How about those anti-Clinton bumper stickers?

The New Neo Posted on by

A commenter named Nick writes, in response to this post of mine:

I remember seeing a lot of anti-Clinton bumper stickers when he was elected. These two come to mind immediately…

“Inhale to the Chief”
“Don’t Blame Me. I Voted for Bush”

I’m not sure whether the Clinton ones ever became quite as popular… or whether they were as ferocious as some of the current Bush ones, but lets not forget about them. Both sides have played this game.

So, have both sides played this game? To a certain extent.

But as Nick himself suggests, the enmity towards Bush seems both more widespread and more vicious than that towards Clinton. For this reason I think there is a qualitative difference; I don’t think that Bush-hatred is merely a mirror image of Clinton-hatred, although Clinton-hatred certainly existed.

Look at the two bumper stickers Nick mentions. They are critical of Clinton, it’s true, and the first one is hostile (the second one reminds me of the “Don’t Blame Me, I’m from Massachusetts” post-Watergate sticker that I mentioned in my earlier bumper-sticker post, and was no doubt modeled after it).

But neither of these stickers even begins to approach the depth and scope of the hostility displayed (and even gloried in) by the Bush ones: calling Bush an idiot, calling his Presidency a “regime,” comparing him to Hitler. What’s more–and I don’t believe it’s just because I live in a blue state now–the number of cars sporting these extremely negative anti-Bush stickers was far greater than the number displaying the anti-Clinton ones, which as I recall were few and far between (and I lived in a purple state back then, so I would have expected to have seen a fair number of them, if so many had actually existed).

There is no doubt that there was a fringe element almost psychotic in its hatred of Clinton, accusing him, for example, of murdering Vincent Foster. These people I condemn in the harshest of terms. But, at least to my knowledge, this element represented a far smaller percentage of the Republican party compared to those who suffer from intense hatred of Bush, which is practically a mainstream position among liberal Democrats.

During the 2004 election, the ratio of Bush-hating to Kerry-loving bumper stickers seemed to be about 3 to 1. I believe that the degree of negativity in that 2004 campaign was an unprecedented event in modern politics. Let’s hope it’s not a trend.

Welcome: first day of spring (hope springs eternal)

The New Neo Posted on by

We here at neo-neocon (that’s me!) wish to officially welcome the first day of spring. It’s today, in case you didn’t know–I didn’t, myself, till I heard it on the radio this morning.

I’ve lived in New England for over thirty years, doing some time in Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire, and I have to say that here, the first day of spring is usually met with a derisive snort: you call this spring? Today is actually rather nice and sunny, but there’s still quite a bit of snow on the ground, and I would wager there’s more to come. But we know that the snows to come will melt far more quickly than before, and that gives us hope. A corner has been turned (I didn’t want to make this post at all political, but it occurs to me that maybe this is a good metaphor for what’s been happening lately in the Arab world).

At any rate, I plan to start thinking about gardening. That’s what people do in New England on the first day of spring–think of the next task (is that a metaphor, too?)

And here’s an excerpt from a Robert Frost poem describing the time of year that’s about to come any moment now, known as “mud time” in New England, for obvious reasons (the poem takes place in April rather than March, but I hope you’ll grant me some poetic license):

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You´re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you´re two months back in the middle of March.

So, go out and enjoy that sun, and enjoy the hope that goes with it!

Fun with sitemeters

The New Neo Posted on by

According to my trusty sitemeter, already today I’ve gotten three–count em, three!–people coming to my blog as a result of Google searches for “Lebanese women cleavage flag.”

Welcome! Isn’t the blogosphere wonderful?

(For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, see here.)

How much credit? The AP gets into the business of editorial writing and answers, “not much”

The New Neo Posted on by

Ah, the AP. Read how they report Bush’s radio speech today, in which he claims that the war in Iraq has inspired democratic reformers from Beirut to Tehran.

Yesterday I asked the question: how much credit does Bush get for the anti-Syria protests in Lebanon? Today, the AP answers: “not much.”

To begin their article, the AP quotes a few lines from Bush’s speech. Then, without further ado, the writer of the piece, Jennifer Loven, skips to this:

With his primary rationale for the war ”” Saddam’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction ”” discredited, Bush has turned to the argument that the war in Iraq was justified because it freed the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator and now gives the Middle East a model for democracy.

Those who read blogs know that freeing the Iraqi people was always a rationale for the war, not one “turned to” because the “real” rationale was discredited. I would have hoped that newspaper readers–not to mention AP writers–would know that, too.

The article goes on with another quote from Bush about recent progress in Iraq. Then we hear some more from Ms. Loven about how bad it all is nevertheless:

Against that progress, insurgents have carried on a relentless campaign of suicide bombings, kidnappings and beheadings while rampant crime, power outages, unemployment over 50 percent and a fuel crisis in one of the world’s prime oil-exporting countries continues. Even as the Iraqi legislators convened, they did not set a new date to meet reconvene, elect a speaker or nominate a president and vice president. Some have questioned Bush’s repeated claims that recent democratic developments in several global hotspots are due to both the Iraq war and his second-term drive to push for reforms in friend and foe.

Hmmm, “some have questioned.” Is it possible that Jennifer reads Benjamin in Michael Totten’s comments section? Will wonders never cease?

She goes on:

Still, the President has pointed to democratic gains…

So still, still, in the face of all of this, Bush has the gall and the stupidity to point to those gains. Would that, instead, he had Jennifer’s ability to see the true picture.

EVENING UPDATE: Hindrocket at Powerline concurs. It seems that Ms. Loven wrote some AP articles in the lead-up to last fall’s Presidential election that were more or less indistinguishable from DNC press releases. I guess she’s nothing if not consistent.

How much credit does Bush get for the anti-Syria protests in Lebanon?

The New Neo Posted on by

No surprise that we’ve seen the usual disagreements about how much credit Bush gets for the recent dramatic “Cedar Revolution” in Lebanon. For example, in the comments section of this post of Michael Totten’s, someone named Benjamin objects to Totten’s calling it a “revolution,” or tying it directly to Bush’s actions:

Although you [Totten] are anxious in your article to trumpet the apparent success of US foreign policy as regards Lebanon, you don’t acknowledge the internal dynamic of Lebanon’s politics which has been building since way before Dubya was President, and which is influenced by many other factors… Indeed, you are anxious to ‘claim’ the Arab street, just as the other lot did earlier. I am not sure how useful that is, or indeed accurate.”

Well, Benjamin, I hereby submit that it’s both useful and accurate. “Useful,” because it’s good to relate causes to effects, even if the causes might only be partial or contributing causes. “Accurate,” because simple logic indicates that there is some sort of causal relationship. True, we don’t have a classic experiment here in which we have an alternate universe as a control, a world in which the US never liberated (and yes, we can now say “liberated”) Iraq and Bush never criticized dictatorships in the Arab world, so we’ll never know for sure. But how useful or accurate is it to fail to connect some fairly obvious and close-together dots?

My take on it? Whatever gradual, step-by-step approaches Lebanon has taken since 1991 towards a more representative government free of the Syrian occupation, Bush’s contribution can’t be denied, unless one is desperately looking to deny it. It as though goods were being laboriously transported by mule pack through some steep canyon pass, and then suddenly a helicopter swoops down and hoists the mule, pack and all, aboard. The goods are going to get to their destination a lot sooner, and it doesn’t make sense to say, “Oh, well, the mule was carrying those packs there anyway, so what help was the helicopter?”

Just ask yourself: if not for Bush and the war in Iraq and most particularly the Iraqi elections of 1/30, do you think these anti-Syrian demonstrations would ever have happened? And, if so, how many people do you think they would they have drawn? The Iraqi war has energized and emboldened this new Arab Street, which may in fact represent a heretofore “silent majority” in the Arab world.

Comments are now more user-friendly–I hope

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve had a couple of complaints about the fact that this blog requires people to register fully with blogger before commenting. In the interests of becoming more comment-friendly (and because I finally figured out how to fix it), I’ve changed the settings and have now made it easier to comment here. Power to the people!

UPDATE: It’s come to my attention that, even though this represents improvement, there are still some folks who are having trouble posting. So, I offer this comments tutorial for those who are even more computer-challenged than I.

The following sounds complex, but it’s really very very easy. Trust me. Take a few deep slow breaths and I’ll walk you through it.

1) Click on “0 comments” (or whatever the number of comments happens to be) beneath the post, on the right. On the left of your screen, you will then be able to view whatever comments have already been made.

2) Click on “post a comment” on the lower left.

3) Write your comment in the blank box on the right of your screen under “leave your comment.”

4) Under that box, you are given three choices for signing in under “choose an identity.” You need to choose one of the three by clicking in the circle before your choice: “blogger,” “other,” or “anonymous.”
–If you choose “blogger”: this means you have to create an account with blogger. Those who already have an account, no problem. Otherwise click on “sign up here” and follow the instructions.
–If you choose “other”: this means you just sign in with a name of your choice. There is also a space to fill in your web page URL, if you want, but you don’t have to do this.
–If you choose “anonymous,” you’re all set to post a comment.

5) After typing your comment in the box and choosing your identity, you now can post your comment, or you might want to preview it first. If posting, just click “login and publish” (if you’ve chosen “blogger” as your identity), or click “publish your comment” (if you’ve chosen “other” or “anonymous” as your identity). That’s all you need to do.

If you prefer to preview your comment before posting it, click “preview” intead. Afterwards, if you look on the lower left, you will see your comment in a yellow box. Look it over, and if satisfied, click on “publish this comment.” Otherwise, click on “edit comment,” and then fix the comment. Then click on “publish your comment” (or “login and publish,” if you’ve chosen blogger), and you’re all set.

Simplicity itself, isn’t it?

Anti-Bush bumper stickers: changing with the times?

The New Neo Posted on by

I live in a liberal Democrat “blue” town in a “blue” state. Back when I was blue myself, I wasn’t even aware of this; it was like background music. But this fact of blueness, or the characteristics that went with it, must somehow have been part of its attraction: good theater, open-minded people, great food, funky little clothing shops, tolerance, all that jazz.

In the build-up to the 2004 election, anti-Bush bumper stickers proliferated on cars like mushrooms on the lawns after a week of rain. My neighbors’ car sported, not just a Kerry bumper sticker, but a “Regime Change Begins at Home” bumper sticker. Almost overnight, before I even knew what it signified, the cars around me sprouted different versions of that “W” sticker with the black slash across it (for the first few days, I actually thought it was some sort of new municipal parking sticker). A good friend of mine, a lovely and ordinarily gentle woman, had one that read “Somewhere in Texas, a village is missing its idiot.” The only anti-Bush bumper sticker I saw that seemed to display any sort of wit was the one that read “Fermez la Bush.”

Pro-Bush stickers were few and far between, although sometimes I wondered whether those yellow-ribbon “Support the Troops” stickers were a coded way of supporting Bush, like a secret handshake. But I always imagined, without even thinking much about it, that after the election the stickers and signs would come down pretty quickly, no matter who had won.

Months later and I still couldn’t go for a drive without seeing them everywhere: a few bumper stickers for Kerry; but, far far more commonly, bumper stickers ridiculing and demonizing Bush. I couldn’t remember anything even remotely like this after previous elections. The closest I could recall were the bumper stickers I used to see when I lived in Boston right after Watergate: “Don’t blame me, I’m from Massachusetts.” But that was after the fall of a president, not the election of one.

It couldn’t be that these people thought Bush would magically go away and that Kerry would somehow still become president. No, something else must have been going on. It occurred to me that these stickers must be acting as a signaling device, sort of like the displays of birds in mating season, or the sonorous cries of humpback whales calling out to others of their ilk . The stickers said something about the driver, not about the election. They said, “I am good, I am wise, I am smart, I am sophisticated.” In particular, they said, “I am not fooled by the simpleminded simplicity of the simpleton Bush.” But, most of all, they said, “I am like you; I am not like them. Are you like me, too?”

They were a form of both communication and of fashion, like having a trendy haircut or cutting-edge clothes (or, for that matter, long hair, no makeup, and Birkenstocks). As such they worked very well, helping people to recognize each other from afar, and to feel comforted that, even though Bush had become President, they themselves had managed to live in a community of like-minded individuals who saw right through him.

But a couple of days ago I was parking at the local health food supermarket, usually a treasure-trove of cars sporting Bush-hating stickers, and I noticed something odd. The cars were bare, stripped of their messages.

What had happened? Had there been a recent special on sticker-scrapers? Or was it something else? Did everyone get the signal all at once–like when the leaves turn colors and drop from the trees because the days are getting shorter and the nights colder–that the time had come? Did it have something to do with the wave of demonstrations for democracy hitting the Arab world? Is there some sort of realization dawning, slowly but surely, that perhaps, perhaps, Bush isn’t so very awful after all?

UPDATE: Welcome, Ann Althouse readers!

Why I love the internet

The New Neo Posted on by

Because we can do these instead of these.

Remember whiteout, typewriters, erasable bond? And even further back into antiquity, remember carbons? (I have to say even I don’t remember carbons too well, but I distinctly recall watching my mother type with them. She was a pro.)

Typing was hard, kids. And when you made a mistake, you swore and tore your hair out, cause it meant typing the whole page over. If you were anything like me, you’d come into your dorm at curfew (yeah, curfew–eleven PM on weekdays, twelve-thirty AM on weekends) sit down in that hard little wooden chair in front of your hard little wooden desk, pack of cigarettes by your side, favorite form of caffeine at the ready, and start typing.

Ten page assignment? Okay. Back to the wall, time running out, no outline and no plan, I’d sit down and type page after page, and when I’d reach that magic number ten, I’d simply stop. Finito.

Those Lebanese protestors have got nothing on this liberty babe

The New Neo Posted on by

By now you’ve undoubtedly seen the photos of those attractive Lebanese girls in the anti-Syria demonstrations. That male-dominated institution, the blogosphere, has done quite a bit to guarantee their–errr–exposure. The blogosphere seems to approve of the liberty babes of Lebanon, not to mention their pulchritude.

But plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. Impressed by the cleavage of the flag-waving pro-liberty women of Lebanon? Well, they’ve got nothing on this babe in that department (even if she is an older woman):

The buzz about women bloggers

The New Neo Posted on by

It seems to be a hot topic today: Jeff Jarvis and Roger Simon are both writing about Steven Levy’s charge that the blogosphere is a white male bastion of power.

As that rara avis, a female blogger (although, in the interests of full disclosure I also hereby state that yes, I am white–mea maxima culpa!), I thought I’d weigh in on the subject. Levy’s article seems to suggest it’s an old-boy-network sort of thing. And it’s true that, in the blogosphere, there is a bit of the “I’ll scratch your back you scratch mine” arrangement going, at least in terms of blogrolls.

But it’s really not much of a factor. Most bloggers (even lowly ones such as myself) only link to people they genuinely like and admire. The blogosphere is indeed a meritocracy. The writing is pretty much everything.

On the other hand, as in anything else, there are certain elements influencing which writing is likely to attact the greatest readership. I hereby submit (at the risk of being Larry Summersed for being un-PC) that there is something about the meritocracy of the political blogosphere that appears to favor male writers, but that it’s not any sort of discrimination, nor is it something to be condemned.

Here’s my disclaimer: I’ve done no research on this, it’s just my personal observation, yada-yada. If fewer women write political blogs it’s because fewer women want to, for whatever reason. Maybe they have better things to do with their time; I don’t know. Maybe more women tend to favor the more comtemplative medium of the blog devoted to personal observations. At any rate, the fact that fewer females decide to enter the particular arena of political blogging is no one’s fault, and so what if they don’t?

But “arena” it is. There are so many political bloggers (and I assume this is the area Levy is really speaking about) that to emerge from the pack one needs to have something really distinctive. Sometimes it’s a specialized audience, sometimes it’s just really fine writing, sometimes it’s the quality of the thinking. But I’ve noticed a tendency that favors the quick sharp jab, the brief but pungent remark; and perhaps (note the qualification, folks; I really don’t know) this comes more naturally to men than to women. There’s also a number of angry in-your-face blogs that seem to fit a need and attract a lot of readers, and perhaps (there’s that “perhaps” again–I’m just speculating here, so be kind!) that’s a more natural mode for men, too, although it certainly doesn’t rule out women.

If in fact this is true, it’s no one’s fault, nor does it need remedying–it’s simply the nature of the medium. People have only a certain amount of time to read blogs, and they select them on the basis of what appeals to them. If the work of men appeals to more people, so be it.

The volume gets turned up in Lebanon

The New Neo Posted on by

Today’s demonstrations in Lebanon by anti-Syria forces dwarfed last week’s pro-Syria rally, which in turn had trumped the anti-Syria one preceeding it.

This crowd was estimated as having been close to a million. This is a big crowd by anyone’s standards. But by the standards of Lebanon, population 3.5 million, this isn’t a crowd, this is practically a census.

As I wrote earlier,

I believe that one of the reasons this “purple finger revolution” has been able to move with such rapidity is that the worldwide media are able to spread those images quickly and effectively to people who in years past would never have had access to them. These people see those images, do the same sort of processing, and come to their own changed conclusions: it’s possible; we can do this, too.

Well, that was just speculation on my part. But in the AP article about today’s rally, here is evidence of the seminal role of modern communications, particularly the Internet and cellphone messaging:

In recent days, opposition ads for Monday’s rally have been running on television, and activists in towns and villages arranged buses to the capital. E-mails and telephone text messages referred to Prime Minister Omar Karami’s claim that the Hezbollah demonstration showed the government had the support of the majority.
“Prove him wrong,” the messages flashed across cellphones and computers.

And they did. Now, we await Syria’s next move in this game of chess writ large. I don’t think that this is checkmate. Not yet.

The extraordinary clothed in the ordinary: Ashley Smith

The New Neo Posted on by

Watching yesterday’s interview (I can’t locate the video at the moment, but here’s a report ) with Brian Nichols’ ex-hostage Ashley Smith, I was struck by the reaction of the newspeople to her story. Not only was she allowed to talk for twenty uninterrupted minutes, but the anchors and reporters that I saw (Fox, CNN) seemed spellbound, riveted, mesmerized, and all but speechless. It takes a great deal to jar them (and many of us, as well) out of either cynicism or stock and facile responses to heroism, and into something approaching awe. Ashley Smith seems to have done it; we know we are watching the real thing.

The power of her story was in her sincerity, her courage, and her own belief in redemption. Whether or not you yourself are religious, there is no escaping the power of her belief, and its effect on what appears to have been the already-weary Nichols. This story could have gone differently–we all expected it to go differently–and the fact that it didn’t is owed in large part to Ashley Smith, an extraordinary woman who looks like any young mother you probably pass every day in the supermarket.

And what of Nichols? He remains a mystery. But one of the things I heard Ms. Smith say about Nichols caught my attention, so much so that I wrote it down verbatim: “He said, ‘Look at me, look at my eyes, I am already dead.'”

If you’ve read my piece on Mohammed Atta’s Eyes, you’ll recognize this is the same phenomenon criminologist James Gilligan reports most murderers exhibiting and feeling, the same deadness in the eyes and in the heart. But Ms. Smith’s “amazing grace” under pressure was to have somehow convinced this man (who in some sense did seem already dead) that he is still alive, and that his life retains some purpose. No small feat.

Of course, he will have to pay the price, as Ms. Smith told him. His crimes were heinous. But to me, this extraordinary story indicates that there was still some part of him that remained reachable, and this woman managed to reach it, at least for a moment, at least long enough to save her own life and the lives of others.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has kindly linked to the video of Ashley Smith’s interview.