Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Elitist Greens

From our UK edition

Matt Yglesias reconsiders his position on arugula. Of course, in Britain we call "arugula" "rocket" - a much more homely, substantial, salt-of-the-earth kind of name, you will agree. A ploughman might have rocket in his sandwich, he'd never have "arugula" would he? Names matter! I can't recall for certain, but I'm pretty sure arugula used to be called rocket in the United States too, but that the name was changed because someone - growers? Supermarkets? - wanted a poncier, more exotic, upscale name for the stuff. If Obama loses in Novemeber this shift will doubtless be seen by historians as a key moment in American political history...

Alex Massie

The Future is Youthiness

From our UK edition

Jonathan Rauch has a terrific, hilarious column about the McCain campaign. Highly recommended. Excerpt: "We need to go on offense. Our theme is that Barack Obama is too old for the job and that the public needs a younger, more vigorous brand of leadership. OK, here are some scripts we're looking at." "Wait, wait, wait. Wait. Do you need time off? I can give you a few days. Take some time. You've earned it." "No, Senator. If you'll just look at these scripts --" "Steve, April Fool's Day is seven months off. You want me to say Obama is too old to be president and I'm not?" "Yes." "I'm younger than Obama?" "Not younger, exactly. More youthful. You have more, um, youthiness. What is 72? That's just a numeral. Same two digits as 27. It's ink on a driver's license.

Sunday

Alex Massie

Telegramese Charm

From our UK edition

All gone, now of course. Bryan Appleyard has more:  I was once persuaded, against my better judgment, to write to Samuel Beckett in Paris - I knew him slightly - asking him about his hopes and resolutions for the new year. The telegram arrived - 'Hopes colon zero stop resolutions colon zero stop.' Christopher Ricks subsequently used this in his superb book Beckett's Dying Words as an example of Great Sam's mastery of punctuation.

Alex Massie

McCain’s Second Life

From our UK edition

What was John McCain to do? By that, I mean: what sort of campaign was he supposed to run? Steve Benen says it's "chilling" that Sarah Palin could be a heartbeat from the Presidency. Matt Yglesias notes the "crassly political" nature of her selection and asks what federal agency or cabinet department she might be qualified to run if she hadn't been picked as McCain's running-mate. Andrew Sullivan, in his characteristically restrained style, fears for the future if "this dangerous, vindictive, Christianist cipher" is "foisted" upon the United States. And yes, today's New York Times story on her record - and style of governing - in Alaska is, to put it mildly, far from encouraging.

Alex Massie

Tales from the Nanny State

From our UK edition

Good grief. A TEAM of NHS nurses is patrolling Scotland's streets to target pot-bellied members of the public and tell them how to lose weight.Armed with measuring tapes to check waists and equipment to test blood pressure, the "Street Nurses" are policing busy shopping centres, supermarkets and community centres.Any man with a paunch, or woman with an "apple-shaped" body whose waist measurement is higher than recommended limits is given diet and lifestyle advice or referred to local slimming classes.Under the scheme the nurses, wearing high-visibility waistcoats, set up portable tables and chairs in town centres to monitor passers-by.

Saturday

Alex Massie

For God and Ulster and Michigan…

From our UK edition

As readers may know by now, I'm hopelessly in love with college football. Within that realm, I follow the University of Michigan. Today, the Wolverines travel to South Bend, Indiana to face Notre Dame. The two most successful programs in college football history go face to face in what is, given their respective recent travails, a Cripple Fight for the ages. UPDATE: Well, that didn't go as well as it might have did it? Always tough to win when you give the opposition a three touchdown start... I think I've said before that I don't care for the Fighting Irish: It's often said that the definition of intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing opinions simultaneously. Perhaps so.

Friday

Alex Massie

Making government “cool”…

From our UK edition

What a choice Americcans have! There's the elderly candidate with precious little interest in domestic policy whose signature legislative achievement was to abridge the First Amendment and whose running mate, for all her charms and freshness, is not someone you'd be terribly comfortable seeing running the country. Then there's the young fellow who, for all his political gifts and for all his capacity to inspire people, can come out and say something like this: Obama would, he said, "transform Washington" and "make government cool again." May heaven preserve us all. To be fair to Obama, he was speaking at a youth forum at Columbia dedicated to the notion of national service. In that context, suggesting that the government is a great ennobler is more understandable.

Alex Massie

Waiting for Glenrothes

From our UK edition

So, the conventional wisdom is that Gordon Brown has survived and will not, in fact, face a leadership challenge anytime soon. Why? Because it's too difficult to get rid of him and, in any case, there's no obviously more palatable successor. As the BBC's Nick Robinson put it this morning: Friends of the Prime Minister put it more positively. MPs have come to realise, they say, that it's not Gordon Brown that's the problem but "the economy stupid" and he's the best man to sort it. In this respect, and this one only, the polls are helpful for Mr Brown. The public does not say it wants a change of Labour leader nor that the party's position would be improved if there was one.So it is that Gordon Brown has neither been backed or sacked.

Alex Massie

How Bush Made Life Easy for Europe

From our UK edition

I've a piece up at Culture11 considering some of the problems Europe may face when confronted by the next American president. Snippet: The election of a new American President is also a test. One which will determine, as is sometimes avowed, if European discontent is merely a manifestation of anti-Bushism rather than a more virulent, infectious anti-Americanism. In truth, the two cannot be so easily disentangled. Yet Europeans may one day reflect that, unlikely as it may seem, Mr. Bush was a better friend to Europe than they ever imagined. Politics is always a matter of style and substance. Mr. Bush’s style permitted Europe to turn away from and reject the substance of his presidency.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Ohio Impromptu

From our UK edition

Wins my support. How could he not, him being a Trinity man and the only Nobel laureate for literature to have played first-class cricket?

Alex Massie

Kith and Kin: Global Edition

From our UK edition

Ever wondered how common your surname may be? Ever wondered where folk who share your name live? Well, now you can find out! Unsurprisingly, Massies tend to be found in the UK and the dominions. In fact Massie is now a more common name in Canada (46 of us per million names), the USA (41) than the UK (38). Australia (26 per million) and New Zealand (15) come next. In the USA, you're most likely to find us in Virginia and West Virginia; in Canada its Quebec and Alberta. I'm also intrigued by the wee cluster of Massies around Biarritz in south-western France. By contrast, everyone with my mother's maiden name seems to have moved to Taranaki and Waikato in New Zealand, leaving few folks behind in Scotland. Who knows how accurate any of this is?

Alex Massie

Sarah Palin: Friend to Liberty?

From our UK edition

Radley Balko says that, yes, perhaps she is. At least sort of. At least more so than her running-mate and, it must be said, more so than Barack Obama. True, Radley has to dig quite deep to find the ore to be refined into a "Sarah Palin, Friend-to--the-Libertarians" bracelet, but there's at least a trace of the stuff to be mined: But what I like about Palin should bother McCain. Palin actually has staked out unorthodox positions on a number of interesting issues, and they're issues that McCain and the Republican base that has embraced her would probably find troubling. Palin's taken a lot of heat, for example, for her (relatively loose) ties with the Alaska Independence Party, an organization that favors a vote on whether the state should secede from the union.

Alex Massie

Headline you won’t see: “Palin Agrees with Obama”

From our UK edition

I guess this is going to get some attention: EXCLUSIVE: GOV. SARAH PALIN WARNS WAR MAY BE NECESSARY IF RUSSIA INVADES ANOTHER COUNTRY Well, yes and no. Here's what Sarah Palin told ABC News's Charlie Gibson: GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia? PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help. But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to -- especially with new leadership coming in on January 20, being sworn on, on either ticket, we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Sarah Palin’s Feminism

From our UK edition

Camille Paglia agrees with me. Should I be worried? Sarah Palin is like Annie Oakley, a brash ambassador from America's pioneer past. She immediately reminded me of the frontier women of the Western states, which first granted women the right to vote after the Civil War -- long before the federal amendment guaranteeing universal woman suffrage was passed in 1919. Frontier women faced the same harsh challenges and had to tackle the same chores as men did -- which is why men could regard them as equals, unlike the genteel, corseted ladies of the Eastern seaboard... For an alternative, more policy-based, take, see Kate Marsh at TNR.

Alex Massie

Is Jonathan Freedland working for John McCain?

From our UK edition

I was going to write about Jonathan Freedland's absurd column in today's Guardian, but thankfully Norm has said pretty much all that needs to be said. Do these people really want to increase one's sympathy for McCain? Because all this stuff about how the US owes it to the rest of the world to elect Obama is one good way of achieving just that.

Alex Massie

How to counter the Palin Effect?

From our UK edition

Democrats have abandoned the idea of avoiding Sarah Palin to concentrate on John McCain. Oh dear. Let's see what Joe Biden has been up to: Exhibit A: In Wisconsin, Biden is asked if Sarah Palin represents a step forward for women. His response: "well look, I think the issue is what does Sarah Palin think? What does she believe? I assume she thinks and agrees with the same policies that George Bush and John McCain think," Biden added. "And that's obviously a backward step for women."Exhibit B: Biden, again, "I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have both the joy, because there's joy to it as well, the joy and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability, who were born with a birth defect. Well guess what folks?

Alex Massie

CNN: Better Than You Think!

From our UK edition

Borges quipped that the Falklands War was akin to two bald men fighting over a comb and you might think that something similar could be said of the question: which is the best (American) cable TV news channel? Still, I'm glad that the New Republic has its groove back, publishing this fun piece by Greg Veis which, in traditionally counterintuitive style, makes a not-half-bad case for CNN being the pick of the bunch. Yes, the CNN of Wolf Blitzer and Larry King. Then again, FOX News' strapline at the moment reads: "Gov Palin did not mention Obama 'lipstick' comment at event today." Also: "Gov Palin about to get on plane to Alaska." Seriously. PS: TNR mildly undercuts Greg's thesis by giving him the subdeck: "Cable News' Tallest Midgets".

Tuesday

Alex Massie

New Tories, New Danger?

From our UK edition

How will Lbour fight the next election? Stupidly, it seems. According to a briefing paper obtained by the Guardian, Labour "has decided to attack the Conservatives at the next election as an unreconstructed, dangerous rightwing party that is only masking its true instincts behind slick positioning." Oh dear. Labour argue that: "Occasionally the mask slips and we see the dangerous, old- fashioned Tory rightwing instincts hidden underneath. They believe in unfettered free markets, cuts in public services to fund tax cuts for the richest, and a smaller, less effective government. David Cameron believes Britain would be stronger if we stand alone, rather than come together.

Alex Massie

Queen of the Silver Dollar

From our UK edition

A mini-blogging hiatus, folks, as I'm off to Glasgow tonight to see the one and only Emmylou Harris play at the Royal Concert Hall. I assume Norm will be seeing the great lady when her tour reaches Manchester in a couple of days time. I think Chris Dillow is also a fan and - since three bloggers are more than enough to sustain a trend - does this make Emmylou the biggest country star in the British blogosphere?

Sunday

Alex Massie

Andrew Sullivan and Sarah Palin

From our UK edition

Let me make something very clear: I like, admire and respect Andrew Sullivan and his writing. I can’t remember when I first started reading his blog, but I think it must have been in early 2001. Certainly before 9/11. Since then I suspect I must have read more words written by Andrew than by any other journalist or blogger. Before his blog moved to Time and, subsequently, The Atlantic, I regularly contributed to his bi-annual pledge drives. I’d recommend his book, The Conservative Soul to anyone interested in the subject. Heck, he’s often been kind enough to link to this blog  and, indeed, I once helped fill-in for him while he took a well-deserved break. In other words, I owe Andrew rather more than the nothing he owes me.