Taking it personally

I’m over the worst of my post-election mourning but even though the disappointment and disbelief are lifting, I’m still left with a sad feeling that's just lingering on.

The post-mortem analysis that I’m reading makes a lot of the increased turnout among Christian evangelicals, and people who reported in exit polls that “moral values” was their primary issue. “Moral values” is being interpreted by liberals as code for gay marriage, and whether or not that’s exactly true, a significant part of that increased turnout was undoubtably driven by the anti-gay-marriage amendment propositions that were on the ballots in eleven states. Of course, that’s exactly why they were on those ballots, to drive up the evangelical vote. Every one of those eleven anti-marriage amendments passed, and all by healthy margins. I believe that I read that with the exception of Oregon, they all passed by at least a 2-to-1 margin; several passed by 3-to-1 margins, and in Mississippi, it passed by an incredible 6-to-1 margin.

The lesson to take from this is that the gay marriage issue is a useful one for scaring up (and I use that expression deliberately) Republican voters, and therefore we can expect to see anti-gay-marriage amendments on more state ballots in the future. Combined with the 2-4 Supreme Court appointments that Bush will make during his second term, civil rights for gay Americans have effectively been put on hold for a while.

Those civil rights will come in the end, of course, because polling also tells us that young Americans could give two shits about preventing gay people from getting married, and my experience with college students confirms this; the difference in attitude toward gays between the college students I interact with now, and the attitudes I encountered when I was in college (which was not THAT long ago) is truly striking. But these things take place in the context of human lifetimes, so if you want to get married and particularly if you want to raise children, timing counts.

I honestly don’t expect gay issues to be especially important to straight people when they go to vote and god knows, I am not a good candidate for Big Gay Martyr status myself. None of the high profile gay legal issues really affect me personally right now – I work in a generally tolerant field and hell, I’m not even dating, much less contemplating marriage or children.

But recent events require me to acknowledge that, whatever the short-term practical outcome, I hold a secondary legal status in America. And because in these days right after the election, politics is a little like sports or weather, I’m expected to talk about it casually.

I share an office with a Republican, I’m friends with a couple, and I’m related to a bunch. So now that the election’s over and it didn’t go my way, I have to talk to them about politics without being a dick or a crybaby or a bad sport. Politics shouldn’t spoil personal relationships, after all, right? As much as I might like to drop guilt-bombs like, “Hey, hope your tax cut was worth my human rights,” I can’t do that because I know the story’s more complicated than that (and liberals love complexity!) and anyway it’s just not cricket.

Gay people and black people understand about “passing”and what it costs. Now, again, the world is asking us to pass by pretending not to take it personally, that hey, it’s just politics. I can do that because there’s really no other way. But I don’t have to enjoy it.

Good Feelings Gone.

I live in a nation of strangers.

Just Voted!

And boy did it feel good.

(click, click "There's no place like home, there's no place like home..." click, click)

Strangest moments at Neurosciences ’04, Part II

You would think that the restrooms in a conference center full of PhD’s and grad students would be pretty tame, but no. I’d sooner go to the bathroom at a rock concert than run across a convention center floor with a colon full of fish taco (did I mention the conference was in San Diego?) only to find the kind of mess that was typical at Neurosciences and have to change direction at the last minute and run for the next gent’s, a mere football-field’s length away.

So anyway, there I am, rather anxiously scanning the john for an empty stall when I walk past a stall in which a tidy-looking middle-aged man in a navy suit is seated, pants around ankles, presumably doing what anyone would be there to do. The fact that he’s doing it with the door to the stall wide open is not the strangest part of the picture, however. No, the strangest part would have to be the blue latex gloves on the man’s hands.

An exhibitionist germ freak, I gather. Not that there’s anything...uh... so wrong with that, you just don’t see it every day, that’s all.

I just returned from the 2004 Society for Neuroscience meeting, and I am happy to bring you…

Strangest moments at Neurosciences ’04, Part I

I actually arrived for Neurosciences early this year, to attend a satellite conference for evolutionary neuroscience. I checked into the hotel on Wednesday night and Leanne joined me on Friday night so that she could start the Neurosciences meeting on Saturday.

So Leanne gets in Friday and I meet her and Russ and Fay out for drinks. We get back into the room after midnight, to find this message in a woman’s voice on the hotel voice mail, left at 9:30 pm:

Hi, this message is for Leanne and Josh, um, if this is your guyses room… Josh, are you a little dick suckin’ homo or what? Why are you leavin’ my man, um, your guyses number, your hotel number? Um, really cool of you… if you guys are pretty fucking gross. And, uh, if I ever see you, I will beat you like a bitch. Okay? And your woman probably has nasty piss flaps. Okay? Bye.

Let me cut you off before you even ask: no, I have no idea. None. I thought it was a joke at first, but after many repeated listenings, I’m finally convinced that it wasn’t. What I know is that this woman knew both my name and Leanne’s, but clearly doesn’t actually know us at all. No idea where she got this information. And I probably never will. For the record, someone had to explain to me what "piss flaps" are. Gross.

Why I Love America

So many wonderful things to buy, and so many wholesome activities for the family.

Tastee Freeze

This looks like fun, and some of the real bloggers are doing it, so why not?


1. Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly? Gene Kelly. Sang better, too.
2. The Great Gatsby or The Sun Also Rises? Hemingway always wins.
3. Count Basie or Duke Ellington? Ellington.
4. Cats or dogs? Cats, fer sure.
5. Matisse or Picasso? Matisse.
6. Yeats or Eliot? Pass, although I suspect I'd prefer Eliot.
7. Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin? Keaton.
8. Flannery O’Connor or John Updike? Pass.
9. To Have and Have Not or Casablanca? Pass.
10. Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning? de Kooning.
11. The Who or the Stones? Don't listen to either, but I kind of like The Who on principle.
12. Philip Larkin or Sylvia Plath? Pass.
13. Trollope or Dickens? Pass.
14. Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald? Everybody loves Billie, but you know what? They're wrong. Ella was a better singer, formally and stylistically. If you don't believe me, watch the Strange Fruit documentary and watch her chop her way through the song that defined her. Painful. A mannerist.
15. Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy? Tolstoy.
16. The Moviegoer or The End of the Affair? Pass.
17. George Balanchine or Martha Graham? Pass.
18. Hot dogs or hamburgers? Blech.
19. Letterman or Leno? Blech.
20. Wilco or Cat Power? Pass. And, shut up.
21. Verdi or Wagner? Verdi, are you kidding? Life's too short.
22. Grace Kelly or Marilyn Monroe? Hm, tough, but I'd probably go with Grace.
23. Bill Monroe or Johnny Cash? Johnny Cash, and for the last time, just because I like jazz doesn't mean I'll like bluegrass.
24. Kingsley or Martin Amis? Pass.
25. Robert Mitchum or Marlon Brando? Brando, but only by a little. And I know a certain grandmother who likes her some Mitchum, rowr!
26. Mark Morris or Twyla Tharp? Pass.
27. Vermeer or Rembrandt? Rembrandt by a mile.
28. Tchaikovsky or Chopin? Hm, tough. Chopin, I guess.
29. Red wine or white? Red.
30. Noël Coward or Oscar Wilde? Coward.
31. Grosse Pointe Blank or High Fidelity? High Fidelity. GPB was silly.
32. Shostakovich or Prokofiev? I would have said Prokofiev until I heard the Emerson Quartet play Shostakovich. Wow.
33. Mikhail Baryshnikov or Rudolf Nureyev? Nureyev.
34. Constable or Turner? Turner, but I like Constable too.
35. The Searchers or Rio Bravo? Pass.
36. Comedy or tragedy? Tragedy, I'm afraid.
37. Fall or spring? Spring, as long as I live in New England.
38. Manet or Monet? Monet, and I don't want to hear any snorting about it either.
39. The Sopranos or The Simpsons? Sopranos.
40. Rodgers and Hart or Gershwin and Gershwin? Wow, hard. Can I say Porter?
41. Joseph Conrad or Henry James? Conrad.
42. Sunset or sunrise? Sunset. Ahhhhhh... the light, the LIGHT!
43. Johnny Mercer or Cole Porter? Oh, dammit. Rodgers and Hart, I guess.
44. Mac or PC? So, so, so Mac, for now and forevermore.
45. New York or Los Angeles? New York.
46. Partisan Review or Horizon? Pass.
47. Stax or Motown? Stax, baby.
48. Van Gogh or Gauguin? Van Gogh. Gauguin was not only a lesser painter, but an asshole, too.
49. Steely Dan or Elvis Costello? Steely Dan.
50. Reading a blog or reading a magazine? Blog. Yep, the transformation is complete.
51. John Gielgud or Laurence Olivier? Olivier.
52. Only the Lonely or Songs for Swingin’ Lovers? Uh... what?
53. Chinatown or Bonnie and Clyde? Chinatown.
54. Ghost World or Election? Election. hee...
55. Minimalism or conceptual art? Minimalism.
56. Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny? Bugs, but Daffy has his charms.
57. Modernism or postmodernism? Modernism (wistful sigh)
58. Batman or Spider-Man? Spidey, unless I can specify Adam West.
59. Emmylou Harris or Lucinda Williams? Pass.
60. Johnson or Boswell? Pass.
61. Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf? Pass.
62. The Honeymooners or The Dick Van Dyke Show? Dick Van Dyke for sure.
63. An Eames chair or a Noguchi table? Like 'em both, and they're probably equally comfortable to sit on.
64. Out of the Past or Double Indemnity? Pass.
65. The Marriage of Figaro or Don Giovanni? Hm, Marriage I think.
66. Blue or green? Green.
67. A Midsummer Night’s Dream or As You Like It? Midsummer Night's Dream. Did you know that "Spot" is Shakespeare's dog?
68. Ballet or opera? Opera.
69. Film or live theater? Film.
70. Acoustic or electric? Jazz? Acoustic, if I really had to choose.
71. North by Northwest or Vertigo? Vertigo.
72. Sargent or Whistler? Whistler.
73. V.S. Naipaul or Milan Kundera? Pass.
74. The Music Man or Oklahoma? Music Man.
75. Sushi, yes or no? Oh hell yes.
76. The New Yorker under Ross or Shawn? Pass.
77. Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee? Albee.
78. The Portrait of a Lady or The Wings of the Dove? Huh?
79. Paul Taylor or Merce Cunningham? Cunningham. He's such a sweetie, and he hung out with John Cage.
80. Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies van der Rohe? Wright for sure.
81. Diana Krall or Norah Jones? Jones for timbre, Krall for style and craft.
82. Watercolor or pastel? Pastel. Anyone who picks watercolor hasn't seen Redon.
83. Bus or subway? Subway.
84. Stravinsky or Schoenberg? Igor.
85. Crunchy or smooth peanut butter? Smooooove.
86. Willa Cather or Theodore Dreiser? Pass.
87. Schubert or Mozart? Schubert.
88. The Fifties or the Twenties? Fifties if I can hang out with musicians or beats.
89. Huckleberry Finn or Moby-Dick? Huck.
90. Thomas Mann or James Joyce? Oh god, neither, please.
91. Lester Young or Coleman Hawkins? Hm, tough. Lester I think.
92. Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman? Emily.
93. Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill? I feel guilty about it, but I'd have to say Churhill.
94. Liz Phair or Aimee Mann? Pass.
95. Italian or French cooking? What a cruel choice. Can I say Italian by a French chef?
96. Bach on piano or harpsichord? Piano. Dynamic variation is the bomb.
97. Anchovies, yes or no? Yes indeed.
98. Short novels or long ones? Short, but no matter.
99. Swing or bebop? Bebop, definitely.
100. "The Last Judgment" or "The Last Supper"? Pass.

Caterpillars!

I wracked my brain for a solid 45 seconds trying to come up with a cute punny title for this post about caterpillars, and I couldn't, yet I must say my peace. (Or my piece, I don't know which it is...) The exclamation point is all I've got for cuteness this time.

Anyway, we didn't get any cicadas up here, which makes it safe for me to claim that I would have eaten some if only they were around. (I've heard more than once that they taste like "minty shrimp," and I can't decide if that sounds like something good.) Instead of cicadas, we got bucketloads of the decidedly inedible but much less noisy Eastern Tent Caterpillars.

I mean, they are all over the place. The last time I went running I was getting ankle cramps trying to dodge them on the sidewalk until I finally gave up and figured I could always wash the guts off the bottom of my sneakers. For those who are interested, if you get them just right they do make an audible pop -- I know, even with no chitinous exoskeleton, can you believe it? -- and their innerds are bright green and come shooting out one end like toothpaste. (Hm, maybe they are minty after all).

Far more serious than gumming up the tread of my running shoes is the consequence of a serious tent caterpillar infestation: they defoliate certain kinds of trees, which in turn detracts from the autumn leaf color show that New England tourism depends on.

Even more serious than that is the subtle sense of dread the little demons have injected into my lunchtime. In light of the relatively few warm sunny days we get up here in these parts, summertime finds all of us basement-dwellers up blinking our eyes in the sunshine, taking our lunchbreak out on the back lawn of the psychology building. Lately our midday reverie has been punctuated by periodic shrieks and spasms when one of the girls -- I won't say which ones, but it is always one of the girls, so sue me for being sexist -- finds one of the crawlies on her foot/leg/ arm, which, given the season, is as likely as not to be bare. The foot/leg/arm, I mean. Well, I guess the caterpillar is bare, too, if you don't count the fuzz, but they're always bare. You know what I meant.

Now, I like watching girls scream and freak out when they touch something icky as much as anyone, but it does get tiresome while you're trying to eat and converse, and what's worse is that it draws your attention to the ground around you as you check to see if you, also, are about to be crawled upon by a caterpillar. And you are. Once you look around, you come to the unsettling realization that there are hordes of the things crawling through the grass, and they're all headed right toward you. Say you pick a few up ("With your fingers?! Eeeew!") and fling them away. They come back. Say you get up and scout out a new grassy spot with no sign of caterpillars and settle down anew. Three shakes, and they've found you. Inching along, slowly but surely, deterred only by obliteration, like little furry zombies. (And no, that was not an oblique reference to John Kerry, who is certainly not little, nor, as far as I know, furry. I said I wasn't gonna do that kind of thing anymore.)

What all of the preceding is really about is setting up justification for a particularly ugly bit of violence I engaged in recently. Last weekend, I followed Laurie out into her garden to see if she was growing anything I wanted to eat help out, and whaddya know but it's pulsing with the furry black devils. (My god, do you think the phrase "black devils" is going to bring all sorts of creepy white supremicists to the site via Google? I mean, I'd like more traffic and everything but I'm not that desperate. If I were, I'd do much better by dropping in mentions of REAL NUDE GIRLS, etc., don't you think?) Laurie, for what it's worth, makes absolutely the most entertaining girlie gross-out noises I've ever heard. But something about her shrieks brought out the knight in shining armor within, or alternatively, the 12-year-old boy within, and I grabbed a stick and went completely kung-fu on about a zillion caterpillars. No, make that "went completely Tarantino" because there was way more minty green guts than you'll ever see in a kung-fu movie.

It was a foul deed, I'll admit, but don't you see, I HAD to do it. Think of the poor garden vegetables, devoured as Laurie looked on, screaming in distress! Think of the New England tourist economy!





I'm a bad person, aren't I?

Doctor Delicious

Dartmouth's commencement ceremony was yesterday. I had no idea that we were giving an honorary doctorate to Alice Waters (who is a wee small thing in person, FWIW). How cool. If I had known, I might have come prepared so I could throw some underwear on stage like a good groupie. Edible underwear, of course.

What the hell does "Gipper" mean, anyway?

If this were a political blog, I probably try to write something nice and moderate about the recent passing of Ronald Reagan, something honoring the good he did for the American psyche, while regretting those policies I dislike and some precedents he set, in light of our current leadership.

But this isn't a political blog, and at this point I'm already in danger of picking a fight that I don't actually want to have with a substantial portion of my readership (i.e., the portion I'm related to). So instead, let me tell you about the time I dressed up as Ronald Reagan.

I don't know exactly what year it was, but it would have to have been 5th or 6th grade for me, so sometime in the first half of Reagan's first term. I also don't remember what the occasion was - couldn't have been Halloween, because we were all dressed up as American historical figures, but it couldn't have been the 4th of July either, because this was at school and the 4th of July is, you know, in July.

Anyway, pretty much all of the girls put on poofy blouses, skirts, and bonnets, and went as Betsy Ross. A lot of the boys went as historical figures (meaning dead guys), but I, already sure of Reagan's greatness and historical stature, put on jeans, a plaid shirt, and my blue blazer, put some of my mother's rouge on my cheeks, and I can't remember what kind of crap in my hair, and went as Ronald Reagan. I went around all day, leaning my head to one side, saying "Well..." a the start of each sentence, and doing the best impression of Reagan's voice that a prepubescent boy could manage.

There's not much more to the story than that, although in retrospect it occurs to me that even at a private school, Reagan was probably not overwhelmingly popular with my teachers, who therefore probably didn't think I was as cute as I did. I had completely forgotten about that until this week, and I'll probably forget about it again, but it's a funny memory while it lasts.

Dirty Minded

So I just went to my friend Hai's thesis defense. He's an MD-PhD doing medical engineering, and his research has been on brain imaging during neurosurgery. So, say you have a brain tumor. The docs'd take an MRI image of your brain to use for guiding the surgeon. The problem is, once you pop open the old brain pan, stuff starts moving around. Brain tissue is very soft and floats around in a bath of cerebrospinal fluid. (God, brain words are cool. "cerebrospinal") Once the skull is open, the tissue can swell, CSF can slosh out, and that's before the surgeon even starts poking around. So these engineers like Hai try to come up with ways to model the movement and deformation of the brain tissue so the surgeon can keep tabs on where the tumor's going with all that movement.

Anyway, I bring it up because it turns out they rely on existing models of soil movement to model the brain movement. Soil movement. You know soil: some solid stuff, some liquid stuff, oozing and drifting around under pressure. Just like brains. Who knew?


In unrelated news, Leanne is arriving tonight for a little New Hampsha visit and I've gotta go get ready, so I don't even have time to tell you about my trip to New York last weekend. Brief preview: still crowded, still expensive, traffic still shitty.

Have a good holiday weekend, y'all.

My Last Kerry Insult Post

I think it's clear that my position on Kerry is pretty much the same as this guy's, but the time has come to accept the fact that the upcoming presidential election will once again be a choice between the lesser of two evils, with one of them being a whole lot lesser than the other. It's time to rally, it's time to unite, it's time for Democrats and scared reasonable Americans of all stripes to back away from the circular firing squad and support our best hope against four more years of Bush the Usurper.

So, after this post, I will refrain from taking cheap shots at Kerry, but I did have to do this one last one just to point out that this was pretty funny, even though William Saletan doesn't know what he's talking about when he tries to talk science.

Everyone's Doin' the Relaunch!


Blogger has relaunched (which is presently causing me no end of confusion), The Robot has relaunched (which I suspect is related to some nosy little robots), and around here, Mother Nature has certainly relaunched (Fiddleheads! Yay! Flowers! Yay! Seminude undergrads! Yay!). Obviously, the time is now for a relaunch of my anemic little blogging effort. (As I believe I said something about a New Year's Resolution a while back, I'd like to point out that we're not yet through the halfway mark of the year. It seems like that should count on my side, for some reason.)

So here's to a renewed promise of plenty of nothingness from the life of yours truly. Much bloggy goodness to follow. In the spirit of renewal, I'd like to congratulate all of the happy couples in Massachussetts who are launching Relationship 2.0 today, and offer this from the man who could have been our president, if only we were good enough to deserve him.

Happy Rat Day

So, what will YOU be doing to celebrate World Rat Day?

(Ever have one of those conversations about who's weirder, dog people or cat people? Looks like those folks have some competition.)

Link 'n Run: Gay Marriage

There is of course much more that I could and should say on this subject, but dammit, I just don't have time and I missed my best opportunity when all the San Francisco weddings were going on anyway. While I realize that link-n-run posts aren't really good form on a personal blog, I just had to share the two very best posts I've seen elsewhere on the subject which have just recently come to my attention. Neither are long and both are worth your time:

If you like words

If you like pictures

Go Get 'Em, Killer!

Now that I've had a little time to get used to the idea of John Kerry being the candidate I'm gonna have to support if I want to get rid of George W. Bush ? and lord knows, I want to get rid of George W. Bush ? I'm trying to warm up to the guy a bit. To help the warming-up process along a little, I thought I'd give my new candidate a nickname. You know how it was kind of cute to call Howard Dean "Hoho" and say stuff like "The Doctor is in!," etc. But what to call ol' Johnnycakes...

Fortunately, thanks to that Dern Lib'ral Media and the completely non-existent Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (TM), I've got an idea!

First there we found out that Johnny O'Kerry wasn't really an Irishman like he (never) claimed to be, but was in fact a big ol' jewy jew.

Then there was this from Brian Sullivan, who has rather recently developed a dislike for Kerry for not singlehandedly predicting the 9/11 attacks and stopping the hijackers at Logan Airport:

"He just did the Pontius Pilate thing and passed the buck" on back through the federal bureaucracy, said Brian Sullivan, a retired FAA special agent from the Boston area who in May 2001 personally warned Kerry that Logan was ripe for a "jihad" suicide operation possibly involving "a coordinated attack."

So you see, he's a jew and he's Pontius Pilate, all in one. Now, thanks to a little helpful dot-connecting from Mel "Intestines-on-a-stick" Gibson, I think you can see where this is going.

John Kerry killed Jesus.

John Kerry, Jesus Killer. It's perfect, see? Even the initials are the same. Yeah, I know they're trying to work the John Kennedy connection by calling him "JFK" all the time, but I think we all know what that 'F' really stands for...

Ouch!

Rats — they bite, the little darlin's.

I'll take one order of "brains of the living," please.

I've been joking for a while now that I'd vote for a dead body before I'd vote for Bush. I guess now I'll actually have that option.

First Discriminatory Amendment

Just a little note for history's sake: Today, February 24th, 2004, compassionate conservative president George W. Bush, who is a uniter and not a divider, publicly put his support behind a Federal Marriage Amendment, which is, to my knowledge, the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution explicitly designed to limit the rights of a subgroup of U.S. citizens.

Wait... did I get that link right?

One more for idealism!


Actually, now that I've got that off my chest, let me propose to all my fellow mourning Deaniacs that we pour a Vermont microbrew, turn up the soundtrack, and raise a toast to what might have been.

Yeeeeeeeeeeearrrrgh!

So...

Since everybody knows I've been supporting Howard Dean, I've noticed lately that a lot of people seem to be waiting for me to say something about the dissolution of his campaign. I haven't had much to say because the whole thing has been so disappointing and infuriating that it just puts me in a bad mood to think about it too hard. But now that it's officially over, I suppose I ought to say whatever it is I have to say and get on with it.

The end of this, the "First Internet Campaign" has seen a lot of internet soul-searching and internet post-mortems, and there are a number of analyses of what went wrong that broadly capture my own feelings. Still, if you want to know what I think happened and how I feel about it, well, here's what I think happened and here's how I feel about it.

I think Dean lost Iowa fair and square. They sent a bunch of volunteers in there who didn't know how to work a caucus and so they screwed it up. This was a mistake that reflected the nature of their outsider campaign; sometimes insiders know stuff you need to know if you want on the inside too. The Gephardt/Dean ad wars probably didn't help, but I doubt they made as big a difference as the mainstream pundits claim. In any case, Dean lost Iowa because he deserved to lose Iowa.

He didn't deserve to lose New Hampshire, however. In different times, his loss in Iowa wouldn't have meant anything to New Hampshire voters, who have shown a willingness in the past to ignore the judgement of their midwestern brethren. He lost New Hampshire, in my view, because of two factors he did not control: the sheer terror of Democrats nationwide at the prospect of seeing Bush (re)elected, and the determination of the mainstream press to assassinate his candidacy.

Democrats are scared about a second Bush administration, and I don't blame them. The prospect of Bush making Supreme Court appointments is enough to make we wake up screaming at night. The arbitraryness of the Bush v. Gore decision and the gutless passivity of Democratic "leadership" only heightens a sense of powerlessness that exacerbates that fear. The result is that most Democratic primary voters don't give a shit who their next president is, as long as it isn't Bush. Thus, the "electability" criterion: people are making their primary voting decision based on who they think other people will vote for. I could write pages on why this is a mistake, but I'll leave it at this – beyond some very broad generalizations (Al Sharpton, for example, was never gonna be president) it is an impossible calculation to make to get inside the head of a mythical national voter averaged over class, race, gender, geographic location, education level, etc, and try to gauge who this nonexistant model voter would find appealing. The very act of trying to make this judgement was bound to obscure our own emotional reactions to a candidate which are, ironically, probably the best predictors of who other people would vote for.

And this is how the trap was set. Long before the fateful Iowa concession speech, the mainstream media had been developing a narrative of Dean as "unelectable." Before I go any further, let me be perfectly clear about something:

There was ABSOLUTELY NO objective reason why Dean was less electable than any of the other Democratic candidates. None.

But not if you listened to any of the talking heads on TV and radio. Dean was unelectable because he was too liberal. Because he was too conservative. Because he was too angry. Because he was too nice to gays. Because he was anti-war. Because his supporters were too white/young/educated. Because he was from Vermont. Because doctors are arrogant. Because Vermonters are hippies/yuppies. Because he was "unstable." Because he "shot from the hip." Because he was dishonest. Because he told the truth too much. Et cetera. The biggest thing all these reasons had in common was that they were all demonstrably, obviously untrue to anyone who was paying attention. To those of us who knew Dean up close from his time as governor of Vermont, the "liberal" tag was laughable; one of the things I liked about him early on was that he was, like me, a little too conservative to be called liberal but a little too liberal to put up with conservatives. Silly me, I actually thought this would make him more, you know, electable. But really, all of these characterizations were laughable.

Since we all knew already that Dean was angry and unstable, the Iowa concession speech could only be seen as proof. Why else would someone holler like that? Because he was trying to be heard in a very noisy room, perhaps? Because he was trying to pump up a room full of shocked and disappointed supporters? Because the audio signal we heard played hundreds of times in the next week was fed directly from his directional mic? No, no, no. It's obvious. He must be crazy.

One of the saddest parts about the whole thing was that I wasn't hearing this from my conservative family members. I was hearing this from my liberal friends, educated people who were paying attention to the race. What they weren't paying attention to was how they were being manipulated by the media, and how their own decision making was being twisted against their purposes. They were relying on a professional class of media political analysts to do their filtering, and didn't realize they were being swindled by those same professionals.
In the end I hope that this will be one of the upsides of the Dean campaign: a lot of people who got emotionally involved in the campaign had their attention drawn, in a memorably painful way, to the power and corruption of mainstream media filters. Maybe some of those people on Dean's activist list will be not only more sophistcated consumers of news media, but will help to spread the word. Being a loyal reader of the Daily Howler, I already have an appreciation of just what a bitterly ironic joke it is when people claim that the media has a liberal bias. But most people don't, and this is one of so many examples of how Republicans have been far more effective at shaping appealing narratives than Democrats have. I hope Dean's figurative assassination is a wake-up call for Democrats. I also hope that the experience that all those Dean supporters had with the organizing and communicating power of the internet will be the beginning of the end for establishment media. I still have a "Kill Your Television" bumper sticker on my car, and now I mean it more than ever.

As for how I feel, well, I feel like crap. A familiar kind of crap, unfortunately. The same kind of crap I've felt like during every other presidential campaign as I anticipated casting a lesser-of-two-evils vote. It was pretty exciting for a minute there to think that we might actually have a president who was one of us. Kerry will certainly be an improvement on Bush. But "not unbelievably awful" isn't the same thing as "good."

Josh's Law for predicting political outcomes:

Assume the worst-case scenario. You will always be rewarded, either with the satisfaction of being right, or the pleasant surprise of exceeded expectations. Usually the former.

Example 1. John Kerry will be the Democratic Party nominee for presidential candidate.

As a bonus: Josh's Law for evaluating conspiracy theories: Assume stupidity until malevolence can be established. Even when it can, you'll rarely have cause to regret the stupidity assumption.

Example 2. The (second) Bush administration: both stupid and evil.

THE SUSPENSE

is absolutely killing me.

One More Reason

To love Howard Dean. From Tapped: "The Deans are a couple who met in a neuroanatomy class."

Aren't I always sayin' brains is sexy?

(the link is worth reading, btw: a case for why having a nerd president might be a good idea)

Frostbitten for Dean

Went to a rally for Hoho preceding this event. It was pretty fun, but GAT DAMN was it cold. There was a lot of "Jumping Dean" and "Hop for Howard" calls among the cheers to keep the old toes from freezing off, and at one point I ran into a nearby building and jammed my toes inbetween the blades of a classroom radiator to get some feeling back. The forum itself was quite good, and I have to say, Dean is just SO many heads above any candidate I've ever seen before. It'll be a cryin' shame if the stupid-assed media succeeds in driving him out of the race.

Dear Democratic Iowa Voters:

I heard a lot of you interviewed last night and this morning in the wake of the surprising caucus results yesterday. The sentiment that the media seemed to capture in these interviews was that you were most concerned with finding a candidate who could beat George W. Bush in the general election. I gather that because of all the soundbites with Iowans saying, "I just want someone who can beat Bush." I agree! We should be very concerned about beating George W. Bush, because after four more years of his administration, we're going to be in very serious trouble.

Apparently, a majority of you thought John Kerry has the best chance of beating George W. Bush, since you gave him the most delegates. Good thinking! Because, you know how the American voter is - always making decisions on silly things like looks and style. A candidate who looks and sounds like Boris Karloff in zombie drag will definitely win the hearts of the American voter! American voters aren't just about superficial stuff, though, because they care about integrity. I know this because I heard a Republican Iowa caucus-goer (who no one on Earth but that dern liberal-biased media cares about since the Republican caucus doesn't mean anything to anyone this year) interviewed, and she said, "President Bush has proven his integrity." That's why he's so popular! And that's why John Kerry is the man to beat him, because he's proven his integrity, too. He proved it by basing his early career on his courageous protests against an expensive and pointless war, sold to Americans with lies, and then courageously voting to approve George W. Bush's pursuit of an expensive and pointless war, sold to Americans with lies. We've got our man!

Apparently many of you also felt that John Edwards was the man to beat George W. Bush. And I think you're on to something, you shrewd Iowans! He's pretty, no doubt about that, and American voters like 'em pretty. I mean, I know I do. He has nice hair, too. Bill Clinton had nice hair. I know because the media used to like to talk about it all the time. He spent a lot of money on his haircuts and even brought the Los Angeles airport to a standstill having an expensive haircut on Air Force One. Okay, he didn't actually, but that dern liberal-biased media didn't want to spoil our fun by telling us the truth. Anyway, John Edwards sure is pretty and has pretty hair. He's Southern, too, and all of our presidents have to be Southern now. That was a condition of surrender when the South lost the Civil War. George W. Bush knows this and that's why he pretends to be from Texas when he's really from Connecticut. He's smart. So is John Edwards, which is why he's really a man to beat Bush. I'm sure his advantages of prettiness and Southernness -- real Southernness! -- will be enough to outweigh his disadvantages of not having any money or campaign organization. Because everybody knows that money and organization aren't really that important in modern American politics. Especially when you're pretty!

So, I just wanted to write you Democratic Iowans and say: Good job! Nice Work! Now you can go back to all your farm chores and stop fucking up my election.

Love,
Josh

P.S. I am never eating corn again. -J.

P.P.S. Nobody's taken ethanol seriously as an alternative energy source for decades, so let's just call it what it is -- welfare -- and call you what you are: barnyard-smellin' welfare queens in coveralls. Okay, thanks again! xxooj

Good News!

This is my favorite news story of the day, and would be even if it didn't feature this sentence:

"Well, I haven't won the lottery yet, so I don't figure I'll get that," Moore said as a hot cow brain sandwich cut in half sat on a plate before him.

Resolutions

I’m a big believer in New Year’s resolutions. Like practically everybody else, I’ve made zillions of them that I didn’t keep past the first week, but occasionally the feeling of hitting the reset button at the start of a new year can have powerful results. I think it was 7 years ago that I made this New Year’s resolution: “I will start the process of applying to graduate school and change my career.” That was a biggie, and I took it seriously, and in a few months, lord willing, I’ll be graduating with my Ph.D.

That same year I started a practice which I continued for several years afterward, but haven’t done recently. I took a 6-week break from all my vices, which at the time were: booze, coffee, cigars, TV, and junk food. The point was not that I had a real problem with any of these, but cutting them all out was a lesson in the place they took in my life. How much time, for instance, did I take making coffee everday, and when was it that I had an urge to drink it? I’ve never watched much TV since then, my interest in cigars is on a slow wane – they’re really nice to be sure, but I just never have time – I’ve never drunk nearly as much coffee as I did then (2 pots a day) although the coffee-making ritual has certainly been a handy avoidance behavior at work sometimes. I have continued, occasionally, to indulge in drink more than is good for me, but my pleasure in doing so declines as my interest in my work increases: you need brains to study brains.

Since I’ve been in grad school, this ritual’s been complicated by two things. One is that my vices are considerably more dear comforts in this environment. Without them, I’ve got precious little goodness going on until I get out of here. The other is that they’re not really vices anymore. The lesson I learned the first few times stuck, basically, and so now my six weeks of abstinence seem like a pointless gesture. The last couple of times I’ve tried it, I reach a point a few weeks in where I’m saying, “Why am I doing this, again? I really want a god damn cup of coffee.” But I’ve really been feeling like I’d like that sense of rebooting again, though, so I’ve given a lot of thought to a big, bad new list of resolutions for 2004. Enough thought that I’m just now ready to get started with ‘em.



And after all that, I’m not going to tell you what they are. C’mon, that stuff is personal. But if you’re wondering, yes, one of them involves this blog.