Shakesville

Lordy Begordy

Awaken, base—and vote your bigotry!

Openly anxious about grass-roots disaffection from the Republican Party, conservative Christian organizers are reaching for ways to turn out voters this November, including arguing that recognizing same-sex marriage could also limit religious freedom.

Enter Shakespeare’s Sister to get all logical again. There are Christian denominations (not to mention other religions altogether) in America which perform same-sex marriage ceremonies; ergo, by this rationale, not recognizing same-sex marriage limits their religious freedom. Quite a conundrum. Especially when you bring us wacky, gay marriage-supporting atheists into the equation—and our right to be free from coerced adherence to religious doctrine. There is no legal, medical, or philosophical argument which advances a legitimate case against gay marriage; it always comes down to, in the end, “God says so,” which isn’t (or, shouldn’t be) a viable rationale in a secular country.

Anyway, movement leaders are looking for new ways to inspire the flock, with Daddy Dobson, for example, “breaking away from his traditional field of child psychology to argue that foreign terrorists are a threat to families” in order to get the Christofascists off their butts and into the voting booths.

“There is disillusionment out there with Republicans,” said James C. Dobson, founder of the conservative Christian broadcaster Focus on the Family and the most influential voice in the movement. “That worries me greatly.”

Of course it does. Hate has been such an awesome cash cow for such a very long time. Unfortunately, it’s not that conservative Christians are feeling less inclined to try to dictate the way everyone else lives their lives these days; it’s that they’re disillusioned with the return on their investment.

Christian conservatives say President Bush and Republicans in Congress have not lived up to their expectations about advancing new abortion restrictions or a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Boo hoo. Still having to cope with legalized abortion by simply not getting one and cope with gay marriage still being illegal in 49 states by not going to Massachusetts and marrying someone of the same sex. What a struggle.

But lest you think life is entirely grim for the Dominionists, there’s always Reverend Jerry Falwell to lighten their loads with a laugh or two.

Ms. Clinton’s nomination, Mr. Falwell said to laughs, would arouse even more evangelical opposition than Lucifer’s.

I’ll sit back and wait for the heinous outrage that Falwell called a prominent Democrat the devil, since there was so much righteous ire over Chavez having said the same of Bush.

…*crickets*…

2 B or not 2 B

That is the question: “Education chiefs [in Britain] may turn Shakespeare into text speak so children can relate to it. The Department of Education has issued guidelines to schools to be more creative. They are even backing the scheme to take a new approach to plays by the Bard. … Sean Dickinson, headteacher of Park Community School in Havant, Hants, said: "The core issue with Shakespeare is that it's become dull."

Dull? Seriously? You know, I don’t think it’s Shakespeare who’s become dull. Anyone who can read this:

Virtue! a fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many, either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions: but we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts, whereof I take this that you call love to be a sect or scion.

Or this:

If by your art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek,
Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer: a brave vessel,
Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her,
Dash'd all to pieces. O, the cry did knock
Against my very heart. Poor souls, they perish'd.
Had I been any god of power, I would
Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere
It should the good ship so have swallow'd and
The fraughting souls within her.

Or this:

Once more the ruby-coloured portal opened,
Which to his speech did honey passage yield;
Like a red morn, that ever yet betokened
Wrack to the seaman, tempest to the field,
Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds,
Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.

This ill presage advisedly she marketh.
Even as the wind is hushed before it raineth,
Or as the wolf doth grin before he barketh,
Or as the berry breaks before it staineth,
Or like the deadly bullet of a gun,
His meaning struck her ere his words begun.

…and declare, “Dull!” is, methinks, a dullard. Alas and alack—perhaps it’s time to sharpen our minds, if we cannot read Venus and Adonis and feel across our cheeks the hot flush a pointed understanding evokes.

And if it isn’t bad enough that the principle (or headteacher) is calling the Bard dull, we get this sterling critique from a 15-year-old student: "I think it's a great idea. Shakespeare is well out of date."

Yeah, fair enough. It’s not like there’s any reason to read about crooked leaders, political intrigue, death, or love anymore. How quaint.

Mind you, I’m all for finding new ways and using new technologies “to fuel expression and creativity,” but surely they should be used in conjunction with learning how to read Shakespeare the way it was written. There are the obvious benefits of connecting with history through literature and developing an appreciation for styles and language that are different from one’s own, but learning to understand Shakespeare is a challenge that helps develop the mind, that furthers one’s ability to learn. We aren’t always presented with concepts and imagery in the manner with which we’re most familiar; it’s only through learning how to learn that we become adaptable, and thusly prepare ourselves to take on board other literary fare that may be unfamiliar in its rhythms.

It’s because I learned to read Shakespeare (and Poe and Voltaire and all manner of “dull” and “out of date” masters) that I can enjoy Khayyam’s quatrains, or Akira Kurosawa’s films. I mourn for students who may sometime stumble across “Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more: it is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/ Signifying nothing.” and think only, “That reminds me of a text message I got once…”

Screw You, Oldies!

Compassionate Conservatism and the big empty hole in its middle:

This is the "doughnut hole" in the new Medicare drug benefit that began in January, and advocates for seniors say there is nothing sweet about it.

…A few more-expensive plans have no doughnut hole, and low-income beneficiaries can receive extra help from Medicare that eliminates the gap. Under the standard plan, however, the government picks up the bulk of drug costs only until the beneficiary and the government together have spent $2,250 for the year. At that point, beneficiaries must pay 100 percent of costs until they have spent a total of $3,600 of their own money. Then the federal subsidy resumes, paying 95 percent of any additional expenses.

Beneficiaries must continue to pay premiums averaging $24 a month, even in months when they are on their own.

What a great fucking idea this was, eh? One of the women interviewed for the story, a 65-year-old breast cancer survivor, saw her payments for three-month supplies of five medications jump from $58 to $1,294. She put $506 on her credit card to pay for her medications to treat high cholesterol, diabetes, and osteoporosis, is hoping to get free samples of eye drops for her glaucoma, and has stopping taking the drug which is part of the treatment for her breast cancer. She hopes to go back on it once she’s through the donut hole.

Why not just stick her on an iceberg and send her out to sea? “Bon voyage, Granny! Good luck and Godspeed!”

Culture of life, my ass.

The pepper-upper-in-chief

So Chris Simms, struggling quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was in such dire straits that George Bush stopped by to give him some advice and a little pep talk.

The result: Not only do the Bucs lose their third game in a row (to the formerly 0-2 Carolina Panthers), poor Simms had to have his spleen removed after the game and is out indefinitely.

George Bush: Doing for the NFL what he's done for the country.

We wish Chris - and the nation - a speedy recovery.

(Cross-posted.)

Caption This Photo

My new boyfriend has the dreamiest dimples!

(Btw, congratulations, Europe.)

Dog Whistles

I’ve blogged about dog-whistle politics before (most recently here, with the most famous example being President Bush’s Dred Scott shout-out during the 2004 presidential debates), because I find it incredible how often Bush et. al. use the technique to send covert messages to their conservative Christian base. Ian Welsh at The Agonist has identified Bush’s much-discussed “just a comma” comment as another dog-whistle.

[T]his is another case where Bush is using code words to speak directly to his Christian right base.

The phrase is: "Never put a period where God has put a comma." Which is to say — it ain't over yet, and God may well make it better. So Iraq's bad, but if we trust in God, he'll make it better.

When I’ve written about dog whistle politics before, sometimes progressives are reluctant to believe that there’s a there there, but that’s the whole point. Only the dogs are meant to hear the whistle.

In fact, many of the times that Bush uses phrases we find completely bizarre, and chalk up to his tendency to create new words like “suiciders,” are actually dog whistles.

In his 2003 State of the Union speech, Bush listed as one of his goals “to apply the compassion of America to the deepest problems of America. For so many in our country — the homeless, and the fatherless, the addicted — the need is great. Yet there is power — wonder-working power — in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people.”

Wonder-working power? To me it sounded like he’d been reading too many comic books. To conservative Christians, it sounded like the refrain of one of their favorite hymns, There Is Power In the Blood:

There is power, power,
Wonder-working power
In the blood of the Lamb;
There is power, power,
Wonder-working power
In the precious blood of the Lamb.
In the transcript of just about any Bush address, I could pull out a similar dog whistle. It’s no surprise he’s inserting them into interviews now, too, with the elections around the corner and reports of disaffected conservative Christian voters. When the master blows the whistle, the dogs come a-running.

A War We Can’t Afford

Literally: “The Army's top officer withheld a required 2008 budget plan from Pentagon leaders last month after protesting to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the service could not maintain its current level of activity in Iraq plus its other global commitments without billions in additional funding.”

Meanwhile, we're already over eight trillion in debt.

Huh. Maybe that’s why most leaders (read: no leader ever) don’t give tax cuts during wartime. Y’know, because war is expensive. Promises that they’ll pay for themselves not withstanding.

Looks like the Bush administration could benefit from the “Don’t Buy Stuff You Cannot Afford” program.

No Love at Clinton's Love-In

New piece up at The Guardian's Comment is Free about Clinton's appearance on Fox and the lesson he ought to take away from it.

The Land of Milk and Honey

And ignorance. Grumpy Old Man tipped me off to the difference in Newsweek’s covers on the foreign and American editions. In Europe, Asia, and Latin America, the cover story is Losing Afghanistan.

You don't have to drive very far from Kabul these days to find the Taliban. In Ghazni province's Andar district, just over a two-hour trip from the capital on the main southern highway, a thin young man, dressed in brown and wearing a white prayer cap, stands by the roadside waiting for two NEWSWEEK correspondents. It is midday on the central Afghan plains, far from the jihadist-infested mountains to the east and west. Without speaking, the sentinel guides his visitors along a sandy horse trail toward a mud-brick village within sight of the highway. As they get closer a young Taliban fighter carrying a walkie-talkie and an AK-47 rifle pops out from behind a tree. He is manning an improvised explosive device, he explains, in case Afghan or U.S. troops try to enter the village.

In the US, it’s My Life in Pictures, a story about celebrity photographer Annie Liebovitz and her new book.

Annie Leibovitz is tired and nursing a cold, and she' s just flown back to New York on the red-eye from Los Angeles, where she spent two days shooting Angelina Jolie for Vogue. Like so many of her photo sessions, there was nothing simple about it. "I talked with Angelina before the shoot," says Leibovitz, who's famous for her preparation. "She felt like she was coming back from having the baby and she felt very sexy and ready to go." Jolie, a pilot, suggested shooting on an old airfield near the desert, with motorcycles and small planes among the props. (She flew herself to the location and the next day, Brad Pitt buzzed up in his plane.) They also spent a day shooting in the dunes near Death Valley, where the mercury hit 104, and the wind whipped so hard that everyone was peppered with sand. There were 50 people on the set, and racks of clothes from the New York spring collections to be tried and styled. It was as if Leibovitz were directing a small movie.

Wow.

File under Things That Don't Surprise Me, But Still Manage to Rattle Me, Anyway.

Wham!

Oh, George, you sassy wench!

A mature, modest and (almost) scandal-free George Michael took the stage in his first solo concert in 15 years. But the pop star couldn't resist making another controversial dig at George Bush.

At the end of the first set Michael sang his 2002 controversial anti-Bush song "Shoot the Dog."

During the number, an enormous balloon depicting a cartoon-ish George Bush rose out of centre stage, drawing whoops and yells from the crowd. But the real surprise came when Michael leaned down to unzip the balloon's trousers, and out popped a British bulldog draped with the UK flag. The dog was stuck to the balloon's inflated crotch, wagging its tail.

Arf.

I believe that would be appropriately classified as a “controversial dig” at Tony Blair, too. Deservedly so.

(Via Dlisted.)

Next Stop: Contraception

You didn’t think they’d stop with attacking abortion rights, did you? Of course they won’t. Give them an inch, and...well, you know the rest.

It's really too bad that "Stay out of my bedroom, my bed, my medicine closet, my decisions, my relationship, my sex life, and my uterus, you fucking assholes!" won't fit on a bumpersticker.

The Market Really Does Solve Everything!

U.S. to relax air travel restrictions

[Kip Hawley, head of the Transportation Security Administration, at a news conference at Reagan National Airport] said that most liquids and gels that air travelers purchase in secure areas of airports will now be allowed on planes. He called the new procedures a "common sense" approach that would maintain a high level of security at airports but ease conditions for passengers.

That means that after passengers go through airport security checkpoints, they can purchase liquids at airport stores and take them onto their planes. The new procedures go into effect on Tuesday, Hawley said.

College Teammates Recall Allen’s Racism

Boy, this guy is a real charmer. Three former teammates on Allen’s college football team remember Allen regularly using the N-word to describe blacks, and one of them recalls:

…that the future senator gave him the nickname "Wizard," because he shared a last name with Robert Shelton, who served in the 1960s as the imperial wizard of the United Klans of America, a group affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan.

Egad.

He also recalls a hunting trip he took with Allen.

After they had killed a deer, Shelton said he remembers Allen asking Lanahan where the local black residents lived. Shelton said Allen then drove the three of them to that neighborhood with the severed head of the deer. "He proceeded to take the doe's head and stuff it into a mailbox," Shelton said.

Some of the other former teammates interviewed for the story say that Allen was not a racist, citing as evidence that he treated black and white players exactly the same. The thing is, treating people of different races the same in public is not actually proof of one’s belief in their intrinsic equality. I’ve known plenty of white people who would never call a black person a nasty epithet to his or her face, but regularly used the n-word to talk disparagingly about black people behind closed doors (read: with other whites). It’s entirely possible that Allen was clever enough not to let himself be known as a racist to people of color, yet showed his true colors (no pun intended) to his white intimates. I would argue that, since the Civil Rights Act, that formula is, in fact, the most typical of practicing racists.

In any case, I look forward to the Swift Boating of Shelton, whose closets are no doubt being searched for skeletons by the right-wingers as we speak.

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

The Munsters

Baraka

Via Blah3, I see that Baraka has been made available on Google Video. Baraka is one of my favorite films, which I first saw in the theater over a decade ago; I walked in not knowing what to expect of a film with no plot, no actors, and no script, which was described by friends who recommended it as stunning, poetic, life-changing. It was all of those things. I own the film on DVD and watch it at least once a year; its soundtrack is as close a thing to hymns as music gets for someone like me—the hum of the world and the people in it.

Baraka is an ancient Sufi word, which can be translated as "a blessing, or as the breath, or essence of life from which the evolutionary process unfolds." For many people Baraka is the definitive film in this style. Breathtaking shots from around the world show the beauty and destruction of nature and humans. Coupled with an incredible soundtrack including on site recordings of The Monks Of The Dip Tse Chok Ling Monastery.

Baraka is evidence of a huge global project fueled by a personal passion for the world and visual art. Working on a reported US$4 million budget, Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson, with a three-person crew, swept through 24 countries in 14 months to make this stunning film.

One of the very last films shot in the expensive TODD-AO 70mm format, Ron Fricke developed a computer-controlled camera for the incredible time-lapse shots, including New York's Park Avenue rush hour traffic and the crowded Tokyo subway platforms.

Watch this film. You’ll be glad you did.

Reality Kicks Bush’s Ass

“You know, I’ve heard this theory about, you know, everything was just fine until we arrived [in Iraq], and that, you know, kind of that uh stir up the hornet’s nest theory. It, it, it just doesn’t hold water as far as I’m concerned.” — President Bush, August 21 (video here).

Today: Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

…An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

How’s that theory holding water now, Mr. President?

(Crossposted at Ezra’s place.)

The Virtual Bar Is Open

I don't know about you, but I need a fucking drink.

Next Stop on Crazy Train: Iran

As reports circulate of a sharp debate within the White House over possible US military action against Iran and its nuclear enrichment facilities, The Nation has learned that the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have moved up the deployment of a major "strike group" of ships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off Iran's western coast. This information follows a report in the current issue of Time magazine, both online and in print, that a group of ships capable of mining harbors has received orders to be ready to sail for the Persian Gulf by October 1.

Read Billmon for some intelligent analysis. All I’ve got at the moment is: “Fuck. We’re truly being led by insane warmongers.”

Caption This Photo

President George W. Bush speaks at a campaign fundraiser in
Tampa, Florida September 21, 2006. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

So…

…my question at the moment is: If the Dems’ best defense is to stretch out and wait, and the “maverick” members of the GOP can’t stop Bush from effectively turning America into a pro-torture, anti-law, radical, Christofascist, isolationist backwater, and Karl Rove is promising an October Surprise to retain control of the two houses of Congress so the dime-store despot can stay in the Annihilation of America business care of the Rampant Rubberstampers, is there actually any point in blogging, aside from creating a record that there were people who didn’t go along with this Freedom Charade, so when historians look back and wonder how it all went so wrong, they see that we tried, we really tried?

I’m so sick of this shit I could puke.