I set this column/review aside almost a month ago. Since then, Hitchens died. How does that change one’s reading of it? How has its meaning changed?
‘Posterity Isn’t Kind To Columnists And Essayists And Book Reviewers, Even The Best Ones.’
A wistful, critical account of Christopher Hitchens, including his bullying and his drinking.
I Underestimated Romney’s Outside Money
IEs. ‘Independent expenditures.’
That’s the money that groups theoretically unaffiliated with a campaign spend (usually on paid media). The preferred form of those groups in the post ‘Citizens United’ (look it up and weep for our democracy) world are so-called ‘Super PACS’ which have virtually unlimited ability to raise and spend (often secret) money.
Romney has the support of a bunch and they hammered Gingrich hard once he took the lead. Romney was able to maintain rhetorical distance while pro-Romney groups attacked the Newt.
Newt’s failure to build a campaign infrastructure (which these days has to include supposedly unaffiliated Super PACs) means that he has struggled to respond.
And so, Newt, like all the rest, falls.
I kind of thought he wouldn’t fall, at least not until racking up some wins.
I underestimated the role that these outside groups would play in the new world of campaign finance. And now, I’m terrified of how things will work in the future, now the campaign finance limits are very nearly meaningless.
What Jeb Says, What Jeb Means
Jeb Bush published a little op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today and it’s titled ‘Capitalism and the Right to Rise.’
But let’s be honest, it’s real title is ‘Don’t Worry That Romney Is a Tool, I’ll Be Running for President in 2016 and You’ll Get the Guy You Really Want.’
The subtitle is ‘Just Let Obama Win, But Don’t Make It Look Like You’re Letting Obama Win.’
To paraphrase Han Solo from Return of the Jedi (which was originally going to be titled Revenge of the Jedi – I know this because some of the first toys that came out between Empire and Jedi had the first draft of the title on them), ‘I don’t know… campaign casual.’
But seriously. This op-ed is hilarious. Jeb might as well be telling Republicans ‘this current field of GOP candidates is so stupid and I’m so awesome, so stay unengaged and uninspired this election season so that Obama will win and there won’t be an incumbent when I run in 2016.’
Paul Ryan Winning Any Award For Healthcare Policy Besides ‘Most Full Of Crap When He Talks About It’ Or ‘Most Likely To F–k It Up’ Is A Joke
The Nation provides a nice little takedown of the ridiculousness of Politico giving Paul Ryan their ‘Healthcare Policymaker of the Year’ award.
My question is how in God’s green earth did Ryan ever get a reputation for being some of budget guru or ideas man anyway? Nothing he has ever put forth has ever had the numbers add up and I don’t consider regurgitating the latest b.s. from ALEC or some right wing hack think tank to be the same as actually having an ‘idea.’
You know who Paul Ryan is? He’s the guy who reads Time Magazine and then tells you with great authority some stupid prescriptive he pulled out of it and then expects you to laud him for being so very well informed on public policy.
A Poet’s Manifesto
Australian poet and activist John Kinsella was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize. He and the poet Alice Oswald subsequently removed themselves for consideration on the basis that Aurum, the hedge fund sponsoring the prize, was not a moral company and neither wished to whitewash their money.
Kinsella responded to the controversy by publishing a manifesto of ‘linguistic disobedience’ in the New Statesman.
It’s well worth reading.
P.S.
For those keeping score, The New Statesman was one of the Christopher Hitchens’ earliest writing gigs. He was with them when he came to America to write for The Nation as part of an exchange program between the two magazines.
That Which Does Not Kill Me Makes Me Stronger
Note:
I wrote this several days and was basically saving it for another day, but then I learned that Christopher Hitchens died yesterday at the age of 62. He was suffering from esophogeal cancer.
Like many liberals, I have mixed feelings about Hitchens. Great respect for him as a stylist and a polemicist. But, like many, I diverged with him over the Iraq war. But, unlike say an Irving Kristol, he did not allow his break with the left on a particular issue lead him to become a right wing figure.
For Christmas, some half dozen years ago, my Aunt Millie gave me a copy of his Letters to a Young Contrarian, titled after Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. Hitchens’ book is almost certainly more enjoyable to read, not in the least because you can’t shake the feeling, when reading Rilke’s book, that the young poet to whom he addresses himself is probably also a very bad poet.
I don’t know how he will be remembered. For the next decade, probably as an English speaking, more biting and more witty equivalent to France’s Bernard Henri-Levy (though Hitchens did not wear his shirts unbuttoned nearly to his navel, like Henri-Levy, and generally stopped at a sufficiently rakish spot at the base of the sternum; he was also not nearly as much an unjustifiably pompous an ass as Henri-Levy and also, Hitchens did actual research, while there is not prove to Henri–Levy does any before spouting off). In decades to come, I suspect he will placed with figures like Arthur Koestler who were influential and much read in their day but whose relevance was more timely than timeless.
But I still loved his magazine pieces and watching him stab and barb debate opponents on CSPAN-2 on the weekends and I am very sad to know he is gone.
So soon after George Whitman’s passing, too. We are losing figures whose personal importance to my time I will never be able to explain to those that follow me.
There are various translations, of course. But it occurs in Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols in a section of aphorisms. It is one of the more enjoyable of his books to read (I prefer to the more novelistic style of Thus Spake Zarathustra; and I should note that Nietzsche is one of the easiest and most enjoyable philosophers to read and is supposedly known in Germany less as a philosopher and more as a literary stylist ), but does not hold so well, intellectually speaking, compared to works like The Genealogy of Morals or his first tome, The Birth of Tragedy.
Christopher Hitchens recently wrote about that phrase, which he said he often used before but now that he is living very close to death’s edge (achieved a relative state of being-there as regards understanding of being-approaching-death, to needlessly throw in some references to the great German obscurantist philosophy, Martin Heidegger) he sees its flaws.
Of course, one wonders if Nietzsche was really referring to things that lead up to the final death. The weakening of the body and mind. Or was he speaking more about the potential to take wisdom from suffering?
But it is easy to read it literally. It wasn’t written with any real context. Also, like many Americans my age, I first encountered it within the opening credits of the 1982 movie, Conan the Barbarian, where it was taken somewhat literally – since Conan did not die of exhaustion pushing that great wheel in circles, he was able to become impossibly strong, almost as if he were actually a semi-articulate Austrian body builder.
This is the problem with Nietzsche, that most literary of philosophers. Because literature, even more than the majority of nineteenth century German philosophy, lends itself to a certain ambiguity of interpretation.
And If The Gingrich Bubble Bursts?
What then?
Will Romney’s support swell as everyone moves to the last man standing? Will Ron Paul get it as the next ‘Not Mitt’ in line?
Firstly, let me say that I am not convinced his bubble will burst. I think he might actually hold on long enough to win Iowa and then all bets are off. Especially if, as seems more and more likely, Romney comes in third in Iowa, with Newt and Ron Paul jockeying for first and second.
But, in the spirit of ‘what if,’ let me put forward a suggestion.
Rick Perry.
What! you exclaim. You mean the Texas nitwit who start flaming out the minute he opened his mouth? The man whose command of the spoken word makes Dubya look like Demosthenes? As John McEnroe was wont to say, you cannot be serious!
But here’s how I see it.
Gingrich explodes/implodes. The anti-Mitt vote (which appears to be close to 60% of the GOP electorate) has no where to go. Mitt moves into first place in Iowa, but with ‘undecided’ polling at between 40-60% in the Hawkeye State.
Ron Paul is simply too far outside the GOP mainstream in certain issues to round up more than a few percentage points from Newt’s demise.
Rick Perry, I propose, would get the lion’s share of the undecided voters just because he has the money to flood the airwaves and mailboxes with paid media, making him the last, semi-acceptable, ‘not Mitt’ that anyone hears from before the caucus.
Of course, his challenge in this scenario is whether these now rudderless voters will actually turn up at the caucus locations, but you could easily seem him doubling his current poll numbers and winding up in either first or second place (probably second, behind Ron Paul) and goes to South Carolina (Mitt cleans up in New Hampshire under this scenario, but gets no bounce because everyone expects him to clean up in New Hampshire) with the national story being, ‘Perry Comeback’ and ‘Perry Beats Expectations.’
Ta-da.
Were Democrats Wrong To Be Concerned About Romney?
The conventional wisdom was that Romney (once it became clear that candidates like Thune, T-Paw, etc either weren’t running or weren’t gaining traction in the primary) was the most dangerous candidate Obama could face.
This became solidified as candidate after candidate gained momentum and, theoretically, was judged inadequate to the need to beat Obama while Romney kept chugging along under the premise that, ultimately, he was the one who could face down Obama and win.
But that’s not really looking so much the case now, is it?
Newt is the current front runner in this game. And the conventional wisdom says that he’s undisciplined and we (the GOP) needs Romney the Robot.
But it’s Newt who is staying on message, who is unflappable. And it’s Romney who’s looking easily rattled, who is doing stupid things like making ten thousand bets on national television.
And now I have to entertain the possibility that Newt could actually be far more dangerous for Obama and Romney far less dangerous that we have previously believed.
Stay Classy, Florida
Or not.
Actually, just go ahead and target teachers who are trying to register young people to vote and pretend this isn’t about partisan politics.
the coffee philosopher 