Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Political Theater
You may have heard a story on NPR yesterday about how New York's hotel doormen are being deployed in the fight against potential terrorism during the Republican Convention in two weeks. Listening to it, it occurred to me that the likely number one on the Republican wish list is not a convention free of attack. No, what would be better for them would be to have an attack thwarted in some public and high-profile manner while the convention is underway--a truck bomb intercepted on its way downtown, for example. That would be much better symbolically than an actual attack, which would raise questions about the administration's security skills--albeit questions drowned out in the breathless horror of the event.
So what would be number two on the wish list? Not an an actual attack, certainly, but not necessarily a quiet convention, either. How about massive, violent street protests? If some anarchist groups have their way, all hell will break loose in New York. Other activists, including 1968 Chicago veteran Todd Gitlin, fear that violence in the streets of New York could have the same effect on the 2004 election as it did in '68--tipping a close race to the Republicans.
Elsewhere today, fallout continues over the resignation of New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey. In a year full of weird political theater (a year that ain't over yet), this story ranks up there with the weirdest. One poll says people in New Jersey are evenly split over whether it was necessary for him to resign at all because of his sexual orientation. Another says only 20 percent think that was the real reason he did it, citing his alleged corruption. In Salon, Dan Savage finds in the McGreevey saga more evidence that the anti-gay-marriage position is logically incoherent, especially given the governor's marriage to a straight woman: "If an openly gay man can get married as long as his marriage makes a mockery of what is the defining characteristic of modern marriage--romantic love--or if he marries simply because he despairs of finding a same-sex partner, what harm could possibly be done by opening marriage to the gay men who don't want to make a mockery of marriage or who can find a same-sex partner?"
Recommended Reading: I once called Dick Cheney "the hinge of history," the man through whom flows all the effluent of the Bush Administration before it's spread over the Republic. Cheney is the man behind the curtain and Bush is just dancing on his strings. But Reason offers a dissenting view from Nick Gillespie, who finds in Cheney's behavior evidence that he's actually an insecure sycophant trying to hold onto the power he has by sucking up to Bush.
Remember Bill Clinton's memoirs? The hottest book of June is probably entombed on lots of bookshelves now, never to be taken down again except to be used as a doorstop. Tom Carson has one last look back at the book, and the title of his piece is a double-action pun worthy of being Quote of the Day: "Policy Wank."
New on The Hits Just Keep On Comin': Under the Apple Tree.
You may have heard a story on NPR yesterday about how New York's hotel doormen are being deployed in the fight against potential terrorism during the Republican Convention in two weeks. Listening to it, it occurred to me that the likely number one on the Republican wish list is not a convention free of attack. No, what would be better for them would be to have an attack thwarted in some public and high-profile manner while the convention is underway--a truck bomb intercepted on its way downtown, for example. That would be much better symbolically than an actual attack, which would raise questions about the administration's security skills--albeit questions drowned out in the breathless horror of the event.
So what would be number two on the wish list? Not an an actual attack, certainly, but not necessarily a quiet convention, either. How about massive, violent street protests? If some anarchist groups have their way, all hell will break loose in New York. Other activists, including 1968 Chicago veteran Todd Gitlin, fear that violence in the streets of New York could have the same effect on the 2004 election as it did in '68--tipping a close race to the Republicans.
Elsewhere today, fallout continues over the resignation of New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey. In a year full of weird political theater (a year that ain't over yet), this story ranks up there with the weirdest. One poll says people in New Jersey are evenly split over whether it was necessary for him to resign at all because of his sexual orientation. Another says only 20 percent think that was the real reason he did it, citing his alleged corruption. In Salon, Dan Savage finds in the McGreevey saga more evidence that the anti-gay-marriage position is logically incoherent, especially given the governor's marriage to a straight woman: "If an openly gay man can get married as long as his marriage makes a mockery of what is the defining characteristic of modern marriage--romantic love--or if he marries simply because he despairs of finding a same-sex partner, what harm could possibly be done by opening marriage to the gay men who don't want to make a mockery of marriage or who can find a same-sex partner?"
Recommended Reading: I once called Dick Cheney "the hinge of history," the man through whom flows all the effluent of the Bush Administration before it's spread over the Republic. Cheney is the man behind the curtain and Bush is just dancing on his strings. But Reason offers a dissenting view from Nick Gillespie, who finds in Cheney's behavior evidence that he's actually an insecure sycophant trying to hold onto the power he has by sucking up to Bush.
Remember Bill Clinton's memoirs? The hottest book of June is probably entombed on lots of bookshelves now, never to be taken down again except to be used as a doorstop. Tom Carson has one last look back at the book, and the title of his piece is a double-action pun worthy of being Quote of the Day: "Policy Wank."
New on The Hits Just Keep On Comin': Under the Apple Tree.
