armchair pundit

When the folks in “real America” want to make a point of distinguishing themselves from the rest of us, they often spit words like French, European, elite, socialist and of course San Francisco and Nancy Pelosi. SNL captured this sentiment pretty well:

Now, I live in San Francisco and Nancy Pelosi is my representative, and while I think the right’s characterizations of her are simplistic, exaggerated and unfair, I was very surprised to receive a robocall from Rosanne Barr the other night urging me to dump Pelosi, especially when I realized that Barr was saying Pelosi is not liberal enough. Specifically Barr declares, Pelosi is “a collaborator with a criminal administration.”

Pelosi’s biggest mistake, in my mind, was to have stated upon assuming her position as Speaker of the House that “impeachment is off the table.” People understood her to be, in effect, giving the Bush Administration a free pass, but Pelosi was only being pragmatic. Regardless of what you think Bush and Cheney deserve (impeachment, a war crimes trial), the Democrats hold the slimmest majority in Congress, and there’s no way they have the votes to impeach. She recognized it as a hopless cause that would only make it impossible to push anything else on the Democratic legislative agenda.

Rosanne’s candidate, by the way, is Cindy Sheehan.

It’s taken me a few days to write this post, partly because I’ve been busy (remarkable in itself, since I’m officially unemployed right now), and partly because I’m still not really sure what I want to say.

David Foster Wallace committed suicide last Friday, and the world lost an acrobatic writer and a dazzling mind. People either love or hate his fractured, self-conscious, self-interrupting, heavily-footnoted style. Some people dismiss it as pretentious or as a kind of academic pandering, but I think his suicide represents a final verdict that shows he was his own biggest critic.

I am a huge admirer of DFW, and I’m not sure there’s ever been another writer so versatile. His work is at times manic, funny, quiet, sad, high-flying, firmly-grounded. Most of it is so multi-dimensional it defies description. He was a virtuoso who came closer to representing the way our brains process life than anyone else I can think of. His magnum opus – Infinite Jest – was 1000+ pages long and packed with footnotes, but as you read it you recognize that your own mind produces this kind of fractured and multi-layered narrative about every second.

Finally, it’s crystal clear in his writing and in the way he would talk about his writing that he wrote out of love. It feels trite to actually write that here, but I think the whole of his writing has a tenderness running through it that is ultimately about the pain of modern life. He recognized how difficult it is to live in the world we’ve made for ourselves, especially for people inclined to examine it.

He was one of those people, and in the end he couldn’t endure what he was able to see.

I’ve been off the grid for a couple weeks, backpacking with my brothers. We embarked a day or two after McCain announced his surprising (and IMHO almost surreal) choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. This, and she, dominated the headlines as we headed into the mountains, and I was hoping the shock and awe would have faded by the time we got back.

The press’s attention span is an interesting thing. It’s still all Palin all the time, and the Republicans seem to be fine with that. They can’t win on the issues, so why wouldn’t they be?

Anyway, I’ve designed a graphic for the new Republican ticket (above). Let me know if you want some stickers.

In a word: compromise.

Now, compromise is often a good thing. I’m all for bi-partisanship. I want a candidate and a president who’s truly willing to look at all sides of an issue and accept that the other party’s point of view might be the right one. I don’t want a candidate who simply panders to the left or the right, and I actually appreciate Obama’s willingness to buck many members of his own party with his recent vote on the FISA bill, as an example.

I’m all for having “no red states and no blue states, but only the United States.”

But then there’s compromise that just seems spineless in a particularly Democrat kind of way, and that’s what I feel like I witnessed this week.

Barack Obama recently took a few steps back from his stance against expanding offshore oil drilling, saying:

If, in order to get that passed, we have to compromise in terms of a careful, well-thought-out drilling strategy that was carefully circumscribed to avoid significant environmental damage – I don’t want to be so rigid that we can’t get something done.

This is a compromise that seems transparently political. Obama’s lead over McCain has all but evaporated over the last week, and polls indicate that the candidates’ opposing views on oil drilling is a key factor. Obama’s move toward the Republican position on oil drilling, therefore, seems like a calculated attempt to neutralize McCain in this one area where he seems to have shown some strength, rather than a sincere effort to reach bi-partisan consensus. It is, “the same old politics” as Obama himself might say.

The problem with this particular compromise is that Obama has professed to agree with virtually all the experts on this issue (including spokesmen from the major oil companies) who say that expanding offshore drilling will have no effect on fuel prices until at least 2017, and little effect even then. This is the truth, and Obama knows it.

So this compromise feels political. It feels like pandering.

It takes quite a bit of courage for a candidate to stand up for the truth when it means telling people what they don’t want to hear, and Obama has made himself out to be the rare Democrat who has that kind of courage. Obama should tell people the truth. He should make a vigorous, passionate case for the truth.

The Republicans have succeeded in clouding the truth on this issue, and Obama’s response should be to clear away the clouds, to shine a bright light on the truth. Instead, he has chosen to accept the clouds.

My belief is that this kind of compromise is what has killed the Democratic Party. When you compromise on everything, then you stand for everything. And when you stand for everything, you stand for nothing.

And when you stand for nothing, then you don’t really give voters an alternative to what the other party offers.

And come election time, if you don’t offer an alternative to what the other party offers, then the people who don’t want to vote for the other party will simply stay home.

RELATED: Why the Democrats will lose in ’08 – Part 1

Lots and lots of people have passed this video around, but it puts a giant, ridiculous grin on my face everytime I watch it. This guy is my new hero.

Matt is a 31-year-old guy from Connecticut who was inspired one day during his travels to do his signature silly dance for the camera and upload it to the website he was using to keep his family up-to-date on his wherabouts.

Anyway, what started on a whim in one country, he decided to repeat around the world…

Well, you could say it caught a wave (over 10 million views as of today), and a year or so later, Stride Gum approached him about sponsoring a sequel, on their dime – which was a no-brainer for Matt…

Don’t ask me why, but I was looking at Sean Hannity’s website today. OK, I was looking for a video clip of his recent interview with Shelby Steele that I learned about via Digg or reddit or something. Anyway, once I was there, I found myself clicking around out of sheer amazement.

Right away, I was assaulted by an orgy of red, white and blue that makes Stephen Colbert’s set look sedate. This is the obligatory patriotic pose. When you stand in front of the American flag, you must look proudly into the distance and display the underside of your chin. It also helps to have a second shot of yourself behind you, representing that “over-reaching” quality we want from our government.

Anyway, after I absorbed the full weight of Hannity’s patriotism, I tried searching for “Shelby Steele” and came up with nothing…

I was delighted to see, however, that I can share this page of zero search results with a friend. And I can search for Shelby Steele in the Yellow Pages. Do people still use the Yellow Pages?

Undeterred, I tried searching for Obama…

Nothing. Hmm… An example of “fair and balanced” reporting? How about a search for Clinton…

OK, could be the same thing. How about a couple of searches more in line with Hannity’s views…

Wow! How about another…

So, clearly pure incompetence. Maybe it has something to do with the way every word you search for is transformed into a “Sean Hannity Keyword.”

I want to keep clicking! By far the best thing I found on Sean Hannity’s website was this…

This has to be a joke. It needs to be a joke. But there’s no way Hannity is that funny, so I can only conclude that it’s real. I’m completely hooked at this point, especially when I see…

I love this. Watch out ladies, he’s “ready for it.” He’s actually armed and ready for it, if you look at the picture. Don’t take your eyes off your drink if you’re around this guy, because he’s bound to slip you a rohypnol.  I can’t stop myself from clicking into his profile…

Who would have guessed motor racing and wrestling? I mean, the guy has a high school education. But wait, there’s more…

Wait, twenty-seven? Didn’t your personal information say you were 31?

This dude can’t be real. I’m almost sure he’s fake… but he is the “featured” profile, which either says something about Hannity’s audience (if he’s real) or his ability to run a website (if he’s fake).

I wish I had time to see more, and say more, but it’s midnight, and I’m procrastinating. I have a couple more hours of work left before I can go to bed, so I’ll just leave it here.

My job has sent me to Amsterdam for the week, and when I went to the Continental Airlines website to check in for my flight the other day, I was presented with the option to buy carbon offset credits – powered by an organization called Sustainable Travel International.

The whole idea of carbon offsetting is met with some harsh criticism. Skeptics argue that it’s just a way to help people feel better about themselves without having to change their consuming, polluting lifestyles…

But there’s no reason why purchasing carbon offsets can’t be just one part of a person’s overall change in lifestyle, instead of an alternative to change. And the truth is the money spent on carbon offsets does make its way into projects like wind farms and reforestation initiatives.

It might be better to avoid air travel altogether, but of course it’s unrealistic. I’m happy that the airline industry is promoting not only awareness of the issue in general, but a quantification of my own individual contribution. And I’m happy that they point me to one way of mitigating at least some of the damage.

It won’t save the world, but it’s better than nothing.

It’s not often I agree with Bill Kristol (like… never), but I can’t argue with his op-ed piece in today’s New York Times. Obama gave a commencement address at Wesleyan University, pinch hitting for the ailing Senator Ted Kennedy. He spoke about the importance of public service and self-sacrifice for the greater good, but as Kristol points out:

…there’s one obvious path of service Obama doesn’t recommend — or even mention: military service. He does mention war twice: “At a time of war, we need you to work for peace.” And, we face “big challenges like war and recession.” But there’s nothing about serving your country in uniform.

Whether you agree with a given war or not, dying for one’s country is the ultimate public service and example of self-sacrifice. It’s a shame that Obama didn’t mention it – so close on the heels of Memorial Day. It’s a shame, but it hardly warrants a whole op-ed piece.

Still, maybe Obama should acknowledge the omission. Politicians spend a lot of time pointing out how wrong their opponents are, but it’s amazing what a small capitulation can do.

H.L. Mencken knew this. He used to get a lot of angry letters, and he would often write back. Instead of arguing or digging in or meticulously refuting each point, he would simply say, “maybe you’re right.”