Search Results for: collin levey

I haven’t blogged on Collin Levey recently, but I just couldn’t ignore another of her bizarrely obsessive and unpatriotic attacks on ketchup. [“Ketchup: the Death of Democracy”… or something like that.]

Now perhaps Collin puts mayonnaise on her pomme frites, but I wouldn’t touch a fried Idaho without a tangy, tomatoey dollop of America’s favorite condiment. And like a majority of my countrymen, my ketchup of choice has always been Heinz.

So it seems odd that Collin insists on emphasizing the Heinz in Teresa Heinz Kerry, as if her name suggested some sort of evil corporate affiliation… like Dick Halliburton Cheney, or George bin Laden Bush. Heinz is a much beloved brand name, especially to the people of western Pennsylvania, where Heinz ketchup is not only an essential topping on their all-American burgers, but where grateful communities benefit from the tens or millions of dollars bestowed annually by Teresa and her late husband’s foundation.

Four times in her column, Collin refers to Teresa simply as “Heinz Kerry”, where as Laura Bush is always referred to as “Laura” or, well… “Laura Bush.”

Curiously, Laura’s middle name is “Welch”, singularly evocative of another well known American brand name, “Welches”, purveyors of grape juice and jam. So why have Collin and her colleagues in the right-wing media echo chamber focused on the “Heinz” in Teresa Heinz Kerry, while ignoring Laura Welch Bush’s missing middle name?

What grape-stained scandal is the media trying to hide? What sticky mess lies beneath Welch Bush’s white bread exterior? Collin continues to insinuate “sinister financial doings” involving the Heinz estate, yet at least Teresa still proudly wears her middle name.

A conspiratorial mind might wonder what kind of a moral, ethical or legal jam Laura Welch Bush got herself into to cause her to drop her middle name entirely? (And I’m not necessarily talking about the time she killed her boyfriend.)

So criticize Teresa Heinz Kerry all you want Collin… but I’d rather have a first lady with ketchup on her hands, not blood.

HorsesAss.org has been “blog lite” the last couple days, as I’ve been very busy working on a special project. You’ll find out the details later today.

So I hope you’ll excuse me if don’t celebrate Collin Levey Day with my usual gush of poison penmanship.

In fact, I don’t really have much criticism of her latest column, “The wink-wink world of campaign-finance laws“, except to point out that it is most notable not for what it says, but for what it doesn’t.

Sure, she spends more time attacking the Democrats’ hypocrisy regarding campaign finance reform than the Republicans’, and she underplays GOP motives for supporting McCain-Feingold in the first place (they thought it would disadvantage Democrats.) She is also typically disingenuous when she suggests that “the spending ledger overwhelmingly favors the Democrats” — it’s a touch closer this year, but once again the Rs will dramatically outspend the Ds.

And I certainly disagree with her apparent conclusion, that what we need is more unrestricted political money, not less.

But it is always important to note not what Collin says, but why she says it. She and her fellow cogs in the right-wing media machine are focusing on 527 groups and campaign-finance, to distract Americans from the real issue at the heart of the notorious “Swift Boat” ads: the vicious lies financed and coordinated by close associates of President Bush.

Bush and Cheney avoided service in Viet Nam. That’s okay. If I had been ten years older I would have tried to do the same.

But that’s all the more reason to be totally disgusted at their pattern of smearing opponents by attacking their war records. Bush did it to John McCain, and (surprise, surprise) now he’s doing it to John Kerry.

The efforts by Collin and her media colleagues to morph this into a debate over 527 committees is a blatant attempt to maximize exposure for the Swift Boat lies, while minimizing the political and financial cost to its sponsors. Collin has an excuse: this is what she does. But those reporters and editors in the “mainstream press” who have fallen for this trick should be ashamed of themselves.

We have a White House full of chicken hawks, who talk tough about our military, but display obvious disdain for those who serve it. If the media insists on making Kerry’s military record the most important issue in this campaign, then they owe it to voters to spend equal time exploring the service of Bush.

If the Rs want to make Kerry’s military record the focus of this campaign, then it is time to compare apples to apples. John Kerry chose to risk life and limb in Viet Nam. At the most, all Bush risked was his liver.

Two days late, the Seattle Times finally mentions the blockbuster national study that charter school students lag a half year behind those in traditional public schools.

Surprisingly, it’s in a column by Collin Levy. Not surprisingly, the column is an ideological screed that contorts itself into an attack on John Kerry, while failing once again to include the tiniest shred of local context. [Big picture doesn’t justify charter-school foes’ glee]

(Question: does Collin even read the Seattle Times? Is she aware that voters are being asked to approve or reject R-55 this November, authorizing charter schools? At this point I can only assume that the Times’ goal is to syndicate Collin nationally, explaining her meticulous efforts to avoid any taint of local consciousness. Anyway…)

While her column benefits from a coherency that has been lacking in recent weeks (perhaps Collin’s taken my constructive criticism to heart,) it includes the usual invective and exaggeration, cartoonishly demonizing those at odds with right wing doctrine:

Not since the golden age of “Looney Tunes” has bad news been met with such hand-rubbing glee.

That’s right Collin, we’re all just tickled pink that hundreds of thousands of children are getting a sub-standard education. Who cares about children, as long as it works to our political advantage, right?

Such opponents may often gasp that the charter-school program is a devious plot by the GOP to rid the world of public education, but their calculation is simple politics. The unions’ positions on merit pay (no) and seniority (yes) badly warps the educational landscape. And, as is true with most such entrenched operations, they are motivated by the interests of their members, not the interests of their students.

I always find it amazing when critics attack the motivations of teachers, many of whom have passed up the opportunity of better paying careers so they could educate our children. Vassar offers a BA in Education, so Collin, like many of her classmates, could have chosen that profession. She did not.

But blaming teachers unions for failing schools is a convenient way of diverting attention away from the fact that charter schools are indeed “a devious plot by the GOP to rid the world of public education”… at least to some of the more cynical and/or ideological members of the GOP.

Unlike Collin, I’m not going to demonize the other side by suggesting that they want to harm our children. It’s just that they are so ideologically driven — so convinced that they see the invisible hand of God in free markets — that they believe the outcome will be for the best… whatever the result.

That is the dark, Social Darwinian side to applying free market ideology to public education. Some schools will survive, some will close. Some children will thrive, others will not. But if you believe that free markets are always the most efficient means of allocating resources, then a free market driven educational system will be the best educational system possible… even if it fails to adequately educate the majority of children.

Of course some of the support for charter schools is more cynical. It all comes down to money.

The standard fig leaf of Democrats attempting to navigate between parental expectations and union demands is in play here, too. Democrats say they support accountability but criticize the Bush administration for failing adequately to “fund” the law. In other words, the educrats always turn it into a demand for more money.

That’s absolutely right, for the core difference between Democrats and Republicans on education, is that Democrats believe we are underinvesting in our children’s future. Democrats want to spend more money on education. Republicans do not.

Collin and her RNC overseers try to dismiss test scores and rely instead on isolated anecdotes to defend the performance of charter schools, but the more interesting question is “why?” Why has the Bush administration made charter schools a central provision of the No Child Left Behind Act?

Because it is education reform on the cheap.

I’ll say it again: you get what you pay for. On their own — without a commitment to adequate funding — charter schools are educational alchemy. A vote for R-55 is fools gold.

I don’t really feel like dissecting Seattle Time’s editorial columnist Collin Levey’s latest barf-bag of partially predigested partisan bile, except to say: “blah, blah, blah.” [“This band of brothers has a different view of Kerry“]

As usual, she uses her opinion column as a vehicle for rumor mongering. In the right-wing media sewer system that starts with the cesspool of supermarket tabloids and winds its way through the Wall Street Journal’s sewage treatment plant of an editorial page, Collin is our local discharge conduit, dumping its effluent into Puget Sound.

While I applaud The Seattle Times for seeing fit to provide op/ed space for a local columnist to regularly cover national and international issues, I’m having trouble understanding what exactly is “local” about Collin Levey? She never provides any local perspective, never explores the local impact of national issues, never draws on local history, people or events to color her commentaries.

Perhaps Collin actually lives in Seattle, but she might as well be writing from the WSJ’s Manhattan offices for all we know. She is essentially a nationally syndicated conservative columnist… without the syndication.

There are a lot of important issues to blog on today: Kerry’s commanding speech at the Democratic convention, Tim Eyman’s hissyfit over the King County Council, the hidden agendas behind Initiative 892. But I’m on vacation, so I’ll just have some fun and take another run at Wall Street Journal Seattle Times editorial columnist Collin Levey.

A while back I gave Collin a backhanded compliment, criticizing a column for not meeting her “usual standard of ruthless clarity.” But after several weeks of meandering essays only slightly less muddled than their theses, I’m wondering if I set the bar too high.

That’s not to say that Collin can’t write. She certainly has a knack for stringing words together into an entertaining sentence; and those sentences tend to form coherent paragraphs.

But too often that’s where the coherence ends. She is so intent on leveling charge after charge against us anti-semitic, un-American lefties that I often feel like I’m reading multiple columns at once: on more than one occasion I’ve found myself stranded between paragraphs, nearly convinced that I had skipped a page.

Collin’s noncontiguous narrative is exacerbated by her minimalist segues, which often consist of little more than a carriage return and a linefeed. Indeed, many of her columns read like they were chopped up and reassembled by some deranged, Dadaist editor.

Of course Collin is not unique amongst the new breed of political commentators who cater to — and seem to be products of — our body politic’s growing epidemic of A.D.D. Whatever you might think of an equally partisan, old-timer like George Will, you have to admit that he knows how to solidly construct and defend a thesis. Collin, on the other hand, seems to prefer a shotgun literary mien that willingly sacrifices quality of analysis for quantity.

Her credibility as a chronicler of truth is further diminished by a penchant for littering her columns with piles of unsupported facts and unreferenced, single-word quotes. She scornfully dismisses her targets as liars and frauds, but does so on the basis of a lazy, connect-the-dots methodology that makes Michael Moore look like Will and Ariel Durant. (Look it up.)

For example, take yesterday’s column, in which she asks:

What or who exactly was Heinz Kerry referring to with the McCarthyite slur “un-American”?

What exactly is Collin referring to with the the un-American slur “McCarthyite”? Well, hell if I know, because Collin never bothers to provide any reference or context. By excerpting a quotation down to a single disembodied word, Collin hopes readers will infer a nefarious subtext, but for all I know Teresa Heinz Kerry may have been flouting her knowledge of condiments by accurately referring to the culinary origins of mayonnaise or Dijon mustard? Or perhaps she was reciting the “U” section of the dictionary?

Or maybe Mrs. Kerry was referring to one of the many times a Republican politician or commentator has questioned someone’s patriotism, merely for opposing the administration’s policies? The word “McCarthyism”, after all, was coined for its Republican namesake.

But like Collin, I digress… a nearly unavoidable pitfall when critiquing a column that jumps from attack to attack to attack, based on charges that have less visible means of support than Neil Bush.

Look… everybody has a right to their own opinions; I just don’t understand how Collin’s earned the privilege to express hers weekly in a major newspaper. (Well… as major a newspaper as we have in Washington state.) Compared to most people, she’s not such a terrible writer. It’s just that stylistically she’s more suited to writing blogs than editorial columns.

I’d already blogged today, so I wasn’t planning to spend much time on my Thursday ritual of heaping ridicule on Seattle Times editorial columnist Collin Levey, and her latest political polemic. [By scolding Israel’s Sharon, France wallows in disdain]

It certainly didn’t seem worth my effort to refute Collin’s assertions of French antisemitism… hell, the French virtually invented antisemitism in the modern sense of the word with the whole Dreyfus Affair. (Although the word itself was coined in 1873 by a German writer to replace the less politically correct “Judenhass,” meaning “Jew-hating.” History lesson over.)

And to be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what Collin was trying to say.

But I’m always a little suspicious when I see a writer excerpt comments by quoting individual words… you know, like when a movie ad quotes a reviewer as saying “entertaining” and “moving” when the original quote might be “I find it more entertaining moving my bowels.” So, apart from her Frenchified Vassar vocabulary and use of the the royal “we,” note Collin’s adoption of this selective quoting technique:

The contretemps began on Sunday, when Sharon, speaking to visiting American Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, commented on the spreading rash of anti-Semitic incidents in France and encouraged French Jews to return to Israel “immediately.” Despite Sharon’s praise for France’s efforts to calm its roiling tensions, Chirac and his foreign minister, Michel Barnier, took the opportunity to castigate the Jewish leader on the world stage, calling the remarks “unacceptable” and disinviting Sharon from a state visit until he had an “explanation.”

We wonder several things here, but first is exactly which part of the remarks they didn’t understand. The calling home of Jews to Israel has been around practically longer than Israel itself, and has been a frequent mantra for Sharon long before this week.

Of course, very few of her readers are likely to whip out a copy of Le Monde and check out the story for themselves. But it’s amazing what you can find with a couple Google searches.

Scott MacMillan writing in Slate (“Sharon to France: Send Me Your Jews“) puts Sharon’s remarks in a bit more context:

“Move to Israel, as early as possible. I say that to Jews all around the world, but there (in France) I think it’s a must and they have to move immediately.” The Israeli government often encourages Diaspora Jews to come to Israel, but Sharon’s remarks about France were particularly stinging as he said French Jews should emigrate to escape “the wildest anti-Semitism.”

This was not the usual “mantra” that Collin makes it out to be, and Sharon himself points out the distinction. And as to “disinviting” Sharon from a state visit, according to a French spokesman:

A possible visit by the Israeli prime minister to Paris, for which no date has been set, will be examined only when the explanations called for have been provided.

A possible visit for which no date has been set… it’s not exactly like they called off a wedding. And as to Collin’s shock that France would ask for a (gasp) “explanation”… well, assuming Chirac did misunderstand Sharon’s statement, isn’t that what you’d want him to ask for?

Slate goes on to show that it wasn’t just France who responded with indignation to Sharon’s remarks, pointing out that “papers elsewhere in Europe sounded similar notes.” And the New Zealand Herald (“Sharon’s warning to Jews condemned by all sides“) even quipped that Sharon should consider a career in French politics, as nobody else could unite the nation with so few words:

Left and Right, government and opposition, French Jewish leaders and French Muslim leaders: all agreed yesterday in condemning a weekend statement by the Israeli Prime Minister.

Clearly it wasn’t just Chirac and the “leftist” Le Monde who were offended. The French and other Europeans seemed to understand Sharon’s remarks quite well, and concluded that whether by intention or stupidity, they could only be incendiary in the current political climate. According to the Herald:

He went on to imply that France was dangerous for Jews because it had a “ten per cent” Muslim population. The true figure for the Muslim population in France is six per cent.

France is a dangerous place for Jews? Considering current events I’d feel a helluva lot safer strolling the streets of Paris than Jerusalem. And I’m wondering which country has the larger percentage of Muslims.

Anyway, like I said, apart from the bold GOP election-year strategy of French bashing, I’m not really sure what Collin’s point is. I just wish she’d make it without distorting events through selective quoting.

I can’t let a Thursday slip by without commenting on Collin Levey’s latest column in the Seattle Times. [Brace for a race between producers and advocates]

Faithfully following the memo from her bosses at Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, Inc., Collin uses John Kerry’s choice of John Edwards as his running mate as an opportunity to paint the presidential race as a contest between hard working businessmen who create our nation’s wealth (Bush-Cheney) and blood-sucking trial lawyers who enrich themselves at the expense of consumers (Kerry-Edwards.)

Yeah, nice try. Attacking trial lawyers didn’t work when Edwards ran for the Senate, it didn’t work in the primaries, and it won’t work in the general election. In fact, if I were running the right-wing media echo chamber, I’d be careful this tactic didn’t backfire, as an examination of the candidates’ resumes makes Edwards look quite a bit more productive than so-called “producers” like Bush and Cheney.

Collin writes that “George Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s private-sector careers were as business leaders — Cheney at Halliburton and Bush at the Texas Rangers and smallish oil companies.”

Right.

Dick Cheney started his impressive climb up the corporate ladder as a low-level flak in the Nixon Whitehouse, where Donald Rumsfeld took him under his wing. When Rumsfeld became Ford’s chief of staff, he made Cheney one of his deputies. And when Rumsfeld became Secretary of Defense in 1975, Cheney replaced him as chief of staff.

Cheney was downsized out of a job in 1976 when Jimmy Carter completed his hostile takeover, so like many other business leaders, he ran for Congress… and won. There he served until 1988 when Bush the 1st made him Secretary of Defense.

Another hostile takeover in 1992, this time by Bill Clinton, left Cheney jobless once again. And so with absolutely no private sector experience, a political science degree, and nothing but Washington insider credentials on his resume, he of course landed a job as Chairman and CEO of Halliburton, one of the world’s largest oil services and construction companies… and a major military contractor.

As for Bush, well, let’s just say that his only claim to being a “business leader” comes from leading those “smallish oil companies” straight down the toilet.

Bush, the son of a sitting Vice President, was given his stake in the Texas Rangers to help grease the wheels of an effort to secure public financing for a new stadium. After taxpayers agreed to foot the bill, the value of the team dramatically increased, and Bush cashed out, making millions.

As businessmen, the only wealth Bush and Cheney ever produced was millions of dollars of profits for themselves, by cashing in on their Washington connections.

Edwards on the other hand, is a self-made man in the proudest American tradition. The son of a mill worker, and the first in his family to attend college, he achieved wealth and prestige through hard work, determination, and talent. Nobody every gave him a leg up because of who he knew, or which man he called dad.

And finally, I hate to burst your bubble Collin, but law firms are businesses too. And there is no denying that Edwards was a leader in his business.

So to Collin and her right-wing overlords I say “bring it on.” If you want to make this campaign a debate over the candidates’ private sector resumes, I’ll start planning my November 2 victory party now.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of Collin Levey’s muddled disquisition on Hollywood, liberals, and anti-Semitism: “Spiritual accessorizing in an era of religious conflict.”

While I enjoy taunting her as a cog in the right-wing propaganda machine, I have to admit that she’s not a bad writer. But this week’s column just isn’t up to her usual standard of ruthless clarity, and since I haven’t been keeping up on the WSJ op/ed pages, deciphering her thesis was all the more difficult.

I believe what Collin is trying to say is that Democrats and their hedonistic liberal backers are anti-Semites, and thus Jews should vote Republican for a change.

Needless to say, I have a couple of problems with her thesis. I myself am a liberal, Democrat-voting Jew… although few people who know me would classify me as a hedonist (with the possible exception of the Hassidic Rabbi next door.)

And I doubt anybody would consider me an anti-Semite (again, with the possible exception of the Hassidic Rabbi next door.) Her attempt to brand liberals and Democrats as anti-Semitic or anti-Israel based on the comments or actions of one individual or another, is at the very least, irresponsible.

In fact, (parenthetically) speaking of the Hassidic Rabbi next door… after accusing us lefties of promoting the absurd notion of an international Jewish conspiracy, Collin actually reinforces this false premise herself:

Jews as a group vote overwhelmingly Democrat.

Jews, as a group, don’t do anything, let alone vote as a block. As a secular Jew raised in a Reformed synagogue, I have little in common with my Hassidic neighbors except maybe a repertoire of colorful Yiddish swear words and a taste for Eastern European Jewish cuisine. And with the Sephardim who seem to dominate the Jewish community here, I don’t even share that.

Indeed, compared to an Orthodox Seattle Sephardim, I have more in common culturally with a New York Irishman (not the least of which being an unfortunate fondness for Irish women.)

The point is, there is no Jewish cabal, no Jewish vote, and no Jewish leaders (at least none I’ve every voted for.) In fact, the very existence of the “Jewish neocons” Collin mentions, contradicts her characterization of us as uniform political block.

While I agree with Collin that anti-Semitism continues to persist, I’m not sure she fully appreciates its subtle insinuation into the debate over support for Israel, nor that she understands the difference between “anti-Semitism,” and good old fashioned religious “Jew hatred.” (The former is a political tool. I suggest Hannah Arendt’s definitive work “Antisemitism.”)

Collin claims “liberal” college campuses are veering towards the plight of Palestinians, and compares this to the staunch support for Israel from the Christian right, implying that Jewish Democrats don’t know who their real friends are.

Speaking as someone who is sympathetic to the aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians (and hostile to the leaders of both,) I think Collin presents an intellectually dishonest choice. And she ignores the fact that the strong support some fundamentalist Christians show towards Israel stems from a profound, doctrinal hatred of the Jewish people.

Unlike most Jews, I have read The New Testament; as sequels go, I found it rather boring (“Jesus this” and “Jesus that.”) But Revelations is, well… a revelation. The prophesy requires the Jews to return to Israel and rebuild the Temple before the Messiah can return. Of course, in the resulting Armageddon, two-thirds of the Jews are destroyed, but well, you can’t have everything.

So while it’s hard to describe the Christian right’s staunch support for Israel as anti-Semitic, a 66% mortality rate certainly doesn’t come across as particularly Jew-friendly.

I’ve always found it offensive when politicians woo Jewish votes by touting their support for Israel. I’m a Jewish American, not an Israeli. Hell… 49% of Israelis don’t even support the Sharon government, why should I?

If this is the best the right wing media echo chamber can do, the Rs are going to have a tough November.

In her latest column — Getting to the root of the stem-cell debate — Seattle Times editorial columnist Collin Levey raises a very interesting question: how much does she get paid for this cushy gig?

Does she really make a living writing one 900-word column a week? Taking into account her rigorous methodology, what’s that amount to… half a days work? And more importantly… how do I get this job?

Collin’s idea of exhaustive research is reading the Wall Street Journal in bed, so I viewed with suspicion her call for deeper analysis on the stem-cell debate. “It’s heady stuff, so let’s review a few facts as we wade into the politics,” she writes.

Good idea. But what kind of “facts” does she come up with?

In 2001, the Bush administration limited the federal funding of stem-cell research to some 78 pre-existing stem-cell “lines” from these sources. Of those “lines,” some smaller fraction of them has been useful.

Well, you can’t get much more specific than “some smaller fraction of” can you? Unless you spent 30 seconds searching Google, and found that according to the American Medical Association, the number of useful stem-cell lines was closer to twelve.

Sure… I know I’m quibbling here. But it’s kind of ridiculous for Collin to write that it is “better to err on the side of research and discovery,” and then not do any in preparing her column.

I’m not sure what the GOP hopes to gain by going after Teresa Heinz Kerry, but if that’s how they want to waste their time, fine with me: whatever fear might be mongered by questioning her fitness to hold the purely ceremonial title of First Lady, it is no match for America’s enduring love of ketchup.

Like her fellow travelers in the right-wing media, Collin Levey seems intent on emphasizing the Heinz in Teresa Heinz Kerry, perhaps attempting to alienate swing voters loyal to the Hunts brand (“Putting a lid on the loose lips of Teresa Heinz Kerry.”) But in this patriot’s opinion, any voter who would violate their freedom fries with Hunts’ watery, treacly, sorry excuse of a condiment is likely already in the camp of our watery, treacly, sorry excuse of a president.

Collin and her comrades can go out of their way to mention Mrs. Kerry’s Mozambique birth and Swiss education, but nothing says “American” like Heinz ketchup. And I find Collin’s attempt to scandalously connect John Kerry’s political fortunes to Teresa’s inherited Heinz fortune, nothing short of laughable in light of President Bush’s decade long service in the patronage of Enron.

I also find curious the media’s obsession with Mrs. Kerry telling a journalist to “shove it.” Collin compares it to Ronald Reagan calling a reporter a “son-of-a-bitch,” or Bush II referring to Adam Clymer of the NY Times as a “major league asshole.” (And then there’s Vice President Dick Cheney, who recently told Senator Patrick Leahy to “go fuck yourself.” On the Senate floor, no less. Ouch.)

What Collin fails to point out is that these occupants of our nation’s highest offices publicly used actual profanity, whereas Mrs. Kerry did not.

Now, I have nothing against profanity; indeed, I encourage it. Profanity is uniquely expressive, and there is nothing wrong with foul language when properly used… even in the presence of children.

For example, yesterday I attended a matinee performance of Little Shop of Horrors, with an audience at least half comprised of youngsters. Two of the biggest laugh lines for the kiddies came when the man-eating plant said “tough titties” and “no shit Sherlock.”

Can any utterance — even a profanity — be totally bad if it elicits peals of laughter from a roomful of children?

On the other hand, later that day, while battling through traffic in the streets of Manhattan, a more explicit profanity erupted from my throat. This autonomic utterance — while justified — displayed poor impulse control on my part… especially considering my 7-year-old daughter and 9-year-old niece were in the back seat.

And that’s really the point. It’s never the profanity that is bad, but rather, the context. Nearly everybody swears in private. But when a dignitary such as a President or Vice President acts so undignified as to swear in public, it calls into question both their judgment and their self-control… two qualities we value greatly in the man who has his finger on the button.

The fact that Teresa “57 Varieties” Kerry stopped at “shove it” and didn’t continue to tell the journalist exactly where, shows more restraint than that displayed by the angry men who currently occupy the White House. This is an administration that lashes out not just at reporters, but at the world. It is an administration with blood on its hands… not ketchup.

I suppose I owe the Seattle Times editorial board an apology. Since almost the day I started blogging, from my early, ponytail-in-inkwell-like obsession with WSJ pod-person Collin Levey to my relentless attacks on the board’s relentlessly selfish shilling for estate tax repeal, I have been one of the Times op/ed page’s harshest and most vocal critics.

I have been snide. I have been mean. At times, I have been downright disrespectful. But this morning, while reading the Times‘ endorsement of Dave Reichert, I realized that I had been underestimating the editorial board all along. While bloggers like me have struggled to define our growing role in the emerging new media landscape while eking out a little hard-earned credibility, if not an actual living, the comfortably paid editorial writers at the Times have soldiered on with a self-confidence that can only come from self-awareness. As a blogger, raised in the shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, an era when current events conferred on journalists near heroic stature, I have been slow to grasp a simple truth the Times‘ editorialists have apparently long understood: they are no better than us.

So, I am sorry Seattle Times editorial board… I’m sorry for holding you up to higher standards than you deserve, higher standards than you’ve obviously set for yourselves. I’m sorry for expecting more rhetorical honesty than I would from, say, Stefan. I’m sorry for demanding that you refrain from wallowing in your own self-serving agenda any more than I would demand a pig to refrain from wallowing in his own shit. But mostly I’m sorry that at some level, a tiny part of me still wanted to believe that even on your opinion pages you hold yourself to a higher journalistic standard than the lowest, muckraking blogger.

I apologize.

That said, it is now possible for me to embrace the Times endorsement of Reichert as the unmitigated, lying load of bullshit it really is — a turgidly written, rhetorically dishonest piece of sophistry more fitting to the pages of (un)Sound Politics than to that of a major American newspaper. Once again failing to distinguish between being serious and being solemn, this soporific and stiffly written unsigned editorial displays the intellectual rigor mortis that has come to define the dying newspaper industry.

The Times congratulates Reichert for showing “a conscience-driven independent streak” despite the fact that he has publicly admitted that the House leadership tells him when to vote against them, and they laud Reichert for opposing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge even though he voted for drilling in ANWR when his vote counted most. The Times points to his experience as a “first-responder,” ignoring his mismanaged, scandal-ridden tenure as Sheriff and his bungling of the Green River Killer investigation, and they highlight his chairmanship of a homeland-security subcommittee… a chairmanship he most definitely will not retain after the coming Democratic sweep.

They claim that Reichert appreciates “nuance,” a word he’d have to look up in the dictionary to spell, let alone define.

How far is the Times willing to go in defense of their endorsement? They even tried to spin one of Reichert’s biggest gaffes into a strength:

He surprised many recently by saying he’s not convinced about how much global warming is caused by human action. We are convinced it’s a substantial contributing factor.

But Reichert says he’s skeptical, so he’s investigating. That’s a better approach than adopting a ready-made ideology.

Global warming isn’t an “ideology,” it’s the scientific consensus for chrisakes! This is the same sort of facts be damned skepticism that freed Gary Ridgeway to go on killing for another 17 years after Reichert dismissed him as a suspect.

But in fact, even the Times has little to say in favor of Reichert, instead spending the bulk of their double-length editorial attacking his opponent Darcy Burner in a surprisingly vicious and dishonest manner.

The Times criticizes Burner’s lack of public service, as if voters are best served by a Congress filled with professional politicians. They belittle her resume and mindlessly repeat NRCC talking points. But what I find most offensive is their blatantly dishonest, one-sided, through-the-looking-glass portrayal of the 8th district race.

Still more disappointingly, Burner has run a mean-spirited campaign that would make Republican spinmeister Karl Rove proud. In The Seattle Times/KUOW-FM congressional debate last week, she accused Reichert of “lying.” She called him “unprincipled” and “politically crass.”

Those charges ring particularly hollow considering one of Burner’s approved campaign ads shamelessly obfuscates the truth about Reichert’s support of veterans funding.

To this there is only one reasonable response: FUCK YOU! As a Democrat I have spent much of the past decade being vilified by the Republicans, being branded as an immoral traitor and a coward, and of being an enemy of the state. I have watched Karl Rove and his cohorts swift-boat a war hero, and morph a patriot who left three limbs on the battlefield into Osama bin Laden.

And the Times has the temerity to tar Burner with the Karl Rove brush? They attack Burner for running a negative campaign when every single mailer and commercial coming out of the NRCC and the Reichert campaign has been an attack ad? This, after Reichert aired an ad that actually fabricated a quote from the Times? Have they no shame? Are they entirely fucking clueless?

I would be more offended… I would be angrier than I am… I would even take back my earlier apology if not for the fact that with this endorsement the Times editorial board has demonstrated once and for all how entirely irrelevant they have become. Sure, they still have a couple hundred thousand readers, but few will manage to wade past the sports section and the comics and the Sunday circulars to get to today’s op/ed page, and fewer still will take this endorsement seriously. The Times incessant shilling for estate tax repeal has so strained its credibility and bored its readers that its endorsements have become more an exercise in narcissism than civic engagement. The vast majority of readers who still bother to read newspaper editorials understand that the opinions expressed by the Times editors are no more well thought out, no more legitimate than, well… mine. And they’re damn less entertaining. Sure, newspapers still have more influence than bloggers, but it’s waning, and they know it.

Which I think helps explain the nasty tone and dishonest logic of this particular editorial, for in attacking Burner they are also attacking us bloggers and the Netroots Movement that helped propel her from a virtual unknown into one of the most hotly contested races in the nation. The Times‘ influence or lack thereof can be measured against their established record of endorsing losing candidates and causes. But a Burner victory would be seen as a huge victory for the netroots, and a clear sign of the growing influence of the barbarian blogger hoards amassing outside the gates of the traditional media.

In this light we can see the Times endorsement for what it really is. It’s not just a defense of the kind of status quo politics they find comforting. It’s not just a defense of a politician they can trust to fight for their pet issue of repealing the estate tax. In some way, at some level, this endorsement can be seen as a defense of the Times editorial board itself.

In such a close election, perhaps what little influence the Times editorial board still has with voters could be enough to swing the victory to Reichert. But if so, it will be a Pyrrhic victory, for by so distorting both the candidates and the tenor of this race to suit their own narrow objectives they have proven themselves to be no more credible and no more relevant than your average, run-of-the-mill blogger like me. And at least I’m not boring.

Damn you Seattle Times…! Damn you all to hell!

First they dump columnist Collin Levey, ending my months-long obsession with the bar-hopping, right wing echo chamber apparatchik. (I love you, Collin!) And now the editorial board starts publishing editorials I actually agree with. What’s next… Frank Blethen championing a state income tax?

In fact, I don’t just agree with today’s editorial asking voters to reject both Initiative 330 and Initiative 336… I wholeheartedly agree with its core thesis.

THE rhetoric surrounding Initiative 330 and Initiative 336 is testament to why such complex issues

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Do not trust a single thing you read on the political blogs. Really. We can’t be trusted. Some of us simply aren’t all that bright. Some of us are propagandists, or out-and-out liars. And some of us are just plain nuts.

But stupid, lying, or crazy, most all of us have an agenda, and it influences nearly everything we write.

Take for example, Jim Miller of (un)Sound Politics, who proudly claims to have coined the phrase distributed vote fraud. Based on the core assumption that “Cheaters are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans,” it is this offensive (and ultimately self-defeating) theory that some of the more self-righteous and non-introspective Republicans rely upon to explain away their long history of electoral failure in Washington state.

(Could it be that the majority of voters prefer Democrats? Naaah… they cheated!)

In his latest contribution to (u)SP’s ouvre of partisan paranoia, Jim shows that his inherent mistrust of the other extends well beyond his own unscientific musings.

One of the minor mysteries of the election is why the Seattle Times endorsed Dino Rossi. I don’t take their own explanation at face value, and I suspect I am not alone in my cynicism. My guess is that some on the editorial board went along with the endorsement because they thought he had no chance to win. They could pose as nonpartisan without cost. It is, when you think about it, rather extraordinary how little support the Times has given to “their” candidate since the election.

Forget for a moment the obvious reason why the Times endorsed Dino Rossi (um… Frank Blethen told them to?) or Jim’s absurd notion that the board might appear “nonpartisan” by endorsing the Republican. It is his final sentence that is truly revealing, for it clues us in on Jim’s view of the primary role of the media, mainstream or otherwise: supporting their candidate.

Jim finds it downright suspicious that the Times would endorse Rossi, and then not overtly use its enormous power of the press to undermine Christine Gregoire’s legitimacy. Because the Times is not reporting all the paranoid propaganda being foisted as news on (u)SP, Jim attacks it for not investigating at all. But what he’s really attacking is not the Times’ failure to investigate the election, but its failure to support his conclusion that it was stolen.

In his mind, if the Times really supported Rossi, it would be working harder to undermine and overturn this election, journalistic ethics be damned. If that is the role that he expects of our state’s largest newspaper, imagine the low journalistic standards he demands from mere bloggers like himself.

Unlike his fellow (un)Sounder, Stefan, who frequently lets his inner demons seize hold of his thesaurus, Jim tends to write in a more measured, detached style, that a less critical reader might attribute to dispassioned thoughtfulness. But the truth is, he is a partisan propagandist, pure and simple.

I myself have long admitted that there is a propagandistic element to much of what I write, starting with the subjects on which I choose to editorialize. And I have also had more than my fair share of fun taking shots at the Seattle Times… including my months-long obsession with dipping Collin Levey’s journalistic ponytail in my digital inkwell. (I think I love you, Collin!)

So this is definitely a case of the pot calling the kettle black. But then, I’ve never pretended to be all shiny and polished.

The point is… don’t uncritically trust the blogs! Read between the lines, scribble in the margins, hold us up to the light, in front of a mirror, and under a microscope… and then spin us backwards on an old turntable if that’s what it takes to reveal our subliminal message.

Don’t fool yourself… we’re no better than the mainstream media. We’re just different.

It has been suggested to me that for a blog devoted to a reasoned discussion of politics and media criticism, I have occasionally gone over the top. Okay… a few people have actually accused me of being offensive.

For example, I have received a couple negative comments about my joyful, half-joking Canadian bashing. One reader wrote that he enjoyed my deconstruction of Collin Levey’s opinions, but that my “savage critique of her writing skills” was personal and uncalled for. And of course, there are those who squirm uncomfortably at my occasional — yet always prudent — use of profanity… like “ass“, “shit“, “bastard“, “fuck“, “prick“, and the semantically nuanced political epithet: “fucking prick“.

Personally, I have long believed that one of the strongest ways to express genuine outrage is to say something genuinely outrageous. Plus, swearing just plain makes me feel good. For example, take FuckTheSouth.com, one of the few pieces of post-election analysis that has actually made me laugh. Downright offensive? I guess so. Thought provoking, informative, political analysis? Yeah, it’s that too… and it’s also damn amusing.

I would hope that my regular readers understand the difference between seriousness and solemnity, and thus do not discount the content of this blog due to the literary style in which it is expressed. But I understand if not everyone shares my predilection for the profane. My goal has always been to entertain as well as inform — but I am doing neither if I’m turning off repeat visitors due to a few cuss words.

And so I ask you, gentle reader, for your input. Am I doing myself and my causes a disservice by expressing my opinions so, well… expressively? Or do you appreciate that, unlike the mainstream pundits, my word choice is as honest as my opinions?

I look forward to your comments and suggestions on how to make this a better blog.

Speaking of intellectual dishonesty on the Seattle Times op/ed pages, Collin Levey is up to her usual rhetorical mischief in her latest column: “Cheap drugs help no one if they’re not effective“.

Collin’s springboard is the recent recall of Indian-made generic HIV drugs, that had been intended for the AIDS-ravaged African market. She uses this unfortunate incident as an opportunity to criticize (largely Democratic) efforts to permit reimportation of less expensive drugs from Canada:

In the past two years, there has been a stampede on the part of governors and Washington, D.C., policymakers to authorize the reimportation of drugs from Canada and other nations.

All the problems of America’s expensive medications could be solved, this contingent said, by performing a simple end-run around the greedy juggernaut of profit-seeking drug companies. In this, as in Africa, the Bush administration’s insistence that it would not sanction the safety of drugs not vetted by the Food and Drug Administration has been met with sneers and accusations of callous disregard for human life.

It’s Collin who is sneering, and her callous disregard is for truthful debate. We’re talking about the reimportation from Canada of drugs manufactured in the United States. She may not be implying that Canadian pharmacies are passing off ineffective Indian generics… but she’s certainly hoping that’s the inference her readers will come away with.

The safety issue is a red herring, and Collin knows it.

That said, I wholeheartedly agree with Collin when she says “Canadian reimportation is an idiotic idea” — but probably not for the same reasons.

Can anybody seriously suggest that shipping drugs to Canada and then shipping them back to the US is an efficient, cost-effective distribution system? Canadian drugs are cheaper because the Canadian government negotiates with the pharmaceutical companies to obtain favorable pricing for its citizens… something the Bush administration explicitly prohibited Medicare from doing in the recent reform legislation.

There is no free market in prescription drugs; government health systems and large insurance companies negotiate best pricing the world over. Only in the US are the uninsured and underinsured left to fend for themselves. In effect, American consumers are subsidizing sales of lower priced drugs abroad.

What would happen if the US government paid more care to the welfare of its citizens than the welfare of pharmaceutical executives? No company can or should be forced to operate at a loss. If the US negotiated lower prices for its citizens, then the drug companies would be forced to negotiate higher prices in those markets that can afford it.

In lieu of a free market, we can at the very least strive for a fair one. Especially when it comes to a life-or-death product like prescription drugs.