Somerby on frameworks for Republicans/Democrats

From today's dailyhowler.com: (sorry to quote so much, but he puts it really well)

SEQUEL—DEVIL OR ANGEL: “Hero tales” and “demon tales” now drive (and decide) our White House elections. These tales come from the mainstream press corps—not just from “the right-wing machine.” You’ll hear these goony tales on the right too. But it’s the mainstream press which can tip our elections—and our mainstream press corps is deeply involved in distinguishing devils from angels.

By the way, in case you’ve missed it: The “hero tales” are bestowed on Reps; the “demon tales” are handed to Dems. The way this works has never been clearer. Consider the treatment handed two pols this week—treatment which differed by party.

Hero tales (Republican): First, consider Republican Fred Thompson. As far as we know, Thompson is a perfectly OK guy, if a bit on the slick, oily side. But at best, he’s a modestly-successful former pol with a mediocre, eight-year Senate record. Since leaving the Senate, he’s had a modest career as a TV and film actor.

Hero tales are for Big Reps. Dems are transformed into demons.

Thompson’s political career has been modest. But what happened to “Ole Fred” in late March when he began making noise about seeking the White House? Of course! On Hardball, Chris Matthews gathered the clan to build standard “hero frameworks” around him. For excerpts from these fawning discussions, see yesterday’s DAILY HOWLER. But according to Matthews and his panel, Thompson is smart, handsome and articulate. He’s a tough guy who looks like a Daddy. He sounds like a president—and he looks like a president. He would win a match-up with Hillary Clinton. And of course, he seems honest and open. Beyond that, Matthews described how he “fell in love” with Thompson during his 1994 run for the Senate. After a weekend’s rest, Matthews continued the gushing. “He looks classic wise man. He has gravitas,” the talker gushingly said. “He’s got that Colin Powell feature, where you just sort of trust him.”

Last Sunday, the Washington Post built these same hero tales around Thompson, comparing him to John Wayne and Ronald Reagan. Outlook’s John Pomfret had scoured the country in search of the dumbest possible writer—and he published the dumbest possible piece about how much fun Ole Fred really is. Liz Garrigan gushed, smooched, pandered and fawned, even telling us that Thompson looks like Work—and, of course, that he’s great with the ladies. Almost two full pages of Outlook were built around this clownish gushing. It came with two pictures of Thompson, one quite large, and a chart which showed us his Reaganesque lineage.

No surprise. At present, that’s what happens to Major Reps when they decide to run for the White House. They’re constantly referred to as “America’s Mayor,” or as the head of the “Straight Talk Express.” Or Outlook decides to pour it on, telling us how much we should like them.

That’s what happened to a Big Rep this week. Now, consider what happened to a Big Dem. Consider what happened to Gore.

Demon tales (Democrat): Al Gore has not had a mediocre career. His Oscar-winning documentary film has been credited with transforming the world debate about warming. He’s now a Nobel Prize nominee for his decades of work in this area. Indeed, he wrote the book on warming all the way back in 1992, with his first best-seller, Earth in the Balance. In his spare time, he warned the country in 2002 against the idea of war with Iraq. Almost everyone now agrees that his advice should have been heeded. Thompson, by contrast, voted for the war resolution in October 2002. Meanwhile, in recent weeks, Ole Dumb-bell has warned us: People, Mars is warming!

By any standard, Gore is one of the most honored public figures in the world. So what happened this week when his new book was published? Of course! In the New York Times, a famous columnist devoted her column to the notion that Gore is just too f*cking fat. And Outlook decided to trash him too; Garrigan didn’t just pander to Thompson, she also filled her bizarre Outlook piece with insults directed at Gore. Her denigrations were so old and so tired that Pomfret seemed to have dug her up from a time machine. In Outlook, Gore was still being described as “road-kill.” Garrigan showed little sign of having heard about Gore’s cosmic successes.

Has it ever been more clear how modern White House politics works? This has gone on for quite a few years—and career liberals have staunchly refused to discuss it. But has it ever been more clear? Has the agenda behind the mainstream coverage ever been more freaking obvious?

Thompson’s a mediocrity—a borderline dope. Gore is one of the world’s most honored public servants. So readers, when even Gore gets trashed this way, isn’t it finally perfectly obvious? That no matter what a big Democrat does, he will be trashed as too fat and too phony? Has it ever been more clear? Has the mainstream press corps—the Pomfrets, the Matthews, the Dowds—ever made it more blindingly obvious?

Dean Barnett on abortion

Abortion —
Dean Barnett wrote a column for the Boston Globe that tries to make a secular argument against abortion. His basic point? He doesn't know when life begins and wants to err on the side of caution. What does he mean by life? Oh, he never says.

Why do people making an anti-abortion argument never bother to clarify what they're actually talking about at this crucial juncture of their argument? Here's a guess: Because doing so would make their position sound silly.

Actually, even without clarifying, Barnett does a pretty good job of that:

You might expect that since I'm pro-life, I would argue that life begins at conception. Actually, that's not quite right. In answering the question of when life begins, the best I can do is say "I don't know." Life may begin at conception. It may begin during pregnancy. Or it may begin at childbirth. While I have a feeling that life begins at conception, I certainly can't prove it.

The only people who can say with absolute certainty and total conviction when life begins do so as a matter of faith or belief, not as the inevitable result of a logical process. This is every bit as true for the pro-choice absolutists who feel that life begins only at birth as it is for people who believe that life begins at conception. Indeed, I would argue that the pro-choice absolutists rely much more on something unknown and unprovable than their pro-life sparring partners.

This is nothing new, but notice how he uses a much more pleasant term for people of his ilk ("pro-life", in contrast to those anti-life bastards) and for absolutists in the anti-abortion camp ("people who believe that life begins at contraception") than for his opponents ("pro-choice absolutists"). Eee gads! Absolutists! These pro-choice absolutists sure sound like scary people.

About the beginning of life: What kind of life? Every cell in your body is alive. A sperm is alive; an egg is alive; and surely a fertilized egg is alive. So is the mosquito you just swatted. So is a carrot or a yeast organism. The question isn't "Will something that's alive end up dead?" The relevant question, it seems to me, is "Will a person end up dead?" Is a fertilized egg a person? It sure doesn't look like a person to me. It has more in common with a cell in my lip than with Bill Murray (or any other human being). How about a blastula? Sure it's alive, but is it a person? Really? It has more in common with a soccer ball than even with a fish. Moving along, an embryo proceeds to take on some amphibious qualities and, as they say, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. It's life all along. Barnett need not fret over this issue. The issue worth fretting over is when is it human life. Not just human life in the sense that "human" is the best available adjective to describe it because, well, it comes from people. No, when is it a living human being?

Now I'll use a Barnett-ism: I don't know. But this is the question he should focus on, not a silly distraction of "When is it alive???"

NBA draft lottery

The Celtics did the worst they could possibly do in the NBA draft lottery on May 22, landing the 5th pick in the draft when they went into the lottery with the second-best odds.

Why is there a lottery, anyway? The draft is supposed to help the worst teams most. The lottery is supposed to prevent tanking. But this past season, most observers agree that many teams intentionally lost games, or at least intentionally put lineups on the court that were unlikely to win. So the lottery doesn't accomplish its goal, and it undermines the goal of the draft. Sounds like a great system, right?

At least if the NBA is going to undermine the goal of the draft, they may as well do it in a way that actually provides a disincentive to tank. How about have the 3rd-worst team get the #1 pick, the 2nd-worst team get the #2 pick, and the worst team get the #3 pick? After that, go in inverse order of record. Then there's a strong incentive for the worst teams to keep trying to win, all season long. AND, the worst that the league's worst team can finish is #3, unlike the current system in which the worst team can finish as low as #4, which they did this year.

The habitable zone

It has been a while since ordering from Saigon Grill. I don't even know if the delivery boys are still on strike, but I've been humming L'Internationale in my head ever since.

I just finished an investigation of whether it will be possible to determine the rotation rate of an extrasolar planet through its transit spectrum. You can find it here: http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.0004

Now, I'm trying to calculate the habitable zone of a star. Broadly speaking, the habitable zone is the region around a star where there can be life. People (perhaps taking a parochial view) often take this to mean the region where there can be liquid water. And that's what I'm taking it to mean. There has been some impressive work done already by Jim Kastings and others. I'm just getting started now, but I'm trying to build some on what has already been done. More later....