I’m glad Reid is “defending” his “the war is lost statement,” but this clip from ThinkProgress still made me want to scream:

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/23/video-reid-defends-iraq-liar-statements/

Apparently, a statement (four words, to be exact) becomes universally controversial when the likes of Newt Gingrich and Bill Kristol weigh in with invective – the factual & empirical basis of the statement be damned.

Here’s Wolf Blitzer: “The Senate Majority Leader didn’t repeat his controversial comments of last week that ‘the war is lost’ today. You had a chance to sit down and speak with him. How did he finesse that?”

Yes, how did he “finesse” standing by the glaring obvious point he made about the war’s failure? What kind of rhetorical tricks did the Senator employ to prevent Bill Kristol from calling him a traitor?

Then there’s what’s-her-name with:

“The senator was very careful not to once again utter that phrase.” and “I gave Senator Reid several chances to take it back and he declined.”

She gave him several chances to “take it back” -- wasn’t that gracious of her?

“The less-attractive student government kids surrounding themselves with the jocks and Barbies that they then stab in the back the moment they leave the room. . . .If anything, ‘reporting’ the John Edwards hair ‘story’ is a pretty tremendous act of projection on the part of these people.” Yes. Some psychological projection seems to be at work here. I think it’s the same process that has led some “journalists” and bloggers to criticize the “soft” VT students, allowing them to project themselves into heroic roles, taking out the gunman through their video game skills & sheer machismo.

Godfrey: I’ll happily ignore the hair opinions of anyone who advocates “collecting voiceprint data of Moslems resident in the USA” (as nabatroll did). It’s a sound general policy. (Did I just violate it?)

The discussion of the war mongers as childish captures it perfectly. I wonder if the particular *form* of immaturity differs by generation. Some, like McCain, seem to see the Iraq war as a way of re-fighting Vietnam (I forget if or how he weighed in on Israel’s war against Lebanon). Their childishness stems, in part, from a replay of the hippy v. patriot narrative. I think – but have no hard data – that the younger hawks more fully embrace the war-as-videogame mindset (“surge dude!”). My students (mostly young adults) have no memory of the first Gulf War and yet were raised in a decrepit media era that failed to demonstrate to them the oppositional role that the press should play.

Compared to Israel, we’re relatively isolated from the horrors of war but, soon I think, the war’s reality is going to prove the moral & intellectual bankrupcy of dead-ender war supporters. Each casualty affects multiple friends and family, and those people share their sorrow with still more people. The horror of Iraq expands *exponentially* in America, fitting (I think) with the larger political sea change discussed here last weekend. I think we’ll see & hear about more encounters like the one between the Kristol and the military wife (which is quite amazing if you haven’t seen it: http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/26/kristol-military-wife/). The contrast between her emotion and his equivocating was sickening but, at the same time, the whole segment gave me a little bit of hope.

2-cent: I think your “feminist backlash” argument is totally spot-on. I think the specific gender ideology you discussed underwrites a lot of the war-mongering mentality.

Your post nicely fits with one from thinkprogress this morning, reporting on an AP story that discusses how the Giuliani campaign “privately expressed its concern to NBC News about Olbermann’s role in the days leading up to last Thursday’s debate.” This is understandable, the AP report suggests, because Olbermann has an “evolving image as an ideologue.” In contrast to Chris Matthews for whom “there’s still a little mystery about what they’ll do inside a voting booth.” Yes, they’re referring to the same Chris Matthews who once compared Bush to Atticus Finch. To top it off, the article quoted from Tim Graham from the Media Research Center who likened Olbermann to a professional wrestler sitting in an anchor chair. As thinkprogress notes, the true hideousness of the article is not what it uncovers about the Giuliani campaign – I expect that he will take aggressive (and borderline authoritarian) steps to control the media & the message. But the AP story reported it as if those steps were valid and needed to correct partisan bias – a bias that I guess Chris Matthews and the Politico posse simply don’t bring to the table.

http://theedge.bostonherald.com/tvNews/view.bg?articleid=198594&format=text

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/05/ap-on-olbermann/

http://mediamatters.org/items/200602270010

I hope I'm wrong, but it seems like there's a fat chance that any of the important details will make it into the mainstream news cycle. I just looked at the Yahoo news headlines and right below "Expert: Iraq Will Become 'Terrorist Disneyland' if US leaves" is "Ex-official: Ashcroft Had Concerns Over Wiretaps." You have an alarming story about people rushing to a hospital in order to prevent a gross abuse of power by Card and Gonzales -- government officials who, in the words of Schumer, "were trying to take advantage of an ill and maybe disoriented man to try and get him to do something that many, at least in the Justice Department, thought was against the law." But "Had Concerns Over Wiretaps" -- that's their lead.