Recording Surface

I suppose I’d be remiss in my blogging duties if I didn’t weigh in on The Scandal inflicting the Bush regime. I mean, something like 18 million other bloggers have, right?

Very well, then, I’m happy to be remiss. If my recalcitrance leaves you thirsting for something, anything, you could do worse than start, and end, at Dennis Perrin’s blog. He has a series of posts on the whole affair. I like this one, in which he wraps up his Halloween greeting on this succulent note:

What’s happening is not a People’s Crusade but a ruling order row. Cheney and his minions overstepped, and now it appears that they will pay. But remember that this is all played out over our heads, without our input, in places we’ll never see. Root for Fitz all you wish, but understand that you are merely spectators to a systemic cleansing ritual. The ghouls are trying to reestablish the unholy balance that the zombies hoped to destroy.

There’s a great ad running on PBS for the preschool cable channel Sprout, PBS’s private, for-profit venture with Comcast. In it, an international governing body, obviously the UN, debates some burning issue. Representatives of several nations are bickering in the way that nations do. As the seemingly interminable argument plods on, an innocent, doe-eyed young man of about eight who is sitting in the gallery clears his throat and pronounces, with great preciousness and common sense: “Excuse me. The more we get together, the happier we will be.” The members of the body all nod and moan their approval. Cut to a pleased parent watching the proceedings on television with her enraptured preschool-aged child.

It’s total horseshit, of course, even aside from the maudlin “message.” Anyone who knows preschoolers knows they are wonderfully free of anything resembling common sense. Ask one of them a simple question and you’ll usually receive a convoluted, nonsensical answer. The boy’s axiom about happiness would prompt most of them (or at least my five-year-old) to cry, “That’s boring!” and turn off the tv. (more…)

For health reasons, I rarely read the Big Liberal Blogs. But this morning I trolled them to test a hypothesis, which, much to my delight, was largely validated. I find it very comforting to not have to do the messy work of reevaluating my assumptions.

After reading yesterday that in 12 Iraqi provinces 90% of ballots cast were for the constitution, I guessed that liberals would have their smirks set on stun: The Busheviks are experts at ballot-box fraud! Of course they fixed the vote! That would be so like them! Alas, the hectoring but ultimately pliable wing of the Democratic Party did not disappoint me. Predictably, I found references to Katherine Harris, evocations of Clermont County, mocking allusions, complete with scare quotes, to Bush’s love of democracy and constitutions. There was petty irony, grim sarcasm, and great glee at the inevitability of the result. In short, the bloggers summoned all the thematic and tonal hallmarks of liberal outrage to show that the big bad Bush administration is “truly in charge in Iraq.” (more…)