Shakesville

Ode to the Weatherpeople

You let us know when we need to take a sweater, or an umbrella, just in case. You let us know whether we should hold off on watering the lawn and washing the car, whether we should stock up on canned goods and make sure the snowblower’s in working order. And when all the rest of us head indoors to escape the rain, the sleet, the hail, the wind—that’s when you finally get to leave the studio, sent into the inclement weather to give your report on impending storms the ultimate veracity. “100 mph winds” doesn’t mean anything without seeing your yellow parka nearly ripped off your body. You risk your own warmth, dryness, safety, and pride to protect us—and get good ratings for your employer. So it’s no wonder you’re all a little nuts. (Via Recon.) The first one on the list is just priceless.

Best weatherman ever? Brick Tamland.

Close runner-up: Harris K. Telemacher

Manhood, baby

Meet Ronnie Coleman. Professional bodybuilder, eight-time Mr. Olympia. By necessity, the guy is roughly the size of a Ford F-150. This weekend, I ran across a video of Ronnie bench pressing a pair of 200 pound dumbbells - for reps, mind you, not just a one-time max - and was awestruck. I also bench press with dumbbells, but you can be dead certain that the DBs I use don't weigh 200 pounds.

I am impressed by Ronnie Coleman: his confidence, his application, his mastery of his sport. There are some who say that Ronnie's...you know...on the juice. I shouldn't be surprised - bodybuilding is rife with supplement use and abuse - but that's not what comes to mind just now when I see Ronnie doing these reps. What comes to mind is this: "Ronnie Coleman is a man, baby."

Meet Ming Tsai. Big-time celebrity chef, noted restaurateur. Not the size of a pickup truck, even though he works around food all day, every day. Every weekend, I watch him dominate his stage of a kitchen, demonstrating master recipes that blend Eastern and Western sensibilities. Food becomes art and performance in his hands. Ming comes off as both a self-assured chef and a regular guy who genuinely enjoys the gustatory pleasures. Additionally, he's almost annoyingly good-looking.

I envy Ming Tsai: his confidence, his dedication, his mastery of his art. There is a voice in the back of my head that discounts the whole celebrity chef phenomenon as not only irredeemably silly but a sign of the coming Apocalypse, but I don't hear that voice when I watch Ming in action. What I hear is this: "Ming Tsai is a man, baby."

(Cross-posted, baby...)

President Photo Op

New Orleans—On the eve of the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s strike here, President Bush returned to the devastated region on Monday promising to continue federal assistance and, with his presidency still under the shadow of the slow response to the storm, eagerly pointed out signs of progress in reconstructing the Gulf Coast.

…In an event with echoes of his prime-time speech in Jackson Square here last September, Mr. Bush spoke in a working-class neighborhood in Biloxi against a backdrop of neatly reconstructed homes. But just a few feet away, outside the scene captured by the camera, stood gutted houses with wires dangling from ceilings. A tattered piece of crime-scene tape hung from a tree in the field where Mr. Bush spoke. A toilet sat on its side in the grass.

Via The Carpetbagger Report, here’s the reality on the ground, as opposed to the fantasyland Bush lives in where toilets in yards are an optimistic sign and unicorn piss is the magic elixir that will fix everything:

* Less than half of the city's pre-storm population of 460,000 has returned, putting the population at roughly what it was in 1880.

* Nearly a third of the trash has yet to be picked up.

* Sixty percent of homes still lack electricity.

* Seventeen percent of the buses are operational.

* Half of the physicians have left, and there is a shortage of 1,000 nurses.

* Six of the nine hospitals remain closed.

* Sixty-six percent of public schools have reopened.

* A 40 percent hike in rental rates, disproportionately affecting black and low-income families.

* A 300 percent increase in the suicide rate.

Get with the program, Bush, you fucking nitwit.

More from Blah3 and Brilliant at Breakfast.

McCain the Douche

Pam has the lowdown on Senator McCain's latest possible appeal to the Christian Supremacists: he's considering speaking at the odious Bob Jones University, which he roundly (and deservedly) criticized during the 2000 campaign. But having integrity didn't get him in the White House last time, so he's ditched it.

BJU's student handbook says "Loyalty to Christ results in separated living. Dishonesty, lewdness, sensual behavior, adultery, homosexuality, sexual perversion of any kind, pornography, illegal use of drugs, and drunkenness—all are clearly condemned by God's word and prohibited here." The campus bans all Abercrombie & Fitch logos because it has "shown an unusual degree of antagonism to the name of Christ and an unusual display of wickedness in their promotions."

And, lest anyone forget, Bob Jones refused to admit any blacks until 1971, and only then married blacks until 1975, and then forbade interracial dating until 2000. So it's super extra cool that McCain, with his multi-racial family, would consider hanging out with those bozos just to get a few votes.

(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)

Bush Goes to Vietnam

President George W. Bush has famously never been to Vietnam -- instead he spent some of that war keeping the skies over Texas safe from the Viet Cong. But now Curious George will finally visit Vietnam, albeit almost 40 years after John Kerry got there.

In mid-November, Hanoi will host the APEC Summit -- the Dear Leader promised last year that he would go. In fact, the Vietnamese have been freeing dissidents in advance of Bush's visit. Gee, do you suppose he'll be sellin' them some of that Iraqi-style deee-mocracy?

Yeesh. Godspeed, Commander Codpiece.

(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

The Monkees

Question of the Day

If you had the opportunity to make President Bush sit and listen to the things that any one person could tell him for 15 minutes, who would you choose to try to enlighten, persuade, condemn, or scream at him?

I can think of a whole lot of people, starting with the man who should have been president, Mr. Al Gore, but in the end I’d be stingy and choose myself. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to let loose.

Apologies

Sorry I went AWOL, Shakers. We had another huge storm and were without power again for the last four hours. I’ve updated the blogswarm round-up below—my apologies to everyone who had to wait to get included.

(And now I’ve got to get off the computer again, because another storm seems imminent. Just FYI—and I’ll update the blogswarm again in the morning. Thanks so very much to everyone who participated.)

Katrina: One Year Later

UPDATE: I'm moving this back to the top for a bit. The round-up continues to grow, and I've added some stuff to the end of the post.

Today, there are hurricane warnings in Florida as the president makes his thirteenth trip to the Gulf Coast since it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina one year ago. He isn’t planning to make any new aid announcements or policy proposals, nor is he planning to spend much time with people most affected by the storm and its aftermath. He plans to give an address to “persuade local residents and doubters elsewhere that he remains committed to seeing the region rebuilt better than before.” He will spend most of his time in Mississippi, rather than “harder-hit, less-recovered New Orleans,” and after his lunch with community leaders in Biloxi, he will “walk through a damaged neighborhood and visit a Gulfport company that builds and repairs boats.” Today will be a day for photo ops.

Today is not about the recovery of the Gulf Coast, not really. Because even though one year later, the “job of clearing debris left by the storm remains unfinished, and has been plagued by accusations of price gouging,” and even though one year later, “tens of thousands of families still live in trailers or mobile homes, with no indication of when or how they will be able to obtain permanent housing,” and even though one year later, “important decisions about rebuilding and improving flood defenses have been delayed” and “little if anything has been done to ensure the welfare of the poor in a rebuilt New Orleans,” and even though one year later, huge numbers of people are still displaced, the president doesn’t believe in the significance of this anniversary, or pointing to it in urgency to get local and state officials, who he blames for the delays in rebuilding, to get things done. What today is really about is the recovery of Bush’s image.

But this catastrophic mess is his to own. It was the finest moment for Bush Conservatism, which advocates a social Darwinism that first leaves people without the means to evacuate and then allows those on higher (and dryer) ground to blame the drowning masses for their own desperate circumstance, which advocates the appointment of people to government specifically because of their disdain for its basic duties on behalf of those most in need of its service, which advocates “starving the beast” to make the federal government as effective as a tiger without its fangs, which advocates cronyism that finds useless, incompetent twits in charge of a massive emergency operation.

Katrina was the inevitable failure in the wake of Bush Conservatism’s success.

Today, in spite of Bush’s desire to separate himself from the shining glory of his most precious policies, we remember how he failed Americans, and failed America.

Blogswarm Round-up:

Royally Kranked / I’m Not One to Blog, But… / Night Bird’s Fountain / Amberglow at MetaFilter / Fluxview / Changing Places / Grumpy Old Man / Morning Martini / What Do I Know? / A Blog Around the Clock / After the Bridge / Swampytad / Rusty Idols / The Science Pundit / Harp and Sword / Mike the Mad Biologist / Momusfire / The Crazy Bird / The Psychotic Patriot (and here) / Truth, Justice & Peace / Stephenson Strategies / Konagod / Paul Krugman (provided by C&L) / BlondeSense / Driftglass / Gideon Starorzewski / The Talent Show / Mike’s Neighborhood / Pen-Elayne on the Web / Mockingbird’s Medley / Bark Bark Woof Woof / Progressive Purls / Booman Tribune / TalkLeft / The Intersection / Stranger Fruit / Poor Impulse Control / Quaker Agitator (and here) / Blue Gal / Talking Points Memo / Hughes for America / Brilliant at Breakfast / Aetiology / Legal Fiction / 300 Dollar Wonder / Drifting Through the Grift / Property of a Lady / HuffPo / Corpus Callosum / The Unknown Candidate / The Tattered Coat / 1115 / The Last Duchess / Facing South / True Blue Liberal / Demagogue / The Daily Background / Think Progress / Thoughts from an Empty Head / Afarensis / Life and Times of NotSoccer Mom / Thoughts from Kansas / Blanton’s and Ashton’s / State of the Day / Article of Faith / The Rude Pundit / The Katrinacrat Blog / The Democratic Daily / A DC Birding Blog / Zen Comix / Liberal Catnip / Firedoglake / First Draft / Left I on the News / The Left Coaster / The Garlic / Puffs and White China Dogs / Linkmeister / Bitty’s Back Porch / Thinking Meat / Lab Cat / Notes Toward Something / The Aristocrats / Dr. Joan Bushwell’s Chimpanzee Refuge / The Evil Petting Zoo / This Space for Rent / Pushing Rope / And This Too Shall Pass… / 2 Political Junkies / Balls and Walnuts / Attempts / Globalclashes / Terra Sigillata / Club Lefty / Off the Broiler / The Left End of the Dial / Dynamics of Cats / Man Eegee / Kevin Wolf / Pam’s House Blend / The Brad Blog / The Moderate Voice / The Reaction / TBogg / Blah3 / AlterNet Video Blog / Mahablog / Liberal Oasis / The Carpetbagger Report / Nihilix / Thou Shall Not Suck / The Blue Voice / Efficacy / Media Needle / Welcome to Pottersville / The American Street / Set Free / 2millionthweblog / A Frolic of My Own / Adrastos / Adventures in the Big Easy / After the Levees at TPM Café / American Zombie / Anima Mundi / Appetites / Ashley Morris / Beyond Katrina / b.rox / Blagueur / Blogging New Orleans / Chill But Real / Chris’ Blog / Cliff’s Crib / Confederacy of Dunces USA / Cooking with Herb St. Absinthe / Creative Display / Da Po’ Blog / Dangerblond / Dangermond / DawnSinger / Doctor Daisy / Emily Metzgar / Flood and Loathing / Gentilly Girl / Gulf Sails / Gumbo Pie / Habitat for Urbanity / Howie Luvzus / Humid City v2.3 / Evil Mommy / Humid Haney Rant / I Pee Sunshine and Flowers / Library Chronicles / Lifestyles of the Easily Obsessed / FEMA, Katrina, and Other Bad Words / Maitri’s VatulBlog / Metroblogging New Orleans / Michael Homan / Miss Malaprop / Missing New Orleans / Moldy City / New Orleans Slate / Nix Bits / NOLA Nik / Old Hammond Highway Bridge / Our New Orleans Saints / People Get Ready / Ray in New Orleans / Saturday Knights / Sean P. Clark / Slimbolala / Spastic Robot / Suburbia / Sung a Lot of Songs / Still Life with Soup Can / Suspect Device / Sturtle / Thanks, Katrina / The G Bitch Spot / The Garden of Irks and Delights / The Katrina Memo / The Periphery / The Third Battle of New Orleans / Tim’s Nameless Blog / Topping from the Bottom / The Velvet Rut / Vicky Moos / Voices of New Orleans / Wet Bank Guide / Yat Pundit

Watch Us and Them and Short People, care of Joe Max.
Oddjob points to today's front page story in the Boston Globe with the note, “It does indeed logically stand to reason that if one elects into office people who don't believe the government has any real business existing (beyond the bare necessities of a standing military) that disaster relief will be handled horrifically. Garbage in, garbage out...”

A year ago, I did a round-up of bloggers who were making the point that Katrina was the inevitable failure in the wake of Bush Conservatism’s success, an observation the Democrats still desperately need to make clearly and unabashedly. Below are some of those excerpts, again.

Rob Salkowitz: "It’s moments like this when you need a party in power that actually believes in the affirmative power of government to help its citizens, rather than the party that sees government’s role as protecting the property of the well-off from the predations of the underclass. It’s when the true ugly soul of American conservatism is borne out for what it is: a rationalization of selfishness and the hysterical denial of community. America is about to see what happens when the government is staffed by people appointed to their jobs precisely for their disdain for the whole notion of policy in the public interest. It’s won’t be pretty."

Driftglass: "Take a good look at the news, Republicans. A looooong fucking look, because at no real risk to yourself (which we know is just how you like it) you have been given a great and rare gift for which others have paid a terrible price…[I]n New Orleans you have been vouchsafed a glimpse into the future of your deepest wettest dreams."

The Green Knight: "Neo-conservative theory has run headlong into reality, and let me tell you the theory is wrong, folks. The authorities are, right before your eyes, sacrificing the lives of your fellow Americans on the altar of their vile social programming theory. Better for people to die than get help. Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile. This is your government. This is the logical outcome of all that neocon Thatcherite management-theory bullshit that has hypnotized the Western world for the past decade. This is Hell on Earth."

PZ Meyers: "It is also obvious that there is one huge, dominant factor that has been operating over decades to culminate now, in this problem and many others: the Republican party. The party of know-nothings, incompetence, greed, bigotry, religious intolerance, and irresponsibility. We now have the government they wanted, and that we allowed them to have."

Rexroth’s Daughter: "I feel some hope that this catastrophe will bring to light the need for an efficient, compassionate, progressive government, that 2006 will restore us to congressional leadership. But I am full of despair that the illumination has come once again on the backs of the poor and destitute."

Blue Girl in a Red State: "I'm dreaming that there are millions of people fed up with this administration. That finally millions of people on both the left and right are fed up with our lack of leadership. I'm dreaming that millions of people want to put a stop to our country's downward spiral."

There's more at the link.

Caption This Photo

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Nero strummed while NOLA drowned.

Meanwhile…

…Bush’s other disaster continues unabated, with 8 soldiers and dozens of civilians killed over the weekend “in a brutal contradiction of the prime minister's claim that bloodshed was decreasing.”

One side effect…

…of trying to destroy the federal government (or, you know, just “get[ting] it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub”) is that you also destroy the public’s faith in the government—and, imagine this, those who govern.

Their confidence shaken by Katrina, most Americans don't believe the nation is ready for another major disaster, a new AP-Ipsos poll finds.

…Fifty-seven percent in the poll said they felt at least somewhat strongly the country was ill-prepared — up from 44 percent in the days after the storm slammed ashore on Aug. 29, 2005. Just one in three Americans polled believe Bush did a good job with Katrina, down from 46 percent a year ago.

33%. Heckuva job, Bushie.

What’s sex got to do with it?

Mr. Shakes passed on this article which reports on the findings of a study whose author says that “having a teacher of the opposite sex hurts a student’s academic progress.” Though the author, Thomas Dee, an associate professor of economics at Swarthmore College and visiting scholar at Stanford University, cautions that no “fast conclusions” should be drawn about his work, the article makes certain to tie it into “the Boy Crisis” nonetheless, by pointing out: “His study comes as the proportion of male teachers is at its lowest level in 40 years. Roughly 80 percent of teachers in U.S. public schools are women.”

My first response to the finding is that it’s totally out of line with my experience. I had favorite teachers of both sexes in all different subjects, and I can’t say at all that the sex of an instructor mattered one way or another to my academic success or interest in a subject.

My second response is that what is being presented as an issue of sex, is really an issue of sexism.

Dee also contends that gender influences attitudes.

For example, with a female teacher, boys were more likely to be seen as disruptive. Girls were less likely to be considered inattentive or disorderly.

With a female teacher, boys were more likely to be seen as disruptive. That’s an interesting way of putting it, because it implies that the female teacher is just viewing boys as disruptive, but I remember being in class with plenty of boys who simply didn’t show the same respect to our female teachers as they did to our male teachers. And not just in class, but even in how they spoke about them outside of class. A difficult male teacher was just a “hard-ass,” but a difficult female teacher was a “bitch.” Certainly, there may be issues of preference among female teachers, but engaging the possibility shouldn’t come at the expense of a rigorous scrutiny of institutionalized sexism—which includes such socialization as male gym teachers and coaches denigrating their male charges as “ladies” in the same environment in which women are authority figures.

In a class taught by a man, girls were more likely to say the subject was not useful for their future. They were less likely to look forward to the class or to ask questions.

Again, is that simply because girls lack the imagination to see how a subject taught by a male could be useful to their future, or is there an institutionalized problem of subtle and/or overt discouragement against girls seeing a future in the maths and sciences (disciplines in which the majority of male teachers are employed)? We know that there are still serious advanced-educational and professional hurdles for women in these fields; it’s not illogical to believe that male teachers share the biases of other men in the field outside teaching in middle- and high schools.

Dee’s findings are interesting and undoubtedly provocative; I just hope they provoke the right follow-up questions.

Gore: Democracy is under attack

In Edinburgh to promote An Inconvenient Truth, Gore minced no words: “In my country and others around the world democracy is under attack.”

"There's a feeling in the US on the part of many that the way democracy operates today is very different from the system we learned about in school."

He said that democracy, which he described as a "conversation", was now "more controlled and centralised", and that the most important role of the media was to facilitate democracy.

Gore said American politicians were spending their time raising funds at small gatherings and cocktail parties because, "the only thing that matters in American politics now is having enough money to put 30-second commercials on air to persuade the voters to elect or re-elect you."

Gore added that the internet offers “the promise of recreating a meritocracy of ideas.” Let it be as you say, sir.

Also, when Gore was asked the recently popular question of whether Bush is stupid, he replied, “I don't think he's unintelligent at all. He's incurious ... there's a puzzling lack of curiosity,” proving once again that he is not only a scholar, but a gentleman. Because if I had been subjected to repeated charges that I was “too brainy” and “too wonky” and “too professorial” and all that shit like he was by the media in 2000, only to have them ask six long years later whether Bush is stupid, I would have screamed, “Fuck youuuuuuuu, assholes!” just before my head exploded.

Lily Tomlin on Same-Sex Marriage

“It is an aggressively negative rejection," she said of the [US and Australian] governments' responses to the marriage issue.

Go read the whole thing.

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

The Partridge Family

Btw...

...I just saw this assmercial again. It's for Polaroid.

Project Gunnway

I’m still loving Tim Gunn, who I fervently believe must be cloned and distributed to every 18-year-old as a Life Mentor after having expertise in every conceivable career path downloaded into his head Matrix-style. We all need a Tim Gunn.

Failing an army of mass-produced GunnClones, perhaps Tim Gunn could be obliged to give lessons on How To Be Gunntastic, because I’m quite certain there’s no shortage of people who want to be Tim Gunn when they grow up. Including me. I’d settle for the improvement in my posture alone.

Although it’s true I primarily tune in to Project Gunnway to obsessively detail in my Big Leatherbound Book of Grievances all the ways in which I am not Tim Gunn (last entry under subhead Disappointing UnGunn-ness: #156 My voice does not have the capacity to nourish nest-fallen baby birds with its sheer soothing cadence), I do pay some passing attention to the designers, too. This season, the focus of what little residue of awareness I have to give to them is largely usurped by Laura Bennett’s sternum, which was prominently on display at her first interview and has remained so ever since.

The Sternum of Doom

Ouch.
Last week, my parents’ minister came to dinner at Parental Manor the same night as Mr. Shakes and I, and he and I had a lively discussion about The Sternum of Doom. While I am quite terrified of it, believing it would likely stab me to death were I ever to be within three feet of it, he seemed more curious about what motivates Laura’s insistence on highlighting it with her trademark plunging necklines. Everything about her says I am glamorous and beautiful and classy and cool (which she is), except for the continual emphasis of The Sternum of Doom, which says, only, I have no boobs.

She really doesn’t.

Crazy Vincent is stacked by comparison.
Which shouldn’t be mistaken for a suggestion that a woman needs cleavage to be glamorous, beautiful, classy, and cool. Laura is all those things—it’s just that they’re even more noticeable on the rare occasions she hasn’t framed The Sternum of Doom as the centerpiece of her outfit. It undermines the overall message just as a huge set of cans constantly spilling out of an indistinguishable series of low-cut garments would. The whole thing perplexes me.

Other than that, I’m pretty sure Uli’s going to win the whole thing. Maybe Michael. I’ll be happy either way. As long as it’s not Jeffrey, whose increasingly annoying antics make me want to shear off his idiotic neck tats with a cheese grater.

And finally, do you think Crazy Vincent and Nutbag Angela will ever realize they’re actually the same person?

Because they are.
(Thanks to EdHill and FourFour for the screen caps.)

Best Political Novels

Via Political Wire, I see that the Wall Street Journal has chosen as the five best political novels Anthony Trollope’s The Prime Minister, Charles McCarry’s Shelley’s Heart, Qiu Xiaolong’s Death of a Red Heroine, Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, and Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men.

Unsurprisingly, my choices would be different from theirs. In fact, how I define a “political novel” probably differs from theirs. Is To Kill a Mockingbird a political novel in the same sense as All the King’s Men? No, but I would certainly classify it as a political novel nonetheless.

It would take me an age to come up with what I felt was a definitive top five list of my favorite (or what I thought were the best) political novels, but the first few that came immediately to mind were: Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Albert Camus’ The Plague, Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, and, of course, the old stand-bys: George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Most of those aren’t explicitly “about politics,” but, in my estimation, very few of the best “political novels” actually are.

In fact, one of the best “political novels” I’ve ever read had nothing to do with politics at all. Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love is about a carnival family, the Binewskis, whose patriarch and matriarch decide to rescue their traveling “Carnival Fabulon” from failure by creating the best freak show imaginable with the aid of drugs, pesticides, radiation, and anything else on which they can get their hands to cause spectacular birth defects. [SPOILER ALERT] One of their progeny, Arturo the Aqua-Boy, born with flippers where his arms and legs should be, serves as the center of an amazing subplot, in which he becomes a messiah-like figure to desperate devotees, the Arturans, who deliberately maim themselves to look like him in pursuit of the gossamer promise of salvation.

On its face (and particularly in such clipped summary), it might sound like a more relevant commentary on religion, but, even when I read the book in 1991, long before the emergence of the Cult of Bush, the parallels between political cults of personality, compelling people to vote against their own best interests to honor a twisted nationalism whose architects claim is the only true definition of patriotism, seemed much more evident to me. Today, 15 years later, drawing an association between such intentional—if ignorant—self-destruction is even easier.

So, now I put the question to you. What are your favorite political novels? And, naturally, please feel free to keep with my willful undermining of the strict definition of “novels about politics” to include novels with political themes.

(Crossposted at Ezra’s place.)

This Just In

Christopher Hitchens is a disgrace.

Btw, nice yellow socks, douchebag.