White House Communications Team: Oops

Politics

It’s funny–I was called a moron, part of a circular firing squad, and worse for arguing what the White House communications team has just determined. As the Washington Post reports, after a year-end analysis, “White House advisers said the president’s communications team had not taken the initiative often enough and had allowed drawn-out debates in Congress, and relentless criticism by Republicans, to drown out his message.”

To bad this only comes after Obama and Congressional Democrats have lost the overwhelming momentum they had after the 2008 elections. I don’t think they’ll be able to get that back, but hopefully they’ll be more effective in (1) calling out Republicans as obstructionist and (2) articulating a compelling Democratic vision of government. I doubt it, though.

Malcolm Gladwell on Drinking

Well Worth Reading

There is something about the cultural dimension of social problems that eludes us. When confronted with the rowdy youth in the bar, we are happy to raise his drinking age, to tax his beer, to punish him if he drives under the influence, and to push him into treatment if his habit becomes an addiction. But we are reluctant to provide him with a positive and constructive example of how to drink.

Malcolm Gladwell has a new article in the New Yorker, “Drinking Games,” examining how cultural influences shape the consumption of alcohol. As always, he gives you a few interesting tidbits to come away with (even if his conclusions can feel overdetermined).

The Onion: Still Funny

Humor

It’s hard to think of many humor outlets that have enjoyed as sustained a run as The Onion (Mad Magazine? The Daily Show? The Simpsons?), but it’s amazing how successful the parody newspaper has remained some 14 years into mass production. Every week I pick up a copy for my commute, and most weeks I’m goaded into laughing out loud on the bus.

Here are a three stories I really enjoyed this time around:

Wal-Mart Cuts Over 13,000 Of What It Calls Jobs

“Although many experts have deemed these layoffs an unfortunate reflection of the economic climate, instead of what they actually are, which is a borderline fucking human rights violation, a number of prominent analysts said current market trends show that Wal-Mart may soon recover from its current woes, as if anyone with an ounce of human decency even gives a shit.”

NASA Launches David Bowie Concept Mission

“NASA’s re-designed Spirit rover, nicknamed ‘Leper Messiah,’ will measure if sunlight striking the Martian surface is strong enough to produce a snow white tan.”

Smoove Is Not a Fan of Valentine’s Day

“Despite these inconveniences, the main reason Smoove does not like Valentine’s Day is that women always expect their men to bump up their game on that night. Now, that makes sense if you are dating a man who is not Smoove. If your romantic output normally hovers around 5 or 10 percent, then increasing that number to 20 percent is a sensible thing. However, what the ladies don’t realize is that I’m like a romance test pilot. I’m already pushing the romantic envelope every single evening. So if you try to push it any harder, the love jet will not be able to handle the strain and will go spinning wildly out of control.”

Gridlock and Bigotry: The Republican Platform Comes to Illinois

Politics

Illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady fleshed out his platform in today’s Chicago Sun-Times (in an article titled, “Ban gay marriages, GOP gov hopeful says“).

Brady is proposing a 10-year limit on Illinois House and Senate members, who face no constraints now, and a two-thirds vote requirement in the General Assembly for passage of sales or income tax increases.

In short, make Illinois ungovernable like California is. They’re even trying to add a governor-recall amendment to the state constitution.

The Texas Textbook Wars

Politics

Russell Shorto has a story in the New York Times magazine, “How Christian Were the Founders?,” exploring the attempts of conservative members of the Texas State Board of Education to insert Christian undertones into the textbook curriculum. (Since Texas spends so much on textbooks, their changes are often applied in the rest of the country as well.)

It’s a thorough exploration, full of quotes guaranteed to make any secularist suffer. For instance:

For [lead conservative board member Don] McLeroy, separation of church and state is a myth perpetrated by secular liberals. “There are two basic facts about man,” he said. “He was created in the image of God, and he is fallen. You can’t appreciate the founding of our country without realizing that the founders understood that. For our kids to not know our history, that could kill a society. That’s why to me this is a huge thing.”

Don McLeroy is a fundamentalist dentist–someone with no backing in history or science–and he’s been put in a position to alter textbooks to fit his ideology. It’s incredibly frustrating to recognize the influence held by McLeroy and his peers, but it’s hard to know how to counter it.