an open letter to e

below is my comment to e's comment to my last post. 

e, this point, that pakistanis are the greatest victims of terrorism, is perhaps arguable, but there is a very compelling case to be made for it. first off, we have to define what "terrorism" means in this context. in my view it's composed of activities by state or non-state actors targeting civilians, or activities resulting in civilian deaths in far greater proportion to legitimate military / insurgent targets. of course, i'm declining to define what proportion is inoffensive enough to exempt said activity from my working definition, but suffice it to say that i believe the drone bombing campaigns over western pakistan, and yemen, and libya absolutely qualify as acts of state-sponsored terrorism. i know that that this statement alone will, for some people, nullify everything i say below, but i think it's important for us to divorce ourselves a bit from our creeds and flags, and think of these issues in terms of our principles and principles alone. i consider you, e, a fair mind and a very serious thinker, so you are not among the aforesaid people. you do what a friend does best -- challenge my convictions and make me think more clearly about them. i hope you do the same here.

according to wikipedia, last year alone there were 50 separate terrorist incidents in pakistan (excluding drone attacks). these were generally carried out by al-qaeda in pakistan, or a like-minded group like lashkar-e-taeba or jamaat-e-islami. these attacks were generally low-tech acts of violence (e.g., suicide bombs) carried out in public spaces. notably, in the last few years, these attacks have taken place in places like lahore, where my family is from, which is far from the badland west where the pasthun population resides and which is largely indistinguishable from afghanistan. while the sheer volume of deaths that has resulted from these acts does not compare to, say, a single act of terrorism like the september 11th attack on the world trade center, the effect of these attacks is palapable in everyday pakistan in a way that september 11th's is not  (except when it's evoked by brain-dead shitheads like giuliani and schumer -- he of the genius "no-ride" list proposal -- and other cynical exploiters of that event). that is to say, terrorism has disrupted pakistani society much more than it has any other society on the face of the planet -- unless you count iraq and afghanistan, which i don't because i think those two places are uniquely fucked up places in which terrorist activity targeting civilian populations and insurgent attacks on military targets are caught up in a whole incomprehensible morass. to put in another way, afghanistan and iraq are sites of war -- unlike pakistan, at least officially,  which is a site of non-militarily justifiable acts of terrorism.

now, it should be said that the wikipedia numbers are pure nonsense. they account only for high-profile events that have gotten press. i rely more on think tank numbers like the pakistan institute for peace studies, whose 2010 report states that there were 2113 terrorist acts in pakistan last year alone (again, not accounting for drone attacks) in which almost 3000 people were killed and almost 6000 injured. now, if drone attacks are counted, an additional 1000 people in pakistan were killed. this figure, 4000 people, is simply staggering, and i have not seen anything else anywhere in the world that compares to it -- again, with the exception of afghanistan and iraq, which are active theatres of war. more important, each year since 2001 has seen an uptick in terrorist acts in pakistan and deaths resulting therefrom. and with the killing of osama bin laden, it should be clear that any reprisal will be visited first and foremost on the pakistani people. such has been al-qaeda's (whatever that even is now, given its many diffuse forms across the world) modus operandi of late.

as for your other point, i appreciate it fully. human beings have no obligation to act in a principled manner or to put their emotions at bay. i get this. i totally do. know that, but know also i have a monumental problem with the notion that it's unobjectionable to celebrate the death of "someone who specifically targeted americans for being american." why is this relevant? seriously, why is it? if a person kills one person in a botched robbery, do we celebrate his execution? if a serial killer kills ten blonde women because he has some insane sexual fetish, do we celebrate his? if he kills ten black people because he's a white supremacist, same question. i have a huge problem with hate crimes legislation -- let me state that from the outset -- but the notion that a person's intentionality should affect my view of his bad acts is totally lost on me. this isn't about osama bin laden -- or it should not be. this is about us. our reaction to his death -- indeed, the way his killing was comissioned -- that speaks to our best or worst selves. i have a convert's zeal for this country and its bedrock principles. therefore, i cannot understand how it can be that we, collectively, have asked so few questions about the conflicting details of operation geronimo. it turns out bin laden wasn't armed. it turns out he wasn't using his wife as a human shield. it turns out that he attempted to surrender. brennan -- the deputy national security guy -- stated this was a kill operation. why was he not arrested? why was he not haled before a civilian court in the united states and given full due process rights and made to answer for the mountain of evidence compiled against him. why was he dumped in the sea? seriously, why? he was a piece of shit who couldn't give a fuck how his muslim victims were buried, and we're, well, we're denizens of a country that couldn't give a shit how the muslim victims of our drone attacks are buried. why afford this man a so-called islamic burial? what constituency does this satisfy?

i know there are still many details not known about geronimo. i know that. and it may turn out some of my questions have legitimate answers. i hope so. but putting aside protestations about america's egregious violation of pakistani sovereignty -- an irrelevant point, as far as i'm concerned given the pakistani army and intelligence services' incompetence in catching bin laden / duplicity in allowing him sanctuary -- and putting aside the basic human need, perhaps, to celebrate something, anything, after 10 years of confused, neo-imperial brutality in various parts of the muslim world, i put to you this: upon hearing news of bin laden's death, doesn't a mature population push aside its base instincts, and think about all that has been lost and can never be restored? doesn't it think about what we -- as a nation -- have lost, but also allowed ourselves to lose? when bin laden was shot dead in abbottabad and then dumped into the arabian sea, i couldn't help thinking we're now a nation that cannot stomach its own core values. we cannot put one of the world's greatest criminals on trial. as a fiercely proud, and thoroughly skeptical american, i wonder if america is now a shadow of itself. would tocqueville recognize this country? would tom paine be proud of it?

also, and i mean this question seriously, say you're a ten-year old pakistani boy whose entire family -- none of whom were involved in any kind of terrorist activity -- was killed in a drone strike. say you're face is half-charred and you lost an arm in the strike. say you did nothing -- clearly -- to deserve this. nothing at all. say "it's rather human to enjoy the elimination of one's enemy." who is your enemy in this situation? the guy in missouri manning the drone? leon panetta? barack obama? what measure of vengeance are you allowed? put aside creed and flag. put aside who-started-what, and tell me. what kind of world are we barreling towards? what have we wrought?

yours,
c4ts

Piece of Shit Cry Baby

America. A truly culturally and ideologically heterogeneous country. We have our political differences, sure. These differences sometimes give rise to shrill, unfocused passion, but come on, nothing wrong with that. ("Build the dang fence.") But one thing I have always liked about the citizenry is that it does not abide cry babies. So, what the fuck is up with us now? How do we abide the spectacle above? Nancy Pelosi needs to take the Speaker's gavel and beat the living shit out of that fucking tear-filled turd sandwich standing behind her. Not because he is wrong about everything ever, but because leading the posturing, blustering tough-guy party means you can't be a piece of shit cry baby. I am pretty sure that's in the Constitution, near the part that says black people are fractional human beings.

You're a good man, 2010

Hey, all. Not sure I was going to get a chance to put up a post before the end of the new year, so I'm seizing the opportunity right now while having some lunch. Anyway, a lot happened this year: offspring, Duke Championship, career stabilization, John Boehner being an absolute piece of shit cry baby son of a bitch who I will kick in the face if I ever see him in person....Banner year all around. My one regret is I only saw one movie in the theatres this year. And ZOMGZOMGZOMG, Inception...This means I missed SATC 2 and the line of dialogue above (classic Samantha, amirite, guys?). This is sad because that line obviously just bumped my daughter to second place in any objective list of most important and wonderful things to happen in 2010. Let's keep the lolz coming, 2011.

Here's the Fetus

VH1 TV Shows | Music Videos | Celebrity Photos | News & Gossip

Look, if we're going to turn this blog into some kind of Gawker Twitter feed, I say, full fucking turkey.

Betty White Will Not Go Quietly into That Good Night

Here's some dude trying to knock the LifeCall bracelet off Betty White's liver-spotted wrist. But Betty White is feisty. She will insinuate carnal knowledge of your girlfriend, and then partake in a Snickers bar, before morphing into some guy and being good at football.

In other Superb Owl news, it must be noted that Barack Obama, despite his faults, will make Presidential history. I have to confirm with the Library of Congress, but I believe he is about to be the only sitting President to meet with two sisters Kardashian in one calendar year. Last month, Khloe Kardashian, wife of Lamar Odom, was photographed shaking his hand at the Lakers' congratulatory White House photo op. With Reggie Bush now winning a Super Bowl title, can we expect his muse, Kim to follow suit?

In other news, both ALF and Joe Lieberman continue to resist the curse. Blog harder, people.

The Curse Lives! (That is a Sadness, not a Happiness, Exclamation Point)

So, Here's what I've learned since putting a Google new alert on "Betty White": people don't really tend to report news about Betty White. This is really weird because I assume she's having so many affairs--so many blaffairs, in fact--with cast members of That 70's Show and she's always blowing rails with Mischa Barton at that new WeHo club. But I guess Google is not that into aggregating news about Betty White. Whatever. Sergey Brin is Racist Against Olds.

Anyway, I am going to go ahead and assume that Betty White is still alive, and, yes, 'Pockets and E, this makes me happy. What makes me sad, however, is the following: On January 1st I listed my films of the decade, noting in the comments that I had snubbed Fog of War on purpose. E quibbled. A month later the film editor for Fog of War was killed by a speeding getaway car fleeing an Upper Westside bank robbery. So, there's your curse in action.

Just in case this curse is real, I will now only blog about Joe Lieberman. And Alf. Definitely Alf.  I fucking hate that guy.

American Politics, the Last 48 Hours

Today, John McCain pitched reviving the Glass-Steagall Act, which would separate commercial and investment banking and lead to the break up of the megabanks, and which Obama and his economic advisers oppose; and today the White House admonished Howard Dean for saying the Senate Health Care Bill should be scrapped and reconciliation should be explored so that we might get a semblance of a public option/Medicare Buy-in; and yesterday, the White House refused to say one word about Joe Lieberman's unprincipled murder of Medicare Buy-in; also, yesterday, Obama's DOJ reiterated its Bush-era position re an expansive and unprecedented States Secret Privilege in asking the 9th Circuit to overturn its ruling in the Jeppesen rendition case.

I know I am supposed to talk about politicians only in terms of how they depress or inspire me, or how imbued with evil or goodness they are, but cold, hard facts are confusing me. Quick, somebody please send me pictures of how cute the Obama kids are or yell at me for questioning our fearless leader, whom we should all love without condition and with complete disregard to the things he actually apparently stands for.

When the only thing that we ask of our President is that he not be as much of an asshole as the last guy -- or at least draw on pretty words, not his Jesusy whims, when he decides to be exactly as much of an asshole as the last guy (on national security issues)-- then we ask nothing of him. And nothing, apparently, shall we receive.

I'm Not Going to Spend My Life Being a Color

E, You're feeling down today, since Lloyd Blankfein, your ertwhile hero and future husband, turns out is not the stand-up dude we thought him to be. I want to cheer you up. If I knew how to Photoshop, I'd put your face in place of this girl's--although I don't know that I have ever seen you with as pained an expression as hers. It's like the photographer captured the very moment her appendix burst. Still the picture is saved by our boy M Sizzle. You crazy for this one, RNC! Urban suburban hip communities be my jam!

ps -- I really wanted to put a still from the Michael Jackson "Black or White" video next to this picture. You know the still I mean. The one where after the rap interlude, MJ and Macauley strike the same timeless, hoppity hip shoulder blade to blade, arms-crossed pose. But all I could find was this.

Rolling Wid Da Homeez (Clueless Reference, a film from 1995)

Haha. I am the best at doing occasional non-posts. But what can I say -- this picture makes me so happy, I have to share it with the world and cover it in gold dust and post it on my ceiling and look at it every night before I go to bed. Not like ironically happy -- I mean kittens napping with babies on a bed of world peace, for-realsies happy.

ps -- E, wtf do we have a Brittany Murphy tag? Oh, yes, because we're awesome. Sorry, forgot for a second.

An Epiphany

So when someone makes a slippery slope argument, what they're really saying is this: I have no reason to object to this other thing in and of itself, but if I conflate it with this second other thing which is clearly objectionable, and which I conflate with the first other thing on the sole basis that the second other thing is outside my rigid understanding of the original thing, just like the first other thing is (even though, implicitly, I understand that alone is no basis to object to the first other thing -- hence the need to invoke the slippery slope in the first place) well, then, Jesus will smite you dead. Got it.

learned apathy

i suppose this story should inspire some sense of outrage. politicizing terror alert levels? what next?! but then again, after falsely leading a country into war, torturing prisoners, obliterating the economy, and canceling arrested development, what's a little screwing with your sense of mortality? just another day in the office. nicely done, rumsfeld. i hope he writes a tell-all memoir some day.

anyway, i thought about looking for an apt photo, then i realized that i'm kind of bored by these "revelations" from former bush administration officials (notwithstanding what i just said about rummy). isn't that panda dog messing with your mind?

Moose Chili

David Foster Wallace, 1962-2008

The late 90's were heady days. Like a lot of young collegians I discovered writers--like Dave Eggers, Chuck Palahniuk, and, of course, David Foster Wallace--who made me understand for the first time what it meant to be ironic, to write in a post-modern vein, to trample on conventional ideas of voice and linearity. When I was 17 I read On the Road and Catcher in the Rye, and thought, so what? When I was 18 I read Broom of the System, and wasn't sure if I liked what I was reading, but "so what? was the furthest thing from my mind. Self-reference, meta-narrative, ironic dissociation, and footnotes are hallmarks of Wallace's work, but perhaps the one lesson I took from him--the one lesson I took to heart--is that you can be prolix and intellectual and at the same time luxuriate in the word "fuck" in its myriad non-sexual forms. (E.g., "[T]he rhetoric of the enterprise is fucked.") Faithful readers of this blog know I have made a habit of this classic tendency of Wallace's.

Now I never finished Infinite Jest (and yes, blog reader, Owen, one day I will return your copy), I sort of hated Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, but, you, David Foster Wallace could write the fuck out of an essay. (See below.)

Today you hanged yourself, and though I don't know what drives a man to that, I hope you have found peace.

(Here's an interview of DFW that The Believer did and here's his absolutely iconic piece on the now-unrecognizable next President of our country.)

Helen Keller Watches The Matrix

So, this has been a very confusing week for me. I found myself in the camp of people who think McCain's post-Convention bounce would prove to be totally ephemeral, especially in the battleground states Obama's targeting, but then polls from New Mexico and elsewhere started to suggest that I've misapprehended this race entirely.

I still think that Palin mania has topped off. A whole bunch of people jumped onto the Republican ticket in the wake of the announcement, but at least some of them will get buyer's remorse before November 4th. Whatever enthusiasm she's generated can only go down from here. Although, let's be serious, it doesn't seem to be going down. And more to the point, in the last weeks, the Republicans have done exactly what we expected them to, and the Democrats have reacted in kind--that is, to say ineffectually. We may wring our hands and bang our heads, as the wretched lies in McCain's latest ads unfold, but how is it possible that in the last 20 years, the Democratic Party hasn't learned that a constructive majority of the country votes from the gut?

The other day I spoke to my dad, who is sitting thousands of miles away in a country so mismanaged it's in a massive energy crisis, in a country now ruled by a man who won office on name recognition alone, in a country held together by the weakest of threads. How Pakistan is like America is the subject of another post, I assure you. As I was saying, I spoke to my dad and he said he doesn't understand how Democrats became this way. JFK hustled his way into the White House. His knuckles bled blue after that election. Where is that party now? I had no answer for him, and couldn't explain to him why people here actually thought Obama was the heir to the Kennedy mantle.

I had two or three days of optimism, yes, but I came to realize this election is lost when I saw Obama on Keith Olbermann's show say, "The American people aren't stupid. They are going to get it." It's not just that he said it -- he meant it. But they -- that is to say, we -- are stupid. We are demonstrably and unabashedly stupid. We don't get how our leaders' environmental poilcies mean our descendants will have to conquer Mars for the species to continue. We don't get that fiscal policy isn't just for eggheads. 13% of us think Obama's a Muslim. Fully, 100% of us, apparently, think John McCain is a war hero because he didn't know how to fly his plane and got tortured for five and a half years as a result. And countless hordes of us will never, ever, ever vote for a black man.

Still, the hope-mongers insist that Obama is The Matrix. He is transformative, impossibly cool, burgeoning with ideas, a visceral and intellectual mindfuck. He will free us from the grime of our daily lives. But the American people are Helen Keller, deaf and blind to all that he may be.

Rage & Hope

Every so often, I'm amazed by my own capacity to hate. Thank you, Sarah Palin, for surprising me anew.

The other night, you delivered a speech so antagonistic to truth (Bridge to Nowhere), so dripping with condescension (Barack Obama's presidency as journey of personal discovery), so bursting with sarcasm ("community organizers"), I just wanted to reach through my TV and punch you in the face. Okay, I've been raised right, so I wouldn't really do that -- but I would spit in your face. I would do that much. So you should avoid me, Sarah Palin. You criticize Harry Reid for running a "do nothing" Senate, but you dismiss government as too big and meddling; you call the other candidate an elitist, but mock his work with poor people in Chicago. You are a horrible person -- in some ways more horrible than George W. Bush, whose religious conversion I always took to be more politically calculated than anything else. You, Sarah Palin, believe -- and I can tell this isn't an act -- you believe in a God who wants to smite Muslims, who wants to see the Earth depleted of its natural treasures, who wants teenagers to deliver their rapists' babies into this world without nary a handout from the government.

Listening to your speech, I vacillated between two thoughts: either this parade of sugar-coated lunacy will unite the desultory base of the Republican party while alienating moderate women and undecided independents, or the narrative of the entire election has been recrafted. If you just accomplish the former, you and your grandfather and his jaundiced smile lose. But if you accomplish the latter, and if, as I believe, the McCain campaign is right when they say issues don't matter to Americans, personalities do, then you will sweep into the White House, emboldened in the belief that you are doing God's bidding.

Oh, and one more thing. I know all us good liberals are supposed to say, "John McCain's an American hero, but...," but fuck that. The guy was a lousy midshipman, shirked his duties while training to become an aviator, and crashed four planes in non-combat situations. Tell me what he did to help win the Vietnam War, and I'll give a shit about his service. Getting tortured sucks for John McCain, no doubt, but if he wins because of it, then it sucks for me too.

So, here it is, anonymous Alex. the official c4ts endorsement:

Obama-Biden '08.

Juno from Juneau

The internet has tackled every angle of the Sarah Palin story. I have little more to contribute. But this being a totally labor-free, Labor-Day Eve, I'm just sitting around picking sand from Stinson Beach out of my eye and arguing with 'Pockets about how to arrange the wires connecting our TV and cable box, so wtf. Why not? Bravely into the echo chamber...

1) She's okay-looking, I guess. Who am I to argue, but can we all just calm down with the Tina Fey comparisons? Yes, they both have brown hair and wear glasses, but the similarities end there -- both physical and substantive. While the 80's were a lot kinder to Sarah Palin than they were to Tina Fey, the millenium is all about the latter. It would be impossible and inappropriate to list her virtues and accomplishments here, but among them are Werewolf Bar Mitzvah and Who Dat Ninja?, and among them are not early and vocal support for the Bridge to Nowhere and an asshole commitment to ANWR drilling. Come on, America, I know you think every woman with spectacles and bangs plays for team sexy librarian, but let's try to tell them apart.

2) What's going on with identity politics in our country? The community organizer who married the independent lady with a collegiate interest in black consciousness runs on the Democratic ticket and transcends race, while the pro-life, shotgun-wielding beauty queen who thought Hillary was whining and didn't know what a Vice-President does now wants to shatter that highest, hardest ceiling. I can't wait to see future iterations of this phenomenon: the Arab-American who wants to double the size of Guantanamo, the gay man who himself thinks he's headed straight for hell. (I'm talking to you, Charlie Crist.)

3) Now the juicy stuff: Pardon the crassness, but there seems to be a raging debate about whether Sarah Palin hails from MILF Island or GMILF Island? Blog reader Anat asked us to cover the rumor that Caribou gov is not the mother of her youngest child, but is in fact covering for her eldest daughter. But we live in a time of abbreviated news cycles, and today even Daily Kos did a post on the story, so go there to read up on it.

Now, I have no real opinion -- I'm not particularly offended by the rampant spread of the rumor in the absence of decent evidence nor would I even be surprised in the slightest if the whole story ended up being true. But here's what gets me. All the photographic evidence in support of the theory (see the Daily Kos story) does nothing to convince me: a couple of pictures of Palin sitting, wearing jackets, not looking terribly with-child? One picture of a 16-year-old girl with the slightest bump? Who cares.

But the story itself is totally convincing: her daughter out with mono for months right around the time the baby was born; her water breaking and her finishing the speech she was giving before taking a 12-hour flight back to Alaska; the fact that her staff had no idea about the pregnancy.

It's all fishy, and fish pickers don't come from Texas.

UPDATE: HAHAHA:THE OLD "SHE COULDN'T HAVE BEEN GIVING BIRTH IN APRL BECAUSE SHE'S FIVE MONTHS PREGNANT NOW. Y'BURNT!" DEFENSE. THE LAST DAYS OF THIS ELECTION ARE GOING TO BE GREAT. I CAN'T WAIT TILL OLIVER STONE MAKES A MOVIE ABOUT IT.

Raining McCain

Are you like me? Sometimes, do you think, man, I've reached the end of the internet? There's nothing left in the vast, oblong hollows of these tubes to amuse me. I had that feeling earlier today, as I avoided reading some reply brief that made its way onto my desk. But then I learned about this guy, who I really want to meet now. Maybe I could fly to Idaho and we could get brunch. And maybe this other guy could join us. And, maybe, just maybe, we could talk about how fucking killer the video above is, especially because no one told the old lady she's not supposed to where clothes the same color as the blue screen.

The End Is Nigh

On Tuesday, a man who spent $30 million to win the Florida Republican Primary finished in third place with less than 282,000 votes. On the same day, another man, who had been precluded from spending even dollar one to win the Florida Democratic Primary, also finished in third place with less than 249,000 votes. Yesterday, both Rudy Giuliani and John Edwards gave in to the reality of their lots in life--and we, in turn, give in to ours.

As this blog has made clear, I regard the former Mayor as depraved and deranged, a man who would make it his mission in life to execute Muslims around the world, a man who would call this excess of American might, largesse of the American spirit. Sometimes, even this fat, dumb country has a way of surprising me: it took a hard, long look at Mayor McCarpetBomb and realized it didn't like the dithering, slithering mess that it saw. It realized that the highest office in the land--though occupied by a myopic brush-herder--deserves more than a man who stood near the embers of his own astonishingly misplaced Emergency Command Center and took credit for...for what exactly, I'm not sure.

I am a bitter and vindictive person, I know; I am given to ad hominem attacks, but Rudy Giuliani is a horrible person, a union buster, a terror-bater, a Machiavellian gifted at decorating his own legend, and I can only pray that his failed campaign will ruin him professionally and erase him from our national consciousness. My saying this may seem impolitic--perhaps I am trampling on the already down-trodden--but if we are really to move beyond September 11th and heal, we must lay to rest all the myths that surround the narrative of that day: Rudy Giuliani did not stop the attacks , he did not guide us to some new understanding in their wake, he did not show resolve in the face of hardship. He was a man who saw oppportunity in disaster, and for that he deserves to be punished. The end of his campaign should be only the first penance.

If we are to gain anything from the day that made Rudy Giuliani, I hope it is this: tragedy should humble us, sober us, lead us to self-reflection. It did not in the immediate aftermath of the attacks; it has not in the protracted aftermath of the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. But when the vilest, rankest of our electorate can look at Rudy Giuliani and see a false prophet, I am heartened. Perhaps, we are not as dumb as I thought.

As for John Edwards, his departure portends different things for our country. Others may despise him for his haircut idiocy, for building his wife an expensive home, for working for those who are blazing a path straight to hell. But I look at him and I see this: a vain man, surely, a flawed one; he profited by helping others profit from their misfortunes; he arrived in Washington a centrist, and then he ran for President, and everything changed. The current administration, its disavowal of its people, its disdain for accountability, shocked this man--this nouveau riche son of a mill worker--into caring, and I--in a way I have not in years--cared about his candidacy.

Edwards rose from freshman obscurity to deliver what I regard--yes, even in the age of Obama--the most stirring stump speech Iowa has ever heard. (Sorry, apparently, there is no youtube of it.) He paraded on the floats of hope. He pandered to the establishment and became his party's vice-presidential nominee. He drank from the grail of establishment politics and became sick to his stomach: John Kerry, insouciant to the last, refused to excoriate the masters of swift-boat politics; he refused to get angry, when in 2004 anger was all that we had left. Edwards got sick to his stomach, indeed, but more important, finally, he got sick of himself: he repudiated his time in the Senate, and he became a left-wing populist.

He crafted an entire campaign about the least politically powerful people in this country, and he brought class issues once again to the fore. For Russ Feingold, for some readers of this blog, the Edwards of today cannot be reconciled with the Edwards of 2004, but as far as I'm concerned, I cannot imagine how a man goes to Washington in 1998, filled with giddy-eyed hope and backwoods moderate ideas, and doesn't come out as enraged as Edwards has. Frankly, it's the narrative of my own political evolution.

As Rudy Giuliani's political demise puts to rest some of the myths of September 11th, John Edwards' signals that there is room in the graveyard for other myths still: specifically, that party politics are about the people and not the party itself. As the warring cults of personality that are the Obama and Clinton camps come into sharper focus, we know now--and we know without a doubt--the poor in this country have no purchase on our political spirit. And the Democratic Party will never again nominate a populist.

My Most Inevitable Post Ever -- Part 7

Mike Huckabee/Herc

Both manage to force themselves onscreen though neither has any particular talent. Most memorable scenes involve humor (Huckabee's Colbert Show appearances/Herc trying to move that file cabinet in one of the earlier seasons) or shocking incompetence (Huckabee's blissful ignorance of the NIE and willful disavowal of evolution/Herc's attempts to recover the camera Marlo stole and his fucking-over of Randy's life). In the end, these two are big, dumb white guys in a game that just ain't about them anymore.

My Most Inevitable Post Ever -- Part 6

Rudy Giuliani/Ziggy

In a game I otherwise love, I hate these two with an all-consuming passion. Their very existences make no sense in context. Both share funny voices and wild delusions of grandeur. In the end, those who created them (I honestly have no fucking clue why anyone thought this guy would be good at anything/David Simon) have done us all a favor and completely lost interest in their storylines. The only thing that could undermine this season (Presidential/televisual) is if one or both manages to worm his way back into the plot (Florida primary/some sort of prison break). Either way, were that to happen my respect for America/David Simon would be shattered beyond repair.