president.

Going back to 1936, with no convention held in 1944 because of World War II, it appears that the convention nominated for president the candidate who actually got his party's nomination in 1952, 1956, 1968, 1972, 1976 and 1988. (Up through 1956, the convention was held for the Republican Party only.)

The "correct" VP candidate was nominated only twice, in 1956 and 1980. At the '92 convention, Roberts' nomination was spearheaded by the Oregon delegation.

Anyway, the mock convention is a great tradition. Unless you transfer in or out -- or manage to finish your degree in less than four years -- you are guaranteed to be a student during the convention. I have to wonder if anyone has the dubious distinction of having participated in two conventions as an undergrad. I suspect it is not something you would put on your resume.

Mr. President

Christopher Hitchens wants Al Gore to run for president. My favorite part:

I am only guessing here, but I think that when Gore wakes up early and upset, he isn't whimpering about the time that the Supreme Court finally ruled against him in 2000. He is whimpering about the time in 1992 when he left the field open to Bill Clinton, a man he secretly despised. Can he really stand to watch yet another Clinton walk away with a nomination that could have been, or could still be, his? To move, then, from a consideration of elevated politics to a reflection upon the baser motives, we have to ask if Gore can possibly be content to be a "citizen" when he could still be a contender.

Meanwhile, the Romney boys answer the call of duty.