It was that latter feeling that I rightfully received yesterday when I found myself reading an article by Geoff Garin decrying the Obama campaign’s “direct, personal character attacks” against a certain female Presidential hopeful. It is the Obama campaign, Garin believes, that has turned the Democratic Party into a circular firing squad. As the bottom of the article states in italics, Garin is a strategist for the Clinton campaign (more specifically, Mark Penn’s replacement), so it seems perfectly natural for him to be crying “foul!” even as the group he represents is busy devising how they can sneak a pea-shooter into a knife fight. But that’s politics, right?

Just so we’re all clear on this situation, I am in no way intending to insinuate that the Obama campaign has not, at times, sunk to the level we are so used to seeing in Presidential elections. They have, of course, tossed their share of negativity into the forum. For better or worse, I consider myself enough of a cynic to realize that regardless of the name checked on my ballot in November, I will most likely be disappointed by our future Presidential adminstration repeatedly in the coming years. Regardless, it would be nice to see the Clinton campaign move away from their attempts at playing the victim, when it could be argued that her campaign has long been more on the offense against Barack Obama than his campaign has been against her.

In the second paragraph of “Fair Is Fair”, Mr. Garin accuses Obama’s head strategist David Axelrod of “keeping with the direct, personal character attacks that the Obama campaign has leveled against Clinton from the beginning of this race…” after quoting Axelrod as saying that he did not believe Senator Clinton “would bring ‘the changes necessary’ to Washington”. To state that this is a character attack is misleading. Axelrod seems, rather, to be making an inference from a combination of facts in Hillary’s past. A look at the contributions to Clinton’s campaign shows that she has received over three times the amount of high-level ($4,600+) donations than has Barack Obama, who is the leader in smaller ($200+) donations. It is practically common sense to infer from this that a relatively large portion of Hillary’s financial base consists of those who, while quite possibly interested in having a Democrat in the White House, might not be looking to see any major shake-ups in the system that has provided so much for them. Mr. Axelrod might also be thinking of the years that Hillary spent serving Wal-Mart, which certainly does not do much to boost her claim of being a friend to those who may be interested in bargaining with their employers in some sort of collective manner. Finally, Senator Clinton has received several hundred thousand dollars more from lobbyists and political action committees than has Senator Obama. Going from these few examples, it doesn’t appear that David Axelrod was out of line in suggesting that his candidate might better represent the voice of change inside the Beltway. Of course, it seems almost absurd that an argument has even arisen over the vague idea of who is more capable of change, but Garin is incorrect in labeling David Axelrod’s opinion as an attack on Clinton’s character.

Later in the article, Garin takes offense to more remarks from the Obama camp, saying that “Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, held a conference call with reporters and called Hillary ‘one of the most secretive politicians in America today’”, which Garin acknowledges as “a striking personal charge in the era of Dick Cheney”. Shortly thereafter, Garin makes note of David Axelrod’s accusation of Hillary “having a special interest obsession”. These are strong statements from high-level people within the Obama campaign, to be sure, but Garin would find it quite difficult to counter them with numbers. According to a Los Angeles Times article about a watchdog group’s book on wasteful government spending, Senator Clinton tops the rest of Congress with “281 individual spending projects” for a cost of over $296 million. Senator Obama took second place on that list with “53 special earmarks, totaling almost $97.4 million”, but Garin’s candidate is by far the big winner. Bloomberg.com went even further, stating that “only Barack Obama has voluntarily made his earmark information publicly available”, and that “the Clinton campaign refused to respond at all to requests that she identify her earmarks”. Garin should consider that refusal at least slightly questionable, considering the amount of taxpayer money involved.

Have these accusations from the Obama campaign honestly been unwarranted? Have they been “mean-spirited” and “unfair” as Garin suggested? While there may be a bit of hyperbole involved, a quick look at Clinton’s past can only leave one answer. Sorry, Geoff, but fair is fair.

This particular “analysis” is spectacular in its failure: its attempt to avoid betraying the naivete of its writer is simply breathtaking in its catastrophic wrong-headedness and oversimplification (”Will Medevedev take the reins and leave Putin out in the cold?!” “Will Putin:Medvedev::Cheney:Bush?!?”), and then, in a way similar to that in which drunks often trip over the very thing they’ve been searching for with bleary, sodden eyes, the article ends with a tiny bit of insight (”Wait. Might Medvedev only be a placeholder until Putin is constitutionally allowed to regain power? Let’s save the only prescient quote from a participant in the political process until the last paragraph”).

 It’s transparent to even the most casual observer that Medvedev is barely even qualified to be called a pawn: he is nothing at all more than a different and slightly more youthful face on Putin. Any attempts to even define him apart from Putin fail, and he owes every shred of his success to Vladimir Vladimirovich.

Even if you do attempt to give him his own identity, you end with a younger, softer Putin:  they both hail from Leningrad,  although Medvedev is twelve years younger; they both spend a great deal of time on staying physically fit, but while Putin pursues Judo as one of his favorite physical activities and has achived a sixth-degree black belt in the martial art, Medvedev is an avid practitioner of yoga; the experience of both prior to Presidency was primarily in appointed positions rather than electoral, although Putin was chair of the FSB (one of the KGB’s successor agencies) and Medvedev proceeded almost immediately to Presidential Head of Staff.

Perhaps the most striking thing about Putin and his mouthpiece is this: even a doughy, pretty-boy version of Putin still works out for two hours a day and has a Master’s. Medvedev may be a shadow, but he is very substantial in spite of it.

Just don’t expect to see a streak of independence any time soon. 

I would go so far as to call that an unwise choice on the part of those Serbs. According to the AP, right now the folks in the White House are bristling and expressing no small amount of their own displeasure with Serbia for its inadequate security.

In addition to the “now it’s personal” attitude our current administration is bound to take against Serbia (and not wrongly, either–the one person who died wasn’t a U.S. citizen, but very well could have been), we’ve got to tangle with the fact that Russia and Spain directly oppose Kosovan independence, siding with Serbia on the issue, and keep in mind that while China is not taking a hard stance against us, they are rightly pointing out that “The unilateral move taken by Kosovo will lead to a series of consequences.”

Oh, and to strain our ties with the Russians yet further, their sometimes-pal Turkey is throwing down in Iraq with 10,000 soldiers. That’s a land operation, as opposed to what we’ve been allowing (pinpointed air attacks against the Kurdistan Worker’s Party), so that’s “not the greatest news,” but hey, whatever. At least Turkish citizens aren’t actually directly fire-bombing U.S. embassies.

C’est la vie. It’s true that our military is unbelievably vulnerable thanks to getting bogged down in Iraq, but it’s not like a World War has ever broken out over the events in some retarded Balkan country or anything.

I want to respond to Garrett’s post about whether or not America is getting dumber. The WP article by Susan Jacoby is full of good points, and I agree that the numbers she references are scary. I agree that, as she says, we’ve seen “the triumph of video culture over print culture”, and that that’s a very bad thing. I’m also frustrated by how uninformed many people seem to be, and how complexity of thought is often tagged as “elitism”. Intelligence is probably the most important gauge of whether I’m attracted to someone (romantically or platonically), and I think it’s ridiculous that it’s so often ignored in the name of PCness.

But I think she gets some stuff wrong. I heartily believe that large chunks of our entire culture are rotting away before our eyes — but I don’t think it’s directly caused by a decline in national intellect.

First off, it may be true that we’re reading less as a nation and getting crasser, but I don’t think it’s anything like a seismic shift. Most Americans — most people everywhere — have always turned to ridiculous, base things for entertainment: bear baiting, minstral shows, 50s sitcoms, whatever. People are naturally attracted to violence, schlock, gaudiness, and sex. Most 13-year-olds in any decade, unlike Susan Jacoby, weren’t spending most days “reading for hours in a treehouse” — they were probably playing games or secretly feeling each other up. Yes, I’d rather see kids rolling hoops down some idyllic street than playing Halo for hours on end, but hoop-rolling is hardly a more “intellectual” activity. Developing the ability to appreciate and understand more “intellectual” stuff takes patience and training, whether it’s self-imposed or taught by someone else.

I know the low culture of the past and of the present aren’t entirely the same. I think there are two big differences between a crowd of Midwesterners gawking at Siamese Twins in a carnival sideshow and a TV audience watching fellow human beings humiliate themselves on a reality show. First, the scale of spectacle, since you can’t cram 25 million viewers into a single circus tent. Second, the intensity of the spectacle, and I think this IS a real problem. The money and psychological sophistication of mass media, coupled with the competition of the entertainment industry, means purer and purer doses of excitement are available at all hours of the day. We’ve upped the voltage on our entertainment to the point where we’re immune to smaller crass pleasures (like, say, staring at sideshow freaks). Jacoby is dead on about the erosion of American attention spans, I believe. I don’t know how to solve that problem, though, other than to avoid TV as much as possible (always good advice) and encourage others to do the same.

But be that as it may, I also think the Jacoby article is wrong in completely discounting the idea that living in a tech-saturated world is purely destructive. To be clear, I agree that it’s fucked up we plop babies in front of the TV for hours. I think World of Warcraft is creepy and alarming. But, the ability to navigate the Internet, utilize technology, and generally participate in an ADHD culture IS its own set of skills and its own form of intelligence. In fact, developing that particular form of intelligence is necessary for survival in the modern world. And, it doesn’t spell the end of human critical thought. The most successful (and also probably most content) individuals among our generation will be the people who can do both — who can navigate the shallow “video culture” of mainstream America while also developing the complex analytical and empathetic and creative abilities associated with reading, writing, etc. Of course you can certainly overstate that case and many do (”we don’t have to read books now that we have Wikipedia!”), but the truth is that we develop new intelligences to replace the old ones that are left behind as our culture shifts. The idea of “multiple intelligences” (yes, I recognize the irony of linking that) is an old one. And as a whole, it’s debatable whether “intelligence”, whatever it means, is declining over time. In this article by the serious badass Malcolm Gladwell, he mentions the fact that IQ scores have been steadily rising over the course of this century, to the point that the threshhold level for mental retardation has had to be steadily raised to account for upwardly-shifting medians in the IQ bell curve. As Gladwell says, this just drives home the point that intelligence isn’t any single measurable figure, whether an IQ score, an attention span, or a knowledge of geography or literature. Those are all pieces of the human mind, not ultimate yardsticks of its intrinsic value or power.

Finally, I think Jacoby is missing something about the role of “smartness” in our culture. As much as contemporary American anti-intellectualism might be a real phenomenon, Americans also have a seriously weird complex about the idea of being “stupid”. Americans can’t stand thinking they’re stupid, which is one reason they get all defensive about their lack of knowledge. When pundits or talk show hosts rail against liberal elites, intellectuals, and politicians, the message to the viewing audience isn’t “fuck smart people”. It’s “these poweful people think they’re SO SMART, but look how stupid and lacking in common sense they really are; you, the viewer, are the smart one. You can clearly see the solutions to the problems. (”Build a wall!”. Or, “End the war now, at all costs!”) Doesn’t it enrage you that they’re in control? We Report — YOU FUCKING DECIDE.” That’s not to say that politicians and intellectuals and whoever else in positions of power don’t do stupid, arrogant things or don’t deserve to be skewered. They do, and they do. But the ravenous public appetite for that skewering suggests something else is being satisfied in those news programs outside — a fulfillment of the need of the viewer to feel smart and validated. Hearing Lou Dobbs or Bill O’Reilly or whoever make their simplistic arguments makes the viewer feel he’s wiser, not through informing him but through lending credence to his preconceptions and implicitly reinforcing the idea that the viewer doesn’t have to learn new ideas and think critically about the story at hand in order to be intellectually worthwhile.

Jacoby calls this attitude, the “arrogance about [a] lack of knowledge”. Yeah, true that, but the smugness also masks a deep, deep insecurity that pervades the American consciousness, a perpetual fear of inadequacy that is itself created by a popular culture that innundates us with reminders of our shortcomings followed by pitches for products to cure or conceal those flaws. Some of those pressure points of psychic insecurity are well documented: unattractiveness, obesity, social anxiety. But just as important, we are also all terrified of exposing our ignorance, irrationality, and dullness. Even if we aren’t overly ignorant, irrational, or dull, we’re as frantic and anxious as a normal-bodied teenage girl castigating herself for being too fat. Secretly, we don’t want to be stupid, which is why it’s so important that we redefine “stupid” as “the other guy’s position”, be it religion or secular humanism.

But I think that up to a point, at certain times, presented in the right way, most people are also quite willing to learn new things if they can see the value in learning them and they’re not already clammed up from distrust. It’s just that in our depersonalized, lunatic, capital-driven, neurotic society, the opportunities for that kind of truly constructive discourse are minimized. That’s true both in the school systems and outside. And there’s a feedback loop: our abilities to learn new things and pay attention and consider thoughtfully opposing viewpoints become atrophied through disuse, making it less likely we’ll try to think critically. And then the problem only gets worse. So, although I agree with Jacoby that “it is past time for a serious national discussion about whether, as a nation, we truly value intellect and rationality”, I wonder — is calling Americans stupid really helping a single goddamn thing?

A few days ago I became especially interested in an article called “The Dumbing of America“, where she cast aside any fear of being labeled an “elitist”, and strictly argued that Americans, for the most part, are not only becoming increasingly stupid, but are acting the part more openly. It brings me a bit of guilt sometimes to realize that I, an elitist of sorts, agree, but how can her point really be effectively countered? When book and periodical sales are continuing their slow descent into futility, and shows like The Bachelor seem less and less likely to have a limit to the size of their audiences, it’s not difficult to see her point.
Very little, if any, of this argument is new, and it has been argued time and time again by Americans (and our cousins to the immediate north, I’m sure) for centuries. What amused me most about reading The Dumbing of America was that my experience was interrupted by two coworkers who (not so quietly) began discussing the absolute hilarity of Good Luck Chuck, I forced myself to stop reading the article and get back to work before my head forced itself into and through my computer monitor.

As I recounted the experience to my girlfriend later that evening, I began to laugh so hard that the last sip of 1967 Cheval Blanc I had taken sprayed right out of my nose, forever ruining my only copy of The Fountainhead.

Fidel’s given up the poorly-upkept facade of being Cuba’s leader, and he’s handed the reigns of power to his brother Raul (for realsies, this time).

Despite constant reassurances from his various lackeys that Fidel would soon to be able to leap tall buildings again, he’s finally acquiesced to the fact that his health problems will keep him from being an effective leader (and who knows where he got such a notion? Perhaps the fact that it’s kept him from being effective for nearly two years).

President Bush reacted extremely quickly to the news and threw together a press conference in Rwanda this morning. He called for a transition into a democratic government: “Eventually this transition ought to lead to free and fair elections, and I mean free and I mean fair, not these kind of staged elections that the Castro brothers try to foist off as being true democracy.”

Delightful words to hear, to be sure, but even though Raul is the fuzzy, warm-hearted little brother, I doubt he’ll be quickly ready to play ball. Sure, he’s raised a lot of hopes in Cuba after hinting that the economy could do with some help and suggesting that the government wages aren’t high enough at $19 a day, but our President is still asking for absolute power to avoid corrupting absolutely. Bush may as well ask the sun to stay up for an extra few hours today so he can finish his coloring book before bedtime.

What’s the Russian take on the subject? They’re a bit busy with the Kosovo/Serbia situation, but the Putin USA 2008 campaign had a few things to say: in case Bush’s dreams come true and there is a democratic election, “Cuban people may find it wise to write me in as candidate. I will solve Cuban problems too.”

Thanks, Vlad.