Jun 11, 2009 2
David Brooks and MCP Misinformation
David Brooks says the global gag rule made no tangible difference in the way the United States conducted itself its international development efforts. He needs to read up.
drink deep
Apr 11, 2009 0
“2M4M, Love Teabagging”: The Far Right Inadvertently Rechristens Itself With Gay Sex Slang
Yes, that’s right: at the moment, both the social and economic arms of the American conservative movement are describing themselves and their efforts with terms directly out of gay chatrooms and gays’ bedrooms. Slang anchored in gay male sex is, at least in recent news cycles, the accidentally reigning metaphorical lexicon of the American far right.
Jan 10, 2009 0
We’re All Missourians Now
“The challenge for all of us,” as Obama said yesterday, “is to identify good ideas.” And so Vandiver’s demand, the demand to roundly understand, must become our own. Having something shown to you in the Missourian sense is a process not of credulous reception but of active and incessant evaluation. For the product of the pragmatic Missourian’s deep skepticism, his demand to know not only the what but also the why of the what, is precisely the elimination of unworkable ideas in favor of workable ones. His search for proof is a continual querying and reconfirming of both the proof itself and the integrity of the criteria from which the proof derives meaning and legitimacy. We must help Obama find or create his whys and whats, and to articulate useful, socially productive, and popularly understandable relationships among them. Being shown is not a passive process. Proof, telling or irrelevant, genuine or counterfeit, is not found but made, and our new president has only two hands.