Quote of the day

"Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time." -- E.B. White (1943)

Back to the Oscar prom

So what, among other (way more important) sequester-related things, was headlining the Washington Post front page this morning? "Michelle Obama's Oscar presentation raises questions about the role of a first lady." Um, really? Yeah, really. And it's the "most popular" story on the newspaper's website, too. Just when I thought the national press corps has graduated high school, I wake up at the back of the classroom and realize it didn't. Technically, this is known as a "temporal causality loop," a phenomenon whereby a specific moment in time repeats itself continually inside an independent fragment of time. Say what? Ok, Ok -- think of it as the Hotel California: You can check out anytime you wish, but you can never leave. Either way, Washington journos remain 20 credits shy of maturity. Please leave the First Lady (who did graduate) alone.

The Emancipation of Barack Obama

HISTORY HAS NOT yet rendered its verdict on President Barack Obama. But we know now that he was no fluke of history. In 2008, Atlantic columnist Ta-Nehisi Coates notes, Obama was a talented rookie -- but arguably very, very lucky. By 2012, however, he "was the captain of the football team" with a formidable record. Coates thoughtfully  writes: "The second chapter of the Obama presidency begins exactly a century and a half after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation took effect" and that "Lincoln’s [Emancipation Proclamation] order transformed a war for union into a war for abolition, and in so doing put the country on a road to broad citizenship ..." I would add that Obama's reelection put the country -- kicking and screaming (see the dying GOP of angry old white men), messily (see Congress) but irrevocably -- on the road toward the Framers' dream of "a more perfect union." It's rarely pretty, but that's how American history is made.

NASCAR, c'est la même chose ...

And you thought Coliseum-style death-sports died when Rome fell.

Kyle Larson’s car (32) goes airborne during a multi-car wreck on the final lap of the NASCAR Nationwide Series auto race at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Fla. -- sending car parts and other debris flying into the stands, injuring spectators. Geez. (Photo: David Graham / AP)

Analyzing Vader's generalship

IT SEEMS Wired is hosting a military strategy symposium that analyzes the Battle of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. You know, the movie. Spencer Ackerman (apparently straight-facedly) writes: "How did the Galactic Empire ever cement its hold on the Star Wars Universe? The war machine built by Emperor Palpatine and run by Darth Vader is a spectacularly bad fighting force, as evidenced by all of the pieces of Death Star littering space. But of all the Empire’s failures, none is a more spectacular military fiasco than the Battle of Hoth at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back. From a military perspective ..." Well, you get the picture. Granted, the symposium is utterly harmless (albeit preposterous). But hey, whatever flies your Rebel Alliance Starfighter (and may the Force be with you). But it's a classic example of what happens when us boys have way too much time on own hands.

Life is tough on the Vatican beat

I SIMPLY MARVEL at how the press loves to cover itself. From CNN, we get this fraught report from Italy: "Opaque, hierarchical and arcane, the Vatican is a tough beat even for seasoned reporters. It involves paying punctilious attention to papal routine -- never missing the often dreary papal audiences on a Wednesday and the uneventful address from the Vatican on Sunday." Surely you can feel their pain. The "Vaticanisti" (what the reporters call themselves) in Rome are forced to toil in the 11th-most-visited city in the world and the most popular tourist attraction in Italy. And, oh my god, they have to dine on real Italian food in all of its sumptuous magnificence -- you know, frequently. How on earth do these lowly scribes manage to survive at all on this beat? Having spent some time amid the beauty and glories of "Roma," all I can say is: Give me a break, CNN.

Rubio's 'Watergate'

Never, ever, volunteer to give the Republican Response after the President's State of the Union Address -- especially if that president is named Obama. No good will come of it. Just ask Bobby Jindal. Marco Rubio -- the new GOP "Savior" according to Time magazine -- did it anyway. Well, it turns out that Marco Aurelius can't walk on water after all. Talk about not being ready for prime time. Enjoy:

Coup de grâce

Ted Nugent, 64, is an aging "rock star" from the now distant 70s. If you were a young person then, you probably rocked out to his "Cat Scratch Fever" occasionally. But Jim Morrison (of "The Doors") he wasn't. His other "hits" appealed mostly to his dedicated fans/groupies. Musically, he went the way of the dinosaurs. Then, he returned from the dead - sort of. Today, Nugent is "famous" for being a crazy-white-guy-conservative who desperately craves the limelight and won't shut up about his politics. Somehow, he has become an uber Republican and a Tea Party poster boy. Wrapping himself in the American flag, Nugent claims to speak for the average Joe, the cop, and especially our troops. Never mind that he dodged the draft to avoid going to Vietnam. Anyway, Nugent was at the SOTU last night as a guest of a publicity-seeking congressman. Apparently, he behaved himself. Afterward, he mingled with the press, according to Slate. “If you walk the halls with me,” he told a National Review writer, “every military guy, every cop, has an Uncle Ted story. See the smile on my face? These are my buddies here. I’m surrounded by working hard, playing hard Americans.” Right. Slate then reported this sequence of events: Nugent was shepherded over to a standing MSNBC camera. Two police officers looked on, confused by the mobile media herd. “Who’s that?” asked one cop. “It’s Ted Nugent,” said the other cop. “He’s a rock star, he talks about guns.” “Really? Never heard of him.” Priceless.

'Fair and balanced' and untrusted

Poor Fox News. It seems, as Falstaff told his mistress in Henry IV, there's no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune. According to Public Policy Polling's latest annual survey on TV news: "There's only one source more Americans trust than distrust: PBS. 52% of voters say they trust PBS to only 29% who don't trust it. The other seven outlets we polled on are all distrusted by a plurality of voters. Just like its actual ratings, Fox News has hit a record low in the four years that we've been doing this poll. 41% of voters trust it to 46% who do not." Andrew Sullivan, of course, couldn't resist: PBS, "That alleged bastion of liberal bias – which Mitt Romney wanted to defund – is now trusted more than any other media source. Congrats, Roger Ailes. You’re doing for the liberal media what Karl Rove did for the Democratic party."

What would Jesus pack?

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition? Yes, pious folks in Arkansas may soon be able to pack heat in church. According to a CNN report, the Arkansas state legislature passed a measure that would allow concealed guns to be carried in houses of worship. It passed overwhelmingly. And the governor, a Democrat, apparently plans to sign the bill. Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri weighs in with this perspective: "Is this really the world we want to live in, where we are not just fearing the worst but expecting it, all the time? To me, at least, that misses the point." Amen.

Go ahead, make my day

POTUS shoots clay targets on the range at Camp David on Aug. 4, 2012.

The hype is the point

Finally, a clear-eyed writer speaks truth to the Super Bowl. The Atlantic's Hampton Stevens observes that the "spectacle has eclipsed the game." So why fight it? He rightly concludes that the "Super Bowl is our National Day of Capitalism—a feast and party that's mercifully without the least bit of spiritual underpinning. It's a celebration of commercialism and consumerism, and consumption for consumptions' sake. ... If you are a serious, hardcore NFL fan—the sort who is deep into fantasy draft prep by June—try not to get too upset about all the silliness today." Good advice. For sanity's sake, this is one of those times when it really is better to simply bow to the absurd and pass the popcorn.

Another inconvenient truth

WEIGHING IN on the gun control debate, writer Sam Harris goes to the heart of the matter and asks: "How is it that we live in a society in which one of the most compelling interests is gun ownership? Where is the science lobby? The safe food lobby? Where is the get-the-Chinese-lead-paint-out-of-our-kids’-toys lobby? When viewed from any other civilized society on earth, the primacy of guns in American life seems to be a symptom of collective psychosis."

OMG: God is a NFL fan?

According to the Public Religion Research Institute, a quarter of Americans say God influences sporting events. Political comedian Dean Obeidallah helpfully notes: "That means about 80 million Americans believe that God will help one of the teams in this Sunday's Super Bowl." Oh my god. I better call my bookie. Per CNN, when asked if they believe God plays a role in who wins, 27% of Americans said yes. Poll results varied among regions and religions: 36% said yes in the South, 28% in the Midwest, 20% in the Northeast and 15% in the West. Do I have a problem with this? Not at all. I'm a committed whatever-floats-your-boat kind of guy as long as your boat doesn't unduly rock mine. Still, the very idea that God might give the Baltimore Ravens a divine assist is difficult to fathom. I mean, how could He not be a 49ers fan in the first place? After all, they are 4-point favorites. This, of course, is the sort of twaddle we get into when ye of too much faith (the pious 27%) try to bring the Lord down to our level. There's a reason we were made in God's image, not the other way around.

Counterfactually speaking

Salon political reporter Alex Seitz-Wald: "If more guns were the answer [to gun violence], then the U.S., with its 300 million guns, should be safest country on the planet."

Lady-in-waiting

Hillary Clinton is stepping down as secretary of state on Friday. Today, she told questioners (for the upteenth time) that she’s “not inclined” to run for president in 2016. I'm inclined to believe her. But her statement is hardly Shermanesque ("I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected"). So the door is still open a smidgen. Now at age 65, I seriously doubt Hillary wants to run the gauntlet of another presidential campaign (and, if she wins, do it again in 2020 at age 73). But the gathering winds of politics and history may compel her into the race nevertheless. That said, I'm sure Hillary was sincere when she quipped: “I am looking forward to finishing up my tenure as secretary of state and then catching up on about 20 years of sleep deprivation.” She'll probably need it.

Just a Monday thought

There's no turning back, of course. But as one Slate writer recently mused: It really is a shame that exiting the interstate in America, "regardless of where you are, you see the exact same thing."

Quote of the day

The Economist: "In most sports, the best men outperform the best women, but the best women outperform almost all men."

History repeating itself - with a twist

Army Col. Eugene Householder on racially integrating the military (Dec 8, 1941): "[Social] Experiments to meet the wishes and demands of the champions of every race and creed for the solution of their problems are a danger to efficiency, discipline and morale and would result in ultimate defeat." Army Lt.Col. Allen West (Ret.) on women in combat (Jan 24, 2013): "Now is not the time to play a social experiment with our ground combat forces ... This is the misconceived liberal progressive vision of fairness and equality which could potentially lead to the demise of our military." The "sociological laboratory" argument was wrong then, and it's wrong now. But to complete the historical irony, had West been a young man in 1941 and eager to fight, the ex-congressman would have been summarily assigned to a segregated, "all-Negro" unit, probably as a Private. Yes, West is African American.

See Jane shoot

In a terrific piece defending the logic of employing women in combat, the Economist noted that no testosterone is required to pull a trigger. "Lyudmila Pavlichenko, a Russian sniper during the second world war, is credited with over 300 kills. The Nazis surely would have preferred a Soviet army with no such female combat troops."

Resisting G.I. Jane - Ctd

SURELY, this had to be an Onion parody piece, I kept thinking. But it wasn't. To wit: "Only someone deliberately blind to human reality could maintain that putting men and women in close quarters 24 hours a day will not produce a proliferation of sex, thus introducing all the irrational passions (and resulting favoritism) of physical attraction into an organization that should be exclusively devoted to the mission of combat preparedness," so wrote National Review commentator Heather Mac Donald who has never served a day in the military, let alone in combat. And we're supposed to take her seriously? Not only did Mac Donald straight-up insult our male warriors (who she blithely paints as a cadre of unethical, unprofessional, sex-crazed brutes), she actually sang a forlorn paean to -- wait for it -- chivalry. No, I'm not kidding. "Chivalry is one of the great civilizing forces, taming men and introducing social graces and nuance to what would otherwise be a brutish social world. It is already on life support, but sex-integrated combat units will provide the coup de grâce," Mac Donald writes. Wow. It's a pity this poor woman wasn't born in the 19th century. She'd clearly be happier.

Resisting G.I. Jane

IT'S BEEN SAID that there are only 36 basic plots in literature. Similarly, a certain narrative against civil rights is retreaded whenever intolerance is forced to confront fairness. For example, antediluvians (a polite term for clueless traditionalists) have dependably employed "the Army is not a sociological laboratory" argument to resist equal rights in the armed forces. The Army leadership used the aforementioned quote in 1941 to justify why it wouldn't integrate African Americans into its ranks. Letting blacks fight alongside whites would pose "a danger to efficiency, discipline and morale," warned spokesman Col. Eugene R. Householder one day after Pearl Harbor. Today, 165 years after women demanded suffrage at the Seneca Falls Convention, the Pentagon lifted the ban on women serving in combat roles. Cue the tattered playbook. “Our military cannot continue to choose social experimentation and political correctness over combat readiness,” said Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America. “This kind of a social experiment is a dangerous one,” said Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness. "The people making this decision are doing so as part of another social experiment,” said retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, executive vice president of the Family Research Council. “Is the social experiment worth placing this burden on small unit leaders? I think not.” Ignorance of history invites its repetition every time.

Will the GOP bring its ship about?

FOUR YEARS ago, it was evident - at least to me - that Republicans would fatally overreach in their quixotic quest to confine Obama to a single presidential term. Theirs was always a doomed galleon plying against history's trade winds. Mr. Obama - now a wilier, battle-hardened politico - is still here and he's not going away. Today, it is evident that this reality is finally sinking in among rational members of the Grand Old Party. New York magazine's Jon Chait pointed to some revealing tweets by conservative Robert Costa, National Review's Washington editor. Costa wrote: "One thing Repubs seem privately confident about: O is a singular, historic figure. Loud chants of O-Ba-Ma today on mall isn't the Dem norm." He noted "Consensus among my GOP sources: Obama is expertly repackaging old-school, tax-and-spend liberalism as the status quo, conservatism threatened" and added "Many members, people you wouldn't expect, are truly concerned about how party's rep is hurting them back home. Some may start to speak up." Is a Great Republican Awakening in the offing? I'd argue yes - particularly since their choice (ironically) is fundamentally Darwinian: adapt or die.

The trouble with 'conviction politics'

Today, much of the GOP (and, to be fair, many leftist Democrats) worships at the altar of conviction politics, a style of governance that puts principle and adherence to ideology first -- regardless of the cost. Congress' current crop of Republican freshmen are especially bewitched with this modus operandi. But for the nation's sake, it would be wiser for these folks to take the counsel of political economist Max Weber. In his famous Politics as a Vocation, he wrote: "Politics is the art of compromise and decision-making based on social benefits weighed against costs; in this respect, political action cannot be rooted only in conviction, since one's conviction can be another's social anathema." This seems so blindingly obvious. And yet, too many politicians and the voters who abet them continue to struggle to see what is in front of one's nose.

Did we just get Gettysburg'ed?

Granted, President Obama's Second Inaugural Address was not conjoined with a civil war or world war -- events that surely helped to elevate the speeches of Lincoln and FDR to greatness. But was Obama's speech actually one for the ages, too, and we just didn't recognize it? The question is not as ridiculous as it sounds. Today, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is regarded as one of the greatest in American history. But that wasn't the case in 1863 when Honest Abe delivered it. The applause was "scattered and barely polite," according to noted historian Shelby Foote. The next day the Chicago Times (a 19th century version of Fox News) described the address as "silly, flat and dishwatery." Echoing a (weirdly) similar sentiment, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius characterized Obama's speech as "flat, partisan and pedestrian." Plus ça change. We'll probably have to wait a century for history's final verdict on Mr. Obama's address. But I have a feeling that its greatness is staring us in the face.