Stephen Colbert's Op-Ed Column

Of Interest to the Colbert Nation:

Stephen Colbert struck again with his October 14 Op-Ed piece in the New York Times entitled I Am An Op-Ed Columnist! (And So Can You!). As usual, there are some great passages that arrive at sharp criticism through Bill O'Reilly's looking glass:

Well, suddenly an option is looming on the horizon. And I don’t mean Al Gore (though he’s a world-class loomer). First of all, I don’t think Nobel Prizes should go to people I was seated next to at the Emmys. Second, winning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don’t need to care about science, literature or peace.

And of course there's plenty of Colbert's signature comic word-play; he pushes his metaphors, like his conservative punditry, to their extreme but logical conclusions:

Our nation is at a Fork in the Road. Some say we should go Left; some say go Right. I say, “Doesn’t this thing have a reverse gear?” Let’s back this country up to a time before there were forks in the road — or even roads. Or forks, for that matter. I want to return to a simpler America where we ate our meat off the end of a sharpened stick.
Let me regurgitate: I know why you want me to run, and I hear your clamor. I share Americans’ nostalgia for an era when you not only could tell a man by the cut of his jib, but the jib industry hadn’t yet fled to Guangdong. And I don’t intend to tease you for weeks the way Newt Gingrich did, saying that if his supporters raised $30 million, he would run for president. I would run for 15 million. Cash.

All this comes as a telephone poll conducted by Rassmussen Reports shows that 13 percent of Americans would support Colbert if he were a third party candidate pitted against Hillary and Giuliani. A facebook group called "1,000,000 Strong For Colbert" has more than 1,000,000 members, while an equivalent Obama group has some 390,000.
All harmless fun, except for a bit of a snafu about campaign finance laws that may have had some bearing on Fred Thompson's campaign had it not been discovered that he is actually a toaster oven.
Still, what does this show about the electorate? Isn't 2008 supposed to be the year the Dems strike back, take the presidency and right our capsized ship of state? Aren't we liberals supposed to be angry and determined to find a political solution to horrendous political problems? Yet in the first poll that included Colbert 2.3 percent of Democrats said they would vote for the comedian in the primaries--more than for Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gavel.
You could say the polled Dems are just being ironic in that effete urban elitist way that conservative pundits, real and fake, love to hate. Or they just don't care that much about polls. But do you think that anyone in the 1968 election would have had enough time to be ironic when it was widely felt that the nation was off course? Actually, there was a comedian write-in candidate: Pat Paulsen, who ran in five presidential elections between 1968 and 1996 and actually got 200,000 votes in the 1968 election. It therefore can't be the seriousness of the times that deters people from voting for throwaways.
What can be the meaning of Paulsen and Colbert's numbers? People who voted for Paulsen and declare their support for Colbert can't be wholly joking. I think they are rather venting their frustration about the critical lack of choices in politics. And I tend to agree with them. It's way past time to seriously consider third party options. I simply don't think either party will deliver exactly what many people want.
On the upside, I'm pretty confident that we'll at least have a Democrat in the oval office, since the Christian Right appears splintered. With the loss of that major voting bloc, I don't think a Republican candidate has a serious chance. Any thoughts?

Machiavelli on the Volga

Of Interest to the Kremlin's Censor:


One of the issues on the table of tonight's "McLaughlin Group" was Putin's recent move to consolidate power by announcing that he will run for--let's face it, he will be--prime minister. Putin will probably have his faceless crony Zubkov have the presidency, then appropriate his powers, or, maybe, have him meet with a "little accident". The prime minister is next in line should the president be incapacitated.

McLaughlin framed the debate on Putin thus: "Is Putin good for Russia?" Chrystia Freedland put up a bit of defense for the negative position, but everyone else, even the supposedly liberal Eleanor Clift, sang the praises of proto-czar. Pat Buchanan and Tom Blankley spoke like good Kremlin officials, lauding Putin for preserving stability and fostering prosperity. An especially effective piece of rhetoric was the constant repetition of Putin's high approval ratings-"In the 70s!" McLaughlin intoned like Homer giving an encomium for Achilles. If the people support him, he must have democratic credibility. Putin's authoritarianism was brushed aside with sophistic moral equivalences: how can we censure him for setting up a one-man dynasty when Hillary might be our next president? This dubious statement was made by Eleanor Clift, who was so adamant a supporter of the Clintons in the 90s she was referred to as "Eleanor Rodham Clifton" by the other panelists. Buchanan followed his typical paleo-conservative line, questioning why we should have a hand in others' affairs, particularly as Russia could be a valuable ally in the war on Islamic fundamentalism.

Putin is held in favor by the Russian people, by and large. But you can understand that if you look at Russians. The country has the lowest male life expectancy in Europe, crushing poverty (usually exacerbated by poor infrastructure) and poverty-related disease, a secret but growing AIDS epidemic, alcoholism, depression, and rabid ethnic nationalism. You also have to understand the chaos and uncertainty that accompanied the breakup of the Soviet Union, the humiliation felt by Russians as a consequence of that event, and the incredible mismanagement of the transition from Communist rule to democracy.

In this context, even modest gains in prosperity and security are like manna from heaven for most Russians. And it's true that Putin has provided these. Putin has also, to some extent, made being Russian a source of pride again. Although we don't have a reliable membership count, it seems the state-sponsored nationalist youth groups that have emerged in the past few years are quite popular.

It's standard to rattle off the litany of anti-democratic measures for which Putin is responsible, so I won't. They are already well known. But will the relative prosperity Russia is enjoying now last? The key to Russia's growth has been its oil and gas industries, but with the energy supply now in the hands of party insiders, it's doubtful it will be competently managed. These men aren't businessmen, they're intelligence officers. The result of poor management in a resource-rich country can be seen in Myanmar.

Putin may have invoked the "war on terrorism" to legitimize Chechnya, but no one should be fooled. Chechnya is a festering sore of Russia's own creation. As Matthew Evangelista points out, the international media has reframed the conflict in terms of religious terrorism, but that is hardly all that is going on there. Islam was on no one's mind when Russia invaded in 1994. Pat Buchanan and George Bush are wrong to think Russia is really an ally in the war against Islamic terrorism.

America now has so little credibility as the embodiment of liberal values that even Putin can call us a "wolf" in foreign affairs. Conservatives rightly point out that there are few acceptable alternatives to Putin at this point. There's little we can do to promote democracy in Russia itself. Yet if we do not condemn Putin and support the fledgling democracies Putin seems to want to strong-arm back in line, Ukraine and Georgia, we are not only hypocrites but have simply given up on trying to be a principled country. We don't need to be Bushean conquistadors, holding out freedom at the end of a sword. Nor do we have to be indifferent isolationists. At some point Russia will become dissatisfied with Putin and his kleptocracy.

Let's not forget Obama, especially when he's in Greenwich Village

Of interest to the young and politically savvy:

Some said 4,000 college students, some said 30,000, some just said a shit load. Whatever the exact number, "a shit load" is as good a description as any for the number of people gathered in Greenwich Village for the Barack Obama rally -which is being called a mini political Woodstock. On top of that, the "shit load" was in Hillary's backyard. Moments like that make it hard to believe that she's so far ahead in the polls. One has to wonder, are the polls accounting for Generation Y?
Today's college student -Generation Y- is no different than any other age group of voters, at least on the Democratic side. There are Obama supporters, Hillary supporters, and Edwards supporters -even a few Kucinich fans. They're also similar in that a large amount of them feel a dead tortoise is better than Hillary (except the Hillary fans). But if that's the case, how is it that she's so far ahead in the polls? All three of the leading candidates have their appealing qualities. Edwards is the handsome populist, Obama the sparkling newcomer, and Hillary the wizened leader -or that's what she wants us to think. Gail Collins pointed out in her latest column that Hillary capitalizes on generalities. She waits to let everyone else declare a side and then just promises that what she has to offer is the best idea, even though her "idea" is commonly yet to be revealed -not always though. Hillary is sneaky like that. She's trying to gain the nomination not by her own opinions or merits -which can be perilous- but by denouncing the other candidates. According to the polls, hers is an effective strategy. Her appeal is experience and a "maturity" above those other flawed politicians who have "platforms" (snicker) and plans for what they'd do in the White House.
Well, Generation Y, at least, is visibly skeptical. That crafty defensive stance of advertising an opponent's failures works, as it did in the last election, but also says something about the candidate.To her credit, Hillary has shared her own policy plans but has spent less time on that compared to the hours she's put in candidate bashing. It's a good way to get to the White House, George will tell you. The polls indicate that a lot of Democrats either don't realize that Hillary's doing this or don't care. That may be true, but a few Greenwich Village goers will tell you that they aren't fooled twice.

Supermassive Blackhole

The show Californication had problems from the start. One, it was about a writer (how original, deemed one perspective fan). Two, besides semi-clever quips mainly from David Duchovny (X-Files) the dialog -which the show clings to for dear life- is pretty bland. And finally, three: It's pretty clear that the direction of the show is unclear. As deadline approached the writers probably said "what the hell, we're good-looking, interesting, funny, and sexually in-demand, let's go to the screen!" As sincere as they may have been in this hypothetical situation, none of this is true. But! The show's most endearing quality is that it's taking shape. Our hero, Hank, is overcoming his severe writer's block and scribbling down something onto a blog, in between sexual encounters with gorgeous women which he picks up like rocks at a quarry. It's obnoxious. We get it. He's sexy, charming, smart, and everything else every guy would like to know he is.
Back to Californication's endearing quality. The show has a stellar but under-appreciated cast: Natasha McElhone and Evan Handler among others.
In the latest episode Hank (Duchovny) rants on Public Radio about the degradation of the English lexicon after his girlfriend says "LOL" in real life (IRL). He takes his disgust and blogs about it and then explains how he feels on the radio:
"Just the fact that people seem to be getting dumber and dumber, you know? I mean we have all this amazing technology and yet computers have turned us into four-finger wank machines. The internet was supposed to set us free, democratize us but all it's really given us is Howard Dean's aborted candidacy and 24 hour access to kiddy porn. People don't write anymore. They blog. Instead of talking, they text. No punctuation, no grammar. You know, it just seems to me that it's just a bunch of stupid people tsudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people instead of using the King's English."
Oh but Hank, what are we both doing? "Hence my self-loathing," he says. Hank Moody has just spoken the rationale for this blog.
Anyway, there are also other pluses. Besides a decidedly dull plot -mediocre at best, there are plenty of pop references and chuckle-worthy moments. And the show's irreverence for the corruption of all literary works through film and the internet is admirable. At least Californication's heart is in the right place.