Pinheads and Political Skewering

This weekend, PBS aired an episode of “Bill Moyer’s Journal” featuring Jon Stewart as the first half guest. I am a huge, huge Jon Stewart fan; I have been ever since he took over the Daily Show. I find him to be far funnier than Stephen Colbert and, for the most part, smarter than Kieth Olbermann. Add into the fact that he’s one sexy Jew, and he’s totally my TV boyfriend. Attractiveness aside, though, he is one of the most mature and thoughtful political comentators working in the media today; the fact that he uses comedy and a comedy show as his medium is totally irrelevant.

On Salon.com Glenn Greenwald posted about a new, budding political sea change brewing in America. The post seemed largely inspired by a comment left on a previous post of his, which said the following:

I’m watching Moyers’ Journal, and Jon Stewart is the guest, with Josh Marshall from TPM to follow. It’s caused me to reflect on the fairly recent past, and I am getting an almost cellular sense that something very profound is beginning to bud.

I have to say that a remarkably intimate, yet expansive, community of thought seems to be forming across television, film, and the Internet. There’s a rather quiet, yet intense, movement of thought and expression building. It focuses not so much on any particular ideology (“right” or “left”), but on a common, critical-mass thirst to dispel the deception, irrationality, and utter hubris that has been corroding our proud country for what seems like an eternity.

An undeniable intellectual and social confluence is rapidly gaining momentum and solidarity. This solidarity is amazingly organic, not hierarchical — its only guide is the sixth sense of skepticism, outrage, and, yes, reason. It transcends party. It is oceanic, atmospheric. An intellectual, moral, societal, and psychological gestalt as ancient as humanity itself, kept underfoot by a long winter, but indelibly germinating once again with the thaw.

It is literally everywhere now. The voices of blindness and rage cannot shake me anymore. I haven’t felt such hope in a very long time.

I agree. And I am delighted to see Jon Stewart at the helm of this sea change (and I truly believe he is). For as many political analysts and commentators we see on television and in print, there are very, very few (I would even go so far as to say none) who have both the kind of widespread influence and truly worthwhile perspective as Stewart. While he takes great pains in interviews to stress that he is not a journalist (and he is not), he seems to miss the fact that he is fulfilling a far more important role: he is a satirist. Political satirists, by nature, must be informed; after all, you have to know what’s going on to make fun of it. So there is an element of news and media analysis in all political satire. Stewart’s role as an analyst is increased by the Daily Show’s format as a mock-newscast. Stewart might only be playing at being an anchorman, but the image of him behind his desk seems to create the same feelings one gets when watching a real news broadcast.

Add to this the fact that Stewart’s comedy is so funny because it’s so true, and we’re dealing with someone who may be our generation’s Mark Twain. I have an incredible amount of respect for Stewart, which has only increased since he began to really accept his importance as a satirist and interviewer. Starting with that incredible appearance on Crossfire a few years ago, he really started to take himself and his show more seriously. Now we see him hamering John McCain with questions about the war and patriotism (which, if you haven’t seen it, is absolutely brilliant and included in the videos at the bottom of this post); interviewing former Iraqi Defense Minister Ali Allawi about the incredibly vast amounts of violence in Iraq. Stephen Colbert is funny, if over-the-top, and Kieth Olbermann has moments of incredible insight, but neither of them provide as complete satire as the Daily Show does.

I cannot imagine a world without the Daily Show anymore, and I sincerely hope the Stewart does this until he is too old to go on. He is providing us with a very important service, and he is the smartest, most thoughtful man for the job.

The interview with Bill Moyer was astounding. Please watch it in its entirety, below:

Update: I forgot to say something that I think is really, really important, especially when one considers why I decided to post about Jon Stewart. I trust Jon Stewart. I trust him the same way I trusted Peter Jennings (and Jennings is the only news anchor I’ve ever trusted). To make the American people trust you and your perspective is a rare, rare thing; most presidents cannot even achieve it. Before his retirement, a survey of the American people found that more Americans trusted Walter Cronkite than any other person in the country, including the president. And he was a worthwhile object of their trust. Without sounding like I’m going too overboard here (Jon Stewart is not Walter Cronkite, and I doubt he would ever want to be directly compared to him), I believe that for many people my age, Jon Stewart is our Walter Cronkite. He is often the only person we feel we can trust.

–Sara Tenenbaum

Achoo!!

Spring Formula 1:

+ =

= ME

Spring Formula 2:

+ + + + + =

Ahhhhhhhh

I hate the spring.

–Sara Tenenbaum

The Awakening…

A lot of people that we’ve talked to about the transition describe it much the way you do, that it was a heady time. But another word that people use is “chaotic.”

Sure, it was chaotic. The Democrats hadn’t been in power for 12 years. Nobody knew what they were doing. But there was a great deal of excitement, not only among the people who were coming down to form the administration or to help the president in the transition, but also in the public at large. We tend to forget, I think, with our jaded selves at the start of the twenty-first century, how excited we can be at the start of a new administration where there’s a recession, when there’s a sense of a complete change. I remember things like driving up to the take-out part of a fast food restaurant with the kids, and I’d order something, and the person behind the glass would say, “Good luck to you. Good luck to you, and good luck to President Clinton,” with a big grin. Wherever I went, people were going like this — excited about America, at the point of what everybody considered to be a very fundamental change.
– Robert Reich [source]

I currently work for a publication that deals very much with politics, and with little else. I am an unpaid intern, the very bottom of the food chain in the magazine world, but my work brings my into contact with a lot of things I simply wouldn’t be paying attention to otherwise. Politics aren’t my bread and butter, but I do like to be an informed and interested citizen. So when my fact-checking duties brought me to the above interview, I found myself oddly entranced. I remember this feeling of promise. I was so young during the Clinton years, but I knew — instinctively — that something good was happening in this country. That someone Good was in charge. Very few people visit this blog, I know, and even fewer comment. But I want to hear what some of the people kind enough to cast an eye upon my thoughts — however uninformed or knee-jerk they be — think about the future. I was talking to my roommate yesterday about the fear I feel already welling up inside of me that not a single candidate who has cast their hat into the 2008 ring is going to win the presidency. Now, I like a lot of these candidates. I really feel that Edwards, Clinton and Obama are very, very intelligent people, and are or would be capable leaders for our country. Or, at least, that’s what my instinct says. What I worry about is that not one of them seem to have — as far as I can tell — a solid idea for what their administration would look like, what the immediate goals of their term would be. We do not need a sweeping ideological change in Washignton, at least not right now. I mean, we certainly need one in general. American will fall apart otherwise. But Washington can’t handle sweeping ideological changes right now. The country will collapse. The government is too rotten, too mis-managed, too far away from their true purpose. We need patches; we need a war patch, to fix this truly fucked war. We need an education patch, to start funding American education so we can become internationally competative again. We need a health care patch and a welfare patch, and we need to patch up American industry so that our economy doesn’t sink like a stone. These are not great sweeping ideological changes; this is good policy, written and implemented properly. So what I want to know is: What do you want? So many people want to tell us what the American people need… but I think Americans know better than anyone else what they actually need and what they actually want. So what do you want, America?

–Sara Tenenbaum

Generation Columbine

This is an excellent article about the Virginia Tech massacre and its roots. You all should go read it.

I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch the video Cho Seung-Hui send to NBC yet. It’s a little too disturbing; I was also pretty ill after work yesterday, and slept away most of the afternoon before people came over for ANTM and Lost. I don’t know that there’s anything to be gleaned from a video of a madman’s ravings, and I don’t know that I want to watch crazy for the sake of crazy.

The Washington Post today had a huge front page section recounting the massacre, nearly minute-by-minute, followed by a very long set of obituaries of all the people who died. And while the logical side of my knows this the way a nation mourns collectively — through the press — the emotional side of me felt exploited and exposed. I did not know any of these people; their deaths do not affect me. I will not be attending any funerals, I will not be comforting loved ones in their time of need, I will not be eyeing my college campus warily (because I’m out). I am sad that this happened, bewildered by this boy’s madness, but I am not affected and I don’t think it’s my place to step in and mourn for these people. The massacre is an American tragedy, but these deaths are personal family catastrophes. I would feel like I was violating someone’s privacy to participate in their grief.

–Sara Tenenbaum

Supreme Court Decision: Partial-Birth Abortion Ban

Note: This is my opinion of the decision made today by the Supreme Court on whether or not to uphold the Partial Birth Abortion ban passed by Congress in 2003. My opinion has been shaped and informed by the opinion of the Supreme Court, which was published and is widely available in both print and digital form. To read the entire decision (all 73 pages of it), including the majority opinion (by Justice Kennedy), the agreement (by Justices Thomas and Scalia) and the minority dissent (by Justice Ginsberg), go here

I’ll start by saying this: I think we’re okay.

The greatest fear this decision has struck in the hearts of pro-choice people is that by approving and upholding the partial-birth abortion ban is that it would be the first step in many to erode the rights given to women by Roe v. Wade to the point where it would make more sense to overturn that ruling, and therefore make abortion illegal. I don’t think this decision will do that at all, and I think that’s probably why Justice Kennedy — who was the most opposed to the ban in 2000 when the case was first brought to SCOTUS (Supreme Court Of The United States) — cast the deciding vote in favor of upholding this ban. I don’t fully agree with the opinion of the court, but I do understand where it is coming from. So let’s start there.

First, what is a partial-birth abortion? It is a variation of the most common second term abortion method practiced by doctors, known as Dilation and Evacuation (D&E). The D&E procedure dialates the woman’s cervix wide enough to be able to insert surgical tools to extract the fetus. These tools are then used to dismember the fetus in utero and extract each part. When all the parts have been removed, the placenta and any other tissue is scraped from the uterine wall and suctioned out. In a partial birth abortion (which is known medically as Dilation and Extraction, or D&X), the fetus is delivered as one would a child — either head-first or breech — until the body is most of the way out of the mother. At that point the skull is pierced crushed (and the contents evacuated to make it collapse, therefore allowing it to pass through the cervix) and the now-dead fetus is removed intact. It is only this second method that is addressed by the ban.

Both plantiffs and respondants in this case acknowledged the somewhat gruesome nature of a D&X procedure. And since the court, the government, and most people recognize that a fetus is a living organism, whether or not it is viable outside the womb, or whether it constitutes a full human life. Therefore, many doctors and nurses are put off by the D&X procedure because evidence of life — such as movement — is visible before the fetus is terminated and fully removed. This, and its name, makes partial-birth abortion a fairly controversial procedure in the public’s eyes.

The case was brought before SCOTUS because the original wording of the ban did not make the constitutionally-required exception for the mother’s health, and because the wording of the act was such that it was thought to be broad enough to include other kinds of D&E procedures. This would mean the act is unconstitutional on its face. That was upheld in 2000, but rejected now as the court felt that sufficient evidence was presented to show that a D&X is necessarily the only medical option that could be performed when a D&E is too dangerous:

1. Usually, in cases where a D&X is performed, a D&E can be performed just as easily. D&Es expose mothers to tiny broken bones and bone shards that can cause damage to the uterus, vagina and cervix; however, doctors were not able to prove that D&X was the only alternative in these cases.

2. The extraction of a whole fetus as part of an abortion (which is what the partial-birth abortion ban… um, bans) is acceptable if the following methods are used: if the fetus is killed in-utero before extraction (by use of drugs, which are injected into the umbilical cord or the amniotic fluid), if a hysterectomy or hysteronomy is performed, or if the doctor did not intend, when beginning the abortion, to extract the fetus whole. That means if something happens during a D&E that means the fetus is extracted to an anatomical landmark (which, according to the court, means that either the body is out to the shoulder, or the torso is fully exposed to the abdomen), when the doctor did not intend to do so, then the abortion is still legal.

The court said:

The conclusion that the Act does not impose an undue burden is supported by other considerations. Alternatives are available to the prohibited procedure. As we have noted, the Act does not proscribe D&E. One District Court found D&E to have extremely low rates of medical complications. Planned Parenthood, supra, at 1000. Another indicated D&E was generally the safest method of abortion during the second trimester. Carhart, 331 F. Supp. 2d, at 1031; see also Nat. Abortion Federation, supra, at 467468 (explaining that “[e]xperts testifying for both
sides” agreed D&E was safe). In addition the Act’s prohibition only applies to the delivery of “a living fetus.” If the intact D&E procedure is truly necessary in some circumstances, it appears likely an injection that kills the fetus is an alternative under the Act that allows the doctor to perform the procedure.

So, essentially, the court upholds the right to have an abortion, just not this kind.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg penned the dissent, which I find both compelling in its argument and laudable in its intent. Ginsberg argues, basically, that this ban both demeans and legally compromises women who are intending to have an abortion, and that they should be able to make the decision to have a D&X abortion all on their own. Just as every patient can consent to a dangerous or unseemly medical procedure in every other type of medical situation, so should women be able to do so in the medical arena of abortion:

I dissent from the Court’s disposition. Retreating from prior rulings that abortion restrictions cannot be imposed absent an exception safeguarding a woman’s health, the Court upholds an Act that surely would not survive under the close scrutiny that previously attended state-decreed limitations on a woman’s reproductive choices.
…
According to the expert testimony plaintiffs introduced, the safety advantages of intact D&E are marked for women with certain medical conditions, for example, uterine scarring, bleeding disorders, heart disease, or compromised immune systems.
…
The solution the Court approves, then, is not to require doctors to inform women, accurately and adequately, of the different procedures and their attendant risks. Cf. Casey, 505 U. S., at 873 (plurality opinion) (“States are free to enact laws to provide a reasonable framework for a woman to make a decision that has such profound and lasting meaning.”). Instead, the Court deprives women of the right to make an autonomous choice, even at the expense of their safety…This way of thinking reflects ancient notions about women’s place in the family and under the Constitution–ideas that have long since been discredited.

I find myself most agreeing with Ginsberg — that there is enough health-related rationale, and enough constitutional precedent to call this ban “unconsitutional” — but I can also see the perspective of the majority, and it’s not as dangerous and offensive as I thought. The wording of the majority opinion stringently upholds the right of women to have abortions using other methods (I did not read the concurrent opinion of Justices Thomas and Scalia, because they are more ideologically motivated, and, to be frank, I cannot stand them), and while I am disturbed the federal government has overrided the States’ right to regulate abortion on a state-by-state basis, I do not think this will have an effect that, in the long run, will work towards striking down our right to choose.

I think it’s also important to note that D&E (intact or not) is only performed in the 2nd trimester of pregnancy. Over 90% over abortions are performed in the first trimester. And of the remaining 10%, D&X is far, far less common in practice than D&E. So this ban will not make a large impact in the ability of women to get safe abortions, both because there are other ways to have a second term abortion, and also because most women do not get second term abortions.

This is a long decision, and a very complicated legal matter. I feel alright about it for now; we’ll see how I feel tomorrow, when it’s had time to sink in.

–Sara Tenenbaum

SCOTUS rules on major Abortion Case

A quick newsflash which, I promise, will be followed in a bit by a more in-depth analysis of this (I need to read the decision and opinions before I can pick them apart).

The Supreme Court ruled today to impose a federal ban on partial birth abortions. Read about it here.

Let it be noted that this DOES NOT overturn Roe v. Wade. Partial-Birth Abortion has been a controversial issue for a long time, largely due (I suspect) to its very confrontational name (wanna make abortion sound like killing babies? Call it “partial-birth”).

As I said, I gotta bust a move for work and then read these decisions, and I’ll be back to let you know what I think.

I will end on this note, though: The decision was 5-4 and the deciding vote actually came from Justice Kennedy, who is liberal. In fact, when the case was first brought to the courts in 2000, Kennedy was so opposed to the ban that he wrote the very, very strongly worded majority opinion to strike it down, on the grounds that it placed undue stress on the mother (the ban would not have provided that the procedure be legal if it was an issue of the mother’s life). He is the one who switched sides here… I am very interested to read this decision.

–Sara Tenenbaum

Placing Blame

It’s another day, and people are still talking and writing about the shootings at Virginia Tech. It’s the same as what happened after 9/11, the same as after Columbine, the same circular reaction we all have when an unimaginable tragedy happens without warning; another sign that Americans have lost the ability to cope.

The Virginia Tech tragedy starts simply by raising logical questions about guns and students and mental diseases. Why was it so easy for this kid to get a gun? (He had no record, no priors, no nothing; just a credit card and knowledge of a gun store in Roanoke. The guy who sold him the gun, by the way, says he is crushed by the weight of the consequences). Why was he so disturbed? (No one seems to know, but the Post today reports that he was quiet and wrote fiction and poetry in creative writing classes that was so disturbing, the dean of the English department had to teach him one-on-one because his classmates were so afraid of him). Why did he open fire on his fellow students, with no warning? (Unknown, but the notes he left indicate he was a very, very angry young man).

These logical questions begin by progressing to logical arguments. We should control guns more. It occured to me this morning that this tragedy is especially ironic considering that DC decided to repeal its gun ban less than a month ago. This is one way to make the city face the potential consequence of their actions. If Virgina Tech — a decidedly un-violent school — can experience a tragedy like this so out of the blue, then what exactly is going to happen to one of the most violence cities in the country when the legal battles are over and handguns are available to all with ease? And the argument that gun control laws are completely responsible for VTech is ridiculous, but living in a society that does not have guns and violence as such a central right (and one that people fight so vehemently to protect) of its people might go a long way to stopping this kind of thing by making it inconceivable; when you are not taught that guns are an easy way to get your way, you are less likely to turn to them when you snap. Not foolproof, but certainly logical.

And univerisities. Many people are blaming VTech for not closing classes and notifying the campus after the dorm shootings that killed only two people. Some of my colleagues have even taken offense to the idea that because it looked like a domestic dispute gone wrong (mainly because it involved a girl, who looked to be intentionally targeted), campus police felt no need to notify the rest of the student body of any danger. And fine, that is a bit unreasonable, and the police weren’t doing their job correctly. And yes, the university should have been more proactive about getting this kid some help (see my post from yesterday for why). But we must also respect the boundaries of the university and role it plays in the lives of young Americans; mainly as a stepping stone from childhood and adolesence, characterized by your dependence on your family and parents for protection and survival, to adulthood, where you are responsible for yourself (and one day, for your children). Students go to college to learn things, yes, and to prepare for careers, yes, but also to learn responsibility and independence. If you have a kid in your class who writes poems so dark and violent that you are afraid to be in the same room with him, you must let someone know. Go to the Dean, go to the health center, go to whoever — it is not the teacher’s job, in college, to look out for their students (although any responsible adult would); it is the job of the students to look out for each other. It happened when I was in school; people would tell professors and school doctors and nurses and RAs and fellow students that so-and-so was depressed, or so-and-so had threatened someone, or so-and-so looked like they were having a really hard time, and the school would then help us find a way to help ourselves. So blaming Virgina Tech outright for not knowing enough about its 25,000 students (21,000 undergrad, 4,000 graduate) is absurd.

Which brings me to the most important point: there is no one to blame here but the man who opened fire, and our inability to cope with that is disturbing. Just like after Columbine, we are asking ourselves who is really responsible for this tragedy, when the answer is as plain as day on the front page of our newspapers. Cho Seung-hui is to blame for the Virgina Tech massacre; he is the one who got the gun, who got the ammunition, who strapped it to his vest, and who opened fire on his campus. He is the one who killed 32 people and then himself; it was not music, movies or literature that made him do it, it was him. In Columbine, it was two very disturbed young men who were to blame; it was they who armed themselves, it was they who opened fire, it was they who made the decision, not anyone else.

But we can’t deal with that. We blame the school for not knowing enough, we blame others for not noticing his depression, we blame the government for not regulating guns (although I do feel that gun control in this country should be far stricter than it is). We cannot turn to look at ourselves and say that it is us who are to blame. We are to blame because we refuse to take responsibility for our own lives. Cho Seung-hui is to blame for this shooting, but we are to blame for not using this time to reflect on the state of Americans as people, as opposed to pointing fingers arbitrarily at people to absolve ourselves of whatever existential guilt we have.

About a month ago, in The New Republic, Stephen Pinker wrote about the unique place manking finds itself in at this point in history. We are less violent now that we have ever been before. We have replaced the horrific and merciless rule of the past with the pragmatic and reasoned rule of the present. We no longer turn to weapons for punishment, violence for production, but instead work our way through life using words and media and ideas instead of hands and claws and guns. This may seem counterintuitive coming on the heels of the worst school shooting in US history, but it’s also true, and one of the reasons we have so much trouble dealing with such a violent tragedy is because we are no longer used to this kind of hardship. So we pawn it on to other sources instead of wondering why humans can be pushed to the edge so readily, can turn to such brutal violence with such ease… and why Americans are so predisposed to do so.

We really do have the largest number of gun fatalities per year. We really do have more of these kind of mass shootings than other countries. We really are more violent than the rest of the First World. Why?

–Sara Tenenbaum

I heard the news today, oh boy…

What a depressing day to blog, eh? The Virginia Tech shooter and (some) of his motives have been identified. He left a suicide note in his dorm room, in which he apparently railed against spoiled students, on-campus debauchery, and just about everything else you expect to see at college.

He reminds me of this kid that I knew/didn’t really know when I was a freshman in college. The kid — who (coincidentally, I swear) was also East Asian, and who also went to my high school, though I didn’t know know him then, just knew of him– was a year older than me. He was somewhat of an outcast in high school, one of those kids that was a little too nerdy, too focused on world politics, and would often spout these bizarre tales of how he was going to take over the world (it sounds funny, but his speechs had an edge of determination that made them sound a little too serious). He left, and went to college, where my freshman-year boyfriend (who was a junior at the time of this kid’s first year, but living in a single room in a freshman quad because the housing lottery totally dicked him over) knew him in passing. Apparently, towards the end of the year, the kid — who was always weird and a little on edge — had a psychotic break. He stood out on one of the balconies of a dorm building (an open air balcony, where you could smoke cigarettes and shout at peopl in the quad) and railed — at the top of his lungs — for hours about how terrible people were and how he was going to kill them all, and once again his plans for taking over the globe, and which countries would be under his control and all of this crazy nonsense. This went on for a long time… my ex said it was at least five or six hours before they could get him down and by that time there was a huge crowd transfixed by his utter insanity. The school brought him to a psychiatrist and then very quietly removed him from the student body and sent him home. By all accounts he got some help and has been fairly normal since (I say fairly because I feel quite sure this kid will never be truly normal). It’s moments like these that make you realize how much you dodged a bullet.

Luckily, I didn’t enter that school until the following year, so I dodged the bullet by a mile. But other students may not have been so fortunate.

–Sara Tenenbaum

Violence in Virginia

CNN is reporting that 22 students have been killed by a single gunman at Virginia Tech. Another 17 or so have been taken to the hospital, injured. The gunman is also dead.

This is the deadliest school shooting in US history, surpassing Columbine (1999).

Hopes, prayers and hearts to all the students and their families. It’s a scary day in Virginia.

–Sara Tenenbaum

Mr. Blue Sky Please Tell Us Why You Had To Hide Away For So Long

So the huge storm that is pummelling the east coast is all over the news, but I wanted to mention it for two reasons:

1. It is ruining my social life. It’s grey, dark, nasty, wet, cold and windy. That does not make a girl want to get on the Metro and trek downtown to go get shitfaced drunk in a bar, like a normal 22-year-old. Instead, that girl stays inside watching insipid tv and half-heartedly reading books she swore she would finish, and gets very grumpy.

2. It gave me a reason to tell everyone that they should be listening to “Mr. Blue Sky” by Electric Light Orchestra. I don’t give a rat’s ass if any of you make fun of me for loving an over-the-top 70s prog-rock-pop band, this song kicks a lot of other songs’ butts. Until the last 1:20, but whatever, just skip the end.

–Sara Tenenbaum