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On the occasion of la fête nationale (not Bastille Day), here's Yves Montand with his greatest hit: Prevert & Kosma's wonderful Les Feuilles Mortes. Salutations to all French friends, readers and relatives today.
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If memory serves, Gore Vidal liked to stress the point that he was always the bugger, never the buggered. Something similar might be said of Rupert Murdoch's approach to his business dealings. The Dirty Digger - and bugger, for that matter - is not accustomed to failure. And yet, inside just seven days, he has lost the News of the World and his bid to purchase the 61% of BSkyB he does not already own. Cue astonishing scenes and muppetry from the likes of George Monbiot who tweeted, I kid you not, "This is our Berlin Wall moment". And yet something has changed on this remarkable day. Credit is due to Ed Miliband and some of his backbenchers (notably Tom Watson) for they've led the way on this matter.
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As an exercise in provoking bloggers Jonathan Rauch's suggestion that the internet is, like, totally hopeless is splendid. So there's that. But as a plausible critique? Not so much. For instance, Mr Rauch - with whom I am guest-blogging for Andrew Sullivan this week - writes: For people who want to read and think, which is still a lot of people, the worldwide web is an incorrigibly hostile environment. Thank goodness, it is already in the process of being displaced by the far more reader-friendly world of apps, which is hospitable to quality writing and focused reading, as opposed to knee-jerk opinionating and attention-deficit-disordered skimming.
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Hats-off to Simon Heffer for his review of a new biography of Ed Miliband: A biography of Ed Miliband has to try hard not to be the sort of thing one buys as a present for someone one avidly dislikes. This effort, the first in what its authors seem (perhaps optimistically) to imagine may be a long series of accounts of their subject’s life, does not try hard enough. It has detail — Messrs Hasan and Macintyre boast of a million words of interview transcripts — but in the end it is, plainly and simply, stultifyingly boring. I am not sure this is entirely the writers’ faults. Before reading their book, I thought Mr Miliband was simply oversold, a man born to disappoint. Now I realise that he, and therefore an account of his life, is boring too.
From our UK edition
There's much thumb-sucking on the question of whether Rupert Murdoch is a "fit and proper person" to purchase the 61% of BSkyB he does not already own. I've defended Murdoch's interest in the past (without, shockingly, ever being asked to write for any of his papers) and still see little reason why the deal should not go ahead. This has little to do with Murdoch but everything to do with the nature of the beast. Owning a newspaper is rather like running for the Presidency of the United States of America: the desire to do so is usually enough to demonstrate that the candidate or would-be tycoon should not be allowed anywhere near their dreams. There are very few exceptions to this endlessly-observable rule and, this being so, it seems unfair to target Mr Murdoch alone.
From our UK edition
Sorry for the lack of posts here lately. That's what a trip to London, an 11 hour journey home and a weekend of cricket will do. Anyway, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings have a new album out and it is as good as you might expect. Here's a bootlegged clip from a recent gig that a) is swell, b) is vivid and c) reminds one of Rawlings' contribution to the partnership. Yeah, I'll Fly Away....
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An exclusive look at a strategy memo prepared for Rebekah Brooks this afternoon: Rebekah, The Boss has sent word: this phone situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage. He's asked us to formulate a strategy for you. It's balls-out time. This is a go large or don't go at all moment. Sticking your fingers in your ears and going lalalalalalala is not enough anymore. Even the payroll vote at Westminster is getting restless. Soon they'll be wandering off the reservation whimpering that Something Must Be Done. We all know how that ends: something gets done even if it's a stupid something. This is how we roll in Wapping too because that's how the game is played. It's what we ask for all the time, isn't it? Anything to keep the punters happy.
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Nevertheless if you are the type of Republican who feels the need to ask What would Reagan do? then you should probably read David Brooks' column today: If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred million dollars of revenue increases. A normal Republican Party would seize the opportunity to put a long-term limit on the growth of government. It would seize the opportunity to put the country on a sound fiscal footing. It would seize the opportunity to do these things without putting any real crimp in economic growth. The party is not being asked to raise marginal tax rates in a way that might pervert incentives.
From our UK edition
That, I think, is what we are supposed to take away from the ridiculous statement News International's Chief Executive has issued today. Surely the editor of the News of the World asks the occasional question about the provenance of the stories she chooses to publish? Apparently not. This being so a reasonable person might just be tempted to ask if Ms Brooks is a) telling the truth or b) any good at her job? It's surely one or the other but her defence appears to be, "It wasn't me; I was just the clueless, hapless, innocent editor". I am not sure how many parsnips this butters.
From our UK edition
The beatification of Ronald Wilson Reagan by American conservatives is itself a grisly affair but at least he was their President. The tendency of some on the British right to elevate Reagan to saintly status is just embarrassing. This does not mean he was not a fine President - in many ways he was - merely that all these years later it still seems impossible to achieve a balanced appreciation of Reagan's record in office. For many years, at home and abroad, he was under-rated, patronised by a complacent oppposition bamboozled by Reagan's style into thinking there was no "there" there; now the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction and we're asked by some to believe that Reagan was the greatest President in the history of the United States of America. This won't do either.
From our UK edition
It is important to praise Dan Hodges. He should be nurtured and honoured and bathed with tender affection by the right. Hug him close my friends, otherwise there's a risk the left might start to listen to him. Since they would be wise to do so he should be cultivated by Tories so much the better to discredit his perfectly sensible analysis of Labour's troubles. His latest post for Labour Uncut is a splendid thing indeed. Tearing in to Blue Labour, Purple Labour and all the rest* of it he concludes: But where in God’s name are the politicians? Where, more to the point, is the leader of the Labour party?
From our UK edition
Even by the debased standards of the tabloid press this Guardian account of how the News of the World intercepted and deleted messages left on Milly Dowler's mobile phone days after the 13 year-old's disappearance in 2002 must represent a new low. That's assuming the Guardian story is accurate, of course, but there seems little reason, at present, to doubt it. It may be one thing to spy on movie stars and pop sensations; quite another, most people will think, to use the same "techniques" in the matter of a missing - and subsequently murdered - teenage girl. As Nick Davies and Amelia Hill report: [W]ith the help of its own full-time private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, the News of the World started illegally intercepting mobile phone messages.
From our UK edition
Been a while since the standard-bearer of the modern Bakersfield sound was featured here. Time to make amends for that prolonged absence. So here's the man himself with a fine rendition of his lovely, mournful song I Sang Dixie. Pure class.
From our UK edition
If the New York Times or the Washington Post had a proper measure of imagination one or other of them would have asked Radley Balko to write a criminal justice column for their op-ed pages. Their loss has been the Huffington Post's gain. Before he moved to HuffPo Balko was a stalwart figure at Reason. It was there that he first wrote about the appalling case of Cory Maye, a Mississippi man convicted of killing a cop and placed on death row. That was five years ago. Today Maye was finally released, a free man at last, after agreeing to accept a lesser charge of manslaughter in return for being released having spent the last ten years in prison.
From our UK edition
Nice to see that American political bloggers, including Adam Sorensen and Kevin Drum, have picked up on Ed Miliband's absurd robot-interview. I think this must be just about the first time he's made any kind of impression beyond this sceptered isle. So he's got that going for him. Meanwhile, Duncan Stephen wins the day with his Ed Miliband Random Statement Generator. Here's a 20-second car-crash: Finally, here's Damon Green's account of the interview. If Ed Miliband ever becomes Prime Minister, well, I'll eat my hat join the Labour party.
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Sorry Pete, but I don't think there's anything hugely ambiguous about the result from the Inverclyde by-election. This was a pretty solid victory for Labour and another reminder - if these things are needed - that Westminster and Holyrood elections are played by different rules. Labour and the SNP ran neck-and-neck in the gibberish spin stakes last night as some Labour hackettes, preposterously, tried to claim that the seat "was the SNP's to lose"; for their part the nationalists tried to suggest they'd never been very interested in winning Inverclyde at all. More weapons-grade piffle. Then again, without this stuff how would anyone fill the weary hours of television before the result is announced?
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Meanwhile, disturbing evidence is found of an ancient Dalek hill-top settlement in southern Scotland...
From our UK edition
Speaking of yokels, the Healy-Rae dynasty - pictured right, and the pride of South Kerry don't you know - deserve to be thanked for providing some comic relief in these dark Irish days. As retail sales fall for the 39th consecutive month it's reassuring that gombeen politics and cute hoorism remain as dependable as ever. The latest evidence for this comes from the unlikely source of a (surely terrible) Irish "reality" television show called Celebrities Gone Wild in which bleak Connemara subsituted for the jungles of Borneo as eight celebrities [sic] did whatever contestants on this kind of programme do to make the best of things.
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You shouldn't really go wrong asking Christopher Hitchens to write about Michelle Bachmann. Nevertheless this part of his most recent Slate column is, though reprising a familiar complaint, unusually unreflective: Where does it come from, this silly and feigned idea that it's good to be able to claim a small-town background? It was once said that rural America moved to the cities as fast as it could, and then from urban to suburban as fast as it could after that. Every census for decades has confirmed this trend. Overall demographic impulses to one side, there is nothing about a bucolic upbringing that breeds the skills necessary to govern a complex society in an age of globalization and violent unease.
From our UK edition
Tim Pawlenty's Presidential campaign may be stranger than any of his rivals'. For some candidates - Gingrich, Cain - running for the Republican nomination is an outlet for excess egomania. For others - Johnson, Paul - it's an opportunity to raise issues and a style of conservatism that's notably unfashionable. Others - Bachmann, Palin, Huntsman - fly a standard for sectional interests within the broader conservative movement. And Romney, of course, is interested in winning. But Pawlenty? What's he about? Quite. There's no interesting reason for Pawlenty to run at all. His starting ambition appears to be the "Oh God, I suppose he'll have to do" candidate. His appeal - to abuse the word - lies in being the compromise candidate still standing once all the others have been rejected.