I’m with The Moose: it seems just bizarre that the world community, including most particularly my own country, is dumping billions of dollars on the Khartoum government without any explicit guarantees of an end to the genocide in Darfur. I know, I know, it was part of a deal to end a seemingly endless civil war that took many lives as well, and yes, I know the “reconstruction aid” is theoretically conditioned on action by Khartoum to stop the carnage in Darfur. But still…. couldn’t we have a slightly stronger appropriations rider on this money?Since our current president is a man of such legendary moral clarity, who is allegedly so willing to speak the truth no matter what those furriners think of us, perhaps he will emulate Lady Astor, who during a 1931 reception in Moscow, reportedly greeted Josef Stalin with the question: “When are you going to stop killing people?” The question needs to be asked of the Sudanese government every day, and if we’re not willing to militarily intervene to stop the killing, the Bush administration should at least go to the trouble of making sure we aren’t subsidizing it.

While I’ve been off relitigating the nature of the Confederacy and obsessing about Tom DeLay, James Dobson, and inheritance taxes, the center-left blogosphere has exploded in a dispute over a subject I’ve written about at some length: marketing of junk culture to kids; its role in the cultural concerns of middle-class parents; and its possible relevance to the weakness of the Democratic Party among this same category of voters.First up, Dan Gerstein, with his usual light touch, went after Democrats on this subject, unhelpfully choosing the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal as a venue. When I first read the piece, I thought Dan buried some legitimate observations in a landslide of marginally relevant abuse. After all, Frank Rich is not a spokesman for the Democratic Party, and most of the culturally concerned parents Dan’s worried about read The New York Times about as often as they play Grand Theft Auto with their church groups. And I also think it’s a confusing digression to get into the issue of Democratic politicians letting Hollywood personalities say inane things at campaign rallies (simple solution: let them smile and strut and wave, but keep the mikes off). But when you cut through the static, Gerstein’s praise of Hillary Clinton’s approach is quite measured:

She does not demonize cultural producers, overstate the extent of the problem, or let parents off the hook. She frames the culture’s influence as a public-health issue as much as a moral one, and cites research showing the potentially harmful effects of screen sex and violence. And she is honest about the limits of that research, which is why she has joined with Sen. Joe Lieberman in introducing a bill to fund more studies of the electronic media’s impact on children.

In the Washington Monthly’s Political Animal blog, Amy Sullivan mildly echoed Gerstein’s argument, and responded to some of the more specious arguments she’s heard about the perils of Democrats treating entertainment corporations like other corporations. And since then, she and Matt Yglesias have been talking past each other in a discussion of this issue.I respect both these folks enormously. And while I’m basically on Amy’s side on this issue, I do think Matt raises the right questions about it: (1) What’s the real problem here? (2) What, specifically, is the public policy lever you propose to use to address it? and (3) If you can’t answer (1) and (2), aren’t you just engaging in demagoguery?Since Matt includes me in the circle of demagogues on this subject (which I don’t take entirely as an insult), I’ll answer these questions for myself. In passing, I will refer to Barbara Defoe Whitehead’s recent paper on the subject, published by the DLC’s Progressive Policy Institute.(1) The problem is that a combination of new, personalized technologies and highly sophisticated marketing methods has created what can only be described as a corporate campaign to bypass parents and sell a variety of products, trends, and attitudes to kids, of questionable moral quality. It’s not just about sex and violence; it’s also about consumerism, fashion-and brand-consciousness, and a generally superficial approach to life. You know, those cultural products that have so endeared America to the rest of the world.I stress this point because Matt is simply wrong to assume this is all about some “New Prudishness.” As a parent of a teenager, I am not that worried that the ever-present marketers will turn him into a sex-addict or a sociopath; I’m more worried that he will turn into a total greedhead whose idea of the good life is stuff, and whose idea of citizenship is to demand a better personal cost-benefit ratio on his tax dollars. To put it another way, I’m worried he’ll turn into a Grover Norquist Republican.In terms of macro, as opposed to micro, factors, Matt repeatedly says the social indicators show the kids are all right, except they are getting mighty fat. We could have a debate over those indicators, if he’d specify them; and I’m sure they would be great comfort to the parents whose children’s cohorts haven’t quite yet entered the data base. But more generally, there are, as Gerstein mentions, and Whitehead cites, a variety of reputable studies indicating the kids may not be all right, at least when they are exposed redundantly to violent, sexual, misogyinist, and hyper-commercial images.The bottom line is that there’s enough smoke out there for Democrats to at least call in the smoke detecters, and beef up the firefighters. And for all the alarm about censorship and Puritanism, that’s mostly what people like Clinton and Lieberman–and Gerstein and Sullivan–are calling for.But that leads me to Matt’s second question:(2) What, other than agitating the air about it, are some of us Democrats actually talking about doing, if it’s not censorship? First, as already suggested, we think it’s helpful to take the complaints of parents seriously enough to study the problem seriously. Second, we think entertainment corporations, and anyone who directly markets products to children, should admit some social responsibility, and work with public officials to (a) develop, to the maximum extent possible, parental information and control mechanisms, like a unified rating system for television shows, video games, and movies, and like technologies that are more effective and user-friendly than the V-Chip; (b) create a “zone of protection” for really young kids by eschewing direct and indirect (i.e., television and internet) marketing techniques aimed at children too young to distinguish truth from hype and crap; and (c) provide some transparency about the most egregious of those marketing techniques, such as the practice of hiring “alpha kids” to wear brand name products to influence their peers.And if cooperative efforts to secure voluntary measures don’t work, then we can talk regulation–just like we do with other corporations–if necessary.(3) If there’s a problem, and at least some sorts of tangible public-policy solutions, then the argument that this is “all about politics” loses some of its sting. But of course, you “can’t take the politics out of politics,” so yeah, Democrats should look at this politically as well. And Amy is absolutely right that Democrats tend to view “cultural issues” as limited to abortion and gay marriage and other Republican-dictated agenda items, and Gerstein is absolutely right that such issues are often just the ways voters use to figure out whether politicians actually believe (a) there are principles more important than politics, and (b) there is such a thing as right and wrong.The whole hep Democratic world right now, from Howard Dean to George Lackoff to Bill Bradley right over to the DLC, says it’s important that Democrats clearly identify “what they believe” and “where they stand” and “what values they cherish.” If all the evidence–some scientific, some anecdotal or intuitive–suggesting that parents believe they are fighting an unequal battle with powerful cultural forces over the upbringing of their children is at all correct, then we have to take a stand there, too. It may matter a whole lot, if you look at the
Democratic vote among marrieds-with-children–steadily dropping from a Clinton win in 1996 to an eighteen-point loss in 2004, a disproportionately large swing.And if there’s a problem, and if there’s a solution–however mild, cooperative, and at most regulatory–what’s the problem with identifying with middle-class, working parents upset with big corporations? And that’s where Amy Sullivan’s, and my, injunctions against Democratic hypocrisy on this issue come into play.The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber suggests this issue has exposed a deeper libertarian-communitarian rift in Democratic ranks that we need to talk about. That may be true as well. Matt, in one of his posts, cites my mockery of Paris Hilton’s First Amendment rights as problematic. Actually, First Amendment jurisprudence has long acknowledged the legitimacy of “time, place and manner” restrictions on even the most protected (e.g., political) expressions, with a lower standard of protection for “commercial” speech. There’s no need for either side to get absolutist about it, but I don’t really think us communitarians are really on the brink of calling in Torquemada here.But any way you look at it, the willingness, or unwillingness, of progressives to identify with the parenting struggles of middle-class voters–in terms of basic economics, health care, work-family issues, taxes, and yes, corporate marketing to their kids–is an issue on which progressives, and Democrats, will ultimately be judged by history, and by voters.

If ever there was a gut check for Democrats, and an opportunity to stand up for principle, the vote in the House to abolish the federal estate tax (or inheritance tax, or Paris Hilton tax, or billionaire’s tax, or whatever you want to call it) this week has gotta be it. Today’s New Dem Dispatch sounds a call to arms.

Josh Marshall helpfully pointed us all to a Focus on the Family radio interview of Mark Levin (author of Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America, the latest right-wing bestseller) by James Dobson. Talk about a fair and balanced discussion…. it’s like listening to a couple of McCoys covering a Hatfield family reunion.Josh went right to the money quote near the end of the broadcast, when Dobson quotes some nameless minister who compared the white-robed men of the Ku Klux Klan to the black-robed men of the federal bench.And that’s vintage Dobson, who loves phony analogies depicting himself and his fellow extremists as brave souls defending themselves and the human race against totalitarian tyranny. A few years back, in a bout of self-pity about being “persecuted” by gay rights activists, Dobson took to comparing himself to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and other “Confessing Church” victims of Hitler. Now, apparently, he’s a Freedom Rider risking violence from the Klan.Any day now, I expect to see Dobson at some Save Tom DeLay rally leading a horde of lobbyists and cultural warriors, arms linked, in a heart-felt rendition of “We Shall Overcome.” The whole Dobson-Levin conversation is an eye-opener for those, like me, who haven’t quite had the stomach to digest the Latter-Day Right’s view of the U.S. Constitution. Levin is a real piece of work, and it is not good news that his bestselling book may provide hundreds of thousands of readers with their only exposure to constitutional law. Unless I am missing something, he seems to object not only to recent Supreme Court opinions, but to Marbury v. Madison, the landmark case that established the right of judicial review 202 years ago.Levin’s mastered the trick of stringing together every generally acknowledged constitutional abomination since then–Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, Korematsu v. The United States–and breezily identifying them with Roe v. Wade, which creates a nice litany of “black-robed masters” enabling “slavery, segregation, internment and abortion.” His “solutions”–term limits for federal judges and a congressional veto of Supreme Court decisions–would, of course, require either constitutional amendments or armed revolution, but that doesn’t trouble Levin. At one point, he says “we can’t get our hands on the Supreme Court, but we can get our hands on elected officials.” Nice turn of phrase for a legal beagle, eh? But then again, in addition to being a best-selling author, Levin’s now a radio talk show host.The other really striking thing about the Dobson-Levin “interview” is exactly how far the Souderization of Justice Anthony Kennedy has gone. God, they hate this appointee of Ronald Reagan so much more than the “liberals” on the Court. With his usual stance of posing as a victim of those he is attacking, Dobson says: “Anthony Kennedy scares me;” Levin seems to posit Kennedy as at the center of a “cabal of radical leftists” who are literally taking over the country at the behest of “moral relativists” and one-worlders.This duo’s reasoning is something to behold. Dobson slips effortlessly from yammering about “lifetime appointees to the Court” to blasting Florida Circuit Court Judge George Greer, the Devil Figure in the Right’s view of the Schiavo case. I suspect Dobson knows Greer is an elected judge who won a new six-year term just last year, but hey, can’t cut those judicial murderers any slack, can you?After all, when you’re fighting today’s black-robed Klan, you have to fight fiery cross with fiery cross.

Today’s Washington Post has an article by Mike Allen that amplifies earlier reports that conservative activists and House GOP factotums are gearing up for a campaign to defend the embattled Tom DeLay, with a message that (a) all his troubles come from a liberal plot financed by George Soros, and (b) if DeLay goes down, the GOP and the conservative movement go right down with him. Point (a) especially amuses me, since, well, people like me and my employers, the DLC, have been as angry and outspoken about DeLay’s abuses of power as anybody, and personally, I haven’t come within shouting distance of a single Soros dollar, and few would describe the DLC as part of some vast left-wing conspiracy.But point (b) is more interesting, insofar as it suggests the DeLay mess may reflect more broadly on the ethical standards and priorities of the GOP and the conservative movement as a whole. And there’s a good argument they are right about that one. Who in the Republican Party, after all, complained about the Great Texas Power Grab of 2003, the DeLay-engineered re-redistricting scheme that led to one of his ethics problems, and to criminal indictments of some of his cronies? Who in the Republican Party has objected to the K Street Strategy, the DeLay-Santorum-Norquist campaign to force lobbying firms and trade associations to skew campaign contributions and staff hirings to the GOP or sacrifice access to bill-drafting? And up until now, who has drawn attention to the hyper-sleazy lobbying practices of close DeLay associates (and big-time GOP operatives) Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon, whose Indian Casino Scandal may yet produce collateral damage among Republicans on a level not seen since Teapot Dome? More generally, how many Republicans have been willing to disassociate themselves from the whole Bush-era GOP fiscal/political strategy of hustling high-end tax cuts, corporate subsidies, and friendly legislation and regulatory actions in exchange for hard-line support for “our team?” Well, there’s John McCain, but the list grows short after that. So as we get further into Tom DeLay’s unhappy hour of scrutiny, it’s fine with me if his defenders get their way, and we review his record of leadership as indicative and exemplary for his party and his ideological soul-mates in this period of total GOP domination of the federal government. Let’s just all agree we are living in the DeLay Era of national politics, and let the chips fall where they may. As L’Affaire DeLay goes, so goes the nation? Deal.

Today is the 140th anniversary of Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, which essentially ended the American Civil War.As a (white) child growing up in the Deep South in the 1950s and 1960s, I looked forward in history class to the tale of the Appomattox surrender, because it marked the end of the interminable period of time we spent studying–or more accurately, saturating ourselves in–the War Between the States each year. Indeed, such was the extent of our wallowing in the Confederacy that we rarely made it past World War I in American history.Far beyond elementary school, in the broader southern white culture I grew up in, there was an odd exultancy about Appomattox that had nothing to do with vicarious relief at the end of that brutal war. No, we drank in the details of Lee’s peerless dress and manner at the moment of surrender, and were encouraged to think of the shabby Grant’s generosity in victory as little more than the acknowledgement of a superior being–and a superior, if Lost, Cause. A Cause, moreover, that was about everything other than the ownership of human beings–about states’ rights, about agrarian resistance to capitalism, about cultured Cavaliers defending civilization against philistine Puritans, about Honor, about Duty.And that was the essence of Confederate Nostalgia in those days: a cult of romantic defeat, denial, self-pity and pride. I never quite shared it, even as a child, but never quite understood its pathological depths until its mirror images in Serbian and (some parts of) Arab culture became part of world events in more recent years. And remarkably, I get the sense Confederate Nostalgia is not only surviving, but perhaps even reviving among people too young to know its nature and political usages.So now, in many heated conversations with my fellow white southerners–and occasionally with Yankees who’ve been caught up by the Romance in Grey–I find myself insisting on an acknowledgement of the reality of the Confederacy, and its consequences for our home region.It was an armed revolution led by a planter class that could not tolerate restrictions on the “right” to transfer its human property into the territories.It was a “Cause” centered in the states most dependent on slavery, made possible by a secession bitterly opposed by poor white farmers in much of the region, and imposed on them by the narrowest of margins.It was a rebellion whose success entirely relied on the calculation that the people of the North would not sacrifice for abstactions like the Union and Freedom.Its inevitable defeat plunged the South and all of its people into a century of grinding poverty, isolation, and oligarchical government. Its heritage has been used again and again to justify racism and every other sort of reactionary policy.I look at Appomattox and see the end of a disastrous folly that killed over 600,000 Americans, maimed far more, and made life miserable for those of my ancestors who survived the Planters’ Revolt. No romance. No victory-in-defeat. Just carnage and destruction in a bad cause made no better by the good men whose lives and futures it claimed.It is far past time for southern pride–which I share to an almost painful extent–to attach itself to everything, anything, other than those four disastrous years that ended at Appomattox Court House.

With a very weird stretch of time marked by the Schiavo saga, the death and funeral of Pope John Paul II, and even a Royal Wedding, it’s a good time to take stock of where things are politically.Things are not looking good for George W. Bush and his party. His approval ratings have sagged after leaping after the Iraqi elections. The famously disciplined GOP is divided over a whole host of matters, with the famously pampered conservative base as unhappy as it’s been in a long time.Bush’s main domestic initiative, his Social Security privatization push, has gone nowhere, after months of presidential hype. Senate Republicans seem to be waivering in their long-threatened determination to ram through Bush’s judicial nominations by outlawing filibusters. House Republicans are now indelibly identified with their Leader, Tom DeLay, who’s working hard to achieve Gingrich-level pariah status, even aside from his ethics recidivism and his growing enmeshment in the Abramaoff-Indian-Casino-Shakedown scandal. House and Senate Republicans are at odds on a whole variety of substantive and political issues, including the budget, which may never get resolved this year despite growing public worries about ever-escalating public debts. The economy is chugging along in low gear, but not much so you’d notice. What people are noticing is a continuing health care cost spiral, which the GOPers haven’t a single clue how to confront, and now a gasoline price spiral, which Bush energy policies would make worse.International affairs remain a relative bright spot for Bush, but now the post-election euphoria on Iraq has turned into another tense period of uncertainty, and the recent presidential commission report on the whole Iraq WMD issue has poured a few more gallons of cold water on the administration’s international credibility. Promising developments are still underway in Palestine and especially in Lebanon, but in neither arena is a dramatic pro-democracy, pro-peace breakthrough as likely as it appeared a few weeks ago.It probably won’t help Bush internationally that his next scheduled act is a high-profile confirmation fight over a proposed ambassador to the U.N. whose public record contains a string of obnoxious unilateralist comments as long as your arm. And to top it all off, his most important foreign ally, Tony Blair, is in a tough election fight; if Labour loses or simply loses a lot of ground, it will be almost entirely attributable to W.If you add it up, the president and his party appear to be in a whole heap o’ trouble, with no obvious relief in sight.This doesn’t necessarily translate itself into political gains for Democrats (more about that in near-future posts), but we can pretty much forget about the idea that Bush and company are off to a roaring second-term start.

In the midst of the shared ecumenical solemnity of Pope John Paul II’s funeral, it’s inevitable that the occasional ax-grinders have introduced a sour note of triumphalism. Here’s an example I happened upon at National Review’s group blog, The Corner, yesterday in the form of an email posted by my friend and occasional antagonist Ramesh Ponnuru:

WHAT A DIFFERENCE 27 YEARS MAKE. An email I got several days ago: “In watching the coverage, I’ve noticed something that you are too young to know about and no one else (to my knowledge) has commented on. When Pope Paul VI died (followed shortly after by the death of Pope John Paul I) commentary was sought, of course, from Protestant theologians and church officials. With one exception (Billy Graham), the Protestants invited to comment were associated with the mainline churches. They were National Council of Churches types. . . . In the past two days, I haven’t seen a single such commentator (of course, it is possible that I’ve missed one or more). Instead, the Protestant voices that are being presented–Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, Richard Land, etc.–are all Evangelicals. This seems to be true, by the way, not simply on Fox, but on CNN, MSNBC, and the networks. This, I believe, is telling. For all intents and purposes, mainline Protestantism has become irrelevant in this country. It is more marginal today than evangelicalism was when John Paul II became the Vicar of Christ. [My emailer is Catholic–RP.] Even the secular liberal media types seem implicitly to recognize that the Protestantism that matters in this country now is evangelical. This is a real transformation.”

I cite this post because it reflects an observation that I hear very often from conservatives, especially those who aren’t themselves Protestants, or in many case, even Christians or believers in any creed: “liberal” mainline Protestants are headed for the dustbin of history, mainly because they don’t embrace a militant agenda of cultural conservatism, which is, of course, what Christianity is all about, right?The idea that mainline Protestantism is so “irrelevant” that even the “secular liberal” media have acknowledged it is an especially disingenuous argument. For decades, the news media ignored conservative evangelicals and pentecostal/charismatic Christians on the few occasions that they were forced to delve into religious issues. The same clueless producers (or their heirs) have now bought into the equally flawed proposition that people like Pat Robertson are exemplars of American Protestantism.For one thing, the line between “evangelical” and “mainline” Protestants is notoriously slippery. How do you classify the evangelical and mainline American Baptists and Disciples of Christ, or for that matter, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America? Are they simultaneously “irrelevant” and “the Protestantism that matters?”So let’s take the other distinction Ramesh’s correspondent used, and examine the statistical relevance of those Protestants affiliated with that great target of conservative abuse, the National Council of Churches. Hmmm. Seems the NCC is down to 36 denominations with just 45 million members.No wonder they can’t get any of their leaders on television.

After expressing puzzlement yesterday at the political value of the Alliance for Justice’s “Phil A. Buster” ads opposing the “nuclear option” on judicial nominations, I opened up today’s Washington Post, and there, in the Reliable Source column, was a photo of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) posing with some dude dressed up as Phil, the animated bullhorn. The caption directed readers to the “nifty cartoon” starring Phil and his little friends Check and Balanz. Several younger colleagues have let me know the “Save Phil” ‘toon is an effort to replicate the School House Rock genre of retro-chic educational animations from the ’80s and early ’90s. In other words, it’s an ironic knockoff of an ironic knockoff. Still haven’t found anybody who likes it, though one colleague said: “Sure, it’s awful, but we’ve been talking about it half the day, right?”

Curt Matlock of MyDD provided a link today to an ad that the Alliance for Justice (a respected liberal group that played a big role in the Bork confirmation fight back in the day) is planning to run on national cable and selected broadcast markets, in an effort to gin up the public against the “nuclear option” on judicial nominations.Matlock didn’t comment on the effectiveness of the ad, but take a look yourself, and see if you think a long animated spot featuring a talking bullhorn named Phil A. Buster, and his friends Check and Balanz (not to mention the Founding Fathers, described as “really smart guys”) is going to turn the tide. I do think the ad is likely to boost support for the filibuster among first-time voters in 2016 or so, but the deal will probably go down well before then.I know that some people don’t think Democrats should ever be critical of anybody on “our team,” and maybe the ad is one of those ironic, so-bad-it’s-good things that old goats like me don’t “get.” But I hope somebody’s working on an ad that operates on a slightly more literate level, if only to prevent those “really smart guys” who designed our system from rolling in their graves.