Wed, May 27, 2009 at 5:11PMOh, Drudge
Hey, you’ve got to give Matt Drudge credit. This is a definite improvement over his initial headline: “Obama Picks Spic Chick.”
Specter's Defection
How should we applaud Arlen Specter? Surely his surprise return to the Democratic Party is not motivated by conviction or bravery, so we shouldn’t applaud him too loudly. But back when John McCain could still remember what it was like to matter, he contemplated this very move. He opted, instead, for the siren’s song of a Republican presidency. He shut the fuck up, he played ball, and he lost. If you remember, he did not lose well.
Specter witnessed this glorious fizzle, and he knows his party will never love him again, not enough to re-elect him. So he did what smart rats always do when the ship is on fire, and that is how we should applaud him, as a smart rat.
The GOP is correct when they say that Specter’s move is motivated by “political self preservation.” But Specter is a politician in a way that most Republicans are clearly not politicians any more. He’s interested in governing, and in all the privileges and headaches that come with governing, whereas the GOP has become increasingly more concerned with the abstract concept of “winning.” If Obama represents a certain cunning pragmatism, the modern Republican Party represents the kind of hissy fit a two-year-old throws when you won’t let it stick pennies a light socket. They are nihilists, it seems, and perhaps they always were.
The problem the GOP faces, that it has faced since vain nobodies like Karl Rove and George W. Bush grabbed the reins in 2000, is that they aren’t even sure what they’re trying to win. Greed and war mongering, as abstract goals, made them rich, but it also busted them in ways even they can no longer ignore. They were never sincerely motivated by religion, but saying so used to at least bring home the bacon. Not so anymore. If money, hate, violence, and willful evil can’t get you what you want…
Well, you’re just fucked.
So purposeless, then, is the GOP, that they ran off one of their most senior and dependable warhorses out of petty spite. Had they been guided by any kind of reasoned leadership, this would never have happened. The GOP is living on Lord of the Flies Island, and they’ve just tried to bash in the head of the only kid who knew how to build a fire. It is not difficult to guess what happens next.
More laughably, the only defense these swine seem to be able to muster is some unhinged whining about a “one-party system.” Yes, this is from the people who used to own you, body and soul, privacy and security, in a way that even your mother never did, but they’ve always been able to comport themselves as if cognitive dissonance was something for hippies and queers.
Listen, this is going to be fun. The collapse of the Republican Party is going to hurt people who deserve it, but the important thing to remember is that it’s going to hurt people who don’t deserve it even more. Not because it has to, but because people like Rush Limbaugh and Mitch McConnell will make sure it does. They’ve spent their whole careers ensuring there’s always someone lower on the shit ladder to bear the weight at times like these, when the turds start dropping.
But they’re not going to be dropping on Arlen Specter, that’s for fucking sure. His party had him by the balls, but what they didn’t count on was his lizard-like ability to detach said testicles and hobble off to regenerate. It’s a miscalculation that will continue to cost them dearly in the months ahead.
But, oh, how it has made me fall in love with politics again.
Nixon, Archie Bunker, and Homosexuality
Ice Black pointed me to this little gem: Nixon and the boys discussing with shock and confusion an episode of Archie Bunker about “teh gays.” Stuff like this make me question who the worst president in American history really was, Nixon or W. Are there diferent levels of scum, or is a piece of shit a piece of shit?
Inside the AT-AT
Coudal linked to a cool t-shirt design featuring an internal shot of an AT-AT from the Imperial Veterinary Clinic. Reminds me of the the cartoon skeletons of Hyungkoo Lee.
Secessionists
Governor Rick Perry of Texas had some interesting ideas about how to protest the Obama administration’s policies at one of his state’s tea baggin’ shindigs:
“There’s a lot of different scenarios,” Perry said. “We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we’re a pretty independent lot to boot.”
If Republicans love America so much, why are they in such a hurry to leave? I mean, the whole idea of re-enacting the “Tea Party” seems to be that Republicans are thinking it’s time to revolt against their own country. Seems pretty unpatriotic to me, but I’m just a simple country graduate student who loves his country.
UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has the audio.
Just Sayin'
A Tax Day Tea Baggin’ Party:
Obama in St. Louis:
I think we’ve got this covered.
Telephone, Telegraph, Tell the Internet
Everything old is new again on the Web 4.0. Telegramstop is a service that lets you send a telegram-like object anywhere in the world for a flat fee. It’s a failry simple concept, and while I wish them all the luck in the world, I can’t help but be a little uncertain about the concept. If anything, Telegramstop foregrounds the deficiencies that weigh down the telegram in our brave new world.
Western Union sent its last telegram in 2006. Slower than email, but less personal than a hand-written letter or card, the telegram sits in an awkward place in communication history. Certainly the draw of something like this is nostalgia, but I don’t know that nostalgia alone can overcome the ease of email or the directness of good old pen-and-paper.
But it takes all kinds in the Web 5.0 (yeah, it happened that fast), and who knows, maybe that special Steam Punk in your life could use a little pick-me-up.
What Twitter Ain't
Nancy Friedman has written an excellent post about the severe disconnect between Twitter’s party line and the actual uses people have found for it. Part of the frustration is the growing fascination the main stream media has for Twitter, in spite of its utter inability to comprehend “the tweet” on the most basic level (c.f. blogs, podcasts, “debating the issues”). And on the subject of Twitter’s supposedly simple opening query, “What are you doing:”
[…] it didn’t take long for the Twitter community to discover a much broader and vastly more interesting range of possibilities: sharing links and tips, spreading news, telling jokes, publicizing events, replying to or forwarding (“retweeting”) other people’s tweets. Twitter has even been used to locate missing children and raise money for charity.
Nancy was one of the first people I followed regularly on Twitter, and I have to say her commitment to the medium is pretty impressive (4,651 updates at the time of this post). But her insights as a user really come into focus when she relates them to her experience creating brand identities:
Usually when a brand gets so much of its vocabulary wrong the business either fails or undergoes a dramatic overhaul. Yet Twitter has succeeded. Why? Because Twitter is much more than the Twitter.com web site. In fact, there is almost no reason to ever use the Twitter web site.
I was bowled over by this last point, mostly because it’s occurred to me repeatedly over the past few months that I hadn’t actually been to Twitter.com in ages because it is a hassle. Sometimes the navigation menu has three options, sometimes eight, and I never know what information clicking on any one of them will present.
As far as I can determine, Twitter fills in the gap between a minimal web presence (say, an email address) and more full-blown endeavors like Faceboook or MySpace, or a blog. Even if you engage in these other mediums (or especially if you do) it’s nice to have a low-impact outlet. And what you get in return is a steady stream of bite-sized ideas that you can tailor to fit your particular needs.
And in those few moments when I do find myself responding to the ostensible “What are you doing?” it’s almost a violation of decorum, like when someone asks how you’re doing and you actually tell them, in detail, to their horror.