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McCain’s service
As is clear from Michael Goldfarb’s response, the right will seek to portray any questioning of McCain’s cross story as an attempt “to disparage a fellow countryman’s memory of war from the comfort of mom’s basement….” But that’s just the point: If McCain falsified this account, then it is he who disparaged his own memory of war. “[B]ut most Americans,”
Campaign dirt
“Swiftboating” has become an all-purpose term, a synonym for smearing, but its accurate meaning is to accuse a candidate of embroidering his (or her) military record for political gain. In 2004 a group of hacks tried this against John Kerry. It may not have caused his defeat but it certainly didn’t help. Now we have a very damning circumstantial case
Georgia: gaining perspective
Ok … Having sounded off on the failure of liberal pundits to express clear outrage at Russia’s incursion into Georgia, it’s time to note some parallel absurdities on the other side. Like John McCain declaring “We are all Georgians” to a room full of Middle Americans who haven’t the slightest clue what he’s talking about, but applaud anyway. Like George
The week on disc (24)
In case you missed the last one… George Colligan, Runaway (Sunnyside) Danilo Pérez, Across the Crystal Sea (EmArcy) Roy Hargrove Quintet, Earfood (EmArcy/Groovin’ High) Rebecca Martin, The Growing Season (Sunnyside) Uri Caine Ensemble, The Othello Syndrome (Winter & Winter) Wolfert Brederode Quartet, Currents (ECM)
King Crimson at 40
One of the most short-sighted things I’ve ever done was a big vinyl purge, years ago, necessitated by moving but costing me some great mid-’70s Judas Priest, every Rush album and too much else to think about. It says something, however, that I kept all 12 of my King Crimson records. The band and I are both 40 this year.
Dismissing Georgia
Andrew Sullivan joins the smugness bandwagon on Georgia, calling the besieged country “uppity” and issuing this shameful bit of relativism: Maybe we should start complaining when as many Georgians have perished as Iraqis – and when Putin throws thousands of innocent Georgians into torture chambers. Thank god there are readers taking him to task on this: That’s a ghastly thing
Russia the aggressor
Yglesias’s take on the Russia-Georgia shooting war, which seems to lay large amounts of blame on Georgia, strikes me as fatuous. He begins with an oddly strained parallel: Perhaps a closer analogy in the present-day context would be to Cuba, like Georgia a former favorite vacation destination for the great power’s elite, a country we’ve been horribly mistreating for decades