politics

Wednesday various

Is Obama in Big Salmon’s pocket?

After the excitement of yesterday evening — which, in retrospect, was perhaps not terribly exciting to an outside observer — I spent the rest of the night with the thrill-a-minute that was President Obama’s second State of the Union address. I don’t make a habit of watching the speech, which can sometimes make me feel like a bad citizen, but I happened to be on YouTube a few minutes before it started at 9 o’clock, so I decided, on a somewhat guilty-conscience-ridden spur, to watch it there. And you know what? It was fairly boring and kind of ridiculously long. And, considering how much of the speech I spent making jokes about it on Twitter, I’m not sure how actively my citizenry was engaged.

Most of my silly comments were directed at John Boehner, our new Speaker of the House, and Michelle Bachmann, the Senate’s resident Crazy Lady. I think the former might deserve it — with an Oompa Loompa tan like that and such a quickness with the tears, it’s hard not to poke a little fun — but I know the latter does. And I didn’t even watch her deer-in-the-headlights, dictated-to-invisible-elves response to Obama’s speech last night. (Can someone please tell me how the Republicans get two televised responses? Say whatever you will about the Tea Party and their connection to the Republicans; they still are Republicans.)

Anyway, more snow today, though I managed not to oversleep or miss my train. I had a busy day at the office, and seemed to be mailing out more things out of the country in one day than I usually do in weeks, or months. We had one of our “Brown Bag Lunch” speakers again, but I decided to skip it. Instead, I grabbed a quick bite and ended up mostly working through lunch, since the weather was bad enough I couldn’t really go anywhere.

And the weather was very icy this evening, on my commute home. The snow had stopped, but it had been replaced by freezing rain and sleet, which made walking very treacherous. I was turning a corner in Manhattan and had to grab onto the side of a building to keep from falling to the ground. And then at home, I found myself wishing people hadn’t shoveled the sidewalks. I don’t love walking through snow if I can help it, but I’d rather than a thin sheet of ice I can’t really see.

I made it home safely, though, and we’ll see what the weather ends up being like tomorrow. More snow is predicted, and in fact it’s snowing now. I’ll tell you this much: whatever happens, I’m wearing boots tomorrow.

Monday various

Wednesday various

  • When defending someone’s horribly poor choice of words, it’s probably a good idea to choose your own words a lot more carefully than this. I suppose we should be grateful the Washington Times didn’t suggest we look for a “Final Solution” to Sarah Palin’s recent troubles. [via]
  • I have mixed feelings about writing contests in general, particularly ones with entry fees. I took part in this year’s Geist Postcard Story Contest, for instance, since there’s not a lot else to do with a story that short, and the fee a) goes towards a subscription and b) helps out a really good magazine. But, in general, I tend to think money should flow towards the writer, and any story worthy of winning a contest should also be worthy of getting paid something for. (Obviously “money” and “paid” can mean a number of different things here, from actual cash to contributor copies to your name printed somewhere. It’s the principle of the thing.)

    But I absolutely think it’s writing contests like this that give the reputable ones a bad name, that leave me with my mixed feelings in the first place. Seriously, writer beware.

  • Tasha Robinson and Keith Phipps have an interesting discussion about which is worse in popular culture: blind, overenthusiastic hyperbole…or bland, unengaged apathy.
  • While A.O. Scott puts the lie to the notion that critics represent some kind of anti-populist elite:

    Speaking personally, but also out of a deep and longstanding engagement with the history and procedures of my profession, I have to say that the goal of criticism has never been to control or reflect the public taste — neither thing is possible — but rather the simpler (but also infinitely difficult) work of analyzing and evaluating works of art as honestly and independently as possible….There is a cultural elite, in America, which tries its utmost to manipulate the habits and tastes of consumers. It consists of the corporations who sell nearly everything with the possible exception of classical music and conceptual arts, and while its methods include some of the publicity-driven hype that finds its way into newspapers, magazines and other traditional media, its main tool is not criticism but marketing.

    False populism, this idea that some snobs in their ivory towers don’t want you to have any fun — or, worse, want to ram their culture, their ideals down your throat — well, that’s sort of what’s given us people like Sarah Palin, isn’t it?

  • And finally, this is how rumors get started: Twitter in a panic over Oxford Circus ‘gunman’. A “gunman” invented out of whole cloth over Twitter, it should be said. See the course of the brief panic charted here. [via]

I’ll Fly Away

This past weekend was the busiest air travel weekend in the United States, because of the Thanksgiving holidays, and there’s been a lot of talk about the new security procedures put in place by the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA). Here’s a round-up of some links, along with some thoughts on the whole mess. Mostly, I’m just glad I didn’t have to fly this weekend.

Maybe you’ve heard the story of Stacey Armato, a woman who was held captive by the TSA as revenge for her complaint against them? [via] I recommend you watch the entire video and read the commentary, although it mostly just served to make me angry.

Some have rushed to say that breast milk isn’t affected by these low-level x-rays, that the scans employed at airports don’t pose a health risk to the child who will eventually drink the milk, and that Armato had no cause to require the alternate screening. That may very well be, but it’s not the issue. The issue is, the TSA has made breast milk an exception, along with other “medication and related supplies” and done so in their publicly available guidelines for travelers. But when a woman asked them politely to abide by those guidelines, which she had printed out for them, they refused. When she insisted, they elected to exact revenge on her the next time she came through their security checkpoint, by again refusing, by threatening to have her arrested, and then by using intimidation tactics until she missed her flight. This may be an isolated incident, more mismanagement at the Phoenix airport than a systemic problem in the TSA. But it is indicative of the general attitude apparent in the TSA, the disregard or unfamiliarity their day-to-day employees have with their own organizations’ guidelines, and the general “do as you’re told or you’ll be lucky if all that happens is you miss your flight” mentality that guides them, with little if any genuine oversight.

Some people have also rushed to say, “hey, the TSA has never been anything but professional to me…” Which has to be one of the worst arguments ever. It proves only just that, and nothing else. I haven’t seen widespread abuse, so widespread abuse must not exist. I don’t have a problem with the new security measures, so everyone else must be over-reacting. Just because a small percentage of TSA workers have been nice to me, and they’re only doing a job, that does not mean they should be given carte blanche to do whatever they want.

In linking to that piece by Michael Kinsley, Mark Evanier writes:

I’ve long assumed that the reason they search old ladies and folks in wheelchairs and nine-year-old girls is that they think while those folks are surely not terrorists, some terrorist might have the idea to hide or plant a weapon on one of those folks, then reclaim it once they’re past the security checkpoint. It’s not that they think Grandma will knowingly have a gun in her purse but that it wouldn’t be that hard for someone else to stash one in there when she wasn’t looking.

Whereas I think it’s more likely they check little old ladies and people with children more often simply because those people are less likely to make a fuss.

Roger Ebert also acknowledges most of the TSA workers we see at airports are just average folks, looking for “a good job in these hard times of high unemployment.” They’re not evil. But that doesn’t mean we don’t ever draw the line at what they’re allowed to do:

Are we doomed to submit to humiliation every time we fly? Perhaps you can argue that the terrorists have won a victory just because of the cost and nuisance of airport security. Not exactly. They have generated vast numbers of jobs for security agents, and inspired millions of dollars in contracts for scanning machines and so forth. Indeed companies have spent frtunes to lobby for their machines to be required. One of the big supporters of scanners is Michael Chertoff. Under his face on the news it always says, “Former U.S. Homeland Security chief.” It should say, “Board Member of Companies Selling Scanners.”

I’d like to think, like Christopher Bellavita seems to want to, that all of this grumbling about the TSA, its new full-body scans and invasive pat-downs, was building to something, that it really does mark “the beginning of the end of complacency.” Because I agree with Bellavita that:

[i]t is now apparent to me that in the haste to ensure compliance with procedures that are inconsistent if not inarticulable, TSA has hastened the likelihood of failure. If we do not insist that TSA work to create articulable policies that make sense, procedures that are explicit and consistent and training that supports both, then we are complicit in what will inevitably be an ultimate compromise of TSA.

That compromise may come in the form of terrorist attack, or it may come in the form of a collapse of public support. Either or both are inevitable. Either or both are preventable. [via]

But I’m not so sure. The TSA has already exempted politicians from the new procedures, and President Obama is again displaying an unfortunate lack of spine when it comes to this and other important issues. It’s one thing to “understand our frustrations,” and I certainly don’t expect nothing to be done to ensure airport security. But the TSA isn’t doing that; it’s engaging in security theater and intimidation and sometimes borderline criminal activity, and that’s not just frustration at long lines and having to take our shoes off talking, Mr. President.

Maybe you’re wondering: has the TSA ever caught a terrorist? The short answer is: almost certainly not. [via]

At least Jet Blue hasn’t hired Steven Slater back.