Quote of the Day: Mark Williams

Tea Party talk radio host and blogger Mark Williams apologized for offending Hindus, when he, trying to offend Muslims, called Allah a "monkey god." His apology, in part:

In the course of the article I described the “god” worshiped by terrorists as “a monkey god”. I was wrong and that was offensive. I owe an apology to millions of Hindus who worship Lord Hanuman, an actual Monkey God.

Moreover, Hanuman is worshiped as a symbol of perseverance, strength and devotion. He is known as a destroyer of evil and to inspire and liberate. Those are hardly the traits of whatever the Hell (literally) it is that terrorists worship and worthy of my respect and admiration not ridicule.

So, again, to my Hindu friends I offer my sincerest apologies for my horrible lapse and my insensitivity. It was unintentional, inexplicably ignorant and I am ashamed at my offense toward you.

As comical as Williams sudden contrition is, he inadvertantly brings up some theological questions. First, does he (or anyone) think that Muslim terrorists worship a different god than peaceful Muslims do? And by refering to "Allah," are Christians knowlingly distancing themselves from Muslims, who come from the same tradition (and who actually recognize Jesus Christ as important, if not divine)? And does Williams really have any Hindu friends to offend?

The blog post he apologized for? It's now password-protected. To get the password, you have to read his book, "Mark Williams Taking Back America One Tea Party at a Time." But if you read the book, you can also learn "How the author cured his own liberalism."

But seriously, Williams' blog post was about the Islamic cultural center that's proposed near Ground Zero. A Muslim group bought a building that used to house a Burlington Coat Factory -- a building that was damaged by a chunk of landing gear that smashed through its roof on September 11, 2001. By most accounts, the man who wants to open the center, Imam Feisal -- a Sufi -- genuinely works for peace and understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims: the FBI says he's acted as a go-between for federal investigators and has the blessing and support of some Christian groups.

Bush to Black People: Where's the Hand Sanitizer?

Watch President Bush shake hands with a Haitian, then wipe his hand off on President Clinton's shirt.

And as Gothamist points out, Bush seems to be at best a germophobe and at worst afraid of touching black people. Here, via ABC News blogs, is an excerpt from President Obama's book The Audacity of Hope. Obama is writing about how he, as a new senator, met Bush in the White House in 2005:

“Obama!” he said, shaking my hand. “Come here and meet Laura. Laura, you remember Obama. We saw him on TV during election night. Beautiful family. And that wife of yours – that’s one impressive lady.”

“We both got better than we deserve, Mr. President,” I said, shaking the First Lady’s hand and hoping that I’d wiped any crumbs off my face.

The president turned to an aide nearby, who squirted a big dollop of hand sanitizer in the president’s hand.

“Want some?” the president asked. “Good stuff. Keeps you from getting colds.” Not wanting to seem unhygienic, I took a squirt.

“Come over here for a second,” he said, leading me off to one side of the room.

“You know,” he said quietly, “I hope you don’t mind me giving you a piece of advice.”

“Not at all, Mr. President.” He nodded. “You’ve got a bright future,” he said. “Very bright. But I’ve been in this town a while and, let me tell you, it can be tough. When you get a lot of attention like you’ve been getting, people start gunnin’ for ya. And it won’t necessarily just be coming from my side, you understand. From yours, too. Everybody’ll be waiting for you to slip. Know what I mean? So watch yourself.”

Quote of the Day: Ravi Somaiya

"By softballing and coddling interviewees, all of television news has helped politicians get away with appalling lies, distortions and… being Sarah Palin.

"Put simply: almost without exception, American political interviewers fawn and simper over their subjects, refuse to ask a question more than once and never call bullshit on blatant bullshit. If anchors, interviewers and White House correspondents did their job — to hold elected officials accountable, by their lapels if necessary — politicians of all stripes could not get away with distorting and outright lying, as they do now.

"Rove-ian veneers would simply be scraped away by the eight words 'that is not true, please answer my question'. Repeated enough on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC they'd mean no birthers. No myths about healthcare or rumors of death panels. No paranoid lies about creeping socialism. No George W. Bush. No Sarah Palin."

That's Gawker's Ravi Somaiya, writing in response to an anti-Fox News screed in the Washington Post by Howell Raines.

Somaiya is right. Watch footage of Tony Blair getting grilled by the British press, and standing up to it without whining. Our journalists just aren't like that. We think backcountry preachers are a good match for bioligists in evolution debates.

But it doesn't just cut one way. All politics -- liberal and conservative -- would benefit from a stronger press, a press that didn't adopt partisan catch phrases or let hysterics and hyperbole stand.

In the Post column titled "Why don't honest journalists take on Roger Ailes and Fox News?", Raines limited his argument at first to Fox News and the issue of healthcare reform. But he too goes further:

"Why has our profession, through its general silence -- or only spasmodic protest -- helped Fox legitimize a style of journalism that is dishonest in its intellectual process, untrustworthy in its conclusions and biased in its gestalt?"

Economics is the typical answer to that, writes Raines. The problem, and I think most liberals suspect this and many on Fox News (including Ailes, O'Reilly and Beck) will use it as a defense, is that Fox News is not news; it's entertainment. It's about ratings, and it's a rollicking success.

MSNBC, CNN and everything else still have their feet in the evaporating pond of journalism, while dabbling in what Fox has perfected. Thus, they cannot win. They let Fox create the rules for the game. Get back to real journalism and its aims of truth, public service and open information and, as both Raines and Somaiya argue, Fox will lose some of its magical power of influence.

So what's stopping everyone? It's simple: Fox has created a climate in which arguing with its people and the people it promotes amounts to bias. Act as if you're the standard and everyone else is the deviant and you can accuse anyone of what you are doing, which is biased reporting.

But there may be hope yet. Here's the powerful London PR exec Matthew Freud, who is also Rupert Murdoch's son-in-law (and the great-grandson of Sigmund Freud), quoted in the New York Times in January:

"I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to."

Is Avatar Racist?

Some critics are seeing racist themes in James Cameron's dazzling new movie, Avatar.

The story, which is told more or less in its entirety through the trailers promoting the film, is simple: An alien race makes their home over a deposit of rare ore on a strange planet. Humans coming to mine the ore are looking for a way to displace the aliens. While scientists study the aliens by using hybrid alien-human bodies that humans control via electronic telepathy, mercenaries hired by the mining company prepare to force the aliens to leave. Our hero, a mercenary, gets the opportunity to control one of the alien hybrids. He falls in love with the aliens, their way of life, and one of their princesses. He turns on his mercenary bosses and he and the scientists that control the hybrid alien bodies, or avatars, revolt against the mining company and try to save the aliens from destruction. You can guess how it ends; it's Hollywood, so it really can't end any other way.



So what about this could be racist? It's the same in many movies. A white man comes in and saves a primitive but more "spiritually enlightened" culture from his own people. As David Brooks pointed out in the New York Times recently, the "White Messiah" theme is central to Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai (2003) and Kevin Costner's Dances With Wolves (1990), among many other movies.

"It rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic," wrote Brooks. "It rests on the assumption that nonwhites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades."

So why would Cameron use such a crude, predictable, even offensive plot? The conservative Weekly Standard's John Podhoretz (whose bitterly negative review called Avatar "among the dumbest movies I've ever seen") had a theory:

"The thing is, one would be giving James Cameron too much credit to take Avatar--with its mindless worship of a nature-loving tribe and the tribe's adorable pagan rituals, its hatred of the military and American institutions, and the notion that to be human is just way uncool--at all seriously as a political document. It's more interesting as an example of how deeply rooted these standard-issue counterculture clichés in Hollywood have become by now. Cameron has simply used these familiar bromides as shorthand to give his special-effects spectacular some resonance. He wrote it this way not to be controversial, but quite the opposite: He was making something he thought would be most pleasing to the greatest number of people."

While Podhoretz's review had many of the earmarks of classic conservative cries against Hollywood liberalism ("Don't smear the profit motive!" admonished Ayn Rand in the 50s), he's spot-on about the pandering, after-thought plot.

No one, Podhoretz included, thinks the plot is the point; it's the effects. But let's take a closer look at these "White Messiah" plots.

Ironically, the White Messiah plot is a liberal device. It celebrates marginalized, colonized and "primitive" cultures, pitting them unfavorably against our more technologically and militarily sophisticated culture. They are weaker, but more in touch with the land. In American lore, they are the "Noble Savage," the Native American. They also represent the desire to leave modern society and get back to basics. They represent a respect for the environment even while they revel in a warrior's way of life.

To me, the "White Messiah" plotline is used by writers and directors of a liberal bent, like Cameron, to create a character that their audience (which they assume in America is predominantly white) can relate to instead of trying to create a sympathetic character from whatever colonized group the story focuses on. Through the white interloper, the audience learns about the colonized culture and, along with that interloper, begins to sympathize with them. Now, to highlight the cultural value of the colonized group, the writers have our hero become their champion. He doesn't merely fight for them, he saves them. Or at the very least, he sacrifices everything he can for them, firmly establishing their cultural and spiritual value by becoming one of them--as much as he can.

I don't believe that it is the writers' intention to appear racist. With a limited understanding of a different culture, and the burden of helping the dominant culture relate to the other, Hollywood has chosen to show us these groups through white eyes. It's a condescending cop out.

It reminds me of cultural critic Edward Said's charge that Napoleon's France stormed into Egypt and studied the culture so thoroughly that it owned it, and taught it about itself as a way to control it.

For a nice antidote to the "White Messiah" story, read Graham Greene's 1955 novel The Quiet American. Or see the 2002 film version starring Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser. This nuanced tale effectively predicted the Vietnam War and America's place in it. The story, which was taken in part from Greene's experience as a reporter in Saigon, revolves around a British reporter (Michael Caine in the recent film), an American CIA agent (Brendan Fraser), and a Vietnamese woman in love with both of them (Do Thi Hai Yen). Greene's story criticizes the liberal American temptation to "rescue" Vietnam from both the French colonizers and Northern Communists.

Glenn Beck on Art

Fox News host Glenn Beck played art critic back in September, calling out some old architectural reliefs across Sixth Avenue from News Corp HQ at rival NBC's Rockefeller Center as either fascist or communist. It looks more like an attack on NBC (and his arch enemy, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, not to mention Rachel Maddow) than an honest look at public art and its meanings then and now.

Beck's meaning is clear: Rockefeller was both a communist sympathizer and fascist (jn this case Mussolini) sympathizer. And that NBC and "progressives" in general continue this legacy.

Beck's hysteria about a pair of reliefs showing one man holding a hammer and another holding a sheaf of wheat and a sickle is a bit like the nonsense about "Nazi" swastikas appearing on Indian-made handbags for the Spanish chain Zara (no, the Indian factory wasn't being anti-Semetic; they don't see swastikas the same way, and Zara didn't catch it until the bags made it to shops). In both cases, we have old symbols that gained very specific meanings for European dictatorships, tainting them for the West for generations.


The reliefs were carved in 1937 by Carl Paul Jennewein, an American born in Germany. Tyler Green of the blog Modern Art Notes explains:

The sickle and the hammer have been used separately to signify agrarian interests and workmen or craftsmen in art respectively since at least the Byzantine period. In the 19th and 20th centuries the hammer and sickle were often fused in a range of European symbology, in both provincial heraldry and in state insignia. It wasn't until 1922 that the Red Army adopted them as a state symbol. (It became the Soviet state symbol in 1923.)

Green can't find any evidence that another Rockefeller Center sculpture, one that Beck connects to Mussolini, has any such connection. That sculpture, "Youth Leading Industry," pictured above, was created out of glass blocks by Attilio Piccirilli in 1936. Piccirilli, a friend of New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, contributed sculptural works to monuments all over the country, including the state capital buildings of Wisconsin and Virginia. Sounds like material for a follow up segment on Beck's show. The imagery in Piccirilli's Rockefeller Center piece is pretty benign. Ironically, notes Green, Piccirilli was picked as an artist because he was an American. There was a public outcry after a previous decision by Rockefeller to use European artists like Picasso and Matisse on such projects. Why would Rockefeller have chosen an American artist, one close to Mayor LaGuardia (who served 1934-1945), only to let him depict Mussolini? It doesn't make sense.


Beck's final target is Diego Rivera, who was commissioned by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. in 1934 to create a mural for a Rockefeller Center lobby. The mural was called "Man at the Crossroads" (see detail above). Beck's failure to grasp historical fact becomes painfully clear here: he accuses Rockefeller of literally commissioning a piece of commie art, and yet the mural was famously destroyed the year it was made after it embarrassed the family and the building's management. It was recreated by Rivera the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City later.

But Beck won't let history get in the way of his message.

Glenn Beck's Mormon Conversion

Glenn Beck, the weepy-eyed rabble rouser who has been out Limbaugh-ing Rush, converted to Mormonism in 1999. Mormonism, which now boasts at least as many members as all of Judaism (by most accounts, each have about 13 million worldwide), has been called the fastest growing religion in the world.



Then again, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, there are only about 4 million active members, and Seventh Day Adventists are growing faster. And, for every Glenn Beck, there's a Harry Reid, who once said, "I think it is much easier to be a good member of the Church and a Democrat than a good member of the Church and a Republican."

Dictator Kitsch

When former President Bill Clinton was in North Korea to rescue former Vice President Al Gore's wayward reporters, he was photographed with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il in front of a huge and garish mural.

It's dictator kitsch, writes, Eric Gibson in the Wall Street Journal this week:

"'Kitsch' has become a byword in the culture for anything over-the-top or tacky. In art, it’s meaning is more specific. It refers to works trafficking in facile, base or false emotions—most often sentimentality—and whose imagery is off-the-shelf and formulaic, a debased version of a once-original aesthetic idea. Need to conjure that warm-and-fuzzy feeling? Cue the fiery sunset. Looking to express fragile innocence? Bring on the shoeless urchin carrying the bird with the broken wing."

Later in the article there's a great anecdote about a Russian artist who was employed by the Soviet Union as a creator of Socialist Realist art. After the fall of the Soviet Union, his transition was clumsy: "so ingrained were his earlier habits that every time he painted the face of Jesus, he wound up with a likeness of Lenin."


In fact, there isn't so much difference between religious kitsch and kitsch employed in the service of totalitarian regimes. Take this poster of Moroni, a character from the Book of Mormon. Aside from the fact that it looks computer-generated, like something out of a late-90s era video game, the rays of sun could just as easily indicate religious themes as socialist ones.


Perhaps a better example, one from the same company Real Hero Posters, is this one of the Bible character Ruth. Here, we see a proud agricultural scene, complete with dramatic sunlight, sheaf of wheat, and a low perspective that makes the figure look large and heroic. This looks positively Soviet, yet it's quite the opposite.

The Poetry of Palin, as Interpreted by William Shatner

Now that I don't have a working television, I have to rely on the blogosphere to keep up with American culture and online video to watch. Thank the baby Jesus that some kind soul alerted me to this gem:

Thank You, Rupert, for Making The Post What it is Today

Graphic from The Post's story DOG STAYS BY ODOR OF THE COURT on May 24.

This Just in: Obama's Mother Saved From Purgatory

Thank God. According to Politico, Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham--who died in 1995--was baptised posthumously by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Baptising dead people is a common practice for the Mormons, who believe that it's the only way to help good people who didn't get the chance to hear the "good news" while alive into heaven. A Church statement e-mailed to Politico said:

"The offering of baptism to our deceased ancestors is a sacred practice to us and it is counter to Church policy for a Church member to submit names for baptism for persons to whom they are not related. The Church is looking into the circumstances of how this happened and does not yet have all the facts. However, this is a serious matter and we are treating it as such."

This practice got the Church into big trouble PR-wise when it came out that they had been baptising Jews who died in the Holocaust.

Apparently the Church stopped doing it after a formal complaint was lodged in 1994 by Holocaust survivor Ernest W. Michel and the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.

Michel found out that his parents, who did not survive the Holocaust, were baptised by the Mormons years after their deaths. "I was incensed that my parents who were killed in Auschwitz were now listed as members of the Mormon faith," Michel told the New York Times.

The Times described the ceremony in a 1995 article:

"Although little known outside Mormon circles, 'baptism for the dead,' in which a church member stands in for a deceased person, is a main tenet of Mormonism. The church teaches that such ceremonies were performed in the early Christian church and work to help extend Mormon membership not just to the living, but also to the dead, who exist in what the church calls 'the spirit world.'

In Mormon theology, all people, living and dead, possess 'free agency,' and may either accept or reject church membership, even if they are baptized by proxy.

Ceremonies take place in the faith's 46 temples. A church member is immersed in a baptismal font as names of the deceased are read. The names of those to be baptized are taken from the church's genealogical archives, which contain approximately two billion names.

Elder Brough, who is executive director of the church's Family History Department, said church rules obligated members to perform genealogical research so they could baptize their ancestors, thus allowing the extended families to reunite in heaven."

Bill O'Reilly

There are two reasons that I don’t absolutely despise Bill O’Reilly. One is that I believe he has a sense of humor—he was an awfully good sport on The Colbert Report. The second reason is one that I couldn’t pinpoint until I read a little bit about him: it’s education. I may disagree with, and even think he’s a jerk on the air, but he isn’t an idiot.

He got a Master’s degree from Boston University in broadcast journalism (apparently at the same time Howard Stern was there), and then after he left the tabloid TV show Inside Edition (few people will remember that he replaced the venerable David Frost, who got fired after three weeks), he went to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government for a Master's degree in Public Administration. Rush Limbaugh, by contrast, went to high school and dropped out of Southeast Missouri State University after barely a year.

When my boss told me she was going to interview Bill O’Reilly, I begged her to let me come along. She had just interviewed Geraldo Rivera at Fox News, and was understandably wary of going back for more, but when O’Reilly’s custom dress shirt maker said he could set something up, she couldn’t say no.

Fox News is in the News Corp building on Sixth Avenue across from Rockefeller Center (not far from MSNBC) at 48th Street. O’Reilly has a modest-sized corner office on the 17th floor, an office that is very neat, but obviously worked in. There are family photos and award plaques on the walls and the desk has a few orderly stacks of books and files. Set carefully alongside an etched glass sign that bears his name, there’s a bumper sticker that says DON’T TAZE ME BRO!

O’Reilly was cool at first. He rose from behind his desk to shake our hands, but the handshake was weak and noncommittal. He’s an imposing man—he must be at least 6’4”—but he looks a little older in person than he does on camera. His face has more lines and his eyes aren’t as bright.

When my boss pulled out his latest book, an autobiography, it earned a smile, but his offer to sign it was as well-rehearsed as any celebrity’s. I was a little worried that he wouldn’t have patience for our questions about his wardrobe, but he took them very seriously. To him, the suit is a uniform. He’s not a peacock and tailored clothing and all of its accessories are not a way to express his personality. His watch is a $100 Seiko. He thinks cufflinks are too showy and pocket squares are for pretentious people. When he was a reporter at ABC, and Peter Jennings offered to help him get a London posting to “refine the rough edges,” but those rough edges are his working class roots, and he’s proud of them.

The Interview

When asked about Obama, O'Reilly was fair. He admitted that 100 days into the administration is too early to tell whether or not Obama was an effective president. But it was in this statement that O’Reilly began to show his personality: “I think he has to send a message to the country sooner or later—he hasn’t thus far—about how he sees his own country: does he want progressive change (it looks like that’s where he’s going) or does he want to bulk up the traditional aspects of the country (which is pretty much where I am).”

Our mission in interviewing was not to argue with him, but to draw him out. We had thirty minutes of his time and we knew that debates would not be productive. It took me a while to jump in. It would occur to me to challenge him on a point, but then I would stop myself after I realized how combative I would sound.

At times, O’Reilly sounded like the sort of dispassionate observer of American politics that we need more of on television: “I think that religious people in America can be persuaded to vote without using biblical references. I don’t think you need to do that; I mean, I think most people understand the separation of church and state, that we run our secular affairs differently than we run our church affairs. I think it’s only the fringe that wants you to be involved with Jesus while you’re running. The Republican Party understands that they need the independents to come back.”

At this point, I’m starting to like him. And then he starts talking about how “hateful” the New York Times is. He quotes a poll that says 46% of Americans call them selves conservative and says that the Times is “an ideological paper. They don’t report the news anymore and they try to social engineer.” He thinks that the Times and many other papers are going down because they are alienating “traditional” people.

This is where I jump in. What about David Brooks, I ask, Isn’t he their pet conservative? This riles him a bit, and I was stunned by what he said next because it sounded exactly like the sort of thing liberals said about the Bush administration and Fox News itself: “If that’s what the New York Times is telling you is a conservative, that’s not true. He’s a moderate. That’s what he is. So they can say whatever they want. They can say, ‘well that’s a Pontiac’ when it’s a Mercedes. They can say that, but we can see what it is.”

O’Reilly continues with his theory that the lack of conservative voices is killing journalism. “Look, Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago—they’re all bankrupt, and they one thing in common: they are all far-left publications, every one of them. You can’t tell half of your readership ‘go get you-know-what.’ Not in this competitive marketplace.”

I jump in again here, and ask him if Katherine Kersten wasn’t still at the Star Tribune. She wrote her last column in January, but I didn’t know that yet. Neither did he. Here, he says the Minneapolis paper is on its deathbed because it had no conservative voices when it clearly did in Kersten. Her rants against taxes and secular humanists weren’t enough to save the ailing paper because journalism’s problems have more to do with the old economic model of print than with a dearth of right wing writers. And he dismisses the much more conservative St. Paul Pioneer Press because it’s so obviously a lesser paper.

My next question was about his show. “How much of your on-air persona is a persona?” I asked. “None,” he said easily. “Okay,” I replied, “because you sound a little different in the office than you do on TV.” He’s not amused. “How so,” he asks irritably. “I don’t know,” I muse, “here you’re more…I hate to say it but you’re more balanced in the office.”

“You have to show that to me,” he insists, “because we’re pretty fair out there. If you watch on a regular basis, we don’t cheap-shot anybody. There are nights when there will be a certain theme, like tonight with this torture memo stuff, which is absolutely a conservative base show tonight. We don’t believe this is good for the country. But there will be other nights when we’ll be doing some other topics that…I get mail that’s saying ‘you’re too conservative’ and I get mail that’s saying ‘you’re too liberal.’ So as long as I’m getting that mail…”

Leaving the No Spin Zone

As the interview continued, my boss's questions got a little tougher, and I got increasingly worried that we would have to leave without photographic proof that we were there. While having a recording of Bill O'Reilly telling us to "shut up" would be priceless, I was really counting on that photo. We got it, and O'Reilly seemed to genuinely enjoy obliging us.

O'Reilly is the quintessential American conservative right now: he's a blowhard, but he's educated. Not William F. Buckley educated, but that level of intellectual rigor started falling out of fashion when Reagan won. O'Reilly is wary of being called conservative, prefering "Independent." It's a way of hedging, of not committing to a party in deference to both journalism and the populist frustration with politics. He enjoys conceding small points to lend enough impartiality to comfortably call himself "fair." Like most wily conservatives of his generation, he's also adept at using classic liberal techniques to argue conservative points (like calling liberals "hateful" of traditional values and accusing the left of refusing to enter into meaningful dialogue).

My fascination with conservatives like O'Reilly is partly good old American celebrity awe. But meeting him gave me the same sort of smirk I get when I watch strangers arguing with each other on the subway. For a moment, I'm able to set aside my own feelings and ideologies and just watch people posturing, puffing themselves up with self-importance and indignation. And then someone will step on my foot and I'm back on the train again, another angry citizen.

Quote of the Day: Michele Bachmann

"I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence."

That's Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, a Republican serving Minnesota's Sixth District (Anoka, Benton, Sherburne, Stearns, Washington, and Wright Counties -- the Northern Metro exurban Twin Cities area stretching west through St. Cloud). She's wrong, of course; as liberals gleefully point out, that last outbreak started under Republican President Gerald Ford. She was talking to the conservative blog coalition Pajamas TV -- see below:



Bachmann, a very conservative Christian who got her law degree from Oral Roberts University, almost lost re-election last November. Her challenger, the unfortunately named Democrat Elwyn Tinklenberg, got a serious boost after Bachmann appeared on MSNBC's Hardball (see the transcript here) accusing Obama of being anti-American. In an exchange that host Chris Matthews seemed to bait Bachmann into, a McCarthy-esque scene, Matthews asks her:

"How many Congress people, members of Congress, do you think are in that anti-American crowd you described? How many Congress people do you serve with? I mean, it's 435 members of Congress."

To which she replies after some hedging:

"What I would say -- what I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think people would love to see an expose like that."

That nearly cost her the election. Watch it below.

Word of the Day: Teabagging

Why are all the liberal pundits laughing at the conservative anti-tax activists who call themselves "teabaggers"? After all, isn't the Boston Tea Party reference pretty clear?

Filmmaker John Waters, director of movies like "Mondo Trasho" and "Pink Flamingos" explained it on the website Boing Boing:

"'Teabagging' is by my definition the act of dragging your testicles across your partner's forehead. In the UK it is dipping your testicles in your partner's mouth. I didn't invent the term or the act but DID introduce it to film in my movie 'Pecker.' 'Teabagging' was a popular dance step that male go-go boys did to their customers for tips at The Atlantis, a now defunct bar in Baltimore."

Ah, that makes sense. What makes it so funny, says Gawker, is that conservatives adopted the phrase themselves.

But by yesterday, the Right had finally caught up. "Teabagging, for those who don't live in a frat house," reads an article on Foxnews.com, "refers to a sexual act involving part of the male genitalia and a second person's face or mouth."

Below, Rachel Maddow covers the teabagging on MSNBC. The most amusing video coverage, however, is Gawker's compilation video.

Obituary: Carl Pohlad

The billionaire owner of the Minnesota Twins baseball team is dead. Without putting too fine a point on it, Minnesotans generally regarded Carl Pohlad with the same esteem they reserved for institutions like Northwest Airlines. We saw him as a necessary evil, and as a miserly figure who disappointed the state over and over again.

As I reflect on the third richest man in Minnesota (his $3.6 billion made him number 102 on Forbes' list of the richest Americans), all sorts of warnings about speaking ill of the dead go through my head. I don't have anything nice to say about this man.

(Nasty obits aren't unheard of: A couple days after Ronald Reagan died in 2004, Christopher Hitchens wrote a pretty scathing piece for Slate called The Stupidity of Ronald Reagan -- I guess he couldn't help himself. This in spite of Hitchens' bizarre turn toward the conservative after 2001.)

While I think it's in poor taste to badmouth dead people -- at least on the ocassions of their deaths -- sometimes obituaries and news accounts romanticize divisive characters. Or maybe that's just a way of justifying this obituary.

Pohlad was no Ralph Engelstad (the infamous North Dakota-born casino baron who used to hold Las Vegas birthday parties for Hitler, and who financed the University of North Dakota's hockey arena only under the condition that they keep the controversial "Fighting Souix" mascot), but he wasn't well-loved in Minnesota either. He's been most famous as the man who constantly threatened to move or sell the Twins.

About a year ago, Murray Chass wrote in the New York Times that although Pohlad was the richest baseball team owner in the country, he seemed reluctant to spend money to keep great players like Torii Hunter and Johan Santana. This after years of trying to bully the state into funding a new Twins stadium. By not investing in the team, by openly stripping the team of some of its better players, he was making it more and more unpalatable for taxpayers to swallow the idea of giving this billionaire a handout.

"The stadium fight was long and divisive," the Minneapolis Star Tribune said in an editorial today.

"In the end, Pohlad and the Twins prevailed, winning almost $400 million in public aid. The amount Pohlad contributed to the stadium deal — more than $145 million — was significant, though not enough to impress stadium critics who called the package a billionaire’s bailout."

It wasn't the fact that Pohlad wanted state money that I find so disgusting. I believe that the state should help with sports stadiums as much as it should help with theaters (the Guthrie), museums (the Walker) and public transportation. It's the way he fought and the threats he made. It's all the cuts he made and the indignance he showed at Minnesotans for not acting grateful after all of his whining.

Pohlad may also be remembered as one of the businessmen who dismantled the Twin Cities' streetcar system in the 50s, a system we are paying a fortune to rebuild now. This isn't quite accurate. Technically, the system, which was run by Twin City Rapid Transit, was dismantled in 1954, and Pohlad didn't take it over until 1959. (It was an investor named Charles Green who started the damage in 1948. His goal was to transition to buses by 1958. And ultimately, this was part of a nationwide trend of train-to-bus conversions allegedly financed by oil interests and GM.) Pohlad ran the TCRT for about ten years.

Was Carl Pohlad just a "regular guy" as his family says? Was he a clever businessman, or was he merely greedy? Did he have a secret life of generous philanthropy that gets obscured by his efforts to save money on the Twins? (He did start the Pohlad Family Foundation, which gives public and private grants to local causes -- $7 million in 2006 according to the website.) One could argue that he bravely stood up to the absurd escalation in pro athlete salaries. And that he saved the Twins in 1984 from previous owner Calvin Griffith, who wanted to move it. But then why did we all feel so lousy about him?

I don't know the answers to those questions, and it seems inadequate to say only that his public was suspicious of him and his intentions. What is certain though, is that his public image was not a rosy one.

Pohlad was 93, and doubtless he had a family that loved him. Yes, it's sad that he's dead, but lived a very full life, one that many of us might envy -- at least on the surface.

Revenge of the Lizard People

25-year-old Lucas Davenport of Bemidji, Minnesota -- not John Sandford/Camp's protagonist from the Prey series of thrillers -- is claiming the above ballot was his. Davenport, if that is his real name, says he wrote in Lizard People as a joke. The ballot has apparently been rejected as a vote for Al Franken, even though Franken was checked for senator and the write-in clearly was not.

Now Davenport's ballot has become national news, with mentions in Hardball with Chris Matthews and the Wall Street Journal. And Gawker has taken to calling all Democrats "Lizard People."

Who are the Lizard People? According to Minnesota Public Radio,

"Lizard People refers to the conspiracy theory there's a race of shape shifting lizards masquerading as humans who rule the world, but Davenport doesn't consider himself a believer."

In a list of the best conspiracy theories about a year ago on Wired.com, the Lizard People made the cut:

Lizard-People Run the World

If a science fiction-based religion isn't exotic enough, followers of onetime BBC reporter David Icke believe that certain powerful people — like George W. Bush and the British royals — actually belong to an alien race of shape-shifting lizard-people. Icke claims Princess Diana confirmed this to one of her close friends; other lizard theories (there are several) point to reptilian themes in ancient mythology. And let's not forget the '80s TV show V.

Laura Bush

The following is from an op-ed piece in the Sunday, November 1 New York Times. A handful of contributors, including Ari Fleischer (who is kind) and Scott McClellan (who is not)--both former Bush press secretaries--talk about what they will miss about the Bush presidency. Curtis Sittenfeld, who wrote the excerpted, is a liberal and a novelist. She wrote a fictional account of Laura Bush and her marriage to George W.

During the last eight years, when I’ve mentioned to people that I’m completely fascinated by Laura Bush, most think I’m kidding. They see her as a traditional wife and mother, a gracious and well-mannered conservative. And while this might, depending upon whom you ask, be an admirable description, it doesn’t tend to prompt fascination. Oh, I say, but there’s so much more to her!

Among my favorite facts: She spent her 20s working at ethnically diverse, low-income schools and was a Democrat until she married George Bush at the age of 31 — after knowing him just 12 weeks. As first lady of Texas, she’d eat at hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurants, shop at Wal-Mart and fly Southwest Airlines to visit friends. In the White House, in addition to organizing literary events that featured writers who have publicly disagreed with her husband’s policies, she has been far more politically involved than people realize — traveling to Africa and the Middle East to raise awareness for, respectively, AIDS and breast cancer, and advocating for the opposition leader of Myanmar, who has long been under house arrest.

Of course, what’s most intriguing to Democrats like me are the suggestions that Mrs. Bush might still be considerably less conservative than her husband: She has said that she does not think Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Asked in 2004 whether she and the president have gay friends, she told a reporter, “Sure, of course. Everyone does.” And earlier this year, Mrs. Bush spoke publicly of her admiration for Hillary Clinton’s “grit and strength.”

I will miss Mrs. Bush not only for keeping me guessing but also for seeming like an intelligent and compassionate presence in a White House not widely recognized for its intelligence or compassion — for being the one person in there whom I’m pretty sure a lot of us would like even more if only we knew her better.

— CURTIS SITTENFELD, the author of the novel “American Wife”

Quote of the Day: Barry M. Goldwater, Jr.

"Barry Goldwater was one of the icons of the Republican Party and, yes, would be unhappy with many of the recent failures from within. I speak about this all the time and how mad I am that Republicans have lost their way. However, we do not find our way back by sheepishly going over to the other side. My father worked to rebuild the party in 1964 by taking it back from the liberal Establishment. He would work to do the same thing today."

That's Barry M. Goldwater, Jr., the son of the famous Arizona Republican Barry Goldwater, who lost the race for the Presidency in 1964 by a landslide. Goldwater Jr. was writing in the Huffington Post, trying to undo some of the damage his niece CC Goldwater did when she endorsed Obama on the same website.

CC Goldwater, who produced a documentary for HBO two years ago called Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater, wrote in her endorsement:

"Nothing about McCain, except for maybe a uniform, compares to the same ideology of what Goldwater stood for as a politician. The McCain/Palin plan is to appear diverse and inclusive, using women and minorities to push an agenda that makes us all financially vulnerable, fearful, and less safe."

Quote of the Day: Terrellita Maverick

“I’m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick."

So said Terrellita Maverick, an 82-year-old descendent of Samuel Augustus Maverick, to the New York Times last week.

As frequent readers will recall, Maverick was my word of the day in mid-September. Maverick came into the English language in the late-nineteenth century, a coinage after the Texas rancher, the aforementioned Samuel Augustus. He was not like other ranchers; he would not brand his calves.

According to the Times, the Maverick family has a history of liberal politics that goes back to the 1600s. And maverick isn't the only word the family has coined. Here's the Times:

Sam Maverick’s grandson, Fontaine Maury Maverick, was a two-term congressman and a mayor of San Antonio who lost his mayoral re-election bid when conservatives labeled him a Communist. He served in the Roosevelt administration on the Smaller War Plants Corporation and is best known for another coinage. He came up with the term “gobbledygook” in frustration at the convoluted language of bureaucrats.

Fontaine's son Maury Jr., who died at 82 in 2003, was a crusading lawyer in the tradition of William Kunstler. He served in the Tecxas legislature in the 50s, and when his colleagues invited Senator Joseph McCarthy to speak, he authored a counter-amendment inviting Mickey Mouse as a substitute. “If we’re going to invite a rat to visit our state,” he said at the time, “why not invite a good rat?”

With a legacy like that, it's no wonder Mavericks are in an uproar over McCain's adoption of the word. A columnist in the San Antonio Express-News, the paper that published Maury Maverick's column for years, wrote an indignant piece in September saying in part:

Unfortunately for McCain, a maverick is not someone who before 2008 occasionally broke with the status quo within his own party by acknowledging the clear threat of climate change and championing the need to give unauthorized immigrants a path to legal residency.

"By definition," the columnist Jan Jarboe Russell continues, "the leader of any political party is not a maverick. Mavericks are loners and more often than not are defined by lost, principled battles."

Terrellita Maverick, the author of the quote of the day, is Maury's sister. She's even more indignant:

“It’s just incredible — the nerve! — to suggest that he’s not part of that Republican herd. Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it again.’

“He’s a Republican. He’s branded.”

McCain Gets Freaked Out By Minnesota Conservatives

Ah, Minnesota. Just as I defend my home state as more progressive, more enlightened than others, some smalltown old lady tells Senator McCain on national television that she's scared of Obama because "He's an Arab."

This is the state that Tyrone Guthrie chose for his theater company based on the high level of education of its citizens. A state that had very high subscription rates for the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's. That was a long time ago.

Yesterday, it seemed even McCain was startled by the dim wits of his fans. It happened at a town hall-style meeting in Lakeville, Minnesota, a city of about 50,000 that lies 20 miles south of Minneapolis. "I admire Obama," McCain said amid boos from the crowd. "I want everyone to be respectful."

Later, one man said, "We're scared of an Obama presidency."

"I have to tell you," McCain said very seriously. "Obama is a decent person, that you do not have to be scared [of] as President of the United States." Here the crowd yells protests. "Now look, if I didn't think I'd be one hell of a better president, I wouldn't be running, okay?" he recovered.

But then it happened again. A wild-haired older woman in the crowd says haltingly, "I can't trust Obama. I have read about him, and he's not, he's not, ah... He's an Arab." Here, McCain starts shaking his head vigorously. "No, no, no," he says. "No?" the woman asks.

McCain takes the microphone from her. "No. No ma'am. No ma'am. He's a... he's a decent, family man citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on, on fundamental issues, and that's what this campaign is all about. He's not," McCain admonished, waving his hand at her dismissively.

Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times, writing about the incident, noted that McCain "did not correct her false depiction of Mr. Obama." I think he was trying to when he called Obama a "citizen" and said at the end, "He's not."

But as Bumiller notes, this is not unusual for a McCain event:

Crowds in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have repeatedly booed Mr. Obama and yelled “off with his head,” and at a rally in Florida where Ms. Palin appeared without Mr. McCain, The Washington Post reported that a man yelled out “kill him.” At the same rally, a racial insult was hurled at an African-American television cameraman.

In McCain's frenzy to get elected, he's been ushering in the same unsavory fringes of the Republican party that William F. Buckley and other tried so hard to purge in the 1950s and 60s. He's encouraged this sort of behavior, and it's finally started to make him nervous.

“I don’t think it’s that big a deal,” his campaign manager Rick Davis told reporters. “I think political rallies have always attracted people who have an emotional connection to the outcome of an election.”

He's right, of course. People behave badly at these things. When Paul Wellstone died two weeks before election day four years ago, his funeral turned into an embarrassingly ugly display of liberal righteousness. Republican senators, in attendance at Williams Arena on the University of Minnesota campus out of respect and held captive by decorum, were booed and made to feel like jerks for coming. And so the election was handed to the suddenly solemn and respectful Norm Coleman.

I don't think undecided voters ever really like negative campaigning. But as the economy worsens, voters start paying a little more attention to what the candidates are saying. They hear attacks and wonder where the solutions are. McCain's use of the Obama's tenuous association with 60s activist William Ayers as an attack tool simply doesn't sway anyone. If Senator McCain has an October surprise, he'd better present it quick.

Watch McCain defend Obama below:

Is Palin Over?

She started out as a deliciously rich dessert for the press: she looks good on camera, did great at the RNC, has the necessary Christian credentials, and has a sort of a frontierswoman/Washington outsider appeal that seemed perfect. But after a couple of big interviews, she's come out as far less appealing. She didn't know what the Bush doctrine was, she thinks being across the water from Russia gives her foreign policy experience and she thinks Alaskan oil makes her an energy wonk when it actually makes her, paradoxically, a welfare state Republican.

Now listen to this -- it's from Kathleen Parker at the conservative National Review:

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true.

What to do?

McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.

Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

Do it for your country.

That's the end of a column that came out today. How can Palin even look like she's speaking the same language as Joe Biden? Conservatives are starting to see this, and it's freaking them out.