the Senate Democratic leadership and the President-Elect agree with Joe Lieberman and think he did a fine job as the chair of Homeland Security under Bush.
Of course, that can't possibly be true.
--
The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
Forget everything he did during the campaign -- tho' I'd rather not -- how about the fact that he continues to be an absolutely horrible choice for the Homeland Security Committee? (And one whose views put him at odds with the Prez-elect.)
I don't get it.
--
To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
... there are two contradictory & plausible interpretations of this whole Joe Lieberman nonsense (and it applies, with some variation, to the HRC SecState stuff, too):
1. The Obama administration is keeping Lieberman (& by extension, those factions of the party that still support him) in the tent, so to speak, but at the margins - he's "been put on notice," "left short-stacked," or whatever analogy you care to use. He remains useful for parliamentary reasons, but won't be any kind of major player in Democratic policy decisions from here on out.
2. The Obama administration is keeping Lieberman (& by extension, those factions of the party that still support him) in the tent because they have no basic disagreements with him beyond intra-ideological family squabbles, and that they intend to cleave to the 'bipartisan' consensus on the War on Terror - a consensus veritably embodied by Lieberman.
I think we'll get a clearer sense of which of these two is the more plausible once Obama starts actually governing.
As The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin observed at the end of last year: "Historians looking back on the Bush presidency may well wonder if Congress actually existed."
So true.
The vote for Lieberman to retain his Chairmanship was 42-13.
--
The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
if Franken wins the recount in MN and Davis wins the runoff in GA there's your 60 votes. Besides, if Lieberman starts being a d!ck again (which is where I'd put my money) they can always vote him out later.
The point here was that there was a vote at all. Despite the flowery words and affirmations of friendship, he's on notice.
What's he going to do, turn into a Republican? Except on constitutional and national-security issues, Lieberman is a reliable vote for the Democrats. Since Harry Reid isn't an idiot, I can't imagine that he fell for such a transparent bluff.
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The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
provided they'll have him. What matters is how he votes. Lieberman can't even threaten to screw with control of the Senate a la Jim Jeffords, because the Dems have a clear majority already and are overwhelmingly likely to retain it in 2010.
--
The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
What's Lieberman going to do, vote "no" on the cloture vote for Obama's health care bill? Out of spite? Not only would he be going against his basic political beliefs, he'd be virtually guaranteeing he wouldn't be reelected.
The talk of 60 seats is so much noise, anyway. The Democratic caucus is nowhere near unified enough to deliver 60 cloture votes on anything the Republicans cared enough about to filibuster.
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The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
I have never, never understood why Lieberman opponents are full of such hate. Ned Lamont and his supporter ran as though he was running to represent Adhamiya rather than Connecticut. Seriously, who else in politics inspires people to say things like "Jew Lieberman (D-Israel)?"
Lieberman indulges in equally, if not more, vicious rhetoric against his political opponents.
But that's not even the issue at all, though both sides have been framing this "controversy" in terms of partisanship vs. burying the hatchet. Lieberman did a tremendous amount to enable Bush Administration policies over the last eight years. Displacing him as committee chair would have sent a clear signal that the United States doesn't intend to continue pursuing those policies. Leaving him in... well, you do the math.
--
The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
The level of hate that Lieberman did. Seriously, when you have trouble telling if something was posted on Daily Kos or Stormfront, there's something a tad bit irrational about the hatred involved.
Joe Lieberman gets away with saying garbage like this:
NAPOLITANO: Hey Sen. Lieberman, you know Barack Obama, is he a Marxist as Bill Kristol says might be the case in today’s New York Times? Is he an elitist like your colleague Hillary Clinton says he is?
LIEBERMAN: Well, you know, I must say that’s a good question. I know him now for a little more than three years since he came into the Senate and he’s obviously very smart and he’s a good guy. I will tell ya that during this campaign, I’ve learned some things about him, about the kind of environment from which he came ideologically. And I wouldn’t…I’d hesitate to say he’s a Marxist, but he’s got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America.
but DailyKos, boy, no, those guys are just like neo-nazis. What's next, you don't get democrats who dislike Zell Miller or Dick Cheney and you have trouble telling if something was said by Ted Kennedy or Osama bin Laden?
That I was referring to the language of Lieberman as a Jew neo-con lackey. It was rancid, and it was real. I'm talking about imagery of Lieberman in blackface, with the people putting it up saying that it's okay to use it, because we're left wing and obviously anti-racist. I'm talking about people calling for Lieberman to be killed.
And you're comparing that to Lieberman saying that Obama is left of the American public? Please.
well that's an even worse argument, since you're resorting to fishing for cherries to pick. There are racists on this website as well -- are we all tainted? You can't seriously claim that "jew lieberman" is the consensus over there.
Language (which, to be fair, was often from people who insist that they hate Zionists, not Jews) was a minority, but it was part of a larger collection of hate and bile that is very much the norm for dealing with Lieberman. But I suspect you know that.
is basically code for "Jew Lieberman". No one who uses the term can pretend that it's non-denominational in his case.
Anti-Zionism IS Jew-hatred. It's exactly like saying "I'm not pejudiced against Poles, but Poland should have remained a part of Germany and Russia. Polish nationalists are like Nazis. And their religion is disrespectful toward others. And they're all too rich and dominate Hollywood. But some of my best friends are Poles, so I'm not prejudiced."
Who are strongly attached to their culture and/or faith, but don't believe that the optimal solution to persecution was to form a homeland in the midst of people who already lived there. Which is why I don't necessarily think that the rhetoric of Lieberman as a Zionist lackey and pawn of Israel was necessarily about Jew hatred, just Lieberman hatred that often wound up sounding like Jew hatred.
On a moderately related note, I suspect that when leftist employ blatantly anti-Semitic (or racist) imagery, they're mainly doing it for the frisson of doing something transgressive rather than out of actually racist or anti-Jewish convictions.
It's a deserved reference to his self-righteousness.
I've never heard anybody say "Holy Dianne", as a reference to Feinstein. Have you? Joe gets this because of his record, not because of his religion.
Joe is a scumbag. You should be able to criticize a scumbag whether he is Jewish or not.
That said, his status in the Senate does not concern me, and is not unexpected. The Senate is a club and will remain so despite the Daily Kos. I'm sure Joe has a lot of markers and he's cashed them in. He's been there a long time, and he has many poweful friends, including the Clintons. Plus being backed by AIPAC doesn't hurt, to put it mildly. That's not antisemitism. That's just fact.
I don't give a damn what Lieberman said in the campaign (#137035)
by stillnotking on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 10:36pm
That's just electoral politics. He supported the other guy, he said nasty stuff about his opponent, and in other news the sun rose in the East this morning.
This isn't about anyone's hurt feelings. This is about the official face of the United States of America. This is about liberals being told, plainly, openly, and in no uncertain terms, that what we want from the Obama administration and Congress is completely irrelevant.
All I can say is: don't ignore it. Please.
--
The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
You've repeatedly asserted that you have no particular interest in or loyalty to the nation as a whole, instead caring exclusively about an extremely small set of folks in your immediate circle.
You've also advocated for large numbers of American men and women in uniform to endure deprivation and the risk of mutilation and death in order to pursue your preferred foreign policy goals -- people who serve mainly out of a sense of patriotism.
Are they all suckers, too?
--
It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
I think you've managed to make two errors: (#136925)
by Bernard Guerrero on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 2:32pm
1) I have asserted nothing along the lines of the claim you make in the first sentence. I've claimed I hold greater (much greater, to be honest) interest in/loyalty towards those whom I find psychologically closer to me than those whom I hold to be far. I find Americasn as a whole to be a great deal more like me than non-Americans, so it would actually follow that I hold some level of benign interest towards them in relative terms. And I'm not quite sure why that sounds shocking to you, since it mirrors standard human behavior, including your own.
2) Your second para implies that there is some level of being a "sucker" in participating in a system that does not match your own goals perfectly, but we both know that cooperation can often render better results for an individual party than mindless constant defection. Case in point, I served in one of said uniforms for a number of years, in a capacity that has since seen people sent overseas to war (including a few former associates.)
No, PM, a "sucker" is somebody who expects X to happen when all the available evidence points to Y as the likelier outcome.
False Statements By People Who should Know Better (#136885)
by AndrewSshi on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 11:22am
"We don't need to replace our microfilm readers because everything's on the internet now."--A disturbing number of people in charge of university libraries.
"Commodities prices are never going to stop going up, ever!"--Lots of the financial community last summer.
"Houses never depreciate, ever!"--A large amount of the banking industry of the U.S., the U.K., and Spain.
I haven't really studied psychology or economics, so I wonder if there's a term for the phenomenon whereby a large group of people who really, really should know better all seem to fall into a particular pattern of error that in hindsight seems to be pretty clearly a mistake. Because it's certainly a fairly common phenomenon.
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
At one point in his talk Haidt discusses the differences between conservative and liberal thinking about buying dogs. Yes, dogs. The key question goes like this: “I'd be more likely to get a dog that was. . . “
(a) “Independent-minded and relates to its owner as a friend and equal,” or
(b) "Extremely loyal to its home and family, and doesn't warm up quickly to strangers."
Haidt says that liberals tend to choose (a) and conservatives tend to choose (b).
This is more than a little wacky. When I think about the characteristics of my three dogs that I prize, "independent-mindedness" is nowhere on the list - and, at least in the case of my beast of a Great Dane, I'd be at least a little worried if he started thinking of me as an equal. Maybe the liberal pet-owners I know are idiosyncratic, but I don't get the sense that any of them are any different. The things Haidt alleges conservatives prefer in pets - loyalty & protectiveness (& I'd add some level of submissiveness) - seem to me rather to be near-universally preferred among pet-owners, whatever their political affiliations. While I don't like the fact, e.g., that my Dane will howl like a lunatic when a strange man comes in the house, while pressing himself against me - the beast can wail - I do like the fact that he's so protective of us & our home, that he's attached to us.
So is Haidt just taking his distinctions a step too far? Is it just nonsense to talk about moral impulses when it comes to our pets (beyond the 'liberal' impulse to prevent cruelty, at least)? Maybe not. Will Wilkinson, in reference to the same lecture of Haidt's - but not the same point - takes issue with Haidt's claim that both the liberal & conservative moral impulses are necessary for a viable political community:
If the conservative dimensions are so important, Jon needs to explain why the people of the advanced market democracies are so much more liberal than they used to be, so much less conservative, and yet so much less disordered (i.e., less violence, less war, etc.)
I think the answer is that in Hayek’s “extended order,” the conservative sentiments play a relatively small and decreasing role. A more thoroughly liberal moral culture evidently not only sustains order, but sustains an order that leaves us healthier, happier, and orders of magnitude wealthier. If cranked-up conservative sentiments were necessary to sustain that order, then their decline would indeed endanger us, and could not constitute moral progress. But insofar as they have become superfluous, the failure to further suppress them is a failure of further moral progress. This is not a story of liberal/conservative Yin and Yang. This is a story of Yin devouring Yang.
This is a potent challenge to the legitimacy of the 'conservative' moral impulses in its own right, but let's grant Wilkinson's argument - the question then becomes, as he puts it, "what to do with impulses that now hurt more than help, but are written into us anyway"?
Well, maybe one answer is: we buy a dog. One needn't be a particularly keen observer of contemporary mores to note that people - I don't except myself from this - have taken to treating their pets with more care, more affection, more attention than they once did. This is not, I think, only a quantitative shift; the tongue-leaving-cheek references to 'pet parents' are as apt as they are discomfiting. Part of this is surely due to an increase in luxury - the looser the bounds of necessity, the wider we can afford to extend the sphere of moral relevance. But why extend it here? If these now-maladaptive impulses are ineradicable, and their suppression is a source of frustration & discomfort, are our moral (or quasi-moral) relations to our pets a form of relief?
Maybe - OK, probably - this is over-thinking it. And I don't think this moral relief story is anywhere near the whole of it, if it's even a part of the story. But I'm fascinated by the way we (I) get invested in our animal companions, the way they answer a need we are hesitant to express to those who are our equals, to those who are (or might be) independent-minded.
There is no prima facie reason to suspect that anyone's selection of a pet has anything to do with their moral or political orientation, and I'd be pretty suspicious of any study that purported to find a link.
As far as the necessity of conservative moral sentiment, I think Wilkinson is barking up the wrong tree*. The question here is not how people should be, it's how they are. I find very little evidence for the proposition that modern industrial democracies have any deficit in the conservative moral emotions. Americans, by and large, feel as strongly about loyalty, tradition, and hierarchy as any other human culture. Wilkinson cites a decline in the frequency of war, but this claim is radically incorrect and bizarre: modern industrial democracies, especially the USA, actually go to war at a rate far above the historical norm.
*Haidt is barking up the wrong tree too, insofar as he has tried to make claims about the necessity or desirability of liberal & conservative modes. The study of value judgments cannot involve making value judgments, if it is to be coherent.
--
The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
Where law and order is absent or not delivered by the state you word is your only currency, loyalty is paramount (not bumper sticker loyalty, cosa nostra loyalty) heirarchy is all that stands between society and anarchy and tradition helps keep those two pilliars in place. The smaller the community the harder it is to act outside of those rules and survive for any length of time. Since in modern industrial democracies law and order comes from a deus ex machina and since there is a tendency to large communities there is much more opportunity to act in anti social ways and escape censure.
I prefer "wacky," but "silly" fits, too. (#136928)
by hobbesist on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 2:45pm
Without looking into the basis for his claims, my guess would be that the responses on which Haidt is basing the claims were given in the context of a long series of questions meant to show this distinction, and the liberals who answered in this ridiculous way had already had their pumps primed (so to speak) to favor independence over loyalty.
And maybe you're right about the relative presence of the so-called conservative moral emotions in Americans - though I shouldn't be surprised to learn that there is a relatively greater number of people who report feeling, say, disgust less strongly in a modern industrial democracy than there is in other kinds of societies, either.
But there's a separate question, here, and I'm not quite sure if it's the one you think is 'up the wrong tree' or not - viz. whether people are inclined to think that the moral judgments based on these emotions ought to be found compelling.* One can readily imagine two people who each find homosexuality disgusting (ex hypothesi, say each is disgusted in just the same way & to just the same degree**), one of whom thinks this disgust is grounds to enact laws proscribing homosexual behavior, and the other who, despite her own disgust, thinks that the demands of equity 'trumps' her own (merely subjective) reaction. So it's not obvious to me that the relative presence/strength of the moral emotions is what's at stake here to begin with, so much as the relative weight one attaches to them in moral reasoning.
*Just to be clear, given the nest of subordinate clauses, I'm not talking about comparing "value judgments" here, but cognitive inclinations/habits/preferences - how folks think, not how they should think.
**Although I think I have to be open to the argument that this 'ex hypothesi' state of affairs can't, in fact, be the case.
because the single most important part about socializing a dog is to make sure that it understands that it is lower in the social hierarchy than humans. Dogs that are not taught that as puppies become dangerous as adults. This is completely separate from training for obedience (I'm sure you know this as a dog owner, but people who don't own dogs may not know this - I didn't until we owned a dog).
I think it's a lousy analogy, independence in an animal (especially a domesticated one) is very different from independence in a human.
I think your last question has two answers, the human tendency to anthropomorphize animals and the ability of domestic animals to read and mimic human reactions and interactions. Especially in the case of dogs, I remember reading an article that observed that the one really unique ability of domesticated dogs is that they are very good at reading human emotions and facial expressions (they re-purposed their abilities to sense the mood of the alpha dogs in a pack to the humans they live with). In the more extreme cases of humans bonding with dogs, I think it's to assuage an emptiness in the human's life.
Yeah - I'd hate to see him raise a puppy. (#136904)
by hobbesist on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 1:23pm
Unlike my partner, who grew up with animals from the time she was a small child, I never had pets growing up. So all the things one does to socialize puppies that are, for her, a matter of course, struck me as - not odd, exactly, because it all made excellent sense, but as an occasion for wonder at the way two very different species, with two very different (but ultimately complimentary) sets of needs, come to an accommodation. And the kind of receptivity to human non-verbal cues you mention is a very big part of that, and really astonishing besides; it's something that can be easily taken for granted, but you must be right that that uncanny ability is a significant reason why our relationship to our dogs is less and less one of strict utility. I hadn't thought of it that way.
In addition to the three dogs, we also have a cat; if I often forget to mention her when people ask if we have pets, it's because - for the most part - she doesn't seem to have much use for us. Which is OK, since we got her for mostly utilitarian reasons.
That being said, and this may just be happenstance, the most egregious examples of "pet parents" I've come across have been cat-owners. The animals' natural aloofness seemed to lead these poor souls to redouble their mollycoddling & baby-talking.
Cats do not consider their owners to be equals. -nt- (#136964)
by Jordan on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 4:50pm
.
--
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
if you ever wanted to round up all the neighborhood cats, all you'd need is a couple dozen empty paper bags.
--
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
Unless this state of nature includes couches, beds, regular feedings (with the occasional addition of table scraps) & clean water - no, I'm pretty sure that's not what the pet would want. Though I imagine they'd like to combine the amenities of domesticated life with the ability to chase the occasional squirrel or rabbit without one of us holding them back.
In this, mutatis mutandis, my pets & I are not so different.
Its interesting that you should say that. Pets have had no say (#136898)
by mmghosh on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 12:53pm
in their domestication. I'm not arguing that a modern pet is quite far removed from the origins of domestication (say hunting dogs or sled dogs), and so needs the amenities of domesticated life pretty much as people do. But aren't modern pets, with their inability to eat "normal" food, need for regular medications etc transgressing barriers of acceptability?
Most pets can become feral pretty easily (#136903)
by HankP on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 1:11pm
but given the choice they'd prefer not to. While I doubt they could rationalize it, free food and a warm place to sleep are pretty attractive compared to living in the wild especially if you're not the dominant predator.
Transgressing barriers of acceptability? (#136902)
by hobbesist on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 1:09pm
I'm not sure what you mean by that phrase. If you mean that the kind of pampering some pets receive is not conducive to their well-being as dogs (or cats, or ferrets, or what have you) - I'd be inclined to agree, but I'm not sure what 'barriers of acceptability' have to do with that.
Ok my phrasing wasn't great. I meant the pet food scenario. (#137015)
by mmghosh on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 9:25pm
Busy and all that.
What I really meant is roughly what you seem to object to, as well. However, I visited a few people in the US who had dogs as pets, it seems that they are unable to eat anything apart from specialised pet food. Now I realise that that the dogs have been selectively bred to reach this state, and that is what I mean by this being an unacceptable situation - to me, I hasten to add.
I'm not sure, though, that dogs are "unable to eat anything apart from specialised pet food" - I'm sure my dogs would have, errm, 'digestive issues' should they abruptly begin catching (& eating) as catch can, but I think they'd all adjust & survive. The more expensive commercial dog foods, as far as I've seen, are those that try to mimic more closely what a dog 'should' naturally eat: no grain, mostly meat, and some vegetables thrown in the mix. But for the most part, that "specialised dog food" is cheap grain + meat meal from the parts not fit for human consumption + some additives for some special purpose or other (make their coats shiny, etc., etc.). I guess that's a kind of pampering.
... but I'm a little unclear about just what game we're playing. Is the point that, by the standards of other cultures, Americans have an excessively sentimentalized relationship to their pets? That the amount of money spent & effort expended on the pets' behalf bespeaks perverse priorities?
Dogs as pets, I mean. And no, not being critical at all (I like dogs as pets too), I just think its a colonial thing over here - Brit-influenced attitude, I mean.
I wonder if its the same over in your place - cultural difference between WASP and Latinos?
There's a theory afoot about how the domesticated dog (#137059)
by BlaiseP on Wed, 11/19/2008 - 1:12am
came into our lives and the wolf didn't. The proto-dog would eat from our garbage piles, all the leftover bones and whatnot. Both the proto-dog and early humans learned of the advantages of the other. Humans could kill much larger prey than dogs could, so the dogs would assist in tracking the prey because they got all the tasty leftovers the humans wouldn't eat, and a big kill meant plenty of those.
The dog becomes more than a tracker. He's raised around domestic sheep and to this day, still works the sheep as if he were stalking and hunting them. They protect the sheep for the same reasons they would drive other predators away from their own kills. Somehow they understand they're going to get to nibble up some tasty bits from the sheep they're herding, and the shepherd takes the role of the alpha dog in the pack, who always eats first.
The sled dog gets to eat before the people do, and it suited their personalities to a T. There's no democracy among dogs, from the lead dog to what the Eskimos call the Dog Least Favored, they all have a place. They genuinely seem to enjoy the work, Lord knows why.
I have my own theory about why dogs aren't favored in some cultures: once the big carnivores were eliminated, the dog as sheep herder became irrelevant. He went back to his roots, garbage scavenger.
"Dogs aren't favoured by some cultures." (#137060)
by mmghosh on Wed, 11/19/2008 - 1:18am
Exactly so, and its interesting to speculate on why that happens. Is there a relationship between "dog-using" cultures developing into "dogs-as-pets" cultures - any data on that?
I saw an interesting program on PBS, Nature. (#137066)
by BlaiseP on Wed, 11/19/2008 - 2:01am
Which went into mankind's relationship with the dog. detailed here This is a paraphrase of they had to say.
Certainly the puppy was an amusing and loving little creature, socialized to human touch from the first few days of birth. The Victorian society created the first standard breeds of dogs, I suspect the whole British crazy affection for their dogs began around this time. Before then, the dog had a useful place on the farm.
to visit with the Embera people in Panama. They keep dogs, and use them when hunting, but they are not treated like pets and there's no emotional attachment that I could see. In fact the guides warned us not to try to pet them or interact with the dogs, they're treated purely as working animals and are not particularly friendly. The kids there preferred things like baby monkeys as pets. Not sure why their culture turned out that way, since they do keep pets of other species.
No wonder, then, that Obama triggers such fear in the hearts of America's millennialist Christians. Mat Staver, dean of Liberty University's law school, says he does not believe Obama is the Antichrist, but he can see how others might. Obama's own use of religious rhetoric belies his liberal positions on abortion and traditional marriage, Staver says, positions that "religious conservatives believe will threaten their freedom." The people who believe Obama is the Antichrist are perhaps jumping to conclusions, but they're not nuts: "They are expressing a concern and a fear that is widely shared," Staver says.
It's a quirk of democracy that manifestly nutty beliefs are judged non-nutty merely because a lot of people hold them. If you think Obama is the Antichrist, you're a nut. It doesn't matter if you share this opinion with a dozen or a hundred or a thousand or a million other nuts. Get back in your f*cking bowl.
--
The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
I think the vast majority of people are nimrods, so I could never claim with a straight face that democracy is about a less error-prone system of decision making. The purpose is stability, and giving nuts their due because they have the bigger battalions is part & parcel of said stability. So long as the system doesn't result in disaffection and then political violence, the specific nuttiness is of minor import.
Have made an ex cathedrapronouncement that Obama is not the anti-Christ. Which of course brings up the question where exactly they get the authority to be the ones who issue rulings on these things, but I think he answer is the millions of people who've bought their execrable books.
First, Olbermann is now successful enough that liberals are taking shots at him. I find this tiresome. Second, note the use of the word 'successful' in the previous sentence. The guy is doing what he's supposed to be doing -- bringing eyeballs to MSNBC. And he even managed to get Rachel Maddow a show while he was at it. Olbermann has a history of burning bridges wherever he's worked, and this may be no exception over time. But scorning someone for being more obviously passionate about their beliefs than you are is a moderately vacant exercise.
Also he once interrupted a broadcast to send out birthday wishes to a friend of mine -- an actress he thinks is underrated, etc. -- so he gets an added break for that. I think of him like I did Tom Snyder back in the day. Easy to make fun of. But the latter is due to the eccentricities and excesses that make people watch in the first place.
So there's that.
--
To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
I have a task for Olbermann - ESPN Monday Night Football (#136985)
by tomsyl on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 5:56pm
ESPN has transmuted gold to lead. We've gone from Al Michaels and John Madden to Kornheiser et al, and I miss the crowd noise because the TV is on mute during the whole game. Apparently their budget doesn't include funding for replays. The whole sorry mess could be cleared up if they put a pro back on the show; he could do political commentary during halftime.
You are right: I am not passionate about Olberman's beliefs. I just find his elevated status as a prophet, True Believer and ardent, principled spokesperson for the left silly, the product of gullibility not often shown here. Like you said, it's entertainment, and an attempt at revivifying the corpse (or more accurately, stillborn body) of MSNBC's cable effort. If you like him, no skin off my teeth. But if you worship him as the left's spokesman and think that anyone who doesn't is a spoilsport, you're naive.
Seriously, who said this, who thinks he's a spokesperson, what? What organization does he head? Which office does he hold? Where does he get donations, and which rallies are held with him as the main speaker?
Seriously, what are you talking about?
--
It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
For those naive enough to think he's an idealist (#137008)
by tomsyl on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 8:12pm
who speaks from the heart instead of traipsing through the schtick he's hired by the network to do. Like every other person on for-profit TV. Semms like he has a number of stanch admirers here who believe he is a principled idealist instead of just another talking head - you, maybe?
Presumably Olberman does actually believe most of what he says -- you can't fake that stuff, and it's not like he had to twist himself in rhetorical knots to denounce the Bush administration with righteous outrage.
You're certainly right about the whole mirror of fox news thing - which I think is great. Instead of having the MSM attempting to be balanced and fox news on the right, so we get right vs balanced (with flaws), now we have right vs balanced vs left. I think it's more fair that they get it from both sides now.
This is just like the various righties here claiming people to the left of them consider Obama the Messiah, or the One, or hold him up to some godlike stature.
Of course, the only ones with this fixation are the ones pointing the fingers and making the claim. I wonder why they want to construct such fantasies?
Olbermann is no one's spokesman anymore than Obama is the Messiah. Of course, there's a 600 word article in this week's Newsweek about people claiming Obama's the Antichrist... so there's definitely loonies out there. And a media willing to give 'em a voice.
Who said Olbermann has god-like stature? (#137009)
by tomsyl on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 8:13pm
And what does any of this have to do with Obama? Is the next four years going to be the flip side of the "everything's about Bush" fixation? I hope not.
Just another talking head. But in this case, one who's managed to find himself a moderately successful niche, and also help boost the sagging fortunes of a cable net in trouble. Add to that the fact that he was one of the guys who changed the way we get our sports news -- maybe not in the way you like, but he was pretty much in at the beginning when it comes to the Irony/Smartass approach. (And was doing it in LA before he went to ESPN.)
I'd love to see him on Monday Night football. Won't happen for several reasons. Not the least of which being the bridges he burned at ESPN.
--
To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
I agree that he's just another talking head (#137006)
by tomsyl on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 8:07pm
and not some guy with lofty lefty ideals that take precedence over what he's told to say on the air. He seems to be MSNBC's greatest draw and inspired some fandom here, so their formula haw worked to a degree.
Why would you say he's changed sports news reporting in a way I might not like, when I am the one recommending him for MNF? You aren't still pissed about that Dodgers' fan remark, are you?
Liberal anger personified? I don't think so. Olbermannn is simply a ploy, a sock puppet aimed at reviving MSNBC's hopeless basement dwelling ratings. And to a degree he's had some success, but all that proves is that hate sells to a certain audience. Does anyone on either side of the spectrum take him seriously?
Oh I dunno, anyone who's happy with the Bushly status quo (#136933)
by BlaiseP on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 3:10pm
needs the whole rig: longlong sleeved shirt, with the sleeves tied in the back, the spit hood and ankle chains.
After Rush Limbaugh and the Excrement in Broadcasting Network, well, the market for outrage has been proven to everyone's satisfaction. I find it deliciously ironic, poetic justice, that Rush Limbaugh has gone deaf.
No, when it comes to bluster and cant, nobody outdoes Fox News and Excrement in Broadcasting. Liberals don't buy into that crap, which is why Air America is always on such hard times.
Heh. So unless you watch KO you support Bush? (#136938)
by tomsyl on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 3:30pm
NBC sure wishes that were true, but its and his ratings prove otherwise.
And the merit of Air America is the reciprocal of the size of its audience? OK. Or do you think there is a Nefarious Masonic/Trilateral Commission Rovian Plot to deprive it of advertisers and force its management to screw up royally, commit fraud and steal money? Maybe Randy RhodeApple was a fifth columnist. I think Propaganda Due was involved, don't you?
I have said Liberals don't cotton up to all this ginned-up outrage. That's why Air America doesn't have many listeners. Liberals don't want to hear this sort of guff. We're already aware of it through the Net. We write our own guff. Me, I like to spin up the Guff-o-matic over here, where it can be hammered on by Conservatives and a limited subset of hard-nosed thinkers. I don't need a large ratings and share to make my case.
So yeah, it doesn't matter what the world at large thinks. Air America doesn't do well, because I believe people like me think the same way, we don't need a big audience.
It keeps us dinosaurs on our toes, bobbing and weaving. And occasionally attempting the rope-a-dope.
I'm essentially allergic to TV, which is why I still have hives after watching all that election stuff. But I make an exception for Juan Williams. Maybe it's just a great acting job, but he's convinced me that he cares, and that he's honestly but politely (usually, anyway) saying what he thinks. He was overcome by emotion, almost speechless, when the Obama victory became clear. No one else I saw on election night showed any genuine emotion that I could detect. Maybe I just believe the guy because he has a real job outside of cable TV.
I'm going to assume you mean among the moderators. I dunno, the MSNBC dudes were getting pretty happy. And as for Juan, yup, but then again he was practically bawling after Obama's convention speech. He's also my wingtard sister's favorite TV guy. Hmmm.
--
To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
I'm curious because your trivialities aside, you seem to think Olbermannn's a truthspeaker. I think Williams is, to the extent anyone on TV says what they think instead of what they're told. Were do you come out on him?
Seriously, take off this whole "I'm a fricking wingtard and I can't read anything anyone says without deliberately misconstruing it" mask you put on when Olbermann, Gore, or one of several other lefty figures gets mentioned. It's an extremely boring act.
--
It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
You may think you know where the PRV line is (#136944)
by tomsyl on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 3:43pm
but I'm not sure you do. Or that you recognize satire and reductio ad absurdum when you see it. I'm betting the person I addressed my comment to does, and will reply appropriately. You didn't.
If you want to defend Blaise, you can, though I seriously doubt he needs help. But this is what you said in your comment:
Seriously, take off this whole "I'm a fricking wingtard and I can't read anything anyone says without deliberately misconstruing it" mask you put on when Olbermann, Gore, or one of several other lefty figures gets mentioned. It's an extremely boring act.
If someone put those words in your mouth, it wasn't me. And that someone is violating the Posting Rules by attacking the commenter and not the comment.
But I still don't think that the point of this site is to post clearly false statements about other commenters' posts, and I'm just plain irritated at the pattern.
--
It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
If you believe that, I have a bridge . . . (#136930)
by tomsyl on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 2:58pm
Olberman is the epitome of a corporate shill: an angry clown whose mandatory bitter, saliva-flecked jeremiads excite a small segment of the viewing public but revolt anyone else who has even heard of the guy. MSNBC has promoted him as some sort of "liberal anger" personification, but it's all for show. If he says something you agree with, it's just a coincidence.
Pathetic.
Dear Senator Reid:
If you don't want to be Senate Majority Leader, find someone who does and let him or her do it.
Sincerely,
--A Guy Who Would Really Like To Be For The Dems, Not Against The Thugs.
It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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)the Senate Democratic leadership and the President-Elect agree with Joe Lieberman and think he did a fine job as the chair of Homeland Security under Bush.
Of course, that can't possibly be true.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )Forget everything he did during the campaign -- tho' I'd rather not -- how about the fact that he continues to be an absolutely horrible choice for the Homeland Security Committee? (And one whose views put him at odds with the Prez-elect.)
I don't get it.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )It squares with Hillary at State. It's a nod to the DLC and the hawk wing of the democratic party.
It means Obama's first order of business is to have a secure power base. I can't blame him, but it might come back to bite him years from now.
--Of course not!
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| parent )... there are two contradictory & plausible interpretations of this whole Joe Lieberman nonsense (and it applies, with some variation, to the HRC SecState stuff, too):
1. The Obama administration is keeping Lieberman (& by extension, those factions of the party that still support him) in the tent, so to speak, but at the margins - he's "been put on notice," "left short-stacked," or whatever analogy you care to use. He remains useful for parliamentary reasons, but won't be any kind of major player in Democratic policy decisions from here on out.
2. The Obama administration is keeping Lieberman (& by extension, those factions of the party that still support him) in the tent because they have no basic disagreements with him beyond intra-ideological family squabbles, and that they intend to cleave to the 'bipartisan' consensus on the War on Terror - a consensus veritably embodied by Lieberman.
I think we'll get a clearer sense of which of these two is the more plausible once Obama starts actually governing.
--Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
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| parent )That remains to be seen.
By the way, this Greenwald post is well worth reading.
So true.
The vote for Lieberman to retain his Chairmanship was 42-13.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )I don't get it.
Yeah. Weird. They've calculated there's more upside with Lieberman than without him. Too bad none of us is privy to the ledger.
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| parent )if Franken wins the recount in MN and Davis wins the runoff in GA there's your 60 votes. Besides, if Lieberman starts being a d!ck again (which is where I'd put my money) they can always vote him out later.
The point here was that there was a vote at all. Despite the flowery words and affirmations of friendship, he's on notice.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )- Login or register to post comments
| parent ):^)
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )Why look for something more complicated?
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )What's he going to do, turn into a Republican? Except on constitutional and national-security issues, Lieberman is a reliable vote for the Democrats. Since Harry Reid isn't an idiot, I can't imagine that he fell for such a transparent bluff.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )Wouldn't that let hi caucus with whoever he chooses?
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )provided they'll have him. What matters is how he votes. Lieberman can't even threaten to screw with control of the Senate a la Jim Jeffords, because the Dems have a clear majority already and are overwhelmingly likely to retain it in 2010.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )hen Lieberman becomes pretty important, right?
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )What's Lieberman going to do, vote "no" on the cloture vote for Obama's health care bill? Out of spite? Not only would he be going against his basic political beliefs, he'd be virtually guaranteeing he wouldn't be reelected.
The talk of 60 seats is so much noise, anyway. The Democratic caucus is nowhere near unified enough to deliver 60 cloture votes on anything the Republicans cared enough about to filibuster.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )I have never, never understood why Lieberman opponents are full of such hate. Ned Lamont and his supporter ran as though he was running to represent Adhamiya rather than Connecticut. Seriously, who else in politics inspires people to say things like "Jew Lieberman (D-Israel)?"
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| parent )Lieberman indulges in equally, if not more, vicious rhetoric against his political opponents.
But that's not even the issue at all, though both sides have been framing this "controversy" in terms of partisanship vs. burying the hatchet. Lieberman did a tremendous amount to enable Bush Administration policies over the last eight years. Displacing him as committee chair would have sent a clear signal that the United States doesn't intend to continue pursuing those policies. Leaving him in... well, you do the math.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )The level of hate that Lieberman did. Seriously, when you have trouble telling if something was posted on Daily Kos or Stormfront, there's something a tad bit irrational about the hatred involved.
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| parent )Joe Lieberman gets away with saying garbage like this:
but DailyKos, boy, no, those guys are just like neo-nazis. What's next, you don't get democrats who dislike Zell Miller or Dick Cheney and you have trouble telling if something was said by Ted Kennedy or Osama bin Laden?
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| parent )That I was referring to the language of Lieberman as a Jew neo-con lackey. It was rancid, and it was real. I'm talking about imagery of Lieberman in blackface, with the people putting it up saying that it's okay to use it, because we're left wing and obviously anti-racist. I'm talking about people calling for Lieberman to be killed.
And you're comparing that to Lieberman saying that Obama is left of the American public? Please.
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| parent )well that's an even worse argument, since you're resorting to fishing for cherries to pick. There are racists on this website as well -- are we all tainted? You can't seriously claim that "jew lieberman" is the consensus over there.
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| parent )Language (which, to be fair, was often from people who insist that they hate Zionists, not Jews) was a minority, but it was part of a larger collection of hate and bile that is very much the norm for dealing with Lieberman. But I suspect you know that.
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| parent )is basically code for "Jew Lieberman". No one who uses the term can pretend that it's non-denominational in his case.
Anti-Zionism IS Jew-hatred. It's exactly like saying "I'm not pejudiced against Poles, but Poland should have remained a part of Germany and Russia. Polish nationalists are like Nazis. And their religion is disrespectful toward others. And they're all too rich and dominate Hollywood. But some of my best friends are Poles, so I'm not prejudiced."
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| parent )b/c he's a sanctimonious windbag who esp. bored me to tears w. tedious values speeches in 2000.
It's non-denominational in my case.
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| parent )"Holy Joe" refers to Senator Lieberman's (CT-Lieberman) self-righteous public persona.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )Who are strongly attached to their culture and/or faith, but don't believe that the optimal solution to persecution was to form a homeland in the midst of people who already lived there. Which is why I don't necessarily think that the rhetoric of Lieberman as a Zionist lackey and pawn of Israel was necessarily about Jew hatred, just Lieberman hatred that often wound up sounding like Jew hatred.
On a moderately related note, I suspect that when leftist employ blatantly anti-Semitic (or racist) imagery, they're mainly doing it for the frisson of doing something transgressive rather than out of actually racist or anti-Jewish convictions.
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| parent )It's a deserved reference to his self-righteousness.
I've never heard anybody say "Holy Dianne", as a reference to Feinstein. Have you? Joe gets this because of his record, not because of his religion.
Joe is a scumbag. You should be able to criticize a scumbag whether he is Jewish or not.
That said, his status in the Senate does not concern me, and is not unexpected. The Senate is a club and will remain so despite the Daily Kos. I'm sure Joe has a lot of markers and he's cashed them in. He's been there a long time, and he has many poweful friends, including the Clintons. Plus being backed by AIPAC doesn't hurt, to put it mildly. That's not antisemitism. That's just fact.
--Of course not!
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| parent )And here I thought it was code for "He's a self-righteous, moralizing scold." Learn something new every day, I guess.
--Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
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| parent )That's just electoral politics. He supported the other guy, he said nasty stuff about his opponent, and in other news the sun rose in the East this morning.
This isn't about anyone's hurt feelings. This is about the official face of the United States of America. This is about liberals being told, plainly, openly, and in no uncertain terms, that what we want from the Obama administration and Congress is completely irrelevant.
All I can say is: don't ignore it. Please.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )Why?
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )That's why he endorsed their standard bearer in this election.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent ):^)
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )He's been making these noises the whole time. That doesn't mean that I wasn't irritated as heck by it, tho.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )The Prez-elect apparently came down on the same side as Reid, and I dare say his word carries more weight at the moment.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )I'm not thrilled with Obama, but it was Reid's job to lead the charge on this one.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )You've repeatedly asserted that you have no particular interest in or loyalty to the nation as a whole, instead caring exclusively about an extremely small set of folks in your immediate circle.
You've also advocated for large numbers of American men and women in uniform to endure deprivation and the risk of mutilation and death in order to pursue your preferred foreign policy goals -- people who serve mainly out of a sense of patriotism.
Are they all suckers, too?
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )1) I have asserted nothing along the lines of the claim you make in the first sentence. I've claimed I hold greater (much greater, to be honest) interest in/loyalty towards those whom I find psychologically closer to me than those whom I hold to be far. I find Americasn as a whole to be a great deal more like me than non-Americans, so it would actually follow that I hold some level of benign interest towards them in relative terms. And I'm not quite sure why that sounds shocking to you, since it mirrors standard human behavior, including your own.
2) Your second para implies that there is some level of being a "sucker" in participating in a system that does not match your own goals perfectly, but we both know that cooperation can often render better results for an individual party than mindless constant defection. Case in point, I served in one of said uniforms for a number of years, in a capacity that has since seen people sent overseas to war (including a few former associates.)
No, PM, a "sucker" is somebody who expects X to happen when all the available evidence points to Y as the likelier outcome.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )"We don't need to replace our microfilm readers because everything's on the internet now."--A disturbing number of people in charge of university libraries.
"Commodities prices are never going to stop going up, ever!"--Lots of the financial community last summer.
"Houses never depreciate, ever!"--A large amount of the banking industry of the U.S., the U.K., and Spain.
I haven't really studied psychology or economics, so I wonder if there's a term for the phenomenon whereby a large group of people who really, really should know better all seem to fall into a particular pattern of error that in hindsight seems to be pretty clearly a mistake. Because it's certainly a fairly common phenomenon.
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).
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent ).
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )Alan Jacobs over at The American Scene points to an odd extension of Haidt's argument about the different impulses at work in liberal & conservative moral reasoning:
This is more than a little wacky. When I think about the characteristics of my three dogs that I prize, "independent-mindedness" is nowhere on the list - and, at least in the case of my beast of a Great Dane, I'd be at least a little worried if he started thinking of me as an equal. Maybe the liberal pet-owners I know are idiosyncratic, but I don't get the sense that any of them are any different. The things Haidt alleges conservatives prefer in pets - loyalty & protectiveness (& I'd add some level of submissiveness) - seem to me rather to be near-universally preferred among pet-owners, whatever their political affiliations. While I don't like the fact, e.g., that my Dane will howl like a lunatic when a strange man comes in the house, while pressing himself against me - the beast can wail - I do like the fact that he's so protective of us & our home, that he's attached to us.
So is Haidt just taking his distinctions a step too far? Is it just nonsense to talk about moral impulses when it comes to our pets (beyond the 'liberal' impulse to prevent cruelty, at least)? Maybe not. Will Wilkinson, in reference to the same lecture of Haidt's - but not the same point - takes issue with Haidt's claim that both the liberal & conservative moral impulses are necessary for a viable political community:
This is a potent challenge to the legitimacy of the 'conservative' moral impulses in its own right, but let's grant Wilkinson's argument - the question then becomes, as he puts it, "what to do with impulses that now hurt more than help, but are written into us anyway"?
Well, maybe one answer is: we buy a dog. One needn't be a particularly keen observer of contemporary mores to note that people - I don't except myself from this - have taken to treating their pets with more care, more affection, more attention than they once did. This is not, I think, only a quantitative shift; the tongue-leaving-cheek references to 'pet parents' are as apt as they are discomfiting. Part of this is surely due to an increase in luxury - the looser the bounds of necessity, the wider we can afford to extend the sphere of moral relevance. But why extend it here? If these now-maladaptive impulses are ineradicable, and their suppression is a source of frustration & discomfort, are our moral (or quasi-moral) relations to our pets a form of relief?
Maybe - OK, probably - this is over-thinking it. And I don't think this moral relief story is anywhere near the whole of it, if it's even a part of the story. But I'm fascinated by the way we (I) get invested in our animal companions, the way they answer a need we are hesitant to express to those who are our equals, to those who are (or might be) independent-minded.
--Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
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)Tibetan spaniels, who stay puppies all their lives. If they are as smart as dogs are reputed to be, they hide it well.
So what does that make me, a Green Party member? Or a Nader supporter? Both?
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )There is no prima facie reason to suspect that anyone's selection of a pet has anything to do with their moral or political orientation, and I'd be pretty suspicious of any study that purported to find a link.
As far as the necessity of conservative moral sentiment, I think Wilkinson is barking up the wrong tree*. The question here is not how people should be, it's how they are. I find very little evidence for the proposition that modern industrial democracies have any deficit in the conservative moral emotions. Americans, by and large, feel as strongly about loyalty, tradition, and hierarchy as any other human culture. Wilkinson cites a decline in the frequency of war, but this claim is radically incorrect and bizarre: modern industrial democracies, especially the USA, actually go to war at a rate far above the historical norm.
*Haidt is barking up the wrong tree too, insofar as he has tried to make claims about the necessity or desirability of liberal & conservative modes. The study of value judgments cannot involve making value judgments, if it is to be coherent.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )Where law and order is absent or not delivered by the state you word is your only currency, loyalty is paramount (not bumper sticker loyalty, cosa nostra loyalty) heirarchy is all that stands between society and anarchy and tradition helps keep those two pilliars in place. The smaller the community the harder it is to act outside of those rules and survive for any length of time. Since in modern industrial democracies law and order comes from a deus ex machina and since there is a tendency to large communities there is much more opportunity to act in anti social ways and escape censure.
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| parent )Without looking into the basis for his claims, my guess would be that the responses on which Haidt is basing the claims were given in the context of a long series of questions meant to show this distinction, and the liberals who answered in this ridiculous way had already had their pumps primed (so to speak) to favor independence over loyalty.
And maybe you're right about the relative presence of the so-called conservative moral emotions in Americans - though I shouldn't be surprised to learn that there is a relatively greater number of people who report feeling, say, disgust less strongly in a modern industrial democracy than there is in other kinds of societies, either.
But there's a separate question, here, and I'm not quite sure if it's the one you think is 'up the wrong tree' or not - viz. whether people are inclined to think that the moral judgments based on these emotions ought to be found compelling.* One can readily imagine two people who each find homosexuality disgusting (ex hypothesi, say each is disgusted in just the same way & to just the same degree**), one of whom thinks this disgust is grounds to enact laws proscribing homosexual behavior, and the other who, despite her own disgust, thinks that the demands of equity 'trumps' her own (merely subjective) reaction. So it's not obvious to me that the relative presence/strength of the moral emotions is what's at stake here to begin with, so much as the relative weight one attaches to them in moral reasoning.
*Just to be clear, given the nest of subordinate clauses, I'm not talking about comparing "value judgments" here, but cognitive inclinations/habits/preferences - how folks think, not how they should think.
--**Although I think I have to be open to the argument that this 'ex hypothesi' state of affairs can't, in fact, be the case.
Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
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| parent )because the single most important part about socializing a dog is to make sure that it understands that it is lower in the social hierarchy than humans. Dogs that are not taught that as puppies become dangerous as adults. This is completely separate from training for obedience (I'm sure you know this as a dog owner, but people who don't own dogs may not know this - I didn't until we owned a dog).
I think it's a lousy analogy, independence in an animal (especially a domesticated one) is very different from independence in a human.
I think your last question has two answers, the human tendency to anthropomorphize animals and the ability of domestic animals to read and mimic human reactions and interactions. Especially in the case of dogs, I remember reading an article that observed that the one really unique ability of domesticated dogs is that they are very good at reading human emotions and facial expressions (they re-purposed their abilities to sense the mood of the alpha dogs in a pack to the humans they live with). In the more extreme cases of humans bonding with dogs, I think it's to assuage an emptiness in the human's life.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )Unlike my partner, who grew up with animals from the time she was a small child, I never had pets growing up. So all the things one does to socialize puppies that are, for her, a matter of course, struck me as - not odd, exactly, because it all made excellent sense, but as an occasion for wonder at the way two very different species, with two very different (but ultimately complimentary) sets of needs, come to an accommodation. And the kind of receptivity to human non-verbal cues you mention is a very big part of that, and really astonishing besides; it's something that can be easily taken for granted, but you must be right that that uncanny ability is a significant reason why our relationship to our dogs is less and less one of strict utility. I hadn't thought of it that way.
--Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
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| parent )Pet owners that want creatures that "prize independence and relate to their owners as equals", have cats not dogs.
[edited to make sense]
-----
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.
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| parent )In addition to the three dogs, we also have a cat; if I often forget to mention her when people ask if we have pets, it's because - for the most part - she doesn't seem to have much use for us. Which is OK, since we got her for mostly utilitarian reasons.
That being said, and this may just be happenstance, the most egregious examples of "pet parents" I've come across have been cat-owners. The animals' natural aloofness seemed to lead these poor souls to redouble their mollycoddling & baby-talking.
--Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
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| parent ).
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )they know more about cars.
...like that's a big hairy deal.
--Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. - W. Somerset Maugham
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| parent )if you ever wanted to round up all the neighborhood cats, all you'd need is a couple dozen empty paper bags.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )in a state of nature? Isn't that what the pet would want?
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| parent )Unless this state of nature includes couches, beds, regular feedings (with the occasional addition of table scraps) & clean water - no, I'm pretty sure that's not what the pet would want. Though I imagine they'd like to combine the amenities of domesticated life with the ability to chase the occasional squirrel or rabbit without one of us holding them back.
In this, mutatis mutandis, my pets & I are not so different.
--Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
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| parent )in their domestication. I'm not arguing that a modern pet is quite far removed from the origins of domestication (say hunting dogs or sled dogs), and so needs the amenities of domesticated life pretty much as people do. But aren't modern pets, with their inability to eat "normal" food, need for regular medications etc transgressing barriers of acceptability?
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| parent )but given the choice they'd prefer not to. While I doubt they could rationalize it, free food and a warm place to sleep are pretty attractive compared to living in the wild especially if you're not the dominant predator.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )I'm not sure what you mean by that phrase. If you mean that the kind of pampering some pets receive is not conducive to their well-being as dogs (or cats, or ferrets, or what have you) - I'd be inclined to agree, but I'm not sure what 'barriers of acceptability' have to do with that.
--Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
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| parent )Busy and all that.
What I really meant is roughly what you seem to object to, as well. However, I visited a few people in the US who had dogs as pets, it seems that they are unable to eat anything apart from specialised pet food. Now I realise that that the dogs have been selectively bred to reach this state, and that is what I mean by this being an unacceptable situation - to me, I hasten to add.
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| parent )I'm not sure, though, that dogs are "unable to eat anything apart from specialised pet food" - I'm sure my dogs would have, errm, 'digestive issues' should they abruptly begin catching (& eating) as catch can, but I think they'd all adjust & survive. The more expensive commercial dog foods, as far as I've seen, are those that try to mimic more closely what a dog 'should' naturally eat: no grain, mostly meat, and some vegetables thrown in the mix. But for the most part, that "specialised dog food" is cheap grain + meat meal from the parts not fit for human consumption + some additives for some special purpose or other (make their coats shiny, etc., etc.). I guess that's a kind of pampering.
--Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
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| parent )Apparently feeding highly domesticated dogs scraps from the table makes them ill - not recommended.
That is moving the goalposts considerably methinks.
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| parent )... but I'm a little unclear about just what game we're playing. Is the point that, by the standards of other cultures, Americans have an excessively sentimentalized relationship to their pets? That the amount of money spent & effort expended on the pets' behalf bespeaks perverse priorities?
--Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
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| parent )Perhaps an Anglophone thing?
Dogs as pets, I mean. And no, not being critical at all (I like dogs as pets too), I just think its a colonial thing over here - Brit-influenced attitude, I mean.
I wonder if its the same over in your place - cultural difference between WASP and Latinos?
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| parent )came into our lives and the wolf didn't. The proto-dog would eat from our garbage piles, all the leftover bones and whatnot. Both the proto-dog and early humans learned of the advantages of the other. Humans could kill much larger prey than dogs could, so the dogs would assist in tracking the prey because they got all the tasty leftovers the humans wouldn't eat, and a big kill meant plenty of those.
The dog becomes more than a tracker. He's raised around domestic sheep and to this day, still works the sheep as if he were stalking and hunting them. They protect the sheep for the same reasons they would drive other predators away from their own kills. Somehow they understand they're going to get to nibble up some tasty bits from the sheep they're herding, and the shepherd takes the role of the alpha dog in the pack, who always eats first.
The sled dog gets to eat before the people do, and it suited their personalities to a T. There's no democracy among dogs, from the lead dog to what the Eskimos call the Dog Least Favored, they all have a place. They genuinely seem to enjoy the work, Lord knows why.
I have my own theory about why dogs aren't favored in some cultures: once the big carnivores were eliminated, the dog as sheep herder became irrelevant. He went back to his roots, garbage scavenger.
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| parent )Exactly so, and its interesting to speculate on why that happens. Is there a relationship between "dog-using" cultures developing into "dogs-as-pets" cultures - any data on that?
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| parent )Which went into mankind's relationship with the dog. detailed here This is a paraphrase of they had to say.
Certainly the puppy was an amusing and loving little creature, socialized to human touch from the first few days of birth. The Victorian society created the first standard breeds of dogs, I suspect the whole British crazy affection for their dogs began around this time. Before then, the dog had a useful place on the farm.
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| parent )to visit with the Embera people in Panama. They keep dogs, and use them when hunting, but they are not treated like pets and there's no emotional attachment that I could see. In fact the guides warned us not to try to pet them or interact with the dogs, they're treated purely as working animals and are not particularly friendly. The kids there preferred things like baby monkeys as pets. Not sure why their culture turned out that way, since they do keep pets of other species.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )... and people who think Obama is the Antichrist:
It's a quirk of democracy that manifestly nutty beliefs are judged non-nutty merely because a lot of people hold them. If you think Obama is the Antichrist, you're a nut. It doesn't matter if you share this opinion with a dozen or a hundred or a thousand or a million other nuts. Get back in your f*cking bowl.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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)I think the vast majority of people are nimrods, so I could never claim with a straight face that democracy is about a less error-prone system of decision making. The purpose is stability, and giving nuts their due because they have the bigger battalions is part & parcel of said stability. So long as the system doesn't result in disaffection and then political violence, the specific nuttiness is of minor import.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )Have made an ex cathedra pronouncement that Obama is not the anti-Christ. Which of course brings up the question where exactly they get the authority to be the ones who issue rulings on these things, but I think he answer is the millions of people who've bought their execrable books.
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| parent )I find it deeply distressing when classics like the Book of Revelations are sullied by bad fanfic.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )Can Glenn Greenwald have his job please?
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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). . .can't afford the cost in sock puppets to keep GG going.
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| parent )First, Olbermann is now successful enough that liberals are taking shots at him. I find this tiresome. Second, note the use of the word 'successful' in the previous sentence. The guy is doing what he's supposed to be doing -- bringing eyeballs to MSNBC. And he even managed to get Rachel Maddow a show while he was at it. Olbermann has a history of burning bridges wherever he's worked, and this may be no exception over time. But scorning someone for being more obviously passionate about their beliefs than you are is a moderately vacant exercise.
Also he once interrupted a broadcast to send out birthday wishes to a friend of mine -- an actress he thinks is underrated, etc. -- so he gets an added break for that. I think of him like I did Tom Snyder back in the day. Easy to make fun of. But the latter is due to the eccentricities and excesses that make people watch in the first place.
So there's that.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )I dislike most of his stated view intensely, but he is doing precisely what he gets paid to do -- bring eyeballs to MSNBC.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )ESPN has transmuted gold to lead. We've gone from Al Michaels and John Madden to Kornheiser et al, and I miss the crowd noise because the TV is on mute during the whole game. Apparently their budget doesn't include funding for replays. The whole sorry mess could be cleared up if they put a pro back on the show; he could do political commentary during halftime.
You are right: I am not passionate about Olberman's beliefs. I just find his elevated status as a prophet, True Believer and ardent, principled spokesperson for the left silly, the product of gullibility not often shown here. Like you said, it's entertainment, and an attempt at revivifying the corpse (or more accurately, stillborn body) of MSNBC's cable effort. If you like him, no skin off my teeth. But if you worship him as the left's spokesman and think that anyone who doesn't is a spoilsport, you're naive.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )For who?
Seriously, who said this, who thinks he's a spokesperson, what? What organization does he head? Which office does he hold? Where does he get donations, and which rallies are held with him as the main speaker?
Seriously, what are you talking about?
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )who speaks from the heart instead of traipsing through the schtick he's hired by the network to do. Like every other person on for-profit TV. Semms like he has a number of stanch admirers here who believe he is a principled idealist instead of just another talking head - you, maybe?
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )Presumably Olberman does actually believe most of what he says -- you can't fake that stuff, and it's not like he had to twist himself in rhetorical knots to denounce the Bush administration with righteous outrage.
You're certainly right about the whole mirror of fox news thing - which I think is great. Instead of having the MSM attempting to be balanced and fox news on the right, so we get right vs balanced (with flaws), now we have right vs balanced vs left. I think it's more fair that they get it from both sides now.
YMMV of course :)
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| parent )This is just like the various righties here claiming people to the left of them consider Obama the Messiah, or the One, or hold him up to some godlike stature.
Of course, the only ones with this fixation are the ones pointing the fingers and making the claim. I wonder why they want to construct such fantasies?
Olbermann is no one's spokesman anymore than Obama is the Messiah. Of course, there's a 600 word article in this week's Newsweek about people claiming Obama's the Antichrist... so there's definitely loonies out there. And a media willing to give 'em a voice.
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| parent )And what does any of this have to do with Obama? Is the next four years going to be the flip side of the "everything's about Bush" fixation? I hope not.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )I didn't write that. Read what I wrote. I know you can, and you can understand what I wrote as well. Quit playing coy.
Obama has been referred to here as the Messiah and the One. More than once. By righties. And only by righties.
Now you're claiming Olbermann is a spokesman of some sort. Yes you did! Yep!
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| parent )Just another talking head. But in this case, one who's managed to find himself a moderately successful niche, and also help boost the sagging fortunes of a cable net in trouble. Add to that the fact that he was one of the guys who changed the way we get our sports news -- maybe not in the way you like, but he was pretty much in at the beginning when it comes to the Irony/Smartass approach. (And was doing it in LA before he went to ESPN.)
I'd love to see him on Monday Night football. Won't happen for several reasons. Not the least of which being the bridges he burned at ESPN.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )and not some guy with lofty lefty ideals that take precedence over what he's told to say on the air. He seems to be MSNBC's greatest draw and inspired some fandom here, so their formula haw worked to a degree.
Why would you say he's changed sports news reporting in a way I might not like, when I am the one recommending him for MNF? You aren't still pissed about that Dodgers' fan remark, are you?
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )Liberal anger personified? I don't think so. Olbermannn is simply a ploy, a sock puppet aimed at reviving MSNBC's hopeless basement dwelling ratings. And to a degree he's had some success, but all that proves is that hate sells to a certain audience. Does anyone on either side of the spectrum take him seriously?
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )needs the whole rig: longlong sleeved shirt, with the sleeves tied in the back, the spit hood and ankle chains.
After Rush Limbaugh and the Excrement in Broadcasting Network, well, the market for outrage has been proven to everyone's satisfaction. I find it deliciously ironic, poetic justice, that Rush Limbaugh has gone deaf.
No, when it comes to bluster and cant, nobody outdoes Fox News and Excrement in Broadcasting. Liberals don't buy into that crap, which is why Air America is always on such hard times.
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| parent )NBC sure wishes that were true, but its and his ratings prove otherwise.
And the merit of Air America is the reciprocal of the size of its audience? OK. Or do you think there is a Nefarious Masonic/Trilateral Commission Rovian Plot to deprive it of advertisers and force its management to screw up royally, commit fraud and steal money? Maybe Randy RhodeApple was a fifth columnist. I think Propaganda Due was involved, don't you?
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )I have said Liberals don't cotton up to all this ginned-up outrage. That's why Air America doesn't have many listeners. Liberals don't want to hear this sort of guff. We're already aware of it through the Net. We write our own guff. Me, I like to spin up the Guff-o-matic over here, where it can be hammered on by Conservatives and a limited subset of hard-nosed thinkers. I don't need a large ratings and share to make my case.
So yeah, it doesn't matter what the world at large thinks. Air America doesn't do well, because I believe people like me think the same way, we don't need a big audience.
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| parent )It keeps us dinosaurs on our toes, bobbing and weaving. And occasionally attempting the rope-a-dope.
I'm essentially allergic to TV, which is why I still have hives after watching all that election stuff. But I make an exception for Juan Williams. Maybe it's just a great acting job, but he's convinced me that he cares, and that he's honestly but politely (usually, anyway) saying what he thinks. He was overcome by emotion, almost speechless, when the Obama victory became clear. No one else I saw on election night showed any genuine emotion that I could detect. Maybe I just believe the guy because he has a real job outside of cable TV.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )I'm going to assume you mean among the moderators. I dunno, the MSNBC dudes were getting pretty happy. And as for Juan, yup, but then again he was practically bawling after Obama's convention speech. He's also my wingtard sister's favorite TV guy. Hmmm.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )I'm curious because your trivialities aside, you seem to think Olbermannn's a truthspeaker. I think Williams is, to the extent anyone on TV says what they think instead of what they're told. Were do you come out on him?
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )Seriously, take off this whole "I'm a fricking wingtard and I can't read anything anyone says without deliberately misconstruing it" mask you put on when Olbermann, Gore, or one of several other lefty figures gets mentioned. It's an extremely boring act.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )but I'm not sure you do. Or that you recognize satire and reductio ad absurdum when you see it. I'm betting the person I addressed my comment to does, and will reply appropriately. You didn't.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )And this business where you put words into people's mouths -- including mine -- is extremely tedious.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )If you want to defend Blaise, you can, though I seriously doubt he needs help. But this is what you said in your comment:
Seriously, take off this whole "I'm a fricking wingtard and I can't read anything anyone says without deliberately misconstruing it" mask you put on when Olbermann, Gore, or one of several other lefty figures gets mentioned. It's an extremely boring act.
If someone put those words in your mouth, it wasn't me. And that someone is violating the Posting Rules by attacking the commenter and not the comment.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )But I still don't think that the point of this site is to post clearly false statements about other commenters' posts, and I'm just plain irritated at the pattern.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )It turns out we're actually allowed to have more than one person who isn't a corporate shill on the teevee.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )Olberman is the epitome of a corporate shill: an angry clown whose mandatory bitter, saliva-flecked jeremiads excite a small segment of the viewing public but revolt anyone else who has even heard of the guy. MSNBC has promoted him as some sort of "liberal anger" personification, but it's all for show. If he says something you agree with, it's just a coincidence.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius