Right. Biden can't rough her up - he has to play nice and be real careful not to condescend. But Hillary and other D women can beat the crap out of her. I suspect they will.

Exactly, Michelle--the Palin pick is a shot at Biden, not so much at Obama.

With all the photos of Palin holding an M16, I don't think that going tough on her is quite the issue you think it is.

Obama set out the strategy last night: treat your opponent with respect and go hard after your opponent's politics.

Of the 67 remaining days, there's only one day when the Dems need to primarily use Biden to take on Palin. The other 66 - especially today, right now - it should HRC, along with other women. The message: She's bad on issues important to women and unprepared to be president.

And I'm already tired of hearing "she has no more foreign policy experience than Obama." It would be more accurate to say that, while he doesn't have decades of foreign policy experience, he still has tons more foreign policy experience than she does. Cause she has zero.

I might be a little more concerned over what you wrote if we were talking about the main contenders at the top of the ticket. There is a grand total of 1 VP debate this year. Biden just has to name some of his friends that are foreign leaders and he will win that debate. If he comes off like a jerk to her who really cares if he "loses." VP Debates matter very little in the grand scheme of elections. Bentsen tore Quayle a new one and we all know how that election turned out.

Dems won't underestimate Palin. I am sure she is an incredibly bright, driven person. She wouldn't be where she is today, state chief executive juggling a marriage and family, if she wasn't a superstar.

What this pick says about McCain's judgment is the story. He would rather make an obvious pander to win votes and put someone with no foreign policy experience and world leadership one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency than pick someone ready to be president on day one. Don't underestimate Obama-Biden to react accordingly.

Fragile? Delicate? You've got to be kidding. She looks and sounds as fragile and delicate as you.

And you're hotter.

Let's also remember that Biden has been out in front of a lot of women's issues for a long time now, longer than Palin has been old enough to vote. Do you really think he's going to go in there and make himself out to be a chauvinistic pig? Give the man a little credit, Michelle.

Biden will just ignore her. He won't waste any time going after her because she's a non-entity as a candidate. Ignore her and just hammer McCain. It's sort of like the famous "f--k you, pay me" line in Goodfellas.

Palin goes after Obama? Biden should ignore her and criticize McCain.

Palin goes after Biden? Biden should ignore her and criticize McCain.

Palin boasts about herself/McCain? Biden should ignore her and criticize McCain.

Be nice and be uninterested by whatever she is selling. Make this campaign about the issues and McCain will lose.

Naw, Michelle, it's easy. Biden just attacks McCain and Bush a bunch. Palin is forced to defend McCain. Biden stays away from her

Wasn't there a movie about her?...."Sarah, Palin and Tall. Well it looks like another "bridge to nowhere" involving Alaska.

I think that McCain would welcome a debate about experience.

So -- Biden should ignore her and let her manifest shortcomings as a candidate speak for themselves. Attack Bush-McCain. When the VP debate comes around, be cordial, dignified, respectful, etc., but forceful in arguing for Obama and against *McCain*.

VAcentrist -- There you go. Agreed.

Michelle - haven't we all be through alot together with the gender wars in this campaign?

You're just terrific at it.

Palin is a smart pick, think of the rest of those goobers in the line-up.  She was the last only one remotely appealing,

Some poll told them the same thing.

Michelle Cottle-

Aside from the obvious play for female votes, I would argue that McCain's selection of Sarah Palin is in one very significant way similar to George H.W. Bush's selection of Dan Quayle, and it isn't just that Palin, like Quayle, is an intellectual lightweight with no real experience, it's that Palin is apparently perceived by the GOP base as a true believer.

This is from the NY Times website, as of a few minutes ago:

________________________________________________________________________________

"They’re [social conservatives are] beyond ecstatic," said Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition. "This is a home run. She [Palin] is a reformer governor who is solidly pro-life and a person of deep Christian faith."

________________________________________________________________________________

As I've said on these threads for some months now, there is one major concern that McCain had to take into account when selecting his VP: that he doesn't have strong support from the evangelical/social conservative base of his own party. There's plenty of  evidence for this: for instance, Huckabee's success in the primaries--despite having virtually no campaign budget whatsoever--was largely due to a widely held distrust of the GOP front-runner (ie, McC) by many millions of Christian Right voters. Which is why, one might argue, Huckabee surprised and destroyed McCain in states like West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas (Huck's home state), Tennessee, and Georgia.

In other words, the GOP base wasn't then, and isn't now, all that happy with their nominee. If McCain was aware of this (and how could he not be?), and if he valued that support, he was going to need to pull the base behind him with a bona fide believer as his VP. Which is very much the position George H.W. Bush found himself in when he picked Quayle to mollify the religious nutwings in his own party. (Reagan and W didn't face this problem, as both of them were widely perceived as true believers themselves.)

Which is to say, picking Palin may go a long way toward winning over the millions upon millions of bible-thumping voters in the GOP camp--may get them fired up, and contributing and volunteering, may get a vast, multi-billion-dollar, evangelical, alternative media beating the drum for McCain.

Of course, picking Palin may also attract a number of Clintonistas and PUMAs to the McCain ticket, but I would argue that this pick had perhaps more to do with John McCain's desperate need to win over his own evangelical/social conservative base.

VA's probably right. This won't change Biden's tactics at all. But it will, in fact already has, knocked Obama off stride and introduced a new angle on Putin's power play: energy security. If Putin were not now threatening Germany and Poland with cutting off their oil and gas supply, it wouldn't mean anything. Yet that's what Putin said yesterday, and he's serious.

Thanks to Putin, McCain now has a chance to reset the terms of the foreign policy debate and focus it on national security. Watch for him to reverse his stand on ANWR.

One way or the other, only one white guy in the top three jobs next year (either Obama-Biden-Pelosi or McCain-Palin-Pelosi. Yay!

Barnacle and VA Centrist are right.  Biden's job is to dismember McCain, not Palin.  If she flails on foreign (or other) policy details in the process of trying to defend McCain, it's a bonus.

Surrogates will have to do the dirty work against Palin, while Biden must courteously and diplomatically destroy her during the VP debate.  Imagine the amount of prep work needed to get her ready for a one-on-one against Joe!!  McCain's folks must be dreading the thought of that day.

With due respect to Michelle's great aunt Ruby, may I point out that Ms. Palin has more executive experience than Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton combined.  At the risk of overdoing the point, may I also point out that she has  about as much executive experience as Theodore Roosevelt had when he became Vice President.  

The Dems have been over-confident about this election all along, and now they're going to do it again.  Don't be so sure about tearing Ms. Palin up after she's been throughly briefed on the issues. She looked smart and tough to this viewer today.

Meme for the day:

John McCain: Always picks the yougner woman.

When is someone going to write a book about John McCain's personal life.

The Republicans made personal attacks part of the rules of engagement.  So why can't the Left get half the mileage out of the truth as the Right does out of lies?

I agree with Michelle's comments about how irrational voters can be with certain items, but if she can't take a beating from Biden, what the heck is she going to do if she has to step in as President and needs to go toe-to-toe with a tough world leader?  If we are too squeemish to watch Biden do it, why would we put the poor delicate thing in the line of fire as the possible President of the U.S.?

Chris Matthews made an excellent point last night about Obama not having beeing appointed, or handed the nomination, that the earned it by winning a hard-fought election.  He compared it to other prominent African-Americans being appointed to positions.  Well, this appointment smells of her being the "token" woman candidate to pander to a certain demographic.  Palin used Hillary's line to talk about cracking the glass ceiling, but I'm sorry to tell her, Hillary Clinton is much more qualified to be for the job than her.  There is no comparison, IMHO.  I hope Hillary points this out A LOT over the next 67 days.

"At the risk of overdoing the point, may I also point out that she has  about as much executive experience as Theodore Roosevelt had when he became Vice President."

Yeah, but haven't you Republicans been making the point that "After 9/11 the game changed?"  Now all of a sudden, when that argument doesn't suit you anymore, you quickly forget it.  I don't care about her executive experience, if McCain can't fulfill his term, is she tough enough to be President.  According to Michelle, she won't be able to take a Biden beating.  How can she take one from Putin?

lsernoff,

She also has more executive experience than McCain.  Somehow I don't find that justification enough for her nomination.

Noemie Emery wrote

What Palin Does

"1. Steps on the story of Obama's speech (and convention), and possibly the bounce coming from them, and wipes them off the news cycle. The Sunday news shows will be all-Palin, all of the time.

2. Sends Republicans into their convention on a huge head of steam.

3. Wipes out the image of McCain as the crotchety elder and brings back that of the fly-boy and gambler, which is much more appealing, and the genuine person.

4. Revs up the base AND excites independents, which no one else in the party, or perhaps in the world, could have accomplished.

5. Puts youth, change, and history on both of the tickets.

6. May detach some young people, especially women.

7. May attach some women pissed off about Hillary.

8. As a pro-life super-achiever, puts feminists in a tizzy.

9. Revives some of the double-edged nature of the Democratic primary, which featured a black vs. a female trail-blazer, and put both sides on notice on sensitivity issues. Democrats used to raising charges of racism against Obama's critics may face charges of sexism and/or condescension if they try to diss her.

10. Steps on Obama's claims to have been a reformer, as he reformed nothing (much less the corrupt mare's nest of Chicago arrangements), while she was a dragon-slayer up in Alaska.

11. As a mother of five, one a Down Syndrome baby, helps her side take on the Democrats on abortion extremism and the Born Alive bill.

12. Reignites the deep and unhealed stresses inside the Democrats, some of whom will now wonder

more loudly than ever why they didn 't pick Hillary.

13. Counters Michelle in a way Cindy couldn't.

14. Counter-intuitively, makes the issue of Obama's light resume more potent than ever. Her lack of experience is no more than his is. And he's--to use a term from Alaska, and the Iditarod--their lead dog."

We underestimate the dynamic Michelle mentions at our own peril -

Hillary Clinton owes her Senate seat to it.

I totally agree with Michelle about the risks facing Biden in that VP debate. The contrast between Biden

Noemie Emery makes some interesting points.

Dems can't be seen as playing by a double standard --  suggesting, for instance, that "untried and untested," as one Dem blogger put it this morning, is not a problem for a MALE Presidential candidate, but is a cause for skirt-clutching hysteria when applied to a FEMALE VP pick.

Also, this was a Politico headline this morning; "Demos belittle Palin pick." Dems, for their long term good not just this election, really cannot afford to have their attitude toward an historical female candidacy labeled as "belittling," especially after the sometimes blatant sexism on display in their primary.

There are plenty of grounds on which to criticize Palin that won't smack of sexist disdain, and will be more effective than trying to belittle her -- "A new face on old, failed policies" is just one example.

Obviously Hillary Clinton's 18 million voters convinced the Republicans that the political power of women is something they no longer can afford to ignore -- and that the times call for shucking their 30 year image as the party of the "angry, white male."

This may not help McCain that much in this election, but it does help the Republicans in the long term. Even more so if the Dems continue to act as they have been acting recently -- as if they are desperate to diminish the power women have worked so hard to gain in their party over the last 30 years.

Palin is a good choice to shore up McCain's somewhat shaky standing in Western states, especially the Mountain States, and, surprisingly, Arizona, where Honest John is no longer the fave and maverick he once was. This is a bid for conservative women in the West and Midwest to get out and work for the G.O.P.

Frankly, I think Obama/Biden will have a tough time dealing with the feisty straight-talking lady pol from Alaska. She'll make the perfect attack dog using sloganized issue-speak that Rove is the master of. There won't be anything to discuss of merit in the VP debates, only contrasting images of the young tough talker conservative in a pants suit, versus the paleo-liberal old guy, Biden. She's perfect.

Unfortunately.

With Palin as their standard bearer, G.O.P conservative women will come out like gangbusters for the cameras, to show what "the *real* women's party" is made of. And, being white, Obama can't say one discouraging word without being branded a black male chauvinist Democrat. Obama and Biden now become radioactive to anybody, man or woman, center to right. The Dems pick of Obama and in turn his of Biden are now the cynic's choice. The GOP base is secured, as Rove surely knows (with his expertise at the service of Steve Schmidt.

It's interesting that people who know absolutely nothing about Palin make the assumption that she is an "intellectual lightweight." Is this based on anything other than the fact that she is a woman?

Of  course, she may BE an intellectual lightweight. It just seems like one should spend a little time observing her and learning about her before making that assumption..

Am I seeing things, or did you just use "varmint-hunting" and "fragile flower" to describe the same woman?

tomeg good analysis in you posts.

I'm glad that it took Tep to tie Putin and Palin together to McCain's advantage.  I'm sorry -- hasn't McCain remained opposed to drilling in ANWR even until now because it can barely make a dent in American oil consumption, and because he called the refuge "pristine"?  How again is this going to help America assist Europeans with natural gas independence from Russia?

Tep could probably also mention Palin's experience as C-in-C of the Alaska National Guard in responding to Putin's provocative move to restore the Russian Empire by taking back the Aleutian Islands.

Palin should be judged on her ridiculous, mid-evil views that would drag this country more into the mud than it already is, not her gonads or breeding capability.

Congratulations to her on both, they are the only things that just got her promoted - but I could care less. her ideological rigidity and membership in an utterly corrupt party are fair game.

It is patronizing and sexism of the highest order to do anything less than call her on her dumb ass views and I am not going to be bullied by rancid 1970's paleo-"feminism" into saying anything less.

There are millions of women out here who feel he same way, the victimologists in no way own this debate.  

esmense.  Anyone - of any gender - who believes that creationism should be taught in public schools is an an intellectual lightweight.  Do YOU actually know anything about her views or are you already assuming the comforting victim mantle because of her gender?

Yes, this is exactly the point I intended to make on one of the earlier Palin threads--if I could have opened the web page, that is.  You guys need more bandwidth!

Gina, you are not seeing things.

Not only can Palin bring home the bacon, and fry it up in the pan, as the song goes, but she probably heard the feral pig trashing her garden the night before and took it out with a thirty-aught-six with a night scope. Dressed that big boy on the spot, left some parts lying around for the dogs.

I hear that wild pig is pretty tasty stuff, although I have yet to partake.

Wouldn't surprise me if she rebuilt her snowmobile's engine after dinner, just because she didn't like the sound of it. Then read the kids a story, then redlined a few budget proposals, then shingled the shed roof, then whipped up a banana cream pie, then reviewed the kids' homework, then wrote thirteen constituents letters in her own hand, then chopped half a cord, then sold four chairs on eBay, then knocked back a couple of scotches, then screwed hubby's socks off. By then it must be, what, 8 p.m., so it's back to the to-do list: floss the dials on the stove, clean out the email in-box, rewire the hall chandelier, put in a good 75 minutes on the elliptical trainer, sign some 8x10's for next week's fundraiser at the Rotary Club, pluck the hair growing from that skin tag on her neck, appoint three Fish & Game commissioners, plant some squash behind the garage, sync her iPod, write the middle kid a note for school about the doctor's appointment, wash out a case of Mason jars for this year's boysenberry preserves, replace the timing chain on the flatbed, buy four chairs on eBay, and check the mailbox again to see if they finally delivered her meds. Holy mother of Cheeses where the hell are those meds?

Unfortunately, men will not be able to safely attack Palin's views because of our socialization (again, see Hillary's Senate campaign against Lazio).  

But women can, and we will - count on it.

Wandreycer1 --

I know that Palin's view are to the extreme far right. And I believe those views should be attacked. But a majority of the men in the Republican party shares those views. Why, if holding extreme Christian Right views make one a lightweight, don't Dems routinely use that descriptor in reference to male Republicans?

wildboy -  talking points #1 and #2 from McC Campaign on the Palin pick today are about energy security.

Gentleman's bet that McCain reverses his stand on ANWR before the first debate.

I would love to know what "tomeg" is talking about when they say that Obama and Biden are now the cynic's choice. I am sure that there's some intelligent argument there, but I can't figure it out. Cynics would have picked CLinton. And then, stuck with Obama, they would have gone for Obama/Clinton. Only starry-eyed true believers would have put up Obama/Biden... the only cynicism so far is in McCain's pick.

You want to argue that Obama isn't qualified to be president? Your argument is with millions of Democrats. But his pick of Biden is respectable, someone we can see as qualified to be President.

McCain's choice is someone who is CLEARLY not qualified to be president. HE passed over tons of qualified people and showed that he is not interesting in governing, but in being elected, and in trying to get elected by pandering. As others have pointed out, there are many other qualified candidates with similar reps for being crussaders and campaigners who have more experience. But they are XY instead of XX and that is the only difference.

The idea that Biden won't be able to properly debate Palin bercause of her sex is ludicrous. If this were true, surely someone would have forwarded these things ages ago and put up two cute little soccer moms and cruised to victory. Everyone is so spastic this election. I guess it's the rise of the bloggers in the last four years. People need to chill.

My favorite Yard post of the week.

As for Palin, I don't know. They love her in Alaska, but Alaskans are politically bizarre--part oily Texan, part frontier hippy. They love their nature but hate their environmentalists. (Note that Palin calls herself a "conservationist" which in Alaska is semantically antithetical to, not synonymous with, environmentalist; conservationists in Alaska are nature lovers who don't make trouble for developers, oil companies, or anyone else, whereas in Alaska "environmentalist" means "litigious, misanthropic, animal-rights nutjob." The Alaskan brand of conservation works mainly because they have so much wilderness yet to despoil and so few people-per-acre that "the tragedy of the commons" seems not to apply. Last year, the state expanded its "Loser Pays" law to include environmental groups: anyone who sues a polluter and loses the case now risks bankruptcy.

Here's another weird thing about Alaskans: many are in effect welfare libertarians, receiving not only a disproportionate share of federal goodies but also the annual handout from oil companies which a majority of Alaskans repay with fealty even as they celebrate their own frontier individualism.

I wonder if her popularity in Alaska will play in the lower 48.

It may be John McCain's birthday, but it seems like he's the one giving out gifts today. The

esmense - they do, regulalry.  Tell poor Dan Quayle only women are lightweight.  Even now, he's a joke because of his mental midget status.  I've called McCain an airhead for months now.  

Calling one a lightweight is not something just associated with women, and sexism becomes a meaningless term when its seen everywhere for every reason.  Cry wolf enough times and people stop listening.  This is crying wolf.

Christianist right views are not intelligent at all - they are proudly anti-intellectual - and trying to be polite about that seems like moral relativism to me, so I will not.

And, at the end of the day, VP picks don't matter a great deal, not even the history-making ones.  That is, indeed, part of the message from Bush-Quayle.

ironyroad-

You write: ". . .at the end of the day, VP picks don't matter a great deal, not even the history-making ones.  That is, indeed, part of the message from Bush-Quayle."

I would argue (as I have on these threads for more than a year) that Bush senior picked Quayle to solidify his otherwise shaky support from the evangelicals and social conservatives that comprise a major swathe of the GOP base. George H.W. was not seen by these voters as a true believer, as one of their own, and so he had to pick a VP who was widely acceptable to that constituency. Quayle fit the bill (his wife was especially admired in evangelical circles), and picking Danny boy as VP did matter, one might argue, quite a bit, in that it secured a core voting block for Bush senior in a way that a non-believer VP would not.

John McCain (again, as I've said on these thread for quite some time now) is in a similar position to that of George H. W. Bush, in that the GOP base doesn't really trust him, doesn't really see him as a true believer, doesn't really see him as one of their own. Palin, on the other hand, is perceived to be a true believer, and it is likely that she will help galvanize support for the ticket from millions of evangelical and social conservative voters.

Which is to say, if McC had picked someone like, say, Lieberman or Romney, he might have had much less of a chance of igniting a fire under the collectve ass of the GOP base, might have much less of a chance of getting those Chistian-right foot soldiers marching on his behalf, volunteering, contributing, getting out the vote, he might have had much less of a chance of getting the vast, evangelical, alternative media beating the drum for him day after day after day.

In other words, I would argue that, in this instance (as in others), the VP selection does matter: because Palin's faith (not to mention her position on abortion) matters, in the extreme, to millions of voters within the GOP base.

One more thing: I think it's worth noting that Palin's lack of experience will not matter to evangelical voters as much as her faith (and her position on abortion). So, as far as the GOP base is concerned, the fact that she's apparently an intellectual lightweight with no real foreign policy (or domestic policy) street cred isn't going to figure into the equation.

Where this lack may matter, though, is with swing voters and disaffected Clintonistas and PUMAs and those concerned by Obama's comparative lack of experience. But there are, one might argue, a number of said voters who may be won over simply by the fact of Palin's gender.

Which is to say, McCain here is gambling that Palin's appeal as a woman may bring in as many voters as she loses due to her blatant lack of experience. While at the same time, McC must know that picking her will galvanize the GOP base behind him in a way that his own candidacy has not.

One last thing: the (historic) fact that Palin is a woman, as well as the fact that she is largely unknown, mutes or camouflages the fact that McCain is bowing to the evangelical/social conservative wing of his own party by selecting her.

In other words, I would bet that little attention in the MSM will be paid to the selection of Palin as a way for McC to knuckle under to the fundamentalist/charismatic crazies in his own base.

And so McCain gets to have it both ways: he retains his image as a maverick for choosing a woman (and a woman who blew the whistle on fellow Republicans), while at the same time he kisses the collective ass of his own religious nutwing base, without whom he probably could not win this election.

Joseph, your arguments are very convincing and, among other things, clarify something I had lurking around in the lower ground floor of my brain, but couldn't quite tease out -- specifically, that Palin is a conservative choice wrapped as a "progressive" choice in the shiny paper of gender.

I agree that my comment about Bush and Quayle was glib and not especially well thought-out.  That said, however, I think I'd stick by one thing I've posted a couple of times today, to wit, that if the election remains centered upon the choice between Obama's new directions and four more quasi-Bush-years, and if the desire not to hand it to the Republicans again is strongly present in the electorate, whether it's Palin on the ticket or not won't make any real difference to the result.

And it's worth recalling:  whatever Quayle brought into the game in '88, it didn't work so well in '92.

Cottle is dead-on here, but if in the course of events Palin reveals herself to be an unsympathetic, Katherine Harris-like character, maybe Biden will be able to take more of a run at her.

"Palin is a conservative choice wrapped as a "progressive" choice in the shiny paper of gender."

Right on the money. I totally agree with other comments suggesting that it is fundamentally up to Hillary, first and foremost, to make the case against this wildly hypocritical attempt to substitute a hyperconservative woman, wholly inexperienced on the national and international stage, for Hillary herself as the first truly legitmate national political female leader. (Ferraro manifestly does not count, having little if anything to her credit as a national figure before, like Palin, she got the VP nomination as an all too obvious pander for the "women's" vote.) Hillary must aggressively articulate to any of her supporters who remain embittered and disaffected that those who would support McCain, or even stay at home, wiell betray the Democratic party, will betray the best hope for the future we've had in our lifetime, and will personally betray her as someone whose values are completely antithetical to those of McCain and Palin. Hillary was polite today but that must stop. If disaffected feminists think they will advance their cause by casting angry votes (or none at all, same difference) in favor of McCain and Palin, who would love nothing more than to grind feminist ideals of social justice and individual autonomy into the dust, they could not be more wrong.

Hillary has to confront those still disaffected in her camp with that notion of how betrayed she would feel (and I believe she would feel that way), if her former supporters cast votes for people who embrace ideas she finds totally reprehensible. I so hope she steps up to that task and that Obama totally rewards her for it. If she wants to be Secretary of State, or anything else, appoint her and let everyone know before election day. If she wants to stay in the Senate to follow if Teddy's footsteps, so much the better.

From the note of near panic in the tone of the comments from the left on Sarah Palin I can tell that McCain has made a brilliant move.

It isn't just about gender,  It's about the contrast between a political reformer with genuine talent and real convictions and a tedious cynical hack like Joe Biden.  I think that the American people, when push comes to shove, prefer the genuine to the phony.

I am a card-carrying atheist, and Charles Darwin is my all time favorite thinker.  Most working class people are of a different opinion.  That doesn't make them fools.  They just happen to be wrong on that point.

By the way, as Steven Pinker has shown in his splendid book The Blank Slate, liberals in many of their beliefs are as much at variance with the discoveries of modern science as are Christian fundamentalists.

Much the same dynamic was at play in the French Presidential contest between Sarkozy and Segoline Royale, including Sarko's reputation for being a bit of a loose cannon and Royale's beauty pagent looks.  But when the risk is that obvious, its pretty easy to prepare for.  Biden will bend over backwards to be a gentleman and will  thoroughly dismantle the lady from Wasilla.  I am looking forward to watching that debate.

Well, we don't have to speculate about what Biden's like in a debate with a woman. We've gotten lots of examples.

Just look at the many debates Biden had against Hillary in 2007. He did a fantastic job.

So I'm not worried about Biden's ability to win the VP debate. I don't think that debate is going to matter much. This is not a big issue.

"By the way, as Steven Pinker has shown in his splendid book The Blank Slate, liberals in many of their beliefs are as much at variance with the discoveries of modern science as are Christian fundamentalists."

I know you said "by the way," Bulbman, but what on earth are you talking about?  And what's the relevance to the issue at hand?

ironyroad,

My point is this.  Liberals attacking Christian fundamentalists for being anti-science  are hypocritical, since neither party is a friend of science.  In particular, liberals deny that genes are relevant to understanding the difference between races, between genders, and between individuals.  The liberal story is that those differences are "socially constructed" by some conspiracy on the part of white males.  That claim is every bit as dumb as the idea that the earth is six thousand years old, and in practical terms has done a lot more harm.

Liberals believe, or rather profess to believe, that most differences in power and status between groups and individuals are due to malice on somebody’s part.  I say “profess to believe”, because few people are really stupid enough to believe what liberals profess out of a devotion to political correctness.

Reply to johnalthousecohen:

Bring it on.  We have Joe Biden, a loud-mouthed sleazebag who has contributed nothing to this country in the course of his long and undistinguished career, versus a brave, intelligent woman who has defeated the corrupt Republicans in her state.  The Democrats yammer about the “middle class”. But when the real thing comes along they show their contempt for ordinary Americans,

The working class senses the hostility of the left for the values they believe in: liberty, honor, family, hard work, responsibility, and patriotism.   They don't want a bunch of liberal snobs running their lives.   I don’t blame them.   The fact that you read the New Yorker and listen to NPR doesn’t make you better than other people, however much liberals believe the contrary.

The desire to dominate others is one of the worst features of human nature, and liberals have made it into a religion.

What Joe Cuomo said. Brilliant analysis, way out front of our media betters. Doubt they'll ever figure out the game here.

Why are Joe Cuomo and Bill Yard giving it away for free, while hacks at MSNBC and elsewhere pull down handsome salaries?

Bulbman, it's quite nice to see someone point that liberals are no friends of science. What you say is very true of the humanities academics, of which I am sick (and I wish the university I work at would be institutionally separated from the history/english/social science/law departments, populated exactly by the kind of obscurantist math-challenged fanatics you talk about).

It is not true of the scientists (I am one of the many). It also is definitely not true of Bill Clinton, the liberal who, among US presidents, was the biggest friend of science ever. I shit on feelings and words - but Bill Clinton wasn't a friend in words, rather in what matters most: funding. He greatly increased the funding of basic science research, more than any other US president. Of course, all these gains were reversed by the medieval Republican dimwit that is now a president.

Now, when it comes to the future, I trust more Obama than McCain for the future of US science. (I trusted even more Hilary, who had by far the most substantial and articulate program for science - but she lost.)  I trust McCain to continue the same science-destructive policy as Bush; there's zero evidence that he plans anything else.

So, as a practicing scientist between the Democrat and the Republican, I root for the Democrat - even though I personally dislike him.

I find it interesting that the very same people who were jumping for joy at the prospect of a TIM KAINE nomination are now acting as if the Palin nomination is unthinkable.

"Woe are we!  How can America possibly go on if this woman is a heartbeat away from the Presidency?  It's just shocking!"  

First, Palin's accomplishments, unlike Obama's and Kaine's, are many, they are eclectic, and they display profound independence from Republican coercion,  Second, it's Barack Obama who sits at the top of the Democratic ticket!  It's his inexperience that is to be even CLOSER than a heartbeat away from the presidency.  Lest you forget, this is a man who said after his election to the Senate three and a half years ago that he wouldn't be prepared for the job in '08... and then commenced to run for it!

I'm actually looking forward to Palin's debate with Biden, because the underestimation going on in these quarters only enhances her upside in the long run.  PUMA!

sleepyavi,

I wish scientists like you had taken a firm stand against the takeover of the social sciences and the humanities departments by the obscurantist left.  Instead you fed them to the crocodiles in the hope that you would be spared. Now the radical feminists are targeting the hard sciences.  Can you spell "quota"?    Soon we’ll have courses in Physics from a Feminist Point of View and Folk and Ethnic Mathematics.   Maybe economic considerations will prevent that.  Foreign students are an important source of revenue, and I don't think they are interested in a degree in Feminist Drivel.

In his last State of the Union message Bush called for a doubling of funding for basic research.  What was the result of that?

Could you point me to some to some data on this issue?

McCain is far from being anti-science.  He even supports federal funding for stem cell research.

ironyroad & tep-

Thanks for the kind words.

Thjere are two issues connected with the choice of Governor Palin as John McCain's running mate and, to me, other issues like experience, etc., should be left on the table.

The two issues are:

Governor Palin is a poster child for the religious, conservative right;

In the choice of Governor Palin indicates how a President McCain makes choices, John McCain has shown how out-of-touch he is with where America is and where it is going.

If Obama gets these two ideas into the heads of voters...Obama will certainly be the next President.

Bulbman:

Well, many of us have taken a stand. However, unless you're a higher up in university administration (I mean really high - vice-president, provost, president), you cannot influence the selection of people in other departments. Moreover, the administration is often in the hands of these people - far more are interested in pushing papers than practicing scientists. I gather you don't quite know how the system works.

Scientists need money (especially in experimental sciences) which they raise through applying for (always) competitive grants (more than 2/3 of funding is federal). If you have no grants, you cannot hire people to have a team and to do research and you will not get a tenured position.

In contrast, most the humanities people teach some (what they don't dump on their teaching assistants) and don't depend on grants. So they have plenty of time for rubbish.

I would not want to libel all humanities, since there are plenty of serious people in art and music - fields where you have to demonstrate some ability, however subjective the assessment is. I mean that if someone plays music badly, everyone hears it. By contrast, fields where you can get away with writing alone (history, English and comparative literature, social sciences - economics and architecture NOT included) are replete with human garbage, of the hateful kind usually.

But, as I say, it is not scientists who recruited these bastards. The universities have presidents and boards - these didn't do enough and that's where the problem is.

As for the funding, I really really hate Bush. What he has done over the past five years is nothing short of a catastrophe for US science. The man is a real enemy of science. His promises? He lies looking at you in the eyes. The budget of the NIH hasn't even kept in line with inflation and will not. He keeps his promises about as much as Yasser Arafat. His promises aren't worth a horse's shit.

The consequences are severe: around the country tons of scientists (good people, well trained) were fired because there was no grant money for their salaries. I work at a major US research university and I have seen labs shrinking across the board in the past five years.

It is as a scientist that hate Bush, not otherwise. While I think he is a mediocre fellow who would run a bodega if he didn't have a US president daddy, I actually agreed with his decisions to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq - so don't get me wrong there. But what he has done to science is abysmal. The man and his shitty advisers don't understand that the technological edge of a country comes from basic research. You don't have to be a Democrat to understand that, but it seems it helps. Yes there were Republicans who were decent about science - Eisenhower, Bush father. But both Reagan and W. Bush were true enemies of science - not surprising for these two imbeciles.

I don't give a shit on cultural wars. But I do care, a lot, about the substance - and that is making sure there is enough funding and freedom for science. Cutting the funding is like cutting the artery of an animal. No blood, no life.

I don't trust McCain, because he hasn't said exactly how he will support science. Hillary Clinton was the only one who said clearly what she would do, by how much she would increase funding and so on.  But McCain? Please. We've seen how his party handled science and how eagerly all those Republican legislators followed W. Bush in his war against American science.

bulbman, also keep in mind that academia isn't the only field replete with bastards. Just look at the corporate world, where the robber barons are aplenty and corrupt too - Ken Lay (too bad he wasn't executed - may he burn in hell, may his name be damned and memory be erased) and many others like him, depraved fellows who steal people's pensions.

The hateful bastards from the left have quite nice equivalences in the predatory bastards of the corporate world. People will be as nasty as they can. And they can: the right-wingers steal (preferably from the weak) and with the support of corrupt politicians like Dick Cheney in the US or Jacques Chirac in France; the left-wingers become humanities professors and support every terrorist and dictator under the sun.

Perhaps it has to do with a human demonism. Right or left are insufficient to explain the evil in so many people.

sleepyyavi,

Thanks for your interesting and informative post on funding for basic science.

Congress must have played a role in cutting back the funding for research.   President Bush hasn't vetoed many spending bills.  Maybe scientists need to get some better lobbyists.

It's unfair to imply that all or most corporate executives are like Ken Lay and that gang.  Fortunately that is far from being the case.   Journalists and liberal politicians tend to bash business for their own political gain, without regard to the facts.

As if Michelle Cottle would have apporved of any one Mccane picked.

Sleepy and Bulbman:  speaking personally, I'm a liberal but not a snob, and moreover I work in a humanities department in which the vast majority of my colleagues are committed to educating and helping their students toward becoming thinking adults, as well as writing about the things -- which run the gamut from the history of classical rhetoric to postmodern American literature -- that they are passionate about (it isn't the money that attracts people to the academic life, that's for sure).  

In general, I make the same assumption about people in the science and social science departments, and I don't feel the need to buttress my professional ego by treating colleagues with contempt.  But, in any case, even the most blinkered individual on campus must know that the job in the humanities is not the same as the job in the sciences, and shoot-from-the-hip comparisons add nothing to the discussion.

I strongly recommend historian Wilfred McClay's article in the Wilson Quarterly

www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm

I haven't seen this anywhere else, and I want it on the record so I can say "I told you so" later...

I think Michelle Cottle has got this right with regard to the risks for Joe Biden.  But what about the risks for John McCain?  I figure the chances are near zero that he will not blunder into some intergenerational feminist tripwire in the next 2 months.  His public posture viz Hillary as an opponent, with her generation's tough feminist skin and her legitimacy as a peer, would have been much easier to manage than cute but featherweight Sarah Palin will be as a running mate.  Old Senator Top Gun is bound, bound I tell you, to condescend and patronize at the very least and maybe way worse.  The similar but more coachable risk of subliminal old school framing of the Race Question has been there all along, of course, but now Team McCain has set their warrior up with a much more insidious sword to fall on.  I frankly look forward to the spectacle.

bulbman and ironyroad:

bulbman: Ken Lay isn't the typical executive. But he made tons of money and was tipped to be US secretary of energy. The fact that people like that (or Ebbers or others thieves) succeed and are honored is the problem.

ironyroad: Same thing for the US humanities departments that I know of. I am convinced that many of the humanities faculty are true scholars, I know personally several such people. Nevertheless, it is the scoundrels who get traction. I see this very very clearly at my university and at other top US universities I know well: it is the bastards that call the shots. This works mostly because the bastards understood very well the Bolshevik credo - disregard opinion, go for the power positions by ANY means. The bastards at the universities I know have absolutely nothing to be taught, in terms of financial corruption and character assassination, by Karl Rove.

Also, they have time in their hands: they don't need grants and they do something else that might surprise you. The surprise is that they write books. That is, not articles for peer-reviewed journals. No, books that do not pass professional scrutiny and that are, at the same time much longer than a research article. (So their adversaries lose: they must waste time to read their unchecked drivel and they must buy the book too!) This way the bastards appear as scholars without actually being ones. How could they be? Maybe they were as PhD students, but then once they're finished with it they go into the business of paper-pushing, supporting thirld-world dictators and terrorists (which they call "speaking truth to power") and boycotting Israel for a living. If you think I am exaggerating, I have lots of names for every assertion I have made.

Bottom line: there are many more evil charlatans there than in science - where if you're a charlatan, you lose the grants and you're finished quickly.

This blog post doesn't at all support the front-page teaser, "Why Feminists Should Be Angry About The Palin Nomination."

Is TNR Becoming Slate.com? Click Here To Find Out!

aquamon:

Palin "cute but featherweight?" As someone who knows Alaskan politics told a New York newspaper, that state's landscape is littered with the political corpses of those who crossed her both before and after she became governor.  

Definitely an issue. But while Obama and Biden may not be allowed to chew her out, there's no rule stopping ME. ^_~

Michelle Cottle, like most ideologues, has no sense of irony.   Sarah Palin represents the success of what is legitimate in feminism.   Talk about a woman who has done it all and isn't afraid of the old boys’ network.  Sarah, unlike the so-called feminist left*, understands that love of family and country are in the interest of women, especially when their country is the USA.

*American “feminists” refuse to criticize radical Islam.  That level of irrationality is almost beyond comprehension.

Sleepy:  you don't know what you are talking about.  Book proposals to academic presses in the humanities or anywhere else are anonymously reviewed, and publishers won't take them on unless there is a consensus that the book meets scholarly standards.  There certainly have been a few cases in which material got through that should have been spotted as inadequate, but I'd like to point out that (a) we're human beings, and (b) this happens in academic science too now and again.

A personal example:  my book had to pass muster anonymously with two outside critical readers (one in a different discipline) and there was a second inspection of the revised ms by the editorial board of the press (also academics to whom my name meant nothing).  And time?  Give me a break!  Neither in grad school, nor in my non-tenure-track jobs, nor in my current job have I a lot of time on my hands.  And more importantly:  one reason why people write books is that most universities now demand a book for tenure.  The other reason is that they are passionate about the topics they think about and involve themselves with.

I'd be very happy to bring you down to my school and introduce you to colleagues in my department, and ask you to identify the ones that fit your ugly and contemptuous caricature.  I believe that would be impossible, as almost nobody fits it.

ironyroad, take a look at books by Cornel West (Princeton and Harvard) on anything, Houston Baker (Penn, Duke and now Vanderbilt), Edward Said (Columbia) in Mddle East or Noam Chomsky (MIT) on anything else than linguistics. I am talking of course only of books published by univesity presses and which ths have the pretense of scholarship.

Edward Said's "Orientalism" is the perfect example. It was praised as a landmark book and it is not only idiotic, but full of factual errors that would land freshman in trouble passing his exam. Yet this fraudulent book is considered by many humanities academics as a foundational book - they hold conferences about it! Perhaps you mean to tell me that reviewers allowed his many historical howlers to pass? Then who were the reviewers. Maybe the falafel cart guys.

If you consider any of these three serious scholars, there's no reason to continue this dialogue.

As for my characterization, it fits very well the individuals and the reality at the universities I mentioned above and I have very direct and relevant experience with it. I dispute your libel of "ugly caricature", which you make with zero evidence. My characterization is based on facts. I don't dispute that your department is good and I am happy for you. But I am at a university where the humanities academics support terrorism and where the vice-president initiates anti-Israel boycotts  and promotes anti-Semites, so my contempt is entirely deserved.

That's a weird compilation of books and authors, which seems to make little sense.  First of all, I think we have to remove Chomsky from the list, because -- after my quick review on amazon.com -- his polemical screeds are not published by academic presses but rather by small trade presses aiming to do political books (and no doubt pleased that NC sells).

Cornel West I can't say anything about, not having read him, except that I've seem him on tv and occasionally he says something reasonable.  But maybe you're right that he's a fraud.

I think Houston Baker's 1980 book "Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature" does a pretty neat job, especially on the sense of exile in black cultural forms; however, I've also read a couple of more recent shorter pieces, which I haven't been so keen on -- but that's because my eyes tend to glaze over when confronted with (a) dense academic prose arguing some point that might have been made with more clarity or (b) arguments about race that leave no room for political nuance.  Hence my liking for critics such as Lionel Trilling, Kenneth Burke, Erich Auerbach, Wayne Booth, and Eric Sundquist.

I think Said is a bit of a different issue.  I've no doubt that "Orientalism" has major weaknesses and factual errors that have now been exposed, but it is written with a kind of fluid chutzpah and it did do a good job of shaking up some standard lenses for how the American academy looked at abroad, and how it wasn't so far from the imperial condescension of British, French, and German scholars back in the day (which doesn't dismiss their work on language, history, culture, archaelology etc, but qualifies it a bit).  I don't think its effect has been pernicious, as it has provoked considerable opposition and challenge as well as affirmation.

In fact I've met a couple of Middle Easterners who were themselves somewhat skeptical of it -- they thought it left out some of esp. Egyptian intellectual history (the East looking at the West) in order to create a black-white picture of western intellectual prejudice.

Incidentally, Said states clearly himself in the preface to the second edition that the book was discussed widely and vigorously in Israel, but was subject to censorship and silence throughout the Arab world.

I can only say of my own experience -- and maybe it's different if you're already a "name" -- that I had not only the two anonymous readers I mentioned, but also at a later point a copy editor who had an eagle-eye for factual or citation errors, and found a bunch of stuff that forced me to check everything again and again.  I'm assuming that wasn't unique to me.

All that said, I reiterate that it is a caricature to take specific cases (and your list above is apples and pears that can't be really compared) and use them as a broad brush to tar thousands of people working in whole areas of education, research, and writing.  The humanities is a type of conversation, not a one-way dialogue, and the process should not to be confused with the individual actions or publications of any one person.  And just because you don't agree with a book's politics doesn't make it a bad book.

I find e.g. T.S. Eliot's political and social opinions pretty offensive, but I admire him as a writer and critic.

In many if not most humanities and social science departments education has been replaced by indoctrination.  Many of the practitioners deny that there is any difference.

What we have is educational malpractice on a vast scale.

When the brilliant president of Harvard University can be fired for making a politically incorrect remark, utterly without malice or ill intent, then something is rotten in the state of education.

Sleeepyavi has it right.  The dominant ideology is a witches’ brew of postmodernist irrationalism, anti-Americanism, radical feminism, reverse racism and anti-Semitism.   Openly criticize that ideology on campus and you can get into trouble.

Bulbman burbles:  "In many if not most humanities and social science departments education has been replaced by indoctrination.  Many of the practitioners deny that there is any difference."

Two assertions, two lies.

To overcome Palin, all Joe has to be is what he is: a gentleman.

ironyroad,

The issue I am discussing has been explored in numerous books and countless articles in the last thirty years.   Much of this literature is by distinguished scholars.  Take a look at the web site of the National Association of Scholars. http://www.nas.org/index.cfm

By no means are all of the critics of the politicizing of the humanities conservatives.  They include the scholar and critic Harold Bloom, a self-described New Deal liberal, and the Milton scholar Stanley Fish, a postmodernist leftist.

I think it is implausible that this large and diverse array of critics consists entirely of liars.

I gather from your list of your favorite critics that you are not one of the culprits.  You have good taste in criticism.   I suspect that out of politeness and a desire to get along you are ignoring those who don't share your high standards.

The statement from the California Association of Scholar, an affiliate of the National Association of Scholar, lays out clearly many of the important issues facing higher education today.

The California Association of Scholars seeks to:

 * affirm the centrality of academic freedom to the integrity of university life and

    strengthen the right to teach and learn in an environment free of politicization

    and coercion;

 * nourish the free exchange of ideas and the virtues of tolerance as essential to the

    pursuit of truth and the maintenance of civility;

 * build and sustain an academic leadership dedicated to the idea of reasoned and

    responsible scholarship;

 * maintain intellectual standards in research and teaching, and resist quotas and other

    numerically based formulas as divisive and inequitable strategies for faculty

    recruitment and student admissions;

Issues That Concern Us:

 * Politicization of scholarship and teaching, and the substitution of social reform for

    the pursuit of knowledge;

 * Dogmatic hostility to Western civilization, and reflexive use of non-Western  

    cultures as a means of denouncing American society;

 * Inappropriate use of sexual, racial, and other nonscholarly criteria in selecting

    works to be studied, and the associated denigration of great literary and artistic

    works;

 * Absence of core curricula or other requirements ensuring a well-rounded

    education, and their replacement by unscholarly curricular innovations that lack

    substance and intellectual depth;

 * Use of sexual, racial, or other criteria unrelated to merit in hiring, in promotion,

    and in student recruitment, and the resulting campus polarization;

 * Use of noncurricular resources such as orientations and residential life programs to

    impose political and ideological conformity on student life;

 * Unfair treatment of teachers and students suspected of holding "politically

    incorrect" views, and its obverse, the frequent placation of activists by

    administrators who refuse to enforce campus regulations;

 * The impact of lowered academic standards in colleges and universities on

    education at lower levels, and the resulting inadequate preparation of high school

    graduates for  college work.

It's simply untrue -- that is, there is *no* evidence for the assertion -- to claim that "In many if not most humanities and social science departments education has been replaced by indoctrination."  It's also pretty insulting.  In my grad school career and as a professor (all in all, at four different instituions) I have met hardly anyone (in fact, no-one) who to my knowledge would penalize a student merely for taking a different political position or having a different political opinion from his or hers.  Most people in the humanities pride themselves on their ability to get students to think about both classical and modern materials in different ways, and the chemistry between a professor and a class can play a role in how it happens -- but a student who regards e.g. the very task of critical thinking itself as an ideological imposition and tries to claim that such an approach is "indoctrination" already has his or her own rigid ideological agenda.

Some -- very few -- students are also quick to try to assert that inadequate work was penalized because of its perceived ideological perspective, as opposed to weaknesses in writing and logic, and indeed there is a small and sleazy conservative sub-culture which consists of trying to label teachers on the basis of the very classes they teach, let alone on how they teach them.  The very presence of the term "gender" or "race" seems likely to provoke hostilty in some people, who knows why.

There are of course individual scandals and controversies, which take place in all human institutions, which are rightly followed up and dealt with within a professional context -- but they can also be played for all their worth by a media that doesn't like or understand higher education and a network of right-wing advocacy groups with ugly agendas.

I can't go through the list you've provided of ideologically distorted bullet points, but one I noticed is enough to discredit it in its entirety.  Go through any catalog at any half-way respectable university or college, and you will find there is no absence of "core curricula or other requirements ensuring a well-rounded education."  That's nonsense, pure and simple.

A very good friend, who is a lifelong Alaskan and one of the smartest people I know, offers this word