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  epigonic 1:45 am on June 16, 2009 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

  Documenting the Protests in Iran 

  One of the interesting things about being totally off the grid these past three days is that I was oblivious to what was happening in Iran. I would probably have followed the news obsessively if I had been in town, and connected.

  Today, I made up for that a bit and out of purely personal interest put together a quick collection of videos from around the web covering the protests. The Channel 4 UK coverage is particularly worthy. I’ll try to update my particular collection over the coming days.

  But short of that, you’ll find the videos being collected by the larger Vodpod community are really comprehensive and good and interesting. I’ve listed some other resources here on the Vodpod blog if you’re interested.  A great example of crowdsourcing at work, where people collecting individually and independently, driven by their owns needs and desires, produce a worthy and timely news product.

   

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  epigonic 7:23 am on January 2, 2009 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

  The Era of Good Work 

  My friend Om has a good provocative post up today: With 2008, Let’s Say Good-bye to Mediocrity. Go read it.

  Om writes: “In 2008, U.S. society — from the very top (our political leaders) to the very bottom (our bankers) — came to embrace mediocrity.”

  I have a slightly different take. The examples Om cites of our supposed embrace of mediocrity are are trailing indicators, not leading indicators. They tell us more about where we’ve been and what we’ve done wrong, not where we’re going.

  2008 wasn’t the year we accepted or embraced mediocrity; it was the year the chickens came home to roost. It was the year where the bill came due for two, maybe three, decades of steady cultural and political rot. Decades in which our individual and collective desire for more money and more stuff drove our policies and our behaviors.

  An era where your worth was measured not by your character or good works, but by the size of your yacht or your private jet. Where we were endlessly fascinated by folks like Mark Cuban (a funny and interesting guy, to be sure, but famous because principally because he got Yahoo! to buy his company for way more money than it was worth) and Paris Hilton. Where an MBA degree was revered, not mocked. ( Trillion Dollar Meltown, Richistan, and Liar’s Poker — the latter two the perfect bookends for our sad story — are excellent chronicles of the past thirty or so years.)

  When I try to divine and look at the leading indicators (oddly and ironically in light of the heavy toll of the past year and likely heavier toll to be paid this coming year and my own ingrained and deeply-rooted cynicism) I find myself more optimistic this new year than any other in recent memory about the state of the country and where things might go the next twenty to thirty years.

  I don’t see people embracing mediocrity  — I saw that in spades in the late 1980s, the very, very overhyped 1990s, and the first part of this decade. Rather, I see more evidence of more people doing good work in more places than I can recall in my adult lifetime.

  Some examples:

  1. Start with politics. Coming up on the one year anniversary of Barack Obama’s win in Iowa, and nineteen days from his inaugural, I find myself more optimistic about the state of our politics than ever before.

  It’s not only — or principally — because of Obama. Rather, it’s  the serious, sober-minded, and eminently practical bunch of kids in their 20s who spent the last year and a half working for him. I got to see them up close, as a volunteer for Obama in California, Indiana and finally Ohio. Many in the press, trained to be cynical and wry, tried to portray this as some sort of cultish movement (volunteers and workers were “Obamabots”). But really, it was a group of kids (and they were mostly kids) who were sick of how the country was being run, and who decided to do something about it rather than complain or sit on their hands. They didn’t protest, they didn’t march on Washington — they just got stuff done, did the hard, demanding, and unglamorous work of grassroots politicking, and changed our country.

  2. The hard-headed, largely unheralded work by folks to fix our public school system. People like Michelle Rhee, or Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg, who founded KIPP.

  3. Our media. Don’t laugh. Between the renaissance of great writing and performance on television (The Wire, Sopranos, Mad Men, Elvis Costello’s new show, and many, many more) and the development of sustainable, strong new voices on the Internet (folks like Om but also Josh Marshall at TPM, music sites like Pitchfork and Stereogum) there are more signs of life than ever before. It’s invigorating and inspiring.

  4. And, closer to my daily life, an impressive wave of startups and entrepreneurs launching companies the last three to four years.  The work done by this second wave of startups has been far better, and resulted in many more useful and more durable services, than the efforts of their predecessors in mid- to late-1990s (I’m in a position to judge, I’ve been involved in both eras!). More of these companies act like Craiglist (the most important web company after google); few act like Pets.com.

  It’s not incidental that this second wave of  entrepreneurs came of age after (and in reaction to) a previous — if smaller scale and more localized — calamity; the bursting of the dot-com bubble.  Folks who worked in and around the Internet business realized they’d been on a bender, went to work putting their value systems back in order, and renewed their focus on doing good work, not just doing well.

  As a society and country, we’re paying the price for our decades of binging this year. It will be painful. But people seem serious about confronting the problems, about doing real work again, putting our values back in order, and that gives me hope on this first day of this very new year.

  monycoleman, miroslodki, cmajor7 and 6 others are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
  • 

    Om Malik 2:33 pm on January 2, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

    Mark

    That is a very uplifting take on things and yes, we need to do good work. I quite enjoyed reading the post. Now as part of this new era, you must blog more often.

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      epigonic 4:20 pm on January 2, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      @om — thanks!

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    Ghazala Khan 7:23 pm on January 2, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

    Interview Request

    Hello Dear and Respected,
    I hope you are fine and carrying on the great work you have been doing for the Internet surfers. I am Ghazala Khan from The Pakistani Spectator (TPS), We at TPS throw a candid look on everything happening in and for Pakistan in the world. We are trying to contribute our humble share in the webosphere. Our aim is to foster peace, progress and harmony with passion.

    We at TPS are carrying out a new series of interviews with the notable passionate bloggers, writers, and webmasters. In that regard, we would like to interview you, if you don’t mind. Please send us your approval for your interview at my email address “ghazala.khi at gmail.com”, so that I could send you the Interview questions. We would be extremely grateful.

    regards.

    Ghazala Khan
    The Pakistani Spectator
    http://www.pakspectator.com

  • 

    lwayswright 7:25 pm on January 2, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

    Very interesting post!

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    lancemaurer 7:38 pm on January 2, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

    Excellent and positive post. Please post more often.

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    strategicsenseinc 7:54 pm on January 2, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

    What a great post you are certainly on target! As a champion of people and a person working with leaders to help them improve their leadership skills, we believe integrity, honesty and the importance of following a set of values one can be proud of is a good start! This post is a great example of where we can direct ourselves in 2009 and the coming years.
    Thanks!

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    cmajor7 7:57 pm on January 2, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

    Thanks for the uplifting post. I’m not as optimistic, but that’s probably because I’m not reading enough good stuff, like yours.

    Keep it up.

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    miroslodki 9:06 pm on January 2, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

    Much of what you speak traces back to a decline in an appreciation that values define value. That greed for innovation, long-term value creation and goals can transform and empower leadership to accomplish the seemingly impossible.(see “greed is good” http://miroslodki.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/greed-is-good/

    This requires a new breed of leadership that is prepared to sacrifice for an ideal and not just be rented out to manage the pursue of it. New leadership that selects and supports teams that share in that vision.

    Except we create matrix management systems where no one is accountable for anything -where specialists optimize locally not globally and eveyone has their own set of ‘relevant’ metrics to justify their value to the hive.

    Businesses have no higher ideal than profit maximization for shareholders. They have lost sight of the fact that the value they create for their shareholders comes from the value they are able to create for their customers …which in turn requires an ability to create trust and a partering relationship with customers. You don’t buy or sell those things – they are things of character.

    If we are the shareholders (through 401k) and stocks as well as customers, how is it that we allowed this to happen? Where was the crowd wisdom? The transparent efficicnecy of market risk pricing?

    Who goes to jail?

    We don’t have senior management leadership we have cost controllers who hide behind the comfort of ROI calculations as if the formulas were the modern day equivalent of gold laying geese…protect the cashflow as its the path to their entitlements.

    Yes we need new leadership. Americans are getting that at the top. But what happens everywhere else and how long will money sit idle before it gets into new mischief?

    Who and how do we create a new business model?

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    monycoleman 9:11 pm on January 2, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

    From one optimist to another. I agree wholeheartedly that 2009 holds tremendous promise for change. 2008 felt, to me anyways, like our whole country from the low man on the totem pole to the highest elite has been shaken (kind of turned upside down by their ankles) with the result of all the junk falling out and then being set back on their feet to shake off the dizziness and begin again. Here’s to a better year!!!

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  epigonic 11:59 pm on May 21, 2008 Permalink  

  Proof of Her Lying, If You Needed It 

  If you are a Clinton supporter, and you think your candidate is being honest, truthful and honorable in her quest to seat the delegations in Florida and Michigan, I heartily recommend you read this.

  UPDATED: And this, and this.

  Bottom line: If you care only about Hillary Clinton being President, and about nothing else –  a woman's right to choose, the Supreme Court, the war in Iraq, our health care system, our environment — then perhaps you can be comfortable with her actions.

  But if you give a damn about the Democratic Party, what it stands for, and what's at stake, I don't see how you could support her actions, which have no likely result other than sowing further divisions within the party and increasing the chances for John McCain in the Fall.

   
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  epigonic 5:31 pm on May 20, 2008 Permalink  

  It’s the Lying, Stupid 

  It may be true that some people aren't voting for Senator Clinton because of sexism. That's sad, not worthy of Democrats if indeed it's true.

  But there are a lot of us who don't and won't support her because she has a difficult relationship with the truth.

  The latest lie — and it's going unchallenged by the talking heads, for now — is that she is ahead in the popular vote. There is only one, tortuous way for her to make that claim:

  1. Include votes in Florida, even though the candidates did not campaign there, because the DNC dictated that the primary would not count because it was scheduled in violation of Party rules.

  2. Include votes in Michigan, where Obama was not even on the ballot and thus didn't receive one single vote. Again, the candidates did not campaign there, because the DNC dictated that
  the primary would not count because it was scheduled in violation of
  Party rules. And all of the other candidates besides Senator Clinton took their names off the ballot, to play by the rules.

  3. Not include votes from four caucus states: Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington — about  320,000 votes for Senator Obama.

  In other words, the only way that she, Howard Wolfson, Terry Macauliffe and Lisa Caputo can make this claim is by cheating — not playing by the rules she agreed to when she thought she would win the nomination on Florida and Michigan. And, lying.

  Do we really want to have a candidate who has the audacity to shovel out this kind of BS? We've just finished eight years of this kind of President, we don't need another four.

   
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  epigonic 2:57 pm on May 16, 2008 Permalink  

  The Open Source Political Campaign 

  I admit to being seriously obsessed with politics, and my family can attest it becomes an irrational obsession every four years. Chalk this up to my upbringing. I’m the son of a political journalist in Washington, D.C., ours was a family where talk of politics was a nightly ritual, where I was instructed about the pocket veto at age seven and dragged out onto the campaign trail at age eight (McGovern, on the press plane, in 1972, yes I’m that old).

  This year, the obsession has been more extreme because I’m supporting the best presidential candidate of my lifetime. I’m just cynical enough to feel slightly moronic even writing this. But I truly do believe this is the best politician I’ve seen, in my life, full stop.

  So, instead of just obsessively checking every political blog every 2 minutes, instead of just donating money, I’ve actually gotten involved. I worked as a precinct captain here in San Francisco, making 1000s of phone calls to about 500 potential voters in my precinct, then canvassing the precinct on foot for 3-4 days to get out the vote.

  And two weeks ago, I headed to Indiana to work in a field office, in Muncie. I could write so much about that experience, as I canvassed such a wide variety of neighborhoods during my three days on the ground — from the poorest African American neighborhood in the city on a Sunday morning, to blue collar mostly white neighborhoods, to more upper middle class neighborhoods.

  But the thing I wanted to write about here, based on these two experiences, is the open source nature of the Obama campaign. It’s a profound change from what has come before.

  The work of the campaign is driven by a substantial army of volunteers (1 million or so). Their efforts are loosely coordinated. As a volunteer, it is expected you’ll have the wherewithal to figure most things out on your own, with little direction or guidance from anyone else. What to say to voters, how best to make Obama’s case, what days to canvas, what nights to make phone calls.

  This is, I am quite sure, by design. Perhaps it’s mostly a legacy and learning from Obama’s days as an on-the-street field organizer himself. Or, perhaps it’s also a more direct embrace of the open source framework for collaboration by large groups. I don’t know.

  The Obama website is your data platform, spewing out phone numbers of voters to call, precinct canvassing lists, and handy access policies to be used.  Sharing knowledge, in person and online, about what works and what doesn’t is encouraged.

  As a volunteer, you are left to figure out what you’re going to do, when, and how you’ll accomplish your work with the tools you’ve been given. It’s not for everyone. But, because it forces a kind of self-selection early on, I’ve found that the Obama army is unusually diverse, driven, hard-working, confident, and self-reliant.

  There are other parallels. Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everyone  is my nightly read at the moment, and his description of the volunteer army that makes Wikipedia is also relevant here.  In particular, Shirky makes the argument that Wikipedia should have theoretically been a victim of the tragedy of the commons, but hasn’t because the volunteer, loosely-coordinate army that  is devoted to Wikipedia working is usually able to thwart the trolls and ne’er -do-wells seeking attention.

  It’s clear the large, passionate and active army working for Obama has been of similar importance. In the past two elections, folks like Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly have been able to drive the debate in the broader mainstream media, by pushing relentless, often unfair and untrue, lines of attack that get picked up by mainstream outlets and go unanswered.

  As Exhibit A, review their work in 2000 and 2004 against Al Gore and John Kerry, where their attacks largely went unanswered, and instead were amplified by mainstream media outlets that felt compelled to cover them as "news." Often without any analysis of the claims, in a quest for neutrality and objectivity, leaving the candidates to try to answer the charges themselves, which in turn made them look defensive and sometimes weak.

  This year, hundreds of thousands of bloggers, with their own personal media outlets, have had Obama’s back. They’ve responded instantly and vociferously and increasingly intelligently to the extremist right-wing mischief makers, or similar thrusts from the Clinton campaign. They can’t keep an O’Reilly or Scaife or Hannity or Limbaugh from saying what they’re going to say; but they have been able to keep other mainstream media outlets a bit more honest. As Exhibit B, I give you the ABC News debate.

  We don’t know yet whether this will result in Obama’s election. But these changes are dramatic, important, and will be far-reaching in the end. 

   
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  epigonic 12:18 pm on May 16, 2008 Permalink  

  What We’ve Been Waiting For 

  For most of my adult life, Democratic politicians — especially Presidential candidates — have adopted a "Republican light" approach to foreign policy, with an eye towards looking just as "tough" and "strong" as the Republicans.

  Without a doubt, this is why John Kerry, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton voted for authorizing the Iraq war in 2002. They didn’t want to look like wimps in 2004 or 2008 as Presidential candidates.

  One of the reasons so many of us like Barack Obama is that he hasn’t fallen into that trap. He has shown you could oppose the Iraq war — strongly, consistently, without wavering — and be just as strong an advocate for our national interests and our national defense as those supporting the war. If not stronger, indeed.

  With his vigorous response to McCain and Bush today, he demonstrates again that strength, and why he is more fit to be C-in-C than either McCain or Clinton, both of whom marched lockstep with Bush in 2002 and 2003:

  George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for. They have to
  explain why we are now entering our sixth year of war in Iraq. We were
  supposed to be going over there for weapons of mass destruction that we
  never found. We were told that it was going to last a few months and
  cost a few billion dollars. We have now spent over 600 billion dollars.
  Thousands of lives lost, and we have not been made more safe. They’re
  going to have to explain the fact that Osama bin Laden is still at
  large and is sending out videotapes with impunity. They need to answer
  for the fact that al Qaeda’s leadership is stronger than ever because
  we took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan. They’ve got to answer for
  the fact that Iran is the greatest strategic beneficiary of our
  invasion in Iraq. It made Iran stronger. George Bush’s policies.
  They’re going to have to explain why Hamas now controls Gaza, Hamas
  that was strengthened because the United States insisted that we should
  have democratic elections in the Palestinian authority. They’re going
  to have to explain why it is that Iran is able to fund Hezbollah and
  poses the greatest threat to the United States and Israel in the Middle
  East in a generation.

  That’s the Bush-McCain record on protecting this country. Those are
  the failed policies that John McCain wants to double down on, because
  he still hasn’t spelled out one substantial way in which he’d be
  different from George Bush when it comes to foreign policy.

  That’s the key line: George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for. The more he can say that between now and November, the more stunning and substantial his victory will be. Because, in the end, they do have a lot to answer for with the most disastrous foreign policy misadventure in a century.

   
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  epigonic 10:42 am on May 16, 2008 Permalink  

  The Hamas-Loving McCain of Davos, Switzerland 

  Will the real McCain please stand up?

  Is it the Dick Cheney-wannabe, who yesterday pandered to a gaggle of radical right-wing bloggers, saying Obama was unfit to be President. He claimed — a claim that was an outrageous lie — that Obama wanted to negotiate with Hamas.

  Or is it Senator McCain of Davos, the man desperate to cozy up with European political and media elites talking of his own willingness to sit down with Hamas.

  The story here, from a James Rubin op-ed (Mr. Rubin is a strong Hillary Clinton supporter) in yesterday’s Washington Post:

  Two years ago, just after Hamas won the
  Palestinian parliamentary elections, I interviewed McCain for the
  British network Sky News’s "World News Tonight" program. Here is the
  crucial part of our exchange:

  I asked: "Do you think that American diplomats should be operating
  the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government
  if Hamas is now in charge?"

  McCain answered: "They’re the government; sooner or later we are
  going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand
  why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy
  towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things
  that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it’s a new
  reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security
  and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that."

  
  For some Europeans in Davos, Switzerland, where the interview took
  place, that’s a perfectly reasonable answer. But it is an unusual if
  not unique response for an American politician from either party. And
  it is most certainly not how the newly conservative presumptive
  Republican nominee would reply today. (emphasis added)

  Some enterprising blogger ought to get and post that footage of Senator McCain of Davos, desperately seeking the approval of folks like Tom Friedman and Joe Klein. Might be our "windsurfing" video of 2008.

  UPDATE — of course, turns out the Jed Report already has the footage:

  Some candidates, when they run for President, do indeed lose their bearings. Their thirst for power and glory becomes so overwhelming they forget who they are, what they stand for.

  We’ve seen it with one candidate in the Democratic primary, and now we’re seeing it with the supposedly-maverick and independent John McCain. As an Obama supporter, one of the things I’m most proud of is that he’s kept his cool, and mostly stayed true to his cause and his beliefs. Here’s his response to McCain and Bush:

   
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  epigonic 2:14 pm on May 15, 2008 Permalink  

  Bring it, McLieberBush 

  So the Bush-McCain-Lieberman trio are at it, with a coordinated attack today on Obama.

  Here is McCain’s hit job. He says today:

  "I think [it] is an unacceptable position, and shows that Senator Obama does not have the knowledge, the experience, the background to make the kind of judgments that are necessary to preserve this nation’s security."

  I say, bring it. Let’s have that discussion about who has "the background to make the kind of judgments that are necessary to preserve this nation’s security."

  For example, let’s talk a bit about McCain’s ongoing, steady, unwavering support for the most disastrous foreign intervention in our country’s history. Wherein we diverted resources from Afghanistan, and our fight against Bin Laden and Al Queda, to invade and occupy Iraq instead on false pretenses and premises.

  Let’s talk about that judgment.

  Or his unwavering support for a Bush economic regime that has weakened us from within. A set of policies that have made us debtors to a series of nations — China, Russia, and the Opec powers most prominently — who may have strategic reasons to accumulate our debt, and use it in ways not in our national interest.

  While we’re at it, let’s talk about some history. Does John McCain now denounce and reject Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Harry Truman? The first pair met with Mao Zedong, the second with Josef Stalin, both the biggest mass murderers of the 20th century (and maybe ever) with nuclear arsenals pointed our way. Was "talking" with them a sign they didn’t have the knowledge or experience necessary to be President or in charge of our foreign affairs?

  Let’s talk about John McCain, the false prophet of decency and moderation. With today’s rant, people of even moderate intelligence will now know he’s just another Republican scare-monger, with his bag of well-worn set of scare tactics dating back to Joe McCarthy.

  Today, John McCain showed us who he really is. He’s not some moderate-friendly Republican, a maverick with a streak of decency. No Chuck Hagel, he.

  No, when it comes to governing, McCain will be just another version of Dick Cheney, but one dressed up for public consumption and media idolatry with some pseudo-straight talk and appearance of access.

   
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  epigonic 11:44 pm on April 21, 2008 Permalink  

  Hillary Clinton’s Slimy Misuse of 9-11 and William Ayers 

  Last week, while watching the infamous lowlife debate on ABC News, I got so disgusted I had to turn off my computer (was watching online) and go home.

  Most people were disgusted at the moderators, with reason. So was I, but I expected so little from Stephanopolous and Gibson that I wasn’t shocked by their shabby and shambolic questioning.

  Instead, what made me want to wretch was watching Hillary Clinton during the Ayers questioning. That’s when I turned off the debate. Here is part of her despicable pile-on:

  Well, I think that is a fair general statement, but I also believe that Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers for a period of time, the Woods Foundation, which was a paid directorship position.

  And if I’m not mistaken, that relationship with Mr. Ayers on this board continued after 9/11 and after his reported comments, which were deeply hurtful to people in New York, and I would hope to every American, because they were published on 9/11 and he said that he was just sorry they hadn’t done more. And what they did was set bombs and in some instances people died.

  Let’s catalog the reasons why this is so pathetic, despicable, and unworthy for a Demcratic contender:

  1. Hillary Clinton knows — and essentially admits — there is absolutely no substance to the Ayers attack. It’s pure political piffle and theater. It has absolutely zero to do with Obama’s character, his readiness to be President, his judgment, his values. Obama was eight when the Weather Underground were active, and nothing in his record, life, or actions suggests he sympathized with their agenda or use of violence.

  2. Coming from the Hillary Clinton, the attempt to paint Obama to the Weather Underground is downright hypocritical. After all, Bill Clinton, in his final days as President, pardoned two members of
  the group who were actually tried and convicted of setting bombs (one
  of the people pardoned was allegedly involved a decade later, while on
  the lam, in a Brinks robbery that resulted in the death of a policeman).

  3. Hillary Clinton has tried to blatantly and inappropriately tie comments made by Ayers to 9-11.  The Jed Report has a terrific post up tonight that documents.

  4. Clinton uses the Bush-Cheney-Rove playbook, and exaggerates the facts to try to make the mud she’s dishing seem stickier and more substantive. Note the key, dog-whistle words: "And what they did was set bombs and in some instances people died." Except that:

  • Ayers himself was never charged nor convicted of any such acts
  • The only people actually killed by bombs made by the Weather Underground were members of the Weather Underground (in an accidental explosion in NYC)
  • Her own husband pardoned someone who was charged and found guilty of making those bombs!

  Chutzpah doesn’t even begin to describe this kind of attack by Clinton. Sadly, folks on the right are ecstatic given the rank hypocrisy involved. Here’s the National Review Online last week:

  …the Ayers/Evans/Rosenberg controversy is just another example of how
  surpassingly strange the Democratic race has become.  Given Evans and
  Rosenberg, how can Clinton credibly criticize Obama?  But given Ayers,
  how can Obama credibly criticize Clinton?  No one has room to accuse
  the other of anything.  Now, John McCain, on the other hand…

  That Clinton is doing the right’s job for them annoys me. But the reason this has made me so mad — and essentially guarantees I’ll
  never vote for Hillary Clinton, ever, for any office — is that she’s
  using the very same, vile character assassination tactics used against
  Bill Clinton, Max Cleland, Al Gore, John Kerry and countless other
  Democrats in the past two decades.   

  Finally, there is this. As I watched her tonight on Olbermann, I
  couldn’t help but be impressed by her grasp of the details, her effortless recital of policy points. She always
  shines there. But at the end, when his question about her embrace by
  Richard Mellon Scaife drew her inauthentic cackle, the worm turned. She reminded me of that former President also known for his detailed grasp of policy, but whose mendacity and vicious brand of politics that Clinton now practices gave us this adjective: Nixonian.

   
• 

  epigonic 9:49 pm on April 15, 2008 Permalink  

  The Big Chip on Maureen Down’s Shoulder 

  You knew Maureen Dowd would turn against Obama at some point. He’s just too smart, and she doesn’t like that in her Democrats.

  So, tonight we get her expected column bashing him as an egghead, professorial type. Key graphs:

  The elitism that Americans dislike is not about family money or
  connections — J.F.K. and W. never would have been elected without them.

  (ed. note: that’s worked out has it with W.?)

  In the screwball movie genre that started during the last Depression,
  there was a great tradition of the millionaire who was cool enough to
  relate to the common man — like Cary Grant’s C.K. Dexter Haven in “The
  Philadelphia Story.”

  What turns off voters is the detached
  egghead quality that they tend to equate with a wimpiness, wordiness
  and a lack of action — the same quality that got the professorial and
  superior Adlai Stevenson mocked by critics as Adelaide. The new attack
  line for Obama rivals is that he’s gone from J.F.K. to Dukakis. (Just
  as Dukakis chatted about Belgian endive, Obama chatted about Whole
  Foods arugula in Iowa.)

  There we have it.

  Sadly, her disdain for folks with smarts hasn’t changed much despite eight disastrous years of W., whom she admired for his common-man touch despite his stupidity. Let’s now travel back in time to re-read one of Dowd’s famous anti-Gore columns from 2000:

  The vice president spoke 1,565 words, really, really slowly, with
  glacial pauses between each word. He propounded and expounded for more
  than 15 minutes, touching on such diverse topics as the human genome,
  the ice-free future of the Arctic Ocean, the ”Star Wars” journey, the
  climate of New York City, federal entitlements, the climate of Atlanta,
  embassy security, the climate of Illinois, Individual Development
  Accounts, the climate of Oklahoma and the state of the U.S. economy in
  1835.

  She spends so much of her life engaged in pop-psychological analyses for her columns, you have to wonder if she’s ever had asked herself why she hates smart people so much.