Eric Alterman | The Nation

House Speaker John Boehner. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

My new Think Again: Rupert Makes the News—Literally. It’s about Murdoch and the Australian elections, Tony Blair and Iraq, and what a bad idea it would be to allow him to take over The LA Times and the Chicago Tribune, etc.

A few things: 
1) I ran into Marshall Berman with my kid at the Metro Diner on 100th and Broadway on Tuesday night and we talked optimistically about de Blasio. Metro was our place, apparently. I learned that the following day, also at the Metro Diner, Marshall had a fatal heart attack. Todd Gitlin has a nice piece about him here. 

Classy John Podhoretz, in a tweet, compared this brilliant Jewish/humanist scholar to a Nazi, the day after his death. Which is funny because his brother in law, Elliot Abrams, enabled actual genocide in Guatemala and proceeded to slander the people who tried to stop it as Communist sympathizers. You can read about that here.  His sister Rachel wanted to see genocide committed against Palestinians who supported Hamas. Don’t believe it? Here’s what she wrote. They were:

“the slaughtering, death-worshiping, innocent-butchering, child-sacrificing savages who dip their hands in blood and use women—those who aren’t strapping bombs to their own devils’ spawn and sending them out to meet their seventy-two virgins by taking the lives of the school-bus-riding, heart-drawing, Transformer-doodling, homework-losing children of Others—and their offspring—those who haven’t already been pimped out by their mothers to the murder god—as shields, hiding behind their burkas and cradles like the unmanned animals they are, and throw them not into your prisons, where they can bide until they’re traded by the thousands for another child of Israel, but into the sea, to float there, food for sharks, stargazers, and whatever other oceanic carnivores God has put there for the purpose.”

(And I haven’t even mentioned Norman or Midge. Sheesh, what a family: The Madoffs of political punditry and policy. As if the Jewish people have not suffered enough...) And of course Berman's wonderful "All That's Solid Melts Into Air" is a more significant contribution to culture than that of all Poddies added together.... Still comparing a gentle Jewish writer to a Nazi a day after his death would get any editor fired—especially an editor of a Jewish magazine—if only daddy had not gotten him the job.... lucky “John P. Normson” can begin atoning tonight.

2) The terrific British World War II detective series, Foyle’s War starts its seventh three-episode season on PBS this weekend. You can find the recently released on bluray and dvd with more than two hours of bonus features which I haven’t had a chance to watch yet. British television specialist Acorn is streaming them the day after broadcast at www.Acorn.TV and offers all previous 22 episodes. You’ll be grateful to me if you’ve not yet indulged. Also out on bluray from Acorn, Prime Suspect: The Complete Collection. I’ve reviewed them here before when on DVD and I do recommend it, though not as strongly as Foyle.

3) How did you know? From the Times New York Today file: The former good-guy pro wrestler Bruno Sammartino (your childhood hero, perhaps) donates a replica of his championship belt to the Italian American Museum and speaks out against bullying.

Now here's Reed:

The Real Credibility Crisis in Washington: Congressional Republicans
by Reed Richardson

There’s one word that, like a bad penny, keeps re-appearing among pundits and politicians these past few weeks: credibility. It has become the overly simplistic prism through which the Beltway crowd now views every one of President Obama’s decisions regarding the civil war in Syria. Sad to say, the president himself isn’t above invoking this nebulous idea of “credibility” to justify his plans for military strikes against the Assad regime. (A use of force that I oppose.) In the world of our nation’s capital, conventional wisdom has once again turned the focus of a complicated policy issue with broad, life-and-death consequences into an insular, petty, process story.

This isn’t a new phenomenon, certainly. Still, it’s no less striking to see how the Capitol Hill crowd’s obsession with phony credibility mirrors horserace political coverage that is thoroughly uninterested in policy outcomes or facts on the ground. For example, when Obama belatedly decided to seek Congressional approval—an abrupt, last-minute move, but a wise one nonetheless—hyperventilating pundits only howled even louder about the long-term danger of his indecisiveness. Of course, this exercise of democracy wouldn’t degrade our military’s capability to strike Syria one bit. It was, however, a major transgression against the Beltway’s fascination with “decisive” “resolute” “leadership.” Or as one pundit put it, with seemingly little interest in having the head of our executive branch abide by the Constitution, Obama wasn’t following “presidential best practices.”

Likewise, when an 11^th hour bid from Russia again changed the policy landscape on Syria—offering the Obama administration a potential modus vivendi it smartly pursued—many of the same DC insiders previously outraged at the president’s rush to war immediately began deriding the plodding pace of diplomacy. No doubt, Russia’s President Putin is a disingenuous partner, at best, but that doesn’t change the fact that a brokered, diplomatic solution offers the only real chance for the US to effectively achieve its broader policy goal—securing and destroying all of Assad’s chemical weapons stores—without having to invade another Middle East country. It is a low bar for sure, but after eight years of the Bush administration, I’ll take any foreign policy—ad hoc or not—that ends up eliminating actual WMDs without causing tens of thousands of deaths.

American credibility isn’t actually at risk from the president’s pursuit of a peaceful solution to Syria’s WMDs. Instead, the real credibility crisis in Washington is that the Republican Party is simply no longer capable of or interested in the responsible governance of our nation. Though this crisis has been brewing for years and now threatens the very functioning of our democracy, it doesn’t generate anywhere near the same amount of concerted pundit outrage or frantic media attention.

Since the GOP gained a majority in the House in 2010, Congress has effectively ceased normal legislative work. Undermined by a nihilistic Tea Party rump that reflexively opposes anything the president supports, the House Republican caucus now routinely fails at passing even its own conservative legislation (and boasts of job approval ratings nearing the single digits). Speaker Boehner, in a flailing attempt at remaining relevant, has tried to co-opt the hardcore, repeal-everything message, but to no avail. Instead, he’s grown increasingly irrelevant and ineffectual.

Consider that nearly two years ago—before recent GOP voting debacles on the fiscal cliff, Sandy aid, health care legislation, and the farm bill—the DC insider publication Politico ran a story with the headline: “Has John Boehner lost control?” This week, when asked about the latest uproar from his caucus’s right flank—over a bill deemed controversial because it would dare to pass a continuing resolution without defunding the Affordable Care Act—the Speaker sounded like a man both beset and bemused by the surreal state of his party’s direction.

“A reporter asked [Boehner] whether he has a new idea to resolve the government funding fight. He laughed and said, ‘No.’

‘Do you have an idea?’ he asked the reporters. ‘They’ll just shoot it down anyway.’”

This kind of alarming acknowledgement should be front-page news. It should be a nightly topic of cable news talk shows. It should be an ongoing point of discussion in op-ed pages across the country. But, again, the media’s process-obsessed mindset won’t let it step back to see the broader outcome for such obstruction. Hence, elected Republican officials in Washington pay no price for proudly spouting rhetorical doubletalk that would no doubt make George Orwell’s head spin:

“Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., said this is a fight conservatives are ready to have, despite the political stakes for the GOP being seen as forcing a fight over shutting down the government.

“‘I think that's a risk you have to take,’ he said, ‘Any path forward, there's a political downside to it. We didn't come here to get re-elected and have safe political careers. We came here to get things done.’”

That’s right, in Kingston’s mind, getting things done can be defined as hijacking the federal government in pursuit of a quixotic political crusade (one that a strong majority of the public opposes). And keep in mind that Kingston is one of three House conservatives—along with Paul Broun and Phil Gingrey—running for the open Georgia Senate seat next year and he is considered the most moderate of the three. Only in an era where the modern Republican Party has fully gone off the rails and abandoned any pretense of legislative credibility could someone like Kingston be characterized in the press as “not known for being a hard liner.”

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Exacerbating this breakdown in the GOP is an ongoing internecine battle between House and Senate Republicans that is mostly ignored by the pundits. A cadre of hard-right conservative GOP Senators, led by Ted Cruz, have effectively gone rogue, disregarding their party’s leaders who (rightly) fear the GOP will be blamed for a government shutdown later this fall. Nevertheless, Cruz has taken to criss-crossing the country like a snake oil salesman, captivating the Republican base with chimerical tales of how they can overturn Obama’s signature health care achievement if they just hate the government hard enough.

Sadly, this abdication of any credible interest in governance on the part of Republicans is all too often unfairly balanced against trifling Democratic moves by the media. Or the GOP’s behavior is inexplicably blamed on Obama as his fault for not “leading.” Either way, what’s left unsaid is the critically important challenge facing American credibility right now. And it isn’t that our president might be willing to change his mind occasionally in an attempt to avoid unnecessary war. It’s that the Republican Party has decided it is unwilling to change its mind about conducting an unnecessary war against government.

Contact me directly at reedfrichardson (at) gmail dot com.
I’m on Twitter here—(at)reedfrich.

Editor's note: To contact Eric Alterman, use this form.

Smoke rises after what activists said was shelling by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in the village of Dourit, August 17, 2013. Picture taken August 17, 2013. (Reuters/Khattab Abdulaa)

My new Think Again column is called The Mainstream Media and the Slowly Boiling Frog and it’s about global warming.

Two things:
1) Here is a list among other things, of people who thought it would be cool to invade Iraq, with pro-genocide, Elliott Abrams.

2) In this article about a visit to the West Bank town of Hebron in the Times of Israel, Marc Goldberg writes, “in Hebron I feel like we’re winning the battle and losing it at the same time. I feel like God himself is playing a trick on us, saying that we can have our Holy Places and the land He promised us but that in payment we have to give up on our own moral code, the same one He instilled within us. He gave us a cruel choice to make and that the punishment for making the wrong choice is to lose the country entirely.”

Reading it reminded me of a fascinating recent discussion I attended after synagogue recently where a noted scholar gave a lecture on the philosophy of Emile Fackenheim, who among many other things, is the author of the philosophical concept of the 613th commandment, that advises that Hitler should not be given any posthumous victories. When I raised the issue of the difficulty of its application with regard to say, Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, a man in the room stood up and screamed at me that I was equating Israel with Nazis and I “should be ashamed of myself.” Naturally, I was not ashamed of myself, as I had done no such thing. (He was the only person who brought up Nazis.) But the issue left me profoundly depressed about the ability of American Jews to hold any kind of intelligent discussion about Israel at all. I learned more about the fellow in question here and here and I suppose one should not draw too many conclusions based on this kind of individual whose wealth, I imagine, provides a useful shield from people explaining to him when he is acting like an idiot. But he received a great deal of assent for his ignorant grand-standing from the room and those who were aware of the foolishness of his point kept their own counsel. The political implication of this is that John Kerry is unlikely to receive much in the way of domestic support from American Jews for the peace process so long as Israel’s government remains intransigent with regard to its continued construction of illegal settlements. More and more Jews, especially younger Jews, may be alienated from Israel than ever before, but most of those who do remain engaged are largely stuck in a time-warp which, ironically, reinforces the arguments of those who would like to see Israel destroyed as a both a democratic and Jewish state—just as its professed enemies would also like.

Alter-reviews
John Updike: Library of America, Collected Stories.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience “Purple Box” re-release.

Sly and Family Stone Box: “Higher.”

Bob Dylan “Another Self-Portrait.”

The Rides, Live at The Iridium and some other stuff.

In the next week or so, my friends at the Library of America will release John Updike: The Collected Stories, which is about as important an announcement regarding LOA or Updike as one could imagine. Updike wrote beautiful stories, but they were unevenly collected. Second only to Cheever in this realm, in my not-so humble opinion, his first collection, The Same Door, was originally published in 1959 and his last, My Father’s Tears, in 2009. Add it all up and we get 186 stories, from 1953’s "Ace in the Hole," a sketch of a Rabbit-like ex-basketball player written when Updike was a Harvard senior, and through "The Full Glass" (2008) in the lovely LOA format. According to the LOA, each story is presented in its final definitive form and in order of composition, established here for the first time. Each volume also contains a previously uncollected story: “A Game of Botticelli” (1954) and “Part of the Process” (1988). You can buy them separately or in a deluxe boxed set featuring Alex Katz’s 1982 portrait on it. I sure would.

Legacy Recordings and Experience Hendrix LLC have a re-release of an expanded edition of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Purple Box, which originally came out in 2000. It’s hard to believe but Hendrix only put out three studio albums while he was alive. Only Elvis has seen his catalogue mined more energetically. Anyway, I’ve been buying live albums and outtakes here and there for the past few years trying to find the right mix and now I can get rid of them and keep this instead. It does the trick save for you Hendrix fanatics who don’t need my advice anyway. A four CD boxed set, it contains 60 previously unreleased or unavailable studio and concert recordings from a remarkable four-year period in musical history, 1966-1970, ending with the artist's final multi-track recording session at New York's Electric Lady Studios in August 1970. Among the highlights are alternate versions of classics like "Purple Haze," "Foxey Lady," “Bold As Love” and "Little Wing," as well Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” from Hendrix’s October 1968 performances at Winterland in San Francisco. For obscurities, you get the original recording of “Peace In Mississippi” from the October 1968 sessions at TTG Studios, previously available only as the b-side of the 2010 “Valleys Of Neptune” and a rare, recently discovered 1967 performance of “Burning Of The Midnight Lamp." The original UK single mix of "The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam's Dice," is also new in the US. There’s an 80 page color booklet filled with rare photos, essays and annotation by Dave Marsh and John McDermott, detailed track notes and more, though the box is the old-fashioned fat cardboard kind, which might have been improved upon, methinks.

The new release of Bob Dylan's Bootleg Series, Vol. 10 - Another Self Portrait (1969-1971) is really something new and quite wonderful. The unreleased tracks from Self-Portraint—by unchallenged consensus Dylan’s worst album—is actually a really quite good (if profoundly relaxed) Dylan album. Containing 35 rarities and previously unreleased recordings, Another Self Portrait (1969-1971) is drawn from the 1970 studio recording sessions that resulted in Self Portrait and bled into New Morning along with a few songs with the Band from the Isle of Wight—at least on the two disc version. It’s hard to understand why Dylan chose to release the inferior material and hold back on the good stuff, though it did have the effect of making New Morning appear to be a massive comeback. Oh and David Bromberg plays some first rate guitar, I don’t recalling hearing him on any previous Dylan albums and it’s too bad because, together with Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield, they really could have provided him with the challenge and support he lacked for so long. As for rarities, we get a previously unavailable version of "Only A Hobo" and the demo version of "When I Paint My Masterpiece," and a new painting by the Bobster for the cover. There are lots of versions, but the one I’m talking about is the two disc version that is the mass market one. There’s a trailer on youtube.

Need yet another new box set? How about Sly & The Family Stone’s new 4-CD box set, Higher!, from Epic/Legacy?, a division of Sony Music Entertainment. Released in celebration of Sly Stone's 70^th birthday, Higher! is the first career-spanning anthology to celebrate the musician whose wedding I attended at Madison Square Garden with my French/Canadian au pair, Celine, when I was in sixth grade in 1971 or so. It’s one of those big book-style boxes with 104-page book, the 77 songs, 17 of them previously unreleased. The box fixes a previous problem with the last box, which had all of Sly’s studio albums but left out the songs that were issued either only as singles or on the massive selling Greatest Hits album. That includes amazingly “Everybody is a Star,” "Hot Fun In the Summertime," "Thank You (Falletinme Be Mice Elf Again)." (Neither box has the incandescent version of “Que Sera Sera,” which was the last worthwhile thing Sly did before slipping into drug-induced incoherence, and provided the first dance of my ill-fated wedding.) This box is pretty generous and beautifully mixed and annotated in addition to the rare and uncirculated photography, 45 rpm label and picture sleeve repros, eye-popping vintage concert posters and ticket stubs from Sly & The Family Stone shows, etc.

If you don’t know about Sly, well, as much as anyone he invented funk and the Family Stone, featuring “Sister Rose” personified racial harmony through getting down in the late sixties and early seventies before they pioneered drug-addled gangsterism and no-show-ism. He also wrote great hooks and wore ridiculous clothing when he did make it to the gigs. To be honest, I don’t exactly understand the choices made in this box, picking live versions of “Stand” and “Dance to the Music” which are fine, but not nearly as awesome as the studio versions. But the unreleased stuff, which includes the Loadstone Records single of "January 1967" by Sly & The Family Stone, cover of Otis Redding's "I Can't Turn You Loose," and the mono single master of "Higher" from May 1967. If you’ve got the previous box set, as I do, it’s going to be a tough call, given you still need those three great songs and the 17 or so you’ve never heard before. If you don’t, well, it ought to be easy. 

Finally, a few weeks ago I mentioned a new documentary I loved called “Born in Chicago,” about the largely Jewish local boys who hooked up with Muddy, Wolf, Otis, etc and went on to obscurity. It featured Paul Butterfield and Michael Bloomfield, but the guiding spirit of the film was Barry Goldberg, who helped get the film made after disappearing for a long time on the west coast following quite a few fine Jewish blues albums. Well, Barry’s finally back and he’s got Stephen Stills and Kenny Wayne Shepherd for a band called The Rides. I saw them Wednesday night at The Iridium, which is as intimate a venue as you will ever see Mr. Stills and/or Mr. Wayne Shepherd. I have long argued that Stills does not get the credit he deserves for his guitar playing—there are not enough CSNY shows for him to show off, or to be challenged—and so it was a pleasure to see him play the blues opposite Mr. Wayne Shepherd, with whom I was unfamiliar, but who plays as good as he looks (or so the ladies tell me). The set was drawn from their debut album, Can't Get Enough (released the day before) which is an homage to 1968 album Super Session, which featured Stills on guitar on one side, and the Mike Bloomfield on the other. The material is hit and miss, but the band cooks on it. Of course, it’s easier to relate to material you know so my favorite songs of the evening at Iridium were Goldberg’s “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination,” with Shepherd on vocals, Stills’ “For What It’s Worth,” “Love the One You’re With,” (which he compared to a fart) and Neil Young’s “(Keep On) Rockin’ in the Free World.” But some of the classics cooked as well, particularly an expansive reading of Muddy Waters’ “Honey Bee.”  

And finally, finally, if you never heard the Drive By Truckers live CD, Alabama Ass-Whupping, you might wish to, if only for its incredible version of “18 Wheels of Love.” It also has a more than decent version of “People Who Died” for which, believe it not, I once had the opportunity to place my headphones on the late Jim Carroll’s head and play for him. (We were members of the same book group, again, believe it or not.) He liked it. And so, I imagine, will you.

Oh, and finally, finally, finally, as I write this, I swear, I have on the bluray player, “One Night Only,” which features the Bee Gees performing at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in November 1997. One of the few Bee Gees performances ever filmed, this Blu-ray, completed with bonus tracks from “An Audience with the Bee Gees," and a band interview, has been fully restored with remastered sound. It is really good in most places and really terrible in a few, but that’s ok, if you keep the remote close. And the sound is beautiful.

Now here, (finally) is Reed:

Camouflaged Debate: How our Democracy Ignores the Military Case Against Syria Intervention
by Reed Richardson

Each day’s news out of Washington makes it increasingly clear; the time for talk is over. A US military attack on Syria is no longer a matter of if, but when (probably this weekend). The administration has now fully coalesced around the big idea that, in response to Assad’s alleged chemical weapons use, something must be done. And whether through sympathetic op-ed columns or jingoistic cable-news “debates”, the Beltway conventional wisdom has once again shown itself more than happy to oblige. 

The tragic déja vu quality of this media obeisance has been brilliantly captured by Conor Friedersdorf. But there’s another troubling aspect to what’s happening right now. For all the pundit bluster about the need to do something, there has been shamefully little scrutiny or public discussion of what can be done, despite a growing chorus of alarm from the folks who will do it. Even if Assad did brutally murder thousands of his own people using chemical munitions—something still not conclusively proven—the painful reality is that there is little our military can do right now to effectively punish him for any past atrocities or prevent future ones short of a massive expenditure of blood and treasure. And it is precisely this blinkered outlook that the nation’s military experts have been warning against.

Indeed, it speaks volumes about our broken national discourse that the most prominent skeptic of military intervention in Syria happens to be the top US general in the Pentagon. For months, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been patiently laying out one compelling reason after another for not engaging our armed forces in Syria’s still-chaotic civil war. But only if you were willing to dig past the establishment media op-ed pages and look outside the cable-news bubble would you find the many red flags Dempsey has raised about our country going to war:

“Dempsey Cautious on Syria” (April 30)

“Martin Dempsey: Syria Options Costly, Risky” (July 22)

“General Says Rebels Aren’t Ready to Take Power” (Aug. 21)

“Dempsey: Rebels Wouldn’t Back US Interests” (Aug. 21)

“Military Experts Cautious about Effectiveness of a U.S. Attack on Syria” (Aug. 29)

Beyond these unheralded press accounts there was the sobering, unclassified letter Dempsey sent to Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, on July 19. In it, Dempsey discusses a range of military options, from limited airstrikes to establishing buffer or no-fly zones to taking physical control of Syria’s chemical weapon stockpiles. For the latter options, which admittedly aren’t being openly considered—yet—Dempsey estimates thousands of US ground forces would be involved at a cost of a billion dollars a month. And though the White House has all but officially declared it will execute the first, least muscular option, that choice has little to commend it as well. Dempsey sums it up thusly:

Conduct Limited Stand-off Strikes. This option uses lethal force to strike targets that enable the regime to conduct military operations, proliferate advanced weapons, and defend itself. Potential targets include high-value regime air defense, air, ground, missile, and naval forces as well as the supporting military facilities and command nodes. Stand-off air and missile systems could be used to strike hundreds of targets at a tempo of our choosing.Force requirements would include hundreds of aircraft, ships, submarines, and other enablers. Depending on duration, the costs would be in the billions. Over time, the impact would be the significant degradation of regime capabilities and an increase in regime desertions. There is a risk that the regime could withstand limited strikes by dispersing its assets. Retaliatory attacks are also possible, and there is a probability for collateral damage impacting civilians and foreigners inside the country.

A couple of things. Note that the favorite pundit term “surgical strike” does not appear anywhere in Dempsey’s very frank assessment, but the phrase “probability for collateral damage impacting civilians” does. Also, it’s worth pointing out that even this scaled-back campaign would involve hundreds of military assets and cost billions of dollars. And then there’s the part where Dempsey explains how the very limited nature of such an air campaign translates into a higher likelihood that Assad’s regime will be able to withstand it. This, of course, merely opens the door for more pundits to call for more missiles and more sorties. The slope, in other words, gets very slippery from here on out.

Nevertheless, this kind of less than sanguine assessment doesn’t stand much of chance with those in the press willing to absorb whatever rosy scenarios anonymous pro-war sources feed them. And sometimes they don’t even bother with that. Over at The New Republic, in an otherwise good primer on the Syrian state of affairs, readers are nonetheless treated to a hypothetically-riven rebuttal to foregoing a military strike:

Retired Major General Paul Eaton, an advisor to the National Security Network, told me that ‘if Assad or rogue elements have decided to use chemical weapons in the face of very strong international condemnation, an attack is not going to be an deterrent.’ That may be true, but Assad may have also assumed that the United States, which had not responded strongly before, would once again back off. If that were Assad’s reasoning, serious retaliation could deter him, and could also send a signal to other rogue governments.

Those second and third sentences are riddled with conditionals to justify spending billions of US dollars and possibly killing untold Syrian civilians. Not exactly a slam dunk. Others in the press don’t muster up that much intellectual honesty, though. Consider the credulous, unattributed assertion that snuck into this news story in The Hill, a statement that would likely come as surprising news to Dempsey:

If successful, the U.S. strikes could cripple the Syrian military's ability to carry out attacks on rebel forces and bring the regime to its knees.

Really? A one, two, or three-day air campaign targeting a few dozen sites will bring to its knees a regime hardened by two-plus years of civil war? Recall that the NATO air campaign against Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s much weaker Libyan regime commenced on March 19, 2011 and continued on for 222 days. And as this 2012 Journal of Strategic Security article points out, Libya was a much better candidate for intervention than Syria for a number of reasons. One, the former had a geographically well-defined opposition with a credible military leadership based in Benghazi. Two, a United Nations Security Council Resolution authorizing military intervention was already in place. And three, there was broad support among Arab and neighboring nations for removing Gadhafi, Libya’s brutal dictator. But as Lance Kildron, of the Naval War College, concludes in his JSS analysis:

[B]efore engaging militarily in another humanitarian crisis, U.S. policymakers should take each of the criteria used in Libya and apply them to the situation in Syria. By applying these criteria to Syria, it is evident that limited military intervention similar to the Libya campaign model does not fit in Syria.

Perhaps not surprisingly, this kind of inconvenient candor from within the ranks about the lousy military options we face in Syria doesn’t sit well with some, in particular, a certain Senator from Arizona. As was noted almost as an aside in this front-page story of The New York Times: “Mr. McCain has said that doubts about military action expressed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, have emboldened the Syrian government to use chemical weapons…” Now, McCain’s shamelessly fickle relationship with the Pentagon’s point of view is well-documented. But still, accusing a high-ranking four-star general of tacitly encouraging the enemy just by doing his due diligence, that should merit a front-page story on its own and give pause to everyone beating the drums of war. After all, it wasn’t that long ago when our nation learned the painful, costly lessons of not heeding the expert advice of those who have seen war close up. Just ask Gen. Eric Shinseki.

Oh no, the president assures us, Syria won’t be like Iraq. And I believe him—to the extent that I don’t think he’s stupid or reckless enough to launch a full-scale ground invasion of a Middle Eastern nation based on lies and misinformation. But to paraphrase the old adage about prostitution, launching an airstrike on Syria will still be pre-emptive war, Obama’s just haggling over the price.

In fact, the administration’s feckless talking points make it seem like downright cheap when it comes to such a supposedly important undertaking. Calling the proposed airstrikes “just muscular enough not to get mocked” or “just enough to be more than symbolic” is an outrageously cavalier attitude toward the unleashing of deadly force. So, too, is the White House’s half-hearted goal to merely “deter and degrade” Assad’s ability to launch chemical strikes.

In an interview with a local NPR station, former Army officer and Boston University professor of international relations Andrew Bacevich blasted the administration’s “weasel words” as emblematic of a similarly fuzzy, ineffectual military strategy:

Degrade? Deter? If indeed the crime here is the use of chemical weapons to inflict large-scale casualties, how will this presumably very limited attack prevent any recurrence of that event? This will be an act of war by the United States against the government of Syria. When we go to war, we should do it only for the most serious reason. We should have very specific political purposes to be served, and I don’t see that in this particular case.

 

I think what we have is a president who backed himself into a corner by foolishly saying the use of chemical weapons constituted a red line. Now the red line’s been crossed, and people in Washington are concerned about American credibility or the president’s prestige being compromised. I think we’re going to have a modest, ineffective military action undertaken to try to give the impression of restoring that credibility and prestige.

We’ve truly arrived at a through-the-looking-glass moment, one where even liberal bastions like The New York Times editorial page believe restoring our nation’s credibility abroad somehow requires launching a military campaign that likely won’t achieve anything except accidentally killing some of the people we claim to be trying to protect. That we’re rushing to undertake this potential misadventure without any public support or Congressional approval only compounds the injury.

To be sure, Gen. Dempsey is not a renowned Constitutional scholar, but one does not rise through the ranks and get to his position without learning to be both strategic and precise in every aspect of your professional life. So, the general’s language at the end of his July letter to Sen. Levin, much like Prof. Bacevich’s above, is worth noting for its strong Article I allusions:

I know that the decision to use force is not one that any of us takes lightly. It is no less than an act of war. [emphasis mine]

In other words, there's a debate to be had about this; but—unlike the UK—we aren't having it. Now, I’m a firm believer in civilian command of our armed forces. So, whatever Dempsey’s personal beliefs, when President Obama eventually gives his order on how to proceed with Syria, all of the military chain of command, Dempsey included, should execute with best possible speed. But it is precisely because dissent and debate are not roles given over to our military—and for good reason—that it falls to us as citizens to exercise those principles on their behalf. And yet, here we are once again—a chosen few in our nation’s capital stand ready to embark on a perilously ill-advised military campaign, all the while brushing aside real debate. Isn’t it long past time we try something different than heedlessly exporting violence abroad to encourage democracy, like practicing a little more of it here at home? 

Contact me directly at reedfrichardson (at) gmail dot com. I’m on Twitter here—(at)reedfrich.

Editor's note: To contact Eric Alterman, use this form. 

Dan Thompson, 51, of Canton, Michigan speaks out against health care reform during a town hall meeting. (AP Photo/Detroit Free Press, Kimberly P. Mitchell)

My new Think Again column is “How to ‘Ignore’ and Obsess About a Story Simultaneously.” An alternate title is “The Wingnut Benghazi Fixation and What it Means about Media Bias.”

I wanted to give two quick shout-outs before turning over to Reed. One is to a film I saw at Lincoln Center recently, called “Born in Chicago,” about the largely Jewish local boys who hooked up with Muddy, Wolf, Otis, etc and went on to obscurity. Everybody knows about the British/Chess connection, but since the deaths of Paul Butterfield and the enormously charismatic Michael Bloomfield, these guys have been largely forgotten. The screening I saw had a panel hosted by my buddy Bob Merlis, and featured Marshall Chess and Barry Goldberg, who after disappearing for a long time, has recently resurfaced musically with Stephen Stills and Kenny Wayne Shepherd for a band called The Ride. Golberg was also instrumental in getting this wonderful documentary made and I hope it screens far and wide. It really is a lost history. There was a nice Times write up here.  And you can read more about Bloomfield and Goldberg in Ben Sidran’s terrific and tragically obscure, There Was A Fire: Jews, Music and the American Dream.

Also, there’s a comic book about John Lewis, the Congressman/civil rights leader, not the MJQ guy. It’s kind of a crazy idea. Well, ok, call it a “graphic novel.” It’s called “March: Book One,”  and it’s published by the very cute Top Shelf Productions, and you can read about it here.

Now here, (finally) is Reed:

The Gums of August: How Angry Town Halls Mesmerize the Media and Distort Debate
by Reed Richardson

Welcome to the yelling season.

Every year, Congress goes into recess in late summer and members trundle back home to their districts and states for a break from their not-so-grueling three-day work weeks in Washington. Lately, however, even these notional vacations have proven to be anything but. Thanks to a small, vocal minority, the longstanding Congressional tradition of holding informative, respectful town halls during August has morphed into a much coarser ritual, one where US Representatives and Senators are routinely targeted for bilious rants and incoherent ramblings. The underlying intent of all this bumping of gums and gnashing of teeth isn’t engaged discourse; it’s disruptive grandstanding.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to trot out a defense of elitist thought masquerading as yet another Beltway centrist call for more civility. And I readily admit that members of Congress increasingly exist in a comfortably cloistered bubble, disconnected from the hard reality of their constituents. This is partly due to the incessant time demands of campaigning and fundraising, but partly it’s the result of simple arithmetic. On average, each member of the House represents roughly 650,000 people today, an increase of nearly 58 percent from 1960, when the median Congressional district population was around 412,000. So, any face-to-face time between members and the citizens they represent should be encouraged. But it is exactly because this democratic give-and-take is so precious that those who merely want to demagogue and dominate the process are such a problem. And, unfortunately, the media only makes it worse.

This enabling behavior by the press can be explained, if not excused. August has long been considered a notoriously slow period for political news (although, to be fair, the idea is probably oversold). So, any news peg that the media can find—no matter how tenuous—soon suffices for hanging an entire narrative upon. Thus, a press corps habitually trained to view every story through the crude lens of partisan confrontation can’t help but make rowdy town halls a staple of slow summer news coverage. For cable TV news—with its insatiable 24/7 content appetite—a steady stream of free, user-submitted videos featuring angry citizens berating their Congressman is practically a godsend. Left unchecked, however, a self-reinforcing loop of selection bias can take hold and distort the truth. Pretty soon, the town hall media coverage can makes it seem as if everyone in the country is mad at the government.

This was precisely the media strategy followed in August 2009 by Tea Party conservatives, some of whom were operating under direction of memos like this, which encouraged town hall attendees to “rock-the-boat” and “yell back [at members of Congress] and have someone else follow up with a shout out.” Often, their behavior didn’t stop at rhetorically blasting the president’s healthcare reform bill, aka Obamacare; at times, the opposition escalated to physically threats or assaults on some of its supporters. Since conservatives appear intent on repeating many of these tactics this summer—hence, the Atlantic Wire’s headline this week: “The Town Hall Outrage Over Obamacare Has Begun”—it’s worth revisiting, for reference, the media debacle from four years ago.

And what a debacle it was, as this Pew Research study from last year concluded. It found that nearly half—49%—of the overall news coverage of the healthcare reform debate in 2009–10 focused solely on the politics and process of reform. (Less than a quarter involved actual policy analysis.) This obsession with the theater surrounding the bill effectively set the conditions for a distorted alternate reality. Once the right wing began its angry town halls campaign, it all came to fruition.

In this parallel media universe, the only rational response to Obamacare was to vent one’s spleen at government officials, even though public opinion was evenly split in August 2009. For example, when the president encountered a respectful, reasoned town hall audience in New Hampshire in mid-August of that year, Fox News quickly cut away. The network's not-so-subtle suggestion: the lack of venom directed Obama's way could only be explained by some sort of propaganda effort by the White House. Then, in a moment of unrestrained id, Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher perfectly crystallized the broader media’s bias for fireworks: “Any contentious questions, anybody yelling, we will bring it to you here.”

Just how successfully were conservatives in getting the media to play along with their anger? A separate 2010 Pew Study that found the opponents of healthcare reform handily won the messaging war, and that a big driver of their larger success was forged in the town hall cauldrons of August:

One example of this resonant rhetoric was the emergence of the term ‘death panels’ in August 2009. That was the month when anger boiled over in the health care debate. The fiery town hall protests, featuring citizens yelling at politicians, proved irresistible to the press, and accounted for nearly one-quarter of all the health care coverage that month.

This is the other important point about the trap of the angry-town-hall news meme. Not only does it misrepresent public opinion, it often misinforms the public by airing and then repeating falsehoods ad nauseam. Indeed, to borrow a term from the national security debate right now, town halls became a popular vector for injecting lies about Obamacare into the political discourse. While some in the media did yeoman’s work trying to debunk town hall myths about “death panels,” to expect cable news anchors to follow-up with a correction after each and every replay of someone spouting baseless rumors or Republican talking points is unbounded optimism. When a US Senator like Chuck Grassley all but endorses the same “death panels” lie, well, that’s a bridge too far for almost anyone in the establishment media to cross. And lest you think this kind of lie, once loosed, has a finite shelf life, think again. Just this week, “death panels” returned, zombie-like, to haunt a headline in a story from The Hill.

That’s where we are this August, contemplating a right-wing-driven media blitz over “defunding Obamacare,” which is essentially the same bitter, misinformed debate we suffered through four years ago. Certainly, Sean Hannity sounds like he’s still stuck in 2009. This, despite the fact that a majority of Americans now disagree with his entrenched obstructionism and say Republicans should stop trying to block the law’s implementation.

There are some rays of hope, however. If there’s one thing the press can’t abide, it’s being bored and getting stuck covering the same old shtick. Increasingly, the establishment media seems to have figured out the right wing is mostly just offering up the political equivalent of reruns this summer. About the only new twist on this saga is that a fair share of August’s conservative anger looks like it will be directed inward, at Republicans who aren’t reflexively willing to sabotage the government and derail the economy just to spite the president.

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Nevertheless, right-wing PAC Heritage Action will be rolling out a nine-city, traveling twin-bill town hall focused on defunding Obamacare later this month. Featuring the latest winner of the conservative sinecure lottery, Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint, alongside the reactionary heartthrob-du-jour, Senator Ted Cruz, this crackpot line-up is readymade for jokes about black satin tour jackets emblazoned with “DeMint-Ted” across the back. A more appropriate name for this tour, though, might be the “Death of Irony,” especially after reading this shameless shovelful of jus' folks manure from DeMint, which stops just short of calling for a boy’s band right here in River City:

I’m thrilled to be joining Heritage Action and to travel across the country to spend time with real Americans rather than Washington politicians. We want to hear directly from people in local communities who often suffer from Washington’s out-of-touch policies. Fortunately, Washington doesn’t have to win.

Left unsaid by DeMint: the awkward reality that his shiny, seven-figure income derives solely from being a former Washington politician who can whisper sweet nothings into the ear of current Washington politicians. Long after the shouting of this August’s right-wing faux populism has faded away, it will be his voice, and other insiders like him, that really matter in our democracy. And until the press figures that out, any talk of real change is just noise.   

Don Cooper, Shamrock, Texas
Thoroughly enjoyed the piece about the corporate media's selective skepticism. Reed Richardson did good work on this. As a former editor-cartoonist-columnist, I was constantly astounded by the double-standard showed by the so-called objective press. For example, President Obama is nitpicked to death, while G.W. Bush's bullshit was taken at face value. Also, I am sick of seeing how networks still maintain a 4-1 margin of Republicans over Democrats on the Sunday talk shows. If, by some chance, a Democrat gets some air time, viewers can expect to see "balance" by bringing on a Republican or two. Doesn't happen in reverse—and, as far as I've been able to tell, Bernie Sanders is persona non grata on the Sunday talk shows.

Contact me directly at reedfrichardson (at) gmail dot com.
I’m on Twitter here—(at)reedfrich.

Editor's note: To contact Eric Alterman, use this form. 

Scene from Woody Allen's "Manhattan." (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

My new Think Again column is called “Indiana Is the Latest Skirmish in the Conservatives’ War on Knowledge” and it’s about Mitch Daniels’s energetic censorship efforts as Governor of Indiana, aimed primarily, but not exclusively, at Howard Zinn.

I noticed this ranking of all 50 of Woody Allen’s films. I’ve seen all of them except Blue Jasmine and first of all, #5 is really #1. But also, way underrated on this list in addition to “Manhattan” is: "Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Scoop," the first part of "Celebrity," and "Play it Again, Sam." I also love "Deconstructing Harry" but that's a personal thing. (It's a hate letter to Philip Roth, who ended up with Mia Farrow, so there...) Overrated on this list: "Radio Days," "Shadows and Fog," "New York Story," and "Broadway Danny Rose," which is great, but nowhere near as great as say, "Crimes and Misdemeanors," which I would put # 3, but only because Annie Hall was so original and wonderful in its moment. Otherwise I'd put it at #2; one of the few genuine masterpieces of contemporary cinema. And I'd also argue that Woody, having three of these, has more than any of his peers...

Alter-reviews: Williamstown Theater Festival and Mass MOCA

No music etc, this week, except to say I saw a wonderful production of Tom Stoppard’s Hapgood—a play that somehow eluded me before, even though I am an enormous fan of Stoppard as a playwright, though not so much as a writer of movie scripts—and it was just wonderful, as was especially, Kate Burton, in the starring role. Nobody alive writes as clever plots and sparkling dialogue as Stoppard does and when it’s done well, it’s near perfect theater. And it was done well by the Williamstown Theater Festival, which is sort of on the Williams College campus, and I don’t know if they are always so great, but if you need to be in the Berkshires, as I did, well, this turned out to be a great idea. And so, did, by the way, the family visit to Mass MOCA in North Adams. I am not a big fan usually of contemporary art but this place was brilliant. It’s a fantastic space and the exhibitions were both fun and thought-provoking. I totally think whoever is in charge of Mass MOCA should be offered the job of running LA MOCA since that seems to be open and I’m guessing, pays a ton more money.

Now here's Reed, who is in especially good form today...:

First, a point of personal privilege: Almost exactly three years ago, I did my first regular post for the Altercation blog. At the time, a huge exposé was laying bare our runaway national security state, Republicans were stubbornly vowing to repeal Obamacare, and the planet was suffering from record-breaking heat. OK, so not much has changed, but thanks again anyway to Eric for letting me stick around too.

All or Nothing: The Press and Its Out-of-Balance Skepticism
by Reed Richardson

The events of this past Wednesday laid bare one of the most infuriating problems with our establishment media—it’s knack for selectively applying skepticism at all the wrong times for all the wrong reasons. Indeed, to compare the press’s snide, cynical stance toward Obama’s “middle-out” economic speech with the all-too-credulous tone it took toward the status quo on the Amash-Conyers amendment vote was to witness an institution failing in its democratic duty twice.

Channeling their inner, easily distracted teenager, many in the Washington press corps couldn’t wait to proclaim Obama’s detail-heavy speech on middle-class economic issues and income inequality “BOHHH-RING!” before it even started. This pre-emptive backlash (forelash?) among the objective press was particularly visceral. What’s more, it was strikingly similar to the smug critiques emanating out of the right-wing media.

Leading things off Wednesday morning, Chuck Todd at NBC News snarkily spoke of feeling “deja pivot,” which elicited approving nudges and winks from the Breitbart hive. ABC News’ political insider blog, The Note, led off with the not-so-subtle headline “Obama Pivots to Economy…Again,” before listing nine previous pivots, a total that fell 10 pivots short of conservative columnist Salena Zito’s count. The National Journal’s Ron Fournier dismissed the speech in a Tweet as nothing of consequence (“Move along.”), which was very close to where the Republican Party’s oppo hit came out: “speeches don’t create jobs.”

But perhaps no one, in the objective or right-wing press, captured the Beltway antagonism toward Obama’s speech quite like The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank. His column characterized the president’s return to a consistent economic message—one the president himself pointed out in his speech—as a case of the White House being “fresh out of ideas” and going into “reruns.” In a neat trick, Milbank stuck Obama in a Catch-22, crediting his ideas as worthwhile, but then faulting him for not coming up with different ones to appease intransigent House Republicans.

“But while that message remains relevant, Obama is now facing a Republican opposition that, by House Speaker John Boehner’s own account, is measuring its success by how many laws it can undo. There’s no longer serious talk about a grand bargain that could reform entitlement programs and the tax code. Legislators and administration officials have little hope of doing more than short-term skirmishing over the debt ceiling and mindless spending cuts in the ‘sequester.’

“If he’s to break through the resistance, Obama will need some bold new proposals. That’s why his speech returning to the oldies would seem to confirm that the White House has given up on big achievements.”

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This kind of analysis is, sadly, not an ironic joke. On issue after issue—the sequester, the debt ceiling, the farm bill, Social Security benefits, immigration reform—the White House and Senate Democrats have offered up significant compromises (often far too significant) only to have their efforts thrown back in their faces by Congressional Republicans, while the political media shakes its collective head and blames “gridlock” on “both sides.” But where, pray tell, is this press’s broad scrutiny of the president’s opposition in Congress?  What, if any, “bold new proposals” are the House Republicans passing that the President is ignoring?

Certainly not any from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who tried to pre-empt the president Wednesday by pushing out a memo entitled “Three Ways to Immediately Grow Jobs and Strengthen the Middle Class.” Cantor’s trifecta? His own set of golden oldies. First, approve the potentially calamitous Keystone XL pipeline, a project that the State Dept. estimates will create a mere 35 permanent jobs. Next, urge the Senate pass the House’s three-month-old SKILLS Act, which is little more than a sop to tech industries seeking to hire cheaper foreign workers. Finally, he reprised the old “drill, baby, drill” mantra of 2008, disingenuously conflating increased offshore oil exploration with lower gas prices, which, time and again, experts say is a myth.

What of the larger House Republican’s tireless dedication to passing jobs legislation?, a curious journalist might have asked—but notably didn’t. Well, he or she can view a list of 15 Republican “Jobs Bills Stalled in the Senate” on the caucus’s official website. Of course, a skeptical reporter might start to question the sincerity of the GOP’s outrage at the Senate when he or she notices this list was posted 638 days ago, and that every one of the links to the pollution-enabling and regulation-gutting legislation from the previous Congress is now dead.

To be fair, the House GOP’s website also has a whole button solely devoted to its jobs plan, which entices you to click it with a promise of “Get all the details here.” That’s true, if by “details” you mean one sentence each of talking points on 10 empty policy platitudes like “Fostering Innovation,” “Expanding Education Opportunity,” and the ever-popular “Reining in Red Tape.” At least the press won’t be bothered with having to sift through an hour-long speech, I guess. And need I really mention that the House GOP’s strategy for lowering health care starts off with: “Repealing ObamaCare…”

When the previous president stuck to his guns on an issue and orchestrated political events to build support for them, the press swooned and called it “leadership.” When Obama does it, the press resents his repetition and castigates the president for being “in campaign mode.” Make no mistake, the press should bring with it a healthy skepticism to all of its reporting, even more so when covering those in positions of power, most especially the President. But almost all of the acid poured on Obama’s economic message this week wasn’t about the substance inside his speech, but the spin outside of it. The viability of his policy solutions didn’t interest many pundits, the majority of which instead chose to take umbrage with the fact that he’s proposed many of these same ideas before. To be clear, there are substantive questions that even liberals should have about Obama, both with the overall scope of his jobs plan as well as his follow-through. But cynicism for cynicism’s sake was pretty much all the establishment media gave us this week on his jobs speech.

Though there was plenty to go around, far too little skepticism carried over to the press’s reporting on the House vote to roll back the NSA’s unprecedented spying authority. Though prompted by a rare bipartisan House coalition comprised of the flanks of both the left and right wing, the media seemed cool to this group’s embrace of radical anti-centrism.

The Washington Post, for example, tried to play it straight, but too easily fell into the arms of anonymous “U.S. officials” who carefully defended the NSA program. Even worse, the article then quotes an ominous warning from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who claims that the Amash-Conyers amendment “risks dismantling an important intelligence tool.” That would be the same DNI Clapper who previously lied to Congress about what our intelligence agencies were actually collecting, an incredibly salient point that goes to his trustworthiness as a source and a detail that the Post, inexplicably, failed to mention.

The New York Times analysis of the amendment, which was defeated 217-205, was likewise full of quotes and devoid of almost any of the paper’s previous, more skeptical reporting. Why, for example, didn’t the Times directly include or, at the very least, link to its extremely valuable story on the secret legal rulings used to justify the NSA’s expansive powers from earlier this month? Such context would have provided a much more appropriate counterweight to the government officials’ unsubstantiated claim this week that “Denying the N.S.A. such access to data will leave the nation at risk.”

But at least the Times avoided spouting the intelligence community’s now standard talking point about the NSA program having foiled “at least 50 terror plot across 20 countries,” as the Associated Press’s write-up did. This claim, routinely presented to—and by—the press sans evidence, has been called dubious by numerous sources, not the least of which are three U.S. Senators. But that detail somehow didn’t merit inclusion in the AP’s “Big Story” on the amendment vote.

These little omissions are symbolic of much broader problem, a perverse inversion of skepticism within the press. The basic facts of how much intelligence our government really collects about us—in our name—remains a mystery, whereas the cutthroat reality that our middle class faces is all too obvious. Yet our media shows little interest in asking the hard questions about the former, and all too eager to lazily critique the value of discussing the latter. But this selectively all-or-nothing coverage increasingly leaves the public, and our democracy, with nothing at all.

Contact me directly at reedfrichardson (at) gmail dot com.
I’m on Twitter here—(at)reedfrich.

Editor's note: To contact Eric Alterman, use this form.