Wednesday, December 24, 2003
It's Already Christmas Morning in Uzbekistan
On this Christmas Eve, we've received a small gift, albeit a puzzling one. Ralph Nader has announced that he won't seek the Green Party nomination for president, although he may run as an independent anyhow. If you think you've heard this story before, you have. Let's wave goodbye to the Greens as they make the same short trip to irrelevance that the Reform Party made when Ross Perot abandoned them in 1996.
We are also waving goodbye to 2003, so there are lots of retrospectives floating around the Internet, including this news quiz from Alternet, which shows better than most what a long, strange trip it has been this year. Another of my favorite yearend reviews is media critic Norman Solomon’s “P.U.-Litzer Prizes” for what he calls “the stinkiest media performances of the year.” In a classic "tell me something I don't know" moment, Solomon notes that most Americans who get their news from commercial TV are misinformed in one way or another about the basic facts of the Iraq war. And (drum roll please) those most likely to be the most misinformed are--Fox News viewers.
As we look forward to 2004 and the presidential election, here's the most compelling piece of evidence yet to vote for Wesley Clark. Man's got the right attitude toward what is going to be, like it or not, the number one issue of the fall presidential campaign. Of course, if Howard Dean had said it the way Clark did, the clucking from the other candidates would have been audible several states away without a radio. At AxisOfLogic.Com, Sheila Samples isn't ready to pick a candidate yet, but she knows what she wants to hear.
The rest of the world is looking forward to 2004 as well, watching to see what happens with our excellent adventure in Iraq. Watching is the key word, of course, as none of the world's other powerful states are contributing to our efforts (but who needs 'em when you've got Uzbekistan and Macedonia?). Nicholas Berry of ForeignPolicyForum.Com sees the silence of the EU, Russia, and China as a strategic matter, one that should sound familiar to Americans.
So the world is what it is, the same today in many ways as it is every other day of the year. But it's also different. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are when we are more the people we'd like to be than at any other time of the year. I may meditate further on that in a later post this afternoon or tonight. But if I go into a fudge-and-cookies-induced coma instead, here's my wish that your holiday is everything you want it to be.
On this Christmas Eve, we've received a small gift, albeit a puzzling one. Ralph Nader has announced that he won't seek the Green Party nomination for president, although he may run as an independent anyhow. If you think you've heard this story before, you have. Let's wave goodbye to the Greens as they make the same short trip to irrelevance that the Reform Party made when Ross Perot abandoned them in 1996.
We are also waving goodbye to 2003, so there are lots of retrospectives floating around the Internet, including this news quiz from Alternet, which shows better than most what a long, strange trip it has been this year. Another of my favorite yearend reviews is media critic Norman Solomon’s “P.U.-Litzer Prizes” for what he calls “the stinkiest media performances of the year.” In a classic "tell me something I don't know" moment, Solomon notes that most Americans who get their news from commercial TV are misinformed in one way or another about the basic facts of the Iraq war. And (drum roll please) those most likely to be the most misinformed are--Fox News viewers.
As we look forward to 2004 and the presidential election, here's the most compelling piece of evidence yet to vote for Wesley Clark. Man's got the right attitude toward what is going to be, like it or not, the number one issue of the fall presidential campaign. Of course, if Howard Dean had said it the way Clark did, the clucking from the other candidates would have been audible several states away without a radio. At AxisOfLogic.Com, Sheila Samples isn't ready to pick a candidate yet, but she knows what she wants to hear.
The rest of the world is looking forward to 2004 as well, watching to see what happens with our excellent adventure in Iraq. Watching is the key word, of course, as none of the world's other powerful states are contributing to our efforts (but who needs 'em when you've got Uzbekistan and Macedonia?). Nicholas Berry of ForeignPolicyForum.Com sees the silence of the EU, Russia, and China as a strategic matter, one that should sound familiar to Americans.
So the world is what it is, the same today in many ways as it is every other day of the year. But it's also different. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are when we are more the people we'd like to be than at any other time of the year. I may meditate further on that in a later post this afternoon or tonight. But if I go into a fudge-and-cookies-induced coma instead, here's my wish that your holiday is everything you want it to be.
