Penelope

I wrote earlier about Edwin Muir and his astonishing (near incomprehensible) rise from obscure poverty to literary eminence. Among many other talents, he had a poet's knack for achieving resonance with his past, including his literary or cultural past. There's nothing here about abstruse scholarship: just a bit of reading and a natural feel for the material. Like this:

Sole at the house's heart, Penelope
Sat at her chosen task, endless undoing
Of endless doing, endless weaving, unweaving,
In the clean chamber. Still her loom ran empty
Day after day. She thought: 'Here I do nothing
Or less than nothing, making an emptiness
Amid disorder, weaving, unweaving the lie
The day demands. Odysseus, this is duty,
To do and undo, to keep a vacant gate
Where order and right and hope and peace can enter.'

--Edwin Muir, The Return of Odysseus

Washington Post Channels Underbelly

You heard it here first: my friend Gladys said that the reason Cheney acted so awful is that he is old and sick (link). Now, turn the mike over to Jim Hoaglund at the Washington Post:

Is the vice president losing his influence, or perhaps his mind? That question, even if it is phrased more delicately, is creeping through foreign ministries and presidential offices abroad and has become a factor in the Bush administration's relations with the world.

"What has happened to Dick Cheney?" That solicitous but direct question came from a European statesman who has known the vice president for many years. He put it to me a few days ago -- even before the discovery of a blood clot in Cheney's leg and the perjury conviction of Scooter Libby, his former chief of staff, brought headline attention to the volatile state of the vice president's physical, emotional and political health. It is not new for Americans to question whether their leaders have become delusional. Editors at The Post directed reporters to find out if Jimmy Carter had suffered a nervous breakdown when he retreated to Camp David for 10 days in 1979 and abruptly fired five Cabinet officers. Remember the hubbub over Al Haig's "I am in control here" and other Captain Queegish remarks, or Richard Nixon's talking to portraits?

What is unusual is for foreigners to think about a vice president at all and to question what effect the VP's moods and internal policy defeats have on America's standing in the world.

But what goes up must come down. In the first term, Cheney was styled as the most influential vice president in history -- in more lurid versions, an evil puppeteer pulling George W. Bush's strings. So now his irascibility in television interviews triggers diplomatic cables analyzing his equilibrium -- as well as inspiring a booming industry of scathing cartoons and television one-liners here at home.

Lefties have been saying for months that Cheney will resign someday soon "for health reasons," and be replaced by, oh, I don't know, Condi. They say it as if it is a bad thing. But the Cheney influence has become so terminally awful that I'd be willing to consider almost any alternative, and on almost any terms.

Rabies for Children

I was going to send this to my grandkids, but I figured their mother might start frothing at the mouth and bite me in the knee.

Hat tip: Ideasculptor, whose wife seems to find it sicko.

My Uncle Perley and Hillary's Drawl

Drudge says Hillary talks with a drawl; the megamedia fall into line, but Greg Sargent is not amused (link). I didn’t hear her, but the kerfuffle did bring back fond memories of my Uncle Perley.

Perley was a great guy, cheerful, good-natured, a bit loud, but friendly as all get-out. His son-in-law said he should just hand out questionnaires to everyone he met: he cared that much about you, and learned that much about you, that fast.

Perley started life as an agricultural extension agent back in New Hampshire, where he grew up. But in time, he drifted off to the Southern Appalachians where he did various jobs that might be described (though inadequately) as “social work.”

I remember being with Perley among the locals outside Richmond, Kentucky (I was about 19, he, around 60). He talked Appalachian. Rather, he talked New England to me (and even more to my father, a lifelong New Englander). But when he turned to his friends and neighbors, he talked Appalachian, switching, if necessary, in mid-sentence.

I told him he did it and he responded with a dismissive chuckle. I have no idea whether he was shy about the whole business, or whether he simply wasn’t conscious of what he was doing, and didn’t care.

This was all new to me as a kid, although I’ve seen it often enough later. I particularly remember a student, a black woman from Los Angeles. For school room purposes, she had made herself a master of Standard English. I went to visit her once at work as a public defender in South Central LA: I listened to her talk to her clients in effortless Blackspeak.

And I remember the late Ned Breathitt, running for governor of Kentucky in 1963—as a reporter for the old Louisville Times, I spent a lot of time with him that spring. Ned was actually pretty good on race issues. But he was born and bred out in Hopkinsville, where they still said—well, not quite “the N word,” but something that sounded like “Nigra.” I remember Ned lying on a couch in the candidate suite of some country hotel, trying to explain himself to me. “Now, what the Nigra wants is…” “Negro, Ned,” his handler would interrupt, “Negro, Nee-gro.” —“Right, what the Nigra wants is…”

Come to think of it, I once knew an east-end London communist street organizer, who liked to boast that he had learned Standard English so he could get an upmarket academic job. Oh, I could go on and on…

I don’t have a quick one-liner moral here, unless it is this: these language issues are trickier than they look. There is a fine line between sympathy and sycophancy—a fine line between warm-hearted understanding and naked manipulation, between trying to appreciate someone and just sucking up. Politicians are great natural mimics—have you ever noticed how funny they can be with the voices after a few drinks at a party, particularly when they are sending up their opponents? If there’s an issue with Hillary, it can’t be that she does it—if this is the charge, you’d need a stadium for a lockup. It could only be that she’s not good at it, that she’s artificial, wooden, like Michael Dukakis in a tank.

Like I say, I didn’t hear her, so I have no right to vote. Tell you what though: I did hear Obama, and man, there was an accent. Funny thing is, it didn’t sound like Southern Black to me, sounded more like Cracker. Just who is he pitching to, anyway?

Dare I Call it a "Prosecutorial Mafia?"

Like TPM and others, Mark Kleiman is all over the story of the dismissed prosecutors. On the main issue, I'm happy to let him speak on his own ground, but I do want to focus this fascinating aside on the inner workings of the shadowy world of top law enforcement types (dare I call them a "prosecutorial Mafia?"). Kleiman is discussing a charge about Thomas M. DiBiagio, formerly U.S. Attorney from Maryland. Kleiman says he thinks it is "a crock." Why? Because David Margolis, "a senior career guy in the Deputy AG's office," thinks it's a crock. Kleiman explains:

I knew Margolis way back when. He was running the Organized Crime Section of the Criminal Division, one of the most successful programs ever put together. Margolis and I were never buddies; he tolerated my presence because Phil Heymann, then running the Division, thought well of me, but Margolis wasn't especially dazzled either by my charm or by my brilliant insights into matters on which he was an expert and I was an amateur, and he never bothered to pretend otherwise.

But there are four basic facts about Margolis: he has a near-genius IQ, a fanatical devotion to doing the prosecutor's job right, complete honesty (mostly because he can't be bothered to bullshit), and brass balls. He must have been in the loop for all these decisions, since he's the top career guy in the Deputy's office and McNulty is smart enough to know that (1) Margolis's judgment of prosecutorial horseflesh is impeccable and (2) Margolis (and Jack Keeney, the senior career Deputy in the Criminal Division) are opinion leaders among the career prosecutors whose respect the politicos need to keep. To cut Margolis out of the action would amount to admitting that something fishy was going on.

But Margolis hasn't been heard from in public on the purge: until now. I'd take his word on the DiBiagio firing at full face value. But that makes his silence on all the other cases that much more pointed.

If Margolis had been willing to say about the other eight (or nine, counting Fred Black) purge victims what he said about DiBiagio, then his superiors surely would have asked him to say so publicly. They haven't, or alternatively he wouldn't.

Margolis has never been a leaker, either to the press or to the Hill; he fights his battles inside the Department. But he's never been an equivocator, either. If he's asked to testify, he'll tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, no matter who gets hurt along the way.

Famous Writers' School

From the NYT Obit of Henri Troyat, the "favorite writer of the French," dead at 95 (link):

'I would read a paragraph of Flaubert out loud and rewrite it from memory,” he explained, “then, by comparing my version with the original, I would try to understand why what I had written was an affront to what I had read.'

Thanks, Larry, who adds: now why didn't I think of that?

An Army of One

There’s nothing in particular to be gained from joining the general pile-on against Ann Coulter, but maybe I can deploy the occasion to offer what I think is a new proposition: Ann Coulter really is in a class by herself.

No, wait. I mean—well, Michelle Malkin may be a venomous little dweeb, but “Intern the Japanese” actually is a a coherent proposition, however contemptible. And that’s the trouble with most of what Malkin writes: not that it is unintelligible, but that it’s too intelligible, stuff whose very intelligibility leaves the world a more shabby place. So also with Rush Limbaugh: he’s big and fat, alright, but he’s really not an idiot—he’s smart enough and if you like schoolyard bullying (and who among us does not?) then once in a while you’re going to find him funny—at least as funny as this guy, who came in 95th in the polling for funniest standups—perhaps as funny as this guy, who ran 21st.

The thing about Coulter is that she isn’t as substantive as Malkin, and isn’t as funny as Limbaugh. She’s the null set, the vacuum, the black hole in the center of the political universe. When you hear all those young conservatives whistling and stomping, they’re not endorsing what she stands for because she doesn’t stand for anything at all. Putting “John Edwards” and “faggot” and “rehab” isn’t a statement; it is a piece of dada poetry made out of right-wing refrigerator magnets.

Or Maybe the Greer Garson Movie?

Peeking over Mrs. B’s shoulder last night, I caught a bit of the PBS fundraiser promo hyping 35 years’ worth of “The Best of Masterpiece Theatre”(link). I admit I’m only an indifferent Masterpiece Theatre fan. Way back in the Pleistocene, I enjoyed “Upstairs, Downstairs,” and “Jewel in the Crown,” Even in the early days, I was inconsistent: never saw “Poldark” or “First Churchills,” (though we’ve been watching the Churchill DVD’s just this month). Lately, MPT seems to have fallen victim to what you might call PBS disease—too much repetition, lost edge, sameold sameold, like Lawrence Welk or the Antiques Road Show.

On the off chance that any reader still wants to be surprised, I won’t tell the exact order of the winners, but my eyebrows went up at a, shall we say, “very high ranking” for (drumroll) “The Forsyte Saga.” Jump Cut to Damien Lewis as Soames Forsyte, which is to say the 2002 adaptation, which I did see a bit of, before I decided that it was vastly inferior to its 1967 predecessor.

Wha--? This didn’t seem right to me at all, but a moment’s Googling revealed to me that the 1967 show wasn’t actually in the running—it was a predecessor to Masterpiece Theatre; in some sense the show that the later series was founded upon.

All very well and I guess you can’t win if you’re not at the table. But I wonder. They say one reason the Readers’ Digest and the Auto Club make so much money is that their members are old and forget to cancel. I wonder how many voters in this time really thought they were voting for the old original.

For the Greer Garson film version, look here.

Blog Birth Announcement

Another of my colleagues is now a blog (co) proprietor (link). Perhaps echoing the gents at ComingAnarchy, they seem to have lavished great care on their selection of noms de blog. It's all a bit, uh, purple-pink?--for me, but I suspect I am not the target demographic anyway. Anyway, heartiest good wishes, and on the grand principle of cronyism, you'll be up on the linklist first thing.

Goodbye, Francis Harvey, And Don't Let the Door Hit You...

Being off line over the weekend, I wasn’t able before to pop off on the case of Francis J. Harvey, who was canned, er, resigned as Secretary of the Army in the dustup over Walter Reed Hospital—perhaps the first act of responsible government in the six years of the Bush administration. Of course I don’t know any more than any other newspaper reader as to exactly what chuffed Defense Secretary Robert Gates into making his move. But before anybody forgets: it was Harvey, in hunker-down mode just last week, tried to fob it off on the hired help. In his immortal words:

We had some N.C.O.’s who weren’t doing their job, period.

Just in case there is any confusion or misunderstanding on the point: this is contemptible. It’s the worst form of irresponsible management: indecent in human terms but also, not less, unspeakably bad tactics. Just a few weeks ago, here was Harvey addressing a class of senior noncoms at the Army Sergeant Majors Academy (link):

Harvey stated upfront that the Army’s noncommissioned officer corps is key to its success and is the envy of every army around the world.

He did not add:

and if there are ever any problems on my watch, be certain that I will blame them on you.

Contemptible, but after Abu Ghraib, par for the course. Recall that he works for a president who, when asked if he’d many bad decisions, responded “I made some mistakes in appointing people..”—i.e., blame it on somebody else. Welcome to the world of kick-down management.

Fn: I see that others picked up on this before I got here (e.g., link). No apologies here; more the merrier, I say, this guy deserves all the humiliation he can get.

Now's The Time to Catch Up on my Reading

Shoot. Sudden laptop death syndrome. The primo laptop is winging its way back to drydock. The backup laptop is 90 miles away. I'm logging in right now from Ms. B's, but she has her own fish to fry, so maybe this is a good weekend to catch up on that stack of old Economists. See you Monday, I hope.

Use a Donkey, Go to Jail

Running around and trying to put out a midterm, so not able to write about stuff I’d like to write about. Left to link to other good stuff.

Like the ever-dependable Patrick Kurp, though I am not quite certain what moral I should draw from this piece

Or Patrick Lang, speaking on a subject that he really knows something about (clarification: I think Lang almost always knows whereof he speaks; I wish others would profit from his example).

Or Glenn Greenwald, who just keeps getting better and better (put up with the Salon gateway: not all that burdensome, and worth it).

Or Elizabeth Warren on another tsunami.

Or this, which beggars description. But here’s a teaser:

He was also charged with damage to a mini-bar in the room, but this charge was later dropped when the defendant said that it was the donkey who caused that damage.

Arthur Schlesinger, RIP

Underbelly's Alabama bureau remembers Arthur Schlesinger Jr, dead at 89:

Among the many things he wrote is one statement that I think people interested in the public affairs of our community, state, country and the world might like to recall when events seem beyond rational control. He wrote:

Problems will always torment us because all important problems are insolvable. That is why they are important. The good comes from the continuing struggle to try and solve them, not from the vain hope of their solution.

I remember Schlesinger's "Crisis of the Old Order"--the first in his three-volume history of the New Deal--as one of the first grownup politics books that I ever truly enjoyed. It was better, I think, than its successors, because it didn't require him to steer quite so close to the partisan shoals. I admit I grew a little tired of Schlesinger as the inventor of Camelot, the too-cool companion of the glitterati. But my buddy's quote recalls a mode of patient optimism we haven't seen in quite a while. I suppose it is the pendant to Enoch Powell's more acerb assertion that "all political careers ... end in failure."

Fn: Press reports say that Schlesinger died while dining at a nice restaurant, with his family. Now that I call style.

Moi, Your Honor?

Eeuw, don’t tell. I just took the Pew Research “Beyond Red vs. Blue” survey and it turns out I’m a L*b*r*l.

Just what my enemies have always said, although a lot of my friends think I am a raging reactionary. And actually, I was a bit surprised myself. But let’s go to the tape:

• US relies too much on military force? Check.
• Worry that government is getting too involved in issues of morality? Checkeroo.
• Strict environmental laws are worth the cost. Well, um, not crazy about the question.
• Poor people have hard lives? Checkeroo.
…because government benefits don’t go far enough to help them? Um, complicated.

Well, okay, I guess they told me I might not always like the choices. Anyway, on to basic demographics. White, check. Highly educated, check. Religious? Well, Mrs. B says I am a communicant of a sect in which only I am a member, but I guess that is not what they had in mind. Wealthy? Hmph, not an investment banker, but again, I guess I know what they mean here, so check.

Young? Ah…

So I guess they got me. Still, I want to squirm, for a couple of reasons. One, I’d really like to do this Chinese-menu style. I suspect I’m a lot more pro-market than the “liberals”—more like the “enterprisers” here, and they vote overwhelmingly Republican. Correspondingly, I find have something in common with the “disaffected,” who think that government is wasteful, and that government officials don’t care much about what I think. But unlike the “disaffected,” I’m not—well, I’m not “disaffected.” And I pay a huge amount of attention—more than is good for me, I suspect—to current events.

But there are interesting curiosities all across the board. Example: another Pew category is the “upbeats:” they believe that elected officials care, that government does a good job, that immigrants help to make our country stronger (I don’t think I’d want to be stuck in an elevator with these folks). In 2004, the “upbeats” broke about 4.5-1 for Bush over Kerry (“liberals,” big surprise, were an absurd 40-1 for Kerry over Bush). The interesting part is that “disaffecteds—well, nearly a quarter of them didn’t vote, but when they did vote, they joined their “upbeat” neighbors, and broke for Bush (about 2-1).

One thing I miss here is a category for “libertarians”—pro-market, pro-gay-rights, skeptical about any government program, including war. Seems to be a major presence in the blogosphere, but evidently for Pew, not big enough to notice.

Go ahead, take the quiz. Can't hurt, kinda fun (link).

Is This the Guy who Grades the SAT?

[Your site] has been been visited 0 times by our users.
a Score of 0.08.

Link.

Crank Is Right

My friend the New York Crank is right. The post on bookstores needed a rimshot (or is it a sting?):

Samuel Butler said that a chicken is an egg’s way of getting to another egg. Badum-CSHHH! A guy who should know told me that ants think of California as one big anthill (they kill interlopers). Badum-CSHHH! Charlie the tailor went to visit the Vatican. So how was the Pope, his friends asked. Oh, about a 42-long. Badum-CSHHH. Thank ya' you've been a wunnaful audience, I'll be here all week...

Note to Self: Do Not Follow Up on This Post

Samuel Butler said that a chicken is an egg’s way of getting to another egg. A guy who should know told me that ants think of California as one big anthill (they kill interlopers). Charlie the tailor went to visit the Vatican. So how was the Pope, his friends asked. Oh, about a 42-long.

It all depends on your point of view.

Somebody, I lose track of whom, says you can regard the world as a network of bookstores and libraries, with dirt in between.

I hear there are people who idle away their lives visiting Starbucks, like birders collecting a life list.

Borders, with a coffee shop, is a lot like McDonald’s with a kiddie playground. Mrs. B knows how to park me there (Borders) for storage while she does whatever it is that she does.

Compared to Starbucks, visiting every Borders shouldn’t be all that hard.

Could It Be He?

Admit it, now, you haven't any idea whom you want to vote for in 2008. You enjoy Obama, but you know he's an empty suit. You figure you ought to like John Edwards, but you're really not crazy about his shallow populism. You take a deep breath and figure it has to be Hillary, but then she does something tacky and mean-spirited that gives you the hiccups.

The Republicans, oh don't get me started. What a sorry lot of embarrassments they are--even to themselves. I'd still wager a few bucks on the proposition that the frontrunners beat each other to a pulp and they wind up with this guy (and I see I'm in good company).

Admit it also, you weren't all that nuts about Al Gore back in 2000. Remember? You gnashed your teeth a hundred times over the way he ran his campaign (good company again: Bill Clinton felt the same way). And don't get me started on the tangle on Tallahassee.

Okay, that was then. It doesn't say anything to venture that Gore would have done better--who wouldn't have? Six years later and we know that a burnt stump could have done better. But what if it turns out that Gore is not just a default improvement, but actually the kind of guy you might want as President? Jump cut to The New Yorker, and let David Remnick explain.

The Future Lies Ahead...

Daniel Gross chortles over the March 12 Forbes which says (link):

"Has the Bull Market Just Started?

Gross treats the question as rhetorical, but here is the answer: maybe. Not by my lights, I am the ultimate pessimist, having lived through nine of the last four recessions. But that's the point. You never know. You just never know.

Prediction is hard, said Mark Twain, especially if it is about the future.

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