Blogcritics Author: Sam Jack

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Bloomberg, and Bush's Post-Modern Presidency

Sam Jack — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 00:10:49 EDT

I really don't see how anyone can look at the overwhelming blizzard of abuses, crimes, and foolhardy errors that have constituted the Bush years and then decide that what they're really sick of is partisanship.Maybe I'm wrong in thinking that voters are sick of what I'm sick of, which is the actions of the current executive, and the actions of Republicans in the House and Senate (and now apparently the Supreme Court). If pressed, I could draw up a specific, and fairly inclusive, list of grievances against BushCo and against the GOP and other enablers. But maybe that's just because I'm on the high side of the news-awareness bell curve.I can see how, in someone who doesn't spend a fairly significant portion of their waking life reading and digesting news information (this is a class issue as well, by the way; a good portion of the population doesn't have the leisure time or spare energy), my fairly specific dissatisfaction could manifest in a general 'screw the government' sort of feeling.That it's so difficult for a casual news observer to distinguish between radicals and anti-radicals is also a damning comment on our broken media discourse. After all, most politicians sound the same as one another, they all yell and point when they get angry, and mostly they only are seen on television disagreeing with one another. Too often, our politicians are quoted side by side making mutually contradictory claims, and too often the media fails to point out factual falsehoods (because to point out a negative about a candidate or official without pointing out a symmetrical negative for the other side would be 'biased' and 'partisan,' perhaps). I recall a commentator on CNN who, after the Bush/Kerry debates said that it would take a team of Kennedy School of Government fact checkers a week to verify or refute all the truth claims made in the debate. And in terms of substantive discussion, that was apparently it for CNN. All that CNN was prepared to do was identify truly glaring factual inaccuracies. The rest was about who was more effective in their message delivery, the little tics, the gaffes. Coverage shifted over to 'Spin Alley,' a name suggesting fluctuation between two poles, existing simultaneously without cancelling each other out, matter and anti-matter.It's understandable for people to get sick of it. The lack of attention to substantive policy difference makes mainstream political discourse a cross between a beauty contest and a shouting match. The media itself isn't the least bit interested in changing the dynamic; it makes for good television (Crossfire! Liberal, conservative--debate!). It took Jon Stewart making his own good television to get the show off the air.There's ambivalence to objective truth; theirs a post-modern feeling that the truth is unknowable and that things can be two mutually exclusive ways at once. Maybe it's best just to call it doublethink. And Bush and his supporters have been disconcertingly open about their post-modern thinking: The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." That's a post-modern stance (in the sense where post-modern can mean "counter-enlightenment". There are so many senses of post-modern that it's best to specify). When Bush and Cheney say, as they often do, that only History will be able to judge their Administration, they are really concurring with the above. The unnamed aide quoted is just, you know, articulater.Post-modernism made some sense when applied to literary conceits like Justice, Virtue, Love, and all the rest, but it is a terrible paradigm under which to build a functioning government, composed of bureaucrats and cops. It's nonsense to say that truth is unknowable in the context of governance. The government must operate under the premise that truth is knowable, or government policy is governed by nothing but competition to see which narrative is the most compelling. There are a few issues where one side or the other is objectively correct, and they can prove it. There are a great many other issues where an objective observer would say that the preponderance of the evidence tilts one way or the other.I don't know that anyone (except maybe that Bush aide) would disagree with that assertion, and yet our media often seems to operate on the premise that all viewpoints are created equal. That stance, more than anything, creates the conditions that I think will consistently allow a sufficiently visible third-party candidate who can "bridge the divide" to claim ten to twenty percent of the vote. The main way to be 'visible' without joining a party is to have tons of your own dough to pour into television ads. That's what Ross Perot did in '92, and that's what Bloomberg will do if he ultimately decides to make a run. Hell, he may get more than 20%. Perot got 18, and he sure wasn't a popular and effective city administrator with a record of effective compromise.The question, if Bloomberg runs, is who he will pull more votes from, the Republican or the Dem. To me, it looks likely to be a negative for the Democrats. So what Bloomberg needs to consider, if he's conscientious, is whether he wants to help someone like Giuliani or Thompson ascend the throne of George the Second. I hope he doesn't run. If it looked like he would help the Democrats, I would be pulling for him all the way. I say this because I am not a political post-modernist -- I think the Democrats have superior ideas and positions, and as a result, I want them to win.

Sam Jack is a college freshman, and is Forum Editor of the Harvard Independent. Visit him at The Harvard Independent and the Harvard Dems blog.

How 9/11 Changed Everything for Giuliani

Sam Jack — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 13:49:59 EDT

I thought I'd note the recent revelation - at least, recent for most people - that Rudy Giuliani was slated to be a member of the Iraq Study Group, but quit to pursue his lucrative speaking careerThis is notable on several levels. For one thing, Giuliani's behavior, like so much else, has been always been a matter of public record, and has been roundly ignored for months.Mainstream media coverage has been sparse. The media would rather cover really substantive topics, like which candidate smells the best. You would think this would be a bit of a big deal, but it isn't, because the media would rather stick to the benevolent demi-god narrative that they've been spinning out about Giuliani, despite all the facts against him, ever since he entered this race, and really ever since 9/11. The Giuliani camp has since said, by way of explanation, that Giuliani didn't want to join ISG because he was afraid it would become a "political football," and because he was considering running for elective office. As others have noted, this doesn't hold water. Giuliani told the Associated Press that he was considering a run several months before agreeing to join the ISG. And he quit the ISG after he was told to either start attending meetings or else quit the group.It was a bad move politically for Giuliani to play hookie on the ISG in favor of raking in piles of dough for 'inspirational' speeches, but the real shame, as Steve Benen points out, is that Giuliani missed a golden opportunity to learn what the hell he's talking about: "Just last week, asked about the future of the policy in Iraq, Giuliani said, 'Iraq may get better; Iraq may get worse. We may be successful in Iraq; we may not be. I don’t know the answer to that. That’s in the hands of other people.'"Giuliani had a chance to become something of an expert on Iraq. In a presidential campaign, he could have had real experience to point to. Instead he gave vapid speeches for big bucks.This is sort of a side issue, but Giuliani's friend Bernie Kerik, lately convicted of ethics violations and ordered to pay $200k, reportedly said that he "couldn't afford to be here" (in Iraq as police commissioner) because he was raking in money speaking about 9/11 for Giuliani's slush fund, pardon me, "consulting firm.'" Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book reports that Kerik did nothing as police commissioner other than issue rosy, false reports about the state of the police force and wait to return to the States to continue cashing in on 9/11 (that, and start a vigilante Iraqi force, which he then failed to supervise).So when people like Giuliani and Kerik say that "9/11 changed everything'" we know they mean it, but we also know that the change they're referring to isn't a "time to buckle down and really serve the country" sort of change; it's more like cash in quick before the magic wears off. Actually, that could be the motto of Giuliani's presidential campaign.

Sam Jack is a college freshman, and is Forum Editor of the Harvard Independent. Visit him at The Harvard Independent and the Harvard Dems blog.

Libby Didn't Need a Gun to Commit a Crime

Sam Jack — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 01:11:21 EDT

To those who are currently mourning I. Lewis Libby and the 'harshness' of his penalty, let's try and put this in some perspective:If a criminal robs a gas station at gun-point, he is liable to be put in jail for several years; in some cases, decades. What are the consequences of a gas station robbery? Loss of money from the register, possible damage to property, and emotional distress or physical harm to the individual that was threatened. Now, whoever it was that was really responsible for the leak of Valerie Plame's identity (which, without a doubt, was secret) was responsible for a number of negative consequences:- Valerie Plame's career was negatively impacted: she had presumably wanted to do fieldwork, and now it is impossible for her to do any further. - Other agents who were known to work with the covert Plame have also had their identities compromised. Any fake companies or organizations associated with Plame's false identity were taken out of commission. - If it's the case, as I've heard, that Plame was working in anti-nuclear proliferation, whoever leaked her identity increased, however minutely, the chance that tens of thousands of people will at some future point be killed in a massive fireball.Ah wait, you say, but it wasn't Libby that's leaked the identity, it was someone else. Why should Libby be punished for another's offense? Well, back to the gas station robber. Someone who lied to protect the robber might be less guilty than the robber himself, but he is undoubtedly guilty, and I should like to see those that are weeping over Libby's fate call for amnesty.One of the principle arguments that I've heard is that Libby is being made an example of, and that he is actually "smart as a whip" and has rendered "years of exemplary public service."Number one, I'll point out that many of the people who whine that Libby is being made an example of are the same people that support the death penalty and who hold one of their principle justifications to be 'deterrence.'What galls me more than that hypocrisy is the sense I get that what people are really saying when they assert as a defense that Libby is smart as a whip and public servant is that who prison is for, really, is poor people and drugged up celebrities. But prison isn't simply a holding tank for the unwashed proletariat. The whole idea is that anyone who commits a serious enough crime goes there.The reason things are considered crimes is because they hurt people. There are crimes that are committed with violence, like robberies and assaults, and then there are crimes that are committed without violence, like the Enron scandal and Lewis Libby's willful lies to try and keep himself and his friends out of the clutches of blind old Justice, who is so crass as to not even discriminate between 'criminals' and 'politicians.'

Sam Jack is a college freshman, and is Forum Editor of the Harvard Independent. Visit him at The Harvard Independent and the Harvard Dems blog.

Let's Forget About the Hair

Sam Jack — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 13:00:54 EDT

It bothers me that our media has decided that Edwards can be dismissed as too "feminine"--i.e., gay.Ann Coulter impoliticly said flat out what the gist of the Republican message is when it comes to Edwards -- "Fag." Of course there was a lot of sound and fury at the time, but I think that the focus of Edwards coverage of late shows that conservatives and their myriad allies didn't really disapprove of those comments; at least they didn't care about them enough to stop propagating the "Edwards is a flamer" line.Bush decisively demonstrates that masculinity isn't a useful criteria for Presidential effectiveness. Nothing beats flying a fighter jet onto an aircraft carrier when it comes to establishing he-man-warrior credentials. It's that same sort of fantasy of strength and virility, coupled with a desire to avoid "humiliation" or signs of "weakness" that's led to the erosion of civil liberties, mass death in Iraq, etcetera.The GOP in the primaries is advancing the concept of the "strong leader" types. They're pushing yet another actor, Fred Thompson, this time. Thompson joined the cast of Law and Order while he was still in the Senate. He's extraordinarily good at portraying authority. In fact he's made his career playing authoritarians on television and in movies, and, above all, what conservatives want is someone who can play that role convincingly. They want their leaders to project aggressive power because the power reflects back on them. It makes them feel powerful.Giuliani is another competitor in the casting call for Daddy-in-Chief. He stood up to the terrorists, and of course we've all heard that story. It's tremendously appealing. But people seem to forget how unpopular Giuliani was just before the 9/11 attacks. His family problems are clearly at odds with the moral authority being assigned to him, and there is actual video of Giuliani performing in drag and being kissed on the fake breast by Donald Trump. Now, I don't think that's problematic (although it's hardly dignified), but if conservatives were being honest with themselves, they would give it at least the same amount of coverage that Edwards' supposed visit to the "Pink Sapphire" is currently garnering.Giuliani is in favor of gay rights (he lived with a gay couple for some time) and abortion rights, and yet he's still the front-runner in all the polls. The reason that this is all excused in Giuliani where it wouldn't be excused in someone else is that conservatives think maybe Giuliani has the strongest narrative; maybe he can play that authority figure better than the others. As long as Giuliani can win, and as long as he pledges some allegiance to the tribe, then that's all fine. But there's good reason to think that Giuliani is willing to say and do whatever is convenient to gain power. And that once he gains it he relishes its use.Of course I'm not saying that Democrats don't pander or pursue emotional, irrational politics (witness the Terry Schiavo debacle), but at this point I think it's clear that government power needs to be taken away from the people who have been playing at government like some kind of swords and sorcery RPG.When it's real swords (and guns and bombs), it is also real blood and real suffering. That's something that the GOP never really understood, and even now they'd like to continue their fantasy of actions without consequences (the most recent consequence the 170 men, women, and children who just today were blown away). They can continue to promise 'victory' while casting themselves in the part of the misunderstood visionaries (just like Winston Churchill, another popular conservative storyline).So I don't care about Edward's hair, or Obama's parking tickets, or Hillary's 'frigidness' or any of these other irrelevancies. In the last two elections, the mainstream media has done us a disservice by focusing on Republican lines of attack. With Gore, it was the invention of the Internet and a kiss with Tipper that was a little too long. With Kerry, it was 'he speaks French' and windsurfs. But none of that stuff matters, and people are catching on that they've been duped. And they're angry, they are really annoyed. Even here in the middle of Kansas, where I live, the overwhelming feeling is anger at Bush and his band of his incompetents.

Sam Jack is a college freshman, and is Forum Editor of the Harvard Independent. Visit him at The Harvard Independent and the Harvard Dems blog.

The Republicans Deserved to Lose

Sam Jack — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 03:49:47 EST

The Democrats took back the House and the Senate. Thank goodness that they did. The specifics of party and party ideologies don't really matter. The party in power, over the course of the Bush presidency, has done so much to merit scorn that maintenance of the status quo would've marked a terrible lack in the American people's capacity to hold their government to any standards. There's a great comfort that we can take whenever power changes hands in Washington: the democracy is still working.It's painful to relive all the great failures that have led us to the point where we are now: the Schiavo affair, Bush's stem cell funding ban, the New Orleans catastrophe, and of course what has proven to be the overwhelming issue of this election and of the past several years: Iraq.The War in Iraq was defined by men sitting in their offices on Capitol Hill and telling themselves exactly what they wanted to hear. More and more evidence about the planning and run-up to the war is becoming available, and it seems increasingly that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld invented WMDs because they wanted to find them. Other eyes would have, and in fact did, find that out of the 978 sites that the Bush Administration and CIA identified as possible WMD stockpiles or facilities, not even a single one could be described as definitely having WMDs. Not one of those 978 cases had much more than a dozen pages of intelligence associated with it, much of that intelligence being composed of satellite photos and interviews with well-paid turncoats. Hardly a slam dunk.And yet we had Dick Cheney explaining that, "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." Who were we to disbelieve him? We, the public, did not have access to the secret intelligence that Cheney and the President had access to.It was the responsibility of Congress, and in particular the party in control of Congress to act as our representatives and demand accountability on the part of the administration. But our representatives were busy at the time; they were busy 'energizing the base' by seeking to deny civil rights to gays, build a fence along the border, etcetera. Is it really a surprise that they don't represent us anymore?Unfortunately, we didn't solve any of our problems by renouncing those who created them. Iraq, Afghanistan, New Orleans, North Korea, Iran-- they're all still on our plate and we don't really have compelling solutions to any of them. There aren't likely to be any compelling solutions for the next two years. Bush is likely to spend his remaining time picking petty quarrels with the Democrats who, as far as he's concerned, didn't exist until about two weeks ago. The best we can hope for out of the next two years is to catch up on some of the oversight that has been non-existent during the past six. We can hope that the shake-up in Bush's cabinet means that he is actually willing to pursue intelligent realistic policies. At the very least, Republicans will stop talking about 'victory' in Iraq; they've already failed. As others have said, our options now range from unpleasant to intolerable.

Sam Jack is a college freshman, and is Forum Editor of the Harvard Independent. Visit him at The Harvard Independent and the Harvard Dems blog.

The Republicans Lost? It's Quiz Day!

Sam Jack — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 18:24:59 EST

I happened to tune into the Sean Hannity Show on our local conservative talk station. I expected him to be saying something about the election or about Republican strategy going forward. Instead, Hannity was conducting one of those annoying faux "man on the street" interviews, where the point is to prove how stupid the general population is, and enforce the audience's feeling of superiority. The "Jaywalking" segments on the Jay Leno Show are of the same type.Hannity had obviously planted callers in advance, because they were set up with a list of pictures; the same four pictures for each participant: of Donald Rumsfeld, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Britney Spears. Predictably, the people he had selected to respond could identify Britney Spears but not the other three. The horror!One woman self-identified as a Democrat and could not identify Reid or Pelosi. She was appropriately chastized. Another woman also identified as a Democrat. She identified Reid and Pelosi, but Hannity pressed the point, asking the woman to name one thing that Pelosi had done in office. The answer is not much, other than oppose all the stuff that the Republicans were doing. I can't really think of much that Pelosi has done; she's hardly been a maverick as minority leader.Hannity is obviously handling the loss by ignoring the real cause -- that is, massive dissatisfaction with Republican foreign policy -- and explaining to the Republican base that people who vote for Democrats are stupid and uninformed. Well, whatever makes him feel better.More generally the spin among conservative talk hosts has been that the loss is actually good for the party, weeding out moderates and 'big government conservatives' who have violated the party orthodoxy in the interest of winning elections."I feel liberated, and I'm going to tell you as plainly as I can why," said Rush Limbaugh, "I no longer am going to carry the water for people who I don't think deserve having their water carried."But it's not really possible for Limbaugh to "carry water", since he doesn't engage in independent critical thinking. It was rather impolitic of him to tell his audience flat out that he doesn't represent his own honest opinions.O'Reilly tried to wish the Iraq situation out of existence, saying, "I don't ever want to hear Shiia and Sunni again."

Sam Jack is a college freshman, and is Forum Editor of the Harvard Independent. Visit him at The Harvard Independent and the Harvard Dems blog.

This 'War' Might Never End

Sam Jack — Mon, 9 Oct 2006 16:12:45 EDT

Note: This article was originally printed in my high school newspaper, so some of the examples used are specific to that environment.It is difficult to really figure out what’s going on with the Bush Administration lately. There’s been the habeas corpus issue: under new United States law any foreigner can be held prisoner indefinitely. No reason need ever be given, and no one held under the new provision has any right of access to the judicial system. In theory, any foreign exchange student could be held in this manner. There’s also the Bush administration’s stonewalling and lack of action on the ridiculous “torture” issue. “We do not torture,” Bush said. A ridiculous statement to make in the face of more than 300 photographs depicting graphic scenes of torture. It’s possible to go on at length in a litany of outrage after outrage, and to present good, compelling cases against nearly everything that Bush has done since the day he first mentioned Saddam Hussein.These good arguments are presented constantly, but they are usually neutralized or buried. There are good reasons for this, too: it’s true that several of the channels which distribute information to the ‘masses’ are controlled by people with an interest in tilting the message conservatively simply because the conservatives are the ones who have expressed willingness to play ball with corporate interests. But the number of media companies which repeat Republican messages is too great to be accounted for by a simple explanation of conscious slanting. Whenever media outlets refer to the War on Terrorism or talk about “the fact that the Democrats have not offered an alternative plan,” (as the Eagle did only a few days ago) they are enforcing Bush’s ideas and paradigms. Mostly we assume that people formulate opinions and then express them with words, but fairly often the process reverses. Words create thoughts, and thoughts create opinions. Here’s an example: our school’s administration enforces the controversial (among students) policy with regard to holes in jeans and other clothing. Since the administration is not elected by and does not directly represent the students, they are not required to justify their policy at any length, or with anything approaching the vigor of a political campaign. This is all to the good, but let us suppose for a moment that the students at our school do elect the administrators, and that two parties develop, one opposing holes in jeans and the other supporting holes in jeans. Obviously the default position of the students would be support for a loosened policy. How would the hole-free party go about winning? First they would anticipate the arguments of their opponents: holes in clothes do not represent a significant disruption, prohibiting holes inhibits freedom of expression, and lower income students may not have the money to buy new clothes every time their old ones tear. The obvious next step would be to answer these questions, but to answer them would be to jump the gun. First it is necessary to decide how to answer them. The anti-holes party would never use words such as ‘prohibited,’ ‘not allowed’ or ‘illegalized.’ They would take care to always refer to their policy as ‘Freedom from Holes’ and to refer to aspects of their cause in terms of the positive consequence that they would like the listener to perceive. It’s also important that, concurrent to the construction of a special ideologically charged vocabulary, the vocabulary used to express the opposition view-point be destroyed. The anti-holes party would let a member of the opposition commit an error of some sort and then would relate it to their political positions by telling the public that the mistake came as a result of moral weakness, and that therefore support of a permissive dress-code is a sign of moral weakness. Anti-holes partisans would take care to utilize the language of the opposition in their produced context of moral weakness and abdication of family values, until soon ‘pro-hole’ might as well be the same thing as ‘pro-manslaughter’ or ‘pro-nudism.’ If we are willing to give in on this one point, they ask, where will it end? Why should there be any dress code at all? Further, why should anyone come to school?At this point it’s obvious to everyone that anyone who opposes a strict dress code is interested in the downfall of the entire school system. In fact, they are working against USD 265. Since their speech is harmful, it must be stopped, by whatever means necessary. It’s easy enough to see through all that. But it’s directly analogous to the approach that the GOP has consciously taken to win the last two elections. The conservatives (and in fact most successful politicians) start with a set of initial facts and from that point attempt to create impressions, negative and positive, in the minds of the audience. Aware of the attention span of their audience and aware of the benefit of brevity, politicians make the easiest, simplest, shortest arguments that they can, “Senator So-and-So opposes the Patriot Act. I just wonder why he wants the terrorists to win.” When Senator So-and-So responds, he can make his specific arguments against the Patriot Act, but how can he address the charge of being soft on terror, other than to simply deny it, which also has the effect of allowing the sound-bite back into the media, where it can percolate in the mind of the masses. It’s untenable to deny the charge, and it’s untenable to simply leave the charge hanging in the air unanswered. Too many liberal challengers have been presented with this dilemma, and have responded as indicated by their pollsters and spreadsheets: by trying to sop out a position in the middle where enough voters on either side will be just frustrated enough to vote against the other fellow. Democrats can’t get by by arguing against torture, for habeas corpus, and against the Patriot Act. By taking this issue by issue approach Democrats miss a huge segment of the populace. Republicans in general and Bush in particular claim to have specific, good, reasons for their unprecedented grab at executive power. But the only real reason that is ever presented to the electorate is a blanket claim that all measures being taken are necessary to fight the War on Terror, and that anyone who opposes any of them is capitulating to the terrorists.So what Democrats, progressives, and conservatives (who have traditionally represented logic and moderation in foreign policy) must oppose is the whole idea of a War on Terror. The idea implicit in the War on Terror construct is an idea of terrorism as empire, with ‘Islamofascism’ an analogue to the USSR. This simply isn’t true. The goal of the terrorists isn’t to create a Muslim Empire or a new Caliphate. The fact that many of them seem to be occupied with killing each other should be graphic proof of this. There are not two monolithic powers involved here; a monolithic strategy is not going to work. Because terrorism is a mindset rather than an organization, and because the United States is too large and too free to ever be totally safe from it, the War on Terror is a war that can never be won. It will go on forever unless it is ended now. Nations who wage endless wars do not persist.

Sam Jack is a college freshman, and is Forum Editor of the Harvard Independent. Visit him at The Harvard Independent and the Harvard Dems blog.

CD Review: Scott Walker - The Drift

Sam Jack — Fri, 26 May 2006 01:45:19 EDT

The cover of Scott Walker's album The Drift reflects its contents: blood, sprayed, and coagulated, or else a satellite picture of Mars, or both simultaneously. More than anything, The Drift made me think of the Morlocks - those future people from H.G. Wells' The Time Machine who live underground and become distorted. The Drift is the sort of music the Morlocks might make down in their caves, having forgotten the sun and their past and living in fear of the sameness of the future.Nothing approaching conventional structure is present; textures enter, exit, juxtapose, and transform at Scott Walker's command. The textures, too, are disturbing: pulsating, ticking, throbbing, and howling. It is sound returned to a primitive form. The vestiges of modernity are present, though distorted. Drums thwack out of rhythm, strings fixate on single pitches separated by semi-tones, guitars grumble low.Through this maelstrom filter fragments of civilization: a disembodied guitar solo, the inexplicable exclamation, "I'll punch a donkey on the streets of Galway," and, very disturbingly, a malevolent Donald Duck. At the climax of "The Escape," the voice of Donald Duck surfaces and, on the edge of inarticulateness, screaming through static, yells, "What's up Doc, What's up Doc." It took me a long time to realize that anything was being said at all.Scott Walker is the vocal equivalent of a Theremin, although more expressive. His voice is deep and syrupy. Walker sings in a recitative style. His imagery matches the tone of the music and the music and words amplify one another. All the lyrics work independently of their music as poems, but I am convinced that reading them on the page would not have anything near the effect of listening to them. Walker uses his sounds to separate us from all familiar reference points. Not only is The Drift a world without rationality, it is a world where rationality is hard to conceive of.This, it's worth noting, is 'music of the future' in the same way that Wagner conceived it: as the uniting of forms. Like Wagner, Walker faces charges of pretentiousness and grandiosity. But I think that to be truly pretentious or grandiose requires condescension. Walker never condescends. There are no witty asides for the bourgeoisie to pick up and feel special about. Rather, everything has a purpose, even if it takes a lot of listening to pick everything up. If our own ironic sensibilities get in the way, that's our own fault. This album took eleven years to make for a reason.After the nine movements of The Drift (to call this pop, or really, to give it any genre, is impossible), we find ourselves in "A Lover Loves," in which Walker's blocks of sound depart. Only a few repeating guitar notes, along with Walker's prophetic voice, remain. There should have been a release of tension, a realization that the terrible weight of Walker's pronouncements was only the result of his sonic landscapes. That's not the way it felt for me, though. Instead it felt like waking from a terrible dream, only to find myself alone in a dark room. When Walker whispers, "Everything is OK," it's hard to believe him.It's easier to believe, "A hand that is cold into another colder."

Sam Jack is a college freshman, and is Forum Editor of the Harvard Independent. Visit him at The Harvard Independent and the Harvard Dems blog.

Satire: How to Become an Onion Ring Connoisseur

Sam Jack — Wed, 17 May 2006 07:03:08 EDT

A wide variety of onion rings exists. Actually, onion rings may be too narrow. Let's say, 'fried onion products.' That may also be too narrow. Perhaps 'onions cooked in some way and breaded with something.' It's impossible to pin down. Suffice it to say that the onion ring represents a unique place in the culinary landscape.You, intrepid reader, may at this point be wondering, "Is this entire column going to be about the onion ring? How pointless could this possibly be?" Well...The onion ring is very important. More important than any other issue I could possibly address.The basic onion ring is probably best represented by what you get from Spangles, which is a local chain here in Kansas -- circular, rather than oblong, rings with an approximately equal volume occupied by the breading and the onion. For the budding onion ring enthusiast, this is probably the place to start. The industry standard is a mix similar to that which is produced by McCormick, under the brand name Zebbie's. Unless you have a deep fryer, it is probably simpler to go to Spangles or almost any chain restaurant other than Burger King.Some of you have probably never had an onion ring before. Many of you who have had onion rings have, unknowingly, eaten them in an incorrect manner. The correct way to eat an onion ring is with the onion still secured within the breading. Do not, as my younger sister does, remove the onion from the breading and eat both separately; this is an embarrassing faux pas. Sometimes it can be tricky to keep both unified without gulping down an entire ring in one bite (another faux pas). A foolproof method is to apply pressure with two fingers at either end of the diameter. This flattening of the circle allows the teeth to make contact at one point, rather than two. Use the molars rather than the incisors.After you have mastered the Zebbie's baseline, taking care, of course, to note the subtleties of smell, texture, and shape that will make it possible for you to render critical judgement, you can move on to the several other basic varieties which proliferate. One I will call the 'crumbly-breaded' variety. It is easiest to find the 'crumbly-breaded' variety at Burger King. I have never liked crumbly-breaded onion rings as much as Zebbie's, but a bit of horseradish sauce improves them greatly. Most baked onion rings, such as the kind to be found in the freezer aisle, are of the 'crumbly-breaded' sort. Another variety is 'beer-battered,' less common at fast food restaurants, but dominant when it comes to casual dining, as well as in sports bars and the like. I am split when it comes to beer-battering. Light battering can add a subtle and enjoyable twist to the basic flavor, but over-battering drowns the onion and, one would assume, is meant to be eaten by people who don't want to interrupt their beer with some other flavor. Beer-battered rings are more prone than any other variety to over-breading. Consider these factors when ordering rings advertised as beer-battered.The above descriptions are only a broad outline of the most common varieties; there is a whole universe of non-ring shaped fried onions. I haven't even covered onion blossoms, onion 'bites', onion shreds, and the infamous onion loaf. On the topic of onion blossoms, I will say that the ones at Outback Steakhouse are good, while the ones at Timberline are to be avoided. If you discover a latent passion for onion rings, as millions already have, you will want to reference one of the numerous books, VHS tapes, and movie-musical extravaganzas on the subject.It is enjoyable to be a connoisseur, if only in one small area. I derive much the same pleasure that a wine enthusiast, or any self-created expert, does: that of being 'in the know.' Now that everyone knows that I'm in the know, I'm even happier. Perhaps, in the onion ring, you also have found something you can take great pleasure in knowing more about than anyone else.

Sam Jack is a college freshman, and is Forum Editor of the Harvard Independent. Visit him at The Harvard Independent and the Harvard Dems blog.

TV Review: American Idol Final Six

Sam Jack — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 08:45:55 EDT

The Contestants:Katharine McPhee seemed self-conscious. She sang fairly well, but her face did not match what she was singing. It was almost as if she was watching herself to see what she was doing, rather than doing it. "Do I look good? How about now?" It's our job to watch, and not her's.Elliott Yamin sang well, and looked more sincere than anyone other than Daughtry. What annoyed me was that he worked his jaw like it was on a spring, to produce a high-speed, forced vibrato. Perhaps it's just a matter of my personal taste, but the vibrato distracted me from the rest of the performance, and towards the end I thought he started to sound like an off-kilter washing machine. Plus, the arrangement was strange -- there was this sort of ragged break in the middle, I thought -- and he was running out of rhythmic space on some of the riffs.Kellie Pickler sang a very bad version of "Unchained Melody." If I was given to obvious metaphors, I might say that Pickler, following in the tradition of hundreds of mediocre singers before, shackled the "Melody" and flayed it. Since I am not so inclined, I'll say that the word "Unchained" should imply a rubato style of singing, rather than a monotonous, rhythmic approach. In the lead-up video, the guy instructed Pickler to hit the high note, and said that even the short squeak that she initially emitted would be impressive and more her "style." So Pickler retained the same squeak in her performance - a squeak you saw coming a mile away, because of the huge build-up.Paris Bennett needs to be given a jazz standard to sing instead of these schmaltzy pop arrangements. I admit, I'd never heard anything like her rendition of "Memories," and never thought it was possible to turn it into a real barn-rattler. It was probably ill-advised, though. Bennett smeared her words together and was wearing too much make-up. Paris has the talent but sometimes does not use it with discretion. It's sort of like buttering toast: too little and all you've got is dry, crumby tastelessness (Pickler). Too much and you have a soppy mess. On the last line, she sang "Of the way *huh* were," an innovative twist on the traditional lyrics.Taylor Hicks' new, shorter hair does not suit him at all. It makes his face look somewhat rounder, and robs it of unique character. Hicks has a good voice, but he would be better employed in his own idiosyncratic projects. Assuming, that is, that he has the talent to devise such projects. Pop music does not really have a place for him. I can't imagine voluntarily listening to him on the radio; it's his performances that are the point. As to the performance tonight: it was a mistake to saddle him in front of a microphone. This left him unable to do much more than raise and lower, clench and unclench, his hands. He sounded the same as ever, except that the happiness of some of the previous performances was missing.I thought it was funny that guest coach Andrea Bocelli could just call his voice "interesting."Chris Daughtry: man, where did he get the Spanish guitars? Were they just given to him? If he asked for them himself, then he is very savvy, because the appearance of two skilled musicians on the stage will garner votes just out of gratitude for breaking up the monotony. And Daughtry sang well and passionately. His was the best performance tonight.The Judges:Randy: "Man, I don't know, man..." Simon: "What that reminded me of was... [something horrid/marginally tolerable]" Paula: (Weeps, or gesticulates furiously) "You are all like my own little singing/dancing children!"Who Will Lose:Really, I thought everyone was pretty bad except Yamin and Daughtry. The worst performance was by Pickler, followed by Bennett and Hicks.Pickler has associated herself more closely than any other contestant with the country constituency, who I assume will see her through another round, even though her Daisy Mae act was wearing thin in the very stilted interview.Hicks still has a certain weirdness going for him, so my prediction is that Paris has drowned herself out. I do wish that we could get rid of Pickler, though.

Sam Jack is a college freshman, and is Forum Editor of the Harvard Independent. Visit him at The Harvard Independent and the Harvard Dems blog.