Media Matters for America - Altercation by Eric Alterman

We're Movin' On; We'll Soon Be Gone...

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 11:28:39 EST

Hello everybody. This is the last time Altercation will be appearing on the Media Matters site. When we return after the new year, it will be on The Nation's site, and will appear rather more sporadically. Thanks to everybody for dropping by, helping out, and offering their support, encouragement, and, of course, solidarity.

You can find Altercation's new home at this URL: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/altercation. If you need to reach me in the interim, I'm at whatliberalmedia@aol.com.

So, thanks again, and a healthy, happy holiday to each and every one of us,

Eric.

Slacker Friday

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:17:47 EST

We've got a new Think Again column here called "Mr. Pot, Meet Mr. Kettle." It's about the newfound and hypocritical conservative sensitivity to "harsh" remarks from liberals.

George Zornick again. Before we start slacking: yesterday I wrote about Dana Milbank's silly comparison of Obama's relationship with the press to that of George W. Bush's. Here is CNN's Campbell Brown, citing the same exchange with a Chicago Tribune reporter as Milbank, and writing: "Mr. President-elect, this sort of approach reminds a lot of us of the current administration now packing up to go, and it frankly doesn't fly in a democracy."

Did I miss Brown's special comments on George W. Bush's abuse of the press, like dramatically reduced access to government information or paying off journalists to promote administration initiatives? And, again, while she may take issue with Obama's decorum in cutting off a reporter, is she asking him to defy a U.S. Attorney and potentially handicap a corruption investigation?

Slacker Friday:

Name: Wade Lassiter
Hometown: Columbia, SC

There was a presidential election just after I joined the military and there was a lot of talk about politics. I hadn't formed political views so I began asking a lot of questions. Most careerists were pretty Conservative; most recent joiners were somewhere in the Liberal sphere.

Libertarianism appealed to me when a believer first told me about it, though on giving it some thought it appeared to be Utopian at best and dumb when I got into Rand. I had the longest and most discussions with someone who had served 22 years and was about to retire. He, too, was Southern, though he was from a couple hundred miles north of me and I frequently kidded him about being a Northerner.

He was very Conservative, of the Limbaugh, fooled-by-Fox strain. What struck me was that he, and many others, said they were Conservatives yet voluntarily lived (and loved) an environment that was as close to Communism as could be. The government told us what job we would have, what days and hours we would work, where we would live, what we would earn, we could not quit and do something else, how we would dress (and the dress was uniform), how to (in many instances) talk, how to have our hair cut, and so on. It was, for practical reasons, anti-democracy (while existing to support democracy.)

On top of that the caste system was stronger in the military than anywhere in America you might name. (I was astounded when a Navy friend showed me an invitation to an official celebration. I don't remember the exact wording but the beautiful card invited "senior officers and their ladies", "junior officers and their women", and so forth, descending on the evolutionary scale through about six categories ending in "junior enlisted men and their mates". It came very close to calling the wives of the lowest caste animals or sluts.)

Having seen that Conservative military people were delightfully at home under what amounted to Communism was one of the many things that removed the shine from that particular political philosophy for me. The fellow I spoke to so often said he'd finally realized that which was why he was retiring.

Conservatives turned out not to really care about half of Communism. When they were on the rampage against it in the second half of the last century they were actually only against the economic side; they really rather liked the totalitarian social side. As is virtually always the case with Conservatives their real interest was money, not people.

The totalitarian social aspect, the loss of personal freedom, free speech and independent thinking was a positive to them, not a negative. I joke that the only thing a Conservative likes more than giving orders is following orders, and that seems to fit as well.

That, however, only partially explained to me why Conservatives were so comfortable with the military. I haven't been able to reconcile the financial side. Conservatives seem to be all about money. Greed is good, Ayn Rand, no taxes stuff. But the military isn't exactly lucrative.

And people aren't quite as black and white as concise notes like this paint them to be.

Name: Leila Abu-Saba
Hometown: Oakland, CA

I live in East Oakland, in a racially and economically mixed neighborhood with a small and well-run independent bookstore. I was just in there an hour ago, spending almost $200 on holiday presents, and the clerk said business is brisk. (The place was crammed with shoppers.) Their fall was "scary" and they're worried about January but the holiday business is good.

The neighborhood email list, with 500 subscribers, features several notes from residents reminding us to shop the neighborhood, along with personal testimonials about the bookstore and its owner.

In a neighboring city, Berkeley, Ayelet Waldman (a novelist in her own right, she's married to Michael Chabon) is running a bookstore pledge in which she and her friends are trying to buy 500 books.

We all feel that independent bookstores are about much more than mere commerce. They add safety to our streets as well as sales tax to our coffers. They sell books by local writers and books for local readers. Our city government is perpetually in crisis, and even more so in these times; we feel that if our neighborhoods are to remain livable we must support our businesses and public institutions. If spending our Christmas money in the bookstore will keep civilization from collapse, then we'll pull out our wallets.

Nothin' between the ground and my brains but a piece of government plastic ...

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 15:59:21 EST

We've got a new Think Again column here called "Mr. Pot, Meet Mr. Kettle." It's about the newfound and hypocritical conservative sensitivity to "harsh" remarks from liberals.

George Zornick here again, as Eric sails the ocean blue. As you may know, we just wrote a four-part Think Again series on Bush's war on the press (here, here, here, and here). I'm happy to report that recently, a member of the mainstream media has acknowledged the vicious campaign George W. Bush waged against the Fourth Estate. Here's The Washington Post's Dana Milbank:

Begging off because of an ongoing investigation? Hiding behind Patrick Fitzgerald's skirt? Warning a reporter not to "waste" a question and asking for an alternative question? All four techniques were popularized by Bush.

OK, that's not a strong indictment, but I'll take it. Wait, what? Milbank was comparing Bush's treatment of the press to Obama's?

Yes, it appears that when Obama interrupted the Chicago Tribune's John McCormick, who was posing a question that had been asked and answered repeatedly, Obama invited a broad comparison to a president who's created fake news reports, planted reporters in the White House briefing room, sealed off record amounts of government information, criminalized information-gathering and imprisoned reporters, and so on.

McCormick was asking Obama about Rahm Emanuel's contacts with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Of course, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has asked Obama not to speak on that, and so he hasn't. No reporter has produced evidence that the silence is the result of some type of political collusion between Fitzgerald and Obama. Yet, somehow he's still "hiding behind Patrick Fitzgerald's skirt." As Jamison Foser notes, Obama is screwed either way. He can conform to Fitzgerald's request, or he can defy it and potentially undermine the investigation into Blagojevich.

Still, McCormick was stubbornly asking about Emanuel's contacts, inviting the president-elect to defy a U.S. attorney and kneecap a corruption investigation, and Obama interrupted him. This specific exchange drew not only a comparison to Bush from Milbank, but this warning from the new NBC Washington bureau chief Mark Whitaker: "Our job is to hold him to account ... we're going to have to get tougher."

The press is finally asserting itself, and only eight years too late.

Earlier in the week, I noted Glenn Beck's odd historical analysis: that the United States in 2008 is very similar to the United States in 1860. He mentioned the Illinois corruption fiasco and the auto bailout vote as (I think) the reasons why.

After further research, I've realized this is actually a running theme for Beck. Here he is on election night last month: "It's 1860. This country is a tinderbox. I wonder if (tonight) there will be the celebratory burning down of a city."

And here he is interviewing Kelsey Grammer in October:

You know, to kind of go off on your Civil War thing, I was, two weekends ago I met with a guy who was I believe the first person to say a global terror network. That was his phrase. And he said this is not -- we're treating this like a police action. This is not. This is a global terror network. And I said to him, I asked him, you know, where are we in our history, where do you think we are. And he said, people don't understand. We're in 1860.

And here he is giving an interview (to The Joplin Globe this week about his new book:

"I've been on the economy now for two years, and both of (the political parties) are taking us down to a place I don't even recognize," he said. "I'm afraid we're living in 1860 and on the verge of some real trouble."

Admittedly, I'm not a Glenn Beck scholar, but this is really hard to figure. It seems Beck thinks the nation is teetering on the brink because of election-night jubilation and/or Islamic terrorism and/or partisanship and/or the economy and/or Rod Blagojevich and/or the financial bailout.

I know that warnings of imminent crisis get audiences riled and move books, but this is borderline deranged. Maybe his old bosses at CNN can explain what he means ...

It appears former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani may be hosting a talk radio show on Westwood One.

Are we going to hear the same serious (and deserved) discussion that happened when it became public that MSNBC's Chris Matthews was going to run for Senate? We didn't hear it when Mike Huckabee got his show on Fox News, but everyone knows what Fox is and what it does.

Westwood One, though, should be asked these questions. By the way, with Huckabee and now Giuliani on the air these days, I wonder how Mitt Romney feels ...

This is well deserved. It's really amazing that Hannity's nightly, nine-month campaign to make Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers the two most important people in American politics failed so spectacularly. Polls showed these attacks had no tangible effect on voters.

Think about that. Americans, it must be said, are quite susceptible to persistent marketing. It will lead them to buy everything from clear Pepsi to ridiculously oversized Hummers. But Hannity's relentless and admittedly quite creative effort to hammer Wright and Ayers into the political discussion didn't even move the voter needle one point. That's really something.

From TomDispatch:

"Worlds shudder and collapse all the time," Tom Engelhardt begins.

"There's no news in that. Just ask the Assyrians, the last emperor of the Han Dynasty, the final Romanoff, Napoleon, or that Ponzi-schemer Bernard Madoff. But when it seems to be happening to your world, well, that's a different kettle of fish. When you get the word, the call, the notice that you're a goner, or when your little world shudders, that's something else again."

Engelhardt's own little world -- of book publishing -- shuddered recently. "Black Wednesday" they called it in the publishing business, as a round of firings commenced, one distinguished house essentially shut its doors, and an editor whose work he admired was essentially perp-walked out of his office and axed.

He puts the recent events in his niche business world -- he remains an editor for Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt, owned by MacMillan, which, in turn, is possessed by the German publishing giant Holtzbrinck -- in the context of far larger firings and "reorganizations" nationwide and global, in order to talk about how parochial we are, how we feel disaster most strongly when our own small worlds shudder.

But Engelhardt also explores just why the bloated publishing conglomerates acted like the auto Big Three, why they couldn't see (and seize) the future even when they could watch it happening these last years in an allied world of print: the newspaper. In the process, he also considers one of the strange miracles of book history -- the book has long resisted the ad (totally rare in our world), which, he suspects, was one factor leading publishers to doubt the relevance of the collapse of newspapers (which were dying, in part, because ads were being sucked onto the Internet).

This is a curious tale of a more than 500-year-old technology that has yet to be surpassed, but also of what happens in a world when the sales stop (as they have in bookstores nationwide). It's personal and it's something a little different for his website TomDispatch.

This week on Moyers:

As a new administration is set to take over in the White House, Bill Moyers checks in with author Sarah Chayes on the state of affairs in America's other war in Afghanistan. An author and former journalist, Chayes has lived the last 7 years in Afghanistan helping to rebuild the country. Then, as 43 states face budget shortfalls, New York Gov. David Paterson talks with Bill Moyers about how states are dealing with the economic crisis. And, the Journal and Exposé: America's Investigative Reports examine a whistleblower's tale of military housing contracts gone awry.

Correspondence Corner:

Name: Josh Silver
Hometown: http://freepress.net

Media and technology issues are once again front-and-center this week. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal ran an A1 story claiming Google and President-elect Barack Obama were abandoning their commitment to Net Neutrality.

The paper got it all wrong. Neither allegation is true. The WSJ blew the story, but as is usually the case, there is a thread of truth in the "secret" documents that the WSJ uncovered: Google does want to "co-locate" their massive servers in the actual facilities owned by the major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T. However, they remain committed to Net Neutrality, and they are not asking for exclusive arrangements with ISPs. The best article I've seen is here.

One good outcome of the botched story is that it got Obama to once again make his commitment to Net Neutrality public. Indeed, he has repeatedly promised to "take a back seat to no one" and protect the free and open Internet. Tuesday's New York Times published an important editorial -- quoting Free Press -- that urged the next president to seize this "Eisenhower Interstate moment for the Internet." Read the whole article here.

Last week, Free Press released "2009 Media & Tech Priorities," a document outlining our top policy priorities for the year ahead. You can read the whole thing here. It is worth taking a moment to read this roadmap to reform in all of the many sectors of media reform. It already has been spotted on desks in Congress and at the transition team headquarters.

At the start of next year, we expect the new administration to push through a major stimulus bill to reinvigorate the economy. Everyone is currently angling to get their issues funded through this bill, as it is likely the only major opportunity for new appropriations for quite some time. We are focusing our efforts on a plan for universal high-speed "broadband" buildout, and also supporting efforts by public broadcasters to increase funding for public media.

Today, we are releasing our broadband stimulus plan, which we will aggressively push for inclusion in the spending bill. In great detail, we describe $44 billion in investments the government should make to jump-start the economy and bring the benefits of broadband to all Americans. It's an ambitious and innovative plan, but based on Obama's supportive statements just last week -- we may well get what we're asking for.

Obama declared that "every child should have a chance to get online" in America on the same day -- Dec. 6 -- that we launched our first "Internet for Everyone" town hall meeting. We brought together nearly 200 people in Los Angeles for an interactive meeting about the future of the Internet and how it would improve their lives and their communities. A short video about the project is here. Marty Kaplan's report from the event is here.

While we're optimistic about the new administration, we're watching closely who they'll put in key positions governing media and technology. On Dec. 3, Free Press placed a tongue-in-cheek job announcement in several major Washington newspapers for a new FCC chairman with "a strong commitment to protecting the open Internet, ensuring fast and affordable Internet access for all Americans, and diversifying media ownership." See it here -- where more than 10,000 people have already voted on their top priorities for the next FCC chief.

Finally, we're going out tomorrow with an open letter to Obama, signed by more than 100 organizations and 50 prominent individuals. It collegially reminds the president-elect -- using his own words - of the promises he made on Internet and media issues, and that we expect him to appoint federal agency officials who will make good on his pledges.

Name: Robert Bateman
Hometown: Washington, DC

Greetings Altercators, just back for a moment to respond to a very long letter.

Yesterday Mr. Reed Richardson asked, "So, I guess, my question to you is: shouldn't we address this disconnect between the military and the civilian worlds before we can realistically expect ordinary citizens to make informed judgments about our country's future naval posture? I'd be interested to hear you thoughts, as well, on the merits of introducing some kind of mandatory national service."

His question was long, detailed, and deserves a full response.

Well, Reed, I'd start my response with, "What the HECK do you think I am trying to do here on Altercation?!"

As I've often stated, I try to avoid being seen as either Left or Right. I do not talk about politics directly, or politicians currently sitting, if I can at all avoid it. But I do try to engage on both flanks. So, when interacting with somebody from the Right, I often find myself trying to explain to them why (pick your topic: wiretapping, torture, attacking Iran, whatever) is just a blatantly stupid idea ... from a MILITARY perspective. This often sways, in part because I am usually talking to a non-military person who had heretofore been basing his political argument upon what he thought was military reasoning. Though it usually was not.

On the other side of the spectrum, as thousands of Altercation readers who have written to me over the years will attest, I am in no way shy about explaining why a cherished position of the political Left might be utterly blinkered and counter to their true objective and/or values. "Explaining?" Hell, who am I kidding. I argue.

Thus, when dealing with a hard-core anti-war protestor who is against all use of force, I use the Socratic method and ask, "You oppose Iraq, right?" (yes) "You also support women's rights?" (also usually a massive yes) "But you support cultural independence in all cases?" (usually a yes) "So you oppose going in to Afghanistan and would prefer that all women there must live as they did under the Taliban?" (sometimes, not often, but sometimes that gets a "yes") ... we will progress along these lines until the person has renounced fighting against the Holocaust, or re-uniting the Union and ending slavery ... at which point I'll usually give up, but hope that the person I engaged has second thoughts now. Sometimes they do. In the process I also hope that they have come to a better understanding about the military in general, the uses of force by our democracy, and have in some small way closed the divide on that side.

So that is what I am doing, from inside the military. Of course, for my troubles I am periodically called a "neo-con warmonger Bush/Cheney apologist" by some, and a "liberal mouthpiece in the pay of George Soros" from others.

The question is, what are all of you doing from the outside to remove that theoretical gap? Are you encouraging your liberal sons and daughters to pursue national service in the Armed Forces...or do you try to dissuade them? Do you encourage liberal friends to learn more about the military, so that they can have informed objections about some things that occur (and as all here know, I am often one of the biggest critics of my own service), or do you automatically agree with any sentiment that seems in line with an political inclination of your own?

One should remember that although there are good statistics that point out that the majority of the officer corps is "conservative", that can mean a host of different things. I think quite a lot of military officers are conservative in their personal finances and believe strongly in self-reliance, trying to eschew all personal debt for example. Those things are "conservative." But in the Army at least, the overwhelming number of my peers that I've talked to about it also support gay rights and a woman's right to choice. So are they liberals? Army officers tend to be leery of fancy new technologies which are unproven (because "proving" for us, means somebody must die, perhaps unnecessarily). Is that conservative? It is by most definitions. Yet we also advocate and participate in the largest government-run medical healthcare system, and we want more of it, not less. That's socialist at best. So are we liberals?

Do you see now the fallacy?

Finally, so far as "National Service" goes, I know quite a few officers who really are hard-core right-wingers in most aspects of their life...who advocate this idea, which is essentially communistic. Think about it, "National Service" essentially says this: "Citizens owe the State, and must pay the State with a period of involuntary service for the betterment of all society, in peace or war, which will also indoctrinate those citizens and make them better members of a larger more homogeneous conformist society." I do not even bother to take sides in the issue because I know that a true National Service program would cost more than this nation could ever afford, in mere filthy lucre, if not in an erosion of the individualism which made this country great.

Name: Michael Green
Hometown: Las Vegas, Nevada

LTC Bob, glad you discovered "The West Wing," which in its first four seasons was one of the most brilliant television shows ever assembled. The character to whom the general was talking, Leo McGarry, was the White House chief of staff, the president's best friend, and among other things a former secretary of labor. He also was an alcoholic who had been in rehab for drug addiction, too, and later became the vice-presidential nominee but died of a heart attack on election night when the actor who played him, John Spencer, died. Hm. The Democrats choose a vice-presidential nominee with a history of drug and alcohol abuse and Republicans don't use it to destroy him?

I mention all this because "The West Wing" often was attacked as "The Left Wing," yet the plotlines were three-dimensional -- on several occasions, Republicans acted nobly or fairly and pointed out to the liberals with whom they were dealing that they were more decent than painted. Thus, the show was a dream, but not just that way. The president was a liberal Nobel Prize-winning economist who loved history and culture, and one theory holds that liberal voters in 2000 compared Al Gore's wishy-washy campaign with Martin Sheen as president and that comparison may have cost Gore votes.

Hm. Americans choosing the literate, intelligent candidate for president. Maybe it's no longer a dream.

Name: Stephen Carver
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA

LTC Bateman's observations about the episode of West Wing could not be more pertinent to the entire Iraq debacle and most wars in general. When one looks at war dispassionately, as soldiers and generals are required to do (to the best of their ability, they are only human), one can easily call innocent people who die "collateral damage." After all, the sole purpose of soldiers and generals in war is to win it. It is the duty of the civilian superiors, i.e., the Commander-in-Chief and/or Congress (should they ever choose to take on the Constitutional mantle of declaring war again...cowards all), to bring his or her humanity to the forefront to counterbalance the required dispassion of our military leaders.

It is when that civilian leadership has no heart or soul, and they have no sense of human decency or honor, that THEY should be held accountable for War Crimes. All war IS criminal and if all war is criminal, then those who start them are the true criminals, aren't they?

There will always be cases when a soldier or general should NOT obey an order from their Commander-in-Chief (or even their immediate superior officer) if the order is against the laws of god and man. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay are perfect examples of this. NO ONE below Rumsfeld should have allowed those atrocities to happen; the military generals should have stopped it somewhere along the line, but didn't. Those who did nothing will have to live with the consequences of their inaction upon their own consciousness. But the civilian leadership MUST be held accountable for the actions that took place at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.

There is one thing that everyone on this planet shares: our humanity. It is that sense of shared humanity that created the War Crimes tribunals after WWII and since. If our common humanity starts to hold these oligarchs and rogue leaders accountable by putting them on trial for Crimes Against that common Humanity, ONLY then will wars like Iraq become too personally dangerous for people like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to start.

Just think of the thousands of instances of "collateral damage," as well as the lives of our own soldiers and those of our allies we could have spared ... for a war that Never Should Have Been.

Name: Mark D
Hometown: Pay-to-playville (Chicago)

LTC Bob,

My perception, which may or may not be shared by some in the Altercatosphere, is that the US Military does not have an adequate investigation and enforcement apparatus to adjudicate actions that might be deemed possible war crimes by an International Criminal Court. First, is that perception correct? Second, how independent is this apparatus? Your quotation, "All war is criminal," nicely captures the difficulty with judging exactly when and under what circumstances combat operations become criminal. Also, what mitigating circumstances would be considered if war crimes are brought? Are those mitigating circumstances culturally specific or universal? I apologize if my questions appear naive or ill-informed. Thanks.

Name: Charles Hinton
Hometown: Satellite Beach, FL

I am a great fan of Bob Bateman and grudgingly admire his reluctance to comment about matters above his pay grade. However, I take exception to his analogy and implication that combat men who cause collateral damage -- like the West Wing episode that recounted killing the eleven civilians accidentally in the attack on a dam -- would be vulnerable to war criminal charges.

The war criminals are those at the highest level who authorized and justified torture. At Guatanamo relatively small numbers of the detainees were captured by US forces, getting the preponderance of them by virtue of advertising and paying a bounty to people who would turn in supposed criminals. An excellent way to collect a little money while settling a grudge.

The McClatchy papers ran a series of articles on this matter last June. According to Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, there is no doubt about torture and war crimes committed by the Bush administration.

"After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes," Taguba wrote. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

Name: K. Castro
Hometown: The Left Coast

LTC Bateman, with all due respect to your profession, and with great admiration for your chosen calling (i.e., Historian), I must take great offence in your citations under "War Crimes and Misdemeanors" of Dec. 17. In the eyes of much of the world, especially the developing countries of the south and east (not to mention many progressive leaning folk in the USA), the basic issue of the US's non-involvement in the International Criminal Court lies in the fact that this country believes itself to be "greater" than the signatory countries of the ICC. This perspective is only epitomized by the soon-to-be former administration of Bush the Lesser; it is not new. Indeed, it was probably begun by Teddy Roosevelt's administration.

As a member of an American Indian Tribe, I fully understand this point of view. It continues to be thrown in the faces of my people. And on the international stage, whether one's plane is strafing a Vietnamese village, cutting wires on an Italian ski-lift, or remote-targeting an Iraqi wedding party, the results are and will be always the same: a perception of an arrogant, willful, conquering country attempting to impose its values and mores on a lesser-developed country, with no recourse for justice against the conquering country, all the while holding the "lesser" country in great contempt for its lack of technological/cultural sophistication.

As long as the USA holds this perception of other countries, we will continue to rot from the core. Attempting to understand this issue from a TV show illustrates a severe lack of understanding and appreciation from one who has seemingly traveled across the globe.

Name: Curtis Miller
Hometown: Moorestown, New Jersey

LTC Bateman:

I read the article Reed Richardson pointed to on Wednesday, December 17.

The article analyzed state by state enlistment rates on a red state/blue state bases. It seems to me if you did the same analysis based on state economies, average income, poverty rates, unemployment rates, you will get almost the same result.

Name: Dave Richie
Hometown: Birmingham, AL

LTC Bateman,

I have not written you in the past. Therefore the first thing I want to say is thank you for your service to our country. I may be the only conservative reader of any constancy of Bro. Eric's. I just enjoy getting smashed in the mouth on a routine basis.

I enjoyed your "West Wing" commentary. I would also remind you of something that you probably have heard or read as an historian. Before General William Tecumseh Sherman laid Hotlanta to waste he encouraged the entire population of that city to evacuate. He is said to have met with the Mayor who reminded the General of his obligations to civilian populations. The General is said to have replied, and I paraphrase as I do not have Shelby Foote's tome in front of me ... all war is cruelty, you cannot refine it ...

Name: Thomas Heiden
Hometown: Stratford, CT

Eric,

It has long seemed to me that the sacrifices made by the members of our armed forces are too great to be asked for or accepted, whether there are willing volunteers or not. It skews citizenship, for lack of a clearer way to express it; it deeply erodes the idea of "equality".

Then I read "Armygirl" (in The Sandbox) writing that she would not want to be in combat next to someone who's commitment she had reason to doubt. That certainly gave me pause. No doubt that in her shoes, I would feel as she does, but that has not erased the nagging feeling noted.

I have no answer for myself or anyone else. It seems clear, however, that we'd have the devil of a time transitioning to a draft if that were decided. How would the current forces feel about and work with the inductees? I know that soldiers are taught "You have a job to do -- do it", and that they work hard to be consumate professionals, but they are also human, and Armygirl's words linger.

Name: Bob Page
Hometown: Independence, MO

"Oh my tongue's the only muscle in my body/That works harder than my heart..."

George, props to you for using a line from one of the best songs ever written, by a truly fine band, Brand New. I was fortunate enough to have a son who exposed me to this fine group.

Glenn Beck's line is beyond stupid: "Where did that happen where the president can just become a king and do whatever he wants?" Duh? Welcome to our world of the last 8 years Glenn. Oh, well, to continue the song: "I hope you come down with something they can't diagnose/don't have a cure for."

Name: Dan Farrow
Hometown: Marietta GA

There are lot of good men and women who won't be home this Christmas because they are serving overseas. Many of them have Internet access, and you can send them this Christmas message -- a message that recognizes their service and sacrifice, and reminds them that they will come home, and we will be waiting. Check out the video, and if you like it, forward it to military members and their families. This is my way of making the most of this sacred season, and you're welcome to join in the fun.

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

War crimes and misdemeanors

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 13:46:20 EST

LTC Bob here again, with a little more forward thinking.

Until quite recently I had never seen an episode of the television show The West Wing. It came to prominence at a time when I was not really available for television watching, and then, who wants to jump on the bandwagon late? Lately, I have caught a few episodes in reruns, and one scene in particular caught my eye because it seems potentially relevant.

The setting was an office somewhere in the West Wing, and an Air Force four-star general (played by the same actor who was once "Major Dad" in another show) is talking with a character that appears to be something like the White House counsel. They are debating the ICC -- the International Criminal Court, which was created by an international conference in Rome, Italy, in 1998.

I was impressed by the level of sophistication shown by the show's writers in dealing with this very hairy topic. The character of the general was no two-dimensional caricature, but fairly well represented. And this issue itself, though often depicted in the real world in the news and by politicians as a "Left-Right" topic, was given depth through the very real introduction of that general, who presented the point of view of the military, which was neither right nor left. The American military, you see, is the most likely target for any prosecutions that might be proffered against the United States.

In the interplay between the characters, one realized that they knew each other far more intimately than one would normally expect between two people from such disparate worlds. The West Wing fellow was trying hard to convince the general that he had to support the administration's desire to ratify the treaty. It was a balanced and moral argument, citing our help in creating the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes tribunals in the wake of World War II. The general just as passionately laid out the misgivings of my profession. And then the general laid out a trump card, and you came to understand why and how these two men could argue so freely with one another.

Pulling an obviously old dossier from his bag the general reminded the West Wing counsel about a particular mission on which they had both flown in the Vietnam War, when they were junior officers together. The general had been the FAC (that's "Forward Air Controller") and the counsel flew an attack aircraft and was guided by the FAC in to a particular target. The counsel did not see the point in any of this, but then the general noted that the target had been a dam, and that "eleven civilians were killed." The implications were obvious, but the general would not answer his friend's repeated query, "Why did you tell me this?"

The point, as I saw it, was a subtle one.

Now, the 1998 treaty (which we signed at the time, though the current administration formally "unsigned" in 2002) specifically states that it is not retroactive. Certainly the writers of the show knew that fact. So the counsel himself was not really under threat. But the larger point was that some other modern American pilot or soldier might be accused of a war crime under the exact same circumstances. Circumstances which the counsel now had a personal lens through which he might see the issue somewhat differently, as obviously the mission he participated in could be raised and he accused of being a war criminal.

The general was given the best closing line. "All war is criminal."

(Postscript: Great Britain, which did sign and ratify the treaty, has since had some 240 complaints and accusations of war crimes submitted to the court against them since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.)

I do not know, but I suspect, that this issue might raise its head again. That matters.

You can write to LTC Bob at R_Bateman_LTC@Hotmail.com .

Correspondence Corner:

Name: Paul Goode
Hometown: Redmond, WA

Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck are cynical hucksters who tell their audience what it wants to hear and in the way they want to hear it. Whether they actually believe their own drivel is an open question.

The entire Fox gang reminds me of Lonesome Rhodes, the amoral singer portrayed brilliantly by Andy Griffith in A Face In The Crowd. Rhodes learned how to manipulate his television audience; the better he got at it, the more he despised them. At the end of the movie, he's revealed calling them morons and guinea pigs. It's hard to believe that Bill-o and Beck have any more respect for their viewers.

Name: Reed Richardson
Hometown: Ridgewood, NJ

LTC Bateman,

I couldn't agree more with your sentiment from Monday: "because the military does have an effect upon all of our futures, and those of our kids, I am of the firm and fixed opinion that everyone should have some basic grasp of things military. Our democracy depends upon this." As it happens, your post passed across my computer screen on the same day as this, which I think reinforces a troubling truth that stands in the way of your stated goal -- there now exists a growing chasm of understanding and familiarity between our military and large swaths of our country's civilian population.

Speaking from my own experience as a former active-duty Combat Engineer officer who served in the mid to late 90s, I can attest, anecdotally, that every fresh batch of soldiers from AIT that I had the honor of leading did seem to increasingly hail from rural parts of the South and West. Likewise, it seemed that senior NCOs and my fellow officers, in particular, came from increasingly homogeneous geographic and cultural backgrounds. I attribute this trend in the officer corps, in part, to the introduction of ROTC scholarship tuition caps in the late 90s, which meant some potential officer candidates could no longer afford to attend private (or public, for that matter) universities on the West or East Coasts as I did (Boston University). This shift to an accession policy that precludes many traditionally liberal regions/colleges has, I believe, exacerbated the military leadership's internal ideological imbalance. (On a personal level, as a company XO, I vividly recall sitting in the Jungle Warfare School DFAC at Ft. Sherman, Panama, and watching my avowed dittohead Company Commander publicly celebrate -- in front of his soldiers -- the breaking news of Pres. Clinton's affair when it was broadcast on CNN. His "impeach the bastard" sentiments were obviously and openly shared by all of my battalion's command and staff officers.)

Of course, the Army officer corps has a long tradition of having a more conservative (albeit more meritocratic) ethos than most of mainstream America, something first pointed out in Samuel Huntington's "The Soldier and the State" and recently expounded upon in a book by Peter Feaver that I stumbled across a few years ago while in the good Dr. Alterman's Columbia J-School class. Of course, Feaver's historical insights are a bit tainted by this bit of lopsided thinking, but one of his book's other points still stands -- when confronted with weak or disconnected civilian leadership/oversight, the military has a tendency to "shirk," or effectively disobey, policies it doesn't like. Feaver focused on the Clinton administration's disastrous DADT rollout and the Pentagon's effective sandbagging of said policy as well as the White House's clumsy efforts to deal with Gen. Wes Clark's somewhat rogue Balkan strategy, but even more recent events in the Bush administration has shown that this disconnect, particularly among those in the White House and Congress, can result in disastrous policy. Coincidentally, the number of veterans in the current Congress stands a sixty-year low, a figure that will decline even more when the incoming 111th Congress, which will include only 26 veterans in the Senate, is sworn in.)

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the all-volunteer professional military and I don't subscribe to the notion that only those with personal military experience are viable candidates to exercise civilian leadership over it (as my recent vote for the incoming Commander-in-Chief would attest). But more and more, it seems like White House staff and members of Congress either abdicate/defer their Constitutional responsibilities (cf. Petraeus, David) or rely solely upon a "benevolent dictator" within the Pentagon (cf. Gates, Robert) to keep the military in check, precisely because of their lack of a DD-214. So, I guess, my question to you is: shouldn't we address this disconnect between the military and the civilian worlds before we can realistically expect ordinary citizens to make informed judgments about our country's future naval posture? I'd be interested to hear you thoughts, as well, on the merits of introducing some kind of mandatory national service.

I tend to support the idea, if only to re-introduce the concept of shared sacrifice to a populace that was told going shopping was a sufficient patriotic response to 9/11, but I fear such a program still wouldn't address the cultural chasm growing between those who secure our freedom and those who enjoy it.

Name: Jim Wiseman
Hometown: Downingtown PA

Hi Eric,

I am completely puzzled by the press' absolute avoidance of the subject of the link between the domestic automobile industry and national security. As a professional historian, I'm sure you know better than I (and LTC Bateman, as a miltary historian, better than both of us), that the U.S. auto industry played a pivotal role in our victory in WWII. The trucks and jeeps we provided were absolutely critical to mechanizing of the Red Army, while the retooling of auto plants to make airplanes (of which Ford's Willow Run plant was only the most famous) contributed hugely to our domination of the air.

What is it that the press and the right wing want? Do they want us to become the superpower equivalent of an idiot savant, only able to respond to extreme provocation by nuking people? Our ability to successfully wage a conventional war is not only vital to us, but to the entire human race. Thus I found the Senate vote last week breathtaking in its irresponsibility (and we're not even talking about the economic aspects of the vote!). I include Democratic leaders like Harry Reid in my condemnation. Why isn't he holding the GOP feet to the fire, and making them filibuster? Expose them for the short sighted hacks they are. The stakes are very high, and we need leadership.

Name: VEH
Hometown: Detroit

One more step to "medium", not "media".

Detroit loses daily home-delivered printed newspapers (they will offer a "compact product" to be sold in vending boxes), with websites being proffered as an exciting substitute -- cheaper for Gannett and MediaNews, not for the subscribers.

Of course they have been cutting content to the point where it isn't the loss it would have been 5 years ago.

My only consolation is that we are on the cutting edge -- everyone else is right behind us, based on the financials being reported across the newspaper industry.

Name: Jeff
Hometown: Seattle

"When did SNL become the new Mad TV? I saw the Paterson sketch on Saturday, and it was offensive, stupid, and -- worst -- not funny."

Oh, about ten years ago.

Name: Matt
Hometown: Moscow, ID

George:

Not having had cable for many years now, I only saw the first few seasons of Mad TV, and I liked it enough to buy the 1st season DVD set. You may be right about what's happened lately (Miss Swan, yes) but I think their first years at least represented a show trying to be everything that SNL wasn't: a cast of nobodies, largely ignoring political commentary, focusing on character driven comedy and pop-culture satire. They were clearly working so hard back then, as opposed to SNL for the past several years, where half of them seem to be phoning it in until they get an obligatory movie offer.

Whether you liked it or not, in any case, now we have fewer and fewer options to turn to for sketch comedy. SCTV2?

George Zornick replies: I do remember the first season being funny, actually, you're right. I was in eighth grade, so maybe my memory is skewed, but there was a pretty funny O.J. Simpson sketch featuring Orlando Jones.

Name: Kevin B.
Hometown: Mauldin, SC

A (thankfully) less harmful example of the risk of over-reliance on anonymous sources is contained here.

If it's worth reporting, either there should be verifiable facts that can be confirmed or denied, or sources should be willing to be public. Seeing Ed Werder called a liar by T.O. (T.O.!) is a bit surreal, but if Ed won't reveal his source (or produce a tape of T.O.'s alleged complaints) then he's just gonna have to twist in the wind.

Name: Tom Edmisten
Hometown: Uijeongbu

Nick Turse asks, "Could a company that produces the Pizzazz Pizza Oven also be a merchant of death?" of course it can; M*A*S*H answered the question years ago: "Just use the standard S-1798 and write in 'pizza' where it says 'machine gun.' "

Name: Scott Casey
Hometown: San Jose CA

We can largely credit the extremely talented comic book artist Dave Stevens (creator of The Rocketeer and a damned nice guy) for bringing Bettie back to pop culture. Unfortunately we lost Dave this year as well as his battle with leukemia brought him to far too early an end.

RIP and many thanks to both of them.

OK, I believe ya. But my tommy gun don't ...

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 12:58:34 EST

Hey folks, George Zornick here again while Eric is away. (LTC Bateman will return tomorrow.)

On Friday, I was curious about how Fox News was reacting in the aftermath of the November elections. (I happily shut it off for a while there, so as not to sully my own good feelings). The answer: not too well. Bill O'Reilly began his show that night by declaring the Blagojevich affair has "a 50/50 chance of disrupting the nation." He never explained what that meant, but later, he did pose the question to future Fox News host Glenn Beck. Here's that entire exchange -- follow along, if you can:

O'REILLY: I got to switch it over to Blagojevich. Now, for our purposes here, we believe that this story has a 50-percent chance of igniting into a mini-Watergate. Do you see it that way?

BECK: I think -- in fact, I was going to ask you that because I saw your talking points and I wanted to know if you thought, when you said they had a 50/50 chance of igniting the country I wondered what that meant. I think it's much worse than that, Bill. I really, truly believe that this country is on the brink, that we are sitting at 1860 and it's not too late to pull ourselves back. But we're feeding on ourselves. I think this has all the earmarkings of pushing us over the edge even more.

1860? Holy crap, why is Beck so angry? Does he own a musket? He explained:

BECK: You can't continue to disfranchise people. You've got -- yesterday, our representatives say no to the bailout. Today it looks like Bush and Paulson are going to say yes to the bailout. How is that constitutional? Where did that happen where the president can just become a king and do whatever he wants? When it comes to the governor in Illinois, the guy's a dirtbag. Now, should Rahm Emanuel have spoken to the governor? Yeah, I think it's appropriate, but let's wait to hear what those conversations were.

[...]

But if the conversations were "Hey, what are you going to give me in exchange?" then Emanuel should have reported that. But let's keep it isolated on Emanuel. Let's ask why now. In fact, let me rephrase this. President-elect Obama, please, the country is on the edge. Please, you are my president. I didn't vote for you, but you are now going to be my president. Please, address the American people and do it with actions and say, "This must not stand."

No answer on the musket, and I'm not sure I actually understand why he's so upset either. You'll recall this is the same Glenn Beck who loved the president's warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, and when House Democrats (temporarily) erected roadblocks to the policy's renewal, said: "[President Bush] feels -- and I happen to agree with him -- that this congressional game-playing by [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi will end up killing Americans." That's one answer to his incredulous question about when Bush started acting like a king, and surely not the only one.

Picking apart the wild contradictions and non-sequiturs in that rant is beside the point, though -- all we can really take away is that Obama should be lucky to have adversaries like Beck and O'Reilly. Perhaps vague calls to arms are scary when the popular wind is at Beck's back, but not when Obama is enjoying historic approval ratings. O'Reilly and Beck just seem disconnected and slightly deranged, playing to an incredibly small sliver of true believers. Fine by me.

We wrote a Think Again earlier this year about the unhealthy national dialogue on health care. It's a complex issue, but we believe that on three simple and essential points, reporting has proven itself deficient: indulging politicians who claim, indefensibly, that the United States enjoys the world's greatest health care system; failing to emphasize the sound economics behind government-provided health care -- and the shaky economics behind consumer-driven care; and neglecting overwhelming popular opinion in favor of government solutions to the health care crisis.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism has released a study examining 18 months of health coverage in the mainstream media, across a wide range of media. Their findings are not surprising, although still disappointing. The study finds that health coverage comprised only 3.6 percent of all coverage during that period, less what's devoted to crime and natural disasters. (Over 18,000 people die each year due simply to lack of health insurance. I don't recall any tornadoes that big.) Cable news devotes just 1.4 percent of its programming to health coverage, and despite the dramatic differences between Barack Obama and John McCain on how the country should run its health care system, the subject accounted for less than one percent of campaign-related news.

Notably, the health coverage assessed here included all the stories we see about specific ailments, like diabetes or cancer, which comprised a majority of the stories on both network and cable news. That's all fine, but not really where the emphasis of our health care reporting should be. This is why when people point out simple, unassailable facts about health care, like that France and other government-run systems do it better for less money, they are treated as left-wing whackos. People simply don't have the facts, and free-market health care supporters have wide latitude to fear monger about socialized medicine.

When did SNL become the new Mad TV? I saw the Paterson sketch on Saturday, and it was offensive, stupid, and --worst -- not funny.

Good satire may be offensive or include prejudiced views, but generally those views are actually being attacked. We're not supposed to be laughing with Borat, or Beavis and Butt-head, or some of the characters on Dave Chapelle, but at them. Mad TV was an awful series because it cut out any commentary and meant simply to offend. One of its most popular sketches was the Miss Swan bit, where the entire punch line seemed to be an Asian lady who talked funny.

And that's all the Patterson sketch was. He's blind and confused, holding charts upside-down. What's the joke? What's the message, blind people aren't competent?

Mad TV was thankfully canceled last month, about 13 years too late. I hope it's not reincarnated as Saturday Night Live.

Bush continues to get a free ride during this valedictory period. From Media Matters: In an article headlined "Bush's Sensitive Side is Showing," Washington Post reporter Dan Eggen quoted former Bush official John DiIulio saying, "Clinton talked, 'I feel your pain.' ... But as Bush showed in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, he truly does feel deeply for others and loves this country with a passion." Despite quoting DiIulio's characterization of Bush's expressions of empathy as genuine and Clinton's not, at no point did Eggen mention Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina, for which he was widely criticized. More here.

From Tom Dispatch:

"Is it possible," asks Nick Turse, TomDispatch Pentagon correspondent and author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, "that one of the Pentagon's contractors has a tripartite business model for our tough economic times: one division that specializes in crock-pots, another in adult diapers, and a third in medium caliber tactical ammunition? Can the maker of the SaladShooter, a hand-held electric shredder/dicer that hacks up and fires out sliced veggies, really be a tops arms manufacturer? Could a company that produces the Pizzazz Pizza Oven also be a merchant of death? And could this company be a model for success in an economy heading for the bottom?"

The answers to these questions are yes, yes, yes, and a distinct maybe.

Once upon a time, from World War II deep into the Cold War, the top civilian corporations producing the big-ticket items for our consumer lives, ranging from Ford and Whirlpool to General Tire and Rubber Company and Dow Chemical, also churned out the deadliest of weaponry for the Pentagon. No longer. Though the consumer majors of this moment are still Pentagon contractors, weapons making is largely left to weapons-industry giants like Alliant Techsystems, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing.

But one modest-sized consumer corporation, National Presto Industries, which makes vegetable dicers, adult diapers, and ammunition, seems a throwback to old times. Turse explores the history of the company and its present economic viability (its stock is rising, despite bad times) thanks to its ammo-making wing.

In this provocative piece, he concludes, as he began, with questions about the Pentagon and the future: "Will Presto be the back-to-the-future model for Pentagon contractors in the lean times ahead? Only time will tell. At the very least, it seems that, as long as Americans allow the country to wage wars abroad, require their salads to be shot, and have bladder issues, National Presto Industries has a future."

Correspondence Corner:

Name: Larry Cowan
Hometown: http://larrycowan.wordpress.com

Altercators,

As an act of solidarity with the jailed Iraqi journalist, set aside a pair of your oldest, dirtiest, smelliest shoes. When the GW Bush Presidential Library opens at SMU, mail the shoes. If random Altercators sent a pair of shoes over the next 20 years, it would be a small gesture of the disgust the world feels for this man and his administration.

Name: Ryan McQueeney
Hometown: Chicago

Stan Wiggins, you are uninformed. I work with the Ford, GM and Chrysler workers, specifically with those in management. I can tell you that for several years not only have the people I work with not been given wage increases or bonuses, but they have been forced to work longer hours due to most empty positions going unfulfilled. These white collar workers don't have the protection the UAW workers have, no job banks, no overtime protections. They are not flying on private jets or vacationing in Europe. They are in as fragile a state as anyone who is employed by the Big 3.

I say this not to attack the UAW, or even Stan Wiggins. But what purpose does it serve to attack a large group of hard working, mostly middle class white collar workers who are suffering as much as the mostly middle class blue collar workers? If it is wrong in any sense to ask the UAW to make wage concessions, why would it be right to ask the white collar workers to make wage concessions?

Name: K. Castro
Hometown: The Left Coast

Re: Correspondent Mark Shotzberger's quip on how "100 years from now, people will not know who most of our present 'Super Stars' are."

I work just a stone's throw from Hollywood, and am bombarded daily with tons of trivial claptrap from the entertainment industry -- this is an industry town after all. I can only hope Mark is right; right now politics is the choice of media, but as soon as Barack's Inauguration is over, the talking heads are going to go back to bombarding us with Lindsay, Paris, Jessica, Angelina, Scarlett, ad nauseam.

Hey, Hollywood: Anyone out there remember Bebe Daniels, Alice Terry, Alla Nazimova or Patsy Ruth Miller? Didn't think so...big celebrities back in the day, "day" meaning the 1910's and 1920's.

Sic transit gloria.

Altercation: Naval Edition

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 12:37:48 EST

Greetings Altercators, LTC Bob here today. I'll be filling in a bit for Eric this week, along with some of the other usual suspects.

Today I thought that I'd bring you a little way into my world, which is mostly located in the fairly distant future. You see, in my "day job," I am now paid to think about things that might occur anywhere from 15 to 30 years from the present. It is a nice job, if you can get it, as one is virtually assured of never being proven wrong before you retire or die. The logic appears to be that if you want somebody to think about large chunks of time in the future, who better than to select a fellow who thinks of large chunks of time in the past. Lately, I have been developing an epiphany. Such things do not appear instantly for me, they grow subconsciously until finally I see the outlines. This one might matter more in the near-term, vice the long term. The reason is because I have been thinking about things naval.

Yes, I know, I know, "What the hell is an Army guy doing thinking about the sea?" Well, truth be told I will admit that it is a curious place if one did not also acknowledge that A) I am a historian, and we do not limit ourselves; B) at the level where I now work/think/write, mere "service distinctions" matter far less than you might imagine; and C) I know something of the sea. It also helps that I work for a very smart man who is open-minded enough to allow "the army guy" in his office the freedom to contemplate things naval.

Why does this matter? Well, the salient point for all of you still comes back to the basis on which I write here. I believe that an informed democracy is far better than one ruled by passions and assumptions. Accordingly, because the military does have an effect upon all of our futures, and those of our kids, I am of the firm and fixed opinion that everyone should have some basic grasp of things military. Our democracy depends upon this.

You may be a pacifist. That's fine. Several, indeed dozens of Altercators who have written to me in the past have asserted such about themselves. My point, however, remains. If you want to be an effective pacifist, then you need to understand the military. If you want to effect change, either for pacifist or humanitarian reasons, then you need to have a firm grip on the realities of war and violence. It is not enough to shout slogans, put up a website, and march. You must be able to intelligently debate, without emotion, how your vision might realistically be put into effect. Which is why you must understand the counterpoint, the one by which I live. You must understand how moral men and women conceive of the use of force. Which brings us back to the Navy.

I have been thinking about the Straits of Malacca. Interesting place, those straits, trapped between Malaysia and Indonesia -- they were until recently the site of the most pirate attacks. That has not really abated; it has merely been eclipsed. It is a narrow channel which sees a huge volume of international shipping. Although this map does not show it well, the fact is that it is only through those straits that the water is deep enough for major shipping vessels to transit. That means that almost everything made in China, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan -- which goes to Europe, the Middle East, or the East Coast of the United States -- goes through that one little passage. And 70-80 percent of the oil imported by those same countries from the Middle East also makes that passage.

Now, think forward, 20-30 years. No, wait, think backward. Remember 1989? 1979? Remember the technology of those years? Consider how different our technology is today from just that very recent period. Apply that observation to those straits. Now do you see why I am thinking about the Navy?

The Army is all about people. We might get new gear, we might get a new rifle or a new armored vehicle, but at the core for us it is people. And most of our people are between 18 and 25, and they will only be in the Army for three to four years. Thus, we are continually renewing ourselves. The Navy, however, is far more dependent upon technology. They design new ships (which usually five to 10 years) and then when they build them they expect these ships to last 30-50 years.

We are building, today, the ships of the fleet of 2038. We are wrestling with the design issues we will need for the ships of 2048, and in my opinion our Navy is in something of an intellectual crisis. They do not -- we do not -- have a clear vision of what purpose our Navy will have in 30 years. This obviously presents something of a quandary, and our Navy is seemingly adrift. Do some research, citizens, and form your own opinions. Are we building the correct fleet for the future? I'd be interested in hearing some opinions.

Here, for reference, are the thoughts of one fellow I respect. (Though I do not always agree with him.) Oh, and unrelated, there is also this by yours truly ... though you knew this about me. And, um, being married to an India Walla, I would be remiss not to notice this.

Oh, and one last thing ... the Army tells me that I am moving here. Spring 2010. Thoughts? Recommendations?

You can write to LTC Bob at R_Bateman_LTC@hotmail.com

Naval levity

It is a Monday, and we all hate Mondays. So some levity is appropriate. Given our theme, and my thoughts, here are a few naval-related videos. The song "Pump It" has a unique interpretation here. While the same squadron also gives us "Move Along," I would note for you that there are also some pretty damned senior officers getting in on this. Dignity must sometimes, not often but sometimes, be sacrificed upon the altar of morale. Good leaders know this. Kudos to those unnamed gray-haired officers.

And not to be outdone ... the women of the supercarrier the USS Ronald Reagan ... another thing which one could not have really anticipated in 1978. Gender equality may not be all that it is supposed to be, yet, in our nation or our armed forces. But these female servicemembers make it clear, at least in some ways, just who is in control. (Note the silliness they convince their male peers to commit.)

The best SecDef evah!

Now, in all honesty, I should have led off with this. Secretary of Defense Gates wrote (yes, HE wrote) an article for Foreign Affairs. You may, as I note, agree or disagree that force should be part of our world. But idealism aside, one cannot but think well of this man. His vision of how we should use our national resources is clear. He is, I dare say, a professional.

Shoes

If you want an insider's view into the cultural issues relating to footwear in the Middle East, especially of the type thrown at American presidents, look here.

Correspondence Corner:

Name: Kyle Childress
Hometown: San Francisco

Of course, one doesn't have to wait long to hear something fall out of Michael Savage's mouth that offends any sentient being, and frankly, the quote you highlighted on Thursday is really not that shocking to me.

It's the father who called in that needs to be condemned. He calls in to justify his bigotry, and I am confident that, with Mr. Savage's blessing, he proceeded to sit his child down and explain to him just how evil gay folks are. And I will lay money that a majority of folks who read this feel that this father has a right to teach his children that being gay is wrong. All I ask is that those folks take one more question into account: What if that child is gay?

There's a reason that gay teens have a suicide rate that is three times that of non-gay teens. That reason is the parents who taught their children to hate themselves.

Name: Michael Green
Hometown: Las Vegas, NV

This was the headline on the AP story:

Union Balks and $14B Auto Bailout Dies in Senate

The article said it was a partisan dispute, Republicans wanted big wage cuts, etc. But the headline does not tell the story. Rather, it tells the story the increasingly right-wing Disassociated Press wanted told. Shameful. CNN, good luck in competing with them.

Name: Ben Miller
Hometown: Washington, DC

Mr. Alterman,

Today in the Washington Post on A12, there was a brief article headlined, "Bush Points to Gains In Anti-Drug Efforts." In the lead, the article writes that Bush was joined, among others, by current major league baseball player Josh Hamilton, a recovering drug addict who had a breakout season in 2008. Don't tough on crime politicians and lobbying groups always argue more laws and tougher penalties when it comes to this War on Drugs?

This isn't even a criticism of Bush, but the entire War on Drugs-concept. Here we had our federal government holding up Josh Hamilton as an example of a success story in beating drugs -- but what if Hamilton, instead of seeking treatment, had been arrested and sentenced to years in prison for possessing drugs, like what happens to so many others. Worse yet, what if he had been arrested not by state police, but by federal police and faced a harsh mandatory minimum? Is there anyone out there that thinks Josh Hamilton, or anyone in his life, would have been better served had Hamilton gone to prison instead of seeking treatment? He isn't an example of why the War on Drugs is working, but on the other hand, is an example of why we need a new approach.

Name: Stan Wiggins
Hometown: Bethesda MD

Has no one in the MSM bothered to note that while CEOs may have agreed to work for a dollar a year, the other thousands of managers have yet to be asked to make wage concessions comparable to the unions?

Thanks for your historical notations on the Nixon whitewash after his resignation. The spectacle in the media reminded me of the collective denial after the Civil War, when the nation sought to erase memories of what they fought over.

Name: RS Janes
Hometown: Chicago, IL

"Why has no bigtime talking head yet suggested that Governor Grabitall out there in Illinois go all-in at the crazy table and announce that he is appointing Patrick Fitzgerald to take Barack Obama's Senate seat? Why am I not an elite pundit with ideas like this?" -- Charles Pierce

Just to elaborate on Mr. Pierce's hilariously excellent idea, after Count-the-Dough Blago names Fitzgerald, he could then call the wife on his cellphone and, with the Feds listening, say something like, "Okay, the deal's done. Fitzgerald had the $100K delivered and I named him to the Senate seat." Let the Federal Prosecutor for the Northern District of Illinois talk his way out of that one.

Name: Mark Shotzberger
Hometown: Dover, DE

We lost another "legend" last night with the passing of Bettie Page.

100 years form now, people will still know who she was and still appreciate her photos and beauty.

100 years from now, people will not know who most of our present "Super Stars" are.

Not bad for a lady who lived in a mobile home.

Name: Roy Hanley
Hometown: Atascadero, CA

Thank you, Charles, for that blast from the past. Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem (sp?). I still sing "up the long ladder and down the short rope" and the "Ahem Ahem" song regularly. Guess that makes me old.

Name: Brian Donohue
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY

I have a message both for Dr. Alterman and his readers. Dr. A., my blog, dailyrevolution.net, which you've been so kind to include on your Blogroll, will have to considerably suspend its activity, as I'm being laid off from my day job on Monday and will need to focus on finding my next gig. As readers may be disappointed at finding a link to a halted item, you are of course free to remove the link.

Regular readers here are aware of the quality and consistency of content at Altercation, all the way back to its MSNBC days. What should also be noted, from my own experience, is how Dr. Alterman actually lives and practices the liberal precepts he teaches here. This, sad to say, is quite rare among writers and pundits in this great land of ours. I will repeat what I have said many times at dailyrev: Eric Alterman is a national treasure, and remains a steady light amid the dusky wasteland that is the American media. In addition to all the other qualities you discover in his work, the mere fact that Alterman has placed, amid the likes of Kos and Digby and Greenwald, a no-name New Ager with little to contribute to policy or the liberal cause, speaks for me of a true liberalism -- the kind of spirit that I hope to see pervade this nation during the crisis ahead, and especially in the recovery that follows it.

Eric and George, my deepest thanks.

George Zornick replies: I'm sorry to hear that Brian. Best of luck, and thank you for the kind words.

Slacker Friday

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:49:24 EST

We've got a new "Think Again" column, the final one of our study of the legacy of the Bush administration's War on the Press, here. It's called "Bush's War on the Press, IV. War on War (and more)." Links to the other articles in the series are at the end of the new one. Also, my new Nation column, "Center Right? Not Quite," can be found here.

Name: Charles Pierce
Hometown: Newton, MA

"The wren, the wren/the king of all birds/St. Stephen's Day, she got caught in the furze/Down with the kettle and up with the pan/Won't you give me a penny to bury the wren?"

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Bacon Fat" (Andre Williams And His New Group) -- Hey, my love for New Orleans is ****ing golden. I'm going to hang onto it.

Part The First: Why has no bigtime talking head yet suggested that Governor Grabitall out there in Illinois go all-in at the crazy table and announce that he is appointing Patrick Fitzgerald to take Barack Obama's Senate seat? Why am I not an elite pundit with ideas like this?

Part The Second: Decent work here from young Ezra. I haven't yet seen the film, so I can't comment on what conclusions it draws from the events it depicts. But the only quibble I have with the column is that, like so many before him, Young Ez goes a little soft on old Tricky there at the end. If the movie argues that the Frost interviews functioned as some sort of national atonement on Nixon's part, then I may well be throwing Jujubes at the screen by the 90-minute mark. That old bastard never atoned for anything in his life, and the country got nothing like closure, because Nixon did no time. He spent the next 20 years rehabilitating himself, aided immeasurably by an amnesiac national press corps that decided he was a statesman. The coverage of his funeral was an appalling whitewash. The fiction that Watergate was a "national trauma" to be healed, and not a series of crimes for which specific people should be punished, lead directly to the inability of Congress to do its duty in the Iran-Contra scandal and, therefore, to the abdication of constitutional oversight that, since 2001, has ruined so much of what the country once stood for. When people argued, in 2000, that "the American people" needed a quick resolution to the extended Florida unpleasantness, it was a demonstration of how the failure to punish Nixon for his crimes developed in the national press a culture of infantilization when dealing with "the American people." Whoever they are perceived to be.

Part The Third: To me, the most intriguing thing about Cadillac Records is that Phil Chess apparently bailed on the project, which is why the film includes only a fictionalized Marshall, played by Adrian Brody. (The second-most intriguing thing is the genius-level casting of Cedric The Entertainer as Willie Dixon.) But, with all due respect to the Panda Gang, there's some decided Fail in this post, most notably in its dissing of Dennis Quaid's Jerry Lee Lewis. I have come to like that portrayal more and more as the years go by, although not as much as Alec Baldwin's turn as the Killer's bible-thumping cousin, Jimmy Swaggart. And, let us be quite frank, Jerry Lee Lewis was demonstrably crazier than a loon for his entire public career. And no less charismatic for it. In fact, charisma is often a manifestation of someone's essential lunacy.

Part The Fourth: Sometimes, I feel very sympathetic to the argument that liberals are elitist bluenoses who look down on anything anyone else finds remotely enjoyable. This is one of those times. Merry Christmas to you, too, you twit. Believe me, when U.S. News finally goes down into the unmarked, unmourned grave toward which that hopeless hack Michael Barone aimed it, I'm going to hire a marching band and throw a parade while you all clean out your desks. I will, to paraphrase Cher in Moonstruck, wear red to your funeral.

Part The Fifth: Having fired Walt The Drunk Security Guard, and apparently at a loss as to what to do next, the folks at Salon continued to be plagued by crazy people sneaking in and using various workstations around the place. The last time it happened, the interloper from the Planet Gobsmack started yammering about Sarah Palin's gifts as a linguistic innovator. She returns to that theme here -- "There has been a revolution in English -- registered in the 1950s in the street slang, colloquial locutions and assertive rhythms of both Beat poetry and rock 'n' roll and now spread far and wide on the Web in the standard jazziness of blogspeak." In reply, I will pay homage to the late Steve Gilliard and say, in the standard jazziness of blogspeak, "This woman crazy."

Part The Last: In case you haven't noticed, the question of what the Politico(!) would do once the horse race concluded in November has been answered rather definitively. Faced with the notion of actually writing about policy and not about polls, the kids either have taken a half-gainer into a deep tank of abject fail, or they've launched a frontal assault on the Hardball green room. In any event, if you bet on this thing being even more worthless after the election than it was during the election, you win. It's like reading the runners-up in a regional "Write Like Margaret Carlson" contest.

Which leads us, inevitably, to this and, to be fair, to this, too. (Ayers also did a bit on Hardball this week.) I'm beginning to wonder whether or not the Warhol Meridian has any meaning any more. Absent their nearly vicarious bit parts in an election that's been over for a month, these two clowns have no news value whatsoever. However, even taking into account their roles as supporting characters in the drama, aren't both of these guys at about the 16 minute mark by now? How do the story conference go out of which junk like this gets produced? At a time of vast and ongoing national crises, upper echelons at the Politico(!) have decide that the best use of their limited time and their limited staff is to send someone to gather quotes from a public dolt. There are a hundred similar decisions being made in a hundred different places, and too many of them produce nothing but dreck.

And, as for Ayers, well. that whole piece in the NYT was fairly gagworthy, but it was this bit -- "Our effectiveness can be -- and still is being -- debated" -- that should have frosted anyone who remembers the era. No, Bill, the effectiveness of the Weather Underground is not "still being debated." History has pretty much made the judgment that you all were a bunch of destructive idiots who threw nihilistic temper tantrums with live ammo, and who did less to stop the Vietnam War than did the Strawberry Alarm Clock. Go away now, OK? Call if you need a plumber.

Name: Jason Parrish
Hometown: Santa Rosa, CA

Eric,

I found the following excerpt of the USC report on Bush's Alhurra TV station almost too funny for words:

"The quality of Alhurra's journalism is substandard on several levels," the researchers wrote. Its broadcasts "lack appropriate balance and sourcing," and "relied on unsubstantiated information too often, allowed on-air expressions of personal judgments too frequently and failed to present opposing views in over 60 percent of its news stories."

"Our diagnosis is that Alhurra is not performing at the level that it needs to reach to be successful," the authors said.

You can almost visualize the report saying, "and the station will now be purchased by Rupert Murdoch to supplement his Fox News cable holdings." Oh, the info on the report came from ProPublica.org, which I thank you for turning me on to.

Name: Ken Bilderback
Hometown: Gaston, OR

In the waning days of the Bush presidency, we are finally, FINALLY, seeing the kind of scrutiny from the media we all desire. The headlines are blaring about the corruption of the administration:

From Newsweek: "What scandal says about Obama's ethics." From Fox News: "(Will) Eric Holder ... pass confirmation after his role in the 2001 Marc Rich pardon?"

It's taken 8 years, but finally we're seeing ...

Wait ... what's that? You say these are the crimes that haven't been committed by the upcoming administration, not the crimes that were committed by the outgoing administration ...

Still ... oh, never mind. My head hurts ...

Name: Bruce Henke
Hometown: Bartlett, IL

Your Thursday 12/11 posting title prompted me to remember your mentioning learning the guitar earlier this year. Here's something for your free time over the holidays.

Thanks for keeping on keeping on.