Gregory Crewdson. Untitled from the series “Beneath the Roses”. 2004.

Digital chromogenic print.

More here and here.

Steven Poole at Unspeak:

George Packer at the New Yorker, whose writing I admire greatly, has had it up to here with the vocabulary of the current US election campaign:

When this is all over, certain half-dead words will need to be put out of their misery with a quick bullet to the back of the head. My candidates for a mercy verbicide: pivot, tank, cave, pushback, gravitas, message, game-changer, challenges, the entire litany of Palinesque nouns, attack dog, battleground, pork-barrel, earmark, impacting, and impactful. Other words that are too important to be executed will need to undergo a long and painful rehabilitation before they can be safely used again: change, experience, straight, truth, lie, victory, character, judgment, populist, and elite.

So far, so potentially interesting. But one’s heart sinks at what follows:

It was Orwell, of course, who first explained the relation between decadent language and corrupt politics.

Of course, it wasn’t. The relation had been explained previously by John Arbuthnot, Confucius, and Cicero, among many others, as I pointed out in the Introduction to Unspeak. Packer goes on:

“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible,” [Orwell] wrote in “Politics and the English Language.” “Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness.” In our time, the corruption takes a different form. Instead of defending the Soviet purges with Latinate words like “liquidate,” politicians and journalists use clichés mainly borrowed from sports, war, and rural life in order to seem to be saying something tough-minded when in fact they’re saying nothing.

Saying nothing? I beg to differ: when George W. Bush assures the American public that prisoners are being “questioned by experts”, or when Condoleezza Rice refuses calls for a ceasefire on the grounds of seeking a “sustainable ceasefire”, or when Martin Amis complains that his society is unable to “pass judgment on any ethnicity”, they are definitely saying something. The task (heroically shouldered by this blog, among others) is to figure out what exactly that something is. Packer claims to be offering a different diagnosis than Orwell’s, but really they are making the same claim: that politicians are not worth listening to.

Such nihilism is, in my view, Orwell’s most malign influence.

Nouriel Roubini in Forbes:

Aggregate demand is now collapsing in the U.S. and advanced economies, and sharply decelerating in emerging markets. There is a huge excess capacity for the production of manufactured goods in the global economy, as the massive, and excessive, capital expenditure in China and Asia (Chinese real investment is now close to 50% of gross domestic product) has created an excess supply of goods that will remain unsold as global aggregate demand falls.

Commodity prices are in free fall, with oil prices alone down over 50% from their July peak (and the Baltic Freight Index–the best measure of international shipping costs–is 90% down from its peak in May). Finally, labor market slack is sharply rising in the U.S., and rising, as well, in Europe and other advanced economies.

Next question: What are financial markets telling us about the risks of stag-deflation?

First, yields on 10-year Treasury bonds have fallen by about 50 basis points since Oct. 14, getting close to their previous 2008 lows. Also, the two-year Treasury yield has fallen by about 150 basis points in the last month.

Second, gold prices–a typical hedge against rising global inflation–are now sharply falling.

Finally, and more important, yields on Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) due in five years or less have now become higher than yields on conventional Treasuries of similar maturity.

///
Election Day
Willaim Carlos Williams

Warm sun, quiet air
an old man sits

in the doorway of
a broken house—

boards for windows
plaster falling

from between the stones
and strokes the head

of a spotted dog

////

This is an honest and reasonable piece by Khalidi, it also has the virtue of being right. To refer to this man as anti-semitic is simply absurd. Notice, btw, the degree to which he discusses failures in Palestinian leadership and tactics across the board while simultaneously condemning the root problem, the Israeli military occupation.

The “Palestine Question” has been with us for sixty years. During this time it has become a running sore, its solution appearing ever more distant. Whether the events sixty years ago that created this question solved the previously perennial “Jewish Question” is once again open to debate. This is the case after many years when the apparent triumph of Zionism stilled doubts and drowned out the protests of those who argued that what purported to be the solution to one problem had created an entirely different one.

It is considered by some to be a slur on Israel and Zionism, and indeed even tantamount to anti-Semitism, to suggest that these events sixty years ago should be the subject of anything but unmitigated joy. Commemoration, or even analysis, of what Palestinians call their national catastrophe, al-Nakba–the expulsion, flight and loss of their homes by a majority of their people sixty years ago–is thus considered not in terms of this seminal event’s meaning to at least 8 million Palestinians today (some estimates are over 10 million) but only because it is directly related to the founding of Israel. Palestinians presumably do not have the right to recall, much less mourn, their national disaster if this would rain on the parade of celebrating Zionists everywhere. The fact that the 1948 war that created Israel also created the largest refugee problem in the Middle East (until the US occupation of Iraq turned 4 million people into refugees) must therefore be swept under the rug. Also disregarded is the obvious fact that it would have been impossible to create a Jewish state in a land nearly two-thirds of whose population was Arab without some form of ethnic cleansing.

more from The Nation here.

Studs Terkel, who made his name listening to ordinary folks talk about their ordinary lives — and who turned that knack for conversation into a much-honored literary career — died Friday. He was 96. Terkel died of old age at his home in Chicago, his son Dan said.

“He lived a long, eventful, satisfying, though sometimes tempestuous life,” Dan Terkell said. “I think that pretty well sums it up.”

The author of blockbuster oral histories on World War II, the Great Depression and contemporary attitudes toward work, Terkel roamed the country engaging an astounding cross-section of Americans in tape-recorded chats — about their dreams, their fears, their chewing gum, about racism, courage, dirty floors and the Beatles.

more from the LA Times here.

A poet should never fall in love with another poet — love is already too much like gambling on oil futures. Two poets in love must succumb to the same folie à deux as the actor and the actress, the magician and the fellow magician, because each knows already the flaws beneath the greasepaint, the pigeons hidden in top hats, all the pockmarked truth beneath illusion. Real lovers, Shakespeare long ago reminded us, have reeking breath and hair like a scouring pad.

Lovers may be permitted an exception to this ironclad rule, if they never achieve the bliss of consummation — and therefore never have to wake to the beloved’s morning breath the morning after. Many would-be lovers have been divided by family, law or plain bad luck; before the days of long-distance phone calls or e-mail, the sublimated affair was conducted by postage stamp. The letters of Nietzsche and Lou Andreas-Salomé, Pirandello and Marta Abba, Gautier and Carlotta Grisi show that, though literature has always been good for love (think how many seductions may be chalked up to Shakespeare’s sonnets), love was even better for literature if there was a mailbox nearby.

more from the NY Times here.

From lensculture.com:

Photographs and text by Katarina Radovic

The series of images A Husband in Paris was set out as a playful comment on the idea of marrying abroad for papers, due to political isolation in economically underdeveloped countries. This was a starting point in my work, which, during the course of its progress, acquired a number of other meanings related to the choice of place and the characters photographed.

The scenario is the following: I myself took up the role of a young woman from Eastern Europe in the search of a husband in Paris, the model of a Western “city of dreams“. Walking across the city districts within the period of several weeks, I approached candidates asking them whether they would be willing to “marry me” and what it would look like. After a short introductory “sniffing“, they happily agreed to pose together with me for a snapshot, in which we played the role of a potential couples.

The aesthetic complexity of these staged images surpasses the strictly political aspects and stretches to romantic relationships between possible marriage partners as well as the seduction of the young woman who, in her appointed role, does not hide that she is “in the hurry”.

More here.

From The Washington Post:

The literature about Abraham Lincoln is so vast as to defy comprehension, yet historians and other scholars — not to mention novelists, poets, artists, sculptors, even composers — continue to find new and revealing things to say about this greatest of all Americans. Fred Kaplan’s Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, is the latest case in point, a book that is certain to become essential to our understanding of the 16th president. To be sure, many others before Kaplan have dealt in various ways with Lincoln’s love of literature and writing, but no one has explored the subject so deeply or found so much meaning in it. Kaplan’s central subjects are Lincoln’s “compelling interest in language as the instrumental vehicle for civilization and culture” and his specific interest in written language, about which he once said:

” Writing— the art of communicating thoughts to the mind, through the eye — is the great invention of the world. Great in the astonishing range of analysis and combination which necessarily underlies the most crude and general conception of it — great, very great in enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and of space; and great, not only in its direct benefits, but greatest help, to all other inventions. . . . Its utility may be conceived, by the reflection, that to it we owe everything which distinguishes us from savages. Take it from us, and the Bible, all history, all science, all government, all commerce, and nearly all social intercourse go with it.”

More here.

Nate Silver at 538:

This is beginning to look like a five-state election. Those states are Virginia, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Nevada. Essentially all relevant electoral scenarios involve some combination of these five states.

I should caution that by far the most likely scenario is that Obama wins some relatively decisive victory of anywhere from 3-12 points in the popular vote. If Obama wins the popular vote by anything in this range, he will find plenty of blue territory, accumulating somewhere between 300-400 electoral votes. The electoral math will matter very little.

We can probably assume, however, that IF the national polls tighten significantly (and to reiterate, the likelihood is that they will NOT), McCain will edge out a victory in North Carolina, Florida, Indiana, North Dakota, Montana, Georgia, and Missouri; put those states in the McCain column for the time being. Likewise, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa all appear safe for Obama, even in the case of significant tightening. Put those in the Obama column.

That leaves our five states in play. The victory conditions for Obama involving these five states proceed something as follows:

1. Win Pennsylvania and ANY ONE of Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, or Nevada*
2. Win Ohio and EITHER Colorado OR Virginia.
3. Win Colorado AND Virginia AND Nevada.

So, if you live in any of these states or live nearby or can phone bank, help get out the Democratic vote.  For that matter, if you live in  North Carolina, Florida, Indiana, North Dakota, Montana, Georgia, or Missouri, help get out the Democratic vote.

Justin Vogt in The National:

During his pitch, Bob Straniere, a Republican congressional candidate, made a rather cursory mention of his support for John McCain. A young man sporting ultra-hip jeans and heavily gelled hair raised his hand, and aired his distaste for McCain’s recent statements at a campaign rally in Minnesota. When a supporter there told McCain, “I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him and he’s not, he’s not… he’s an Arab,” the candidate took back the microphone and said ““No, ma’am. He’s a decent family-man citizen.”

“Why,” the young questioner asked Straniere, “would you support a person who would respond in such an unfavourable way to the community?”

A sustained round of applause swallowed the young man’s final words, and all eyes turned to Straniere, waiting to see if he would affirm that he believed Arabs could be decent family men. “You know, we all work very hard, we campaign very hard, and sometimes, your mouth goes faster than your brain,” he said through a stiff smile. Besides, Straniere declared, McCain hadn’t been his first choice – “Rudy Giuliani was!”

This did not quite suffice, and the crowd let Straniere know it with a chorus of boos.

The young man sat down, frowning and rolling his eyes. A woman sitting nearby muttered, “They don’t get it.”

More here.

Ruchira Paul in Accidental Blogger:

Repentant Bush supporter Andrew Sullivan is deliriously happy at the prospect of a possible Obama presidency which he believes will end identity politics in America. I think his optimism is premature in this regard. People are good at compartmentalizing opposing public and personal views and not recognizing their own hypocrisies. Those of us who grew up in countries where rigid identity politics (religion, caste, gender) is the norm, know that sometimes voters can indeed eschew prejudice in politics without revising broader cultural attitudes. Just because a male chauvinist votes for a female head of state or a casteist elects a candidate from a lower caste, doesn’t mean the end of other personal predilections. Think Indira Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto and the status of the majority of women in India and Pakistan. In these turbulent times, out of self interest, a white racist may very well vote for a black candidate who appears to be more competent than his opponent. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the US is going to be transformed into a cheerful Rainbow Coalition if Senator Obama becomes president. In any case, we don’t for sure know who will be the winner next Tuesday. We have to wait and see if Obama will become the victim of the Bradley effect or the beneficiary of the pragmatist racist vote.

More here.

Obama Undertakes Presidential Internship To Ease Concerns About His Lack Of Experience

from The Onion.

The Obama website has an extremely well designed call center that allows you to pick the state you’d like to call and then start talking to potential voters. After the first couple of calls it becomes quite easy and even kind of fun to do. My salty wife, the formidable Timothy Don and I called people in Ohio all day last Sunday. All three of us ended up having some remarkable conversations. It is also notable that the Obama campaign has such trust in people that it allows this to happen. It is good. Do it.

Click here to start calling (have one martini, but NOT two, to get yourself started).

When I was a little boy in my hometown of Hopeless, Arkansas, my daddy once said to me, “If you ever feel like giving up, remember that it’s the easy way out, and, in the majority of instances, makes the most rational sense on a strictly cost-benefit basis.” His words echo in my mind whenever I encounter a seemingly insurmountable obstacle, such as a rack with six consonants to kick off a game of Scrabulous. I’ve since committed them to a poster that hangs over the crib of my son, Eeyore, although, given the state of education and the hegemony of visual media, he’ll probably never learn to read sentences with clauses.

The next president faces a host of critical challenges; he must listen to all viewpoints, carefully weigh his choices, then decisively curl into a fetal position once he realizes that eventually we all die alone anyway, so what’s the point?

We’re all tired of reading about the violence in Iraq over our morning cocktail of an increasingly-ineffective-SSRI-and-vodka. I have formulated the only sensible approach: stop writing about the violence in Iraq.

more from McSweeney’s here.

One of the best:

[Thanks to NYCtoGoa.]

Dexter Hill at Editor & Publisher:

The Obama campaign leads by better than 2-1 in newspaper endorsements from dailies and weeklies, based on our tally so far. But the Democratic ticket has an even more impressive lead when it comes to college newspapers — 63 to 1, according to UWIRE’s Presidential Endorsement Scorecard (we have been providing a partial tabulation).

Here is the latest count.

For more on the media and the campaign go to our new blog:

The E&P Pub

JOHN McCAIN (1)
Daily Mississippian, U. Mississippi

BARACK OBAMA (63)
The Amherst Student, Amherst College
The Optimist, Abilene Christian U.
The Bates Student, Bates College
The Justice, Brandeis University
The Orient, Bowdoin College
The Orion, California State U.-Chico
Central Michigan Life, Central Michigan U.
The Flat Hat, College of William and Mary
Columbia Daily Spectator, Columbia U.
Cornell Daily Sun, Cornell U.
The Davidsonian, Davidson College
The Chronicle, Duke U.
Daily Eastern News, Eastern Illinois U.
The Et Cetera, Eastfield College
The Berkeley Beacon, Emerson College
El Vaquero, Glendale Community College
The Crimson, Harvard University
Indiana Daily Student, Indiana U.
Iowa State Daily, Iowa State U.
Daily Kent Stater, Kent State U.
The Parthenon, Marshall U.
The Tech, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Miami Student, Miami U.
The State News, Michigan State U.
The Middlebury Campus, Middlebury College
Northern Star, Northern Illinois U.
Daily Northwestern, Northwestern U.
The Post, Ohio U.
The University News, Saint Louis U.
The Point News, St. Mary’s College
The Rocket, Slippery Rock U.
The Daily Campus, Southern Methodist U.
The Reporter, Stetson University
Pipe Dream, SUNY-Binghamton
The Lamron, SUNY-Geneseo
The Phoenix, Swarthmore College
Tufts Daily, Tufts U.
Arizona Daily Wildcat, U. Arizona
Daily Californian, UC-Berkeley
New University, UC-Irvine
Daily Bruin, UCLA
The Daily Nexus, UC-Santa Barbara
Central Florida Future, U. Central Florida
Daily Illini, U. Illinois
University Daily Kansan, U. Kansas
The Louisville Cardinal, U. Louisville
The Michigan Daily, U. Michigan
The Michigan Journal, U. Michigan-Dearborn
Minnesota Daily, U. Minnesota
The Maneater, U. Missouri
Oklahoma Daily, U. Oklahoma
The Daily Pennsylvanian. U. Pennsylvania
The Pitt News. U. Pittsburgh
The Daily Gamecock, U. South Carolina
Badger Herald, U. Wisconsin
The Daily Cardinal, U. Wisconsin
Advance-Titan, U. Wisconsin-Oshkosh
The Pacer, U. Tennessee-Martin
Daily Texan. U. Texas
The Independent Collegian, U. Toledo
Daily Evergreen, Washington State U.
The Voice, Washtenaw Community College
The Daily Athenaeum, West Virginia U.

Jason Linkins at The Huffington Post:

Oh, dear. Michael Goldfarb, who’s clearly better off blogging about ABBA and criticizing people for playing Dungeons and Dragons, just pooped his pants on national television. The McCain campaign is making a last ditch effort to make SCARY MUSLIM NOISES at Barack Obama, and since Goldfarb doesn’t have any sort of reputation worth salvaging, it figures that he’d be doing duty here.

But CNN’s Rick Sanchez calls Goldfarb out for the hypocrisy of hyping a sinister connection between Obama and a guy that McCain funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to, and from there, Goldfarb goes right off the rails, refusing to answer Sanchez’s questions with anything other than intimations. Repeatedly asked to name a second anti-Semite that Obama allegedly “pals around with,” Goldfarb does nothing but issue hollow, Page Six-style intimations.

What a gutless wonder. And here I’d been led to believe that this campaign took its cues from some kind of war hero.

///

I’m Climbing You
Erica Jong
…………………………………

I want to understand the steep thing

that climbs ladders in your throat.

I can’t make sense of you.

Everywhere I look you’re there–

a vast landmark, a volcano

poking its head through the clouds,

Gulliver sprawled across Lilliput.
…………………………………

I climb into your eyes, looking.

The pupils are black painted stage flats.

They can be pulled down like window shades.

I switch on a light in your iris.

Your brain ticks like a bomb.
…………………………………

In your offhand, mocking way

you’ve invited me into your chest.

Inside: the blur that poses as your heart.

I’m supposed to go in with a torch

or maybe hot water bottles

& defrost it by hand

as one defrosts an old refrigerator.

It will shudder & sigh

(the icebox to the insomniac).
…………………………………

Oh there’s nothing like love between us.

You’re the mountain, I am climbing you.

If I fall, you won’t be all to blame,

but you’ll wait years maybe
for the next doomed expedition.
///