The Secretary of Law

The Obama Administration's decision to formally announce the president's intention to seek the party's nomination in 2012 coming hours before the Attorney General's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in military court invites speculation about the actual reasons for going through with the latter, but before we talk about whether or not it was motivated for political reasons let's take a look at what the political reaction has been.

Jeff Sessions, the Republican from Alabama, said "while it is unfortunate that it took so long to make this announcement, I am pleased that the Obama Administration has finally heeded those who rebuked their decision and that the trial is being held where it belongs." Then he said Obama's initial plan to try them in civilian court was "built on the naive premise that softening America's image would somehow soften our enemies' resolve." Peter King called the decision a retroactive affirmation of George W. Bush's efficacy. And Mitch McConnell took advantage of the opportunity to say "the Obama Administration has actively sought to bring the 9/11 plotters into our communities," which he then quantified as a "horrible idea."

Democrats weren't a lot better, which is to say the ones with lines to the presidential agenda were made to contend with the same path the President's taken. Chuck Schumer, who has a constituency to think of, made a kind of admission that he'd been uncomfortable with the initial plan the whole time, and Lieberman, well, he did the president the favor of releasing a positive statement joint with John McCain. Patrick Leahy was alone in Senatorial outrage.

And the bloggers, or the voters, as I like to call them, were, well let me put it this way. Dahlia Lithwick at Slate wrote an article on Monday headlined "Cowardly, Stupid, and Tragically Wrong," and let me lessen the suspense, she wasn't talking about Paul Ryan.

This boils down to two basic reactions, either A. you were wrong from the start and now you're finally getting it right, or B. you have now proven definitively you are not the man I voted for. The A's wouldn't have voted for Obama regardless, whereas the likely situation for most of the B's is that they'll still vote Obama, but they'll do it without the illusory optimism that gave him the edge the first time. So politically motivated? Maybe. There are the voters, the 59% of them give or take that rely on polls to get their voices heard, who don't want Mohammed in this country at all, who think that trying him in civilian court makes him a civilian and not an enemy combatant, which makes this thing in Afghanistan a police action instead of a war. Let's talk about those people for a second.

Obviously this isn't the only reason. As far as our justice system is concerned we've already done enough to Mohammed to warrant his case's dismissal. But we're dealing with the case our Attorney General called the defining one of his career. We're dealing with the architect of the 9/11 attack. We're dealing with someone who admitted to 31 counts of terrorism against the United States and its allies. Our justice system is tremendous, the envy of the world, the fairest system of adjudication ever conceived, sure, dude is still getting tried. No judge, jury or politician in the United States is irresponsible enough to see him acquitted before his trial begins. No, what's brought out the voices is the symbolism. And the very foundation of the argument has expanded to fit the size of these post-terror symbolic debates: liberty versus safety, the establishment versus the fringe, civil rights versus American sovereignty, America versus Terror, etc....

There is also, however, the symbolism of the terrorism itself to consider. In 2001 the United States was attacked by a body of individuals trying to start a war. "When we made any war against America," Mohammed confirmed in 2007, "we are jackals fighting in the nights. I consider myself, for what you are doing, a religious thing as you consider us fundamentalist. So we derive from religious leading that we consider we and George Washington doing same thing."

We agreed. We went to war. But I wonder if by providing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed with a jury of Americans, we wouldn't have sent the message that his whole career, they're whole life, isn't even that big a deal to us. Like we can't even be bothered to make a war with them.

We'd still be at war of course. But just in reality.

P.J. Crowley

After World War II and the beginning of the Cold War the heart of the art scene moved from Paris to New York, which debuted with something it called abstract expressionism. This movement was so wildly apolitical it caused certain people sincere paranoia that the CIA was funding it. The thought was that serious intellectuals wouldn't stop to consider what their government was doing because they'd be so caught up considering the expression behind this:



There are obviously a number of reasons why things probably didn't happen this way, but a couple of them are
1. Art is rarely political ever, and there's nothing about impressionism or cubism or dadaism or any other movement from before the war that's any more political than abstract expressionism. In fact most of the 20th century was about extracting the personal from the political, and it was stuff that happened during the Cold War that made anyone start thinking about getting back to macro concerns.
2. The suggestion that any branch of government could do anything remotely this effective goes against everything history has taught us about the government.
3. If the government wants to do something horrible, it just does it. It doesn't bother distracting anyone.

This has been, by any accounts, a fascinating quarter of the year. An earthquake and a tsunami created calamity about a nuclear meltdown which gave us primers in nuclear theory, and when the fears were debunked by SOMETHING EVERYONE ON EARTH SHOULD READ we were, or at least I was reminded of Michael Moore's conviction that the media traffics in fear. Meanwhile Scott Walker, Hosni Mubarak, and Moammar Qadhafi have played out in real time the unassailable property that power's only function is to sustain itself, and have demonstrated by their respective actions how class and standards of living dictate morality the exact same way that demand dictates supply. Essentially, we've had confirmed for us the practical realities of every theory we ever read about in college. We've also watched our socialist president become an ineffectual centrist, been exposed to the enormous hypocrisy of our Tea Party bandleaders, and had confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that Michele Bachmann really is as stupid as you think she is. Oh, and we got to add another name to the fascinating yet inadequately examined list of political assassins.

Today Barack Obama did something that isn't just shameful, but pointless. And while I don't see any Republicans giving him grief about it, I can't think of anyone it could have made happy. It's too convoluted to make him look not-soft on terror, it actually requires every member of his base to ask him why he's allowing Bradley Manning to be, not necessarily tortured, but badly kept, and why he's chosen to do something that is the exact same thing the dishonorably discharged previous administration did. It also provides an open invitation for anyone who wants it to compare him to George Bush, and to hold up statements he made condemning Bush for adopting a for-us-or-against-us attitude while in office. Furthermore, it won't do a thing to make anybody think the government is speaking with one voice if they didn't before. The only way I can look at it is as a terrible political move that will only hurt his image, made for terrible reasons by someone who is otherwise in full pandering mode, in a time where liberty is on everyone's tongue. In short, it was some terrible shit, the kind of terrible shit governments do because governments will do terrible shit whenever it's even an option.

Which brings me to Animal Collective, and the current art scene.



I chose this song for two reasons: 1. I really like it, and it's fully apolitical, and 2. it's video is one of the few that isn't permanently disturbing. That said, if you want some abstract expressionist apolitically gut wrenching art, check out any other video they have made.

Hipster culture is so insulated right now someone could make the argument it's been sanctioned by the CIA to keep people from paying attention to the news. Hipster irony isn't really even ironic anymore so much as it's a kind of paralyzing rabbit-hole of meaning and not meaning things. Wavves I think captures this well. They sing about their own inadequacy over music that's meant to convey apathy but also often tries to sound like Animal Collective, who are clearly perfectionists, and are more creative musically than just about anybody in the scene. And I'm not so sure the "we're inadequate but not really but really we are but everyone is and we're actually really proud of that" has any real end point to tether itself around. They're joking, they're not joking, they're not joking but they're not serious, whatever; they're not going anywhere. They're not saying anything about themselves besides that they subscribe to the culture of their generation, and they're certainly not saying anything about the world around them.

Which is fine. Art isn't meant to be political. I don't think it's meant to be our refuge from the political either. But today our president fired a perfectly decent employee of the government because he pointed out something the government should be embarrassed about. The government should be even more embarrassed now, but it won't be, because now it will speak with one voice again. So today I'm hoisting a picture of Mr. Philip J. Crowley. A man who got fired for doing the right thing. Tomorrow I'll give the government another chance, because it represents a country I love. Then maybe I'll listen to some indie rock.

How fascism works

A cable released by WikiLeaks this week confirms for anyone still in doubt that by the second half of the last decade Gadhafi was fairly eager to help us fight terror. Interesting, because I hope this story becomes huge and the Republicans (by the way, I'm putting more credence into the possibility that there's an underground lair in somewhere like Arizona where the 12 most powerful Republicans meet and have total control over everything the party does. This could include Dick Cheney, David Koch, Grover Norquist, Thad Cochran, Roger Ailes, maybe John Boehner, some incredibly wealthy PR guys and consultants, etc.) have to start denying its validity. Even more interesting is Gadhafi's admission that when shit went bad in Africa, he'd go out in public and blame the United States.

What strikes me about this is that he's now blaming Al-Qaeda, and while that's essentially Orwell 101, seeing it applied to real life is fascinating.

Today was an emotional day. A lot of things happened, good and bad. Let's review:

The Good

Rahm! Rahmbo. Mayor Emanuel. Maybe the happiest election result since Obama, and he'll be in there for like 20 years. I have to imagine Chicago is the place to be tonight, and if I weren't living like Joe Gargery these days I'd be popping champagne.

This morning's insane Gadhafi speech. Fucker is losing it, and while I'd like to see all those bastards fall over there, three is pretty good. I also have a feeling that Bahrain's king is going to punk out pretty soon. The resilience of these kids really is amazing.

In general, good vibes around the office. And I got to have a conversation with Salon's own Andrew O'Hehir, who, in addition to being an entertaining and astute film critic, is a legitimately stand-up guy.

The Bad

The Sarah Palin grind mill's most recent discovery that Palin has a personal facebook page that she uses for the most modest purpose ever, which is to like the official Sarah Palin posts she presumably writes. I'm as guilty as anyone, but let's leave this poor woman alone. She's vindictive, right, but to me this just seems like some lady from Alaska trying to have the tiniest semblance of a private life.

Sarah Palin writing the most offensively awful stupid thing maybe ever literally minutes after I start feeling bad for her. Libyans especially deserve their freedom because Gadhafi only recently started playing by our rules? Throw yourself down the stairs. Did you forget he has oil? Did you forget 97% of the population there is Muslim? We created a monster. Good, now let's kill it.

Also, it's fucking cold.

An addendum, this girl from Philadelphia has made me very, very happy

Also, they all had mustaches

Maybe Scott Walker can be America's next governor. The Wall Street Journal ran a poll and he came out looking pretty good in it. That's the newspaper most Americans read, right? And the ones that don't will be sympathetic to his sad eyes. By this metric it's pretty simple. We're competing with China now. Maybe the 21st century will be the century of deunionization. Scott Walker in 2016? Get lost in those sad eyes...



But it's President's Day, so I spent the afternoon reading about James Garfield and Rutherford B. Hayes (who, incidentally, would have been a steadfast union man by now.) The two of them have in common--along with the other presidents from the late 19th century--reputations for honesty and committed patriotism that their legacies more or less confirm. Which is great because with the exception of Chester A. Arthur their accomplishments have pretty much been nullified over 120 years of political evolution.

Speaking of evolution, the parties have since switched places, almost entirely. And more interestingly, the international policy of the time was centered on the imperialist conquests of countries overseas. The question in the United States was should we take up what might be the next stage of grandeur and join the leagues of such sovereign empires as England and Spain, or is there a moral obligation to focus on the prestige of the homefront. In other words; do we search outward for more glory, or should we just clean up what we already have. You can spend a minute thinking about which party would pick which side now--I definitely did--but in fact its an unfathomable situation now. Both positions are impossible to rectify to the current global reality. World War II taught us to be capable of destroying absolutely everything contained within our schema, and technology has allowed our schemas to be virtually unlimited. We know everything and we're capable of destroying all of it. Interesting, right? Except its put us firmly on the retreat. Our decisions are actively fear-based, whereas before it was essentially a question of Teddy Roosevelt manliness versus Grover Cleveland sensible dullness.

Things change. Especially the media. In 1891 Grover Cleveland wrote a letter to a convention of New York Democrats expressing his interest in another run and they gave it to him. I don't know exactly how this works but my guess is that the right people receive said letter and run him and the two or three newspapers in the area report that the ex-president is giving it another go. Somebody draws a cartoon of Benjamin Harrison walking in through a front door and out through a back door and that's pretty much it. I don't know how the media worked then but I know that these fuckers campaigned from their front yards. If you've worked on campaigns ever you will laugh condescendingly at that.

(Another thing, briefly, that's changed, is that we were on a gold standard, which means there were so few people in this country that we could match every single one of their bank accounts with gold.)

Now, suffice to say, we're not. The technological information transmitters are omnipresent to suggest not a series of tubes so much as a vortex whereby the tubes are assumed as the first step towards a void of information. This has the tangible effect of every single person on earth interpreting the meaning of world events. The nature of evolution makes this unsurprising, but just read about 1893 for a minute and then come back. Back then people received information about what was happening in the communities that mattered to them. The more elite they were the bigger the communities were, and the bigger the communities were the more interpretation was needed, but by and large they were living in about three dimensions less than we are now.

Does this have anything to do with the global climate of fear? I don't know. But if it does its more theoretical than anything else. That imperialism gave the eastern world reason to hate us, and technology has made it easier to do something about it. I think that more its changed the lens through which we view politics. Hayes, Garfield and all them developed reputations as men of honor that survive to this day, despite the fact that honor isn't really a quality we seek anymore. The best thing anybody says about Obama is that he's smart and values compromise, and a lot of people have counted those as negatives. The omnipresent media and the public's world-conscious interpretation of events have given politicians every reason to be as pragmatic as possible. We assume their motives, and in doing so assume there's nothing else going on with them. So the fact that Tim Pawlenty's book has been christened with the meaningless platitude "Courage to Stand" is irrelevant because we'd assume regardless it was just some meaningless platitude to get him to Iowa to get him to voters to get him the presidency. The meat of the book, presumably about having courage and standing, is dropped. We don't care. Nobody cares. There's the valley of idiots who may or may not exist and then there's the 50 trillion newsmakers who've rushed into the tube network to proclaim that Tim Pawlenty wants to be president. This is the evolution of politics. And right now it is firmly entrenched in the postmodern.

PS. in 1877 Rutherford B. Hayes ran against Samuel Tilden for president. Voter fraud in the southern states meant both sides contested the election results, and the anti-slavery Republican party agreed to remove federal troops from the south if the anti-civil rights Democratic party would cede the victory. The Democrats agreed, and President Hayes withdrew the army, effectively ending Reconstruction. The interpretive result of this is that the honorable and progressive civil rights leader ended protection of black voting rights in exchange for the presidency, rights they wouldn't get back for about 80 years.

Dedicated to Drake

I wrote a single verse of a rap. I was going to do more but I got lazy. Anyway the odds of anyone finding this good are astronomically small but if anyone has a spare beat around, let's lay it down. This is how I would rap if I were a rapper. Also it was built around a single line. Try to guess which one.

Nutmeg

Look both ways before you cross the street, I mean it
it’s not advice I thought I’d give on a beat, but I’ve seen it
It’s New York, and you’re pushing as fast as the screen
Through which somebody you don’t know doesn’t care that it’s scenic
I’m here I came back but before that I scraped
Cross the states I relate to Manhattan’s
well, not its diaspora, its inodus, it’s fate
that the block you created seemed so uninviting
But you made it you make it, now you’re in advertising
And you point out your Billboard by Holland you’re excising
Saying you better make it, otherwise you naked
See I’m Like Saul Bellow I’m from Chicago
I’m Like Saul Bellow’s mayor I was resurrected
In the Midwest my mixtape was checked education
Confiscated by doctors so we had demonstrations
I got drunk and backed into a dodge while police
Sat shotgun in two brand new leather bound seats
I’ll show my driver’s license to anybody that asks me
And you’ll see why the state’s been deferring to AFSCME
On the subway you saw me I’ve been spinning those tapes
Yeah I’m good, yeah I’m fine, glad you asked, glad you stopped by
I spent time in the west took shots of cops on boats
Blew a sewer in Vegas, took pictures of ladies
who laid dead on the streets, yeah they do that I swear
Then they wake up they’re made up its dreams they’re on welfare
Their food stamps are homeless I mean hopeless they’re godless
I mean our president is what? he said what about what?
I broke bread with the pastors, I’ve been every religion
Now I’m godless, I mean goalless, I peaced like Mubarak
Trained through the mountains, I mean Taggart, Guevara?
I mean not Taggart, Whitney, Asa Whitney, clearly
Three days in a salt mine, and two in a Wendy’s
There was snow on the ground and a breeze
and the window was down and I felt it, that winter
The redeemable god and the sins of our father
Which is Texas by night in the sun Oklahoma
You been to Oklahoma, yeah?
You’d bomb it too, right?

Sitting with Intellectuals on the Subway

It has recently come to my attention that people like Jamie Kelso exist beyond the abstract, that they actually go to CPAC and have YouTube supporters. At least 12. It's also come to my attention that the conservative youth are about as repulsed by visible vocal racism as the liberal youth, and putting myself in this position I think I'd just tell Kelso to go fuck himself and walk away, so props to these kids for actually trying to debate him. I don't want to hate on any of them; this is a teachable moment.

One thing though, sort of off topic; what did Haley Barbour say about amnesty? He doesn't support it, he just worked on it to get paid? Oh he didn't say that? He couldn't? People would find it uncouth? That a Washington lobbyist shirked the ethics of his party for a paycheck? For his slice of the pie? For the American dream? The Barbour situation underscores, to me, how irrational political foundations always are. And that's not really a criticism, just an observation. But once the self-proclaimed fat redneck said he didn't see people in terms of color. Later he said he didn't think Mississippi had been all that bad for black people. Then he said he couldn't denounce anyone, not even a founding member of the KKK, not even one that's been dead for 130 years. Then he went to Iowa to run for president.

My take on the Barbour situation isn't that he's racist like Jamie Kelso, or willfully ignorant like Steve King. He's too shrewd for that. I think he's seasoned, and cynical, and he doesn't really care if people think he's racist. I don't really care about it though. I like him as the governor of Mississippi. To be honest I like him. I like Mississippi. Faulkner lived there. It's way better than Oklahoma, which sucks. Fuck Oklahoma. And fuck white supremacy. But then there's this moment in the Kelso video about 8 minutes in where he makes a point about Irish unemployment and how it's exacerbated by Nigerian immigration to Ireland, and the young Republicans God bless 'em fumble for a minute because he's put the issue into a context they support. Republicans don't like exodus immigration because it hurts the native populace. White supremacists don't like it because it dilutes the ethnicity of the native populace. But a legitimate issue came head to head with an illegitimate one and everyone in the room was faced with the task of tracing their reasons to their logical ends. Again, opinions always end irrationally. Why did Haley Barbour represent a Mexican amnesty group? They paid him tons of money. Why is he a Republican? I don't know. I really don't, and I like him, but the racial gaffes and the amnesty charge he'll have to defend probably do indicate above anything else that he lacks empathy for the disenfranchised races, and the people that support him, particularly the young ones with the good intentions, are going to have to address that. What I mean is, they're going to have to trace their support for the cynically apathetic to some logical end. They might not be able to. They might just end up ignoring it. Which is when things get messy. And again, that's not a criticism, just an observation.

One more thing; if I were there, I'd probably have told Kelso to go fuck himself and walked away, but I hope now that I wouldn't. I like those kids, a lot. Dragged into the immigration debate though I'd be screwed. I don't have thoughts about amnesty or immigration. Not good ones anyway. It's one of the issues I defer to the party on.

The Greatest Show on Earth

The spirit of mystery that pervades awards shows in general makes their decisions hard to argue with to the point where most people eventually give up. What was your favorite movie this year? Was it True Grit? Are you gonna be mad if The King's Speech beats it? But the Grammys are so unrepresentative of both quality and popularity that its mystique is irrelevant to the point of seeming like it would be embarrassing. The state of music today is as good as it was in the 60s, if not the best its ever been, and I think that has a lot to do with Pitchfork.

As far as I can tell Pitchfork came to prominence in 2004 with Arcade Fire who's success they claimed (probably rightly) to be responsible for. But now their status as tastemakers is undisputed, to the point where the backlash has reached the point where once I saw a guy checking it in public and when I asked what they were saying he clicked off it and started talking about something else. As part of the hip nexus, everyone has some relationship to Pitchfork, and I've noticed they fall into one of three categories. 1. I hate Pitchfork and whenever I check it it confirms my hatred by saying Nicki Minaj's pop album is disappointingly generic without entertaining the notion that probably what happened was that she decided she wanted to make ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS and it wasn't some dearth of creativity so get over yourself because you gave Tapes n Tapes like an 8.5. 2. I read Pitchfork compulsively but am truly ashamed of this and lie about it but if someone presses me I'll say I read it for the news. 3. After countless hours of soul-searching I have decided I am not ashamed of who I am and today I proudly stand up to say I love Pitchfork.

Pitchfork has become the Establishment and as such everyone is aware of its considerable faults. But consider what a world without it would be. Like all revolutions it came into existence out of a dissatisfaction with the status quo. In 1991 how many options did people have to hear about Pavement. Spin Magazine? Sure, maybe they were hipper. The aging hipsters who read Robert Christgau might have been aware of them. I suppose they were occasionally played on MTV. But the point is everyone was a lot more reliant on the mainstream to get their music choices. There wasn't a large scale alternative option. And I don't know what the scene actually was like back then, but I imagine it just created a more elite and considerably smaller brand of hipster that had less in common with everyone else.

Now alternative music is a huge culture, regardless of Pitchfork's flaws. This isn't the case with movies. In fact my suspicion is that what the music scene now would look like without Pitchfork is about what the movie scene looks like. We still get our movie options from mainstream sources. And I'm vaguely aware of an indie film culture, but it has no bearing on the decisions average people make. The Establishment still stands. Even heavily alternative-seeming movie websites like Chud that lean towards film-nerd culture still spend most of their time circulating Hollywood. So when the old white nepotists at the Academy release their ten best movie selections, that matters to us because they're pulling from the same pool we are. We're all watching the same movies, so they get to retain their status as tastemakers.

The Grammys on the other hand are just sad. There's still a feeling of legitimacy that they retain, but I only know this cuz I saw a video once where the white guy from TV on the Radio was complaining about not being nominated. Otherwise the alternative culture made the established regime so irrelevant that its started to kowtow to it. Which means this year, in addition to Eminem, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Lady Antebellum, Arcade Fire has been nominated for best album of the year. They probably won't win, but it doesn't matter; their inclusion spells the irrelevance of the award. Because if we are rewarding quality over popularity or likeability, why wasn't LCD Soundsystem nominated? Or Hot Chip? Or Broken Social Scene? Or The Fall? And on the other side, Arcade Fire has crossover appeal sure, but they're not huge. If you're trying to legitimize the mainstream, someone like M.I.A. who has become massively successful and still gets mad crit-love also released a record this year, and, voters, let me tell ya, it was pretty interested in the popular American psyche.

Mubarak is dead. Long live the army. I love it every time a blind stumbling dinosaur dies. Pitchfork and I have that in common. But just for fun, I want to go over my picks, from the options provided by Grammy, of the best music of the year. Here it goes, and if my choices here mirror what happens tomorrow night, someone let me know, because I can almost guarantee I won't be watching.

Album of the year:

"Empire State of Mind" was released in 2009, and I'm not a farmer or a Mayan, so I'm disqualifying it on the grounds that Grammy needs to figure out what years are. "Love the Way you Lie" is actually a great song and probably one of the most accurate accounts of spousal abuse one hundred million Americans are ever going to hear, but I just want Cee-Lo to win the award because he'd put it on his bookshelf and his friends would congratulate him on it. So I choose "Fuck You." Also I wonder if they're going to call it "Forget You" or if they'll just all get censored when they talk about it.

Record of the year:

A great collection. Between a washed-up Eminem, a country singer crossover (I'm just guessing based on sounds, I've literally never heard of Lady Antebellum before today) Lady Gaga and, Katy Perry, I suppose I ought to go with The Suburbs, but I won't. First off, I grew up in the suburbs, so I should relate to this record, but I don't because I don't live in a Victorian play, so I don't relate to anything Win Butler says. Second, its kinda boring, right? I want to give the award to Eminem to apologize for snubbing him for his great single, also I think he's a genius. I'm discrediting Lady Gaga because her success and the size of her spectacle make her the most establishment choice possible, and not only that, her talent and edge ensures that if she wins the one-dimensionalist capitalist villains who made it possible will get to congratulate themselves publicly. Mostly I hate all these options so I'm giving it to Katy Perry. Congratulations girl, try to use that enormous talent for good.

Song of the Year:

Cee-Lo! Just kidding. This one can go to Eminem. It really is a great song. Maybe someone can explain to me the difference between a song and an album. Does the album include the b-side? If so that might explain why Ray LaMontagne got nominated for something that sounds about as old as b-sides. Miranda Lambert, you're boring girl.

Best New Artist:

If you're still not convinced the Grammys aren't real, listen to this. Justin Bieber was nominated for an award. That means that a room full of people decided that a 16-year-old kid who's public persona is essentially an apparatus for show-biz women to make underage sex jokes about was the best something they heard or saw all year. I don't even see how this is something you can explain. Does his nomination mean this whole big award show is just a scheme to make money? Perish the thought, they also nominated Florence and the Machine and, wait for it, Esperanza Spalding. I nominate Mumford and Sons, who are new to me as of this morning, and really solid. In fact they're Scottish so I'm sure Pitchfork's said something about them.

Best Female Pop Vocal Performance:

"King of Anything" is a charming song I like just fine but I'm not sure it's a really strong vocal performance. If pop music is an objective barometer of any measure of ability it's pipes, and the hottest talents generally can sing better than anyone else. So with that I'm going with Beyonce for a song that I find generic and boring but that she really lays it out on.

Best Male Pop Vocal Performance:

Adam Lambert? I've never heard of almost all of these. Ergo I'm skipping a lot of categories.

Best Pop Vocal Album:

Katy Perry in a totally unpredicted sweep beats out Lady Gaga in every category. Guess dumb jock girl sentimentality beats Gaga's spidery affectations. Who would have guessed.

Best Solo Rock Performance:

John Mayer is literally the only person on the list under 60 years old. That said, he's also probably the least talented. My thing on Rolling Stone magazine isn't so much that they're pandering to a new audience as that they think they'll remain successful if they write about all the same people that made them successful in the 70s. A part of me thinks Grammy might be similarly archaic. Paul McCartney's not even being nominated for a new song. Apparently the version of "Helter Skelter" he recorded at a concert in New York is one of the five best rock performances laid to tape this year. I don't want anyone to win, I want them all to die. But the image of anyone besides Mayer walking up to the stage to accept the award is causing me to be upset. So give it to that dude.

Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals:

"Ready to Start" by Arcade Fire. I don't even like that song. I'm starting to really regret this project.

[I want everyone to know I'm skipping Best Hard Rock Performance]

Best Alternative Music Album:

Contra - Vampire Weekend


I quit. I quit before I got to rap. Drake is nominated for something. Thing is, Drake really can't rap. Please everyone watch a rerun of the Simpsons tomorrow night.

Common Sense

Patriots!

I have watched events unfold in Tunisia and Egypt, and now Yemen and Jordan, as I’m sure you have. But I have also watched the reactions of our leaders, and I have to say I don’t understand them at all. President Obama is calling for the liberty fighters in Egypt to remain peaceful so that their despotic ruler can continue to oppress them. This of course did not surprise me, but I was appalled by the reactions of people who say they love freedom. Speaker Boehner and Senate minority leader McConnell condoned Obama’s words, and former governor Huckabee has been worse, asking the protesters in Egypt to stop, go on with their lives, continue to be oppressed by a power-mad autocratic dictator. Where are our Tea Party faithful? Where is Sarah Palin? Glenn Beck? Michelle Bachmann? Where are the people we’ve supported so vigilantly these past couple years because we thought they stood for the people? They have been silent, demurring to the voices of the establishment that fears the will of the people. I say, let’s not look at Egypt with fear, let’s look at it the way Egypt looked at Tunisia! Let’s look at it with respect, pride, even envy! Let’s look at our own oppressive system of government, and tear it down!

President Obama doesn’t fear the American people, because he is a fool. Sarah Palin chooses not to acknowledge the strength of the populace because she doesn’t understand it. For too long we have watched our country sacrifice its greatness in the name of more power for itself. For too long we have watched a corrupted president seize power over our minds and bodies in the name of a “good” that we know will really bankrupt our economy and destroy our jobs. A good that does no good for the people who love America and all good for those who wish to rule over it with the same hungry malevolence that Hosni Mubarak ruled over Egypt. No more! Patriots, the time is ours! Let’s throw down the shackles of our oppressors, take arms and march towards Washington and the White House. Let’s take this country back from those who would destroy it! George Washington said every citizen should be not only armed, but vigilant. But we have grown fat and complacent through government tyranny, and now is the time that we must throw that that tyranny off! Patriots, today I say let’s march towards Washington and revolt! Like our brothers in Egypt who love freedom so much they are willing to die for it, let’s take Washington back from the government! Let’s make it ours again!

Our demands are simple. We ask only for the liberty which was promised us at the founding of this country we love so much. But we will not be satisfied with anything less than what we deserve. We demand the following:

1. That President Obama relinquishes the power of the presidency, and that he leaves this country in exile.

2. That we put in his place a new leader, someone with no hunger for authority, who wants only for the citizens of this country to come together as individual parts of the constitution of a sovereign nation, each as great as the whole and each with equal responsibility for maintaining that greatness.

3. That we keep for this country a strong military, to protect the honor of it, and to defend it from the Arabic world that hates our freedom, hates our strength.

4. That we abolish the income tax, a tax on our livelihoods and our labors that benefits only those who have no livelihood, and who do no labor.

5. That to protect the strength and honor of our nation we restore the values that provide the moral strength a country needs; Christian family values, and as such that we outlaw practices of homosexuality, infidelity, and divorce.

6. That we establish an education system that strengthens the minds of our youth, and that teaches them not only the arts and sciences, but faith, charity, and patriotism. We will not teach the works of anti-American radicals such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Cesar Chavez, nor will we let the legacies of misguided patriots like Joe McCarthy be so fully tarnished.

Our demands are simple, but they must be met. Friends, the time of American oppression, masked by the smiling face of liberal equality grinning into our souls and nibbling softly at our hearts until they are mushed into a shapeless porridge of ignorance and acceptance, is over. Now we fight back. Like the heroes in Egypt, in Tunisia, in Yemen, in Jordan, and all over where freedom is trampled and authority reigns, we will accept our conditions no more. And because our aim is true, and our hearts pure, we will succeed.

Michelle Bachmann for County Fair Beauty Contest Judge

This whole thing with Michelle Bachmann last night made something clear to me that I’d never considered before. Maybe the Tea Party doesn’t really have any aspirations to real power. It’s a huge movement, and it’d be impossible to sum up the political motivation of every office-holding member, let alone the wealthy middle class and Iowan supporters who we make fun of for being racist and wanting to own guns, but from the viewpoint of the establishment, and what the establishment looks like, maybe it’s really more about being a sort of very vocal peanut gallery, and there isn’t any real idea of taking anything over. I mean just looking at the differences between Paul Ryan’s speech and Bachmann’s; Paul Ryan is an economist turned politician with fears about the deficit that legitimately weigh on him. He’ll never have the charisma, but he used a lot of the same tactics that made us fall in love with Obama: he’s more direct than average, more willing to saddle blame on the system than on members of the system, and more willing to speak ideologically about specific issues. He’s not shiny enough to be the next Barry, nor is he savvy enough to be the next Nixon, but he’s ambitious, and we’ll be hearing from him for awhile.

Michelle Bachman on the other hand spent 6 minutes pretending that—given the forum and the circumstances of the night—the same points that go over at Tea Party pep rallies make an actual tenet-establishing speech. I won’t go into how she wasn’t looking at the camera. I don’t have to. I won’t even go into the fact that her ideas had no substance. What struck me is that they aren’t real on any platform in any reality. Nobody in this Matrix believes that Obama is going to sign a repeal on healthcare, which is why Republicans were talking about their mandate and not our future. And whether or not Michelle Bachmann believes in her heart of hearts that she’s doing the right thing, when she tells her supporters that that’s what Obama needs to do, she in the end accomplishes only personifying the symbol that the House meant to send with their repeal vote. She’s not interested in actually being change. Or maybe she’s just not capable; but I think the Tea Party representatives have a funny relationship with their representees that doesn’t necessarily require them to make change. Again, they want to make noise, and they’re glad they have such a huge platform to make noise, but I’ve seen no indication that they’ve ever acted like they’ll actually ever have any power.

Which is why she shouldn’t have been broadcast on CNN last night. She didn’t even ask to be. She was perfectly happy broadcasting solely to her supporters through a website her supporters are probably checking anyway. Which makes me wonder, if the Tea Party doesn’t actually want to have real power, than would they if the average American wasn’t so lustfully fascinated with what they have to say? CNN decided to broadcast Bachmann, and I’m quoting a Salon writer now, because she’s “must see TV.” Because the chances that she’ll say something we can write about tomorrow are astronomically higher than they are with Paul Ryan, who throughout the day was quietly acknowledged for not fucking up and then we went back to talking about Egypt.

If Bachmann had only been seen by the 50,000 people that love her the most, she would have said what they wanted to hear, made them happy, kept them vocal and pissed off. Everyone would have been satisfied, and nothing would have changed. Instead she was broadcast to, let’s say ten times that number, and still nothing changed, except the rest of the world was given one more reason to hate a group of people that at the end of the day are self-containing. Not that they’re not bad. But maybe it’s not their fault we all know they’re bad.