As I’ve been hinting, I finally got around to my goal of reading Walter Lippmann. I still haven’t finished the seminal Public Opinion, but can heartily recommend the frequently overlooked Phantom Public, a quicker, easier read that still encapsulates several of Lippmann’s key ideas about public opinion and democratic legitimation. In fact, it’s hard to […]
Back when I saw the documentary Weather Underground, I wondered why the documentary didn’t do a better job explaining what the Weather Underground’s politics were, or where they came from. It seemed content to remain on the level of content ("radicals hated the System") and Cliff’s Notes history (those 60s sure were a radical time). […]
It’s not my intention to make this blog Jon Keller Watch, but this week’s interview with Marty Meehan was just too rich. On the Alito hearings, he asks:
Yet again, Democrats wound up taking legitimate policy differences…and kind of squandering the argument in overheated rhetoric that tried to paint the other side as extreme — a […]
In the comments, Lynne writes,
Polls don’t reflect that "by and large the country leans rightward on the political spectrum" if you poll on the issues.
Maybe. I still need to be convinced - does anyone have pointers to someone presenting this thesis, or a good resource for polling data? - but her comment does bring […]
Being on the other side of the political divide, I would probably put the emphasis on this differently, but Lexington has a point (sorry, premium content, but you might be able to watch an ad like I did):
RICHARD HOFSTADTER’S classic essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”, was aimed at the American right […]
I could get behind David Warsh’s complaint that the apathy surrounding the latest GOP scandals is actually a big deal and something very bad for our democray. But I don’t know what we get calling by calling it "postmodern corruption." In my mind postmodern politics has a potentially useful reference to a political mode in […]
Sometimes I like local pundit Jon Keller - at the very least he’s beefed up CBS4’s political beat and has been a more analytical version of WHDH-7’s Andy Hiller. But this brand of political cynicism seems wrongheaded to me:
We are coming up on the 30th anniversary of the last major auto insurance reform here, […]
I was wondering how the White House might be dealing with fears of a GOP split on the Miers nomination until watching the NewsHour last night:
MARGARET WARNER: So, it’s one thing for you all to send out blogs and make statements and write columns now, before the hearings start, but are you, do you think […]
City Council candidate (for what used to be my district before reallocated to Mike Ross) Gibran Rivera looks at a West Roxbury development proposal and asks, “How do condos set to sell at almost half a million dollars helping us solve the lack in affordable housing?”
Regular readers - or those who want to click on […]
Maureen Dowd has been really on lately. After what is mostly an indictment of a President so incurious about the world that he doesn’t seem to watch the news, she gets to the punchline:
The president should stop haunting New Orleans, looking for that bullhorn moment. It’s too late.
One of the maddening things about the […]
A blogger at TPMCafe points me to yet another attempt at Ronald Reagan hagiography, this time the creation of Ronald Reagan Boulevard in DC. If these folks had their way half our public spaces, streets and monuments would be named after the Gipper. At what point this crosses outright over into totalitarian-style forced memorialization, I […]
I don’t know if David Sirota represents any larger trend besides David Sirota, but if he does, this post is enough to put me off of it. If I wanted wild, Know-Nothing rantings against policy journalists as “elitists with cushy jobs,” I’d vote Republican.
Trade policy seems the bone of contention here, and I’m wondering […]
So… what did I think of the book? First, I should say that this is one book so widely cited and so talked about that I came to it already thinking I knew exactly what the argument would be. Fortunately, I was pleased to find a different book than I expected. Thomas Frank is a […]
Why oh why does Timothy Noah begin to think that Bush will fire Karl Rove? Not only do you have the legendary premium on loyalty that the Bushies have, but Bush would be lost politically without Rove.
As far as the Plame scandal itself, Mark Schmitt gets it right when he discusses this not as a […]
Theoretically, I’m quite receptive to discussion of politically frames. After all, as someone schooled in semiotics and media studies, I think narrative is central to all arenas of life, politics especially. Furthermore, books like Todd Gitlin’s The Whole World Was Watching, which introduced the notion of a news frame to media studies, are remarkably helpful.
But […]