Fraysters take to the podia.

Los Lobos: Exactly how bloody was Howard Dean when he emerged from the debate Thursday night in Albuquerque? The_Bell doesn't know whom to believe:

This morning on NPR, the report was that the other candidates "seemed reluctant" to criticize Dean and largely left him alone. Then I read the articles by Mr. Suellentrop and Mr. Saletan. Both saw a number of attacks on Dean but while Suellentrop saw Dean as failing to respond adequately and thereby raising serious doubts about his reputation as a straight shooter, Saletan saw him as simply laughing off these attacks and the attackers made to look fools by their use of hyperbole.

In the same spirit, Zathras suggests that since Slate's pair of pundits "appear to have watched two completely different debates it might have made sense to get them together in a Breakfast Table."

Why does The_Bell deem a clueless cameraman the most astute pundit on the trail? Click here to find out.  

Extensive debate analysis is available in the Fray:

From The_Slasher, who finds Dean more saccharine than sensible, here:

I'm more invested in getting rid of the preppy twit than I am in "feeling good." And THAT, it seems to me, is the limit of what Dean is useful for. I am gratified to hear the truth spoken forcefully and plainly, but I am not going to choose the next President. People who are confused about the issues, and who voted for Bush in 2000 because they distrusted Gore, will.

From locdog, glowering from the other side of the bluff, here (with a prologue on redistricting in Texas, among other sundries):

the democrats have begun their attack on bush-iraq with safe-seated spear-chuckers like tom daschle busting the sod. they'd better hope that one of their candidates finds a way to make some hay because the economy is turning around, and that right quick. what will edwards say when people start going back to work? what kerry say when the market continues its climb? what will gephardt say when anything good happens?

And from Publius, who found Lieberman's uncharacteristic pugnacity the most notable sideshow of the parade, here:

The rest of these guys seem to be so taken aback by Dean's surge, held back by their innate caution, frightened of what they take to be the stranglehold on many early state primaries held by atypical, left-leaning voters, and worried about being accused of generating intra-party strife that they are laying down before the Dean challenge. This is no way to win an election. Dean has to be taken down a peg or two, and inevitably he will be. Joe sees this as his opportunity to break through by playing this role.

To Will Saletan's question "why does the former governor of Vermont speak better Spanish than the former governor of Texas?" Paul Breslin responds,

For the same reason, I should think, that he speaks better English.

By and large, the Fray has been in a protracted slumber on the Democratic field since the initial Dean surge. On The Trail Fray offers Fray delegates a convention hall — think Atlantic City in 1964. Fray Editor will be Fannie Lou Hamer … KA4:40 p.m.

Tuesday, September 2, 2003

Fray Course Catalog, Fall Semester 2003

History 101: Appropriation of Wartime History, 1945-present
Instructor: Condoleezza Rice

Section 1, TA: wewhite

Of all the differences between the occupations of Iraq and Germany, I've heard no one mention one of the biggest. Before VE day, the allies had already destroyed Germany with a thoroughness never equalled. The morally troubling question, that no one wants to deal with, is: was our success in Germany despite this terror,or because of it? Machiavelli had some worthwhile things to say on this subject.

Section 2, TA: Robes

Condi Rice is a very bright woman. Also Rumsfeld. Why would they resort to lies to forward their purpose of drawing parallels between post-war Germany and post-war Iraq? … Mostly, I believe, it is because they both now have contempt for the American public they believe they can still keep lying and get away with it. On the "Threat Matrix" they have proved themselves their own worst enemies. These folks don't need al Qaeda terrorists, they cruise along believing what they say will be taken as rote by the "true believers" …

Section 3, TA: Zathras

… the statements by Rumsfeld and Rice left me scratching my head. Not only were they wrong, but they were the kind of thing that could easily be proven wrong, and within a couple of days. A reasonably clever person who wanted to make a deceptive argument should be able to do a better job than that … [Rice's] main function in the Bush administration seems to be to provide quick briefings and emotional support to a President seriously out of his depth on foreign affairs. How well she has done at that only the President can judge, but at the other things past National Security Advisers have done -- planning strategy, making sure all points of view get heard, being an honest broker between the Departments of State and Defense, explaining administration policy to the public -- are things Condi Rice either does not do at all or does not do particularly well. You wouldn't have guessed that from all her academic credentials, but maybe those don't mean as much as they used to.

Musicology 1965: Kim Il Song, Strangelovian Protest Hymns
Instructor: Tom Lehrer

TA: raprap

... France got the bomb, but don't you grieve,
'Cause they're on our side (I believe).
China got the bomb, but have no fears;
They can't wipe us out for at least five years!
Who's next?...

Agriculture & Mining 301: Chicken & Eggs in the Political Hatchery
Instructor: William Saletan

TA: RufRuf

…the primary obstacle with politics is not the limited comprehension of the electorate. Rather it is the absolute lack of interest on most of the public's part to actively investigate and analyze the fundamental issues that will affect their daily lives. It is certainly proper to condemn those who willfully deceive the public with their political commercials. (Vote Bush because McCain is bad for the environment!) I'm more outraged though at the overwhelming majority of my fellow citizens who are the recipients of the gift to choose their leaders, a gift the Founding Fathers fought and died to bestow upon them, and who then exercise that choice on the basis of a 30-second attack ad.

Paid commercials are a very limited medium with which to convey comprehensive information on a given topic. It is excellent though to transmit slogans, propaganda, and emotions. Drink Pepsi and you'll be young. Vote Bush and fight against Big Government. Every medium has its strengths and weaknesses, and brings out the worst in various manners, including this one … Aside from a few screamers, most people come [to the Fray] for the right reasons. With TV though, I'm not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg. Is it that people are drawn to TV solely for its entertainment value, and they are then reachable through the medium of commercials with all its corrupting consequences? Or do people only want to form their political views from TV commercials, Leno, and SNL, and don't read the papers since it doesn't touch them the way they want? They don't want to take the time to read and digest a variety of opinions. They simply want an easy to digest image with a side order of sound-bite. We've moved beyond fast-food to fast-thought.          

Professor Saletan responds here with today's assignment:

I had a philosophy professor in college who often complained about the mentality of "the bottom line." Nobody cares how you think through an issue. They just want to hear your bottom line. When I go on TV to talk about anything, it's the same. The host only wants to hear the bottom line. I could be a total idiot or a liar. They don't care. They just want the bottom line, and an equally unexplained bottom line on the other side. Thanks, and cut to commercial.

Question 1: How widespread is this mentality? Where do you see it in politics or elsewhere in your life?

Question 2: Do you think it's a big problem or not?

Question 3: Who's to blame? The manipulators or (as RufRuf suggests) the lazy manipulated?

FrEd has uncovered blue books by TheQuietMan here, biteoftheweek here, and PresterJohn here. Fray faculty members are encouraged to submit their syllabi to Fraywatch Fray for the upcoming semester. Past grade inflation will be punctured like a carnival balloon. … KA 11:25 a.m.

Thursday, August 28, 2003

Blind Lady of Alabama: Our weekly feature—in which FrEd highlights a single post—takes us to Fighting Words Fray, where locdog answers Christopher Hitchens's judgment against not only Judge Roy Moore, but the juridical efficacy of the Ten Commandments (see " Moore’s Law: The immorality of the Ten Commandments").

"One Christian’s response to Hitchens," locdog:

i like hitch. i really do. i think that he's pretty much the perfect slate writer: witty, iconoclastic, contrarian but not reactionary, charming ... he's everywhere slate wants to be. and he's an excellent writer to boot. his columns positively crackle.

but he's got that western atheist's disease. you know the one i mean. the one where they suddenly lose all control of their bladders whenever the Bible is mentioned. it's not enough, you see, to voice one's objection to the decalogue in the courts, no, we've got to turn the book of exodus into our own private portajohn.

and miss some very obvious things in the process.

i can understand why, i suppose. i don't go searching the bottom of my toilet for wisdom. that said, i have the wisdom to know what is and is not a toilet.

for instance, it may be that the first four commandments serve no place in our culture, but do they really seem so out of place in the context of a theocracy? granted hitchens doesn't believe in God, but he's playing the reductio ad absurdum game so all i need to do is demonstrate coherency within the Biblical system.

there's a reason, after all, those first four commandments are the first four commandments. the ones that come after are predicated entirely on the authority of God Himself. why not steal? why not kill (it's "murder," and that's perfectly clear in context)? why not covet? because God says so. if you don't respect God, why would you respect God's law? i'm not saying atheists can't be moral, what i'm saying is, if i'm laying down the law on the basis of God's authority alone, then that authority must be absolute, unquestioned, and treated with the utmost respect.

sensing this, hitchens supposes no real God would be so insecure. any of you ever been in the military? back in basic training, were you allowed to mouth off to your drill instructor? what would have happened to you if you did? one more question: would you describe your DI as an insecure man? i didn't think so.

ultimately, what the DI is telling you will save your life. he knows more than you do, is acting in your best interests better than you yourself could, and deserves your respect whether you think he does or not. if he doesn't get it, in the long run, it's younot him—who's going to suffer. roughly speaking, that's how God's law works as well.

hitch has some other, rather generic objections but i think they're beside the point. i'll go over them in brief but you can skip this next paragraph if you're getting bored.

rape, he says, was left out. well no, it wasn't. rape is a form of theft, after all. it's taking someone else's body without their consent. oh, it's dealt with specifically later on in the mosaic law but one needn't be a torah scholar to see that it's against the rules. and genocide. genocide is what happens when one group of human beings, on their own authority, exterminate another. when God exterminates a group of human beings, it's called judgment. in the OT, God Himself commanded the conquest of canaan and the extermination of the wicked tribes that lived there. maybe that doesn't sound very Godlike to you or hitch, but sometimes things that would be wrong for us are perfectly just for God. God, if He exists, is the author of life, and as such, He has the right to end it as He sees fit. if He wishes to use one nation to judge another, that is also His right. and there wouldn't have been any doubt about whether or not it was really God or merely some lunatic cult leader giving the orders, either. the Bible describes a pillar of clouds by day, a pillar of fire by night, an audible voice from heaven that rumbled like thunder, a plainly visible presence in the tabernacle, manna from heaven, hail mingled with fire, parting seas, three days of darkness, etc, etc. now maybe you don't believe in any of this hocus pocus, but we're only checking for internal consistency here: if there is a God, He has the right to judge humanity whenever and however He sees fit, and could certainly make His wishes known beyond any shadow of a doubt. finally, if we're made in God's image, why are we so bad? again, the Bible passes the consistency test: we weren't made bad, we became that way after rebelling against God. at that point, our perfect nature was corrupted and we became slaves to sin. the mosaic law exists not because we are expected to follow it (there would be no sacrificial system—or Christ—were that the case) but to demonstrate to us our imperfect nature, the mercy of God, and the need for a savior.

anyway, that's all beside the point. hitch's real problem is that he, as an atheist, obeys what he thinks of as the really important commandments while flouting the first four. so why bother with the tired old symbol at all? it's very simple, really: hitch lives a moral life (he doesn't—if he were being completely forthcoming, he'd admit that he, like the rest of us, frequently falls short of his own standards, and that's to say nothing of God's) because it seems good to him to do so. if it didn't, he wouldn't bother—or he would but only because he was a coward and didn't want to go to prison. if in the final analysis laws are merely a contrivance of man then we have no real reason to obey them. if someday the clear majority of the human race decides that stealing and killing are ok, then that's it. there is no higher court of appeal.

"ah," says hitch "but we are smarter than that."

are we? atheists love to bash the Biblical accounts of genocide, but the major accounts of genocide in the last century were authored by the godless, or rather, by those who stood in the place of God themselves. stalin killed twenty million, hitler killed six million jews alone, pol pot killed two or three million of his own people, hussein killed around one million. there was no one, they thought, to tell them otherwise.

and hitchens can't condemn them.

oh, he can say that their conduct was offensive and outrageous and that he found it personally distasteful and that's all fine, but he could never say that it was wrong because wrong, to him, never means anything more than "inconvenient." he could use the word "wrong," trying to get the emotional impact of a violation of an absolute moral imperative, but that's empty sophistry: no such thing exists to him. and yet we know that there are absolute moral imperatives. i know that it's wrong to torture children for fun. everyone does. it's not wrong because it's counterproductive to the human race (which is as far as an atheist's morality can carry him) but because some immutable law is being transgressed, some universal imperative is being disregarded. on some level, everyone knows that to be true.

locdog thinks atheists do too.

For locdog's constitutional perspective on Moore's court, click here. K.A. 10:15 a.m.

Tuesday, August 26, 2003

Montreal-Washington:Schadenfreude alludes to the fact that Montreal has traditionally supported its Expos and will do so again, provided that Major League Baseball finds "an owner who is willing to invest a little money in a couple of key players." FrEd notes that throughout the 1980s, Montreal's gate routinely eclipsed those at Shea Stadium in New York, Atlanta, and baseball's fair-haired child, St. Louis—even during the Cardinals' world championship season in 1982. Until the 1994 strike, Montreal's attendance figures mirrored most franchises—solid when the team performed, sluggish when the Expos stunk up the O. 

AdamMorgan comes up and in at Charles P. Pierce ("No New Senators: Don't Let Washington, D.C., muck up another baseball team"):

You haven't presented an argument. There are many arguments against baseball in DC. Your witless drivel, that you don't like DC and there are other worthy candidates, doesn't count as one.

The rest of the juicy post, including some quality D.C. deprecation (replete with Mamie Eisenhower fashion cues) and a parting shot at Pierce's Boston, can be found here. Zathras comes in to close, bringing a 98-mph fastball to rebut Pierce's piece.

Montreal-Portland:Robes makes the case for the National League doing a Lewis-and-Clark down the Columbia River to Portland here.

Eno-Timberlake: You're a producer ... produce. Or don't. Sasha Frere-Jones ("When Critics Meet Pop: Why are some writers so afraid of Justin Timberlake?") takes on Alex Ross, possibly Wilco and Thom Yorke, and the notion that musical performers who leave production to the professionals—and happen to appeal to teenage girls—don't warrant serious critical consideration. TheNewSnobbery offers this:

[I]s it really that surprising that there's snobbery towards musicians who have made their livings off of teenaged girls? Just because there's occasionally a Madonna or a Justin or a Michael doesn't mean that teenaged girls don't, as a group, have really terrible taste 99% of the time. This fact is self-evident. We've suffered through 7 years now of Spice Girls, Britney and countless Disney channel derivatives. By the 1,000,000 monkeys typing logic, we were due for a Justin Timberlake eventually.

OhioBoy and JDW1 aren't drinking the Kool-Aid. JDW1 answers Frere-Jones' implicit question:

When I learned William Orbit produced Madonna's Ray of Light, it settled in my own mind this fascinating debate. ... Now, Orbit is an artist whose work I admire. Should this matter? You bet it does. I admire the creator more than performer. Madonna is a great performer; I would much rather pay $60 to see her than I would Orbit, or even Eno or Moby for that matter (I can't even imagine what an Eno performance would be like). No one remembers the great Shakespearean actors once they are dead, nor do they remember the great Wagnerian Opera singers; even though those performers may have enjoyed greater fame during their lives than the creators whose work they were performing. But Wagner and Shakespeare will live on for centuries or longer, while their performers fame is ephemeral. It matters much more to me (and, I suspect, artists) who creates than who performs. This does not detract one bit from the performer. It is just not fair to put them on a par with the creator.

Frere-Jones has a host of respondents to the following, "Quick—think of a single solo disc by a famous producer ... that's any good. We'll wait." Ed_From_Texas delivers the Music Box Fray's most lyrical, if cryptic, post here (and comes up with Eno, as do many others). 2GunSid here and BeeFox here toss a few other notables into the mix.

Ballot Box Fray-Frame Game Fray: Will Saletan invites Fraysters looking to escape the Ballot Box Fray to a compelling discussion over in the  Frame Game Fray. The topic: the first chapter of Saletan's Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War (available here in PDF format). The conversation is underway, with Thrasymachus rolling up his sleeves  here (in BOTF, actually), and rob_said_that and Geoff initiating a thread on argument vs. manipulation here. KA11:10 a.m.

Saturday, August 23, 2003