Off-Topic

Professor of Philosophy Costica Bradatan has an interesting essay in the New York Times "The Stone" on "philosophy as an art of dying." We're not talking batik here; Bradatan examines the famous death of a few famous philosophers, centering on the most famous of all -- Socrates. Bradatan posits, "Perhaps that to be a philosopher means more than just being ready to 'suffer' death, to accept it passively at some indefinite point in time; it may also require one to provoke his own death, to meet it somehow mid-way." Undeterred by the seriousness of the subject, I dashed off a comment, which at this writing has not been published. Here ya go:

Dying is just half of the job; the other half is weaving a good narrative of martyrdom and finding an audience for it.
-- Costica Bradatan

Quite right. Of course most people's favorite martyr-philosopher is the Jesus character of the gospels. The narrations are superb! I don't think there's any question but that the story of Jesus's death, particularly as told by the author of Mark, who wrote the first gospel (no, really, it wasn't Matthew!), is based in part on Plato's narration of Socrates' death. 

But I should say my favorite martyr-philosopher's death was that of the Roman Seneca (the Younger). Philosophers & theologians of the day were much enamored of the idea of the "noble death." In the Socratic tradition, Cynic and Stoic philosophers began to see political martyrdom as a sort of bona fide for philosophers.  Persecution and execution, they reasoned, were proofs that the victim had sought justice and was righteous to the end.  Persecution was a badge of honor.  Martyrdom became the equivalent of a Ph.D. in philosophy. Using this "logic," a person didn’t even have to be very smart or very thoughtful to become a philosopher. Seneca saw the athletes' and gladiators' suffering and deaths as moral triumphs: a "reward [that] is not a garland or palm or a trumpeter ... but rather virtue, steadfastness of soul, and a peace that is won for all time...."

 Seneca also saw brotherly love as an incentive for a noble death.  Here he is in De beneficiis [7.12]:

But my end of friendship is to have one dearer to me than myself, and for the saving of whose life I would cheerfully lay down my own....

If you think that sounds an awful lot like a saying by the subject of the later-written gospels, you'd be right. (See John 15:13.) Presuming Seneca wrote "Hercules at Oeta" (scholars debate the authorship), he also wrote a play which not only extolled the noble death but also hypothesized that a resurrection might ensue if the dying philosopher were noble enough.

So how did Seneca himself die? In 65 C.E., Seneca earned his badge of courage in a personal tragicomedy.  The Roman Emperor Nero, whom Seneca had taught and counseled, accused Seneca of conspiring to kill him. Nero ordered Seneca to commit suicide. Eager to oblige, Seneca first tried slitting his wrists, but that didn’t kill him. Then he drank hemlock a la Socrates. That didn’t work, either. He finally succumbed in what may have been the original accidental hot-tub death: He jumped into a hot pool in an attempt to make the blood from his slit wrists flow faster, but instead he suffocated from the hot steam rising from the pool.

Noble deaths really are not that good an idea. Or else Seneca needed a better narrator than I.

The Commentariat -- June 12

I've posted an Open Thread for today's Off Times Square. Update: see Karen Garcia's excellent comment on Dowd here; the Times moderators axed it, at least so far.

Maureen Dowd argues that "At a moment when powerful men are self-destructing by betraying their wives, [Newt] Gingrich is self-destructing by honoring his."

Know-It-All Tom Friedman explains the U.S. economic crisis to anyone who has just emerged from a coma that began prior to September 2008.

Chuck Mikolajczak of Reuters: "Don't be surprised if Wall Street racks up a seventh consecutive week of losses as the likelihood of more poor economic data and other disconcerting signals outweigh any thoughts that stocks are cheap." CW: the good news -- if Wall Street keeps taking hits, maybe to help out their BFFs, the Administration & the Congress will wake up & DO something to improve the overall economic picture. They obviously will do nothing when it's only ordinary Americans who are taking hits.

Scott Wilson & Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post: "Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill are applying fresh pressure on the Obama administration to draw down U.S. troops in Afghanistan faster than many military leaders say is responsible, forcing the president to balance his party’s demands with his generals’ on-the-ground assessment as he nears another milestone in the war."

Pakistani journalist Umar Cheema in a New York Times op-ed on the murder of investigative reporter Syed Saleem Shahzad & on his own abduction & torture for "upsetting the government" and "defying the authorities."

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "... there are signs that [Iowa's] influence on the nominating process could be ebbing and that the nature of the voters who tend to turn out for the Republican caucuses — a heavy concentration of evangelical Christians and ideological conservatives overlaid with parochial interests — is discouraging some candidates from competing there."

Edward R. Murrow's "Harvest of Shame" -- the Update. David von Drehle of Time: "More than half a century later, journalist Barry Estabrook has returned to those fields and reports that things are no better. Read the citation from Estabrook's book Tomatoland. CW: The Fort Myers News-Press has published several stories about the enslavement of farm workers in South Florida. Law enforcement has also uncovered sex slaves rings here. Most of these slaves are foreign-born.

Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable war, at great cost in human life.... He would probably also feel vindicated (and envious) that ALL the crimes he committed against me -- which forced his resignation facing impeachment -- are now legal. -- Daniel Ellsberg

CW: So we have real slaves in America. In the "Democracy Now" segment I posted yesterday, we learned that because of the 40-year-old "war on drugs," there are more African Americans under correctional control than there were slaves in 1850. Income disparity between the rich & middle class is much greater now than it was in the Eisenhower years & that disparty continues to widen as tax policies encourage the establishment of an aristocracy. Millions of Americans are still living in poverty. American children go to bed hungry. K-12 education is getting worse for everyone but the elite, & higher education has become significantly less affordable. Big banks & large corpoations have more power than ever. Healthcare for middle-class Americans less than age 65 is becoming less & less affordable. The political parties can no longer work together because a good percentage of Republicans are nuts. Instead of the activist progressive Warren Court we have the activist regressive Roberts Court. Government services have been sharply reduced. Much of our infrastructure is half-a-century old and crumbling. Nixon's impeachable war crimes are no longer war crimes. We torture our prisoners. We're arguably engaged in three wars. Climate change is leading to severe weather patterns & all the Florida homes encumbered by underwater mortgages will soon be literally underwater. The United States was a 20th-century nation. The 21st century belongs to somebody else. ...

... BUT on to the important news. I know Anthony Weiner is in tweetment & we're all supposed to be politically correct. Well, Mr. Politically Incorrect himself & "Glee" star Jane Lynch do a reading of the Weiner tweets. Pathetically hilarious:

Right Wing World *

Gordon Gekko for President. Steve Benen: Mitt "Romney ... would just as soon hope people forget he was even a governor.... Businessman Mitt [is] running as a less ridiculous version of Herman Cain.... I think Romney’s biggest problem is that the message brings to the fore his key weaknesses — Romney’s record on jobs is atrocious.... During his tenure, Massachusetts ranked 47th out of 50 states in jobs growth.... And this is the part of Romney’s record he’s most proud of. Romney slashed American jobs as if his career depended on it — and it did." Here's the hilarious -- and accurate -- Colbert segment Benen highlights in his post. All you need to know about Mitt Romney's vaunted business acumen:

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

Al Jazeera: "The escalating military offensive in northwest Syria began after what corroborating accounts said was a shoot-out between members of the military secret police in Jisr al-Shughur, some of whom refused to open fire on unarmed protesters. A growing number of first-hand testimonies from defected soldiers give a rare but dramatic insight into the cracks apparently emerging in Syria’s security forces as the unrelenting assault on unarmed protesters continues."

Politico: "Rep. Anthony Weiner took several pictures of himself grabbing his privates, part of a new batch of embarrassing photos that surfaced online Sunday morning. The gossip website TMZ.com posted 11 photos it claimed were taken in the House member’s gym, a private exercise facility in the Capitol complex that is open to current and former lawmakers." The TMZ page is here.

New York Times: "Syrian troops retook control of a rebellious northern town on Sunday, smashing what remained of an armed uprising after thousands of residents fled into neighboring Turkey, barely escaping a force backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, according to residents and the Syrian state media."

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, in a photo released by her staff today. Staff did not identify the woman with her. Photo by P. K. Weis of SouthwestPhotoBank.Washington Post: "Two photos of a smiling Rep. Gabrielle Giffords were released early Sunday by her office, her hair shorn short but few other telling signs of her gunshot wound to the head. The Facebook photos, taken May 17 outside her Houston hospital, are the first clear snapshots of Giffords since the shooting five months ago during a constituent meet-and-greet in a Safeway parking lot in Tucson." Giffords' Facebook page is here. ...

... Washington Post: "U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords could be released from a rehabilitation hospital in Houston sometime this month, a top aide says, offering the latest indication that the Arizona congresswoman is making progress in recovering from a gunshot wound to the head."

New York Times: "The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy 'shadow' Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks."

The Hill: "The third-ranking House Democrat is breaking with party leaders who called for Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) to resign. Assistant Democratic Leader James Clyburn (D-S.C.) issued a brief statement Saturday saying 'he stood by his earlier assertion that 'the full caucus should address this issue when we meet next week.”

The Commentariat -- June 11

I have an Open Thread up on Off Times Square.

The President's Weekly Address:

Joe Nocera writes his first useful column in months -- a full-throated defense of Elizabeth Warren.

Charles Blow covers the report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which concluded that: “The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world." Blow adds, "As the A.C.L.U. pointed out last week, 'The racial disparities are staggering: despite the fact that whites engage in drug offenses at a higher rate than African-Americans, African-Americans are incarcerated for drug offenses at a rate that is 10 times greater than that of whites.'” The White House's response? -- Really, we're doing a great job. ...

... Here's a related Democracy Now story from March 2010 -- an interview of legal scholar Michelle Alexander, whose book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, documents the way the war on drugs has been used to create a black underclass. "... today there are more African Americans under correctional control, whether in prison or jail, on probation or on parole, than there were enslaved in 1850. And more African American men are disenfranchised now because of felon disenfranchisement laws than in 1870." The transcript is here.

Thom Shanker & Steve Erlanger of the New York Times: "In his final policy speech before he steps down, [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates issued a dire and unusually direct warning that the United States, the traditional leader and patron of [NATO], was exhausted by a decade of war and its own mounting budget deficits and simply might not see NATO as worth supporting any longer.... The White House made clear on Friday that in the tough tone of his remarks, Mr. Gates was speaking for the Pentagon, not necessarily for the administration.... But a White House official did say that Mr. Gates’s speech raised 'legitimate concerns' about whether NATO was providing enough resources for the war and that the Obama administration fully expected the alliance to meet its challenges."

David Sirota covers the ten top stories you missed while you were reading wall-to-wall coverage of Weinergate.

Paul Krugman posts a graph illustrating "Why I Don't Believe in the American People." The title is satirical. The graph illuminates one reason Tim Pawlenty "has turned out to be a much bigger fool than I or, I think, anyone imagined." ...

... AND Krugman does the math & finds that "there’s a very good case to be made that austerity now isn’t just a bad idea because of its impact on the economy and the unemployed; it may well fail even at the task of helping the budget balance." CW: That the jokers in the White House can't get this, or more accurately, refuse to get this, is a scandal.

Dana Milbank: "With [Council of Economic Adviser chief Austan] Goolsbee returning to Chicago, it will be that much more difficult for Obama to resist the political pressure to be rash."

Natalie Wolchover of Live Science: "La Niña and global warming are both partly responsible for some of the episodes of wild weather, experts say. However, natural atmospheric variability has also come into play this year; to some extent, the pile-on of wild weather is random chance."

A Feel-Good Story with Bipartisanship, too. James Cullum of the Huntington-Belle Haven (Virginia) Patch: "Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack kicked off the 'Virginia No Kid Hungry Campaign' to an audience of hundreds on Tuesday at Barcroft Elementary School in Arlington. Their goal: to end childhood hunger in Virginia by 2015."

The Epistolary Palin

Jim Rutenberg & William Yardley had the unenviable task of writing the New York Times story on the release of e-mails written to & from Sarah Palin for the brief time she was governor of Alaska. ...

... You can "explore" the Palin e-mails on this New York Times interactive page. Here's the lede: "A collection of e-mails between Sarah and Todd Palin and Alaska public officials during Ms. Palin's first 22 months as governor. The messages were originally requested under state public records laws in 2008. The documents were released on Friday, June 10, at 9 a.m. Alaska time. E-mails are organized by the date of each conversation. The New York Times has redacted some documents to remove offensive language." The page also provides the facility for you to alert the Times of any e-mails "of interest."

Here's the Washington Post lead story, by Dan Eggen & Robert O'Harrow, on the Palin e-mails. ...

... You can also read the e-mails beginning on this Washington Post page, which doesn't look quite as user-friendly as the Times format. There are also links on the page to related stories, some of which might be interesting & probably none of which I'll read.

Sean Cockerham & Erika Bolstad of the Anchorage Daily News: "A massive trove of emails released Friday from Sarah Palin's time as governor show a chief executive who was engrossed with countering her critics and increasingly upset at news coverage as she vaulted into international celebrity." Page includes links to related stories.

Becky Bohrer of the AP: "Much of the country was taken by surprise when Sarah Palin became the Republican vice presidential candidate in August 2008, but newly released emails make it clear that the little-known Alaska governor was angling for the slot months before Sen. John McCain asked her to join him on the GOP ticket. Earlier that summer, Palin and her staff began pushing to find a larger audience for the governor, wedging her into national conversations and nudging the McCain campaign to notice her."

Dave Weigel provides a short list of e-mail troves he wants to read more than Palin's.

Right Wing World *

Matt Browner of AmericaBlog:"Media Matters reports 'Thursday night on Fox Business, John Stossel used about seven minutes of his show to host a "debate" between former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and an actor who impersonates President Obama.' It's a fairly embarrassing video to watch, both in terms of how insignificant it makes Gary Johnson look and how absurd Stossel's program is." CW: this could not have been more ridiculous if Fred Armisen of SNL had appeaed as Obama:

The Man of (Absurd) Ideas. Washington Post political reporters provide a play-by-play of how the Gingrich campaign disintegrated. CW: My favorite sentence: "Gingrich became convinced that one of the keys to his winning in Iowa was in targeting the Chinese community living in the state."

* Is batshit crazy.

News Ledes

New York Times: "The House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, on Saturday called on Representative Anthony D. Weiner to resign, underscoring the growing concern among Democrats that his online exchanges with women had become a distraction for the party." ...

     ... Story has been updated with new lede: "Defying forceful demands for his resignation, Representative Anthony D. Weiner of New York said on Saturday that he was entering a psychological treatment center and seeking a leave of absence from the House to deal with a pattern of reckless online behavior with women."

New York Times: "The International Monetary Fund, still struggling to find a new leader after the arrest of its managing director last month in New York, was hit recently by what computer experts describe as a large and sophisticated cyberattack whose dimensions are still unknown."

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "A coalition of union groups active in state Senate recalls now advocates that Democrats field fake Republican candidates to run in primary elections against GOP state senators -- just as Republicans are fielding fake Democrats to run against those who challenging GOP incumbents. Friday evening, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin issued a statement that neither endorsed nor ruled out the idea, saying the party will 'review the options available.'"

New York Times: "The government issued warnings on Friday about two materials used daily by millions of Americans, saying that one causes cancer and the other might. Government scientists listed formaldehyde as a carcinogen, and said it is found in worrisome quantities in plywood, particle board, mortuaries and hair salons. They also said that styrene, which is used in boats, bathtubs and in disposable foam plastic cups and plates, may cause cancer but is generally found in such low levels in consumer products that risks are low."