Bush Doctrine not working

U.S. Foreign Policy Hurting American Students' Chances of Getting Laid Abroad

"I've been in Amsterdam for two months and have yet to begin a conversation with a cute girl that hasn't ended in a lecture about how big, evil America is taking everyone's oil," said college sophomore Brad Higgs, a participant in Johns Hopkins University's study-abroad program. "I offer to buy them a drink, and they tell me I shouldn't just stand by and watch Bush destroy the world. Look, if I had that type of pull with the president, I obviously wouldn't be out trolling for anonymous Dutch pussy."

Ah who wants those Europeans with their premarital safe sex anyway?

Joe Malchow's virile buddies at The Editorial Board should take heed.

Jeff Gannon snubbed

The New York Post reports,

DISGRACED former White House reporter/male escort Jeff Gannon can't believe no one has invited him to tomorrow's White House Correspondents Dinner. "It seems to me to be odd to exclude the one person who has brought more attention to the White House press corps than anyone else in years," Gannon tells PAGE SIX's Jared Paul Stern.

I've posted this before, but I just can't pass up the opportunity to post it again: Jeff Gannon pics (contains nudity).

Ha ha

Fuck Clear Channel. From Boston.com:

Clear Channel Communications Inc., the nation's largest radio broadcaster, on Friday reported a 59 percent drop in earnings in the first quarter while also announcing it will split up its media empire by spinning off its live-entertainment division.

Let's hope the downward trend continues, and that the hypotheses are correct that bloated media uber-conglomerates will deteriorate on account of their own inefficiency and the rise of smaller Internet media.

GE to grace Dartmouth Commencement again

Tom Brokaw will deliver the main address at the 2005 Dartmouth Commencement. Read the official Dartmouth news release.

In all seriousness though, my first reaction is that this is much better than having General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, last year's speaker. Brokaw has had a remarkable career in journalism and will surely have some interesting things to say.

We'll likely have more thoughts on this to come, as I take the matter of who speaks at my graduation pretty seriously.

Senator Franken?

Now here is someone who'd be capable of a good filibuster. Al Franken, SNL legend, Air America anchor, best-selling author, and all-around bad-ass, is considering a run for Senate in his home state of Minnesota in 2008 against Republican freshman Sen. Norm Coleman. Read about it at Salon.

Re: "Nuclear Fission"

A friend of mine who's at Princeton posts the following comment re: "Nuclear Fission":

...I have a particular interest in judicial nominations and the filibuster thereof. I actually worked on the issue during the summer of 2003 in the Majority Leader's Office. I would like to make a few predictions. 1) Various interest groups will start a large scale campaign of advertisements in order to move public opinion in a direction favorable to the nuclear/constitutional option. This will begin quite soon. 2) Republicans will successfully exercise the nuclear/constitutional option with 51-52 Senators voting for it. 2) They will do so relatively soon, likely by the end of May. 3) Democratic retaliation will be loud but ultimately irrelevant. If they attempt a total shutdown, they will end up looking like Newt redux. If they attempt a partial shutdown, they will look petulant. The reporting of Michael Crowley in The New Republic ("The Day After," 4/18/05) is particularly interesting on this count. 4) Rehnquist will retire this summer and Bush will appoint a judge who Ted Kennedy and Chuck Schumer consider "outside the mainstream." He/she will eventually be approved with less than 60 votes.
I would love to see any comments you have.
Stephen

I've been following the developments on Liberal Oasis and other web sites, and the plot is definitely thickening. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid offered a compromise to Majority Leader Bill Frist that would have allowed two of the less extreme of Bush's nominees through in exchange for dropping the Nuclear Option. Frist rejected it. Liberal Oasis speculates Reid might have been "going through the motions" of a compromise so Democrats would be able to say they tried to compromise when shit goes down.

Polling by and large shows the American public to be against the Nuclear Option, and even to side with Democrats on taking a stand against the nominees, though one cleverly worded GOP poll produced different results. Such is the flexible nature of polling, but I think the evidence shows Americans are against the Republicans here.

So to respond to your comments, Stephen, I believe though you might be right on predictions (1), (2), and (4), you're off on (3), which is the one that'll have big ramifications for midterm elections. This situation is clearly not analagous to the government shutdown over the budget in '95. Republicans are trying to pull a completely unprecedented, absolute takeover of power here, and it's not going to sit well with people. The noise Democrats make will indeed be relevant, because Republicans will lose (even more) seats in 2006. Perhaps you Republicans have concluded the risks/costs in the legislature are worth the benefits of the power gained in the judiciary. I think that's a reasonable analysis, but I'm betting it's ultimately wrong. I'll take a Democratic House and the initiative of agenda that comes with it -- in fact, I think that might be Democrats' best bet.

That War on Terror

Reuters: World Terror Attacks Tripled in 2004 by U.S. Count

"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him." — George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 13, 2001

"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." — George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., March 13, 2002

Paleocon, Neocon, Beacon

You may have seen The Dartmouth Beacon around campus by now; it has five issues to its name. It's a sly little publication. And it might well be the future of conservative journalism on campus.

The Dartmouth Review is past its prime. Several of its staff members have told me as much, even going so far as to speculate it'll fold in the next few years. I don't know about that, but I do know TDR represents the old guard of conservatism -- what is now often referred to as paleoconservatism. Libertarian small-government Classical humanist skeptic with a hint of Old Testament moral electness. It's a kind of conservatism the Bush administration has made seem quaint, and, well, liberal. As we're all aware, the new order equals neocons and fundamentalists.

The Dartmouth Beacon pretty much fits the mold of the new order. You wouldn't think so at first, just by glancing at the cover, with its homely layout and unremarkable article titles. But the signs are all there.

Take the naïve March article by Jim Throckmorton '06 on the Iraqi elections:

Of course, despite the best arguments for hope, responsibility, and a strong society, the Iraqi elections are no panacea. It won’t be long before they too are talking about soft money, special interests, and the like. But for now, hope reigns.

While America may be the most conspicuous democracy in the world, it still has much to learn from places like Iraq, where freedom and self-determinism have not always existed. We can learn to hope that the fate of tomorrow depends on our decisions today. We can grasp that hope, and take responsibility to ensure it is nurtured to fruition. And we can find an appropriate place in public affairs for such an intensely private thing as religion.

When the dust settles, the situation in Iraq is not unlike many situations faced here during America’s younger days. Divided and war-wearied, the people and leaders of Iraq are stepping up to a far greater degree than those here at home. In such an environment, it is Iraqi leaders who sound more like Lincoln when he called for our country to act, “With malice towards none...With Charity for all; With Firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right”. With hope, Iraq will follow that call.

The Beacon is replete with this kind of righteous romantic rhetoric, which sounds like a scrapped first draft of Bush's inauguration speech. It's hard to find any substance behind it. Jim Baehr's coverage of the actual inauguration speech is even more fluffy, to the point of being highly misleading and insidious: "If past is prologue, Bush’s second term will continue to bolster his place among the most audacious and idealistic of American Presidents. As the years pass, increasingly free peoples from Florida to Fallujah will come to remember him with the respect his ideals and conviction demand." Florida, world symbol of democracy -- epicenter of Bush v. Gore and the Terri Shiavo intervention, the two most glaring breaches of the Constitution's separation of powers in our time, both by the Right. It's unfortunate, because I know Jim and he's a great guy. (In all fairnesss, he wrote that piece before the Schiavo spectacle, and surely he respects both the Constitution and the right to die just as much as those sacrosanct cultures of life.) He just needs to step back and examine his stances critically. We really don't need the Right's echo chamber to spread here.

Two really salient examples of the Beacon's strange mixture of journalistic amateurism and strategic spin -- some would call this the recipe for propaganda -- are the February cover photo and the most recent back-cover "Face-Off" (point-counterpoint) feature. I looked and found no credit for the February photo:



That and the thorough Photoshoped-ness of the image made me wonder, what exactly is this? If it's not a real image, it's essentially a caricature, an exploitive simulation playing on the most visible and reductive stereotypes many Americans have of an incredibly complex set of cultural and historical circumstances. Veiled women: this is what Islam is; purple finger: this is what freedom is. Even if the image were real (would anyone care to answer?), I believe my point would still stand -- this is simplistic sensationalism.

And now my favorite Dartmouth Beacon moment: the April "Face-Off" feature, titled "Terri Schiavo and the Right to Life: Should judges be permitted to make the decision?" Talk about framing -- this is the stuff of "Hannity and Colmes," pulled straight from the Republican Playbook. Might as well skip what the liberal has to say, because she's not going to be able to argue her way out of the trap set for her. Or just bring in Baxter Jones.

That's the Beacon for you, and I'm worried that's the future of conservative media -- and, let's hope I'm wrong, mainstream. Part Fox News, part Bush administration educational video, part carelessness, part calculation, wholly irresponsible, kind of disturbing. But, hey, that's why blogs are here: to do all the dirty work of cleaning the mess up.

New Revue issue

Alas, I won't be covering the new Dartmouth Review issue, at least not yet. That's because I'll be reading the new Dartmouth Revue issue out, 'The Decline of Everything'. Fartlog sums up the highlights.

Big Media Hall of Shame

Free Press, a "nonpartisan organization working to involve the public in media policymaking and to craft policies for more democratic media," is holding a contest to determine who is the most reprehensible figure in America's Big Media culture. The whole thing's a little heavy-handed, but the powers-that-be still deserve all the criticism possible, plus it's pretty funny and informative. Go watch the video and cast your vote for who should be the sixth nominee, in addition to Rupert Murdock and Michael Powell, among others.

Montreal

George Bennat and I will be rolling deep in Montreal tonight with a bunch of other people. :) Keep it real here.

Alumni Magazine errata :(

Just received my first Dartmouth Alumni Magazine in the mail. Kinda strange feeling. Anyway, I noticed they have a small "Blogs to Log" feature on page 27. The five blogs mentioned are Dartlog, Free Dartmouth, Vox Baby, Dartblogs, and Joe's Dartblog. That's three conservative blogs, one liberal, and one community blog. The Little Green Blog does not get mentioned. :(

The feature was composed by Sue DuBois '05, who George says is actually a liberal. Interesting.

Also, the article on the War and Peace Studies Program is titled "More than Dostoevsky".

:(

Finally, a magazine for most Dartmouth students

Introducing New England Home, a luxury homes magazine targeting the "super affluent," to be launched in August.

Love Will Tear Us Apart

ATTENCION: The Baker Tower bells played "Love Will Tear Us Apart" right before 11s today. I don't know what exactly this means but holy fucking shit.

Nuclear fission

Liberal Oasis sums up reports that Congressional Republicans are uncertain about proceeding with the "Nuclear Option" of ending Democratic filibusters on Bush's judicial nominees in light of new poll numbers that show Americans to be wary of the tactic and even Senate Republicans to be hesitant. However, certain Democrats, including Harry Reid and Joe Lieberman, are showing signs of weakness, i.e. compromise on this issue where Democrats, as is true with the Social Security debate, should not budge, both as a matter of principle and good politics, I believe.

The developments are worth following, as this is a pivotal political moment.

Heritage Foundation corrupt?!?

I was alerted to this story through Think Progress and Liberal Oasis. The Washington Post reports,

For years, the Heritage Foundation sharply criticized the autocratic rule of former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, denouncing his anti-Semitism, his jailing of political opponents and his "anti-free market currency controls."

Then, late in the summer of 2001, the conservative nonprofit Washington think tank began to change its assessment: Heritage financed an Aug. 30-Sept. 4, 2001, trip to Malaysia for three House members and their spouses. Heritage put on briefings for the congressional delegation titled "Malaysia: Standing Up for Democracy" and "U.S. and Malaysia: Ways to Cooperate in Order to Influence Peace and Stability in Southeast Asia."

Heritage's new, pro-Malaysian outlook emerged at the same time a Hong Kong consulting firm co-founded by Edwin J. Feulner, Heritage's president, began representing Malaysian business interests.

I'm curious to know what the Dartmouth Reviewers and College Republicans who have worked at the Heritage Foundation think about this. Just business as usual?

Computers, Evolution, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy

Great little editorial over at the Independent on the new Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy film. I've never actually read the book, or anything by Douglas Adams, for that matter... yet I somehow remain fascinated by its popularity and success. I suppose I just sort of "missed the boat" on the whole affair. The book, published in 1979, seems to be trapped in that hazy period just before my birth, a time of Dungeons & Dragons, E.T., and the Amiga Computer. Stuff I can't claim as my own- and probably wouldn't want to- but nevertheless feel affected by.

I don't suppose I'll ever wind up seeing the film, either. To my mind it would feel just a wee bit like grave-digging, now- and I'll leave the nostalgia to those who were actually alive to experience it in the first place.

Self-promotion

The Dartmouth Independent just posted a nice little interview with Friday Night Rock management. Of interest to anyone who is generally uninterested.

In other news, the first serious gathering of campus music here at Dartmouth in nearly a year will be held this Friday in Fuel, sponsored by FNR. We're calling it "Spring 2004!" because its basically the same fucking show we did in, uh, Spring of 2004.

Details 4/22:
Oh No Dinosaur 10:15pm
Fashion Fashion! 10:45pm
Reaction Speaks 11:30pm

War on Drugs and Marginal Religions

In honor of 4/20, here's an interesting story from yesterday's New York Times about a case the Supreme Court added to its docket Monday, Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao Do Vegetal, in which the Justice Department is arguing for the right of the federal government to "ban the importation of a hallucinogenic tea that is central to the religious rituals of a small Brazil-based church":

The case is an appeal by the Bush administration of a federal court injunction won by the 130 members of the church's American branch, who brought a lawsuit five years ago to prohibit the government from invoking the Controlled Substances Act to block the importation of their tea and from seizing the sacred drink. The church, which combines elements of Christianity and indigenous Brazilian religion, opened its American branch in Santa Fe, N.M., in 1993.

The Bush administration's appeal sums up a nice sliver of its deranged set of priorities: taking an agenda, the War on Drugs, that is both a dubious moral crusade and a proven pragmatic failure to begin with, directing it in such a way as to needlessly target some minority culture and trash their rights, and wasting resources on the entire fiasco.

New Pope=Fucking Creepy as Shit

So George just made some points about the man's life history that should absolutely be considered. But I feel like one major detail was glossed over: the dude looks fucking horrendous. Just look at this picture. Or any picture, for that matter. Who on Earth thought some creepy as shit Necromancer would make a good new face for the Catholic church? Pure evil, I shit you not.

Endorsements by bloggers

How the people of the Dartmouth blog-o-bubble, mostly at Dartlog, are casting their ballots in the SA election:

Joe Rago: Paul Heintz

Stethers White: Paul Heintz

Scott Glabe: Noah Riner

Kale Bongers: Brian Martin

Joe Malchow: Who cares what Joe Malchow thinks

Fartlog: Michael Ellis ("Although he is the editor-in-chief of Fartlog parody and neo-conservative rag The Dartmouth Review, he is a close associate of the revered William F. Buckley, Jr. ... He has absolutely fabulous command of the game of wickets, and is a breath-taking prodigy at draughts. While he could further develop his polo game, we will not count it against him. And his appreciation for fine port is unparalleled.")

Student Assembly voting

Wow, I'm up early today. Looks like Joe Malchow beat me to the punch by 2.5 hours though. That's one thing about our blog, definitely late-night oriented.

SA voting starts at 9 a.m. I'm so excited! Go vote here:

https://sa.dartmouth.edu/elections/

Update: Link fixed

In honor of Newt

--- Forwarded message from College Republicans ---

>Date: 18 Apr 2005 14:38:18 EDT
>From: College Republicans
>Subject: Newt tomorrow!
>To: (Recipient list suppressed)

******************************

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

The Nelson A. Rockefeller Center, in Association with
The Dartmouth College Republicans Present:

Newt Gingrich
Chairman, Gingrich Group
Fmr. U.S. Congressman and Speaker of the House of Representatives (R-Georgia)

Guest Speaker from 11:00-11:50 am during

"CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN AMERICAN POLITICS"
Government 083

Filene Auditorium, Moore Hall
Class from 10:00 - 11:50 am
Faculty and Students Only

Don't miss it: Newt Gingrich, potential Presidential hopeful, signing books at the Dartmouth Bookstore, tomorrow from 9:45 to 10:45 a.m., then lecturing in Moore Hall at 11.

Get acquainted with Newt with this biographical info if you don't know much about him already:

L.H. Carter was one of Gingrich's closest friends and advisers until 1979. "It doesn't matter how much good I do the rest of my life," says Carter. "I can't ever outweigh the evil that I've caused by helping [Gingrich] be elected to Congress."

Paul Heintz: my pick for SA President

Three years ago, this campus rallied around Janos Marton '04 and elected him Student Assembly President. Everyone from Dartmouth Reviewers to Free Pressers, Psi U's to Panarchists to people who actually have lives and don't need pong voted for Janos, who brought a campus not without unrest over Greek life, the adminstration, and the SLI to some kind of accord, and a new beginning. The Greek system is arguably stronger than ever now, the adminstration actually does listen, and though Dartmouth has its controversies as always, I'd say it's a pretty dynamic, balanced, thriving place right now.

This time around, Paul Heintz has Janos' endorsement, and he has mine, too, for what little the latter is worth. I'm hoping people rally around Paul as they did Janos. I know Paul personally and through working with him on Young Dems, of which he served as president during the 2004 national elections, organizing a hell of an effort in Hanover which helped Kerry win New Hampshire. I respect him highly on both levels. He's a great person to work with, a proven leader who is still easy-going and open to all ideas from all kinds of people. He's an AD and stands up for the rights of the Greek system, but he doesn't see things at Dartmouth in Manichean terms of fraternity vs. anti-fraternity. In some hard-to-define way, he comes across as the most inclusive and energetic of the candidates, much as Janos was.

Though the SA seems to be marginally more productive than when I first arrived at Dartmouth in 2001, it's been plagued by petty internal strife recently, and, from what I understand, attendance numbers at the meetings are woefully low. I can promise you Paul Heintz is the best candidate to turn these trends around: he'll make the SA vibrant, and, well, less childish; and he'll get things done that Dartmouth students want done.

As George W. Bush would say, Paul Heintz is a "stand-up kinda guy" -- the kinda guy I'd trust to house-sit and water my plant, for example, and also to represent Dartmouth's student body.

Not for yuppies

David Gates has a pretty entertaining book review of The Outlaw Bible of American Literature in the NY Times. The book's about William Burroughs, Henry Miller, Hunter S. Thompson, Charles Bukowski -- the usual suspects, but also some more unusual choices like Dave Eggers. Bret Easton Ellis does not make the cut. Here's an amusing excerpt:

Kaufman and his fellow editors seem to be fighting battles that were over with half a century ago -- in romantic-sentimental language that should have been over with half a century ago. ''Some of our best, our fiercest, our most volcanic prose,'' they write, ''is not a tongue-twisted Henry Jamesian labyrinth of 'creative writing' but an outraged American songline of tear-stained revelation.'' I can't sit still for James either -- who the hell can? -- but the editors ought to visit some creative writing classes: these days, both Jamesian maundering and Vesuvian spewing get the red pencil. And the attempt to transplant bebop-era grievances to a hip-hop world -- ''in the grip of Google and Wal-Mart'' -- only makes them sound clueless. This alternative canon, they write, springs ''not from reality shows, Botox or I.P.O.'s, but the streets, prisons, highways, trailer parks and back alleys of the American dream.'' Jeez, why pick on Google, the most useful tool since the stone ax? (That's how I found out it was Rahv and not Lionel Trilling or somebody who'd thought up the paleface/redskin thing. Took me 30 seconds.) And if you're all about the trailer park and the prison, why dis Wal-Mart, which melds the two so perfectly that writers should stop wishing it away and start hanging out there and taking notes?

Basic knowledge 101

Joe Malchow '08 reveals his ignorance and presumptuousness again, getting peeved about the word 'gender' again:

The word gender is a pet peeve of mine. Hark. The word 'gender' does not refer to the classification of a human being as a man or woman.

'Sex' is the only English word that means that. 'Gender' exists to classify male and female nouns in romance languages. It has, for a reason uncomprehensible by me, been co-opted by feminists and PC'ers who don't want to use the proper term.

OK, Joe, I will try to make this extremely clear for you. Let's say you called some guy 'effeminate' because he was a liberal, and because you're conservative and by extension very manly. What about him made you call him 'effeminate'? (You know he has male genitalia.) It's not a matter of sex, it's a matter of GENDER that made you do that. Gender is a word that refers not to biological sex, but to cultural ideas and norms held by everyone in some form or another, deriving ultimately (but not wholly) from biological sex. Male and female have to do with peepees and vaginas. Masculine and feminine have to do with gender. Think hard, Joe, and recall if you have ever used the words 'masculine' or 'feminine' in reference to something other than Indo-European noun-classification systems. (BTW, Romance languages are not the only ones in the world, not even the only ones with gender!) If you have, you've already been talking about 'gender', you just didn't know it! Isn't that something.

This dictionary entry should help, too:

gen·der
2. Sexual identity, especially in relation to society or culture.

If you don't know what you're talking about, don't talk about it, and for God's sake, don't blog to the world about it.

Blog post of the day

Well, yesterday technically. From Fartlog, "[Nathaniel] Ward '05 Beaten Up By Girl." An excerpt:

...Ward '05 entered a rousing rendition of "Men of Dartmouth," complete with faux-Indian Rain Dance and accompanying gesticulations, attracting the attention of members of the fairer sex supping on the lawn nearby. They proceeded to surround him; the grinding and gnashing of teeth followed. Ward broke his fear-induced paralysis and backed up, reciting lines from The Quotable Ronald Reagan which stopped the feminists in their steps...

Let's hope the priceless parody keeps coming from there, with the addition of W. Thurston Stanfordshiresbury as a contributor. And that I can return to blogging more after straggling through this thesis chapter ("nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express" --Samuel Beckett).

Honest sexual frustration, chauvinism, preadolescent fantasizing

Over at Joe Malchow's new intercollegiate conservative blog Editorial Board, Ilya Laskin of Boston Univ. has a post called "Conservatism--A C*%k-Block" lamenting,

Alas, I am without female companionship. Unless, of course, the girl I've been religiously stalking qualifies as a partner. But being a self-proclaimed conservative, I've found dating to be particularly difficult at college. As if it wasn't bad enough having to overcome insecurity and overwhelming self-conciousness, I now have to deal with political differences. Case and point [sic]: A girl who, for sake of anonymity, shall be henceforth known as Unsuccesful Hook-Up Attempt #7, expressed to me her fear of what she felt was an inevitable draft. I sent her a nice article from Slate explaining how the controversy over a military draft was nothing more than a democratic ploy to garner opposition to the war in Iraq. Her response? "You're so naiive." I was astounded. I didn't know how to respond to her. From what I gathered of her intellect, hand puppets seemed like the only method of teaching that would have any effect on her. Oh well....She's probably a lesbian anyway.

Meanwhile Jason Broander of U Chicago, in his post "On Republican Girlfriends", writes that

Mine, alas, is staunchly liberal. The advantage of this, though, is that I have to keep my wit sharp and my arguments sound. But one day, I'll assimilate her...

You can also find them fawning over a picture of Natalie Portman posted on there -- good look with that, lads.

No women contribute to the Editorial Board.

New Dartmouth Free Press website

The DFP's website has gotten a much-needed update and nice makeover to boot. The latest issues can now be found online at dfp.dartmouth.edu. The revamped site, designed by Nick Santos '06 and up since March, looks pretty good, though they're still working on updating the archives. An update of the Free Dartmouth blog and a link to it from the new DFP site would be nice, too.

I've added the DFP site to our permanent links section.

SA elections are stranger than Alexander Payne's "Election"

In today's D: the Student Assembly presidential election is off to immediate controversy, with Paul Heintz's campaign -- which I'm loosely a part of -- getting a warning from the Elections Planning and Advisory Committee about an illegal BlitzMail message sent out by a supporter, and with an EPAC investigation into postering by Noah Riner's campaign, which has been absolved, claiming the allegations were a smear tactic by an unspecified opponent. Serious shit! Makes the trustee election look like a silly high-school affair, doesn't it?

Best of all, the posters in question featured Noah arms crossed looking fairly buffoonish, with the large message

NOAH
STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT
Vice President '04
Tucker Intern
Varsity Athlete

Shteak! Who could be the ad wizard behind this ad wizardry? Riner's campaign manager, one James S. C. Baehr?

Already too good to be true.

Stay tuned to the blog for updates on this election. And vote Paul Heintz for SA President.

American High

CNN's education section has been absolutely brilliant lately. All sorts of great stories about creepy school practices, nationwide. This time around its a new AP article from Georgia, titled "School to pay students for tips on campus crime":

ROME, Georgia (AP) -- A high school is looking for a few good snitches.
Using revenue from its candy and soda sales, Model High School plans to pay up to $100 for information about thefts and drug or gun possession on campus.

Normally I'd make some apocalyptic comment about Youth Leagues, or Big Brother... but right now I'm pretty damn broke and need money for drugs, SO! Sign me the fuck up? Find the rest here.

"Report from the Upper West Bank"

If The Daily Dartmouth's coverage of the Columbia University Palestine-Israel conflict left you wanting something slightly more in-depth, check out "Report from the Upper West Bank: How Columbia University became the latest mideast battleground" by John Giuffo in the most recent Village Voice. Of particular note is the analysis of the various kinds of inflammatory spin the controversy has received in less-distinguished New York press:

This is also a story of how some reporters and news organizations are suckers for a good controversy, and a case study of how advocacy journalism can drive and shape events. No news organization has been more of an advocate than The New York Sun, which first wrote on October 20 about Columbia Unbecoming and has played a major role in framing the debate, covering the story aggressively and sympathizing with the pro-Israeli students, and making itself part of the narrative in the process, with students repeatedly singling it out to the Voice as a primary player in the dustup. The Sun has pursued its crusade against Columbia's supposed brownshirts with a steady stream of more than 30 news and opinion pieces with headlines like "Farrakhan for Columbia?," "Dershowitz Says Faculty Members Work to Encourage Islamic Terrorism," and "Ex-Prosecutor Likens Massad Speech to a 'Neo-Nazi Rally.' " Together these pieces have drawn a picture of a campus awash in anti-Semitism, and of an administration that has been hell-bent trying to deny and manipulate events. They are all marked by hyperbole, and they all consistently eschew contradictory statements and testimonies from other students. Editors followed up by publishing on Friday an outraged editorial reaction to the report, goading Columbia's trustees and naming some of those with connections to the Jewish community: "We invite our readers to study the list above. Has the cat got all their tongues? Do these individuals know where—at a time when their country is at war—the funding is coming from for Columbia's Middle East studies programs?"

Jacob Gershman, the Sun reporter most often dispatched to Columbia's trenches, defends his paper's flame-fanning. In an e-mail to the Voice, he writes, "The editor of the Sun tells us that a reporter never has to apologize for covering the hotel that's on fire instead of the ones that are not."

While the Sun has been rabbit-punching the story, the New York Post has been busy throwing around sensational headlines like steamy blocks of leaden hackshit, such as "Soft on Anti-Semitism" and "Columbia's Anti-Semites." The Daily News has shown characteristic restraint with scareheads like "HATE 101" and "This Nut Teaches at Columbia?" Even the Voice's Nat Hentoff, while more balanced, has backed the Columbia Unbecoming students, advocating for their academic freedoms, at one point offering his services to moderate a panel discussion of the events at Columbia.

Conservatives for Liberal Bias

Another issue of The Review and more of the same on "intellectual diversity" and the preponderance of liberals at universities. But J. Stethers White (Whither the first name, Mr. White? Doesn't quite ring Anglo?) actually has an interesting take on this matter, so belabored at Dartmouth, in his article "Hold Yer Horowitz". I credit him for condemning David Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights" antics, which would be funny if they weren't so seditious and even occasionally successful. White likes the argument made by New Criterion editor Stefan Beck '04 and other conservatives that liberal bias only hurts liberals, writing:

The Right should not resort to diversity mongering, and in doing so, sacrifice its principles for a small tactical victory. The proper response to liberal bias—the truly conservative response—is a stiff upper-lip. Since William F. Buckley Jr.’s God and Man at Yale, conservatives have been quite clearly out of place on campus. But with constant access to the inner workings of the hard left, they have an opportunity to firm their own ideological grounding and to critique that of the Left. It is an opportunity conservatives ought gladly take, rather than adopting some their opponents’ most craven tactics.

I believe the Left has suffered to an extent because some liberal professors, in the humanities especially, have gotten removed from American political reality, partly for having such radically reality-based worldviews, but also partly because of an over-ambitious, 1960s-rooted philosophical idealism that has become at times quixotic with the erosion of the very foundations of progressive ideals by neo-conservatism (broadly conceived, with its strange bedfellows) -- a subject I have a lot of thoughts on. That said, I do not fully buy White's line of reasoning; I think having lots of liberal professors can be and is generally a good thing for the Left and for everyone else. I can't speak for all universities, but the faculties of Dartmouth and its peer institutions are pretty healthy as is, and certainly need no tampering from jerks like Horowitz.

Mr. White's supercilious stoicism is welcome by me. If he really means what he says, he would agree with me that zealous trustee candidates like Zywkci and Robinson would also have no place in interfering with the vibrant faculty we have here, say, by pressuring hiring processes.

White's article, and the new TDR issue in general, are worth reading if, like me, you thrist for the edification only conservatives can provide.

Re: "Jumping the shark"

It seems Frank Rich of The New York Times has been reading our blog. After George's post on the phrase's rise to meta-significance below, Rich ends his latest op-ed article by writing:

We don't know the identity of the corpse that will follow the pope in riveting the nation's attention. What we do know is that the reality show we've made of death has jumped the shark, turning from a soporific television diversion into the cultural embodiment of the apocalyptic right's growing theocratic crusade.

And I had never even heard the phrase till George informed me of it. Then again, I've never seen "Jaws," either.

Oh and the op-ed is, not surprisingly, amazing. Rich continues to take on and take apart the perverse culture of the far right better than other, whinier liberals out there do.

The Great Crane Game

According to a new article from the Associated Press, found at CNN:

"Enrollment has been dropping steadily as timber jobs have dried up, and Oregon's budget cuts have left Myrtle Point facing a $675,000 gap for next year. Since Oregon bases its state school funding on enrollment, every home-schooled child Myrtle Point can woo means an extra $5,000 or so. An estimated 100 youngsters living in the district are home-schooled."

From grades 7 through 12 I learned at home. According to an Education Department Survey conducted in 2003 I was one of 1.1 million home-schoolers, nationwide. But this figure is misleading; for I never even bothered to tell the state of Illinois that I was home-schooling in the first place. Rather, my family set up a nice little "Private" school, had my records transferred home to our address, and I enrolled as the first (and only) student of "Redwall Learning Academy." Illinois, like many states, has no specific statute to govern home-schooling; instead home-schoolers have been granted the right to operate trouble free by various court rulings that categorize them as privately schooled. As home-schoolers in the state of Illinois are thus most often classified as enrolled in Private schools (as I was), The Education department's figures, which work out to around one home-schooled child in forty-five school-aged youngsters, rest more than likely far below the actual number of students currently not enrolled in Public, Private, or Charter schools.

For home-schoolers, used to flying under the radar for fear of harassment from the very people now attempting to court them back into the fold, this sort of stat dodging is all part of the game; like any counter-culture, the homeschooling movement takes its cues more from "what not to do" than from any set pattern or formula for success. It is this last point that school authorities have failed so consistently to understand. Take for instance the exhortations of Dal King, local school board member in Myrtle Point:

"Families who home school or choose to send their kids to other districts, we need your full support, not just what's convenient for you," King wrote. "While you may have good reasons, please do your part by enrolling your kids full-time in the district and don't just 'cherry-pick' music or sports."

Some simple allusions: Rowboats; sinking ships. Fire escapes; burning buildings. You don't jump back into the shit pile just because it asks you to. That seems like one hell of a big "what not to do" to me.

So if Dal King is allowed to be a bit naive when dealing with a movement he does not understand, then perhaps I am allowed to be a bit naive when I ask: why the fuck do our institutions exist if not to serve us? I've sunk enough cash into those jury-rigged crane games at Bennigan's to know that you don't get shit back from something inherently broken. "Learning Centers" are not less-school like by virtue of the fact that they are no longer called "schools," just as my "home-school" was not more-school like for being classified as "private." It's different clothing on the same ailing body, it's the crane game without any prizes. It is the state of "american public education." And it is an idea most home-schoolers gave up on long ago.

Jeff Gannon and journalists on CSpan now

Well, there he is, on a panel beside journalists and bloggers including Ana Marie Cox, a k a Wonkette. Gannon, who comes across as a real shifty-eyed bastard, just used the argument that drawing the line between what's journalism and what's not journalism is dangerous to justify being paid by Texas Republican operatives to pose softball questions to Scott McLellan at White House press conferences.

Now that takes balls, which we all know Jeff "Bulldog" Gannnon has (contains nudity).

Vegans like Cookies, too.

From CNN:

Truglio said "Sesame Street" also will introduce new characters, such as talking eggplants and carrots, and offer parodies, such as "American Fruit Stand."

For a while now I have felt Sesame Street's singular dominance of children's educational programming to stem more from its clever appeal to the parents of young children (i.e. the controllers of remote controls), than from any specific genius engagement, through the content of the show, of the children themselves. For Sesame Street, though lacking any unique brilliance in content (as opposed to, say, Teletubbies, which deliberately structured its format entirely around an understanding of the developing child mind), has never lacked popularity in American homes. Do kids have the cultural context for REM, or "American Fruit Stand" (presumably a parody of American Band Stand)? No, and I really doubt they give a shit. Yet Sesame Street continually places an emphasis on these sort of nostalgic cameos in its format; it seems like everytime I turn on the fucking show I get bombarded by baby-boomer irony, and that generation's unique brand of totally unfun sensibility.

Case in point for today: this article. I am sorry- but even though I liked cookies as a child, and even though I liked cookie monster as a child, I don't remember ever conspiring to eat cookies all day, speak in a retarded voice, or turn blue. Well, whatever. Chalk another one up for the folks over at Sesame Street, and the rest of the god damned baby boomer generation that has enabled their rise to power: They've created a playground where my parents can once again find their youth, by paving wholly over those little eccentricities that made my own childhood worthwhile.

To the children of today I can only say: hang in there. You parents may be playing with your toys, throwing out the cookies to reduce their own middle-aged paunches, and leaving you daily in the hands of a cold corporate empire hellbent on retreading a pitiful fascimile of mom and dad's faded ideologies and cultural heroes back to you... (whew) but I'm pretty sure they'll all be gone soon.

Because they're old. And old people are pretty good at dying.

Complaints with today's D

This whole issue just sucks. From an awkward but still way-too-flattering front-page intro for J.C. Watts, one of the fakest politicians around ("Thrilling the audience like a football player, philosophizing like a preacher and gesticulating like a politician"), to Steph's latest slaver (not link-worthy; I couldn't force myself to read more than half of it this time), to the various mechanical errors throughout ("Alumni model held" [p. 5], three missing paragraph indentions [p. 5]), to Lindsay Barnes' conclusion that the worn-out classic rock at Phi Delt, let alone anything at Phi Delt, is "A-" cool, to the proliferation of the word "sweet" in the Mirror ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]), to the vacuous, self-congratulatory note from the new editor of the Mirror....Fuck, I give up.

Tell a friend

Well this will come across as incredibly self-promotional, but yeah, it is. Seriously though, I feel like this blog has become a semi-legitimate forum for liberal ideas, probably the best such forum for Dartmouth students to be found online, with Free Dartmouth still floundering. But even after our two-day facebook.com advertising campaign, which cost us $ 26 and put us $ 9 in debt, we get an average of just 150 visitors daily and 70 people who actually read the posts. I'd say a good estimate is that we have a core readership of 100-150 people. If you're one of them, well then you're sweet. But I'd definitely like to see more. And it would only make the forum more interesting, with more comments and more outreach for all the ideas/causes we try to cover (in addition to the laughs Wuk provides), the Darfur humanitarian effort being a good example.

Mass blitzes suck, and word-of-mouth does not. So I would like to ask each of you core readers to tell a friend about us if you could be so kind. A friend who would like it and keep visiting, if possible. Just give them a blitz or drop the name of your blog in conversation -- the latter will make you sound really cool, trust me. It's that easy.

Cool, I did it. Thanks and keep on reading. I expect 300 visitors Monday.

Straight shooter

From the Personals of It's Classified: A Buyers' and Sellers' Weekly for the Upper Valley, April 1, 2005:

"Male, 49 looking for a female friend, 36 to 49, within 25 miles of Lebanon. Race, creed, color does not matter. I smoke. I smoke. I don't drink."

Lieberman well-liked

... by Republicans, according to a Quinnipiac poll.

72% of Connecticut Republicans approve of Lieberman; 66% of CT Democrats.

And, apparently, his primary run won't be the smoothest sailing (also via Kos).

Double standard for American Idol?

From Feministing: "Fun fact: You can be an 'American Idol' if you beat up your girlfriend, but not if you pose for topless photos."

(Via Liberal Oasis)

SA grills trustee candidates

Student Assembly sent out questionnaires to the six trustee candidates, and responses from four of them can be found on a weblog SA has set up, Dartmouth Future: Sheila C. Cheston '80; Peter Robinson '79; Curtis R. Welling '71, Tuck '77; and Todd J. Zywicki '88.

But I don't recall ever seeing that building in the header graphic on campus...

The New Yorker exposed

The New Yorker is a shadowy operation. Downright sketchy, even. The New York Observer tries to answer the question, "Who is running The New Yorker?"

Their masthead approximation, in PDF form.

Fox Reality Channel

Under monopoly all mass culture is identical, and the lines of its artificial framework begin to show through. The people at the top are no longer so interested in concealing monopoly: as its violence becomes more open, so its power grows. Movies and radio need no longer pretend to be art. The truth that they are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce. They call themselves industries; and when their directors’ incomes are published, any doubt about the social utility of the finished products is removed. But reality TV is different. It's sweet. We like to watch it and throw pepperonies at the screen when things don't go right. -- Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment As Mass Deception"*

Coming early next year...

American Idol. The Simple Life. Joe Millionaire. Temptation Island. Over and over. Plus all new reality programming.

Fox Reality Channel will join Reality Central, to begin later this year, and Reality TV (Dish Network only).
_____________________________
*Quoted slightly liberally. Thanks to Zooperville, legendary Daily Dartmouth comic, for the pepperonies inspiration.

Centrist Dem Stephanie Herseth visits

Stephanie Herseth, Democratic House Representative from South Dakota, is visiting campus today. Ms. Herseth will be giving a public lecture at 4:30 PM -- "Securing Quality Education and Healthcare in America" -- in 3 Rockefeller Hall, and the Young Democrats are holding a lunch with her at 12:30.

Herseth is a Dem from a blood-red state, and her stances and political tactics have been criticized by some Democrats. A summary of their qualms with her:

- is anti-gun control
- supports a flag-burning amendment
- said she'd vote for W if the election went to the House of Reps
- voted for the Federal Marriage Amendment
- targeted her get out the vote effort at Thune-Herseth supporters, i.e. directly working against Tom Daschle, the Democratic majority leader who was defeated by fewer than 10,000 votes in a major victory for the GOP

According to South Dakota Politics, "Herseth deserves much of the credit for Daschle's defeat." And Sam Hurst of the Rapid City Journal writes, "Stephanie Herseth is too young and too bright to have lost her backbone. At an age when she should be known for brash idealism, she has chosen instead to pander to the dark voices of discrimination. Such is the cynical calculus of electoral campaigns."

Daily Kos, however, has taken a sympathetic stand towards Herseth, arguing in June that "Some of you may not like it, but we're going to see some Republican-lite out of Herseth in the coming months. It's the only chance we'll have to hold the seat."

Herseth embodies the kind of tug-of-war of ideology and strategy going on within the Democratic Party right now. It will be interesting to see how Dartmouth Democrats respond to her and what kind of message she'll have for us. We'll have updates later.

Cut down by the Tree of Knowledge

You know how Einstein got hit by that apple from the tree and then felt like an idiot? The tree was the Tree of Knowledge, a k a Google. Now I have had a few ideas in my life so far, only to find out they were all already thought up. You probably know what I'm talking about. My most recent example: feeling an affront at seeing "ridiculous" yet again spelled "rediculous," stopping myself from breaking something, and channelling the anger into positive creativity by coining, insofar as my knowledge went, the word "bluediculous" and insulting the intelligence of my friend who wrote "rediculous."

Predictably by now, "bluediculous" was used on like a dozen separate occasions before I ever used it. And, yes, you guessed it again, even "blackdiculous" is attested, though I hesitate to learn in what context.

Fun with logic

Funny story on Dartlog about a protest this morning on campus.

A group of New Hampshire conservatives and libertarians protested in front of Baker Library this morning, demanding the right to participate in Dartmouth's Trustee election in what one organizer called "election fun."

Ed Naile, president of the Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers and a Republican election monitor, said that since Dartmouth students not from New Hampshire are allowed to vote in state and local elections, New Hampshire residents who are not alumni should be allowed to vote in College elections.

That's a riot. I'm continually envious of the fun Republicans are capable of having.

Dartlog doesn't mention that the premise of the group's next demonstration will be that "since all men are mortal, and all men are primates, all monkeys are immortal."

Incidentally, all these logicians said they would vote for petition candidates Peter Robinson '79 and Todd Zywicki '88 (no joke).

1st Quarter political wrap-up

A scrutinizing look at which party is winning politics, issue by issue, at the national level right now, on Liberal Oasis. Here are some highlights, but the brief analyses there are what's worth reading:

Restrictions on class action suits and the bankrupt bankruptcy bill: GOP ("At least they got something.")

Social Security: Dems ("An unequivocal, high-profile failure that’s fractured the [GOP] caucus.")

Terri Schiavo: Dems ("A missed opportunity [for Dems] to emphasize the party’s position against government interference in deeply personal decisions...People already thought Dems lacked spine, whereas the GOP's fealty to religious extremists had been somewhat masked for the last few years via code words, and has now been exposed again. The GOP loses more here.")

Foreign Policy: GOP

Judges/Nuclear Option: Dems

Overall Assesment:

Republicans:
"So far, they're failing. They’re not just failing on high-profile issues. They’re failing on issues they’ve chosen to make high-profile."

Democrats:
"They're experimenting with unity, but are unable to display any on issues that had already been in the queue for years (bankruptcy) or suddenly appear (Schiavo)...

In turn, overall party messages are still fuzzy, limiting their ability to take advantage of GOP missteps."

I would be very careful with the advice Liberal Oasis has for Dems to compromise a little more (they think the public would like to see this). I think Democrats should keep "holding out" on all important issues and then eventually compromise only on one or two (and on nothing as important as Social Security) when Republicans are desparate and will give them decent terms. I'm no game theorist but I'm a mediocre chess player and this seems likes the best strategy to me.

Foer rolling in dough, wants more

According to the New York Daily News, Jonathan Safran Foer received a $1 million advance for his latest novel, and got $925,000 for the paperback rights to his first. Oh and films of both are on their way. Yet,

The hot New York novelist urged friends to buy his new "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" - last week - to help keep it on The New York Times best-seller list.

It didn't hurt, since last week's sales lifted the novel to No. 13 on the list to be published April 10, up from its debut at No. 15 this coming Sunday.

In an E-mail to "Friends, Romans, Countrymen," Foer acknowledged some tough reviews and added, "So I'm going to have to rely heavily on word of mouth."

Jonathan would need a lot of friends for this to work, wouldn't he?

I'm reading his first novel now, and it's damn good. As an apsiring writer of sorts myself, I definitely must "eat a slice of humble pie."

Sex ed

From Daily Kos:

Ok, it's quiz time! Consider the following two statements:

Abstinence helps protect teens from contracting a sexually transmitted disease, becoming pregnant, and the emotional risk and responsibility involved with sex. Abstinence is the healthiest choice for teens because they are not ready for the adult emotions of sex and the adult choices that sex entails...

Abstinence for your teen means that he or she would avoid voluntary intimate sexual contact (oral, anal or vaginal). This is the best choice emotionally and physically for all teens. The values that come from abstinence, such as respect, responsibility, and self-control, will benefit their future relationships...

Tell them that abstinence is the healthiest choice... Waiting for sex shows self-respect. Let your teen know that even though they are capable of having sex, having sex will not make them an adult...making good choices will.

And:

A homosexual is a person who prefers sexual contact with people of the same sex... If you believe your adolescent may be gay, or is experiencing difficulties with gender identity or sexual orientation issues, consider seeing a family therapist who shares your values to clarify and work through these issues.

Now, here's the question: What is the source of those two statements?

a) A religious website

b) A government website

c) A book by Rick Santorum

Click here for the answer.