Being on the radio was fun, and I’ve decided to set my sights on a repeat performance. Along with my lifetime goal of having my name cursed on the air by Rush Limbaugh and/or Michael Savage, I had, until recently, declared a new lifetime goal: being on NPR’s Bryant Park Project, the respected radio network’s well-loved attempt to capture the twenty-to-whatever professional demographic.
But, in what must come as a disappointment to me and any fan of good radio, the BPP is to be no more.
If you’ve ever thought that NPR is just too stuffy, for one, you’ve obviously never listened to “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!”, but for another, the BPP was proof of the contrary. Although over the past few months it’s clearly missed Alison Stewart’s influence, the show was a jaunty and intelligent morning program, pulling together information from the big-name blogs and the mainstream media in a fun, conversational manner. And, for the network, it was a stellar “gateway drug,” sucking a new audience into the rest of NPR’s programming (“Fresh Air,” “Science Friday”…). I hope NPR manages to fill the void left by the BPP; I for one will have to find a way to fill the void on my iProducts’ flash chips.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, but I haven’t heard the name “Jeremiah Wright” in a while. Nor have I heard much about anyone being “bitter.” Although the enduring truth of this assessment will have to wait until November, it may prove true that Hillary Clinton, by trotting out some of the major foibles of the Obama campaign early in the primary season, deprived the McCain campaign of the opportunity to use them to discredit Obama when it actually mattered… as in, now. The American electorate, being a composition of single individuals, has an attention span and capacity for memory of current events akin to that of any individual. So, the effectiveness of a smear campaign varies on the strategic nature of its deployment.
The Time Value of Dirty Politicking
A well-timed public relations disclosure, regardless of its veracity, can spell disaster (Swiftboat Veterans for Defamation Truth), while truthful information that comes too late (Bush’s DUI conviction, disclosed on the eve of the 2000 Election) can be irrelevant. I think we’re about to see a new case: if a talking point is put into action too early, it loses its effect faster than an overplayed Top-40 Britney hit.
Of course, counterexamples abound. The issues of Kerry’s elitism and incomprehensibility to the common man (“I voted for it before I voted against it”), broached in the spring of 2004, both survived as potent themes and venues of attack until the fall election. But that’s due in no small part to Kerry’s incompetence. He continued to play into the role the Bush team had crafted for him. If you’re trying to dodge the “elitist” label, you don’t go windsurfing, and if you do, you can expect old smears and old missteps to be reincorporated into the next spin cycle. Making the same mistakes over and over again just gives the opposition an invitation to dredge up the old ones.
There’s every reason to think Obama’s case will be distinguishable from Kerry’s; his image related mistakes per week have dropped drastically since spring, and it’s come to be viewed as tactless and puerile to repeatedly harp on Obama’s “difference” from white America. “Look, he’s wearing a turban!” Oooooh, I’m scared. Hopefully, we’ve moved on.
What, Too Soon?
But we’re not invulnerable. A wise campaign would still keep a tight leash on Obama’s public image, and play down his vulnerabilities wherever possible. Sadly, some liberal groups and media outlets aren’t playing along. Outside of the “Colbert Report” – and even then, I’m not sure how I like it – it’s too soon to start making fun of the way Obama’s enemies want him portrayed. We risk dredging up and re-activating the very images that we thought were dead. Apparently the New Yorker hasn’t gotten that memo. And, neither has MoveOn.org. As much as I love MoveOn’s platform, they seem singularly incapable of doing anything with grace or tact. According to a recent e-mail sent to supporters, the PAC may soon start selling buttons displaying the “terrorist fist jab.”
Definitely too soon. While it’s good to show that we’re not afraid of difference, let’s not be foolhardy about it. A lot of Americans are afraid, or at least suspicious, of what makes Barack Obama different than previous presidential candidates. Not playing into their fears, and smugly acting like we’re completely invulnerable to a continued assault along those lines, might be a good campaign tactic. Let’s not “bring it on” just yet.
Wearable Wartime Atrocities, Brought to You by TownHall.com
Torture is the last resort of a desperate warrior, and not a particularly effective one at that. Of course, to some t-shirt manufacturers and their advertising partners at TownHall.com, it’s not as serious as it is funny (see right). To quote Bender, comedy is dead, but tragedy? Now that’s funny! While letting that idiocy speak for itself, let’s move on to the issue at hand…
The national debate on the issue of torture – a debate that’s smeared my fellow Rice graduate Alberto Gonzales, and left him hilariously unemployed – has largely centered on the issue of the morality of the act. Whenever we as a nation stoop to the level of our enemies, suborning reason to violence, we vitiate an element of the very values we seek to protect. Like a murderer in Harry Potter, we tear off a portion of our national soul. Opponents of torture clearly win on moral grounds. Right, the counterargument goes, but let’s turn to the practical. Surely desperate times call for desperate measures. If we could choose between suffering an intangible loss of the moral high ground, and the loss of three million lives – if we could torture an enemy combatant to find a “ticking bomb” somewhere in Manhattan – surely we’d opt to torture one individual rather than suffer armageddon.
That’s a tough rebuttal with no easy answer… until you realize the hollow, speculative nature of the hypothetical. No liberal, indeed no American, could ever oppose, on ethical grounds, an act of torture done to surely save the lives of millions. If the ethical calculus fell in exactly that manner – certain death and no torture, or certain salvation and torture – I submit that our hands would be tied. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one (© Spock).
However, that fact pattern never squarely presents itself, nor is it likely to. We can never know that torture will result in information, and (even more emphatically) we can never know that torture will result in the right information. England’s experience with the IRA unequivocally demonstrates that torture fails to produce reliable information, and instead radicalizes moderates in the opposition. While Jack Bauer may find himself in precisely this scenario every Wednesday at 9/8 Central, it just doesn’t happen in the real world: there are no ticking bombs, no quickly broken captives who happen to know all the details of whatever nefarious plot must be foiled, and no easy answers. If torture is only acceptable in a one-in-a-million hypothetical, our duty in debating the issue is to question the scenario rather than proceeding under a false framework.
Torture is wrong morally, and wrong practically. This is torture’s Kobayashi Maru. In debating against someone who supports torture, if placed in a factual scenario where defeat is inevitable (i.e., where torture starts to look reasonable), we should challenge the scenario before conceding defeat. While there may be (realistic) circumstances under which torture is justified, this just isn’t it.
