Letters to the Editor
William Timberman
Published Letters: 3298 Editor's Choice: 7
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@ Holly M
[Read the article: A beautiful mosaic of anti-blogger hatred]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Firedoglake, for one, has been roasting them over a slow fire for months now. I don't know how widely read FDL is, but I suspect that after their Fitzgerald/Libby coverage, which is deservedly considered to have set a new standard for reporting on legal proceedings, most MSM reporters and pundits are aware of it, and many read it daily.
The peasants, in short, are at the gates, and there are no reinforcements in sight.
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Thanks, ondelette
[Read the article: A beautiful mosaic of anti-blogger hatred]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes, I understand that the sort of thing I've referred to was for a long time almost the exclusive province of sociology departments. Back in the day, most of my friends were in sociology -- I was the lone applied sciences guy, or at least I thought that at the time. I finished up at UC Santa Barbara, which had a fairly well-respected sociology department at the time. (Dick Flacks moved there after he was nearly killed at Chicago. I used to see him now and again at meetings, with his crippled arm, but the fire still in his eye. Paul R. reminds me a lot of him.)
Anyway, as I say, differential equations, statics and stregth of materials, vector and tensor analysis, Fortran programming, physical chemistry, etc. were great discipline for a guy whose first love was philology, but they unfortunately left me clueless about the sorts of things which the statisticians among us rattle off here. I envy them.
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Religious, yes. Christian soldiers, well....
[Read the article: A beautiful mosaic of anti-blogger hatred]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Shaller says that outer South will become competititve relatively soon if we adopt such a strategy, whereas trying to prove ourselves as bossom buddies of Deep South culture just makes us look like fools. -- Paul Rosenberg
Despite Michael Harold's argument, which makes a good deal of sense also, I think that this is essentially correct, and not only because it feels better to me. (Every time I see someone like Kerry in a shooting vest, or carrying a Bible, or Michael Duukakis jolting along in a tank, I cringe. I'm sure it looks as phony to the southerners I grew up with as it does to me, even if Karl Rove doesn't point it out to them.)
Think back to the days of the Dixiecrats. Racists, yes, but every one of them had a portrait of FDR on the wall above the mantel. Southerners aren't as poor today as they were in 1932; Reconstruction and Yankee occupation are long over, and Japanese car companies and the petroleum business in the Gulf have leavened the solely agricultural economies of the southern states. That, coupled with anger over the Civil Rights Act, and the Republicans' expoitation of their cultural anxieties have made them Republicans, but I don't think I need remind anyone that it's only since Nixon that the South has been solidly Republican.
I also think that it can be argued that demographic trends, even in the South, have been running against our right-wing culture warriors. In my opinion, that's a good part of the reason for their seeming hysteria. We also shouldn't underestimate the consequences of this abominable war, not least the economic ones, which are just barely becoming visible now. These consequences may very well foretell the end of the Southern Strategy altogether as a sure road to the White House. It wouldn't surprise me at all if a Barack Obama-like figure didn't carry the south someday soon, even if it isn't Barack Obama himself, and it isn't in 2008. (Think Clinton in black churches. Consider why no one thought he was a hypocrite for being there, even though he himself is an identifiably secular guy.)
I spent most of my Sunday mornings as a kid in southern Protestant churches, and I can tell you that southern religion is genuine. It has the virtues -- social solidarity, respect for honesty and plain dealing, etc. -- as well as the vices of all religions. The southern church militant doesn't have to dedicate itself to reversing Appomattox to be successful, nor does it in fact have to be militant at all. Certainly when campaigning in the south, a politician from elsewhere in the country only has to show some genuine respect for what is respectable. He doesn't have to pretend to be Billy Graham.
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@ Paul Rosenfeld
[Read the article: A beautiful mosaic of anti-blogger hatred]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Good stuff, as usual. Are we missing something here, though? For me, it's easy to focus on southern culture per se because of my personal connection to it. But what of the spread of southern revenge fantasies outside the south. What do we make of Focus on the Family, for example, which seems to have about as much to do with the culture of the mountain west as Béla Kun.
Your take?
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Excuse me, Paul
[Read the article: A beautiful mosaic of anti-blogger hatred]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have a good friend named Paul Rosenfeld. One of my phobias in commenting here for some time has been that I'd call you by his name. Sigh...now I've finally gone and done it. My apologies. (I can live with a pot belly and gray hair, but this confusion of neurons as I get older still unsettles me.)
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@ kitt
[Read the article: A beautiful mosaic of anti-blogger hatred]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Those were the good things, the lubricants, if you will. Timothy Leary had a point, and so did Malcolm Lowry and Brendan Behan. Living's what kills you in the end, no matter your overindulgences, and as has been said, none of us gets out of this alive.
That said, not everyone is equally qualified to be the conductor of his own symphony. (My sympathy for libertarians stems from the idea that even if this is true -- and oh, 'tis true, 'tis true -- no one else should presume to take the baton from your hand.)
No, it wasn't the acid, or the booze. When I was forty, I could absolutely trust my memory -- both short and long-term -- not to betray me. At sixty-plus, google is my friend, but even google can't restrain my odd and sometimes unfortunate impulses.