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Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 01/08/04 10:19:40 PM
Categorized as Religious.

General Wesley Clark Picks Up a Crucial Endorsement

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode C

Madonna.

I've never done this before. But life is about taking risks is it not? I know that people seem to pay attention to everything I do. Big or Small. Ridiculous or Sublime. So I am hoping they pay attention to this:

I am supporting General Wesley Clark for President.

Not only as a "celebrity" but as an American citizen and as a mother. I want my children to grow up with the same opportunities that I had – to know and understand what's going on in the world and to travel that world safely and with pride.

Now I'm asking you to join me.

I am writing to you because the future I wish for my children is at risk.

Our greatest risk is not terrorism and it's not Iraq or the "Axis of Evil." Our greatest risk is a lack of leadership, a lack of honesty and a complete lack of consciousness. Unfortunately our current government cannot see the big picture. They think too small. They suffer from the "what's in it for me?" syndrome. The simple truth is that the current administration has squandered incredible opportunities to bring the world together, to promote peace in regions that have only known war, to encourage health in places that are ravaged with disease, to make us more secure by living up to our principles at home and abroad. The simple truth is that the policies of our current administration do not reflect what is great about America.

Thankfully, there is now a candidate running for President who is committed to ensuring that our country lives up to its promise and its people. He is a decorated soldier and a respected diplomatic leader, who has already given 34 years to his country. He is smart and he is good. He has worked hard to get where he is and he is a national hero.

A perfect example of the American Dream.

I've never aligned myself with a presidential candidate during the primary season. But this time, the stakes are too high, we have too much to lose and there is so much work to be done.

I'm supporting General Wesley Clark in 2004 and have committed to do all that I can to help his campaign in the coming months. I ask you to visit his website today to learn about his candidacy, his vision for our nation and the many ways you can get involved.

I've looked at all the Democratic candidates. I respect them all for their dedication and patriotism. But I'm supporting Wes Clark because in him I see the qualifications, character and vision that we so desperately need.

We are a country with incredible promise. As Americans we enjoy opportunities like no other. Unfortunately we take these opportunities for granted. You may not agree with everything I say or do, but whether you're rich or poor, young or old, black or white, gay or straight, I know you share my concern and recognize the need for change.

Even if you've never been involved with politics before, please consider joining with me. If you can give, give generously. If you can volunteer time, get involved now. And if you can vote, this time…make sure you do.

Wesley Clark has asked for my support and now I'm asking for yours.

Madonna

PS: Please spread this message to everyone you know.

I'm trying to figure out what sort of "risk" Madonna is taking by supporting Wesley Clark, especially since (I believe) she lives most of the time in London now. And, I'm trying to figure out which is worse: did she mean conscience or did she really mean consciousness?

Oh, don't worry: I won't be spending too much time doing that. Meanwhile, I'm glad to oblige and spread this message to everyone I know.

See also Summit Meeting Between Wesley Clark and Madonna.

[Follow-up: Re: General Wesley Clark Picks Up a Crucial Endorsement.]

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 01/08/04 10:10:19 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political & Social/Cultural.

Frank Salvato Slices and Dices "Cliff" Dean

At The Washington Dispatch today:

.... But probably the biggest hardship for Dean, the modern day version of the poor little match girl from the early 20th Century, was having to summer at the “whites only” Maidstone Club in the Hamptons. It must have been a brutal experience, a humiliating experience, to be waited on by those who weren’t even of the religion or race that would allow them to be members. I would imagine that is were young Howard developed his sense of need for diversity. It is quite obvious through the multi-cultural atmosphere that exists in the post-Dean Vermont that this gross inequity weighed on his mind quite heavily.

And then there was the traumatic experience of having to endure the horror of racism at the Maidstone Club. As if the exclusion of people for membership consideration based on their religion and/or the color of their skin wasn’t startling enough, he had to endure the occasional racial epithet from his own parents although he proclaims, "Yes, there was sort of this casual racism, in terms of the racist expressions that were used by that generation," he told the Times. "But in all, I think my family was pretty open-minded about different kinds of people." I suppose when one summers in the confines of the exclusive Maidstone Club one learns to be tolerant of others, even if they are committing acts of racism, if only casually.

For Howard Dean to stand in front of his supporters and the people of the United States, grinning the grin of the snake oil salesman better than Bill Clinton ever did, proclaiming that he “feels the pain” of the working class people would be laughable if it weren’t so infuriating. The fact of the matter, and it is quite apparent, is that Dean lived a life of privilege equal to, if not more so than, anyone who is elected to office today. His parents afforded him an upper-class college education, an education that left him a physician. He was deferred from military service because of a “medical problem” so debilitating that he was able to ski in Aspen instead of fighting in Danang. He suffered the lavish brutality of the exclusive and obviously racist Maidstone Club as he toiled his youthful summers away and he learned that his brand of tolerance included an acceptable level of racism....

For the NYT article cited, see Dean Is Just Like Bush; Almost; Sort Of.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 01/08/04 06:30:15 PM
Categorized as Political.

Modern Marxist Language Association

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode XCIX

Scott Jaschik, former editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education, takes a look at the latest annual meeting of the Modern Marxist Language Association.

"Why are you headed to San Diego?" asked the man next to me on the plane. "I'm going to a meeting of English professors to hear what they have to say about the war with Iraq," I replied.

"English professors? On the war?" The man smirked. "I can't imagine what they would have to say."

Plenty, it turns out. This past week, about 8,000 professors and graduate students gathered here for the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association. Most came for job interviews, to catch up with old friends, and to attend some of the 763 panels of scholars. But among the panels on topics ranging from Hawthorne to Asian cinema to "The Aesthetics of Trash" were a surprising number of sessions dealing with the war in Iraq, terrorism, patriotism, and American foreign policy.

Not that there was much actual debate. In more than a dozen sessions on war-related topics, not a single speaker or audience member expressed support for the war in Iraq or in Afghanistan. The sneering air quotes were flying as speaker after speaker talked of "so-called terrorism," "the so-called homeland," "the so-called election of George Bush," and so forth.

The approach to the war was certainly wide-ranging -- from cultural studies to rhetoric to literature to pure political speechifying. In a session on "Shock and Awe," Graham Hammill of Notre Dame traced the ideas behind the initial bombing back to the Roman historian and orator Tacitus's idea of arcana imperii, which translates roughly as "mysteries of state." Like Roman emperors who used rhetoric to sway the populace, Hammill argued, the Shock and Awe campaign was a rhetorical gesture aimed at demonstrating US power as much as flattening Baghdad.

At a different panel, Cynthia Young of the University of Southern California spoke about how the White House uses Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell "to create a distorted multiracial mask on imperialism." "What does it mean," Young asked, "when imperialism comes wrapped in a black bow?"

Instead of Rice's August speech comparing the Iraqi "liberation" with the civil rights struggle, she recommended the writings of the African-American activist and writer Angela Davis, who once described her alienation from white Americans mourning the death of John F. Kennedy in 1963, but not the four young black girls who died in the Birmingham church bombing that same year.

Similar alienation is evident today, Young said, as the United States ignores the problems facing minority citizens while taking over countries where people do not look or worship like white Americans. "The new patriotism looks a lot like the old slash-and-burn imperialism," she declared.

Berkeley's Judith Butler, a superstar of gender and literary studies, drew a packed house with her analysis of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's bad grammar and slippery use of the term "sovereignty."

On a 2002 visit to Eritrea, in response to a question about the detention of dissidents there, Rumsfeld declared: "A country is a sovereign nation and they arrange themselves and deal with their problems in ways that they feel are appropriate to them." Beyond the noun-verb agreement problem with "country" and "they," Butler rapped Rummy's knuckles for redefining sovereignty -- in her analysis -- as "the suspension of legal rights."

When the United States is challenged over the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, American officials assert that US courts have no jurisdiction there because we are not sovereign there, Butler pointed out. "We are using sovereignty to declare war against the law," she said, to nods throughout her talk and loud applause after it.

The MLA's deliberative body, the Delegate Assembly, adopted by a landslide margin of 122-8 a resolution supporting "the right of its members to conduct critical analysis of war talk" despite government efforts to "shape language to legitimate aggression, misrepresent policies, conceal aims, stigmatize dissent, and block critical thought."

Sometimes that critical analysis was aimed at elements of the antiwar left. While denouncing the "particularly evil cabal" that runs the country, Barbara Foley of Rutgers urged leftist critics to look beyond the distraction of "Bush's cowboyism" to "the Leninist notion of intra-imperialist rivalry" to explain US-European competition for domination of the oil-rich Middle East.

Anthony Dawahare of California State University at Northridge said that "whoever wins the war in Iraq, the working class people in Iraq and in the US will be subject to a dictatorship of the rich." In an interview, he said that unless Howard Dean challenged capitalism itself, student activism on his behalf would be "a waste of time."

Not that everyone at the MLA was preoccupied with Marxist analysis. Ask many of the graduate students or younger scholars what's on their mind, and they talk about finding a job.

The closest public challenge to the prevailing geopolitical views at the MLA came when one professor asked a panel that had derided American responses to 9/11 and Iraq what a good response would have looked like. She didn't get much of an answer, left the session, and declined to elaborate on her question.

But a young professor of English who followed her out the door to congratulate her did offer some thoughts on politics at the MLA. Aaron Santesso of the University of Nevada at Reno described himself as being "on the left" and sympathetic with much of the criticism of the war in Iraq. But he said that the tenor of the discussion "drives me nuts." "A lot of people here don't want the rhetoric to just be a shrill echo of the right," he said.

Just a few years ago, he noted, the Taliban was regularly attacked at MLA meetings for their treatment of women and likened to the American religious right. Now, there is only talk of how the United States has taken away the rights of the Afghan people.

Santesso said he gains a good perspective from his students, most of whom he characterized as "libertarian conservatives." Most of the debate at the MLA, he said, "would completely alienate my students."

Plenty of English professors share his views, Santesso said. And some of his colleagues are even conservative. They just avoid coming to the MLA.

Scott Jaschik, former editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education, is a writer in Washington.

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

Just a few years ago, he noted, the Taliban was regularly attacked at MLA meetings for their treatment of women and likened to the American religious right. Now, there is only talk of how the United States has taken away the rights of the Afghan people. One can easily get the idea that, at rock-bottom, these people really hate anybody who can actually act in response to a problem situation rather than merely talk and/or write about it — which is all they can do. And while they talk/write, they can feel morally superior, both to those in the problem situation and to those who aren't doing anything about it. But once somebody has actually taken action, their talking/writing is revealed to be... well... nothing more than words, and their excuse to feel morally superior has vanished. And they just can't stand that.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 01/08/04 06:23:29 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.

Patriotic Rock

No, not music.

Enjoy.

(Thanks, Jennifer.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 01/08/04 03:47:40 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

"My Journey to Conservatism"

An article by philosophy professor Keith Burgess-Jackson at TCS, Jan. 6:

.... I used to be liberal. When I was, I thought conservatives were uncaring, unintelligent, irrational, and obstructionist. They seemed to resist every attempt to make the world a better place -- by my standards. They seemed stuck in the past, oblivious to changes that were taking place in technology, demographics, and world affairs. Didn't they see the threat to the environment posed by global warming? Didn't they see that their cramped understandings of marriage and family were doing real harm to people? Didn't they see that their opposition to redistributive taxation was perpetuating -- indeed, exacerbating -- poverty, sickness, and illiteracy? Didn't they see that in affairs of state, no less than in personal relationships, force never solves anything but only makes things worse?...

As I've aged, I've come to appreciate the vastness, complexity, and intricate beauty of things. I've come to see the delicate evolved equilibria in human institutions. Just as it is unwise to disrupt a natural ecosystem, it is unwise to disrupt, disregard, or disrespect longstanding human practices. I've come to appreciate the other side of various issues. (There is always another side, although liberals seldom acknowledge as much.) I've come to appreciate and respect the wisdom of our forebears, from whom we inherited so much: everything from marriage to mechanisms of wealth transmission to free markets to individual rights to our rambunctious, expressive language. Conservatives don't live for the moment, as liberals do. They respect the past and care deeply about the future. The present, in their view, is merely a bridge (or contract) between the dead and the unborn. Conservatives love history; liberals love sociology. Conservatives are archaeologists; liberals are engineers....

Once this essay comes to light amongst his peers, I'm sure the professor is going to be treated to a whole mess o' Liberal Tolerance.

(Thanks, Kathy.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 01/08/04 07:18:04 AM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

Letter to Jennifer Nelson

A reader very kindly copied The Blog from the Core on her e-mail to Jennifer Nelson:

Thank you for pointing out the hypocrisy of the wealthy liberals of the Bay Area. This same mindset exists throughout the land, especially in the wealthiest suburbs of the major cities.

I'm a former liberal from back when it meant support for civil rights and clean air and water. Then I had to endure the contempt of country-club raised Republicans for getting all worked up about what I considered important issues.

Those same individuals have flipped into leftist liberals. They were smug, self-absorbed Republicans who now despise Republicans. They were nominal Protestants in the 60's and 70's (married in churches and even attending on holidays), now they are comfortably non-religious and contemptuous of those adhering to religious beliefs and values. Oh, and their current concern for the environment and the poor has never cost them a vacation requiring the use of jet fuel and money they could have donated to their cleaning ladies' kids' college fund!

My head hurts from all the spinning.

Keep fighting the good fight.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 01/08/04 07:13:04 AM
Categorized as Political.