Jon Stewart vs. CNBC

First things first: I apologize for the absurd amount of time that’s lapsed since my last post. Per usual, I have no real excuse, so I’ll resort to donning my finest shit-eating grin, shrugging my shoulders, and saying “But I’m so busy!” This may not translate too well without a picture, but I’ll spare everyone. It shan’t happen again.

Anyhow, I’ll get started.

[Note - Here's the Daily Show clip I'm referring to. I wanted to post it directly here, but can't for some reason. If you haven't seen it, drop whatever you're doing and watch it now. Now!]

I realize I’m a bit late to the party, but this whole Jon Stewart vs. CNBC/Jim Cramer feud is hilarious. I was worried that the Daily Show would drop off a bit without their favorite punching bag of the last eight years making life so damn easy for them, but they’ve really turned a corner. These basic cable alchemists and snake oil salesmen deserve the reaming they’re getting from Stewart. The messianic certainty with which these guys prognosticate is so over the top it actually almost masks the utter recklessness of their speculative get-rich-quick investment mantra. Almost. What makes it worse is that they have the stones to palm off whatever the hell it is they do as journalism, albeit sandwiched between the high-pitched whine of their hour long investment advice spectacles.

What it comes down to is that the personalities on CNBC are, like all good uber-capitalists, out for themselves. If one guy’s outlandish stock pick unexpectedly takes off, he’s an instant investment guru celebrity. There’s a huge incentive to make brash, overconfident bets against the odds. Hell, if you’re loud enough (BUY THIS NOOOOOW!) and can convince enough people, you’re gold, even if the investment itself is pure, bubbly speculation. Perception is reality, especially in the stock market. However, if you’re making the boring, safe recommendations, you’re just another voice lost in the cable TV din. How are you supposed to make an instant name for yourself like that?

Who cares, right? There are plenty of other professions where making outrageously wrong assessments 99% of the time is worth that one visionary prediction that sets you up for life. Specifically, there’s a similarly large incentive for professional music critics (who seem to have their own alchemical formula for reviewing albums that makes sense only to them). If one critic goes out on a limb and gives a gushing, starry-eyed review of an otherwise completely mediocre album on the off chance it happens to start a trend or revolutionizes some aspect of the industry, voila! Our critic has arrived. If not, so what? A dozen people read the review and forget about it an hour later. He has a lot to gain, and not much at all to lose.

The difference is that the CNBC soothsayers’ vain self-promotion is had, effectively, by betting big with someone else’s money. If not for this, watching the house of cards collapse might well be amusing, with all the morbid intrigue of watching a train wreck in slow motion. But it's not. Even in an advisory capacity, in an occupation with this much at stake – mortgages, pensions, retirement plans, college funds – there has to be some level of professional accountability. There has to be, right? I can’t, for the life of me, envision any other occupation or situation in which people would keep their jobs after being so fantastically wrong (Bear Sterns can’t fail!) on such a staggering level (Merrill Lynch is flush with cash reserves!). Even if CNBC wanted to keep pretending that their programming was worth a damn, you’d think they’d be looking for new analysts.

Granted, no one’s forcing anyone to follow this advice. It’s not like CNBC, let alone their TV personalities, is solely responsible for the current state of economic affairs. And true, this may just be another one of my rather self-indulgent rants. What CNBC and its minions are, however, is the grinning, Botoxed face of the broader and entrenched culture of unchecked corporate greed. They basked in the fuzzy glow of B-list stardom during the boom times. Now that things have, well, imploded, what’s happened to Wall Street’s cable TV public relations department? I know better than to ask for an intellectually honest reappraisal of the post-Reagan-era-deregulation financial model. Would an apology be too much? How about an admission that the gunpowder they were marketing as flour blew up in our faces? I think a lot of people at this point would settle for a simple, “Oops. My bad, guys.”

If unmitigated failure on such an epic level can’t cause a group of people to look inwards and ask just how they became so enamored of their own groupthink, what can?

John Yoo est fou

I came across an interesting (for lack of a better word) op-ed the other day, and haven't really been able to respond properly to it.

It was written by the infamous John Yoo, author of dozens upon dozens of memos of pseudo-legal cover for the authorization of Bush's (still illegal) torture regime. My first reaction was irritation. Yoo claims that, by closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay and scaling back the CIA's interrogation authority,

"... Mr. Obama may have opened the door to further terrorist acts on U.S. soil by shattering some of the nation's most critical defenses."

He also says,

"While these actions will certainly please his base -- gone are the cries of an 'imperial presidency' -- they will also seriously handicap our intelligence agencies from preventing future terrorist attacks. In issuing these executive orders, Mr. Obama is returning America to the failed law enforcement approach to fighting terrorism that prevailed before Sept. 11, 2001."

... and so on, and so on.

I realized fairly quickly, though, that being irritated at what Yoo's saying wasn't quite appropriate. The claims he makes, which, at this point, are worn pretty thin, aren't novel or necessarily well thought-out.

The necessity of "tough interrogation" techniques? There's a reason why the overwhelming majority of military and intelligence officials are steadfastly opposed to Yoo's conception of interrogation. Confessions or intelligence coerced out of people by what amounts to torture, no matter how you define it, is untrustworthy at best. Most people will say anything to get out of hypothermic conditions, twelve hours of standing in a stressful position, or waterboarding. Still more, the spectre of torture is the biggest, most effective recruiting tool al Qaeda has. It gives jihadists something to rally around, something to really piss them off. But, for all I know, that was intentional -- didn't Bush quite famously and rashly tell the terrorists to "bring it on"(one of the most colossally stupid things ever said)?

And oh woe is Yoo -- we're now restricted to using the Army Field Manual as guidelines for interrogations. The very guidelines, in fact, that netted us Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the then-most wanted man in Iraq.

Yoo's greatest hits laundry list of pro-torture bile is capped off by suggesting, in essence, that if the president does it, it's legal by default:

"On the advice of his intelligence advisers, the president could have authorized coercive interrogation methods like those used by Israel and Great Britain in their antiterrorism campaigns. (He could even authorize waterboarding, which he did three times in the years after 9/11.)"

All admitted war crimes aside, the claim of unlimited executive power in times of war is patently false, and even Bush administration officials backed off these claims when they managed to extract themselves from the crippling groupthink that spawned this policy.

None of Yoo's points are very hard to refute. I'm as much of a legal scholar as I am a ballerina, and I could see through his diatribe quite readily. So what, then, is he trying to do with this article? As much as I disagree with him, I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt and think that he's fighting for a policy he believes in. Right?

I've since come to a different conclusion. He's covering his ass.

Some of what was done during the last administration, all moral and ethical questions aside, was illegal. And given the profound effects these actions and policies could have on not only our national security, but the security of our allies as well, there's a growing call for someone to be held accountable. Is this Yoo's almost-last-ditch effort to deflect the reckoning that may be headed his way?

Look, waterboarding is torture. Straight up. It's been considered such at least since the Enlightenment, if not earlier. It's not even really debatable, forgetting for a moment Cheney and his minions. It's forbidden by the Geneva Conventions, it's illegal under US law. Yoo's smart; he knows this. So why say explicitly that Bush authorized it on three separate occaisons following 9/11? Maybe he wants to ensure that if he gets dragged off to the Hague, someone else will go with him.

Ultimately, this article smacks of a small man too proud to admit his great mistake. Thankfully, he's no longer in a position to cause any more damage on this scale (but how he keeps his job, especially at a law school as reputable as Berkeley, remains a mystery). Will he be prosecuted, or fade into obscurity? Who knows.

But, hey -- I finally found a word to describe the article: pitiable.

And .. I'm back (again)

So, after a great vacation stateside, some bank complications here, and a few days of general laziness, I'm back.

I spent a good three and a half weeks running around between Chicago, Columbus and Lexington around Christmas and New Year's, and I couldn't have had more fun. I was completely exhausted and drained by the end, but it was well worth it. That being said, though, I'm happy to be back in Senegal.

Due to my aforementioned bank problems, I was in Dakar on Inauguration Day. I spent most of the afternoon at the Peace Corps haunt downtown watching all of the proceedings. I've been a vocal Obama supporter for quite a long while now, so watching him take the oath of office (on his second attempt -ha) was moving. Needless to say, the other volunteers I shared the experience with were as excited as I was.

As far as my life and work in Senegal go, a friend of mine and I are putting together a short documentary about the village association and the women who produce the baskets we've been exporting. We hope to have it finished sometime next week. Once it's done, it'll be posted on the Peace Corps Senegal website.

We're also looking forward to a visit from the buyer who ordered a boatload of baskets from the association last summer. She's graciously agreed to lead a day's worth of training specifically concerning artisan work for the new volunteers who are in their second round of training now.

Last, but most certainly not least, the annual West Africa Invitational Softball Tournament is coming up on President's Day weekend (queue the halleluja chorus). Who wouldn't be excited about a weekend of softball, hot dogs and good times?

I'm lame

I know. It's been an unforgivably long time since I last posted. In my humble defense, I've been busy. Back off.

The big event of the past few weeks was an artisan exposition we volunteers put together for our work partners in Dakar. It went really well -- our work partners sold a great deal of their wares, were able to meet each other and talk shop, and we're now well on our way to a Peace Corps/Senegal-wide artisan network that could have a tremendous impact on these entrepreneurs' careers.

Today is Tabaski, the great day of slaughter. I (well, really, my host family) helped kill, skin, butcher and grill 3 rams to honor Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac, a story common to Muslim, Jewish and Christian lore. As near as I can approximate it, it's the Senegalese equivalent to Thanksgiving. The gluttony is great -- I almost feel like I'm home.

But, of course, the biggest news is that I'll be home this time on Sunday. I leave Dakar Friday night, and after a brief layover in Brussels, I'll land in Chicago in time for lunch. Holy crap, I can't wait. I'll try to keep up with my random "insights" into whatever it is that strikes me as interesting while I'm home. I'll try.

If not -- happy Chrismahanukwanzakabaski.

Free documentary

I can't talk up enough this documentary I was referred to the other day. It's free to watch online and doesn't take too long to load. Given the name, it's not too hard to guess the subject matter: the torture regime of Bush and company. This issue transcends politics and the global war on terror. It is an affront to every ideal Americans or any other rational people in the world hold dear. There is no excuse.

I highly encourage you to watch it, as hard as it may be to stomach at times.

http://www.torturingdemocracy.org/

"There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free trade, and quietly read the prices-current along with the latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both.

What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot today? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed, to the right, as it goes past them. There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man. But it is easier to deal with the real possessor of a thing than with the temporary guardian of it," - Henry David Thoreau.

Quote via Sullivan.

Don't piss off Putin

Here's one for the boys:

With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia’s Government. According to Mr Levitte, the Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin declared.

Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. “Hang him?” — he asked. “Why not?” Mr Putin replied. “The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein.”

Mr Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: “Yes but do you want to end up like [President] Bush?” Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: “Ah — you have scored a point there.”

Followup

It occurred to me while writing my last post that I was only in a very roundabout sense addressing Jones' initial question. I decided not to add anything more specific because I'd already droned on far long enough, and I'd wanted to articulate a lot of what I've been thinking about for some time now. However, I was promptly called out:

"... your entire post did little to answer Jones' question as to how you rationale voting for Obama, and more of how typical conservative Christians wrongly vote Republican based on a few issues that have become infused with other issue that aren't theological."

I guess that whole diatribe could be continued and boiled down to this: a vote for Obama, and specifically against the Christianist regime I berated ad nauseum, is a rebuke of that same regime. It is a disengagement from a politics of division, opportunism and naked manipulation. I wouldn't say that Christians vote Republican to their error (that would be making the same mistake I criticized), but that Christians do themselves a tremendous disservice by assuming that they must vote Republican. A group who follows blindly any person or ideal is at risk of being manipulated, and most often is.

But bucking the norm isn't reason enough, in and of itself, to vote for Obama.

To clarify my point, using what someone else has written (and written better than I'm able):

Austin Bramwell (0f The American Conservative magazine) makes the case that the Christianist (in his words, movement conservative) mindset is much more entrenched, and extends further than the Bush-Cheney-Rove axis to American conservatism as a whole:

"Again, there are crucial differences between the conservative movement and a movement like environmentalism. Environmentalists have never sought to create a counter-establishment. Rather, they try to supply establishment institutions with environmentalist ideas. Conservatives, by contrast, have sought to create a whole alternative institutional world. The movement offers entire career tracks for aspiring conservatives. Moreover, the movement preaches hostility to non-movement institutions. From the moment a movement conservative starts his career at his college conservative paper, he learns to conceive of conservative organizations as the City of God and traditional establishment institutions as the City of Man. The two Cities, he believes, are antagonists. Hence, movement conservatives have not generally succeeded in reaching sympathetic outsiders – if anything, they have actively sought to alienate them."

Italics mine. Ultimately, this is why I was compelled to vote for Obama and against the Christianist regime, and feel others should have been, as well. Not only do I believe this outlook to be seriously flawed in and of itself, it is counter-productive and self-destructive politically, socially and, most importantly, missiologically. Obama (as he reminded us so many, many times during the campaign) represents change, and not just to the other side of the same coin. I feel that Obama is the best shot at post-partisanship we're going to get for quite awhile. And given the scale and nuance of the problems facing us (most notably the incredibly complicated financial crisis), his commitment to pragmatism and demonstrated ability to judge dispassionately a situation based on its merits offers us the best chance of moving forward. Still more, as a Christian, he can provide a much needed critique of what has passed for Christian political thought most of my life.

As far as the abortion debate, which is so fundamental to Christianist (indeed, Christian) thinking, Bramwell makes another good point:

"If you want to achieve a change in public policy, it may be better to create a loose networks of like-minded elites rather than to organize a mass movement. Second, the conservative project of “stitching” together various disparate ideas may be counterproductive. Sure, it’s great that pro-lifers have an alliance with foreign-policy “Projectarians" [read: neoconservatives]. But the cost is that the enemies of the Projectarians – who are legion – become the enemies of the pro-lifers. If you’re pro-life, might it not be better to build alliances with all ideological types, whatever their views on other subjects? I would think so. But “conservatism” and the “conservative” movement prevent this from happening."

The goal of any pro-lifer is to see an and to the practice of abortion. But, for a long time now, the abortion debate has devolved past any actual debate: both sides are so entrenched that they are often antagonistic, if not outright cruel, to anyone who sees the issue differently. Bramwell's point is this: in a society where being labeled "Democrat" or "Republican" (let alone pro-life or -choice) carries so much baggage, why not distance yourself from the big political establishments and seek allies across the ideological spectrum, much like the environmental movement? Tone down your rhetoric, take a breath, and try to work with people rather than seeking (at huge cost) a top-down outlawing of the practice.

The ideological importance of standing behind a politician who flatly denounces abortion during the election cycle (and promptly forgets all about it when he gets back to Washington) would start to diminish as grass-roots activism, organizing and outreach become more vital and viewed as more effective. This is a decidedly less ideological and much more pragmatic approach to the issue, and a much better approach than the all-or-nothing mentality of both pro-life and pro-choice camps.

Let's face it -- there will never be federal mandate banning abortion. Ever. There are just too many forces against it. I know this sounds like heresy to some people, but I say, who cares? I believe a federal law/amendment/whatever would be largely symbolic and, ultimately, ineffective. All this would do is drive the practice underground and have a limited effect on the actual number of abortions in the US. The situation would still require a huge outreach push to convince mothers not to seek dangerous back-alley abortions, to help them find adoptive services, and to counsel them through an incredibly difficult and trying process.

Why not cut out the tremendously draining process of fighting tooth and nail for a federal ban on abortion that will most likely never come, and focus on the kinds of initiatives that will have a much stronger impact (indeed, any impact at all)? Everyone, both pro-lifers and pro-choicers, would like to see the number of abortions fall. Approaching the issue more pragmatically could actually see this happen in a significant way and maybe even see people from (gasp!) both sides, as well as a large coalition of people in the middle, working together to realize this goal.

Here's my disclaimer: if a woman ever solicited my advice as to whether or not she should have an abortion, I would try with everything I had to convince her to carry the child to term in almost any possible situation. However, I think mandating this from a federal (or even state) level is a very dangerous option, for the reasons I outlined above. Because of these risks, and because of the existence very plausible (if underutilized) alternative routes to reducing the number of abortions, I cannot support a flat federal ban on abortions as such. If that makes me pro-choice, so be it. But, this is a very tricky issue, and I've by no means made up my mind.

I've gone and done it again. Sorry for the obscene length of the last couple of posts. I'll keep things shorter and more Senegal-related now.

Some responses

Jones asked about this rationale for voting for Obama, from a conservative perspective: “Faith. Obama's fusion of Christianity and reason, his non-fundamentalist faith, is a critical bridge between the new atheism and the new Christianism,” from this post.

This addresses a concern that many left-leaning Christians (like yours truly) have had for quite some time. The mindset that Sullivan (the author of the top-10 list and himself a Catholic) is talking specifically about is the super literalist-fundamentalist thinking that characterizes a large portion of the religious far-right (think James Dobson or the late Jerry Fallwell). In it’s more extreme (and, I would say, absurd) form, this line of thinking leads to a harsh denouncement of anyone who strays from the very narrow, theologically questionable dogma its leaders champion, which (again, in its most extreme forms) is characterized by an obsession with homosexuality, abortion and end-times, fire-and-brimstone fear mongering. In many cases, any dissent (be it from a religious or secular point of view) is heresy, even if it is a valid critique that could ultimately strengthen the fundamentalist cause. I personally have been subjected to this kind of treatment more times than I’d care to remember.

Thankfully, this camp is in the minority, however vocal they may be. They just happen to occupy many influential posts in the GOP and religious right establishment (for the time being, at least). The more widespread and thus more problematic issue with this line of thinking is what has turned out to be an incredible level of built-in cynicism. Some right-wing culture crusaders have used these same social concerns related to religious thinking (abortion, same-sex marriage, etc.) as nothing more than wedge issues to exploit to ensure the election of their candidate. George W. Bush, for one, campaigned on these platforms, on the advice of one of the pioneers of this tremendously manipulative and opportunistic style of thinking, Karl Rove. Upon winning office, he promptly ceased all discussion of those very issues. The same strategists have branched out from these few topics to bring more standard conservative concerns (taxes, defense spending, size of government) under the same religiously-themed umbrella, even if these concerns are of a secular nature. (This still is to say nothing of the quasi-populist, anti-intellectual, small-town-elitist bile we have heard over the last few years from many of the same people.)

This is what Sullivan would characterize as “Christianist”, as near as I can approximate: a mindset and a campaign style comprised of a laundry list of issues, both religious and secular, to be used as wedges to divide the electorate along religious and cultural lines while blurring the distinction between the two, and stoking mistrust and resentment of "outsiders" who must be fought and defeated. The only real goal is to win the election at all costs. “Christianism” is inherently political and only marginally theological. It is divisive, judgmental and completely intolerant of outside critique, let alone self-reevaluation. Anyone who sees things differently is not only wrong, but in clear opposition to divine mandate, even on issues as relatively trivial as tax or welfare policy. I realize this last statement borders on hyperbole, but the culture of blind submissiveness to established religious authority spawned by absolute certainty in the justness of the Right's stances on abortion or same-sex marriage can very easily trickle down the hierarchy of issues until the entire list becomes non-negotiable. In many cases, I would argue that this has already taken place.

The sooner this style of thinking gets pushed to the fringes, the better. Only then, I believe, can a conciliatory and inclusive theological message be advanced. This is especially key to addressing the “new atheism” Sullivan (among others) have referenced, championed by thinkers like Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, that feeds on the excess and ignorance of this protracted and self-destructive culture war.

I don't mean to say that all politically-minded Christians fall into this camp, or even that the issues they wish to address do not warrant close attention. My critique is simply of the methods employed to gain political favor. Most people, including the majority of evangelical Christians, I firmly believe, are able to see this cynicism for what it really is. But, unfortunately, it draws enough support and enough votes to be problematic.

Marcus, to clear up something you said about the African American population in the States:

One of the biggest concerns at the beginning of Obama’s candidacy was whether or not he was electable enough in the black community -- is he "too white?" (an absurd question in and of itself). He doesn’t play into the stereotypical narrative of the black politician, a role that Jesse Jackson has been characterized to fill for years now (hence all of the concerns for Obama heading into the South Carolina primary). In this sense, the fact that he still drew a huge portion of the black vote, as well as voters from across generational, economic and cultural lines speaks to his overall electability and the draw of his “change” mantra. I believe, like many others, that the election of Obama is a huge step forward, but by no means an end to the question of race in America.

One more thing (to be anal about some statistics): African Americans make up only about 12% of the population, not 20%.

Regarding the Phelps Troupe at my old high school: I hope someone ran them off the campus the minute they showed up. Their venomous, hateful and bigoted message has no business in any school, in any town, at any time. But, Bubba said it better:

"Don't worry too much, there is already a special place in Hell awaiting Fred Phelps."

Keep the comments coming, I enjoy thinking about them and, eventually, responding to them.

Best photo ever

Via Coates:



Teh winnar!

Disgusting

As if picketing (or, more appropriately, disrupting and disrespecting) the funerals of fallen soldiers wasn't enough, Fred Phelps and his inbred band of hate mongering theofacists have announced their intention to do the same at the funeral of Madelyn Dunham, Barack Obama's recently passed grandmother. Disgusting.