Another Nov. 22, as Camelot fades into the mists of reality

Yes, you read the last part right.

First, JFK was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone.

Second, a man who actively supported the overthrow of the president of South Vietnam for not being anti-Viet Cong enough, then professing to be mortified over Diem's murder, must be considered a hypocrite of high rank even among the 43 men to occupy the Oval Office so far.

Let's look at the Kennedy reality.

1. He got "rolled" by Khruschev in Vienna in 1961, perhaps in part because Dr. Max Jacobsen's amphetamines had started wearing off.
2. That, combined with the Bay of Pigs failure, surely led to his "tough on Cuba" strategy, which wasn't that tough.
2A. By not having LBJ involved in all ExComm meetings, he let Johnson think he was tougher on Cuba (i.e., that missiles weren't swapped) than was true; hence, Jack Kennedy contributed to wider war in Vietnam that way alone.
3. The Diem assassination shows he would have upped the military pressure in Nam through the 1964 election at least, leaving either him or the unlikely Goldwater to continue expand the war.
4. How much JFK would have expanded the war is open to reasonable debate; that he would have expanded it to some degree is not.
5. The best think JFK ever did domestically for civil rights was to get himself killed, so LBJ had a martyr to spur Congress into action. Go all the way back to 1960. Kennedy was as politically scared to call Martin Luther King in jail as was Nixon. Eventually, Harris Wofford picked up the phone and forced the issue.
6. Sidebar to this: Kennedy is the only president to deliver an inaugural address without a single word of comment on domestic policy. Beyond being the arch Cold Warrior, he was arguably an arch imperialist, indirect American style.
7. The various conspiracy theorists who wander Dealey Plaza are rightfully scorned for the degree of their detachment from reality; the worshipers at the Shrine of Camelot are not. Why not?

UPDATE, Nov. 26: Ross Douthat, in a column I largely endorse, weighs in on both the Camelot myth and Stephen King's new time-travel novel about the assassination. Frank Rich tries to have his cake and eat it, too, noting (per Douthat) that he wasn't that liberal, but replaying the old canard that right-wing hate killed Kennedy. No, as Douthat puts it, Oswald was, really, the Jared Loughner of 1963. William Manchester gets that wrong, too. Dallas was a "nexus" only in that Oswald lived there, not because of any atmosphere of right-wing hate.

First Frank Rich, now Bob Herbert

Bob Herbert, following Frank Rich, is the second New York Times op-ed columnist in less than a month to announce they were leaving the paper.

Both columnists said they wanted to pursue new angles in journalism.

Fortunately, the Times did NOT go craptacular on Rich's replacement, naming Joe Nocera. But, Nocera, at least from what I've seen of his blogging or commentary outside of Times news stories, isn't really, well, opinionated. And, to the degree he is, he's a business columnist.

I hope the Times thinks outside the New York-DC axis, and outside the traditional bipartisan poles, for a replacement for Herbert.

The story notes that the NYT is in the middle of revamping its Op-Ed section. And, of course, it has the paywalls going up. Both are good reasons for thinking outside the box.

Herbert's farewell column is here. Apparently, he's leaving now, unlike Rich. Interesting. Anyway, he goes out with a bang - call it millions for Libya, but not one cent for the homeland.

Tom Freidman, flat-Twitter asshat

Teapot Tommy Friedman, Mr. Earth is Flat, in talking about Twitter, Egypt and related issues, is even dumber, more uninformed, and more American-exceptionalist chauvinistic than usual, and that's hard to imagine!

Here's the nut graf on his stupidity:

The Arab world has 100 million young people today between the ages of 15 and 29, many of them males who do not have the education to get a good job, buy an apartment and get married. That is trouble. Add in rising food prices, and the diffusion of Twitter, Facebook and texting, which finally gives them a voice to talk back to their leaders and directly to each other, and you have a very powerful change engine.

Just one problem. There IS no "diffusion of Twitter." The reality of Iran's failed Green Revolution showed that, as did the reality of Egypt's protests becoming stronger after President Mubarak shut down the country's ISPs.

Fortunately, Friedman's colleague, Frank Rich, knows the truth.

The talking-head invocations of Twitter and Facebook instead take the form of implicit, simplistic Western chauvinism. How fabulous that two great American digital innovations can rescue the downtrodden, unwashed masses. That is indeed impressive if no one points out that, even in the case of the young and relatively wired populace of Egypt, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/01/how-wired-are-egyptians.html of those masses have Internet access.

Rich also implies that American teevee, as opposed to the effectively banned-from-America Al Jazeera, relies on foreign Tweeters out of collective corporate laziness:

That we often don’t know as much about the people in these countries as we do about their Tweets is a testament to the cutbacks in foreign coverage at many news organizations — and perhaps also to our own desire to escape a war zone that has for so long sapped American energy, resources and patience.

He's not the only person writing for the NYT to know the truth about Twitter, too.

Lee Siegel immediately notes one issue:

Just a few years ago, all anyone could talk about was how to make the Internet more free. Now all anyone can talk about is how to control it.

it's a good start to his review of Evgeny Morozov's “The Net Delusion.”

He shows how American naivete and chauvinism have mixed to worship at the altar of Twitter:

He quotes the political blogger Andrew Sullivan, who proclaimed after protesters took to the streets in Tehran that “the revolution will be Twittered.” The revolution never happened, and the futilely tweeting protesters were broken with an iron hand. But Sullivan was hardly the only one to ignore the Iranian context. Clay Shirky, the media’s favorite quotable expert on all things Internet-related, effused: “This is it. The big one. This is the first revolution that has been catapulted onto a global stage and transformed by social media.”

The more I read out of Shirky's mouth, the less and less intellectual capacity I will give him credit. It's like he is a fellator of anything called "New Media." But, that's pretty much the case with his whole tribe of Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen types.

Could O'Donnell be GOOD for the GOP?

In what sounds like a contrarian take, but really isn't, on Delaware's GOP Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell, Frank Rich argues she's good for the GOP.

Why? In a nutshell, her work and financial record makes it look like the Repugs care for the common person.

'Freedom' is just another novel for Obama not to get

Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom" soared in sales after President Barack Obama was reported to have received an advance copy at a Martha's Vineyard bookstore.

Well, per the title of this post, Frank Rich pointedly says "Freedom" is our equivalent of "The Great Gatsby" or "Bonfire of the Vanities" and that Obama just doesn't get it, or his most recent speech, the "end of Iraq comment" Oval Office vomitoria, wouldn't have been the limp dishwater that it was.

Rich fires both barrels:

What was so grievously missing from Obama’s address was any feeling for what has happened to our country during the seven-and-a-half-year war whose “end” he was marking. That legacy of anger and grief is what “Freedom” mainlines to its readers. ... The other American casualties of Iraq include the credibility of both political parties, neither of which strenuously questioned the rush to war. ... And yet here we are, slouching toward yet another 9/11 anniversary, still waiting for a correction, with even our president, an eloquent Iraq war opponent, slipping into denial.

It's well worth a read.

Faux News hearts terrorists!

What other answer could there be for all of this, as Frank Rich expostulates:

What does Faux News accept $3 billion with a B from the obviously terrorism-supporting Saudi Arabia? C'mon, TPers, answer me about your top propaganda outlet? And, why is it undercutting Gen. Petraus' counterinsurgency work in A-stan? C'mon, TPers, answer me!

Rich takes Obama to the BP cleaners

Again, Obamiacs will surely defend "their man." But, more and more mainstream liberal opinionators, like Frank Rich today, are saying that Obama, instead of just pointing fingers at BP, DOES have his share of blame for not really cleaning house at Interior in general and Minerals Management Service in particular.

That said, hiring Kenny Boy Salazar to run Interior made it clear that Obama, despite his climate change rhetoric, really wasn't that much of an environmentalist, wasn't that interested in environmentalism, and didn't really want to clean house.

Sidebar: Not a single Gang Green group has yet to even think about calling for Kenny Boy's head.

Frank Rich asks two good questions

In a good column about gay marriage, Frank Rich asks why Rush (The Pomposity of Lust, to riff on Steve Miller) Limbaugh would invite Elton John, openly gay and civil-union pseudo-married, to be the wedding singer.

The real question is, why would Elton John even have considered accepting, let alone actually doing it? Was he fame-whoring or something? Does he really need the money that badly?

Elton John just went way down in my book.

BP blow WORSE than Katrina for Obama?

That's the take of Frank Rich, who may well be right. It's similar to a theme I've sounded, that the Obama Administration has had a theme of technocratic neoliberal government competence, and it's all blown to hell over Deepwater Horizon.

Rich is also the first mainstream liberal media commentator to say what's up with no press conferences for nearly a year.

Meanwhile, how bad is the mix of oil and Corexit? This bad.

Arizona and NYT columnists

Tom Friedman, in "Narcos, No's and NAFTA" looks at what's happening south of the border, with the implication that soon enough, a rising Mexican middle class will alleviate immigration issues.

I think he's full of crap, because as Mexican oil production continues to decline, the Mexican government will have a lot less money to alleviate poverty, and I doubt the middle class will grow that fast or that much.

Meanwhile, Frank Rich sees the Arizona GOP's action on immigration as just the front lines of how Tea Partiers are radicalizing the GOP nationally on this issue. And, yes, it's fair to start saying the movement as a movement is racist, or quasi-racist, if it doesn't start reading racists out of the movement.

SOTU: Comatose or unstable?

From a domestic perspective, and a political spinelessness perspective, Frank Rich offers up "comatose."

From the reactions of foreigners, Tom Friedman weighs in with "unstable."

They're both right, overall.

That said, I disagree with Rich that Obama did not enter into Clinton-like bite-sized programs. As I blogged last week, the way he parceled out light rail money certainly looks that way, and looks like it has a political angle to it, too. (It seems Rich is indulging in a bit of long-past Clinton-bashing through the judo of Obama-boosting.)

Friedman errs in thinking anybody from the GOP wants to be non-obstructionist. He salutes Lindsey Graham and Judd Gregg by name AFTER every Republican senator voted against reinstating pay-go legislation. (Friedman's Washington political world is apparently "flat," too.)

Both Rich and Friedman are worth a read. Just don't get into the fine print too much.

Frank Rich on Obama's A-stan wrongness

Frank Rich can be somewhat hit-or-miss with me, overall, as a columnist. But, occasionally, he really hits the nail on the head, as in dissecting just how wrong President Obama is on his Afghanistan surge decision.

Rich notes one Vietnam-Afghanistan anti-parallel that hasn't gotten much discussion recently — the draft of 40 years ago vs. a "professional" armed forces today. Even with the use of "contractors," there is no way we could scale up to an Afghanistan-sized war without massive new "inducements" to recruiting. Even in a recession. And so, like Bush before, especially if Obama bluntly rejects the Obey-Levin call for a surtax to pay for his surge, America won't get asked to sacrifice.

Indicating that this isn't such a "necessary" war after all, except, perhaps, to "look strong" at home as well as abroad.

Wrong-way McCain

Frank Rich tells Arizona’s senior senator to shut up on Afghanistan.

Obama has no timeline on Afghan troops decision

Bob Woodward reports President Barack Obama first has a series of national security strategy meetings scheduled before making any decision. Is Obama refusing to set a decision timetable to lean on Afghanistan commander Stanley McChrystal on his threat to quit if he doesn’t get all the troops he wants?

Meanwhile, Frank Rich reminds us not only of Afghanistan-Vietnam parallels, but that, through his choice of “advisors” such as Fred Kagan, McChrystal had politicized his job well before his carefully-leaked threat to quit if he didn’t get more troops.

So, if Obama is making him wait, and sweat, and cool his heels, good.

Frank Rich finally smells the Obama myth coffee

Rich wonders if maybe, just maybe, Obama isn’t that much a reformer after all.

Dude, I knew that 16 months ago.

But, without sparing Obama personally, Rich looks at the system:

In this maze of powerful moneyed interests, it’s not clear who any American in either party should or could root for.

Answer is ultimately nobody from within the two-party duopoly.

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