We've got a new Think Again column called "Sotomayor and SCOTUS, Captured on a Carousel of Time" about the punditocracy confirmation hearings here.

And I did a post for The Daily Beast on the recent metzora-making of Joe "The Volcano" Lieberman here.

Now this...

An Open Letter from "Altercation" to Stephen Colbert:

Dear Mr. Colbert,

I hope you and your staff are having a nice time yukking it up in Baghdad. I really enjoyed tiny portions of your Newsweek issue. Actually, it was all downhill from the letters page. Actually, it was all downhill from the first letter on the letters page. After that funny one, I came across this one:

Dear NEWSWEEK, I never thought this kind of thing would happen to me. I was at the library making last-minute edits to The Dartmouth Review when Miss Shimock, the young librarian, walked up to my table wearing nothing but a copy of Atlas Shrugged. She made a strong case that it was in my rational self-interest to take off my pants...Wait, I think I'm writing this letter to the wrong magazine.

Stephen Colbert, Hanover, N.H.
Sept. 18, 1984

Hey, buddy, you know I love you, but you (and whoever wrote this letter) also know that this is a total ripoff of a letter that appeared in the Harvard Lampoon parody of Newsweek in approximately 1982, if my marijuana-addled memory serves. Back then, in a letter entitled "Newsweek Forum," the junior at the small Midwestern university was studying alone in his room, when hearing a knock on the door, and who should appear but UN Permanent Representative Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick. It went something like this: "After briefly discussing totalitarian vs. authoritarian regimes and agreeing that the former were so much more horrible than the latter, Jeanne said she'd be more comfortable sitting on my lap."

I will refrain from making the obvious aesthetic comparison, but if you were plagiarizing yourself, twenty seven years after the fact, well then, buddy I salute you. If someone on your staff did it, well, I have a nephew graduating college who needs a job...

Alter-review: Booker T at Joe's Pub last night by Eric

If you were me, and lived in the Greatest City in the World, then last night you had a choice between getting your sorry self out to Jersey for an expensive opportunity to see Eric Clapton and Stevie Winwood in Jersey--even though you saw pretty much the same show at the Garden last year, also expensive, and recently saw Clapton with the Allman Brothers from like, the second row, two nights in a row at the Beacon, or Elvis Costello also at said Beacon, which is lovely, beautifully redone, and walkable to boot, or, the dark horse third choice, take a couple of subways downtown to see Booker T and his band at Joe's Pub which is also lovely and tiny and has wonderful soft couches.

I picked the latter, as you may have guessed, based on the fact that Clapton/Winwood would be a rerun, cost a fortune, and has been captured on Blu-Ray, which is fantastic, and I've seen Elvis more times than I can count, but I've never seen Booker T. Like Sal, I love the new album Potato Hole, and I also loved the lengthy interview he did recently with Terry Gross, (whom I have also come to love of late).

It was a great choice. He did not have Neil Young and the DBTs as his band, but the music was wonderful, and the dignity and bearing and eloquence of the man who founded Booker T and the MGs when he was seventeen was downright inspiring. I loved the way he gave us the historical, psychological and musical backgrounds of the songs they played and loved, loved, loved the lengthy version they did of "Time is Tight" which kicks "Green Onions's" proverbial posterior any day of the week. As a historian, I felt I had a more complete understanding of the development of the Memphis Stax/Volt sound and of the man who as much as anyone, was responsible for creating it. Plus it was just a lot of fun. Get the album. Trust me. Listen here.

The mail:

Name: Michael Bartley
Hometown: Fort Collins, CO

I would add Mattie Ross to Pierce's list of great child narrators. True Grit, the novel not the movie, by Charles Portis remains criminally under-appreciated due, I suppose, to the dukification of the film. John Wayne's Rooster simply overwhelms every character. Give your head a couple of hard shakes to remove his big blustery image from you brain pan and dig into a novel that is a subtle wonder. Mattie Ross is one of the great characters of American literature. This is a book that belongs in our schools alongside Tom and Huck and Scout.

Name: Jeff Stivers
Hometown: Richmond, CA

Not to step into the whole California budget/bond mess, but...

Our problem stems from the infamous Prop 13, which did two things*, one of which was to require a 2/3 legislative majority to raise (or initiate) any tax at both the state and local levels. This was passed in 1978.

You can just imagine how far out of sync our revenues are with our current fiscal needs by now. Thirty years of normal inflation without revenue increases would be sufficient to put a serious hurt on things. Add to that the $9 billion that went to Enron when they gamed CA (still floating around as unpaid bonds), and the current demands from the "Bush boom," and that puts us $20+ billion in the hole (some claim $40b).

Now we're held captive by Jurassic supply-siders and proto-Reaganites, who will not allow any taxes to be raised--no matter what. I imagine they're smiling inwardly as their dream of destroying government comes to pass.

(* The other thing it did was decouple property taxes from education financing. This drove public education in CA from the top 20 in the country to the bottom 20.)

Name: Bob Rothman
Hometown: Providence, RI

So nice of Charlie Pierce to recognize T.R. Pearson's A Short History of a Small Place. I've always thought of it as an unsung masterpiece, so I'm glad someone is singing of it.

I once heard him at a reading say that Mark Twain was a major influence (he complained that people "keep throwing Faulkner" at him), so I'm sure he'd be pleased that Pierce put him in the same sentence as Mr. Clemens.

Name: David K. Richie
Hometown: Birmingham, AL

Dr. A,

Just because I haven't weighed in with my right wing, neo-fascist, business owner, morally degenerate, polluter opinions recently, do not for a minute console yourself with notion that I may not be reading every word. I know you will lose a lot of sleep thinking about that!

I am getting nauseous with the Sotomajor thing. This able and obviously qualified person will be confirmed no matter what the loopier element of the conservative wing of the republican party--lower case intended--tries. Yes, yes there will be some obligatory grilling at the hearings. After which she will be easily confirmed.

The only thing the looney left is getting out of this is more punching bag time with wing nuts already thoroughly discredited.

A pleasure to be able to talk with you again.

From the Red States,
Dave Richie

P.S. to Pierce: Ray Nagin wrote a very nice thank you letter to the people of Birmingham for our support during the recent unpleasantness. 'Twas a little looney in the Nagin tradition but a very nice gesture from the city you and I love.

Name: Roger H. Werner
Hometown: Stockton, CA

Hi Eric,

I read your ThinkAgain column and while I agreed with virtually everything you say, there is one very important point I think you ignored. The right-wing windbags who pontificate with sickening regularity don't have much of an audience beyond that 28% who still cling to a dead GOP agenda. Whether Gingrich-Limbaugh-etc. like it or not, I am not aware of very many people who pay the slightest attention to what these people have to say. I do understand that the "Inside the Beltway Mentality" people remain breathless at every word the punditocracy says, but in the real world few people are paying any attention. Inasmuch as Sotomayor has already been approved by the Senate twice, she is very likely to pass muster once again and if she does not, those blocking her nomination are going to be viewed with disdain since there's no justification for such an action beyond politics and ideology. From where I sit, the citizens and voters of this country are sick to death of both. In any event, I enjoyed your thoughts on this important matter.

Name: Ann Donahue
Hometown: Shelburne, VT

While I agree with everything Charlie Pierce says about Obama's response to Dr. Tiller's murder, the author of Idiot America (terrific, by the way) should know the so-called dialogue on abortion put forward by the media and our legislative bodies has already created an equivalence between the violence perpetrated by the anti- choicers and the legal right of women to decide whether or not to have a child. Abortion itself is regularly described by the anti- choicers as violent and murder and the media and legislators have not been slow to promote the reasonableness of this absurd position. When legislators vote to interfere with a decision that properly belongs to a woman and her doctor--whether by restricting late-term abortions, requiring doctors to describe graphically every detail of the medical procedure and show a woman pictures of aborted fetuses, or allowing pharmacists to refuse dispensing legal drugs (are vegans allowed to get jobs in delis and then refuse to make the sandwiches?)--they are promoting the argument that abortion is a form of violence and creating a moral equivalency between physicians who perform a legal medical procedure and those who break the law to prevent it. Obama's attempt to condemn Tiller's murder in the context of "our [profound] differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion" unfortunately furthers this meme.

Name: Larry Howe
Hometown: Oak Park, IL

Eric--

Charlie Pierce may be right about the child narrators he mentions, except in one instance: Twain's child was Huck and only Huck. Tom Sawyer never narrated anything.

Name: Richard Sattler
Hometown: Missoula, MT

I have to disagree in part with Pierce (always an intimidating prospect). It is not merely enough to "tell one side of the debate to knock it the hell off." It is long past time to minimally charge groups like Operation Rescue with aiding and abetting terrorist, just as we have done with a number of Muslim groups. Even better would be to directly classify them as known terrorist organizations. Dr. Tiller's assassin is quite simply a domestic terrorist and organizations like these are at minimum giving them aid and comfort. Indeed they are directly inciting these terrorists to action, if not giving them direct support and assistance. We can no longer pretend that this is an "honest difference of opinion" when one side routinely resorts to acts of intimidation and violence.

Name: Stephen Carver
Hometown: Los Angeles

Overall, I am truly amazed by the political insight and execution of this particular trip overseas.

1. He visits Saudia Arabia, spiritual home of Islam and meets with the King, protector of the two most holy Islamic sites (Mecca and Medina). They meet at the King's ranch... shades of Bush bringing state leaders to his ranch?

2. Visits Cairo, hotbed of radical Islam, home to the proverbial Islamic "street" and one of the oldest continual civilizations on earth, and gives a major speech at a university known for its secular views, in which he asks the three major parties to peace (Muslims, Jews and Christians) to get over themselves and find common ground. The speech is met with both positive and negative reviews (as expected), because he knew he wouldn't make everyone happy.

3. The next day he visits Buchenwald with Elie Weisel and the German Chancellor, reminding everyone that the Jews (who don't like being blamed for anything going on in the Middle East) are victims in all of this, too. He also confirms his statement of a day before that not only does Israel have the right to exist, but that the Israeli politicians, understanding and having lived through holocaust, need to bring real compassion to the table with the Palestinians, not just their overbearing arms superiority.

Political masterstroke, and a very Christian thing to do. Blessed be the peacemakers for they are the sons of God.

I get the feeling watching Obama that he's at least two steps ahead of everyone else. The world is seeing the political skill of the man who beat the Clinton machine; and Hillary is now at his side.

Brilliant.

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