I am stunned to see all of these defenses of Jenna Bush that seem to totally miss the point of the article. Celebrity culture, indeed! Look at the big picture and the idea of royalty and noblesse oblige. During the period I study (late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Britain), many were struggling to break themselves free of the remnants of a feudal state. Part of the discourse around that struggle included a growing view of the aristocracy as bloated, parasitic, useless, and lazy, and depictions of them as such are rife in the literature. But there was also a strong pull to look to the past as some kind of golden age, when aristocrats fulfilled their paternal duty to the people, and many thought that part of the problem was the fact that aristocrats no longer were bound to the social contract. Counteracting this view were people like Paine and Wollstonecraft and Thelwall and Godwin and others, who argued for reason as the basis of the social contract. What they saw was that noblesse oblige was simply a way to maintain the old status quo. It was an interesting rift in the radical movement of those times.

But I still see this kind of confusion today. And a musician, of all people, expressed the problem well. In the aftermath of Band Aid, Bob Geldof (who, hilariously, has been knighted) pissed everyone off by saying that what he was doing with his charities was ultimately a waste of energy. Because he said that until the huge disparities in wealth across the globe were addressed and changed as a matter of policy, then charity would do nothing but help to maintain the current ugly system. So when I see people from political dynasties doing their little charity works here and there, and I don't see them working to change the policies that make such interventions in terrible situations necessary by private citizens, then I am seeing noblesse oblige in action. Noblesse oblige is a tiny band-aid, as Bob would say, but it is great PR for the rich.

The only thing I can recommend is the Photoshop help files! I am self-taught, and that is how I learned. Their help files are better than most.

BWAH HA HA!!!!

What a sneaking cowardly clump Klein is! I cannot believe it. He can't win an argument with you to save his life, so he talks shit about you behind your back! And not just to a few friends, but to the whole MSM secret community!

This just illustrates what these armchair fucking war cheerleaders are really like. Junior high school sneaks. Unbelievable. Just unbelievable. I am sitting here shaking my head.

Illustration at sig.

The world needs you much more than it needs Joe Klein.

That really says it all.

I just did. :)

The first rule of journolist is YOU DON'T TALK ABOUT JOURNOLIST.

Heh. (From HuffPo)

That was a good read by Digby. Btw, if Obama dumps the public option and forces us all to buy private health insurance, I think it is time to emigrate.

It's akin to religious fervor, which Bill Maher calls a mental disorder.

The ever increasing irrationality that characterizes the public mind in this country is disturbing. As Dan Savage said on Countdown last night, all of the talk from the right about "death panels" and "killing grandma" appeals to a segment of the populace that sees things in religious terms, and in fact, sees policy discussions not as a rational give-and-take, but as a struggle--to the death, if need be--to carry out god's will. And part of that mindset is to see those who don't agree with them as subhuman, worthless. So Dan suggests that this death discourse is a way for the right to encourage violence towards the administration. They aim, he believes, for one of those irrational louts out there to kill Obama.

My dog is rolling her eyes in disbelief. Gah.

From the last round, Mark Slackmeyer vs. Broder, at sig.

Did I hear the news right?--Obama has let the health industry leaders know that he is backing off from the public option, that he is not even going to touch the pre-existing conditions issue, that he is basically doing nothing for the people that elected him?

And then I see a disabled woman on the teevee, in a wheelchair, trying to talk about her plight at a town hall meeting, and being abused and heckled and shouted over by ignorant lunatics who are doing the bidding of the insurance companies??

So Pelosi and the progressive caucus are our last hope. I wonder what kind of shit Obama and Rahm are going to put them all through--to make sure that they don't do the right thing.

Sometimes I just cry.

I hear this and I wanted to let you know my empathy is right here, available and at hand.

Thank you. Every time I think this is the last straw, then something else happens! So it is good to be in touch with like-minded people.

snot rag

Heh heh. Every time I blow my nose, it's a big "Fuck You" to Obama.

Now. What the hell is up with this damn tomato alfredo blocking my view? Dammit.

I think Wormtongue is a good figure to stand for Big Pharma, and O is certainly in thrall to those bastards!

If things keep going the way they have, it would be better to be down and out in Paris and London than to be living here. :)

Keep the aspidistra flying, dude!

I have to go with H. L. Mencken:

The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

A guy who makes a secret deal with Big Pharma in order to give them a Wall Street-like giveaway never had any intention of pushing for a real public option. Pure bait and switch from the very beginning.