The Idea That There Are Sexual Images On MTV Is Shocking… Shocking

Brian Stelter at NYT:

MTV executives have a new hit drama on their hands, featuring the sexual and drug-fueled exploits of misfit teenagers. They also have something else — a fear that coming episodes of the show may break the law.

In recent days, executives at the cable channel became concerned that some scenes from the provocative new show “Skins” may violate federal child pornography statutes.

The executives ordered the producers to make changes to tone down some of the most explicit content.

They are particularly concerned about the third episode of the series, which is to be broadcast Jan. 31. In an early version, a naked 17-year-old actor is shown from behind as he runs down a street. The actor, Jesse Carere, plays Chris, a high school student whose erection — assisted by erectile dysfunction pills — is a punch line throughout the episode.

The planned changes indicate that MTV, which has been pushing the envelope for decades, may be concerned that it pushed too far this time.

“Skins” is a calculated risk by MTV which is eager to get into the scripted programming business. The channel, a unit of Viacom, has long tested American standards for sexuality and obscenity on television with shows like “The Real World” and “Jersey Shore.”

Those reality shows have generally involved adults, but for “Skins,” the producers purposefully cast actors ages 15 to 19, most of whom had never acted before.

MTV’s president and other executives declined interview requests on Wednesday. An MTV spokeswoman, Jeannie Kedas, insisted that the future episodes of “Skins” were still works in progress. She would not confirm that MTV executives were fearful of running afoul of child pornography laws.

Jon Bershad at Mediaite:

According to the article, some MTV executive watched a cut of the show and suddenly freaked out because they were afraid that they had broken child pornography laws. They rushed to have the episode in question edited. And then…just for kicks I suppose…they decided to call up The New York Times to have them report on the whole thing. If you believe that, well, you’re probably pretty naive (no offense!). While I’m sure there’s a possibility that MTV edited a scene from the show after standards and practices got a look at it, I have pretty high doubts anyone was legitimately worried about getting hauled off to jail. No, this seems like nothing but a rumor designed to get a new show some press.

But what does that mean? Basically it means that MTV is now marketing their show with the promise of potential child pornography and the media is helping them. Not only did The New York Times cover this “story” (on the front page!), but a bunch of other media outlets picked it up. Morning Joe did a whole segment this morning that began with Joe Scarborough asking “Why should I be afraid of Skins?” You know there were some good high fives all around the MTV offices when that sentence got uttered.

Shows like Skins have always gotten by on their controversy and the promise of scandalous content. A few years ago, the show Gossip Girl used a brilliant ad campaign that quoted negative and outraged reviews from the likes of the Parents Television Council. However, actually going out and saying the phrase “child pornography” is just so damned cynical. MTV is basically betting that they will get more viewers if people think there are actual naked 15 year olds on this show. They may be right but, God, is it a creepy way to run your business.

So, no, Skins is not child pornography. In fact, it’s a neutered version of the original British show (which, by the way, was actually pretty darn good for two seasons) since MTV isn’t able to feature profanity or nudity.* People are going to say MTV should be ashamed and they certainly should. Not for airing an edgy show, but for trying to profit off the demand for child porn. And anyone who reports this nonsense should feel ashamed for believing it.

Adrian Chen at Gawker:

Of course, the main reason MTV’s target audience will continue to tune into this lackluster remake of the British version is because of its purported edginess. (Tuesday’s premier boasted solid numbers.) And herein lies the problem: How do you make a super-edgy teen drama while simultaneously reassuring some suit back at Viacom that he won’t be carted off as a kiddie pornographer?

Here’s our suggestion: gratuitous violence. Have one of the kids mow down a bunch of pedestrians in an SUV or something—just make sure she’s fully-clothed while doing it.

Erin Brown at Newsbusters:

“Skins” is hypocritical programming for MTV, which has been praised for its portrayalof the reality of teen pregnancy with the hit show “16 and pregnant” and its follow up series “Teen Mom.” The platform of casual sex and living life without consequences as appears in “Skins” stands in direct contrast to the harsh realities that actual teen mothers face and as Michael Inbar for the “Today” show put it, “the often painful resultsof youthful hookups.”

To further entice indecent behavior among teens, the MTV website for “Skins” has launched a new section called, “Where it went down.” Readers are encouraged to anonymously post on a mapof the world where “every kind of trouble” occurred. The website whereitwentdown.com actually encourages posters to “Browse and share the places where memories were made – and the scattered pieces of nights you can’t really remember. Post the truth about the biggest parties, heartbreak, friends, sex, and every kind of trouble.”

Despite the nasty content, one media critic still found a way to praise the show. “‘Skins’ feels raw and gritty… Only the show’s target audience will know how true its portrayal of adolescence is, but it should make many parents pay closer attention to what’s going on in their teenagers’ lives” wrote Amy Amatangelo of the Boston Herald.

Despite its success, the media need to accurately report the consequence-free filth that this show and this network are promoting. Truthful reviews such as this onefrom James Poniewozik from Time magazine can go a long way in exposing the muck of this program.

“There’s far more flesh, swearing and toking on Skins than on the edgiest CW soap, but what may be most shocking to an American audience is how insouciantly it defies teen TV’s unwritten mandate of consequences. On U.S. teen dramas, you can titillate the audience with bad behavior so long as, at some point, there’s a pregnancy scare or a cautionary drug overdose…Skins, like the movies Superbad and Dazed and Confused, instead admits that teenagers seek out sex and drugs because they feel good.”

Juli Weiner at Vanity Fair:

Given MTV’s history of publicity stunts, the network spokeswoman’s claims of Skins’s legality seem convincing. Recall Snooki’s globe-squatting kerfuffle: the Jersey Shore employee was supposedly going to be dropped in a ball over Times Square at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. At the last minute, though, sphere-ensconced Snooki was relocated to New Jersey, as MTV never received permission to conduct the event in Times Square. The ordeal engendered weeks of press coverage.

For other instances of MTV publicity stunts, look no further than nearly every annual iteration of the Video Music Awards, a broadcast that inevitably includes an unforeseen act of animosity (cf. Bruno and Eminem) or adoration (cf. Britney and Madonna).

James Poniewozik at Time:

I’m not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but the concerns seem to stem from the fact that many of the actors who play teens on the show (as in the original British version) are under 18. So while there’s not live sex on camera—having seen four episodes in advance, I actually found the series’ depictions of drugs more unusual for American TV than its sex scenes—the definition of pornography is trickier when underage actors are involved.

As Stelter notes, a picture of a naked minor can itself be ruled child porn if it’s sufficiently sexualized. But the one scene the piece describes executives specifically being concerned about—a male character shown running down the street naked—is not, as I recall, a sex-charged scene. (It’s played, like a lot of scenes in Skins, for a combination of drama and slapstick.)

It raises scads of definitional questions: Does the fact that the actor is shown (but not shown naked) in other sexual scenes therefore make this scene more sexualized? Does the presence of other sex scenes involving other characters elsewhere in the episodes make the scene more sexual? Would the scene constitute pornography if it were, say, an underage actor running naked down a street in a war movie? Are depictions of teen characters in sexual situations inherently pornographic, or does the use of teen actors drive it over the line? What’s dirtier: two adult actors playing teens having sex, or a teenage actor shown naked in a scene that doesn’t involve sex?

Again, not a lawyer. (And I haven’t seen every episode shot, so it’s possible there is other, unmentioned material they’re nervous about.) But I have to wonder, if MTV’s executives are suddenly concerned about the legal liability, how could it not have occurred to them earlier in the process—especially since the use of teen actors has been one of the show’s best-publicized aspects, and since the show was very directly adapted from a British show that already exists for comparison?

Forgive The Blog Post

Brent Baker at Newsbusters:

“I was at – forgive the expression – a Christmas party,” NPR reporter Nina Totenberg interjected on Inside Washington in the weekend’s oddest cautionary separation from a common description for a common event, seemingly embarrassed to invoke any religious terminology for Christmas. She didn’t say what she’d prefer for parties this time of the year to be named. “Winter solstice party”? Just plain old “holiday party”? Or a “seasonal gathering”?

Ed Morrissey:

Via Newsbusters, Nina Totenberg offers another data point for the “war on Christmas” with this odd, offhand remark about attending a Christmas party. What’s to forgive in that expression?  Christmas gets celebrated as both a religious and secular holiday, and a “Christmas” party is about as offensive as eggnog.  Totenberg seems more interested in apologizing to the PC crowd for even mentioning Christmas rather than using a more generic term, such as holiday celebration.

Matt Schneider at Mediaite:

On Sunday’s Inside Washington, NPR’s Nina Totenberg apologized for using the words “Christmas party” in a discussion about budgets. It’s unclear why she became as red in the face as the red Christmas flowers behind her when she mistakenly allowed the “offensive” words to escape from her lips. Yet she does regret that no alternative expression was available to describe the party she attended.

[…]

And please forgive the above-mentioned description of the flowers, I should have referred to them as red poinsettias.

Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit:

Aren’t you just thrilled that your tax dollars – forgive the expression – are paying this loon’s salary?

Don Suber:

Don’t worry. She only insulted Christians, not Muslims so she will keep her job.

Ann Althouse:

Nina Totenberg: “I Was At – Forgive the Expression – a Christmas Party at the Department of Justice….”

Brent Baker at NewsBusters does not understand why Totenberg said “forgive the expression.” In his headline, he uses the same quote I’ve used in my headline, but he puts the ellipsis 5 words before I’ve put mine.

Piss Christ, Part II: Antz

Penny Starr at Newsbusters:

The federally funded National Portrait Gallery, one of the museums of the Smithsonian Institution, is currently showing an exhibition that features images of an ant-covered Jesus, male genitals, naked brothers kissing, men in chains, Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her breasts, and a painting the Smithsonian itself describes in the show’s catalog as “homoerotic.”

The exhibit, “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” opened on Oct. 30 and will run throughout the Christmas Season, closing on Feb. 13.

“This is an exhibition that displays masterpieces of American portraiture and we wanted to illustrate how questions of biography and identity went into the making of images that are canonical,” David C. Ward, a National Portrait Gallery (NGP) historian who is also co-curator of the exhibit, told CNSNews.com.

A plaque fixed to the wall at the entrance to the exhibit says that the National Portrait Gallery is “committed to showing how a major theme in American history has been the struggle for justice so that people and groups can claim their full inheritance in America’s promise of equality, inclusion, and social dignity. As America’s museum of national biography, the NPG is also vitally interested in the art of portrayal and how portraiture reflects our ideas about ourselves and others.

An ant-covered Jesus/crucifix in “A Fire in My Belly” video, part of the ‘Hide/Seek’ exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)

Victor Davis Hanson at Pajamas Media:

Its title is coyly encrypted in postmodern bipolarity: “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.” And the exhibition apparently is full of Mapplethorpe-inspired gay-related imagery and offers us an image of Jesus being swarmed over by ants. Clever, brave, bold, shocking. Or in the words of the overseers of the federally-subsidized National Portrait Gallery, such artistic courage proves how the gallery is now “committed to showing how a major theme in American history has been the struggle for justice so that people and groups can claim their full inheritance in America’s promise of equality, inclusion, and social dignity.”

But once more all that verbiage turns out to be just Sixties-ish lingo for about the same old, same old:

1. Abject cowardice—since if a theme were really religious intolerance, why not portray Mohammed in lieu of Christ, inasmuch as contemporary Islam is far more intolerant of gays and liberated women than the so-called Christian West. Such a video might better exhibit just how “committed” these federal artistic bureaucrats were to “equality, inclusion, and social justice.”
2. Mediocrity—dressing up talentless soft-core pornographic expression with federal catch-phrases and subsidies ensures a venue for junk art that most otherwise would neither pay to see nor ever exhibit.
3. Politics—all this is supposedly sort of revolutionary, full of neat phrases like “committed”, “struggle for justice”, “full inheritance”, “equality”, “inclusion”, and “social dignity”, and all the empty vocabulary that mostly upscale white nerds like a Bill Ayers employ when they want to tweak and embarrass the gullible liberals who support and pay for their nonsense.

The Jawa Report:

If these “artists” really wanted to be daring and controversial, they’d create an ant-covered Quran exhibit. But the cowards take the path of least resistance and then applaud their own courage in the face of minuscule risk.

Don Suber

Ann Althouse:

“If they’ve got money to squander like this – of a crucifix being eaten by ants, of Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her breasts, men in chains, naked brothers kissing…”

“… then I think we should look at their budget,” said Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, scaring the Smithsonian Institution into taking down the ants-on-Jesus video. Cowed, the Institution nevertheless defended the artist, whose “intention was to depict the suffering of an AIDS victim.” The museum assures us it had no “intention to offend.”

John Nolte at Big Hollywood:

Another turn in this story, again via CNS News, and in my opinion a hollow threat from John Boehner and Eric Cantor:

House Speaker-to-be John Boehner (R-Ohio) is telling the Smithsonian Institution to pull an exhibit that features images of an ant-covered Jesus or else face tough scrutiny when the new Republican majority takes control of the House in January. House Majority Leader-to-be Eric Cantor (R.-Va.), meanwhile, is calling on the Smithsonian to pull the exhibit and warning the federally funded institution that it will face serious questions when Congress considers the next budget.

CNSNews.com had asked both congressional leaders if the exhibit should continue or be cancelled and both indicated it should be cancelled. …

“Smithsonian officials should either acknowledge the mistake and correct it, or be prepared to face tough scrutiny beginning in January when the new majority in the House moves to end the job-killing spending spree in Washington,” Smith said.

When asked to clarify what exactly Boehner meant by calling on the Smithsonian to “correct” their mistake with the exhibit, Smith said Boehner wanted the exhibit “cancelled.”

Cantor, meanwhile, said the exhibit should be “pulled.”

I’m sure some on the Left will scream censorship, but this is what happens when an institution takes money from the government, or anyone else. If the Smithsonian depended on big private donors to fund this junk, those big private donors would likely demand a say in what their money’s used for. Same with Congress, and not just in the arts. Whether you’re on welfare or a big corporation receiving subsidies, all taxpayer money comes with certain conditions.

The problem is that there’s no teeth behind this threat. The time to end the grossly immoral practice of funding the arts (and PBS) in every shape, manner and form was sometime between 2002 and 2006 when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the White House. Pardon my cynicism, but if the Republicans didn’t have the sand to do it then, they sure don’t now with even less power; so you can bet the Smithsonian isn’t exactly shaking in their boots.

Jim Newell at Gawker:

Update:

That didn’t take too long. The ant-covered Jesus is now gone. From TBD.com:

The National Portrait Gallery has removed a work of art from a GLBT-themed exhibition after it attracted conservative and religious ire for its images of homosexuality and Christianity. Director Martin Sullivan announced the removal of A Fire in My Belly by artist David Wojnarowicz after conservative news service CNS wrote yesterday that the “Christmas-season exhibit,” which opened in October, used taxpayer money to indirectly fund an exhibition that includes imagery of genitalia, homoerotic situations, and Christ covered in ants.

What’s The Frequency, Katie?

Conservatives4Palin:

As you can see, the video shows Katie Couric preparing to go on the air on the day John McCain announced Governor Palin as his running mate. It shows some tantalizing hints of Couric’s attitude toward the Governor–when talking about first Trig, then Track, Couric says “where the hell do they get these [names]?…” At that point the producer running the sound board shut off the sound because he or she didn’t want to have Couric’s disdainful and contemptuous view of Governor Palin’s children captured on even an internal CBS tape that they never expected would see the light of day. You can tell this by the “OMG!” reaction of the CBS news employees who were in the control room as Couric said that about the Governor’s kids. This video also shows Couric taking a shot at female basketball players and at Governor Palin’s hometown, one of the fastest growing areas in the country, and the fifth largest city in Alaska.

Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit:

In July we found out that hundreds of leftist media members on Journolist were conspiring to alter the results of the 2008 elections in favor of far left radical Barack Obama. Now comes explosive video that Katie Couric was mocking Sarah Palin on the day she was announced as John McCain’s running mate.

Jeff Poor at Newsbusters:

Highlights include the following:

• Couric mocking Palin’s oldest son’s name:  “Her oldest son, 19-year-old Track-Where the hell do they get these [names]?” [laughter] (1:09)
• “She hunts, fishes and eats moose burgers. Her parents, Sally and Chuck Heath, were out hunting caribou when they got the news. You can’t make this up – OK hold on a second. [laughter]” (1:43)
• “I’m saying I’m glad you took out the feminine side because you can be feminine and play basketball, right Jerry?” (1:59)
• Struggles with the pronunciation of the name of the town Wasilla. (4:05)

This isn’t the first time Couric has been caught on camera and the footage leaked out. In 2007, footage of Couric openly mocking her predecessor Dan Rather found its way on the Internet.

Don Suber:

I am not surprised by this clip and Miss Couric comes off as rather small. Apparently it is common for Couric to espouse such views as the soundman repeatedly turns off the sound in mid-snark. We are not witnessing a once-in-a-lifetime act of professional indiscretion.

Lori Ziganto at Redstate:

Note the contempt dripping from her voice when talking about Sarah Palin’s town of Wasilla – one of those pesky bitterly clinging small towns, I suppose. She also mocks the names of the Palin children. You see, politicians’ children are only off limits if you dig their sweet, sweet liberal policy. And, if you don’t think their mom is icky, in which case it is then totally cool to mock children and make them the butt of jokes. She then continues in her oh-so-professional way, perhaps learned from JournoList members, to insult female basketball players. She’s heard jeeringly asking someone off camera “you can be feminine and play basketball, right Jerry?” Perhaps she’s projecting her own insecurities, what with Couric’s own unfortunate hairdo and all. Even her own staff seems to have been taken aback by the volume of her disdain and you can hear someone gasping off camera and another staffer appears to have cut off her sound.

The final product actually wasn’t much better. While it wasn’t outright cattiness, like in the above video, it was still full of veiled disdain. Palin’s professional achievements were only mentioned in a cursory manner and the piece focused more on moose-burgers, beauty pageants and Vogue covers. As usual, that’s an attempt to push the not serious, dum-dum narrative that the press wants people to believe about Sarah Palin. From Day One, the media strove to demean and diminish Palin and it never stopped. We also know that some members of the Press, those in on the infamous JournoList, actually conspired and colluded to do so.

Ed Morrissey:

Couric was hardly the only person to make a snide comment about the tradition of names in Palin’s family, and Sarah Palin herself talked about their efforts to find unique names for their children during the campaign. Couric may have been first, however, even if it was in a presumably off-air moment. People make similar comments about Hollywood celebrities and the names they select for their children, but that usually doesn’t extend to major network news anchors. The comments themselves aren’t an indictment as much as they are a window into the first biases that formed in Couric’s mind, to such an extent that she felt it necessary to share them with her co-workers — and why the McCain campaign bet badly on having Palin give her first major interview to CBS News.

In the wake of the Sherrod disaster, it’s also worth pointing out that this is an edited clip; there is at least one cut in this video, and quite obviously we don’t have everything Couric said off air for context.  It’s entirely possible that Couric also made approving comments about Palin at other moments on that day, which either didn’t get captured or were cut out.  Likely?  Well …

We have contacted both CBS and Governor Palin’s staff for comment on this tape, and will update if we receive any statements.

Update: CBS has an official non-statement statement on the clip through a CBS News spokesperson:  “It must be a slow news day for this video to be getting so much attention.”  We’re hearing from other sourcing that CBS isn’t disputing that this is Couric in an off-air setting, and that they won’t pursue how it got out.

What Happens If We Publish This On Our Cover

Richard Stengel at Time:

Our cover image this week is powerful, shocking and disturbing. It is a portrait of Aisha, a shy 18-year-old Afghan woman who was sentenced by a Taliban commander to have her nose and ears cut off for fleeing her abusive in-laws. Aisha posed for the picture and says she wants the world to see the effect a Taliban resurgence would have on the women of Afghanistan, many of whom have flourished in the past few years. Her picture is accompanied by a powerful story by our own Aryn Baker on how Afghan women have embraced the freedoms that have come from the defeat of the Taliban — and how they fear a Taliban revival. (See pictures of Afghan women and the return of the Taliban.)

I thought long and hard about whether to put this image on the cover of TIME. First, I wanted to make sure of Aisha’s safety and that she understood what it would mean to be on the cover. She knows that she will become a symbol of the price Afghan women have had to pay for the repressive ideology of the Taliban. We also confirmed that she is in a secret location protected by armed guards and sponsored by the NGO Women for Afghan Women. Aisha will head to the U.S. for reconstructive surgery sponsored by the Grossman Burn Foundation, a humanitarian organization in California. We are supporting that effort. (Watch TIME’s video on photographing Aisha for the cover.)

I’m acutely aware that this image will be seen by children, who will undoubtedly find it distressing. We have consulted with a number of child psychologists about its potential impact. Some think children are so used to seeing violence in the media that the image will have little effect, but others believe that children will find it very scary and distressing — that they will see it, as Dr. Michael Rich, director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital Boston, said, as “a symbol of bad things that can happen to people.” I showed it to my two young sons, 9 and 12, who both immediately felt sorry for Aisha and asked why anyone would have done such harm to her. I apologize to readers who find the image too strong, and I invite you to comment on the image’s impact. (Comment on this cover.)

But bad things do happen to people, and it is part of our job to confront and explain them. In the end, I felt that the image is a window into the reality of what is happening — and what can happen — in a war that affects and involves all of us. I would rather confront readers with the Taliban’s treatment of women than ignore it. I would rather people know that reality as they make up their minds about what the U.S. and its allies should do in Afghanistan.

Meenal Vamburkar at Mediaite:

This reasoning follows what many might agree is the definition and purpose of good journalism. The things that are hard to look at are often the things that are most necessary to look at. Whether readers think the cover is bold or too graphic, the shock value cannot be denied. Without diminishing the value of telling a difficult story about a seemingly endless war, it’s hard not to wonder how the shock value will translate in terms of newsstand sales.

Mark Finkelstein at Newsbusters:

The risk that Afghanistan might once again become a staging ground for al Qaeda attacks on the US?  Meh.

The danger of cross-border raids from Afghanistan into Pakistan that could lead to nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists?  Yawn.

But a US withdrawal from Afghanistan that would lead to a setback for women’s liberation there?  Now you’ve got the liberal media concerned!  Rick Stengel of Time gave a perfect illustration of the phenomenon on today’s Morning Joe.  As is his Friday wont, he unveiled the new Time cover, which portrays the heart-rending image of a young Afghani woman who had her nose and ears cut off for fleeing an abusive family and husband.

Max Fisher at The Atlantic with a round-up

Choire Sicha at The Awl:

The story contains this: “As the war in Afghanistan enters its ninth year, the need for an exit strategy weighs on the minds of U.S. policymakers. Such an outcome, it is assumed, would involve reconciliation with the Taliban. But Afghan women fear that in the quest for a quick peace, their progress may be sidelined…. For Afghanistan’s women, an early withdrawal of international forces could be disastrous.” So… which is it? That sure sounds like an argument—and, you know, a very moving and affecting one!—for something like a permanent or at least extended occupation. Making things a little more complicated? The new issue also has an article by expert-without-portfolio Joe Klein, which goes: “Afghanistan is really a sideshow here. Pakistan is the primary U.S. national-security concern in the region.” So now what am I supposed to think while I’m not going on summer vacation because it makes our children stupider?

Irin Carmon at Jezebel:

Such stories are obscene, not at all uncommon, and need to be told. But there is an elision here between these women’s oppression and what the U.S. military presence can and should do about it, which in turn simplifies the complexities of the debate and turns it into, “Well, do you want to help Aisha or not?”

While Aryn Baker’s story features the voices of many Afghan women who worry that the likely compromise with the Taliban vis a vis a possible U.S. exit will curtail their new freedoms, it doesn’t actually forcefully make the case that American military presence is the only solution to their problems. (That’s probably because Baker is a reporter, not a commentator, and it’s the job of headline writers to grab readers at almost any cost.)

There are, however, conflicting signals about how seriously committed U.S. officials are, in the context of an exist plan, to pushing back at the resurgence of the Taliban as it affects women in the country. One anonymous diplomat tells Baker, “You have to be realistic. We are not going to be sending troops and spending money forever. There will have to be a compromise, and sacrifices will have to be made.” On the other hand, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told reporters that women’s rights are a “red line” that won’t be crossed: “I don’t think there is such a political solution, one that would be a lasting, sustainable one, that would turn the clock back on women,” she said, after relative quiet on the issue last year.

Matthew Yglesias:

As David Petraeus put it in his remarks upon assuming command in Afghanistan: “We must demonstrate to the Afghan people, and to the world, that Al Qaeda and its network of extremist allies will not be allowed to once again establish sanctuaries in Afghanistan from which they can launch attacks on the Afghan people and on freedom-loving nations around the world.” That doesn’t say anything about what happens to young girls who flee from their in-laws. Protecting them was not among the things he exhorted his troops to do. And when he addressed himself to the people of Afghanistan he didn’t mention anything along these lines either:

Finally, to the people of Afghanistan: it is a great honor to be in your country and to lead ISAF. I want to emphasize what a number of our country’s leaders recently affirmed – that our commitment to Afghanistan is an enduring one and that we are committed to a sustained effort to help the people of this country over the long-term. Neither you nor the insurgents nor our partners in the region should doubt that. Certainly the character of our commitment will change over time. Indeed, Afghans and the citizens of ISAF countries look forward to the day when conditions will permit the transition of further tasks to Afghan forces. In the meantime, all of us at ISAF pledge our full commitment to help you protect your nation from militants who allowed Al Qaeda sanctuary when they ruled the country. Moreover, we see it as our solemn duty to protect the innocent people of Afghanistan from all violence, whether intended by the enemy or unintended by those of us pursuing that enemy. And we stand with you as we all work to defeat the enemies of the new Afghanistan and to help create a better future for you and your families.

Defend Afghan allies from being targeted by the Taliban. Check. Avoid accidental killing of Afghans by NATO forces. Check. Women’s rights? Not so much.

And you can see this time and again if you look at statements about US policy in Afghanistan from George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Gates, Stanley McChrystal, David Petraeus, etc. We are fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Thus, emphasizing that the Taliban is a group of bad people is often a rhetorical point of emphasis. The Taliban’s poor treatment of women often comes up as a sub-point here to illustrate the theme that the Taliban are bad. But actually altering social conditions in southern and eastern Afghanistan isn’t on the list of war aims.

Greg Mitchell at The Nation:

I  have to ask:  In Time‘s mission to really “illuminate what is actually happening on the ground” has it ever put on its cover close-up images of  1) a badly wounded or dead U.S. soldier  2)  an Afghan killed in a NATO missile strike  3) an Afghan official, police officer or military commander accepting a bribe from a Taliban war lord.  Alison Kilkenny has her own examples here.

No one makes light of the plight of women and children in Afghanistan under the Taliban–and, contrary to Stengel’s claim, many Americans do know about it.  Indeed, liberal women’s groups in the U.S. have raised the issue often and expressed mixed feelings about staying (or even escalating) in Afghanistan because of it.  It’s a serious issue.  And please see the response to Time by the Feminist Peace Network.  Jezebel with another good take here.

But I’d propose here a few alternative, or at least additional,  cover images, all showing Americans here at home,  that Time might go with an upcoming cover on “What Happens If We LEAVE Afghanistan.”  Please supply your own ideas  in the Comments section below.

— A student in a high-tech classroom.

— Workers streaming into a newly re-opened factory.

— A poor black or Hispanic  woman examined by a doctor in a first-class facility.

— A returning soldier embraced by his wife and two kids.

— Solar panels being erected on a huge office building.

Well, you get the idea.  Contribute or take issue below.

“Are You Ready For Some Futbol?!?”

TNR’s world cup blog

Jonathan Last:

It’s happening again.

The most puzzling part of anti-American soccer obsession is that it’s not like Americans don’t like the game of soccer. We all play it at the youth level and–for the most part–have a good time. It’s just that we graduate up to other sports and don’t have much of an appetite for soccer played at the elite level.

And what’s wrong with that? Our interest level in soccer is the mirror image of our interest level in football, which, comparatively few people play at the youth level, but which has great popularity at the professional level.

But the thing is, you never hear football–or baseball, or ultimate frisbee, or tennis, or cycling, or hockey, or curling–or any other kind of fans railing against people who don’t share their passion as if there’s something morally and politically wrong with them. Why is it that soccer fans care so much about what American’s don’t care about?

We’ll never know.

Will at The League:

But despite the thoroughly artificial media blitz surrounding the World Cup and the obnoxious social signaling that goes into American soccer fandom, I’m really looking forward to the tournament. So I thought I’d take a stab at explaining how soccer differs from American sports and why I find its distinctiveness so enjoyable.

Lumping team sports together is a chancy business, but I think there is one important commonality between football, baseball and, to a lesser extent, basketball that distinguishes them from soccer. All three American sports are characterized by short, action-packed intervals followed or preceded by pauses – an inbounds pass that leads to an easy dunk; a pitch that results in a strike that ends an inning; an end-zone reception immediately following a thirty second pause. This is not to say there aren’t fluid sequences in American sports – witness fast-break basketball or baseball’s hallowed triple play. But American teams usually see action in short, frenetic bursts instead of the slower build-up of a good soccer match.

To an outsider, the notion that a two hour football game only consists of 11 minutes of televised action must seem absurd. At its best, however, the pauses accentuate tension and allow for more elaborate plays, more back-and-forth adjustments between the teams’ respective coaches, and a level of athletic execution that would be impossible in a less controlled, faster-paced environment. For the most part, this is a trade-off I can accept. To take another example from American sports, good pitching duels include plenty of pregnant pauses. I don’t think this detracts from the action so much as it heightens the tension of athletic competition.

Soccer has fewer pauses, fewer substitutions, and no timeouts. As a consequence, the manager (coach) has very little opportunity to pause or direct in-game play. Soccer also tends to be more spontaneous, more dynamic, and less scripted. While physical contact or bad execution will sometimes slow the game down to an unbearable pace, the rules of soccer allow for a level of fluidity that would be impossible in an American context (transition-oriented basketball is the only exception I can think of, but that’s  still broken up by frequent timeouts, inbound passes, and the tempo of the opposing team). The build-up to the first Dutch goal in the 1974 World Cup final is a classic example of soccer’s distinctive style – despite a slow start, the Dutch control the ball for over a minute before Johan Cruyf streaks through the defense to draw a penalty kick.

Maybe the contrast between the short, frenetic play of American athletes and the fluid build-up of a European soccer match offers some insight into our respective cultural psyches. But I suspect a more fluid style of play already appeals to American sports audiences. Fast-paced, transition-oriented basketball was the calling card of Magic Johnson and the Showtime-era Lakers. A quarterback-directed hurry-up offense is often the most exciting part of a football match. So if you like fast-paced team competition, give soccer a try. But if the World Cup isn’t your thing, I won’t hold it against you.

Daniel Gross at Slate:

Being a soccer fan at World Cup time in America is a little like being Jewish in December in a small town in the Midwest. You sense that something big is going on around you, but you’re not really a part of it. And the thing you’re celebrating and enjoying is either ignored or misunderstood by your friends, peers, and neighbors. It can be a lonely time. But the World Cup is much bigger than Christmas. After all, only a couple of billion people in the world celebrate Christmas; the World Cup is likely to garner the attention of a much larger audience. Yet in the world’s largest and most important sports competition, the American team, and the American audience, is a marginal, bit player. And for those of us who love the game of soccer and the World Cup, and for the few of us who followed the ups and downs of Landon Donovan’s career, these next couple weeks are likely to be bittersweet.

[…]

Oh, sure, you can find other enthusiasts. A few Slate colleagues pass around YouTube links to the latest sick goal. Urban hipsters are obliged to show some interest in the game, the same way they do in CSAs, and facial hair (for men) and yoga (for women). On the Internet, there’s the high-brow crew over at the New Republic, (which features an ad for a book from Cornell University press on Spartak Moscow), the fine blogs No Short Corners and Yanks Abroad, and a rising volume of press coverage. But there’s nothing like the volume and sophistication of stuff our frères at Slate.fr are doing. If you want to follow the game, wince with every missed shot, and question coach Bob Bradley’s personnel choices, you’ll have to venture into the fever swamps of BigSoccer.com. There you will find some people who live and die with status updates of defender Oguchi Onyewu’s knee. But they’re only avatars.

Following the U.S. national team in the World Cup is a somewhat solitary endeavor in part because the scheduling doesn’t lend itself to social or family watching. Unlike the Olympics, the World Cup is not scheduled or televised according to U.S. preferences—the last time the quadrennial tournament was staged in the Western hemisphere was 1994. To watch the United States’ opening game in the 2002 World Cup, I had to go to the Irish pub across from my New York apartment at 4 a.m. This year the schedule is only slightly better: this Saturday against England at 2:30 p.m. ET, Friday, June 18, against Slovenia at 10 a.m. ET, then Wednesday, June 23, at 10 a.m. ET, against Algeria. Yes, pubs and sports bars will be showing the games. But how many people will leave work, or take the day off, or skip the Little League game or pool party, to sit indoors and watch a soccer match? My guess is that when the U.S. plays England, the bars in New York and Los Angeles will be like Condé Nast in the 1990s—overrun with Brits.

I won’t be there. On Saturday afternoon, I’ll be at a family gathering, one at which I’m confident nobody will be checking scores or talking about the potentially epic matchup with England. I’ll have to tape it and watch it later, most likely alone. At least I’m confident none of my close friends or family members will call, e-mail, or text me with scores or updates, and that I can safely listen to the radio without the result intruding. On the other hand, I might have to shut off my Twitter feed. I follow a few foreigners.

Matthew Philbin at Newsbusters:

Time magazine is leading the “Ole’s” for soccer this year, putting the World Cup on its cover and dedicating 10 articles to the sport in its June 14 issue.

One of those articles proclaimed in the headline, “Yes, Soccer Is America’s Game.” Author Bill Saporito argued that “soccer has become a big and growing sport.”

“What’s changed is that this sport and this World Cup matter to Americans,” Saporito asserted. “These fans have already made the transition from soccer pioneers to soccer-literate and are gradually heading down the road to soccer-passionate.”

Soccer is even in the White House, Saporito pointed out. President George W. Bush was a former co-owner of a baseball team. And although President Obama played basketball, his daughters play little league soccer, and current White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs played soccer in high school and college.

On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on June 3, host Joe Scarborough noted the importance of the World Cup to other countries, but explained that Americans just don’t understand “what a huge sport this is.” Still, he said hopefully, “It is a growing sport in America as well, isn’t it?”

Growing, but not “huge” by any standard. The final game of the 2006 World Cup drew 16.9 million viewers in the United States. While that number may seem respectable, it pales in comparison with the 106 million viewers that tuned in to watch the 2010 Super Bowl. The final 2009 World Series game drew 22.3 million viewers, and 48.1 million tuned in to watch Duke beat Butler in the 2010 NCAA men’s college basketball championship.

A look at game attendance figures is instructive, as well. According to Major League Soccer’s MLS Daily, as of June 7, 2010, the highest drawing pro soccer team, the Seattle Sounders, averaged 36,146 attendees over seven home games. Conversely, the Seattle Mariners baseball team has averaged 25,314 over 32 home games.

The Mariners are dead last in the American League West division, and 24^th in the league in batting average, 30^th in home runs, 27^th in RBIs and 25^th in number of hits. In short, they’re horrible. With a record of 4-5-3, the Sounders aren’t very good either, but they play in a very liberal city, are currently benefiting from World Cup year interest in their sport, and they play a schedule that allows far fewer opportunities for fans to attend.

Another number is Hollywood box office. John Horn of The Los Angeles Times contemplated on June 6 about Hollywood’s lack of a mainstream movie about soccer. In “Why is There No Great Hollywood Soccer Movie?” Horn pointed out that each sport has its own hit movie except soccer.

Robert Costa at The Corner:

When it comes to soccer, I’ll quote Churchill: America, it seems, still has “sublime disinterestedness.”

Michael Agovino at The Atlantic:

During this World Cup, I know there will be kids like me from the Bronx—a soccer wasteland in 1980s; a wasteland period, to some—watching this strange new game and devouring it. Where is Valladolid? Vigo? Bilbao? Cameroon? El Salvador? Algeria? Why does Algeria wear green, Italy blue? Why is it Glasgow Celtic and not the Celtics? Where’s this team Flamengo? Or Corinthians? Why is that skinny man with the beard named Socrates?

They’ll be some curious 14-year-old or 12-year-old or 10-year-old (kids seem so much smarter these days) and maybe they’ll start by bugging their parents for a Kaizer Chiefs jersey. Then, better still, they’ll get the atlas off the shelf, or more likely online, and trace their finger on the computer screen and look for Polokwane and Bloemfontein and Tshwane. Maybe it will take them to the photography of David Goldblatt or to the music of Abdullah Ibrahim (no room for him at the concert last night I suppose), or of the late Lion of Soweto himself, Mahlathini. (Don’t laugh, my first encounter with Joan Miro and Antoni Tapies were from 1982 World Cup posters.) Maybe they’ll learn that the “word,” long ago, was “Johannesburg!”

And they’ll ask questions—why is this stadium named for Peter Mokaba, that one for Moses Mabhida, and who is Nelson Mandela? And they’ll learn and they’ll be obsessed for life.

And that makes me do one thing: smile. Now, may the games begin.

UPDATE: Dave Zirin at NPR

Jonah Goldberg at The Corner

James Fallows

UPDATE #2: Daniel Drezner

UPDATE #3: Stefan Fatsis at Slate

Jonathan Chait at TNR

UPDATE #4: Marc Thiessen at Enterprise Blog

Matt Yglesias on Thiessen

UPDATE $5: Bryan Curtis and Eve Fairbanks at Bloggingheads

She Was There For The Original J’Accuse

Sam Stein at The Huffington Post:

Longtime White House scribe Helen Thomas caused more than a few eyebrows to perk up when video surfaced on Friday of her declaring that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go back to Germany and Poland.

Captured by Rabbi David Nesenoff of RabbiLive.com, the footage made the rounds on mostly conservative and neoconservative sites, with some private complaints that her comments weren’t getting wider play.

Thomas on Friday apologized in a written statement, saying she deeply regretted the comments — which were offered, ironically, during the White House’s Jewish Heritage Celebration.

But even as she was trying to walk back the remarks, calls for her firing mounted. Among the more vocal was former Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, who claimed to have a close relationship with Thomas when he was manning the daily briefings.

“She should lose her job over this,” Fleischer said in an email. “As someone who is Jewish, and as someone who worked with her and used to like her, I find this appalling.”

“She is advocating religious cleansing. How can Hearst stand by her? If a journalist, or a columnist, said the same thing about blacks or Hispanics, they would already have lost their jobs.”

Tim Graham at Newsbusters

Allah Pundit:

It must be sincere. She’s never betrayed any anti-Israel sentiment before, has she?

Helen Thomas issued the following statement today: “I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon.”

I’m satisfied. Who among us hasn’t innocently stumbled into a statement of support for ethnic cleansing when we didn’t really mean it? In fact, that might explain Jake Knotts’s slur on Nikki Haley. He meant to say, “I welcome followers of the Sikh faith to South Carolina,” and it came out “f***ing raghead.” Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, my friends. (Just make sure to cast it at a Jew!)

Rep. Michele Bachmann at Big Government:

Once again the liberal media has shown its true colors! The White House media dinosaur, also known as Helen Thomas has called on Jews to leave Israel and move back to Poland and Germany. This anti-Semitic sentiment has no place in our public discourse. I call upon her employer, Heart Corporation to dismiss her at once! The White House needs to revoke her press credentials immediately.

Her apology is not sufficient, considering her many previous negative sentiments against Israel. Her language is offensive, vulgar and intolerant.

John Hinderaker at Powerline:

Helen Thomas has been a White House correspondent for decades; how many decades, I can’t even guess. She is a hard-core left-winger who thinks Barack Obama is nowhere near radical enough. She is also, frankly, an idiot, and has been humored by White House press secretaries for about as long as I have been alive.

Thomas revealed her lunacy once again last week, when she confided that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go “home” to Germany and Poland. Here is the clip; as usual, Thomas gives hags a bad name[…]

The apology is insincere, of course. Like so many left-wingers, Thomas has a long history of Israel-bashing. Her astonishing historical ignorance is also par for the course on the Left.

I read a news story a year or two ago to the effect that someone was going to make a movie about Helen Thomas’s life. I don’t think it’s ever happened, thank goodness, but here is the funny part: who do you suppose was signed to play the hideous Ms. Thomas? Michelle Pfeiffer. Being a liberal means, I guess, getting your fantasies indulged forever.

UPDATE: A reader writes, “I’m a bit disappointed that you didn’t manage to use the word ‘hagiography’ anywhere.” Touche.

Gateway Pundit

Jason Arvak at Moderate Voice:

When Trent Lott was caught saying things that implied admiration for the racist past of Strom Thurmond, he quickly apologized and began the normal ritual of damage control. Nonetheless, critics hounded him out of office, his apologies ignored.

But now when Helen Thomas is caught saying things that imply the crudest kind of anti-Semitism, her apologies are quickly accepted by some of the same people who refused to even consider apologies from Lott. And the same people who kept pointing out that Lott had apologized now mock it from Thomas.

Why the different treatment? The obvious answer is that Helen Thomas is a heroine of the same side of the ideological divide that loathed Lott. The same pattern can be found over and over in political debates — the same statements or actions that get Republicans harshly condemned get a pass when done by Democrats. If the partisan dominance of the media and blogosphere were reversed to favor Republicans, there is no doubt that the same double standards would run in that direction as well. And what that does is bring into sharp relief the continuing role that double standards have in corrupting and debasing political and social debates.

I suggest a thought experiment. Imagine that Sarah Palin had said exactly the same thing that Helen Thomas did. Would you accept Palin’s apology? Do you think those that are accepting Thomas’ apology would accept Palin’s? Do you think those that are demanding Thomas’ head would demand Palin’s?

The answer to the first question differentiates the principled from the unprincipled. And the answers to the last two show the total lack of accountability from many of those who set themselves up as today’s opinion leaders.

Joe Klein at Swampland at Time:

Helen Thomas’s front-row presence in the White House press room is an honor bestowed by her colleagues, in recognition of her long-time service. She retired as a reporter about a decade ago–and now, at the age of 89, she writes a column for Hearst Newspapers. She is the daughter of Lebanese immigrants and her general views on the Middle East have long been known. Her specific views about Jews became a bit better known last week, when she told them to leave Israel and go back to Europe. This is odious, obviously.

Thomas is a vestigial member of the White House Correspondents Association, an organization that mostly consists of those who cover the White House on a daily basis; most columnists–people like me, for example–are not members, although a smattering of opinion-mongers, even from obscure publications, have somehow managed to get themselves credentialed over the years. So it’s not unprecedented for journalists with odious views to have access to the press room. What is unprecedented is for such a journalist to have a front-row center seat. Thomas should no longer have that privilege. The front row should be occupied by working reporters, not columnists. The WHCA should sanction Thomas by sending her back to the cheap seats. This would accurately reflect her current status as a journalist while preserving her First Amendment right to be as obnoxious as she wants.

UPDATE: Craig Crawford at CQ Politics

Patrick Gavin at Politico

More Stein

UPDATE #2: Helen Thomas retires. Sam Youngman and Emily Goodin at The Hill

Jonah Goldberg at The Corner

John McCormack at The Weekly Standard

Matt Welch at Reason

UPDATE #3: Mark Kleiman

Dana Milbank in WaPo

Roger Cohen in WaPo

Float Like A Butterfly, Scented Candle Like A Bee

Janet Maslin at NYT:

In July 2008 The New York Times Magazine published Zev Chafets’s appreciative profile of a surprisingly candid Rush Limbaugh. There was spontaneity to the piece, perhaps because it had come about only by accident, after Mr. Chafets’s original assignment to write about John McCain (and interview Mr. Limbaugh in the process) fell through. And there was an overriding idea that still holds true: The only way to form a fair opinion about Mr. Limbaugh is to listen to him directly. His pronouncements are distorted and yanked out of context by acolytes and enemies alike.

The article traced Mr. Limbaugh’s background, visited his lair in Palm Beach, Fla., described the impact of his weekday AM radio show on the 2008 presidential campaign and generally captured the heat of the moment. Asked whether any of his thunder had been stolen by Sean Hannity, his fellow talk-radio apoplectic, who was exceptionally aggressive in harping on Barack’s Obama’s connections with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Mr. Limbaugh at first loftily dismissed the idea that he had any competitors. “Things only take off when I mention them,” he told Mr. Chafets. “That is the point.” When Mr. Chafets continued to press the idea of a rivalry, Mr. Limbaugh lost patience. “Write what you want,” he snappishly replied.

A funny thing happened to Mr. Chafets’s reporting on its way to the bookshelf: It got declawed. The ticklish parts (like that touchiness about Mr. Hannity) vanished. It appears that the price of access to Mr. Limbaugh for “Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One” has been the purging of any details that might pique him. Quotations are truncated in ways that make them softer, and the boosterism has been boosted. (How much of a cheerleader is Mr. Chafets? “Republican success in 2010 can be boiled down to two words: Rush Limbaugh,” he wrote in an Op-Ed article in the Times on Thursday.)

In his short, skimpy book Mr. Chafets seems also to have lost his enthusiasm for asking tough questions, digging for facts (his sales and listenership numbers for Mr. Limbaugh’s books and programs come from Cigar Aficionado magazine) and having opinions that fall short of gushing enthusiasm. Anyone wanting to ascribe these qualities to adroit editing should know that even the name of one of Mr. Limbaugh’s wives is misspelled here, as are Hugh Hefner’s and Phyllis Schlafly’s, and that Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America” was not his “Contract for America,” as it is called here. As for Mr. Chafets’s willing playbacks of even the loopiest Limbaugh reasoning, Mr. Chafets speaks for both of them when he says, “Sometimes you don’t want to let logic stand in the way of a good line.”

David Frum at The Washington Post:

So what, if anything, is new and interesting in Chafets’s long-form treatment?

For one, Chafets exposes some disconnects between Limbaugh’s private life and public presence. Chafets has seen more of the pundit’s personal world than any other journalist, and reveals some distinctly grandiose tastes in this self-imagined tribune of Middle America.

“Largely decorated by Limbaugh himself, [his Palm Beach house] reflects the things and places he has seen and admired. A massive chandelier in the dining room, for example, is a replica of the one that hung in the lobby of New York’s Plaza Hotel. The vast salon is meant to suggest Versailles. The main guest suite, which I didn’t visit, is an exact replica of the Presidential Suite at the Hotel George V in Paris. There is a full suit of armor on display, as well as a life-size oil painting of El Rushbo. Fragrant candles burned throughout the house, a daily home-from-the-wars ritual.”

There is a great deal more in this vein, and not a syllable of it is meant mockingly. Yet Chafets also writes the following, with equal non-irony: “Rush wasn’t enthusiastic [about the reelection bid of George H.W. Bush]. Bush struck him as a preppy, country club moderate, an Ivy League snob.”

And this: “[Limbaugh’s] far enemy in 2010 would be the Democrats, but the near enemy was ‘blue-blood, country-club Rockefeller Republicans’ embarrassed by the party’s unsophisticated ‘Billy Bobs’ and consumed with the need to be popular in Washington and the northeast corridor.”

And finally this: “Limbaugh had, for many years, traveled in social reverse, haunted by his father’s admonition that a dropout would never have any real status.”

Chafets quotes Limbaugh telling Maureen Dowd in a 1993 interview, “You have no earthly idea how detested and hated I am. I’m not even a good circus act for the liberals in this town. . . . You can look at my calendar for the past two years and see all of the invitations. You’ll find two, both by Robert and Georgette Mosbacher.” (Robert Mosbacher was secretary of commerce under President George H.W. Bush.) Not two pages later, we hear of Limbaugh’s New York evenings with investment banker Lewis Lehrman, William F. Buckley and Henry Kissinger. And yet the aggrieved subject and biographer are fully sincere in both instances.

Limbaugh has skillfully conjured for his listeners a world in which they are disdained and despised by mysterious elites — a world in which Limbaugh’s $4,000 bottles of wine do not exclude him from the life of the common man.

Heather Horn at The Atlantic

Tim Graham at Newsbusters:

he Washington Post knows how to thrust two middle fingers in Rush Limbaugh’s face. They decided to put a book review of the new Zev Chavets book on Limbaugh on the front page of Tuesday’s Style section, reviewed by….David Frum, the Republican establishment’s leading Rush-hater.

This is a little like assigning a Bill Clinton book review to Jim Clyburn, so he can call him a racist again for 1,000 words. There’s more hate than light. Frum gnashes his teeth hardest late in the review, jealous that he, the wise and humble Frum, is not acknowledged by all as the country’s leading conservative intellectual

[…]

Frum cannot seem to distinguish between intellectual leaders and political leaders. Most people think of Ronald Reagan as a political leader, not as an intellectual leader, and the same is true of Limbaugh. Conservatives in the 1980s weren’t going to elect William F. Buckley or Irving Kristol, but that didn’t mean they weren’t intellectual leaders.

Limbaugh is a great popularizer of conservatism, a very accessible professor of “advanced conservative studies.” He mints new conservatives, and moralizes the troops, old warriors and new recrutis alike, when they get demoralized. Why can’t Frum appreciate him for what he is?

Instead, he relayed how Chafets reports without irony on Limbaugh’s ornate tastes in home decorating and mocks Rush as a faux populist.

Frum responds at FrumForum:

Some replies:

1) Hate, jealousy, etc. are strong words. They are visibly not substantiated by the extract Graham quotes, most of which in turn is quoted by Chafets. My advice to Tim: stick to the facts, omit the mind-reading.

2) It is not I who “cannot seem to distinguish between intellectual leaders and political leaders.” The claim that Limbaugh has displaced Reagan is made by Limbaugh’s enthusiastic biographer, by Zev Chafets, right up there in black and white.

3) Tim Graham describes Limbaugh as a “great popularizer” and asks why I “can’t appreciate him for what he is”? The answer to that question comes from Limbaugh himself, in words quoted in my review but not in Graham’s blogpost. Limbaugh no longer sees himself as a popularizer. He sees himself – in his own words!” as the “intellectual engine” of the conservative movement. Limbaugh sees himself as the successor and replacement to William Buckley and Irving Kristol. If Graham does not agree – and he indicates that he does not – then his problem is with Limbaugh, not me.

4) Why did my review focus on Limbaugh’s ornate tastes in home decoration? For this reason: because that’s what Chafets’ book focused on! The question any reviewer would ask of a newly published biography is: what does it tell us that we did not know before? In the case of An Army of One, it is precisely these personal details that are the news, really the only news. Limbaugh liked Chafets and gave him access to his house and life. Chafets described what he saw in awe-struck detail. At the same time, Chafets captured in multiple quotations Limbaugh’s intense resentments and his avidity for social status. These are not mind-readings, like Graham’s attempt to analyze me above. They are Limbaugh’s own words. And they make for a jarring juxtaposition – and the most arresting thing in a book that otherwise repackages very familiar material.

Legal Insurrection:

The disconnect is on Frum’s part, who apparently does not often listen to Limbaugh’s show. Limbaugh frequently boasts about his wealth, even calling his commecial breaks “obscene profit” breaks. There is no secret here. It’s one of the endearing qualities Limbaugh’s listeners love that unlike Barack Obama, Al Gore and Thomas Friedman, Limbaugh leads his wealthy life without demanding that others don’t aspire to the same thing.

If I didn’t know this was a book review about Limbaugh, there is someone else much more historic about whom this sentence from the review would have applied:

It might seem ominous for an intellectual movement to be led by a man who does not think creatively, who does not respect the other side of the argument and who frequently says things that are not intended as truth.

Scott Lemieux at Lawyers Guns and Money

Doug J.:

I’ve seen this sort of statement a lot and I think it’s weird:

Limbaugh is a great popularizer of conservatism, a very accessible professor of “advanced conservative studies.” He mints new conservatives, and moralizes the troops, old warriors and new recrutis alike, when they get demoralized.Warriors! Troops! Professor! How Rush do so many things at once? And don’t conservatives hate professors anyway?

I’ve tried very hard, but I just can’t wrap my head around the way that some conservatives think of Rush Limbaugh.

Joe Strupp at Media Matters:

I was supposed to interview the author of a new book on Rush Limbaugh. But he backed out, without explanation.

Zev Chafets, whose past writings on Limbaugh have been seen as, well, glowing at best, has a new book: “Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One” (Sentinel 2010).

About two weeks ago, Chafets’ publicist sent me an e-mail offering his time for an interview about the book and saying he could even meet in person if needed.

“Though this isn’t an authorized biography, Limbaugh gave Chafets extensive interviews and access to his inner circle, including Limbaugh’s family and close friends,” the e-mail claimed. “The result is a uniquely personal look at what Limbaugh is really like when the microphone is turned off. Chafets also makes a compelling case for why Limbaugh is the most important and influential conservative in America.”

The most important and influential conservative in America? I had to hear this argument.

We set the interview for 2 p.m. last Thursday by phone.

I should have known early on that it would be a problem.

First, they did not want the interview published until the date the book was to come out, May 25. They also would not give me a copy of it until that day.

Okay, so I am supposed to interview this author about a book that I can’t even read? That’ll work.

They eventually agreed to send me an early copy, but only if I signed a non-disclosure agreement promising not to reveal anything until the publication date. I did not sign the agreement or receive a copy of the book, but Media Matters obtained one elsewhere.

Even so, we agreed and plans were in place for the one-on-one chat today. But last Monday, another e-mail arrived from the publicist.

“I just wanted to follow-up with you quickly to let you know that I need to cancel the phone interview slated for Thursday, May 20 @ 2PM EASTERN with Zev Chafets. Please remove the interview from your calendar and thanks!”

Surprise? Yes. When I e-mailed to ask for a rescheduled time or a reason, all I received was this response: “I wanted to let you know that I received the message to cancel from Sentinel without explanation.”

Sentinel is the publisher of the book, describing itself as the “dedicated conservative imprint” of Penguin Books.

Too bad they canceled because given Chafets’ past work on Limbaugh, this book will likely require some scrutiny.

Dave Zirin at Huffington Post:

This morning on National Public Radio, Rush Limbaugh’s authorized biographer Zev Chafets equated the object of his affection to boxing’s own Muhammad Ali. This is not a joke

As Chafets said, “In the book I compare him to Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali was, in public, a very bombastic guy. And in private people say he was very soft-spoken and that his public persona was just a ramping up of his real personality, and that he did the public persona to gather a crowd. And I think that’s very true of Limbaugh also.”

The historical and ethical problems with Chafets’s comparison abound. Yes, both Limbaugh and Ali belong in a Talkers Hall of Fame and both used a larger-than-life public persona to “gather a crowd.” But Limbaugh used this skill to become richer than Croesus by exploiting fears based upon race, religion, gender, and sexuality. He’s the great exemplar for all conservative media celebrity: revel in bigotry; become unbelievably wealthy; blame liberal media as your quotes are circulated; rinse, repeat.

Ali in contrast sacrificed. He sacrificed millions of dollars, national heroism, and in the end, his very motor functions, because he was a militant opponent of racism and the war in Vietnam. The only thing Ali and Limbaugh have in common is that they both did what they had to do to avoid military service in Nam. The slight difference of course, being that Ali risked five years in Leavenworth while Limbaugh claimed he couldn’t wear the uniform because “pilonidal cysts” (anal abscesses rfrom ingrown hairs”) prevented him from service. To say that they have a lot in common because they are both “big personalities’ is like saying I have a lot in common with Lebron James because we both play hoops.

Here are some other people with “outsized personalities” who Chafets could also have used to compare to Limbaugh; Hulk Hogan, Harvey Fierstein, Benito Mussolini… the choices are really endless. So why choose Ali? I fear that Chafets chose Ali for the same reason that Tom Horne, Superintendent of Arizona schools, said he was moved to abolish the Tucson ethnic studies program: because “Martin Luther King gave his famous speech in which he said we should be judged by the quality of our character, rather than the color of our skin.”

This is one of the right’s favorite strategies: defend the indefensible by cloaking arguments with the martyrs of the black freedom struggle. This might be effective rhetorically, but it requires debasing history for political expediency. I wouldn’t expect much more from Horne or the Texas School Board or any of the know-nothings who wear their ignorance like badges of honor in the culture wars. But I’d expect more from Chafets who wrote a terrific expose of the Baseball Hall of Fame last year called Cooperstown Confidential.

Andy Alexander, The WaPo ombudsman:

The Post wasn’t looking for someone neutral when it chose David Frum to review a new book on conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh. And that has raised the question of whether Frum was too biased to be fair.

Frum, himself a well-known conservative commentator and speechwriter for President George W. Bush, wrote a controversial Newsweek cover story last year arguing that Limbaugh’s strident rhetoric was hurting the Republican Party.

“Rush Limbaugh is a seriously unpopular figure among the voters that conservatives and Republicans need to reach,” Frum wrote. “From a political point of view, Limbaugh is kryptonite, weakening the GOP nationally.”

That assertion sparked a nasty quarrel among conservatives that pitted Limbaugh and his followers against Frum.

[…]

Post Book World Editor Rachel Shea said she was unaware that Frum had written last year’s critical Newsweek piece, which was headlined: “Why Rush is Wrong.” But she said she was aware of debate Frum had stirred over how the GOP could best position itself with voters. And she said The Post chose Frum precisely because “it’s no surprise where he was coming from.”

“There was no way we could find someone who didn’t have an opinion” about Limbaugh, she said. “In the absence of finding someone who is completely dispassionate, we decided to go with somebody who people know.”

But should Frum’s review have noted his past pointed criticism of Limbaugh, for those readers who were unaware? “I suppose we should have,” Shea said. “

I agree. Limbaugh is a fascinating figure to many readers, regardless of their ideological orientation. Not everyone is aware of the feuds within the conservative movement. In this case, transparency is important for those coming to the review without prior knowledge of the Frum-Limbaugh clash.

Frum’s Style section review said the book adds little to what already is known about Limbaugh. But while it is not an authorized biography, he noted that Chafets had been given extraordinary access to Limbaugh.

Max Fisher at The Atlantic:

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has become such a controversial figure that everything from his health to his investments to his favorite music can draw furious criticism. So it will be interesting to see if this surprising detail of Rush’s life inspires a similar firestorm: He loves scented candles. That detail is revealed in a new biography by New York Times Magazine writer Zev Chafets, as reproduced in David Frum’s Washington Post review of the book:

Largely decorated by Limbaugh himself, [his Palm Beach house] reflects the things and places he has seen and admired. A massive chandelier in the dining room, for example, is a replica of the one that hung in the lobby of New York’s Plaza Hotel. The vast salon is meant to suggest Versailles. The main guest suite, which I didn’t visit, is an exact replica of the Presidential Suite at the Hotel George V in Paris. There is a full suit of armor on display, as well as a life-size oil painting of El Rushbo. Fragrant candles burned throughout the house, a daily home-from-the-wars ritual.
Balloon Juice blogger DougJ, who pulled out the strange detail, quips, “Colbert is going to have a great time with this.”

Frumforum has Limbaugh’s response to Frum

UPDATE: Matt Lewis at Politics Daily

Poetry Night At The Blogosphere With Dave Weigel And Sarah Palin

Ben Smith at Politico:

Sarah Palin, guerilla Facebook warrior, turns the tables a bit on the author Joe McGinniss — best known for his Nixon campaign account, The Selling of the President, and for the murder investigation Fatal Vision — who, she says, has rented the house next door.

Palin, in a recurring preoccupation, suggests that McGinniss is really there to peep at her young daughters, noting that his property overlooks “Piper’s bedroom, my little garden, and the family’s swimming hole.”

Needless to say, our outdoor adventure ended quickly after Todd went to introduce himself to the stranger who was peering in…

Joe announced to Todd that he’s moved in right next door to us. He’s rented the place for the next five months or so. He moved up all the way from Massachusetts to live right next to us – while he writes a book about me. Knowing of his many other scathing pieces of “journalism” (including the bizarre anti-Palin administration oil development pieces that resulted in my Department of Natural Resources announcing that his work is the most twisted energy-related yellow journalism they’d ever encountered), we’re sure to have a doozey to look forward to with this treasure he’s penning. Wonder what kind of material he’ll gather while overlooking Piper’s bedroom, my little garden, and the family’s swimming hole?

Welcome, Joe! It’ll be a great summer – come borrow a cup of sugar if ever you need some sweetener. And you know what they say about “fences make for good neighbors”? Well, we’ll get started on that tall fence tomorrow, and I’ll try to keep Trig’s squeals down to a quiet giggle so we don’t disturb your peaceful summer. Enjoy!

UPDATE: I haven’t been able to reach McGinniss, but did send an errant email to his son, the novelist Joe McGinniss Jr., who replied, “Sadly, she’s right. We tried our best to intervene, but alas, the heart wants what it wants. We can only pray for him now. He’s convinced that Todd will step aside and when the time is right, he’ll be there, right next door, to pick up the pieces.”

The Mudflats:

While there is no indication that McGinniss planned to publish photos or information about the personal lives of the Palin children, Sarah Palin has responded to the discovery of her famous neighbor in classic Palin style.

When I said “classic Palin style,” if you immediately thought “wild, inappropriate over-reaction” you can give yourself a gold star.  And if you guessed Facebook rant, give yourself another one.  This one was just too big for the Twitter limit of 140 characters.  With twitchy forced nonchalance, she offers to bake him a pie, offers to lend him sugar and says she’ll keep her youngest son Trig quiet so McGinniss can enjoy his summer of peace and quiet while she constructs a giant fence.  In this monologue, which is worthy of every “crazy neighbor” character ever penned, she also speculates (somewhere between the pie and the sugar) that he’ll be spying in Piper’s bedroom window, and watching her do the gardening while wearing skimpy summer clothing. It’s quite something.  Reading it is kind of like watching someone spontaneously combust.

And in a brilliant move, to attempt to show how intrusive he’s going to be, and how much he will invade her privacy, she has actually published a picture of him sitting on the far side of the deck, minding his own business. You know… to show how inappropriate he is for whatever it is he might or might not do at some time in the future.  Maybe.  You know, like taking a creepy spy picture of her that she doesn’t know about and then publishing it online to a hostile audience and asking for comment.  He would sink that low, wouldn’t he.  Some people…

Jack Shafer at Slate:

Where do I go to advance-order a copy of Joe McGinniss’ forthcoming book about Sarah Palin?

Obviously my desire to put money down is premature, as the book isn’t supposed to come out until 2011 and Amazon has yet to post a standing page for it. For all I know, McGinniss hasn’t even written a first chapter. Yet I must find some way to commend the writer for an act of journalistic assholery—renting the house next door to the Palin family in Wasilla, Alaska, from which he is going to research and write his book—that honors a long tradition of snooping.

[…]

In calling McGinniss’ ploy “assholery” I intend no disparagement. I admire his determination to get the story and have no problems, ethically or morally, with him getting as close to his subject as possible—even if his technique seems a little stalkerish. Besides, there’s a long journalistic tradition of wearing sources and subjects down until they surrender … of knocking on the door of a grieving family to ask them, “How do you feel?” … of feigning friendliness to gain access … of crossing police lines in a brisk manner that implies a right to be there … of charming sources’ families, friends, or colleagues in order to get closer to them … of frequenting a subject’s favorite bar, place of worship, and subway stop until he cracks.

Take, for example, the camera ambush, which is at least as intrusive as moving in next door to a subject. But few protested Mike Wallace’s practice of chasing reluctant subjects with a camera crew after they refused to sit down and talk with 60 Minutes. After Wallace came Michael Moore, who became expert at waylaying the unexpecting in unexpected places. The strategy was largely tolerated by the journalistic culture until the boys and girls at The O’Reilly Factor started ambushing “high school principals, lawmakers, journalists and celebrities,” as the New York Times put it. Only then did people start thinking it was creepy.

Still, McGinniss’ stunt will outrage those who believe reporters should get close but not too close, who believe that there is something sacred about an individual’s place of residence, who would prefer reporters to behave more like Boy Scouts and less like gumshoes.

Taking up residence next to Palin doesn’t even approach violating her legal right to privacy. She has no legal right to blind eyes looking at her property from an adjoining property or even from the street. If McGinniss didn’t live next door, he’d be completely within his rights to interview Palin’s neighbors about her. In fact, he’d be remiss if he didn’t grill them about her.

Ken Shepherd at Newsbusters:

Even if one accepts that as a justification, Shafer failed to address what potential blowback that approach might have in the marketplace. Indeed, Shafer saw no potential drawbacks for McGinniss, predicting that the liberal author would most certainly “debut in the [New York] Times best-seller list.”

Of course this appears to be an unprecedented move in the history of modern American politics, but it should be instructive to see if Shafer sings a different tune if in the future a conservative writer would literally move next door to an unsuccessful Democratic vice presidential candidate.

After all, John Edwards certainly ginned up a juicy story or two after his 2004 run.

Foster Kamer at Village Voice:

Oh, Slate: where the writing is endlessly contrarian, in extents ranging from the hysterically absurd to the spot-on to the shamelessly loony. Which is why Slate editor Jack Shafer’s defense of mortal Sarah Palin press enemy, Joe McGinniss – who has employed every tactic of what Shafer refers to as “journalistic assholery” under the sun to get his stories – doesn’t come as much of a surprise. That doesn’t make it any less wonderful.

[…]

Shafer’s not wrong, and of course, there’s a line (there always is). Question, though: Will consumers ever not pick up a piece of news to take in based on the methods a reporter took to get it to them? Historically, no. Then again, consumers never had the information on how those stories came to them like they do now. Think of torture methods: We want the information to protect our government, but at what cost? The public wants the truth, but are they willing to create uglier truths in order to get what they desired in the first place?

In a casual estimation: Yeah, probably.

David Weigel, back on the Palin blog post:

I saw Ben Smith flag this earlier today but did not really appreciate how strange and, frankly, immature Palin’s post was until I read it.

Palin informs her readers that McGinniss is “overlooking my children’s play area” and “overlooking Piper’s bedroom.” Alternately sounding angry and mocking, she refers to “the family’s swimming hole,” which at first reference sounds like she’s accusing McGinniss of checking out the Palins in their bathing suits, until you realize the family’s “swimming hole” is Lake Lucille. And she posts a photo of the space McGinniss is renting, captioning it, “Can I call you Joe?”

Can somebody explain to me how this isn’t a despicable thing for Palin to do? She describes McGinniss as the author of “the bizarre anti-Palin administration oil development pieces that resulted in my Department of Natural Resources announcing that his work is the most twisted energy-related yellow journalism they’d ever encountered.”

Another way of putting it would be that McGinniss is an investigative journalist who wrote his first best-seller at age 26 and was shopping a book about Alaska and the oil industry when Palin was named John McCain’s running mate. And another way of describing those “bizarre” pieces is that no one has ever challenged the facts in them.

Palin, who has an undergraduate degree in journalism, should understand that articles don’t become untrue when the subjects don’t agree with them.

Has McGinniss gone to an extreme to get a story? Well, we don’t have his side yet — not that this has prevented every other media outlet from typing up Palin’s Facebook post like some lost Gospel. But assuming he’s rented the house near the Palins for some period of time, assuming the Palins know he’s there and that he’s writing a book, then what, exactly, is wrong with this?

Politicians don’t have veto power over who gets to write about them, or how they research their stories, as long as they’re within the bounds of the law. It’s incredibly irresponsible for them to sic their fans on journalists they don’t like. And that’s what Palin is doing here — she has already inspired Glenn Beck to accuse McGinniss of “stalking” Palin and issuing a threat to boycott his publisher.

This is really the ultimate example of the way Palin manipulates the press and inverts the relationship between reporters and politicians, turning the former into “stalkers,” and the latter — as long as they’re Republicans or members of her family — into saints whom no one can criticize. No one in the media should reward Palin for this irresponsible and pathetic bullying.

Greg Sargent:

In fairness, McGinniss is doing something a bit unorthodox, and for that reason this particular standoff is perhaps somewhat newsworthy. But more broadly, as long as Palin isn’t an actual candidate for public office, at what point do we stop rewarding every statement from Palin, no matter how vicious or mendacious, with attention? Should there be such a point?

That’s a real question, by the way. I’d love to hear what other reporters and editors have to say about this.

Erick Erickson at Redstate:

Unlike a lot of my friends, I really don’t have a problem with Dave Weigel. He is what he is. Referred to the Washington Post by Ezra Klein as someone competent to cover conservatives (a bit like Lenin making staffing decisions at the Wall Street Journal for someone competent to cover capitalists, or setting up Mearsheimer and Walt as the heads of the NYT’s Israel bureau), Weigel’s primary job has been described to me on several occasions by so many people in the same basic terms as to make me think it is in fact his actual job description: “to report on groups and people on the right who should be viewed as fringe.” At least, that is how one Washington Post employee described the job. Another DC journalist described it as, “His job is to mock tea party foks as racist crazies if they criticize Obama.”

He seems like an affable enough guy. We trade emails and I’m happy to help him on stuff on occasion, but this latest post of his is precisely why I don’t take him seriously — I won’t even get into his twittering that shows total disdain for social conservatives who make up a very large part of that group he is supposedly covering from the inside.

A reporter moves in next door to Sarah Palin — a reporter with a negative history reporting on Palin — and Palin takes to Facebook to complain about the rather stalkerish vibe of this reporter taking up residence right next door to snoop on the family. This is the same reporter who once tried to get into a charity contest where he bid $60,000 to have dinner with Palin. Imagine if you had someone like that move in next door to your family and say they were going to write a book about being your neighbor. We all know that’s exactly what this guy is going to do.

But Weigel, along with a host of other reporters in DC, is going after Palin for being upset about it.

Melissa Clouthier:

Like Erick, I like Dave Weigel–in the same way I liked the trained Siberian Tigers at the Sigfried and Roy show: they look interesting and exotic, but are extraordinarily dangerous–as poor Roy learned the hard way. A journalist is a wild animal with an appetite for conservative meat and should be interacted with that way–always.

I do not expect Dave to be unbiased or fair. I do not expect him to defend a conservative point-of-view, ever, and therefore, I’m not disappointed or offended when he snaps off some pithy, demeaning, diminishing remark about conservatives or conservatism generally.

When he says something sufficiently irritating, I might respond, but mostly, I suppress the urge as it’s useless. Joking at a conservative’s expense and yucking it up is easy peasy. Everyone does it. So trendy.

So no, I don’t take Dave Weigel seriously. I think he’s a gifted writer and has interesting insight. He has an sophisticated mind and I enjoy talking to him. But he’s as ideologically left as the rest, he’s just willing to lower himself to hang with the natives from time to time. And he’s welcome to do so. Conservative people treat him with more kindness because he is willing to at least publicly view conservatives as a species of human. When it comes down to it though, his reporting sounds like reports from the out-back bush.

Dave Weigel with some of his mail

Kate Pickert at Swampland at Time:

Obviously, this is a free country and anyone has a right to rent any house they want. But, as Ben Smith points out, this shouldn’t prevent Palin from saying she finds it annoying that a journalist has moved in next door, which is the general gist of her Facebook post. Additionally, I find it interesting that Weigel—who has done great work covering the day-to-day goings on in the populist right—seems angry that Palin is “bullying” a journalist who’s writing a book about her.

Isn’t this what a journalist writing a critical book about a subject should expect? To be bullied and boycotted by supporters of the subject? This is not new. What is new is the way Palin chose to react to McGinniss’s move. Rather than hunker down and use back channels and legal threats to stymie McGinniss’s work – as public figures have historically often done in cases like this – she’s using Facebook to bring it all out into the open.

Eleanor Barkhorn at The Atlantic:

Sarah Palin made a reference to Robert Frost in a Facebook note this morning—but she missed the American poet and former Atlantic contributor’s point. Reacting to news that a man planning to write a critical book about her is about to become her next-door neighbor, the former Alaska governor echoed the 1915 poem “Mending Wall,” whose refrain is “good fences make good neighbors”:

And you know what they say about “fences make for good neighbors”? Well, we’ll get started on that tall fence tomorrow, and I’ll try to keep Trig’s squeals down to a quiet giggle so we don’t disturb your peaceful summer. Enjoy!As Andrew Sullivan points out, however, Palin’s desire for a tall fence is completely contrary to the spirit of Frost’s poem. “Mending Wall” is a polemic against building walls that separate us from our neighbors—the poem opens with the line,”Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” and goes on to describe the narrator’s attempts to talk his neighbor out of putting one up.

This back-and-forth sounds eerily similar to a plotline from The West Wing— the now-defunct NBC series that has been eerily prescient before. In the show’s fourth season, a Republican campaign strategist misuses the “good fences make good neighbors” line, inspiring some literary-minded White House staffers to set the record straight:

JOSH
Here he quotes Robert Frost. “Good fences make good neighbors.” Did he talk about that?

DONNA
Yeah.

JOSH
What did he say?

DONNA
Basically, that if you stay within your personal space, you’ll end up getting along with everyone.

JOSH
You had to study modern poetry.

DONNA
Yes.

JOSH
Is that what Frost meant?

DONNA
No, he meant that boundaries are what alienate us from each other.

JOSH
Why did he say “Good fences make good neighbors?”

DONNA
He was being ironic.

Shannyn Moore at Huffington Post:

It’s been a few days since the Palins learned Joe McGinniss moved in next door. Love thy neighbor as thyself, then build a fence.

“Fences make good neighbors,” promised her Facebook blog. Not sure at which of the five colleges Palin studied Robert Frost’s Mending Wall , but I think she missed the point. Perhaps it was the, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” part.

Within a few hours Sarah had launched a “Joe The Stalker/Pervert” campaign. Glenn Beck called for a boycott of Random House publishing, and Random House held their ground. The Paliban swarmed with comments of “stalker”, “reload”, “let’s burn it to the ground”, and “get ’em, Todd”. The following morning the Palins super-sized their fence. The “waterin’ hole” must be defended.

Joe the Neighbor should have told Todd he was writing a book about Russia and heard he could research from his porch. He didn’t.

But why the outrage now?

The home Joe McGinniss is renting used to be an Oxford House from 2005 until 2008. The tenants were men recently released from prison who were recovering addicts. What? No fence to protect sexy Sarah in her tank top? Dear God! Who was lurking in that house watching her children play?

The Palins themselves rented the home McGinnis is staying in for six months in 2009, but weren’t interested in purchasing it. They didn’t want to spend the money. Last October they were “done with the house”. During the election, the Secret Service guarded the Palin home from the backyard now occupied by Mr. McGinnis. Here’s a hint, Sarah – if you want to dictate who lives in the house, you should have probably bought it first.

It’s predictable Palin.

UPDATE: Dave Weigel

Tear Your Eyes Away From The Gulf Coast And Times Square For Just One Moment

Ron Hogan at Popular Fidelity:

In one of the most shamefully underreported stories so far, the fatal flooding in Nashville, Tennessee, continues to get worse as the river approaches its crest.  The entirety of downtown Nashville had to be evacuated, including 1500 people from the Opryland Hotel.  The flood waters from the storm system have caused the deaths of 17 people in Tennessee alone, plus more in Mississippi and Kentucky (fortunately there’s been little flooding in Louisville, just storms).  The entire Middle Tennessee area is paralyzed by massive flooding, mud slides, and general destruction.  It’s awful.  The best coverage, though, is the local coverage, as compiled by Nashvillest.

When riots for democracy hit Iran, Twitter was an invaluable resource.  Over the last day, as I struggled to slay the technical demons besieging PopFi, Twitter was the most useful resource for all my friends and family in Music City to keep abreast of the situation in real time. Fortunately, they’ve all made it out safely, though I had a couple of sleepless nights in the process.

Jen Doll at Village Voice:

Add to our End Times Watch record rains and 50-feet-high-and-rising waters in Tennessee. The flooding has led to evacuations of downtown Nashville, including some-1,500 guests at the Gaylord Opryland Resort, and caused 21 or more deaths in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi.

The Cumberland River was expected to crest Monday afternoon at more than 11 feet above flood stage, and officials worried they may find more bodies in the rising floodwaters, reports the AP.

Electric power has been cut off to about 14,000 customers, and one of the city’s two sewage treatment plants has been submerged, requiring residents to minimize water use except for drinking and cooking. One shopping center employed boats to do rescues in the parking lot yesterday.

Many homes were flooded to the rooftops, and although the rain has ended, officials anticipate weeks of cleanup.

“The news accounts of the Cumberland River rising today, with such bright blue skies, are quite disturbing,” reports one Nashville resident. “We’re watching on television as the huge Opryland mall and convention center (plus the Grand Ole Opry house) become flooded by the rising river. It’s that eerie Katrina-like sunny day after the storm where the rising waters cause even bigger problems.”

Claire O’Neill at NPR:

On Facebook I’ve seen an outpouring of photos from friends and family, and it really is unbelievable. Weekend storms poured more than 13 inches of rain in two days, resulting in a swift rise in the Cumberland River. By Tuesday, the death toll has reached 18 in Tennessee.

People have lost cars and homes – and Nashvillians watched waters inundate their beloved Grand Ole Opry. Fortunately, the Ryman Auditorium and the Station Inn were not flooded. But as Nashvillian RJ Witherell wrote on Morning Edition‘s Facebook page, “Doubt Bob Dylan ever thought Nashville’s Skyline would look like this.”

Randy Lewis at The LA Times:

I just rang up country musician Marty Stuart, one of the mainstays of the Grand Ole Opry, to find out how bad the flooding in Nashville is to the Opry’s home of the last 36 years. He had two words:  “It’s biblical.”

An Opry member since 1992, Stuart said he hasn’t been through the facility yet — “The river just crested last night” — but was told by Opry officials that water is chest deep. “They’ve just been through it in a canoe. I think that tells you all  you need to know.”

“It’s a profound sense of loss,” said Stuart, who took over the dressing room assigned to Porter Wagoner after the longtime Opry star died in 2007. He said he doesn’t have high hopes for recovering a rhinestone-bedecked tapestry he kept in that dressing room. The tapestry was fashioned out of what was to have been a new Nudie Cohn-style suit that was being made for Wagoner when he died.

“There was plenty of artwork, lyrics, artifacts, Nudie paraphernalia, Nudie boots and belts — we will test the power of the rhinestone against the mighty waters,” Stuart said.

“We’ve all been affected by it,” singer and songwriter Dierks Bentley told the Associated Press on Tuesday, after canceling performances over the weekend to deal with less-serious flooding at his own house. “There’s devastation all over the city. But to see the Grand Ole Opry affected, that just really hit home for me, even more than having water in my house.”

The Grand Ole Opry show itself, however, “will go on,” Stuart said. Tuesday night’s performance is being shifted to Nashville’s War Memorial Auditorium, a former home of the Opry, and on the weekend, it will move to its historic home at the Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville, where the show originated for decades before the current Opry House opened in 1974.

Huffington Post:

Nashville is struggling to recover from a massive flood that has inundated historic areas of that historic city. A record-breaking storm caused flash floods, forcing residents to flee the city as quickly as possible. They are now returning to survey the devastation and look for survivors. So far there have been at least 29 fatalities. Read more on the flood here.

One YouTube user made a montage of photos of the destruction throughout the city, overlaying the Johnny Cash song “Five Feet High and and Rising” on the montage. It’s quite moving.

UPDATE: Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters

Andrew Romano at Newsweek

Ed Morrissey

Michelle Malkin