Kausfiles: A mostly political weblog.

Sex, Cyberspace, Snobbery and Harvey

The problem was fundamental: Rich guys don't want to socialize only with one another, and once you let in enough attractive young women and such your VIP site loses [its] cachet and everyone might as well just hang out on Facebook.

I'm not sure Gawker has the second part of the problem precisely right (though A Small World's membership policies seem well-designed to allow "[t]rusted and loyal ASW members who meet certain criteria" to invite "a limited number of their friends" enough attractive young women to keep all the bankers happy. But even assuming that's the dynamic at work, there seem to be at least four distinct possibilities: a) Snooty rich men don't want the kind of women who would sign up to meet only snooty rich men; b) Snooty rich men need a larger pool of women to draw from than a 'limited number of their friends" can provide;  c) Even snooty rich letches don't want to be made to feel like snooty rich letches; d) Even non-lecherous snooty rich men don't want a website where their competition is other rich men! They'd rather be the richest guys in an average neighborhood, where the population is easier to impress.
 
So, is aSmallWorld's unsuccess a victory for social equality? You make the call: 

Yes! Attempted stratification undone by the common characteristics (sex drive) of mankind! Sex, solvent of snobbery.
 
No! The status hierarchy of money just needed a bigger empire in which to recapitulate inegalitarian financial relations as inegalitarian sexual relations! 

All the lechery-related reasons suggested above point to "no," yet it's hard to not see aSmallWorld's decline as, somehow, a "yes." How about a dialectical Third Way:  In asserting itself outside its own sphere the hierarchy of money nevertheless sows the seeds of its own destruction! [Which would be ...?-ed Facebook] ...

 P.S.: Why didn't The Atlantic think of this idea? An exclusive site where "Brave Thinkers" like Pinch Sulzberger and the "Atlantic 50" ("the most influential commentators in the nation") can talk to each other! Writing the first draft of history! Then we charge the Boeing lobbyists $10,000 each to join! And let everyone else pay to watch! It's genius. The American Idea! ... [Isn't that the Atlantic business plan?--ed Not yet fully realized. Email suggestions to David@IoverpaidforthebestopinionwritersinAmericaandnowImdesperate.com] 8:44 P.M.

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Are Conservatives "Blowing It" on Health Care?

"Conservatives are blowing it" on health care. So argues Marc Ambinder. Republicans are turning town halls into general "anti-Obama venting sessions," he twittered on Sunday. All that shouting-down was turning people off.  "[T]his trend favors the left." It certainly wasn't going to cause the Blue Dogs, whose votes are crucial to reform, to vote against it.  

Ambinder elaborated on Sunday's instant analysis today:  

At this same hour last week, several of the President's top political advisers were meeting in a White House conference room to discuss the appearance, over the first weekend in August, of a coordinated effort to scare Democratic lawmakers who planned to attend town hall meetings into a state of panic.  A week later, and the Atlantic's tricorder readings are picking up much calmer electromagnetic energy from the White House.  ... Democrats are beginning to notice that opponents of health care reform have discredited themselves. They ramped up much too quickly. When smaller, conservative groups Astroturfed, they inevitably brought to the meetings the type of Republican activist who was itching for a fight and who would use the format to vent frustrations at President Obama himself.  ...[T]the loudest voices tended to be the craziest, the most extreme, the least sensible, and the most easy to mock.  ...

A coherent, organized effort would have recognized that the moment the media began to take sides was the moment that the entire enterprise could be damaged. The media, being a collection of different megaphones, reported on the town hall meetings in one of two ways, both damaging to Republicans.  Either they credulously reported the louder, angrier voices (inherently damaging to Republicans in this case) or they reported on the political architecture of the town hall meetings, which plays down the substance of the protests.

Remember, the target audience for Republicans is Blue Dog Democrats in Congress. They won't panic unless they perceive organic anxiety.  The White House's goal was to prevent the Blue Dogs from panicking. The swing constituents in these congressional districts aren't angry Republicans, and the Blue Dogs know this.  They're political independents for whom the sanctity of the process is important. ....  Unrestrained, these town hall meetings are going to turn off the type of voters Republicans most need to pressure Blue Dog Democrats -- independents who don't have red genes or blue genes.

These are good points--possibilities, at least. They're the possibilities you'd want to emphasize if you were, say, a Democratic aide talking to Marc Ambinder. But are they the most important possibilities? For example, anti-Obama activists indeed seemed uncouth and even thuggish in some early townhall MSM coverage. But how many people watch the MSM in the middle of August? (And anyway, Obama has now shown that these meetings aren't that uncivil!)  

The bigger picture is whether support for health care, already too weak, builds over August or shrinks, no? Does Ambinder really think it's going to build simply because GOPs ramped up too quickly and got too loud last week?  Doesn't the latter criticism, however valid, have the half-life of either a twitter item or Rahm Emanuel's attention span, whichever is shorter?

Ambinder seems to be operating on the premise that all Obama needs to do is convince a finite number of Blue Dogs to vote with him and a "comprehensive" health reform will pass--the way a few more delegates once enabled him to lock up the nomination. But lawmaking isn't that cleanly mathematical. When the general public sours on a bill, it affects more than a few swing votes. Unpopular bills have a way of magically bogging down in Congress even if a majority technically favors them and regardless of what happens with Senators and Congressman whose votes were once considered "crucial." (There were crucial swing Senators on Clinton's health care reform too, at one point. And on "comprehensive" immigration reform in 2007.) The White House aides whose temperature Ambinder's taking certainly have an interest in making it all seem like simply a battle for the Blue Dogs, because that seems more like a battle they can win.  

If Ambinder were any easier to spin, he'd be a dreidl.  ... Update: See also Patrick Ruffini. ...

P.S.: Ambinder says the GOP effort was not "coherent, organized." Doesn't that undercut the left talking point that it was secretly, centrally controlled by sophisticated DC corporate lobbyists? ...   

P.P.S.: A more interesting, though equally spinnish, Ambinder post makes some subtle points about the real views of Obama health care adviser Ezekiel Emanuel (Rahm's brother). 

a) For example:  

Hospice care costs more than hospital care in most circumstances, Emanuel found -- and so the end-of-life counseling that a doctor provides has little to do with saving money.  

But if that's true, then why doesn't Obama calm everyone down by ostentatiously dropping the end-of-life- oriented parts of the bills?  ...  

b) I knew it was all Michael Sandel's fault! On Ezekiel Emanuel's "communitarian" world view:

Emanuel sketches out a "civic Republicanism" telos -- that is -- our health care decisions as a society should be yoked to a system that "promote[s] the continuation of the polity-those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations-are to be socially guaranteed as basic."  He notes that such a system would deny "services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens."  

Emanuel is setting up a contrast: our health care system today treats everyone equally -- as if they ought to have equal access to every possible procedure or treatment. To most of us, the status quo seems intuitively right. Everyone is equal -- equal under God -- Emanuel doesn't say this, but he might as well -- and therefore it would be evil to make distinctions.  What Emanuel is arguing, here, is that this liberalism substitutes one goal -- equality -- for another -- a healthy society -- and that substitution may be responsible for the limited choices that policy-makers confront. [E.A]  

Well, if you put it that way ... I'm for equality! For a health care system that "treats everyone equally," even if it's expensive.  Against a system that would deny "services ... to individuals" who won't ever achieve "full and active participation .. in public deliberations." 

Like I said, Sarah Palin had a point. ...

P.P.P.S.: Who said social equality would always be cheap? ... 8:59 P.M.

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Red Herring in The Atlantic's Revenue Stream

No saintlier man has ever walked the earth than the brilliant and beloved David Bradley.** That goes without saying. But how, exactly, would it help solve the ethical problems created by his corporate sponsored "salons" to put them on the record--as TPM's Zacary Roth, Slate's Jack Shafer and Bradley himself seem to believe?

The problem with Bradley's salons, like the problems with WaPo's similar, now-cancelled events, is that they create two big conflicts: 1) The need to avoid pissing off the corporations who fund (and then some***) the salons in the hope of getting access to influential journalists and administration bigshots; and, even more corrupting, 2) the need to suck up to the administration bigshots to get them to show up at the salons where they can be accessed by corporations who are paying for them. ...

Shafer argues that making the "salons" off the record is a key part of Bradley's marketing strategy--it convinces the corporations that they are getting something special.**** Shafer's no doubt right.  And generally, "on the record" is good (though "off the record" can be valuable too). Putting the salons on record would also help solve the Atlantic's seemingly congenital "We're Insiders, Aren't We Great, Look at Us" problem. But I don't see how it would do anything to remove conflicts 1) or 2). ... Plus, even if the meetings themselves are on the record, there would still be plenty of time for off-the-record lobbyist-to-player contacts in the halls or at any pre- or post-event cocktails. (Even if there isn't, just encountering someone face to face can make it easier to "access" them later.)....  

P.S.: Marc Ambinder's post quoting Bradley's response without daring to link to what Bradley is responding to is a little creepy. Who is this guy, L. Ron Hubbard? What is Ambinder scared of? At least he gets beaten up in his comments.    

**********

**--He's also the Last Sucker "ridiculously generous" in his willingness to pay big bucks for opinion journalists, but that in no way influences my opinion of him.

***--Bradley says openly that the salons are "one of our revenue streams."

****--I suspect that the privately funded, non-profitmaking salons Bradley also gives might be another part of the overall effort: If you are a policymaker and you show up at one of his profit-making confabs do you then you get invited to the more exclusive and legit private confab?  If your corporation funds one of the profit-making salons do you find yourself invited to the more intimate event? But I am being entirely too suspicious. Bradley is just a wonderful, wonderful man. I am the one who should be concerned--for thinking such bad thoughts. My apologies. ... 4:09 P.M.

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Elizabeth Edwards' Reality Problem

Sunday, May 10, 2009

"Elizabeth is not really a member of the reality-based community." Melinda Henneberger wrote an informative but ... incomplete look "inside the Edwards marriage" for Slate in 2007.  The scales have now fallen from Henneberger's eyes! In an excellent post-Oprah column, she outlines Elizabeth Edwards' "surreal" structure of denial and her drive for publicity:  

The bottom line in Elizabeth World is that "I have a husband who adores me, who's unbelievable with my children, who's provided for us in ways we never could have imagined.'' 

"He's fed you,'' Oprah puts in. "He has,'' Elizabeth agrees.

One of the things she feels he's given her is light - and spotlight. In explaining why it was important to her that "this person's'' name not be mentioned, she says that anyone who would "work at destroying my family and my home in order to get in that light, I'm really not interested in them being in that light too much. It's not about this woman. It's about this family.''

So, get out of my shot?

Of course, without Rielle Hunter Elizabeth wouldn't have this big a spotlight. ... Henneberger also offers more evidence that one purpose of Elizabeth Edwards' seemingly destructive self-exposure is indeed to rehabilitate John ("'I think we're getting to a good place,' he says ...")  

P.S.:

When Oprah remarks that hmm, she doesn't know a lot of men who would run off to a hotel somewhere in the middle of the night to hold a baby that wasn't theirs, she repeats her husband's lie - or maybe he'd repeated hers: "Golly, then you don't know that many politicians. We do it all the time. Holding babies is what we do.''

Did Elizabeth Edwards really say that? Does she really think it? The really alarming thing would be if she does. [Second thought: She can't possibly think it. That much self-delusion would be clinical. She's BSing. See Update below.**]

P.P.S.: I should have noted the impressively long period of tongue-tied fumfawing in Elizabeth Edwards' NPR interview after she is asked "Do your children have a sister?" Starts at around 6:38. ...

** Update--Three Theories of E: Of course, Henneberger's thesis--that Elizabeth lives in a semi-delusional world of her own--can itself become a form of exculpation. Elizabeth's in heavy denial, poor thing! But I'd say that, at best, the jury is still out on whether Elizabeth Edwards is 1) deluded (e.g., she actually believes the crap about how John "doesn't know any more than I do'' about whether he's the father of Rielle Hunter's daughter); 2) pretending to be deluded (e.g. she knows the truth but she's damned if she's going to admit it on her book tour); or 3) in it up to her eyeballs (i.e. she knows what she's saying is BS, but she's still actively covering up for John to further his ambitions as much as possible, given the circumstances).

How would saying she doesn't know if John's the father advance his interests under #3? That's easy. John hasn't said he doesn't know if he's the father. He has vehemently denied, in his televised Nightline "confession", that he could possibly be the father because he had ended the affair long before. ("I know that it's not possible that this child could be mine because of the timing of events, so I know it's not possible.") Admitting that he might be the father, and that this might be OK with his wife, is a useful halfway house on the road to confronting voters with the likely truth (he's the father and he lied about it even in his "confession.") If you were a PR agent retained by the Edwardses, this could well be the strategy you'd come up with.

That Elizabeth, in her current tour of interviews, doesn't even grapple with what now looks like his big Nightline lie--that he couldn't be the father--even as she substantively concedes it (by allowing that he could) gives support to view #3, no? Why isn't she more annoyed he lied on Nightline (and, presumably, to her)? Why ignore it? Come to think of it, Elizabeth herself once flat out denied, in one of her earlier damage control efforts, that John had fathered the child. Is delusion--at least non-clinical delusion--really the most plausible explanation for the seamless, unremarked shift in Elizabeth's own line---from righteous allegations of "wrongly alleged" to the solipsistic "whatever the facts are it doesn't change my life"? The shift fits awfully comfortably into the PR template for political survival famously sketched out by James Boyd--'Admit what is known. Deny what is unknown ....'

That MSM interviewers don't confront her with these contradictions says something too. ... Even Henneberger may have a few scales left to fall. .. 9:36 A.M.

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Limits of the Groucho Marx Principle: The Vanity Fair/Bloomberg party after the White House Correspondents' Dinner was so exclusive that nobody wanted to go. I think there's a Yogi Berra quote in there somewhere. ...

P.S.: Isn't the point of the modern White House Correspondents' Dinner (assuming it has one) to generate a culture clash between Hollywood and Washington, to revel in the discomfitting celebrity/nerd interface? That point's being lost as bigger and bigger celebrities demand (in some cases with good reason) exclusive partying room. At one event, they were penned in a narrow, brightly lit area as if they were prize animals on display. At least it was still awkward! Next year it will be less so, as Obama's D.C. becomes more skilled at star-greasing. .. 

It's almost enough to make you long for the old days when reporters competed to invite the most notorious newsmakers, not the biggest entertainers--when the reigning ethic was: "We Had Hitler at Our Table!" (Mike Kinsley's joke). ..

Update: Rachel Sklar enjoyed it all way too much but is right about the importance of inviting lower-level sources. The event can also be a morale-booster for lower-level journalists (I can atttest). Both purposes are frustrated by Graydon Carter-style status segregation. ...  9:35 A.M.

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The New "Going Bare"

If you see a banker with a vacuum cleaner, watch out: A friend took me to a fancy West L.A. fundraising event recently. Lots of very, very affluent people--mainly youngish couples, mainly investment bankers. There was some whispering about one particular glittering husband and wife team. "They have no help. ... Can you believe it?" Yes, I can believe it. Ask Nancy Killifer!  It's not easy to employ "help" both a) efficiently and b) completely correctly, from a legal and tax standpoint--i.e., in a way that couldn't surface at an unfortunate time (say a Senate confirmation hearing). I tried it once, in D.C.. After paying Social Security taxes and Unemployment Comp and Workers Comp, I'm sure I left a few things out.

Is "having no help" the new sign of political ambition? Democracy works to produce social equality in mysterious ways. ... 12:35 P.M.

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