The Age of "Frozen Scandal"

In the latest Tomdispatch.com interview, Mark Danner explains, "we've entered an 'age of frozen scandal.' The great problem in this new age is that revelation is followed by nothing but more revelation. Investigation, no less punishment, never comes so that, as he puts it, "it's as if we're this spinning wheel, constantly confirming facts that we already knew" and "the revelations become less and less effective in causing public outrage. The public begins to become inured to it, corrupted in its turn." It's here.

Don't believe the hype; just believe the numbers: Here. (I'm not really necessary here so I'll let my fellow Americans do the talking.)

In the poll, 34 percent approved of how he is handling his job, down eight points from a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted in January.....In addition, 62 percent of those polled said the efforts to bring stability and order to Iraq were going badly, up from 54 percent last month....There has been a decline in Mr. Bush's support even among Republicans. In the January Times/CBS News poll, 83 percent of Republicans approved of the way he was handling his job; in the latest poll 72 percent approve. Approval among self-identified conservatives also dropped to 52 percent, from 62 percent."

Quotes of Whatever: "Everybody sort of likes the President, except for the real whack-jobs." --Chris Matthews

And Boehlert asks: "When are the smart guys at The Note finally going to face facts and concede the Bush presidency is a failure?"

This is pretty great: A Joe Klein contest with an actual prize, here. ( I don't see how anyone can beat Pierce, but give it a try.)

Great moments in Little Roy-dom (No Hat-tip):

You're welcome. And as I read this and other Iraqi blogs written by people who lived under a kind of terror that we in the West have no way to understand or truly empathize with, I feel a lump in my throat. I am so proud of the country I was born in and the country I have made my home. I have never been prouder to be an Anglo-American, to have done in our time what so many before us have done - to broaden the possibilities of liberty, to bring hope, to restrain the violent men and evil ideologies that are each generation's responsibility. The men and women in our armed forces did the hardest work. They deserve our immeasurable thanks. But we all played our part. By facing down the evil, the cowardly and the simply misguided, we have done a great good."

You think he means the lies, the torture or the civil war part?

Then again, people who know something can be just as silly as people who are just pretending, alas. One of my current projects in life is to try to revive the tradition of 1950s era liberal intellectuals who participate in public life in the manner of say Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and John Kenneth Galbraith. But then I run into a sentence like this one, "Conceivably, the vulnerability of a Democratic administration would have made a Gore presidency still more pro-active and militaristic than George W. Bush has been in practice." (Here.) Note the use of the weasel word "conceivably" as in "Conceivably, my cheeseburger is actually made from the remains of little green Martian men." To take the above seriously, one must simply ignore absolutely everything Gore has said and done with regard to Iraq, which in my view, rather weakens it. So yes it "could" be true; the same way it "could" be true that I am the long lost son of the King of Saudi Arabia. And this is by a person who's written an extremely useful and interesting book, too. It's scary, really, and depressing. Take a look at the book, though here, which as I said, is quite useful despite the nonsensical quality of the analysis above.

Reading Assignments:

* Moyers' latest is here.
* Thoughts on A.J. P. Taylor here.
* Thoughts on Strauss, here.
* Thoughts on Nicholas Sarkozy here.