James Fallows of the Atlantic has made it a yearly tradition now to annotate the State of the Union address. This year, he has gone through the process again, and it has its usual delightful results.
Some fine examples:
Let us show them that Republicans and Democrats can compete for votes and cooperate for results [Yeah, yeah. No one in the hall is believing this.] at the same time. (Applause.)
[...]
Just as we trust Americans with their own money, we need to earn their trust by spending their tax dollars wisely. [Two problems with this sentence. One: the creakiest sort of transition, relying on the “just as.” Two: oh sure! This is what the current Congress will be known for???]
[...]
Since 9/11, we have taken the fight to these terrorists and extremists. We will stay on the offense, we will keep up the pressure, and we will deliver justice to our enemies. (Applause.) [This sentence really deserves some examination. It is striking that in the whole discussion of Iraq and terrorism, the president’s rhetoric is much less sweeping than in the days of yore. When the second sentence of this paragraph was delivered, it sounded as if it should naturally end, “and we will win.” It didn’t end that way, of course. The ending it has is a reference to the president’s memorable September, 2001 speech with its line: we will bring our enemies to justice, or we will bring justice to them. But striking here and elsewhere that the president was not predicting clear-cut victory in the way he had done before.]
This last bit is essential, especially because Fallows is not a dogmatic liberal by any means. Yet, he notes that Bush has morphed his view of the battle of good and evil. Rather than an overwhelming victory by good, Bush has totally embraced the Manichean worldview of constant, unending struggle. We’re not ending this conflict any time soon for Bush, and so much the better.
Check out the full-length article here. It’s worth the read if you have the time.
Barker is a sophomore majoring in journalism and business.
Naming someone or something can be a very arduous process. Why? Because we’re conditioned to believe that names factor into the amount of success someone or something has. And while this isn’t always true, it is my hypothesis that names matter in one area: music. Read the rest of this entry »
Josh Levin at Slate has a feature on the end of the venerable parody film, as Airplane! and Spaceballs have become replaced by Meet the Spartans and The Comebacks. Though I agree with him that the quality of such films has degraded over the years, I think it has less to do with the smug writers (although they obviously play a role) and more to do with the instantly-parodying culture we inhabit.
Take, for instance, those Spartans. 300 has already been parodied online to no end. There’s the PG version of the trailer, there’s mash-ups with everything from The Sandlot to an Olive Garden commercial, along with the inevitable techno remix. We have reached a point where the parodies pop up even before a movie even appears. All the writers who would’ve loaded joke after joke into a movie like Meet the Spartans had already done their part. They’re not going to contribute to the big spoof films because they have already made their little ones. With the fragmentation of internet culture, it seems impossible to ever achieve a universal cultural moment of parody. If we’re laughing at Britney Spears and Paris Hilton all the time, there’s nothing left to put in a parody movie.
As a result, the spoof movie dies because we have replaced it with the spate of Internet and home-made material. Consider even a venerable team of writers like the one that produced Walk Hard and the movie’s unceremonious booting by critics and audiences alike. Now, we go to see a movie like, say, Meet the Spartans, because its jokes aren’t jokes in and of themselves. Rather, they’re just totems, stand-ins for the real thing, which we’ve already seen a thousand times. Our laughter (if there is, indeed, laughter at all) is the repeated laughter at an old joke, not the inspired laughter of a new one.
(note to Internet Explorer users: For some reason, the video is not showing up in Explorer, but you can click on the link to watch the video on The Onion site. It was working last night and is still working in Firefox… if anyone knows why this might be, please let me know . I’m still trying to figure this whole “internet” thing out…)
Indira Dammu is a junior majoring in political science.
If you are considering taking an introductory economics class at IU, I’ll save you the trouble. A semester’s worth of learning can be reduced to two maxims — tax cuts are always good and globalization will save your life. While the merits of the first are still in dispute, the verdict on globalization is clear. Neoliberal economic policies have been credited with alleviating global poverty, increasing net economic prosperity and leveling the economic playing field. This self-congratulatory back-patting among economists and pundits alike often obscures the ugly face of globalization — the one that screws over the middle class and places profits over people. Thanks to policies enacted by both Democrats and Republicans, more people across the country are reeling from the harmful effects of free trade, and Indiana is no different.
A human tongue has been served up in a hospital canteen’s chicken risotto — and bosses reckon it was accidentally dropped into the food by a doctor. Slovenian officials are investigating after a doctor complained about a strange piece of meat on his plate. Ananova.com revealed the doctor insisted it was not chicken and after some intense bickering it was sent away for tests — and found to be part of a human tongue. Inspectors have closed the canteen in Izola, southern Slovenia, to review hygiene standards. Bosses believe a doctor could have unwittingly dropped the tongue in the food after treating a patient. A hospital spokesman insisted: “I can say clearly that we have never used patients’ parts in any of our dishes.”
And since I know you were wondering, yes, Slovenia does have a universal health care system. I mention this purely for anecdotal purposes, of course.
John Edwards will drop out of the Presidential race at 1 p.m. EST this afternoon. I figured he would see at least if he could grab 15% in a few states on Super Tuesday but I guess his internals showed him not reaching enough of those thresholds. Though I was never a big Edwards fan, I certainly valued his honesty and integrity, despite his occasional snake-oil salesman moments. He was a charmer, no doubt, and I think he missed his chance in 2004 against John Kerry in the primaries. This time around, though, he could never get the corporate media spotlight on him. Mr. Edwards, you will be missed from this race. You kept Obama and Hillary honest; now it’s nothing but a mudfight from here on in. This only raises the stakes further on Super-Duper-Ultra Tuesday.
I wonder whether the Edwards supporters helped Obama or Hillary. On the one hand, they are the kind of old white men who don’t take well to Obama’s message. On the other, they may have voted for Edwards as an un-Hillary. It’s hard to tell for sure. But it sure shakes up the Super Tuesday numbers.
There are 60 lobbyists in Washington for every member of Congress. The big corporations don’t need another president that looks out for them — they’ve got all the power they need. I want to be the people’s president.
A few weeks, ago I met a man named James Lowe in Wise, Virginia. James spent the first fifty years of his life without a voice — literally without a voice — because he didn’t have health care. All he needed was a simple operation to fix a cleft palate. That a man in the richest country in the world could go unable to speak for 50 years because he couldn’t pay for a $3,000 operation is something that should outrage every American. We are better than that. America is better that that.
It’s a stark reminder of our broken political system that leaves millions of Americans without a voice in their government — a government that is supposed to work for them.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. And we can change it together.
No one called out corporations more, and no one got punished more. Farewell, John.
And so it ends, out of the game after one round. Let this be a lesson to all who would skip the early contests to bank on Florida and the bigger states. Rudy’s fall from grace provides yet further evidence that we’ve got a screwy primary system in desparate need of reform. Rudy dominated national polls for almost a year. There’s gotta be a better way to decide nominees than to keep letting the same states exert enormous influence year after year.
Apparently Giuliani’s planning to drop out and endorse the Maverick tomorrow, officially signaling my cue to lose all interest in the 2008 election – see you in 2012. (Just kidding, you’re not getting rid of me that easily.)
For all his flaws (and there were many) I think America’s Mayor would have been a good nominee and probably a good president. But sadly, if you were a Rudy fan, you can just fuhgettaboutit.
After Mark Bittman’s article about the meat industry, “Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler,” was published on the NYT the other day, it shot right up to the top of the coveted ‘most emailed’ list, wedged in between day-old opinions and Caroline Kennedy’s Obama endorsement. Why? Because the article surprised Americans, who hold that meat-eating is a fundamental tenet of our national identity, right next to stars and stripes and SUVs. Americans were surprised that eating meat can be unhealthy–for our bodies, for our environment, and even the global food supply.
People often ask me, “Why are you a vegetarian?” I think they expect to hear, “Because I love animals.” But here’s the truth: I don’t love animals. I don’t think cows or chickens have feelings. I don’t think humankind should return to the animal-prohibition of the pre-Noah-flood history. (In Genesis, God only allows eating animals AFTER the flood, since he lowered his standards for humankind’s capacity to choose good. Before the flood, Adam, Eve and their progeny were vegetarians. I can only assume that Abel was a shepherd in order to exploit the animal for wool and milk, and not meat.)
I am a vegetarian because of the excesses of the meat industry. Bittman suggests in his article we cut back on meat. I suggest this too.
This is where you get your protein when it’s not from a slab of meat: in dairy, but more healthily in legumes like beans and lentils, in some whole grains, and in nuts.
OK, so here’s a scene for the masses of media Molochs out there. Clinton reaches to shake Obama’s hand. Obama turns away to shake McCaskill’s hand. Did he see it? Did he not? This is the kind of garbage the mainstream media drops on us all the time, without even bothering to answer the more pertinent question – does it matter?! Needless to say, everyone has picked it up.
Aside from that, everyone will see in The Snub what they like. The media, driven by a bias toward conflict, has already concluded what the Snub was, but they’re pretending to ask the question anyway. To be fair, the vast majority of the press’s first impressions were that it was a snub.
This is a perfect dissection of how our political media works. You have one question to ask Barack Obama: Do you ask it about his education proposals or about whether or not he meant to not shake Hillary Clinton’s hand? Every normal person asks the first one. Every journalist asks the second one. What a shocker. To counteract this focus, here’s Obama’s response to the State of the Union. I’m trying to do my part. I swear.
January 31st, 2008 by 
Peter Chen, columnist
