Philosophy in the news ….

Good gosh, wasn’t the ‘evidence’ in the American Thinker [sic] conclusive enough? Why would anyone doubt their expertise? – “Obama has not himself still has not released a certified copy of his birth certificate, which is treated as a confidential document under Hawaiian law.” Snopes. Ahem.

And you’ve read both, Michael? And counted the words per sentence in each? And compared these to other autobiographical works by political academics (because you need a base number and a null hypothesis)? How very … thorough of you. You’ll put up some money toward this analysis then, and support the publication of the result, whichever way it falls, I take it.

Sounds like an “urban legend”: that is, the kind of thing that could easily happen and probably sometimes does in rarefied-enough environments (say, if a politician were to write a mass-market book entitled Profiles in Courage while busy with real work). Stylo-eyeballing the selections of text reveals significant differences: Ayers employs a “high-low” style, both calling things “a motherfucker” and then making a Homeric reference, whereas Obama writes as he speaks, with equal temperament. But the bare fact both cohere with basic patterns of American English neither speaks for nor against the suggestion, and as such is a poor reason to go Kolmogorovian on some Republican ass.

And do you think Jesus likes it when that happens? Not one bit.

#5 writes: “…a poor reason to go Kolmogorovian…”

I now have the desire to write a poem that rhymes Kolmogorovian and Karl Rovian.

That Millican link is dynamite. So, Ayers also ghostwrote Clinton’s memoirs! An entire party craftily controlled by an uber terrorist. Now that I think about it, didn’t the first Bush prove conclusively that Clinton traveled to Moscow in the seventies to get a chip put in his head by the KGB?

I think the entire rotten business has to come out. How many books has Bill Ayers ghostwritten? Surely all of Maya Angelou’s work – remember, she read “her” poetry at Ayer’s puppet Clinton’s inauguration. I’d also guess Ayer’s has ghostwritten most of that “feminist” empowerment stuff, destroying our families. Also, all of Jean Genet’s work – do we even need to be reminded that the gay agenda was designed and implemented by the terrorist Weather Underground? Throw in Origin of the Species and I think we have bingo – Ayers, it turns out, ghostwrote all the harmful books listed on this very helpful site! (Wasilla librarians should take note!)

Until we have courageous leaders who will purge this filth, we will see our sheeplike people follow the deadly course of socialism down the slippery slope until they drink the last poisonous drop.

Z
O
M
G, RB!

Dave, the “too risky” bit was a masterstroke, that had me guessing too. Well done, Michael, good stuff.

In a major series event, it shall be revealed that Obama is a mutant, and has inherited his (biological) father’s mutant power, of “political hypnosis”.

Could the mutancy be any more obvious?

Malcolm X

Or a terrorist of the same name.

LGM takes on the graphic design element:
I was impressed to find out that the Weather Underground had a logo. Now I know that when I’m forming a clandestine group devoted to overthrowing a corrupt political system, the first step is to consult a graphic designer.

J Thomas: I wasn’t aware that Rage Against The Machine had managed to blow up any of its own members.

The Weather Underground may have been wrong, they may have had a superficial and wrongheaded theory of revolution, they may have killed more of their own members than anything else–all this is true. But dismissing them as “not a clandestine group devoted to overthrowing a corrupt political system” is absurd presentism. Just because they failed doesn’t mean they didn’t think they were trying.

jacob, I just tore one wing off an angel, then was suddenly besieged by doubts. J Thomas, would you please clarify? This angel is really squirming and thrashing, and getting angel blood all over my bib. There’s still time to reattach the wing, but the angel might not be able to fly as well afterward. Actually, it might only be able to find work as a flying attack monkey for the GOP. That’s quite a step down in the Great Chain of Being, especially when you consider the fortunes of the GOP these days. Baby Jesus will be displeased.

Rage against the Machine definitely doesn’t count. Several of Spinal Tap’s drummers spontaneously combusted, which is sort of like blowing yourself up. However, the group was never about overthrowing a corrupt political system. It could be considered “clandestine”, I suppose — all attempts to locate the members, or even to interview them by phone, have been futile so far.

The early 80s retro-soul rap ensemble Malcom X’s Love Child had several members who were, under pseudonyms, violating the terms of their parole simply by performing together. You could say that was rather “clandestine” of them. Their lyrics also suggest a somewhat subversive streak, especially the line “Cinque, barbecue, Tania sez she’s missing u.” However, when they broke up, it wasn’t in some factional division over whether it was permissible to use deadly force in a plot to spring Antonio Negri from prison. As recounted by one beat-boxer sideman who sat in on the recording session during which the group began to have what their manager later called “serious artistic differences”, the split started when one band member described another’s girlfriend as a “ho”, or some syllable to that effect.

I’d say Malcom X’s Love Child qualifies as “clandestine” primarily in the sense that it had a very underground following, and remains almost entirely unknown today. Indeed, the group’s leader had been described in (now unlocatable ) xeroxed fanzines as “the retro-soul rapper’s retro-soul rapper, unfairly consigned to the remainder bin of history,” and the group is rivaled in their obscurity perhaps only by H. Rap Brown’s Ectopic Pregnancy. That group formed in my dorm room one night, produced one (now-missing) demo tape, and broke up very acrimoniously the next morning, something about whose turn it was to pay for breakfast at Denny’s (not mine, I swear.)

Does anyone know whether it’s true that the fusion band Weather Report named themselves for the Weathermen. I read that someplace – I think in a newspaper – but that doesn’t make it true.

Ideally you’d be spreading seditious ideas, and you have to be clandestine to keep from getting jailed or killed for doing it. But we don’t jail people for that.

No? Tell that to the Haymarket Martyrs (killed). Or to Sacco and Vanzetti (killed). Or to those jailed under the Smith Act (jailed). Or the Black Panthers (killed and jailed).

Ha! Serendipity.

I think someone said of the Weather Underground that the only reason they weren’t guilty of mass murder was sheer incompetence. I think that is fair. But so is the poseur accusation. They were the smartest, best looking, most self-confident kids in the class, and they lived the pose. Talk to people who were at the 1969 convention, or who worked with them. Compare with the folks who went into TDC/TDU (endangering their own lives but not those of others), built local labor councils, built the environmental movement… Reckless, sure, but poseurs often are.

Chris has a point. It’s not so easy to link Weather Report to Obama. I can only do it by cheating, sort of: Seven Degrees of Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert.

Weather Report appeared on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert. This links them to every band that ever performed on that show — including a band that appeared far too many times for anyone’s taste (not that taste had anything to do with it): Black Oak Arkansas. And there’s your Obama link, a triple word score actually: Obama is black, oaks grow from acorns, and Obama is now supported by the Clintons, who used to rule Arkansas. Working at it from the other direction: as we all know, Weather Underground derived its name from a Bob Dylan song. While I can find no evidence that Dylan performed on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert (even incognito), Joan Baez performed with Dylan at times and sang covers of his songs, and she appeared on the show.

Yeah, OK, maybe I could do better, but with that kind of investment of time, I might as well turn pro and start writing for David Horowitz’s Discover the Networks.

“I think someone said of the Weather Underground that the only reason they weren’t guilty of mass murder was sheer incompetence.”

I don’t think the Weather were incompetent. After the famous explosion in Greenwich Village, which killed four members, including Diane Oughten, the group made a U turn about bombings – they explicitly decreed that the bombing campaign would be set up so that nobody would be hurt. It isn’t incompetence that was exhibited when their bombs went off at midnight, or 2 am, when nobody was around, but intelligence and design. This is a typical Weather action, from Ron Jacob’s history of the movement:

“On August 7, 1970, Jonathan Jackson, the 17-year-old brother of prison revolutionary
George Jackson, entered the Marin County courthouse armed with a submachine gun. He
hoped to force the release of the Soledad Brothers—George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and
John Clutchette, who were charged with the murder of two guards at Soledad Prison after
guards had killed another prisoner. Jonathan gave guns to three prisoners who were present
in court—Ruchell Magee, a jailhouse lawyer who was testifying at the trial of fellow prisoner
James McClain, and William Christmas. The three then took the judge, the prosecutor, and
three jurors hostage. They left the courthouse and placed the hostages in a county van.
Before the armed men and their hostages left the courthouse, the Marin County sheriff had
ordered his men not to shoot, but the van was hit by a hail of gunfire from San Quentin
prison guards and other law-enforcement personnel immediately after it left the building’s
garage. Jackson, Judge Haley, McClain, and Christmas were all killed. Several weeks later,
at approximately 1:30 in the morning on October 8, Weather exploded a bomb at the
courthouse building in anger over the “murders.” The explosion wrecked one of the
courtrooms in the building and an adjacent bathroom.”

1:30 was pretty much an ideal time for a bombing that would do building damage but that would not hurt anyone. The Weather got better as they went along, from freeing Leary to pretty much putting bombs into any space they wanted to. I’d compare their record to the IWW favorably as far as that goes.

Yes, it really seems that Harry’s remark was completely unfair. It did not give WU credit for deliberately not killing people, when they clearly went out of their way to avoid taking life, (and, no, the government has never been able to make a case that they were responsible for the pipe bomb that killed the cop), and it refers to a group competent enough to break Tim Leary out of high-security prison, to bomb the Pentagon fully enough to suspend Vietnam bombing for a couple of days, to successfully stay on the lam for years despite being majorly infiltrated till they decided to turn themselves in, and to do all this without killing anyone as “too incompetent” to simply plant bombs that kill people, a vastly easier task. And Harry proclaims this evaluation “fair”. Why is it that people who would normally pride themselves on their intellectual standards feel no need to be fair, logical, or reality-based when attacking the fringe? Probably because anyone who simply defends the truth in a case like this will be accused of “apologizing for the WU’s crimes”