At the Wisconsin Capitol today.

Photos by Meade (who also took a long video of the Tammy Baldwin/Jesse Jackson procession).







The taped-on message there is: "If you voted for Walker, then you voted for Nazism."

Scott Walker likened to Stalin... and to the Wicked Witch of the West.

Some analogies are more heavy-handed than others:


(Enlarge.)

I talked to the man who combined "SS" and Stalin in his denouncement of Walker:



And to the young woman with the "Release the Flying Monkeys" sign:



(The photo and videos were done at about 11:40 this morning, at the Wisconsin State Capitol.)

"Barack Obama is the most partisan politician since Richard Nixon."

Says Victor Davis Hanson, explaining why call for "civility" is bogus:

His brief Senate record, his health-care partisanship of 2009, his snickering amid audience applause after the “inadvertent” middle-fingering of Hillary Clinton, and his polarizing metaphorical speech (e.g., knives, guns, kicking ass, getting angry, getting in their face, hostage takers, trigger fingers, tearing up) all attest to that.

That Obama is a postracial mellifluent Chicago politician does not mean that he is not a Chicago politician. That he blasts the “fat cats,” the “stupidly” acting police, and the limb-lopping surgeons, or that his attorney general calls the American people “cowards,” is typical, not aberrant. For 2012, President Obama will have raised $1 billion in cash. He knows from 2008 (“cling to guns or religion,” “typical white person,” “gun to a knife fight”) that his own emotionalism and polarization both earn him cash and create the “them” against “us” (minorities, youth, gays, women) binaries that might draw attention away from an agenda that a majority simply does not want. Obama has always used polarizing politics, coupled with calls for bipartisanship, to great effect, and he surely — as we just saw again in October 2010 (“punish,” “backseat,” “enemies”) — cannot stop now....

Indeed, hours after President Obama’s calls for a new landscape of civility, Rep. Steven Cohen (D., Tenn.) was comparing Republican opponents of the health-care legislation to Nazis from the House floor, while Slate published a screed by Emily Bazelon on  “Why I Loathe My Connecticut Senator,” with serial expressions of how she “loathed” and “despised” Sen. Joe Lieberman.

"That last post wrecked my blog theme. I was working on a theme."

Meade: "What theme?"

Me: "My piss theme. I had a piss theme going. That's how I got to the dog that pissed off the Nazis. I Googled 'piss,' because I saw I had a theme going."

Meade: "What?"

Me: "There was the 'pee-o-meter' and... "

Meade: "Where was the piss in the first post, the Johnny Weir..."

Me (suddenly realizing I didn't use Johnny Weir's "pissed me off" and "heard worse in bathrooms" until the the second post): "Oh, yeah."

Meade: "Johnny Wee-er."

Me: "You're good with the homophones. The homophobe homophones."

Meade: "I'm afraid of homophones."

"Jackie the Hitler Saluting Dog Really Pissed Off the Nazis."

"The documents reveal that three German ministries became involved in the investigation of a Finnish pharmaceutical magnate, Tor Borg, and his dog Jackie, over reports that the dog was trained to ... [respond] to the command 'Hitler' by raising its paw."

I can't find video of the dog, but here's Hitler's reaction:

"And so you look at something like the 17th century Brandenburg Gate and you think – oh my, how splendid."

"Until you think about who passed through its gates and why. And you can’t help but recall all things having to do with military strength and conquest. And how are you supposed to process it? Are you supposed to smile for the camera? Pose, and with a person making a Euro by imitating a German soldier? On this cold day there are several such 'soldiers' for you to choose from: from the wars of the past century, from the post war Soviet presence here – pick your poison. In the alternative you can stand next to a bear."

Things you may have missed if you didn't hang out here over the weekend.

1. "Witch! Whore!... Nazi!" How evil is it for a candidate to play the role of a Nazi in war reenactments? How evil is it for a journalist to write about that and bury — in the 13th paragraph — the news that the same man — Rich Iott —  has also done reenactment as a Civil War Union infantryman, a World War I doughboy and a World War II American infantryman and paratrooper?

2. It's sexist to worry about calling Meg Whitman a whore. If women are going to join men in politics, they deserve to be called whores like the rest of them.  

3. Woeful/wilful metaphor deafness: Some people just don't/won't understand what it means to say "some people are just born to be slaves."

4. "Watch Russ Feingold confidently assert that he represents Tea Party values."

5. The story of a pregnant woman who had to pee invokes an old memory of the time I was persecuted by Episcopalians. 

Witch! Whore!... Nazi!

A (Republican) Senate candidate has been called a witch. A (Republican) gubernatorial candidate has been called a whore. And now... a — guess which party? — House candidate is tarred with Nazi.

"Why is This GOP House Candidate Dressed as a Nazi?" You may click to see Rich Iott — posing and smiling in 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking uniform with 3 of his closest Nazi friends... I mean... with 3 of his fellow WW2 reenacters.  "It's purely historical interest in World War II." Hmm. Yeah. The high-profile article — by Joshua Green in The Atlantic — goes on, stoking your suspicion that a guy who dresses up and plays the part of Nazi has got to feel some affinity for Nazis. Sample:

Iott participated in the group under his own name, and also under the alias "Reinhard Pferdmann," which has also been removed, and which Iott described as being his German alter ego. "Part of the reenactor's [experience]," Iott said, "is the living-history part, of really trying to get into the persona of the time period. In many, not just in our unit, but in many units what individuals do is create this person largely based on a Germanized version of their name, and a history kind of based around your own real experiences. 'Reinhard' of course is 'Richard' in German. And 'Pferdmann,' 'pferd' is a horse. So it's literally 'horse man.'"

I was very far into the position of thinking man, this guy should not have been the candidate, what a screw-up for the Republicans when I got to this information — buried at the end of the 13th paragraph of the 15-paragraph article:

[Iott] added that he has participated in re-enactments as a Civil War Union infantryman, a World War I dough boy and World War II American infantryman and paratrooper.

What?! Green should be ashamed of himself for minimizing this. The 13th paragraph is about follow-up email with Iott. Did Green have the whole damning article written when he encountered this crucial piece of information? And then he decided — what? — to stick it where it's least likely to be read? A decent journalist would have ascertained how many war reenactments Iott has done and which roles Iott played in them. What is the proportion of Nazi roles he assumed compared to the number of times he played WW2 American infantrymen or paratroopers? Who decides, when war reenactments are done, which side somebody plays? Give me a realistic picture of what participation in war reenactments is really like so I can assess what Iott did.

Instead, Green's article is filled out with the well-known information that the Nazis were bad and that Jews and others are offended by signs that a person is sympathetic to Nazis. It's pretty obvious that Green is hot to smear Iott and help the Democrat in the race. And, unsurprisingly, the Democratic blogosphere welcomes Green's hearty slab of biased reporting.

TPM's Josh Marshall types up "Marcy Kaptur's Good Night's Sleep" ("whatever worry she may have had about reelection, I think that's over now that her opponent Rich Iott has been revealed as an avid Nazi reenactor"). Also at TPM ,Evan McMorris-Santoro has a long piece that looks like a rewrite of Green's piece, except that it leaves out the crucial information about other reenactments altogether. How incredibly slimy!

Look! Over there! Nazis! They're eeeevil! Sorry, but I'm looking over here, at journalists who should be ashamed of their shoddy political hackery.

"American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains."

Uh oh! That's Christine O'Donnell, my dear friends.

Via Memeorandum.

ADDED: And here she is with Eddie Izzard!

What's so terrible about book burning?

I'm wondering, after reading this hyperventilation in the always-awful "On Faith" section of the Washington Post. The author is Gustav Niebuhr:

In the United States, short of causing arson, you can burn a book, just as you can America's most sacred symbol, the U.S. flag. It's Constitutionally guaranteed. Free speech.

The moral question here is, how do we handle our freedom, which permits us appalling, anti-social acts?

As an American who deeply believes in free speech, I regard burning a book as a nearly unspeakably terrible thing. It is an assault on knowledge, and the societal value of allowing people to read and decide for themselves whether what they read has meaning to them. Torch a book and you at least symbolically deny your fellow men and women that freedom.

What's more, you replicate images of a political brutality--book burnings in Germany in the 1930s--that will haunt our planet for generations to come.

Good lord. There's an immense difference between burning your own book as a way of saying "I hate this book" — which adds more expression to the marketplace of ideas — and the confiscation and destruction of other people's books — which is about depriving people of access to expression that they want to consume.

It's offensive to say "I hate this book" about a book that some people revere, but that's the point. It's a vigorous, vicious expression. Burning your own copy of a book is the same thing. Unless you possess the only copy of the book — or, perhaps, an artistically or historically distinctive copy — the burning is just a way of being showily expressive and getting a big audience. It's absurd that any clown who wants attention can light a tiny fire and become world famous. Get a grip, people.

I find it hard to believe that Niebuhr and hyperventilators like him are big readers of important books, because their minds seem pretty feeble to me. "Torch a book and you at least symbolically deny your fellow men and women that freedom." At least symbolically. Or, to put it another way, i.e., truthfully: You don't deny other people anything. You give them something: the information that is your hatred of a book. And as they "decide for themselves whether what they read has meaning," they can take into account that you hate the book. It's not going to be a very influential piece of information, because you're just some attention whore who burned a book instead of articulating a pithy critique of it.

Yes, conceivably, a private group burning its own books might be intimidating, but that would only be because we have other, much greater reasons to fear that group or the movement it represents. And yes, when you burn a book, you adopt an image associated with the Nazis, but that marginalizes you. We don't cower every time some marginal idiot draws a swastika or does the Hitler salute. You're free to express yourself, but I think lavishing outrage on some nobody empowers him. Why not ignore what is worthless? It's a marketplace of ideas. Why are you even browsing the crap?

UPDATE: Pastor Terry Jones has announced that he won't be burning the Koran after all.

The Nazis and KKK of Galesville, Wisconsin.

Details from a kiosk displaying snippets of the history of the town:


(Enlarge.)


(Enlarge.)

... faded away into the night, and have never returned to this day. Never returned... implies what is unknown: that they left.

A view of Galesville from the heights of Pine Cliff Cemetery:

Sarah Palin denies that she aimed any "ugly innuendo" against Joe McGinniss.

"How that equates me with the Nazis is quite beyond me."

But fortunately, there is Facebook to let her get her message out that she is not a Nazi and that the "'lamestream' media" should be ashamed of itself.

What McGinniss said was:

And I think it's probably a lesson for the American people of the power Palin has to incite hatred and her willingness and readiness to do it. She has pushed a button and unleashed the Hounds of Hell, and now that they're out there slavering and barking and growling. And that's the same kind of tactic and I'm not calling her a Nazi, but that's the same kind of tactic that the Nazi troopers used in Germany in the '30s. And I don't think there is any place for it in America.

So Palin has Facebook and a button to release the Hounds of Hell!

Man, McGinniss is getting a ton of publicity for his book project! I'm sure he's not one bit sorry he rented that house next door to Palin. There is no amount of shaming or "ugly innuendo" that will outbalance the immense benefit he's grabbed for himself.

Palin is milking this whole thing for publicity too, of course (even as she has every right to be royally pissed that the book-flogger moved in next door).

"What this film was about for me, which are the moms that take care of the babies and the children no matter where they come from."

Said Sandra Bullock, accepting her Oscar, after fighting alongside her husband Jesse James to win full custody of his 6-year-old daughter, Sunny. There are 2 other James kids — Chandler, 15, and Jesse Jr., 12 — who have had Bullock as a mom. Moms take care of the babies and the children no matter where they come from... but what is she supposed to do now that her husband has betrayed her? Stay together for his children? Or are they her children now? She has dropped plans to adopt them. Presumably, James's children will go back to their real mothers, now that James is consorting with that tattooed, Nazi-arm-band-wearing stripper.

Imagine "Reverse Yoo."

Orin Kerr poses a hypo in which John Yoo is asked to interpret a federal statute that fairly appears to permit enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding. The Reverse Yoo believes, personally, that these techniques really are torture and should be forbidden:

[Reverse Yoo] is not going to be like the Nazi lawyers who let the Holocaust occur... So Yoo decides that he must write a memo concluding that these techniques are unlawful.  Granted, he needs to get a bit creative to reach that result.   He needs to stretch a legal term here, bend a legal term there.  But by fudging the analysis when necessary, he manages to write a memo that gets to the result he wants to reach that the CIA is not permitted by law to engage in these interrogation methods.   With OLC’s opinion issued, the CIA never uses these techniques and no one is ever waterboarded.

Now, did the real John Yoo do basically the same thing as the Reverse Yoo? Or is the bending and stretching justified to prevent torture but not to permit it? Does it all depend on whether you think enhanced interrogation techniques are torture?

Absurdly bleak thoughts I have had while cross-country skiing.

At the Odana golf course — which is nicely groomed for skiing — in the twilight, near a row of tall black-looking evergreens (everblacks?): What if this were limbo, and it went on forever?

At Blue Mounds State Park — while enjoying a well-groomed trail through a woods full of bare scrubby trees: What if this were WWII, and we were escaping from the Nazis?



I am pleased by these snow outings, and I don't suffer from racing thoughts or negativity, but I do have a tendency, when I'm experiencing something as beautiful, to test out the feeling by imagining additional circumstances which would make it awful. This wouldn't be so fun if....

Oh! But it was fun:

"Best Male Actress in a Supporting Role in a Film Not Released Direct-to-Video went to the Nazi."

Male actress... I love this response to the SAG Awards "Male Actor"/"Female Actor" terminology... among other silliness.

The Philosopher's Petition: "Apprehended like a common terrorist Saturday evening, September 26, as he came to receive a prize for his entire body of work, Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison."

Begins French Philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, who is collecting the signatures of "writers and artists." I put "writers and artists" in quotes, because the list includes, presumably as "artists," at least one actor and one fashion designer. If "artists" is a comprehensive term, why aren't writers "artists"? But I delay. On with the rest of the petition:

He risks extradition to the United States for an episode that happened years ago...

And he fled! That's why time has passed. He's avoided the jurisdiction. It's not as if prosecutors let the case go stale.

...and whose principal plaintiff...

Plaintiff! You might talk like that in France, but here in America, that's the language of torts. And we are talking about crime.

... repeatedly and emphatically declares she has put it behind her and abandoned any wish for legal proceedings.

And how much money was she paid to settle the case? What were the terms of the settlement? Do you approve — as a general rule to be applied to all — of dropping criminal charges whenever the victim has been moved to closure?  It is the nature of criminal law that it is a crime against the people, and not merely a wrong against the victim. Do you argue against that, philosopher? Why? Give reasons! Your assertions are not enough — philosopher.

Seventy-six years old...

Yes, he's that old because he fled and because he was protected in other countries that apparently did not take rape so seriously, at least not when it was committed by a great artist.

... a survivor of Nazism and of Stalinist persecutions in Poland...

If a life of suffering excuses crimes, many, maybe most, of our criminals would escape prison. Wouldn't the Nazis themselves have cried about their own suffering in the years preceding their rise to power? Philosopher, do you approve — as a general rule to be applied to all — that those who have suffered earlier in their lives should not be punished for the serious, violent crimes that they commit? Explain, in abstract terms that meet the standards of the discipline of philosophy, why you think this is so.

Roman Polanski risks spending the rest of his life in jail for deeds which would be beyond the statute-of-limitations in Europe.

We have statutes of limitations here in America too. Do yours absolve fugitives? Philosopher, do you absolve fugitives who succeed in evading capture while a period of years passes? Would you do that for everyone? For Nazis? Explain your reasons in terms that meet the standards of the discipline of philosophy, so we can judge.

We ask the Swiss courts to free him immediately and not to turn this ingenious filmmaker into a martyr of a politico-legal imbroglio that is unworthy of two democracies like Switzerland and the United States. Good sense, as well as honor, require it.

Do you assert that an artist ought to receive special treatment? Would an ingenious Nazi deserve to live out his life in peace? What does the special treatment of artists have to do with democracy? Explain what ingeniousness, filmmaking, and democracy have to do with your proposed rule.

Bernard-Henri Lévy, you present yourself as a philosopher. I would like to honor philosophy. Back up your petition with a philosophical argument that we can understand and critique.

IN THE COMMENTS: Peter Hoh said:

So in Bernard-Henri Lévy's world, there are common terrorists. One must presume that some other terrorists are uncommon. Perhaps some are extraordinary. I wonder how one can tell the difference?

Surely, the 9/11 attacks were uncommon. In fact, they were ingenious.

Let's not forget what the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen said on September 17, 2001:

... Stockhausen...  called the attack on the World Trade Center ''the greatest work of art that is possible in the whole cosmos.'' Extending the analogy, he spoke of human minds achieving ''something in one act'' that ''we couldn't even dream of in music,'' in which ''people practice like crazy for 10 years, totally fanatically, for a concert, and then die.'' Just imagine, he added: ''You have people who are so concentrated on one performance, and then 5,000 people are dispatched into eternity, in a single moment. I couldn't do that. In comparison with that, we're nothing as composers.''

So, Bernard-Henri Lévy, by your standard, we should leave Osama Bin Laden alone?

"On what planet do you spend most of your time?"

Barney Frank answers a question:



ADDED:

"You want me to talk about it or do you want to yell?" he asked over and over when interrupted while trying to answer. Continued shouting brought a sterner rebuke.

"Disruption never helps your cause," he said more than once. "It just looks like you're afraid to have rational discussion."...

"What's the matter with you all?" he said. "I don't know if you get angrier when I answer the questions, or when you don't think I do."

Ha ha. I love hearing Frank voice his confusion about whether people are accepting his answers as serious efforts at fully answering the questions. He doesn't know if they hate his actual answers or if they know he's not really answering. I'm guessing he knows he's not fully answering, and he knows they hate his partial answers, and he's trying to calculate whether giving full answers would get a better result. On the one hand, they'd be full answers, but on the other hand, they'd be there presenting a big target for the crowd's contempt.

Things Howzerdo discussed with her husband after watching — on my recommendation — "My Dinner with Andre."

I opened this email from longtime commenter Howzerdo, and it's a list, and I'd just said I love lists.

So:

-grittiness of pre-Giuliani NYC
-Wally is 36? Looks a decade older, awful hair
-both look so shabby for such a nice place
-nervous about who would pay?
-Poland story a snooze-fest, felt sorry for Wally, how long will this go on?
-The Matrix was maybe inspired by this?
-Andre's experiences reminder of Don Quixiote / mushrooms
-Andre’s name dropping seems pretentious (my husband didn't agree)
-Wally chews with his mouth open - yuck
-irony of mention about status v. them not paying attention to waiter
-irony of mention of people not “seeing,” when they are oblivious to restaurant environment
-sympathetic to Wally’s view, that why aren’t mundane daily tasks enough, even profound
-cold coffee from night before? Ugh
-dead fly / cockroach - ugh again
-did they actually eat?
-sympathetic to Ande’s view at same time, for the need to be “clear”
-violence, trivia, etc. of mass media, art even more overwhelming since ‘80s
-mid-life crisis of hip NYC folks
-totalitarian reference reaction to Reagan's election? (I didn't think so, film may have been in works earlier)
-so many Nazi and fascism references
-moral conflict (reminded me of Rosenthal’s comments about what is our responsibility to starving people across the world in Kitty Genovese documentary)
-in the taxi, Wally finally "sees" NYC streets at the end

***

Buy the DVD — here — and maybe you'll email me a list of what you talked about afterwards, perhaps over dinner in a restaurant, where you will be oblivious to your surroundings while talking about the importance of achieving heightened awareness.

More than twice as many 15-year-old German boys belong to neo-Nazi groups...

... than are active in mainstream politics.

IN THE COMMENTS: David said:

I wonder how American boys would stack up on this test? How many 15 year old boys are active in mainstream politics? Run the USA comparison based on street gangs vs. mainstream politics and we will look like Mad Max's utopia.

Amba said:

Yeah, since when were 15-year-old boys active in mainstream politics? They can't even vote yet, and there's no forbidden, secret-society fun in it. Stupid statistic.