John Holbo

Hey kids! The Sheri Berman event is over, but it’s too soon to be bawling in your cornflakes about how you have nothing to read … about books! Over at the Valve we’re hosting – or at least keeping track of – a book event about Michael Bérubé’s What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? [amazon].

In inverse news, I notice that in the last few days Hugh Hewitt and Dean Barnett have made – by my count – 32 posts and/or major updates about this Kerry business. I guess you could say they’ve written a non-event book. (There’s another one. Make that: 33).

UPDATE: I think they’re up to 40.

Glenn Greenwald is complaining about Peggy Noonan and, by extension, a considerable swathe of the punditocracy. I’ve been meaning to write that post myself, give or take. The problem is: it’s a bit hard to complain effectively about such things because you end up just sounding extra bothered about minor stuff from years ago. It seems like there should be some snappy way to make this charge stick and sting a little. Thus do I toss my post title – humble message in a bottle – onto the sea of talking points. Perhaps it can be used by someone to embarrass someone who deserves it.

If you haven’t, you really should read the very interesting exchange at TAP (round 1, round 2) between Matthew Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Mark Schmitt and Jacob Hacker, author of The Great Risk Shift: the Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care, and Retirement – and How You Can Fight Back [amazon]. I don’t have too much to add myself, but I’ll presume to recycle a little something from my good old “Dead Right” post from yesteryear.

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Everyone is much amusing by our President’s proclivity for finding things ‘unacceptable’. (As in: you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does.) I got curious whether anyone had made the obvious inversion of Teddy R’s wisdom. Turns out Josh Marshall said it, back in early 2003:

Speak softly and carry a big stick. Or, speak loudly and carry a big stick. Or maybe even speak softly and get by with a small stick. But, for God’s sake, don’t speak loudly and carry a small stick. And yet that’s precisely what President Bush has been doing on the Korean Peninsula issue for two years …

Wait, it’s coming to me in a vision: speak sensibly, and carry a medium-sized stick and a medium-sized carrot (which was the fashion at the time). Damn, we all pretty much miss the Clinton years, don’t we? (You can make jokes about Clinton’s carrot if you like. Doesn’t change a thing.)

A few months ago I praised Kim Deitch – as well I should. I didn’t mention at the time that his dad, Gene Deitch, is no slouch either. (I guess that must be why they gave him an Oscar, so maybe my help here is not needed.) And not just that: on Gene Deitch’s website you can listen to the original John Lee Hooker recordings he made long, long ago.

I mention Deitch because I notice that Amazon just put a bunch of Scholastic DVD’s for kids on sale (we parents watch out for such things). And the pick of the litter is Where the Wild Things Are; a bunch of Sendak stories, directed and produced by Deitch. And you get Peter “PDQ Bach” Schickele providing some music and narration. And Carole King singing songs we remember: “Pierre”, “One Was Johnny”, “Alligators All Around”, “The Ballad of Chicken Soup”. (You can watch them all on YouTube.) Best of all is “In the Night Kitchen”. It tripped out my 2-year old. And, of course, “Where The Wild Things Are”.

This is an abstruse bleg. (Move along, move along, if you aren’t likely to want to talk about technical philosophy stuff.) [click to continue…]

At the Valve we’re hosting a book event discussion of Walter Benn Michaels’ The Trouble With Diversity [amazon]. You can read a sample chapter at TAP and are cordially invited to attend.

In my post I discuss, in passing, Michael Lind’s Up From Conservatism (1996) – his notion of the ‘overclass’ – and so I happened to notice that he has a new book out just yesterday: The American Way of Strategy [amazon]. I haven’t seen much advance discussion of it. I’d be curious to hear about it.

Doesn’t float your boat? I’ll try to come up with more comic book jokes for later.

I finally got around to watching V for Vendetta [imdb]. Being a comics nerd, I am mildly bothered by the departures from the original (wikipedia will tell you all about it) – and more so by the fact that the author, Alan Moore, didn’t want this. So he got his name struck from the project. (Then they went and packaged a whole teaser section from his graphic novel with the DVD. Chance of Moore disassociating himself from the Wachowski bros.? Not so much.)

I found it a pretty good film. Entertaining. Nicely slick. Thought-provoking? In some ways I think the less ambiguous treatment of the material suits the material, although in other ways it dumbs it down. But here’s my simple thought: the film pretty clearly intends to be anti-Bush allegory or what have you. (You can cut it finer, but it comes to that.) Yet you could turn around and say: but the whole Iraq mess depends precisely on people finding this sort of political romanticism far too realistic for their own good. The dream of an Event – an explosion – after which, miraculously, everyone comes out into the public square and spontaneously dons the mask of their destructive liberator. Freedom forever! Unity through demolition. And there will be flowers. Why would you think postwar planning wasn’t necessary? [click to continue…]

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration has blocked release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes, the journal Nature reported Tuesday.
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The report drew a prompt response from Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg D-N.J., who charged that “the administration has effectively declared war on science and truth to advance its anti-environment agenda … the Bush administration continues to censor scientists who have documented the current impacts of global warming.”

via C&L

Hey, someone should write a book about this sort of thing. Maybe give away a companion to the book for good measure. (Admittedly, this report may be premature – the report about the report, that is. The actual Nature article title ends with a question mark, “Is the US hurricane report being quashed?”)

I didn’t mention this in my previous post: Mooney’s book [amazon] is now out in paperback – and cheap! (And it’s got search inside. So if you want to research various figures’ involvement in the debate, you can do so efficiently online.)

If you haven’t, you should read this Intel-Dump post, “National Insecurity”. And then read all 154 comments. If every American voter had to read the whole thread (it’s only, like, 30,000 words) I think the Democrats would get about 70% of the popular vote, showing most dramatic improvement in red states. Of course, we would still have no real plan for Iraq, sadly. But accountability starts at home. [click to continue…]

I am proud to announce our CT book event on Chris Mooney’s The Republican War On Science has become a book! (You’d rather buy from Amazon? Here you go.) I declare it an event! There is a certain danger of regress, admittedly. But I think it is quite sound publishing procedure. I’m now an editor for Parlor Press. We’re calling the line Glassbead. I like connotations of transparency and combinatoric possibility. All our books will be available as inexpensive paperbacks and freely downloadable PDF’s; all released under a Creative Commons license. We’re starting with book events – some ones that have happened here at CT and at the Valve. I also want to make anthologies of good blog material. Dig things out of archives that are worthy of editing and preservation. And some nice critical editions of public domain works. More generally, the idea is to figure out a low-cost, fast, efficient model for peer-reviewing and publishing. Mostly the idea – I’ve said it before – is that academic publishing can only truly distinguish itself in this day and age by becoming an exemplary gift culture. (Chris Mooney seems pleased with the treatment.)

Maybe it’s already been done but, if not, someone could do a good ‘how Hitler conquered Europe’ skit based on the idea that at every stage he is able to advance, invisible, like a ghost, because someone points out that to take note of his presence would be a Godwin’s Law violation. The Wehrmacht rolls into Poland. The border guards frantically phone for assistance, only to be tut-tutted. ‘Ah-ah-ahh! You said ‘Hitler’!’ Stalin raves at his underlings when news of Hitler’s betrayal of their pact reaches him. ‘Impossible! That would be a Godwin’s Law violation!’

You may say I just compared Bush to Hitler and this is a strictly inaccurate analogy in a large number of respects. (I guess I can take cold comfort in that.) But I also, in effect, just compared David Broder to Stalin. Which is totally absurd. So let’s call it a wash and proceed straight to the improving moral. It is absurd to uphold moderation as a normative ideal in politics by simply refusing to acknowledge the possibility that it might have failed, in point of fact. (See Broder’s most recent pair of columns, if you haven’t already. And this Jennifer Senior book review, and this Digby review of the review.)

I used to be a practitioner of the Higher Broderism myself, in some ways. I’m trying to do better. What stings me is the conclusion of the Senior review. Two books on what’s gone on with Bush and what’s the moral of the story: “how important it is for writers to have a slight sense of humor about themselves.” Yes. A whole quadrant of possible conclusions is excluded – you just can’t get there from here – because it would be hard to get there while giving the audience a jolly ‘he said-she said’ ride, which lets them back off at the same place where they bought their ticket. And this is effectively put forth as a sufficient reason for doubting the conclusions are true.

UPDATE: It occurs to me the objection will be made that the likes of Broder are willing to consider the possibility that both sides have abandoned the middle in equal and opposite fashion. But this is really more a flirtation with political mysticism – a doctrine of the occultation of the middle, if you will – than a serious empirical proposal. (The Hidden Moderate speaks through its earthly representative: folks like Broder.) Because this view refuses to consider alternatives to itself, e.g. that moderation has failed in some other way. Either way, what we get is merely a means of preserving the accustomed rhetorical equilibrium of Broder, Senior. et al.

UPDATE the 2nd: Yes, I’m using ‘violation of Godwin’s Law’ to mean, more or less, ‘confirming instance of Godwin’s Law’. Well, I think I’m just following common usage in doing so. It’s some sort of non-exception that disproves the rule thing.

Drawn & Quarterly’s long-awaited Moomin, the Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip vol. 1 is delayed until October, but in the meantime they are releasing a strip a day from the publisher’s site, and you can download a 6-page PDF preview sample.

I have been so curious and eager. I’ve read and enjoyed moomin books since childhood and am not ashamed to say I once answered a daughter’s innocent, ‘why did you want to have children?’ with a less innocent, ‘so I could read them moomin books.’ Which was a wretched half-truth. (Belle and I also have plans to construct a plush Groke toy for children’s beds. It will have an opening in which you insert one of those athletic injury cold paks, so in the morning your bed has a horrid cold spot.) Until last year I didn’t even know there had been a long-running moomin newspaper strip.

Now that I see samples for the first time, my feelings are mixed. On the one hand, the art answers gorgeously to my need to feed my eyes on all the antlers and pajamas and especially the triangular noses and the over-sized ones. But the characters are all changed.

Hattifatteners who demand cocktails?

Where’s the small jolt of the silent, nordic, static electricity of vaguely yearning existential dread in that? No Moominmamma and Moominpappa? Sniff as an incompetent, pushy get-rich-quick schemer, played to broad, slapstick effect? Silly fake elixir of youth turning old ladies into old men who roar off after can-can girls? Obviously I must withhold judgment, but it looks as though – at least initially – Jansson didn’t trust the subtle tones of her storytelling to the three-panel form and somewhat condescended to it, letting lovely pictures do all the work. Or maybe she just has to grow into it.

You can pre-order from Amazon – and at a good discount: Moomin, the Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip vol. 1.

This post contains more newly translated bits of Nietzsche on Kant. (The response to my first post was good, so I am encouraged to follow up.) [click to continue…]