Archive for August 4, 2008

Breathaking Work of Staggering Genius

Congratulations to Joss Wheedon for producing “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog,” an internet video that combines five of my favorite things: blogs, musicals, supervillains, Neil Patrick Harris, and ex-Firefly actors. Watch the blog here, read about it here, and buy the video on iTunes: don’t just mooch on Hulu, Joss needs to know he’s done good.

Pistols at Dawn: Schlafly’s Challenge Accepted, and the Latest News from Conservapedia

Good news, everyone! Andy Schlafly, of Conservapedia “fame,” has offered to debate any “evolutionist” or “liberal” who’ll have him – including PZ Myers. Schlafly chalks his hitherto unbooked debating schedule up to the cowardice of us lib’rul scum: after all, we apparently lose every debate we get into with him.

Actually, that’s not quite true. I’ve debated Schlafly numerous times, and my record is unblemished by defeat, as my block log on Conservapedia ought to prove. You see, being blocked on Conservapedia, especially if the block is accompanied by a snarky explanation, is the highest honor a liberal can receive, because it means you’ve hit too close to home, or too nearly debunked an element of their craziness. After all, they can’t keep around anyone who exposes the foolishness of Fearless Leader.

Accordingly, if Andy’s serious about his willingness to debate freely, I’ll be happy to debate him either here (comment back and forth on an open thread – I’ll verify his IP and approve, unedited, all of his comments) or on Conservapedia, on any issue of substance he chooses. Consider the glove thrown. Andy, I await your reply.

In other relevant news, Conservapedia’s letter to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, objecting to biologist & PNAS author Lenski’s use of biology to disprove creationism, should as we speak be speeding through the tubes to its destination, the recycling bin of the publication’s letters department.

Update: Andy hasn’t responded, but another challenger has emerged.

Republicans Mock the Law

Protesting the extension of human rights to indefinitely incarcerated foreigners, a Republican congressman files a bill to transport all Guantanamo detainees to the Supreme Court’s grounds so the Court can “more effectively micromanage” them.  Haha!  Hilarious… but seriously, who gave Rush Limbaugh a congressional sockpuppet?

Blunting the Edge of McCain’s Experience Advantage

Obama’s challenge, it seems, is to beat Hillary. Again.

Experience & elitism: the same themes that powered Hillary’s campaign to near-victory continue to animate the corpse of the McCain campaign. Time & again, we’re seeing that these two talking points are the only things McCain has on his opponent. But their forceful and shockingly negative recent presentation may turn what appear to be the McCain campaign’s violent death throes into a second wind.   Obama should act now to blunt the edge of this attack.

For the sake of this post, I assume that Obama can properly dispose of the “elitism” label.  He’s doing a fine job on that already, mostly because all he needs to do is avoid making a mistake that plays into that label, cancel any windsurfing or skiing plans he had, and stage a few more “basketball with the troops” photo-ops.

The “experience” issue is a problem, but not one that can’t be handled.  Taking a page from the Rove/Republican play book, Obama need not “win” the issue: he need not prove beyond a shadow of a doubt his capability to lead.  All he needs to do is muddy the issue enough to make his case “survive summary judgment” – i.e., enough to prevent either issue from turning into a resounding defeat, and call into question McCain’s attacks.

Creationists use this tactic with evolution – they can’t ever “win” on the science, but they can raise enough scurrilous issues, and manufacture enough controversies, that high school teachers are chilled from teaching science.  Just so, if Obama can inject doubt into McCain’s “experience” talking point, he can prevent himself from having to “write off” key blocs of voters.

Luckily, Obama has a head start: there are already enough facts and footage about him to create reasonable doubt about McCain’s accusations.  Obama just needs to deploy these facts, effectively.  Here’s how.

Obama should attempt – preferably through third-party actors, like MoveOn.org – to reframe McCain’s experience advantage as a negative.  In redefining McCain’s history, his affiliations with George W. Bush are obviously fair game: it’s no secret that America is fed up with Bush, and McCain’s “experience” means he ought to have known better than to be Bush’s lapdog for the past eight years. What is experience, after all, if McCain lacks the willpower to use it when it counts?

Obama should also play up his foreign policy successes, and juxtapose them with McCain’s failures.  While McCain has yet to articulate a clear vision for solving the Iraq debacle, Obama’s Iraq proposals have met with foreign approval and even forced McCain to change his tune.  Obama recognizes the real front of the war on terror – Afghanistan – which, despite his “experience,” McCain has ignored.  Obama talks tough about America’s need to wipe Al Qaeda off the map, even if that requires military action in allied Pakistan, a policy supported even by Obama’s detractors. In this context, McCain’s “experience” seems positively an empty promise, or a promise to continue policies that have already failed America: we deserve better than “experience without intuiton.”  We deserve someone with the ability to learn from his mistakes.

This is a harsh but effective line to take.  If MoveOn.org could take this message and articulate it in an appealing manner – without the organization’s characteristic tactlessness, preferably – Obama could stay above the fray, half-heartedly condemn the ad, and watch as the media snaps up and replays the controversial message time and time.

Mount Soledad’s Cross: Religious Monuments Revisited

California courts have been nothing but trouble lately: this time, they’re playing with the first amendment’s establishment clause, and the intersection between religion and public monuments.

Last Tuesday, Judge Burns of the Southern District of California ruled that a 43-foot tall cross on top of Mount Soledad was a secular monument to “military service, death and sacrifice,” and not a Christian monument – despite the cross’ alternate name, the “Mt. Soledad Easter Cross.” Surprisingly, I concur.

I retain my deep suspicion of religious monuments.  The goal of a national symbology should be to include and cultivate the national myth, rather than exclude and raise one sect above the other.  Washington, D.C.’s romanesque monuments succeed wildly under this rubric, from the Pantheon-style presentations of Jefferson and Lincoln, to the post-modern Vietnam Memorial, to the over-stylized and much-criticized World War II Memorial.  On the contrary, religious monuments to secular events – wars, triumphs, historical figures – appropriate the event to the group rather than the whole, and exclude rather than draw together.  Obviously, the first amendment is the vehicle by which we may express our displeasure with such exclusive monuments.

Nonetheless, a religious monument may vindicate the goal of the national symbology, while also avoiding sending a nasty exclusionary message, under two conditions: first, if the monument’s history dominates its religiosity, and second, if the monument’s modern cultural context dominates its religiosity.  I’ve discussed both exceptions before, and despite my initial surprise at finding myself saying this, the Soledad cross fits both exceptions.

The cross enjoys great antiquity in military circles, and not just as a blazon for murdering crusaders’ shields.  A field of small crosses has long been understood to represent the honored dead.  As the planted cross becomes synonymous with military sacrifice, the religious importance of the same dilutes and becomes more reliant on context: the symbol becomes equivocal, dependent upon its surroundings and its history for meaning.  A cross in front of a church is not the same thing as a cross surrounded by bronze name plates and flanked by flags, like the Soledad cross.  In a case like this, there’s good cause to doubt the religiosity of the message being transmitted.

Further, the complicated history of the Soledad cross belies the claim of its religious history, and supplies an innocent context vindicating the perceived religiosity of the Soledad cross.  While the monument may have begun its life as a privately-owned Easter memorial to the fallen, the religious origins of the cross seem to have faded and been replaced by the narrative of its current usage, as a memorial.  Especially where the government had no hand in the religious origins of the monument, the state’s intervention to preserve the landmark becomes less suspicious: obviously, the state may save an antique church owing to its antiquity.  Just so, the state may save a respected monument for its contribution to our cultural heritage.

Admittedly, the idea that a cross may be “secular” seems to fail the laugh test.  If I say “cross,” 90% of the time, the first thing that comes to mind will be “Jesus.”  But to reduce the establishment clause to a legal Rorschach test, by making first impressions determinative of a symbol’s meaning, ergo its legality, ignores the richness of political and cultural symbols, from which their power derives.  A cross may be religious 90% of the time, but the Soledad cross falls within that last 10%.

Obama Seats Florida/Michigan Delegates

Candidate Obama has asked to seat all of Florida & Michigan’s delegates at the Party convention, a request he’ll almost certainly get. Hillary partisans ignore this push for party unity, and report on what really matters: astrology.  Thanks.

Update: the Fla./Mich. move wasn’t covered for reasons of style (see comments), but now “The Confluence’s” analysis is up.  Surprise: they’re still angry.