HHH on POTUS

Have you become so overwhelmed by the presidential contest that you’ve forgotten why democracy is a great thing (and why Democrats are so awesome)?

Well, then it’s your lucky day!  Here to remind us . . .

HUBERT HUMPHREY!!!!!!!!!

WE LOVE YOU HUBERT!!!!

Random sniping roundup

For whatever reason, my blog aggregator seems to be particularly full of distribution-worthy gaffes today. To that end:

Staffers at John McCain's campaign are said to refer to Barack Obama as "The One" - sarcastically, one might assume. In that vein, they've been taken with quite the bout of self-pity regarding allegedly biased media coverage of Obama. The campaign is now holding a lopsided election between two different soundtracks for a compilation of talking heads saying "Obama" and swooning. Interestingly, McCain himself said last night that coverage of the campaign has not been unfair, and that since he's a "big boy," he is "certainly not complaining" and even finds it "fun to watch." I hope he keeps us posted about his mood swings.

Despite their complaining (or not?) about the media's adulation of Obama, the folks at McCain HQ are apparently cool with a little bit of messianic imagery themselves:

On the plus side, the campaign also seems to have a sense of humor, as evidenced by their distribution of a press pass that reads: "McCain Press Corps JV Squad - Left Behind to Report in America," with the French translation on the back. Disappointingly, though, those press passes may not have gotten the wide audience in trend-setting New Hampshire that they so richly deserve, as McCain was greeted on his arrival at the Manchester airport late Monday night by precisely one reporter. (And a photographer, if you're picky.) Conservatives can insert more griping about biased media coverage here. I will begin to prepare a riposte about how McCain's publicity people clearly suck.

In less hilarious news, everyone's favorite columnist Bob Novak was on the guilty end of a hit-and-run today. Apparently he hit a pedestrian and started driving his Corvette away - until a cyclist pulled in front of him to block him from going anywhere. Kind of reminds me of the time Greg Mankiw almost ran his BMW over my blockmate. Moral of the story: yay, bicycles!

Finally, despite the urging of forty thousand signatories to a petition circulated by Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street, yesterday Joe Lieberman made an appearance at a convention of Christians United for Israel, a group headed by the, um, outspoken Reverend John C. Hagee. If you've forgotten about him, here's a quick refresher:

If you don't want to sit through that (totally understandable), the gist of it is that Hitler was doing God's will by chasing the Jews back to Israel. Wow! A perfect friend for Joe Lieberman!

McCain Blooper Reel: A Matter of History

It should go without saying that John McCain is leaning very, very heavily on Iraq, and particularly the effectiveness of the surge, in order to make his case that he would be a superior Commander-in-Chief to Barack Obama. In case you haven't been following the most recent round of sniping between Obama and McCain, it goes roughly like this:

McCAIN. First there was the surge, then there was stability. Surge good!
OBAMA. Right, but the stated purpose of the surge was to make space for a political reconciliation, which didn't happen. Surge bad!
McCAIN. But other awesome stuff happened after the surge too, like the Anbar Awakening. Surge good!

(See, I told you it would be rough.)

Then, unfortunately, the facts got in the way. It seems that the Anbar Awakening (or Sunni Awakening, or Iraqi Awakening; whichever term you prefer, it refers to the establishment of a number of councils of Sunnis who cooperated with the American military against Sunni insurgents) actually happened before the surge. TPM strings it all together:

As McCain might say: "I mean, that's just a matter of history."

NYTimes to McCain: Dude, You Can't Write

Forgetting for a second that McCain probably didn't write the thing himself, let's take a look at that Iraq policy op-ed of his that the NY Times refused to publish, in a move that has our favorite libertarian Frances Martel up in arms.

I’m not a John McCain fan by any means, but what glorified liberal rag The New York Times did to him and his editorial today crossed boundaries of objectivity and decency that should not have been crossed.

I think there's another answer, and it's this: McCain, or his speechwriter surrogate, submitted a genuinely unpublishable piece. Take a look for yourself over at the Drudge Report, which I commend for bringing this issue to light--not because I care about self-referential analysis of old media by new media, but because this op-ed is seriously educational, in a bad way.

Full disclosure: I think the surge worked. I thought it would, and I'm glad we did it. I do think we should think about eventually leaving a country we had no business in in the first place. But none of this has anything to do with why McCain's piece was rejected. I doubt it would have been accepted by the Crimson. It's a thinly-disguised attack ad, a shallow and partisan rhetorical stream. Case in point: It mentions Obama ten times. Ten. I'm excluding pronouns. (Examples, and much, much, much more, after the jump...)

Read more »

Kick-ass

What I learned from RedIvy today: you don't mess with Frances Martel.

And if the angle from which this particular reader criticizes homosexuality [link for context] is religious... I have to question what kind of God this wrathful evangelical deity really is, and why He is so desperate to smite everyone. Does He have nothing better to do, like create beauty in nature or answer the prayers of the faithful? My Christian God (and His Son), the one I talk to and worship every day, who in name and denomination is the same as yours, is kind, loving, forgiving, and understanding. He interprets sin and deprivation as an exclusive choice of the sinner, and not something thrust upon him from above (or below). Gays and lesbians can engage in sinful debauchery in the same way that straight individuals can, and aren’t considered sinners by default more than any of us are. I do not pretend to read the mind of the Lord, but if I am to believe that whole New Testament thing as the true way to lead one’s life(which I do), I cannot believe that God creates some people more sinful than others, or that there are sins that He is not willing to forgive.

...It is highly irritating to me that any mention of [Rachel] Maddow in the media has to come hand-in-hand with her sexuality, as if it were relevant to her occupation. Read any piece about her success and you’ll see what I mean. Those that abuse the stereotype will claim that she is “asking for it” with her short hair and, uh, eloquence, and all those “masculine” features like “snark” and “education”. Never mind that she rarely engages in discussion of gay and lesbian issues on MSNBC- she’ll talk about them when they’re relevant (she does have an extensive history in gay rights advocacy), but the scope of her political lens is much broader. She was “asking for it,” just for leaving the kitchen and not bowing down to the Valley Girl-esque image of the socially traditional newsgirl. Taking issue with her political beliefs (I myself disagree with her on almost every single point) is completely fair and, I believe, warranted. She’s practically wrong about everything, and it’s her choice to be so. Taking issue with her sexuality- which is neither here nor there in the political world- is disrespectful and uncalled for.

It’s almost as if the more envious elements of the media want to chalk up her success to her sexuality and not her talent, as if she is a product of this new socialist “Affirmative Action” thing and not a respectable pundit. And envy is always a thing to be mocked, traditional or otherwise.

FRANCES MAD. FRANCES SMASH.

...As much as I despise libertarianism -- and boy, do I ever -- I have to admit that the Internet, and the Republican Party, would be better if they had more people like Frances Martel in them. At least, they'd be more entertaining.

Sunday Screening

Everybody, this is Corb Lund. Corb, this is everybody. Now that we're all acquainted, let's hear some music.

CORB LUND is Canadian -- I know, me writing about Canadian music, you're shocked -- from Alberta, to be specific, and he plays country music (variously, along "the Corb Lund Band" or, lately, the wonderfully named "Hurtin' Albertans"). But it's not really country like most people understand it. Yes, there's yodeling in this song (which is part of a long tradition, actually, going back to Jimmie Rodgers who is arguably the founder of country music); but more than that, Corb Lund's music is just weird. Dense, inscrutable, sometimes deliberately stupid and sometimes deadly serious; you won't hear much else like it. Here's another example:

Now, I'm no fan of that video -- can't quite tell if it's a deliberate throwback to grunge, or just cheap and ADD-addled, but either way I'll pass -- but the song is just great. (That line: "This is grape juice and cheap vodka, man! This isn't even wine!" kills me every time. Not to mention it's an excuse to bring up the recent ridiculousness involving PZ Myers and a Communion wafer, which you should look at if you need more proof that this country's religious right is completely unhinged). You can hear the obvious Dylan influence in this one, but it's got that rootsy twist to it that adds a new dimension. Here's another, much more serious (and political) song -- follow the lyrics now:

Corb Lund's music, like a lot of Canadian rock, is an acquired taste. (I'm thinking here specifically of the Tragically Hip, whose songs are so dense both lyrically and musically that it often takes dozens of listenings before you can unravel them -- and that's not counting the YEARS of radio acclimation you need before you can get past Gord Downie's weird-ass voice.) But once you acquire it, man, do you ever acquire it; I've been spending a lot of time lately trying to tease out "Expectation and the Blues," under the logic that any country song which rhymes "over-intellectualize" with "self-actualize" must be worth understanding. (Here's a little low-quality snippet, if you're hardy enough to try it for yourself).

And it's not like he doesn't have a sense of humor. Here's "The Truck Got Stuck," one of Corb's most irresistibly dumb and catchy songs -- I warn you now, this is a talking blues about trucks getting stuck in mud, and if you hear it you WILL have it playing in your head for days. Listen:

(Agriculture Canada is our equivalent of the USDA, incidentally. Many Canadian federal agencies are just the name of what they do with the word "Canada" tacked on -- "Health Canada", ""Environment Canada", "Sport Canada", "Western Economic Diversification Canada", etc. You get used to it.)

Anyway; if you want to hear more Corb Lund, his albums are in all the usual places. I recommend eMusic, which sells real DRM-free MP3s at sensible prices ($10 for 30), and has a catalog of everything you need (they just don't carry the major labels, which is fine, because all that mainstream shit is on the filesharing networks anyway). Meanwhile, enjoy the rest of your weekends; this is an open thread.

The World's Most Amazing Campaign Site

Seriously. Just click here. Words can't begin to describe how awesome it is.

Deregulation solves everything. Deregulation is magic. Deregulation is your father

Nathan Newman's little article about the failure of deregulation and the current financial crisis made me have an equally little thought -- remember after one of the more recent Wall Street shocks, I think it was the Bear Stearns collapse, when McCain went on TV and gave a big speech where he said the answer to our problems was more transparency and a simpler tax code?

My thought: Boy, that was stupid.

McCain Blooper Reel: Now Who's a Flip-Flopper?

John McCain, May 28, 2008, Reno, Nevada:

Senator Obama has been to Iraq once. A little over two years ago, he went, and he has never seized the opportunity, except in a hearing, to meet with General Petraeus.... Now, I asked Senator Obama to go to Iraq. I asked him to go back... and I said I would go with him, if necessary. I would be glad to go with him.

Last month, Obama announced plans to visit Iraq sometime before the election.

Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for McCain's campaign, this morning:

Let's drop the pretense that this is a fact-finding trip and call it what it is: the first of its kind campaign rally overseas.

Plus, some whining:

It is unproductive to spend it worrying about the way Obama is covered. That being said, it certainly hasn't escaped us that the three network newscasts will originate from stops on Obama's trip next week.

John McCain, a little bit later, sort of repudiating Hazelbaker's comments:

The fact is that I’m glad he is going to Iraq. I am glad he is going to Afghanistan. It’s long, long overdue if you want to lead this nation.

John McCain, another little bit later, according to the Times:

Later in the day, in Grand Haven, Mich., Mr. McCain elaborated on his and Ms. Hazelbaker’s original remarks. He differentiated the Iraq and Afghanistan parts of the trip from its other legs, saying that Mr. Obama’s activities in those other countries could have “a political flavor, to say the least.”

I'm really lost at this point as to what part of the trip is pandering and what part of the trip is legitimate fact-finding. The logic seems to work like this: If John McCain tells you to go to a country, that makes you slightly better qualified to be commander in chief, except that you should have done it before John McCain told you to go, and at any rate you're not as qualified as John McCain. But if John McCain didn't recommend a trip, it's just a big overseas rally. Ooh, that makes my head hurt.

McCain and school choice

This morning, John McCain spoke at the NAACP Convention in Cincinnati about his plans for education and the economy. Most of it was standard Republican boilerplate - lower taxes ("for whom?" is an inconvenient question), smaller government (except the Pentagon) - stuff he probably recites in his sleep. But here's one particular bit of Republican boilerplate that really irked me:

In Washington, D.C., the Opportunity Scholarship program serves more than 1,900 boys and girls from families with an average income of 23,000 dollars a year. And more than 7,000 more families have applied for that program. What they all have in common is the desire to get their kids into a better school.

Democrats in Congress, including my opponent, oppose the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. In remarks to the American Federation of Teachers last weekend, Senator Obama dismissed public support for private school vouchers for low-income Americans as, "tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice." All of that went over well with the teachers union, but where does it leave families and their children who are stuck in failing schools?

Wait, wait, wait, hold up, Mac. I understand that election season is, by definition, oversimplification season, and if I complained about every instance of blaming the trial lawyers or the teachers' unions or the homosexuals, I'd probably break this blog. But the issue of school vouchers is particularly near and dear to my heart, because I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, hometown of the voucher movement. I received the first fifteen years of my formal education in the Milwaukee Public Schools, and I'm pretty well aware of the system's problems - low test scores, class sizes well beyond capacity, and shrinking budgets. (For one of the best illustrations of our budget problems, use the bathroom in an MPS school. After Tuesday or Wednesday, finding toilet paper is a gamble; in some bathrooms, you will find Boraxo, a powdered soap product so old that Ronald Reagan made an ad for it.) It seems to me that the sensible thing to do about those problems is to fix the public school system, not airlift students out of it. But Milwaukee's voucher program, which started in 1990 - about the same time that I was throwing a fit because Ethan Reik got to sit on the "E" in our kindergarten letter circle - took the latter approach, and like other voucher programs, it has had less than a stunning record of success. Which means that there are plenty of reasons, other than McCain's fictitious union-centered greed, to oppose school vouchers.

There are a number of fundamental issues with the concept of voucher programs - privatizating public goods, violating the separation of church and state, and so forth - but the one I want to deal with is that vouchers impose the classical economic paradigm of rational choice on a situation that doesn't fit that model. Anyone who's taken Ec 10 will be familiar with the model of the rational consumer, who carefully considers the costs and benefits of every available option before choosing the best one, which is good for the consumer and good for the rest of us, too. This may be sensible in a situation like buying a cell phone - at any rate, I presume that's why there are so damn many ads for models I can't afford. But the rational-choice paradigm works quite differently when parents are picking a school for their child. Part of this, to be sure, is the fault of individual parents who enroll their children indifferently in voucher programs, just as they enroll them in public schools. But a more fundamental part of the problem is that there isn't much information available on which parents could base a rational decision. MPS publishes test score and demographic information for every school it operates; there is no equivalent source of information for choice schools, making it impossible to make a rational economic choice. Consequently, the benefit of a free-market approach - that parents, by voting with their voucher dollars, will ensure that only the best schools survive - simply doesn't happen.

Nonetheless, parents keep on enrolling in the voucher program, perhaps on the assumption that private schools are uniformly better. (Evidence from the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, which McCain cited as an example of what he'd like to do, suggests this might be the case: while kids in the program don't test better or feel more positively about their schools than kids in the public schools, parents do think that choice schools are better and safer than public schools.) We tend to picture a private school as a well-funded institution with talented teachers, motivated students, and a strong college-prep curriculum - places like Chapin or Exeter or Horace Mann (although if they aren't getting kids into Harvard, I guess they're just failing completely). But this isn't what parents actually get when they enroll in voucher programs. The maximum subsidy for the 2008-09 school year in Wisconsin is $6,607 - a sizable chunk of money, to be sure, but that's less than half of the tuition for a year of kindergarten at the University School of Milwaukee, one of the best private schools in the state. Eligibility is restricted to families with incomes below 220% of the federal poverty level, which means that vouchers are not enough to help those families make up the gap between their income and tuition at a really good private school.

Instead, students on vouchers find themselves at poorly regulated schools with an astounding range of quality. The horror stories include Mandella School of Science and Math, where the principal claimed voucher payments for students who weren't enrolled and bought himself two Mercedes-Benzes, and Alex's Academics of Excellence (you read that right), which was founded by a convicted rapist and evicted from two different locations. Because the Wisconsin voucher law has very weak accountability provisions, these violations were detected by journalists, not the state, and it took much longer than it should have to shut these schools down. I don't mean to say that all voucher schools are like that, but a couple of good success stories does not make public policy, especially when the state doesn't give parents the tools they need to distinguish between the success stories and the horror stories. And if John McCain really wants to fix educational equality in the United States, instead of leaving kids' education up to Alex's Academics of Excellence, he ought to invest in the public schools that serve everyone.

The Hollywood Reporter

Tonight, I watched a wonderful film from 1987 called Broadcast News.  Directed by James L. Brooks (best known for his Oscar-winning Terms of Endearment and for being one of the creators of The Simpsons), it tells the story of three very different people working together at the Washington bureau of a major network news program.  The trio quickly forms a love triangle that interacts with the trials and tribulations of reporting, including frantic deadlines and massive layoffs.  I find the movie outstanding for two principal reasons which, being a good friend, I’ll share (with clips!).

The first is simply that it’s a great romantic comedy that somehow feels the most realistic of any I’ve seen.  The characters are believable and heartwarming, and the ending forgoes the usual happily-ever-after in favor of something much more real (and, as a result, probably more moving).

The second reason is that though it was made two decades ago, Broadcast News is just as timely today.  Like its predecessor by ten years, Network, it touches on problems in our media that still trouble pundits and laymen alike.  Issues like the battle between real news and infotainment, the sacrificing of quality journalism in favor of ratings, and the struggle between bare facts and creative interpretation dominate the plot.  The conclusions Broadcast News reaches are far from comforting, leaving viewers smiling at the characters while shaking their heads in sobering resignation.

Here now . . . some great scenes!

This segment shows the excitement of live broadcasting as we see our three principals: eager anchor Tom Grunick (Oscar winner William Hurt), a good-looking and nice guy who’s a bit dumb; high-strung producer Jane Craig (Oscar winner Holly Hunter), a talented neurotic who’s a bit anxious; and slighted correspondent Aaron Altman (Oscar nominee Albert Brooks), a brilliant yet prickly reporter who’s a bit drunk:

Here's an amazing scene between Aaron and Jane:

McCain Blooper Reel: Inaugural Edition

For a while I've been toying with the idea of establishing a recurring feature, à la "Sunday Nights on the Lam," chronicling John McCain's sometimes hilarious, sometimes frightening missteps on tape and on the record. I've been held back mostly by my superhuman (if I do say so myself) capability to not follow through with stuff I start. However, two factors reassure me. The first is that my usual tardiness shouldn't be an issue, because the official timing of this series is Whenever I Feel Like It. The second is that the last week or so has provided all kinds of awkward McCain moments, leaving me confident that I will not be bereft of material. So, without further ado, I present to you the inaugural edition of the John McCain Blooper Reel.

Probably my favorite incident this week is McCain's utter failure to muster a response to a reporter's question about why he voted against requiring that Medicare cover birth control. Watch it:

The gist of it is that Carly Fiorina, a McCain surrogate, made the news recently for complaining that many insurance plans cover Viagra but not birth control. Some witty person quickly pointed out that she ought to be complaining to her chosen candidate, because McCain twice voted against a bill that would require insurers to cover birth control. Oops. Later, maybe or maybe not aboard the Straight Talk Express, a reporter asked McCain about his position on that issue. First, as soon as the Viagra bit came up, McCain stammers, "I certainly do not want to discuss that issue." Then he hedges and hedges and hedges, and pauses for a full eight seconds before he says that he has no idea what his position is, and he'll have someone get back to her. CNN later received a boilerplate response from the campaign saying that McCain supports choice in health insurance. I'm not altogether sure what that means, although I'm pretty convinced that his pro-choice sentiments don't extend to abortion - which is really too bad, because abortions would probably be less frequent if women had better access to birth control.

But what really gets me is the digging in his long, long memory for a voting record, as if he couldn't formulate an opinion when he was point-blank asked for one. Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. I am not a heterosexual, and I nonetheless have an opinion about birth control. I understand that condoms will probably not be the subject of an international crisis anytime soon (although they sure are international these days), but shouldn't McCain, whose campaign is premised on the argument that he is qualified to be the commander in chief, at least be able to make a snap judgment about something so banal as condoms? Or maybe it's just the mention of Viagra that got him. After all, we all know how that worked out for Bob Dole.

You probably saw this coming, but Viagragate is not McCain's only misstep regarding women's issues. Here's a clip from last Friday, in Wisconsin of all places, where McCain hearts equal pay for his mostly-female audience:

But here he is in Michigan two months earlier, getting called out by a fourteen-year-old:

Oops! Maybe McCain doesn't heart equal pay. He comes up with an awfully weak justification for skipping the vote on (and stating his opposition to) the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act on the grounds that extending the statute of limitations with respect to pay discrimination claims is "um, um, bad for people, and, um, trial lawyers suck." (That's a paraphrase - sorry, but I just can't listen to that clip again - it's that incoherent.) If you haven't followed, the Fair Pay Act was drafted in response to Ledbetter v. Goodyear, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the plaintiff's pay discrimination suit against Goodyear Rubber was invalid because she filed suit more than 180 days after the decision was made to pay her less than men doing the same job. The Fair Pay Act would remedy that situation by making it clear that pay discrimination occurs every time a woman is issued a check that gives her less pay for doing the same work as a man, so that the clock on the statute of limitations starts ticking much later in a worker's career. The act does not, as McCain claims, abolish the statute of limitations, or even extend it; it recognizes that pay discrimination, like so many other forms of bias, can't be isolated to a single incident, and that its harms occur every time a woman gets a paycheck for less money than she deserves - a change that is essential to ensuring equal pay for equal work. So much for McCain's attempt at feminism.

(Oh, and if that doesn't get you pissed, consider this: What kind of campaign would pass over the microphone to a girl wearing a T-shirt reading "John McCain doesn't care about your future"?)

Finally, Markus beat me to it, but I highly recommend this clip of Mark Sanford, the governor of South Carolina and until yesterday considered a VP candidate, screwing up on the important question: "Are there any significant economic differences between what the Bush administration has put forward over these many years, as opposed to, now, what John McCain supports?"

Here are the topical words: "NAFTA," then "earmarks." First, as Blitzer points out, McCain loves NAFTA, but at least he's loved it consistently, which doesn't differentiate him from El Presidente at all. Plus, if we're all about consistency, maybe we should keep that in mind when it comes to McCain's newfound love for the Bush tax cuts, which he voted against way back when. Then, I don't think they get to this, but earmarks are - forgive me for this nerdiness - fiscal policy, and not economic policy in the sense that most folks think of it (think gas prices, jobs, and other mental issues). I'm not sure that John McCain has ever argued that reducing earmarks will create jobs. In fact, he hasn't even claimed that vetoing earmark-laden beers bills will help balance the budget (thus freeing up funds for his other genius economic schemes), reserving that task for "victory savings" from Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, there's some fuzzy math.

That's all for this blooper reel, but one last note: any other DemApples blogger is more than welcome to join in on the fun. Just be sure to tag your posts "McCain Blooper Reel," for the sake of my easy access to the series on a bad day.

Warnings of Alleged Liberal Leanings - Erroneous (or, WALL-E)

In a summer that is mostly bereft of good films (for that, we’ll have to wait for the winter: Frost/Nixon, Doubt, Milk, Revolutionary Road), I was pleased with and mesmerized by a film that has almost no dialogue and few human characters.  It instead found its power through heart, expression, and a celebration of the talents of some exceptional filmmakers.  I am referring to the magic and wonder of Disney/Pixar’s WALL-E.

 I’ll begin right away by saying that I was blown away by the movie.  I, like millions of Americans, fell in love with the titular robot, a delightful blend of R2-D2 and Charlie Chaplin whose binocular eyes and nervous twitters express more emotion than most of the human actors in summer entertainment.  That, combined with a terrific story and the best use of Hello Dolly! since Leonid Brezhnev’s stoned styling in Dick, has helped make WALL-E the finest film of the summer, likely one of the greatest of the year, and maybe even the best that those wunderkinds in Emeryville have produced.  If you haven’t experienced it yet, please do.  You won’t regret it.

It’s because of the charm and timeless magic of WALL-E that I feel compelled to provide some commentary on the politicization of out little mechanical friend.  Given the overall setting of the film – a dystopian earth that suffers due to the neglect of mankind – it’s pretty inevitable that people would see the parallels between it and the conservation movement.  But Andrew Stanton, the creator of this film and Finding Nemo, conceived of WALL-E even before Pixar’s first major hit, 1995’s Toy Story, long before global warming permeated the public consciousness as it does today.  Stanton basically told CNN that the ecological underpinnings of the film were unintentional:

“Yeah, frankly the love one is really all I was pushing. Everything else I was using elements that I knew matched those scenarios of environment and society and things, but I was just trying to go with things that [were] ... true aspects of us that amplified the big point of the story, which was this love story and what is the point of living? What is the real point of living? There's a lot of different ways people can fill their time, but there's really only one reason we're here and it's relationships and loving one another. That's all I was pushing. Everything else was a benefactor of that.”

 In following with this mentality, I find that I most agree with the conclusions of Variety film critic Todd McCarthy: “Stanton, his co-story hatcher Pete Docter, co-scenarist Jim Reardon and the entire Pixar team operate on the principle that entertainment values come first, and they have applied [the environmental message] throughout to sprightly effect.”  In other words, with regards to the ecological call-to-action, take it or leave it!  It’s perfectly fine (and maybe even recommended, considering that love is the real theme of the flick) to watch WALL-E free of any political statement.   

 That’s why I’m confused with comments like those of National Review’s Shannen Coffin, who claims that only liberal Inconvenient Truth-types will enjoy a film that left her kids “bombarded with leftist propaganda about the evils of mankind.”  Um . . . what?  (In National Review’s defense (did I just say that?), their film critic gave WALL-E a glowing endorsement.)  As if this already wasn’t inappropriate and misguided enough, Patrick J. Ford over at The American Conservative argues that Coffin is off-base.  Not because it’s stupid to apply politics to a fantasy endeavor whose creator stated that the environmental message is incidental, but because WALL-E – who knew! – espouses proper conservative doctrine:

“The real tragedy of these callous conservative critics (say that three times fast) is that they are missing the real lessons of the movie, ones I found immediately attractive to a traditional conservative. In the film, it becomes clear that mass consumerism is not just the product of big business, but of big business wedded with big government. In fact, the two are indistinguishable in WALL-E’s future. The government unilaterally provided it’s citizens with everything they needed, and this lack of variety led to Earth’s downfall.” 

Well, of course!  That’s the whole point of the film!  Who needs love when you have Barry Goldwater’s ghost pissing all over everything?  (For more conservative viewpoints, go here).

Maybe it could be expected that some conservatives would find fault with WALL-E.  After all, Chaplin himself was investigated by HUAC.  But even some on the left complained . . . because WALL-E isn’t liberal enough.  At The Huffington Post, Jessica Jensen (who overall really liked the movie) wrote, “Why didn't Pixar put up a simple screen with ‘ten recommendations for loving planet Earth’ at the end of the film -- or a link to a site with educational information? It pains me that MILLIONS of people will see this movie and learn nothing about what they can do to save the planet!”  Now, naturally I agree that we have lots to do to save the earth, and that people should be educated about how to do it.  But do we need to criticize WALL-E when, as I keep pointing out, the ecological-minded message was never meant to dominate the movie? 

What I’m trying to say here (and bless everyone who’s kept reading this far; in that time you probably could have gone out and watched the film) is that we as a people don’t need to apply politics to movies where it’s just not called for.  WALL-E is wonderful without being burdened with a liberal or conservative ideology.  After all, shouldn’t escapist fare be just that – escapist?  I’m a guy who loves political movies, whether that be through plot (everything from Nixon to The American President) or message (The China Syndrome or Angels in America).  But let’s leave politics to those films with political intent, and enjoy WALL-E for what it truly is: a classic love story . . . with robots. 

Awwwwwwwwwwwwww.

McCain opposes gay adoption

Sickening.

Q: President Bush believes that gay couples should not be permitted to adopt children. Do you agree with that?

Mr. McCain: I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no I don’t believe in gay adoption.

Q: Even if the alternative is the kid staying in an orphanage, or not having parents.

Mr. McCain: I encourage adoption and I encourage the opportunities for people to adopt children I encourage the process being less complicated so they can adopt as quickly as possible. And Cindy and I are proud of being adoptive parents.

Q: But your concern would be that the couple should a traditional couple [sic]

Mr. McCain: Yes.

So-called "social issues" aren't normally my purview, but this pisses me off. There are innumerable children out there who desperately need a stable home, and innumerable gay couples out there who could provide them one with love and care. And -- surprise -- there are no psychological issues associated with growing up in a gay household, none. No reasonable person in the 21st century should hold this position; the fact that McCain and other conservative politicians can say this stuff publicly without immediate rebuke and ostracism is a sign that our national discourse is still, in fundamental ways, retarded.

I hate Mondays. Somebody get me a drink.

(Both links via the Washington Independent.)

UPDATE (Thursday): "Actually Senator McCain only kind of opposes gay adoption, and also he doesn't, and it's a state issue anyway, and PLEASE GO AWAY SCARY GAY PEOPLE."

What Not To Do On CNN

This clip has been making the rounds today, in which Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) does a total faceplant trying to articulate any contrast between McCain and Bush on the economy. This is one of the worst appearances by a high-profile surrogate you'll ever see, and it highlights the severe message difficulty McCain's campaign is having on the economy. Look:

Brutal.

(Also, as Taegan Goddard notes -- we can probably strike Mark Sanford off McCain's VP list.)