Grammar counts when writing propaganda

In his column today, George Will writes, “In the 1960s, public-employee unions were expanded to feast from quantitative liberalism (favors measured in quantities of money). And qualitative liberalism was born as environmentalists, feminists and others got government to regulate behavior in the service of social “diversity,” “meaningful” work, etc.”

If I had the moxy, I’d use this article in a lesson on the passive voice. Labor unions “were created.” By whom? For what? Ditto civil rights and women’s rights: who were the ones clamoring for all this? Was it this big monstrosity cooked up by the government to control our lives? Or did this all happen with thousands of people toiling away year after year, educating, building awareness, raising the issue and demanding change? The article is replete with issues I’d take up if I were ever (mis)fortunate enough to debate the matter with Mr. Will and his column (a typical one), but at the very least, we can all agree that the AFL-CIO didn’t come from some sort of legislative big bang. It came from the people. If that’s a special interest, then there aren’t enough of them today.

Bachmann sets record straight on Biblical submissions

AMES--On her Sunday talk show circuit, Representative Michele Bachmann, after winning the Iowa straw poll, fielded questions about a comment she made in a 2006 stump speech in which she said she became a tax lawyer because her husband wanted her to. "“Tax law? I hate taxes,” she said in the speech. “Why should I go into something like that? But the lord says, be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands."



Bachmann said on Face the Nation that "submission" really meant "respect." “I respect my husband, he respects me,” she said. “We have been married 33 years, we have a great marriage…and respecting each other, listening to each other is what that means.”



The Flannel Diaries feels that a reexamination of key Bible passages is in order, since previous instances of the word "submit" or "submission" may have been misconstrued by earlier scholars and pious readers. Here are some revised passages:



"Now as the church [respects, mutually respects] Christ, so also wives should [respect, mutually respect] everything to their husbands." --Ephesians 5:24

Clearly some syntax problems here, since "bow to the will of" works much better in context. Nevertheless, the early Bible was way ahead of the sort of Biblical allusions that would be used to keep women barefoot and pregnant for years to come.



"Obey your leaders and [respect, mutually respect] them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you." --Hebrews 13:17

Clearly someone "keeping watch over your souls" is not someone you need kowtow to. After all, regardless of your level of power, they think of you as an equal. That must have made for some really liberal slaveowners in the day.



"[Mutually respect] yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." --James 4:7

See? God is more like a business partner. One hand washes another. He's open to your ideas. It's not like he's God or anything.



Any more passages we missed, please submit them to us. Whoops...we meant "respect" them to us. Because we respect you. Mutually.

My Interview with Sarah Palin

All Palin dialogue taken from her book Going Rogue: An American Life, available anywhere fine hardcover memoirs are sold.

Handsome, young, budding and incredibly talented reporter walks up to a rustic cabin surrounded by rustic folks field-dressing moose and saluting the flag as only rustic people can do. He knocks on the door and Sarah Palin answers.

ME: Ms. Palin, I want to thank you for your time. I know that, being an ex-governor, you probably have tons of it, but still, holla. [Fist bumps galore here.]

SARAH PALIN: “That’s not entirely true.” (87)

ME: And you’re not entirely Ms. Frontier Woman of the New Millenium either, so let’s call it even.

They enter Palin’s living room.

ME: Okay. Let’s start with the basics. Now, I read Going Rogue, and I checked out your Facebook page…

SP: “Isn’t Facebook a terrific illustration of the power of American ingenuity?” (400)

ME: And by the way, your Mafia Wars score is un-frickin’-believable. But I think we ought to begin at the beginning. Start fresh. So. Tell me how you got to where you are today?

SP: “’Before I became governor…I was mayor of my hometown. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.’” (242)

ME: Ha ha! Take that, Martin Luther King, Jr.!

SP: “[An] individual’s commitment to his or her own business and family—that is significantly more important than any community leadership role.” (243)

ME: And take that, Jesus Christ!

SP: “[Government] experience doesn’t necessarily count for much.” (84)

ME: Well that leaves you in the clear all right. Now, you had a lot of people telling you you couldn’t be a mom and run for office, right?

SP: [Alaska Governor] Mukowski [when interviewing me for a Senate seat] …launched into a soliloquy on how tough it was on a family to serve in the Senate. It seemed to me that though he thought me competent enough to make his short list, the father in him felt compelled to protect me from the storm that is national politics.” (98)

ME: That sucks. Hell, you can prioritize, right? But then why didn’t you go for the Senate later, in 2006?

SP: “[Who would] be [my son’s] hockey manager?”

ME: But I thought you said…

SP: At that point in [my son Track’s] life, having an involved mom was more important to him—and to me—than having a mom with a powerful position in Washington, D.C.” (341)

ME: So a mom can do it, except when a mom can’t. Now, I understand these non-qualification qualifications didn’t really get the attention you felt they deserved? Particularly with the Katie Couric interview?

SP: “There was so much I could and should have said [to Katie Couric regarding foreign policy]…For instance that Alaska’s geographic position makes our relations with Pacific Rom countries of great strategic import, and that we’re the air crossroads of the world…

ME: Well, she was asking about experience, right? Not just situations, but your actual actions and decisions.

SP: That Russian bombers often play cat and mouse with our Air Force near Alaska’s airspace…

ME: Did you deal with that directly? What did you actually do?

SP: That I dealt with Canadian officials on a weekly basis and have signed agreements concerning everything from security to salmon fishing…

ME: Okay, you signed stuff. But what did you do?

SP: …and that NAFTA has significantly affected our economy…

ME: That’s what NAFTA does. Not you.

SP: That melting polar sea ice has created new trade routes but has also created security threats to North America…

ME: Look, I don’t think we’re communicating here…

SP: That Alaska takes on Japanese and Russian fishing trawlers that want to ravage the ocean floor…

ME: Goddamnit…

SP: That Chinese and Russian energy companies had both sought access to (and possible control of) our natural gas resources. That these and other countries were staking their own resource claims in Arctic waters while the U.S. sat on its hands.” (275)

ME: [Whining] Come on! In your years as governor, what did you actually do?

SP: “[The Governor’s mansion] came with a personal chef, but I unbudgeted the position. … The chef seemed so darned bored because the kids didn’t want anything fancy to eat.” (133)

ME: Ms. Palin, give me something specific or I’m hitting your baby.

SP: …

ME: Christ. Fine. Why don’t we take a break so people can check your non-rebuttal rebuttal out? And where are those little darlings of yours, anyway?

Click here for Part II of this completely idiotic thing.

From today's paper

The History of the Death Panels. Ought to be required reading for town hall and tea party idiot protesters.

Teachers Sell Lesson Plans. Personally, I don't see it for myself (I can't even give mine away sometimes), but if we're going to be held accountable like people who work "real jobs," then we ought to be able to sink our thumbs into the free market like, say, investment bankers, mortgage brokers and the like.

Megan Fox talks about being an actress. For some reason, the people offscreen aren't laughing hysterically. P.S. Take your top off, Ms. Fox.

Fox News Isn't Even Pretending Any More [to be objective], from Salon.com.

Things Sarah Palin can do now that she's resigned from the office of Alaska governor

Kill something with her big gun

Practice Tina Fey impersonation

Find a mirror to start rehearsing speeches in front of

Learn how to use "Find" function in e-mail (as in, Find: "Hire my husband, damn you"), so she can fork over records for those pesky news agencies

Begin rigorous, impassioned reading of Middle East, Russian and American history.

Find alternative phrases for "you betcha"

Look up Wikiarticles on Adam Smith to find out why she supports free markets

Find Levi and beat him to a pulp

Get her book ghostwritten. Crowd aspiring writers out of the literary marketplace

Conservapedia.com, the conservative's answer to what, I suppose, is a left-leaning Wikipedia.

Some routine searches:

William Shakespeare's life and works in about two pages' worth of text, with a whopping four sources cited (three of them web pages). Conservative academia?

Eric Alterman does not exist. Guess I saw that coming.

Barack Obama was "allegedly" born in Honolulu. Presumably, this means he might have been born in Kabul.

The war in Iraq had nothing to do with WMDs. (The only even tangential reference to that whole debacle: The site credits a Washington Post article pointing to a meeting between Bush and a Spanish prime minister who said Hussein was "open to exile" and such an exile might avoid war, but that "Bush made it clear in the meeting that he expected to "be in Baghdad at the end of March" (according to the former p.m.).

Helen Thomas is a "liberal anti-war biased journalist." And she wrote...what, exactly? Pamphlets? Protest songs? Or do we take you on conservaword alone?

In short, a conservative encyclopedia is a valuable reference tool...as long as you ignore some facts, truncate others, and shorten your entries to those meeting the attention span of a six-year-old. Color me unimpressed.

That damned left-wing media...

Pop quiz, sea monkeys! Who said the following quotes about the media?

1. "Don't believe the right-wing ideologues when they tell you the left still controls the media agenda. It does not any longer. It's a fact."

a) liberal comedian/pundit Al Franken
b) liberal fillamker Michael Moore
c) liberal Fox News commentator Alan Colmes
d) Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly

2. [The] idea the media now tilt toward liberals is absurd."

a) CNN journalist Wolf Blitzer
b) MSNBC's Keith Olberman
c) Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas
d) conservative analyst Bruce Bartlett

3. "[There's] this cottage industry [in the media] in which it pays to be unobjective. It pays to be subjective as much as possible. It's a great way to have your cake and eat it, too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It's a great little racket."

a) political commentator Jay Marvin
b) White House reporter Helen Thomas
c) Hardball's Chris Matthews
d) Weekly Standard's Matt Labash

4. "We have the media now."

a) New York Times' publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.
b) Washington Post former editor Ben Bradlee
c) a secret cabal of pro-Israel newspaper owners
d) conservative pundit Ann Coulter

If you guessed "d" to all of the above, you win the grand prize: sight over ignorance! Truth over slander! And a date with me, at the NRA rally of your choice!

WORKS CITED

O'Reilly's comments: The No-Spin Zone, July 2005 (transcript currently unavailable on Fox's website)
Bartlett's comments: Realclearpolitics.com
Labash's comments: Interview on journalismjobs.com
Coulter's comment: Interview with Sean Hannity July, 2005 (soundbyte courtesy of Oliver Willis)

Research compiled by Eric Alterman. Sapere aude, indeed.

Somebody needs to give Bill O'Reilly a reading assignment.

From Kirk Russell's The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Elliot:

Any informed conservative is reluctant to condense profound and intricate intellectual systems to a few pretentious phrases; he prefers to leave that technique to the enthusiasm of radicals. Conservatism is not a fixed and immutable body of dogma, and conservatives inherit from Burke a talent for re-expressing their convictions to fit the time.

See that, Bill? Talking Points that spoon feeds us a few phrases (ego-inflated rather than pretentious, I suppose) are for spaghetti-kneed liberals. Oh, the irony is delicious.

Oh wait, Bill, I know what you'd say. You'd remind me that the following sentence in the passage I've truncated reads:

As a working premise, nevertheless, one can observe here that the essence of social conservatism is preservation of the ancient moral traditions of humanity. Conservatives respect the wisdom of their ancestors (this phrase was Strafford’s, and Hooker’s, before Burke illuminated it); they are dubious of wholesale alteration.

So, does that fit into Scalia's "original intent" framework? Doesn't that pretty well kibosh the revisions made to Article I, Section II of the Constitution? Or the 13th, 19th and 21st Amendments, right? Aren't those alterations that could be classified as "wholesale"?

I'm obviously not directly addressing Bill here. But if I were, Bill and I might agree on Russell's final point:

[Conservatives] think society is a spiritual reality, possessing an eternal life but a delicate constitution: it cannot be scrapped and recast as if it were a machine.

So...there you go. Just like we can't pack everything up in Iraq in a suitcase and Fed Ex it over here, so we can't fine-tune our laws and liberties to fit a particular agenda...any agenda.

(Note--this whole post exploded over a segment I can't find online, which makes me feel somewhat ridiculous, and a homework assignment about conservatism, which I have abbreviated here. Indulge me.)

Karl Rove raps at the Correspondents' Dinner. The Times says this cockiness is in spite of the recent brou-ha-ha over Libby's conviction.

I say this is yet more evidence that white people shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a microphone when hip hop is playing, especially not while wearing tuxedoes and sporting glasses and a bald spot.