Metropulse has my review of crazed Japanese prog band Koenjihyakkei’s third album, Nivraym up now. This is about the most fun I’ve had writing a music review, I think. Also, there are slavering elves. And Alban Berg.
Yearly Archives: 2009
Partially Congealed Pundit:Christopher Columbus
Since it’s the 4th, I thought I’d do an American themed poem. Sort of. This is from 2003 or so, I think.
___________________
Christopher Columbus
If I was Christopher Columbus I wouldn’t be so boring. Because that is the name of a parrot and he just sits there on the island he is on. Maybe he was stranded there when he pooped on Bluebeard’s beard and that is why it is blue. Also he flew into things by accident. Like eyeballs so they had to get eyepatches. Trees and things were afraid and they ran off the island and even his poop was afraid of his later poop. So he sleeps a lot. My Dad would say he needs ambition and maybe some money.
Alice Hoffman flips out; internet scoffs
It’s been pretty dead at my house. I haven’t read anything interesting in a while, except for lots of Rex Stout, who’s pretty fab, but who doesn’t exactly keep me up at night pondering the deep questions.
This story caught my eye the other day, though. I particularly love the blase reaction of Roberta Silman, who went on vacation in time to totally miss Alice Hoffman’s embarrassing public flip-out over nothing (in her review of Hoffman’s latest novel, Silman described the book in question as lacking the spark off Hoffman’s earlier work, which she says she liked), followed by Hoffman’s asinine defense of herself (“Girls are taught to be gracious and keep their mouths shut. We don’t have to,” said Hoffman, trying to write off her blatantly immature act of malice against another female publishing professional as for god’s sake, feminism), and Hoffman’s subsequent deletion of her Twitter account. It would be dull to sit through it all first hand, but how lovely for her to get back from a weekend in the Berkshires and be presented with this brief snack of schadenfreude.
It’s amazing that anyone could even wonder whether disseminating someone’s contact information and instructing your fans to harass that person over a minor professional slight might just perhaps be going too far, almost as amazing as Hoffman’s implication that only in the age of electronic mass media and microblogging have authors finally been given the power to respond to book reviewers. No one who’d ever read the letter column of The Nation could read that with a straight face.
This is beautiful
Okay, Todd Purdum and Vanity Fair, this is how it’s done. Let us now thank Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe for bringing to light the Steve Schmidt/Sarah Palin correspondence of October 15, 2008. It includes one of the most beautiful emails ever written by a busy professional to a lying, narcissistic idiot. The email is also a chance to see a Republican political operative going into reverse mode. Instead of scrambling facts, he’s spelling them out; hey, he’s good at that too.
Background: Sarah Palin’s husband, Todd, belonged for 7 years to the Alaska Independence Party, which wants Alaska to secede from the United States. During the campaign, Palin complained to Steve Schmidt and others in the top command that not enough was being done to push back against criticism of Todd for his secessionist ties. The back-and-forth over this matter was all by email.
Schmidt told her no, they weren’t going to touch the AIP issue. Palin harangued him again, this time claiming that the AIP’s platform doesn’t mention pulling out of the U.S. Schmidt lost it and wrote the following:
Secession. It is their entire reason for existence. A cursory examination of the website shows that the party exists for the purpose of seceding from the union. That is the stated goal on the front page of the web site. Our records indicate that todd was a member for seven years. If this is incorrect then we need to understand the discrepancy. The statement you are suggesting be released would be innaccurate. The innaccuracy would bring greater media attention to this matter and be a distraction. According to your staff there have been no media inquiries into this and you received no questions about it during your interviews. If you are asked about it you should smile and say many alaskans who love their country join the party because it speeks to a tradition of political independence. Todd loves his countryWe will not put out a statement and inflame this and create a situation where john has to adress this
Isn’t that great? It moves me.
Palin had also claimed that Todd registered with the AIP by accident, that Alaska voter registration forms list the party only as “Alaska Independent” and Todd had meant to register as an independent. But no. Alaska forms list the party by its full name.
Lying to her own side. Lying about points of fact available to anyone who might want to look. In-fucking-unbelievable. But Andrew Sullivan has already covered this ground.
So all can one say is that Steve Schmidt lived the dream. He got to write Sarah Palin an email spelling out how full of shit she is.
update, Yeah, another thing. “I’m afraid he finds our country so flawed he pals around with terrorists.” And meanwhile she’s married to a guy who finds our country so flawed he wants his state to secede.
Marie’s doing okay
I blogged here about Marie, who was waiting for biopsy results the last time I saw her. Good news: no cancer. I kind of guessed as much because I heard her voice halfway across Cafe Depot. Nothing subdued or weighed down about her; she’s like normal.
I ran up and asked for news, and she gave me the lowdown. The lump, whatever it is, has to be removed, but there’s no big threat. I congratulated her and she thanked me, but she’s had the good news for a while now and really wanted to show me a framed print she had bought of a vase and flowers
“On Bullshit” discussed
My thanks to commenter Billjac for bringing up H. G. Frankfurt’s On Bullshit. I found an excerpt (right here; warning, it cuts off in midsentence) and someday I may read the whole book. The excerpt, at least, is very good and taught me a lot.
First thing, I’d said that Frankfurt, in giving his concept the name “bullshit,” simply “slapped on” the term. No! “Bullshit” is most often used to mean something very broad, namely wildly and obviously false statements, but it is also used often enough to mean exactly the concept that Frankfurt has in mind. As far as I can tell, no other word is used for that one idea, so what can you do? Out of stubbornness, I’ll refer to the Frankfurt-identified style of bullshit as “b.s.,” but no, he was not at all arbitrary in saying “bullshit.”
More later, I guess, but I’ve got to run.
Bad job on Palin
That Vanity Fair article on the Gal was pretty lame. (Mentioned it here.) It was notable mainly for two giant holes: nothing about the $150,000 shopping spree, nothing about “Africa is a country/who’s in Nafta?” and the other imbecilities Palin was supposed to have committed during her debate prep. Those were major stories: if a really plugged-in behind-the-scenes tell-all piece about Palin comes out, I want to hear anything I can about whether those allegations are true.
All right, the piece mentions the shopping spree, a one-time passing mention, and refers to it as if spree and pricetag were established facts. But no details and no presentation of evidence. At the time of the original stories, some paper or web site reported that one of the stores in question said it had no record of the purchase allegedly made there. One hopes a big-deal piece like the Vanity Fair article would help us wade into questions like that. But the best we get is the forlorn hope that the spree story must be true because the article acts as if it were. Ah well.
(update, The corollary of that last point: the “Africa is a country/who’s in Nafta?” stories are probably not true. If the article could have used them it would have, especially since it makes so much noise about the problems between Palin and McCain’s staff during the runup to the debate. Now I get to play told-you-so because I warned friends when the stories came out. Never believe a story sourced to a Republican political operative, especially when he/she is anonymous. It’s a measure of GOP flacks’ moral standing that they are more dishonest than Palin is stupid.)
Another big gap: the fiasco over her nominee for Alaska attorney general. The guy got voted down — “the first time in Alaska history that a cabinet nominee was rejected.” Sounds major! But why did the guy get voted down? The article mentions that he has said dumb things about gays and that he is against “subsistence hunting preferences for Native Americans.” That’s it? That’s enough to get you voted down in Alaska? Well, okay, I guess it’s possible, but sounds like there’s something missing.
Another: Palin’s communications shop. The article says it’s lousy, but everyone has heard that already. How about some examples, or something about the background and style of the shop’s allegedly incompetent director? How about a concise summary of the back-and-forth over whether Palin would speak at the Senate-House fundraiser? That was a damn mess, a great chance to watch her staff’s incompetence in action. Nothing.
The article is just all the usual stuff everyone knows, most of it mentioned headline fashion (did you know Levi Johnston did some tv interviews?), plus a few bits of new material as garnish. The Palin-as-God email, a couple of poignant blind quotes by McCain advisers about what a jerk Palin is, nothing else.
Fuck, what a disappointment.
update, Now this looks promising. A CBS.com story headlined “Palin E-Mails Show Infighting with Staff.” Something to check out.