The Illiterate

In a way, I

The best liberal argument for invading Iraq–if it’s done right–that I’ve read. And from a German Marxist, at that (Link from Arts and Letters Daily).

Better Than He Deserves

Fremont’s great Bolshevik leader, properly adorned:

I only wish the duck were a little bigger.

I’ve been wondering for a long time why no one on the liberal side of the fence had made the argument that Saddam deserves to be ousted simply for what he’s done to his own people, regardless of how close he is to developing nuclear weapons or whatever tenuous (and possibly trumped up) connections he may have to Al Queda. There was a time when liberals believed all totalitarian regimes should be overthrown, whether they were our allies or not–possibly the most moral thing Jimmy Carter ever did was refuse to prop up the Somoza regime in Nicaragua. Too many on the far left seem to have convinced themselves that the United States is as totalitarian as it’s possible to be, and therefore no other government overthrow is defensible. Meanwhile, the more moderate left appears to espouse what might be called geopolitical nimbyism: “Yes, we know he’s evil and needs to be removed from power, but why should we sully our own hands doing it?”

In any case, here’s one liberal who does make the argument, and forgive me if I’m a little surprised to find that it’s Salman Rushdie. When I saw him speak about a month ago, Rushdie said that he couldn’t think of any justification to invade Iraq, and that he didn’t know anyone else who knew of any either. It made me wonder afterwards if he and Christopher Hitchens were still friends. Maybe Hitch got a hold of him sometime in the last month and gave him a good talking to.

Further proof of blogs’ effect on newspapers, from a press release announcing the “new” New York Sun (thanks to Tapped for the link):

Other new columnists include Andrew Sullivan, the former editor of The New Republic who now issues a WebLog, Andrewsullivan.com and will be writing a weekly column for the Sun. David Frum, a former speech writer for President George W. Bush and one of the best connected Washington columnists, will be writing a weekly column from the nation’s capital. The Sun is the first newspaper to carry the “Best of the Web” column by James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal’s online editorial page site, “Opinion Journal.” Also, the Sun will be the exclusive New York newspaper to carry the weekly column by Michael Kinsley, the founding editor of Slate.com.

Nothing Where Two Somethings Meet

Interesting interview in the New York Times Magazine with sculptor Eric Fischl, who created the tumbling woman statue that raised such a controversy in New York a while back. I was particularly struck by this quote:

I think what happened is that since the 60′s there’s been an ambition that art merge itself with pop culture. At first it was an ironic stance, and then it became actually a real thing; people wanted to have art as a playground and as entertainment. And that’s fine in good times, but when something terrible or powerful or meaningful happens, you want an art that speaks to that, that embraces the language that would carry us forward, bring us together, all of that stuff. I think that 9/11 showed us that as an art world we weren’t quite qualified to deal with this. Not trained enough to handle it.

A corollary of this is that as art moved toward pop culture, it actually moved further away from the mainstream, instead of into it. By converting pop into an aesthetic object, they diminished its value as entertainment and escapism. People looked to art for intellectual and emotional involvement, and to pop for release. Now they can

From the “Looks like a duck, walks like a duck…” dept.

Reuters article quotes now ex-Israeli Foreign minister Shimon Perez as saying “I feel like I’m in a crisis”. Well, no kidding!

Being a great hater of the Lenin statue in Fremont, I found this article by Ian Jack from the Guardian fascinating. I wasn’t overly impressed by Martin Amis’s book on Stalin–except for a few minor details there was little I didn’t already know, and I had long ago formed my own opinions about the Bolsheviks and the honor and respect they received from Western intellectuals.

But many people at the time, as Jack explains, had complicated personal reasons for endorsing the Soviet regime, or for hoping against hope that it was better than it seemed. So I’m willing to extend a certain amount of sympathy to those who grew up through the years of the Soviet “experiment,” and whose vision, besides being blocked by Soviet propagandists, may have been blurred by their misty desires for a better world.

All of which only begs the question, however: What in hell is Fremont’s excuse? The Lenin statue was picked up on the cheap, like an oversized tchotke at an estate sale, the detritus of a system that had already been discredited and collapsed. If it’s intended as a memorial to lost liberal dreams, it’s a misbegotten image. If it’s intended ironically, it’s just tasteless. Yet again, if it’s intended as a way of keeping the socialist dream alive, then it’s misbegotten, tasteless, and immoral. I still harbor a fantasy of visiting Fremont in the middle of the night, and hanging a sign reading “MURDERER” around the statue’s neck. Better yet, I envision it being hauled down–like the statue in Eisenstein’s “October”–and melted. The Fremonters could use it to make wind chimes or some kind of garish lawn art. It would be a hard price to pay, but anything would be better than endorsing totalitarian butchers.

There’s a lot to agree with in Hendrik Hertzberg’s Comment in this week’s New Yorker, but there’s one point that seems very off-base, and nearly throws the whole argument out the window:

“[The Bush Doctrine's] idea of world government looks very much like a benevolent American dictatorship

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Glenn Reynolds predicts that the ultimate result of blogging will be a beefing up of real journalism in the major media. Since bloggers and other small-time net services can’t provide the kind of in-depth news coverage the majors can, but will be able to outflank the majors when it comes to commentary, he suggests that newspapers will need to go back to the basics in order to survive economically. If he’s right, that means we’ll see a lot more newspapers go under or be absorbed in Joint Operating Agreements, as they struggle to find the cash to reorient themselves toward hard reporting.

But I don’t think Reynolds is right. The tendency of newspapers, when faced with new media rivals, has always been to try and incorporate the techniques of their enemies, using their vast piles of capital as leverage to overcome the upstart competition. This was the tactic many employed against alternative papers in the seventies and eighties, and against cable news outlets through the nineties. That’s why there are so many pundits in the dailies to begin with. What we’ll see is more punditry, more “analysis,” and a larger web presence on the part of major papers. After all, if more people read the New York Times Online than pick up the print edition, they know they’re on to something.