The Week That Was

Napolitano, Janet
Disturbing ability to predict future events results in her being barred from several Las Vegas casinos.

Letterman, David
“Joke” by achieves the impossible: unites NOW, the Palins, textee and rose83 in agreement, and actually causes the latter to feel bad for A-Rod.

Capitalism, Free Market
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Merging with Movement, Evangelical to produce new religion in United States. Characterized by situational ethics and a lack of adherence to any definable concrete principles beyond Taxes, Lower and Wars, Many, and Bailouts, Selective, Bank-related.
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See Hypocrisy, Evidence of.

Limbaugh, Rush
See von Brunn, James W.

Palin, Governor Sarah
Former republican VP candidate who accepted decision not to let her speak at republican fundraiser but couldn’t resist the opportunity for more fancy pageant walking on a stage. See media ho’.

KT- why are you throwing anything away? are things really so bad that Time can’t afford a scanner?
(says the packrat)

sacred is that what Roland twitted, tweeted, whatevered about?
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@Roland_Hedley: Letterman: Palin updates “slutty” stewardess look @
Bloomie’s. Irate Palin: Never went to Bloomie’s. Needs outrage advisor.

Obama, President Barack
Writes fourth grader an excuse for missing last day of class providing her with a memento she’ll treasure for the rest of her life. Young girl placed on terrorist watch list by outraged house republicans.

Pafro: If you are around, please see my answer (#19) to your comment (#14) on the Permanent Campaign (Cont’d) thread below.

That Onion J.D. Salinger article was hilarious, thanks for that.

Klein, Joe
So intent on proving that real reporters are better than bloggers inadvertantly makes all other reporters look lame in comparison as well….

Pnnto: I’ve never read a twitter. Sarah does have the slutty stewardess look downpat though. If she ever decides to stop making laps on the speaker circuit, she could still make a fortune on the lapdance circuit. The fine line between poll dancing and pole dancing can be easily mistaken. When she was doing her winking thing during the VP debates, I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to make a campaign donation or just lay the money on her nightstand.

ha scared someone sent that to me this week and I’ve been waiting to shoehorn it in.
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Giving you something to riff on was just a bonus.

Pnnto: I appreciate the opportunity to go off on Sarah. Feel free to set me up whenever you like. I can’t resist.

KT: No “1000 Words” for us to play with over the weekend? Moving day is just sooooo disruptive for us swampcritters. Since Amy isn’t there…what are you folks going to do with her porn collection? Are you just going to leave all those file cabinets where they are? Inquiring minds want to know.

One other thing. Any quotes or articles you might be thinking of keeping from Rosen…burn them. They’re not worth saving.

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Outraged Andy Breitbart is Outraged
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James von Brunn is exactly like a lesbian studies major.
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Note: voicemail is NSFW. Repeat, NSFW. Unless your work is selling lots at Glengarry Highlands and Glen Ross Farms, of course.
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Sullivan, Amy
“Handkerchief” of, accidentally pulled out by Sacredh. Steamy affair exposed.

You, Things that Time Magazine Won’t (note: I’d insert the full list but they haven’t installed my direct link to the internet backbone yet.)

Describe, Groups that Time Magazine Won’t Ever Accurately

Breitbart, Andrew
See Limbaugh, Rush

Saw it and responded, using Jeff Rosen’s latest sins against truth and justice as an example.

OT (sorry, all)
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Rose:
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That essay by Wacquant is a fantastic reiteration of what I’ve been trying to get at in these discussions, albeit in the form of a critique of Ann Laura Stoler (I wish I’d read that essay first) and Michel Foucault (lecherous, nonsensical freak possessed of some epiphanies).
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In particular, the section “The Logic of the Trial” is extraordinarily adept in its arguments against our current, bloated, inebriated-with-righteousness, non-analytic, dysfunctional discourse on race –especially in this country.
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Wacqlan writes:

All these reasons make it urgent to reassert that to conduct sociological analysis is not to conduct a trial. The purpose of sociohistorical investigation is not to establish guilt and to affix blame for unpalatable social facts but to break those down into their constituent components so as to uncover the social and symbolic mechanisms that produce, reproduce or transform them over time and across space. Its end-purpose is to explain and understand, not to excoriate or exculpate, denigrate or celebrate.

, and this is undoubtedly true.
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I have been for the most part treating this forum as a means for us (professional journalists, amateur journalists, advocates and engaged news consumers) to explain and understand events and situations, and to perform analysis according to rules whose purpose is to create the greater likelihood of public exposure to that which is true. I have been using the premise that arguments –even arguments involving rhetoric as the primary vehicle for ideas, as opposed to more empirical or rational bases– here are for Socratic purposes, not political goals, and certainly not personal vendettas or grievances. This is not to say that I do not have political goals, or am performing acts of sociology, or that I always prevent myself from responding emotionally (obviously not the case), but the primary purpose of my involvement is to revive Enlightenment-era Coffeehouse discourse, and to decrease the opacity or obscurity of the journalism, propositions and discussion presented:

The cafés earned their place in the public sphere due to the conversation that took place within them. Robert Darnton in particular has studied Parisian café conversation in great detail. He describes how the cafés were one of the various “nerve centers” for bruits publics, public noise or rumour. These bruits were allegedly a much better source of information than were the actual newspapers available at the time.[63]

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At every opportunity, and especially during our predictable, unproductive spats during events that touch on the politics of race “it is particularly important to reaffirm the analytical imperative“, as Wacquant so usefully and eloquently reminds us.
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I could go on and on about the incredibly helpful reminders given the reader regarding “the existence of long-standing racial traditions in non-WEstern societies” or “The first groups to be ‘racialized’ by Europe were not colonized populations but the ‘Others from the Interior’: Jews, peasants, workers, rival and recalcitrant nationalities within nascent states…“, or “The idea that ‘race’ is a matter of ‘physiology alone’ bespeaks the hegemony of U.S. folk notions premised on an obsessive concern with descent and blood admixture…“, or any number of concepts given by Wacquant that aid in widening our discourse on this subject beyond its current (political) absurdity.
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But rather than doing that, I would love to know, Rose, to what you could possibly object in this piece? What of significance has Wacquant gotten wrong, or omitted from this analysis, in your opinion?
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I really can’t thank you enough for posting a link to this excellent piece for me, Rose. I’m extremely grateful.

Murphy, Mike
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(See also Idiot, Complete)

Save the Packwood stuff KT. It’s an interesting chapter in D.C. history. Have a techno nerd scan it for ya.

“Michel Foucault (lecherous, nonsensical freak possessed of some epiphanies)”
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His lechery is relevant? I seem to recall a similar statement re: Andrew Sullivan at some pt? But you felt Clinton’s oval orificial duties were irrelevant to his professional success/lack thereof?
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Though I agree MF’s language appears nonsensical (though not Derrida-esque) it is like all disciplines heavily flavored with jargon, being both un/consciously a specialized discourse. B/C outsiders find such language impenetrable or absurd is not always relevant–academics write at one another, not for lay audiences. In any event, I love his work.

But rather than doing that, I would love to know, Rose, to what you could possibly object in this piece? What of significance has Wacquant gotten wrong, or omitted from this analysis, in your opinion?
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I actually agree with pretty much every word (the qualifier is because I didn’t read the piece again before linking it and maybe there is something I forgot about there). I just think you’ll be able to use some of his insights to more effectively make other arguments that I do disagree with!
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But yes, I actually thought it was brilliant. Especially his utter destruction of “race” as an independent historical force. I also appreciated his criticism of the “logic of the trial.” Personally I find the prevalence of that logic burdens my observations about racism (I see his point about eliminating the word, but I’m not sure how exactly to do that while making myself clear to people who haven’t read Wacquant) and sexism (a far less problematic term) with a weight and hostility that I truly don’t want. The hegemony of the trial greatly hinders the discussion and analysis of oppression.
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BTW, I’m embarrassed to admit I can never get through Foucault. I’ve tried and I’ll try again, but I’m not sure I’ll ever truly succeed… And I love Darnton.

As a former Navy brat, I’m feeling for you KT. I’m of the save as much as you can school, if for no other reason than you have had access to parts of our present and recent past that future historians will duel to the death to have in their possession. Of course having had to do rather sudden moves myself, I completely understand the tough choices of what to take and what to dump. If nothing else, get a storage unit somewhere and let someone discover your treasures at some point in the future.

And BTW, Rose, thanks for bringing LW to my attn. He’d not yet risen to prominence during my time in the tower. His site seems to link to virtually everything he’s ever written. I enjoyed this piece this morning:
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http://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/wacquant/wacquant_pdf/DECIVILIZDEMONIZ-2003.pdf

pafro: change the subject much?

I see that Media Matters has notice how nice it is for Rosen to fail up.
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What happens when you write an innuendo-laden hit piece on a prospective Supreme Court nominee without, by your own admission, bothering to read enough of her opinions or talk to enough of her colleagues to reach a fair assessment, in which you crop a comment by one of her fellow judges who described her as smart so that you can portray the judge as having said she is “not that smart” — a false charecterization you still have not corrected more than a month later?
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If you’re Jeffrey Rosen, and the target of your hit-piece is Sonia Sotomayor, Time magazine invites you to write more about her.
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http://mediamatters.org/blog/200906110031

gunny: don’t mess with me. been packing boxes all day. very, very cranky.

Bad Media Matters! Bad!

thank you, gunny. patronizing, but makes me feel better anyway. amazing how much of professional life is now in dumpsters outside my office. then again, after five years, can’t read my own notes.

KT-Some times and especially now, we have to remind ourselves to be thankful for what we have. Even the sucky parts. Just sayin…

Also just saying that you are not a sucky part.

Oregon JC:
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His lechery is relevant?
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OK, you’re right: that was gratuitous.
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It’s like saying “Friedrich Nietzsche (syphilitic, nonsensical freak possessed of some epiphanies)”.

gunny: don’t mess with me. been packing boxes all day. very, very cranky.
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Eerie flashbacks of moving with my mother from Connecticut to Washington there KT. She moved four boys all on her own. Cranky was a VERY mild way of summing up her mood.

I didn’t change any subjects. I have one main thesis: people who have been outed as serial liars and con artists get repeatedly asked for their opinions at a national level. These are people like President Gingrich, Crazy Pete Hoekstra, and as it happens…Jeffrey Rosen.
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I made an (admittedly snide) remark about hearing the newest phony Republican talking point (that Obama was going to steal 130 million ‘Mericans health care) being disseminated and predicted that that meant it would soon make it in this magazine.
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The inclusion of the dishonorable Jeffrey Rosen was merely fortuitous timing; the old and creaky institutional pressures fated him to get invited to write for Time and lie about President Gingrich’s “apology”, despite your noble attempts to point out that President Gingrich did not actually apologize. And although you also nobly and correctly characterized the Lewin study, the institutional pressures practically guarantee that the health care equivalent of Jeffrey Rosen is going to show up in Time lying about the Lewin study and accusing Obama of taking hard working people’s awesome health insurance and giving it to his watermelon eating buddies.
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As I am living in Arizona, I predict the honor will go to Jon Kyl, who lied to the Supreme Court but is somehow still “respected”.

Having just experienced the Phish reunion tour, Obama thought he’s try out one of those trampoline thingies himself…..

Sorry, wrong thread….

KT: “Amazing how much of professional life is now in dumpsters”
Just because you’re moving does NOT give you the right to steal quotes from Amy.

Paul Dirks Says:
Friday, June 12, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Having just experienced the Phish reunion tour, Obama thought he’s try out one of those trampoline thingies himself…..
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Paul Dirks Says:
Friday, June 12, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Sorry, wrong thread….
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PD, are you sure you’re not the one just back from a Phish show?

Berman, Howard, (D-Ca); synonymous with hypocrite, i.e. tirelessly combating international arms sales and proliferation of ballistic missiles, while sponsoring House Resolution 2410 Foreign Relations Authorization Act for FY 2010 and 2011 amending the Arms Export Control Act of 1976 to loosen the restrictions on arms sales to Israel.

Billy Dale, Obama Version:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Whats-behind-Obamas-sudden-firing-of-the-AmeriCorps-inspector-general-47877797.html
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PD, your shout out to Napolitano is pathetic.

CORN, A*
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Hot bed of terrorist and corruption, according to certain political individuals.
Upon investigation of the Burien office of this allegedly hideous orgainization, the following were not found:
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1. No “real” Americans being waterboarded, just for fun.
2. No weapons.
3. No illicit cash.
4. No stogies being snuffed out in ashtrays under glowing posters of His Esteemed Leader, BHO. There wasn’t even one poster of the POTUS, at least within my eyesight.
5. No drawings of major sites with red X’s on ‘em.
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Seemed like there were only three ladies, two of them middle aged, one Asian lady helping another lady with two kids do her taxes, a couple of jumbled offices demarcated by odd homey brickabac to provide walls for the “cubicles” that constituted the offices of a volunteer organizer and another for a housing specialist.
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*I know. I know! How else could I keep it in Slansky-esque form, though?
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I was so moved by the difference between the reality I saw on the ground and spobs’ inane quackery that I posed myself the following question, then decided:
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How could I figuratively plant a loogie squarely between spob’s eyes most effectively?
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And then I had the answer:
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Volunteer my services as a GIS analyst to these underfunded and overworked people, who appear more like people interested in helping the poor more than the crooked terrorists in spob’s diseased imagination.
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And so I did. I volunteered.
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In yer face spob…