imtalkinghere

My fellow knuckleheads...

The most striking thing about (what I caught of) the pundit analysis of Senator Obama’s brilliant speech on race and religion is this: They all seemed blown away by the power of his thoughts and the honest courage in the way he shared them...

“This speech is probably the most monumental speech since Martin Luther King as it relates to matters of race…"  - Dr. Floyd Flake, Pastor of Allen AME Cathedral, a Clinton supporter, on Charlie Rose

"The rhetorical magic of the speech—what made it extraordinary—was that it was, at once, both unequivocal and healing. There were no weasel words, no Bushian platitudes or Clintonian verb-parsing…  It was a grand demonstration of the largely unfulfilled promise of Obama's candidacy: the possibility that, given his eloquence and intelligence, he will be able to create a new sense of national unity—not by smoothing over problems but by confronting them candidly and with civility." - Joe Klein, Time Magazine

"Obama offered himself as the man who rises from flames and invites you to rise from your own. He took a grievous embarrassment and moved his lesson to the plane of prophecy. Talk about hope; talk about audacity. Tears came to my eyes. I don't think I'm especially hard-hearted, but I cannot think of another time when the speech of a presidential candidate watered me up." - Todd Gitlin, professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University

“And so at 11 o’clock AM on a Tuesday a prominent politician spoke to Americans about race as though they were adults.” – Jon Stewart, Daily Show

... BUT it was this very fineness of Obama's talk that made them wonder how it would “play” to “regular Americans.” Regular Americans – you know them, they are what Clinton strategist Mark Penn refers to as “jugheads”. Or Pennsylvania “knuckleheads”, as someone in Philadelphia described them to Newsweek's Howard Fineman.

See, this is the commonly shared view of the ruling and mainstream media class – that elections are about who can herd the biggest bunch of idiots into the voting booths. You get those doggies moving with game-playing and manipulation and absurd spinning and fear…oh, never go short on the fear…and be sure to keep all ugliness going as long as humanly possible, without leaving fingerprints, of course.

Is this who we are?

Is this how we live up to our serious responsibilities as citizens in a democratic superpower nation?

Because the assumption is that we are a bunch of knee-jerk, over-emotional non-thinkers. 

Senator Obama bet another way yesterday. He spoke to America as if we could process sophisticated, nuanced, and plainly true words. As if we want to see, to understand, to grow. And heal. As if we want to take the good we've been given by America and show our gratitude by making it even better.

It is surely a test of us to see how We The Knuckleheads respond to that.

It is also a test of the Democratic Party – to see how its leaders line up to support Obama's deeply respectful approach to us... as if we are not just a bunch of jugheads.

Of course, I realize that all these most positive scenarios will require some hope.

Obama's 2002 Speech

Since it's being belittled this week, let's have a look at it:

October 2, 2002

Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil. I don't oppose all wars.

My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton's army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain. I don't oppose all wars.

After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again. I don't oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism.

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income - to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. Now let me be clear - I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He's a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the President today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure that the UN inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil. Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.

The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not -- we will not -- travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain.

"One Nation, Under Stress"

Quiet here of late. The truth is I've been so depressed about all things American, and a few other things as well, that I didn't want to spew that mooooood all over this space. But last night I was flipping through a magazine and came upon something that cheered me considerably:

Since 9/11, America has behaved like a battered spouse, says psychologist Martha Stout, Ph.D., in her powerful new book The Paranoia Switch: How Terror Rewires our Brains and Reshapes our Behavior - And How We Can Reclaim our Courage (Sarah Crichton Books). We've been collectively traumatized and subsequently dominated by fear, she says, only to become demoralized, paralyzed, and separated from the values and passions that once guided us as a nation. Drawing from her work with trauma patients and her teachings at Harvard Medical School, Stout makes the case for applying the psychological model of trauma on the brain, body, and behavior to the nation as a whole. Seen in this light, the instigating events of 9/11 are just part of the problem. The rest comes from people with political purposes who are "motivated to keep your subliminal fear and your sense of dread at a simmering point." Fortunately, a nation, like an abused spouse, can break free and heal, Stout says. She details a plan to assess anxiety, identify the myths and realities of the threat, protect ourselves against fearmongers, and regain  hope.  "Our continued fear has had large scale social and political implications," she writes. "And healing from it is more than an individual health objective - it is a national mission. Striving to be calmer, more aware, and more rational is, arguably, a patriotic act." This is one of the year's most illuminating books.

"Cheered by this?" you say. Yes. Because we're well past time to be talking about what's really broken. And how it has been made worse by small, dangerously unwise, so-called leaders.

I sure hope the reviewer is right about illumination, because we're definitely overdue for light. Time to recognize and talk - and I mean serious talk  - about the core material at the heart of what really ails us. And specific steps we can take to self-correct.

Show me a viable presidential candidate who gets this and pledges commitment to concrete healing steps as a national mission, and I'm on board.

In the meantime, we should all be pressing media outlets to start a whole new order of conversation about what we "need" to do.

"Clinically Incapable"

Let us note that it was John Edwards who got it exactly right on the Scooter Libby commutation:

"Only a president clinically incapable of understanding that mistakes have consequences could take the action he did today."

Clinically Incapable - What a perfect title for the authoritative biography of George Bush! Clinically incapable of so many things. Except serving himself.

Obviously, the choice to commute instead of pardon was designed to continue obstructing  justice, one of the several charges for which Libby was found guilty. Commutation keeps his crony out of jail while allowing the farce of ongoing court proceedings which Bush and Gang can continue to use as their excuse for not answering legitimate questions. The pardon will come later.

Cynical. Self-Serving. Bastard.
Pretending he deliberated in service to justice.
Splitting the difference, my ass.
The guy is a study in perfect shamelessness.

How is it that I got this immediately,  others have recognized the same...

"[T]he real effect of Bush's actions is to prevent Libby from revealing the truth about Bush's -- and vice president Cheney's -- own actions in the leak. By commuting Libby's sentence, Bush protected himself and his vice president from potential criminal exposure for their actions in the CIA Leak. As such, Libby's commutation is nothing short of another obstruction of justice." - Marcy Wheeler

...some even predicted it ...

Libby trial book coauthor Jeff Lomonaco, in an op-ed he tried unsuccessfully to get published several weeks ago, predicted a commutation because "it would enable Bush and Cheney to continue the strategy they have successfully pursued in deterring journalists seeking their explanations with claims that they shouldn't comment on an ongoing legal proceeding. If Bush were to pardon Libby, he and Cheney would no longer have such a rationale for evading the press' questions - nor would Libby be able to claim the right against self-incrimination to resist testifying before Congress about the role that Cheney and Bush played in directing his conduct."   

h/t Froomkin

...but, so far, I'm not hearing the broadcast press put it out for conversation?

Talk about missing the forest. Talk about missing the trees. Talk about fiddling while the forest burns down around us.

Impeachment Is Nowhere Near Enough ... or, IT'S ABOUT US, STUPID!

For a while there, I was getting daily "Impeach Bush" email updates. I didn't ask to be on the list and when my requests to be removed were ignored, I added the source to my SPAM list.  It's not that I think George W. Bush doesn't qualify for impeachment. I'm with Chalmers Johnson in understanding that this President has "of course, flagrantly violated his oath of office, which requires him 'to protect and defend the constitution'...(that) among the 'high crimes and misdemeanors' that, under other political circumstances, would surely constitute the Constitutional grounds for impeachment are these":

(T)he President and his top officials pressured the CIA to put together a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's nuclear weapons that both the administration and the Agency knew to be patently dishonest. They then used this false NIE to justify and American war of aggression

(After launching this invasion,) the administration unilaterally reinterpreted international and domestic law to permit the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.. at Guantanimo Bay, and at other secret locations around the world.

Nothing in the Constitution, least of all the commander-in-chief clause, permits the president to commit felonies. Nonetheless, within  days after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush had signed a secret executive order authorizing a new policy of "extraordinary rendition," in which the CIA is allowed to kidnap terrorist suspects anywhere on Earth and transfer them to prisons in countries…where torture is a normal practice, or to secret CIA prisons outside the United States where Agency operatives themselves do the torturing.

On the home front, despite the post-9/11 congressional authorization of new surveillance powers to the administration, its officials chose to ignore these and, on its own initiative, undertook extensive spying on American citizens without obtaining the necessary judicial warrants and without reporting to Congress on this program. These actions are prima-facie violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (and subsequent revisions) and of Amendment IV of the Constitution.

These alone constitute more than adequate grounds for impeachment, while hardly scratching the surface.

Underlining mine. Yes, indeed, George W. Bush is a really, really inept and damaging President, probably the worst in our nation's history. His shocking disregard for the rule and spirit of law will be a central element in the story of his role in history...along with his poor critical-thinking skills,  his lack of actual leadership qualities, his unsound instincts (ignored months of 9/11 warnings, missed the import of the Katrina warnings  - something we actually have on tape, continually stokes fear and  negative instincts in the American people, etc.), his catastrophically bad decision-making, his deeply-flawed character judgments, and what appears to be his lifelong dishonesty at a cellular level. And that's just my short list.

So, it must be profoundly frustrating for pro-impeachment activists to deal with how difficult it has been to kindle their particular fire, even under people like me.

In Salon’s "Why Bush Hasn’t been Impeached" (subscription), Gary Kamiya cites multiple "factors -- the sacrosanct status of war, the public's complicity in an irrational demonstration of raw power...

“Congress, the media and most of the American people have yet to turn decisively against Bush because to do so would be to turn against some part of themselves.

"…Bush’s warmongering spoke to something deep in our national psyche…To impeach Bush would force us to directly confront our national core of violent self-righteousness – to come to terms with it, to understand it and reject it. And we’re not ready to do that…to turn decisively against Bush…would be to turn against some part of (our)selves."

...(and) the loss of respect for law, logic, and memory -- (that) have created a situation in which it is widely accepted that Bush's lies about Iraq (are) not impeachable or even that scandalous, but merely a matter of policy."

To which I say, uh... yes ...and no.

First, I think Americans are understandably averse to launching the impeachment process at a time when it might distract us from our greater moral responsibility to clean up the hellish messes we've got going in Iraq and Afghanistan and in New Orleans and elsewhere at home.

I also think we have to understand that Newt Gingrich's merry band of Republicans diminished the seriousness of impeachment when they used it against Bill Clinton. (Read John Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience - Most of those Republicans didn't even believe in it themselves! They were just following marching orders.)

But I think - I hope - that the major reason that even people like me are not focused on impeachment is because we realize - or at least sense - that George Bush's illegal behavior is as much symptom as cause. No president gets to do the kind of damage he has done in a system that works.   In other words, the problems we need to face are much, much bigger than George W. Bush.  As Al Gore said in a recent conversation (5.25.07) related to his new book, Assault on Reason -

"It's too easy...to simply blame President Bush and Vice President Cheney. We have free speech, a free press, a Congress, independent courts, checks and balances - we are all responsible for the decisions that are made in this country."

Yes, Bush is us. (And for those who say, "Hey, he ain't me!" I say, "Democracy isn't about I, it's a 'we' thing.") But he's showing us much more than our inclination to war or revenge. This is, after all, a presidency born of a breakdown in our most sacred collective act: voting for president.

American democracy is in the throes of systemic breakdown.

The level of our national discourse is a disgrace.

Voter turnout? We rank 139th out of 172 countries. Aren't you proud?

A large percentage of the news media - especially broadcast, where the vast majority of Americans get their information - fails us daily.

Our elected officials in Washington are so reliant on big bucks that they find it hard to think straight or do their jobs, as in providing serious oversight and demanding accountability.

We are not educating our children well.

Our health care has severe problems. We're 39th in infant mortality. Anybody got a good excuse for this?

How much more needs to go badly before people demand some serious across-the-board fixing?! Well, more than fixing, actually - more like  fast-track evolution.

Which brings me to my best possible spin on the current Bush presidency.

Years ago, I heard a parable that charmed me. It went like this:

An angel is told that s/he is being sent to be born as a human on earth. The angel, devastated at the notion of being unable to see God, makes this one request, "Please, please, if I have to be a human, grant me life where I never take my eyes off God for a second." Wish granted, the angel is born as God's greatest enemy on earth."

For the last six+ years- ever since that shameful metaphor in Florida -  I have been contemplating this version -

Just before birth, an immature soul makes one fervent request, "Pleeeze, pleeeze, pleeeze - I wanna be famous! Make me the most unforgettable President ever! I want to be unforgettable! " Wish granted, George W. Bush is born in a position to become the Worst USA President Ever... a wake-up call to the American people to begin treating their country with the respect and care it deserves...to start acting like grown-ups, not democracy's babies."

But of course, it's our choice.  American renaissance - taking the next evolutionary step in our  democracy, where people demand more power over multiple essential systems... or continuing downward spiral into powerlessness?

This is a test of us. Not George Bush.

 

RELIGARE: to reconnect, to re-link...perhaps re-weave

Over there on the sidebar is a section called RELIGARE. Today I added Matthew Fox's 95 Theses for the Third Millennium.

Matthew Fox nailed his 95 Theses, calling for a new Reformation...on the door of Wittenburg Cathedral, the same place Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses in 1517. Dr. Fox was protesting Cardinal Ratzinger, the Chief Inquisitor of our time, getting himself elected pope.

"Getting himself elected" ... hmmmm... do I detect a pattern at work?

Fox is calling for necessary growth in the church, just as we need to effect the same for American democracy. It's worth reading them all, just for the spirit of this matter... but here are some of my personal favorites:

13. Spirituality and religion are not the same thing.

11. Religion is not necessary, but spirituality is.

40. The Holy Spirit is perfectly capable of working through participatory democracy. Hierarchies can interfere with the work of the Spirit.

45. "Joy is the human's noblest act." (Aquinas) Is our culture promoting joy?

61. Interconnectivity is not only a law of physics and nature, but forms the basis of community and compassion.

69. Loyalty and obedience are never a greater virtue than conscience and justice.

71. A church more preoccupied with sexual wrongs than with the wrongs of injustice is itself sick.

72. Since homosexuality is found among 464 species and in 8 percent of any given human population, it is altogether natural for those who are born that way and is a gift from God and nature to the greater community.

73. Homophobia in any form is a serious sin against love of neighbor and a sin of ignorance of the richness and diversity of God's creation.

81. Another test of right action is this: Is what I am doing beautiful or not?

84. The Dark Night of the Soul is a learning place of great depth. Stillness is required.

85. Not only is there a Dark Night of the Soul but also a Dark Night of Society and a Dark Night of our Species.

91. Three highways into the heart are silence, love, and grief.

95. True intelligence includes feeling, sensitivity, and beauty...

19:51

Required viewing: Charlie Rose conversation (5.14.2007) with three young Iraqi journalists. Well, let me clarify: Ali Fadhil planned to be a doctor. Zeyad Kasim was a dentist until it became too dangerous to show up at his clinic. Ayub Nuri graduated from teacher's college to be an elementary school teacher. Now, they all just work at getting at the truth of their own country. Give them 19:51 minutes of your time. Listen to the energy behind their words, look into their eyes - compare what you see there with the faces of Kristol and Perle and Cheney and Bush and Rice and...  and then tell me which group "gets it". Who is giving you the true picture?

Someone should give these guys a TV show. Put all three of them at a round table and let them conduct discussions with Perle and Kristol and...

PBS? LinkTV? Discovery TV?

Little Blog Book

Somebody ought to do this. Not me, I'm full up with projects already. But somebody - maybe Lance Mannion - ought to put together a book of blog entries related to the stuff of daily life. Holidays. Raising Kids. Wives. Husbands. Pets. Family trips. Bird watching (Okay, that one is just because nobody beats Wolcott at gluing words together just right).  Death. Birth. Cooking. TV. Teaching. You know, all the regular stuff. Somebody ought to put together a print collection because there are all these wonderful little essays out in these here tubes and too many people will never have a chance to see them because either they don't use the internet or (and here I refer to everyone) don't have the time to locate all the best ones.

I mention Mannion for this because he's a master of the form. His comments on family life knock me out, as with his recent entry about church and family and faith, which includes -

If there's a God, I believe He gave us one commandment.

"Come find me."

And there are only two types of people I see following that one as their vocation.

Artists and scientists.

Because if He's here to be found, He's here in the things He made and we're not going to find Him in them until we've figured them out, which we're a long way from doing.

But read the whole thing.

Likewise, read everything Quinn Cummings has to share about daily life, but stop laughing hysterically long enough to bow down to her when she nails a truth of home life,  like

But, the tasks of mothering are frequently brainless at the same time that they are mentally taxing. I

And go ahead and imagine Christy Hardin Smith is there at the table with you (she makes this easy) as she pauses from really fierce, really smart civic activism to talk about the plants in her garden or what The Peanut is doing now.

Peter Cottontail hippity-hopped to our house this morning, and The Peanut is wearing a cute little set of lamb ears while coloring with her new crayons and eating a healthy breakfast of a candy bracelet. It's good to be a kid.

There's a freshness and punch to the way these regular life reports get shared on blogs, and if more people could read them they'd know there's a whole lot more going on here than the mindless flame throwing that always seems to get talked about in the MSM.

Surely there's a publisher out there who would be happy to throw money and a team of eager internet-scouring interns at someone to pull together a small book of pearls, perfect for the airport book rack, suitable for gifts, stuffing a Christmas stocking...and making one blogger-editor rich.

Uh-Oh

I may have discovered my addiction.

eBay.

It began innocently enough. The Greek had asked me to place some of his woodworking machines for sale online. As I tooled around, getting acquainted with the turf, it occurred to me that maybe this was a good place to look for a larimar ring. I have wanted one for the longest time, but they’re so godawful expensive. My birthday is just a few weeks away. This could be my gift to myself. L-A-R-I-M-A-R, I typed it in. Up came 600+ options, about 90 of them rings. Now, I didn’t find a ring in the right size that worked, but I did find a larimar stone that I could  make into an interesting ring. I made a bid. As others bid on the same stone, I started checking what else they had bought – they were all stone junkies...which led me to other gemstone “stores” at eBay...which led to noodling around as I waited to see the pending results of my larimar bid. And then I saw it – a big, honking piece of kyanite. I don’t know what kyanite is. Never heard of it. But this piece of kyanite ignites something in me. I want it. I really, really want it. But why? I look up kyanite online. “Clears all chakras. One of two stones on earth – the other is citrine – that does not hold a negative charge, never has to be cleaned. Clears all negativity – from the electromagnetic charge around computers to black energy holes in your home. Can even be effective on pets.” I never noticed a black energy hole in the house but maybe my attraction to this stone tells me I have one. What could it hurt for me to walk around the house with such a stone...doing what? Waving it about? Making spirals in the air? I have no idea what one would do. But I’m wanting this hunk – the eBay notice calls it a WAND – of kyanite more and more. I make a bid. I’ll know in less an hour.  Now I notice a “store” that has a whole bunch of pieces of jewelry with just minutes to go and zero bids. The starting bid for most is, I kid you not, .01. I can afford a cent. I can even afford to be big about a cent. Oooh. Here’s a lovely pair of earrings – tiger’s eye and carnelian. Very pretty. I’d choose these in a store. I put in a maximum of $3.00 because anything less seems cheap to the point of meanness. My bid shows up as .01. Next, I find a large fire opal ring in an elegant silver setting. My size. Another $3.00 maximum. It comes up as .01. Oooh-oooh, a beeeee-autiful bracelet – about 2.5 inches wide with hundreds of white topaz and pyrite crystals. White and gold. Gorgeous. Another big .01. - It’s two minutes now until the kyanite bidding closes. I check back in. Refresh – 1 min 40 seconds. Refresh – 58 seconds.  My bid is still holding, holding, holding. Ten seconds to go. OH, NO! loadfish987 tries to sneak a bid past me! loadfish987 now has it for just 50 cents more than my maximum bid. I can’t let this stand! Fool! You don’t know I always scored at the top of my class on the reflex test. I may have been lousy at sports, could never climb  that damn rope, but by god...YES!!!  I manage to slip in in the very last seconds to secure MY kyanite...wand...for 50 cents over loadfish and a mere dollar more than my original high bid. As I sit, breathless, heart-thumping in the rush of this victory, I hear the email bell ding... ding... ding... ding... ding! Five messages. Kyanite, mine. Larimar cabachon, mine. Earrings, mine for a penny. Ring, mine for a penny. Bracelet, mine for a penny. I kinda feel bad about those last three. I mean the only way three cents could be a fair price for those pieces is if the materials are toxic, radioactive, something like that.  So yeah, I feel guilty about such a deal. Worse is my fear that this could become habit-forming. The cats sleep peacefully, unaware – or maybe not - that soon they will be cleared of all negativity.

Meryl Streep, Maureen Dowd, David Geffen, Hillary Clinton, Karen Tumulty, Barack Obama, Scooter Libby, Margo Channing... and Fashioning Reality

WNYC's Brian Lehrer asked film critic Owen Gleiberman to reflect on Al Gore's night at the Oscars. Gleiberman answered with an opinion about Gore as candidate instead -

Lehrer: Owen, you're a movie critic, why are you going there?

Gleiberman: Movies, politics... it's all one now.

A Firedoglake commenter shares this observation from the Libby trial -

After each day's events I have stood outside the exit of the Barrett Prettyman courthouse. I have been able to observe the Libby team exit and the MSM's cameramen (no women) and their coverage of him.

They anxiously await with a scout in the hallways signaling to them when Team Libby is about to exit from the courthouse.

When Libby exits the cameras start flashing and Libby begins to pose... yes pose. When I first saw this display I was in shock. Somehow I assumed one would want to escape the courthouse onslaught of the MSM. But no, Libby poses. I wondered if I had gotten off the wrong metro stop and ended up in Hollywood.

Libby stood, turned his head slowly and struck a pose. Cameras flashed. He turned his head and struck another pose; cameras flashed again. So scripted!

The next day (Wednesday of last week) I watched as Libby's wife exited first from the revolving door. She stopped, just outside the door, flipped her hair and struck a pose for the cameras. It seemed like eternity because not one camera flashed, not one. I almost felt bad for her but her actions seemed so deliberate, so arrogant, so what I consider pathetic.

A few minutes later Libby came out and the same MSM exercise that had taken place the day before repeated itself. Libby poses, cameras flash, he strikes another pose, cameras flash.

As I closely watched Libby and his wife being chauffeured away in the jet black SUV, his wife tossed her hair and they began to laugh and continued to laugh.

Meanwhile, from a San Francisco Chronicle columnist at the Vanity Fair after-Oscar party - 

James Woods was arriving with his golden-haired squeeze, Ashley Madison (a perfect starlet name). Fingering her diamond necklace, a circle of hearts, he told reporters it came from Jason of Beverly Hills. It was on loan. Next on the line was Faye Dunaway, whose face is mostly lips nowadays.  There was a man in front of her telling the TV journalists all they needed to know: H. Stern earrings, dress by Jay Mandell, shoes by Stuart Weisman. He was kind of an announcer for her, as she made her way down the line...

...Some of the stars arrived, posed, chatted, went inside and came out pretty quickly.  A lot of this party is about business...  Faye Dunaway's drive-by was 15 minutes long,

And so the people came and went, which was all visible from the viewing stands, and this leads to a philosophical and maybe self-hating observation.  Daniel Craig, the new James Bond, was on his way out of the party when the photogs spotted him and started screaming.  He shook his head and walked right by them, refusing to pose. There I was, standing right in the middle of the crowd, one of the salivating dogs hungry for a bone; but there is something pleasing to me in his gesture. 

Inside the party later, I mentioned to Francis Ford Coppola that the spectacle of that red carpet meat market gives me the willies, and he turned it back, perhaps rightfully.  "That's what the media's become," he said. 

I dunno, seems like a partnership.

And over at Bagnewsnotes -

How perfect.  Just three days before the awards show, and TIME plays the hype to imagine Hillary as Bette Davis, the "great but aging actress" in All About Eve, and Obama as the (female) ingenue looking to take her down.

Besides the specific typecasting, what could be more thematic than likening Democratic candidates to actors playing actors.

Maybe I've been in Europe too long, but really, I could care less about David and Maureen and the Hollywood - Beltway mafia and their personal bones to pick... What I do care about is how the media eggs this stuff on to profit off the entertainment value.

SO... let's talk about Meryl Streep at the Oscars... the Meryl Streep who has earned (operative word) more Academy Award nominations (14) than any other actor... the Meryl Streep who is described by her friends as "startlingly earthy - without a whiff of pretense."  Earthy is a word that comes up often regarding Streep.

The Meryl Streep who is famously UNinterested in the trappings of showbiz glamour:

One consistent thread in Streep’s career has been her resolute decision not to play the beauty card. “I think the most liberating thing I did early on was to free myself from any concern about my looks as they pertained to my work,” she says. “For an actress worrying about appearance is a horrible, horrible trap. It’s great for acting to be unconscious of how you look and to be willing and to be willing to mess up how you look, and see what that does to people.”

The Meryl Streep who has said...

"All that attention to the perfect lighting, the perfect this, the perfect that, I find terribly annoying."

"I don't have very much interest in trends and fashions. I don't follow the fashion shows and stuff like that."

...and in a recent magazine conversation between Helen Mirren and Streep:

MIRREN: One of the great advantages of getting older is that you can walk into a world which is more truthful and less to do with other people's fantasies.

STREEP: But I felt the desire to f--- around with how I look from the very beginning. And the idea that you're married to some sort of glamorous look makes me crazy. I hate all that bulls---. I mean, I'll put on foundation over my pimples, but really it pisses me off.

...who said of her nominated role as Amanda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada:

“I had a blast stepping into Miranda’s shoes, literally,” laughs Streep. “But I couldn’t care less about fashion to the degree Miranda does... It was hard work dressing like that, too. I felt like I was wearing or putting on underwater gear. I guess a normal woman would find it extremely enjoyable to wear those clothes. For me, I didn’t enjoy it. It just felt like a straight jacket."

"We finished filming right after Hurricane Katrina and Anne [Hathaway] had the great idea that we donate all of the clothes from the set to a charity auction. Not only does the money from the auction go to people who really need it but the clothes, shoes and coats that were auctioned off went to people who actually wanted them, would wear them and would be comfortable in them. If I had taken any home, they would have remained in my closet for the rest of their existence.”

It's not that Streep hasn't thought deeply about the social and psychological impact of fashion...

"But fashion has a profound effect on young girls. And as a mother of young girls I think about that. I remember the effect that fashion magazines had on me when I was growing up, and how they added to my feelings of inadequacy and un-attractiveness and yet they were some sort of inspiration. You know, I was thinking that if only I could be that thin, or change my nose, or my hair, if I had the right shoes and the jewelry, well, maybe everything would be alright for me. So it’s all tied up in ourselves and it’s very conflicting within ourselves."

...or the essential role of wardrobe in creating characters:

"I love costume. In my next life, I'm going to be a costume designer."

"Yes, I'm a notorious pain-in-the-butt for any costume designer because I have so many opinions about how my people should present. I feel very strongly that we make decisions about what we're giving to the world, what we're withholding from the world by virtue of what we put on our bodies, and what we choose to say and not say. So, for me, clothes are kind of character; they're more interesting in those terms."

In other words, she understands the difference between costume for a role and how she makes her way in the world as a human being.

That Meryl Streep went to the Oscars this year and got panned by multiple fashionistas for not getting her dress right. "What was she going for," sneered one, "earth mother?" There's that "earthy" business again.  Oh my, it seems Meryl Streep walked down that red carpet as her authentic self. How dare she be real? Didn't she understand she was supposed to play a role in their constricted little fashion play? Yes, according to the fashion cops, the woman with 14 Oscar nominations doesn't know how to act.

Which is how I found myself yelling at the TV screen and the newspaper and the radio , "She's not in your damn play! Why are you reviewing her as if she were, you shallow moron?!" Streep knows the difference between acting and being, and has the integrity to hold the line that is right for her.  Talk about missing the interesting story!

When TIME's Karen Tumulty uses the strained & silly metaphor of All About Eve to tell us something "newsworthy" about Barack and Hillary, she's doing the same thing - framing a story in a little meaningless box that says more about her than the actual story.

When Chris Matthews obsesses (watch the video) on Bill Clinton's "philandering" as a fruitful  topic in assessing Hillary's candidacy, he's doing the same thing. (h/t Lance Mannion)

How did we arrive at this place of oddly skewed frames and too much posing and sick mutually narcissistic partnerships and It's All Entertainment? I ask only because it's draining the life out of us. Slow death by posing.

There's only one ticket out: excruciating authenticity. Now that, Karen, would be "a bumpy ride." Because - hoo-boy - just about everyone concerned is way, way, way out of practice! They're going to need rehearsals to get real.