“It takes something like courage to admit that we will never do better than a politician…”

At this hour it looks like Arlen Specter is going to be on his way out of the U.S. Senate. I voted for Sestak … strike that, as I write this the AP has just called the race for Sestak.

I have mixed feelings here. Even though I voted for Sestak I feel a little sad that Specter is done. I can’t remember a time when he was not the senator for Pennsylvania. I love politics on many levels. I love it as a policy debate, governing process, but most of all as a fight, a struggle between candidates, or parties or coalitions.

And Specter represented, up until tonight, a guy who knew how to win those fights.

Specter is cagey. He’s a political animal. There is something that transcends ideology for me: political talent. I can respect a politician who knows how to fight, even when I disagree with him or her. I love politics and Arlen Specter is a consummate politician.

He just came up against his last fight tonight. He’s giving his concession speech at the moment and it is a little sad.

Specter makes me think of Bruno Latour’s (1988) defense of the politician:

“…no one does any better than the politician. Those others simply have somewhere to hide when they make their mistakes. They can go back and try again. Only the politician is limited to a single shot and has to shoot in public. I challenge anyone to do any better than this, to think any more accurately, or to see any further than the most myopic congressman.” (The Pasteurization of France, p. 210)

On that note I leave this post with a double illustration of Specter at his most politically adept; a double feature that shows how truly good this guy was. How many other politicians have anything equivalent to back-to-back TV ads from Barack Obama in one reelection campaign and George W. Bush in the preceding reelection campaign? No one even comes close.

So ideology aside, my thanks to Arlen Specter for thirty years of service to Pennsylvania and now on to a Sestak victory in November! The last thing we need is a Santorum clone representing us in the U.S. Senate!

Health care crowds

Talk of the crowd is all the rage these days. The word rage here is convenient for me, given that the word describes much of the imagery of the crowd currently being discussed. There are crowds at tea parties, with their subtle and sometimes overt racism; there are crowds at congressional town hall meetings, with their vague and seemingly, amazingly, misinformed anger over health care reform; the crowds that talk to pollsters that are harder to define and thus slowly eroding the credibility of those pollsters (more on that in a later post); shouting; throwing punches; and in all of the talk about these crowds we find a movement toward making the act of gathering problematic in itself.

One image keeps recurring in my mind, that of Kathleen Sebelius attempting to address an audience with Arlen Specter in Philadelphia recently. The key moment comes at about one minute into this video:



She doesn’t seem to understand the nature of the crowd she’s dealing with. As she throws her hands up in frustration, as if to say, “why won’t you listen to reason” she misses the point that the crowd is not there to have a reasonable discussion. It is there to yell. And herein lies the problem for me; the ideological challenge with which I am faced. Can I continue to hold on to the assumption that crowds/audiences, not to mention individuals, can be reasoned with?

I use the term crowd rather than audience because it is a better description. The people who are shouting at members of congress about health care appear to be “barking mad” for lack of a better phrase. I say this not because they have an opinion counter to my own, but because they literally, at points, look like they’re barking rather than speaking; and look mad, crazy-mad not angry-mad.

And here I reach the depressing point. Is the act of gathering in and of itself now damaged? Will pro-health care reform gatherings now be presented in a similar light by media? These “barking-mad crowds” are coming under scrutiny for the organizations behind them, calling into question the act of organization vis-à-vis astroturfing. Will all organization now be tarred as astroturfing?

All of this misses an important point; if the crowd is “inauthentic,” they are not necessarily there to debate the issue of health care, but rather to act as a communication jam; to stop the flow of communication between representatives and constituents who want to interact. Thus, what is presented by actants (the crowd) as authentic outrage and anger as a political act of participation is instead a political act of interruption, at least as it is described here: “If the event were a shouting match, the mob won. [Rep.] Kagen tried talking about the health-care bill, but the roaring chants deafened his attempts.” This textual description is reinforced by video shown on Rachel Maddow.

The word “mob” is becoming more common these days. I’m afraid it might be an accurate description. I don’t recall protests of the left ever substance-less anger. Maybe that’s because I am of the left and I am blinded by my own beliefs here; I think I’m more fair-minded than that, but who knows. We’ll see how today’s forum with Arlen Specter goes.

Throwing Shoes in Free Societies

Sin and Suds

Gil Smart - Sarah Palin fans the flames

Lil' O'Reilly

I love this.

The Daughter of the Sheriff, The Daughter of the Judge

I just watched We Jam Econo, a documentary on the Minutemen. That's the awesome band, not the wacko vigilantes trying to keep Mexicans out of the country. It's a great film. I even got a little choked up when they talked about D. Boone's death. The Minutemen are great, but also love Mike Watt's solo stuff, especially Big Train. This video even had my little girl singing along.

Faux News at its best

From the beginning of the conflict between Russia and Georgia I've gotten the feeling from most of the coverage that Russia has been portrayed as an unprovoked aggressor. If there has been more balanced coverage I haven't seen it. Of course I would not argue that Russia is justified in invading Georgia...like Sheppard Smith says, there are a lot of gray areas in war.

I love when a conservative expresses moral ambiguity.

"I am weak and materialistic"

Oh Danny Boy