The Commentariat -- April 1, 2012
My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is on Ross Douthat's little screed about health care costing too much and how Obama & Congressional Democrats managed to hide the true costs. The NYTX front page is here. You can contribute here. ...
... AND do read this funny, short takedown of Tom Friedman by Hamilton Nolan of Gawker. Nolan perfectly captures Friedman.
New York Times Editors: "For anyone who still thought legal conservatives are dedicated to judicial restraint, the oral arguments before the Supreme Court on the health care case should put that idea to rest. There has been no court less restrained in signaling its willingness to replace law made by Congress with law made by justices.... A split court striking down the act will be declaring itself virtually unfettered by the law. And if that happens along party lines, with five Republican-appointed justices supporting the challenge led by 26 Republican governors, the court will mark itself as driven by politics."
Nicholas Kristof persuades Goldman Sachs to get out of the sex-trafficking business.
Steve Hendrix of the Washington Post: "... in Libya, five months after the death of the man who managed to hold this country together by brute force, people are beginning to wonder whether there is any other way to do it."
Caroline Bankoff of New York magazine: George W. & Laura Bush's daughters, Barbara and Jenna, voted for Barack Obama in 2008.
CW: I read several posts in mostly respectable online journals & other media (PBS!) that highlighted this astounding figure: families earning less than $13,000 spend 9 percent of that income on lottery tickets. I too was shocked. So I read the study that generated all the foo-fah, which is here (pdf). I'll be darned if I can see where the study shows any such thing. Maybe you're a better reader than I.
Right Wing World
CNN: Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) no longer thinks it's a good idea to imply that the nation's top military brass are liars and perjurers when they claim cuts in defense spending are warranted.
Existential Dread, Right-Wing Style. Thanks to Jon Chait of New York magazine, I found out what conservatives are skeert of. Apparently the denizens of Right Wing World cite this passage often -- and even more often now that we have a black Muslim socialist in the White House:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. -- Anonymous (variously incorrectly attributed to de Toqueville & others)
CW: while I was mulching some giant crinum lilies today, my mind wandered to the Chris Mooney article I linked yesterday, & I came up with my own counter-theory about what's eating conservatives. I'm not ready to reveal it just yet, but I think I'll give it a whirl in polite company one of these days and see how many spit-takes it engenders. ...
... Update: just read the following. It feeds into my theory:
** "Stag Party." Frank Rich: "... the hostility toward modern women resurfacing in the GOP today was baked into the party before the religious right gained its power and before recriminalizing abortion became a volatile cause.... Unlike the angry Santorum, [Romney] has the smooth style of a fifties retro patriarch to camouflage the reactionary content [of his views about women]. In this sense, his war on women would differ from Rick’s — and Rush’s — only in the way prized by GOP spin artists like Noonan and Matalin. He would never be so politically foolhardy as to spell out on-camera just how broad and nasty its goals really are."
The way things are supposed to be in the marital realm.
News Ledes
New York Times: "The United States and more than 60 other countries moved closer on Sunday to direct intervention in the fighting in Syria, with Arab nations pledging $100 million to pay opposition fighters and the Obama administration agreeing to send communications equipment to help rebels organize and evade Syria’s military, according to participants gathered here."
New York Times: "The party of [Nobel Peace Prize winner] declared that she had won a seat in Myanmar’s Parliament on Sunday, an unofficial result that may herald a new era for the country as it moves toward democracy after decades of oppressive military rule."
AP: More details emerge about Osama bin Ladin's life in Pakistan in the years before U.S. Navy SEALS killed him.
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Reader Comments (4)
After reading Rich (and getting to read him again on Sunday morning is such a treat) I remembered Midge Decker, wife of Norman Podhoretz who once was pinkish and then turned a right corner to join the ultra-conservative venue, speaking at some symposium in the seventies about women needing to stop all this leaving the home for work outside, and advocating the importance of being a wife and mother. Phyllis Shafley at the same period was hawking this message––she's still doing it. Both these women were strident, castigating women who "are trying to become men," and at the time I thought it ironic because they both had lots of kids and yet were actively involved in politics OUT OF THE HOUSE.
In 1949 my father was diagnosed with TB and had to leave his dental practice (another doctor took over) and enter a sanatorium for a year and a half. My mother, once a teacher of many years, having had to give up her profession after she married, was in many ways a frustrated woman whose ambitions were relegated to bringing up my brother and me along with being involved in all those social clubs and events one did at that time. With my father absent, my mother decided to start her own Welcome Wagon business; when she ran the idea by my father he was mortified that she would even think of working––what message would that send, he said, that his wife would HAVE to work? She did it anyway and was successful, but what I remember was how happy she was, how fulfilled she seemed to be and how grateful I was to have a mother who pushed the envelope.
And just a side note re: Nixon. Let's not forget what he did to Helen Gahagan Douglas when he was running against her for the California Senate seat; "Pink down to her underwear," he quipped, continuing to slander her with lies and put downs. Yes, we can look positively at some of Nixon's equality laws, but underneath the man was a hustler, convincing the "common people" he was just like they were and since Nixon was being persecuted they too were being persecuted. His own "sainted" mother lied through her teeth; he had a good teacher.
I have a little personal story about the change in women's idea of being a woman in today's world. I have three daughters. My youngest wanted to go fishing with me. We went to the local sporting goods store to get her a license. As we walked out I said congratulations you are officially a fisherman. She said sorry dad, I am a fisherwoman. She was 12 years old.
P.S. The word fisherwoman comes with a red underline. Spell check has not arrived yet.
@ P. D. Pepe & @Marvin Schwalb. Thanks for your great comments.
I do remember Nixon's treatment of Helen Gahagan Douglas. I was a little girl and my mother had to explain to me what Nixon's comment meant. (One thing I never knew about Douglas till ten minutes ago -- she had a longstanding affair with LBJ -- they lived together in Washington while their spouses stayed home. Nixon surely knew, and if that came out in the campaign, little girls didn't hear about it.) I grew up with the worst impression of Nixon, one I held all my life. I was working for ABC TV during the Watergate hearings, and I was standing around with a bunch of network newsmen -- yup, they were all men; I think I was the only "girl" in the room -- when Nixon announced his resignation. The newsmen were frankly delighted, and I felt vindicated for my life-long disdain of the man. I think Nixon's resignation gave me the false impression that bad guys would eventually get theirs. Sometimes they do. More often than not -- they get somebody else's heart or something.
Spokeswoman, Congresswoman, chairwoman all pass the spell-check. I guess in Spell-Check World girls aren't supposed to be interested in sports. I sure hope you bought your daughter a pink fishing vest, Mr. Schwalb, with a few dainty girly lures pinned to the pockets.
Marie
My Nixon/Watergate story: At the time, I was working at the National Academy of Sciences, but off campus. Our offices were in the building catercorner from the old Executive Office building. On the seventh floor. CRE(e)P was located on the 5th or 6th (I forget). On the morning after the break in, a co-worker and I were going down for coffee or something and the elevator stopped at CRE(e)P and Jeb McGruder got on pushing a shopping cart full of small tape recorders. My co-worker looked at then, smiled, and said, "Taking those to the Watergate, Jeb?" He turned sever shades of red. My co-worker, incidentally, was Carolyn Kalk... she later married John Snow.