Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Thursday

Alex Massie

Tim Russert: A Fox in Nipper’s Clothing

An excellent column by Paul Waldman on the Ghastliness of Tim Russert. (Note for British readers: he's America's  version of Paxman except twice as smug and half as useful) Waldman makes the reasonable point that Russert and his ilk help ruin Presidential debates. On Tuesday in Philadelphia Russert was at it again, demanding if the cadidates would "guarantee" that Iran would not produce a nuclear weapon while they were President. As though the US President were some omnipotent being capable of achieving anything they desired merely on the ground that they, well, desired it. To her credit Hillary Clinton refused to be bullied into giving Russert the imbecilic answer he wanted, insisting only that she would do all she could to prevent Tehran getting the bomb.

Alex Massie

Just because Congress wants to forget the Armenians doesn’t mean you have to.

If you happen to be in New York City this evening and feeling in the need to get your protest on, might I suggest you join Jewcy's Michael Weiss et al and cause merry havoc outside the Anti-Defamation League's HQ:: The ADL National Meeting is in town from Nov. 1st though Nov. 3rdJoin the good folks at Jewcy and No Place for Denial for a hastily organized, totally spontaneous demonstration in front of ADL Headquarters on Thursday, November 1 @ 7 p.m.: 605 3rd Avenue New York, NY Youthful representatives of two ancient peoples will hit the pavement in front of the ADL offices to demand that the ADL come down on the right side of a key human rights issue: unqualified opposition to genocide denial.

Alex Massie

Heroes of Public Diplomacy

David Frum on Karen Hughes: My column for this weekend's National Post will try to explain why Karen Hughes so signally failed as US Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy. Hint: It's not because she is a shallow and ill-informed person with scant experience of the world outside America's borders but dangerously unlimited confidence in her own abilities. Although of course that didn't help. Mr Frum of course is a senior adviser to a Giuliani campaign which, thus far, does not seem overly concerned with matters as trifling - or as tricky - as public diplomacy. A message of strength is all very well and good - it may even be necessary - but it is far from sufficient if the Unite States wants to achieve its tactical and strategic goals.

Alex Massie

Department of Road Safety and Demagoguery

If one were to compile a list of all the issues in which elite - and, er, libertarian - opinion is most completely out of touch with "ordinary" people's concerns, there's a more than decent chance immigration would be at the top of the list. As Garance reports from Iowa, it may also be the last issue with which Republicans can credibly thrash Democrats. People (like me) in Washington are relaxed about immigration - including illegal immigration - but that's not true in the mid-west, to say nothing of the south or parts of the south-west. Which is why the question of drivers licenses for illegal immigrants is a topic that is not likely to go away any time soon. It doesn't take much imagination to consider how popular it will be with talk radio.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Obama gets angry! Or, rather, no he doesn’t…

So the first question in tonight's Democratic debate at Drexel University goes to Barack Obama who is asked - as he must have known he would be - to outline the differences between himself and Clinton. And his response? Meh. He flubs it, delivering a nervous-sounding, meandering, indecisive, confused answer that goes precisely nowhere and gives no indication that he's really wanting to take a shot at Clinton. Quite a let-down and, surely, dispiriting to his supporters. Talking about taking a more aggressive approach and then declining to do so when given the opportunity is not the way to win an election. Does he actually want to win? Because his answer to this thumpingly predictable question did not give the impression that he does.

Alex Massie

“End the Horror”!

November 1st would have been election day had Gordon Brown not been spooked... Here's a poster the Tories are placing in papers around the country today: The tag-line reads: Tomorrow should have been election day. Your chance to end the horror.

Alex Massie

A Noun, a Verb, and 9/11

Best* line of the Democratic debate? It's not even close. Joe Biden on Rudy Giuliani: "He only uses three words in a sentence: A noun, a verb, and 9/11." *By "Best" I mean, of course, "Only". UPDATE: At The Corner K-Lo crys foul! Maybe the 10 P.M. hour has killed what little sense of humor I've ever had, but that 9/11 sentence line was a low, crass line. And it's disturbing it got laughs. I'll believe they were nervous laughs. No, not nervous laughs. It's funny because it's true.

Alex Massie

Media Disappointed by Hillary’s Clear Victory…

OK, so Hillary was all over the place on whether illegal immigrants should be allowed driving licenses and, sure enough, that's what Chris Matthews and co focus on immediately. But that's because Hillary won the debate by a mile and a half and it's very important for the media to highlight anything that can be used to keep alive the impression that the race is nerve-janglingly close... hence the discussion on Clinton's admittedly poor response on drivers' licenses. Still, I'd give her some props for not demagoguing the question as tendentiously as the rest of them. This is also why no-one is talking about Obama's embarrassingly lame response to the very first question of the debate. UPDATE: Sweet merciful Jesus, why is Chris Matthews obsessed with UFOs?

Alex Massie

Dancing for the Queen of the Fairies

Appropriately enough - this being Halloween don't you know- Slate has this week been running a series of dispatches from my own native heath (Part 1 here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here). Kate Bolick asks, essentially, why are there so many haunted castles and ghostly apparitions in Scotland? Think what you want. I'm not here to convert you. Either you believe in ghosts or you don't, and if you don't—well, it's probably because you haven't seen one. They say the best believers are those who began as skeptics. Take Bella Beck (not her real name; she asked that I not use it), a suitably matter-of-fact academic at the University of Edinburgh's School of Scottish Studies.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Fred Thompson, Scourge of Moonshiners

So, Fred Thompson is just a conservative good-old-boy from Tennessee whose folksy charm is his biggest selling point. OK, well then you might expect that Fred would be a champion of traditional Tennessee values. Not so! The Los Angeles Times reviews the 88 cases Thompson prosecuted as a US Attorney in Nashville between 1969 and 1972 and discovers that though: There were a few bank robbers and counterfeiters. But more than anything, Thompson took on the state's moonshiners and a local culture, rooted in Tennessee's hills and hollows, that celebrated the independent whiskey maker's battle against the government's revenue agents. Twenty-seven of his cases involved moonshining -- more than any other crime.

Alex Massie

If You Read One Post About Waterboarding

American conservatives who seem to think that waterboarding is perfectly ok - and there are, shamefully, many such people including the two leading candidates for the Republican party's presidential nomination and, judging from his equivocation on the subject, the nominee for attorney-general, should be required to read this detailed post from Malcolm Nance. Mr Nance is no hand-wringer. His bio states, inter alia, that he is: A 20-year veteran of the US intelligence community's Combating Terrorism program and a six year veteran of the Global War on Terrorism he has extensive field and combat experience as an field intelligence collections operator, an Arabic speaking interrogator and a master Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) instructor.

Alex Massie

Department of Local Interest

Lots of talk about taxis in Washington DC and, more particularly the Mayor's announcement that DC will switch to a meter system, abandoning the current fare tariff which is based upon a zone system that seems, frankly, arbitrary* in the extreme and unlike any other system I've encountered in any developed city anywhere in the world. The prevailing view is that switching to meters is good news - especially for tourists who may be less likely to be ripped off by cabbies claiming they've crossed three zones rather than two etc etc. Too bad for tourists if you ask me; voters get ripped off in Washington all the time and, as Capra and any number of film-makers have demonstrated, the city's no place for callow idealists. Welcome to DC: Where We're Always Ready to Pay to Play.

Alex Massie

Values: An Immensely Malleable Concept

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is visiting Britain this week. Fine. These are people we need to be able to do business with, however much one might wish it otherwise. But that's no excuse for a minister of the crown to embarrass himself like this: On Monday, Foreign Office minister Kim Howells called for Britain and Saudi Arabia to work more closely together, despite their differences.He said the two states could unite around their "shared values".

Alex Massie

Ron Paul: the Housewife’s Choice?

Isaac Chotiner issues a provocation: British coverage of the United States must be really bad if William Hill have been persuaded that Ron Paul is a 12/1 shot to become the next President. This is, I admit, strange. Since Paul had previously been available as a 66/1 chance my suspicion is that, given the likely smallness of the market so far, one mad punter has plonked a couple of grand on Mr Paul, causing Hills to rein in their price in short order. Quite why they should feel the need to do so however, is a mystery. My hunch is that some computer algorithm has gone to work. On the other hand, trying to outsmart the bookies - and the market - is a mug's game. Perhaps Hills know something we don't.

Alex Massie

Question of the Day | 30 October 2007

Is there a specific word  - or neologism - for wanting to write a blog post (or several in fact - and wanting to write them quite badly) but finding oneself utterly incapable of actually doing so?* *For reasons that have nothing to do with being too busy to actually, like, write. To the contrary, in fact. I mean, there's no real reason for procrastinating writing that is just for fun. It's not like work.

Monday

Alex Massie

Media Training 1980s Style…

Jim Hacker, immortalised forever in the classic BBC comedies Yes, Minister and Yes Prime Minister prepares to deliver a Prime Ministerial televised address to the nation. But what, if anything, should he say? And how should he say it? Plus, reflections on media management, clothing, make-up and much much more in this classic clip. Verily, the more the times change, the more they remain the same...

Alex Massie

But at least the trains ran on time…

Megan on the horrors of travelling in the United States these days: You know, I never really understood why making the trains run on time was so important for Mussolini, but after last week, I can understand how that became one of fascism's main selling points. She kids, of course. I've always thought, however, that improvements to the reliability of the Italian train service improved after Mussolini came to power were as much due to changes in timetabling as actual efficiency gains. In other words, by officially giving the trains more time to reach their destination they had a better chance of actually getting there on time even if the journey took as long as it did in the bad old days of a useless, inefficient service*.