Author Archives: Josh Eidelson

CHENEY IS SCARY

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Every now and then a news story comes along which, while not momentous in its impact (I can’t say I take this quite as seriously as, say, John Podhoretz), nicely sums up the particular ridiculousness of our historical moment. Like when the Vice President, on one of those plentiful days off it’s in vogue to criticize Europeans for taking, shoots a friend in the neck and face.

All of the trademarks of this administration are there: the needless violence, the unnecessary cover-up, the fallback on macho posturing, the creative use of language, the heaping of blame on a former ally. Highlights: the earnest claims that “we’ve all been peppered like this once or twice” (look for Scott McClellan to start adopting this language to describe our troops in Iraq), and the apparent consensus – which poor Mr. Whittington will no doubt have to join – that it was all his own fault for sneaking up on Cheney.

PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW (AND THEY HAVE GOOGLE)

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do democrats take blacks for granted
I’d say so.

Is Barack Obama pro-choice
Yeah. But he’s wrong to say that denying some people choice doesn’t make you any less so.

what is Goldilocks problem
Here’s one (on the other hand, if the question was supposed to be “what is Goldilocks’ problem, I’ve got nothing).

FIGHTING WORDS (ALITO EDITION)

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Barbara Ehrenreich: “In the ‘dress for success’ literature we learn not to look ‘too feminine’ or of course ‘too sexy.’ Shoulder length hair has to go; large breasts should be concealed under mannish jackets. Corporate dress guru John Molloy actually warns women against the “too busty” look, as if an elective double mastectomy might be a good career move.”

Robert Kuttner: “The world that Bush inherited was not an easy place in which to promote U.S.-style civil society, or a civil world order. But Bush has poured oil on the flames (or in his case, flames on the oil). It will take decades to undo the damage and restore a world in which pro-democracy again equals pro-America. In the meantime, we need nothing so much as an outbreak of democracy at home.”

Russ Feingold: “This administration reacts to anyone who questions this illegal program by saying that those of us who demand the truth and stand up for our rights and freedoms somehow has a pre-9/11 world view. In fact, the President has a pre-1776 world view.”

Ed Schwartz: “This President seems to be of the view that it’s an honor to die for your country but an imposition to pay for it.”

MAKING OUR MARK

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In today’s YDN, I question whether unrestricted donations are the best gift seniors can give Yale:

The Alumni Fund’s literature asks both too much and too little of students. Too much, in that by choosing cash as the measure of commitment, it obscures those students working now not to make a charitable donation to Yale but to pay off tuition or pay down debt. Too little, in that by suggesting that providing more resources to Yale is enough to leave a mark, it obscures our responsibility to take part in determining how those resources are used to pursue the mission of the University.

The same issue offers this news piece on the latest stage of our financial aid campaign, which includes a 2,000 signature petition supporting our platform, letters to alumni, and an installation those of you in New Haven can check out on Beinecke Plaza.

NOT A GOOD WEEK FOR JUSTICE

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Robert Bork’s failed domination set a crucial precedent that a nominee whose jurisprudence endangers fundamental freedoms can and should be rejected by the Senate regardless of his personal competence. Unfortunately, Senate Democrats set a new one on Monday by stopping short of a filibuster on Sam Alito, a man who literally wrote the brief on how to kill Roe v. Wade, who has shown unwavering support for the power of the federal government to have its way with marginalized individuals, and who rejects that government’s responsibility and power to act in the service of the disenfranchised. Monday set a dangerous new precedent that when push comes to shove, the Senate will advise and consent only on whether the nominee is a sex offender or an incompetent. It’s a precedent Republicans can be depended on to take advantage of, to the real detriment of everyone who looks to an independent judiciary to safeguard their rights.

The Democrats’ ostensibly rebellious clapping after Bush said that Congress hadn’t enacted his plan to erode Social Security only emphasized the dark irony of the day: politicians who express their opposition through unauthorized clapping but not through the parliamentary avenues available to stop the confirmation of men who will leave us less free.

Want to put some real progressives into Congress? Here’s a good place to start.

TEACHING IS WORK

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Attended a powerful GSOC rally at NYU Thursday. Chris Quinn – proudly introduced by the UAW’s Secretary-Treasurer as the first woman and first gay person to lead New York’s City Council – spoke insightfully about the fundamental rights at stake in these teachers’ fight to save the union they won. The most compelling of the speakers with Amy LeClair, one of the teachers NYU is locking out of future work. As she said:

Teaching is an enormous responsibility, and I take that very seriously. Teaching is work – hard work – and anyone that does not understand that, that teaching is work, should not be in the business of education. The university administration has reminded me time and time again of my obligations to my undergraduate students. And now my stipend is going to be terminated, I am essentially being fired from my JOB for not only the current but future semester as well, because I am not fulfilling my responsibilities. But as one of my colleagues so astutely pointed out, with responsibilities come rights.

From there, I took the A Train over to a great fundraiser for Students for a New American Politics with Geraldine Ferraro, who spoke to the importance of SNAP’s mission:

I wasn’t a student activist in college because my father had died when I was eight and I had to work some nights, most weekends and every summer to help my mother financially. That’s why I’m glad that with the help of SNAP, students who are financially strapped as I was, can still participate in the process.

More on that here. You can donate to help SNAP send students to work on progressive congressional campaigns this summer here.

ON CASUAL RELATIONSHIPS

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My latest YDN column, on real and imagined threats to academic freedom, is on-line here:

This is the academic freedom being touted by the right: The right of the supporters of the most powerful man in the world not to hear him criticized too harshly, or too irreverently, or outside of the appropriate context. Here conservatives themselves are demanding what they once claimed the hated political-correctness legions were calling for: the right not to be made uncomfortable. The term “politically correct” itself was popularized by Dinesh D’Souza, who wrote a book arguing that racism is merely “rational discrimination” by whites with a justified fear of “black cultural defects.” D’Souza is now a political analyst for that supposed bastion of political correctness, CNN. Working the referee has its advantages. The greater irony, perhaps, is that while Horowitz’s campaign has been grabbing headlines, the real academic freedom — which depends on professors’ ability to speak out without fearing for their jobs — has been steadily eroded by academic casualization.

Here’s hoping it draws at least one angry letter from a Yale Free Press editor and another from someone who doesn’t like GESO very much.

From the archives: More on campus conservative persecution claims and unionizing teaching assistants.

STATING THE OBVIOUS

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In a banner ad over at Instapundit, right-wing blog outfit Pajamas Media shares the breathless prose of Tammy Bruce:

The core of the American people has manifested itself most purely in blogs because elites for so long controlled all avenues of communication. Those days are over now.

The blogosphere oozes with this kind of petty triumphalism – from Andrew Sullivan’s “The Revolution Will Be Blogged” tagline to Ed Driscoll’s “Year of Blogging Dangerously.” Bruce’s claim is just a shining example because it counterposes “elites” with the “core of the American people.” She’s right that American journalists are a fairly elite group (the shift in journalists’ conception of their job from a trade to a profession is related to this). That’s why coverage of unions, contrary to the claims of most bloggers, tends to be so right-wing and hostile. But if Bruce thinks that blogs – overwhelmingly written and read by the wealthiest sliver of the population – represent the “core of the American people,” that suggests that she has a rather elite conception of the American people herself.

JOBS AND FREEDOM

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Martin Luther King called for a guaranteed minimum standard of living for all Americans; a generation later, our political leaders have presided over a bipartisan retreat from this country’s social contract with its most vulnerable citizens. King called for a broad-based movement against bigotry, militarism, and economic injustice; a generation later, the left remains beset by the divisions he worked to overcome, and by the ones he himself failed to critically engage. King called for an audacious, visionary struggle to win the seemingly unachievable; a generation later, we spend much of our energy working to protect what’s been won against further erosion. There was a time when the FBI called King the most dangerous Negro in America. It’s time King was dangerous again.

ABRA-MATHON

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On today’s YDN opinion page, Eli Luberoff writes a letter responding to the statement in my Tuesday column that

While Abramoff made strategic donations to members of both parties, it was Republicans with whom he collaborated to break the law and the trust of the American people.

Eli agrees with the second part of the sentence, but he disputes the first part – that Abramoff made “strategic donations to members of both parties.” In retrospect, my wording was needlessly imprecise. Literally, Abramoff did make “strategic donations to member of both parties,” in that he made in-kind donations to Democrats as well as Republicans. More important, though, are the donations Abramoff directed through his clients to Democrats as well as Republicans, which were more substantial. Better wording here would have more clearly encompassed those contributions, which while heavily skewed towards Republicans, didn’t go exclusively to them. But as my column made clear, I agree with Eli that this is a Republican scandal through and through.

My Tuesday piece also comes up in Roger Low’s column today. Roger notes that Democrats do corrupt things sometimes too, which I think we can all acknowledge without losing sight of the underlying ideological edge of the Abramoff scandal: this is a story about concentrated economic power trumping popular majorities in setting policy and distributing resources. Roger rightfully calls the Democrats on their failure to champion a more aggressive reform agenda, and then veers off into an encomium to John McCain, who – besides being a staunch conservative except for his opposition to torture, global warming, and soft money (talk about defining deviancy down) – hasn’t championed any of those reforms either.