"Ferocious storms and deadly heat waves are occurring with alarming frequency all over the world."

"We are living with the reality of the climate crisis every day. The only question is, how soon can we act?"

Al Gore is threatening us with reality... TV...." a live-streamed event called 24 Hours of Reality...."



I love the way reality is so propaganda-y when it emanates from The Mind of Gore.

"On September 14th, the world will join hands to create 24 hours of reality..."

That was so weird. It didn't have the slightest feeling of science to it at all.

"Want to see a corpse on a can of Pringles?"

(Via Overlawyered.) A. Barton Hinkle rankles at "those graphic new cigarette warnings Washington regulators unveiled last week."

"We'll begin ... studies to make sure that we are keeping people sensitized," says Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius. "What may seem quite shocking at the beginning, people get used to quite quickly." So if people build up a tolerance for the repulsive, the FDA will amp the dial up to grotesque....

The old warnings — informing buyers that cigarettes cause cancer, and so forth — conveyed information. The new labels are designed to provoke a reaction in that lizard part of your brain that thoughts never reach. A warning on a ladder that reads, "Caution: Improper use could lead to serious injury from falling" conveys information. A graphic photo of a compound tibia fracture conveys only sentiment.

Only sentiment... I disagree. Vividly pictured information is still information, even if it offends your taste. Years ago, if I remember correctly, the radical feminist Catharine MacKinnon argued that free speech rights shouldn't cover pornography, because it didn't convey any ideas. It was a sensation... designed to provoke a reaction in that lizard part of your brain that thoughts never reach. Those are Hinkle's words, not MacKinnon's. I don't think she said "lizard part of your brain"... though she might well have said "lizard part."

[INSERTION: "40 years ago: The Lizard King breaks on through to the other side." Did you forget to remember Jim Morrison 3 days ago?]

But, of course, the government doesn't need free speech protection to say what it wants to say to us. It's the government. The question is only whether it can require a private business to carry its message (or its delivery of sensation straight to that lizard part of your brain that thoughts never reach). The messages that already appear on cigarette packs give you the short answer: It can. The better question is: Do we want our government reaching past our intellect, into our deepest instincts, injecting its vision of how we ought to behave?

Well, of course, government actors are always trying to manipulate us on an emotional level in the hope that we'll vote for them or tolerate a war or a tax and so forth. I think the key is to become conscious and critical of those manipulations (and every day, I work at that, in public writing, to model and encourage awareness and resistance). Perhaps an even better question than whether we want the government to manipulate us emotionally is: Do we want the government to manipulate us emotionally with respect to the decisions we make about what to do with our bodies?

Phrased at that level of generality, the photos of cancerous lungs on cigarette packs (trying to get us not to smoke) are like the photos of aborted fetuses (trying to get us not to have abortions). Except we haven't seen the government go graphic with an anti-abortion message, and it's not as easy to think of a commercial product to stick the message on. Something for women. Tampons?

Hinkle's mind drifts to food:

[I]t's reasonable to ask when the federal government will start showing us disgusting pictures on packages of food, in which Washington also takes a keen interest. Indeed, someone asked Sibelius that very question during a press conference about the cigarette labels. Her response was evasive. Food labels are voluntary, she said. And tobacco is unique because smoking is "the No. 1 cause of preventable death."

It won't be No. 1 forever. Obesity is gaining ground fast. Sibelius says smoking imposes "$200 billion a year in health costs." According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity costs the U.S. about $150 billion....

Two days after Washington unveiled its new warning labels for cigarette packages, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study reporting that our food choices influence our weight more than exercise does. And potato chips pack on the pounds faster than any other food, including candy and desserts.

Hence the question about a corpse on a can of Pringles.

ADDED: Want to see a corpse in a can of Pringles?

"Gov. Scott Walker said... he should have done more to prepare the public for his plan to eliminate most collective bargaining for public employees."

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:

"We had not built enough of the case" for the sweeping plan, Walker said...

"What I should have done, from a political standpoint, was build that case sooner"....

"They defined it as a rights issue," Walker said. "It's not a rights issue. It's an expensive entitlement." 

He's saying he let the other side frame the issue, and he should have gotten out in front with his framing. I know conservatives love to read Saul Alinsky and appropriate advice that was originally written to further lefty causes. Now, it sounds like Walker has been reading George Lakoff stuff about "framing":

[T[he progressive worldview is modeled on a nurturant parent family. Briefly, it assumes that the world is basically good and can be made better and that one must work toward that. Children are born good; parents can make them better. Nurturing involves empathy, and the responsibility to take care of oneself and others for whom we are responsible. On a larger scale, specific policies follow, such as governmental protection in form of a social safety net and government regulation, universal education (to ensure competence, fairness), civil liberties and equal treatment (fairness and freedom), accountability (derived from trust), public service (from responsibility), open government (from open communication), and the promotion of an economy that benefits all and functions to promote these values, which are traditional progressive values in American politics.

The conservative worldview, the strict father model, assumes that the world is dangerous and difficult and that children are born bad and must be made good. The strict father is the moral authority who supports and defends the family, tells his wife what to do, and teaches his kids right from wrong. The only way to do that is through painful discipline - physical punishment that by adulthood will become internal discipline. The good people are the disciplined people. Once grown, the self-reliant, disciplined children are on their own. Those children who remain dependent (who were spoiled, overly willful, or recalcitrant) should be forced to undergo further discipline or be cut free with no support to face the discipline of the outside world.

Lakoff pushes liberals to get their "frame" into the public's head. Walker is saying he wishes he'd pushed the conservative frame. Walker seemed to assume that people understood the problem the way he did and would — after the election — trust him to do what he thought was needed. He wasn't sufficiently into propaganda, he's essentially saying. To say that, of course, is a form of propaganda (because he's subtly flattering himself). But if the other side is aggressively propagandizing, don't you have to enter the fray and counterpropagandize? You have to keep talking to people, even when you have the power to act quietly and industriously, getting things done.

Ideology and irony: Stephen Jay Gould mismeasured "The Mismeasure of Man."

A new study shows that Gould — who purported to show that ideology influenced the 19th-century physical anthropologist Samuel George Morton — was himself the one who got the data wrong.

In a 1981 book, “The Mismeasure of Man,” the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould asserted that Morton, believing that brain size was a measure of intelligence, had subconsciously manipulated the brain volumes of European, Asian and African skulls to favor his bias that Europeans had larger brains and Africans smaller ones.

But now physical anthropologists at the University of Pennsylvania, which owns Morton’s collection, have remeasured the skulls... “demonstrating that Morton did not manipulate his data to support his preconceptions”...

Dr. Gould, who died in 2002, based his attack on the premise that Morton believed that brain size was correlated with intelligence. But there is no evidence that Morton believed this or was trying to prove it.... Rather, Morton was measuring his skulls to study human variation, as part of his inquiry into whether God had created the human races separately....

But the Penn team... identified and remeasured half of the skulls used in his reports, finding that in only 2 percent of cases did Morton’s measurements differ significantly from their own. These errors either were random or gave a larger than accurate volume to African skulls, the reverse of the bias that Dr. Gould imputed to Morton.

“These results falsify the claim that Morton physically mismeasured crania based on his a priori biases”....

Does that mean Gould was the ideologue? Did Gould consciously or unconsciously slime Morton? Gould isn't around anymore to explain. He died in 2002, presumably a rich man, having sold many books that said many things readers enjoyed hearing, including the defamation of a man who'd died a century before he was born. But all the skulls remain, to be measured and evaluated by the living.

Ah, but what does John Hawks — our local (UW) blogging paleoanthropologist — have to say? 

Some of Gould's mistakes are outrageous, with others it is hard for me to believe that the misstatements were not deliberate misrepresentations.

For example, let's take the story about pushing seed into the skulls. Here is a paragraph from Lewis and colleagues, with direct quotes from Gould:

Gould famously suggested that Morton's measurements may have been subject to bias: “Plausible scenarios are easy to construct. Morton, measuring by seed, picks up a threateningly large black skull, fills it lightly and gives it a few desultory shakes. Next, he takes a distressingly small Caucasian skull, shakes hard, and pushes mightily at the foramen magnum with his thumb. It is easily done, without conscious motivation; expectation is a powerful guide to action”... While Gould offers this as only a “plausible scenario,” and did not remeasure any crania, subsequent authors have generally (and incorrectly) cited Gould as demonstrating that Morton physically mismeasured crania...

In other words, Gould made up the whole thing. It was an utter fabulation. It is disgraceful that later authors have cited this idea as fact.

Truly shocking.

Jon Stewart has put his friendship with Anthony Weiner above comedy.

And joking about how he's done that wasn't funny either. But this made me laugh.

ADDED: Jon Stewart should just come clean and admit that it has never been the show's agenda to mock people in the order that they are mockable. The calculation has always included how much Stewart & Co. enjoy mocking them. He's a comedian and not a journalist, so it doesn't make sense to call him biased. He's choosing his targets for his reasons, which include political ideology and personal relationships. We understand that. Move on. The effort to be funny about that last night failed. But I hope some viewers have learned from this and become more sophisticated about what the show is. The show influences viewers to think that various people are stupid/evil/corrupt, but it could just as well be making them think that a different set of characters is stupid/evil/corrupt.

"Chinese Pianist Plays Propaganda Tune at White House: US humiliated in eyes of Chinese by song used to inspire anti-Americanism."

Memeorandum points us to this article in the Epoch Times:

Chairman Hu Jintao recognized it as soon as he heard it. Patriotic Chinese Internet users were delighted as soon as they saw the videos online. Early morning TV viewers in China knew it would be played an hour or two beforehand. At the White House State dinner on Jan. 19, about six minutes into his set, Lang Lang began tapping out a famous anti-American propaganda melody from the Korean War: the theme song to the movie “Battle on Shangganling Mountain."...

The movie and the tune are widely known among Chinese, and the song has been a leading piece of anti-American propaganda by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for decades....

The song Lang Lang played describes how beautiful China is and then near the end has this verse, “When friends are here, there is fine wine /But if the jackal comes /What greets it is the hunting rifle.” The “jackal” in the song is the United States....

“In the eyes of all Chinese, this will not be seen as anything other than a big insult to the U.S.,” says Yang Jingduan, a Chinese psychiatrist now living in Philadelphia who had in China been a doctor in the Chinese military. “It’s like insulting you in your face and you don’t know it, it’s humiliating...

[One] Chinese commenting on a forum responded to the Lang Lang performance by writing, “Defeat America, defeat Obama” (writing Obama’s name with the wrong first character, one meaning “sunken” or “dented.”)

IN THE COMMENTS: Irene says:

The media in general will make less of this than they did of Michaele and Tareq Salahi.

This is "fuck you, ignorant barbarians" crashing.

William says:

Didn't the Red Chinese lose tens of thousands of men in the Korean War in order to insure the prolonged rule of one of the most fucked up regimes in that region's long history of fucked up regimes? I would think that playing that tune is more likely to remind the world of the stupidity of Communist rulers than humiliate the United States. I think Obama should get Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen to write a commemorative song about Carter's failed rescue mission to Iran. He should play that song at all state functions. Same deal as this.

Rosie the Riveter, AKA Geraldine Doyle...

... has died at the age of 86.

[T]he woman in the patriotic poster...

... was never named Rosie, nor was she a riveter. All along it was Mrs. Doyle, who after graduating from high school in Ann Arbor, Mich., took a job at a metal factory, her family said.

One day, a photographer representing United Press International came to her factory and captured Mrs. Doyle leaning over a piece of machinery and wearing a red and white polka-dot bandanna over her hair.

In early 1942, the Westinghouse Corp. commissioned artist J. Howard Miller to produce several morale-boosting posters to be displayed inside its buildings. The project was funded by the government as a way to motivate workers and perhaps recruit new ones for the war effort.

Smitten with the UPI photo, Miller reportedly was said to have decided to base one of his posters on the anonymous, slender metal worker - Mrs. Doyle.

For four decades, this fact escaped Mrs. Doyle, who shortly after the photo was taken left her job at the factory. She barely lasted two weeks.

A cellist, Mrs. Doyle was horrified to learn that a previous worker at the factory had badly injured her hands working at the machines. She found safer employment at a soda fountain and bookshop in Ann Arbor, where she wooed a young dental school student and later became his wife.

Oh, the irony! She couldn't do it. But she could inspire others to do it. And she could do other things, like play the cello and rear 6 children. "We" can do it, each in our own way. You work the machines, I'll help people find the right books.

Here's the Norman Rockwell version of Rosie, who's not nearly so glamorous and is clearly not based on Mrs. Doyle:

The 52-by-40-inch oil on canvas depicts "Rosie" on lunch break, her riveting gun on her lap as she uses a dog-eared copy of Mein Kampf as a foot stool.

Great symbolism, Norman. And I don't mean the book. I mean the manly power tool.

Rockwell's Rosie is posed as an homage to Michelangelo's frescoed depiction of the prophet Isaiah from the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Here's Michelangelo's Isaiah, who's more respectful of his book, which is about God, not his struggle against lies, stupidity and cowardice.

"Kim Jong Il, the supreme commander of the Korean People’s Army, deeply concerned over the soldiers’ diet."

The title of a painting from an exhibit called "“Flowers for Kim Il Sung: Art and Architecture from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.... in Vienna.

By presenting it uncritically, the Vienna museum is subtly legitimizing the world’s cruelest regime....

Like most socialist realism, this “art” is devoid of complexity. Whatever talents the North Korean painters may possess are tragically subordinated to Stalinist politics and stultifying adulation of the Dear Leader. The descriptions of the artwork underline its utterly bland, primitive, and unenlightening character: “The leaders’ closeness to the people is repeatedly emphasized,” reads the press release. “Red, internationally recognized as being symbolic of socialism, is employed most frequently.” My tour guide’s attempt to distinguish the works from those produced in other Communist societies by labeling it “Idealistic Realism” only underscored the lengths to which the MAK has had to go in order to justify the exhibition....


Could one imagine, in the 1930s, an English gallery featuring Nazi art in such undiscerning fashion?...

What about a Viennese gallery? You'd think Austria would be more sensitive.... about its own reputation.

The article, by James Kirchick, ends with this great George Orwell quote: "All art is propaganda. On the other hand, not all propaganda is art." (By the way, Orwell is calling himself a propagandist there, is he not?)

"Hello, Mr. President we honor you today! For all your great accomplishments, we all doth say 'hooray!'"

All right, now, I'm really outraged. It's one thing to lead the little children to sing the praises of our leader. It's quite another to make them learn lines like that.

***

If you think "doth" is funny, listen to the David Sedaris segment of "The Drama Bug" episode of "This American Life."

"Was the NEA coordinating with the White House to push their agenda on a group of artists eager for and reliant upon the NEA for grants...

"... or is the NEA telling the truth that this call 'was not a means to promote any legislative agenda'?"

Asks Breitbart, who promises "explosive new information" at noon today.

UPDATE: Here:

We were encouraged to bring the same sense of enthusiasm to these “focus areas” as we had brought to Obama’s presidential campaign, and we were encouraged to create art and art initiatives that brought awareness to these issues. Throughout the conversation, we were reminded of our ability as artists and art professionals to “shape the lives” of those around us. The now famous Obama “Hope” poster, created by artist Shepard Fairey and promoted by many of those on the phone call, and will.i.am’s “Yes We Can” song and music video were presented as shining examples of our group’s clear role in the election....

It is not within the National Endowment for the Arts’ original charter to initiate, organize, and tap into the art community to help bring awareness to health care, or energy & environmental issues for that matter; and especially not at a time when it is being vehemently debated. Artists shouldn’t be used as tools of the state to help create a climate amenable to their positions, which is what appears to be happening in this instance. If the art community wants to tackle those issues on its own then fine. But tackling them shouldn’t come as an encouragement from the NEA to those they potentially fund at this coincidental time.

How can Obama keep claiming prime network time...

... with no time given for a response from his opponents?

The networks don't like giving up their ad money, and on top of that, they are being turned into channels of state propaganda. I hope the ratings are terrible, and I'm pretty sure they will be. Why would anyone watch at this point? Even if you love the Prez, why tune in for multiple performances as if he's your favorite pop star?

"It is time to drop the term 'the environment' and talk about 'the air we breathe, the water our children drink.'"

Because we're dumb, and you need to manipulate us. More blather about "framing." Hey, maybe you need another word for "framing" — you need to reframe framing — because I think that’s a code word for progressive liberals...

Why did Obama's people buzz lower Manhattan with a jumbo jet and an F-16 fighter?

"The planes appeared on the horizon around 10 a.m. and sent a chill through the city. Flying in as low as 1,000 feet to 1,500 feet above New York City, they circled the Statue of Liberty before flying over Manhattan, Staten Island and New Jersey. Before they vanished, hundreds of frightened people had jammed emergency phone lines, and thousands of terrified people evacuated from buildings in the city and across the river in New Jersey. 'I was crying and praying to God to forgive me my sins because I thought I was going to get killed,' said Kathleen Filandro, who fled from 1New York Plaza when she spotted the planes."

Quiz:

Why'd did they do it?
	To get pics for propaganda, like they said.
	To distract you from the flu.
	To distract you from the economy.
	Because the torture memos weren't exciting you enough.
	So Obama could just eat his waffle, in a golf cart, and wear shorts.
pollcode.com free polls

"What we’re learning here is really the bedrock difference between the United States and the countries that are in a broad sense its legal cousins."

"Western governments are becoming increasingly comfortable with the regulation of opinion. The First Amendment really does distinguish the U.S., not just from Canada but from the rest of the Western world."

The NYT quotes Mark Steyn in an article that emphasizes the unique strength of the American law of free speech:

“Canadians do not have a cast-iron stomach for offensive speech,”[said Jason Gratl, a lawyer for the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Association of Journalists.] “We don’t subscribe to a marketplace of ideas. Americans as a whole are more tough-minded and more prepared for verbal combat.”...

A 1990 decision from the Canadian Supreme Court, for instance, upheld the criminal conviction of James Keegstra for “unlawfully promoting hatred against an identifiable group by communicating anti-Semitic statements.” Mr. Keegstra, a teacher, had told his students that Jews were “money loving,” “power hungry” and “treacherous.”

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Brian Dickson said there was an issue “crucial to the disposition of this appeal: the relationship between Canadian and American approaches to the constitutional protection of free expression, most notably in the realm of hate propaganda.”

Chief Justice Dickson said “there is much to be learned from First Amendment jurisprudence.” But he concluded that “the international commitment to eradicate hate propaganda and, most importantly, the special role given equality and multiculturalism in the Canadian Constitution necessitate a departure from the view, reasonably prevalent in America at present, that the suppression of hate propaganda is incompatible with the guarantee of free expression.”

"Senator Robert Francis Kennedy died at 1:44 A.M. today, June 6, 1968."

That was the announcement, 40 years ago, made at 1:59 a.m., the last entry in the transcripts of statements made by Bobby Kennedy's press secretary from the hospital. The first statement is from 2:30 a.m on June 5th. It is agonizing to read through the transcript and remember the ordeal. At 2:30, surgery was about to begin:

... His breathing is good and unassisted. His heart is good. He's unconscious and the doctors describe his condition as very critical. ...

The next announcement is at 4:45 a.m. on the 5th:

The surgery will take another hour or perhaps two. But Senator Kennedy's life signs remain good — respiration, pulse, blood pressure. And that's all they say...

At 7:20 a.m., the surgery is over and his condition is "extremely critical."

All but one fragment of the bullet have been removed from the head injury. There is still one bullet apparently somewhere in the back of his neck, although this has not been regarded as a major problem....

There is talk of the blood loss to the "midbrain" which controls "certain of the vital signs... although not directly the thinking processes." Everyone was talking about what would be left of him if he survived, so this reference to "the thinking processes" must have stirred some hopes. We were told "the next 12 to 36 hours will be a very critical period."

There's nothing more until a "very short bulletin" at 5:30 on the evening of June 5th. The doctors were "concerned over his continuing failure to show improvement."

The next we heard was the 1:59 announcement of his death, which ends: "He was 42 years old."

I was 17 when this happened, and of all the assassinations of the 1960s, this is the one that had the deepest effect on me. I wrote this a while ago:

When Bobby's coffin was on public view in St. Patrick's Cathedral, [my friends and I] got in my car and drove in to New York City (from Wayne, New Jersey) and waited in the long line to file past. I remember the feeling of being around the other mourners and how extremely kind I thought it was when office workers brought us cups of water from inside their building. In the end, we teenagers started worrying that our parents would get upset, wondering where we were, and we left the line we'd waited in for hours.

When I was in New York this past year, I happened to walk by a rather ordinary high wall next to a sidewalk and recognized it as the wall over which the office workers handed those cups of water. It was something about their concern for us that made me think that our parents worrying was more important than getting to the coffin. But I have often regretted that we didn't stay there in that line. We'd come so far.

Now, I'm looking at some more of the articles in the NYT from 40 years ago. (My links will get you to PDFs of the articles, but you may have to pay to see them.)

Here is the article describing the shooting:

The Shooting: A Victory Celebration That Ended With Shots, Screams and Curses; SUSPECT IS SEIZED WITH GUN IN HAND Men Wrestle Him to Table as Kennedy, Bleeding, Lies in a Corridor

A thin, intense man stood on the platform in the glare of television lights. He had come to share victory with those who had helped him win it....

Another article:

"Hysteria" in West Is Feared by Arabs

Amman, Jordan. Palestinians here voiced fears today that "a wave of anti-Arab hysteria"... might follow allegations that a Palestinian Arab had shot Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

"Jewish propaganda" was one Palestinian Arab's reaction to reports that Sirhan Bishara Sirhan had been charged in the case.

"It's outrageous!" declared Amman's semi-official newspaper, Ad Destour. "What Arab in his right mind would do a thing like this? The only people to benefit from such actions are the Jews."

Some Palestinians expressed the belief that Sirhan was a "hired killer" and part of a Zionist plot to discredit Arabs."

In his column, Tom Wicker quotes Gene McCarthy:

"It is not enough, in my judgment," he said, "to say that this was the act of one deranged man, if that is the case. The nation, I think, bears too great a burden of guilt, really for the kind of neglect that has allowed the disposition to grow here in one's own land, in part a reflection of violence which we had visited upon the rest of the world."

Wicker also quotes Representative Gerald Ford:

"Surely there can be no further quibbling about the urgent need for tougher law enforcement legislation."

It remains to be seen whether those who agree with this will be willing to include some practical limitation on the purchase and possession o the kind of handgun with which Robert Kennedy was assassinated, or the cheap rifle that killed his brother.

Here is a piece on Sirhan Sirhan's father:

"This news made me sick when I heard it. If my son has done this dirty thing, then let them hang him."...

"I'm deeply sorry for both of them, for my son and for Mr. Kennedy. I admire the Kennedy family very much. I prayed that Robert Kennedy would be elected President so he could do many of the good things for the world that his brother did."...

"Please tell the Kennedy family that I am very, very sorry... I don't know how he could have done such a thing," he said. "Ours is a deeply religious family... We hate this sort of thing, this violence and death. It is not our way."

The family was Greek Orthodox, and Sirhan, as a child, had studied at a school run by the Lutheran Church of the Savior.

Here's a piece called "Tragedy Stalks Kennedy Family In a Long Series of Misfortunes."

Experts were consulted to explain it:

Experts Link Attack on Kennedy To a Strain of Violence in U.S.

A strain of violence in the American psychological make-up, going back even earlier than frontier days, was suggested yesterday by some experts as the cause of increased crime, rioting in the streets and acts of individual violence such as the shooting of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

Dr. David Abrahamsen, a psychiatrist..., said here that Americans condone violence.

"We love it," he said. "We love to fight. The frontier days made the gun manly.

"We feel we can have anything we want. We have a unique society — so affluent... In France, they can riot for three weeks and only two people are killed. Can you imagine how many would have been killed here?..."

Abrahamsen asserted that our affluence makes us think "we can have what we want," and we become frustrated and violent when we don't get it. He calls "frustration" the "wet nurse of violence" and says that public figures symbolize America, and "authority figures... have to be killed by those who feel frustrated by authority." The article also quotes a psychiatry professor, Dr. John P. Spiegel, who said: "The population as a whole is conditioned to expect violence... Behind this is America's gun fetish and the notion that a gun can be used to solve conflict. There is an emotional addiction, as strong as any any other addiction, such as drugs, to guns."

"This is the nuttiest thing in the freaking world. It's not propaganda. It's not part of a campaign."

"There's no corporation behind it — the record company couldn't get involved. I did it on my own. The only thing behind it is the people. And that's like, wow!" Will.i.am exclaims about all the love for his Obama song, "Yes We Can."

Dear al Qaeda: Why haven't you attacked the United States again?

Ayman al-Zawahri is taking questions on line.

Some of those posting questions sound worried: Does al-Qaida have a long-term strategy?...

Many appear frustrated that al-Qaida is not doing more.

"When we will see the men of al-Qaida waging holy war in Palestine? Because frankly our situation has become very bad," writes one, with the username "Seeking the Path."...

"I think they (al-Qaida's leaders) were aware (that) ... everyone was no longer buying into the propaganda about how great they are," said Jeremy Binnie of Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center. "This was put forward as a propaganda exercise and to make it look like they are responding to these concerns."

Politics is not easy for the terrorists. It's not enough just to blow things up. You have to also explain why you aren't blowing more things up.

"Do you have a body that studies events and reviews them to correct mistakes and assess them?"

Let's have some accountability.

ADDED: An emailed comment:

If only the process was more transparent. Then people would feel that they had more of a say in which terrorists were in charge.

The terror netroots are all about wanting to see more things get blown up, but they don't actually do anything but make noise. Chickenvultures, that's all they are. A serious terrorist leader would be able to get them in line, and be generally more supportive of jihad, rather than undermining it.

And really, al Qaeda's entire campaign is built on what they did on 9-11. Nevermind that prior to that, they were considered very polarizing figures. The truth is, they were in the right place, at the right time, and they've been playing that for all it's worth. And what have they done since? Been using that rep to garner big
contributions.

Having Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speak at Columbia University "is required by existing norms of free speech," says Lee C. Bollinger.

Here's the text of the speech by Columbia University president Lee C. Bollinger as he gave the stage to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday. Bollinger has a lot to say about free speech -- freedom of speech is his specialty in legal scholarship -- and there's no way to tell how much of this is sincere opinion and how much is an effort to shore up his reputation and the reputation of his university. He has a complex task in giving this speech. He must introduce the speaker and justify having him there, but he also wants to appease or one-up the critics who say the speaker doesn't belong on the stage at all.

Let's look:

First, since 2003, the World Leaders Forum has advanced Columbia’s longstanding tradition of serving as a major forum for robust debate, especially on global issues. It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas or our naiveté about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas. It is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices. To hold otherwise would make vigorous debate impossible.

Second, to those who believe that this event never should have happened, that it is inappropriate for the University to conduct such an event, I want to say that I understand your perspective and respect it as reasonable. The scope of free speech and academic freedom should itself always be open to further debate. As one of the more famous quotations about free speech goes, it is “an experiment, as all life is an experiment.” I want to say, however, as forcefully as I can, that this is the right thing to do and, indeed, it is required by existing norms of free speech, the American university, and Columbia itself.

Required? Not just an acceptable option? "[T]his is the right thing to do"... "it is required" -- what is the antecedent for "this" and "it"? Having Ahmadinejad speak? You can't give the big stage at a prestigious university to everyone who wants it. Is he only referring to the generic idea that debate required and debate requires opposing voices? Bollinger claims to be stating his argument "as forcefully as I can," and the word "required" is forceful, but, oddly, you can't tell what exactly he thinks is required.

"It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas." But giving the big stage at a prestigious university is not "merely to listen," Ahmadinejad represents something more than "ideas," and the ideas that he has are not merely ideas that "we deplore in any way." Yet Bollinger denies that giving a high platform to one speaker implies any special respect: "[W]e do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices." Public forum? This isn't a street corner where everyone gets to say what they want. It is not just any "public forum" when you highlight one speaker like that. The university's speech is implied: This is someone worth listening to.

Now, Columbia has its World Leaders Forum, and you might say that Ahmadinejad fits the framework of that speaker series so well that to exclude him would be to betray the commitment to debate. But then define the program and say why this is so. The university's website says: "The Forum brings together a wide range of governmental leaders, influential citizens, and intellectuals from many nations to examine global challenges and explore cultural perspectives," but under the question "Can my country's leader participate?" it only gives an email address. The actual standard to be applied is not stated. Presumably, the university preserves its discretion to make individual decisions, in private, about which leaders will speak and which will not.

Will Bollinger provide a list of all the requests received and which leaders were given the forum and which were denied it? Will Bollinger offer a principled definition of who belongs in the World Leaders Forum so that we can see what speech the university is "required" to present and so that we can know a high-level commitment to open debate when we see it?

Back to excerpts from Bollinger's speech:

[T]his event has nothing whatsoever to do with any “rights” of the speaker but only with our rights to listen and speak. We do it for ourselves.

This is a solid point. I like it. But I want to understand how it squares with the earlier statement that the event "is required." I appreciate the emphasis on the audience's right to receive information, but if it is our right, why are we required? Don't we also have the right to withhold the respect of a lofty podium to individuals whose hateful ideas we abhor and whose actions we regard as murderous? The point must be we wanted to hear him. Say why!

We do it in the great tradition of openness that has defined this nation for many decades now. We need to understand the world we live in, neither neglecting its glories nor shrinking from its threats and dangers. It is consistent with the idea that one should know thine enemies, to have the intellectual and emotional courage to confront the mind of evil and to prepare ourselves to act with the right temperament.

So the implication is: This man is evil. This is our chance to study him in the flesh, to understand the mind of evil and to build our confidence in our values as we face up to him.

Now, Bollinger is framing the event and boxing Ahmadinejad in. What we have here is not really a normal speaker that we might provide a forum for, but more of an object of study for you to abhor in person. I present the monster. It's quite unusual to bring in a guest and then introduce him that way. Or is it a World Leaders Forum tradition? Prove it!

Bollinger exercises his free speech rights describing the monster's evil to his face and questioning the monster about why he is such a monster. Excerpts:

Iran hanged up to 30 people this past July and August during a widely reported suppression of efforts to establish a more open, democratic society in Iran. Many of these executions were carried out in public view, a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a party.

These executions and others have coincided with a wider crackdown on student activists and academics accused of trying to foment a so-called “soft revolution”. This has included jailing and forced retirements of scholars....

Why have women, members of the Baha’i faith, homosexuals and so many of our academic colleagues become targets of persecution in your country?...

In a December 2005 state television broadcast, you described the Holocaust as a “fabricated” “legend.” One year later, you held a two-day conference of Holocaust deniers.

For the illiterate and ignorant, this is dangerous propaganda....

Will you cease this outrage?...

Twelve days ago, you said that the state of Israel “cannot continue its life.”...

According to reports by the Council on Foreign Relations, it’s well documented that Iran is a state sponsor of terror that funds such violent group as the Lebanese Hezbollah, which Iran helped organize in the 1980s, the Palestinian Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. ...

Why do you support well-documented terrorist organizations that continue to strike at peace and democracy in the Middle East, destroying lives and civil society in the region?...

In a briefing before the National Press Club earlier this month, General David Petraeus reported that arms supplies from Iran, including 240mm rockets and explosively formed projectiles, are contributing to “a sophistication of attacks that would by no means be possible without Iranian support.”...

Can you tell them and us why Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq by arming Shi’a militia targeting and killing U.S. troops?...

Why does your country continue to refuse to adhere to international standards for nuclear weapons verification in defiance of agreements that you have made with the UN nuclear agency?

Bollinger ends by telling Ahmadinejad that he probably lacks "the intellectual courage to answer these questions." If you know he won't, why have him speak? Bollinger anticipates and answers that question: Avoiding the questions "will in itself be meaningful to us." And performing that avoidance in public will "exhibit the fanatical mindset that characterizes so much of what you say and do." And that will be helpful, because it will "only further undermines your position in Iran with all the many good-hearted, intelligent citizens there." Let's hope so. Ahmadinejad does look bad in the video clips I've seen. I hope that furthers the cause of his opponents in Iran, and if it does, then, thank you, Lee Bollinger.

Bollinger concludes:

I am only a professor, who is also a university president, and today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for. I only wish I could do better.

But it's easy to do better. You make me vomit, you hateful bastard. But you can't do that when you're presenting a man on a prestigious stage. You have to use polite language.

Oh, I'm yearning, yearning to express myself. But I am only I am only a professor, only a poor wee little professor a humble little incredibly prestigious university, which I also happen to be president of... yet I must yearn and yearn to express myself.... here where I control the stage and decide who will speak and who will not...

So, okay, he made the best of a bad situation that he brought upon himself.

IN THE COMMENTS: Smilin' Jack writes:

I wonder if Bollinger himself wrote the invitation to Ahmadinejad...if so it must have read something like this:

Dear Hateful Monster:

I yearn to express my revulsion at everything you stand for, so please come and speak at Columbia. Tell us your deplorable ideas in order to strengthen our resolve to resist them. Then we will ask questions in order to learn more about you, our enemy. But you will be too cowardly to answer them.

RSVP, Lee

"Jayson Blair and the resurrected corpse of Spiro Agnew would be a great diavlog."

Former NYT reporter Judith Miller goes on BloggingheadsTV to talk about this article about female suicide bombers, and gets a tirade of abuse from the commenters:

Oh my god! Where do hack NYTimes reporters go to die, figuratively speaking of course! Why it's Blogging Heads TV!!!! Will we be seeing Rick Bragg and Howell Raines here next?

Oh God. Bloggingheads has stooped pretty low in the past, but really - Judith Miller? A dishonest hack and a proud purveyor of pre-war propaganda, one of the chief vehicles for the lies the Bush administration used to sell its phony war? Why is she being given a platform here? Could Bob not find anyone more intellectually dishonest - the festering corpse of Richard Nixon, perhaps?...

Why bother watching this? How would it be possible to guess when she's lying and when she isn't? There ought to be some minimal standards for who appears on bloggingheads.

Next up on Bloggingheads - Jayson Blair and Steven Glass...

Jayson Blair and the resurrected corpse of Spiro Agnew would be a great diavlog.

Etc. etc.

ADDED: Since I've been savaged by commenters at bhTV, I may have a distorted perspective, but I hate to see Miller treated this way. For one thing, she's talking about an interesting important subject, and it would be nice if people could pay attention to it. For another, I think her experience there will deter others from going on the show. You already have to face an interlocutor who will argue with you, perhaps intensely, in an hour-long session that will not be edited. But you also see that a strange horde of pseudonymous commenters is waiting to shred you.

Liberals ideate furiously over the black-and-white McCain website.

John McCain has an aesthetically pleasing website, which is distinguished by the very low color level. Instead of the usual florid blue and red, it uses elegant, crisp black, white, and gray. Perhaps that calls to mind some beautifully photographed black and white movie. Bring on the liberal commentators, and what movie do they think of? Of course, it's "Triumph of the Will," which, admittedly, is a film known for its crisp black and white photography (to go along with its Nazi propaganda).

Here's Atrios:

Imperial Stormtrooper Chic

And here's Ezra Klein:

But to get the full flavor of the terrifyingly martial undercurrent, watch the video "stand up," which is currently the default clip on the front page. It looks like an over-the-top parody of fascist campaign propaganda from a movie, and sounds like Triumph of the Will. It's also worth noting that in an effort to shore up his conservative credentials in a particularly pandering and ghoulish way, the next video is simply called "Reagan Tribute," and the weird shoehorning of McCain's time as a POW into his admiration for Reagan really has to be seen to be believed. I don't know how many cults of personality one web site can foster, but props to the McCain team for trying to find out.

What bugs me the most about their reaction is not the usual conservatives-are-Nazis business, it's the thoughtless tainting of the aesthetic of black-and-white design, this eagerness to score political points, with no feeling for art.

Klein does have a point about the film clip. The music is over-the-top. Visually, I think the film -- Errol Morris? -- and the website are excellent, but the music is off-putting. It announces the intent to manipulate you emotionally. That makes it a less effective effort at manipulation, though. I don't think Leni Riefenstahl would have done something so crude.

ADDED: I've amused Kevin Drum.