This issue‘s cover features a controversial picture of Senator Crazy John McCain.
Hail the Leader!
The controversy mainly has to do with the photographer’s other images of McCain. The Atlantic defended the image above.
The legend, “Why War is His Answer,” seemed eerily apt- the magazine arrived in the same mail as a gift from a friend (thanks, cymast!) a Quaker “War is Not the Answer” bumper sticker.
Interesting points after the jump.
Posted by acilius on October 7, 2008
https://losthunderlads.com/2008/10/07/the-atlantic-monthly-october-2008/
1/8 Sept– Kristina vanden Heuvel quotes Mikhail Gorbachev’s Washington Post op-ed on the Georgian crisis, claiming that “if we had heeded his vision of a truly post-Cold War world, we might not today be confronting such dangerous geoploitical gamesmanship.” Vanden Heuvel points out that in Kosovo, the West supported the KLA’s demands for independence on grounds that treated the right of self-determination as all-important, the sovereignty of the nation-state as unimportant. In Georgia, we oppose the Abkhazians and South Ossetians in their demands for independence on grounds that treat the sovereignty of the nation-state as all-important, the right of self-determination as unimportant. Unless we can practice foreign policy in such a way as to show equal respect to these twin principles, vanden Heuvel argues, there will be no hope for world peace.
Stuart Klawans recommends Trouble the Water, a documentary about the destruction of African-American New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina made by African-American New Orleanians in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina.
15 Sept– Stephen F. Cohen on the lives of people released from Stalin’s gulag; David Schiff on the opera Peter Grimes; a poem by Mahmoud Darwish.
22 Sept– The first of four consecutive issues to feature the name “Palin” on the cover. Robert Grossman’s comic strip sets “The Legend of Flyboy McPlane” to music. Margot Canaday reviews William Eskridge’s history of sodomy laws in America.
29 Sept– The cover is a spoof of the New Yorker’s now famous Oval Office cartoon. After the jump, images.
D. D. Guttenplan on a couple of books about the history and meaning of comic books; Paula Findlen on Giordano Bruno’s life, his philosophy, and the power of his story as a rallying point for anticlerical sentiment.
6 Oct– I’d always thought of the idea that the Hanoi regime had withheld American POWs at the end of the war as a sick delusion. Sydney Schanberg gives reasons to think otherwise. Apparently there is a great deal of evidence to the effect that such a thing did happen, and Crazy John McCain has behaved rather unpleasantly in his role as one of the chief figures in the official effort to hush that evidence up.
13 Oct– Several contributors argue against the idea of bailing out major Wall Street firms, calling instead for an effort to rebuild the American economy from the bottom up.
Posted by acilius on October 3, 2008
https://losthunderlads.com/2008/10/03/the-nation-september-and-october-2008/
This issue includes several pieces about the 2008 presidential campaign, but some interesting things as well.
A note mentions a RAND Corporation study of piracy which reached the reassuring conclusion that, contrary to hype, terrorists and pirates are natural adversaries. While terrorists “would presumably aim for the destruction of the maritime economy, pirates depend on it for their livelihood.”
Guy Gugliotta recounts the increased interest in space-based weaponry in the US defense establishment since the current administration took power, then argues that nothing is to be gained and a great deal lost from the development or use of such weapons.
Lisa Margonelli’s “Gut Reactions” explains how the biochemical reactions that take place in a termite’s stomach could provide a model for efficient biofuel production. Along the way, she discusses the complexity of the communities of bacteria found in termites’ stomach’s and quotes the idea that “Maybe the termite is just a fancy delivery system for the creatures in the gut.” And maybe humans are really controlled by their stomach bacteria, too…
The jewelry of Ted Muehling is the topic of a new book; Benjamin Schwarz reviews the book, taking the opportunity to write at length about how obscure the location of Muehling’s New York shop is (“tucked on a short stretch of the four-block, semi-hidden Howard Street- reportedly the last street in Manhattan to get street lights”) and how all the most sophisticated ladies in New York know and wear his work.
In 1974, heiress Patty Hearst was abducted by the Symbionese Liberation Army. During her captivity, she was beaten repeatedly, raped hundreds of times, and brainwashed into joining the SLA’s bank robberies. Apparently something just like that happened to Caitlin Flanagan. Well, minus the abduction, captivity, beating, rape, brainwashing, and bank robberies. Her sister left home and became a hippie for a while back in the early 70’s, much to her mother’s dismay. So as you can see, she knows exactly what Patty Hearst must have gone through, and is the person most qualified to write a highly judgmental essay about her in the guise of a review of a recent book about her case.
Corby Kummer takes a cooking class on the Greek island of Kea. His slideshow about the island and its food can be found here.
Posted by acilius on October 2, 2008
https://losthunderlads.com/2008/10/02/the-atlantic-monthly-september-2008/
Via haha.nu–
Posted by acilius on September 30, 2008
https://losthunderlads.com/2008/09/30/if-vietnam-were-now/
August- Alexander Cockburn reviews Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland. Cockburn has a lot of fun reminiscing about the 1964-1974 period, but denies Perlstein’s thesis that the American political scene hasn’t changed much since then. “It’s a different, less strident, less violent, less creative time.” He and Jeffrey St. Clair then offer “One cheer for Sarah Palin.” “The liberal attacks on Sarah Palin are absurd to the point of lunacy… Given the highly experienced maniacs who have been destroying this country and the rest of the world decade after decade, one would have thought that the E word would be an immediate disqualification.” They also point out that the three-point oil plan she introduced as governor of Alaska are now on display as the three-point oil plan of one B. Obama: “a windfall profits tax on the oil companies, an energy rebate tax, and the development of a transcontinental natural gas pipeline from Prudhoe Bay across Canada to the Midwest.” They don’t mention that Obama has been a presidential candidate longer than Palin has been governor, so it’s not so clear who came up with the idea first.
1-15 September- Promoted on the Counterpunch website as “The Timebomb Who Would Be President,” this issue features two front-page articles about Crazy John McCain. In “McCain’s 14th Amendment Problem,” Douglas Valentine argues that since the 14th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits traitors from holding public office, the man the North Vietnamese codenamed “Songbird” while he was their prisoner is not eligible to be elected president. Cockburn and St. Clair tell the story of Crazy John’s two marriages, including this: “According to two emergency room physicians in Phoenix, interviewed by Counterpunch and who tell us they don’t want their names used, it was at this time” [when Crazy John was under investigation for his ties to corrupt financier Charles Keating] “that Cindy McCain sought medical attention in the Phoenix area for injuries consistent with physical violence: bruises, contusions, and a black eye. There were at least two more visits for medical attention in the Phoenix area by Cindy, with similar injuries, between 1988 and 1993.” True? Who knows? But those who paid attention to the 2004 Illinois Senate race can’t help but remember the end of Blair Hull‘s campaign.
Posted by acilius on September 26, 2008
https://losthunderlads.com/2008/09/26/counterpunch-august-september-2008/
7 July– Alexander Cockburn points out the shortcomings of the late Tim Russert; Jon Wiener derides efforts to depict the University of California at Irvine as a hotbed of anti-semitism.
14 July– In “The Subprime Swindle” Kai Wright shows that many of those now facing foreclosure because of exotic mortgages are African-American, and argues that those mortgages have had the effect of siphoning away a tremendous share of the accumulated wealth of black America. Stuart Klawans recommends the film Full Battle Rattle, a documentary about a military training exercise in California meant to simulate conditions in Iraq.
21/28 July– Naomi Klein labels the current state of our political economy “disaster capitalism” and identifies its main instrument of persuasion as extortion. The rise of private firefighting firms enables the rich to threaten to shut down public fire departments that serve the rest of us; the deal the big oil companies have made in Iraq, apparently giving them right of first refusal on future drilling, puts them in a position to threaten to shut down oil supplies; genetic modification gives seed producers the power to starve the world. Klein doesn’t have much faith in the power of market mechanisms to rein in the rich, but then why should she.
In the same issue, U Penn classicist Emily Wilson reviews John Tipton’s translation of Sophocles’ Ajax. The play puts her in mind of war’s psychological effects. “[B]y denying the opposition any humanity, and therefore making them killable, we risk making ourselves something less than human.” When Ajax responds to a slight by setting out to kill his fellow Greek warriors at Troy, the gods delude him into mistaking a herd of sheep for his companions. He slaughters them with great efficiency. Classicists used to call this slaughter “the Ovicide” (from the Latin ovis, meaning “sheep.”) The Ovicide (Wilson doesn’t mention the term, and it is extremely old-fashioned, but I’m rather fond of it) occurs before the play, which focuses on Ajax’ attempt to come to terms with the fact that he has made a fool of himself. In Ajax’ torment, Wilson sees a symbol of every warrior whose training and formation have stripped him of the ability to distinguish between human and not-human.
Posted by acilius on September 25, 2008
https://losthunderlads.com/2008/09/25/the-nation-july-2008/
The theme of the issue is the importance of historianship; interesting pieces praise the historical works of David Hume, Edward Gibbon, and Ray Allen Billington.
Elsewhere in the magazine, William Watkins reports a case in Stoke-on-Trent, England, in which non-Muslim boys attending a state school were punished for refusing a teacher’s instruction to pray to Allah as part of a diversity lesson. Watkins is most disturbed that these boys must seek redress, not by appeal to the traditional rights of Englishmen, by under the European Convention on Human Rights. Here is a news story about the case; here is a news story about a deadly encounter between a Muslim man and his anti-Muslim neighbor in Stoke-on-Trent, suggesting why the school there may have been nervous about diversity issues.
Lefalcon’s idol Srdja Trifkovic takes the arrest of Radovan Karadzic as an opportunity to relate the recent history of the Balkans, demonstrating the plain falsity of much of the anti-Serb mythology Westerners have been fed since 1991. Read a slightly different version of Trifkovic’s article here.
Chilton Williamson, whose contributions lately have tended to be barely readable stories about preposterously stereotypical characters in Mexico, writes an 11 paragraph column, the first 10 of which are surprisingly cogent. He analyzes the notion of an “American Dream,” arguing that such a dream is “inherently inflationary, and therefore ultimately destructive.” Destructive not only of prosperity, but of the bonds of family, faith, and tradition. Just when it seems Williamson has abandoned his creepy racism and found a genuinely humanistic topic to explore, he concludes with a paragraph beginning “Barack Obama, the mulatto presidential nominee sprung from the loins of a white Kansas woman and a black man from Kenya, embodies the American Dream as it has been understood at least since James Truslow Adams’ day.”
Posted by acilius on September 12, 2008
https://losthunderlads.com/2008/09/12/chronicles-magazine-september-2008/
“Chalabi’s Lobby” shows both that Ahmad Chalabi’s efforts to persuade the US to invade Iraq were paid for by the US government itself and that Chalabi is back in favor with senior American officials. “Inside the Surge” argues that America is helpless in Iraq, and that Iraqi groups who share none of America’s interests are manipulating American forces and money for their own advantage. Some memorable lines: “The Americans think they have purchased Sunni loyalty by giving aid to these groups, but in fact it is the Sunnis who have bought the Americans.” “The Bush administration and the US military have stopped talking of Iraq as a grand project of nation building, and the US media have dutifully done the same. They too have abandoned any larger narrative, presenting Iraq as a series of small pieces. Just as Iraq is physically deconstructed, so too is it intellectually deconstructed, not as an occupied country undergoing several civil wars but as small stories of local heroes and villains, of well-meaning American soldiers, of good news here and progress there.”
Alice Kaplan reviews a clutch of books by, about, and related to Irene Nemirovsky. Matt Steinglass reviews two books about the Vietnam War, Andrew Wiest’s Vietnam’s Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN, and Mark Moyar’s Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam. Wiest’s book includes the riveting story of Colonel Pham Van Dinh, the hero of Dong Ap Bia (aka Hamburger Hill) who later defected to the North. Leading with this story, Steinglass argues that the Communists were better able to meet the aspirations of Vietnamese nationalism than the Saigon regime ever could. As for Moyar’s book, Steinglass claims that “just as for some liberals Iraq has always been about Vietnam, for Moyar Vietnam has always been about Iraq.” Steinglass argues that Moyar’s partisanship leads him to wander away from a set of perfectly reasonable claims and to try to defend the some of the most reprehensible policies the USA pursued in Vietnam.
Posted by acilius on April 11, 2008
https://losthunderlads.com/2008/04/11/the-nation-21-april-2008/
A special issue devoted to the 75th anniversary of the New Deal.
Most interesting are three items outside the special pieces. A brief editorial by Laila al-Arian notices the recent panels Iraq Veterans Against the War sponsored in Silver Spring, Maryland, where US military personnel returned from Iraq testified about war crimes they committed and witnessed in that country. Unlike their predecessors who appeared at the 1971 Winter Soldier Investigation during the Vietnam War, these veterans all produced photographs, videos, and other corroborating evidence for their accounts. What stick in my mind was a quote from an active duty enlisted man named Hart Viges. Specialist Viges tells of his refusal to join in desecrating an Iraqi corpse. “I said no- not in the context of, That’s really wrong on an ethical basis. I said no because it wasn’t my kill. You shouldn’t take trophies for things you didn’t kill. That’s where my mindset was back then.”
Kim Phillips-Fein reviews a silly book by libertarian writer Amity Shlaes arguing that the Great Depression was solely the result of government meddling and that only laissez faire economic policies can lead to prosperity. Phillips-Fein points out the logical implication of this argument. The US effort in World War Two represented the biggest increase in government spending, taxation, and regulation in history up to that point. On Shlaes’ premises, that should have been accompanied by a profound exacerbation of the depression. Yet in fact the war years saw prosperity return to America, and were followed by decades of tremendous growth.
Robin Einhorn reviews Woody Holton’s history of the debates around the constitution, faulting Holton for his uncritical acceptance of the Antifederalist worldview and his failure to engage with any scholarship produced since 1940. Still, Einhorn finds much to praise in Holton’s unflagging optimism and democratic spirit. “What Holton really wants is for Americans to understand that we have a grander political tradition than constitutionalism, a democratic tradition in which ‘ordinary farmers’ used tangible power to win tangible gains.”
Posted by acilius on March 28, 2008
https://losthunderlads.com/2008/03/28/the-nation-7-april-2008/
A remarkable story on the cover. John Derbyshire writes that US foreign aid to Africa has produced enthusiastic crowds to greet George W. Bush on his recent visit to the continent and high approval ratings for America and Americans in polls of African opinion. However, he expresses doubts as to the real value of such aid. Citing Peter Bauer’s 1970’s-vintage definition of foreign aid as “transfer of wealth from poor people in rich countries to rich people on poor countries” and economic studies by Bauer and other supporting that characterization, Derbyshire argues that changes in foreign aid programs in recent years have been at best cosmetic and that aid continues to make matters worse for the countries that receive it. Going beyond narrowly economic arguments, Derbyshire points out that foreign aid, like big oil reserves, free a government from the need to finance itself by taxing its people, and thus from the need to win that people’s support or respect. Thus aid, however nobly intended, undermines democracy. Quoting Africans who resent the rich world’s gifts to their countries and prefer the more straightforward exchanges businesses from China make in Africa, Derbyshire speculates that the short-term popularity aid may buy donors will come at the cost of an overall loss of influence. Derbyshire mars this very interesting and tightly-argued article with some paragraphs near the end wherein, for no apparent reason, he brings up James Watson and the question of race and IQ. A well-known exponent of the nativist hypothesis, Derbyshire evidently could not write anything at all about Africa without indulging himself in this rather unseemly preoccupation of his. Still, the article as a whole makes a powerful case against the rich world’s patronage of the poor.
A review of recent books on the history of the American right points to an historical cleavage of considerable importance. Before the mid 60’s, the most prominent right-wing intellectuals in the USA were men whose education had been primarily in philosophy, history, and literature, and whose chief goal was to give true answers to the main questions of the day. The following generations were men (and a few women) whose education had been primarily in the social sciences and whose chief goal was to formulate policies that right-wing politicians could implement. The two groups could not understand each other- the older group were mystified as to what the younger ones really wanted, and the younger group thought the older ones were foolish to care so much about being right. This is a story that The American Conservative should tell often, since the word “neoconservative” is so easy to spin as an anti-semitic slur. By exploring this history, the magazine could enrich the word and avoid veiled bigotry.
Eric Margolis contrasts the Iranian president’s recent highly publicized, multi-day, triumphal procession through thecities of Iraq with the brief, unannounced visits American leaders pay to US military bases and to highly guarded sites in the quietest corners of the country. This contrast suggests to him that the US has already lost any hope of competing with Iran for influence in the future Iraq.
Elsewhere in the issue, Andrew Bacevich tries to talk himself and other disillusioned conservatives into voting for Barack Obama; Leon Hadar speculates on how Obama and McCain would handle crises stemming from Kosovo’s recent declaration of “independence”; and William S. Lind explains how past Balkan crises led to World War One, and finds inexcusable hubris in western governments’ failure to see a renewed disaster brewing in the region.
Posted by acilius on March 23, 2008
https://losthunderlads.com/2008/03/23/the-american-conservative-24-march-2008/
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